Treating Citizenship Like a Coupon at Applebees | Ep404 - Look Forward - Progressive Political News

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you could speak directly to Elon Musk, what would
you say?

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Fuck off? That's hello, welcome to a brand new episode

(00:27):
of Look Forward. I'm your host, Jay, I'm here with
my co host Brad.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
I don't really wish to speak to Elon Musk. I
wouldn't mind repeatedly punching Elon Musk in the face might
be an improvement for him, because he already he already
has that like mashed potato face anyway, and and body.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
His body looks like a zip lock bag full of old.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
I gotta tell you, we're not going to talk about it,
because I can think of nothing I'd like to do
less than talk about the substance of the first Cabinet
meeting today with the with the Trump cabinet and Elon Musk,
who was not in the cabinet but was basically running
the meeting essentially, And like there's there's no more perfect
picture of or no more perfect encapsulation of the picture

(01:14):
that set out of Elon standing at the head of
the table talking with everyone's attention on him, and Trump
sitting looking down probably at his phone, shoulder slump, not
paying attention to what's going Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Well, sheepishly allowing the real president to uh write the
meeting while wearing a fucking baseball cap and the fucking
White House.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
We've really really come very very far down from the standards.
Don't wear a fucking tan suit, but.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
Don't do that. Don't do that, don't don't ask for
dijon uh mustard.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
But right, yeah, now you got a fucking edge lord
douchebag handling meetings, Oh goodie. Yeah, so there's plenty of
talk about Look right up at the top, obviously you
heard Jasmine Crockett, who if we had an award of
the Week it would be it would go to her.

(02:11):
Look I like that energy, man, I do. Look, the
rules are clearly been thrown in the in the garbage.
Didn't take the fucking gloves off. Oh she shouldn't say that.
Oh no, I think that's exactly how she should talk.
You noticed the response. The response wasn't Oh my god,
Everyone's like yeah, no, that's awesome, high five, Like yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
I mean, I mean to be frank, I'm fucking shocked
that I didn't see any stories about Republican pearl clutching
over her. Uh Donald right, yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
And Elon Musk it's not like he calls people the
R word on his platform like he's a fucking twelve
year old kid in the nineth.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
Well that's okay, Jay, that's that's something we took from
them that they're finally able to take back.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Oh, finally, finally good.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Because of all the liberal cancel culture that that that
would face. Did you also also, did you see Chris
Farrufo just like like tell us what we already knew, Like, oh,
the problem isn't cancel culture. The problem is who was
doing the canceling, Like there should absolutely be right wingers
being able to cancel people, but we don't have canceled
by liberals.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Like all right, go ahead, who are you going to cancel?
Go ahead, go ahead? Like you guys would cancel someone
for existing, like that's.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
Not and and and they do or speaking, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
I don't care that you exist or even say, you know,
speak your mind, that's fine. But if you say bigoted things, yeah,
people are gonna go after you. Like it's not we
just can't say anything. Yeah, you can't really call people
the N word on TV? Sorry, Like is it?

Speaker 3 (03:42):
You know?

Speaker 2 (03:43):
I know there's like weird lines.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
I wonder, I wonder if that's just I wonder if
that's like like the true peak of the mountain that
they're going for. Right, you want to be able to
say the ED word publicly? They should.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
I think they should be allowed. I think they should
be allowed, and I I'd like to see them do
it as publicly as they want, so they can. They
can suffer immediate consequences for they can.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
They can they can re enact the scene from a
Diehard of the Vengeance if they want to. I think
that would be totally fine.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
This is the fucking sandwich board. Yeah, Like I wouldn't
have done that. I get in here and get yourself killed?

Speaker 1 (04:23):
Why? Boy?

Speaker 2 (04:25):
So pushback, Brad, That's a big story. Uh this week?
The pushback? Is it working slowly?

Speaker 1 (04:32):
It is? It's it's it's important to it's important to
remind people because it's because it's tough. Right, Like we've
been talking the last couple of weeks about the absolute
deluge of bullshit that this administration is trying to throw out,
and you feel help, you feel hopeless, you do you know,

(04:52):
you're doing a lot of doom scrolling. You're wondering, like
how how they can be stopped, especially if they seem
to not want to pay much attention to the courts
and things of that nature. But unfortunately these things move slowly,
and like the next couple stories are not to say
that you can't keep screaming and you can't keep being

(05:14):
aware of these things, and you can't keep pushing your
representatives to to fight, but it just goes to show
you that, like things are working and there is some
response to the insanity that's going on right now, even
if that response seems quiet in the face of continued

(05:35):
insanity happening like like that, Like this is not to
say like, oh, the courts will save you, the norms
will save you, but just that there is things happening
right now, slowly but surely. The big one was that
a so basically, you know, the Trump administration elon must
specifically was like, hey, like we basically canceled all these

(05:57):
payments for USAI D we basically old USAID. We talked
about that a couple of weeks ago, and they were sued.
Obviously a restraint, temporary restraining order was put out by
a federal judge that says, hey, you need to knock
the shit off, like, you know, let's do this. They didn't,

(06:19):
so they they've been pushing this and it got in
front of a federal judge and district court judge Amir
Ali basically and and and this is why this is
super important, right, because the reason why we push people
to go to court and and be like, oh the
court tarnkcress save you. But at the same time, like

(06:40):
it's one thing to say wild shit on Twitter, or
it's one thing to say wild shit, you know, in
the White House or in the Oval office. But the
thing about being in a courtroom is that if you're
a lawyer and you say some wild shit that's patently false,
there are real consequences that can be handed out to

(07:01):
you immediately. So it's so it's always hilarious when these
Trump lawyers get in front of judges where in a
situation where they can't lie and they can't you know,
feed the judge some bullshit, and all of a sudden,
like their demeanor gets very uh a lot more recalcitrate,
let's just say, right.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
But also to your point, it also allows you to
see what's under the hood, right, because the judge can
ask very pointed questions that because they're not allowed to,
you know, allowed to lie because they don't want to
be fucking disbarred. They are forced to be very honest

(07:45):
or at least less less bullshit. So then it allows
us to get that because of reporting good reporting, that
information gets pushed out and so it's like, oh, this
is what they're really doing, right, Yeah, yeah, they're they're
giving you all the fucking sung and dance here, but
when they get into the courtroom, they gotta they gotta
be honest about what they're trying to do, and that

(08:05):
that is something right, that there is there is power
in understanding that truth and having that sort of the
cloud removement around those things.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
Yeah, and like and some of the stuff we've seen
from this particular hearing is that the Trump lawyer was
trying to allege that, oh, no, we did start the payments,
and the judges like, well, then why is the plaintiff
saying that they still haven't seen any money, Like you
need to tell me what's going on. And the lawyer's like, yeah, like,

(08:33):
I'm not in a position where I can tell you
that the government has resumed payments. And the judge is like,
you're the fucking representative of the government in this case,
Like if you don't fucking know. Then you're then then
get me somebody who does.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
Right, And so why did you just say that you did?
And that's what they would do from a podium and
a press conference. Yeah we're doing that thing, well, but
you're not. Yeah, but we did.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
Yeah, And it's so and and the and the judges
whole point is that, like the whole point of this
training order is that you can't just fucking turn off
this tap immediately of payments that have been allocated by Congress.
Like currently, the laws as it exists today is that
Congress says, hey, put this money in these places, and
the president is supposed to do that. Like that's the

(09:19):
whole fucking that's the whole fucking deal. And so the
judge like, that's why the trains were in place, because
while this goes through the legal process, we don't want
to stop what's going on until it was adjudicated. And
so he ordered the administration to prove by the close
of business today. I think uh that they had that
the payments were going out. And the Trump administration, like

(09:40):
the DJ asked for an extension on the judges ruling
because they're like, hey, you gave us like two days
to basically allocate, you know, all these millions of dollars,
and the judges like, no, like you should have been
doing that weeks ago. You still need to fucking get it,
make it happen by the end of the day, otherwise
you're gonna find yourself back in front of me again.

(10:00):
So like, this was a pretty big fucking deal. And again,
like the I would say, the poor lawyers who were
forced to go out here and defend this shit. But
they're you know, they're going into this with eyes wide open.
They know what they're fucking signing up for. Or if
they don't want to deal with that, they can fucking leave.
So yeah, fuck those guys. I'm glad they're getting fucking

(10:21):
embarrassed at the courtroom and this hopefully will at least
And it's interesting, right because as a result of this,
like remember how Elon Musk had like the fucking oh,
here's like the wall of receipts. If you go to
the DOGE website, you can see like all these things
that we all these things that we saved. Well, well,
the top five quote unquote savings that doges bates so

(10:43):
far have all been taken down from that wall because
they weren't real at all.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yeah, it's like they had a total of like eight
billion dollars in savings. It turns out it's like eight million.

