Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 804: RFK vs. Health

Episode Date: November 18, 2024

   

Get ready for Las Vegas style action at Bet MGM, the king of online casinos! Enjoy casino games at your fingertips with the same Vegas strip excitement MGM is famous for when you play classics like MGM Grand Millions or popular games like Blackjack, Baccarat, and Roulette. With our ever-growing library of digital slot games, a large selection of online table games, and signature BetMGM service. There's no better way to bring the excitement and ambience of Las Vegas home to you than with BetMGM Casino. Download the BetMGM Casino app today!

BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. BetMGM.com for Ts and Cs. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you please contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge bet MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming

Ontario. This episode of cognitive dissonance is brought to you by our patrons you fucking rock. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. Recording live from Glory Hole Studios in Chicago and beyond, this is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way, we bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big or makes us mad. It's skeptical. It's political.

And there is no welcome at. Today is Thursday, November the 14th and Cecil yeah, there's a lot of appointment going on A lot. It's an appointment heavy. I I don't know. Do you listen to the daily? I do. Yeah The daily that I was listening to this morning as they were recording the day like oh, there's another one. Yeah It was really kind of funny. This is like in real time, like, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah,

ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, just not interested in the news anymore, so bleak, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And we here at Cognitive Dissonance genuinely fucking agree. Over the last four years, when Trump was in the news,

we would cover him because he was at this point, someone who was either running for the presidency or he was someone who was in trouble, right? There was many, oftentimes we would cover his trials, things that he would, there was a whole long farm article where we read his bullshit, the 2020 election was stolen from me, here's the proof. So we've covered quite a bit

of what Trump has done in the past. In before, when Trump was president, we covered a lot of what Trump was doing. Tom and I, we talked before the show and we've talked for the last couple of weeks. What we don't want to do is continue on that path to talk about every little thing that Trump says. Every little thing that Trump says, Trump often doesn't follow through or he'll say something horrible and it doesn't really mean anything except for that he's horrible. We know he's horrible. We don't need to continue on telling people how horrible he is.

If Trump is going to do something or put something in place that makes us think, hey, we should probably mention that, we almost certainly will. But we want to try to do three things. We want to roll back to more of our atheist roots, more of our skeptical roots, and more of our funny roots. We want to try to kid around more and have more fun. And we also wanna ask the audience too

to send us uplifting stories because we wanna try to create a segment from now on about uplifting shit that's happening in the world. What's happening with Trump, there's so much anxiety in the world because we're not sure what's gonna happen. We don't know what he's gonna do. We see some of these appointments materializing,

but they don't necessarily mean that something bad is gonna happen. We just know something happened. Tom and I are gonna continue to talk and bring you all the times when something we think in the horizon is something that we genuinely need to talk about. And we probably will talk about Trump

probably every episode, but we're gonna try to limit it as much as possible because we recognize there's just an overload of this information in the world. Yeah, it's exhausting. I don't know about you, but after the election, I couldn't bring myself to listen to my usual morning news podcast.

I just couldn't do it. I couldn't bring myself to look at the newspaper. Like I normally would read, I keep saying newspaper, but like digital newspaper. I usually read the newspaper, read the news every morning, couple of two, three sources every morning. I had a hard time with it.

And I recognize that like that hard time is not going away for everybody. And I get that. And to a certain degree, it's not going away for me either. I don't wanna be a bleak person. And we did have a talk about this. I feel like over the last few years,

as the news has gotten more serious and more difficult, from COVID and January 6th and just the fucking, I feel like I've lost some of the joy that I used to bring to this show. And I wanna bring that back. I wanna find that again and enjoy the laughter again. Yeah. So that we, cognitive distance will always be here for you.

We will always talk about stuff that means stuff. We were not going to get rid of analysis. I'm not going to not talk about that stuff, but I think we're going to limit it a little bit. Absolutely. Yeah. We want to be a place where people can come have a good time. Yeah. And I really want people to have a, there's going to be plenty of places where you can doom scroll the news.

Yeah. I don't want to be one of those places where you're doom scrolling the news. I want to be one of those places that might make you crack a smile while you're listening to the news. That's right. Yep. I call upon you not as a president, but as a father! Aaaaaah! Cut, cut it! Would you show a little emotion? People, people, please, just because it's a dramatic scene doesn't mean you can't do a little comedy in the background. Throw a pie or two for God's sake. So this first story comes from the Atlantic,

Trump voters got what they wanted. Trump's appeal in this election lay less in policies and more in his ability to fuel grievances and resentment, capturing a coalition that wanted his brand of populist rage. Despite debates over alternative Democratic candidates, this outcome underscores that many Americans prioritized emotional appeals over factual policy discussions. Gravitating to Trump's combative rhetoric. Now tasked with governance, Trump faces a greater expectation to deliver on his promises

likely to reveal the realities and consequences of his leadership for his supporters and critics alike. You liked this article quite a bit, you said. I did, as I was reading it, I was texting Cecil and I was telling him, I'm like, I think this is a really important article. I think this article hit the nail on the head a lot. And I think the key for me is recognizing that what mattered to the voters was the ability that the Trump campaign had to reach in and emotionally appeal to them. To not try to persuade with facts.

Like if we were persuading with facts, this would have been a done deal before 2015, right? Like Trump, Trump on the facts never would have been a candidate, not even an alternative candidate with alternative facts. No way he could win. Right. No way he could win. But I think what we need to do a better job and be a little more introspective, a little more honest about ourselves and say, Hey, this is actually how people make choices.

Choices are made in our hearts, choices are made in our guts, choices are not made in our brains. That is like, we justify after the decision has been made. I'll tell you something I catch myself doing. And I catch myself doing it, Cecil, even though I know it's fucking stupid, and I know it and I'll laugh at myself and I'll myself doing it, Cecil, even though I know it's fucking stupid and I know it and I'll laugh at myself and I'll still do it. I can tell you two funny things. I bought a car. So I bought

a car not that long ago. I had to replace the car and I knew which one I wanted. I'd read a bunch of stuff. I bought the car and for about a week after I'll still sometimes read a review of that car. I own the car! My chance to make the decision is over. But I'm like, I'm reinforcing that choice. I want to justify my purchase. Right. And I've done that with other expensive items. So like I splurged and got myself something the other day and I read a review of it after

I pressed buy. I already knew what I wanted. I knew I wanted it. You already ordered it. That's kind of something that I think buy, I already knew what I wanted. I knew I wanted it. And you already ordered it. That's kind of something that I think is not terribly uncommon. I think a lot of us feel something first and then we justify it intellectually

when we get around to it later in the end, again, often. So I think this article really importantly recognized that. I think the emotional appeal, the best part about this article in my opinion, I don't know that I agree with it a hundred percent, but I do think that that piece is probably the most important piece I pull from it too. And I think the emotional appeal doesn't necessarily mean one thing. What's happening now is there's a million people out there all trying to tell you why

Kamala lost and they only have one answer. And they keep saying she lost because of, let's just say woke policies is one of the things I'm hearing. She lost because of the war in Gaza. She lost because of, uh, you know, the, she wasn't, she wasn't appealing to, you know, uh, the Latino demographic or whatever it is. There's all these people who are saying she lost because of, and then they have a reason. There are a multitude of reasons that she lost. There can be more than one reason. We keep on having this thing where we're lazy.

