Executive Disorder: State Dept. Summit on Left-Wing Extremism, Alien Terrorist Removal Court, Canada Tariffs

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media. This is it could Happen here Executive Disorder,
our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House,
the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm
Garrison Davis today and joined by Mia Wong and Robert Evans,
with a special sign by James Stout. This episode, we're

(00:24):
covering the week of July fifteenth to July twenty second.
On Monday morning, someone poured gasoline in front of an
entrance to the Federal Immigration Court in New York City
and lit the gasoline on fire. A forty three year
old Army vet was arrested outside the building that has
been charged with arson. The man brought a sign reading
ice off our streets and also allegedly launched a bundle

(00:45):
of fireworks and fired pellets from an air soft rifle.
Three US service members were killed this week on an
air base in Jordan as a result of Trump's war
with oron. The New York Times reported that the Trump
administration has tried to obtain phone and text records from
New York Times journalists and their families to uncover the
source of leaks regarding the security capabilities of the new

(01:08):
air Force one courtesy of the Qatar government. Cash Hotel's
overseeing this investigation. This is a huge First Amendment breach.
After multiple failed election campaigns, Katie Porter has announced she
is leaving politics to become a book influencer Oh God,
and has rebranded her Instagram account to Katie Porter turns

(01:31):
the page.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
What okay, I mean bold move to be like, you
know what, the growth industry of the future is books.
I can't fault the desire there, but I just don't
think history is going to really work that way, Katie.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Secretary Kennedy has announced the Trump administration is pausing more
than one billion dollars in medicaid payments to California and
Minnesota due to quote suspected fraud and non compliance. Play
a short clip here.

Speaker 3 (02:03):
That includes more than eight hundred and sixty seven million
dollars for California and over two hundred million dollars for Minnesota.
If those states want that money, they need to provide
documentation that these payments are legitimate.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
This will seriously harm, if not kill, people, huge numbers
of people. This is just a billion dollar cut to
medicaid citing quote unquote fraud.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
It's aimed at blue states that the administration sees as enemies.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
You know, let's move on to our first main story,
and it'll be kind of a through line this episode.
As I briefly mentioned last week, on Thursday, July sixteenth,
Mark Rubio and the State Department held an international conference
on the Scourge of Left wing violence and Antifa Terrorism.
This is just the latest escalation following Trump's designation of

(02:54):
Antifa as a quote unquote terrorist group last year and
the emboldening of law enforcements targeting left wing groups the
National Security Presidential Memorandum number seven. According to the State Departments,
this international conference was attended by representatives from sixty six countries.
Over sixty senior ministers were invited, but only seventeen ministers

(03:17):
actually were in attendance, though other quote political leaders and
experts and law enforcement officials traveled to DC for the event,
including the senior chief of the Hellenic Police from Greece.
According to a reporter from the LAHRNTA newspaper, Mexico was
invited to the summit, but the president declined to attend

(03:39):
because the conference seemed quote more political than really related
to combating criminal groups.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yeah, amazing, imagine that.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
And before the conference, Washington Post reported that many senior
ministers were confused as to the purpose of the event
and why they were invited to the conference, with two
European diplomats telling the Post quote, we don't have Antifa
end quote. Our law enforcement authorities have not focused on
left wing terrorism because this is not considered a high
priority threat in our countries.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
It doesn't really exist, yeah to us.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
So this international summit put on by Mark Rubio was
titled the Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism, Come.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
Very Serious, completely leaving out the right, and also, as
we'll talk about later, blaming a lot basically the entire
modern left on Cuba, because it's a mix of Marco
and everyone trying to panter to Trump. A lot of
these are grievances either rooted in the seventies or like
a four month period in twenty twenty. Yes, right, like
that's their entire conception of the left.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
To open the summit, Rubio told this story of a
civilizational threat posed by leftists, Marxists and anarchist political violence,
the violence that has laid dormant since the seventies but
has now awoken. Rubio plot our counter terrorism strategies in
taking down quote unquote radical Islamistic extremism. But while our

(05:06):
focus has been on Isis and jihadism, law enforcement and
the counter terrorism apparatus has been unable or unwilling to
go after left wing violence, let's hear from Rubio.

Speaker 4 (05:17):
For far too long, however, our counter terrorism doctrine has
had a blind spot, a blind spot when it comes
to extremist violence from the political left. Even today, the
very idea that far left terrorism could be a serious
threat is treated as a right wing fever dream or worse,
as a dangerous fascist conspiracy.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
It's treated this way.

Speaker 4 (05:39):
By many in the press, by many an academia and
our universities, and by many of our legacy institutions. You
will no doubt see the dogma rear its head in
the coverage of this very conference. In spite of the
clear and the undeniable reality, in spite of the objective
numbers and statistics.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
One of the main tactics alloid by Rubio, Stephen Miller,
and others throughout this conference was the subtle conflation of
mass casualty incidents from the far right with instances of
property damage or, in the most extreme cases, targeted assassination
attempts against political figures attributed to the far left, which

(06:19):
people on the far right also do, by the way.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
Much more often.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
Yeah, Rubio said quote. A whole industry grew up in
our countries around the study of extremism. We have think
tanks and fellowships and journals and consultancies, with the unspoken
understanding among them that only one kind of political violence
was a true threat to the system. A bomb planted
by a neo Nazi group was a nefarious and murderous

(06:44):
act of evil it is. But a bomb planted by
a Marxist revolutionary, well, that's just merely a tragic excess
of idealism. Perhaps its means were misplaced or over zealous,
but its ends were virtuous and just.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
Unquote, no one's ever said that, Mark, No one in
US politics has ever said that. You can find some
maniacs have said anything about anything, but like, that's simply
not a discourse in America.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
CVE researchers generally would not describe Marxist bombing plots as
virtuous and just.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
I've never heard a bombing plot described as virtuous the
only act of what you could call terrorism. I've ever
seen in the recent days people call virtuous. Is you
know what happened to that healthcare executive which Rubio does
talk about, Yes, and that is definitely a lot of
people cheered that on. But I can't think of a
single instance in which a bombing has ever been cheered on.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
And Marxist bombings, it's like, wait, was the last time
of Marxist like actually said, like, this is not a
real thing.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
It isn't that. What Rubio was talking about is a
spate of left wing affiliated bombings that occurred from nineteen
seventy one to seventy two. He talks about this in
the Cube Pity and that's what he's saying.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
That hasn't happened, like no weather underground has been above
ground for.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
Like that's entirely what all this is based on. Yeah, yeah,
and it's like it's not a thing now. Yeah, is
what old people remember about the left in the seventies.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
Yeah, you know, it's not directly referenced, but I know
the DJ did make a big hubbub about foiling a
quote unquote far left or it's kind of like an
anti imperialist like Maoist bombing plot in California late last year.
Also a confidential human source who was working with law
enforcement was involved in the planning of this operation, which

(08:28):
was stopped by law enforcement before they could ever carry
out the attack. And that's the closest thing to like
an actual like Mark City. That is the closest recent thing. Yes,
like that's it like in the last like very long
number of years now. Rubio claimed that quote an extraordinary
ideological prejudice was embedded in the way we talk about

(08:49):
political violence and extremism, to the point that this prejudice
has become the neutral and objective baseline quote, so entrenched
in the mainstream conventional with that it came to be
regarded as an apolitical fact. For an example of this,
Rubio mentions the protests against the murder of George Floyd.

Speaker 4 (09:10):
Many people in positions of power have repeatedly dismissed acts
of violence and even terrorism as legitimate forms of political
expression so long as they served a left wing cause.
It is why during those George Floyd so called George
Floyd Riots in the summer of twenty twenty, as criminals
and extremists burned and looted their way through American America's

(09:33):
Great cities and nearly brought the country to its knees.
City governments all across the country simply refused to prosecute
the people conducting these acts of violence and terror. It
is the reason for the now infamous image. Maybe you
all recall this of a news anchor from a very
prominent agency, a news anchor standing in a neighborhood consumed

(09:57):
in flames. Meanwhile, the cryon on the bottom read that
the protests were mostly peaceful.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
Can even say cairon right, My god.

