Chapo Trap House - 702 - Don’t Worry Be Happy (1/30/23)

Episode Date: January 31, 2023

A grab-bag of topics today: A novel idea for fixing policing from the Slow Boring blog; Eric Adams has a rat problem; Priest goes to hell; TikTok ban on the horizon; Prince Andrew in the tub; Andrew Tate’s jail posts.

Hello boys and girls and podcast land. It's a Monday, January 30th. It's shop. Oh trap house coming up. You coming at you coming up here coming up your ass. Fuck. What are these days? All right. When we're all in the hover fats, you'll get it right. All right. Well, let's give these a little chopper ideas session. This is a I'm going to pass this one along. This is just sort of a whiteboard session. How can we do things to grow the show, expand the show? What are some bits we can do? And look, this is actually

I got to pass this on. This is Catherine's idea. So we were driving back from San New York yesterday and she said, I want to listen to something I can sing along to say no problem. Put on that Billy Joel. She's loving it. Who doesn't love Billy Joel? We're seeing him in the garden on Valentine's Day. Then it gets to the song, my favorite Billy Joel song. We didn't start the fire. And I remember it like it was the only Billy Joel song I knew as a kid. It was the only song I knew as a kid. And for some reason I liked it despite the fact you're a Casper Houser. You have a little dog kennel, but you just pumping in. We didn't start the fire 24 seven. And you know, it's a bop, but like it struck

me that like, why did I like this song so much as a kid? I had no fucking clue what he was talking about. You didn't know what the lullaby was? What the fuck is Doris Day? Ray Johnny, Johnny Ray? What the fuck? I didn't hear that. But then, of course, now I'm very proud of myself. Like, oh, yeah, North Korea, South Korea, I've recognized those references. So then it got me a little bit of the wheels sticking. This is Catherine's ideas. I want to pitch it to Matt and Chris here. Someone should do a 17th century version if we didn't start the fire, you know, because it's always been

burning since the world was turning. And, you know, Billy Joel is really saying, hey, like, don't look at me. It's not our fault. There's a lot of stuff happened, you know, in the past before we got here. So I was thinking, like, as a hell on earth supplemental, you guys should record a We Didn't Start the Fire remix for the 17th century. I got to say, off the top of my head, very good idea. Because, you know, I'm listening to Hell on Earth. It's just a lot of, you know, it's a lot of names and things happening, you know, so we should put it in a sort of a snappy song. Well, you know what? I'll let Matt write the lyrics to that one. And maybe I can enlist

some of our musician friends, get Dan Beckner, get Nick Diamonds on the phone, see if they can come up with an instrumental. I'll serve as more of the producer role, the George Martin role for this piece. OK, challenge accepted. I will try to, I'll, the first thing I get to do is I get to listen to that classic song, get the rhyme scheme going and everything, and then plug in the references. I'll do it. Great. Done. We'll use that as the final track. Yeah. All right. That's one idea completed. Now to turn to the news of the week. Currently,

I guess the main news story of Big Dominate is another, you know, horrible police murder, the Tyree Nichols case in Memphis. Members of the elite Memphis Scorpion unit beat a man to death. And now they've been charged with second degree murder, but really, really bad. Wait a minute. The Scorpion unit did that? Yeah. That doesn't sound like them. I mean, it's just, it seems it is indicative of like, whether it's the Scorpion gang or the gun trace task force or the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, you know, or

just actual gangs, they give themselves gang names. And it's like this sort of new innovation in law enforcement where they give elite units, not special victims units, but special victim creating units that like basically act as death squads in quote unquote high crime areas. But I mean, just further indication that the police in this country are at least the police in this country are a gang. They behave like a gang and we are all subject to them. But I just like to turn now, I mean, like, look, what are we going to do about the cops in this country? It's a terrible situation that we find ourselves in. But I just want to bring our attention to one possible solution, courtesy of one Matthew

Eglacius, who over to his slow, slow boring sub stack this weekend in response to the murder of Tyree Nichols has a very good idea for how to, how to reform law enforcement in this country. I'm just going to read from his, I'm not going to do the title because that would give it away. He just says, I mentioned in a mailbag, but I think part of the strategy for police reform in the United States should be a police for America program modeled on the Teach for America. In other words, an initiative funded by donors who care about both crime control and social justice to recruit relatively high performing graduates of selective colleges and place them for a few years as police officers in high crime,

high poverty cities. I've heard proposals to try to make police departments function more like the military, which a distinct entry point for people who do investigative or patrol work. But while I think there's a certain logic to these proposals, that's not what I have in mind here. So Matthew Eglacius is doing the Ivy League version of police Academy citizens on patrol. So Ken Griffin, this is pretty straightforward. Ken Griffin and other people who fund Teach for America are now going to pay for a bunch of ambitious 23 year olds would be Buddha judges to go around America to communities like Memphis and Jacksonville, places on the south side of Chicago and tell suspects all

about the situation before they shoot them 78 times. I love the idea that there's these the people, their cops are these donors, they love social justice, and they love stopping crime. Just like all those Teach for America donors who were very interested in something other than breaking teachers unions, like that's the not the only reason they fucking funded in the first place. I don't think they really have the same interest in getting rid of police unions. I mean, maybe they do, you know, they want to do like a cost cutting thing. But if they were to pull this off, that would really be all they would accomplish. Well, I think I do love the idea of a bunch of like little

