Political Conspiracies: 2016

Every election season conspiracy theories proliferate across the political spectrum -- and some may be less crazy than others. Join Ben, Matt and Noel

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,

(00:22):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noel. I am Ben today, as as I
was last week. I think, and uh, I've been sticking
to that identity pretty close. I mean, I think I'm
very very proud of you. I find that if we
are working with the same people, they like me to
pretend to be the same person each like overtime, you

(00:43):
help are cool. It helps with coffee and all that. Well,
you know, guys, I don't have these I'm not acclimated
to this stuff the way you are. It's all still
very much a learning experience for me. And I think
the Ben thing is working. Thanks man, Thanks man. Well,
the other versions of me, there's a there's a Chris
from Boston, and he's doing pretty well. Matt. You know
Chris from Boston. Anyway, we're getting uh, we're diverging a

(01:06):
little bit, as we always say. Most importantly, ladies and gentlemen,
you are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. Now, I had previously. We started
this episode twice. The first time I said, once you
go flat, you never go back. My name is Matt
and continued the way we normally would, and you guys
just looked at me so puzzled. Do you have any

(01:27):
idea what I'm referring to that I did not catch
that reference. That was a tweet set out by b
O b L. Yes, yes, yes something. We've been something
of a rap battle with Neil deGrasse Tyson right now
over the flat earth theory. Can you even call it
a theory? Well, you know, opinion, the flat earth opinion exactly.

(01:51):
He's promoting his new mixtape, and I mean he did
a great job of getting out, you know, people looking
at him and his Twitter and talking about him on news,
So great job. Tila Tequila, who is apparently an entertainer,
also did the same thing. I don't know what is
she a musician or what what's her dealing? I don't
know what you would categorize. Uh, she's what you call

(02:14):
a media figure, a public figure, okay, so just like
famous but not actually doing anything, sort of a Paris
Hilton esque okay, although she did make a pretty sweet
neo Nazi rap record. Yeah, and she's a holocaust and
I yes, she's gone and she's gone deep in the conspiracy.

(02:34):
I don't know space. Maybe we should have her and
b O B on the show. And she's a She
just started a Kickstarter or a go fund me to
buy her new furniture for her apartment that she wants
to move into, even though apparently she's worth over a
million dollars. But you know, everyone needs every little bit weird.
Maybe we should do that. Maybe we should sorry go
fund me or a kickstarter. Final diversion though, speaking of

(02:55):
the flat Earth, you know, we've had a lot of listeners,
right and ask us to talk about the flat Earth.
I d um. I bought an album over the weekend
by Thomas Dolby that many people mainly know from the
hit She Blinded Me with Science, But he has a
record called The Flat Earth that's really a great it's
a really cool album. But I was looking up and
apparently he does somewhat ascribe to the flat earth theory

(03:19):
as well, or at least he did in the In
the Early Night okay, okay, point of order. One of
the things that we found because we did an older
video on this, right, we're starting out, and it was
it was not our best work. But one thing we
did find is that there is a society of there.
There are two there are two worlds for this. There's

(03:39):
one group of people who really do believe that the
Earth is flat, and they're a very small percentage of
the flat Earth people. There's another group that shows this
as kind of a flagship example of their main thing.
Their main thesis is that through the power of rhetoric,
you can argue anything and ultimately it doesn't matter whether

(04:01):
what you're arguing is true or not. So there there
are people who there are people who like it. Ironically, yes,
basically the onion for theories about the shape of the Earth.
So when people say it modern flat Earth society, is
that what they're talking about, because I'm seeing a lot
of that online um kind of differentiating like a more
contemporary version of that. Then like maybe the people that

(04:22):
actually really did believe there was less scientific information about it.
I think we're at a point now where there is
so much stuff on the Internet and people I don't
think really a lot of people don't understand how to
find a source. You know, things that we talked about
all the time like finding a source and then make
sure that sources being talked about somewhere else and then
it's legitimate. There's so much of that out there. I

(04:44):
think there is a genuine maybe misunderstanding that's happening in
a lot of people. That episode, I think it was
this one. That episode had one of my one of
my favorite endings because you know, listeners, if you're familiar
with our videos which you can watch on YouTube dot
com forward slash conspiracy stuff. Uh, if you're familiar with
those videos, there's a formula to them, right, So this

(05:07):
have one of my favorite endings where I think the
argument was essentially do you know any astronauts? Right? I
think that's exactly what it was. Yeah, the stuff that
don't want you to know video formulas sort of lack
of them, the old tried and true rom com formula.
You know. Oh, thank you man. Really I never thought
about it was a meat cute with the ideas and

(05:28):
then a Dark Knight of the Soul. So, speaking of
Dark Knight of the Soul, we are entering into a
very fascinating part of US culture this year. And whether
you live in the US, whether you do not, whether
you visited um or you think it's just like New

(05:49):
York l A and then some cowboys. Uh, you probably
know that there's an election coming up. Yeah, I don't
know how anyone could have missed it, even in other
countries where know there might be a small effect to the
the president of the United States might have a small
effect in your country. You've probably been seeing this on
the news or on the comedy shows. I mean, this

(06:10):
has been a pretty incredible year for comedy writers, you know,
later show hosts and all of the above. I mean,
you know, it's it's been pretty entertaining all around. Yes,
it is that time again. So after four years of
largely ignoring local elections, politics, and policies, uh, less than
half of the U. S. Voter population will get their

(06:32):
collective crap together and participate in the presidential election. They'll
actually vote if statistics bear out. Of course, these same
people will return to uh internet activism right Uh clicktivists,
I think is what they're called, and uh tell I
can trash on the Internet and refusing to vote in

(06:54):
local elections or learn the names of their representatives until
the course four years later. Is activism a thing? I
think it should be? Yeah, I think yeah, I think
it is. I've heard it before, but I don't know
what it could be along the same lines as click. Yeah. Man,
And so let's let's start with some other I don't
want to call them bummers, but just realities on what

(07:17):
did they call realities on the ground? Right? Isn't that
what military say? It's where the rubber meets the road.
Oh that's good too. Uh, it's where the badger meets
the bag. I don't know, I'm going to get an
increased where the bat meets the badger bag? It's true, Yeah, Matt,
do you have what you're talking about? Beating a badger
inside of a bag? It's just it's just a metaphor. Mayeah,

(07:39):
I guess. I mean it had to have been real
for a metaphor to come about, right, Oh I thought
it was like a fly, like a fruit bat. Okay, okay,
make you feel better if it was a possum in
the bag. No, they're weird looking their pink in their eyes.
Yeah no, no, we're getting to okay. But I do
have to say, man, out of all them, our supial's

(08:00):
North America could get stuck with joke? What a what
a rip? You know? Moving on. So there there are
a couple of reasons that the US has one of
the lowest voter turnout rates in the developed world. And
one of the big ones, of course, is that a
lot of people are disillusioned. You know. Yeah, that's something

(08:23):
we've talked about before I'm here. But you just look
at this giant system, how it all works. You try
and figure out how it works, and you just start
going one vote, one person, I don't matter, None of
this matters. So how do I get into the electoral
college actual votes? Oker So, but there are other reasons,
and some of these may seem strange to people who

(08:45):
don't live in this country. For example, if you have
a felony, you cannot vote ever, Yeah, and we have
a lot of felons in this country. Yeah. We also
have the highest rate of incarcerations. You may not to
mention that a lot of these felons are designated as
such for what many would consider pretty low level non

(09:05):
violent offenses, sure, like mandatory sentencing, a three strike rule. Uh,
non violent crime like possession of a narcotic or something.
And it does seem like we're moving away from some
of those mandatory minimums, Like I know, there was a
big release of inmates recently because of some changes in
those but changes like that take years decades to happen.

