Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 927: Supreme Court Rulings, America's 250th

Episode Date: July 6, 2026

US Postal Service cannot carry out Trump order on mail ballot delivery, judge rules | CNN Politics The Birthright Decision Was Surprisingly Close, Some Legal Scholars Say - The New York Times Despite Some Losses for Trump, Supreme Court Delivers Enduring Conservative Wins - The New York Times E. Jean Carroll Asks Judge to Order Trump to Pay $5 Million Jury Award - The New York Times Paramedics responded to a 'cardiac arrest' at Mitch McConnell's home on day of hospitalization Trump vows to give long July 4 address even if it is 107 degrees Trump's $2B income in 2025 raises fresh questions about profiting off presidency | PBS News

This episode of Cognitive Dissinance 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. Glory Hole 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 it. us mad. It's skeptical. It's political. And there is no welcome at. Today is Friday, July the 3rd, a day before the 250th anniversary of the birth of our great nation season. So I know that this story is farther in on the notes, but I feel like it's something maybe we touch on now. Let's go. Supposedly, Donald Trump, now this is from the Hill, Donald Trump vows to give long Fourth of July address. And it's supposed to be 107 degrees.

This headline is the wrong headline. The Hillman, let me rewrite the headline because I want to make sure that it's accurate. It should read, Donald Trump threatens to give long July 4th.

It says vows, but threatens this better. Like, who wants, like, this is not, this is not something. I'm going to do a terrible thing nobody likes for a long time. 100%. This is turning the car around. on the nation.

Look, at a certain point, it'll make me do it. It chafes no matter what. You know, it just, you just gotta call it a night. I would say this is eating your vegetables, but that's even too good for this. This is definitely a punishment of some kind of,

this is kneeling on a drumstick or whatever they make you do in like a torture. But this is like, it's almost like he's the yin to William Henry Harrison's Yang. That's what I'm hoping, Tom. is that there is a moment where he's doing 107

degree heat index speech at 7 o'clock at night and his Adams disassemble mid-word. That is what I'm hoping. All the liquid shoots out. He's like a sprinkler. And he just slowly

He slowly, he slowly, I'm melting. He just fucking disappears. I love that the reason he gave for doing this is to just show everybody he can. Oh, God. He's such an old piece of shit that, like, his flex is, I bet I can be hot.

He won't, it won't kill me. For a minute. And I want to explain the context of the William Henry Harrison joke if, like, people didn't catch it. William Henry Harrison was like, I'm going to give a speech when it's real cold. It was an inauguration speech. He died 45 days later. He got super fucking sick.

He did a speed run of the presidency. He was up there It was like fucking freezing ass cold He had like no coat on or some shit He's at the top of the precipice on his sled And he just slides down And then he falls right into his grave I also want to point out too

That Trump is notoriously bad at drinking Like he needs like three hands And a prehensile tail to hold a bottle of water He's gonna try to hold this Hold that with his tiny little club hands And he's gonna try to put it up to his mouth And shake. Yeah

I think they'll be amazing Oh, God. Nothing in the world would be greater than if he had a fucking heat stroke moment or a stroke moment. Just a straight up. Hey, look, I don't care how it happens. Yeah, I don't really either, man. I don't care how it happens.

Like I said, if he literally disassembled Adam by Adam, that's fine too. Like, let's do that. If you, if you, you know, believe some of the more esoteric physicists, it's technically possible, right? Like, there's a lot of things where it's like, you know, technically. your atoms could slide between the atoms of the earth. Holy like it's like extremely not going to happen, but like you're mostly made up of, you know, dead space and air.

So like could it happen? Sure. I would love it. Just fall into the earth and be consumed by the universe. Give me, give me, give me. Come on. Never stop feeding that to me. Yeah, that's all I want.

And this story dovetails with another great story. Yes. Really great stories. And I mean, just uplifting. You know, like, we don't have, Tom, a lot of good news lately. It's been a lot of getting beat with a hammer. And sometimes you go unconscious when you get beat with a hammer. Sometimes, yeah, it needs CPR when you get beat with a hammer.

Speaking of those things, paramedics respond to cardiac arrest at Mitch McConnell's home, the day of his hospitalization, which was a couple weeks ago. Now, they don't say who they treated it. Could have been somebody else. Maybe it was a visitor. Yeah, right. But he coincidentally went into the hospital the same day. And it does say, I read maybe enough, this article, maybe another article, but that they had to give him CPR.

So, like, they don't, they give you CPR if you're in fucking full cardiac arrest. Like, you don't get CPR if you have a heartbeat. Can you say that slower, though, about Mitch McConnell? Mitch McConnell, in full cardiac arrest. So many people have that. So many people have that. as their ringtone right now. They're going to put that on as their ringtone.

That's fucking amazing. It's so funny. It's like, if you're giving, if you're the paramedic giving Mitch McConnell's CPR, do you have to worry about salmonella like touching turtles? You know, like it's like a real contamination issue.

