August 29, 2025 • 61 mins
The gang discuss the school shooting in Minneapolis and the shooter’s obsession with mass killers, how Trump is trying to fire the Federal Reserve Governor, and a possible nationwide National Guard deployment.
Sources:
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/india-us-lose-trump-tariffs-russia-wins-2025-08-27/
https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_14986.htm
https://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed.htm
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RRPONTSYD
https://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/rrp_faq.html
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RPONTSYD
https://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/goldvault.html
https://www.stlouisfed.org/in-plain-english/who-owns-the-federal-reserve-banks
https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/forthcoming/1202mart.pdf
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/08/prosecuting-burning-of-the-american-flag/
https://www.justice.gov/maxwell-interview
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/national-guard-mobilizing-19-states-immigration-crime-crackdown
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
All Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hey everyone, it's James here and I just wanted to
share Basher's fundraiser again. He has a court date coming
up and I know he's still hoping for any help
you're able to provide with his legal fees. I know
it looks like we've right God money we have, and
we're super proud of that. Immigration legal defense right now
costs an awful lot of money. So if you have
(00:24):
the means to give, I know it would be hugely appreciated.
The address for that is GoFundMe dot com, slash f
slash standing with our family. We'll include that in the
show notes too, And if you would like to reach
out to us for anything else, you can reach us
at the email cool Zone tips at proton dot me.
(00:45):
If you send from an encrypted address, it will be
end to end encrypted. We are encrypted on our end
with proton Mail.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
This is it could happen here. Executive Disorder, our weekly
newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling
world what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis this episode,
I'm joined by Na Wong and Robert Evans. Were covering
the week of August twenty first and August twenty seventh.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yeah, we sure are.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
I can't believe cracker Barrel would do that. It's outrageous.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Yeah, that's clearly the biggest news.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Thankfully they switched it back. They took the cracker out
of the barrel, and thankfully though they've.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Reversed course put the cracker back in.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
I really don't understand how it's how it's woke. I mean,
I do understand, because I understand how this messaging works, but.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
It doesn't matter anytime anything happens, and they can see
a backlash forming you after the fact because people were
starting to get pissed off about the fucking cracker barrel
thing in the same way like that happen with fucking
Games Workshop earlier this year, Like they redid their logo
in a shitty way. It is the same like minimal bullshit. Yeah,
everyone's doing it.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
It's it's not woke. Yeah, it's just incentivizing like capitalist conformity.
This is why they've changed all of the buildings of
like you know, McDonald's pizza Hut to the same structure,
so you can use the property and resell it over
and over and over again without having to do yes,
big renovations. It's just all about capitalist efficiency. It's not
about woke.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
It's got nothing to do with woke. But there's people
whose whole like Chris Rufo, whose whole job is sitting
around and as soon as you started to see the
backlash forming it and realize like, oh, there's probably gonna
be a spree of these companies coming in with these
new minimalist logos. Because it's clearly a trend in like consultancies,
right like it started happening. This is not the first one.
(02:34):
So I'm just gonna look around until I see one
of these that feels like it's got culture war potential,
and Cracker Barrel is an obvious one, like if I'm looking,
if I was looking out there, that's when I would
pick right, Like.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
I think they're also responding to, like, you know, the
past few years where we've been removing like racist caricatures
from logos right with like like Entemima's and like Lando
Lakes and using this in a similar way, except they
took quite kay leaning against the barrel. Yeah, so it's
part part part of that whole backlash as well. It's
(03:06):
funny though I have seen like I don't. I don't
know if it's from Chris Ruffo, but you know people
similar in that orbit talking about how this thing actually
is wokeism because minimalism is based on brutalism, which was
invented by communists. So actually turning everything into this minimalist
design is actually a plot from the Frankfurt School, the
(03:27):
Communists taking over.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
I mean, look, it doesn't matter outside of the fact
that people whenever you buy into it, like you're you're
helping to feed like if you like, even dunking on.
That's part of like the problem is that like, yeah,
just talking about this shit at all fuels the feedback loop, right,
And that's that's what this is, is a feedback loop
that they're very good at manipulating for political purposes. And
(03:52):
I'm not going to sit here and lecture you and
say like stop commenting on this, stop talking about this stuff,
but we do need to understand that this is the
olds in the audience will remember the old Simpsons Halloween
episode where the different like mascots from different companies like
come alive and start murdering people in town. And the
(04:12):
solution that's an old ad Man gives everyone is like, well,
if you want to stop the monsters, just look away.
Advertising feeds on attention, you know, and as every once
everyone ignores the monsters, they go away. And unfortunately that's
not how things actually work because there's three hundred and
fifty million people in the country and so whatever you
choose to do about this isn't going to matter. But
(04:32):
the feedback loop is going to continue unabated. That much
I can.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Say cracker barrel has fallen and like Christ after three days,
has rose again.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah. Great. Anyway, speaking of memes, unfortunately we should talk
about this horrible mass shooting that is probably going to
be the big story this week. I mean, I hate
to reduce it to that, but yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
We're recording this on Wednesday, a few hours after the shooting.
This is in Minneapolis.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Yes, there was a mass shooting at a Minneapolis Catholic school,
Annunciation Catholic School. This happened earlier the day that we're
recording this, So that's going to be Wednesday, August twenty seventh.
As of right now at about two eleven pm PST,
two children are dead, Seventeen people, mostly children, are wounded.
(05:26):
The shooter is also dead, and the shooter has been
identified as Robin Westman, who graduated from the school in
twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Their mom also worked at the school until very recently.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Yeah, and that's not at all an unusual kind of situation.
Mass shooters at schools often are either attending the school
or recently graduated. There's been a couple of cases where
a family member worked at the school. Like this stuff
is all pretty standard for somebody shooting up a school.
What's different is one of the things that's different is
that the shooter basically followed in Brenton Tarrant the christ
(06:00):
shooters footsteps by covering their firearms and the gear that
they were wearing and draw like I guess drew or
painted on I'm not sure. It looks like with like
a white paint pen, like white out or something like that,
a white paint pen and covered it. In the names
of other mass shooters, references to racial annihilation memes like
the Removed Kabab meme, which is in short, a memes
(06:22):
celebrating the Bosnian genocide, and it was a meme that
was specifically Brenton Tarrant had signaled in his like manifesto
and I think on his gun he had a remove
Kebob reference, but it's something he signaled and it was
on the shooter's firearm as well as the names. I
mean Tarrant. There's references to Tarrant on there. Timothy mc McVeagh,
(06:42):
te mcvay's name, just the word McVeigh is painted on there.
Ted Kazenski, the Unibomber, a.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Whole bunch of other more recent mass shooters, people who
are in like the mass shooter fandom, yeah, as well
as just a collection of memes from like old memes.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Too utterly unrelated to shooting, Like there's a loss meme
on there, and if you're a lot of people are going, wait,
what the fuck? Really? Yeah, and if you're too young
for loss. There used to be a wet well. I
think there still is a web comic called Control Alt Delete.
It started in like the early two thousands. It might
have gotten started in the late nineties, and it was
part of like this, there's this boom in web comics
(07:20):
in the late nineties when suddenly there's people are able
to make their own comics online and make livings off
of them. A whole bunch of guys made gaming comics
after Penny Arcade, which is like the big one that
blew up. And one of them was Tim Buckley, who
did a comic called Control All Delete that was not good,
and he tried to have a serious storyline where his
character's girlfriend has a miscarriage, and the strip in which
(07:42):
he finds her having a miscarriage is called loss. And
it's gotten to the point where people are abstracting the
four panels into like a minimalist line representation of how
the blocking look like. It's a bit people have done
everything like put loss memes on everything, like that's the
joke at this point, more than a reference to the
show is like, look at this new crazy place. Somebody
(08:03):
put a loss meme, and.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
So yeah, it's a game.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
And a lot of what we're saying with the shooter
is like, oh, this is the natural extent of a
bunch of things, and a fucking mass shooter putting a
loss meme on the bear or on the side of
their gun before shooting up a school is the natural
furthest craziest extent of the loss meme. Right.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
If this is anything, it is like a mimetic shooting.
It is based on a whole bunch of memes about
other mass shootings as well, specifically in the way that
engages in like anti semitism and racism and includes slurs
and catchphrases. It's not in the way that the shooter
actually believes these things ideologically. It is just to gesture
(08:41):
to them as they exist in the lineage of other
mass shootings.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
It is.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
It's a perfunctory use of slurs and of messaging that
just kind of wraps around this whole like nihilistic fandom
culture around other mass shooters, and like that is that's
what this shooting is. I've watch now like seventeen minutes
of video of the shooter like showing off their weapons,
going through their diaries and journals, inspired by a whole
(09:08):
bunch of like Eastern European mass shooters as well. And
this shooter reminds me of participants of what's called the
true crime community or TCC. Not as in like the
genre of true crime podcasts or documentaries, but it's more
of an online fandom based on a personal obsession with
mass killers themselves and specifically school shooters. And this community
(09:31):
encourages reenactments and tries to get some people to do
their own mass shootings. Yeah, and this is not the
first one of these we've had in this past year. Now,
the shooting in Wisconsin last December I spent the rep Noow,
which we reported on on NI could Happen Here, was
also in this variant of like Columbiner True Crime community shootings.
Repnow's name is on one of this shooter's rifles. Yes,
(09:54):
there was a shooting in Tennessee a few months later
which also referenced Repnow, done by a black white supremacist
in cel whose manifesto was full of like plagiarized memes
and other manifestos. It's about this, like yeah, this complete
lack of meaning, Like they scatter shot all of these
memes and references and like bits of manifestos and like
(10:15):
images to just to make this whole mess of stuff
to look at. But none of it actually means anything.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Well, and the draining of meaning, the flattening of meaning
is part of the pla. That's the point taking is
taking a man who shot fucking fifty people to death
and turning that into the same thing as a twenty
year old joke about a comic strip in terms of
its impact and severity, Because if that's no more serious
or meaningful or painful than fucking a joke about Tim
(10:43):
Buckley's dumbass cartoon. Like, once you get someone in a
mind state where they accept that they're willing to accept
a lot of terrible things, right, And the goal here
is creating content in the form of mass shootings, right, Like,
that is the goal, and that is also what people
are consciously. A lot of people want to be a
part of themselves. You mentioned the last year's shooting that
(11:05):
committed by Samantha ruppnow, but there's also I found a
December thirtieth, twenty twenty four article in Wisconsin Public radiowpr
dot org their website. It talks about reupnow, but it
also gives the story of thirteen year old Jamie Sitz,
who killed herself in twenty twenty four and was a
member of the true crime community. The police went through
her phone and they found a bunch of memes and
(11:28):
reference and like her contributing to online discussions and telegrams
and stuff for PCC. She was obsessed with the Columbine Kids, right.
She like engaged in a lot of those conversations, and
she was posting about her plan to kill herself, but
she was not interested in carrying out like a mass
shooting or killing other people, and that fit in fine
(11:48):
within the discourse like people in courage present basically right,
Like yeah, I think part of the thrill hitary is
just wanting to feel like you, sitting on your ass
on the computer, you are impacting the world in part
because you feel like that's the only chunk of the
world that you've got right, and that's tied into the
hopelessness and the nihilism of all of this. I found
(12:09):
a just random poster on Reddit in a discussion of
the TCC community. I actually really like this person's summary
of it. And this is like seven years old. Interestingly enough,
it's not a new phenomenon. It dates back to interwar
period Germany. There were many Germans at the time who
were fascinated with the topic of extremely grisly murder and torture,
especially such instances where sexual arousal was involved. The German
(12:29):
language even has a word for it, lust mort or
lust murder. Serial killers were on the rise at the time,
and many of them claimed to get extreme amounts of
carnal pleasure from the act of killing or maiming, and
there is this weird vein I found another study as
I was looking into this that uses the true crime
community term. It's from twenty fifteen by Naomi Barnes of
Utah State University, and it was like looking into fandoms
(12:53):
that had grown up around serial killers and around spree
killers online. And Naomi is using the word true crime
community for just the general terms of people who are
interested in true crime, not in the way that you
and I have been using it.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Yeah, because we're using this this term to refer to
like a specific fandom around like around these shootings, not
the general milieu of like true crime podcasts and like
documentaries and people who are into that sort of content.
We're referring to a much more niche group of people
online who operate on like Telegram, discord, Tumbler, and other
(13:26):
social media accounts.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Right.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
It's based around like specifically like like an obsession over
actually doing these acts and like and and like they
like cause play as these people. This isn't like your
you know, average white woman who likes listening to true
crime podcasts. This is this is something very different.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
No, and that's that's important. But it's also important to
note that, like what you've been talking about, this this
need to recreate, and not just prior to actually carrying
out a shooting, because most of them don't ever do that.
There's this need, this obsession with the aesthetics to want
to own clothing and objects and whatnot that like look
like Eric Dylan or whatever. Right, the column bine band shirt.
