Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 906: The 31-Year-Old Candidate Thrilling Gen Z

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

'This Should Be Illegal': Senate GOP Uses AI Deepfake to Attack Talarico | Common Dreams A DOGE Bro Allegedly Walked Out Of Social Security With 500 Million Americans' Records On A Thumb Drive And Expected A Pardon If Caught | Techdirt 2 DOGE staffers say 'no' regrets for people losing income, didn't reduce the deficit: Depositions - ABC News Trump spoke about girls being 'of age' at 'above six years old' as he promoted the SAVE America Act Some Republicans warn Trump's SAVE America Act is doomed to fail as Senate tees up a vote I Went to Florida to See the 31-Year-Old Candidate Thrilling Gen Z. We're in Trouble.

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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. is Monday, March the 16th. I know, I know. You're probably thinking, didn't you guys just record last Thursday? Yes. Yes, in fact, we did. But the world moves at such a speed with such haste, Cecil. Yeah. That and you're not going to be here later this week. Our timely analysis was necessary. Yeah, I will be, I will be gone for some time. Haley's having her surgery in a couple of days. So we're just recording early. I get to fly down to beautiful, beautiful Houston,

Illinois. Houston, Illinois. Houston, Illinois, Houston, Texas. Houston, Illinois sounds absolutely horrible. Dude, if you say to Southern Illinois, it would be like there's a Houston there. It wouldn't even have the benefit of having that many people around it and at least being a good food city. And no buckies. Yeah. Houston, Illinois would have no buckies. That's true. That's true. So you're going to Houston, Texas. Houston, Texas. I've been to Houston, Texas, and I will say it is my second least favorite city in all of America. Okay. So first is, of course, Jacksonville. Jacksonville is literally horrifying. Third on the list, Gary Indiana. Gary Indiana, not a great fun time city. No. Turns out. Never. Never good time. Gary Indiana.

That's actually the Bermuda Triangle over America. That's three points to the Bermuda Triangle right there. I was listening Cecil to a stupid true crime podcast the other day. I was talking about Jacksonville, Florida. And the fucking mayor of Jacksonville was like, hey, we're no longer the murder capital of the United States. And they were so happy, but they were then third. I feel like- So it's all they dropped to like 16th place or so they were still in the top three.

And they were high-fiving each other with knives in their hands. What I went to Jacksonville a few times for work. And I remember being on the phone with Haley and I was in this Uber coming from the airport to the hotel. And like there's all these police cars and caution tape and all this stuff. And I literally said to Haley was like, oh my God, I hope my hotel is nowhere near this. There seems to be like a murder or something out here.

There's fucking cops everywhere. Cisle, we turned the corner and there was my hotel. And there had been a literal murder outside. There had been a shoot. If you pulled up and you actually pushed the caution tape over it and pull up. It would have been a little better. But you're close. I mean, it's like,

you know, if you're playing horseshoes, you won. Yeah. Amazing. One of the cops comes out covered in blood and he's the concierge for the hotel, you know. He asked me to get your bag. Amazing. We will be in Houston at MD Anderson.

So, like I said, I think I mentioned before, like we had so many nice messages. I just wanted to say thank you again for all of the wonderful well wishes. It does mean a lot. You guys have always been so sweet and supportive. and it doesn't go unnoticed and it does not go unappreciated.

So I am grateful to all of you guys and for your wonderful messages. Everybody's pulling for Haley. We hope everything turns out perfect. This upcoming week, obviously the show is being recorded early. And then next week for Monday, we already recorded a show on Project 2025. So we essentially did an Evergreen show that's not necessarily needed in the time that it's like released. It's about Project 2025, the progress they made. and things like that.

That'll be out next Monday. And hopefully by then, Tom understands sort of where things are and whether he's going to come back or not. We might have an extra guest show in there somewhere. We'll see, we're going to play it by ear as we work our way through. But like I say, we're all pulling for Haley. We hope everything works out great. Yeah.

Thanks, bud. All right. So let's talk about some of the uplifting news stories we've recently found. Isn't it fun to be a news, like, look for news now, Cecil? Isn't it like just a joy and a pleasure? Every single day, I'm just thinking, I'm like, is this? Is this the day that we just all fall off the cliff? I wonder, did we get to a point of no return?

And then I read this story. And I was like, yeah, I think this is it. I think this is the point of no return. This story comes to New York Times. I went to Florida to see the 31-year-old candidate thrilling Gen Z. We are in trouble. We are in trouble. Holy shit.

This is some guy, some fishback dude. What a terrible name, James Fishback. He's running for governor of Florida. Now, before we get too deep into it, I want to say he does not appear to have a statistical shot in hell. No. Winning. Five percent of the vote, something like that.

It's not a strong, he's not a strong contender, you know, for the governorship of Florida. He is, however, packing hotel rooms with his speeches. Yeah. And the hotel rooms. There's small rooms. 100 people, 200 people. But those are motivated people.

Right. And they're all Genzi dudes. they're all the same guy and they're Gen Z. Except for one woman in this article. There was one woman. Yeah. They found a girl and they asked her a question.

And the only question you should ask in this situation is like, why are you here? Why? How do you feel safe? Like what is happening right now? Like, are you covered in bear spray? Like, this seems like the worst idea ever. Like, this is a genuine groiper candidate.

This is a Nick Fuentes following. Groyper candidate. Nick Flentes, Cecil, there's like characters that have appeared on this show that we thought, or at least I thought, I don't want to speak for you, that I thought were like comically fringe.

