February 23, 2025 • 42 mins
Comedian Trae Crowder is from a tiny town in Tennessee, so he has a unique point of view on conservative, liberals, MAGA and especially J.D. Vance… what’s the deal with that guy?? Well, Trae knows a thing or two.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I was a
CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts
in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East
and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive
our adversaries.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
theories large and small.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Could they be true? Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 1 (00:26):
This is mission implausible. Today's guest is Trey Crowder. He's
the liberal redneck. He's a comedian with a big following
on YouTube and social media and the author of several books.
He's from rural Tennessee, and you can see the dates
for his nationwide.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Comedy tour on his website.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
So welcome Trey.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
The website and questions try Crowder dot com. By the way,
thanks for the Introy, and thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
First question I've had for you is can you explain
JD Vance?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
No, not really, only a forty minute show.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
I have a weird miniature, Heytory with j D Actually,
because his I first went viral and started gaining my
online following that you mentioned in the spring of twenty sixteen.
I had been doing stand up in anonymity for like
six years already at that point, but then I made
these videos and they one of them took off really big,
(01:18):
and then I could just snowball from there, which was great.
But it started in twenty sixteen and I started going
all these meetings, Hollywood meetings and stuff like this, and
people started asking me, oh, you must love have you
read that new book? Have you read He'll Billy Eligy?
If you read that, you know about that. And that's
how I found out about it. And I looked it
up and they were all any type of remotely fancy
(01:38):
person intelligentsia or any type of artist to have whether
they were like salivating over this book, right, they loved it.
So I found out about that way. And then I
was like going on TV at the time, like CNN
and MSNBC and Bill marsh Show and stuff like that,
and usually I was being brought on there relevant to
the first question you asked to, like explain He'llbilly's to
people because there was a big narrative of them about
(01:59):
them Trump. Then that's what happened with Trump is he
reached these specific people it's like, you're one of these people,
what's up with that? Explain to us what that's all about.
And jay D was doing the same thing at the
same time, and we like met and started talking and stuff.
He brought his wife, who was pregnant at the time,
to my comedy show that I did in Columbus. We
(02:19):
hung out afterwards, went to a bar, hung out for
a few hours talking about stuff. Now at that time,
and he was still calling Trump Hitler and everything. So
I was like, this guy's all right. Stayed in touch
sort of over the years, a little bit, texting here
and there, and then as his rise became more evident
and took the trajectory it did, you know. I haven't
talked to him forever at this point, But like I
(02:41):
even when I read the book, though, there were parts
in it where because we had we do have, if
everything in the book is to be believed, we have
a very similar upbringing and background in a lot of ways.
My mom was also a drug addict. I'm from very
very rural, poverty stricken Tennessee. Now, he would like go there.
He like grew up in Ohio, really, but he would
(03:03):
go there in the summers and be immersed in He'll
billy shit for a while. I was in it all
the time, not bragging, but uh, and so I definitely
related to a lot of it. But there were a
lot of angles he took in that book and things
that he said that even at the very beginning of
even knowing who he was, I was like, it just
struck me odd or weird. I was like, that's I
(03:24):
don't I'm not down with that. Like one of the
big ones I remember is here he makes his whole
case into the book for payday loan places, right about
how people like demonize those as being predatory, but what
they don't understand is those places really are lifelines to
poor rural people and all this stuff. Okay, because I
got to that part and I was like, what fuck
(03:44):
those places? What are you serious?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
You know?
Speaker 3 (03:47):
And then I hear later after the fact that I
purportedly he had whatever investment stakes or something like that
and some company and had some payday loan places, was
that type of thing, and I was like, Oh, that's
pretty greasy. And then his whole central thesis the way
I read it in that book, which was basically just like, yeah, listen,
you know, uh, these poor white people, they're just like
(04:09):
they're just fundamentally lazy. There's something broken in them, like culturally,
like they it's their own They could blame everybody else
all they want, but it's it's their own fault at
the end of the day. But I just never looked
at like that because I've seen too many people very
close to me that I feel like there're no fault
of their own been you know, turned to shit by uh,
(04:32):
completely external factors. Ironically to a lot of those people
love JD's boss, Donald Trump and that type of thing,
you know, because of all that that happened. But I
don't know how he you know, how we had basically
the same experiences and landed on such different outcomes the
way that we did. But I think that, you know,
(04:53):
you know, I don't know, I'm a conspiratorial it is,
But I think that he's I very much believe that
he's been that he's backed by Peter Thiel and his
and shepherded into this position that he's in now for
a very strategic reason on their part. He was identified
early on by them, I think, as someone who's like
to be used for this purpose and has been more
than happy to allow that to happen. That's what I
(05:15):
think has happened with j D.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
I think two or three different times.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Yeah, yeah, I know, it's definitely weird and all everything
that's going on there, and then he still like sucks
up to people, the types of people who will be
openly racist towards some other his children to his face
or to his digital face on Twitter anyway, and that
type of thing, which I also just find very wild.
The whole thing is wild. But you know, I mean
(05:39):
it's worked very well for him. He's the freaking vice president.
He's in the White House right now, Like he can't
argue with the results. If that's you know, those are
things you value, money and power and all that. It's
he's definitely getting what he wanted out of it so far,
and it could only just be beginning, so we'll see.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
I'm not a hillbilly here my accent, but I did
up in a small town, one of ten kids. Everybody's
working for Kodak up in that area, and then Kodak
went bust. Everybody lost their jobs, and right, yeah, yeah,
I get that kind of thing. That was like taking
your date to the town dump to watch the Bears
shooting yeah, but I'll tell you where I come from too.
(06:17):
Trump is fuller with a lot of my family and
a lot of former friends from high school and everything
like that, and I have not had really the chance
to sit down and talk with them about what's in
their best interest. And not that you represent all Hillbillies everywhere,
but one thing I struggled with is sort of this
cult light adherence to something that that maybe appeals to
(06:40):
their pride, but is it always in their best.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Interest early on from the beginning. And that's alluded to
this a little bit. And so did you. So I
my hometown also, So my hometown, I think is an
interesting case study. It's called Salina, Tennessee. It's in Klay County.
It's very rural. We don't have any traffic lights or
McDonald's or anything. There a big lot bragg and I
that's enough. I get it you, Francy. But in every
general election up to like two thousand and four, Lay
(07:04):
County was a Democratic county and was blue like win
for al Gore in two thousand and then Clinton before that,
and had been Democrat previously, and then now it's like
one of the strongest for Trump counties in Tennessee, like
by percentage again it's very small, but percentage wise, and
in the nineties, for years and years, the whole, the
(07:25):
beating heart of the town's economy was a fact of
textile factory from your way, Midwive, because I assume they're
from actual oshkosh Oshkosh Bagosh is what they're called, you know,
the most whimsically named company to ever destroy an entire community.
But they made and make a little cute, little baby
overalls and stuff, and that was like, there's a big
factory in Solina for years and years and the nineties
(07:47):
that left it went to Mexico. Nothing ever replaced it.
My family and a bunch of other people. You either
worked at the factory or you did something that kind
of service people that worked at the factory that my
dad ran the only video store in we like. He
had a converted single white trailer called Crowder's Video, and
my grandpa had a car lot, my other grandma had
a country cafe like a diner, and then my openly
(08:11):
gay uncle and his partner had a deli on the
town square and all of which were doing great. And
then that factory left, and within ten years all of
those businesses were closed. Half those people were dead. My
mom was hooked on pills, and that was the norm.
That happened to everybody there pretty much, or almost everybody,
or at least that were adjacent to It just devastated
(08:33):
the town and they've never to this day recovered. And
I felt like at twenty sixteen, like Trump showed up
and like was the first person to even really pretend
to give a shit about them or any of that,
because he had been famous for years before that as
a rich douchebag that I never liked him. For the record,
I didn't know any redneck, especially redneck dude who liked him.
(08:53):
You know. He was like a you know, a blue
blood Yankee son of a bitch who thinks she's better
than everybody else, you know, and needs ass whipped type
of thing. Is how nobody liked him, and I did either.
So when he showed up and he was doing that,
I was like, Okay, but he's full of shit. That
he's clearly full of shit. Shouldn't that part matter? But
I just think they were just so desperate for anyone
(09:15):
to care that they latched onto it. And he blamed
a lot of the same people like the swamp and
that sort of thing, and then yes, the racist aspect
of it too that he fed into. But I always
used to tell people, I just thought the racism part
was just the icing on the fuck you cake that
he baked for them, for the establishment that they had
seen as having ruined their lives and left them behind.
(09:36):
So I was sympathetic to it the first time around. Again,
I felt like I saw through it and I was like,
you guys are getting sold bad bill of goods here.
This is bullshit. But I did get where they were
coming from or why they felt that way. All these
years later, after everything that has happened, on the stuff
that he's done, and how nothing has really changed in
my hometown for the better for sure, and they're even
(09:57):
more die hard now than ever. It's hard for me
to try to reconcile with that. But I guess it's
a you know, I mean, you called it a cult.
