It Could Happen Here Weekly 93

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
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. Ah, welcome to it

(00:28):
could happen here a podcast where myself, Garrison Davis and
James Stout just created a new soon to be beloved
fiction character, Racist Sherlock's Holmes. And don't worry, We're not
done workshopping at It's not ready to go public yet.
But when this bit drops you people are gonna lose
your minds. Ah, how's everyone doing today?

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Much better after learning about Racist Shadow comes?

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Uh huh? After no, we didn't learn about him. He
burst fully formed from our heads like Athena from the
brain of Zeus. A good stuff. Speaking of the Greek
and Roman pagan pantheon, James Garrison, you know who does

(01:16):
kind of have the feel of a of a malevolent
spirit in Greek mythology, is Ron DeSantis.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yeah, not wrong, Sure, Ron, that's what they call him.

Speaker 3 (01:30):
After all my years study studying the papyrie, this is
I can't confirm.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Yeah, Meet ball Ron, I'm gonna I have a long
essay on my substack about how meet ball Ron and
the Egyptian deity Maat are are really uh directly related
to one another. But that that that'll, that'll you can
find that on my substack, my Egyptology focused substack.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yeah, he's not what's his what's the god of the sun,
the god of the sun disk hm, the one they
tried to do a monotheism for.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Oh yeah, that isn't that raw? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Right, yeah, I can see seeing himself in those terms.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
No, Maat like I think, is more of like a
Horus figure.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
Actually yeah, I mean no, because Matt here's the thing.
Matt has wings uh and Ronda Santis is currently flying
over us, uh, shading us all in the comfort of
his of his mighty technicolor wingspan.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
I'm seeing. Let's there's too many colors in these in
these in these wings.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
I don't know. I don't know why we got onto it.
Comparing Ronda Santis to this was a mistake. Anyway, Garrison,
you just last week we closed out on two great
episodes about fash wave and uh, the adoption UH and
kind of reposting of a lot of these aesthetics that
had become popular on the far right via you know,

(03:00):
the dark brand and memes. And a big part of
that was how Ron de Santis somehow allowed some incredibly
internet poisoned zoomers to make an ad for him that
was far too online for a presidential campaign ad. And
I felt like it was time to kind of have
a discussion about meatball Ron because obviously things in Florida

(03:22):
are very ugly right now. As a fascist, which he
definitely is, Ronda Santis is an effective administrator, yeah, which
I mean he's good at twisting the administrative state that
exists into a weapon to attack marginalized groups. He's been
effective at that. What's happening legally, you know, in the laws,

(03:43):
you know a lot of the anti trans laws, the
anti drag laws in Florida is very frightening. What he's
been doing to the Florida education system, state education system
is very unsettling, And you know that is all of
that is worthy of further discussion. But I think because
the most immediate concern we have is like, is this
guy going to be able to do that on a
national scale? Right, Which is not to say that we

(04:04):
should just let Florida, you know, sink into the abyss.
I don't believe that. But at the moment, Ron de
Santis is tied for second place against Donald Trump. So
it kind of it behooves us to ask the questions
purely for the purpose of self defense. Can Ron de
Santis win? Right? Could he actually become not? Even the

(04:26):
first question is like could he become the Republican presidential candidate?
Can he beat Donald Trump? And the short good answer
to that is I don't think so. It's not looking good.
Not looking good for all Meatball. Ron agreed, and I
wanted to get into why and kind of some of
the fundamental flaws as a guy who is there was
kind of this belief fear, I think a reasonable fear
among a lot of liberals and folks on the left

(04:47):
that because of how effective he's been consolidating and expanding
his power in Florida, and because he's generally seemed like
less of a like Donald Trump, has certain competences as
an authoritarian. There's things he's very good at, but he
was not good at being the president. He was not
good at using power. He's not too much of a
fascist in a lot, He's not an effective fascist, right Like,

(05:09):
he wasn't good at picking people to like do things
for him. He wasn't good at He was good at
hurting people in a blunt way. But he was kind
of incompetent at rerat like a competent fascist, like Hitler
was a competent fascist, right he was not in there
long in an elected position before he had effectively made
it impossible to oust him without military force. And Trump

(05:32):
was never good at doing that stuff. And the worry
is that rond de Santis would be The good news
is that Rondi Santis is incompetent as a politician and
a political candidate. So I wanted to kind of start
with why a lot of his the people who do
form his base, which is quite shrinking at the moment,
he's losing a lot of support, why they thought he
was capable of winning the primary and the general. And

(05:53):
when you when you look into kind of why, a
lot of sort of Republican like legacy Republicans, the folks
who often get called Rhinos. Why a lot of them
decided to back Ron Dea Santis. The best summer you're
going to get comes from Phil Huffines, who is a
businessman in Texas whose car dealership ran a series of
ads that are like plasted forever in the memories of
everyone who lived in the DFW area in the late

(06:15):
nineties early two thousands, and in a CNN interview a
few days ago, he said this, when one looks objectively
at who can beat Biden, it's going to be DeSantis.
We already had a match with Biden and Trump. Trump
turns out Democrats better than anybody. DeSantis will be able
to articulate more clearly what Republicans stand for, and he's
not going to be bogged down in other stuff that
Trump brings to the election. I don't think that was

(06:35):
a logical thing to think a year ago, right, because
it is true that Trump turns out the dims. The
idea that like DeSantis isn't going to get bogged down
and shit has become kind of fundamentally silly. Like he's
gotten bogged down in the fact that a lot of
his you know, backers are invested in culture warship that
does not sell well on a national level. This whole

(06:58):
like anti trans crusade, on the anti woke shit is
not a big vote getter. It just gets the base
behind you, and like you're never going to beat Trump
in a race to the base. You know, Trump has
the core of the hard right Republican party in his
pocket and they're not gonna like move on from anybody. DeSantis'
hope should have been like going after independence, people on

(07:20):
the edge, people who are like unhappy with Biden. And
I think when you pick this sort of like hate crusade,
it hasn't worked well. But Huffines decided that, like, yeah,
this guy, this is the dude who has a shot.
I think he can actually like pull it out from Trump.
I think he's got the ability to like get a
lot of people in the middle or close to the middle.

(07:41):
This has been proven kind of absurd over the last
couple of months of stagnating poll numbers. Huffine says that
the governor recently held a meeting with about one hundred
and fifty Texas Republicans in Dallas, where he quote impressed
them with his stamina, youth, and performance in recent Florida
state elections and There's a number of reasons think that
this is a bad strategy that like really laying on

(08:02):
his performance in the last Florida election is like a
good way for him to win support. One of these
has to do with the fact that, like Florida is
the national watchword for crazy right, like like the rest.

Speaker 4 (08:14):
Of their man.

Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yeah, even a lot of conservatives when they're talking about
like madness in America, they talk about Florida like Florida
man is an archetype and like, yeah, there's a lot
of right wing culture warriors who like Ron's anti immigrant
and anti LGBT policies. But moderates and swing voters the
people he has a chance of pulling away from Trump.
Like if you tell them I want to make New

(08:37):
Hampshire more like Florida, most swing voters are going to
be like that sounds like hell, I don't want to
be anything like that place. Like what a horrible What
a horrible idea. This is a sentiment that you will
find among Republican thought leaders. Quote. One Republican consultant who
has worked on presidential campaign said DeSantis was making a
classic governor's mistake by talking extensively about his past accomplishments.

(09:00):
Put bluntly, people in Ohio or Iowa do not want
to be Florida. They don't care about Florida, and they
are tired of hearing about Florida.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
Yeah, because he's he's so reliant on the types of
covered to have come out during the past two years
of legislative stuff he's done in Florida, and he's I
guess forgetting the overall view of that people have of
Florida divorced from his own administrative changes.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yeah, it's not like people are moving in droves to
Florida Bay because he's defeated the woke menace and he's
created a paradise. Like, yeah, he's getting high on his
own supply.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
He's getting high on his own supply. It's one thing.
There's a degree of his campaign that's focused on like
what he calls like the Florida Miracle, the fact that
Florida economically weathered COVID pretty well. And again, this would
be a stronger point if like Florida's economy was booming
and everywhere else was bad. But the US economy overall,
in terms of like the numbers that you know economists

(09:55):
care about allies is like doing reasonably well, and like,
of the shit that is bad in the US economy,
it's not any better, Like inflation is not better markedly
better in Florida than it is in Iowa. Right, there's
just not a good case to be made because like
when you're not when you can't really drive the economic
point home, when you can't be like, look at how
much better Flora is doing than your home. You know,

(10:15):
it's a it's a fucking paradise compared to the you know,
shitty economy in Ohio. That's an argument you can make
if there's any evidence for it. But when you're like,
you can't really make the economic argument. It all comes
down to culture war stuff, and most Americans don't want
this culture war shit going on in their backyard because
it's like a gross, weird pain in the ass. So

(10:36):
right now, the bulk of DeSantis support comes from higher income,
old guard Republicans, the kind of were lukewarm for Trump
from the beginning, and the kind to point out rightfully
that he didn't win against Biden and it is time
for new blood. This is true, but current polling indicates
it's not what most GOP voters want, which is kind
of the big problem the Republicans have is that this
is why Trump's definitely gonna win, you know, as the

(11:00):
primary campaign, is that like the hardcore of the GOP
cannot be overcome by the moderates because the hardcore is
so in lockstep about what they want, and what they
want is Trump. The moderates don't have control of the party,
but the moderates are the ones who can like actually
win a general election. So yeah, it's a tough situation

(11:22):
for them to be in. And one of the things
that kind of shows how fucked Ron is is that,
like Ron won reelection in Florida in his last cubernatorial
campaign by about twenty points a year or so ago.
In Florida, Trump currently has a twenty point lead on him.

Speaker 3 (11:38):
Not great, not great, No.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
That's a disaster, like because again not only like should
you be able to bring in your home state as
a sitting governor, but like it shows that Ron is
not popular because of his legislative achievements. He's popular because
Florida is just that right wing right. Like that's like
currently like the electoral state or status of Florida is

(12:00):
very conservative, and so Ron won by an overwhelming margin,
but that doesn't mean people love him. They definitely like
Trump more than they like him. Bad situation to be in,
and a number of early backers in DeSantis's orbit have
begun to acknowledge this reality. I'm gonna quote from NBC
News here. Yeah, there are a number of people grumbling
about it, no doubt. A Desantist downer said, there is

(12:20):
an overall sense, including with me, that he just is
not ignited the way we thought he would. And I
find that really interesting because you get versions of that
a lot that like we were expecting him to really
take off as soon as he started campaigning, and he hasn't,
and that was our only strategy. You get this, and
like if you read interviews with like folks who were
in the DeSantis orbit and people because a number of

(12:42):
his early backers have like peeled away and rescinded their
their endorsements and given them the Trump it was this
hope they had that like once as soon as he's
out in front of America, Americans are going to love
this guy because he's all the good stuff about Trump
with none of the baggage. And that was just fundamentally
disastrously wrong. And I think one of the things we're

(13:04):
starting to see is that the Dysantis people didn't have
another plan for how to get this guy elected. Like
their plan was that we think that Trump's policies are popular,
but everyone doesn't like Trump, and no, that's actually not accurate.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
The opposite of true. Almost like some of them just
like Trumps as a person.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
Yeah, a lot of them don't care about what he's done.
They like the fact that he owns the Libs, right,
They're not.

Speaker 3 (13:27):
Thinking about he's a compelling character. Yeah, DeSantis is a
void of charisma. He is he is not a compelling character.
He's actually like he's good at being like an administrator
and like like yeah, he's like he's very successful in
doing bad things.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
And he's a guy you make your chief of staff
if you're yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:48):
He's not like, he's not a compelling character like the
way Trump is.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
No, and it's it's again, it's so fascinating to me.
It says a lot about like the degree of bubble
all of the political class are in. And when I
say the political class, I mean the people the fairly
small number of people in the left and the right,
liberals and conservatives who work on political campaigns, right, because
it's actually a pretty small community of people, of the

(14:14):
folks who do the different jobs that are running political
campaigns and that are like working as the age and
legislative assistants and all that stuff for elected leaders. And
because to me, to just a guy sitting out there,
like I'm worried about Ron because what he's doing in Florida.
But from the moment I saw the guy speak, I
was like, well, this man has no charisma whatsoever. And

(14:34):
if you can't think about like how a guy could
attract voters. If there's nothing that seems appealing about a
candidate to you, if you can't understand their charisma, that's
probably a good sign that they can't get elected. I
am not mystified by why any president who was won
in my lifetime won, right. George W. I've been in
a room with George W. Bush and watched him spoke

(14:56):
to in immediately made sense why people fucking love George W.

Speaker 4 (14:59):
Bush.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
He had an attitude, he had an air that put
people at ease. He was good at putting on a
character that people found appealing in that time and place.
There's a reason why so many voters who loved him
you know, especially after the first campaign where it was
kind of a but like, there's a reason why he
got re elected, Like there's And it's the same thing

(15:21):
with like Bill Clinton. Right, you watch old videos of
Bill Clinton on the campaign trail before he was president.
You can see the charisma, you can see the way
he connects to audiences, you can see the things about
him that people find appealing. There's not a mystery. It's
not mysterious why Obama got elected. He's a deeply charismatic man.
And you know, Joe needed a little bit of help,

(15:42):
that's why he lost so many presidential campaigns beforehand. But
next to Donald Trump, he seems like a much more
appealing person. Like, I'm not mystified, and I'm not mystified
by why Trump got elected. Next to Hillary Clinton, Trump
felt not like a politician, not like the same people
who would let us down. There was this degree to

(16:02):
which like, you should never be you should if you're
looking at like whether or not someone can win an election,
you should never be like, well, I don't get it,
but I guess maybe they have. They must have some
sort of charisma because everybody's talking about them as a
serious candidate now Honestly, if you can't see anything about
appealing about a candidate, then that might be a good

(16:23):
sign that they're doomed. And I think DeSantis is fucking doomed.
And this is kind of a thing that a lot
of his early backups has started to realize. One DeSantis
aligned operative told NBC, from my understanding, if we don't
see a bump in the polls, we're basically going to
shut down the idea of a national operation. This is
really something that we're probably going to see. I wouldn't
be surprised if he kind of has a blowout politically

(16:47):
pretty early in the primary season next year, because he
raised a lot of money earlier in his campaign. He
raised about twenty million or so between mid May and
the end of June of this year, which actually put
him ahead fundraising wise of Trump by about two million
or so. But the Trump campaign ended last quarter with
twice as much cash on hand as Wrong Alongside is

(17:08):
still dominating lead in the poll. So Ron has raised
a lot of money, which kind of speaks to the
number of sort of like Republican you know, institutional backers
who hoped that he could win where Trump had failed.
But he blew all that shit, and it didn't get
him anything right, Like he didn't raise a b Like
he crept up a teeny amount in the polls, but

(17:28):
he's still like tied for second with Donald Trump despite
blowing all of that money. And I think we're going
to reach a point pretty quickly where if he doesn't
immediately take you know, a state or two or three
from Trump in the early primaries, any kind of hope
he has for further donations is going to dry up, because, like,
why would you keep wasting that money. We all saw

(17:51):
how much money he got wasted trying to take Trump
out of the primaries in twenty sixteen. I do think
people are going to be a little more gun shy
this time. There have already been a number of recent
layoffs of major staffers by DeSantis. He's kind of purged
a big chunk of the people who started his campaign.
One of the things that's a little interesting about him
in his political career is that as a politician, he

(18:12):
has always been kind of noted as kind of weird
within Florida politics because every election he's had, he's had
an entirely new team of people. He does not work
with the same people twice. He does not have like
bring people back for his campaigns, which is really unusual
in US politics for a successful politicans. When you win,
you tend to bring him back a lot of the

(18:33):
same people who helped you win the last time. And
so the fact that Ron doesn't do that, that he's
got such basically one hundred percent churn in his teams
suggests a couple of things. One, he's not great to
work with, and two, the people who work with him
and have been successful and are good don't see him
as someone with national potential. Right They don't want to

(18:54):
keep working with him because then they get kind of
trapped in the loop of being a DeSantis guy. They
want to move on somewhere rounse else because they think
governor is as high as this guy can go. You know,
Like that is kind of one of the things that
you see when you note this dude has such total
turnover in his fucking teams. Now again, for all of
the money that he spent, Ron's polling numbers have changed

(19:15):
basically nil from when he announced his candidacy. According to
New York Magazine, kind of coalated a bunch of this
together in the real clear Politics average of polls starting
July first, twenty twenty two, Trump had a thirty four
point lead over Ron DeSantis and fifty two point eight
percent of the vote in national surveys, with DeSantis at
eighteen point five At present, he's got Trump's lead over

(19:39):
to Santas. So a year ago, Trump had a thirty
four point lead over to Santis. Now he's at thirty two,
which is not the speed of movement that you want
to see. After a year of effectively campaigning. On the
national surveys, DeSantis has gone from eighteen point five percent
to about twenty one percent, which again is just kind
of like a disaster rate of change. Now this is

(20:03):
just one pole. There's probably potentially outliers here. I've seen
other polls that show DeSantis at more like twelve percent
and tied with Vivic Ramaswami, who is another GOP candidate.
Like the fact that Vivek, who is not nearly the
kind of national name that DeSantis is, is tied with
him and some polls now is fucking disastrous. He and

(20:26):
Trump are pretty close in terms of funding. Vivek has
raised only a fraction of what DeSantis has raged so
that's a pretty bad sign kind of a fucking disaster.
One major area in which Ron lags behind Trump is
his ability to draw interest and what amounts to free
advertising from the media. Trump famously got about a billion
dollars in free publicity in twenty sixteen thanks to relentless

(20:50):
media coverage of his every move, gaff and speech. He
understood it didn't matter if it was negative. It didn't
matter that they were shit talking to me. What matters
that they're keeping my face out front, right, this is
a thing that will bring me support, It will bring
me donors, It will make my supporters see me as
like this kind of gladiator fighting for them. He leaned
into this shit. On the surface, Ron and Trump are

(21:12):
kind of the same in their approach to the media,
and that if you go to a Assantis speech, you
go to a Trump speech, they're going to call the
media the enemy of the people or some variant thereof.
They're going to talk about the need to control the press.
They're going to like support authoritarian measures against like free
you know, the free press. Like again, if you're kind
of just looking on the surface, it seems like they

(21:34):
have the same attitude towards the media. But the way
they treat journalists is completely different, and that DeSantis has
no strategy with the media. He just attacks them. If
you're if you're right wing media, if you're some podcaster
he likes, He'll go on your show, he'll talk to you.
But he ignores the liberal media. He ignores the mainstream media.

(21:54):
But that's that's different from having a tactic for dealing
with them. Trump has a strategy with the media. He
will howl that they're the enemy of the people in
front of crowds. He'll talk about locking up journalists. But
if you like read articles about him after a speech
or whatever, he always gives the press their time. He
knows a lot of these guys by name. He has
relationships with reporters. He's had relationships with like Maggie Haberman

(22:15):
of The Times. He's he's able to be like friendly
with these people and social with them, which isn't like,
doesn't make it's not doing that to be a good person.
He's doing it because like he wants them to feel
comfortable around him and cover him.

Speaker 3 (22:30):
And like and this is this is the thing that
he's been doing longer than he's been a politician. Like
Trump is primarily like a media guy like he is.
He is someone who's been able to very successfully manipulate
public image and manipulate media in his favor for years,
especially as like he's not like a good businessman, He's like, no,
he's like a con man who was like really good.
He's a good promoter, so like he knows how to

(22:50):
do this. DeSantis has none of this background, So he's
just trying to copy like the hostile vibe of Trump
without understanding the action like media backing that Trump puts
into his UH, into his like relationship with UH, with
like with like advertising and with having you know, any
any amount of coverage that will get Republicans be like, oh,

(23:13):
this is a guy that's worth voting for.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
Yeah, And well also that will the kind of coverage
that will make independence pay attention to him.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
Right.

Speaker 1 (23:20):
A big thing part of how a lot of negative
media coverage worked for Trump is that people would just
see his name in the fucking news, and you know,
so they would wind up reading and listening to a
lot of what he had to say. And because like,
you know, he's getting so much coverage, and because all
of these media outlets have one to want to present
the image of being unfair and unbiased. Like when Trump

(23:41):
would go out and sit down with the New York Times,
sit down with the Posted down, he would often get
coverage that like, let him say his piece, let him
make his case, like they would because they didn't want
to feel like they were being biased, and he was
giving them some of his time. But when you just
cut the media off like the Santis has done, you
don't get that from them. You don't get any of
like the benefit of this sort of like idea of impartiality,

(24:03):
which cuts down on your ability to actually like reach
people who might be converted to vote for you. This
is highlighted particularly well in a segment from a recent
New York Times article on Dessanta's difficulty getting press coverage. Quote.
Assigned to cover the reelection campaign of Governor Ron de
Santis of Florida, Miles Cohen, a young ABC News reporter,
found himself stymied. The governor would not grant him an interview,

(24:25):
aids barred him from some campaign events, and interrupted his
conversations with supporters. When mister Cohen was finally able to
ask a question about the governor's handling of Hurricane Ian,
mister DeSantis shouted him down, stop stop, stop, and scolded
the media for trying to cast dispersions. The Dessanta's campaign
then taunted mister Cohen on Twitter, prompting a torrent of
online vitriol. So on election night, mister Cohen de camp

(24:46):
to a friendlier environment for the news media mar A Lago,
where former President Donald J. Trump greeted reporters by name.
He came up to us, asked how the sandwiches were,
and took twenty questions. Mister Cohen recalled mister Trump, who
heckled the fake news in his speech that evening elevated
media bashing into a high art for Republicans. But ahead
of the next presidential race, potential candidates like mister DeSantis
are taking a more radical approach, not just attacking nonpartisan

(25:09):
news sources but out ignoring them altogether. And yeah, I
think that kind of like gets at the core of
what a bad strategy this is. And it shows all
of the Republicans right now because of Trump's success in
twenty sixteen, which we do have to remember, was not
based on converting a majority of Americans. It was based
in part on like the electoral system and just raw

(25:32):
luck that shit broke the way it did. But they
are looking at like his success in twenty sixteen and
trying to copy that. But it's like a cargo cult thing, right,
they don't actually understand what he did that work. They
see him bashing the media and his speech is They're like, well,
I'm gonna be even harder. I'm not going to talk
to the media at all. And it's like, well, you
have eliminated for yourself the primary benefit that Trump true

(25:52):
out from this.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
Yeah, I think the corga cult de script is great.
They're like they're trying to have the appearance of doing
the Trump thing with now understanding why, yeah, the thing worked.

Speaker 3 (26:03):
And like also importantly, it's not like twenty sixteen anymore.
As much as it feels like twenty sixteen was the
here that never ended, Actually a lot has changed and
also a lot of media has gotten a bit wise
to the tactics that Trump did. Like they're no longer
going to be blasting all of his speeches every time
he says something outrageous because they know that's part of
his strategy. So, yeah, the same tactics. If de Santis

(26:25):
thinks heason to get publicity for saying some horrible thing
in his speech. The media knows what's up now, like
they've already seen this like playbook get played. It's not
like it's you can't treat it like eight years ago.

Speaker 1 (26:39):
Yeah. I think a good example of this is in
twenty sixteen, if it had come out, if Joe Biden
had been the front writer, say he beats you know,
Hillary Clinton, but everything else is the same, So he's
the he's the Democratic primary guy. Say it comes out
that his son has been smoking crack with prostitutes, and
like there's pictures of his hog everywhere and he was
involved in So he gets charges against him for commit

(27:00):
a couple of crimes that might sink a presidential campaign
in twenty sixteen, nobody gives a shit about Hunter Biden,
Like zero moderate it's not a single vote is being
changed as a result of the Hunter Biden situation in
twenty twenty or it's a different landscape and these people haven't.
This is a good thing. I am frightened for when

(27:21):
a new you know, there's another coup in conservative politics
and somebody understands that it's a different year. Yeah, but
we are fortunate at this moment, and you know who
else is fortunate.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
Who's that robot?

Speaker 1 (27:35):
The sponsors of this podcast, they're fortunate to have great
pitchmen like James Stout. James, why don't you tell the
people which meal box subscription will finally cure the gnawing
pit of anxiety at the center of their life and
bring them both both peace and the love of Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 (27:52):
Yeah, absleutely, we're pretty gonna have to uh, we're gonna
have to bleet some shit out here, but absolutely, I
personally love been a big chicken wing fam my whole
life until the baby's arms from the Apron arrived. They
are delicious, little little fatty arms from freshly harvested babies,
and I've felt better inside and out since I started
eating children. Yeah, just remember our motto, nothing's wafficking like

(28:19):
human trafficking.