Comically fringe. Sure. Like, just cooks. We covered these cooks, and we covered them. And like at some point, you and I both kind of got bored because we were like,

they're just cooks. This is like, we've said the same shit about the cooks. It kind of feels mean. let's kind of move on from the cooks, right? So I remember, like, we laughed about Liz Croken and her QAnon stuff. And we're like, this is crazy, crazy, ultra-nuddy stuff. And then Q&N became mainstream.

And the same thing happened with, there's a religious figure whose name escapes me that is the apocalyptic, evangelical right-wing nutjob that it turns out Pete Hegsef follows that we stopped covering. because we're like, he's just some fucking apocalyptic nobody, O'Bangelist preacher.

Like, we've all heard this before. That's Pete Hegss's preacher, man. And now we've got Nick Flentes, who, when we first started covering him, he just seemed like your,

like, bargain basement, right-wing, misogynist neo-Nazi troll. Yeah. He really did. He didn't feel like anything. He didn't feel like much of a force.

And now this is a guy who's like, his followers are filling hotel rooms, and most importantly, in real life space, and like in ways where people are not embarrassed or ashamed to hold these views and to follow this person. And that last part is the part that scares me the most, that these views are no longer seen as something which people feel rightfully, like, embarrassed, ashamed, nervous about showing their faces. The Ku Klux Klan had the fucking, like, at least they understood they had to wear a fucking hoax. hood. Yeah, they had to hide their head space. Yeah. Holy shit. These people are showing up to hotel rooms like,

yeah, my name's fucking Jim, and I'm a fucking neo-Nazi, and women shouldn't vote, and black should be in jail. And these are real things I believe. What the fuck. I, so one of the things that is interesting when I think about what you just said about the different groups of people that we covered on this show, because obviously we covered, you know, a range of people. Could you imagine, though, if only Pastor Manning had changed his message a little bit, he would still be wrote. He would still be

somebody who you would see every day. If he changed his message, the tiniest little bit, I'll bet you we would still be talking about Starbucks, semen, and lattes. Cecil, if there is a candidate, I want to see Pastor Manning standing at a podium,

having a debate about the semen and the lattes. I want to hear. At that point, I'll just be like, yeah, this is a simulation. It's fine. I'll walk into the ocean with you, bro. I'm pixels. Like, I can't.

None of this is anything. Like, I'm just going to erase my pixels now. Thank you. One of the things that this article starts out pretty strong to show a connection. And I want to read a piece of it says, appearing on Tucker Carlson's show in January. Fishback described this sexual sadistic pleasure that pro-Israel donors get enforcing America to bend over for a foreign country, Carlson endorsed him and wrote, pretty soon, all winning

Republican politicians will talk like this. And this is not something that I think we are, it's something that I think we're seeing more and more of. I think you and I have, while we recognize that a politics of civility is gone, right? I don't think that there's anything that's going to bring it back. I think we both lament it, right? I think both of us look at it. and say, I wish that something like that still exists. But I think we're both realists in the sense that we realize those days are gone. There's not going to be a rollback. We thought the only way it was going to work was if Biden won and then prosecuted Donald Trump.

If he didn't, then what happened was you just said, oh, well, now you just showed that you can get away with it. And so now all these people realize that not only can you grab people's attention with this trolling and mean and shitty language, you can do it in a way that will secure your spot as someone who they're paying attention to. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that wins a race for you. But it does get you on Tucker Carlson show. And what's interesting to me is there's as a guy who has to now consume that sort of media on a regular basis with the other show I do, the No Rogan experience while I watch Joe Rogan every week, is I see Joe talk to many people. And when he talks to them, he almost always has a very similar conversation, which is like, hey, look, they just want to call people Nazis. They just want to, they just want to yell at people and call them Nazis and call them Nazis.

And if there was real Nazis, we'd be against them. But we're, you know, there's that. This is all just bullshit, et cetera, et cetera. I want to read a piece here real quick. This is something that I think is very important. In December, the conservative Manhattan Institute found the 31% of Republicans under 50, identify their own views as racist and 25% their views were anti-Semitic. For those over 50, it's only 4% for each.

The same survey showed that a majority of Republican men under 50 think that the Holocaust either didn't happen or was exaggerated. So I realize that they want to push away and say, oh, you just want to call people Nazis. You just want to demean them. You want to dehumanize them. It's like, no, they have. have dehumanized and debased themselves enough to be called a Nazi. Yeah, man, if the brown shirt fits.

Yeah. You know, like, I don't know what to tell you. Like, these are the things you're saying about you out loud, right? So this isn't me saying, here are the things that I think about you. If you follow Nick Fuentes and you're like, yeah, I'm a groper. I think Nick Fuentes is a guy with good ideas. Here's a quote from Nick Fuentes. He said this on his podcast.

Jews are running society. women need to shut the fuck up. Blacks need to be imprisoned for the most part. Those are things he said. Like that is straight Nazi shit. Yeah, man. There's nothing. Like, the only difference between this and an actual Nazi is political power. And that's why we should all be like, holy shit, because now this is a guy who's like,

I have the views already. It's a great point. I just don't have the power piece. So now what I want to do is get the fuck. power piece. And then your box cars into the game. No bullshit, no exaggeration. There's no reason to say that's hyperbole at that point. If somebody says, I really believe these horrible things and the thing that's holding me back from doing anything about them is that I don't have access to the guns. And then we give them the access to the guns because that's what political

power ultimately is, right? It's force. Donald Trump has shown us that. What political power really is is the ability to lever actual physical violence and force. If we give them that, then it's a Nazi state. Yeah. So, like, yeah, like, they're constantly trying to say, like, I'm fucking settled out. We're not Nazis. While they walk around, like, goose step around everybody.