They blow in his mouth and they come up and half their face is black like it. Oh God, it spreads. It's like a creature on aliens. It's just working its way through their body. One of his aides has to rush in the room and turn them back on again. Oh, gosh.

Oh, he powered down. It just happens from time to time. Some of the times when they've caught him on camera and his face is just like, I have no idea where I am right now. And you're just like, that guy's so old and shitty. Yep. And he should have been pulled out of there. They should have fucking yoined him out with a shepherd's crook years ago,

like a bad vaudeville act. The only reason they're not doing it is because he's a senator in Kentucky and they have a Democratic governor. Yeah. And if he is like unfit to serve, the governor gets to put in whoever he wants. They have to do that thing. So they're gonna like fucking weekend at Bernie's this motherfucker. Like, do you remember playing like when you were a kid?

This is fucking, I'm so old. Do you remember Capsulla? They were these little like toys you could buy that had these little motors. You connected them together and they had these little gears. I'm vaguely remember this. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I am pretty much convinced at this point that like just internally, he's just essentially that.

He's a series of like servos and like little motors and just moving him around. He's just all of his internal components. been replaced and he's remote control driven by somebody at this point. He's not a big truck. He's a series of tubes. He's a series of tubes. The internet's not a truck. I remember.

So it was, was it 10 years ago? 10 years ago last February. So this, what the one that just passed, right? The February here was when Scalia died. And I remember it because it was an important day at a medieval thing that I do that. Medieval thing I do that. Oh yeah. Yeah.

It was an important day, and I was approached as soon as it happened by a guy, Guino, who happens to be a gay guy and also a lawyer who came up to me immediately after it happened at this event. And he was like, Scalia just died. And he had the biggest glow on his face. He was so happy that Scalia died because Scalia was a piece of shit, right? And there was enough time, plenty of time. What is that? 10 months, nine months, nine months to find their replacement. And he thought that there would be a possibility that that would happen.

And I think many people did because that's what should have happened. Right. Yeah, that's all of the precedent. It's pretty much what would have happened. But instead, Mitch McConnell didn't allow it. He wouldn't bring it up. So he wouldn't let him appoint Merrick Garland. And so what we wound up with was not a full bent. for that entire rest of Obama's term.

And then as soon as Donald Trump was elected, he put in Neil Gorsuch in that seat. So that seat that belonged to Scalia, 10 years ago a little less than 10 years, was filled by Gorsuch. And that's just such a travesty of justice. That something like that happened. It's awful that something like that happened.

And this is the guy who facilitated. And he did it not once, but he did it twice. Did it with RBJ. Yeah. Mitch McConnell is the architect of the weaponization of the Senate. Yeah. He is the guy who built out that architecture to weaponize the Senate and to consolidate power at the executive branch level. He is the guy who basically built the modern Republican Party and enabled the MAGA movement,

even though now he's, you know, ostensibly anti-Maga in some ways. Remember that he always wasn't and that he built all of the preconditions and the prerequisitions and the prerequisites and the strategy required for it. And despite his words on January 7th, he fucking backed Trump afterwards. Yeah. He came back. So he's a coward and a liar and a hypocrite and a piece of shit.

And like a lot of the shit that we're dealing with, you can tie it right back to this guy. So if I was one of these paramedics, I'd have run out and be like, oh, no, he looks unwell. I forgot my medical bag on top. I'll be back in the middle. I'll be back in the minute. Get a coffee.

And then you go out to your car and you play candy crush. Come back in. All right. Did you do CPR? Well, I hit him in the chest a lot. I don't know that's CPR. Oh, gosh. Oh, definitely have a broken rib.

100% whatever broken ribs. I don't know for sure because I'm not an autopsy and guy, but I'm not sure that they can tell the difference between I just broke a few of his ribs and then laughed. Or I actually gave him. from CPR. I'd like to know. I don't know. Because it might come in handy. We can't, we can't tell. We can't tell. That's amazing. Yeah. He had no problem whatsoever hitting on the 100 cover officer on the audio tape trying to pick her up and saying,

girl, you're thinking of an Ebola oatmeal. A lot of really important legal news. We're going to focus a lot in this show on Supreme Court rulings as well as other judicial rulings. I was listening to some analysis, and a lot of the analysis agrees that this might be the most consequential set of rulings in modern American history that the Supreme Court has undertaken or ruled on. The first story is not necessarily Supreme Court ruling. This is just a federal judge ruling. It's important, though, from CNN. U.S. Postal Service cannot carry out Trump order on mail-ballot delivery, according to a judge. So Trump had signed an executive order that basically said, hey, you can't, you are not allowed as the U.S. Postal Service to send out these mail ballots

in states that don't comply with my voter registration, data gathering, draconian evil shit that I want to do. And the federal judge was like, you don't have the authority to do that. You're the federal government and this shit is run by the states and the U.S. Postal Service can't just unilaterally not deliver certain kinds of mail because you don't want them to hard pass. Yeah. And the good thing is that they decided, I think that they decided not to hear this. So it wound up being essentially, this is the ruling. Right. This is the thing that's going to happen. There's no more upward. There's no more way to move it up. And so we're at this place now, though, where Trump is, you said it. I think it was maybe the first or second or third month of his presidency. You compared Trump to the T-Rex testing the fences in Jurassic Park. Oh yeah, yeah.

