Chapo Trap House - 402 - G.I. Joe Biden Goes to Baghdad feat. Brendan James and Noah Kulwin (3/16/20)

Episode Date: March 17, 2020

We're joined by Outline editor Noah Kulwin and erstwhile Chapo producer Brendan James to discuss the debate between Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, Democrats' tepid response to coronavirus, and their new podcast "Blowback", a reexamination of the Iraq War. Find everything you need to know about Blowback here: https://blowback.show/

We're still chomping You have to make every one of we I talked to my my my advisors and they're telling us we all Everybody must fuck everyone. No exceptions must fuck neither up folks get fucked You're not gonna get rid of the COVID unless you get your back walls blown open you have to hit the back Wow, you gotta use the back wall You know in China, they're not hitting the back walls and and you see what's going on there. It's a real problem Have to get the back walls Are we going? Okay, everyone. Hello everybody. It's Ruchapo. We're back

pleased to I don't know share with you our bravery of Continuing to do the podcast still podcasting in the face of the apocalypse And you know like we are in one of the you know few sectors of the economy that is not only Resistant to quarantine, but in fact with we'll thrive Is just you know indoors with nothing to do nothing to do but listen to some pods We are you know, we're risking our lives to and probably you know and the lives of others too, of course to To to bring you content. Yeah, I barreled through a pod of retirees on the street earlier today I bowled them over like bowling pins probably gave all of them the COVID but it was all for you people

So, yeah, we're keeping we're keeping the pods coming. You know what I'm saying? This is like, you know, we're like Like the brave captain of the Titanic who was like keep playing those songs. Yep. You know, hit me that oxcord It's also like Sylvia and the sopranos when he's like Recession-proof businesses certain aspects of show business and our thing Yeah Yeah, and podcasting that's it. So it's Matt and I today, but luckily we are joined by Chappell made man Brendan James. Thank you. Hello and

Chappell associate Noah Coleman. Howdy, so the Meyer Lansky if you oh, yeah I'm just pulling it out of the hat. Okay. Do you want to be him? Yeah, I'm fine with that thing specific So, yeah, I was being a podcast of course Brendan and Noah in a little bit will be telling us about a new podcast project that they're have just launched that will Keep you entertained and informed during these during these dark times and then keep you Informed about a you know a prior disaster in American history that people have largely forgotten now So I'm of course about the Iraq war. Yeah. Yeah, we have a new show. It's about the Iraq war. It's called blowback No, and I have been working on it for a couple months. We're excited for everyone to hear it

It's going to be in your choppo feed Probably as you're done listening to this so check it out There's like a taster episode, but the rest of it is on stitcher premium So if you want to listen to it sign up you get a month free with the code blowback one word caps don't matter and We hope to see you on the other side and remember that You know these podcast episodes can be bartered for canned goods shotgun shells. Absolutely Anything you're gonna need in the apocalypse. They're actually more valuable because they're premium. Yeah, the choppo script will be coming out soon

Yeah, well before we get there Let's let's talk about Recent current events and I'm speaking of course about last night's democratic debate 1v1 Biden Sanders We we streamed the debate last night from our new stream studio Matt was in full Joker makeup. I was sorry time. Yeah Romero style with the makeup over the only way to go Yep, respect. Um, but you know, okay, let's just just start it out. What were you know a Brendan? I assume you watch the debate or at least read about it. What we did. I didn't okay

Well, what were your perceptions of the debate? How what do you what do you think? How can it be summed up? I think I would sum it up as I would love to know why Joe Biden seemed so perky last night I would seriously he was so much he was way more on the ball than yeah, like it was that was noticeable to me That was the first takeaway and the second I think was just that it seemed like it was the moment at which all things were laid bare and Biden was like repeatedly asked, you know, true or false questions about his own record and his past and he answered falsely several times and It was a pretty jarring television. I'll say that I gotta say I don't leave you

I mean, yeah, I think Trump really has in a way that people are maybe not even fully grasped Change the game. Just maybe by virtue of the fact that things happen so fast now I mean and the fact that he this is happening during a unprecedented, you know, a public health crisis and and Concomitant economic collapse Somebody told him just like yeah, just say whatever you want. Don't matter. Don't what doesn't matter if he says you you wanted to cut Social security, you say no, I didn't yeah, what are they gonna do?

Yeah, it's not like the fucking the moderators are gonna say anything about it, which they did not even though these are not Opinions, this is objective historical record and I mean, I'm old enough to remember the 2012 presidential debate between Romney and barf sac or crumble when Romney said something about Benghazi and The Barf Sacks Barf Sacks said, ah, that's not true and he appealed to the moderator and Candy Crowley just said yeah I'm sorry. I'm sorry Governor but but a barf sack is correct, right? At none of that happened last night or instead. They just said actually one time you said you wanted to adjust our security

Yeah, standard So does that mean this is basically all just he said she said anyway No, no, he said she said because they were like the it was funny It was interesting the moderators came prepared with individual instances from Bernie's record that they were willing to bring up and call him on But strangely they didn't seem to do that for Joe Biden at all and when it came to the social security issue They brought up they were like well, yeah, didn't you mr. Sanders like didn't you you know try to adjust social security? Just like Joe Biden did and it was like yeah, you dumb asshole. I tried to expand it not cut it and I will say and make it make it more

make the social security trust but more long-term viable by removing the cap on on contributions which a lot of people probably don't know that My people don't know that you only get tax for social security on the first two hundred thousand dollars of income So anybody who makes more than that they're not paying any payroll taxes towards our security And one of the things Bernie wanted to do is get rid of that which would by the way obliterate basically forever the worry about it being Unsustainable or whatever you can't cut it but okay, but then but then if you remove that cap though then the Ponzi scheme won't work Yeah, it's so security is a Ponzi scheme

Right, this is what it is a Ponzi scheme and like all Ponzi schemes every working person is required to contribute to it Right, that's how they all work one thing that showed up last night in debate that I've thought a lot about it Sort of like the question of like to what extent is the corporate media affecting like the actual races it precedes and one of the I think kind of layups that they Handed to Biden last night at least in terms of like how the pundits were spinning it was this idea that like we know Bernie's talking about a Revolution and Biden's talking about dealing with the crisis as it is as if what Biden was saying had you know any Relationship to reality on an effective way to deal with the crisis as it is right now But it was like this false distinction where they were like able to once again paint Bernie is like somebody totally

Unable to deal with the challenges of this very moment when in fact, it's it's quite obvious Which one of them could possibly do that well Here's the interesting thing is like the whole first half hour of the debate, of course was just all about coronavirus and pandemic and you know Like well, you know, what what are you gonna do? Like what could you do right now if you were president like you know assuage people's fears or help them get treatment and the interesting dichotomy was that like Matt you put in that sound we were watching it like Biden was just saying like listen Mac Like we're gonna we're gonna get you the treatment you need free of cost We're gonna take care of you