Harvard dorks showing up with their gun. I think it would go well. I like the idea of the shield, but exclusively with grad students. They blackmail, they blackmail Acevedo by showing him sleeping with an undergrad with a three year age gap. This is on you for the rest of your life. I think this is a couple of things going on here is like one, Matt, you're right. I think I think Eglacius has sort of reverse engineered an effective strategy for defunding police unions is replacing cops with grad students. Or I think it's also in his brain, I think he's just sort of like, oh, there are people who are interested in law enforcement and

the social justice. And no one who goes to Harvard could be evil. It's just the line about select universities. It's just like, yeah, was teacher America drawing? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, teacher America, I kind of it's sort of what you do when you you're below a booted judge level, when there are no McKinsey offers after you get out. That's sort of like, it's the last ditch effort for the ambitious but not intelligence. And also, like these teacher America jobs, like they're not meant to be careers. Like, I mean, it's like, you know, it's like jury duty. They do, I think most of them do like two or three years at most. So like, it could be a high turnover for cops under the Eglacius

regime. That is like the religious faith he has in in credential type kids, people who go to these schools, people who do a lot of extracurriculars in high school. He honestly thinks that that makes you like a superhuman. Because yes, this would be tie turnover. There'd be no, they would be out of there after like a year, just like in Teach for America. So how the hell could they do any like long, actually meaningful impact? Well, just they're very present. So it wouldn't matter that they're just throwing in new ones every year. Just the aura of the fact that they like did a science fair volcano is enough to just make

all the all the all the thugs just part like the fucking Red Sea at their arrival. And you know, like, I mean, we've covered this before on this show. You know, just just last week, we talked about constitutional sheriff's departments who are, you know, claiming for themselves more authority than the president to ignore laws and overturn elections. You've got literal gangs who are like, you know, administering ink to their gang members based on the number of bodies they collect. I'm sure these people would be thrilled to have a bunch of like little Eglacias is waddling into police departments. I mean, you know, to clean up the culture around police unions. Yeah, I love the idea to in like cities that

do have like an actual gang problem, like the gang members being like, do you hear about the new beat cops on our street? They were they were in the hasty puddings club. We've got to dump ourselves immediately. I mean, it would lead to a culture of fragging in police office departments. Yeah, high time for some of that. They solve a lot of existing problems. But yeah, Jesus Christ. What are you gonna do about these fucking cops, man? Like it's just I mean, like this coming on the heels of that that guy in LA they taste to death a student Atlanta that was killed the whole cop city thing. And then this Tyree Nichols thing is just like the abominable just unspeakable level of evil going on just beating a guy

to death. And with this with Tyree Nichols, these cops specifically, they are the result of the previous solution that it Eglacias and Eglacias types offered, which was like more training and money. These guys did get more training and money. More training and money doesn't mean anything when you can't meaningfully like get in trouble for breaking the law. Like that is part of it. And Felix, do you know where the Memphis police departments training came from? A certain country. They worked with Israel. And like, and like, then that's not an accident because like this model of law enforcement is basically how to do our insurgency. Yeah, active occupation. Well, at least at least those guys were charged

with murder. I mean, what can you even say about this shit? But I wish Eglacias the best of luck on this, the slow and boring task of reforming America's police departments. I mean, like his attitude, though, is that like they just need more funding because like in order for it to be a high quality service, it needs to be more professionalized. And I've seen a couple of different variations on that attack for this latest police murder is that like these unaccountable death squads that we're sending out when giving free license to kill people in high crime neighborhoods, they just need to be more professional. They should be a little less, a little less, I don't know, if you were skull paraphernalia

on their unit or I don't know, maybe they should try reading a book sometime. That's the thing. But those type of people don't want that job. They're not going to they're not going to accept that job. They don't want to do it. Like that's the whole thing is that the culture that makes you nice, civilized, professional manager type person who is going to like do such a great job on the streets of our cities, hypothetically, they don't want to fucking have a gun and be in those and constantly be in conflict with people. Their entire professional culture is about diffusing and denying any actual conflict with another human being. That's why they created HR departments. You can't call

in the HR supervisor when some guy is freaking out in front of a 7-Eleven and you got to deal with them. And you know, that's your job. You have to actually deal with a conflict. No, I got my fucking degree so I can never have a conflict with another human being. That being said, though, I'd imagine for like, I don't know, let's just say some small potential cadre of Harvard philosophy majors who want to become, you know, do like a rip and run Vic Mackie style shit on the streets of America's most dangerous neighborhoods. The thing is, though, like, it doesn't matter. In fact, like, the education that you receive and the background that you come from, like, I'm sure Matt thinks that would make, it certainly makes you less

inclined to get a job in law enforcement. But I guarantee you that anyone who does get this job and then is given that level of authority would abuse it just as quickly, if not more viciously than other people from different backgrounds. Well, he wants Dalton from Roadhouse to become a cop. That's it. Be nice. Be nice. But that guy, the thing about that guy is that he's not real. He was in a movie. There basically has never been a guy like that that's made up. I used to fuck guys like that in prison.

