November 25, 2025 • 64 mins
The gang discuss X’s new account location feature, a Russian peace hoax published by Axios, Border Patrol’s use of license plate readers, the shuttering of the Education Department and DOGE, and Zohran’s White House meeting.
Sources:
https://www.axios.com/2025/11/19/ukraine-peace-plan-trump-russia-witkoff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqZO0VRlp7E
https://x.com/SenMcConnell/status/1992719172292214824?s=20
https://x.com/BarakRavid/status/1990948698508185760
https://www.dhs.gov/publication/dhscbppia-049-cbp-license-plate-reader-technology
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/doge-doesnt-exist-with-eight-months-left-its-charter-2025-11-23/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDanzN1EUeE
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/nyregion/mamdani-osse-dsa-endorsement.html
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
This is it could Happen here Executive Disorder, our weekly
newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world,
and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis today
I'm joined by James Stout and Robert Evans. Yes, this
episode recovering the week of November nineteen to November twenty fourth.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Boy, this year's just blown by yeah fast, yeah, yeah.
They sped up the time stream. You know what else
sped up the time stream watching something on Twitter blow
up again. We can't seem to stop talking about this
fucking website and I'm tired of it. But the big
news this week from Elon Musk's fucking vanity propagana app
(00:45):
is see Everything Happen That they introduced a new feature
to let you know the location of the account and
also the number of like name changes, like how many
username changes it's had since the account has started. I
would say within sort of progressive and liberal circles. The
i'm an interpretation of what's happened is best summarized by
this Daily Beast headline. Top MAGA influencers accidentally unmasked as
(01:07):
foreign trolls, No shit, Now, as is often the case,
this isn't entirely accurate. Not to say that there's not
a shitload of foreign trolls who are making money by
pretending to be American MAGA influencers. There definitely are. We've
known about this since well before this Twitter change. One
of the most prominent people on Musk's Twitter, Ean Miles Chong,
is a Malaysian man who has never been to the
(01:28):
United States and publishes nothing but MAGA content. Now, what's
happened here? You can find going through there's a bunch
of threads. There's threads on Blue Sky, threads on Twitter, threads,
and various articles that are basically all copies of each
other that are collecting a bunch of these accounts that
have been busted, right. One good example would be the
Magination verified account, which has almost four hundred thousand followers.
(01:50):
Started in twenty twenty four, it's had five name changes
since October twenty twenty five, and it is based in
Eastern Europe Non EU.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Yeah that's a nation, yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
A lot of people have taken to mean like it's Russian,
right yeah. Another account is the Ivanka news Trump, which
displays as Ivanka Trump, even though it has nothing to
do with her, which it does note in its Twitter bio.
The account was started in twenty ten, it has had
eleven user changes since August of twenty twenty four, and
it is apparently based in Nigeria.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
You have to see it.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
You're seeing like aload a shitload of stuff like this right,
and it's being taken unfortunately. I think this is a
mistake and I hate to be like the hey, guys,
stop being happy about this, but you should because you're
wrong about what's happening here. Most people are like the
Daily Beast account posts some liberal Twitter account being like
this is total armageddon for the online right. It's looking
(02:42):
like half of their large accounts were foreigners posting as
Americans all along. Now, let me clarify a couple things.
For one thing, nothing that Elon has done here, nothing
that Twitter has revealed has proven that these accounts exist
in any particular country. I'm going to explain why a
lot of people use something called a vp and a
VPN masks the location that you're browsing and logging in from, right,
(03:06):
and you can use a VPN to look like you're
posting from almost any country on the planet, and there
is no evidence whatsoever that Twitter has done anything at
all to deal with this right to like make sure
that they're getting someone's actual location. A bunch of accounts,
a bunch of like people have pointed out like, hey, look,
this is saying I'm from a country that I've literally
never been to, Like here's my information. I'm very transparent.
(03:29):
And there have also been organizations, including liberal you know,
coded organizations, that have been mistakenly identified as coming from
a country that they are not set up. And for example,
the Planned Parenthood account was showing us from Germany, which
is ignited this conspiracy theory on the right that Planned
Parenthood is some European fucking influence op in the United States. No,
(03:49):
they used a VPN because they're in danger because it's
Planned Parenthood, right.
Speaker 5 (03:54):
No.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
I mean I ran into a very similar situation because
I mostly use Twitter to look at yowie now, and
when I was in Germany last month, it wouldn't let
me look at the AWI without putting in my government
ID for like age verification, sure of course, and then
the state hits garrison, so obviously a non starter. I'm
not I'm not, I'm not giving X. The everything app
(04:15):
my government id to allow me to look at Yawi
in Germany. Sure, so instead I had to put on
the VPN so I'm back in the States and then
I can look at the AYAUI. So it's basically the
same situation between me and Planned Parenthood here.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Yes, I've said often that you and Planned Parenthood basically
identical beings. What's happening here is it is worth talking about.
But it's worth talking about not because we suddenly know
the truth that it's been revealed about. We don't really
know anything more than we did before this change came in, right.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Well except Robert, I mean the biggest the biggest news
is that the DHS has been a massad operation this
last time. Yes, that's right, Yes, like we've always suspected.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Yeah, so the the Department of Homeland Security account I
think it was, got listed as having been based in Israel.
This is not real, Like it's not this isn't even
X fucking up. Somebody just edited a screenshot and there's
so many of these going around, hundreds and hundreds of them,
right that this just kind of got shuffled in to
the flood and a lot of people didn't catch it right,
(05:14):
and it just gets integrated into people's beliefs about the world.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
Right.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
This is a standard story with how Twitter works now.
And this is, by the way, is overall I think
beneficial to Musk and his kind of people, which is
that we know less every day about the world. There's
more disinformation about what's happening. People are less keyed in
on reality and more just getting locked into different delusions.
(05:38):
Like That's what the story is here, which is that
this app and the way that social media in general works,
particularly in this age, each of these changes, even the
ones that get celebrated as having revealed something, are just
fogging up reality, and they're doing it in such a
way as to make it so that like no one
knows anything about what's going on. Right, this is like
(06:00):
that this is the standard playbook that you've been getting
out of like authoritarian regimes from forever.
Speaker 6 (06:05):
Right.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
What's important is not that just their propaganda be out.
It's that there's not really any any way for there
to be a consensus reality. Because if there'sn't consensus reality,
then you can't put together a large enough block of
people who all believe basically the same things about reality
to stop what's going on, right, that's what's happening here,
And you're wrong if you're looking at this as good,
(06:27):
if you believe that this has blown up the right
and that this has done damage to them, they're saying
the same things about you and about the left because
a shitload of people use VPNs and you can always
cherry pick a bunch of and I'm not again, none
of that I'm saying is not saying that they're in
a shitload like Elon has specifically incentivized foreign accounts in
different countries to make money by getting into the US
(06:49):
culture war, right, That is absolutely a big part of
how Twitter works today. No one's denying that. What I'm
saying is that you don't know any more than you
did before this came out, because you have no way
of knowing if any of these accounts are based. Where
is saying they're based because of how VPNs work. That's
what I'm saying. Yeah, that's what I've got to say.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
It's incredibly annoying. It's incredibly annoying that we have to
continue writing about eggs everything. The half of half of
Blue Sky is people just virtue signaling that they're not
using Twitter, and I'm being mad at Twitter.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
You know, it's the same.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Honestly, this will get me flat, But it's the same
thing about like whether people are angry about substack or
fucking Instagram or Twitter or whatever. Like, if you're using
social media, you're not doing yourself any favors. And they're
all pretty supportive of bad things and bad people. And
we use them anyway because that's the world. Like we
spend dollars anyway, and let me tell you, dollars support
(07:43):
some bad things. We pay taxes, and boy howdy, I
don't like where a lot of those taxes go.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
Yeah, but don't don't pretend.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
That because you pick the right social media app that
you're not fucking your brain up and introducing yourself to
a bunch of things that aren't true. We all do it,
Like that's the problem.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
Yes, they're not good for humans broadly. Do you want
to talk about something else it's not good for humans?
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Yeah, let's not talk about fucking X the every goddamn thing.
Ye anymore?
Speaker 4 (08:13):
No, Unfortunately, I have I have something Robert which does
relate to X great everything app. So let's talk about Axios.
Oh yeah, are you guys familiar with Axios. It's the
use oatelet for people who hate paragraphs.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
People who love cocaine.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
Yeah yeah, yeah, for people reading the news while they're
having a dump. That is what Axios is for. They
ship out news for you to read while you're having a.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Ship again, which makes cocaine even a bigger part of
the picture here.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
No, it's it's like it's like the ADHD is like
ideal news source.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Yeah yeah, yeah, you do a line, you have to
go take a ship, you catch up on your news.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
Yeah, it's that's what they called productivity. That's that's the
Robert Evans grindset, the morning routine that everyone's been asked.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
It's really it's really genius of fucking Axios to hit
that demographic exactly because those people also have a lot
of money because they're all day traders. True true, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
I have I have polymarket on the Califi on the
other Axios always pulled up.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
That's split screening.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
You have one of those Apple like flat grass glass
touch screen panels. But it's just for doing coke off
of you've just got lines kind off on.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
Yeah, it's because the metaglass is a contact right looping
Axio screen at your Axios and use that left for
people who are taking cocaine. Has seemingly been duped into
running a Russian wish list as a proposed piece plant
in Ukraine. Yeah great, this is what happens when you
(09:51):
do journalism the speed of paranoia. But this has come
at the same time as Trump has proclaimed via truth
the medium of a truth on through social that Ukraine
was not showing suficient gratitude for what we had like
eleven month of him failing to end the war.
Speaker 7 (10:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
So this twenty eight point plan was first published by Axios,
and it was pretty much immediately rejected by a number
of Senators, led by Senator Angus King, who were at
a security conference in Halifax, Halifax, Canada. Not og Halifax,
shout out yeah Halifax Junior. The senators pretty much immediately
(10:32):
said that the US was not the author of the document.
Rubio quote made it very clear to us that we
are recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one
of our representatives, said Senator Mike Grounds. So what they
are saying is that the US didn't write to document
and it was delivered to them. One can safely assume
by Russia. Right, Rubio using X the Everything app then
(10:55):
attempted to deny this. So what it appeared years has
happened is that this plan was drafted by Russian special
envoy dmitriev probably was Steve Witkoff.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Sure that sounds right.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
So Wickkoff is Trump's what is I think he's a
special envoy to Russia at this point.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Yeah, I believe he's an onvoid of Russia. Yeah, Warren
Zevon wrote a song about guys like him.
Speaker 4 (11:19):
Yes, yeah he has. He has not covered himself in
glory in his time doing this. He's kind of a
useful fool. He's formerly like a real estate.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Guy that'll prepare you to deal with Vladimir Putin, having
sold houses during the subprime mortgage crisis.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
Yeah. Yeah, Like it's pretty much what he's doing here, right,
Like he's consistently been duped and pretty much has become
an advocate for the Russian point of view a lot
of the times. In this case, it seems that it
was then strategically leaked to Axios. Right when Barak Ravid,
who authored the Axios article, posted it on Eggs the
(11:59):
Everything web site. Steve Whitcoff responded saying, quote, he must
have got this from K. This is very funny because
we have Steve Witcoff right negotiating a peace process which
affects millions of people, and he also doesn't know how
to use the DM button on X the Everything website.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
To be fair, X the Everything I've just changed their
DMS and the whole the whole user interface for the
DMS is completely different. Now you have to put in
like a pass co and they claim to be encrypted,
and it's much uglier to look at.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
So in defense in defense of Steve, instead you can
instead leak.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
The safer, more secure option might just be to do
it all in public.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
And to do it in public. Yeah, So so Steve
of course using a code name there K will never know. Yeah,
because we can possibly tell that Careal Dimitria my might
be using K as a code name also the first
letter of his first name. So it seems very like
that either Dmitrie of someone else in Russia decided to
(13:02):
leak this plan to Barakraavid or Dave Lawler, knowing it
would be raised at a press conference of belling that Trump, who,
according towards the Post, seems to have very little detailed
knowledges and negotiations. Would probably see this as a quote
unquote deal that then he could claim for himself, right,
and it worked. I want to talk about how Axios's
model makes that possible.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Right.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
I'm very well aware that Barackravid was a member of
the eighty two hundred unit in Israel. If people I'm familiar,
that's like a sigint Israeli intelligence unit. This is widely known.
I've seen this being discussed in sort of relation to this.
The thing is, he doesn't need to be nefarious for
this to happen, and I think the most likely option
(13:48):
here is that the Axios model is to do insider
journalism and then rush to be the first to post
it on social media and then get a bazillion clicks
for your z seventy eight word article. Right. That is
how That is their entire business model.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
It is the name of their whole game.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
Yeah, that's why they don't use paragraphs. It's news for
people who are like waiting for their coffee at Starbucks
or whatever the problem is in this case, states are
or nonstate actors, right, can effectively place a leak and
they know that Axios will rush it to press probably
in minutes, if not ours. And with the way that
the United States executive branches right now, it seems very
(14:29):
clear that that they can get it in front of Trump,
then they're going to get a reaction one way or another.
So it seems that Rubio was effectively cut out, that
the United States Secretary of State was effectively cut out
of this whole process. And there's a lot of reporting about,
like I don't want to do kremlinology for the Trump
White House particularly, but it shows how these news outlets,
(14:53):
these news outlets are sort of don't fact check that
rush to press, to do everything for social media can
effectively be used right in a way that the benefits
in this case Russia, but any number of organizations could
do the same thing.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Robert mentioned some kind of like Wartimes warn that some
kind of Wartimes song, And I was wondering, where is
the country of Zevon? You said, there's like a song
about Warren Zevon.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
Jesus Garrison, Garrison, get out of you hears about discrimination
in the workplace. Ah, I'm going to do a Woody
Guthrie thing in my next series. And Gary is just
going to sail straight past Garrison. You listen to Johnny
Cash Garrison, I liked.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
I like Johnny Cash.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Okay, James Cash.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
That's what they call me. Here's the ads.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
And we're.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
New Doge news for the first time in who knows
how the news being. There's no more Doge. According to
a report in Reuter's, DOGE has disbended eight months before
its scheduled expiration in July of twenty twenty seven. When
asked about the status of Doge earlier this month, Office
(16:16):
of Personal Management director Scott Poor told Reuters quote that
doesn't exist, adding that DOGE is no longer a quote
unquote centralized entity. Yeah. Boro has also said that the
DOGE mandated hiring freeze is over and that there's quote
no target around reductions unquote, meaning that the DOGE era
(16:41):
rule of having to fire a certain number of people
in order to be allowed to hire people is no
longer in use as well. And this isn't really surprising.
