It Could Happen Here Weekly 172

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
you know this is a compilation episode, So every episode
of the week that just happened is here in one
convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
you can make your own decisions.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
Hi, everyone, and welcome to the podcast. It's James today
and I'm joined again by Kevin McDonald. Kevin is a
retired officer from the Irish Defense Forces with some special
forces and peacekeeping experience.

Speaker 4 (00:38):
Welcome to the show, Kevin, Thanks, thanks very much for
having me. And just as a sort of disclaimer at
the very start, any views er opinions that I expressed,
the opinions of a retired senior officer from the Irish
Defense Forces can't be construed it has been in any
way the views of the Irish Defense Forces, not indeed
that of the United Nations. So I just wanted to
put that was there before we get into it.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Yeah, yeah, not a UN or an Irish Defense Forces spokesperson,
not that we've had many of those suppose on our show, Kevin,
we're here today to talk a little bit about the
situation in Congo and perhaps more specifically like how the
peacekeeping mission there has it evolved and changed and sort
of morphed over the years. So maybe just to begin with,

(01:21):
I can give an idea that like this city of Goma,
which is the capital of North Kivu Province, has recently
been captured by M twenty three rebels, would explain who
they are people who aren't familiar in a minute. It's
a city of about a million people. I believe they're
saying around three thousand people have been killed in this operation,
which is I mean, it's a massive.

Speaker 4 (01:41):
Death toll in a short space of time.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
Very short space of time. Yeah, And some of the
other stuff I've heard, like at one point there's a
prison within the city which there was a jail break,
and they think a hundred of the women who were
incarcerated there were sexually assaulted and in some cases burned alive.
After the jail break happened, thousands of Congolese military and
police have surrendered. A contingent of I believe Romanian private

(02:08):
military contractors were captured.

Speaker 4 (02:11):
Yes, captured, surrendered either where they went into Rwanda. I
think about three hundred of them, which is a significant
amount of mercenaries.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
Yeah, yeah, especially when we're talking about Romania, which is
not a vast country.

Speaker 4 (02:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
Understandably, a lot of things are happening in the US,
so people may have missed it, and like I think
people in the US, just due to the nature of
news being quite naval gazing here, may not be as
familiar with the conflict in Congo. Like if they know
about it, it's from Warren zvon Songs or maybe from
maybe from a couple.

Speaker 4 (02:41):
Of films, Layer's Gone and Money.

Speaker 5 (02:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
Yeah, what's the other one? Roland, the Thompson Ganna. That's
the Law and the Headless Thompson. That's it. That's the one. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:51):
So let's talk then about the various United Nations peacekeeping
missions in Congo. They've been there since the nineteen sixties,
is it on and off?

Speaker 4 (03:03):
Yeah? So the first mission in the Congo was oak
in nineteen sixty and a lot of people would say
that that was the first UN mission, but as I
think we discussed the last time, the first yu Went
mission was full scale war in nineteen fifty in Korea,
and that mission is still in existence the UNC, the
United Nations Command, but I suppose speaking about the Congo specifically.

(03:26):
So in nineteen sixty there was seventeen newly independent states,
of which fourteen were from Africa. I agreed to a
call from the UN to establish this mission in the Congo,
and Ireland answered the call as well, so we deployed.
It was the first time that we deployed with the UN,
and we had a battalion there from nineteen sixty to

(03:49):
I think nineteen sixty whenever the initial deployment ended, and
it was it was a fairly tough, intense introduction to peace.
In the early in nineteen sixty there was an engagement
between an Irish platoon and a large group of Bluba
tribesmen and there was nine Irish soldiers killed and twenty

(04:11):
six Blubas killed. And that was the first time that
Ireland kind of had to deal with that kind of
death overseas, so it was pretty traumatic. And then in
nineteen sixty one, you've probably seen the film The Siege
of Jariteville, but it recounts the true story of an
Irish company under Kamada pack Quendlin. His company was one
hundred and fifty eight roughly strong, and they were attacked

(04:35):
while they were at mass on a Sunday morning by
a group of between three and four thousand Catanganese well
armed soldiers backed up by French and Belgian and South
African mercenaries. They also had an attack helicopter and they
had an attack chest.

Speaker 3 (04:51):
I think he had some of the old Rhodesians in
there as well at that time.

Speaker 4 (04:54):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, well yeah, unfortunately, anything for a fight,
but the Irish held out for I think over a week,
and they didn't give up when they ran out of water,
they didn't give up when they ran out of food.
It was when they had no bullets left they negotiated
a surrender thanks to the skill of the officers and

(05:15):
NCOs and men. Not one fatality on the other side.

Speaker 3 (05:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (05:20):
Unfortunately, when they came home because they had surrendered, they
were treated like parias for years. It was seemed like
a state on the nation. Now if God forbid, they
had fifty percent casualties that have been treated like heroes.
Yeah yeah, And it's only in recent years that they're
getting the recognition that they should have got back in
nineteen sixty one.

Speaker 3 (05:38):
That's really interesting. I know they've been treated that way.
It's quite sad to hear.

Speaker 4 (05:42):
Yeah, yeah, it's a strange one. And a lot of
the people that we will say shunning these officers and
NCOs and men. It's having to serve to overseas. And
like if the UN they tried once to resupply them
with ammunition from the year, but it wasn't successful. So
if the UN had full supported that company, they would
have held out even longer. But I suppose that's that's

(06:06):
the way things things go. So that's the first mission
to the Congo, And I could be corrected. I think
sixty four sixty five it might have sort of started
to draw down. Then in nineteen ninety nine, after it
was the first the second war, the UN established monarch
monu See and that lasted from nineteen n ninety nine

(06:28):
until twenty ten when it was renamed and rechanged into MONUSCO.
And the difference between the two is that MINUSCO is
what we call an integrated mission. And the three pillars
of an integrated mission are the restoration of the rule
of law, the protection of civilians, and the provision for
long term recovery and democratic governance. So it's combining we'll say,

(06:53):
the force of a military presence, but also there's special
advises on justice and police seeing on governance, all that
sort of stuff which you wouldn't have an emission like UNIFIL,
which we discussed the last time. Yeah, yeah, which is
the earlier form of peacekeeping. So the NUSCO was supposed
to have left the country in twenty twenty four, but

(07:15):
they were given a i think a one year extension. Yeah,
And unfortunately with the twenty three rebel advance, the mission
is relocating most of its staff evacuating others. The difference
between the two terms is very specific. You relocate within
the country and you evacuate out of the country. And

(07:38):
I also note that some of the Hybrid African Union
peacekeeping operations there was I think thirteen South Africans killed
and in the initial stages of the of the onslaught
towards towards going. So that that's kind of where we
are with the With the I think at the at

(07:58):
its height within twenty one twenty two, there was probably
a strength of twenty thousand. But if you think the
DRC is the second largest country in Africa. It's vast, yeah,
and the eleventh largest country in the world. Just the
size of just phenomenal. So you can imagine what the
Congo and is entire no more than Sudan, but what
the Congo and its entirety was back in the day. Yeah,

(08:20):
absolutely huge.

Speaker 3 (08:21):
Yeah, it's vast. It it encompasses different climates, own different
ethnic groups as we're seeing right.

Speaker 4 (08:28):
Two hundred main ethnic groups.

Speaker 3 (08:29):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's a fascinating place. It's a place
I've wanted to go for a long time. I spent
some time on the Congo Rwanda border a few years ago.
I'm not so far from going er actually like riding
riding my bike around. And it's a very interesting place
in terms of what Rwanda is, a very interesting place
in terms of its relation to its neighbors. I think
people will probably struggle to conceptualize. I actually saw somebody

(08:52):
had posted on Twitter, somebody who talks about Syria mostly
like how on Earth is Rwanda invading Congo? And they
had like a picture, you know, and the land mass
of Rwanda. Randa is one of the smaller countries in Africa,
and Congo is obviously a vast country. Are you come
toward explaining a little bit of like the Rwandan involvements.

Speaker 4 (09:11):
It's complicated, and it goes back to the cities the
genocide back in ninety four ninety four, I think, yeah, yeah,
and the Two Kivus, North and South Kiva, which is
on the border with Rwanda, there's a large amount of
ethnic Tutsis, Congolese Tutsis. Yeah. There, I think what Rwanda

(09:34):
has always projected force into the Two Kivus and Katanga
because like literally that that's that's where the money is.
Of course Rwanda would say they don't, but they are
actively supporting and emptry industry I don't have. Yeah, and
most of the twenty three certainly the leadership would be
ethnic Congolese Putsis. Yeah. So ostensibly I think the raison

(09:58):
deathstra for romanda involvement was to protect the ethnic Tutsis
from Hutus that had escaped from the from the genocide.
So it's complicated, but if you kind of part those
complications and think of the money trail, it kind of
leads to the Two Kivus because seventy percent of the

(10:20):
world's cobalt, I think, is kind of located between the
Two Kivus. And then you have gold, diamonds, all the
other sort of rich minerals.

Speaker 3 (10:31):
Yeah, incredible wealth in Congo.

Speaker 4 (10:34):
Yeah yeah, but I was reading that the estimated deposits
in eastern Congo it's something like twenty three trillion, Like
it's it's off the wall stuff.

Speaker 3 (10:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (10:45):
So it's no wonder it's become the battleground that it
has essentially since nineteen sixty because in nineteen sixty, after
getting independence, the Kivu and Katanga wanted to secede back
by belt and that's kind of what kicked off a
lot of the conflict in nineteen sixty, and the reverberations
from that are still are still kind of being felt

(11:06):
and been exploited because everyone wants to get a piece
of the action, like all the surrounding countries. So yeah,
I see. I think it was yesterday that the they're
planning a meeting. I think it's this week or this
weekend to try and resolve the conflict. And this time
they're going to try and include enter twenty three in
the in the meeting rather than ex Google. I don't

(11:28):
think that the choice. I mean they're heading down to
book of use.

Speaker 3 (11:31):
Yeah, I mean at twenty three have said that they're
going for sort of the whole country. Now that they're
not you know, it's not as not a regional or
like you know, ethnic movement so much as a and
they will M twenty three would say that they're not
like per se ethnic separatists, right, Like I think they
would claim that they're like a liberation of Congo force.
And then you've Brundy supporting the Congolese government. You know

(11:54):
that there's all kinds as as you say, like regional
and international actors because of the wealth in Congo and
like let's can't go emerge from the DC emerged from
its colonial past, right, it's always been destabilized by these actors,
both regional and international, who wanted a piece of that
mineral wealth. And then they've created and sustained these differences

(12:15):
which have become I think there's some evidence to suggest
that like certainly they're like the ethnic differences have become
more pronounced and more like intransigent I suppose, or like,
you know, it's become more difficult for those ethnic groups
to coexist over time due to decades of conflict, right
and killing, and it's a very difficult situation and it

(12:37):
leaves people like the civilians living in Goma today in
a terrible situation where I think this is the fifth
time that people have attacked Goma, Like it's certainly I
think the last time was about twenty twelve, was it
when the last time M twenty three took Goma.

Speaker 4 (12:54):
Yeah, and that's that's when the which we've probably just
got slater to the Force and Invention Brigade. Yeah, Goma
in twenty thirteen in a relatively har space of time. Yeah,
compared to how long we took to more, they regained
it very quickly.

Speaker 3 (13:08):
Yeah. So I think we break for adverts now. I'd
like to come back and discuss the Force Intovention Brigade
because I think it's something that people ought to understand
when we talk about peacekeeping. And we're back, okay, So yeah,

(13:29):
you mentioned the Force Intervention Brigade, which is something a
bit unique within peacekeeping, and there's a lot of like
when people talk about peacekeeping, they'll be like, oh, why
aren't they fighting? Why aren't they like going and stopping
the things? And I understand why people ask that. So
can you explain a little bit about what the FIB
was and what it did?

Speaker 4 (13:50):
The concept of the Force Intervention Brigade was I think
to my knowledge it's the first yew Woe Me mission
that developed that concept. And they actually changed the mandate
to include an offense of capability for U and troops
as opposed to defensive or separation of war in factions.
This was full on warfighter and what they had figured

(14:12):
out because the DRC is so big that the footprint,
even with twenty thousand troops, the footprint on the ground
was not sufficient to would say, as I said, one
of the three pillars of an integratedmissions protection of civilians.
And they were finding that very difficult. So they decided
to use a concept of protection by projection rather than

(14:35):
protection by presence. So not alone did they have the
Forceancry Brigade, they had the joint protection teams and also
an idea of a rapidly deployable battalion. So the idea
was that the Port and Diveention Brigade would say, do
the heavy lifting and then when hotspots that flare up,
they could choose either the rapidly deployed the battalions or

(14:57):
the joint protection teams. So the idea is that rather
than having static positions trying to protect people. They would
go where the action was. That was the idea. And
in fairness, the FIB had artillery, martors, snipers, attack helicopters,
U have these special forces. They retook Gum and I

(15:17):
don't know the exact timeframe, but I think it was
less than a month. One of the problems and I
think we touched on at the last time we spoke,
and I think this is a specific problem to the
how the FIB didn't really keep going the way it
should have is that two of the main TCCs were
Tanzania and South Africa, and they would have had slightly

(15:40):
different agendas in terms of who they should and they
shouldn't attack based on the government's position sorrue true country
in the countries. Excuse me, I should have said that.

Speaker 3 (15:52):
Yeah, yeah, sea of acronyms here. I've tried to avoid
all the these faction acronyms, but yeah, yeah, explain that
a bit, because when people think of the UN or
in peacekeepers or troop contributing countries, the only time it
comes on the news in sort of the global north
is when people from say Northern Europe or North America

(16:14):
are part of these UN peacekeeping missions. So they think
of people British troops, American and Canadian what have you,
in their blue helmets. Right that the vast bulk of
TCC's don't come from from Northern Europe, right, they're in Africa.
The majority of TCC's or other African countries. I think
I'm right saying it's a majority.

Speaker 4 (16:34):
Yeah, Like like here here in in suth Sudan, most
of the big battalions are Wanda, Nepal, Mongolia, China generally speaking,
in my experience in the Central African Republic and here
a lot of the battalions come from Africa, which which
is fair enough. I mean it's it's their continent. Yeah,

(16:58):
and they should have they should of a stake in
trying to faster piece and develop peace and help countries
in less or more dire situations than they themselves perhaps are.
So it's I understand your point about about different countries
being aware of what the UN does based on I take,

(17:19):
for instance, everyone in Ireland knows about the UN, and
they know about the Irish and Lebanon, and in Syria
and in Africa. I'm sure in the United Kingdom, because
you've got a very small UN footprint. Yeah, Cyprus been one,
and there's a few of you guys here, generally people
in the UK, I'm sure you'll be able to enlighten
me on this. Wouldn't have the exact same intimate knowledge

(17:39):
or even interest in the UN because basically they don't
have a big footprint, deployable footprint.

Speaker 3 (17:47):
Yeah. Yeah, and it's the same with the United States.
I think it's not something that people think about for
the most part, and so like that's this question of
like why doesn't the UN. Certainly I think when people
saw what happened recently in Lebanon, they were like, why
are these peacekeepers? You know where you had these peacekeepers
And we spoke about this in our last episode, right
being shelled being shot at. You know, the people were

(18:09):
asking why they weren't out there fighting and there are
a lot of reasons for that, one being that's not
what they're there to do. But yeah, when we had
this Force Intervention Brigade in Congo, they did some good things, right,
they were able to retake Goma, and for the people
who lived in Gomer, I'm sure that was very important,
like that meaningfully improved their lives. But like it also
comes with these complications that you've addressed, right, Like each

(18:31):
of those those troop contributing countries, you need everyone to
be committed to like the same mission, I suppose, and
like if your government is giving your armed forces one
mission that differs slightly from that which the whoever's in
commanded the force into venture brigade hats, then we get friction, right,
or it's not as efficient as it could be.

Speaker 4 (18:53):
Yeah, I think I'm sure I mentioned just when we
last spoke. It's one thing developing a robust mandate, But
if the if the TCCs don't want to have the skills,
the experience, the training, the equipment, or the will to
enforce the robust nature of that mandate, well then the
mandate isn't really worth anything, you know. So it's it's

(19:16):
kind of like, Yes, the FIB was extremely effected for
a while until it wasn't. Now whether that was a
lack of will on the TCCs or on New York
or mission leadership, I have no idea, but it was
a great idea and it worked and then it didn't work.

Speaker 3 (19:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (19:38):
Plus the fact that the DOC wanted the mission to
downsize and eventually leave that added to the should should
we really invest in something when we're going to pull
out because the country doesn't want to hear it anymore,
which is again as a fair point.

Speaker 3 (19:54):
Yeah right, No one wants foreign troops in their country, right,
you know, walking around, especially you know, engaging their owns.
It's but I mean, it's interesting. I was watching a
speaks the current president of the DRC, Felix TOSHISAKEDI. I've
tried my best to pronounce it correctly. It's not that disrespect.
He was saying that the international community is bordering on

(20:14):
complicit in M twenty three's advance because of the failure
to do anything about it, in a speech he gave
this week. And it was interesting because it had previously been,
like you said, for under very understandable reasons, especially in
the DRC, which has this long and horrible history of colonialism,
like the terrible things done in the Belgian Congo. We've

(20:34):
covered those a lot on Bastardsen now the show that
we do, people can listen to that if they want to.
But now he's asking for more help, which is also
understandable because you know, his military is one hundred and
twenty five thousand or so, like and a large number
of that it's not very combat effective forces maybe, and
they've just been overrun in Gourma, in a big city,

(20:57):
a city of a million people. So, like, where do
you think we go from here? What's like, We're at
a very unique time in world history in which the
United States is it's doing some things with this foreign policy.
I mean, I don't I won't really mince words about
anything's terrible. But if we talk about like USAID, right

(21:20):
I was speaking to people on the Thai Burmese border
last week who were telling me that USAID has turned
off life support machines as part of its draw down
and that people obviously directly died as a result of
that there. So the US is not necessarily averse to
having terrible consequences to its whatever it's trying to do
right now, which I don't really have a good word for.

(21:43):
So where do we go from here? With the US
becoming more isolationists.

Speaker 4 (21:47):
Well, let's discuss for a few minutes the alternatives to
UN peace keep ye, And there's a lot of them
here in Africa. So you have the South African Development Community,
the East African community, there was an African Union stroke
UN hybrid mission and therefore UNIMIT which is closing. There

(22:09):
was an AU mission in Somalia. There is the Lake
Chad base in Multinational Task Force, there's the Group of
Five for the Sahel. Then you had EU four which
was an EU force in Chad and in Mali and
subsequently became miner cat in Chad and Minusna and Mali.
Then you have the EUTM mission in Mali which I

(22:31):
was part of at one stage, and another one in Socenaria.
And of course we have our mercenaries, you know, and
when it emerged that there was over three hundred of
them allowed into Rwanda, I was reading the report that
they were getting something like three and a half thousand
dollars a month, whereas the DRC soldiers were getting maybe

(22:54):
three hundred dollars a month. Yeah, you know, and these
guys were brought in to protect the mines because again
they goes back to money.

Speaker 3 (23:00):
Yeah yeah, yeah, pactal resources, not people. That's a different thing.
So what if those like those African led peacekeeping missions
look like like you talked about these various like international
and regional groups.

Speaker 4 (23:15):
I think it's it's certainly worth a try because dun
hasn't the ability, not indeed the money, I presume to
keep doing these large, big missions. At one stage, the
three largest missions were MENUSCO, which were discussing MINUSCA and
the Central African Republic, and MINUSMA, which was in Mali.
Mali's gone. DRC is on the drawdown. Central African Republic

(23:39):
is still there, but I've noticed I spent four years there,
and obviously I have a keen interest in the place,
but there has been a big increase in anti anti
French with a Francophone country. Yeah, Antry French and linked
with a kind of an anti UN sentiment. No, the
special advisor to the President is from Russia. Vaguer. You

(24:02):
had a big part to play when I was there.
The were key players. Yeah. Most likely they're interlinked.

