Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 147

Episode Date: September 14, 2024

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file. How to Stop the Far Right in Three Easy Steps What’s The Matter With Texas? feat. Steven Monacelli & Dr. Michael Phillips Inside the Russian Government's Big YouTube Scam Harris V. Trump: The Thriller in Wherever They Filmed This Debate What Happens When Temperatures Soar at the Border? You can now listen to all Cool Zone Media shows, 100% ad-free through the Cooler Zone Media subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. So, open your Apple Podcasts app, search for “Cooler Zone Media” and subscribe today! http://apple.co/coolerzone See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Jess Casaveto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me for I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me for I Have Followed on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Perdenti.

And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadston. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice.

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Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. Every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart and how to put them back together again.

I'm your host, B.O. Wong. With me is Robert Evans. Woo. Woo. So we have spent a lot of time on this show talking about the rise of the far right and what that's looked like electorally, what that's looked like in the streets and the sort of, you know, deleterious effects that it has had on effectively everyone in the U.S. And this is going to be a little bit of a different episode. We've talked about a lot of the responses to the far right sort of, you know, in terms

of sort of direct actions and sort of confrontations, what we haven't really done is talked about what can be done electorally. And I do think that a significant portion of the far right can be defanged and eventually defeated through a series of things that are not particularly complicated. But the problem is that defeating the far right means going beyond simply trying to win every single election, which is the current sort of democratic strategy, right? If you want to actually defeat the far right, winning every election is not a viable strategy. We've seen this fail already with Hillary Clinton. We cannot rely on simply

winning every election into the future. You have to go beyond a mere electoral victory towards using your electoral victory to actually defeat the base of the far right. When the Republican Party held power for 12 years following the ascension of Ronald Reagan, they did it by destroying the political base of the Democratic Party. They shattered America's trade unions and rebuilt the economy to ensure unions would no longer be able to provide the ideological and financial support the Democrats had relied on. If we are going to defeat the far right, we need to wage the same kind of campaign against

them. Now, luckily for us, unlike Ronald Reagan, we do not need to completely rebuild the American economy to knock the legs of the far right out from under them. There is in fact a pretty minimal program that we can implement to defeat the far right that is very simple. It has three components. First, a crackdown on MLMs that drives them effectively completely underground. Yeah, by which we on MLMs that drives them effectively completely underground. Yeah, by which we mean multi level marketing for these appear at schemes, right, which

are a major source of funding for the far right. I mean, this is where Trump comes out of right. This is why he did that fake university. Like this is a big part of his base. Yeah. Yeah, we're going to get more into that in a second. The second very important one is a regulatory overhaul of how the FDA regulates supplements. Oh, boy. Which sounds like an extremely technical and nerdy thing, but supplements are another enormous cash spigot for the far right. Yeah, this is where Alex Jones and Joe Rogan get their shit. Yeah. Yep. Yep. And the third is another kind of wonky change that will be extremely important, which is making sure to allow car companies to make direct sales to customers, thus undercutting the enormous and extremely politically powerful base of right wing American car dealership

owners. Yeah, who donate more money to political causes than any other career field in this country. Yeah, and you may not believe us yet just from this sort of basic introduction, but these three simple reforms, MLM regulation, regulation of dietary supplements, and the direct sales of cars will destroy so much of the financial and political base of the far right that they will, at least temporarily, and in the sort of mid-range term become significantly less of a threat than they are now. So we are going to start with MLMs. Yeah as Robert has sort of alluded to MLMs are a very very important political base for the

far-rights. I'm probably the most famous and the one that Robert has done an entire show on so go listen to that if you want a really actually in detailed thing on the history of Amway. Amway and the sort of political family, the DeVos's that they've generated are an incredibly important part of the emerging far right. I mean, obviously, most famously, Betsy DeVos, who married into the Klan was our secretary of education under Trump, you know, the sort of Prince family is embedded into this. And Amway famously used its own internal communications to stump for Republican party candidates and also uses its base and also directly its own funds

to fund the Republican party and a bunch of Republican congressional candidates. Now, obviously, and this is something that is true of all of these reforms is that everything we're doing here, they're morally and politically good in their own, right? MLMs are scams. They're extremely exploitative. And their role, I think, in the far right is a lot more important than people understand. Even if you just look at the money, you're sort of missing part of what's going on with MLMs. MLMs aren't just a cash spigot.

They're a part of how the far right builds its ideological base. MLMs teach you to convert all of your personal relations into potential assets for sales. This is obviously evil on a moral level, but it's also insidious on an ideological level. on a moral level, but it's also insidious on an ideological level. The MLM logic of turning all of your most precious relationships into sales vectors changes how you see the world. And this is why Republican recruiting inside Amway worked so well. Once you've been trained that literally everything, even your sort of closest friends and your dearest relationships with your family are just business opportunities, it's extremely easy to convince you of the rest of the Republican Party platform.

In the same way the experience of being in a union and organizing with your co-workers once reliably turned out the ideological base of the left, MLMs have generated enormous political bases for the right. And unfortunately, this sort of ideological threat doesn't just go away if people are able to get out of MLMs or especially if you know, they're sort of cast out of the MLMs because they've simply are broken brand of money and are in debt. The isolation and alienation that comes from pushing away, you know, every single relation

that's close to you from attempting to sell them soap or whatever, makes people isolated and alienated and makes them more vulnerable to far right radicalization. Yep. And this is why driving these MLMs under isn't just a way to sort of cost Republican Party money because that's not enough to defeat the Republicans. They can find other sources of money. What you need to do is systematically remove parts of their political base. And when I say remove parts of their political base, what I mean is you have to go after the systems that are creating more members of the far right. Going after MLMs is a way to do that. Now the FTC

has gone after MLMs before they sort of famously as you talked about in that episode on Amway, they went after a bunch of MLMs in the 80s. But this sort of caused MLMs to get smarter and has, you know, has been pretty effective in sort of warding the FTC off from really going after MLMs since then. Yeah, which is, by the way, like another, you were just talking about how the way MLMs impact, like, the minds of the people participating in them, prepares them for the far right. The way in which this sense of impunity has developed among the people who run and participate in these things due to their capture of the legal system is also a part of why the far right works the way it does.

That sense of impunity. Yeah. And part of the reason why they have that impunity is just the way the FTC goes after these companies, right? I mean, there was in the mid 2010s, the FTC went after Neutralite, which is one of the biggest and oldest MLMs. But the way they went after them was they issued them a $200 million fine. And that's a lot of money. But it didn't drive Neutralite out of business and as the anthropologist David Graeber pointed out if government regulation just means setting fines and if the fines still allow the business to make more money than they lost from the fines

then that's just the government taking a cut it's not actual regulation and if you're if you're one of these businesses and the worst that can happen to you is the government takes a cut you end up with you know, 2008, right? Where all these banks know they're going to get bailed out and they know the worst punishment that's going to happen to them is just the governmentTC, you know, even if you were to sort of put in charge a more militant FTC that was willing to go after stuff, there needs to be actual regulatory change here. And that is possible but difficult. But if we actually want, if we're actually deeply serious about wielding political power to defeat the far right and to keep them from reemerging and keep them out of power generationally, then this is the start of what we have to do.

So we mentioned Neutralite, which is, you know, a very, very powerful MLM. Neutralite is important because it is actually two kinds of business that are extremely important to the far right at the same time. It is part MLM, but it's an MLM that also sells dietary supplements. And when we come back from these ads, we will be considering the role of the virtually unregulated dietary supplement markets in the rise of the far right more broadly. And we are back. Oh boy.

Yeah, the supplement market. There is a lot less that has been written about this than there should be. So dietary supplements are barely regulated by the FDA. People are getting scammed all over the place. Enormous numbers. I mean, I've seen numbers that were suggesting I mean 200 million people take some kind of dietary supplement if you include things like sort of vitamin gummies, etc, etc. This is an enormous this is an enormous business. I'm going to read from Rajani our star who wrote an article

about supplement regulation in the American Journal of Public Health. If you're going to read this, by the way, this is slightly out of date because the next year, I don't know if this is part of this, the next year at FTC a little bit overhauled their supplement regulations. But here is Star, quote, the dietary supplement health and education act, which is the big thing that sort of deregulated supplements prohibits supplements that pose a substantial risk of injury, allows the Secretary of Health and Human Services to issue immediate bans on substances

that are imminent hazards, and authorizes the FDA to implement current good manufacturing practice guidelines. The law also requires pre-market notification for new dietary supplements. Defined as supplements that were not marketed in the US before October 15th, 1944, which is when the Dietary Supplement Health Education Act went into effect.

Products violating these regulations are deemed dangerous, adulterated, misbranded, or otherwise unlawful. And that all sounds well and good until you get to the next sentence, which is, quote, however, supplements need not be evaluated for efficiency and only limited data on safety are required for new supplement ingredients. Yeah. So like you were not supposed to let people sell dangerous supplements, but we're also

not supposed to check to make sure the supplements are safe or work. Yeah. Yeah. As the FDA itself admits, even the little tiny notifications for things like new ingredients that the FDA imposes in 2016, you're supposed to notify the FDA if you like new ingredients that the FDA, FDA imposes in 2016. You're supposed to notify the FDA if you put new ingredients. But even that just isn't happening. These companies just don't care.

They're just not even doing the little tiny legal mandate stuff they're required to. I should also note a large part of the blame for particularly the supplements, but also, I mean, MLMs actually, they play a role in it too. It's the state of Utah. Yeah. By the way, a political power of the state of Utah is a huge part of why because supplements are a massive fucking industry in Utah. So are MLMs. So by the way, our team treatment facilities, the ones where they like kidnap your children and torture them. These are all things that the state of Utah in specific will fight like hell to stop from being fixed

in any way, shape or form. Yeah, and that bill I keep talking about, the Dietary Supplement Health Education Act, that is the baby of Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, who is a terrible right-wing force in American politics. And the fact that Orrin Hatch has been this effective and the fact that Utah serves as such a powerful base here, demonstrates something that's important about this political strategy, which is that it has to be a federal level political strategy,

because there are a lot of states, the Republicans effectively have strangleholds, you need to use the federal government to bypass the unbelievable block of sort of political power in these states. I want to read a little bit more from that article by Star about what kind of regulations are required for supplements because I think it's extremely dire in and of itself. Quote, manufacturers are not required to confirm the identity of all ingredients supplied to them. Sure, why would they need to do that? Yeah, no, unbelievable.

And they're not required to follow remember how I talked about there's current good manufacturing practices guidelines Yeah, following those guidelines does not guarantee the absence of all contaminants moreover Unlike drugs which are considered unadulterated or misbranded if they do not achieve compliance with national standards set by US pharmacopean national formulary if they do not achieve compliance with national standards set by US Pharmacopeia and national formulary, dietary supplements may choose to be compliant. Only six brands of dietary supplements are currently verified by US Pharmacopeia. So they don't have to work. They can choose whether or not they want to be submitted to see if any of this stuff works. Now, in theory also, the marketing of dietary supplements is supposed to be submitted to see if any of this stuff works. Now, in theory also,

the marketing of dietary supplements is supposed to be regulated by the FTC. But like, is the FTC regulating, you know, all of these false claims people are making with the dietary supplements? No, of course they're not doing that. So why do we care about supplement market? Robert has kind of has talked about this at the very beginning of the episode. The easiest answer for why we should care about supplement Markets is simply the figure of Alex Jones who you know we have talked about extensively on this show It's behind the bastards if you want a really really in-depth look At who Alex Jones is the podcast and knowledge fight is the single best resource. I think anyone has ever created

Yeah, it would be hard to beat Yeah, it's I it unbelievably detailed. But Alex Jones has you know, as an individual figure has done more to sort of spread the ideology of the far right and turn this country into what it is now then maybe almost any other single person other than someone like Trump, right? He is probably most well known now as quote, the Sandy Hook guy, which he's extremely mad at people calling him, but he's why everyone thinks that not everyone, but a bunch of people

think that Sandy Hook was a false flag. And importantly, here's from NPR quote, most of free speech systems, which is Alex Jones, the corporate name for Alex Jones company, most of free speech systems revenue to this day, about 80% comes from dietary supplements according to court records. Now these court records come from one of a number of lawsuits against Alex Jones for defaming the families of the victims of the Alex Jones shooting.

I'm starting to talk. For defaming the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting. Sorry. Yeah, yeah. And you know, in the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting. Sorry. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, in the process of discovery, we got a bunch of information about how Alex Jones's internal media empire actually works. Now, if you followed Alex Jones over the years, you know that he's hawked everything from silver to satellite phones.

But it is the dietary supplements that actually sell, right? As an NPR article said, about 80% of his revenue comes from dietary supplements. And this is not a sort of small dependent media outlet, right? Free speech systems, again, as Alex Jones company was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. This is an enormous for right media empire and supplement sales allow right-wing figures like Alex Jones to bypass the reliance on ads which removes a lot of potential leverage from activist groups who wage pressure campaigns against you know they do this against Tucker Carlson for example where people went after their advertisers and showed them

the stuff Tucker Carlson was saying on Fox before he got kicked off and what do you want to fund this and You know that was actually a decent sort of effective strategy But you know the funny part about this is if you look at the end of Tucker Carlson show Right the ads on that show were ads from the my pillow guy who is a a far-right extremist in his own right and a very important election denier Mm-hmm and a bunch of supplement companies. Supplement sales are a durable and renewable grift.

Because there's already an extensive network of suppliers and distributors, right-wing brands who want to make a bunch of money can just sort of slap their name onto existing supplements that they buy wholesale, and then they can market them to their viewers, and this gives them an extremely profitable and lucrative source of funding. And this is used all over the place, right? Again, it impacts what they say and like how they like the obsession they have with like seed oils and what's destroying your ability, like your testosterone and all of these like different far right conspiracy theories about, you know, what kind of stuff you shouldn't be eating.

Like all of this stuff is related to the supplement business, right? Like they are trying to drum up and destroy trust in public health and drum up conspiracy theories for their own profit. And so it's not just a matter of like, this is how they get money. But this also is why they do some of the things that are so harmful. Yeah, and as you're saying, this is cyclical, right? The incentive structure for going further and further into these conspiracies and selling more and more of these supplement things, it's a spiral, just keep it keeps on just increasing in size and increasing in size due to the feedback loop from the incentive structure that selling these supplements creates. Now this is actually not a enormously difficult sort of field to just completely shut down. The next branch we're going to talk about I think is actually a much harder political fight but a lot of the market for this can be defeated by just having the FTC actually regulate supplements the way they do drugs

because and this is really important. These supplements are being marketed as drugs, right? The advertisements that these people are already doing are already illegal. The FTC is not supposed to allow people to sell supplements like this. They shouldn't be able to be manufactured like this. And this is again, as with banning MLMs, this is something that helps the consumer because it'll mean that whatever like supplement market exists after sort of a massive regulatory sweep and crackdown will be much safer. It will be much more effective and it will also destroy the base of far right media. If you can cut the knees out of this sort of far right media ecosystem, you can go an enormous way towards solving the crisis of the far right that has

been brought upon this country. Speaking of crisis. Yeah, we're gonna let the ads talk about the ads and then we're going to come back and close by talking about car manufacturers and the American gentry. Yeah. We're back. And this is a fun one. This is also like one of my particular favorite things to hit,

because I don't think a lot of people know how much the Republican Party is just a party of used car dealers. Yep. Probably the most famous piece that talks, it's not really fully about car dealerships, but it mentions their sort of political effect and the kind of class that they belong to is maybe the best thing the Atlantic has published in

the last decade, or at least one of the best things they've published. And it's an article on the American gentry by the journalist Patrick Wyman. Wyman argues that huge swaths of America are ruled by what he calls the local gentry. These are millionaires, and notably these are not billionaires, these are multi-multi-millionaires whose wealth derives from immediate wealth extraction from the surrounding communities and places like Wyman's childhood home of Yakima, Washington. These elites have enormous local power over the territory they rule like the landed gentry of old.

Here's Wyman, quote, "'The conspicuously consuming celebrities and jet-setting cosmopolitans of popular imagination exist, but they are far outnumbered by a less exalted and less discussed elite group, one that sits at the pinnacle of the local hierarchies that govern life for tens of billions of people. Donald Trump grasped this group's existence and its importance, acting, as he often does, on unthinking but effective instinct.

When he crowed about his quote beautiful boaters, lauding the flotilla of his supporters trailing MAGA flags from their watercraft in his honor, or address his devoted followers among a rioting January 6 crowd that included people who had flown to the events on private jets, he knew what he was doing. Trump was courting the support of the American gentry, the salt of the earth multimillionaires who see them as local leaders in business and politics, the underappreciated backbone of a once great nation. Now, Wyman is largely focused on the agricultural gentry, because that's, you know, the sort of agro barons who are very important to this story, but are kind of are kind of auxiliary to this. And that you know, that's largely because he's talking

a lot about the places where he grew up, which are agricultural hubs. But a very critical component of this American gentry, of this local elite class, are car dealership owners and their wealth and influence literally cannot be overstated. The journalist Alexander Salmon wrote this in an article in Slate in 2023, quote, auto dealers are one of the five most common professions among the top point 1% of American earners. Car dealers, gas station owners and building contractors, it turns out, make up the majority of the country's 140,000 Americans who earn

more than $1.5 million a year. Crunching numbers from the US Census Bureau, data scientists and author Stefan Davodowitz found that over 20% of car dealerships in the US Census Bureau, data scientists and author Stephens Devotowicz found that over 20% of car dealerships in the US have an owner banking more than $1.5 million a year. Which is absolutely absurd. That is an unbelievable amount of money for people who really, when you think about it, don't do anything. Like, what is the actual service that a car dealer is doing? I mean the primary thing that they do is rip people off. Yeah. The entire way that car sales work is based on fraud. Yep. Right? Like it's based on getting you to buy things that do not actually work like service packages and whatnot that you often will not get any benefit from. And it's a lot of it is

based around also just outright scams, you know altering The information buyers have access to so they don't realize like problems with a used car or whatever like it's it's all fraud Right. Yeah, and and as as is becoming ever true of American life fraudsters scammers and people who are just Their entire existence is dedicated to ripping you off have more and more political power in this country. Here's a salmon from that same article, quote, As of 2021, the top 100 dealership groups in the US had annual revenues of around 100 billion dollars, more than any company that actually makes cars. The National

Automotive Dealer Association, NADA, became one of the most influential lobbying entities in Washington, with 16,000 dues-paying members spanning 32,500 franchises. Soon enough, a stop at the annual NADA convention became routine for presidential hopefuls and even presidents. Lyndon B. Johnson, Ronald Reagan, and Hillary Clinton all attended ahead of presidential runs Bill Clinton and both Bush's came after they left the White House and the fact that Democrats are showing up to this is appalling On a moral level right this this is an entire organization of fraudsters Mm-hmm, and it's not it doesn't even work right car dealers donate six to one for Republican causes, but they really want that one

Yeah, it's the same thing with like you've got Schumer going out for the crypto caucus now. We're like, yeah Well only a fraction of those guys are gonna donate to dims But it's all a scam he doesn't really care as long as some of it goes to him. Yeah. Yeah Now the thing that's more that's dangerous about these people and I think it's even more dangerous than something like crypto money, is that these are local elites, right? And they are dispersed enormously across the country. This is something that Salmon is very sort of specific about. It's something that comes up in Wyman's piece. It's something that comes up if you do any research about this at all.