Where he's testing the fences. He's trying to see how far can I push. How far? Is this one on? Is this one not on? Which one's okay to actually touch? And I think that that's an apt metaphor because he was for a long time just trying to see where the weaknesses were.

A lot of these weaknesses were already laid out in Project 2025. We knew that they wanted to do a lot of these things. They wanted to try to take away votes from lower income people and people of color. They wanted to do that. We knew that they wanted to do that. We know that the Republican Party has been trying to do that forever, and there is no argument against it because they are the ones who try to limit votes every time. So they are the ones who are trying to limit votes.

There's literally no argument you can make to me that would make me think that they don't know that that's what they're doing every single time. They are absolutely trying to disenfranchise large paces of the populace because they want to take away. Voting centers are in certain places. They want to condense other voting centers. they want to make it so you have to show up in person. That's a much more arduous thing if you are a working person.

Even though they're supposed to give you that time off, some employers won't do it. Some employers, and obviously it's a problem, but you could just get lose your job and then not win a court case and not a lot of people have that saved a wealth. That they could just say, oh, well, I'll just fight this in court if my boss fires me today.

Not a lot of people can do that. No. So you're stuck. So if you can't mail in ballot, if you can't get to a close polling place, voting's just out of the question for you, if you're a working person who has to work and I'm busy that day.

We also put it in the middle of the week for some reason. It's on a Tuesday every time. Tuesday's not great. It could be on a fucking Sunday. Could be on a Saturday. A lot of people are off those days. We don't do that. So they have, and there have been many bills

that in the past that have been tried to pass that will make this a more open process for more and more people. They don't want this. They don't. They don't want it. They want less people voting. They do not think that because the people who will vote for them, the retirees have the day off,

the wealthy people will be able to get out of work, the people who want to make sure that the Republicans stay in power, they're going to find that way to vote. Yep. And often those people also get things that, like the mail and ballots sense to them. Because Trump votes by mail and ballot every time. Yeah. Trump votes every time by mail and ballot. So it's not like, it's not like that's not something that happens all the time.

time, but he'll tell you that that's where all the fraud happens. And like a couple of things to add to that. So your employer does have to give you a time off to go vote, but they don't have to pay you for that time off. That's important distinction. Even if they don't hold it against you or whatever, it's still unpaid time. Yep. So that's on your dime, right?

So every hour I don't work is an hour that I pay. That's money I didn't earn today. So it costs me money if I'm an hourly worker to go vote if my employer doesn't compensate me for that time. So that's essentially a poll tax. That's what that amounts to. The solves for this, as you pointed out, are super simple. And we just don't do them on purpose because we don't actually want a democracy. The solve for it is simply to say voting is both mandatory and it's a national holiday. And we're going to choose the date. It's this day. It's a national holiday. Voting is mandatory. That's what we would do if we actually cared about having a democracy. It's so evident

that that's not what we want. What we want is for the tools of democracy. and the privileges of democracy to consolidate in the hands of a wealthy few. And the Republicans want to control who those few are. Donald Trump, when he thought that the votes would swing his way, at one point directly encouraged mail-in voting because he was convinced that the mail-in voting from the certain voting bloc, specifically absentee ballots from the military, he was encouraging that. Go out, mail your vote, and it's great.

He's on tape encouraging people to mail-in vote. and at the same time trying to destroy mail-in voting in places where he thinks he's not as strategically, where he's more strategically vulnerable. So, like, this isn't about democracy. And it's not about fraud because you don't have a selective issue with this procedure only in this area, but not in this area. That's nothing to do with that. This is all about the Republicans saying, hey, if we don't cheat, we can't win.

And if we do cheat, we'll win more often. So let's destroy the ability of our country to have and to hold. and to maintain a democracy. And let's gerrymander and let's reduce the number of people who can vote. Let's make it hard for the wrong people to vote and make sure that only the right people can vote. And when I say right, I mean white. Yeah, of course. You mean white, wealthy.

Those people, they get the chance to vote. Yep. We don't ever take their polling stations away, it turns out. We don't ever condense their polling stations. And so you could just tell that that's been something they're trying to do. I like that this is one of the few wins. So savor this, because this is one of the few ones that we actually got a chance to win. As you're about to write down your verdict, I feel it's my duty to inform you that in exactly five seconds, it will officially become opposite day.

Objection! Hey, Mr. Loisstein, I will not allow that mental trickery in my court. I would like the jury to know that it is not, in fact, opposite day. That's not right, Your Honor. Lawyerstein, you tell these people that it's not opposite day. It's not opposite day. Thank you. You're not welcome, Your Honor.

