Chapo Trap House - Episode 242 - Touched by a Funeral (9/3/18)

Episode Date: September 4, 2018

Well folks, we worked on Labor Day to own the Libs: We discuss the McCain funeral and how you really got to hand it to these #resistance folks for how hard they're working to prove Trump right about the swamp. Then, we check in with Donna Brazile to learn how she and the X-Men are similar. Tickets still available for NE Tour! http://chapotraphouse.com/tour/

It's like he used to be so cool, and now he's like dude Serena Williams is serving tea Internet turns everyone into a loser. Yeah, no, I'm dude. I like I'm a Dina John's Twitter account He's like dude. You like tea dude enjoyed tea. Yeah, he's just tweeting about things like Do not even come at me with this Kobe stuff. It's LeBron Jordan get out of this Yeah, I just don't like him as a top like he's he's all posting my correct opinions like the Serena Williams thing Oh, yeah, it's like you can find those from anyone. It's like you have a gift for You know stuff about the holocaust Really knowing God preventing in modesty and it's do an air-to-tweet. I wish that would be amazing

He doesn't need to tweet dude. Do you care if it unleashes? 140 character bomo's and mean form machine gun. Do you tear it they would be one of those accounts for people like, um Felix, I know you like following this guy, but um, have you seen some of the things he's done? I'm like, oh damn another really funny account. I find out that it's a problematic guy. Damn it I don't even know he's president of the Philippines. I just think he's a funny dude that I follow I don't know. I think he'd be like a Michael Mason type of guy Just a lot of stuff about how about being a boss and living your most boss life and how Religion is for the week and how you know, he's still fucks even though he's eight years old and all that my favorite thing

Was you tear today? And you know, there are a lot of things like obviously, but uh, Is that he just visited the holocaust memorial in Israel? I bet that went great. He said never again unless I'm doing it. Yeah But he he's awesome because uh, like you he's like sort of hyper macho, but he's also like He had that thing where he's like, yeah, you know, I thought about being bisexual just came out of nowhere Yeah, he's homey sexual like that's awesome. Yeah. Well, he put it's extra funny because he said that his policy Is comparable to Hitler like he said like I'm fighting crime with Hitler like resolve like But in Tagalog or whatever. Yeah, but like he doesn't attempt synthesis. He doesn't care. No, he doesn't care about

Consistency, you know, he's got a hot couch in the basement of the presidential mansion. Oh No, Duterte is in a hot couch. It's the Philippines though. Everything is a hot couch in the Philippines. It's a hot country It's extremely hot country. Duterte. No, Duterte is a different. He's a different type of midwestern archetype. He's the do my wife guy He's the guy. Well, whoa. Whoa. Okay. Let's let's I need I need to know more about this guy You know this guy. Do my wife guy is a middle aged Do my wife, please are they swingers or no? He's well sometimes he's an incredibly tanned psycho This guy's wife wears a leather skirt and he'll like finger being hurt in the bar He'll do very uncomfortable things like go up to younger guys at a gym

Maybe go even go up to like kids at a jv football game and be like you guys want to know how to really make a woman come And they're like 14 and they're like what? Do my wife guy is incredibly tan He he only works out his arms and forearms somehow He's uh, like just anytime you're with him He'll get drunk and start crying about something. He's just like I just want to get home and do my freaking wife That's his favorite thing is just to be sexual as fuck with his beloved of 25 years And he will never stop giving you uncomfortable advice about how to touch the clit

He will never stop trying to pipe his wife down in a semi public space and comfortably He's just purely he's a purely passionate creature. No, Duterte is really evil Uh in 2016 in a reference to an opponent's remark that his rice could be like that of Adolf Hitler Duterte said he himself would be happy to slaughter drug addicts in a similar way to the nazis mass murder of shoes I mean, that's just a different herna phrase over there. Like, you know, like hitlers like a boss over there He did apologize For likening his war on drug dealers with a holocaust and then in june he called god stupid Well as a callback to our uh episode we did before this

Um, many people are now saying the hot couch riff has defined a generation I've gotten so many messages from people like I didn't know that this was my life until you guys described it that way Yeah, so many people are saying I didn't know I was a hot couch guy until that episode. So it's like we're they're coming out Yeah, we're we're we're reaching a level of self-awareness that uh, as Andrew said Uh, everyone like when people talk and think back to the best years of their lives Um, those years were all dog shit and awful We played the probably the most important hot couch game of all time Last night on stream. We played a halo stream. It was very fun

But I think it conjured memories of being being on hot couches for all of us And we had just a three hour dialogue about the world of hot couches As I it's it's it's Proust's Madeline dipped in tea for our generation It is conjured up a reverie that has sort of universally felt and acknowledged now. Thanks to us. Thanks to you, Felix Well, thanks to Andrew. Thanks to thanks to Mike And most of all my great lakes voice who also lived this reality and most of all thanks to the hot couches themselves Absolutely making it all possible You keep rolling around in eternity looking for that cool spot. You never find it

Let's change change the guard at the tomb of the unknown hot couch guy Uh, another another throwback to our last weekend's episode. Um, not to clap myself on the back It's not exactly the the hardest prediction to make But I feel very vindicated that John McCain's funeral played out exactly like I thought it would It's still going on, right? I didn't think it was over. They're gonna fucking fill that asshole with helium and float him above the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade Well, he picked a bunch of religious patriotic songs and Danny boy because he's a basic bitch Well, they did have to extend it because I did sort of I caught a red eye and I went into the national cathedral I said god, you epic son of a bitch

How did how did you take this man from us? Uh, he's gonna have the the the bagpipes that played amazing grace buried with him. Did uh, did you see um The the front page of the uh, new york post. Yeah that rule. Okay. It's it's it's megan mccain like Crying in profile with her mouth open and it just said the meg Megan mccain Megan mccain takes a bite out of trump at her father's funeral And now like the trump people are very upset about this. They're like, how dare you bring politics Into your dad's funeral or whatever But which I think is funny because she was attending the funeral

With her uh, big boy husband ben domino who runs probably the most shameless pro trump propaganda site on the internet Yeah, so like what did he make of all of this because like he went he probably just published an article like you know slagging off his own wife as like, you know some sort of uh her impropriety for saying He was a great warrior and his country didn't have to be great again because it is great and john mccain's great But uh, you guys remember I I have forgotten about this, but mccain blog yet. Oh, yes. Yes. No. Oh my god. I do she decided to be a um, I don't know like a represent a youth representative

