Chapo Trap House - 859 Teaser - Elicitations

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

Dan Boeckner recounts the saga of Canadian journalist being “elicited” by a nice Chinese man and his wife. Subscribe today for access to the full episode and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/chapotraphouse

So this guy, as far as I can tell, has got theater kid energy and used to go to film school and is just kind of an evil nerd. He was responding to CSIS, which is the Canadian version of the CIA. Our intelligence service has, not unlike the CIA, been trying to rehabilitate their image, right? Like they're like, we're not, we're not your grandpa's intelligence agency. We're woke. And we want to engage on social media with our fans, the Canadian public who love us and think we're cool. So they put, they posted this insane thing about what they called elicitation, which is, was a thread.

No, it's not someone trying to buy sex from you. It's not someone trying to buy sex from you. It's just someone flattering you into being an unwitting asset for a foreign power. Yeah. Yeah. And if you go to their website and follow the link and read their guide to Canadian travelers, like, okay, you might think you're just a guy from, you're just a guy from Comox, British Columbia.

What would a foreign government want from you? But you'd be wrong, according to CSIS. Is there such a problem with Canadian adults being groomable? That like, you know, this is a problem? They're like, Canadians traveling abroad. If anyone notices you, flatters you, or shows an interest in you, they're grooming you for intelligence work. But like the standard is just being not noticed by anyone, not complimented.

This can be so violently upsetting to Canadians that it can like, it can put their whole identity into crisis and they become malleable nodes in foreign influence networks. Yeah, nodes of entry. So these nefarious foreign governments can melt down our totally functional democracy, where we have like a grocery monopoly and shit. It's awesome. But yeah, so basically, the the CSIS article goes so far as to recommend like, not giving all your information on visa applications. It's insane. It's insane. It's like if you're illegal, basically, yes. Like

be careful what you put on your visa application. So anyway, obviously people are dunking on this tweet because it's insane. And it elicitation also sounds like something Ricky from trailer park boys would say. It's just fucking bullshit. Why don't you start doing your job instead of making false accriminations all the time? But Adam Givow weighs in and he originally posted, he was like, funny story, I organized a sting operation with Ukrainian intelligence when a suspicious Chinese man caught my attention. And I immediately seized on it and was like, I quote tweeted it. I was like, what do you

like? What do you mean by this? I don't believe this is bullshit. And then many hours went by and he replied with like a 10 paragraph story about how he met a Chinese man in a mall. Got a bad feeling from him essentially describes him. As a Greek greasy. It was very inscrutable very inscrutable yeah. Is here it is his vibe was sketchy slash greasy. Oh okay no he meant in the trailer park boys sent. Yeah. Like, he doesn't mean, again, you know, he doesn't mean that he was like literally dripping with Chinese oils and greases. But he was like, yeah, sketchy. And he wears a wire. He wears a wire to meet this guy. I mean, like in this guy's

story, he says, Yeah, I we agreed to do a small sting operation. I wanted to do my part to keep my boyfriend city city, Odessa, safe. Around this time, we were worried about the risks of a potential Russian winter offensive. In February, I met the Chinese man and his wife at a restaurant while wearing a wire. I arrived early and grabbed a table on the ground floor by the window. The SBU officers watched us from a car parked outside which had tinted windows. And then he goes on to just say, I found his wife suspicious. I like, like, this is really like, you know, I have tried to, you know, be fair to Ukraine ever since I saw that video, the ads of guys dancing with the Hoss seeds. I thought that was

delightful. I thought it showed that they're figuring things out over there. But if this is, if the SBU really did like just grab this random idiot for, from a newspaper and was like, Hey, do you want to be a double agent? That's that really puts you in not a real country territory. I hate to say, you know. Yeah. Like no one looks good in this story, whether it's true or not. No one looks good. I hope it isn't true.

I hope it isn't true either. That is humiliating for Ukraine. Yeah, exactly. You know, and the story ends with him getting a plate of mysterious brownies brought to him. So he's at a dinner with the Chinese, with the Chinese man and his wife. He says, I moderated my drinking and watched what I ate. Eventually the Chinese man left and returned with a plate of brownies. Very suspicious.

Very suspicious. Which he said he had gotten from the restaurant for me. But this was odd as you could just order these brownies from the waiter. So as you could just order these brownies from the waiter. So yeah, this is how James Barnes spots a double agent. Yeah. Something's amiss. So then he says he placed the brownies in the middle of the table and then he and his wife insisted at several points throughout the rest of the dinner that I eat them. I declined that I said I was full and I encouraged them to eat the brownies but they refused. After some time the wife took the tiniest crumb from a brownie ate it and tried again to get me to eat the rest of the dessert. I declined again. To be fair, if that happened to me I would think that this is suspicious.