Speaker 1 (10:53):
Dollars, right, And and there was one transaction where it's like, oh,
we saved six hundred and thirty three million dollars in
that transaction was listed Oh at that much because they
actually did like two hundred million dollars, but they listed
it three times and so they like added it up
there and that's how they did that. So like it's
all fucking smoken merrors and we all know that, and.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
They know that it's it's disinformation. It's not misinformation which
is like, oh this was incorrect, sorry about that. It's
disinformation because it is is on purpose, right, and that
is a very important distinction. And they do that. I mean,
in the quote unquote cabinet meeting today, Musk is like,

(11:36):
you know, we're gonna make some mistakes. Here's the thing, though,
you're firing people based on these quote unquote mistakes. You
don't get to make mistakes. And if you do, it
can't just be like whoopsie doodle, that's not that doesn't work.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
It doesn't work like that and and by the way,
like when he said that in the cabinet meeting today,
he was like, yeah, you know, we make mistakes. Did
you hear did you hear what He's it as the
example of a mistake that they made in that like
to demonstrate.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
That ol thing.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
Ye, we cut off funding for to make sure a
bola doesn't spread. We'll see are bad, but but but
we fixed it. And then the press reached out to
the folks who were in charge of that and like
they're like, hey, they said they cut this off and
then and then the money's coming back, like they fix right,
They're like, no, we have They have not fixed it,
like like we have not seen any money coming back

(12:27):
into this. We're still dry right now, Like like these
people lie as easily as they breathe.

Speaker 2 (12:32):
Right, And and to me, what is the purpose of lying?
If you're so tough and you you're so in control,
you know what you're doing, and you don't regret what
you're doing, why are you just being honest? All right?
Because you know what you're doing a shade as fuck,
like you know, and you know it's it's it's the
it's the you're self aware of that you're you're doing

(12:54):
something bad. Right. It's like in law, right, like this
idea of like you're you're aware that you're committing crime
and in this case, yeah, you're actually our getting a
crime as well.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
So and and again another way. We talked about this
a little bit last week, but we got there. There
was a development in this story them trying to be like, oh, no,
Elon Musk isn't the head of DOGE, Like he's he's
just he's just he's a he's a presidential special advisor,
but he's not the head of DOGE. And reporters were like, okay,

(13:23):
well then who is the head of DOGE? And the
Trump administration was like, oh, we can't tell you that,
Like it's a secret. We can't possibly say, Like like
they literally asked in a press briefing the press secretary
what is like who is the person who's in charge
of DOG and it's not Elon Musk And the Press
secretary answers literally like I'm not going to name that

(13:44):
person in this in this venue, Like bro, like you're
the government, Like it's not supposed to be a fucking secret,
Like like the whole point is that you know you're
publicly available, and in the same breath he talked about like, oh,
like we're really big on transparency, like it's super important.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
Does to be uh, Like so can we get the
name now or.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
No, it's a it's a it's a secret. So finally
they did give up a name.

Speaker 2 (14:09):
Allegedly they just picked it's this random woman.

Speaker 1 (14:12):
Well so, so this woman named Amy Gleeson who worked
for the US Digital Service, which is the department that
was converted into DOGE once once the Trump administration came in,
and she is a Trump appointee. But this woman lives
in Tennessee, right, so not even in Washington.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
And vacationing in Mexico at the time.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
She was vacationing in Cancun, like like like I almost
thought about asking Jay if he could just take a
take a quick trip over.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
And yeah, he DOGE right right right, So.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
So again they have someone who is it? I mean,
like you said, this fucking poor woman, like she she's
just being set up to try to slings and arrows
even though but again, like we all know what the
fucking score is. Like like like Elon Musk.

Speaker 2 (15:06):
Is speaking idiots really right, he doesn't run dose okay.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
And again, I like, I'm pretty sure this is just
to try to insulate Elon Musk with executive privilege so
that he can try to keep his communications under reps.
I don't think it's going to work. I think again,
if you get this in front of a non you know,
like fucking hack judge, that it could be like, are
you fucking kidding me? Like, here's like twenty examples of

(15:35):
the president saying Elon Musk runs does Here's here's interviews
with Trump's chief of staff who says, yeah, Elon Musk
runs doge. Like, here's Elon Musk saying that, like he's
doing the hiring and he's you know, he has executive
oversight on dog. Pretty sure he's running dog. Like, I
don't think that's gonna work. Coachi.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
It's it's a pretty stupid.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
It's an incredibly stupid and and again, like I understand
why they're doing it. You know, they're sitting you know,
they know that the press will uh you know, sometimes
they're like a playful dog who all you to do
is throw the dog toy to the other side of
the room and they'll go chase after it, right, do
a little squirrel action, but come on like and and again.

(16:17):
It doesn't help Elon Musk when he is so incredibly
vain that he must be the center of attention at
all times. So even he was trying to lay low
his personality simply wouldn't allow him to do it.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
Yet the image for the last week's episode is him
wielding a chainsaw at Seapack. Not exactly the most subtle
person we've ever met, right, like in politics, I mean,
it's just unbelievable. So okay, So continuing from there, GOP
congress congressmen and women have been dealing with something that

(16:51):
they have not seen in quite some time, which is
angry supporters in their town hall meetings. And they do
what all Republicans do when they have bad tamn hall meetings,
just stop having them. Like these people, I didn't sign
up for this ship. And so they do these town
halls and they go back to their their their states,

(17:13):
and uh, these people are fucking laying into them, calling them,
you know, uh ineffective and allowing for you know, this
authoritarian to run, you know, run rampant all over Washington,
d C. Destroying people's jobs and all this other stuff.
And to the to that there was one guy who says,

(17:35):
I forget which state he was in, he's some Republican
member of the House. And he was like, I remember
when Joe Biden was president and you guys said all
the same things about about him, and they all booed,
and I thought, he's he's out of line, but he's right,
Like you guys did do this, you did? You always

(18:00):
think that republic or excuse me, democrats. These are Republican voters. Now,
you always think that Democrats are these oligarchs and they're
just imposing their horrible will on you by like making
you not yell at gay people from a bridge and
throw rocks at them, like you know, you're you know,
they're like, oh, he's destroying the country by helping people

(18:23):
and you know, being reasonable and all this other stuff.
And so for them it like that guy's actually not wrong.
That is how you react. The problem is in this
case they're actually right, Like you guys are actually letting
a guy do these horrible authoritarian things. But when he

(18:44):
said that, I laughed because they're like boo, like, dude,
that's on, Like.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
He's well, and that's and that's the thing is that
like the ultimate backfire to conditioning your people to be like, oh,
like government overreach is is the thing you should fear
the most, and it's terrible. And then like when you
go in there and fuck shit up, people are like
what the fuck? Like I thought you guys were the
government over each bad party, Like why are you coming

(19:10):
in here and just fucking dynamiting everything right without even
fucking thinking about it, And again like it's it's because
these these congress people have districts that they represent that
have where federal agencies are and and they have jobs
like like this guy, Rich McCormick in Georgia was one
of the ones that probably went the most viral over

(19:31):
the weekend, the reactions that he got, and that's because
the fucking CDC is in his fucking backyard and they're
fucking laying off people at the CDC. So it's like, hey, bro,
like we fucking voted for you, you, like I expect
you to keep us safe, but you're just kind of
going wrong with this, And it's just funny to watch
them try to rationalize the bullshit, and it's it's just

(19:52):
so weird for me because like we talk all the time,
like how much of this is like them being completely
fucking cynical, and how much and how many of them
are like true believers, Like it's always it's it's always
kind of hard to tell, like like which way it
goes with a lot of these fucking idiots. But it
was funny to watch them come back from these town
halls and all of a sudden, like a lot of

(20:12):
Republicans are going on Fox, are going on you know, CNN,
and like, well, you know, I think we need to
be a little bit more careful with how we're cutting
things and maybe take a more nuanced approach and maybe
come at this with a scalpel instead of a fucking sledgehammer.
Like like, a lot of them came back and we're
very we're very cowed when once they got back into

(20:36):
d C after getting fucking barraged by their constituents. But then,
to your point, the solution to this is not going
to be, hey, maybe we should, you know, take a
more modern approach. The solution of this is going to be, hey,
let's stop hearing from our constituents because they're not saying
what we want to hear.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
Yeah, look, I'm not surprised this is what Republicans do, right,
This idea of who here is what our people think.
And I'll understand that, like as a voter, if you
keep seeing them, anytime you push back, they just ignore you,
like and not in that like weird politician thing where
we just like we're just gonna do what we want,
but just yeah, we're just not gonna ever let you

(21:14):
speak to us again. I don't understand why every two
years you like rush out to support these guys, but.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
Uh, because because they know they can, because the Republicans
have never had to pay a consequence for that. Like
like half of these people who you see like going
viral for in like the fucking Leopards subreddit where it's
like I voted for Trump all three times, and I
I'm in support of what doee is doing taking care
of waste, but I wasn't talking about my job when

(21:40):
they did that. Like I can't believe that they fucking
fired me, or they fired my wife or fired my
sister or whatever the fuck. But it's but half of them,
we're still gonna just turn around and vote Republican anyway,
doesn't fucking matter.

