Chapo Trap House - 720 - The Demon Way in Hell feat. @ettingermentum (4/4/23)

Episode Date: April 4, 2023

We’re joined by wonk whiz-kid @ettingermentum to discuss some of his recent elections analysis. We take a look at how today’s arraignment might affect Trump’s 2024 outlook, the electoral history of transphobia for the GOP, and analyze the art of losing from some recent Democratic stars. Follow @ettingermentum on Twitter And subscribe to his very good Substack here: https://ettingermentum.substack.com/ And keep an eye out for his livestreams at: http://twitch.tv/zevonmentum NYC! We are doing a special Movie Mindset mini-series launch party & screening of a 35 mm print of John Carpenter’s “In The Mouth of Madness” on Thursday, April 27th at the Roxy Cinema, followed by a special talk back pod recording with Will & Hesse. Tickets here: https://www.roxycinemanewyork.com/screenings/chapo-trap-house-movie-mindset-presents-in-the-mouth-of-madness-35mm/ And submit any questions for a Hell on Earth wrap up stream and/or ep over at [e-mail]

Okay, hello. Greetings friends. It is Monday, April 3rd, and we've got Chapo coming at you. Just in just a little bit, we'll be talking to Etten Germantum from Substack about polling, politics, winners, losers, picks. We're going to pick them all. But before we get to that, obviously the news is still being convulsed by the impending indictment of Donald Trump. He's landed in New York today, and I'm hearing from my sources that Daimio Trump will turn himself in tomorrow morning to the Lower Manhattan Office of the Shogunate Executioner. There he will be presented his favorite meal, a McDonald's Filet-O-Fish sandwich. I have spoken to sources inside the Trump camp that he has already composed his warrior's death poem, but after

receiving his last meal, he will don a ceremonial white kimono, and then he will be presented in front of his retainers with the ceremonial tray holding the tanto blade wrapped in cloth. From there, Trump will begin to make a left-to-right-wise cut on his lower abdomen before getting to a turning point, turning the blade back around, and beginning to come right-to-left across. It is at that point when, which is second, will deliver the ceremonial killing stroke. It's a highly skilled executioner, so they will be performing the cut that leaves a single flap of flesh still attached to your head, so it will sort of prop itself back up for the sake of appearances. But what can we say? I'm just leaning forward to reading his death poem. I actually heard that Trump is planning to

do something where he's going to be there with Barron, and he's going to put two objects in front of Barron, and one of them is going to be Elton John's landmark album, Rocket Man, and the other object will be a book by Thomas Chatterton Williams about ending wokeness. And if Barron crawls towards the Elton John album, they will travel the road with no master seeking to right wrongs. But if he crawls towards the book about wokeness, they will both be executed. So if you're watching the 2024 race, what Barron does here is very important, obviously. Yeah. You never know, though. Look, I mean, it's happened before. It could happen this time, but right before presenting himself to do these ritualized disembowelment, he could take off his ceremonial white kimono to

reveal he is actually wearing the hollycock crest of the Biden Imperium, which no blade can strike. And then he will begin to walk the demon way in hell to the 2024 election. Yeah, I think that that's exactly what Gerald Ford did. So Trump's impending a ritual suicide. Obviously, there's, there's, but we got, we got Ed and Germantum here. You know, this is the young gun, the young gunners out here in the game of political, political predictions. So I got, I got to ask you, the young savage, with like, okay, like, will this help Trump as much as people are hyping it? Like, you know, like, apparently, he wants a big, a big lots of cameras per block, you know, he's going to be grinning ear to ear in that mugshot. Is this going to, I mean, you already see

evidence of this in polls already, like juicing him over the Santas. Well, the sad thing about this is, and this is going to be in the historiography of it, everybody's going to say that, Oh, it was the indictment because he's going up by like 20 points in the polls. He started making gains, like two weeks ago, it was well before the indictment, like he's even was even in the news. So it's always going to be credited to this indictment and not his genius nickname of desanctimony is finally landing, which it sucks that that actually did work. I think it's that the pudding thing. The pudding, the pudding thing was like, that was, you know, some tax in DeSantis' tires. Yeah, really slowed him down. Rupert Murdoch deployed some British journalist to help DeSantis fight

the pudding accusations, and it did not work. What was that? It was pure smart. He ate pudding with his hands. He ate pudding with his bare hands. How did the journalist defend him? He was like, and let's find, let's dispel the pudding rumors once and all. Finally, and DeSantis went, I wouldn't even eat pudding. It's sugar. Yeah, he said that. Yeah, he went, he said, it's sugar, man. That's the worst thing after silly season. Yeah, just awful. Actually, no, I figured it was silly season. After he said silly season, he started tanking. It's silly season, folks. Yeah, like Uncle Arthur on Bewitched. So what made a good point that he said he has the same voice as George Santos? Yeah, he does. Well, me and you talked about this long before it really heated up that

DeSantis has a problem. He's like, even when he was closer in numbers to Trump, even when people were trying to make it seem like it would actually be a contest that favored DeSantis. DeSantis and has this problem, if he's going to go for it, that he can get attacked by Trump, but he is in this impossible position where he's supposed to defend from, obviously, on indictments, on most things. He went further for Trump on indictment. But he can't really attack him that well or that harshly. He can't attack him at all because this is something that'll always be following when I saw him getting a ton of hype and even leading in the polls because there's not really a theory of the case for DeSantis. You can't break from Trump electorally trying to run a campaign against

him trying to beat him and then try to replicate him on policy and not just policy, but his own political destiny. DeSantis still has to support Trump for president while running against Trump. And he's supporting Trump more than Trump is supporting himself. He had that post immediately out about where he said, we will do the second notification crisis. We will not honor the indictment. We're going full John C. Calhoun on Biden. We're going to not do this. And then Trump said, yeah, I'm going. I'm taking the mugshot next week. So now he's just saying that I'm going to cause a constitutional crisis for something Trump didn't even want to do. And I'd like to think that Trump faded that out of him on purpose so we can call DeSantis a flawless hack at the

debate. The one road that he could have taken and hugely risky, which is why he didn't do it. But when we look at how boxed in he is and how fucked he is, given the parameters that he's set for himself, what if he had just come out and been like, fuck Donald Trump. He's a fucking loser. He's a bitch. He sucks. He's a whiny, corrupt shit. Just go and raise the entire right critique of Trump and just attack him. Yeah, that could have changed things. He had to actually step out in a way that I don't think he's capable of. But I did see that I have sources on the ground. I keep track of 50 accounts called shit like Roman Horuskistan or Elizabeth Dolan Joyer. And these people, you learn more about like GOP politics from these guys and you could like

doing anything even like the media watchers who watch like 50 hours of William F. Buckley. They're not like getting as much raw info. These people were so mad at Trump after the midterms. They were so mad at him. They're like this fat loser. He's doomed us. We're never going to win election again. We're going to like, we can't like win any single swing status. This guy's like, he sucks. And that was a lot of what led them to DeSantis. Like if you read Bill Mitchell, the kindest soul in all of Republican politics, that's exactly his thing. He's like ruthlessly pragmatic. He's like Trump's a loser. DeSantis wins. And there is like an electoral argument for that. DeSantis' performance was very impressive how legitimate it was. I am a little skeptical.