What the fuck is happening? It's not even, like, okay, so you do remember we used to watch UFC, you and I, like we used to watch. There was a fellow by the name of Jake Shields. You may or may not remember him. He was a grappler, a graper. A groiper. Back in, he's a grappler.

But anyway, Jake Shields was one of these guys. I think he was in Strike Force for a long time. And he, if that was the name of it, I don't even remember if that was the name of it. I think it was. It was the opposite of the UFC for a little while. They kind of had a different league. And he was one of the top guys in that league for a while.

There's a video of him, a very recent video of him. And his crew, going out to a place, some place to get, like, drinks and barbecue or something, and they're filming themselves. Like, these are these guys filming themselves. Right.

And they're sitting there, and they start making racist comments at the bar. Jesus Christ. And the bar keeps like, get the fuck out of here. Get out. Don't, you can't be here anymore. So they start walking out,

throwing Hitler signs, and saying white power to the black barman, to the black bouncer, who's throwing them out. They keep saying white power over and over. And like, this is a guy who is one Kevin Bacon away from Joe Rogan. Right. Like, this is a guy who Joe Rogan probably knows personally, right?

This is a guy who's, he almost certainly has interviewed him in the past. He almost certainly has talked to him in the past. Probably did an in cage interview with him after a fight, I'm sure. Right. This is a guy who is now throwing fucking the Heil Hitler sign and he's, and he's saying white power to a black man's face in front of everybody. This, like, look, man, nobody's freaking out and say, and like, like, and there's, and like, there's only smoke and no fire, right?

Right. There's definitely fucking fire here. You can see it. They are literally walking around in flames. Yeah, man. Who are you? Like, what are you talking about? Of course there's fucking Nazis.

Of course they exist. They literally are doing it on camera now. Yeah. Look, there's. there is no longer any question that there's been a forchanification of American culture that has moved away from online spaces and into real life. Because it has always been the case that the differentiation, the line, the sort of like false binary between IRL and being online, has never been true.

Right? That has never, ever been true. And there's been a lot of people who from the very beginning have pushed back against this idea, this nonsensical bullshit idea, that online spaces and online communities are not the same or reflective of people's actual real, sincerely held beliefs and values. There's literally no reason to think that. And now we are filling hotel rooms full of people who, by virtue of their ability to gather together online and to reinforce these ideas amongst one another, have said, hey,

we can coalesce in real life, which is what we always wanted to do. Right. They were, they start, you start off anonymous when you are worried you will be ostracized by society. But once you gather enough numbers, you begin to wonder, can I simply change society? Can I simply become society? There is not a reason to think that we should be unconcerned about anonymous internet trolling and this sort of stuff and be like, oh, that's just internet speak.

That's just internet culture. It's different than actual culture. No, it is not in exactly the same way that many people will, I think very rightly say, I have a lot of real, honest, important to me, loving relationships with people I've met online. So if the good stuff is online and real, then the bad stuff is also just as real. You can't have it both ways. You can't have a buddy you met on Discord that you have formed a deep and honest relationship with. then many people would argue that that is true.

And right? Many people will say, I've had that experience. I have friends that I've met and are entirely online and they mean something to me. That's a common experience now. Sure. So like, we can't have that be true. But on the other hand, all of this other horrible hateful shit isn't true about the people that say it.

Of course it is. Because like no good person says hateful shit unless they're hateful. it's impossible to square that circle. Yeah, it's a great way for a magnet to get like-minded people. And if you're shitty, you collect those other people. You're attracted to them. If you're good, those people will attract each other. But I don't know that the number of good people outweighs the number of bad people.

I'm not sure that that's the case. I have no idea. And I'm not sure. And I wonder if it's growing the wrong way. And I think there's a piece of this where they start talking about how essentially these guys realized what Trump is doing, which is he's just trolling. And they recognize that you can get away with everything that he's done. And all the ways in which Trump can lie, I mean outright lie, attack people, go after them. Say things that other presidents would be literally thrown out on their ear for saying.

he can say whatever he wants because he doesn't he doesn't care he just does there's there's nothing in his brain that makes him feel any sort of shame right he doesn't have that that function that's nothing that he's gathered throughout his life he doesn't have shame so so you can't shame him into acting correctly so he essentially can he has his run over a polite society he can do whatever he wants and nobody can stop him because there was never anything put in place to stop somebody from doing those sorts of things. And they recognize that. And they look to him as some sort of idol.

Now, we were wondering early on during Trump's presidency, once he goes out of the spotlight, will that change everything forever? Same thing now. What happens when this guy kicks it? Or maybe he steps down after, who knows if he's even going to bother to step down after his terms up, if he's still alive?

But in any case, what happens afterwards? Is there going to be another Trump? Will there be only Trumps? What's going to happen? And I really think it's, the second. I think there's going to be only Trump's. I think the only thing we're going to, I think what we're cultivating right now is politics as Donald Trump sees it, which is every single person will have to emulate Donald Trump from now on because that is the successful model. Yeah, man, I was listening,

let me, let me run this past you to see what you think, because I was listening to a podcast this morning, like one of these news shows. And one of the phrases I hear all the time is some version of Trump is, has a unique and unlikely coalition. So they talk about the coalition of Trump voters being in so many ways, sort of contradictory. Like, well, the evangelical group would seem on its face to be contradictory to some of this, like, trolling group. And some of this, like, super aggressive pro-war, you know, holy war crusader shit like Pete Heggseth would seem to be in opposition with some of this and the Forever Wars camp over here.

