Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 901: The DOJ Hid Trump's Epstein Files and 2025: Zero Job Growth

Episode Date: March 2, 2026

Democratic lawmaker: 'If a Prince can be held accountable, so can a President' US women's gold medal-winning hockey team declines Trump State of the Union invitation F.B.I. Director Celebrates Hockey Victory as Bureau Stares Down Crises Supreme Court strikes down Trump's tariffs : NPR Rep. Al Green ejected from Trump State of the Union after holding 'Black People Aren't Apes' sign Secret Service says an armed man was shot and killed after entering Mar-a-Lago's secure perimeter | PBS News NPR finds DOJ withheld, removed some Epstein files related to Trump U.S. had almost no job growth in 2025

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According live from Gloryhole Studios in Chicago and beyond, this is cognitive distance. 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, February the 26th, and Cecil yesterday, yesterday, or day before, I don't know,

doesn't matter. There was the State of the Union address. Yeah. The longest one in history. I didn't watch it. I didn't watch it either. Yeah, this was one. I normally forced myself to do it, but I knew what it was going to be.

It was going to be wall-to-wall lies. Yeah. And I don't think he said anything of substance or anything believable in a long time. And so I knew there's another thing that. I think is going to be a theme, a through line for most of the stories we cover tonight, that the party of trolling is doing its very best to continue to be the party of trolling. And I think literally what that was was a trolling grandstand. So what they wanted to do was make people angry because that makes them feel better and it makes their base feel better.

And I'm just not, I'm not playing into it. I'm like, okay, that's cool. You had a state of the union. I have no idea what you said. I mean, I read about it, but I didn't listen to it. So I'm good. Yeah, I read about it to see what he talked about. I know he talked for the previous record was like 99 minutes.

And I think that was held by Bill Clinton. And he fucking blew past that with well over two hours. But you know what a Trump speech is. It's a series of like lies and grievances while he just makes shit up and then yells at people and never gets to the fucking point and does the fucking bob and weave or whatever the fuck he calls it. And, like, he, the only thing I was really interested to see if he was going to do. You knew he was going to lie about the economy and gaslight everybody into thinking that, like, the Dow Jones is the same thing as their pocketbook.

Yeah, and affordability is a, is a hoax. Right. That whether or not you can buy your groceries is a conspiracy theory. Yeah. Like, what is that? Yeah. So, you knew all that was going to be a bunch of bullshit. There wasn't going to be anything substantive in there.

You knew he was going to grouse about the Supreme Court. So like, I wanted to know if he was going to lay out a case for attacking Iran. A lot of people thought that maybe they might. Yeah, right. Yeah. That was my big like, okay, did he do it? Did he lay out a case? And everything that I read was like, he just basically was like, Iran's bad.

And that's it. And I was even listening to coverage this morning where it's like there still is not a clear and definitive. Here are the policy and like actual diplomats. Obamatic objectives we are trying to achieve. I think he's just like, I can move my risk boats around. Yeah. I feel like you're battleship?

I can move my battleships around. Yeah. This is cool. I have to wonder if he's like one of those like old civil war generals where he's got like a map and he like move stuff with the stick. Got a big long stick with a little end on it. Push it out there. It's like a shuffleboard thing.

Yes. Yeah. That's what I was thinking. He's like very carefully like two handedly drinking his water so he doesn't spill it over the map, you know. chewing it. How many times, and this doesn't just go for Trump, it's a two and a half hour speech, long time.

Ridiculous. How many times did people pee themselves in the audience and on stage, do you think? Over under, like if you were going to guess, there's a lot of people there, right? There's a lot of, and there's a lot of like octogenarians. That's right. So it's a count as peeing yourself if you're wearing the depends.

Like if you're wearing it. No, I think that does count. Does that count? sure. I mean, it's going to be warm for a second. Well, now I feel bad. I mean, these are long records, Cecil. These are long records. I figure that you probably had at least

45 peed pants. That's just Mitch McConnell. That's just Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell just is sitting there and his penis is just flapping around like a fucking fire hose just shooting everywhere. Yeah, but I mean, like two and a half hours is a long time to wait.

I wonder what the bathrooms were like during and after. Does anybody get up during? That's a good quiet. Do they not have like biology breaks for the state of the union? Do they have people like the Oscars that they fill your seat with somebody else? They have seat fillers standing on the side. Do they do that at the Oscars? They do that at the Oscars.

I didn't know this. So if you leave your seat in the Oscars, they'll, someone else will come over like an actor. Or will sit, like someone who they're paying will sit in that seat until you get up and you leave. Now I'm saying it out loud. It's something I've read, but I can't remember where. so Tom do not take me at face value. No, this is a true thing. Absolutely locked in gospel.

I will say it's not only the first time I heard it. I heard it multiple times. Interesting. And I think that they've even made jokes about it on stage, like the guy who's doing the thing has made jokes about it. Or the gal who's running the Oscars has made jokes about it. I had no idea. I mean, it kind of makes sense.

You don't want to pan over a crowd and see empty seats. I think what you have to do is the empty seats get filled by state senators. So the state senators have to all stand in the back. And, you know, like if your state senator has to fill in the house seats or whatever, I think it would be really funny. Did you see that only like four people from the Supreme Court made it? I did not. Yeah. So not.

Really? Everyone from the Supreme Court came. Only four. And four of those people, I think, voted for, was it three of them or something like that, voted against his big tariff thing. So was a tariff thing was in a shot. It was a six three shoot down, right? Yeah. So it was pretty definitive shootdown.

Yeah, it was definitive. It was just, so Alito voted against it and Roberts voted against it along with, and then there was the three just justices and Amy Coney Barrett voted against it. So it was just Kavanaugh Alito or, yeah, Cabinow Alito, yeah, because Gorsuch voted against it. So Kavanaugh and Thomas. Thomas. Those guys are, they are thick as thieves. They're rubber stamps.

They are, they are actual thieves. Yeah. Yeah. Because they're fucking corrupt, shitty boat people. Yeah. they're just like on a yacht like oh i gotta do i gotta say yes to trump yeah send my rubber stamp it's fine but but but they were there there was a small contingent there they were gonna talk about a couple stories of things that happened there but for the most part it was just lying it's just waldwell lying

and grandstanding and also um there was a i don't know did you see the the yelling that happened between elan omar and him yeah yeah yeah so yeah that happened i guess elan omar and a couple and i think Rashida Talib were in the audience. They were screaming, you're killing Americans, which is a true statement. Very true. Yeah. And he said, he had comments to call him nasty and awful and whatever. So he stopped and he said

they were un-American and awful and shitty, etc. They hate America, etc. It's like, yeah, I hate America when they kill their own citizens. Sure. Yeah, I don't love that about America. I don't like lots of things that we're doing. Also on board that I hate America then. You can just be like America hater. Okay.