But like nobody cares about that. Nobody follows the midterms. Nobody's like, there's never been an instance in history I can think of where like people change the entire direction of their party based on like, not only the results of the midterms, but interpreting the results in the midterms in a particular way that allowed them to understand why it was bad. Like, nobody really cares about that besides the elite Republicans. And like, I don't think that's the case. You can really articulate that's like, even if you went that route, the people would even understand. You can't win an election with the guys like Slade Gorton, Enjoyer. Yeah. Yeah. I have also like through you found a bunch of those utterly stultifying

accounts. Yeah. By the way, I had them were born in 2010 and they're all named like Mark Kirkstan. I like there was one or somebody who like like talked about how they were like getting spanked by their dad. And I found an old tweet for them were talking about how spanking is good. So it was like doing like a like some shit with like Trump where he said, I hate the electoral college, but for like somebody like in middle school, just like those like a couple of weeks ago, I saw I saw accounts from like people who were, I don't know, 19 or 20 years old. And that's like the oldest I could imagine them being being like, I will never forgive Jane Fonda for what she did with the anti air battery. It's just like that was that was 60 years ago. Yeah. And that was

the best thing that's ever happened. So yeah. Yeah. Well, just going back to the midterms for a second, I thought it was interesting that they it was very convenient for like that type of Republican to pin this all on Trump and certainly like Trump is like an electoral albatross, especially midterms. But it seemed it was a coping mechanism. It was absolutely coping mechanism. Absolutely. Because they don't want to admit that like their broader project they've been working on, like for the past 40, 60, like 100 years is a complete dud once they put it in the practice. It's easier just to blame out of this one stupid guy. Granted, he is stupid. That part of it is correct. But it's not him. This is your thing. He might be stupid, but are you smart enough to know that it's probably

a bad idea to repeal Roe versus Wade? Yeah. Republicans to win elections. That was very underrated point also in December where Trump outright like went out against the pro life people. It was funny or how he had a better grasp on what happened than than any of the professionals. But that's like that kind of moment, like after the elections, keeping track of that, that is really informed how I think of the Republicans right now. I want to get into the Dobbs effect and its ongoing importance for upcoming elections. But I mean, I guess just like the last thing I wanted to ask you about Trump dissent is like Matt outlined one road not taken for dissent this because he is a coward. And that's just simply go directly at Trump that A,

he's a loser. B, he's a whoremonger. C, I mean, go down the list. Yeah, I want to pull out his Epstein connections. I mean, like 20 is kind of like that's impressive. He won Miami Dade County by 11 points. He won Palm Beach County. It was like really like impressive stuff, like just objectively, but he never even really talks about that. He just talks about his stupid policy agenda that like everybody, every Republican governor in the country is just copied from him. Like that's not what's unique about you. Like you have freaking like, I don't know, globb slave owner in like Arkansas doing that. Like the difference with you is that you won off that. Like make that case. He never really says it. But even then that's not compelling.

Like Beto tried that and it didn't work. Well, I mean, like, I would say that the second possible out like open route to the Santas that I'm seeing is just like, I mean, it seems like there's been a lot of a little bad blood already for him, even like dating to run for president. But like, doesn't it make the most sense for both of them that he just auditioned to be Trump's VP, which he will hate and he'll have to eat like like a buffet of shit to get there. But I mean, he has no soul or decency. So like, you know, that shouldn't that shouldn't affect him too badly. Yeah, that was anticipated. The funny thing about that is that there would have been some legal complications about that because legally you can't have a president and a vice

president from the same state. That's not if you don't not if you want the electoral college votes of that state, which yeah, that's true. That's the substantial part. Yeah. So Trump would have had to move back to New York to do that. Well, this certainly complicates things for that option. He could have just been like fleeing like like to like some random red state. This is something. It's like a crackpot thing. I always said, I always felt like Trump should have just run for senator and like some like, I don't know, Wyoming or something. So he could have just been like in politics or whatever. Like that's like a really old thing. The presidents just don't do anymore about it. I feel like they should do that. There's nothing that says you can't.

They'll still be able to stick around. The last person to do that was Hillary and specifically because that was like her nerd like Goldwater girl. Like she would have been, she would have been, if Hillary was born in 2009, she would have been on electoral Twitter. Absolutely. As Tom Mellonowski stand. Yeah. Yeah. Barbara Milkolski respect her. That's when she reached high school and abandoned the GOP. She would have been one of those people who's like my political progression. Age nine monarchist. Age. Yeah age 14. Conservative Republican. Yeah. 14, Strasserite 15 of Gonzalez 16 of Simpson bulls obsessive. Yeah. But yeah, Hillary, Hillary was the last person who did that. I do, this is like for totally

forgotten now. It's been subsumed by the DeSantis Trump prople rate. But do you remember in like late 2021 when Republican operatives were suggesting that the House should elect Trump as speaker. They should have done that. Yeah, I still think they should have. There was like, you could bet on him and betting markets for him to be speaker. The thing about Hillary that you mentioned, it's always so funny to me that she thought that the route to being president was Secretary of State, like she's fucking Henry Clay, like Thomas Jefferson. Who do you think you are? What year do you think it is? Secretary of State and Senator from New York, Senator from the state of New York. Yeah, literally only happens 200 years ago. And

it didn't even work back then. Everybody got pissed at them when they tried that. There's a strategy that like fucking like from the era of good feelings didn't even work back then. But yeah, so yeah, a complicated for Trump. He'll be moving to New York, upstate New York. Awesomeing is what I'm talking about, folks. But I gotta say, I like, I think it's funny that he's going to be fingerprinted and mugshot it tomorrow. But like, I would not be surprised if he skates on this on this case. I would not be surprised if this case completely falls apart. It's easily the weakest charge. I was like reading through the article about it. And it's like, they're like, oh, he paid with like his own money for the hush money stuff. But it helped this campaign.