Uh to the millennials or something and she's during her father's campaign and she started like a blog Uh called mccain blog yet and it did so poorly That his campaign manager barred her from commenting. She Her dad fired her that's basically from blogging The most not no show non real job on earth That's the equivalent of like your parents showing up to the wing and saying madison. You're not making handbags anyway, how do you bet like in 2008 the standard was so low too Yeah, there's no content basically just a bunch of how dare you serve fucking dumbass blogs. Yeah

The two types of blogs were you know, as we detailed before prometheus's warhammer Uh, just a highly disturbed man from colorado springs. He's 39 years old and writes meticulous Uh rundowns of every model rocket. He's ever built and then blog posts are like All right. Fuck a doodle do you're gonna put on your big boy pants and here we go. Okay. Fuck meister shit bird You're gonna fucking. Oh, you think it's all unicorns and rainbows. Well, my ass goblin is shitting on my fuck And she got fired she could back it basically by her dad She commented on it in some interview much later in the new york times And there was just no self-awareness. She's like, yeah, I guess just people didn't want to hear from me

She learned nothing Never will learn anything Um, I don't want to spend too much time on uh, john mccain's funeral because I think we've already put him in the ground I'm still kind of glowing. We put him in the ground last weekend because to be fair It's like he was dying for years And it was just how you really looked at dial ready It took so long Franco style, but I mean just just two things like it

This funeral it's yeah, I've been going on all fucking week is this kind of national event I've had to have seen it on tv like all week long and had to hear, you know, uh Nightly news anchors who are, you know, again objective journalists say things like a nation morons Say our greatest hero or whatever fucking dana bash said because it started raining when they were bringing the casket into the cathedral The angels are crying An adult human being whose job is to write and talk about politics said that Something that you wouldn't tell a fucking 10 year old You'd be embarrassed to say that to a kid at a funeral for one of your family members

The angels are crying because they're like, oh no, we have to spend time with this asshole now This is a demonious prick. He said that to your kid. It's a woke toddler sentiment It's something someone actually says Someone someone says they're told that to a kid the kid would say don't patronize me right That isn't even woke toddler like if someone made that post it like oh, that's definitely real because that's stupid as fuck A child would say that this this is the state religion platitudinous hallmark dribble from a cynical piece of shit Yeah, it just Meaningless, but hey, north korea. What a weird country, right?

They worship their leaders God they defy their leaders And then have these garment-rending Breakdowns and they die. It's like wow that is that is a sign of an unhealthy society Yeah, there is at least they turn it into gymnastics and shit Yeah, imagine like imagine like chrysalis are trying to do a backflip with wolf blitzer Actually, I'd love to they both like fucking smashed their c7s, but uh Yeah, no, there is like a form of juce that only exists for people in nova and this is it

It's it the most somehow the most noble thing you can do is like repeatedly fail and Just become an even bigger sanctimonious prick every year of your life Just imagining the entire like new york time is mastheads with ribbon dancers I'm imagining them all turning over like cards being sewn from like a satellite and it's just his face over all the Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah in the in the 10s of thousands of lanyards just all like, you know Insynchronized card turning to form a giant mosaic image of the heroic senator john mccain The last thing I'll say about the the funeral is that you know as I expected it would be this it's really

It it became sort of a national pageant that it really didn't again Like every all the specifics about his life that we mentioned are completely irrelevant because this was um a moment that really needed to serve a purpose For for those people in that room and they needed to advertise it to the rest of the country and that purpose was of course Um, trump is the weird outlier trump must be shunned He is he is the bad thing And if only we could just go back to the way things were a couple years ago everything would be okay again When trump fell to earth in a meteor

Yeah, and landed in the white house and and hatched and we just haven't been able to get him out of there And I'm thinking specifically about the moment the probably the most nauseating thing Everyone losing their shit over george w bush giving michelle obama a were there's original during the funeral dark times I mean that was an edible He gave her one of those nice, you know, uh weed gummies or caramels or whatever to get through that fucking funeral But um, yeah, just the um Everyone who is just like just creaming their pants Over that moment and just like oh, this is what we're missing as a country

The former first lady and the former like the guy who invaded iraq and killed like half a million people Um, just assuring us that like they're still fun. They're still nice. They're not trump You know, it says so much though, doesn't it that cindy and megan and uh their brother who has yet to be named uh Trump whose grave personal offense to their family was saying their dad was a bad pilot Was made a big show not being invited But then george w bush who called their sister and daughter an illegitimate child who smeared her made her the center of this Very nasty primary race Oh come on down and the important thing is you didn't insult the the great big patreon even crazier

And I didn't say this last week We mentioned the fact that nixon had sabotaged the 68 peace negotiations that led to mccain spending an extra Four-plus years in prison that he wouldn't have had to but I forgot to mention Is that one of the people who spoke at the fucking funeral was the actual guy who was Facilitating nixon sabotaging of the 68 peace treaty negotiations by feeding information He was uh, he was getting because he'd been hired as a consultant by the johnson administration On the fucking talks and he leaked all of that information to nixon who then used it to sabotage it The guy who was the actual the actual

Agent who made this motherfucker spend four and a half years getting tortured in north greea Henry motherfucking kissing your feet numb. He fucking spoke at the goddamn funeral Like it's one thing. Okay. He smears you as as a guy with an illegitimate black child and and owns you out of a presidential A bit that's bad keeping you in prison for four and a half years more directly Responsible for you rotting away in jail than any other single person on earth. He gets on the fucking dais Well a plucky Vietnamese missile operator and your own ability to pull back on the yoke then Henry Kissinger Yes, his own oafish inability to pilot a goddamn plane. Uh, I just want to uh,

Read here. This is just the uh, the last few paragraphs from uh Susan b. Glazer of the new yorker wrote this up Letter from trumps washington. Uh, john mccain's funeral was the biggest resistance meeting yet No, it is true though. That's you're 100 right? That's true two ex presidents and one eloquent daughter teamed up to rebuke the eloquent. Yeah To rebuke the point in the one word everyone has said about the woman who got fired by her dad for being a blogger Yeah, eloquent ass. This is too damn eloquent. Yeah, they sent a poet So, uh, I'm just going to read a little from this here. Um Of course, there were some there were fulsome tributes to senator mccain's bravery and courage and public service

