Chapo Trap House - 654 - Tossin’ the Pigskin feat. The Trillbillies (8/15/22)

Episode Date: August 16, 2022

We discuss the equal parts terrifying and stupid possibility that Trump or an associate actually tried to sell nuclear secrets to the Saudis, and all the insane ramifications for domestic and world politics. Then, we’re joined by Tom and Tarence of the Trillbillies to talk about the recent catastrophic flooding in Kentucky, and how the years of government neglect and industrial mining in the region have exacerbated the disaster. Also, prayers up for our boy Salman Rushdie. Link to the disaster relief mutual aid mentioned in the ep: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeAMXIPoChrCeYk7aMlsa0MuHFguB5CM1Gm-H8zJlYUCcllmw/viewform?fbclid=IwAR1bciEajmf80sYbS8mLDOmSZRk6tEBo1j4_cslNDP2Sggf1DkLekzdLhWU&fs=e&s=cl Tarence’s piece in the Baffler on the flood: https://thebaffler.com/latest/flooding-in-the-sacrifice-zone-ray Dates + Tickets for our fall tour here: https://www.chapotraphouse.com/live

Greetings friends, it's Joppo coming at you on Monday, August 16th in just a little bit. I will be talking to Terrence and Tom from the Trilpillies about the devastating floods that they are living through in eastern Kentucky right now. It's a very good conversation with our friends at Trilpillies. But before that, it's Joppo, it's Matt and Felix, we're chilling here in LA. You know what we got to talk about? Trump nuclear codes. These folks, I mean, the last episode we did, we talked about, you know, Feds did a sweep on Mar-a-Lago.

And since then, it's come out that like, you know, the warrant was issued in conjunction with a number of statutes, one of them being the espionage. Okay, so like, most of the stuff in the raid, like, who gives a shit, right? Like it's, the raid in and of itself and the document, most of the documents themselves, it's like, this is another case of someone being like, you did documents wrong. Yeah. But the important thing is that one of the documents is basically like one of those ten mile long CVS receipts that may prove that in 2019, Trump and elements of his NSC like

gave Saudis nuclear technology secrets, which it turns out they did. It turns out like Congress has seen documents basically confirming this fact. I know this is like on the verge of sounding very live Parnas. But the reason that I know it's true is that Trump and his legal team, his lawyer who he shared with King Vaughn, Drew Foundling, they moved to seal the warrant. And then when the Justice Department's like, okay, the warrants unsealed, you like, this is pursuant to the espionage act. Yeah.

He's like, no, you have to reseal it now, which like kind of tells me that's exact, like, because it's like, what would be so shameful that even he would be like, actually, no. Yeah. And of course, that's not how the story is being told right now. As far as I could sell, it's basically he, instead of going back to Washington for the inauguration and the handoff of the nuclear football like his tradition, he just was staying sulking in Florida for the inauguration. And since nobody really wanted to bother him and they were all just kind of glad that he

was leaving, they just said, you know what, let him keep it. Fuck it. We'll just get a new, new football made and we'll have new codes. Switch out the code. We'll go to Verizon and we'll get a new football. So base. And then he kept it. And so, I mean, but if that's what happened, and that's kind of the story as it's being

told, that's like when you check out of a hotel, you forgot to give them your key card and you like leave it in your pocket. It's, you're not going to be able to like break an enter in there anymore. You know, they changed the card as soon as your stay ends. So once again, you have real horrifying criminality and like a, an inability to actually talk about it. Cause nobody I guess wants to. Cause it's too just terrifying.

I don't know. Cause you're like, in reading the accounts of this, like, yeah, like it, it is very hard to discern. I mean, again, like, cause, you know, like the warrants, what's sealed and what isn't, it's very hard to discern like what actually these documents are, why, like why the rate take place. And if you're a defender of Trump, you really say the FBI planted the documents. And then within hours later, they were just like, Oh no, like the documents are real,

but Trump declassified them and he classified them by thinking, he thought as I was taking them out and like not returning them, like he just thought in his own head, these are declassified. It's like, it's like space invaders. They're planting documents and he's trying as fast as he can to declassify them. But yeah, like, I guess like the fact that like, I wasn't even, I guess like, maybe dimly aware of this fact. But yeah, like, I feel like, as you pointed out in, in 2019, like Trump's National Security

Council, like, you know, whistleblowers at the time said that they like illegally gave nuclear technology to the Saudis because they fucking bribe them. I mean, like, How did I just try to think about that? How did he get indicted or fucking impeached off some fucking left parties? Ukraine bullshit. Ukraine, this is the worst thing he could have done. Like this is the one thing where I will go, okay, he is a unique, he's like a unique malevolent

force, not just in character and culture and all that, but like in, in policy, he, he departs significantly from like Bush or like a hypothetical Rubio's administration because he's the only guy I could think of who would do this right outside of like a Saudi Manchurian candidate. And this is the most reckless thing he could have done. And not because of any ideological commitments, not because of any like theory of politics, purely he's running five million scams at a time and he needs to have fresh infusions of cash at every point to keep the fucking thing going. And this is just another fucking short term grift to keep him, keep him keep the lights

on in the White House. If like just one of these things was true about Saudi Arabia, this would be grounds to execute him, right? If it was just a, not a country, no institutions, oops, all cousins, right? If it was that way, if it was just that, if it was just a fucking pile of sand with some oil and some cousins, that's grounds for execution. If it was that they'd have no formal military and the closest thing they have is religious extremists from their own countries and global hotspots that they send into Syria to do genocidal

acts, that that's grounds for, that's grounds for imprisonment execution. If it was any of the, if it was any of these singular things, but it's all of them, it's all of them. It is, you're giving nuclear secrets to, yes, a bunch of cousins who fund like freelance, what's the Nazi, the Nazi dirty dozen auto, auto, no, no, that's special forces. Oh, I don't know. You know, the guy who was a pedophile and like, oh yeah, Oscar Dural Wangler, the Dural Wangler Brigade.

Yeah. Like you're giving nukes to the Dural Wangler Brigade, like the 500 freelance Dural Wangers in Syria. Yeah. Yeah. And here's the thing about this though. So the one thing we know about Trump is that he has, he is basically allowed to do it every once because it's in the general interest to let him do so and that he, and

that means that he was allowed to do this because there is no way that the highest levels of US intelligence were not aware he was doing this. He was not able to ever disguise anything. He would take NSC meetings in front of the fucking leather dinosaur golf pros at Mar-a-Lago for Christ's sake. Like he had no Opsac. The other countries knew what was going on. We sure as shit knew.

And yet it was allowed to happen. A guy that they could have touched at any time, at any moment. And that means one of two things. That means somebody wants loose nukes in the hands potentially of the Saudi psycho hillbilly cousin network and has sees that as in like the longterm, the best interests of like their vision of like American interests, which is a terrifying thought, or the neoliberalization of institutions in America has also infected intelligence and like the deep state to such a degree that they're incapable of stopping something like this from happening.

I think it's both, right? I think that there are elements of the deep state who are like, there are elements and they cannot be checked. There's no overseeing force that could stop like a rogue, could like discipline like a Ted Shackley or something. I think that there are like elements in there who are like, well, like if people found out about like if Los Angeles like got hit with a dirty bomb, like people would be mad at us, but like really what's going to happen and like, it's like, again, it's like defund

the police. I mean, what does that mean for me? Ultimately, yeah, bigger budget. And then there are other elements who like might want to stop this, but like trying to do 1963 trying to do the equivalent of killing JFK or RFK or any of that. It is like, it's like trying to get your insurance to cover Adderall like making your way through the deep state phone bank to like kill a president. It's like, yeah, it's your HMO.