(09:27):
And the fun thing is whoever is holding the executive
position might have a say and how that works out right.
And here's another thing. This concept that felons should not
be able to vote excuse some very important policies in
our country, because if felons could vote, you know, of
course I'm nuts. I'm not saying that all these people

(09:49):
deserve to vote, even but if felons were allowed to vote,
then we would probably see some substantive prison reform. And
one of the reasons it's not happening is because the
people who first experience this stuff firsthand often are legally
banned from doing something worthwhile about it, which is a
crying shame. That's what my uncle would say. He's not

(10:11):
a felon. He just uses the phrase crying. He's just
a fella. He's just a fellon, not a felon. I'm
telling me you said that, so. Um. Another thing is
it's not really a day off. There's not a national
voting holiday. Yeah, in this country, you just have to
either do it before work or find a way to
do it after work? Would they give you a little sticker? Yeah,

(10:31):
you get a sticker or you know, there are a
couple of ways you can write in a vote in
depending on where you live. It's convenient though, no, not necessarily.
But if you can't get to the voting booth, like
let's say you're elderly or you're unable to get to
a voting booth, you can do other things like that.
Not to mention folks that are like overseas um serving
you know, yes, voting. So we talk about this just

(10:56):
to give you a look at the somewhat depressing situation
in the US as far as voting goes. So for
a country where more than half of the people are
not going to show up to vote for the president,
is uh, we sure do have a bunch of opinions.
And perhaps now more than ever, to steal a line

(11:18):
from Fox, perhaps now more than ever, we're seeing the
mainstreaming and popularization of things that once upon a time
would have been dismissed as conspiracy theories. And no, this
is an idea that you came to us with. You
were you were the the originator of this concept. What
inspired you? I don't know it just it just seems

(11:40):
like this cycle in particular. I don't know if I'm
just more engaged or paying more attention, but there's just
so many of these little, you know, what some might
consider off the wall ideas that when you dig in
even just a little bit, there's more than a spark
of truth there, you know what I mean. And some
of these are not a stretch at least in the
terms of some of the theories and conspiracy you know,

(12:00):
ideas that we talk about that they're very plausible, and
I think it's just fascinating and on both sides of
the aisles. Yeah, absolutely why. I think it's particularly interesting
this year. Yeah, from Hillary Clinton's very sketchy email business
I still know what that's about, to the the the

(12:21):
statements that Donald Trump makes where some people wonder is
this all just a show, which we'll get to in
a second, but first let's let's we're gonna dive into
a few of these that you may have seen in
our video series where we have a quick recap. The
first one might sound like a little bit of a
snooze fest at the beginning, but we have to explain

(12:42):
what these things are so that everyone knows what what's
rotten in Denmark about it? Right? So there are there
are a couple of ways that debates are decided in
the US, and a lot of this becomes more like
a contract or agreement rule of thumb rather than rule

(13:05):
of law. Yeah, a huge legal document essentially is what
how these things begin? So there are two big parties
in the US, the Democrats and the Republicans, often presented
as very different things ensure they disagree on some kind
of stuff, But there it's like pepsi and coke. They're

(13:26):
both still soda. And the The thing that's strange about
this is that these committees, the d n C and
the r n C, have an enormous amount of power,
And they also have power because people don't really pay
attention to them that much. I mean, part of my
brain shuts off and I'm like, here we go, another
alphabet soup of things that don't really matter, just more

(13:49):
people in ties. And both of those things are true.
But also what's true is that the d n C
and the r n C are the people who arrange
fundraise strategy every four years. They help write the policy platform,
and for purposes today, they set the debates for primary candidates, right, Yeah,

(14:09):
they set rules for who can be in the debate,
who is in the debate, where they stand. There's all
these crazy things and that end up getting worked out
in this document, this contract that you spoke of, where
the the candidates who eventually are actually involved in these
debates sign off on and they make deals with where
they get to stand. And I mean, it's all these
crazy little things in the debate that when you're on

(14:31):
television actually may make a difference. And it's so funny too,
because that's like obviously, in the early stages of any election,
we're talking pre nomination, you know, so this is all
people just you know, trying to get their party's nomination,
you know, in clawing their way to the top. And um.
In one of the early debates and the on the
Republican side, you know, they have what's called the children's table,

(14:52):
which is like a non televised or it is televised,
but it doesn't get as much coverage, and it sort
of happens separately from the main debate, and it's almost
like a slap in the face kind of like to
be at the children's table, it means you're not a
serious candidate. So I think Carly Fiorino at the time
was at the children's table, and then she got you know,

(15:12):
they let her said at the big kids table after
she started, you know, saying some inflammatory things on television
a little bit more. Yeah, her poll numbers have gone
down though, haven't they They have since then. But all
I'm saying is that is what it it's based on.
It's based on their profile there, you know, and is
it polls? Like is this stuff in the document? I
don't know. I actually this is the first I've heard
of this, uh legally binding document you're talking. Oh yeah,

(15:35):
A lot of stuff is in there, and they're pretty
secretive about it because it's not the kind of thing
that you would want leaking to the public in full. Uh.
One thing that we do know that's very interesting is
that they maintain exclusivity. So if you're Carly Figurino or
your you know, whom ever is running Hillary Clinton, Marco Ruby,

(15:56):
O'donald Trump, whatever, when you sign up with these party
is to do their debates, you also sign away exclusivity,
which means you cannot participate in anything outside or non
sanctioned by those people, Which leads us to today's first
conspiracy theory one of the biggest corruption conspiracies happening right now,

(16:20):
or conspiracy theory, I should say, people are accusing the
d n C of working for Hillary Clinton specifically and
then swaying everything unfairly toward her, which is something we
had talked about initially, right Yeah. And I think one
of the points of contention, and one of the things
that might support this argument is they organized very few

(16:43):
debates and waited until kind of the final hour until
now I think they've done maybe three and there was
some sort of town hall meaning the other night, which
wasn't even the same as, you know, a proper televised
panel type moderated debate. UM and the many folks argue
that the reason they did this is because they didn't

(17:05):
want to give UM anybody a chance to shut down
Hillary Clinton, because she was largely considered to be, you know,
the most dominant candidate. And then you have sort of
a dark horse candidate like a Bernie Sanders that starts
this really successful grassroots campaign and starts to really kind
of inch up in the numbers, and you know, many
would argue that they shut him out in terms of

(17:27):
actually having his day in court to you know, go
toe to toe with the dominant Democratic candidate being Hillary Clinton.
And as you know Ben Um, the chairman of the
Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz has pretty close knit
ties to former Clinton administration and the Clinton family in general. Yeah,

(17:48):
I would say they're pretty close knit. She was the
co chair right in two thousand and eight, who of
the the presidential campaign for Hillary Clinton, the other one, yeah,
the one where the Hillary and Pain and Hillary Clinton
herself I think really believed they had it in the bag.
And then another kind of sleeper candidate at that point,
who was Barack Obama who kind of snuck up from

(18:11):
behind and overtook it and kind of became the people's candidate.
And you know, and that's sort of so I might say,
what's happening with Bernie Sanders right now? And it's not
clear what's gonna actually come with it, but there are
some interesting parallels. Right. Yes, there's this concern that because
of her past with the Clinton campaign, that this chairwoman,

(18:31):
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, is not just swaying things with favoritism,
but also bending the rules ethically. Because there were only
six debates among Democratic candidates and the people who are
supporters of Bernie Sanders, which is the only other Democratic

(18:52):
candidate that I know of the only three. But I
don't think he's I don't think the third one is serious.
You know what, I can't remember his name. I'm sorry.
I feel bad, Martin O'Malley. I want to say, I
think you're right. So the thing is that people who
are supporters Bernie Sanders are arguing that Sanders is to

(19:14):
them the people's candidate, whereas Clinton would be the establishment candidate,
right the um the hand of the big banks. Yeah.
Whereas whereas Bernie uh Sanders to his supporters is like
Larry David. Yeah, I guess, or at least in SNL's perspective.