And there's a lot of, like, consternation about how to, you know, we how do we explain this unlikely coalition? And I just was thinking this morning, and I'm a little sleep addled, lack of sleep addled, so forgive me if this is gibberish. But I don't think it's an unlikely coalition at all. People say, oh, it's Trump that holds people together. And I thought to myself, well, that doesn't mean anything. Like, what we have to then ask, well, then what is it specifically about Trump that holds these people together. And I think there is a new era of personally self-interested viciousness that is its own manifest party, that is its own ethos. And I think that that is what people see in Trump. What they see is here is a guy who can

exercise power without ethics. And we want to see how far we can. push that because maybe he'll get my pet issue. And I don't care if he also gets your pet issue. We don't have to share the same values. It used to be that a party, a group, a politician, whatever, they were a coalition because they shared the same values. I think what they share here is a sort of vicious, self-interested pragmatism. That's the value that holds these people together. And I think if that is, in fact, the case, then the lesson to learn here is that you don't actually don't have to have a party with a platform, which is why the Republicans just stopped putting one out. What you have to have is a desire to wield a self-interested viciousness.

And self-interested and vicious people will coalesce around that. It's so short-sighted, Tom. Yeah, I know, man. It's so unbelievably short-sighted. And I think that's the real issue is that, like, I think you have to be, you have to be politically naive. to not think that that viciousness will not turn on you. Right? This is, this is, you know, I don't know, like feeding an angry dog and hoping it's going to

protect you. Right. Like, like there's a possibility at will, but it might also just bite the shit out of you, too, right? Yeah. Who the hell knows? And the thing is, like, we're seeing that now. I mean, you saw that all through the first Trump term and you're seeing it now with all

the leopards ate my face stuff, right? I didn't expect my kid to get shipped over there. I didn't expect this to happen. And I certainly didn't want my business to go under because of tariffs. I didn't want this and this and this. And I think you're absolutely right. I think that they were happy to see that viciousness unleashed on someone else. And then they get caught in that backlash.

I think the issue is with Trump, which is, again, also short-sighted, is that he doesn't care who he hurts. Yeah. I think in order for this to be successful, long-term plan, you've got to not hurt so many people. you've got to keep your, you know, you can't cross the streams. You got to make sure you're just individually sort of fucking people up, but not really mass fucking people up with like massive inflation, high gas prices, unaffordability, no upward growth, those types of things.

Because if you do that, what happens is everybody's just like, well, now you're fucking everybody. Yeah. I wanted to be on the in crowd and you didn't let me be on the in crowd. So now you're fucking everybody and now you're out. Yeah. So I think like that's the real issue. And if you look at this, what is really interesting about what you said, when you read this article, there's multiple times that they say things like this person who is part socialist, part this, part that.

And they're mentioning very disparate political ideologies that are smashed together, right? There's a woman who they interview at the end who says, I'm a Democrat. I'm a registered Democrat. But I just, I feel like this is the kind of radical change that we need in our country. And that got me thinking about how bad it is for most people in our nation, right? How bad it is day to day for them because they're working dead-end jobs. There's no upward mobility. There's no chance for them to own any real wealth in a capitalist society.

A lot of that wealth's getting passed up that happened, started happening in the 80s, right, where they started passing more and more wealth up to the top. And now, you know, CEOs pay in comparison to the workers. pay is astronomical. It's unbelievable. It's almost to a point where you can't even believe how much money they're making in comparison of the regular person. How much the top earners in our country just keep making money over and over and over again. You're talking about Elon must possibly be worth a trillion dollars in a soon amount in a short amount of time. This is an immense amount of wealth that has traveled upwards. And so I think you see a lot of people who are just dying

for something to change because what they've seen over and over and over again throughout all the years is nothing happens. And we've talked about that for a long time. There's no real legislation that happens because we have that filibuster. So nothing ever happens. What happens is we pass a budgetary bill. They yell at each other. They talk about a few pet issues here and there that they have.

And those issues get stalled out and nothing really happens or bad things happen. Right. bad the remove progressive stuff and then nothing happens. So what like these people are stuck looking at the wheels in the mud spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning and they're never able to get anywhere. And so now they're just like, I don't care what does it, but I need something to turn it on its head. Yeah, man. I think that that is exactly it. And we are headed into a, I fear very much that we're headed into like a crisis, like a, like a significant long term financial crisis.

which when combined with that attitude, which is a justifiable to some degree attitude, people have been fucked over. Like legitimately fucked over. So like a massive distrust that the system will correct or self-correct is warranted. Yeah. That's not conspiratorial. That's experiential. That's true.

And I think as we head into what I genuinely worry will be a prolonged and significant economic crisis, I think that that like desperation, will manifest in increasingly like violent political ideologies. But I hope I'm wrong. I hope so much that I'm wrong. I think you have to, somebody has to come in and has to start raising the boats and lowering the yachts. I think that's going to, that has to happen.

Somebody has to come in and change that. It's not going to be a conservative, though. And that's what, and that's the thing that I think people don't recognize is that as, as sort of different from the. the mainstream as this person is, right? They still hold some very conservative values. And I think like the conservative values that they hold are that the rich stay richer, right? Right.

And I think like that's something that you can't ever pull away from these people. None of these people think that anybody really deserves anything below the rich. Like the rich, they own everything, they should have everything and nothing ever. They're never going to contribute to society. They're never going to be giving their tax dollars. We shouldn't be expecting that sort of thing. All these conservatives all believe the same thing. So you'll never actually change it with a conservative.

I don't even know at this point if you'd change, you certainly wouldn't change it with a corporatist Democrat. So like you need real progressives in there to change the system to raise these boats. Because if you don't, what you're going to get is a cycle. Like we've seen the on-off switch since Obama. Yeah. It's the on-off switch.