Yeah, everybody's got a tummy ache. They can't handle it. A technician will come by your house anytime between six a.m. and seven p.m. You know, I would really love to inject the president with a with a pellet of ricin, but I just don't have the spoons. It's literally all fucking. It's all contractors is, I mean, if they wanted to kill him for this, if they wanted to prevent this, they would have had to like have a mixer in 2019 between like former CIA

special activities divisions who are technically classified the same as Uber drivers and like people formally in DIA. I mean, like, you know, when, you know, like when all this news is burbling up about, you know, Trump has, you know, like the way it was sort of like metabolized until like, you know, the popular discourse was that Trump just has like nuclear nuclear launch codes with a nuclear football in a closet in Mar-a-Lago. And we had a fun time just imagining what like, you know, probably defunct codes, but like the obvious thing that would come to mind is Trump just showing it off to dentists

and cosmetic surgeons. And he's like, look at it. The football. We're going to go toss around the big skin. Many of the generals, they didn't want me to have the football, but I have a quarterback. I'm the conventor. So give me the football. Or just like you said, like making it like the highest tier of Mar-a-Lago membership.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The picture taken like. Oh, do you think he like did a skit where like, because all his cultural references are from 47 years ago. He made like someone's big son redo the Samsonite commercial where the gorilla tries to open

the suitcase or the nuclear football. Someone's just like big, slow son. Oh my God. But I guess like, I've been like, this is the perfect Trump scandal and Trump story because the spine shillingly horrifying and criminal and like world scale level genocidal evil that like people are imagining has already happened and happened legally and in more or less in plain sight. Yeah.

No one did anything. Like I'm just reading here. Like this is from NBC News. This is a Ken Delaney and from 2019 whistleblowers from within President Donald Trump's National Security Council have told the congressional committee that efforts by former national security advisor, Michael Flynn to transfer sensitive nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia may have violated the law and investigators fear Trump is still considering it according to a new report obtained by NBC News.

The House oversight committee has formally opened an investigation into the matter, releasing an interim staff report that adds new details to previous public accounts of how Flynn sought to push through the nuclear proposal on behalf of a group he had once advised, Tom. I didn't know this. This is Michael Flynn. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, yeah, Michael Flynn, like, okay, if you remember in 2015, he was writing articles that were like, let's shoot Erdogan with the AIDS gun. And then they were like, do you want a Maserati? Yeah. He's like, I will personally capture and compromise to a permanent end for Tola Gulag. Yeah. Like it's literally give him $700,000 and he will, you'll get him supporting a caliphate by the end of the day.

Yeah. It's like how like this, this whole mirage of a social movement, this based right populism, this fantasy that it could be grounded in any meaningful politics when it's made up entirely at the highest levels of complete fucking frauds, like there, there's no way to discipline them because they are fucking in charge of this thing. It's just all this, all this anger justified in most cases, expressing itself in the most incoherent way, and then, and then exploit it by complete fucking soulless frauds who will literally give people who want to destroy the United States nuclear weaponry.

I think like, okay, I can game out what their argument in favor would be, right? It's like, oh, look how much Mohammed bin Salman has secularized the kingdom. He's based. He's fighting like corruption within the kingdom. Well, he's going to nuke Mecca himself. Yeah. Right. Exactly.

It's so stupid. It's so stupid for like a billion reasons, but it's like, okay, so he like, he still hasn't created institutions. Exactly. And it's still like, what he wants, he's barely holding on by his fingernails. Yeah. It's a network of fucking relatives who hate each other. You're telling me he's factions upon factions upon factions.

No institutional checks toward private activity. Like when we say the Saudis did 9 11, you can't really say what the, you mean by the Saudis, the highest levels of state. Yes. But they're so compartmentalized and unchecked by one another. It still doesn't really necessarily add up to like a state project, which means anything is possible because everything is utterly denied at the end, a deniable. And even if you believe, even if you believe that, you know, 9 11 was pulled off by elements

within the Saudi and American governments, it was a collaboration on some level. Epic collab. And like, you know, like besides in there too, give them their bit in service of, you know, like, Yeah, maintaining, yeah, maintaining, but like, you know, unchecked American military empire in the 21st century, if like, if you are committed to that project or even any kind of like American nationalism, no matter how evil it is or how it represents itself, this is the one thing literally you can't do.

Yeah. And in the NBC article, it like, it doesn't like stay straight out, like whether it actually happened, they were like, he was planning to do it and like, like he might have done it or like it's all, it's all very vague. Like just the fact that anyone at any level in the Trump administration was considering giving the Saudis any kind of nuclear, nuclear technology or declassified anything is grounds for execution. Okay.

I got, you say, so that isn't clear from what we have now, whether it actually happened or whether this was efforts to. Yeah. Okay. So it's very possible that they watch this whole thing happen, waiting to intervene. And of course, Trump fucked it up somehow and it didn't happen. And then essentially kept it in their pocket. If they needed to like actually go against Trump, which it does look like they're doing

right now to a degree that they weren't before. I think they see him as a unique threat to the institutions that they need to keep the fucking lights on in this country and, and, and see it in their interest to put more pressure on him than they have until this point. Yeah. I like, I, if I had to bet money on this, I would go Michael Flynn looking at the outstanding job that he did trying to capture Goulon, looking at the attention to detail and operational intelligence of everything.

His, his, his Machiavellian masterful month long stay as a national security advisor. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, if I had to bet money, I would say that like they fucked it up. I would say that Trump sent them like something that's like a schoolhouse rock for how to enrich an atom. I'm just an atom waiting to get split. Yeah.

Like it probably, like it, or they probably screwed it up, but even just like, even if you were right, I agree with you that this is the deep state going, okay, here's the, here's the hugely dangerous thing he did. And I think Trump has confirmed that to the case by how much, by them trying to reseal all this. That is by them trying to sweep all of this, they're trying to sweep it back under the rug after raising his think about it. It's like they forgot what they did.

Right. Because like, if it's, if it's all the same stuff that has been going on, it's the same like, you know, bullshit, like a weak tea and abstract shit that Democrats have been throwing at him for the like last six years, then there's no reason to keep anything secret. Right. Because, but, but yeah, if that's not the case, then maybe, yeah, maybe you, you stop it. But even if this is like the deep state, like pulling this back out three years later, it's

like, well, like they're right. Like this is like the worst thing he could do. This is like, this is like genocide. Like, okay, you thought like putting a law white women in cages was bad. You thought mass graves of Shia in Syria is bad. Absolutely. Absolutely. Imagine that with a fucking dirty bomb.

Yeah. Imagine that like not even leaving sitting, if it doesn't get dirty bomb, like a working nuclear weapon, like it is a humanitarian catastrophe, unlike anything that we've seen as of recent. Yeah. And I mean, if you, if you look at like, uh, current politics, this is rubric of like elite domination, like, you know, some great reset fucking, uh, fantasy of like the reshuffling of the social reality in favor of like a totally enforced centralized federal authority distributing

resources in cubes and bugs and all that bullshit. How would they not be incredibly benefited by a newt going off in an American city or a dirty bomb? How would that not absolutely help every bad actor that you're supposed to be worried about as a base fucking populist? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, another thing I want to discuss is like, you know, whether, whether they attempted

to do it or there was ever any actual like legally approved or otherwise transfer of American nuclear technology to elements within the Saudi government, whether it happened or not. Like I think we should take into consideration the like post president, like post white house condition of Trump and his family. I'm thinking about the $2 billion that Jared just got from the Saudis, this big, like big fund of money that he had now has access to and the Saudi live golf tour that Trump is involved.

Like how, how are we not to like, interpret this as just a massive form of like legalized like I've just paid like, like openly paying the bribes that have been promised him for shit. Like, I honestly kind of wonder if Trump even knew about this. If this happened that he was even aware of it because it seems like you think that Jared would have been actually, you know, quarterbacking. It does seem like something that Trump would blurt out too. They're going to be helping our friends.

