Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 912: Petty Kash Patel Sues the Atlantic

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

MAGA Is Increasingly Convinced the Trump Assassination Attempt Was Staged | WIRED https://archive.ph/20260418055449/https://www.wired.com/story/maga-is-increasingly-convinced-the-trump-assassination-attempt-was-staged/ Virginia voters approve redistricting measure backed by Democrats Tucker Carlson Says He Is 'Tormented' by His Past Support for Trump RFK Jr. Refused to Commit to Backing New CDC Director on Vaccines - The New York Times Kash Patel Sues The Atlantic for $250 Million Over Article Claiming Excessive Drinking - The New York Times Judge dismisses Kash Patel's defamation lawsuit over claim he frequented 'nightclubs' F.B.I. Said to Have Investigated Times Reporter After Article on Patel's Girlfriend FBI, DOJ scrambling to rebuild after being depleted by resignations and firings - ABC News The Onion reaches new deal to take over Alex Jones' Infowars | CNN Business

This episode of Cognitive Dissidence is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. Cording Live from Gloryhole Studios in Chicago and Beyond, this is Cognitive Dissence. 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. April the 23rd. It's only April, man. Yeah, I know, man. It's only April.

2026, 300 years long. Here we go, buddy. What's happening in the world? Cecil, anything interesting? Hey, man, did you know that the Navy secretary got fired yesterday or quit? It's not 100% clear because nothing is. true anymore. There was also an unconfirmed report

that Trump was like, I'm going to use the nuke codes. Yeah, dude. So I don't remember if I sent that to you or if we just stumbled across the same thing. Like, I want to be clear to the audience. It is unconfirmed. It's unconfirmed. We're not sure. Yeah, you know, there's no idea. But here's why, to me,

I sent this to Cecil, or I think I did at least. I thought to myself, this feels true because he tweeted out, I'm going to annihilate an entire civilization. I mean, the language around that whole thing makes you wonder. But yeah. Yeah.

So, like, when somebody says, I will destroy a civilization so much, they will never come back from it, which is what he said. Like, I'm paraphrasing only the littlest bit. And only because I don't remember the exact words, that is literally the gist of everything, right? And then you see something like, yeah, it looks like he was looking for the nuclear codes. It's like, well, I already thought maybe he was. There was a lot of people who thought that. I mean, that wasn't something. Iranians were worried about that.

Yeah, there wasn't, that wasn't something that was a big shock to anyone. There was a bunch of people who were speculating about that because of his language. And then, look, I have no idea if this is true because it's an unconfirmed report, right? But there's been a lot of unconfirmed reports from things that have happened in his, in his cabinet, and people's sources close to him, et cetera, et cetera, that have happened in his previous presidency and in this presidency that have wound up being true. So I don't, I can't be sure. But let me just say out loud, I'm happy someone was like, no, go lay down. If that's the case, if it's real, I'm happy someone was just like, no, go, get away from me.

Get out of here. Go play Xbox. You go back to your room. Somebody like a high, they're like throwing the nuclear football over his head while he's like jumping in the middle like a little brother trying to catch it. Amazing. No. No. Yeah.

No. Imagine Cecil being like, you know what, we are really worried that Iran could enrich a bunch of uranium, get a nuclear bomb, and kill millions of innocent people. The solution would be to use our nuclear bombs to kill millions of people. That way we'll prevent the needless deaths of millions of people. Man. What the shit. That kind of thinking is real, though. Yeah.

And what it underscores is how intensely tribalistic. Sure. And how we like think of a life over here that is one of ours as so much more both real and important than a life that live that has lived somewhere else. Right. Like when we think of like, think of the uproar if a school full of little girls in America were bombed and a hundred and some of them died. it would be a moment that would define American history forever. It would be a 9-11 type of moment. If a foreign nation bombed an American school and we were just like, yeah, shit happens.

Yep. God bless. Yeah. Well, and I read Anne Jacobson's book, nuclear war and it seems to be a very, very well researched and reported book. So if I believe that book to be true, and I do, what would most likely happen, is China would retaliate and it would be the end of all things. Because every nuclear armed major country that has ICBMs, they have a standing mad policy that if anyone in that group fires a weapon, they do not wait for that weapon to land before they fire their weapons. Jesus Christ, too.

So the official policy of Russia, China, America, there is no waiting. There's no try to shoot it down and see. the policy, the official policy, is that one nuke launched is every worldwide nuke launched. Jesus Christ, dude. So it isn't even possible to nuke, to drop, I don't want to say nuke, because that actually minimizes things and makes it seem different.

To drop a weapon like that in an isolated way, that's not real. What is real is that, like, it would be the end of all times. That's the, because China would retaliate. It's also true that you can't drop a weapon like that and not have it drift. Oh, no, of course not, yeah.

And that would be an act of warfare against everybody downwind. And that's part of the reasoning behind this. And also, if you're China, you can't be like, oh, well, we've now established a precedent where America gets to use nuclear weapons. So there's a lot of reasons behind that policy. And the policy, like, if it's launched in the air,

everything else goes off. It's all over. It's all over. It's like, you know, it's the road. That's it. We're all done so. So, yeah. Drive to your largest population center as quickly as you can and hope that you get wiped out during that.

Open your mouth and try to eat the big flash. That's it. Just, nah. I want that fucking missile in my mouth. Gosh. Have you ever had a dreams that you had, you, you, you could, you do what you want, you, you, you could do so. You want him to do you so much, you could do anything. So this story is from Wired,

MAGA is increasingly convinced that Trump assassination attempt was staged. It is very interesting to me that as Trump's like standing among the MAGA lunatics has gone down, that their willingness to believe conspiracies that, like, impact their guy go up. Yeah. right? That's a weird sort of like mental calculus. It's like, well, my guy is awesome. So these things are not true. And then you're like, I kind of don't like my guy. Maybe I should come up with some bullshit. Yeah. Well, I think one of the things that they've cultivated in their group for many years is the idea that you should do your own research. Right. So you hear this all the time from this side. Don't listen to the mainstream. You should do your own research. Do your own research. Now, let me remind people that research doesn't mean what you think it means. What it means is, is find a thing on the Internet that agrees with you, and that's your research. It's not find the first thing.

