Chapo Trap House - 941 - Sister Number One feat. Aída Chávez (6/9/25)

Episode Date: June 10, 2025

We’re joined by The Nation’s Aída Chávez for her report from WelcomeFest, the abundapalooza dedicated to staking the technocratic claim for the future of the Democratic party. We review the fairly directionless and unenthusiastic vibes of the centrist shindig, but also discuss the explosion of police violence during protests against ICE in Los Angeles over the weekend. All leading us to ask, what exactly do these people think “power” is, and when is it “right” to exercise it? Read Aída’s dispatch from WelcomeFest for The Nation: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/welcomefest-dispatch-centrism-abundance/ Donate to the Jordan Breen sports journalism scholarship fund - https://gofund.me/837f326c New merch for the summer up at https://chapotraphouse.store/

All I wanna do is hit the drum. All I wanna do is your Choppa. On today's episode, Felix and I are joined by journalist Ada Chavez, who was at last week's Welcome Fest in Washington, D.C. to tell us about her time there and all the wonderfully abundant things that she saw and experienced. Ada, welcome to the show. Hi, guys. So good to be here.

And yeah, and then at the end of the show, I will be we will be sharing some music with you, some recently commissioned music that I think that you will quite enjoy. But before we get into that today, I think it would behoove us to talk a little bit about a couple of the events that happened over the weekend. I'm thinking specifically of the just violence that's happening in Los Angeles right now as people begin to basically fight back against paramilitary federal law enforcement, which has been targeting, I don't know, elementary schools, immigration courts, and is certainly promising more violence to come. Similar clashes happened in New York. And I guess, like, I'm thinking about this happening at the exact same time this weekend,

where the Madeline flotilla, the ship that was sailing to Gaza with Greta Thunberg, Liam Cunningham and other activists was interdicted in international waters by the Israeli military. Their cargo was seized and they're currently being held in Israel. I'm sure they're about to be let out of the country, but like these things all seem somewhat connected in my mind in terms of like both who's being targeted by ICE, but also just like the fact that they're targeting schools and courts and just like putting people off the street. It just it all seems it's it's all coming home to me is what it seems like.

And whenever something like this happens and like riots occur or there is, you know, violent clashes between people and federal law enforcement in this case, I think there's like there's always this like round of debate about whether this is helping or hurting the cause of immigrant rights in America or immigrant communities. And rather than get into talking about rather than debate that I just like whenever I see stuff like this, it's just like, it's not a matter of whether it's justified or not, or whether you think it hurts or helps strategically. All those are other debates. This is just inevitable. Like when you treat people this way, eventually they're going to fight back. And like that, and that's what we're seeing right now. And I, and like, you can, you can wish away that, oh, I wish it didn't have to be this way. But like, way ICE is behaving, like they're asking for it.

They're courting this and this is just an inevitable reaction when people see the law being turned against them in such an unjust way. Yeah. I mean, that whole conversation about like, whether it's people saying that they should be waving American flags or that they should be thinking about the Buttigieg 2028 campaign. It's particularly nauseating right now because I saw someone say, it's okay, look, we shouldn't expect unaffiliated protesters to have the Democratic Party's best interests in heart, but it's so unfair

that the Democratic Party gets affiliated with these protests no matter what happens, which there's this larger narrative of the Democratic Party as like Gil from The Simpsons. There are these lovable losers who just all these bad things keep happening to them. Not that this is like a consequence of them co-opting every protest movement besides the ones that had anything to do with Israel in the last 20 years that had any popularity for their own electoral game. They just did that five years ago. Obviously I think it's ridiculous to say that like you you know, Chuck Schumer is in cahoots with like, you know, fucking George Soros to create chaos in cities for what?

I don't know. But if an internal poll comes out that like 65% of Americans support these protests, they will be all over it. They will have like in-house activists on the scene there. They will have, they'll produce a slate of candidates that like arise from the movement as movement leaders that we've never fucking heard of before. But secondary to that, I mean, this sort of reminds me of October 7th when people just before anything,

the moment it happened, everyone's favorite thing to do is to Act as their own Frank once they only know people who are exactly like them have Exactly the same experiences, but all they ever do is just game out how the hypothetical sub like Median American will react to everything with October 7th, it was all these people going, this is the end of any pro-Palestinian activism because Americans will just, you know, everyone will just be so, so disgusted by this. You know, it's probably the end of the left.

And obviously that is not what happened. I mean, there are similar themes in how Democratic primary voters will often vote based on what they assume other Americans will consider too liberal or moderate enough. But it just, especially now, is such a fucking pointless exercise. This thing of just constantly gaining out what is the exact right thing, what is too scary, what is the right amount of resistance for the average American. As if the last 10 years have not shown that public opinion is completely amorphous and all these opinions that pull a certain way, they don't seem so deeply held that they can't turn on a dime in eight fucking months. And like just the idea that the protesters in the first

place that the motive, their motivation is attracting public support as if that is the be all and end all that someone in Northern Virginia sympathizes with them and not what I think was kind of the point of these protests, which was to put the actions of ice front and center to make every one of those costs and pose a cost on these lawless gangs of like these lawless press gangs of like masked without any identification or warrant or whatever these masks thugs that are like, you know, we also have the videos this weekend of them just like tearing people off the streets, arresting and seizing people at an elementary school graduation. Like I would think the purpose of these protests is to enact the cost on, I'm sorry, these lawless gangs for their behavior. But Ada, I want to get you in here because like to Felix's point about like, well, how is this all going to pull? You recently covered the DC welcome fest, like centrist

extravaganza, the centrist fire fest. And I'm just wondering, like, how is that section of politics? Like, how do they metabolize these ideas about like, is the American public pro or anti-immigrant? And like, is the is our ICE detentions popular or unpopular? Well, they're just totally unequipped to deal with the present moment. Their obsession with polling and data and the numbers and like the positions that they claim, like regular people want. It breeds us like especially out of touch when you have protests like these or things like the genocide in Gaza and then at these events like they'll go through the entire thing without even slight mention or reference to it. Because like I think

they will point to polls that show that like oh Trump's deportations are But then, like when it's revealed that like they're deporting people without criminal records, and in fact, they're, you know, seizing people at immigration courts who are going to apply for citizenship or check in on their visa process, and they're being the one seized, it becomes very unpopular. Like it's very popular when people imagine that these, you know, ICE is seizing like, you know, Pablo Escobar or, you know, drug cartel sicarios, but like not their neighbor or friend or spouse.

Yeah. I mean, we, we had this conversation about immigration during the last election that like, okay, sure. I guess, you know, the, the, the sort of immigration restrictionism polls in a certain way. And it was never like, you know, this sort of immigration restrictionism pulls in a certain way. And it was never like, you know, 70, 30, it was like 55, 45. But you go back, you know, four years and it was completely the opposite. Then of course, like obviously when you adjust for torturing random people

with green cards, stropping citizenship from people with green cards, sending people to these fucking unaccountable foreign hellhole prisons. What we said at the time was, when people actually see this in practice, you may get a different result. But at the time, I don't think we even imagined how truly horrifying it would be in practice.

In terms of like imagining how horrific this all is. I mean, I think a lot of you probably saw that clip from over the weekend of police in Los Angeles just shooting an Australian TV reporter with a less than lethal round. And like not accidentally, like if you look, she pointed out that you can see the cop in the video, line her up, take sight and pull the trigger. The LAPD moving in on horseback firing rubber bullets at protesters, moving them on through the heart of LA. So if they're doing that in broad daylight, like being recorded on a live news broadcast, what do you imagine is taking place in the areas that you don't see and never will see being carried out by these same people?