They're sorry. They're going to be very happy very soon. Yeah. We're giving them the bomb. The bomb. They're going to have the bomb. Our good friends. They're going to bomb them.

This sounds like something he would like tell the Eagle scouts, right? You know, like, I mean, it's, you know, as we said, like a symptom of like a unique type of like incompetence and graft, but part of that incompetence and graft is that all these things are happening while he's like producing more hamburger parties. Yeah. He's not aware. It's, it's, it's Jared and all these other people trying to like shore up holes in their shitty real estate deals.

Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And I, my guess is what's going to end up happening is this is going to sort of subside and I, and not, and I don't think it's going to lead to prosecution or anything. It's going to, it's going to be a slow rolling thing, like a sort of an investigatory milieu that they're going to keep going over the next two years and hope to sort of sink Trump over time.

Like, you know, the fucking, trying to stamp a woolly mammoth, you know, just bring them down with like death by a thousand cuts, because I don't think they want anything to go to any real legal proceedings because prosecuting of president is of right, right. It opens a door that's never going to get all of them, it undermines things that just are, are load bearing structure. So, and I don't think they need to do that. I don't think there's any imperative. Nobody's going to make them do it if they don't want to.

I think they're just going to keep this like juiced environment going so that all the Libs can like invest in it and feel like, oh, it's all, this is all leading to him. Sure. They can fantasize, go to jail. What they're really fantasizing about is he's going to not be president again. We're going to beat him in the, in the, at the polls. And that'll get him through to the next election and hopefully it'll work and he will lose either to DeSantis in the primary or to Biden or hopefully somebody else in the general.

According to them, I don't know. I don't see. I, so I, if that's their plan, I am, I give it like a 50, 50 shot of working, probably less than that. No, it's a very bad plan. But again, it feels like the best they can actually pull off anything more than that requires degrees of coordination and capacity that these organizations have been drained of over the last 40 years.

Yeah. I mean, so DeSantis would have to go to them and be like, I'm, I promise to be 30% more normal. Yeah. He got a normal load up a little bit. Yeah. I mean, the thing is there, they're already reaching out to DeSantis today, fricking David from Arch Neocon, Arch Neocon says, Hey, DeSantis, huge bump up from Trump.

He will go away if he loses. Wow. Hell of a fucking standard there, David, but he's reaching out the glad hand from the fucking establishment to this point if you take two, three steps in their direction, which of course he will because he's a fucking demon who wants to be president more than anything else. Yeah. That was hugely, that was hugely symbolic.

That was Regina George inviting him to sit with them. Indeed. Yeah. We talked briefly about the fact that Trump has the same lawyer as Gucci, man. That's funny. Well, okay. I want to correct myself. But it turns out that's just his lawyer in the Atlanta, in the Georgia vote tampering

case, which is like, Oh God, that's still his lawyer. That is his lawyer. It is his lawyer. I was excited at the idea that Drew Findling was his lawyer for the nuke stuff. That would be funny. No. Yeah. I mean, if you can get a rapper off a gun charge, you can get a president off a nuke

charge. Drew Findling is a pretty good lawyer. He's a pretty fucking good lawyer. He's gotten some of my favorite guys off. He's responsible for some of my favorite pictures in rap because he is a five, six Jewish man. He's pretty swagged out. He's pretty fucking swagged out. And now, most importantly, this means there's one degree of separation between Trump and

King Vaughn. He feels like he's basically, he's Sean Penn and Carlitos Way. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. He's like a fixer type criminal lawyer. Yeah. But he also, he's weird because he has a little bit of that fixer thing.

Like he gets, he is notorious for like a guy will be on video emptying a clip into another car and he'll get him out on bond. Wow. Like he's pretty fucking good, but he also seems to be amazing in the courtroom. I mean, as far as guys that Trump could pick to hire, say he'll pay $972,000 to and then never pay, pretty good choice. Yeah. So the factor that is worth considering when it regards like, you know, any possible prosecution

of Trump is the, the, the wave of retaliations against the FBI that we're already seeing right now that has been, I mean, honestly, the best case scenario for anything that could happen in this country. Like, cause it's just, you know, you know, Ken Wanton on the, it's the early colonels getting popped off of the bag. And we talked about this on the Hassan show yesterday, but I got to shut it again on our show. I got to, I got to credit John Dole and the Warner because he did a Facebook post about

that guy that tried to shoot up the Cincinnati FBI office and he said, the first sentence of this guy's Facebook post about it will live in the annals of like a 25th century American poetry anthology. Just the first sense of his Facebook post, I thought I had a way to get through the bullet proof glass. Turns out I didn't, it really, it really is like moths flying directly into the heat map. Yep.

I can't take it anymore. And it's like, I'm going out, all I got to do is get myself there and then it'll take care of itself. And by the way, the guy's, the guy's strategy for getting to the bullet proof glass involved a nail gun, a nail gun, a thing that fires a shittier bullet, a much less powerful gun. But basically though, so he like, he fails to get into the FBI building and then he met, he escapes and he runs into a cornfield and he's holding off the cops at gunpoint. Like he's shooting from the corn while they're like at a perimeter and then he fucking posted

it. That quote was after he was in the fucking field. That's the most poetic thing I've ever heard. Of course. The cornfield. He ran into like, he ran to like the heart, like embrace all of it, the entire archetype that he was trying to defend. He went into like, he went into like the base elemental form of soda.

Yep. Like he's, oh my God, you're right. He tried to fuse with treats. He tried to do like a, he tried to do like have like a heroic death that would send him to the Valhalla of infinite core. Yes. Yes. He's walk.

He's Walter white at the end of Breaking Bad. So once again, we have a genius. This guy is in Elysium. Yes. Like at the end of gladiator, when he's putting, he's dying and he's putting his hands out to touch the fucking court, the wheat. He's doing that with the fucking highest and elephant-side corn. Oh my God.

It's rivers of Dr. Pepper. It's perfect because he, he did it. He's like, this is like, this is blood of patriots refreshing the tree of liberty for like, so like Michael Flynn could make $700,000 giving Saudi Arabians nuclear secrets, doesn't kill a single FBI agent, fails, doing something he saw in a Gerard Butler movie that mind of Jason saw and then dies trying to merge with soda wall posting. He's like, he's Jesus Christ. He's like the new Jesus Christ.

If you want to know what Jesus would do if he came back out, that's what happens to him. He goes down in a cornfield of Golgotha. Yeah. Like, it's like, look, I mean, I came not to bring peace, but a nail gun. The remaining confederates at you should be replaced by, yeah, I mean, like, you know, there's two other examples. There was a guy who pulled up to the Capitol.

His name is what, Ricky Shitley or something? Yes. Yes. Yes. He has a fucking disgusting German name. What's that? What's that thing from the cultural revolution, like the diary of the Chinese soldier who got run over by a truck, right?

Like found his diaries. Yeah. Like that's him. That's for the American cultural revolution. That's true. That's the guy that just pulled up to the Capitol like four in the morning, just flared off with four shots, a couple shots into the air and then blew his head off and they just shot himself.

And there was another guy I just saw this morning who was just like, he got a little too wild on Gab. Oh, this is so funny. He got a little too wild on Gab and he was just like, he was like, I will like any FBI agent from the janitor to the director and Christopher Wray, like should be murdered. Yep. Like they are enemies of the state and like, I will pledge my life to just taking out as many of them as possible.

And he said, I will not spend a single second in custody. I will sacrifice my life. Like there's no way they are taking me alive. Yes. He is currently in federal custody. Yeah. You had your chance. They came for you.

What did you do? Did he even like point a gun at them? No. He went down. Like, I mean, you had this vision of like, you know, let's say Trump is indicted for, you know, treason or high crime and anything. Whatever. Even if they go at the lowest, any regional FBI office will immediately like see like

laid, will be laid siege by, by, by just like, you know, like, like Feral Magus will be their brick folks. They're bringing out the trebuchets. Oh yeah. You got to know it. They're bringing out the archibuses. They're bringing out the catapults. They're going to be.