I want you to remember that it's a job. It's nothing personal. Uh-huh. Ain't called a cocksucker in personal? No. It's two nouns combined to elicit a prescribed response. Don't wonder if somebody calls my mama a whore. Is she? I would like to move on. We haven't checked in on my mayor and yours, America's mayor, Eric Adams, in a while. And I'd like to because the New Yorker last week had a great article called The Mayor and the Conman,

which is about a guy who we featured on this show before. Do you remember the case of Brooklyn-based pastor Lamar Whitehead, the pastor who was robbed on the pulpit of several hundred thousand dollars in jewelry? Yeah, I remember that guy. Yeah. He was the man. And I think at the time, I don't know if we did, but I think the correct speculation was like, rather than an outrageous robbery of a man of God bejeweled in several hundred thousand dollars of diamonds, that this was some sort of insurance scam that he tipped.

He was in cahoots with the guys who robbed him to get an insurance payout on the jewelry. But anyway, like the New Yorker article is about what a fucking con man this guy is and his long, close relationship with Mayor Eric Adams. There's some pretty funny stuff in this article. Wait a minute. So that was a realist. That was a insurance scam. He didn't actually get robbed. I did a fucking GoFundMe for. What the fuck? This is still speculation.

The jewelry robbery, I'm saying this is an alleged insurance scam, but there's something about that story that didn't sit right with me. And then I was just like the context of this article here would provide a hint as to what this was. It implied to me that this was not just a random robbery or that he was targeted as like, you know, someone known for having jewelry. I think that this was something he was probably in cahoots with the guys who robbed him. But I mean, if he wasn't, he certainly deserved it. Let's put it that way. So the article begins with an account of Lamar Whitehead and his dealings with the proprietor of the No Limit Auto Body Shop.

I'm just going to read here. It says, about a year ago, not long after Eric Adams was sworn in as the mayor of New York, an old friend and church leader named Lamar Whitehead went to an auto shop in the Bronx to drop off a Mercedes Benz G-Class SUV that had been in a crash. Whitehead led a small church in Brooklyn called Leaders of Tomorrow International Ministries. All right, sounding good. People called him Bishop. The shop he visited, No Limit Auto Body, was operated by a man named Brandon Belmonte, who was involved in real estate.

Federal prosecutors had later referred to Belmonte as a businessman. The Mercedes was a $25,000 job. Belmonte paid the $13,000 bill for a rental replacement while the work was getting done. Whitehead wanted more. He basically says, you've got to give me another $5,000, Belmonte recalled. I said, bro, the job was only $25,000. $13,000 and $5,000 is $18,000. The parts were $7,000.

I'm going to make zero. It occurred to Belmonte that Whitehead wasn't trying to negotiate. He was asking for a kickback. He promised to make it worth Belmonte's while. I've got City Hall in my back pocket, Whitehead said, according to Belmonte. Whitehead explained that he was close to Adams, going back to when Adams was Brooklyn Borough president. He told Belmonte that Adams had once offered him a $50 million construction contract. Eric's doing big things, Whitehead continued.

I got to get mine. He mentioned a property that Belmonte was developing in the Bronx. He said, Eric Adams can make it a homeless shelter and you'll get city benefits, Belmonte recalled. Whitehead offered to broker a meeting with Adams. He kept telling me we're going to make millions together, Belmonte said. And he said, you've got to give me five grand or I'm going to beat you up. I would love to convert all my rental properties into homeless shelters and get billions in kickbacks from the city. But right now I just need that five grand or I'm going to kick the shit out of you.

A few other Eric Adams updates. He has declared war on the rats of the city. And considering appointing a rat czar position for which I feel that I should be considered. He also said in the campaign that he likes rats and that he had pet rats. I don't know. Yeah, this guy needs to figure out what his position on rats are. Yeah, he can't get his story straight. He said that he both grew up with rats the size of dogs and that they were also his pets and that he likes them.

But also it's time for war. Maybe there was a falling out that we don't know about the rats. The rats are negged on a contracting job that he was going to turn their burrow into a homeless shelter but didn't pay $5,000. They promised to lead him to the biggest deposit of enchanted jewels and minerals underneath Manhattan. And then they said, no, we're not going to do that. Redwall was based on Eric Adams' childhood. Overflowing trenchers of the honey wine and walnut salad at City Hall. This is a swag badger.

And just one more thing before I get back into the New Yorker article. I saw over the weekend Eric Adams announced like in the midst of announcing a budget that is just an austerity budget. It just cuts to education and social services. He declared that he declared something like it was framed around what he describes as the four pillars of New York City. Like it's fucking Islam or something. And it's like, I don't know, it's like respect, courtesy. It's like, I don't know, the courtesy professionalism respect shit that the NYPD did years ago. But now it's four pillars and it's for the city of New York.

So Islam, you took five, New York, we're getting it done in four thanks to Mayor Eric Adams. Just a little more from the New Yorker article. Wait, what are the four pillars of New York? Does he actually say? New York City Schools. OK, this is the New York City Schools Chancellor unveils four pillars for the new normal in public school systems. So it's four pillars for New York City's public schools. Oh, OK, OK.

What are the pillars? OK, I'm getting to the pillars. Come on, just list the pillars. OK, reimagining the student experience to make students more eager to attend school and to graduate them with a pathway to the middle class. Scale. OK, pillar number two, scale and sustain things that work. It's a good idea. OK, these are Jesus Christ. Nobody thought of that before.

These are like the most long-winded pillars. I bet most pillars are sharp, quick. Yeah. Pillars are usually things like honesty, you know, respect, tithing, shit like that. All these things are like, OK, there's a permanent innovation culture. That's not a pillar that's copywriting. The final two pillars are. If this was Mohammed, he would have been stoned to death.