A huge part of the power is because these people are spread geographically across the country. And because they are the richest people or among the richest people in the sort of small areas that they dominate, they have unbelievable amounts of political power. And because they are, again, unbelievably wealthy, they can funnel this money directly into local politics on a scale that cannot be matched by your sort of grassroots organizations. This allows them to buy everything from city councils to seats in Congress. And they're they effectively unionize like in Portland, they've got the Portland Business

Association, right, which is, to a significant extent, allied with the police and like dominates local politics. They're the ones who buy the mayor's election, like they're the ones who make deals with the Portland Police Officers Union. Like this is the way in which a lot of power gets exercised that actually impacts your daily life. Yeah. And they've also been doing things like coordinating and doing strategy sharing about defeating unions. I mean, this is why most of these business associations were formed was specifically to destroy unions in the early 20th century. And, you know, I mean, the auto lobbying group was formed to do auto lobbying because these car dealerships don't have unions that that that's another thing that we'll come back to it a little bit. But

yeah, these car dealerships are a durable and extremely powerful force in electoral politics and they deliver seats. And this is the most important thing if you are an electoral list, right? These people consistently deliver seats to Republicans by flooding an amount of money into local races that people can't compete with. And because of this, they admitted, miserable the lives of hundreds of millions of people. And they can also largely be destroyed in a single stroke. That's maybe overselling it a little bit, but their power largely rests on an enormous array of state level monopolies that ban the direct sales

of cars to consumers or prevent car companies from competing with local retailers. And this is something that the auto lobby has been, you know, the auto association lobby, NADA has been fighting for for ages. They've gotten it in an enormous number of states. Yeah, and this, by the way, you know, in terms of abilities to like disrupt things, this is a big part of like how Tesla is different from other auto manufacturers is in most states. There are some states where they're not allowed to do this, but in most states, they sell directly to the customer, which is like back before Musk became as political. A figure was actually a major reason why these

people didn't like him. Well, they still don't. This is actually a really interesting thing is what the thing I want to close on here. Yes, yes, I, yes, these people still hate mosque and they hate electric cars because electric cars, to a large extent, are both a being directly sold by companies, and B, it's harder to you actually have to do service on them in a way that that makes it more expensive for these these companies to write about this is something that salmon has written about extensively.

So they absolutely despise electric cars. And this is actually a political opportunity for us, right? Because Elon Musk now is again, one of the reasons I think he's still the richest person in the world, technically, until sort of all of the stocks implode. But this is an opportunity also to split parts of the Republican base, right? Because the local government monopolies that these car dealers have are actually enormously unpopular among a lot of the other parts of the Republican base, right?

Elon hates them. Actual car manufacturers hate it. No one likes car dealers. Like, yeah. And! Yeah, and this is everything. You know, this is also something that libertarians hate because libertarians look at this and this is one of the few times libertarians are right. They look at this and go, oh yeah, well these people have been literally granted market monopolies. There are a lot of places where if

there's already a car dealer there, if you're a car company, you can't compete with these things. So these are state-sanctioned monopolies. So there's large portions of the Republican base to oppose these companies and if you're if you're a car company you can't compete with these things so these are state sanctioned monopolies so there's large portions of the republican base to oppose these companies and if you can you can use this as a wedge issue to split the republican base and that that's sort of where i want to close on as much as i've been talking about these three very specific things right banning mlms or at least having extremely large regulatory crackdowns regulatory crackdowns on supplements and legislation to allow direct car sales. What we're trying to do here isn't just getting rid of the money that supports the far right.

We're trying to destroy their institutions and we're trying to fracture their base, right? Going after MLMs destroys their ability to sort of produce more, like produce more Republicans from these MLMs and produce more people in the far right from these MLMs destroys their ability to sort of produce more, like produce more Republicans from these MLMs and produce more people in the far right from these MLMs. Going after supplements is a way to destroy the right wing media ecosystem, which has been crucial to the rise of the far right. And going after cars can help split the emerging Republican coalition by, you know, pitting two parts of the Republican base against each other, pitting these car dealers versus Elon and versus the auto manufacturers. Well, Mia, great episode. This is a nice starter. This is again, something we're

going to continue to talk about because I really think we can't hit enough on this. Obviously, these three things don't solve every problem with the far right. But this is like, if you could actually like package these together into a legislative agenda, it could be the equivalent of like the nuclear option for these people. So yeah, yeah, I think this is a smart thing to be hitting. We will continue to talk about this in more detail, but you know what? We're done for the day. Go do something else. I'm Jess Casaveto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult.

And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me for I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and LA-based Shekinah Church, an alleged cult that has impacted members for over two decades. Jessica and I will delve into the hidden truths between high control groups and interview dancers, church members, and others whose lives and careers have been impacted, just like mine. Through powerful, in-depth interviews with former members and new, chilling first-hand accounts, the series will illuminate untold and extremely necessary perspectives.

Forgive Me for I Have Followed will be more than an exploration. It's a vital revelation aimed at ensuring these types of abuses never happen again. Listen to Forgive Me for I Have Followed on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Predente. And I'm Jeme Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.

When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions. Like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or, can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes! Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Sanner. The only difference

between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it like you miss a hundred percent of the shots you never take? Yeah, rejection is scary but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career. Without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

MTV's official challenge podcast is back for another season. That's right. The challenge is about to embark on its monumental 40th season, y'all. And we are coming along for the ride. Woohoo! That would be me, Devyn Simone. And then there's me, Devon Rogers. And we're here to take you behind the scenes of... Drum roll, please. Nananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananananan behind the scenes of, drum roll please, na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na you're rooting for at home, everyone is welcome here on MTV's official challenge podcast. So join us every week as we break down episodes

of the Challenge 40 Battle of the Eras. Listen to MTV's official challenge podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Fantasy football fans, the NFL season is here and now is the time to get ready to dominate your leagues. The best way to crush your opponents this season is to listen to the NFL fantasy football podcast.

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lunch with the best guests you could possibly ask for. People like Matt Bomer. Thank you for that introduction. I'm gonna slip you a couple 20s under the table. Dang. Emma Roberts. When it came into my email inbox, I was like, okay, I know I'm gonna love this so much that I don't even wanna read it,

because if I can't be in it, I'm gonna be bummed. Colin Jost. You know, your wife was the first guest on Table for Two. It's come full circle. As long as they do better than her, I'm happy. Table for Two is a bit different from other interview shows. We sit down at a great restaurant for a meal, maybe a glass of rosé, and the stories start

flowing. Our second season is airing right now so you can catch up on our conversations that are intimate, surprising, and often hilarious. Listen to Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Stephen Monticelli, a journalist in Dallas who covers political extremism in Texas. I'm Michael Phillips, an historian who wrote a history of racism in Dallas called White Metropolis. Both of us grew up in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, and for both of us, our home state has been a matter of both wonder and horrified fascination.

In this episode of It Could Happen Here, we're going to try to explain Texas culture and politics and why the country and the world should care. Spoiler alert. What happens in Texas doesn't stay in Texas. The state has always had a disproportionate impact on national politics. The annexation of Texas in 1845 provoked the Mexican-American war from 1846 to 1848. The United States grabbed two thirds of Mexico's territory and there was an ugly and bitter fight over the status of slavery and all that new land the United States acquired. That's gonna turn out to be one of the major causes

of the Civil War, a conflict that resulted in the liberation of four million African Americans from slavery, but also the death of three quarters of a million Americans. Texas also was the epicenter of the populist movement, a leftist movement largely based in Texas that actually challenged the power of the Democratic Party in the South. And if the populist party had succeeded, everything else that happened in America in the 20th century in terms of Jim Crow, lynching, the Klan, et cetera, may have had a very different outcome.

Slavery didn't end in Texas until June 19th, 1865, months after it had ended in the rest of the country. It's a state that today is the second most populous state in the nation and it's the eighth largest economy in the world. Two of the most consequential presidents over the last 60 years hailed from the Lone Star State. There was Democrat Lyndon Johnson, who brought the country not only Medicare and Medicaid, but the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, two issues that the right wing continue to fight against to this day. Those laws made African Americans perhaps the most important constituency in the Democratic

Party. Racist backlash to Johnson's civil rights legislation, urban uprisings in places like the Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles, and white flight generally led segregationists and their children in the South, who had been loyal Democratic voters, to switch allegiance to the Republican Party over the next three decades. Another Texas president, Republican George W. Bush, he aggressively embraced homophobia, tightened the ties between the Republican Party and the most right-wing Christians in the country, and made denial of climate change strict GOP orthodoxy. Of course, the Bush family's oil wealth was central to their rise to power, and broadly

speaking the wealth of right-wing oil barons in Texas has helped push the Republican Party further and further to the right, in no small part due to a particular belief in a particular strain of Christianity, which we'll get to later in this episode. Bush's response to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11th led to the rise of the modern surveillance state and the two longest wars in American history, both of them disastrous failures. The combination of white backlash to the LBJ era civil rights initiatives, the intense religiosity of the Bush era and the Republican party in that time period, and the sense that

the United States was a declining power, unable to impose its will on Afghanistan and Iraq, opened the door to Donald Trump's ascendancy. will on Afghanistan and Iraq, opened the door to Donald Trump's ascendancy. In short, two Texas presidents played a major role in making the Democratic Party vastly more diverse, more urban-based and more mainstream liberal, and the Republican Party more white, more right-wing, more isolationist, and far more fundamentalist and skeptical of science. Texas has been in the national news frequently in recent years and often for the worst reasons. It's become famous and infamous for its wide open gun laws and several of the worst mass shootings in American history,

including at an army base in Killeen, a Walmart in El Paso, and an outlet mall in Allen. a Walmart in El Paso, and an outlet mall in Allen. Draconian abortion laws allow complete strangers to sue women who go out of state and their pregnancy and new laws are being considered to prevent women from traveling through particular counties on highways who if they are seeking abortion, you know, they could be arrested for basically trying to leave the state to seek an abortion. In the last three years in the state, a group of teachers in the Southlake School District in the Dallas-Fort Worth area were instructed to tell, quote, both sides of the Holocaust in order to not run afoul of the legislature's ban on critical race

theory. A beloved teacher in Irving was fired for displaying a rainbow sticker in her classroom as a sign of support for LGBTQ students. The first ever African American high school principal at Heritage High in yet another Dallas suburb, Colleyville, was forced from his job when he sent an email to his high school community after the murder of George Floyd that acknowledged the existence of systemic racism in the United States. So, you know, I think you could maybe pick up on a trend here in Texas that our fundamental rights like free speech are under threat, particularly if you run afoul of the orthodoxy that comes out of the Republican Party. And one target of that orthodoxy has been books. All across this nation we've seen dustups over books in schools, books in libraries, and Texas has been one of the main flashpoints of this fight. Pen America reports that Texas and Florida lead the nation in book bans at public schools.

With more than 1,500 books banned in the state of Texas, most of those books deal with issues like racism or LGBTQ experience. One deputy constable in Granbury, a suburb near Dallas-F Fort Worth, even spent two years investigating three librarians on alleged felony charges of providing so-called harmful materials to minors, simply because they allowed minors to access acclaimed books like The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. According to an investigation by NBC News, the law enforcement officer, Scott London, was a member of the extremist Oath Keepers Organization. He subpoenaed names of young readers who checked out supposedly objectable material, and he

even secretly recorded his conversations with the librarians who drew his unwanted attention. The investigative report that came out of this investigation into so-called harmful materials was 824 pages long and no charges were ever filed. But nonetheless, a lot of people's lives were made difficult and a bunch of books have been taken off the shelves. So as we mentioned, Texas has been on the cutting edge of right-wing politics in America on issues like abortion, the treatment of trans children, and on immigration in particular.

Texas has modeled the Republican attitude on newcomers and migrants and policies towards them. The state's governor, Greg Abbott, essentially tried to establish his own independent border policy, even though the Constitution makes that the responsibility of the federal government. Texas so far has built 34 miles of a wall. Abbott vows will eventually extend along the entirety of Texas' 1254-mile international border with Mexico. One estimate says that project, if it were completed, would take 30 years and cost $20 billion.

The state of Texas has placed buoys entangled with razor wire in the Rio Grande River near Eagle Pass, a border town that's a major crossing point for migrants fleeing the violence and economic hardship in Central America, Venezuela, and the rest of Latin America. One of Governor Abbott's border initiatives, Operation Lone Star, has flooded the border with hundreds of law enforcement agents and has touted thousands of arrests, but it's also cost $11 billion and it's unclear what it's really done in terms of making the state safer. Texas insists through statements from people like Greg Abbott that immigrants are dangerous

and that they are flooding our streets with crime. Never mind the fact that studies indicate that immigrants are far less likely to commit crimes on average. These initiatives have been deadly. In August 2023, a buoy trapped a 20-year-old Honduran and a small child, causing them both to drown. The Texas Border Patrol's El Paso sector has become one of the deadliest areas of the border here with 149 immigrants dying over a 12-month period between 2022 and 2023. Recently on a podcast, Abbott expressed regret that Texas has been unable to shoot immigrants

who are attempting to enter Texas by crossing the Rio Grande and has complained that the Biden administration might file murder charges against border agents if such lethal force was used. The only thing that we're not doing is we're not shooting people who come across the border because of course the Biden administration would charge us with murder. One of the issues about immigration is a panic amongst the Anglos living in the state that white people will become a shrinking and less politically powerful minority. And this connects to the issue of abortion.

Throughout the history of abortion laws in Texas, there's been a discussion of whether or not white Texans were committing what they said in the early 20th century was so-called race suicide, a real panic that black and brown people would eventually outnumber whites and would seize political control of the state. And this is tied to the abortion issue because throughout the history of abortion laws in America and in Texas, there's been a concern that white women are having abortions. And that really fuels some of the extremism in how Texas has approached this issue. 2022, the state legislature passed a law that would allow a third party to sue anyone who helped a woman getting an abortion, although the courts have so far blocked enforcement

of that law called Senate Bill 8. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, meanwhile, has addressed another issue dealing with trans children. And again, trans children, if they're white, would be out of the reproductive demographic race that panics white racists in the state. He has tried to force doctors and other states provide medical information on young people receiving gender affirming care outside of Texas. And the parents of trans children in Texas have been

investigated for child abuse. In each case, these extreme laws have been discussed and in some cases imitated in other red states. discussed and in some cases imitated in other red states. So on the one hand, we've got anxieties about immigrants allegedly replacing the white race rhetoric that has been repeated by people as high up as Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who has said that immigrants are trying to take over our country without firing a shot. our country without firing a shot. This is something that people like the Hitler admirer Nick Fuentes, who has met with a high ranking and influential Republican consultant who works for one of the largest political donors in the country, he believes that sort of rhetoric and pushes it.

On the other hand, we've got the issue with LGBTQ issues in general. We've seen books being taken off the shelves, as we previously mentioned. We've seen rights taken away from students with regard to their access to bathrooms. We have seen, as Dr. Phillips mentioned, the targeting of parents parents and a lot of this comes from this anxiety that students are being groomed into becoming LGBTQ in public schools in public libraries and other settings The idea being that yes, they're trying to turn your kids gay. That's what they're saying and so of course they're going to be extremely upset about any shrinking demographic numbers among the white population or a growing acceptance of queerness or people being transgender.

So much of that is rooted in religious belief. But all of this, it matters in a bigger perspective. I think we can understand why some of this is so prevalent in Texas through the lens of Texas's importance to national politics. Texas counts for 40 of 270 votes needed to win the electoral college. Only California has more electoral college votes. And the Republican Party has been able to rely on winning every single presidential election in this state since 1980. If Texas should ever flip

politically, it'd be hard to see how the Republicans could ever win the White House again. And it always seems like Texas is just on the verge of flipping blue. Right. There's been a lot of talk for a long time about this pending demographic revolution, the idea that eventually the numbers are just baked in and that Republicans will no longer control the state. So let's look at some of those numbers. So Tejanos are people of Latino-Herspanic descent, make up more than 40% of the state's

population. So they're the largest single population group. Non-whites account for 60% of all Texans. And as a group, they vote mostly for Democrats. They control most of the state's largest cities in terms of political dominance. But because of low voter turnout among people of color, laws that intentionally make registering to vote harder, making voting itself even more difficult, gerrymandering, and the general feebleness of the Democratic party in the state.

The state has remained in control of a very conservative, very white Republican minority for three decades. In Texas, every major city is blue, except for one, and that's Fort Worth, which is in a place called Tarrant County. And I think it is not a coincidence that the largest, flashiest conflicts have often been in Tarrant County when it comes to things like schools, when it comes to things like books, Colleyville, as we previously mentioned, is in Tarrant County. If you've ever heard of the name South Lake, that's a town in Tarrant County. There are numerous national articles about issues that have emerged

from this one single stronghold of Republican power in the state, which if it were to fall, would pretend great changes, not just for the politics in the state of Texas, but perhaps even the nation. It's been remarkable because school board meetings used to be really dull in talking, you used to talk about boundaries for particular campuses, you know, what students are going to attend which class, but now over the last few years, very often, they've been scenes of screaming matches, threats, and so on. Texas, in many ways, has become a laboratory of autocracy.

And, again, it's a model for other states that have a right-wing political leadership. For instance, the Texas Republican Party platform adopted this year called for changes in the way statewide officials like governor would be elected. And essentially the Republican Party called for creating a local version of the electoral college. Under these proposed changes, a candidate for governor, lieutenant governor, all the down-ballot statewide offices

could win the popular vote and still lose the election unless they carry a majority of the 254 counties in the state, most of which are very white, very conservative, very fundamentalist. If this became law, the proposal would guarantee permanent Republican rule in the state. As I said, other Republican states are looking at this proposal. It hasn't been proposed as legislation, but that would really end any pretense of democracy because most people in Texas live in cities like the rest of the United States. Another way that Republicans have maintained their grip on the state is by waging a never-ending

culture war centered on matters of faith. So if you really want to understand Texas, its culture, and its politics, you can avoid a discussion of religion. You have to dive into one particular type of Christianity we've already referred to. This interpretation of the Bible motivates right-wing voters in the vast rural sections of the state and the outer suburbs of the major cities, it's disproportionately molded the state's laws and attitudes towards African Americans, immigrants and the people we've talked about, women, gay and trans people, and also non-Christians like Jews and Muslims. If you track the sort of issues that are being discussed by the Republican Party of Texas and you look back say

to the time of George HW Bush and you look to now, it will be very clear to you that the topics have changed. The sort of things that they talk about, it's less about low taxes, it's less about being business friendly, it's less about letting you do what you want in your personal life. And it's much more about imposing a particular religious viewpoint on others through policy. And the most vocal, perhaps one of the most highly organized and certainly flush with funds, sect of Christianity that is driving this is this group of Christian fundamentalists that religious scholars broadly describe as dispensationalists. So, what's a dispensationalist? It's a fancy word for someone who believes that we are living in the end times. The end times being this idea that at any moment now, all true Christians will be whisked up into the clouds in an event

called the rapture, that an embodiment of Satan called the Antichrist will take over the world and try to destroy Israel. And all of this is presaging the final judgment, the day when the Lord, Jesus comes down and he basically decides who's done well and who's done bad and that settles it for all eternity. This particular strain of fundamentalism in Texas culture and politics has a profound impact on global politics. The dispensationalists are certain World War III is going to consume the planet.

They believe there's going to be a final battle between good and evil called the Battle of Armageddon. And they believe this, and this is significant, they believe that Jesus Christ will come back specifically to stop World War III for a particular purpose. He's going to come to prevent the destruction of all remaining Jewish people on the planet. And they believe that millions of Jewish people are going to die. Those who survive are going to convert to Christianity and when Jesus returns he will establish what's essentially a divine dictatorship that will be a time of perfect peace and harmony called the Millennium.

Texans have played a major role in popularizing dispensationalism and its doomsday theology, both in modern times, but also historically. One Texas writer named Michael Ennis once called the city of Dallas the Athens of the apocalypse. And in the late 20th century, predicting the end of the world was a lucrative business. So there was a theological center here in Dallas that was one of the most influential groups when it came to originating and promoting this idea of the end times. It also has to do with one gentleman named Cyrus Schofield. But before we talk about Cyrus Schof member, a convert to the Congregationalist Church who came from Kansas.

