Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 847: Chemtrails and Biden Clones

Episode Date: June 16, 2025

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 mat. Today is Thursday, June the 12th. And I feel like my voice might be almost back to close. You're back in studio back in studio. Voices good. Life is looking good. How are you feeling?

I feel mostly great. Good. I really do. I feel mostly great. I get a little tired, a little easier. So we're recording during the day instead of at night. It's a little weird drinking coffee instead of eating pizza. But hey, man, it's good to be back in studio. It's going to be up and moving.

So I feel mostly just really good. Yeah, everybody's very happy that you're mobile and that your neck isn't just hanging out like a fucking face hugger opened up. Well, that'll teach me for sleeping wrong. See, it's like all takes. That's all it takes now. Yeah. Woof. Hi, my name is Luis. See, so Tom, all takes, that's all it takes now. Yep. Woof. Hi, my name is Luis.

Today, hi, my name is Luis. And today I'm in Paris to try the top five. And we're gonna see which one is the best. So the first one we're gonna check is called Tout-A-Tour. Excuse me. How do you pronounce this? Tout-A-Tour-du-Pin.

Tout-A-Tour-du-Pin. All around the bread. All right, so let's just jump right in. The stories from New York Times. Newsome tells Nation that Trump is destroying American democracy. Dude, I read this and I was like, yeah, man, you're just now picking up on that. I think we all knew it was going to happen. Fuck it.

Everybody knew it was going to happen. For the longest time, Gavin Newsom has been, I don't say for the longest time, but in recent memory, Gavin Newsom has been, I don't wanna say for the longest time, but in recent memory, Gavin Newsom has been drifting center. He's been drifting further and further right. And I think he's been doing that because I think he's been trying to distance himself in some ways from some of the left-leaning policies in California that he enacted

and that he's associated with in order to make a larger national political play. Seems contrived a little. play. Seems contrived. Seems super fucking contrived. And so now he's on board with the Trump is destroying democracy train. And I'm like, yeah, it's a little late, my guy, right? It's a little late. But also that that's not a progressive stance, right?

That's just objectively true. Yeah. We all knew it ahead of time. They wrote a whole playbook. That's not a progressive stance, right? That's just objectively true. We all knew it ahead of time. They wrote a whole playbook on how to destroy American democracy. You know what I mean? It's like if you're cleaning your kid's room and you find the anarchist cookbook under his fucking pillow and then like a closet full of fucking pressure cookers, it's not a fucking leap to be like,

I think we got a problem, honey. Right? Like this shit is telegraphed. It's tele, they've come out and said it. They're calling it, right? The right has been saying fucking eight ball in the corner pocket. And we're sort of like, I don't know if I can really,

what about the, like we're fucking, they're doing all the things. They said they were nothing. There's no surprises here. So this feels like really craven and opportunistic. Like I think he's right. I actually do also think he cares, but this also feels like self involved, right? Like very self promoting. I agree. I think, you know, after Gavin Newsom has Charlie Kirk on his podcast and spouts anti-trans views, how do I take the man seriously anymore?

Right? How do you, how do you divorce yourself from what it really should mean to be somebody on the left? So, so far, just so far, such a, such a wide gulf between you and someone who should, you know, who would normally be a leader on the left. How do I take you seriously anymore? And I saw him on TV. He was, you know, he's talking to Trump and there was another interview I saw of him on MSNBC. And I mean, I'm in his camp in the sense that there's a group of people out there that are upset that the actual system we have in place of making sure that people who are here

in an undocumented fashion get seen and have a hearing and all the things that have to go into that, there's already a system in place. We are uprooting that system in favor of kidnapping those people in the places where they work, in the places where they worship, in the places where they go to school, and even in the places where they worship, in the places where they go to school, and even in the places where they're trying to get those,

go through the proper channels that we told them to go through, right? They're being kidnapped, literally kidnapped from their immigration trials. They'll go in for an immigration trial, and then in the fucking lobby outside, someone will kidnap them and take them away. They're being taken away from, you know,

and what was sold to the American people, and what was sold to the American people and what was sold to all these people who voted for Trump. And I'm not trying to apologize for them. So don't send me your message and be like, you're apologizing, I'm not apologizing for them. But I want you to recognize what they were sold in, I'm not saying in a large part, I am saying that many of the people there were sold

an idea that there was a lot of very violent criminals that were here illegally because that's the lie they told. Yeah, right. And they told it multiple times. You can go back and listen to it. There's plenty of times. Now, I think everybody knew what they were planning on doing. 100%.

They have been shifting that over to Nwindo to include undocumented as violent criminal, right? They've been shifting that over and talking about it for a long time as undocumented as violent criminal. You gotta think about an undocumented migrant to our country as like the fucking city giving you a ticket because your weeds are too long. It's like that. That's how violent a criminal they are, right?

They're in our country, but they are not committed. It's not technically a felony. It's not a criminal offense. It's not a felony. It's not a felony. It's almost like a civil offense. Right. And the people who see them, these immigration judges,

are not actually judges. They're appointed people to decide whether or not these people's case has merit to stay in our country, right? So this isn't like a, it's not like these people are disobeying federal judges. These are people who are immigration judges. There's a difference in those types of, in the, in that job description, right? So there is a misunderstanding, a blatant, forceful, and purposeful misunderstanding on the right

to criminalize these people as dangerous, violent people. These are people who are just here trying to get a better life for themselves. That's all they're doing. They're not most of these people are the do they once in a while catch somebody who's a criminal? Sure. But most of the time, these people, they, they are, there's less of a chance of them being a criminal than in someone who was born in this

country, right? Much less of a chance, in fact. So what they've done is they've done a really good job. The right has, and I say good in the, in a sense that like it's effective, not good as like there did a good job, but like an effective job of convincing a wide swath of their base that this is the group of people that we need to go against. And you're seeing their poll numbers are going down, Trump's approval rating is going down, people don't like what's happening.