Sure. Yeah. Well, like I'm not like pro everything we do when we do the wrong things because I'm not a fucking psycho weirdo cult member. That's what cults do, man. Like literally like if you are, if everything you do is like everything the government does because that's my team or whatever, I'm going to justify. I'm not going to be critical of. That's a crazy stance to take. That's an insane. That's cult shit. Something given has no value. Look, when you vote, you are exercising political authorities. You're using force. And force my friends is violence, the supreme authority from which all other authority is derived.

Uh, my mother always said violence never solves anything. Really? I wonder what the city fathers of Hiroshima would say about that. You. They probably wouldn't say anything. Hiroshima was destroyed. Correct. This is great.

This is from NBC News. Representative Al Green ejected from Trump's State of the Union after holding a black people, Apes sign. So this is a direct reference to a fucking tweet or a truth or whatever it was that Trump himself posted. Yeah.

Refused to apologize for and that showed the Obamas as monkeys or apes. And again, refused to apologize for it. And what I love about this is that we shouldn't ever let stuff go. I think we're doing a

thing that plays into the administration's hand, which is almost impossible not to do. So I don't want to be that critical of it. But because there is a new fresh hell every 15 minutes, we let go of the last thing. And it's like, well, that's old news. But like, it's a fucking, like all this stuff would be disqualifyingly awful. And we just let this shit go.

And I think we got to stop letting stuff go. We just never let it go. You're absolutely right. When you flood the zone, it seems like you can only pay attention to the surface of the water. but there's so much underneath. It's full of things that were flooded into the zone, right? The whole, like, it is raising all boats. Like, this is a genuine amount of flooding that is, there's so much.

We talked about it at the beginning of the year where I said, I should write down these horrible things that happened per week because we will forget what happened. And it's true, you will forget what happened. This is one of those things that got, it was literally out of our consciousness within four days, no one was talking about it anymore. And it's a real important thing.

And I'm happy he did this. What I would love to see is the Republican that came up to try to grab it out of his hand and the final Republican who reached out and pulled that thing and tore that up, get fucking socked in the nose.

I would love to see somebody just fucking break the jaw of the person who goes to take the sign away from a house member like that. Like, you're essentially assaulting them. You're going up to them and trying to take something from them. a piece of their property.

I think, you know what? If you got a fucking broken jaw out of that deal, I would not care about it at all. I would be like, oh, that's fine. Maybe you won't say stupid shit for the next couple months. Right. Yeah, man.

Fucking drink your fucking food through a straw and see how you feel. Look, if, if, imagine, imagine a world where you see a sign, you see somebody holding up a sign that says, black people aren't apes, and you're mad at that guy. And you think I need to tear that out of his hand.

I'm mad at that guy. Yeah. That guy is saying, I'm mad. You are sending the wrong image. You got to respect the guy who said that. Because like that sign, it's like I, like they would, you know how they would paint this, right? They would paint this as like, it's not that I'm racist. Yes, you are. That's why the sign upsets you. It's not that I'm racist is that this is disrespectful to the office of the president. It's like the president is the motherfucker who on using the biggest bullhorn in the world tweeted out this racist shit and then refused to apologize for it.

So like, no, the respect starts at the top and it trickles the fuck down. The only thing that trickles down actually, because money sure is fuck doesn't. Yeah, for sure. The only thing that trickles down is culture. Yeah. That's it. And if the culture from the top is a racist, violent culture that paints his political enemies in racist dehumanizing terms, we get to call that out. And you're not like some hero of the office of the presidency for attacking a black guy

for saying we should maybe not call black guys apes. Holy shit. How do you think you're the hero? Yeah. And it wasn't just one guy. It was a couple of Republicans. One tried to snatch it from him. missed.

Totally whiffed, which is fucking hilarious. It's so funny that he goes to reach for it. And he can't even reach a giant piece of paper out of a guy. And then the other guy finally does grab it and tear it apart. But I think like, you're right. The reason why you're mad is because you're calling out the thing, not that the thing happened, that's why you're mad. You're upset because they're saying,

hey, man, you shouldn't say that. And you're saying, fuck you, man. We can say whatever we want because that's what that message sends. Yes, it is. Yeah. Real quick, too, I just want to also point out for our younger listeners that the first time that I can recall in my history following politics, where the state of the union address was ever interrupted,

was when somebody yelled out liar at Barack. Obama in 2008 or nine. And it was a fucking huge deal. It was a scandal. Because we, if you are, if you're sort of like looking back at the last 17 years of politics, you wouldn't remember. But like there used to be some fucking civility. And I remember you and I doing this show for almost 20 years.

I remember you and I like covering like stories like overseas where people like get in fist fights on the floor. And you and I would be like, what the fuck is happening over? there. Like, what is going on? And we are right there. Like the decline in discourse and civility and kindness and respect and cooperation has been absolutely swift and stunning. And it began with Obama. It really did. It really began when we hired a black guy for that job. Then that's when all of a sudden, everybody felt real fucking comfortable throwing civility out the fucking one. They Wanted to grab a lot of signs.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, that felt that made them empowered to do it. I remember when we first started covering politics and both of us decided that we were going to read the policies of the people without trying to make any commentary about it. Yeah. So we tried to read McCain's. We read Obamas and we both of us thought, oh, those aren't bad policies.

And then we started to read McCain's and both of us said, we can't do this anymore. But initially, there was a thought that maybe we could be objective. Maybe we could look at politics objectively because we didn't know. You didn't know ahead of time. you weren't doing, you weren't podcasting before and we weren't covering politics. And we started to do it and both of us said, can't be, I can't look at this as if somehow the Republican policies are good. I can't pretend that when I say these out loud, that I'm not laughing inside when I say

these things out loud because they're so silly or goofy or whatever. Right. Yeah. I remember that. I remember that too. It was because the impulse was to be like, all right, let's try to be fair and intellectually honest and like not insert ourselves. There's already enough vitriol and, you know,

and it was like, okay, but that's bullshit. And you just read something. I got to bite my tongue right off. That's real stupid. What you're saying out loud is real. So, yeah, we just, you couldn't, we couldn't do it. And I think, you know, I think genuinely there was a lot more civility back in the day because I think like what happened was

is there was, when things changed, there was at least that recognition that things changed and they're done being changed. Right. So like there was a shift. If there was a shift, we were like, okay, civil rights happened. And then there's a shift. And then it keeps growing. And that's the shift. Instead, it's like, let's roll back those rights. That's the thing that I think changed politics as people said, well, we don't have to keep it the way it is. Progress can be rolled back. And I think that is the real thing that changed politics in our country. And what it did was when they tried to roll back progressive

policies, what that meant was we were suddenly saying, you're less human now. And that is what changed politics forever in our country, because I think there was a point where people could have conversations about politics. But then when they tried to pull those things away and be like, oh, no, what we want is to say that trans people don't deserve to exist. You're like, okay, well, now we got a problem. Now we have an issue. And now it's not a civil conversation. Now it's not just us having like a, just a back and forth a cabitzing, which is what they still want. That's the, that is the, that is the dream when you talk to any boomer, that's their, that's their dream. Yeah.