Hey, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, it is not opposite day. Whatever verdict you come back with will be literally interpreted as the verdict. Do you guys not get that? Hey, I will hold you in contempt. Uh, thank you. I mean, boo! Sit down! So this is a really big story, and there's two pieces of this story.

So this is from New York Times. The birthright decision, was surprisingly close, some legal scholars say. A bare majority of Supreme Court justices ruled that President Trump's executive order was unconstitutional, reflecting a conservative shift on the issue. So if you have not followed this, I don't know where you've been, but that's all right. The 14th Amendment basically says, hey, if you were born here, you're a citizen. As long as you are under the jurisdiction of the United States, you're not like the child of a diplomat. It's extremely plain language, and it's been settled law for a real long.

fucking time. Trump has challenged that, and he actually went and attended the oral arguments at the Supreme Court, which feels like a show of force. Gave him the one puffy, non-puffy stinky eye. And the justices just decided five to four, and it's a bare five to four. There's actually a distinction with Kavanaugh. So they decided that, okay, you can't actually get rid of the 14th Amendment by executive order. But Kavanaugh basically said, well, but Congress could pass a law.

Wink, wink, wink. And if Congress passes a law, then I would vote to enforce that law. That's super important. When you say, look, I would be able to support getting rid of birthright citizenship if Congress passed a law. What you're saying is we can circumvent the Constitution and here's how to do it. Because what the Constitution should require is, in order for a Constitution, Amendment to not be textually true, and these are textualists, right? We should not be able to pass a law. You should have to reamend the Constitution. But what he said is, look, I'll rule differently.

If it comes down to it, I'm willing to rule differently. I'm willing to actually make a decision that does not require the full force of a new amendment. That's a big fucking deal. That's a really big deal. It should be that the textualists look at this, and this should have been a 9-0 case. If you're any of these guys in any of the rest of their rulings as textualists, they should look at this text and say, it's actually really plain language. It's really, really plainly. It's more plain language than the Second Amendment, much more so. The real fucking plain language textualists when it comes to the things that they want to support.

When the 14th Amendment comes up, they're all of a sudden, well, let's look at the intent. Let's like read between the lines. And they got real close. This came really close. That's fucking weird, man. Yeah, you're absolutely right. It should have been 90. They should have just stopped the case while they were arguing.

And then somebody should have like voice called speakerphone, the National Archives, to read the 14th Amendment to them. Right. Allowed. And then they all should have just been like, no, we don't need to write a paper. It's cool. I don't need to write a big long thing. It's over.

This case is done. it should have never made it up to them. Yeah. What should have happened if it was, and I don't know exactly what the legal process was if it was one of those like, and obviously I think it probably had to be, they don't think they assented with the under,

I don't know what the under one was, the appellate court was ruling was. I don't either. It should never even leave, what it should do is go to a court, right, Tom, it should go to the lowest court, the lowest court hears it, and then they say, that's stupid.

Right. It's overturned. And then the other court hears about it and says, we're not going to call it up. Exactly. And then they say, fine, we'll take it to the Supreme Court. And they say, we're not going to call it up. That's what should happen. Yeah.

Right. That's how it should work is there shouldn't even be this kind of back and forth because it's so clear. It's so simple. And when all the legal pundits all over the country all say the same thing, it should be 9-0. Yeah. I didn't hear anybody say it was going to be a squeaker. Right. Before it happened, I don't remember anybody saying, well, I don't know.

It's all about the coaching. I didn't hear any of that. I didn't either. I didn't hear any of that going into this case at all. And this tells you, and I just, I want to be real clear. Now, recently I started working on a presentation about the Great Replacement Theory. And one of the books I read to help me bone up on the Great Replacement Theory is Ibram X. Kendi's book called A Chain of Ideas.

I read this book last month and I took a lot of notes in it to try to help bolster my presentation. I'm doing a presentation on Joe Rogan and the Great Replacement Theory and I really thought this book was really interesting because he makes the claim

that the dominant right-wing political ideology in the world, not just in the United States, in the world, is the great replacement theory. He maps it in 10 different countries. so and I don't remember all of them but you know Marie Le Pen

Palvier is that his name I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right it's the guy from Canada the fellow I think there was somebody there was somebody from El Salvador I don't remember his name Victor Orban the guy from the UK

Nigel Farage I think and so each person is the is a focus of part of this book to talk about how they're using the theory to try to spread this idea that there is a group of elites that are moving people

in to this country and they are doing it very specifically to take away your livelihood, your life, your money, your benefits from citizens here and they are doing it very specifically to replace that group.

That's the conspiracy theory. And the elites change. They can shift and move around. But the core concept is the same in all the different places, right? And very specifically, this whole thing and how it plays out seems like he's right. It seems like Ibram Kendi is right that the dominant theory that is in the United States right now

of right-wing government is that the great replacement is real and you have to do something about it. You have to do something to stop it. Yeah. The Great Replacement feeds on selfishness. It feeds on the selfishness of people on the in-group.