But it was like all within the paradigm of this pandemic is like as soon as it goes away Like if you have breast cancer or something. Oh, no, no, you'll still be you'll still be bankrupted by health insurance bills Yeah, right, so you just like you just wanted to like stress the point that all of these things are only contingent on a pandemic Yeah, don't get used to it because like we shouldn't create expectations going forward in the future about what you know What you can't shoot or shouldn't expect from our healthcare system and by implication anything Bernie is offering is gonna shake things up too much And what you want right now is stability It's the I want to I want everything to go back to normal impulse times a thousand And so Biden can just sound as though he wants to make the right tweaks get a competent person there

So, you know the music next guy, I know I know the music next monster. I'm the guy who's trying to lock him up I'm trying to lock up music next monster a whole that's what wrap That's the old my old the other president was we were whole thing. We were trying to do and then people go, okay Yeah, I mean Bernie's gonna probably you know Rock the boat too much. So I'm gonna stick with Joe. I do wish that Bernie had had more actual blue sky big idea shit, you know when talking about how to respond to Corota because What because Biden was just able to say I want to do the same thing But just for a shorter period of time to say like I want to go to war with the virus

The fucking general from Mars attacks. I heard Bernie wasn't mean enough You know, I mean you were texting me like he's landing some blows But that he should have been basically a hundred percent or well, yeah I mean like this is the thing is though. Is that just us? We want the thing is like we want that Yes, we have no idea what if any what it affects, but honestly, I don't think really any of us have absorbed just how Maybe none of at this point like we we've been going through this whole campaign with a certain expectations and like of you know, where things are gonna be what strategies should be all that kind of stuff And and then, you know, the Biden consolidated against Bernie and that created a new paradigm and now we're like well

What to do with this but now with the fucking corona? I don't know if any of this is registering at all in any sense. I honestly feel like The election doesn't have is it happening in a meaningful in like people aren't thinking of it uh, I This is unprecedented. I mean they're close. They close everything today. Everything's closed Do you think that they should shut down the primaries? Well, of course they should and that's what's amazing Is you've got people blue check fucking people like near attended saying in one breath Make sure that you're stay safe and stay quarantined and don't go out and then

Uh, wow, bernie says we shouldn't have a primary is way to suppress of elections. That's messed up of you I mean, I think we should definitely be hurting old people into fucking church basements and gymnasiums To fucking cough on each other's faces for four hours Just pure death cult insanity And like the thing is like I think What you know what what we see what we see from the media and certainly like the reaction like a day after Is like since super tuesday on It's just like they want this to be over with and they are

Acting accordingly in that like it is already over and they're just like they they're they're they're They're pissed off that they even have to cover this or that there even was a debate in the first place That that they are now expected to look adjudicate the claims made in and we were watching it last night And I was like look I would have liked to see joe biden get his fucking throat slit metaphorically speaking on national television parody I would have like I would have liked bernie to like really fucking stick the knife in or just made him satire Seem, you know like the babbling daffy moon babble that you know, he's known for Um or just get him angry which he did at a certain point and like I was like well

At the end of the day like bernie did force joe biden into Probably a half dozen absolutely glaring bald face lies about his record And I was like well, okay, maybe that's maybe that's something maybe someone will pick up on that And the answer is at least I don't know what what I was thinking at the time Nobody has other than the sanders campaign or people who were dedicated sanders partisans because like Every one of the media universally declared biden the winner of that debate and we're basically like that that's that it's over Like, you know, like this is the last gasp of bernie sanders the wacky old man You know, like this is the last we'll ever have to deal with or talk about him and it's just like

They don't believe that it's even their job to just simply state Whether what joe biden said about his record on cutting social security and medicaid last night is even Their purview, what they'll bring it back up during the general whenever they will that's the thing They will bring it back archival footage to go you said this there's someone asked you about this Uh, maybe an audience member or maybe are you saying that that bernie should have dropped out and that he shouldn't have given this vital In munition of donald trump or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm saying bernie don't run in all caps On a certain website and you know like to me like the the the comment of the night that sums it up better for me than almost anything else was uh

joy and read last night live to the debate said that like At this point like does anybody actually care what two career politicians Said or did 20 35 years ago? And it's just like well, that's it. That's it You know like your job is to cover politics and like offer your opinions on it to like a your your audience of fucking loyal listeners or people who want to be informed about the world and you're just saying who cares Yeah, who care like a hashtag who care? Yeah. Yeah, like who who cares what joe biden even did five years ago Yeah, and it's just like well that this is the thing whether it's social security or the iraq war

Dave just we've just decided none of it matters. She is a third mic on our new show Yeah, okay before we get too deep into this slamming her um Yeah, well also I think the rony is going to Like soft and trump up in the general obviously with as you said uh a corollary economic Collapse so so everyone's feeling just as sure as ever that biden will coast in But that means that yes, they want to wrap it up all the quicker

I mean also the like look at what's happening in congress now where it's like, you know Like the thing being bandied about today is this like, you know You're like tom cotton talking about like we got to give cash to like every american or whatever and it's like romney too Yeah, like romney and no they're like it's it's like an insane fail You know, it's not really like a misfire of the democrats because they've they're engineered to lose and their will is to lose But it is really striking how quickly like the republicans are the ones with like a bold face policy proposal About like cash in every pocket and like nancy polosi and shucks. I mean shucks humors, you know They're putting out their own proposal. I guess but just like getting beaten to the punch like this and just like like it's uh

I mean it would be embarrassing if it if it wasn't like again by design Well, yeah, at what point do you have to include that it absolutely is by design? Yeah, not just like a flaw of their that they're just so like disciplined and democratic Sharon Brown has come forward also saying Yes, we need cash, but it should be me insisted So he is his he is also bidding to the right Of the the opening republican bid on a fucking temporary ubi. I mean, that's why this is This this is I mean we've been talking about how we're in uncharted territory One of the things that might come out of this is the thing people have talked about for years

Uh, the evidence has mostly been rhetorical, uh, but you know the the possibility always existed that the republicans run to the left Uh, it's like a broad populist way Like they do like a war communism type response to this thing Uh, and the democrats spend a whole time kicking and screaming and trying to like means test it and and shins and and cut it down from the right, uh and become uh, essentially obsolete Yeah, I mean, yeah, and that's and then and we get essentially a one-party state where the republicans are divided between the racist neoliberals and the racist national socialists. Yeah And the democrats are the wigs or something. Yeah, uh, and and that's what'll happen if no

meaningful left force Can fill the gigantic gap right now left by a party that is completely in denial Uh determined to anoint this just senile, uh, uh fossil to the presidency and to continue to be seen as ineffectual penny pinching dipshits in congress and There's no one to stop it. I mean the bernie campaign We talk about how this is like he's being vindicated and everything he's ever said and yet it's not translating into anyone wreck making those connections because I don't think we're we can make those connections anymore and any any any

Social why there's no common experience for us to compare notes across So there's no way for us to all like have that moment of wow Like I said, I think like 2008 ended 2008 and the response to that and the obama campaign I think it kind of broke that I don't know if we can ever do that again and so There needs to be a concerted left Uh effort here to provide an alternative to what's coming But there's no structure for it and the bernie campaign was supposed to be the first step in creating a structure and providing

You know a breeding ground for left organizing, you know, but you know We were supposed to have a little bit of time before this sort of extreme crisis happened It's a little early. So there's just nothing on the ground to Do anything about it and you know, I was reading. Uh, I was reading my favorite, um online news website of vox.com this morning And um, one of the one of the vox boys, uh interviewed megan day And like the entire you know concept of the interview is that like wow, uh, bernie sanders is over Will you admit now that you were wrong and that bernie sanders was wrong?