(14:02):
Yeah right, And this does extend to the shootings, Like
there's a number of shooters who have worn that KMFDM
shirt because one of the columnbind guys wore.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
It cementthro up now and I believe this recent shooter
also had had a KMDS shirt picked out.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
And what's interesting about that twenty fifteen study is that
it is looking at the true crime community because columnbiners
were already a thing. There'd been a number of copycat attacks,
but the kind of social fandom around like that aspect
of it had not really taken hold in a mass
level in a way that the internet and virality could
really make use of.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
It involved on Tumblr like in that era. Yes, it's
more like an infant compared to like the fully grown
version that it is now.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Yeah, And what's interesting to me is this this paper
kind of catches the communities. It's starting to calv Off.
And so there's a chunk of the paper where she's
quoting from a couple of different people who went and visited.
In one case, they visited like Adam Lanza's house and
the Sandy Hook Elementary School, and it's people visiting places
like that, sites associated with like mass shootings and the like.
(15:08):
And she gives this mix of people being like, oh,
like the first quesson he quotes who went to Lands
of House is like, I was actually just really sad
and I just wish none of it had ever taken place,
Like it was all really horrible and it made me
feel bad. But then a bit later she gives you
responses from people who have the opposite reaction, Like there's
this fella Paul, who does not specify which murder site
(15:30):
they visited, but specified that it was a place where
a murder victim's body was found. And Paul responded, Honestly,
I felt a static like, Wow, I'm going to place
someone was killed. What if there are ghosts the murderer
him or herself? I was absolutely off. My kid, we
dug up some dirt and we keep it in a
little glass bottle. It's like a religious pilgrimage, right, right,
And that's the static and that's what this starts to document.
(15:52):
And that's where I'm like, oh, this is this study
is mostly about an unrelated just a normal fandom, but
you can see the bits like already popping up in
twenty fifteen, these people who are having these estatic almost
again like almost like psychosexual experiences being at the site
of a mass shooting.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Yeah, and the further country that is then doing one yourself.
And obviously this also is like a part of like
a suicidal drive, a suicidal intention. While a lot of
people kill themselves in the course of the act, right,
it's a way of making your suicide not just be
about yourself.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Right. And there's more to say about like the culture
of fame in this country and like how how virality
and whatnot has made it so that like these people
tend to get what they want, or at least they
know they've got a good chance of getting what they want, right,
they're obviously not around to experience it, but like, as
long as you do something sufficiently like weird and bloody,
(16:46):
you're likely to get a good amount of attention for
a while.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
So that's the actual like background of what this shooting was.
I think now we should probably mention how the shooting's
being talked about more broadly, Yeah, because it takes a
very different angle from the actual like nihilistic, like TCC
fandom aspect it is. It is making this a more
about like woke contemporary politics, I suppose.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
Cash Betel's announced that he's investigating this as as an
anti Catholic hate crime.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Yeah, which is just not true. I mean, it's almost
certainly by a Catholic or somebody who was raised gath Like. Yeah.
All the people who hate Catholics most are often lapsed Catholics.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Very early on, people started claiming that this shooter was
trans Now, a few years ago, they did change their
name to Robin, and the name change petition stated that
at the time they identified as female. At this point,
we still know very little about the actual shooter beyond
like the videos they posted on YouTube of their weapons
(17:50):
and a journal written in cyrillic and a note that
they left to their parents discussing their fear of dying
of cancer due to vaping. I've not been able to
look at their Internet presence or activities in the intervening
years since changing their name, and their current gender identity
is still not very clear. In a translation of their
(18:11):
cyrillic journal, they discussed detransition quote, I don't want to
dress girly all the time, but I guess sometimes I
really like it. I know I am not a woman,
but I definitely don't feel like a man. I regret
being trans. I wish I was a girl. I just
know I cannot achieve that body with the technology we
have today. I also can't afford that I only keep
(18:34):
my long hair because it is pretty much my last
shred of being trans. I'm tired of being trans. I
wish I never brainwashed myself. I can't cut my hair now,
as it would be an embarrassing defeat and it might
be a concerning change of character that could get me reported.
It just always gets in my way. I will probably
(18:55):
chop it on the day of the attack. Discussion of
gender takes up a very small percentage of the journal.
Most of their writing is about admiration for previous mass
shooters and fantasizing about killing children from a very young age.
On the cover of their journal, alongside a bunch of
other like gun stickers, they do have a defend a
(19:18):
quality Progress flag sticker with an AK forty seven YEP.
From my perspective, this is just another one of those
memes that they're wrapping into everything. On one of their magazines,
they wrote I am the wokeler, why so queerious? Right
on the other side of the magazine had an anti
queer slur. So I view this type of stuff in
(19:40):
the same way I view the inclusion of like the
Lost meme or like Ted Kaczinski or all this other stuff.
This this like memified version of trying to throw everything
at the wall just to make everything mean nothing right.
And it's it's extremely like obnoxious and annoying.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
But it it works.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
But yeah, it works. And I don't know what else
I want to say on this, onlike the trends angle, we.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Don't want to deny that like this is going to
cause a problem, that this is going to be used
by the right, like there will be There will certainly
be rhetoric, and I've already seen rhetoric from you know,
Jack posobc in that crowd around it.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
About trans people targeting Catholics.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Well, this is why these people shouldn't have weapons or whatever,
like this is why we should put them all in
and I don't. I'm not going to minimize that that
didn't start with this, that that kind of rhetoric, that
conversation and this is useful to that crowd, and you
know that is that is bad. I don't. We don't
know what's going to happen or to what extent this is.
Like we're talking right now that they clearly would like
(20:38):
to use this and are trying to use this. One
thing that I would point out and I don't know
if this is certainly not an on balance optimistic thing,
but making Americans focus on a mass shooting for more
than a day or two not as easy as it
used to be.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
No, Yeah, which is really devastating.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
It's not good that we're there, but like two people dead,
I'm just saying, like Americans ignore way bigger numbers all
the time now the right, you know, there's not always
a media campaign like there's going to be with this
beyond trying to make this huge. But also they've done
that before, right, they did that with the rep now shooting, right, Like,
there were attempts to make that and it didn't.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Every mass shooting, right, they have tried to pain it's
been done by a transperson, and I think in some
ways that has depowered this rhetoric as a tactic. Yeah,
by claiming every shooter is trans, most Republicans already believe
that to be the case. So whether this person either
was trans or used to be trans, it may not
matter that much to the right because they already think
(21:41):
every shooter is trans. Like right, Trump's already targeting queer people.
The right doesn't need an excuse to go after queer people.
I don't think an event like this will make the
hammer come down much harder. This could be a boy
who cried wolf situation for the anti trans right, since
their base already thinks that every mass shooter from the
(22:03):
past three years is trans. I did a whole episode
on this last year, called fake trans Terrorists. The Gun
Violence Archive says that there have been two hundred and
eighty six mass shootings in the United States so far
in twenty twenty five. If one or two trans people
do a mass shooting, that would still mean trans people
at one percent of the population, are less likely to
(22:25):
do a shooting compared to CIS people. There was like
one legitimate trans mass shooting targeting a school a few
years ago in Nashville, and if this happens to be
the second, I don't think that this new brain Rod
Columbine true crime community shooting will make much of an
impact on trans people nationwide. Think of how quick conservatives
(22:46):
moved on from the Zizians, and certainly being trans is
not a motivating factor of this shooting. If you look
at their writing and videos posted on YouTube before they
did this, this nihilistic meme maximili has no trans causation.
It has nothing to do with being trans. There's no
coherent or ideological leftist screed, there's no pronoun pins. Their
(23:09):
journal talks both about quote unquote hating fascism and inequality,
while also hating Jews, Arabs, Mexicans, Indians, calling Somali's subhuman
and criminal, writing that quote white people should rule the
world unquote, but that minority should quote unquote have rights.
While talking about ideological Nazi killers, they remarked, quote, I
(23:31):
don't often find myself aligning with these killers specific ideologies unquote.
They said that they disliked racism but also were racist.
They wrote about killing quote unquote fags while also calling
themself one on one of their weapons. This shooter and
all the memes and rhetoric they use is most similar
(23:51):
to the Rep. Noow shooting last December in Wisconsin in
terms of the neo Columbiner school shooter obsession, as well
as the white supremacist mimetic black in cell shooting in NNOC, Tennessee,
last January. All these shootings are heavily referential, contradictory, and
intentionally incoherent. Right, every single extremist political faction is represented there,
(24:16):
because that that is the point, is combining all of
these references two previous mass shootings, So they're incorporating everything
they can and things that they just think are funny,
like just a whole bunch of like meaningless memes.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
And that's vastly more important than whatever gender identity the
shooter happens to have right now at this point in
twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
All right, Well, anyway, folks, there's going to be a
lot of people going the sky is falling over what
this is going to mean for people and how this
is going to be used. And obviously this is terrible.
I'm not telling you not to feel terrible about a
mass shooting.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
You should feel bad about the actual mass shooting.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
You should feel bad about the mass shooting the sky.
I mean, this guy's been falling right, Yeah, let's give
this one a little bit to see if it makes
this sky fall any faster, or if in a week
we're like, no, this guy's still falling at about the
same rate, which isn't good. It's just what happens. It's
where we are, all right, ads, and we're back.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
We can safely leave the brain rot in the previous
section and now talk about something totally real. The economy.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Yes, the economy, which never kills people.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Okay, so speaking of things that have never killed any one, eye,
that's so not true. The volkershaw killed so many people.
But a very very critical rubicon was crossed on Monday
of this week when Trump attempted to fire a member
of the Federal Reserve Board, Lisa Cook. Now, Lisa Cook
(26:02):
is refusing to step down under the fairly obvious justification
that the president does not have the power to do this.
Trump has been cooking a very weird thing, accusing her
of mortgage fraud as a way to remove her from
the Federal Reserve Board. But Trump does not have the
(26:23):
power to do this. So we are in the midst
effectively of a confrontation over this, where Lisa Cook has
continued to just not actually leave her position at the
Federal Reserve and is going to court. This is an
extremely significant escalation of what up until this point had
(26:46):
largely been a series of attacks on the Federal Reserve's governor,
Jerom Powell. There are a few factors here that one
of the most important things is Trump's anger over continuing
high interest rates or sort of high interest rate. Trump
wants to slash interest rates because he thinks it will
make the economy grow more. Now, when I said this
was the crossing of the rubicon, what this is is
(27:09):
this is the beginning of the fight over whether the
Federal Reserve is going to be an independent density right.
Trump has been attempting to, as we've talked about in
the show, appoint Stephan Miran as another one of the
governors on the Federal Reserves Board. Miran very explicitly wants
to eliminate the independence of the Federal Reserve. What to
talk about exactly what that means in a second, But
(27:32):
I want to read this quote from Fortune magazine report
on it describing a JP Morgan analysis of the situation,
because this has really spooked a bunch of major financial
institutions for very obvious reasons.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
Quote.
Speaker 4 (27:50):
In a note on Friday, JP Morgan analysts, led by
chief economist Bruce Cassman, highlighted key proposals such as giving
atwill power to the President to fire FED by members
and FED bank presidents, giving Congress control of the Fed's
operating budget, and shifting the Fed's regulatory responsibility over banks
and markets to the Treasury. So this is what Stefan
(28:12):
Mihern has been proposing. This is what looks to be
the long term plan of Trump and the people around him.
Eliminating the Federal Reserve is a long, long time goal
of the far right for an extremely convoluted variety of reasons.
The FED in and of itself is an extremely confusing entity.
(28:34):
Its creation has spawned a full century of academic arguments
about what the States even is, and it's complicated to describe.
Also because most of the information will not most, but
a significant portion of the information about it is just
anti Semitic conspiracy. Because this is eliminating the Federal Reserve.
In the return to quote unquote, sound money is one
(28:55):
of the key elements of a massive network of sort
of right wing, very old right wing conspiracy theories. But
I think that the thing that's best understood by people
kind of is just about the Federal Reserve is the
FED printer meme, and the Federal Reserve is the body
that creates money like that is that is authorized to
create the US dollar. That is why it's a Federal
(29:17):
Reserve bank. It is critical on a level that is
difficult to express to the entire functioning of the world economy. Now,
the Federal Reserve Board is technically a government entity, but
it is it was set up explicitly to be quote
unquote non political. Now the extent to which that's true
(29:39):
is fuzzy, obviously, But the point of it was so
that there would be a large scale financial institution that
controls like the money supply effectively, that that controls enormous
portions of US sort of macroeconomics policy through its due
as control of interest rates would not be able to
(30:00):
be like directly interfered with by the President or Congress.
That is that it's the whole point of this, you know.
It is effectively a measure to instill confidence that the
US isn't going to just like turn the printers on
and print a bunch of money from every other capitalist
in the world.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Yeah, and like so much. When that promise goes away,
what happens, I don't know. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
Well, and this is this is something that I think,
I think is not understood very well.