Speaker 4 (28:21):
Shit.

Speaker 3 (28:22):
Go to HelloFresh dot com use promo code children Arms
for a ten percent discount.

Speaker 1 (28:27):
Of blue Apron. Actually cut hell afresh there. They're giving
us a lot of money. It's blue Apron. We shit on. Ah,
we're back, and we're thinking about how there's one food
box company who's been accused of a lot of malfeasance
and another food box company. Who are I think it's
safe to say Christ like, you know, honestly and Jesus.

Speaker 3 (28:50):
Jesus inspired to at the very least.

Speaker 2 (28:53):
Yeah, Well, the reason Jesus actually rose from the dead
was to consume a breakfast. That's right by Blue Apron.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
Mmmmmmmm Jesus, big omelet guy, huge omlet guy. Anyway, I
don't know, that's not really a joke. So Ron DeSantis
has long ignored any media not guaranteed to be fawningly
indulgent of him for political reasons. This worked well in Florida.
He's been able to get by by attacking centrist in
liberal media and embracing a constellation of far right podcasters

(29:21):
and Fox News. But Florida is not the United States,
and a governor's race is not a federal election. He
simply can't succeed against Trump with the same tactics that
worked in Florida's or against Florida's anemic state Democratic Party.
When he's tried to rebut the naysayers who see his
cause as largely doomed, DeSantis has tried to publicly downplay
the significance of national polls. It is one of my

(29:42):
favorite things whenever people point out, like, your polls have
not moved in a year, and you've spent millions and
millions of dollars. He'll be like, I don't trust those polls.
Those polls don't really matter. You can't trust the poll
to get how wrong the polls were in twenty sixteen articles.

Speaker 3 (29:56):
I've seen him use that line a lot. Look, yeah,
how wrong the polls were in twenty sixteen?

Speaker 1 (30:02):
Okay, Ron, Yeah, I don't think they were not off
by thirty four points. You can see clearly how he's
making his case currently to donors in private. Because a
memo that he's sent out to a bunch of his
high dollar donors leaked recently. There's been a number of
websites that have written about it, but we have like

(30:22):
this memo, which is fascinating. It was sent out to
a bunch of big dollar donors to a superpack. So
these are the people who are not limited by like
campaign contributions because it's due a super pack. So these
are like the thick pockets people. So we get an
idea of how he is marketing his campaign right now
that it's in a crisis, and it starts with a

(30:43):
state of the race update with a subtitle, the ballot
is very fluid. Early state voters are only softly committed
to the candidates they select on a ballot question this
far out, including many Trump supporters. Our focused group participants
in the Early States even say they don't plan on
making up their mind they meet the candidates or watch
them debate. Well, we know Trump's flor is twenty five percent.

(31:04):
That leaves three quarters of the electorate willing to consider
other viable options. What has not changed to the candidates
who are realistically being courted by the electorate. As it
has been for the last year, Trump and DeSantis remain
the only viable options for two thirds of the likely
Republican primary electorate. While Tim Scott has earned a serious
look at this stage as Bio is lacking the fight
that our electorate is looking for in the next president.

(31:25):
We expect Tim Scott to receive appropriate scrutiny. In the
weeks of HEEAD. We found low to no interest in Vivek,
Bergham and Nikki, while too many voters will not consider
Pincer Christie for them to be remotely viable. Now I
agree about pens and Christie. Neither of those people is
going to be the primary candidate. But again Vivek and
some polls is right up there with Ronda Santis. So yeah,

(31:48):
note that neither of them is gonna win.

Speaker 3 (31:50):
Great scigncet.

Speaker 5 (31:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (31:51):
The mimo goes on to note and to sort of
admit that their efforts and other primary states have hit
a wall, and they're basically like, we're given up in
Iowa and Ohio kind of We're not going to be
putting new resources into them. We're just going to throw
everything we've got into New Hampshire. There's a couple of
reasons for this, but I think it's largely that they
don't think they can win in those other early states,

(32:13):
and they know they desperately need an early wind to
have any hope of building up momentum. Yeah. Language like
this from the memo has to have experienced Republican politico's nervous.
While Super Tuesday is critically important, we will not dedicate
resources to Super Tuesday. That's slow our momentum in New Hampshire.
We expect to revisit this investment in the fall. I'm

(32:35):
sure you will not a great sign, guys, the memo.

Speaker 3 (32:40):
I'm sure you'll be revisiting a lot of things in
the fall.

Speaker 1 (32:45):
The memo also claims Governor DeSantis and his messager thriving
in town hall engagements. So basically, when Ron gets in
front of people, they see his magnetic charisma. They really
like him once he gets a chance to shine in
front of them. Now, there's been no evidence in polling
he's been in front of people quite a bit, and
he's not very impressive. Most of the social media response

(33:07):
to his public appearances have been people making fun of
the way he eats in public. Like there's like six
or seven different videos out that are him trying to
eat something and looking like a goober and people making
fun of him, Whereas like again, Trump has because he's
actually charismatic. Trump can like sit in a truck and
look like a dufus playing truck driver and everybody's like,

(33:29):
look at that guy. Even people who hate him are like, well,
that's kind of endearing. Look at him. He's hogging the horn.
He's pretended to be a big truck driver.

Speaker 4 (33:37):
You know.

Speaker 1 (33:37):
Meatball Ron. I mean we call him meatball Ron because
of a food related gaff. Putting Ron to putting Ron too.
He's just a disaster in public. There are some useful
bits in this leaked document. This is the part of
the document where the Desanta's campaign is like trying to
lay out what they see as his assets as a candidate.

(33:58):
And again, the goal of this is to get big
dollar donors to give him more money. So this is
them making the case as to why Ron is worth
further investment. We found that when voters hear about the
governor's bio, principally as a dad and as a veteran,
they like him and are open to hearing more about him.
This is to say nothing of his successes on parental rights,
his leadership bringing Florida's economy back during and after COVID,

(34:19):
fighting illegal immigration, and ensuring Border Act security. That he's
not just a fighter, but most importantly a winner. A
major paid media effort featuring the governor's bio will help
us to convert three big issues that you know. That's again,
so the three big issues he's highlighting that he says like,
these are the things that are going to get voters
onto us enough of them that we can overcome Trump's

(34:41):
twenty five percent floor. Our anti immigration stuff. Well, I'm sorry, man,
Trump's got you beat there. The wall is his right.

Speaker 2 (34:49):
Descentist has tried to go one step further. And if
you saw his press conference in Texas where he.

Speaker 1 (34:53):
Is the birthrights teamship thing, yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
No to shooting people.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
I think he said quite drop a few of them.

Speaker 1 (35:01):
Yeah, he's trying to. But again, he just talked about
what's interesting to me. He opens this memo by starting like, look,
Trump's got a twenty five percent floor of support, but
you know there's that other three quarters of people we
can get. And yet when you are talking about gunning
people down at the border, you're just trying to take
that twenty five percent from Trump. You are not reaching

(35:22):
out to like the people who are less maniac, right,
he's trying. Like again, it's just bad strategy. It's a
bad strategy within the context of what his people have
laid out as a strategy. Right, Like, if the good
strategy is go for the other seventy five percent of
the voters, well you probably don't do that by promising
to be even harder on the border.

Speaker 2 (35:45):
Yeah, and he doesn't really even have like obviously Trump
didn't have a coherent border policy either, but he had
a thing, right, Like he had a sort of shiny
thing that.

Speaker 3 (35:56):
He had three words that were very power build the wall.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
And you know, if desantists thinks Americans are ready for
shoot them, all right, you can try that. But he's not.
He's like trying to do this weasel thing anyway. It's
just not there's just not any evidence of an actual
tactic there of an understanding of like what people find
appealing and how to highlight it. He's not doing it yet.
He's not if you're a donor, he's not exhibiting the

(36:22):
idea that he knows how to copy what Trump did
and do it one better, like your goal here at
if you're running against Trump based on kind of what
they lay out, is what their strategy needs to be,
which is get the other seventy five percent of people
to back us instead of Trump. You need to be
you don't need to be yes ending you are acknowledging

(36:43):
by laying that out as the strategy that Trump his
appeal is. He's got a dedicated base of appeal, but
it's limited, and so if you are trying to make
the case that you're more electable than him, you need
to show how you have a wider base of like
a whiter repeal than he does. And you don't do
that by being like, I'm even shittier on the border

(37:05):
like anyway, just a bad strategy since he doesn't have
a strong case to make an absolute numbers. Ron's campaign
has made the call to push heavily on the forgotten
Man narrative, arguing a soft conspiratorial view that a cabal
of shady elites is colluding to ruin American greatness. Here's
another quote from that memo. Equally important, we will offer

(37:26):
an economic message to disrupt and win economy voters. American
decline was not an accident. It was a choice. Our
elites do not consider themselves Americans so much as they
think of themselves as citizens of the world. Their loyalty
is not to a discrete nation, but to the bottom
line on a balance sheet, and the decisions they made
in leading this country over the past few decades has
reflected that worldview. They have governed in their interests rather

(37:47):
than ours. And I do think there's a germ of
something interesting there. There's this idea of like economic populism,
which was a factor in Trump's campaign. It's interesting to
me how close Ron's idea is to like outright anti
Semitic conspiracy theory language, like, yeah, they don't recognize borders. Uh,

(38:09):
they're citizens of the world, which is a you know,
very similar to a lot of the arguments that like
the Nazis would make about the Jews, is that like
they're a borderless people who exist within this like financial
system rather than like our national like co citizens. Right,
it's interesting to me that he's got that this in
that memo. Again, I don't think it's a good strategy.

(38:31):
I think the way Trump, Trump's just better at doing
this right at like he's made himself like there's a
lot of people who consider Trump like their kind of guy,
like a working class dude, even though he's a billionaire
with a gold toilet. I don't see that DeSantis has
the ability to like win that kind of support from
working people.

Speaker 6 (38:52):
Now.

Speaker 2 (38:53):
He tried really hard to go to push his like
his military record as part of a like, yeah, sort
of I'm a normal dude kind of think, but it
doesn't seem to have stuck the landing at all. Again,
he just yeah, I just did it in a clumsy
and awkward way.

Speaker 1 (39:08):
Yeah, I mean, in part because like the thing he's
got to hang on like that he was this fucking
dude doing sketchy shit at Guantanamo. Isn't like even conservatives
don't feel great about that, right.

Speaker 2 (39:19):
Yeah, he tried earlier to push like he was a leaguer,
he was a JAG officer, like attached to a seal team.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
Yeah, he tried to call himself a seal.

Speaker 3 (39:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:28):
I think he Like, I think he flew a little
bit too close to the sun on that one. And
again like he fucked up and alienated the people he
was trying to appeal to.

Speaker 1 (39:37):
And I also I do kind of wonder it was
like sort of taking his red for some time that
having military experience was like a positive aspect in a
in a campaign that it would like win you a
lot of conservative voters and whatnot. I don't know that
that's really the case. Yeah, see a lot of evidence

(39:58):
for it, Like people certainly shout it when they serve,
but I don't know that it really works for them.

Speaker 7 (40:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:03):
I think that's more of a like a I don't
know if I'm using the right phrasing here, like a
traditional Republican value, not like a post Trump Republican value.

Speaker 1 (40:10):
Because Trump is like on record as being like, no,
only idiots serve in the military. I'm a smart man,
and like that didn't seem to hurt him at all.
But you know who else hates veterans?

Speaker 2 (40:23):
Oh yeah, several of the food box delivery companies. They
actually they just won't give them food.

Speaker 1 (40:30):
They are they are actively every one of our supporters
is wiping their ass with whatever flag the Navy uses.
I assume they have a flag, right.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
Oh definitely yeah, yeaheah, especially navy flag. It works underwater too,
very special.

Speaker 1 (40:45):
That's good. That's good. And underwater flag that's what we
need to bring nationalism to the fish. We're back. So
I wanted to close out by kind of looking at
a segment of Desanta supporters the find people behind my
favorite reliable media institution, legal insurrection dot com. Oh good, now,
this is a kind of libertarian right themed news website.

(41:09):
They're like, boy, I do want you to look up
legal insurrection dot com because their website's very interesting, Like
starts with this like phonetic breakdown of the phrase legal insurrection.
Like that's their logo that includes like a definition a
rising up against established authority, rebellion, revolt in conformity with
or permitted by law. That's a nonsense phrase, because there's

(41:31):
no such thing as a permitted legal insurrection. We had
this argument actually, like back in around eighteen sixty and
guess where it ended. Like, I'm not saying it's bad
to have an insurrection. I think some insurrections are potentially
really good, but they're never legal. Otherwise they're not an insurrection.
Yet the same silly.

Speaker 2 (41:51):
Ideas direction is illegality.

Speaker 1 (41:54):
Yeah, like one way or the other. I think it's
this idea. These people who like pretend to be libertarians,
they still have this like sacred sort of reverence for
the law. They can't just say like, yeah, I believe
in overthrowing the government. No, no, no, what I'm doing is
actually obeying the real law. The people in charge are
obeying laws that are illegal and fake. But like, I
know the real law. So what I'm not. I'm not

(42:15):
a criminal? Like, no, man, just be like yeah, man,
I'm a criminal. I want to I want to overthrow
the government. You know what's cool is being a criminal
who wants to overthrow the government. We all love criminal
This is why Star Wars is the biggest movie series.
We love criminals who want to overthrow the government. That's
who the founding fathers of this country.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
War is a very American thing to love.

Speaker 1 (42:35):
You shouldn't have to be like no, but ours is
a legal and now fuck it, you're a criminal. You're cool,
You're fucking al Capone.

Speaker 2 (42:42):
Like, yeah, it's very very cooked.

Speaker 1 (42:47):
It is very cooked. Anyway. Here's an article from legal
insurrection dot com who bafflingly backs Ronda Santis Florida government.
Rond de Santis is serious about restoring executive branch agencies
and rebuilding trust with the American people who've been shocked
and appalled at the weaponization of government by the Biden
administration and before that, the Obama administration. The federal government,

(43:09):
specifically the executive branch alphabet agencies, has been completely corrupted
by the Obama, Biden and now the Biden Harris administrations.
We all know it, and we're all disgusted and disheartened
by the myriad ways the Obama administration targeted political opponents.
That's why Trump's twenty sixteen campaign to drain the swamp
was so potent. We knew the depth and breadth of
the corruption. The partisan Banana republic style attacks on political

(43:31):
opponents and we wanted it stopped. Unfortunately, Trump was not
able to drain the swamp at all, not even a
little bit. So when Biden took office in twenty twenty one,
he just got to work picking up Obama's attacks on
ascent with a deep state still fully embedded through the
executive branch, having spent the intervening years openly working as
the resistance to Trump's the duly elected president's agenda. God,

(43:52):
it's such, first off, very funny that they're trying to
like make the resistance to be anything but like Twitter libs. Yeah,
Like I do find it funny that they're like fucking
trying to treat this like a boogeyman.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
I'm just yeah, like leading the Maquis through to through
that I don't know, Forester Siteorgia and blowing up fucking
train tracks is extremely amusing to me.

Speaker 1 (44:14):
It's just sad, but it does get it something right.
This attitude among a lot of Republicans, particularly the guys
who really like DeSantis, that the deep state is really powerful.
These federal law enforcement agencies are fundamentally like fighting against us,
and we have to build an ability to compete with them.
And this is I actually think we've been mostly talking
about like the weaknesses and the dumb shit about DeSantis's campaign.

(44:37):
I think a strength he has not maybe capitalized on
enough is this idea, because this is something Trump proved
he was unable to do, like he didn't go in
there and unseat the deep state. And DeSantis has actually
been kind of effective at resisting the federal government and

(44:58):
even sidelining some FEA mineral agencies within Florida. And there's
some actual like potential for strength here with Trump's base.
I don't know that this gets you moderates, but like
it's weird to me that he hasn't pushed this harder.
Part of that maybe the fact that he's, like everything else,
really bad at it. Kind of His strongest attempt to

(45:20):
provide sort of a countervailing force to federal law enforcement
was his activation of the Florida State Guard, which seventeen
or so states have state guards. It's just kind of
like a state version of a National Guard. Potentially, Florida's
had not been active in a while, and he reactivated them,

(45:41):
claiming that it was going to be a force of
volunteers who could respond to hurricanes and other public emergencies.
But what he was actually doing was trying to create
a paramilitary organization. He is in the process of attempting
to do this now these people are undergoing like military
training and whatnot. He's trying to get them access to
like weaponry. Like this is potentially kind of concerning, but

(46:03):
he's really fucking bad at it. There was a really
interesting New York Times article recently that kind of goes
into the problems the Florida State Guard have had sort
of spinning up. And it's a very funny read because
it's like it's like a little kid's idea about how
you would build a paramilitary organization. So on paper, the

(46:23):
Governor's office has said that one of the Guard's missions
would be quote to ensure FLOYDA remains fully fortified to
respond not only to natural disasters, but also to protect
its people in borders from illegal aliens and civil unrest.
And then the New York Times article continues, the deployment
this spring has been mired in internal turmoil, with some
recruits complaining that what was supposed to be a civilian
disaster response organization had become heavily militarized, requiring volunteers to

(46:47):
participate in marching drills and military style training sessions on
weapons and hand to hand combat. At least twenty percent
of the one hundred and fifty people initially accepted into
the program dropped out or were dismissed. And if you
get into this, the people dropping out are like the veterans,
they're like military officers and stuff who got into this
thing and then are like, I was in the military

(47:08):
for twenty years, you know, I did deployments here and here,
and I came into this thing and it's a bunch
of civilians dressed as soldiers yelling at me to do
push ups in march in a field and like trying
to be an asshole to me because they're angry that
like I have military experience that they think they know better.
Like it is like the volunteers said, the training seemed

(47:29):
poorly structured, with an order to minimum amount of time spent,
as one of them described it, marching in fields. Some
of the men said that as veterans with years of
experience in the military, they were offended when they were
yelled at by junior instructors acting like drill sergeants who
disregarded their previous ranks. I find this really fucking funny
if you guys seen those videos coming out about like

(47:51):
they're these classes where if you're like a rich or
you know, upper middle class dude, you can pay like
ten grand to spend five days doing a fake version
of the Seals hell weak like you rolling, you're like incredible,
Like yeah, you're like carrying, like hitting stuff with big hammers.
You're like crawling on your back through rocks. You're doing
all these like shitty, painful exercises while like some dude

(48:15):
who probably fucking got an other than honorable separation from
the Marine Corps as a private second class like screams
at you a lot, and it's you know, that's what
you feel. Yeah, yeah, rolling around on a one wheel
yelling at you that you're you know, just like making
a bullshit reasons to be angry at you, because idiots

(48:36):
honestly have it.

Speaker 3 (48:37):
Like yeah, it sounds like a weird mix of like
expensive LARPing and like a like a repressed kink thing
for these guys.

Speaker 2 (48:46):
Like yeah, that's.

Speaker 1 (48:49):
Watched the movie Full Metal Jacket and a number one
didn't watch all of it because like our Lee Ermie
or whatever his name was. Character they're like the really
mean drill star gets murdered after like emotionally abusing one
of his recruits, like kind of a big part of
the movie, but just saw him like making fun like

(49:12):
yelling at people and making up fun insults, and we're like, well,
that's got to be key to teaching people how to
fight Garrison. Have you seen Full Metal Jacket?

Speaker 3 (49:21):
I have not seen Full Metal Jacket.

Speaker 1 (49:23):
You'd actually probably like it's good. There's some interesting parts
of that movie. Well well shot, but yeah, I do
think it's really funny. Like there's potentially this is one
of those things potentially very scary to have a far
right elected leader building his own paramilitary force that is
answerable only to him. Righteah, that is a frightening thing.

(49:45):
I'm not saying we shouldn't be concerned about him trying this,
but he's so shitty.

Speaker 3 (49:50):
It it's like dictator one oh one. Yeah, yeah, Like
it makes sense that he would try it. I mean, like, yeah,
I would never want to be a governor because I
think that's an a moral thing to do. But if
I if I was to be, yeah, a romitarian governor,
my own hit squad.

Speaker 1 (50:05):
Step one, make your own army, and it says a
lot about Ron number one that of all of the
different things he's tried to do, this is the only
one that seems like, Oh, you might actually be able
to get a lot of Trump voters to switch over
to you if you promise them I'm going to do
this nationwide, and you, as a guy who didn't join
the army but is pretty sure he would have been
good at it, can like become a militant commander in

(50:29):
your like state guard thing that I'm going to establish.
You might get some votes. I don't think you'd win
a lot of moderates, but you might get the base
away from Trump.

Speaker 3 (50:37):
Right, it's just so clearly a brown Shirts rip off. Yeah,
it's just like it's so blatant that it's like it's
it's like it's like it's like he's like poorly copying
someone else's homework. Yeah, Like I don't a lot of
his campaign has that vibe and he's like just poorly
copying someone else's homework.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
Like, I don't know that this would work, and I
still think he would have. It would be a long
shot that he would have any chance of beating Trump.
But if he were to be like I'm going to
establish a State Guard where conservatives can get access to
military grade weaponry and the right to carry their handguns everywhere.
You might get I don't again, I don't think you
went a general that way, but you might get the
base away from Trump with that. It's at least more

(51:18):
creative than anything else he's tried. Anyway, this is all
a bad idea. I want to close by reading one
last anecdote from that New York Times article on Ron
meetball Ron's attempt to make an army. A fifty one
year old former Marine captain who had retired from the
military with a disability and later joined the State Guard
also clashed with instructors during initial boot camp last month,
raising concerns about the training. In an assault complaint filed

(51:41):
with the Clay County Sheriff's office, the man said he
was accused by the State Guard commander of being the
leader of the group that had been criticized in the
organization and its leadership. He was then forcibly pushed into
a van against his objections and driven to the command boost,
where he was fired and escorted off base. Of the
nine original State Guard recruiters and commanders who's months recruiting
for the organization, Fewer than a third remained. The staff director,

(52:04):
who had been a proposion of the less militarized version
of the group, appointed in January, was removed from his
post just two days before the inaugural graduation. The program's
personnel director was fired this week. So good.

Speaker 3 (52:16):
Sounds like it's going great over there in Florida.

Speaker 1 (52:19):
Sounds like meatball. Ron knows how to make an army.
I don't know, folks. That's that's my episode on on
the Ron de Santis campaign, and now he's doing. I
hope you all enjoyed this little update. We're done cool.

Speaker 2 (52:34):
Stay tuned for a vveck Ramaswani.

Speaker 1 (52:37):
Episode, yeah, which is just gonna be me making fart
noises into the microphone. You'll get everything you need on vveck.

Speaker 4 (52:45):
Here.

Speaker 1 (52:45):
Look, it's gonna be Trump unless he dies, in which case, boy,
that could be interesting.

Speaker 3 (52:51):
I mean, I just like Dessantis could have waited four
years and then he could have had the backing of
Trump to help him. I don't he's such a he's
such a weird little like power goblin because like, yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:04):
I mean, if he was still try to do that.
Trump has gone back and forth on people in the past.
But it's such a weird call to like make this
doomed play at it, to build like this bad, like
you're gonna piss some people off. Yeah, why yeah, anyway, I.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
Yeah, I remember us doing an episode not so long
ago about the Santis and being like, well, he'll just
wait four years until Trump's out to the pit show.
But no, he fucking defied our expectations by torpedoing his
own presidential chances.

Speaker 1 (53:35):
Yeah, and uh, that's why I love him. Welcome back

(53:56):
to It could Happen Here a podcast about things falling apart,
and you know, when things fall apart, one of the
few things that can keep you on an even keel,
you know, keep you feeling like there's something that makes
sense in the world. It's good TV.

Speaker 6 (54:08):
You know.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
I think we can all agree no job more important
than making television because it's really, for a surprising amount
of the population, the only thing keeping them on the
ragged edge of sanity. And obviously, if you're at all
aware of the news, both the Writers Guilt the WGA
and the Actors Guild sag AFTRA have both separately, although

(54:30):
they are now, you know, on strike. At the same
time have both kind of independently announced strikes after a
breakdown in negotiations with the major studios, and to talk
with me today about what's going on. What's it like
being a writer on strike? Is my friend and one
of the people who makes a show that helps keep
me on the ragged edge of sanity. Sore and Bowie sorin.

(54:53):
How you doing woo?

Speaker 5 (54:56):
You're simply the best money Hey, you met of.

Speaker 4 (55:01):
Them all the risks.