He had been a politician in Kansas who had to leave office because he was accused of accepting bribes. He later said he was struggling with alcoholism at the time. His name is Cyrus Schofield. And he converts to Christianity and he's invited to head this Congregationalist church that has a tiny congregation in Dallas, Texas. And when he gets here, he brings this dispensationalism he's learned from other evangelists. And he's a modernizer, he has adult education classes, correspondence courses on the Bible, and eventually he produces something published in 1909 called the Schofield Reference Bible that basically is the King James Bible with footnotes that

he and his co-editors have put together where they say these strange verses in the book of Daniel, the book of Revelation, that refer to beasts with seven heads and ten horns and, you know, these other strange creatures and this highly symbolic language has a very literal, obvious meaning, and that is the return of Jewish people to the state of Israel and how that marks the beginning of the end. So, the Schofield Reference Bible, extremely popular when it comes out. It was so popular, it didn't save effectively the Oxford University Press from going under? During the Great Depression, that was very much a possibility that Oxford University Press would go under. And Schofield was lucky in some ways, if you could put it that way,

because the reference Bible comes out in 1909, and four years later, what was at that point the most catastrophic war in human history, World War I breaks out with a level of death and technology that was unprecedented in its destructiveness. Then the Depression happens, you have the rise of these fascist dictators, and there's a sense that the world as we knew it was collapsing. Capitalism might collapse, you know, you might have communist takeover, you might have fascist takeover, and then of course World War II. And then finally the thing that really makes Schofield seem like he was onto something in terms of his biblical interpretation. And this particular interpretation had been around in certain variants for centuries and

centuries. But it had always been a minority view. But what really made it seem like Schofield was onto something was 1948 when the state of Israel is established, the modern state of Israel, because he had been saying this would happen, this would be the sign of the end. It becomes the point where a lot of churches, ministers are measured by the degree to which they promote Schofieldism. And Protestant churches ministers get fired if they don't begin to talk about the end times. Schofield kind of won the lottery with timing. And you could imagine a world maybe where

the Schofield Bible didn't take off because it hadn't come out at that time that it did. Now one of Schofield's acolytes, separated by several decades, Schofield had been dead for a long time. When you have a student at the Dallas Theological Seminary, named Hal Lindsey, who had been a tugboat captain, is attending this particular school, Dallas Theological Seminary, had actually been established in the 1920s by allies, associates of Cyrus Schofield. It had been a center of the study of biblical prophecy. And basically, Lindsay's a student and a lot of his peers said basically he took his

class notes and turned it into a book. And his real effort, he had been a leader in the Campus Crusade for Christ, which was an evangelical group that was trying to fight the counterculture, hippies, LSD, and so on. And so he had that experience and he brought it into the writing of a bestselling book called The Late Great Planet Earth. And The Late Great Planet Earth is written in the language of the time. He tries to use hippie type of lingo to catch on with the youth culture. And his timing, just like Schofield's, is great.

This is a time where there's an obsession with hidden knowledge. You have really popular books selling about the lost continent of Atlantis, UFOs, the phenomena supposedly of spontaneous human combustion, did ancient aliens build the pyramids. And if you went to a convenience store or a department store, you might find racks of paper books with all this hidden knowledge. And people believed that there was something hidden because of Watergate and because of Vietnam. And so this became a phenomenal seller. It was the best-selling quote unquote nonfiction book of the 1970s.

It later got made into a pseudo documentary that was narrated by the movie star Orson Welles. Yeah. I mean, it was so successful that it was like 28 million copies by 1990 had been sold. And if you've got Orson Welles buttery voice narrating it as if it has some real import, certainly many, many, many people were exposed to the ideas of Hal Lindsay. Man is faced by unprecedented perils, threatened to send him crashing of the extinction. Now, from Hal Lindsay's incredible best-selling book comes the film which explores the terrifying

prophecies of the revelations. Is our planet truly in mortal peril? The late great planet Earth featuring Orson Welles. But it didn't stop there. Lindsay's book inspired some other guys who you may have heard of. These two right-wing political activists and Christian evangelicals named Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. And they are the creators of the Left Behind series. Now, if you don't know the Left Behind series, you may have been living under a rock or maybe you weren't born yet and that's not your fault. But it is this publishing empire at this point. Retail giants like Walmart stocked the books. They sold 80 million copies, the warehouses full of merch, sequels, prequels, graphic novels, audiobooks, calendars,

greeting cards, a shoot-em-up computer game based on the books. All of this stuff was centrally talking about the Rapture, the End Times. That's what the Left Behind series was about and those who are left behind are those who were not Raptured. And these films center on the chaos that breaks out right after the Rapture. Really, really popular stuff. We'll play a quick clip so you can get a sense of what that's like. He took them to protect them. From what? From the darkest time in the history

of this world. Persecution, war, and seven years of darkness he took them to heaven. The Left Behind books, they basically depict Jesus not as a source of love and forgiveness, but as this like source of vengeance and bloodshed. One person we spoke to in the preparation of this episode described him as a sort of Rambo Jesus. This is to be compared to Mr. Rogers Jesus, you could say. And what's particularly dangerous is sometimes believers in this interpretation of the Bible try to make the end times happen

in this interpretation of the Bible. Try to make the end times happen sooner rather than later. I can mention two cases, one better known than the other. You had a father-son evangelical team called Garner Ted Armstrong. His father was named Herbert W. Armstrong. They had a radio broadcasting empire. The program was called The World Tomorrow. And they had college campuses in California and in Big Sandy, Texas. Unaccredited college. Unaccredited college, absolutely. And one person who had listened to the Armstrongs on the radio, and there's an Australian named Michael Dennis Rohan on August 21, 1969, actually travels to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem because he believes that's a key

focal point of where Armageddon is going to take place. And he actually starts a fire in that mosque and it's revered on those holy sites in Islam. And there was a time where there was a diplomatic crisis caused by this believer in dispensationalism. Then of course, we have what had happened to Waco, where you had a sect very much obsessed with end times and with dispensationalism, led by a man named David Koresh, 1993. He led his followers on this 51-day standoff with federal and state officials over the illegal weapons that this group, the Branch Davidians, held. Eventually you have an exchange of gunfire between the agents and the Branch Davidians, and then on April 19th, the feds decide to charge in.

And there's a fire, and 76 people die, including 25 children. In the modern day, we've got two hugely influential people who promote end times theology. Now, one of them is the biggest political donor in the entire state of Texas, more money donated than anyone else. And his name is Tim Tim Dunn and we'll talk about him in a second but first I want to talk about someone who is also pretty influential maybe not as wealthy as Tim Dunn who I should mention got his money through oil but this is a man named John Hagee he is the pastor of a 22,000 member church in Texas called Cornerstone Church.

And I think he has a global audience as large as a hundred million people. So back in the day as a 28 year old young man, he took part in the Wallace Youth, which is an organization devoted to supporting the presidential candidacy of white supremacist Alabama governor George Wallace in 1968. Yeah let's just hear from Wallace real quick. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever. So since then in his 58 years as a non-denominational pastor, Hagee has proven to be as much of a lightning rod as Wallace. When Hurricane Katrina killed nearly

1,400 people in New Orleans in 2005. Hagee insisted the super storm represented God's wrath at a planned gay pride parade. I can't even believe that that's real. Yeah, so he really said, oh, you celebrated the gays and so God killed a bunch of you with her again. He really said that. He's also called the Catholic Church a false cult and has falsely claimed that Muslims are commanded by the Quran to kill Christians and Jews. So he's a really moderate guy when he comes to his word choice and his rhetoric. Hagee, for instance, believes that Jewish people are still God's chosen. And he often quotes a line from Genesis 12, 3, 12th chapter, third verse, in which God says to Abraham,

I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. And he interprets that to mean that if the United States ever fails to support the state of Israel in any of its policies, or if it attempts to encourage Israel to trade land for peace, to set aside land for the Palestinians to establish their own nation, that that leader is violating a divine commandment to, quote, not divide my land, and there will be terrible consequences. So one dispensationalist pastor basically said that the United States has economic problems whenever it fails to support Israel.

Hagee in 2014 said that a small outbreak of the Ebola virus in the United States was God's vengeance against President Barack Obama for supporting the establishment of a Palestinian state. And of course when that is a big attitude amongst a really significant block of voters, that makes the United States really have problems when it tries to mediate in that conflict. We'll talk a little bit more about John Hagee right after this ad break. You might be asking, who cares about this guy, John Hagee? Why does his interpretation of the Bible matter at all? Why does what he say have anything to do with my life? There's a number of reasons why it matters. So, I mean, he could be considered the most important

leader of the Christian Zionist movement for starters. He formed an organization in 2006 called Christians United for Israel, which has like a reported 10 million members in the United States. Not sure how accurate or real that is, but he has donated through his organizations more than $58 million to right-wing extremists in Israel, specifically ones that have sponsored settlers to move to the occupied West Bank in violation of international law. He's pushed Congress to take a hard line on the issue of Palestinian statehood. He has the ear of elected officials in Texas.

State level politicians like Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick have been seen with him at campaign events, have featured him at campaign events. Hege has tried to influence a number of issues and has had success. He was sought as someone whose endorsement mattered in the presidential elections of George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. He was an early supporter of Donald Trump and he influences other major pastors as well. And so it's hard to say that people like this don't matter, particularly whenever they have been invited to speak during big events like the March for Israel in 2023, which drew tens of thousands of people to Washington, D.C.

And who was there? John Hagee. And here's one of the paradoxes of this movement. When Hagee was invited to speak at this pro-Israel event after the October 7th Hamas attacks near Israeli kibbutz, Hagee was invited and a lot of Jewish people were horrified because he really does capture one of the central paradoxes of dispensationalism, and that is someone can be inflexibly pro-Israel and anti-Semitic at the same time. And so John Hagee has promoted a very old anti-Semitic myth that rich Jewish people control the world's finances.

He talks about the Rothschild family, which has always been an obsession of anti-Semites, you know, secret puppet masters of the world, who rob the typical, the average person of money to gain wealth. They cause wars to enrich themselves. He actually described Hitler based on nothing as a half-breed Jew, and he said that Hitler was sent by God himself. So Hitler was an emissary of God as a hunter to prosecute Jews in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, specifically for the purpose of forcing them to leave Europe and settle in Palestine. And yeah, he said that this was all part of the divine plan. Nazism was part of the divine plan. Yeah, but don't just take our word for it. You can listen to him say something along

these lines right now. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said my top priority for the jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of israel today israel is back in the land and they are at his equal thirty seven and eight they're physically alive but they're not spiritually alive now how is god going to cause the jewish people to come spiritually alive and say the god of abraham isaac and jacob he is gone

so yeah alive and say the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, he is God. Adam So yeah, you know, Hagee has predicted that the Antichrist will be a half-breed gay Jew and will rule the planet on behalf of Satan. Those are the kinds of things that he believes and he spreads. And in spite of statements like these, several Israeli governments have welcomed the support of right-wing and times pastors like Hagee. I mean, they Israeli governments have welcomed the support of right-wing and times pastors like Hagee. I mean, they don't have any issue with working with someone like Hagee. And obviously that relationship is cynical because people like Hagee are able to help

bring material resources to Israel and further solidify the relationship that Israel has with the state of Texas. And there's a real interesting synthesis between the far right in Texas and the very right wing government that rules Israel now. Israel depends on Texas oil. Many of the weapons Israel is using in its war in Gaza are manufactured in Texas, including in the Dallas Fort Worth area where Steve and I are having this conversation. You have some of the wealthiest American supporters of Israel, like hyper conservatives, such as the widow of the casino magnate, Sheldon Addison, who have spent quite a bit of money flying Texas

politicians like Governor Greg Abbott, the agricultural commissioner, Sid Miller, members of the state legislature to Israel to promote close business ties and ensure that weapons manufactured in Texas and that Texas oil flows to that state. In the background of all of this is the money, the money backing these politicians. And the largest and most powerful political donor in Texas is someone who we have mentioned already, billionaire oil man, Tim Dunn. So Tim Dunn, who is he?

What's his deal? He's a pastor. He's based in Midland, which is in West Texas. And over the last decade, Dunn has dumped tens of millions of dollars into the campaign coffers of far-right politicians and political action committees that promote incendiary messages, including the one group that I previously mentioned was caught meeting with a self-admitted Hitler fan, Nick Fuentes. Nevertheless, Dunn is named alongside Hagee on the annual list of Israel's top 50 Christian

allies published by the Israel Allies Foundation of which Dunn incidentally is the chairman of the Christian advisory board. So yeah, this really, really powerful donor who has his thumb on the scales all across the state, he too is an end times prophecy believer. And he's not just a believer, he preaches it at his own church in Midland where he's a pastor. God is a consuming fire, taking vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. The word obey means listen to. So, we're talking here about unbelievers. These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of

the Lord and from the glory of His power. And, you know, it's completely changed the nature of the Republican Party, his influence. They were already conservative and already religious to begin with, but the sort of wave of politicians that have been supported by Dunn has taken that to a new level. And you know, I mean, it's resulted in, I think, a real assault on free speech in the state of Texas. We have religious groups like Christians United for Israel and the Texas Eagle Forum, lobbying the state legislature and persuading politicians like Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick

who are sympathetic to their agenda to pass laws that limit the way people who oppose Israeli policies can protest. So for instance 2017 Texas passed House Bill 89, a law that banned the state from doing any business with any company or individual contractors who participate in the boycott of Israel that many activists have participated in. And on March 27th of this year when you began to have a wave of protests across the nation and in Texas, and there were major protests at the UT Austin campus, at the University

of Texas at Dallas, which is in a suburb called Richardson, another one at the University of North Texas, UT Arlington, University of Texas at San Antonio. Abbott responded to these protests by issuing an executive order that defined a common slogan chanted by supporters of Palestinian statehood, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, as anti-Semitic. And it required public colleges and universities to review their free speech policies and to punish what the state regards as anti-Semitic speech by faculty and students. And it targeted two specific groups, two student groups, the Palestine Solidarity Committee and Students for Justice in Palestine to be disciplined for violating these policies.

The state of Texas saying these words are forbidden. Nat. Indeed. And despite the fact that the University of Texas at Austin had issued a video celebrating their so-called free speech week. I think it was just a matter of months before they arrested 136 pro-Palestinian demonstrators at the University of Texas at Austin. All across the state, we've seen pro-Palestinian protests or what you could call anti-genocide protests or calls for divestment at these various universities. And arrests have happened at least three different universities. Dr. John B. Bollinger I mentioned earlier a paradox in dispensationalism, and that is that some of the people who have absolute devotion to promoting the state of Israel

devotion to promoting the state of Israel, or at the same time, anti-Semitic. And another paradox is that Schofield himself, Cyrus Schofield himself, said that Jesus wasn't into politics. He said that when Jesus was alive, slavery, inequality of wealth, all of these political oppression were all at their worst, and Jesus and his apostles didn't address any of that. They focused on salvation, that Christianity is not about changing this world because this world is doomed, and the only person who's going to fix anything is Jesus himself. But nevertheless, these dispensationalists at the same time are very happy to be involved in politics that's not involved in social reform. They don't want you to, you know,

Schofield was living at a time of progressive movement when they were trying to end child labor, trying to make workplaces safer, and so on. Today, we're dealing with issues of wealth, inequality, and so on. The dispensationalists issues of wealth and inequality and so on. The dispensationalists will say believing that humans can fix those problems is satanic, but nevertheless you should be involved in politics if it involves denying women sovereignty over their bodies, if it involves banning people from gender-affirming care and so on. That politics is okay.

We see this with this activism in trying to suppress a particular side of the Israel-Palestine debate. Right. I think that if that strain of dispensationalism that's Schofield represented, that sort of apolitical dispensationalism. If it still exists, it is certainly no longer dominant because today, you know, we're seeing this end times theology, this belief in this theory around the end times, it's increasingly overlapping with other sort of distinct trends in Christianity. So, on the one hand, there's things like the prosperity gospel,

which is best represented by Kenneth Copeland. He's the richest pastor in all of the United States. And his whole thing is, yeah, if you give, you get. And so, you give me your money and you prove that you're a holy person, you will be rewarded in turn, you will be healed. All of your things will be solved. And then the other thing that it's overlapping with this end times theology belief is what we might just call the seven mountains dominionist trend or dominionism, broadly speaking, which you may or may not be familiar with, but it really just breaks down to this idea that Christians should be at the top of all of the mountains of society. These are just basically stand-ins for the segments of society they think are important. So education, media, politics, what have you. This is a really

growing idea, it's a sort of meme in right-wing Christianity, in these sort of non-denominational churches, which are the fastest growing and largest segment of churches I think we're talking about. And those dominionists are the ones who are taking over these school boards that are adopting the anti-trans policies and also banning the books. That's right. And it is a very active form of Christianity, very politically active. And so through people like Hagee and people like Tim Dunn, we see that embodied in what they do, the sort of advocacy that John Hagee takes

part in and the millions and millions of dollars that Tim Dunn dumps into the state of Texas. You could almost characterize the Republican Party in Texas, which is one of the most important state wings of the Republican Party in the United States as a wholly owned Dunn subsidiary. You know, he really, many of the most infamous Texas politicians in this era, such as Ken Paxton are generously supported by Dunn. And so I think if we kind of wrap this up, I think that we could say that the disdain from activism that dispensationalists claim is a ruse. That activism is bad if it advances any attempt to create equal opportunity,

reduce income inequality, and dispensationalists vote. And they, you know, with Texas as one of the major bases for dispensationalism, they are a hugely influential voting block. 39% of Americans have told pollsters that they believe we're living in the end times. And the simple fact is, if you think the world's going to end, you're not going to invest much time in making the world better, making it a more just place. You're not going to try to clean the water, clean the air. Half of evangelical Protestants in

the United States believe that supporting Israel is absolutely essential to fulfilling Bible prophecy. believe that supporting Israel is absolutely essential to fulfilling Bible prophecy. And that group constitutes a third of all adult Texans. And they want to love Israel to death because they believe that if they push Israel to annex the West Bank, to take the most aggressive stance towards Palestinians, that will provoke the wrath of the Antichrist, that will provoke the wrath of the Antichrist, which will lead to Armageddon. And they're willing to make that sacrifice. They're willing to fight for the second coming to happen down to the last Jewish person. And this is creating instability for the world and putting the United States in a very difficult place in the world stage.

And the chain of events leading to our position currently, uh, vis-a-vis the middle East can be drawn back to this state. That's right. And I think one thing that I really want to emphasize that, um, we haven't dived into as much as we could have is that this sort of belief system tends towards dehumanization. So if you believe that your opponents are in league with the devil or are satanic or are doing the bidding of evil and that you are on the side of good unequivocally and you are doing the Lord's work, it is easy to treat your opponents as inhuman, less than human, to see them as other than someone who has equal rights and equal standing.

And if you're wondering if it could happen here, it meaning fascism, in many ways, it's happened in Texas already. And we have a large population here. As they wait for the end, they're building walls around the lives of more than 30 million people who live in this state. I'm Stephen Monticelli. I'm Michael Phillips. Thank you for listening. I'm Jessica Acevedo, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church.

And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and LA-based Shekinah Church, an alleged cult that has impacted members for over two decades. Jessica and I will delve into the hidden truths between high control groups and interview dancers,

church members, and others whose lives and careers have been impacted, just like mine. Through powerful, in-depth interviews with former members and new, chilling firsthand accounts, the series will illuminate untold and extremely necessary perspectives. Forgive Me for I Have Followed will be more than an exploration. It's a vital revelation aimed at ensuring these types of abuses never happen again. Listen to Forgive Me for I Have Followed on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Predente. And I'm Jeme Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions, like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job?

Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer we bring in experts who do like resume specialist Morgan Sanner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah I think a lot about that quote what is it like you miss a hundred percent of the shots you never take. Yeah rejection is scary but

it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career. Without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. MTV's official challenge podcast is back for another season.

That's right. The challenge is about to embark on its monumental 40th season, y'all. And we are coming along for the ride. Woohoo! That would be me, Devyn Simone. And then there's me, Devon Rogers. And we're here to take you behind the scenes of... drum roll, please. The Challenge 40, Battle of the Eras.

Yes, each week cast members will be joining us to spill all of the tea on the relentless challenges, heartbreaking eliminations, and of course, all the juicy drama. And let's not forget about the hookups. Anyway, regardless of what era you're rooting for at home, everyone is welcome here on MTV's official challenge podcast.