They were lied to and they were had and they are recognizing it, right? And so we're seeing this massive protest start to take place all over the United States. And now you're seeing Trump, something that he didn't do during the George Floyd protests, mobilizing the National Guard under his name in a state where he doesn't have that authority.

So he's doing what in this article sort of spells it out. He's sending these National Guard people to protect because he does have sort of spells it out, he's sending these National Guard people to protect, because he does have sort of a narrow window where he can send them to protect the ICE agents if he wants. He can't send them to go do certain things, but he can have them protect sort of federal buildings and whatnot. So now we're seeing these massive protests and there's gonna be one this weekend. There's gonna be one on Saturday, a massive protest across the country. That's gonna to be the no Kings protest That's very specifically against Trump and his big birthday parade

And so there's going to be this big protest that's going to happen this weekend I mean we're in a situation now where We knew this was going to happen and now it's happening. And I mean, I don't know how you unfuck this I don't know how you unfuck this you don don't know how you unfuck this. No, you don't. The only way you unfuck this is this like cholesterol wins. Yeah, I know, man. That's the, that is the great hope. You know, not only did he mobilize the National Guard, but he also, and this is really important,

he also mobilized 700 active duty Marines. Yeah, active Marines, yeah. We don't have our active duty military Marines. They're not trained for this. This is not their mission. That is not what we use. Our military should not be there in California where California is like, we don't need you here.

We don't need you here. This is a show of authoritarian force. What Trump has said about the no Kings protest, he said basically like, we're gonna do this big fucking idiot parade where I'm gonna have tanks roll down the fucking national monument square or whatever fucking nonsense he wants to do

and fucking shoot aircraft carriers into the sky or whatever nonsense. Like every dictator ever, right? to do and fucking shoot aircraft carriers into the sky or whatever nonsense, like every dictator ever. Right. He has said that protesters will be dealt with very, very harshly. Those are his words. Not, and this is really important, not violent protesters.

Protesters. We have a first amendment right to protest. We have a right to gather and peaceably assemble. We have a right to petition our government for redress for harm. We have a First Amendment right to free speech. This is the First Amendment. We're already seeing journalists being targeted, actively targeted, and shot at with less than lethal rounds by the police quelling our First Amendment rights, which continues to quell our right to a free press.

The First Amendment is under attack. That's the most important amendment. It's the, I don't know, the first fucking one of them, right? It is the most essential building block that holds our democracy together. And it is no coincidence that that is the first thing under attack by a fucking authoritarian military style dictator. That is what is happening here. Were there some bad actors in the protests setting like waymos on fire? Yeah.

Who? I'm like 100% people like should not go out and set fucking way modes on fire. That doesn't help anything. Like I am not a proponent of that. It doesn't help. But like that was little as few and far between the vast majority of these protests have been peaceable.

The vast majority of the protesters have been nonviolent. We have a right to this shit. We have a right. Civil disobedience is a responsibility in a civil society, in a free society, in a democratic society. Protests, the right to redress, these are important. These are the most important distinctions between us and a full authoritarianism. If we lose this, we lose what it means for us to be a democracy. The thing is that makes me crazy about fucking Newsome and so many other people is like we had an opportunity to not have this fucking happen.

This was not some inevitability. That was, this was not an inevitability. I know I'm, I won't do this again. I pro well, I want this again today. I promise. But like, I do need people to look and say like, please don't both sides this shit. Please don't both sides this shit. It's not both sides. Like there are no military parades down the fucking,

you know, Washington DC on the left, no matter how centered the left is, that's not happening. You know, like Think about the last summer of Trump's administration in 2020. It was a summer marked by violence by the cops. All that summer of 2020, there were the civil rights protests after the murder of George Floyd. And those protests were met with extreme violence and like there was no national culpability afterwards. No, right?

None. We have how many hundreds of videos of cops across cities all over America just beating the shit out of people, hitting them with cars, hitting them with bicycles, running into them with horses, beating them with batons, tear gassing them. Knocking an old dude down till his ear bleeds. Yeah, like beating a fucking veteran till they broke his arm, driving around in unmarked cars and kidnapping people,

shooting people, and we have it on, we covered it, we have it on like audio where they're driving around, shooting at people sitting on their porch during curfews. The cops, the jackboot thugs that are acting as cops in these scenarios are like, this is authoritarianism. This is the loss of your democracy. This is the loss of your rights. This was the defining feature of the summer of 2020. And it's the first thing we're back to in the summer of 2025. It's the first thing. You knew it was going to happen. Everybody knew it was going to happen. And everybody, I think, on the right that wants more authoritarianism knew Trump was going to do this because he

was so aggrieved from his previous stint. He's so mad and he's so upset. He has, if you listen to the difference between him talking in 2020 about whether or not he can send in troops and now the difference is stark. Yeah. You know, it's stark. The difference now is I'll do what the fuck I want because they gave him that card, that that card when they, they talked about whether or not he can be convicted after because of his, because he was the president, right?

Acting in, in an official capacity. These asshole Supreme Court justices that he put on there all fucking sided with him. And so now we have this, people knew he was gonna do this. You and I knew it, we talked about it for two years before he finally got elected. We knew he was gonna act like this. It doesn't take a really smart person

because neither of us are those guys. No. We knew it, going to act like this. It doesn't take a really smart person because neither of us are those guys. No. Right? We knew it. It was easy. The writing was on the wall. It's my hope that somehow some of these people that are in power, these governors and other people start to snatch back and hopefully we see federal law maybe step in. I know Newsom has already sued him on this.

So hopefully we start to see the federal people start to, the federal power start to shrink a little if the government can hold, if the courts can hold. But man, we've been saying a lot of ifs lately. There's a lot of ifs involved in Trump's presidency. And like I said earlier, I don't know how you unfuck this after we're all over with. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I like you know this next story that we're gonna talk about really genuinely is like yeah We're in an unstable country. So this is an opinion piece from New York Times from David French. America is no longer a stable country and the the really the the heart and soul of this story is

Talking about like like really what is civil disobedience? What is the government's responsibility to civil disobedience? And when these things flip, when the script flips and the government no longer allows its citizenry to exercise their rights, like we were talking about a moment ago, what happens is that we have a country which is unstable.