We want to find the silver bullet. We want to find that one thing that is the reason why, and then we can fix it. It's not that easy. Fixing it means you're gonna have to emotionally appeal to people when it comes to Gaza. You're gonna have to emotionally appeal to people when it comes to these policies that,

the DEI policies, et cetera, all the what we call quote unquote woke policies. You're gonna have to emotionally appeal to people when it comes to that stuff. When it comes to anything that we're the economy, you're gonna have to emotionally appeal to people when it comes to the economy. And I think that that might be the key is make your comments quick, make them easy, don't answer questions, and emotionally appeal. And I think you could change it, you could change how things turn out. I totally agree with that.

I would also add that I think asking the question, I see this all the time and maybe it's because I read, probably like you, I read a lot more liberal news. But the question of why Kamala lost, in my view, is exactly the wrong question. That's a bad question. That sort of assumes that it was Kamala's to lose. The real question is why did Trump win?

I think when we frame the question of why Kamala lost, we're assuming what you're describing, right? Which is that it was hers to win, it was hers to lose. But like Trump won, it was not close. Yeah, it wasn't close. He fucking decimated this. He also won back in 2016. We need to look and see why did Trump win? What is the appeal of this guy?

And I think the thing is that like you have to acknowledge, and I don't know what we do with it, that like not all emotions are the same, convey the same power. Fear conveys a lot more power than most other emotions. Fear motivates. Right? We have a negativity bias and that negativity bias. If I read one bad review of the show

and I read 25 good reviews of the show, I read a bad review of the show today. The negativity bias, the fear bias, these emotions are stronger. So it's really tough to have a message of joy trying to fight a message of fear. As a human being, I'm programmed to want to avoid fear more than I am to gravitate toward joy.

We have to recognize the psychology of that. Yeah, I think so. I also think too that a lot of people, they have a hard time presuming that other people aren't as plugged in as they are. So the people who listen to this show, they are very plugged into the news. They know a lot of things that are happening in the world.

They understand a lot of things that are happening in the world. I think often what we'll do, and I saw this a lot after the election, is they'll say, they chose the party of misogyny and racism. When they might, some of those people who voted for Trump

may have never ever heard or encountered any of those things that we've encountered for the last several years and that we heard Trump say and that we heard his party say and the things that they promised to in Wisconsin policy and how racist and misogynist those things were, we heard them and we listened and we were like, holy shit, this is terrible.

But that might not have reached everybody's ears. I want to point out something that occurred to me the other day is that in the 90s, you know, all the way growing up, I would say probably until about 2000 on every television in America from five to six 30 was the news. Every television in America had the news on. There was, you were constantly inundated with news every single day. Then there wasn't a, I mean, you could get around it. Maybe you could watch the U and you could watch Simpsons while the news were on. But

for the most part, most of the channels, you didn't get a lot of channels and those channels were almost always news at a certain time. So you had to encounter news in your day in some way. If I wanted to right now, let's say I was a, a, a New York Jets fan and I wanted to listen to 12 New York Jets podcasts every single day and then come home and watch New York Jets YouTube videos and then watch the New York Jets on the weekend. And then we'll listen to all those podcasts again next week. I could never encounter a single scrap of news for the entire season that the Jets are on, and then the entire off season,

because those podcasts don't stop, because the season's over. Now, you know, or maybe I like two sports, then there's stuff to fill my day. And it doesn't, I'm just using sports as whatever, but it can be literally anything. It can be Game of Thrones. It could be the newest drama on Netflix.

It could be anything that you're into suddenly can pull your attention away from the news of the day. And we're not, we don't have a thing around us anymore that just puts that in our life. You have to seek that information out. So the people, especially those people in our audience and people who I see on my Facebook feed and people who are plugged in on Reddit, they're all saying the same thing, which is

I can't believe the other side chose Donald Trump after all the things I know about him. Right, right, right, right. Yeah. But it might not be what they know about him. Yeah. And I think we need to understand that we're a culture now of very low information people who don't have the news piped to them every day. Well, and something else that occurs to me in the same vein is that, you know, there

was a world not that long ago, which you're describing, which we all shared a similar set of cultural experiences. And as a result, we had a shared reality. Our days, like if I watch the news and you watch the news and your neighbor watches the news, we're all watching the same news. Now, no one's watching the same news. Your feed is different than my feed,

which is different than your feed. My whole life is algorithmically adjusted to be personal. My choices are very bespoke, right? Like I choose how to spend these hours of my day and I get this amount of money. It wasn't always like that. We used to have a broader shared reality. I think we also have to understand now

that without that broader shared reality that comes from sharing media, right? And like, remember the radio? Everybody listened to the radio. So everybody, like all your friends were listening to the same songs. Now everybody's listening to something different because you can pick exactly what you like.

The same is true of the news. It's all bespoke. It's all perfectly tailored. We're not sharing the same experience anymore. I don't know how we take that truth and move that into motivating voters and educating voters, but we have to recognize that we are not sharing the same reality anymore. And I think one of the things that I would suggest is be a little more kind to other

people if they said that they did this and don't presume that that's how they did it or that's why they did it. Yeah. You know, I think that bringing my shared reality to them would be like, did you see the things he said? And if they say, well, I don't believe him or I didn't know him, be like, well, let me reiterate the things he said so that we can then evaluate them together. That might be a different way in which we can then contend with reality together in some way. We can call it up, we can watch it together. We can now share a moment together.

I think a lot of times we're so eager to wash our hands and say, fuck you, man, I'm fucking mad. And don't get me wrong, I'm fucking mad, bro. But I think like, there's gotta be something that we, there's gotta be something there because I cannot, I just don't see and I don't feel like I live in a world where there is 74 million misogynists. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

And I hope so much that you're right. And I think that you're right. I think that a huge number of people are misogynists. And I think a huge- I don't disagree. Yeah, I don't disagree. I know. Or internalize misogynists. They don't even know they are.

100%, yeah. 100%. I don't disagree. And I think that a huge number of people are just not following what's going on. And to your point last week, they're voting for something to be different because they feel like the system doesn't work.

And they just want a different thing now. That's what Bernie Sanders said. So here's what Bernie had to say. Bernie, this is sort of dovetailing off the last story. Bernie Sanders essentially came out and he said, it should come as no great surprise that the Democratic Party which has abandoned the working-class people Would find that the working-class people have abandoned them and he goes on to say like they've sort of lost the thread of economic Equality yeah, some way yeah, and they and I don't think he's wrong I don't think I don't think that's a hundred percent the reason but I don't think he's wrong. I don't think he's, I don't think that's a hundred percent the reason, but I don't think he's wrong in the sense that the Democratic Party didn't spend a lot of time talking about the economy and they should have.

Yeah. They, you know, I feel like he's not wrong, but I feel like his language is too aggressive. I feel like the Democratic Party has done some real intangible things for the working class recently, but it's clearly not enough. And the thing is like, people are gonna vote for just different. This makes something be different. This thing didn't work.

Makes something different. It is bizarro world to people like you and I, just to share the same, that a couple of billionaires are, people are working classes lining up behind billionaires as if there's, they're gonna be working class heroes. And we know for certain that from a policy perspective they will not be.

We know it because they've said it, none of their plans are and they've already been in power. So like, that's not, this is not gonna happen. So, but I think with respect to people that are experiencing the horrible wage inequality that defines the American, you know, social class and economic classes here. Like, we've gotta fix that shit. We gotta come up with solutions and say,

hey, it's us. We're here. We see what you're afraid of. And I think we have to do the work, you know, I was just saying before, and I'm having a realization now, like I was saying before, like, God, it sucks because we don't share a reality.