I think you know, it's some kind of you get
dug in and it becomes part of your identity, your personality, whatever,
and then you just like it's hard to break people
out of that. And then now lately, all the stuff
that's happening lately in this country like scaring me. But
(10:20):
if your hardcore maga or whatever, I mean, they have
got to be loving all this shit, I imagine, like
so far because there's no been there's no long term
effects of any of it. Yet it's just all they
see is Trump just doing all the things he told
them he would do, because that's why, I mean, that's
what he's doing. Like in a way, I'm like morbidly
impressed by it because I've never seen an American politician
(10:40):
do that. Almost all the time, they just say a
bunch of shit and don't do much of nothing on
both sides for most of my life. But he's doing stuff,
and it's stuff that I really am not in favor of,
but they love it and think it's a great idea,
And so you know, they're not jumping off the Trump
train anytime soon, I don't think. And the real question
to me is when the receipts come in for a
(11:01):
lot of these things that I think are going to
have disastrous long term result, you know, sex When that
when those consequences arrived, what happens then? And I'd like
to think they'll find some of them will finally shake
it off, But I don't know if I'm actually not
that optimistic though at the end of the day.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
So, well, that's the thing is, I think you based
on your humor stuff, I think you can see a
lot of this is just built on lies, right, And
I think a lot of what populist politicians do is
they create enemies, they create false narratives, someone to blame
the elites or for us, the deep state is where
we worked, right, right. I think that the real people
hurting the rural population and eventually will see this are
(11:36):
their representatives that lie to them.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Right.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
The people are telling them these lies, but they actually
aren't going to fix things. They feed them information to
keep them angry. Why they hop why they hob now
with the super rich people and get yes breaks. But
so I don't know when it will come and how
much damage would be done before before everybody figures it out.
But it's a real problem that being lied to all
the time.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Yeah, And I really felt like when I was a
kid in that town, because I tell people too, it's
like again, not only did it like vote blue in
most elections, but most people when I was growing up there,
I would have described as outwardly a political like people
didn't talk about the general the general consensus, and almost
everybody there back then was basically like, I'll fuck them.
(12:20):
They're all full of shit and none of them really
give a damn about you know. The Yeah, right, I know,
I know. And that's like the sort of context I
was raised in there. And then now there's Trump signs
all over the place or anything, and it's just it's changed.
I mean, yeah, you're right, I mean, yes, they feed
them things to make them angry and turn people against
each other and make, you know, turn people into enemies
(12:41):
that aren't really while hiding the fact that the real
enemies are the masters that they're representatives serving all that
stuff that they don't say, get mad at, like Mexicans
and shit, instead of welfare queens and stuff, and the
serial boogeymen that they're terrified of, instead of like the
people that are actually screwing them over, sometimes right in
front of their face, like Elon Musk. And then he
(13:02):
turns around and talks house Elon that is like through
out there the idea of we've been saving all this money,
and uh, we might give everybody a dividend for it,
you know, And he said, like five thousand dollars, and
I don't think that'll ever happen, but it's funny. It's
funny to me that it's like, these people have been
decrying anything that seems we can't have health care whatever.
(13:23):
That's socialism. It's not fair. People's tax pa taxpayer tax
money can't pay for other people's stuff, and that's not
how it should be. Socialism's bad, you know, all this stuff.
And then Elon's like, I think we should take this
big sum of taxpayer money and just distribute it evenly
to the people, unconditionally. And they're like, oh, that's a
great idea. That sounds awesome, that's totally what we should do. Again,
(13:45):
I don't I think it'll be called dan help where
that actually even happens. But it's the whole thing is
just kind of upside down.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Yeah, feral boogeyman. I like that.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
You guys should know all about those. I would imagine
probably that.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
We are ongoing. So I want to take you, so
we insport yourself back to your hometown and Selena, and
you're sitting in so my hometown, the local dinter is
called the Greeks. You sit there and you have a
cup of coffee, everybody talks after the church and things,
and so you're back at the Greeks and you tick
me in and we sit down at the table of
your local cafe and you introduce me to your friends
(14:19):
and go, this guy's the deep State, and John's there too, right,
so the true deep state guys, well, questions would they
ask us?
Speaker 3 (14:25):
It's funny you say that, because I actually have a
question that I was wanting to ask you guys. But
it's not this questions coming from me. It's not it's
actually coming from a friend of mine. So this is
not exactly what you're asking. I'm not channeling a hometown person.
This is my own question I already wanted to ask you.
But my friend that I co host a podcast with
is and saying recently, he's been positing that if these
(14:48):
things that the current administration is doing really does lead
to truly disastrous results, like things start to crumble apart,
and it's heading in that direction, at what point does
anybody or can anybody step in and then do something
about it to whether it's like a coup or an
Operation Valkyrie type sign or whatever it is, is there
a point where to keep this country from collapse? Would
(15:09):
the deep snit ever do some deep state stuff in
this scenario, And because he's starting to route for that
the end.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
I wish there was a deep state. The deep state
is just a it's just a shitty name they throw
at people like us who Congress and the president. They
make the laws and the rule, they don't always know
what they are right we carry them out. So like
for even at CIA, the first thing we do when
we're gonna have an operation is we go to a
lawyer and we're like, is this legal? Is this conspiracial?
(15:39):
Can we do it? And you know, if the answer
is no, we don't do it. Regardless, even if the
president says I want you to do something, and I
think this is one of Trump's problems, He's like, I
give an order, nobody carries it out like because they're like,
maybe it's against the law, or maybe it's against the rules,
or maybe it's unethical. People won't do it. To know
these and as least as bad as it is now, Nope,
(16:03):
the only thing I think you'll find is people of
goodwill will basically say I'm just gonna like keep my
head down and try to wait out four years and
I'll do what I need to do. But no, the
answer is no.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Well, even on that last note you said, I remember
thinking the first time around the first Trump administration, people
were like, this guy's in charge of the nukes. That's terrifying.
And I was like, surely there's people around high high
levels in the military and stuff. I got to have
been there for a long time. They're legit, they're not insane,
and hopefully they would be able to keep something truly
wild like that from happening. And I feel like after
(16:38):
the first administration, you got we've got reports during like
January sixth, committees and all that of the way things
were inside at the time, and it seemed like that
was sort of the case. I had. It broke down
and like there was team Saying and team crazy, and
it's like saying, like longtime bureaucrats who were like actually
reasonable people were trying hard every day to keep Team
Crazy from doing a bunch of crazy shit. And that's
(16:58):
really what was happening by the scenes the first time around.
And it's like part of the whole plan this time
around is to not have any of the same people there.
And so you know, you said you were saying, people
have been there a long time and are not down
with all this, just like keep their head down. But
do you think there's because I used to work for
I used to work for the Department of Energy, and
I was just like a pencil pushure of the desk.
But I that's another thing I used to think because
(17:19):
I worked my whole time in twenty ten, the two thousand,
middle of twenty sixteen, six and a half years I was.
That was all Obama administration, So the Secretary of THEDE
was like the head of Physics and Energy at MIT.
And then after I left and Trump came in, it
was fucking Rick Perry right, who couldn't even remember the
name of the agency, And that was that was all
freaking me out. But because I'd worked there, I was
(17:40):
like I knew. I was like that people doing the
things there every day are longter like life. First, they're
people that have been working for the de for a
long long time, through all kinds of different administrations with
different politics, and they keep the mission going and the
trains running on time and all that. So it's even
with all this craziness, people all still be there and
(18:02):
that's the thing that gives me comfort. But again, what
they're part of what they're doing right now is they're
excising a lot of that. They're saying to.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
All right, let's take a break. We'll be right back.
So John and I John is speak himself, but he's
worked against Russia, the Soviet Union, And you know, I've
done a lot of time counterterrorism. I spent time in
Rock Afghanistan pushing back against like really some evil ideologies
(18:32):
and some nasty people. But if Trump comes along and says,
and this isn't like, this isn't crazy anymore, he says,
I want us to, I want you say, work against
our real enemies, Canada. And then I guess it's not
illegal to run operations against the Native Ali. I mean,
it would be stupid and unethical and foolish and short sighted.
(18:55):
But I think they'd find a couple of people who
do it, and a couple of people who Yeah, if
you make me do it, I'll do a shitty job.
I don't know, Chuck, what do you think I.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Will get that question a lot of time when you
guys gonna come in and take care of this kind
of thing. You see, hey, guys, and essentially you have
experienced in Dee it's the same thing people are. Our
public servants are focused on their mission, which is collecting
foreign intelligence, where we're not focused on domestic politics and
try it. In fact, we're very much inculcated to stay
away from that.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
You know, you don't want.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
A powerful agency that steals thing and does things like
that working domestically, right, and so we'll pretty much stay
out of domestic politics. So what Jerry said first is
most likely is there isn't really a means for people
to step in or do something or stop something. You know,
half the country it most would blame them for getting
involved in something they shouldn't get involved in. But like
(19:44):
Jerry said too, I think most people are going to
focus on trying to do their job or keep their
head down, or if they do give these kind of
orders that are crazy, a certain percentage of people will quit.
Another group will try to explain is best and try
the best they can to push back and explain, and
some of them get fired. And then there'll be a
small group of people who will do it and probably
do it poorly. And then maybe if Trump's in long enough,
(20:07):
he'll bring in enough todies to try to come in
and do it. But it's a very difficult job to
just do on the fly. It takes a long time
to go through training and get experience and get languages
and learn how to do these things. I mean, he'll
be dead long before anybody he brings in from the
outside is trained and ready to do this effectively. So
possibly Justice Department, possibly in the courts, possibly an FBI.
(20:30):
At some point there'll be a group of people who
can more effectively push back, but it's pushed back, probably
trying their best to explain what's happening.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Is illegal, right for the Republican Party from his own ail.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Yeah, Congress is where it's supposed to happen.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Yeah, the rest there answer. Yeah, I mean, that's that thing.
I was thinking just because this week he had a
new executive order basically it was like, you know, expanding
executive authority even further and basically telling the courts like, actually,
we're we're the ones who are going to interpret the law.
And it's like, you know, even on the constitution, like
says that's what judicial just for it, and he's like,
now we're not really doing that whole constitution thing anymore.