And it makes it seem like there is someone coming to take your stuff, right? They're coming in and they're taking your stuff. How many arguments have you heard throughout your life about what they're trying to take from you? They're trying to take from you. And the great replacement theory is zero-sum thinking, right? If they get something, they have to take it from somewhere

and there's only a small amount of pie. What we never do is look to the government to try to provide through our tax dollars enough for all. There's always a limited, scarce quantity of the thing that we want. And then there's other people from other places coming in to dig in that thing.

They're taking our health care. How many times you've heard, oh, the emergency rooms are full of undi- they say illegal. So they'll be like, oh, they're full of illegals and all these people are coming in and they're taking our health care away. One, you don't even have health care.

Right, right? So that's a stupid thing to think. But they're not coming in and doing that. But if you make a narrative like it and make those people feel like somewhere, taking something from them, that motivates them. And it motivates their entire block to do this. And it seeps into other thinking. It's literally mirrored in the trans bathroom panic that is happening all across the country. There is a scarce resource. In the one case, it's our government benefits

in the government replacement theory. In the other case, it's the bathroom facilities. There's a group of people that are invading, right? A quote unquote invading. They're invading the space. The undocumented and people are invading, and the other, the trans people are invading this space. And they're making people feel less safe, right? The less safe, you're making me feel less safe in both those places. And you need to then run into the arms of the authoritarians. And in one case, it's getting MAGA elected so they can mass deport people. In the other, it's calling the police and having ID checks outside of bathrooms and things.

You have to run into the arms of the authoritarians to protect, you know, quote unquote, protect you from this thing that's happening. But what it is is zero-sum thinking. That's all it is, right? There's so many other ways that you could get around this other than what they're suggesting. But they're suggesting the exact same thing because that's how they all think.

Think about, have you ever heard this framed in the marriage argument? It doesn't make any sense when you say it out loud. In the gay marriage argument? In gay marriage argument. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They'll say they're getting married and they make my marriage illegitimate. there's not a limited number of marriages, right? It's not like, it's not like, it's not like at the end,

you know, like when they do deer hunting season and you have like a lottery. It's not like every year there's a marriage lottery that you have to sign up for. There's an unlimited number of marriages. And your marriage is different than my marriage because you got married differently. You got married at a different place with a different set of words and a different thought behind it and a different time in your life and all this stuff. So your marriage is totally different than me. 100% different.

I got married in a totally different. time place with a different person with different words. It's not the same thing. Right. But they make it seem like, because it's zero-sum thinking, makes you think everything has a scarcity, right? Everything's got this scarcity. Yeah, yeah. So that's what they do with gay marriage. And you're like, that does he make any sense. It doesn't make any sense. But they shoehorn all these ideas into it. And that's what becomes the dominant theory. And look at how far this gets.

Yeah. Look at this is not going to stop. It's not like this theory isn't going to keep propagating. I really do think he's right. I think it is the dominant theory. And if you think about all the speeches that Donald Trump gives all the time, all the ways he talks, it's embedded, it's woven in. He does the weave of this theory all the time in what he speaks about. That is a couple of things. That matches perfectly with what I think Clarence Thomas actually said in his dissent

to the majority opinion here, which was summing to the effect of, you know, if the 14th Amendment stands as is, then it will create an incentive for their to. to be birth tourism. And that was, and when I read that, I thought, but that's the effect of the law, right? So even if you believe that, which I don't, it's nonsense, and it's a great replacement theory, shit, right? To your exact point, and that's exactly what Thomas is articulating with his dissent. But I also thought, like, your job isn't actually to determine if the effect of a law is beneficial to the country. You as the judiciary are supposed to look at this law and say, is it constitutional or not constitutional? But they've,

moved away from the actual purpose and the mandate of what that organization, what the judiciary is supposed to do. And they're now deciding whether or not they like it. That's a good point. Yeah. And that's different. And then if you take that what your point, which is the great replacement theory, if that underlies their worldview, then what they're really doing is not saying, is this law constitutional or unconstitutional? They're saying, coming from a place where I believe in the false scarcity and the racism and classism of great replacement theory, does this benefit this class of people, the privileged class of people, are not benefit the criticism? And that's the decision making that we've actually seen now a couple of times. There's been at least a couple of rulings now where it's been

very evident from the way that these decisions have been written out, that what they're deciding is not really constitutionality. They're deciding about whether or not they happen to like the effect of something. When the Supreme Court ruled against Biden's student loan forgiveness. They basically didn't say, well, he doesn't really have the right to do it. They basically said, well, if he does it, it will create an effect that we don't like. That's not the role of the judiciary. What was the effect?

The effect was basically that, like, the education secretary will have the ability to give, to have this, this authority to forgive these loans. and we don't actually want to forgive these loans because we don't want to forgive these loans. Because we already forgave the PPP loans. Right. We can't do that. Can't give it twice. I mean, that's stupid.

But the thinking really at the time was like we don't want to privilege this class of people. But that's not really the question at hand. They keep doing this. They've done this a few times now. Where the question at hand should be, are they allowed to have this power through the Constitution or not allowed to exercise this power through the Constitution? Now they're answering a question of, do we want them? to have this power? Do we like the effect of the law?