Stark reminders of the torture he endured as a prisoner of war and of the policies he fought for and against in his many decades As a republican politician from arizona But mccain knew that he would not be the headline from the grand service whose many details he personally oversaw This was to be no mere laying to rest of a washington wise man Nor just another funeral of an elder statesman whose passing would be marked by flowery words about the end of an era It was a meeting of the resistance under vaulted ceilings and stained glass windows This was made clear a few minutes into the two and a half hour serve. Oh two and a half hour service Good lord

When mccain's daughter megan weeping at times called it a funeral for nothing less than the passing of american greatness That her father represented and not the cheap rhetoric that now passes for this. I'm sorry again Megan mccain and john mccain that you know, they're like they're rebuking trump The only thing they're rebuking trump for is being mean to them in public Yeah, they like they do not disagree with a single thing he's done in office And that is the thing that's most horrifying about this because that headline is 100 correct This was a reading of the resistance these people were all doing this self consciously to As you said create an image to the public that this is this is these are the the good political people

This is the established political system and then trump is outside of it. He's a complete renegade And they think people are going to see that and they're going to dislike trump and that just shows how Horrifyingly unequipped these people are for the fucking world that they live in and how doomed they are in their Pathetic attempts to ward off the worst of fascism because when a mere regular person sees that They see a room full of people who pass nafta went to war with iraq Fucking bailed out wall street on the backs of the middle class After the 2008 collapse of the economy All in one room and they're all explicitly telling them that trump isn't responsible for any of that

This isn't his he has no stake in the current system that you all hate You couldn't ask for a better advertisement for him to continue his fraudulent appeal as a Renegade as a as a radical as someone outside of the status quo that will fight for you as a regular person against the establishment Because the establishment is telling you that that's the case. Listen, they're so delusional. They think that they're they're liked They think that people think that they're the good guys even though trump is only president because no one liked them anymore Well, they also just fundamentally will never know the difference between nice and good The resistance is just the greatest world world the greatest word these people could ever use to describe themselves because

What are you resistant? What what act of resistance is it where you? Still sitting your couch for Five hours in a row watching a hulu original series called like family What resistance is it where you? You know try to make it make a fucking Meal prep service meal three nights a week Then you consider going to pf. Chang's where your life is exactly the same but you feel worse You feel worse because you have given yourself notifications for all your news services

Nothing in your life has actually changed But you just read the news and then you know, maybe you go to a rally that's themed like We're all going to show up in our underwear because the emperor has no clothes you do that once a year And this entire thing is about how it feels you it feels bad And I thought about a post I saw where it was like, oh, you know, I'm sort of sick of all the lefty hot takes I've seen about like we we don't remember how bad the bush administration was You know if the the country is on fire, I don't care who comes to put it out and it's interesting because It's not to these people that the country was

Just as on fire under bush It's that somehow This feels worse than that. It feels worse than that because with bush there was in their memory in their hazy memory There was more There were more norms There were more lines hard lines and people ran up against more invisible walls and they're not there anymore And that is the worst part to them that they get this is not a predictable season arc for them anymore And that resistance equals feeling better

Because that's what they felt watching that It's a funeral they felt better. So they thought this must be working. This must be helping It's the ultimate politicization of self-care. This is These people want entire elections and political dynasties just based on you know, if it makes them feel slightly better All right, I'm taking I'm taking a bubble bath. It's basically smuggling secrets through vichy france Imagine imagine telling imagine telling like somebody who like fought in israeli occupant. Oh, I'm also a resistor Like imagine that it's fucking incredible. Uh, sorry to the point about oh, uh, the house is on fire I don't care who comes to put it out

To carry that further like america's on fire and everyone at that funeral Rushed in to put it out, but they were literally just like using a fire hose that was blasting a high test fuel onto the house. Yeah, it's like it's like that epic Me gif of that of that had that happened the fire department was doing a test and they accidentally put fuel in the line And they sprayed it and it just exploded my country real good right now No, but I did to this other point about you know backs like george w push and michelle obama and their little candy moment And people who are like look, I understand the bush administration was an epic twat waffle buck show But you know, god damn it like, you know, if trump is is worse, you know

Not to give trump and his administration too much credit because I mean they are Gastly and in terms of I don't know mainstreaming open racism. I think that's what people are mostly responding to but I have to say He has not done anything yet That touches how fucking evil george bush and dick cheney was I saw another another tweet that was like someone was like Can you name one american politician that's as awful as uh, Donald trump is Easy dick cheney

Done It's not even close and like this is what they can't compute is that like trump is a deeply venal person He's a a dumb shithead who doesn't believe in anything and he only cares about himself And he has essentially has no functioning super ego and it's just like unmoored from Yeah, again all of these norms and or politeness or anything like that. He's a deeply gross awful man However kissinger the guy who spoke at his funeral dick cheney Unlike trump these guys take themselves extremely seriously

They take themselves extremely seriously and they live for another opportunity to kill millions And work their will over the world well trump would do trump. He I'm saying like if you gave him a sweat Like if it was presented to him that easy if there was a button that's like kill You know the combined number of bodies to say afghanistan and iraq Kill those and you can be president and have the apprentice on and you'll get the best rate He pushes the button. I don't for sure know that because I think he lacks the kind of world view that allows for that Scale of violent ambition like he's a petty bitch If he could just press the button he'd do it. He doesn't care. He's too lazy. He's too lazy to go through it

Although we'll see about that. I mean the aran thing is always. Yeah. Well if venezuela we're probably I mean that's another good We're we're also we're in this weird moment in history where we are We're sort of repeating parts of the 80s where we're reeling from two military embarrassments And we're now you notice this that uh the sort of hard neocons like rubio are pushing this line like Uh, it's a threat to national security drug trafficking. Yeah, which is amidst the opiate crisis is Fucking amazing. Yeah, that's fucking amazing to still trot out that fucking 80s line I mean, I guess it was we were still selling drugs to ourselves in that time too But this is even more explicit tweak is coming from inside the house more than ever

but but you know That is the we are speaking the language of a humiliated empire and I'm really not going to be shocked if we hit venezuela and I'm not going to be shocked if The trump administration racks again similar amounts of bodies. That's a function. That's a function of He doesn't have this neocon ideology. He'll just push the button because he likes to feel in charge Yeah, but he does keep losing interest Like we saw that like a little bit with syria like we saw like he he he doesn't have the follow through