(19:35):
When I see him, it's like Larry David. It's true.
I think a lot of his supporters, UM cite the
fact that you know, he's been in politics for a
long time and has done practically no flip flopping on
his major you know, um platforms, his major concerns. Then
he's you know, still kind of singing the same tune

(19:55):
decades later. But but he's definitely I mean, these are
all establishment candidates, right, I mean, can't get on that stage. Absolutely,
you can't. You can't hop a train which hike to
the debate and then beg for change afterwards, you know
what I mean? So that she goes into this other
idea I have about some laws we could change, so

(20:17):
this this concept right that there's some sort of backroom
manipulation of the people who would be the voter base
of Demo of the Democratic candidate whomever, that ends up
being this. I'm gonna file and one everybody's opinion as
we're doing this. I'm going to file this one under
possible trending towards plausible. I mean not just because it

(20:41):
doesn't take some vast overarching thing for that to happen.
I just know that in the election cycle we're talking
about where it was Clinton and Obama, there had been
quite a few more debates at this point in this
right in the cycle than there have been. Did we
even get into the timing of the airing of these debates,

(21:05):
but do you have some specifics? No, No, it's just
something Ben, you and I had talked about before where
it's really crazy when when I was sitting down and
wanting to watch the debates because I was interested earlier
early on in this I've I've since I would say,
come to my senses just to realize that after I
watched the first one, Oh wait, we're just gonna have

(21:26):
the same conversation every time. At least that's the way
it feels to me. Um. But yeah, it's not exactly
primetime television and not at all. I think there was
one of there was like a Saturday Saturday evening. Yeah. Yeah,
it doesn't make schedule on the weekends to not scheduled
at prime time or Golden hours, as the Republican debates

(21:46):
very much are. Oh yeah, yeah. I watched those, you know,
just to kind of get both sides out of interest,
and they were super easy to find online streaming, you know,
very much accessible, more plausible, more more plausible competition between
the candidates as well on the Republican side, which leads

(22:07):
us to bigger one another conspiracy wheels within wheels, my friends.
So Donald Trump going like gangbusters. You know, there's so
many would be voters in the US. I love Donald
j you know they call him trumpeters No they don't.

(22:27):
Oh no, so will he be try Trump trumphant triumphant
Trump that that pump pun is not gonna work, guys,
I'm sorry I let you down. So he is like,
let's talk a little bit about this. So in the beginning,
Donald Trump was not taken seriously as a candidate for
some of the following reasons. Had no legislative experience. If

(22:48):
you want to hold the highest office in the country,
it's cool if you have some sort of governmental experience beforehand, right,
at least basic knowledge of parliamentary procedure. Yeah, for Christ's sakes,
be a city commissioner for like a week. Absolutely something.
But and one could argue, you know, to Trump's credit
that he's led a whole lot of business meetings and um,

(23:10):
you know, he definitely knows how to negotiate. There's no
doubt about that. Well, he's also definitely the people who
were deriding him in the GOP establishment, the Grand Old
Party establishment, are now having to bite their tongues because
this guy, this candidate struck a nerve with a lot
of the American voters. You know, people who thought, uh,

(23:32):
people thought, oh, this is a bunch of smoke and mirrors,
and I'm tired of seeing these bureaucrats pretend to uh,
you know, tiptoe around things. And then Trump by being bombastic,
got this reputation amongst his supporters as someone who says
what they mean or just you know, doesn't try to
throw some ribbons and glitter around what they actually want.

(23:54):
You guys are both familiar with the let's call him
a media conservative media figurehead Glenn Back. Yes, oh, yes, yes, yes,
Is it me or is he chilled out a little bit?
Because I saw him on TV the other day and
he was being interviewed on CNN and he literally said,
you know, I disagree with pretty much everything Bernie Sanders says,
but I gotta say I really respect him for being

(24:18):
able to come out and say, hey, I'm a socialist
and this is what that means, and not trying to
like hide behind anything. And it was just there was
just so little venomous rhetoric in his like discourse in
this interview. I was pretty impressed. But the reason I
bring this up is the guy who was interviewing him,
who whose name es keeps me. Basically they were talking
about how Beck thinks that Trump is a quote dangerous

(24:41):
figure because he is kind of tapping into all this
apathy and anger in the country and this kind of
really dire aggressive mood that's very pervasive right now with
among certain voters, and um, he basically accused Beck of
being complicit and that this was sort of the chickens

(25:04):
coming home to roost. Is like, you know, pundits and
these like bombastic Rush Limbaugh type figureheads who have been
spouting this kind of hate speech for for years, and
now all of a sudden, this is what we've got.
We've got Donald Trump. Well, you know, Rush Limbough is
not himself a Trump supporter. I just I'm saying the
type you know. I mean, it's in terms of like

(25:26):
the pervasive attitude among some of these super right wing
conservative you know, talk show hosts and radio hosts. It's
just kind of this very doom and gloom. You know,
the country's going to hell in a handbasket. You know,
everything that liberals stand for is pure evil, that kind
of thing, you know. Right. Yes, So it is true
though that not everybody on the right is a fan

(25:49):
of Donald Trump because some of the things that he
believes in or that he has supported in the past
or in the present our counter to some more traditional
values on out side of the fence. And then there
are people who believe that he doesn't actually intend to
win this election. No, he never intended to win. You know,

(26:13):
why was that? Man? Because he's a false flag. Donald
Trump is a false flag attack. Did you guys know that?
On whose behalf? At least this is the theory on
the Clinton's behalf? Wait? What? Yes? Because Donald Trump has
had a fairly I wouldn't say cozy relationship with the Clinton's,
but he's made fairly sizeable donations to the Clinton Foundation,

(26:37):
a couple of other things, a couple of other things
that the Clinton's have been a part of. He's also
donated to campaigns before he I think Bill Clinton. He's
quoted as saying Bill Clinton is his favorite president. Um.
Kind of interesting me get this straight. The trump Ster
is acting as a false flag attack on behalf of

(26:58):
Hillary Clinton and her, um, her entourage. Let's just to
deprive the Republican Party of an electable candidate, to splinter
the Republican Party and divide it so that those votes
go to you know, three or four other candidates instead
of one. It's candidates, and they've just been struggling to

(27:22):
find their identity and to kind of have a cohesive,
you know, idea about what it means to be a Republican.
It seems like they've been struggling with that for a
long time. You haven't watch out with that because there
there are a lot of people who probably disagree in
our audience, and they might not be thinking of the
same vision either. That mean, I just mean there's so
many different visions floating around, so many different things in

(27:45):
the mix at this point, and some of which can
be contradictory, and which happens on the on the left
as well. Now here's here's my take on this. Okay,
Trump doesn't strike me as being willing to be anyone's puppet.
But wait, no, there is a smoking gun here, at
least allegedly. Sure it's not a smoking hairpiece. Maybe maybe

(28:09):
maybe that's what it is. Uh, it's more like a
smoking cellular phone. I don't know what would have been
the big cell phone you're not talking about six the Clinton. Yeah,
it's a smoking call log, Yes, smoking call log. And
right before Trump decided that he was going to be running,

(28:29):
or I guess until he not when he decided, right
before he kind of threw his hat in the race,
formally announced yes, thank you, Ben, Sure you don't mean
threw his hairpiece in Okay, So right before Donald Trump
decided that he was running and he made his escalator
entrance and gave a speech, was that what he played
keep on Rocking in the Free World. And Neil Young
got real mad that it did happen. Yeah, I don't

(28:52):
I'm sorry, I don't know those things. So before the
formal announcement in June, Yes, before the formal announcement in June,
he had a private telephone conversation that is acknowledged by
both the Clinton camp and the Trump campaign. Uh, they
acknowledged that they were on the phone for a little while.
And you know, again, it kind of at least I'm
reading this while Washington Post article it's talking about how, yeah,

(29:14):
they were very cordial and Trump's a big fan of Clinton,
and they just talked about the race and everything about
possibly running, what Hillary was doing, But they didn't talk
specifically about whether or not he should run and how
she'd that. That's what they say. I'm sure the first
thing he said it was like Bill as see, my man,

(29:37):
what what's going on? Hey? Uh, I get the sense
that they're kind of bros. Yeah, you get the sense too. Well.
You know, there are people who think that it's all
a big party in Washington, and everybody's friends and nobody's
really in the belt line. Yeah, I think that they're
the belt Way rather. I think that they're definitely people
who are enemies of each other in Washington for sure.