Speaker 4 (10:05):
This was something worse than a double standard. Left wing
violence was not just excused, it was treated as sacricinct,
a protected class unto itself.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
A protected class unto itself, protecting their ability to light
trash on in the middle of a street.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
That's what happened. There weren't thousands of arrests and prosecutions.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
That is. The other thing is that the Trump administration
did that a little bit. But this was at the
end of twenty twenty. The Biden administration did tons and
tons of like federal arrests, yes, with people involved in
these protests, people who are still in jail. Meanwhile, the
January six people are out of jail and have had pardons.
Rubio referenced instances of political violence in Europe from recent time,

(10:53):
like a firebomb attack on the home of a Greek
politician that killed at politician's mother earlier this month. Rugu
did not mention that four suspects have already been arrested
and that this fire bombing was the first time in
over a decade that someone was killed in an attack
targeting a politician in Greece. Rubio also referenced a five
day blackout in Berlin last winter caused by a power

(11:15):
line sabotage. People claiming to be responsible for the attack
associate to themselves with a far left eco extremist group Leslie.
Rubio mentioned that in February of this year, quote, a
French twenty three year old succumbed to traumatic brain injuries
beaten to death on the streets of Leone by a
group of far left militant thugs. This twenty three year

(11:35):
old was a neo fascis quote unquote activist, that's what
he's referred to in local news coverage, who died two
days after being brutalized in a large street brawl during
a far right protest outside of a university event. Featuring
a Palestinian lawmaker. Eleven anti fascists were arrested for this.
Rubio tried to connect the current emerging threat of far

(11:57):
left political terrorism to historic Marxist struggles in the twentieth
century and particularly the nineteen seventies. Rubio name dropped to
urban grilla groups in Central South America FARC, the National
Liberation Army, the Shining Path, Maoist gorillas in Peru, as
well as European groups like Italy's Red Brigades, the Red
Army Faction in Germany, Marxistic treamists in Greece and in

(12:20):
the US, the Weather Underground, the Black Liberation Army, and
the Symbonese Liberation Army.

Speaker 4 (12:26):
And today we face a new wave of this old
evil here in the United States. The share of left
wing terrorist attacks and plots has risen to levels not
seen in decades. In Germany, far left violence has jumped
by more than forty percent in just the last year alone.
In Greece, more than eighty percent of radical violence is

(12:47):
now driven by far left and anarchist actors.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
These these are not abstract statistics.

Speaker 4 (12:54):
Americans have seen what those numbers mean, and all out
assault on our immigration officers, sniper attacks, explosives, armed ambushes,
a transgender shooter opening fire on Catholic elementary school students
as they pray, his gun marked with slogans like where
is your God now? A healthcare executive executed in cold

(13:18):
blood in the streets, multiple assassination attempts on a sitting president,
and the murder of the greatest conservative activist of a generation.

Speaker 1 (13:28):
So there's a lot there. Anarchist violence certainly isn't new
in Greece. No, and again in the American context, this
little speech by Rubio conflates mass casualty events with property
damage and isolated targeted violence. He references vague quote unquote
all out assaults on immigration officers as in big protests

(13:50):
in Minneapolis. He references a one sniper attack by a
suicidal man who was not very political and leaned libertarian
in Texas Ince as a transgender shooter who also was
not politically motivated in the traditional sense and initially planned
to shoot up an LGBTQ music venue. The United Healthcare
ceo assassination is arguably the closest thing here to like

(14:13):
left wing motivated violence.

Speaker 2 (14:15):
It's definitely politically motivated.

Speaker 1 (14:16):
Even that suspect wasn't particularly like left wing politically. No
belief in some political ideology was not the driving force
behind that assassination. It wasn't ideologically motivated, but rather materially
motivated based on interactions with our inhumane health care system.
Trying to understand every public act of violence, whether that's

(14:38):
a shooting or an assassination, just as existing in between
this left right binary is a very limited way to
actually try to understand public acts of violence, because not
all shootings have an obvious ideological driver. Public acts of
violence can be downstream of someone's personal experiences and material conditions.

(15:01):
As for the Trump assassinations, two have been from people
who were largely moderate liberals, not leftists, and the first
attempt assassination did not appear to have what we would
originally consider to be a political motive. Again from someone
with a conservative background, who was closer to what we
would describe as having like a school shooter mentality. I'll
talk about this a little bit later, but I think

(15:21):
it's really important to understand that just because the target
is a political figure does not mean it as political violence.
The attempted assassination on Ronald Reagan is a key example
of this, and investigations into the first Trump assassination found
that the shooter, Thomas Crooks, searched online for a variety

(15:43):
of events to commit a shooting at. In the month
prior to the shooting, he did more than sixty oternit
searches related to Biden, Trump and information about the upcoming
DNC and RNC conventions. Trump's campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania
just happened to take place in the right place at
the right time, And for someone who's just trying to
do a high profile shooting, it might not even matter

(16:06):
what the outcome of that attempted shooting is. These public
acts of violence usually have a suicidal component, a driver
self annihilation while simultaneously gaining some final sense of meaning
or purpose by crudely emblazoning yourself in history through a
violent act. This kind of public suicidal violence can be

(16:28):
a sort of final attempt of communing with the world.
The AP summarized report published last year by the Center
for Strategic and International Studies that found that left wing
terrorist attacks as of July of last year had surpassed
those from the far right for the first time in
more than thirty years. But a closer look at that
data showed that the uptick reflects a very low starting

(16:53):
level and a concurrent drop on the far right. Quote,
there was an average of zero point six left wing
incidents annually from nineteen ninety four through two thousand, compared
with an average of twenty point six on the right.
The report shows from twenty sixteen to twenty twenty four,
they were an average of four per year on the
left and twenty two point seven per year on the right.

(17:14):
Those numbers have dropped dramatically on the right as of
early July twenty twenty five, with only one incident. Meanwhile,
there had been five from the left. So yes, left
wing attacks in twenty twenty five did outpace what that
report as of July categorized as right wing attacks, but
that was because there was a big drop off in

(17:35):
right wing attacks once Trump came into office, and a
very small increase in attacks attributed to the left. And
that is the sort of statistics that Rubio is using
to make this push. Yeah, and you know, like it's
worth noting. It's like, okay, so why have there been
less of these sort of like right wing political terrorism events?
And it's like, well, because ICE is just doing them instead.

Speaker 2 (17:56):
Yeah, the state's doing the violence for them.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
Yeah, Like it's the same reason that you can look
at the period in which sort of like jailhouse lynching
suddenly like collapses, and the reason they collapse is that,
you know, the US government starts executing those people, and
you know, this is like a very explicit deal that's
made between the state and you know, the specific kind
of lynch mob is like we'll just carry out death
like penalty sentences against these people if you stop storming

(18:19):
prisons and lynching them in there. So you know, that's
like what's happening here, right is like you have people
with mass shooter profiles. Who are you know, ICE officers
shooting like immigrants in the streets. Now.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
One thing that was really common throughout Rubio's whole speech
and some of the follow up remarks by like Miller
and Bessett, is like a big thing that was undergirding
their rhetoric was this assumption that if the target of
violence is viewed as a right wing then the attacker
must be left wing, and any attack that goes against
what they would consider like a right wing symbol, whether

(18:51):
that's Ice, whether that's the president whatever, then whoever is
attacking that symbol must be coming from the left wing
or have some left wing motivation, and that's the way
that they're trying to frame a lot of this. One
of the old categories of violent extremism is called anti
government violent extremism, which is a very broad category which
can encompass some people who have explicit ideological drivers, but

(19:13):
also can include people who are doing public suicidal violence,
who will target the government or political figures as an
expression of their own political and societal alienation. Someone who
does this kind of public suicidal violence can often lack
a recognizably coherent political philosophy that can be easily grafted

(19:35):
on to our Democrat Republican binary, with there sometimes being
a mix of political beliefs across the left right spectrum.
But now that Trump is in office, any attack against
the federal government can be used by the Trump administration
as an example of left wing terrorism attacking a right
wing government. Take, for instance, the sniper attack in Texas

(19:56):
targeting and ice facility and vehicles. Although actually shooting multiple immigrants,
this shooter was described by his friends as being largely
a political but leaned libertarian This shooting also had a
suicidal aspect in that he did kill himself after the shooting.
With Trump in charge of the federal government, nihilistic and

(20:19):
self destructive attacks against American society may take a form
which can be characterized as left wing violence. Another example
of this is the plot against the UFC Freedom two
fifty event, where self described Christian patriots who saw themselves
as aspiring revolutionaries tried to start the Second American Revolutionary

(20:42):
War by targeting high level politicians and public figures at
the UFC White House event. These people are not on
what I would consider the left wing, but in the
conservative coverage of this attack, this was framed as an
anti capitalist attack targeting Trump's cabin Towards the end of
Rubio's speech, he started talking about this like international strategy

(21:04):
that they want to develop to handle this emerging threat. Quote,
this is an international conference because we are facing an
international transnational threat. These are not distinct and isolated cells.
They are interconnected networks. They do not recognize our borders,
They do not believe, in fact, in the nation state itself.
They coordinate, they communicate, they travel, they train, and they

(21:25):
act together, sharing the same infrastructure, sharing the same enemies,
sharing the same mission, and I'll play one more clip
from Rubio Here.