So it was campaign donations that weren't done right. By the standard, literally anything you do that's not like starving yourself to death is a campaign donation. But then you have the Georgia case where he's legally like, yeah, you need to just get the exact number of votes. So I win by a single vote. And he just had that on tape to the secretary of state. And it's like, they're like, yeah, we're still we're still working on that one. Like they can lock up every single rapper in the entire state. But they don't have anything against Trump and that like they're not using their resources right in Fulton County. Do you remember when like Rudy was on tape? Like he butt dialed a reporter. And it was just in the middle of one of his like, like disgusting,

smoke filled meetings at a cigar bar where he's like, how are we going to get more money from the UAE? Like they were just on tape, discussing, discussing extortion attempts. Yeah, something like that. Lobbying ops. It's like that happened every like two months under the Trump administration. There's just never any closure for any of it. Yeah, like I just tweeted it out thing that Don Jr. just tweeted out nothing ever resulted from him just tweeting that out. I'm haunted by it. And you know, like, I'm not trying to be like a contrarian here. Like Donald Trump should be in prison. And he and like, honestly, like, a politically motivated prosecutions are good. And we have more of them. It's good to set the precedent. I think it was like, it was a good tone

setter. It's like establishing the run. Yeah, you know, and like, so like Trump should be in jail for any number of things. But like to your point, it does seem like they chose the weakest case, because it has the least it's like the least consequential to our democracy or to like the world in general. They're just like, I like him paying hush money to this porn star. Yeah, that's a good point. Celebrity apprentice, you know, like, whereas he said, like the Georgia example is just like, he's like, Hey, could you please steal this election for me? Yeah, they'll like put him in like, like a freaking like chain gang, if he ever enters the state lines, if they can get that charged through with New York, I'll just probably have to pay a fine for

like bad bookkeeping. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, where were these people when Rod Leguiovic and George Ryan to Illinois executive chief executives were politically prosecuted? That's true. That's a blago and the Trump connection is so fascinating to me. I like to think like, because Trump was a Democrat for 10 years. I think I like to think he was a blago Democrat, and he left the party after they arrested him. Timeline six up. It does. Yeah. I mean, that's one thing to say. This might run on Trump against him as a Democrat for as long as he was. Yeah. So I mean, look, I mean, basically, I think the best we're going to get out of this is just tomorrow when he turns himself in. And sadly, America, America will now join the ranks of banana republics like Israel, France,

Illinois, South Korea, Japan, Illinois, as you know, prosecuting former heads of state for things unrelated to well, matters of state. Yeah. I don't move on out to like the big piece you just did forecasting the 2024 election. And like the headline is you have it's like the country is leaning democratic. But like the real point of the piece is that the Dobs decision has it like essentially in your reading, erased any structural advantages that the GOP once had in the electoral college because you talk about that. Well, the point is there. And this is like the way I look at it is like a kind of like a bit of like an esoteric viewing of the states. I'm not like saying states are necessarily leaning one way or the other. But it's like, what does the map

look like if you have like more of a neutral or just slightly Democrat or Republican leading national environment? Like what is the bias towards in that case? And for the past two elections, it's been heavily Republican leading. There are states that like Biden are barely one, but while he was winning by four points nationally, so like you could have had like a totally like even national vote, like no advantage once they're together and Trump would be winning Michigan and like Wisconsin by four. No, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin by four. What I saw from Dobs is that the environment last year in 2022 was Republican leading not by a lot, but by like, it was like by about one or two points. But they were still losing on all of these swing

states. And what that it's obviously bad to lose in swing states in any circumstances. But it's worse to lose in swing states and you're winning nationally slightly like what happened with Hillary. So the problem for Republicans is that like there's a significant indication and it makes sense if you take the Dobs stuff seriously, like you should, that like Michigan, like the impacts of it haven't been even across the board, like obviously Florida and New York didn't really care about it. The states that care the most about Dobs are disproportionately swing states. And that's like both North and South. So it's like it matters. It's like made a huge difference in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, a little bit in

Georgia, but not a ton. And all these states like are like just less Republican than they were previously. And even if the rest of the map is the same, that makes winning the presidency a lot more difficult for them. I mean, like obviously, like, you know, the removal of a human right that's existed for like several generations in American life is obviously going to have huge consequences. But do you think like in terms of the movement in these swing states, it's sort of a factor about like when making abortion illegal is all theoretical, there's a good number of people who call themselves pro-life or at least would have no problem voting for a pro-life politician because they know it's all sort of like theoretical and it's a law blah, blah, blah. But then now when

it's like in New York, yeah, and like, and like, and now that it's like a real thing and like these are like, you know, they're now like half the country, like women are facing prosecution for trying to obtain an abortion, like any Republican, anyone with an R next to their name, much less little than one that's like, you know, staunchly pro-life, which is all of them. Like that's not longer a theoretical choice that you're making that you can overlook because you want low taxes or like limited regulation or whatever. Absolutely. And the problem with them is that it's never going to have a situation like that and under any circumstances, you never want to have this overriding issue hanging around your party like a scarlet letter. But what's especially

for Republicans is that this will never go away. This is going to be a permanent issue just like how like pro-choice when like it was established that never stopped being an issue for Democrats. It's isn't like, um, like COVID or even like the war on terror where it was like really like potent for a brief period, but it had a timer. Like obviously the pandemic is going to end. The war is going to end one way or the other. Like this is just a policy issue that's perpetually going to be relevant. And it's just always going to haunt them in every election. And people aren't used to thinking about like shifts like that are that permanent. It was really resistant to the way a lot of people thought about stuff. Like there are like really

infamous like kind of just the amount that people overlooked it in 2022 was unbelievable. Like there was one like really high level guy who just like tried to prove that abortion stopped being an issue. And this is like seriously what he did. Post-Doms, he tried to say that abortion stopped being an issue. Yeah, he said it was an issue immediately after they did the ruling, but people stopped caring about it. Like it was like the bin Laden raid or something. Like it just lost salience. And like his proof of that was that he got Google trends and he put an economy and he put an abortion. And abortions stopped being Googled as much after a couple of weeks. And that was proof that people care more about the economy than abortion.