So join us every week as we break down episodes of the challenge 40 battle of the era. Listen to MTV's official challenge podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Fantasy football fans, the NFL season is here and now is the time to get ready to dominate your leagues. The best way to crush your opponents this season is to listen to the NFL Fantasy Football Podcast. Come hang out with me, Marcus Grant, and my pal Michael F. Florio as we give you all the info you need to absolutely steamroll your fantasy league and bring home a championship. You don't need to spend hours each day breaking down every stat and every stitch of game tape

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on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Bruce Bozzi. On my podcast, Table for Two, we have unforgettable lunch after unforgettable lunch with the best guest you could possibly ask for. People like Matt Bomer. Thank you for that introduction. I'm gonna slip you a couple of 20s under the table.

Dang. Emma Roberts. When it came into my email inbox, I was like, okay, I know I'm going to love this so much that I don't even want to read it because if I can't be in it, I'm going to be bummed. Colin Jost. You know, your wife was the first guest on Table for Two. It's come full circle. As long as I do better than her, I'm happy. Table for Two is a bit different from other interview shows.

We sit down at a great restaurant for a meal, maybe a glass of rosé, and the stories start flowing. Our second season is airing right now, so you can catch up on our conversations that are intimate, surprising, and often hilarious. Listen to Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

Oh, what's getting indicted by the FBI? My several people I don't like. It could happen here. A podcast about things falling apart. And today, this week, well, for the last couple of weeks, the thing that's fallen apart is Tenet media. This is not related to Christopher Nolan that we can prove at this exact moment.

It is instead a media venture starring a bunch of assholes that turned out to all be an op by the Russian government And none of said assholes claim they knew anything even though they got paid a hundred thousand dollars a video Anyway, we're gonna talk about all that and more today, but I'm gonna bring on to the program now my co-hosts Garrison Davis and James stout. Thank you. I'm not getting a hundred K per episode here But if I if I was I certainly wouldn't tell the government that it was actually a foreign government. It's paying me.

I would keep tweeting about it. Fun fact about both of you guys before we get into this. If you reverse your last names, you sound like Confederate-era generals. Garrison Stout. James Davis, I can see. James Davis, Garrison Stout, yeah. Oh, yeah. All right. Yeah, yeah. James Davis I can see. James Davis, Garrison Stout, yeah.

Yeah, alright. Yeah, yeah. That is our secret back story. We had to actually switch them when we joined CallZone Media due to our Confederate ties. Yeah, and the fact that you're 190 years old. So Garrison, you want to take us off here? Yeah, so Tenant Media was this kind of small right wing startup that hired a whole bunch of more well-known content creators on the right wing sphere from like Tim Pool, Dave

Rubin, Benny Johnson, Lauren Southern. People who are either just like conservative commentators, you know, in someone like Lauren Southern's case has been like an alt-right kind of white supremacist media figure for quite a while. And they put together this little collection of people to make like content for tenants on YouTube channel as well as licensing some of their regular content. And this company was ostensibly started by another right wing YouTuber named Lauren Chen and her husband Liam Donovan.

Now, Chen's been like on Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire, and was employed at the Blaze, where she's no longer employed based on the allegations inside this DOJ indictment. So yeah, it was a small collection, not super kind of noteworthy, honestly, in a lot of cases. Lots of people weren't super familiar with Tenet Media. I know they also hired like Taylor Hansen, who was kind of one of the first guys to report on grooming LGBTQ stuff like a few years ago That's kind of what was immediately weird about them to everyone who pays attention to this stuff

Is that their videos did not get a crazy amount of engagement? They were clearly not an established like they came out of nowhere But they had the money the money to pay for people who aren't cheap Tim pool If you don't know Tim is one of the most profitable influencers on the right-wing chunks of the internet. He's a guy who kind of got his start as a citizen journalist during Occupy. Really, he's one of these guys. All he does is he gets on, he reads news articles, he reads the headlines of news articles, he

talks about how we're all doomed to left-wing terrorism or whatever and then he makes millions of dollars. He's a frustrating individual to say the least, but he doesn't come cheap and Hansen also doesn't come cheap. Dave Rubin is not an inexpensive person to bring on to your team. So it was kind of clear from the beginning there's a lot of money behind this thing that seems to have come out of nowhere. Whose money it and that is what the federal government's been trying to figure out and we have now a better indication on Where all of these kind of right-wing content firms or at least this one who is employing some very influential people Where they are getting some of their money from because there's there's a lot of money flying around this space

Lots of these guys are obviously filled by like fossil fuel billionaires. Right. You can look at like the early funding for the Daily Wire. That has a lot of money. But for this for this smaller kind of lesser known company, how are they paying one hundred thousand dollars per episode to these guys? And it's also the Daily Wire definitely started in organically by getting a lot of fossil fuel money pumped into it.

But one thing you have to hand it to them is they built a business that is a functional business, right? They are now profitable in their own regard, or at least were. There's evidence their traffic collapsed recently. But you saw them have a growth curve that looked pretty organic for a media organization, which you didn't see with Tenet. No, no. And it seems the only way to actually pay these millions and millions of dollars to all these people is if you are actually the government of Russia, who is starting covert operations, that's their words, not mine, to influence the US election by, like

Bo was talking about, like Ukraine using these mouthpieces, but also just kind of so general division, which seems to be kind of the main tactic. And Robert elected to actually go through some of this, geez, 23 page indictment and kind of, hopefully we can find some of the better, funnier little tidbits here, because there's a lot of interesting information about kind of the inter workings of some of the better, funnier little tidbits here, because there's a lot of interesting information about kind of the inter workings of some of these like, like media groups and how exactly Tim Pool was convinced by a Russian agent. Yeah, a Russian agent pretending to be three different people. They pretending to be some mysterious European billionaire.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the document starts with some stuff that I had been unaware, which is that, you know, because Russia Today is kind of the first large Russian government-affiliated media organization that has been like putting up propaganda in the United States. And the FBI has been watching them like a hawk. And so they quote here from the editor- chief of RT after the expanded Russian invasion in February 2022, when he describes Russia Today, which has always argued

that it's a legitimate news organization as an entire empire of covert projects designed to shape public opinion in Western audiences. And one of these covert projects, it described as the funding of what we now know as Tenant Media, right? It's described in these documents because they're indictments as a Tennessee based online creation company, but it can only be referring to Tenant Media.

As employees have since admitted that, yes, it is for sure Tenant Media. Yes, yes. There's no doubt about this. We're not like reading into what the Fed said here at all. So they spent over the course of about a year, 10 million dollars. I think it's actually was more like nine point six, but 10 million dollars basically just buying these influencers.

Oh, my God. First off, things we could do with 10 million dollars. Yeah. Oh, James, we'd be sailing to Myanmar and on a pallet full of rocket launchers. The things that their military could do with 10 million dollars. Like that's sending dudes to the front with airsoft plates. Yeah, it's anyway, whatever. So the kind of key detail there is how much they were making per one of these dog shit videos,

which is about a hundred thousand dollars per YouTube video. That's what Tim was getting. I think Dave Rubin was getting close to just half a million a month to do like a weekly video. So when that is the kind of money we're talking about. And Tim was also being paid $100,000 per weekly video as well. He was making one video a week. That was what he decided on his contract. So he was writing in at least 400,000 if not $500,000 a week. That was what he decided on in his contract. So he was ranking in at least 400,000, if not $500,000 a month. Yeah. And then they had signing and download bonuses on top of that. Which is like even for them is more than you could get on YouTube for the kind of traffic

that they get. That is that is like the top 1% of the top 1% of YouTube creators are making money like that. And certainly no one with the kind of views these 10 videos are getting. So anyway, Garrison, you've got a clip to play? Yeah, here's a clip that's definitely a totally genuine opinion, not impacted by those $100,000 of Tim Pool talking about Ukraine. Trigger warning, most annoying man on earth.

This is psychotic. Ukraine is the enemy of this country. Ukraine is our enemy being funded by the Democrats. I will stress again, one of the greatest enemies of our nation right now is Ukraine. They are expanding this war. Now don't get me wrong. I know you've got criminal elements of the US government pushing them and guiding them and telling them what to do.

Ukraine is now accused, a German warrant issued, for blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline, triggering this conflict. Ukraine is the greatest threat to this nation and to the world. We should rescind all funding and financing, pull out all military support, and we should apologize to Russia. Interesting. I wonder what would compel a man to say that. Huh? Very curious.

There's no way to know, Garrison. So since they publicly launched in November of last year, Tenant Media posted almost 2000 videos that got about 16 million views. And 16 million views is a lot for a YouTube channel, but not if you've put out 2000 videos. So again, that's what I mean when I say like, this is not the kind of audience that you would get this kind of money organically for, right? Like this is, was obviously, and I mentioned this

because this is obviously suspicious to the creators. You cannot be, Tim Poole is not a smart man, but you cannot work for YouTube the way that he has and not know that something is fucked up with the money. Yeah. Just if you're not a mental arithmetician like myself, that is 8,000 views video. Yeah. I made a video once about how to use hiking poles, which has around that many views.

I have a video that I fucked up when filming another video while I was reviewing products 15 years ago before anyone knew who I was that has more than eight thousand. Yes. Where is our money, Vladimir? Yeah. Yeah. Come on, Vladimir. Like I'll there's a lot I'll do for half a million dollars.

Well, and I think part of this as well is not just trying to prop up tenants own news itself. It's making these specific content creators lives more comfortable. Because the better that these guys do, that's all that Russia is interested in, as alleged in this document, right? It's that they just want to make sure that these guys can still talk about Ukraine, certainly, as this evil and how Russia is the traditionalist Christian empire and right-wing resistance to globalist domination.

But in terms of just wanting to amplify US domestic divisions in order to weaken US opposition to core government of Russia's interests in the ongoing war in Ukraine, as said in the document, all they need to do is just make sure these guys are having a lot of money so like they're comfortable. Yeah. And it doesn't need to be like a successful media operation where like they're making more money on YouTube than they're paying their influences. That's not the point. The point is just to give these guys a lot of money to keep talking the way

they're talking. Yeah. What was also interesting to me and this comes from a Wired article. Wired downloaded as many of these videos as they could and then ran them through this is actually one of the journalistic uses for these large language models. They ran them through like one of those like machine learning algorithms to just kind of look at how often different subjects are mentioned because no human being could analyze that many videos with any kind of like speed, right? And one thing they found is that Ukraine, which you would imagine being the focus of a horrific war that is bleeding Russia's military, was mentioned about like a third as often as transgender people.

The vast majority of the content was US culture war stuff, right? Yep. Like woke is much more of a focus than anything to do directly with Russian military operations or Russian like government, like what you would imagine. And the reason for that is that they see it as, number one, building a sense of solidarity between American conservatives and Russia, which is largely imaginary. I'll be talking about this in an episode later, but Russia is not the country a lot of conservatives in the US think it is. But more to the point, it's just stoking division rather than actually needing to change American minds on Ukraine in much of a concerted way.

Like if you kind of keep them ginned up and angry about everything the quote unquote left is doing, they will be against supporting Ukrainian resistance anyway, right? And that's the bet the Russians made very, very astutely. And it seems to be paying off for them. One of the more interesting facts here is that one of the primary contacts, this is one of the people who has been indicted, who was working with Poole and these other creators,

is an employee of Russia Today with the perfect spy name, Konstantin Kalashnikov. Just amazing stuff. How is that literally their name? How, how do they not just change it? We call it a Kalashnikov because the guy's name was Kalashnikov. It's just lovely. It's just lovely.

Yeah, it's beautiful. It's breathtaking. Because if you put a character with that name in a Bond film, everyone would be like, come on, man, it's not 1965 anymore. What are we doing here? But that's just the person's actual name. It's beautiful. What are we doing here? But that's just the person's actual name. It's beautiful.

So they had a couple of fake personas within the company, but this was a person who directly talked to the employees of people like Poole, the editors and whatnot, without disclosing that he worked at Russia Today. Now there's evidence that people who worked for some of these creators in their discords, like editors and whatnot, saw this as deeply suspicious. Probably the most interesting came from when we now know it was Tucker Carlson posted a video during his trip in Moscow, like where he was going to a Russian grocery store to be like, look, Russia has grocery stores.

Everything's fine here. His editor in the discord was like, this seems like a little much. What are we doing here basically? And the statement made was along the lines of like, you know, this is what the people paying us want us to get out. Right. Like it, which is clear evidence that people were aware of what they were doing to some extent. At least among like the tenant media producers, there was a growing awareness of what was actually going on. Obviously, all of the on air talent still maintains that they are the victims

of an international conspiracy. You know, victim pays, I guess. Oh, my God. And no, I think one of one of the funniest parts is definitely this fake European businessman, I believe, is referred to as Edward Gringorian. Yeah, this is very funny. We'll talk about Ed Ward.

Let's let's throw to ads first and then we'll get back to this. And we're back, Garrison, let's talk about Ed Ward. Yeah. So in the document, they talk about how Kalashnikov, this other RT person, as well as Tenant's founders, worked together to deceive commentators one and two who we believe are Tim Poole and Dave Rubin. The point was to leverage their existing audiences and license their videos they were already making So together the RT people and the tenant founders tried to

trick Pool and who we believe is Ruben into thinking that the person providing these $100,000 per episodes was a European businessman and private investor named Edward Gregorian which is a wonderful a wonderful fake name and this was a European businessman and private investor named Edward Gregorian, which is a wonderful fake name. And this was a not real person. This was a completely fake person. At some point, I believe Dave Rubin, our commentator number one,

requested that the founder provide like a profile or an article. Yeah, yeah, it was commentator two that wanted to know more about, would like to know more about the company and who he will be working with. Yeah, so they asked for like this like one page profile on like who this guy was. And this was provided and he was described as an accomplished finance professional who had various positions in Brussels and France at a multinational bank, including the director of private banking division and wealth management.

The one page on this guy who is supposedly their investor shows an obvious stock photo of a man on a private jet with his face blurred out. His face blurred is the best, yeah. That's what, that looks real. Yeah, not sketchy at all. This is an actual guy. Quote, founder one transmitted the Edward Gregorian profile to commentator one who is either pool or Rubin.

We believe it's Rubin. Yeah, I think that one's Rubin because Tim wouldn't have asked for more details. Honor about May 12th, 2023. Founder one reported to persona one that commentator one had a problem with the profile we sent over specifically the reference to social justice. I think it may be because that's usually a term used by liberals, but we're trying to create a conservative network. Founder One suggested that Commentator One and Edward could simply speak together to clarify the profile. Yes. And I know there was a secure call between a Russian agent pretending to be

Mr. Gregorian to Tempool and allegedly this other call with commentator one who we think is Rubin. So there was like conversations between like Rubin and Pool with people like further involved in the actual like espionage parts of this and the actual like you're talking to people affiliated with like Russian spies in order to like sell this lie. I did find it very funny where did you read the section where they sort of did a Forensic analysis of the three personas email accounts. Yeah, no, I'm not a front of Intuit yet So they had three different personas

So we're all accessed from the same IP address and had different were presenting as three different individuals right with three different email accounts obviously the DOJ has been able to get access to those email accounts. And they found that the people using those email accounts made mistakes in signing them. So one was supposed to come from Persona 3, but they mistakenly signed it Edward Gregorian. And another time Persona 1 sent a draft of an email to Persona 2, which Persona 2 then copied and pasted

into an email. Like the OBSEC was extremely poor, it would seem, and it didn't set anyone off. To kind of make that point in terms of like, what's happening to these guys right now, what they've been indicted for is violations of the Foreign Agent Registration Act. Like if you are acting as the agent of a foreign government, you have to register in the United States. You, you have a freedom of speech, but you don't have freedom to create propaganda for another government and pretend that you're not, right?

Yeah. And so, you know, obviously one of the things the feds needed to indict them is evidence that they knew specifically they were being employed by the Russian government, right? That like the Russians hadn't somehow snuck money to the people who founded Tenant Media, right? And so at one point Founder2 gets on the Investor Discord channel to submit one of the influencers, I think it's Rubin's invoices to Persona One and press for payment of those

invoices. On September 11th, 2023, never forget, at approximately 8.07 PM Central Time, Founder Two wrote in that Discord channel, today marks two weeks since I submitted the invoice for August Any idea for the delay we are signing the large contracts We need to be certain we will get the funding to pay these people while waiting for a response They searched for the current time in Moscow So just Unbelievable opsec like giving the government absolute knowledge of intent.

I mean, similarly, earlier on in the document, quote, in their private respondents while working directly for RT pursuant to founder one's written contract, founder one and founder two regularly referred to their sponsor as the Russians. For example, on or about May 12, 2021, founder twoer 2 messaged Founder 1 on Discord, quote, So we're billing the Russians from the corporation, right? On or about May 22nd, Founder 1 messaged Founder 2 on Discord, also the Russians paid, so we're good to bill them for the second month, I guess. Nailed it.

On or about June 2nd, Founder 1 messaged Founder 2 on Discord, also I say we billed the Russians for the last last month once we're done the extra offense I wonder if they knew they were working for the Russian government there's there's a lot more that's just like this they constantly referred to the source of their income at least to each other as quote-unquote the Russians and then in like outreach to like talent which is you know a generous word to refer to Tim pool and others. They were a little bit more vague, but they certainly made kind of coy references to it in their producer discord. Beautiful. Well, yeah. So, I mean, the big question here with all of this is like, did

any of these major right wing media figures who have like they got hired in part because they were already doing the job the Russians wanted them doing. You know, building up this kind of hatred that exists on the right over the idea of funding Ukraine and Ukrainian resistance to the Russian war machine. Like all of that kind of stuff is like why these people got brought on anyway. Tim Poole has just kind of been one of the most reflexively anti-Ukraine voices in conservative media. And Rubin is very effective at getting Americans to hate other Americans. He's one of the big anti-trans culture warriors out there, Ditto Hansen.

That's why they wanted these guys. They wanted to encourage them basically to keep it up. The question then is, what did these guys know and when did they know it? And the bigger question, because I have my suspicions and my suspicions are a lot and immediately. But none of that is in this indictment, obviously. And the big question then is, is the federal government going to attempt to prove anything? Like, do they want to actually go after these guys?

And I don't know, my guess is not because there very rarely are consequences for these people, but I'm curious as to what y'all think. No, it seems not. I mean, both Poole and I think three others have made statements saying that they've been contacted by the FBI as a potential victim of a crime and that they will be happy to assist the FBI investigating this matter. Now, that doesn't mean the FBI isn't necessarily Looking into them because that's the language the FBI would use if they suspected them

But yeah, my guess is that they lawyered up Absolutely. It was funny both in there in Betty Johnson's and Tim Poole's immediate immediate statements They called this a leak DOJ indictment, which is not true. It was not leaked. It was just unsealed. Yeah, they just arrested people. Yeah, I'm fairly sure there's a press release. Also, one of the final posts from Tenant Media is talking about how this woman named Lauren Sun was charged with acting as an agent of the Chinese Communist Party, quote, Here she is talking about DEI.

Why would the Chinese government want to push a DEI in America? Oh, yeah I remember this This is this this is I think one of one of their final Twitter posts before their account got taken down Yeah, beautiful. Their rumble account is still alive and kicking. Yeah Oh, thank goodness that out also, can we talk about their graphic design just for a moment because it is dogshit Yeah, tenet medias tenant Can we talk about their graphic design just for a moment? Because it is dog shit. Yeah. Tenant Media's? Tenant, yeah.

Like have you, I don't know if you, have you been on their Rumble account, Garrison? You know, I can't say I have been on their Rumble account as of recent. The last time I looked at Rumble, it was their booth at the RNC. Well, let me tell you, they're back. Genuinely some of the most like deranged, it's just, it's extremely busy.

It's very 90s, like it's a lot of bright colors. I mean, the clearest indication to me that this was absolutely a Russian op is that the company described itself as, quote, a network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues. Definitely Russians. Definitely Russians. Definitely Russians. You're like, oh, I wonder who wrote that. Who would ever describe themselves?