We should be able to roll back to those moments. And you're like, those moments are gone. They're gone that can't come back. Yeah. That is like, that is gone like you believing in the tooth fairy. That is gone. Yeah. I also think genuinely, I think that the, the technological moment has changed for us and the

pandemic has changed for us and these things combined to create an environment where we've become very comfortable in different parts of. of our everyday life being vitriolic and having vitriol brought to our doorstep in ways that like prior to would just have been bizarre, like genuinely bizarre and kind of anathema to the human experience outside of like strange confrontational moments

that you tell everybody about if they happened. And now those sort of same confrontational moments with strangers are commonplace. And so the way we've been sort of like enculturated to, talk to each other and be spoken to has shifted in a really like uncivil way. Sure. And I don't think that like there's any reason to think that that silos itself onto a screen.

I think there's every evidence to see that it has not siloed onto a screen. Hey, you know they got your man's. They got your man's on sex or so charges. Yeah, the thing you be hanging with. The shit you be hanging with. Oh, it's sex offenders. And he was your man's. He was your boy.

I heard you grow up with him. That's crazy, man. You ain't know what he was doing? You ain't feel bad at all? Like no guilt, none of that. Story is from the Hill. Democratic lawmaker, if a prince can be held accountable, so can a president. This is referring to former Prince Andrew, now just Andrew Montbotten, who has been stripped

of his titles. He's been stripped of his property. And now he's been stripped of his liberty for being a giant piece of shit. being connected to Epstein. And it sounds like, from what they are, it looks like arresting him for, it sounds like giving like secret fucking government information over to fucking Jeffrey Epstein. So like that dude's fucked.

And that's awesome. Yeah, it's going to be like they, they say in the article it's going to be hard to prove, but easier because they have access to all of Epstein's documents, obviously. It's a little easier. But I will say this. Like, I think that they're, this is one of those things that I think a lot of people, even the people who are like democratic lawmakers

don't understand the underlying thing here, they are thinking that he was arrested because of his, you know, what happened with, you know, possibly happen with victims, how he's been filmed with some of these victims. Right. And so a lot of people are making the assumption that what he got arrested for

was the actual sex crimes or maybe being part of Epstein's network when it came to sex crimes. And what he got arrested for was misuse of his station, essentially, is what he, and he has, he has been arrested for it. And he was let out. But, yeah, like, stripped of all those titles and things. And very specifically, because of a few things that have come out where it's possible that he used his security for, like, one of the parties. like basically misusing his office, and there's a possibility he shared secrets, maybe shared things like ways in which people might share tips on what market's going to be going where, because you have insider information on how things work.

We know that that's how things work in Congress. These people do insider trading literally all the time. So we know that that's how these secrets get passed back and forth amongst Congress and with other powerful people. We know that they use tips and insider information to get more wealthy all the time. But if there is things in there that point to him using his office and his station to try to influence Epstein's money, his own money, using his station to protect other people, that's all real bad. And that is something that they can arrest him for. I think people are misunderstanding what happened with Trump

and what happened with Trump is Trump is in these things or at least we're going to look in a second some stuff was very much taken out because Trump was involved with possibly with some of the sex stuff that went on there are people who have accused him

and Epstein of these types of things and done it under oath right this is not just like a fucking tip line thing this is a real actual accusation against Trump that was given in a court where someone with a, you know, a five key typewriter type that shit out. Right, right.

That's a real actual thing that is now in the record. That's a real important piece. And there's a bunch of this stuff that might have got caught out of the Epstein files. We'll talk about that in a second. But people are mistaking these two things and sort of glomming them up because I think that there is going to be a lot of if you're in the files, it's a bad thing type of thing. You know what I mean? Yeah, I do.

Yeah. And I can understand the control. fusion, right? Because the first time that Andrew was stripped of his titles was after the first sort of leaks came out that showed a bunch of pictures of him with his arms around underage girls at Epstein parties. And so like the first sort of consequence that he suffered, which wasn't being arrested, but they were consequences that he suffered were a result of these sexual misconduct allegations. He also settled some sexual misconduct allegations. He also settled some sexual misconduct allegations privately out of court on civil matters.

So there's like nothing but reason to think that that's a problem. But everything that I read was like, this is kind of like getting Al Capone on tax evasion. It's like, you know that guy sucks. Nobody's confused about whether that guy sucks. That guy sucks. This is what we can probably prove. Let's prove what we can prove. One thing that I think is worth noting is that it is very,

likely. I mean, let's say, I don't, I don't know anything about British law. I'm not a law talking guy here in the States. I'm super not a law talking guy over the pot. Right. You have the hair for it. Yeah, right. Yeah, I don't have that. I could get the wig and throw it on. Be just fine. All that stuff is, is purchasable. Purchase. You can just get it all online now. I can get it on fucking, I get a T-Moo British wig and it'll look fucking sweet. Amazon wig. But here's what I strongly suspect. The last time a royal was arrested was over for, hundred years ago. This doesn't happen unless there is a pretty strong fucking case that somebody thinks they can make, right? They're not like, hey, let's all get together in a room and like, I don't know, let's go bring them in and arrest them and just kind of see what happens like you would, the neighborhood drug dealer that you suspect. It's been hundreds of years since anybody has arrested a royal.

I have to think that they're like, that's a rock solid case. now again not a law talking guy maybe something different's gonna come out maybe I'm dead ass wrong but I don't feel like I'm wrong yeah because if that was my job if I'm like the fucking captain of police station seven or wherever that fucking arrested him I'd be like you want to arrest who

you better have you show me that fucking evidence let's bring some law talkers in here yeah yeah you want to have a guy like cash who's got his eyes everywhere he can look under everything he's short enough leave no stone unturned Cash, they're right at your level.

And this is the next story, because this is important, basically cuts right, it basically dovetails right into this story. This is from NPR. NPR finds the Department of Justice withheld and removed some Epstein files related to Trump. And it's not like just a few, and it's not just random smattering information. According to this article from NPR, I feel like NPR is a pretty fucking credible source, by the way. Like what they removed were really credible,

investigated allegations of sexual misconduct. We knew that was going to happen. I mean, like, when Trump hires these people to come in for the Justice Department, you knew that the Justice Department was going to be his, essentially his buffer. They were going to be the lawyers that were going to take on cases that he wanted them to take on, and they were going to be the ones who protected him and defended him. You knew that was going to be the case. Now, that's traditionally not something the Justice Department does, it's supposed to be an independent body. It's supposed to be

separate from the presidency while it is controlled technically by the presidency. Most presidents have done their very best to separate themselves from the Justice Department. Trump has never done that. Trump literally was digging all around during the Mueller investigation.