I imagine that the next time around, you're going to see if there are still elections and those elections count, a Democrat get in office. And if they can't write that ship in four years or at least significantly change it, you're going to see another conservative. You'll see J.D. Vance or whoever is the flavor of the week that time, whoever Peter Thiel has his hand up their ass, right? Whoever Peter Thiel is puppeting, that's who you'll see as the new presidential candidate. I'd ask you a question because something occurs to me. I'm curious what your take on it is. I wonder if part of the appeal of social conservatism isn't that, like, I want the world to look the way it used to look where there was a perception, probably historically inaccurate. I recognize that.

But there was a perception of upward mobility and growth and a more like general fairness. And it's like, well, how do I rebuild that world? Yeah. You know, and it's like, well, I just, I got to look at that world. world and I got to embrace all of these other pieces of it. Yeah. Rather than say like, oh, well, actually, you know, during that time, we had a massive, massively smaller wage inequality.

Actually, that was a massive part of why there was, you know, a higher standard of living at the middle class level, you know? Like, rather than look at that, because economics is hard and complicated, I think people say, well, we got to get back to the values that created that. And that ignores, like, the economics of it, because, like, economics is hard. and like telling women to like get pregnant is easier. I am reminded of a piece of the demon haunted world where he talks about cargo cults.

And the cargo cults would stand in a, they would mimic the people who would land planes who would bring supplies to these native islands. They would do the same motions to try to bring planes down that would bring supplies to these native tribes who had never seen anything like this before. and so they would do what they called the cargo cult,

where they would stand there and move they move two sticks instead of flashlights and a plane would land because they were doing, they were going through the same motions to create a result that they thought would happen. And that's the same thing that you're mentioning. Essentially, conservatism is a cargo cult for a good economy. Yeah, yeah. And it's like, and like that's what people see. They think, oh, that's a, that's, that's, if I can recreate these steps,

I can then have. the bountifulness that came with that. Right. And the problem is that the real nuts and bolts had nothing to do with conservative, like social conservative values. That was just the window dressing on what was happening at the time. Right.

And again, just for the audience, I understand that there was never actually that time in America. Like, I do understand that. I'm just saying that that's an idealized version. Now, ask what the great conjunction is. What's the great conjunction? What's the great conjunction? You tell me.

The great conjunction is the end of the world. All the beginning. This is from common dreams. This should be illegal. Senate GOP uses AI deepfake to attack Telarico. Political deepfakes are a profound threat to our democracy because there's no realistic way for voters to understand they are seeing fake representations. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, they should be fucking illegal. Holy fuck. Did you watch it? No, I didn't watch it. No, I listened to this article while it was doing stuff. It is. So if you get an opportunity, I'm not going to play it on our show because I'd like to not share AI and deep fakes on our show. But I do think that it's necessary for people to take a look at because it's pretty realistic.

Like, I mean, I think that you would recognize if you're plugged into the internet on a daily basis, you would recognize that this is a deep fake. I think, you know, like most people would recognize that. But most people is in all people. And that's, I think, the most important piece we need to bring from this is that some people may see this and think, holy shit. That's because they made him basically read his tweets out of context, out of what they were talking about, and make it seem like he really thinks these things and he says these things out loud. I think you need to, like, if you're going to quote somebody's tweet, then they need to get a response and be like, oh, that was in response to this, or this was the thing that was happening at the time because tweets don't allow for context, right?

A tweet doesn't allow, a tweet is too short for me to say, this is in context to the Evaldi shooting, which happened on this date, and this is what I'm talking about or whatever, right? I don't have a space in a thing, but I could certainly talk about how, you know, policemen are cowards and they won't enter a building or something like that. I could say that

and you could be like oh you're calling all police cowards and you're like no it's in very specific a moment in time because that's how tweets work and it's a perfect way

to attack somebody because all you have to do is just pull their tweets and then read them out loud back to them and it makes it seem like oh my God I can't believe

they would have said something like this right? And so that's what they're doing is they're pulling his tweets out of context and then they're using them and they're using a fake face

and fake voice, that is, literally is, if you were being very quick about it, kind of indistinguishable from the real person. So it looks like he's actually reading these things and smiling and gleeful about it instead of being like thoughtful about it. Yeah, I strongly, and with every fiber of my being,

believe that if you are a politician, if you are working for like a pack or something similar, and you do something like this, it should be prison time. Should straight up be prison time. Like, full stop. Like, we cannot allow reality

to become distorted this easily. We can't let it. Because today it's somebody reading their own tweets. But, like, within, like, maybe later today, it's somebody deep faked saying things they never said. Yep. And then, you know, after that, it's somebody doing something

in what appears to be physical space that they've never done. And now we are, you know, one thing we cannot afford to keep doing is questioning our own version of reality and creating bespoke versions of truth. We can't do that. We cannot do that. Therein lies madness, right? Therein lies the destruction of a society.

Therein lies a destruction of what it means to be a nation. A nation is not our physical borders. It's not a shared currency. It's not only those things. A nation is a story we tell about ourselves to ourselves. If we start telling ourselves untrue and disjointed and fragmented and bespoke versions of our own history, of our own current reality, we don't share the same reality. We can't have the same conversations anymore.

We can't make informed decisions. We can't even be, like, definitionally citizens of the same. nation in a proper sense any longer. When we see something from a source that is asking us, literally asking us to be trusted, right? These politicians are standing in front of us and they're saying, please trust me, put your faith in me. I would like to represent you.