Like my reality, Cecil, is more different day to day than yours than it was 15 years ago. Sure. 15 years ago, we had many more, just as very close friends still, we had many more points of intersection because we all shared, like I said, we all shared that same media.

We were all seeing the same TV shows, the same movies, we were listening to the same radio. That stuff matters. But what I think we can do is we can try to share our reality with others. We can try to bring people in. We can try to create bigger bubbles. You know, widen out your circle, create a bigger bubble, share your reality, draw people in, we can try to create bigger bubbles, you know, widen out your circle, create a bigger

bubble, share your reality, draw people in, you know, and I'm not talking about fucking Trump supporters like the fucking people who are died in the wool, hardcore Trump supporters. I don't think I have anything in common with them and I don't think I share a common reality with them. No, perfectly frank. So and and there are millions of those people. Don't, and, and there are millions of those people. Don't get me wrong. There are millions of those people. I don't think there's 74 million of those people, but I think there's a large amount of millions, dozens of millions of those people

exist. And I don't have anything in common with them. And I don't, and in my life, I don't really want to interact with those people. I don't think that there's anything to be gained. I can't really, I don't think I'll ever convince them of my reality, so why bother? But I don't think that everybody, everybody is that person. And I think we're trying to, a lot of people are trying to say everyone is that Trump supporter. Yeah, and I don't think that I agree with you. One, we know that that's not true. I mean, it just, just think we, like there are the MAGA nuts, those people I agree they're lost.

Those are the loss. But it's like everybody is not one of the loss. And I think too, that if we can share our reality in ways that aren't even political, we can get people to understand our viewpoint, our direct, the directionality, the lens that we use to see the world. And then if you've got a shared lens, we can then say, all right, now

let's look at this other thing. Because you've built trust. Yeah. There's, there's a way to look at the rest of the world and open it up. Yeah. I want to, I want to bring in one more story here. And this is the people were trying to change their votes in red states. They looked to see if they could change their vote.

They looked up online. There was Google searches for this. Now it's hard to know. Like, cause Google doesn't release there was Google searches for this. Now, it's hard to know, like because Google doesn't release how many people search for this, you could just see that there's a spike, a trend line, there's a trend line in certain things like what's a tariff? You know, how do I change my vote, those types of things. And it appears that because of these spikes, and again, we don't know the numbers, so I can't tell you that it's a great deal of people, but we know that some people

clearly regretted their vote, right? And I think this bolsters the point in some way that there's people who were low information voters, they didn't know what a tariff was, they didn't know a lot about what Trump was gonna do, and then they came to the polls, and I mean, you can even see that in some of the people who voted for abortion access,

and then they voted red afterwards. Those people came to the polls, they probably did not have that same narrative about how much Trump has damaged women's freedom in this country. They probably didn't have, I'm not, and some of them, didn't have, I'm not, some of them, so I'm not saying, I'm not saying all of them, but I'm saying there's gotta be some that came there

because we see that trend line that they voted for abortion access and they still voted for Josh Hawley. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I wanna explore an idea with you. We talked a little bit pre-show, Cecil, but I wrote down the question, how do we tell people I told you so

in a way that's constructive and doesn't lose them? Because I think there is going to be some value in pointing out, hey, we tried to talk about this. We try, you know, like people said this thing was gonna happen and now it's happening and now you're appalled by it, right? People said that this thing was gonna get worse and now it's gotten worse and you're appalled by it.

So there's gotta be a way to, we've gotta find a way, and I think maybe smarter people than me will figure this out, but we've gotta find a way to like lead people into that without losing them. Because if you just say, I fucking told you so, look how right I was, lepronate your face, lepronate your face, people are just going to be like,

all right, fucking, I'm out of this, right? Or they'll double down, or they'll build emotional walls. More often what happens is the doubling down. So we got to be able to show people, hey, this was predictable, because that's important. I think you gotta say, this was predictable. This was predictable, and it was predicted,

and it happened. And we find, we all, can we all agree that we find this appalling? Maybe, I think in the coming days, there may be things that happen where we can reach those people that were just right of center, people that were, you know, just right of center that were not the far left and say, Hey, you know, like you didn't want this.

I know you. And this might have to be something that we do on a really one to one level. Very, very personal personal level. Yeah. Yeah. Because I think, I think there are people who are listening right now that know that probably somebody they know voted for Trump and they probably are not MAGA. I'm sure there's somebody listening right now that that is the case.

I know that a lot of people want to push back and say, I don't want to reach the center. I want to reach the left. I want to go and continue to reach the left. And I say, sure, go reach out to the left too. Make sure that the left is included in this conversation too. I think the Democrats got to be a bigger tent. I think they've got to be a bigger tent. But I also think that the people who are far left also have to accept that it's going to have to be a bigger tent if we're expecting to win. We can't just win with the far left. The far left is

not going to win this for us. It's not going to be the only people who vote. You've got to convince the center and this other group that all of us want a progress. We all want, you know, single payer healthcare. We all want a better, a better wage. We all want, you know, to make sure that we have a social safety net that isn't just, you know, good luck. Hopefully you have savings, right? So I think that there's, there's a lot of things to do. And I also think too, a lot of people are trying to abandon these, what they, and I called them earlier, woke policies. You know, some of these policies include immigration.

Some of these policies include DEI. Some of these policies include abortion access for women, right? These are the things, these social issues, these social justice issues that Democrats really embraced this last time, right? We talked about asylum seekers. We talked about women with abortion access.

So often we talk about them as ethical things. These are the ethical things that we should be doing. This is an ethical problem. We look out at the world and we say, these are the ethical things that we should be doing to care for our fellow man. But I think we also are losing people sometimes. And what we need to do is instead say,

these are ethical, but they're also economically beneficial. Getting women and men childcare across the board, getting young kids across the board fed, it doesn't matter who they are, they get fed when they go to school. Getting, you know, like allowing people to come into this country and do jobs that many Americans will not fill is beneficial to our economy. They feed money into our economy. They buy things.

They spend money. They create more wealth when they spend that money here. It doesn't just go up to one person. It goes to businesses and people get hired to handle those businesses. That's a beneficial thing to our economy. The more of those people that we can hire, the better off we're gonna be

because there's gonna be more money to spend to hire more people. We need to start framing these things as economic wins too. And there's plenty of ways to do it. And there's smart people who can handle that. Frame it like an economic win. And suddenly you'll get those people who maybe don't give a fuck about ethics as much as you do, but they care about themselves and they care about the economy. Yeah, I agree with that. I think if we, at the, you know, but they care about themselves and they care about the economy. Yeah, I agree with that. I think if we, at the, you know, like I was thinking of like an analogy, like the primary serves a different purpose than the general election. Maybe the general elections serve a purpose of saying, all right, we're going to, during the campaigning for the

general election, we're just going to talk about solving for the economy. That's all we're going to talk about. And then once we That's all we're gonna talk about. And then once we win, then we can talk about ethics. Then we can do this other work. It's like, you gotta win first. If you don't win, you can't do the other work. So you solve for the economy, you get elected, then you can do the ethics stuff.

And you fix stuff. Then you fix some shit. You get in and you fix stuff. The problem is, is every single time, they leave us a broken ass system that you gotta fix afterwards. So you spend two and you fix stuff. The problem is, is every single time they leave us a broken ass system that you gotta fix afterwards. So you spend two and a half years trying to fix the shit that they broke.

And then you gotta try to fix it in a short amount of time during election season and it doesn't work and then they flip the switch. My thought would be come in right away, come in hot and be like, okay, minimum wage. Let's get it done. Get a big thing done. Let's get a big minimum wage thing done. If you change minimum wage in this country, you could change so many people's lives.

