Demand for Paid Protesters Is Up

Remember when we were told that paid protesters isn't a thing? The head of a company that provides them says demand is up from a year ago. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
The news, opinions, commentary, and interviews. You need to start
your day, and you're listening to the West Carrol Morning Show.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Wednesday morning, thirteenth day of August. I'm West Thanks for
joining me. Well, we had the announcement that the President
had decided he'd had enough of crime in the DC
area and ready to take things over from a federal

(00:33):
level from the DC police and get federal with it,
bring in some assistance and let's get things cleaned up.
And this announcement came earlier this week. And of course
now we've got folks on the left saying publicly that

(00:57):
this is dangerous, can't happen, shouldn't happen, they should let
the now reminding you, we're not talking We're talking about
District of Columbia. There's no governor. This isn't a state.
This is something that has its own Technically, it answers
to the Congress. I mean that's who the police there

(01:19):
would answer to. It's not really a situation where you
and a federal call from the President of the United
States declaring it a situation that's out of control, saying
it's time, this is a danger to the people who
live here, and some people saying, well, I thought we
heard crime was down, well, crime in some areas down,

(01:40):
And I think that maybe even to say crime is
down in Washington, d C may even be accurate according
to some of the stats. I think the issue that
the President has stressed and many on the right have
stressed in this administration is it's not so much the
crime stats being up or down. It's the crime stats

(02:01):
compared to capital cities and other countries around the world,
and it's an embarrassment. And when you look at countries
that are sort of known to be crime haven countries,
cities known to be crime haven cities, and when their
crime is significantly lower, significantly lower than what's been experienced

(02:28):
in Washington, d C. I think that's reason enough to say, look,
this is a place. It's a little different than you know,
you're in a state and you go, well, I want
to go visit our capital city. I want to go
to this particular landmark that resides inside or state, or

(02:49):
I'd like to travel to an area where they have
this amazing landmark that I'd like to see that's inside
a state. The capital of the US should be a
place that belongs to everyone, and it does, and everybody
should be able to go and visit and not feel threatened,
not feel afraid, not have to look over their shoulder constantly.

(03:13):
My wife just went on a trip for work to
a major US city and most of the time that
she was there, she was in a suburb area. She
wasn't in the actual city. I gotta be honest. You
get a little nervous when you're sending a loved one
to some cities. City in question with Chicago, yeah, I

(03:36):
don't now, it wasn't on a weekend when it seems
the crime is extra high. And still get a little
nervous moment that the plane lands, moment that she tells me, Okay,
we're now in the suburbs. We're safe, We're good. You go, okay,
well that's good. I feel better now. A little nervous though,

(03:58):
when somebody you care about lands in Chicago or lands
in New York. Or when we were on our trip
to Australia this summer and we got to LA and
we were stuck in LA for twenty four hours, longer
than we expected to be in LA. A lot of
people thought, oh wow, you're going to get out and

(04:18):
venture out, and we didn't decide to not venture out
because of crime. That wasn't the concern. We decided not
to venture out because we really wanted to be near
the airport and our goal, our objective was to get
to our destination, which was in Australia, and we just
didn't want to take any chances. And we had some
things still to take care of concerning our newly booked

(04:40):
adjusted flights. So we ventured out, but not far. We
saw things near the airport, We didn't see anything close
to what we've seen around that time, at least on
the news of what was going on in LA. And
people asked me, was it as bad as they said
or was it just a bunch of bunk? No, it

(05:01):
was I mean, I'm sure everything that you saw was genuine.
We just didn't go into those areas. We strategically stayed
out of some of those areas. That was never our intention,
wasn't our goal. We did not think, Wow, We're going
to venture out with twenty four hours to spare into
all of to see all of LA. We stayed near

(05:22):
the airport. We made it to in and out. Those
are one of the things that Luke wanted to do
while we were in LA, and we thought we can
do that without going too far. Did we see some
things in the short trip from our hotel to in
and out, Yes, some of the things that you've heard about,
but not on the major scale.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
No.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
So, if you don't want to venture out into LA,
and I know that there are people that do. If
you don't want to venture out into Seattle, you don't
want to venture out into New York or Chicago. We
still love going to New York. I've spent some time
in Chicago, La, of those cities, and I haven't been
to Seattle. I probably should have gone, at least during

(06:05):
one period of time when I had several very close
friends who lived there, but I never made it there.
It's a long way away from the Southeast. It's a
long way to go, so LA the only of the cities,
and I've been to LA many times but never really
made it far from the airport. Even with this trip
we ventured away from the airport, we still didn't go

(06:26):
very far. I love New York. I've always loved my
time in New York. I've been there several times. I
have a great time when I go to New York.
There are restaurants that I really love there. There are
places that I like to visit. One of my favorite
things to do in New York is you know, you
wake up at two in the morning, you're sleeping, and
you wake up and you think, Eh, put my shoes

(06:49):
on and go walk around. Can't do that now, I
mean you can. I wouldn't recommend it. I wouldn't do
it now. There was a time when I've done it.
I've done it many times on my trips. You just
go under around. There's things to see in the middle
of the night. I wouldn't I wouldn't recommend it now.
Wouldn't do it now, have no interest in it. Now.