Yeah, that's a great point. Then if they send, if they didn't turn around and use tools to manipulate our idea of reality itself, they got to go to prison. Straight up prison. It's not a fine. It's not a year kicked out of the candidacy. It's you're in prison now. And you're in prison for like 30 years.

Like you got to die in there, man. Like it should be like if you like what like it's look, man, it's fucking rape and murder and fucking messing with the idea of reality to the masses when you've been asked to be trusted with it. Like what the fuck? We can't allow it, man. We can't let this happen. Yeah.

I don't think you're going to. It's never going to happen, man. We're going to allow it. We're going to allow it so bad, dude. And what's interesting is that we don't push back. We don't push back on this, but they pushed back on pornography with this. And it was because, very specifically, you could not consent to that, right? Like, I couldn't consent to somebody making a pornographic movie with my face in it, right?

I can't consent to it. First off, I don't know where you find the body double. That's the first thing. I mean, like, come on. There's no way you're going to find somebody that looks like this. Not important anyway. You just use the Michelin Man. Not important. That's for sure. You're certainly find somebody who looks way different from me, but certainly not anybody that looks like me.

But if they put my face on, I didn't consent to it. Well, this is the same thing. I mean, this is essentially, granted, he's not in the same, he's not naked and they're not trying to shame him in that way. But they are trying to shame him, right? Like, I mean, like, they are doing similar things to why we ban the porn thing. Unless somebody has another answer. I'm happy to hear the other answer that makes porn deepfakes different from this deep fake. I'm happy to hear somebody's contention.

If you have that out there and you're like, no, it's very different because of X. I'm willing to hear you out. But so far, just looking at this, it doesn't seem like it's so different from what they had, why they had made that decision on pornography. So why is this different if the other thing is not allowed? And in fact, you can be prosecuted for it. Well, Cecil, like, GROC lets you take pictures of just about anybody and turn them into naked or half-naked pictures.

That's like a tool that just Grock has and allows for. It's like, they've literally made the pornography portion of that illegal. So I wonder if it happens to be that they're just saying that it needs to cross a threshold of nudity or sexual nature in order for it to be. something that is considered pornography. So now we're arguing about what pornography is, not about the concept of what this thing is doing, which is removing your consent,

putting you in an awkward position, shaming you for something you never did, all those things that they're getting out of the pornography, now they're putting it behind a label that says it has to be this, because that's what the law says or whatever. You know what I mean? Yeah, I do. I know exactly what you mean.

And it's a good, like there's a good dissonance there that you're pointing out. Like, why would we allow one thing which has an individual impact, right? An individual, on a one-to-one basis, we're saying that's wrong. And this other thing, which has a massive social impact and we're just like, well, yeah, but I mean, we want to. Yeah, this is fun, though. Like, genuinely, if you're the United States government and you want to say, hey, we have to drop a nuke in Tehran, and we have to do it because this thing happened and it's an atrocity. And we're going to show you video now of this thing that's an atrocity. and that thing never happened.

Why would you, tell me why that seems unlikely. When George W. Bush stood in front of the whole country and knowingly lied, knowing, lied about going to war with Iraq and saying there were weapons of mass destruction, knowing full well, he didn't. Why does that sound unlikely when Donald Trump said, you know, Iran has weapons that could hit the United States in 45 minutes? That's not true. That is not true. We're going to go to war, Cecil. We're going to go to fucking war because of pictures that aren't real and videos of shit that did not happen. People will avenge themselves for events that didn't occur, that they become radicalized about from shit they see online.

Of course they will. Of course. Like, a guy broke into Pizza Gate with a fucking assault rifle based on words he read on a screen. Do you think if there was fucking video, like real? hyper-realistic video that like there wouldn't be a hundred pizza gates, there is an amplification effect to this that's so frightening to me. Yeah. This kind of behavior is never tolerating in Boracca.

You shout like that, they put you in jail right away. No trial, no nothing. Two Doge staffers say no regrets for people losing income. Didn't reduce the deficit. So this is like, I just want to read what they were quoted in. saying here. So we'll do the question and answer. You don't regret that people might have lost important income to support their lives. And attorney asked Kavanaugh about the grant cancellations. No, I think it was more important to reduce the federal deficit from two trillion dollars to close

to zero, Kavanaugh said. And did you reduce the federal deficit? The attorney asked. No, we didn't. No, we didn't. No, we didn't. We actually spent more money than we saved, but that is not our fault. Yeah, there's another one in here too where they ask him, they say, you know, like, hey, you cut these things out because you said they were DEI. Why are you cutting out like a Holocaust woman's documentary that was a grant for that? Why did you cut that out? And they're like, well, it's obviously promoting a very specific group of people. And it's, and it's, and it's, and it's, and it's, and it's, and it's, it's basically it's, what did he say? It was discriminatory to other people. And you're like, that's not how this works. That's not how DEI works. Just because you promote someone else's voice doesn't mean you lower the volume on the other

voice. You just promoted another voice. That's how it works. Always funny to me, whenever anybody talks about DEI, I always think about my own past. And I think about all the ways in which I moved forward. in life, and it almost always happened when I knew a guy, right? It's almost always like, I bet you. And I just want like a little thing for people to do to think back. And you got to be

pretty open with understanding this. But think back to all the jobs you've had, especially any of the good jobs you've had. Did you know a person there? Did you know somebody there that got you the job? Because when I was out of high school, I got a job because I knew my mom worked at a place and I got the same job at that place. Then I knew a guy who worked for another, like a plumbing supply company and he got me a job at the plumbing supply company. I went away to college,

and when I went away to college, I got a job because they had to give me a job at the university. But then I worked my way to meeting somebody and then got a different job there. Then I left for a little bit, and then I needed to come back and I used that to get a job at the university I was working at. So I had connections there

that then got me another job. And I stayed at that career for 22 years afterwards. For 22 years, I was at that same university that I went to school at because I knew someone who got me a position. I know tons of people who got their job, our other best friend, got a job where he's working because of you. Yeah, yeah. He got a job because of you.