Tim Poole had never even seen the word heterodox before. It's crazy. It's wild. Yeah, they put multipolar into a thesaurus and that's what they came up with. It's crazy. It is interesting. One of the things in this indictment that I did find kind of worth talking about is that it specifically notes that folks at Russia Today, when they were, because they were largely

deplatformed after the expanded Russian invasion in 2022, early 2022. And the indictment quotes the editor in chief of Russia Today being like, but it's fine because we were able to rebuild our following on Twitter. So I don't know if you just in case you had any questions about like what Elon Musk's reforms at Twitter have accomplished. One of them is that we should probably roll the ads again. And then Garrison, you had a very fun document you wanted to take us through. Yes, to kind of talk about why they might be doing some of this.

There was one other document that was unsealed that kind of sheds a light on Russia's exact focus on influencing US politics. Well, that's great. Speaking of influencing US politics, our advertisers probably don't. And we're back. And we're back. There is a there's another document called Exhibit 9A, which is originally in Russian and this translated copy is is provided in this PDF.

And this appears to be some kind of instructional manual for why exactly people are going about this. Why exactly is Tim Pool and all these others getting paid to talk about what they talk about? And then it also kind of explains like tactics and like how to actually go about it. So the first bit of this of this document, they just are talking about like the US two party system, which is really funny. And they primarily explain the two party system's differences as being like the way that they affect race. That the US political party B, or Democratic party, includes people of color and, quote

unquote, supporters of affirmative action and reverse discrimination, i.e. infringement on the rights of the white population of the United States. And then meanwhile, the Republican party are victims of discrimination by people of color." Unquote. So that's how they kind of frame the US two-party system, is that there's these poor white people being oppressed by wokeism. They end this little introduction on the two-party system by saying, quote, a key characteristic of the American media is its skew towards the Democratic Party's influence. While society is split between supporters of the new globalist socialism and traditional values, the media is Democrat by over 75%. Situation for the

Republicans is made complicated by the censorship on social media, and Democrats oriented new media. So some kind of weird phrasing there because it is being translated from Russian, but they're talking about how liberalism is inherently biased in media and that's something that's promoted while being racist and being a Republican is something that is harder to get paid for by big media to talk about. And that's why they have this campaign, which they title, Gorilla Media Campaign in the United States.

They justify this by saying that there is no pro-Russian and or pro-Putin mainstream politicians or succinctly large numbers of influencers and voters. And this is one of the things they're trying to do. Another quote is that Americans are, quote, dissatisfied by the dramatic decline in standard of living and large expenditures of Offensive policy in the United States in Europe and Ukraine They are afraid of losing the American way of life and the American dream It is these sentiments that should be exploited in the course of an information campaign in the United States

Smart the campaign topics used in their guerrilla media campaign are included here first ones encroaching The campaign topics used in their guerrilla media campaign are included here. First one's encroaching universal poverty. Number two is the risk of job loss for white Americans. Privileges for people of color perverts and disabled. Constant lies of the Democratic Party administration. The threat of crime coming from people of color and immigrants, including new immigrants from Ukraine. Overspending on foreign policy at the

expense of interests of white US citizens, constant lies to the voters by the Democrats in power. Last but not least, America is suffering a defeat despite liberals efforts. We are being drawn into the water, our guys will die in Ukraine. The target audience of their campaign is listed as Republican voters, Donald Trump supporters, supporters of, quote, traditional family values, white Americans representing the lower and middle class. Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things. It's frustrating that it is working.

Yeah. To be quite frank, it's exactly what the Russiagate conspiracy theorists have been saying for years. Unfortunately, yeah, unfortunately. And like a shitload of people on the left have just been mocking them endlessly, in part because they bought a lot of this propaganda. And this is certainly different from the way they were going about it in in 2016. Right. This is absolutely. Yeah. Like this. This isn't the same like Facebook stuff they're doing. Although Tenen did have Facebook accounts.

These are like weaponizing these people that have gotten gotten big on YouTube and other platforms for talking about the same type Facebook stuff they're doing, although Tenen did have Facebook accounts. These are like weaponizing these people that have gotten big on YouTube and other platforms for talking about the same type of things that Russia kind of wants them to talk about. And it's just making sure that they have the ability to do so. Kind of lastly in this information doc, they talk about kind of like where you can spread this disinformation. It says here, quote, on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, we need to create multiple perishable accounts primarily for the work with comments. Websites should serve as the sources of information for dissemination and for video content, YouTube accounts with relatively small number of subscribers and commentators, unquote. The list of information products can be disseminated

includes text of posts, comments on social media, memes, including characters and collages, and video content, including news stories in the Fox News style. They then propose creating a quote-unquote project office to run this style of media campaign. This consists of three segments, monitoring US media and social media accounts of Republican politicians, a text factor with a minimum of five to four main topic-based recommendations, including about 10 basic posts on social media and 40 to 60 comments, and then managing an editorial office with a daily output of three to four pictures and memes, and a video editorial office with a daily output of three to four videos per day.

Quote, in order for this work to be effective, you need to use a minimum of fake news and a maximum of realistic information. At the same time, you should continuously repeat that this is what's really happening, but the official media will never tell you about it or show it to you." So, part of what's frustrating about this, number one, is just like they clearly have watched Alex Jones and like I've learned a great deal from how he's done this, which unfortunately is something Alex used to claim about Putin that, fuck, maybe he was right. But the bigger, more frustrating point to me is that like, oh, they didn't need to do any of this at all. Like this was all working just fine without them directly getting involved this way.

I kind of am, I think it's probably just a reaction to the fact that they had a lot of their more traditional stuff get deplatformed after February, 2022. But like, this was all stuff the right was doing organically in their media without Russian money. They didn't need this. They certainly are trying to kind of rebuild some of their direct ability to influence after like RT got deplatformed.

The other part that's interesting to me is because like this indictment focuses on like tenant media as being kind of one of these video editorial offices with a daily output of three to four videos a day. Like that's what this that's what this kind of guy did describes. That's what time it is. This evidence talk also talks about how like they're also just like faking engagement, getting like 60 comments per day

on various social media posts on political topics. So that also like points towards like a lot of people like driving like discussions and trying to like increase the actual visibility and engagement is being boosted by this non-authentic interference. A lot of videos will go viral, not just because they had a lot of people watch them initially, it's because they have a lot of engagement in the comments. And that's what's going to push something to actually show up on more people's feeds. That is how Twitter currently

works. There's a degree to which that's how things work on YouTube. So it's also just trying to try to like engineer Virality by faking a certain amount of engagement. Yeah There's also like that that degree of like interference beyond just actually, you know paying for Tim Pool To talk about Ukraine and talk about how gay people are evil once a week. Yeah, I don't know I think that's probably all we've got to say about this for right now Yeah, I don't know. I think that's probably all we've got to say about this for right now. This is not the most surprising news in the world. It is good that it's embarrassing to some of these guys. I don't know that I think it's actually gonna hurt their listenership at all. The people who listen to them don't really care. Yeah, they'll lie out of it. Yeah, they'll find some way to make themselves the victim out of it.

Yeah, they will not have any reflection that bit and to make themselves the victim out of it. Yeah. They will not have any reflection that there was a whole Russian operation to identify like, like influencers to scout for that would serve Russia's purposes that they will never reflect on why they specifically were scouted for. No. Yeah. They will never reflect that the only bit of like the only bit of hesitation that they had to take to take this money was at the profile for the fake businessman mentioned to social justice. That was the only thing that they like protested.

That was the only thing that he actually wanted to look further into was the fact that he listed social justice as something he cares about and not the fact that he just doesn't exist at all. This is a completely fake person. They were able to flag social justice, but not flag that he just did not exist. None of this will cause any kind of recollection because these guys don't care. Like the reason why they say what they say is because they can make five hundred thousand dollars a month extra saying it. So imagine how much money they're already making. Yeah. Like that explains why they're doing what they're doing. Like they

don't care what they say anymore. They make such a ridiculous amount of money that it doesn't matter. Yeah. And that's what it's always been about. Like they have never believed in anything. Yeah. They don't need to like reflect on on any of this because they're still making tons of money. They're making slightly less than they used to now that Russia's not paying them. But they are still making tons, especially like if this is what they thought like the

going price was like they suggested these amounts like they this is like the regular price for them. And that kind of points towards how much money is flying around this right wing media ecosystem. Yep. Great. Good stuff. Yeah. The last couple of videos were focusing on this ridiculous lie that migrants taken over

an apartment complex in Colorado like all this shit that just isn't true that they've been able to make true. I know it's so frustrating. I find it so frustrating also how like, pool has been able to run this line of like the media won't tell you this because there are things that legitimately are neoliberal establishment media completely ignores and like that leaves the door open for this kind of shit. And as a result, people can fill that space

with lies as we're seeing here. Yeah well so the next time you get contacted by a shady man on whatsapp to pay you five hundred thousand dollars a month talking about how gay people are evil you might want to check to see if he's actually a Russian agent first you just you might want to do a little a little bit of work yeah they have to tell you it's like cops. You just ask them that they have to tell you, you know, what? Just send them my way. Some exciting new content news for you guys.

I would not get paid by Russia to lie. I might get paid by like Sweden, you know, to like advanced Swedish interests, maybe. There's a there's a number of most countries I would lie for beside that aren't Russia. I would I would lie for like Japan, probably Russia. I would lie for like Japan probably. No, that could get dark actually. No, that could get dark. Nevermind. Yeah, yeah, leave that one out bro.

Sweden. Sweden's perfect. No, Garrison, I think you're underestimating the kind of shit Sweden gets up to. Oh, no, they're certainly evil. They're certainly evil. But in terms of like a very like milquetoast country to get paid to increase their foreign interest in I think Sweden's about As good as you're gonna get like come on like hungry. Come on. Come on, Switzerland, you know, although You would you would quickly get implicated but but they could pay all the financial all the financial

Yeah, Robert and I receive material benefits from the Burmese PDF We got we both had a nice lunch from them and that has been why we've done all our coverage. It's time for us to come clean now. We did, although you did get very sick afterwards. Unbelievably sick and you locked me out of the toilet. So, yeah. Putting that out there. That was pretty funny.

Oh, what a time. Anyway, RIP Tenant Media, you were a fake one. We'll be back tomorrow. Jessica Acevedo, Executive Producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. We're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and LA-based Shekinah Church, an alleged cult that has impacted members for over two decades. Jessica and I will

delve into the hidden truths between high-control groups and interview dancers, church members, and others whose lives and careers have been impacted, just like mine. Through powerful, in-depth interviews with former members and new chilling firsthand accounts, the seriesdepth interviews with former members and new, chilling first-hand accounts, the series will illuminate untold and extremely necessary perspectives. Forgive Me for I Have Followed will be more than an exploration. It's a vital revelation aimed at ensuring these types of abuses never happen again. Listen to Forgive Me for I Have Followed on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Predente. And I'm Jeme Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions. Like how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or can I negotiate a higher salary

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On my podcast, Table for Two, we have unforgettable lunch after unforgettable lunch with the best guest you could possibly ask for. People like David Duchovny. You know, New Yorkers have a reputation of being very tough, but it's not. It's not that way at all. They're very accepting. Jeff Goldblum.

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on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. podcast. What's not doing great, my democracy, although better than a couple of months ago, maybe if we're comparing this debate to the last debate, I think the short answer everyone will agree with is better debate. My gosh. I'm Robert Evans with me tonight for you know a quick reaction to everything that went on in case you don't want to sit through it yourself is

Garrison Davis and Sophie Lichterman. Yeah this was like a real debate we haven't had one of these in a long time. No no maybe never I can't actually think of a time in my life it's certainly not in my adult life where we have had one, I don't know, you know what, maybe I'm not remembering the Romney one well enough, but certainly it's been a long time since we've got this was really was about the issues to a significant extent. Not all of the issues I would have picked to talk about, but there was a lot of discussion of issues and policy. And like actual moderating. And actual moderating, yes.

Live fact checks, which I've never seen to this extent at any presidential debate ever. It was almost shocking to see the moderators actually do their job. That was the highlight of the night for me. Yeah, and if you didn't catch the debate, it was hosted by Disney's ABC and the moderators were Lindsay Davis and David Muir. And both of them each did a very decent job I believe with live fact-checking when Trump said some very out-of-pocket unhinged comments. They deferred to him a couple of times when he would demand to be allowed to speak that I wasn't thrilled

with but yeah it was kind of it was made up for, you know, one of the things going around in right-wing media the last couple of days has been this claim that Haitian immigrants to the United States are eating people's pets. We'll probably do an episode on this. It's worth covering. Like, it's all lies. It's like evil, racist lies. But Trump brought it up in detail during the debate and got pressed pretty effectively by David,

who essentially, while I'm saying like, well, that's just not true. Like we've talked to the city manager. There's no reports of anyone's pets being eaten. You've just made this up. And Trump said it was true because he saw it on TV. He said it twice, but like, you know, I just want to like per per like a Reuters fact check, like this started from a Facebook post and then determined that it was not there was no evidence to this claim. And that didn't stop the likes of JD Vance and other horrible individuals spreading it on the internet and Donald Trump announcing it to be true multiple times during the biggest presidential debate of our lifetime.

As they kept saying, it seems every debate is the most historic debate that's ever happened. Yeah. I'm going to say this one wasn't. Sorry. The last one definitely was. Because one of the guys who was in it is no longer running for president. That's fair. That one was a little historic. Yeah. Do we want to get into a little bit of the pre-show at all or?

Sure. We could talk about the pre-show first. Yeah, why not? Why don't you start there, Sophie? During the pre-show, Fox News was talking about how the Trump campaign says that he will only go low on the issues. And he did not. They also had a guy who is on TV way too much, Byron Donald, where he said that, Kamala, we know Biden is not running the country, you're VP now. Basically, they kind of just did the same sad talking points. And then CNN did. I mean, this is not that interesting, to be honest. Like CNN talked about how important this was.

And Chris Wallace specifically said that Trump's biggest strength is he doesn't talk like a politician. I don't think that helped him tonight, to be honest. Not tonight. Well, you know, to be honest, here's what I would say. That was true of why he won. That played a major role in him winning, but he talks like a politician now because politics has reordered itself around

Trumpism, particularly on the right. But even Harris and Walls are a little trumpier than certainly any democratic politician was before this election. And the most interesting thing that was said in both of these things to be, which will bring us to the start of the debate, is CNN was heavily focusing on the fact that President Trump is almost a foot taller than Vice President Harris and asking if he will take advantage of that. He wouldn't even meet her across the stage to shake her hand.

She walked all the way over to him. I genuinely think he did not want to shake her hand. No, he didn't. And I thought that was again, this all seems like very petty stuff to talk about. But this is the pettiest man alive. And yeah, like this stuff actually does matter. And I think it was a pretty intelligent strategic move. I think it started off the night with him off balance. She immediately put him off balance and pissed him off. And he didn't really recover. He had some moments. He certainly was not weak everywhere. I think he was, he was like his economy, everything he says about like tariffs is like it's a

nonsense policy that would devastate like large chunks of this country. But I think his messaging was pretty effective there. It probably is going to work for a lot of moderates. I thought his messaging on Afghanistan was really effective. I think he probably won that segment of the debate just in terms of what's going to play better. Those were the two, definitely. Right? But he didn't lose every clash they had.

He never got momentum. And he was never able to build momentum. Even when he had a win, he was never able to tie that into a greater pattern like he was with Biden. He was never able to get any kind of weight behind him. He just kind of was wobbling the whole night. Which I think at this scale is the first we've seen from him. No, it was definitely Kamala going in hard for the handshake at the very like very start of the debate was her equivalent of Trump following around Hillary Clinton on that debate stage.

Yup. It threw him off balance. He wasn't expecting it. It immediately kind of gave her the upper hand literally. Wow. And controlling where the conversation was going to go. Trump refused to look at Kamala through the entire debate. He only looked straight ahead. Kamala was often addressing Trump directly, looking at him

and then also turning towards the cameras. Trump was just straight faced the entire time. He never, he never looked at her or acknowledged her visually. It was kind of odd to see. And throughout the debate, he just kept getting really angry and almost like childish. Harris maintained her ability to present herself as the more hopeful candidate and by and large, like led the debate. Yeah. Yeah. He kept having to like follow her. He just got off as like an angry child. Now she did not answer some of the questions about like her policy shifts, but she was able to deflect those questions and Trump to go off topic to talking about like crowd sizes and rumors about eating dogs. Trump wasn't able to actually talk about what his plans for the country were. And Harris just kept him

like complaining about weird nonsense going off on Tejans and always going back to talking about immigrants. He just he just couldn't control the conversation at all. No. And the crowd size stuff like he was very clearly like on the verge of kind of losing it there, which was interesting to see. CNN claimed during their post show that that moment was when he never recovered after the crowd size. Yeah, I think that's probably accurate. Fair. Yeah, that's a fair analysis from CNN. I would say that he didn't he never recovered from the opening handshake. Like, but that's when it was kind of undeniable, the crowd size thing, like

he, cause he, he kept trying to get back on the rails and I think he gave up. And the clearest example of that was his closing statements, which I know we're kind of jumping around here, but Kamala's closing statements were the kind of closing statements you give if you are trying to become the president. And Trump's, you can contrast it to the way he was talking during his big RNC speech, which was certainly much too long, but was clearly intentional for the most part. Was a better speech. Yeah.

It's like there was some ad libbing there. He did some, but this was clearly not written down ahead of time. It did not sound like that. It made no sense. Yeah, it was nonsense. Kamala's ending statement was talking about how this is a fight for two different versions of what this country will look like, you know, very like, politiciany speech. Trump didn't talk about himself at all. He just was complaining that if Kamala Harris has so many great ideas for the country, why hasn't she enacted them? And the answer is because she's not the president. Yes. But he did not talk about his own version of the country. He was just complaining about how much he didn't like Kamala Harris and that Kamala Harris is promising to do great things, even though that she's not like doing them right now as vice president. And that was his messaging. At least in the pre show that I watched and in a lot of like the punditry I read before this, the thing that kept getting reinforced was that this has to be a debate about the issues the Americans that are still undecided want to hear what people's plans are for the

country. Now, do I believe that's the case? I'm not necessarily the most optimistic about how seriously Americans take political policy. But if that is the case, Trump blew his chance to talk about what he wants to do as president. Because he, number one, was extremely defensive. He spent more time denying things that he wasn't going to do.

She got him very good on 2025. That has proven to be an extremely effective line of attack. And he was really, he had to, he had to not just deny that he planned to in like in state project 2025 as president, but like he had to repeatedly claim I've never read it. Like, I don't know what's in it. I don't want to read it. I have nothing to do with project 2025 and quote. And quote, you know, in a way that

sounded almost panic. Yeah. Right. Like where he really, I'm kind of surprised they didn't give him a better response on that, that they didn't really drill that down. And I wonder if they did. And he just was so flustered and pissed that he didn't do it. But he certainly did not have an effective response to that one. And when he kept repeatedly being asked to give his policy on how he would, like, fix the Affordable Care Act or replace it, he just punted. He just kept saying, it's terrible. It's like, OK, yeah, it's terrible, but I can't do anything about it. So I'm not going to repeal it.

But like, we've got to do better. It was it was a really weak answer. Yeah. One thing I found interesting is that the last debate was full of so many ad breaks. And we went full like a one hour. Yeah. A full hour before before ads. And speaking of ads. Oh, wow. We have gone a full 13 minutes.

And that means it's time for us to take an ad break. All right, we are back. Yeah, can I get to one thing first? Yes. I just came across this. It's about the Haitian immigrants. PBS put up a documentary, like literally a day or two ago, one day ago talking about this. And they interview a factory owner in Springfield, Ohio about what he thinks of Haitian migration. And he's like, I wish a lot more of them would come. They're the only people in town who don't do drugs and come to work on time. I just thought that was a great, great Springfield, Ohio representation.

