It Could Happen Here Weekly 198

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.

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

Speaker 3 (00:29):
Garrison takes a puff of their clove cigarette as slow
jazz plays in the background. These sites say what they
used to be. I've been digging into liberal conspiracy theories.
That is, they're all the rage where the sky is
blue and the book is face. These libs think Old

(00:52):
Donnie Jay's close call in Pennsylvania was a false flag,
that the South African Musk stole the election, and that
the Park Service has gone rogue, waging an insearchent information
warfare against this corrupt administration, sending out coded messages on
social media. It's called blue and on doll and it's

(01:14):
been making me blue. This is it could happen here.
I'm Garrison Davis. I'm joined by Mio Wong for our
Blue On On episode.

Speaker 4 (01:26):
Finally, I never thought. I never thought I would be
nostalgic for the days where I was arguing with Isis
on Twitter. But increasingly increasingly I am looking back at
that as the golden age the Internet. We were merely dealing. No,
it's it's only gotten.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
More stupid right wing terrorist organization. It's it's only gonna
get more stupid from here. Oh yeah, no, this is
this is the least stupid it's going to be for
at least fifty years. And this is the thing that
I realized what doing my research for this blue On
episode is that usually conspiracy research is kind of fun.
I have a good time looking into conspiracy theories. I
like going to conspiracy conventions. I get joy out of this,

(02:06):
almost no joy. Looking into liberal conspiracy theories really boring
and kind of sad.

Speaker 4 (02:13):
So that's the intro for this episode, Garrison, can I
interest you in some of the bespoke shit? None of
none of the none of this twenty twenty four elections stolen?
Can I Can I interest you in some two thousand
and four iowall vote total skill? Oh yeah, absolutely, We'll

(02:36):
get to that so much better.

Speaker 3 (02:37):
We'll get to that in our last section, because yeah,
there has been liberal election done out in the past,
not at the same I think scale it exists at now,
but yes, it certainly has existed before. And you know,
for a while, conspiracy theories were like a bipartisan or
at least like a by directional political pastime, like old
conspiracy magazines were not as partisan as conspiracy theories have

(02:59):
seemed today. Think of like, you know, JFK. Everyone gets
to have fun with JFK except for me. I don't
have any fun with that. And conspiracy culture used to
like crossover between hippie environmentalism, anti semitism, anti corporatism, anti authoritarianism.
All these things exist both on the far right and
the far left. There was a lot of meshing between

(03:23):
different different polarities of conspiracy theory, and I think politics
on the fringe are slightly more susceptible to conspiratorial thinking.
And if if you spend any amount of time and like,
you know, the communist left, you'll see that they have
their fair share of conspiracy theories or even just a
conspiratorial way of understanding the world.

Speaker 4 (03:42):
They all think that we work for the CIA.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
Yeah, stuff about the CIA and NATO all kinds of stuff,
and though like anti vaccine and nine to eleven trutherism
were initially more liberal aligned conspiracy theories, in the Obama years,
conspiracy culture coalesced around the growing far right. Look at
people like Glenn Beck and the slide of Alex Jones

(04:05):
into the fascist right. Case in point Obama, Birtherism and
all this stuff leads to Donald Trump and QAnon. As
of late, liberals have had a conception that as the
more rational of the two political alignments, they were almost
naturally immune to conspiratorial thinking. Meanwhile, attacks on consensus, reality,

(04:28):
fractured information streams, and any larger collective sense of what's
real and what isn't started to slip away from everyone.

Speaker 4 (04:36):
Here, Yeah, your camera's flashing. They're trying to silence me.
They're trying I'm getting too close to the truth. He
legitimately looked like a fucking like you're being taken off
the air in a cyberpunk thing, like you pirate radio
is my cat started to unplug my camera. Really funny shit.

Speaker 3 (04:57):
Although my cat is named Theodore Katzinski and Kazinski was
a CIA operative who got mk ultra, so you never know.
The right wings trailblazing of political unreality allowed space for
liberals to dip their toes into the conspiratorial mindset again,

(05:17):
but maybe without even realizing that's what they were doing.
Exaggerations of Russia Gate was one of the first Trump
era liberal experiments with conspiracy theories, the idea that Russia
not only engaged in hacking on a social media disformation
campaign to influence the twenty sixteen election, but that Donald
Trump himself colluded with Russia to get himself elected and

(05:40):
might even be a Russian asset. And even though those
allegations were investigated and not concretely proven, the conspiratorial churn continued,
emboldened by the media environment that the right has created.
As QAnon accelerated during the second half of Trump's first term,
so did the decline of American consensus reality, culminating in

(06:03):
the Stop the Steel movement in January sixth, which were
explosive manifestations of Internet conspiracism which erupted in the physical world.
A severe fracturing of reality took place. Any conception of
a shared political reality seemed so far gone, and the
effects of this loss aren't just contained to Republicans, but

(06:25):
this also enables liberals and people on the left by
opening up space for small reality tunnels to form regardless
of political ideology. The siloing of information channels makes it
almost impossible to actually form a consensus reality. As the
United States has embraced its political cafe, as everything gets

(06:45):
more absurd, what loses is political mundanity. Liberals and the
left were almost destined to become more conspiratorial in this
current moment. And you can even look at how newsome
is like copying Trump's posting strategies, and even how people
like me memify and replicate Trump phrases. Many such cases,

(07:10):
we were all gonna be pulled into this at a
certain point because it's just more interesting. I'm going to
quote from one of MIA's favorite books, the CCRU quote
God No. Conspiracy fictions are spun out of an all
encompassing narrative that can't possibly be falsified, because they want

(07:31):
you to believe in their non existence. To attempt to
refute such narratives is to be drawn into a tedious
double game. One either has to embrace an arbitrary and
outrageous cosmic plot in which everything is being run by Jews, Masons,
the Illuminati, the CIA, Microsoft or Satan, or alternatively advocate

(07:52):
submission to the most mundane construction of quotidian reality, dismissing
the hyperstitional chaos that operates behind the greens. This is
why atheism is usually so boring. Both conspiracy and common
sense the normal reality script depend on the dialectical side
of the double game, on reflective twins belief and unbelief.

(08:17):
But disbelief is merely the negative complement of belief.

Speaker 4 (08:22):
Unquote.

Speaker 3 (08:24):
Belief is so much stronger because disbelief is so much
more boring. It only exists in comparison to belief in something.
I think this is why everyone has this urge to
get more conspiratorial and like Americans specifically, our country is
based on conspiracy theory, like the Masons are such a

(08:44):
core part of our national identity.

Speaker 4 (08:47):
I fucking went down that title. I went down the
like if you ask me to start talking about politics
in late nineteen seventies early nineteen eighties Italy, I could
start talking about how Italy was run by a rogue
Basonic lodge. So that actually is true. If you google
propaganda due you will you will find out this was
this was actually, this was all the front page of
the New York Times. It was to be fair to
the basis, this was a rogue Masonic launch. They had

(09:09):
been expelled from the Masons for being assholes. But this
is true. All conspiracies are true, but only about nineteen
seventies Italy. But it's more interesting, right, like it it's
so much more interesting. Yeah, it is more interesting. And
it makes it really hard to disprove conspiracy theories when
the act of disproving it makes it feel like you're

(09:32):
submitting to some all controlling authority, and people people feel
like they're losing, like they're they And that idea of
submission is why people get so pulled into conspiracy theories,
because they think that believing in conspiracy theories is itself
almost a form of resistance against you know, quote unquote them, Yeah,
which is which, which is very funny, because the actual

(09:52):
operation of conspiracy is precisely the other way around. Like
conspiracies had been encouraged by the government, by governments for ever,
like the protocols are the Elders of Zion were like
an op by the fucking czars, like like this is this,
like this this, this is this was this was literally
a Russian police operation. Right, but all of these people
now believe that they're like, oh, I'm like the anti
systemic person because I fell for this like anti Symitic

(10:15):
police operation. But it's yeah, it's a really powerful force.

Speaker 3 (10:18):
The US government has intentionally stoked like UFO conspiracy theories
for eighty years.

Speaker 4 (10:24):
Yeah, because it covers up the thing. You know, if
you if you want to go conspiratory about it is
because it covers up the thing they're actually doing, which
is like mundane but horrifying weapons testing shit.

Speaker 3 (10:34):
Like Now, the CCRU proposes that quote unquote, unbelief might
be the way out of this cycle by building a
plane of potentiality where the annihilation of judgment converges with
real cosmic indeterminacy. I myself tried to embrace an unbelief

(10:54):
viewpoint for a lot of things, but I think that
only gets you so far, and might also so encourage
some of these same problems in a larger scale. Because
America has now gotten to the point of unbelief, especially
in regards to QAnon. We've outgrown the need for QAnon
because everything is QAnon.

Speaker 4 (11:15):
Now.

Speaker 3 (11:16):
Politics are about determining who is and isn't a pedophile
immigrants are trafficking children. Donald Trump is on the Epstein list,
which both doesn't exist and was invented by Democrats. Historical
events are staged. Every election was now stolen by the
side who won. DHS is posting coded messages on the Internet.
The FBI and police are faking crime statistics. Everything Trump

(11:37):
does is a distraction from whatever the previous thing Trump did,
which itself was a distraction from whatever the previous thing
Trump did.

Speaker 5 (11:44):
So on and so forth.

Speaker 4 (11:45):
This is just what American politics are now.

Speaker 3 (11:48):
Yeah, and while Trump's numerous connections to Epstein are long
documented and he appears in Epstein FBI investigation files, discussions
around it can feel very the storm is coming. The
pedu elite are always just about to be arrested and
removed from office. I like to see old Donnie J

(12:09):
wiggle his way out of this jam. The logic of
QAnon has perforated almost every aspect of American politics. On
Blue Sky, there is this conspiratorial mantra gaining traction among liberals. Quote,
he wasn't shot, he didn't win, He's on the list.

Speaker 4 (12:26):
Don't like that.

Speaker 3 (12:28):
Oh no, that's what they believe. Do you know what
isn't a conspiracy theory. Maya that advertisement is designed to
drive consumer demand repledged capitalism by replacing your desires.

Speaker 4 (12:40):
Not a conspiracy theory. That's just the good old truth.

Speaker 3 (12:43):
Listen to these ads, all right, We're back as q
andon itself became a uber conspiracy theory overtime liking together
a large collection of historical and contemporary conspiracy theories into

(13:05):
one overarching story. Bluinon does not just refer to a
single conspiracy theory, but rather as a label that can
be applied to a general assortment of theories or conspiratorial
thinking held by contemporary liberals and Democratic voters. I myself
used a version of this term all the way back
in January of twenty twenty one for a since removed

(13:28):
YouTube video due to threats of violence, in which I
used the word blue QAnon to describe Portland liberals who
believed that Russia was staging Antifa protests to make liberals
look bad after Biden's election victory, and some of the
banners used in this video apparently had threats to the
President of the United States, so YouTube took down the video. Unfortunately,

(13:52):
even though the video was just outlining liberal conspiracy theories
about this protest, thinking that Russia probably made this banner.

Speaker 4 (14:00):
The censorship regime continues apace.

Speaker 3 (14:06):
Around this time twenty twenty one, the term blew and
on was mostly used to refer to Trump Russia conspiracy theories,
but there were a whole bunch of other liberal conspiracy
theories in this era, like how palettes of bricks were
being mysteriously dropped off at protests. And though I will
say this conspiracy theory was used by both people on
the right as well as some centrist liberals.

Speaker 4 (14:29):
Yeah, and I think this is actually you know, you
were talking about how there is this like QAnon, like
this sort of moment of break with consensus reality. And
I think the twenty twenty uprising was one of the
most the single most important events in this entire process massively. So, yeah,
because the twenty twenty Uprising was a systemic challenge to
both the liberal and the Republican establishment right, because if

(14:51):
its central premise is true that the United States is
a structurally racist state, right that is based on the
oppression of black people, then you can't continue to maintain
the state. And also, simultaneously, the thing that was incredibly
threatening was that people were actually willing to go out

(15:11):
and fight the police over this. And on the right,
this obviously causes massive reality fraction because they have to
grapple with the fact that like most of the country
was fine with burning a police station down or were
they right? Yeah, this is like oh no, there was
this was this was act. This whole thing was actually
like a plan by like Antifa Democrats and like Pritzker's billionaire,
like the Jewish billionaire sorrow Jewish billionaires.

Speaker 3 (15:34):
It was actually the Boogaloo boys who planned the whole
thing and burned down the Third Precinct.

Speaker 4 (15:39):
Yeah, and this is this is a very very compon.
This became the liberal main line on the burning of
the Third Precinct was that it was a false flag
by like the Boogloo Boy People don't remember the Boogloo right,
Boogloo Boys. Yeah, it was like they're like this very
very weird race.

Speaker 3 (15:54):
War fashion, trying to encourage a new civil.

Speaker 4 (15:56):
Lanness of a word weird fascist group. But like that
became the liberal main line because they had to find
a way to explain the fact that the people who
were you know, like a lot of people who are
norminally supposed to be their base, decided instead of doing
their sort of just like vote for the presidents and
like vote for the Democratic president and like non violently
and passively do nothing, people went and fought the police

(16:21):
for most of a year, and this caused this massive
fracturing where people had to believe it instead of there
just being construction sites and people taking bricks from construction sites,
as people have been doing for literally since the first
brick was made, people have been taking them and throwing
them at enemy authorities, right, Like Stonewall was a false play, yeah, right,

(16:43):
because the actual power of that uprising was so dangerous
to the fundamental liberal conceptions of of reality in the world,
and that like the marginalized and oppressed people who they
who they sort of planned to represent, would take take
it into their own hands. The idea that, yeah, the
state is structurally racism, so it has to be resisted.
That caused people to just have to create these like

(17:05):
just pure reality tunnels of like, oh no, actually, any
attempt to fight the police is a false flag that
the police want to do. Or the burning of the
Third Precinct was actually like the fascist attempting to provoke people,
and that the state actually wants you to fight it,
because if you fight the state, then the state wins.
And like this is one of the er reality tunnels
that creates this sort of conspiratorial mindset. We're like the
Booglue boys at the third precinc That's not just a

(17:26):
thing from like you know, online posters that became the
main line of the Democratic Party because they also had
to contain the uprising and from there and once that's
the accepted narrative of like the Democrats, then this pure
reality tunnel conspiracy shit is now just baked in to
the very core of liberalism as it attempts to recuperate

(17:49):
and defeat the energies that were unleashed by twenty twenty
And that's how we're here. That's a large part of it.

Speaker 3 (17:56):
Flash Forwarding a few years during the first half of
twenty twenty five, especially in and around Biden's disastrous debate performance,
the blue and on term begun being used to refer
to a collection of theories that a secret cabal of
deep state elites, the news media, high ranking Democrats, and
Republicans were targeting Biden to sabotage his presidency to make

(18:19):
him lose the election.

Speaker 4 (18:22):
There's no such thing as getting old. There is simply
being sabotaged by q cards and camera lighting positions.

Speaker 3 (18:32):
Now, the blue On term here is sort of a
misnomer because like at this point, like Russia Gate, and
QAnon had very little in common. Like one viewed Trump
as the Messiah, the other viewed him as basically, you know,
an anti Christ slash Russian asset. In the wake of
the Trump assassination, Philip Bump penned a Washington Post article declaring,

(18:55):
quote QAnon and blue and on rhyme, the similarities end there.
And I have sympathies for this viewpoint, especially in the
wake of like January sixth. Right, Blunon doesn't have Satanic
wayfair child trafficking, but maybe it doesn't need to. No,
In conspiracy theories, it's not just about the substance of

(19:15):
the beliefs held, but the function and methodology of the beliefs.
And in the past year, Blunon's function and methodology have
started to parallel q Andon's more and more, which leads
us to the event that really opened up operating space
for the mainstreaming of the liberal conspiracy theories, the attempted

(19:37):
assassination of one Donald Trump. Americans are particularly susceptible to
assassination conspiracy theories. It has kind of been woven into
our national identity now. Of course, Republicans, including elected representatives,
developed their own fair share of theories about the attempted

(19:57):
assassination of Donald Trump. But that's a another episode. Here's
a viral Facebook video. Remember Facebook, it's not that bad taken.

Speaker 4 (20:09):
Look what happened? Fake ass shit man.

Speaker 6 (20:15):
Stage, fake ass shit bro Ain't no bullets flying and network.

Speaker 4 (20:19):
You know what I'm saying. If you know anything about
the shootout.

Speaker 6 (20:22):
Soon a shootout, you will see bullets, class stuff getting
piled off. Oh, ain't netting going on, never getting hit,
nothing getting piled off.

Speaker 4 (20:30):
He definitely didn't get hit.

Speaker 5 (20:31):
He faked it all.

Speaker 6 (20:33):
The whole dang is fake stage and Grid Broles how
didn't play y'all. They gonna make y'all vote on now
off the dump?

Speaker 4 (20:40):
You feel me?

Speaker 7 (20:41):
Oh, y'all?

Speaker 1 (20:42):
Oh he oh, he been shot at.

Speaker 4 (20:43):
Y'all all gonna on a vote on goat some fucking clowns.

Speaker 6 (20:46):
Bu.

Speaker 3 (20:47):
The word staged spiked in use by almost four thousand
percent on Twitter, according to the misinformation tracker NewsGuard appearing
three hundred thousand times the day of and after the shooting.
The term inside job also rose on social media, up
by over three thousand percent, with bots and inauthentic accounts

(21:12):
adding to this chaos and Israeli dsinfo tech firm Cybra
found that forty five percent of accounts using hashtags like
fake assassination and staged shooting were inauthentic. Within a day,
a post on x questioning the authenticity of the event
gained over fifty thousand likes. Quote great camera angle, great quality,

(21:33):
no secret service agent in front of his head covering
the wound, conveniently placed US flag unquote. Another got nearly
fifty thousand likes, asking users to quote raise your hand
and repost if you think this was staged.

Speaker 4 (21:48):
There was a flood of posts.

Speaker 3 (21:50):
Earning thousands of likes and millions of alleged views, which
questioned why Trump was able to or allowed to stand
above the crowd after being shot, yelling fight, fight fight,
risking getting shot again, and while it could have been
possible that there was a second shooter, Trump was only

(22:11):
able to stand back up after it was confirmed that
Crooks was killed. You can hear it in the video
shoot her down shoot her down. Secret Service was already
aware of Crook's position prior to the shooting and had
not located any other possible shooters. But reality does not
matter here. Yeah, I'm going to play a short clip
from a YouTube video which was uploaded just a month

(22:33):
ago with over eighty five thousand views, explaining why someone
feels it really easy to believe in this conspiracy.

Speaker 8 (22:41):
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I normally don't go down conspiracy hos.

Speaker 5 (22:47):
I don't, but we know MAGA does.

Speaker 8 (22:51):
Maga has gone down so many conspiracy holes and brought
it to science that we've got people not giving their
kids vaccine. We've seen easels rising in Texas. We had
people not wanting to get into COVID. We had quarterbacks
telling people to take ivermectin. We had people saying take
fucking horse trank oralizers to get rid of COVID. And

(23:12):
so now I think I've earned opportunity to go down
a rabbit hole. This video was someone who was right
there at the Trump rally, and they're contending that this
whole thing is made of which a lot of us
felt like it was anyway, because we do know that Trump,
he's not afraid to fool around and shall we say

(23:34):
reality or entertainment TV. We know he's not afraid to
do that, and I'll show you an example of that
in a minute.