And he put this like to be official New York Times graphic and it was just a Google trends graph. Oh my God. Well, no, that way he should have known is that in states where it's now illegal, people were searching abortion, but with the A as an ampersand to avoid. Yeah. Or the idea about that, just like just searching abortion, why would you just search abortion? Yeah, I think that like almost everyone, almost everyone who professionally, you know, either is a pollster or watches polls or makes these types of types of prognostications, they lost any ability to see anything outside of a 24 hour news cycle. Mm hmm. They got, I mean, and it's an easy mistake to make because yeah, that is almost

everything in the last like seven or eight years really. I had some sympathy last for like a week max, but it doesn't mean that that's going to be the only thing it's still possible for there to be enormous shifts. Obviously, Biden still hasn't recovered from Afghanistan. It's been a year and a half now and he still is like 40% because of that. But it's and I have sympathy for that. I understand why people feel that way because it's like after watching everything with Trump and just having it beaten over your head, like this thing you think is really important, people don't care. They don't care about it. Your perspective is wrong. There's just like people are kind of like whipped into like not like really

trusting like their own instincts on stuff like that. But I still like I can understand where it comes from. But I thought I thought for people who like do this as a profession, it was really, really lazy. Yeah, I mean, like we saw the results in the midterms. It's just like a like a historically poor showing for the Republicans or like any part or any party out of out of power going into a midterm election, at least of recent vintage. But like, okay, like, I don't know if you saw New York Magazine this week, but they have a big headline that says abortion wins elections or supposed criminalizing abortion wins elections for Democrats. But like, I was struck by in the midterm elections, just how little Democrats actually ran on abortion. Like so I mean, it seems

like I had this huge effect. But Democrats were able to take advantage of it, mostly by not really campaigning or talking on it. Like, do you see evidence of that changing? Or would that like or would talking about it like, or making it like, you know, a quote unquote, culture war issue in an election that you have to like go back and forth on? Does that sap the electoral power of this? Or is this just cowardice on the behalf of the Democrats who should be out there, you know, like directly confronting this this monstrous, you know, situation? I think Biden was very kind of weak on it. His response to it was kind of baffling at the time. And I think it depends on the candidate, like in the swing states, especially where they have these really impressive

showings, there were like a lot of there was a lot of focus on like abortion. Like I remember, like seeing ads, I live in like, in my state for the Herschel Walker race, there was stuff about how like he opposed it all the time. Like in Michigan, like they had a whole referendum on abortion, they timed specifically like the gay marriage referendums in 2004 to coincide with the election to boost them. The only candidate I think notably didn't do it was the governor of Kansas, who's a Democrat, because they were under the impression people would care more about the economy, which is a bit strange to see, like after like the referendum there, like the abortion won 60% of the vote there. But she ended up winning reelection. So like, what do I know?

I think with Biden, there is like kind of like this, obviously, he's not a great messenger for it. And he is, I think there's a bit of kind of personal vanity on the White House's part to like really focus a lot on like the bills they pass because they want to feel like they have some legacy. But I do think it's overthinking it a lot. The infrastructure bill, like that's the idea. Yeah. Oh, that's on one side of the scale. And then like decriminalization of abortion goes on the other. I wonder what people are going to remember about Biden's tenure in office. Yeah. I mean, it's like, it's I get like the ego part of it, but it's like, don't make this too complicated. This, it's like, it's not always this, you don't need to think

about it too hard. Like that's been the case historically, like the biggest ships have just been something that's just obvious and hammering on that. Well, I mean, like, and speaking of obviousness, I mean, like, like you mentioned, like that this issue is not going to go away, because, you know, for the foreseeable future, abortion will remain illegal and increasingly more and more illegal, even if you don't live in a state that's like, you know, deep red or whatever. But I guess like my question is like, you know, like by 70 30 split, you know, Americans would prefer did not want to see ropey weight overturn and would prefer abortion to remain illegal for those seeking its service. But here's the deal, like, with the way the court system is now with

the federal courts and the Supreme Courts and like these, you know, like, or judges in Texas or whatever, who are making or like taking cases that either like where they do rule in a way that affects the entire nation, or is basically by like judicial fiat, removing even more rights, like the right to, you know, the morning after pill, or things like that. Like, will this matter for Republicans? Like, I mean, like, because like just how just how unpopular can something get when they have their bony claws over like every, every choke point of like either the, you know, a state elections or the court system in this country? Like, so what will that mean for like, you know, our politics going forward? Like for the policy? I don't know.

It's like, these types of things are very long term. Republicans took them decades to be able to get rid of this. And like, that's just the nature of the court system. Like, if you're going to go totally by the book, it's going to take you decades to like overturn this. The thing I think that is kind of interesting is, and I think a bit overlooked, because the courts obviously, you decide tons of policy, but they really only do so because there's such an absence of policy making from Congress over the past 20 years. Like they're, they had the really big like ruling, like about the EPA last summer, like that would and that was supposed to be really big. But really, all that ruling said was that like the Congress never enumerated that the EPA had this right.

So in the big like reconciliation bill that they passed, they enumerated the EPA did have that authority and it made the court decision moot. Like obviously they can try to do a new case and go farther on that. But like there's like a certain point where like if you try to just like overturn like stuff like the commerce clause, you risk like kind of going after the goose, laying the golden eggs. Are they stupid, stupid enough to do that? Like probably, but it's definitely not what they prefer. They prefer it to be like, I think their idea was that they would get this passed. It wouldn't necessarily be all that popular, but like it wouldn't affect them electorally. They'd still like maintain power legislative and judicial

levels. But it hasn't turned out that way. And their strategy isn't necessarily calibrated for that. And their legal philosophy is definitely not calibrated for it. Because a lot of this stuff in the Dobs decision assumes that they'll have a client Congress. It leaves an opening actually for codifying Robi Wade like through law. It was never actually done so. But maybe they could just do like a case where they just overturned that law. But that would require them to set a new precedent. And they're very egotistical people, like they'll exercise power if they have it. But like they've left themselves kind of like they've had their guards down in some instances. And I don't think that they've really anticipated a lot of what happened.

I, you know, it related to this is another piece you have on Substack that looks at the net effect of like anti trans rhetoric and policy proposals and just making gender issues, especially at the school level, like red meat that like here to for would seem like a ready made issue for like right wing red meat, you know, you shovel that out, it riles people up, you put Democrats in the position of defending stuff that sounds weird. And then hey, like you're laughing, you're having lunch. But like, I mean, you go through it piece by piece about how like virtually everyone who tried to sign on for this in the midterm elections ate shit on it. What do you think is going on there? Like, I mean, it has the American public consciousness

just shifted so fast, like since the Oberfeld decision legalizing gay marriage, that everyone just sort of has this attitude of like, oh, like gay people are just a normal part of American society. And then like, from there, it's just like not too far a leap to say, well, it's the same as true for trans people. Like, how did how did the like, the anti trans agenda of this current Republican election, like how did that how did that become such a disaster for them? Yeah, well, what I write about like, and I went back to the history for this, not just in 2022, but going back to like, 2015, when this started, and it was a response to Obergefell, like, they needed a new wedge issue, like not just electorally, they felt like they needed it. But like, I think

mentally, they had the feel like they were going after the lives on something with, like, I don't think that people's mindset is like, I don't think anything has really changed since Obergefell. Stuff has changed since like 2004. But like, it was mostly during the 10 years, when gay marriage just miraculously became super popular, I still don't even really know how that happened. Like, that was very strange, like that usually issues don't move that quickly. I mean, I think people, I mean, like my personal opinion is I think people were already there. I think they were just waiting for some official body to like sanction what they already are believed to be the case. They were just going to be like, Oh, now it's okay to say it. But I think people were sort of cowed by this,