And then like the overall tone of it is that obviously vox has been 100 against bernie sanders from the very beginning, right? But they're like, you know, why can't you just admit that, you know Voters just aren't buying what bernie sanders selling and will you take any responsibility for that? And that like do you think maybe if he you know, we're more like me Or like catered more to our like, you know policy prescriptions in worldview that voters would like him better Which is hilarious because like elizabeth warren is like the perfect test case for that She ain't shit. Absolutely not not a single person bought her whereas bernie sanders Let's be honest was the frontrunner up until a couple weeks ago and is still basically

Kind of toe-to-toe with the entire apparatus of the democratic party And he still beats biden on like fairly like when put head-to-head on like fairly key questions of like Who is a better like who is a better person? And the way and the way they frame it is he's like, you know, like I see socialists like often blame the media for like Why like bernie sanders like voters perceptions of bernie sanders like doesn't matter it like match, you know their own And and what he said was like look I'd be lying if I said the media didn't massively influence voters perceptions of politics and reality But now that we've done our job

You need to wrestle with the fact of like why that's the case But it's not our fault and like a perfect example of that is that like in the same interview He's like look well. Yeah, you know polls are unreliable and voters Are ideologically incoherent and can be prompted one way or another to say like oh We should have a safe choice or versus like we need to change the fundamentally change the economy But they're like, you know on issue by issue like Medicare for all is a perfect example of that Overwhelmingly democratic voters and all voters are in favor of it But they also think that joe biden is for Medicare for all right and like the media just like they're just like oh

Well, that just happened, you know, what was the case did we do that? Like certainly not like they just believe that for some reason when it's just like no like they Do exist to to manage and discipline like the parameters of what is possible and what it can be believed Of among voters right and like it's just like there's a big did I do that thing that I'm getting from a lot of these people Where it's just like they say in one breath Well, like obviously we influence everything about like what people believe and how they perceive reality But then once we've done our job It's like it's your fault now or you have to deal with that fact and like also not blame us because then that's

Like you're shirking responsibility or something like that right they they they rely on the idea that They're simply a prism, you know, that they're that they're just a If anything like kind of filter through which people get facts that they interpret and they represent but that ultimately They don't change in any meaningful way or contaminate in any meaningful way And so their responsibility for any misperceptions still lie on behalf of sander's campaign the left whatever and that I'm sure they believe that in their head. And so yeah, why would they think they they hold any responsibility? There's a a guy I think about a lot ben bagdeke in who is it like a an editor at the washington post years ago Was later the dean of berkeley j school. He's played by bob odin kirk. Yes in the

Steven Spielberg movie, right? Yeah, yeah And bagdeke in like late like, you know It was like a big proponent of like the idea that the biggest blind spot in american journalism is like capitalism and the cap And like specifically the role that the media industry play like or the news media industry plays Within capitalism like as such in terms of like enforce like in terms of its business model And how it's meant to enforce those kinds of ideas And it's like kind of wild to think that like the conversation and the like degree to which like that observation Has just not sunk in

For like, you know, like 50 years 60 years like, you know, there's been no Like the like evolution like there's been no evolution in thought about that and we're still dealing with like the same like simplistic attitude And it's like gotta take like, I mean, I have no idea what could crack Well, journalism has also been reduced to, you know, I mean it's hanging by a thread is that the business models are all dying or dead And the consolidation has happened, you know, quicker than I think everyone thought And so you have this atomization of what the way people get media and and then just a few giants up top who all Think and want the same stuff Um, so journalism is I mean, it's it's much worse than it was probably even at that time

And we also don't you know, we like should could like give money to like make journalism happen The state can do that other countries do it. It's just that like we of course, we don't like the kremlin You want to do? I want american rt. Absolutely But it's just like I think on some level they are they must be aware that the media in this country outside of I don't know democracy now jack event and this show Is top to bottom universally hostile to bernie sanders and everything he stands for and will in every single way um

Poison the well in in terms of the way they cover him or just not cover him And then like now that they've done that they're just saying well Oh, like you have to deal with that or like we won't even admit to it I mean, there's something too in the sense that that was always the reality that needed to be confronted and complaining about it Doesn't really change it you had to have a plan and they did the bernie sand pain has had a plan to try to Overcome the the media hostility. It just didn't work And I mean it's very disingenuous for the vox motherfuckers act like they are not largely responsible But there it does have to be a real question

A search and for the answers to why The specific reasons that the mobilization strategy for the sanders campaign did not bear the fruit that it needed to Yeah, I mean like I said before I mean like it bore a lot of fruit I mean it's sort of like the question is oh no Yes, it needed to do more and it always did and it didn't and we need to reckon with why well And it just that and we need to reckon with it pretty fucking quick because We're entering in new territory now that I like I've said we've all been saying no one knows what's gonna happen But I mean talk about a fucking crisis of legitimacy, you know in basically every sector and institution we have

And how is that? How are we going to respond to it? Like I mean In a situation where we're seeing every single Politician and political institution show itself to be completely incapable of dealing with the moment What is the only institution in this country that people actually trust and respect and and give any kind of A faith in their podcast. Yes. There's one other one. Does anyone want the military? Yes. That's the one. Yeah, I mean I don't know where this ends up But I just know that the political the political sphere seems to be shrinking very very quickly

Well, if you want to talk about a crisis of legitimacy at least as far as like Our two democratic or two, you know political parties that we are offered in this country just back to this The Pelosi's paid sick leave bill where they're just like they could have passed like does not take supermajority Like they control like the House of Representatives and then with the position they started from Is something that will exclude 80% of all workers from getting paid sick leave and they're like yep We've done paid sick leave now time to dust off the hands. Yeah comically And it's just like yeah vote blue no matter who right? Yep. This is what we're voting for coughing directly into each other's mouths

Yep. Yeah, again. I don't know what you say about that But like you should keep that in mind when people just tell you that like It's your moral duty and like, you know to vote for the democratic part vote for Joe Biden in the general election If he's the nominee If he doesn't it's just like It just feels more and more like as the crisis deepens and as more radical steps are being considered The democratic party will be less and less relevant as an institution to that process You know what I mean? I mean and they're doing it on purpose because they want to abdicate their responsibility because yes

Because my god, I mean they don't want to do what they say they want to do in the best of times They sure as shit wouldn't want to do Do what they're claiming to want to do during the with the mandate and sort of accelerated timetable and loosened uh restraints of a significant Social crisis and that in that desire to continue to fundraise while president cheeto is in power or some republican and That they'll look good by definition in comparison. Oh, we wish we were in there, you know But we're not at least keep giving us money