He has no he like he has no motivation or follow through. He doesn't work Like where's like a guy like donald rumsfeld, you know He had a standing desk and he had an odometer that like clock 10 000 steps a day and he wrote like 100 memos a day being like You know, can we get a status update on iraq? How's it going? like yeah, like these guys who are psychotically like the organization men dedicated to Achieving their goals and ambitions. This is not to say that trump can't wreak havoc, but he does not have The ambition or dedication or really attention span for something of that. I don't know. I don't know

Okay, you have john bolton has spent his entire life like figuring out how to flatter people that that flatter and push people who are like above him and For a guy who's been like training in bureaucracies like pretty much. Yeah more than half his adult life at this point He has just a fucking A tomato can for what does he have to do to convince trump to go to war be nice to him? That's it. He doesn't have to go through any real tricks. He just has to be like however I think you'd be the best at war. Mr. However for a guy like john bolton being nice to another human being is a sycophian task

That's almost impossible. John bolton is so bloodthirsty. He can even turn off that fucking Psycho part of his brain. He can that's how he stayed around this long is he can smile to get what he wants But you probably also You know flew a little bit under the radar and I could see I could see trump Turning on him for saying he liked wendy spicy chicken sandwich more than mcdonald's chicken nuggets. That's my hope right about that That's my hope That that's my hope is that there's just like john right john bolton john bolton was like he said an unkind word about like john tash Trump is like he's been very nice to me. You don't know what you've said

the real Favor they're doing is that trump is beholden to the exact same awful corporate and interests that undergird every crime that was in that fucking chapel And he gets to be exculpated from it because everyone's convinced that everyone is fully on board with this strategy of trying to making my exotic which just Launders his responsibility for Maintaining all the fucking policies to keep people miserable so that people will be more likely to say, you know what it hasn't happened yet But it's because he hasn't had a chance to drain the swamp

So we got to give him four more years to drain the swamp Read a little bit more from the new yorker here Uh mccain's grand funeral the obama advisor david axelrod called it an exercise in civic communion Underscored a fact that is often lost about washington these days The city is much more bipartisan in some respects than it has ever been More united than it may currently seem in its hatred of donald trump again as matt like you said that is his reelection Yeah, that is everybody in washington hates me just clip that and put it on a bumper sticker for trump 2020 And don't be fucking surprised when he wins again. Yeah everyone in washington who you hate and think has betrayed you

And or doesn't care about you hates this man Communion everything bad that has happened in the last four years isn't his fault. It's their fault Communion what a great word to use Just you know, it always slips. This is this is not ideology. This is not wanting a better life for anyone This is just our religion is feeling better We are we are taking the sacrament. We made a little cracker in the shape of a plane and washed it down We washed it down with anhyzer bush the fortune that undergird this fucking shitty sanctimonious assholes fortune Here you go

In the name of the father the son and the grandfather who let me fly these fucking planes I am i am surprised at how deftly they've been able to kind of adapt Megan for pr purposes someone who Everyone hated and and she's only gonna win She's only gonna win after his death. Well because she's been She is the hurt his his legacy. She is the inheritor of his greatness and she has been cosigned by everyone in that fucking chapel One more quick thing. Obama during one thing. I hate her with my life. She does not leave the lizard alone

So another another highlight from this moment of civic communion was when uh Obama during his speech said I I never doubted that we were on the same team It's like wow. Yeah, why do we even have a show? I mean, there's nothing to decode in politics. They just tell you and I just I do love how this comes on the heel of us Getting home for our book. Why did you run against him? Like that's that's the thing like we were on the same team Then why did you why did you run against him? Like the why do we even have elections if you're all on the same team? Why don't you all just get together in a room decide who's going to be president without us? Yeah, and all this week we had our we were

Our book was called naive and facile for a claim suggesting that there's some common interests between the two political parties and then the last fucking democratic president says about the guy who he beat To become president while talking about how he was dangerous and he was in the mold of george w. Bush He couldn't allow his type of politics to reign supreme just to tell you Yeah, we were all the same team the whole time and of course they'll say oh, he means that the team of america He means that we both wanted what's best for america But that obviously can only extend so far down the economic line before it becomes incoherent Because some people benefit at the expense of others and that has been the bipartisan movement of the american politics for the past

30 years has been making sure that that group that benefits has been the very very smallest economic elite and the ones who are Directly harmed and impoverished are everyone else So that's when he says on the same team It can't mean anything other than that small economic elite because it's a fucking contest over resources and control And the people on the bottom have lost and lost and lost under both parties Just to round out this uh, new yorker piece A few minutes after the service when the talking and singing was over and the bipartisan establishment flowed back into the

Humid swamp outside the cathedral settled down. I read you have this I ran into jeff flake mckay's fellow senator from arizona And like mckayne one of trump's few remaining public critics among republicans on capitol. He retired by the way He's not running for re-election. He's not opposing any of trump's actual agenda Uh, the fever will break eventually flake said it has to it was an oddly optimistic thing to say at a funeral And when he said it it hardly sounded convincing. Oh, at least there's that But I imagined but I imagined that it was a prayer Voice silently by many of those in that room. What is this fucking bullshit? Are we watching the hallmark channel?

It's susan glazer touched by an angel Oh I thought back to the beginning of the service when the choir had sung the beautiful words of the navy hymn Oh, holy spirit who dids brood upon the chaos dark and rude and bid its angry tumult cease and give for wild confusion Peace oh hear us as we cry The for those in peril on the sea I have heard those words at many funerals before she was she's a funeral crasher She goes to to hook up with people and our desperate emotional state

Um, but never did they seem to speak to the room in quite the same way. Good fucking lord You know who else by the way said the exact same phrase the fever has to break about right wing populism Barack Obama right after the tea party election Uh, and then they just kind of waited and saw what happened and didn't change anything and then oh, no It didn't break and now they're like no, it'll break. It's like well. Yeah, like the fever breaks sometimes because it Is you know, it's defeated by the body's Uh resources and you get better or you just fucking die

That's another way that a fever can break and if you're just standing there as the supposed sort of You know a physician for the body politic and just saying well wait and see you got about a 5050 chance that that's gonna work We have about a well We have about 104 fever right now, but when it finally shuts down our brain and heart I think you'll find that our body's temperature will drop dramatically Well, just slap some more leeches on them every time I have a fever. I try to you know have a sit down with it Sort of try to meet in the middle and be like all right. What if you take out my gallbladder?