Yeah. Yeah. My story is literally exactly the same. And I'll tell you, this is come up with my kids. So my story, like right out of college, I got a job working for Bose Corporation because I knew the market rep because he used to come into Circuit City. So I called him. I applied. I already knew this guy, DJ, DJ pushed my resume up. I got a job. I wanted to leave that. I called my friend Derek. He got me a job at the first title company I worked for. I worked for that company. My friend Bill was leaving that company and going to another company. And I was like, hey, can I come along with you? He got me a connect at the next company I was at. Then when I got bored and tired of that company, I called a guy named Joe who had moved from that company to the bigger company and Joe got me an interview with the job that I have now.

I have not updated my resume meaningfully in terms of just blind giving it to somebody and applying for a job that just exists on like indeed literally ever once in my life. So when we say like DEI basically allows it so more different people get to get that same opportunity. What we're saying is we want to have more options than just you know a guy. You want to be able to do more than that because what happens with you know a guy is you constantly recycle the same ethno groups over and over, the same gender groups over and over and over again. There's never any changes in there because it's always you know a guy and you probably know a guy who looks a lot like you. Yep. That's what you probably know. You probably know. You probably know

someone who looks like you. And so we never see the changes because there's never any pressure to change it. That's right. Dei is the tiniest bit of pressure to say, why don't we allow for the inclusion of other people in this process that is not just, you know a guy, it's maybe you know a guy, but then there's also 10 other people that get an opportunity as well. And maybe one of those people wows you more than the guy you knew. And that's the important piece about DEI that people neglect, they forget. And if you keep the same system and the same gender and the same, you know, ethnicity as the group that is in power all the time, that never changes. Yep. Yeah, dude. And I always think about you because you, in your previous career,

you were exposed, I think, in a very formal way to DEI as a set of both ethical and professional principles. And I have never had that same experience in my working life. never has DEI. Those letters in that order have never been said out loud to me in my professional career. Yeah. And I think sometimes like,

I think that's a real problem because so many people only encounter the idea of DEI from a wildly uninformed view, right? They're just told something about what it means. And they're like, well, I don't know, I watch us, you know, Fox News told me a thing

or, you know, like Rush Limbaugh. They think it means affirmative action quotas. Right. That's what they think it means. And affirmative action quotas aren't real. Yeah. Right? They're all, so they're like,

they think it means a thing. It's not real based on another not real. You know, like it's fucking ghosts on ghosts. That's what they think it is. Yeah. Yeah, they think it, they think they, they don't know what it is. Right. Mr. Madison, what you just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard.

At no point in your rambling, incoherent response, were you even close to anything that could be considered? a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points and may God have mercy on your soul. All right, so this story comes from Politifact.

Trump spoke about girls being of age at above six years old as he promoted the Save America Act. Now, Cecil, I think it's important that we do not take Trump out of context. You're going to play the audio. I read the Trump. transcript.

And I want to tell you like... The transcript means nothing, right? Yeah. When you read the transcript, you're like, I can't parse this, but I don't think the audio's any better. I want to just share, like, I'm very, very busy right now and I'm a little sleep deprived. And I'm getting ready. I'm doing my prep work for this show, Cecil.

It's like 5.30 in the morning. And I read the transcript and I literally thought like, okay, I have got to get back on some coffee. I can't. I literally went, I'm not even kidding. Cisel. I was like, I unquit coffee. I got to have a cup of coffee right now.

I wouldn't have a cup of coffee. And I was like, no, that didn't help. It didn't help. It did not help. The thing is, is like when you hear it, I don't think you'll, you will change your mind about what is set here. It won't be revelatory. Trump is talking about the Save Act in this.

I'm going to play it for everybody so they can hear it. Here it is. Trump having a conversation about Save Act. He was president. It was a single best thing and he did a thing on mail-in ballots. He said, mail-in ballots. should not be allowed because they are inherently dishonest. And we have seen it time and time again,

and we just keep going with it. That's not true. We haven't seen anything like what you're talking about. Like I know he's talking about fraud. That's just not true. I just want to point that is literally not true. Something like 0.02% is it. Look, no male and now you have the exceptions for the military.

And I would even say foreign-based military, but for the military, for disability, for illness. and if you're traveling, you know, you have an excuse. And I was lenient on that. But those three things. Then I added two more. These are best of, you know, best of. These are called best of Trump.

We should also add on to this bill. And so what I've asked Mike to do is to draw a new one with these few things added. And let's go for the gold. Let's not just get one like voter ID, but, you know, it can be given to you by your daughter. you know, your daughter, she has to be of age, like above six years old, she's allowed to say. You had to see some of this stuff is so bad. They're doing everything possible because they know, if we get this, they'll probably won't win an election for 50 years.