Actually, like it dovetails also with the other stories about Trump. Now, the Supreme Court made another decision that basically said, hey, Trump and the executive branch can fire the independent agency heads of everybody but the Fed. So even though Congress wrote a law that said you can't, Supreme Court said, yeah, you can. Yeah. Even though it's literally in the law that says that these are independent agencies, heads, they said, well, that's not the actual answer we want. That's not the effect. It's very

interesting to see how they've moved away from their mandate of determining constitutionality. And now they've moved to a new mandate of, is the effect, the right-wing effect that we are trying to achieve? Is it ideologically producing the right-ring results that we want to achieve? It's incredibly ideological. I wonder, obviously, we can't know. But I very much wonder if the carving out of that very specific position is just pragmatic on the part of the people who are in the court and they know the effect of what will happen if Trump puts in a yes person that can easily do something like that. Oh, Cecil, in their decision, it's very, to me, when I was reading analysis of the decision,

I think that's exactly it. I think what they essentially admitted, it was fucking crazy to me is that if we give the president, they basically said the Fed is different than all the other agency heads because if you tie the Fed directly to the executive branch, then the rest of the world will lose confidence in the American

economic system. There's other systems too. I just want to let you do that. I mean, it makes sense if you're going to say one system, wouldn't it be other systems too? Yeah. So their thought process was effectively, this would be economically disastrous. So we can't do it.

even when they do that, they're not making a decision about real constitutionality. They're just saying, hey, we don't like the effect. And we think the effect would be bad. But over here, when it's the EPA chief or something, we're okay with the effect. The thing is, as many of the secretaries get replaced anyway. Yeah. There are just a few of these jobs. Yeah, not a few.

There's many of these jobs that very specifically they're there and bipartisan in some way so that they don't flip over every presidency. they're there specifically because they know that this office needs to act with some independence away from the president and it's going to make hard decisions that piss him off. And you put somebody in there and they're going to sometimes say things you don't like or do things you don't like and that's too fucking bad because that's what it takes to run a country. And they have since Reagan and Roberts is a huge proponent of this created this, created this unitary executive theory

that has shit so much power up the ladder that it's just teetering ready to fall. There's so much up there and it's on the top of this ladder that's sort of bending and it's gonna break one day. If I was president next, I would fire every single person except for the FTC chair.

I would go in and just be like, everybody's fired in the if you're on the right, you're 100% fire. I would fire everybody. I do it. I do it the first day. I'd be like, that's cool. Yep, that's fine.

Why not? And that's fine. I would, I would over-extend this power until they, Congress brought it back somehow. They reeled it in somehow. I would walk in and I'd be like, yeah, I'm playing wrath of God. Boom. Everybody's done. Yeah, exactly.

I know it's a chaos orb because I get to throw it where I want. I'm just going to chuck this fucking thing all over the place. But yeah, it's just stupid. It's stupid. And it is completely, what the effect of this is that it is neutered Congress. Yeah. It's completely neutered Congress. It's destructed Congress.

It's destructed Congress. the checks and balances system. It's destroyed the independent agency system. It's destroyed watchdogs and ethics groups. There are no such things as these things anymore. If the president can just go in and appoint the watchdog, it'd be like me appointing like my son to be like, hey man, make sure I'm not in trouble, winky face.

You know, like it's literally, well, I guess he did fucking employ his own family. So it's actually that. It's the same thing. It's actually that. Yeah. is, if you believe the things or back the things that Trump did, you're either in it for a grift or you're fucking stupid. I can't see any other way around it because all the things he does are so, they twist themselves into knots so deeply. And you have to twist yourself into a knot

to follow him. Even Marjorie Taylor Green, who doesn't seem like all that bright a person, she still got off the Trump train. She still stepped off and said, I can't do this anymore. I can't twist myself into this position anymore. Even Tucker Carlson, who's an absolute chameleon, a snake, somebody who will follow anybody.

Even he can't even keep up with the twists and turns and the volatility of a Trump mindset. You have to be a self-interested authoritarian fascist. Yeah. And like, I want to be clear, there are lots of people

that are very comfortable with fascism as long as it's their fascist in charge. They're very comfortable with that. This is not something they shy away from. I know this is just a stupid, fucking reel. But do you know that Dean Withers guy? I do know him, yeah. I think he's very quick on his feet.

So I've seen some of his reels have been like, damn, that guy's quick on his fucking feet. So there was a reel where he was talking to somebody outside of a MAGA event. And he asked him a question, something along the lines of like, do you think that being a pedophile should be disqualifying to be president.

And this guy could not answer yes to that question. Because they've tied themselves up into these impossible Gordian knots where they have to support no matter what. They have to support no matter what. So he knew that if he answered, yeah, of course you shouldn't be a pedophile and be president, that there would be a follow-up question, which would be awkward.