Speaker 2 (21:52):
It's amazing. It's just it's just you gotta learn a
hard lesson and then even when it's like cracking you
in the side of the head, they're like.

Speaker 1 (22:01):
Could you hit me harder?

Speaker 2 (22:02):
Is it harder?

Speaker 1 (22:03):
Daddy? I mean, I mean, I mean again, like these
people are not are not real real, They don't have
the wrinkly brains like like a lot of us do
around them.

Speaker 2 (22:14):
So smooth as sort of the top of my head.
So all right, so from there, hackers have entered the
chat as you wrote, which I think is really funny. Yes,
Ai video of Trump kissing Elon's bare feet plays through
the House of Urban Development office as Doge is there
to you know, cut waste.

Speaker 1 (22:35):
And and they literally could not figure out how it
was being done. So they had to literally go around
and unplug all the TVs in the in the in
the office because they couldn't figure out how it was
on there, how to remove it all that jazz. So again,
I'm the second we could grow like is a I bad? Really?
Like I guess it has some some good uses.

Speaker 2 (22:57):
All right? Who should be killed? The President? The Elon musk?
That's right, we should listen to the robots. Guys. You
know there is gonna come that moment, by the way,
where like the singularity or whatever the fuck you want
to call it, where robots are like totally sentient and
like artificial intelligence is like a real thing and it's

(23:17):
not just regurgitating you know, things that we kind of
feed into it, but it's really learning. And they're going
to eventually ask which of these parties does better by society,
like which thing is better? And there's gonna be that
moment where the robots are like it is clearly not
the Republicans, and they're gonna be like, these robots are corrupt.
We need to destroy it. Like it won't be like, oh, okay,

(23:40):
that's a good idea, you know, they'll be like no, no,
fucking somebody change the code inside or something like that. Right,
That's that's what will happen.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
I mean, I mean we're already seeing it, like every time,
it seems like with between Community notes are between Rock,
anytime any anything that Elon Musk opens up to, like
public training or public and he doesn't like it. He
fucking shuts it down because he's like, no, no, no,
I want you to tell the answers that I want
to hear, not not the truth, like I should make

(24:08):
me feel better.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
It's inconvenient to my narrative.

Speaker 1 (24:12):
Yes, but I think I think most importantly, though, among
among anybody else, most importantly, we're starting to see some
response from uh the shareholders, which are truly, truly are
the ones who well, no, truly the ones who run
the Republican Party and and who kind of point their

(24:32):
point their way forward. We famously saw a couple of companies,
as soon as Trump came into office, decided to immediately
rush to be like, look, look, look, mister Trump, We're.

Speaker 4 (24:45):
Scrapping our DEI programs just like you want it. So
that means you're gonna leave us alone and not do
anything bad and and and oh no, you still want
to stack the d o j ois and our stocks
started tanking.

Speaker 1 (24:55):
Oh no, that's so bad.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
We could not have seen this, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
We could not have possibly seen this coming. And so uh,
I think a lot of a lot of companies are
being like, oh, like, the people that actually spend money
on our goods and services would like us to continue
with DEI. So what we saw, very notably Apple's shareholders,

(25:22):
you overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to end Apple's DEI programs
that they're currently running right now, And so Apple's gonna
keep this in place, not just Apple, by the way,
for like, oh, those fucking tech bros out in California,
of course they're gonna vote for this. How about none
other like the fucking lib cuck bastion company of John Deere's.

(25:47):
Their shareholders also voted the same way.

Speaker 2 (25:50):
How about this? How about this? Here's a new headline,
PepsiCo joins Target and Walmart and rolling back de I polish.

Speaker 1 (26:01):
I feel I feel like, isn't there Oh no, that's spright.
Never mind. I was gonna say, like, it doesn't Pepsi
have a soft drink that's kind of a big NBA
sponsor that they might not want to this off, and
that's co co Cola Coke. Cole is probably not gonna
be rolling back the.

Speaker 2 (26:15):
Oh I'm sorry, no, no, I yeah, I apologize now
I read that wrong. No, Pepsi is joining Target in
Walmart in getting rid of dvdypolicies.

Speaker 1 (26:24):
Yeah, that's what I mean, That's what I meant. I
like like at first, like I was like, oh, Coke,
perhaps he's making a bad mood. But I guess, I
guess since they don't have any major sponsorships, but maybe
they do and maybe some uh some folks be like, hey,
maybe we'd rather do business with coke.

Speaker 2 (26:37):
Yeah, but but here's the thing. Uh, Walmart and Target
are suffering because of this.

Speaker 1 (26:42):
Yeah, they're taking it on the chin. Yeah right.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
Target is closing stores Target, Target, my my heart. I
love Target as a black person. That's like and it's
like Martin Luther King, the people who run Costco and
then Target, Like these are the things that we were black, right,
tarja if you will if you buy clothes there, and
I do. Yeah, they're having to close fucking stores because

(27:08):
black people are just like a word, fuck off. Walmart
is like, our numbers are not looking great. Yeah, and
they will continue to not look great as long as
you continue your bullshit and frankly, even when you fix it,
they should still continue to look bad. Fuck you.

Speaker 1 (27:22):
Yeah, learn a less.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
And you think that the world is going to be
like this with this Trump shit forever, like okay, man,
I don't think so. And I'm not saying it's gonna
like change back in fucking two years and everything will
be fucking back to back to normal. But this idea
that the world is only ever going to be like
this is a It's a rough gamble, especially in America.

(27:48):
We love to fucking sway back and forth in extreme ways,
which is part of our biggest problems. We don't stick
to anything. But yeah, this idea that, oh, let's just
screw these people over, bitch, these are your fucking customers.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
What are you doing right? And it'll be curious, and
I know that you know that when companies do this,
it's absolute performative bullshit. It'll be curious to see whose
logos changed on social media on June first, and who's
do not at this point. That'll be that'll be a

(28:24):
very curious litmus test to see, uh, who's really drinking
the kool aid and who realizes, oh, ship, we still
need people to shop with us in order to remain successful.
And then another fantastic sign. Now again, take this with
a bit of a grain of salt, because this stock
has shown shown itself to be somewhat of a meme
stock compared to other stocks that are out there. But

(28:46):
if if you guys haven't taken a look at what
Tesla's been going through in the stock market for the
past couple of weeks, to yourself a favor, because it'll
put a smile on your face when you see.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
It it is. It ain't doing so good.

Speaker 1 (29:02):
Literally lost thirty percent of share value in two months.

Speaker 2 (29:09):
I want to say, Uh, it's lost twenty seven in
a month.

Speaker 1 (29:13):
There you go. So it's take and it's taken its
market cap below a trillion dollars yep for the first
time in a while. So oh well yep. And and
again like if you if you want to see Elon
Musk hit where it actually hurts, Tesla stock is where
he's hit where it actually hurts, because that makes up
a significant portion of his networth.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
It does. So look, I think that's great, good tumble tumble,
because keep going, keep going. Yeah, his his sales everywhere
are down like significantly, all over Europe. They're down like twenty.

Speaker 1 (29:49):
Three protests, protests outside of Tesla dealerships all over the
country every day. Yep. Yeah there again, we.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
Can talk about it last week for somebody quote, as
the article said, someone lick dated a Tesla showroom with
bullets last week. So, by the way, liquid eating something
with bullets is a dope fucking way to write.

Speaker 1 (30:09):
Yeah, no, and uh look, uh it just goes to
show you if I was going to fuck around with
people's well being, with their healthcare with their retirement benefits
and stuff like that. I might want to divest myself
from holdings that I own that can be affected by
the general public before I go ahead and start fucking
around with that stuff. But again, I'm who am I?

(30:31):
But just a simple, a simple country podcaster. Yeah not
you right, So just a simple country chicken. What do
I know? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (30:43):
Good.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
Look.

Speaker 2 (30:44):
If if anything will quote unquote save us, it will
be the greediness of business owners and shareholders gonna ban
all the SSR drugs and everything else. Is like, who's
gonna ban it?

Speaker 1 (31:00):
You know about that?

Speaker 2 (31:01):
We got shooters lening to stop sucking around. You know,
it's like this pharmaceutical industry, we got more money than God.
We are God on earth. Get off. So yeah, maybe
the greed of corporations will be our savior. And then uh,
when reasonable people get back in power, we will crush
them with taxes like you shut up, or you or

(31:22):
you'll get the whip next time. They're like, all right,
all right, just don't let the other guys back in.
All right, we got it, we got it, we got it,
We'll pay.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
And that's why it's so funny. That's why it's so
funny to me to watch like all the stuff that
Elon Musk is doing for his own enrichment essentially, Like,
do you think like the fucking big banks are gonna
be like, yeah, like we have no problem with you
putting your thumb on the scale to set up, you know,
xcess of payment app to compete with all of our
payment apps that we're using all over the place. Like, no,

(31:48):
get the fuck out of here. They'd be like, hey,
what the fuck, Like we had to jump through all
these fucking hoops in order to get this ship from you. Guys,
we're paying you fucking millions of dollars a year to
make sure that you know, we're keeping our station. And
this guy gets if push fucking walks in the door
and have it however he wants it. Fuck you, Yeah,
get the fuck out of here.