(07:10):
It's a different place, probably about to get a lot worse.
Current polling shows that the Democratic Socialist, which is again
the code word that we've been given all the way
back to MLK, as doctor King told us, the communists,
will be referred to democratic socialists. I mean it's right
there in the playbook. We were told this is eventually

(07:32):
what the name is going to be for the communists.
And you get somebody who wants to shut down the police,
defund the police, run out all the business by saying, hey,
these businesses. We're going to tax them so much is
going to pay for all the free stuff. And the
business owners are already saying, we're watching, We're keeping a

(07:52):
close eye. Probably have already had conversations with boards of
directors and various employees at high levels. Hey, we might
not be here much longer, could be moving the whole
operation elsewhere, so brace yourselves. It could be coming. Got
no interest in going to New York now, and I

(08:14):
miss it. It's been a while since I've been. I'd
love to go back, but all right, now there's a
time when I wouldn't have wanted to go there, and
we're back there again. Chicago. Had a great trip to
Chicago once, had a great time there. Was on the
set of The Dark Night, which is now one of
my favorite movies of all time. I was there on

(08:35):
the set. I was looking at Gotham City police cars.
Don't know that I would go there now, at least
not for it. And I had another trip to Chicago
years later for a convention. I've kind of stayed in
a convention center or a hotel the whole time, wandered
outside only when it started to snow in April and
it was great. I loved walking out in the snow

(08:57):
and taking pictures and wouldn't do it now, got no interest.
I mean, this is what we're dealing with with these cities.
DC shouldn't be like that. DC should be a place
everybody can go. D C belongs to the people, and
it should be under control. And we should have I

(09:18):
don't know, the lowest crime as far as violent crimes
and violent offenders, we should have the lowest in our capital.
Why can't we thrive for that? Why can't we strive
for that? I guess it's y I don't know why
we can't hope for that. That's what we should want.
Why would we settle for being and I mean among

(09:41):
the worst capital cities, especially of our allies and friends
around the world, And I mean some that aren't even
necessarily allies and friends. Some are places you'd think, how
are we worse than them? Is there more at play though,
than what we've been told? It's possible. I mean, this

(10:02):
is definitely a bit of a chess match that's going
on between Trump and governors in blue states, Governors in
states that want to oppose and fight and dig in
and do everything possible to keep absolute lawlessness in their

(10:22):
major cities, or mayors of some of the cities I've
already talked about that just show their incompetence. So you've
got governors of cities that you know, keep the water
away from where they've been having fires and no real
explanation for why, and denial, denial, denial, and mayors there

(10:44):
saying well, we should add this all under control. And
governors that are saying we're going to fight the redistricting
in Texas because you know, we don't want Trump to
get an advantage that we've had many times before. So
is there more play it could be? I mean, this
is definitely a little bit of a flex to say

(11:07):
I can do this, I'm gonna do this. But the
real question is, as we're hearing that so many on
the left, oh, they're digging in. This is terrible. And
then there's this report from Joe Scarborough Morning Joe, and
he says the people in DC on the left, they're

(11:28):
glad they're not going to admit it out loud, but
they're saying it behind closed doors. They're saying it in
gatherings and meetings and to people that will be friendly
and will not necessarily say it on the record, not
out them for it, and it's probably true. I mean,

(11:49):
would you be honest and say, hey, I'm glad Trump's
doing this. No, nobody's going to say they're glad Trump's
doing anything. That's just the way politics works. But if
you have to work there, and if you live there
at least part of the year, you probably don't want
to have to look over your shoulder. Probably don't want
your car to be carjacked. You probably don't want to think, oh,

(12:11):
there may very well be someone who's been arrested and
released that's running around with another weapon, ready to commit
a crime. Probably not something that you want. You would
probably welcome a cleaned up Washington, d C. I would
think I would. I wouldn't want to live and function
in that world. Why would you? And when you hear