You have not really heard about many DOGE related stuff
in a while.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
They haven't been doing anything in a while. Musk has
basically been out of the center loop of things. But
also they did the things that they were needed to do, right.
They did up massacred large portions of government employees. Yeah,
did permanent damage to the administrative state and cost several
hundred thousand people around the world their lives through cuts
in USA.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Yeah, And like two former DOGE employees, including big Balls,
now just work on web design for US government websites,
and other DOG officials have moved to agencies which they
administered cuts to. A former DOGE team member, Zachary Terrell
is now the chief technology officer at the Department of
Health and Human Services, And Jeremy Lewin, who assisted the
(17:37):
slashing of you say it, now oversees foreign assistants at
the State Department.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
So those guys got jobs out of this. All of
the people who got fired or got natively impacted by
the government shutdown are probably not going to be coming
out as well as mister big Balls here.
Speaker 7 (17:55):
Well.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
And there's some evidence that a number of folks who
worked with DOGE are now feeling left in the wind
and potentially in danger because there are a lot of
people who want these folks to be prosecuted for what
they did. Yeah, there's definitely talk about that. If there's
another democratic administration, we'll see if they would ever have
the big balls to do it. But there was an
article in Politico recently and I'm going to read a
(18:17):
quote from that Musk had not just been their visionary
leader for them, he was their protector, the man who
had an elect direct line to Trump, who they believed
could pick up the phone and secure a presidential pardon
if the worst came. Without his presence in Washington, they
were suddenly exposed. A senior DOSE figure named Donald Park
tried to reassure his colleagues that they were still brothers
in arms and that Musk would continue to protect them.
That led to another protesting and advising, guys, seriously, get
(18:40):
your own lawyer if you needed. He LUNs great, but
you need to watch your own back. Watch your backs, guys.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
Yeah, these guys would be some of the more like
presumably very easy to prosecute and like obvious targets. Yes,
another democratic administration's.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Some really obvious crimes in terms of like protect action
of information, you know, like some some pretty obvious rule
breaking that went on that's not being prosecuted now, but yeah,
they're right, it could be prosecuted in the future.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Those like first three four months of the Trump admin.
Ye what it really was just full steam ahead on
the Silicon Valley version of things, right, like the move
fast and brave things. Yeah, that's such a wild time
to look back on, not only just in terms of
how much damage they did, but the idea that if
they were going to continue at that pace for the
rest of the term. The government already is fundamentally different
in some ways, but like how much worse that would
(19:31):
have been? Yeah, Yeah, and if Musk's ego is in
part what's sabotaged that from being complete and really kind
of doing that more like Jarvin inspired project. Yeah, Hubris
uh kills kills a man once again. But there is
aspects of like the doge idea and this government efficiency
thing which aren't fully going away like this, this still
(19:52):
is an aspect of the Trump administration. There still is
like some of those guys at the Auspice of Budget
and Management and the Hair twenty twenty five guys who
have a lot of this government efficiency quote unquote government
efficiency type stuff that they're still working on, including at
the Education Department, which last week the Trump administration took
another step towards closing the Department of Education by shifting
(20:16):
some of its duties to other federal agencies, which the
Admin claims will quote streamline federal education activities on the
legally required programs, and reduce administrative burden unquote. That is
going to be done by these six new interagency agreements
which have been signed with the Departments of Labor, Interior,
(20:39):
Health and Human Services, and State. The Education Department writing
in an announcement that this will quote break up the
federal bureaucracy, ensure efficient delivery of funded programs activities, and
move closer to fulfilling the President's promise to return education
to the States. So by splitting up Education Department duties
(20:59):
among the four different agencies in three different interagency agreements,
this is supposed to cut red tape and lighten central bureaucracy.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
You have seven entities now what one entity did before.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
The elementary, high school, and post secondary programs will now
be administered by the Department of Labor.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
That's great.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
We'll now overseee over thirty billion dollars in education grants
aimed at trying to boost the number of Americans in
the workforce. The Department of the Interior will be taking
over the education departments to Indian education programs and integrating
them into existing programs administered by the Department of the Interior,
with quote unquote proper oversight by the Education Department. College
(21:43):
childcare programs, and foreign medical school accreditation will be administered
and overseen by the Health and Human Services, and the
State Department will now oversee all foreign education programs, handle
international education grants, and fully administer the full Bright program.
Justification for this State Department takeover of these funds specifically
(22:04):
cited five instances of grants that were used to fund
academic and medical research on trans people, writing that these
programs have deviated from the core mission on The announcement
from the Education Departments reads that the State Department is
quote best positioned to tailor foreign education programs with the
national security and foreign policy priorities of the United States.
(22:27):
This partnership provides an opportunity to streamline international education program
funding and data collection measures, consolidate program management, and advance
national security interests.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
That's not good.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Yeah, that doesn't seem great. Huh.
Speaker 8 (22:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
This last part is particularly concerning that the US previously
has done a lot of funding of education programs around
the world, and to see that pretty much I like
with this current vasion of the State Department either disappear
or become even more up propaganda. Like it's really worrying.
This kind of builds on that dose stuff that you
(23:06):
were talking about. This is the end of the State
Department doing anything other than the propaganda and I guess
warmaking well.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
And specifically, like Rubio's focus on education has been to
crack down on academics palestatiing academics, academics who have who
have protest in support of Palestine. That's specifically what Rubio
has talked about in terms of you know, universities. Yeah,
so with all the stuff in that statement about you know,
(23:36):
national security and foreign policy priorities, it's not hard to
see what they could be gesturing towards. Yeah, as the
announcements are currently written, a lot of the programs itself,
at least in the trench transitionary period, remain kind of
the same. They're shifting who is like quote unquote administering them.
That's the word they use a lot. But they're not
(23:59):
cutting funds to these programs at the moment, and they
do talk about them as like legally required programs. But
I mean Carolyn Levitt and Linda McMahon have said, this
is just one step towards well fully sending education back
to the States.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Woh.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
This also was sort of like in massive disparities in
educational outcomes state by state in the United States, right, Like,
we already have that to some extent, but that's only
going to be exacerbated by this. Right talking about things
happening between the states, let's talk about Gregory Buffino, person
(24:37):
who supposedly patrols the borders of the United States but
has more recently been doing internal enforcement for the Border Patrol.
He gave an interview to AP recently that I was
just reading. They did confirm interestingly that like a few
weeks ago, maybe months ago, we've been talking about Bevino
and like trying to work out if he was still
chief Patrol agent in El Centro. It appears that he is.
(24:58):
But he's also reminder of this operation at large, which
is their sort of the thing that has moved from
Los Angeles to Chicago, which is now in Charlotte. Right,
this sort of internal enforcement operation. He calls his team
and now quote unquote sanctuary busters, and he said that
quote there will be no more sanctuaries, which kind of
(25:20):
does build on what I spoke about in our last
ed right when we spoke about the idea that the
reason they had targeted Charlotte was because it appeared on
that CIS map quote unquote sanctuary city or sanctuary jurisdiction,
despite the passage of legislation in the state which would
have prevented it doing the things that the sanctuaries do.
I just want to talk about this ABC investigation into
(25:42):
CBP's use of licensed plate readers. CBPS has had these
for like eight or nine years now. I found the
twenty seventeen piece they wrote out their justification for using them. Right,
Their use has grown immensely right in a yeah, and
it has grown under both of meministrations we've I suppose
Trump administration from twenty twenty by the administration twenty twenty,
(26:05):
twenty eighty four. We spoke actually in an episode that
I think it was just Robert and I in that
episode when we spoke about Gavin Newsom. People love that
episode and they send me great feedback, because guys, it's
important that we all know that the only person standing
up against Trump right now is Gavin Newsom. Everything else
is pointless. But in that episode, we spoke about how
(26:27):
many California jurisdictions share license plate reader information with federal
immigration authorities, even when California law prohibits them from doing so. Right,
this is kind of one of those these things they
were it's a ratchet, right. Once you give that power
to the state, it belongs to all of the state,
and you can never take it back. Automated license to
(26:49):
plate readers have been a big thing in this kind
of the post twenty twenty tendency of democratic mayors in
big cities to massively increase spending on the police and
massively increase police surveillance. We have automated cameras on our
lampposts here in San Diego now right, California has prosecuted
(27:10):
one jurisdiction that I'm aware of, which is Alcoholone. People
will be familiar with alcoholne from Alcoholone. Mayor Bill Well's
attempt to make a country music song about how schools
are turning kids trans that is un ironically probably the
most national use it that ALCOHOLA has made for a while.
(27:32):
But bundahursued Alcoholone for showing that data. My guess is
that that is because it's alcoholone, right, Because alcohol is
a city where the mayor makes a country music song
about how schools are turning children trans like it's very
obviously like a partisan prosecution. There are many other jurisdictions
doing this. What Border Patrol does with these cameras is
(27:53):
it targets quote unquote suspicious activities and then it requests stops.
Sometimes this stops an made by Border Patrol, but are
made by local police right on the pretext of something
like speeding or failing to signal before you change lanes,
having a break light out could be many, many things, right.
The ABC piece quoted Deputy Joel bab Of saying, quote,
(28:17):
the beautiful thing about the Texas traffic code is there
thousands of things you can stop a vehicle for. The
idea here is not to explicitly talk about the license
plate readers, right, And the fact that they are using
these to do predictive surveillance is what they call it. Right,
They're trying to highlight like suspicious patterns of vehicle motion
(28:38):
and stop people. The piece has some they obtained through
public records requests from a court case a whatchapp group
chat between Border Patrol and Texas officers, which the opposite
shared movement, social media profiles, car rentals, and home addresses
of people who they were interested in surveilling. Right, and
it reveals a massive level of surveillance. You know, if
(29:01):
you if you're thinking of border patrol and you're still
under the impression that in America, the border can't come
to you wherever you are, this is another example of
why that's not true. Right, DHS uses these all over
the country to include outside of one hundred mile border
enforcement zone. Right, this piece seems to believe that the
board one hundred mile zone is it's like a legal
hard line. It's not. It's an interpretation of a quote
(29:25):
unquote reasonable distance. There is no hard line stopping BP
for operating further from the border than that. That is
just generally where the interpretation of a reasonable distance from
the border is perceived to fall. Border patrol has these
cameras at fixed points, so like that would be border
patrol crossings. You know, when you enter or enter the
enter or leave the country at a port of entry
(29:47):
and then at checkpoints. Right, people will be familiar with
checkpoints that live in a border area. And then they
also have these in mobile and covert capacities. Right, and
they're using them to find people who might be driving
near the border or staying and and then leaving at
a strange time, and then they're building a profile of
those people's movements and using that request stops. Right. It's
(30:07):
a level of surveillance that I think should be worrying
to many people.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
And they have access to these like larger integrated camera
networks like by Flock Safety, which I've talked about before,
including I think yesterday's episode, as Flock is like an
Atlanta based company that rose to prominence through their surveillance
around the forest where Copsity was being constructed. Now Flock
is all over the country, and Border Patrol has access
(30:32):
to the Flock system. Yeah, and it's used for a
whole bunch of other really dubious stuff, including in Texas.
I think four h four Media did a report not
too long ago about Texas sheriffs tracking a pregnant woman
getting an abortion not in Texas.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
Right, Yeah, yeah, I can see. Yeah, Texas law makes
it a crime to leave the state in order to
get an abortion or something, right, and so that would
be the I guess their excuse here, But like I
think we can all see that that's a pretty pretty
disgusting use of the surveilance state. Yeah, these things grew
massively in the time period between twenty twenty and today,
(31:09):
and it was not just in Republican jurisdictions. Right, there's
this like unabated support for state surveillance that we saw
all over the United States is now being turned against
migrants and anybody who is suspected of helping them, which
is not great. Talking of not great, we have an
obligation to pivot to add I'm happy.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
I think that's great. I love I love having a job.
Speaker 4 (31:36):
I enjoyed to consume products and services.
Speaker 6 (31:38):
That's right, and we're back.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
How's everybody doing good?
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Yeah? Banging, pretty good, pretty good. I just finished my
Asahi smoothie from the Hair Heritage Social twenty twenty four cup,
so I feel great.
Speaker 6 (32:04):
That's great.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
Yeah, that's good for you.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Garrison really coming together, you know, politics from different sides
coming together to enjoy a smoothie. Not unlike the meeting
between Zora Mum, Donnie and Donald Trump.
Speaker 4 (32:15):
Oh my god, Oh how long did you plan that for?
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Garrishon? Like literally five seconds? It just it just came out.
Speaker 4 (32:22):
We don't do smooth transitions here like that.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Well, you know sometimes do you know who was smooth?
It was Zoramum Donnie during that meeting, which bit like
a duck's back, like a like a seal.
Speaker 4 (32:34):
That kind of smoothness is.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Trump seemed pretty pretty enamored. Mister mum Donnie mayor elect
Mom Donnie. Quote, we have one thing in common. We
want this city of ours to do very well unquote.
So this was on Friday, Trump and Mum Donnie had
a private meeting in the White House. Afterwards a thirty
(32:55):
minute press conference in the Oval Office where Trump was
sitting down and soa was kind of looming over the
side of Trump the whole time, never fully smiling, always
having a little bit of like a a tiny like
both sided smirk, but not doing his traditional happy smile.
He had a very different look in the White House.
(33:16):
But as soon as the press conference started, it was
clear that the meeting went very well for Momdannie. Trump
was exuberant about the man.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
Yeah, he seemed really excited. Yeah, it's a little weird,
but he seemed really excited.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
He stated that they have common ground on getting housing built,
on affordability, on food and prices coming down saying, quote,
there's no difference in party, and we're going to be
helping him to make everybody's dream come true unquote.
Speaker 4 (33:43):
Everybody's stream doctory amazing.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Yeah, First, I want to play Zoron's initial statement as
the press conference started on what they spoke about during
this meeting.