(21:03):
But but I was thinking because of that, I was
like it's wild that that's the idea, that one thing,
like an example, something is completely bipotterson and just unquestioned
my whole life until recently, was that, like, you know,
checks and balances, which is the thing you get told
over and over again as a kid growing up in
this country. It's like one of the principles were founded
(21:24):
on is the idea of checks and balances, and that
that is good right whoever it has the power at
any given time. The fact that we have that is
a good thing, right. And that's one of those types
of things, like fundamental precepts that I just never thought
I would see questioned by anybody like regular people. I mean,
(21:45):
And now they're actively trying to dismantle checks and balances
and they're being cheered on for it, and that's it's
all just it's all pretty wild. But since you asked
me that question, the two I thought of, what's the
deal with the weather machine? Right, who actually controls that?
And Uh, why didn't they send to her kind of
put the fires out in LA when we had that
problem out here, because it's this is liberal haven out here,
(22:08):
so you'd think they want to take care of us.
And then uh, and then what's the real story with COVID.
What were you guys really doing there trying to put
five G and everybody or were sterilized smart people?
Speaker 1 (22:19):
I don't know and I had retired, so we can't
be blamed for either of those.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Yeah, So yeah, the conspiracy crazies, they've got their team
in there now, all the people Louderie, Taylor Green her
parties are in it. It's time to expose the Jewish
space laser, right, I mean they well, now let's wheel out,
get the gurneyes out, and wheel out the aliens that
the CIA has hit all this time, Right, Let's do
(22:43):
the Kennedy assassination. Let's do his people in charge.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
They can do all that.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
So yeah, let's bring it all out there.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Let's show everybody to find out there's nothing there.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
But they still That's another thing that I don't get
is like I was just in Kentucky doing shows and
it was flooding there at the time. I saw people
these people like on Twitter they were talking about so
Elin had been saying, you know, we need to audit
Fort Knox, right, because we don't even know if all
that gold is there anymore. It could be just standing
empty who knows, you know. And it's like my buddy
(23:14):
pointed out, He's like, well, if it's been empty for
a while, that feels like that's been fine.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Like it's like I don't like that hasn't really affected.
We don't know this, We don't know that. What they're
saying is that they don't know. They for the government,
they actually do know if they ask people.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
So they had been saying that we need to audit
Fort Knox and these people, and it caught up at
a little traction on like Twitter and stuff between the
conspiracy theories are like very funny that they're talking about
auditing Fort Knox and all of a sudden it's flooding
there and it's because they're saying, you know, they we
employed the weather machine again. And my thing is like, okay,
but that but that I thought that was like a
Biden administration deep like they you guys have taken care
(23:53):
of that, haven't you. Like you've won, You've pushed those
people out right, So where are they? What are they do?
And there's some like secret.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
There's always got to be an enemy. So I have
a question for you, Tray, do you get threats? There
was recently a Vanity Fair article called They're Scared Shitless,
and it talked about how North Carolina Senator Tom Tillis,
who was claiming that he was going to vote against
Pete Haygesith for Secretary of Defense, that the FBI went
to and warned him about a series of credible death
threats against him because he was going to vote against
(24:22):
the presidents. Now, do you get threats from people who
really don't like what you're doing?
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Early on, when I first popped, first became a thing,
and I was kind of all over the place briefly,
like on the Internet. I got a lot of messages
from people and dms and stuff that a lot of
them are just like Colin at gay in various ways
or whatever, or having conspiracy theories about me. It's like,
I'm a secret Jewish actor from New York Who's been
installed by the Obama administration to like propagate liberal propaganda
(24:51):
in rural America. Right, that was a conspiracy theory, right,
So stuff like that. But I would get some that
were like threatening violence, you know, and however ways, and
I got a few death threats and that type of thing,
But they were like here and there, and I mostly
just like laughed them off or ignored it. Over the years,
they've gotten much less and less because those people are
not generally what you know, their algorithms, not showing them
(25:15):
my stuff. For the most part, it's mostly just it'll
be hateful comments or whatever. And I have known people
who are like, don't have as large of a following
as me, but have gotten on the radar of some
of these guys. Right, I don't know how or why
I have not gotten that kind of attention so far.
(25:36):
Maybe I'm just again, I'm just either not on their
radar or they don't. They think I'm just a silly
thing that's not serious, which is fine with me because
I am a comedian. So I ask myself sometimes like
if that does happen, if I start getting that type
of attention the way you hear all these stories about
all the time, what am I gonna do, Because like
I said, I am married, I do have kids, and
(25:57):
it would you know, that shit would be freaky. I'm
not you know, you were about these people, even that
one guy, like even people on their side like that
that guy who was like a big he was like
a big sort of leader. In the process of January
sixth on the day of and then later they decided
that he actually was one of your people who worked
for the deep state. Right then he was installed there
and this guy Maga and loves Trump. They just decided
(26:20):
he was that secret deep state and then he had
to like go into hiding and shit with his wife
and like leave there out because of you know, the
threats they were getting, how harassed they got. So it's like, yeah,
I don't know, it's like a list you get you
find yourself on at some point and they'll like do
everything they can and make your life hell. And thankfully
that hasn't happened to me yet and I'm hoping obviously
that it doesn't.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Is Trump good for you? So I've got friends who
are journalists now I never had when it was on
the inside, And after their third drink, they'll say, at
least people are like animated now Trump hate and releiveled.
But it's he's an animating character and he's like in
the headlines all the time, and he's journalists are building
their career years off of either opposing him or digging
(27:02):
shit up or lick spittling him and praising him. So, well,
how do you see you yourself in this in this biasphere.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
Yeah. People were bringing it up to me too or
asking me about that the first time around, also in
twenty sixteen. That's like what I said then, and I
think it's still true this time around too. Is like
I would as somebody who lives in this country and
as kids and all this stuff like, it's this is
not worth it to me, But it would be disingenuous
of me to not acknowledge that this probably is like
(27:33):
a quote unquote good thing for me professionally considering what
I do, like I probably do benefit from this ultimately,
and did the first time around as well. But on
the other hand, in the run up went Biden won
in twenty twenty and everything, everybody naively thought, you know,
now that all that's over forever, what are you know?
What are you What are you gonna do now? What
are you gonna talk? When I was always like, it'll
(27:54):
be fine. I've been this country long enough to know,
especially now at this point, there's always going to be
dumb shit happening that it needs to be made fun of,
regardless of who's in charge. So I think I'll be fine,
And I was, I mean I had, you know, I
was in I didn't like go back to my old
job during the Biden administration, just crawl back out of
my internet hole when Trump got re elected, like I
(28:15):
was still doing it all the that whole time. But no,
but yeah, it's been you know, my numbers will have
gone up recently and probably will continue to do so.
And that means ticket sales and all that stuff, probably,
and it's because of you know, the current state of
things politically. But again, if I could snap my fingers
and be doing somewhat less well but feel better about
(28:37):
the future of the country, I would take that trade
in a heartbeat. But yeah, it probably does help me
a little bit for now, up until a point like
when the like water wars start or whatever, or I
don't know, people are gonna going to comedy shows in
the after times or during the Second Civil War or whatever,
so we'll see it. I had thought and planning that
(29:00):
if Harris Walls had won, my plan was to gradually
drift away from heavy politics stuff in the more just
regular stand up clips. And I even started making like
cooking videos and stuff like that, just it's like regular
funny stuff and not have to talk about politics all
the time, because I've been thinking if they had won,
then maybe we can all try to put some of
(29:21):
this behind us as a people. Obviously didn't work out
that way, and when that when what happened happened, I
was like, well, Okay, I guess I'm still doing my
thing for a while's.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Cause perception, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Talking about conspiracy theories. Do you think there's a greater
tendency towards conspiracy theories on the right wing or in
rural communities. And one of the things that leads me
to ask that is I recall a few years ago
there was a journalist that had been coming back from
cover civil wars and poverty in the Third World for
a long time, and he was getting interviewed on one of
(30:05):
these podcasts, New York Times podcasts, and they asked him,
do you see a similar breakdown here that's going to
lead to a civil war or whatever? And I was
expecting to say, oh, yes, and he said no, because
in the places where he was they had real problems,
like they were really poor, they couldn't eat, they were
actually killing each other, right, And here it seems like
it's middle class board white guys so do you think
(30:26):
there's a regional piece to this, or a rural peace
to this, or what is it?
Speaker 3 (30:32):
Well, first of all, the thing that that journalist said
is like a version of a thing that I like
try to tell myself to sleep at night or whatever.
So I've heard other people say it to Americans don't
really realize how like we look around, like, oh god,
the sky's following, this is horrible and everything, and it's like,
as compared to a lot so many places in the
world and the shit that goes on there, it's like
it's still it's still pretty nice here, you know, and
(30:55):
we don't know how good we got it. And I
try to remind myself of that, but I didn't. I
would not used to. I would not have thought that
it necessarily was the right leaning thing. Conspiracy theories. It's like,
that's one thing I've lamented is like I used to,
I was ever really into them. I've always liked aliens
and stuff and UFO stuff and that type of thing.
I like Oliver Stone's JFK movie and listening to podcasts
(31:19):
about that stuff and whatever else. And it was always
kind of a silly, fun thing to me. Conspiracy theories
you know, I smoked a little bit too much weed
one time in college and watched the wrong YouTube video,
and for a couple hours after that, I was like,
Damn Bush did nine to eleven, you know, like that
type of thing. Then I shook it off later, but
and like that's another good example. I feel like that
was a dull like nine to eleven being an inside
(31:41):
job and something that Bush did, like that conspiracy theory was.