Speaker 7 (55:03):
Stop it, Tina, stop it.

Speaker 1 (55:05):
Thank you guys, very good, very good. See you are
my former colleague at cracked dot com dot net backslash aol.

Speaker 7 (55:16):
Don't send anyone there now.

Speaker 1 (55:19):
And you are also, or at least before the strike
hit where a have been for the last several years,
a writer on American Dad, one of the most consistently
funny animated shows of like twenty years now almost it's
been on the air.

Speaker 7 (55:33):
Stop it stop. Oh, thank you, Robert, Tina, You guys
are the best.

Speaker 8 (55:37):
Uh.

Speaker 7 (55:37):
That's very nice of you. Thank you very much for
saying that it did.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
Cost a lot of money to get her in the
studio today.

Speaker 7 (55:44):
That's very kind of you to say. Yeah, I we
try very hard, but It also has like a feel
at the show of like the warden isn't watching, Like
we're kind of allowed to do what we want, and it's.

Speaker 1 (55:54):
Yeah, you love your job. It's very obvious. I think
probably everyone there loves writing for that show. Most of
the people I know who write for TV have the
same attitude of like, wow, I can't believe I get
to do this. But that attitude is great and it
makes life livable. But what doesn't make life livable and
what makes the enjoyment of the job harder is starving

(56:16):
to death, which is an increasing reality for a lot
of writers over the last like ten years. So a
decade ago, about thirty three percent of TV writers got
what was paid like the minimum rate, which is kind
of the minimum rate you get paid to get staffed
on a union show. And the WGA says that about

(56:37):
half of TV writers are at that point. Now, writer
pay has declined about fourteen percent over the last five years.
And that's with inflation. That's like, if you kind of
take out inflation, right, everybody's making a yeah with inflation,
it's like, yeah, about twenty three percent writer producer pay
over the last decade with inflation factored in so that

(56:57):
sucks because people aren't why twenty three percent less TV?
In fact, I think we're watching more TV than we
ever have before, like so it and I like, if
you listen to the kind of numbers given by streaming
platforms about how many people are watching it, sure doesn't
seem like TV writers have have been gotten twenty three

(57:19):
percent worse at their jobs. So anyway, there was the
WGA went into negotiations earlier this year and basically to
kind of, you know, shorten it, we're asking for more money,
more money and residuals, more money and upfront pay changes
to some policies that streamers were using to kind of avoid.
There's been sort of this effort by streamers for a

(57:41):
while now to kind of kill the concept of a
writer's room in a lot of shows, and they have
a couple of different sort of fucky ways to do that.

Speaker 7 (57:48):
I gotta say, Robert, it is a dream to come
on your podcast with you, because you do your fucking homework.
I usually I'm the one who has to explain all
this stuff, but this is great. I'm loving where this
is going.

Speaker 1 (58:00):
You're actually right, Can you walk us through kind of
what's been happened, because that's a thing that I think
is sort of you miss that on kind of the
big level sort of like discussions of this is like
what like what a writer's room is and sort of
what streamers have been tiny tried to do to change
that because fundamentally, like one thing people who know what
they're talking about will point out is that like movies
are you know, not that scripts don't matter, but it's

(58:20):
like a director's medium. That's like the big sort of
like guiding you know, through the vision of like what
a film is going to be. And TV is a
writer driven medium. More often you'll at least hear that
a lot. And I kind of want to talk about
like what is a writer's room and what has been
changing in terms of how studios have been trying to
edge that concept out?

Speaker 7 (58:39):
Great, great question. So so writer's room traditionally, like you
think back to broadcast television and it's heyday, the way
writer's room worked is you had probably first of all,
you're going to have like twenty to twenty two episodes
a season, and then within that you've got a block
of anywhere from like ten to almost sometimes twenty writers.

(58:59):
And the reason that you have so many writers on
a show like that is because while you're working on it,
it's also in production, so as stories are being broken,
and that means that there are rooms where people are
creating a story together. As that's going on, there's like
six other things going on, like you're going to have
they're probably filming during that time. And if that's your
particular written by episode, like that's the episode with your

(59:20):
name on it, you might be on set for that
because you're going to be having to make changes on
the fly. While that's going on. There's table reads happening,
there's joke punch ups happening, So there's generally a separate
room for that. And so you need like a pretty
big group of people to just make a show, to
just write a show. And that's that's to keep the
hours within like to keep them bearable. I mean, it

(59:42):
doesn't even you wouldn't even turn that into a nine
to five. Generally, that's still a lot of hours with
a lot of people, but at least it's bearable for everybody. Now,
streaming has tried to change that because they're tired of
hiring so many writers and they're tired of paying writers
and so with streaming, there's different loopholes that they can
get into, which is, if you start creating a show

(01:00:03):
before it's even technically green lit, you can start having
writers write episodes, but because it's not green lit, you're
not beholden to the same rules through the WGA. You
can start hiring people at their at a minimum even
if they are should be making more than that. And
depending on what your position is at as a writer,
like you start as a staff writer, then you move
up to story editor, then executive story editor, and you

(01:00:24):
move up and up and up from there. Generally, what
happens is if you leave a show as as an
executive story editor, you don't then go to another show
and drop back down to staff writer. You maintain the
position that you have because you've now learned the trade
enough that usually you have a skill set that's valuable
enough that you should be being paid for being an
executive story editor. So what they're doing is they're making

(01:00:45):
sure that people are not being paid for the roles
that they generally have because they can do that before
show has been green lit. And then they will say
we're going to write, like, let's just write twelve episodes
and that's a lot, like that's a whole season of time,
but they're doing it before it's green lit. And then
what happens is you will have these writers who are

(01:01:06):
burning the midnight oil trying to get this thing done
and calling in a lot of favors from friends because
you have such a small group of writers. You have
maybe like in a pre green lit room, you've got
like three or four people trying to write an entire
season of a show, and as they're writing it, they're
like they're calling in favors from friends and be like
will you come edit this and stuff? Because you don't
have enough people for everything. You have to break all

(01:01:27):
these stories simultaneously. You have to know what's going on
in each individual room, but you don't have enough bandwidth
for all of that. So you're calling in favors from
other people. Do we just come and like look at this?
Will you just take a look? Like we need like
eyes on this, And so you're calling in favors from friends.
Students have figured out that they can they can you
can ask people to do this. Essentially, it's like they

(01:01:48):
get a natural part of the writing process. Every writer,
in every form of writing does a version of this,
and they're like, what if we did this to help
to make it easier to starve ye, Yeah exactly, and
then and then what they would do. There's different tactics
beyond that, which is like once those are appen, once
those episodes are written, then maybe the studio will will uh.

(01:02:10):
They can kind of pick and choose when they want
to release that. They don't have like a it's not
like in broadcast television where everything gets released in the fall.
It's just like you can choose when you want to
release it, So maybe you wait a year or whatever,
you release it, and then you can release it in
two seasons. So if you have twelve episodes, you can
cut those into six six six.

Speaker 1 (01:02:26):
I fucking hate I think this is a little bit
of a distraction, Like we miss by because we're not
doing seasons the way they used to. There's so much
good shit we miss think like half the best episodes
are star trek. We're just like, we have forty dollars
to shoot this episode on, Like what can we do
with like three guys in a room?

Speaker 5 (01:02:44):
You know?

Speaker 4 (01:02:45):
I know?

Speaker 7 (01:02:45):
Like you yeah, you're like you miss out on those
bottle episodes, those like little ones where you're just like
or like that. If you think back to Breaking Bad,
like there's the fly episode episode Yeah, oh, it's like
the best episode of the show because you've got room
to stop and breathe and like they'll just characters. Yeah anyway, Yeah,
it's like you lose out on all that. Then you
can also because you're breaking it up, you don't have
to pay people to like advance them to the next

(01:03:08):
the next season, and then that would also be released
over the course of like two years. And so you
have a writer who's written for maybe like eleven weeks
on something on a show, and then they don't know
that they have that job again for another two and
a half years, and so there's no consistency, there's no
and nothing is stable, and that makes it very very

(01:03:32):
difficult for writers to keep their jobs and maintain a
writing job.

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
It's this really fucked up situation in which I think
the streaming era in freeing sort of television from some
of like the way that sweeps used to work, the
way that a lot of like kind of the way
that you would have to like run shows and the
way that they aired when you were you were doing
it on like fucking cable and they're hand supported. Has
allowed for kinds of TV shows and structures of shows

(01:03:57):
that you never could have had, Right, it was just
we just watched and The Bear. Probably the standout episode
of The Bear from season two is this like episode
about a family Christmas party that's just this absolute, like
anxious nightmare. That's an hour long episode, twice the length
of a normal episode, And oftentimes that's kind of a
mixed thing with TVs, but it works in this one,
and the fact that it's so much longer actually like

(01:04:18):
helps with like trans you could you can only do
that with shows that work the way they do in streaming.
That wouldn't have been a thing that you would have
gotten to do in nineteen ninety three probably. But while
I think like there's a lot of cool stuff structurally
that's gotten to come out of that, it's also it's
it's made the compensation so much worse. It's made the

(01:04:38):
job so much less reliable. Like it's it's like it's
really stark how much more difficult it's become to make
a living in TV. Yeah, well TV is more popular
than ever.

Speaker 7 (01:04:52):
Yeah, Yeah, that's like it's making more money than it
ever possibly has. In the fast and certainly through streaming.
Like they're not, these these studios not moving to streaming
because like they're early adopters of technology, the money is there,
so they're going to streaming. It's like they're making way
more through streaming, but writers are getting paid les and
less because they're finding these like wild West loopholes in streaming.

(01:05:12):
Residuals is another one that's like it. The way that
residuals work is if you have a show that then
gets played again through syndication or through streaming, you should
then get a residual check for every time that the
episode that you wrote shows up on television. And it
was very easy to track that as it would show

(01:05:34):
up on like our show on American Dad. Yeah, I
know that it's going to get played on Cartoon Network.
I know that it's going to get played at these
other spots. The TBS will rerun it at some point,
and I can I know when those are coming in.
With streaming, it's much more difficult to determine when somebody
watched something, not because those numbers don't exist, but because
all these platforms that are created by studios will not

(01:05:55):
give out that information. That information is like in a
black box where you have no idea how often a
show gets streamed. There's a couple of reasons, like people
are speculating as to why that might be. One is
that either shows are getting watched way more often and
people are not getting the proper residuals that they should be,
or that the whole business model doesn't quite work. Yeah,
it's all yeah, yeah, And if you found out how

(01:06:18):
little people were actually watching television, this whole all investors, everything,
the whole thing would collapse. I don't know which is true.
I don't care. I just want to know what the
numbers are. So like a big part of a big
part of this is is the WJA asking different streaming platforms.
You got to you got to be more transparent. You
got to tell us how well our show is doing,
so that we know if people are getting paid properly.

Speaker 1 (01:06:39):
Yeah, and it's again, it would be one thing if
like writers were getting less than ever and TV was
just like dying as a as a thing, as a
as a creative thing that people want. But there is
the money. We know where the money is going. The
eight major Hollywood studio CEOs in twenty twenty one made

(01:07:00):
nearly three quarters of a billion dollars an annual salary,
which is more than the value of what the WGA
and sag AFTRA want to take out of them and
increase compensation for their members. For those eight guys, I'm
gonna guarantee you Ari Emmanuel the highest compensated of these
CEOs over at Endeavor three hundred and eight million dollars.

(01:07:20):
And like, I don't think he made any of your
He's not responsible for any of your favorite shows whatever,
like lying in the Great you know made you made
you laugh or cry or like whatever, whatever joke from
American Dad keeps you uh, you know, makes you suddenly
start like bawling out laughing while you're driving down the highway.
That was not Ari am manual. Ye, neither the shows
were Endeavor whatever. You know what I you know what

(01:07:41):
I'm trying to do here, right, Yeah, Yeah, Ted Sarandos
whatever fucking you know, Bob Eiger, all these guys like
they're they're I mean fundamentally like Bob Iger. One of
the big things he did was pushed the The Flash
movie out into theaters, really put a lot of money
into that thought it was going to be important for

(01:08:02):
the brand going forward. Lost so much money lost, like
probably about as much money as like the Writer's Guild
is asking for it increased compensation this year, like if
they just hadn't made that movie. So let's talk you
guys went on strike. What it's been like two months
now already.

Speaker 7 (01:08:23):
Yeah, it's like day eighty four or something like that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:25):
Yeah, so a little more than two months. How are
you feeling, Like, what does it mean like physically to
be on strike, like going out and picketing and stuff.

Speaker 7 (01:08:34):
Great questions, Robert, Uh, It's it's actually really nice. I
don't want to say like it's I enjoy it because
I would rather be getting paid and not being freaking
out about the fact that I don't have my job.
But going out it gives me gives me a sense
of purpose first of all, each day to like get
up and go out of this to the picket lines. Yeah,

(01:08:54):
and you're out there, you're marching around it. You choose
your studio, like from the majority of the time I
go to Sony or I go to Amazon, and I
know the people there. Now it's like going to the
gym every day where you get to know the people
there and then you build your community, and so I've
got this group of people that, like I go there.
Those are just people that like I happen to talk
to because like we'd see a truck going and we're like, oh,
hope that's not teams or truck or whatever. And then

(01:09:17):
and then you just like strike up a conversation with somebody.
You start talking, and then you find out that this
person like ran Malcolm in the Middle for eight years,
and you're like, oh, okay, cool.

Speaker 1 (01:09:26):
You know, people talk a lot about how the last
writers Strike, which was kind of like right when I
was getting out of fuck in high school. They're not
far from that point, like a year or two later. Uh,
how the last writers Strike was kind of what gave
us the birth of like a lot of reality TV.
You could almost argue there was a degree to which
it like was part of Trump's rise to prominence, right,
because that's why The Apprentice gets on air, because that's
the way the studios can get around paying writers. But

(01:09:48):
I also wonder on the opposite and like, how many
shows do we get because of connections people make out
of the picket line, because like folks meet each other
and get talking, and like I do I do wonder
if that's like a thing.

Speaker 7 (01:09:59):
Yeah, I guarantee it is. I mean it is shocking
how like how quickly you just chum up with people
and like, yeah, the the contact I shouldn't call. It's
like it's not supposed to be a networkating experience, but
it just ends up being that, Like you can't help it.
Like you're just talking to people and then all of
a sudden your jobs come up and you start talking
about your work and then people are like after li while,
like well, like send me something, like send me some

(01:10:21):
of your writing, and then you just become buddies and
like you start working on stuff accidentally together. And I
guarantee that, like by the end of this, there'll be
writing teams that didn't exist before, and there'll be people
who want to make stuff together. Plus the studio pipeline
will be empty, so like they're gonna want to like
fill it with They're gonna want to fill it. Yeah,
when the strike ends, And guarantee, there's gonna be people

(01:10:44):
from the lines who came up with stuff on the
lines who are gonna be like we've got lots, like
there's what about this and be like yes that buy it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:51):
We'll take that, and I like just kind of in general,
the fact that like that's sort of the the hope, right,
Like that's actually the thing that can defeat these giant
industry colossuses, not just like writing TV shows with other people,
but like the solidarity, like the fact that you're building
connections with people, the fact that you there's an understanding
of shared interest. You're seeing this especially like now that

(01:11:14):
like sag After has joined the strike. There's a lot
of a lot of people who are very famous and
prominent talking about issues that go well beyond Hollywood.

Speaker 4 (01:11:22):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:11:23):
The the incredible amount that executive pay and compensation has
increased over the years, The fact that a lot of
companies that used to do things of value and employee
people and good jobs have been hollowed out for the
short term profits of you know, vulture capitalists whose job
is to you know, fucking suck money out and hand

(01:11:43):
it to shareholders, and shit like this is not just
a you know, a lot of this started in the
fucking nineties. We've talked about like Jack Welch and ge
and kind of like how that company was turned from
something that made stuff to something that produced stock value
and fired people and you're you're getting that all across
entertainment right now. And I think this is I think,

(01:12:05):
and this is something I think kind of everyone knows
on some level, this is an inflection point, right, you know.
AI is a part of it, the fact that we're
about to see them try to use this technology to
cut down the number of people they have to pay
even further. But it's like this is bigger than Hollywood.
Hollywood is just getting a lot of attention because actors

(01:12:25):
know how to get attention.

Speaker 2 (01:12:26):
Yeah, that is the job.

Speaker 7 (01:12:29):
Yeah, yeah, that's yeah. Writers are good at building the
narrative and ractors are very good at getting attention.

Speaker 1 (01:12:34):
Then exactly.

Speaker 7 (01:12:34):
Yeah, it's like it was a it's a worst case scenario,
want to say, for like for the studios, and just
because it's no coincidence the UPS is going on strike
that all these companies are going on strike right now,
because the same thing's happening across the board where it's
like this consolidation of power and then consolidation of money,
and then it's just like all that you are behold
to when you are at the top of these companies

(01:12:55):
is the shareholders and like getting them money and so
whatevery way you can do that, you do it, and
a lot of times the way you do that is
that you just fuck everybody at the bottom and figure
out how to carve out money from them and bring
it rise it to the top. And so yes, I
think that it's what happened was the WGA went on strike.
The WGA is a very strong, good guild, good union

(01:13:17):
that like does not blink, and and everyone saw that,
and immediately people were on the side of the WGA
in a way that I think no one anticipated that.
All everybody else in unions is like, no, this is wrong,
like we should. We were dealing with the exact same stuff,
and universally everyone seems to be on the side of
unions right now. Then that's like we should use that,

(01:13:38):
like we should, we should ride that wave a little bit.
And absolutely they should, because there's there's so many things
that are systemically broken right now just happens to be
the entertainment industry is the only one that I have it. Yeah,
I have skin in the game on.

Speaker 1 (01:13:51):
We had this moment about a week or so ago where,
you know, a couple of weeks ago that it came
out that like some anonymous UH Studio executive told a
writer at I think it was Deadline that their plan
was to the wja's demands were unreasonable and we're just
going to kind of wait out until they lose their homes,
right until we're on the street, and then well then
we can get them to accept it. And you know,

(01:14:14):
this is right around when SAG was, you know, deciding
to strike and Ron Pearlman gets on and makes a
little video where he basically says, you know, we can
burn your houses down, Like there's more than one way
to lose a house. And I thought the important thing
about sharing that because one of the ways you know,
media works is that there's people let the things that
people are willing to listen to and that can like

(01:14:35):
affect them and change their minds is partly dependent on
the situational context at the time. This is why so
many of like the journalist, much of the journalism have
done the far right, Like has been articles that I
felt like I had to get out within an hour
or two of a shooting because people will pay attention
to these these things that are problems that are important.
They won't lead if I do a deep dive on
how this specific kind of radicalization works normally, but if

(01:14:57):
somebody has just been shot, they'll listen, you know, And
that's like a fortunate but that's the way people are.
And there's this I thought. What I thought was important
about that is that not that you know, Ron Pearlman
threatened to burn down a guy's house, that's just kind
of funny, but what he was doing there that's really
valuable that I think more people need to think about
is accepting that when you're saying something like, well we

(01:15:20):
just need to wait for writers to lose their homes,
that's a violent threat. That is a threat to harm
somebody for your own personal gain, and we shouldn't view
that as like fundamentally morally different than saying I want
to go rob a guy with a thirty eight, right
like I don't. I don't feel like there's a big
moral gap between them. And you can get people to
actually kind of who maybe wouldn't think about that, to

(01:15:42):
think about that this way. And I think that's an
important thing to transmit in this time.

Speaker 7 (01:15:46):
Oh Man, one hundred percent. Yeah, the fact that that
what it gives you real context for what they're actually
saying when they say we just got to wait them
out till they don't have any more money, and like
it really starts to hurt their health and well being,
Like yeah, you have somebody else being like, oh I
can hurt your health and well being and be like okay,
I get how those are the same thing, but but

(01:16:07):
but that's not what the way I was saying it was.
It was more removed, you see, And so you're absolutely right,
like having hell Boy come out and be like there's
lots of ways to lose a house, it's like, oh.

Speaker 1 (01:16:15):
Shit, yeah, yeah, it's a it's a there's like potential
right now that I'm glad to see recognized. How are
you doing, like just in general with this because it
is you know, we've talked about all the good parts.
There's a lot that's good. This is like, this is
a stressful time, Like I'm wondering like when you wake
up and like you hear.

Speaker 7 (01:16:36):
For acknowledging that, Yeah, that's it's like how you be.

Speaker 5 (01:16:40):
Uh.

Speaker 7 (01:16:41):
It sucks. It sucks really bad. It sucks particularly badly
because I loved my job. Yeah, I when I talk
about all these things, a lot of this wasn't happening
at my job. My job was a I had working
for an animated show that ran twenty two episodes a
season that was it would get We knew when we
were getting our pickups generally, uh. And it was a

(01:17:01):
system that worked. And I was really really enjoying it
and very happy at my job. I was getting paid well,
like I liked everything about it. I felt like it
was financially stable and I was getting what I deserved,
and I was just happy. And that's not what's happening
across like eighty percent of other shows right now. And
so like we left, we left our show in solidarity

(01:17:23):
of other writers because at some point, you know this,
I maybe won't have this job anymore and I'll have
to go get another job. And also for all the
people who are working those other jobs, and it's really
really struggling right now to even make ends meet. We
know they're watching, they're working on three different shows a year,
like they came and pay their rent, like we're working
on behalf of them, but more importantly, like we're striking
on behalf of all of the other writers who are

(01:17:45):
going to come along after this, Like the fact that
the two thousand and eight strike happened was the reason
that my show is so good and has such good
benefits and like why the show is is comfortable for
writers because they fucking went to work and like they
got what they needed from the studios even though it
was hard and it was bitter and a lot of
them lost their jobs over it. And so now it's
just like even though it sucks and I'm not happy

(01:18:07):
about it, it's it's our turn to do it. It's
like our turn to make sure that everything works.

Speaker 1 (01:18:12):
Yeah, it's such an important detail that like a lot
of the people striking, there's been this kind of like
bad faith theme I've seen. I've seen some people on
the left do it online where like they'll post some
video of like an actor, you know, talking about why
they're doing the striking, like this person's net worth is
this many millions of dollars And it's like, yeah, well
they're not striking for them, Like Ron Peerlman is going
to be okay. Ron Pearlman is not going to be

(01:18:34):
forced out of his home. Like that's not why they're
doing this, because I mean, yeah, that.

Speaker 7 (01:18:40):
You can have a you can you can have a
good job, but also have a sense of the bigger
picture and like a greater a greater good.

Speaker 1 (01:18:48):
You can just like care about the art form. You know,
we're watching journalism get fucking eaten alive right now, and
AI is gonna has been a part of like people
have already lost their jobs because they and like the
thing that keeps getting brought up to me when I'll
I'll talk about it to like family or whatever, it's like, well,
you know, they're using it to replace these low level jobs,
you know, summing up sports articles or like you know

(01:19:09):
this kind of coverage or that kind of coverage. Like
it's not the kind of stuff you do. It's not
like investigation. You can't have a machine do that. And
it's like we have, but how do you think people
learn to do what I do? Like part of it
is like doing the like that's the feed or right,
it's part of what you're saying about like TV writing.
It's like they're trying to kill the way in which
people learn how to continue this art for Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:19:30):
No, it's there's so many parallels between this and what's
happening with journalism in terms of like is turning it
essentially into a gig economy, which is exactly what destroyed
the news yeah, or is destroying the news, but like, yeah,
it's it's the same thing. And when you talk about AI,
like you if you were to write an episode of
a show and you ever written by credit on it,
you get a script fee for that, and ultimately, like
what the studios want is to just have a piece

(01:19:53):
of shit AI written script to begin with, and then
they're not paying a script fee to anybody, and then
writers just fix that and so like, yeah, it's it's
all these differently cost saving measures then ensure that no
one will ever come up through this industry again and
learn all the things.

Speaker 1 (01:20:09):
Yeah, there will still be people who become writers, but
there'll be people whose parents are rich and so they
can afford to work for free for forever. And then
and then you know what, we don't get the bear? Yeah,
the bear and it's curiously jacked leading man, Where's where's
he get the time? When's he putting down the protein?
We're not saying him jug a protein shake every twenty minutes.

(01:20:30):
You complained about this on Twitter, and I agree with you.

Speaker 7 (01:20:33):
The structure that requires the like to get a body
like that, the structure you need in your life, and
like the regiments that you need to follow, need to
be like to a tee every single day. And there's
just he's too spontaneous. There's too much going on in
his life. He doesn't have tis enough two hours to
carve out to go to the gym every day.