Speaker 4 (23:41):
What example do you think he's going to show a
WWE thing? It is a WWE thing. I remember there
was so much WWE like tieing shit with this. Well
we'll get to that in this second.

Speaker 3 (23:55):
But I find this explanation of why this person feels
almost allowed to believe the conspiracy theory is now super interesting.
It is specifically because the right has been so willing
to embrace conspiracism that now it feels like it's fair
game for liberals to do it as well. And this
guy is just almost almost acknowledging this fact. He's kind

(24:16):
of like working his way to my entire thesis here,
maybe without realizing it.

Speaker 4 (24:21):
Also, this guy sponsored by an AI company, just just
to make this absolutely perfect great stuff, great stuff happening
in this in the sphere of our political discourse. We
love to see it.

Speaker 3 (24:31):
But yes, based on the blood severed across Trump's face
after he went on the ground, people postulated that Trump
was hiding a razor blade in his sleeve WWE style
to purposefully cut his face to make it look like
he was shot.

Speaker 4 (24:47):
Yeah, Donald Trump bladed himself. What are we doing here?

Speaker 8 (24:51):
So should we believe that faking getting shot is beyond boom?
Why would we believe that when this is steal Trump
that once was trained by the WW whatn't those some

(25:13):
convincing ass right hands he just gave vincement Man, No, those.

Speaker 4 (25:18):
Were the least convincing right hands I've ever seen, and
I have watched pul Colgan threw a poton not for me.

Speaker 3 (25:24):
You know what, I think we've saved this whole assassination
thing right here. Like this stuff doesn't even warrant debunking.
Debunking is useless, right, Yeah. All of these conspiracy theories
rest on the fact that rally attendees were hospitalized with
gunshot wounds and two people died as a sacrifice to
sell this event, and that the Biden era Secret Service

(25:47):
helped facilitate this whole operation. I watched YouTube videos explaining
that even if bullets were fired and people at the
rally were hitting killed though just not Trump, the actual
footage of the shooting is actually ai because as the
number of targets hit don't match the number of shots
heard in the video, and people in the crowd suddenly
disappear once shots are fired, as in people get down

(26:10):
low on the ground to avoid getting hit. As for
the number of shots hit versus shots fired, these videos
seem to not realize that bullets travel through objects like
say Donald Trump's ear the.

Speaker 4 (26:25):
Point of a bullet.

Speaker 3 (26:27):
Also, this was actually Trump loyalist police firing into the
crowd as a part of this stage operation, not not
Thomas Crooks. After the shooting, a political advisor to Democratic
donor and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman named Dimitri Melhorn sent
an email proposing that the shooting may have been quote

(26:47):
encouraged and maybe even staged so Trump could get the
photos and benefit from the backlash unquote. The next day,
Melhorn regretted and apologized for sending the email. And think
about it. While one person was lined up perfectly to
get the now historic photo, think of how many other
professional photographers at the rally weren't so lucky. There's not

(27:08):
just one photographer at the event, there's lots, And yeah,
one person got a really compelling shot.

Speaker 4 (27:13):
It's a campaign event. There's paid photographers there. This is
what a campaign event is Oh my god, there was
a flag that was stayed because it was a campaign
event going insane.

Speaker 3 (27:28):
According to a poll from Morning Consult, roughly one in
five voters said that they found it credible that the
shooting was staged and not intended to kill Trump, including
one third of at the time Biden supporters, thirty three
percent of Biden supporters, and twelve percent of those who
backed Trump, which is really funny to me.

Speaker 4 (27:50):
That's actually really funny. It was an inside job.

Speaker 9 (27:55):
Good job, guys, good job the mega Trump assassination truthers
the majority of voters, though sixty two percent, said that
the unsubstantiated notion is not credible.

Speaker 3 (28:06):
A statement I've seen from both the conspiratorial left and
the right is that we know all about say Luigi
Mangioni or this latest school shooter, but still know nothing
about the Trump assassination. And this just isn't true. We
actually know a lot about Thomas Crooks. Now, just because
you haven't read about it doesn't mean that we don't know.

(28:29):
I'll link to a recent New York Times article looking
into his online footprint. We know a lot about this guy.

Speaker 4 (28:36):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (28:37):
But based on the conception that this failed assassination attempt
would in the end help Trump get elected. Some people
chose to just reject the event entirely, and yeah, it
was surreal, a warped manifestation of millions of people's dream
And when things happen that challenge expectations or are just

(28:59):
plain weird, some people reject that reality and substitute to
their own alternate realities which make more sense to them.
If a near mis event like this would help Trump,
then it must be Trump's doing. Do you know what
Trump has no control over?

Speaker 4 (29:14):
It's so not true that he doesn't have control of
these products and services. We have good report I got
is his Increasingly.

Speaker 3 (29:20):
The tariffs aren't real, be a. I won't believe the
tariffs until I see them with my own two eyes.

Speaker 4 (29:24):
I'm gonna I'm going to walk you to the port
of LA. Are gonna go look at the tariffs together?

Speaker 5 (29:31):
Why inside?

Speaker 4 (29:32):
So here's the ads. All right, we're back.

Speaker 3 (29:46):
You can't talk about liberal conspiracy theories without the most
blatant example of some libs taking a page right out
of the megaplaybook twenty twenty four Election denial God another
instance of Trump and you and on trailblazing something that
used to be on the political fringe and normalizing it
as acceptable political discourse. Early on, after Trump was declared

(30:09):
the projected winner, liberals questioned why there were seemingly twenty
million missing Democratic votes from the expected twenty twenty four totals,
pointing to the higher numbers in twenty twenty seemingly forgetting
that vote. Totals were still being counted, and in the end,
there were only three million fewer votes this election, which

(30:29):
is extremely reasonable for an election, according to NewsGuard. By
Wednesday morning after the election, Trump cheated was trending on
Twitter with nearly one hundred thousand mentions since midnight. I'll
read a few of these viral tweets quote. I hold
a master's degree in political science. I don't yet understand

(30:53):
these results, and I don't pretend to. I'm not into conspiracy,
but I'd like to know millions across Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan
really split their vote? Did millions of Democratic voters really
stay home?

Speaker 4 (31:07):
And the answer is yes, yes, yes they did. That
is what happened. You figured it out.

Speaker 3 (31:13):
People did split their vote, and yeah, lots of people
were not compelled to vote for Harris and stayed home.
Congratulations you you stumbled across the reality.

Speaker 4 (31:22):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 3 (31:22):
Another person remarked, quote, I hold a master's again. I
love all these people prefacing this by saying that they
have degrees.

Speaker 4 (31:30):
And I want to say two things about the degree thing.
One eight each of the time when someone starts doing
what are these things? You can go back and find
different degrees they pretended have two. I have been around
people who get master's degrees in political science. We are
not talking about the cream of the intellectual crop here, Like,
this is a discipline that is like economics for people

(31:53):
who like or even worship the chain rule than economists. Like,
what are we doing here?

Speaker 3 (31:59):
Quote I hold a masters in political science with a
minor in statistics, and I can't make sense of this.
Human nature had to completely upend itself for this to happen.
Swing states voting straight blue down the ballot except for
the top. Nah, that's not what people do, and yet
it is what happened. A frige political science analysis.

Speaker 4 (32:22):
This is hinged for them so very quickly.

Speaker 3 (32:26):
Liberals demanded recounts and court challenges, begging that Kamala Harris
take this to court with misinformation spreading that she was
planning said court challenges. Others alleged that Elon Musk hacked
voting machines. According to a report from the University of Washington,
over a five day period, there were hundreds of thousands

(32:48):
of tweets and retweets about how Elon Musk, working with
Trump and sometimes with Putin, used Starlink satellites to steal
the election, perhaps by intercepting than changing totals through the Internet,
despite most voting machines not being connected to the Internet.

Speaker 4 (33:06):
No, and the actual thing that he did was like
going to places and saying, I'll give you a million
dollars if you vote for this election, one of you
will win. Like that's like the actual thing that he did,
which is so blatantly obvious and.

Speaker 3 (33:20):
Like basic like ground game targeting and swing states, Like, yeah,
they mobilized a shit ton of money. Quote, I'm hearing
today that Elon's software Starship is the software that handled
all the swing state ballots. If indeed this is true,
this is clearly a conflict of interest and another reason

(33:41):
why swing states need investigations. Well, good news, this isn't
indeed true.

Speaker 4 (33:47):
You made this up. This is fake.

Speaker 3 (33:50):
It's not just Twitter, though on Meta's Twitter alternative threads,
there was a hotbed of election denile, with posts like
this spreading on the platform and beyond to places like Reddit.
Quote Trump cheats at everything in life. Putin interfered in
the past three elections. Musk and Trump talked to putin
a lot. Musk's Starlink uploaded votes in swing states. Swing

(34:14):
state voters went Dem down ballot, but Trump at the top.
Unlikely Starlink satellites exploding, destroying evidence unquote. This is referencing
a conspiracy theory from the time that based on an
event on November tenth where a Starlink satellite re entered
orbit and blew up, as elon Musk's technology is known

(34:35):
to do. This was its self proof that he was
blowing up his satellites on purpose to conceal evidence that
Starlink was used to alter election results. SpaceX regularly retires
satellites which then slowly fall to Earth and blow up.

Speaker 4 (34:51):
This is ordinary practice.

Speaker 3 (34:53):
This particular satellite, which exploded on November tenth, was decommissioned
back in August. This has nothing to do with the election. Still,
there were viral tweets calling for a quote unquote, forensic
investigation and accounts like your n on News, an account
pretending to be affiliated with the hacker group Anonymous, which
is a real vector point of left wing conspiratorial thinking.

Speaker 4 (35:16):
I'm going to put a note here. Viz says that
the history of relationship if your n on News is
very complicated. This is not a this is not a
definitive statement on it. Please don't get mad at us.
It's a it's a fucking mess. It's a fucking mess.
That's That's what I'm gonna say about it. That guy
sucks shit.

Speaker 3 (35:35):
They've been spreading a lot of election misinformation news, especially
in November.

Speaker 4 (35:40):
Quote.

Speaker 3 (35:41):
Some strange statements from Trump and Elon have fueled doubts
about election integrity. You can just change one line of code,
Elon stated about the code on electronic voting machines. I
don't need more votes. I already have votes, Trump stated repeatedly,
So why not take a look unquote. This alleged quote

(36:02):
from Elon cannot be sourced at all. The full version
of it is quote. If you want to steal an election,
all you have to do is change one line of
code unquote. I have tried so hard to find the
original source for this quote. I cannot. It is just
liberals saying Elon said this. It may have been something
he said, I cannot find it. Even if it is

(36:23):
something he said, it's not evidence that he stole the election,
no at all.

Speaker 4 (36:28):
He does this like there's a whole conspiracy on the
left that thinks that Elon Musk was behind the coup
in Bolivia, which was like something I was accepted by
EVO back when he was in the NIS, like in
Bolivia because it was like politically convenient for everyone involved
to believe that, like Elon Musk did this coup in
Bolivia over like lithium prices, when the actual reality was

(36:49):
it was done by a bunch of Bolivia agrobarons. But
people just believe this shit and and Elon will just
play into it, like because I don't he probably didn't
say that. But like even if he, like he did
say the ship that he did the coup in Bolivia,
but like he didn't, he objectively didn't lollxd like I okay,
I'm not I'm not. I'm not going to get into

(37:10):
the price history of of lithium here and how there
was a fucking market glut at that point, which is
the exact opposite thing you would want there to be
if you're trying to steal with you like, it's nonsense.
So people just believe this shit because it fits, it
fits their version of reality. And the right is really
happy to sort of play into this because they just
play around with conspiracies.

Speaker 3 (37:28):
And this line from Trump is just breaking about having
a lot of projective votes already.

Speaker 4 (37:32):
That's all it is.

Speaker 3 (37:32):
Yeah, the day before inauguration day, people alleged that Trump
may have accidentally admitted to stealing the election in one
of his speeches.

Speaker 4 (37:42):
Oh my fucking god, let's take a look.

Speaker 5 (37:44):
Trump just told on himself.

Speaker 7 (37:46):
He just credited Elon Musk's knowledge of how voting machines
work for his victory in Pennsylvania. He said this during
his victory rally in Washington, d C. The night before
alleged inauguration. Let's listen to the audio.

Speaker 10 (38:04):
And then he journeyed to Pennsylvania, where he spent like
a month and a.

Speaker 11 (38:08):
Half campaigning for me in Pennsylvania. And he's a popular guy,
and he was very effective. And he knows those computers
better than anybody, all those computers, those vote counting computers,
and we ended up winning Pennsylvania like.

Speaker 8 (38:22):
In a landslide.

Speaker 5 (38:23):
So that was pretty good.

Speaker 1 (38:25):
It was pretty good, So thank you to Elon.

Speaker 3 (38:28):
That is from a very popular TikToker. This particular video
has twenty thousand likes. I can't even find how many
views it has, but there's hundreds of comments talking about
how the election was stolen. The same video was spread
by people like a friend of the pod Brooklyn Dad defiant.

Speaker 4 (38:44):
Oh god, fucking okay, I need to spend five seconds. No,
we don't have time. He's literally paid by a Democratic party.
He used to be Yeah, he used to be bluterally
paid a Democratic party. He was a fucking oil guy.
God damn it.

Speaker 3 (38:59):
Sorry, okay, but he said quote. Is that a fucking confession?

Speaker 1 (39:03):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (39:04):
Twenty three thousand likes?

Speaker 8 (39:06):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (39:06):
Which, Now this line from Trump gets referenced a lot
in liberal stolen election theories. Trump is not saying he
won because Elon knows vote counting computers. Those two statements
can be separate statements that are just right next to
each other. More, it could be easily interpreted as saying
that Elon Musk's computer knowledge helped prevent fraud, ensuring that
if Dems tried to steal the election again, Elon would

(39:29):
have caught them. As twenty twenty, Republican election denial focused
heavily on voting machines. In terms of numbers on how
many Democrats don't think the election was legitimate, we do
have some statistics. In twenty twenty, eighty eight percent of
Democrats thought the election was legitimate and accurate. In twenty

(39:50):
twenty four, it was only sixty three percent, with nine
percent saying it was the result of illegal voting or
election rigging, and twenty nine percent saying they don't know
if it was legitimate or accurate. Of course, the Republicans
found this election was extremely legitimate as compared to the
last one, in which a majority of Republicans thought it

(40:10):
was the result of illegal voting or election rigging. But
still twenty nine percent of Democrats in twenty twenty four
not knowing if the election is accurate pretty pretty damaging,
and obviously a lack of trust in election systems is
an extremely damaging thing to the functioning of democracy. The
reason why I decided to finally do this episode after

(40:32):
pulling little research bits over the course of the past year,
is a tweet from August twentieth quote. Two whistleblowers have
now confirmed that the NSSA conducted an election audit and
Harris was the winner. Don't fucking ignore this. One hundred
and forty six thousand likes, almost thirty thousand retweets, five

(40:56):
point five million quote unquote views. This went super viral.
One of the biggest instances I've seen in recent election denial.
This viral tweet links to a substack with over fifty
one thousand subscribers and three million views. The focus of
the blog is showing how Kamala Harris really won the

(41:18):
twenty twenty four election. The recent posts cover how a
former CIA operative has confirmed that, based on an NSA
audit of the twenty twenty four election, Kamala actually won.
This was a quote covert compartmentalized forensic audit unquote.

Speaker 4 (41:35):
It's literally just stop the steal. They did this the
same thing.

Speaker 3 (41:40):
It was completed in December twenty twenty four, and based
on the findings, the NSSA and CIA recommended a hand recount,
but the recount was unable to take place before the
January sixth election certification, and since then, the findings of
the audit proving a Kamala victory have been covered up
by Tulci Gabbard and the Trump administration. This blog claims

(42:01):
the election was stolen by hijacking voting machines and quote
illegally copied software, decades of vulnerabilities, and the installation of
a back door through a last minute change order right
before the election unquote. Now, there's a few problems with
this theory, the first at which being that the NSA
doesn't audit elections.

Speaker 12 (42:22):
No what.

Speaker 3 (42:25):
This substacker also operates a still growing TikTok account to
prevent being suppressed for misinformation. The user toksin coded phrases
calling elections baking contests. State election results are either red
cakes or blue cakes.

Speaker 4 (42:43):
Votes are ingredients.

Speaker 3 (42:45):
Rist In her most popular video with about seventy five
thousand views, she claims that Trump isn't giving red swing
states FEMA AID because he knows that these states actually
voted for Kamala Harris, and so Trump is punishing them
by withholding aid. This is her second most popular video,
with fifty thousand views, talking about North Carolina and how

(43:08):
Elon Musk and Peter Thiel worked together to alter election results.

Speaker 1 (43:14):
Hey y'all.

Speaker 13 (43:14):
Quick update on the baking contest in North Kakilaki and
the cake is in fact who we were able to
identify about one hundred and ninety seven thousand ingredients that
were swapped out by the space Baker, So he and
his friend whose name rhymes with seal have been up
to some interesting things.

Speaker 1 (43:33):
When it comes to these baking contests.

Speaker 13 (43:35):
So the surveillance Seal and the Space Baker doing some
doing some interesting baking. So we need you to let
your media friends know and let all your let all
the people know. We're going to do an email campaign
next week because that seems to be how we get
this done. We do have avenues to undo this unholy.

Speaker 1 (43:54):
Mess, and just hold on to your hope.

Speaker 13 (43:56):
Run over to my friends at the coorse Ate and
of course the Common Coalition. Check out the report. We
have more to report on all of the baking contests
that we're working on. We're still digging, We got more
to go and blue Skies ahead, y'all.

Speaker 4 (44:11):
There's something specifically uniquely horrifying about the way that like
just the sort of TikTok language of sewer side or
whatever like that people say, like that kind of shit
this stuff just makes me really sad. No, it's it's
so like I can't have fun with this anymore. Oh God,

(44:37):
damn it.

Speaker 3 (44:37):
The same thing when I was watching some of the
trum assassination videos when I realized this is just from
people who are unwell, and I can't even have fun
with this. And that is also the case with a
lot of Q and on stuff. You should be really
careful about how much joy you take in the suffering
of people and people displaying their suffering on the Internet
by engaging in this stuff. But yeah, this stuff's just
really sad. Like in other videos, she's with her followers

(45:01):
to contact their state governors to convince them to change
all the voting machines because they've been compromised. And I'll
play one more video before we close the episode, I
says over thirty two thousand views. She talks about Trump
using tariffs as leverage to get countries to sign deals
with Elon Musk's Starlink satellites, which will then be used
to control elections worldwide, and the only way to stop

(45:24):
this is to impeach Trump and put Kamala in the
White House since she is the rightful winner of the
twenty twenty four.

Speaker 1 (45:30):
Election, they take from their constituents.

Speaker 13 (45:35):
Now to address the Space Cadet, and how look at
what he launched last year in record time ten months,
this low orbit DTC constellation. And look at what they're
doing with the countries around the world. To get your
tariffs removed, you have to sign a contract with the
Space Cadet. Hello, this is not about any kind of

(45:56):
like you know, internet in the rural areas, blah blah blah.
Nothing about this is to be nice. No, it is
to control future contests. The US was not the endgame.
It was the litmus test. So we can get out
of this. We have constitutional avenues to get out of
this situation, but we need Congress to act, and Congress

(46:18):
won't act until the American people know what happened. And
they're not going to know what happened until our influencers
and our media handle the situation. So Rachel Matto, please,
Lawrence Midas touched. For heaven's sake, Midas touched you guys,
four million people, you could be blasting this out and
letting the American people know what happened. Do your jobs, please,

(46:41):
so we can get the rightful people in the.