There was plenty of people on the left tour all
about that because it was an anti Bush thing. So
used to know, but now I feel like it's undeniable
that it's like right wing coded, and I think it's
a combination of things where it's like the rise of
Quanon and it begetting as big and mainstream as it did,
(32:04):
and it kind of becoming like intrinsically linked with MAGA
and Trump and the right, and also how all encompassing
it is. It's like it will wrap up anything into itself,
do you know what I mean. It's like any kind
of conspiracy theory can get connected back to this larger
one type thing and it and there it's people on
the right largely and then uh, and then I think
a lot of like pied type stuff. You know, Like
(32:27):
I'm not not blaming things on Joe Rogan, but I'm
saying like that what realm of influence is tied to
get you know, again like early Joe Rogan and that
there's like a crossover. He loved talking about conspiracy theories
and aliens and all that shit that's used to be
mostly all of what he did, and then you can
see how they've got it's gotten mixed together with the
politics of the right over the years, just by looking
(32:48):
at his show as like a case study or an example.
And that sucks because, like some again, sometimes I could
think they're fun, right, but I don't want to be
even jokingly part of the current version of the world
of variously theories. It's just another thing that's been co
opted and ruined by the far right. As far as
I'm concerned. We used to have fun with conspiracy theories
(33:08):
in this country and now they're dangerous.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
But yeah, yeah, in high school there was like who
really built the pyramids or space aliens? And you know,
you can enjoy that on any any part of the
political spectrum. But one of my things that I'm sort
of gobsmack and still dealing with. But it was like
where I come from, I think where you do too,
you know, sort of like a small town. The military
was always sacred sanc It was also a place where
(33:32):
kids coming out of high school, we can get a
job and you can see the world. You can make
something of yourself with a we had a pickle plant
in town, right and it closed down, and kodaks like,
you can always join the Marines, right, yes, yes, and
a lot of people did. And if you didn't go
to college. So with with the right now with Trump,
what they've broken is really the military isn't sacre sanct anymore.
(33:53):
When Trump got up and said that John McCain is
a fucking loser for getting and being tortured by the
North Vietnamese, and people bought that, and people blought that
in my tone too. You know, Trump's saying that generals
are stupid and the military of a bunch of pussies. Right,
what's your sense of, Like where you come from, is
(34:13):
the military not being held in high regard anymore? I
thought that was the bedrock thing me too.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
Yeah, it's another thing, like I was saying earlier about
checks and balances or whatever. The military is the type
of thing that I thought would not everybody called into quest.
That was one of the craziest things that I ever
saw Trump do, is when he did the things like
you're talking about. He got caught calling you know, dead
soldiers losers and all this type of shit that he's
done over the years. It's like, I can't believe that
this is okay with everybody, because that was like the
one thing you could never ever do. And it's all
(34:41):
this doze stuff. And they've just recently started talking about, oh,
they're actually going to cut some of the defense budget.
And this part is hard for me because I've spent
years being like, we should cut some of the defense.
It's just like, for most of my life it's like, God,
I really wish we could cut some of the defense
budget and focus more on space travel and going to Mars.
And it's like without the monkey's Paul cur right, this
is the version of the world that's happening. But I
(35:03):
think it's like I don't know for sure, but I
think it's like they still have an idea, an idealized
version of the military that is sacrosanct in their head,
and it's like they think that the present day military,
like so many things, has been like co opted and
ruined by like wokeism and dei stuff and that type
of thing. Or you know, the military is like gone
woke with military leadership. So the military has lost its
(35:24):
way I think and gotten all woke and shit is
how they justify being anti military right now? And it's
like they just they want to they the real American
military that they like, Remember, it's like it's still attainable
and that's still like the gold standard and it is
sacro sanc but it's just been bastardized in the current
(35:45):
version of it. That's why you can shit all over
it is because of that, So you got to get
it back to the old way or something.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Well.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
The next one then is similar, is like how do
we become pro Russian? Like for Christ's sake?
Speaker 3 (35:55):
Like yes, that's that one is nuh because again, growing
up here am I whole you know how I mean,
they're the bad guys in every movie and everything. It's
like the Cold War was such it ended when I
was like a kid, but it was still just like
such a huge part of everything, and it's I just
never I don't know, Uh, it's a big part of
like how so many people demonize the left overall a
(36:16):
period or socialism being a dirty word is because they
got associated with the evils of communism and Soviet Russia
and that being the enemy and all that, and it
was just never questioned. It's communism is still evil and
socialism by proxy and all that. But now Russia's awesome
because of I don't know, Putin's.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Yeah, we got to get people to watch Red Dawn again.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
That's the russ Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
I lived in Russia and I've been working on Russia
things for a long time and it's not awesome. Yeah,
but I you know what I think it is. And
you what's so good about your comedy trade is you
focus on what has happened I think in this country
is we've defined our enemies as internal enemies rather than
external enemies. Like when we grew up, it was like
there was external enemies and we disagreed with each other.
But we're on the same side against external I think
(36:58):
one of the geniuses that Trump picked up on that
was already out there was if I can make Hillary
Clinton the enemy, then anything I say or do is
okay because it's attacking that because they're the real enemy,
not anybody else.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
So Treue, what's your favorite conspiracy theory? And I hope
it has to do with CIA so we can maybe
address it for you.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
My definitely the favorite genre of them, at least I guess,
is all aliens and UFO stuff, anything from like Rosswelt
through the drones or whatever, and all the stuff that
people say, and then we can't talk about any of that, right, See,
I have aliens inting in an underground bunker somewhere, or
alien tech or whatever. It's like one of those things
where it's like, basically, do I think that aliens probably
(37:40):
exist somewhere in the universe? Yes, mathematically I think that
they probably do. Do I think that like the drones
in New Jersey and shit, or like aliens surveillance or
any of that stuff. No, I don't.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
There was a senator from Nevada, Reid, who was really
was obsessed with this for years, obviously at Area fifty
one is in Nevada and stuff, and so he pushed
the Defense Apartment and the intelligence that needs to create
some version of looking at things that we couldn't figure out.
And there's been a Congress variety of hearings and this
and that, and of course none of it really answers
(38:10):
any of this. And of course the thing is every
time you try to answer these things, it just makes
people go deeper and say ah, like they said, hey,
let out all the JFK stuff, And essentially the intelligenent
is let out all the JFK stuff. But the fact
there's like two pieces of paper left, they're like, ah,
that's where the real thing is. That you almost can't
win when you start down this thing. So I think
there is an office or in the Defense Department, and
(38:34):
probably in the intelligences or that try to do what
they can to look at things that are unexplainable and
see if they can't figure things out or if recover
things that look that way. But in terms of actual
alien stuff, I spent thirty years in net Cia.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
I never heard anything but anything.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
We hit an office on this. I think this is
big in the seventies and eighties for a while that
was looking at far seeing and we hired psychics and
they would sit down and they would sit were a
piece of paper and drink of coffee and they would
like sketch something out and they go look for this
in Atlanta, vous stock like a submarine pen and the
only reason we had that was because and I can't
(39:10):
remember was here to read. But there was some influential
senator who was convinced that this could and he like
made us do it. He gave us the money. It said,
fucking do this and it produced nothing. But we're still
like CIA had an office that did this, yeah, because
we were forced to.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Like it's like mk Ultra, which is in the nineteen fifties, Yep.
There was a concern that we were fighting the Soviet
Union and there's all these public TV shows and movies suggests,
and a number of people had come back from fighting
in Korea and other places, and it seemed to become brainwashed.
If you believe communism, it must because there must have
been a drug or a brainwashing that the Soviets had
figured out. And so there was a small place at
(39:51):
the CIA that was supposed to look into it and
test drugs and things to see if this thing existed.
I think they ruined a lot of people's minds, but
they found out that there was no You could destroy
some one's brain, but you can't really reprogram it very right.
And it was a pretty sad experiment and.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
I have to say, if we just the way things
work in the real world. So John and I are
both we've been out for a long time and are
measly pensions were not port but we're certainly not rich.
We could hit the jackpot if we, like said, I
know where the aliens are, right, And if there really was,
why wouldn't people come out afterwards and say it, like,
you know, just or sneak off to the Washington Post
(40:28):
or the New York Times or Carlson and go, here's
the Yeah, the thousands of us. Why wouldn't wanted to know?
Speaker 3 (40:34):
That? Is the mind that because over I thought about it,
I think really like the real conspiracy theory is that
it's all way more boring than you think it is
and also less effectual than you think of. Is not
as all powerful as a lot of people think it is,
and they couldn't don't have the capacity to do a
lot of this stuff that people think that has been done.
And also, as you just said, it's like the whole Moonland,
the Main Fight or whatever like that one. It's like
(40:56):
the the sheer number of people that would have to
be in something like that and never ever even up
to it, including their deathbed say a single thing about it,
or leak any information out or whatever. And it's like
people just people can't do that, you know, it's human
nature to it's just impossible. You can't keep a secret
(41:16):
like that with that many people. There's like two people
maybe can keep a secret, and even when the third
person gets involved, it's your danger of it getting out
let alone thousands of people.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
So yeah, especially in this day and age, he could
make some good money off of it.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Yeah. Yeah, they don't stay secret very long.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
It's been so fun to listen to you. I enjoy
following on social media and I would suggest that people
in our audience to look it up.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
Trey Crowder, thank you Trek Crowder dot com, trakt Crowder
on all the socials and yeah, thanks for having me.
It's a fun.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Appreciate Troy is tr Ae, So Trey, thank you very much,
really really appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (41:48):
Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'shay, John Seipher,
and Jonathan Stern. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission
Implausible It's a production of honorable mention and abominable pictures
for iHeart Podcasts.