So we're gonna let the republicans do things like give everybody money and suspend rent and and then when they run for them But then when we do reestablish elections if that ever fucking happens They're gonna be like we're the guys who kept your lights on and kept you from getting evicted when you're fucking with hiding out Where you were hiding from the coronavirus. Yeah Well, fucking Nancy Pelosi was our and steny Hoyer and shit. We're talking about like well How can we make sure that this is a means tested so it doesn't go to people who don't deserve it But they may not realize of course that that could push them into the historical Obsolete category of also ran party. I think they're you know, they're they're hoping it keeps them as you know

Did that perfectly placed kind of grift loyal opposition thing? But as you say it could actually just sort of evaporate any efficacy of the democratic party to ever come back And big biden's success. I think for a lot of them is just being taken as proof that like hey the thing works Like you know, yeah, like we're like, you know, it's like a fairly the fact that he was able to you know With an enormous amount of assistance like it was the pulp fiction heart chest cavity Pump Where are they just shoved a vile full of Pete and Amy and Bloomberg, you know and literal adrenaline Don't actually because I guarantee you before that debate. They did an actual reenactment of that scene

It into his chest and that that is what took him back to front runner status wasn't him. Yeah But they look at it now either with The the the real brains look at it cynically, but I'm sure a lot of people look at it go Yeah, Joe had and he was down or they look at it the other way Which is that it's like well, Joe like the people want to Joe and the voters Like that's like like that is what they go to and it's like, oh shit They're interpreting this as like a democratic mandate to like, you know, do like means tested like mortgage tax credits or something Yeah, I'm not going to pretend to know whether or not

There was a that Bernie only had a plurality because I mean obviously the number of candidates was a huge factor But let's say we got beyond that I don't know whether it was just a push like you blow and it just sort of all would have fallen over And electability conceptions of electability was the only thing or maybe there was more work to be done You know and that and that people still Needed to be won over but there was we're never going to know now because the way that they marshaled that just hive mind Zergling rush of pete amy

You know bloomberg Obliterated the entire problem for them. Well, I would actually say that coronavirus is the zerg and that I think they were like Be set upon Felix isn't here. So no one else is going to jump into this stupid video game bullshit It definitely makes you think that It makes me suspect in any way that if Biden had been stronger from the get-go if he had If he had more of trust of high-level donors and politicians

If he had more of an actual network of supporters and like Genuine clients within the democratic party from the beginning that he would have kept a lot of these knuckleheads from running in the first place Sure And in that situation, I don't know if bernie ever would have looked like a frontrunner even for a minute. All right. Well, um Like like I said back to the debate itself and like biden's litany of just bald-faced lies and I think like well, there's two things There's one that I think is hilarious is that just just yesterday he announced like, yeah Like listen mac like i'm adopting Elizabeth Warren and bernie sanders part of their free college tuition program

Or it's just like that's the thing he's going to be like Hey, take take this dummies like hey like yeah, well, I'll give you this is a scrap. I'll throw you by the way I'm sure he'll vigorously pursue this absolute policy. It's like obama did with cardshack. Yeah. Yeah, exactly Did you guys talk about the leaked thing of who would be in his cabinet? Oh, yeah Yeah, j.b. Diamond j.b. Diamond and Elizabeth or Elizabeth Warren for treasury secretary, which is hysterical Yeah, that's always like one of those great examples of just like like who knows what the fuck to think about that because I do love this They like that just feels that is like the most like drunk throne. Well, there's teacups like teacups used to tweet like health health secretary

Ben Carson Treasury Mitt Romney because he did business David Clark as homeland security chief Cop person, you know, and it was just this infants idea of like names you attach to jobs And then the biden thing was just honestly points for honesty It was just like bankers and then Liz Warren Even though she's supposed to hate bankers, but they'll work together under the biden administration Yeah, but also Uh, I mean also how they're gonna pass that, you know, oh, yeah, we're never tell you how they're gonna get it done

How are you gonna get it through the senate? Yeah, okay That's amazing. That is the funniest shit in the world Is that is that biden shit is subject to every single question about procedure that bernie's is Because the republicans are no more likely to pass biden care than the single payer zero percent You get zero you get as many republican votes for biden care as you would for Public option. No, but this leads you to the actual problem that they will never talk about Which is that what they're really discussing when they're going over like that hemming and hawing over what's possible Is actually over. Can you even get democrats to vote for it?

Yes, yeah, Joe fucking mention vote for this bill Like that's the negotiation that they're making like internally and it's just like a reveal But it's like it's psychotic. Yeah, it's it's a hostage. It's like arguing It's like a crazy guy with like a mirror and a gun like pointed at his head like shouting Like like don't make me do it. Don't make me do it Get these lines right I'm gonna blow your fucking brains out tonight All right, your brains are gonna be splattered all over your goddamn pool

I'm mean it motherfucker Get your shit together. Uh, okay. There was another big one was uh, Joe Biden's role in writing the bankruptcy bill No, he didn't do that. He was he absolutely No, he when he said about that is like look the bill is gonna get passed anyway So that by writing it and voting for it. I was managed to make it slightly less worse than he was There you go. I mean you could that is that is the reput that is the democratic Pitch in the last 40 years condensed to one fucking sentence. It was gonna be even worse if I wasn't there, right? It would have been worse if I wasn't there

And then and Bernie's response to that was like well You could have done what I did which is vote against and try to marshal support against this awful bill rather than being like Oh, yeah, I'll I'll write it that way I'll write it and pass it. Yeah, no It's so bad that I need to write it and pass it into law so I can prevent it for being Even worse than it would have been that sounds very I mean it's hard to imagine how that bankruptcy bill could have been Even worse than it actually turned out as listen here fat He didn't write the bill. He didn't he didn't vote for it

He didn't ever say no, so because he'd never said to cut Social Security. He didn't vote for the Iraq war I don't know what you're talking about. Also the thing what his name is bernie sanders actually I'm the guy's trying to beat biden You guys remember the thing what he said about politifact and how like yeah, well, you guys say Like the most incredible like ref begging like just bullshit like that was a crazy how it was like I mean it was That's media serving its purpose right there. Yeah. Yeah, and we get quite When they got into that ref working and shit because like obviously like the moderators were not not going to call out anyone

Or except not going to call out biden. I should say uh like Bernie sanders be like, oh, okay. All right. Well if you watch this at home go to the youtube Go to the youtube go to the google. Yeah, and then when Joe Biden would have to like, you know cite facts or sources You'd be like go to Joe biden.com Just check out Joe Biden.com fact check on Joe biden.com go to the fact go to the frequently asked questions jack Yeah, go to the fat go to the fat back. Listen to the fact the fat fact Yeah, um, but like okay, so the like let's let's move into uh Your your new your new project and like again probably the number one thing that you know still to this day

Obsesses and fascinates me is the war in Iraq. Well, we we have an episode with well by the way You're in it. You're in it too. Um And that like, you know that when they got into foreign policy and bernie sanders is like look You everyone who voted for that war authorization like knew it was you were giving bush to go ahead to go to war biden's excuse or his response to that is basically He has said I never believed Sonoma had what was a mass destruction and I had to give bush the authority to go to war To prove that son that he didn't have any that's what he said just the other day