Speaker 5 (30:25):
Right.
Speaker 4 (30:25):
The current conflict is largely over Trump wanting to be
able to control the Federal reserves interest rates. Right, So
he wants he wants the lower federal interest rates to
make it make it cheaper to borrow money because he
thinks this will pump more money back into the economy
and this will make the economy grow. And he thinks
that he's being like sabotaged by the FED. The Fed's
worried about inflation. But I actually think that focusing just
(30:48):
on that part of the Federal Reserve is significantly underestimating
how important the Federal Reserve is to the entire structure
of the economy. There are so many just sort of
random things that it does that are not particularly well understood.
I was talking about this earlier on a meeting, but
(31:09):
the significant portion of the gold held by countries around
the world is literally just keptain a vault under the
New York Federal Reserve building, and that's just the sort
of seemingly random thing that it does. I was reading
about its payment system for reasons that I'll talk about
in the episode to do about this next week. It
just in a footnote about the payment system, there is
(31:29):
a part where it says that the Federal Reserve runs
the payment system for the World Bank. So this is
something that is a critical, critical, an extremely complicated center
of the entire capitalist world. Right, Its payment infrastructure has
trillions of dollars a year and moving through it. If
(31:50):
this infrastructure stops working or breaks a little bit, a
lot of the very subtle management of the economy of
the Federal Reserve does can stop working. And you know,
again we've been talking mostly about interest rates and its
ability to sort of print money, which is oversimplification, but
you know, for example, the Fed also does these things
(32:11):
like carries out these like massive overnight repo agreements, like
inject liquidity into the market. There's all of these massive
we are talking billions and billions of dollars of financial
interventions that you basically never even hear about that have
been stabilizing the economy since two thousand and eight. And
this apparatus if it is dismantled, if it has directly
(32:32):
seized control of by Trump. And and part of what's
going on with this board is that Trump is trying
to get a majority of the people on the Board
of Governors of the Federal Reserve to be his appointment
so that he can control it directly, and so they
can start bringing it under directly under the control of
I mean the president effectively. Right, this is something where
(32:54):
if you unleash the doge people on the Federal Reserve
and the payment system, the settlement and clearance systems stop working.
We are talking about a catastrophe that it's unclear to
me whether it's even been modeled. There are so many
different complicated things that this institution does that these people
(33:15):
do not understand particularly well at all and think that
they can use to just sort of permanently create a
bubble economy that they can ride. And this is the
first sort of shot over the battle. Isn't even in
the right where this is the first engagement over the
fight for that. There's also been a lot of sort
of taco analysis of this, arguing that this is actually
Trump backing down from trying to fire Jerom Powell to
(33:38):
just try to fire one of the Reserve board members
that's not backing down. There's also a chance to heal that.
If this works, he's going to try to fire Powell too.
So we're gonna We're gonna keep watching a situation. I'm
going to talk more about it next week when we
know more, and also talk about what the Federal Reserve
is as an institution, And we're going to continue monitoring the
situation because it is extremely important and handing the keys
(34:00):
over to these people is something that is dangerous enough
that it is creating significant pushback among the actual people
in finance and in the banking system who matter.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Great, well, it's so good. I mean, we'll see if
this means anything other than more suffering for you know people.
I guess that's where I am, as like, is there
even a level of fucking with the money that Trump
can do that that's enough to seriously cause consequences for him?
And there must be, but it's just hard to imagine
(34:31):
if there was. It's this. Yeah, we'll see. I mean,
that's the fun thing with the big stories we've got
this week is they're all like, well, could get a
lot worse, could just stay as bad as it is
right now. Well, we'll continue to wait to see what's
going to happen with all of that. Speaking of something
that we don't have to just wait and wonder what's
(34:52):
going to go on, because the news changes every single week.
Here's the tariff song.
Speaker 6 (35:01):
Rocket Jazz, Rocket Jazz, good sal locking rocking jazz, rocking jazz.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
Boy.
Speaker 4 (35:14):
Oh boy so, and yet another instance of the whole
Trump backing down thing not happening. The tariffs on India
that Trump had been threatening for the purchases of Russian
oil have in fact taken effect. The terriff right on
India is now fifty percent. This is a significant barrier
to any trade between India and the US. It is
(35:37):
again sort of unclear whether India is going to bow
to the political pressure here because as with many of
these terriffs, we've talked about this situation with Brazil fairly
extensively on this show. The thing about imposing tariffs on
a country to get them to fall in line with
the American policy is that it pisses off everyone in
the country, regardless of whether or not they would traditionally
(35:59):
be US allies, and so there's you know, it creates
a massive countervailing pressure against the financial incentive to fall
in line and stop buying Russian oil. I also, very
briefly want to talk about something that I think is
a sort of part and parcel of the tariff policy
that Garson you have mentioned wanted to talk about, which
is like the US purchasing ten percent of Intel.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Yes, socialism has been achieved. We did it. Now now
you can finally call Trump a national socialist.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (36:31):
Yeah, And this is sort of a intensification, I guess,
of a agree that we talked about a while back,
where Intel was talking about giving part of its profits
to the US. This is just the US government is
just buying a stake in these companies.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
And this is.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
Actually a very very weird maneuver by the US because
the US has obviously bought companies before, right, this is
how a lot of the bailout worked. But the thing
about if you look at the bailout from two thousand
and eight and you look at the US like purchasing
the automakers, the US got these really weird specific shares
that don't give any kind of controlling interest. And here
(37:10):
the direct rationale for this that the US should just
own part of the chip manufacturers because they're effectively like
domestic national security resources. Significant portions of the market think
that this is going to be a continuing tread, and
the US is going to continue buying stakes in these companies.
There is a sort of symbiotic relationship here in the
sense that on the one hand, it's obviously not great
(37:31):
to have sort of stakes in you bought by the
US governments and have US government federal policy directly dictating
what these companies do. But on the other hand, it
creates for these actual companies themselves, It creates a sort
of symbiosis right where these people now have effectively guaranteed
(37:52):
state backing that can bail them out of all of
their unbelievably terrible business decisions around basing all of their
production around AI. So yeah, and this this is all
sort of part of the same hypernationalists direct.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
National socialism, if you will, Yes, kind of national sentence,
but the most stupid for we've ever seen.
Speaker 4 (38:18):
Yeah, Yeah, I don't know, there's gonna be a lot
of hype about this being like American state capitalism or something,
and just ignore that, just just ignore it. It's bad.
I think it's it's in the same category as a
lot of the things here, which is that Trump administration
is trying to consolidate as much power over the economy
as they can, both in federal Reserve and through just
(38:39):
straight up taking controlling parts of companies. This is a
trend that's going to continue, and it's not good.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Do you know what is good? Though? You beat me
to that exactly, that's right. The fact that we get
a nice ninety to to I don't know, one hundred
and twenty second break to listen to these ads. All right,
(39:10):
we are back. There has just been so much news
this week it's kind of outrageous. Trump is continuing his
attacks against the Smithsonian for for going woke is He's
promised a Department of Justice lawsuit against California for their
new redistricting map. A GOP House probe has begun to
investigate if the DC crime stats have been faked this
(39:31):
whole time, making it look like crime is low even
though it's obviously super high as we all know. As
Mia said, we have socialism now with ten percent of
intel and Trump and Hague says announced that they want
to change the name of the Department of Defense back
to the Department of War because it quote unquote sounds stronger.
Speaker 4 (39:52):
Hey, this is this is the only one of those
that I that I actually agree with. They should do this,
Like calling it anything other than the Department of War
is incredibly dishonest.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
Yeah, I wonder that I'll make it a harder sort
of get people on board, increasing funding.
Speaker 5 (40:09):
So it used to be called the Department of War,
and it had a stronger sound. And as you know, we.
Speaker 7 (40:16):
Won World War One, we won World War two, we
won everything.
Speaker 8 (40:20):
Now we have a Department of Defense with defenders.
Speaker 5 (40:23):
I don't know if you people want to standing behind me,
if you take a little vote, if you want to
change it back to what it was when we used
to win wars all the time, that's okay with me.
Speaker 7 (40:32):
All right, that's coming.
Speaker 5 (40:33):
You let me know if you want to do it.
I think Department of War. It just sounded me.
Speaker 8 (40:37):
And you said, sir, behalf of the Department of Defense.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
Defense.
Speaker 7 (40:41):
I don't want to be defense only. We want defense,
but we want offense too, if that's okay, So you'll
make a decision. But you know, as Department of War,
we won everything. We want everything, and I think we're
gonna have to go back to that.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
All right, man, cool stuff happening in the FOE.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
I mean, I do like that when he starts that speech,
he has to go like we won World War One,
Like he's like, there's a question at the end there
where he's like he's he's like, he's like, just make sure.
I don't know, I don't really remember if we won
that one or not, but we definitely won the second
one and others.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
When as to how he would go about change the
name as it requires an Act of Congress, Trump replied
to quote, We're just gonna do it. I'm sure Congress
would go along if we need that. I don't think
we even need that, But if we need that, I'm
sure Congress will go along.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
I don't know that we do we need I don't
know if what you need to change the name of
the Department.
Speaker 3 (41:41):
Of Defense, you do?
Speaker 1 (41:42):
Yeah, you do? That makes sense to do that.
Speaker 4 (41:45):
Auto Macro's sense right. What Trump is suggesting, heureus would
wouldn't it simply be more efficient if there was simply
a fearer, a single person to make all the decisions?
Speaker 3 (41:54):
He said a lot of things in that vein recently
is like Congress being more of a symbolic, symbolic branch
of government that if we need them, they'll probably just
agree with me, but like we don't.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Really that's your standard dictator stuff.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
That's how we's been talking about it recently.
Speaker 5 (42:11):
Now.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
Earlier this week, a redacted transcript of Gallaine maxwells Gilen
Jiselene Maxwell's meeting with Trump's DOJ has been released, where
she denied that she ever witnessed President Trump engaged in
inappropriate behavior, saying, quote, I actually never saw the president
in any type of massage setting. The President was never
gonna appropriate with anybody, and the times that I was
with him, he was a gentleman in all respects unquote.
(42:34):
She also denied allegations that Prince Andrew ever had sex
with a minor in her home, saying that a substantiating
photograph is quote unquote fake.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
Well, I can't imagine why she'd lie.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
And also claimed that there is no Epstein quote unquote
client less. So yeah, that all about wraps that up.
I think we got to the bottom of the whole
Epstein case. We don't need to worry about this anymore.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
I would say, of all of those, the one of
those that I might have believed before she denied it
was that there wasn't an additional client list outside of
what we've already seen like his black wole. Oh yeah,
I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't keep all of
that many notes on a criminal conspiracy.
Speaker 3 (43:10):
Yeah, I don't think here's a list of being like,
here's all of my pedophile friends in one place.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Here's what does make me wonder now, and this really
is the first time I am, which is that they
clearly came here with a list of Here is all
of the things you need to say you didn't see.
Speaker 3 (43:23):
Like maybe or she's just savvy enough to know what
to say, Like I don't even think, Yeah, we don't
even need to an allege a larger conspiracy here. I
think everyone involved in this is quite savvy and knows
what they should say and shouldn't say.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
Yeah, I mean, I think the conspiracy is obvious, Like.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
That's all there is. There doesn't need to be an
explicit quid pro crow here.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
Yeah, I don't know. It's interesting to me that she
brings up Prince Andrew. If nobody brought that up to
her she was asked about it, That's what I'm saying
is I believe there's a conversation we're not privy here too,
where she got marching orders in exchange for getting you know,
she's basically out on work release, right, I.
Speaker 3 (43:59):
Don't need to jump to such outrageous conspiratorial beliefs such
as that.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
I'm okay with it at this point. Yeah, I don't
know what to what extend it was, but yeah, I
don't know this is this is pointless, like, yeah, I
don't know if this helps with his base. I don't
know that his base is going to be like, well
if Gilan Maxwell says it.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
Nope, yeah, I mean people have responded positively, like Margor
Taylor Green, who was previously going on a slight offense
that on the Epstein things, has now fully come around
being like, well, there you go. It's it turns out
Trumpet isn't a pedophile after all. Thank goodness, that was
a close call there.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
I know this is being disseminated to his influencer network, right,
and to the network of people that he like uses
for stuff like this. I'm wondering about the actual like
voter base, fan base, like time will tell, and the
folks who are a step or two further than Marjorie
Taylor Green like the like the people who are more
like on the Rogan side of things, like, does this
(44:58):
really move the needle for them?
Speaker 3 (45:00):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (45:00):
I hate having the cares like this, Joe Rogan, I'm
gonna buy this shlot, But this does seem like, yeah,
shameful even for him.
Speaker 3 (45:08):
I mean, I think a lot of people can see
that there's an incentive for going to say certain things,
and I think people people are smart enough to understand that.
I don't think she's going to tell the Trump's own
DOJ about like a smoking gun involving Trump. Why would
that help her try to get a pardon from the President?