I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I was a
CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts
in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East
and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive
our adversaries.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
theories large and small.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Could they be true? Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 1 (00:26):
This is mission implausible. Today's guest is Trey Crowder. He's
the liberal redneck. He's a comedian with a big following
on YouTube and social media and the author of several books.
He's from rural Tennessee, and you can see the dates
for his nationwide.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Comedy tour on his website.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
So welcome Trey.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
The website and questions try Crowder dot com. By the way,
thanks for the Introy, and thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
First question I've had for you is can you explain
JD Vance?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
No, not really, only a forty minute show.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
I have a weird miniature, Heytory with j D Actually,
because his I first went viral and started gaining my
online following that you mentioned in the spring of twenty sixteen.
I had been doing stand up in anonymity for like
six years already at that point, but then I made
these videos and they one of them took off really big,
(01:18):
and then I could just snowball from there, which was great.
But it started in twenty sixteen and I started going
all these meetings, Hollywood meetings and stuff like this, and
people started asking me, oh, you must love have you
read that new book? Have you read He'll Billy Eligy?
If you read that, you know about that. And that's
how I found out about it. And I looked it
up and they were all any type of remotely fancy
(01:38):
person intelligentsia or any type of artist to have whether
they were like salivating over this book, right, they loved it.
So I found out about that way. And then I
was like going on TV at the time, like CNN
and MSNBC and Bill marsh Show and stuff like that,
and usually I was being brought on there relevant to
the first question you asked to, like explain He'llbilly's to
people because there was a big narrative of them about
(01:59):
them Trump. Then that's what happened with Trump is he
reached these specific people it's like, you're one of these people,
what's up with that? Explain to us what that's all about.
And jay D was doing the same thing at the
same time, and we like met and started talking and stuff.
He brought his wife, who was pregnant at the time,
to my comedy show that I did in Columbus. We
(02:19):
hung out afterwards, went to a bar, hung out for
a few hours talking about stuff. Now at that time,
and he was still calling Trump Hitler and everything. So
I was like, this guy's all right. Stayed in touch
sort of over the years, a little bit, texting here
and there, and then as his rise became more evident
and took the trajectory it did, you know. I haven't
talked to him forever at this point, But like I
(02:41):
even when I read the book, though, there were parts
in it where because we had we do have, if
everything in the book is to be believed, we have
a very similar upbringing and background in a lot of ways.
My mom was also a drug addict. I'm from very
very rural, poverty stricken Tennessee. Now, he would like go there.
He like grew up in Ohio, really, but he would
(03:03):
go there in the summers and be immersed in He'll
billy shit for a while. I was in it all
the time, not bragging, but uh, and so I definitely
related to a lot of it. But there were a
lot of angles he took in that book and things
that he said that even at the very beginning of
even knowing who he was, I was like, it just
struck me odd or weird. I was like, that's I
(03:24):
don't I'm not down with that. Like one of the
big ones I remember is here he makes his whole
case into the book for payday loan places, right about
how people like demonize those as being predatory, but what
they don't understand is those places really are lifelines to
poor rural people and all this stuff. Okay, because I
got to that part and I was like, what fuck
(03:44):
those places? What are you serious?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
You know?
Speaker 3 (03:47):
And then I hear later after the fact that I
purportedly he had whatever investment stakes or something like that
and some company and had some payday loan places, was
that type of thing, and I was like, Oh, that's
pretty greasy. And then his whole central thesis the way
I read it in that book, which was basically just like, yeah, listen,
you know, uh, these poor white people, they're just like
(04:09):
they're just fundamentally lazy. There's something broken in them, like culturally,
like they it's their own They could blame everybody else
all they want, but it's it's their own fault at
the end of the day. But I just never looked
at like that because I've seen too many people very
close to me that I feel like there're no fault
of their own been you know, turned to shit by uh,
(04:32):
completely external factors. Ironically to a lot of those people
love JD's boss, Donald Trump and that type of thing,
you know, because of all that that happened. But I
don't know how he you know, how we had basically
the same experiences and landed on such different outcomes the
way that we did. But I think that, you know,
(04:53):
you know, I don't know, I'm a conspiratorial it is,
But I think that he's I very much believe that
he's been that he's backed by Peter Thiel and his
and shepherded into this position that he's in now for
a very strategic reason on their part. He was identified
early on by them, I think, as someone who's like
to be used for this purpose and has been more
than happy to allow that to happen. That's what I
(05:15):
think has happened with j D.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
I think two or three different times.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Yeah, yeah, I know, it's definitely weird and all everything
that's going on there, and then he still like sucks
up to people, the types of people who will be
openly racist towards some other his children to his face
or to his digital face on Twitter anyway, and that
type of thing, which I also just find very wild.
The whole thing is wild. But you know, I mean
(05:39):
it's worked very well for him. He's the freaking vice president.
He's in the White House right now, Like he can't
argue with the results. If that's you know, those are
things you value, money and power and all that. It's
he's definitely getting what he wanted out of it so far,
and it could only just be beginning, so we'll see.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
I'm not a hillbilly here my accent, but I did
up in a small town, one of ten kids. Everybody's
working for Kodak up in that area, and then Kodak
went bust. Everybody lost their jobs, and right, yeah, yeah,
I get that kind of thing. That was like taking
your date to the town dump to watch the Bears
shooting yeah, but I'll tell you where I come from too.
(06:17):
Trump is fuller with a lot of my family and
a lot of former friends from high school and everything
like that, and I have not had really the chance
to sit down and talk with them about what's in
their best interest. And not that you represent all Hillbillies everywhere,
but one thing I struggled with is sort of this
cult light adherence to something that that maybe appeals to
(06:40):
their pride, but is it always in their best.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Interest early on from the beginning. And that's alluded to
this a little bit. And so did you. So I
my hometown also, So my hometown, I think is an
interesting case study. It's called Salina, Tennessee. It's in Klay County.
It's very rural. We don't have any traffic lights or
McDonald's or anything. There a big lot bragg and I
that's enough. I get it you, Francy. But in every
general election up to like two thousand and four, Lay
(07:04):
County was a Democratic county and was blue like win
for al Gore in two thousand and then Clinton before that,
and had been Democrat previously, and then now it's like
one of the strongest for Trump counties in Tennessee, like
by percentage again it's very small, but percentage wise, and
in the nineties, for years and years, the whole, the
(07:25):
beating heart of the town's economy was a fact of
textile factory from your way, Midwive, because I assume they're
from actual oshkosh Oshkosh Bagosh is what they're called, you know,
the most whimsically named company to ever destroy an entire community.
But they made and make a little cute, little baby
overalls and stuff, and that was like, there's a big
factory in Solina for years and years and the nineties
(07:47):
that left it went to Mexico. Nothing ever replaced it.
My family and a bunch of other people. You either
worked at the factory or you did something that kind
of service people that worked at the factory that my
dad ran the only video store in we like. He
had a converted single white trailer called Crowder's Video, and
my grandpa had a car lot, my other grandma had
a country cafe like a diner, and then my openly
(08:11):
gay uncle and his partner had a deli on the
town square and all of which were doing great. And
then that factory left, and within ten years all of
those businesses were closed. Half those people were dead. My
mom was hooked on pills, and that was the norm.
That happened to everybody there pretty much, or almost everybody,
or at least that were adjacent to It just devastated
(08:33):
the town and they've never to this day recovered. And
I felt like at twenty sixteen, like Trump showed up
and like was the first person to even really pretend
to give a shit about them or any of that,
because he had been famous for years before that as
a rich douchebag that I never liked him. For the record,
I didn't know any redneck, especially redneck dude who liked him.
(08:53):
You know. He was like a you know, a blue
blood Yankee son of a bitch who thinks she's better
than everybody else, you know, and needs ass whipped type
of thing. Is how nobody liked him, and I did either.
So when he showed up and he was doing that,
I was like, Okay, but he's full of shit. That
he's clearly full of shit. Shouldn't that part matter? But
I just think they were just so desperate for anyone
(09:15):
to care that they latched onto it. And he blamed
a lot of the same people like the swamp and
that sort of thing, and then yes, the racist aspect
of it too that he fed into. But I always
used to tell people, I just thought the racism part
was just the icing on the fuck you cake that
he baked for them, for the establishment that they had
seen as having ruined their lives and left them behind.
(09:36):
So I was sympathetic to it the first time around. Again,
I felt like I saw through it and I was like,
you guys are getting sold bad bill of goods here.
This is bullshit. But I did get where they were
coming from or why they felt that way. All these
years later, after everything that has happened, on the stuff
that he's done, and how nothing has really changed in
my hometown for the better for sure, and they're even
(09:57):
more die hard now than ever. It's hard for me
to try to reconcile with that. But I guess it's
a you know, I mean, you called it a cult.