Speaker 1 (01:20:50):
No, this is my only issue, Like, this is what's
really threatening my support of the WGA. I just needed
an episode of the Bear where all it is is
going through his workout routine. He's in the back room.
He's doing some pearls, you know.

Speaker 7 (01:21:04):
Yeah, he's got bags of rice back there and he's
doing squats with him on his shoulders. I even I
want to see him at three am in the morning
and I'll buy it. I'll be a five at three
am in the morning and he's like going to it anytime,
fitness or fucking whatever, and he's like work it out
a little bit. I could be like, Okay, there it is,
that's what he's doing it there, we got tonefits it in.

Speaker 1 (01:21:22):
Let me see him get his BCAAs you know, have
fucking ritchie, be like you've taken your pre workout today. Yeah,
give it, give me a little bit, you know. Yeah,
all right, Soren, you got it out here. Do you
have anything you want to plug before like perhaps a
podcast with our with our other former colleague, Dan O'Brien.

Speaker 7 (01:21:41):
No, yeah, no, yeah, yeah, I got a show called
a Quick Question with Dan and Soorn No, Soren and Dan,
oh got him a headliner. Uh yeah, Quick Question with
Soren and Daniel. You can check that out anywhere you
listen to podcasts. It's basically just Dan and I catching
up because we live on opposite coasts and we're good buddies,
and uh that's about it.

Speaker 1 (01:22:01):
Yeah, excellent, check out Quick Questions with Soren and Dan
special show. Just a thank you. It's a wonderful time. Soren,
Thank you so much, and you know, good luck out
there on the picket line. To you, to all of
the other writers, and to everybody at SAG after it.
Thank you.

Speaker 4 (01:22:30):
This is Mia from the very very Near Future. We
found out as we were live recording this episode that
Teamster's leadership has cut a tentative agreement with UPS to
try to revert the strike. So we've we've decided to
leave this in and you're gonna hear us find this
shit out. Literally in the middle of an interview of
what we thought was going to be a really, really

(01:22:51):
really large strike starting so enjoy it. Strike season here
at I could happen here the podcast where things fall
apart and sometimes you put them back together again. And
as you probably have noticed, presumably from the last interview,

(01:23:12):
maybe from reading the news, maybe from like talking to
people who are in unions, we are in a genuinely
historic period of labor militancy in this country. That is
effectively we are now we are. We are now entering
the second phase of the hot Summer of twenty twenty three.
We used to have hot summers all the time. People
do what that meant, so now it just means like

(01:23:33):
global warming. But long ago in the galaxy, far far away,
there are these things called hot summers when everyone would
fucking go on strike and there'd be you know, sort
of masters just as a capital estate. And yeah, we're
fucking going back. There's talk with me about the next
series of massive private sector strikes that we're about to get.
Is Rehee Smith and Oliver Rose, who are rank and

(01:23:55):
file ups workers and teamsters doing the standard disclaimer. These
individuals do not represent the union or the positions of
the union. They are speaking as individuals. Yeah, we have
this is this is the disclaimer for the lawyers, it
is also true. Yeah, but recent Oliver, welcome to the show.

Speaker 9 (01:24:14):
Hey, yeah, thanks for having us.

Speaker 10 (01:24:16):
Yeah, thank you much.

Speaker 4 (01:24:17):
Yeah, I'm really really glad we can talk to you. So,
all right, the day this is going out, it'll be
six days before the teamsters are potentially going to go
on strike and the current contract runs out. Can I yeah,
can we talk a little bit about what? Okay, who
is who is going on strike and what do they do?

Speaker 6 (01:24:40):
Yeah, so there's going to be three hundred and forty
thousand UPS workers going on strike, and that's going to
be you know, the inside warehouse workers, and that's going
to be the delivery drivers and also the theater drivers
and the twenty two fours, like all of them.

Speaker 4 (01:25:00):
Could you explain what oh are?

Speaker 5 (01:25:03):
Yes?

Speaker 6 (01:25:04):
Yeah, So twenty two four's is a classification of worker
where they're kind of half inside and half driving.

Speaker 4 (01:25:15):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (01:25:15):
Something that the union has told us is that there's
already been a tentative agreement that that classification is not
going to exist anymore.

Speaker 9 (01:25:21):
It was kind of.

Speaker 6 (01:25:22):
A really raw deal for people that found themselves in
that position. Shit, what was the other one that I mentioned? Twos?

Speaker 9 (01:25:31):
I think theater drivers?

Speaker 6 (01:25:33):
Yes, so feter drivers are not your regular package delivery drivers.
They drive the big semis that you see from like
hub to hub and whatnot, and that's how they deliver.
Uh So those are the last two classifications that I mentioned.
And yeah, we're all going to be going on strike,

(01:25:55):
and well, we are potentially going to be on strike,
and if we are, UPS is kind of going to
be in a world of hurt because it is very
hard to replace three hundred and forty thousand workers and
what economists have told me is a tight labor market.

Speaker 9 (01:26:14):
So yeah, it's going to be very exciting.

Speaker 4 (01:26:18):
Yeah, it's I'm excited, like I don't know, you know.
It was funny so when when SAG officially walked off
and joined the WGA strike, that was that was the
largest strike since hilariously, the team Stirs went on strike
in the like the year I was born, like ninety seven,
And hilariously, that is a title that if this happens,
they're going to hold that title for like one month

(01:26:40):
before this, UPS striker places is the largest strike in
the US is the nineties.

Speaker 6 (01:26:46):
Yeah, yeah, it's gonna be wild if we go on strike.
While you know, sag Afra is on strike, and while
the Writers Guilder are on strike, that's going to be
over half a million workers on strike in this country
at this time, and that is just going to you know,
it's gonna be fucking historic.

Speaker 4 (01:27:01):
Right yeah. And there's and there's a chance, depending on
how long these strikes drag out, that we get to
like September, the big the Big three Auto, the UAW
goes on strike, and if that happens, that that will
be like the most number of people who've been on
a strike in this country since like the fifties, which
is wild especially, you know, because this is supposed to
be a sort of like, I don't know, I think

(01:27:23):
that's sort of the especially interesting thing about this, right
is that actual union density is really low and hasn't
been increasing that much. On the other hand, like everyone
seems to lake unions and everyone wants to go on strike,
and I don't know, it's a it's a really interesting
sort of set of conditions right now.

Speaker 6 (01:27:40):
Oh yeah, oh yeah. I'm very heartened by, you know,
the support that unions have garnered, because, as you mentioned,
you know, we are at a low union density. There
was like that labor decline that happened, you know, since
the fucking like seventies and eighties, right, like the backlash
to org nice labor. I am very hopeful that this uh,

(01:28:06):
this strike wave can kind of turn that around, right Uh.
You know something that I've been thinking about a lot
is uh you know, it's like ups is A is
a major, major company in a whole logistics sector, right yeah,
and like we can set that standard for that logistics

(01:28:26):
company or like a piece of shit company like Amazon can.
So if we win, and we win big, that could
absolutely encourage more organizing in those other sectors, leading to
an increase of union density. So hopefully that's like the
way forward past all these strikes.

Speaker 9 (01:28:46):
It'd be great. It's sorely needed, sorely.

Speaker 10 (01:28:48):
Needed, absolutely, and and even beyond you know, the logistics industry,
you know, I think we can show that you know,
any you know company or corporation that you know, a
year after years making these record break and profits, you know,
while meanwhile there's poor wear conditions or even unsafe ware conditions.

(01:29:09):
You know, there's hey that does not you know allow
you know us to pay rent but food on the table.
You know that we can just show that. Okay, you know,
we're done. You know, with giving all of the wealth
that we're creating to the company and now it's going
back into our hands.

Speaker 9 (01:29:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:29:27):
And UPS fucking created thirteen billion dollars in profits last year.
Yeah yeah, and that's up from I was just reading
an article this morning and U and Jacobin written by
a fellow UPS team star, and that's up from six
point five billion in uh twenty nineteen.

Speaker 9 (01:29:47):
And they're also giving.

Speaker 4 (01:29:48):
Doubled the profit. They've over doubled the profits in like Tree,
they were.

Speaker 9 (01:29:50):
Doubled their profits.

Speaker 6 (01:29:52):
And they keep trying to tell the union that, oh, no,
I'm just a poor popper. We don't have money for
your demands, Like we're just we're just so poor, and
it's like there. Meanwhile, you know, they're given their fucking
like CEO and shareholders like dividends and stock buybacks and
all of that in addition to the profits that they
are reaping, right, because profits is just the cream of

(01:30:13):
the crop, right, Like that's everything past business expenses, what
they're paying out like salary, so that's not even being touched.
And yeah, no, it's time for us to say we
want that.

Speaker 9 (01:30:25):
We created that.

Speaker 4 (01:30:27):
So I think that leads it to sort of the
next thing I want to ask about, which is, can
you talk a little bit about what the sort of
specific grievances were that kicked this off. I'm assuming there
are a lot, because you know, this sucks, you.

Speaker 10 (01:30:42):
Know, and there is a wide range of conditions because
you know, for a long time, you know, the contract
hasn't kept up with both like economic and non economic
side of things, you know, and we have kind of
two two dynamics where there's you know, well over a
majority of like part time workers who aren't getting enough

(01:31:04):
payer hours you know, to afford to live. And then
we also have you know, the full time workers who
inside warehouse could be working you know, ten twelve hour shifts.
You know, we have drivers who are doing you know,
twelve hour shifts and you know even up to like
fourteen hours you know, every day, and then also getting
you know, uh contacted to come in you know on

(01:31:25):
their day off, have to do six day weeks.

Speaker 5 (01:31:29):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:31:29):
You know.

Speaker 10 (01:31:29):
Of course on the driver's side, you know, we have
these escalating temperatures and meanwhile there's you know, no air
conditioners in the vehicles and same you know thing in
the warehouse because personally, you know, I work in side
warehouse as a loader. So I'm spending you know, virtually
all my shift in the trailer loading boxes. You know,

(01:31:51):
there's no airflow, those things, you know, can you know,
be five to ten degrees hotter, you know, like at
a minimum than the yeah, ambient temperature last summer, like
on a mid ninety day, I recorded one hundred and
eight degrees you know inside the trailer. So you know,
there's not necessarily any kind of protections currently for that.

(01:32:14):
So you know, that's one big lack in the contract
is having those kind of you know heat heat protection
and you know that is.

Speaker 4 (01:32:22):
Yeah, I mean that could just kill people. And we've
talked about on the show before people who've died like
working conditions like that because you know it was it
was too hot. But their bosses were like, fuck you,
we don't care, like keep uploading this stuff.

Speaker 10 (01:32:34):
Yeah, and it's absolutely tragic. I know we had a
you know, ups teamster I believe in California who died
due to the extreme heat conditions last summer. And also no,
you know, there was another case where I think a
driver stopped at like a convenience store to buy a
drink and you know was fire for making you know,

(01:32:55):
an off route stop, even though they tell us, you know,
take breaks when you need it, but they don't actually
mean it.

Speaker 4 (01:33:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 10 (01:33:02):
Yeah, because obviously, you know, you want to be being
disciplined or fired.

Speaker 4 (01:33:08):
One of the things that I saw was part of
the negotiations that UPS had offered to be like, oh, well,
put in air conditionings in all new vehicles. And I
was looking at this and I was like, this is
this is the Clean Air Act loophole. I remember this.
If you only specify new vehicles, I'll just never replace
the old ones. Mm.

Speaker 6 (01:33:25):
Absolutely, And you know with these companies, they're going to
be looking for those loopholes, right Yeah.

Speaker 9 (01:33:31):
And like, I don't know.

Speaker 6 (01:33:33):
That I've seen a vehicle that looked new when I'm
at my hub. I'm also inside worker and yeah, they
all look like they've been around, been around a while,
and I don't know that they've been spending the capital
to get those new vehicles. So that's absolutely something that

(01:33:54):
we're gonna, you know, keep their feet to the fire on,
so to speak.

Speaker 3 (01:34:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:34:00):
And then in terms of other conditions that are like
really leading up to this right now, there is a
big problem with MRAs and no, not the MRAs, you
all might be thinking of, this is a market rate adjustment,
and both are bad. Both are bad. We are staunchly

(01:34:22):
against both MRAs. And essentially what an MRA does is
it sounds good at first, you know, it gives the
company leeway to, you know, potentially increase our pay right
beyond what's just stipulated in the contract. However, when you
kind of get late into the contract, like you know,

(01:34:44):
towards the expiration date, the base pay that was agreed
on for the last contract is no longer acceptable. And
while it gives them the leeway to increase our rate wage,
they can always go back down to the lower wage
should they choose to. And last year at the hub
that I worked at, it was right after peak, in

(01:35:07):
peak season. We were hired on at twenty seven dollars
an hour. And come February, you know, we're all walking
into the job and there's one of the supervisors there
who is frankly looking like she's not having a good
time having to stop to talk to each of us
to explain, oh, yeah, so we are going to be

(01:35:29):
bringing your pay down to fifteen fifty an hour.

Speaker 4 (01:35:32):
Jesus, But don't.

Speaker 9 (01:35:33):
I know, I know but don't worry. Don't worry. There's
an attendance bonus.

Speaker 6 (01:35:38):
There's an attendance bonus of one hundred and twenty dollars
if you make all your shifts, and that really fucking sucked,
like if you get like if you get sick, like okay,
So like at this hub that I work at, I
work at one of the few hubs that don't have
what's called the hourly guarantee.

Speaker 9 (01:35:56):
Most hubs have an hourly guaran.

Speaker 6 (01:35:58):
If you're a part time worker, you have an hourly
guarantee of three and a half hours a day. So
if they say that there's no work to be done,
you can say I want that hourly guarantee, and they
either find you more work to do or they pay
that out. And then for full time workers, that's eight hours.
I work at one of the few hubs that doesn't.
It's a classification related to the type of hub that
I am at, And so I'm only like at this hub,

(01:36:23):
I work maybe twelve hours a week if I'm lucky,
So this is twelve hours a week at fifteen fifty
an hour with an attendance bonus. But if I get
sick one of those days, that means I have a paycheck,
a weekly paycheck that is going from roughly two hundred
dollars to like maybe roughly eighty and that is just

(01:36:44):
it's totally totally unacceptable the way that they can kind
of like, yeah, with the plague going on, yes, being
sick is highly likely right now. And yeah, no, they're
just kind of able to like yo yo us around
on these ages like whenever they want. And so a

(01:37:04):
demand that is being circulated in the grassroots of the union.
Leadership hasn't really talked about it to my knowledge, but
there is, you know, a petition going around to have
a starting wage of twenty five dollars an hour, and
you know, right now that would only be because right
now this year, I'm making twenty four and they didn't

(01:37:26):
do that bullshit. I think kind of an anticipation of
the strike coming. They didn't want to make us, you know,
more angry, and so that would only be a dollar
increase for me, but also it would prevent them from
doing that in the future, right Yeah.

Speaker 10 (01:37:40):
So yeah, I like Reese, you know, also was affected
by the MRA, but luckily not as severe. You know,
my pay went from twenty six down to twenty three
an hour, and of course, you know what ten eleven
percent pay cut also same time goes up, you know,

(01:38:01):
ten percent. Uh, that was very difficult enough, let alone
having you know, your pay getting dropped almost by fifty percent.
You know, there's multiple hubs in the area, and they're
all just on different pay scales, you know, for the
same kind of you know, same same area, doing the
same work, and we had just have these like fluctuating

(01:38:21):
pay scales, you know, I know for us, it was
you know, right after peak season, and they're like, oh,
thanks so much for the most successful peak season ever.
We made record breaking profits. We couldn't have done this
without you. By the way, we're cutting all of your
pay and now, of course you know we're getting paid
above twenty five and hey, that helped their profits. So

(01:38:44):
you know, it's absolutely absurd to say, oh, well, you know,
we can't afford you know, these higher wages when they can't.

Speaker 6 (01:38:54):
Yeah, they don't, exactly, they do hold their fucking profits,
Like are you kidding me? Like Jesus Christ, it's like
they think we're fucking dumb. It's like, no, like our
work bar exceeded what you're paying us, Like an unimaginable amount. Yeah,
and you guys like it was earlier on in the complo,

(01:39:16):
not earlier on. I think this happened maybe late June
early July. It was they leaked, it got leaked their
economic proposals for us, and they had the part timers
starting at seventeen dollars an hour seventeen and like, I
just I don't think that's affordable anywhere.

Speaker 4 (01:39:37):
That's just think I'm going to mention that I think
is I think it's really important, but isn't particularly well nursed.
So you know, if you go back to like the
original fifteen campaign, right wage like that wage which was
already like kind of nonsense in like twenty twelve, like
with inflation that's like nineteen thirty now, Yeah, so this
is you know, this is this is how much like

(01:39:59):
inflation has sort of deteriorated wages and that, and that's
just sort of like you know, the economic terms, like
inflation is like the bundle of goods, right, and that
that's not accounting for the fact that, for example, the
increase in housing prices has been way higher for the
sort of like avig rated inflation. Right. Healthcare costs are
increasing higher from the sort of quote unquote Aviatrade inflation,
and so like, yeah, it's like, yeah, this sounds like

(01:40:19):
a lot of money. It's fucking not like no, simply
is not.

Speaker 6 (01:40:23):
Like Yeah, I heard at a at a rally not
too long ago from one of the speakers for you know,
it was a it was a team's rally that you know,
we're getting our members hyped and all that, and one
of the speakers mentioned that for our city, a minimum
wage that could be livable would be twenty six dollars
an hour. And I'm just like, yeah, that seems about right,

(01:40:47):
and that's like the bare minimum. That's like, Okay, I
can eat enough, I can pay my rent, and I
probably don't have a whole lot leftover.

Speaker 10 (01:40:56):
So yeah, especially when we have you now, like average
rent you know for one bedroom you know, around like
fifteen hundred dollars you know these days, and so many
landlords want, you know, want three times you know that
rent and income. So you know, I was actually just
kind of yeah, writing you know or you know, doing

(01:41:17):
the math last night, I was just like, oh, okay,
so in my hours, I would actually need forty three
dollars an hour.

Speaker 3 (01:41:25):
Just to.

Speaker 10 (01:41:27):
You know, be making three times the average monthly rent.

Speaker 4 (01:41:31):
Yep. Yeah, yeah, so.

Speaker 10 (01:41:34):
That's definitely why you know, twenty five dollars you know
an hour is the minimum. You know that, you know,
I think we can settle for. I would love to
see it higher, but I also recognize, you know, well,
you know, maybe twenty five is still not quite cutting it,
you know, in a more urban area. But you know,
there's going to be a lot of people that's you know,

(01:41:54):
significant gains are going to help so much, you know,
to meet their material needs. You know, definitely have to
you know, consider this as you know, big picture, this
is a national agreement, and you know, we got to
get that really solid foundation and then we can expand
from there.

Speaker 4 (01:42:13):
Yeah. Well, what the sorry as as as you were talking,
I got a thing saying that the teamsters have settled.

Speaker 7 (01:42:21):
What all right?

Speaker 4 (01:42:24):
Think?

Speaker 9 (01:42:26):
Oh my gosh, what the fuck.

Speaker 10 (01:42:29):
They're they're back at the table.

Speaker 9 (01:42:31):
At the negotiation table.

Speaker 1 (01:42:34):
Jesus Christ.

Speaker 6 (01:42:35):
They've only been at the negotiation table for like four hours.

Speaker 4 (01:42:39):
Yeah, okay, okay, I signal shots here, Yeah, Jesus Christ.
Well all right, I don't know if we're gonna leave
this in, but yeah, we've discovered live on air that.

Speaker 6 (01:42:51):
Yeah, teamsters win historic ups contract. Uh oh, we'll see.

Speaker 10 (01:42:58):
Yeah, I'm also looking at this and see what.

Speaker 6 (01:42:59):
I'm Yeah, I'm at the teamster dot org website where
they have an update on it.

Speaker 10 (01:43:08):
Yeah, and at least, you know, speaking of wages, at
least the first thing that I'm seeing is existing part
timers will be raised up to no less than twenty
one dollars per hour immediately. Part time seniority workers earning
more under a market right adjustment would still receive all
new general wage increases.

Speaker 6 (01:43:27):
Yeah, yeah, this is uh, I'm not stoked on those wages.

Speaker 1 (01:43:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:43:35):
Yeah, No, I'm definitely I am twenty five or bust
on this.

Speaker 4 (01:43:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (01:43:41):
All right, so that does that will change things.

Speaker 6 (01:43:44):
That definitely changes the timeline because this still has to
be sent out to be voted on and approved by membership.

Speaker 9 (01:43:52):
Yeah, and what we learned.

Speaker 6 (01:43:57):
At the there was a call not too long ago
where they kind of explained the process of it. So
in the event that they would reach at tentative agreement
that gets sent out to us, we vote from home
and it takes about three weeks for it to ratify.
There is still a possibility that membership could vote to
reject it, in which case they would be going back

(01:44:17):
to the bargaining table and we could potentially be going
on strike then. But this does set it back by
now three weeks. It'll be interesting to see what the TDU,
which is the Team Service for a Democratic Union, which

(01:44:39):
is a reform caucus inside our union. It'll be interesting
to see what their line is on this. So, oh
my gosh, what a what a bomb drop to get
in the middle of a podcast about this.

Speaker 10 (01:44:58):
Yeah, unfortunately can't even speak to it since gimmed a
little bit of it.

Speaker 9 (01:45:06):
Yeah, yeah, it.

Speaker 4 (01:45:08):
Do they actually have the full agreement out or are
they just do they just have this stuff?

Speaker 6 (01:45:14):
They will not have the full agreement out. Something that
we've been having a little bit of frustrations with within
our union is that we do not have open bargaining.

Speaker 9 (01:45:25):
So bargaining happens. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:45:27):
Yeah, bargaining happens behind closed doors, and they occasionally give
us updates about what's happening, but we don't really get
to see the full picture until we're going to be
voting on it.

Speaker 9 (01:45:40):
And uh, I obviously think this is bad for a
number of reasons.

Speaker 6 (01:45:46):
Yeah, one and a big primary one is these contracts
that are negotiated. I was about to go get my
copy of the contract I could show you, and then
I remember this is a podcas asked, and that's not
actually going to be helpful for Hey.

Speaker 4 (01:46:03):
We do, we do. We do visual bits on this
podcast all the time. It's fine.

Speaker 6 (01:46:08):
So the size of our pok our contract is about
the size of a pocket Bible Jesus it is. It
is very very big, and it's you know, it's written
in that legal ease and stuff like that, and so
it's not very accessible to most of our most of
our members. And so you know, if we had open

(01:46:31):
and bargaining, if we had consistent like updates where like
you know, our union leadership would be like, all right,
so this is what we've agreed upon so far, this
is what we've rejected.

Speaker 9 (01:46:41):
This is what it all means.

Speaker 6 (01:46:44):
You know, in the lead up to like whether or
not you vote no, membership could have a far more
comprehensive understanding of what is in the contract instead of
waiting until the very end as we got little bits
pieces and snippets and then being like, okay, well read
this and decide how you feel.

Speaker 4 (01:47:06):
Yeah, I mean, that's just I don't know if if
it feels like it's just a much just kind of
designed to like railroad people into signing whatever contract negotiators
agree to. Yeah, it's kind of a disaster.

Speaker 10 (01:47:19):
And without that transparency, I mean, you know, you know,
all of us rank and file members are you know,
essentially being removed from the process, you know, being involved
in the decision making, uh, you know, stipulating what's going
to do it, you know, to meet our needs? What
what do we need? You know out of these you know,
five year contracts, and you know, I think it was

(01:47:42):
just you know, a few days ago, got you know,
get an update from the local you know, basically a
week before you know the contract ends, you know, and
they're you know, talking about this is like one of
the most transparent contracts there's ever been. There's all these
updates and you know, there's more rank and file, all
you know, members involved in the bargaining. And it's like, well,

(01:48:03):
that's great, you know that shows you know how far
you know, we've come, I guess, but also it's still
just it's kind of sad to think that you know, this,
this process that's all banned by NDA is the most
transparent transparent it's been.

Speaker 4 (01:48:18):
And and also the fact the fact that you're fighting
this out live on air from like their press release
that they put out on Twitter, it's like.

Speaker 6 (01:48:27):
What yeah, yeah, oh my gosh, absolutely absolutely absurd. Yeah,
so it seems like this is a this is an
agreement that is going to be pushed by union leadership
as a vote to vote yes on UH, which is
a kind of a.

Speaker 9 (01:48:47):
Far cry from earlier in UH in July.