We said the scorpions. They're like, okay. Like there's going to be someone who's close to death and you said they will choose to get vaccinated and then be catapulted into the FBI office. Yeah. And like their body will just smash against the wall. Yes. They'll shed the proteins, shed the spike proteins to everyone inside the FBI.

That was, yeah. That was my idea for them doing Mongolian biologically. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. And then also like any shit they could get at home depot, like a fucking, like a sodium bomb in one of those like big green egg barbecues, just rolling into the fucking lobby of a

federal court. Yeah. No, of course, but anything, you know, anything for the cause. Oh, think about, think about like, um, they're getting like, they're getting bowed down, like going over the top into no man's land. And instead of an adrenaline shot, it's like a zinc and vitamin C super boost. No, but I mean, it's going to be, it's going to be upsetting watching these guys just pop off, but, uh, it's, it's not going to, I don't think add up to anything.

No, I mean, like what, what, like, what would happen? Like is the FBI going to be like, we were wrong. Um, another, another really funny element to this, uh, that I've, that I've seen repeated a lot that is like, that has become like a, a real focus for this, like, you know, like violent revolutionary anger at the FBI is I've seen a lot of people sharing an obsessive idea that the FBI agents went through Melania Trump's underwear drawer and sniffed her pants. These disgusting pigs, these people are sick. First they defend and protect Epstein and now they do this awful.

That's funny because it's like, that's the first thing I imagined Trump doing if he was an FBI agent. John Malkovich and being just a little cheeky, little sniff. That always confused me so much when I was like a little kid, you know, like stuff where like a guy sniffs a girl's panties. Yeah, it's a very weird one. I'd never gotten that one. Yeah.

Well, I mean, like what, you know, when the FBI has a search warrant for your house, I mean, they don't, they don't say panties or off limits. It's true. Yeah. And he said, like, they opened my personal safe. They opened my personal safe. That's what I keep things. I don't want people to see.

Yeah. Yeah. That's very, that is very good. Like, like the idea that like the FBI is searching your house and you're like, okay, off limits. And they're like, yeah, you're right. Okay. What do you guys think is Donald Trump's personal safe?

Like what is his rosebud that he keeps in there? Oh man. I think he's definitely, I think I totally believe now that he has a nuclear football and that if you like win the auction to sit at his table at the wet meat buffet at the end of it, he shows you the football and you have to like hold it and get a picture taken with it. Okay. I think stuff that's in Trump's personal safe, I think like, so like a postcard that

Tom Landry wrote like with his own handra like his, like actual signed by him, a picture where like his hand is on Candice Bergen's thigh. Yeah. 1984. Absolutely. And I think like maybe like fraudulent Nazi memorabilia. Oh yeah. Like some stuff you got scammed off of eBay with.

Yeah. Something really fucking dumb. Like, oh, these were Hitler's cufflinks. He like wore these. He wore these when he killed himself. Isn't that cool? He's just stupid. Like stupid shit like that was something that where it's like, something that couldn't

exist. Where it's like, this was Patton's TV remote. It's like a universal remote. Oh my God. A photo of Douglas MacArthur signed by Harry Hamlin. Oh man. Well, yeah, I can't wait to see what happens to this. It just seems like.

I got to say they're, you know, this new season, they're raising the stakes. They're hooking us in again. I got to give them credit. The programmers, the showrunners, the Arkons, they're working overtime and we were, we salute them on it. I mean, actually just like, we're getting into trouble is one last thing in terms of the Arkons scripting this, this new season of reality that I got to talk about. Prayers up from our boys, Salman Rushdie.

Jesus Christ. Wow. Shit. Like I thought everybody had shown out on that. That is wild. The fact that like, okay, it does, it looks like he's going to pull through, but even he was gravely injured. And like, you know, the fact that he lived through it, I'm like, okay, that's, that's

a G shit. You know, like he lived that long 30 years after that shit. Some fucking moron just pokes his liver up at the Chautauqua Writers Conference in Western New York. He'd been living more or less openly in New York for decades. And like the Fatwa had even kind of been rescinded. Okay. This is funny though.

But the bounty was still in effect. And it's like, what's he thinking? Does he think they're going to put it on his commissary in prison? The guy who stabbed him, we were requesting like, is he going to get the money? Yeah. Yeah. Does it go on his books? Yeah.

So you're thinking like he's in jail, but he has the most ramen noodles out of anyone in like the New York state prison system. He has to start like that guy has to start a new thing in prison because it's, it's like, okay, you're a Southeast Asian Shia Muslim. Yeah. Who do you even, you've got to start a new thing. You've got to start a new thing. And all those ramen noodle packets will help.

Yes. They're going to lubricate the transmission. He's going to be like Monsa Musa, that like fucking like African King who like would cause hyperinflation on his trap to Mecca because he spent so much gold on everything. Like that would be him in prison. Here's what I don't like about this guy. Like him stabbing Rashid. He stabs someone.

He stabs someone. That's his business. That's his business. But no, no. I mean, it is that like this guy is like 34. Yeah. How do you care about this? Yeah.

He's like those people who like post under Led Zeppelin things on YouTube where they're like, I'm 12. Well, that's what we're seeing. That's really, this really is meaningful. You're showing like this is the cultural dead end. We're all in. We got to like, I'll be young. I'm a younger, I'm a relatively young guy who's frustrated and wants to like have a religious

object. I want my own corn, you know, transcendental moment. How do I do it with my cultural context where I don't have corn as my God? Oh, what do I have? Just this old fucking deal, this old culture war thing that's like been 30 years old because they're not generating any new, anything new to believe in anywhere. Yeah. Yeah.

It's like they don't even in Iran. They don't, I think like the context for that historically is interesting because it's like, no, like, yeah, I told it wasn't like, oh, I'd like hate Rush G. So much. It was like a flex. Like I'm, we're the real defenders of Islam. Right. Saudi Arabia can say they have Mecca and Medina, but like they can't like, they can't openly

call for the death of a Westerner. They can't kill for like, yeah, like a British citizen. They're showing their state capacity and their ability to like project power globally. Yeah. We're outside of the fold. Exactly. We can, we like, they, maybe they can secretly kill Westerners. We were openly doing that.

Well, I mean, like, look, Saudi Arabia, they can, they can wipe out all of cantor Fitzgerald in one day. Even one of those guys had f**ked Padme Lashkwa, you know, like it would have been a problem. And you know what I gotta say is Salman Rusty, I'm like, look, I saw, you know, like not overwhelming, but like similar to the Charlie Hebdo thing, there are a few dumb babies who were like, um, like actually Salman Rusty, like, I deserve to die for writing a novel that I haven't read. Psychopathic.

Shut the f**k up. Shut the f**k up. See, like, yeah, you were really offended by his portrayal of Muhammad and the Satanic verses. Shut the f**k up. You know what I gotta say, outside, outside any freedom of speech issue, I simply must ride with Salman Rusty because he is one of the all-time greatest pussy-getters of all time.

There is few men who have batted out of, like, fought out of their weight class at a higher level than Salman Rusty did. Outrageous. Insane. So, I mean, you know, respect. It's like his adjusted stats are, are legendary because he's up there with your, like your Warren Beaties and stuff. But it's like, well, yeah.

The Warren Beatie looks like Warren Beatie. That's exactly what you consider the handicap here. These are similar numbers. It's amazing. He put up Will Chamberlain numbers and he's, like, five-five. He's always looked the same. He's one of those guys that, like- He looks like Middle Eastern Frasier.