It shakes the foundation or the bedrock that like, not just intellectually, but legally and otherwise, that we've come to rely upon, that we're able to say, okay, like we might not all agree, but the stability of our nation comes from some shared values. Whether those values are even not individually or even socially held, even if that only value is the rule of law, the respect for the rule of law, who's in charge of making

which types of decisions. These are the things that give a country real stability. If we subvert that, we lose our ability to say that the United States is a stable country and as a superpower, that's an incredibly dangerous space for the world to be in. I was thinking the other day, Cecil, about empires and all empires throughout history have come and gone. You know, Noah recently wrote an episode about the charge of the light brigade for a citation

needed and he was talking about the Ottomans and the I was thinking about the charge of the light brigade for a citation needed. And he was talking about the Ottomans. And I was thinking about the Ottoman Empire. I was trying to make a joke, and it never came to fruition. I was trying to make a joke about the fall of empires. And then I kind of got to thinking about, I was musing about a little bit, like when empires in times past fell,

the danger was less, because they were not nuclear nations. Right? We were not living in this broadly, globally, economically interdependent sense that we're in now. Things were different. The world was a smaller world. So like if the Ottoman Empire collapsed and it was supplanted over time by another empire,

it's not like the Ottoman Empire collapsed and had a stockpile of world ending Armageddon machines. It's different now. Well, and even just like you mentioned globalization. Think about this, you know, you're the Ottoman Empire collapses and you're a farmer. You're still a farmer, right? You're still making the stuff. But here in the Midwest, we make grain and other things for the rest of the world. What happens if you collapse? Can I get the grain out? Can I get the new vegetables in?

Can I get other food in? Am I able to sustain us as a country or even as a community with being hyper-focused on one thing? Can I sustain us? What if there's nobody who's coming here because we're an unstable country? We're now like a fucking band of pirates

and people don't wanna show up here or drop any goods off because they're not gonna get anything back. So then you're fighting amongst yourself. What happens? What happens in that situation? We're not in a, you're not there yet, but you're in a situation that makes you think like, I certainly as

someone who is not in this country would not come to this country. I would not choose to be here right now. If I could be somewhere else and watch this from afar and think about this thing and say, that's a thing I'm observing like a scientist from like a half a world away. I'd be a lot more comfortable than living where I am now because we're in like they suggest. It's an unstable place. We don't know. Can you predict?

That's what stability is, right? It's a prediction. It's being able to predict what's next. Can you predict what Trump is gonna do tomorrow? You can't. Nobody knows. Even the closest people to him don't know. And he has gotten so much power in the last couple years, even if he wasn't in office,

through these court decisions that have come through, that he's essentially a king now. And we have whims. Whatever his whim is, he gets to make this decision. And in many cases, even if it gets overturned, for a while he had his whim, right? For a while it doesn't get overturned and he does have his whim and he does get to decide,

even if it's momentary, what gets to happen. So we're in a real, real difficult spot. Like we said earlier, like, I don't know, I don't know how you fix all this. I don't know what the next thing is. I don't know how you fix this. I think we've got to keep protesting. That's obvious.

You got to keep, and you got to make sure we hold the people, the leaders that are on our sides, feet to the fire. And you've got to convince the leaders on the other side that he's doing the wrong things. And you've got to show up in a year and a half. Oh my God. Like, like I, like I don't, you're like there, I cannot even stomach the notion of the idea of the plausibility of the argument.

Yeah. Of doing anything other than counter voting. You've got to get every Republican, you've got to take every Republican seat possible. You like, it doesn't matter if you hate the guy. Yeah, like I like I would vote for a Democrat that stabbed my kid in the eye at this point. I'd be like like for real, it's like anything that isn't the right because we have got to create barriers here. Yeah, like and like if you're overseas, this isn't 99 percent, but if they're overseas and you're watching this with some amount of glee, understand that as much as that may be genuinely morally warranted, that

phrase, like, with America sneezes, the world catches a cold, remember that the 2008 global recession started because America had a housing crisis and a banking crisis. There is no destabilizing of our country that does not destabilize the global economy and the globe and make all of us less safe. We all have a vested interest in stability and in democracy. stability and in democracy. If we can't preserve that first as our sort of like a shared reality that we're working toward, we're in deep shit. Like we're in deep shit.

And I understand looking backwards to try to think how can we do better in the future. So I understand if somebody's like, man, we should definitely have a full primary next time or whatever. Sure. I'm fine with that, right? Let's be critical. if somebody's like, man, we should definitely have a full primary next time or whatever. Sure. Sure. Yeah. I'm fine with that, right? But let's be critical.

But I don't, what I don't want to see is a bunch of people dwelling on the past and saying, see, I told you so. Because none of that's helpful, right? The I told you so stuff doesn't help anybody. And I don't even think you can do and I told you so with the previous election because it was so out of everybody's hands. Right.

It was so out of every single person's hands that we can look back and so the things that are coming up with Biden now we're like, Oh, maybe he wasn't all there during his presidency. You know, maybe maybe he should have stepped down earlier. All this stuff. It's like maybe would have should have could have. Yeah, absolutely. We should do that in the future. And let's be a little more critical about how we do things in the future.

But going back and spending all our time and fracturing ourselves over that, what's already under the bridge is useless. It is genuinely useless, wasted energy in my opinion, to fracture us more and more and more, talking about the past, talking about how wrong somebody else was about something that you're so righteous about. All that shit is garbage. What that is, and

I would be, I mean, this is pretty obvious. It's genuinely you being manipulated into not following a way to stop this because they recognize that if you unite, you're going to win. Yeah. Well, look, like, like we're in a place where we all have to, we're in a crisis, we are bleeding out, we have to stop the bleeding first. If we bleed out, we die. That's it.