Speaker 1 (46:44):
House that they belong in, the big white one.

Speaker 4 (46:48):
I think one of the things that makes me so
insane about these is that like if you're actually, I
guess Garrison, you weren't around for this. But like I've
legitimately have lived through two attempts to steal an election, right,
Like there was two thousand which the Republicans just stole

(47:10):
and then yeah, Donald Trump did try to steal the
election in twenty twenty, but he did it by having
people try to form mobs outside of polling places and
then like his supporters did January sixth That's a real thing.
But the thing about these conspiracies is like they devour reality,

(47:32):
They consume it and strip it for his constituent parts.
Which is why you see so many like you know,
used to see so many conspiracies that would you know,
if you look at their giant conspiracy charts. They're talking
about like the structure of the World Bank and the
IMF and like that's where the Builderberg group stuff comes
out of, Right, they love charts. The Builder Group stuff

(47:52):
is them taking the real structure of the International Monetary
Fund and the World Bank and then you know, devouring
that structure and spinning back out conspiracy and that that's
what these things do. They take they take real things
that happen in the world and just devour them and
turn them into just nothing. And it makes it harder

(48:14):
to act because like, yeah, we do live in a
world where the Republican Party has like attempted to or
successfully did steal two elections, but not this one.

Speaker 3 (48:24):
And if this is your mode of resistance, of hashtag
resistance against Trump, that's useless. It's completely useless. It's not
actually managing any of the effects of Trump on people,
like ice, like attacks on career people. It's this fully contained,
non non form of fighting.

Speaker 4 (48:44):
Yeah, and like like you see you see this, You
see this too on the left of CIA stuff, where
it's like everyone is convinced that like the person they're
arguing with on Twitter like is the CIA, and that
the way that you combat CIA influences by like spreading
I don't know, post and pro asage shit. And it's
like that's not not actually substantively combating the influence of
the CIA. It just feels like it is. And that

(49:05):
structure of feeling is so powerful that it prevents you
from doing actual action.

Speaker 3 (49:10):
There has been this new conspiracy theory getting traction on
Blue Sky a lot that the masked people engaged in
Immigration enforcement ICE aren't actually ICE agents. They're secretly quote
J sixers, bounty hunters or thugs, oathkeepers, proud boys. It's
a big assumption to even say they're federal agents. They're

(49:32):
not identified. We have no idea who they are. Could
be proud boys, or oath keepers or three percenters unquote.
This is trying to push the blame away from the
US government, who is engaging in this action ICE, onto
these non state actors, which people in their mind think
are easier targets. And it's just a completely misunderstanding of power,
and it's a misunderstanding of their current political situation, and

(49:54):
it gives you no ability to actually stop the bad
things ICE are doing. I've seen this theory gain a
lot of traction online. And in the same way that
QAnon is a product of the cognitive dissonance of Trump
supporters having to grapple the fact that the trumpet that
their god king is in power and their lives still suck,
this is this specific one is a product of the
cognitive dissonance of like the fact that these people all

(50:17):
supported ICE when Biden was Biden was the run, running
it when like Biden fucking did his executive order to
shut the border down, right, but kumboom Biden was like
doing consration camps in the desert. They were all pro ICE,
and then they suddenly have to deal with the world
where ICE is doing an ethnic cleansing and they can't
process that. And so the way that they attempt to
cope with it is being like, well, that's actually not
the real Ice. That's like j six proud boys. It's

(50:41):
a groper occupied government. They're sending out coded messages on Twitter. Yeah,
it's the same thing me and you did the episode
about a few weeks ago in our dog Whistle Politics
and the Hunt for Coded Nazi Messaging episode. But yeah,
And though some Democratic voters are engaging in election denial,
I think one key difference from twenty twenty Republican election

(51:03):
denial is that liberal election officials have as of yet
not been willing to participate in this rhetoric openly or
pursue these baseless fraud accusations. This is still one difference.
But I think it's a ticking clock. I think it's
only a matter of time, especially once we see the
midterms that people running for office, that Democrats might start

(51:24):
embracing some kind of wing nutty stuff the same way
Marjor Taylor Green Trojanhorst wing nutty politics into Congress, and
now we see a whole bunch of other representatives being
able to engage in conspiratorial thought on the right. There's
going to be a few instances of this, I think
in the next midterm election for Democrats. It's something to

(51:45):
keep an eye out for, because I think it's only
a matter of time. Like what I mentioned in that
CCR you quote, mundane reality is going to lose because
this stuff is just more interesting. People are going to
try to buy it, and it requires constant pushback. It
for part one, But there's gonna be another episode tomorrow
where I talk with Jack of the Alt watcher Blue

(52:08):
Sky account to discuss the latest evolution of blue and
On and possibly the most qan Oni extension of Blue
and On we've seen yet, the Alt National Park Service
and their coded messages being sent out on Blue Sky
and Facebook. So stay tuned for that tomorrow, and remember
you are not immune to propaganda. Seventeen two nineteen, two

(52:52):
hundred twenty seven general public. Please disregard as this podcast
as fighting battles on multiple fronts. This podcast is it
could happen here, and I'm Garrison Davis. Last episode, I
talked with Miowong about the trajectory of liberal conspiracy theories,

(53:12):
specifically throughout the last ten years, from Russia Gate to
Trump's staged assassination and twenty twenty four election denial. This
resurgence of liberal conspiracism has been dubbed blue and On.
If you want more background on that, go listen to
our previous episode. But this episode is about a new

(53:33):
evolution of Blue and On and possibly the most Qanani
iteration we've seen yet. The Alt National Park Service a
social media engagement farming account that gained traction on Blue
Sky and Facebook last February. In March admidst cuts to
the Park Service from the Trump administration. This account gained

(53:56):
followers by posing as a group of anti Trump dissidents
from within the Park Service, and soon enough it inspired
a collection of other Alt government accounts like Alt CDC,
Alt Nih, Alt Yellowstone, and Alt Noah. The original Alt
National Park Service account basically never talks about the park

(54:19):
Service itself, but during the first few months of Trump's
second term, the account started going viral by posting sequences
of random numbers as ostensibly coded messages to other hashtag
resistance fighters, though the account has since experimented with, altered
and refined their engagement strategies. To hear more about that

(54:42):
and how Alt National Park Service fits into this trend
of liberal conspiracy theories, I talked with someone who has
spent the past few months documenting and writing about this account.
The person who runs the alt watcher account on Blue
Sky and writes about their search on the blog Dispatches

(55:02):
from the Online Void. So here's that interview.

Speaker 5 (55:07):
My name's Jack.

Speaker 14 (55:09):
I'm the user behind the account alt Watcher on Blue Sky,
and I've been following the Alt National Park Service for
about six months, just documenting what they do and how
they steal from journalists and how they're driving a lot
of people insane, including me.

Speaker 3 (55:24):
What is the Alt National Park Service or first, what
does the Alt National Park Service claim to be?

Speaker 14 (55:34):
Yeah, that's an important difference. The All National Park Service
claims to be a loose affiliation of anonymous former parks
employees that are either still employed by the park service
and kind of working behind the scenes, or who were
fired or laid off by the Trump administration and are
now part of a nationwide coalition to resist the government.

(55:55):
That's what they claim to be. What they really are
is just a Facebook shit posting account. We're not sure
if it's one person behind it or if it's a group.
It's remarkably hard to find out anything about the person
who is behind the account, who they are, where they are,
and how they started this. But what they do most
of the time is repost the work of journalists directly

(56:18):
plagiariyes from news outlets, and post these vaguely conspiratorial things
online to try to whip up engagement from their followers.

Speaker 3 (56:25):
I first became aware of this back in probably March
of twenty twenty five, specifically when on Blue Sky they
just started posting a lot of numbers. Yes, I was
aware that this account was created, like in the aftermath
of some like Doge related cuts to the Park Service,

(56:46):
or like anti Dei, anti woke stuff, and then this
account popped up claiming to be you know, like resistance
from inside to people who watch politics like seriously for
their jobs.

Speaker 4 (56:59):
Was very clear that this was.

Speaker 3 (57:00):
Not a legitimate organization, and then they just started posting
numbers sequences of numbers along with other cryptic messages, and
this like immediately starts hitting like the q and on bells.
Back in July of twenty twenty four, there's a Washington
Post article about the Trump assassination conspiracy theories, but specifically

(57:26):
it was it was a I think it was an
opinion piece critical of terming liberal conspiracy theories as as
quote unquote blewing on. They said, quote the main similarity
of q and on and bluing on is that they rhyme.
And for a while I kind of understood this criticism
and agree with parts of it, because there was there

(57:46):
was structural differences between some of how you know, liberals
or like quote unquote the left engage in conspiratorial thinking,
and like the function of q and on the numbers
think started to I'll mess with that analysis because then
you started to see the actual methodology and like the

(58:07):
ideological function of QAnon start to get replicated in what
is most likely just like engagement farming. But for the
people who are following this account and engaging with it
and like it becomes like an important part of their
life and their perception of like hashtag resistance. And I

(58:27):
think that's where bluing on actually proved itself as a term,
was in March of twenty five, I guess, let's talk
about the numbers.

Speaker 14 (58:36):
You know what, I would love I would love to
talk about the numbers. The numbers are also what stood
out to me, and that is why I ended up
making my account and diving into all this. During the pandemic,
I got obsessed with qana, you know, as as just
what is this? A lot of people did a lot
of people did, you know, Look, pandemic did a lot
of crazy things to us. Some people learned to knit,

(58:59):
some people got good at baking. I got really into
learning about q and on and I am. I'm a
huge fan of the QAA podcast. I listened to that constantly.
And as soon as I saw altonps post one of
the numbers, I realized, I'm reading this.

Speaker 5 (59:16):
In their c voice.

Speaker 14 (59:18):
Yeah, their their voice modulated voice that sounds like this
whenever they would post. And I started reading all the
numbers post that way, and just like you said, something
clicked and I went, oh, this is oh, I see
what they're doing here. Yeah, and they've posted numbers many times.
I've got my giant spreadsheet pulled up here, and I
think they've posted something like thirty numbers. It's been a

(59:39):
while since they've done it. But the thing that really
gave the game away from me was during one of
these numbers posts, they posted some random number and then
replied to themselves and said, for discussion, what do you
think these numbers mean? And I said, oh, I see
what's happening.

Speaker 4 (59:57):
Here, kind of giving away the game there, hell at exactly.

Speaker 14 (01:00:01):
Yeah, this is not a group of government insiders communicating
with their coalition. This is the user behind a Facebook
account realizing in real time that they've stumbled on like
a gold mine for engagement. Yeah, oh, we can just
do this and people will do the work for us,
and we're just going to say that out.

Speaker 4 (01:00:21):
Loud and throughout.

Speaker 3 (01:00:23):
Like March and April, their count just like rocketed in popularity. Yes,
I've not actually looked on their Facebook account. Besides, like
the post that you've shared, I've only seen them on
Blue Sky. Is what is the difference of their presence
on Facebook versus like blue Sky Blue Sky.

Speaker 14 (01:00:41):
I think they're at something like nine hundred k on Facebook.
The last time I checked it was about four point
three million.

Speaker 4 (01:00:47):
Geez.

Speaker 14 (01:00:48):
Yeah, they are a massive presence on Facebook and they've
been monetizing their posts. Recently, they have been sponsored content
on Facebook leading to their page.

Speaker 3 (01:00:58):
This is where I think one of the different from
like how Q and nonfunctioned and all National Park Service,
because you know, Q was not monetizing posts on the chance.

Speaker 5 (01:01:09):
That's like I would have loved to see him try.
That would be really funny.

Speaker 3 (01:01:13):
I do not see like this account existing as like
as a sort of operation to influence the political trajectory
of the United States the same way that the qan
on account at least evolved in that capacity. Even if
it started off as like a shit posting thing exactly,
it certainly evolved with with more of a malicious intent
the people behind you know, Q posting.

Speaker 14 (01:01:34):
Yeah, I think that's a big difference between them, is
that this is straightforwardly an engagement far.

Speaker 3 (01:01:40):
Yeah, using some of those tactics, especially like early on,
but for a very simple reason, and that's that's making
money on the Internet, like everybody is trying to do.
It's it's it's just like internet hustle culture stuff with
with no grappling with like the consequences that has for
like the psyche of of people who who engage with
your content.

Speaker 14 (01:02:00):
Exactly, and the psyche of people who engage with this
content is really what keeps me coming back to this project,
because that is the real harm I see here. Look
the online drifters or a diamond doesn't you know people
who sell stuff online. It's everywhere, it's inescapable. What's unique
about alt NPS is that they are trying to make

(01:02:20):
money on convincing people that this is real. You know,
they're not just selling hashtag resist shirts or whatever. They're
trying to get money out of people by convincing them
that they really are part of a shadow resistance against
against Trump, and that you can buy their shirts or
you can straightforwardly just send them money for things like

(01:02:41):
their all Junior Ranger program that they've said they're starting,
and if you send them a dollar, you're helping fund
that program. And it's totally real. And the fact that
they didn't mention it for seven straight months after initially
announcing it is something you definitely shouldn't worry about. Do
you know what else you definitely shouldn't worry about? This
short at break.

Speaker 3 (01:03:12):
So they have face pushback for their numbers posting, but
they have found a way to justify it publicly, to
talk about like how they've framed the posting of just
like four numbers, two numbers, and like the sort of
like defense of the account that it plays.

Speaker 14 (01:03:29):
Yeah, that was this maybe says something about me, But
that was maybe the post that made me the angriest
of anything they've done, because I have a deep seated
reaction to feeling like someone who thinks I'm stupid, And
all I could think is, do you think I'm an idiot?
When I saw their reaction to this, Because we are
often criticized for the numbers we post online.

Speaker 5 (01:03:51):
We can't tell you everything.

Speaker 14 (01:03:53):
Sorry, And then they went on this big half explanation
about stingrays and cell site simulator.

Speaker 4 (01:04:00):
Cell site simulators.

Speaker 14 (01:04:02):
Yeah, but they didn't explain what those actually do. They
did not explicitly claim they were being surveilled by one,
and they didn't explain why the existence of stingrays and
cell site simulators means that they should.

Speaker 3 (01:04:16):
Do all this on Facebook instead posting numbers does not
bypass the security concerns posed by the presence of a
cell site simulator. No, because you're still posting publicly on
the Internet. That doesn't matter at all. Yeah, you're pulling
something out of your asse that sounds technical, that's going
to trick your you know, average boomer and maybe you

(01:04:38):
know three out of five gen X people who are
scrolling Facebook slash Blue Sky and like that's that's all
they need to do. But for anyone who knows what
a cell site simulator is or how like internet communications works,
it's very very clear that this is just like completely bullshit.

Speaker 14 (01:04:56):
It's completely bullshit because you're right that this is all
they need to do. They just need to deflect. And
I think that's what stood out to me about this
post in particular, is that it showed me that the
person or people behind all the time ps have a
genuine level of pr skill. You know, they have a
certain level of what I think is a real skill
at deflection public relations and being able to spin what

(01:05:18):
they're saying. You know, that's a genuine skill. It's a
shame that it's being applied to this instead of, I mean,
anything else, but that is a skill that they have
that they're able to deploy in defense of their conspiratorial posting.

Speaker 3 (01:05:32):
The other thing that they post in relation to the numbers.
Is there one time forward catchphrase general public can disregard.

Speaker 4 (01:05:41):
Don want to talk about the context of those posts.

Speaker 14 (01:05:44):
Yes, those were replies that they would make to the
numbers posts, usually to the numbers posts, but occasionally to.

Speaker 5 (01:05:51):
Some other cryptic thing they would post.

Speaker 14 (01:05:53):
They would post their numbers, say forty four, and then
they would reply to themselves saying general public can disregard,
or they'd say please disregard if you are a member
of the general public. And there were a lot of
people online who saw that and thought, oh, that must
mean it's a code.

Speaker 5 (01:06:13):
It has to be real.

Speaker 3 (01:06:14):
They're engaged in some sort of like secret agent spy work,
and this is very really important.

Speaker 14 (01:06:21):
Yeah, yeah, And I would see a lot of people
push back on any criticism that the account would get
for this by saying things like, it's code for a reason.
You know, guys, they're speaking in code. Don't try to
crack the code. It's not for us, you know, this
is for the coalition. And whenever anybody would say I
don't think this is real or like any of the
things we've talked about about, why does this make sense,

(01:06:43):
they would instantly be accused of being a right wing
infiltrator or a troll or a MAGA spy or something
like that. You know, there can be no actual criticism
of the account. There can only be infiltration.

Speaker 4 (01:06:58):
Yeah, and that does have more like Q overlap, I
suppose absolutely. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:07:04):
It's odd because like throughout through writing about all this
like bluing on stuff. As much as this stuff is
a legitimate problem, like which it is, it's just a
symptom of a larger political problem in America, and the
people engaged with it, if anything, are kind of victims
as well as like perpetrators. And like this was the

(01:07:24):
same thing with like Q and on, where like your
average person engaged with it as bad as it is
and some of the stuff that they might like say
or do, I also just feel bad for the people involved.

Speaker 4 (01:07:36):
And it's this same thing with this.

Speaker 3 (01:07:39):
As annoying as this kind of like lib slop can be,
the people who have to have to believe in something
like this in order to like keep going that it's
kind of like a tragedy in a way, and this
is obviously is serving some important psychological function for them.

Speaker 14 (01:07:57):
Yeah, I totally agree, And I think that's that sadness.
I think is what keeps me wanting to engage with this.
You know, when I look at this and I see
alt Enps trying to get people to buy their T
shirts or just farm engagement, that's not remarkable to me.
That's normal that happens on the internet all the time.

(01:08:18):
What keeps me coming back to wanting to fight this
and wanting to document all this is the people I
see in the replies. Yeah, the people who say that
alt Enps brings them so much hope. It's what's keeping
them from falling into despair. And it's not that I
want to take that away from them, it's that I
don't like that their need for that is being used.

Speaker 3 (01:08:37):
Yeah, this is like a predatory mode of trying to
capitalize on that.

Speaker 14 (01:08:42):
Absolutely. Yeah, the account is trying to capitalize on people's
need for hope. You know, they need to believe that
there is someone fighting for them because in a lot
of ways, it doesn't feel like anyone is. You know,
it feels like our politicians are ineffectual, our institutions are crumbling.
We need someone be there. We need ironically, we need

(01:09:02):
patriots to be in control. Yeah, we need to trust
the plant. There is an appeal to that, and I
do understand that. I understand that these people are looking
for a light in the darkness, and I really can't
pretend that I'm not doing the same thing totally through
my writing on this. I need something to cling to,
and I can't blame anybody for feeling that way too.

Speaker 3 (01:09:22):
I mean, that's why I feel like your project, though,
it comes from a much better and healthier place, because
you're looking at this like decline in nationwide American sanity
and trying to do something about it, even if that's
just a documentation, and then writing about it and trying
to explain to people and like help help people understand
where the psyche of the country is. And I think

(01:09:45):
part of what makes me so interested in your project
is that, like it reminds me a little bit of
people who started studying QAnon, you know, back in like
twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen.