You can have that let's make a grand bargain to retain my central nervous system and you can have some of my organ Hey, you know, it's another uh indication that this fever is definitely gonna break soon You know, it's gonna it's gonna treat that fever Uh getting Brett Kavanaugh on the supreme court and giving opus day a chokehold on our fucking laws for the next I don't know 100 years Yeah, that'll break that fever when they you know, literally, uh, I don't know outlaw all contraception and uh labor unions Then again, Brett Kavanaugh was one of the top ranked carpool drivers in the nation Yeah, I love that. How many articles were there that were like?

Oh, uh, Brett Kavanaugh wants to make all women who go to a clinic play Russian roulette. Oh, yeah, well That's actually true but uh, he you know, he took me to Gilbert and Sullivan once well, it's yeah, it's it's weird like everybody who has access to write about a supreme court nomination in a national newspaper happens to know this asshole because it's this incredibly tiny incestuous group of of elites and they all have good things to say to each other So, yeah, the right to privacy will be officially abolished But your commute times are going to be unparalleled. You're going to get to work the fucking carpool rains are going to be humming Uh, yeah, I mean it basically has come out, you know

Kavanaugh is going to be confirmed barring something truly extraordinary And the other thing that people were like, you know counting on uh, what's her susan collins or whatever? That you know, she was gonna because you know, uh, she was gonna vote no to uphold Roe v. Wade Well, it turns out uh, Kavanaugh was on a list of judges that susan collins had essentially Pre-approved oops courtesy of the federalist society like a credit card for a college freshman. Yeah, exactly You're pre-approved Brett Kavanaugh. And you know, I I see people like uh, Chuck Schumer You know being like, oh, we have to fight this confirmation I would honestly if you're him just say like we lost this one

Like he's getting on the supreme court. I mean like what are they going to do? Well, that's the thing is that they play this game where they Center their own Importance and they they insist upon the need for their continued leadership within the party And control of the caucus and things like that by saying well, we have the experience and the ability Uh, and the know-how to play the game to do what needs to be done with parliamentary procedure to get the best outcomes But then when they get steamrolled by something like a judicial nomination when it really is just comes down to numbers And they can't marshal the numbers then all of a sudden it's be out of their hands

And they want to be both at once they want it They want to be these indispensable operators But then they also want to never get blamed when the system coughs out this kind of result and the thing is is that At the end of the day what matters is numbers and even more than that is what matters Is your willingness to ignore norms and do horseshit like that which they have been willing to do I mean you saw fucking abe clobacar rending her garments because the democrats during obama's term lifted the judicial filibuster And she now is like that's why they're doing this That's why they're ramming through all these judges now as if they needed the excuse to do that as if having the ability to

Do it wasn't all the license they needed the idea that they needed the democrats to make some sort of first move Before they could breach some imaginary line of decorum it's not true and and they're the only ones playing by those rules and Now they're stuck in a situation where they can't really affect the outcome But they have to keep giving people the impression that they have power over this system Instead of just being totally useless clogs who should cogs all of whom should be replaced by people who don't suck so badly Uh another quick note about the uh the new yorker where that um again touched by an angel Heart-rending television program was just aired

Touched by a russian anti-aircraft missile Uh Yeah, no, uh, it's the new yorker. I mean this this is their point of view to be noted that it just came out today that The new yorker just booked steve bannon to be their headline speaker at the new yorker festival this year Which is like they're reviving steve bannon He has not been relevant even one way since he got let go from the white house Well from breitbart after that because he went back to breitbart for a minute

And then they canned him because he was on record criticizing trump over the russia shit Which by the way is all it takes to make him now officially a resistance person too Because he said that the that the trump did do something wrong by talking to the russians about the dnc hack So that that's I mean that's all they really want at this point is people to acknowledge that norms are being violated They don't really care about the content of anyone's views. I mean jeff flake to talk about another one Was a fucking tea party guy in 2010 Or when he 2012 when he won he was he was one of that generation of many frothing maniacs who just came through the gates And uh, and now he's he's an elder statesman and moderate

You know champion the new yorker magazine has like is like putting the paddles on steve bannon's big Blubbery chest and then it's gonna open up into some gaping mall like the thing and take off both of their hands But um, oh man, I'd pay to see that, you know But like if you're if you're david remnick or whoever put together the new yorker festival And they're like oh we can get steve bannon. I can guarantee you what they're thinking like when they got criticism for like Why would you give this revolting shithead who's again in a relevant figure has nothing of any import to say or offer At all no longer hasn't even any popular base No power just just like a big bloated block remember when he

Floated running for president right after he got left for a guy for oh go from Breitbart And just it went nowhere And then he went to europe to try to whip up all the local Gert Wilders and blort vander racism and just mostly a shit Uh, yeah, he's it's just been a collection of political impotence ever since Um, no, but like if you're then you like I can guarantee you what these people are thinking when they get criticized or something like this What they're thinking is Uh-huh But what if he's on stage and we we expose to the world that he is in fact a racist than an anti-semite

Whoa, what if we get him to admit that on stage, you know the best disinfectant is sunlight And by you know giving him the headlining gig at the new yorker festival alongside Um, you know a dog on a therapist's couch and um a ros chast cartoon Uh, we are essentially if everyone knows that he is indeed a white nationalist then Would not want to be in his shoes or drumps for that matter And they're always just that they're really late to the game And they don't know like they're still operating on like a pre-internet news cycle or something and they don't know that he's over Well, they also think that I'll own him with logic

I'll I'll I'll debate him and reveal him to be Of a fraud or whatever which always overestimates these dorks abilities Rhetorically they get they get they get fucking destroyed by guys like bannon in any kind of adversarial Even though absolutely liberals cannot fight bannon Even though bannon is an absolute fucking moron. Oh totally every time he's interviewed. He's the little carmine Yeah, the far right every time he's interviewed. He's like well, you know It's uh, it's actually like emily dickinson said, uh, two in the bush is worth one great happy family It's like damn really fucking damn. My man loves books