Speaker 2 (32:06):
Well again, please, by all means, puts off the pharmaceutical
companies that would be great for you. Yeah, those companies
were like, oh, did you want ketamine? We're out, don't
call here. No he did, actually here, have more? All right,
I have a question before we get out of the
big topic. Is James Carvell correct? So James Carvell came

(32:31):
out human, snake man hybrid. James Carvell. He came out
and he was like, listen, we are a month away
from the Trump administration just eating itself and collapsing under
its own weight and basically falling completely underwater with public support.

(32:53):
And a lot of people are like, James Carvel's an idiot,
he doesn't know anything.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
He said that Karla Harrison's gonna win.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
He was wrong about that. And you know, James Carvell
is an old man.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
He's just crazy.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
Don't listen it. And he was on Cuomo's show recently,
I guess today or maybe yesterday, and he was he
was basically like, yeah, sometimes you gotta throw a sometimes
you gotta roll a grenade out there. And he basically
was like, I just said it to get people thinking
about what's happening right like, to just kind of create
this conversation. He wrote an up ed for New York

(33:25):
Times too, like he believes it. But he was just like,
if he says it, he knows that he's a big
enough name, then it'll start to move the conversation. Right now,
I actually agree with him on the face of this.
The details is where I don't agree with him, which
is he's saying that Democrats should just step back and

(33:45):
do nothing.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
Well, yeah, that's that's the other part, because I had
heard about him saying this, and no, like you have
to get caught trying here, like like you can't just
fucking sit back and just be like, well, you know,
just let it, let them eat themselves and we'll and
we'll all over the fucking ruins once, once it's all
said and done. Because again, like these are actual lives
that are that are you know in the balance here.

(34:10):
I I go back to my you know, very firmly
stated opinion on all of this. If you're over the
age of seventy five, I don't need to hear from
you on politics ages anymore. Yep, wow, you got it.

Speaker 2 (34:25):
Yes, yes, and right.

Speaker 1 (34:28):
Yeah, yes, and like like no, like it's it's I
just don't need to hear from you, like James Carville.
And because the problem is is that these guys, these consultants,
and like I like James Carvill, like he's obviously, like
you know, one of those people who's entertaining at the
very least. But the problem is.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
He literally asked the question when's the last time Trump
saw his own dick, which is okay, Like it's fine.

Speaker 1 (34:52):
But but but the problem and especially with these like
guys who were successful, very successful for a moment in time, right, yeah,
is that kind of crystallizes this thought process in their
head of like, well, my way is the right way
because I won doing this, and so they kind of
put their fucking stake in the ground on this, like hey,

(35:13):
this is the way things should be done, and then
the country and or the party keeps on moving past
them and they're like, well, what the fuck you guys
do and not listen to me, like like I won,
like this is the way things should be done. We're
like yeah, like that was relevant like thirty years ago,
but it's literally in nineteen yeah, Like and you're seeing
the same thing with like David Axelrod. Like David Axelrod,

(35:33):
who was Obama's campaign chief when he first got elected
for the last several years has been like, hey, this
is the way to be successful in democratic politics. But
David Ashrod, like, your way to successful fifteen years ago,
Like it worked fifteen years ago, bully for you. We're
past that now, like the lan Yeah. So that so

(35:54):
that's why I'm saying, like all these old political consultants
that typically they just typically don't move the same way
that the party moves. And I'm not saying we have
all the answers either, Like obviously, like we are we
we tend to skew very progressive on a lot of issues,
and I would say we're much further to the left
of the general American electorate, like the general American elector

(36:16):
has proven time and time again, like they love fucking moderation.
They are scared of moving in one direction or the
other of a far distance, like they like to keep
it right in the center as much as possible, and
that's nowhere. Yeah, you're right, and and so that's a
tough thing to have to fucking deal with for us
because obviously, like you know, in many ways, we're no

(36:38):
different than folks on the right who say, like, no, guys,
if you just fucking try this, we're telling you, it's
gonna be fucking awesome, and people like yeah, but I'm
scared though, like like, yeah, that's the twelve foot end
of the pool. I'm gonna stay over here in the
three feet where my head's still you know, very much
above water, and I don't have to worry about drowning.
Like that's that's you know, that's that's the challenge. But
that doesn't mean that the old ways are still the

(37:01):
right ways. You still have to move with people as
their movie. And and this is why Joe Biden was
so effective, and it's how he became president because Joe
Biden literally moved with the Democratic Party wherever he needed
to in order to be successful. He was able to see, oh,
this position that I had thirty years ago not really
good position to just take it anymore. Maybe I need
to change how I view this. Hey, I'm a Catholic.

(37:22):
I don't really like abortion, but I'm not in the
no abortion party, so I need to be a little
bit more accepting of this.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
Yeah on my side, right, Yeah, Look, I think Carvell.
The thing about James Carvel is it is very easy
to dislike him because he's one. He's old, right, and
you're like, ah, what does this old man know? Right?
He also comes off as being like obnoxious. Yeah, like

(37:52):
shocking news helped put he helped put a guy into
office against you know, like he helped Clinton get into office,
and not only just get into office, kick ass in
the nineties, right like they did even with a fucking
blowjob scandal. Those motherfuckers still kicked ass like amazing work,

(38:14):
like it just is now you can look back and go, oh,
the Third Way was fucking bullshit and it caused a
lot of problems for Democrats going forward. But that's that's hindsight.
Like in the moment, these guys were like, get the
fuck out.

Speaker 1 (38:28):
Of the way.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
We're just winning. The economy is fucking roaring, like they're
doing all the right things right. And look, look, I'll
be honest, not all of Bill Clinton's economic successes are
all due to him, right, some of it, and actuality
some of it, especially in the beginning.

Speaker 1 (38:46):
George H.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
W Bush is responsible for right.

Speaker 1 (38:48):
Yeah, George H. Wish had to eat a political bullet
to give Bill Clinton to jump out of the.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
Decided right when he decided to raise tom when he
said he wouldn't. That was the right move. He paid
dearly for it, and also long term, the country paid
dearly for it, because now Republicans are like, we're never
raising taxes. It's like, Okay, he was actually right about it.
They're like, yeah, but he lost, but he lost, but
he lost, right, And it's the same thing with Carvell.
But I want, but I want, but I want, so

(39:18):
never change anything. So Carvel has I think he is
stuck in time, right, he is very much stuck in
the nineties, but he's also there are things that you
can learn from that time. Not everything, but there are
certain tactics and stuff like that the Republicans still use
and you and he's been sitting here watching this shit

(39:39):
and he's been very much a part of it for
a long fucking time. So when people just completely dismiss him,
I think that's a terrible idea. When people completely take
what he says, it's like gospel, that's also a terrible idea.
Listen and pull out some fucking shit from it and
see what he's saying, and see how you can adapt
some of it to what's going on. I think that's
the better way of looking at it. Now. To his point,
he says that they should do what the military calls

(40:01):
a tactical pause, right, just just stop, let them fucking
destroy themselves, and then you fucking ride in and like,
look what we're doing. I think that's a I think
that's a bad idea. I fundamentally don't agree with that.
Like you said, get caught trying right, like these motherfuckers
are going to destroy themselves.

Speaker 1 (40:20):
He's on and by the way, with like I'm not
saying that, like, oh, Democrats need to swoop in to
keep the government open, and no, I actually agree with
that on that yeah, like like that's that's not That's
not what I'm saying here again, like you're the messaging
from the Democratic Party on the upcoming uh continuing resolution
that's gonna have to get past, is the right one? Hey,

(40:42):
Republicans have enough votes to do this themselves, and then
both the House and the Senate, they have the president.
We can we can step back and chill. Let them
handle it. They're the governing party. Like Republicans are already
trying to trot out the Oh, the Democrats are gonna
are gonna let the government shut down that you know
why the speech and people are like, sorry, bro, that.

Speaker 2 (41:01):
You're in charge of all three branches. So look, I
like that idea. You don't give them anything. Oh the
government's gonna shut down if you don't vote for us,
vote with us. That sounds like a U problem, not
a NUS problem. It sounds like a U problem. You
are in control of all three branches of government. What

(41:24):
what you looking at me for?

Speaker 1 (41:25):
Bro?

Speaker 2 (41:26):
Like you got it, so you got both houses, get
it done. But they but to Carvell's point, they know
they can't get it done. They know that they're gonna
have to come to Democrats and then the past Democrats
would save them, don't.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
Don't.