Speaker 4 (21:34):
ANTIFAM militants and their comrades travel from across Europe and
to the Americas to participate in each other's attacks, to
funnel propaganda and training materials and target information through shared
encrypted channels, moving through underground networks of safehouses and finance,
and sustain their operations through transnational funds. And they work

(21:56):
alongside hostile foreign states that share their mission, like a
Rocks Iranian proxy networks, who are increasing increasingly intimately tied
to leftist militant groups around the world. The Cuban regimes
sprawling intelligence and ideological network help to build the far
left in our country and in our hemisphere, and it

(22:17):
remains inextricably linked to the far left groups and movements
across and beyond the West. Today's far left terrorists can
raise money in one country, they can host their communications
in a second country. They can receive training in a
third country. They can recruit militants in a fourth country,
and then together strike a target in a fifth country.

Speaker 2 (22:40):
A thing that we've never seen happen. This is complete
fiction that's never ever happened. This is not once, where
are they training Marco? This is like a Tom Clancy novel,
that's he does think they're training in Cuba. Actually I
shouldn't ask that.

Speaker 1 (22:54):
Yeah, the only thing that functions like this is the
Central Intelligence Agency? What nothing else works like this?

Speaker 2 (22:59):
That's entirely true, like the global far right does to
a degree work that's true, right, Like, yeah, there's an
element now. Now I wouldn't even describe it that way
because that's more elaborate than I've ever seen the global
far right do, honestly, But yeah, they're versions of that
do occur, where people are like traveling to one country
for armed training or whatever.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
Yeah, yeah, I guess you could look back at the
old like world anti communist networks exactly like league networks,
where they would do that, but like this, I mean
I wonder if they would consider stuff like traveling to
like Rojava, right, a leftist traveling to Rojava or traveling
to like you know, see like Zapatista's right, if that's
kind of what he's thinking of, or if he's even
thinking about it in like a real literal way.

Speaker 2 (23:35):
I can tell you specifically what he's thinking about in this,
I mean, he's thinking about two things. He's trying to
directly draw a comparison for political purposes to the influencers
who went out of to Cuba recently. But the thing
that he is actually thinking about is the way a
chunk of the global far left worked in like the
sixties and seventies, Kadafi trained the IRA right Like there
were a lot of like web not all of them,
but like there was people did travel from left wing

(23:56):
groups to other places and then carried out attacks in
other kind That was a thing that occurred during what
is often called the Golden Age of terrorism. This is
a lot of This is just more Marco not leaving
the seventies behind, like even though again it's fifty years
since that kind of shit's been going on almost and
Kadafi's dead, like the IRA isn't exactly active anymore either.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
We'll return to talk more about far left transnational terrorism
after this at break we are back. There's one last

(24:41):
part about this Antifa far left terrorism summit that happened
at the Tate Department that I want to hone in on,
and that is the remarks made by Stephen Miller. So
brace yourself for a short clip of Miller here.

Speaker 5 (24:56):
President Trump issued a directive in our parlance called a
National Security Presidential Memorandum or NSPN NSPM seven to be exact,
that directs, for the first time in American history, all
of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies to work together
to disrupt, identify, defund, debank, arrest, and prosecute these political

(25:23):
terrorists that are operating in our country. There's no point
at which the left wing terrorist is satisfied with his
gains and ceases progressing inevitably left to run its course,
it always becomes a gulag. It always becomes the mass
imprisonment of political enemies, the stripping of their rights and freedoms,

(25:45):
inflicting immense pain, humiliation, suffering. In order to establish complete
and total control control through psychological and physical and actual.

Speaker 1 (25:58):
Terror, we must disrupt, identify, defund, d bank, arrest, and
prosecute these political terrorists, or else they will turn the
country into a goolag and conduct the mass imprisonment of
political enemies and establish total psychological control. It's just that
we must do the genocide before they do the genocide
against us thing. And that is a lot of how

(26:20):
Miller and the Ambassador for the Counter Terrorism Bureau talk
about this so like, we need to stop this before
it gets bigger. We know it seems kind of small
right now, but by the time that everyone realizes this
is a huge threat, then it's already too late. Then
we've already lost. We have to end this thing right
now as it still is like an infant, like we
cannot let this thing grow up. That is very much
how he talks about it. And he is really frustrated

(26:42):
about the way that attempts by the repreministration to do
this have been curtailed or I've not been able to
really be followed through on to the extent that he wants.
And she has a specific thing that's been happening that
he's really upset about. And that's a little term that
some people in the audience might be familiar with called
jury qualification.

Speaker 5 (27:02):
There's a real threat that those who are not themselves terrorists,
but who support left wing violence will create the conditions
that allow that violence to go on without any meaningful inhibition.
So to be specific, we've seen some of our nation's

(27:23):
cities in America, like Washington, d C. In New York
City something again as an American term, but it's known
as jury nullification. This is when a person is obviously
guilty of a crime, but the juror, because they're ideologically
sympathetical sympathetic to the perpetrator, will not sentence them to
the crime which have obviously committed. We've seen in the
United States again and again individuals who are part of

(27:46):
lefting organizations who've committed the saults against ice officers or
federal law enforcement, who have been brought to court where
clear evidence has been presented against them, that the jury
has refused to convict for purely political reasons. When you've
reached that point, it demonstrates how deeply the cancer has
begun to infest your society.

Speaker 1 (28:06):
According to a new report in Just Security Quote, nearly
half the cases nationwide brought against protesters and immigrants for
assault against a law enforcement officer or dismissed by judges,
with drawn by prosecutors, or resulted in jury acquittals, and
at least eighteen publicly reported instances grand juries have refused
to indict, at least sixteen grand jury subpoenas have been

(28:27):
blocked or withdrawn, and judges have dismissed or prosecutors have
dropped at least seventy nine cases relating to ice protests
or federal law enforcement surgis across DC, Chicago, Minnesota, and
Los Angeles in a period of two months. The US
Attorney's Office in DC dropped more cases than it had
in the previous ten years combined, unquote. And that also
shows the scale in which they're bringing these cases against protesters.

(28:50):
This is something that Miller is really upset about. This
is something that is severely prohibiting the administration's ability to
go after quote unquote left wing terrorism, what they view
as left wing terrorism, and he's really frustrated about this.
Here's one last quote from him. Quote. One of the
hallmarks of left wing violence and terrorism is it's completely
protectual and disingenuous appeal to civil liberties in an effort

(29:13):
to shield its own violence. This is the tactic that
the left always uses to try to protect itself from
facing criminal punishment. It is essential that we are wise
enough and strong enough to understand that these appeals must
fall on deaf ears. We must stay the course and
be completely unflinching in the pursuit of justice against these
enemies of civilization unquote. And Miller and Rubio went on

(29:36):
pretty lengthy rants about how the threat of left wing
violence really is this civilizational threat against what is beautiful
and what is good, what is natural. It's a quote
from Miller against this like ugly hatred that fuels the left,
this sort of like you know, like resentment for like
failing at life, and now they want to attack those
of us who like succeed those of us who like

(29:57):
build very fascistic like stuff. At the end of both their.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
Speeches, very and also very Bin Shapiro stuff. To be honest,
the whole builders and takers thing. I mean, he didn't
start that, but it is interesting to see there's so
many old throwbacks to this because you can tell these
these are guys who get started in writing politics before
the current era because they keep hearkening back to stuff
that's just like not as big a part of like
the modern vernacular, which is always interesting to me, like

(30:24):
how stuck a lot of these guys are in the past.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
At a post conference press conference for Foreign Press, the
Coordinator and Ambassador at Large for the Bureau kinter Terrorism
reiterated that the US Keno Terrism strategy is still focusing
on three main types of threat groups. NARCO terrorists, Islamic
Corgiatis terrorists, and far left terrorists, and that they need
to quote identify terror actors and plots before they happen.