like, imaginary impression that it was like much less popular than it actually was. And then once the Supreme Court stepped in, and then everyone was like, Oh, it's like, it's legal now. I think that like, everyone just sort of like, were able to like, you know, just admit openly or come out, if you will, of an attitude that I think most people had had for quite some time. Well, I think the popular opinion actually did predate the court. A lot of the reason why the court actually did rule the way that they did was because gay marriage became really popular, like in the early 2010s. So just like the attitudes have always been the same there, which changes that Republicans like have are constantly convincing them. So they're like

shadowboxing with reality, like that they like, no, this is we're going to go back to 2004, we're going to have an in we're going to like, be able to get all the socially conservative minorities on our side this time, we just this is the finally the one we're going to get all the barstool conservatives or whatever the hell they came up with that. There are a species of South Park conservatives, they were like the Pokemon evolution of the South Park conservatives. Yeah, like that's like, they're conservatives. It's a huge part of their mythology and like their self image. And like it changed for me about gay people to being about trans people. And you can really notice like, it hasn't it didn't like, there are a ton of examples,

like throughout the piece, like the North Carolina 2016 gubernatorial election and like the Kentucky gubernatorial election, even the Alabama Senate race, I think Roy Moore just outright said, like this was after like the like the off year elections there, he just said, Transgenders don't have rights. That's what I believe. And that even that didn't work in Alabama. So nothing about like the politics has really like been revealed since the North Carolina race. It's just like Republicans just like they want to believe that it works. And it like their kind of mindset has gotten so like kind of back into a corner with what they can even like believe in or express. They like just keep on convincing themselves this works, it keeps on losing. Nothing

really changes. But it's what they want to believe it's really similar. Like I a lot of what I say about the Stacey Abrams phenomenon. And I'm sure we'll get to that later is that she told people what they wanted to hear. The anti trans people is the exact same psychology, but with a different party. And you also know in your piece, like the something I alluded to on a previous episode, like it's it's interesting to contrast like and you have a very funny rundown of like quotes from people who like lost winnable elections, stridently talking about, you know, girl's sports or whatever, that Trump Trump himself has been sort of, I don't know, much more cowed or or much more hesitant to engage in like being anti gay and being anti trans. And look, he's

not he's no ally. But I mean, how would you how would you see Trump? Like, I mean, he like he has been either he's been cagey about this in a way that for instance, the Santas hasn't. Oh, yeah. Well, like one of the parts of the story that like I went through, like there's kind of this main character from the second half of the piece, this guy, Terry Shilling, who is just this fascinating figure. He's the son of a former Republican congressman from Illinois of nine siblings, a childhood friend of his actually messaged me a couple of weeks ago and said that when they were kids, they used to try to show porn to him all the time. But that's like kind of his background. And he just like is was really helpful for me in this piece, because

every time I would go to like, look up like an election, like, and like what happened with like the rhetoric on this, he'd always just be there saying like, we're using this as a test run for the next year's election, so we can prove the anti trans rhetoric works. And then it doesn't work. And then the next year, he's like, it didn't work last time, but we're going to get it to work this year. And then it doesn't work again. And like, there was this really interesting piece from Politico literally about him and how the Trump campaign in 2020, like just wasn't buying anything that he was selling. And he was just like, you know, I think it's still going to work. I'm just going to do it even though they don't like it. Like, Jared and Ivanka were really hard against it.

Like even Pat McCrory, like the guy who signed the bathroom bill and lost like in 2016, like the only Republican in a Trump state to lose like as an incumbent, even he was there like, you guys, you got to stop this, it doesn't work. But he just plowed ahead with it. And then there was a sort of like, kind of leadership vacuum after like January 6. And he wrote a whole like little history of how like Republicans like need to go anti woke. And it was what they wanted to hear. So this guy who has done nothing but lose elections for four years, just told them what they wanted to be hearing. And they went along with it because they have nothing else. I mean, like if we take their point of view seriously for a second,

is it like, I mean, like, I think they would say that they have, they have no choice but to like engage on this issue because they're fighting like a battle for civilization. Yeah. And I got to say, like to give them credit if like going back to the Oberfeld decision, like the legalization of gay marriage, they said it would represent an existential threat to what they see as civilization. And if you're talking about like the rather dramatic shift in public opinion about gay rights or just the gay relationships, I mean, they're kind of right. And like, you know, the transition issue as well, like those posts and fairly crucial and existential threats to their view of like, you know, a rightly ordered society.

Yeah, that's something I touched on also. Like it's not just that like he really touched on all their anxieties and fears and told what they wanted to hear. These like all the hatchet men from like the Bush era, the guys who like to help stuff like the Max Klylin ads, those guys are gone. They're either dead or they just like became Epic Lincoln project guys and are like living like perpetual cycle of doing Matt Schlapp stuff every day. Like those guys aren't there. So all they have left are people like Matt Walsh who were like educated, like as conservatives grew up as conservatives are professional conservatives, never engaged with anybody who's not a conservative. And like if they do, they're just arguing with them. And they don't really know anything besides

just the press forward on this. And they think it has like these really high level stakes. So in their mind, engaging on it, even though it's a loser issue is virtuous, you're standing up for your beliefs against like the broader society being wrong. But like it's not helping them. It is, it is sort of like, not a complete mirroring, but there are echoes of, you know, we've talked about how, you know, first Josh Hawley seemed like a Republican Elizabeth Warren, and now it's- They're all Elizabeth Warrens now. Exactly. They're all Elizabeth Warren because they all have the exact same problem that Warren had, which is a two-internet of a campaign. And I think you hit the nail on the head pointing out how the current purveyors

of their message, their biggest mouthpieces are people who have just been around other conservatives online their entire lives. They have no idea how to do anything but to froth of people who are already on their side. There's no persuasion. And, you know, it's like drug addicts. They, the supply has to get pure and pure to amp people up. So when you're in these Republican circles and people are already into it, they need to be amped up with like graphic depictions of bottom surgery and all of these things that like if you go up to normal voters and talk to them about this, you're going to freak them out. If you go up to like someone who in a normal environment, all things being equal in a textbook thing, whatever people are using to predict the last

midterms, someone who should lean Republican and you're going up to them and talking about sissy hypno, you know, what do you, how do you think? Furries, literally talking about furries, the term. Yeah. I mean, like, and like, and this is evidence of the fact that like, unlike demons of your, like your Lee Atwater's and your Karl Roves, who were like seasoned political operatives, who are they turning to now? Christopher Rufo and guys who like go on Nick Fuentes' live streams, you know? It's because it's interesting, it's like the people who were doing this used to be kind of like the party operatives. You went from like Rince Priebus saying like, yo, Hillary Clinton is a cap to like just having cats or like be the RNC honorary co-chair. It's like, it's like,

if in 2016, Birdie's campaign released statements condemning a legalist anarchists. Yeah. Or like they just started like putting out stuff about like Hillary Clinton being Korn Cobb in the Michigan primary. Yeah. That's not far off from that. Like literally the Arizona Republican Party just tweeting woe jacks about Mark Kelly. Yeah. That was my favorite. That was my absolute favorite piece of political memeing or political campaigning in the last 20 years. Can you believe this fucking pussy astronaut? Yeah. Explaining, explaining griper to a Korean war veteran. Yeah. That's what they did. Along with that, end the photo of him just explaining and then firing a silence to Walter P.P.K. in the desert. Yeah. I loved, did you ever see when