Why last year he had a completely different explanation when challenged on it again Which is he said what people usually say which is I was duped and that they tricked me So he's gone from I was duped to no, I was actually playing 12th dimensional chess I was doing irony where I even though, you know, we all know this is false I was trying to give them authorization so they could go into iraq 2003 by the way, this is the rather this vote was 2002 october 2002 And there was a march to war

There was still a window there though where there could have been a real an actual loyal opposition if you want to use that phrase The anti-war movement was starting to coalesce Biden was of course incredibly strong and solid supporter of the war and made it clear in his like three hour long Speech when he voted for it. We had to ripple out I had to rip a lot of audio to you know, drip it into the show and Hillary Clinton I'll give her this when she voted for the war basically took about 10 minutes said, you know, uh, let's go in Got off the podium. Biden talked for like honestly hours and hours and hours and I just kept looking to see if the file was done yet

But he went on forever and in it he says We have to dislodge. He has to dislodge his weapons or we will dislodge him And then the last year he says well, I was duped and then this year He says no, I was trying to do a secret un mission to defeat the bush administration It's exactly the same justification as for the bankruptcy bill. He was like look, I knew the war was going to happen Therefore, like I should be a part of the war and have some say in how it's carried out Not that like the very idea of carrying it out is an insane atrocity Correct. And here's the thing that really drives me insane about this because like, you know, biden now

like 15 20 years after the fact has to say shit like, um Yeah, it was a mistake and I admit that and I've admitted in the past So stop asking me about it and then he'll say but listen listen He said this on stage last night the idea that like, you know, bernie sanders has better foreign policy judgment than me I'll have that debate anytime. Well, it's just like, okay. You're having that debate right now You just gave the textbook example of how fatally poisoned your judgment is And that like you help kill a million innocent people for like no fucking reason So like how can you admit that it was a mistake and then like if you admit that you did that as a mistake

Why are you running for president? Why are you even on tv? Why haven't you killed yourself in shame? Not only that and I think we want to we probably want to use this episode We talk about joe biden in the show joe biden is is one of the people that you know We we discuss as far as his support for the war and then once the war is underway. We can talk in a second about another horrible idea He had to fix it But he was the chair of the senate for relations committee during the iraq war. Yeah, this was not he was not even some bystander He had if you if you really want to rank these things one of the most important places in the senate to genuinely view the evidence To genuinely make a case to his colleagues about why it was a good idea or a bad idea

And he was among the first people to get you know intelligence from all sorts of like dubious characters who we get into in our show Like achman chalabi and like all of The dark store the darker side of the corn pop saga Yeah, it was it was kerbal and corn pop those were the two sources for mostly intel And you know german intelligence had already vetted corn pop. Yeah, I have to be unreliable. Yeah, and a bike chain wielding That's fun. Yeah, he had that quote. Yeah, he had he had like an enormous amount of insight into this And it's just like obviously as brennan has said just like painted himself as a bystander Yes, when that now he does yeah now now he does the time he was all too happy to say

I think this is a march to peace. I'm I'm proud of what we're doing here So yeah, it is infuriating to watch any of that and if you like we should mention once the war was underway He came up with the idea around 2006. I believe Uh, when a civil war was I mean the Iraq became a butcher's slab Courtesy of the united states. He came up with the idea of ethnically cleansing the three main factions in the country and carving it up British imperial style in real time to just make it three new countries

Which is probably the only thing that would have made things. Yeah, it's like the you Like probably couldn't have come up with the worst plan in a lot like so he supported the war And then when he wanted to end it he wanted to do ethnic cleansing Which is like the worst position you could have and the other amazing thing he did at the debate last night to talk about the war in Iraq, he's like yes I not only did I vote for it, but I was like a loud Loud cheerleader for the war and not that but like but also attacking anyone who questioned the wisdom of You know launching an invasion of Iraq, but then like to get out of that. He said listen

the the the Abadabadabadabadabadabad administration the barack barack america administration And the first thing he did when he came in there, he said, Joe, end the war. And I did. Yeah, yeah. He didn't have to say that. He was like put into, he's, phrases like he was put in charge

of ending the war in Iraq, which I mean, whatever. I guess he knew all the fucking warlords and like disgusting scarface type guys we were working with maybe so he could whisper in their ear. Also like the war in Iraq ended and then what happened? Yeah, well, we get into that as well. So no, the knock on effects from good old Joe's decisions every step of the way.

Joe's folly. Yes. But like, you know, again, like, and you guys have like done a shitload of research into this. And like, again, this is really not that long ago. No, no. But like, it seems like it was a million years ago the way people talk about it.

Or like, but like, how, like, you're like, how does like the war on terror, but the Iraq war specifically, like, how is that like kind of the emperor of all maladies of like the twenty, twenty-first century American imperial collapse and rot? Sure. Well, the most important thing is what we did to Iraq and the Iraqi people, obviously, that's that's front and center.

You know, you can look at the utter destruction of a country both through whether it be and we actually really want to emphasize this in the show. We have an episode on the Gulf War before we even get to the Iraq war, the sanctions throughout the nineties, the the incredibly punitive and the psychotic intentional destruction of Iraqi infrastructure and particularly their electrical grid, which purified their water, huge

outbreak of disease accompanied the sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands of people. That's softened Iraq up for the Iraq war to be as bad as it was. And that was the noble statesman, George H.W. Bush, not his cowboy, Yosemite Sam's son, H.W. gets often a free pass and saying he did it the right way. And W. was this messy, you know, black sheep of the family

who came along and fucked it all up. But the invasion itself, the nineties, and then of course the actual carnage that rolled out destroyed a nation. That's one thing and is good enough to do a show on in general. But also at home, this is where we invent the Home Department of Homeland Security. ICE comes out of the war on terror and more than that,

the actual gearing up to treat this as a civilizational conflict that involves Iraq, the deficit in any kind of trust in government, WMDs being the linchpin of the case and being revealed to have been false. When Trump got up there in 2016 and effectively ran against the Iraq war, especially when he was running against Jeb Bush, all these hogs in the audience who would have told you a couple months earlier, I still think

they're in Syria personally, the WMD, they immediately dropped all that. They didn't give a shit. They just saw a strong man who was willing to exploit brilliantly that deficit of trust within their own party, let alone the government at large, and run away with it. And he was a steamroller at that point. Once you saw a Republican running against the Iraq war

and against anyone who was associated with it as like cuck, neocon, untrustworthy creeps, he was on his way. I mean, that was it. And then running in a general election against Hillary Clinton, a candidate who also supported the Iraq war. And supported it, no matter what they like to say now, she also supported it throughout the execution of the war. And we don't do this in the show per se, but I interviewed

Cindy Sheehan a couple years ago. And she said, I was trying to meet with Hillary almost near the 2008 election, and she canceled a meeting with me and the anti-war moms. She went over and she had an event with the pro-war moms to prove that she was still representing the families who fight our wars. And that was way after the initial psychosis that got us

into Iraq. So all these people that we still live with, these institutions, and the NSA, name it, ICE, the NSA, the National Security State, given a huge shot in the arm at that time by Democrats and Republicans. And then, of course, the violence in Iraq that gave way to a proxy war between Iraq and Iran that is constantly exploited.