(29:58):
Just the egos alone. Is there more? Is that the
That's the gist. So what do you rate this one? Well,
I know I saw there actually, you know, not to
say we're taking out what everyone says at face value,
but I saw Clinton, um Bill Clinton on one of
the late shows, I think it was Colbert maybe, and
you know, he was asked about this phone call, and man,
I wish I could do a good Bill Clinton, but

(30:19):
I just can't. So I just kind of do it
in my own voice, you say, you know, I don't
really remember what we talked about. It was just kind
of definitely I definitely didn't tell him to run for president,
and he said it, and then he had kind of
a little guffall and built in there. You know. I
of I bought it, you know, and I don't see
I don't. I mean, maybe even maybe if you said it,
maybe he said it as like a joke, or maybe
maybe it's another kind of semantic hair splitting thing, like

(30:42):
what our sexual relations? That's fair, you know. So maybe
he's like, I didn't tell him to run for president.
That could that has so much um there's so much
space in that definition, so much wiggle room. It's like
he might have said, uh, you know, oh, I'm just
looking at the Hall of Presidents show that I was

(31:04):
watching when you called. It looks like there's a new
one gotta run coming up soon. Could be anyone, could
even be you anyway, have a great night. So so
in that article, I'm just gonna read this really fast
so you get an understanding. It says for Trump allies
and one Clinton associate. It's not naming anybody here, I

(31:27):
guess because it would be damaging to either camp and one.
You don't name names in Washington. Yes, so Fortune Allies.
One Clamton associate familiar with the exchange said that Clinton
encouraged Trump's efforts to play a larger role in the
Republican Party and offered his own views on the current
political landscape. So I mean that to me, that's interesting.

(31:48):
It's almost like for me, if it is true, Clinton
is playing a little head game. But I don't know. Maybe, well,
they would just be I can clearly see if people
are friends outside of outside of the intense political competition,
I can see them talking shop essentially. But that's that's
something that I think a lot of people forget. These

(32:09):
people aren't necessarily all mortal enemies, you know what I mean.
They're not throwing daggers at each other. Oh No, it's
much more of a gray area, and it's kind of
collegiate fair weather friends maybe, you know, Brenda, Yeah, kind of. Well,
let's just say that you and I were out having
a drink or something like we like we do from
time to time, and you said, you know what, and
all I really feel strongly about quitting this whole podcasting

(32:34):
riggamar role and and getting astronauts license, and as your friend,
you know, I'd be like, you know, Ben, that that
sounds like maybe a bit of a stretch. I mean,
you're sort of a little late in the game, you know,
just start from scratch on that screw you. I know,
I would say hypothetically, but I know that you've always
really been into space, and you know what, man, I
really think that if you gave it, you're all you

(32:55):
could make it happen. Yeah, that's that's the kind of
I could see that kind of collegiate conversation people would have,
and um, you have inspired me, and thank you. And
I'm sorry that am I saying Ben astronaut for me? No,
I want you to be in my space spy. No,
that's not what I'm saying astronaut for me. But yeah,
that's that's a pretty that's a pretty good comparison. And
this behind the scenes. Oh wait, first, what do you

(33:17):
guys think possible? Plausible? Bunk? Bunk? Bunk? Okay, this is
my last bit that I'm gonna add to this. I
think maybe Bill and Hillary are still a little bit
on the rocks. I think Bill is actually like shooting
at Hillary through Donald Trump. He's like, you're not gonna win.

(33:39):
I'm gonna send Trump no way. I'm totally kidding. Okay, So,
um this alright, so we've got that one. Ranked is no,
you think it's bunk? And uh, I would be very
surprised were that the case. Um, I don't. I don't
think it's plausible. Is it possible? I think it's fun,

(33:59):
it's to consider in a comic book, and yeah, it's interesting,
But I think if it were I don't let me
put it this way. I don't think that we're Donald
Trump to be elected. And of course there's a current event.
This could all change very soon. But I don't think
that we're he to get elected. He would go psych whoops,

(34:20):
that got out of hand. I think he would take
the vow and be president. Yeah, I think he would
do it. I think he would do it begrudgingly. He'd like,
oh no, I don't know. I don't know. I think
he's in it. I think he genuinely, I don't. I
think he genuinely wants to be president. To be fair,
I think that's how every president is right right as

(34:42):
it's happening in the reality sets in. Oh no, this
is the last I'm gonna say about it. Um. But
I do think it's sort of like a conquest for him.
I don't know that he's he really is all about,
like quote, making America great again. I just think he
wants to be able to say I am the president.
I think so, you know, without going like too much

(35:03):
into the speculation, I think a lot of these candidates,
Republicans and Democrat are like, are still formulating their policies
to see what plays out and what actually happened. Yeah,
when they get actually lots of focus groups, why don't
they ever ask us to be on those things? Huh?
I would be in anyone's focus group, especially Ben Carson

(35:24):
get at me man, team Ben's honestly, I feel quite
hands Oh, the Saturday Night Live Characters is probably actually
probably doing great for publicity on that side. But okay,
here here's the thing I want to talk about. So
we have we have established that sometimes it's like wrestling.

(35:45):
You know, these people may pretend to be enemies and
may have contradicting interest, but at the end of the day,
when the crowd is gone and the lights go down,
they walked to the same bar and have a drink together,
you know what I mean, And they talk about, oh,
I'm still I'm gonna send my kid to college, and like,
oh yeah, I hear good things about that, good things
about that. And then camera person comes in there like

(36:07):
I hate you and we'll lead your eyes and how
much of it is an act and how much of
it is real? And here's a big one. And my opinion,
my personal opinion, which I do usually keep out of stuff,
is going to come into playing this. So theoretically, America

(36:27):
is a meritocracy. We talked about this in the video
what's a meritocracy? Then? I am so glad you asked, Matt.
A meritocracy means that people are put into positions or
earned positions based on their talent, their ability, their skill.
So the US being theoretically ideally a meritocracy, proposes this

(36:49):
amazing concept in comparison to a lot of other countries
that regardless of the circumstances of your birth right, regardless
of your ethnicity, regardless of your name, regardless of whatever
a physical deformity or something, if you do the work,
you get the cookie right. If you are the best

(37:09):
you will, you will be able to earn a position,
whether in society or in business or in government, that
reflects your capabilities. And that's reflective of the whole American
dream ideal. You know, if you pull yourself up by
your brootstraps and you work hard every day of your life,
you can have the good things in life. Again, theoretically

(37:31):
is ideally exactly and this is this is amazing. It's
easy you forget how amazing this is because now in UH,
now in the US, it's something that we're taught from birth,
and a lot of people in the Western world are
taught something similar. But way back in the day, right
before any of us were alive, many nations were ruled