Speaker 7 (33:55):
I appreciated the meeting with the President, and as he said,
it was a productive meeting forocused on the place of
shared admiration and love, which is New York City, and
the need to deliver affordability to New Yorkers, the eight
and a half million people who call our city their home,
who are struggling to afford life in the most expensive
city in the.
Speaker 8 (34:13):
United States of America.
Speaker 7 (34:14):
We spoke about we spoke about groceries, we spoke about utilities,
we spoke about the different ways in which people are
being pushed out. And I appreciated the time with the President.
I appreciated the conversation. I look forward to working together
to deliver that affordability for the orders.
Speaker 4 (34:28):
It's one of the posture people with the green line.
The green line.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Yeah, no, I've seen yeah, that going on a couple
of times.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
They've already they've had that way with it.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
They've been on it.
Speaker 3 (34:37):
Yeah, yeah, okay, it does seem tense. The vibes in
that room must have been very, very weird.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
N Yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah, no, Zorn's very tense. Trump's
trying to relax. Like bad late.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
Face that you've posted on gas he is, I can.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Only it's like a shit eating grin on Trump's face. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
like he does seem genuinely half thrilled. Yeah, it's weird.
Speaker 4 (35:02):
He likes to be associated with winners.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
This is one of the big things, right A lot
of I mean, we'll talk about this more and that
takes okay at this, but but yeah, I think it's
very clear why Trump's actually having a good time here.
Zoron's like the most popular politician in the country right now,
and Trump likes winners. And if anything, Zoron has proven
to be an underdog that has an enormous capacity for winning,
(35:25):
and I think Trump does like that, and that, coupled
with a genuine love for New York, I think Zoron
was able to navigate around Trump pretty successfully. When asked
about Zoron being a communist, Trump said, quote, I feel
very confident he can do a good job I think
it's going to surprise some conservative people actually unquote, and.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
You should add what he said about liberal people because
I thought that was his funniest line.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Oh then also liberal people, but they already like him
too or something.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
Yeah, I don't think they'll be surprised, they'll just be yeah, yes,
they like him because they already like him. It was
very funny. It was very funny.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Trump's talked about how a lot of Trump voters actually
voted for Zoron as well, saying quote unquote, I'm okay
with that, And so I mentioned that, yes, one in
ten Trump voters in New York voted for Zoron, and
zor mentioned the end to forever wars and the cost
living crisis as the driving motivators that voters spoke about
(36:21):
as he was campaigning. Throughout this press conference, and we
can assume some degree of the meeting, Zoron was very
laser focused on New York specifically, And you've even seen
this in interviews that he's given to like NBC and
other outlets the past few days, where people are asking
him about, you know, the Democratic Party as a whole
and national level, and Zoron repeatedly just goes back to
affordability in New York. This is like the one thing
(36:43):
that he's going to keep talking about. He doesn't want
to talk about any anything else, really, And this was
evident throughout this meeting, the way that Zorn would would
reiterate every question to being about New York. But they
didn't shy away from talking about the things they disagreed
on on, like an ideaological sense, ICE being one of them.
Here's one of their exchanges about ICE.
Speaker 5 (37:05):
Resident, you've threatened to send federal troops to New York City.
You both have differences when it comes to ICE agents
in New York City. Mister Mundanie, you've called ICE a
rogue government entity. I wonder how you reconcile your differences
on both of those issues.
Speaker 8 (37:20):
I think you're going to work them out.
Speaker 9 (37:21):
And I think that if we have known murderers and
known drug dealers and some very bad people, you know,
we want to get them out, and the mayor ones
have we discussed there is a great length actually, maybe
more than anything else, he wants to have a safe
New York. Ultimately, a safe New York is going to
be a great New York. If it's not safe, no.
Speaker 8 (37:42):
Matter how well we do with pricing and with anything else.
We can talk about anything you want.
Speaker 9 (37:47):
If you don't have safe streets, it's not going to
be a success.
Speaker 8 (37:51):
So we're going to work together.
Speaker 9 (37:52):
We're going to make sure that if they're horrible people,
we want to get him out. I think he wants
to get him out, maybe more than I do, so
we'll work together.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
They talked about ICE at one later point in the meeting,
where you get kind of a peak at what some
of this conversation may have been like behind the scenes,
about trying to target any ICE enforcement against people who
have criminal records rather than these roving raids that round
up but just swaths of undocumented people like the Canal
(38:22):
Street raid a few weeks ago. It's still not super
clear what they are talking about, but there's not compromise
in this point. Like Trump's obviously going to try to
frame this in a way that strengthens Trump's own positions
on this, and I think Zoron will do the same.
Before we discuss I don't want to play this the
second bit of their discussion, because you get more of
(38:44):
Zoron's angle.
Speaker 7 (38:46):
We discussed ICE and New York City, and I spoke
about how the laws that we have in New York
City allow for New York City government to speak to
the federal administration for about one hundred and seventy serious crimes,
the concerns that many New Yorkers have around the enforcement
of immigration laws on New Yorkers across the Five boroughs,
and most recently, we're talking about a mother and her
(39:08):
two children. How this has very little to do with
what that is.
Speaker 8 (39:13):
Is we discuss crime more than ice per se.
Speaker 9 (39:16):
We discuss crime, and he doesn't want to see crime,
and I don't want to see crime, and I have
very little doubt that we're not going to get along
on that issue. He wants to and he said some
things that were very interesting, very interesting as to housing construction,
and he wants to see houses go up. He wants
to see a lot of houses created, a lot of
apartments built, et cetera. And you know, we actually people
(39:40):
would be shocked. But I want to see the same thing.
Speaker 8 (39:43):
See that.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
Yeah, that worries me a little bit.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
What about that worries you?
Speaker 4 (39:47):
I can tell what Trump's.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
Trying to do, which is that he really would like
to get Mom Donnie on his side and he's interestingly
for Trump, I think he is willing to move on
some things if he can fundamentally get Mom Donnie who
agree that ice has a use. Yeah, right, Like that's
what he's clearly trying to do, and he's clearly trying
to portray it as we've already agreed on that. And
(40:09):
I think that within the context of this meeting, because
of how the questions were being asked, I don't think
Zorn got enough of a chance to fully address that question.
So I'll leave it open to see how that is,
like like how he deals with that in the future,
But I don't think he got enough of an opportunity
to push back enough on some of the things Trump
was claiming here. That does concern me a little bit,
(40:32):
Like I think it's more a factor of how an
Oval Office press conference is structured. But I do think
that it's like I can see what Trump's trying to
do well.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
I think what Mum Donnie is trying to navigate for
is if he can put an end to roving ice
rates that just like that just round up people at
whether they're at restaurants or from depots, and if there's
people who are who have been incarcerated who are incarcerated,
and if removal operations are specifically against except like what
(41:06):
one hundred and seventy like serious crimes, and if that
is a sort of compromise, I guess I don't know,
Like he's not an office. Yes, it's it's unclear the
way that this would this would be enacted. Yeah, but
if it's an harm reduction measure of stopping ICE raids
from happening or limiting the amount that ICE is able
to operate as as basically a rodenty within the city,
(41:30):
And I don't think we know enough to like actually
see what that will look like yet, because he's not
taking office for another what like forty five days.
Speaker 4 (41:38):
Yeah, Yeah, what he's talking about when Trump goes about crime,
crime is what they have always talked about, right, right,
When when they talk about the ICE enforcement, the crimes
that they are speaking about, very right, they will always
give the example of the person who's been convicted of
child abuse, of murder, of domestic violence. Right, But then
(41:58):
they will also go ahead and say the crossing between
ports of entry can be prosecuted as a crime, and
then they will use that as a justification for taking
anyone right and specifically people who have entered within the
last two years, many of whom were shipped to New
York from other states, and saying, well, these people entered
between ports of entry, which they did after the end
of Title forty two, right when we returned to processing
(42:20):
people under Title eight. And they will place him in
actibility to remove all proceedings like that, that is what
they have been doing for a while. When he talks
about the sanctuary policies, New York right now doesn't honor
detainer requests right in theory, sanctuary laws prevent and y see,
from what I understand, from honoring detainer requests, which would
(42:42):
be an extra forty eight hour detainer. We haven't, like,
as Robber said, we haven't really seen enough to see
see what he's talking about there. But like, I don't
know if he's talking about a change to those sanctuary
policies or not. But yeah, like that that would be
disappointing if you did.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
I obviously there's any indication that he's talking about a
change to sanctuary policy.
Speaker 4 (43:00):
Well, when he's talking about we can cull them on
one hundred and seventy serious crimes, right, what does he need?
Speaker 3 (43:07):
Yeah? And I think This gets back to the fact
that a press conference in the Oval Office is not
going to give you a chance to adequately address an
issue like this, and I see Trump trying to paper
over it and move past as quickly as possible. Yeah,
and I understand why you'd show up for this meeting,
and I think it was probably, on the balance, the
right thing to do. But like, I am interested to
(43:30):
see what he does next, because I think Trump is
going to continue trying to push for accommodations. And it
is kind of it is wild and unique to see
that he seems to be willing to move on some stuff.
But he's willing to move on some stuff because he
thinks he can get Mom Donnie to soften some of
his stances.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
I mean stances on what I mean. I mean, I
don't on ice.
Speaker 3 (43:51):
I mean, that's what he's trying to do here. He's
trying to build a case for that.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
I mean, I guess I don't know the degree to
which we're using.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
Saying that this is a rogue government agency to saying
that this is a government agent. That's what Trump is
trying to push for. Yeah, I'm not saying Mom Donnie
agreed with that. I think that the nature of this
meeting did not give him enough time to push back
on that.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
Sure, sure you have Mum Donnie pointing there towards like
an instance of like, you know, a mother and like
a child getting affected by this and like and using
it as an example of like what they are trying
to prevent and like focusing on like the stopping ice
rates from happening, as as like the thing that Mam
(44:35):
Donnie is pushing for there and Mam Donnie as New
York City mayor cannot abolish the entity of ice, and
so like the degree in which we're framed that as
like Mom Donnie's like softening, I think still, I mean yeah, like,
as you've said, there's not enough here to make a
full determination.
Speaker 4 (44:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:52):
I just think that's that's what Trump wants to get
out of this.
Speaker 4 (44:55):
I think trumple just wants to be associated with this
guy who is currently, as Garrison said, very popular.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
And it is really wild to see him be so
deferential to somebody.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean including in this this this
question about Trump being a fascist, which he handled in
a very uh, very fascinating way.
Speaker 3 (45:14):
This is nuts.
Speaker 4 (45:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
Are you affirming that you think President Trump is a fascist.
Speaker 7 (45:20):
I've spoken about.
Speaker 8 (45:21):
Okay, okay, it's easier.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
It's easier than explaining it, or did say yes during
that exchange he did? He did not, He in fact did.
Speaker 3 (45:35):
Yeah, he absolutely did. It's one of the most remarkable
moments in American political history. Yeah, if I had any
stretch of the imagination.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
As Trump pats on the side, and I mean, it's
it's it's wild for Trump. This word doesn't mean anything
right for for Trump, like him saying it's easier than
explaining that's just indicating to zort On that you don't
have to do this like little like political game for
this reporter and be like, you know, we have we
have just we've disagreed on policies, which blah blah blah.
Like Trump's like, no, you don't have to do that.
(46:04):
It's easier and explaining just say it yeah yeah, which
is a sort of like a point like against like
the media. That's from Trump's point of view, it's like
you don't have to do you don't have to do
like the little dance for like this like New York
Post reporter or whatever. Just say that I'm a fascist.
It's fine.
Speaker 4 (46:20):
Yeah, And because politics is for him a sort of
behind closed doors boys club. And they, yes, they both
have to go out and then deal with the media.
But like you can sort of see that in this
sort of highly viviality that Trump goes for there. I'm
not saying that ma'm Damie is less necessarily in his
boys club. I'm just saying that that that is how
Trump perceives politics.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
Yeah, I mean he made other references like when when
Trump was asked if he considers or on a g hottist,
like someone else in the Republican Party called him, and
Trump's like, no, I mean, the man's sitting in front
of me is not a the hottest. People have to
say certain things during campaigns, but the man I met
was today. It's a very rational man. And like little
lines like that, like people, Yeah, when you're paining, you
(47:00):
have to say things that I think that he's getting
at a similar point there. But there was multipoints for
this press conference where Trump defended Mamdani against like other
aggressive questions about his focus on international law versus the Constitution,
or why Zoron flew to DC instead of taking a
greener train. Yeah, silly, silly stuff. And Trump was like
(47:21):
Trump like dismissed these questions if like for Zar, essentially,
I mean like, I'll stand up for you.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
Yeah, it's it's something else.
Speaker 4 (47:28):
There are more salient criticisms, and there were reasonable criticisms
you can make of some stuff he's done. Those are
the event.
Speaker 3 (47:35):
Yeah, it's just gotcha media stuff, right, like which which
it's interesting how well Trump is able to call sort
of their bullshit. Yeah, always fascinating.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
One of the more hilarious attempts at a gotcha question
is from Jack Pasovic, who was in the room, who asked.
Speaker 4 (47:54):
This, God, he must have been having an absolute melt down.
Speaker 3 (47:59):
Yeah, he can't be happy about this, okay.
Speaker 8 (48:03):
I wanted to know.
Speaker 10 (48:03):
One of the policies as well that Mayor, like Madomie
talked to a number of times about on the campaign,
was shifting the tax burden for property taxes from what
he called minority communities to white based communities.
Speaker 8 (48:18):
And putting more taxes on white people.
Speaker 10 (48:20):
I also noticed that in your acceptance speech you didn't
mention didn't mention anything.
Speaker 9 (48:25):
About America or Christians or white.
Speaker 10 (48:27):
People in general, and so I didn't know if that
was one of the policies that you guys had spoken
about incredible.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Yeah, and Trump's like smiling, like like a proud of
father this whole time. Ass like weird question. It's such
an odds like schizophrenic moment. It's it's weird.
Speaker 3 (48:47):
How much more he seems to like Zoran than like
his supporters.
Speaker 2 (48:51):
Oh yeah, I mean a lot of his supporters are
losers and Zoron's a winner.
Speaker 4 (48:55):
From his cabinet members, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
Because they're losers like Pete Haig, saith Elon Musk, they're losing.