And Trump, obviously, made his mark on a couple months ago. All this shit we still live with. And it wasn't that long ago. And we want to take a look at exactly how we got there so that next time you see a headline or a tweet or whatever, you know where some of this stuff actually comes from. And the other thing that's amazing to me about this is that after Trump kicked open the door, and certainly now in

Democratic primary, at every single level in American politics, like a national level, or even a local level, there is nobody who is running as a proud defender of the war in Iraq. It is universally acknowledged after, again, and at the time it was going on, I never thought this would have ever happened. Because the top to bottom, the media, the political class,

at every level of authority in this country, from the New York Times, the New Yorker, at every level of liberal institutional authority, certainly conservative media outlets, was four square in favor of the war in Iraq. And to be against it was just simply a not serious position to hold. That if you would instantly mark you as an outsider, I cannot stress, if you were too young at the time, just how

marginal and insane you were made to feel for being against the Iraq war, not as a tactical mistake or that it was badly prosecuted or incompetently done, but the concept of it itself is an atrocity. It was a needless, unnecessary war that was sold to the American people on lies, on straight up, not things that were misstatements or false, self-conscious lies. Like the people who did this on purpose and they knew the

things that we're saying were not true. They were false. Basically, everyone accepts that at some level or another now, but especially among liberals, like again, face of the prospect of Joe Biden being the Democratic nominee or Hillary Clinton before him, they basically look at it like, yes, voting to authorize the Iraq war and give Georgia W Bush the authority to start one of the most disastrous wars

in American history, that was a mistake. But it's a mistake on par with, I don't know, voting not to raise interest rates or just like a weird technocrat, like a parking ticket violation. I mean, one of the things that in the process of making the show that I think Brennan and I both found was that there was like an incredibly, like the amount of distance that the military and the Pentagon bureaucracy and the Bush

White House sought to put between what was happening on the ground and how they characterized it and weren't denial about it. Like I think that that partly contributes to that kind of amnesia and to like why people are able because they, you know, they weren't, even if they knew at the time, they want to forget now, like, you know, that we use, for instance, like radioactive material when fighting, you

know, insurgents in Fallujah. There was a forced labor system designed for Fallujah, you know, I don't think a lot of people know that. I don't think a lot of people know this kind of stuff. And I'm sure that Joe Biden fucking knew it, but he didn't wait, I don't know about this. What is this in Fallujah after so 2004, one of the most, you know, horrifying set pieces of the war.

It was a stronghold of Sunni insurgents. I mean, just to put it out a second, like every time you hear about a battle, like that is a set piece. I mean, it's already like, you know, really just some like a bit of American theater. Yeah, I'm using the running dog terminology, but yes. And it was, it was a stronghold for quote, unquote, insurgents, which was why that won't happen in Fallujah right

after the invasion that might have led that to happen. The, the, the, the idea, of course, throughout the entire war was that the insurgents were all al-Qaeda, you know, foreign fighters, foreign fighters could not stress this enough coming from Syria and other bad places led by Zarkawi, who was a guy that funnily enough we had said was al-Qaeda in Iraq, but for all intents and purposes, which is some asshole.

But then we, when we invaded, he became and seized the day and said, well, now I can actually exploit this vacuum and get a bunch of guys on my side. And he actually did become al-Qaeda in Iraq, but that was still a very, very small portion of the insurgency. Most of them were nationalists who just wanted us fucking out. Fallujah was a stronghold in a largely Sunni part of the country in which they had been completely disenfranchised and,

you know, raids happening in their homes. Well, there was the big massacres, remember? Yes, you want to speak on it? There, shortly after the invasion, there was a big protest in front of an American military base and the U.S. military guys just opened fire on them and killed a bunch of them. And that like set the tone for their response to everything that came after.

There was a sense among the Sunnis in Iraq that, you know, especially because they had been, you know, Saddam was a Sunni clique regime and all of a sudden they were pushed out of any meaningful participation or like future of Iraq. So you had all these things boiling over that resulted in a clear insurgency. And when Fallujah blew up, or rather when we blew it up, I mean, millions or hundreds of thousands of people fled the

city. It became rubble, much like people think of Aleppo or whatever today and the liberal guilt over, you know, Syria. This was not applied to a place that we were doing that to in Fallujah. But once people came back, the males were conscripted into a, yeah, forced labor. It was, I mean, you were paid, whatever that fucking meant in

the middle of the Iraq Civil War, to rebuild the rubble that we made sure was on the ground and that there, I think, cars were also banned. People had like papers with them at all times. Like, you know, I mean, just Nazi shit that we were doing in this country, particularly, you know, in one specific part of the country, but not the only place. And so I don't think a lot of people know this stuff.

And as far as, you know, to bring it back to Biden and the intelligence going in or the intelligence that was coming out of the country, everyone knew that the war was already in motion in 2002. Tommy Franks and Rumsfeld had started drawing up the plans in November 2001 when Bush told Rumsfeld to start looking at options for Iraq. So the idea that the Senate Foreign Relations Chair didn't

know that this was not going to be an inspection, this was not going to be a knock on the door. It was going to be, at the end of the day, an excuse for a full-fledged invasion and occupation is bullshit. And Biden knew it. And this is now scrubbed from all of our memories, because as you say, even the moderators go, wasn't that a bit of a blunder?

It wasn't a blunder. We all knew it was going, or they all knew it was going to happen. And they were happy to support it. Or like if you say like, OK, like I said, like, get back to my original point, it's like, if you're able to admit that the war is a mistake because you essentially have to at this point, then what you're actually saying is what I knew and

people in the anti-war movement knew to be true all along. It was that it was not a mistake of judgment. It was a war of aggression against another country that killed probably a million people, which is, I'm sorry, Hitler-level evil shit. So like, once you admit that to yourself, there's no follow-through on the moral or political ramifications of it whatsoever.

Yes. And we obviously, like the occupation in particular, the invasion was relatively swift. I'm not talking morally here, I'm just talking about the competence of the American Empire. The invasion was relatively swift. There actually were some fuck-ups there as well. But the occupation and everything that came after

that is what I think most people think of as the incompetence and the bungling and all that. And there is bungling and there is incompetence. We don't want to short-sell that. But largely speaking, the policies were deliberate. And the carnage that they brought about were deliberate. It wasn't as though because the way George W. Bush gets some, he's basically Frank Drebben now.

He's like a lovable oaf who goes on Ellen. I don't know what happened back then. It wasn't great, but his heart's in the right place. And who cares or even remembers now? That's a major motivating factor for us to do the show in the first place. But these policies were deliberate. And so there are funny things.

We want this to be like the, I don't know, Cohen or Safty brother's retelling of the Iraq war. We want to get into all the corruption and all the weird absurdity of it. But we also want to, much as you guys do still on this show, mix the hybrid on the low brow, the funny and the depraved. So you have things like in the occupation, Paul Bremmer, the vice-roy of Iraq, to Iraq's spiritual leader of the Shia

community, this Ayatollah, the envoy he sent was not a religious scholar or any kind of fellow Imam himself, but a dick doctor who had patented a bunch of penile implant technologies that could speak Arabic. That was our envoy to the main guy of the Shia community. We were hoping he would make us hog big. Yeah, I mean, maybe that was the message. I don't know.