And then like, once you imagine that, what do you think the like appropriate strategically sound response to something like that is? Or do you think maybe that like, the people targeted by this aren't thinking about essentially like this issue in those terms, like perhaps they're just afraid and angry and what they have a right to defend themselves against this kind of lawlessness? By the way, this is conversation about optics extend to them

does that extend to ice agents and the police officers and the Marines that will probably end up killing at least a few people? Or is optics only a consideration for the people that are being fucking terrorized? Ada, like, in reading your piece about Welcome Fest, like, it seems like the the the bettenoir of the the Abundantist Coalition are what they refer to as the groups. Like what are they referring to when they talk about groups? And like I like I'm sure immigration rights groups are

talking there are thrown in with that lot. You say like, walking around the Welcome Fest, you heard a lot of people talking about how bad open borders are. So like, when when when these abundance people they talk about the groups, who are they referring to? And what and what's their what's their alternative? Yeah, so I think they're referring to, like, immigration groups, the climate groups, young people, like left leaning advocacy groups, but their whole, like groups thing that they did all day,

I think it's a euphemism for just anyone who expects more from their lawmakers, anyone who makes any kind of demand. And so like Miley Glasey, for example, he was blaming like immigration groups, advocates for immigrants and climate groups for how bad like Joe Biden was in office, saying that they were what was standing in the way of effective policy. When they see like these images of chaos or violence in Los Angeles and clashes between people and the police, like or when they're confronted with the idea that like ICE is basically without identification, without even showing

their faces, are just kidnapping people from like schools, you know tearing away mothers from their children, throwing know, tearing away mothers from their children, throwing them in unmarked vans to be sent to some legal black hole. And I think we should be clear here. All of this is for the crime that is a civil misdemeanor. Like if you have driven in a car over the legal speed limit or over the legal limit of alcohol, you have committed a more serious crime than overstaying a visa. So like, what is their answer to this? Is that is it? Do they just think that, well, hey, they have a point and we knew we do need to crack down on illegal immigration? Or do

they see the horrors like this? And they just like is the answer? We just you need to elect better Democrats? Oh, both. I think a lot of the people I spoke with and a lot of the speakers on stage are really that far right where they see these images and they think, oh, that's good actually. Democrats should support this or try to outflank Trump on the right on immigration issues. But I did encounter a lot of people who were not to like project too much on them, but they did seem quite ashamed of the immigration issues of the Gaza issue. And kind of this awareness of what the Democratic Party has been doing.

Were those people that were like more ashamed, not not, you know, who didn't just like, cheer at the idea of like protesters being injected. Did they like trend on the younger side, like the, the college kids who fell in with a bad crowd? Yes, it was, it was basically all college kids and early twenties where, you know, I would ask about Gaza, and then, like, then just pretty quickly they would go silent. They would think about it. They would avoid eye contact.

They would stutter. And so I could feel a real sense of shame. And their voices would get low. And sometimes they would say, oh, well, it's an issue that Democrats just shouldn't run on. They should stick to the domestic. But there were some who would get a little closer and kind of like whisper this forbidden idea at the centrist rally that it might help Democrats to have a little bit of empathy

for migrants, for Palestinians. You quote someone in your piece for the nation when you ask them about Gaza, you quote them as saying showing some empathy to Palestinians is probably good for the Democratic Party. I think I think they'll probably need further polling before they you know really get out too far over their skis on that one. But like you know what does that say about the the mentality here about how they like how they perceive political issues. Because, look, I mean, you should always be careful about treating politics as morality. But there is a moral valence to all of these issues.

And it's just like whether it's the in 2016, it was a crisis that Trump was putting kids in cages. And now, you know what, eight years later, they're like, oh, actually actually we need to build more cages and like we need to ask the question Like do all kids deserve to be in cages? No, but like what is the correct number of kids that should be separated from their families in ICE detention centers? Like do you get the sense that like these people believe Sincerely that immigration is bad for America and that undocumented workers that immigration is bad for America and that undocumented workers need to be purged from

America by force? Or is it that they just like they regard it as a problem for the Democratic Party and it's getting in the way of their zoning reform that they really care about? Yeah, that second one, I think at least with the younger people. And it was quite revealing, just in the way they spoke about the issue, like the guy you just mentioned who was quoted in the piece about saying how showing a little bit of empathy to Palestinians might be good for the Democratic Party. Like when he spoke about like the horrors of Gaza, he never spoke like directly about the people and the violence being inflicted. It was more just like the images, like we've all seen the videos, like everyone's seen the images. And so, like that just shows like, yeah, like the detachment on how they just think about these things in terms of like, like messaging, pulling issues for Democrats and like, kind of annoyances standing in the way of their abundance agenda?

Well, getting into that abundance agenda and like, I mean, I think it is, we had scheduled this, your appearance for Monday, because we definitely wanted to talk about Welcome Fest. But like, I think it actually pairs perfectly with the events of this weekend, which were like I said, crises involving outright warfare, slaughter, horror. And you want to talk about crossing the Rubicon, now the specter that the Marines' active duty military will be deployed to quell civil unrest in an American city. For Rubicon heads out there, that is a crossing, if okay.

But like, I think it's like the contrast could not be more hilarious between like these vicious and horrifying things that are happening in front of our eyes now in the borders of America and like the abundance agenda. Like this is their answer to that. Like this is their big rollout for like what they see the problems of America as and like how they intend to solve them. So give it giving your experience at the the Welcome Festival, could you just describe like what was like the you said there were a lot of like college students there like, first of all, how many

people were there? And what was sort of the median attendee for this event? Like, how would you describe the people there? There were a few hundred people who are sitting in the back row. So maybe it wasn't that great because the last few rows were empty. So, I don't know, it looked a little extra sad from where I was sitting. There was a good number of women, but it was very male-dominated. It was like mostly typical DC freak, but like young kids that didn't really know how to socialize. And then candidates who are kind of using

it as an opportunity to like, get money and support. Because it was hosted by like third way, blue dog democrats, the other dark money groups and centuries groups. It like I wonder what your opinion is on this? Because like, am I correct in thinking that like this whole abundance rebranding and like this whole, the whole abundance movement to me, is evidence that the Democratic Party no longer has any fear whatsoever of like Bernie and the squad and like

the sort of nascent populist message that is Kindled quite a bit of like actual in the real in real world support But like politically speaking seems to have been totally neutralized like after 2016 All the Democrats who ran for president in the next cycle all pretended that they supported Bernie's agenda, but like this go-around after losing and like completely defenestrating like the left part of the Democratic Party or the left or populist or progressive whatever you want to describe it. It seems like there's no effort to co-opt the message or the policies. It seems to me that they're

just trying to rebrand in a way to sell essentially a moderate centrist politics that is like socially liberal but fiscally conservative that has a lot of well-heeled donors but no real purchase in the American electorate. Yeah, that's my read of it. In terms of the actual substance, it was just very lightly rebranded neoliberalism. And what I thought was interesting too, was like the kind of tension between trying to make, welcome fest like a victory lap, like saying like we own the party, like the threat of Bernie and AOC has been neutralized.