I hope that guy's having a good night. Great quote there, Robert. Yeah. Gare, what do you want to talk about next? I know in this middle section, just kind of want to go over some of what they actually talked about during the debate, a few of kind of the main topics. They started with the economy. Kamala was talking about how there's a shortage of homes, the cost of housing is

just too high, and she's going to have tax cuts for families and warned about Trump's quote unquote sales tax that would rise costs for households by nearly $4,000 a year. This is in reference to Trump's tariffs, which he then talked about next. They know they're not sales tax, they're tariffs. And that countries will pay us back for all that we've done in the world. It's insane. Which will mainly mean that our economy will do worse and things will be more expensive for us. I thought, I thought Como was pretty strong during that section in terms of like her response.

She directly mentioned Goldman Sachs, which is something that's come out in the last couple days from Reuters. It's that Goldman Sachs, his biggest boost to US economy from a Harris win, talking about US economic growth would likely get the biggest boost in the coming two years from Democrats headed by Kamala Harris winning the White House and Congress in November's election. And she specifically called out to that. And her being actually able to call out to something like that in a debate Was something we haven't seen in a while in a debate. And so that was something that I particularly took note of Yeah, actually slight relevant authorities on yeah Yeah

Yeah, she did a lot of that. She definitely had her moments where she would avoid responses. I noted she she consistently refused to answer. Are there limitations you think should be in place on when people can get abortions? Right. Yeah. She just kind of did not answer that one. Now, to be frank, I think that's a bullshit question. And I think her redirection was pretty effective. Yeah. But as a general rule, when she answered questions, she cited statistics and studies and did a pretty good job. Now, again, how well does that kind of matter? We're still very early in the

kind of pundit cycle here. It seems pretty clear that most of the mainstream media, including Fox, agrees Harris won the night. Polymarket predicts a 97% chance that Harris is judged the winner in the debate snap polls, which I found out from Nate Silver's quick reaction, where he also notes, quote, Bitcoin prices are down, which also implies a loss for Trump. That's very funny. I love that Bitcoin's a good political needle to see where the country's going. I'll tell you the happiest assuming that we don't usher in a new fascist or you know a significantly worse state in November. The best thing about it is going to be not needing to pay

attention to Nate Silver for another four years. Yeah. But yeah, you know, he did make one other point that I found kind of funny which was his argument that like well Trump is a lot taller the stature gap in terms of physical size was also notable Especially with Harris having a shorter podium. Oh my god I'm sure hear people say that you should watch the debate with the sound off and by that measure It was much closer than with the sound on who says that name So has ever said that who's gonna watch the debate with the sound off? Stick to polls, man. What the fuck is wrong with you?

These debates used to be audio only. They were radio broadcasts. That's how this tradition started. That is so unwell of him to say. What are you doing? Why? Think that in your head and don't put that on the internet. He is a degener, generous gambler. Yes. Every second Nate Silver isn't writing a blog post or looking at polls. He is he is sitting in a a shitty bar in like Fremont Street,

Vegas, playing like mid stakes poker. So he probably does consume a lot of television with the sound off. But to go back to the economy, so as Kamala was talking about her plans for like tax credits and tax cuts helping people buy homes, Trump was just talking about tariffs and immediately brought up that one of the things that's affecting the economy is that there's millions of people pouring in from prisons and insane asylums, taking jobs from black and Hispanic and union workers. Now these immigrants are taking over towns and buildings violently. And it's just immediately that's that that that's what that's what he goes to because he has really just nothing else.

He also said people can't buy bacon, cereal and eggs, cereal, cereal of all the foods to choose cereal. So, yeah, to try to talk about like inflation and stuff. It just it just didn't go very well, especially because inflation has rose so much during the pandemic when he was president. It just didn't play very well at all. Immediately, it was clear that that Kamala was kind of the front runner. The next topic was abortion, which Kamala also did very well. And Trump just really lost it because he couldn't stop talking about how

Tim Walz wants to execute babies after birth. And this just this was the main thing he talked about. He was very defensive about his stance on a national abortion ban. Moderators asked him about his contradictory abortion statements, about how he's voting for an abortion ban in Florida, but is claiming to not want one nationally. And Trump just didn't know how to talk about this topic very well and just kept saying that Democrats are evil because they want to do nine-month abortions, seven-month, eight-month abortions, post-birth executions.

They will execute the baby. Which was, I believe this was like the first fact check of the night. And this is what kind of really scared Trump is he was like, oh, they're actually going to call me on this stuff. The moderator said that there's no states where you can kill babies after birth. And Trump just didn't know what to do. Kamala brought up Project 2025 and their plans for a national abortion ban. Trump made a little funny comment kind of throwing JD Vance under the bus.

Oh my God. First statements about Trump vetoing a national abortion ban if it was passed by Congress. Trump said that he actually hadn't talked to Vance about that. I didn't discuss it with JD. By the way, I've been taking a break from Twitter, but I did catch a good post recently. JD Vance, before the debate, made a claim that a bunch of people from Springfield, who he won't name, have reached out to him talking about Haitians eating their pets and then ended it by saying like it's possible this will

prove to be untrue and someone just quote tweeted that and said every day I see something that makes me understand why Vance's mom traded him for a couple of perk thirties. Incredible. But Kamala basically said most of her regular talking points on abortion, she, you know, would like for the House and the Senate to put abortion protections into law. And she would sign that bill and wants

to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade and also talked about how it's absurd to be talking about post birth executions and how this is like insulting. Yep, she's correct. Thank you so much. Yeah. Next thing was the border. Very similar to both their RNC and their DNC speeches. Kamala talking about this kind of very conservative border bill that Trump shot down for political gain. And then invited us to attend a Trump rally where he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter

and how windmills cause cancer and that people leave early. And he never talks about you, the American people. So this was obviously a giant bait for Trump, which he took immediately. He just couldn't stop talking about people actually come to my rallies way more than they go to your rallies. They don't leave early. You have to bus in people to your rallies. And he claims she pays people to attend her rallies as well. He got so flustered is that this is what he started talking about the eating dogs thing.

It's because he got so flustered on this line of argument about his crowd size that he just had to immediately talk about how there's immigrants eating dogs. Yeah. Because he just didn't know what to do. I mean, it's actually kind of just a very on the nose, but perfect representation of how racism works culturally a lot of the time, which is like white man feels aggrieved and threatened and immediately turns to attacking an entire group of people based on their race. Like, like it really was the most direct example of that that you could possibly get.

Like he felt vulnerable. And so he attacked a group of people for eating cats. He did a blood libel. I think a big part of Kamala's strategy here was to paint Trump as like an illegitimate figure in politics, like someone who's not like responsible to like lead the military and it is dangerous. Yeah. She bragged about the endorsement of 200 Republicans, including Dick Cheney.

Hate of that moment. Like, no. But you know, it's it's not great, but we'll see if it plays politically well. It might work. Yeah. It doesn't play well for us. But yes, doesn't mean it doesn't overall play well. Unfortunately, a lot of her statements seemed like she was trying to court for us, but that doesn't mean it doesn't overall play well, unfortunately. A lot of her statements seemed like she was trying to court both the NatSec people and the courts. If there's ever like a contested election, like she wants those people to be

on her side. And there was a lot of comments throughout the debate that was kind of pointing to that and like showing how Trump's just like an unreliable and like dangerous figure to be in control of national security. Trump went on this interesting tangent about how he was actually good because he fired a whole bunch of those Republicans because they were bad at their jobs. I thought it was one of his more effective moments. That was something we've never really seen done before, openly attacking military leaders in that fashion.

Yeah. I didn't read it as attacking military leaders. I read it as him specifically stating, because Harris had been talking about the Republicans from the Bush White House who had endorsed her. And I read it as Trump saying, I brought in a lot of like rhinos, what he would call rhinos,

but I brought in a lot of like old Republican veterans and fired them because they were bad at their job. And I thought that was one where I was like, well, yeah, they were, you know, like, you're not wrong. You didn't replace them with anyone better, but like they were. In fact, you did hire a bunch of Republican, like officials who had a long history working in other administrations who sucked at what they did, you know, like not wrong. Now it's interesting to have him say, I brought in a lot of people, some of them were good and some of them were bad. Yes.

I don't think I've ever heard a former president admit that during a debate. He was like, we don't talk about the good people. And it's like, well, why don't you do that now during your debate? Yeah, here's your chance. JD Vance, great guy. Great guy. Great guy. So JD Vance, great guy. Great guy. Great guy. JD Vance, great guy. Never met him. Don't know who he is. Who are you talking about?

Never talked to him. One of the more interesting questions the moderator asked was just directly asking Trump, how would you go about your massive deportation program? How would you actually go about deporting 11 million or more undocumented immigrants? And Trump did not have a real answer to this question. Trump said that, you know, there's actually way more of them here than what you would think. South America is sending all their criminals here.

It was really interesting because he said they say 15 million, it's really 21 million. And then he said, and it's a lot more than 21 million. Okay, how many is it, Donald? The moderators challenged him on like rising crime rates, saying that the FBI is actually, you know, showing that crime is going down. And Trump then claimed that the FBI

crime rates are fraudulent. Are fraudulent. Which is the first time that you've seen, at least that I've seen him talk about it that way. Like usually on Fox News, they will like mention that. But they'll be like, but people feel crime is going up.

So that's what really matters. Even if even if the FBI claims it's going down, people people still feel less safe. And but he just openly said that those numbers are just like fake. Like the FBI is just like lying, saying that they aren't counting crimes in like the biggest major cities. The comments response to this was saying that that's rich coming from a convicted criminal, so we got that first like prosecutor girl boss moment. K-Hive rise up.

Trump complained about all of like the legal witch hunts he's been facing and said that, quote, I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things they say about me, unquote, which is just a fascinating way to frame that. Unhinged thing to say. It is, especially given how many Americans don't think he was shot in the head. You just know his advisors were like, what the fuck? What are you saying right now? Oh, fuck. Oh, they are drinking tonight. Oh, they are drinking tonight. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's not even like the most unhinged thing he said because the most unhinged thing he said the entire night came shortly after that, which was she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison. Based? She wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison. She wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison. And then later says she's a radical liberal.

I believe that a president can perform surgery if that president wants to, Sophie. And I support Kamala Harris's policy. You should have voted for Ben Carson then. I did. I write him in every year.

OK, Jesus Christ. No, you don't. There was a good tweet that remarked that it just sounds like he's talking like he's playing cards against humanity. He's just like changing out different words like transgender, aliens, prison, surgery. I believe what he's referencing here is that both Fox News and Trump's campaign team the past few days have been talking about how in 2020, Kamala made a statement basically

saying that, yeah, we should like offer gender affirming health care to people in prison. Like if you're in prison, we should not like deny health care to you just because you're locked up. That's like what he's talking about. That is specifically what what he's referring to. But it just it sounds just absolutely bad shit. Let's have another quick ad break. We will come back. I want to talk a little bit about January 6th, foreign policy Israel-Palestine and then some of Trump's and Kamala's post-debate statements made to the press. All right, we are so bad.

So bad. It's just like the Harris campaign. Kind of kind of kind of. She's been slowly kind of like flatlining and some of these polls. I do want to talk about that a little before we get into this because it has been interesting. She's been losing kind of national like popular popular vote momentum, and that has been narrowing. The swing states have not really narrowed in the same way. Yeah.

Which is not to say that like she is a clear favorite. Everything basically is within the margin of error. She's barely ahead, but she's still ahead. It has been a really interesting change. Like it has not been the same. There's a newsletter I check on occasionally for stuff like this, Ettinger Mintum, that made what I thought was an interesting point, which was that it's possible that a lot of that has to do with the fact that the national popular vote has been narrowing as a result

of the ads the Republicans have been pumping out, because there wasn't a real strong consensus about who Harris was, and now that's growing. But in a lot of these swing states, which are red states, people have been living under Republicans and are just a lot less kind of vulnerable to being drawn away by that kind of propaganda because they know what it's like. No, I mean, especially if you're looking at North Carolina, you're looking at Georgia. Those are two battlegrounds that the Harris campaign is targeting. I can definitely see that being being an aspect. So the mods turned the questions towards January 6. Trump immediately claimed that nobody on the other side was killed only Ashley bad that was killed by a bad police officer. Very ironic.

Very ironic. Easily. The only cop I'll go to bat for the best shoot in 2021 by a lot by a mile. And he then complained that why haven't BLM rioters been prosecuted in Seattle and Minneapolis, which of course they have. They are still they're still arresting people. Man, I spent time in courtrooms with people like, yes, I was shocked. He did not call out Portland. It is interesting that he went for Seattle and not Portland. I guess it maybe just says a lot about his media diet

that he just maybe got a lot more chaz stuff than he did Portland stuff. I don't know. He certainly did go after Kamala a few times for being pro defund the police back in 2020. He really tried, he tried several times. He clearly- She never took the bait. No. Yeah, she never took the bait.

And that must have been one that his, his advisors really pushed him on. Yeah. Like they must've said, you'll get her on this. But it was both that and her previous like fracking policies, which she is, which she has like backtracked on. And you have to, if you want to win Pennsylvania.

So like, I understand why they're doing it. It sucks because the planet's burning. But right now they're trying to win Pennsylvania. The debate was in Pennsylvania. Like that's why she has backtracked on those policies. I think it's smart to deflect from that, at least right now. But yeah, I mean, that's not surprising to me. Now, I think Kamala did a pretty good statement about January 6th.

She said, I was at the Capitol on J6. That's not surprising to me. Now I think Kamala did a pretty good statement about January 6th. She said, I was at the Capitol on J6. He incited a violent mob and now she got kind of emotional. She said that 140 officers were injured and some died. Trump was impeached, which is something that just hasn't been talked about very much. It's like, yeah, Trump has been impeached. Why isn't that talked about very much? So many other things have happened that everyone has forgotten.

He was literally impeached. Multiple times. about very much. Because so many other things have happened that everyone has forgotten that he was literally impeached. Yeah. Multiple times. And then she pointed to January 6th as like not the only incident. No. She pointed back to Charlottesville, talked about Trump's statements about Proud Boys and how the Proud Boy militia was told to stand back and stand by. And she kind of closed this this little January 6th monologue by saying like, we don't have to go back to this. He says that if the election doesn't go to his liking, there will be a bloodbath. We don't have to go back. And she is positioning herself as like as an alternative towards like that type of chaos. Trump got very mad at this. Very mad. Trump talking about how Fox News debunked the Charlottesville quote. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. Yeah.

I'm sure. I know one other like fact checker. I think it's Snopes is like, oh, actually the Charlottesville quote is different in context. And at least a whole bunch of fact checkers that like I know and extremists and reporters have kind of gotten on Snopes' ass for this

because it's very clear. It's a very like disingenuous way of framing what he was trying to say. Yeah. We all know what happened on Charlottesville. We all know what he was talking about. Yeah, Catabu is a really good video on it if you want to watch more.

Yeah. Yes, she does. And then the moderators talked about how Trump has been falsely claiming for three and a half years that he won the 2020 election, but now says that he lost by a whisker and Trump was startled by this. He's like, did I actually say that? I said that, I said that.

No, no, no, no, no, that was sarcastic. And it was like the only time I've ever heard him, he sounded genuinely like confused. Like maybe there was a little old man, but we were just like, oh shit, what have I been saying? He's like, no, no, no, that was a sarcastic statement. I still think I won the 2020 election. Yeah, and he really, and that was one of the more effective moderator moments, because

you could see the moderator was like, oh, what a gift I've been given. I just want to make very clear. Let's have him say, let's have him confirm what he means like three times and then we could move on. Kabbalah had a good reply talking about how like, we can't have a candidate who's confused about how the elections work and being like like like she is correct yes come on great response um and then Trump immediately went on to defend Victor Orban yes the president of Hungary saying it some people call him a strong man because

he's a really tough guy he loves the strongman thing that was my favorite part because he clearly misunderstood no strong, strongman is a term for dictation. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. He just. That was quite a moment for this country. It was just the fumbling and bumbling. I love it. You know what? Overall, good time, except for one thing that really sucked, which is several things that really sucked, which is whenever it came to something where a huge number of human lives were involved, almost always it got kind of brushed over. Ukraine, I will say, I don't think it got a very good set of questions. It was the same shit that they've been asking both sides, right?

The Dems get asked, how are you going to actually conclude this conflict in a favorable way? And the Republicans get asked, are you just going to abandon Ukraine? Right? Like that's the gist of what both candidates are being pushed on. And the gist of their responses is unchanged from everything we've heard earlier this year. Right? And despite being asked multiple times, Trump refused to answer if it was in the world's best interest if Ukraine wins the war.

He was asked that several times and he just, he just said, I want the war to end. Not an answer. And there wouldn't have been a war if I'd been president. He said, no, this wouldn't have happened. Yeah. This wouldn't have happened. That's his claim. But you know, Harris did not have an answer because there isn't one.

No, no. This is an incredibly difficult war, right? Now I will say, I think like the actual thing she should have done and the thing that Biden should have done is say, like we are removing all extant limitations on the weapons that we ship Ukraine and how they can use them. You know, at this point, they have now invaded

Russian territory and occupied hundreds of miles of it. Like, you know, that was something I was interested in that she should have hit on and did not, which Trump brought up the fact that Russia has nuclear weapons and a matter of like, we can't push them too much. Who knows what they'll do, right? That was clearly what he wanted people to take from him bringing up the fact that Russia has a nuclear arsenal. And Harris didn't bring up like, yeah, you know, they invaded Russia a couple of weeks

back. No nukes. Like this kind of threat is clearly something that the Putin regime wants the international community to have. But when push comes to shove, he's not suicidal. And the idea that like, Putin is going to start nuking people

if Ukraine is able to fire missiles at Russian fuel depots or whatever. I just don't think is supported by how he's actually performed so far. But at any rate, at least Ukraine got a decent amount of time. It was one of the things that they talked about more in this debate. Gaza got one very quick question. You could tell the moderators wanted to move the fuck past it as fast as possible. And both Trump and Harris wanted to get past it.

Yeah. Harris more so than Trump. Harris stayed with about the same statement she made at the DNC. Yep. She first mentioned October 7th, talked about how far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. The war must end. We need to ceasefire deal, the hostage is out.

We need to chart a course for a two state solution and rebuild Gaza. We will always give Israel the ability to defend itself, especially in relation to Iran. That was most of her statement. Which is nothing new from her. No. Trump first tried to skip the question and just immediately talk about Russia. He then said that Kamala hates Israel and she also hates the Arab people. The whole area will be bombed under her presidency, saying that if he gets

elected as president elect, he will he will solve the war. And then he just talked about like how oil pipelines are important. It was so weird. Interesting to me that he tried to skip this when this is one of the things she's weakest on. And yeah, but I think it may just be that like like Americans overwhelmingly at this point do not think Israel is categorically in the wrong. They think that Israel is often in the wrong in this war and has been killing a lot of innocent people. And so it may just be that he knows that like, this isn't really a great issue for me either.

Let's move back to something. But it was it was interesting to me that he didn't have any kind of concerted attack. Like saying she hates Israel and Arabs is such a strange tactic to take here. And I don't see how he thought it could help him. Who are you trying to appeal to? Right. How is this supposed to get you a vote? What vote does this get you that you don't have? There's just no way that was like what was in his campaign prep. No, that was not advised. There's no way. Yeah.

Kamala did have a good line here to think points towards her like according that sec people. She said, it's well known that Trump is weak on foreign policy and national security. He's pro dictator. Yeah. Yeah. Trump just doesn't have any way to answer that because yeah, he does want to be a dictator. He just defended the president of Hungary, like a few minutes ago. Yeah, like called him a strong man

and said that that means he's tough. Well, and he also, she had a good line about how like, he's not going to be tough with these people. They're just going to like say something nice to him and then he'll immediately want to be their friends. Like there was a, that was a decent little jab. She got a few of those at more than a few. I want to talk about, since we're kind of running long, just a little bit at the end here after the debate ended, I caught this. I don't think you guys did, but Trump went down to what's called the no spin zone,

which is just a thing Fox did I think it started in the Hannity show I caught the Fox immediate after the debate response do you want me to get into that it's just a once one quick thing sure yeah so immediate response from Fox was vice president Harris was clearly well prepared but she was never held to the fire. It felt like ABC was helping her out. He went down a few cat and rat Cat and dog holes instead of rabbit holes and not rabbit holes That was good. That was a direct thing to the eating pets thing. I know but snake about it Trump had a bad night Yeah, that's interesting. Then just talked about how she was calm and

Yeah, that's interesting. Then just talked about how she was calm and prepared and whatnot. But then, you know, Hannity came on and did his Hannity thing. And then I'm no spin zone. That must have been why Trump was heading down to the no spin zone. So what happened? You've got this. It's the floor of where they did the debate. So everyone is everywhere. Tons of media. And Trump, there's like this huge scrum around him. And I'm watching on ABC and the ABC anchors just start screaming at him from like Donald Trump, Mr. President, trying to get him to answer their questions. And like everyone is doing this. And he eventually like gives a statement where he says, well, this was my favorite debate. This was like the best debate I've ever had.