Speaker 2 (41:40):
And now if the media goes, well, why did the
Democrats keep the the the government open? Their job isn't
to placate to Republicans bullshit. Their job is to work
for the democracy to do better by it. If that
means it's shut down until these dumb fucking idiots figure
it out, then it's shut down.

Speaker 1 (42:00):
Yeah, and it's like hey, like we're happy to we're
happy to help you vote for this, but uh, get
el On Musk the fuck away from the from the
inner workings of government. If that's gonna happen.

Speaker 2 (42:10):
Doose dosee ends is gone, don't play nice, it's gone.
And like hard demands, Well, if Elon Musk can only
come in on Mondays and Wednesdays, that'd be great. Now,
fuck that that guy is out of government. That guy's
no longer working in government at all. Big balls in
his fucking crew of idiots, they're gone, they're gone, all
of it is gone. You put back that funding for

(42:32):
USA I D and we see that ship for real.
You put those people back to work for real. No bullshit,
that's what you do. Play fucking hardball. They don't want
to play.

Speaker 1 (42:46):
Oh well, sucks.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
To be you, bro, sucks to be you. You're gonna
cause fucking chaos and government. Then you're gonna fucking pay
the consequences for like that. That's just it is what
it is. So in effect, I do actually agree with
him that you do need to just let these guys
blow themselves up. But I think you don't stand there
and just be like, you don't just cross your hands
and just go okay, well you know, we'll just say no.

(43:09):
You call these guys out, you go on TV, you
fucking say whatever you gotta say, and be like, we're
not helping you. We are not going to help you.
You figure it out. If they can't figure it out,
that's our problem. They got the votes, They have the votes.
They just can't get me psychos.

Speaker 1 (43:24):
They proved that they have the votes. We'll talk about
it later on.

Speaker 2 (43:27):
Yeah, you have the votes, they just can't get all
of their psychos to agree. But that sounds like a
you problem, not a NUS problem, right, So yeah, I
love it. So I again, I think Carvel is correct
on its face, but I think the detail, especially they're like,
just sit back and don't do anything. I disagree with that.

(43:47):
That's the part I don't agree with it all. And
also like people gave him a bunch of shit, are like, oh, well,
you said that Kamala Harris was gonna fucking mop the
floor with Trump. Yeah, that was probably before all of
the purging of so many people off the voter rules.
That that probably has an effect on, you know, whether

(44:07):
or not she was gonna win, amongst many other things.
And I'm sorry, I'm very much living in the thought
process that this is not a fair fucking election at all.
At this point, I can't ignore what feels very very
fucking obvious today.

Speaker 1 (44:22):
So yeah, I'm I think it was completely fair and
I think Americans are just fucking idiots.

Speaker 2 (44:26):
I think both things can be true. How about I
think Americans absolutely gonna be big fucking idiots, But I
also think I just know I'd like watching how they
operate now inside the government when they have when they're
trying to gain access to the code base for shit
and stuff like that, where they're just like, we're just auditing.
It's the same amount they used for the voting shoots. Again,

(44:49):
I can't definitively tell you like they did X y Z.
I can't say that, but that is a very uneasy
feeling that I personally have. So yeah, all right, let's
take a quick break and we're gonna come back and
get into fast corruption and faster scrubs. All right, nothing
could possibly go wrong here, Brad, Now tell us why this.

(45:13):
This software to automate the firing of government employees is
probably not a big deal.

Speaker 1 (45:19):
So I did not even know this. Apparently the DoD
twenty years ago developed a program called auto RIFF, which
is stands for Automatic Automated Reduction in Force, and apparently
it's been used by a lot of agencies to expedite

(45:41):
when they need to whittle down workforce. Apparently don't really
know how it works specifically, but that's the thing that
government agencies have used in the past. Well, guess who
has code access to this program that makes it real
super easy, uh, to fire people?

Speaker 2 (46:02):
Cool?

Speaker 1 (46:04):
Yeah, it's gonna be fucking awesome. Yeah it's not. It's
not great. I think, you know, obviously, like they're already
micro targeting with the firings that they've done so far,
like probationary employees like people that have that are still

(46:24):
that could be fired very easily without cause. That's that's
who they primarily have been going after in a lot
of these agencies where they're making where they're making cuts.
But yeah, now they're looking to make this potentially even
more efficient. And so basically the way the program works

(46:45):
is that when an agency needs to make a big reduction,
their HR departments create like lists that rank the employees
who would be you know, who possibly might be under
the gun essentially, and in the past, all of this,
all of these lists, like this data has been manually

(47:07):
confirmed and employees are allowed to like see this in advance,
so like that it doesn't come like a bolt out
of the blue sort of thing. I guess it's kind
of similar to like stack ranking, Like a lot of
jobs you stack ranking for you know, duties and stuff
like that, just so you see where you stand in
comparison to your colleagues. I can't imagine that once DOGE

(47:28):
gets their fucking fingers in this that it's going to
work with such scrutiny and manual oversight or.

Speaker 2 (47:35):
Be publicly available.

Speaker 1 (47:36):
There's right, and and again, like we've already seen all
of these fucking a lot of these people they fired
are in essential positions looking after things like our nuclear
arsenal or our response to the bird flu which is
popping off right now, or things that easily that they
have to scramble. Yeah, which they then have to scramble

(47:59):
in order to get those people back because they move
too quickly and not vetting what they're doing. Having a
program that makes it super easy to do that, I
don't think it's gonna be very helpful.

Speaker 2 (48:11):
So yeah, I'm not a fan of mass automated firings.
That feels like a really bad idea. Hey, why don't
we just build a rubric and just go down the
list and just can all these people? I think it's
incredibly stupid. Again, this is a that's a very startup

(48:32):
sort of move fast, break things logic, and that only
works well when you just fundamentally don't care about anyone.
And look, I think that's true for them in this case.
They fundamentally don't care about anybody that they're firing. But
the problem is, like working for the government, and as

(48:54):
vast as the government is is the number one employer
in the entire country, you can't just not swaths the
people off and just put them on unemployment like I mean, yes,
technically you can, but it feels like a really bad
idea because what you're doing is you're ripping apart the

(49:14):
system which undergirds the entire country. It's not like we
got rid of five accountants because we have another ten
accountants at Joe's startup. That's not the same. Oh maybe
paychecks or like it's gonna be we're gonna have to
work a little bit into the night to get it
done that we would have gotten done at three o'clock normally.
That's not what this is. When you knock people out

(49:36):
of government systems like that, and especially if you're using
it automated, my guess is it's not gonna be doing
a lot of overlap. Looking it's just like, we don't
need this entire department, we don't need this entire lab
we don't need this entire group, Which means you may
think you understand what that group does, but there may
be something major and very serious that group does that

(49:57):
nobody else touches and then you lose that institutional knowledge
and you're like, oh shit, why why are the launch
codes not being changed at you know, for the nuclear weapons.
Oh well, you fired the guys who do this one thing.

Speaker 1 (50:10):
But and and by the way, like you see this
in private in the private sector all the time, like
like think about where you work and think about like
the things that you like, like that that you do
in your role that you just kind of do that
aren't like written down anywhere, that aren't like part of
an sov And if your job fired, you tomorrow think

(50:33):
of certain things that would just fucking go haywire without
realizing like oh shit, Like I didn't realize Jim did
this stuff all the time because like you know, like
not everything gets written down all the time. Like everyone's
moving faster in the day. You don't think about it
just becomes kind of part of your routine and you
don't really give it a second thought. Why would you
assume that the federal government or any government or any

(50:53):
bureaucracy works any differently. I guarantee you it works the
same way, where it's not like various specifically charting down
our a Jim does this and Ted does that, like,
it just doesn't work that way.

Speaker 2 (51:05):
Yeah, you're one hundred percent right, And I can tell
you why they don't think that think that way. None
of these people have ever had regular jobs, Brett. No,
that's the difference, Like and when when would they have
ever experience that? If you've only ever been the CEO
or the the CTO or the CFO or something like that,
when have you ever been like, oh shit, remember when

(51:26):
Brian knew that one thing? You don't have any idea
because institutional knowledge is not the job of the CEO.
It's not. It's the reason why it is the most
turned over position in most corporations. Right, Oh, fucking figurehead,
Get rid of him. Fucking put another person in who cares?
What's your vision? Your vision the board? Run shit, right,

(51:47):
you're just the you're the the dancing monkey we sent
out there.

Speaker 1 (51:50):
Right.

Speaker 2 (51:51):
So they literally don't have any experience in being around
people with just institutional knowledge of things because is just
not what they do. This is not what they do,
which is why you should always want a president or
people in charge of the government, people who work their
way up. That's why you don't actually want just rich

(52:12):
people who have like bought their way to that fucking seat,
and then you just give them this job because they
don't have any connection. They don't have any connection to
what it is to like work your way through the government.
There's a reason that Joe Biden was so successful. Joe
Biden worked his way through being in the Senate and
understanding the mechanations of what it is to write bills

(52:34):
and to get bills passed, and to fucking glad hand
and like move people and give a little take a
little compromise.