Speaker 3 (24:08):
Yeah, I mean, and they've done some things which are
horrific in terms. We've covered that as well with the
print Derma on the show. I did want to talk
about this because the US is talking about withdrawing its
sort of what we call like soft power assets right
around the world, and I saw, like I forget who
it was saying, like, oh, let the chips fall where
they may. It's very obvious where the chips will fall

(24:28):
in this part of the world. Right, Like when I
was in Rwanda, every fancy road in Rwanda they call
them Chinese roads because they go from the mind to
the airport.

Speaker 4 (24:38):
Ye belt embraces Yep.

Speaker 3 (24:40):
It's as naked a resource extraction project as you'll see
right now. China also does a soft power thing. They'll
build hospitals and these. You know, I forget where the
quote comes from, but like every time the US comes,
we get a lecture, and every time China comes, we
get a hospital. This will reorient the way these countries,

(25:01):
specifically in Africa, associate with the world. Right with the
US drawdown and the United Nations not capable or willing
of sort of doing these massive peacekeeping missions. And I
think for very understandable reasons groups out the EU. You know,
it's best not to have large deployment to European en

(25:21):
forces in Africa for reasons that are probably quite obvious.
So like, yeah, we were likely to see I mean,
hasn't Wagner rebranded itself as the Africa Core Now.

Speaker 4 (25:33):
Yeah, I'm not sure who's running at no, but I'm
sure the strings are being more closely pulled by by
Putin as opposed to having very loose control when precaution
was there. Yeah, yeah, it was given him like a
standoff capability. Was right, This is just a PMC, nothing

(25:53):
to do with me. Yeah, But I would imagine after
his drive to Moscow and a subsequent to my I'm
sure that whoever is running the Africa core is much
more tightly controlled by the criminal I would. I would imagine.

Speaker 3 (26:07):
Yeah, it's like a britishis India Company kind of model,
like a sort of proxy colonialism, but very tight. Like
you say, it's just almost just like a different badge
on the same thing there. I think this is one

(26:27):
of the things that won't get talked about in the
next four years because the US media will talk about
the US a lot. Again, I mean they always do.
But I think people should be concerned about this, about
the future for like multinational peacekeeping in Africa, and more importantly,
I guess the future for Interlink without the future for
human rights in Africa. What do you see as like

(26:48):
meaningful ways that people can advocate for a future for
Africa which is not just another set of countries extracting
resources and leaving very little for the people there, Which
is something that has happened. You know, I'm British best,
and this has happened by British people for a very
long time and other European people for a very long time.
But like that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to

(27:09):
stop it happening in the future.

Speaker 4 (27:11):
That's a difficult one to answer, because ideally African problems should,
in my opinion, be solved by African nations. Yeah, and
that's the reason that the African Union and all these
other ones that I mentioned I think are an attempt
to do that. Yeah. And certainly Europe and the US

(27:35):
shouldn't be dictating how Africans government themselves. They should be
assisting in good governance, good policing, good judiciary. But it
kind of goes back to money again, because there's so
much of a vested interest. I heard a figure that
twenty three were getting eight hundred thousand dollars a month

(27:56):
from some of the mines in the Kivus. Yeah, I
can believe we'll get that kind of money floating around
a lot of people maybe don't want to sort things out. Yeah,
and it may suit to leave the mayhem there and
use all these artisanal miners who are getting paid a
couple of cents a day and Wonder has just got

(28:16):
a big contract with the EU in terms of diamonds.

Speaker 3 (28:20):
Yeah, I mean that is the thing, right, we can
tell where this stuff comes from. There is a means
to try and limit the amount of these resources which
you can leave conflict zones in a way which benefits
beligerent parties. It's where the markets for those resources are
willing to do it, right.

Speaker 4 (28:38):
Yeah, And everyone has mistaken the point, whether it's the
overseer of the mind, whether it's the company that owns
the mind, whether it's the people that move the product
from Kivu into someone neighboring country, and then ultimately the
people that buy it commercially in Western Europe or around

(28:58):
the rest of the world.

Speaker 3 (29:00):
Yeah. Yeah, And it's it's not you know, people think
of diamonds a lot, and I think people that there's
been a kind of movement to purchase diamonds which you're
ethically sourced, or to just not use diamonds, to sort
of move away from them as like a store of value.
But it's also the parts in your mobile phone, isn't it.
It's not you know, it's not just like fancy engagement rings.

Speaker 4 (29:20):
Because this is a chain you wanted to be over
the price for more ethical mining methods most people probably own.

Speaker 3 (29:27):
Yeah, that's the thing, right, and especially when it's out
of sight, out of mind for most people, even compared
to you know, we obviously genocide Palestinian people or the
you know, when we think about these other atrostees, right,
like those have not remained out of sight out of
mind because they're visible in people's social media, because you know,

(29:51):
people in Palestine have phones and they can film, and
like that's I think meaningfully changed the way. Like I
wouldn't have thought American people would care about Palestinian people.
I moved here in two thousand and eight, and you
wouldn't have found much interest in Palestine.

Speaker 4 (30:09):
You wouldn't have expected them to promote that cleansing of
Guz Yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (30:12):
Know you well, you wouldn't have expected that either. But
the movement like to support Palestinian people from the grassroots
and then also the other government doing the exact opposite.
You know, it's come from the bottom up. It hasn't
come from like government advocacy. But we don't see that
as much with certainly this part of Africa, right, Like
and it's exposed. It's to contro it's coins of like

(30:35):
people in Congo maybe aren't able to access those global
networks of like social media and maybe to share their stories,
you know. And I think it's also a consequence of
us in the media not reporting at all, you know,
Like I've for years tried to sell stories about Africa
to American publications and at best they'll want a story

(30:56):
about like the people who are starting like social enterprise,
European North American people starting like social enterprises or like
sort of beneficial companies. And I understand it's have a role,
but like, you're not going to persuade me that there
is a single African person of interest to you, and
that like it's someone who came from North America, that

(31:16):
it's the only relevant story to tell in Africa. And
like I've had this falling out with so many editors
over the years that like, no, I don't want to
tell that story. I want to tell a story about
people from Congo and Congo, about people from Rwanda and Rwanda.

Speaker 4 (31:30):
I live in the town towards the west coast of Ireland,
and there's a guy from there. What I'll do is
I'll send you a link. Yeah. Yeah, but he's passionate
about getting free education in Africa between online courses and
online libraries. Obviously, the more education you get, the better
chance you have of having a better life. So yeah,

(31:52):
I think of some sulf and I'll send an auntie
and then you can figure out whether it'll be an
interesting topic or whatever. But I just literally as we were,
I was thinking of how one guy is trying to
change conditions for younger people in Africa and trying to
give it to them for free.

Speaker 3 (32:07):
That's it. Yeah, that's the key is like people doing it.
One of the things that people did which I thought
was really great as an example as a model, is
from October about October the tenth of twenty twenty three.
I suppose people weren't going to school or university in Gaza,
and very quickly there weren't any universities in Gaza because

(32:27):
they all got bombed. Right, the colleagues of mine in
academic departments started putting on seminars and lectures that Palestinian people,
be they displaced or still in Gaza, but with access
to internet, you know, it's still displaced, but internally displaced
could attend and continue with their educations. And I thought
that was a really great, like solidarity based way to

(32:50):
facilitate access to something that people have had taken away
from them through no fault they were by state aggression.

Speaker 4 (32:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:56):
Absolutely, Yeah, there's a model for that. I mean, colonial
has done many terrible things, but it's given us a
common language with a lot of our African friends. You know,
you speak French and English, you can do quite well.
So like, yeah, there are things available, and I wish
people would I don't think people should stop caring about Palestine,
of course I don't, but I do wish they would

(33:17):
care more about people in Africa too, because like, they
don't deserve this any more than anyone else.

Speaker 4 (33:23):
I was born in nineteen sixty when the first mission
went to the Congo. Yeah, and it's been going on,
like I'm sixty four, it's been around sixty four years. Yeah,
so no more than the problem with the Palestinians. I
think some people, unless you have a specific interest in

(33:44):
it or feel passionate about it, a lot of people
just I think true note and to go to the
next pronouncement from the White House, you know, clickbit. Yeah,
So I think it's a sad fact, but it's the
factor I think.

Speaker 3 (34:00):
Yeah, yeah, it's a shame. And like, you know, if
there's one thing I'd like to do with my career,
I'd like to spend more time in that part of
the world and do more reporting. And I think we
could do a lot with as a media with just
explaining how life is for everyday people, because people think
about Congo in terms of yeah, the M twenty three

(34:20):
in the conglese government and the who too, militias and
this and that, but the vast majority of people are
just trying to get on with their day. You know,
they want a better future for their children. Yeah, and
you know the fact that your mobile phone it's cheap,
it's maybe making their children's future worse. And that's something
that we need to reckon with.

Speaker 4 (34:36):
And E cares.

Speaker 3 (34:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean this is the thing people
and talk about electric cars. It's so as weird. It's
all that stuff come and then even here in America
right whether the US trying to mind lithium on reservations
where you know, the land there's little land it's left
indigenous people to have sovereignty on. It's where it's now
trying to do this very invasive form of mining. Kevin,
You've written a book, so would you like to as

(34:59):
we wind down here, do you want to explain a
little bit about about your books so that people are
interested in your life and your time as a peacekeeper
and an archaeologist.

Speaker 4 (35:07):
Okay, So what started off as a lockdown project when
COVID hit back in the day, I decided I would
write an account of my weird of wonderful life for
my just from my family, and don't you start writing
as you're no doubt where you start remembering. And suddenly
I was at something like a hundred thousand words, and
I thought, right, there might be a book in this.

(35:28):
And I know, obviously I'm opinionating about my own book naturally,
but it's not just a book about some random military
guy waffling on about his military career. I've a separate
career in mountaineering and kind of a nearly separate career
in archaeology, So it's it's a mixture of soldiering, mountaineering

(35:50):
and archaeology. As someone said it to me, it's a
bit like Chris Bonnington meets Bert Grills meets Indiana Jones,
which is weird and wonderful way to do so. The
title of the book is a Lifeless Ordinary, which this
was a recruiting slogo in the nineteen nineties for the
for the Irish Defense Forces.

Speaker 3 (36:09):
Oh, I didn't know that.

Speaker 4 (36:10):
I think. I think I'll sent you the link. Yeah, yeah,
if not, I'll do it, yeah, immediately. So all your
viewers can order the book. You can only get it
online at the publishers. It's not on Amazon unfortunately. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (36:22):
Well maybe maybe fell the best given the way tech
people are playing the US economy. Yeah, you can. You
can get it online. You can get it sent to
the United States if you interest date I did. Thank
you so much for your time, Kevin. You're insights today.
I know we really appreciate it. Is there anywhere else
if people want to follow you online? Aside from the book?
The book is probably the best one. What is probably
the best way to get in comment? I'm on LinkedIn

(36:44):
and yeah, the normal stuff. Just google Kevin McDonald and
I should I should come up. I was resisting for
years and years, and eventually I googled Kevin McDonald and
I was surprised at the amount of Kevin McDonald's There
is a famous American actor writing called Kevin McDonald. Yeah,
but I just as a small party shot when when

(37:05):
I was in Mali, I was researching the archaeology of
Mali and the world expert on Melaye archaeology is a professor, naturally,
Kevin mac donald. So I sent him an am here
and I said, by the way, I'm also an archaeologist,
and my name is Kevin McDonald, and he goes my word,

(37:27):
I'd be in Bangi or in Bamaco in two weeks time.
Let's meet up.

Speaker 4 (37:31):
So the two Kevin McDonald's, two archaeologists met up in
Bama cup to discuss archaeology.

Speaker 3 (37:37):
So that's nice when these things kept again.

Speaker 4 (37:39):
Another one of my word and wonderful stories.

Speaker 3 (37:41):
Yeah yeah, well thanks so much for joining us to you, Kevin,
So it's nice to hear me.

Speaker 4 (37:45):
You're more than welcome.

Speaker 6 (37:45):
Jims, Hello, welcome to It could Happen Here a podcast

(38:10):
about things falling apart and the people.

Speaker 7 (38:12):
Trying to put them back together again. I am today's
guest host, Margaret Kiljoy. Today is one of those episodes
about people, well trying to put it back together again,
or I guess really an episode about people trying to
stop them from making things fall apart, because today I'm

(38:33):
going to talk a little bit about the fight against
the Mountain Valley natural Gas pipeline. Last Tuesday, February twenty fifth,
twenty twenty five, the last criminal trials from the campaign
to stop the Mountain Valley pipeline were held in Parisburg, Virginia.
As you might have guessed based on the fact that
you've never heard of Parisburg, Virginia, it's a tiny town

(38:56):
nestled in the Appalachian Mountains. It's also the seat of
Giles County, Virginia, and it the town is home to
almost three thousand people. It's in the southwest of the state,
right up against West Virginia. Culture and geography, of course,
both reject things like state lines. The governments are obsessed
with them. For ten years, the people of Central Appalachia,

(39:19):
on both sides of the imaginary line, fought against this
destructive pipeline. Their campaign tied nonviolent direct action with lawsuits
and public pressure campaigns, and they very nearly won. It
took backdoor dealings at the highest level of power to
force the pipeline's construction, with West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin

(39:39):
holding twenty twenty three's Inflation Reduction Act hostage until President
Biden personally guaranteed that the pipeline would be constructed, overriding
all of the courts, activists, and locals who blocked it
along the way. Essentially, the ostensible Democrat Joe Manchin said, fine,
I'll vote for your climate bill, but only if you

(40:01):
fuck over the state that I represent. The pipeline, owned
by Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC, was supposed to be built
in a year. Thanks to the campaign against it, it
took six and a half years to build. It was
intended to cost the company three billion dollars. It costs
them more than twice that, which is not bad for

(40:23):
a scrappy movement of mountain people, hippies, and punks. It's
not bad for a bunch of grandma's and college kids.
I'll be covering the full campaign in more details soon
on cool people who did cool stuff. This podcast is
instead about the trials. Twelve defendants went before the court
that day, eleven of them facing felonies and serious prison time.

(40:46):
In the end, none of them were sentenced to time
behind bars. I am happy to say a friend of
mine invited me down to cover the trials twelve defendants,
all in the same day, all in the same courtroom,
with the same judge. I said, yes, West Virginia is
a bigger state than its own map would indicate because
there aren't freeways that run through it, so it takes
a very long time to get anywhere. So I packed

(41:09):
up my van and headed down on Monday night. That night,
sleeping in my van, I had a stress dream about
court where I'd forgotten to take off my knife before
going through the metal detectors, and spent a very long
time talking to various cops about who I was and
why I was there, before being stuck outside the courthouse
and a large crowd of protesters surrounded by a large

(41:31):
crowd of cops. In that dream, someone who wasn't on
either side stood up to give a speech, but too
near an open flame in his clothes caught fire. Us
anarchists again, I'm talking about my dream here. Aus Anarchist
rushed to help him while the cops stared on with
blank stairs. We beat out the flames and held his
burned body while the cops stared on with blank stairs.

(41:53):
We screamed for someone to call an ambulance while the
cops stared on with blank stairs. I like when my
dreams lend themselves to obvious symbolism in this moment where
the apparatus of the state is content to let all
of us burn, whether in the fires of fascism or
the fires of climate change. But I woke up disturbed nonetheless,

(42:14):
with the sun barely over the horizon. I ate a
quick breakfast, and I drove the rest of the way
up to the actual courthouse and the actual trial. Fortunately,
at the actual thing, no one caught fire. I parked
on a nearby street and made my way to the courthouse.
It didn't accidentally bring a pocket knife, which is easy
for me to do since I usually have three on

(42:35):
me because I am a totally normal human. I did, though,
bring an audio recorder, which was equally forbidden in the courtroom.
I went through the metal detector and surrendered my little
bag with the Zoom recorder. Later, press came into the
room and I tried to get my recorder back, but
I was told that's real media. Without a press badge,

(42:55):
I don't look much like someone who works for iHeart.
I settled into a seat and waited for the proceedings.
Eco defendants and ECO defenders both poured into the tiny,
dingy courtroom. The ceiling had holes in it, the drywall
was sagging. Appalachia isn't extracted from region. A place from
which wealth is gathered, not a place where wealth goes.

(43:18):
We were reminded repeatedly that the fire code limited occupancy
of the roomed eighty nine people, and it sure seemed
like they brought in as many cops as they could
to limit our numbers. Many more supporters waited outside. Most
of what I did that day was weight in the courtroom,
because most of the courtroom drama was happening behind closed
doors as the prosecutor, the judge, and the aid or

(43:41):
so defense attorneys all argued and fought over the details
of plea deals. Most of these characters, judge, prosecutor, and
lawyers were quite familiar to the people working with the movement.
This was the last trial of many throughout the ten
year campaign, which has relied heavily on non violent direct
action since twenty eighteen. The prosecutor, in particular, a guy

(44:03):
named Bobby Lilly, was a well known figure. Usually, when
people say things like the prosecutor was a clown. They're
speaking figuratively, but Bobby Lilly, the prosecutor, is a balloon
artist in his free time, and his Facebook is full
of photos of all of his balloon creations. The rumor
is that he clowned his way through law school, all right, Which, look,

(44:27):
if I wasn't predisposed to not like this man because
he was arguing for the imprisonment of people trying to
save all life on earth, I would kind of think
that's cool. But it does mean that there was a
clown prosecution. And some people who were there to support
the defendants wore balloon animal hats to mock Bobby Lily,
though they were forced to leave those hats outside as

(44:47):
no hats of any kind were allowed in the courtroom.
Coming in that morning, we expected most of the defendants
to take non cooperating plea deals they'd already agreed to.
Non Cooperating plea deals are deals in which the defendant
refuses to cooperate with the state's investigation of other protesters. Basically,
this means these are non snitching deals. A few of

(45:09):
the defendants, though we're ready to take their cases to trial,
I've decided to largely not use people's names in this reporting.
Those names are a matter of public record, of course,
but we are entering unprecedented times, and I don't see
any particular advantage in making their names more public than
they already are. But do you know what I do
want to make public the sweet sweet deals offered by

(45:32):
our advertisers. I love making those public. Here they are,
and we're back. The charges against the defendants seem politically motivated.

(45:53):
This isn't to say the defendants might not have walked
onto pipeline work sites and disrupted activity. There certainly a
coordinated campaign to do just that, but the charges against
them were artificially inflated. I was talking to a supporter
during one of the many long interludes in the proceedings
who explained to me that nearly everyone on trial that day,

(46:15):
and a large percentage of all defendants throughout the course
of the campaign, were charged with felony misuse of a
motor vehicle aka joy riding. To be clear, no one
has been accused of hijacking construction equipment and riding it around.
It's just one of the many charges levied at protesters
in order to get their bail denied or inflated to

(46:37):
tie everyone up in legal proceedings for longer, and intimidate
people into pleting guilty to lesser charges. These are similar
to the kidnapping charges that a lot of protesters got
as well, despite that, well, no one was kidnapped during
the course of the campaign, except, of course, by the state.
Another supporter explained to me, inflated arges has been part

(47:01):
of the Mountain Valley Pipeline's legal strategy all along, the
same as protesters look to tie the pipeline company up
in court and delay construction, MVP's strategy seems to have
been to drag out court cases and keep as many
individual force defenders caught up in legal jeopardy as possible.
Of course, they shouldn't actually have the means to change

(47:24):
people's charges. But if the fight against MVP has taught
us anything it's that the state caves to business interests
every time. Most defendants from the course of the campaign
have taken pleas that include suspended sentences so that they
never do jail time as long as they promise to
never try to save the world from fossil fuel infrastructure.