I think you know, it's some kind of you get
dug in and it becomes part of your identity, your personality, whatever,
and then you just like it's hard to break people
out of that. And then now lately, all the stuff
that's happening lately in this country like scaring me. But
(10:20):
if your hardcore maga or whatever, I mean, they have
got to be loving all this shit, I imagine, like
so far because there's no been there's no long term
effects of any of it. Yet it's just all they
see is Trump just doing all the things he told
them he would do, because that's why, I mean, that's
what he's doing. Like in a way, I'm like morbidly
impressed by it because I've never seen an American politician
(10:40):
do that. Almost all the time, they just say a
bunch of shit and don't do much of nothing on
both sides for most of my life. But he's doing stuff,
and it's stuff that I really am not in favor of,
but they love it and think it's a great idea,
And so you know, they're not jumping off the Trump
train anytime soon, I don't think. And the real question
to me is when the receipts come in for a
(11:01):
lot of these things that I think are going to
have disastrous long term result, you know, sex When that
when those consequences arrived, what happens then? And I'd like
to think they'll find some of them will finally shake
it off, But I don't know if I'm actually not
that optimistic though at the end of the day.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
So, well, that's the thing is, I think you based
on your humor stuff, I think you can see a
lot of this is just built on lies, right, And
I think a lot of what populist politicians do is
they create enemies, they create false narratives, someone to blame
the elites or for us, the deep state is where
we worked, right, right. I think that the real people
hurting the rural population and eventually will see this are
(11:36):
their representatives that lie to them.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Right.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
The people are telling them these lies, but they actually
aren't going to fix things. They feed them information to
keep them angry. Why they hop why they hob now
with the super rich people and get yes breaks. But
so I don't know when it will come and how
much damage would be done before before everybody figures it out.
But it's a real problem that being lied to all
the time.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Yeah, And I really felt like when I was a
kid in that town, because I tell people too, it's
like again, not only did it like vote blue in
most elections, but most people when I was growing up there,
I would have described as outwardly a political like people
didn't talk about the general the general consensus, and almost
everybody there back then was basically like, I'll fuck them.
(12:20):
They're all full of shit and none of them really
give a damn about you know. The Yeah, right, I know,
I know. And that's like the sort of context I
was raised in there. And then now there's Trump signs
all over the place or anything, and it's just it's changed.
I mean, yeah, you're right, I mean, yes, they feed
them things to make them angry and turn people against
each other and make, you know, turn people into enemies
(12:41):
that aren't really while hiding the fact that the real
enemies are the masters that they're representatives serving all that
stuff that they don't say, get mad at, like Mexicans
and shit, instead of welfare queens and stuff, and the
serial boogeymen that they're terrified of, instead of like the
people that are actually screwing them over, sometimes right in
front of their face, like Elon Musk. And then he
(13:02):
turns around and talks house Elon that is like through
out there the idea of we've been saving all this money,
and uh, we might give everybody a dividend for it,
you know, And he said, like five thousand dollars, and
I don't think that'll ever happen, but it's funny. It's
funny to me that it's like, these people have been
decrying anything that seems we can't have health care whatever.
(13:23):
That's socialism. It's not fair. People's tax pa taxpayer tax
money can't pay for other people's stuff, and that's not
how it should be. Socialism's bad, you know, all this stuff.
And then Elon's like, I think we should take this
big sum of taxpayer money and just distribute it evenly
to the people, unconditionally. And they're like, oh, that's a
great idea. That sounds awesome, that's totally what we should do. Again,
(13:45):
I don't I think it'll be called dan help where
that actually even happens. But it's the whole thing is
just kind of upside down.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Yeah, feral boogeyman. I like that.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
You guys should know all about those. I would imagine
probably that.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
We are ongoing. So I want to take you, so
we insport yourself back to your hometown and Selena, and
you're sitting in so my hometown, the local dinter is
called the Greeks. You sit there and you have a
cup of coffee, everybody talks after the church and things,
and so you're back at the Greeks and you tick
me in and we sit down at the table of
your local cafe and you introduce me to your friends
(14:19):
and go, this guy's the deep State, and John's there too, right,
so the true deep state guys, well, questions would they
ask us?
Speaker 3 (14:25):
It's funny you say that, because I actually have a
question that I was wanting to ask you guys. But
it's not this questions coming from me. It's not it's
actually coming from a friend of mine. So this is
not exactly what you're asking. I'm not channeling a hometown person.
This is my own question I already wanted to ask you.
But my friend that I co host a podcast with
is and saying recently, he's been positing that if these
(14:48):
things that the current administration is doing really does lead
to truly disastrous results, like things start to crumble apart,
and it's heading in that direction, at what point does
anybody or can anybody step in and then do something
about it to whether it's like a coup or an
Operation Valkyrie type sign or whatever it is, is there
a point where to keep this country from collapse? Would
(15:09):
the deep snit ever do some deep state stuff in
this scenario, And because he's starting to route for that
the end.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
I wish there was a deep state. The deep state
is just a it's just a shitty name they throw
at people like us who Congress and the president. They
make the laws and the rule, they don't always know
what they are right we carry them out. So like
for even at CIA, the first thing we do when
we're gonna have an operation is we go to a
lawyer and we're like, is this legal? Is this conspiracial?
(15:39):
Can we do it? And you know, if the answer
is no, we don't do it. Regardless, even if the
president says I want you to do something, and I
think this is one of Trump's problems, He's like, I
give an order, nobody carries it out like because they're like,
maybe it's against the law, or maybe it's against the rules,
or maybe it's unethical. People won't do it. To know
these and as least as bad as it is now, Nope,
(16:03):
the only thing I think you'll find is people of
goodwill will basically say I'm just gonna like keep my
head down and try to wait out four years and
I'll do what I need to do. But no, the
answer is no.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Well, even on that last note you said, I remember
thinking the first time around the first Trump administration, people
were like, this guy's in charge of the nukes. That's terrifying.
And I was like, surely there's people around high high
levels in the military and stuff. I got to have
been there for a long time. They're legit, they're not insane,
and hopefully they would be able to keep something truly
wild like that from happening. And I feel like after
(16:38):
the first administration, you got we've got reports during like
January sixth, committees and all that of the way things
were inside at the time, and it seemed like that
was sort of the case. I had. It broke down
and like there was team Saying and team crazy, and
it's like saying, like longtime bureaucrats who were like actually
reasonable people were trying hard every day to keep Team
Crazy from doing a bunch of crazy shit. And that's
(16:58):
really what was happening by the scenes the first time around.
And it's like part of the whole plan this time
around is to not have any of the same people there.
And so you know, you said you were saying, people
have been there a long time and are not down
with all this, just like keep their head down. But
do you think there's because I used to work for
I used to work for the Department of Energy, and
I was just like a pencil pushure of the desk.
But I that's another thing I used to think because
(17:19):
I worked my whole time in twenty ten, the two thousand,
middle of twenty sixteen, six and a half years I was.
That was all Obama administration, So the Secretary of THEDE
was like the head of Physics and Energy at MIT.
And then after I left and Trump came in, it
was fucking Rick Perry right, who couldn't even remember the
name of the agency, And that was that was all
freaking me out. But because I'd worked there, I was
(17:40):
like I knew. I was like that people doing the
things there every day are longter like life. First, they're
people that have been working for the de for a
long long time, through all kinds of different administrations with
different politics, and they keep the mission going and the
trains running on time and all that. So it's even
with all this craziness, people all still be there and
(18:02):
that's the thing that gives me comfort. But again, what
they're part of what they're doing right now is they're
excising a lot of that. They're saying to.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
All right, let's take a break. We'll be right back.
So John and I John is speak himself, but he's
worked against Russia, the Soviet Union, And you know, I've
done a lot of time counterterrorism. I spent time in
Rock Afghanistan pushing back against like really some evil ideologies
(18:32):
and some nasty people. But if Trump comes along and says,
and this isn't like, this isn't crazy anymore, he says,
I want us to, I want you say, work against
our real enemies, Canada. And then I guess it's not
illegal to run operations against the Native Ali. I mean,
it would be stupid and unethical and foolish and short sighted.
(18:55):
But I think they'd find a couple of people who
do it, and a couple of people who Yeah, if
you make me do it, I'll do a shitty job.
I don't know, Chuck, what do you think I.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Will get that question a lot of time when you
guys gonna come in and take care of this kind
of thing. You see, hey, guys, and essentially you have
experienced in Dee it's the same thing people are. Our
public servants are focused on their mission, which is collecting
foreign intelligence, where we're not focused on domestic politics and
try it. In fact, we're very much inculcated to stay
away from that.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
You know, you don't want.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
A powerful agency that steals thing and does things like
that working domestically, right, and so we'll pretty much stay
out of domestic politics. So what Jerry said first is
most likely is there isn't really a means for people
to step in or do something or stop something. You know,
half the country it most would blame them for getting
involved in something they shouldn't get involved in. But like
(19:44):
Jerry said too, I think most people are going to
focus on trying to do their job or keep their
head down, or if they do give these kind of
orders that are crazy, a certain percentage of people will quit.
Another group will try to explain is best and try
the best they can to push back and explain, and
some of them get fired. And then there'll be a
small group of people who will do it and probably
do it poorly. And then maybe if Trump's in long enough,
(20:07):
he'll bring in enough todies to try to come in
and do it. But it's a very difficult job to
just do on the fly. It takes a long time
to go through training and get experience and get languages
and learn how to do these things. I mean, he'll
be dead long before anybody he brings in from the
outside is trained and ready to do this effectively. So
possibly Justice Department, possibly in the courts, possibly an FBI.
(20:30):
At some point there'll be a group of people who
can more effectively push back, but it's pushed back, probably
trying their best to explain what's happening.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Is illegal, right for the Republican Party from his own ail.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Yeah, Congress is where it's supposed to happen.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Yeah, the rest there answer. Yeah, I mean, that's that thing.
I was thinking just because this week he had a
new executive order basically it was like, you know, expanding
executive authority even further and basically telling the courts like, actually,
we're we're the ones who are going to interpret the law.
And it's like, you know, even on the constitution, like
says that's what judicial just for it, and he's like,
now we're not really doing that whole constitution thing anymore.