Speaker 3 (49:00):
Yeah, they're all dweebs.
Speaker 4 (49:00):
I think JD. Van's right.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
Yeah, Zorn's has proved himself to be like an incredibly
capable figure. There's a little moment as Jack's first asking
the question where Trump indicates to Zora, like, Okay, you
you handle this guy. You can have fun with this. Yeah,
and it's it's it's very odd and not odd and
it's unexplainable. I understand what's happening here. Actually I think
this is actually very easy to understand. But it's just
(49:24):
still it feels odd.
Speaker 4 (49:26):
Yeah, yeah, and just give him the adversarial politics were
so used to.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
Like there's a lot of moments like this, like when
when Trump's asked if he's gonna cut off federal funding
to New York. He says, quote, I don't think that's
going to happen. I think we're gonna help. And this
is like an indication of like what Zora was trying
to do in terms of harm reduction in this meeting,
specifically around raids on National Guard deployment and on like
cutting off federal funds to the city. One of the
(49:52):
methods I think that Zoran used to help get Trump
on his side is an appeal to like the real
estate brain that Trump has with mom Donnie's like left
wing yimby style of policies, talking about rent coming down
by building housing and how much that surprised Trump because
Trump has this conception of people, like of people usually
(50:12):
on these like left wing positions are very very nimby
in a lot of ways, and Trump was like surprised
by this. I guess he hasn't really encountered like a
left wing yimby before. And it's like it's like this
like caught him off guard. Yeah, there's a good point
here where Trump expresses this.
Speaker 8 (50:29):
Now we may disagree how we get there.
Speaker 9 (50:31):
The rent coming down, I think one of the things
that really gleaned very very much. Today, he'd like to
see him come down, ideally by building a lot of
additional housing here.
Speaker 8 (50:42):
That's the ultimate way. He agrees with that, and so
do I. But if I read the newspapers, in the stories,
I don't hear I don't hear that.
Speaker 9 (50:50):
But I heard him say it today, and I think
that's a very positive step. No, I don't expect. I
expect to be helping him, not hurting him. A big
help because I want New York City to be great. Look,
I love New York City. It's where I come from.
I spent a lot of years there. Now I'm right.
Speaker 4 (51:07):
Here, am ray Okay.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
And later Trump clarified that he would feel comfortable living
in New York under Mam Donnie and compared Mam Donnie's
popularity to that of Bernie Sanders, as well as how
supporters of Bernie moved over to Trump and then vice versa.
And through Trump talking about this, you can start to
kind of peak behind the current of like how Zorn
was framing his version of populism, which was able to
(51:33):
get Trump to be like friendly towards like the economic
affordability sides of his policy proposals in talking about like
the crossover of support between Bernie and Trump and twenty
sixteen and the crossover support between Trump twenty four and
ma'm donnie in twenty twenty five. At one point, Mam
Donnie did also address the genocide in Gaza.
Speaker 11 (51:53):
Ask mister mamm donnie, you've accused the US government of
committing genocide and Gaza. Why President Trump was working on peace?
Speaker 7 (52:01):
Why that I've spoken about the Israeli government committing genocide,
and I've spoken about our government funding it. And I
shared with the President in our meeting about the concern
that many New Yorkers have of wanting their tax dollars
to go towards the benefit of New Yorkers and their
ability to afford basic dignity. And what we see right
now is we're in the ninth consecutive year of more
(52:21):
than one hundred thousand school children being homeless in our city,
and there's a desperate need not only for the following
of human rights, but also the following through on the
promises we've made New Yorkers. And I appreciated the meeting
we had and the work that we can do.
Speaker 11 (52:33):
I agree that President Trump didn't do a piece and
work hard to make the peace, because we were hard
to do with the peace in the Midate East and everywhere.
What do you agree with that?
Speaker 7 (52:42):
I appreciate all efforts towards peace, and I shared with
President Trump that when I spoke to Trump voters on
Hillside Avenue, including one of whom was a pharmacist, that
spoke about how President Trump's father actually went to that
pharmacy not too far from Jamaica, states that people were
tired of seeing our tax dollars fund endless wars. And
I also believe that we have to follow through on
the international human rights and I know that still today
(53:03):
those are being violated and that continues to be work
that has to be done no matter where we're speaking of.
Speaker 3 (53:08):
Man, that's I I that's so complicated, so conflicting.
Speaker 4 (53:13):
That's a lot going on.
Speaker 3 (53:14):
On one hand, it's really good that somebody on record
said in the White House that the US is enabling
Israel and continuing the genocide. I'm glad that that happened. Yeah,
On the other hand, the fact that it's off roaded
so quickly to now let's talk about like what we
want to do for New Yorkers and it is like, yeah,
(53:35):
it's not I don't know, it's it's the only way
this was going to happen at all. I suppose it's
the mar It's very no, I agree, I agree, but
it's tonally awkward, like it's yeah, it's it's totally a
little lot, especially when the topic is genocide, right, like
the vault from genocide to housing affordability and understand that
(53:56):
both the serious issues, it's still a tonal shift that
is jarring. And like, yes, it's absolutely fair to say
he's the mayor of New York. He has no ability
to influence US policy in terms of selling arms to Israel,
and the fact that he brought it up at all
is positive. But boy, is that is that a wild
minit or so of talking.
Speaker 2 (54:16):
I think the reason why he brought it up is
to talk about specifically, like funds that we are sending
to Israel should not be sent to Israel now, those
funds that should be being used in the United States
to do things to help people here. And that is
why he brought that up as a seg well.
Speaker 3 (54:34):
And reiterating that Trump supporters often agree with the idea
that we should not be spending this much money on this,
sending weapons over the world to fund wars overseas. It'll
be interesting to see if shit continues with Venezuela, how
that all moves. But I think it's valuable to like
really slam that home in the White House that like, hey,
(54:57):
you ran on getting the US out of these kind
of violent entanglements overseas. Yeah, I'm glad someone said it.
I guess, Yeah, it's just weird. This is all a
very weird meeting.
Speaker 4 (55:09):
Yeah, yeah, the whole thing was jarring. I guess.
Speaker 2 (55:11):
There was another point there where he was talking about
like like local local New York businesses and a Trump's
father like went to this pharmacy, And I think stuff
like that is tactics that he used to get Trump
to be friendly with him as well. As Trump later
spoke about how in one of the rooms that they
were meeting, and there was a portrait of FDR which
Trump had personally like picked out of the storage faults
(55:32):
to hang, and like Orn asked him about the portrait
and asked if he could get a picture with it,
and this seemed to please Trump a lot. Tr Trump
wasn'thing able to talk about how he picked up the picture,
and then Trump said a few really interesting things. He's like,
I guess it's a big fan of FDR and the
New Deal, which is phenomenal maneuvering from Zora classic technique
(55:55):
to get like democratic socialist politics across to someone. Again,
there's moments like that stuff with stuff of how we
talked about like Bernie some some you know, the you know,
regular populist rhetoric, talking about the crossover between you know,
voters from between Trump and mamdannie, just his general love
of New York and FDR New Deal. You can see
all these things that were used to like navigate through
(56:17):
this meeting to get to get Trump to actually seed
ground on a lot of stuff with I think very
very minimal concessions, if any if any real concessions even
from Zor like at all. Like I think in general,
Trump was the one that moved rhetorically throughout this meeting
and moved on like actual like actual like promises to
withhold funds to invade the city with National Guard troops.
(56:39):
I think Trump was the one who actually seeded territory
in this meeting. I do not see much evidence of
things that m Donnie had could have personal impact on
actually like losing losing ground on those things throughout this meeting.
Speaker 4 (56:51):
It is also important to remember that he has a
rhetoric man, Damie two has a rhetorical role to play, right,
And yes he is Mayor of New York. He is
also an extremely popular politician at the and like when
he talks about things like the genocide in Gaza, that
that has rhetorical value. I'm not saying he can go
to New York City Council and stop it, but like
him saying that it is a genocide at the White
(57:13):
House is important, and like it is important that like
when he has this this podium in front of the
whole world at the White House, so he used it
to talk about the genocide, and he did, But like,
I don't think we should only think about this in
terms of New York. Like it is sure important that
someone said that, and I hope he keeps using that
platform he has right now to say that as someone
who like is definitely looked up to nationally in like
(57:37):
DSA circles.
Speaker 2 (57:39):
I mean, I think and this this goes into some
of the the I guess kind of I mean, some
of them are critiques, some of them aren't even really
critiques of this meeting. I think a lot of them
are people jumping on the opportunity to just attacks or
on with no real construction critique there. But there's this
kind of relates to these two different forms of politics
that people use on the left, like politics is a
form of personal expression as a for of like posturing
(58:01):
as a as a form of like maintaining of moral purity,
versus politics as an actual practical method of achieving cyst
like systematic change, And people engage in these two different modes,
and there're thing there's a role for both of these
modes of politics. Actually, I think both of these have
have a degree of necessity. And Zoron has has taken
one specific path, and there's the others who are who
(58:24):
are very clear in having taken the other path. And
there's there's a bunch of a bunch of a bunch
of critiques from this meeting quote unquote critiques, including from
a formal Seattle City councilman who's now running for Congress
as a socialist, Kashama Sawant quote. If I were in
Mamdani's position, instead of asking Trump to meet me, I
would have announced a mass rally of tens of thousands
(58:46):
of people in New York City to protest against ice rates,
to declare that New York City will not tolerate ice
and will fight Trump every inch of the way. I
would launch a mass campaign for free transit and free
childcare and build a militant movement to win unquote. These
these are things Zoran's are already participated in. These are
things that have happened. Just one more, like one more
protest that's going to be more effective than actually having
(59:08):
Trump seed some ground on the scale of enforcement. This
is part of why I have this like hesitation around
discussion of Zoran, because I think he's actually doing kind
of strategic moves to actually limit the amount of damage
that Trump's able to do in the city. And he's
doing it through like rhetorical maneuvers, and some of that
(59:29):
may feel awkward to watch in a like a live
press conference, but I think the actual end results of
that have a lot more potential than say of, you know,
a rally of ten thousand people which effectively does nothing.
Speaker 1 (59:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (59:42):
I mean we've had a bunch of those that that
is politics is performance right lately like that, Yeah, people
are very attached to that mode of political engagement in
the United States, like that they're large, you know, walking
around with sciences shouting demonstration and political intent. It has
not been success in stopping ice gribing random people of
(01:00:02):
the street, I'll just say that.
Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
And people have been criticizing Zoran just simply for even
taking this meeting because it's somehow quote unquote like humanizes
Trump in some way, like Trump doesn't need to be humanized, right,
Like it's like Zoron's platform by Donald Trump. He is
the president of the United States. He he he wins,
he has that position, he has bought the legitimacy like
this this I don't think Zoron being there actually rehabilitates
(01:00:27):
Trump's image in a meaningful way. I think what he's
doing is trying to actually make New York a safer
and more affordable place to live by doing a kind
of complicated political maneuver, which I'm sure is kind of
upsetting to kind of go through, but he's doing it.
And the wave of criticism that it's kind of based
on based on that sort of you know, humanizing argument
(01:00:47):
or this stuff on, like why doesn't Zorn just protest
instead of actually trying to like cut deals or like
not even cut deals because that sounds so like slimy,
but like actually like negotiate with the president, and like
this criticism comes on the tail end like a week's
worth of very reflexive criticism of Zoran for his retention
of New York Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tish, as well
(01:01:11):
as advocating against the New York City DSA's endorsement of
city councilmen and new DSA member she offses primary campaign
against Congressman Hukim Jeffries. Some of these criticisms I get
the Jefferson a little bit more, but some of these
criticisms I find to be a little odd, mostly considering
the fact that Zoran has been open about his plan
to retain Tish for literal months, for literal months, and
(01:01:32):
just this week people acted like it was this massive
betrayal in his like ideological purity or his stated promises,
which just isn't true. He's been open about this like
since like last summer, and on the on the Jeffrey
side of things, I think Zorn's point of view here
is at a difficult primary campaign and one that's probably
going to be unsuccessful based on the Zoron twenty twenty
(01:01:53):
five general vote map. It shows that that'd be very,
very challenging. But this, this difficul call primary against referees,
would also inhibit Zoron's ability to implement the affordability agenda
in the city. The New York Times quoted a leaked
portion of the DSA's endorsement meeting with Zoran saying, quote,
the choice before us is not whether to vote for
(01:02:14):
Chai or Hageme at the ballot box. The choice is
how to spend the next year. Do we want to
spend it defending caricatures of our movement or do we
want to spend it fulfilling the agenda at the heart
of that very same movement. Unquote, Zora has a very
specific focus right now on the New York City government,
and implementing the agenda for New York City and the
(01:02:35):
congressional campaign would, in his view, only put more roadblocks
to that at this point in time. Versus keeping a
left wing ally in the New York City Council.
Speaker 4 (01:02:46):
I guess I don't see why they can't do both.
Like they will be defending caricatures of their movement for
sure the next forever right until the Internet and stupid politics,
the stopping part of a politics which isn't coming anytime soon.
I think it'd be perfectly possible to give that endorsement
and still say my job as mayor is to do
the ship that I promised to do. I also endorse
(01:03:06):
this person because I think they're a better person than
the Keem Jeffries, who has been very poor. Okay, I
don't I don't see those two things as mutually exclusive.
We need to talk about MTG, if only very briefly.
Speaker 3 (01:03:19):
What is there to say.
Speaker 4 (01:03:21):
That magic the Gathering has finally reclaimed the acronym. Oh good, Yeah,
Marjorie Taylor Green leaving politics?
Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
Well maybe, well she's leaving the house. Is at the end,
at the end of the year.
Speaker 4 (01:03:35):
Is leaving the house?
Speaker 2 (01:03:36):
See what she's announced?
Speaker 4 (01:03:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
It is unclear how she will continue her career.
Speaker 4 (01:03:42):
Maybe maybe Zoran will be taking her seat. Maybe the
Trump's new friend.
Speaker 2 (01:03:46):
I mean, I really don't think he's much interest in
being in the House of Representatives, especially in Georgia.
Speaker 3 (01:03:51):
Oh would jesus?
Speaker 4 (01:03:52):
He has a much more important role now. I guess
like he's able to do a lot more as executive
new York than he ever would be as like a
single rep in yeah yeah, yeah, but yeah no more MTG.