Yeah, overnight. And change it in a big way. I think, while I agree and I'm happy that they were targeting student loan debt, that was not for many people in this country. They didn't benefit from that. It's not for most. It's not for many people in this country. They didn't benefit from that. It's not for most.

It's not for most. And so you're targeting a lot. And you're creating in many ways with that. I don't say don't do it. Right. But I don't think you run on it. No, you don't run on that. I agree with you.

Yeah, I feel that way more and more. Solve for the economy and then we'll deal with the ethics later. Yeah. Climate change. A problem so huge. How could I ever make a difference? I'm Marco Chiaunovet, And then we'll deal with the ethics later. Climate change, a problem so huge, how could I ever make a difference? I'm Marco Ciarnoved, Climate Reporter for the Toronto Star.

I meet a lot of smart people doing really inspiring things in this space all the time. Small things that add up to big climate benefits. Small things, big climate, wherever you get your favorite podcasts. The Climate Solutions podcast is brought to you by SmartFlow from Enbridge Sustain. Vegas Strip Excitement MGM is famous for when you play classics like MGM Grand Millions or popular games like Blackjack, Baccarat, and Roulette. With our ever-growing library of digital slot games, a large selection of online table games, and signature Bet MGM service, there's no better way

to bring the excitement and ambience of Las Vegas home to you than with Bet MGM Casino. Download the Bet MGM Casino app today. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. BetMGM.com for tees and sees. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge.

Bet MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Here at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, the spirit soar, the mind is educated, and the bowels, the bowels are born again. All right, now we're gonna get into more goofy shit, but we are gonna talk about Elon Musk. Oh my God. All right.

So Elon Musk, once an atheist hero, now says he believes in the teachings of Christ. During a Pennsylvania town hall last week, he claimed that he now believes in the teachings of Christ, including the principles, love thy neighbor and turn the other cheek, which is very important for forgiveness. It's very important. Fair. That's a very important forgiveness. You got to turn that cheek.

The billionaire has repeatedly made it clear that his ideology has shifted to the far right. He's also spent much of the last two years evangelizing the teachings of Christianity. I think this is a natural place for the right to go to get cred. The shorthand, we've talked about it on the show, and I think it's far more valuable on the right. The shorthand of I'm a Christian means I'm a good person

on the right. I don't know that that's what it means on the left. Certainly doesn't mean that to me, but it does mean that to some people in this country. It's very specifically a large group of Christians believe that, and they are more right-leaning than other people, and you get cred. You get cred.

Look at where I was, look at fucking Russell Brand, man. I know. That dude who was like part of this sort of, I mean, on the left, intellectual, philosophical, maybe agnostic type person, gets a show and then now look at him. He's getting baptized. He's hanging out with Jordan Peterson, all those people. They found where they're, you know,

where they could cash their check and they just followed it. And I think Elon Musk recognizes, I don't know that this is about money as much for him. I think it's about cred for him. He's swimming in these circles and for him, this gives him more clout. Yeah, well, I think if you're going to have clout on the right and credibility on the right, there is a very, very low bar purity test you have to pass. And so I think we've seen time and time

again, these figures that want to grift into the right or have power structures within the right. What they realize is like, okay, look, these guys need the barest excuse. And that's really kind of an interesting thing about the right, is you don't have to be a certain kind of this or enough of that. Like Trump's a great example. He's not any more fucking religious than you and I, man.

Yeah, when the lights come on, you only gotta be a five. Right. Yeah. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I. Right. Yeah. And he's exactly right, dude. It's because it's any excuse, right? It's like, well, all right, look, I'll take you home. Like, I'll close my eyes in the dark. People will swipe left on him. Or is it right?

Or I don't know which way they are. I didn't date during that era, so I don't know if it's left or right. At 2 in the morning, everybody gets a right. You know? Everybody's right. Doesn't matter. Yeah. It doesn't matter. So I think guys like Elon Musk, you know, everybody gets a right, you know? Everybody's right, doesn't matter. Yep, doesn't matter.

So I think guys like Elon Musk, you know, and like Russell Brand, they're just, and you know, Jordan Peterson's another good example. Like those guys, you know, they espouse a very specific kind of like, you know, broad brush so that everybody can kind of take it and paint what they want with it. Oh, and Jordan Peterson is great at saying nothing.

Oh, he is the most, yeah. And people love it. He's a nothing artist. want with it. Oh, and Jordan Peterson is great at saying nothing. Oh, he is the most, yeah. And people love it. He's a nothing artist. People love it. He'll talk for so long and he'll say absolutely nothing. Fucking nothing, man. He seriously says less than the fucking Charlie Brown adult. Yes, for real.

You could get more philosophical deepity out of the Charlie Brown adult than you can out of him. You of the Charlie Brown adult than you can out of him. You and the Charlie Brown adult won't burst into fucking self aggrandizing tears in the middle of his own fucking hill. I've never seen a man make himself, talk himself into crying that much.

Especially when he's talking about his grandma's tits or whatever. Yeah, like he had that dream. Thank you, he had that dream where like, is I saw her hairy pussy and like, you're just like, what the shit? Jesus Christ. What the shit, man?

How did you last pass, I saw my grandma's and then that's it? Dude, how do you last pass that? Like, what the fuck? If you had that dream, how many horses would it take to pull that out of you? You couldn't get that out of me in Gimmo. Are you kidding me? I'd be like, I got a a pair of pliers you got some teeth I'd be like you still don't have a story about my grandma

Man, I'll fuck out of here. What who the fuck is like all right? I'm gonna set up my ring light I got some well that was a doozy everybody. It's tell you a story. Oh Dream too, so it's doubly worth a dub. Oh, I'm, I'm gonna tell it. So I'm gonna do what I never do. I'm gonna tell you a dream. I'm gonna tell you a dream. Okay. I fucking hate when people tell me dreams. It's not about your grandmother, is it?

It is not. Okay. It is not, but this made me laugh just because of my response to it. So I had a dream that Haley and I were still dating, we were long distance, and I found out that she was in love with somebody else, and I was very sad in my dream.

And I woke up and I was like, oh good, that was just a dream, like everything's fine. And then I remembered the guy's name and the guy's name was Mitchell. And I left. And I- Mitchell! And I left to myself.

I was like, huh, I don't have anything to be insecure about from a guy named Mitchell. And I turned over and went to bed. I was like, Mitchell, Mitchell. I'm gonna be insecure about a man named Mitchell. There's a fucking phenomenal mystery science theater, 3000, called Mitchell. Is there really?

And now you have to watch it. Now I gotta watch it. It's with Joe Don Baker. Oh dude, I'm gonna watch it tonight. So if you know, Joe Don Baker was also in another one of their, he did another one that they did, but he's the guy in Walking Tall originally, and they make so much fun of that guy in that movie.

They make so much fun of him. Oh, I can't wait to watch it. It's so mean. It's so genuinely mean. And it is, it is, it is so mean spirited. And it's also before a time of like, like where people were conscious of body shaming. So there's a lot of body shaming that happens in the movie. But there's also some very funny stuff too.

Like it's not all just like he's fat or whatever. It's not all that, but it is, there is a lot of very funny stuff that happens. And then the book, they mention how he wouldn't speak to them because he was so mad that they made so much fun of him. So they wrote this big long paragraph about how if he ever did try to take a swing at him, he'd fall over into the punch bowl. And they made this big long paragraph

of making fun of him in their book. So it's really, they tore into Joe Don Baker, who is Mitchell. So yeah, I have a prank that someone, it's not a prank, It's a disinformation campaign. I have a disinformation campaign that I want someone to undertake. You just use this as you see fit. My suggestion would be get with a bunch of other people.

