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August 26, 2025 • 23 mins

On the first half of today's podcast, Hosts Ramses Ja and Q Ward dig into some Donald Trump fact checking. 

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Broadcasting from the Civic Cypress studios. Welcome to the QR Code,
where we share perspective, seek understanding, and shape outcomes. The
man you're about to hear from is a man who
is the great anchor in my life. He is the
Q and the QR code. He goes by the name
of q Ward.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
The voice you just heard is the north star for
this entire movement, the reason why I do any give
this work.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
He is the R in the QR code.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
He goes by the name ramses Jah.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
We need you to stick around because we have a
show in store for you. We're going to do a
little bit of catching up. You'll hear a little bit
later about my recent travels. He had a birthday and
needed to get out of the country for a little
bit and breathe some fresher air. But we didn't want
to get too far behind in the news cycle. So

(00:47):
I am back in the flesh and we are back
to business as usual. In terms of stuff that we missed,
we will be talking about how Texas Republicans have passed
the jerry mandered congressional map requested by Donald Trump. So
a bit of a loss, but that also means you
know they've drawn first blood and now the fight is on,

(01:08):
so we're going to get into the weeds there. He's
going to be talking to us at length about how
Donald Trump has ordered the Smithsonian to dial back the
slavery exhibits and the implications of what it means when
we erase history in whitewash history. So I employ you

(01:29):
to stick around for that because I kind of have
an idea what he might say, and it's going to
be deeply insightful. We're going to be talking about how
Governor Wes Moore continues to defy Trump, this time staying
upfront that he's going to keep the National Guard out
of d c. DC is devolving and wes Moore is
holding his ground. We appreciate that. We're also going to

(01:51):
spend our culture segment talking about Donald Trump and really
fact checking him because a lot of stuff has transpired
since our last recording. But before we get to any
of that, it is time, as always to start off
with our feel good feature. And today's feel good feature
comes from CNN, and we are will be talking about
Target for a bit. So Target CEO is stepping down

(02:13):
as customers turn away. This is from based in New
York the article, but Target CEO Brian Cornell is stepping
down after eleven years at the retailer as the company
faces slumping sales and backlash to its retreat on DEI.
Cornell's departure was widely expected. Some industry analysts believe Targets
should bring in an outside voice to lead the company,

(02:33):
but adopted for an internal candidate. Cornell will be replaced
on February first, twenty twenty six by Michael fiddlek Fiddle
fiddle Key, I think that's how we say it. Target's
current Chief operating Officer, Fidolke, started as an intern at
Target and has been at the company for twenty years.
Fidolki was chosen from a quote strong list of external
and internal candidates unquote, Cornell said on a call with

(02:55):
analysts Wednesday, adding that he is quote the right candidate
to lead our business back to growth. Cornelle will stay
on as executive chairman. He took over in twenty fourteen
and revitalized Target, overseeing strategy to remodel stores and strengthen
the chains online business to compete with Amazon. You're feeling
optimistic about this guy, Q.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Well, I think the idea that they're going to compete
with Amazon in the online marketplaces. I mean, I guess
everybody can dream, but yeah, right, especially when you've alienated
trillions of dollars in spending, like I mean, sure, good luck.
You know you've said famously, at some point, Donald Trump

(03:37):
will be gone, Black people shill still be here and
we will not forget what you did.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
Yeh.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
I'm hoping that we stick to our gun because if
we do, as you can see, we can be very powerful.
So it's hard to feel hopeful or optimistic for him,
but good luck.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
Yeah. My thinking is like you'd have to do something drastic,
like let's say, hire Kamala Harris or somebody that looked
like her or had the pedigree of her, and they
just kind of shuffled the deck. So I don't really
see this being any any different, you know, in terms
of like impacting those of us have decided that we

(04:15):
don't need to give our dollars to a place like that.
All right, let's move on to talking about what's going
on the culture. We are going to be fact checking
Donald Trump, or rather sharing some some content that does
a good job of fact checking Donald Trump and bringing
it to life, which is kind of what we do,
so I'll share a bit from Time magazine. President Donald

(04:36):
Trump has said he is preparing an executive order to
get rid of mail in ballots and voting machines before
the twenty twenty six mid term elections, and he's spreading
misinformation on social media about the voting methods ahead of time.
During a meeting with the Ukrainian President Lottimore Zelenski in
the White House, Trump criticized mail in ballots as corrupt
and undemocratic. Quote mail and ballots are corrupt. You can

(04:59):
never have a real democracy with mail in ballots, quote,
Trump said, adding that lawyers are always drafting the executive order. Sorry,
already drafting the executive order. Quote it is the only
way democrats can get elected unquote. Earlier in the day,
Trump posted a similar message on True Social pledging to
lead a movement to eliminate mail in ballots and highly