It's not look through all the things and weigh them out. It's not go to somebody who understands this thing and find out what they looked at and decided and how they made their decision. It's none of those things. It's literally, that doesn't match what I like. That doesn't match what I like. that doesn't match what I like. Oh, there's the Mercola site. This one says, this is good.

This is my research, and I've done it. And what they did was is they fed them. They didn't just do it once. They did it multiple times. They did it with ivermectin. They did it with all the different types of things that you could do instead of getting a COVID shot. They did it with COVID shots themselves,

MRI technology. Then they specifically did it with a large tranche of information called the Epstein, files. Yep. So what they did was they said, hey, guys, you do your own research group. Here's a big tranche of information that you could dig through.

And the thing is, is that they've, in order to keep this group at bay, you've got to always be on the ups with them. You can't be somebody who has a negative, that they have a negative perception of. Because if you are, then suddenly they start pointing their high-powered, uncritical lens at you. And then they start thinking, well, is there anything this person would have tricked me on? Because they're already primed for being tricked. They're already primed for all the conspiracies because you did that. You're the one who fed them all the conspiracies.

So now this is a whole group of supercharged, very uncritical people who are willing to confirm their own biases. And so what happens then? Well, now you're on the outside of them with this war and with terror. and with the economy and with gas prices. And suddenly they start thinking, maybe you're the problem. Maybe you lied to them not just once, twice, three times. Maybe you lied to them about the origin story you tried to sell the American people that

you were shot. Yeah, man. Like, this is the direct result of the ecosystem, the information ecosystem they've created and maintained and bathed in and chosen for themselves. They understand. I think that the right has understood that there is a vast group of people who operate better if you can tell one narrative that connects all things. And that narrative has to be not, let me be very clear.

It has to be simple to understand, but it can have infinite points of complexity. So it has to be something that you can elevate our pitch in a moment, right? but it has to be broad enough that everything can fold inside of it. And they understand that there's a lot of people who are comforted by that idea. And that's where a lot of these conspiracies, that's how a lot of them work, right? Because they're broad enough and nonspecific enough that everything can kind of fall under that umbrella. And it is able to infinitely evolve for the next set of facts or the next set of like conspiratorial musings or whatever. that's bad, right? That's bad. We should be fighting against that. Instead, the right for a long time

and MAGA specifically, they stoked that fire, right? They fed that baby. They made that happen because it served their purposes. But that sort of thinking doesn't change just because the facts have changed. And we know that because every group that falls into that category of wanting the world to be strung together by a single cohesive narrative that explains all things, we've seen that that like the research shows they just double down, right? When things don't happen, when new facts are presented, when there's contradictions, they don't change their minds, they double down. It's in, like, every research shows the same thing.

Well, now they're fucked. These guys are totally, like, the right is fucked because they're holding a fucking poisonous snake that they're like three times they wiggled it out of their people and it bit them. And they're like, it'll never bite me. Sure. Idiots. Yeah. Idiots.

Couldn't happen to a better group of people, man. couldn't happen to a better group of people. I mean, this in particular is genuinely silly to think that this is staged. There was a person who was shot to death, right? Like, I don't understand how you could think, well, you know what we're going to do is we're going to, as the Secret Service or the FBI, whoever you think is behind this, we're going to go out with live bullets and we're going to shoot at the president. Like if you're going to shoot at the president and you're going to make a big show about it, why not I use blanks?

Like what's the, why would you use a real bullet and murder someone in the audience if it's a stage thing? That's a stupid thing to do. Just use blanks. There's a big loud sound. He grabs at his ear.

He falls down. He wakes up and stands up and he's like, fight, fight, fight. He's got a big bunch of blood pouring out of his ear. And then it gets carried out, etc., etc. And the thing is that they're using these these little tiny anomalies that happened during it.

Like at one point, it appears that someone is sort of pushing photographers over to get a photo of him. But it might just be like the Secret Service is letting people move or they're not paying attention to people or whatever. They're saying that the flag got lowered down. There's all these like little anomalies that happened during this particular moment. And you're like, but somebody got murdered, right? Like a person was shot to death in the audience. Like this is not a sacrificial lamb moment

where we're just like, well, I guess one of these idiots is just going to have to die for this. You could do it without that and it would be fine. It wouldn't even make it. It wouldn't even be a big, and you could also put the guy, if you were going to stage it,

you would have somebody probably stand up be like, blop, blop, blop, and maybe try to shoot at him or something like that. You wouldn't put somebody far away and then the gun goes off. It just doesn't make any sense if you think about it for two seconds.

Now, I will say this. it's possible that he might have reacted to the bullet and like waved his hand and been like, because, you know, like, just like anything comes by your ear, you might be like, oh my God. And maybe he fell and maybe like some people suggest that maybe when he was trying to stand up, he bumped his head into somebody else's thing,

like a belt buckle and it ripped his ear. Because he doesn't, he didn't get like pierced by a bullet. Like it wasn't like a bullet like shot through his fucking ear and pierced it. It was like a tiny. If the very worst, it was a graze, right? At the very worst, it was a tiny little gray. Right.