In order to avoid the follow-up question, he was like, no, it depends. and I'm like, we're living in a world where that's just an, it depends. Like anybody in the world, it's like, it depends. That tells you everything you need to know about the mindset that's just like, okay, it doesn't matter about principles. It doesn't matter about whether or not we have or don't have a democracy. None of those things, all that stuff we never believed in it.

None of that stuff's anything. What we want is an authoritarian that smells like us. That's it. That's what we want. That's it. And I think that. it hits the proper center in your brain, that selfish center in your brain,

to make you feel like that anything that branches out from it also has to be right. And I lean back into Joe Rogan here too because I see him constantly being convinced by other people of things that he may or may not be convinced of, but they already believed the same thing about COVID.

Right. And so if they believe, if they believe the same thing about COVID, he's got to be a little more open to these other beliefs that these people have because they also are pushing back against the mainstream in the same way that I am. So in order to make sure that that belief stays as true,

in my mind, I've got to think about the other things they say as potentially true as well. And so I think these people get stuck in this situation because what they want is they want that selfish part of their brain stimulated by saying, this is my country. I get to decide who stays here. I get to decide who goes,

they're not going to take from me, they're not going to cut in line in front of me. Nobody's cut in front of line. Nobody's taking my benefits and not putting in. None of that stuff's true. Right. But if you can trigger those sensors

and then you go off of a different, in a different path, well, then they have to kind of think, well, I've got to kind of follow you, which is why this guy is twisting himself in nuts trying to figure out how a pedophile can be president. Right. That's why he's trying to twist himself and nuts.

And not to be the guy who talks about it all the time, but really, this is also, I think, a byproduct of how we get our information, right? We wrote a whole book about it. We wrote a whole book about how it's bad to get information this way and very specifically bad to get it electronically through your social media. There's a lot of people that this hits the perfect sensor of their brain. You'll get these mouthpieces, these large mouthpieces,

like Elon Musk on Twitter will say something like, oh, did you know that they were accused of rape? so someone was accused of rape, someone outside of the, he says the rape, the person who was raped, tweeted at the rapist and they got more jail time

than the rapist, right? But none of that's true. But if you get your diet from social media, that all starts to fall into place. You're like, what the hell? What kind of world are we living in it?

Because it's so easy to flip your switches and then you just, suddenly you just believe these things that these giant media personalities are tweeting out and there's no

fact check, there's nothing that you can look to to say, well, is this a real thing? Is this not a real thing? Yeah, it's so funny because I was thinking about the word, just in relation to that. I was thinking about the word influencer the other day. It just came into my hat. And I was thinking, this should be a derogatory word. Like, we should be very unsettled by the idea of somebody whose job it is to influence. Yeah. Right? To be influenced is to accept some sort of propaganda, whether that propaganda is some kind of advertising propaganda or an ideological propaganda to be influenced is not a good thing. But we've embraced this culture, this influencer culture, in a way that I think creates a fucking toxic soup that we swim in

of never-ending promotional materials for ideas, for concepts, for outrages, for things to be angry about, for problems that don't exist that we have to solve for all of this madness, all of this just complete madness because we're living in an influencer culture. And you can't ask for anything actually more damaging than for people to aspire to be an influencer, to aspire to be a propagandist and to embrace this concept of, I am willing to, oh, I follow this influencer. This is an influencer I like. These are influences that I want to have.

The algorithm is in charge. This is not grassroots work that builds this, right? There are massive institutional and political and geopolitical forces which are building this. This isn't just like some guy you know with a microphone most of the time. Very often, that's not where this is driven from. So we're just being manipulated better than we've ever been manipulated before. and we're embracing it. Yeah.

We're like, we're living in it and we're like laughing about it and like kids are waking up and aspiring to it. And it's like, like to be a fashion influencer is to be basically,

I would like to be an advertiser and I'll do it for free until somebody discovers me like I'm a movie star. And then I'll be a paid influencer because now it's a different kind of movie star. It's a seven second at a time movie star. That's all it is.

You're built. You're like, It used to be like you went out and hired an ad agency. But now they'll just do it for free. People will raise their hand and say, I'd like to, I'll sell my soul for nothing in the hopes that eventually you'll give me something. And we'll build this insane culture where we launder these ideas, these horrible, toxic, great replacement theory ideas. We'll launder them right through a willing public who is happy to sell their soul to be on both sides of the equation. And we don't even recognize we're doing it.

it's crazy to me. And the real key, and I can't recommend this book enough. So if you get a chance, like I say, The Chain of Ideas is such a brilliantly written book. And he's a, the guy's a scholar. He's done a bunch of research. But the real key to this whole book is that people will cling on to privilege instead of all consolidating our power to fix it. That's the real key. That's the real key to the whole 14th Amendment thing. That's all that this is. They are trying to hold on to that privilege that they have and not think that we can make a better system for everybody if we work together. In order to satisfy an English requirement, Michael appeared in the drama club's production of an original play, the trial of Captain Hook. You're a crook, Captain Hook. Judge, won't you

throw the book at the pie? This story comes to New York Times. E. Jean Carroll asks Judge to order Trump to pay $5 million jury award. The writer's request came after the Supreme Court, declined. to review a civil case in which President Trump was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming her. Now, oh, where's the sad trombone when you need it? Oh, no. Oh. The $5 million has been deposited into an independent escrow. It's coming to her soon. It's not worth $5.8 million. It's coming to herself. It's kind of. And Trump basically said, well, we're going to ask the Supreme Court to reconsider it. The Supreme Court already said we're not considering it. It's just a stalling tactic. But while it's to be stalling its earning interest.