Speaker 1 (45:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (45:27):
I think I think. I think the important thing for
this is that like, the people who are going to
believe this are the people who just don't want to
believe that Trump did this, and this is this is
a reinforcing thing that can feed them. But the question
is what asks for everyone else? And it's not particularly
compelling for them.
Speaker 3 (45:44):
All Right, We have four executive orders to get through
before we close this episode, starting off with cashless bail.
On Monday, Trump signed two executive orders targeting cash's bail,
one specific to Washington, d c which directs law enforcement
to charge people federally and hold them in federal custody,
and to use federal funding and services as leverage to
pressure DC to change its cashless bail policies. The other
(46:07):
executive order targets cashless bail nationwide and asks the Attorney
General to make a list of quote, states and local
jurisdictions that have, in the Attorney General's opinion, substantially eliminated
cash bail as a potential condition of pre trial release
from custody for crimes that pose a clear threat to
public safety and order, including offenses involving violent, sexual or
indecent acts, or burglary, looting, or vandalism. The Attorney General
(46:29):
shall update this list as necessary. So, using that list,
Trump's cabinet will then quote identify federal funds, including grants
and contracts currently provided to cashless bail jurisdictions that may
be suspended or terminated unquote, So it's trying to bribe
states and local municipalities to cease cashless bail policies using
federal funds, the same way that they've tried to do
(46:51):
for a whole bunch of other anti WOUE policies Trump
has tried to force onto unwilling states. Second Executive Order
from August twenty fifth, titled Prosecuting Burning of the American Flag.
Let's start with a clip from Trump. I don't want
to just play super long Trump clips because they know
that can be annoying. But the way that he talks
(47:13):
about disorder is kind of more interesting than the way
the order is written. But we will talk about some
of those smaller details included in the actual text. But
here's a clip from c SPAN.
Speaker 5 (47:24):
Flag burning all over the country. They're burning flags all
over the world.
Speaker 3 (47:28):
They burn the.
Speaker 5 (47:29):
American flag, and as you know, through a very sad chord.
I guess it was a five to four decision. They
called it freedom of speech. But there's another reason, which
is perhaps.
Speaker 8 (47:41):
Much more important. It's called death. Because what happens when
you burn a flag is the area goes crazy. If
you have hundreds of people, they go crazy.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
You could do other things, you.
Speaker 5 (47:52):
Can burn this piece of paper, you could, and it's
when you burn the American flag. It incites riots at
levels that we've never seen before. People go crazy in
a way. Both ways. There's some that are going crazy
for doing it. There are others that are angry angry
about them doing it?
Speaker 8 (48:13):
Do you want to discuss that?
Speaker 5 (48:14):
Sure?
Speaker 9 (48:14):
What the executive order does there charges your Department of
Justice with investigating instances of flag burning and then where
there's evidence of criminal activity, that where prosecution wouldn't fall
afoul of the First Amendment, and instructs the Department of
Justice to prosecute those who are engaged in these instances
of flagburn.
Speaker 5 (48:33):
And what the penalty is going to be. If you
burn a flag, you get one year in jail, No.
Speaker 7 (48:39):
Early exits, no nothing.
Speaker 5 (48:42):
You get one year in jail. If you're burn a flag,
you get And what it does is insight to write.
Speaker 7 (48:47):
I hope they use that language.
Speaker 8 (48:48):
By the way, did that insight to riot?
Speaker 3 (48:51):
I love it. He has to check, yeah, because God
forbid him. Actually he's citing Trump Trumpe auto pen That's right.
So included in the order, it says, quote, notwithstanding the
Supreme Court's ruling on First Men protections, the Court is
never held that American flag desecration conducted in a manner
that is likely to incite imminent lawless action, or that
(49:14):
is an action amounting to quote unquote fighting words, is
constitutionally protected see taxes fe Johnson unquote. The order directs
Theatery General to enforce criminal and civil laws against acts
of American flight discration that cause harm unrelated to First
Amendment expression, which could include charging people with violent crimes,
hate crimes, a legal discrimination against American citizens, what violations
(49:38):
of American civil rights, crimes against property and peace, as
well as conspiracies and attempts to violate in aiding and
abetting others to violate such laws, so it's like an
anti rioting thing. The dj will also look for cases
where American flag discration could violate applicable state or local laws,
such as open burning restrictions, disorderly conduct laws, or destruction
(49:59):
of proper laws, and will refer such matters to state
and local authorities for potential action. Finally, the Secretary of
State shall deny, prohibit, terminate, or revoke visas, residents permits,
naturalization proceedings, and other immigration benefits, or seek to deport
any foreignational that has engaged in American flag to secretion activity.
So that's how they're going to go after it. Rober, Are,
(50:20):
do you anything to say on this flag burning thing?
Speaker 1 (50:24):
I mean, they're waiting. I mean, and they didn't wind
up waiting long. Someone did it immediately as they knew
they would, so that they can get a case that
they can take up to the Supreme Court. So we'll see,
we'll see what happens. We'll see.
Speaker 3 (50:35):
Yeah. Yeah, they want to prosecute one of these things
and appeal it all the way to the Supreme Court
to maybe change that ruling so they can apply it
more broadly. Right, So it's part of the same test
that they've done with a number of other things that
seems unconstitutional, it seems to violate Supreme Court rulings. Yeah,
but the point is to test that and see if
they can change it, just like they did with abortion.
Speaker 4 (50:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:56):
Can we go further and if this works, if we
feel like we made productress on this, can we start
pushing and saying other things are incitement? Right? You know?
Can we start going after people who aren't even present
who write something that is like, well, this was incitement
to write because they wrote about the police murdering this guy.
Speaker 3 (51:12):
Right, like a party of free speech strikes again.
Speaker 1 (51:15):
This is the kind of thing where can I wargame
out would they try this if they can get that
far yeah, they will if they can get that far.
Will they get that far? You know, is the Supreme
Court going to give them everything they want on this?
I don't actually know. I really don't know. So I'm
going to try not to doom spiral too much. Just
you know, let's see, none of us have any choice
in the matter at this stage.
Speaker 3 (51:37):
Finally, let's address the quote, additional measures to address the
crime emergency in the District of Columbia. So it's another
executive order from August twenty fifth. Trump wants to establish
an online portal for Americans with law enforcement experience quote
or other relevant backgrounds and experience to apply to join
federal enforcementities to support the policy goals described in Executive
(52:00):
Order one four three three. That's the Making a DC
Safe and Beautiful Order from a few weeks ago. The
Secretary of Defense is instructed to create and begin training, manning, hiring,
and equipping a specialized unit within the District of Columbia
National Guard who will be deputized to enforce federal law.
To quote the order quote, the Secretary of Defense shall
(52:21):
immediately begin ensuring that each state's National Army Guard and
Air National Guard are resource trained, organized an available to
assist federal, state, and local law enforcement in quelling civil
disturbances and in ensuring the public safety and order whenever
the circumstances necessitate, as appropriate under law, in coordination with
respective Adjuncts General, the Secretary Defense shall designate an appropriate
(52:43):
number of each state's trained National Guard members to be
reasonably available for rapid mobilization for such purposes. In addition,
the Secretary of Defense shall ensure the availability of a
standing National Guard Quick Reaction Force that shall be resource
trained and available for rapid nationwide Deployant National Guard walking
streets of DC are now carrying firearms after first being
(53:06):
deployed without their service weapon, and since the operation in
DC began on August seventh, there have now been over
a thousand arrests, including dozens of undocumented immigrants. Currently, the
Pentagon is planning to deploy thousands of National Guard to
Chicago to continue Trump's alleged crime crackdown.
Speaker 8 (53:24):
I would have much more respect for princecour if he'd
call me up and said, I have a problem, can
you help me fix it? I would be so happy
to do it. I don't love not that I don't
have the right to do anything I want to do.
I'm the president of the United States. If I think
our country is in danger, and it is in danger
in these cities, I can do it, no problem going
(53:45):
in and solving you know, his difficulties. But it would
be nice if they'd call and they say, would.
Speaker 3 (53:50):
You do it?
Speaker 1 (53:51):
He's hurt, poor guy. They want to ask him for help.
Speaker 3 (53:56):
His little fewings he's going to have to do. He's
ano have to deploy the National Guard without putschool's approval.
Speaker 5 (54:04):
You know.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
Gang In all of this focus on the people being
killed and persecuted by the government, I don't think any
of us has stopped and spent enough time thinking how
does Donald Trump feel? And shame on us, you know,
shame on us.
Speaker 3 (54:18):
But it's not just Chicago. On Friday, the Pentagon told
Fox News at upwards of seventeen hundred National Guard troops
will be mobilized in nineteen states to be deployed across
the country to assist ice in the nationwide hunt for
undocumented immigrants. The Guard will be activated in states like Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, Nevada,
(54:40):
New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia,
and Wyoming, with effective status ranging from August through mid November,
and operations expected to start in early September. Importantly, as
we saw in DC, national guard from other states might
deploy too states. Specifically, in the case where Trump doesn't
(55:02):
get cooperation from the governor who is in control of
the National Guard of each state, he can deploy national
Guard from somewhere else, like what he did in DC,
pulling national Guard from other Red states being deployed to
d C but mobilized in those Red states. So national
guards from all of these states could be deployed in
a town near you, no matter where you live. And
(55:24):
this operation specifically with these like seventeen hundred National Guard troops,
is specifically to assist ice his plan to do this,
like anti crime deployment in Chicago, is a separate yet
similar plan. It's also pulling from National Guard. But these
things are are two separate operations according to White House officials.
Speaker 4 (55:44):
And I think one of the important things about this
is that, you know, obviously there's the part of this
where it's like, yeah, they want to at the very
least look like they're just occupying cities and they are
arresting huge numbers of people, but they also just don't
have the manpower to do this kind of stuff, which
is why they're pulling the national Guards, why they're trying
(56:06):
to expand the number of people on ice. This is
why they're pulling National Guard out to do this kind
of stuff, which that like, they don't actually have the
repressive capacity to just occupy cities and they're trying to
find the manpower to be able to do it.
Speaker 3 (56:19):
So we will keep an eye out in September for
these possible military deployments around the country. Yep, Hey everyone,
this is Garrison recording a short update on Thursday since
we have a little bit more information about the Minneapolis,
Minnesota school shooting. So right after we recorded, rumors started
(56:40):
circulating that this shooter was linked to neo Nazi satanic
pedophile groups nine A and seven six four. Someone on
Twitter found a neo Nazi forum account that they alleged
belonged to this school shooter. This account used in nine
A symbol and an affiliated Twitter account made other nine
(57:04):
A references. These claims gained a lot of traction from
leftist accounts and armchair experts. On Twitter and Blue Sky,
lots of people were very eager to talk about something
else besides that this shooter was trans and many pinned
the blame on seven sixty four, the child exploitation group
(57:24):
that operates on discord and telegram that Blackmaile's children and
encourages some to commit acts of violence like school shootings.
I talked about seven sixty four on my Nihilist Violent
Extremism episode from earlier this year. As these claims spread online,
I remained skeptical because this shooter did not seem to
(57:46):
really fit the profile of A nine A or seven six'
four grooming. Victim this shooter did not really seem like
an ON ninea. Acolyte they more closely resembled The True
Crime community. Fandom and while Sometimes True Trime community OR
tcc may USE O nina references because other mass shooters
have or because previous mass shooters have been affiliated WITH
(58:09):
nina and related, GROUPS i did not see much evidence
linking this shooter TO o NINE a based on the
videos they posted to. YouTube and while Some Nazi satanist
types have helped facilitate The columbiner OR tcc fandom there
was no solid evidence linking a group like seven to six'
four to this. Latest shooting the shooter was in their.
(58:31):
Mid twenties they weren't a fourteen year old being groomed
into doing a. Mass shooting and Then on, thursday morning
the forum account alleged to Be the minneapolis shooter and
the source of claims calling them A on nina or
sen six four grimmy victim started posting again on. The
forum it wasn't the. Shooter's account the shooter did not fit.
(58:53):
That profile they weren't in A Cult, nazi satanist they
were obsessed with, mass killers and translations of their cerelic
journal have helped to. SUBSTANTIATE this a journal entry discussed
taking pleasure in dressing up as a. School shooter QUOTE
today i assembled a school shooter cause play quote and
in translations of, their journal they made explicit References To
(59:16):
True CRIME, community tcc saying that they might cringe if
they joined AN online, tcc community and it could make
them not want to follow through on doing, an attack
DOING online tcc fandom as mostly full. Of POSERS quote
i think joining a community would alienate my future unquote
(59:36):
AND quote i feel a very small PORTION of tcc
FEELS as I do harbor's admiration of. Intent unquote one
more UPDATE before i closed the episode. Earlier Today, ON
Thursday rfk junior was asked if he would now be
looking into if gender transition drugs. Cause violence he responded
(59:57):
by saying that they were already doing studies looking, into
that and then quickly pivoted to talking about quote launching
studies on the potential contribution of some OF the ssri
drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might
be contributing to. Violence unquote this lines UP With rfk
junior's general focus on, PSYCHIATRIC drugs SSRIs, depression medication as
(01:00:21):
he has. Previously stated that's all for us today On
It Could. Happen here we reported.