Speaker 3 (01:04:03):
Okay, well great.
Speaker 4 (01:04:06):
If you want to contact us, you can reach out
to us at Coolzone tips at proton dot me. We
reported the news, We reported the news.
Speaker 1 (01:04:27):
It to happen here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
now find sources where it could happen here listed directly
in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Also media.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
This is it could Happen here Executive Disorder, our weekly
newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world,
and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis today
I'm joined by James Stout and Robert Evans. Yes, this
episode recovering the week of November nineteen to November twenty fourth.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Boy, this year's just blown by yeah fast, yeah, yeah.
They sped up the time stream. You know what else
sped up the time stream watching something on Twitter blow
up again. We can't seem to stop talking about this
fucking website and I'm tired of it. But the big
news this week from Elon Musk's fucking vanity propagana app
(00:45):
is see Everything Happen That they introduced a new feature
to let you know the location of the account and
also the number of like name changes, like how many
username changes it's had since the account has started. I
would say within sort of progressive and liberal circles. The
i'm an interpretation of what's happened is best summarized by
this Daily Beast headline. Top MAGA influencers accidentally unmasked as
(01:07):
foreign trolls, No shit, Now, as is often the case,
this isn't entirely accurate. Not to say that there's not
a shitload of foreign trolls who are making money by
pretending to be American MAGA influencers. There definitely are. We've
known about this since well before this Twitter change. One
of the most prominent people on Musk's Twitter, Ean Miles Chong,
is a Malaysian man who has never been to the
(01:28):
United States and publishes nothing but MAGA content. Now, what's
happened here? You can find going through there's a bunch
of threads. There's threads on Blue Sky, threads on Twitter, threads,
and various articles that are basically all copies of each
other that are collecting a bunch of these accounts that
have been busted, right. One good example would be the
Magination verified account, which has almost four hundred thousand followers.
(01:50):
Started in twenty twenty four, it's had five name changes
since October twenty twenty five, and it is based in
Eastern Europe Non EU.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Yeah that's a nation, yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
A lot of people have taken to mean like it's Russian,
right yeah. Another account is the Ivanka news Trump, which
displays as Ivanka Trump, even though it has nothing to
do with her, which it does note in its Twitter bio.
The account was started in twenty ten, it has had
eleven user changes since August of twenty twenty four, and
it is apparently based in Nigeria.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
You have to see it.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
You're seeing like aload a shitload of stuff like this right,
and it's being taken unfortunately. I think this is a
mistake and I hate to be like the hey, guys,
stop being happy about this, but you should because you're
wrong about what's happening here. Most people are like the
Daily Beast account posts some liberal Twitter account being like
this is total armageddon for the online right. It's looking
(02:42):
like half of their large accounts were foreigners posting as
Americans all along. Now, let me clarify a couple things.
For one thing, nothing that Elon has done here, nothing
that Twitter has revealed has proven that these accounts exist
in any particular country. I'm going to explain why a
lot of people use something called a vp and a
VPN masks the location that you're browsing and logging in from, right,
(03:06):
and you can use a VPN to look like you're
posting from almost any country on the planet, and there
is no evidence whatsoever that Twitter has done anything at
all to deal with this right to like make sure
that they're getting someone's actual location. A bunch of accounts,
a bunch of like people have pointed out like, hey, look,
this is saying I'm from a country that I've literally
never been to, Like here's my information. I'm very transparent.
(03:29):
And there have also been organizations, including liberal you know,
coded organizations, that have been mistakenly identified as coming from
a country that they are not set up. And for example,
the Planned Parenthood account was showing us from Germany, which
is ignited this conspiracy theory on the right that Planned
Parenthood is some European fucking influence op in the United States. No,
(03:49):
they used a VPN because they're in danger because it's
Planned Parenthood, right.
Speaker 5 (03:54):
No.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
I mean I ran into a very similar situation because
I mostly use Twitter to look at yowie now, and
when I was in Germany last month, it wouldn't let
me look at the AWI without putting in my government
ID for like age verification, sure of course, and then
the state hits garrison, so obviously a non starter. I'm
not I'm not, I'm not giving X. The everything app
(04:15):
my government id to allow me to look at Yawi
in Germany. Sure, so instead I had to put on
the VPN so I'm back in the States and then
I can look at the AYAUI. So it's basically the
same situation between me and Planned Parenthood here.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Yes, I've said often that you and Planned Parenthood basically
identical beings. What's happening here is it is worth talking about.
But it's worth talking about not because we suddenly know
the truth that it's been revealed about. We don't really
know anything more than we did before this change came in, right.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Well except Robert, I mean the biggest the biggest news
is that the DHS has been a massad operation this
last time. Yes, that's right, Yes, like we've always suspected.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Yeah, so the the Department of Homeland Security account I
think it was, got listed as having been based in Israel.
This is not real, Like it's not this isn't even
X fucking up. Somebody just edited a screenshot and there's
so many of these going around, hundreds and hundreds of them,
right that this just kind of got shuffled in to
the flood and a lot of people didn't catch it right,
(05:14):
and it just gets integrated into people's beliefs about the world.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
Right.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
This is a standard story with how Twitter works now.
And this is, by the way, is overall I think
beneficial to Musk and his kind of people, which is
that we know less every day about the world. There's
more disinformation about what's happening. People are less keyed in
on reality and more just getting locked into different delusions.
(05:38):
Like That's what the story is here, which is that
this app and the way that social media in general works,
particularly in this age, each of these changes, even the
ones that get celebrated as having revealed something, are just
fogging up reality, and they're doing it in such a
way as to make it so that like no one
knows anything about what's going on. Right, this is like
(06:00):
that this is the standard playbook that you've been getting
out of like authoritarian regimes from forever.
Speaker 6 (06:05):
Right.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
What's important is not that just their propaganda be out.
It's that there's not really any any way for there
to be a consensus reality. Because if there'sn't consensus reality,
then you can't put together a large enough block of
people who all believe basically the same things about reality
to stop what's going on, right, that's what's happening here,
And you're wrong if you're looking at this as good,
(06:27):
if you believe that this has blown up the right
and that this has done damage to them, they're saying
the same things about you and about the left because
a shitload of people use VPNs and you can always
cherry pick a bunch of and I'm not again, none
of that I'm saying is not saying that they're in
a shitload like Elon has specifically incentivized foreign accounts in
different countries to make money by getting into the US
(06:49):
culture war, right, That is absolutely a big part of
how Twitter works today. No one's denying that. What I'm
saying is that you don't know any more than you
did before this came out, because you have no way
of knowing if any of these accounts are based. Where
is saying they're based because of how VPNs work. That's
what I'm saying. Yeah, that's what I've got to say.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
It's incredibly annoying. It's incredibly annoying that we have to
continue writing about eggs everything. The half of half of
Blue Sky is people just virtue signaling that they're not
using Twitter, and I'm being mad at Twitter.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
You know, it's the same.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Honestly, this will get me flat, But it's the same
thing about like whether people are angry about substack or
fucking Instagram or Twitter or whatever. Like, if you're using
social media, you're not doing yourself any favors. And they're
all pretty supportive of bad things and bad people. And
we use them anyway because that's the world. Like we
spend dollars anyway, and let me tell you, dollars support
(07:43):
some bad things. We pay taxes, and boy howdy, I
don't like where a lot of those taxes go.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
Yeah, but don't don't pretend.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
That because you pick the right social media app that
you're not fucking your brain up and introducing yourself to
a bunch of things that aren't true. We all do it,
Like that's the problem.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
Yes, they're not good for humans broadly. Do you want
to talk about something else it's not good for humans?
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Yeah, let's not talk about fucking X the every goddamn thing.
Ye anymore?
Speaker 4 (08:13):
No, Unfortunately, I have I have something Robert which does
relate to X great everything app. So let's talk about Axios.
Oh yeah, are you guys familiar with Axios. It's the
use oatelet for people who hate paragraphs.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
People who love cocaine.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
Yeah yeah, yeah, for people reading the news while they're
having a dump. That is what Axios is for. They
ship out news for you to read while you're having a.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Ship again, which makes cocaine even a bigger part of
the picture here.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
No, it's it's like it's like the ADHD is like
ideal news source.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Yeah yeah, yeah, you do a line, you have to
go take a ship, you catch up on your news.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
Yeah, it's that's what they called productivity. That's that's the
Robert Evans grindset, the morning routine that everyone's been asked.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
It's really it's really genius of fucking Axios to hit
that demographic exactly because those people also have a lot
of money because they're all day traders. True true, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
I have I have polymarket on the Califi on the
other Axios always pulled up.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
That's split screening.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
You have one of those Apple like flat grass glass
touch screen panels. But it's just for doing coke off
of you've just got lines kind off on.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
Yeah, it's because the metaglass is a contact right looping
Axio screen at your Axios and use that left for
people who are taking cocaine. Has seemingly been duped into
running a Russian wish list as a proposed piece plant
in Ukraine. Yeah great, this is what happens when you
(09:51):
do journalism the speed of paranoia. But this has come
at the same time as Trump has proclaimed via truth
the medium of a truth on through social that Ukraine
was not showing suficient gratitude for what we had like
eleven month of him failing to end the war.
Speaker 7 (10:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
So this twenty eight point plan was first published by Axios,
and it was pretty much immediately rejected by a number
of Senators, led by Senator Angus King, who were at
a security conference in Halifax, Halifax, Canada. Not og Halifax,
shout out yeah Halifax Junior. The senators pretty much immediately
(10:32):
said that the US was not the author of the document.
Rubio quote made it very clear to us that we
are recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one
of our representatives, said Senator Mike Grounds. So what they
are saying is that the US didn't write to document
and it was delivered to them. One can safely assume
by Russia. Right, Rubio using X the Everything app then
(10:55):
attempted to deny this. So what it appeared years has
happened is that this plan was drafted by Russian special
envoy dmitriev probably was Steve Witkoff.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Sure that sounds right.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
So Wickkoff is Trump's what is I think he's a
special envoy to Russia at this point.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Yeah, I believe he's an onvoid of Russia. Yeah, Warren
Zevon wrote a song about guys like him.
Speaker 4 (11:19):
Yes, yeah he has. He has not covered himself in
glory in his time doing this. He's kind of a
useful fool. He's formerly like a real estate.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Guy that'll prepare you to deal with Vladimir Putin, having
sold houses during the subprime mortgage crisis.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
Yeah. Yeah, Like it's pretty much what he's doing here, right,
Like he's consistently been duped and pretty much has become
an advocate for the Russian point of view a lot
of the times. In this case, it seems that it
was then strategically leaked to Axios. Right when Barak Ravid,
who authored the Axios article, posted it on Eggs the
(11:59):
Everything web site. Steve Whitcoff responded saying, quote, he must
have got this from K. This is very funny because
we have Steve Witcoff right negotiating a peace process which
affects millions of people, and he also doesn't know how
to use the DM button on X the Everything website.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
To be fair, X the Everything I've just changed their
DMS and the whole the whole user interface for the
DMS is completely different. Now you have to put in
like a pass co and they claim to be encrypted,
and it's much uglier to look at.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
So in defense in defense of Steve, instead you can
instead leak.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
The safer, more secure option might just be to do
it all in public.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
And to do it in public. Yeah, So so Steve
of course using a code name there K will never know. Yeah,
because we can possibly tell that Careal Dimitria my might
be using K as a code name also the first
letter of his first name. So it seems very like
that either Dmitrie of someone else in Russia decided to
(13:02):
leak this plan to Barakraavid or Dave Lawler, knowing it
would be raised at a press conference of belling that Trump, who,
according towards the Post, seems to have very little detailed
knowledges and negotiations. Would probably see this as a quote
unquote deal that then he could claim for himself, right,
and it worked. I want to talk about how Axios's
model makes that possible.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Right.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
I'm very well aware that Barackravid was a member of
the eighty two hundred unit in Israel. If people I'm familiar,
that's like a sigint Israeli intelligence unit. This is widely known.
I've seen this being discussed in sort of relation to this.
The thing is, he doesn't need to be nefarious for
this to happen, and I think the most likely option
(13:48):
here is that the Axios model is to do insider
journalism and then rush to be the first to post
it on social media and then get a bazillion clicks
for your z seventy eight word article. Right. That is
how That is their entire business model.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
It is the name of their whole game.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
Yeah, that's why they don't use paragraphs. It's news for
people who are like waiting for their coffee at Starbucks
or whatever the problem is in this case, states are
or nonstate actors, right, can effectively place a leak and
they know that Axios will rush it to press probably
in minutes, if not ours. And with the way that
the United States executive branches right now, it seems very
(14:29):
clear that that they can get it in front of Trump,
then they're going to get a reaction one way or another.
So it seems that Rubio was effectively cut out, that
the United States Secretary of State was effectively cut out
of this whole process. And there's a lot of reporting about,
like I don't want to do kremlinology for the Trump
White House particularly, but it shows how these news outlets,
(14:53):
these news outlets are sort of don't fact check that
rush to press, to do everything for social media can
effectively be used right in a way that the benefits
in this case Russia, but any number of organizations could
do the same thing.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Robert mentioned some kind of like Wartimes warn that some
kind of Wartimes song, And I was wondering, where is
the country of Zevon? You said, there's like a song
about Warren Zevon.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
Jesus Garrison, Garrison, get out of you hears about discrimination
in the workplace. Ah, I'm going to do a Woody
Guthrie thing in my next series. And Gary is just
going to sail straight past Garrison. You listen to Johnny
Cash Garrison, I liked.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
I like Johnny Cash.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Okay, James Cash.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
That's what they call me. Here's the ads.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
And we're.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
New Doge news for the first time in who knows
how the news being. There's no more Doge. According to
a report in Reuter's, DOGE has disbended eight months before
its scheduled expiration in July of twenty twenty seven. When
asked about the status of Doge earlier this month, Office
(16:16):
of Personal Management director Scott Poor told Reuters quote that
doesn't exist, adding that DOGE is no longer a quote
unquote centralized entity. Yeah. Boro has also said that the
DOGE mandated hiring freeze is over and that there's quote
no target around reductions unquote, meaning that the DOGE era
(16:41):
rule of having to fire a certain number of people
in order to be allowed to hire people is no
longer in use as well. And this isn't really surprising.