(21:03):
But but I was thinking because of that, I was
like it's wild that that's the idea, that one thing,
like an example, something is completely bipotterson and just unquestioned
my whole life until recently, was that, like, you know,
checks and balances, which is the thing you get told
over and over again as a kid growing up in
this country. It's like one of the principles were founded
(21:24):
on is the idea of checks and balances, and that
that is good right whoever it has the power at
any given time. The fact that we have that is
a good thing, right. And that's one of those types
of things, like fundamental precepts that I just never thought
I would see questioned by anybody like regular people. I mean,
(21:45):
And now they're actively trying to dismantle checks and balances
and they're being cheered on for it, and that's it's
all just it's all pretty wild. But since you asked
me that question, the two I thought of, what's the
deal with the weather machine? Right, who actually controls that?
And Uh, why didn't they send to her kind of
put the fires out in LA when we had that
problem out here, because it's this is liberal haven out here,
(22:08):
so you'd think they want to take care of us.
And then uh, and then what's the real story with COVID.
What were you guys really doing there trying to put
five G and everybody or were sterilized smart people?
Speaker 1 (22:19):
I don't know and I had retired, so we can't
be blamed for either of those.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Yeah, So yeah, the conspiracy crazies, they've got their team
in there now, all the people Louderie, Taylor Green her
parties are in it. It's time to expose the Jewish
space laser, right, I mean they well, now let's wheel out,
get the gurneyes out, and wheel out the aliens that
the CIA has hit all this time, Right, Let's do
(22:43):
the Kennedy assassination. Let's do his people in charge.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
They can do all that.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
So yeah, let's bring it all out there.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Let's show everybody to find out there's nothing there.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
But they still That's another thing that I don't get
is like I was just in Kentucky doing shows and
it was flooding there at the time. I saw people
these people like on Twitter they were talking about so
Elin had been saying, you know, we need to audit
Fort Knox, right, because we don't even know if all
that gold is there anymore. It could be just standing
empty who knows, you know. And it's like my buddy
(23:14):
pointed out, He's like, well, if it's been empty for
a while, that feels like that's been fine.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Like it's like I don't like that hasn't really affected.
We don't know this, We don't know that. What they're
saying is that they don't know. They for the government,
they actually do know if they ask people.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
So they had been saying that we need to audit
Fort Knox and these people, and it caught up at
a little traction on like Twitter and stuff between the
conspiracy theories are like very funny that they're talking about
auditing Fort Knox and all of a sudden it's flooding
there and it's because they're saying, you know, they we
employed the weather machine again. And my thing is like, okay,
but that but that I thought that was like a
Biden administration deep like they you guys have taken care
(23:53):
of that, haven't you. Like you've won, You've pushed those
people out right, So where are they? What are they do?
And there's some like secret.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
There's always got to be an enemy. So I have
a question for you, Tray, do you get threats? There
was recently a Vanity Fair article called They're Scared Shitless,
and it talked about how North Carolina Senator Tom Tillis,
who was claiming that he was going to vote against
Pete Haygesith for Secretary of Defense, that the FBI went
to and warned him about a series of credible death
threats against him because he was going to vote against
(24:22):
the presidents. Now, do you get threats from people who
really don't like what you're doing?
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Early on, when I first popped, first became a thing,
and I was kind of all over the place briefly,
like on the Internet. I got a lot of messages
from people and dms and stuff that a lot of
them are just like Colin at gay in various ways
or whatever, or having conspiracy theories about me. It's like,
I'm a secret Jewish actor from New York Who's been
installed by the Obama administration to like propagate liberal propaganda
(24:51):
in rural America. Right, that was a conspiracy theory, right,
So stuff like that. But I would get some that
were like threatening violence, you know, and however ways, and
I got a few death threats and that type of thing,
But they were like here and there, and I mostly
just like laughed them off or ignored it. Over the years,
they've gotten much less and less because those people are
not generally what you know, their algorithms, not showing them
(25:15):
my stuff. For the most part, it's mostly just it'll
be hateful comments or whatever. And I have known people
who are like, don't have as large of a following
as me, but have gotten on the radar of some
of these guys. Right, I don't know how or why
I have not gotten that kind of attention so far.
(25:36):
Maybe I'm just again, I'm just either not on their
radar or they don't. They think I'm just a silly
thing that's not serious, which is fine with me because
I am a comedian. So I ask myself sometimes like
if that does happen, if I start getting that type
of attention the way you hear all these stories about
all the time, what am I gonna do, Because like
I said, I am married, I do have kids, and
(25:57):
it would you know, that shit would be freaky. I'm
not you know, you were about these people, even that
one guy, like even people on their side like that
that guy who was like a big he was like
a big sort of leader. In the process of January
sixth on the day of and then later they decided
that he actually was one of your people who worked
for the deep state. Right then he was installed there
and this guy Maga and loves Trump. They just decided
(26:20):
he was that secret deep state and then he had
to like go into hiding and shit with his wife
and like leave there out because of you know, the
threats they were getting, how harassed they got. So it's like, yeah,
I don't know, it's like a list you get you
find yourself on at some point and they'll like do
everything they can and make your life hell. And thankfully
that hasn't happened to me yet and I'm hoping obviously
that it doesn't.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Is Trump good for you? So I've got friends who
are journalists now I never had when it was on
the inside, And after their third drink, they'll say, at
least people are like animated now Trump hate and releiveled.
But it's he's an animating character and he's like in
the headlines all the time, and he's journalists are building
their career years off of either opposing him or digging
(27:02):
shit up or lick spittling him and praising him. So, well,
how do you see you yourself in this in this biasphere.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
Yeah. People were bringing it up to me too or
asking me about that the first time around, also in
twenty sixteen. That's like what I said then, and I
think it's still true this time around too. Is like
I would as somebody who lives in this country and
as kids and all this stuff like, it's this is
not worth it to me, But it would be disingenuous
of me to not acknowledge that this probably is like
(27:33):
a quote unquote good thing for me professionally considering what
I do, like I probably do benefit from this ultimately,
and did the first time around as well. But on
the other hand, in the run up went Biden won
in twenty twenty and everything, everybody naively thought, you know,
now that all that's over forever, what are you know?
What are you What are you gonna do now? What
are you gonna talk? When I was always like, it'll
(27:54):
be fine. I've been this country long enough to know,
especially now at this point, there's always going to be
dumb shit happening that it needs to be made fun of,
regardless of who's in charge. So I think I'll be fine,
And I was, I mean I had, you know, I
was in I didn't like go back to my old
job during the Biden administration, just crawl back out of
my internet hole when Trump got re elected, like I
(28:15):
was still doing it all the that whole time. But no,
but yeah, it's been you know, my numbers will have
gone up recently and probably will continue to do so.
And that means ticket sales and all that stuff, probably,
and it's because of you know, the current state of
things politically. But again, if I could snap my fingers
and be doing somewhat less well but feel better about
(28:37):
the future of the country, I would take that trade
in a heartbeat. But yeah, it probably does help me
a little bit for now, up until a point like
when the like water wars start or whatever, or I
don't know, people are gonna going to comedy shows in
the after times or during the Second Civil War or whatever,
so we'll see it. I had thought and planning that
(29:00):
if Harris Walls had won, my plan was to gradually
drift away from heavy politics stuff in the more just
regular stand up clips. And I even started making like
cooking videos and stuff like that, just it's like regular
funny stuff and not have to talk about politics all
the time, because I've been thinking if they had won,
then maybe we can all try to put some of
(29:21):
this behind us as a people. Obviously didn't work out
that way, and when that when what happened happened, I
was like, well, Okay, I guess I'm still doing my
thing for a while's.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Cause perception, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Talking about conspiracy theories. Do you think there's a greater
tendency towards conspiracy theories on the right wing or in
rural communities. And one of the things that leads me
to ask that is I recall a few years ago
there was a journalist that had been coming back from
cover civil wars and poverty in the Third World for
a long time, and he was getting interviewed on one of
(30:05):
these podcasts, New York Times podcasts, and they asked him,
do you see a similar breakdown here that's going to
lead to a civil war or whatever? And I was
expecting to say, oh, yes, and he said no, because
in the places where he was they had real problems,
like they were really poor, they couldn't eat, they were
actually killing each other, right, And here it seems like
it's middle class board white guys so do you think
(30:26):
there's a regional piece to this, or a rural peace
to this, or what is it?
Speaker 3 (30:32):
Well, first of all, the thing that that journalist said
is like a version of a thing that I like
try to tell myself to sleep at night or whatever.
So I've heard other people say it to Americans don't
really realize how like we look around, like, oh god,
the sky's following, this is horrible and everything, and it's like,
as compared to a lot so many places in the
world and the shit that goes on there, it's like
it's still it's still pretty nice here, you know, and
(30:55):
we don't know how good we got it. And I
try to remind myself of that, but I didn't. I
would not used to. I would not have thought that
it necessarily was the right leaning thing. Conspiracy theories. It's like,
that's one thing I've lamented is like I used to,
I was ever really into them. I've always liked aliens
and stuff and UFO stuff and that type of thing.
I like Oliver Stone's JFK movie and listening to podcasts
(31:19):
about that stuff and whatever else. And it was always
kind of a silly, fun thing to me. Conspiracy theories
you know, I smoked a little bit too much weed
one time in college and watched the wrong YouTube video,
and for a couple hours after that, I was like,
Damn Bush did nine to eleven, you know, like that
type of thing. Then I shook it off later, but
and like that's another good example. I feel like that
was a dull like nine to eleven being an inside
(31:41):
job and something that Bush did, like that conspiracy theory was.