So Facebook group would be a perfect place to organize something like this. Go to Twitter and have a bunch of people buy blue check marks for their Twitter account. And then have half the group pick Trump and half the group pick Elon. And the people who pick Trump constantly take Elon's tweets and Trump's tweets and tag Elon in them and talk about how Elon is totally in the pocket of Trump and he's doing everything for Trump

and look at how Trump has made him into his servant and go on and on and on about how Trump totally owns Elon and Elon will do anything. Elon will eat out of his hand. Elon will follow him around and pick up crumbs that he throws on the ground and just say the meanest shit you can, the most aiming right at his narcissistic personality

and tagging him in every single one, praising Donald Trump for controlling Elon. And then the other group does the exact same opposite thing. I love it. They go to Elon's Twitter and they copy and quote tweet and reply on everything he posts about Donald Trump and tag Donald Trump in it to talk about how Elon owns Donald Trump and Donald Trump does anything

he wants and look at how weak Donald Trump is in comparison to our God Elon on and on and on and just continue to do this from now until whenever. And do it like an actual genuine account would, because there's plenty of these people who filate Elon. Oh my god, yeah. Go do it. Go spread as much misinformation, and it's not misinformation, because in some ways it's true, right? One of them is controlling the other one.

They're both bitches for each other. Yeah. So just go and cause as much havoc as you can in their mentions and get them to hate each other. If they hate each other, the next four years might actually be fun. That's a fucking riot. I think it would be an amazing thing to watch. What's your over under in like, I don't know, we probably should,

we should probably measure this in Scaramoochies, but what's your, what's your over under on when the breakup happened? So I, I'm already starting to see some comments from Trump about how Elon is, he's going to eventually tire of Elon. He said it today. He like made fun of Elon in the press today in front of the house. So and people, and I love that people are reporting it like he made fun of Elon in the press today in front of the house. So and people, and I love that people are reporting it like he made fun of Elon. I love that that's how it's being reported because that's great. Make sure to again, carry that news story over to post it as much as you can.

Let's break this couple up. And don't just do it there either. I mean, I feel like you need to do that with everybody who Trump nominates. Oh yes. You know, anybody who he nominates, create an account that's like, oh, Matt Gaetz, you got fucking Donald Trump eating out of your hand. Oh, you're going to run the Justice Department. You know what you should do? You should prosecute Donald Trump when you get in the Justice Department. Make up, I mean, just go in and just, just get these people to hate each other because here's the thing, they already fucking hate each other.

None of them have any respect for anybody. They hate each other. They hate everybody that's not them. And they might never see this, maybe not, but other people will and they may heart it. And then if they heart it, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and you can get these people to hate each other.

And then you can get other people to jump in and make it seem like they're hating each other. There's a possibility there might be a sort of wave of this sort of disgust on either side. It could happen. Look, not only could it happen, how many fucking speakers of the House were there? Yeah.

When the Republicans controlled the House, they couldn't find their ass with both hands because nobody- Didn't they have three total or something or something like that? It was crazy. Yeah, it was like Kevin McCarthy and then like somebody- No, then then Mike Johnson came in, yeah. But didn't it take like 14 attempts or some crazy that. It was crazy. Yeah, it was like Kevin McCarthy and then like somebody like, No, then then Mike Johnson came in.

Yeah. But did it take like 14 attempts or some crazy shit? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was all a fucking clown car train wreck. And for like six or eight weeks, they didn't even have a speaker. Yeah, they didn't even bother. These guys don't like each other. There's no honor among these things.

They hate each other. So like, yeah, I think your plan is, I think your plan could fucking work. Get them fucking riled at each other and just let them go. And it'll only cost you enough to buy a thing for Twitter. And it's not really gonna enrich Elon that much because it's a loss leader for him. It is. He doesn't care. He's not gonna gain any money. I mean, yeah, you gotta pay Elon a couple of $5 here and there,

but you could think of how much damage you might be able to do if you do. Yeah, I was gonna say, don't worry about that. Twitter's all red. Twitter's gonna be in the red no matter what. Yeah, no matter what. Like no matter how many blue check marks you buy, Twitter's not making a profit't worry about that. Twitter's all red. Twitter's going to be in the red no matter what, no matter how many check marks you buy, it is not making a profit. You ain't dragging Twitter out of that.

No, I don't like them putting chemicals in the water. They turn the frigging frogs gay. Do you understand that? Turn the frigging frogs gay. Boo, boo, serious crap. Gay, frogs, frigging frogs. Boo, it's not funny. I'm going to say it real slow for you.

Gay, frogs. All right. I'm gonna say it real slow for you, hey, frogs. All right, this story's from CNN Politics. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeatedly suggested that chemicals in water are impacting the sexuality of children. Now, this is from July. I did wanna say that this particular, but it's relevant now because.

Because he's been picked to be the head of the Health and Human Services. Yeah. So that's fuckin' nuts, Democratic presidential candidate the house health and human services. Yeah, so that's fucking nuts Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy jr. Has a history of repeatedly sharing unfounded conspiracies that man-made chemicals in the environment could be making children gay or Transgender and causing the feminization of boys and the masculinization of girls and there's also another story about him Talking about fluoride and how there's a possibility. We have no idea if he's gonna do it,

but they're talking about how he may remove fluoride from United States water systems. I just wanna point out a couple things. One is, we've had fluoride in our water system since 10 years before Robert Kennedy was alive. So, you know, if anything was gonna happen I think clearly if anything Robert F Kennedy is a Reason to get rid of

Cecil I feel I feel like the world's gotten stupider. We've had some fluoride in the water. I am converted Yeah, there that's a that's a bad thing for our teeth But then you know It's just it's just a bad thing in general. And then the other thing that they talked about too, is that if he's that ahead of this, he could, you know, maybe get rid of some of the very specifically get rid of some of the vaccines or at least limit some of the vaccines. Man, I was looking it up today.

Coronavirus, there's a possibility you get one to three persons sick from having coronavirus. You can get up to 18 people sick if you have the measles. That's that R naught number. Yeah. Yeah. The R naught is 18. It's so much more. It's fucking bonkers.

It's so much more. Can you imagine if he starts pulling these regulations and things out? I mean, you're like, I think you can right now, if you wanted to, and you were going to have a baby, you could just say, I don't wanna get the vaccines. I think people can just do that. I'm pretty sure, at least in Illinois, like you could just say, I don't wanna do it. And then like they say, look, you really should get it.

And they probably try to tell you, you should probably get it. But then there's no mechanism for them not to, because we're seeing more and more people not get vaccines. We're seeing it all over. There's plenty of people who aren't getting these vaccines. The problem is, is that him being part of that system, he can then make it so that they don't even,

they can't even really ask you or something like that. He can put things in place that can make it so it makes it more difficult for people to get vaccines. Yeah, so most of the vaccines, most childhood vaccines, they talk about being mandatory or mandatory with exemptions. So, and then different states all have different exemptions. So some states have religious exemptions, some don't. Some states have like an ethical exemption,

some states don't. Some states, all states have medical exemptions. Some people that can't get the vaccines. And if the kids don't get the vaccines, they're typically not allowed to enter school. So like you can't go and like enroll your kid in school if they don't have the mandatory vaccines unless they also have an exemption. If you get somebody who's a fucking vaccine denier, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge

of the Department of Health and Human Services, and they're just like, yeah, we're just going to make it illegal for states, because remember states are in control, not the federal government. If they're gonna make it illegal for states to put a mandatory vaccination at all, a huge number of people just won't do it. Right now also you've got a medical system which recognizes that these are mandatory. You've got a school system. You've got two institutions which are helping to educate

and to push parents into making this choice. If it's no longer mandatory, there will be doctors that don't want to have this fight. They don't want to have this argument. They don't feel like they have a legal leg to stand on in order to demand to have this fight. Schools won't push it. They won't be like, hey, give me your paperwork.