So like, we have to vote. Like, it's the only power we have. The protesting is the precursor to the thing that makes the difference, right? Like, people say like, well, what's the value of the protesting is the precursor to the thing that makes the difference. Right? Like people say, like, well, what's the value of the protesting? Nothing changes. The protesting is the thing that creates the energy to get that second thing to happen.

If we protest without voting, we didn't do anything. We didn't do enough. We didn't, we didn't do the next thing. It's like, it's like, you know, step one, step two profit, right? Step two is fucking vote. Like you have got to do it. There is no, there is no way to not do that second piece. Like if we just do the first piece is if we just get mad,

if we just complain, if we just write blogs, if we just do podcasts, if we just show up and like protest and wave a sign, but we don't do the second thing, we'll keep bleeding. We have, in a crisis crisis you have to stop bleeding first. We'll figure out the rest later. The rest is important. But if we bleed out, it's over. It's just over. You keep talking like that and I'm gonna have to wash your mouth out. So the story comes from the Huffington Post. GOP Senator doubles down on

So this story comes from Huffington Post. GOP Senator doubles down on, we all are going to die, comment in a wild non-apology. This is Senator Joni Ernst. I think we covered it a few weeks ago. Senator Joni Ernst was basically doing a town hall, talking about Medicaid and cuts to Medicaid recipients being booted off the system. And she was like, I have somebody say yelled out like, but people are going to die. And she's like, well, we're all going to die. And this is, this is her reply to it. So, somebody said, yelled out, like, but people are gonna die. And she's like, well, we're all gonna die. And this is her reply to it. So, you know, cause some controversy. This is her response.

So let me just play it for everybody real quick so you can hear what she has to say. Hello, everyone. I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely apologize for a statement that I made yesterday at my town hall. See, I was in the process of answering a question that had been asked by an audience member

when a woman who was extremely distraught screamed out from the back corner of the auditorium, people are going to die. And I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that yes, we are all going to perish from this earth. So I apologize and I'm really really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well. But for those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace

my Lord and savior, Jesus Christ. Do you think that makes it worse or better? Well, here's what it does. Here's what it does. Here's what it does. It clarifies her stance, right? Which was perfectly fucking clear before. And it's a stance that like, nobody should be surprised about. The goal is that, like the lack of empathy is not like a bug.

No, no, that's she's, this is a gloating. Yes. Yeah. No, no, that's she's this is a gloating. Yes. Yeah This is a message to say all those people who don't agree with me. I don't fucking care. Yeah, you weren't gonna I don't I don't fucking care what you think. I don't care fuck all about all you people Yeah So if we take away Medicaid from some of you constituencies and some of you die because you don't get care I never fucking cared about you in the first fucking place from some of you constituencies and some of you die because you don't get care, I never fucking cared about you in the first fucking place.

So I'm, you know, like there's a part of me that really wishes some of these people would get the comeuppance they deserve. Cause this is a bully move. Of course. This is a bully, right? Like she is bullying the American people and she's gloating in front of the American people.

And you wish that these people could get some come up and something bad would happen to them. Like you'd lose your job or so that would be a scandal of some sort. We're past that point. That's not a thing anymore. You can say the most callous fucking thing in the world to the people who you represent in government and it does not matter anymore. And so we're in a terrible situation if that's the case.

I feel like this is one of those moments though if you watch this you're seething. You're seething because you're just like I want something, I want you to experience some comeuppance for the bad things that you're doing and we'll never get to experience that. This is like watching the fucking Handmaid's Tale because like there's never a moment in that series where you're like, ah, the bad guy. I know. I just watch that show. I watched the first two seasons.

I mean, granted, something happens in the third season where that kind of happens. But the first two seasons, I was like, dude, this is like nut torture. Like, I can't watch this. It's just like the lady just gets the shit kicked out of her the whole time. Like, nobody wins.

I'm like, no, no, the good people win. All the bad people win. I don't want to watch bad people win all the time. They gotta lose some. Sometimes. And you're living this right now. Right. Well, a couple of things are also really important

about this when I was reading this article. The first is like, she's doing this, she's filming this in a graveyard. She's filming this in a cemetery. So she's trolling. Yeah. Right, she's filming this in a graveyard. She's filming this in a cemetery. So she's trolling. Yeah, right, she's trolling. And the purpose of the trolling obviously is to create a reaction from the people

that were always going to react to it, that's part of it. But this is also a virtue signal on the right. This is how the right virtue signals out, right? She's saying, she's creating this content now. She's probably gleeful, like, thank you so much for the content because what she wants to do is to use this messaging to create this video to reach out to the other people

that support this level of callousness to say, hey guys, we always wanted to disenfranchise these people. I am actively working to make that happen for you. She got voted in, she'll probably get voted in again, right? She's making this video because she knows this appeals to her voters. If this didn't appeal to her voters, she wouldn't double down on it. So she sees this as an opportunity, as a political opportunity, and that should tell you something about the value system that supports this, that props this up and

that demands this kind of blood sacrifice. Yeah. Right? Because that is what this is. What these guys on the right want is they want their blood sacrifice. And this was a great, she's, if she would not make this response video, if she knew people weren't politically masturbating to it, but there a group of people that I eat this shit. Yeah, and those are bad people. They're bad. Those are bad people Yep, I don't want to write off every single person who disagrees me with me in the world is a bad person

No, I think that that's a bad way to think But I do think anybody who's gleeful and has no empathy for another human being and is gleeful When there's a bully on your side punishing people, I think you're a bad person. What else would being a bad person mean? I think you're a bad human being. You need to redirect your fucking thoughts inward and try to fix yourself because you're genuine.

Like the true magas out there, the true magas that get joy out of this bullying, there is something seriously wrong with our culture that reinforces this and continues to churn this. It's such a fucking shame that we look back on the fucking awful fucking people that were in politics in the late 80s and early 90s and think those people were virtuous.

Yeah, yeah. It's a shame. It is. That that's the case. But genuinely, in comparison to today's politicians, those people are fucking saints. They're saints. Well, I think, you know, part of the difference too, though, Cecil, is like those people were serious people.