(37:53):
by the opposite of meritocracy. They were ruled by monarchies.
So one group of people, through blood and conquest, becomes
a ruling family or ruling clan, and then from that
point on until they fall, their children are the people
who run the country, regardless of how inept, incompetent, and yes,

(38:15):
I'll say it, at times inbred they might have been.
Because the Habsburgs are an example of this stuff gone wrong.
There there was so much inter marriage that at the
end the last of that line was mentally and physically
unfit to do even the most basic labor, let alone
run a country. Nations fall for stuff like this. So

(38:38):
I have a question right before, just a quick question,
just to tease this. Is it still a democracy? Is
it still a meritocracy? When we're in a political situation
where one of the candidates is the wife of a
former president and one of her opponents is the son

(39:01):
of a former president as well as the brother of
a former president. This how does this work out? If
you look at abilities and merit alone. Statistically, it is
implausible that these people would both be in the same
families and be the great candidates for president. And we'll

(39:22):
get to that right after a word from our sponsor,
and we're back, ladies and gentlemen at the UPONT consultation

(39:44):
with my producers. A co host, I have to make
a an important clarification here. I am in no way
implying that the Bushes, the Clintons, or the Kennedy's or
the Roosevelts are in bred. I would say that happened.
They're well bred monarchies. Yes, perhaps they're well bred, and
thank thank you for thank you for pointing that. Well,

(40:07):
hopefully we avoided some email. But the parallel is there.
I mean, it's interesting because I think what you're getting
at is that because of this, it is probably a
combination of these physiological issues in addition to just nepotistic concerns,
where you know, just because you're the son of a duke,
does that make you naturalistically duke? Like do you automatically

(40:28):
have the skills needed to duke? Yes? And that's you know,
that's that's the point, Like we shouldn't have people duking
or astronauting just because of you know, the just because
of who their daddy was, right, or who their mother was,
or whatever the case may be. So look, we know

(40:49):
we knew when we got into this topic, folks, we
knew that talking about political conspiracies would be uh controversial,
and so and so we're doing We're we're working to
present stuff from either side of the aisle and present
stuff that you may have heard but wanted to hear
more information about. With that being said, we do always

(41:12):
try to clearly delineate when something is just our opinion,
and this is my this is my opinion. I think
there should be a law all right now. I know
you guys know that I have some views about surveillance
and big brother and big government kind of things. But
that aside, there should be a law that says something

(41:32):
along the lines of, if you are related to a
former president or or a current president, a senator or
Supreme Court justice, boom, too bad, you cannot hold any
office similar in power and scope. So like you can't
be Robert Kennedy, right, and then also have your brother
be the president. Uh this this concentrates too much power

(41:55):
in families, And I get I get it every but
who once their families succeed. But it's not a meritocracy
when one family is occupying so many positions of power.
I means that a law that interest you guys, Well,
couldn't you argue that some of these folks do kind
of work their way up even though they are related

(42:18):
to say a Kennedy. I mean absolutely, absolutely, that's a
good point. Yes, I'm I want to play devil devil's
advocate both ways, so I I would agree that perhaps,
you know, maybe a family is very good at politics
and very good at making deals in this kind of stuff.
There are Hollywood dynasties as well. Sure, there are dynasties

(42:40):
in like every every single industry at the top has
some sort of dynasty that has occurred in it. And
I wonder if if that is even possible if you
have someone in your immediate family who already holds a
position that's that high, if you're not being helped in
some way by having those connections, right, it's who you know?
Right that the entire all of the United States, and

(43:03):
even now, perhaps what the American dream has become is
who do you know? Right? We're a tribalistic species, sure,
I mean, I can tell you firsthand I've never gotten
a job without networking, so you know, take that for
what it's really Yeah, I mean I've never gotten like
a cold call back on a resume. It always had

(43:24):
you know, had to do with knowing someone who knew
someone who you had lunch with, and you know, I
had a couple of drinks with and they suggested that
you go out for an interview or something like that.
You know, wait, wait, are you using your real name,
like the real the same name and identity each time?
That's man, see that's what it is. Gotta you gotta
switch it out. Okay, do you want me to make

(43:45):
a like a character profile for you? Yeah? Man, just
let go slip it under my door and a dossier.
What what voices are you comfortable with doing? I can do?
You know. You know, I'm a man of many voices.
Both of you guys are quite talented when it comes
to voices. So I'm just gonna point out here, well
before you get back to this. Uh, I just discovered this. Actually,
there is a list on how stuff works dot com

(44:07):
of the top ten political dynasties. I was not even
aware of this. True. Yeah, I didn't know the Cuomos
were a dynasty, right, Because when we're for the purposes
of this conversation so far, because it's been sticking with
um political conspiracies related to presidential elections, we haven't been
talking about city level, you know, city level political dynasties,

(44:31):
which definitely, you know, this stuff definitely occurs. But I
think that law could be unenforceable, honestly, with too many
gray areas. But I think it's important to acknowledge that.
And it just irritates me when I hear people pretend
that it's normal in what is theoretically a meritocracy to

(44:52):
have these the same families of people pop up again.
And I'm not necessarily criticizing those Candida themselves, you know
what I mean. I'm not criticizing uh Jeb Bush for
who his family is. I'm not criticizing Hillary Clinton for
who her family is. I'm criticizing a system that is

(45:12):
inherently disingenuous. That is my opinion. Yeah, it seems like
it's way too easy too when when you know people
just get in there, griesome hands if you have to,
and get in there. That's the way it feels when
we first started talking about this as being, you know,
something we wanted to mention in this episode. I was
sort of like a little incredulous about how it pertains

(45:35):
to this particular cycle, because, as many of you know,
Jeb Bush has been kind of floundering, like he's not
really picking up much steam, and he's become a bit
of a of a gag kind of in terms of
just like him not really having much substantial to say
and kind of waffling and just kind of coming off
as not particularly polished. So again I would argue that
dynasty or no, you still have to appeal to your constitution,

(46:00):
see to the voting public. You have to capture their
imaginations in some way that apparently Jeff Bush is failing
to do. And ben to to that, you replied, well,
it's the game's still afoot. Gets in, he gets swoop
in like a guy who shows up to a bar
five minutes before last call. Well, he's had a tremendous

(46:21):
amount of money thrown at him by huge donors that
Jeff Bush has where people really did believe that he
would be able to get there because of the likely
because of the dynasty thing. I mean, you know, they're
like that's the horse you want to bet on. That's
the short things and good pedigree, and got that Bush pedigree.
Apparently you know a lot of them. Donald Trump, uh

(46:43):
is the one who kind of swooped in in this
situation and kind of made put a little egg on
the face of some of these you know billionaires that
were throwing their money at Bush, right, because it definitely
again it seems like the American voter, at least according
to the poll numbers, they're more likely to vote for
Donald Frump than they are to vote for Jeb Bush.
And also Hillary Clinton's campaign has had has taken some

(47:07):
heat from the kind of donors that GAG has especially
I think um Goldman Sacks one. Did you see how
much she got paid per hour a speech? Right? Two
undergrand an hour, and here we are only making a
hundred grand per episode. Yeah right, all right, it ain't natural.

(47:28):
I want another play to gold On the jet, So
I was gonna say, your jets looking a little dull,
looking a little lass lackluster. When you when you landed earlier,
someone said, oh wow, what is that a bronze jet?
And I was like, you guys, shut up, that's gold.
Because I have your back of my jet. What's the name?