Yeah. If he presented pillars like this. If he was like, all right, here's what Islam's built on. We're always reinventing a culture of respect. The pro-Saudis through rocks at him would have hit. What if instead of tithing, Mohammed emerged and faced a major tenet of his new faith on prioritizing wellness and its impact on student success. Oh, OK.

Yeah. Oh, man. That's the best word ever, right? Wellness. Partnerships with parents. Partnerships with parents is the last one. Yeah. Partnership with parents.

To do what? What are you partnering with them for? To prioritize wellness and success in the schools. You need parents to uphold the pillars. It's a partnership between parents and teachers to build and uphold the pillars. OK, back to the New Yorker article. This is about Eric Adams. It says here, later, Adams amended 15 years of financial disclosure forms to reflect that he still owned half the apartment.

This is more of his apartment owning shenanigans. He blamed his former accountant, Clarence Harley. Harley had gone through some difficult times, Adams said. I had an accountant who was homeless, he explained. I let him continue to do his job even when he lived in a homeless shelter. And because of that, it caused him to make some bad decisions. Oh, I remember that. I remember him talking about the hobo accountant.

I remember the hobo. Yeah, yeah, by can of beans futures. It came out after the primary that Harley hadn't simply fallen on hard times until 2017. He had lived in an affordable housing building in Harlem where he did the books for the building's board. The board discovered that Harley appeared to have siphoned tens of thousands of dollars from the building's account and evicted him shortly thereafter. Harley could not be reached for comment. So, I mean, this is just if you're going to have a hobo do your books. I mean, look, a few things are going to fall through the cracks.

I mean, like they're doing accounting in fingerless gloves. You know, it's hard to do two column accounting when you're when you're heating your hands on a garbage fire. An authoritarian train conductor is always taking your calculator and legal pad. You have to fight Lee Marvin to get your 1099s for that year. A little more about the more Whitehead says Whitehead is 44 years old. He has bright brown eyes and a wide engaging smile. He often spends hours a day live streaming on Facebook and Instagram where he promotes his church and his luxurious lifestyle and announces his enemies. Designer for days, he once said, giving his followers a virtual tour of his walk in prayer closet, which was stuffed with clothing from Gucci, Fendi and Louis Vuitton.

Whitehead, who lives in a multi-million dollar house in Paramus, New Jersey, advertises himself as an ascendant community leader in a multiplicity of realms, business, politics, religion and entertainment. He has said that one of his missions is to serve as an emissary between the streets and the church. In 2018, here's an example of doing just that. In 2018, after the rapper Takesh 6ix9ine pleaded guilty to making sexually explicit videos of a 13-year-old girl, Whitehead spoke in court on his behalf. The bishop had to come through, 6ix9ine said in a video he posted on Instagram. We had a situation. I did not expect there to be a 6ix9ine connection in here.

Okay, but a little bit of Eric Adams, Lord. Do you remember the Eric Adams Drill Summit where he met with Fivio Foran? Yes. Do you think that that was just him muscling a bunch of ascendant New York drill guys to give money to this guy's church? Probably. In retrospect, that's probably what it was. That's highly likely, yeah. If you want to get in good with us, then show your commitment to the community.

Right, right. Yeah, if you want to perform without issues, if you don't want to have venue problems, give a kick back to this scumbag creature that I know. Already clearly has industry contacts. Yeah, did you see the thing where the NYPD was filming everyone who came out of the Drake concert in Harlem on the weekend? So yeah, well, Drake didn't probably donate to New Life Progress Ministries, four pillaries of school teaching. That's so weird to record everyone who goes to a fucking Drake concert right now. This is the most violent murder music. These psychos who are listening to Drake's song, I drove you to your law school exam even though it was snowing.

They're like the fucking axe gang from Cobra. They're going to kill it at a moment's notice for no reason to please their nihilistic leader, Drake. Drill music like Drake's big single, I'm sad and like cartoons. Want to have lunch with me? Drake has hardcore drill lyrics like I wasn't hiding my son from the world. I was hiding the world from my son. Just one last thing about Whitehead is also a prolific poster. It just says Whitehead spent the subsequent weeks in a frenzy denying the accusations made against him, picking fights online in parentheses.

At one point, he threatened to beat up comedian D.L. Hughley. Mayor Eric Adams, once again, doing great things in the city of New York. DeBungler did not have as fun a social circle as Mayor Eric Adams, which is including the prayer closet preacher. He was like a designer for days as I thank you around my prayer closet. Eric Adams, look, you can criticize him, but it's the only known example of sureism being tried on a large scale. New York City right now is like the cube of sureism. To those of you who say real sureism has never been tried, I would just point you to the five bros. Moving on, here's a fun story from the Daily Mail, isn't it?

A headline, Priest who died during heart attack claims he went to hell and saw demons singing Rihanna's Umbrella. And Bobby McFerrin's Don't Worry, Be Happy to Torture People. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. I mean, I saw the headline and Umbrella, whatever, that's a fine song, but I gotta say Bobby McFerrin's Don't Worry, Be Happy is a song I would expect to be playing in hell on a loop just constantly. I'm saying there's some credibility to this here. A priest claims he temporarily died during a heart attack and went to hell where demons singing Karaoke tortured him. Michigan pastor Gerald Johnson said Rihanna's hit song Umbrella echoed through the gates of hell during his bizarre visit to purgatory. Well, wait a sec, was he in purgatory or hell?