Speaker 1 (01:00:28):
The news we reported.
Speaker 10 (01:00:30):
The news It Could happen here is a production Of Cool.
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(01:00:51):
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All Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hey everyone, it's James here and I just wanted to
share Basher's fundraiser again. He has a court date coming
up and I know he's still hoping for any help
you're able to provide with his legal fees. I know
it looks like we've right God money we have, and
we're super proud of that. Immigration legal defense right now
costs an awful lot of money. So if you have
(00:24):
the means to give, I know it would be hugely appreciated.
The address for that is GoFundMe dot com, slash f
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(00:45):
If you send from an encrypted address, it will be
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Speaker 3 (00:56):
This is it could happen here. Executive Disorder, our weekly
newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling
world what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis this episode,
I'm joined by Na Wong and Robert Evans. Were covering
the week of August twenty first and August twenty seventh.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yeah, we sure are.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
I can't believe cracker Barrel would do that. It's outrageous.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Yeah, that's clearly the biggest news.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Thankfully they switched it back. They took the cracker out
of the barrel, and thankfully though they've.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Reversed course put the cracker back in.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
I really don't understand how it's how it's woke. I mean,
I do understand, because I understand how this messaging works, but.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
It doesn't matter anytime anything happens, and they can see
a backlash forming you after the fact because people were
starting to get pissed off about the fucking cracker barrel
thing in the same way like that happen with fucking
Games Workshop earlier this year, Like they redid their logo
in a shitty way. It is the same like minimal bullshit. Yeah,
everyone's doing it.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
It's it's not woke. Yeah, it's just incentivizing like capitalist conformity.
This is why they've changed all of the buildings of
like you know, McDonald's pizza Hut to the same structure,
so you can use the property and resell it over
and over and over again without having to do yes,
big renovations. It's just all about capitalist efficiency. It's not
about woke.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
It's got nothing to do with woke. But there's people
whose whole like Chris Rufo, whose whole job is sitting
around and as soon as you started to see the
backlash forming it and realize like, oh, there's probably gonna
be a spree of these companies coming in with these
new minimalist logos. Because it's clearly a trend in like consultancies,
right like it started happening. This is not the first one.
(02:34):
So I'm just gonna look around until I see one
of these that feels like it's got culture war potential,
and Cracker Barrel is an obvious one, like if I'm looking,
if I was looking out there, that's when I would
pick right, Like.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
I think they're also responding to, like, you know, the
past few years where we've been removing like racist caricatures
from logos right with like like Entemima's and like Lando
Lakes and using this in a similar way, except they
took quite kay leaning against the barrel. Yeah, so it's
part part part of that whole backlash as well. It's
(03:06):
funny though I have seen like I don't. I don't
know if it's from Chris Ruffo, but you know people
similar in that orbit talking about how this thing actually
is wokeism because minimalism is based on brutalism, which was
invented by communists. So actually turning everything into this minimalist
design is actually a plot from the Frankfurt School, the
(03:27):
Communists taking over.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
I mean, look, it doesn't matter outside of the fact
that people whenever you buy into it, like you're you're
helping to feed like if you like, even dunking on.
That's part of like the problem is that like, yeah,
just talking about this shit at all fuels the feedback loop, right,
And that's that's what this is, is a feedback loop
that they're very good at manipulating for political purposes. And
(03:52):
I'm not going to sit here and lecture you and
say like stop commenting on this, stop talking about this stuff,
but we do need to understand that this is the
olds in the audience will remember the old Simpsons Halloween
episode where the different like mascots from different companies like
come alive and start murdering people in town. And the
(04:12):
solution that's an old ad Man gives everyone is like, well,
if you want to stop the monsters, just look away.
Advertising feeds on attention, you know, and as every once
everyone ignores the monsters, they go away. And unfortunately that's
not how things actually work because there's three hundred and
fifty million people in the country and so whatever you
choose to do about this isn't going to matter. But
(04:32):
the feedback loop is going to continue unabated. That much
I can.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Say cracker barrel has fallen and like Christ after three days,
has rose again.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah. Great. Anyway, speaking of memes, unfortunately we should talk
about this horrible mass shooting that is probably going to
be the big story this week. I mean, I hate
to reduce it to that, but yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
We're recording this on Wednesday, a few hours after the shooting.
This is in Minneapolis.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Yes, there was a mass shooting at a Minneapolis Catholic school,
Annunciation Catholic School. This happened earlier the day that we're
recording this, So that's going to be Wednesday, August twenty seventh.
As of right now at about two eleven pm PST,
two children are dead, Seventeen people, mostly children, are wounded.
(05:26):
The shooter is also dead, and the shooter has been
identified as Robin Westman, who graduated from the school in
twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Their mom also worked at the school until very recently.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Yeah, and that's not at all an unusual kind of situation.
Mass shooters at schools often are either attending the school
or recently graduated. There's been a couple of cases where
a family member worked at the school. Like this stuff
is all pretty standard for somebody shooting up a school.
What's different is one of the things that's different is
that the shooter basically followed in Brenton Tarrant the christ
(06:00):
shooters footsteps by covering their firearms and the gear that
they were wearing and draw like I guess drew or
painted on I'm not sure. It looks like with like
a white paint pen, like white out or something like that,
a white paint pen and covered it. In the names
of other mass shooters, references to racial annihilation memes like
the Removed Kabab meme, which is in short, a memes
(06:22):
celebrating the Bosnian genocide, and it was a meme that
was specifically Brenton Tarrant had signaled in his like manifesto
and I think on his gun he had a remove
Kebob reference, but it's something he signaled and it was
on the shooter's firearm as well as the names. I
mean Tarrant. There's references to Tarrant on there. Timothy mc McVeagh,
(06:42):
te mcvay's name, just the word McVeigh is painted on there.
Ted Kazenski, the Unibomber, a.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Whole bunch of other more recent mass shooters, people who
are in like the mass shooter fandom, yeah, as well
as just a collection of memes from like old memes.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Too utterly unrelated to shooting, Like there's a loss meme
on there, and if you're a lot of people are going, wait,
what the fuck? Really? Yeah, and if you're too young
for loss. There used to be a wet well. I
think there still is a web comic called Control Alt Delete.
It started in like the early two thousands. It might
have gotten started in the late nineties, and it was
part of like this, there's this boom in web comics
(07:20):
in the late nineties when suddenly there's people are able
to make their own comics online and make livings off
of them. A whole bunch of guys made gaming comics
after Penny Arcade, which is like the big one that
blew up. And one of them was Tim Buckley, who
did a comic called Control All Delete that was not good,
and he tried to have a serious storyline where his
character's girlfriend has a miscarriage, and the strip in which
(07:42):
he finds her having a miscarriage is called loss. And
it's gotten to the point where people are abstracting the
four panels into like a minimalist line representation of how
the blocking look like. It's a bit people have done
everything like put loss memes on everything, like that's the
joke at this point, more than a reference to the
show is like, look at this new crazy place. Somebody
(08:03):
put a loss meme, and.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
So yeah, it's a game.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
And a lot of what we're saying with the shooter
is like, oh, this is the natural extent of a
bunch of things, and a fucking mass shooter putting a
loss meme on the bear or on the side of
their gun before shooting up a school is the natural
furthest craziest extent of the loss meme. Right.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
If this is anything, it is like a mimetic shooting.
It is based on a whole bunch of memes about
other mass shootings as well, specifically in the way that
engages in like anti semitism and racism and includes slurs
and catchphrases. It's not in the way that the shooter
actually believes these things ideologically. It is just to gesture
(08:41):
to them as they exist in the lineage of other
mass shootings.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
It is.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
It's a perfunctory use of slurs and of messaging that
just kind of wraps around this whole like nihilistic fandom
culture around other mass shooters, and like that is that's
what this shooting is. I've watch now like seventeen minutes
of video of the shooter like showing off their weapons,
going through their diaries and journals, inspired by a whole
(09:08):
bunch of like Eastern European mass shooters as well. And
this shooter reminds me of participants of what's called the
true crime community or TCC. Not as in like the
genre of true crime podcasts or documentaries, but it's more
of an online fandom based on a personal obsession with
mass killers themselves and specifically school shooters. And this community
(09:31):
encourages reenactments and tries to get some people to do
their own mass shootings. Yeah, and this is not the
first one of these we've had in this past year. Now,
the shooting in Wisconsin last December I spent the rep Noow,
which we reported on on NI could Happen Here, was
also in this variant of like Columbiner True Crime community shootings.
Repnow's name is on one of this shooter's rifles. Yes,
(09:54):
there was a shooting in Tennessee a few months later
which also referenced Repnow, done by a black white supremacist
in cel whose manifesto was full of like plagiarized memes
and other manifestos. It's about this, like yeah, this complete
lack of meaning, Like they scatter shot all of these
memes and references and like bits of manifestos and like
(10:15):
images to just to make this whole mess of stuff
to look at. But none of it actually means anything.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Well, and the draining of meaning, the flattening of meaning
is part of the pla. That's the point taking is
taking a man who shot fucking fifty people to death
and turning that into the same thing as a twenty
year old joke about a comic strip in terms of
its impact and severity, Because if that's no more serious
or meaningful or painful than fucking a joke about Tim
(10:43):
Buckley's dumbass cartoon. Like, once you get someone in a
mind state where they accept that they're willing to accept
a lot of terrible things, right, And the goal here
is creating content in the form of mass shootings, right, Like,
that is the goal, and that is also what people
are consciously. A lot of people want to be a
part of themselves. You mentioned the last year's shooting that
(11:05):
committed by Samantha ruppnow, but there's also I found a
December thirtieth, twenty twenty four article in Wisconsin Public radiowpr
dot org their website. It talks about reupnow, but it
also gives the story of thirteen year old Jamie Sitz,
who killed herself in twenty twenty four and was a
member of the true crime community. The police went through
her phone and they found a bunch of memes and
(11:28):
reference and like her contributing to online discussions and telegrams
and stuff for PCC. She was obsessed with the Columbine Kids, right.
She like engaged in a lot of those conversations, and
she was posting about her plan to kill herself, but
she was not interested in carrying out like a mass
shooting or killing other people, and that fit in fine
(11:48):
within the discourse like people in courage present basically right,
Like yeah, I think part of the thrill hitary is
just wanting to feel like you, sitting on your ass
on the computer, you are impacting the world in part
because you feel like that's the only chunk of the
world that you've got right, and that's tied into the
hopelessness and the nihilism of all of this. I found
(12:09):
a just random poster on Reddit in a discussion of
the TCC community. I actually really like this person's summary
of it. And this is like seven years old. Interestingly enough,
it's not a new phenomenon. It dates back to interwar
period Germany. There were many Germans at the time who
were fascinated with the topic of extremely grisly murder and torture,
especially such instances where sexual arousal was involved. The German
(12:29):
language even has a word for it, lust mort or
lust murder. Serial killers were on the rise at the time,
and many of them claimed to get extreme amounts of
carnal pleasure from the act of killing or maiming, and
there is this weird vein I found another study as
I was looking into this that uses the true crime
community term. It's from twenty fifteen by Naomi Barnes of
Utah State University, and it was like looking into fandoms
(12:53):
that had grown up around serial killers and around spree
killers online. And Naomi is using the word true crime
community for just the general terms of people who are
interested in true crime, not in the way that you
and I have been using it.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Yeah, because we're using this this term to refer to
like a specific fandom around like around these shootings, not
the general milieu of like true crime podcasts and like
documentaries and people who are into that sort of content.
We're referring to a much more niche group of people
online who operate on like Telegram, discord, Tumbler, and other
(13:26):
social media accounts.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Right.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
It's based around like specifically like like an obsession over
actually doing these acts and like and and like they
like cause play as these people. This isn't like your
you know, average white woman who likes listening to true
crime podcasts. This is this is something very different.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
No, and that's that's important. But it's also important to
note that, like what you've been talking about, this this
need to recreate, and not just prior to actually carrying
out a shooting, because most of them don't ever do that.
There's this need, this obsession with the aesthetics to want
to own clothing and objects and whatnot that like look
like Eric Dylan or whatever. Right, the column bine band shirt.
(14:02):
Yeah right, And this does extend to the shootings, Like
there's a number of shooters who have worn that KMFDM
shirt because one of the columnbind guys wore.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
It cementthro up now and I believe this recent shooter
also had had a KMDS shirt picked out.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
And what's interesting about that twenty fifteen study is that
it is looking at the true crime community because columnbiners
were already a thing. There'd been a number of copycat attacks,
but the kind of social fandom around like that aspect
of it had not really taken hold in a mass
level in a way that the internet and virality could
really make use of.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
It involved on Tumblr like in that era. Yes, it's
more like an infant compared to like the fully grown
version that it is now.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Yeah, And what's interesting to me is this this paper
kind of catches the communities. It's starting to calv Off.