(12:36):
about the crimes, by the way, when you hear about
the fact that you've got DC that connects to so
many states right there, when a crime happens, someone can
just instantly exit and leave as that big roundabout takes
you straight into Maryland, all of a sudden you're in
another state. They don't know which way you went. You
can go in all sorts of directions, lots of stay easy,

(12:58):
easy to just dip into virgin right, just vanish into
thin air. Suddenly you're just gone. And where did they go?
Where did the person go who committed this crime? So
as good old Morning Joe says that there are people
who don't want to admit it, and it's big business
because remember how we've been told for a long time

(13:21):
that there's no such thing as these companies that get
paid to bring in professional protesters. You know, that's been
a conspiracy theory. Oh, these people don't exist. It's not
a real thing, even though there's lots of evidence to
the contrary, namely the fact that there's a company called
Crowds on Demand, and the CEO of Crowds on Demand,

(13:44):
his name is Adam Swart, talked to Fox News Digital
and he says, right now, DC inquiries are up roughly
four hundred percent compared to the same period a year ago.
This is between May and July of twenty twenty four
that he was talking about. And this comes just before

(14:08):
this announcement about the federal takeover of the law enforcement
in DC. So this crowd rental company says, yeah, people
are wanting to bring in crowds, so it's set a
large share or focused on opposing Trump's policies in Washington
and raising alarms about government overreach. We're weighing those offers

(14:32):
carefully because while there's truth in saying DC's local government
has been an abject failure in keeping its citizen safe,
there's also a real danger in putting too much power
in federal hands. That balance of power matters. Yeah, yeah,

(14:52):
So just keep in mind these companies that don't exist,
these people that aren't professional protesters, are in high demand
right now, even though they don't exist, even though there's
no such thing. This is all grassroots. Everything that happens
is genuine, and people are only coming in because they
just felt like, I just have to go in, not

(15:14):
because they're getting paid, not because they and their friends
this is what they do as a career. Now because
they've been showing up the same people that protests all
over the country, just because they're genuinely just concerned and
there's absolutely no financial benefit to it. They're not filing
it on their taxes, they're not reporting this income as
their job. They haven't been spotted and changing their appearance

(15:39):
slightly or sometimes even wearing the same shirt. They haven't
shown up at Trump rallies wearing Trump clothes and then
later showed up at another rally wearing something that says
they hate Trump. None of that stuff is true. That
is all absolute fabrication. There can't be any truth to
any of this. This is all just a big sham, right,

(16:00):
all a conspiracy theory. And I guess if there's a
danger of us running out of conspiracy theories, maybe if
there's one like this, we just hold on to it. Right,
You have to hold onto a couple and say we're
not going to let this one get outed, because we've
got to make sure we've got at least one conspiracy
theory left. There's actually several. There's several conspiracy theories left that.

(16:22):
I mean, we could start at the whole flat earth
thing at the very beginning. We get started the flat
earth or the moon is filled with air, or any
of those. We get start at those. And I think
it's about time that we stop pretending that there aren't professional,
paid protesters showing up at these city events. Because the
CEO just did an interview. Today's show brought to you

(16:44):
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(17:56):
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(18:16):
and you can do that as well. Upcoming Astronomy Night events.
Also on their website, it's CCSSC dot org. As Sean
Cruisin says Charlie Charlie SamSam Charlie dot org, I just
remind you that it stands for Coca Cola Space Science
Center CCSSC dot org. Today's show brought to you by

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seven oh six three five eight forty five hundred O
dccolumbus dot com more West Carrol Morning Show right after
the break. So let's talk about this story that has
now started to go viral, and this is a tough one.

(20:26):
This is a tough one. So there's a twenty one
year old woman named Josie Stenson. She lives in Salem, Massachusetts,
and she signed up for an anti loneliness event. Okay,
twenty one years old. She said she just felt lonely,
wanted to meet some people. Paid twelve dollars for a

(20:48):
ticket on event bright the Anti Loneliness Club meet up.
The dinner promise. Sorry, The ticket promised dinner and socializing
at a restaurant. When she arrived, sat down, was seated
at a table for six. No one else showed up.