The tension between that and kind of saying, oh, but we're also underdogs and like victims of the groups. What we are pushing this like abundance agenda, this is actually the threats and the status quo. But you know, it makes no sense because they are the status quo. Yeah, the abundance guys, I think that I could take Mein Kampf

and replace Jews with the groups and I would be accepted in abundant circles. It is such a weird view of the world that these like nervous, annoying Elizabeth Warren staffers who, by the way, the only reason any of this like groups stuff had any purchase at all in the fucking party was because the Hillary campaign and some of the Obama internet surrogates in the years before the 2016 election decided that identity politics were an amazing cudgel to hit Bernie with in 2016 and for some reason decided that they should stick around that that should be that that

should be like a a load start during the Trump years. This again, what do we always talk about? People who voluntarily did these things to themselves, voluntarily took these positions, said these things in public, acting as though someone broke into their house and pointed a fucking gun at their head and said, you need to start saying on how no, you did this. You were into all of this. You hired the Elizabeth Warren staffers during the Biden presidency. You were saying, this is actually fucking great.

This is the best presidency in history because of all, all of these Elizabeth Warren people doing all this shit. But this is a view of the world that puts those people, like the people that got the Elizabeth Warren green hex code tattoo as like the elders of Zion. They're the most powerful fucking people in the world. They can defeat, you know, Reid Hoffman and all these, and David Geffen and all these fucking super donors. But at the same time, they're also weak and they'll never win elections and they're foolish and they're defeated. But they're also a looming

threat that we have to defend against at all times. Ada, the sort of, the branding for this year's Welcome Fest was the phrase responsibility to win. So what did you see there? What is the plan for winning the next like the midterms and the next presidential election? Like, what's their agenda here? What's the winning agenda that these people are laying out? Their plan to win is to win. Okay, that's right. Score more score more points than the other team. You know, classic strategy. You don't you don't if you're trying to win, you don't want to be losing. So I can know that.

I mean, that's that's what they said. Like, I wish I was like trying to be funny right now, but they would have these PowerPoint slides. I would say things like, flip red to blue. Me. Yeah, you don't want to do it the other way or else they win. And so like, for example, like one of the first speakers

on stage, it was a PowerPoint slide. First was an arrow pointing up. And so it was like flip red to blue. And then it, was it down? I don't know. The arrows don't matter. Another arrow was to like keep the blue, blue and then the arrow forward.

The arrow forward, like the arrow pointing to the right. It had words underneath like Alyssa Slotkin and data. It's referring to the Star Trek character, not numbers. I have the curiosity of humans, but there are questions that I will never have the answers to. What it is like to laugh or cry or to experience any human emotions. Well, if you ask me, these human emotions are not what they're cracked up. Okay, so get surgery to become Alyssa Slockin. Get data, just any data at all. If

you see an Excel spreadsheet, just start reading it. Print it out and eat the pages. Yeah, essentially. Yeah. One of the things that that perked my interest in in your reporting on this is like of the few like concrete policy prescriptions being off on offer was something called the Madison Amendment, which was apparently to prevent packing the Supreme Court. Could you explain that a little further? And were there any other sort of gimmicky ideas being tossed around at the Welcome Fest? Oh, so that was just like a group of young interns going up to people and being like,

we got to keep nine justices on the Supreme Court, like no matter what. And... Aim high. Why? Why? What if those nine justices were blocking housing reform and urban development? That is essentially like saying, OK, we shouldn't change the American flag, the Spotify logo. So we need a whole new NGO and a law to guarantee that will never happen.

You could also achieve that by doing nothing. Like there's no threat of more than nine Supreme Court justices right now. According to them there is. According to them, either the left or the far right could pack the court. And so they are doing what they can to stop it and they have their like best and brightest on this

handing out literature. So like, how how do they plan on stopping it? Is it another NGO funded by like the guys who founded Netflix? I think they're pushing an amendment. It's so fucking stupid. Like it's not gonna, basically like if you started an NGO, you gain employment, you're collecting W-2s, and the reason you get up every day and go to work is like, I wanna prevent the state of Indiana

from colonizing the moon. We need a constitutional amendment to prevent Indiana from achieving space flight. If you killed yourself right now, you would achieve the same result. Okay, you guys are making me feel a little crazy about this. I looked it up just to double check. Yeah, it's the Keep Nine Amendment that says, I can't even say it, the Supreme Court of the United States shall be composed of nine justices Like if someone was like if someone like had had it together enough to like pack the court like they had the votes

Couldn't they just like overturn that amendment to like if they're already there Whatever just making a king's decree. It's just as real. Ada, another thing that I found interesting was some of some of the characters at this event. Now, we've talked, we were just talking about how like a big pitch of this event is that the quote unquote groups are sabotaging the Democratic Party by in Matt Iglesias, his word creating bad incentives for the party by like bad incentives, meaning pressure on them to pressure on them from their constituents.

You know, and like I'm wondering like, okay, they're mad at the left for sabotaging the Democratic Party, right? But then there was a guy at this convention. I'm going to read from your piece now. It says, someone like Liam Kerr, the co-founder of Welcome Pack, a group that brought the Welcome Fest to life. On Wednesday, Kerr wore a West Virginia University football jersey customized with the former Senator Joe Manchin's name on the back, a tribute to the conservative Democrat most known for sabotaging his own party's agenda. So, could you tell us a little bit more about the guy in the Manchin football jersey?

And once again, is there any indication of a, I don't know, a dissonance here between being mad at the groups and the left for sabotaging the Democratic Party and then having the guy who founded Welcome Pack happily wearing a jersey emblazoned with the name of the Democratic senator most known for sabotaging Joe Biden's agenda? Yeah, I should have also mentioned in the piece that he had like a Jared Golden koozie too that he was drinking on stage. Yeah, he was interesting. And so he was the person who kind of intro the whole event.

And so just to show like how weird they are about the groups, one of the first things that he does when he's on stage is put up a picture of the official Welcome Fest protester shirt. I guess they made shirts kind of anticipating protesters. There was one interruption during the conversation with Richie Torres, but yeah, they were just doing that thing of like, yeah, like they hate us, they hate us because we're so right. And so he showed the picture of the shirt and it's just like a pineapple and it says like, official protest here at Welcome Fest 2025. Um, I'm not gonna lie. All right. When I saw the pineapple, I thought of like, swears. I thought like, isn't the pineapple associated with swears?

I thought the same thing. I mean, I thought that's what it was about. Because I mean, that is like, you know, I don't like talking about I L a lot because her whole thing just like sincerely depresses me. I think like that every a series of horrible things happen to her in her life. And now she is essentially like a living conduit to create sex parties for guys that invent like AI assisted diet apps. Like it's very sort, like I legitimately don't want to make fun of her because I think her whole life is like incredibly tragic. But there is, you know, True and I talked about

how there's like a network of IELAs and part of it is being very into like group sex and swinging. So I just thought they were openly like branding it. Was there any hanky codes observed at the hotel basement where this conference was hosted? It wasn't even like a particularly nice hotel basement or conference room. And I thought this was backed by billionaires. Like this is an event that was supposedly funded by like the Walton family, Michael Bloomberg, all those guys.