You have not really heard about many DOGE related stuff
in a while.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
They haven't been doing anything in a while. Musk has
basically been out of the center loop of things. But
also they did the things that they were needed to do, right.
They did up massacred large portions of government employees. Yeah,
did permanent damage to the administrative state and cost several
hundred thousand people around the world their lives through cuts
in USA.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Yeah, And like two former DOGE employees, including big Balls,
now just work on web design for US government websites,
and other DOG officials have moved to agencies which they
administered cuts to. A former DOGE team member, Zachary Terrell
is now the chief technology officer at the Department of
Health and Human Services, And Jeremy Lewin, who assisted the
(17:37):
slashing of you say it, now oversees foreign assistants at
the State Department.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
So those guys got jobs out of this. All of
the people who got fired or got natively impacted by
the government shutdown are probably not going to be coming
out as well as mister big Balls here.
Speaker 7 (17:55):
Well.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
And there's some evidence that a number of folks who
worked with DOGE are now feeling left in the wind
and potentially in danger because there are a lot of
people who want these folks to be prosecuted for what
they did. Yeah, there's definitely talk about that. If there's
another democratic administration, we'll see if they would ever have
the big balls to do it. But there was an
article in Politico recently and I'm going to read a
(18:17):
quote from that Musk had not just been their visionary
leader for them, he was their protector, the man who
had an elect direct line to Trump, who they believed
could pick up the phone and secure a presidential pardon
if the worst came. Without his presence in Washington, they
were suddenly exposed. A senior DOSE figure named Donald Park
tried to reassure his colleagues that they were still brothers
in arms and that Musk would continue to protect them.
That led to another protesting and advising, guys, seriously, get
(18:40):
your own lawyer if you needed. He LUNs great, but
you need to watch your own back. Watch your backs, guys.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
Yeah, these guys would be some of the more like
presumably very easy to prosecute and like obvious targets. Yes,
another democratic administration's.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Some really obvious crimes in terms of like protect action
of information, you know, like some some pretty obvious rule
breaking that went on that's not being prosecuted now, but yeah,
they're right, it could be prosecuted in the future.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Those like first three four months of the Trump admin.
Ye what it really was just full steam ahead on
the Silicon Valley version of things, right, like the move
fast and brave things. Yeah, that's such a wild time
to look back on, not only just in terms of
how much damage they did, but the idea that if
they were going to continue at that pace for the
rest of the term. The government already is fundamentally different
in some ways, but like how much worse that would
(19:31):
have been? Yeah, Yeah, and if Musk's ego is in
part what's sabotaged that from being complete and really kind
of doing that more like Jarvin inspired project. Yeah, Hubris
uh kills kills a man once again. But there is
aspects of like the doge idea and this government efficiency
thing which aren't fully going away like this, this still
(19:52):
is an aspect of the Trump administration. There still is
like some of those guys at the Auspice of Budget
and Management and the Hair twenty twenty five guys who
have a lot of this government efficiency quote unquote government
efficiency type stuff that they're still working on, including at
the Education Department, which last week the Trump administration took
another step towards closing the Department of Education by shifting
(20:16):
some of its duties to other federal agencies, which the
Admin claims will quote streamline federal education activities on the
legally required programs, and reduce administrative burden unquote. That is
going to be done by these six new interagency agreements
which have been signed with the Departments of Labor, Interior,
(20:39):
Health and Human Services, and State. The Education Department writing
in an announcement that this will quote break up the
federal bureaucracy, ensure efficient delivery of funded programs activities, and
move closer to fulfilling the President's promise to return education
to the States. So by splitting up Education Department duties
(20:59):
among the four different agencies in three different interagency agreements,
this is supposed to cut red tape and lighten central bureaucracy.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
You have seven entities now what one entity did before.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
The elementary, high school, and post secondary programs will now
be administered by the Department of Labor.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
That's great.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
We'll now overseee over thirty billion dollars in education grants
aimed at trying to boost the number of Americans in
the workforce. The Department of the Interior will be taking
over the education departments to Indian education programs and integrating
them into existing programs administered by the Department of the Interior,
with quote unquote proper oversight by the Education Department. College
(21:43):
childcare programs, and foreign medical school accreditation will be administered
and overseen by the Health and Human Services, and the
State Department will now oversee all foreign education programs, handle
international education grants, and fully administer the full Bright program.
Justification for this State Department takeover of these funds specifically
(22:04):
cited five instances of grants that were used to fund
academic and medical research on trans people, writing that these
programs have deviated from the core mission on The announcement
from the Education Departments reads that the State Department is
quote best positioned to tailor foreign education programs with the
national security and foreign policy priorities of the United States.
(22:27):
This partnership provides an opportunity to streamline international education program
funding and data collection measures, consolidate program management, and advance
national security interests.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
That's not good.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Yeah, that doesn't seem great. Huh.
Speaker 8 (22:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
This last part is particularly concerning that the US previously
has done a lot of funding of education programs around
the world, and to see that pretty much I like
with this current vasion of the State Department either disappear
or become even more up propaganda. Like it's really worrying.
This kind of builds on that dose stuff that you
(23:06):
were talking about. This is the end of the State
Department doing anything other than the propaganda and I guess
warmaking well.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
And specifically, like Rubio's focus on education has been to
crack down on academics palestatiing academics, academics who have who
have protest in support of Palestine. That's specifically what Rubio
has talked about in terms of you know, universities. Yeah,
so with all the stuff in that statement about you know,
(23:36):
national security and foreign policy priorities, it's not hard to
see what they could be gesturing towards. Yeah, as the
announcements are currently written, a lot of the programs itself,
at least in the trench transitionary period, remain kind of
the same. They're shifting who is like quote unquote administering them.
That's the word they use a lot. But they're not
(23:59):
cutting funds to these programs at the moment, and they
do talk about them as like legally required programs. But
I mean Carolyn Levitt and Linda McMahon have said, this
is just one step towards well fully sending education back
to the States.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Woh.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
This also was sort of like in massive disparities in
educational outcomes state by state in the United States, right, Like,
we already have that to some extent, but that's only
going to be exacerbated by this. Right talking about things
happening between the states, let's talk about Gregory Buffino, person
(24:37):
who supposedly patrols the borders of the United States but
has more recently been doing internal enforcement for the Border Patrol.
He gave an interview to AP recently that I was
just reading. They did confirm interestingly that like a few
weeks ago, maybe months ago, we've been talking about Bevino
and like trying to work out if he was still
chief Patrol agent in El Centro. It appears that he is.
(24:58):
But he's also reminder of this operation at large, which
is their sort of the thing that has moved from
Los Angeles to Chicago, which is now in Charlotte. Right,
this sort of internal enforcement operation. He calls his team
and now quote unquote sanctuary busters, and he said that
quote there will be no more sanctuaries, which kind of
(25:20):
does build on what I spoke about in our last
ed right when we spoke about the idea that the
reason they had targeted Charlotte was because it appeared on
that CIS map quote unquote sanctuary city or sanctuary jurisdiction,
despite the passage of legislation in the state which would
have prevented it doing the things that the sanctuaries do.
I just want to talk about this ABC investigation into
(25:42):
CBP's use of licensed plate readers. CBPS has had these
for like eight or nine years now. I found the
twenty seventeen piece they wrote out their justification for using them. Right,
Their use has grown immensely right in a yeah, and
it has grown under both of meministrations we've I suppose
Trump administration from twenty twenty by the administration twenty twenty,
(26:05):
twenty eighty four. We spoke actually in an episode that
I think it was just Robert and I in that
episode when we spoke about Gavin Newsom. People love that
episode and they send me great feedback, because guys, it's
important that we all know that the only person standing
up against Trump right now is Gavin Newsom. Everything else
is pointless. But in that episode, we spoke about how
(26:27):
many California jurisdictions share license plate reader information with federal
immigration authorities, even when California law prohibits them from doing so. Right,
this is kind of one of those these things they
were it's a ratchet, right. Once you give that power
to the state, it belongs to all of the state,
and you can never take it back. Automated license to
(26:49):
plate readers have been a big thing in this kind
of the post twenty twenty tendency of democratic mayors in
big cities to massively increase spending on the police and
massively increase police surveillance. We have automated cameras on our
lampposts here in San Diego now right, California has prosecuted
(27:10):
one jurisdiction that I'm aware of, which is Alcoholone. People
will be familiar with alcoholne from Alcoholone. Mayor Bill Well's
attempt to make a country music song about how schools
are turning kids trans that is un ironically probably the
most national use it that ALCOHOLA has made for a while.
(27:32):
But bundahursued Alcoholone for showing that data. My guess is
that that is because it's alcoholone, right, Because alcohol is
a city where the mayor makes a country music song
about how schools are turning children trans like it's very
obviously like a partisan prosecution. There are many other jurisdictions
doing this. What Border Patrol does with these cameras is
(27:53):
it targets quote unquote suspicious activities and then it requests stops.
Sometimes this stops an made by Border Patrol, but are
made by local police right on the pretext of something
like speeding or failing to signal before you change lanes,
having a break light out could be many, many things, right.
The ABC piece quoted Deputy Joel bab Of saying, quote,
(28:17):
the beautiful thing about the Texas traffic code is there
thousands of things you can stop a vehicle for. The
idea here is not to explicitly talk about the license
plate readers, right, And the fact that they are using
these to do predictive surveillance is what they call it. Right,
They're trying to highlight like suspicious patterns of vehicle motion
(28:38):
and stop people. The piece has some they obtained through
public records requests from a court case a whatchapp group
chat between Border Patrol and Texas officers, which the opposite
shared movement, social media profiles, car rentals, and home addresses
of people who they were interested in surveilling. Right, and
it reveals a massive level of surveillance. You know, if
(29:01):
you if you're thinking of border patrol and you're still
under the impression that in America, the border can't come
to you wherever you are, this is another example of
why that's not true. Right, DHS uses these all over
the country to include outside of one hundred mile border
enforcement zone. Right, this piece seems to believe that the
board one hundred mile zone is it's like a legal
hard line. It's not. It's an interpretation of a quote
(29:25):
unquote reasonable distance. There is no hard line stopping BP
for operating further from the border than that. That is
just generally where the interpretation of a reasonable distance from
the border is perceived to fall. Border patrol has these
cameras at fixed points, so like that would be border
patrol crossings. You know, when you enter or enter the
enter or leave the country at a port of entry
(29:47):
and then at checkpoints. Right, people will be familiar with
checkpoints that live in a border area. And then they
also have these in mobile and covert capacities. Right, and
they're using them to find people who might be driving
near the border or staying and and then leaving at
a strange time, and then they're building a profile of
those people's movements and using that request stops. Right. It's
(30:07):
a level of surveillance that I think should be worrying
to many people.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
And they have access to these like larger integrated camera
networks like by Flock Safety, which I've talked about before,
including I think yesterday's episode, as Flock is like an
Atlanta based company that rose to prominence through their surveillance
around the forest where Copsity was being constructed. Now Flock
is all over the country, and Border Patrol has access
(30:32):
to the Flock system. Yeah, and it's used for a
whole bunch of other really dubious stuff, including in Texas.
I think four h four Media did a report not
too long ago about Texas sheriffs tracking a pregnant woman
getting an abortion not in Texas.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
Right, Yeah, yeah, I can see. Yeah, Texas law makes
it a crime to leave the state in order to
get an abortion or something, right, and so that would
be the I guess their excuse here, But like I
think we can all see that that's a pretty pretty
disgusting use of the surveilance state. Yeah, these things grew
massively in the time period between twenty twenty and today,
(31:09):
and it was not just in Republican jurisdictions. Right, there's
this like unabated support for state surveillance that we saw
all over the United States is now being turned against
migrants and anybody who is suspected of helping them, which
is not great. Talking of not great, we have an
obligation to pivot to add I'm happy.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
I think that's great. I love I love having a job.
Speaker 4 (31:36):
I enjoyed to consume products and services.
Speaker 6 (31:38):
That's right, and we're back.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
How's everybody doing good?
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Yeah? Banging, pretty good, pretty good. I just finished my
Asahi smoothie from the Hair Heritage Social twenty twenty four cup,
so I feel great.
Speaker 6 (32:04):
That's great.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
Yeah, that's good for you.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Garrison really coming together, you know, politics from different sides
coming together to enjoy a smoothie. Not unlike the meeting
between Zora Mum, Donnie and Donald Trump.
Speaker 4 (32:15):
Oh my god, Oh how long did you plan that for?
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Garrishon? Like literally five seconds? It just it just came out.
Speaker 4 (32:22):
We don't do smooth transitions here like that.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Well, you know sometimes do you know who was smooth?
It was Zoramum Donnie during that meeting, which bit like
a duck's back, like a like a seal.
Speaker 4 (32:34):
That kind of smoothness is.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Trump seemed pretty pretty enamored. Mister mum Donnie mayor elect
Mom Donnie. Quote, we have one thing in common. We
want this city of ours to do very well unquote.
So this was on Friday, Trump and Mum Donnie had
a private meeting in the White House. Afterwards a thirty
(32:55):
minute press conference in the Oval Office where Trump was
sitting down and soa was kind of looming over the
side of Trump the whole time, never fully smiling, always
having a little bit of like a a tiny like
both sided smirk, but not doing his traditional happy smile.
He had a very different look in the White House.
(33:16):
But as soon as the press conference started, it was
clear that the meeting went very well for Momdannie. Trump
was exuberant about the man.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
Yeah, he seemed really excited. Yeah, it's a little weird,
but he seemed really excited.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
He stated that they have common ground on getting housing built,
on affordability, on food and prices coming down saying, quote,
there's no difference in party, and we're going to be
helping him to make everybody's dream come true unquote.
Speaker 4 (33:43):
Everybody's stream doctory amazing.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Yeah, First, I want to play Zoron's initial statement as
the press conference started on what they spoke about during
this meeting.
Speaker 7 (33:55):
I appreciated the meeting with the President, and as he said,
it was a productive meeting forocused on the place of
shared admiration and love, which is New York City, and
the need to deliver affordability to New Yorkers, the eight
and a half million people who call our city their home,
who are struggling to afford life in the most expensive
city in the.
Speaker 8 (34:13):
United States of America.