Speaker 5 (01:09:56):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, back when.

Speaker 3 (01:09:57):
It's just this little, cute, small thing, and then you
fast forward years later they realize they've actually done some
extremely important like work documenting a phenomenon that is shaping
the trajectory of our country.

Speaker 4 (01:10:12):
And I don't know if.

Speaker 3 (01:10:13):
Alt National Park Service is going to evolve in the
same way. But I think the slow embrace of this
sort of conspiratoral thinking among decently sized like chunks of
the democratic base, I think is very notable and work.

(01:10:33):
Like what you're doing, I think actually has a really
important place in trying to like map where our country
might might be headed. And yeah, in a few years
it might somehow it might turn out to be super
important when the Libs finally do their own JA six.

Speaker 14 (01:10:50):
So yeah, I mean, I to be honest, I would
be very happy if this whole thing petered out.

Speaker 5 (01:10:58):
Sure, you know, I would be very happy if.

Speaker 14 (01:11:00):
One day the account just stops posting and there is
no years long continuation with this like there was was
something like you or not, you know. But I do
think Altenps is a part of a broader ecosystem of
this blue and on world. And you know, I do
agree with what you said earlier that bluanon is a
phrase that I think does get overused, that there are

(01:11:22):
some things that are just normal people, you know, expressing
their political opinions that kind of gets derided as oh,
blue and not, but it really is just people being
normal or people being extremely online. But Altenps is a
part of a bigger world of this sort of vaguely
left wing conspiracism. You know, I'm seeing a lot of

(01:11:42):
crossover between people who post in reply to al t
enps and people who have this sort of mantra about
Trump that he wasn't shot, he didn't win, he's on
the list. And you see that exact phrase, you know,
post it over and over.

Speaker 5 (01:11:57):
And over again.

Speaker 14 (01:11:58):
It's in pictures, it's in memes, it's in people's posts.
And I think all t NPS is a part of that.
I think they're emblematic of that. Yeah, that you are
not immune to conspiratorial think.

Speaker 3 (01:12:08):
We are not better than that now, and they're facilitating
I think that mindset. I think liberals became so susceptible
to it because they had this conception that they're immune
to it, that conspiracy thinking is something that only exists
on the political right.

Speaker 5 (01:12:22):
Yes, that's for other people, And this is part.

Speaker 3 (01:12:24):
Of what I'm going to write about it, like in general,
but like the way that consensus reality was like sheared
down so heavily during the first Rump administration and like
parts of the Body administration by people on the right
that like weakened this notion we have of Consettu's reality
that then liberals kind of got blindsided by when events
happened that were hard to understand or felt so surreal

(01:12:47):
or like bombastic, that it allowed a split that was
already there to grow into a pretty wide opening where
you now believe that major historical events are fake and staged,
that an election is stolen.

Speaker 4 (01:13:02):
And you're like, what, what does this remind you of?

Speaker 3 (01:13:05):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:13:05):
What?

Speaker 3 (01:13:05):
Yes, one of the things you're saying remind you of.
Isn't this part of why you're against the Trump movement
in the first place.

Speaker 14 (01:13:12):
Yeah, And I think God help you if you ever
try and point that out. Yeah, you know, to a
lot of the people in these replies, it's just like, hey, guys,
doesn't a lot of this smell a lot like you
or not? You know, doesn't this sound a lot like
the way people talked about the twenty twenty election? You know,
doesn't this smell the same way? And that is when

(01:13:32):
people in especially in al t NPS's replies, will go nuclear,
you know. There, I've seen some incredible dog piles in
response to people bringing this up, even if it's if
it's anodyne, you know, even if it is just hey guys,
just a reminder, I think this is something that we
should you know, maybe I'll take with a grain of salt.
People go nuts, you know. They they need to believe

(01:13:53):
it needs to be real and it needs to be unquestioned,
and that there can be no good faith questioning of
this idea.

Speaker 3 (01:14:00):
Do you know what else is an unquestioned truth that
we have to go on one more ad break before
we return to conclude our discussion on the Alt National
Park Service. It's easy to see how they reached just

(01:14:23):
a certain like ceiling on how much they can just
numbers post and have that be a reliable method of
engagement that they've started to like experiment with with with
different types of posting to see what makes people stick,
who can help with engagement over a long period of
time instead of just like rocketing to like virality first
but then having a stable audience. And now they're basically

(01:14:45):
a news aggregator account but deceptively framing where they are
getting their their news from.

Speaker 14 (01:14:51):
Yeah, they are a news aggregator account with massive caveats.

Speaker 3 (01:14:55):
Yeah, yes, well, I mean I think most news aggregator
accounts are actually bad. Yeah, I'd agree this is something
we saw in twenty twenty was how unreliable news aggregator
accounts were and how much of a harm that they caused.
And I see the current version of all National Park
Service as kind of an extension of that taken to
a slightly higher level.

Speaker 4 (01:15:16):
I suppose I'm.

Speaker 14 (01:15:17):
Obsessed with this, you know, I've said that a few times,
but I've documented what I think is most of the
time that they have posted a news article without attribution
and either just described something where they could have or
should have posted a link to an actual article, or
more often just copy pasting sections of an article and
reposting it as though they wrote it. You know, those

(01:15:39):
are the ones that really get me. Those are the
aspects of their news aggregation where you say this is
just plagiarism. You know, this is just you stealing verbatim
from an article and acting as though you wrote it
because you want your audience to think that you are
a government insider with all this inside information, and that
information like that is coming first to you, not to

(01:16:01):
the New York Times, not to CNN.

Speaker 4 (01:16:03):
Even though you're just posting sections of the New York
Times and CNN.

Speaker 14 (01:16:08):
Yeah, I mean, they took the first, I think three
paragraphs of an article from Wired, and did it word
for word, didn't link to Wired, didn't say where it
came from, and implied that the information was being sent
to the rangers of the all National Park Service instead
of two journalists at Wired. This happens constantly, you know,
and every time I think, well, they've been posting more

(01:16:29):
link slately, they've been linking directly to actual sources of information.
Every time I start thinking that, they do it again.
You know, they steal another thing again, or they've started
posting to court watcher or directly to government documents in
what I'm thinking as an attempt to dodge accusations like
the one I make. Somebody in my comments described it

(01:16:49):
as the don't cite Wikipedia, cite Wikipedia's reference page problem.
They're reading an article from NPR, and rather than just saying, hey,
we've heard this in NPR, they're going to NPR's citation
of the Department of Justice and linking directly to that
instead to make it look like they're diligently watching government
court records and posting them for our benefit the moment

(01:17:12):
they come out, instead of just we saw this in
the Washington.

Speaker 3 (01:17:16):
Post and they've been engaging this for like a few
months now with this sort of behavior.

Speaker 14 (01:17:20):
Oh yeah, they've been doing that since January February. Yeah,
they've also started claiming for a while, and then they
stopped that. One of their sources they would list at
the end of their posts was an unnamed official in
whatever relevant government agency they were talking about. Our services
include this newspaper, this website, and an unnamed Department of

(01:17:41):
Justice official, an unnamed Department of Education official. They suddenly
stopped doing that as soon as they started. There was
about a week or two where that was behind about
every post.

Speaker 3 (01:17:50):
Anything else you want to add about either the existence
of these alt accounts or like any other aspect of
this world you want to mention before we before we
close up.

Speaker 14 (01:18:00):
Yeah, I do have two quick ones, and the first
is that among the alt accounts that you see online,
the Alt National Park Service is overwhelmingly the most malicious
and the most harmful. You know, there are may be
a couple others that get a little wild, that are
maybe a little conspiratorial. I think Alt Noah has been

(01:18:20):
kind of in the spotlight for that lately, but a
lot of them, like Alt CDC, the Alt Forest Service.
All these random little alt government agency accounts are pretty harmless,
you know. They really are just posting links to news
articles or given updates on their relevant agency.

Speaker 5 (01:18:41):
ALT.

Speaker 14 (01:18:41):
Forest Service mostly talks about the Forest Service. ALT CDC
mostly talks about the CDC. ALT NPS basically never talks
about the National Park Service. I think I can cut
on one hand the times that they have said anything
about the parks. There was a point when I think
it was in the big beautiful budget bill where there
were these massive cuts being proposed to the National Park Service,

(01:19:04):
and they talked about the bill as a whole and
didn't mention anything about the cuts of the Park Service.

Speaker 3 (01:19:09):
Well, you never know who's watching the communication channels.

Speaker 4 (01:19:13):
You got to be careful. There's cell site simulators out there.

Speaker 14 (01:19:16):
There's cell site simulators out there. And then the second
thing is that I'm always very careful in my writing
and in my posts to emphasize that the people who
followed this account are not the problem the account itself is.
You know, I always want to make sure to have
a lot of empathy for people who follow this account,
because I understand why they did, I understand the hope

(01:19:37):
they're looking for, and I never want to do what
I see some people do in the replies to Altenps's posts,
which is dunking on their followers. You know, how do
you rubes believe this? Do you idiots still think this
is real? I never want to do that because that
doesn't help anyone. What that does is make them dig in,
It makes them double down. So I always want to

(01:19:59):
make sure to treat the followers of these accounts with respect,
you know, treat them with empathy, talk to them like
a person. Yeah, And that's how I've managed to get
a few people to get out. I've managed to have
people tell me that it was through my writing and
other people's work on this topic that they were able
to get out, they were able to disengage from this.

Speaker 5 (01:20:21):
World of fake spies and code numbers. And I think
that matters.

Speaker 14 (01:20:25):
I think that that helps with every little bit we do,
and it starts by just being nice to people, just
being kind to people who are looking for hope in
the world we live in.

Speaker 3 (01:20:36):
Where can people find your work both on social media
and then also you're writing.

Speaker 14 (01:20:40):
You can find me on blue Sky at altwatcher dot
bsky dot social and I am unfortunately still on substack
at my name, it's Jajoyce Lynch dot substack dot com.
And also look for dispatches from the Online Void is
the name of the blog.

Speaker 3 (01:20:55):
There should absolutely be more people reading your Dispatches from
the Online Void, some very very solid work just straightly
documenting the phenomenon that we've been talking about this episode
and specifically the old National Park Service.

Speaker 5 (01:21:10):
Well, I really appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (01:21:12):
Yeah, it's fantastic, very like, non editorialized, just showing you
what's happening, extremely well put together.

Speaker 5 (01:21:19):
Well, thanks, thanks, and nice for you to say thanks.

Speaker 3 (01:21:22):
Again to Jack for talking with me about alt National
Park Service. I strongly recommend people seek out his research,
both on Dispatches from the Online Void and Blue Sky.
Before I close this episode, I want to remind everybody
that you two are not immune to propaganda. This past weekend,

(01:21:44):
the internet has been a buzz with rumors and speculation
that Trump died over the weekend or was actively dying,
and there's been attempts to cover it up, when in
fact he just went on a brief Labor Day weekend holiday.
People were sharing ai altered images to make Trump look
more sickly and were speculating about road closures around Walter

(01:22:07):
Reed Medical Center, sharing a map with roads blocked off,
but in fact there were no irregular road closures, and
this map of supposed closures that was spreading online just
showed old security gates. People concocted elaborate theories that Putin
poisoned Trump during their last meeting, and that when the

(01:22:30):
quote unquote President was supposed to give an announcement on
Tuesday afternoon, it would be Trump resigning for health reasons,
or Vance would come out and announced Trump died and
he is now the president. And sure enough, come Tuesday afternoon,
Trump appeared perfectly normal for a press conference. Even in
the lead up to the press conference, I saw people

(01:22:50):
continuing these conspiracy theories with sometimes a tat of irony.
But as the press conference got delayed an hour, there
was more and more speculation about Trump's declining health and yeah,
he is an old man, but he's not going to
drop dead this weekend.

Speaker 4 (01:23:07):
This isn't true.

Speaker 3 (01:23:09):
This is a copium strategy, and the way people have
been talking about it is very similar to the liberal
conspiracy theories that I've been reading about these past few weeks.
And as fun as it can be, to speculate about
a president's health, as many people did last time we
had a geriatric president?

Speaker 5 (01:23:28):
When was that?

Speaker 3 (01:23:29):
Oh last year? But as much fun as it is,
things can quickly spiral out of your conspiratorial control, even
when your percipasion is from the safety of ironic detachment.
I'll talk a little bit more about Trump's imminent death
theories on this week's episode of Executive Disorder, but until then,

(01:23:50):
just remember you are not immune to propaganda.

Speaker 4 (01:24:10):
Welcome to it could happen here a podcast where by
my longtime home city of Chicago is preparing for a
federal occupation. I am your host, Mia Wong, and with
me to talk about what the fuck is going on
about a thing that, at the end of last year,
as bad as we thought this was going to be,
was basically unimaginable. With you talked about. This is Raven,

(01:24:34):
who's a journalist from the independent outlet Unraveled in Chicago,
which does a lot of really really excellent work on
the ground reporting on social movements in the city. You're
putting on the government does a bunch of incredible works
and some really good stuff on shot Spotter. Yeah, Raven,
welcome to the show.

Speaker 1 (01:24:50):
Yeah, thank you for such a beautiful intro.

Speaker 4 (01:24:52):
Yeah, thanks, thanks for doing this. I don't know, like
I'm a really big fan of Unraveled. I think most
of the newspapers in Chicago it's just like just weird
right wing rags, and getting actual good news out if
the city is kind of difficult because it's like, yeah,
we we have a good number.

Speaker 15 (01:25:14):
Now, like digital indie outlets in the city, but once
you get outside of Cook County, especially, you know, the
Chicago metro area is huge and like, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:25:23):
It's all like pink slime garbage, like everything's been brought out.

Speaker 15 (01:25:26):
They don't have like real reporters anymore, so it can
be a huge challenge to cover things like just in
the collar counties, which is coincidentally also where a lot
of this ice activity might be happening in the next yep,
forty five days, thirty days, however.

Speaker 1 (01:25:42):
Long it lasts.

Speaker 4 (01:25:43):
Yeah, so let's I guess from the jump before we
get into sort of the kind of long arc of
ice and the FEDS in in Chicago for the last year,
let's talk about Trump's thing to send in the National
Guard and so off the pep in the city. I'm
really concerned about.

Speaker 15 (01:26:01):
Yeah, well, you know, there's kind of two things happening simultaneously.

Speaker 2 (01:26:06):
Right.

Speaker 15 (01:26:06):
Trump is threatening the National Guard, which has been a
thing like threatening the National Guard in Chicago has been
a thing with him for like a while, and it
can be very difficult to tease out like what what
level of it is propaganda.

Speaker 1 (01:26:18):
And what level of it is like really happening.

Speaker 15 (01:26:20):
Right. But the other more important part here is we
do know now like conclusively that DHS is planning a
large operation in like Los Angeles style. So everything that's
been happening around Lay for the last few months is
moving into Chicago. This is what the chief of Border
Patrol has said. You know, he just put out like
a social media video that was saying they're trading palm

(01:26:43):
trees for skyscrapers and bringing a few hundred guys with
DHS ice border patrol to Chicago.

Speaker 1 (01:26:50):
So it's pretty wild.

Speaker 15 (01:26:52):
I don't think I've ever seen border patrol in numbers
on the ground here in the Great Lakes.

Speaker 1 (01:26:59):
We've always known it's like this thing.

Speaker 15 (01:27:00):
That cooking seembly happen because we're technically like a border city.

Speaker 1 (01:27:05):
But you know, to be staring at in the face
now like it's real, like it's actually happening.

Speaker 15 (01:27:10):
It's obviously feels like a real emergency for our communities.

Speaker 4 (01:27:16):
Yeah, And I think that's the interesting thing like talking
to you and then talking to other people on the ground,
is that like the National Guard deployment is what's getting
all of the press, right, and people really aren't that
worried about it. It's worth pointing out. So we're recording
this on the morning of like Wednesday, September third, yea,

(01:27:37):
So it's possible that stuff has changed by the time
this episode goes out like tonight, because the situation is
shifting really rapidly, right, But you know that there's this
whole fight over whether the Texas National Guard is being
deployed here on a federal deployment. But people don't really
seem to be worried about the National Guard, and I
think kind of for good reason. They didn't really. I mean,

(01:27:59):
they did some stuff, I guess, but like they mostly
kind of are there to make it look like there's
troops in the street, right, while Ice in DHS does
like the most horrific shit, right.

Speaker 15 (01:28:11):
That's been sort of the the understanding of what's happened
in Los Angeles and then in DC it's gone a
little bit differently just because they have so many FEDS already,
so they've been able to do a lot of traffic
stops in these little FED tactical teams. So you'll have
like some FBI guys, some DA guys, maybe like an

(01:28:32):
HSI guy I just read and woppole the other day,
they've crashed like six cars in DC.

Speaker 1 (01:28:38):
I mean, like it's really dangerous that kinds of stops.

Speaker 15 (01:28:41):
These guys are executing their jumpouts, right, It's not like
opficer friends and like pulling you over a license and
registration please.

Speaker 1 (01:28:48):
You know, it's like really violent and they're in on
mark cars and they're like trying to suffice people.

Speaker 15 (01:28:53):
So that is you know, also what we're expecting to
see alongside like the ice ups is these FED teams
crawling through the city.

Speaker 1 (01:29:04):
You know, I don't know when they're going to be
doing what where, but like.

Speaker 15 (01:29:08):
I said, the Chicago Land area, you know, the suburb
everything around, it's very big. Yeah, you know, there's every
indication this isn't going to be centralized just to like
Downhoume chicag.

Speaker 4 (01:29:19):
Yeah, And like I think there's something that's kind of
hard to understand if you're not from Chicago, but like
even just the city proper is massive. Yeah, right, Like
it takes like I mean, I haven't driven it in
a long time, but like I think, I think if
you're trying to go from like the top of like
the North Side to like the bottom of the South Side,
that's like hour and a half two hour drive, right,
It's massive, right, And this.

Speaker 15 (01:29:40):
Naval station where they're basing operations isn't even in the city.
It's two hours north than in in County. Yeah, so
there are a lot of questions right now. I don't
have the answers. Nobody's going to know until it starts,
but you know, there are a lot of questions now
just kind of like how far into the city are
there even going to go? You know, it's obviously, you

(01:30:01):
know what we've seen out in Los Angeles with these
like larger like workplace raids like car washes and home
depot and stuff. It's really difficult to imagine them executing
something like that in the city. I'm not going to
say they couldn't try, but they would obviously need a
lot of backup from border patrol. Yeah, to try something
like that even in the suburbs, which is what we
saw in La.

Speaker 1 (01:30:22):
You know, that's who.

Speaker 15 (01:30:22):
Showed up those first few days when they were like
tear gassing the fuck out of everybody, and it was
just like crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:30:28):
You know, that was border patrol. So what our eyes
are on is something like that.

Speaker 15 (01:30:34):
And to your point about the National Guard and the press,
you know, it's part of the issue is like the politicians,
the electeds, like they can't say no to the fence,
they can't say no to ice, like Ice is coming,
DHS is coming, no matter.

Speaker 13 (01:30:48):
What they do.

Speaker 1 (01:30:49):
The Guard is a little more of like.

Speaker 15 (01:30:50):
A political football for them, and and Pritsker can can
push back, and there's like you know, the arguments about
sending one states troops into another, and so there's more
legal option, you know, all this stuff, right, But the
FBI already has a field office here, I already has
field offices here. You know, Like there's there's just I
think also just a disconnect there because of like the

(01:31:13):
way the news reporting works is like, well, we're reporting
on what the public officials are saying. Governor Pritsker did
say pretty clearly actually like well, DHS is coming, you know,
ICE is going to do these operations and we don't
improve it, but we can't stop it.