But then we have all of the worst people's kids in the Republican administration getting jobs, like designing the new urban planning of Iraq, writing the constitution, these like 18 and 19 and 20 year old go first. Like Heritage Foundation interns. Mark Levin's kid. The radio guy? Yes.

Mark Levin's kid had a job. Wait, let me make sure that I'm getting it right. There's another one. There's another Mark, isn't there? Savage. No, yeah, it's Mark Levin. Yeah, it is Mark Levin. And Paul Bremmer was obviously this dandy who put combat

boots underneath his Brooks Brothers suit. And people were fucking in the porta-potties in the green zone. It was a farce, but it was also an incredibly world historical civilization destroying farce. And we try to talk about that as well. So, and actually, by the way, I have here the, I brought a prop.

This is the card deck. Oh, yes, yes, Iraq's most wanted. This is the deck of cards. The playing cards when we were going in. They gave every enlisted man so that they could under, like, yes, see and familiarize themselves with the high value targets of the Saddam regime. These were the top bath party guys.

Let's see. Six of hearts here. Muhammad Mahdi Al-Salla, Minister of Trade. Yep. Saddam is obviously the ace. We could do like an animal house style thing where they are right now. Yeah.

Animal house. Let's see. House. House. King of diamonds. Let's see. Aziz Saleh Al-Numan, Bath Party Regional Command Chairman, responsible for West Baghdad.

Yep. Sort of looks like Christopher Plummer, kind of. Sure. Yeah, yeah. The casting, I want to find out what happened to these guys. Give me a guy. Five of clubs. Let's see here.

We've got Barzan Ibrahim Hassan Al-Takriti. He's just a presidential advisor. We hit almost none of these guys going in, by the way. There were all these strikes or whatever in the initial invasion to try and decapitate the leadership, so-called. That Barzan guy got executed in 2007. Right. I think slowly but surely, this deck

was probably, like the human faces on this deck, were liquefied. But most of the time during the invasion, we just took out a shitload of civilians. Oh my god, I'm glad I looked this guy up. So that guy, you randomly said Takriti. So he was executed in 2007, along with his co-defendants, Saddam and former.

So he was executed as part of the Saddam trial. Right. There were two other guys with Saddam. And the former Chief Justice of the Revolutionary Court, when he was hanged, he was accidentally decapitated. Because the rope was too long. First time? Yeah, and a lot of the guys were named Takriti because Saddam

comes from the village near the town of Takriti. And so I think a lot of the guys' last names on the deck there are Takriti quote unquote last names. But yeah, and then we get into the Saddam lore, his family. We get into a lot of the first episode is actually all about the 20th century history. Yeah, it's sort of about, it's the connective tissue, I think, to kind of explain how America meddled

in the middle of the 20th century and why we did it. And it makes very, very clear how we would then become friends with Saddam in the 70s and 80s. And then why we would turn on Saddam before destroying Saddam, his government, and his country. As far back as the 60s, the Baath Party was like the hot new nationalist cell inside of Iraq. And Saddam was joining it right around the time

the Iraqis had a revolution in the 50s. But by 63, the CIA very, very, very likely was at least involved in his party's installation. They fell out of power for a little bit, but then they stuck the landing in 16th. What were they hedging against in installing them in the first place? Would you be surprised to know it was communism?

Oh, OK. All right. Wait, this rhymes. Yeah, yeah, our first episode is a lot of Cold War politics. And we start with the British, obviously, but we move on from them pretty quickly to the Americans taking over. And it's a lot of Cold War politicking.

And the Soviets came to the West a couple of times in the late 50s and said, hey, how about none of us intervene in the Middle East anymore? It's going to get real messy. It's probably a bad idea. We can work this shit out diplomatically. They wanted to draw down all bases, all foreign troops, and arms embargo to everybody.

And the US said, to quote Dr. Ivo, how about no? And we ratchet it up every single possible way to play against the Soviets in Iraq, in particular. And that was giving comfort and material and intelligence. And perhaps even the ascension to power of the Ba'ath Party, which would, of course, introduce the career of Saddam Hussein. And then when our enemy changed a bit, when our rivalry with the Soviet Union

wasn't enough of an activity or a pastime for American Empire, and we began working against the Islamic Republic of Iran, we then teamed up with the Iraqi government to wage war there as well. And was the longest protracted sustained conflict. It was the longest conventional war of the 20th century. And we get into this in a bit more detail in our show. But I mean, we literally gave the Iraqi military

the coordinates to conduct chemical attacks. And we saw the anthrax. And then just a few years before we initiated the Gulf War. So there's a lot that happens there. But I think that one of the things that I feel pretty strongly about with this show is that those sorts of pieces of the story are so essential to understanding

a lot of why we were there in the first place and why a lot of these really powerful people would want to have amnesia about it. Because it's not just like it's an atrocity that we committed in the mid-2000s, but it's part of an entire rotted, fucked-up scissors. It's a part of an entire rotted, fucked-up system of which they're all key players.

One thing I'm really hoping people can get from the show, especially early on in this episode, too, is that the sanctions in the 90s and the Gulf War were as big of a crime, actually, as the Iraq War itself. It killed probably around the same amount of people. And it emissorated the country in a way that we really had never actually done to someone else before.

Bit of a tonal shift, though. Did you know that Saddam was once given the key to the city of Detroit? Really? What for? Yes. There was a Chaldean church. And it was the first year of his presidency. If I'm not mistaken, it was 1979.

And he had sent money to this church in Detroit. And they got the mayor to give them the key to the city. And they went over, as like a delegation from America, to the Republican palace and said, thank you so much for supporting Christian minorities, maybe, in the Middle East and then also us in America. And he said, oh, yeah, no problem. Do you guys need any more money?

And they said, actually, we do. And he said, here's another check. And he gave them a quarter million dollars. And I don't know if the key was prominently displayed in the Republican palace, but that's how close. The Motor City Bath Moon. Yeah. There he is.

But yeah, so there's a lot of stuff. It's a little ambitious, maybe overambitious. We try to go from the first episode is all that kind of backstory. And then we take it till about Isis until the last episode ends around there. Yeah. All right, well, just to wrap this up and bring it back

to the president and our current political catastrophe that we're dealing with. We're a fucking unfuck crustable sackpastrophe. It goes back to this idea that the Iraq war was something that was supported by every single major institution of American intellectual, political, and media power, with very few exceptions, across the board from liberal to conservative.