(47:45):
It seems like MVP wants each person who catches charges
to be out of the fight. But fortunately Frontline's work
is only a portion of the work involved in defending
the earth. When someone told me that this was MVP's
strategy to catch everyone up on charges, I wasn't really
skeptical because it made sense, but I still had that

(48:06):
confirmed for me in the courtroom. You see, a few
lawyers or other legal representatives of MVP were present in
the courtroom that day, standing at the back of the room,
seemingly eves dropping on the courtroom.

Speaker 5 (48:19):
Chatter.

Speaker 7 (48:19):
Word on the street was that part of their goal
was to gather information for the ongoing civil litigation happening
against environmentalists. But eves dropping goes both ways, and one
supporter I talked to overheard them talking to each other
about how they wish they could drag these cases out
even longer. Once court began, defendants went up one by

(48:40):
one before the judge. Most entered pleas of not guilty
with stipulation. This is, in essence, a way to accept
a plea agreement without actually accepting guilt. So each person
went up pleaded not guilty with stipulation, and then was
found guilty by the judge.

Speaker 3 (48:57):
On their lesser charges.

Speaker 7 (49:00):
The process took three to six minutes per defendant.

Speaker 3 (49:03):
I tracked it.

Speaker 7 (49:05):
The defendants were there for arrests stemming from actions that
happened between October twenty twenty three and March twenty twenty four,
from three different actions, all on nearby Peters Mountain, a
mountain which sits on the horizon of Parrisburg, Virginia, and
which defies the border between Virginia and West Virginia. Most
of the action from the campaign happened on either Peters

(49:28):
Mountain or another mountain in another county, Poor Mountain. One
action in October twenty twenty three, like I said, court
has been dragged out for a very long time, was
an action in which one person locked themselves to an
excavator while others were there in support. The supporters of
the action were facing felonies too. Some of them a

(49:49):
while back were re arrested at their own arraignments, given
additional charges, and put into jail for days. It's not
hard to imagine why the defendants were nervous in the
courtroom that day, even though most of them had already
sorted out their plea agreements ahead of time. The state
is fickle, condescending, and unpredictable. One of the defendants that

(50:10):
I talked to told me about their own case. The
evidence supporting the charges against pretty much everyone was weak,
but the evidence supporting the charges against this particular person
were particularly weak. The state kept offering this person plea
deals before anyone else. Will you be offering the same
deal to my co defendants, the defendant kept asking. The

(50:31):
state kept saying no, so the defendant kept refusing the deal.
That defendant came to court fully expecting to stand trial
rather than take a better deal than what their co
defendants were getting. The big story of the day actually
revolves around that particular point. At least one of the
defendants who came prepared to stand trial last Tuesday wound
up being offered much more generous plea agreements at the

(50:54):
last minute because the state knew its case against them
was flimsy. Those who accept at non cooperating plea deals
were hit with suspended sentences, community service, and restitution. The
details differed from case to case, but in general, people
were given a year in prison hanging over their heads
if they're caught breaking the law in the next year,

(51:15):
and have to spend between fifty and one hundred hours
doing manual labor for Giles County, Virginia. I've been told
this can range from something benign like painting murals to
something intentionally humiliating, like cleaning the toilets.

Speaker 3 (51:28):
At the police station.

Speaker 7 (51:30):
The single biggest issue of contention was restitution. The defendants
are being ordered to pay for the overtime costs associated
with arresting them. One defendant, who was I believe, arrested
at a mom's against the pipeline's action, a woman who
simply wants her children to grow up in a world
with a habitable ecosystem, was in court last Tuesday to

(51:50):
contest the restitution payments. This is, as I understand it,
the only issue that was not fully resolved that day.
The case the defense made was one that I found convincing,
though of course I have a bias in that direction. Essentially,
the defense's case was that people are not legally on
the hook for the investigation of their own crime, that

(52:11):
it would set a very dangerous precedent to have people
have to pay for the cops's time to arrest them.
The prosecutor's argument was, and I rudely paraphrase here, yeah,
but fuck these people in particular that because there was
a campaign against the MVP, their crimes ought to be
treated differently, in the same standard of the rule of

(52:31):
law should not apply to them. Again, I'm paraphrasing, but
that really was the takeaway that I seem to get.
The judge said he would need to consider the case
law on the matter and would not rule on it
that day. But you know what he would have ruled
on if he was the judge of this podcast. He
would have ruled that it is time for advertising.

Speaker 5 (53:02):
And we're back.

Speaker 7 (53:04):
The only case that actually went to trial, as I
understand it, was for the only misdemeanor case of the day,
a protester who was accused and convicted later at the
end of the trial of spending a couple days living
inside a length of pipe to prevent it from being
buried in the earth. The full incompetence of the police
was on display from the state trooper who didn't know

(53:25):
what the word diameter meant when asked to describe the
pipeline in question, to the police, who admitted that they
didn't actually bother watching the entrance to the pipe, so
they didn't actually see the protester when they emerged from
the pipe. In court, the cop said the protester came
up to them to turn themselves in and said, quote, well,
you're lucky, I'm honest. A large part of the defense's

(53:47):
case was that the defendant had been denied the right
to a speedy trial, which seems true to me. Misdemeanors
in particular are supposed to move through the court system quickly,
not drag on for a year, because again, it seems
quite like that MVP has been working from the start
to drag on court cases as long as possible. All
the while the trial went on, supporters outside had a

(54:09):
table set up in the parking lot with homemade food,
a staple of this movement. As far as I can tell,
the connections between the front lines and their supporters built
a very strong movement. Indeed, after the trial, an older
local man gave a heartfelt thank you to everyone who
had put their bodies on the line to protect the
mountains he loves. And I went around and talked to people,

(54:30):
feeling a bit odd to be there as a stranger
to the movement and as a journalist. Blocking pipeline construction
through nonviolent direct action is simple and principle, but complicated
in the details. The core of it is that you
leverage your own safety in order to prevent construction crews
from working. Since your own safety is what you're gambling with,

(54:51):
it's well not safe the ideas you put your own
body on the line. In nineteen ninety eight, for example,
Earth First activist named David Chain died when a lagger
dropped a tree on him and killed him, and despite
ample evidence that the lagger in question had been aware
of the protesters and had been threatening them, no charges

(55:12):
were pressed against him. In two thousand and three, an
American anarchist piece worker named Rachel Corey was killed in
the Gaza Strip when she stood in front of an
Israeli bulldozer trying to stop the bulldozer from demolishing a
Palestinian home. Even when you aren't murdered for doing it,
the work itself is dangerous too. Shortly before I joined

(55:34):
my first forest defense campaign in the Pacific Northwest, an
activist named Whorhound had just fallen to her death from
a tree sit and her absence was a tangible presence
in every meeting and every forest defense camp for years after.
So I don't feel like I'm speaking hyperbolically when I
say that in that courtroom were some of the bravest
people I've ever met who risked their lives to stop

(55:56):
a clear and present threat against it. And again genuinely
believe this is not hyperbolic to say clear and present
threat against all life on Earth. Climate change could very
easily destroy every ecosystem on the planet. This fight is
bigger than Appalachia. These forest defenders at this last trial
knew that they would likely face felonies where they arrested,

(56:19):
and they knew that people have died doing this work
before them. And I don't want to speak to everyone
involves gender identity, but it seems likely that some of
them were trans as well, and thus risking spending prison
time in the wrong prisons, which is a particularly dangerous
position to be in. I don't say this to try
to scare people out of joining movements like this. I

(56:39):
can name people who have died in nonviolent direct action campaigns,
and occasionally people have served real jail time, But I've
met thousands and thousands more who have saved wild places,
who have built lifelong friendships, and who have proven to
themselves that they are who they hoped they would be.
I want to end this by reading two statements. One

(57:01):
was written by one of the defendants and was posted
onto the Ablachians Against Pipeline's Facebook page on March third.
You can read the full statement over there if you'd like.

Speaker 5 (57:11):
Quote.

Speaker 7 (57:12):
Today we proved that co defendant solidarity works. We were
able to see how different strategies against a stacked system
play out. It is in the court's best interest for
us to take a deal out of fear of trial,
but today we showed that they are just as afraid
of an uncertain outcome, and we can use that to
our advantage when we work together. The people who went

(57:33):
to trial or pushed it to the brink got objectively
better outcomes than those who took deals ahead of time,
and those who took deals often had to struggle with
changing conditions at trial, but still felt obligated to comply.
I and another defendant held out, in part out of
principle for people who had not been offered deals, and
in part to say fuck you, Bobby Lilly, our prosecutor,

(57:55):
who is a literal clown. My co defendant and I
went to bat for another who was not offered a
deal at first. My co defendant was offered a deal,
rather nice one at that, but my friend said no.
The clown blinked. My friend basically went to trial. Technically
they took a deal, but they basically started a trial.
Prosecution made a motion to amend charges, but abruptly the

(58:18):
clown and his cop body left.

Speaker 5 (58:20):
They ran.

Speaker 7 (58:21):
They had no evidence. Another deal, which was even better,
was offered, and this time I got one too. For me,
it was good and an agreement. We took our deals.
The one other person was offered an okay deal, but
opted to go to trial with eyes open at the
courts in competence and crushed it. Little Bobby Lilly looked
even more like a clown. Every deal that was offered

(58:43):
only got better, especially on the day of the trial.
You don't have to accept the first deal, or the second,
or the third or the fourth. And when they try
to pit us against each other, it is because they
know we are stronger together. Initially we were charged with conspiracy.
The real conspiracy is between prosecutors and the judges, between

(59:04):
the cops and the corporations. It is the conspiracy between
your landlord and your boss to keep you exhausted and hungry,
unable to fight back. It is the dictatorship of the
billionaires to keep us bound to their world where they
make and break their own rules. This is bigger than
a forty two inch wide, three hundred and three mile long,
ticking time bomb running to Appalachia. It is the fact

(59:27):
that our lives are bought and sold by the large
land owning class who are able to ram this project
through under Joe Biden, despite the harm it'll cause, because
it will make them money as the world burns. Then
here's another statement from the person who sat inside the pipe,
and the statement is from last year.

Speaker 5 (59:47):
Quote.

Speaker 7 (59:48):
Winning looks so much bigger than just stopping this pipeline.
It's a win through the community folks continue to build.
It is a win because of the insane amount of
skills that people have gathered and shared, no whin because
whether or not this pipeline ever has gas running through it,
the legacy of resistance in Appalachia still lives. Extractive industry

(01:00:09):
knows that they can't fuck with the communities here without
going through hell, and we better not let them forget that.
Many times in my life I have felt consumed by grief,
grief for all the places this pipeline has destroyed, For
communities who continue to be ravaged by the state and industry,
For the senseless violence committed against people and land every day,

(01:00:31):
For friends and strangers forced into cages. But what keeps
me moving is knowing that I feel such grief only
because I have such deep hope and love for what
could be and what we have the power to create.
Find or facilitate radical community. Wherever you call home, Think
about the things you are willing to sacrifice for people
near and far. Dream of worlds that feel out of reach,

(01:00:55):
because I bet they aren't as far away as it
may seem as the end of the and so yeah,
though the criminal trials are over, the civil legal fight
rages on. MVP is attempting to wield civil courts to
silence its opposition. And if you want to help support
that fight, which continues, you can donate to Appalachian Legal

(01:01:16):
Defense Fund, which you can find probably by just searching
for it, but you can also find it by going
to bit dot l y slash app Legal Defense all
one word, no dashes.

Speaker 5 (01:01:30):
Anyway.

Speaker 3 (01:01:31):
That's it for the episode. I'll talk to you soon. Hello,

(01:01:55):
and welcome to the podcast. It's me James. Today we
have a very special episode in which everyone is a doctor.
I will believe in discussion, of course, as a doctor
of modern European history. But I'm joined today by venktash Ramnath,
who is a practicing pullmanologist, a professor at UC San
Diego Health, a medical director of several its use in

(01:02:16):
royal and urban settings, and also the author of the
substack be a health architect. Welcome to the Shoving Test.
Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 8 (01:02:24):
Great to be here.

Speaker 3 (01:02:25):
I'm also joined by doctor Carve Hooder, a gastro enterologist
and the host of our favorite medical podcast, the House
of Pod. Of the many you listen to, I'm sure yeah,
what they might call a super user in a medical
podcast space you listen to more than. Most importantly, Cave
is of course our friend, our resident doctor with a

(01:02:46):
useful doctorate. So what we want to talk about today
is Medicare and specifically some of the cuts to medicare.
More broadly, the I don't know, you have to put
this challenges for people working in healthcare in the Trump administration. Right,
we addressed specifically gender affirming care in a previous episode,

(01:03:09):
but it doesn't start and end there, right, That might
be the thing that sort of the culture wars have
been focusing on recently. But I want to talk more
broadly about the challenges facing healthcare. So, first of all,
would one of you care to explain medicare for people
who are not familiar And some listeners might not be
living in the United States, or they might just not

(01:03:30):
have encountered this yet in their life, So could one
of you explain what this particular sort of type of
health insurance is and how it's maybe more vulnerable than
other types to federal government changes.

Speaker 8 (01:03:42):
I could take a stab at it.

Speaker 9 (01:03:44):
I'm not a health policy want but I am a
physician that has to deal with Medicare all the time.
So Medicare, in sort of general terms, is a type
of health insurance that is provided by the federal government.
It is almost exclusively for individuals above the age of
sixty five, as it dates back to the nineteen sixties

(01:04:05):
with Linda Johnson's Great Society Program, and so since that
time there has been this blanket coverage for any individuals
above that age, such that all their medical services or products,
whatever they need for their healthcare is actually covered by
the government.

Speaker 8 (01:04:24):
This is the federal government. Now.

Speaker 9 (01:04:25):
The interesting thing about Medicare is that there are different
parts to it. There's Part A, which is primarily for
some essential services and includes hospital care. There's Part B,
which includes whatever physicians fees go into that healthcare. And
then there's Part D, which relates to pharmaceutical prices, so

(01:04:46):
your drug costs. It's not comprehensive in the sense that
there's always something more that individuals need, but Beneicare, for
all intents and purposes, is the sort of standard and.

Speaker 8 (01:04:58):
It should cover most of individual's needs.

Speaker 9 (01:05:02):
Now that said, the commercial payers, that is, the other
insurance companies that are not federally government sponsored, take their
lead from Medicare. So a lot of the different payment
rates or coverages and services they all look to what
the centers of Medicare and Medicaid services dictate as far

(01:05:22):
as what is an acceptable reimbursement rate, what are the
rules around what should be covered and what should not.
So that's why Medicare is such an important entity for
the United States.

Speaker 3 (01:05:35):
Yeah, I'll add to that.

Speaker 10 (01:05:37):
They set the lead of importance here too, because if
we're talking about telemedicine telehealth, how important that is to
Medicare patients, to everyone in the country at this point,
then if they are to cut it. If that happens
is I think we're probably going to discuss. If that
goes away, then the other private insurance companies are going

(01:05:59):
to follow. That's right, could be across the board changes
led by these changes of medicare.

Speaker 3 (01:06:05):
Yeah, so let's talk about those changes. Then, as you
mentioned right, there's this telemedicine. It's a waiver right that
has allowed telemedicine to be funded through this for the
last five years. I suppose it's going to expire by
the end of this month, which is March twenty twenty five.
If if you're listening later, explain like why telemedicine has

(01:06:26):
been such a positive step like in healthcare since if
you could since twenty twenty and then what we're facing
if it's no longer funded federally.

Speaker 10 (01:06:37):
May I'll start this one, but Venkesh definitely want you
to weigh in on it as well. Does give a little
background over the past five years that's grown quite a
bit and it's gone from being kind of this emergency
stop gap to a real cornerstone of what we consider
modern healthcare and now it's exceedingly common, like over seventy

(01:06:58):
five percent of hospitals in the US connect at a
distance via video conference or some technology to patients, and
it's been popular on both sides. It's been popular on
both sides of the aisle. When it first was done,
as you mentioned, during COVID, when they said, okay, we're

(01:07:20):
gonna peel back some of the restrictions on Medicare coverage
for these telehealth things, it was considered like a victory,
like one of the few good things that come out
of COVID. Both sides liked it. It was popular amongst patients,
it was popular amongst medical providers. It was good for
Republicans and Democrats alike. And as you mentioned, it's been

(01:07:43):
kept going through being put in some bill or another
since it was initially put in I think as they
called in twenty twenty, and it's been put in one
bill or another to go with a funding. But then
came this last December when Congress was going through their spending.
It was only given this three months reprieve, which is
going to be up as you mentioned, at the end
of this month. And if it goes away, there's a

(01:08:04):
lot of factors will go into a lot of them,
but there's a lot of people, older patients, you know,
compromise patients who don't want to come into office, people
with disabilities, people can't get around that well, people in
rural areas, which is you know, really how it started.
People who are going to be hurt all across this country.
And at this point, the majority of people have had

(01:08:26):
at least one experience or more in a year with telemedicine.
It's become a part of a lot of people's lives.
And if it goes away, you know, there's still going
to be health care as it is. I mean, it
doesn't mean healthcare is going away, but it is going
to put a tremendous burden on patients and hospitals for
that matter, across the country.

Speaker 8 (01:08:46):
Yeah, let me add to that.

Speaker 9 (01:08:48):
So, you know, telemedicine has been around for a very
long time, at least technically speaking, right, I mean, you
can go back to the nineteen seventies. Even when you
talk about the intensive caeriod, which is where the sickest
people in the hospital are, there are studies that come
out of the nineteen seventies. However, Ever, since people have
had iPhones and been on airbnb and everything else. Since

(01:09:10):
two thousand and seven, That inflection point actually had a
wave of opportunity that washed right into medicine, and as
Cave is saying, you know, we have such a fragmented
healthcare system that has you know, folks living in rural areas,
suburban areas, and urban areas, all of whom are at

(01:09:32):
the mercy of what specialists may be. They're contracted at
any given time for any given specialty. Now telemedicine, as
it's gotten more and more popular, has kind of leveled
the playing field. I mean, you can be in a
rural place like where I'm sitting right now on the
US Mexico border, or you can be in New York City,

(01:09:53):
you know, one of the densest populations, but you may
might not have access to specialty expertise without telemedicine. With telemedicine,
you can now have access and I've seen patients love it.
You can deal with the sickest of the sick, like
I said, intensive care units, but you can also have
outpatient experiences. And we've seen a number of different you know,

(01:10:15):
commercial opportunities that have leveraged that. But the point is
that as we're hearing on this, you know, it's become
sort of a standard operating procedure for how we deliver healthcare.
And if you just pull the rug out from that,
there can be some you know, unintended consequences to that
that are not insignificant.

Speaker 3 (01:10:34):
Yeah, and like it makes a lot of sense to
a lot of people, right, Like I think about my
own experience with it. I was traveling recently and got
COVID like a couple of months ago, and there was
no need for me to go to a clinic and
be around other people, right, I just needed to contact
my doctor and get some prescriptions and check in, And like,
it was so much better that I could do it
in my pajamas from the bed rather than like having

(01:10:56):
to get out. And I'm lucky I have access to
a car I can drive to to surgery is not
that far away, have a job that accommodates my schedule.
But there are million reasons way it might be very
beneficial to people. So let's talk about you. You mentioned
this before, but we have commercial insurers, and like people
might think that this is limited to older folks, or

(01:11:16):
it doesn't affect them, or it's something that only impacts
people who have Medicare. But as you said, Medicare kind
of sets the standard for what is covered and what
isn't covered, right, So, can you explain how this might
end up resulting in it in just a massive like
a cliff. I've seen it described as a telehealth cliff.