Well you would think it'd be nicer, but it wasn't. I guarantee you they had 20 hours of meetings about how nice the hotel should be. Like they thought it was a major coup if the hotel was kind of shitty. Oh my God, most people stay in shitty hotels. Once they see this. Ada, were you there for were you were you there for the

disruption of Richie Torres and Josh as a borrow? Yeah, yeah, that was cool. I like Josh as a borrow just being like, Oh, come on, Jesus Christ. It's just like, do you want to advocate for war? Because if you do, like, you're gonna have to get deal with some protesters. Like, it's just like, do you want to advocate for war? Because if you do, like, you're going to have to get deal with some protesters. It's like it's just like how indignant they are. They all get about people being mad at them is like it seems to be a big, big theme of the the abundance festival.

Yeah. If if their point of view is that like these issues that put like a majority of American support, they should be no brainers. Well, you should be on those protests beside them because they do represent the majority position, the super majority of Democratic voters and a near super majority of Americans. If we're OK with people being sent to fucking El Salvador because you think it polls well, then this should be a no fucking brainer for you. Well, yeah, I mean, like I think this gets into the essential contradiction here is

that like this whole thing is sold as like the Democrats need to win again and they need to win with the fact that everything that they support isn't popular and is not going to be anytime in the future. Yeah, that was one of the biggest themes of the day. Almost every single person who got on stage spent a good amount of time talking about how they get yelled at online every day and how a lot of people like hate their guts. For example, like, you know, Adam Jenelson, the former chief of staff to John Fetterman. Yes, of course. Yeah. He was there and he, one of his like biggest pieces of advice to his fellow centrists was to like stand up for centrist that are getting bullied

online like say something. Does that include his former boss? Because I like gentle, gentle sin was quoted in the piece as saying like, if you're getting a lot of flack, it means you know, like you're doing something right. Well, does that include his former boss that now he's gone on record as saying is out of his mind and is being and by the way, Jentleson is being attacked now by centrist for betraying John Federman. How does Michael Bloomberg feel about like he's he's paying like millions of dollars

like that's, you know, couch change for him. But he's paying millions of dollars for this conference where, like, you know, people are going on well-butered trips and passing out. And the point of every speech is like, juice my posts. I would be mad. I noticed recently that there is this like poll done that all the abundance people were very mad at because, like, they asked, like a sampling of voters, like which message is you consider as a better way forward for the Democratic Party?

And the first one was this hodgepodge of abundance buzzwords about bottlenecks and development and shit like that. And the other one was that the wealthy have too much power, and wealthy corporations have too much power of our democracy, and we should take it back from them. And the second message pulled way more higher, like had a way higher appeal

than the the mishmash of abundance jive. So like, and then like combine that with the just sort of visual contrast between this sparsely attended hotel basement and any of the huge rallies that AOC and Bernie have turned people out for. Like this must rankle them in some way, right? Or is it that like, there's another part of the abundance agenda that AOC and Bernie have turned people out for. Like this, this must rankle them in some way. Right. Or is it that like there's another part of the abundance agenda where they're like they're convinced that like that something can be too popular,

which is why it's bad. They're sort of like looking for like a just right approach to policy where it's like equal parts hated and loved. Yeah, I mean, nothing about this makes any sense. That's why going was so weird because they all contradicted each other. It didn't seem like many of the people there even really believed in what they were saying. Like if I would ask someone like, okay well give me an example of a political hero. They would say like Richie Torres, but they would seem very unsure of themselves and just

immediately say, like, I don't agree with everything. Richie Torres is no one's fucking hero. Like what an odd response. You think like Barack Obama would be like the easy stock answer for this crowd. But Richie Torres, like nobody even knew who this guy was until like two years ago. Right. And like, I remember how when someone, you know, when I'd be interviewing someone, how they would light up about like Bernie Sanders, for example. And this just wasn't there for any

of the people that they supposedly admire. They couldn't even fake enthusiasm when they talked about these people. I mean, like this is it's it sort of reminds me of like the anti woke people. If something is like annoying or perceived as annoying enough, you can get a lot of mileage out of just making your whole thing opposing that. But when you actually tried to make like a coherent But when you actually try to make like a coherent political ideology and like social identity around just not being something, you will fall flat every time. And in this case, it's especially fraudulent because, okay, maybe you could get more mileage out of we're not that thing in like 2019 when this stuff had more of a purchase inside the Democratic Party. But now it's just like, I mean, it is big. It is basically

like you're you're creating an entire identity and asking for money and asking for commitments around a project that is just were mad at people from seven years ago. And we're also not those people. You can't, there's no like positive, there's no like positive association or like any type of like admiration or any, any positive, anything when it's just, you know, I like Elisa Slotkin because she's not not like because she's normal. Okay. What is normal mean? Is it just that?

It pulls well. Well, you don't take that approach with like fucking Palestine or this recent polls matter until they don't I mean, I think the Democratic Party is never gonna change But whatever this is this whole thing of, we're going to enforce some idea of normalcy by people who had braces until they were 37. I just don't see a future past, you know, holding and endless conferences like this. Well, I mean, this goes back to my original point, is it like the contradictions become easier to understand when I think like you have to understand like this whole rebrand is just like what is just like they're not looking to win elections. They're not looking to like change policy. They're looking to do the same thing that they were always going to do at the behest of the well-heeled donor class that funds all this bullshit. But they need they know they need to manage the discontent created by like, the base of the Democratic Party that is very much, like I said, like, of which of which of where these ideas hold very little purchase and are in fact, very unpopular. And I think this is just about managing the kind of discontent and like, so putting a new coat of paint on like the same old bullshit and trying to convince people that like working Americans,

number one problem is like, you know, zoning regulations and not like a lack of health care or that like the rent is too high. And the way that we can lower rent is to like, you know, I don't know, let private developers build residential units and charge market rates for it so that in 20 years time, it'll come down by one or two percent. Yeah. And all that all that like, you know, we're going to have suborbital deliveries and fucking cold fusion powered supersonic travel. All the shit that like all the most crack headed parts about abundance

or the Jake Austin's loss stuff. I know he was at this conference. I wish I got to see him speak. He's my favorite guy. It's just like, that is just window dressing to disguise the fact that taking at face value, what this actually means in practice, what is this entire thing?

It is all these people who are identical to the members of the groups that they hate saying, we think this is the most optimal way to attract the stupids to the party. That is kind of the least cynical reading you could give. They think this is the best stupids magnet, this entire program of politics. But all that all that stuff about, you know, we need to build things and, you know, also deal with kitchen table issues. That is just to make it seem like it's anything but being defined by what it is not. And what it what it is not is what is what they're really against,

which is populism of any kind and like the the conflation of right-wing and left-wing populism. And like it's very clear when they talk about populism, what they're talking about is democracy. They don't like a system of government where people have too much input over the laws or like conduct of the government. Like that should be left to the smart people, people like them and the people who fund them. And like they know what that sounds like. So everything else is just papering over that essential truth is that like, these people know what ideas are popular. They know what a winning message would be for like, not just the Democratic Party, but if they wanted to like, win over, I don't know, like, like the most popular politician in this country among independents is Bernie Sanders.

And you know, say what you will about the guy, and like, if anything, like as I said before, like the fact that the abundance agenda exists is testament to how well he's been defenestrated by the Democratic Party. But like, they know what a popular message is. And it's a message that they are wholly and completely hostile to. And they're hostile to it because they're essentially have conservative viewpoints about all of these things.