And the problem is, is that's an anomaly, right? And it's the thing they can take their fingers in and pull apart. And these people are crazy. And they don't want to just believe what you saw on the screen. Yeah, I mean, like, like, same thing. I want to acknowledge that, like, his ear looks fine. There's been, like, a million people have posted pictures and, like, his ear looks exactly the same. Oh, like, well, like, what?

how did he get shot in the ear and his ear looks fine? Well, like, maybe he cut it with his own fingernail, right? Like, to your point, oh, God, he reached up and he cut his own, like, there are lots of things in chaotic moments that could happen that if I were him, I would play up as I got shot in the ear. And then I would bandage it up and I would create a theatrics out of it, right? Because all of that, I will tell you, like,

is there any part of me that thinks that he did not immediately understand and seize the value of that moment? Of course. Yeah. But like, and would, is there any part of me that's like, did he milk that moment? Yeah, of course he milked that moment. I bet like if I got fucking, if something like that happened to me and I realized that I cut myself diving down or with my own fucking fingernail or like you said, like bumped it on the podium

or whatever, I'd be like, awesome, awesome. I'm seizing this moment right now. There is nobody that can suggest, like no matter how much you hate Trump, you have to acknowledge that some amount of manipulative, political, and media savvy exists, or he would not be where he is. Sure, of course, absolutely. 100%. So if I know that at the very least, he is an instinctual animal in that regard, that literally explains everything. Yeah.

And I know that that's already true. So I don't have to, like, create a scenario where they convinced a young, young guy, like a 20-year-old guy, to allow himself to be killed. right, the shooter. Yeah. I have to invent a scenario where that guy, despite, and I've read some reporting, there's no background and there's been a lot of reporting on this guy. There's been deep dive articles, and I've read a couple of them about who this guy is. There's nothing that would suggest he was, you know, he didn't have like stage four cancer or

something, you know, he wasn't like vulnerable in some way to a sort of like manipulation by shadow forces. Like, the complexity of the other thing is too big. I and and you're absolutely right there's two deaths there I said one death but you're right there's two deaths that dude died

who shot him and the person in the audience died man like like I don't know how you how you add this conspiracy theory up in your head and come up with it was all staged because you got to be I mean you got to be somebody who's just I think just dying to find something

in like in the gaps you're trying to find anything you can And I'll also point this out too. Who are the people, and I mean this non-ritorically, let's assume it we're staged for a minute. Let's assume that you're operating on that assumption. Remember that at this time Trump was not the president.

So he was not in control of any of the forces of government. So who were the people who did this? I don't know. I mean, what we've seen since Trump has taken office is, and we'll cover a story about this, is largely a raft of people

in government who have fled government. So I would have to assume that there are these very powerful, shadowy, covert operatives who want Trump to come back into power, who have the ability to get someone to allow himself to be killed with total disregard for the lives of the people in the audience, willing to do this. And also willing to say like this incredibly sophisticated and risky operation is so worth it that we think it's going to be the thing that will move the needle for the election and it is necessary or there's no way he's going to win because otherwise literally why would you do it?

So there's so many points of like, does that who? Who were the people that did this? It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense. Fuck this shit I'm out. Nope. Fuck this shit I'm out. All right then.

I don't know what the fuck just happened, but I don't really gay. I'm going to get the fuck a bit. out of here. All right, so as I just referenced, ABC News, FBI and DOJ scrambling to rebuild after being depleted by resignations and firings. I think a couple of things are important about this. Obviously, there's been a purge at the DOJ and within the FBI of people who did their job and the right didn't like the way they did their job. And the MAGA idiots are going on a retribution. campaign to ruin careers and ruin lives for people who were literally just doing the job

of investigative justice and nothing more. So there's that piece. Then there's people who are like, it is bad to work here now. And actually, these are hard jobs to get, which means I'm a very qualified person and I can go get a better job somewhere else. Yeah. More pay, less stress. It's all better. Yeah. So there's a, you know, there's a need now for people because people have been fired and people have fled. And they're filling it now with, and hold your fucking breath, less qualified candidates.

Less qualified candidates that they fucking, they raked Twitter for. Like at a certain point, at a certain point, some person who was working at the DOJ who was like in charge of some of this stuff had posted, hey, if you're looking for a job at the DOJ, why don't you send you

your, and you're like, dude, you're asking Twitter for resumes at the DOJ? And then that person, a bunch of people were all said the same thing, which was essentially, no, this has never happened like this before. Those were sought after jobs. They were people who wanted to work in government, who had molded their whole careers to go down that path. And then what happens is this clown car people come in.

They're all super unqualified or they're just malicious, right? And what happens is a group of people look at that and say, Fuck that. I don't want to have to be tied to this administration. I don't want to be tied. I don't want to be doing the bidding of this administration. I don't want to be doing illegal things for this administration, which we've seen them try to push forward. I don't want to be that person who won't even sign their name to an indictment because nobody in the whole DOJ is willing to do it. They have to hire some random outside personal lawyer to come in and be the signatory on some of these things because no sane person. person who works as a DOJ wants to do this work and they don't want to be the person whose ass is going to be on the line when they go in front of a judge and say, yeah, no, it's literally all made up. It's just all made up and the points don't matter. So yeah, you can, you can ruin my career. Of course they don't want to do that. And then they have to, they have to, they're skipping a social media network that literally does this LinkedIn. They're skipping that entirely.

They're jumping over LinkedIn to get to Twitter to say, yeah, you. you know who we really need? We need some of these Nazi bots. That's what we need to be lawyers at the DOJ. Calling all Russian activists. DOJ is now hiring. Yeah, DOJ is hiring. And the thing is in Twitter,

you can tell who they are because they have a little flag. And none of them are from America. Now one of them is from America. Man, a couple of things about this are interesting to take note of and important. I think one, this is the deep state, right? We've talked about this before.

But this is literally. So what they're doing is, They fired everybody who was doing the work of a nonpartisan justice group, FBI, and the Department of Justice have always been nonpartisan actors. They fire all of those people. And then they literally go look for partisan actors. Yeah. If you believe in the concept of a deep state, you have to say this literally fits the entire description of mold of a deep state.