(47:49):
You're just the p the pony boy, the pony boy.
Why why? Okay, why is it called the pony boy
because it stays gold? Oh God? Alright. This idea and
about political dynasties and the implication that rather than a
meritocracy we are working within a rigged system does mean
a lot to me, and I do think it's anomalous.

(48:13):
But you, I think you are right and all that
people do still have to earn their way somehow, you cannot.
This is not enough of a monarchy for someone to
be completely incompetent and still be in a position of power,
to be like a hemophiliac with you know, syphilis right right,
just like a weird hump running rough shod over you know,

(48:37):
every everything, making weird requests like all citizens of the
land shall mail their left shoes to me like that. Yeah,
that's how I That's how I picture American royalty. Uh um.
Anyhow so is it true then? Is it possible that
what purports to be a meritocracy is instead a rigged system.

(49:00):
That's a good question because that brings us to a
bigger question too. What about those debates not not the
primary debates, not the Sanders and Clinton saying I want
to be president as a Democrat, and then Trumps and
the Rubios and the Cruise are saying no, no, no,
and I want to be president of a Republican the debates.
Once they choose that person, Let's say it's Donald Trump

(49:21):
and Bernie Sanders, or it's it's Marco Rubio and Hillary Clinton,
whoever those two. Maybe then they have a debate. Uh,
they have a debate that will be televised, one of
the few political things that many Americans will watch, and
it's the presidential debate. And you know, let's say, let's

(49:42):
let's do this hypothetically. Let's say, uh, okay, which one
of you wants to which one he wants to be
the example in this make an example of me? Okay?
All right, so Noel uh, Noel Brown. Let's say that
you are a died in the world true believer. You're

(50:03):
a Trumpeter, You're you're a Trump enthusiast. Yeah, and you
are You're like, this is gonna be my president. Shoots straight,
it talks. You know, he's a straight shooter. He's a
straight shooter. That's what That's what I'm saying um. But
then he doesn't get the blessing of the GOP. So
they say, no, Jeff Bush is our guy. Trust me,

(50:26):
it's been decided. And then Trump says whatever to you guys,
I'm gonna run as an independent, right, And then you
think you know I'm gonna vote I'm gonna vote for
him anyway. Yeah, I still got my trumpet, right, you
still have your trumpet? And uh, there are no returns
on the trumpet. Also also, uh, this is the candidate

(50:46):
who most likely or most closely represents your values. And
so you think, okay, well we'll do the independent thing.
First thing that's gonna happen is that someone else is
gonna come and give you a scare tactic. Matt, do
you want to do this yet? A man? Don't even
think about throwing your vote away on that Trumper. Okay,

(51:06):
you hear me, because if you do that, man, the
other guys they're going to get exactly what they want
because you're just splitting our vote in a half. But
I really like the cut of his jib. Well, you know,
his jib ain't got nothing to do with this, all right,
I'm talking about votes. I'm talking about bacon and we
need to get on with the show. And then later

(51:27):
at the Democratic part is like those fools, don't they this? That?
And that there's the raal way don't have that votes? Wow?
Clearly the clearly that was uh, the account form the
sesame Street as well as a very smarmy English guy

(51:48):
who has somehow in charge of their campaign anyway. Point being, yeah,
point being that it's not in the best interest of
these two parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, to have
an independent candidate, even if that independent candidate more accurately
portrays the overall or embodies the overall desires of voters.

(52:11):
And the Commission on Presidential Debates uses pretty controversial stuff
to uh to make sure that it's difficult for an
independent party to ever get a representative at those federal
level debates. Yeah, and really one of the only one
of the most viable ways to be an independent running

(52:32):
candidate in a presidential election in the US is to
have run or at least tried to get the nomination
of either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party and
then not being able to make it at least to
the top of those rosters, but then also be popular
enough that you have name recognition and your polling numbers.
When the Commission on Presidential Debates is looking at those

(52:54):
numbers says, okay, you're you're good enough or popular enough
to stand on the stage. Here's the here's the the
nitty gritty of it. So the CpG, the Commission on
Presidential Debates, their rule is that if a party is
going to appear in the debates, they have to have
at least fift support UH in at least five polls.

(53:20):
The issue with that is that most folks are not
taking polls, right. Most folks are instead just tuning in
to whatever debate is already on television, rather than hearing
a bunch of um, a bunch of people argue and
try to impress themselves in the public enough to get
on there. Yeah, and you've only really seen the primary debates,

(53:43):
which are the Republican nominees and the Democratic nominees, right,
I mean that's when people are making their choices. Yeah,
but then you know, we need an independent nominees. I
don't know what what it would be, but some kind
of independent commission that has all the other people. And mean,
I think these commissions are necessary. Evil, someone has to

(54:03):
organize these debates. But here's what stinks about here, here's
what's rotten and denmark about the Commission on Presidential Debates.
So they have moderated a bunch of debates, but before
they did that, debates were moderated by a group called
the League of Women Voters. They did the nineteen seventy
six nineteen eight debates, but then withdrew from the position

(54:28):
is debate moderator because get this quote, he said the
demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud
on the American voter. And then after after the legal
women Voters pulled out because they said, well, you're not
gonna let us ask questions the voters actually want to hear,
then why are we having this farce? Essentially, then the

(54:50):
commission was taken over by the Democratic and Republican parties
who formed the current thing. So there's no independent representation
in that commission either. It's the left hand in the
right hand coming together to form the little clay pot
that is the debate. So, I guess you could say,
and the slightly augmented words of Mark Origan from one

(55:11):
of my favorite TV shows, Peep Show, it's something of
a macabre fraud sharade. Oh, well well done, you're m
fired today. That's pretty good true. And that explosion in
the distance, ladies and gentlemen, that could have been the
That could have been the sound of Nolby on fire.
It could also be the sound of the impression that

(55:32):
the typical independent candidate makes on the American public. Or
it could be the sound of an old Diebold voting machine,
could be the sound of the men working on the
chain gang, or it could be the sound of silence.
But for our purposes, let's go to another conspiracy theory,
which would be voter fraud, right, voting frauds. There are

(55:54):
one thing that's strange about especially US politics, is that
every see goal, every single time someone wins the election,
there's gonna be a group of people. Man, I don't
care which election we're talking about, there's gonna be a
group of people who says, something's not right here. Why
didn't my guy didn't win? Yeah, my guy didn't win?

(56:16):
What's up? What's going on? You know? Clearly I demand
a recount. Yeah, I demanded recounting. You re recount it
until those numbers come out, right, and then you really, really,
really re re recounted. So maybe maybe the easier way
to fix this would be electronic voting machines. Put it

(56:37):
on the internet. Do you know what a kive of
scum and villainy the internet is? No, you've heard of hackers.
You put it on a card, a little plastic card
that you insert, and then you vote, and then you
take the card over to the table, right like a
punch clock. The biggest controversy is that they're super old
right now. The technology is crazy old, and there are

(57:00):
backdoors to the software that is ridiculously easy to access
if you wanted to. At least back in two thousands six,
that's when there was a YouTube video posted of a
gentleman giving testimony software programmer I believe his name is
Clint Curtis. He was saying that this representative in Florida,
Tom Feeney, asked him to write this program, the program

(57:23):
that would be used to vote and count the votes,
and then he so, yeah, he asked him to flip
the vote basically how he wanted to to who am
with whomever they're voting for, so that this person could win,
so that they would be able to basically control the vote.
And no matter who what election it's is happening. I

(57:47):
can control what happens in the end. Is this sort
of like a white hat hack? Or this was just
sort of like a hypothetical. You know. This is the
single testimony of one person in thwo thousand six that
I viewed and the internet owned on YouTube. Um. But
then in a weird little twist, this dude Curtis, he
apparently was trying to run for this congressman's seat, uh

(58:13):
in the election, which is kind of weird in two
thousand six. So I don't know if there might be
some weird shenanigans going on with this guy Curtis and
trying to politicize something that maybe didn't happen to win
a seat. Being though it is known that these devices
are outdated, those voting machines were purchased immediately after the
two thousand election because of the hanging chats. Yes, the

(58:37):
just the debacle that was the two thousand election. I
just went in up for the entire time. I've heard
that story. Every time you hear the phrase haying chat,
I picture some guy in like a denim jacket with
a cigarette dangling out of his mouth, and he's just
like leaning against this brick wall. He's a hanging chat
and and you want to hang with Chad because he's

(58:59):
got a hyperculor their shirt on, you know, stone washed jeans,
he's got those. He's got those sunglasses that are actually classes,
they just have those horizontal stripes and he wears them
at night. Yeah. Well, sorry, Chad. Chad was the spark
that caused these Diebold machines to be created and then
sent out around the country so people vote on them.