Speaker 4 (01:31:30):
Yeah, And I think before we get more into that,
I want to pivot to talk about what the presence
of ICE has been in Chicago already, and I want
to kind of like roll the clock back to right before,
kind of like I think, like the literally the weekend
before the big confrontations in LA started, there was a

(01:31:51):
pretty big raid at a check in and a bunch
of stuff happened with that. I was wondering if you
could talk about that a bit.

Speaker 15 (01:31:57):
Yeah, it was around the time when things popped off,
and earlier I don't remembers precisely, but around then.

Speaker 4 (01:32:02):
Yeah, yeah, I think it was like right before.

Speaker 15 (01:32:04):
Yeah. You know, they have these stuck in sights where
people have to go and some of them are on
like electronic monitoring and some no, and they check in
with ICE, and so it was like an ambush, right
Like people showed up and then they were like, oh,
we're actually like kidnapping you.

Speaker 1 (01:32:19):
Yeah, and it was very very ugly of course, you know,
like agents ripping people away from their families and friends.

Speaker 16 (01:32:27):
And we had some local electeds like trying to get
in the way of the van, and Chicago police of
course showed up, and then there was this whole back
and forth over whether the police really assisted.

Speaker 1 (01:32:40):
ICE or not. And I mean they were there and
they did crib control.

Speaker 4 (01:32:43):
Yeah, they definitely did.

Speaker 15 (01:32:46):
Like you know, it's it's very interesting what's happening with
CPD and ICE right now, because like, at the end
of the day, cops are lazy above all else too write,
you know, and so there's this kind of tension of like, well,
we support what ICE is doing, and ideologically, like of
course the pops are aligned with ICE, but they also

(01:33:06):
like don't want to get out of their cars, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:33:08):
So it's kind of any any excuse they have not
to do something they will take. So it's not that
we've seen them assisting with like.

Speaker 15 (01:33:16):
Enforcement removal operations, but of course if there's a protest,
they're going to show up and police that.

Speaker 1 (01:33:24):
And then also, like data sharing is a huge issue there.

Speaker 15 (01:33:26):
I mean, like with fusion centers and with like block
license plate data visas and everything, there's just the information
is so porous between local cops and the Feds that
it's just kind of absurd on a space to even
think that they're like not sharing information.

Speaker 1 (01:33:42):
Some of these cops are on task forces and they
have like group.

Speaker 15 (01:33:45):
Chats together, you know, with DA and FBI agents, right,
so it's all it's all connected, it's all porous. They're
already working with the Feds, you know, it's just they
can't visibly be seen assisting with immigration enforcing.

Speaker 1 (01:34:00):
But yeah, that was a really traumtizing day for community.

Speaker 15 (01:34:04):
Like an organizer here who was well known was taken
and she was a grandmother, so she had a family
here too, you know, so it was brutal. And then
around that time that that was happening, also, I started
escalating rusts at the immigration court downtown, which went on
for a while and ultimately was stopped by protesters continuing

(01:34:28):
to show up and just have a presence there. You know,
these guys are terrified of being docks terrified. I mean,
they just they really don't want to be filmed. And
it's been a very different situation here in our courthouse
versus New York's because I've seen so much photography out
of the New York Immigration Court. For whatever reason, they
allowed photos there, but they don't inside of ours. But

(01:34:49):
you know, protesters started showing up there. I mean, we
had been their documentary what was going on. Slowly people
started trickling in, showing up and protesting, and eventually people
started then ta making it to like actually blocking the
driveway that they were using a private parking garage belonging
to the building, and so they were.

Speaker 1 (01:35:07):
Like going underground and then like waiting and then using
the great elevator. It was like the whole operation.

Speaker 15 (01:35:12):
Yeah, but ultimately the building put their click on and
ban them. You know, they got a lot of complaints
from tenants. People didn't like that the protests were going
on shore, but people also were like in the building,
people were ICE using our crad Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:35:29):
Yeah, yeah, we used the power of the use of
against them, deploy every weapon exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:35:35):
Exactly exactly it was.

Speaker 15 (01:35:37):
It's kind of like a you know, diversity of tactics
thing there where it's like the people who owned property
in this building aren't super aligned with the like people
trying to block ICE spans. But but at that moment
they joined yea, and you know, so so that that
was happening, and like while all of this is happening,
of course ICE is still doing more dispersed traffic stops

(01:36:00):
arresting people at their homes.

Speaker 1 (01:36:01):
It's been happening. It's happening all.

Speaker 15 (01:36:03):
Over out in Elgin, out in Waukegan, which is up
by the Base of operations, you know, where they're setting
up all of these operations for what's coming this week.

Speaker 1 (01:36:13):
Waukegan, North Chicago and that area of Lake County.

Speaker 15 (01:36:16):
There are a ton of imfants and they're not surrounded
by necessarily like super progressive, super friendly people.

Speaker 1 (01:36:25):
Some can be.

Speaker 15 (01:36:26):
I mean the politics in the North Shore, it's very
like purple like it's weird. It's like you can have
super progressive people, but then also like it can be
out in the Boonie somewhere you'll see like Trump science.
So it's it's not as sympathetic as being in Enoughtown
Chicago for sure. Yeah, And so there's a lot of
concern from people up around the base about what's going
to happen in those communities because there's much less coverage,

(01:36:50):
too much less eyes on them.

Speaker 4 (01:36:51):
Yep. I want to I want to talk more about
sort of what enforcement has been looking like in outlying
areas and what it's going to look like. The first
we need to go to ads and we are back,

(01:37:15):
So I want to I kind of I want to
follow the train that you've been on about the stuff
in the center of the city versus the stuff in
the outlying areas and across Chicagoland in general, which is
also just massive, unbelievably large geographic area. It has unbelievably
large numbers of people, and also the concentrations get way

(01:37:36):
smaller really quickly. And I think, I don't know, it
seems like the resistance inside of the city proper had
been pretty effective in a lot of ways, just in
the sense of like shutting down the courthouse raids for
the most part. But what have things looked like up
near like Wakegan and like, yeah, in the sort of

(01:37:59):
outlying areas in terms of like resistance and in terms
of cooperation.

Speaker 15 (01:38:05):
Yeah, I mean I've seen videos out of those places,
you know, really harrowing scenes like traffic stops where they're
separating people from their families, showing up at people's homes.

Speaker 1 (01:38:18):
Usually what's happening is we're not hearing you got it
until after the facts.

Speaker 15 (01:38:24):
And in the city there are like good response groups
going by different neighborhoods. But I think in general, sometimes
it just doesn't feel very rapid because it's people are
are vetting, they're verifying.

Speaker 1 (01:38:36):
There's a lot of false alarms, you know, there's a
lot going on. So that's what I've.

Speaker 15 (01:38:40):
Seen that's happened out in the burbs. You know, it's
kind of, like I said, kind of a black hole
for news out there too. It's not always easy to
get information, you know. We also had a case of
like an ICE agent.

Speaker 1 (01:38:54):
Detaining a woman with her child at like a well,
it wasn't.

Speaker 15 (01:39:00):
An agent, it was a contractor, contractor working for ICE
detaining an arrest tee out at an hotel.

Speaker 1 (01:39:08):
By Ohare Airport.

Speaker 15 (01:39:10):
That's something that that people are concerned about in a
more general sense too, right now, because we actually literally
just this morning, we're looking at a letter from the
mayor of broad View, Illinois, which is where our processing
center is, outlining how they're going to be operational seven
days a week for the next forty five days, which
to me implies like thousands of arrests potentially happening, and

(01:39:32):
that facility is not set up.

Speaker 1 (01:39:34):
It's not a long term detention center. Yeah, overnight detention
is banned.

Speaker 15 (01:39:39):
In Illinois, so people have been kept there longer than
they technically are allowed.

Speaker 1 (01:39:44):
To even with like without some huge surge happening.

Speaker 15 (01:39:47):
So it kind of thinking about what's potentially coming and
then using that center, it kind of follows that, Yeah,
there could be more contractors keeping people in hotels like
dispersed around, like there's just not enough space at that
facility to keep up with that. And so because there
are also backups in the like ice logistics chain, because

(01:40:09):
like people have to be they can't be kept here
long term, so they have to go to Gary Airport
to fly out somewhere, or detention center in Indiana or
Wisconsin or Michigan.

Speaker 4 (01:40:19):
So I guess there's a couple of things kinds of
sort of resistant stuff I want to ask about. I remember,
like got back in like twenty eighteen. I remember there
was a bunch of efforts to like block deportation flights
out of the airport. Has up been still going no,
I mean.

Speaker 15 (01:40:33):
There was a protest at Gary Airport very early on
in the year. Actually it was like right after Trump
was inaugurated. I think I know a photographer who was
arrested some protesters.

Speaker 1 (01:40:48):
It was really random.

Speaker 15 (01:40:49):
It was like towards the end of the protest, Gary
police just decided to like grab and arrest a few people,
and since then, I have not heard of any more
protests or a time or attempts at intervention at Gary Airport.
I mean, obviously it's not Chicago, it's Gary, so you know,
there's a smaller community there people would have to travel to.

(01:41:10):
I don't know if deportation, if any deportation flights are
leaving from O'Hare.

Speaker 1 (01:41:14):
I don't believe so, but don't quote me on that.
I'm not sure.

Speaker 4 (01:41:19):
Yeah, And it's still like I feel like O'Hare is
kind of a soft target for that in the sense of, like,
I mean, it's annoying to get there, but like there
is just a rail line that runs it directly into O'Hare,
and you can flood it with a bunch of people
pretty easily, like what happened to like the beginning of
Trump one.

Speaker 1 (01:41:36):
Right, we haven't seen anything like that yet.

Speaker 17 (01:41:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:41:39):
Yeah, But it's also like I wonder if they're still
thinking about that in terms of like the flight logistics,
in terms of like wearing stuff primarily through Gary.

Speaker 1 (01:41:48):
Oh, I see, yeah, that might be why.

Speaker 5 (01:41:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:41:52):
The other thing I'm wondering about is like, Okay, so
I guess it looks like right now with the information
we have that there planning to run their operations out
of the military base. But everything that I've seen has
been talking about like the National Guard operating out of
that base, but do we know where the FEDS are
Its supposed to be operating out of.

Speaker 15 (01:42:12):
The Feds are operating out of the base. The National
Guard will will potentially operate out of the base if
they come.

Speaker 1 (01:42:20):
But we don't have a lot of details on like
a National Guard deployment.

Speaker 15 (01:42:23):
And the other thing to keep in mind is like
the National Guard are all younger people. Typically is a
lot of young people, and they have like families and things.
So that kind of information like a deployment right of
like platoon or several platoons whatever the worst of National Guard.

Speaker 1 (01:42:40):
It's not gonna stay secret for very long, right like,
because we would know.

Speaker 15 (01:42:45):
So I have not seen anything yet as a twelve
thirty noon on Wednesday indicating that the National Guard specifically
has rolled into that base.

Speaker 1 (01:42:56):
That could change at any point, you know, I don't
know what's.

Speaker 15 (01:42:59):
Happened in the last hour to check the news, But
what we do know is that the DHS Operation Customs
and Border protection the FEDS that are coming.

Speaker 1 (01:43:08):
They are setting up a base.

Speaker 15 (01:43:10):
Of operations at that naval station, and the Navy said
that they denied them lodging and that they have to
stay elsewhere like hotel. Wise, I don't know how that
will work because that's like several hundred people. I guess
they're gonna have to disperse a lot around the suburbs
in order to do that. And I don't know the
reason for the denial for the lodging. It could simply

(01:43:30):
be they literally don't have space. You know, people are
actually like training there, like military and Navy and stuff.
It's not like it's just empty, so they might not
have had capacity for that. But supposedly they're gonna be
doing office space there. I think the letter also mentioned
they can do laundry, their emails like stuff like that.

(01:43:53):
But yeah, I mean that's that's like something that of
course people have eyes on, because if you can locate
a hotel, that's how where people are saying, you know,
that's like a pressure point.

Speaker 4 (01:44:03):
Yeah. I think I think that's an interesting point that
comes back to something you were saying earlier, which is
like it really looks like this is a lot of
this is going to be targeted on the places close
to the base, just because like if they're really like
two hours out from the city, it's like pretty difficult
to do raids further right into the city, just on

(01:44:28):
the logistical level, and just like I don't know, just
just in terms of like dealing with Chicago traffic.

Speaker 12 (01:44:34):
It's like.

Speaker 1 (01:44:36):
I don't want to exclude it as a possibility.

Speaker 4 (01:44:39):
Yeah, it's definitely possible, but it's.

Speaker 15 (01:44:40):
Like I just think when we look at inner city
or urban policing, there are certain tactics that like local
police use that we see the FEDS also using, right,
like these unmarked cars, more covert operations, trying to move
really quickly and get in and out because they know
so that it's such a denser area and if rapid

(01:45:03):
response shows up, people start showing up, then can get
unsafe you know, for them as cops.

Speaker 1 (01:45:09):
And so we just we do know that those tactics work.
We know that this is how they've been doing operations
so far.

Speaker 15 (01:45:17):
With more DHS agents and more customs and border production backup,
could they try for something bigger in the city, I
mean yes, Like we don't want to rule that out,
trust me, Like it definitely could happen. But I think
given the numbers that they are trying to reach at
this point, what we have to prepare for is being.

Speaker 18 (01:45:37):
Really dispersed and just kind of everywhere, you know, like
and like that traffic like you mentioned, you know, it's yeah,
it's like obviously if they're driving like three in the
morning or something, they're not going to face as much
traffic up.

Speaker 1 (01:45:51):
Nineteen ninety four.

Speaker 15 (01:45:52):
But like, yeah, there's also the like covertness of it too,
Like you can't just drive a bunch of military vehicles
down the highway for an hour and a half and
not be sighted or spotted right like, so then you'd
be giving like you're giving people more opportunities potentially intervene.
So I don't know, I mean, I think like we'll

(01:46:13):
see them in the city for sure. We'll see them
in the burbs for sure. Whether or not we're going
to see like teams of like border patrol, you know,
in like full riot kit marching through like Pilsen that,
I don't know. I think it's something that probably they
want to do. I'm sure those dudes would be amped
as fuck to like, you know, be in downtown Chicago,

(01:46:34):
like harassing people, you know, beating up people, but from
an operational security standpoint, like for them.

Speaker 1 (01:46:41):
It is like so dangerous.

Speaker 4 (01:46:43):
Yeah, so I just I don't know. So so, speaking
speaking of dangers, we're going to go to these ads
and then we're going to come back and talk about
Oh god, is rumors the right word to describe something
that the governor is saying about the target getting to
the Mexican Independence State Parade?

Speaker 1 (01:47:03):
But maybe not rumor? Maybe maybe just statement.

Speaker 4 (01:47:08):
Yeah, I will, we'll figure we'll figure out the verbiage
when we returned. Yeah, we are back. So one of
the things that Governor Pritzker has said is that Stephen Miller,

(01:47:29):
I'm gonna I'm gonna read this quote. This is an NBC.
I'm gonna read this quote, just that Pritzker said at
a conference, we have reason to believe that Stephen Miller
chose the month of September to come to Chicago because
celebrations around Mexican Independence Day that happened here every year.
And yeah, you know. He further said, it breaks my
heart to report that we have been told ICE will

(01:47:49):
try and disrupt community picnics and peaceful parades. He said,
let's be clear, the terror and cruelty is the point,
not the safety of anyone living here. So yeah, I
guess I want to start by talking a little bit
about these parades themselves, because they are a absolutely massive
event in Chicago. There's like a big one in Pilsen,
but also like I'm just all over the city. There's

(01:48:11):
just a bunch of people driving around with Mexican flags rocks.
There's people celebrating. It's really cool.

Speaker 15 (01:48:17):
Yeah, it turns into more of like a like a
widespread like car caravan thing. Ye, there'll be a lot
of yeah, you know, and like here's the thing. I know,
traffic jams are annoying to like anybody, but when it's
in celebration of something.

Speaker 4 (01:48:36):
You know, yeah, its pick the train that day, it's great.

Speaker 15 (01:48:41):
I mean, I understand the arguments for like, well, ambulances
need to get through things like that, but I think
there's a lot of power in people taking the streets
and like, you know, the cars are just the easiest.

Speaker 1 (01:48:52):
Way to get massive amounts of people around.

Speaker 15 (01:48:56):
And then there's a lot of like there's a street
culture here around like street takeovers too, and and this
happens outside of like Mexican Independence Day, where like some
some people will take over an intersection and do donuts
and and set off.

Speaker 1 (01:49:11):
Fireworks and like yeah, yell at the cops and whatever.

Speaker 4 (01:49:15):
Right, it's fun, it's cool. It's it's good.

Speaker 1 (01:49:19):
That happens in cities.

Speaker 15 (01:49:20):
And I think when it comes to living in a city,
it's like, yeah, you you're trading certain things for other things,
and and and stuff like that happens.

Speaker 1 (01:49:29):
And so with Mexican Independence Day, it's like we we
we can have like.

Speaker 15 (01:49:33):
Sustained nights where that is just going on and on,
like the loop will be jammed up, like everyone will
be jammed up.

Speaker 1 (01:49:38):
And of course there's like the public safety people who
like whine about it.

Speaker 4 (01:49:42):
And and you know, yeah, this is also like a
big like like white people of the city get really
fucking pissed about this like every year. First like oh no, no, no, no,
look at the Mexicans, Like it's just like and like
like the most racist shit you've ever heard in your
entire life. And there's the people sort of below that
who will couch it and like, oh uh public safety, right,

(01:50:06):
and I'm going to be really fucking mean to these people,
which is like if you're if you're pissed off at
a bunch of people like basically doing their own parade.
You are not fit to live in a city, Like
get the fuck out of here, Like, fuck off, go
back to the suburbs, you dip shits. You're fucking losers.
You're not fit for urban life, like elight dick, the

(01:50:27):
shit rules.

Speaker 19 (01:50:29):
Yeah, it's Yeah, the reaction to it is like so
so over the top, And it's the kind of thing
where like when when Trump is like talking about the
National Guard and responding to crime in Chicago or disorder,
you know, that's the kind of thing I could see
him like ordering them into.

Speaker 15 (01:50:48):
Respond to, you know, especially if there's like there's like
a shooting or something that happens towards the tail end
of one of these celebrations, which again, you know, it's
like that that's a risk.

Speaker 1 (01:50:59):
Anytime large months and people gather anywhere.

Speaker 15 (01:51:01):
Interpersonal violence freaking out right, like again, is a thing
that happens, and the.

Speaker 1 (01:51:06):
Direct cause of it is never like people partying. The
direct cause of.

Speaker 15 (01:51:10):
It is usually like somebody's got a beat with somebody,
or somebody drank too much and lost in pulse control,
you know, whatever the reason might be.

Speaker 1 (01:51:18):
Yeah, So I think that is, Like I think that's
what Pritzker is alluding to.

Speaker 15 (01:51:23):
It's kind of like the car caravan and stuff when
he says, like Steven Miller is bringing ice to interrupt
family picnics, Like I don't I don't know where he's
getting that information, Like I don't know that that is
like specifically going to happen. You know, I think given
what we've seen out in LA, unless I've missed anything,
it doesn't seem like they've attacked any like festivals or

(01:51:44):
like like public gatherings like that, like in a direct way.