And so there's a chunk of the paper where she's
quoting from a couple of different people who went and visited.
In one case, they visited like Adam Lanza's house and
the Sandy Hook Elementary School, and it's people visiting places
like that, sites associated with like mass shootings and the like.
(15:08):
And she gives this mix of people being like, oh,
like the first quesson he quotes who went to Lands
of House is like, I was actually just really sad
and I just wish none of it had ever taken place,
Like it was all really horrible and it made me
feel bad. But then a bit later she gives you
responses from people who have the opposite reaction, Like there's
this fella Paul, who does not specify which murder site
(15:30):
they visited, but specified that it was a place where
a murder victim's body was found. And Paul responded, Honestly,
I felt a static like, Wow, I'm going to place
someone was killed. What if there are ghosts the murderer
him or herself? I was absolutely off. My kid, we
dug up some dirt and we keep it in a
little glass bottle. It's like a religious pilgrimage, right, right,
And that's the static and that's what this starts to document.
(15:52):
And that's where I'm like, oh, this is this study
is mostly about an unrelated just a normal fandom, but
you can see the bits like already popping up in
twenty fifteen, these people who are having these estatic almost
again like almost like psychosexual experiences being at the site
of a mass shooting.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Yeah, and the further country that is then doing one yourself.
And obviously this also is like a part of like
a suicidal drive, a suicidal intention. While a lot of
people kill themselves in the course of the act, right,
it's a way of making your suicide not just be
about yourself.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Right. And there's more to say about like the culture
of fame in this country and like how how virality
and whatnot has made it so that like these people
tend to get what they want, or at least they
know they've got a good chance of getting what they want, right,
they're obviously not around to experience it, but like, as
long as you do something sufficiently like weird and bloody,
(16:46):
you're likely to get a good amount of attention for
a while.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
So that's the actual like background of what this shooting was.
I think now we should probably mention how the shooting's
being talked about more broadly, Yeah, because it takes a
very different angle from the actual like nihilistic, like TCC
fandom aspect it is. It is making this a more
about like woke contemporary politics, I suppose.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
Cash Betel's announced that he's investigating this as as an
anti Catholic hate crime.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Yeah, which is just not true. I mean, it's almost
certainly by a Catholic or somebody who was raised gath Like. Yeah.
All the people who hate Catholics most are often lapsed Catholics.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Very early on, people started claiming that this shooter was
trans Now, a few years ago, they did change their
name to Robin, and the name change petition stated that
at the time they identified as female. At this point,
we still know very little about the actual shooter beyond
like the videos they posted on YouTube of their weapons
(17:50):
and a journal written in cyrillic and a note that
they left to their parents discussing their fear of dying
of cancer due to vaping. I've not been able to
look at their Internet presence or activities in the intervening
years since changing their name, and their current gender identity
is still not very clear. In a translation of their
(18:11):
cyrillic journal, they discussed detransition quote, I don't want to
dress girly all the time, but I guess sometimes I
really like it. I know I am not a woman,
but I definitely don't feel like a man. I regret
being trans. I wish I was a girl. I just
know I cannot achieve that body with the technology we
have today. I also can't afford that I only keep
(18:34):
my long hair because it is pretty much my last
shred of being trans. I'm tired of being trans. I
wish I never brainwashed myself. I can't cut my hair now,
as it would be an embarrassing defeat and it might
be a concerning change of character that could get me reported.
It just always gets in my way. I will probably
(18:55):
chop it on the day of the attack. Discussion of
gender takes up a very small percentage of the journal.
Most of their writing is about admiration for previous mass
shooters and fantasizing about killing children from a very young age.
On the cover of their journal, alongside a bunch of
other like gun stickers, they do have a defend a
(19:18):
quality Progress flag sticker with an AK forty seven YEP.
From my perspective, this is just another one of those
memes that they're wrapping into everything. On one of their magazines,
they wrote I am the wokeler, why so queerious? Right
on the other side of the magazine had an anti
queer slur. So I view this type of stuff in
(19:40):
the same way I view the inclusion of like the
Lost meme or like Ted Kaczinski or all this other stuff.
This this like memified version of trying to throw everything
at the wall just to make everything mean nothing right.
And it's it's extremely like obnoxious and annoying.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
But it it works.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
But yeah, it works. And I don't know what else
I want to say on this, onlike the trends angle, we.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Don't want to deny that like this is going to
cause a problem, that this is going to be used
by the right, like there will be There will certainly
be rhetoric, and I've already seen rhetoric from you know,
Jack posobc in that crowd around it.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
About trans people targeting Catholics.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Well, this is why these people shouldn't have weapons or whatever,
like this is why we should put them all in
and I don't. I'm not going to minimize that that
didn't start with this, that that kind of rhetoric, that
conversation and this is useful to that crowd, and you
know that is that is bad. I don't. We don't
know what's going to happen or to what extent this is.
Like we're talking right now that they clearly would like
(20:38):
to use this and are trying to use this. One
thing that I would point out and I don't know
if this is certainly not an on balance optimistic thing,
but making Americans focus on a mass shooting for more
than a day or two not as easy as it
used to be.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
No, Yeah, which is really devastating.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
It's not good that we're there, but like two people dead,
I'm just saying, like Americans ignore way bigger numbers all
the time now the right, you know, there's not always
a media campaign like there's going to be with this
beyond trying to make this huge. But also they've done
that before, right, they did that with the rep now shooting, right, Like,
there were attempts to make that and it didn't.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Every mass shooting, right, they have tried to pain it's
been done by a transperson, and I think in some
ways that has depowered this rhetoric as a tactic. Yeah,
by claiming every shooter is trans, most Republicans already believe
that to be the case. So whether this person either
was trans or used to be trans, it may not
matter that much to the right because they already think
(21:41):
every shooter is trans. Like right, Trump's already targeting queer people.
The right doesn't need an excuse to go after queer people.
I don't think an event like this will make the
hammer come down much harder. This could be a boy
who cried wolf situation for the anti trans right, since
their base already thinks that every mass shooter from the
(22:03):
past three years is trans. I did a whole episode
on this last year, called fake trans Terrorists. The Gun
Violence Archive says that there have been two hundred and
eighty six mass shootings in the United States so far
in twenty twenty five. If one or two trans people
do a mass shooting, that would still mean trans people
at one percent of the population, are less likely to
(22:25):
do a shooting compared to CIS people. There was like
one legitimate trans mass shooting targeting a school a few
years ago in Nashville, and if this happens to be
the second, I don't think that this new brain Rod
Columbine true crime community shooting will make much of an
impact on trans people nationwide. Think of how quick conservatives
(22:46):
moved on from the Zizians, and certainly being trans is
not a motivating factor of this shooting. If you look
at their writing and videos posted on YouTube before they
did this, this nihilistic meme maximili has no trans causation.
It has nothing to do with being trans. There's no
coherent or ideological leftist screed, there's no pronoun pins. Their
(23:09):
journal talks both about quote unquote hating fascism and inequality,
while also hating Jews, Arabs, Mexicans, Indians, calling Somali's subhuman
and criminal, writing that quote white people should rule the
world unquote, but that minority should quote unquote have rights.
While talking about ideological Nazi killers, they remarked, quote, I
(23:31):
don't often find myself aligning with these killers specific ideologies unquote.
They said that they disliked racism but also were racist.
They wrote about killing quote unquote fags while also calling
themself one on one of their weapons. This shooter and
all the memes and rhetoric they use is most similar
(23:51):
to the Rep. Noow shooting last December in Wisconsin in
terms of the neo Columbiner school shooter obsession, as well
as the white supremacist mimetic black in cell shooting in NNOC, Tennessee,
last January. All these shootings are heavily referential, contradictory, and
intentionally incoherent. Right, every single extremist political faction is represented there,
(24:16):
because that that is the point, is combining all of
these references two previous mass shootings, So they're incorporating everything
they can and things that they just think are funny,
like just a whole bunch of like meaningless memes.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
And that's vastly more important than whatever gender identity the
shooter happens to have right now at this point in
twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
All right, Well, anyway, folks, there's going to be a
lot of people going the sky is falling over what
this is going to mean for people and how this
is going to be used. And obviously this is terrible.
I'm not telling you not to feel terrible about a
mass shooting.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
You should feel bad about the actual mass shooting.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
You should feel bad about the mass shooting the sky.
I mean, this guy's been falling right, Yeah, let's give
this one a little bit to see if it makes
this sky fall any faster, or if in a week
we're like, no, this guy's still falling at about the
same rate, which isn't good. It's just what happens. It's
where we are, all right, ads, and we're back.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
We can safely leave the brain rot in the previous
section and now talk about something totally real. The economy.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Yes, the economy, which never kills people.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Okay, so speaking of things that have never killed any one, eye,
that's so not true. The volkershaw killed so many people.
But a very very critical rubicon was crossed on Monday
of this week when Trump attempted to fire a member
of the Federal Reserve Board, Lisa Cook. Now, Lisa Cook
(26:02):
is refusing to step down under the fairly obvious justification
that the president does not have the power to do this.
Trump has been cooking a very weird thing, accusing her
of mortgage fraud as a way to remove her from
the Federal Reserve Board. But Trump does not have the
(26:23):
power to do this. So we are in the midst
effectively of a confrontation over this, where Lisa Cook has
continued to just not actually leave her position at the
Federal Reserve and is going to court. This is an
extremely significant escalation of what up until this point had
(26:46):
largely been a series of attacks on the Federal Reserve's governor,
Jerom Powell. There are a few factors here that one
of the most important things is Trump's anger over continuing
high interest rates or sort of high interest rate. Trump
wants to slash interest rates because he thinks it will
make the economy grow more. Now, when I said this
was the crossing of the rubicon, what this is is
(27:09):
this is the beginning of the fight over whether the
Federal Reserve is going to be an independent density right.
Trump has been attempting to, as we've talked about in
the show, appoint Stephan Miran as another one of the
governors on the Federal Reserves Board. Miran very explicitly wants
to eliminate the independence of the Federal Reserve. What to
talk about exactly what that means in a second, But
(27:32):
I want to read this quote from Fortune magazine report
on it describing a JP Morgan analysis of the situation,
because this has really spooked a bunch of major financial
institutions for very obvious reasons.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
Quote.
Speaker 4 (27:50):
In a note on Friday, JP Morgan analysts, led by
chief economist Bruce Cassman, highlighted key proposals such as giving
atwill power to the President to fire FED by members
and FED bank presidents, giving Congress control of the Fed's
operating budget, and shifting the Fed's regulatory responsibility over banks
and markets to the Treasury. So this is what Stefan
(28:12):
Mihern has been proposing. This is what looks to be
the long term plan of Trump and the people around him.
Eliminating the Federal Reserve is a long, long time goal
of the far right for an extremely convoluted variety of reasons.
The FED in and of itself is an extremely confusing entity.
(28:34):
Its creation has spawned a full century of academic arguments
about what the States even is, and it's complicated to describe.
Also because most of the information will not most, but
a significant portion of the information about it is just
anti Semitic conspiracy. Because this is eliminating the Federal Reserve.
In the return to quote unquote, sound money is one
(28:55):
of the key elements of a massive network of sort
of right wing, very old right wing conspiracy theories. But
I think that the thing that's best understood by people
kind of is just about the Federal Reserve is the
FED printer meme, and the Federal Reserve is the body
that creates money like that is that is authorized to
create the US dollar. That is why it's a Federal
(29:17):
Reserve bank. It is critical on a level that is
difficult to express to the entire functioning of the world economy. Now,
the Federal Reserve Board is technically a government entity, but
it is it was set up explicitly to be quote
unquote non political. Now the extent to which that's true
(29:39):
is fuzzy, obviously, But the point of it was so
that there would be a large scale financial institution that
controls like the money supply effectively, that that controls enormous
portions of US sort of macroeconomics policy through its due
as control of interest rates would not be able to
(30:00):
be like directly interfered with by the President or Congress.
That is that it's the whole point of this, you know.
It is effectively a measure to instill confidence that the
US isn't going to just like turn the printers on
and print a bunch of money from every other capitalist
in the world.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Yeah, and like so much. When that promise goes away,
what happens, I don't know. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
Well, and this is this is something that I think,
I think is not understood very well.
Speaker 5 (30:25):
Right.
Speaker 4 (30:25):
The current conflict is largely over Trump wanting to be
able to control the Federal reserves interest rates. Right, So
he wants he wants the lower federal interest rates to
make it make it cheaper to borrow money because he
thinks this will pump more money back into the economy
and this will make the economy grow. And he thinks
that he's being like sabotaged by the FED. The Fed's
worried about inflation. But I actually think that focusing just
(30:48):
on that part of the Federal Reserve is significantly underestimating
how important the Federal Reserve is to the entire structure
of the economy. There are so many just sort of
random things that it does that are not particularly well understood.