Yeah, come on, get this shit figured out. We gotta get a church ecumenical council together to figure this out. I mean, I would have to say purgatory because that is waiting room music. Yeah. Oh yeah, don't worry, Be Happy, that's classic waiting to get your teeth cleaned music right there. But you know, like, I mean, this is hell we're talking about here. So there's something, there's something so demonic about playing a song that's meant to make people happy, but you're torturing them for it. Classic irony.

Yeah. That's, that's a quick, quick Taratino style hell we got here. Johnson said my spirit left my physical body when he suffered the heart attack seven years ago. Despite living his life as a man of God, he said he was stunned when he was denied entry to heaven and instead plummeted down to the earth's core. I thought I was going upward because I thought I had done so much good in this lifetime and helped so many people and made so many decisions that he said. After entering the fiery depths, he was faced with cruel punishments befitting his place in hell, including being tormented with demonic renditions of Rihanna's umbrella and Bobby McFerrin's Don't Worry, Be Happy. And there was a section in hell where music was playing. It was the same music we hear on earth, but opposed to entertainers singing it, demons were singing it.

Well, see, what if I tell you the entertainers here on earth are demons? That complicate matters for you? Well, Gerald continues, while you're while up here, you can listen to music to get over a breakup, like Don't Worry, Be Happy or Umbrella. If I was trying to get over a breakup and listening to Don't Worry, Be Happy, I would fucking kill myself. I would go straight to hell. Oh, God damn it. Johnson said his bizarre experience should serve as a warning to those who choose to enjoy chart to chart toppers instead of hymns and prayers. Why am I listening to you? You went to hell. Fuck off. You're a priest. You're a priest. You went to hell.

That's like you're fucking up. You're one thing. You're one thing you're supposed to do. Talk about, like, being a homeless accountant. Oh, yeah, my priest actually went to hell. Priests are the worst Eucharist ever asked to go to hell. So this guy is a Michigan native. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe maybe there's just no entry point to heaven through Michigan. It's possible. Highly possible.

That was part of NAFTA that closed that off. He was replacing the communion wine with Fago. Oh, yeah, please, please. If you have elderly relatives in the state of Michigan, please get them across state lines. Get them to Indiana before they die. I like how this happened to him in 2016, but he's opening up about it like six years later. A lot of people probably went to hell during COVID. A lot of people probably got sent to hell by COVID, and this was important information for them. Now they're listening to Don't Worry, Be Happy, and he could have told them way earlier.

What are you on Facebook? How many people has this hellbound priest given the last rights to between him going to hell and now none of that counted? That's like going to extra hell. Him giving you last rights is like Roseanne singing the National Anthem. This guy's a megachurch pastor. He's not a priest. That may explain why he's going to hell. He said priest. What are you talking about? He's not himself a priest, which I don't know.

Maybe that's why he's going to hell. He doesn't even know what fucking denomination he's in. He's accidentally starting the fucking Hooper Avignon Papacy. No wonder you're in hell, dumbass. You're not a priest. You're not a priest. You wear jeans that have zippers around the knees. This is really good. I figured out why he's in hell now. He doesn't even know what religion he is in. He says, while up here, you can listen to music to get over a breakup.

Don't worry, be happy or umbrella. But down there, every lyric to every song is the torment you. Johnson said his bizarre experience serves a warning to those people. Weird Al Jekovic? Is it parody lyrics? Is that it? That may be pretty fought. If you have a good sense of humor about yourself, you don't take yourself too seriously, the demons are remaking top 40 hits to be roasts of you. Yeah.

And about how you did all seven deadly sins. I mean, you're in hell. You know, you should relax. What's the worst that's happened? It's already happened. He shows up. He's in the fucking Lake of Fire. There's just fucking, you can stand under my umbrella, umbrella, umbrella. And then he just turns next to him and Hitler goes, don't worry, you get used to it after a while. I know it says here, as well as being forced to listen to fan favorite hits in the fiery inferno,

it's like one of those time life collection. All your favorite singles will be here in hell. Umbrella by Rihanna. Jay-Z and Alicia Keys Empire State of Mind, which by the way, if I die and go to hell, that is absolutely the song that they're going to use to torture me for eternity. The Jay-Z, Alicia Keys' song. I'm from New York.

Big lights will inspire you. Just hot flames will burn you for eternity, more like it. Place where dreams have made of? No, place where nightmares are made of. This is hell, bitch. Take your sensitive ass back to purgatory. We clown in this motherfucker. I know it says here, as well as being forced to listen to fan favorite hits in the fiery inferno, if you also claim to have witnessed the gruesome scene of a man being burned alive, the things I saw were indisible.

It makes me emotional, he said. His eyes were bulging, and worse than that, he was wearing chains on his neck. It was a demon holding the chain. On Earth, a lot of the lyrics and music are inspired by demons, he claimed. People come into contact with demons who give them lyrics for the purpose of controlling people on Earth. Oh, he met a demon liar down there. He was like, oh yeah, I've actually ghosted in a lot of like Sam Smith's songs. You know, I'm like, yeah.

I met Taylor at Ibiza. She's really down to Earth. I actually wrote all of Tau Kruse's songs. Black Eyed Peas, that was me. And then he meets the Dark Lord Lucifer himself, and it's Bruno Mars? What? If hell is just like I got to watch other people burn, that's not that bad. I can handle that. Yeah, and presumably, if you're like Reinhardt Hydric, you're like, oh, this is like what I did during my life. Like I like this, your own.