It is that. It is just and exclusively and only that. it's also a separate thing that is incredibly interesting, which isn't in our show notes, but is related to this that I want to talk about real quick, is that there were the confirmation hearings this week for the proposed new Fed chair. Yeah, I saw that.

And that's Warsh, Kevin Warsh. Which always sounds like saying WASH wrong. Yeah, you're saying like you're from like southeast or whatever. Right, yeah. Like I'm sitting in the fucking in the hollows of Kentucky washing something, right? Yeah. And one of the questions, I thought this was so fascinating and so telling, one of the questions that

was asked of Warsh was, did President Trump lose the 2020 election? And Warsh was unwilling to answer that question. And that's incredibly important. It's important because the Fed chair, and Warsh specifically has said out loud that he intends to operate independently, and the independence of the Fed from the executive branch is. is not just important, but it is literally globally economically critical. Trump has said, I'm going to appoint a guy who does what I said. He said it out loud.

I'm going to, I'm going to appoint a guy who follows my direction. Then Warsh, who can't say out loud that he is just going to be a fucking sock puppet of Trump shows up. And he's like, yeah, I intend to be a fully independent, you know, Fed chair and, you know, blah, blah, blah. And they're like, great, who won the election in 2020? And he can't answer that question. Sure.

If you can't answer that question, you know where his loyalties lie completely. So we're at a place where we are about to have a Fed chair for the first time in modern American history, we are about to have a Fed chair who answers specifically to and is a fucking lapdog of the executive. And that should scare everybody listening to this. Every person listening to this should be concerned about a global economic. Recession at the very least as a direct result of this. It's so crazy to me because I always think to myself that this group of people is so motivated by money that they'll do all kinds of things to make sure and ensure that they are rich. This is one of those things that you're doing to ensure that everybody loses.

No one is going to win if you put somebody in charge who is actually. controlled by Trump. There is no way you're going to win. This is a disaster economically, not just for you individually, but for the country and possibly for the entire world. It is an absolute disaster. If you put somebody in who when Trump says jump, they ask how high. That is going to be a terrible ad. And the problem is, I always thought at a certain point, there would be a pushback. There would be something there that would say, okay, no, that's enough. That's enough. No, we wanted to make a shit. Gobbs and gobs and gobs and gobs.

I want to eat. But the moment you start taking that away from me, now I'm going to push back and we're going to stop you. But these people are just cowards and they're sick of fans. And all they care about is pleasing this one guy. And it is terrifying that this group of people, even the people who meekly once in a while speak out about him are the. most cowardly people in the world.

And it's terrifying that they are the ones who are now controlling, they control all levers in government. So every lever belongs to the Republicans right now. Yeah, on occasion you can stop people, but they're not going to be able to stop this. If the Republicans all get behind this guy, you aren't stopping this. This is going to go through.

Yeah. And like this is just Tom's fucking Thursday conspiracy hour next. So this doesn't mean anything. I just made this up. my thoughts about this this week when I was thinking. But like, when I looked at it, one of the things that seems to be true is that anytime that there is a recession, following the recession, there is an even more, an even greater collapse of economic power to the top.

And that's because of the ways that we get out of recessions. Yeah. And so there is a part of me that is like, I wonder if these guys are looking a little longer term and saying, look, we know we're going to cause a recession. And we know that the way out of a recession, a lot of people are going to eat a lot of shit and it's going to be terrible and families will go hungry and all of this stuff, but we don't care. Because the way you get out of a recession is by following these principles and those principles collapse money to the top more and more and more and more. And so if we can create a nice bust cycle, we know that the following boom or recovery

cycle will continue to consolidate more of our wealth upward. I don't know that, I mean, that assumes a lot. And I don't know that that's true. It's just like, fucking maybe it is. And that's not great, dude. That's not great. There was a part of an article that we read for the show. And it was a, it was during the Epstein one we did, where Epstein, I think, was talking

to Teal maybe or someone like that. And they had said something like, well, we're just both waiting for the collapse because we know that you can buy cheap during the collapse. So this is not, it's not like it's something that is so out of the realm of possibility that people don't muse with that thought already. You saw all that group of people get really wealthy off of ruining our economy in 2008. You saw all those people get ultra wealthy because of that. Incredibly wealthy. It's not going to stop. It's not going to slow down.

No. And like the, you know, one of the major economic levers that they're, that they want to pull is the reduction of interest rates. So if you're somebody whose livelihood is based on leverage, so most of us are livelihoods, the way we earn money, the way we serve our families, we go to work, we get paid a money. We put that money in our account. We use the money to buy goods and services. But if you're ultra wealthy, you're living on leverage. It's an entirely different plan. So high interest rates hurt you, low interest.

I'm being oversimple. Like low interest rates have an enormous impact on your ability to live leverage. So, yeah, I don't know. Like, I'm not saying it's not, you know? Like, I was thinking about it this week. Like, I'm like, why would they want this recession? I'm like, oh, well, because the ultra-wealthy long-term benefit from a recession. Because at the bottom of all our terrified souls, we know that democracy is a dying giant,

sick, sick, dying, decaying political concept, writhing in its final pain. This story comes from the Hill. Virginia voters approve redistricting measure backed by Democrats. Cecil, I thought this was very interesting because it also is like part and parcel of a few other stories. When the Republicans opened up the redistricting attack plan, I think they thought this would just uniquely and only benefit them. Yeah.

And what a lot of analysts are saying now is this seems like it is backfiring potentially. And the Democrats may actually end up picking up more seats. Because if we're going to fistfight, it's like, if you're going to fist fight, you better be damn sure you're going to win. Well, and you better be sure you're going to win in a year where you're just hemorrhaging approval. Right. And that's the real issue is that no matter how you redistrict some of these plays, you're just going to hemorrhage so much approval that you can't get those votes back.