Yes. Yes. Yes. He is always, from the time I was, like, an infant, he's looked 57 years old. And he's still, like, he's never, he's never f**ked a woman shorter than five-nine. But, like, he's, God, yeah, what can you even say? My other, my other favorite, favorite detail about Selma and Rusty is, like, you know, like, like, when the, what, the height of the fatwa when, like, his life was, like, truly

in danger, he was living with round-the-clock CIA protection, like, CIA bodyguards. They were living in his flat in London. I'm, like, going everywhere with him. Round-the-clock CIA agent security detail. These who were, like, you know, like, basically would give their lives to save his. At the end of every month, he submitted an invoice to the CIA that charged them for, like, down to the individual sheet of toilet paper consumed in his apartment, the electricity bill, the water bill, cereal, everything.

He f*****g squeezed every penny out of Langley for having guys live in his f*****g house. He's awesome. He kicks ass. You know, we, we were talking about this yesterday, but don't you think it's interesting how, like, I mean, a rot, like, the point of the fatwa was, like, it was, like, a sweepstakes. It's like, you know, go out and do your best, um, but that, like, go for it. Yeah. Like, no one.

Believe it yourself. Don't you think it's interesting that no one tried a honeypot because it's always been known. That's a real guy, yeah. Like, a little disciplined move could get there, yeah. Yeah, but, like, I guess they, like, anyone who, anyone who would kill him for that is so, like, disgusted by that idea, maybe. They're not sophisticated enough for that sort of high, high-end espionage act.

Yeah. And, like, a Suleymane type would be able to put that together, but I don't think, like, guys that competent gave a s**t. Exactly. Yeah. Like that. It's mutually exclusive. Right.

Like, if you care about this stuff, it's because you're kind of a loser. Exactly. Exactly. Like, Suleymane is, like, well, I mean, he was a little young at the time, but, like, his equivalent in IRGC and goods, they were like, we're, we're, like, trying to kill Israelis. Yeah. Like, what the f*****g are you talking about?

Yeah. And it's interesting to look at this and see, like, okay, so we had this, this attack on Rishni, but this is, there have been zero, at least my knowledge, like, public terror attacks in the West, as, like, ascribed to anyone or independently in response to the Suleymane assassination. You know, there was no legal, like, blowback to that. There were some missile attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq, but there was no real terror related to it.

Even individual guys taking it upon themselves. And it's kind of like, well, here's the thing where, like, maybe if you're pissed about Suleymane, you have something better to do with your time than, like, impotently strike out at the West. Like, you have an actual project, a state project that you could participate in. And so you don't need to do the loser thing of just trying to kill somebody. Yeah. I wonder, like, with the Suleymane thing, I think about that a lot because it's like, I didn't expect it to happen, like, right after, you know, that's not really their style.

I am kind of curious as to what it will be, if anything. Yeah. It's got to be something. I mean, apparently they, I mean, apparently they were put a bounty on Bolton. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, that's an 83-year-old man. Like, better hurry up.

So I just, a bit of a personal connection here with Rushdie. My mom emailed me this morning because she just forwarded me Google alerts for, like, everything she gets on, like, like me or our family. And it was a Google alert for Daniel Menaker, and she says, I don't see any mention of my dad in this, to either of you, and it's just like an AP news story about Selman Rushdie being attacked. And I don't see my dad's name, but he did edit one of Selman's later novels called Chalamar the Clown, which, as far as I know, does not have any blasphemous depictions of

Muhammad or does not defame the Islamic faith in any way, shape, or form. I just want to be very clear about that. But she says, did you know we went to Rushdie's wedding to Padma Lakshmi? It was quite the event. They got divorced pretty soon after. You know, I actually did not know that. I know my dad edited one of his books, but nothing gold can stay. Yeah.

What can you do? Just respect to Selman. Absolutely. I'm glad he pulled through. Yeah. I mean, I hope he stays crushing pussy. You know, he's with one eye. But that's cool.

I can have an eye patch. Yeah. Yeah. That's baller. If anything, I think he, like, he gets more now. Yeah. But I mean, like, that's just that's insane to me, but like 30 years, 30 years, and then you just get poked up.

Yeah. We're in. Like that's fucking wild. I'm glad you didn't die, though, because I would have been really fucked up. Yeah. I would have been sad. I would have been really sad. Well, anyway, let's let's move on to the second half of the show.

Here are Terrence and Tom from the Trilbillies discussing the floods that just happened in Eastern Kentucky. Okay, so I know it may not seem like it in between my, you know, John's in between New York and Los Angeles. I do sometimes notice what's going on in the rest of the country. And to that end, I would like to welcome on TNT of the T-billies. That's right. It's Terrence and Tom from the Trilbillies to talk about the devastating floods that have

just happened in their neck of the woods, Eastern Kentucky. So Terrence, you wrote about it in the Bathler. Tom, I read an interview with you by Sarah Miller about just like, you know, your experience of the flood and just the history of Eastern Kentucky. So just to begin, guys, could you just like share with me and our listeners what your experience are like of you and your loved ones? What was your experience of the flood and its aftermath like? Man, it was it was gnarly, dude.

Like, so all the phone lines were down and I couldn't get ahold of anybody like I usually like just when I get up in the morning, I call everybody, you know, like back home and nobody was answering. Nothing was going on. So I was like, okay, well, man, it's a little weird. And then I get a call from from the Parkway Inn Motel, which is our hotel in Whitesbury, which ain't the Ivy Leagues, if you ever want to stay in Whitesbury. Most people.

Yeah. If you live in like New York City, you go to brunch at like a five nine five, I don't know, some like nice brunch spot. Like that's where me and Tom used to have to go to brunch on Sunday mornings with the church crowd. Do you like soggy biscuits and powder eggs? So my sister calls me and she's like rattled and I'm like, what the fuck is going on? And she's like, like all of Whitesbury is underwater.

I like was like waiting at the house, her and my nephew to be rescued. And she's like, eventually it got so high, like almost up to their like the roof that like we had to take our chances with the floodwater. So they just jump in the fucking floodwater, her and my nephew and their dog, like my nephew's like got the dog underneath his arm. And then like they float downstream and she says it's not like being in floodwater is not like being in a lake or even a river or swimming pool. It's like it just takes you wherever the fuck it wants to, you know.

And there's a ton of other like shit in the water, too, like, yeah, and diseases and diseases and all kinds of gasoline. Yeah. So my nephew, like before she goes under this bridge, like at the end of their holler, like my nephew grabs her and like pulls her up the hill and they walk up the mountain and over the other side, which is like an old like railroad tracks, but it's like all overgrown now. It's not in use anymore.

And they have to walk down Kentucky 15 to the parkway in where they called me from a landline because all the cell phone lines were down. So the rest of the day, I'm just getting calls from like buddies that I've not seen in a long time that don't live there anymore, like, man, do you know, can you get a hold of anybody like my buddy Wes called and he couldn't find his wife or kid for like hours. And then eventually they ended up being fine. But like, you know, so there was all that kind of stuff in the immediate. And then after the fact, like a lot of people, I mean, including my mom, my sister and my

aunt all lost everything. And yeah, it was just, it was just, it was wild. I don't know. It was, it's still, it's, I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around it because the flood is, you know, tornadoes, earthquakes, those things, you don't really think of floods in that calculus of like very, you know, you see them on the news. From time to time, but like, it's, uh, I got a new appreciation. Read your Bible, Tom, floods are a no joke.

It's actually the, the OG, the old testament, um, uh, Terrence, in your baffler piece, you have a, uh, there's a stunning thing you describe about seeing, uh, like, like, like a building structure that's just like perfectly preserved, like on top, like this has been moved, like, and then perfectly preserved, just placed on like the precipice of like a bridge or something. And then you realize like you're trying to figure out, did the water suck it under the bridge or did the waters just get so high that it went like over the top of the bridge? Yeah.