Remember, it was like, you know, that was something that was, he was all over, firing people, reappointing people, making sure it was redacted. when it needed to be. So we know that he's already meddled once. We had reprieve with Biden because Biden chose a guy who would want to make sure that everybody

was really, really separate in Merrick Garland. And then they chose Jack Smith to run some of those cases for them. Another independent, another layer, another independent layer, even separating Joe Biden one more layer from these accusations against another president. What we see now is Trump is back in and he has done. doesn't care at all about separating himself in any way, shape, or form. There's been reports from people in the Justice Department that they spent so much money and so much man hours on trying to go through and redact.

And there's even, you can even tell that they went and redacted certain things because don't, if it doesn't have an apostrophe, is Don T. And Don T. can be found and it can be redacted. So sometimes in the article, in the emails, you will see a redaction in the middle. And if you just add the word don't, the sentence makes sense. That's a fucking riot. But Don T, without an apostrophe, is something that automatically got redacted. So they auto-redacted a lot of these files because they knew that they wanted to make sure that those, that particular

phrase was, was redacted. So we know that they did that. It's obvious and we know that they've done it very specifically to protect the president. If these files somehow still exist after everything is over, it's my great hope that all of these things get unredacted and released. And everything gets released. Yes. I was thinking the same thing. Like if we survive the next three years, I sincerely hope that administration number next is just like, yeah, we're putting this shit out.

We're putting it. We're not going to see it. Like there's three million plus documents that are still unaccounted for. And I think that no amount of, what's distressing is that in a sane world, Cecil, an amount of pressure could build from the fourth estate to pressure the government to release these missing documents. I actually don't believe that there is an amount of pressure externally that can build that would prompt the release of this redacted information. Well, I mean, we know that that's. true because we saw that Congress couldn't even do it.

Yeah, right. Right. So Congress votes on it, and then they release it, and then they just decide when they're going to release it. So they were ordered to do it, and then they just put it off for a while, and then they only released part of it. They didn't release it all. So, like, they very much disobeyed Congress already.

We've already seen that happen. So what you say is absolutely true, Tom. There's no way to refute that because it already happened. And look, they've spent obviously more time and energy and attention redacting the names of Trump and other powerful figures and not spending that same time and energy and due diligence protecting the victim. Sure. Because they've fucking outed the victims. They've included sexually explicit and naked photos of people in this shit. Like, they did a genuinely terrible and lopsided job.

So they're clearly... Some would say that's malicious compliance. Yeah. Some would say that that essentially was... I think we should say that. Yeah. I think people... You know, it could be argued very easily

that people specifically left things in like this to harm the people who pushed hard for these documents to be released. Yeah. I don't think that that's a stretch of the imagination. Because it's either that or you're incompetent. You get to pick which bad one it is. Right.

Which one is it? It's one or the other. Because it can't be, there's, what's your third option? Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's malicious or incompetency. Yeah, those are your two options. I can't think of a third.

Yeah. I'm happy to hear a third. If someone has one out there, but what's the third? Magic? I don't know. Sure. Yeah, there's nothing. It's not even like they had to do it.

Blame it on Adobe or something. Like, I don't know. The third would be it's someone else's fault. Right. But then that's still your incompetence. But it's still you because you were the one who released it. It's not like, it's not like Adobe has to prove it for you. So again,

It all should roll uphill. The problem is this is a absolutely, this administration takes no responsibility whatsoever for any of the mistakes they've ever made. So for them, it doesn't matter whether it's malicious or not because if they meant to do it, they can still blame their own incompetence and then not take responsibility for it.

It's fucking insane. It's crazy. It's literally crazy, but that's where we're at. That is. And it's not even like they could say, hey, we had to move fast in order to hit the deadline because they missed the deadline. Totally missed it.

So, yeah. So it's not like, even if they were to say that the, the initial request on its face was impossible to comply with and do a good job. You can't say that because, like, well, you already didn't do it. You didn't hit the timeline and nobody said, like people were like, people said stuff, but nothing happened. Right. That's what I mean. Like nobody like did a thing to you. Yeah, nobody cared.

Right. I support the woke agenda. Smiley piercings are now mandatory. pronouns for everyone. We will move the U.S. Capitol to Oakland, California. What is a Bay Area? Take that nerds. The whole world has been mocked.

While you were Jester Guni, we were woke maxing. Universal health care and free abortion for all tax-mogging the billionaires. Government-sanctioned sideshows on every freeway in America. Being straight is now illegal. The story is from the Hill. U.S. women's gold medal winning hockey team declines Trump's state of the union invitation. So did you see the video, Cecil, of Trump calling the men's hockey team and basically saying like, I'm going to have to invite the women's hockey team because if I don't, I'll get impeached.

And all the dude hockey players, except for one, which who yelled out two for two, which I thought was actually fucking great. All the rest of them were like laughing, like, oh, I would invite the football. fucking women there too. So fucking gross. Especially when like from everything that I've read, the women's hockey team is an objectively superior team to the men's hockey team.

Like everything that I read is like they were far more dominant of a team. Far more dominant of a team. And Trump was like, he called the men up basically made fun of the women's team. And then he was like, well, I got to invite him. And the women were like, yeah, we're not going. Well, and also

he invited them very, very late. Like in this document or in this in this article, they even say like the women are like they literally didn't have a time to comply. So what it was was an invite that you knew somebody couldn't even take. Right. Right. It's like, it's like forgetting to invite that person you don't like significant other or whatever. Right. And then being like, oh, well, yeah, I just forgot.

I'm sorry. You're not a plus one. Right. Yeah. So just that's what it was. And so very specifically, it's not only that he talked shit about him. he invited him when he didn't have any intention of even hosting them, right? So fucking gross.

But I want to talk about these guys, these rich fucks that are sitting there. And I want to put this other story up to at the same time. This one is from the New York Times. This is FBI director celebrates hockey victory as Bureau Stairs Down Crisis. Stairs down is such a great thing for Cash Patel. It's so good. It's so good. I didn't even catch that.

It's so good. Oh, my God. Kudos to the, to the headline guy at the New York Times for saying Stairs down. Oh, my God. That is so good. Cisle, I didn't even catch that. But in any case, in any case, Cash Patel, the reason why they even had access to the president there is because Cash Patel was there and he did a FaceTime call with Trump while he was there.

And that's where we heard it from. Right. So Cash Patel was at, flew the prime. FBI jet over to Italy to watch this game. After it was over, was quote unquote invited in the back to go drink. And my favorite line... This video.