(30:50):
He calls far left rorism a resurgent threat with a
clear upward trend and that they are quote committed to
addressing it before it metastasizes that they want to hold
this scourge before it grows into something larger, more unified,
and more deadly. The ambassador outlined three concrete outcomes from
this conference. The first was on designations and accountability, and

(31:12):
like Rubio, he promised that additional foreign terrorist organizations and
specially designated global terrorist designations for quote unquote far left
groups are under active review and are going to be
incoming soon, following the four designations of europe based groups
last year, so there's going to be more left wing
or Antifa related groups designated as foreign terrorist organizations. Secretary

(31:35):
Bessin talked about how legitimate nonprofit and charitable structures are
being quote exploited as a mechanism to conceal the movement
of illicit funds to support political terrorism, and the Ambassador
talked about how international partners are discussing prospects quote allowing
their own legal frameworks to ensure that these networks cannot
simply relocate across borders. As a part of these terrorist designations,

(31:59):
that Measuri's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence will take
steps to dismantle the funding which sustains these groups, and
the state departments also offering payments it up to ten
million dollars for information disrupting far left terrorist financing. The
second outcome of the conference was on operational coordination like
deepening information sharing between partner agencies and coordinating on travel

(32:20):
restrictions and strengthening the protection of critical infrastructure like transportation
and energy systems. It was also announced that Germany would
host the next quote unquote counter terrorism Workshop. The last
concrete outcome of this event was new visa restrictions quote
targeting members of far left terrorists and aligned groups. For

(32:42):
more on that, let's throw to our colleague James stout.

Speaker 6 (32:47):
Hi one, it's James coming at you with the second
attempt to record this. Find myself traveling every Wednesday at
the moment, so apologies for missing out on recording to
everyone else, I will be back next week. I promise.
We were turned to our usual shared conversation, but I
did want to check in with everyone this week because
I want to talk about a couple of things. Last week,

(33:07):
for the first time in its history, the United States
government attempted to remove someone through the use of the
Alien Terrorists Removal Court. This is something that was first
published by Shamus Hughes at Court Works and want to
give credit book credits you shame of spensern On godly
amount of time looking at PACER and other court documents
have found this.

Speaker 1 (33:25):
So background's court right.

Speaker 6 (33:26):
It's established in nineteen ninety six by the Anti Terrorism
and Effective Death Penalty Act. That law allows the Attorney
General to designate some of the terrorists and use this
process if Title two removal will be a threat to
national security. Now, the hearings in the ATRC, I will
say they fly extremely close to the sun with regards
to constitutional rights and the concept.

Speaker 2 (33:48):
Of a fair trial. There are lots of.

Speaker 6 (33:52):
Provisions in this law for classified evidence, for restrictions on
the things that the defendant can obtain by discovery. The
law also said, as quote, an alien subject to removal
under this title shall not be entitled to suppress evidence
of the alien alleges was unlawfully obtained. That's great stuff.
It's just worth noting nineteen ninety six is before the
start of the Global War on Terror, and it therefore

(34:16):
pre dates the existence of the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.
At the United States had a base at Guantanamo Bay,
but the large scale extra judicial torturing of people, what
they called enhanced interrogation at Guantanamobe, had not begun in
nineteen ninety six.

Speaker 1 (34:30):
Right.

Speaker 6 (34:30):
I'm not saying that they were not doing extra judicial
things in nineteen ninety six. I'm just saying that the
GITMO as we understand it today for those of us
who have grown up with it as a political reality
for most adult lives, didn't exist in that sense.

Speaker 1 (34:43):
Then.

Speaker 6 (34:43):
I'm not saying that they were not.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
People detained there. They probably were.

Speaker 6 (34:46):
I'm not saying they did not do extra judicial things
in pursuit of quote unquite aity terrorism.

Speaker 2 (34:50):
I believe they did.

Speaker 6 (34:52):
Boseberg mentioned this court Judge Bosburg, right, remember him from
the El Salardore Sicot cases, when he told the government
that there was a procedure for someone accused of terrorism
because the government basically said.

Speaker 2 (35:04):
Oh, well, these people are terrorists.

Speaker 6 (35:06):
Look at that we put them on a plane, send
them to a death camp and ensemble or essentially right
a prison that very few people leave. Eventually, most of
these people did leave in this case, but it was
very unusual for someone to leave that camp. And what
he said was quote so, if there's a national security
concern with having these hearings, whether via habeasts or otherwise,
you can always go to the ATRC, which will be

(35:27):
a first. But that's what it's there for, right. So
at the time, he's pointing to it, saying, if you
can't put the evidence for these people's the need to
remove these people out in public. That's why we have
the ATRC. When it used that, Trump administration said we
can use that, that does not mean we have to
use that, and that was their argument, right. The court

(35:47):
is of not just people engage in terrorism, it's also
their families. It's also people accused of things like soliciting
others to engage in actual terrorism or raising funds. It also
appears that once a person they've submitted an application for
removal through this court, they can detain a person. The
court has this crazy website. It looks like it was
very hastily created, it's not a usual website for court

(36:09):
at all. Usually court websites that they were made in
the late nineteen nineties. They are very difficult to navigate
and they have a huge amount of data that it's
hard to find. That's why a lot of us like
to use court Listener or some other website rather than
going directly to the court pages, which can be very
hard to navigate. This page lists of judges, where each
of the judges comes from a different US circuit, and

(36:30):
it has the two documents that the court has made
available so far. One is pretty much all blanked out.
The other one is a court order in which court
Chief Judge asserts, quote, the government could benefit from an
opportunity for more thoughtful consideration. So they've made an application
to remove someone by this court and that is a
response of the court at this time. Right, obviously, this

(36:52):
is very concerning. Right immigration court to begin with, I
think is getting closer and closer to being something that
is sort of openly flouting the Constitution and people's rights. There.
Immigration judges are not judges in the sense that you
understand judges to be, even though some of them have
worked hard to give people due process and many of

(37:12):
them are now being removed. One could demized because of them.
But if we look at this in addition to the
United States adding groups in Mexico and Europe to the
FTO list Foreign Terrorist Organizations. For those who aren't familiar,
it's especially concerning right. And it's especially concerning when we
look another announcement this week which explicitly cited NSPM seven,

(37:33):
which we've spoken about lengths on this show, limiting visas
for people it calls anti fascist and far left terrorist groups.
The announcement began going to quote from extensively here, right,
far left terrorists and aligned groups use sophisticated organized networks
to perpetrate violence as a political tool, seeking to implement
an extreme political vision through intimidation and coordinated campaigns of terror.

(37:56):
It is a strategy that explicitly aims to undermine the
political foundation of free and self governing societies, utilizing bombings, assassinations,
and other forms of terrorism to silence speech, limit political opposition,
change policy outcomes, and sabotage political processes. This announcement also
said that it's quote targets members of far left terrorists
and other aligned groups who have supported or incited acts

(38:17):
of terrorism, supported violent criminal activity, participated in economic sabotage, finance,
recruited or provide logistical support for violent or criminal actions,
cremated by far left terrorists and other aligned groups, and
or facilitated the convergence of far left terrorists and other
aligned networks for the purposes of violent action. Some of
these are pretty broad, right, economic sabotage normally also to

(38:38):
Agris suggest that that could include bds. But I think
given where we are, it's not crazy to think that, right,
some of these facilitating the conversions, Right, is that like
holding a big summit is like the logistical support for
violent criminal actions. So does that mean bail funds all
of these things? Cash bail, I guess is less less

(38:59):
of a thing outside the US. Does that mean people
who have done jail support, right, that kind of thing?
This is super concerning. The State Department explicitly cites Section
two twelve, Subsection A, Parts three, subsection C of the
Immigration and Nationality Act, which deals with the inadmissibility of aliens.
This section begins quote an alien whose entry or proposed
activities in the United States, Secretary of State has reasonable

(39:21):
ground to believe have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences
for the United States is inadmissible. So that's a very
very broad category.

Speaker 7 (39:31):
Right.

Speaker 6 (39:31):
Notably, it is not sub Section B, which deals specifically
with terrorism or which terrorists are in admissible. This is
a different one which deals with this very broad power
given to the Secretary of State to decide whose admission
would be bad for the United States foreign policy consequences
they've used just before. Right, this is a favorite of
this administration. But again, right, this is an example of

(39:53):
a law which gives massive leeway to in this case,
part of the executive branch, Secretary of State, and it
is therefore he's using that leeway right to do this.
I think that we should be especially concerned when we
combine this with some of the other things that we're seeing. Right,

(40:13):
we are seeing social media surveys of applicants. Right, people
have to submit their whole social media before they apply.
We are seeing phone searches at the border more and
more frequently, right, famously the JD Vance meme, but it's
not uncommon to see these phone searches at the border.