Will, that that entire thing about like being hostile to democracy, it reminds me of the conversation we had when Bloomberg was in the Democratic primary. How, like I still think this that the the most horrifying outcome for the 2020 election, I think it would have been Bloomberg winning. We talked about it at the time, but that would be out of anyone that exists

in contemporary politics, I think Bloomberg has the most potential to be an American Franco. I think his entire political program is like hostile to the idea of democracy and it would just formalize this idea that the richest among billionaires are the only ones who deserve to rule over nations and we would just have 20-year terms. That's what Curtis Yarvin believes. Yeah, it's the same. What he believes is the exact same thing.

Just like how we talked about how Yardley does his own version of were like Gryffindor and they're like Slytherin. These are the same people with the same ultimate goal. A ultra wealthy philosopher, Kings, the end of all democracy. I want to go back to this idea about we need to be normal and we need to have normal politicians. I thought about that in light of the fact that clearly one of the big stars among elected representatives attending the welcome fest is Marie Glussencamp Perez. I did see footage of the attendees singing her happy birthday on stage. Ailid, did you get a chance to

to see any of the Glussencamp? Yeah, I saw a lot of guys getting selfies with her. Oh, were they hover handing? Yes. Oh my god. Yeah, people people were really excited to see her. I would say like the people that like the attendees are most excited about definitely besides Maddie Glacier's her. Well, I bring up Marie-Glutenkamp Perez because I think this is once again

another glaring contradiction in terms of making this person your new superstar for the abundance agenda, which is all about normal politics for normal people. Marie-Glutenkamp Perez is one of the strangest people like I've ever seen be in Congress. She is very odd. And like I became aware of her because it was like right after the 2024 election, right

after Donald Trump won, she was like being heavily promoted everywhere. And like the thing that they were promoting was this video of her talking about like this great reform that she passed in Washington State about like how day carers couldn't serve fresh fruit because peeling fruit counted as like food preparation and they had to be zoned for that. It was, you know, a typical onerous government regulation that's preventing preschool kids from eating a banana. And everyone goes, Oh, yeah, obviously, that's sensible politics for normal people. But like, a, the thing she was talking about wasn't even real. And b, I don't know if you

remember that video. When she spoke, there is something definitely touched about her. Oh my god, like I think her mom was just drinking an ounce of mercury every day during her pregnancy. I'm sorry she's touched with madness. I bring this up because like a while back, Ezra Klein, the king, the abundance goat, he did an interview with Marie-Gloucester-Camp Perez in the New York Times. I just wanted to highlight briefly because they have a very strange exchange about garbage collection that I think is very telling.

So she's talking about like, he asked her a question about consumption and she replies, that's one of the things we've replaced the idea of freedom as the freedom to consume and I would argue that we're not just consumers we're stewards we are producers so it's not just what you can buy but it's what you can make and how you can make things last and your values your inner values manifest in the world around you I have a bill that would require manufacturers of household appliances to put a sticker on the average life expectancy of that washing machine

along with the annual maintenance costs because I think the persistence of Speed Queen or something like that Does show that people will pay more but having a class of buyers who has that information available changes consumption habits Okay, it gets rid of like what I'd like to highlight from that here. Is it okay? Sure. We should build things that last longer We should build appliances that last longer like you know our grandparents had you know Our grandparents had computers that last never needed a new battery. I'm playing with my great-grandfather's ps5 But like her solution to this is not just to regulate the industries that produce these appliances to build them better. It's to put a sticker on the shit that they're already producing, telling you how bad it is.

Yeah. I interesting thing about this, like in addition to glues and camp being so weird and just like her, her most ambitious policy proposal being, you know, you should be, you should be aware of how ripped off you are. I don't know how anyone like looks at this the last like five years of American politics and American culture and goes, Oh yeah, yeah. Normal. The thing that everyone is becoming that's everything should be normal. Like everyone now has the same personality as that QAnon guy that like killed the mafia boss. Yeah. So, uh, as it goes on and answer, do you think of these as economic policy arguments or arguments that are almost more moral and spiritual in nature? She says they're both.

My dad used to say you can talk about your values all day long, but you see somebody's tax returns and you know what they really think. The depowering of the environmental movement has been supplanting real environmentalism with a consumption habit. So she goes on a bit for a while about developing skills and allocating your time to live in relationship to the world around you. But then she says, one of the things I really love about where I live is rural scamania is that we don't have trash service. So I have to look at all the trash and it's why I'm not going to buy single serving yogurt cup because I'm going to have to smell that for two or three months before we go to the dump and load up the truck and take

everything. You have to see it. And I think it enforces the reality that there is nowhere else. You can't export emissions. The climate is global and your relationship to the world around you, not just as a terrarium, but as a dependence and something that informs your life daily. I think that really matters to informing what trade-offs people will make. And then Ezra says, I take the point, but most people want trash pickup. I want trash pickup. She says, sure. Ezra says you represent the city and that's not going to work without trash pickup.

And she says, yes, there are economies of scale, but often they can exclude the full of reality. Yes, there is modern convenience. But is the climate better? Are we happier? Are we healthier? Do we have what we actually want or has it been supplanted? And yes, I would like to have trash service, but I would like to have trash service enough

to move to a city. No. OK, I think I figured out what's wrong with her. She's from the year like 1100 and got unfrozen. What like this is this is the closest thing that like people are calling it now is it is it this is like fucking she wants to empty the cities. Yeah, this is your Rouge. Like she said, I later the review I don't like cities and like in her ideal

world where she's queen, there's no trash collection. You have to look at all your trash. Everyone lives, uh, at least two miles away from each other. And, but there's like no regulation on industry. Yeah, it's so weird. It's so fucking weird. I do have one small detail to add, um, from welcome fest. Um, since it was her birthday, they asked her what her favorite candy is. And she said, body parts gummies.

What? What the fuck? Body parts gummies? Yeah, like on Halloween, you know, the gummies where it's like different body parts, like an eyeball. Yeah. So that's your favorite candy. When the abundance of agenda is in charge, we'll have Halloween every day. I very much take your point that you don't want trash service enough to move to a city and that's totally fair. What do you think about and how do you talk to your constituents who do? That small minority of her constituents who like trash collection so that their front

yard isn't just moldering with... By the way, my mom lives in a pretty rural area where there is no trash collection, so she has to take trash to the dump in the car. It doesn't take her months to do that. Marie Glusinkamp-Perez says, I don't want the trash just sitting around for months at a time. You can just take your months to do that. Marie-Glusson Camperez says, I don't want to trash just sitting around for months at a time. Like you can just like take your garbage to the garbage. Like you don't have to wait.

Yeah. We figured out she's one of those women that has like, there are cups of water on her nightstand that have been there for 12 years. Like, one of those people. She says, sister number one, Marie-Glude Lusinkamp Perez says, oh, that's great. If you want to live in a city, you should. I think it's also true that you could put an apartment building in a rural town and

a lot of people would get a lot of utility out of that. But I think one of the things that is missed frequently in this discussion is that the shift to a service economy or a knowledge economy means that now your barber has to move to a city where they're not able to afford housing. And when you have domestic manufacturing, if you're a mill in a rural community, you're able to own land. You're able to spend time with your family. I'm not trying to slight the urban issue, but I think that divorce from the farms you

rely on, from the water that you drink, from being able to ship your garbage somewhere else and not have to smell it yourself, it changes your relationship to the natural world around you. And if you're not clear about that and those relationships, you're losing something necessary. So yeah, she's on that Khmer Rouge, basically. Oh my God, yeah. She represents a city.

She represents a small city in Washington. What is she talking about? Can you imagine if the reign of her in Jay Goshen's loss? No, she she is. She is. Yeah. Her and out out out out loss are like these are the two star abundance politicians and they like they sound deranged.