My favorite line from this is... It says another clip showed Cash Patel chugging most of a beer. Most of a beer is the best line. It's so fucking snarky and amazing. because they didn't give him a child-sized beer. He has to drink one of those airport bottle. It's like a little tiny Coke can.

You know, like a little half-kids. He's got to drink one, but it's like a Miller light or whatever. He's got to crank it and open to drink it. Oh, so funny. If you guys have not seen the video of Cash Patel in the locker room with the men's hockey team, there's almost, I would say almost because there's the video of RFK working out with Kid Rock. Yeah. And that is actually objectively the most cringe word.

thing I've ever seen with my eyes. Second and just kissing the fucking rim is Cash Patel, fucking all three and a half feet of him, losing his mind like a frat boy in the hockey locker room. He looks

like the fucking biggest poser ass want to be dipshit. Anybody has ever seen. He looks like that guy that got invited to a thing and you're all just like, when's he going? When's he leaving? Let's start his car. Somebody warm up his car. somehow he's on the table dancing.

God, it's so embarrassing. And everyone's just like, God, can he please go? But here's the thing. Cash Patel, I think all those guys, like, they wanted him there. And I think what this should tell everybody, right? This should tell everybody that rich people are so insulated from the real life things that happen to everyday people

and very specifically insulated from things that happen to marginalized communities that a bunch of rich dudes who play a special. sport for a living, they don't see this as bad at all. They see this as cool. In fact, some of them might have done it very specifically because they knew it was going to make people mad that they did it. Sure. They thought, this will be funny because they'll see this and they'll get mad about it. And that makes me feel good. So all those people in the world who spend all their time worried that someone else is unhoping that someone else feels bad, those are bad people. That's not, not a good human being. That's a bad person, right? And we are full. We're chock full of them.

And they can find themselves so much more easily now because they announce to the world with their red hats how much they like to hurt other people. Right? They announce it to the rest of the world. These guys are no different, right? These aren't, these aren't your heroes. These are dudes who play with sticks for money normally every day of the week. And they're ultra rich. These are very, very rich dudes who never feel any kind of pressure and are never going to be in the crosshairs of the Trump administration. So for them, this is hilarious. This is trolling. This is funny. What we need to do is just disconnect from all this and say, yeah, great, that's fine. What I want is Cash Patel taken out of his office because he's wasting our funds. All these people have run on all these comments in the

past. Look at how much they've run on. Oh, it's all waste for on reviews. Waste for on abuse. Well, What are you doing in Italy with a private jet that we pay for? Yeah, man. And he's also used that same private jet to, like, fly his girlfriend around and give a security team to, like, friends and family. And, like, Cash Patel is treating his role as FBI director like he's on fucking spring break. Like, he's on tour. Yeah. He's, like, he feels like a kid on fucking Rumspringer with a credit card.

He's a podcaster. Yeah. He's a podcaster. Right? That's what he is. where he is. Like, let's not forget how Cash Patel was paying the bills. Granted, he was like a low-level, I think FBI or something in the past worked for some sort

of secret service or something in the past. So he has some, like, low-level ability. But he's not a director of the FBI. No. He's a podcaster. And he's treating this job like every other podcaster I know. Because if they gave me a private jet, I'd fucking use it. it. I use it to go everywhere.

That's not a guy. The thing is, is like, other FBI agents in the past had to step down when they got caught doing one of these things. Yeah, man. And like, even just watch the video of him celebrating and, like, losing his mind and spraying fucking beer everywhere. And you're like, I'm sorry, you're a public official.

You are supposed to present to the world. A public official heading up a very serious department, a very serious. serious department. While you're in that job, while you're doing public stuff, while you are publicly visible, while you're on camera, which should be all of the time. And if you don't like this, don't take the job. You don't get to be the fucking frat boy. You don't. You need to present to the world that I've got this. I'm always on top of it. I am fighting crime fucking like Batman. Especially the FBI, right? Yeah, man. Leave that to Hag Seth.

Hegseth can chug the beer. Yeah, the Department of War guy. Hagseth can chug the beer. He'd chug the whole bottle. He wouldn't fill his tiny tum-tum right away. Actually, you don't see it, but when he throws it on the ground, Hegsetth licks it up off the ground. You don't see it. It's off camera. It happens off camera. But Hexeth doesn't let anything go to waste. No, oh, yeah.

When it comes to beer. Absolutely not. He's at the end of the urinal. Yeah, he was laying on the ground. He was essentially that great that all the beer falls into and all the slop. He was that great. He just just sits there. He doesn't have anything that covers his mouth, though, just like falls right in.

Yeah. And like I do want to just mention, of course, because I think it's, I think it's a massive big deal that we are not paying enough attention to that we have now built and it's not that we are building. We have built it and it's done. It's complete. We have built an institutional culture of misogyny

that is now absolutely right wing normalized. Yeah, 100%. That's just it. Like, and you cannot be on a continuum. with misogyny. You can't. There is no continuum. It's like,

where do I fall in the continuum of being a racist? Or where do I fall in the continuum of being an anti-Semite? Like, it's a binary thing. It just is.

You can't be a little misogynist. It's binary. You're either a misogynist or you're not. When the president of the United States calls up the United States hockey team

and mocks the women's hockey team, the message could not be more clear that when men do the same thing women do, it counts more. It's a bigger deal. The same thing. They both won the gold medal against the same rival team. They both beat Canada. Like what is, like, from what I, again, I've just listened and read a bunch of stuff, but like the women's hockey team gave up two goals in their entire tournament. The men's hockey game, hockey team gave up two goals in just the last game. Like everything I've read is like the women's team is just an objection.

objectively much more dominant team against all of their competitors. They just are better. And their accomplishments mean less for the only reason because it's women playing. That's the only reason their accomplishments mean less. If you flipped it and reversed it, everybody would be talking about the most dominant hockey team ever to play hockey. But when women do it, it's the most dominant women's hockey team. That is always a qualifier. And anytime you use women as a qualifier, you are specifically out.

and normalizing that what you mean by people is men. Yeah. Well, and I mean, Trump in his first term, I think, wasn't it the soccer team? The women's soccer team had won the women's World Cup and it wasn't as big a deal. They downplay this sort of thing all the time. I think you're absolutely right. Like, it's essentially downplayed when it's a woman's sport and it's, you know, raised on a pedestal when it's when it's the man's sport. But I also want to say, too, like, I want to touch on.

Cash Patel doing this very publicly. This is 100% calculated by this group. I think everybody in that, in Trump's cabinet, knows that when they get on camera and they infuriate a large group of people, they are doing the right things for Trump. That makes Trump happy. It makes that base happy. It makes all those people excited that they are making a segment of the United States upset.