Yeah, but he is mr. Sunsuit Machiavelli. He's found the contradictions uh within Uh within kind of like prominent liberal thought, you know, like the hawkishness and you know the whole like Identity over economics and he's exploited them and They literally don't know how to do that So instead of say maybe bringing a left winger on who knows how to talk about those things They're like, well, let's hear him out. Yeah

Well in the new yorker world the only two Political options are like, you know, whatever republican is in power and you know fucking one of the johns That's it. One of the liberals named john with no h John 81 82. Yeah John 420. All right, uh moving on I have a another op-ed piece this is going in a different direction, but we're uh checking in on an old friend of the show

Donna brazil you guys remember when we are one of our favorite friends one of our favorite friends Remember when we read her book with david roth? That was one of my my favorite episodes of recent vintage Uh, she has a A beautiful mind and a way with words and uh, she's putting it on display right now for usa today In an opinion piece titled Democrats stripped my super delegate powers. No democrats stripped my super delegate super powers super powers It's so settled out

She's so awesome. She's so awesome because like the argument the super delegate thing like the dnc line was like Oh, actually, no, this is very normal. It's just like a way for uh seniority and blah blah It's actually it's like the same as a regular vote. Actually, it's less, but she's like I was mortal They took it from me Like she rocks. I love her. She goes now. I'm a notch above a coin toss and then like the subhead is this Holy rusted metal the democrats strip powers from super delegates. I earned my place at this table There's a reason we're called the party faithful I love I earned my place by being the most incompetent single human being in the history of the dnc

She's also her place is very much based on this consolidation of power at the top Like she's like, how dare they I'm supposed to have like a completely unbalanced degree of power in an undemocratic way I help I help make sure that we lost the easiest election layup in history You do gotta give it to her though because it's like the The the thing that annoys me is that fucking smarmy democrat line where it's like, yeah I may have a disproportionate vote share, but i'm representing millions that are never heard from I am their voice I'm I represent everyone. I'm I'm humble servant of the people and donald brazil's like what the fuck I had seat check

What I was here like it just at least she's just putting it out on the table. I appreciate that a lot Yeah, and to be dr. Manhattan of the democrats. She's she's fun Yeah, to be and to be fair to dana. I don't think it's fair to say. I don't think dana is as incompetent as debbie washing machine She'll absolutely According to herself Justifying memoir no Well, I believe everything in herself justifying more though 100 by it. Yeah, so she goes here She continues with this like adam west batman style of writing

Curses super delegate is vanquished and then what what is holy rusted metal referred to? Oh, you don't remember that line that's from batman batman repeat batman forever when It's it's a it's a cheap It's a very awkward attempt to do a throwback reference to the seven sixties tv show Where they used to say like holy whatever batman there's a scene where they're towards the end and they're going into I think the riddlers Den and they see some rust and they're on the thing and it's raining and

Uh, Robin Robin says Robin says Holy must rusted metal batman batman goes what and you think oh, it's like holy whatever, but it goes There's uh, there's holes in the in the metal here Which is awful pun holy rusted metal batman Uh, it's all metal it's full of holes, you know, holy oh, yeah, no, it's not from the original batman and robin so we've a step forever. God damn it It's the third one. Why can't they just be one two three fuck We've established Donna brazil is a fan of the Joel Schumacher batman films. I like those nipples on the suit. I don't care

Curses super delegate is vanquished I've had my wings clipped my cape ripped and my superpower stripped my irresistible kung fu grip on the democratic party is being Pride loosed by well-meaning citizens who may yet endanger the very fountainhead of their freedom. Oh boy This is like weirdly. I mean the word fountainhead aside, but like this is like a weirdly kind of Fascistic language in terms of like look. I am the only thing that is keeping, you know My kung fu grip on on the party is the only thing that that keeps you safe I of course have not read this, but I'm assuming she's Using irony. She's saying actually the more that I hear of this the more I'm assuming it's going to be like

Oh, I actually, you know, it wasn't that powerful, but just like come on. I like my snacks I think that may be where it's going. She says here You see since time immemorial we super delegates have stood as the guardians and protectors of the secret machinations of the democratic party Yeah, there you go. Keeping it safe from outsiders and agitators We were ever watchful always ready to spring into action should unorthodoxy rear its ugly head But now a simple democratic national committee vote has effectively left us neutered stripped of our awesome powers Left helpless and weak like superman zonked by the kryptonite Batman without his utility belt or a hammerless Thor. She's she's loving these comic book references

Donna check out preacher awesome comic book Okay, I don't actually read a lot of comic books. I've been more than me. I've been too busy a gamer girl I've been too busy running the democratic party by executive fiat along with other bullet bureau insiders I mean super delegates. At least that's the way it's been explained to us Last weekend the dnc voted to essentially disenfranchise the super delegates the elected officials Activists and leaders who go to the democratic convention as unpledged delegates free to support whomever their conscious demands Many strident voices blame super delegates for the fact that bernie sanders didn't win the 2016 presidential nomination Even though hillary clinton won a clear majority of the elected delegates

In fact neither their introduction in 1984 have super delegates overturned the choice of elected delegates We're not there. I know you had a bad day at work, but jesus christ She's just bitching about office politics. We're not there to circumvent the will of the voters. We're simply there to vote Well, not anymore. We're not according to the new rules We super delegates won't be able to vote on the first ballot at the convention or on any ballot unless there's a tie some Or some other deadlock in the process So we super delegates are what now merely the mechanism you default to in case of a tie great I fought for the democratic party my entire life and now i'm one notch above a coin toss

so well, well, I mean this is You know, I hardly give the fuck about this. I think the super delegate fight talk about rearranging deck chairs, but You know, it is one of those things like when pares ran against ellison in the line was like, well, they're that they believe the same things Okay, well, why the fuck did you run that guy? Okay, so if the super delegates make no difference, why do they exist? And why is it so horrible that she's having this power stripped if it's not meaningful if it's never gonna come into use Yeah, if it doesn't determine the outside and of course, you know, this is obvious But the whole point of the real point of the silver super delegates is not necessarily to sway the outcome at the end

but to influence the outcome along the way by By padding the fucking delegate total of one of the candidates, which is what happened during The clinton sanders thing every time they showed delegate counts even though they were relatively close in terms of Pledge delegates who were won in primaries and caucuses Hillary had this giant hundreds and hundreds of delegate lead because they counted all of the super delegates who had pledged to vote for her so that's where the influence comes in but Also, there is no influence, but it's also an outrage that I don't have power anymore. That isn't actually I mean She's using I only want this small little thing, but I'm furious that it's gone