(05:20):
inaccurate voting machines. Quote. We are now the only country
in the world that uses mail in voting, while others
gave it up because of the massive voter fraud encountered,
he wrote. Absentee voting and vote by mail allowed people
to send in their ballots via the postal service. Not
all states allowed, but the laws vary in each state
that does. Some states permit universal mail in voting, for example,

(05:40):
or anyone can vote by mail for any reasons. Others
allowed in specific circumstances. Despite what Trump claims, the United
States is not the only country that uses mail in ballots.
The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance the IDEA,
an inter governmental organization that works to protect democratic instat institutions,

(06:00):
says that thirty four countries allow voting, twelve of which
allowed for all voters and twenty two of which allowed
for some voters. Among the countries that allow it are Canada,
the United Kingdom, Australia, and Germany. So that's a great
way to kick that off. Donald Trump is sowing additional
fear and division by suggesting that mail in ballots are

(06:25):
undemocratic and it's the only way that Democrats can win.
But indeed, every single Republican candidate that ever won ever
did so with the same framework that exists right now.
But again, I think when your voter base is kind

(06:46):
of primed, they've been taught to hate half of the
country and based on really nothing like we could look
at a lot of things that are done by democratic
leadership that's actually harmful, that has real world implications where
you have long historical data, etc. That says this, these

(07:07):
policies are corrupted. You could have an argument about the
moral fabrico society all day, because that's kind of a
little bit more subjective, But what is objective is dollars
and cents, incarceration rates and all that sort of stuff.
You know, it doesn't seem like Republicans are winning a
lot of those battles. But again, when you've been primed

(07:28):
to hate the opposition, then disenfranchising the opposition feels like
exactly what you wanted to hear. So you just kind
of accept stuff like this on its face, that this
is the only way democrats can win, and ignore the
fact that every Republican won the same way, and that
somehow this is undemocratic just because he says it.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
Your thoughts cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Let's own the lives, even if we own ourselves is
of course, Republican voters vote by mail. Everyone does, and
as you said, more than two thirds of democracies around
the world use some form of mail in voting. So

(08:11):
the idea that it's not democratic, or that only we
do it, or that it's corrupt in nature coming from
someone who.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
Votes by mail.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
By the way, I don't people just like ignore that
the first time he started having a conversation about mail
in ballots being wrong in that election, he voted by mail.
So Trump be lyon, But more importantly, his base allows it.

(08:43):
They will go with whatever he says, and you will
watch them do mental gymnastics to justify whatever he says,
even when it's blatantly corrupt or blatantly false. You know,
if it's provable, if it's if the data and all
the facts show that it's false, they'll say he didn't
mean it. If it's just corrupt, they'll find a way

(09:07):
to align themselves with the corruption.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
Right.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
No, it doesn't matter how low he goes. He's still
the best choice for America. So it doesn't matter. Yes,
if he did that to his daughter, or if he
did this to someone else and it was harmful or
whatever the crime is, Yes, I'd still support him because
he's God's choice for America. It's a really really sad state,
but it's also a really true one.

Speaker 1 (09:31):
Also, want to add one more thing here. A lot
of the military votes by mail, especially people who deployed overseas,
so it's kind of part and parcel to the whole.
Everybody gets a chance to have a voice in their government. Well,
the more people that have a voice, the less likely
he is to win. So you don't want everybody to
have a voice. Yeah, well this is why in Texas

(09:54):
they are jerry mannering the maps, because they recognize that
they lose power when it's organized the way that it
should be and everyone gets a fairer Say, all right,
let's move on to another thing that This one will
be very brief, but this comes from CNN. The wall
along the southern border will be planed black in an

(10:15):
effort to make the structure too hot to climb, Department
of Homeland Security Secretary Christy Gnome announced Tuesday, saying the
suggestion came from President Donald Trump. Quote. It's tall, which
makes it very very difficult to climb, almost impossible. It
also goes deep into the ground, which would make it
very difficult, if not impossible, to dig under. And today
we are also going to be painting it black unquote,

(10:38):
Noam said during a news conference Tuesday in Santa Teresa
New Mexico as she stood before the slatted steel structure.
Quote that is specifically at the request of the president,
who understands that in the hot temperatures down here, when
something is painted black, it gets even warmer and it
will make it even harder for people to climb. Unquote,
she said, do you want to just tell the people

(11:02):
the most obvious things about this que So, there's a
couple of things.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
First and foremost, we don't live in eternal summer in
this country.