Speaker 9 (01:11:34):
Yeah, so, I mean basically, the sort of this convoluted
way that we pay for services is it looks to
one standard, even though some may argue how did that
standard come about?

Speaker 8 (01:11:46):
But regardless of.

Speaker 9 (01:11:47):
That, Medicare is the central authority that basically tells everyone
this is what we should be doing, and this is
how much we should be paying for it. Now, the
commercial insurers can decide to exceed that if they wish.
If they say, have an employer who's employees they want
to have a special contract with, that's that's fine, that's

(01:12:10):
not restricted. But the bottom of what is considered a
reimbursable amount is really set by Medicare, and so they
move the bottom. And so if you drop the bottom,
you can pretty much well assured in this. You know,
in a capitalist you know sort of mentality that the
costs should go down, right, I mean, why should you
pay more for something that you don't need to write?

Speaker 8 (01:12:32):
And we see that we see that every year.

Speaker 9 (01:12:35):
Okay, every year there's new technology, but the slightly older technology,
which is again covered by Medicare, they move those reimbursements down.
So whether it's a sleep study, you know, for someone
with obstructive sleep apn are difficulty sleeping at night, or
it's some ophthalmology technology, or it's some ultra sound machine,

(01:12:56):
it doesn't really matter what it is. Medicare is always
trying to minimal cost, which is understandable.

Speaker 8 (01:13:01):
They want to make it cost.

Speaker 9 (01:13:02):
Effective, but they are setting the lead so everyone will
follow what they do. That's kind of the way that
our system is sort of set up.

Speaker 10 (01:13:12):
Yeah, you know, I might just add to that that
aside from all the things we mentioned about it, how
you know, it helps people in rural areas, people with
difficulty getting places are just really busy schedules. It also,
you know, helps free hospital beds, helps prevent emergency rooms
from being overwhelmed. It leads to faster testing, it leads

(01:13:33):
to a higher number of people that we can see,
and in terms of its quality, we know it works
well and about ninety percent of cases of telemedicine to
get the same outcomes if the patient was there in clinic,
and that ten percent that's not it's not clear that
they're getting inferior care in most of those cases. So
it's an effective treatment, and you could make an argument

(01:13:56):
that it is cost effective in some ways too. It's
particularly clearly for like things of dermatology, pediatrics. These are
things where it's clearly cost effective to have it. But
even beyond that, it's not even necessarily I think a
strong argument that we'll be losing money from it, and
that cutting it would help us in the long run.
I feel like if we're being smart about how to

(01:14:17):
manage American healthcare system and how to keep it afloat,
telemedicine is going to be an important part of that
going forward.

Speaker 9 (01:14:26):
I want to I do want to add something here,
and I do want to be careful about the term,
because telemedicine and telehealth are not only sort of a
catch all, but they're sort of used interchangeably, right, and
just like anything, you have to be specific about the term.
So I think what we're talking about this on this
podcast is tell amedicine in terms of a two way

(01:14:48):
audio visual interface where you can have a direct face
to face consultation or interaction with a practicing practitioner. Usually
that's going to be a position, but it may be
a nurse practitioner or other physician extender we call them.
But just to be clear, you know, telemedicine also extends
to other types of devices like wearables. Those things that

(01:15:12):
they are either you know, trackers that you can wear
as your fitbit, or a sleep device you know that
you can wear around. Those kinds of things are kind
of put into the telemedicine bucket and it's not clear
to me at least how that is going to change.
I think April first is when they face to face

(01:15:33):
coverage from a professional fee standpoint that is slated to
end because they did liberalize it during the COVID pandemic
and it's been extended I think another year around that,
and that will definitely change the dynamic here, but it's
not clear how much of it extends to other types
of remote physiologic monitoring services and products.

Speaker 3 (01:15:56):
Right, yeah, so something like a glucose monitor or like
yeah some yeah, which could be catastrophic for people, right
if they don't get those those funded. Right, We're going
to take a little break for advertisements here. Maybe you'll
get an advertisement for a Bluecoast Monitor or even Insolent.

Speaker 5 (01:16:10):
Could only hope.

Speaker 3 (01:16:10):
Yeah, yeah, I'm glad they're taking some of that money
that they've made me bleed out of my wallet over
the years and returning it to me in the form
of podcast advertisements. All right, we're back. Let's talk more

(01:16:35):
broadly about I guess the changes in the legislative environment
for healthcare might be a good way to put it.
I think if you were an excellent op ed recently
where you discussed you were one of the many recipients
of the Tomby five Useful things you did at work
this week email, I thought you wrote like a really
good piece about about the varied and critical work that

(01:16:59):
you do. Can you talk about, like, what is the
feeling among healthcare professionals, physicians who have you sort of
like to speak speak as going into four years of
possibly vastly reduced government spending and a sort of bizarre
and haphazard cutting of the federal biocracy that we're seeing.

Speaker 9 (01:17:23):
Yeah, it's a tough time, certainly, and coming out of
the pandemic, this is not what really anybody expected. But
you know, the stresses have been mounting for quite a while, right,
Healthcare professionals are seeing and feeling more stress at work,
whether it's you know, the demands of the job meaning
that there are fewer resources to spend on a heightened

(01:17:47):
number of patients with you know, increasingly complex diseases, or
even just the questions that we are getting from patients.
A lot of patients now are asking me really financial questions.
I mean literally, the other day, I had a woman
who was unfortunately having septic shock and was faced with

(01:18:07):
having to amputate her leg, and I was speaking with
her husband because she was becoming more and more delirious,
and he was just asking me about, well, I'm going
to have to sell my house in order to fund
what might come down the pike as far as being
at home with services, and I was trying to I
was trying to kind of get an understanding of how

(01:18:29):
he viewed his wife actually going through the thing that
we're watching in the moment. But it's a preoccupation that
has taken up a lot of space in the room,
and it's now coming on to physicians to sort of
navigate at least some questions and answer those questions around it.
So that's a long way of saying that, you know,

(01:18:50):
physicians and nurses and other healthcare professionals are feeling more
and more stress in a system that's just buckling, right,
and the last thing anybody needs is to be having
to do more without really a clear understanding of the
purpose around it, right, And we are all for a
cost effectiveness.

Speaker 8 (01:19:09):
We want that to work.

Speaker 9 (01:19:11):
We also want to provide care irrespective of someone's religious, political,
or other beliefs. And yet, you know, we have to
work within a system that we kind of are not
really understanding how they're approaching this issue. Are they are
they with us or against us or somewhere in between.
It's it's sort of a it's a moving target, and
so I think that's what's that's what's kind of sandwiched

(01:19:32):
a lot of healthcare professionals, and we don't really know
where to turn for.

Speaker 8 (01:19:37):
Some of the answers that we ourselves are looking for.

Speaker 10 (01:19:40):
I would add also, you know, we're seeing this active
dismantling of the US healthcare infrastructure, and our friends in
the academic world in particular, it's a very stressful time
for them. Who knows if their studies are going to
go through, who knows if they're going to get their
funding who knows what's going to stay with going to
go in the next couple of years. There's a lot

(01:20:01):
of concern over that, obviously, But even in the medical
world outside of the academic centers, I know a lot
of doctors right now are concerned and they're concerned about
what's going to happen to the state of our scientific
community that helps us with new advancements in medical technology
in the coming years. And it seems like, as Ventechia

(01:20:23):
was alluding to, we're dismantling all our ability to follow
to study to really closely track infectious disease in a
time that is exceedingly dangerous across the world, with rising disease,
tuberculosis in this country, measles in this country, in Uganda,
there's ebola again. There's threats all over the world. And

(01:20:46):
this is one of the worst times I could think
of to be in this moment of austerity, and particularly
because so much of it seems unclear to us why
why these things are being done, you know, is it
all because of this ridiculous gender ideology. Do they actually
think they're saving money with some of these things. It's
a very unclear time. And of course there are a

(01:21:07):
lot of people in the medical world, doctors included, that
are conservative or Republican voters. Getting into conversations with them
about this is sort of a tough thing to do because,
like Fintesha mentioned, they, like a lot of us, want
to make sure we're doing this in a cost effective manner,
something we talk about and we have been talking about
in medicine for a long time, particularly academic medicine, interestingly enough,

(01:21:30):
which is really on.

Speaker 3 (01:21:31):
The cutting board.

Speaker 10 (01:21:32):
It's academic medicine that usually talks about, you know, trying
to be cost effective. What tests are we going to order,
what labs do we need to get, How we doing
this in the most cost effective way. These are important
things that are discussed and across the political spectrum in medicine.
I think there is some concern even amongst some of
the more right leaning doctors. But again it's hard because

(01:21:55):
they've gone this far down the road, it's hard to know,
you know, when they're going to pull back. What's the
line in the stand for them about what is maybe
too far for this administration.

Speaker 3 (01:22:04):
Yeah, and certainly like an area where we're seeing there
right now is in like public health, right, we don't
really know, like I'm going to Texas next week, where
there's currently a measles outbreak. The things that we didn't
think that we might be seeing in this country again,
we're seeing again. And like, as you say, it's coming

(01:22:24):
at a time when like not just funding is unstable,
but also like the I guess, like the basics of
science have been somewhat politicized right to a degree, and
like people, I don't know if that's something you see
in your practice, but like certainly, like I was talking
to a doctor friend who said half their clients are

(01:22:45):
now like declining vaccinations as I was there to get,
you know, every disease that I could get. I have
a lot of travel vaccinations, so I'm always getting new
and exciting vaccinations. But I'm making up for some of
the gap, I guess. But it's it's a really challenging
time right from that perspective as well, like the culture

(01:23:05):
around it.

Speaker 4 (01:23:06):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 10 (01:23:06):
I mean even here in the San Francisco Bay area,
you know, I've seen more of vaccine hesitation than I
remember ever seen before in the past.

Speaker 9 (01:23:14):
It's sort of a vexing question because I think some
of this is let's be clear, some of this is
on our messaging, you know, as healthcare professionals. I mean,
there are more and more articles. In fact, the Wall
Street Journal piece a couple of weeks ago that was
saying how patients you know, are increasingly not trusting their
doctors and there are data to say that we don't

(01:23:37):
communicate very well. Right, So there there is that, and
that's on us. And you know, another op ed piece
in the Boston Globe by Ashi's Jaw, you know, did
a mea culpa around some of the things that public
health we did wrong.

Speaker 8 (01:23:49):
We got it, we got it.

Speaker 9 (01:23:50):
Wrong in COVID where we didn't you know, deal with
some of the doubts and lack of evidentiary base for
masking and some of these other things that basically hurt
us in the end. So there's definitely that. However, you know,
restoring the trust in healthcare professionals is sort of like

(01:24:10):
a basic step to anyone getting their healthcare. I mean,
I think people still go to their doctors. Most people
still trust their doctor to some degree, and I think
that that's at least a bright spot in where we are,
because when we've lost that, I think we're really in trouble.
I mean that's slipping. But I think that there is

(01:24:31):
a way to restore that trust. But it starts so
that it just starts with a conversation. You know, if
someone has a vaccine hesitancy or they don't understand what's
going on, that's the opportunity to open the doors to
a dialogue. And I think maybe that's, you know, maybe
that's the starting point for any of this. We all

(01:24:53):
want cost effectiveness, we all want you know, transparency. We
also want to have choices that make sense to us.
But let's not make it an adversarial confrontation. And I
think that that goes for both sides. I would add,
though I agree with you on pretty much all of that.
I agree that we need to have those conversations, you know,
if they're difficult. We need to be able to look

(01:25:15):
back objectively about things that worked and didn't work. But
a lot of these sort of mia culpas that have
come out about like you know, this is where we
went wrong and why we lost trust, if I'm being honest,
including that one from Ashi's Yad, has a lot of
in my opinion, pick me energy, a lot of people
who are trying to appeal to the incoming administration and

(01:25:37):
be like, hey, look, I'm cool too. I'm not always
about vaccines, and to me, that's just as bad too.
And I do think we need to have an honest conversation,
and I do think we need to be clear about
how we do science.

Speaker 10 (01:25:49):
Something we need to be able to explain. And you're
absolutely right, which we didn't do very well is Look,
we are working with information we have at hand. We're
doing everything we can may change when it changes, our
recommendations are going to.

Speaker 4 (01:26:02):
Change too, And that is tough.

Speaker 10 (01:26:05):
That is a tough message to get across because people
don't like nuance like that. People don't like the uncertainty
of that. People want to know yes or no absolutely,
and sometimes it's hard. It's hard to find good communicators
and science to do that. But that you're exactly right
is incumbent upon us as doctors who have a sub
stack like yours, of a podcast like mine, who are

(01:26:28):
academics who have a reach to students and beyond to
communicate these things.

Speaker 4 (01:26:34):
And even though it would be.

Speaker 10 (01:26:36):
Awesome for the next four years my podcast was just
about farts and poop, I know I have to do
a lot of this stuff because I know how important.
This is now more than ever, So I totally agree
it's going to start with conversations.

Speaker 3 (01:26:53):
I think that's a big difference between this is the
information we have available when were doing our best with it.
When we get new information, we'll do something different if
that's what that information points to. And these people are
acting out of malice to deprive you of your rights
or you know, which is sometimes what's been suggested by
some people, and like, I think a good way to
defeat that, as you say, it's communicating around it. It

(01:27:15):
is very sad that, Like when I was doing the
research for my PhD dissertation, I wrote about First I
wrote about violence and the Anarchist Builders Union for my masters,
and then I wrote about public health and popular sport
in the nineteen thirties in Barcelona, And a lot of
what you saw anarchists doing in Barcelona in the nineteen
thirties was talking to people about tuberculosis, educating people about

(01:27:37):
tuberculosis and explaining what tuberculosis was and where it came from,
and like that was in nineteen thirty one, and how.

Speaker 8 (01:27:46):
Far we've come, baby, wow, wow.

Speaker 3 (01:27:49):
Yeah, it's great. There were some other things from the
nineteen thirties, which have also made an unwelcome return. Tuberculosis
is not the only one. There's also the Nazi salute
in large public gather to the United States, which yeah,
I don't know, and I guess i'd answer for them
both in the nineteen thirties, and they're the same answers
that apply now. I think people like people will be

(01:28:22):
distressed by this, right, like a lot of people of
my age and younger. I guess it's folks a bit
younger than me for the larger part, Like the pandemic
was a life defining event for a lot of younger folks, right,
and it was a scary thing. It still is a
scary thing, Like getting COVID still really sucks. And I
know people who have long COVID and the thought of
that is petrifying to me. People will be genuinely anxious

(01:28:47):
now right at this potential dismantling of the public health apparatus,
that rise in vaccine hesitancy, less funding for research, such
that if we enter another pandemic with some novel infectious disease,
we won't be able to respond as fast. Right. The
response to COVID, for the criticisms of it like the

(01:29:07):
speed with which we had vaccines was amazing. Some of
that came from like Vancousca's college that UCSD actually all right,
like sult I guess which is next door with free parking?

Speaker 8 (01:29:17):
Which is nice?

Speaker 3 (01:29:19):
So like, what would you say to people, because this
is a thing I've seen more and more among folks
who you know, who are friends of mine, right, is
like real worry about infectious disease, real concern about new
variants of COVID or about you know, the bird flu
is one, right with these other infectious diseases. I saw
fifty people have died of it as yet unexplained disease

(01:29:42):
in Congo recently. What would you say to those people?
Because they are concerns are somewhat legitimate, Right, Like, if
we go into another pandemic, we're not going to be
anywhere near as effective as we were in twenty twenty
because of all these combination of reasons we've discussed.

Speaker 9 (01:29:57):
That's a hard question to answer. I would say, let me,
you know, I think that the COVID pandemic, Yes, there
are a lot of things that went well. The vaccine
development was phenomenal, I mean a revolutionary. I mean, who
would have expected that to happen. However, it also just
revealed how shattered our public health system really is in
terms of messaging, even detection, spreading information. Even the vaccine

(01:30:22):
distribution was completely chaotic, Right, So so I don't want
to say that, you know, the public health response during
COVID was some sort of paragon to be emulated or replicated, right.
So that said, though, absolutely, I mean, you know, how
are we going to handle a new era of this

(01:30:42):
what if you know, scenario where we don't know what
virus is coming next. I mean, I'm seeing these days,
I'm even seeing viruses that never caused the kind of
respiratory failure in the past, they're doing it now, whether
it's RSV, the respiratory syensitial virus, or even non COVID coronavirus,
which should just give you a cold the sniffles, and
yet it's causing devastating, you know, pneumonias. So we're in

(01:31:06):
a new era and you know, antibiotic resistance is not
getting any less problematic. So what do we do in
this era? Well, I think awareness is the first thing. Okay,
awareness around Yes, I mean, these diseases are transmitted from
person to person you know, we all know somebody who
doesn't want to take a vaccine. I mean, I don't

(01:31:28):
think there's that's a surprise to say we know of
somebody or directly or maybe one degree of separation, right,
And I think you need to have those community conversations.
You need to have one on one conversations. Yes, it's
going to be uncomfortable, but we got to talk about
it and talk to your healthcare provider about it. I mean, yes,
you can look up stuff on TikTok. Yes, you can
look up stuff on Google or you name your online resource.

(01:31:53):
But you want to have a person that can actually
understand from years of living and living and breathing this stuff,
and also who listens to you as a human being
in the same community or somewhere nearabouts right to put
together what the science says in some sort of meaningful
way to you, uh, and not some anonymous you know

(01:32:17):
resource that may or may not have all the you know,
all the data their fingertips, you know. So so I
guess it still goes back to how does anyone find
reliable information? Where do you go when you've got questions?
Most people want a human being who's lived and breathed
this with experience to help them navigate. I I certainly

(01:32:38):
see that not just as a doctor, but as a friend,
as a family member. I mean constantly, you know, they're
asking me these things, and I would suggest that you
know your audience may have connections both personally but also
professionally to those.

Speaker 8 (01:32:53):
Folks that can help them navigate.

Speaker 10 (01:32:55):
You know, and to answer your question from my perspective,
is a challenge. I I think people should be concerned.
In fact, I just did two parter with one of
the world's best virologists talking about the possible bird flu
pandemic that could arise and all the threats that are
out there, and so I do think there are some

(01:33:15):
really significant, serious risks to be worried about. However, I'm
never gonna say there's nothing that can be done about it.
There's plenty that can still be done about it. I
still maintain hope in the medical community for what we're
able to do and what we're able to accomplish, And
to echo what I think both of you guys have
said or would at least agree with, there's a lot
of changes that we can make locally amongst our small

(01:33:38):
sphere of influence and then growing out from there in
terms of getting vaccinated, in terms of wearing masks when needed,
or at least looking at the data with an open
mind and sharing good resources. Because one thing that the
younger population is good about, and what some of the
people you're mentioning, James, is they're good at detecting online

(01:34:01):
and that's a skill that needs to be honed for
medical literacy as well, and I'm hopeful that that's going
to continue to improve. Maybe stupid optimism, but I do
believe the younger generation is going to continue to be
better at that than the older generation, and I think
that will help battle a lot of the misinformation that's
out there. But there are things that they can do

(01:34:22):
in fact, for getting back to the telehealthing. For example,
talking about telemedicine slash telehealth as vnteche sort of broke
down in terms of it being cut at the end
of the month. There are people that are really pushing
against that, including Rocana, who's here a legislator here in
California who's proposed a new bill. I haven't been able

(01:34:43):
to see any of the details of it, but there
are a lot, including Amazon. By the way, Amazon is
one of like three hundred and fifty companies that have
written a letter to the to Congress to help push
for this funding. So if you can call a congres
if you can do that, if you can keep bothering
them telling them how important it is, I think those

(01:35:06):
are things that can help. So I think that's a
good place to start.