Speaker 3 (01:51:48):
You know.

Speaker 15 (01:51:48):
I think like logistically it's just maybe not as easy
to necessarily like grab people with questionable immigration status at
that kind of stuff. And if you go to like
a place where you know, like the car wash wherever
they have intel that it's like undocumented people are working here.

Speaker 1 (01:52:04):
It makes more sense.

Speaker 15 (01:52:05):
So I don't want to rule out that something like
that could happen, but I think I think there's a
whether it happens or not. It's like part of it
is also the intention is to have this chilling effect,
like to make people afraid to celebrate or come out,
to cause that terror, you know, It's kind of like
we had a situation a couple months ago where some

(01:52:28):
FEDS who claimed they were with like a financial crimes
task force. It wasn't even Ice, but I don't know
what they were doing, and they were meeting up at
a boathouse parking lot in Humboldt Park like a week
before all these cultural celebrations in the area, and people
got really freaked out because it.

Speaker 1 (01:52:45):
Was just like, what the fuck are you guys doing?

Speaker 15 (01:52:47):
And they like went into the museum and were like
questioning workers and asking you the bathroom and I mean,
just being assholes, it sounds like. And then they laughed,
and then there were like all these questions swirling like
well what was this, Like were they seeking intel before
these fests? And you know, people made sure to like
we wanted we wanted to still have these fasts, but

(01:53:09):
we want people to show up in even bigger numbers,
like powering numbers.

Speaker 1 (01:53:12):
Everybody show up, and that's what happens.

Speaker 15 (01:53:15):
And you know, they didn't attack the fest, And you know,
that was a really weird situation because it wasn't Ice
and we didn't know what was going on.

Speaker 4 (01:53:22):
But I think.

Speaker 15 (01:53:23):
Ultimately, like yeah, giving in and like staying home and
refusing to show up obviously just plays right into their hands.

Speaker 4 (01:53:32):
And I wanted to kind of pivot a little bit
from this into the way that Pritzker has sort of
been framing this, where he's talking about how if anyone
throws a sandwich at the guard, this is going to
be used as like the excuse to do a crackdown,
and like I think, yeah, they're gonna they're gonna do
the crackdown anyways, Like I don't think that's like.

Speaker 1 (01:53:53):
I mean, this is the central kind of point of conflict.

Speaker 15 (01:53:56):
I think in like a lot of movement space to
discussions right now too, especially among kind of.

Speaker 1 (01:54:02):
Like older liberals and like the younger generation.

Speaker 15 (01:54:06):
And part of it is is like, yeah, there's this
insistence that, well, he's looking for a reason to send
in the National Guards, so don't give him more.

Speaker 1 (01:54:15):
But it's like border patrol is the reason. Yeah, you know,
like they're going to show up, and I don't know
how it's.

Speaker 15 (01:54:22):
Going to go down, if it's going to be walking again,
if it's going to be in Chicago, whatever is going
to happen.

Speaker 1 (01:54:26):
But if somebody throws a water bottle at those DHS agents,
that's enough of a reason, you know for them to
say there's there's unrest, like and who triggered that, the cops?

Speaker 4 (01:54:37):
Yeah, and like it's CPD, Like I have I have
watched CPD do this shape to people where nothing happened, right,
Like it was just people standing there and.

Speaker 15 (01:54:48):
You know, right, our Attorney General said the same thing
in a statement last night, like make sure you protest
peacefully within the law. The Cook County Board President Tony
Pukwinkle said the.

Speaker 4 (01:55:00):
Same big money still around you.

Speaker 15 (01:55:03):
No, I mean how all the like you know Illinois
Democratic god big dog people, like they're all, yeah, all
the machine mother fucking the same thing.

Speaker 1 (01:55:13):
I mean, like honestly, Mayrev.

Speaker 15 (01:55:15):
Johnson kind of was a little more fiery in his rhetoric,
but he's still only going to go so far.

Speaker 1 (01:55:21):
You know, like they're politician. Yeah, they can't.

Speaker 15 (01:55:23):
They're not going to come out and say like, oh,
that's physically crisis ice. I think we always yeah, but
it is like it is a very dangerous way to
frame resistance, like to say, yeah, well, don't provoke him.
You know, it's kind of like living with an abuser
or a bully and then blaming somebody for fighting back.

Speaker 4 (01:55:44):
Yeah, and I think there's also there's really it creates
really dangerous and hammocks on the ground. I mean, like
I still remember like one of the things I'm sort
of haunted by from this Durm twenty twenty was in
Atlanta or someone like the person who burned the Wendy's down. Yeah,
like a whole there was like a whole thing where
people were like, this is a federal infiltrator, and they

(01:56:05):
turned them over to the FEDS, which doesn't make any sense,
by the way, Like if your logic is this person
is a FED and we turn them over to the Feds, nonsensical,
But like this this is the thing you see a
lot in these kinds of protests, Like people will just
like hand people over to the Feds. And then it
turned out that that she was the girlfriend of a
fucking guy the police had shot. Yeah, and that shit

(01:56:25):
just like happens. Yeah, And I don't know, like that's
like that's like the consequence of this this kind of
stuff is like these people, the peace of police people
feel like they are in power to hand people over
to the actual police. And I just want to sort
of like take a second to talk to like directly
to people who are listening to this who agree with
this stuff, which is okay if you are facing a

(01:56:47):
fascist regime, right, regardless of whether you agree with what
someone is doing or not, do you think it's a
good idea to hand them over to the to the
legal executors of that regime, Like would you hand someone
over to the SS because they resisted the SS and
know what you didn't approve of?

Speaker 14 (01:57:06):
No?

Speaker 4 (01:57:07):
What are we doing here?

Speaker 5 (01:57:08):
Right?

Speaker 4 (01:57:09):
I don't know? And I think this ties back to
something from what we're talking about the beginning of the
week of like the extent to which people have become
convinced that like the ICE agents are all like proud
boys or something because they can't imagine the institutions that
they had supported for so long, right, suddenly being fascist
And it's like no, actually, like these organizations have always

(01:57:31):
bent this way, and they're they're organs of the state,
which means they're going to be subverted to enforcing the
regime of fascism, right.

Speaker 15 (01:57:38):
And you know, I think I think a lot of
people who kind of and I'm not talking about the politicians,
but like regular people who kind of share in this
sentiment of like they're scared.

Speaker 1 (01:57:48):
They don't want to provoke or like make things worse.

Speaker 15 (01:57:51):
You know, I think their their hearts are in the
right place, Like they're coming from a place of like, well,
we just don't want people to get arrested.

Speaker 1 (01:57:57):
We want people to be safe. Like I think, by
and large, that's the motivation.

Speaker 15 (01:58:02):
But yeah, it's just kind of like a very shallow
understanding of how resistance actually looks and works.

Speaker 1 (01:58:09):
In real life. There's also just like a worry for
a lot.

Speaker 15 (01:58:14):
Of people that like, well, that kind of stuff might
endanger others want to show up with kids or families,
and I think there just needs to be like a
separation in space.

Speaker 1 (01:58:23):
Obviously, not every protest or every resistance is for everyone,
but at the end of the day, like some of these.

Speaker 15 (01:58:29):
Discussions kind of just fall to the wayside once things
get to a certain point, because like, yeah, if border
patrol rolls through your.

Speaker 1 (01:58:39):
Town, you're you're not gonna be able to control how
everyone responds to that.

Speaker 15 (01:58:44):
Yeah, like that that's a point at which you can
see a more spontaneous response. And and so like this
sort of like top down movement organizer level like control
of like the protests and how it's going to go
kind of falls apart anyway, because by that point, like
no one's in control of any.

Speaker 4 (01:59:04):
Yeah, it's a it's a it's a bunch of it's
a bunch of people running out of our houses being
like fuck, fuck the fucking like the immigration authorities right right,
you know, And I don't know. That's the thing that
gives me hope in the situation, is that, like I'm
going to retreat to the metaphysical level for a second,
where like one of the things I don't know almost

(01:59:26):
spiritually that I believe in is cities. That cities are
more than sort of some of their parts. Yeah, and
obviously like they're they're broken down into all of these things,
and you know, like like they're like there's something there
right in Chicago. Is something that I believe in, and
I believe in the people there, and I believe in

(01:59:47):
their capacity to resist this and to drive these people
out because they can be driven out. And you know,
with with enough organization and enough spontaneity and enough cost
and on their logistical operations, they can be ran out
of a city. Yeah, I think the power of a city.

(02:00:07):
It's not something that's clear until it's manifested and you
never know when it's going to manifest, but when it does.
If you look at the entire federal deployment, even if
they bringing the National Guard, like we're talking about less
than three thousand people, there are millions of people in
the city. This is a fucking flea in an ocean,

(02:00:29):
and the flea is relying on the waves, staying calm
so it doesn't get drowned. And this is the thing
that can happen. These people can be ran out of cities,
they can be chased out, their operations can be made impossible,
they can be rendered impotent, and they can be made
to retreat. And you know, that's just something I'll say,
is just like the experience of watching these people break

(02:00:50):
and run, because they will break and run. They can
and they will, and you can do it is the
most amazing feeling in the entire world, because you know,
however powerful they look, they are beatable and they know it.
And that's why they operate with this sort of you know,
these like fear shock tactics, because they know that if

(02:01:14):
you're not afraid of them, they can be defeated.

Speaker 1 (02:01:17):
There have always been more of us than there are
of them.

Speaker 15 (02:01:20):
Yeah, like that's always been true, and they do rule
by fear, and Chicago will fight back. And there's so
much knowledge and history here of our urban black and
brown communities resisting the police.

Speaker 1 (02:01:36):
Even to this day.

Speaker 15 (02:01:37):
I see on TikTok every night videos of crowds hassling
the cops or pushing.

Speaker 1 (02:01:42):
Them out of their hood. I mean, like, this is
it's amazing happening right now. There are communities who do
this work right now. The schallenge, of course, remains building
solidarity across the borders of the neighborhoods.

Speaker 4 (02:01:56):
Yeah, but I don't think this is an insurmountable thing.

Speaker 5 (02:01:59):
No.

Speaker 4 (02:02:00):
I have never been in a place where where people
fly the flag of their fucking city that you like,
it's not real.

Speaker 1 (02:02:09):
We're basically a small nation state at this point. So
this is going to get really weird really fast.

Speaker 4 (02:02:16):
Yeah, And it's like, I don't know, like the US's
record of military occupations is not good and we can
hand them another l.

Speaker 10 (02:02:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:02:28):
So, Raven, is there anything else that you want to say?
And also where can people find your work?

Speaker 1 (02:02:34):
Nothing else to say?

Speaker 15 (02:02:35):
Our work is who've mostly even posting on Blue Sky honestly.

Speaker 1 (02:02:39):
Which I always like kind of cringe, but we just
do a lot of live reporting. It's the only functional
way to do it.

Speaker 4 (02:02:45):
Yeah, it's it's really good. By the way, this is like,
it's it's a kind of coverage that I think is
becoming more and more important as things go on, and
it's really the only way right now to get good
on the ground coverage of people of how these actions
are actually unfolding.

Speaker 5 (02:03:02):
And it rocks.

Speaker 4 (02:03:04):
I've I mean, we've been there together at events at
protests before, and like I could, I could, I could
personally vouch for the coverage being good, and yeah, yeah,
And it's also like, I mean, we have a lot
of people on this show, but like it really matters
when the people who are covering a social movement are

(02:03:25):
people who actually are in them and understand how they
work and like have been in these places, and so yeah,
I think it's I think it's really really important work.
And I think people should go support y'all because it's
it's great and it's going to be more and more
necessary as the occupation unfolds.

Speaker 15 (02:03:41):
As the occupation unfolds, what a bleak, what a what
a terrible world.

Speaker 1 (02:03:51):
But another world is possible. That's the most important.

Speaker 4 (02:03:54):
Yeah, remember, Yeah, and the only way to do it
is by build it, and you can do that right now.

Speaker 15 (02:04:03):
I also do think a lot about how like the
first well not the first police uprising, but like kind
of the the opening of.

Speaker 1 (02:04:11):
This like era of what's going on was the George.

Speaker 20 (02:04:14):
Floyd Uprising, which didn't happen in Great Lakes in the Midwest,
in the Mideamo West. Yeah, I think there is there's
something about this leads in specifically We're generally not like
the first to pop off, just because don't have as
many people as in New York or Los Angeles.

Speaker 15 (02:04:33):
But there's such a rich history of like resistance to
the police here. I mean you get Ferguson and Missouri,
which is like kind of Midwest, kind of South, but
like these communities have such a strong history of noringm
what it's like to live as like some downtowns too,
and some of them still are with these like majority
white police departments.

Speaker 1 (02:04:52):
So it's it'll be something to watch how things unfold
here specifically.

Speaker 4 (02:04:57):
Yeah, and the uprising in Chicago was like one of
the motion times anywhere in the country, Like they ran
the cops out of the center of the city, like
they they lost control for days of like the giant
shopping district in the middle of the city. That is
like the thing that like the Chicago business glitzy self
image is like based off of they just lost it

(02:05:19):
fully because people ran them out. And you know we
did to them once, we could do it again.

Speaker 5 (02:05:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 15 (02:05:29):
Well, and I think public opinion against ICE is much
worse than like CPD. I mean, like not that public
opinion against CPD is great, but obviously things with ICE
are reaching like a fever pitch right now.

Speaker 4 (02:05:41):
Yeah, people hate them.

Speaker 1 (02:05:43):
Yeah, so you know you're not. I don't know if
there's ever been an occupying army that people didn't hate.

Speaker 15 (02:05:49):
But like, it's just not going to go well for
you when the locals hate you, Like, it's just not
it's not going.

Speaker 11 (02:05:55):
To go well.

Speaker 4 (02:05:56):
Yeah. And I think you know, the history, as said
this before, the history of American occupations is littered with defeats.
Fucking hand them another one.

Speaker 3 (02:06:06):
Oh mom, no inappropriate joke Robert to start this episode. Wow,

(02:06:28):
I feel so clean, you know.

Speaker 2 (02:06:31):
I guess you could say I have some executive dysfunction today.

Speaker 4 (02:06:34):
This is it could happen here.

Speaker 3 (02:06:36):
Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the
White House, the crumbling world what it means for you.
I'm Garrison Davis today. I'm joined by Mia Wong, Robert Evans,
and possibly Sophie Lichterman, our producer. This episode, we are
covering the week of August twenty eighth to September third.
Happy Fake Labor Day to everybody, and some breaking news

(02:06:59):
from this past weekend. Trump maybe died.

Speaker 21 (02:07:03):
Yeah, let's check out on that.

Speaker 2 (02:07:04):
Garrison, as our official, is the president a lie of correspondent?

Speaker 4 (02:07:08):
Let me do a click at Google search here. Oh no, no,
he's still He's still around.

Speaker 21 (02:07:13):
Did everyone get checked again?

Speaker 4 (02:07:15):
He's still okay.

Speaker 22 (02:07:16):
The conspiracy theories this week were really fun.

Speaker 23 (02:07:18):
And then there was that thing that video that went
viral of like them like opening a White House window
and throwing out a couple black trash bags.

Speaker 21 (02:07:25):
That really was really funny.

Speaker 4 (02:07:27):
That was really funny.

Speaker 23 (02:07:28):
I was like, there's way worse things going on in
the world. I don't have time to care about this,
But we never got information about that. That was just
some weird shit.

Speaker 4 (02:07:35):
Not yet, not yet, Sophie sensational.

Speaker 21 (02:07:37):
I don't think we know what it was.

Speaker 2 (02:07:39):
I mean, it could just be that's them fucking cleaning shit,
but I wouldn't be surprised if they were destroying evidence.

Speaker 23 (02:07:45):
I wasn't aware those windows could open. I thought they
were like bulletproof and and like weren't.

Speaker 4 (02:07:50):
Supposed to open.

Speaker 2 (02:07:51):
I'm sure they both bulletproof, but have to be possible
to open so that the Secret Service has more paths
of egress in the event that some crazy disaster of
a fall the White House. You need to watch the
documentary White House Down, Sophie. This spells all of that out.

Speaker 3 (02:08:06):
So Trump went a few days without a major public appearance.

Speaker 21 (02:08:10):
The man is just trying to take some time off.

Speaker 3 (02:08:15):
Though he wasn't seen golfing between Saturday and Monday. But
there's nothing on Trump's public schedule for three days during
Labor Day weekend, where he essentially took a brief golfing holiday,
and this fueled speculation that he was in a rapid
health decline, spawning a whole bunch of gnsper theories about

(02:08:35):
him being in the hospital, Vance imminently taking over, and
some comments from JD. Vance during a USA Today interview
released last Thursday fueled some of this speculation. Over the weekend,
Vance said, quote, I feel very confident the President of
the United States is in good shape, is going to
serve out the remainder of his term and do great
things for the American people. And if God forbid there's

(02:08:58):
a terrible tragedy, I can't think of better on the
job training than what I've gotten over the last two
hundred days unquote.

Speaker 4 (02:09:06):
It sounds like he's ready to take the reins right now.

Speaker 21 (02:09:11):
Sure, man, Yeah, you're trained up now.

Speaker 3 (02:09:14):
Over the weekend, people spread AI altered images of Trump's
face looking more swollen and sickly than it actually was,
and rumors circulated that roads to Walter Reed Medical Center
were closed yeah, when in fact there were no irregular closures,
and screenshots of maps supposedly showing these quote unquote closures
were actually just showing old security gates because yeah, you

(02:09:38):
can't just like walk or drive up to the front
door of Walter Reed Medical Center. Yeah, it's in a
military base.

Speaker 2 (02:09:44):
This is the ocent of idiots, right, which is people
seeing something that is described as being one thing in
this like little clip that they get of it in
social media, and they don't actually do any further check
up It's the same thing with like the pent Gone
pizza totally orders that people are like, oh when when
pizza orders peeked the Pentagon where about the US is

(02:10:05):
about to go to war, and it's like no, sometimes
people just order pizza near the Pentagon because the Pentagon
is surrounded by a city, right, there's like there's people.

Speaker 3 (02:10:14):
The Pentagon pizza tracker was part of these weekend conspiracy
theories that yes, you were like trying to decide how
to handle Trump's declining health, and.

Speaker 2 (02:10:21):
Yes, people just like pizza guys, Like it's one of
those things. I'm certainly not saying there's no way you
will wake up tomorrow to hear that Trump has died,
because you know what, He's seventy nine. It wouldn't be
weird if his health took a sudden turn in the
next day. Just statistically, it wouldn't be weird because he's
seventy nine. But like the people pointing outs the simile
they were doing with Biden pointing out like oh, like

(02:10:42):
the marks on his hand, and it's like, yeah, that
isn't it for both of them. This is evidence that
they are older than you should be to be president.
But like my grandpa had shit like that, Because my
grandpa lived with us for the last like ten years
of his life. His hands looked a lot like that
for like a decade. Like, so people live for a
long time. After it becomes clear they're very sick and old.
It's not a sign that they're about.

Speaker 21 (02:11:04):
To kick off this weekend.

Speaker 3 (02:11:05):
That guy in Congress who looks like a turtle has
had weird bruises on his body for as long as
I can remember, Toddel, Yeah, but no, like accounts were
basically theorizing that like Putin poisoned Trump during their last meeting,
and this is why he's in a rapid health decline.