Right. And they didn't realize they thought they could out maneuver the approval that they have. And you can't do that. Right. Right. It's so funny because it's like, well, we're worried that they're going to vote against us. So we're going to make it so that we're going to restructure the country. And it's like, I don't know, well, shit, that's bad.

I was worried about that when it happened. It's bad. It's a bad plan. I actually, this is such a stupid thing to do. Did you get the new census stuff mailed to you? No, it didn't get mailed to me. So, you know, in order to do this, they had to do another census. And I were, you're not even allowed to do this, but it was such a stupid act of civil disobedience.

I just threw them away. I got multiple things in the mail being like, hey, you got to do your census. And I'm like, no, I'm not doing it. It's every 10 years. That's what we're supposed to do. I'm not participating. It's crazy. I didn't get anything.

Oh, my God. I got like three. or four official like census things. Nobody sent me anything. Yeah. So, nobody sent me anything. It's like technically illegal, but like, I mean, come on. Yeah.

But I was just like, I'm offended by it on principle that you can go ahead and say, we're just going to do this new plan and call for a new census with no reason. So this appears to be backfiring and fucking good. Well, and, and their lies are about how the Democrats have been inflating their numbers through undocumented immigrants, through illegal immigration. They've been talking about this for a long time. If you look at any of the census, how they redistrict based on those census in the past, up till now, you'll see that the right has gained more votes, or it's been mostly a wash.

But look, Texas has gained eight votes since 2000. So they've gained eight seats since 2000. Florida has gained, I think, four seats since 2000. New York, Illinois, California, we've all lost seats. So traditionally blue places have gained seats. Traditionally red places have, are traditionally blue places have lost seats, traditionally red places have gained seats.

There has been some washes with some of these smaller states. One or two would gain or lose one based on the small states, and most of those are very red or very blue depending. But those don't matter as much as, you know, taxists gaining eight seats. That's a huge number. And they are very good at making sure that very few of those are Democrat votes. Very few.

Even before they had these redistricting things that they tried to do, they were very good at that sort of thing. And even still, the people will say that Biden had an open border for the last four years and that's what's causing all this issue. And they were trying to push people around. If you look at any of the projections of what's going to happen in 2030, from really, you know, astute, these are professors, these are universities, these are think tanks, all of them say that the Democrats will lose seats. All of them say that. All of them are pointing to

where the migrants are and how those will inflate numbers based on the census. So everybody who says this, everybody who claims this over and over and over again, it's a lie. It's a great, It's the great replacement theory, guys. It's a dangerous, dangerous conspiracy theory that is promoted by the highest levels of our government to us. And it's regurgitated on many different shows. Joe Rogan's show talks about it every third week. They talk about the, and fuck, it might even be every third episode, because I don't listen to every episode. So it could be every third episode he's talking about the great replacement theory.

It's a dangerous lie that they've been showing and talking about for all. long time. And one of the things that I saw this week, Tom, about this story in particular, is they had AOC. Someone had come up and asked AOC a question. They said, hey, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, what do you think about this redistricting? And she said something. She said, look, in the past, the Democrats would have tried to fight instead to say, no, what we need is a bipartisan redistricting. What we need to do is fight for that. And we won't do what you're doing. What you're is you're going to redistrict, we won't do it. She said, we're done doing that.

We're going to fight you with, we're going to fight fire with fire. Now, if you want to go back and revisit the nonpartisan redistricting, we have a bill ready today. So if you want to redistrict with a nonpartisan group all across the country, the Democrats are willing to listen to you and pass this as a bipartisan bill. But we're not going to do that if you don't want to do that. We're not going to do that for our states and not for yours. We're going to do it for all the states.

And the thing is they don't want that because they know in the states that they've already heavily gerrymandered that they're going to be fucked if they go backwards. Yep. Yeah. Like if we actually cared about the system representing the people, there would be a, there would be a single bipartisan national system that drew these boundary maps. That's what we would do. Yeah, absolutely.

And the fact that we don't have that is just 100%. ironclad evidence that what we actually don't want is to fully represent the American people. Yeah, yeah. Everything that isn't that is anti-democratic. So every effort on everybody's part that is anything other than there should be this one thing and we should do it. It should be bipartisan. It should be done at a national level.

It should not be controlled bipartisan actors in any circumstance. We write it. Anything that isn't that says every other thing is an attempt to undemocratize and strip people of their power and their, you know, rights as citizens. Everything else is a takeaway from you as a person. I've made a severe and continuous lapse in my judgment, and I don't expect to be forgiven. I'm simply here to apologize. All right.

So this story comes in New York Times. Tucker Carlson says he is tormented by his past support for Trump. Boy, you know, I read this and I thought, oh no. Oh, no. Guys, Tucker Carlson, who, by the way, in that same interview, referred to Kamala as Cameltoe. Nice. In that same interview. That's awesome.

Yeah. Tucker Carlson is tormented. I thought, like, I hope he is tormented by the demons that attack him while he sleeps all the time now and forever and that that never ends until he dies. And I hope when he dies, it hurts and he's lonely. I guess that's all I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah, I don't believe this. First off, I don't believe it.

Because I think what is happening, and I'm seeing this happen in the Rogan verse, is that people are dying for one of these supporters to have a leopardsate their face moment, right? Everybody's dying for it. The news wants it because they know that the public wants it. So the news doesn't care whether it's true or not. what they care about is if they can sell you a click for a moment for you to come find it on their site. So they will do things. They will post things about Joe Rogan that aren't true, right?