Speaker 1 (52:41):
That's why he was able to achieve so much despite
not having democratic control of the House for exa exactly,
he still got He's still got bills passed.

Speaker 2 (52:49):
Right, because he understands what the fuck the actual nuts
and bolts of that job are. Right, There's a reason
why somebody like a Barack Obama can move people in
like you know, like you know, just like emotionally, can
move them or get them to do things that he
wants on a political level, because this dude was doing

(53:11):
shoe leather fucking neighborhood work with people. He didn't start out,
he didn't jump like, Hi, I'm Barack Obama, I'm president now,
like like he didn't start out like that. Trump didn't
take his dad's business where he's like on the I
mean like I think he was a collecting rent at
one point, right, like the movie with Joe Peshi or

(53:33):
some shit, right, But he didn't fucking grind his way
up to then running you know, the Trump business, right, Like,
what's the guy Rex Tillerson, Right, that dude started out
at like the lowest job at Exxon and grinded his
way all the way to the CEO. That guy understands
what it is. Like. You can hate Rex Tiller's at all
you want. I'm sure hoever I will be do, but like,

(53:54):
you can hate that guy and everything he fucking stands for,
besides calling Donald Trump with fucking moron, which was right about.
But that guy understands the mechanations of running a corporation
like that and what it takes to like from the
guy pumping the fucking gas to the guy cleaning the
fucking toilets to the CEO. He understands all of that
because he works those jobs. That matters a lot. So

(54:16):
Trump has never done that. He came in basically was
like I'm the boss, So what the fuck does he
know about any of this other shit. He doesn't. Elon
Musk another privileged asshole. What does he know about anything?
He's only ever been a corporate executive his entire life.
He doesn't have any experience in that shit none. Just
just a quick case in point on this. When they

(54:37):
were doing all these crazy firings before they fire enough,
you heard about this. They fired a guy in one
of the national parks. He's a federal EMPLOYEEY fired one
of these guys. This guy was the only guy with
all the keys to the bathrooms. And they were like,
we gotta call Brian because like they just like fired you.
When he was at home, like funck off, don't come

(54:58):
into work.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
He was like, all right, Bett, fuck you.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
And they're like, bro, we can't go into bathwards.

Speaker 1 (55:02):
That sounds like a problem. They'll locksman those keys.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
And by the way, that's exactly don't need it. Funk off.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
Right.

Speaker 2 (55:11):
But luckily, you know, the guy is probably a decent dude,
right because you don't hate the people he's working with
right now. But it's not you know so, but that's
a prime that you have to have that institutional knowledge.

Speaker 1 (55:24):
And and and it doesn't help to have a like
and Elon Must believes this, and therefore Donald Trump believes this.
We're like, they think that, like, you know, a third
of these fucking jobs are fake anyway, like that don't
have people that are actually working them for some reason,
which is which which is insane. But okay, all.

Speaker 2 (55:42):
Right, next up, think about government contracts.

Speaker 1 (55:46):
Yeah, so, funnily enough, Elon must one of the other
things he's bragging about. He's like, oh, we're canceling all
these government contracts that are spending all this money, and
look how much fucking money that we saved. Here's the
thing about government contracts, though, is that a lot of
times they're paid up front, and or a lot of
times the financial obligation is already so firmly in placed

(56:10):
that you can't just kind of back out of them
because they're already kind of set up. And so fort
of the contracts that DOGE is canceled will actually not
save the federal government any money whatsoever, because the services
that the contracts provided are already bought and paid for. Yep.

Speaker 2 (56:30):
And by the way, remember this headline forty percent of contracts,
Because there's gonna come a time when those contracts normally
about a yearly basis they're gonna come up again, and
he's gonna be all the things that the government needs
that they're just like, we don't need it until you do.
And then you're scrambling like.

Speaker 1 (56:48):
Oh shit, what of all the things? Why isn't there
someone showing up?

Speaker 2 (56:52):
Okay, all right? What at Like all these contracts that
you're you're canon, are those consulting contracts because I work
for the government for almost twenty years as a consultant.

Speaker 1 (57:04):
If you just.

Speaker 2 (57:05):
Killed my contract, all right, cool, I ain't showing up
to work one day, dude, and then me and all
of the people I work with ain't showing up to work.
So then what what happened?

Speaker 1 (57:17):
And when people think government contracts that like they think
of like Halliburton, and they think of like Lockheed Martin
or all this other stuff. But you also have to
realize that like government contracts also might be with staples
to buy office equipment and furniture that you need to
do stuff, or with a janitorial service possibly like if

(57:40):
you don't hire, like if you don't hire like cleaning me,
you know, a person, like if you contracts, I want
to do it, Like there are services that contracts provide
or like, hey, come back to the office. Oh shit,
what happened to our coffee machine? Where's our fucking bending machines?
All those were contracts, they canceled those. Sorry, yep, so

(58:01):
like coffees for I tell you. Yeah, So again, just
don't think of like I know, when we talk about
government contracts, we think about these like billions of dollar
contracts with these giant mega corporations that are kind of
locked into place. But that's not what the majority of
government contracts are that exists, No, not at all. So yeah,
stuff that you need to run to run the business essentially.

Speaker 2 (58:24):
So yeah, uh so, just just put a pin on
that one for one year from now and they're gonna
be fucking scrambling to find out why they don't have
any fucking pens or notepads in any of the like
in any of the government offices and staples is like, sorry, bro.

Speaker 1 (58:41):
Yeah, what do you want? What do you want me
to do? Oh you want to renegotiate. Cool, we just
raised the prices of twenty percent you goddamn right. Next story. Sometimes,
like a story comes along that just just really frames
everything in the most clear way that you possibly could

(59:03):
frame it. And this is one of these stories. So
Trump uh and Pete Hegseth last week fired uh C
Hugh Brown, who was the chairman of the Joint chiefs
of Staff. Yes, this is a guy who was incredibly
qualified for his job, someone who had been in the

(59:28):
position for the last eighteen months or so. He was
a fighter pilot in the Air Force. He was the
and he wash. He was like a real fucking dude,
like a widely respected you know, like a real fucking
military like, like a military dude who knows what the
fuck he's doing. He also happens to be black. Well,

(59:54):
and you know that's right, we can't we can't have
some black dude heading up the Joint chiefs of Staff.
Like that's that's just not gonna fucking happen. And so I.

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
Hired this guy clearly.

Speaker 1 (01:00:08):
Yeah, and so where are you gonna who You're gonna
take this very qualified black dude, and are you're gonna
replace him with? Well, it's interesting because you're gonna replace
him with a three star general, not even a four
star general. Three star general who happens to be white,
who has a cool nickname.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
Like I'm not gonna lie. I laughed my ass off whenever.

Speaker 1 (01:00:33):
Yeah, but is so unqualified to serve in this position
that a waiver needed to be signed by Trump in
order to appoint him into this role.

Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
This is due for white men. There is nothing that
is more pathetic than having an incredibly qualified black man
who has had to do I'm sure twice as much
as every white guy he's ever had to fucking deal
with for the positions in which that that he has obtained. Again,

(01:01:13):
he was a fighter pilot. You said, do you know
how good of a good of a pilot you need
to be to be a fucking fighter pilot? Now imagine that,
but also being black? Okay, Like they're not gonna like
you know, there was that whole time where like Candice
Owens and all these other fucking jackass Republicans were like,
vise you a black person as a pilot. I get

(01:01:36):
really worried. I'm thinking to myself, as many a point out,
this is gonna be a great flight because that black
person had to work super hard for why people be like, here,
have this multimillion dollar plane, we entrust you with it,
Get the fuck out of here. So to replace him
with a guy whose nickname is literally Raisin Caine, that's

(01:01:59):
quite literally, his nickname is ridiculous. Like, it's just ridiculous.
But like you said, it encapsulates everything they're all about.
It turns out that the whole idea of being in
a job based on merit is only a valid argument
if you are alabaster white. Yep, Because what you're saying

(01:02:24):
is everybody else who has these positions are worse than
every white person who applied. That's what you're saying, right,
you can replace them with any white person, because that
is what merit is, is only hiring wife. Okay, so

(01:02:46):
we're betraying the idea of merit. I wonder if there's
going to be another thing in this week's episode about
betraying a fundamental thing that Donald Trump has been screaming
about for years only I I have like five million
guesses as to what it could be. But yeah, it's hard, hard.

(01:03:08):
So yeah, shocking news. The black Joint Chiefs of.

Speaker 1 (01:03:11):
STAF gets fired. Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:03:14):
This was a fun one. This this little news nugget
came out today. I really I thought it was hilarious.
Ron DeSantis is creating a Florida DOGE task Force to
review state spending, including universities. He is he is. He
has announced that he is going to use AI, by

(01:03:34):
the way, to go in and check for government waste
and fraud. And and someone made the point, bro, who's
the governor of Florida right now?