It was hard for us to wrap our minds around because, um, you know, as I pointed out this, this, this housing structure, this, it had been upstream from this bridge and it was like a mental block you have in your mind. Like how did it get from point A to point B? It just made no sense. And I think it's like with floods, especially with this kind of flood, I mean, you think of, uh, I guess, I don't know, I've never been in a serious flood before, especially not one in a city or in the countryside, but in this case, you had decades of, of strip

mining and I mean, we'll talk more about it in a second, but just to paint you a picture, in this case, you had decades of industrial activity that created the situation where the water was running through communities. Like, like I said in the piece, like stampedes of bulls, like this isn't just rain accumulating in low lying spots and then slowly rising and then like, you're like, oh shit, well, I guess the water's getting higher. No, this was like the last, that scene in Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou? Where were you guys?

Yeah, yeah. Yes. It's like wall of water, just, just like Del you's just pouring towards you. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you've got, I mean, the dispersal of debris is what's so astonishing and not just debris, but also people like up in, they actually two days ago had to raise the death toll again.

Like they were still finding people that had been carried, you know, we're talking miles. Like some, this one woman came into our mutual aid office and was telling us, she's like, I lost my car. She was like, I know that sounds maybe like cliche in a flood, but like, how do you lose a car? She says, eventually you would imagine someone would find it. No one's found it two weeks later. Who the fuck knows?

It's just, it's just been, it's just been, yeah, it's just been erased by nature. Right. But yeah, like you alluded to it. And I just wondering like, could you talk a little bit about how they like sort of unique geography and history of Eastern Kentucky make it so uniquely vulnerable to like how devastating this flood was that like otherwise would, would have been bad, but not nearly as devastating as what we're seeing now. I mean, surface mining is just about what it sounds like here.

You've got a mountain and it's got coal seams in it and in a mountain, there's several coal seams. Once upon a time, you would go to the bottom of that mountain, you'd face it up, you'd, you know, send the coal miners in, they'd bring the, the coal out. But as the industry became more mech, mechanized and that, and especially as it started to sort of enter its end game, after all the easy to reach coal seams had been mined out, they started this new practice called mountain top removal, which was a sort of even more developed form of just surface mining.

And so you cut the top of the mountain off, I mean, you just dynamite it and then drag line it over into the streams. And then that way you can just literally lift the coal seams out of the earth that way. That creates flooding hazards in two ways. First of all, you've got, you've put in all that debris into the streams. The second way is that you've compacted the soil on top of the mountain so that none of it gets absorbed into a mountain. Like these hills around here are mostly porous and there's also vegetation and the water

can get absorbed. I, I saw, I read this one article that said 70% of the rainwater went directly into the streams, which is apparently pretty astonishing. We're talking like 11 inches and 12 hours. Even more than that. In some cases up to 16 or 17 inches. I mean, some of these houses I've been into. You look at the flood line, the water line in their house and it's taller than you are.

Yeah. And like 16 or 17 inches, like that's like if it was just flat or whatever. But 16 or 17 inches when it's now channeled into these very narrow creeks and valleys becomes like an astonishing amount of water and it really like frightening amount of time. That's exactly right. Yeah. And so like the floods, it happened about two weeks ago, but what is like the state?

What are the conditions in Eastern Kentucky and the flooded areas right now? So a lot of those areas, obviously the water drained out, the water drained out within about three days. And there was a few dicey moments because it felt like it was going to start raining again at any moment. And it did start raining. And so there was a little bit of flooding again here and there. And obviously everything is coming waves.

Every single day is different. It's, I mean, anybody who's like lived through a disaster like this, they're probably listening to this and like being, you know, saying like, you know, baby's first disaster or whatever. But get you wired up boys. But it is my first disaster. I didn't know what to expect about anything like this. So like every day really is different. So like at first there was the National Guard and you'd see those trucks everywhere.

FEMA hadn't arrived yet. Nobody from the federal government. And we were just running supplies to people out of our own money and money that people could get to us. And then it sort of caught up about a week later, then you had like an inundation of like crisis workers, like church groups, nonprofit people in supplies. And then about a week after that, at some point in the middle of all that FEMA arrived, but you couldn't tell because as I explained to Tom, like, I just when I was thinking of

FEMA, I thought like, oh, you know, like they'll have like cute fancy uniforms. Like, you know, it's I'm from the government. I'm here to help you. It's like, no, they were like polos in like boat shoes. They look like a CIA, like a CIA, they look kind of like that, you know, that CIA agent in one of those James Bond movies is like supposed to be like the cool American with a Hawaiian shirt and like played by Joe Don Baker in GoldenEye. That's exactly what I'm thinking of.

They look like Joe Don Baker. What are you doing here, Wade? Vanyan trees. I am not here. The CIA has no knowledge, no involvement. But like, yeah, like, I mean, like the Terrence, the title of your piece is Flooding in the Sacrifice Zone. And I guess, like, you know, it makes a point of like, you know, Eastern Kentucky, the conditions

in Eastern Kentucky have, you know, have been, you know, this is a sacrifice zone. Like this is a place that like capitalism has, you know, to take an untold wealth out of, but like there was, you know, virtually no infrastructure that could contain something like this and the effects of the flood were greatly magnified by, you know, the extraction of coal and mountaintop removal, like you were saying. So I mean, like, like, how do you, how do you see this disaster as sort of, you know, like, I mean, you know, New York has flooded a bunch of times, but like as a preview of things to come as climate change worsens and as like capitalism, like, you know, concentrates

itself even further and just like, abandons larger and larger parts of this country to like these sacrifice zones of, you know, people and just like a forgotten about place. I mean, Tom, I don't know if you want to add anything here, but I mean, I'll say that the inland Southeast where we live is already mostly almost a rainforest. I mean, it gets something like 60 to 70 inches of rain a year. And like by comparison, I'm from originally from New Mexico where we get about six or seven inches of rain a year. I mean, it's, we get a lot of rain here.

And they're saying, and people were saying this for years, Tom sent me an article just about a week ago where we were talking about this, but people have been saying for years that Eastern Kentucky and Central Appalachia, this place where you've got this very specific mixture of circumstances, you know, the legacy coal mining, but also increased rain events from climate change from a warming world are going to create this situation where these disasters are more common. So I mean, like they called this like a one in a thousand year flood, but I would assume over time that's going to be cut down to one in 10 years.

Well, yeah, it's, it's accelerated right now, just kind of a crazy clip because that the article that Terrence was talking about is the study that the Army Corps of Engineers did with Duke University and they looked at the river basins and all their tributaries in Central Appalachia where there's been a lot of strip mining going on. And they had projected that, you know, and they showed like the river basins that were like the most affected and the three that were most affected were the Lower Cumberland, the Big Sandy and the Kentucky, which the headwaters of all three of those start in our town.

And those were the most affected and they projected that by the year 2070 that basically there would be this 35% increase in like the stream levels and stuff because of the destruction from the coal mining and everything added with a coming monsoon season for much of the Southeast. So you got this like payments route for disaster. Well, they're already at 35% in 2022. They projected that by 2070. So about 50 years early on their projections and this I think they ended that in 2015,

the study. I was just going to say, if you're a poor working person in one of these communities, you most likely live in a cheap trailer home in a floodplain. I mean, we've created virtual just traps for, I mean, like this is it's a death trap for a lot of people and it's, you know, it probably varies from place to place, whether you're in like Ohio or out West versus here, but here a lot of the infrastructure is completely worn down and devastated by the coal industry. And that's what's kind of ironic about the whole idea of rebuilding.