Speaker 6 (01:48:51):
When you know, you when the team stories were telling
ups you need to present us with either an agreement
that we like actually agree with or present your life
best final offer by July fifth.

Speaker 9 (01:49:02):
Right, Yeah, and yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:49:07):
So.

Speaker 6 (01:49:08):
Yeah, we'll we'll see how how the rank and file react.
In the twenty eighteen contract. I know that the TDU
tried to UH organize a vote no campaign and they

(01:49:30):
did get a simple majority of the membership to vote no. However,
at the time and this has now been changed, but
at the time, in our constitution, it would require a
two thirds majority to have rejected it, and goes to
strike Jesus Christ.

Speaker 4 (01:49:51):
Was it was? It was?

Speaker 3 (01:49:51):
That?

Speaker 2 (01:49:51):
Was that?

Speaker 4 (01:49:52):
Because it was was that? Because it has one of
those weird like electoral college systems or was it like
you need two thirds to project?

Speaker 9 (01:49:57):
It was a it was a you need two thirds.

Speaker 6 (01:50:00):
That has been changed when when Sean, when the Reform
slate was elected and they had their Teamsters convention, they
changed the constitution so that it would be a simple majority.
So yeah, well we'll see what TD the line that
TDU wants to take, and yeah, yeah, we'll see. This

(01:50:25):
certainly puts a wrinkle in things. I'm gonna be honest,
I was actually really looking forward to strike pay because
my strike pay would have paid more than my.

Speaker 4 (01:50:34):
Actual job does. Yeah, And I mean, I think there's like,
I think there's a few things that we can sort
of immediately talk about from this. One is that it
doesn't like nothing they've put out here from what I've
read so far, I'm reading, I mean literally, I'm reading
from the Teamsters website says you're doing anything about market
rate adjustments at all.

Speaker 9 (01:50:55):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 4 (01:50:57):
And the second thing is that you know, we we
you know, we were talking earlier before we knew that
there was a strike about sort of the impact of
this on the entire class. And it really looks like
both the Teamsters and ups, like you know, really wanted
to cut a deal as you know, part of part
of this attempt to keep everything going and to keep
this stuff from happening, which I mean I think makes sense,

(01:51:19):
right if you're you know, if if you're UPS, you
don't act like we're we're having an actual sort of
like workers and surgaency like having having having a summer
this hot like isn't good for like, it isn't good
for UPS. It's arguably not good for some of the
more sort of like some of the more sort of
conservative union leaderships either who do who unlike a lot

(01:51:42):
of workers do not want to be on strike because
that like that cut that cuts into the sort of
war chest of capital that they have to manage.

Speaker 9 (01:51:48):
Mm hmmm hmm.

Speaker 6 (01:51:50):
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, Uh, they're you know, they're just recently
on Twitter or excuse me, x it's now, but just
recently on Twitter there was a fair amount of a
strike discourse, and there was like you know, labor activists
and stuff saying that, you know, like it's good, it's

(01:52:11):
good for you know, if they reach a tentative agreement
that you know, so yeah, yeah, if they reach a
tentative agreement that you know, makes those material gains, it's
better to not go on strike. And like, I I know,
I know, like and to me that's like a little
bit wild because one there is so much and we

(01:52:31):
could demand so much more. But also like you know,
collective action, you know, in order to be consistent, to
be good at it, it requires you to undertake it,
right Like, and you know, when I think about like
how our local is, they have a very service model

(01:52:54):
orientation to unionism as opposed to an organizing model, and I,
you know, I was really under the impression that this
potential strike could have kind of like you know, lit
a fire under their ass and like kind of got
back into like the organizing aspect of unionism, right uh.

Speaker 9 (01:53:12):
And like they weren't that great at that.

Speaker 6 (01:53:15):
I swear sometimes we would talk to them about like, hey, so,
like have you tried like mobilizing members.

Speaker 9 (01:53:21):
Have you tried like showing up the gates? Have you?

Speaker 6 (01:53:23):
Like you know you can like there's like programs out
there where you can text your entire membership about like
you know, come to this like contract update. And it's
like we were just speaking a different language. Like they
just had no idea, Like they had no idea, and
they would look at our union meetings where like you know,
we represent like I think over like a like I

(01:53:47):
think well over like one thousand workers. I don't have
the numbers on that, so I'm not going to get
more specific, uh, but like well over that. And they
would look at our union meetings where we have maybe
fifty to seventy people, and they're just kind of like, well,
this is just as good as it's going to get.

Speaker 4 (01:54:02):
Yeah, and that's nonsense, Like it's nonsense.

Speaker 6 (01:54:05):
It's nonsense, like you know, like back in the fucking
like you know, from like the tens to the fifties,
union meetings would bring in just so many people and
they don't have anywhere near the like technological advance advantages
that we have now. And it was just it's very
much like, yes, you tell us about your grievances, we

(01:54:25):
get those filed, and we do make those like wins
for you, and like that's that's good. Like you know,
there are some unions that barely do that much, and
the fact that they do that is great.

Speaker 9 (01:54:37):
But like you know, at my hub, I.

Speaker 6 (01:54:40):
Remember I was I was talking to my carpool and
he didn't even know who his steward was. And I'm
like the only person that gives him updates about what's
going on in the union. Yeah, and that's just because
like when I started working at UPS, I was just like, yeah,
I'm going to go to these fucking union meetings. I'm
gonna find out what's going on. I want to be
in involved. And most people, you know, it's just a

(01:55:02):
job for them, and they don't know all the things
that a union can provide for them or how a
union can back them up. And part of that's because
you know, union leadership, you know, has decided that that's
not something they really they don't need to be as
engaged with the members as they could be.

Speaker 10 (01:55:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:55:22):
Well, and there's there's a second thing there too, which
is like, okay, if you are like you know, if
if if if, if you are someone you know, if
you were in a position of leadership, and you're in
your position of leadership. Because there's incredible base, there's like
really really lowd attendance for union elections, right, really load turnout,
which is which is usually true, right like union union
election turnout tends to be just atrocious. You don't actually

(01:55:46):
want more people being involved because the more people that
are involved, the more likely is it a bunch of
people are going to show up in the election. Someone's
good and you know when someone's gonna look at one
of the deals you cut and it's gonna be like,
what the fuck are you doing? Right, So there's there's
there's a lot of sort of perverse intensive structures in
terms of like just to sort of the basic organizational
electoral structure that gets you, you know, like people cutting
deals and culling and you know, like trying to cut

(01:56:09):
off the sort of like hot summer and its knees.

Speaker 6 (01:56:11):
Yeah, I have something funny that's kind of related to that.
So when we were voting to authorize a to authorize
a strike, right, you know, we did it and all
of that, and you know, Sean O'Brien announced that there
was going to be voting at the gates and our local.
Initially it was like, oh no, we're just going to

(01:56:33):
have people come to the hall between the hours of
eight and ten on two specific days and we'll do
voting that way. Eventually they did change it after they
got pressure I think probably from up top and below.
But one of the members who is involved was like,
oh no, no, no, no, like it'll be better if it's

(01:56:54):
just the people that are motivated enough to go, because
they're the ones that are going to like vote the
thing on through. And that was just that was wild too,
seeing that sort of perspective, because if we you know,
if the union is there, if like you know, our
union reps, our business agents, if they're there, if they're
constantly engaging membership, then we will all be on the

(01:57:15):
same page. Like they're the ones that have all of
the like you know, the like technical information. They're the
ones that can really talk to they can talk to
people about you know, like this is how much UPS
is making and profits, this is like what they're paying
our CEO, this is.

Speaker 9 (01:57:32):
All of this. You deserve more and we're going to
fight for it.

Speaker 6 (01:57:35):
And if they had those constant interactions, you would all
be on the same page and we wouldn't have to
worry about, well, if there's increased voter turnout, it might
make the vote kind of iffy, you.

Speaker 10 (01:57:46):
Know, like, yeah, there's definitely you know, that's been one
of my biggest scripes is around uh, you know, communications,
particularly you know from the local which is kind of
practically non existent, and you know, it's there's so many
even like between new hires and you know, even people
have been there a few years. A part timers like

(01:58:07):
don't know their rights under our contract and you know
it was only because of organizing and you know, talking
with people that I know those rights and can you
know then share that you know knowledge with other you know, teamsters.
But it's kind of like, well, why why are we

(01:58:28):
having to do this? And I mean, of course internal organizing,
you know, knowledge is super important, but it'd be nice,
you know why, you know, why isn't there a you know,
like a welcome packet. Why are there you know, not
more maybe not like full meetings, but at least something
where you know, our union officials can meet with rank

(01:58:49):
and file members. And I think I'm partly you know,
speaking to that because you know, the shift I work
is during union meetings, so you know, attending those is
not you know, not quite feasible, uh, you know for
me or other people on my shift. And I know
that's also kind of seems like it's led to this
like some contempt for part timers like oh, we're not involved,

(01:59:11):
you know, we don't care, but it's like we don't
you know, we don't necessarily know you know about the meetings,
or that you know, there's the scheduling conflict, or you know,
again talking about like we don't even know what our
you know, basic rights are you know under our contract.

Speaker 4 (01:59:29):
Well, it's like a like you can't you can't not
explain to people. You can't not onboard people and then
complain that they're not onboarded, Like come on, this.

Speaker 10 (01:59:37):
Is a sad self fulfilling prophecy there. You know, you're
creating the outcome that you think you know already exists
because you're not engaging members.

Speaker 4 (01:59:47):
So there was no other thing that I wanted to
talk about, which is that there's been a lot of
like I don't know, I've been seeing this in sort
of various places in the discourse talking about the strike,
which is that there's a lot of people who basically
are holding onto the notion that a people don't want
to strike and b that like striking is bad and

(02:00:09):
that you should want to do it as little as possible.
And you know, this pisses me off for like a
lot of reasons, one of which is that, like my
grandma was a teamster and she was a she was
a union punch card operator. Like back in like the
seventies and eighties, and you know, my grandma is like
like not like a leftist, right like, we have to

(02:00:29):
stop her from giving money to the Fallen Gong. Like
she's so you know, this is this is the kind
of thing super dealing with you, right, But like she
loved going on strike, right like. And that's the thing
that like my family who's not like particularly sort of
labor friendly or like, oh yeah, no, we love going
on strike. Because that's that's why she has insurance, right
because because the team shirts were going with any eighties
teams just go on shrike, and I you know, and

(02:00:51):
I think I think that's an everything that's like this,
you know, this kind of well okay, then there's two
ways to look of it at it. One is that
it's a fundamental misreading of the situation that's happening right now,
which is, no, people absolutely love going on strike. People
are really excited to go on strike. People who people
whose politics are not like, you know, people whose polities
are not aligned with the left, really like going on
strike and are really excited about it. And this is

(02:01:12):
something that's happening sort of irrespective of this, there's been
a bunch of wildcat strikes. This is something that's been
happening sort of irrespective of like actual union membership, as
people want to do this. We've also seen sort of
the great resignation over the last few years of you know,
what is effectively a massive like part of the reason
the conditions for labor are like this strong right now
is because there's been this massive informal strike of people

(02:01:33):
just sort of of people, you know, walking off the job,
like deciding their job fucking sucks and quitting, and that's
been putting a lot of pressure on employers and you know,
and as simultaneous this, you know, I think I think
the reading of this that's more sort of cynical is that, like,
these people know this, right, they know that people want
to go on strike, and they're looking at it and
they're terrified, and their conclusion is like, we have to

(02:01:54):
fucking stop, you know, we have to stop with this
wave of labor militancy before it gets going. Because if
it gets going, and you know, if you're like, if
you're you know, like a sort of centrist liberal politician,
or if you're like a conservative union bureaucrat, like that's
terrifying for you, then there's you know, there's there's a
lot of people who have a lot to lose if
if you know, like if really sort of a president

(02:02:17):
wave of labor militancy gets going.

Speaker 9 (02:02:20):
Yeah, absolutely absolutely.

Speaker 6 (02:02:23):
You know, when I think of, you know, people in
wanting to go on strike, I guess I'll touch on
two things here, which is that you know, at my hub,
whenever we talk about going on strike there, you know,
there is a sense that, yes, people really want it,
and also they're really worried that they aren't going to
be able to that. Like, you know, we're going to

(02:02:46):
get this kind of agreement that most people will want,
and it's not going to happen, and we've had all
of this build up and you know, it's kind of
kind of you know, fall flat. And then you know,
also I've a fair amount of time on picket lines
as like a community supporter, and you know, there is

(02:03:06):
something incredibly magical about being on strike, you know, like
there's often just this outpouring of community support for the workers,
right and workers get to see that their labor is
extremely valued by the larger community, and I think that
is really important. I think that builds bonds of solidarity,

(02:03:29):
and you get to see the other unions who come
out and support of your strike, and then you know,
you go and support them, and then it creates Yeah,
it creates these bonds that you know aren't really they
can be achieved without it, but it's just so much
more bonding. I guess I'm going to use the term

(02:03:49):
bonds a lot, but and there really isn't a substitute
for it. And you know, and then people also they
get to experience the power that they have as you know,
as labor right like they be can they realize it's
like oh wait, no, Like I'm on strike and this
company is like the shit is hitting the fan for

(02:04:13):
them because they don't have us who know how to
do our jobs in there doing them right. Like you know,
I was at a picket line for this other company
a few years back, and like the workers there on
the line were constantly giving the updates. They'd be like, yeah, man,

(02:04:34):
it's wild I heard in there that like, you know,
the managers are trying to do our jobs and like
none of what they make is edible and they're throwing
it all away and like breaking the machines are breaking
like yep, and so they're one they're seeing that, yes,
their labor is specific, it has value, it is necessary

(02:04:55):
and crucial, and they are getting that community support and
you know, there's not a lot of other opportunities for
those realizations to happen.

Speaker 4 (02:05:08):
So yeah, and I mean this is something that like
I've literally seen this, like our teachers union. We've talked
about this a bit on the show, but like our
local teachers union in Chicago, like got you know, they
got to reform caucussy and they're not perfect, but you know,
they're they're much better than what was happening before. And
you know, and one of the things they do is
they've they've been on strike a lot of times. Go
to last about Deck, like decade, a decade, bit over

(02:05:28):
a decade, and it changed the city. Like Chicago is
a you know, was for i mean decades, decades and decades.
This just like interminable machine run like neoliberal hellhole. And
you know, I mean I'm not going to say like
Chicago's like some kind of like you know, like beacon
of the Left or whatever, but like the city is

(02:05:49):
just different after it. And it was just the one
truck they kept they kept going on Shrek and they
kept going on the Shrek, and you know, you can
you can look at the quality of their wins and
you can sort of like you know, like I mean
there's a like I know, I mean, like I know
people who like have quipbals with sort of like exactly
what happened in the contract negotiations, but like you know,
they they went on strike multiple times and they won

(02:06:09):
and that really and then you know, the every thing
happened is the thing you were talking about, right, is
like suddenly you're at these pickets and like the entire
community is showing up, like everyone's showing up with food,
Like it changed, it changed the city, and you know,
and I think this guess is an everything I think
is important here about and what's you know, sort of
the potential that being averted is. The interesting thing about
this strike wave is that we've had a number you know,

(02:06:31):
we've we had like the whole we had sort of
the wildcat teacher strikes in twenty seventeen. We've had a
couple of a couple of waves of teacher strikes, but
like most of the strikes that have been happening at
public sector unions, we haven't had these giant strikes other
than basically, I mean there's been some right, there's there's
there's been a lot of strikes in the healthcare sector.
We haven't had a strike like at this scale in
the private sector in you know outside basically like the

(02:06:54):
Team series and is like the Team Series and like
the Guild are like the only two big unions on
that who go on strike like even kind of regularly.
Even that's like that's like a once in like twenty
year thing, right, And so I don't know, like I think,
I think just sort of the the potential of what's
being lost here is enormous if if what happens is

(02:07:17):
that this deal, which is like I'm not great from
when I've seen it from the initial things. Although again,
like we still don't fucking know what's in this deal,
and we're not going to for like a bit at
like at least until they fucking release the thing.

Speaker 1 (02:07:31):
I don't know.

Speaker 10 (02:07:32):
Yeah, I mean obviously, you know, we'll we'll we'll have
to see, you know, what's what's in that agreement. Yeah,
but you know, at least just you know, for you know,
my own views, you know, it's any you know company
you know that's paying you poverty wages, or you know,
there's unsafe work conditions and just seems like, well, on principle,
there needs to be a work stoppage, like that's you know,

(02:07:55):
if you're going to treat people that way, that's just
the result.

Speaker 9 (02:07:59):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 6 (02:08:01):
Something that I'm like kind of thinking about right now
is like, so, like the twenty one uh seventy five
I believe it is for part time workers. You know,
that is a significant increase from the fifteen fifty, but
we're just at the beginning of our five year contract.

Speaker 4 (02:08:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (02:08:18):
Yeah, you know, like I.

Speaker 6 (02:08:20):
Feel like, you know, like it's being viewed as like, oh, well,
that's like okay for right now. It's you know, kind
of not but it's really just not going to be
okay in five years when we have to have these
contract negotiations again. And because we're not starting out with
a solid twenty five dollars an hour, we're going to

(02:08:44):
be playing catch up to what is not really okay
right now. Like it's just gonna like it's like it's
just going to keep happening. You know, by the time
we get to twenty twenty eight, you know, probably get
up to twenty five dollars an hour. Maybe, but by
that time, you know, who knows what we're actually going

(02:09:05):
to need in order to survive in this economy. Yeah, so,
you know, I feel like that wage is just not
it's not proactive enough for what we're going to need
in the coming years. And you know, in there there
is stuff about like, you know, wage increases for like
you know, however long you've been there and stuff like that.

(02:09:27):
But yeah, I you know, you know, like I graduated
from high school in like two thousand and eight, and
I just feel like the my entire life, the economy
has just been fucking shitty. And when they tell me
the economy is great, my finances are still fucking shitty.

Speaker 4 (02:09:47):
And you know, this is one of the old twenty
eleven slogans that like, well don't I guess it's also
two thousand and eight slogan that like, people need to
fucking remember that when the bank takes your house. GDP
goes up. The economic indicators that we have are are
you know, they're they're bushw economic indicators right like they
are they are. They are designed to measure how well

(02:10:10):
capital is being extracted from you.

Speaker 9 (02:10:12):
Mm hmm, yep, yep, yep, yep.

Speaker 10 (02:10:17):
Definitely no reflection on our actual you know, day to
day lives, you know what what our needs are. Yeah,
and hey, some people made money off of your labor,
so things are good unless you know you're the labor.

Speaker 4 (02:10:32):
Yeah, And like you know, I think, I think, and
everything that happens a lot is like yeah, like you know,
it is entirely possible that a bunch of people who
are you know, making like seventy thousand dollars a year
are fucking doing.

Speaker 7 (02:10:43):
Great right now, and it's like, well, bully for them,
like we're fucking not.

Speaker 11 (02:10:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, and speaking to you know,
to the you know what the things you know, look
five years out, which you know, it seems like, you know,
things just kind of get exponentially worse.

Speaker 10 (02:11:01):
You know, I don't know what you know, the environment,
you know what our climate's going to be. I don't
know what you know, inflation or food costs, you know
it's going to be and you know so far, you know,
i'd need to see the you know what the Tenet
Agreement has on that market rate adjustment. And then there's
also the cost of living adjustment too, which at least

(02:11:21):
what I believe is, you know it doesn't kick into
like you've been there for five years, so I guess
you just aren't living for those first five years. I
don't know.

Speaker 6 (02:11:30):
You know that my utilities and my rent waives my
bills for the first five years that I worked for UPS.

Speaker 4 (02:11:37):
Someone someone someone, So someone also like, go find the
statistics on how many people get fired at four years
and eleven months, Like yeah.

Speaker 10 (02:11:46):
And that's yeah. I mean that's also when the pension
uh minimum investment investment time is five years. You know,
that's also something I've thought about, Well, what happens on
a four years and eleven months is that when you know,
now even got a bigger target on my back, it's
like already a thorn on their side.

Speaker 4 (02:12:05):
They did the thing I said they were going to do,
where it says UPS will equip in cab a c
in all large delivery vehicles, sprinter vans and packaged cars
purchased after January first, oh, twenty twenty four. Fans are
getting cars getting two fans in an induction event in
the cargo compartment, which is good, but also not air conditioning.

Speaker 6 (02:12:24):
It's not air conditioning and it gets very hot in
those trailers. And yeah, no, it's like yeah, and all
large except you know, all things purchased after January first,
twenty twenty four.

Speaker 4 (02:12:36):
Yeah, so it's just like, you know, yeah, it's like
they will start purchasing cars again in like twenty ninety four.

Speaker 7 (02:12:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (02:12:43):
Yeah, nothing in there about retrofitting those cars.

Speaker 9 (02:12:48):
Well I think interesting cars.

Speaker 4 (02:12:51):
I think they're well, okay, I don't know. This is
another thing, like it's it's unclear to me exactly what
a lot of this means because we you know, like
we we were like we we can't get the actual contract,
which is yeah, like yeah, so this is we need
to I guess also like prefaces like this is what

(02:13:13):
we're not doing legal analysis of this. This is our
speculation based on what we're reading. This is this none
of this constanity's finding legal advice. Yeah, but yeah yeah,
hey I.

Speaker 1 (02:13:26):
Just work here.

Speaker 9 (02:13:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (02:13:29):
Another thing that I'm like noticing in this contract. So
another big grievance that was had was the lack of
full time positions and so like if you want to
get a full time inside job, you know there is
a seven to ten year wait list for that, right.

Speaker 9 (02:13:50):
So this us, this tenetive.

Speaker 6 (02:13:52):
Agreement stipulates that there will be a creation of seventy
five hundred new full time teams or jobs that ups
and the fulfillment of twenty two thousand, five hundred open positions,
but it doesn't specify if that's going to be for
inside work or for uh, you know, more more drivers.

(02:14:13):
And you know, I have I have epilepsy, So I
Am not going to be a driver. That's just doesn't
seem ideal for me. And yeah, I would I would
like to see some numbers on so that wait list
is that going down, like, because that's like what I'm

(02:14:34):
waiting for is to be able to you know, snag
one of those full time inside positions, but I don't know.
And like when you think about, you know, seventy five
hundred full time positions, it's also worth to keep in
mind that ups employees three hundred and forty thousand people.

Speaker 4 (02:14:54):
So it's like yeah, wait, so yeah, so that's a
two percent.

Speaker 6 (02:15:00):
Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's like two percent. And like admittedly,
like you know, forty percent of that workforce is already
like they're full time drivers, but so that's like sixty
percent of that is part timers. And you know, I'm
not going to make anyone do more math but seventy
five hundred for sixty percent of three hundred and forty

(02:15:21):
thousand people.

Speaker 5 (02:15:23):
Is.

Speaker 9 (02:15:25):
It's not as exciting as just seeing that number.

Speaker 7 (02:15:28):
Yeah, right, which is like a shook, Like.

Speaker 10 (02:15:35):
And this goes into something you know I've noticed, you know,
with you know, coworkers, which is always talking about you know,
like you know, we need more hours and that you
know that that is true to a degree. You know,
really though it's like, well we need more pay, you know,
I you know, I think that's you know, would be
a sign you know, when it can be you know,

(02:15:56):
like a really strong union is that you know, we
can even to say, yeah, you know what, maybe people
shouldn't be working seventy hour weeks. Yeah no, maybe we
should cap that at thirty with you know PT pay
that you know pays like full time. But of course
you know we're not there. You know, we need these
jobs that can actually provide you know, definitely not going

(02:16:17):
to knock that, but you know, would definitely like to
see that overall shift kind of just you know in
our culture of you know, we don't need to work
more to have our needs met.

Speaker 4 (02:16:28):
I think it's also sort of important to understand about
ups jobs. It's like you're fucking destroying your body. So
especially if you're like if you're if you're if you're
one of the people shorting packages like you are lifting,
like you were lifting like thousands of packages a day.
These things can weigh up to like eighty fucking pounds.

Speaker 9 (02:16:47):
They can weigh up to one hundred and fifty.

Speaker 4 (02:16:48):
One hundred fifty Jesus Christ, never.

Speaker 10 (02:16:50):
Mind, Okay, one fifty is the other limit. Seventy pounds
is where you know you can do team lift. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I know. Talking to a feeder driver recently was talking
about having a you know, two of those trailers hooked
up and weighing in at something like seventeen thousand pounds
on the scale. Jesus Obviously you know that's the cabin

(02:17:11):
engine included, I believe, but you know, that's not my world.
I'm kind of completely unfamiliar with that side of things.
But still, yeah, it's like a lot of weight, you know,
because we're carrying so many packages every day. Yeah, it's
a lot of wear and tear on the body.