When what's her face sat down? when Pam Bondi sat down and did that, you know, Dow was at 50,000, the Ashton P is smashing records thing while she's trying to talk about the Epstein Files, she was ecstatic that that's what they ran with. They made a song about that. Did you see the song? No. So it was a joke song where they took her voice and they auto-tuned it.

And then they made it be like where she's like, the Dow was over 50,000. And it's like a whole song. And it's funny. But like I bet you she was excited that somebody made a song about it. because, like, they know that that upsets people. They know it makes people mad. And that is literally the goal of this administration is to make you upset and to make you mad about every moment.

Because the more they make you mad, the more the other side relishes that you are mad. And that gets them support. So they can fuck those people over. Gas prices are still where they always were, right? Your gas hasn't gone down dramatically. Grocery prices. are through the roof, people are losing their jobs. We'll talk about a jobs number on this show

that are abysmal. The market is not doing well for the average person, right? All these things are really important. It doesn't matter to those people. They could lose their job, not have any help. Medicare could be canceled. It wouldn't matter as long as you feel bad about something. That's the most important people. That's the most important thing to those people. So what I think we have to do is like we have to like recognize that that has been their plan and has been their plan for a very long time cash pettel didn't have to be on camera drinking that beer cash pettel chose to be on camera and chose to put himself in the front of that thing because i think he recognizes that this will be pressed that was positive in their light Jesus Christ i i i didn't think of it that way

and i 100% agree with you and as you're talking i'm like fuck like one of the things i think the right has done an excellent job of is really sort of like motivating an anti-intellectual, anti-academic culture in America and saying like those people who want you to pay attention to be civil and get an education. Like those people are just fucking dumb. Those people are, they're the elites. We shouldn't pay attention to them. What we want is the fucking beer drinking, screaming frat boy. That's who we are. That's who you are. That's who will show you. Well, we'll work out to a kid rock video in our fucking jorts or whatever. Like, we'll have a, like, when we see that, I think we see how fucking idiotocracy insane that is.

But you're 100% right. This stuff is being not even leaked. It's being like pushed as the narrative because that's what these guys want. Yeah. It's exciting to them. Yeah. It's like, yeah, man, I love fucking throwing beer in my friends' eyes. There's no negative to them.

There's no negative to Cash Patel doing this. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Because they don't want serious people. It should be, though. I mean, it should be disqualifying. Just like what we talked about at the beginning of the program, the president posts images of a former president and a former first lady as monkeys when

they are black people. That should be disqualifying for the presidency. You should say, nope, you're not allowed to do that. We don't care if it was a mistake. Literally doesn't matter. We don't care that you tried to talk about it for different ways to excuse yourself. None of those things matter. You should be removed from office.

That should be a galvanizing thing among both parties. It is not. It's literally out of the consciousness. And there were some people who were like, take it easy. It's just a joke. Well, finally those capitalist pigs will pay for their crimes, eh? Hey, comrades, hey? Austin, we won.

Oh, groovy, smashing. Yay, capitalism. So we alluded to this earlier, NPR, Supreme Court strikes down Trump's tariffs. So they specifically struck down Trump's ability to levy tariffs using a provision called IEPA. And they basically were like, hey, if Congress had wanted to give the president through IEPA the authority to levy these tariffs, they would have written it down somewhere, anywhere in the legislation. Some place. And literally, not only is the word tariff nowhere in here, but actually no synonyms for tariff are also in here.

They literally said something. So it needs to Bible code it in order to get tariff out of this. Yeah. So they struck it down. IEPA stands for the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. But they... I also named a new cat I bought Aeepa. Because it's the best name I've ever heard for an animal.

They struck it down. And Trump immediately was like, hey, I've got other authorities. And he does have some other authorities, but they're time-limited authorities. So he imposed... Oh, God, I wish the time was running out. Oh, dude. It's 150 days. I know.

150 days till the midterms? No, 150 days is his time limited authority for the... It's more than that. No. Oh, God, I know. Like, fucking can't come soon or something. So he imposed like on a Friday, he's like, it's now 10% across the board tariffs

because he can't do individual ones. And then he's like, Saturday, by 10%, I mean 15%. Why does everybody say we're chaotic? The other big thing is that they basically say in there, you collected a lot of money. We're not sure how you're going to have to get that back, but that money has to go back.

You can't just keep that money. Now, today I saw a thing where he was asked the question and he said, well, I'm going to give $2,000 payments out. He's been saying this the whole time that he's going to give this money away. He's going to give it back to the people. It's like, dude, it was already our money. Like, you're just giving us our money back. And it's a great con if you can do it, right?

Admittedly, amazing con if you can play it off as the hero to give me back my own money and I'm stupid enough to believe it. Right. That's a great con because not only does he get to show how powerful he was, he also gets to show he's the underdog based on now the Supreme Court attacking him and telling him he can't do it. And that tariff from before is actually money in your pocket, even though it was your money that you had to pay extra for all those goods, it's money in your pocket at the end of the day. So he's a hero to all those people. And could also change people's minds when it comes to the midterms.

Because if you get a big fat check that says Donald J. fucking Trump on it before the midterms and you're stupid, now you think, oh, well, yeah, I guess it's because of him that I have this $2,000. Right. I don't think it's going to happen. I don't think it's going to happen. But I'm just saying out loud why I think it's a great con if it works. Right.

So I heard the same thing. And here's why I don't think that's going to happen. But again, who am I? Right. But I don't think it's going to happen. Because already, and actually prior to the Supreme. court decision. There were already lawsuits by companies who want a refund of the money that they pay. So the way, like, I know we've talked about this before, but like when there is a tariff,

the person or the organization or company or whatever that pays the actual point of tariff is the company who imported those goods. Now, they pass that cost on to the consumer very often, but the actual check that gets written from ABC Corp to the, government directly is from the company that imported or brought those goods in. So if I'm a toy manufacturer and I got my toys were manufactured in China and I imported them, I have to pay a tariff. I literally write a check to the government and say, here is my tariff, here is the tax I just paid. Then I raise the prices on consumers in order to sort of pay myself back for my increased manufacturing costs. So those are the companies they're going to ask for the refund.

Those are the people that have access. It's literally the line of where the money should. Right. So what is most likely to happen, and there's lawsuits all over, what is most likely to happen is the government is, so there's a bunch of companies, right, that raised all their prices, they paid these tariffs, then they're going to get a refund for the tariffs. You and I are going to get nothing. That's what we said in the very beginning.

Right. We're going to get nothing. And prices will stay elevated because we've proven that we're willing to pay them. Yeah. So we've lost, and it's something that you and I said in the very beginning that we would be fucked out of this money even if they do reverse it. Because that company would be the one in line to get it, not the consumer who raised A, they raised their prices to try to cover the cost for. Which is what everybody said in the very big, everybody fucking said it, man. Everybody who knew what was going to happen.