I was talking about this earlier on a meeting, but
(31:09):
the significant portion of the gold held by countries around
the world is literally just keptain a vault under the
New York Federal Reserve building, and that's just the sort
of seemingly random thing that it does. I was reading
about its payment system for reasons that I'll talk about
in the episode to do about this next week. It
just in a footnote about the payment system, there is
(31:29):
a part where it says that the Federal Reserve runs
the payment system for the World Bank. So this is
something that is a critical, critical, an extremely complicated center
of the entire capitalist world. Right, Its payment infrastructure has
trillions of dollars a year and moving through it. If
(31:50):
this infrastructure stops working or breaks a little bit, a
lot of the very subtle management of the economy of
the Federal Reserve does can stop working. And you know,
again we've been talking mostly about interest rates and its
ability to sort of print money, which is oversimplification, but
you know, for example, the Fed also does these things
(32:11):
like carries out these like massive overnight repo agreements, like
inject liquidity into the market. There's all of these massive
we are talking billions and billions of dollars of financial
interventions that you basically never even hear about that have
been stabilizing the economy since two thousand and eight. And
this apparatus if it is dismantled, if it has directly
(32:32):
seized control of by Trump. And and part of what's
going on with this board is that Trump is trying
to get a majority of the people on the Board
of Governors of the Federal Reserve to be his appointment
so that he can control it directly, and so they
can start bringing it under directly under the control of
I mean the president effectively. Right, this is something where
(32:54):
if you unleash the doge people on the Federal Reserve
and the payment system, the settlement and clearance systems stop working.
We are talking about a catastrophe that it's unclear to
me whether it's even been modeled. There are so many
different complicated things that this institution does that these people
(33:15):
do not understand particularly well at all and think that
they can use to just sort of permanently create a
bubble economy that they can ride. And this is the
first sort of shot over the battle. Isn't even in
the right where this is the first engagement over the
fight for that. There's also been a lot of sort
of taco analysis of this, arguing that this is actually
Trump backing down from trying to fire Jerom Powell to
(33:38):
just try to fire one of the Reserve board members
that's not backing down. There's also a chance to heal that.
If this works, he's going to try to fire Powell too.
So we're gonna We're gonna keep watching a situation. I'm
going to talk more about it next week when we
know more, and also talk about what the Federal Reserve
is as an institution, And we're going to continue monitoring the
situation because it is extremely important and handing the keys
(34:00):
over to these people is something that is dangerous enough
that it is creating significant pushback among the actual people
in finance and in the banking system who matter.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Great, well, it's so good. I mean, we'll see if
this means anything other than more suffering for you know people.
I guess that's where I am, as like, is there
even a level of fucking with the money that Trump
can do that that's enough to seriously cause consequences for him?
And there must be, but it's just hard to imagine
(34:31):
if there was. It's this. Yeah, we'll see. I mean,
that's the fun thing with the big stories we've got
this week is they're all like, well, could get a
lot worse, could just stay as bad as it is
right now. Well, we'll continue to wait to see what's
going to happen with all of that. Speaking of something
that we don't have to just wait and wonder what's
(34:52):
going to go on, because the news changes every single week.
Here's the tariff song.
Speaker 6 (35:01):
Rocket Jazz, Rocket Jazz, good sal locking rocking jazz, rocking jazz.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
Boy.
Speaker 4 (35:14):
Oh boy so, and yet another instance of the whole
Trump backing down thing not happening. The tariffs on India
that Trump had been threatening for the purchases of Russian
oil have in fact taken effect. The terriff right on
India is now fifty percent. This is a significant barrier
to any trade between India and the US. It is
(35:37):
again sort of unclear whether India is going to bow
to the political pressure here because as with many of
these terriffs, we've talked about this situation with Brazil fairly
extensively on this show. The thing about imposing tariffs on
a country to get them to fall in line with
the American policy is that it pisses off everyone in
the country, regardless of whether or not they would traditionally
(35:59):
be US allies, and so there's you know, it creates
a massive countervailing pressure against the financial incentive to fall
in line and stop buying Russian oil. I also, very
briefly want to talk about something that I think is
a sort of part and parcel of the tariff policy
that Garson you have mentioned wanted to talk about, which
is like the US purchasing ten percent of Intel.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Yes, socialism has been achieved. We did it. Now now
you can finally call Trump a national socialist.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (36:31):
Yeah, And this is sort of a intensification, I guess,
of a agree that we talked about a while back,
where Intel was talking about giving part of its profits
to the US. This is just the US government is
just buying a stake in these companies.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
And this is.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
Actually a very very weird maneuver by the US because
the US has obviously bought companies before, right, this is
how a lot of the bailout worked. But the thing
about if you look at the bailout from two thousand
and eight and you look at the US like purchasing
the automakers, the US got these really weird specific shares
that don't give any kind of controlling interest. And here
(37:10):
the direct rationale for this that the US should just
own part of the chip manufacturers because they're effectively like
domestic national security resources. Significant portions of the market think
that this is going to be a continuing tread, and
the US is going to continue buying stakes in these companies.
There is a sort of symbiotic relationship here in the
sense that on the one hand, it's obviously not great
(37:31):
to have sort of stakes in you bought by the
US governments and have US government federal policy directly dictating
what these companies do. But on the other hand, it
creates for these actual companies themselves, It creates a sort
of symbiosis right where these people now have effectively guaranteed
(37:52):
state backing that can bail them out of all of
their unbelievably terrible business decisions around basing all of their
production around AI. So yeah, and this this is all
sort of part of the same hypernationalists direct.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
National socialism, if you will, Yes, kind of national sentence,
but the most stupid for we've ever seen.
Speaker 4 (38:18):
Yeah, Yeah, I don't know, there's gonna be a lot
of hype about this being like American state capitalism or something,
and just ignore that, just just ignore it. It's bad.
I think it's it's in the same category as a
lot of the things here, which is that Trump administration
is trying to consolidate as much power over the economy
as they can, both in federal Reserve and through just
(38:39):
straight up taking controlling parts of companies. This is a
trend that's going to continue, and it's not good.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Do you know what is good? Though? You beat me
to that exactly, that's right. The fact that we get
a nice ninety to to I don't know, one hundred
and twenty second break to listen to these ads. All right,
(39:10):
we are back. There has just been so much news
this week it's kind of outrageous. Trump is continuing his
attacks against the Smithsonian for for going woke is He's
promised a Department of Justice lawsuit against California for their
new redistricting map. A GOP House probe has begun to
investigate if the DC crime stats have been faked this
(39:31):
whole time, making it look like crime is low even
though it's obviously super high as we all know. As
Mia said, we have socialism now with ten percent of
intel and Trump and Hague says announced that they want
to change the name of the Department of Defense back
to the Department of War because it quote unquote sounds stronger.
Speaker 4 (39:52):
Hey, this is this is the only one of those
that I that I actually agree with. They should do this,
Like calling it anything other than the Department of War
is incredibly dishonest.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
Yeah, I wonder that I'll make it a harder sort
of get people on board, increasing funding.
Speaker 5 (40:09):
So it used to be called the Department of War,
and it had a stronger sound. And as you know, we.
Speaker 7 (40:16):
Won World War One, we won World War two, we
won everything.
Speaker 8 (40:20):
Now we have a Department of Defense with defenders.
Speaker 5 (40:23):
I don't know if you people want to standing behind me,
if you take a little vote, if you want to
change it back to what it was when we used
to win wars all the time, that's okay with me.
Speaker 7 (40:32):
All right, that's coming.
Speaker 5 (40:33):
You let me know if you want to do it.
I think Department of War. It just sounded me.
Speaker 8 (40:37):
And you said, sir, behalf of the Department of Defense.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
Defense.
Speaker 7 (40:41):
I don't want to be defense only. We want defense,
but we want offense too, if that's okay, So you'll
make a decision. But you know, as Department of War,
we won everything. We want everything, and I think we're
gonna have to go back to that.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
All right, man, cool stuff happening in the FOE.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
I mean, I do like that when he starts that speech,
he has to go like we won World War One,
Like he's like, there's a question at the end there
where he's like he's he's like, he's like, just make sure.
I don't know, I don't really remember if we won
that one or not, but we definitely won the second
one and others.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
When as to how he would go about change the
name as it requires an Act of Congress, Trump replied
to quote, We're just gonna do it. I'm sure Congress
would go along if we need that. I don't think
we even need that, But if we need that, I'm
sure Congress will go along.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
I don't know that we do we need I don't
know if what you need to change the name of
the Department.
Speaker 3 (41:41):
Of Defense, you do?
Speaker 1 (41:42):
Yeah, you do? That makes sense to do that.
Speaker 4 (41:45):
Auto Macro's sense right. What Trump is suggesting, heureus would
wouldn't it simply be more efficient if there was simply
a fearer, a single person to make all the decisions?
Speaker 3 (41:54):
He said a lot of things in that vein recently
is like Congress being more of a symbolic, symbolic branch
of government that if we need them, they'll probably just
agree with me, but like we don't.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Really that's your standard dictator stuff.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
That's how we's been talking about it recently.
Speaker 5 (42:11):
Now.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
Earlier this week, a redacted transcript of Gallaine maxwells Gilen
Jiselene Maxwell's meeting with Trump's DOJ has been released, where
she denied that she ever witnessed President Trump engaged in
inappropriate behavior, saying, quote, I actually never saw the president
in any type of massage setting. The President was never
gonna appropriate with anybody, and the times that I was
with him, he was a gentleman in all respects unquote.
(42:34):
She also denied allegations that Prince Andrew ever had sex
with a minor in her home, saying that a substantiating
photograph is quote unquote fake.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
Well, I can't imagine why she'd lie.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
And also claimed that there is no Epstein quote unquote
client less. So yeah, that all about wraps that up.
I think we got to the bottom of the whole
Epstein case. We don't need to worry about this anymore.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
I would say, of all of those, the one of
those that I might have believed before she denied it
was that there wasn't an additional client list outside of
what we've already seen like his black wole. Oh yeah,
I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't keep all of
that many notes on a criminal conspiracy.
Speaker 3 (43:10):
Yeah, I don't think here's a list of being like,
here's all of my pedophile friends in one place.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Here's what does make me wonder now, and this really
is the first time I am, which is that they
clearly came here with a list of Here is all
of the things you need to say you didn't see.
Speaker 3 (43:23):
Like maybe or she's just savvy enough to know what
to say, Like I don't even think, Yeah, we don't
even need to an allege a larger conspiracy here. I
think everyone involved in this is quite savvy and knows
what they should say and shouldn't say.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
Yeah, I mean, I think the conspiracy is obvious, Like.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
That's all there is. There doesn't need to be an
explicit quid pro crow here.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
Yeah, I don't know. It's interesting to me that she
brings up Prince Andrew. If nobody brought that up to
her she was asked about it, That's what I'm saying
is I believe there's a conversation we're not privy here too,
where she got marching orders in exchange for getting you know,
she's basically out on work release, right, I.
Speaker 3 (43:59):
Don't need to jump to such outrageous conspiratorial beliefs such
as that.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
I'm okay with it at this point. Yeah, I don't
know what to what extend it was, but yeah, I
don't know this is this is pointless, like, yeah, I
don't know if this helps with his base. I don't
know that his base is going to be like, well
if Gilan Maxwell says it.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
Nope, yeah, I mean people have responded positively, like Margor
Taylor Green, who was previously going on a slight offense
that on the Epstein things, has now fully come around
being like, well, there you go. It's it turns out
Trumpet isn't a pedophile after all. Thank goodness, that was
a close call there.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
I know this is being disseminated to his influencer network, right,
and to the network of people that he like uses
for stuff like this. I'm wondering about the actual like
voter base, fan base, like time will tell, and the
folks who are a step or two further than Marjorie
Taylor Green like the like the people who are more
like on the Rogan side of things, like, does this
(44:58):
really move the needle for them?
Speaker 3 (45:00):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (45:00):
I hate having the cares like this, Joe Rogan, I'm
gonna buy this shlot, But this does seem like, yeah,
shameful even for him.
Speaker 3 (45:08):
I mean, I think a lot of people can see
that there's an incentive for going to say certain things,
and I think people people are smart enough to understand that.
I don't think she's going to tell the Trump's own
DOJ about like a smoking gun involving Trump. Why would
that help her try to get a pardon from the President?
Speaker 1 (45:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (45:27):
I think I think. I think the important thing for
this is that like, the people who are going to
believe this are the people who just don't want to
believe that Trump did this, and this is this is
a reinforcing thing that can feed them. But the question
is what asks for everyone else? And it's not particularly
compelling for them.
Speaker 3 (45:44):
All Right, We have four executive orders to get through
before we close this episode, starting off with cashless bail.