Speaker 6 (02:17:28):
And management is always pushing you to move faster too. Yeah,
Like I had a u a worker who is a
feeder driver for another hub, and she was telling me
that a supervisor there was telling newly hired part time
employees that it's actually safer to work faster.

Speaker 9 (02:17:49):
Instead of slower.

Speaker 6 (02:17:51):
What. Yes, Yeah, that makes no fucking sense, no fucking
sense at all. And like one of the reasons they
have an incentive to make us work really fast, which
is that the full time soups get a parts per
hour bonus, uh, depending on how fast we go. So
you know, they will harass you into working faster even

(02:18:12):
though you know we're moving these thousands of fucking packages.
They'll harass us to move faster so that they get
a bonus off of the packages that we handled and moved.

Speaker 10 (02:18:25):
I mean, like this last week in the you know,
I think it was like mid nineties outside or something.
You know, we're not getting Oh do you need water?
Do you need to rest? It was, oh, you're not
working fast enough. Like your packages per hours you know,
too low. You know, it's that kind of constant you know,
harassment or you know maybe sometimes like you know, I know,
my supervisor is a little bit more subtle about it,

(02:18:47):
you know, versus you know outright being like, oh, you
need to work faster because That's the thing is in
our contract. You know, there's no kind of productivity quota.
You know, we work safe, we follow the methods. That's
something I really try and you know, really focus on
because you know, ideally, yeah, I want to you know,
I would like to be here longer. Yeah, silly enough

(02:19:09):
as that is for a job with terrible conditions, but
you know, also it's a job that and that Yeah,
that's the big thing. And it's like, I don't you know,
what's a pinch you're going to do if you know,
I'm you know, have some kind of you know, grave
injury from from the job pension but still, yeah, you're

(02:19:31):
dead with heat exhaustion.

Speaker 4 (02:19:32):
Like's like, well a pension doesn't pay out, Like.

Speaker 6 (02:19:35):
Yeah, it's just it's just yeah, it's wild. It's wild, man.
I am going to be really excited to see how this,
how this smoke goes.

Speaker 10 (02:19:47):
Yeah, it's gonna be an interesting day at work.

Speaker 6 (02:19:50):
Yeah yeah, yeah, I'm sure that I'll have those people
that know that I know about the union come up
and talk to me to ask me what I think
about it U because I'm the only person they know
that knows anything about the union. Because as we talked
about earlier. Union reps just are barely ever there. Yeah,

(02:20:11):
and yeah, we'll see, we'll see. Man, that's I'm just
now really thinking about that. Seventy five hundred full time
jobs three percent, two or three percent, depending on the
metric that you're looking at.

Speaker 10 (02:20:26):
Yeah, absolutely, I mean not enough.

Speaker 6 (02:20:29):
No, no, no, wild wild, And now that addis is
a at best, a delayed opportunity for a strike to
build those as we talked about earlier, those necessary, necessary
muscles that need to be exercised.

Speaker 9 (02:20:47):
Yeah, and that's at best. You know, we might have
we might have missed it. Yeah, yeah, well we'll see,
we'll see.

Speaker 4 (02:20:59):
Yeah that that fucking sucks.

Speaker 6 (02:21:03):
Yeah, what a curveball to get for the podcast.

Speaker 4 (02:21:10):
Well, honestly, unless you have anything else you want to
talk about. Yeah, I actually going to wrap up this
incredibly chaotic episode that it could happen here, in which
we discovered the chaos of a not open bargaining process
and what that looks like life what air?

Speaker 9 (02:21:25):
Yeah? Yeah, exciting times.

Speaker 6 (02:21:28):
But yeah, I think I think I'm good. I feel
like I hit all my notes and some that I
wasn't even planning on hitting because we had this new information.

Speaker 4 (02:21:38):
So right, good lord.

Speaker 10 (02:21:40):
I was like, it couldn't have been like an hour earlier,
so I could have at least oh my gosh, Well,
you know you can join us next for the live
analysis of the over three hundred page contract.

Speaker 9 (02:22:04):
That we got, like just the highlights of Oh.

Speaker 4 (02:22:09):
Yeah, but thank you to you both for thank you
both for coming on. And yeah, I guess I guess
if the strike happens, we can talk to you again
or maybe also if it doesn't, I don't know.

Speaker 6 (02:22:19):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely thank you for having us on. Yeah,
I love to stay in contact to talk about if
we do go on strike or you know, if we don't,
would love I would absolutely be open to a follow
up on that.

Speaker 4 (02:22:33):
And yeah, okay, so where can people go if they
want to support like the strike or also potentially the
rake and file workers who are trying to like make
sure it happens. Yeah, I would say.

Speaker 6 (02:22:44):
That a good place to follow, or like a good
source I guess to follow would be to follow the
Team Service for a Democratic Union. If there is going
to be any movement that is in the union that's organized,
it's going to be coming from them most likely, So

(02:23:07):
they are the better version. I would say to follow
on that front. And of course you can still follow
the regular uh teamsters page and stuff like that to
see what's going on. But yeah, yeah, it's gonna be weird.
I don't know what the TDU line is going to
is going to be on this, so it's like.

Speaker 10 (02:23:30):
We'll see and you know, hopefully, you know, if we
can strike obviously, Yeah, come out to yeah, support your
fellow workers, and you too will also be able to coordinate,
you know with rank and file on union reps. You
know what kind of needs there might be out on
the picket line.

Speaker 9 (02:23:49):
Yep.

Speaker 10 (02:23:50):
Yeah, also, and yeah, thank you very much for for
having us.

Speaker 4 (02:23:54):
Yeah, thank you for coming on. Yeah, this has been
nicking happen here, go on strike. Don't let your leadership
tell you not to go and strike. Simply do the
thing and organize so you could do it again.

Speaker 1 (02:24:23):
Ah, it could happen here. A podcast that is right
now happening in your ear. It could happen a year.
That's what we should call it. Garrison. We're changing the name.
We're rebranding our valuable valuable titles, uh completely moving moving
overnight to a whole new thing based on a whim you.

Speaker 3 (02:24:45):
Know, gam bitzer.

Speaker 1 (02:24:49):
Uh yeah, this is a this has been a fun week.
We're all laughing a little bit at Elon Musk. But
we have something serious to talk about today, and that
is everybody's favorite fascist governor, Ron DeSantis. Garrison. You and
I spent just way too much time last week talking
about meetball Ron, and now now we're back. Now we're

(02:25:10):
back because he's he keeps meatballing meetball. Ron is is
ballin and meeting.

Speaker 3 (02:25:16):
Yeah, so we wrapped up like a like a two
part episode on Ron Desandres's use of Fashi rave asthetics,
and then like two days later, the funniest thing happened,
uh where he just decided to basically basically post Son
and Rounds. So we're gonna we're gonna get to that.

(02:25:39):
But first there's a whole bunch of other information that's
come out these these past like really three days that
have kind of that are actually giving more context to
what's going on at the DeSantis campaign because stuff doesn't
look too good. Actually, you know, he he kind of
looks like he's losing everything as he slowly watches it
all crumble. So let's see, let's start by talking about

(02:26:02):
everyone's favorite topic campaign finances. I know this is what
everyone tunes in to listen to.

Speaker 1 (02:26:08):
Yes, we love campaign finances.

Speaker 3 (02:26:10):
Yeah, so last week the public finally got a glimpse
at DeSantis's campaign finances. The financial disclosures showed that DeSantis
had about twice as much staff as Donald Trump and
as of last week.

Speaker 1 (02:26:24):
Yeah, Morrison, you just said that, and I imagine in
my head for a second that you were referring to
the amount of staff infections he's had versus Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 (02:26:32):
That's not true, though, Trump's definitely had more staff.

Speaker 1 (02:26:35):
There's almost no way, yeah, that Trump is not leading
in the staff infections category. Please, I'm sorry to itterrrupt.

Speaker 3 (02:26:42):
But as of last week, the Florida governor had already
spent about forty percent of the twenty million dollars fundraised
from April to June of twenty twenty three, So the
campaign's suspending rate was averaging more than two hundred hundred
and twelve thousand dollars per day, which is an astronomical

(02:27:03):
cost for a campaign for someone like running for president.
Basically for the first.

Speaker 1 (02:27:08):
Time this far out too from the season proper hit.

Speaker 3 (02:27:13):
Yeah, it's absolutely absurd. The inflated number of staff heavy
use of private jets and luxury event venues has his
campaign essentially just burning through cash and with very little
seeming to come of it in terms of positive poll numbers.
So another thing that they've.

Speaker 1 (02:27:30):
Gained maybe a point or so on Trump over the
last year.

Speaker 3 (02:27:34):
Yeah, after spending two hundred thousand dollars per day for
the past like four months. Another thing that these financial
disclosures exposed is DeSantis's heavy dependence on high contributors. So
just just about fifteen percent of fundraising contributions came from
donors who gave less than two hundred dollars, and the vast,

(02:27:56):
vast majority of DeSantis's money has come from donors who
gave the legal maximum of three three hundred dollars in
the primary, which also means that those who gave that
can cannot contribute any more money either. So he's running
out of people that are actually able to fund his operation.

Speaker 1 (02:28:13):
Yeah, and it's worth noting he does have a super pack.
You are not limited in how much you can donate
to a super pack, but super packs cannot spend money
on the same things as general campaign funds, right, Like,
there are limitations in what you can use that on.
So this is actually a logistical problem for him that
he has maxed out his donor base.

Speaker 3 (02:28:33):
Yeah, and The New York Times has reported that future
like large prospective donors have been spooked by DeSantis' sliding
poll numbers and they may be less willing to invest
in what's looking like a losing battle. So to combat
these swelling campaign expenses, including two hundred and seventy nine
thousand dollars at the four seasons in Miami, DeSantis's Tallahassee

(02:28:58):
based campaign has began undercoing massive cuts to campaign staff
this past week. Previously, DeSantis had upwards of ninety people
on payroll, but just this month they've eliminated thirty eight
jobs in a variety of departments, cutting more than one
third of his payroll. DeSantis' cutbacks are nearly equal to

(02:29:18):
the size of Trump's entire twenty twenty four campaign staff. Dessentus'
campaign manager Grenera Pek said in a statement I believe
late last week quote following a top to bottom review
of our organization, we've taken additional aggressive steps to streamline
operations and put Ron DeSantis in the strongest position to
win this primary and defeat Joe Biden. So that was

(02:29:42):
their little statement accompanying the news of firing almost forty
people from their campaign. According to The New York Times,
advertisers are quote promising to reorient the DeSantis candidacy as
a quote unquote insurgent run and remake it into a
quote unquote leaner, meaner operation. So this is the new

(02:30:02):
strategy that they're trying to do, is instead of having
ninety people on staff in a largely ineffectual strategy, have
a more insurgent run with a smaller number of people.
But in addition to the dozens of staff members who've
been let go this July, to senior advisors have also
departed this month to work for an outside pro DeSantis nonprofit.

(02:30:24):
One of these senior advisors, who was supposed to oversee
the campaign's television messaging, voluntarily left quote as the reality
of a disappearing advertising budget set in. So these these
two more more kind of seasoned Republican advisors saw what
was happening in the campaign, and they're still pro DeSantis,

(02:30:45):
but they believe they can be more effective by working
from outside of the actual campaign. That's so funny, which
is not a great sign for DeSantis's internal internal team
here if you have people like who's still like you,
but they just can't work for you because you're doing such.

Speaker 4 (02:31:02):
A bad job.

Speaker 3 (02:31:05):
Uh so decidus. His team is now telegraphing a plan
to engage with mainstream media that in the way that
they have not previously done because they've he's so far
kind of scornfully avoided it, as we've talked about previously.
And they're calling this new strategy the DeSantis is Everywhere approach,
which is a good Jesus Christ bad name for strategy.

Speaker 1 (02:31:28):
The part of the problem, Garrison, I don't know how to, like,
I can't like prove this the way that we prove,
you know, when we're when we're tracing back the ideological
roots of like a lot of our modern fascists. But
what I what I believe in my heart is that
so many of these very young people on the extreme
right who are who are driving this campaign like just

(02:31:51):
want to be villains from a bad late nineties early
two thousands movie. They want to be they want to
be the bad guy in like the fucking super villain
hero movie. Right, Like that's you don't you don't say
that about a guy who's good like this. You wouldn't
like the Biden campaign. If they came to Joe and
we're like, we want to do a Biden is everywhere thing,
he'd be like, now that sounds kind of creepy. Guys

(02:32:12):
like I already got a little bit of a problem
with that, what with a hair sniff, and I don't
really want to really want to jump on that train.

Speaker 3 (02:32:18):
You know, Like it definitely has the vibes of like
zoomers who grew up watching like late nineties animated and
superhero cartoons who are trying to like it.

Speaker 4 (02:32:26):
Yes, we're trying.

Speaker 3 (02:32:27):
To emulate that for some reason. There is one one
really funny quote from The Times that that I will
read because because it quotes like internal sources that that
I don't have access to. But anyway, quote one person
close to mister DeSantis, who requested anonymity to speak candidly
about a candidate whom the person still supports, said the

(02:32:49):
governor had experienced quote unquote a challenging learning curve that
has left him quote unquote a little bit jarred.

Speaker 1 (02:32:58):
So does sound like a six year old who's like
not quite progressing fast enough. In the reading where they're
like maybe we need to try teaching him another way,
Like we'll get out the different colored books.

Speaker 3 (02:33:10):
Like, yeah, so's he seems to have a rough adjustment
period to campaigning in just more than one state and
having an actual like opponent to go up against. Also
like an opponent who's like actually a good who's like
good at being like a politician. Yeah, so yeah, a

(02:33:30):
challenging learning curve.

Speaker 4 (02:33:31):
Indeed, I might I.

Speaker 1 (02:33:33):
Might specify I think actually DeSantis is a lot better
as being a politician than Donald Trump. But that's not
what the competition is.

Speaker 3 (02:33:42):
Yeah, Destus is better at being like an effective like governor.

Speaker 5 (02:33:47):
H He's better.

Speaker 1 (02:33:49):
He's better at the machinery of politics, yes, whereas Trump
is better at holding power within the GOP.

Speaker 3 (02:33:57):
Yeah, and being like a showman.

Speaker 1 (02:33:59):
Yea, we will.

Speaker 3 (02:34:01):
We will talk more about some uh some actually relatively
breaking news regarding the de Santas campaign.

Speaker 1 (02:34:07):
Shortly for this, I just saw this before we got.

Speaker 3 (02:34:09):
On short shortly after this at break. Okay, we are
we are back. So a lot has happened the past
two days, A lot has happened the past two hours actually,
but we're we're gonna have to work our way there.
The first bit of news that was kind of both
It was both confirming my suspicions and in very a

(02:34:35):
very interesting piece of news in the first place, is
that that fast Wave inspired kind of homophobic Pride Month
video that we talked about in our last Dysantis fash
Wave episode. It turns out to be slightly more self
inflicted than what than what at least I said in
the episode, because I didn't want to make claims that

(02:34:55):
I couldn't back up. Because we have we have some
new new information regarding this video. I'm gonna I'm going
to quote from this this article in the Times quote
a Dissanta's campaign aid had originally produced the video internally,
passing it off to an outside supporter to post it
first and making it appear as if it was generated independently.

(02:35:18):
According to a person with knowledge of the incident, so
this video turned out to be actually be made in house.
This actually was made by someone who was working for
Rondasantis as as we speculated it initially, but we couldn't
really like say for sure because it was it was
posted first on a third party account.

Speaker 1 (02:35:39):
Specifically the guy who was the one who shared it
as the dude who made it.

Speaker 3 (02:35:43):
No, that is that is for this next video we're
going to talk about. Yeah, the the homophobic one was
was shared by this this this proto Santas account called
Proud Elephant, who had a corresponding telegram channel. This was
the guy who posted the first homophobic meme one. But yeah,
so we found out Sunday night that it was actually

(02:36:03):
made by someone at the Dasantas campaign, which kind of
justified a lot of our suspicions about DeSantis employing staff
of zoomers who don't actually understand how to win a
political election and are more interested in just creating fascist memes,
which is seems to be not a very effective strategy
for DeSantis so far. So again, just the day that

(02:36:29):
this news broke that that the video was actually made
in a house, another fash wave of inspired video, but
with much much more overt Nazi imagery, was shared online
by a Dysantis campaign staffer. I'm Robert. Have you seen
this video?

Speaker 1 (02:36:46):
Yes? Okay, so I'm the Sun and Rad video.

Speaker 3 (02:36:49):
Yes, so we don't. We don't have to watch it here,
but I will. I will give a description of it
for for the people listening, because also we should probably
shouldn't be sharing these things like everywhere on on like
Twitter and stuff anyway, Like it's not it's not a
great idea.

Speaker 6 (02:37:03):
But.

Speaker 1 (02:37:04):
It's not going to make you happier help you in
any way. To see this, it's just like it's surprising.
I will say that I was surprised to see how
fascy it was, to see how like explicitly accelerationist mash
shooter fascy it was. Yes, this is like christ Church
kind of Yes.

Speaker 3 (02:37:22):
Yeah, so we're not going to share it, but it
is useful to know what's in it. So I did
write a pretty in depth description of this video here.
So this video was posted on Sunday, July twenty third.
It's about seventy seconds long. It plays over a Meg
Myers cover of the song Running Up the Hill, which was.

Speaker 1 (02:37:42):
Made you know recent Wait, isn't that the one that
was the one that the new season of Stranger Things
a while back, like it brought back to the main.

Speaker 3 (02:37:50):
Possibly it's it is It is a Kate Bush original.
This one is is a more like electronic cover of
the song. Yes, it's talking about like you know, like
a like a trying to like ask God to help
you with certain things. Blah bla blah blah blah blah blah. Anyway,
it starts with the doomer wojack sitting at a computer
looking at headlines about the ineffectiveness of Trump's border wall,

(02:38:13):
unfulfilled anti immigration policies, and Trump's pro COVID vaccine statements.
So I guess we should probably talk about what a
wojack is in case someone is unfamiliar. If you've ever
spent any amount of time on the Internet, you've probably
seen memes with kind of crudely drawn like human faces
and heads. These are called wojack memes. They're very popular

(02:38:36):
in like political spheres. They kind of kind of rose
to prominence on four Chat and spread spread out from there.
Everyone kind of uses them. Nowadays they're pretty common, but
there's a few specific like wojack characters, like the chad
is one. One of the more popular ones is the
doomer wojack, which is someone who has taken the black pill,

(02:38:59):
so to speak. They've they've they've looked at modern society
and have decided that it's not worth engaging in. Now
there's this. There's doomers on the right, there's dumers on
the left. There's doomers who look at like climate change
and the acceleration of like of of of capitalism and
just decide, hey, this is this is too far gone.
So they become a doomer, and they're on the left.

(02:39:20):
There's also doomers on the right who are like looking
at gay marriage and the acceptance of trans people, being like, oh,
this is so socially degenerate. It's the society is too
far gone, and then they become a doomer. But they're
on the right. So it's it's it happens on. It
happens on both sides, and both both sides use doomer memes.
Uh yeah, this one is because we're talking about it

(02:39:42):
in this context of fash wave. This is obviously a
fascist doomer meme. But that's that's kind of what I
mean when I say there's there's a doomer wojack sitting
sitting at a computer. It's like it's like a guy
with a beanie, like a scruffy beard. He looks like
very depressed and tired, that sort of thing. So as
as these kind of headlines about Trump's not conservative enoughness

(02:40:05):
are flashing on this computer, the dumer Rojack is looking
increasingly disillusioned and apathetic. Then there's the clip of Trump
holding up a Pride flag that plays right before we
see Trump signing the First Step Act, the twenty eighteen
Criminal Justice Reform Bill. Then headlines flash about violent criminals
being released into the streets, that sort of thing. So

(02:40:27):
the dumer BoJack is looking at all these things about Trump,
looking more and more depressed, when suddenly a doorway appears
with an almost angelic light pouring in from behind, and
as the door opens, we see a silhouette of Ron DeSantis.
More short clips of Ron play, and now the wojack
is looking happy, almost like exuberant, seemingly kind of random.

(02:40:49):
Images of outer space, volcanoes, rocket launches, surfing and the
beach flash quickly on screen with with like glitchy silhouettes
of Ronda Santis looming above coastal ocean side cities that
are lit up by a sunset. A don't tread on
Florida Alligator flag spins onto screen like it's a fucking

(02:41:11):
like MS paint like edit, and then the the video
flashes more clips of DeSantis wearing sunglasses standing in front
of American flags as the sunset. Happy Woejack fades in.
So this is another wo shack meme of somebody almost
like tearied eyed with like contentment, staring into the horizon

(02:41:33):
as like a sunset is behind their head. It kind
of it kind of reminds me of like the that
guy who who stole that plane in Seattle.

Speaker 2 (02:41:43):
And yeah, crash it.

Speaker 1 (02:41:46):
Yeah, very sad story if you're not aware of it.
A man hijacked I believe it was an Alaska Airs
flight a couple of years back. It was empty, like
he he worked at the airport. He just took the
plane and he got up into the sky and then
like he was just kind kind of a dude who
was sort of suicidal. There's very sad audio of him
talking too, because he gets on with air traffic control

(02:42:07):
and he makes sure that he's not going to hurt
anyone else, and like then the plane goes down, you know,
he goes down in it, and it's it's very bleak.
He was not a man who wanted to hurt anybody.
It's just this kind of like exist. I found it
set to a lot of vapor wave tracks. Actually, like
the audio the conversation between them, because he's kind of
I think a lot of people identify with his sense

(02:42:28):
of like I don't really know why I was ever here.
I don't really know.

Speaker 3 (02:42:32):
Yeah, it's someone who was dealing with like postmodern absurdity,
but in a way that like he doesn't want to
hurt anybody about it, but he just doesn't know what
to do with existence.

Speaker 1 (02:42:42):
Yeah, he had part of he had like the ten
percent of what a mass shooter has, which is exactly
go out and I want to do something. But thankfully
he was also a good person and didn't want to
like murder strangers.

Speaker 3 (02:42:54):
So this became very popular on the Internet, including on
redda and four chan. This he was he was dubbed
sky King, and there's there's footage of him basically crashing
this plane as the sun is setting, and there's there's
footage of him flying around in sunset played often played
with vapor Wave with his conversation with attracktic control that

(02:43:15):
this is very popular. The sunset happy Roe Jack is
very similar. I've seen people post this image in threads
about sky King before, and I think a lot a
lot of people to understand it's like this this act,
that this this Skyking thing, that this has more in
common with like accelerationist like terrorism than what most people

(02:43:36):
can like really understand about like between like shooting a
random person for like violent crime and this like this,
this is more this, This is closer to why people
do accelerationist like terroristic acts. But this guy was like
not actually a monster, so he didn't do that. He
like explicitly didn't want to hurt anybody. He explicitly didn't

(02:44:00):
want to try to land the plane at the airport
because he thought he might hurt somebody.

Speaker 1 (02:44:04):
Yeah, and presumably since he worked at an airport, he
had some knowledge of how easily that could go wrong.

Speaker 3 (02:44:10):
Yeah, so this anyway, these two images are kind of
linked often on the Internet. So anyway, we we we
see we see the video getting like more hopeful with
with with Rona Santis, you know, having stupid fash wave,
having stupid fashwave imagery. Is this sunset happy Woejack fades

(02:44:31):
in as like as the dumer is now has like
contentment and then this this, then this is followed by
very quick flashes of dysantis and more.

Speaker 4 (02:44:40):
More more beach imagery.

Speaker 3 (02:44:42):
There's a lot of beach in this video. Yeah, there's
like this like rotating sheet of stickers that read make
America Florida. Then we get this shot of a small
yacht zooming through the water with DeSantis campaign events played
over top of the water. And during this shot we
have another jack holding a rifle wearing Camo military fatigues

(02:45:04):
that slides onto screen. He has a patch of the
flag of Florida on his plate carrier and his helmet.
We get more shots of beachfront cities and rocket launches,
followed by headlines about Dysantis on a variety of topics,
including his anti immigration actions, his use of Florida's National
Guard in other states, DeSantis's anti diversity initiatives, his anti

(02:45:27):
education bills, his anti drag bills, the cancelation of pride
parades in Florida, and in general just kind of how
DeSantis has been pushing Florida further right. So after this
barrage of headlines, we get to the most mask off
from a moment of the video. The flag of Florida
fills the screen with two lines of armed troops at
either side marching towards the flag. A still photo of

(02:45:52):
Dysantis is center frame, with his head right in the
middle of the seal of Florida, which is on the
center of their state flag. The head in front of
the seal creates this almost like halo effect around Desantas's head,
and then the seal turns into a spinning son and
rad as we zoom into the symbol as troops march

(02:46:12):
into center, and then the video ends. The sun and
Rad is on screen for about ten seconds. So this
was a pretty upsetting thing to see on Twitter.