Speaker 3 (01:35:10):
Yeah, that's a really get piece of advice.

Speaker 9 (01:35:12):
If I could just follow up with that. I think
part of what will help with the support for some
of these programs is to take you know, take us
take a few minutes to think about what the other
side is worried about, right. I mean, we all know
about the excesses of certain online bad actors. Who are

(01:35:33):
they use telemedicine to promote you know, ADHD medications or
other types of psychotropic medications, which was not it was
not supported, and it actually caused harm. Right, So so
there are things out there that are excesses and somewhat harmful.
And if we could as a community sort of help

(01:35:54):
frame the approach to dealing with some of those things
and preventing some of those problems, then I think some
of the support will kind of sort of shortself. I
think the worry is if you open up the floodgates
too wide, you know, human nature being what it is,
it's going to encourage bad behavior. Not that anybody wants that,
but there is something to be said about some scrutiny. Right,

(01:36:17):
So if we're the ones, and I completely support the
use of tell medicine, but I also want to be
careful about how to promote its thoughtful and safe use
and wed that in the proposal and not just leave
it for others to figure out.

Speaker 8 (01:36:32):
That I think would potentially.

Speaker 9 (01:36:35):
Change the conversation around while you just want this and
we're not going to give it to you, like the
standoff will will subside when you try to work it,
work a partnership out as opposed to a give it
to me or else kind of scenario.

Speaker 10 (01:36:48):
I don't disagree with that, but I also think you're
giving those more credit than I would, which is to
say that they actually, really, they really would focus and
listen to I think what they've just done is literally,
you know, take a chainsaw and cut away at major
federal funding and then kind of seeing what was really

(01:37:09):
bad about that and what wasn't and being like, oh, Okay,
maybe we do need people in charge of nuclear security.
Oh maybe this is popular, We'll put it back. You know,
I kind of think that they're not taking as much
attention or care. But I also do agree that the
point is is valid. I mean, sure, is there fraud
in some telemedicine? Yeah, I'm sure, probably small, very small percentage.

(01:37:31):
But if we can specify its use, if we can
be better about that, I agree, I'm all for it.

Speaker 3 (01:37:38):
Yeah, especially right now. I was just thinking, as you're
talking about, like how important is people that accessing reproductive
healthcare and being able to access reproductive healthcare wherever they are,
and like how much more difficult that would be, right
if people didn't have ten of medicine appointments. So I
think we've spoken about before on the show. But yeah,
I'm sure there are some school cases. I'm sure there
are a bunch of CIS gender guys getting gender affirming

(01:38:01):
hormonal care through telemedicine who probably could go without and
be Okay, guys, I'd like to wrap up there, but
I want to give you a chance both to You
talked a lot about like science communication, So where can
people find you online? Where can they see you communicating
your medical knowledge?

Speaker 9 (01:38:19):
Okay, Well, so I thanks James, I have a substack.
It's called Be a Health Architect. You can book me
up at Be a Health Architect, and you know, I
have a conversation there around an issue that certainly affects
me and those around me, which is physician burnout, but
in the larger sphere of healthcare professionals, it really touches
everybody in healthcare. So that's where I'm posting actively. I'm

(01:38:43):
also sharing that, you know, through various other avenues such
as X and Blue Sky and other places, so you
can you can find me there.

Speaker 8 (01:38:52):
Look forward to seeing you there.

Speaker 4 (01:38:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 10 (01:38:55):
I would also recommend Vintesha's substack if you're in the
medical field in particular, I think you'll appreciate it. A
focus on burnout is as important as it's ever been,
if not much much more. I mean, we were talking
about burnout and moral injury in doctors before COVID, and
now you know, down a couple of years down the road,

(01:39:16):
it's only worse. So I think it's really important and
I do recommend it, or you know, check out his
latest article in the Los Angeles Times. As you mentioned before.
As for me, find me on Blue Sky at Cave MD.
But more importantly, just listen to the podcast The House
of Pod. If you are a fan of this show,
I think you're going to like The House of Pod

(01:39:36):
if you haven't already given it a try.

Speaker 5 (01:39:39):
It's a lot of the same people that you hear.

Speaker 10 (01:39:41):
On this show. On the House of Pod. James included
he's going to be coming back to talk about the
measles and with an author of a new book down
there about the measles outbreak. And you know, we take
a look at grifters, medical grifters, We take a look
at some people that would be considered medical contrarians. We
take a look at some of the quackery in medicine

(01:40:03):
as well. So I think you'll appreciate this show. If
you like the whole behind the Bastards verse, I think
you'll get into the House of Podso, so check us
out where you get your podcasts.

Speaker 3 (01:40:15):
Yeah, great, Thank you so much for joining us. Guys,
really appreciate it.

Speaker 8 (01:40:18):
Thanks, thank you.

Speaker 5 (01:40:39):
Welcome to and it could happen here Special Report. I'm
Garrison Davis. I'm joined by James Stout and Sophie right
when you're in so exactly, we are here to discuss
Trump's first Joint Session speech of his second term. This
is basically the equivalent of a state of the Union,
except it's too early to really give a good state
of the Union, even though this month has felt kind

(01:41:01):
of like a year. So we are doing a special
report here in addition to our regular executive Disorder episode,
because there is just so much to talk about that
we cannot fit it all in our regular ed pause
pause for effect. Okay, guess it was us speaking of

(01:41:23):
This was the longest Wow Session speech in American history,
and man, it felt like it lasted forever.

Speaker 1 (01:41:34):
Yeah, I was gonna say, and boy, howdy did it
feel never ending?

Speaker 5 (01:41:39):
It went on so long.

Speaker 3 (01:41:41):
Not a great feat of ar tree. Really.

Speaker 5 (01:41:43):
I was supposed to watch some yawie with a friend
last night and they came over and I was like, haha,
I gotcha. Actually I have to watch this this speech first.
Don't worry. Usually it's only like an hour or so. Two.

Speaker 1 (01:41:57):
I did the exact same Two hours later, I did
the exact same scam to my friend Sarah. She was like,
you know, I seriously love you, right because this is horrible, horrible.

Speaker 5 (01:42:09):
Two hours later, it finally ends and they're like, Okay,
we can finally watch yawee, right, I'm like, no, no, no,
I have to watch the Democratic response speech. Don't worry.
It should be shorter, and thankfully it was. Yeah, but yeah,
let's let's just start by talking about like the beginning
of this speech, or rather with the general overview of
this speech was. This was not a leaning across the

(01:42:32):
aisle speech, right, This wasn't trying to unite the country. No,
it was not, but you know, just cater to core
like mega supporters and new issues at the center of
the modern right wing media machine. The version of the
speech I watched on ABC frequently cut to Matt Walsh
and Ben Shapiro sitting together overlooking Congress as they were

(01:42:53):
special guests of the President and the First Lady.

Speaker 1 (01:42:56):
Yes, magic, they did they did this. They did this
on CNN. I switched back and forth between a couple
of channels. I noted this to our team. But when
I first looked up, like what time the speech was starting,
I turned on my TV and went to see it
in and I happened upon the them talking about if
Dems should not applaud or if they should heckle, and

(01:43:20):
some motherfucker I don't care about said that Gems should
find places to applaud him to show unity.

Speaker 5 (01:43:27):
Cool.

Speaker 3 (01:43:28):
Sure, yeah, mm hmm, that's always worked well.

Speaker 1 (01:43:31):
Dems should find places to applaud him, to.

Speaker 5 (01:43:36):
Draw to the king, the king for ruining the government,
firing all the workers. Give him a clap. Why don't you, Sorry, James,
I realized that got a little insensitive.

Speaker 3 (01:43:46):
Wow, yeah, Garrison, this is why we have to watch
those videos where the bad actors talk about how they do.

Speaker 1 (01:43:53):
Not anymore talking about our workplace harassment videos.

Speaker 5 (01:43:56):
EI is over, James, No more of those videos here
in the freeze state of Georgia. That's illegal.

Speaker 3 (01:44:02):
Unfortunately, here in California, I have approximately seventy five little
little red bells and I log into my work day.

Speaker 5 (01:44:09):
But like a single time, early in the speech, Trump
asked Democrats why not join us in celebrating America. After
he complained, I could cure any disease, and these people
sitting right here, the Democrats, they would not cheer. I
could cure any disease, and these people wouldn't cheer.

Speaker 1 (01:44:26):
No, No, that was weird. I mean, like some Dems
didn't even show up. They had the subcab of wearing
certain they did the same performative bullshit they always do.
And they had what I can only describe as like
church paddles the status statistic signs on it.

Speaker 5 (01:44:43):
They weren't.

Speaker 1 (01:44:43):
They weren't even like I mean, like come.

Speaker 5 (01:44:46):
On, like a good description. But no, some Dems did
not show up in protest. Others were black, kind of.

Speaker 4 (01:44:56):
Like in mourning.

Speaker 1 (01:44:58):
Yeah, who cares.

Speaker 5 (01:45:00):
Of the women's caucus were pink, very cool, very feminist,
and others were the colors of the Ukrainian flag. Sure
that will help, but you know, Trump just pointed towards
the Democrat side of the chamber throughout the night and
just referred to them as the radical left lunatics. Like this,
this was not across the aisle speed.

Speaker 1 (01:45:19):
No, it wasn't.

Speaker 5 (01:45:20):
This was this was, if anything, emphasizing the divisions within
the country.

Speaker 1 (01:45:25):
One of the things that happened before the speech even
started was like he drove in with Milania and Elon.

Speaker 5 (01:45:35):
First lady and first bitch boy.

Speaker 3 (01:45:37):
Yeah, first buddy, Garrison, first buddy is the official term.

Speaker 1 (01:45:43):
First buddy. Yeah, I don't know, but like you know,
Trump starts off the.

Speaker 5 (01:45:48):
Speech with America is back, and like.

Speaker 1 (01:45:52):
How far back are we talking? Because you're not wrong.

Speaker 3 (01:45:57):
Yeah, like eighteen sixty four, I think it's the it's
the goal.

Speaker 5 (01:46:01):
I mean, this is the same phrase that that Biden
opened his first speech with as well. I think Biden
was referring to, like we are back to pre Trump America,
and now Trump is using this phrase to refer to
like this like mythical America. Right sure, but no. Trump
took the stage to USA chance throughout yeah, thout the rotunda.

Speaker 6 (01:46:21):
That was.

Speaker 3 (01:46:22):
You know, I grew up watching the Houses of Parliament,
so I'm used to like the boomers getting unruly, but
this was something else.

Speaker 1 (01:46:30):
They're just so fairal it's weird.

Speaker 5 (01:46:33):
So cheesy. The speech was outlining like a new golden
age of America and the renewal of the American dream.
Trump talked about how he has accomplished in forty three
days more than most administrations do in four to eight years,
and that we're just getting started.

Speaker 3 (01:46:50):
Cool.

Speaker 5 (01:46:50):
He referred to this wide popular mandate a quote, a
mandate like this has not been seen in many decades,
referring to like winning all swing states, winning the electoral
and the popular vote, and reference to this mandate kind
of sparked the big boo, big like disruption of the.

Speaker 1 (01:47:06):
Night, specifically when he started saying we won the popular vote.

Speaker 3 (01:47:11):
Which like it's heavily disputed, Like, I.

Speaker 5 (01:47:14):
Don't know, I don't think that that's not specifically what
mister Green was talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:47:19):
I'm not necessarily talking about when he specifically was saying
that's when the crowd had their biggest they did reaction
of the night, which like weird in my opinion.

Speaker 3 (01:47:31):
It's great. It's the thing that Democrats are doing now,
which is trying to be like the Republicans but lib
like kind of just I suppose.

Speaker 1 (01:47:40):
But not really because they didn't follow fucking through.

Speaker 5 (01:47:43):
Without any like strength, like without any actual like momentum.

Speaker 3 (01:47:47):
Right, like we saw like the sort of blue and
non attempts at election denial like after the election, and
like I don't think that's what they were doing here, agreed.
They gave off this like yeah, this very ineffectual kind
of a half fast attempt at booing. And then aside
from Green, they they'll just sit down and wave their
ping pong things.

Speaker 5 (01:48:07):
Yeah, so representative of Al Green from Texas old man
with Caine.

Speaker 3 (01:48:12):
It's a good cane. It's got a gold handle, like
I thought.

Speaker 1 (01:48:15):
It was snazzy.

Speaker 3 (01:48:17):
I thought, I mean, it's a sort of cane you
normally see a sword coming out of if I'm.

Speaker 5 (01:48:20):
Mind, Yeah, that would have been cooler. That would have
been cooler. But instead he doesn't waves the cane around
talking about how this mandate doesn't mean that there's a
mandate to like, you know, cut medicaid, cut medicare. That
was specifically what he was talking about. Television mics did
not really pick that up.

Speaker 3 (01:48:36):
No, and a lot of reporting didn't either, which was shitty.
I thought, like, yeah, a lot of reporting just mentioned
that he had shouted and not what he had shouted about,
which I think is like, really, when you like, you see,
what the media is doing is serving as like the
propaganderam of a certain class of people when they're more
upset that he was shouting than that he was protesting

(01:48:56):
the fact that people are going to lose their healthcare
and probably die because of it.

Speaker 5 (01:48:59):
Yeah, and like Trump started like yelling over these protests.
There was like a brief maybe like like you know,
minute or so, like yelling match in the chamber. Mike
Johnson was like what do I do here? Eventually, you know,
Mike Johnson threatens mister Green gives warning and eventually directs
the Sergeant of Arms to restore order and remove him
from the chambers. Not a regular scene in American politics,

(01:49:23):
but a scene that you might be more familiar with
in overseas politics, and specifically in democracies that are in trouble.
You'll have more and more scenes like this.

Speaker 3 (01:49:35):
Yeah, we can't get any smoke grenades like you see
in Serbia.

Speaker 5 (01:49:39):
You know it's still twenty twenty five, James, we still
have three more.

Speaker 3 (01:49:42):
Three more years, three more years soon to break out
the ass off smoke grenades.

Speaker 5 (01:49:47):
Whether or not this is like, you know, performative or cringe,
it's like it's something that demonstrates, Hey, like this, this
actually isn't normal, more than holding up a cheesy sign
next to Trump reading this is not normal, which is
some others did in protest. This actually is treating it
like a serious situation, and more Democrats should have done this.
They should have staggered their protests throughout the entirety of

(01:50:09):
the speech, continually disrupting it, making this speech basically unable
to end. Pushing this past midnight, having an endless procession
of people having to be escorted out, you should force
Congress to censure half of the sit in Congress people like,
if this really is like an actual existential threat to
our democracy, if Trump represents right now a genuine constitutional crisis,

(01:50:33):
which he does, he is ignoring the courts, the people
in Congress should fucking act like it.

Speaker 1 (01:50:38):
They should have gone literally, single file, one by one.

Speaker 5 (01:50:44):
Stagger it every like three minutes so that he just
is unable to finish the speech. Have Mike Johnson do
this every time because he was thrown. He was thrown,
and they should have continued to do this. The fact
that no one else did is pretty disappointing.

Speaker 3 (01:50:59):
You could see Ants was very uncomfortable as well, Like.

Speaker 5 (01:51:02):
He didn't have that nervous smile for most of well.

Speaker 3 (01:51:05):
He normally does when he's confronted with a human being.

Speaker 5 (01:51:08):
But later on the speech, after Trump talked about you know,
trans women in sports and the price of eggs, you
had you had a group of Democrats wearing resist t
shirts walk out of the speech in protest, and like
that's so much more pathetic than actually like standing up
and talking about how this guy is ignoring the courts
and is actually breaking the constitution. Like that's what they

(01:51:30):
should have all been doing instead of wearing resist lim
merch performatively.

Speaker 3 (01:51:35):
Yeah, you could ran on, you know, to go parodying this,
but you actually couldn't because they would just do that
next time, Like if they really think this is the last,
the last joint session of Congress, the ever going to
have They sure didn't act like it or whatever.

Speaker 5 (01:51:49):
But this is going to be the first ad break
in a series of two mid episode ad breaks that
we are playing on this show. So here's the ads.
All right, we are back. I hope you pick up

(01:52:10):
your new ad break themed T shirts to walk around
in protest of capitalism.

Speaker 3 (01:52:15):
Yep, not made by unions.

Speaker 5 (01:52:18):
All right, let's talk about transgenderism. One of the first
topics Trump discussed at length was the anti trans culture war,
declaring that the government will be woke no longer.

Speaker 3 (01:52:31):
Oh God, that fully fucking sent me. I've forgotten about that.
It's just so. As the drunk old man at pub.

Speaker 5 (01:52:38):
He bragged about about signing an executive order establishing that
there's only two genders, as well as an order preventing
quote unquote men from playing in women's sports. He first
pointed out to someone in the audience who was a
former volleyball player who got hurt by a volleyball and
then decided to quit the sport. And they now blame

(01:53:02):
this on the fact that a trendswoman was allegedly responsible
for probably spiking the volleyball, which yes, is painful.

Speaker 1 (01:53:11):
For playing sport the way that everyone else plays sport.

Speaker 3 (01:53:15):
Yeah, for trying to win.

Speaker 5 (01:53:17):
Yeah, in a team of volleyball context. So yes, this
was the first kind of of these political props that
Trump brought along to kind of point out and demonstrate
some of the things that he was talking about. Frankly,
it just seems like this person was not a very
good volleyball player. But the next example Trump pointed to,
I think James can speak better on But Trump said

(01:53:40):
that essentially there was quote unquote a man who beat
a woman in a race by five hours, to the
shock of the audience.

Speaker 3 (01:53:47):
Yeah, So look, it was shocked listeners to hear that
most of what he said it's wrong. He directly referenced
a friend of mine. He was referring to Austin Cillips,
who is a woman. She's a trans woman, she's a
very good cyclist. The reason she was doing the race,
which see Arizona trail race. It's an eight hundred mile
ultra endurance race like I used to do these kind
of things. The reason she was doing it is because
of a UCI Union Cyclic International that governing bodies stopped

(01:54:10):
trans women competing, right, so she did these races which
were not sanctioned by them. She did get the record.
The previous holder of the record was a CIS man.
That CIS man had previously beaten. A CIS woman got
Leo Wilcox. It's interesting that in this particular discipline, actually
like SIS, women have been doing as well as it's

(01:54:31):
not better than men like Lee. Wilcox owns nearly all
the long distance records in the United States. She's a
phenomenal athlete. The idea that there's some inherent biological advantages
it's particularly nonsense in this sphere of cycling. But the
reason that she was five hours ahead is because this
race is eight hundred miles long, like those those records
are broken by that kind of period, not all the time,

(01:54:52):
but when you have athletes like Austin coming from the
higher paying areas of the sport into this which has
been a much less well a much smaller area of
the sport, you're going to see these records getting broken,
and again she broke a record that was held by assistude.

Speaker 5 (01:55:07):
Crazy.

Speaker 3 (01:55:07):
Yeah, it's fucking ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (01:55:09):
I mean, like the level of like propaganda and lie.
I mean, my mom watched the speech and she was like,
that doesn't seem possible. And I was like, because it's
all bullshit.

Speaker 3 (01:55:22):
Yeah, it's just the second time he's picked on Austin
and obviously it pisces me off. You could read her
rop ed in The Guardian where she wrote about this
the last time he cited her and his executive order,
and I would encourage you to so.