On Monday, Trump signed two executive orders targeting cash's bail,
one specific to Washington, d c which directs law enforcement
to charge people federally and hold them in federal custody,
and to use federal funding and services as leverage to
pressure DC to change its cashless bail policies. The other
(46:07):
executive order targets cashless bail nationwide and asks the Attorney
General to make a list of quote, states and local
jurisdictions that have, in the Attorney General's opinion, substantially eliminated
cash bail as a potential condition of pre trial release
from custody for crimes that pose a clear threat to
public safety and order, including offenses involving violent, sexual or
indecent acts, or burglary, looting, or vandalism. The Attorney General
(46:29):
shall update this list as necessary. So, using that list,
Trump's cabinet will then quote identify federal funds, including grants
and contracts currently provided to cashless bail jurisdictions that may
be suspended or terminated unquote, So it's trying to bribe
states and local municipalities to cease cashless bail policies using
federal funds, the same way that they've tried to do
(46:51):
for a whole bunch of other anti WOUE policies Trump
has tried to force onto unwilling states. Second Executive Order
from August twenty fifth, titled Prosecuting Burning of the American Flag.
Let's start with a clip from Trump. I don't want
to just play super long Trump clips because they know
that can be annoying. But the way that he talks
(47:13):
about disorder is kind of more interesting than the way
the order is written. But we will talk about some
of those smaller details included in the actual text. But
here's a clip from c SPAN.
Speaker 5 (47:24):
Flag burning all over the country. They're burning flags all
over the world.
Speaker 3 (47:28):
They burn the.
Speaker 5 (47:29):
American flag, and as you know, through a very sad chord.
I guess it was a five to four decision. They
called it freedom of speech. But there's another reason, which
is perhaps.
Speaker 8 (47:41):
Much more important. It's called death. Because what happens when
you burn a flag is the area goes crazy. If
you have hundreds of people, they go crazy.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
You could do other things, you.
Speaker 5 (47:52):
Can burn this piece of paper, you could, and it's
when you burn the American flag. It incites riots at
levels that we've never seen before. People go crazy in
a way. Both ways. There's some that are going crazy
for doing it. There are others that are angry angry
about them doing it?
Speaker 8 (48:13):
Do you want to discuss that?
Speaker 5 (48:14):
Sure?
Speaker 9 (48:14):
What the executive order does there charges your Department of
Justice with investigating instances of flag burning and then where
there's evidence of criminal activity, that where prosecution wouldn't fall
afoul of the First Amendment, and instructs the Department of
Justice to prosecute those who are engaged in these instances
of flagburn.
Speaker 5 (48:33):
And what the penalty is going to be. If you
burn a flag, you get one year in jail, No.
Speaker 7 (48:39):
Early exits, no nothing.
Speaker 5 (48:42):
You get one year in jail. If you're burn a flag,
you get And what it does is insight to write.
Speaker 7 (48:47):
I hope they use that language.
Speaker 8 (48:48):
By the way, did that insight to riot?
Speaker 3 (48:51):
I love it. He has to check, yeah, because God
forbid him. Actually he's citing Trump Trumpe auto pen That's right.
So included in the order, it says, quote, notwithstanding the
Supreme Court's ruling on First Men protections, the Court is
never held that American flag desecration conducted in a manner
that is likely to incite imminent lawless action, or that
(49:14):
is an action amounting to quote unquote fighting words, is
constitutionally protected see taxes fe Johnson unquote. The order directs
Theatery General to enforce criminal and civil laws against acts
of American flight discration that cause harm unrelated to First
Amendment expression, which could include charging people with violent crimes,
hate crimes, a legal discrimination against American citizens, what violations
(49:38):
of American civil rights, crimes against property and peace, as
well as conspiracies and attempts to violate in aiding and
abetting others to violate such laws, so it's like an
anti rioting thing. The dj will also look for cases
where American flag discration could violate applicable state or local laws,
such as open burning restrictions, disorderly conduct laws, or destruction
(49:59):
of proper laws, and will refer such matters to state
and local authorities for potential action. Finally, the Secretary of
State shall deny, prohibit, terminate, or revoke visas, residents permits,
naturalization proceedings, and other immigration benefits, or seek to deport
any foreignational that has engaged in American flag to secretion activity.
So that's how they're going to go after it. Rober, Are,
(50:20):
do you anything to say on this flag burning thing?
Speaker 1 (50:24):
I mean, they're waiting. I mean, and they didn't wind
up waiting long. Someone did it immediately as they knew
they would, so that they can get a case that
they can take up to the Supreme Court. So we'll see,
we'll see what happens. We'll see.
Speaker 3 (50:35):
Yeah. Yeah, they want to prosecute one of these things
and appeal it all the way to the Supreme Court
to maybe change that ruling so they can apply it
more broadly. Right, So it's part of the same test
that they've done with a number of other things that
seems unconstitutional, it seems to violate Supreme Court rulings. Yeah,
but the point is to test that and see if
they can change it, just like they did with abortion.
Speaker 4 (50:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:56):
Can we go further and if this works, if we
feel like we made productress on this, can we start
pushing and saying other things are incitement? Right? You know?
Can we start going after people who aren't even present
who write something that is like, well, this was incitement
to write because they wrote about the police murdering this guy.
Speaker 3 (51:12):
Right, like a party of free speech strikes again.
Speaker 1 (51:15):
This is the kind of thing where can I wargame
out would they try this if they can get that
far yeah, they will if they can get that far.
Will they get that far? You know, is the Supreme
Court going to give them everything they want on this?
I don't actually know. I really don't know. So I'm
going to try not to doom spiral too much. Just
you know, let's see, none of us have any choice
in the matter at this stage.
Speaker 3 (51:37):
Finally, let's address the quote, additional measures to address the
crime emergency in the District of Columbia. So it's another
executive order from August twenty fifth. Trump wants to establish
an online portal for Americans with law enforcement experience quote
or other relevant backgrounds and experience to apply to join
federal enforcementities to support the policy goals described in Executive
(52:00):
Order one four three three. That's the Making a DC
Safe and Beautiful Order from a few weeks ago. The
Secretary of Defense is instructed to create and begin training, manning, hiring,
and equipping a specialized unit within the District of Columbia
National Guard who will be deputized to enforce federal law.
To quote the order quote, the Secretary of Defense shall
(52:21):
immediately begin ensuring that each state's National Army Guard and
Air National Guard are resource trained, organized an available to
assist federal, state, and local law enforcement in quelling civil
disturbances and in ensuring the public safety and order whenever
the circumstances necessitate, as appropriate under law, in coordination with
respective Adjuncts General, the Secretary Defense shall designate an appropriate
(52:43):
number of each state's trained National Guard members to be
reasonably available for rapid mobilization for such purposes. In addition,
the Secretary of Defense shall ensure the availability of a
standing National Guard Quick Reaction Force that shall be resource
trained and available for rapid nationwide Deployant National Guard walking
streets of DC are now carrying firearms after first being
(53:06):
deployed without their service weapon, and since the operation in
DC began on August seventh, there have now been over
a thousand arrests, including dozens of undocumented immigrants. Currently, the
Pentagon is planning to deploy thousands of National Guard to
Chicago to continue Trump's alleged crime crackdown.
Speaker 8 (53:24):
I would have much more respect for princecour if he'd
call me up and said, I have a problem, can
you help me fix it? I would be so happy
to do it. I don't love not that I don't
have the right to do anything I want to do.
I'm the president of the United States. If I think
our country is in danger, and it is in danger
in these cities, I can do it, no problem going
(53:45):
in and solving you know, his difficulties. But it would
be nice if they'd call and they say, would.
Speaker 3 (53:50):
You do it?
Speaker 1 (53:51):
He's hurt, poor guy. They want to ask him for help.
Speaker 3 (53:56):
His little fewings he's going to have to do. He's
ano have to deploy the National Guard without putschool's approval.
Speaker 5 (54:04):
You know.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
Gang In all of this focus on the people being
killed and persecuted by the government, I don't think any
of us has stopped and spent enough time thinking how
does Donald Trump feel? And shame on us, you know,
shame on us.
Speaker 3 (54:18):
But it's not just Chicago. On Friday, the Pentagon told
Fox News at upwards of seventeen hundred National Guard troops
will be mobilized in nineteen states to be deployed across
the country to assist ice in the nationwide hunt for
undocumented immigrants. The Guard will be activated in states like Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, Nevada,
(54:40):
New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia,
and Wyoming, with effective status ranging from August through mid November,
and operations expected to start in early September. Importantly, as
we saw in DC, national guard from other states might
deploy too states. Specifically, in the case where Trump doesn't
(55:02):
get cooperation from the governor who is in control of
the National Guard of each state, he can deploy national
Guard from somewhere else, like what he did in DC,
pulling national Guard from other Red states being deployed to
d C but mobilized in those Red states. So national
guards from all of these states could be deployed in
a town near you, no matter where you live. And
(55:24):
this operation specifically with these like seventeen hundred National Guard troops,
is specifically to assist ice his plan to do this,
like anti crime deployment in Chicago, is a separate yet
similar plan. It's also pulling from National Guard. But these
things are are two separate operations according to White House officials.
Speaker 4 (55:44):
And I think one of the important things about this
is that, you know, obviously there's the part of this
where it's like, yeah, they want to at the very
least look like they're just occupying cities and they are
arresting huge numbers of people, but they also just don't
have the manpower to do this kind of stuff, which
is why they're pulling the national Guards, why they're trying
(56:06):
to expand the number of people on ice. This is
why they're pulling National Guard out to do this kind
of stuff, which that like, they don't actually have the
repressive capacity to just occupy cities and they're trying to
find the manpower to be able to do it.
Speaker 3 (56:19):
So we will keep an eye out in September for
these possible military deployments around the country. Yep, Hey everyone,
this is Garrison recording a short update on Thursday since
we have a little bit more information about the Minneapolis,
Minnesota school shooting. So right after we recorded, rumors started
(56:40):
circulating that this shooter was linked to neo Nazi satanic
pedophile groups nine A and seven six four. Someone on
Twitter found a neo Nazi forum account that they alleged
belonged to this school shooter. This account used in nine
A symbol and an affiliated Twitter account made other nine
(57:04):
A references. These claims gained a lot of traction from
leftist accounts and armchair experts. On Twitter and Blue Sky,
lots of people were very eager to talk about something
else besides that this shooter was trans and many pinned
the blame on seven sixty four, the child exploitation group
(57:24):
that operates on discord and telegram that Blackmaile's children and
encourages some to commit acts of violence like school shootings.
I talked about seven sixty four on my Nihilist Violent
Extremism episode from earlier this year. As these claims spread online,
I remained skeptical because this shooter did not seem to
(57:46):
really fit the profile of A nine A or seven six'
four grooming. Victim this shooter did not really seem like
an ON ninea. Acolyte they more closely resembled The True
Crime community. Fandom and while Sometimes True Trime community OR
tcc may USE O nina references because other mass shooters
have or because previous mass shooters have been affiliated WITH
(58:09):
nina and related, GROUPS i did not see much evidence
linking this shooter TO o NINE a based on the
videos they posted to. YouTube and while Some Nazi satanist
types have helped facilitate The columbiner OR tcc fandom there
was no solid evidence linking a group like seven to six'
four to this. Latest shooting the shooter was in their.
(58:31):
Mid twenties they weren't a fourteen year old being groomed
into doing a. Mass shooting and Then on, thursday morning
the forum account alleged to Be the minneapolis shooter and
the source of claims calling them A on nina or
sen six four grimmy victim started posting again on. The
forum it wasn't the. Shooter's account the shooter did not fit.
(58:53):
That profile they weren't in A Cult, nazi satanist they
were obsessed with, mass killers and translations of their cerelic
journal have helped to. SUBSTANTIATE this a journal entry discussed
taking pleasure in dressing up as a. School shooter QUOTE
today i assembled a school shooter cause play quote and
in translations of, their journal they made explicit References To
(59:16):
True CRIME, community tcc saying that they might cringe if
they joined AN online, tcc community and it could make
them not want to follow through on doing, an attack
DOING online tcc fandom as mostly full. Of POSERS quote
i think joining a community would alienate my future unquote
(59:36):
AND quote i feel a very small PORTION of tcc
FEELS as I do harbor's admiration of. Intent unquote one
more UPDATE before i closed the episode. Earlier Today, ON
Thursday rfk junior was asked if he would now be
looking into if gender transition drugs. Cause violence he responded
(59:57):
by saying that they were already doing studies looking, into
that and then quickly pivoted to talking about quote launching
studies on the potential contribution of some OF the ssri
drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might
be contributing to. Violence unquote this lines UP With rfk
junior's general focus on, PSYCHIATRIC drugs SSRIs, depression medication as
(01:00:21):
he has. Previously stated that's all for us today On
It Could. Happen here we reported.
Speaker 1 (01:00:28):
The news we reported.
Speaker 10 (01:00:30):
The news 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
(01:00:51):
can now find sources for It could happen here listed
directly in. Episode descriptions thanks. For listening
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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