We're going to create barriers. We all know barriers are how a lot of things get done. Yeah. You know? And people might just wind up, you know, in four years, you might not see a ton of change, but in 10 years, with the people who were born in those four years, you could see massive closing of schools because there's one kid who got, you know, measles and then a bunch of you could get thousands of people can get an outbreak.

Do we'll have polio back and you could, yeah, you could have a polio back. I almost feel like, like the worm in his brain is vulnerable to vaccines. It's the thing that's controlled. It's like one of those cordyceps things. It's like, yeah, he's going to climb like a blade of grass and get eaten by like a, I feel like that's what's controlling him to become the head of this. Like does he have stock and iron lung machines?

Like does this make polio great again? Is that the new slogan? That's true dude, it's true. What the fuck? It's crazy to me that the people who Trump is picking are the least qualified people in the world and in fact the exact opposite of what you would want to see in those Okay, but a quick hot shot. I mean like Robert F. Kennedy clearly what do you happen to know his scientific scientific? Bonafides, can you name them? He doesn't have any that's right scientific bona fides, can you name them? He doesn't have any.

That's right. Yeah. None, none, he's not, like, he's not a, you know, it makes me laugh, it's like when they put fucking Ben Carson, a fucking neurosurgeon, in charge of HUD, Housing and Urban Development, you're like, yeah, I'm sure he bought a house, but he's a fucking neurosurgeon, he's got nothing,

he doesn't know shit about housing. They put a dude who was a Fox News host in charge of the defense. Yes! That's an 800 million dollar a year budget. Billion. Maybe billion? Is it billion or million? I don't know. It's all the money.

It's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. It's all- Like, I think it's billion. It's gotta be a billion. It's gotta be billion. It's gotta be billion. It's 800 billion. It's like, that is a guy who's like, he's fucking up Fox and Friends.

Yeah. He's one of the friends! He's not a fox!'s fucking on Fox and Friends. He's one of the friends, he's not a fox, he's one of the friends. He's one of the friends. He's in charge of the fight, like, the last people that held that job were like, they had fucking stars on their shoulders, man. These are people who are part of,

and this is a guy who's like, yeah, I did a tour in Iraq as a guardsman. They used National Guard. He wasn't a fucking, like, he's not a, mm. Come the fuck on, man! I will say. It's the least competent, it's almost like a game, like the least competent people.

But let's talk really quickly about these appointments because a lot of people are in some ways upset. There's, you know, a lot of people I'm seeing online are upset about the Gates appointment for the, if you don't know, I'll mention a couple of these. Matt Gates, who was, he's the guy who looks like either Beavis or Butthead. I think it's Butthead.

I'm not sure which one it is. Butthead. I don't know either. It's Butthead. He looks like Butthead. And he's the guy who was basically throwing a wrench in everything that was happening in the house for the last several years. He's a congress who was basically throwing a wrench in everything that was happening in the house for the last several years He's a congressperson from Florida. Then there's Tulsi Gabbard who was a Democrat and then

Eventually left and became a Fox News correspondent It's been suspected that she's a Russian agent because she literally all she does is talk about Russian propaganda So she's got an accent She's now in charge of national security. He made Christine Holm the person who killed her dog because it was acting up, a puppy that was acting up, she murdered in a hole in the middle of South Carolina or whatever. She is now the Homeland Security Chief.

I didn't hear about that one. That's good. And then there's this Fox News guy who's in charge of the Department of Defense. And then, so there's a bunch of these people, right? These people who are really unqualified, but they're all troll appointments. And in many ways, what they are is just sycophantic appointments. One of the people I saw, one of the pundits I saw talking about this today, they had this comment and they said, you know, with the Gates appointment, what Trump is trying to do is show the Senate that he's in control and you're going to basically green stamp whoever I have.

You're going to, I'm going to make you jump through the soup. The dominance thing. He's humping their leg. I don't think Trump cares. That much. I think Trump basically is just looking around the room and saying, who's my guys? Who have been my guys? Who stand next to me?

And he's just awarding them something. And he didn't know what he was doing before. If you remember, his appointments were crazy before. They were insane before. But. They were insane before. But what he did have before was a group of people who somewhat knew what someone was capable of. So they would look around the room and there was enough advisors near him where they would say, this guy for this. And he would say, okay, fine.

I'll take this guy for this. And he didn't make insane appointments of people who is just like a fucking Fox news host for Department of Defense. He didn't do that last time. He instead was like, okay, fine, I'll have a general do it. There's a general, at least somebody who I might be able to do. So I don't think the one saving grace, they hate each other, that's awesome.

The other saving grace is they might not know. We were super worried about project 2025 because we were afraid they were gonna put insiders in charge a lot of these positions and they were gonna dismantle these industries in these governmental institutions from the inside. We don't know that that's the case. Some of these people may not even know how to just,

like, do you think Matt Gaetz really understands how the justice department works? Don't you think he's gonna have to get up to speed in order to even be dangerous? It's gonna take him a while. Then I think there's gonna be a lot of people who are gonna be really resentful that they have to answer to Matt Gates. I think there's gonna be a lot of revolts in these places and they're gonna get stymied. And I think the same thing's gonna happen in the Department of Defense Defense Do you think there's gonna be a bunch of four-star generals? It's gonna be looking at a Fox News host and be like yes, sir Like I feel like I feel like these appointments actually might be beneficial because they're troll appointments

And I think a lot of people will not respect them I know a lot of people might send us message be like they're gonna dismantle the department and yeah I can doom and gloom But I also think a lot of times these people are just genuinely incompetent and bad. And I don't, I think that in a lot of ways these deployments are not as bad, at least on the surface right now, I could be totally wrong, right? And I'm, I'll eat it. I'll eat it if I'm wrong. But I think, I just don't think that they are as bad as I think a lot of people are thinking. Yeah. Like what I feel like he's very clearly doing is selecting for loyalty. Exactly.

Like the only thing that matters in his selection process is the loyalty process. It's a loyalty question, right? That's why he asked Comey, the first thing he asked Comey, like, are you loyal to me? And Comey's like, the fuck? And he's like, okay, you're fired. I'm loyal to the government. And he's like, fuck you. I'm eating ice cream.

Get out of here. You can't even have a hamburger. I'm going to throw ketchup at the wall. I won't even let you have a hamburger. don't drink my coffee. So like you see selecting for loyalty first, but he's not selecting for competence at all. It's not even part of the equation. So it's not solving for why with the back gates. Yeah. For real. Like it's, it's like, why is the question? We're all answering. He's never going to get to the answer for that one. Like with Matt Gaetz, think about this.

Like the attorney general of the United States is one of the chief legal advisors. Think how bad that would be. So Trump is gonna go to Matt Gaetz. Oh, think how bad that would be. And Matt Gaetz is gonna be like, ba-doo, ba-doo, ba-doo, ba-doo. Oh, God.