They fucking knew it. They knew it was true. And he's just like, yeah, it doesn't matter. No. This is two dicks in the ass at the same time. That's what this is. Like we're just getting fucking double rammed right up the ass And we're all just and there's a bunch of fucking dumbass dip shitsits you are like

Well, I locks it that way And it's like no you don't You gotta stitch up my tariff You are torn Tate to top Are you kidding me? That's why they call it a tear Well think how disappointed he's going to be when he gets home

Well he better get used to it Disappointment's going to be a big part of his life He's a foot short for his age and he's cross-eyed. Stories from PBS. Secret Service says an armed man was shot and killed after entering Mar-a-Lago's secure perimeter.

Okay, one thing I always got to say about this sort of thing is like, do you guys not know when he's there or not? Like, these people don't even know. Look, I realize you're going to throw your life away for something like this. Can't you at least fucking follow the schedule? Thank you.

Can't you know, like, what you're there? These people are so bad at this. I mean, granted, They're crazy, but still, like, you're just bad at it. There was, like, the one assassin who was pretty close. And that was just chance. Like, the Secret Service was incompetent and didn't check all the line of sight buildings. They're like, oh, is that a rooftop?

What's up there? I don't know. It looks like something glinting. Anyway, what's on my phone? Right. Yeah, there's a roof with access literally 100 yards from the president. Any. Did I just hear the whistle from the good, the bad, and the ugly in the distance?

Is that what I heard? that, nah, couldn't have been. So what I think is also worth pointing out, like as Cecil mentioned, like that fucking Trump wasn't even here that day. Like, okay, what are you doing? But like this dude came from a fucking MAGA house. His whole family

everybody was like talking about this guy was like, yeah, we can't figure it out. Like, he's always been so quiet. He was never somebody who's like had any interesting guns. Our whole family, our MAGA supporters, notice how quiet the right is about this.

That's the thing. Listen to how quiet the right is. And it's because they can't twist any piece of it to make themselves be the underdog. Right? So when we talk about the kid from Utah who came from a MAGA house, they were able to find pieces of their story that they could twist to their best interests, right, to show how they're under attack. The same thing happens with other people. When other people come into the news that they can twist, they will do their best to bring. bring up, oh, this is an attack on MAGA.

It's an attack on MAGA. But when MAGA attacks MAGA, which does happen, and it has happened, multiple times, in fact, the reason why we don't hear anything about that shooter in Butler is because there wasn't anything to use, right? If they could have used that, if that person was a lifelong Democrat or something, now you get a chance to use it and they use it forever. That's the card they'll carry on forever. But if this person isn't part of the mold that they want to send out,

to everybody, then it's useless to them. And so they don't care anymore. They're just like, yeah, that's just another guy who died trying to assassinate the president. That's all it is. Exactly. And what makes me particularly crazy is that they can't fit him into this mold of where he's politically valuable, right? That's exactly it.

And they, but what they, what they, what we are not doing is we're not saying, okay, but there is a mold for violent shooters and extremists. Yeah. They do have some things in common. They do share some. demographic traits that we could look at and we should think about. Like, these are by and large, disaffected white men almost all the time. That's a real inconvenient.

And I'll tell you what, if it was disaffected black women, we'd be paying attention to their blackness and we'd be paying attention to the fact that they were women. Yeah. We'd be paying real close attention. We are never paying attention to the demographic realities, as long as those demographic realities, don't serve some kind of political purpose for the people in power. Yeah, it's really inconvenient. when it's white, it was time.

Yeah, man. Really? The worst part about this particular assassination attempt is the commute for Cash Patel to get down there. Just think of how inconvenient it was for him to take his fucking private jet from Italy.

Jesus Christ. And then fly all the way down to Mar-a-Lago so he could stare at the thing. He's got, he... Cash Patel has to have two magnifying glasses. One on either eye. Ah, yes. he's walking around looking for clues down there.

The Pink Panther music is playing in the background. Do you think there's any? He half chugs like a drink with an umbrella and it just throws it on the ground. Can you imagine? He's the Valhella guy. He's the, I'll see him at Valhalla. Skull and he just smashes everything on the ground.

Do you imagine that there's any world where he thinks that the agent's on the and like, oh, everybody relax. Cashy's here. Whoa, all right, the big brains

walking into the door. Here's what I hope happens. He'll help. I hope that when he leaves his jet, he doesn't leave from a staircase, like a normal staircase. I hope that a pole comes down

and he slides down the pole to get out like a Batman thing, right, or a fireman type thing. But on the bottom, they have one of those FBI jumpers. So they have a guy down there who's got to hold his pants.

and then he slides into his FBI jumper and then they put it on him and then zip him up and make sure he's like that little kid from fucking a Christmas story all wrapped up and then they send him out there with his half of beer. I think there's like at least a 50% chance

that when he's private jet lands instead of the staircase it's actually like one of those like emergency slides with a bouncy castle at the end. He just pours beer down and slides down. Hexsats already down there drank all the beer. That's a whole thing. God damn, Haggy.

God damn, Seth. Think about it. These people are from the future, right? Well, if we can get everyone to turn queer, then there won't be no children to have no children. The people from the future won't exist to take our girl. I ain't turning queer. You have to, Jimbo, or else they won't be able to stop them.

Damn it, they took our deal. Yeah, they took our year. They took our dear. NBC News, U.S. had almost no job growth in 2025. no good or is that bad? It's not the amount we're looking for, Cecil. I feel like what's not the amount we're looking for. Woof. And like, it's like 187,000 jobs or something like that, which is essentially a statistical rounding error in a amount of jobs. And out of that 187,000 or 160 or whatever was, 130,000 were all in one sector, which is healthcare. So if you were to take healthcare out

of that, it's almost not even statistically zero. It's almost. actually zero. So, like, if only one sector of the economy is growing, and it's a sector that's growing because of the demographic changes rather than any sort of economic policy, you know, improvements, you just got to look at that and be like, well, that is bad news, real bad. And when they actually, the Bureau of Labor Statistics went back and did a reanalysis and adjustment, like, actually there's been, like,

really shit job growth now for a long fucking time. A long time. Like we're supposed to be celebrating all these fucking economic wins. But I'll tell you what, like I'm not seeing it. Unemployment's like 4.3%. It's still pretty low overall. Like that is pretty decent unemployment. But there's no fucking growth in that sector.