Speaker 4 (02:11:21):
Oh my god, Why.

Speaker 21 (02:11:22):
Why would he need to do that? Why would that
benefit him?

Speaker 4 (02:11:25):
So baffling.

Speaker 3 (02:11:26):
Yeah, when people noticed looking at the White House schedule,
which they'd realized just existed a few days ago. But
when looking on the schedule, they saw that quote unquote,
the President was to give an announcement on Tuesday afternoon.
Because of this, rumor spread that it would be Trump
resigning for health reasons, or Vance would come out and

(02:11:47):
announce Trump died and he was the president now, like
some like really bad.

Speaker 4 (02:11:52):
Aaron Sorkin movie.

Speaker 21 (02:11:54):
That's how it works.

Speaker 4 (02:11:55):
Also, I just I just want to also put this
out there. Yeah, that White House leaks like a fucking sieve.
There is no way you could cover up the president
dying without it being out immediately, Like come on, no.

Speaker 2 (02:12:11):
I'm sorry, like you, they couldn't keep it hidden when
he got sick. You think they're gonna keep the fact
that they're gonna weaken it Bernie's head ridiculous.

Speaker 15 (02:12:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:12:20):
When this press conference got delayed an hour on Tuesday,
this too was used as the evidence of Trump's declining health.
But sure enough, right before three pm, Trump came out
with a huge gaggle of people, which is probably why
it was delayed, because he had like twenty guys with
him who, like multiple people spoke to announce that they
were moving Space Command. And Trump seemed normal. He seemed

(02:12:44):
like normal Trump, like he is an old guy. But no,
this was just normal Trump.

Speaker 1 (02:12:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 21 (02:12:50):
Does he seem older than he did in twenty sixteen?

Speaker 4 (02:12:52):
For sure, Man, it's like more wrinkled, but like, no, he's.

Speaker 23 (02:12:56):
Older exactly like he did before these conspiracy theories starts.

Speaker 2 (02:13:00):
Yeah, I mean he looks old, Like he looks older
than he did ten years ago. Yeah, I'm just saying, oh.

Speaker 4 (02:13:05):
She's so much less coherent than then. But like, yeah,
he's not like, yeah, dying.

Speaker 2 (02:13:10):
I don't have any particular reason to expect he's about
to drop dead, like as opposed to like three months
ago or six months ago, you know, yeah, Like does
it appear as if time is continuing to march on
his face?

Speaker 3 (02:13:22):
Yes, of course, you know exactly. During said press conference,
Trump himself was asked about his alleged imminent demise and responded,
like this a.

Speaker 4 (02:13:32):
Really different but about a big viral social media trend
over the weekend.

Speaker 5 (02:13:37):
How did you find out over the weekend that you
were dead?

Speaker 4 (02:13:42):
You see that people.

Speaker 5 (02:13:43):
Didn't see it for a couple of days.

Speaker 2 (02:13:44):
One point three million user engagements as of Saturday morning
about your demise?

Speaker 10 (02:13:50):
Really, you know, I have heard it's sort of crazy.
But last week I did numerous news conferences, all successful,
they went very well, like this is going very well,
and then I didn't do any for two days, and
they said there must be something wrong with him. Biden
wouldn't do him for months, you wouldn't see him, and
nobody ever said there was ever anything wrong with him.

Speaker 15 (02:14:12):
And we know he wasn't in the.

Speaker 5 (02:14:13):
Greatest of shape.

Speaker 4 (02:14:14):
No, I heard that. I get reports, now you knew.

Speaker 10 (02:14:17):
I did an interview that lasted for about an hour
and a half with somebody and everybody. So that was
on one of your competitors.

Speaker 4 (02:14:25):
That's a remarkably coherent Trump by Trump's standards.

Speaker 3 (02:14:29):
Like no, and he's talking about how he was sending
out very pointiant truths.

Speaker 4 (02:14:34):
Over the weekend on truth So okay, that's for current.

Speaker 17 (02:14:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:14:41):
Yeah, he just took a nice little golfing golfing holiday
and like it is, Drue. He is the oldest elected
president and the White House recently announced he was diagnosed
with chronic venus and sufficiency a few months ago to
explain his ankle swelling and the bruises on his right
hand have become more noticeable, which the White House is
attributed to frequent handshaking and the use of aspirin.

Speaker 4 (02:15:04):
That is really funny.

Speaker 21 (02:15:06):
Yeah, he shook too many hands.

Speaker 4 (02:15:09):
He just can't stop shaking hands.

Speaker 1 (02:15:10):
That's actually hilarious.

Speaker 3 (02:15:13):
But the aspirin thing is is real and people of
his age, frequent aspirin use can lead to hand bruising. Yeah,
but I just finished up my blue and on research,
and then this whole weekend as I was like literally
finishing those episodes, this this whole, this whole giant wave
of these like Trump health conspiracies just just completely took over,
and I felt like I was like losing it. Like
everyone around me, everyone around me was indulging this, and

(02:15:36):
like usually from this place of like half.

Speaker 4 (02:15:38):
Joking but not really joking.

Speaker 3 (02:15:40):
Like when yeah, when that line gets blurry between are
you indulging in this like ironically because it's fun, or
does it is it actually kind of altering your brain?

Speaker 4 (02:15:48):
Like is it actually slowly making you convinced of this stuff?

Speaker 2 (02:15:52):
In like a small way, this gets to what is
at the root of all conspiracy culture, regardless of like
the political ideology, which is the need, the emotional need
to believe that you are the possessor of secret knowledge. Yeah, right,
like that that is so much a part of this
that like no, no, no, I am privy to secrets
about the world that the average person is not, and

(02:16:14):
the degree to which that's like comforting and also emotionally
necessary for quite a few people. And that's part of
the problem with humoring this is that the instant you
let it into your life, it starts taking more and
more power because it becomes part of your ego, It
becomes part of your coping mechanisms. It becomes like yeah, something,
but you become dependent upon it.

Speaker 4 (02:16:35):
Yeah, and I think it's also word noting. Like, you know,
people are confused all the time about how does the
right come to believe all of these things? How does
the right sort of you know, like, how how does
like vaccine conspiracism spread? How does like QAnon spread? It's
like it spreads like this, Uh right, this is what
it looks like. And you're also not immune to it

(02:16:57):
just because your politics are better. It's still really really
easy to fall down those pathways because they're addictive and fun,
and that's spreading so much unhinged shit.

Speaker 21 (02:17:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:17:10):
The root of a lot of madness comes with thinking
that you're better than other people and you're not.

Speaker 3 (02:17:16):
Cognitively, I can play around with this stuff without it
affecting me the way to fix other people mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (02:17:22):
Yeah, or just because this is because the politics of
this counter factual belief system are better than their counterfactual
belief system. This is not a counterfactual belief system totally.

Speaker 3 (02:17:33):
Yeah, And like when we see this with the way
some people talk about like Russia, and like, I've faced
a little teeny bit of pushback on some of the
ways that I was framing like Russia Gate in the
Blue and on episodes, and like, there is a difference
between a social media disinformation campaign to influence elections, which
Russia does, Like we.

Speaker 2 (02:17:52):
Know this absolutely, that's not in question whatsoever.

Speaker 3 (02:17:55):
Yeah, there's a difference between that and like straightforwardly stealing, yeah,
an election in such a manner that the election results
are themselves illegitimate, right.

Speaker 2 (02:18:04):
And this is the big question always if you're saying, like, no,
they literally did steal this election in the twenty sixteen
election the like, but they just like fucked up for
twenty twenty. They just like couldn't get their shit together
and time for that one, Like what or is it
that they have influence campaigns like everyone else and they're influence,
Like that doesn't mean saying that they're not problems, but
it doesn't it doesn't mean pretending that's the only.

Speaker 21 (02:18:26):
Reason shit broke their way, you know.

Speaker 2 (02:18:28):
In part A big reason why things worked the way
that they have and have worked the way that they
have is that the disinfo campaigns that Russia, that the
Russian government was engaged and were complementary to campaigns of
disinformation that have existed for decades in the US.

Speaker 3 (02:18:43):
Right, Yeah, look at the way they were funding right
wing content creators through Tenet Media.

Speaker 4 (02:18:47):
Right.

Speaker 3 (02:18:48):
And like, you know, same thing with Trump, Like publicly
encouraging Russia is not the same thing as actual collusion.
And there is no clear indication that the twenty sixteen
Russian influenced operations or even like their acts sing of
voter registration actually made a meaningful impact on the results
of the election. And this is the same thing with
you know, like the rights legal methods of voter disenfranchisement,

(02:19:11):
voter suppression or changing mail in voting rules. Right, there's
that versus talking about like hacking voting machines. Right, the
former doesn't mean that the election was quote unquote stolen.
Now just because they do voter suppression, right, the results
still need to be accepted. Like, that's not illegal election interference.
It's not good, we should we should oppose it. Yeah,

(02:19:31):
but it's not a legal election interference. And like this
is kind of just like a coping method that passes
the buck to avoid accepting that Republicans were better at
winning these elections, and it may be emotionally easier to
like blame Russia than to actually like reflect on ourselves.
And I've seen the same thing when people talking about
how for the twenty twenty four election on election day

(02:19:53):
there were bomb threats to swing state polling places that
were traced back to Russia, and like, while this is
nominally true, this did not influence the result of that election.
And then this can very quickly devolve into like just
like basically like just asking questions right, like you can't
prove a negative, and this just turns into like a
very cartoon version of understanding reality, like with like people

(02:20:15):
in ski masks fixing elections or changing votes, or like
hackers compromising election like voting machines, instead of just accepting
that a lot of people voted for Trump and he
won well.

Speaker 2 (02:20:26):
And it's the part of the other problem is that
I think when you lose yourself in patterns of thinking
like this, it also leads to a failure to accurately
gauge the strengths and the capacities of the enemy, Like
if you're unwilling to see where they've made smart decisions
and where they've made good investments that have paid off

(02:20:48):
for them. Then you are unable to follow and properly
counter those kinds of things. And I think part of
why this is so difficult is that so many people,
so many liberals and people on the left.

Speaker 21 (02:20:59):
I don't think.

Speaker 2 (02:20:59):
I think think both sides have differences in how they
do it, but I don't think there's a massive difference
in the degree to which either side does it. But
you find on both ends of the political spectrum this
emotional need to be like, these people are idiots, And
the corelating factor with that is that like, and I'm
not right, Like I'm smarter because I'm not one of
these people, because I'm not one of these like fools

(02:21:20):
who buys into this right wing propaganda. And you're if
you're more obsessed with that than you are with seeing
where your enemy has made smart decisions, then you're going
to continue getting dunked on by them endlessly. You get blindside.
And that's that's where we are right now. People are
getting dunked on repeatedly because they refuse to see the
things that Trump does that are based in actual intelligence,

(02:21:42):
and the things that the far right has done, the
things the Republican Party is of the architects of this
movement have done that have been successful. You know who
else is successful? Genius the products that support this podcast. Yeah,
that's right, and we are bad.

Speaker 3 (02:22:09):
So. On Tuesday, the mayor of DC ordered that the
city will continue cooperating with federal law enforcement past the
expiration date of Trump's Crime Emergency Declaration, which is set
for September tenth. She has established the quote Safe and
Beautiful Emergency Operations Center. She's for DC to indefinitely coordinate

(02:22:34):
with Trump's Safe and Beautiful Task Force. This is like
a caving and like an acquiescence to prevent some kind
of larger legal fight over Trump's ability to exert power
over DC. It's giving him a little bit of what
he wants while trying to maintain a degree of sovereignty,
but in doing so you kind of just play into

(02:22:56):
what he actually wants.

Speaker 15 (02:22:57):
In the end.

Speaker 3 (02:22:58):
This Operations Center will work on quote centralized communications, formulate
post emergency planning and operations, and ensure coordination with federal
law enforcement to the maximum extent allowable by law within
the district. Later in her order, she quote unquote requests
that federal partners adhere to effective community policing practices to

(02:23:22):
maintain community confidence in law enforcements, such as by not
wearing masks, clearly identifying their agency, and providing identification during
arrests and encounters with the public.

Speaker 4 (02:23:33):
Quote.

Speaker 3 (02:23:33):
The Safe and Beautiful Emergency Operations Center will continue to
prioritize DC National Guard for typical mission focused activities unquote.
So they are requesting that federal partners not wear masks.
And that's kind of the strongest amount of pushback the
mayor is allowing in regards to Trump's federal control of
over law enforcement in DC.

Speaker 21 (02:23:55):
Great, that'll solve it.

Speaker 4 (02:23:57):
In a wild band. I said that like, one of
the most important sources of support that the Trump administration
has is a bunch of the democratic mayors and governors,
and oh boy, is this one of them.

Speaker 11 (02:24:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:24:11):
Uh. However, it's worth noting that this has not been
the response of all of the democratic governors. And I
think we're going to turn here towards the impending occupation
of Chicago. So Trump has said that he is going
to deploy the National Guard to Chicago, ostensibly also because

(02:24:33):
of crime. As of two thirty two Pacific time on Wednesday,
the third, we don't have a timeline for the National
Guard deployment that could change. The situation is evolving rapidly.
We will get you more on a second. We also
have conflicting reports where Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker has
said that the Texas National Guard is being staged to

(02:24:56):
sort of participate in the sort of occupation of Chicago.
It has denied this. We sort of don't know what
exactly is going on with that, but it is worth
noting that both Governor Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson
have been very very clear that they do not want
a federal deployment in Chicago. They have said go home.

(02:25:17):
There isn't really because this is a federal deployment, There
isn't really much they can do about it outside of
legal stuff. And the Trump administration has been a lot
more careful about this, and they were in la in
terms of how they're doing the deployments legally. So we'll
see what happens with the National Guard deployments. However, and

(02:25:41):
this is something that I think is getting very very
little coverage, which is that the actual threat model on
the ground in Chicago and the day this is going up.
We will have run in an interview the day before
with Raven who's a journalist from the Chicago based outlet
Unraveled about what the respect bonds in Chicago has been
to all of this, and how people are repairing in

(02:26:03):
what the threat model is. The actual thing people are
worried about in Chicago is not the National Guard so much.
It is the deployment of federal agents from Homeland Security,
including ICE in the border patrol. Very very specifically. Their
is significant concern about border patrol because while there has
been ICE operation in the city and it's obviously very bad,
as we sort of talk about, there really hasn't been

(02:26:24):
any significant border patrol deployments and that seems like it's
about to start as an indication of how fast the
situation is moving. So that interview was recorded Wednesday morning,
September third, Yeah, September third. In the time between that
recording and now, which was maybe three hours, we got
more information about the federal deployment. So the Sun Times

(02:26:48):
is reporting, based on reports from government officials, that two
hundred and thirty agents, including border patrol, are being sent
from LA to Chicago. Thirty agents are already here. They've
been doing training in anti riot stuff with flash bangs.

(02:27:08):
They've also apparently moved one hundred and forty unmarked vans
to this naval base not really in Chicago. We'll get
to that in a second, but they've moved one hundred
and forty un marked vans to do these kind of raids.
This very much suggests that they're going to do the
kind of smashing grab raids we've been seeing in LA.

(02:27:29):
That's the thing people are very worried about. And we've
seen you know, tiktoks from the senior leadership with the
Border Patrol talking about how their talks.

Speaker 21 (02:27:36):
I know it's it's bleak.

Speaker 4 (02:27:39):
Yeah, no, literally, it's like it's it's tick talks of
him going like we're trading our palm trees for skyscrapers. Jeez,
it's really bad. It seems like they're going to be
deploying the kind of smashing grab raids they did in LA.
But comment there's one final thing I want to get to.
This naval base is not really in Chicago. It is

(02:27:59):
really far north of Evanstone, which is like a thing
that's like not Chicago's like this naval base that they're
deploying from is closer to Kenosha than it is like Noosha, Wisconsin,
than it is to like even the north side of Chicago.
It's like really really far north again, like even getting
to I mean neighborhoods that are pretty far north, it's

(02:28:21):
like an hour out right. It is mult a multiple
hour drive into the center of the city, so it's
going to be kind of difficult for them to deploy
in the middle of the city. This is something I
talked about with Raven. It looks like they're trying to
hit the more outlining areas more with raids because those
areas are less well defended and there's not as much

(02:28:41):
sort of rapid reaction stuff there. That's sort of what
this looks like. People are preparing because I guess there's
one more important thing, which at the naval base is
where they're running their operations out of. But the naval
base has declined the request to house them, so they're
probably gonna be in hell seop We're going to target those,
but yeah, that's that's where things are at as of Wednesday.

(02:29:06):
They're staging in this weird naval base that is really
not close to the city.

Speaker 3 (02:29:13):
Yeah, I mean the real focus on this anti crime
crackdown is also a way to like trojan horse slightly
obscured ICE operations. And when Nacheler talking about like National
Guard deployments to cities nationwide, the actual main mode that
National Guard will be operating in is logistical and like
like PaperWorks support for ICE operations. Yep, at least for

(02:29:36):
these like broader nationwide deployments. With these specific deployment in
DC and in Chicago, there's there's more preparation for like
carrying out ordinary law enforcement actions. But those actions also
exist in coordination with immigration crackdowns, and like that's a
lot of what these like more militarized occupations are going
to be focused on. Yeah, and it's worth noting, like

(02:29:59):
just logistically, like they're not going to be sending the
Guard into the parts of Chicago where they're like aret
is crime sometimes, although again it's worth noting crime rates
that waged fuck down. Yeah, But also like every story
about this is like, oh, there were shootings over the weekend,
and it's like, yeah, it's not good, but like the
National Guard is not going to be deployed to stop shootings.

(02:30:20):
They literally can't get there. Again, It's like no, three
hours out.

Speaker 2 (02:30:24):
No, they can't get to the north side of Chicago.
And as as we all know from the song Bad
Bad Lee broy Brown, the south side of Chicago.

Speaker 21 (02:30:31):
Is the baddest part of town.

Speaker 1 (02:30:32):
Jesus Christ.

Speaker 4 (02:30:34):
I'm just gonna ignore that.

Speaker 21 (02:30:35):
Uh huh, yeah, you should just ignore that.

Speaker 4 (02:30:36):
There are places in Norset that they could deploy. But
if you're trying to get to the actual south side,
it is at least a three hour drive. And that's
like assuming that, like the traffic isn't bad, Like it's
at least three hours. It's possibly larger than that. I
I didn't even bother checking it because I looked at
where this was and I was like, this is basically
in Wisconsin, what are we doing here? So like this

(02:30:58):
is you know, this is this is Gys Garson say,
this is a this is a giant show force thing,
and it's but it's mostly just this is the sort
of shock and all thing to frame this as crime
so that people aren't focusing on and obviously like it's
bad having just like troops in the streets, but like
the ice enforcement and the border patrol deployment is what

(02:31:18):
the actual threat is here?

Speaker 3 (02:31:20):
And yeah, and like, Yeah, Depentagon and the Trump badmen
are planning a lot of different scenarios that they would
like to enact. But Trump's actual comments on like a larger,
like military style deployment to Chicago had been a little
bit flip floppy. I think they're still trying to reach
some kind of deal to like work with the local
government and state governments in a way that is less

(02:31:42):
bombastic than like a like a completely like adversarial deployment
would be.