Speaker 1 (02:46:24):
Yes, upsetting is one way to phrase it. Yeah, and again.
The son and Rad has a long history. It's kind
of a specifically a cultic version of the swastika it reached.
It has been around for quite a while, but it's
most recent. The kind of thing that brought it into
modern prominence was the christ Church shooter chose it as

(02:46:45):
the cover of his manifesto and also wore a son
and rad. I believe it was on the chest of
his plate carrier when he carried out his massacre. He
also had a couple on his gun.

Speaker 3 (02:46:54):
I think, yeah, so it's very clearly Nazi symbol. I
know there's some people of making it make jokes about
how this must have just been an azof Battalion reference.
Deeply unserious.

Speaker 1 (02:47:06):
No, you can see some of these on a I
mean again, this is a Nazi thing. They wear this too. Yeah,
azof uses it.

Speaker 3 (02:47:14):
There's people trying to excuse the use of the sun
and rad by saying, oh, it's just an azof simple
it's not a hot sea thing, which is bad, which
is a deeply unserious thing to say. So Yeah, this
video was shared by at least one campaign staffer. It's
a very short video, but it plays into a strain

(02:47:35):
of like accelerationist propaganda tropes that even the previous Fashionay
video didn't didn't even really have in many of the
same ways, like like all of all of like the
dooomer wojack slowly becoming like happy and content than putting
on military fatigues to go fight for Ron de Santis,
who's now in the center of like a haloed son

(02:47:57):
and rad like it's it's it is emulating a type
of meme that both gained popular in order to specifically
like inspire mass shootings to happen, and also to like
to get young depressed males to channel their depression into
like fascism. It has a whole bunch of tropes like
it's it's it's it's really just like playing by the playbook.

(02:48:18):
So the video was first posted on the Twitter account
Ron DeSantis fancams, which is a horrible sentence. Yeah, the
account is a few months old, but its visible posts
only go back to June. They post a lot of videos,
all in a very similar style, which leads you to

(02:48:40):
believe that whoever operates the account must be making the
videos themselves. One video from the account plays clips of
people describing Dasantis as fascist, edited together with clips of
DeSantis deploying National Guard and calling for civilian state military
force under his control, all sliced together next to footage
of Nazis and Mussolini played over an upbeat e d

(02:49:04):
M track. So it's all like explicitly fascist stuff like
like like it's people like rev like it's like a proud,
proudly embracing the fascist label. So this style of video
is almost identical to the homophobic Pride Months video that
we discussed last week. And considering the recent news that

(02:49:24):
the other video shared by the Dasantas Warham account was
secretly made by a campaign staffer, that led myself and
others to assume that this son and Red video was
most likely made by the same person inside DeSantis's campaign
and was operating this DeSantis fancam account as a sock puppet.

(02:49:44):
But you know, I could not prove this myself, really,
I it's just it's it's a it's a hard thing
to kind of backtrack this. I this account was pretty
clean in terms of like I tried to like, you know,
do do pretty pretty basic osin on this account, But
it's it was, it was I could not find out
much about it. But the campaign staff member that first

(02:50:06):
shared this sun and Red video to his own Twitter
account was former National Review writer Nate Hakman. We will
we will talk about Nate Hawkman's exploits shortly shortly after
this this hat break. All right, we are back and
in a much better position currently than twenty five year

(02:50:29):
old Nate Hawkman.

Speaker 1 (02:50:31):
Yes, so really was a tragically was a promising career.
You know what, Let's give them another chance. Garrison, reach
out to Nate. We can bring him on the team,
you know, have him start making some videos for us.

Speaker 3 (02:50:42):
Yeah, I'll build an invoice to Nate Hawkman's address. Yeah,
I'll see where he lives. So, twenty five year old
Nate Hawkman has been working as a speech writer for
DeSantis's campaign. After rising to prominence among young conservatives for
his online references and willingness to entertain outside the Overton window.

(02:51:03):
Uh Hawkman hosted a Twitter space late last year centered
around the question of if white supremacists like a Nick
Fuentes should have a place in the modern conservative movement.
Funtes himself appeared in the Twitter space, and Hawkman thanked
him for radicalizing children by saying, quote, You've gotten a
lot of kids based and we respect you for that.

(02:51:27):
And he also said that Fuentes quote is probably a
better influence than Ben Shapiro on young men who might
otherwise be conservative unquote. So Hawkman has retweeted the Dysantis
fancam account at least six times before he shared this
on and rata video this past Sunday. But he's not

(02:51:48):
the only Dysantis linked account to share these videos. The
campaign's war room Twitter account and the pro DeSantis Never
Back Down superpack have also shared videos from this Rond
Dessanta's fancam Twitter account. By using this fancam account to
post videos and then by retweeting on Nate's account, someone

(02:52:09):
was certainly testing the waters to see how close the
Dysantas campaign can get to just doing explicit Nazi shit,
and considering the New York Times, who Hawkman has written for,
by the way, basically confirming that the person who made
the Pride Month video was secretly employed by Dysantis and
posted the a third party to get some distance from

(02:52:29):
the official campaign. This led many to suspect that Hawkman
was secretly the person behind this fancam account due to
the similarities in video styles and his frequent boosting of
the account. The sun and Ride video was deleted the
same day was posted, and the fancam account has not
posted since then. But then suddenly, just a few hours

(02:52:51):
ago as of time of recording, news dropped that Nick
Hachman has been fired from the Dasantis campaign, and the
sources at Axios confirmed that he has in fact secretly
been making these Fashway videos. So it was it was
Hawkman on all along. This is what happens when you
hire a twenty five year old Groypewer to work on

(02:53:12):
your to work on your presidential bid.

Speaker 1 (02:53:16):
Your very serious presidential campaign.

Speaker 4 (02:53:18):
Yeah so uh.

Speaker 3 (02:53:22):
The Dessentant's campaign officially has only said a few words
on the subject quote, Nate Hawkman is no longer with
the campaign and we will not be commenting on him further.

Speaker 1 (02:53:34):
Not that easy, guys, But other.

Speaker 3 (02:53:37):
Anonymous sources have confirmed to news outlets that it was
Hawkman who was making these videos. So this is weird
because like this hasn't been a great move for DeSantis
hiring Hawkman, having Hawkman do all this like behind the
scenes like Scooby Doo shit of like you're posting fasci
fascist videos on sock wepons to then get reboosted by
Desanta's campaign like it's it's all. It's all very like

(02:54:00):
dark but like comical, like it's it's silly, like uh,
similar to the Descentus video we talked about in the
last Adventures in Fashionate episode. This video it was not
meant to like convince older Trump supporters to vote for Dissantis, right,
like that, that's not the intention of posting this video.

Speaker 1 (02:54:19):
No, this new bid trying. They are first off, going
for the zoomer vote. Always a mixed bag anytime. Yeah,
anytime you're going for the youth vote. This is like
famously a difficult thing. It kind of sometimes works for
the dims because the youth tend to be pretty progressive
and the Republicans are terrifying. Yeah, but going for the

(02:54:41):
trying to base your campaign as a Republican presidential candidate
on the youths is uh quite a move. Yeah, Like
it's let's see how it pays off for him gotten.

Speaker 3 (02:54:51):
Yeah, because like this new video is almost more chronically
online than the last one, Like, not even considering the
Nazi imagery, it's it's heavy use of BoJack memes is
just like cartoonish to the median voter. What this video
is trying to do is signal to self describe fascists
that Dysantis is their guy, and trying extremely desperately to

(02:55:14):
create another like meme magic moment like we had in
twenty sixteen to recruit a slew of teenage Nazis to
try and meme another based president into office, which isn't
gonna work this time around, because it's not twenty sixteen anymore.
Like we we've we've already been we've already been inoculated
to some degree to this, to this style of of

(02:55:36):
campaign tactics, all of all of the all the people
in like like four chan. Isn't the thing that it
used to be. It is, it is, It is a
shell of its of its former self. But like what
we have here on like the DeSantis side is like
in terms of hiring people like hackmen. Right, these are
like seasoned gropers who grew up and are now like

(02:55:58):
getting into their twenties. Uh, you know, they're taking jobs
at National Review and as and as campaign staffers. But
due to their isolated, niche political upbringing, they have deluded
themselves into thinking that there's like a mythical far right
youth voting block that just like quite simply doesn't exist.
So you can spend all day making and retweeting these

(02:56:19):
meme heavy videos with Nazi imagery that really only succeed
in turning off the reliable boomer Republican voters. Now, like,
there's a few other you know, future scenarios here. If
these if these like up and coming gropers continue to
like grow up, polish their act, take more jobs as
staffers or on Capitol Hill, and like slowly grow in

(02:56:40):
numbers as they learn to like hide their power level
like hea like hide their amount of racism, then we
might have a problem. If they like actually like put
like intentionality into a long term strategy to like put
more of these young freaks into positions in Washington, but
we're simply not there yet. Like in the case of Hawkman,

(02:57:01):
he kind of just like he blew up the spot
right like he went like he went too hard, too fast,
and then he got fired because they don't want that shit.

Speaker 1 (02:57:12):
Yeah, the olds are going to watch this and go like,
what the fuck is this? This does not look serious,
This is not speaking to my issues. This is just
like off putting, in strange, and most young people are like, oh,
it's some brain poisoned four channer. That's who this guy's
running as the four chan candidate. Yep, all right now.

Speaker 3 (02:57:31):
Like so the other fear is that they'll shift from
like this electoral focus and try to just use this
type of video propaganda to initiate another wave of like
Nazi mass shootings like in twenty eighteen. The halo effect
around DeSantis's head is certainly cause for concern, but there's
a lot of other factors that go into that sort

(02:57:52):
of thing, and that is kind of just more of
like an ever present fear that anti fascists have, and
you know, people do a lot of work and trying
to catch these guys before they actually do mass shootings
and try to try to isolate the spread of this
style of propaganda for that very reason. So yeah, I mean,
it's it's certainly an interesting trajectory. When I started, like

(02:58:15):
finishing this episode earlier today, I had no idea that
Hawkman was going to get fired, had no idea that
it was going to be confirmed that Hawkman was the
one making making these videos. So that's kind of some
breaking news on our side. It's it's been a few days.
If you're if you're listening to this, at the end
of the week, I'm going to read out one tweet
from this guy, a double Doink, who is a stupid,

(02:58:37):
stupid handle no offense, but he made a made a
made a made a pretty good point here I quote.
I think DeSantis's real problem isn't just that he's racist,
It's that his campaign is racist in the same way
a really annoying teenager is your average xenophobic suburbanite dad
looks at a son and rad roejack ad like his

(02:58:59):
son crack his car. A lot of people are arguing
that your average fifty six year old Trump supporter isn't
as racist as your average DeSantis supporting Zoomer, but that's
not the point. Putting weird blood and soil shit in
your ads smells it's deeply uncool to the exact people
that you want to impress unquote, and I'll add it's
it's it's deeply uncol to the exact people you want

(02:59:21):
to impress if you want to win at being president
and like are trying to move over Trump voters. It's
just it's just it's just not going to play. So
this is this is the state of the de Santa's campaign. Now,
they've they've shed almost forty people from their staff. The
guy that was supposed to lead their television ads has left.

(02:59:42):
They seemingly just have no idea what the fuck to
do They They tried to have this guy do this
like backdoor nazi video sock puppet strategy that has also
resulted in not very good things for this for the
Desanta's campaign. So I guess we'll we'll see how their
how their campaign develops, if they if they continue this

(03:00:04):
sort of like fash wave rhetoric and style. I kind
of doubt it now that now that now that Hawkman
is out. But yeah, it's been a certainly certainly an
interesting interesting few months here, or a few weeks here
rather in terms of in fashwave videos resurfacing again for
the first time in quite a while. In terms of
like mainstream of political use.

Speaker 1 (03:00:26):
Yeah, I'm kind of suspecting that this might be the
death knell of that as a at least for a spell,
as a as a relevant form of propaganda.

Speaker 3 (03:00:38):
Yeah, I mean it's it's been in some ways, like
internally rejected at the Disanta's campaign, and he is arguably
the most fascist mainstream candidate that they that we like
have right now, nothing.

Speaker 1 (03:00:50):
Puts a stink on stuff like this like failure, right,
you know, these guys, these guys are not anarchists, and
the anarchists are we nearly always lose, So there's this
like because things fail, you know that, Like there's a
lot of Spanish Civil War, you know, iconography and stuff
that's still very relevant on that chunk of the left.

(03:01:12):
But with the right, it is all about power, and
when something like this fails, when it actually weakens a campaign,
when it weakens the insurgent right, when it makes them
less able to exert power. Yeah, I kind of feel
like we may have seen the last of this, as
a thing that matters. Right, Yeah, I'll.

Speaker 3 (03:01:34):
Definitely be watching these next few months. But I think
that's that's definitely a very a very fair assessment at
this point. Lastly, I just want to clarify one thing
about our last episode due to some viewer feedback. So
last time we were talking about how the Biden administration's use
of dark branded memes had like inadvertently led to fast
way of taking a big body blow. Now, I think

(03:01:55):
some people misinterpreted our discussion as downplaying anti fascists and
leftists attempt to disrupt dark Mega and fash wave in
general by like proliferating the satirical dark branded memes. So
in the episode, we talked about the methodology behind this,
this this strategy of like normies seizing onto memes and aesthetics,

(03:02:16):
thus making them cringe and unattractive to the niche groups
that they that that once enjoyed using them with Dark
brand And there were certainly an attempt from anti fascists
and leftist posters to appropriate fash waves aesthetics with the
hope that if spread widely enough, it would disarm some
of fashwaves more dangerous and inspirational aspects. But you can't

(03:02:37):
really force mainstream like virality. This kind of thing works
best when it appears natural, and for the majority of
Dark Branded posters, they were just doing this shit for
like shits and giggles like that. That was the primary factor,
is that it was funny, and no effort to damage
fash waves legibility would really be successful without mainstream spread.

(03:03:01):
A small group of leftists could mean like eternally, but
until it breaks through that bubble, it would have little
to no effect. Now, because of how Twitter's algorithm worked
during the summer of last year, after a few months,
Dark Branded did in fact break through to the liberal mainstream.
But I've seen nothing to suggest that the White House
staff had any intention of trying to damage fash Wave's

(03:03:24):
legibility by sharing laser I memes in August to twenty
twenty two.

Speaker 1 (03:03:29):
I think the key here is that you were not
saying this was purely the result of liberals accidentally like
jumping on to this, but that the primary like success
was achieved, Like, the part of the success that was
achieved as a result of this going like mainstream among
Biden supporters was accidental. Yeah, it was the part that

(03:03:49):
was key, not saying that the people who recognize this,
and we're putting in the background work to try to
push this stuff and make it, you know, eventually go viral.
That was certainly not accidental, but correct. The part that
the liberals played was an accidental part in killing this
That's that's the point.

Speaker 3 (03:04:06):
Yes, Because what I mean by accidental is that when
dark Brandon started in March of twenty twenty two, there
was no way to guarantee that four months later the
White and like the White House and blue Wave liberals
would be sharing these memes on mass Like I remember
conversations I had like last August when liberals were seemingly
like ruining the funny dark branded memes. But like me,

(03:04:30):
like myself and research colleagues during this time, like that
was when we realized that if, like if liberals keep
sharing these cringy memes, we might actually have a shot
at killing off a fash wave. So yes, this was
to not discount the efforts of anti fascists or others
who pioneered the spread of dark Brandon and their attempts
to insert it into greater public consciousness. But I think

(03:04:50):
to frame this as like a meticulously planned siop from
the very start, is also kind of inaccurate in like
a very like spotlighted way like this was. This was
a collaborative effort with with the with the liberals not
realizing the degree that their collaboration played in this larger
game of trying to disarm fascist aesthetics and like meme styles.

(03:05:12):
So yeah, that's one one clarifying note as we hopefully
wrap up this dysantis fashwave sega for the time being,
because I definitely did not plan on making this episode
when I when I finished recording last week with you.

Speaker 1 (03:05:26):
So here we are cool, all right, that's the episode.

Speaker 5 (03:05:34):
That's the episode.

Speaker 4 (03:05:51):
It's happening here. The thing that's happening here is fucking
child labor.

Speaker 5 (03:05:55):
I am.

Speaker 4 (03:05:56):
I am deeply angry this episode. This is see get
up here. I'm your host, Mio Wong and with me
Sharen Hi Mia.

Speaker 12 (03:06:05):
I'm so glad to join you on this really uplifting episode.

Speaker 4 (03:06:08):
Yeah, it's gonna be great. So yes, all right, as
anyone who studied like even a little bit of labor
history dos, the fight over child labor is very very old.
It is. It's one of the first causes that sort
of liberal reformers to capitalism took up nearly eighteen hundreds.
Like it's like in the Communist Manifesto is one of
the things. It's actually it's one of the things people
point out. It's like, oh, we've done all the things

(03:06:29):
that was in the original Communist Manifesto, and it's like, no, no,
we never got rid of this, you know. It's it's
also one of the things that like you get these
sort of like capitalist triumphalist accounts that like, oh, we
eliminated child labor. This is like this is proof the
system works. No, this, the battle over child labor is
a battle that we are in the middle of losing,
and we are losing it in worse and worse ways

(03:06:53):
every day. So okay, so why why are we Why
are we dealing with a new resurgence of child labor
in this country. There's there's a lot of reasons. One
of the big problems is that vast swaths of the
US sees child labor is morally good. You know, they
see something like oh, this is like you teach your kids.

(03:07:14):
It's like how you yeah.

Speaker 12 (03:07:15):
Like how they grow up and get responsible and.

Speaker 4 (03:07:18):
Yeah, and then this and this is true in a
lot of parts of the world. It's also completely and
absolutely bonkers. It is just it's just nuts, Like people
shouldn't think like this. It's incredibly weird. And the other
thing that you get a lot is like there's you know,
there's sort of like different versions of like more or

(03:07:39):
less socially acceptable child labor. Right, So, like I think
most people agree if you're not running the business that
like children shouldn't be working in like slaughterhouses or whatever.
But you know, there's like lots of things that people
are like, oh, no, kid working in a restaurant, like
that's completely fine. Like oh, it's like a like a
fourteen year old is like doing farm work on a farm,

(03:08:01):
Like that's fine.

Speaker 12 (03:08:02):
But it's a slippery slope, right because it's starting to
farm work and then down.

Speaker 4 (03:08:08):
Also, like I would argue that that's also not fine,
because what's what's essentially happening here is that there's this
basically like this sort of family loophole to people's understanding
if child labor were like as long as child labor
is being done by like the family is an economic
unit instead of like capitalists directly, yes, it's fine. It's

(03:08:30):
like no, no, it's not. It's actually not fine, to
be working people like be a child and then working
for a living for your family, Like that's not.

Speaker 12 (03:08:40):
I think there's a difference between. I think there's a
difference between like child labor and like working in a
field for your family versus like a chore, you know
what I mean, Like, yeah, yeah, it's I think I
think that line gets blurred and people see their kids
as much more mature than they are and like able
to like no, I don't understand what you're saying. And

(03:09:00):
I think I agree that I.

Speaker 4 (03:09:02):
Agree, yeah, and it's I don't know it. It sucks.
This has a lot of sort of knock on effects.
One of the big knock on effects his house. And
this is this has been a thing for like the
entire history of child labor, right, is that like capitalists
use children as a way to write down wages for
everyone else. And this is you know, if you ever
listened to argue to someone about the minimum wage, right,
one of the big arguments about the minimum wage is

(03:09:23):
that like, oh, well, it's like it's like kids get
the minimum wage, so like it's fine. It's like one,
it's not like children are not morally worth less and
their labor is also not worth less than an adult,
like like if if you're gonna exploin them like this.

Speaker 12 (03:09:37):
Like, yeah, things are the same price for everybody. It's
not like less for a child.

Speaker 4 (03:09:41):
Yeah, it's not. It's not like like a kid is
like somehow less of a human being than an adult,
right like this is this is this sucks, but you
know it's used to sort of hold down wages directly
through things like like opposing minimum wage increases. Used to
hold you know, hold down wages sort of indirectly because
and this is another reason like capitalists love child labor
is that children are you know, like they're physically smaller

(03:10:05):
than adults, they're easier to control, they have less social power,
and because you know, because of that, you can pay
them less. And because of you know, because because people
just in our society don't fucking like kids, and because
of that, it's so it's just socially accessible to just
pay them less.

Speaker 12 (03:10:26):
All those reasons you listed are absolutely terrifying though, like
oh they will listen, Oh they're smaller, Oh they're like
cheap or whatever it is that they're all like terrible
reasons to justify child labor.

Speaker 4 (03:10:40):
No, they're not good. They're not good. And yet however, Comma,
it still persists, it has resisted. It's very old. I'm
going to read something from the Bureau of Labor Statistics
about this fucking kid who was working in a mine.

Speaker 2 (03:10:58):
What okay?

Speaker 4 (03:11:00):
This is from the early nineteen hundreds. One boy touchingly
recounted his attitude towards facing the day at the mind
this way. I'll always think of my poor blind father
and my mother at home, but I won't never play
with the boys at all, and then the cracker boss
won't have to beat me like he does the others.
This boy was nine years old. While stories like these

(03:11:20):
produced outrage in many quarters, in the cold producing regions,
there is no such concern the view that quote the
little devils like it, as one cold boss put it,
seemed to be the prevailing sentiments. Child labor wasn't discussed
these regions because it wasn't seen as an issue. So
this is like nineteen hundreds of American view, like early
nieten hundreds of American view on this right, like people,

(03:11:42):
my people, I mean capitalists, and also people who are
incredibly desperate and don't have enough money to get by
like love child labor. There's you know, it takes a
long time for like an actual series anti child labor
campaign to like get started in the US. And of
course the exact people who you would expect to oppose
banning child or posed banning child labor. I'm gonna read

(03:12:02):
this from the also from the bar laboristics. The chairman
of the National Association of Manufacturers said about a law
to abolish child labor. Quote this union, this labor union
plot against the advancements and happiness of the American boy,
is a ploy. Is also a ploy against individual industrial
expansion and prosperity in this country. So this is what

(03:12:25):
their thing is. Their argument is that is that children
don't oppose child labor. This is this is being foisted
upon them by outside agitated labor unions. And also if
we're not allowed to use child labor, and if we're
not allowed to have a nine year old be put
in a mine, the entire American economy will collapse and
every manufacturer will go broke.

Speaker 12 (03:12:46):
It's like making you like being like child labor because patriotism,
Like that's basically what that means.

Speaker 8 (03:12:51):
Yeah, it's it's it's genu widely terrible. Like I I
I don't know, it's so ghoulish.

Speaker 4 (03:12:57):
Like companies today have figured out how to do this
pr thing of like, oh, we don't condone child labor.
We crack down on it very seriously. We also hire
children literally all the time. But it's fine, We're just
we're gonna like you know, but back in like nine hundreds,
they hadn't really figured that out yet, and so you know,
there's there's this sort of reform movement that happens. And
one of the sort of key moments of this reform
thing is the Laurence Textile Strike. And this strike is

(03:13:20):
probably most famous today for popularizing the slogan we want
bread and roses too, which is, you know, like wrung
down the halls of labor and socialist histories, like the
names of newspapers, songs, poems, and also like being the
namesake of a truly dogshit DSA caucus. We're not going
to talk about this strike enormously. Here the short, the

(03:13:42):
very very short version of this strike, and this is
a nineteen twelve strike. The short version of it is
that there's a law pass in Massachusetts that would have
reduced like the number of hours that you could have
women and children work from a blistering fifty six hours
to a leisurely fifty four hours a week.

Speaker 12 (03:13:58):
Oh my god.

Speaker 4 (03:14:00):
This prompted the local capitalist to get so mad that
they did this like massive like industrial speed up, so
they forced everyone to work faster and then also doctor
everyone's paid for it. And this this set off a strike,
which's relevant for like our stories that the workers at
this plant. You know, there's there's lots of coverage of

(03:14:20):
the fact that like most of these workers are immigrant women,
like from a bunch of different places. The part of
it that's not talked about as much is that another
huge person of the workers we're is fucking.