Well, you think maybe like this pastor, like he was given, like, look, he had his eighth heart attack of that year. You know, he's. And, you know, the Archangel Michaels, like, look, this guy, he keeps not having a heart attack. And, you know, the Archangel Michaels, like, look, this guy, he keeps knocking on the door. Let's just give him a little, let's give him a little preview. You know, he's on our side, but let's just show him what the waiting room to hell is like so we can come back to Earth and warn people about demonic lyrics. Like, don't worry, be happy. I mean, come on.

Just don't worry. I'm sorry. I worry all the time about sin. Oh, he does say why he went to hell. He said it was the thing was I had in my heart was unforgiveness towards people that had done me wrong. You can go to hell for that. So he went to hell for being, he went to hell for being a workaholic, basically. Yeah.

I'm too dedicated to my job. Oh, I guess I got to go to hell. Yeah, I went to hell for standing up for myself. I'm a fucking loser. Well, speaking of hell, here's a story I'd like you guys to weigh in on here. This is courtesy of Gizmodo by Nicky Main, nationwide ban on TikTok inches closer to reality. Now, this is a Josh Hallway specialty here. I'm just going to read it here.

It says, the White House is facing mounting pressure from Congress to ban the wildly popular TikTok app nationwide after Senator Josh Hallway, Republican Missouri, and Congressman Ken Buck, or Ed Buck's brother, introduced a piece of legislation on Wednesday to curb its use. A similar bill to ban TikTok in the U.S. was filed during the last congressional session, but it was not considered in either chamber. The No TikTok on the United States Devices Act, wow, Josh Hallway really coming up with a pithy fucking title for this piece of legislation. The No TikTok on the United States Devices Act would ban access to the app on all devices, but it may face pushback from a divided Congress in the coming weeks. Senator Hallway argued for the legislation in a Twitter post on Tuesday, oh, how funny, it's using another rival social media app. TikTok is China's backdoor into Americans lives, he added, it threatens our children's privacy as well as their mental health. Last month, Congress banned it on all government devices. Now, I will introduce legislation to ban it nationwide.

Now, much as I am loathe to agree with Senator Josh Hallway on anything, I think TikTok is, as you pointed out, Matt, I think TikTok is creating a Ponty Pool-style situation, like, but in reality, I think it is very much contributing to the mental illness of many people in this country. But what do you guys think? Ban TikTok, ban TikTok, yay or nay? What are your guys' feelings on this? I mean, like, if it's not TikTok or having people insane, it will be something else, you know? Yeah. You gotta just have, get rid of the phone, like, no phone.

Yeah. You know, one thing they could do? Mandate increasing the weight of a phone, so that it's like 10 pounds. Okay, yeah. That's not that, because that would be like, so that would be like, okay, like, to carry it with you all day would be a commitment. And when you want to use it, it's like, you know, you have to be a little bit more conscious of it. Exactly. You can have a phone, it's just, it's gonna be, you're gonna have to really want to be on there instead of just, like, letting it fill in the gaps of all of your free time, just passively.

But yeah, like, I mean, people who don't know how to use a VPN will figure it out to get TikTok, certainly. Yeah, I don't know how else you ban them. I mean, we don't have the great firewall of China. Yeah, it's just gonna be an American company that creates, like, exact, I mean, all, like, Instagram and Twitter have already tried to do versions of TikTok, like, on their, on their own apps. So, like, the eight-second video format, I mean, I don't know. Am I just old? Is that the reason I find TikTok so uniquely disturbing? Because, like, whenever I come across a TikTok video, it's just like this, just, it's just a shrieking wall of sound and, like, unpleasant images and words that, like, I think are really, yeah, like, it's creating Ponty Pool.

I saw this thing over the weekend that was like, Julia Fox has to apologize to Instagram person who uses the, for using the word mascara, which he thought to be the makeup mascara, but on TikTok now mascara is code for sexual assault. And I'm just thinking, I just, I don't know, yeah, it's, I don't even know if I'm relaying that story correctly, but it's, it's doing wonderful things to people's brains and language. I'm enjoying, I'm enjoying the people just, like, full-on just retreating into pre-modern mental states thanks to it, like, the guy, the thing of, the guy who, who saw, who saw a giant. That was just a fucking tower on the top of a hill. It wasn't moving. It was clearly made of metal, but it was big and it was far away. And then he died because the government wanted to cover it up that there was giant on the hill. Did he go to hell? Because presumably he didn't forgive the giant for causing his own demise. No, yeah, I mean, so the mascara thing and pretty much all, I would say most things from the internet, most linguistic things that sound insane to anyone. Like, okay, the friend thing, you know, the friend thing, these are all, yeah, like friend candies, a little like frog and all that shit.

Everything like that was created to get around automated suspensions. Like, there are words, people, you know, think there are words that, like, make you more likely to be suspended or shadow banned on TikTok or Twitter. So they'll, like, you know, there'll be widely accepted replacement words. That's how the friend thing got started. That's how mascara became a stand-in for sex. So this is like my friends who went to high school in Bay Ridge said the Italian kids that went there would refer to black people as citizens as a way of getting out of saying the n-word in public. So, like, this is basically a version of that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a particularly, like, interesting phenomenon of the modern internet because, I mean, this has always been around because there's always been bannings, right? But in the new age where, you know, content can't possibly be moderated in the old way because now you have hundreds of millions of people on the same platforms and things are automated, you know, you have to do it through automation bolstered by underpaid people in the global south. I do think it's interesting how, like, it creates this sort of, like, infinite, this sort of infinite mirror of degenerating language. Like, it just makes, you know, it just keeps going and going because then, you know, your replacement word gets added to the words that trigger the filtration system.