Stefan, boring as heck, put Mikey Miles captions on Blake Masters pictures? No, I didn't see that. Perfectly. What was it like? It would be like the day after it got called for Kelly, it went up for a job today and didn't get it. Feeling a little bit discouraged, but I'm not going to stop. I'm a future. I know that I have a bright future if I just keep knocking on doors. Just a kid from New York, food porn, food gas. He has that same like uncanny smile as Mikey Miles. Yeah. By the way, just a kid from our creep shots. By the way, if you send Blake Masters a photo of yourself, your pet, your mom or your dad, he will draw a picture of it and share it with you. That's what he's up to now. I think Blake Masters is the perfect example

of GOP overconfidence in 2022 because you would not let Peter Thiel buy that guy's nomination if you thought it was going to be a tough year. Yeah. And they did that in several states. They were trailing in Ohio for four months because they went with the Thiel guy there, JD Harris. Yeah. It was the only one that did win. Yeah. Barely. He actually underperformed just as badly as any of the other guys. The only one because it was Ohio. He did worse than Trump against Biden in the state. They had a human elf, Mike DeWine, who was running for governor there. And he won by like 25. So it wasn't exactly a hard environment. And he did pretty poorly because of that. In the literal sense, I don't feel bad for Mike DeWine, but in some spiritual

sense, I do because he has the face and the name of an Iran contra-Coke inspirator. But he was just, he's in the wrong era. No, he's actually not really. He was first elected the public office in the 70s. If he grinded harder, he could have been there. Oh, yeah. He was slacking. He wasn't in the bullpen. He wasn't. No. He was in the single A, like Hamilton County Board of Commissioners team. Oh my God. Yeah. I thought he was in his like 60s. No, he's in his 70s. He's so old. He was a senator for three terms, lost, and then came back and became governor 12 years later. And he's like the most popular man in the country. Yeah. He's a popular governor who like probably has a grudge against Frank Church. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like campaigned against him in person.

They need to, like that's what the 12 year Republicans, you need to have Mike DeWine stand. You're standing for the wrong people. Yeah. Mike DeWine, I don't, yeah. If you're a 13 year old who's just coming out of his integralist stage, start standing Mike DeWine. Yeah. He's a good place to start off from. I mentioned in the piece about the history of anti-trans politics, you have a long list of quotes from loser candidates and like how much they lost by. And look, out of no, like, you know, this is no virtue on my part. But I gotta say, I think they stunt themselves by making a lot of this about high school girl sports or women's sports in general. Yeah. Because let's be honest, Americans don't give a shit about women's sports.

Yeah. You're defending the honor of the WNBA. Look, the WNBA is like so unpopular. It was like, like I knew fantasy leagues in high school were the challenge. If you lost a league, you had to go to a WNBA game. Like this is like what you're staking everything on. And usually conservatives especially hate women's sports because it, you know, empowers young girls. Yeah. And you do something other than get pregnant. The fascinating thing about this, it's like the Republican like consulting class now is either like it's like Eric Schmitt is swaggering out like like 20 year old like weirdos are like just like 80 year old like people who were around during a rancontra because they are bringing up the women in sports things because they think it's

an own against Birch Bay for writing title nine in 1971. They think they're they're getting him by his own logic there. That's what that's where it comes from. So you talked a bit about like how they they've sort of sunk themselves because they've begun to believe exactly what they want to hear and they've begun to hire people and like I'm speaking of the right of people like Christopher Rufo or young based Grapers who let them know that they're cool and cutting edge and like that, you know, and that penises are being amputated like by the millions every day in this country. But let's let's start let's start let's let's turn to the other side of the aisle because you have two very good pieces on your substack called The Art of Losing that focus on Beto

O'Rourke and Stacey Abrams. So like you mentioned that this is a similar phenomenon is going on with like with these two much hyped Democratic candidates. So like what is the Democratic version of what what is what is Stacey Abrams and Beto O'Rourke telling Democratic donors and the people who run these campaigns and do these media buys that they want to hear that isn't necessarily true? Well, I think Stacey Abrams and O'Rourke are slightly different. They're like similar like in that they were both like they were into like kind of historically Republican states and they represented like the future of the party. But they are different in the sense that like Abrams is much smarter than Beto. Beto is actually kind of like stupid. Like that's why he ran for president

she didn't like she was running for vice president. But like Beto I don't think was doing some nefarious scheme. He's just like really like confident in himself. He believes in himself. He thought like he like was the guy and he like he actually kind of like did pretty well his first run he did like very well like actually know like you you mentioned in the piece like how how impressive him almost beating Ted Cruz in that Senate race was like he came within less than two points. I think yeah it was 2.3%. But then but then he immediately yeah just set it all on fire. Yeah. It was like like death of a salesman. But if he made one good deal and then just like the whole thing happened. Yeah we I remember us remarking on this during during his run for presidency and you talk about

in the piece what he presents is sort of like something that no one else has tried before really an ultra maximalist social liberalism where there is like no no economic policy really nothing safety net related. But it's stuff like we're going to take tax breaks away from churches. That was so cool. We will make we will make burger illegal. Yeah. That was the version of like he was literally doing we're going to make burger illegal. And it was funny because I think it was just like he had so much exposure to Republican attacks against him that he just sort of like felt like okay this is what we believe. So he was like going out there and he's like okay guys so we really want to like we only want NATO to get involved in the Iraq war so bin Laden can win

right. And people were like no fuck off. What are you talking about? You're going to make your guns into mosques. Yeah it's like okay guys we really don't want we really don't want the troop to get body armor. We're just lying about that. So like NATO is just kind of a kind of a bimbo. But like I mean like the example of Stacy Abrams is that I remember like when I saw media like you know her campaign ads or whatever it was always in this tone of like we deserve better. We're so much better as a people you know like we can rise above all this. Which I say cap. No we're not better. Citation needed. Obviously not. And like none of us are nearly as good as her. I could not like funnel 40 million dollars of campaign donations into my friend's law firm.