I clearly won. Someone's like, so are you going to do a second debate? Harris says she wants another debate. And he's like, well, she just wants another debate because she lost. So I don't know if I'm going to do another debate. I found that very funny. I found it kind of shameful how the ABC guys just kept howling at him to give them some attention in the middle of this very crowded room.

There was no way he could hear you. He's an old man. Guys have some self-fucking respect. You're supposed to be journalists. And you had a colleague down there who was actually asking him questions. But anyway. So yeah, I mean, there wasn't a ton there

other than him kind of desperately trying. And one of them did make the good point that like he is claiming I obviously won the debate as he heads down to the spin zone to spin his loss. which is like, yeah, that's not a position of strength. No. I don't know that you would have been doing this if this had been a clean win, but it certainly wasn't. And yeah, like I think tonight went pretty badly for him. Yeah. Yeah. CNN was like foaming at the mouth. Happy or sad?

CNN was thrilled. They're foaming at the mouth for Kamala Harris that nobody else has done what she's been able to do. And then something else happened that made CNN and MSNBC thrilled and ruined one Trump advisors day. I'm sure Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris for president right after the debate. And if only we could have seen that Trump advisor whispered in his ear that he did not in fact, despite that AI fake endorsement, get endorsed by childless cat lady, Taylor Swift. That's so interesting to me that she couched her endorsement in I am doing this because

of the AI that Trump kept retweeting. Yeah, retruthing. Sorry, retruthing. Retruthing. Yes, you're right. I apologize. I didn't mean to. I'm not going to make that joke.

Anyway, Garrison, what were you going to say? No, just that. That's all. Just retr your stick. It's interesting to me that she she did specifically like couch it and like is it's because of what he did with this AI video. Like that I felt like I had a need to come out and say who I'm voting for. Yeah.

Also, she has a cute cat. I haven't seen her cat before. It's also that but because I pay attention to Taylor Swift News, she was getting hammered a little bit in the last week because one of her good friends, Brittany Mahomes, who's the wife of Patrick Mahomes, who is Taylor Swift's boyfriend, Travis Kelsey's teammate. Jesus Christ. You're welcome. Has liked several of Trump's posts and-

Truth, truths. No, I don't know where it was to be honest. I actually don't think it was his posts. I think it was actually, I don't, I actually don't think it was his post. I think it was just posts about him. Pro Trump post. On Instagram. Very important to this election. Yes. And then they were seen together at the US Open and the girl bosses were very unhappy

with Taylor about this. So I think that also played into the timing. Robert, just so you know, know your Taylor Swift facts. Bye, Sophie Lichterman. Sorry, Sophie. Well, you were talking about washed up musician Taylor Swift. Oh my God. I was getting- No, don't ruin our lives. They're gonna get on- How dare you? The Swifties are gonna get on our ass.

They will get our show canceled. Robert Evans, we are not in that era. We are not in that era. I was getting crucial debate take from America's most influential celebrity. Dilbert artist Scott Adams. What do you think? No, the debate is a tie so far with lots of folks is flying. A tie is a win for Harris. Well, that's true. I think that is true. There you go, Scott. Good work. Scott comes out saying that Harris won the debate. There you go.

Uh-huh. That's great. Finally, I do think it's funny that Trump claimed that he didn't know about his previous comments, questioning if Kamala Harris was black. That was a very bizarre little section. Oh, God, I wouldn't even talk about that moment. Oh, were you accused her of putting out too? What was that?

Talk that he was also like saying, well, the Central Park five pled guilty. So actually, I think it was okay. I wanted them executed. A wild, a wild unforced error there. Man, that whole little racism section was just just crazy. Look, I will take one quick victory lap, because I said after the last debate, which it was a disaster in every possible way for Biden, Trump's not himself either. He is definitely an older man. He was in 2016 and even 2020. And like, yeah, this this was that. Well, hopefully this was the only presidential debate that we'll have to talk about

with Kamala V. Trump. What an exciting time. I am excited for that for that Vance Walls debate. If that ever happens. So am I. Oh, interesting that like our reaction after this debate was like, okay, she shouldn't do any other debates and he's going to want to do more debates. Yeah.

And it was the exact opposite in their in their reactions. Yeah, I was interested by that. Which like on on MSNBC, Tim Walls was like, she should do one every day. I mean, she did good. She did well. But like my reaction was like, OK, you did the job. You did the job. I do think like I have like, oh, boy, is I think this might be hubris coming in here and a bad idea, but she could be right

I I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, like what are the problems is that if The election doesn't turn around as much or if something else happens that pushes momentum back towards Trump She might need a third debate and you kind of have to you kind of can't know like you're you are rolling the dice On this one way or the other. Yeah. Well, that was that was the best debate I've ever I've ever watched. Yeah. Just in terms of it actually being a debate. Yeah. There was not a half dead man on screen or. Yeah. Maybe there was.

There just wasn't two half dead men on screen. So you just get a good look at like, OK, yeah, these are these are pretty decent pictures of the kinds of president that these people want to be. And like, it literally comes down to, he was not willing to shake her hand. And she walked across the stage to shake his hand. And that's basically what the debate was. Yeah. Anyway, anyways, this has been It Could Happen here. We're going to post our source links from this episode in the episode description. So look out for that. Yeah, that's right.

And you know, until next time, I don't really have any advice. Bye. I'm Jessica Acevedo, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and LA-based Shekinah Church, an alleged cult that has impacted members for over two decades. Jessica and I will delve into the hidden truths between high control groups and interview

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And I'm Jeme Jackson-Gadston. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions. Like how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes! Each week we answer your unfiltered work questions.

Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Sanner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it, like you miss 100% of the shots you never take?

Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. MTV's official challenge podcast is back for another season. That's right. The challenge is about to embark on its

monumental 40th season y', and we are coming along for the ride. Woohoo! That would be me, Devyn Simone. And then there's me, Devon Rogers. And we're here to take you behind the scenes of... drum roll please... Nanananananananananana... The Challenge 40, Battle of the Eras.

Yes. Each week, cast members will be joining us to spill all of the tea on the relentless challenges, heartbreaking eliminations, and of course all the juicy drama. And let's not forget about the hookups. Anyway, regardless of what era you're rooting for at home, everyone is welcome here on MTV's official challenge podcast. So join us every week as we break down episodes of the Challenge 40 Battle of the Eras. Listen to MTV's official challenge podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Fantasy football fans, the NFL season is here and now is the time to get ready to dominate

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look no further than the show straight from the source at NFL Media. Do it before it's too late. Subscribe now and listen to the NFL Fantasy Football Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 1982, Atari players had one thing on their minds. Sword Quest. This wasn't just a new game.

Atari promised 150 grand in prizes to four finalists. But the prizes disappeared. And what started as a video game promotion became one of the most controversial moments in 80s pop culture. I just don't believe they exist. I would feel my reaction shock and awe. That sword was amazing. It was so beautiful.

I'm Jamie Loftus. Join me this spring for The Legend of SwordQuest, a podcast about the fall of Atari and the disappearing SwordQuest prizes. We'll follow the quest for lost treasure across four decades. It's almost like a metaphor for the industry and Atari itself in a way. Listen to the Legend of SwordQuest on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone. It's me James. This is a pickup. It's Thursday morning. I recorded with Joseph on Wednesday night. Someone destroyed or removed one of our callers since then. I've received photos this morning of a place where we put it and it's gone. You can probably draw your own conclusions as to how I feel about that and probably tell

from how I'm talking to you, I'm pretty pissed off. Also our friend, Rafael, Rafael from Los Angeles del desierto is without a vehicle at the moment, his truck broke. This is a person who gives every ounce of his being to rescuing migrants. He is there with them in their hardest times when they pass away. He's there to recover their remains with dignity, to connect their families with the passing moments of their loved ones. He's there to rescue people.

He rescued a woman and child on Monday. His truck's broken. And if you're able to give, I'm going to include a link in the show notes. I talked to Borderlands Relief Collective and we all agreed that the most important thing right now is to get money to Rafael so he can continue doing that life-saving search and rescue work as we hit record temperatures here and before it gets freezing cold in the winter. So if you can please, please just a few bucks like we'll buy my old truck, I'll fix it. I just don't want more people to die out there and I think having a track for RFIR would meaningfully make it safer for people.

So if you're able to give, please give. Otherwise, please enjoy this podcast. And yeah, I understand if you can't, it's a hard time for everyone. But yeah, either way, help if you can enjoy this podcast. Bye. Hi, everyone, and welcome to the podcast. Today, it's me, me James and I'm joined by Joseph Hauser who's a volunteer from Borderlands Relief Collective who was out with me on Sunday. We're recording this on Wednesday night and we were dropping water at the border. We wanted to describe for you a

little bit of our what we saw out there. It was very hot and things were in a bad way. I think it's fair to say like despite all of our best efforts, things were really difficult that there's only so much we can do when it's 105 degrees and there are dozens of people and we're trying to get water to all of them. So welcome to the show. Yeah, thank you, James. Thanks for having me on. No, I appreciate you being here.

So I think if we begin by like describing perhaps for people, we first started messaging about going out on Sunday like a Saturday afternoon, right? I think. Yeah, yeah it was um yeah early Saturday afternoon. I had just finished getting my haircut. I'd gone and grabbed an early lunch and I saw a message from you in one of our group chats that some of the local grocery stores were selling those big orange five gallon water jugs for like $13. Like apparently they're trying to like get rid of their stock or something. So you, me, a couple of other people were scrambling around the county trying to buy up as many of them as we could. Yeah, like I think that's like normally a hundred bucks for reference there, like an insulated water vessel with a spout on the bottom.

And given that we knew it was gonna be a record temperature and it was already really hot on Saturday, we wanted to try and get folks water that was as cold as possible. So yeah, we went all around, bought all the ones from that chain of grocery stores that we could and sort of corralled them and then we put ice in them right yeah this is the next day on

Sunday and then you and I met up and we went out and do you want to just give people a sense of the people we met right from all over the world the different places we met them and then the sort of conditions that we found them in yeah so the first group of people we met, we ran into four Mauritanian men. They seemed to be in pretty good spirits. They were all traveling together, gave them some food, Gatorade, water, kind of our typical stuff that we hand out. And I don't know, maybe three minutes down the road from there.

I don't know where the man was from, but it's an Asian man that did not look to be in great shape. His clothes was torn up. His face was really dirty. From what we could understand, he was saying he had been mugged. His cell phone had been stolen from him. And he just looked in a bad way.

So we gave him water, gave him again some Gatorade. And when we tried to give him some food, he was just like, I can't like I'm so like he's just so dehydrated. He he couldn't stomach anything other than liquid. Yeah, it was like, we see people all the time who are who are in a bad state, but it's pretty rare for people to be like, I can't eat. I'm too dehydrated. I can't face food right now, because he'd been walking for at least seven, eight hours, I'm guessing, if not days.

Yeah, depends how he came. Man, because we were just driving along and he came out of the verge, like with his hands in the air looking Just so afraid like they'll stay with me for a while like the absolute like fear that he had Yeah, like he just looked stricken. Yeah. Yeah, like just really uh I don't know. It's just so sad to see someone like reduced to that. I'm glad we were able to help him and uh Get him the stuff that he needed. And then from there we moved on to, I'm trying to think where we went next. We went up to the top, right? We drove up to the top of the mountain.

Yeah, we went up to an area where Borderlands Relief Collective has set up what we call a welcome station. It's up on top of one of the smaller peaks in the area. It gives us a good view one of the smaller peaks in the area. It gives us a good view. You can see all the way down to the actual border and stuff and kind of take note of like, okay, we've got a group coming up. They're here. There's some people crossing over there. And then we've primarily done that in the wintertime just to greet people with some hot teas, some water, food, just basically things to say like, hey, like, you know, you're here.

Yeah. And at least give them a friendly face because who knows what they've, you know, what everyone's been through just to get to that point. Yeah, so we dropped one of our water jugs there and then went a little bit further down the road to a gate that I think Border Patrol maintains that gate, maybe CAL FIRE as well. They keep that locked pretty much always, but we know people take that road up obviously, so we left one of the smaller water jugs we were able to pick up. I think that one was like a two or three gallon that we left there.

Right. Yeah, because people walk up to the border. I always liked that spot. Oh, it's weird because sometimes you see people and you're like, Oh, they've got a long walk and it's hot. And I'm up here and they're down there. And that, that sucks. Sometimes it's a really, if it was anywhere else,

it'd be a beautiful view. There's a valley below with a little oak grove. And like sometimes you'll see like a red-tailed hawk or something. And it'll be like level with your eye line because you're at the top there. But unfortunately, yeah, it's at the border, so people have to suffer miserably there. Yeah, it's absolutely gorgeous, natural landscape, but it is just so unbelievably deadly and unforgiving.

Yeah, you and I have both hiked alongside hiking up and down the road. We've hiked on the trails that migrants often take. And I've hiked a lot. You've hiked a alongside hiking up and down the road we've hiked on the trails that migrants often take and I've hiked a lot you've hiked a lot yeah it's incredibly difficult going yeah it's difficult for us as like fit people with technical apparel and good shoes and like we often see people in flip-flops or like crappy sneakers yeah if they have footwear at all at that point yeah I remember a number of the people we ran into didn't have shoes like later in the day. Yeah.

I've definitely given away shoes before I normally have some in my truck, but I'm a giant person. Not everyone fits. It's like penguin flipper feet. I wasn't able to help everyone. So yeah, we went from there. We dropped another, we hiked to water in a little bit, because the road was too narrow to turn the truck around. And we dropped that, and then navigated.

And then, I think at that point, things were pretty normal, and that was like a normal water drop day. Or like a driving water drop day, I should say, not a hiking one. Do you want to describe what we saw at the next place you went to? Because I think that was when both of us realized that, like, things were going to be worse than normal and people needed as much help as we could possibly get them. Yeah, so basically once we finished up in that area, we went, from where we were, we went a little bit further south, I don't know, it was like maybe a 10 minute drive, you think, once we got back to the main road?

Yeah. We ran into a group of three men, I believe they were Mauritanian, again, a different group of men. Yeah. When we came across them, they were kind of walking almost like just middle of the lane on the road. Yeah, yeah. Which was kind of like keyed us in that like, oh, like we should stop and check on these

guys. They overall seem to be doing pretty well. Like they were obviously very tired, exhausted from their journey, but they were telling us that, you know, like, oh, we've got another two, we've got two more. They fell behind. So we gave these guys, you know, again the normal like food, Gatorade, water, checked in with them to see if they had like any wounds or anything we could treat and they seemed pretty good. So we hung out in that area

for, I don't know, it was maybe five, ten minutes max before we saw the people that they had mentioned were further down the road. So another two guys came up. We again gave them what supplies they seemed like they needed. The fifth guy in that group seemed to be in the worst shape of all of them. He was upright and moving under his own power, but you just kind of see that little wobble in his step. So we kind of took some extra time with him. I believe we got him a little ice pack to put on the back of his neck just to try and

bring his body temperature down. And then kind of just got all five of them regrouped together under a tree in some shade. And then from there we went, I don't know, maybe we got maybe 300 feet down the road and we came across a group of five, I believe they were all Spanish speakers. I didn't catch where they were from. Yeah. I think one said from Colombia. I can't remember where the whole group were from though.

But that was so far everyone we had run into was by appearance middle-aged men. I shouldn't say middle-aged, like young adult. Yeah, yeah. Like 30, 35 maybe like, you know, somewhere in that range. Yeah, yeah. They could be anywhere from like 20s to 30s. Yeah.

Like, I think some of that is because it was such a difficult day that like some folks who have children or older people maybe decided not to make the journey that day. Yeah. They had that choice. But this group was. Yeah, this group of five, we, I want to say it was three men in that age range. There was a woman with them and then a kid that if I had to guess probably 15 at the oldest. I seem to remember the clocking that he had braces on. He seemed young.

Yeah, he seemed like a child. He wasn't a young man. And so we got off to the side of the road again. We're giving them food, water, all that. Again, like this is all off the main road for that area. And, like, as we're interacting with these groups, you know, like several border patrol cars are just zooming past like, yeah, just cruising by. Nobody's stopping to check in. Nobody Nobody's stopping them from, big finger quotes here, invading. Yeah, yeah. Getting on a bus as people got so mad about us

before they got mad about Haitian people. So we worked with that group. Nobody really seemed to be in dire straits there. So we're working towards a trailhead, which we could actually see from where we were working with this group of five. And there's like a little bridge there and we just kind of see some heads popping up. Yeah. And really, oh, I think you have my binoculars.

Yeah. We were like checking to see. Yeah. And it's really, oh, like we need to get over there. So we get back in the truck after we get them kind of, you know, as settled as we can. And we get over to this trailhead, which is like really, I think, where the day, because like you said,

like it was kind of a normal day up until we got to this trailhead and then things kind of seemed to take a turn. Yeah. Talking of taking a turn, why don't we take a turn to advertisements and then come back? That's why they pay you the big bucks. That is, yeah. Did you see that? No, no one saw that coming. All right. All right, we are back. I hope that you haven't bought anything. You could give money to Borderlands Relief Collective. Google it. Oh yeah, that would be really nice.

I would appreciate that. Yeah, so would I. Do that. Don't go to Chamba Casino. Yeah, so we got over there and like that location, just to give people like paint a picture, there's the road which we were traveling on and then parallel to that, oh not parallel to it, 90 degrees, there's a dirt road which we pulled into.

The road that we are traveling on was going over a creek, which is dry at this time of year. So there's a bridge and it was under that bridge that people were hiding from the sun. And so that's why we couldn't see them until we were very close. And yeah, like describe what we saw there. Because that one was when I was like, oh shit. That was when we started to run out of enough bottles for people to

drink out of so we had to like just start opening like cans of energy drink and beer and stuff or whatever we had in the truck just to use them as bottles. Yeah, so we we pull off the road and underneath that bridge I mean I didn't do like a head count necessarily or anything, but it was a group of like 15, 20 at least. Yeah. You know, again, like mostly men in that like 20 to 30 age range, but there were moms with kids, and there were just so many people. We, at that point, we had, you know, some water bottles, some Gatorades.

We had that one five gallon jug with the ice water in it left that we were going to take up to the top of this pass. And we just like, by the time we got done getting every one water, we ran out of water in the jug. I think we had just about cleared out all the food we had. We had no more Gatorades. We were scrounging around in the back of your truck trying to just find vessels, essentially, to give people what liquid we could, you know, like get a shake out of the ice. Yeah, it was not good. And so then that was when there was one young man, I believe he said he was from Jordan, he was trying to get our attention and telling us, you know, like, I've got two, like, I've got

family up there, two, two family, and he keeps pointing up, up the mountain toward the pass, saying he's got two family members up there. And then another man, I didn't catch where he was from, but he was telling us there were two family members of the first man and then there was another three men traveling up there and they were trying to indicate to us that one of them had heart problems was how they put it. So we kept telling them like, hey, like,, hey, we're going to go help them, but the gate to access that dirt road that goes up that pass was locked.

So first we had to figure out who we could contact to get through the gate. And then that poor guy that said his family members were up on that mountain, he desperately, desperately wanted us to drive him up there with us. But we had to keep telling him, we can't. It is so illegal for us to put you in a vehicle. Yeah. That would take you anywhere. Yeah.