And she's using like the the superhero language. Yes, ironically to be like, oh, you think I you think I'm like Thor or Batman Or, uh, you know, one of your caped crusaders. Well, no, I'm really not I'm just I just work for the party and want what's best for everyone even though I don't really have that much power But like you said, I'm really mad now that I don't have it anymore I realized that many people have felt left out Part of the reason is that they have not participated worked and fought to the same degree as many other people A political party isn't some sort of event planner. It's there to make sure you have a fun time installing the candidate of your choice It's an organization made up of flesh and blood people who have spilled endless blood sweat and tears

I like that sense build blood. It's made it's made up of flesh and blood people who have spilled Tons of their own flesh and blood They're just leaky sacks It's it's they're not superheroes. They're blood bags They're blood bags hooked up to the party doing they're all they got all positive universal donor just being hooked up And just bleeding their veins into the corpse of the democratic party These people have literally devoted their lives to creating this organization to fulfill their dreams To fulfill their dreams of the kind of country we're going to be there is a reason they're called the party faithful

Yeah, because they believe in something they can't see and don't really know is real or not Um, and one of my tweets this week, I used Louisiana governor John Bell Edwards as an example He has devoted his life to public service both in uniform and in office as governor since 2016 He expanded Medicaid to give healthcare to thousands of louisianans. He hasn't he wasn't given a seat at the table He earned it And the super deli super delegates aren't the infamous smoke filled room full of old white men deciding the fate of everybody else But let me tell you something It was once close to being that I know because I helped change it

As I said earlier this week, I've been those people outside shouting at the gate I was with jesse jackson in 1984 an outsider a troublemaker and believer in the rainbow coalition We complained and we fought and we worked like hell for years to get on the dnc I like that. She thinks the rainbow coalition was like the weather underground I do want to say though as the son of a prominent uh jackson 88 supporter And I think angela davis in 92 and 96. I'm trying to remember how my dad voted but uh Jesse jackson wins in 88

We're a far better country our show doesn't need to exist. I could have just joined my true call of pro gaming God knows how it would be He would have been he was the best one out of that pile 100 fucking percent. It was a pile though Yeah Now that poc women and lgbtq leaders have a significant say in the nomination process Suddenly the rules need to be changed. I thought they didn't have a say in the rush Well, no, she's saying that she's saying it used to be like that

But I fought to make the super delegate process more diverse. Yeah, but she's saying it still it has an influence on the She's saying if now that they have she's saying the people who got into the dnc They're more diverse, but now that they have a big say she just said earlier that it doesn't matter And now she's saying they have a powerful. What was what's the quote now that they have a significant significant say So what is it? Is it meaningless? Is it not determinative or is it a significant say? It's sort of a liminal state I mean to be honest like none of this is going to change anything anyway There's just it's just going to be a less formalized kind of whatever whip procedure that happens behind behind closed. Oh, yeah

It's not totally Suddenly the rules need to be changed effectively eliminating their participation funny how that happens Lucy moves the football again. My dear friend and co-author Lea Dottree tweeted. She has not read anything for anyone over the age of 18 All of the people lumped together as super delegates have made the dnc an organization that everyone can be proud of I invite people to become more involved with it not to try to make others less involved No, like isn't the whole thing about the Superdome thing is that people want to be more involved So they have to take away the power of these weird unelected super Democrats. Yeah, like have some no But that's things she's inside of it. So she can only think in those terms

She can only think of who's in the dnc and how it's it's diverse not the idea that there are people outside of the actual literal party who want an influence in the way that they're Part their candidate the candidates are chosen in the party that they support. It's weird though because the democratic party It's not an old it's not a real party in the traditional sense. So there's this weird Inside-outside thing and she's clearly focused entirely on this incredibly small group of people on the inside of it I mean the idea that the diversity there is more important than the diversity of the people actually Voting in these primaries none of whom are in the democratic party is absurd to some degree There has this has been a perception problem

People seem to think that we seem to think that we super delegates really did have some sort of superpowers Maybe it was the super part of super delegates They began to fear and distrust us We've wound up being outcast and despised like those with superpowers in the x-men universe Yes, Bernie Sanders is building giant sentinels with laser eyes to hunt down and destroy all the super delicacies I believe the better comparison would be Muir Island. I would love to see the sequel to Logan Donna Just oh man He says we've become outcast and despised like those with superpowers in the x-men universe

I think like I said, I don't actually read a lot of comics. Yes, you do You She's like, you know, some may think that we're actually like the hellfire club or maybe the cybernetic assassins omega red Well, you know, I don't read a lot of comics. Well, you know a lot of Jim Lee's run on x-men was uh Well, you know a lot of these a lot of these party outcasts They think they're the good guys because they're so morally pure But if you actually know the story, they're sort of like war shock. They're actually you get to meet them They're a psycho like I said, I don't really like comics at all. I never have ever read one

It's this is such good like even when she's just in usa today article form Even when she's just in usa today article form. She's still like pure dana because this is all comic book references She's like, yeah, I've literally never read one ever. I don't know what the fuck they are We'll have like a great deal of affection for this person. We don't really charge of anything, but let's think of it this way Okay, wouldn't you like to hear six thousand words about what donna brazil thinks of rob lifefield? Yeah, oh my What's around those pouches? Oh, dude, let donna write a spawn reboot. Yeah

Yeah, and like oh no like Todd McFarland did on the HBO show every every episode begins with like her in a darklet room Turning around being like, how would you feel if you're the party you loved and worked for? Went to fucking hell Went to fucking hell and was made an assassin for satan himself What if the party you loved came back to earth and found that its wife had moved on? How would you feel? What would you do? She's man? I like Out of all like like so many shitty democrats just soulless people just fucking nothing just dead glass eyes