And now there's a, there's a sort of like lack of seriousness that surrounds this lack of empathy. So it's like, it's like a fucking shit truffle Yeah, you know, it's a shit flavor truffle with a shit coating. Everything is just layers of shit Yeah, it's an everlasting gobstopper of different fucking flavors of shit like on but the corn level Yeah, oh look, I made it into the corn level guys. Oh, yeah. Keep going. Keep peanut They took the president took his DNA and put an imposter in the White House, kidnapping, robbery and fraud. That's what I call breaking the law.

This story comes from Fox News. Trump shares posts saying Biden was executed, replaced with clones. I mean, okay, Tom, just read this real quick. This is literally shared on his truth social. This was a truth doubt or fucking whatever by at LIIJH. So cool. There is no Joe Biden executed in 2020. Biden clones doubles and robotic engineered

soulless mindless entities are what you see. Democrats don't know the difference. Hashtag steal, hashtag us steel, hashtag MAGA, hashtag Maha. And then there's a photo of Donald Trump from 40 years ago. See, it's gotta be 40 years ago. From like, let's just pause here and imagine what you have to believe is true that there are robot clones that there are just robot first of all if there were robot clones these would be for sale to fuck immediately they would be before we made a pile

yeah let's be honest about who we are who we are as people the first thing we do with any technology is we fuck it. We fuck it. We fuck it. If we can't fuck it, we're not expanding its use case. Doesn't. That's a... It fails after the board room. That's it.

For sure. That's it. So like if there were robot clones of people, there would just be robot clones. You'd be fucking one right now while you're listening to this. Like a hundred percent. As soon as chat GPT came out, people sexted with it. Like as soon as it came out, they're like, talk sexy to me. I want a hundred percent. As soon as Chad GPT came out, people sexted with it. Like as soon as it came out, they're like, talk sexy to me. That's it.

I wanna beat off. So you have to, and you also have to believe that he was executed. Now executed, like that's a state sponsored thing. Well. But usually, right? Like military tribunal, you could do it secretly. That's what they've been saying for years.

So like, okay, so the military is like, oh, we gotta execute Joe Biden. Okay Why would you be do that secretly? Why would you do that secretly? And then why would you replace him? At all what you are spending so much time in a place that's so far away from the hashtag. I'm sorry I guess I gotta get all right. I got like I recognize all that stuff is crazy. But let's focus on US Steel for a second. What do you think the robots are made of? Well, I was thinking it was, like, this was like a tie-in to Skynet somehow. Like, the Terminators made his deal.

And he's getting lowered down, down into the fucking back. Magma or whatever. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. And he's getting his little thumb I don't know dude us steel though like that's what I don't understand. I don't get it. I don't understand it I don't know what's happening. I Spend a lot of my time not knowing what's happening, but really genuinely This again is one of those things like even if it's not mean it's stupid Yeah, those are the two options you have you have to flip you have two switches. It's either mean or it's not mean, it's stupid. Like those are the two options you have. You have two switches.

It's either mean or it's obnoxiously stupid. And those two switches are constantly being flipped and there's no repercussions for either one of those things. You could be as callous and unfeeling as possible. That's celebrated. Or you can post literally the stupidest thing in the world. Someone should hit you in the face. They should be like,

like you ever seen that scene in airplane where the person is going, like they're having a, like a mental breakdown and there's a whole line of people and they're all smacking them and there's somebody with like brass knuckles behind them. Somebody's like sharpening a knife or whatever. Like there should be a line of people. If you say something this stupid and you're in politics,

there should be a line of people that line up and they have boxing gloves on and they're ready to punch you and they're just like, no, you said the stupidest thing possible. You can't even defend yourself. You're not allowed. You have to put your hands behind your back and take what's coming to you. Like that slap fighting shit. It's like, genuinely, we let slide the stupidest thing. Stupidest!

This is the stupidest thing you could possibly say. And what I love about it is that even in it, it declares its own validity and then says the other side is stupid for not believing it. I know! And then like fucking Trump re-truths it, right? He re-truths this thing. There are nobodiesuths it, right? He re-truths this thing. There are nobodies asking about it, right?

It's because it's just like, oh, it's a crazy thing he did. But here's what else is fucking nuts about this. Like just this last week, so Donald Trump truths out a fucking whatever, some insane shit about secret executions and robot clones and all this like madness. Just this last week, there was a fucking news anchor, I think a CBS news anchor, I forgot his name, who on his own personal page was critical

of the Trump administration and he got fired. Like the press secretary came out and was like, this is an unacceptable way for anyone in the press to talk about the president and it has to violate some policy over at CBS and CBS fired that guy for being mean basically. That guy has a lot less power. He's punching up, right? So even if what he says is mean spirited and unkind or whatever, at the end of the day,

he's a civilian punching up. When Donald Trump uses his platform to punch down, because everything is down, everything is down, right? Everything is down. It would be considered gauche to call him out on it. Nobody can say anything. Nobody can say anything. Nobody can say they get told they're asked nasty or stupid questions. Right. When they ask a question, a very pointed question like, hey, man, are you going to like turn your fucking the military on peaceful protesters? Like, that's a stupid question. Next one, you're like, but that doesn't answer it.

Yeah, right. That's not a, that certainly didn't answer that question. Yep. It's like, and like that question is like, I don't know, man, there's fucking 700 active duty Marines being deployed into a fucking civilian space. And he's just like, robots, robots ate Joe Biden's heart or like Fucking, again, if you want to know if there's robots, ask yourself, are we fucking them? Are we fucking them?

And who would fuck a Donald Trump robot? Jesus Christ. I'd fuck a Joe Biden one though. Get over here Scranton Joe. It's from NPR. I heard you like ice cream cones? All in the markets together. All differences forgotten and no need at all to mention the war.