They're going to like Marie was at Camp Perez. She loves living in a rural area because no one knows that her husband is in. He is now distributed to seven different rivers, systems, and tributaries. That's the reason she loves body part gummies. She's going to get together with Jake Oshensloss and birth a shadow baby. And they're going to have the abundance Camille Rouge

where the cities are emptied and everyone has to live in rural apartment buildings that have sky gardens. Rural apartment buildings. And, and like there will be forced breeding until someone finally creates the family from Foxtrot reborn in Jake Oshensloss's vision. The iguana has come separately. Yeah. But I like once again, she's like, oh, like your barber can't live in the city where they cut hair because housing is too expensive. But like, the solution to that is never to like, I don't know, build social housing or like put a cap on the rent.

It's just like it's like her washing machine problem. It's like, we could just demand that appliance manufacturers build better products. But like no, it's just we have to label it. And then with this, it's just like it's all these bizarre little tweaks around the edges because like Marie, the gluten camp, what she actually believes in is just very strange. And like she's part of a democratic coalition that expects her to do things about this. But like all her answers are like, you know, these are both political but moral and spiritual problems about being disconnected from the land You live in so like the solution is what make everyone farmers again. Who the fuck are you Thomas Jefferson? Like our farmers like also dependent on the cities where their goods are sold like it's this weird

It's this weird, very, very strange like glorification of rural areas. And again, it's like it's just Republican shit. Like smaller rural communities are better and more soulful than big cities. This reminds me of like, this was more of like a 2000s thing because there really aren't that many libertarians anymore.

They've all become like Maggot guys or gone on to other things. But like in the during the Bush administration, there was this phenomenon where, like, if you were like a left liberal, and you were really upset about things like warrantless wiretaps, and Gitmo and all these things, the closest the people that you could talk to actually about these things and would be where you were at were libertarians. And so often you would have this thing happen where you would hear a libertarian start talking.

And for the first minute you're like, oh my, yeah, this all makes sense. They're saying we should end the war on drugs. Like that this war is unjustified. We should persecute these people for war crimes and torture. And then enough time passes and they're, they, they, they finally say it. You should be able to buy a baby or harvest one to buy its organs in the future. And you go, Oh, I, I see why you have such a small constituency. Yeah. The same, the same type of thing where it's like, oh yeah, it sucks that like, you know, we have the, we, you know, the, the, the locus of all economic activity in America is in urban centers where most of

the, most of the service workers that keep it going and are the backbone of the modern American finance and service economy cannot afford to live there. finance and service economy cannot afford to live there. The solution to that, instead of like government housing or price controls on rent or regulation of landlords and large real estate trusts, is to march them at gunpoint to the farms. And they can live on a haircutter farm. Well actually the solution is maybe people in the city should drive three hours to get

their hair cut. That's a great idea because then then they'll be more they'll have more of a relationship with the land in between them and their barber. Yeah or maybe actually I think a real abundant solution. Do barbers need clothes? Shouldn't all barbers be nude? I'm so glad you brought this up. Think about how in touch you'll feel with your barber when he's naked cutting your hair. Yeah, the world's first nude barber, he was, he's a yimby. That's what he was he's a yimby. Why is doing

here's a question. Here's a question that the populist left needs to answer. Why is it easier to build a nude barber shop in Texas than it is in New York and California? I asked you that. And I want to read real quickly from Ezra Klein's view of populism and democracy. But before I do, I want to ask, who were your favorite guys at the at the Welcome Fest? Were there any anecdotes that didn't make the cut for your article? Who was your favorite person to see and or talk to at the Abundance

Fest? Okay, so a lot of them weren't very passionate or enthusiastic. But one guy, very passionate or enthusiastic, but one guy who was pretty passionate, he was telling me that his political hero is Dean Phillips. And he just found it so inspiring how he went against the party when it came to Joe Biden. And then he immediately starts talking about how New York and California are overrun with crime. But he was really animated. Yeah, like people wearing glasses. Well, I mean, like, I mean, you talk about the strange lack of enthusiasm

or like the fact that people say their political hero is Richie Torres, someone that we all learned about a year ago. It just seems to me like there's no real enthusiasm or they don't seem sure of themselves because like, there's nothing here to believe in other than like what already exists. It's just the Democratic Party, take it or leave it keep voting for us, you have to like there's nothing to like, nobody really is passionate about zoning laws or fucking or deregulating small business or whatever the fuck these people want to do.

Like, these are not moral, political, or spiritual issues that matter, or that anyone, anyone is excited about. But they have to pretend like they are, because they realize if they don't, then maybe they won't have a job, or maybe politics will turn into direction away from them. And to that point, I just want to read Ezra Klein.

This is from over The Weekend in The New York Times. You can tell they've been kind of stung by the reviews that came in for their abundance book. And they're like, oh, everyone's saying we don't have a theory of political power. Well, allow Ezra to lay it out here. And I think it's very telling what he says at the end of this piece here. He writes, many of my more leftist friends and antagonists have asked me

if abundance has a theory of power. I often say it does, but they're not going to like it. And that's in part because its theory of power is liberal rather than populist. Cas Mud, I love that name, Cas Mud, a Dutch political scientist, defines populism as an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogenous and antagonistic groups, the pure people and the corrupt elite. Different forms of populism populate these groups differently. Right-wing populism defines the people in geographic, nationalistic, and racialist terms.

The corrupt elite tend to be educated, foreign, and cosmopolitan. Left-wing populism tends to sever society economically, the 99% against the 1%, or corporations against everyone else. Once again, I don't know who Cass Mudd is, but I think his definition of populism is that like, it's a belief that there are pure people and the corrupt elite to be wholly spurious. Like, once again, populism means democracy. It means popular support. It means the people, the masses have a say in the government that rules them. It would seem to be like to me, it's the greatest good for the greatest number of people. But then like this hand waving away that like,

oh, it's all just this Manichaean view that divides people into like good and bad. Well, I think a lot of the criticism that Ezra got for his stupid book is that like, yeah, like sometimes, yeah, there are there are antagonizing and competing interests in our society and they're competing points of view. Some of them are good and some of them are bad. Some of them are held by genuinely evil people seeking to it, most of whom just funded the welcome fest. How is this a sophisticated view of the world though? How is this any more sophisticated?

I mean, with Mary-Glory Zagan Perez, it's dividing the world into city and not city. But with the less mercury afflicted members of the coalition, it's the same thing. Everything that polls at above 55 percent is good, except for anything having to do with health care, housing costs or Palestine. Any anything that we associate with like staffers that tricked us into posting a black square in 2020 is bad. This is, I mean, someone today said that Ezra Klein is he's Thomas Friedman for the millennial set. And I think

that's very true. And he's, you know, as is always the case with the successor to the original, he's learned from Friedman's mistakes by presenting himself as more reactive and more open to the views of others. But if you if you actually look at all of this, if you try to address it, what are they actually saying? What are they proposing should be done? And who are they naming as their enemies? There is no complexity.