At least the interpretation of the Laura's Border Patrol season is that we would be trafficking them at that point and like maybe one could defend it in court if the person was like bleeding out or you know something but pretty much that is something that we can't do yeah we've been out on a water drop together and just handing out food and water to people on foot next to the truck and Border Patrol has threatened like an agent has threatened to write us up for trafficking Yeah, yeah in this particular incident, which like I don't really care this agent can go fuck himself like we were

This girl was probably four years old. I would say I don't know exactly I didn't ask wasn't the most important thing at the time. She was with her mother. They were both from Guinea and a Nigerian woman. Like, I speak French, so I was speaking to the Ghanaian family. And like, I remember you were trying to feed the little girl, right? Like she had... Yeah, another volunteer and I were trying to feed her some trail mix I had. And she wouldn't touch any of it but the dried banana chips that were in there. So, actually ever since then, any time I make trail mix for drops, I always make sure that

I've got dried banana chips in there just in case there's another kid that that's all they'll eat. Yeah. And I remember she wasn't very responsive. I've been talking to her mom and her mother's feet were in a very bad way. Like, immersion foot. And after a while we were like, this little girl is not very talkative at all. Like, maybe to a degree that we should be concerned. And I think we both, we all kind of quickly realized she was very cold.

Like, potentially hypothermic. I remember having the the I tried to record some of this for the podcast but it's all fuck it's all I had to wrap her up in a mylar blanket such that like I was sitting behind her so that she would get like warm from me right and I'd sit my jacket and so she would get warm from me and obviously the whole fucking podcast but it my love blanket noise, which is a shame because at that point a border patrol agent arrived, started swearing at us, accusing us of trafficking, just like as if this little girl wasn't having the worst day of her life anyway.

Yeah. Just like someone who's paid by my taxes and your taxes turns up to scream at the only people who are helping her that day and her, right? Like it scared them. And eventually one of our friends was able to deescalate that situation. And those people got taken and hopefully processed. And I hope that they are living a happy life in the U S for sure. But yeah, that was a bad day. So yeah, we, as you said, right, we can't take this guy with us back up the hill.

And we're now trying to get to it's about 10 kilometers to the top and 10 kilometers and I have no idea how it's a lot of climbing. Like it's 10 kilometers all uphill. And so like, it's not really possible for us to hike up that road and get to these people who need help In a timely manner right in a manner that would lack so we need to drive. I Think in the end we ended up calling 9-1-1 Yeah, I think that was what we also called a friend who? Personally contacted. Yeah, then yeah, somebody got Cal fire out for us

They open the gate and kind of let us take the lead of that dirt road Yeah, I thought that was really cool of them. Like it would have been easy for them to be like, yeah we're here to save you and like Credit where it's due they were like your truck is gonna go faster than our fire engine. You guys should go first Yeah, so we get a portion of the way up and we run into the group of three men that we were told were there and Where at this point I think is when we realized like oh shit Like the only water we have on our that we have at all is our personal water

so yeah, I Actually, I have water bottle right here next to me. I was literally pouring what I had left into their water bottle for them. Yeah. Luckily, this is like an insulated thing. So it's cold for them. But you know, we're trying to figure out like, shit, like when we get to when we find these two women, the family members, the guy kept talking about like,

what are we gonna do then? Like, I think we ended up giving, when we came across them further up the mountain, at that point, like we basically just had my backup Nalgene left. So we were like, hey, we want you two to take this. Like we just gave them the full Nalgene and tried our best to explain to them

that we were gonna go to the top, make sure that there wasn't anybody else up there. And then we were gonna come back down to check on them. So we do that, we go up to the top where you and some other volunteers have built like a little shade structure to try and just give people some relief. Yeah, I didn't build that one.

I built the previous one that got torn down by some type of cop. Lovely. Yeah, great. Really nice. Really helpful. It wasn't actually a cop to be fair. I'm pretty sure it was some other federal agency, BLM or BP or someone. But so when we got up to the top, we didn't see anybody else. We couldn't find anybody up there. We were doing our best to try and use our language skills to...

Yeah, we were just shouting in various languages to see if anyone needed help. Then the Cal Fire guys met back up with us up there, figured out, like, hey, we're not seeing anybody else. So you and I decided that basically all we could do at that point was go back down the mountain and go further south to a little town that's like pretty much right on the border I think. Yeah it's literally a border crossing. Yeah because we ended up, we drove down, checked in on the women, the two women that were traveling down. They seemed to be doing about as okay as they

could at the time. Again it's like I't know, 105. Yeah. Completely exposed up there. Yeah, there's no tree cover. You're not getting any shade. I don't remember it being particularly windy at all. So it's just like hot, still. Still. Yeah. Miserable.

But we get down the mountain, kind of give everyone, like the big group that's there under the tree at the bridge at the bottom, a heads up of what we're doing. We go into this little town and like again like tiny little place like it's basically from what I saw just parking lots and then like a gas station and a border crossing. Yeah. And that's it. We went into this gas station and bought, I think like 16 gallons worth of water. Yeah, like they had to go around the back to get the rest of the water.

Like we took all the gallons jugs they had. They had one of those little like displays of like, I don't know, I think it was like little Keebler, like cheese cracker sandwiches. Like we just bought the whole display. Yeah. Yeah. Just to try and give people some more food.

And then from there, like we just high tailed it back to the bridge, like distributed out some more water, checked in with them again, just like explained like we're going back up. And as we were going back up the mountain we started seeing these like little raindrops hitting our windshield. Yeah. Like, oh that can't be good. You know, so we continue up when we found the two women.

They were both just kind of lying in some shade just on the road. Yeah, it was not a good scene. Yeah. And so we got out, we mixed, I think it was, we got one gallon of cold water, and then we took another of the gallon jugs and just mixed up like a full thing with some Gatorade powder we found in your truck. Yeah.

And just kind of sat down with them. And then we got help with some translation over the phone, trying to talk to these women, figure out what exactly was going on, because one of them kept pointing to her chest. Yeah, and she was doing the thump, thump, thump. Yeah. Which was concerning. Yeah, through the help we got translating over the phone, just basically explained, we just absolutely cannot transport you.

We want nothing more in this world than to be able to take you down the mountain, but we just can't. Yeah, I would have very happily put those ladies in my truck and driven them down. That would have considerably improved my day. Yeah. To do that. Because it is fucking heartbreaking trying to tell someone they have to keep walking when they're maybe halfway down and they're like just lying there exhausted, ready to...

Yeah. I don't know what, just give up. But yeah, it fucking sucks. It sucks. We now know that several people died that day and the day before and the day after, I guess. I don't know exactly how many because the medical examiner hasn't confirmed and I'm not going to say their names or really much about the location beyond that because I want to respect the privacy of their remains and their family. Yeah. And so until we hear from them, I won't, but like, it's, I found out some people

had died in the vicinity of where we were and it was only, I don't know exactly where some people died, I don't know who they were, but like, it's a really fucking hard thing to say with like, I think those people we helped were probably okay, I think between the fact that as we'll get onto a giant thunderstorm, soaks them to the degree that we had to give them like ponchos and then just having to deal with like, I would happily have driven up and down that road all day, put people in my truck, it wouldn't have bothered me in the slightest. We're not able to and somebody's journey ended in tragedy and like

it's I don't know like we we try our best rather a lot and it's not we we do more than enough like I'm not saying that like it's on any way on us but like we would love to do more if they would let us and like shit like that like not being able to put people in the vehicle it's just let us and like shit like that like not being able to put people in the vehicle it's just it's just hard to live with and you know when you're sitting in bed at night or whatever yeah having your dinner like it sucks but yeah cuz like there's I feel like there's this picture like when you talk about San Diego or just kind of Southern California in general it's oh like it's sunny beaches it's nice days like it's mild weather year-round but as

we've said multiple times at this point like it gets fucking hot it gets it was 105 degrees on that mountain a thunderstorm rolled in and in a matter of I don't know 20 30 minutes our conversation went from like oh like I hope they'd you know are not coming down with like a heat illness or you know gonna get heat stroke to like Oh shit, like are they gonna go hyperthermic? Like what do we have to get them warm? We're trying to cool them down now. We're trying to warm them up. Like what what kind of cruel joke is this? Yeah, like it does seem like this is the most perverse thing to be like then worried about the most perverse thing to be like, then worried about

fucking lightning on the other side of the valley. You know, like, it was insane. Just from like, we then we carried on up the mountain, drop some water and then returned down to check on these women again. And when we were at the top of the mountain, we could look down on the thunderstorm. Yeah, see it beneath us. And then yeah, we drove into it. And like, just what an apocalyptic scenario to be in you know like it's dumping with rain triple digit temperatures and all you have the only thing you're allowed to do is walk like it was difficult and then like I guess the last thing the last

person we ran into as we came down the mountain was the guy who'd been pleading with us to go help them. Oh yeah, God. And like had decided Border Patrol had collected everyone to take them to process them, right, for their asylum claim. And that we've heard on this podcast before about what it's like when that happens. It's not nice. It's not a pleasant stay.

It's now considerably worse. I imagine people are being moved to Texas. They stayed for weeks. I met a young man a few months ago now who was in detention for three or four weeks before he was being deported back. I can't find any record of him being released, which fucking sucks. So like this guy had chosen not to go back and instead he'd chosen to hike back up the mountain without any food, without any water, to try and rescue these women, which I mean, it's an incredibly

selfless thing to do, but he was in a bad way, right? Yeah, because when we... So we passed the two women on the way down, kind of gave them little snacks here and there, like just tried to encourage them as much as we could. And then when we ran into this man, he kind of had that, I don't know what other word to use, but kind of like crazed look in his eyes.

Like he wasn't sure like, do I just go back down? Like, I can't leave them. Like, I need to keep going. Like, I feel like I can't. And so we tried to get him settled as much as we could. We got him some water. I think you dug out some gummy worms or something from one of your bags. Yeah. I had a bag of... It wasn't... It's like an open bag of Haribo that he was happy

to receive. Yeah. And we just did our best to try and convince him to just kind of sit there, rest a little bit, and assure him that they're walking down now. It was honestly kind of beautiful, the one woman, because the two women had kind of split up a little bit while they were walking downhill. So the one comes around the bend and like when they saw each other like he just kind of like you could see like just everything about him just kind of elevated and he you know pep in his stuff was like oh my god like I'm so happy to see

you and yeah he got up because he'd just been kind of slouched there almost like just looking exhausted. Yeah, so like seeing them kind of reunite was really nice and they had a quick conversation and seemed like they kind of decided she was going to keep going down and you know he just seemed like energized by that and decided to keep going up to find the other woman to make sure she made it down as well. Yeah, which was like not an easy choice. I'm sure if I am like, yeah, I get that point again We were out of food. We we mixed him up some Gatorade I think we took the sugar packets from an MRE and like mix them in there and some salt just like

Yeah, try and give him like I guess something some Fluid he could hold on to so he doesn't get hypernitrinoemic right which is definitely something when you see the amount of salt on people like the white crusting on them like like and they're only drinking water and they're not replacing electrolytes like it becomes a concern yeah that I guess was us for the day right like we we drove home yeah and like we don't get to really find out how anyone did and we don't get to really find out how anyone did. And we don't get to follow up, right?

Like it's kind of not how that works. But yeah, that's just one day. Like I spoke to Rafael from Angelis del Desierto and he was out on Monday. Said it was just as bad, right? Doing a search and rescue on Monday for a mother and child. And they were able to rescue them. And like, I felt like it was a value to highlight what we saw in one day, because it's every day.

I mean, it's cooled off now on Wednesday. It's a little less hot, which is good, but it's every day at the moment. Well, and I guess for like context, cooled off means it's like low to mid 90s. Yes, yeah, yeah. It's still like, it's still not safe to make that hike without water. People are often mugged right when they cross the border or sometimes before. Sometimes they get their bags stolen.

That often involves them getting their water bottle stolen that they've taken with them, right? Makes that journey a lot more dangerous. They also get their phone stolen. So even if they need help, they can't call 911. Border Patrol sometimes has like rescue beacons that you can press them and it calls Border Patrol. On the route that we were on for the back half of the day, there were none of those I saw. Like I came back and you know, sort of tried to process my day and get on with my life

when we do and I saw the presidential debate last night and it just makes me so fucking angry. I mean, we shouldn't expect any more from these people. They're politicians. They don't give a shit about you. They don't give a shit about me. And they certainly don't care about these poor desperate people. And like, I understand that people want to vote for Kamala because maybe she's less bad they certainly don't care about these poor desperate people and like

I understand that people want to vote for kamala because maybe she's less bad than trump but like I have a real fucking hard time thinking about the parents of the young man who died at the border Having to do with okay. Well, she's less bad than trump. Cool. It doesn't bring that baby boy back, you know like and uh Just seeing both them, like the whole framing of the immigration discussion was how do we reduce numbers and make it harder. They didn't entertain for a moment that someone might come here because they've got nowhere else to go and they need to be safe or because they want to work hard and have a better future for their family.

There are a million reasons to come here. I came here to fucking do a PhD in Spanish history and no one made me race my bike. No one made me walk across the desert, you know? Yeah. So the reasons are a lot more valid than mine were. And like, I guess, I guess we should take a commercial break. Okay, we're back. I guess I want to finish up. You told me a story about why you started volunteering, which I thought was really meaningful and I'd like people to hear it.

So would you mind sharing that with everyone? Oh, yeah, no problem. So my grandmother on my father's side came to the US from Panama to go to college. My grandma on my mother's side, my understanding is they originally came to the US because somewhere down the line they were German. One of them was a Duke, fell in love with, you know, like a servant girl or something, you know, that old story. Yeah. Got ostracized from the family and fled to, you know, the United States.

And so like, even though looking at me, like I'm a white as white can be freckles and all, right? Like, my family is immigrants. Like you go back, like, you know, as we all are. And God, this was 2019. I didn't know what I was doing. I felt stuck in my job. I just kind of wanted to get away from my family for, you know, lack of a better phrase. And I thought, oh, hell, why not? hell, why not the Peace Corps? Go do something good on the government's dime and see the world. It's big, it's sexy, it's foreign.

And so I got placed in Eswatini, which is a country in southern Africa. And I was in the youth development sector there. So, I got placed, I was working at a high school there and I was having a conversation one day with the religion teacher who just couldn't, he could not understand the idea of like why we don't teach religion in high schools in the US. Like, He's like, you know, how can you learn to understand somebody else's point of view if you're not allowed to learn about it? And so, like, talked about how we value the concept of separation of church and state and just kind of got on the topic of different viewpoints between our two cultures like that. And this man looked at me and said, I feel so blessed that there

is a country in this world, like the United States, where there's no poverty, nobody goes hungry, everybody has a job. And there are people like you willing to leave such a beautiful place to come here and help us. Which, you know, naturally I was like, oh, like that's, you know, really nice of you to say, but you know, like in the United States, like we have people that go hungry, we, you know, deal with poverty, homelessness, et cetera, et cetera. And I'll never forget this guy looked me dead in the eyes and just said like, Oh, then why are you here? Why aren't you at home helping them?

And it just kind of shattered me in this, you know, like, yeah, no, like, you're right. Like, I totally and completely joined the Peace Corps for these super selfish reasons. And so, like I said, I was there in 2019, so I was there, I don't know if you were the listeners heard about this thing called COVID and the pandemic that happened, but I was part of the global evacuation order that went out for Peace Corps, came back to the US, moved around a little bit. And last year I was listening to your podcast at work. You interviewed a couple of people that do work with Borderlands Relief Collective and just kind of thought to myself, well, like, shit, I live near there. Like I can carry stuff in a backpack. Like I know how to hike, you know,

why not me? Why not go see how I can help out? And, you know, it's been a year and some change at this point that I've been with the group. And, you know, like, it's not like I've got some big fancy degree in, like, international relations or anything like that. I'm just a, I'm some guy, I'm a graphic, I'm a graphic designer that can carry stuff in a backpack. Yeah. But, you know, that makes all the difference sometimes. Yeah.

It's just being willing to go out there and, you know, like put that compassion to, you know, to work. Yeah. I think it like we're just two dudes with a truck and like a credit card to buy water bottles. It doesn't take either a brilliant sort of command. I speak a couple of other languages, but often like maybe I'll make the image for this show, my Google Translate app for that day. We're just using the tools that most of us have, right?

Like, and it doesn't have to be at the border. Obviously, lots of people listen on the border, but like things will be so much worse there if local folks didn't just take it upon themselves to do the things that the state refuses to do. And like that applies to the unhoused population too, right? Like I know my friends were also carrying water for them this weekend because it was hot.

And the city shut down the homelessness resource center because the temperatures were too high in for the staff which is fucking just something else. But I don't think we should expect any more from the state that's not what it's for it's not to keep us safe it's to keep capital safe it's to keep wealth safe it's to keep a certain class of people faith and it camouflagesages itself in all these institutions, which say they're there to look after us. But like when it comes down to it, like when those ladies are lying on the dirt, it's just two toots in a truck, kind of scrounging around for gatorade, right? And like, I want people listening.

I know I harp on this a lot, but like the only way that we fix it is you. It's not someone else It's not posting. I would love it if you could donate right? I mean, I'll include a link in the show That'd be great but I would love it so much more if you could do something wherever you are like just Don't think that anyone doing this is special like we of course the things I think that special people enjoy spending time with them but like You could do it too. There's nothing that's inherently stopping you from doing it.

And it doesn't matter who wins the election, right? It really doesn't matter. Every year that Joe Biden has been president, more people have died than the year before. And he was the guy who was supposed to be kind. He didn't even run on a harsh border policy. Harris is running on a hard border policy. It's, it's only going to get worse. She's even reneged on building more wall.

Like they are beginning to construct wall around Hucumba and the places where we looked after people last winter. So that'll push people to valley of the moon where it is. Impossible terrain where more people will die in the cold and more people will die in the heat and I guess we'll probably be out there too trying to help them but I just want everyone listening like I know we've covered the election a lot it doesn't I don't want to tell you it doesn't matter I'm sure it matters like it matters for my friends in Kurdistan who Trump fucking abandoned left to die after they gave thousands of their children to fight ISIS, right? But even if

Harris wins, like donations went down so much in the Biden era compared to the Trump era. And people died in the desert, people died in Tijuana, right? Because that's what the system does. But people stop caring when a lot of big commercial networks start reporting on it. And I would like you all still to care whoever wins the election, I'd like you all still to care before the election. And the way you can show that you care is showing up for your community, whatever it is, right? Yeah. Harmony isn't going to fucking solve homelessness either. So yeah. You got anything to leave

people with Joseph? Anything you want to say, want to plug? Just, you know, Borderlands Relief Collective, Border Kindness, Rafael's group, the Ángeles de Desierto, I think. Yeah. You know, just if you can come out, like if you're in the area, if you can come out, you can help. Great. Like the more people that carry supplies, the more we can leave. If you're not in the area or, you know, like hiking, carrying heavy things is not what you're into, donating. Always super appreciated. I know specifically Borderlands Relief Collective, every single cent that is donated to us goes to supplies That we leave for migrants and even if it's only a few dollars. I mean like we're talking Bottled water. I mean the 16 gallons of water that we bought I think ended up running

Somewhere in ballpark like 50 bucks like yeah, you know, like it's it's water Gatorade sometimes it's you know off-brand Gatorade so like a few dollars can go a long way and that long way could mean saving someone's life yeah totally so you know whatever you can give I would be appreciated I know our friend Rafael from Los Angeles del Desierto is his vehicle broke this weekend he does search and rescue. If you got a few bucks and you want to pass them his way, it's Los Angeles, like the town deldesierto.org. I'll put that in the link too.

But we'll put both those in the show notes. Please do whatever you can. And yeah, hopefully next time I talk to you about border stuff, it'll be better news. Thank you, James. Yeah, thanks man. Next time I talk to you about border stuff, it'll be better news. Thank you, James. Yeah, thanks man.

Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonedmedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. I'm Jess Casaveto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series,

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