Speaker 12 (03:14:29):
Children, and it seems to get glossed over.

Speaker 4 (03:14:35):
Yeah yeah, And it's like, I, I, you know, I
don't know, maybe maybe maybe we should go back to
talking about that part because it's really important for like
the stuff we're going to talk about later in this episode.
That made me so angry, I was like physically punching
my pillow. What happens next is that the police crackdown
on the strike. It's more and more violence, and as

(03:14:55):
this goes on, the workers at like the adult workers
at this plant decide, Okay, we're gonna like send the
children who are both like both the child workers and
also like just people's kids to New York to keep
them safe and also to make a political point. But like, hey,
look they're they're running our children out of town, and
this goes great. The first way is just go great
for the children. Like a bunch of people in New
York show up are like yay, hey, we'll take care

(03:15:16):
of these kids. Like and this makes like the officials
in Lawrence be like, you have to stop this. It
looks really bad for us. And so they they like
assembled outside of the next train that was trying to
leave and tried to stop them. Oh my god, so
she shouldn't be really brististics Again, When the next group

(03:15:38):
of children prepared to depart the train station, they were
met by police and soldiers. The police refused to let
them board the trains and launched an attack on the group.
A seven year old was given a black eye when
she was picked up and thrown into a patty wagon
by police. Another witness. Another witness testified to children being
thrown around like rags.

Speaker 8 (03:15:57):
Oh my god, like yeah, thin blue live baby, let's
fucking go.

Speaker 4 (03:16:02):
This is this is the thing.

Speaker 8 (03:16:03):
The cops or the thin blue line ordering chaos that
sevy little girls. Yeah's not gonna throw herself around, right,
Like someone has to beat up this children.

Speaker 4 (03:16:14):
And for that there is the few, the proud, the
American police.

Speaker 12 (03:16:17):
But they were scared for their lives, you know what
I mean, Like there're seven.

Speaker 4 (03:16:20):
Year olds that that seven year old girl looked at
me really aggressively.

Speaker 12 (03:16:25):
Yeah, I was scared for my life. That's what they said.

Speaker 4 (03:16:28):
It's it's you know, it's this is bad. And like
you know, the the nineteen hundreds police can get away with,
like nineteen hundred police. We've tked about another episodes, like
they could get away with just like shooting people right,
like the like they could show up to like a
strike and just open fire into the crowd and it
doesn't do anything throwing around a bunch of children like rags. Finally,

(03:16:50):
it turned out was the thing that was bad enough
that it like started a congressional investigation.

Speaker 12 (03:16:55):
Wow, I guess that's good and bad.

Speaker 9 (03:16:57):
But yeah, so.

Speaker 4 (03:16:59):
There's a call launched this investigation, and there's like this
fourteen year old immigrant girl named Kamela Tielli testifies about
how she was working at the mill when a machine
caught her hair and tore her scalp off. The police
promptly and this is going and okay, the police promptly
arrested her dad. Didn't do anything to the company, arrested

(03:17:19):
her dad for lying about her age. Oh my god,
what now this hold that wood in your fucking mind,
because we're gonna come back to that shit, do I
have to? Okay? Unfortunately, because it's gonna get so much
worse when Tyler's episode is over. So the product of
this is that there starts to be like a really

(03:17:40):
mainstream push against child labor, which is, you know, a
thing you would have thought would have started earlier, because again,
we're on like century two of child labor in the
US by this point, right like in the in an
entity called the United States. But you know, apparently it
takes this to actually make people go, wait, maybe this
is bad. And the product of this is you get

(03:18:02):
this thing called the Kenning Owen Child Labor Act nineteen sixteen. Now,
as we sort of talked about earlier, right, the weakness
of this law is that it, you know, it allows
kids to be used as laborers, like inside of the
family unit. So like if you're on a family and
this is a very very broad category. Right, so it's
you know, you can you can force your child to
work as long as like you're their parents, right, you're

(03:18:23):
the one making the money off of them, and not
like a capitalist. But even this, even this is considered
too strong of a law. And in nineteen eighteen, the
Supreme Court rules and it's unconstitutional to ban child labor.
Wait what Yeah, they do it the uiple times, multiple times.

(03:18:43):
And we really cannot emphasize this enough on this show.
The Supreme Court is and has always been just one
of history's greatest monsters.

Speaker 12 (03:18:51):
Like, yeah, wait, I was right then, child labor does
equal patriotism. That's basically what's so.

Speaker 4 (03:18:59):
Eventually FDR gets into this giant fight with Supreme Court,
and the first child labor law we get in federal
child labor law that gets that sticks. I like doesn't
happen till nineteen thirty eight when FDR threatens to pack
the court if the Court refuses to fucking stop stop
saying that that that the state, that the state doesn't

(03:19:20):
have the government doesn't have the power to regulate child labor.

Speaker 12 (03:19:24):
Wow, it's like literally less than a century ago. That is,
like yesterday, you.

Speaker 4 (03:19:28):
Know, but but but you know, and this actually works, right,
but but and this is a real problem. And this
is a problem that we're gonna we're gonna talk about
later in this fucking episode. In the modern day, those
child labor laws don't get enforced. It doesn't that act,
that actual the nineteen thirty eight Fair Labor Act, like
basically doesn't actually do shit to like reduce the amount

(03:19:51):
of child labor in the country. And here's the thing,
like even now, even before all the horror show stuff
that we're about to get to that's happening right now,
like not kids, like we never actually dealt with child
labor through like the law. Like we just basically outsourced,
you know, Okay, we we had to find someone whose
labor is cheaper than like an American child, and we did.

(03:20:12):
It's either like mechanization other immigrants who like don't have
legal citizenship status, or just outsourcing. And then you know,
our kids still fucking do work, you know, like are
like they're like it's very common for ten and twelve
year olds to work. It's just that it's usually like
babysitting or like bowing lawns. And we've we've decided that like, no,

(03:20:32):
this is actually fine, Like it is actually fine to
fucking put twelve year olds in a labor market.

Speaker 12 (03:20:38):
Yeah. I mean I think most people today anyway, I
think the common person thinks that child labor happens like
in other countries over there, you know what I mean.
I don't think they think America is still that archaic
and stupid.

Speaker 4 (03:20:53):
But yeah, and oh my god, yeah, so we need
to take an ad break. And then I'm not even
gonna make a joke about our sponsors and child labor because,
like Jesus fucking Christ, this is good about to be
it so bad? But yeah, here's what ads. Okay, So
you know, we never really got rid of child labor, right,

(03:21:16):
what we did basically was, to some extent, we've been
able to successfully decrease the severity of it. And you know,
in the last twenty years, there'd been a decline in
what economists and I really cannot emphasize enough this is
the actual phrase they use, is child participation in the
labor markets.

Speaker 12 (03:21:36):
Wow, so vanilla of a way to say that.

Speaker 4 (03:21:41):
So return to present day, present day. The thing that's
been happening in the last few months is that in
a five week span in this country. Three children died
or I, you know, I would actually argue we're killed
by their employers on the job. Wow, five children in
three building in five weeks. So sixteen these there, these

(03:22:03):
kids were all sixteen. Sixteen year old Duven Thomas Perez
got killed by machinery, had a conveyor belt. Sixteen year
old Will Hampton died working at a landfill, and sixteen
year old Michael Schulz died working for a logging company.
There have been other child labor deaths recently. Those are
just sort of the most recent ones. And I want

(03:22:25):
to get in to this shit that's been happening because
in the last really in the last been under like
eight years, things have gotten you know, like the til
labor situation in the US was never good, and we'll
talk about that later, but like things have gotten so
much worse. There's been almost a factor of four increase

(03:22:47):
in twenty fifteen in kids working illegally and hazardous jobs.
It's actually probably well, it's unclear to me whether the
numbers are actually worse than that. I don't know, because
I think almost all of this these districts are being
undercounted like dramatically because those numbers are just like violations
that are caught and go into that a bit later.

(03:23:07):
But meanwhile, like right now, Arkansas, Iowa, New Hampshire, New Jersey,
and Vermont have already passed laws in the last two
years that weakened restrictions on child labor, and bills are
appearing like across the country to do fucking more of
the same stuff, like they want to allow fourteen year
olds to serve alcohol in bars. It's you know, it is.

(03:23:28):
It is truly horrific, and it's being driven by restaurant
business associations across the country who want to, you know,
use child labor. And that's bad. The fact that there's
more stuff that's that you know, is on the horizon
is not good. But for an enormous number of people,
regardless of what the law says, the situation is absolutely intolerable.

(03:23:49):
Here's from the New York Times. In many parts of
the country, middle and high school teachers in English language
larder programs say it is now common for nearly all
of their students to rush off to law long shift
after their classes end. They should not be working twelve
hour days, but it's happening here, said Valeria Lindsay, an
arts language arts teacher at Homestead Middle School near Miami.

(03:24:12):
For the past three years, almost every eighth grader in
her English learner program, about one hundred students, was also
carrying an adult workload. So there's been a massive surge
since twenty twenty one in unaccompanied minors entering the US.
And this has been driven by a lot of sort

(03:24:37):
of you know, it's been driven by pandemic driven poverty,
a massive obseration of violence in a bunch of countries
in Central America, a lot of which has to do
with a like you know, the the US back to
q Andel, Southador about a decade ago. You know, there's
a lot of stuff going on. It's all very bad,
and it's been pushing people here. But you know, like

(03:25:01):
the situation for immigrants getting into the US is never good,
but Biden specifically has managed to make it worse because
Biden's sort of like Biden's immigration policy has been resting
on getting kids out of shelters as fast as humanly
possible and just like throwing them at literally anyone who
claims to be a sponsor, right, And you know, this

(03:25:25):
has gone about as well as you would expect it
would when someone like starts to you know. One of
the I think was the New York Times was talking
about this woman who's working. You quit working in a
health human services like office because they had a quota
of getting rid of twenty percent of their kids a
week and if they didn't do it, they would get dated. Yeah,
they had a quota for we need to get twenty
percent of the kids out of the shelter every week.

Speaker 2 (03:25:47):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (03:25:48):
In the last two years they have lost track of
a third of the kids they send out, which is
again in the last two years alone, at least eighty
five thousand children. They've just lost fucking know who they are.
Here's some New York Times again. It's getting to be
a business for some of these sponsors. And yet Pasilaqua,
who left her job as a caseworker in Central Florida

(03:26:10):
last year. Miss Pasilachua said she saw so many children
put to work and found law enforcement officials so unwilling
to investigate these cases that she largely stopped reporting them. Instead,
she settled for explaining to the children that they were
entitled to lunch breaks in overtime.

Speaker 12 (03:26:27):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (03:26:29):
Wow, And you know, I want to make really clear
what we're talking about here, right, This is not you know,
like I don't think like you know, whatever your position
is on like whether like a twelve year old or
a fourteen year old should be working any job at all.
We are talking about twelve year olds working on factories.
We were talking about thirteen year olds cleaning up the

(03:26:52):
floors of slaughter the kill floors of slaughterhouses. We are
talking about like, we are talking about fourteen year olds
who are like literally making food that like you are eating. Yeah,
and we're still right, So this is this is happening
in a large part because there's been a sort of

(03:27:13):
like a giant surgeon on a company of miners. Well,
it turns out a lot of those miners are on
a company because the Biden administration wouldn't let their fucking
parents into the country. And this is where this is
where we need to get into the fucking like the
whole sort of like sex trafficking panic, right because you know,
one of the things that that this panic, specifically about

(03:27:34):
sex trafficking, has covered up is that most human trafficking
is not sex trafficking. It's almost all labor trafficking. Almost
also too strong a word, but it's mostly by volume.
Most of it is is labor trafficking, which nobody gives
a single shit about because you know, there's no you
can't you can't have a moral panic around like you

(03:27:55):
can't have a moral panic around labor trafficking like people
who aren't white. And simultaneously, all the business groups who
would normally fund these panics like love this shit because
you know, all all of these capitals ghouls drinking a
thousand dollars bottles of wine, un they're thirty million dollar yachts.
All of that shit is paid for by child labor,
so of course they don't give a shit about it.

(03:28:16):
In fact, they love it. And the you know, the
product of this is you have a bunch of fucking
twelve year olds who are effectively in debt bondage, working
twelve hours a fucking day in a slaughterhouse or a
paper bill. I'm gonna read another thing for the New
York Times, which is, I don't know, so many of
these things are so depressing, but like I think this

(03:28:38):
is the most depressing thing I've read in this entire
I don't know, like in ages, I didn't get how
expensive everything was, says thirteen year old Jose Vasquez, who
works twelve hour shifts, six days a week at a
commercial egg farm in Michigan and lives with his teenage sister.
I'd like to go to school, but then how would

(03:29:00):
I pay rent? Thirteen thirteen? You know? And of course
one of you know, like the everything about this, right
is these these are people dealing with the fucking American
housing market. Right. The American housing market is intolerable to
adults who work full time, who work like full time
jobs or multiple part time jobs. Right, this is a

(03:29:23):
thirteen year old. How the fuck is a thirteen year old?
It's supposed to be paying rent?

Speaker 1 (03:29:29):
Right?

Speaker 4 (03:29:31):
And you know, and every every sort of additional thing
just makes it worse because the more the more of
these kids. And one of one of the things is
happening is these kids are getting funneed into very specific areas,
right because they're getting they're getting funneled to like specific towns,
because those specific towns have a bunch of like have
a bunch of companies who specifically want to hire these
migrant kids. And when they do that, that fucking continually

(03:29:52):
drives out the price of housing. Because all of these
people are competing for the same like fucking one Vedroe
apartment for sixteen time dollars a months, right, And so
every everything just sort of spirals in on each other
and until you get you get a fucking thirteen year
old working, working, fucking this is this is nine ninety six.

(03:30:13):
This is the fucking like thing I talked about in
China is at nine am, nine pm, six days a
week at a fucking egg farm in Michigan. In you know,
in any just world, people would die for this. In
this world, and you know, people have fucking died for this.
It's a bunch of children who are dying on their
fucking jobs in this world though. The people, you know,

(03:30:36):
the people who die for this are children. And the
Biden administration again is actively aiding fucking human traffickers by
kicking all these kids out to their families, like they're
kicking all these people out to just like fucking anyone
as soon as humanly possible, and not allowing these people's
families into the country, and then doing literally nothing at
all to ensure that like the people who are fleeing
into this country like have a place to live, or

(03:30:59):
like any kind of reasonable job or any way to
support themselves, you know, and we could, we could fucking
like there are there are individual people in the US
who benefit from this child labor who you could fucking
like throw into a box tomorrow, take all of their money,
and you could fund this entire program or individual people. Right,
No one will fucking do it. They will let these kids.

(03:31:20):
They will let every single one of these kids die
before a single billionaire has to fucking spend a single
cent taking care of these kids. Meanwhile, the actual child
laws that exists in this uh uh you know that
that exists in the US are completely useless because regulatory
agencies are taking one of two approaches. Either they do nothing,

(03:31:43):
or they spend some time investigating so they can get
a cut of the child labor money by issuing a
fine to the company.

Speaker 12 (03:31:49):
Are you fucking kidding me? It gets worse.

Speaker 4 (03:31:53):
Now, And and this is the fun part. Merely taking
a cut of the child labor money or doing nothing,
those are those might arguably be the best case scenarios.
Because the other thing that happens, and the Washington Post
has been talking, you did a very good report about this,
is the other thing they do is you know, either
they effectively enter the rev share agreement with the contractors

(03:32:15):
who are hiring these fucking human traffickers, or they do raids.
And the product of these raids is you put is
they put the families of the kids who are doing
the child labor in prison or deport them, and then
they do nothing about the actual you know, so a
lot of what's happening is happening to contractors, right, so
they'll find the contractor the parent company. Nothing will fucking happen.

(03:32:37):
And the parents of these kids, who also like cannot
fucking survive and in a lot of cases are doing
this because literally they do not have enough money to
pay rent or buy food for their kids. Those people
are getting fucking sent to prison. Are the only people,
by the way, again, the only even even though all
of these companies are systematically hiring children, they are getting
children killed, the only people going to prison are the

(03:33:00):
families of the fucking kids.

Speaker 12 (03:33:04):
I none of it makes sense, and it makes me
I mean, I can't really recover from any of this episode,
and I and I shouldn't. That is the reality, But
I just I don't know. It's it doesn't feel like
billionaires uh will ever lose it. I guess capitalism.

Speaker 4 (03:33:29):
My analysis of this is that any world that allows
us to happen is intolerable once we've burned to the ground.

Speaker 12 (03:33:35):
I agree, Oh, I agree. I think we're ready for
the rapture. But by that I just mean like the
sun exploding into us and everyone dying.

Speaker 7 (03:33:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:33:45):
I'm going to read a bit more, because you know,
the horror, the horrors never end. Here's in the Washington Post.
The Grand Island teens had been hired to scour blood
and fat from slippery kill floors using high pressure hoses,
scalding water in a dusty foams and assets. According to
the Labor Department in federal court records, they sanitize electric knives,

(03:34:06):
fat skimmers, and one hundred and ninety pounds saws used
to split cow carcasses. According to court records, some students,
and again when they say students, they're not talking about
college students. They're talking about middle and high school students,
suffered chemical burns. And we're so sleep deprived after working
their night shift, they dozed off in classes, according to
a local prosecutor in court records when asked about the children,

(03:34:29):
like the actual kids who are supposed to be you know,
the ones being saved by these by the fucking Department
of Labor raids. The Department of Labor pulled a it's
not my departments, and we're like, yeah, fuck it, we
don't know what happen to these kids. Hope they're okay,
have fun. And there's one more part of this Washington
Post article that I want to read just to sort

(03:34:51):
of like, I don't know. I think the big problem
with all of this coverage is that it's treating this
problem as if it's new. Yeah, this is sort of
like a unique product of like, oh, it's a tight
labor market in the pandemic. It's like, no, no, it's not.
Here's what the Washington Post. We have never in my
memory found the types of violations that are being found

(03:35:12):
on hazardous occupations that David wheel a professor of social
policy and management at Brand's University who was a top
labor official in the Obama administration, it's outrageous. Now, this
is bullshit, dreaming Wheels Obama administration, there was absolutely a
shit ton of migrant workers and my specifically migrant children
workers doing a bunch of incredibly dangerous and hazardous work.

(03:35:36):
It's just that they were mostly in agriculture. I mean
some of them were also in slaughterhouses, right, Like, some
of the shit was already happening as nobody paid attention
to it, and it's gotten worse. But again, they were
also just a shit ton of kids fucking like picking
tomatoes in like one hundred and ten degrees in California.
That was always happening. It was always fucking happening. Obama
specifically made it worse because one of again, one of

(03:35:58):
the things about using immigrant child labor is that you like,
if if you commit a labor violation against one of these,
against against against again someone someone who is undocumented in
a child, what the fuck are they gonna do about it? Right?
They can't go to the government. They go to the government,
they get deported.

Speaker 12 (03:36:12):
Yeah, and Obama, Yeah, the employers know that, I mean employers, yeah,
but like they know that they're control of the situation.

Speaker 6 (03:36:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:36:22):
And Obama fucking helped them do it because he deported
so many people like Obama and this fucking guy probably
also too directly, was helping literally the worst abuses of
this system happen over and over and over again. They
were they were using you know, immigration, one of the earlier.
Things you can notice about these stories is that if
you if you look at the locations right, most of
the places with these not all, but a lot of

(03:36:44):
the places where these are happening are very very anti
immigrants southern border states in the Southern states and border states.
And the reason or or or places or some places
in the Midwest like Kansas or Nebraska, and a lot
of the reason why this stuff happens here, right is
you know, if you're if if you're like, uh, if
you're a politician, right, and you know and your your

(03:37:05):
allies are local business owners, you get you get you
get to play this sort of like you get you
get to play both sides of the of the fucking spectrum. Right.
On the one hand, you get to you get to
keep hiring a bunch of mon documented immigrants, and on
the other hand, you whip up this like enormous social
hystoria about them so that all these people you know,
can can be more effectively disciplined and crushed. Right, And

(03:37:27):
everyone fucking knows how this game works, right, like all
the all the people with any real power like actually
understand this. It's it's why, it's why, Like the Justice
Department or like you know, all of all the immigration
agencies never go after the companies you hire people, They
only ever go after the actual workers themselves.

Speaker 12 (03:37:44):
Just so upsetting because like the most in their mind,
like the most helpful like useful person is the person
that has like the most to lose, and they know
that and use it against them for that reason. Yeah,
it's just so it's just fucked up in every possible way.
I don't know. Yeah, it's also just a little silly,
like you said to just like I think this just happened,

(03:38:08):
Like this is something that has clearly been building to this,
you know what I mean. I think anyone with a
brain can figure that out, because this kind of intricate
system doesn't just like pop up in a year or
two out of nowhere. It's been building it on itself.
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (03:38:26):
Yeah, it's like it yeah, Like you're definitely right, it's
not just like yeah, it's been building for ages like
it was just it was deliberately designed by those white
people who like make a bunch of fucking money from it, right,
they make slightly more money if they fucking force a
twelve year old to clean the floor of a slaughterhouse.

(03:38:46):
Than they do if they force like a twenty two
year old to do it, and so they do, and.

Speaker 12 (03:38:54):
The last is so mad.

Speaker 4 (03:38:56):
Yeah. And the last thing that I want to sort
of mention about this, right is that a lot of
these a lot of the states where this stuff is happening,
a lot of the states that are passing these laws
are also states that are like simultaneously passing like enormous
rass of anti trans legislation, like as part of their
show called like Protect the Kids thing, And you know,
you can talk about the hypocrisy of it, right, but
I think the important thing to understand here is that

(03:39:16):
Protect the Kids was always racialized, Like they don't give
a shit about the kids dying and meatpacking plants because
they aren't white, right, They're immigrant kids who these freaks
want to fucking kill anyways, And if those kids die
in the job, nobody gives a shit, right, So.

Speaker 12 (03:39:33):
It makes it's upsetting also because the majority of these kids,
I don't want to say majority, I don't want to
speak for anybody, but I feel like these kids also
they need to work in their minds, you know what
I mean, Like they're like, I have no other choice,
No one's helping me. This is the only option I have,
and it just becomes this like snaky in its own

(03:39:54):
tail bullshit where it's just I don't know, there's no
there's no good out for them because no one's fucking
helping them and their family's not there and they need
to fucking survive. So it's this thing where it's like
they're consenting to it in a in a sick way,
like not because they not, because they're consenting to it
because they want to because they need to to survive.

(03:40:15):
And the people that are in power know that and
take advantage of it. And I don't know, the lack
of empathy across the board is just inhumane and disgusting
and I hate that.

Speaker 4 (03:40:28):
I don't know. That's that's all I have, other than
a general exportation that like every single part of the
system that produces this, the entire border regime, the US
labor regime, the regime, the sort of family regimes and
this stuff relies on, like all of it needs to
fucking go, and we need to do it before another
kid gets fucking killed on a factory floor.

Speaker 12 (03:40:51):
Yeah, I have a hard time not feeling like it's
too big and it's I'm too helpless and there's nothing
to do. But I think stuff just raising awareness and
not pretending this doesn't happen here or just started happening.
I think that's a good step in the right direction.
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (03:41:10):
I think one way to look at it is that
like there there there have been regimes that are a
lot more powerful and a lot sort of a lot
more willing to kill, that have been brought down and
have collapsed don't exist anymore. So, you know, as as

(03:41:31):
as bad as everything looks on any given day, right,
like people people have done this before, they'll do it again.
And you know it's at some at some point they're like,
we will hit a point where it's fucking too much,
it will cease to be You're right, and our responsibility
is to get everyone to that point.

Speaker 12 (03:41:52):
Yeah. I think it takes longer when the like insidiousness
or the evilness is more subtle. Quote you know what
I mean, Like when it's not so outright in your face.
It's almost like it really takes longer to burn out.
And yeah, we're just in that burning out phase. Yep, well,

(03:42:14):
glad I enjoyed you.

Speaker 4 (03:42:16):
Yeah, yeah, this is to make it up here wage
war against the capitalist system and the people who kill
children for money.

Speaker 1 (03:42:29):
Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
from now until the heat death of the universe.

Speaker 9 (03:42:35):
It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

It Could Happen Here News

Follow Us On

Hosts And Creators

Robert Evans

Garrison Davis

James Stout

Show Links

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Dateline NBC

Cold Case Files: Miami

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}It Could Happen Here Weekly 93