Oh, that was it. When you said porn, I thought you said war. Oh, the war. Oh, yes. Completely slipped my mind. Yes, I've forgotten all about it. Hitler, Himmler and all that. Oh, yes. Completely forgotten it. Just like that.

Oh my guys from NPR, which still exists temporarily for a while. Former Doge engineers says federal waste and fraud were relatively nonexistent. He got fired for saying, this is a really interesting article though. Yeah. Like really interesting. This calls to mind something you said really early on when we were covering this stuff. This was right when Dodra was starting

and you stopped us in the middle of this and you said, are we sure there's fraud? Are we sure? You didn't say fraud. You said, are we sure there's waste? You of course didn't believe the fraud, right? But immediately you're like, are we sure there's waste? Cause I don't know that there's waste

I mean we were taught that that people say oh, there's got to be waste in government. Do we know do we actually know that? Do we know for sure and what's really interesting is here's a guy who you know I think when you look at some of these certainly businesses and the way businesses are run There's no way to like Have checks and balances and everything that you do to make sure that everybody's doing everything that they should be doing at all times, right? There's going to be somebody who slips through the gears or doesn't pull their weight and they stay there for a while or whatever, however it works. You know, like businesses, it doesn't matter how it works.

Somebody is going to be doing something that they're not, like they're not actually doing their job or they're not doing a good job, et cetera. But when it comes to the government, there's tons of checks and balances in place. There's tons of scrutiny involved. And you're seeing someone who went in with this idea that I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna cut out all this abuse. And they see it and they're like, there's not anything. Like there's not this waste, fraud,

and abuse stuff that's happening. It's just not occurring. And then they decide to do an interview about this because they, they were told from the beginning that, that Doge is going to be as transparent as possible and how they do these things and how they operate. So they think, well, if they were transparent, they won't mind me talking about it. And they immediately are fired as soon as they do it. Immediately got their access revoked. They weren't actually fired either. They were ghosted. Yeah, which is- They were just ghosted.

What? But genuinely, I recall you saying, are we sure? Are we positive that that's even the case? We hear it, but do we know? Right, and I remember that conversation. I was gonna bring that up again relative to this because the people I know that have worked for the government always say

they're operating on a shoestring. Yeah. They always say the same thing like, oh yeah, we're always understaffed always say they're operating on a shoestring. Yeah. They always say the same thing like, oh yeah, we're always understaffed. We're always operating on a shoestring. And then there's, and I believe those people, right? I believe them because they're the people on the ground that I know doing work on the ground. And that is very contrary to this idea of massive government bloat.

Yeah. Right? We're taught that our whole lives, but we're not taught that by people in the know. We're taught that by politicians because it's an easy talking point. Nobody says that at the educational level. It's not like that comes up in your civics class. It's not being drilled into you from an academic source.

It's not coming to you from the people doing the work. It's always coming to you as a media narrative that is being delivered by generally politicians and then whitewashed through the media as a press release or like, we're covering this politician's speech. And so it creates this background idea that we carry around with us that our government has all this massive inefficiency and bloat.

We also carry around this idea that anything that can be done by the government is done inefficiently. And that it would always be more efficient to do it through the private sector. But like, when you look at, I was literally just listening to a two-part episode, two-part series episode on the Washington or the Wall Street Journal podcast called The Journal and it was about Medicare Advantage.

So Medicare Advantage is basically where Medicare is being run, is paid for by Medicare, but it's being run by private insurers and like two parts series short, it's worse. It's less efficient and it's more full of grift and stealing and bloat when it's run by these insurance companies. It's a lot worse. We keep finding that to be true. We keep finding that over and over and over again, that when we really look into these things government does tend to actually do a better job than private sector does.

Very, very often that's the case. But we have this idea that we carry around with us that it's $800 toilet seats. Because like one time something, when the machine gets big enough there's going to be mistakes. But it's not like there's not big private sector machines. There are huge private sector machines. They make mistakes and have mistakes too. When we look at them stand back overall, I don't believe that the government is full of you know people sitting around on the dole collecting checks for doing nothing. I don't think that's the norm.

And I don't think it because nobody's ever shown it to me. And I think too, there's another segment of this. There's two actual two segments of this. We talked about waste. So we just covered waste, but fraud and abuse, right? So abuse is easy to point people to and easy to manipulate people on because you make it sound absurd. So you say, we're giving condoms to, you know, kids in Africa, we're vaccinating children for STDs that they won't, they won't

ever encounter until they're much later in life or something like, you know, like there's a way to make anything you want sound absurd, right? We covered this on the NoRogan experience, but there's, they bring in, Joe Rogan reads aloud a tweet that he found that talks about five or six of these programs and how much money we were spending. Now, when you listen to the money dollars,

it sounds a lot to you or me, like where it's like a couple million or 10 million or whatever. It sounds like a lot of money, but it's not. It's tiny amount when it comes to the government, but they're talking about pottery classes in this country, Sesame Street for Iraqis. They make it sound silly,

but when you think about why it's there or what it's doing, it really does make sense. And some of these programs failed. And a failed program, sure, I mean, we can make fun of it, but you had to try to see if you're gonna do it. And Soft Power is all about that sort of trying and figuring out what sticks. But it's real easy to make it sound silly.