Speaker 1 (01:03:44):
Not just not just who's the governor of Florida right now,
who's been who's controlled Florida politics for the last thirty years?

Speaker 2 (01:03:53):
Twenty six years, Republicans have had a trifecta control of
Florida by the way.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
M hmm.

Speaker 2 (01:04:02):
The call is coming from inside the house, like what
are you talking about? We gotta find all the waste
and stuff like that. Why haven't you guys been finding
it for twenty six years?

Speaker 1 (01:04:12):
Where are you been who generated all this waste?

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):
Mmmmm, I'm fraud. Yeah, we'll see, we'll see. My guess
is this is just an AI program and an initiative
to fire anybody with any sort of DEI brownification of Florida.
I mean, I guess, I guess white people in Cuban

(01:04:36):
conservatives are the only people are gonna be allowed to
keep jobs.

Speaker 1 (01:04:39):
It's it's and it's and it's amusing because again, like
I'm pretty sure this is simply a ploy bidas Antis
to be like look at me, like I'm also a
real doge. Guys that like he can try to run
for the party's nomination in twenty twenty, like trying to
keep himself relevant. But like, bro, like, are you not
seeing the way the wind is blowing on this on

(01:04:59):
the federal level and you want to fucking do it
on a state level as well? Doesn't seem like a
good idea to me, But hey.

Speaker 2 (01:05:07):
What keep going? Keep going? So maybe he'll be really
cool with like firing a bunch of veterans and just
like the US government tried to do and see what happens.
All right, keep going. Let's take a quick break and
get into uh some news you need. There are some

(01:05:29):
there's some fucking doozies in this week. Good lord, all right,
coming right out of the gate.

Speaker 1 (01:05:36):
I I when you react when I think I posted
Did I post this in our chad? Or did you
I think you did?

Speaker 2 (01:05:43):
Yes, you did.

Speaker 1 (01:05:45):
It's been a while since I've seen you react with
a level of incredulity then that I saw you react
this and not saying something, because it's been a pretty
incredulous couple of weeks, uh for.

Speaker 2 (01:05:58):
For folks obviously not in our private chat. Here's what
I said. I don't even need to read it because
I remember my response was in all capital letters, Nigga
Cummelin like fucking insane. Trump says, okay, so I won't
you know what, it's not for me to say. Okay,
I don't want to take the man's thunder. I have

(01:06:20):
a clip. Let's play what Trump is proposing, and then
you know we're gonna do a we'll do a live react.
So you know, you tell me to pause.

Speaker 1 (01:06:31):
And how long is this clip?

Speaker 2 (01:06:34):
It's like a minute thirty seconds. Okay, there's a lot
of stupid shit. It's like a lot. All right, So
here's the clip.

Speaker 5 (01:06:42):
We're gonna be doing something else. It's gonna be very
very good. We're gonna be selling a gold card. You
have a Green card. This is a gold card. We're
gonna be putting a price on that card of about
five million dollars and that's gonna give you a Green
card privileges LUs. It's going to be a route to citizenship.

Speaker 1 (01:07:03):
Hold on so card plus Green card, Green card privileges
plus so so. Now citizenship is like a fucking like
rewards program at Applebee's basically okay, like you could be
a Green Card member of the United States or level
up to the Gold Card membership and see what other
fun benefits UH come at you. For For example, if

(01:07:25):
you're a Gold Card member, no racism will be lobbied
against you on purpose.

Speaker 2 (01:07:32):
Excellent Gold membership also comes with I'm reading uh in
the article here. You also get five dollars off at bennings.

Speaker 1 (01:07:43):
I believe, I'm I. You know what. Another benefit of
Gold Card membership status you get assigned your own Republican
politician that you can tell what to do. Essentially, that's
very exciting. That's pretty good. That's pretty good.

Speaker 2 (01:07:55):
Yeah, all right, let's uh, let's let's let this this
golden calf continue.

Speaker 5 (01:08:02):
The people will be coming into our country by buying
this card. They'll be wealthy, and they'll be successful, and
they'll be spending a lot of money and paying a
lot of taxes and employing a lot of people. And
we think it's going to be extremely successful and never
been done before or anything like this, but it's something
that we're.

Speaker 2 (01:08:19):
Going to be putting out over the next would you.

Speaker 5 (01:08:21):
Say, two weeks out, do you want to say a
couple of words about.

Speaker 2 (01:08:24):
So this motherfucker said, this motherfucker said, no one's ever
thought of this him.

Speaker 1 (01:08:32):
Get him off of the screen. I don't want to
look at his dumb face once he's done talking.

Speaker 2 (01:08:35):
So this motherfucker said, we let me just rewind here,
uh for the Commerce secretary because he goes onto a
bit of a sycophantic rant, which we'll talk about.

Speaker 1 (01:08:49):
Oh cool.

Speaker 2 (01:08:51):
I mean this guy just like he's really just he's
just given confidence and reasonable.

Speaker 1 (01:08:57):
This this howard le looks like a mob return. That's
what he looks like. Yeah, I'll try to figure out
what he looks like. He looks like.

Speaker 2 (01:09:03):
I mean it's fitting, right, Like it's very fitting. So
what's wild is okay? He says, Look, we're gonna pay
these We're gonna take these people five million dollars like
no one's ever thought of this before. There's a reason
no one's ever thought of this before, because you're selling
citizenship like like like you're selling admission to a fucking concert. Well,

(01:09:29):
they'll be very rich, and that's really cool.

Speaker 1 (01:09:32):
Bro.

Speaker 2 (01:09:32):
You spent the last number of years telling us how
immigration was bad in that it changes the fundamentals of
the country and it's not right. And you know, we
got to keep the country the way it is and
all this other stuff. But for five million dollars, people
can basically launder five million dollars into your pocket, carry

(01:09:57):
favor with you, and get all of the privileges being
an American citizen. Not only that you also have allowed
you've also allowed this a situation where we are meant
to believe that you are, like you're gonna be reasonable
about the vetting process. We'll get back to the hut,

(01:10:19):
like you're not gonna be reasonable out the vetting process.
Like at a certain point in the video he talks
about like, well, if we sell a million of these,
what five trillion dollars?

Speaker 1 (01:10:31):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:10:33):
Okay, But here's the problem, dude. One, you can find
a million people to buy this.

Speaker 1 (01:10:37):
That's insane.

Speaker 2 (01:10:39):
I don't think so. But Two, that's how I already
know that you don't care about the vetting process because
you're your front of mine about this is how do
we make money off of it? Well, if and if
we sell ten million of these, then we'll have fifty
trillion dollars, and you know, the deficit is only you know,
forty trillion, so we could pay off the deficit and

(01:11:02):
then you can have all these mob bosses buying.

Speaker 1 (01:11:04):
Gold compan I mean, I mean, surely there are ten
million people around the world who aren't already US citizens
who just have five million just laying around to fucking
serious question, though, I wonder, like, and this is an
impossible question to answer. How many people, though, do you
really think exist in the world who have enough disposable

(01:11:30):
income in in liquid assets to have five million dollars
to call on as soon as it's needed to do this,
who don't either already live in the United States and
are not already a citizen, or aren't at least like
a temporary resident who can pretty much come and go
as they please. I have to imagine that number is

(01:11:53):
probably relatively small, with the exception of maybe a shipload
of people in China, a shitload of people in run
not a shipload, but like a lot of fucking oligarchs
in Russia, maybe some criminal and and that's kind of
the whole point is that like a lot of the
people who would qualify for this are probably involved in
crime in in some ways. One has to imagine, Look,

(01:12:17):
here's the thing.

Speaker 2 (01:12:20):
I think that's the point. Like, as much as the
gold card thing is dumb and it's really dumb, and
it's selling off the democracy in very weird ways, and
I am one hundred percent against that. That's the point
I think it is. It is. You know what it is.
It's the new Trump meme coin. It's a meme coin,
that's all it is. Here's a way, here's a here's

(01:12:42):
a big fat wallet. You shove fucking money in there,
and then I'll I know that it was you, John
who did it? So, yeah, you get all the fucking privileges.
Come on in, like, do you have to live here?
Do you have to live in the United States? Can
you spend your five million dollars? Get your fucking uh
you get your Gold card? You're a fucking citizen. And

(01:13:03):
you're just like, all right, well I was back in China,
Oh I get did I get arrested? Well, I'm an
American citizen. I'm an American citizens. You can't do that
to me. What are all the privileges? Do you know
how important it is for people overseas to get an
American passport? An American passport opens doors that other passports
simply cannot.

Speaker 1 (01:13:24):
Or think about this, how many uh, how many Russian
old arcs are currently under a financial sanction from the US.
You think, do you think you the US sanction financially
sanctions its own citizens. Spoiler alert, they do not.