Don't tell me like, I know he went to like William and Mary college. I know he fucking actually has like a legit JD from a good college, but he's still Matt Gaetz. At the end of the day, that guy is still Matt, that guy is still just a party boy who like wants to go to like, you know, go fuck a bunch of like underage girls,

like because he's getting investigated for, and like do a bunch of fucking drugs. He's just a shit head, lousy, awful, degenerate piece of shit. They're not wrong. He's gonna be like hey We gotta we need some help over here at the Department of Justice is gonna be like dude I'm busy riding a fucking cocaine bowl. Yeah, sorry. I asked my secretary to put her ass on the Xerox Fuck you. This is Fred. Oh, they're gonna have the White House is gonna have a couch on the front lawn They're gonna have the White House is gonna have a couch on the front lawn

Walking through with a general hat kicking all the drug To wake them up. I I I really do like like look can Matt Gaetz do damaging shit? Yeah, can all these people do damaging? Yeah, absolutely I do think they can and I don't want to downplay know that these people can't do damaging shit But I'm gonna wait the other thing that these people can't do damaging shit. But I'm going to wait. The other thing that I think people are misunderstanding is that the Senate, I saw people in the Senate now may not fold. It may not hold true, but as it stands today, a bunch of people in the Senate are really puzzled by this choice.

And they are saying, I can't wait to look into the investigation that Congress has already put forth. Republicans. Yeah, these are Republicans. And you also have to give time to the Democrats. It's not like you don't have to give time to the Democrats. The Democrats also sit on these committees and they ask these questions. Matt Gaetz is gonna have his dirty laundry

that he took off of a teenager. He's gonna have that wafted in front of every American person. Yeah, I think that this is gonna be a scandal and an embarrassment And it's gonna be I I don't know. I'm not sure they might just rubber stamp him I have no idea but there's gonna be a week of fucking him getting grilled that they may actually Resend the thing and go for somebody else. So we don't know. And if they delay it, all the better. Yeah, if you're in the Senate, this is dangerous. Yeah.

Like if you rubber stamp it and it goes badly, then your feet can be held to the fire. Yeah, yeah. Right? And if you're in the Senate too, like you're gonna be up for reelection and Trump is not gonna be able to help you. Trump is not up for reelection.

That's what I mean. Yeah. He doesn't need to worry about it anymore. I think that the people, there's going to be somebody who's also probably going to suggest that maybe they'll do recess appointments. And that's one of the things that a lot of people have been thinking that maybe they'll do. But recess appointments really are a corner case and they have to do a lot in order to

get a recess appointment done. And you can still get sued if you do a recess appointment. So Obama did it, he got sued and he had to like not do it because he got sued and they decided that it has to be at least a recess of 10 days and it's hard to actually get done. And we're also presuming that the president has complete and utter control over the Senate. And he can say, do a recess appointment. When you say do a recess appointment, what you're doing is you're saying to all those senators, you don't get a say in this. These are also powerful people who just got elected too, and they control one branch of the government.

So they might be like, how about you go fuck yourself. We're going to make a decision on this. Maybe we'll rubber stamp it. Maybe we won't. But the idea that it's always going to only be recess appointments, I'll wait to, I will be convinced when I see that happen, but I don't know that I need to worry about that right now because I think the Senate, I think these people are also powerful and want that power for themselves.

And you know, I also want to point out too, that this is one of those times where we need to be careful about not prognosticating with our own anxiety. Yes. Right? Like it could happen. That's why articles are being written about it. It could happen. Until it has happened, it didn't happen yet.

And for us as sort of bystanders, there's nothing we can do about it. So we need to be careful about prognosticating our own anxiety and deciding about what could happen and following that trail of dominoes all the way through to the end of the apocalypse. Like therein lies madness, especially when we are in a position like we're in right now.

It's just to the beginning of the episode. We're in this position where that's not healthy for people to do. So what's true is that there's a clown car of incompetent dipshits. There was a clown car of incompetent dipshits round one. Yeah. You know, this is not,

if this comes as a surprise to anybody, you didn't pay attention in 2016. Trump, I don't know if you remember this, but Trump assembled business leaders in his first term. He assembled all these business leaders and they all got together and there was, and these were all like far right leaning business leaders who were going to advise him on business and how businesses needed to thrive in his economy. And he had this big slate of a ton of these people, right?

They all came to the White House and they showed up and they talked for a little bit and they were going to be this, this council of businessmen. And then Charlottesville happened and every, like almost every one of them was like, fuck you. And they left and they didn't do it anymore. And I feel like there's more of that in our future where there's going to be a big thing that everybody's looking at and be like, holy shit, those guys in a room is fucked. And then there's going to be something that happens that changes how looking at and be like, holy shit, those guys in a room is fucked. And then there's gonna be something that happens that changes how that works and how that fits together. You know, these people are often their own worst enemy.

And they do things and they say things that often come back to bite them because they're not smart. And then they'd say shit like, there's fine people on both sides. And 40 business people are like, peace! And then they run screaming out of the White House because they don't want to be associated with them. And that's going to happen again. I want people to remember the clown car ask shit that happened during his first term.

There's going to be more of that. Yeah, I feel like there is a cause, genuinely, there's a cause for some extremely guarded optimism that their refusal to appoint people who are even passingly familiar with competency, you know, may actually be a huge benefit to us. It might be a huge benefit. It could be the end of the world, but it might be a huge benefit.

Barbara, we're leaving now. I want you to come with us. Daddy, please. Barbara, I've made your mother cry. I'm up for reelection. We're in the middle of a scandal. I'm in the home of a gay couple who own a drag club. I realize you want to get married, but how many lives

do you have to ruin to do it? I know we spent a lot of time on Trump this particular episode, and I want to close with a story to talk about how people are treating other people that are in the MAGA world. And I know we spent, we said we weren't going to try to cover Trump a lot, etc, etc. But we kind of came to that realization sort of before we recorded and after we found stories. So it's going to be our hope that we can try to do recorded and after we found stories. So it's gonna be our hope that we can try to do that in future stuff moving forward. So I want people to be like, I thought Sherrick had talked a lot about Trump and a lot of it is.

But I wanted to mention that before we got into this final story that is again about Trump. So this story is from teen Vogue. Young people are struggling to deal with their Trump supporter parents again. We're seeing a lot of people in this country are starting to really form some hard boundaries. I'm seeing that a lot on my social media and I'm seeing a lot of that on Reddit and I'm seeing that in a lot of different places where there's some hard boundaries are being formed. I think there's a lot of, I saw,

and I don't know, this is anecdotal, right? So like I saw stories of people like getting divorce papers based on this stuff. I think that's legitimate. I think like there are gonna be people, there are gonna be families that break down over this stuff. And I think that that is fair and legitimate. If somebody is, if somebody shows you

that they hold values that are just morally reprehensible to your own. Like that's somebody that, it's totally fine. It's totally fine to protect your peace. It's totally fine to do what you need to do in order to stay safe and stay sane and surround yourself with people that like reflect your own moral

values. Sure. If they're reachable, I think we should reach them. Yeah. And I say that like you brought this up before. If they're reachable, we should reach them on the far left too, if they abstained. Yeah. You know, if they didn't show up, they need to be reached too.

We have a lot of outreach to do as people that want to win elections in order to get change done, in order to accomplish Yeah, the practical machinery of politics move to move progress forward. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we've got we've got work to do on both sides But I totally understand, you know that our my former nanny. She's not she just left us So she's not our nanny anymore. But yeah, she's our nanny for like Four and a half years. Sure. Five years. So she's a big part of our family. Her parents- All of your kids are older now.