Speaker 7 (34:14):
We spoke about we spoke about groceries, we spoke about utilities,
we spoke about the different ways in which people are
being pushed out. And I appreciated the time with the President.
I appreciated the conversation. I look forward to working together
to deliver that affordability for the orders.
Speaker 4 (34:28):
It's one of the posture people with the green line.
The green line.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Yeah, no, I've seen yeah, that going on a couple
of times.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
They've already they've had that way with it.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
They've been on it.
Speaker 3 (34:37):
Yeah, yeah, okay, it does seem tense. The vibes in
that room must have been very, very weird.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
N Yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah, no, Zorn's very tense. Trump's
trying to relax. Like bad late.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
Face that you've posted on gas he is, I can.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Only it's like a shit eating grin on Trump's face. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
like he does seem genuinely half thrilled. Yeah, it's weird.
Speaker 4 (35:02):
He likes to be associated with winners.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
This is one of the big things, right A lot
of I mean, we'll talk about this more and that
takes okay at this, but but yeah, I think it's
very clear why Trump's actually having a good time here.
Zoron's like the most popular politician in the country right now,
and Trump likes winners. And if anything, Zoron has proven
to be an underdog that has an enormous capacity for winning,
(35:25):
and I think Trump does like that, and that, coupled
with a genuine love for New York, I think Zoron
was able to navigate around Trump pretty successfully. When asked
about Zoron being a communist, Trump said, quote, I feel
very confident he can do a good job I think
it's going to surprise some conservative people actually unquote, and.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
You should add what he said about liberal people because
I thought that was his funniest line.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Oh then also liberal people, but they already like him
too or something.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
Yeah, I don't think they'll be surprised, they'll just be yeah, yes,
they like him because they already like him. It was
very funny. It was very funny.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Trump's talked about how a lot of Trump voters actually
voted for Zoron as well, saying quote unquote, I'm okay
with that, And so I mentioned that, yes, one in
ten Trump voters in New York voted for Zoron, and
zor mentioned the end to forever wars and the cost
living crisis as the driving motivators that voters spoke about
(36:21):
as he was campaigning. Throughout this press conference, and we
can assume some degree of the meeting, Zoron was very
laser focused on New York specifically, And you've even seen
this in interviews that he's given to like NBC and
other outlets the past few days, where people are asking
him about, you know, the Democratic Party as a whole
and national level, and Zoron repeatedly just goes back to
affordability in New York. This is like the one thing
(36:43):
that he's going to keep talking about. He doesn't want
to talk about any anything else, really, And this was
evident throughout this meeting, the way that Zorn would would
reiterate every question to being about New York. But they
didn't shy away from talking about the things they disagreed
on on, like an ideaological sense, ICE being one of them.
Here's one of their exchanges about ICE.
Speaker 5 (37:05):
Resident, you've threatened to send federal troops to New York City.
You both have differences when it comes to ICE agents
in New York City. Mister Mundanie, you've called ICE a
rogue government entity. I wonder how you reconcile your differences
on both of those issues.
Speaker 8 (37:20):
I think you're going to work them out.
Speaker 9 (37:21):
And I think that if we have known murderers and
known drug dealers and some very bad people, you know,
we want to get them out, and the mayor ones
have we discussed there is a great length actually, maybe
more than anything else, he wants to have a safe
New York. Ultimately, a safe New York is going to
be a great New York. If it's not safe, no.
Speaker 8 (37:42):
Matter how well we do with pricing and with anything else.
We can talk about anything you want.
Speaker 9 (37:47):
If you don't have safe streets, it's not going to
be a success.
Speaker 8 (37:51):
So we're going to work together.
Speaker 9 (37:52):
We're going to make sure that if they're horrible people,
we want to get him out. I think he wants
to get him out, maybe more than I do, so
we'll work together.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
They talked about ICE at one later point in the meeting,
where you get kind of a peak at what some
of this conversation may have been like behind the scenes,
about trying to target any ICE enforcement against people who
have criminal records rather than these roving raids that round
up but just swaths of undocumented people like the Canal
(38:22):
Street raid a few weeks ago. It's still not super
clear what they are talking about, but there's not compromise
in this point. Like Trump's obviously going to try to
frame this in a way that strengthens Trump's own positions
on this, and I think Zoron will do the same.
Before we discuss I don't want to play this the
second bit of their discussion, because you get more of
(38:44):
Zoron's angle.
Speaker 7 (38:46):
We discussed ICE and New York City, and I spoke
about how the laws that we have in New York
City allow for New York City government to speak to
the federal administration for about one hundred and seventy serious crimes,
the concerns that many New Yorkers have around the enforcement
of immigration laws on New Yorkers across the Five boroughs,
and most recently, we're talking about a mother and her
(39:08):
two children. How this has very little to do with
what that is.
Speaker 8 (39:13):
Is we discuss crime more than ice per se.
Speaker 9 (39:16):
We discuss crime, and he doesn't want to see crime,
and I don't want to see crime, and I have
very little doubt that we're not going to get along
on that issue. He wants to and he said some
things that were very interesting, very interesting as to housing construction,
and he wants to see houses go up. He wants
to see a lot of houses created, a lot of
apartments built, et cetera. And you know, we actually people
(39:40):
would be shocked. But I want to see the same thing.
Speaker 8 (39:43):
See that.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
Yeah, that worries me a little bit.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
What about that worries you?
Speaker 4 (39:47):
I can tell what Trump's.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
Trying to do, which is that he really would like
to get Mom Donnie on his side and he's interestingly
for Trump, I think he is willing to move on
some things if he can fundamentally get Mom Donnie who
agree that ice has a use. Yeah, right, Like that's
what he's clearly trying to do, and he's clearly trying
to portray it as we've already agreed on that. And
(40:09):
I think that within the context of this meeting, because
of how the questions were being asked, I don't think
Zorn got enough of a chance to fully address that question.
So I'll leave it open to see how that is,
like like how he deals with that in the future,
But I don't think he got enough of an opportunity
to push back enough on some of the things Trump
was claiming here. That does concern me a little bit,
(40:32):
Like I think it's more a factor of how an
Oval Office press conference is structured. But I do think
that it's like I can see what Trump's trying to
do well.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
I think what Mum Donnie is trying to navigate for
is if he can put an end to roving ice
rates that just like that just round up people at
whether they're at restaurants or from depots, and if there's
people who are who have been incarcerated who are incarcerated,
and if removal operations are specifically against except like what
(41:06):
one hundred and seventy like serious crimes, and if that
is a sort of compromise, I guess I don't know,
Like he's not an office. Yes, it's it's unclear the
way that this would this would be enacted. Yeah, but
if it's an harm reduction measure of stopping ICE raids
from happening or limiting the amount that ICE is able
to operate as as basically a rodenty within the city,
(41:30):
And I don't think we know enough to like actually
see what that will look like yet, because he's not
taking office for another what like forty five days.
Speaker 4 (41:38):
Yeah, Yeah, what he's talking about when Trump goes about crime,
crime is what they have always talked about, right, right,
When when they talk about the ICE enforcement, the crimes
that they are speaking about, very right, they will always
give the example of the person who's been convicted of
child abuse, of murder, of domestic violence. Right, But then
(41:58):
they will also go ahead and say the crossing between
ports of entry can be prosecuted as a crime, and
then they will use that as a justification for taking
anyone right and specifically people who have entered within the
last two years, many of whom were shipped to New
York from other states, and saying, well, these people entered
between ports of entry, which they did after the end
of Title forty two, right when we returned to processing
(42:20):
people under Title eight. And they will place him in
actibility to remove all proceedings like that, that is what
they have been doing for a while. When he talks
about the sanctuary policies, New York right now doesn't honor
detainer requests right in theory, sanctuary laws prevent and y see,
from what I understand, from honoring detainer requests, which would
(42:42):
be an extra forty eight hour detainer. We haven't, like,
as Robber said, we haven't really seen enough to see
see what he's talking about there. But like, I don't
know if he's talking about a change to those sanctuary
policies or not. But yeah, like that that would be
disappointing if you did.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
I obviously there's any indication that he's talking about a
change to sanctuary policy.
Speaker 4 (43:00):
Well, when he's talking about we can cull them on
one hundred and seventy serious crimes, right, what does he need?
Speaker 3 (43:07):
Yeah? And I think This gets back to the fact
that a press conference in the Oval Office is not
going to give you a chance to adequately address an
issue like this, and I see Trump trying to paper
over it and move past as quickly as possible. Yeah,
and I understand why you'd show up for this meeting,
and I think it was probably, on the balance, the
right thing to do. But like, I am interested to
(43:30):
see what he does next, because I think Trump is
going to continue trying to push for accommodations. And it
is kind of it is wild and unique to see
that he seems to be willing to move on some stuff.
But he's willing to move on some stuff because he
thinks he can get Mom Donnie to soften some of
his stances.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
I mean stances on what I mean. I mean, I
don't on ice.
Speaker 3 (43:51):
I mean, that's what he's trying to do here. He's
trying to build a case for that.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
I mean, I guess I don't know the degree to
which we're using.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
Saying that this is a rogue government agency to saying
that this is a government agent. That's what Trump is
trying to push for. Yeah, I'm not saying Mom Donnie
agreed with that. I think that the nature of this
meeting did not give him enough time to push back
on that.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
Sure, sure you have Mum Donnie pointing there towards like
an instance of like, you know, a mother and like
a child getting affected by this and like and using
it as an example of like what they are trying
to prevent and like focusing on like the stopping ice
rates from happening, as as like the thing that Mam
(44:35):
Donnie is pushing for there and Mam Donnie as New
York City mayor cannot abolish the entity of ice, and
so like the degree in which we're framed that as
like Mom Donnie's like softening, I think still, I mean yeah, like,
as you've said, there's not enough here to make a
full determination.
Speaker 4 (44:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:52):
I just think that's that's what Trump wants to get
out of this.
Speaker 4 (44:55):
I think trumple just wants to be associated with this
guy who is currently, as Garrison said, very popular.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
And it is really wild to see him be so
deferential to somebody.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean including in this this this
question about Trump being a fascist, which he handled in
a very uh, very fascinating way.
Speaker 3 (45:14):
This is nuts.
Speaker 4 (45:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
Are you affirming that you think President Trump is a fascist.
Speaker 7 (45:20):
I've spoken about.
Speaker 8 (45:21):
Okay, okay, it's easier.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
It's easier than explaining it, or did say yes during
that exchange he did? He did not, He in fact did.
Speaker 3 (45:35):
Yeah, he absolutely did. It's one of the most remarkable
moments in American political history. Yeah, if I had any
stretch of the imagination.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
As Trump pats on the side, and I mean, it's
it's it's wild for Trump. This word doesn't mean anything
right for for Trump, like him saying it's easier than
explaining that's just indicating to zort On that you don't
have to do this like little like political game for
this reporter and be like, you know, we have we
have just we've disagreed on policies, which blah blah blah.
Like Trump's like, no, you don't have to do that.
(46:04):
It's easier and explaining just say it yeah yeah, which
is a sort of like a point like against like
the media. That's from Trump's point of view, it's like
you don't have to do you don't have to do
like the little dance for like this like New York
Post reporter or whatever. Just say that I'm a fascist.
It's fine.
Speaker 4 (46:20):
Yeah, And because politics is for him a sort of
behind closed doors boys club. And they, yes, they both
have to go out and then deal with the media.
But like you can sort of see that in this
sort of highly viviality that Trump goes for there. I'm
not saying that ma'm Damie is less necessarily in his
boys club. I'm just saying that that that is how
Trump perceives politics.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
Yeah, I mean he made other references like when when
Trump was asked if he considers or on a g hottist,
like someone else in the Republican Party called him, and
Trump's like, no, I mean, the man's sitting in front
of me is not a the hottest. People have to
say certain things during campaigns, but the man I met
was today. It's a very rational man. And like little
lines like that, like people, Yeah, when you're paining, you
(47:00):
have to say things that I think that he's getting
at a similar point there. But there was multipoints for
this press conference where Trump defended Mamdani against like other
aggressive questions about his focus on international law versus the Constitution,
or why Zoron flew to DC instead of taking a
greener train. Yeah, silly, silly stuff. And Trump was like
(47:21):
Trump like dismissed these questions if like for Zar, essentially,
I mean like, I'll stand up for you.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
Yeah, it's it's something else.
Speaker 4 (47:28):
There are more salient criticisms, and there were reasonable criticisms
you can make of some stuff he's done. Those are
the event.
Speaker 3 (47:35):
Yeah, it's just gotcha media stuff, right, like which which
it's interesting how well Trump is able to call sort
of their bullshit. Yeah, always fascinating.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
One of the more hilarious attempts at a gotcha question
is from Jack Pasovic, who was in the room, who asked.
Speaker 4 (47:54):
This, God, he must have been having an absolute melt down.
Speaker 3 (47:59):
Yeah, he can't be happy about this, okay.
Speaker 8 (48:03):
I wanted to know.
Speaker 10 (48:03):
One of the policies as well that Mayor, like Madomie
talked to a number of times about on the campaign,
was shifting the tax burden for property taxes from what
he called minority communities to white based communities.
Speaker 8 (48:18):
And putting more taxes on white people.
Speaker 10 (48:20):
I also noticed that in your acceptance speech you didn't
mention didn't mention anything.
Speaker 9 (48:25):
About America or Christians or white.
Speaker 10 (48:27):
People in general, and so I didn't know if that
was one of the policies that you guys had spoken
about incredible.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Yeah, and Trump's like smiling, like like a proud of
father this whole time. Ass like weird question. It's such
an odds like schizophrenic moment. It's it's weird.
Speaker 3 (48:47):
How much more he seems to like Zoran than like
his supporters.
Speaker 2 (48:51):
Oh yeah, I mean a lot of his supporters are
losers and Zoron's a winner.
Speaker 4 (48:55):
From his cabinet members, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
Because they're losers like Pete Haig, saith Elon Musk, they're losing.
Speaker 3 (49:00):
Yeah, they're all dweebs.
Speaker 4 (49:00):
I think JD. Van's right.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
Yeah, Zorn's has proved himself to be like an incredibly
capable figure. There's a little moment as Jack's first asking
the question where Trump indicates to Zora, like, Okay, you
you handle this guy. You can have fun with this. Yeah,
and it's it's it's very odd and not odd and
it's unexplainable. I understand what's happening here. Actually I think
this is actually very easy to understand. But it's just
(49:24):
still it feels odd.