There was plenty of people on the left tour all
about that because it was an anti Bush thing. So
used to know, but now I feel like it's undeniable
that it's like right wing coded, and I think it's
a combination of things where it's like the rise of
Quanon and it begetting as big and mainstream as it did,
(32:04):
and it kind of becoming like intrinsically linked with MAGA
and Trump and the right, and also how all encompassing
it is. It's like it will wrap up anything into itself,
do you know what I mean. It's like any kind
of conspiracy theory can get connected back to this larger
one type thing and it and there it's people on
the right largely and then uh, and then I think
a lot of like pied type stuff. You know, Like
(32:27):
I'm not not blaming things on Joe Rogan, but I'm
saying like that what realm of influence is tied to
get you know, again like early Joe Rogan and that
there's like a crossover. He loved talking about conspiracy theories
and aliens and all that shit that's used to be
mostly all of what he did, and then you can
see how they've got it's gotten mixed together with the
politics of the right over the years, just by looking
(32:48):
at his show as like a case study or an example.
And that sucks because, like some again, sometimes I could
think they're fun, right, but I don't want to be
even jokingly part of the current version of the world
of variously theories. It's just another thing that's been co
opted and ruined by the far right. As far as
I'm concerned. We used to have fun with conspiracy theories
(33:08):
in this country and now they're dangerous.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
But yeah, yeah, in high school there was like who
really built the pyramids or space aliens? And you know,
you can enjoy that on any any part of the
political spectrum. But one of my things that I'm sort
of gobsmack and still dealing with. But it was like
where I come from, I think where you do too,
you know, sort of like a small town. The military
was always sacred sanc It was also a place where
(33:32):
kids coming out of high school, we can get a
job and you can see the world. You can make
something of yourself with a we had a pickle plant
in town, right and it closed down, and kodaks like,
you can always join the Marines, right, yes, yes, and
a lot of people did. And if you didn't go
to college. So with with the right now with Trump,
what they've broken is really the military isn't sacre sanct anymore.
(33:53):
When Trump got up and said that John McCain is
a fucking loser for getting and being tortured by the
North Vietnamese, and people bought that, and people blought that
in my tone too. You know, Trump's saying that generals
are stupid and the military of a bunch of pussies. Right,
what's your sense of, Like where you come from, is
(34:13):
the military not being held in high regard anymore? I
thought that was the bedrock thing me too.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
Yeah, it's another thing, like I was saying earlier about
checks and balances or whatever. The military is the type
of thing that I thought would not everybody called into quest.
That was one of the craziest things that I ever
saw Trump do, is when he did the things like
you're talking about. He got caught calling you know, dead
soldiers losers and all this type of shit that he's
done over the years. It's like, I can't believe that
this is okay with everybody, because that was like the
one thing you could never ever do. And it's all
(34:41):
this doze stuff. And they've just recently started talking about, oh,
they're actually going to cut some of the defense budget.
And this part is hard for me because I've spent
years being like, we should cut some of the defense.
It's just like, for most of my life it's like, God,
I really wish we could cut some of the defense
budget and focus more on space travel and going to Mars.
And it's like without the monkey's Paul cur right, this
is the version of the world that's happening. But I
(35:03):
think it's like I don't know for sure, but I
think it's like they still have an idea, an idealized
version of the military that is sacrosanct in their head,
and it's like they think that the present day military,
like so many things, has been like co opted and
ruined by like wokeism and dei stuff and that type
of thing. Or you know, the military is like gone
woke with military leadership. So the military has lost its
(35:24):
way I think and gotten all woke and shit is
how they justify being anti military right now? And it's
like they just they want to they the real American
military that they like, Remember, it's like it's still attainable
and that's still like the gold standard and it is
sacro sanc but it's just been bastardized in the current
(35:45):
version of it. That's why you can shit all over
it is because of that, So you got to get
it back to the old way or something.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Well.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
The next one then is similar, is like how do
we become pro Russian? Like for Christ's sake?
Speaker 3 (35:55):
Like yes, that's that one is nuh because again, growing
up here am I whole you know how I mean,
they're the bad guys in every movie and everything. It's
like the Cold War was such it ended when I
was like a kid, but it was still just like
such a huge part of everything, and it's I just
never I don't know, Uh, it's a big part of
like how so many people demonize the left overall a
(36:16):
period or socialism being a dirty word is because they
got associated with the evils of communism and Soviet Russia
and that being the enemy and all that, and it
was just never questioned. It's communism is still evil and
socialism by proxy and all that. But now Russia's awesome
because of I don't know, Putin's.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Yeah, we got to get people to watch Red Dawn again.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
That's the russ Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
I lived in Russia and I've been working on Russia
things for a long time and it's not awesome. Yeah,
but I you know what I think it is. And
you what's so good about your comedy trade is you
focus on what has happened I think in this country
is we've defined our enemies as internal enemies rather than
external enemies. Like when we grew up, it was like
there was external enemies and we disagreed with each other.
But we're on the same side against external I think
(36:58):
one of the geniuses that Trump picked up on that
was already out there was if I can make Hillary
Clinton the enemy, then anything I say or do is
okay because it's attacking that because they're the real enemy,
not anybody else.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
So Treue, what's your favorite conspiracy theory? And I hope
it has to do with CIA so we can maybe
address it for you.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
My definitely the favorite genre of them, at least I guess,
is all aliens and UFO stuff, anything from like Rosswelt
through the drones or whatever, and all the stuff that
people say, and then we can't talk about any of that, right, See,
I have aliens inting in an underground bunker somewhere, or
alien tech or whatever. It's like one of those things
where it's like, basically, do I think that aliens probably
(37:40):
exist somewhere in the universe? Yes, mathematically I think that
they probably do. Do I think that like the drones
in New Jersey and shit, or like aliens surveillance or
any of that stuff. No, I don't.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
There was a senator from Nevada, Reid, who was really
was obsessed with this for years, obviously at Area fifty
one is in Nevada and stuff, and so he pushed
the Defense Apartment and the intelligence that needs to create
some version of looking at things that we couldn't figure out.
And there's been a Congress variety of hearings and this
and that, and of course none of it really answers
(38:10):
any of this. And of course the thing is every
time you try to answer these things, it just makes
people go deeper and say ah, like they said, hey,
let out all the JFK stuff, And essentially the intelligenent
is let out all the JFK stuff. But the fact
there's like two pieces of paper left, they're like, ah,
that's where the real thing is. That you almost can't
win when you start down this thing. So I think
there is an office or in the Defense Department, and
(38:34):
probably in the intelligences or that try to do what
they can to look at things that are unexplainable and
see if they can't figure things out or if recover
things that look that way. But in terms of actual
alien stuff, I spent thirty years in net Cia.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
I never heard anything but anything.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
We hit an office on this. I think this is
big in the seventies and eighties for a while that
was looking at far seeing and we hired psychics and
they would sit down and they would sit were a
piece of paper and drink of coffee and they would
like sketch something out and they go look for this
in Atlanta, vous stock like a submarine pen and the
only reason we had that was because and I can't
(39:10):
remember was here to read. But there was some influential
senator who was convinced that this could and he like
made us do it. He gave us the money. It said,
fucking do this and it produced nothing. But we're still
like CIA had an office that did this, yeah, because
we were forced to.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Like it's like mk Ultra, which is in the nineteen fifties, Yep.
There was a concern that we were fighting the Soviet
Union and there's all these public TV shows and movies suggests,
and a number of people had come back from fighting
in Korea and other places, and it seemed to become brainwashed.
If you believe communism, it must because there must have
been a drug or a brainwashing that the Soviets had
figured out. And so there was a small place at
(39:51):
the CIA that was supposed to look into it and
test drugs and things to see if this thing existed.
I think they ruined a lot of people's minds, but
they found out that there was no You could destroy
some one's brain, but you can't really reprogram it very right.
And it was a pretty sad experiment and.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
I have to say, if we just the way things
work in the real world. So John and I are
both we've been out for a long time and are
measly pensions were not port but we're certainly not rich.
We could hit the jackpot if we, like said, I
know where the aliens are, right, And if there really was,
why wouldn't people come out afterwards and say it, like,
you know, just or sneak off to the Washington Post
(40:28):
or the New York Times or Carlson and go, here's
the Yeah, the thousands of us. Why wouldn't wanted to know?
Speaker 3 (40:34):
That? Is the mind that because over I thought about it,
I think really like the real conspiracy theory is that
it's all way more boring than you think it is
and also less effectual than you think of. Is not
as all powerful as a lot of people think it is,
and they couldn't don't have the capacity to do a
lot of this stuff that people think that has been done.
And also, as you just said, it's like the whole Moonland,
the Main Fight or whatever like that one. It's like
(40:56):
the the sheer number of people that would have to
be in something like that and never ever even up
to it, including their deathbed say a single thing about it,
or leak any information out or whatever. And it's like
people just people can't do that, you know, it's human
nature to it's just impossible. You can't keep a secret
(41:16):
like that with that many people. There's like two people
maybe can keep a secret, and even when the third
person gets involved, it's your danger of it getting out
let alone thousands of people.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
So yeah, especially in this day and age, he could
make some good money off of it.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Yeah. Yeah, they don't stay secret very long.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
It's been so fun to listen to you. I enjoy
following on social media and I would suggest that people
in our audience to look it up.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
Trey Crowder, thank you Trek Crowder dot com, trakt Crowder
on all the socials and yeah, thanks for having me.
It's a fun.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Appreciate Troy is tr Ae, So Trey, thank you very much,
really really appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (41:48):
Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'shay, John Seipher,
and Jonathan Stern. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission
Implausible It's a production of honorable mention and abominable pictures
for iHeart Podcasts.
Hosts And Creators
Adam Davidson
John Sipher
Jerry O'Shea
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