Speaker 1 (40:26):
Now.

Speaker 6 (40:27):
We have also seen this week the elimination of duration
of status for a number of visas f ones being
probably the most numerous. F one being a student visa
right also some foreign journalists visas. Other visa types as
well included there, but I want to focus on the
ones because I think that will be the one that
impacts the most people. So generally, with an F one visa,
once you maintained status are once you are still in school,

(40:51):
you could keep your student visa right now, These include
like a time limit on the duration of the visa.
For some people, this will be a serious issue if
you are entering, for example, to speaking from experience here,
if you are entering a program in the United States
in the humanities, and you are entering with a bachelor's degree, right,
not a master's.

Speaker 2 (41:11):
Degree, you will then have to.

Speaker 6 (41:15):
Advance to candidacy right, complete the requirements for your master's degree,
and demonstrate competency in two languages. Let's assume you are
not someone who is multi lingual. That could take a while,
right like, depending on how strict the testing is at
the particular university you go to. Then you will have
to research, then you will have to write, then you
will have to do a dissertation. These time limits on
the F one visa are less than the nominal time

(41:37):
to degree at some institutions, and that means that it's
going to be very hard for graduate students, especially to
come to the United States to do those degrees. That,
combined with this denial of visa's thing, is going to
have an impact on the way campuses look in the
United States, and it's going to have a broader impact

(41:57):
than that.

Speaker 2 (41:57):
Of course it is.

Speaker 6 (41:58):
But this is a thing that I have direct experience with. Right.
F one student visas are numerous. I've taught dozens, if
not hundreds of F one students. I came on a
student visa when I did my PhD. And like, one
of the reasons that people come here, and this is
something that I've heard from so many people, is that, like,
this country has a Bill of rights, and the very

(42:20):
first Amendment to the Constitution guaranteed freedom of speech, and
that isn't the case everywhere. That is a thing that
is good, but it is more and more and more
under attack, especially for foreign students.

Speaker 1 (42:34):
Right.

Speaker 6 (42:34):
We've seen this right from the very beginning of a
Trump administration, and I believe that this will be part
of that same attack. Right when we look at all
these things together, these are the clearest signposts we have
seen yet to the new McCarthyism. Right. We can talk
about what Rubio said about Cuba, we can talk about
this Antifa summit, which I will talk about soon in
more depth. But it is not hard to draw a

(42:57):
line from, for instance, a prosecution and the persecution outside
the legal system of Lincoln Brigadiers right, people who volunteered
to fight fascism in Spain to what is happening today.
And it is sad but not shocking to see yet
another shameful aspect of this country's history resurfacing and becoming
policy again. So I guess I'll just finish up by saying,

(43:19):
if this has impacted you, if you are someone who's
recently had a visa refused, if you are somebody who
was trying to get in an IF one visa and
it is now finding shit, I don't think I can
do my degree in that much time. What do I
do here? I always want to tell stories about people,
not just about government announcements, So you can hit us
up Cool Zone tips at proton dot me if you'd

(43:41):
like to talk about that. Thanks to and I'll be back
with everybody next week.

Speaker 1 (43:46):
We will discuss teriffs and even more far left terrorism.
After this ad break, we're back.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
So earlier this week, the US State Department put out
a one hundred page report this would be on Monday,
about Cuba's history of trying to overthrow or manipulate US
politics via left wing activists and quote unquote left wing
militants going back to the sixties. When they say going
back to the sixties, basically what I mean is pretty
much exclusively the sixties and seventies. Is almost everything in

(44:28):
this document that relates to the US directly in any way.
The document, which is basically this is just to give
you a little bit of background. This is all Rubio, right,
not just what Gare has been talking about, but particularly
trying to drum up fear and panic around Cuba and
justify an invasion or regime change in Cuba. That's been
his whole fucking life goal for a very long time.

(44:51):
There's a pretty good Guardian article from last year with
the title Marco Rubio Niar's goal of toppling Cuba's government,
and I want to read a brief quote from that.
The campaign against Cuba's government is the culmination of a
personal pursuit spanning decades. In a video released on Cuban
Independence Day this week, Rubio said in Spanish that a
US embargo was not the reason for the country's privations,
telling Cubans that currently the only thing standing in the

(45:12):
way of a better future are those who control your country.
All roads have been leading to Cuba for Rubio. Set
a person who has known Rubio since his time as
a local politician in South Florida. He has wanted this
for a long time, and now he finally has the
authority to reach that goal. Now, Trump has made a
couple of comments that make people believe he is in
the process of planning to try and force the government

(45:33):
of Cuba out one way or another. Last Thursday, he
told reporters other presidents have looked at this for fifty
sixty years doing something about Cuba, and it looks like
I'll be the one that does it, So I would
be happy to do it. Now. Hard to say is
that actually means anything. Trump says a lot of stuff
that doesn't come true, but there's been real world reasons
to believe that he seriously intends to do this. I mean,
first off, what happened in Venezuela, right where we used

(45:56):
our special operations forces to take out and and extradite
legally elect it well to ext write the president of
a sovereign country. Right. This is something that like you've
had like a lot of planners and depending on talking
about for years, is like, well, we could use these
guys to just deal with problems at the top, right.
And for Rubio, there's a lot of speculation that Venezuela

(46:18):
was kind of a proof of concept for him, right,
that we could in fact use a very small footprint
force get the current ruling regime out of there, or
enough of them that they're not willing to fight back anymore.
And that might be something that the US military is
capable of doing. I don't have a great sense as
to Cuba's defensive capacity or how functional they would be

(46:38):
at doing this, or how much support the regime would
enjoy in the event that the US try this, or
how much that support would matter. It kind of depends
on the weapons systems they use at the moment. We
know that the US NIMICS and its Strike Group have
recently been brought into the South Caribbean c as part
of an ongoing military build up, and there have been
some other signs that the regime is planning to act.
Axios recently published in articles that administration estimates that Cuba

(47:02):
now has some three hundred military drones quote, and was
considering using them to attack a US base at Guantanamo Bay,
US ships, or even targets in Florida, Miami. Your days
are numbered now, folks. I'm going to walk you through
some stuff. First off, we don't actually have hard evidence
that they bought any of these drums. There was some

(47:22):
earlier reporting, and I'm sure they have been talking with Iran,
and I know that they have ongoing defense agreements with Russia,
and I wouldn't be shocked if they had bought like
three hundred of these, like Shihed style cheaper suicide drones.
Here's the thing. The night before we recorded this, Ukraine
launched a major attack on Moscow using four hundred drones.
If Cuba does have three hundred Iranian drones, that is

(47:43):
roughly enough to carry out an offensive against US forces
for two to three seconds, perhaps a little more, maybe
more like fifteen to twenty, you know. But it's not
an invasion force. It's not really a defensive force. And
we also don't know that they even have them, right,
it wouldn't be weird if they did. But this isn't
any reason and to believe there's any kind of a
threat coming from Cuba. The fact that they're trying to
really hype up three hundred drones. It's twenty twenty six.

(48:07):
You can run through that in an afternoon.