(59:21):
We're still using them today. We're still using them today,
and it would cost over a billion dollars to replace
these old machines with something new. And even again, as
you said, these things are easily manipulated as they are
as standalone machines. Now, imagine if you've got interconnected machines
on the Internet and that's where you go and vote.
Imagine all the things anonymous could do. Oh, I mean,

(59:43):
that's the same reason that like control panels and systems
for say, nuclear power plants are very purposely kept off
of the wider net. I mean, their networked in and
of themselves within the facility, but they are cut off,
you know, And it's the same reason. You know, there's
it's we're at we are at peak hacker, right, you know.
I think that's a good point. But that's not the

(01:00:05):
only voter fraud argument. I'm just going to briefly mention
something that you might not see that often the news,
but it will be back for a little bit. When
as the elections kicked into full swing, the idea that
there's citizen voter frauds, there are people stuff in the
ballot box, fake voting right that I leave here and

(01:00:28):
use a different name and thereby vote twice. And this
was some of the initial inspiration or publicly stated inspiration
for the voter I D requirements. And wasn't that a
whole to do? I do itself, And and apparently there
have been very very few, if any, proven cases of

(01:00:49):
citizen voter fraud, so apparently this was uh, this was
a situation where the thing we were worried about turned
out to be largely fixed if we were actually worried
about that, which is a whole another bag of bats
and badgers. But then there was an argument that by
instituting a requirement of having you know an I D,

(01:01:13):
that you were essentially disenfranchising a segment of the voting population, right, Yeah.
Well also to me, it's just more paperwork too. But
what was the argument there though, I mean, like, what
could you obviously you have to approve your identity, so
you they were saying, you have to have a state
issued identification card. You couldn't have like a passport or

(01:01:37):
you know, birth certificate or something like that you specifically
had to have. Right. So opponents of the opponents of
voter id X, which exists, some form of it exists
in about thirty three states. Opponents say that these i
D laws disproportionately impact Latinos, Africans, Americans, people of color
because they reduce turnout of of these voting blocks. That's

(01:02:06):
that's what they said, as far as the opponents go,
or that you know, eleven percent of the population voting
age lacks some kind of photo i D, which is
strange to think about, but a lot of people you know,
do that. No, it is, But what's the alternative? I
guess that's what? What what could you present if this
law was not in effect back before? What could you

(01:02:29):
have presented, you know, as a stand in for voter
registration card? Got it? You know? Uh, I'm just saying
you obviously have to prove you know your address and
that you were John Smith from this county. Right, Yes,
so I get this the idea of verifying that people

(01:02:51):
are who they say they are, but we wanted to
mention that because that is another case of alleged voting fraud.
All right, let's end today's episode on one one last topic,
and it's one that we were saving. Probably notice, folks,
that we have not talked about the money behind so

(01:03:13):
many of these elections, the shadowy billionaires moving stuff behind
the scenes, and then you know, kind of behind the scenes,
because if you are if you are a person on
the left, then one of the biggest financial resources you
could run into is one George Soros s O R O. S.

(01:03:34):
If you're on the other side of the aisle than one,
then the people you would be running for the Koke Brothers.
Both of these people, both of both sides of this
have enormous amounts of money, but also enormous amounts of influence,
and especially considering what happened with the Citizens United decision,

(01:03:57):
where now corporations are treated as humans and are allowed
to contribute indefinite amounts of money to freedom and the
choices exactly, so you have these superpacks that basically are
just endless, bottomless money pits for whatever. You know, the
good kind of money pit, not the one that takes
your money. It's just not a pit full of money. Yeah,

(01:04:20):
Like it's like the George McDuck swimming around the a
giant point spinning them out. It's like that, um And
that's relatively and a relatively new development. So we're seeing
some of the effects of that this cycle as well.
And here's a question. What if all our talk of
conspiracy is for not? What if it's just interesting, what
iffing that we're doing. What if our conversation here is

(01:04:44):
moot because the president's already been chosen. You know, that's
that's something that's popular too, regardless of who's supposed to win.
And you know, five thirty eight is a website that
does a pretty good job on predicting this kind of stuff.
But continually we hear someone say, well, the real people,
the real government, right, the uh, the CIA, and banking

(01:05:08):
families and other private industries have already selected their person.
And they said, well, it doesn't matter. What we're gonna
do is we're gonna have Bernie Sanders split the like
picture all these folks in the room, all the presidential candidates,
and then somebody who is like, what's the most opulent,

(01:05:29):
crazy wealthy thing you could see somebody doing to enter
a room lighting a cigar with, you know, a pile
of bills while while sauntering in on a tiger and
uh and then they whomever this because we don't know
who these people would be, and the tiger has outfitted
with them a day. Yeah, the tiger comes with its

(01:05:50):
own biday. But the uh, the thing they do if
we're picturing this hypothetical moment, and let's say, let's say
the whole gangs there, Rubio crew, Who's Trump, Clinton, Sanders,
whomever else? You want to add Ben Carson two because
still like Ben's Ben's gotta stick together. And those guys
are essentially the extras, Like those guys are if we're

(01:06:13):
talking about a performance they're gonna put on. Yeah so this, yes,
so the shadowy figure groups of figures who are opulent
and wealthy. Uh, they they say, okay, guys, here's the plan. Bernie,
I want you to go in and be really really
left and when you split up like Democratic vote and
he's like, you got a boss. It's like Hillary, I

(01:06:37):
love what you're doing, wants you to keep it up.
You're not gonna win this time, but maybe next year.
And she's like, ah nuts, But okay, boss, He's like Trump,
my man, you're out. You're gonna retire, You're gonna implode
very publicly. And he's like yes, of course. And then
you know, he gives the instructions to the other ones,

(01:06:58):
and there's one person left, said Jeff Jeb Bush is
going to be president. We decided that in like, we
had a meeting at jack Al Island. Uh, a little golf,
played a little golf, a little some poached eggs. One
day's the voting machines are already pre pre prepared, already
preloaded the software. Is that possible? That's my question? Could

(01:07:23):
somebody selected president? I'd like to think not. I know
that there has been plenty of corruption in past elections
in the US and many other countries. Then it continues today.
But I like to think that no one has enough
control to sway that. And you know, when you see
corruption in other countries, political corruption, it's usually really transparent,

(01:07:45):
it's usually very unapologetic corruption. You know, I just don't
see a shadowy cabal like this being able to keep
it under wraps, like I mean, that's just I guess
across the boards with some of these things. For me, well,
that was the uh oh man. I forget who put
it out, but several of our colleagues sent us an

(01:08:05):
article that was discussing how long it would take for
a massive conspiracy to be revealed. Four years, Yeah, roughly
four years, sometimes three, sometimes two. And that was based
on a I guess a statistical analysis. Yes, we'll share it,
we'll share that out. I don't know if that's completely
true because it makes an enormous error, which is long

(01:08:30):
time listeners, as you know. This is something really bugs
me when people take a very broad term like conspiracy
theory and then say, oh, it's all the same. So
anyone who believes something that is not part of the
mainstream narrative is somehow automatically a conspiracy theory theorist. Right.
The example we always use is like, oh, you think

(01:08:50):
banks could somehow be involved in supporting drug cartels, that's
a conspiracy theory. I bet you believe you're a half
snake reptile from being a you know what I mean. Yeah,
it's a way to discredit people HSBC so and look
it up. Yeah, and it's not even a clever way
to do it, unfortunately. Sorry, let me in the rant here.