Even some sections of the left, like the kind of liberal left, like the Hitchhits or whatever. No, no, I mean like Descent's magazine, Michael Walter. So yes, it was unilateral. Now we all realize, oh, our bad, that was a mistake. But every single person who helped this happen. And by that, I mean either advocated for it in the forms of op-eds or wrote disingenuous news articles

that stovepiped phony intelligence directly to the American public. That's the episode Will is on for everybody who's going to listen. Will comes on to talk about the media. Every single one of these people are still on your TV, not only just telling you what should happen as far as America is rolling the world or what our foreign policy should be,

but even more than that, like hectoring you, like making a moral argument for why you should still continue to listen to them. And first of all, there was no one ever on TV or in any op-ed page who was against it who could be on your TV now, because they never were. But it's just like, how do we begin to deal with the fact that all of these people are not just still with us,

but have been promoted? And of my favorite example, Jennifer Rubin was one of the most hawkish neocon ghouls, one of the most right-wing voices in the Washington Post for years, for two decades almost, has now totally come back and rebranded herself as like the Democratic Party Whisperer. And she is out there on TV and in print almost every day

with the expectation that you, as a Democratic voter, take her advice seriously on what the Democratic Party should do and how they should behave and what they should advocate for. I don't know, like, I guess, like, I don't have an ad. This is a rhetorical question. I just don't know what to make of that or what to do with that. No, I think looking at it square in the face

is one of those things that'll sober you up about what America is really capable of and what it's really about. I mean, you mentioned Jennifer Rubin, David Fromm. A lot of these administration people are their sympathizers in the media. Also in the military, this one general named Spider Marx, who was on the ground discovering there was no WMD, he almost comes across as sympathetic in some of the accounts,

not in a very limited sense, as far as someone who was like, this was bullshit. But I saw a clip of him on TV when the Silamani stuff happened. He was all about banging the war drum against Iran. So it's not just. I mean, James Woolsey, who is. James Woolsey, former CIA director. He was the former CIA director under Clinton briefly

in the 90s. And on TV in the hours after 9-11, basically, he's already pointing the finger at Iraq. And Woolsey was the first and most high-profile intelligence community person to endorse Trump in 2016. And he's been part of the Trumpist inner circle now. And it's like these people haven't gone away. John Bolton is resistance now because he has a book out

or whatever. So no, they're all still here. And I think if you really want to understand the rot and then get angry about it and then channel it into the political will necessary, you have to look at shit like the other. But also, if you think about the rise of what would eventually become like Chompo or like podcasts or like social media.

The really important side of that. No, but I mean, in the Bush administration, that was the rise of the blogosphere. And like daily coasts. That was like the new, like a resurgent left. They were like, we're outside the mainstream. We are the people yelling from the street into the party going, you're all mad.

This is crazy. And throughout the entire Bush administration, if you were against the war in Iraq and the Bush administration, that was it. That was the leftmost possibility. And then as soon as Barack Obama got in, all those differences that were totally flattened by it, and we've revealed that how almost all of those people

were totally full of shit too. Case in point, how eager they are to support Joe Biden. The guy who, again, did this thing, he did it. He's just as responsible as George W. Bush. I mean, I know George W. Bush like spearheaded it. There was his idea, but Joe Biden and everyone like him in the Democratic Party, but him especially, is every bit as culpable as Dick Cheney.

Every fucking bit is culpable. And now these people are getting ready to scold you into fucking voting for him again. Yep, don't do it. Don't do it. We're going to do it. He's going to be president. He's going to be some sort of ventriloquist dummy.

They're just going to literally hollow him out. Who was the guy, Salazar? Yeah, Salazar. They told him you're still president. In Portugal, he had a stroke and all of his minions were scrambling to create a continuity of government, assuming he was going to die. And then he got better.

But they had moved on. So they kind of, for the rest of his life, pretended to him that he was still in charge. That's basically going to be Biden. That's going to be Biden. Just a few little things that happened while we were recording. Mike DeWine, governor of Ohio, has postponed the Ohio primary until June.

They're going to do, I think, just mail-in votes until then, until that deadline. He's a Republican. That would seem to be the responsible thing to do. Well, that's the thing. The only states that are likely to do it are Republican-run states. Democrat-run states want them to do it.

The death cult is death cult. In all of its different manifestations, I mean, we're seeing this whole thing as a fucking, is a tesseract of death cultory. Every emanation of capitalism driving towards the only way to respond to a significant crisis that could kill millions of people is to just drive into the skid and kill as many as possible because anything else

would disrupt things, would disrupt profit flows, or would disrupt power structures. And that can't happen. So we'll sacrifice millions on the fucking altar. If something is stupid, it's getting a few more fucking delegates for Joe fucking Biden. So the other thing is the Dow closed down 3,000 points, all-time single day drop record.

OK. All that Q, all that quantitative easing is really doing the work. All because we showed up to do a promo today. On that note, I should say, again, thanks for having us on. We hope everyone enjoys this new show. It's called Blow Back. Sorry.

Got nothing but time to listen to it. Yeah, I mean, if you're as you should be, if you're quarantining, there's 10 hours with the bonus giveaway that Chapo is kindly putting up today or tonight when you're hearing this. It's called Blow Back. Again, if you want a month free of Stitcher Premium, where the show is going to be for a while,

just go to stitcherpremium.com, promo code Blow Back. And we hope you listen and enjoy. And if you're listening at home and you're quarantined and you're seeing everything fall apart, and you're wondering, how can we deal with this, given the failure of institutions and electoral politics? A lot of people talk about dual power. I don't know really how much capacity we have for that.

But if you're looking at the Iraq War, Madi Army, a good example, a good little model, you know? And he's still around. He is. Now he is one of the most powerful politicians in Iraq. You'll meet all the stars in the Iraq War. So once again, I'd like to thank Noah and Brendan. The show is Blow Back.

And you will be getting just a little taster, a little test bag to spike up with. And for more information on the show, and if you want to check out some of the sources that we've used and so on, our website is blowback.show. And then on Twitter, our handle is at blowbackpod. I wonder what blowback.org is. Oh.

All right, so next time we'll be back later in the week for part two of our hyperjoker vacation. We are watching episodes three and four of the Hillary Clinton docu-series on Hulu. Well, I'll be doing it while wearing Venetian plague masks. The big reveal on episode four. She's patient zero of coronavirus. Cheers, guys.

Bye. This land is your land. This land is my land. I'm a Texas tiger. You're a liberal wiener. I'm a great crusader. You're a Herman monster. This land will surely vote for me.

This land is your land. This land is my land. I'm an intellectual. You're a stupid dumbass. I'm a Purple Heart winner. And yes, it's true. I won it thrice. This land will surely vote for me.

You have more waffles than a house of pancakes. You offer flip flops. I offer tax breaks. You're a UN pussy. And yes, it's true that I kick ass. This land will surely vote for me. You can't say nuclear. That really scares me.

Sometimes a brain can come in quite handy. But it's not going to help you because I won three Purple Hearts. This land will surely vote for me. You're a liberal sissy. You're a right wing nut job. You're a Pinko commie. You're dumb as a doorknob.

Hey, you got that bo-talks. But I still won three Purple Hearts. This land will surely vote for me. This land was my land. But now it's our land. From California to the New York Islands. What I do? I'm a liberal weaners.

To the right wing nut jobs. This land belongs. This land belongs. This land belongs to you and me. Oh, and Dick Cheney, too.