Speaker 17 (02:31:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:31:48):
Even that that press conference where the shambling corpse of
Trump made an appearance, his comments about the possibility of
the plot of to Chicago is seemed still pretty explorer
to There's still there's still like conversations being had about
how to actually do this. They are not as as
brazen as what they were in LA, and they don't

(02:32:10):
have as much justification to do what they did in
DC to a city like Chicago. So they're still trying
to work out some kind of deal with like the
local governments.

Speaker 4 (02:32:19):
Yeah, and it's really unclear to me that they're going
to be able to reach a deal with Brendon Johnson
and with Pritzker, who's leading it.

Speaker 3 (02:32:26):
It seems that Brandon Johnson's less willing to work with
Trump on this than the mayor of d C, so
props to him for that, I guess.

Speaker 21 (02:32:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:32:34):
Yeah, And it's just also a thing where Brandon Johnson
is like very deeply unpopular in Chicago. However, comma actual
federal deployment there is so unpopular that you have you
have the fact that The Sun Times is pointing out
in their reporting of this that crime reach are down,
which they have never done, like ever, That's not a
thing they ever talk about. It's so unpopular that there

(02:32:56):
is really really significant pressure on both Pritzker and Johnson
not do this, and you know, maybe they cave. I
have I have a kind of low opinion of them
from like my like time in the city doing politics there.
But I don't think they're going to cave on this, No,
And I think what that means is that it's mostly
going to be the homeland security like ice border patrol deployments.

Speaker 3 (02:33:17):
Yeah, because Chicago does fall into our very loose definition
of like a border.

Speaker 21 (02:33:21):
Town, h yes, which most towns are.

Speaker 4 (02:33:25):
Yeah yeah yeah.

Speaker 21 (02:33:27):
Speaking of JB.

Speaker 2 (02:33:29):
Pritzker, I mean he has a lot of corporate interests.
He may have stock in one of the companies advertising
on our show. They have no way of knowing.

Speaker 21 (02:33:48):
We'll back.

Speaker 4 (02:33:49):
I just got a text from JB.

Speaker 3 (02:33:51):
Pritzker was recruiting for the private People's Militia to defend
the free municipality of Chicago.

Speaker 2 (02:33:58):
So he's recruiting horse archer for thees.

Speaker 15 (02:34:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:34:02):
Yeah, you've got to be able to loose twelve arrows
a minute from the back of a war pony in
order to in order to make the make the cut.

Speaker 4 (02:34:11):
Protesters did shoot arrows at the cops at Hong Kong,
so it's not it's not without precedent.

Speaker 21 (02:34:17):
Yes they did. Yes, they did at the university. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:34:20):
Well, and you know, if if Florida National Guard deploys
to Illinois, they may be able to use biological warfare
because the Florida Surgeon General has just vowed to end
all of the state's vaccine mandates, equitting them with slavery
amazing stuff, not just the COVID mandates, all vaccine mandates
across this state. After he announced this, he got like

(02:34:42):
over thirty seconds of applause, like NonStop. I will play
a little bit of the end of this announcement.

Speaker 21 (02:34:49):
M hmm.

Speaker 12 (02:34:50):
Every last one of them is wrong and drips with
disdain and and slavery. Okay, who am I as a
government or anyone else? Or who am I is a
man standing here now to tell you what you should
put in your body? Who am I to tell you

(02:35:13):
what your child should put in your body?

Speaker 4 (02:35:17):
I don't have that right. Your body, your.

Speaker 5 (02:35:21):
Body is a gift from God.

Speaker 4 (02:35:23):
You really wanted to say, your body, your choice, what
you put into your body is because of your relationship.

Speaker 12 (02:35:31):
With your body and your God.

Speaker 4 (02:35:33):
I don't have that right. Oh really, oh really? Oh wow,
unless it's trans healthcare, which case you simply cannot a
little on the nose there, God, Yeah, it's frankly wild.

Speaker 22 (02:35:45):
Yeah, motherfucker. It's like it's like that commercial.

Speaker 4 (02:35:52):
That was I don't know, you might be too young
for this.

Speaker 22 (02:35:54):
Guess there's this commercial with this this old man with
like a dollar on a fishing.

Speaker 4 (02:35:59):
Rod going almost got it. It's literally that.

Speaker 3 (02:36:02):
It's literally that no, very close into walking into a
full body autonomy argument there, even though you know, for
reproductive healthcare that is unrelated to general public health, which
is why these mandates exist, which can affect people besides you.

Speaker 4 (02:36:17):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (02:36:19):
Ron Santas announced and during the same press conference the
creation of Florida's own Make America Healthy Again Commission, which
will enforce Robert F. Kennedy's policies to the fullest extent
in their state.

Speaker 23 (02:36:31):
Grand he was the least charismatic person we saw speak
at the RNC last year, just saying yeah, Desantas, Yeah,
in my opinion.

Speaker 4 (02:36:39):
No, no, who was worse? Jd Vance? Vance was there
that that lady did fall asleep.

Speaker 2 (02:36:47):
Man, and people people were outwardly contemptuous of Vans at
the RNC, like like Republicans were contemptuous.

Speaker 3 (02:36:55):
But remember the women for trouble, the woman who fell
asleep next to us, the advanced speech.

Speaker 22 (02:37:01):
And then mold he's so dry.

Speaker 21 (02:37:03):
Yeah, yeah, that was really good.

Speaker 5 (02:37:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 22 (02:37:06):
But I would say DeSantis is a solid number two.
Maybe abbot three.

Speaker 4 (02:37:11):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (02:37:12):
Maybe they should have got a vaccine to boost their
charismas dats that's right.

Speaker 21 (02:37:16):
That's how that works.

Speaker 4 (02:37:17):
Yeah, lax Aura, So.

Speaker 3 (02:37:20):
This is really dangerous. This is going to put a
whole bunch of kids in harm's way. Yeah, worrying trend.

Speaker 1 (02:37:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:37:28):
I'm going to talk a little bit about Ukraine. Ukraine
specifically kind of the present situation of the war in Ukraine.
Just kind of another little update, because people catch little
bits here and there on the news about what's happening,
and I think felt like we should probably update people
as to like what's been going on. Kind of the
most recent news you've probably heard is that Russian forces

(02:37:51):
have been advancing in the Dnetsk Oblast and recently broke
into an eighth region of Ukraine and started taking villages
in the d naipro Petrovsk region, which is like a
major industrial center that's next to the Denet region, where
Russian soldiers had not been recently. At this point, gains
in this new region by Russia have been seemed to

(02:38:13):
be fairly minimal. They've entered two villages in the eastern
part of the region. The Russian Defense Ministry claims that
they captured both of the villages. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry
has said, well, they're in the area and they're basically
contesting them, but they haven't entrenched or built fortifications, like
fighting is ongoing. I'm sure neither country is giving out

(02:38:33):
perfectly accurate data, but it seems certainly fair to say
and verifiable to say that Russia has made an incursion
into this region, and the fighting is ongoing, however solid
their gains may or may not be. This is not
the entirety of what's going on in the conflict overall.
The basically the whole line of contact with Russia, which

(02:38:54):
is about one thousand miles long, is in play at
the moment, but there have not been like massive gains
over the last couple of months, And in fact, as
of August of twenty twenty five, Russian forces occupied about
nineteen percent of Ukrainian territory. They first hit nineteen percent
back in October of twenty twenty two, right before Ukrainian

(02:39:14):
forces liberated a large chunk of the Kersan Oblast. So
basically what we're seeing here is Russian forces reached this
peak like three years ago, a Ukrainian counter offensive pushed
them back, and over the last three years Russian forces
have kind of clawed their way back to where they
were near the end of twenty twenty two. Right if
you're looking for like what is the overall progress of

(02:39:36):
this war over the last three years, So that's obviously
not going well for Ukraine, but it's also not This
is not a situation where Ukrainian forces are in any
kind of collapse like you're looking at. It took Russia
three years to get back to where they were three
years ago, So this is I mean, this continues to
be a grinding and hideous conflict, but it does not

(02:39:58):
look like one at which the end is in any
way in sight. Still, even with the kind of pulling
of support from the US of Ukraine, with the reduction
in arm shipments and whatnot from the United States to Ukraine,
there's not any signs of like a generalized collapse, And
in fact, over the last couple of years, there's been
a fairly minimal increase in occupied territory. Right now, the

(02:40:21):
pace of Russia's advance in Ukraine, per a recent AP article,
has slowed by eighteen percent just over the month of August.
So Russian forces took about four hundred and sixty kilometers
of territory in August and had been seizing more like
five six hundred square kilometers of territory a month in
the couple of months prior to that. So that's kind

(02:40:41):
of what you're looking at in terms of the overall
pace of the conflict. One of the major changes that
we've seen over the last like really specifically like a
couple of quarters in the conflict is Ukraine has been
increasing their capacity to hit Russian strategic targets behind the line,
like well, behind the line, we're talking fuel and we're

(02:41:02):
talking power infrastructure, which has been extremely successful. One of
the things that's allowed Ukraine to hit these further back
targets has been they've they've started producing an indigenous style
of cruise missile code named the Flamingo, which has an
eleven hundred almost twelve hundred kilogram warhead and a three
thousand kilometer range, which puts it about one thousand kilometers

(02:41:24):
past kind of the maximum range the one way attack
drones like these one way suicide UAVs, which had been
Ukraine's furthest in way to strike Russian territory, those only
reached in about two thousand kilometers, So this puts a
significant amount of like Russia's infrastructure, within Ukraine's ability to target.
They're currently producing I think that they're hoping to get

(02:41:46):
up to by the end of the year, seven missiles
a day by October. Now, these new cruise missiles are
fairly easy to shoot down with like modern air defenses,
but modern air defenses are in short supply. So it's
a matter of if you're able to produce an increasing
number of these and you're fleeing as many of them
as you can out every day, the Russians will have

(02:42:06):
to make choices in terms of what infrastructure are we
actually going to devote anti missile assets towards, and you
know that's that's always going to be less than the
total number of targets there are to hit. And the
in terms of like evidence that these strikes have been successful,
there has been increasing limitations on personal fuel use inside

(02:42:27):
the Russian Federation and increasing power outages, like all of
that has gotten more common over even just like the
last several months in particular, So kind of overall, what
we see if we're looking at this conflict is a grinding,
high casualty endeavor where the Russians are slowly pushing back
Ukrainian lines at the cost of a pretty nightmarish number

(02:42:48):
of casualties. Right like, this is still a meat grinder
conflict and that dimension on the ground for the Russians
hasn't changed. The main thing that has changed is Ukraine
has gotten better at striking behind the line, which has
been met by a significant acceleration in Russian strikes, particularly
even on like civilian assets in Ukraine, Like there have

(02:43:09):
been more missile campaigns, more drone bombardment campaigns on the
capitol and civilian targets than previously. Like some of the
largest raids just took place like three or four days ago.
You know, that's kind of a broad update as to
what's going on. It continues to be a very ugly war.
One of the main things that we've learned about what
modern warfare is going to look like is that it

(02:43:29):
is almost impossible for infantry forces without air supremacy to
break and make large advances and then hold that territory
if they do not have air supremacy. When you're looking
at two peer combatants, that's almost impossible to do. And
so a significant amount of the fighting devolves into who

(02:43:50):
can fling drones and missiles behind the lines and hit
different sort of strategic assets with more efficacy. And that's
what the war has bogged down to at this stage.

Speaker 3 (02:44:02):
Speaking of aerial strikes, do we want to at least
reference the attack on the Venezuelan alleged drugs smuggling vessel
that was announced during Trump's death press conference.

Speaker 21 (02:44:13):
Yeah, we blew up a boat.

Speaker 2 (02:44:15):
We did a boat in international waters that was claimed
to be at trinda Agua, which is a Venezuelan kind
of analogous to a cartel organized criminal organization.

Speaker 4 (02:44:26):
One of the biggest boogeymans of the second Trump term.

Speaker 2 (02:44:29):
Yes they're primary like Latin American boogeyman, and yeah, we
blew them up. The administration is claiming it was filled
with fentanyl or whatever. I don't believe there's as of
yet any independent evidence that this boat was in any
way affiliated with Trindagua or carrying drugs or headed to
the United States. We simply don't know a lot of times,

(02:44:52):
like just the way that trinda Agua works, this is
not like the Sinaloa cartel. This is not a cartel
that has a massive degree of international capacity that extends
to the United States. Like there's even significant debate as
to how much they are extended into other parts of
Latin America. They've had like really limited success expanding into

(02:45:13):
Colombia because different insurgent groups like the FARC and the
ELN have provided a significant counter veiling force to them.
And I wanted to note because one of my sources
is an article on Trindagua by America's Quarterly and in
talking about their kind of troubled expansion into Colombia, this
article notes tellingly, even in these spaces, TDA Operative subcontract

(02:45:36):
smaller local gangs and authorize them to use their name
to generate fear in compliance with their victims. And this
is a really common thing with Trindaugua where when you're seeing,
oh this is you know, TDA affiliated or whatnot, these
guys may have no actual communication or very much to
do at all with the centralized group. They're just kind
of using the name for branding purposes because it scares

(02:45:59):
off other gangs because it allows them to like act
as if they're connected to this larger organization, but they
really are not in a very meaningful way. In the
same way, a lot of you'll see a lot of
articles that will be talking about like these are trinda
Agua tattoos, Like none of them are actual like tattoos
affiliated with the group. This is like largely nonsense because
Trindagwa doesn't have a tattoo tradition. Per the people who

(02:46:22):
are actually experts on Trindogwa. There's a lot of good articles,
particularly in Insight Crime Jeremy McDermott being one of the
authors that have tried to bust a lot of these
myths about TDA. We'll be doing more coverage on them
in the future, but like, yeah, that's kind of the situation.

Speaker 4 (02:46:37):
Speaking of international shipments.

Speaker 17 (02:46:39):
Oh boy, sorry, locking jazz, locking jazz bog Sorry locking jazz.

Speaker 8 (02:46:53):
B locking jazz bog.

Speaker 21 (02:46:56):
Ah, that's good stuff.

Speaker 4 (02:46:58):
Jesus Christ. Okay, So nobody being murdered in cold blood
to post a video on x dot com. The everything
app in this one, but probably there's its own fair
share of harm. Yeah. So, at the end of last week,
the official end of the deminimus exemption for packages under
eight hundred dollars finally fully went into effect. We're going

(02:47:21):
to talk about this more next week when it's more
clear what the large scale ramifications of this are. We
have been talking about this for a very very long time.
The other really big news this week, and this is
I think most of what's been going on here has
been the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the Federal
Circuit ruled that most of the tariffs that are in

(02:47:43):
effect are illegal now. The court also basically put in
a thing saying that this ruling doesn't go into effect
until October fourteenth, so that Trump can have time to appeal.
This is a Supreme Court. He's already appealing to the
Supreme Court, trying to he wants a quote expedited ruling
from the Supreme Court. He started ranting about how if

(02:48:04):
the tariffs go back into effect, are not allowed to
be in effect, the US will quote turn into a
third world country or may turn into a third world country. No, yeah,
so not a third world country.

Speaker 3 (02:48:18):
Oh god, the American Century of humiliation continues to chug on. Yeah, so, okay,
it actually is worth talking about this case a little
bit because it goes to the core of what's been
happening with these terrorists, which is that yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.

Speaker 4 (02:48:34):
So in the Constitution, if you read it, it says
that the power of taxes and tariffs led with Congress.
It really explicitly says this. I'm gonna I'm gonna read
a thing from the ruling is this is a quote
from the ruling. Quote. The Constitution grants Congress the power
to quote lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises,

(02:48:58):
and to quote regulate commerce with foreign nations. This is
the constitutioned Article one, Action eight. I'm going to stop
here to note that everything that's in the Bill of
Rights was not in the original draft of the Constitution
that got tacked on later. So like freedom of speech,
and like freedom of assembly, and like freedom of religion

(02:49:19):
were considered less important by the people writing this than
Congress or the other people who could do taxes. I'm
going to keep reading from this ruling. Tariffs are a tax,
and the framers of the Constitution expressly contemplated the exclusive
granting of taxing power to the legislative branch. When Patrick
Henry expressed concern that the president quote may easily become

(02:49:39):
king debates in several state conventions, Jonathan Elliott eighteen thirty six,
James Manison replied this would not occur because quote, the
purse is in the hand of the representatives of the people.

Speaker 3 (02:49:54):
So I cannot believe that we have a president doing
a t tax in terrists. I know, I know where's
Boston when you need it.

Speaker 4 (02:50:04):
Robert, do the voice.

Speaker 21 (02:50:05):
No, I'm not, I'm not. I'm not your fucking monk.

Speaker 3 (02:50:08):
To see this is the only way to have to
stop Robert from doing the voice is to try to
get him into place because of oppositional defiance.

Speaker 21 (02:50:16):
Yeah, that's that's what that's what rules may.

Speaker 4 (02:50:18):
Okay, speaking of what rules are, so Trump has been
using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and he like
declared a state of emergency over like drug trafficking in
order to do this. This is nonsense, gibberish. And this
is actually where I think this is a very very
significant part of this case here, which is like, Okay,

(02:50:39):
what power does Trump actually have? Like can he continue
to just sort of rule the United States? Many people
are asking me questions And I'm gonna read this this
this line from CNN, which is quoting the court draft quote. Notably,
when drafting the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, Congress did
not use the term tariff or any of its synonyms

(02:51:01):
like duty or tax. The Court said in its majority ruling,
the absence of any such teriff language in the Act
contrasts with statutes where Congress has affirmatively granted such powers
and including clear limit on that power. So this law
does not say that he could do this. He has
simply been doing this the whole time, with using a

(02:51:24):
law that it literally explicitly does not say the word
tariff in it. So the Court is extremely unhappy about this.
Ladies and gentlemen, we got them, it really is. I
think this is genuinely just on a basic constitutional level,
this is one of the most staggering ones of these
I've ever in terms of just like does the Constitution

(02:51:45):
still exist? The answer is eh, Like, this is article
one of the Constitution. It's article one. This is the
first shit they wrote. This was like literally the whole
point of the American Revolution was that the king can't
levy taxes. It has to be the parliamentary representatives of

(02:52:07):
the people. That's like the whole thing. It was that
the slogan was no tsxactination without representation. Yes, yeah, and
like and like obviously that's the stated goal of it.
You could obviously go into your right, there's like a
million other things. You can go into your territorial expansion,
you can go into your slavery blah blah blah blah.
But like, this is what it was supposed to be about.
And has just claimed this power from himself, And we're

(02:52:27):
going to get a real test in the Supreme Court.
So the Supreme Court costs back from their recess in
like a month, So we're gonna probably get a real
test on how far the Supreme Court is willing to
let Trump just straight up rule by executive fiat. But
in the meantime, all these terrors are still in effect.

(02:52:48):
And yeah, this has been tariff talk. We have talked
about the tariffs.

Speaker 21 (02:52:52):
Excellent.

Speaker 3 (02:52:53):
Well, I believe that does it for us. Yeah, you're
at It could happen here, all.

Speaker 2 (02:52:57):
Right, everybody until next time. You know, Well, just if
anyone tells you the precedence is dead, assume they're telling
the truth and go live your life.

Speaker 4 (02:53:07):
We reported the news.

Speaker 5 (02:53:09):
We reported the news.

Speaker 2 (02:53:15):
Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
from now until the heat death of the universe.

Speaker 24 (02:53:21):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
now find sources for It could Happen here listed directly
in episode descriptions.

Speaker 1 (02:53:38):
Thanks for listening.

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