Then you come up with another thing and then it just drives you further and further away from making any type of sense. It's, like, a uniquely degenerating effect of automation. I mean, but, like, this is Josh Hallway's, like, I think he's trying to launch, like, a presidential campaign with this very, very weak team. This is sort of, like, pseudo-populous posturing and, like, making it all about China. And I'm like, look, I'm sure this is some sort of covert weapon of war that China is using against America, but that doesn't mean I think we should ban it. If anything, I think we should encourage it. But no, I mean, it just, like, they succeeded where we failed. Like, we could never come up with something as good as TikTok.

All our shit is like, they fucked it up. Remember Vine? Yeah, they fucked it up. Yeah, because we, instead of central planning, we made it subject to the free market. But, yeah, no, I mean, it does sort of show the limits of national conservatism. He's never going to, like, actually, like, you know, propose something like, okay, you have to be, like, 24 to get a phone or something like that. Because if you're funding the Republican Party, you don't want to hear that. It'll just be, like, you know, singular symptoms you pick out instead of the disease. That's sort of the MO of national conservatism.

I do think, though, it's a combination of, like, you say, am I just old or is this uniquely evil? And it's like, as always, it's like, it's both. Like, we are just too old for this. We have not been acculturated into it. And so we find it alienating and weird in a way that we wouldn't if we had a different experience with it. But at the same time, like, these media developments are a progression, you know, towards a total breakdown of meaning of any kind. If only we had, Matt, if only we had a map to meaning. If only someone wrote out our map or maps to meaning that we could follow to just get some goddamn meaning out of life. Well, speaking of things that shatter meaning and reality, did you guys see this fucking front page article that the Daily Telegraph ran over the weekend,

supposedly proving that Prince Andrew couldn't have had sex with Virginia Roberts in a bathtub? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I did see that. Okay, like, this is a front page article in the Telegraph. The Daily Mail covered it, I'm just reading here, it says, Maxwell family bathroom stunt said to prove Prince Andrew's innocence is shameful say friends of accuser Virginia Roberts. So basically, friends of Virginia Roberts, sorry, a photograph on the front page of the Daily Telegraph showed a man and a woman lying fully clothed in a bath in the former London home of convicted child sex trafficker Jelaine Maxwell, wearing makeshift masks bearing the faces of the Prince and his accuser. It was published under the headline, the photo that clears Duke over bath sex, and was said to disprove Miss Robert story that the Prince had engaged in intimate acts with her and its confined space. Jelaine's brother Ian told the newspaper that the image posed by two of his sister's acquaintances shows conclusively that the bath is too small for any sort of sex frolicking.

I mean, like, I saw that, but like, they printed the photo that was just like one of the weirdest things I've ever seen. They're like, they have computer printed out photos of Prince Andrew and Virginia Roberts that they've like taped to their face. But the photo clearly shows a man and a woman sitting in a bathtub with more than enough room for two people. So I like, and what do they mean by sex sex frolicking? They're like, they're sitting in the bathtub, like, foot to foot opposite each other, which I mean, is going the only member of the Maxwell family who's had sex? That's not how it happens. Prince Andrew, he wasn't accused of scissoring with Virginia Roberts. And another, another detail that's just like, I mean, it was just insane to me because like, I know it's the daily the Tory graph or whatever, but like, isn't the telegraph supposed to be like an ostensibly serious newspaper? The other funny detail from the photo is that he's the bathtub is surrounded by mirrors, which is like, OK, if this is not a bath for sex frolicking, then what's one of the fucking mirrors everywhere?

Like the last thing I want to look at is by like, you know, wet body is just shoved out of a hot tub is a full length fucking mirror. Speak for yourself. But I don't know. I mean, like, did they did they really think that this was like exonerate? I mean, it's just like, you have to ask yourself the question is like, are they this stupid? Or do they think like, or is that I think there's like a tendency to just be like, oh, like, they're doing this, you know, like you said Matt to dab on us. But like, there's always that's always in competition with like, are they this are they just this inbred and stupid? Like they did like the same person who who gave Prince Andrew the like, I can't I medically can't sweat excuse. Did they come up with this photo stunt idea? Like, why even do this? Like just I think the UK is in like really dire straits right now what with the queen dying and the country like, you know, circling the fucking drain socially and economically. And like, is this need to defend the royal family? And like, are the it's like, in the midst of like all the anger and Harry and Meghan Markle, like, I'm dumbfounded as to what the reason for doing this would be.

Like, you really think that just Lane is going to get out of prison because of this fucking photo? Or are they just doing it because they can? It's it's baffling to me. Well, presumably this is the type of thing that may have worked when Robert Maxwell was still alive, you know. Yeah. But like the photo itself is like self refuting. There's two people in the bathtub. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It's that it's that they're, you know, the second generation, they're not quite as clever as their predecessors. I think on their side, there's a little bit of like shock and like what the fuck at Elaine taking the fall for some of this, you know, I think they're a little bit surprised by that. But otherwise, I can't really get inside their heads or what I want to. It's like he's buzzing. Yeah.