Speaker 1 (48:09):
Yeah, And also, like I just want to be very clear,
Cuba is not planning to launch strikes in the United States.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
Come on, like, you look at the last sixty years
of history, right, We had one big dust up with
them over the fucking Bay of Pigs, And obviously the
Cuban government funded and sent soldiers and doctors and other
stuff into a variety of countries, and that led to
conflicts in places like Africa with the US. But there's
never been any direct aggression from Cuba towards the United States. No,

(48:35):
we're not in danger from them. One of the most
ridiculous things you could do today is watch the celebrated
Aaron Sorkin movie A Few Good Men, which is entirely
about how well, you know, you don't understand how difficult
it is protecting America from Cuba. You know, we really
we got to be extra crazy to keep the Cubans
off the walls of the United States like it's fucking nonsense,

(48:55):
and it's Marco is number one. Marco comes from a
Cuban American background, His whole family hates the Castro government.
He has wanted and seen himself as ordained to destroy
the Communist government in Cuba for his entire life. That
doesn't mean that there's any kind of realistic threat here,
or any real reason to feel like any kind of
actual danger. And you can see that in the report itself, right,

(49:19):
there's even some bits here where they almost admit it. Right,
I'm going to read one segment. The Cuban campaign against
America is unique. It is a regular and covert. Even
at the peak of its military power, Havana never possessed
the capacity to defeat the United States at a conventional
armed conflict. Instead, the Cubans perfected a new model for
a long war of attrition organized around espionage, infiltration, sabotage,
proxy networks, and a revolutionary infrastructure designed to turn America

(49:41):
against itself. Did Cuba do that? Did Cuba turn America
against itself? And also, if they've perfected a war of attrition,
why are they out of gas, and like the United
States is the healthiest economy in the world. I mean,
it's because we stole a bunch of shit. But there's
no evidence that Cuba has done some sort of horrible
damage to the US. In fact, all of the damage
says otherwise that we've continued to fuck over the Cubans

(50:03):
for goddamn no reason for decades. It's incredibly frustrating. And again,
the more you read this, the more you realize unless
he's talking about like shit that because he does periodically
talk about like fucking South America and some of the
different like Cuban like state involvement there, But when he's
talking about acts that can be traced to Cuba that
involve violence in the US at all, it's just shit

(50:23):
from the sixties and seventies, right, which is like back
when Cuba's economy was functional and they're the backing of
the USSR. And also like none of it ever came
close to doing serious damage to the United States as
like a national, like as a nation, right, none of
that was never in the fucking cards. You know, it's
very frustrating to have to even take any of this serious,
but you do because they are going to try to

(50:44):
blame and try to punish and imprison people based on
this fucking fantasy. Right, And one of the things you've
seen a lot of quotes like when Marco came up
to talk and give a speech about this report, he
accused Iron and Cuba of funding both Antifa and the DSA. Right, Like,
come on, and he'll make these comments in his speeches.
The actual report isn't even willing to go that far,

(51:06):
because when you get to the meat of the report,
Marcito doesn't even have the guts to call the DSA
a Cuban op quote. The DSA was not founded as
a Cuban intelligence or influence front. It was born in
nineteen eighty two as a fusion of socialist organizations and
movements for both the Old Left and New Left factions.
And you know, like they're right that people in the
DSA are very angry about what the US is doing
into Cuba because they're out of fuel and starving and

(51:28):
being continually harmed by our completely pointless boycotts and trade
fucking wars. Like there's not much more than that for
most people to it. There's some weirdos out there, but.

Speaker 1 (51:39):
It is really interesting how carefully. The report talks about
DSA because like DSA's mentioned a lot, DSA is mentioned
very frequently.

Speaker 2 (51:48):
But there's no direct connection.

Speaker 1 (51:50):
DSA's mentioned twenty four times in a one hundred page document,
but they're very careful to be like DSA's could be
sympathetic to the human government, but DSA is not a
reziz result of Cuban influence necessarily, No.

Speaker 2 (52:03):
And I think the argument they are making is that
you had a split between the old left and the
new Left, and the Cuban government founded a bunch of
new left factions, and because the DSA is a fusion
of old left and new left factions, that means that
they're partly a result of Cuban operation. Sure, that's what
they're trying to argue, right, It's build some sort of

(52:25):
historical justification to if they go after DSA people or
activists who have gone to Cuba to delivery mediaran ads,
that build some sort of framework to criminalize people who
are sympathetic to people living in Cuba. Yeah, I think
that's precisely what's happening. And one thing that's kind of
telling is even among news sources that are like sympathetic

(52:48):
to the right, and to the administration. No one's pretending
that this paper isn't just Marco like pushing out his
own personal vendettas. Like I found a Washington Examiner article
summarize the report as Marco Rubio accusing the Cuban government.
Here's an exact quote from the Washington Examiner. Secretary of
State Marco Rubio accused the Cuban government of running one
of the most sophisticated infiltrations of US politics, in part

(53:10):
using the Democratic Socialists of America. So even with a
lot of these articles, they're like, yeah, this is just
Rubio fucking spouting off, right, Like this is mostly oh Marco,
And among some of like the crazy like anti communist
sites I've been reading, they're still like, well, there's nothing
new in this. They didn't because they are reading like, well,
nothing passed like the seventies involves the US directly.

Speaker 1 (53:30):
Which is going to say there's not real danger here, right,
there was no huge danger. One of the main activists
that Code Pink, which was this organization that that co
organized some of those aide trips to Cuba, is under
federal investigation right now. And this indicates that despite how
much of this is just Rubio having fun with this
little pet project. This does show where the targets of

(53:50):
the administration are. Oh yeah, and that can be the
DSA and people doing humanitarian aid trips.

Speaker 2 (53:57):
And it's specifically because of that humanitarian aid trip, right,
like that gave Rubio a really good like you know,
honestly wasn't anything. I think just pissed him off because
he hates the Cuban government more than anything, and the
idea that anyone would want to like bring aid to
the people in Cuba is like infuriating to him. Now again,
we know that Trump is in the process of planning
to try and force the government of Cuba out one

(54:18):
way or another. That doesn't mean he actually will, right
he hasn't committed fully to that yet. But given what
happened in Venezuela and given what's going on in Iran,
I think it would be foolish to say I don't
think he's going to try, right, Like, I think that's
not the smart If I'm making a bet. I certainly
hope he doesn't. I hope they get scared. I hope
shit with Iran is bad enough that they chicken out.
But I think it would be foolish to assume they're

(54:38):
not going to try and unseat the government of Cuba. Right, Yeah,
I don't think that's the rational way to look at this, right,
And whether this is all bluster or not, you know,
is going to be seen. But as I said, the
US Nimits and Strike Group have moved into the South Caribbean,
and there's a lot of talk about like, oh, we
think the Cubans are planning an attack on Guantanamo. Last Thursday,

(54:59):
Marco Ruby pedeed his claim that Havana has weapons they
acquired from quote Russia and China, and that they host
Russian and in Chinese intelligence in country, which is also
interesting that he's so stuck in the Cold War he
has to keep bringing Russia into it. Now there's a
big debate as like how can it it is Trump
actually to unseating the Cuban government, And that's always hard
to tell because when he does talk about it, it

(55:20):
sounds like, oh, he wants that feather in his cap.
But you also get the feeling this is a thing
where whoever he talks to last as in a lot
of cases, going to heavily set his agenda. And Senator
Chris Murphy, who serves on the Foreign Relations Committee, said
something like that quote. I do think that as Trump
gets older and he spends his days sleeping and worrying
only about his ballroom, he's increasingly susceptible to dangerous people
around him with dangerous agendas. And there is a crowd

(55:42):
of Cuba hawks who have always wanted us to invade,
and who think they might be able to take advantage
of it increasingly checked out old man, and I just
think we have to be prepared for that. And honestly,
I think Chris pretty much like that. Yeah, it's more
or less right, Chris. I think that's basically an accurate summary.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
The sanest man in the room.

Speaker 2 (56:00):
Yeah, that sounds right to me.

Speaker 1 (56:04):
Let's turn to the midterm elections before we close. In Florida,
the Groper candidate for Governor, James Fishback, who I did
an episode about a few months ago, is not going
to win that election, but he is pulling double digits,
which is bad. And worse, he is dominating youth polls.

(56:26):
He has fifty one percent in youth polls. That's ages
eighteen to thirty four. Really really dark look at a
future of the Republican Party Fishback is like barely even
like a crypto fascist. He's barely even hiding it. I mean,
he plays with dog whistles, but also just openly says
a bunch of anti Semitic stuff and very racist attacks,

(56:48):
all with a sort of wink wink, nudge nudge in
that classic groper charisma style. But there's another aspect of
the Fishback race I want to briefly mention is that
there's been a lot of ai ads targeted against Fishback,
where it has like AI generated video deep fake style

(57:08):
of Fishback with like the Squad and Russia and Putin
and Alan Omar and Rashida Taalob foreign generals, Muslim leaders
in the Middle East with her jobs. Basically, he's like
welcoming all of these people into his home and they
cut up an anti Israel cake and that's the ad.