Speaker 1 (11:15):
There's these things called seasons. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
We also, unlike you know, our neighbors to the extreme north,
don't live in twenty four hours sunlight. The sun sets
every day, and that's.

Speaker 1 (11:33):
What people think.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
This takes me back to when he proposed injecting bleach
to treat the coronavirus. It's like, you think that when
he says some of these ridiculous things, like there's no
way there are no educated Republicans. Imagine being so married
to evil and corruption that you don't even speak up

(11:57):
when he says and does ridiculous the unintelligent things man
like yeah, let's just.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
Paint it black. Then it'll be too hot for them
to climb.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
It's I'm sorry, man, some of the stuff that he
says and does, it's just too ridiculous to even try
to form an educated.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
Response to I know what you mean. Well, the other
thing is that how can it also be true that
nobody's coming over and that this wall is necessary? How
much extra does it cost to paint it black? Who
crosses the border in the daytime when you're most likely
to be seen and crossed? Since he got elected anyway,

(12:36):
so what are we doing? Yeah, you know what I'm saying,
but him. But the other part is, if you're going
to climb a wall, you're not going to touch the wall.
You're going to get a ladder. You don't have to
like it. Just there's so many parts of this that
feel just like he's just saying whatever, and people like, yeah,
that's all good, you know, but like it's not. It's

(12:57):
not based in any real, meaningful, impactful version of reality
that changes anything. So but you know, that's that's their God.
All right, let's move on to the last one. This
one will be brief, but Donald Trump is of course
teasing the idea of no more elections. As from the BIM.
President Donald Trump is again hinting at finding a loophole
to serve a third presidential term. During a White House

(13:19):
summit on Monday, August eighteen, Trump appeared at a joint
press conference with several European leaders, including Ukrainian President Valtimore's
and Lensky, who noted that his country couldn't safely hold
elections amid its conflict with Russia. Per people. Trump used
the moment to suggest that he could suspend the twenty
twenty eight presidential election if the US were engaged in

(13:39):
a war at that time. Quote, so let me just
say three and a half years from now, if we
happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections.
Oh that's good, unquote the president joke. So you know,
that's him further priming the pump and giving his base
what they want and what a lot of people seem
to not mind. I guess we might. All right, let's

(14:01):
move on. So one of the things that I think
is happening, and this is where we're sharing our opinions here,
but and it's better late than never. It should have
happened a long time ago. It should have happened right
after Michelle Obama said they go low, we go high
because in the moment, that was a brilliant philosophy. But

(14:23):
right after Hillary lost that election, we should have kind
of read the play, and Democrats specifically should have read
the play like, oh, okay, this is a different form
of politics. Everyone was saying it, but it didn't. It
took them the better part of a decade to start
trying different approaches instead of politics as usual. And Wes

(14:50):
Moore is one of those people that we believe is
standing up and holding his ground and not seating any
ground and being defiant and not kissing the ring and
not bending the knee. And indeed a lot of other
Republicans are and Wes Moore is not the only name here,
but he makes a strong case for not just the

(15:13):
commander in chief of Maryland, but for the presidency maybe
at some point in the future if he's eying a
run and he is being very presidential while still fighting
an unorthodox fight, not unlike Gavin Newsom, not unlike the
Texas Democrats that flood the state. Like I said, it's

(15:36):
not nothing, and it's better late than never. So what
we're going to do is we're going to hear in
his own words, what Wes Moore is saying about keeping
the National Guard out of DC.

Speaker 3 (15:48):
I am the commander in chief of the Maryland National Guard,
period in full stop. That I'm the sixty third governor
of the State of Maryland. But along with that means
I am the commander in chief of our state's National Guard,
in our state's Air Guard, and I will not authorize
the usage of our national Guard for something that is
not mission critical or mission aligned, period and full stop.

Speaker 4 (16:12):
So if the idea comes in, or if the request
comes in to mobilize a National Guard in either one
of our cities or another city, and I do not
deem it to be mission critical or mission aligned, I
can give you my answer in one word, no, because
as the commander in chief, this is something I take
very seriously. And I take it very seriously both from
a professional perspective but also from a personal perspective, because,

(16:35):
unlike the President of the United States, I've actually worn
the uniform of this country. Unlike the President of the
United States, I actually deployed overseas and fought on behalf
of the United States of America. I know what it's
like to say goodbye to my family. I know what
it's like to wear a US issued military uniform. I
know what it's like to patrol communities, and so I

(16:56):
do not need and will not accept any type of
sure from someone who the only uniform they have worn
is a Brooks Brother suit about how to utilize members
of the National Guard.