Yeah. I just, yeah, I think as always, it's a combination of like incompetence, a feeling of, I don't know, sort of still being untouchable and yeah, to generation. I mean, like just they really need the royal family to like be untainted by this or something. I don't know. Like it's just this thing that's hanging over them. That's like, I think, I think honestly, like so much of the anger about Harry and Meghan is just a way to like diffuse and distract people from like the massive issue of Prince Andrew and his connections to Epstein and Gillian Maxwell. But I don't know. Also, as you said, the fact that England is like England is now at the point where it the standard of living is going below all those Eastern European countries that people would come to England from before Brexit. Like they're, they're, they're fucked and they have no response to it other than miserably clutching all the remnants of Imperial majesty and power that they, that they have. They cannot die with dignity. They must continue their sex frolicking. Yeah, most importantly, they don't, they're not getting, they're not being miserable on their own terms.

Yeah. But the royal admitted he'd stayed with Epstein in his New York mansion for four days. You were staying at the house and convicted sex offender. It was a convenient place to stay. Well, I mean, just one more example from across the pond. An article I came across this weekend is not just the Daily Tory graph. This is from The Guardian is an opinion piece that have a line, forget Andrew Tate. What about the host of misogynists in labor's ranks by Catherine Bennett for The Guardian? And this one of those articles were like, I just like, I read it through.

I was like, okay, like the first two thirds of the article are just restating like Andrew Tate's greatest hits, like, you know, bragging about being a pimp and, you know, imprisoning women and saying that women shouldn't speak or have jobs. And then I'm saying, okay, like, when are we going to get to the thing that this is compared to? And it's like a communications guy for the Labor Party who said some fucking MP. He said he said of an MP that she should consider spending more time with her constituents instead of JK Rowling. And that is what is being used to be like, okay, forget about Andrew Tate, the pimp and sex trafficker. Let's focus on this random labor communications guy who had what is a standard political put down and insult from among any politician, which is just, yeah, spend time with your constituents and not celebs. What a fucking shitty country. Jesus Christ. Yeah, they had the chance. They're done. They're they've just there. Goodbye. See ya.

I did say, is Andrew Tate allowed to have a phone in solitary confinement? He's posting you there. He's tweeting from prison. Is he kiting these out or something? Because I saw him over the weekend and he said the matrix doesn't want you to drink two cups of coffee a day. And I was like, censor this man immediately. These ideas are too powerful. Ever since he's went to prison, he's been really funny. He's been really, his jail posting is really funny. Before it was like, before it was like, I know all the dark truths, the matrix is going to kill me. You could break any woman, you know, I could, like if I had two minutes to Kate Middleton, she would be my slave.

And after he's like, life begins after coffee. I do wonder, did he like stick a phone up his ass or something to get in there? And just so that he could tweet about how good Folgers is, that's pretty wild risk to take. Or maybe his wizard is doing it. Maybe the wizard is posting for him. Oh, the wizard has been like a source of like a lot of like inter-right wing strife. Because more Varg like people are like, look, he literally has a Jewish mage. This is our guy. But like as far as the phone, I mean, like, what would you have to bribe a Romanian prison guard with to get a phone like a pog?

Yeah, that would be pretty cheap. Andrew Tate gets out of prison and becomes like a spokesman for the pog lifestyle. Not P-A-W-G, P-O-G, pogs, they're back. And Andrew Tate is like, this is how you sharpen your mind. Pog sharpens pog, iron sharpens iron. Do you really say the matrix got rid of pogs? You're right. Where'd they go? Damn it.

Yeah, I'm so sick of the matrix. Fucking matrix, man. Fucking forget. I turn around and my Mighty Morphid Power Ranger slammer has just disappeared. One last story. Speaking of the matrix, did you guys watch the video of Paul Pelosi getting attacked in his home? Like the police body cam video that came out? Because that was pretty good.

Like, why is his motherfucker in his underwear? I mean, I understand it's his own house, but come on. I'm not endorsing every right wing conspiracy theory about this. I want to, but I sorely want to, but it was pretty good. Pretty good video. Well, like, okay, I've seen a lot of episodes. They've, like, definitely run out of ideas on SVU and they've had Olivia taking hostage approximately 7,000 times since Stabler's been off the show. She's taken hostage, like, once a week.

And a lot of the time she'll, like, you know, be, like, to show the hostage takers that she's trustworthy. She'll, like, you know, throw her gun away. Maybe Paul Pelosi was like, look, look, to, like, show you that I'm no threat and to make you comfortable. I'll get naked. I'll take my pants off. Maybe he showed up with his pants off. We know he drives drunk. That's true.

Yeah. I mean, if you're Paul Pelosi and you're just walking around with, like, one ball hanging out in San Francisco, what, like, cop or anything that's going to say shit to you? It seems like he has a pretty chill lifestyle, though. Yeah. Yeah, just cruising around shit-faced in his Porsche. No pants on. Yeah, just whipping around to Porsche, getting sloshed.

You gotta say. Well, an 82-year-old man surviving getting his head cracked open with a hammer. Like, Jesus Christ, this dude's indestructible. No wonder he drives drunk. He's like Bruce Willis. No, unbreakable. Unbreakable. An even greater hero.

All right. Let's, let's wrap it up here for today. That does it for us. Until next time, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, we bid you bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.