And then the fraud part, I mean, genuinely, like listening to Joe Rogan's show, they think, this is what Joe Rogan thinks, because he was told this by Elon Musk on his program. Jesus Christ. That all you have to do is just sign up for this. All I have to do is gall somebody in the government, say I'd like to start a grant where I'm doing,

and it doesn't matter, whatever, I'm just gonna make anything up. And the person on the other end of the phone was like, yeah, it doesn't matter, you can just make anything up. Do I need proof of that? No, you don't need any proof of that. And then we send them millions of dollars. Right. And then they somehow think that that money

sort of either filters back into a campaign fund or into these people's pockets that are approving it. But, and this is said by Elon Musk blatantly on the air that even if they would have sent me just, send me a picture of what you're doing, I wouldn't cut their funding, but they couldn't even do that. The amount, the ways in which you have to get that funding is so deep and difficult and hard and fucking Byzantine. And you've got

to fill out a bunch of fucking essays and then go through interview processes. And then even to get to the very last step, they can say no, right? They can, there's all this extra shit, but, but we've been told by these really crafty politicians that there's this group of people out there who are stealing our money. They're taking your money. They're taking your money, Tom, and they're making an Iraqi Sesame Street with it. Instead of you having your money,

that four cents that you would have saved on that tax, and we don't create more people that hate America, you're saying this is better. It's better four cents spent in your pocket than it is if it's, you know, this other thing that gets spent out, you know, by the rest of the world. So I have, it's funny, you may,

I have some personal experience in my day job with how difficult it is to get a government contract. So my day job, one of the things that falls under my purview is the sale of certain kinds of information, property information, and it's boring to go into. So we sell certain kinds of property information. And from time to time, the federal government and state governments and local governments will have some need for this research. And in order

for you to be considered to be a provider for this research. And in order for you to be considered to be a provider of this research, paid provider of this research, you have to go through their hoops, right? So we get contacted every once in a while, I'll be like, hey, would you like to complete an RFP, a request for proposal for this project that the federal government is working on?

And here's what it would entail. And Cecil, do you know how many of those I've actually finished and gotten through the finish? Zero. Zero. It is an immense amount of work for like very low, like the dollars they wanna pay are well under market value compared to what I sell that same product for,

like commercially on the street, so to speak. And then those RFPs, it's not, I don't pick up the phone and say, hi, I'm Tom, I'm with such and such company, I'd like to sell this. It's like a year long process of forms and applications. We gotta get like legal involved, compliance guys involved. And I'm like, the amount of time it would take in man hours

to complete the RFP actually makes it not worthwhile to get the business. So I reject the RFPs. I don't, I'm just like, it's not, I actually, I did it. I did the math and I'm like, I would spend more hours of my manpower trying to get through the labyrinth to be considered to get the business that will be worth less than the man hours I would put into trying to get it. So I actually like, we get man hours I would put in to try to get it.

So I actually like, we get them, I was like, no, turn that down. Like I'll look and be like, no, it's too, the scope of the project won't meet the actual cost to begin asking to pretty please do the project. It's a nightmare, man. It's not like, this is what grant writers, it's a whole job, that's a whole ass specialty.

Yeah, that's a whole career. People spend their, you know, tons of time trying to figure out how to word those things so that they can actually succeed. Yeah. Okay. It's that, it's that, it's that. But like you suggest though, we've been told this lie that the government's inefficient, that there's fraud, that there's abuse, and none of those things came to light. Because if there was fraud, they'd have charged them. If there was waste, you would have, we would have seen that there was waste. What you did was you fired a bunch of people

on the pretense there was waste. And now you're trying to hire a lot of them back. You're trying to hire them back, because now everything's seizing up. Yeah, and like I was just this morning looking for like, like I was reading an article, that like now like there's a huge number of people whose like tax returns are delayed,

and they're getting like bills as if they didn't pay their taxes and they have a return coming like the IRS is all fucked up right now Because they fired the IRS fucked it up. I'm saying that when the president does it that means it's not illegal His stories from ABC News Trump administration argues it complied with court order to return a brego Garcia So kilmar a brego Garcia was brought back to the US. He was brought back, he will be facing charges. Which is what should have happened in the first place. Yes, he never should have been fucking deported

to fucking El Salvador against a court order. If they wanted to charge him with a crime, they should have just charged him with a crime. I really cynically believe that what they did is they said, we're not bringing him back until we can put him in a different prison. So let's find another way to put him in a prison because we have to be able to show if the Trump administration brought him back and said, you're free to go, that would be a big black eye. If they bring him back and put, you're free to go. That would be a big black guy. If they bring them back and put them into just a different prison, then they can all take a victory lap and say, Hey, we told you, we told you this guy was a bad guy. Yeah.

Well, and that's the thing is like, I don't ever want to go off. You told me, right? We should never accept that as a, as a possible way for our justice system to work. That guy said you were bad and you're bad and that, and then we're going to, we're going to punish you for it. That's not how this works. There's a jury of your peers. Yeah.

Or there's a judge who overhears this case and makes a decision based on the evidence. That's how our justice system works. And it works like that for every single person. So if you're gonna make a suggestion that this person was an absolute criminal for years, for 10 years, transporting people up over the border, breaking our immigration laws, multiple times, every transport, if you're going to say that, then why didn't you do it before?

Why didn't you do it before you shipped them out? Why didn't you? Because you didn't have the stuff. That's probably why. And look, I'm happy if you prove your case in front of a court and all this stuff, and it actually is real and not just trumped up or whatever, I'm happy to be like, cool, but it should have happened like that in the first place. And you did something wrong. Nothing will change the fact that you tried

to fucking pass go and you didn't collect your whatever, you tried to jump past it. You tried to skip these processes that are literally enshrined in our way of life here. And you tried to skip them. And that's, and I don't care, I don't care how, if he turns out to be the most guilty person in the world, it doesn't matter.

You still did something wrong. Look, think about it another way. Imagine it wasn't, it had nothing to do with immigration, right? Imagine if a police officer knew in his heart of hearts and his brain of brains that I was a killer and he drove over to my house and he shot me in the face and killed me. Yeah, man.

Right? And he said, and then later they found out, yes, Tom was a killer. There were 75 bodies buried in his basement, right? And like a note, and there was DNA on every one of them. And there was a handwritten note and videotaped evidence. So they were as right as you could possibly be. It would still be wrong of that police officer

to execute me, right? Meet out vigilante justice. That's not how the system is supposed to work because we have systems in place for a good reason. You cannot violate that due process system. You can't eliminate due process. You can't just have people at any level of authority make unilateral choices about the guilt, the innocence,

and just be like, this one does, this one is special and doesn't get due process. And especially when you've already admitted you made a mistake. Like you start out the whole conversation where your guy let it slip that you made a mistake. Exactly, yeah. We made a mistake, we're sorry, we made a mistake.