Speaker 5 (01:55:33):
After this initial dive into the trans topic, Trump followed
up by talking about how egg prices are out of
control take a shot, which happened about fifteen minutes into
the speech. But near the end of the speech, Trump
returned to the trends topic, pointing to the anti trans
activist mom named January Little John No Comment whose kid

(01:55:57):
secretly used they then pronouns at school, with Trump discussing
how wrong it is for schools to secretly transition students
and like this actually just isn't true. Surprise, surprise, the
parents in this case knew that their kid wanted to
use a different name and pronouns at school, and actually
were the ones to inform the school of this, according
to school emails obtained by CNN. Not that this matters.

(01:56:21):
And I will say during this clip when when the
camera cuts towards his mom, like all of the people
that were used as political props that were cut to,
they all had the most bizarre look on their face,
like completely blank, like soulis not even like get really
excited this this woman who who's you know, kind of
a one of also the faces of like Florida's don't
say gay bill just yeah, completely like blank expression because

(01:56:43):
this thing that the president's talking about is just a
flat out lie. And like you know it, you lost
a federal lawsuit over this lie. But here you are
on national TV now, the prop of the president.

Speaker 3 (01:56:53):
Yeah, on national TV, in front of both hanswers of Congress,
attacking your own kid, yep, for trying to be here.
They want to be a subject on which you lost
a lawsuit.

Speaker 5 (01:57:02):
Like and then Trump directly asked Congress to pass a
bill banning trans health care for children, saying wokeness is gone,
our country will be woke.

Speaker 1 (01:57:12):
No longer whatever, such a loser.

Speaker 5 (01:57:16):
The next topic was Elon Musk's doge Trump essentially just
read out a list that mischaracterized aid programs or scientific
research grants, talking about how Health and Human Services paid
for housing for displaced immigrants in the United States, money
for Middle East Sesame Street for making mice transgender, and

(01:57:39):
LGBTQ education in Africa, as well as DEI in Burma,
which I will now pivot to James again to fill
in some context here.

Speaker 3 (01:57:50):
Yeah, so I'm aware of this scholarship because I'm aware
of the people within the Simpil disobedience movement who are
talking to the State Department about it, and they begged
for it not to be a DEI thing because they
could see this happening. Right. It's the Lincoln Scholarship program
our linked to it in the show notes. But it
exists to empower people in Burma write with technical skills
and to rise up young leaders in Burma. And it's

(01:58:13):
not a DEI program, but for some reason it was
categorized as such. Right. It talks about respecting diversity because,
as long term listeners will know Meanmar is an extremely
diverse country, right, with more than fifty ethnic groups and
hundreds of languages spoken, So that's why it talks about
respecting diversity. This is one of the few things the

(01:58:37):
United States has done for the people of Myanmar, after
pumping up their economy, pumping up real estate, and then
doing nothing when the military seized power there and started
to brutally repress the people. And the US is also
I should add, at this point holding a billion dollars
of the Burmese people's money that it froze when the
coup happened, and if it doesn't want to give them

(01:58:57):
these scholarships, could give them back their money, but I'm
sure it won't. I know this one pisces me off
in particular because obviously I'm very invested in the course
of the people of mem and they are my friends.

Speaker 5 (01:59:08):
Yeah, and this is very emblematic of the way Trump
and Elon talked about a bunch of these aid programs.
How like, you know, HIV prevention programs will be LGBTQ
usaid money, right, Like they find a way to mischaracterize
it in the most like culture war way.

Speaker 3 (01:59:25):
Yeah, talking about public health programs as circumcisions, right.

Speaker 5 (01:59:28):
Yeah, exactly right. They'll try to find every single like
health or education program and turn it into some like
LGBTQ or DEI culture or issue. Trump claimed on stage
that they've found hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud. Now.
The doge website previously listed one hundred and five billion
dollars in like found savings, but this very week the

(01:59:48):
website scrubbed the five of the highest dollar value receipts
after journalists found massive errors in Elon's estimated count, and
now it's while of receipts totals around it eight billion,
though that might also be an overestimate according to some journalists.

Speaker 3 (02:00:05):
Amazing.

Speaker 5 (02:00:05):
Trump also talked about alleged Social Security fraud, claiming that
millions and millions of dead people are getting Social Security.
Like this just isn't true.

Speaker 1 (02:00:13):
The math is not mathing.

Speaker 3 (02:00:16):
Yeah, this has been their thing for a while, right,
Dead people are voting. Dead people are getting Social Security.

Speaker 11 (02:00:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:00:21):
Trump's own Social Security administrator has like said as much.
The super old people in the database simply don't have
death and details logged, but they are not receiving payments.
There is improper payments in the Social Security system, usually
around one percent. Mostly that's over payments or entertainments to
people who are actually alive, and there is a system
for resolving those already in place, because social Security is

(02:00:44):
a pretty old system that we've had for quite a while.
And like, I don't know, like Trump's skirted by a
lot of economy issues, and the way he did so
was just by repeatedly claiming that doge and like, cutting
this fraud will magically fix the economy, right, Like, this
is how he wants to frame this. Eggs are too
much money, all of these things, and he has no

(02:01:04):
actual solution to it. So instead, We're going to fix
the economy through doge, through finding all this fraud, and
somehow we will locate this like pot of gold hidden
somewhere that will magically make our economy better. And this
is his solution because he doesn't have any real solution.

Speaker 3 (02:01:20):
Yeah, I should have pointed out that Lincoln Scholarships were
in fact a Trump They started in twenty nineteen, this
round of them.

Speaker 5 (02:01:25):
So like, good job, cut of your own fraud, Donald.

Speaker 3 (02:01:28):
Do you know what else started in the first Trump era?
Garrison Advertising advertisements was I believe Trump's first executive order.
He established the podcasting advertising industry, which you know supports
us to this day today is the backbone of the
American economy.

Speaker 10 (02:01:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:01:45):
I mean that's actually unfortunately more true than it should be.

Speaker 3 (02:01:48):
You know, if anyone wants to buy any colloidal silver.

Speaker 5 (02:01:52):
No, no, no, okay, we are back on top of
trains issues. The other, I would say most cited element
in this speech was the border. Trump reference to the

(02:02:12):
Lake and Riley Act, which requires DHS to detain illegal
immigrants who've admitted to were charged with or convicted of
theft related crimes or any crime related to serious bodily injury.

Speaker 3 (02:02:24):
They're not necessarily illegal. They could just be undocumented people.
They could be asylum seekers.

Speaker 5 (02:02:29):
Correct, correct, Yes, that is a good point.

Speaker 1 (02:02:32):
I just want to note it was incredible the amount
of sad looking children and or family members that he
had as his propaganda prop people.

Speaker 5 (02:02:42):
He had a lot of props for this speech, a.

Speaker 1 (02:02:44):
Lot of props for his speech. I had Fred watch
with me, and she just kept going, how did he
find like these people?

Speaker 5 (02:02:51):
These people have been figures of his campaign for years.

Speaker 1 (02:02:55):
Yeah, I explain that. I explained that. Yeah, he's brought
these same individual jewels out. As Garrett's mentioned over and
over and over again, and use same thing.

Speaker 5 (02:03:05):
With Fox News with one American News, like their entire
life revolves around being political props.

Speaker 1 (02:03:11):
It's an industry, right, there was nothing new here.

Speaker 5 (02:03:15):
Trump signed an executive order on stage to rename a
wildlife preserve. In this like anti immigrant propaganda move, he
called for mandatory death penalty for anyone who kills a
police officer and asked Congress to sign that into law,
which is mostly like an anti immigrant dog whistle, essentially
trying to find a way to kill immigrants who are

(02:03:37):
like charged with the death of a police officer.

Speaker 3 (02:03:39):
Yeah. They proposed the same thing for people smuggling drugs
in the United States, like effectively charging them as if
they were going to give all the drugs to one
person to murder them and therefore giving them the death penalty.

Speaker 5 (02:03:50):
Now that he wants to label all these people terrorists
or you know, has labeled these groups terrorists, it gives
the like the government a lot more leeway to do
stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (02:03:57):
Yeah, I mean, proving membership of those groups would be
a chat.

Speaker 5 (02:04:01):
Sure, I mean, so is proving membership to Antifa.

Speaker 3 (02:04:04):
Yes, exactly. Yeah, we haven't seen how they can. Well,
we've somewhat seen how they're going to try in the
latter case, but none in the former. I guess we'll see,
I'm sure at some point in the next year or two.

Speaker 5 (02:04:14):
But like Trump said that, like previously, America has quote
unquote buckled under migrant occupation, but now we are achieving
the great liberation of America. That's the sort of language
he was using for this section.

Speaker 3 (02:04:26):
And he said how they rule from mental asylums and prisons.

Speaker 5 (02:04:30):
Very standard campaign rhetoric that he's used for years now.

Speaker 3 (02:04:33):
If you're new to this podcast, you can go back.
You can search the word hacumber or border, and you
can listen to interviews with probably hundreds of migrants. You
can listen to my title forty two series, you can
listen to my Darien series, and you can joy for
yourself if these people are criminal or bad or mentally unwell.

Speaker 5 (02:04:49):
The economy had a very minimal focus compared to border
or trans issues. He really skirted over the tariffs thing
as fast as possible, briefly talked about the federal funder
Freeze bragged about terminating the green new scam, something that
has never existed. Yeah, talking about withdrawing from the Preparis
climate Accords again, as well as the corrupt World Health

(02:05:11):
Organization and the and the anti American un War Crime Council.
Very cool, bragged about ending climate restrictions, you know, drill, baby, drill,
going after rare earth minerals, talked about no tax on
tips over time and benefits for seniors, and then briefly

(02:05:31):
discussed that on April second, he will be enacting reciprocal
tariffs just completely across the board for all nations. And
he did warn farmers there is going to be an
adjustment period. Quote, there will be a little disturbance unquote.

Speaker 3 (02:05:46):
Certainly when you adjust to not having a job that
pays you any money anymore.

Speaker 5 (02:05:50):
Crashing the economy will have a bit of an adjustment period.
It will be a bit of a little disturbance.

Speaker 1 (02:05:56):
Yeah, I mean, just like he just kept going through
these obvious, ridiculous claims and making Trump side comment stupidity,
like calling the Middle East a bad neighborhood and.

Speaker 5 (02:06:14):
That's my street joke.

Speaker 1 (02:06:15):
Yeah, it's just incredible. And James, our colleague Molly Conger
had a good point.

Speaker 3 (02:06:21):
She did, Yeah, of her many good points. Trump said
that people had never heard of Lesotho. At the same time,
pronouncing it in a way that one would only know
if one had heard it pronounced rather than seen it
written on the page. Very very funny, south Ownd. He
also said something about Liberia like implying like I would
encourage people to understand the history of Liberia if they
think the US does an Liberia a thing or two.

Speaker 5 (02:06:44):
One of the last focuses of the speech was national security,
promising a Golden Dome missile defense system, which Trump has
previously talked about at previous twenty twenty four campaign events.

Speaker 1 (02:06:57):
I'm obsessed with gold, sessed with gold with dome.

Speaker 3 (02:07:07):
Garrison didn't even crack for those listening.

Speaker 5 (02:07:09):
Once again, got him now once again. He announced that
his administration will be reclaiming the Panama Canal, saying we
have Mark Rubio in charge. Good luck Marco. If something
goes wrong, we know who to play right.

Speaker 3 (02:07:25):
Amazing.

Speaker 5 (02:07:26):
His comments on Greenland were specifically odd, saying Greenland, we
strongly support your right to determine your own future, and
if you choose, we welcome you into the United States
of America. But the full quote about Greenland was very odd.
He said, quote, we need Greenland for national security and
even international security, so weird, and we're working with everybody

(02:07:51):
involved to try to get it. But we need it
really for international for world security, and I think we're
gonna get it. One way or another, We're gonna get it.
It's a very small population, but a very very large
piece of land and very very important for military security.
Unquote okay, yeah, very odd, very odd comments.

Speaker 3 (02:08:14):
Whole collection of English language.

Speaker 5 (02:08:16):
Would he is He is continuing to say that one
way or another he will take Greenland. I think his
focus on it for national security is particularly interesting. I
think this has something to do with trying to make
the US and Russia these like two massive like world
powers that both have like you know, Arctic land at
their disposal, considering climate change or you know, a variety

(02:08:38):
of issues. But I think that this does move towards
this like quasi like Douganism of like this like multipolar
world that that Putin certainly wants, and Trump is kind
of signaling that, you know, through the influence of Bannon,
he's also moving towards with like Putin and trumpet like
you know, the two people who control the world. Speaking
of Trump didn't talk about receiving a letter from President's

(02:09:00):
Lensky asking to return to the neotiating table, and bragged
about freeing another weed smoking teacher in a Russian jail,
returning him home to America. And oddly enough, Trump met
with the mother of this teacher in Butler, Pennsylvania right
before he got shot, which led him to point towards
the comparatour family, again, pronouncing it in a completely new

(02:09:24):
and different way. All of the members of the family
seemed very not thrilled to be there, completely blank expressions, quite.

Speaker 1 (02:09:32):
Odd, extremely weird.

Speaker 5 (02:09:33):
Yeah, so this is where he ended the speech, was
talking about, you know, getting shot, and then kind of
went on a very long, ten minute, almost gptesque ramble
about like America. I didn't take any notes on it
because it just sounded like word salad. But there is
a few other mislanious things from the speech I do
want to mention before we close out. Trump bragged about
stopping all government censorship and having brought back free speech

(02:09:57):
to America, saying it's back, which is you know, a
slightly humorous amidst reports of grants being pulled for using
quote unquote the bad words, wrong words, as well as
a truth social post a truth made earlier today Wednesday,
saying all federal funding will stop for any college, school,

(02:10:19):
or university that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned
or permanently sent back to the country from which they came.
American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested.
No masks. So in one moment, you can celebrate bringing
back free speech, and in the other you can call
for deporting people who protest or imprisoning students are protesting

(02:10:42):
on their own university campuses. Very very typical Trump doubles
speak type stuff.

Speaker 1 (02:10:48):
He talked about bringing the people back to the office
like these are all like normal Trump.

Speaker 5 (02:10:55):
Well, yeah, and these are things that have happened already.

Speaker 3 (02:10:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:10:58):
Most of the half of this beach was celebrating things
that he's already done. The other half was like asking
Congress to help him do more things Mixed in with
these weird propaganda moves like making this thirteen year old
brain cancer survivor in honorary Secret Service agent and admitting
this very square looking teenager into West Point. Who by

(02:11:21):
the way, this this teenager has the most cop phenotype
I've ever seen before. It's crazy, It's I was shocked, like, whoa,
they found him the cop phenotype. There he is, which
was which is two? Two more of these weird props.

Speaker 3 (02:11:37):
It's like in the cave in Plato, everything else is
just a reflection of this cop kid. Every other coult
it was.

Speaker 5 (02:11:43):
It's so odd because like Trump spent this speech talking
about how, you know, like we're bringing back a merit
based hiring. We have we have quote ended the tyranny
of dei across government, private sector, and military, as he
then just did two DEI hires on stage. But you
know whom I who am I to say? So that's
kind of all I had to say on the Trump speech.

(02:12:03):
Right now, I will briefly, very briefly talk about the
Democratic response. The Democratic response was done by Senator Slatkin
from Michigan, who opened by saying America wants change, but
there's a responsible way to make change in an irresponsible way,
trying to paint DOGE as like this very irresponsible and
brash way to achieve efficiencies, something that we all obviously

(02:12:23):
want the government to move more towards. She warned about
how Trump's actions may result in our recession, warned about
losing Social Security Medicare and VA benefits, quoted Musk, who
recently called social Security the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time,
and attacked Musk and the twenty year old DOGE members
for using their own servers to access your sensitive data.

(02:12:44):
Sluckin spent a lot of the rebuttal praising Ronald Reagan.
Odd for a Democrat. I would say, I don't know why, strange,
don't know why you as the opposition party, are continuing
to base your politics on praising Bush and Reagan. Very
cool position party bros, very fun stuff. She also said,
I've lived and worked in many countries. I've seen democracies

(02:13:07):
flicker out. I've seen what life is like when a
government is rigged. Like yeah, I bet you have the
former CIA agent. She also mentioned doom scrolling, so that
that really shows how the Democrats have the finger on
the pulse here when when doom scrolling is mentioned as
something not to do, saying, instead, you should hold your

(02:13:28):
elected officials, including me, accountable, Watch how they're voting, go
to town halls, demand they take action and organize. Pick
up one issue you're passionate about and engage. Doom Scrolling
doesn't count. Join a group that cares about your issue
and act. If you can't find one, start one. And
that was that was the bulk of the ten minute
Democratic response. Oh boy, what a what a what a

(02:13:50):
fun what a fun day in American politics?

Speaker 3 (02:13:52):
That was Yep.

Speaker 5 (02:13:53):
Any final thoughts, James Sophie.

Speaker 1 (02:13:56):
Like this speech. This episode is running long. Yeah, so
I rarely don't have any final thoughts other than.

Speaker 5 (02:14:04):
Bad, bad, bad, bad bad. The Democrats are unwilling to
do anything actually serious. Once again, the attempts that quot
unquote fact checking the speech are also incredibly pathetic to
look at.

Speaker 3 (02:14:18):
Truly.

Speaker 5 (02:14:18):
There's this New York Times fact check which I will
close on just because it made me and the rest
of our group chat very upset, which outlined this long
paragraph from Trump saying over the past four years, twenty
one million people poured into the United States, many of
whom were murderers, human traffickers, gang members, and other criminals
from the streets of dangerous cities and all throughout the world.
Because of Joe Biden's insane and very dangerous open border policies,

(02:14:39):
they are now strongly embedded in our country. But we
are getting them out and getting them out fast and
the fact check for this very like false claim is
quote fast is a relative term. This statement is misleading.
It's just oh, it only focuses on the ending sentence
saying that we're getting these immigrants out and we're getting

(02:15:00):
them out fast. It ignores calling many of these twenty
one million people human traffickers, gang members, and criminals. Does
not say that we never have had open border policy.
Like it's crazy, even like the liberal fact checking is
completely pathetic and toothless, and like fact ticking doesn't work,
it's not useful anyway. That's why I'm not spending this

(02:15:22):
whole episode fact checking Trump's claims. But the fact that
you're gonna parrot this insane anti immigrant rhetoric and only
fact chuck Trump saying that we're going to get these
immigrants out of our country fast, calling it a relative term.
And this is the reason that this statement is misleading.
This completely shows how Democrats like completely lost any momentum

(02:15:43):
on the immigration topic. Same thing with the trans topic.
They're actually unwilling to push back on changing popular sentiment
because they're automatically agreeing with the actual conceit. Yeah, anyway,
that got me upset, and then I watched Tiawei and
then went to that. So there we go.

Speaker 3 (02:15:59):
Do you go ya yaie? Garrison?

Speaker 5 (02:16:01):
Anyways, this is it could happen here. Executive Disorder, our

(02:16:29):
weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the
crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison
Davis today. I'm joined by Bauford Evans, Nia Wong, James Stokes,
and Sophie Lichterman.

Speaker 2 (02:16:40):
Tragically, we all have ed. All right, I got it
out of the way. We can continue the episode.

Speaker 3 (02:16:46):
Now.

Speaker 5 (02:16:46):
This episode, we are covering the week of February twenty
seven to March five, Number Go Down, Public Humiliation ritual
of Vladimir Zelensky, and the age of US global supremacy
is over.

Speaker 11 (02:16:59):
Welcome to the end of the American Empire. It sucks
way more than I thought it would.

Speaker 2 (02:17:03):
Yeah, uh huh, well, I mean, look, some of us
have been saying this.

Speaker 3 (02:17:10):
Yeah, it's just tragedy that is fast, and then it's
whatever the fuck is happening now?

Speaker 2 (02:17:15):
Yeah, we're we have crossed the tragedy farce horizon.