We've seen this before. This is, all this is, is the early 90's DLC platform adjusted for tech donors. And authored by people who have gone insane from picking about 800 milligrams of fucking well butrin every day for 10 years. And like, you know, like, in the abundance as our worldview, like, I mean, there are groups that he's antagonistic to that he thinks, you know, like, I need to be confronted. They're just like homeowners associations and like labor unions. You know, it's just a matter of just picking who your targets are. And

he disagrees with the targets of left and right wing populism. Coincidentally, the targets of right wing populism are just non-white people. And the targets of left wing population populism are, you know, the dramatically wealthy corporations and elites who like if billionaires can't be called an elite or a corrupt and parasitic elite, I don't know who can. And he writes, what both forms of populism share as a tendency to treat virtue as a fixed property of groups and policy as a way of redistributing power from the disfavored to the favor. Yeah, I mean, actually like that, I think that is actually is a pretty good

definition of politics, in my opinion. But he says he goes on to say, under the populist theory of power, bad policy can be and often is justified as good politics. Every policy in this telling has two goals. One is the goal of policy or the project. Perhaps you're trying to decarbonize the economy or build affordable housing or increase competition in the market for hearing aids. But the other is the redistribution of power among groups. Does this policy leave unions stronger or weaker? Environmental justice groups? Corporations? And then he goes on to say, my view of power is more classically liberal. In his book, Liberalism, the Life of an Idea, Edmund Fawcett describes it neatly.

Edwin Fawcett. Human power was implacable. It could never be relied on to behave well, whether political, economic, or social, superior power of some people over others tended inevitably to arbitrariness and domination unless resisted and checked. To take this view means power will be ill-used by your friends as well as your enemies, by your political opponents as well as your neighbors. From this perspective, there are no safe reservoirs of power. Corporations sometimes serve the national interest and sometimes portray it. The same is true for governments for unions for churches for nonprofits A lot is lost when you collapse the complex interest of politics into a simple morality play

There are often different corporations on different sides of the same issue There are often different unions on different sides of the same issue to know where you stand and who stands with you You need to know what you were trying to achieve. This is not I should say some untested approach to politics It's how Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the two most successful national Democrats of the past 50 years, approached both their campaigns and their presidencies. Obama was perceived as like more radical than Harris or Biden. Like regardless of what his policies and rhetoric were, he was perceived that

way. And he is the most electorally successful Democrat that we will probably see for about 50 fucking years. Look, I mean, for Ezra, like the presidency's of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were very successful. And like I don't think he means electorally. I think he means in terms of policy. I have to disagree. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I mean, I think there were disasters for this country in a lot of ways. But like, it's this idea about

like power can never be wielded for good. You know, power always corrupts. It's like, it's this like half smart college kid view of the world where you're like, oh, like when I was younger and more immature, I simply thought that, you know, there are bad people in power and that like power should be gained to like take that that you need to you need to wield power to take it away from the people who are evil. But like now that I went to college and have a job now, I just know that everyone is sort of good and evil and that like, all power needs to be checked. And like, the important part about power is not having it and using it. It's just making it as diffuse as possible. So like, so that like no bad actor can do bad things, trying to do good or something like that. And I just think that like that sums up like the world view here is that like power is not to be wielded except by the people who fund the abundance festival. Because like, look at what Donald Trump is doing right now.

I would say that that's an example of power being used for evil. I mean, like deploying the Marines in an American city to quell, you know, protests against his ethnic cleansing policies. But like, that's why like the idea that this is some way back for the Democratic Party is farcical to me, because like, power is to be used. The only the most important thing about having about power is keeping it and using it. And using it on behalf of the people who gave it to you. And like, yes, and using it against the people who are bad, who are evil, who are villains. Like, it seems like they're using power against everyone else every fucking day.

And we're just supposed to, I don't know, tweak regulations and zoning permits to deal with that. It's especially farcical now because it's like, OK, do you believe that if you just if you do the Obama thing, what Obama did in office and just, you know, the point of your presidency is to show how responsible you are with power. So people like you enough for you for you to create like shitty Netflix documentaries till the end of time. Like that is a successful presidency. If you just do that with the next Democratic presidency, well the Republican party is just bound to go back to normal. There's no seal has been broken here. You know? This is not a new era of American politics. This is just, you know, this is just at this point like a 10 year long fever. And if we behave responsibly enough, then our opponents will stop calling us pedophiles

who deserve to be executed next time they hold the White House. You know, that's over. That is over with. And I don't know if these people know that and don't give a shit, or if they are so delusional that they think like it can become the nineties again. But it is so ignorant of the time that we live in. I mean, it's so funny that they mentioned Obama too, because the only reason that Obama won reelection by a pretty big fucking margin was that he named enemies after four years of like a health care bill

that the insurance industry practically wrote and like a shitty stimulus that it was the exact policy prescription of these people's predecessors. He named Mitt Romney as a class enemy and won. Ada, to your point about how when you brought up, for instance, Gaza to any of these people at the welcome fest, like they sort of stuttered, whispered, didn't really know what to say. And I think this speaks directly to the heart of this idea about power because like, these are these are the same people have been telling you over the last two years, you

can't expect the president to just do something. Look, Joe Biden doesn't have the power to stop Israel from killing all these people. He Oh, I suppose you think he can simply just stop selling them weapons. It's just like, they turn the power button like up on and off at will, in terms of like what you're allowed to do with power and what's realistic to expect of the US government being able to accomplish. Like whenever you talk to like Yimby people about like, well, why don't we just do rent control and just have the state build housing rather than private developers? They're like,

there's no money for that. You know, like, who's going to pay for it? And it's like, the US government has a budget in like the trillions of dollars. Like it's not like they could pay for it if they wanted to. But it's just this like it's this it's this mystification around the idea that like the people you elect to office should be expected to do something. And like they turn that dial on and off whenever it suits them. Donald Trump is spending trillions of dollars to give a massive tax cut to everyone who's

earning more than $300,000 a year with the highest earners, people making millions of dollars a year receiving the biggest benefit. Surely in this era of politics where this was supposedly the austerity party, surely you can see that that doesn't matter. But no, nothing can be done except for the crushing of the left. And I guess I'll just bring it back to the protests and police violence going on in Los Angeles

and elsewhere in this country right now, because obviously this is not an original thought, and this is sort of lib brain. But like, I had to think about January six, and sort of like taking in all of this stuff. And like, what I thought about it was that it was one of the greatest political successes in American history. Like, they did not manage to overturn the 2020 election, but they managed to get the 2024 election. And what

Donald Trump did, one of the first things he did was pardon all the people involved in it. So like they exercised power illegally to threaten the government of this country and its politicians. And like, yeah, they got sent to jail for it, but then they were pardoned because the political power they were doing it on behalf of supported them. So how about the optics of that? How about the strategy, the electoral strategy involved in looting the Capitol and threatening to kill the vice president and then four years later the person you're doing it

on behalf of is president again? How's that for power? For like a year. I mean talk about like bad optics. Donald Trump's, Donald Trump as a political entity was over except for like you know certain, certain Republican primaries, even then, like the the common the the conventional knowledge among conservatives was that it was going to be between like DeSantis and Doug Burzum for the leader of the future party. It was the lowest he's ever been with his supporters, both after the vaccine and him, like in the wake of January 6 being like, I disavow everyone who's there. Just let me have Twitter. And then, you know, what is there? What is their solution to this optics problem? Well, they say that, like, everyone there who did anything insane, anyone, anyone who got shot by a cop, anyone who did anything, they were actually like it was a false flag or a federal agent and the people in prison are victims of entrapment and also that none of it happened. Just total denial and you know in the sense that it stopped being an albatross around the neck of Trump's movement, it fucking worked. Well, because he stopped apologizing for it and started celebrating all the people who

did it. Yeah. It seems like it changed public opinion. Yeah. As far as the election goes. It's almost like the attitudes of powerful people can affect polls and that public opinion isn't just this like this force of nature that exists alone. That operates independently.