Speaker 1 (17:10):
And there you have it. So I know that things
have been I guess regressing in DCQ talk to us
about the state of the District of Columbia.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
You know, there's an interesting provision with regard to our
servicemen and women and our law enforcement officers, and their
oath is supposed to be a promise and an oath
they take to protect this country and its people, to
protect and uphold the constitution of this country. And what

(17:52):
we're learning in real time is what we've said for years,
and people have told us that we were fearmongering or
race baiting or playing the victim, and it is that
so many institutions in this country are racists first, before
they're American, before they're capitalists, before there whatever they are,

(18:12):
they're racists first. So it took a blatant racist leader
to have all of these institutions that we knew and
thor thought we knew showed their true colors because had
our former president Barack Obama taken the same position but

(18:36):
for black people, I know as fact that our law
enforcement agencies in our military would not have stormed on
behalf of black people, the neighborhoods and businesses of white Americans,
of white immigrants, of white tourists, of white citizens in
order to try to uphold some perverted version of xenophobic

(19:01):
racist bullying. In real time, we were noticing that no
undocumented or overstayed visas of white immigrants have had their businesses,
their neighborhoods, or their known communities raided, stormed with police
filled with extra law enforcement or treated like they were criminals,
specifically targeting black and brown people and one of the

(19:24):
black and and brownest cities in the United States. So
as we've watched our institutions bend the knee, all the
checks and balances go away and the name of white supremacy,
these institutions are showing, hey, this is really what we're
on when we say America First and proud to be
in America and all that stuff.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
We're talking about.

Speaker 2 (19:43):
Being white and that's what we've always been been talking
about and that's what we've always been here for. And
as long as we had someone that wasn't a latant,
flagrant racist leading the way, these institutions did not have
to bend to the knee of directives in orders that
served white nationalist white supremacy. But now that the boss

(20:06):
is on that they seem almost excited to comply. They
cheer when he talks, They show up aggressively to do
what he's asking him to do. When a camerap, I
mean you might get shot or tackled or tased or
punched in the face over and over again, only to
have judges and leaders of those same agencies tell us

(20:28):
nothing wrong was done, no crime was committed, nothing to
see here, right, So seeing someone finally say I refuse
it means so much more than he could possibly know
when he said it, because all we've seen is pre
compliance and hypernormalization of really evil, sadistic, dystopian reality playing

(20:51):
out right in front of us, and us being left
to field, hopeless and defenseless and like no one cares
and like no one can help or no one will
even try. So, you know, very very refreshing to hear
the governor to see this stance he's taken and hearing
it from a veteran who knows that they're not supposed
to been the need to a dictator. They're supposed to

(21:13):
protect the Constitution and the citizens of this country against
all enemies, both foreign and domestic. And there are domestic
enemies here now roaming our streets, committing crimes and violating
people's human rights and violating the Constitution with impunity. So
somebody needed to stand up.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
Bravo. Governor was more Yeah, And like I said, there's
a few people that are standing up, and you realize
that they are not as helpless as we once thought.
I'm not going to paint a rosy picture of the
status of Democrats in this country, because you know they're

(21:51):
down bad and it's probably gonna get a lot worse
before there's a chance of it even getting better. But
like I said, critically knowing that there's a fight, there's
a defiance. They haven't just rolled over and shown their
bellies like so many inst we talked about Target. You know,

(22:12):
Target rolled over and showed its belly to the President
before he even took office. And I mean, I'll speak
for myself and the people that I know, there's no,
like it would. It would be like a like a
slap in the face to everybody that they were born

(22:38):
and they lived very short, very hard, very difficult, challenging lives,
and they could not dream of a better reality, and
they often died in agony or in horror, and maybe
some of them the last word that they ever heard
was the N word. All those people that lived and
died in this country. In order to get me here,

(22:59):
it'd be a slapping all of their faces, every last
one of them for me to step foot in the
target and give them my money. So how I really
feel about it is like I don't care who you
put in there. Like if you say something, do what
you say. That's a very easy thing for me to do.
I don't know why it's so challenging for other people.

(23:21):
And I don't know why people got so much fear
in their heart. Maybe I'm just a different type of person,
but I just don't like, why are these people living
their lives so scared? So this is why salute people
like Jasmine Crockett, like Wes Moore, like Gavin Newsom, people
just like, look, man, run it like I'm not going
to pretend like I'm a brawler or a fighter or
you know, anything like that, like in terms of physical fight.

(23:44):
But I'm just not that person. I never needed to be.
But my heart is just not made out of fear,
and it feels like everybody else is. And like, what
is the measure of your humanity If at the end
of your life you look back on them, it's like, yeah,
I bowed and showed everyone my belly.
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