I could not do that. You're better than me. But like do you see what I mean like in that terms of like of like for the for the Democratic donor class and the media class they have a very distinct like like you know like mythology that they're telling themselves is true that isn't. And that's it. And that's this idea that like there's this like there are better angels out there that are willing that are like that are by the way completely unrelated to people's like material economic concerns and issues in their lives. They're just sort of if you can appeal to like just like the like the soaring or you know the you know like appeal to people the good inside everyone's heart. Yeah. Like they'll know that they deserve better. And it's just like people

like I deserve health care. What the fuck are you talking about. Yeah that's the thing it's like the thing about like appealing the better angels is you don't really have to try. All you have to do is they just exist and you appeal to them. You don't have to put in any work. You don't have to put a coalition. I have to make any promises or act on them. You don't have to really like create a message. It's just it's there for you and you just have to be brave enough to double down on what you already wanted to do in the first place and take it. And that was exactly what her whole her whole thing was doing. And what's funny about it is that like she actually did have very concrete goals and she's never met them. She said she would register like 140,000 voters

like in 20 fucking like 13 and she like registered like 10,000. She said like she was going to make black voters like 30% of the electorate. They were 26 last year. Like she has failed at all these concrete goals. It's not hard at all to tell that she isn't living up to it. But people don't want to hear that she's failed. They want to believe in a world where she's at least trying and succeeding. So that's how I believe in the world where she's president of planet Earth. Yeah, literally president of Earth. So on the nose. They made that too easy. I felt like not including that because it's just really just like, come on, make it harder. It's a real article of faith among the liberals about her. Like you point out,

hey, she has won zero elections. They'll say, yes, but all of her vote mobilizing has gotten all these other people elected. She's just selflessly giving her electoral mojo to Warnock and fucking Osoff or something. Which is funny because she like was on the same ballot as one of them finally. And she did 10 points worse than them. Literally should not be possible in a state in Georgia. Our elections are the census. It's so racial here. It literally is just like, it just is like white people vote Republican, Republicans vote like black people vote Democratic. It should not, there should not be any instances where there's crossover more than 1%. In 2020, that was the case. The difference between Biden and Osoff was 1%. Between Abrams

and Warnock, it was 10. What accounts for that? Because she sucks. She's terrible. She's like atrocious. Like, oh my God. She just doesn't even try. It's like incredible, like the stuff that she says. She's like what everybody thinks like Bernie Sanders campaign strategy was. She actually put that in the practice. She's literally quotes from her campaign saying, we don't want to reach out to like suburban voters because they vote too often. And that's not what we're trying to do. And then she loses because she did like 20 points worse in the suburbs. Like I'm sorry, but I can't feel bad for you if you're not trying. Even like the little things, like every part of that campaign, both campaigns was just like missteps all the way. I remember the one ad

very early in her campaign, this go around, where she's in, she's in like a kindergarten class. Oh my God. Yeah. She has all the like toddlers wearing masks, but she isn't. Okay. You guys are not going to believe that this actually happened, but I saw this on my TV and I think I could find like a clip of it. That's not the only, that's not even the worst thing she did around kindergartners, not in that way. She had an ad where she was like in like a kindergarten classroom and she was talking about all of her plans. And some kids were like, wow, it's awesome. Expanding Medicare is awesome. Man, the maternal health cap is terrible. How do you know all this, Stacey Abrams? And she looks in the camera and she says,

I shit you not. I did my homework. And then the ad ends. Oh my God. Check my math and check out my plan. Well, how'd you figure it out? I did my homework. And I watched that. I was like, she's going to get 10% of the vote. They're going to make camp the king of the state. That is like, that is like she's in a Brewster's Millions thing where she has to spend as much of David Geffen's money as possible while losing an election. Yeah, just I couldn't believe it. Like she had like weird art house cinema for like her abortion ads somehow like managed to make that like a liability. It was the same director as the Romanian film four weeks, three months, two days. Basically that it's like that wasn't even the worst money she spent. She had a TikTok

hype house. She bought a house like $13,000. Yeah, she had a swag truck. I'm going to steal this swag truck. I want it. Pussy wagon. But in terms of like pleasing things that people like to hear that aren't true, I mean, I suppose I have to turn the analytic glaze back on myself with what you mentioned about the idea that you can win elections by activating non-voters or people who haven't voted before. I mean, it sounds good, right? It's actually the opposite. It's actually the opposite. That's true. Yeah. You want turnout to be as low as possible if you want anything left-wing to get passed. This is like very consistent. Like surprisingly, like the worst, like the lower turnout is the less people who are voting, the better left-wing

candidates do. I kind of overshot my 2022 predictions a little bit because Democrats were winning Alaska in special elections because they were off year because the only people who voted in those elections are like committed liberals who were so mad about Trump that they just vote every single time. That was sort of the case within the Democratic primary too. This is one thing that the Bernie people did that I never really understood. Bernie's best races were always caucuses because the only people who went out the caucuses were fucking weirdos. Yeah. And the weirdos, like sad as it is to say, were always like have the best politics, at least in that case. So like you had stuff where Bernie was winning like Washington by 50

points because it was a caucus. Like he was getting tons of delegates out of there, really sustained his momentum. But then they have the big thing after the election where like, okay, we're ready to make concessions. What do the Bernie people want? How do we like fix the process? There's like the new McGovern-Frasier Commission. And the Bernie people said, we have to get rid of all the caucuses because they're not representative. It's like, yeah, that's true. But like you guys were doing that. It was your best thing by far. And then in 2020, they have every single election as a primary besides Nevada, which he wins by 30 points. And then every single state where he had a former caucus, he does like 30, 40 points

worse and loses outright. Yeah. So like it, that was frustrating to see happen in real time. Bernie, Bernie seemed to have a similar electoral profile, though more successful, similar to Ted Cruz in 2016, where he benefited from like extremely passionate supporters. Yeah. And it's kind of interesting that Warren never did much better in those things. I guess like, yeah, there's a different type of nerd. It's Geeks versus Nerds. The thing with like activating non-voters, that was like a lot of the theory behind 2020, which I think sort of noble in ambition, but it's impossible to do with like a year's notice. You can't activate non-voters with like a year of lead time. That would take like a decade of

organization. You also cannot get it by spending any money on fucking advertisements, which ends up being the vast majority of your expenditures. And that is literally going into the garbage if you're trying to reach non-voters. And the issue is it might actually be actively counterproductive to have higher turnout. Like that's what happened in the Rio Grande Valley. You had these areas that like had very low turnout and always voted Democratic. And then there turned out double and nearly all the new voters were Trump voters. That's why I have pioneered the ideology of Marxist campism. We're going to be passing new Jim Crow laws because of the way demographics work. It'll just cause like socialists to win