They're all old. Yeah, we just don't, we don't need. We actually haven't needed her for like, for a while, but we just didn't have the heart to let her go because she has been such a part of our family. So really for like the last two years, she just comes over. Yeah, just hangs out. Just hangs out.

But she's great. She's 20 something, I don't know. And like her parents are MAGA folks, like hard MAGA folks. And she's leaving, she's moving to California. She's just like, I just can't spend time with these folks anymore. She can't do it, it's a big deal. It's a big deal for her, but she's like,

yeah, I gotta go. Yeah, I think a lot of people are gonna have interesting decisions to make about their neighbors. I have a neighbor across the street I probably won't speak to. He went out of his way to, there was a sign fight we had. Yeah. The great sign wars of 2024. I had a Kamala Harris sign that I put in my yard and it was stolen.

And the guy across the street from me had already had like four or five signs out for the local people in the Republican party. And he had a small Trump sign out there. And I went to the, my thought was, well, if you're going to steal one of my signs, and I'm not saying he stole it. It was stolen from my yard. And I said, you know what, if you're going to steal one of my signs, how am I going to go fuck yourself?

I'm going to go to the Democratic party. And I was like, Hey, give me every sign. I was like, give me every single sign you have. And so I took every sign they had and I put them in my yard. And then the guy across the street, I think he took it as a glove slap. So he went out and he got the biggest Trump sign I've ever seen.

And he put it in his yard. And he also got another sign that says, socialism, but free markets, not socialism. and he pointed it directly at my house. And I told Sarah, I said, I want to get a sign that says the guy across the street doesn't know what socialism is. And my wife's like, he can't do that. And I said, okay, how about this? If a Kamala wins, can I get you to get a big sign that says, womp, womp? And Sarah said, and Sarah's like, no, we got to live across the street from this person. But in any case, like that's a guy, right, who went out of his way to be like,

fuck you, I'm gonna get a big Trump sign. And he took it as he took it as me, you know, antagonizing him when really, it was really just because my sign got stolen. I was mad about my sign. He was upset about that. And I also have another final. I do want to do a follow-up. I didn't mention this on the show,

but I had a second sign stolen. There was a couple kids came to my area on Halloween. They drove up, so they were kids who could drive, essentially adult children get out of their car and start going to all the houses near us. And they walked up to my house, and I have a ring camera, right? I have one of those ring cameras, it's a Nest or something.

And they came up and they rang it, but it didn't answer my phone. So I let them go, I didn't notice them. And then I run outside actually, I tried to catch them when they were walking across the street. I was like, hey, kids want some candy. They didn't turn around.

So I went back inside. Well, next morning my sign was gone. Well, I watched the footage and you can see them clearly walk up and grab the sign and throw it as they were leaving. And they went across the street and they came over and grabbed the sign and they left. And I was like, you little fuckers. I was like, they came to my door, rang on the door and I didn't answer. And so they just stole and they only stole the Kamala Harris sign. So I called the sheriff, because that's, I'm in an unincorporated area and the sheriff said, send me the footage. Well,

I sent the footage and then nothing happened, right? Cause they, you know, I got a great picture of their face, but what are you going to do? You know, they're not going to do an AP fucking B or whatever. So my wife just on a whim, just reaches out to the neighbor across the street and says, Hey, you have a kid about this age. Do you know these kids?

And a couple of days later, she comes over the house. She's like, let me look at the footage. She's like, yep, I know them. And then she had already preemptively called their parents and said, they stole a sign. And I got a text from their parents that was like, I'm really sorry, my kids, you know, they shouldn't have done this.

They wanna come over and apologize. And I text them back and I said, look, I was like, I don't think an apology is gonna help anything. I said, why don't you have them do a couple hours of charity work? I said, go have them go, you know, if they wanna work at a soup kitchen, they wanna work at a food depository,

they wanna work at the homeless or an abuse shelter, have them do a couple hours of that. Take them up, take a picture of them doing it and send it to me and I'll just call the sheriff and we'll call the whole thing off. And they said, no problem. We'll have it done. I said, that's great. And then I responded with, I'm sure you'll have plenty of opportunities to do that around the holidays. So, so to like sort of give them a time limit on when they should do it. And I'm going gonna reach out to them in the middle of December if I haven't heard anything back. I'll be like, you got anything?

If they say no, I'll be like, great. Well, you can deal with the judge because the judge will... That's a fucking class A misdemeanor stealing my sign. And I literally don't care about you at this point. I'm like, you know what? You had an opportunity for your kid to just go out and do like a couple hours of church work and they didn't want to do it.

Well, they can do 60 hours with a fucking judge when the judge tells them to do it. Good for you. Yeah, so I... I hope they follow through on it. I really, really hope that they follow through on it. I will let everybody know if they do. But I thought, you know, I could just turn them in,

but what does that do? You know what I mean? It's a Class A misdemeanor. He's a kid. Also, it might not even do anything, because when you're a kid, there's a totally different justice system for children. And I don't think they were 18 yet. So it's like a whole thing, right?

So it's like, it might not even happen. But if I can at least convince them that, you know, maybe this was a wrong thing to do. Just scare them a little bit. Scare them a little bit. You know, like give them a little, it's not scared straight. I'd send them to prison or anything like that.

But you know, if they do a little, maybe it might change their mind too, doing a little bit of work like that. Sometimes open people's eyes. So maybe that'll help. Well, like stealing the sign and then nothing bad happens to you. Yeah.

Then you just do it again. You don't learn anything from that. Then you just do it again. Right. You learned you had a fun night. I told people last week that I met a lady that lives down the street. And I went over to her house just to hang out. It was the first time I got a chance to meet her this last week.

And then Sarah and I went over to her house and hung out. She told me that during the season, she not only got her sign stole and had to put a new one out there, but people, they carved pumpkins that said Trump 2024 and FKH and put it on her lawn with a candle in it. What? They did like crafting vandalism. Like they had to fist a pumpkin and pull all that shit out of there and then carve it and then put a candle in it and then put it on her property. Okay, look, legit, I hate the message,

but I admire this somehow. I mean, there's a hustle to that. Yeah, there's a dedication to that. There's a hustle to that. And I'm just like, all right, you know. I couldn't believe it when she told me. Clearly you just wanted it more. They fucking seriously carved a pumpkin in

And to vandalize someone else's problem when I was like a youngin and I did like vandalizing I didn't do like all this prep work. It seems like a lot. It's a lot of prep work I feel like I never needed a fucking prep chef for it. You know, they're doing a lot of work They're cutting it out there. They're bacon seeds in an oven What the fuck they're gonna make a pie with it later when they go pick it up. Don't throw that away. Whatever you do, don't smash that pumpkin.

I'm gonna use it. Throw those pie pumpkins. Those are a little sweet. Those are good. All right, that's gonna wrap it up for this week. We're gonna have a funny show for you on Thursday, but we're gonna leave you like we always do with the skeptic screen. Credulity is not a virtue.

It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician double bubble toil and trouble pseudo quasi alternative, acupunctuating pressurized stereogram pyramidal freeidal, free energy, healing, water, downward spiral, brain dead, pan, sales pitch, late night info, docutainment. Leo Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death in towers, tarot cards, psychic healing, crystal balls, bigfoot, yeti, aliens, churches, mosques, and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, shame and healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double-speak stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential,ance pod. Help us spread the word by sharing our content.

Find us on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and Preds, all under the handle at dissonance pod. This show is can credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm on their hotline at 617-249-4255, or on their website at creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org