Speaker 3 (02:17:19):
We're well beyond.

Speaker 2 (02:17:20):
We're well beyond anything marks could of anticipating.

Speaker 3 (02:17:23):
We're going we don't need foss.

Speaker 5 (02:17:27):
Like I am upset about how Landy and everything is
becoming Like I feel like you have to be almost
forced into being an accelerationist now, like there is no
other way out.

Speaker 3 (02:17:36):
Did you watch the Democrats last night, Garrison.

Speaker 5 (02:17:39):
It's like this non consensual acceleration as well. Yeah, yeah that,
like people spent years trying to resist this. Accelerationists push
that even now I'm seeing like analysts like embrace, like,
I guess we have to be accelerationists now, which is
very bizarre to see.

Speaker 11 (02:17:52):
Yeah, I've been saying there is no more ideology called accelerationism.
There is just acceleration of what you do about it.
So funhole, we've gotten there into Yeah, speaking of let's
start with talking about Ukraine, a place which accelerated, and
that Oval office meeting that happened last Friday. That was
a little bit odd.

Speaker 4 (02:18:11):
Wasn't it.

Speaker 1 (02:18:11):
Folks Hearson say thank you, thank you.

Speaker 5 (02:18:15):
Yes, I realize I've been under your employee for for
four years now. I've said thank you many.

Speaker 1 (02:18:19):
Times each of you. Thank me. No, I'm kidding Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 (02:18:23):
Wow, So Sophie has gone mad with power?

Speaker 3 (02:18:26):
Mm hmm, I'm going to go call the EU because
Sophie has asked.

Speaker 5 (02:18:29):
Me, yes, So I don't know. I'm sure people saw
like a two minute clip or something. I watched the
full ten minute section, which is much more crazy. Yeah,
And like in Trump's push to get like this Ceaspire deal,
Zelensky's hesitation has been because Putin has broken multiple Ceasepire deals,
so how can we be sure that he will respect

(02:18:50):
this one? And that's kind of what jump starts this
extra combative exchange between Trump, Zelinsky, and eventually little boy JD.
I don't know, Robert and James, you your war understanders.

Speaker 3 (02:19:03):
Yeah, that's what it says when I go into my hobe.

Speaker 2 (02:19:07):
The increasing story, and this affects Ukraine, but is not
just limited to it. The story of the next several
years is going to be the mass rearmament of Europe
and almost certain nuclear proliferation. France, who has I think
two hundred and ninety five nuclear warheads and extremely advanced
first strike capability as well as a first strike doctrine

(02:19:29):
is under Macron has just made a statement that he's
willing to have France be the nuclear shield for the
rest of Europe. The UK also has enough nukes to
kill way more people than actually live there. Unfortunately, their
nuclear defense system and reaction system is very tied into
the US one. I expect you will see them sever
it from the United States as the United States becomes

(02:19:51):
more and more of a geopolitical adversary to England and
to everywhere else in Europe. I think you are going
to see more smaller states in Europe get the bomb.
I think in general, I'm shocked if in four years
there's not at least another four or five states that
have gained access to the bomb. Yeah, because the overarching

(02:20:12):
international lesson from Ukraine has never ever, ever, ever, ever
ever give up a nuke and get one at all costs.

Speaker 3 (02:20:19):
Yeah, fantasy the European national anthem whenobe because if it's
not love, it's the bomb that will bring us together. Yep, Garrison,
great one. I don't like that that.

Speaker 2 (02:20:31):
I'm not saying this because it's it's good, but it's
also literally like if I was in charge of European security,
that's where you had priority would be let's get as
many fucking nukes out here as we can.

Speaker 3 (02:20:43):
I think we should say that, like this is how
US diplomacy happens. This sort of shouting at and humiliating
non US leaders is what the US does. The difference
here is that Trump did it in front of the
entire White House, press corps and TV cameras, Yes, in
the Oval Office, for everyone to see. Yeah, and it
doesn't give Zelenski a place to back down. Right, Like,

(02:21:04):
he's a leader of a country that is at war.
He needs to show strength and like certainly sort of
with the current understanding of leadership, he needs to show strength,
and to show strength, he doesn't have many places to
go when he's been humiliated like that, right.

Speaker 5 (02:21:16):
Well, and like you know, Trump was yelling about you know,
world War three and then and then and advanced China thing.
He's particularly incoherent with his with his little like thank
you speech. And I think Robert, I think I think
you pointed out to me earlier, like why Vance jumped
in on this the way he did, in like a
way to establish dominance when Vance and Trump have very

(02:21:38):
little cards to play because this is the guy who
has been like at war for years now, and like
they need to feel superior to that. And that's why
it's a public humiliation ritual, because that's the only method
they had yet right now.

Speaker 2 (02:21:52):
No, because there's nothing really like they play act at masculinity,
and their fan especially Trump's base, really like feeds into that.
But they definitely also have that deep secure insecurity that
because of aspects of our culture and media. I think
most men who have never been to war have a
little bit of that. I don't think it's a natural

(02:22:13):
thing for men, but I think it's a natural thing
in our society. I think it is extremely common, verging
on universal. I went to war in part because of
that derangement. And by the way, war doesn't do anything
to make you better. Yeah, but what it does do,
what it has done for Zelensky and why he acted
the way he is, is that like he's he's literally

(02:22:34):
been in the position of his entire family and him
having Ak forty seven shoved into their hands because a
Russian kill team was in the city gunning for him
and his family as bombs fell all around. Like, yeah,
he's just he's I think he just has too much pride. Sorry,
pride's even the wrong thing He's learned over the course
of fighting this war. When you are up against a

(02:22:56):
strong man, you can't back down.

Speaker 3 (02:23:00):
Like, yeah, you just keep getting pushed back further and
further if you do that.

Speaker 2 (02:23:04):
Because he wouldn't have gotten anything if he had like
sat there and been nice and let them make fun
of him, and like, like the the ending would be
the same. They'd made up their minds prior to that meeting.

Speaker 3 (02:23:14):
Right, and like the one of the things that Zelenski
has going for him, and like there's a lot that
he doesn't have going from. He's not a coward, and
like no people have noticed that he's not a coward,
and that has brought him some of the support and
like it has allowed him to remain in that position
of leadership a relatively uncontested right. They haven't been able
to have elections. This is something that the Ukrainian opposition

(02:23:35):
have also kind of consented to. It's not like he's
he's being a dictator here, as Trump is alleged, but
like his personal bravery and willingness to confront these strong
men is something that like people draw strength from in Ukraine,
and he can't afford to let that go.

Speaker 5 (02:23:51):
He actually was fairly submissive in this exchange. He was
letting Trump talk way over him. Zelenski did not raise
his voice. I don't. I frankly, I don't understand how
people have even deluded themselves into thinking this makes this
like Zelenski look bad or like he wasn't proper.

Speaker 3 (02:24:06):
Yeah, he handled it like a grown up would handle it,
Like he tried to point out what you're saying it's wrong.

Speaker 5 (02:24:11):
This was clearly like a coordinated trap from like the
entire White House team, from like the press corps. Yes,
like talking about like why he doesn't wear a suit,
and like someone like Rubio, like a neocon that has
more of this like geopolitics focus, Like he was like
literally like syncing into the couch as this was happening,
Like like Rubio was not thrilled at this.

Speaker 2 (02:24:30):
Yeah, no, no, because Rubio he has no personal pride
or backbone, so he is willing to try and remake
himself as a Trumper. But in his actual heart and soul,
he's a Reagan Republican.

Speaker 5 (02:24:41):
He totally sure, or maybe at least a Bush Republican.
Definitely Bush. And yeah, I don't know. Like Zelenski was
literally kicked out of the White House on Friday, he's
now trying to find a way back into the negotiating table.
On Monday, the United States suspended all military aid to
Ukraine after Trump has continued to inflate the numbers in

(02:25:01):
regards to the amount of military aid we have sent
to Ukraine, often by a magnitude of two hundred billion
dollars and I don't like this was one of the
first things that me and Robert noticed at the RNC,
like how much Ukraine was like a top issue for them,
Like people wouldn't shut up about Ukraine. And it took
us a few days to like acclimate, be like okay,
like why are they talking about it in this way?
Like it was. It was very odd and Robert did

(02:25:24):
a deep dive on that last year with front of
the pod Rudy Giuliani Garrison.

Speaker 2 (02:25:30):
I just wanted to update you have been talking with
Rudy about the album that you and I wanted to
drop with him, and he is on board, so we
will be moving forward with that this spring.

Speaker 5 (02:25:38):
That's exciting a little taste for all you listeners. And
I like this. This is very much a part, in
my mind, a part of Bannon's push for like this
quasi douganism, this idea of a multipope polar world of
Trump and putin with putin expanding power into Europe, while
Trump tries to see his control over more parts of
North and Central America, you know, taking the Panama Canal

(02:26:00):
eventually Canada and Greenland, you know, and like both people
want to you know, more more Arctic land that will
be useful considering climate change. And Russia already has their
fair share. So that's why, you know, Greenland is so
essential for national security, like Trump talked about endlessly in
his joint session speech, I guess, uh miya, do you

(02:26:20):
want to add something about this mineral thing before we
go to break?

Speaker 11 (02:26:24):
Yeah, So I think I think one of the important
things here is that this is this is the definitive
break point, Like this is the moment that people are
going to point to and they look back on the
moment the old American empire died and that empire, you know,
the sort of post World War two international order thing.
Right the way, the way, the way the US maintained
is ueopolitical and economic power was by a network and

(02:26:44):
system of alliances with a bunch of the you know,
with their allies and sort of in places like Japan,
but also you know, across Western Europe, they maintained this
series of economic and political alliances that was able to
win the Cold War. I you know, make make the
US like the world's low and superpower. But in order
for it to function, the US has to like maintain

(02:27:05):
the alliance system even as it's doing imperial power protection
and use its allies.

Speaker 2 (02:27:10):
Well, and like the US is power primarily has always
come from the fact that like or at least in
this century, has been from the fact that we are
the center of the global economy.

Speaker 11 (02:27:21):
Yeah, right, And and the second part of it has
been has been its ability to wield power in international institutions, right, yeah,
you know, the US seizing control of the IMF and
the World Bank, and and you know, using sort of
trade like trade doctrine to to sort of empower itself.
And this is all fucking gone. The US is alienating
like everyone in the fucking globe basically except for except

(02:27:41):
for Russia. And you know, now we're entering this really
kind of Argentina maybe well well well well we'll see,
we'll see how long that government holds just like okay, yeah,
but you know, like and the thing that it's pivoting
to now, right is the stuff that used to be
the there'd be a sort of like coalition thing, and

(02:28:03):
and American corporations would do this stuff behind the scenes.
Is now just unbelievably explicit. The US is just straight
up openly doing resource colonialism, like they're straight up they're
demanding that Ukraine exchange its mineral resources for protection, like
it is straight up a protection racket.

Speaker 4 (02:28:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:28:20):
The proposed way that it works.

Speaker 11 (02:28:22):
Is that there's going to be like a quote unquote
development fund controlled by the US and Ukraine like jointly.
But I mean it's it's just gonna control by the US.
I don't know why people are pretending that Ukraine is
going to like have a say in this. I'm going
to read from the proposed agreement. We don't know what
the text of the final agreement is going to be.
Zelenski has recently expressed that he's willing to sign it,

(02:28:43):
but we don't know exactly what's going to look like.
Here's here's the quote for the document that we had.
The Government of Ukraine will contribute to the fund fifty
percent of all revenues earned from the future modestization of
all relevant Ukrainian government owned natural resource assets, whether owned
directly or indirectly by the Ukrainian governments defined as deposits
of minerals, hydrocarbons, oil, natural gas and other extractable minerals,

(02:29:07):
and other infrastructure relevant to natural resource assets such as
liquefied natural gas terminals and port infrastructure, as agreed by
both participants, as maybe further described in the fund agreements.
Another quote, the funds investment process will be designed so
as to invest in projects in Ukraine and intract investments
to increase the development, processing, and monetization of all public

(02:29:29):
and private Ukrainian assets, including but not limited to, deposits
of minerals, hydrocarbons, oil, natural gas, et cetera, et cetera, ports,
and state owned enterprises, as may be further described in
the fund agreements. So what they're talking about here is
not just like seizing control of Ukrainian mineral reasearchs. They're
talking about like privatizing the Ukrainian state and selling it

(02:29:50):
off and taking the profits from that. They are talking
about seizing ports, which I have seen no media coverage of.

Speaker 5 (02:29:56):
I do not know why it is any agreement. You
can just read it there.

Speaker 11 (02:30:00):
I I, notably on the show, am not like I
am well known as not a China supporter. But I
deeply remember for five years everyone losing their fucking minds
about China doing this exact same fucking thing with port
lease agreements, and they was just doing it now. And
this is just what the new international order is going
to be. It's the US just very very openly instead
of instead of working through allies, instead of working through

(02:30:20):
sort of like reshime shamed operations. It's just the US
going to be going like, okay, like you are all
going to die unless you give us all your money.

Speaker 5 (02:30:27):
Speaking of giving us all your money.

Speaker 3 (02:30:30):
Wow, hell yeah, that's right, magnificent.

Speaker 1 (02:30:34):
That was art.

Speaker 5 (02:30:34):
Here's some ads. All right, all right, we are back, Robert.
You want to talk about Syria?

Speaker 3 (02:30:52):
Yeah, Syria. I hardly know you.

Speaker 2 (02:30:54):
Okay. Anyway, I was sent to a document by my
good friend Joey Aub from the Fire This Time podcast
if sorry, The Fire in These Times podcast. Joey's great.
It's a document that the US is sending out to
NGOs around the world. This one was sent to an
NGO doing humanitarian work in Syria, and it's basically, you

(02:31:15):
have to fill this out in order to have a
chance of retaining the funding that has been paused right now, right,
So it's part of the USAID pause. If you want
to get that money, you have to fill this out
and basically prove that you are in line with the
new executive orders and policies of the United States government.
There's a bunch of questions on here that you have
to answer. A lot of them are yes, no, and

(02:31:36):
some many of them are just like normal shit.

Speaker 4 (02:31:38):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:31:38):
Does your organization have a current risk management frameworker policy?

Speaker 4 (02:31:42):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (02:31:42):
No?

Speaker 2 (02:31:42):
If yes, please describe the framework or policy right, not
extreme or anything like that. You have to say that
you're not working with cartels, narco human traffickers. But then
you have to say you have not quote organized groups
that promote mass migration in the last ten years, which
is interesting, and when you're dealing with like war torn

(02:32:02):
areas that are helping like refugees escape is clearly going
to be damaging to a lot of NGOs that have
done very good work to save people.

Speaker 3 (02:32:10):
Yeah. No.

Speaker 2 (02:32:10):
Number five is does your organization encourage free speech and
encourage open debate and free sharing of information?

Speaker 4 (02:32:16):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (02:32:17):
No?

Speaker 2 (02:32:18):
And then right under that, does your organization have a
clear policy of prohibiting any collaboratoration, funding, or support for
entities that advocate or implement policies contrary to US government interests.
So free speech unless it's not stuff that we like, right, Yeah,
that kind of always been the way to be fair.
Now kind of the most I mean not kind of
by a wide margin. The most fucked up thing about

(02:32:41):
this is that it then goes down again right after
the free speech thing. First off, I should note number eleven,
after the free speech question, can you confirm your organization
does not work with entities that associated with communist, socialist
or totalitarian parties? And then below that is a basically
a question of like whether or not, and they frame
it as like, does this project take appropriate measures to

(02:33:03):
protect women and to defend against gender ideology? Is to
find in the below executive order, and then it links
to the Defending Women from gender ideology extremism and Restoring
Biological Truth to the Federal Government executive Order. And then
it asks does the project take appropriate measures to protect
children and links to the same executive order. So it
is basically saying your organization has to support effectively like

(02:33:27):
transphobic policies in Syria in order to continue to get
US money, right, and the fact that that is numer
one a requirement for aid organizations receiving aid worldwide now
is deeply harmful. And it's also just like Syria was
already transphobic, like the Syrian governments not really pro trans

(02:33:50):
but the fact that this is just being like, this
is going to be like across the board, Yes, everywhere,
This is going to be everywhere in the world. If
we want to get US funds to save human life,
to stop the spread of diseases, you have to officially
embrace transphobic policies. That's that's the stance of the United
States government that that matters more than stopping the spread

(02:34:12):
of a bowlet in the congo.

Speaker 5 (02:34:14):
Oh yeah, this is like particularly worrying for you know,
HIV preventative measures across the world as well. Most of
the language that's used there has been heavily targeted. We're
just gonna get a whole bunch of people sick and
die yep, because of these actions.

Speaker 3 (02:34:28):
Yeah, until it starts getting people sick and dead in
this country. But we probably won't stop then.

Speaker 5 (02:34:33):
Probably not. James, I p pivot to you on our
semi regular border update.

Speaker 3 (02:34:40):
Yeah, it's me the border guy. I was down at
the United States border this weekend, the one with Mexico
and not the Canada one. And when I got back
from the border, I saw an announcement from the Pentagon
which announced the deployment of a strike A Brigade combat
team and an aviation battalion. So what's the strike A
Brigade Combat team, you ask. Normally they are like four

(02:35:02):
four hundred soldiers. In this case are sending twenty four
hundred soldiers from the fourth Infantry Division based in four
Cartson in Colorado. Strike up gad combat teams are based
around strikers. Strikers. They are armored fighting vehicles with eight wheels.
They're pretty cool.

Speaker 4 (02:35:19):
H Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:35:20):
Yeah, I've hung out in a couple.

Speaker 2 (02:35:22):
A lot of them have fully automatic grenade lodgers. Yeah,
they have decent air conditioning, you know, big.

Speaker 3 (02:35:28):
Vehicle outside, small vehicle inside, as with all military vehicles.
Great when you're six foot three like me, but famously
not really something you can use for like policing the border.

Speaker 2 (02:35:41):
No, Honestly, a lot of arguments as to whether or
not they were good at their stated role in warfare.

Speaker 3 (02:35:47):
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. The Bradley's have been having to
come back in Ukraine. The striker is not so much.
What they're not good at is moving through incredibly rugged
mountainous train that stuff. Where I was on Saturday.

Speaker 2 (02:36:00):
This is something Chuds don't understand, because a popular thing
among Chuds is to take their Toyota Tundras or their
f one to fifties or their Jeep Gladiators and send
them down to this company in Florida that adds an
extra axle in two more wheels so that they have
six wheels, because they think it makes truck go better.

Speaker 3 (02:36:19):
Why it ruins everything. It's a horrible wet thing to
do to a tract. I know the people at Jeep
have actually been thinking about how to make Jeep that
for quite a while. Actually very amusingly. The place I
was down at the border this weekend, there's a very
rugged road that you drive down and then you get
off and you hike. And I remember a few years
ago a guy fresh minty fresh tid hundress straight off

(02:36:43):
the lot. And I've just negotiated this in a nineteen
eighties Erra Toyot to pick up with my friends standing
in the back to counterbalance and add weight as we go.
I offered the spot for this guy he says, no,
he doesn't need it because it's a tid immediately destroys. Excellent.
Oh yeah, very beautiful. Love to see.

Speaker 5 (02:37:02):
These strikers are doing pretty good as well, we're hearing.

Speaker 3 (02:37:05):
Yeah, so we're excited to see the strike. Perfect perfect
vehicle for the terrade. The other vehicles that we're going
to see are UH sixty black Hawks and Shnooks from
the General Support Aviation Battalion who are deploying alongside them.
They are also about eleven hundred soldiers from sustainment units, right,
people who facilitate the in this case, infantry and aviation deployment.