every election. You know, FDR did get 99% of the vote in South Carolina and all those elections for that reason. Now, that's a celebrationism, I can believe it. Yeah. In order to vote, you should have to have eight forms of ID. Your original birth certificate, like the one from when you were born, no copies. 10,000 Twitter followers minimum. 10,000 Twitter followers. You have to pass a CAPCA test. Yeah. Follow inflation weighted. So it'll be 15,000 in a couple of years. You have to pass a literacy test, but it's all based on Jay Sakai's settlers. Yeah. Yeah. If you say like much to his like astonishment, you're out. But yeah, that's how politics works now. You want to have as little people voting as possible

under any circumstances. And that's how you win. It's all Obama won. And how do you see Joe Biden and the Democrats pursue? I mean, it seems like they're doing a pretty good job of just demobilizing people politically. Yes. That's what's so genius. You run an 82 year old man who nobody likes and nobody's going to vote. You're going to have the first two person election and then like they'll win every time. I wish that was their actual strategy to be probably be smarter what they're actually doing. I mean, we have talked about how Holly versus Kamala Harris would be the 30,000 vote election. Yeah. Kamala could be playing the long game. She would get all those 30,000 votes. Yeah. It would be like George

Washington's election. She would win by acclaim. And like she would, you know, one percent of the inhabitants of the United States are able to vote. Yeah. And you know what? This is materialist. It's like it fits in with the Vanguard party. The smaller the electorate is, the higher proportion the Vanguard party makes of the voters. That's why Mary Kaltola won. Do you guys have anything more? Should we wrap it up there? I think we're good. You guys have anything? I have a point to make. I think when you're reading the Electoral History of Transphobia article, it is free. When you get to the part that's about where I'm listing all the names, that is supposed to be led, author's intent. You have

to be listening to the Layla piano thing. That is how it's meant to be read. So if you're not doing that, you're not doing it as it was meant to. Well, at Intermentum, I want to thank you for joining us today. And if people want more of your election, your election prediction and political analysis, where should they head? At Intermentum Twitter, also my substack. Also, you can just show up to my house. I'm doing a front porch campaign. I'm on my McKinley shit. I'll just talk to you. We'll have links to everything in the description. We've long been admirers of the newsletter. I pointed out how through numbers in historical cases, you help bolster my gut feeling prediction for the midterms. I'm going to write a thesis. When

I write it about normal depolarization, I will call it the normal whites theory. Thank you. It's all I ask. It's true. It literally is what is happening, racial depolarization. That is what happened in every single state. It was true. Yeah. But yeah, we love the newsletter. We've really enjoyed all the analysis you've brought. Everyone who, use your substack prime on Editor Menton. Yeah. We're going to be partnering with Amazon soon, so you can read it with Amazon Prime. Jeff Bezos says he's a really big fan of the transphobia thing. I don't think he read it. He got the addition. This is a big fan of transphobia.

Yeah. I know. That's what he reached out to me. That's what it sounded like. But yeah, also, I do streams with Spencer every once in a while. We're doing Dark Souls 2 right now. Would you be live streaming Trump's execution tomorrow? Yes, we will. Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah. We're not going to be showing it. We'll just be talking about it. He's going to be fighting the sentinels or something. So we've got to get through that first. But yeah, we'll be doing that after that. Okay. Well, before we go, I have one more big announcement to share with you.

And that is the official launch date of the movie Mindset Miniseries. Not just the official launch date, but the official launch party and screening. That's right. This upcoming Thursday, April 27th at 7 p.m., we'll be hosting a screening and live podcast episode of Movie Mindset. Hessa and I will be at the Roxy Hotel in Cinema to present a 35-millimeter screening of John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness, a movie that we selected because I think it is the closest to demonstrating basically my thesis with the whole Movie Mindset project is that movies have the ability to alter reality for the better. Yeah. Shout out to Hessa. She actually did some editing for my transphobia article.

She was helpful. She helped me choose the picture for it, whereas the guy who just looks really lost, which I think was a good choice. Folks, more and more people are saying they love Hessa. And Hessa and I, once again, the Roxy Hotel in Cinema 35-millimeter print of In the Mouth of Madness, will be introducing the film, having a little mini podcast episode afterward, drinks. If you haven't been to the Roxy Hotel in Cinema, it's a trip. It feels like the hotel from John Wick, but we're very excited. And then on the same day, April 27th will be the release of episode one of Movie Mindset, which, let's see, should I say what it's about? I know I shouldn't. Okay. Well, the first episode, the inaugural episode of Movie Mindset, will be Hessa and I talking

Tony Scott and Denzel Washington. So, there's a little preview of things to come, but there will be a link for tickets to see a screening of John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness with Hessa and I at the Roxy Hotel in Cinema in Manhattan. So, I hope to see you guys all there. And also, I got a little thing. So, as Hell on Earth is wrapping up, we're going to hand the baton over to Will, but before that, Chris and I are going to put together a episode containing our final thoughts wrapping up. It might be a stream. It might be a podcast. Either way, though, we would like to get some listener questions. If you listen to the show and you have anything that you feel like you want more information about, a little more deeper dive or clarification, let us know,

and we will address some of them in that program. So, as with the other call-in shows, please leave a voice memo under 30 seconds for the love of God and email it to callsatchappotrapouse.com and we will talk about some of those in the show. Yeah, I have the first question. I was a listener of Hell on Earth. I loved it. It's actually not a question. It's more of a statement. It's called, you have to play EU4 or I'll kill you in real life. You have to figure it out. I'll teach you. I've been playing EU4 for 10 years. Half of my life. I did a world conquest on that show. It took me a full week. That would be a good stream. That would be a good Twitch stream. I tried to do it once. Me and Chris tried to do an EU stream like before we even recorded it and we couldn't get it to go

at the same time. They have a Wars of Religion mechanic, man. They have a Catholic League and a Protestant League. You just have to play for 150 years in real time. You should definitely set up a stream where Josh teaches you to play EU. I'm going to have access to a gaming rig type deal in the near future. Maybe I'll give it a shot. It only took me the better part of a decade to graduate on all the systems. That's a quick study. No, I would need somebody to do the actual clicking. I'm not fucking with that stuff. He's the idea of the tables. Not in a million years am I doing that shit. Look at those fucking screens and I get a migraine. I got the Dutch Republic gameplay optimized. I can do like an anti-percent like Eastern

colonies like Spice's Speed Run. I'm getting money real fucking quick. Yeah. The Ottoman Vassilage Hacks. The frame perfect Syria Vassilization. I got all that. All right. Once again, thank you to Ettinger Mentum for joining us today. That does it for us today. Until next time, bye-bye everybody.