Like for years, for about 10 or 15 years, the sort of professional class here has been involved in this long term project called, you know, the just transition away from coal. And the whole insinuation was that we were rebuilding from the devastation of the coal industry, but nobody could say that because, I mean, we would be insulting the coal bosses. And so it's just, it's just devastation compounded on top of devastation. So yeah, no, you're the Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, Tom, you talked about something called the SOAR initiative, saving our Appalachian rivers or something, shaping our Appalachian region.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, let's shape the region so it's a little less, I don't know, cut through with the deep creeks and cleared mountain tops. Yeah. Yeah. So the SOAR initiative is dead now, basically. Well, yeah, the whole thing was predicated on like the idea of like, we're going to give

these, you know, like everything we've ever heard about, you know, sort of like giving micro loans to poor people to start businesses and all that kind of stuff. But it's like, a lot of people have been doing that for a while, right, as part of this whole calculus of like the just transition movement they called it in Eastern Kentucky and other places that are, you know, you know, poor and affected by like extractive industries and stuff. But it's like, the reason it's dead is like, okay, if me and you have a restaurant wheel in this town that's become rapidly depopulated because all the jobs are going out, right?

And a flood comes and like takes our building out, like, that's almost like a mercy kill in a way, right? Because it's like, now I get my insurance money and all this stuff and I don't have to like live on these razor-ass-thin margins, you know? I don't have to set it on fire with myself and hope I get a good job. Yeah, we don't have to goodfell as it, so, yeah, it's, but the whole thing is a crock of that it's like, you know, I'd mentioned to Sarah and that thing that like, you know, some of the things they had come up with were like Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos-esque, like

horseshit, where like they wanted to take mine run off water that was trapped in what they call slurry ponds. And these things, when they rupture, can be pretty destructive. I mean, they've wiped out towns and everything like that. One in Martin County, Kentucky was like, what was it, Terence, like three times the size of the Exxon Valdez oil spill and it ruptured, just buried the town and this like mine run off shit. But this guy wanted to take all the coal slurry and use it to generate nuclear power as like

a clean energy thing. And it's like, how does that work? Well, you know, like, you know, you like Japan does that, but they have like the whole Pacific to draw water from and whatnot, you know, like, yeah, there was a lot of holes in it. But like, it's that kind of stuff. It's all like scammy shit. And then the other thing is, like, they let all these recycled coal bosses get in on the ground floor of whatever the newest like thing is, you know, whether it's solar or whatever

it is. So you have all these old guys that were like cold diehards that are now like, oh, we're solar guys, but really all they've done is just retrofitted their outfits to like put up solar panels. Well, we will still be using coal to run the solar panels. I know you guys have mentioned some of the mutual aid work you're doing just like out of pocket on your own. But Terrence, a point you raised in your Baffler piece is sort of like the limits of charity

when confronted with, you know, like, what is it like a generational like environmental and economic problems that are now coming to the fore because of, you know, things like flooding and climate change, but just like you make the point that, yeah, like people need socks or generators or whatever. But as soon as you start talking about, hey, how we just give them housing or like a new place to live, like the steel door just slams shut. Yeah, absolutely. I think that you, I think that this is an interesting issue with this that I've really

been turning over in my mind a lot, which is that natural disasters and again that phrase I find to be very interesting that we call them natural disasters. But natural disasters do kind of create a contradiction, which is that by their very nature, by their very physical force, they can sort of challenge in a revolutionary way and accelerationist way. It's not good, but they challenge the bounds of property. They turn private property and personal property into public property. All your shit goes into the...

To a lake. Into a fucking swamp. Yeah. The lightest car. Hey, the property lines by the poplar, wait, where the fuck is this, where'd the poplar go? It's still over there. And this requires like intense, intensive policing.

And you know, we talked about that a lot. We've talked about that in the last couple episodes of the show and in the baffler piece. But I think people are finding this out more and more, and I think it's why it's becoming a huge flashpoint in both urban and rural politics. Like the example I mentioned in the piece was the chase of a Bowdoin recall in San Francisco. That like visible poverty and reforming policing and everything like that, this has become a huge flashpoint for like the reactionary liberal politic. And I think that it's tied in here because like they can't give people free housing.

That's not what they do. And so it has to be policed and obviously the reactionaries have their own way of doing it. But the liberals can't just come out and say that, which creates this very bizarre kind of like disjointed, like farcical thing where you see all these democratic politicians like Bashir and our own state representative, Angie Hatton running around with our congressional representative, Hal Rogers, where they all like are sort of making gestures to rebuilding. But the one thing that nobody can say is that the way to do it would be to put people in

free, efficient housing outside of floodplains in a safe way where they don't have to leave the region and where they can be provided for. But again, nobody's going to, they can't do that. Yeah, I mean, you mentioned like this sort of the reaction to local police response, which is just like, oh boy, I mean, I just, I wish a motherfucker would try to loot something. I can't wait. I can't wait to round up these looters and it's just like, from what you described, it doesn't really sound like there's anything to loot.

No, it's all, it's all under what's all under like oil drenched water. Like it's. Yeah, they act like there's this robust market for like waterlogged fucking shit for somebody's garage or something. And we got to put a stop to that. It's fucking ridiculous. It is weird, I looted a PlayStation five that I took out of someone's engine block that has been floating in front of my house.

It makes no sense because like some of the, like there's like a genealogy of certain like looting myths because like one that I kept hearing was like, oh, people are flipping copper. They're like out here, scrapping copper and they're selling it. And it's like, to who? They would have to drive to Lexington to fucking or paddle boat it. It's like every, the thing is, is like this storm was so catastrophic that everybody was affected and fucked up by it.

Everybody, like nobody was enterprising enough with it, like who the fuck is just like sitting around like waiting for like, yeah, like as soon as the flood hits, like, all right, now I'm going to go still a catalytic converter. Like no one is that I'm sure it happened. I'm sure it happened, but it's just the whole, the fact that the cops were saying this before the floodwaters had even receded just shows you that they are the ones spreading the rumors. And I guess, yeah, like that's the, that's the reactionary response. Like you said, like from the, the democratic state leadership for politicians, you know,

it's like a sort of half-assed FEMA response, but also like, I would imagine, I don't know, like a tax credits for people who stay in a floodplain and like some ramshackle fucking house or like open a business in a formerly flood devastated community that no one lives in anymore. Right. And it is weird, like FEMA, FEMA itself is a very strange organization, like me and Tom have joked multiple times that it is almost like a practical joke in some ways. It seems designed to waste your time, which I don't, I don't know, maybe somebody would

get angry at me saying that I don't, you know, I don't know, maybe, maybe it runs efficiently, but all of my interactions with it have disabused me of the notion that it exists to help people in any meaningful way after a disaster. My idea, like the conspiracy theory about FEMA is that they're like, it's like a federal infrastructure that's just like when the order is given, they're just going to round everyone up and efficiently put them into camps. But it's just like, if you, like your interaction with this organization, do they seem that prepared to do that?

As I said, you're not going to go to a camp of a guy with a Ralph Lauren polo and bow shoes shows up at your house. It was also funny because weren't you telling me like they're like not even going to people that are like trapped in these hollers and stuff. They're like putting up these mobile stations that are like not reliably located or anything like that. Yeah. That is the thing.

That's the funny thing about the FEMA conspiracy theory because it's like what I've seen of them, they won't get off their asses to go anywhere. They're not rounding anybody up. They're not rounding any up because they're not even going to people's houses to check on them. This is a situation when you would want them to round some people up. Right. Right.

Right. Get them out of the holler that they're stuck in. It's like you said, like road, like all the roads, like sometimes like the only access to these communities and like rural parts of Kentucky have been completely washed away. So they are now completely isolated and cut off from any infrastructure of even like can I even get out of this area that I'm now trapped in? I have a friend. He's blind.

He lives up a holler and he's still cut off because his bridge broke. They have to, and his dog was sick and they had to take it to the vet and so they literally had to put his dog on a raft and like ferry the dog over to the other side and take him to the vet. I mean, like, yes, that's just to illustrate that a lot of these places are still cut off. And actually, I have a funny FEMA anecdote before we move on. FEMA is set up in our town. They set up like a mobile, I guess like you could call it a hotspot.