(01:09:11):
What what else do we need to What else shall
we talk about before we walk out here? Yeah, there
was one that I think we sort of skipped um
that I think is a fun one. We were talking
about the two different committees for the Republicans and the Democrats. Um,
there was sort of I guess, uh, I guess you
could call it kind of a short lived scandal, uh
involving uh Bernie Sanders um having a staffer gain unauthorized

(01:09:35):
access shall we say, to the voting records um of
the Democratic National Committee that are you know, for all
of the candidates. They maintain this database of supporters, members
of the party, etcetera. I'm not sure exactly how far
it goes if it involves, you know, people that are
signing up to be a part of this database, or
how they're getting this information. Point being as they sort

(01:09:57):
of hold the keys to the kingdom, the Democrat Now
Committee when it comes to all this information and they
share it out with the various candidates. But the different
databases are specific to individual candidates. So the staffer on
the Bernie Sanders side stumbled upon, shall we say, some
sort of backdoor or it was actually revealed to have

(01:10:20):
been a glitch of some sort that gave him access
to Hillary Clinton's information, hillary Clinton's database, and UM supposedly
allegedly this individual downloaded some of these files and you know,
it was found out on the Sanders side relatively quickly.

(01:10:41):
That person was fired. But the Democratic National Committee, it's
not clear exactly what the chronology of this was, whether
they were told by the Sanders campaign, whether they found
out on their own, But at the end of the day,
what happened was they UM punished the Sanders campaign, you know,
across the board by cutting them off from their data.

(01:11:06):
And you know that's a big deal at that at
that at that stage, this was maybe a month and
a half, two months ago, things were really heating up.
You know, this grassroots campaign was really starting to gain
some traction and that information was the lifeblood of any
you know, ground floor grassroots campaign like what you know,
the Sanders folks are running, and it was you know,

(01:11:29):
largely Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who we talked about, had some
really close Clinton ties that kind of came out and
you know, wagged the finger at Sanders and his folks
and said, you know, you guys took this information. It
was not um right for you to do that. You
cross the line, and now we're shutting we're cutting you off.
And so Sanders actually sued the Democratic National Committee and

(01:11:52):
in this lawsuit, UM kind of set it up as
you guys have been trying to screw us left and right.
You know, you're not having debates, you're not giving us
a platform to speak. You have been doing everything in
your power to shut us down. And this is the
last straw. And they backed down and gave them back

(01:12:12):
their access to the information. But there is a smoking gun,
sort of like that Bill Clinton phone call with Trump. Um,
the staffer that access to allegedly accessed these uh these
records from from the Clinton campaign was in fact pitched
to the Sanders campaign by folks at the Democratic National Committee.

(01:12:35):
Make of that what you will, but I would argue
that that is something of a smoking gun. I don't want. Yeah,
I I see, I see where you're coming from. I
don't know if it's smoky. I don't know if it's
smokey enough for me. Hey, what what do you what
do you rate that one? Then? Does that change your opinion? Plausible? Plausible?
What do you think? Mhm, they're trying to jam them up,

(01:12:57):
the trying. I'm not saying like it's seen know, the
most nefarious trick in the book. I mean, it's not
beyond the realm of just normal Washington riff referee, you know.
But I do feel like it's plausible. I totally hear
the jam up, Ernie. I totally hear you. I just don't,
you know, I don't have enough hard information about any

(01:13:19):
of these to really say absolutely plausible or not. That's
why I love this show, guys. So here's what, you
know what, here's what I would like to see, just
once in an election. I would love to see two
people kind of like Elope from their party, like Hillary
Clinton and um maybe Marco Rubio say like, well, guys,

(01:13:42):
we were talking and we're actually going to run together
as independence because we think this whole thing is ridiculous,
waste of time. Would a political suicide. It would be interesting,
It's true. But can you imagine if Sanders and Trump
both went independent and ran together? Oh my god, I
mean I don't And what if whenever they appeared in public,

(01:14:04):
it was like they would take turns sitting on each
other's shoulder. Yeah, and then what would the songs be?
Man glorious campaign songs? Um, you ain't seen nothing yet.
That might be a gooding or is that too cliche? Oh?
I was thinking they might be might write an original
song like those those Trump girls. Have you seen that
clip on the internet. Sounds like they're saying like some

(01:14:25):
kind of nationalistic like North Korean, you know, Fearless Leader
kind of song. I love that. It's like President Trump,
you are so awesome, you will crush the enemy. So
it's like that kind of stuff. I mean, and little
kids in American flag. But you're kind of exaggerating, But
it's I'm not. I mean, it's all a little bit.

(01:14:46):
It's really It's like, I'm gonna check it out. It's great.
I want I want to have a song like that.
If there's a song like that about you guys, or
about me or about our show, I would play it
all the time by myself. I think it would be
rude to make other people listen to it. But we
hope that you have enjoyed this episode. Ladies and gentlemen,
we have. I don't know. I think that's it for

(01:15:07):
us for today, right, I think so I was going
to add one last thing in here, just because you
maybe a little down thinking about all this stuff and
how you know how your vote doesn't matter, and uh,
I have fun with it and if you are a
little down, that's okay. We have we have a remedy.
It's a it's a very small remedy, but we think
it'll help. It's called the chickening. Please please stop what

(01:15:33):
you're doing. Stop what you're doing and watch this right now.
Just type in the chicken ing. It's the only thing
that will come up. It'll it'll make your day. I
didn't um, I did not anticipate that you would, you
would choose that it is a remedy as the light
at the end of the surprise me on that one.
Thank you, bless you, sir. I was at the edge
of my see, I was thinking, what is he what

(01:15:54):
is he gonna say? What's happening? And uh yeah, Also,
the chickening is weird. It may I day to see it.
Uh we hope you enjoy it too. If you are
a Kubert fan. Yeah, wait, don't don't tell him anything.
Else about it. Okay, just just the chickening. Alright, my
lips is sealed. Uh, so, he says as he continues
to talk. So we hope you enjoy this. Uh. We

(01:16:16):
hope you like this show, and we hope you consider
it in some way, uh, your show, because our best
ideas come from you. As we say at the end
of every episode. If you want to do us a
solid and get us a little bit further away from
being fired, then check us out on Twitter and on Facebook,
like us, follow us. Were conspiracy stuff and we hang

(01:16:36):
out there all the time. You can see stuff that
doesn't necessarily make it to the air for one reason
or another. You can check out every episode we've ever
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to know. Dot com. It's a long name, mouthful, but
it's where it's it's about the journey, right, It's a
delicious mouthful. So there's one other thing that you can

(01:16:58):
do if you want to reach out to us. Yeah,
if you're not into the Internet that much, just a
little bit, you know, you don't want to go onto
social media, but you want to, you know, send out
some sort of missive our way. You can write a
good old fashioned email, which at the end of the
day is a whole lot like a letter. Really, I mean,
you're not really on the internet if you're any email right,
and you can send that to conspiracy at how stuff

(01:17:19):
works dot com. For more on this topic, another unexplained
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