Just pure transaction their whole fucking lives. Everything they do is just a climber activity They don't enjoy anything and then you just have donna who's so wonderfully weird and like has like this actual Clearly under the impression. They were all in it together. Yeah, it's just heart breaking. It's fucking heart breaking But donna rocks and I don't know fucking earnestly. I love donna She closes it out by saying well I can still go to the convention as a super delegate and do everything in my power to help democrats win elections I earned my place at this table. Hell. I helped build the table. So when you're sitting at it without me Please use coasters. I don't want any stains on it

You rule you fucking rule. I love you to go from a extended comic book superhero metaphor to one about home decor at the end And that's an amazing. That's like a alpha move rhetorically. What do the coasters represent? Comedy, I don't know. Not being nice. What's the uh, I Know what kind of varnish is on the coffee table? I don't know like the ringed coffee stains on the table She built that that represents the violator played by john I'm sorry producer Chris is just handing me this bit of breaking news. I was gonna say that He's actually edited in some of that x-men music. Okay coming up soon

September 21st a free admission event in uh, where is this the in florida? So if you're in florida n nf7 not safe for work corporations state college foundation Uh Palin and brazil bridging the political divide sarah palin and donna brazil The g.o.p.'s first female vice presidential candidate sarah palin and the first african-american to head a presidential campaign donna brazil Our political trailblazers known for speaking their minds in this powerful con in these in this powerful conversation Two of the most respected women in american politics Whoa, whoa, whoa

But I also like though this conversation will be insanely powerful Is like they are they're gonna have this i'm putting on cerebro right now And i'm feeling the vibrations coming off this conversation. It's not even gonna be a debate though It's just gonna be this bizarre Like it's gonna start out like maybe 10 minutes political then it's gonna be like by Hour or two it's just gonna be like here's what it really means to be someone's on like Fucking weird donna's gonna crack open a canned rosé and like it's just these are these are

They're very much a different of different variation on the same kind of loon. Yeah. Yeah Like they were the right person for their time and they don't understand They're not very cynical So they don't understand that they are There for optical purposes It's gonna rule sarah palin is gonna end up yelling about some guy who promised to buy todd's truck and then backed out of it At the last minute a sarah palin is gonna be talking She's just gonna recapitulate the plot of sisterhood of a traveling pants

Which she watched the night before in the hotel room It's gonna rip. There's gonna be a giant box of wine in the middle of the table Yeah, oh my god. Yeah, the I hope all the palins are in the audience It's just getting into fights have another fight over some snowmobile bullshit. That's it. Oh, I love that family We already talked about them, but it's like that is I would I would max out my contribution to a sarah palin super pack just because I want I want like facebook bullshit to be the animating The next political meta

Is at least I raise my kids because you know, they're gonna be able the bridging that divide means they're both gonna come out Hard against fake friends They will both agree about you know, those people they're behind they'd smile to your face You turn your back and then they just put the knife right in there and Donna's like, oh, I know all about that sarah palin reminds me of She's like all the women who watched sons of anarchy and are like gem is fucking badass That's her I think the political divide is going to be bridged when they uh both

Come together over their shared love of Alan Moore's run on swamp thing. I don't read comics by the way By the way, this is not a one-off. This is part of some sort of kakame me tour Because I was looking for the article to just bring it up and I the first hit was something that happened I guess like four or five months ago at the university of houston So they're fucking touring with this shit, which means people are coming out I mean we would enjoy it, but if you're a regular person trying to understand the political moment and you went to this

What the fuck could you possibly take away from it? Like I don't know they came on stage and they started uh drinking really quickly And then they were hollering about headphones. I didn't really understand it I mean if this is comes anywhere on the northeast, we're going like I hope you know that we're going But it it does. I mean, I think we're back to this. There's some question as to whether or not We have gone past like, you know, the stage of capitalist realism where there is like, you know, no future or whatever But no, we're definitely stuck in a loop Like steve bannon is back sarah paleon is back people are like nostalgic for like the bushes

Like there's no sense of a future people can't envision anything past this moment So much so that a few of them have gone literally backwards Like sarah paleon is irrelevant steve bannon are irrelevant And they're trying to do like walk-ons from people who left the show like fucking two seasons ago You'll need to uh get out of this loop Walk through the walls like a kitty pride shadow cat. All right, so That about does it for this week? Uh

Big news though We are leaving new york tomorrow I'm never coming back as you listen to this show. We will probably be on the road to our nation's capital Tickets still available at club 9 30th on wednesday night in dc and then thursday night in baltimore If you were in dc in baltimore, please come out to see us. We would love to Uh entertain you andrew i'm bringing my keyboard and mouse Uh from my desktop setup with me So I want to make trouble like readjusting the keybinds

Uh, sorry about my pitch sort of had a broader appeal than the plug you're doing. You fuck off. I'm trying to talk to my friends No, seriously dc in baltimore this week, uh, go to chopper traphouse.com tickets still available and then uh the week after that Philly and a whole bunch of other places whole bunch of other portland main boston broad island And canton canada kit and then brooklyn new york back at home, baby. I am so excited for the new england part of the tour I mean, it's it's it's clamp chowder weather weather right now I think we've all agreed we need to go to at least one scowling fisherman's village Oh, man, I would love for a guy on a cable net sweater to curse me

Uh, I just you know when it gets this hot, you know northeasterners, you know You guys know the sweltering sun the marionette and garbage You just want a big chunky chowder and a bread bowl like Right now We're gonna do shots of chowdy out of bread cups And we're just gonna actually just eat it. That's how you do the show I can't wait to read a book that drives me insane when we're in maine You can't get that from yeah

Stay away from that road. It is going to be a good time These shows are going to be wonderful. Please if you are a new englander, you know Wrestle yourself from the ancient curse From the town that you cannot leave, you know roll your fish body out of bed Tell us about how you long for the sea. I love those stars. I love it when you guys talk about that I'll even read your scroll. I'll curse my family for eternity. It's fine. It's fine. Yeah, I may marry a lighthouse keeper We're all married But the same one we're all gonna marry the same light. I would love to live in a lighthouse

Yeah, you know a lot of people think the lighthouse keeper is ugly with me and my cousin We fucked one. She looked exactly like fuck the kid up then awesome Till next time till We see you in dc in baltimore Bye You