Speaker 2 (01:13:39):
So you get your get yourself a nice American passport. Uh,
you know, like crasing off Trump, right, and then you
go to uh, you go back to Russia. You're good
because he says, oh, the Gold Card is a path
to citizenship. Bullshit. The Gold Card is citizenship.

Speaker 1 (01:13:59):
It is citizen it is.

Speaker 2 (01:14:00):
That's the whole You're not You're not paying five million
dollars to then go through a bunch of rigam more role.
That's that's a lie that rich people are trying to
tell poor people to be like, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
They go to the same Oh yeah you think, yeah,
you think the Gold car holders are going are getting
the fucking citizenship tests and going to the fucking swearing
in ceremony and all that jazz. Absolutely not, absolutely cool.

Speaker 2 (01:14:21):
We got your payment, thanks, here's your fucking receipt. Boom,
you're fucking US passport right there, damp, have a good day. Yeah.
So that this idea that that's not what's gonna happen
is total bullshit. It's just total and utter bullshit. I
think this is one of the bigger stories of the week, honestly,
because this guy sold Republicans a bill of goods about

(01:14:43):
how immigration was so bad and how you didn't want
all these other people coming in and changing the way
the country works and how it functions. And now this
motherfucker's like, shit's for sale, bro, like you want one?
Like who gives a fuck?

Speaker 1 (01:14:56):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:14:57):
Where are all the Republicans who were bitching and complaining
about Indians coming over to America with h one B
visas taking American jobs. These motherfuckers they're not even taking
your jobs. They're coming over just spending money. And now
they got the same privileges as you. I respect people
crossing the Rio grand and fighting tooth and nail to
get themselves and their kids out of a hostile situation.

(01:15:20):
And those people fighting and working hard and doing the
fucking hard work and scrounging and surviving. I respect those
people to get a fucking citizenship because they actually are
trying to make something and they're trying to do something,
and they're hardworking people and they don't do crimes and
shit like like as much as Republicans are like, oh,

(01:15:41):
the grammar grants are.

Speaker 1 (01:15:42):
Just killing and what is right? And what is this?
She's like, Oh, they're gonna create lots of jobs when
they come over. Like I'm sorry, Like if I wasn't
from China, if someone from China is like, oh cool
in the US, citizen, Now, let me open a fucking
factory in America where I have to pay wages that
are like ten x paying right now, Like, get the
fuck out of here.

Speaker 2 (01:16:01):
It makes no sense.

Speaker 1 (01:16:02):
The fuck are you talking about?

Speaker 2 (01:16:03):
Right, I'm gonna tall you. Here's my five million dollars,
and then I'm going to leave. By the way, here's
here's an aspect of this that I hadn't thought about
until just now. And and I guarantee you no one
else has thought about this, and they haven't really written
about it. I am a Chinese citizen. I am a

(01:16:25):
citizen anywhere in the world. Right, I got my five
million dollars, I got a clean record, I get my
goal card. I'm an American citizen. What stops the Chinese
government or any other government saying you know what we're
gonna pay. We'll give you the five million dollars. You
u u U, you and you you thirty, you one hundred,

(01:16:45):
you five thousand Chinese citizens. Now you're all American citizens. Cool, Now,
go run for office in all these different places.

Speaker 1 (01:16:54):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:16:55):
And you slow and you slowly just seed in people
to start taking over the fucking country that are loyal
to fucking China. They are loyal to Iran, they're loyal
to whatever. And by the way, it doesn't even have
to be all China. China could have a conversation with
Russia and like, all right, dude, we're gonna put five
thousand people. You put five thousand people. Are you just
put the country up? What's stopping them?

Speaker 1 (01:17:17):
Sure? Here here's another question I have for you that
I didn't think about until just now. Hey, Jay, was
the Salama bin Laden destitute or was he incredibly wealthy?

Speaker 2 (01:17:27):
Mmm?

Speaker 1 (01:17:28):
Yeah, just out of curiosity? A little bit of money,
A little bit, yeah, just a tad. So I mean again, like,
if you have a government who is rolling in the
fucking dough, who has loose terrorists or loose connections with
terrorist organizations. Again, to your point, what's to stop them
from just being like, here's your five million, here's your

(01:17:48):
five million, here's five million, go to the US set
up shot. Yeah, do your thing?

Speaker 2 (01:17:55):
Do you think, oh, they'll they'll be vetted hard. No
they won't.

Speaker 1 (01:18:00):
Nope.

Speaker 2 (01:18:00):
The vet is five million dollars. That's the vet.

Speaker 1 (01:18:04):
Yeah, the vet. The vet, the actual vetting for citizens
is why it takes like fucking eight years to for
that depends, yes, to jump through. That fucking sucks. Ask
anyone who's had to, who's had to, Uh, it's ever
rate over here, how fucking peopleship processes? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:18:19):
Yeah. My father in law had to have what was it,
Eagleton had to write a special law for him to
stay in the in the country because it's like his
visa was expiring. And Eagleton actually wrote this like right
before his entire life got destroyed by that like psychology report.
But he he quite when when he was in Congress,

(01:18:41):
he literally wrote a special He signed a special basically
bill for my father in law. Could they do like
the like a one off like Joe Smith type of
ship so he could stay in the country because he
was a he was a surgeon, right, and so that
he could stay in and like keep his visa going
or whatever, so that he could then move into becoming
which he's been a citizen for fucking decades at this point.

(01:19:04):
But yeah, it's really hard. And that guy worked his
ass off and came to this country and worked his
ass off and helped people and save lives and everything else.

Speaker 1 (01:19:15):
Right, and and and was a guy who is legitimately
like in a highly highly skilled profession, highly desired, like
somebody you absolutely wont here to your point, like saving lives,
like making making people's lives better, you know, and helping
the economy. Like it's not like he fucking operates by himself.
He hires a whole you know staff. He went for
the VA by the way you were there, you go
even more so. And and it still took that dude

(01:19:37):
all these hoops and all these like fucking hurdles that
you have to jump over just to them just to
get there. Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:19:43):
So this idea of like this is this is like
crossing the rubicon from maga hypocrisy. To me, like this
is like it seems very silly. But to me, if
I just like immigrat.

Speaker 1 (01:20:00):
Shit that they've been selling like that, I mean, sure.

Speaker 2 (01:20:02):
I guess you know, but no, no, but I'm just
it's going to come.

Speaker 1 (01:20:05):
As a shot to their vote, to their some of
their voters, I'll tell you.

Speaker 2 (01:20:08):
So, No, but I just I just find that really
fascinating that immigration is such a big deal to them.
When Push came to show this, dude, it's like, I'll
sell it for a fucking I'll buy that for a dollar,
right like, and they're just like, yeah, this was fine,
Like where.

Speaker 1 (01:20:21):
Where are you guys? By the way, even like one
of the press people that were in the Oval office
for this for this presentation even asked them, They're like,
would Russian oligarchs be eligible for this? And and Trump's
response was, I know some Russian oligarchs that are very
nice people.

Speaker 2 (01:20:38):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (01:20:38):
That's what he said.

Speaker 2 (01:20:39):
Let's let's finish up the video. That is exactly it's
quite literally what he.

Speaker 3 (01:20:42):
Said, ridiculous EB five program. We're gonna end the EB
five program. We're going to replace it with the Trump
Gold Card, which is really a green card gold, so
they'll be able to pay five million.

Speaker 1 (01:20:55):
Dollars to the US government. They have to go through vetting.

Speaker 3 (01:20:57):
Of course, we're going to make sure they're wonderful a
world class global citizens.

Speaker 1 (01:21:02):
They can come to America.

Speaker 3 (01:21:04):
President can give them a green.

Speaker 2 (01:21:05):
Card global globally with all the money as we got.

Speaker 3 (01:21:11):
It, and they can invest in America, and we can
use that money to reduce our deficit. Why do we
give out lotteries of green cards? Why do we give
out EB five for green cards? President of United States
understands that the right answer is why don't we eliminate
the deficit of the United States of America instead?

Speaker 2 (01:21:31):
Russian oligarch.

Speaker 5 (01:21:35):
Yeah, possibly, Hey, I know some Russian oligarchs of very
nice people. It's possible. They're not quite as wealthy as
they're not as wealthy as they used to be. I
think they can I think they can afford five million dollars.

Speaker 2 (01:21:52):
They're not as wealthy as they used to be. Bro,
Yes they are, Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:21:57):
Yeah, but I say they're the ones who have been
kept very safe by a lot of this stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:22:02):
Okay, that's the end of the free portion for this
week's episode of look Forward. Make sure you go to
look Forward show dot com slash Premium sign up for
premium content. It's only five dollars a month or fifty
dollars for the full year.

All Episodes

Treating Citizenship Like a Coupon at Applebees | Ep404

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

The Joe Rogan Experience

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Treating Citizenship Like a Coupon at Applebees | Ep404