No, he doesn't connect anything to anything else in that speech. There's nothing. Like, I know that everybody was saying that Biden was muddled. He was disconnected. He didn't understand what was. happening around him, tell me that makes any sense whatsoever. And here's the thing. Like, I normally am, I think, pretty forgiving about somebody who's going to talk stream a consciousness for a few minutes. I'm normally pretty forgiving. I couldn't make heads or tales about what he was

talking about the Save Act. I know that he was talking about Mail and Ballots. And then he started saying that Mike Johnson was going to change everything around for him. And he wanted to add a few more things and then he said voter ID and then he brings up children and then he says they're of age when they're of six and I don't know what he's talking about. Literally there's no way for you to know and the PolitiFact article is like yeah it's unclear what that even refers to and I was like come on. I mean we're being shitty PolitiFact. I read the transcript. I was like okay, I clearly am not well caffeinated. I read the transcript again. Now you played it. There's no way to make that make sense, Cecil. That sounds seriously like a person who is. Is he a person who

losing their own train of thought mid-sentence. The only thing I can maybe connect it to, maybe he didn't use his words properly, was that your child at a certain age would recognize you as who you are. So, like, that's the ID. Do you know what I mean? Like, that's the ID he's talking about there?

I was, I don't know, man. I don't know because it sounds like he's suggesting that your daughter turns six and gives you a voter ID. And that's honestly, what he kind of sounds like. Now I can't like, she's got a fucking like fucking like picked like a polaroid. She's like what is happening? Like what? She's taking fucking passport photos at Walgreens. Like what the fuck? She's in kindergarten, man. She's six years old.

Yeah, you know. It says let's not just get the one like voter ID, but you know it can be given to you by your daughter. You know your daughter. She has to be of age like above six years old. She's allowed to say you had to see some of this stuff is so bad. I don't know what any of that means. Like, they were screaming and shitting in their own hands and scrubbing it all over themselves whenever Biden did anything that was even remotely a gaffe. When he said something, when he messed things up,

he would, you know, say up instead of down or something. And they would flip their fucking shit. They would be like, oh my God, get this guy out of here. That doesn't make any sense. That, like, literally makes zero sense. And he's getting reactions from the audience at a certain point when he when he says that we're going to trump this up or whatever, the audience starts to laugh. Like, this is a cult, man.

Oh, yeah. This is a cult. This is a straight up cult. How do you listen to that as somebody who's politically minded to be like, no, that's my guy? I'm so happy that my guy is up there. You know, he's fighting the good fight. Like, what are you talking about?

Give that guy the nuclear suitcase. Give him the football. That's great. Awesome. Yeah, that's the guy who should. be in charge of nothing. He should not be in charge of it. Tell me what this means. I challenge anybody. Tell me, give me an explanation for what this could possibly mean. Because I can't figure it out. Like, I know that he's saying at the beginning that we have this save act and it has three elements

and he wants to add two more elements to it. You guys, he never gets to the two additional elements he wants added to. Voter ID is one of the elements. Voter ID because he says, I thought that was already one of the Let's go for the gold. Let's not just get one like voter ID. Oh, I guess you're right. You're right. Yeah, because and then he says afterwards, he's like, anything's possible.

So maybe later he adds them. I don't know, but he doesn't add him quickly. I don't have any idea what the extra two things are that he wants to. What I also love just as an aside is he wants to amend the Save Act so that it does more. But the Save Act is not going to pass doing less. It's a nothing burger bill that's not going anywhere. the save act's not going to go anywhere, man. Like, it's not going to get 60 votes in the Senate.

That's a dead fucking bill. Yeah, unless they bust the filibuster. Unless they break the filibuster, then it won't. But if they break the filibuster, it could feasibly go somewhere. Yeah, I think they've got 51 secured. So if they do break the filibuster, they'll get the SAVAC through. I just think that they don't have the votes to break the filibuster. So I would be, I mean, I guess anything could happen.

We went to war with Iran because I fell asleep and woke up. So, yeah. They could break. They could, I don't, I wouldn't, I will say this. I would be surprised if by the time Trump is, does the midterms roll around, that the filibuster is in place. Yeah, sure.

Yeah. Cecil. Because like I think that that's a barrier to his, his policy setting and his agendas. I'll be happy if it's in place. Right. But I won't be surprised if it's gone. It's so funny because I actually strongly have

disagreed that we should just have a cockblock filibuster in the past we've talked about this. I think if you're going to filibuster, get your ass up there and fucking start talking. Let's put things to a vote. I have believed that in the past. I still, on a principles level, have to acknowledge that, like, I have to believe the same thing I believed before. But I also am like, you know, like, when your house is on fire, you don't walk around, like, being like, you know, I actually disapprove of fires.

Like, the house is on fire right now. and the guys who are in charge are fucking actual Nazis. So I'm like, I don't care what tools we use to stop them. I don't care about any of my principles at all. All I care about is putting up every fucking roadblock possible to stop the Nazis. I'll tell you what, though. We have a system in place that hopefully will prevent this. But if it doesn't, and the SAVE Act goes through, he's not wrong at the end of that when he says they won't win another election for a long time.

because what it's going to do is disenfranchise voters. So that's what it's going to do. It's going to disenfranchise the people who won't have time or ability or who feel threatened by this sort of thing. They just won't do it. All right. That's going to wrap it up for this week. Like I say, next week we'll have a Project 2025 sort of score sheet we're going to be going through

how well they've done the bowling scores so far. A lot of strikes. A lot of turkeys, actually. A lot of turkeys. A lot of, a lot of say, In any case, so we'll be covering that next Monday, but we're going to leave you like we always do. Spare us from Project 2025. 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. Couched in Scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quazi alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, Stereogram, Pyramidil, Free Energy Healing, Water, Downward Spiral, Brain Dead, Pan, Sales Pitch, Late Night Info Ducatainment Leo Pisces, Cancer Cures, Detox, Reflex, Foot Massage, Death and Towers, Terocars, Psychic Healing, Crystal Balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, Yeti, Aliens, Churches, Mosques, and Synagogues, Temples, Dragons, Giant Worms, Atlantis, Duthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts.

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