Speaker 4 (49:26):
Yeah, yeah, and just give him the adversarial politics were
so used to.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
Like there's a lot of moments like this, like when
when Trump's asked if he's gonna cut off federal funding
to New York. He says, quote, I don't think that's
going to happen. I think we're gonna help. And this
is like an indication of like what Zora was trying
to do in terms of harm reduction in this meeting,
specifically around raids on National Guard deployment and on like
cutting off federal funds to the city. One of the
(49:52):
methods I think that Zoran used to help get Trump
on his side is an appeal to like the real
estate brain that Trump has with mom Donnie's like left
wing yimby style of policies, talking about rent coming down
by building housing and how much that surprised Trump because
Trump has this conception of people, like of people usually
(50:12):
on these like left wing positions are very very nimby
in a lot of ways, and Trump was like surprised
by this. I guess he hasn't really encountered like a
left wing yimby before. And it's like it's like this
like caught him off guard. Yeah, there's a good point
here where Trump expresses this.
Speaker 8 (50:29):
Now we may disagree how we get there.
Speaker 9 (50:31):
The rent coming down, I think one of the things
that really gleaned very very much. Today, he'd like to
see him come down, ideally by building a lot of
additional housing here.
Speaker 8 (50:42):
That's the ultimate way. He agrees with that, and so
do I. But if I read the newspapers, in the stories,
I don't hear I don't hear that.
Speaker 9 (50:50):
But I heard him say it today, and I think
that's a very positive step. No, I don't expect. I
expect to be helping him, not hurting him. A big
help because I want New York City to be great. Look,
I love New York City. It's where I come from.
I spent a lot of years there. Now I'm right.
Speaker 4 (51:07):
Here, am ray Okay.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
And later Trump clarified that he would feel comfortable living
in New York under Mam Donnie and compared Mam Donnie's
popularity to that of Bernie Sanders, as well as how
supporters of Bernie moved over to Trump and then vice versa.
And through Trump talking about this, you can start to
kind of peak behind the current of like how Zorn
was framing his version of populism, which was able to
(51:33):
get Trump to be like friendly towards like the economic
affordability sides of his policy proposals in talking about like
the crossover of support between Bernie and Trump and twenty
sixteen and the crossover support between Trump twenty four and
ma'm donnie in twenty twenty five. At one point, Mam
Donnie did also address the genocide in Gaza.
Speaker 11 (51:53):
Ask mister mamm donnie, you've accused the US government of
committing genocide and Gaza. Why President Trump was working on peace?
Speaker 7 (52:01):
Why that I've spoken about the Israeli government committing genocide,
and I've spoken about our government funding it. And I
shared with the President in our meeting about the concern
that many New Yorkers have of wanting their tax dollars
to go towards the benefit of New Yorkers and their
ability to afford basic dignity. And what we see right
now is we're in the ninth consecutive year of more
(52:21):
than one hundred thousand school children being homeless in our city,
and there's a desperate need not only for the following
of human rights, but also the following through on the
promises we've made New Yorkers. And I appreciated the meeting
we had and the work that we can do.
Speaker 11 (52:33):
I agree that President Trump didn't do a piece and
work hard to make the peace, because we were hard
to do with the peace in the Midate East and everywhere.
What do you agree with that?
Speaker 7 (52:42):
I appreciate all efforts towards peace, and I shared with
President Trump that when I spoke to Trump voters on
Hillside Avenue, including one of whom was a pharmacist, that
spoke about how President Trump's father actually went to that
pharmacy not too far from Jamaica, states that people were
tired of seeing our tax dollars fund endless wars. And
I also believe that we have to follow through on
the international human rights and I know that still today
(53:03):
those are being violated and that continues to be work
that has to be done no matter where we're speaking of.
Speaker 3 (53:08):
Man, that's I I that's so complicated, so conflicting.
Speaker 4 (53:13):
That's a lot going on.
Speaker 3 (53:14):
On one hand, it's really good that somebody on record
said in the White House that the US is enabling
Israel and continuing the genocide. I'm glad that that happened. Yeah,
On the other hand, the fact that it's off roaded
so quickly to now let's talk about like what we
want to do for New Yorkers and it is like, yeah,
(53:35):
it's not I don't know, it's it's the only way
this was going to happen at all. I suppose it's
the mar It's very no, I agree, I agree, but
it's tonally awkward, like it's yeah, it's it's totally a
little lot, especially when the topic is genocide, right, like
the vault from genocide to housing affordability and understand that
(53:56):
both the serious issues, it's still a tonal shift that
is jarring. And like, yes, it's absolutely fair to say
he's the mayor of New York. He has no ability
to influence US policy in terms of selling arms to Israel,
and the fact that he brought it up at all
is positive. But boy, is that is that a wild
minit or so of talking.
Speaker 2 (54:16):
I think the reason why he brought it up is
to talk about specifically, like funds that we are sending
to Israel should not be sent to Israel now, those
funds that should be being used in the United States
to do things to help people here. And that is
why he brought that up as a seg well.
Speaker 3 (54:34):
And reiterating that Trump supporters often agree with the idea
that we should not be spending this much money on this,
sending weapons over the world to fund wars overseas. It'll
be interesting to see if shit continues with Venezuela, how
that all moves. But I think it's valuable to like
really slam that home in the White House that like, hey,
(54:57):
you ran on getting the US out of these kind
of violent entanglements overseas. Yeah, I'm glad someone said it.
I guess, Yeah, it's just weird. This is all a
very weird meeting.
Speaker 4 (55:09):
Yeah, yeah, the whole thing was jarring. I guess.
Speaker 2 (55:11):
There was another point there where he was talking about
like like local local New York businesses and a Trump's
father like went to this pharmacy, And I think stuff
like that is tactics that he used to get Trump
to be friendly with him as well. As Trump later
spoke about how in one of the rooms that they
were meeting, and there was a portrait of FDR which
Trump had personally like picked out of the storage faults
(55:32):
to hang, and like Orn asked him about the portrait
and asked if he could get a picture with it,
and this seemed to please Trump a lot. Tr Trump
wasn'thing able to talk about how he picked up the picture,
and then Trump said a few really interesting things. He's like,
I guess it's a big fan of FDR and the
New Deal, which is phenomenal maneuvering from Zora classic technique
(55:55):
to get like democratic socialist politics across to someone. Again,
there's moments like that stuff with stuff of how we
talked about like Bernie some some you know, the you know,
regular populist rhetoric, talking about the crossover between you know,
voters from between Trump and mamdannie, just his general love
of New York and FDR New Deal. You can see
all these things that were used to like navigate through
(56:17):
this meeting to get to get Trump to actually seed
ground on a lot of stuff with I think very
very minimal concessions, if any if any real concessions even
from Zor like at all. Like I think in general,
Trump was the one that moved rhetorically throughout this meeting
and moved on like actual like actual like promises to
withhold funds to invade the city with National Guard troops.
(56:39):
I think Trump was the one who actually seeded territory
in this meeting. I do not see much evidence of
things that m Donnie had could have personal impact on
actually like losing losing ground on those things throughout this meeting.
Speaker 4 (56:51):
It is also important to remember that he has a
rhetoric man, Damie two has a rhetorical role to play, right,
And yes he is Mayor of New York. He is
also an extremely popular politician at the and like when
he talks about things like the genocide in Gaza, that
that has rhetorical value. I'm not saying he can go
to New York City Council and stop it, but like
him saying that it is a genocide at the White
(57:13):
House is important, and like it is important that like
when he has this this podium in front of the
whole world at the White House, so he used it
to talk about the genocide, and he did, But like,
I don't think we should only think about this in
terms of New York. Like it is sure important that
someone said that, and I hope he keeps using that
platform he has right now to say that as someone
who like is definitely looked up to nationally in like
(57:37):
DSA circles.
Speaker 2 (57:39):
I mean, I think and this this goes into some
of the the I guess kind of I mean, some
of them are critiques, some of them aren't even really
critiques of this meeting. I think a lot of them
are people jumping on the opportunity to just attacks or
on with no real construction critique there. But there's this
kind of relates to these two different forms of politics
that people use on the left, like politics is a
form of personal expression as a for of like posturing
(58:01):
as a as a form of like maintaining of moral purity,
versus politics as an actual practical method of achieving cyst
like systematic change, And people engage in these two different modes,
and there're thing there's a role for both of these
modes of politics. Actually, I think both of these have
have a degree of necessity. And Zoron has has taken
one specific path, and there's the others who are who
(58:24):
are very clear in having taken the other path. And
there's there's a bunch of a bunch of a bunch
of critiques from this meeting quote unquote critiques, including from
a formal Seattle City councilman who's now running for Congress
as a socialist, Kashama Sawant quote. If I were in
Mamdani's position, instead of asking Trump to meet me, I
would have announced a mass rally of tens of thousands
(58:46):
of people in New York City to protest against ice rates,
to declare that New York City will not tolerate ice
and will fight Trump every inch of the way. I
would launch a mass campaign for free transit and free
childcare and build a militant movement to win unquote. These
these are things Zoran's are already participated in. These are
things that have happened. Just one more, like one more
protest that's going to be more effective than actually having
(59:08):
Trump seed some ground on the scale of enforcement. This
is part of why I have this like hesitation around
discussion of Zoran, because I think he's actually doing kind
of strategic moves to actually limit the amount of damage
that Trump's able to do in the city. And he's
doing it through like rhetorical maneuvers, and some of that
(59:29):
may feel awkward to watch in a like a live
press conference, but I think the actual end results of
that have a lot more potential than say of, you know,
a rally of ten thousand people which effectively does nothing.
Speaker 1 (59:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (59:42):
I mean we've had a bunch of those that that
is politics is performance right lately like that, Yeah, people
are very attached to that mode of political engagement in
the United States, like that they're large, you know, walking
around with sciences shouting demonstration and political intent. It has
not been success in stopping ice gribing random people of
(01:00:02):
the street, I'll just say that.
Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
And people have been criticizing Zoran just simply for even
taking this meeting because it's somehow quote unquote like humanizes
Trump in some way, like Trump doesn't need to be humanized, right,
Like it's like Zoron's platform by Donald Trump. He is
the president of the United States. He he he wins,
he has that position, he has bought the legitimacy like
this this I don't think Zoron being there actually rehabilitates
(01:00:27):
Trump's image in a meaningful way. I think what he's
doing is trying to actually make New York a safer
and more affordable place to live by doing a kind
of complicated political maneuver, which I'm sure is kind of
upsetting to kind of go through, but he's doing it.
And the wave of criticism that it's kind of based
on based on that sort of you know, humanizing argument
(01:00:47):
or this stuff on, like why doesn't Zorn just protest
instead of actually trying to like cut deals or like
not even cut deals because that sounds so like slimy,
but like actually like negotiate with the president, and like
this criticism comes on the tail end like a week's
worth of very reflexive criticism of Zoran for his retention
of New York Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tish, as well
(01:01:11):
as advocating against the New York City DSA's endorsement of
city councilmen and new DSA member she offses primary campaign
against Congressman Hukim Jeffries. Some of these criticisms I get
the Jefferson a little bit more, but some of these
criticisms I find to be a little odd, mostly considering
the fact that Zoran has been open about his plan
to retain Tish for literal months, for literal months, and
(01:01:32):
just this week people acted like it was this massive
betrayal in his like ideological purity or his stated promises,
which just isn't true. He's been open about this like
since like last summer, and on the on the Jeffrey
side of things, I think Zorn's point of view here
is at a difficult primary campaign and one that's probably
going to be unsuccessful based on the Zoron twenty twenty
(01:01:53):
five general vote map. It shows that that'd be very,
very challenging. But this, this difficul call primary against referees,
would also inhibit Zoron's ability to implement the affordability agenda
in the city. The New York Times quoted a leaked
portion of the DSA's endorsement meeting with Zoran saying, quote,
the choice before us is not whether to vote for
(01:02:14):
Chai or Hageme at the ballot box. The choice is
how to spend the next year. Do we want to
spend it defending caricatures of our movement or do we
want to spend it fulfilling the agenda at the heart
of that very same movement. Unquote, Zora has a very
specific focus right now on the New York City government,
and implementing the agenda for New York City and the
(01:02:35):
congressional campaign would, in his view, only put more roadblocks
to that at this point in time. Versus keeping a
left wing ally in the New York City Council.
Speaker 4 (01:02:46):
I guess I don't see why they can't do both.
Like they will be defending caricatures of their movement for
sure the next forever right until the Internet and stupid politics,
the stopping part of a politics which isn't coming anytime soon.
I think it'd be perfectly possible to give that endorsement
and still say my job as mayor is to do
the ship that I promised to do. I also endorse
(01:03:06):
this person because I think they're a better person than
the Keem Jeffries, who has been very poor. Okay, I
don't I don't see those two things as mutually exclusive.
We need to talk about MTG, if only very briefly.
Speaker 3 (01:03:19):
What is there to say.
Speaker 4 (01:03:21):
That magic the Gathering has finally reclaimed the acronym. Oh good, Yeah,
Marjorie Taylor Green leaving politics?
Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
Well maybe, well she's leaving the house. Is at the end,
at the end of the year.
Speaker 4 (01:03:35):
Is leaving the house?
Speaker 2 (01:03:36):
See what she's announced?
Speaker 4 (01:03:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
It is unclear how she will continue her career.
Speaker 4 (01:03:42):
Maybe maybe Zoran will be taking her seat. Maybe the
Trump's new friend.
Speaker 2 (01:03:46):
I mean, I really don't think he's much interest in
being in the House of Representatives, especially in Georgia.
Speaker 3 (01:03:51):
Oh would jesus?
Speaker 4 (01:03:52):
He has a much more important role now. I guess
like he's able to do a lot more as executive
new York than he ever would be as like a
single rep in yeah yeah, yeah, but yeah no more MTG.
Speaker 3 (01:04:03):
Okay, well great.
Speaker 4 (01:04:06):
If you want to contact us, you can reach out
to us at Coolzone tips at proton dot me. We
reported the news, We reported the news.
Speaker 1 (01:04:27):
It to happen here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
now find sources where it could happen here listed directly
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