(02:37:28):
There's some public affairs soldiers, there's people with logistics, people
who are going to help make this deployment happen. Right
In the press release, NORTHCOM that's the North American Command
of the United States Military, New United States Army said
to us, carried out by a second striker. A gade
combat team will include detection and monitoring, administrative support, transportation support, warehousing,

(02:37:51):
logistics support, vehicle maintenance, and engineering support. Personnel will not
conduct or be involved in interdiction or deportation operations. This
is the the Possycommatatis thing. Right, that they're not directly
going to be doing cop stuff. It's going to be
helping border patrol do cop stuff supposedly, But this is
still very different to the previous deployment. We saw that

(02:38:13):
the previous deployments were of like engineers and military police. Right,
So the engineers and the marine cor engineers, what they
seem to do is get up every day and put
razor wire on fence and then wait for someone to
take photographs and put razor war on fence again, right, And.

Speaker 2 (02:38:27):
Marines love putting razor wire up. It's not the job
that everyone hates the most.

Speaker 3 (02:38:33):
Yeah, yeah, everyone le's razor wire. Handling razor wire is
famously fine.

Speaker 8 (02:38:37):
Easy.

Speaker 2 (02:38:38):
Does it get you horribly?

Speaker 3 (02:38:39):
Cut the fuck out? Yeah, it's just what you're signed
up to do. I think what are the MP's doing
that they will be facilitating CBP operations. I'm guessing like singing,
like helping with intelligence that kind of stuff. Probably anti
drone stuff. There's been a lot of talk about drones.
I have not seen any small drones. Most of the

(02:39:01):
areas where I go in the border of federal wilderness
or state wilderness, so drones aren't allowed there any way.
But I've never seen one. What makes this different is
that these are infantry soldiers, right, Like, this is a
concentration of troops. Everyone in the military that kills people,
that helps people kill people. These are the killing people,
guys and girls and well and a closeted they thems. Yeah,

(02:39:25):
if you're a close to day them in a military,
best of luck to you. That's what makes it different. Right.
This is a significant concentration of troops on the border
with one of our allies. This is coming as the
United States has used drone over flights to pass information
to Mexican authorities that resulted in the arrest of cartel
personnel in Sinaloa. Right. So it is a significant change,

(02:39:50):
and I imagine, based on what I've heard from sources,
that we will see more of this. Right, the US's
deployable infantry troops will be coming to the border. It
means that we might soon be seeing foot patrols, right,
soldiers on foot walking through the mountains to the border,
because we ain't going to see striker mounted patrols out
there if they want to keep their strikers. They're adding

(02:40:12):
more helicopter assets, right, which can both move people to
more remote areas and do more surveillance. Surveillance, I would assume, yeah, yeah,
I mean, like when a hiker was shot down at
the border a few weeks ago, and I was out
there very quickly thereafter, and they used a UH sixty first. Well,
actually didn't evacuate the person in the UA sixty. They
went in the UA sixty of acted them in a

(02:40:33):
uicopter and then another military black hawk's kind of flying
over after that, and I'm guessing that was just to
kind of provide cover for the like the first responders
right who were going there to I think in that case,
they're investigating the scene. The person had been evacuated, but
there are very remote areas of the border which probably
our best access by helicopter, and so that's what they

(02:40:53):
will be doing. But this does represent a significant concentration
of combat troops on the border with that ally, which
is not a normal thing to do.

Speaker 11 (02:41:01):
And it's worth bearing in mind that as we're doing
troop build US in the Mexican border, there are a
lot of people in the Trump administration who want to
do just full on cross border US military operations in Mexico.
They want to do invasions, They want to do like
what what they think of as like hell actions.

Speaker 3 (02:41:17):
So yeah, sort of support for like drone strikes right now,
which the terrorist designation does kind of pave a road to.
But obviously it's worth noting for those not familiar that
Mexico is a different country and you don't just get
to drone strike other countries. That's an active war.

Speaker 5 (02:41:32):
Well, and speaking of they them's in the military, I
will do a quick follow up before we go on break.
We mentioned last week about efforts from the Navy to
house trans naval.

Speaker 3 (02:41:47):
Members sailors.

Speaker 5 (02:41:50):
I guess I guess they kind of all are sailors,
aren't they, But basically, how's them with people matching their
assigned gender at birth, same thing with access to intimate
spaces like bathrooms. This has escalated further to now a
general quasi ban of trans people from the military altogether,

(02:42:11):
with a few implementation paths towards this a form of
like don't ask, don't tell. We will report on this
more in the future as a part of a larger
piece on the lavender scare currently happening across the government.
But that that did happen literally like a few hours
after we record it we got word that they are
seeking to just band trans people from the military altogether. Anyway,

(02:42:34):
we will go on break and return to talk tar Us.

Speaker 4 (02:42:51):
We're back.

Speaker 2 (02:42:52):
Hey, I wanted to note something I was unaware of
because I have not changed my friend's name and my phone,
but Joey now goes by a ya ayub. I apologize
for the error there, but James corrected me.

Speaker 3 (02:43:06):
So we're good team. What makes a dream work?

Speaker 2 (02:43:08):
And never changing people's names in my phone makes well?

Speaker 1 (02:43:12):
Actually, I usually I was gonna say, I'm impressed you
have a name saved in.

Speaker 2 (02:43:16):
Your LEAs is a friend, so I actually have their
name saved in my phone. Ninety percent of the texts
coming at me at any given time is just a
series of unlabeled phone numbers, and it's chaos. I'm just
guessing that people are who someone I should be in
contact with.

Speaker 5 (02:43:34):
That's absurd. Well, there's no tariffs or butts about it.
But the economy is it a bad spot? No, I
was gonna do.

Speaker 11 (02:43:47):
I was gonna do speaking of absurd but no, no,
even worse.

Speaker 1 (02:43:51):
Worser Gar said.

Speaker 2 (02:43:53):
You know what, Gear, I'm proud of you. That's almost
as good as my rock. The kas bad joke.

Speaker 5 (02:43:59):
Yeah, well I don't want to do tariff talk. No,
but where do we do it? Anyways, So.

Speaker 11 (02:44:08):
After those horrors we got, we have other horrors question mark.
So on Tuesday, Trump's tariffs on Canada and Mexico and
also an additional ten percent tariff on China went into effect.
So these are twenty five percent across the board tariffs.
There's some I think there are only like ten percent
on Canadian oil, Canadian energy, Yeah, yeah, like energy stuff.

(02:44:31):
Weirdly that's not also applied to Mexico, even though we
there's a shit ton of oil.

Speaker 5 (02:44:35):
I don't know.

Speaker 11 (02:44:36):
And at sort of the last moment, if there was
a kind of he got called by all three of
the heads of the big three auto manufacturers who were like,
if you don't exclude auto tariffs, we're all gonna die.
So he's he's like pushed tariffs out for one month.
They're suspended on automotive imports. We still don't know what

(02:44:57):
the fuck that actually means, because it's unclear whether he
just means like cars and trucks or whether it also
glues auto parts deeply unclear. There's also all tariff alune
women steel imports. He announced that a tariff on in
the speech, the copp rolem we knew about I don't
think we knew about the illune women steel imports, which
are new, which are also going to be sort of catastrophic.

(02:45:17):
I want to read this amazing CM quote from CNBC.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that Trump's tariff will cause
quote higher prices, but he maintained that only some products
would be affected and that price hikes would be temporary.

Speaker 5 (02:45:31):
Famously, price hikes are only temporary. Hold on, hold on,
it gets better. We got to the good part.

Speaker 11 (02:45:37):
Yet, Lutnick consisted that those rising prices should not be
considered inflation. Okay, as the President said last night, there's
going to be a short period where there'd be some
higher prices on certain products, the cabinet secretary said on
Fox News, it's not inflation. That's nonsense, certain products for
a short period of time. He said, Now, now the

(02:45:57):
definition of inflation, and I kind of have it's enough,
is prices going up?

Speaker 5 (02:46:01):
So great? Great stuff here.

Speaker 11 (02:46:05):
There's also you know, as this has been unfolding, there
are been reciprocal tariffs from Canada. The first round of
negotiation between Trump and Trudeau basically went nowhere. Canada's putting
tariffs on and this is true of both Canada and China,
who have both done reciprocal tariffs. They've been more limited,
They're only targeting sort of specific sectors. Well, the Chinese

(02:46:28):
rates are lower. China's Yeah, rates are really a ton
of fifteen percent, the big one from China. And I'm
very confused about this whole the way everyone's talking about this,
because everyone only seems to be talking about Canada and
Mexico and these, even though the terriff rate on China
is now up to twenty percent.

Speaker 3 (02:46:42):
Yeah, he did it out of two steps, right like that. Yeah, yeah,
he slid under the Rada.

Speaker 11 (02:46:47):
You know obviously, Like yeah, okay, So like the US
and Mexico and the US and Canada have the two
largest trading relationships on Earth. However, Comma, the Chinese reciprocal
tariffs are really going to hurt because one of the
big things that they're targeting is US soybean exports. Now,
we do twelve billion dollars of soybean exports per year.
This matters enormously though. It has an outsized impact regardless

(02:47:09):
of sort of the dollar amounts here because Midwest farming,
huge parts of it is based on yearly rotations between
soybeans and corn to maintain soil quality. Right, like the
farm like that I grew up near, Like this is
what they did, right, this is this a massive portion
of mid West and agriculture functions off of this.

Speaker 2 (02:47:25):
Well, it's just also just like soybeans and corn are
like primarily what human beings grow. Yeah yeah, and rice
like those are really the big three.

Speaker 5 (02:47:36):
You can't you can't eat that corn, but yeah, look.

Speaker 3 (02:47:40):
You don't, but it's part of your foods.

Speaker 5 (02:47:42):
Eventually it becomes definitly yeah, yeah, it's corn syrup and ship.

Speaker 3 (02:47:45):
But yeah, well corn syrup.

Speaker 2 (02:47:47):
And also it's you know what the animals be yeah yeah,
when they feeded to cattle and chickens.

Speaker 11 (02:47:51):
Yeah, and so this this is going to have a
massive disruption on American agriculture. Trump has also been talking
about imposing attacks on all American agricultural exports. Is some
sort of weird like American autarchy thing. So interest the
thing people are calling this a teriff, This is not
a tariff. You don't impose tariffs on something that you
are exporting to How this works, You know, like you

(02:48:12):
can go back to a basic Hey, division of powers.
Congress has the power of taxation. Wait, how is he
doing who knows? I don't know where We're so far
beyond that. But like the thing that he's hinting at
here right, like if he really is trying to sort
of like prevent all US agricultural exports, this is apocalyptic. Yeah,

(02:48:33):
and it's also worth noting this thing has also been
lost in the news.

Speaker 5 (02:48:36):
But he's been talking about this. He's been talking about.

Speaker 11 (02:48:37):
Doing these tariffs to the EU twenty five percent across
the bard terriffs of the EU. Now what I think
is important. So the markets today on Wednesday have been
going back up. They immediately tanked like Tuesday. This week
was nasty like Monday, Tuesday was red. And what's happening
here is that none of this shit, None of the analysts,

(02:48:57):
none of the people getting paid like fucking thirty million
dollars you do financial analysts?

Speaker 5 (02:49:01):
What other the fuck?

Speaker 11 (02:49:01):
Like, none of these people, none of them thought this
these terrorists were actually going to happen. They all just assumed,
but they were, Oh, he's not actually going to do it,
He's not actually going to do it. This it's just negotiations. No, no,
he's doing it, and he was going to do it.
They probably will be like sector bisecondor negotiations to get
temporary lifts on them. But none of this shit was
priced in. None of the financial animalsts, like no one
was doing business planning or whatever, like none of the

(02:49:22):
ship was supposed to be real, you know. And what's
happening right now is sort of like they're latching on
to this thing with some of the auto terifts being
lifted for a month again one month, not and not
an actual lift, but one month. They're latching onto this
and they're going, Okay, maybe we can sort of reverse this.
But this is the first moment that the financial markets
have actually had to grapple with the fact that Trump
is going to do all of the shit he says

(02:49:43):
he's going to do. And like, like that afternoon, Bloomberg
had a guy on like calling Trump a dictator and
saying he wasn't gonna have elections. We are beginning to
see capital flight from the US, where investors are like
are openly talking about like pulling their fucking money out
of this country and pulling into somewhere else because it's
no longer stable, and this is something that you know,
I think the next dam will be when the US

(02:50:03):
is like credit rating gets downgraded. But we're starting to
see the damn break on the financial class and all
of these analysts and like people on Wall Street realizing
that no, he is going to continue to throw bombs
at the entire world economy in order to sort of
carry out He's like, I want to be like the
fucking big man empire guy.

Speaker 5 (02:50:24):
I like Trudeau. I had a call with Trump on Wednesday,
basically going, hey, what's what the fuck man? I thought
I thought we had a deal, and Trump was like, well,
I'm not seeing much progress on the whole Fentanel thing.
And Trudeau's like, what the fuck are you talking about?
And Trump then basically pointed towards him not being satisfied

(02:50:45):
until there's a new Canadian government, like he is not
going to want to lift these until Trudeau is out
of office and ask Trudeau when the next Canadian election,
is hinting towards the fact that he just is going
to refuse to seriously negotiate with Trudeau and will wait
until whoever the next guy is. Meanwhile, you haven't post
from the Chinese embassy in the US, saying if war

(02:51:05):
is what the US wants, be it a terraff war,
a trade war, or any other type of war, We're
ready to fight till the end.

Speaker 11 (02:51:13):
Yeah, I will say, I will say the guys they
put on the embassy pr coms are dipshits, Like those
are not the guys running the Chinese government. Those are
like the fucking clowns they put at these administrative posts
to like scream about wolf.

Speaker 5 (02:51:26):
Warriors or whatever the fuck.

Speaker 11 (02:51:27):
The reporting I've seen from inside the Chinese government is
that they also were like what the fuck are you doing?
And they're they're trying to figure out like okay, like
how do you negotiate with this guy? Yeah, like yeah,
they're having real issues because like for all, for all
of the Chinese government does like this is a government
of capitalists.

Speaker 5 (02:51:48):
They want to make money, and.

Speaker 11 (02:51:50):
They're looking at a guy who is willing to just
blow the entire thing up.

Speaker 2 (02:51:54):
Here's my pitch for what we should do with China, right,
you know, China has this border conflict with India that
could endo the world, but usually just involves two groups
of people with spears that were originally made in the
thirteenth century having Felanx fights in the mountains. Yep, we
should just send over a couple of thousand marines and

(02:52:15):
do that with China. Get it all out of our systems,
this whole all this war talk. Just have a couple
thousand dudes, have a big old speared fight. We filmed
The Son of a Bitch. We get some drones, we
bring in, Maybe we bring in Tarantino. He'd be great
to film the fucker.

Speaker 3 (02:52:29):
You know.

Speaker 2 (02:52:30):
We really just have a good time with it, and
then we just go back to not not doing stuff
like this.

Speaker 4 (02:52:38):
Look.

Speaker 11 (02:52:38):
I think if we get us and trying to compete
each other in the against each other in the US
Special Forces Games, and we show this to Donald Trump
and we have the Chinese government take like a stage
loss or something, we could solve most of our problems.

Speaker 2 (02:52:51):
You can just edit it to be whoever like for
both countries. Right, have an America version and a China version.

Speaker 3 (02:52:58):
We already do this.

Speaker 4 (02:53:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (02:53:03):
So the last sort of serious thing that I want
to talk about here is that this, especially the stuff
he's talking about with you, but also with sort of Canada,
this has broken the sort of international coalition that all
of these people have been setting up for a really
long time, right, this whole sort of coalition of all
the sort of world's right wing governments like coming together

(02:53:24):
in this national thing, and like they're really fucked now.
Like the Canadian right was just like about to take power,
and they might not now. And even if they you
take power, they're gonna have to like deal with the
fact that they've all been like fucking maniac Trump supporters
this whole time, and Trump has just been like fucking
their entire country. And like these people are now talking
about like again like shutting off power to the US.

Speaker 5 (02:53:45):
And this is happening.

Speaker 11 (02:53:46):
All over the world with all of these fascist parties
who've been allied with the US right, they are now
having to grapple with the fact that the US.

Speaker 5 (02:53:52):
Is just gonna it's just gonna fuck them.

Speaker 11 (02:53:55):
Weirdly, the thing it reminds me a lot is like
the situation you've got at the end of the seventies
in East Asia with the communists. It was like, Okay,
so we have three nominally communist governments on the border
with each other. Right you have China, you have Cabodia,
and you have Vietnam and I guess you have flows
and then in those three governments, instead of like forming
a united block, like all go to war with each other.
And that's like sort of what we're seeing with the
fascist right now is like because Trump has decided to

(02:54:15):
just be like fuck it, like we're just gonna do
tariffs on everyone it has, it is really starting to
tearrist coalition apart and hopefully this rolls back a bunch
of their gains everywhere else in the world.

Speaker 5 (02:54:27):
And yeah, they suply chit. And I think Trump is
using for leverage hair beyond even tariffs, like a cutting
out Canada from the Five Eyes Intelligence Group, halting intel
sharing with Ukraine, very very like drastic steps in terms
of like national security and intel sharing.

Speaker 2 (02:54:44):
I mean, it's just deeply clear that what's happening is
we're ending every single thing the US used to do
that Trump does not see as a direct financial benefit,
and largely aligning ourselves with Russia against every state that
does not have the physical power to stop us.

Speaker 5 (02:55:03):
Yep, well that does it for us today. I know
on Tuesday night, Trump did a speech to a joint
session of Congress. We have a whole episode on that
that released yesterday because there was just so much to
talk about. So if you want to hear our thoughts
on that, you can check out yesterday's episode on his
congressional speech, Full of Somebody. A summary, yes, because the

(02:55:27):
speech was very long, focused a lot on trans people,
focused a lot on the border, talked about national security,
really skipped over the economy because yeah, no, guys are great,
because that's not really going too good. Keep shooting holes
of it. Let's skip it over. That focused more on
trans people as the single greatest threat facing this country.

(02:55:48):
But yes, if you want to hear about that, check
out yesterday's episode on the it could happen here feed.

Speaker 1 (02:55:53):
The shortest summary possible speech bad.

Speaker 5 (02:55:56):
Speech bad, Yeah, speech bad. The era of Woke is
over would be the other summary I give.

Speaker 3 (02:56:03):
The era of woke is over. Where you're employed, if
the era of Wok has ended your employment and you'd
like to reach out to us, you can using our
proton mail address. That doesn't mean that it's not like.
If you're not using proton then it's not end to
end encrypted. If you are, then it's encrypted, but it
doesn't mean it's necessarily totally safe. So you need to

(02:56:23):
do what you think is best. It is cool Zone
tips at proton dot me. If you don't work for government,
but you do work for Elon Musk in another capacity,
it would also be very funny to hear from you
about what that is like. So yeah, cool Zone tips
at proton dot.

Speaker 5 (02:56:39):
Me increasingly relevant considering that Social Security layofs have started
and they're now seeking to cut possibly upprints of fifty
percent of the Social Security workforce.

Speaker 3 (02:56:49):
And the irs. So I'm sure that's going to work
out great for government revenues.

Speaker 5 (02:56:54):
I'm sure everything will be fine and America will be
back on top in no time.

Speaker 3 (02:57:00):
It is back. America is back.

Speaker 5 (02:57:01):
I learned that last night we reported the news.

Speaker 1 (02:57:05):
Yes, we certainly did.

Speaker 3 (02:57:07):
We reported the news.

Speaker 2 (02:57:14):
Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
from now until the heat death of the Universe.

Speaker 12 (02:57:20):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
now find sources for It Could Happen here, listed directly
in episode descriptions thanks for listening,

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