There's been a couple of moments that we've covered on our other show, the No Rogan experience, where they'll say, they'll say Joe has turned his back on Trump or Joe has changed his mind on Trump. He's done, you know, he's basically done an 180 on Trump. and then you listen to the show and it's Joe hedging his bats or, you know, slowly distancing himself but not fully distancing himself. It's just a very different thing

than what they're trying to portray. And I think what they want is they want these leopards ate their face moments for everybody because people are anxious. They want that piece where they say, God, I told you you were fucking wrong. I told you you were wrong and you went out there and you fucking promoted this guy,

you know, and they want those moments. but you're not going to get those moments. Those moments don't exist. I actually, I didn't listen to any of his talks about this, but not only do I not believe it, I also believe that it's probably shoddy reporting in some way. I believe that what they're doing is they're emphasizing the moments, like you said, in this interview, he said, Cameltoe.

So, wait, do you think he somehow regrets his vote? Do you think he somehow thinks he voted for the lesser evil? Of course he doesn't. He still, he might regret that he voted. Trump in over some other Republican, but he doesn't regret his vote in the sense that he would have voted for Kamala if that would have been the choice that he could have looked forward into the future and see. He doesn't think that at all. Of course he doesn't think that. No, I think what I very cynically believe is happening. And we're seeing it with Candace Owens, or we're seeing it

with Tucker Carl's. We're seeing with a handful of pundits now is they are sensing because these are all just opportunistic, you know, leeches. and Ramoras and fucking ticks. So what they're doing, I think, is sensing the coming implosion of the MAGA movement, the breaking up of the coalition that supported Trump,

and they are trying to create proactive distance between themselves and Trump, so that when Trump implodes as a personality, they still maintain some audience, right? They still want some audience. So if they're the guys that called it first, if they're the guys who got off the ship before it fully

officially sank. If they're the guys who switched and converted and became critics, they get to keep their audience, which is all they care about, and keep the dollars flowing in. This is just a cynical, like, they're sensing the fucking wind. That's all this is. None of these

guys are principled. And I think that that's the most important piece to remember. Like, Tucker Carlson is not a man of principle. Oh, goodness, no. You know, Tucker Carlson is a genuinely awful human being, and he always has. Putin, for Christ's sake. What are you talking about?

He went over there to fucking go lick his feet on the ear or whatever. Shut the fuck up. Come on, man. So, like, I don't believe that he's tormented. I think he's just cynically trying to get ahead of the backlash. Yeah, at the best, at best he's trying to do that. And that's even, and like I say, that's even if that's what this is. Because I think, like, there is a need in the left right now to say how, because

because you were right. You were right when you decided that Trump was going to be a disaster. It's not like you were wrong about that. Just let me gesture vaguely at all of it. And then you could say, yes, of course you were right. So everybody on the left and even people who were center who voted left, all of them right now are saying, I fucking told you so, man. I fucking told.

We showed you the fucking book of the Christian fucking national. white supremacists who wanted to change his country into a fucking deep state. We showed you the book. And you were all like, no, come on. That's not going to happen. He's going to end the war. He's going to lower gas prices where it's going to be a Johnsonville broad in every pot. It's going to be the best thing you ever saw.

And of course, none of that happened because it was all just smoke up your ass so he could fucking pilfer and pilfer the government for whatever he could. Yep. And ruin the government in any way he could that in any way. benefited the normal person and very specifically go after and attack any of the people who he thought needed attacking. Those were his three options. Those are the three things he came in to do.

And if you don't look around and see that's exactly what he fucking did, there's no helping you. You're a stupid person who should check out of civic society. We'll leave. But one day you'll be eating a fast food burger. Boom! You'll be crawling with us again. Ever wonder what makes special sauce so special? Yo.

All right. Well, it wouldn't be a week if we didn't talk about RFK Jr. I hate him so much. New York Times. RFK Jr. refused to commit to backing new CDC director on vaccines. This guy is the most whiplashinist motherfucker in the world on vaccines. I saw literally the same day that you posted this story. I saw him come out and say, everybody should get the measles vaccine.

He also was trying to shed blame for the measles thing, though, because what he's saying now is they're trying to blame this measles epidemic on me, but most of the people who get measles are older than I was around to suggest not getting the measles vaccine. So you can't blame that on me

because my advice to not get the measles vaccine or to make it a decision that your family makes, which means you're never going to do it because you can put it off. Those decisions all came in the last two years, year and a half, and all the people who are getting measles are much older. And so you can't blame that on me. And so he's trying to walk back. What a crazy thing to say.

He's trying to walk back. Yeah. You can't blame it to me even though I was a fucking information super spreader. Right. You fucking idiot. As if like the only reason he didn't become the HHS secretary was because he had a long and storied history of this exact position. Exactly.

It's like he's like I actually popped into existence. I didn't even, I wasn't even born before I was the HHS secretary. I just appeared like I was conjured into weird jeans wearing being. Which God pops something out of their head? He pops a brainworm out of his head. That's what happened is one of the gods, one of the Greek gods popped a brainworm out and it turned into R. There's a description of him that makes me laugh every time I think about him, which is that

he sounds like a lawnmower screaming underwater. And I love that so much. You know, one of the things that is interesting about this is the person who would be the CDC director seems like a really grounded regular person. Yes. Seems like a regular, like a stark change for. Trump cabinet members because most of them are just

sycophants, who will do anything that he says, this person seems like a regular qualified human being and of course, RFK can't get behind it. And I think it's because he, you know how you normally have a devil on one shoulder and an angel on another? He's just got one brainworm on one shoulder.

And he's not weighted correctly, Tom, so that brainworm the whole time is like, vaccines are bad, vaccines are bad, vaccines are bad. And there's nothing on the other side. He doesn't have like, I don't know what would be the opposite of a brainworm. I'm willing to accept applications. Yeah, a whalehead. A bear, bear carcass on the other shoulder. A raccoon penis. That's perfect. Oh, I brainworm on one side, a raccoon penis on the other. And those two things are fighting it out. And I don't think the raccoon penis is using sign language and it can't out speak the brainworm on his shoulder that is telling him, do not. Whatever you do, don't.

this person in because they will vaccinate people. Yeah, dude, I mean, imagine the hubris of being like, hey, you are a lawyer, right? Oh, yeah, I'm a lawyer, yeah. So you're not medically qualified, like literally in any way. I read all the scientists. I read all the studies. I read all the studies. I read all the blogs about this.