Like it's like a Wi-Fi network or whatever. But the funny thing about it is that it's password protected. Oh my God, you just lost everything. You're trying to contact your relatives and they're like, okay, X. Capital J, lowercase w, k, k1, n percent. I like the idea of going to your local like city council meeting and like the only reason that you're there is like, yo, can I get the Wi-Fi password? All right, thanks.

Yeah. But like actually, you've been doing some like like community aid work because you describe a little bit about like the people you've talked to, like what they're feeling right now, their anger, their fear and just like what kind of stuff people need right now in Eastern Kentucky. Yeah. So the main thing is that people need money and there's a lot of supplies. There's a lot of distribution centers with a lot of supplies.

The politics around that has sort of started to become interesting as people are now accusing like drug users of, I don't know, taking advantage of the distribution centers. I don't know. It's so fascinating to me again how like class hierarchies get kind of reinforced during all this. Anyways, there are people that need supplies, but they can mostly get them from the distribution centers, but they mostly need his money. And so we've got like mutual aid funds set up like that and I'm sure, you know, I can

see you guys the link and we'll just put them in the show description. And what we also need volunteers, because what I've started doing in the last couple of weeks is like mucking out people's houses and I really cannot describe how awful this is. I mean, a lot of the material that's been left in people's, first of all, if you live in a trailer home, it's basically completely, as Tom was mentioning earlier, trailer homes once they get any amount of damage. Yeah.

In my mom's and sister's and aunt's house, like the walls are already starting to bow. You know what I mean? It's just not even safe to be in there like getting stuff. Like you need to get the shit and get out, you know? Yeah. The material is made that trailer homes are made with. It's abysmal. It's appalling that we would force anyone to live in a situation like that in this country.

But we've been to the extent that anything is salvageable in those homes, we've been trying to get them out and help those people. But the thing is, the protocol with a lot of this is like you have to go in, you have to shovel out all of this muck that is mostly chemicals, like oil, gasoline, fecal, like shit, actual shit from like septic tanks, mud, I mean, just the smells, like it's astonishing. It's absolutely astonishing. And so we need volunteers for people to help out with that too. And again, I see you guys the link.

Like I know I'm not expecting people to come down from like British Columbia or whatever to volunteer, but like, you know, I don't know, if anybody is listening in the, you know, slightly outside the region and wants to come help, I'm sure we could find a way to do that. And that's the crazy thing about this. It is astonishing that I pointed this out in the early days of this. And then I felt bad because I was like, well, maybe I was too harsh on the National Guard and FEMA or whatever, but it's like, you know, you kind of talk, you can talk yourself into

that sometimes, like, oh, maybe I'm being too ridiculous about this. But it is really astonishing that like a ragtag group of locals have to go and clean out people's homes and give them supplies and money. Like it just continues to blow my mind. I don't know. I mean, again, I know all of the things we know about the neoliberal government and that it doesn't do anything or whatever, but it still is impossible for me to wrap my mind around the fact that like me, someone who is not an expert in like gutting houses at

any point, that I would be tasked with helping people, you know, helping people on something like this. It's really astonishing. I mean, Terrence, like you have a couple of points in your article where you say, like, you know, you just got to laugh, you know, like when you're confronted with the magnitude of these kind of problems. But Tom, in your interview, you mentioned that your mom was in the hospital when the flooding occurred.

Yeah. So my mom doesn't even know yet. My mom's... That's what I wanted to bring up because you said like she was in her condition and she'd want to turn on the TV and you'd be like, let's just stay away from the news channel. You don't have to worry about it. But the fact that your house is gone now. Yeah.

I'd be sitting there with her. She goes, God, I can't wait to get out of here and go home and sleep in my own bed. And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, about that. So it is kind of funny in a dark way, but but yeah, it's, I don't know, man, there's just no absolutes in human misery, I would say, so I mean, I was going to laugh about it. Yeah. Yeah.

Absolutely. And I guess like in terms of like the, you know, a vision of things to come for the rest of the country and particularly in areas of the country where like, you know, capital was highly concentrated in very wealthy parts of the country. I mean, I asked you guys to come on a couple of days ago after I read your Bethler piece, Terrence, but like almost the day after and I'm staying in LA right now, I read about something called the atmospheric river that has the potential to be the greatest natural disaster in human history.

And you know, I always thought, I always thought an earthquake was going to be the thing that takes out LA, but apparently no, like, and people have known about this for a while, there is the potential for basically the entire valley to flood at once. And it is just a giant concrete bowl that will not drain and it could happen like pretty much instantly. And it's like, could happen very soon. And I mean, like that would that would lead to the displacement of millions of people overnight.

Yeah. Yeah. What I've seen is that, and I guess this is kind of where like the gallows humor comes into play. What I've seen is that no one cares. No one gives a shit. Like that would happen and the Democrats would still probably be talking about rebuilding. We're going to rebuild.

There's like 4 million dead and like 200 million displaced. We're going to rebuild. It's insane. I mean, like, it's like you said, well, it's like, well, we know it's not a matter of if but when there's going to be a massive earthquake that like shelves like most of the Pacific Northwest off into the ocean, right? Like people, geologists have known this for years and it's like, you know, it could happen today or it could happen in a hundred years, but like they know it's imminent.

And it's crazy that we kind of get stuck in this, like just thinking that like, oh, well, that can never happen. I guess it's the same mechanism that helps us deal with the fact we know we're going to die. Right? Like if it feels like it's far enough down the road, we can just kind of kick the can a little bit, but yeah, it's that shit would scare me now reading that kind of stuff. I just think that like in a healthy society, one that's not built around the profit motive,

we would have values that would want us to protect, want to protect the environment, want to live in an ecosystem that is not trying to kill us at all times. And if it is to use science and technology available to us to protect ourselves and to live efficient, you know, happy lives to where when we do go out, we're comforted in everything. But but yeah, I don't know. It's well, I mean, like not, you know, not to defend the profit motive or anything on the trap house, but it's like almost suicidal in the way because like, you know, even if you like take for granted, like the long term viability of like, you know, the economic

growth and, you know, the profit motive, you think like huge chunks of like urban centers and like large swaths of this country just being like fucking devastated obliterated by natural disasters and that having like no one prepare for it or do anything after it happens would seem to be somewhat antithetical to everybody continuing to make fucking money. Well, here's what I'm not, I mean, maybe that's the scary part. I mean, maybe like actually, no, no, you're absolutely right. Here's what I found natural disasters or again, whatever you want to call that, they are immensely profitable.

And again, I know obviously like Naomi Klein has pointed this out, there is the whole thing about disaster capitalism, but like the sort of minutiae of disaster capitalism is what is blowing my mind. The fact that like I can sit and like, you know, you can stare at a mountain of Colgate toothbrush, like you have to imagine every time there's one of these things, they sit in their boardrooms and like Johnson and Johnson and like everything, they're like looking at like the fucking line go up every time there's like stuff like this has been catching those tide loads of hope all over.

I mean, it's immensely profitable for not everyone, but but for probably certain segments of the capitalist class and industries. And I mean, I don't know at one, if there will ever come a point where it's not profitable for enough of them to where they can then leverage that into some, I don't know, reform. I have no idea. But right now it's too profitable, I think for certain segments of capital to not fuck want to fuck with it. All right.

Well, I think we should leave it there for today. Terrence and Tom, the Trill Billies, I want to thank you guys for coming on. Just you know, sending love from the Chopper trap house family, I'm glad everyone you know is safe at the moment, but we will include those links for, you know, community aid and our resources for anyone who wants to volunteer or donate. So you know, thanks for all you're doing there. Stay safe. And just sending love to you guys and all of Eastern Kentucky right now.

Thanks, boys. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. All right. Cheers, guys. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, don't you spy me over till another year. Well, what is this? And I can't see with the ice cold hands taking hold of me.

Well I am death, none can excel. I'll open the door to heaven or hell.