(21:10):
She says the restaurant staff had no knowledge of the event.
She waited alone at a six person table, eventually receiving
a free cake from the sympathetic restaurant owner. She shared
her story on TikTok and that went viral about a
million views right away. She says that she's she shared
the clip many people have reached out to share similar
stories and offer support. She says that despite the disappointment,

(21:35):
she remains optimistic and open to future meetups, and she says,
learning to laugh at yourself in those situations the best
thing you can do. Because I got embarrassed or wallowed.
If I got embarrassed or wallowed, it would have been
a worse experience. She said. Life isn't that series. You
put yourself out there. You know you tried. It's better
than not trying at all. Ouch, but a positive message

(21:57):
to come out of it. I guess. So I guess
good for her and for people to be made aware.
You don't set up an anti loneliness meeting. Whoever organized it,
at the very least they should have showed up right.
According to a new survey, the most attractive hobby that

(22:17):
a man can have is reading. Ninety eight percent of
women pauled said it was the most attractive hobby. Second
most attractive hobby was learning other languages, followed by playing
an instrument, cooking, and woodworking. The least attractive hobby for men,
according to the survey, was being in online manisphere groups,

(22:38):
followed by gambling and adult entertainment. Fair I don't know
what a manisphere group is, to be completely honest, but
I'm not a big fan of gambling, and I absolutely
understand why all three of these things would be considered
least attractive things for women. To find out, So the

(23:00):
idea for escape rooms. You know what it is, You brainstorm,
you figure out how to get out of the escape room. Well,
some people are bringing AI into the mix and using
it to solve the escape room puzzles. Someone on social
media bringing it to light saying it was the ultimate

(23:22):
fun killer. Why would you do that? It's like basically
just going into a corn maze and then wanting a
straight line to the very end. There's no fun in that. Yeah,
and using AI in these escape rooms hasn't even necessarily
been that helpful because it doesn't know the room's layout
or specific specific puzzles, and it gives sometimes hilariously wrong answers.

(23:46):
Well maybe that's the reason to do it. It's like
watching a bad movie. So yeah, the staff at escape
rooms are starting to catch on and they say you
have to lock up your phone now to keep the
game fair and fun. There you go. That's good. So interesting.
I don't know why. I mean, obviously people would think
of that as a great hack. But Chick fil A

(24:07):
no longer the number one fast food chain. That title
now belongs to Del Taco. How did this happen? Which
is claimed the spot top Spot is America's favorite fast
food chain. According to USA Today's annual rankings. So Taco's burritos,
crinkle cut fries some vegan options only has six hundred

(24:29):
locations in the US, but it's managed to climb to
the top. They're owned by Jack in the Box, which
came in second place on the list. Sounds like somebody
bought some advertising with the USA Today. Next was A
and W in third place. Chick fil A dropped to fourth.
The list also named the best fast food burger out there,
and that winner was the double char At Habit Burger

(24:53):
and grill. Interesting. Jack in the Box didn't get it.
I got questions about this survey, this poll, whatever they did.
I don't know this ranking, I don't get it doesn't
make any sense to me. I like Del Taco, just fine.
Good for them. Just find this all a little sus
don't you. It's a little bit interesting. Something about this
doesn't seem right. Just maybe some advertising was purchased. I

(25:17):
don't know. That'll do it for this Wednesday edition of
the show. Thanks to our sponsors and patrons. Thank you
for listening. I'll catch you back here tomorrow morning.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
This is the West Carrol Morning Show, powered by Overhead
Door Company of Columbus, the Holiday Inn Resort in Panama City,
and CSU's Coca Cola Space Science Center.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
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door needs covered, residential and commercial service and repairs. If
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(26:00):
five eight forty five hundred seven oh six three five
eight forty five hundred o dccolumbus dot com. Get ready
for dragon Con twenty twenty five Labor Day weekend downtown
Atlanta with the dragon Con pregame show coming August twenty
third and twenty fourth to a radio station near you

(26:20):
if you live in the state of Georgia or one
of the states near enough to the State of Georgia
to pick up a radio signal coming from the network
of stations in the State of Georgia that'll be carrying
the show, and there are many in Alabama and Tennessee
and the Carolinas that'll have a chance to hear it,
even down into Florida, or simply listen to it on

(26:40):
the dragon Con Pregame Show podcast wherever you listen to
your podcast, yes, where you're listening to this podcast. You
can also find past editions of the dragon Con Pregame
Show podcast with interviews with William Shatner, other stars from
Star Trek, The Walking Dead, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, many

(27:02):
animated stars, some of your favorite Disney stars. Chances to
hear interviews with them and this year's dragon Con Pregame
Show will drop to the podcast on August twenty third,
and you can hear this year's interviews. It's sponsored by
Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center, where doctor
Sean Cruisin and I often like to discuss the science

(27:27):
behind the science fiction and the connections between where science
fiction sometimes leads to science science sometimes leads to science fiction.
It's just a weird connection that's already there. It's built
into it. And I say it's weird, but it's really not.
It makes perfect sense. The two go together very well.
Learn more about the Coca Cola Space Science Center at

(27:47):
CCSSC dot org. Learn more about this year's dragon Con
the website, which is DragonCon dot org