It's fine. Like, so you're not in any way qualified whatsoever in any, no, no, no. All right, well, we're going to have this guy over here and be, he's going to be in charge of the CDC, and he's got, you know, credentials for that. So if he suggests a medical science thing, you're obviously just going to be like, yeah, it's great. Great plan. I plan a second guess that while wearing jeans in the hot tub.

I'm going to, God Rock and I are going to put our heads together and figure out if it's about a bow to bow to bang and a biggie or not. And if it is, then we'll obviously go for it. But in the song. And with the brain room we can harmonize. So the three of us together, it's amazing. Well, think how disappointed he's going to be when he gets home.

Disappointment's going to be a big part. of his life. He's a foot short for his age and he's cross-eyed. So you can't hardly look sideways these days without running into a story of our catch-but-tell. You don't have to look hard, Tom. You don't have to look hard.

That's for sure. You don't have to look hard. Yeah, absolutely not. Just squint and you'll see a story these days about our good old buddy. All right, this is a little story. It's just a fucking little man. He's a little. That's the joke.

All right, so there's a bunch of stories. Cash Patel says that the, sues the Atlantic for $250 million over article claiming excessive drinking. Yeah. Good luck with that. The Atlantic is like, yeah, cool, cool, cool. They don't care at all. Their lawyers are like, we actually report on stuff and investigate it and have sources.

And that's not how any of this works. And I think, neat. Well, and of course, it's not going to. It's not going to work. And the thing is, this is just a scare tactic that he learned from Trump, right? Go after whoever you can. We saw that Trump lost the Wall Street Journal. They dismissed that case. I don't know if you saw this, but the Wall Street Journal had posted a artist rendition of the message he gave to Jeffrey Epstein for his birthday book. Trump says that it wasn't him who did it. And that's a bullshit lie, et cetera, et cetera. So they wound up posting the actual one. they said this is the actual image.

And then Trump tried to sue them for $10 billion. And a judge said, no, no, we're not going to do that. We're not going to do that. And Trump has tried to sue a bunch of people for billions and billions of dollars. So he's trying to sue the Atlantic for $250 million. He also tried to sue another pundit from Morning Joe. And he said, he said, I want to sue this guy because this guy came on and said that Cash Patel was spending more time in.

He was more frequenting nightclubs more than he was in the office. Right. And they brought that before a judge. He was trying to sue this guy who said it on Morning Joe on MSNBC. And the judge said, no, that's hyperbole. They're allowed to say that. Go away. Go away.

Take your tiny little body and go put it in an FBI jumpsuit and go fly over to some other place and chug a beer with somebody on camera. Look, if you're trying to combat these rumors, the best thing to do would be not chug a beer with the U.S. team. That would be what I would suggest. I mean, obviously there's there's real issues here that are like worth being nervous about where the government and forces that are, you know, part of the government are actively working against our First Amendment rights and just trying to dismantle the institutions

of journalism that act as the fourth estate to provide transparency and accountability. And are the only reasons that we aren't falling into in a third. authoritarian hellscape faster. That's a real worry. I want to sit down. I want to say it out loud and set it to the side. But it's also fucking delightful because it's failing. Yeah.

This is one of the few areas where there's been relatively little progress in the courts. I think it's important to note that some of these organizations like CBS folded immediately. Yeah. Right? They settled. They folded. They immediately licked the boot. But many others have not.

Many others have been like, no, we'll actually, we'll fucking go down swing. And I will say that by and large, you will very often find that journalists operate at a level of principle and integrity. This is not glamorous work. It's not high paid work. Like being a journalist is a difficult, like kind of shitty job. It really is. Like these guys don't get paid big, big money.

These guys do work really, really hard hours. It is one of those jobs that you do because you believe that it is important, like with a capital I important. you know, that it is a civic duty in some ways to report. So these are not guys who, by and large, are often going to go down without a fight. And I love it. And the courts are like, yeah, I mean, we're not dismantling all of America at once. That feels weird. Somebody will notice.

Yeah. And these lawsuits are essentially frivolous. I mean, like, what are you talking about? This person said something on the air and it made me mad. And I get to sue them. And what you're hoping is that you silence them. And you're also hoping that, you know, it's like that slap law where you're going out of your way to make it so that it's difficult for people to defend themselves because it costs a lot of money. It takes time.

It's stress on them. And so they get afraid to say things. And so you're trying to not just silence the person who's talking. You're trying to chill the rest of the people around them so that they never say anything bad about you. Well, you are in a very important position. You fucking signed up for it. take the fucking L, dude. If you want a better image of yourself behind that desk,

then take a bunch of pictures of you behind the desk and stay behind the desk. Don't go to the nightclub. Don't go drinking with the U.S. team. Don't do these things that are very public that make you look like a fucking drunk. Don't do those things and nobody will say them, right? I'm not, why would I say it if it's not, if I don't like actually see you do it? So that's the real issue. and what he wants to do is he wants to have his cake and eat it too.

He wants to be able to go out and party and never have anybody say anything. And if they do, he wants them to shut the fuck up about it. Well, you can't do that. You don't get both things. You get one or the other. You got to pick one. It's either done well and made fast or made fast and not done well. Those are your two options.

You don't get a fucking third option, dude. And he's also, there's another story here where the FBI is said to it, investigated a Times reporter after they did an article on Patel's girlfriend. And this is really shady shit. This is not just using the courts anymore. Now what you're doing is you're using the institution of power that you control to go after people to try to make it so they're silent too. It's not just chilling in one way.