(57:28):
It looks, I mean like someone like me can tell
it's AI a boomer might not be able to. And
this is something that Thomas Massey, since losing his race,
has said that he believes through talking with voters, specifically
older voters, that many boomers and older voters believed the

(57:49):
ai ads against Massi that Massey was in like a
threuple with like AOC and someone else Elanomar. I think
that he actually got calls his office got calls to
asking if this was true. So these sorts of ai
ads are a real problem, obviously, the fact that these
are against Fishback. I'm not being sympathetic to Fishback here,
but this is a more general societal problem. Moving on

(58:13):
to another governor's race in Wisconsin, Democratic socialist Francesca Hong
is ahead in the polls, but many people are still undecided.
In a Wedgewood poll from mid July, Francesco Hong is
up thirty eight percent, Mendela Barnes is thirty percent, and
David Crowley is nine percent, though undecided or supporting another

(58:36):
candidate is pulling up twenty three percent in that poll,
so there could still be upwards of like twenty percent
of people who are undecided. There's been some other polls
in the past few days that show Francesca Hong about
fifteen percent above everyone else, so that is a good
sign for her. I know there's been some organizers from
New York and across the country going into Wisconsin right

(58:57):
now to help with this last leg of the campaign.
This is a very important race looking at what the
future of the viability of democratic socialism is going to
be in swing states. This past week, David Crowley re
entered the race, which may split the moderate vote, which
could help Hong win the primary. It's another thing to

(59:19):
keep an eye on here. In Maine, Troy Jackson is
said to be the Democratic cent nominee after organizers and
volunteers secured the vast majority of delegates for the nominee
replacement convention. I've mentioned Jackson a few times on the
show because he ran for governor with the endorsement of
DSA and Bernie Sanders, who was the only person to

(59:40):
receive the endorsement of DSA Platner did not. Jackson's a
former state lawmaker, a five generation lagger, very pro labor,
like the most like legitimate working class pro labor candidate.
He's pulling a little bit ahead of Collins right now,
like about three percent, but this is going to be
a very close race, is going to be very tough.

(01:00:01):
Another really close race right now is the Democratic send
primary in Michigan with corporate and APAC backed Hailey Stevens
going up against left wing populist Abdual l said, there
has been a ton of outside spending the past few
weeks with multiple attack ads smearing l said as quote
unquote sexist, and these are all just for him, like

(01:00:25):
criticizing female politicians, like criticizing Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama,
like not attacking them for being women, but doing very
sometimes actually very soft criticism of like their ability to
improve the world as political actors. But the playbook that
Stevens and that larger campaign has been using has been
trying to smear el said as a quote unquote sexist podcast. Bro.

(01:00:49):
This is the sort of last last light of defense.
This style of liberalism has had this going back to
this sort of identity reductionism. When they are faced with,
you know, vast actual economic and policy differences between two candidate,
the only thing they can do is, oh, but Hailey Stevens,
I am a woman, and this man must hate women.
APAC is helping with this. They've already spent at least

(01:01:10):
fifteen million dollars, with other corporate packs helping Stevens with
another twelve million. As of July first, there's already been
over forty six million in ad spending, seventy four percent
of which supports Stevens, and there's a lot of money
going in since that July first date as well. One
of the pro Stevens ads has manufactured a fake Obama

(01:01:34):
endorsement using old clips of Obama talking about Hailey Stevens
because she worked with him like fifteen years ago. Now
Obama has declined to comment on this sort of manufactured
fake endorsement, which is effectively just letting them do that.
If he's not going to say no, I haven't actually
endorsed in this race, then basically he's allowing them to
lie about him endorsing Stevens in this race. Meanwhile, laid

(01:01:59):
is on the news almost every week getting grilled about
why he doesn't support Israel enough. And Israel has been
a very important part of this race. This is in Michigan.
Michigan was a big part of the uncommitted movement. And
Stephens is a ridiculously pro Israel candidate who has voted
to send tens of billions of dollars in unrestricted aid

(01:02:20):
to Israel, has stopped the Lebanon War Powers Resolution, has
banned the State Department from citing Gosa Health Ministry death tolls,
and Stevens also sees Israel in her dreams and in
the United States Congress.

Speaker 4 (01:02:37):
I will continue to fight for the people of Israel.

Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
I will continue to fight for Israel's existence. Israel comes
to me in my dreams. I see Israel's future. Meanwhile,
Elsa AID wants to abolish ice, fight for medicare for all,
and cut off all aid to Israel. He's certainly running
a downstream of Zoron Mamdani's style campaign. With his videos.

(01:03:04):
He has declined to explicitly call himself a Democratic Socialist,
but there's a lot of similarities in his platform to
some other DSA candidates like Zoron, though elsay it is
not endorsed by DSA, but he is running with backing
of the UAW and the Working Families Party. Speaking of elections,
let's close out by talking about election security, because on

(01:03:27):
Thursday night, President Trump delivered what was promised to be
a very important address to the nation on election security.
The speech started out as a basically mini version of
his last State of the Union before he announced the
release of heavily redacted CIA documents on how China tried
to influence our past elections, intelligence reports on possible vulnerabilities

(01:03:51):
in our election infrastructure, and finally claiming that two hundred
and fifty thousand non citizens are registered to vote. No
further details or evidence of that number. Basically, this whole
speech was a big ploy to try to pass this
Safe Act to restrict mail in voting and disenfranchised voters
with heightened ID requirements. Trump also talked about how China

(01:04:15):
had stolen election data. What actually happened was China downloaded
publicly available voter data in twenty twenty two that the
Trump Aadmin now claims could be used by foreign countries
to fraudulently vote in our elections. And of course China
was looking at possible influence operations as many foreign countries do.

(01:04:40):
Russia has done foreign influence operations. That's not changing vote
tallies or hacking into voting machines. That's doing disinformation campaigns,
which as we've seen with Tenet Media, Russia has certainly
been involved in recently, And according to some of these documents,
China was looking into if they wanted to run influence

(01:05:01):
operations for the twenty twenty election, and they actually declined to.
After Trump's address, reporters questioned John Solomon, a former right
wing journalist who Trump brought onto his election Task Force
to investigate possible voter fraud, and Solomon clarified that there's
no evidence that any foreign power tampered with US voting

(01:05:22):
machines or manipulated the vote count.

Speaker 2 (01:05:26):
You acknowledged that there were no votes changed in twenty twenty.

Speaker 7 (01:05:29):
All I can acknowledge is what the intelligence shone is right.
I only know the Intelligence Committee has zero evidence that
someone's flipped, that a foreign power flip they vote in
twenty twenty, twenty two.

Speaker 2 (01:05:37):
Or twenty four, and you have no you're able to
do through all the documents, You're.

Speaker 1 (01:05:41):
Able to acknowledge that Venezuela has not tampered with voting
machines in the United States. No, the.

Speaker 7 (01:05:47):
Intelligence is very clear they did it on their own machines.
Why is important that they did it on their machines.
Their machine protocols are the same as America. Why just
for a long time they did it.

Speaker 3 (01:05:57):
Twenty twenty election was in fact the results as we
the American body researching.

Speaker 7 (01:06:03):
So let me let me have this is the first
there's intelligence.

Speaker 1 (01:06:08):
There's no intelligence at the election. Truman mar on Friday,
the day following Trump's address, DHS Secretary Mullen announced that
regardless of if the Save Act passes, he will institute
mandatory changes to election security, including scrubbing states voter rules.

Speaker 8 (01:06:32):
We are going to make our second our our security
enhancements mandatory, meaning that if these states want to grant
and they want to be reimbursed to work or to
run federal elections, they're going to have to implement security issues,

(01:06:53):
just security issues. We're not trying to get into anything else,
but we're saying that the machines had to be secured
and that your voter restoration list needs to be scrubbed.

Speaker 1 (01:07:04):
If this actually happens, this could possibly lead to many
people thinking they are registered to vote who are actually
not come election day and then be unable to vote.
This is a voter disenfranchisement tactic. Second time alone, later
directly contradicted what John Solomon said the night before, saying
that quote, we know for sure that foreign adversaries have

(01:07:27):
vital pieces of our voting machines, and the quote unquote
key to the back end of these machines.

Speaker 8 (01:07:34):
We know that they can change voter registration and your vote.
We know it's possible. There's not a question. It's not
even for debate.

Speaker 1 (01:07:45):
Finally, on Wednesday, the House advanced a bill to stop
insider trading, except Republicans added Save Act style measures into
this bill to pass new voter ID requirements to please Trump.
And part of why they put those Save AX style
measures into this bill is so that they could attack

(01:08:06):
Democrats in upcoming elections for voting against a bill to
stop insider trading. Literally seconds after this bill was voted
on the White House, rapid response accounts started posting, quote disgraceful,
one hundred and ninety eight Democrats just voted against banning
members of Congress from trading stocks while they're in office.
They're corrupt, as you can see, very transparent ploy to

(01:08:30):
manufacture a vote to be used in elections to attack
Democrats for being corrupt. This quote unquote insider trading bill
will now go to the Senate with those Save Act
style voter ID measures included.

Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
All right, thank you for that, Gaarre. And last, but
certainly not least, we've got one more edition of the
tariff song, and then talking about tariffs after it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:55):
All right, let's talk tariffs so long ago in account
far far away, which is to say, really truly not
that long ago, we did an episode on the hideously
illegal terrorists Trump imposed under the quote unquote authority of
Section one twenty two of the Trade Act of nineteen
seventy four. These are the ones that are based on

(01:09:18):
this completely manufactured crisis about the US facing a balance
of payments crisis, a thing that cannot happen and is
not happening now. These tariffs, which is just a general
ten percent tariffunnal goods, are set to expire on Friday
July twenty fourth, quite possibly the day you're listening to this.
So on Monday, July twentieth, Trump took the most dramatic

(01:09:41):
terrorf action he has taken since the Supreme Court found
he was illegally using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act
to apply terraffs in February. By the time you are
listening to this, presumably he is going to have unleashed
a wrath. You know, I was originally gonna say raft,
but wrath actually works too. Of new time tariffs, but
as if to time of recording, the one that has

(01:10:03):
been revealed specifically is that he is imposing a fifty
percent tariff on goods imported from Canada or some goods
imported from Canada. Now, I'm going to get into what
that tariff is actually going to do in a second.
But the important thing here is not the specific tariff itself,
but the legal authority Trump is using to invoke it.

(01:10:23):
He is invoking Section three thirty eight of the so
called smoot Holly Terriff Act. If the name vaguely rings
a bell, it's probably because smoot Holly is best known
for exacerbating the Great Depression to the extent that it
is in Basically like every history textbook of the United
States you will read in high school will have this

(01:10:44):
in it. This Act smoot Holly is the final frontier
for terriff authority. It is the tariff big red button.
It is a power that has never been invoked before,
even by its creators, and I genuinely don't know if
it even still exists. This is the tariff rubicon, and
Trump has just crossed it. Now, before we get into

(01:11:07):
this more, let's talk for a second about Trump's nominal
fifty percent teriff on Canada, which is actually much less
of a big deal than it looks. The tariffs are
supposed to take effect on August nineteenth and has about
a million carveouts for you know, different kinds of Canadian goods, including,
for example, things like energy products, which is a huge

(01:11:29):
amount of what we import from Canada. So this is
only going to apply to about five point two percent
of Canadian trade with the US. I mean, obviously that
is still kind of a big deal for that five
percent of trade. But you know, there's a good chance
that these tariffs aren't going to go into effect at all,
and that this is sort of a piece of trade
leverage for negotiations with Canada. These you know, even if

(01:11:51):
they did go into effects, aren't going to be the
biggest deal. I'm also going to briefly mention that we
finally got the long awaited pharmaceutical import tariff. And when
I say long awaited, I have literally been waiting for
these tariffs to be announced since the beginning of the administration,
to the point where I literally stopped covering the announcements
that they were coming because they just never did. Apparently

(01:12:12):
they are also kind of a joke. They impose a
one hundred percent tariff on pharmaceutical imports, which would be
a massive deal, except it starts in twenty twenty eight.
It eventually rises at the two hundred percent, and like, Okay, yeah, sure, Donald,
whatever you say, that's not happening. None of the specifics
of the tariffs matter at all, or matter much at all.
What is significantly more important is Trump invoking three thirty

(01:12:35):
eight of Smooth Holly. Now, the reason he's doing this
is pretty clear. All of the other avenues he has
to impose tariffs legally actually have restrictions attached to them.
Section one twenty two tariffs, as we've mentioned, are only
supposed to be when there's a balance of payments crisis,
and you can only impose a flat rate, and once

(01:12:55):
he imposes them, they have to be reviewed by Congress,
and that's just not happening. Are expiring on Friday. We've
talked about the Section three oh one tariffs a few
weeks ago. Those are the ones that nominally are about
forced labor, but those also have limits and can only
be imposed after a long and slow process of trade investigations. Now,
obviously the way that that Trump has used both of

(01:13:16):
them is illegal, but even trying to use them illegally,
they have definite limits. Section three thirty eight of Smooth
Holly has basically no limits, and the one limit that's
relevant for our purposes is a fifty percent maximum teriff rate. Otherwise,
it lets the president impose tariffs on whatever country he
wants for the extremely nepulous reasoning of that country having

(01:13:39):
placed quote the commerce of the United States at a
disadvantage compared to the commerce of any foreign country. Trump,
can you say any country is doing this for any reason?
We are back to Calvinball nonsense. This nominal legal authority
allows Trump to do whatever he wants trade wise, up
to a fifty percent tariff. Now, again, it is widely

(01:14:00):
expected that by the time you're reading this, we're already
going to have seen more tariffs. I'm expecting something akin
to a smaller scale version of liberation tariffs. By the
time you're listening, you will know more. Now. The reason
I'm talking about section three thirty eight of Smooth Holly,
and the reason I've described it as like the big
red button of tariffs, like it's the tariff rubicon, is

(01:14:21):
because not only has it never been used before, right
you know, the section one twenty two has also never
been used before, but this one, specifically section three thirty eight,
there is a real question as to whether it's even
still in effect now The argument you will most commonly
see is that Section three thirty eight has never formally

(01:14:41):
been repealed and therefore is still on the books. This
is a law that was passed in nineteen thirty The
co administration is making the argument that because it has
never formally been repealed, it is still on the books. However,
the problem is that there exists a thing called superseding
statute or a quote imply I repeal. This is the

(01:15:02):
argument that I've seen that this law is not still
on the books. I've seen various versions of it. The
one that is kind of spreading around now, for better
or for worse, kind of for worse to some extent,
is from Philip Zelico, who is a Hoover Institute guy
and a history professor who's writing in Reason magazine. So, like,
you know, these are not the people I would normally

(01:15:22):
turn to in terms of getting legal analysis on everything,
but I actually think there's a kind of a decent
argument that they might be right. And their argument is that, Okay,
because of the way that you know, laws can supersede
other laws, Right, if you write a second law that
is about the same thing as the first law, and

(01:15:43):
it covers explicitly the same thing. It can repeal the
first law. It's sketchy, the courts don't like it functioning
like that, but it does technically work like that. And
you know, Zelico argues that a whole train of statutes,
ranging from the Trade Expansion Act of nineteen sixteen to
our old friend section three oh one, if the Trade

(01:16:05):
Act of nineteen seventy four cover exactly the same things
and therefore have repealed the statute. I think that's actually plausible.
And this is, you know, part of the reason why
no one has ever actually tried to use this stuff,
because there have been subsequent legislation to describe these exact
powers and describe what you can do with them. So

(01:16:25):
whether it even still exists is extremely dubious. Now, this
is probably not going to survive a challenge in court,
but until the legal challenge actually winds its way through
the courts, Trump is going to be free to do
as Calvin Ball nonsense, and we're back to you know,
twenty five era. Trump just declaring a tariff is happening

(01:16:47):
in a country every morning. Now on a broader level, right,
what's happening here is that the way the Supreme Court
has been doing. Shadow docket decisions have allowed Trump to
simply keep breaking the law and seizing more illegal power
and then using it until the Supreme Court gets around
and taking that power away. Now, obviously this is not
true of everything he's been trying to do with terriffs.

(01:17:08):
In particular, he's been extremely successful in simply applying the
tariffs and then keeping them into effect until the legal
challenges go through the courts. That looks like what's going
to happen here, which is going to give him probably
another I mean, it's going to give him but at
least half a year probably of the ability to just
do whatever bullshit tariff policy he wants, which means another

(01:17:29):
year of completely unhinged economic instability for the entire global economy.
It means another year of all you know, of supply
lines being degraded, of prices increasing, and of all of
us getting absolutely screwed. Okay, put a transgole on your couch.

Speaker 2 (01:17:50):
We reported the news. We reported the news.

Speaker 9 (01:18:02):
It could happen. Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio
app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you
can now find sources for it could happen here, listed
directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening,

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Executive Disorder: State Dept. Summit on Left-Wing Extremism, Alien Terrorist Removal Court, Canada Tariffs