Ada, just before we get off, before we go here, just any final thoughts about Welcome Fest? Is there any moment that stands out in your head? Any sort of sensory memory? Were the food and drinks there any good? You said you attended a there was sort of a happy hour. What was the socializing at this scene like? Yeah, there was no music, just everyone. at this scene like. Yeah, there was no music, just everyone. Everyone's speaking loudly about centrism and the chikoras and open borders.

There were two open bars, but no fumed drinks or anything, just a big plastic storage bin of gummy bears in honor of the Congresswoman's buffet. You know, in full transparency, I did eat some of the gummy bears. I know you're not supposed to just eat random gummies at festivals without testing them first, but. But I did try them. How were they? without testing them first.

Oh, I did try them. How were they? They weren't bad. She's been compromised, folks. She's taking gummy bears from the people she's known. Oh, it took Richard Torres is MDMA gummies. I think I think this is the one this is the one place in the world

where I would feel safe eating anything that was given to me, knowing that it wasn't adulterated in any way. Yeah. My final takeaway, in a way, the sadness of the whole event was kind of comforting to me. I know for a lot of people, including me, it can feel like things are totally out of our control, but I found it pretty comforting that these are the people we're up against and these are the people at the top of the democratic party.

Um, that just made me feel better. Yeah. I think that that's a very good point, especially in light of like, you know, in a, in organic protest movement that happened concurrently with this, an organic protest movement of people who, you know, it wasn't affiliated with any party or any organization necessarily, but it was just people protecting themselves, protecting their family, and protecting their friends. For all that is said, and you know, all the game planning about public opinion that is done about it.

It showed that there is actually organic resistance to all of this, and that people will go out and risk life and limb for each other. And as grim as everything is, it's a very stark contrast to this, this political festival for the idea of nothingness. And then like the very real like self-defense of people, you know, standing up themselves against, like I said, like paramilitary federal law enforcement targeting, you know, elementary schools. Like that's not an exaggeration.

Yeah, it reminds you that like there are a lot of different types of people out there. Some of them are Pennsylvania voters, you know, they're dumber and more incoherent than you could ever imagine anyone being. But a lot of people are very courageous and maybe they don't know it until they're tested. I don't think a lot of these people knew exactly how this would play out.

I don't imagine that in November of last year, they knew they would be in the streets like fighting federal agents and now Marines, but it does show that like. It's similar to what we said right after the election that there will be times when people are tested and sometimes it will turn out that maybe their beliefs weren't that tightly held. But other times, and this seems to be more common now, people turn out their native much stronger material. They have a much tougher moral fiber than even they themselves ever assume. Okay, that does it for today's episode. But before we go, before we go today, I got two quick, I got one quick thing, and then a little treat for you. Per our sort of in memoriam for Jordan Breen, that Felix spoke to about at the end of our last episode,

some of Jordan's friends have reached out to us to share the news that his alma mater is starting a scholarship fund for sports journalism. And we're gonna have a link to that in the show description. So just, if you're thinking about Jordan, it seems like a very nice, a nice effort to remember him and to continue his work in the future in the field of sports journalism and MMM. Yeah, I posted this. I've already donated anyone who, you know, don't break the bank if you are in a precarious

situation if you have money burning a hole in your pocket, um, and Jordan touched your life as a fan of the sport, a fan of his work. Um, I will just say that like one of the things I found very harrowing about Jordan's tragic and untimely death was that this guy was a absolute Titan in the sport, uh, in the eyes of people who followed the sport intensely, in the eyes of people who read and listened to him. And his greatest curse was that he was just too ahead of his time. And it was harrowing to see this guy who was, I thought, such a Titan,

unambiguously the greatest combat sports journalist in the entire world, that he unfortunately died in obscurity. Even though in light of his passing, thousands and thousands of people have talked about the ways that he touched their lives. This is a way that we can make Jordan live on in more than just our memories as people that admired him and loved his work. That we can put some permanent marker that Jordan was here and that he touched the lives of thousands.

So in slightly later news, I mentioned that we'd be sharing some music with you at the end of today's episode and Now if you've listened to the show recently, you know first time or long time if you listen to Chapo You know two things about Felix and I that we are fans of both John Federman and Rxk nephew The two men bringing back hip-hop. Yeah. And now we've referenced before the brilliant tweet that made John Federman into an RxK nephew lyric. Kill myself at my son's birthday party. I'm the worst guy in the Democratic party. The Democrat party.

We've said Federman, Slitherman many times on this show. And listeners of the show reached out to RxK nephew. He's very gregarious on Instagram. He will respond to a lot of people. Very enterprising. He's very enterprising musician. And they inquired to Mr. Nephew, how much did it cost to do a song about John Federman?

RxK responded, $500, I have my engineer with me right now. Listeners, friends, I answered the call. I gave RxK Nephew $500 I have my engineer with me right now Listeners friends, I answered the call. I gave our XK nephew $500 I feel like the modern-day Medici family for my sponsorship of the arts But without further ado here is our XK nephew's untitled John Fetterman track that was worth Every penny and then some a steal it twice the price Yeah, the best line is when he says John Fetterman can suck my dick. Actually no, I don't want him to do that.

I guess the sense he was learning more about Fetterman as he went. Yeah, well I couldn't be more thrilled. RxK, he fucking crushed it with the John Fetterman song. He really did. Yeah, it's RxK and FU Untit the John Fetterman song really did it's a the RXK nephew untitled John Fetterman song Till next time everybody bye bye and thanks again to Ada Chavez

We'll have a link to her article for the nation in, get lit at a Democrat party Get a bitch pregnant at a Republican party Call Fetterman, dad got fat, no I'm island Who the fuck you think you is? Who the hell you thought you was? Nigga bought a church in Pennsylvania Off his family drugs Nigga, you like 6'8 White man can't jump to this day All your advice is dead dirt My samples are dope, make your dance break We still trafficking through P.A. My dogs in Philly got switches for days I feel like Neff, Kenna man I feel like Neff, Fetty White man

I feel like Neff, Slither man My dope hit like Rob Van Damme All Auntie said was, God damn Tell Fetter man he can suck my dick I'll take that back, I don't want him to do that I'ma turn Mexican and jump the border I'ma buy an AVE, turn it to a quarter Fetterman, nephew, traffic your daughter It's a ransom, free food stamps She my type, only fiends and food stamps Treat my trap like a boucan This random dope will do stamps Got a BBL, that shit sting Hit it once, set on top rank Off the Remy, they ain't hear my dream Nepfetterman doing what they can't

I'm got a bald head, John Fetter Walk in, get lit at a Democrat model Get a bitch pranked at a Republican party Call Fetterman, dad got fat, no I'm got a bald head, John Fetter Walk in, get lit at a Democrat heart Get a bitch pranked at a Republican party Carl Fetterman, that got fat in all my league Who the fuck you think you is? Who the hell you thought you was? Nigga bought a church in Pennsylvania Off his family drugs Nigga, you like 6'8 White men can't jump to this day All your advice is dead dirt My samples of dope make you dance break We still trafficking through P.A. My dogs in Philly got switches for days I feel like Neff Ketterman

I feel like Neff Eddie Wilde man