He's trying to do it in multiple ways. That is the one that worries me more. They both worry me. That is the one that worries me more. because like if cash Patel wants to fight the Atlantic cash Patel unlike Trump doesn't have virtually unlimited resources and like if you're going to get into a resources

fight in the courts my money's on the Atlantic over cash Patel right so he's gonna like he does not have infinite money to run infinite lawsuits you know and so there's a chilling effect but like he's got to pay for this you know he's got I don't know that like fucking like Arm and Hammer legal group is taking this on fucking contingency you know like the guys on the fucking billboard.

Yeah. But when you're just like, well, listen, I control the fucking FBI. That's a big, big deal. And I can have like your house rated or I could have you trailed and followed. I could have agents knock on your door. I can have people poking in your financial records. Like, that is different, man. That's frightening.

That is an exercise of Gestapo-like power. Like literally secret police type shit, man. Yeah. And this is something that, it's my great hope that he has to pay for eventually, that somehow after this is all over, that somebody's going to reach in and be like, now we've got to make sure he pays for the,

using the office the way he did. Yes. You know, using it like a private slush fund to travel wherever he wanted, using it to guard his girlfriend, to travel, let his girlfriend travel where she wanted, using it as a way to silence other people by using the power that he has to go after them,

those are things that I hope he really has to answer for. Because this is, guys, this isn't a professional. This isn't somebody who's like supposed to be, you know, he was a sought after candidate. It's a podcaster, guys. That's who's running our FBI. The most important police force in the United States is a podcaster. That's who's doing it. And it should be pointed out every time that he fails, that he's not qualified for this position.

He never was qualified for this position. The only thing that qualified him was he wrote a book of him, like a child's book of him eating Donald Trump's whole ass. That's the, that's the, that's literally why he was put in that position because he's fucking face as deep

into the cheeks as he could, tossing Donald Trump's salad. That's why he got that position. Liberal. Liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, happy fun, la la, la, la, human smuggling, fit and no deaths.

Force government, euthanasia. chopping up children's genitals. La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la this story is from cnn and this is great the onion reaches new deal to take over alix jones's info wars at auction it's theirs now there was some legal back and forthinating and like now it's going to be the onion run the onion is going to run. The Onion is going to run Info Wars as an ongoing comedic satirical venture. And what's great is they've already started creating merch. So I'll put a link in the show notes for their merch. And the Info Wars now, the O in Info Wars is the Onion for the O is the Onion. Now, I want to read off what they have on their site for the merch.

So they have regular stuff, obviously, a hoodie. They have a T-shirt, a bag, a pair of sunglasses. And then the sold-out portion of the program is my favorite. So on the sold-out portion of the program, they have, turn your piss into gold. Liquidate your assets today. Oh, my God, I love it. It's $349.95, but they're both sold out.

There's two different ones. Oh, so good. And then they also have pure-o oxygen capsules. Those are $39. Those are all sold out. They have demon-guard patches, those are sold out. They're 4795.

And then my favorite, my favorite is the for $1.29.99, learn to float. So you can check out all the stuff that they're selling. It's all it, like they're doing a very good job of making it a joke still. So amazing, amazing work by the onion. These people have been doing this sort of thing for decades. They're hilarious.

And then they decided to get involved in this. and this is the best use. This is the greatest use of satire. Bravo. From what I hear, they're going to hire a fellow who used to be a famous, like,

disc jockey or whatever, who does an Alex Jones impersonation to continue doing the show, but it's just going to be all satirical. So that's what I hear that there's a Tim guy from Tim and Eric, I guess. I don't know who those people are.

But in any case that they did, they used to do a comedy show and now they don't or something. I don't know if they were disc jockeys or if they were, comedy duo. I'm not sure. So I don't really care, to be honest. I don't fucking, I don't need your correction. They're fucking irrelevant to me. I don't know who they are. Right. But in any case, the, the, the one of them, I think it's the Tim of Tim and Eric is going to be the guy who does the voice for him now.

I don't know if they're going to put him in prosthetics shit to make him look like. God, I kind of hope so. God, I hope so too. But in any case, they're going to be continuing on with a show. They're going to keep doing a show. That's just satirical. It's going to be satirical. which is fucking amazing. And they're calling you like, they're keeping the Info Wars thing going. So like what I also love is it'll create weird brand confusion,

which I think is really worth like pointing out too. It's like before Alex Jones was Info Wars, Info Wars was Alex Jones. Now there's this Info Wars thing over here that is a thing you'll find by searching for Info Wars. Yeah.

So now there's brand confusion. And now people, or stupid are going to be like, which one of these is true? I want to look right now to see, let me look, it still is right now held by the actual InfoWars. So the actual InfoWars.com is still held by them. So there's not by actually Alex Jones. This is still Alex Jones.

He's interviewing Count Dankula. God, what, that guy. Jesus Christ. What? Jesus Christ. To dig that guy. That's the guy who was like taught his pug to do a C-Dile. Yeah, great.

Yeah, no, you want to make sure you get that guy's got a lot to say. That's cool. That guy, man, let me tell you, let's get the guy who's like, let me teach you. That's the guy. Get the fuck out of it. Anyway, it's still under his control. So there still is, Info Wars is still under his control. But I think they have the name and I'm sure they're going to have to, they're going to

They're going to make him close this site down. This site is going to have to go somewhere else. But right now, the URL is still infowars.com. So I imagine it will be a slow process, but they're eventually going to evict him from it all. All right. That's going to wrap it up for this week. And then we're going to be back on Monday with a full episode.

We're going to leave you like always do with the Skeptics Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babalon bullshit. 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 info docutainment. Leo Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death and towers, tarot cars, psychic healing, crystal balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques, and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards,

vaccine nuts. Shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double-speak stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands, bloody, evidential, conclusive.

Doubt even this. 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 Preds, all under the handle at Dissinance Pod. This show is Can Credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm on their hotline at 617-249-4-255. or on their website at creator accountability network.org.