And we are staring down the barrel of this fucking AI revolution. You bet, man. And that is going to cause massive disruption in the job market and the job sector. For sure. They're saying that what it might affect is white color. jobs. Yeah. And that could be a huge change game changer for everything that happens. I mean, if AI takes jobs and really does genuinely start taking jobs, we need to as a culture start looking at universal basic income because those jobs are not going to come back. These people are

essentially buggy whips, right? Once AI can take over for some of these creative jobs and other things that are, and we're okay with it, like the society has, because I do see a lot of pushback from AI right now. What I'm seeing is a lot of people who are rejecting, I'm seeing consistently, any journalism that is done with AI is literally resoundly rejected by people underneath as this is slop, this is slop, this is so people are rejecting it. When I see images, there's a bunch of people sharing these things and saying, hey, man, you shouldn't be using images that are specifically AI. That's not something you should be doing. So there is a rejection right now. There's some sort of pushback against it, which is good.

right? But I think like once we start accepting that we're going to lay off our graphic design team and just use AI from now on, and we're going to lay off our marketing team, and we're just going to use AI from now on and those types of things, I think there needs to be some serious reconsiderations on how we have a social safety in this country. Because if you don't do something about that, those people aren't just going to be able to transition into welders or whatever you think we're going to be. And the worst part about the AI revolution is that it's taking jobs that are creative jobs and things that help us be human rather than the other way around, taking the menial bullshit stuff that we should hand off to robots and nothing. And then we should all endeavor to be creative rather than the other way around. Yeah, I've read a number of really recent articles on AI. Like with the, with the Claude, their vibe coding software has the potential to dramatically like 70, 80% reduced the need for software engineers of all types. Like, that's a massive disruption.

I think of like my industry. I'm in the insurance industry. And if I really think about my industry, which I've been doing a lot over the last few weeks, what I am is a decisions industry. What I mostly produce as a company are decisions. And you can get AI to make decisions. And you can teach it if you silo good information into it. You can teach it to make almost all the right decisions fairly quickly.

So, like, data analysis, decision-based industries, legal industries that produce documentation, a tremendous amount of, like, the legal industry is based in the production of good, high-quality, statutorily accepted documents. Like, all that shit can be fucking automated away. We automate this shit away. 60% of the American workforce is white-collar jobs. 60%. if you were to automate away 50% of those jobs and you do the math, that is an amount of unemployment that is equal to or greater than the Great Depression. That's the number.

The Great Depression unemployment was around 24%. That's what it was the Great Depression. So we are looking at building a world where who's then buying the products for the blue collar guys to make, right? The whole system is viciously cyclical. Yeah. We can't decide as a society whether people should be able to go to the doctor. I think the worst part about all this thing is that this is the first year of Trump's presidency. And so we're going to see, I think, this come to fruition in the next couple of years because this is exponentially moving forward.

And I think the real issue is just like what happened with the pandemic is Trump will have no idea how to fix it. And he won't have anybody around him who would be able to advise him in a way that is worthwhile. So what happened during the pandemic, he got lucky and had like, Fauci, but most of those people that are around him, they didn't know what was going on. He had very high-level people fucking up and doing the wrong thing. He wasn't a top-down leader. He was bad at it. And that was a pandemic, right? That is actually an emergency somewhat on easy mode because the protocols should be in place to fix that. A thing that's never happened before, that's a totally different animal

and Trump was not capable as a human being of being a systems thinker to figure this out. He's just a stupid o-fish pig who only cares about making other people upset him staying in the headlines. So he's 100% not qualified

to fix this problem which will almost certainly blow up on his watch. Yeah. This is a, I see, like never stop thinking about this. This is like, we are headed into, I think, one of the most dangerous inflection points in modern history with one of the least competent leaders in all of history. Yeah.

This is a very dangerous moment. I am genuinely very afraid of what the next three or four years are going to look like. And I have no idea, like, my kids are in college. And I'm just sort of like, I've had thoughts like, maybe I should pull you out and you should go learn some trades. Like, maybe that would be a better. life for you going forward. I don't, and it's not that I think the trades are less than. I just don't think my kids are well suited to them. That's the only reason I don't do it. I think the trades are a very necessary and vital and real good work for people to do. My kids just are not suited to that

like naturally. And I'm still just thinking like, well, maybe you could force it, you know? Like, maybe, maybe you could because I don't know how we automate that yet. But we'll get there. Because I'm watching robots do Kung Fu, dude. Dude, this is a thing that I don't think this administration is not only equipped, but I think that they're also embracing it in ways that is also accelerating it. So again, it's a double whammy. You have somebody who doesn't understand how this stuff works, but then also wants to accelerate it because they recognize that there's profits to be made,

but it's all a balloon. Yeah. It's a bad situation. It's a genuinely terrible situation. And I think, too, like, of all the stuff that you have to learn, I think about the amount of schooling that my wife went through to learn how to become a marketer, right? All the work that she did.

And then I think about all the schooling that I went through. And AI can do some of the work that I can do in seconds. And I had to go through years of school in order to understand how to do that, right? She had to do the same thing. She had to go through years. My wife has an advanced degree, right? So like she had to go through years of schooling

to get her advanced degree and be able to do the things that she does now that AI may be able to mimic in a year. Right. And it won't even be an issue. And you don't need that person who spent, you know, 10% of their life going to school. You don't need that person anymore. Right.

Yeah. And we're getting to a point where I agree with you. Like we should be looking toward a future and saying, okay, well, what if most of the work can be done by, machines. How do we have a functioning economy? How do we build a society? It's got to be UBI. You have to have UBI involved. It has to be that people are, your basic needs are taking care of and the rest of it is all just figuring out how the rest of that shakes itself out. You can't do it. I don't think you can do it in any other way. If things aren't there to do, then you don't do them. Yeah. I just don't, I mean, what else do you do? Part of me worries that what we do is experience a social collapse.

Yeah. Oh, no, I don't disagree. Yeah. And I'm like, well, fuck, I don't want to do that. I mean, we already have. That's terrible. Yeah. I know. Another one. All right, that's going to wrap it up for this week. Now, we are going to be back on Thursday. We have two articles, one from The Verge on Jeffrey Epstein, and then one from someone who we've attended a conference with in the past. A gentleman by the name of Lawrence Krauss who wrote an article for Gwlett. So we are going to read both of those articles, and then we're going to talk about the Jeffrey Epstein documents and very specifically the picture they paint.

All right, so check it out this upcoming week. It's going to be a whole thing on Epstein's influence, which I think is going to be a real interesting show. We're going to leave you like we always do with the skeptics creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-babelon bullshit. It. Couched in Scientician, double bubble, toil, and trouble, pseudo-quazi alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing, water, downward spiral, brain dead pan, sales pitch, late night infotucatainment.

Leo Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death and towers, tarot cars, psychic healing, crystal balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques, synagogues, temples, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, blothers, wizards, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double-speak stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this. Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at patreon.com forward slash dissonance pod. Help us spread the word by sharing our content. Find us on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and threads, all under the handle at DissinancePod. This show is Can Credentialed. which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm

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