That guy wasn't supposed to be on there, where that was our fault. You already admitted that. And then you go back and you find all this stuff after the fact. How should I, why should I believe you that you did that? You somehow missed all this stuff ahead of time and couldn't hold a proper immigration, a proper immigration hearing for this person beforehand. You had to ship them away, admit you were wrong in front of everybody.

That guy's gone now, by the way, the person who admitted they were wrong, they're gone now. And now you've got to come back and be like, we were never wrong. We've never been never been wrong. We've always been at war with your always been at war. You've never been wrong. Not a single time. They will never admit it.

Not a bit. So when I drive into that telephone pole, you're going to shoot through the windshield and then I'll never have to hear about fucking chem trails and 9-11 and mind control and fucking lizard people again. This story is from the Guardian and Cecil. This is good news. Our eight US states, they are seeking to outlaw chem trails, even though they are not real. I am very curious to know what they're going to do when the laws of physics continue to

apply in the air. Imagine how great this is going to be the moment they're like, yeah, they're outlawed. And then a jet flies over saying, like, we said that was outlawed. What are you going to do? What can you do? Nothing is going to change. There's no like this is outlawing Bigfoot. Like there are no Bigfoots allowed on my property

I feel so yeah, like here's a stone that'll prevent big foot. Yeah, what's working? You don't see any Bigfoots, dude I we we are genuinely I I am curious Are we the stupidest country because I feel like we're the stupidest country. I feel like we are the dumbest because I feel like we're the stupidest country. I feel like we are the dumbest, genuinely stupidest country out there. Because I can't imagine another country enshrining in law something so obviously fake. Dude, I don't... Except for Vatican City, like other than that.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, okay. That's very true. I don't know if we're the stupidest country because like I don't know enough about like the stupid shit that goes on all over. I do hear about stuff that happens sometimes in Britain and I'm like, that's a fucking mess. That makes no sense.

I look at something like this though and I'm like, do you ever get a sense, this is gonna sound crazy, do you ever, I'll actually port this over to something entirely different, do you ever watch a video of a person physically doing something unbelievable and you think that person just isn't made of the same kind of body. They are like evolved in some way that I am not involved. I watch a video. There was a, there was a lady who has, I was just watching

this thing yesterday. There's a woman who has Cushing's disease, which my wife is struggling with right now. And it's a big deal. And she had two brain surgeries to get rid of it. It's a whole thing. And she recovered from it. And then she became the first woman to set this like Atlantic speed record rowing across the Atlantic solo, like unbelievable. And she's like, yeah, my first day I did 56,000 kilometers or something. And I'm just like, your body isn't made of the same, like we're not the same animal.

What the fuck? I look at it, I'm like, we are not the same animal. Like I am, we always call ourselves all humans, but like I kind of like, I read this and I'm like, I don't think we're all the same, man. I feel like, yeah, this is the other end of the spectrum. This is the other end of the spectrum. Where you're like, oh, let me help you with that food.

Yeah. I'll open that can of pop for you. Right? Yeah. Right, I'm just that can of pop for you. Right? Yeah. Right, I'm just like, oh, like, I don't know, like, how evolution works, but I feel like- No, honey, honey, you push the button, and the door opens when you push the button.

It feels like we're not, like, one of these things is not like the other. If you think there's fucking chemtrails, and fucking big feetses and shit, big feats and shit fucking I'm like I don't know man. Like I don't know that like we should breed Together, you know, like I know that like man, I feel like breed a dog and a wolf Yeah, but like they're not the same species, you know It's a wolf wolf

It's just a bad idea really is man we're in a where when I see this and I'm like It's just a bad idea. It really is, man. We're in a, when I see this and I'm like, this should be the people who are, you need to talk about leadership. And you're like, the people in charge, the people who are making laws, they should be leaders.

And then you see this and you think, you don't have any idea what you're doing. You're just a really dumb person that everybody said, yeah, let's put that dumb person in charge. And then you're like, oh no, this this isn't just think about how they handle the budget. Yeah, right. And like, how would you handle complicated stuff if you don't even know that this isn't real? How do you handle the most complicated thing?

I don't know, man. I think like we've talked about this before, and I know this bad idea for reasons, but I also am like, yeah, but I don't care. I got an idea. Like we have certain requirements to hold office, right? You got to be like to be president. You got to be 35 years old. Like, can't we have some kind of, you're not a fucking idiot. Can we just have flashcards where you just hold it up and if it's big foot, they're like real or not real. And then you're just like, yeah, man, you can't be, I'm sorry. Yes. Like Bigfoot, real, up, nope. Take the guy out the other side.

Yeah, right. And out the other side is like a cliff you throw about. Like, you just like, Climbs trails? Those are real. Yep, off the cliff. Like a Sarlacc trap. Yeah, just yeah.

Just like right into the Sarlacc pit. Oh, like a trap door. Right. Yeah, or a James Bond ejector seat. I'm not saying we put, yeah. You just get fucking catapulted into the fucking stratosphere and then figure out how you're gonna come down, grab onto a chemtrail while you're up there,

and swing back down to Earth. The moon's made of cheese, you'll have plenty to eat up there, dumbass. Yikes. I'm not saying we put everybody that's a dumbass in down the trap door, but I'm saying like if you run for office? If you put yourself out there,

we should be able to say I'm sorry Yeah, there's a fucking flashcard test. It's so easy. How do we miss? How are we failing a flashcard test? We're failing it though All right, that's gonna wrap it up for this week We're back with a long form show or no, it's a funny show this week. Funny show this week, long form next week, but funny show this week, and then we'll be back on Monday with another full show.

So we're gonna catch you then, but we're gonna leave you like we always do with the Skeptic's Creed. 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 free energy healing, water downward spiral brain dead

pan sales pitch, late night info docutainment. Leo Pisces, cancerures 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 Vaccine Nuts Shaman Healers Evangelists Conspiracy Double-speak stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this.

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