Interest he has to pay. He also owes her $83 million in a defamation suit, which I know will also move its way up. Now, I don't know if the defamation suit will also survive all of these challenges, because who fucking knows what's true and happening anymore, but at the very

least, at least the Supreme Court said, okay, we can't overturn things that went through the proper chain of command. And there was nothing untoward or improper at all about the process that E. Gene Carroll availed herself of in civil suit to win this $5 million award.

There's like no grounds to flip this over. He's going to write that check. Yeah. I think I actually think they already wrote it. Oh, really? Yeah, I think it's already in a place. I remember when I was doing the podcast with Craig, he had said that in certain states,

you have to put that money into an account. And so the interest that's already gained is already there. It's just they put it into like a independent escrow account. And then that money will just gain, because that's how money works. When you have a lot of it, it turns out, you can get a lot more. It turns out. So, yeah, it's going to be a lot more money because it's just been sitting there waiting for her to get in there.

And so it's going to, I'm pretty sure I can be corrected. I'm happy to be corrected. But I'm pretty sure that that money exists is in a place already. And he doesn't have to write the check as he already did. Yeah. Well, I guess, like, I guess what I meant to say is, is he'll, if he were to prevail, he'd get his money back. He'd get his money back.

And he's not getting his money back. It's not going to happen. No, it doesn't look like that. And that's great. And I think that this is the thing that so many people want to deny. I don't know if you've ever heard anybody who's on the other side in the MAGA world. When this gets brought up, they all say it's a sham trial. This is all bullshit.

It's all made up. It's charges that don't exist. It's all this. She just lied, et cetera, et cetera. And the best part is is you can look them in the face and be, like a super majority Supreme Court refused to hear it. A super majority Supreme Court

decided that this wasn't worth looking at because it was fine. Yeah, let's just say out loud that like right now, right now, today, the sitting president is a 32 times felon and has been adjudicated as civilly responsible

for sexual assault. Yes. And used to be close personal friends with one of the world's most notorious pedophiles. all of those things are just unequivocally true. All true. And to what, like, what? How do you bend yourself over backward enough to be like, yeah, but?

Dude, there's people that were in the Democratic Party that did a thing that is essentially nothing in comparison to the things that he's done. Right. I'm thinking back to Anthony Wiener, who rightfully was kicked out of the party, rightfully he served jail time for the things that he did. Yeah. Right. Sexting a minor.

Yep. Absolutely should have got the hammer thrown out. Yep. Right. Get rid of him. Don't want to talk to him. Don't want to see him anymore. That guy should live a life that isn't under his name and never be public again.

Yeah. Right. That's what he should do forever. I am so happy to do that to a person who turns out to be a bad person. I'm happy to do that to anybody who turns out to be a bad person. genuinely bad person. Why should other groups not be willing to do that?

Even if you know it takes your piece off the board. Even if you know that now I'm one piece down, that should still be how did we get to a place where morality is so, it's so diluted that we're willing

to just say, you know what, I'm willing to keep that piece there because it keeps me in the game. Think about two, it's your morality point. Think about too, the right is in bed with the Christian right. I know. I know. And they are the supposed arbiters of moral truth, right? So they're the ones who hold up their hand.

We're not doing it for them. They're holding up their hand. And they are proclaiming to everybody that they are the arbiters of universal truth and morality. That's their whole thing, right? They would even claim to a one on that side of the equation that you actually can't even have a morality without the universal. foundation of a god. That's one of the founding, like, teleological principles that they found

themselves upon in the Christian right. And here's their guy. Here's their guy that they are, that they have embraced. And you have to just say to yourself, they never believed any of this. Not really. Not the way you and I believe it. Right. So I was thinking about this, like, you and I have a moral system that's based on, like, having really deeply thought about who we want to be. and how we want to interact with the world, and how we want to understand the idea of right and wrong. And I know that because when you and I were young, we talked that through together a lot.

A lot. A lot. Yeah. Because it was important to us to try to get right the idea of being good. And we wanted to understand what those ideas meant. And how could we interact with people in a way that, like, benefited them and benefited us and understood the idea of what goodness was. And like, they understood the idea of how right and how right and how.

wrong, interacted and intersected in important ethical ways. These were conversations you and I had for years. And we read about it. We thought about it deeply. And then we arrived at whatever conclusions we arrived at. But they're deeply held because they were personally achieved. And I think the difference on the right is that what they have is a vague sense of practical outcomes. They do not have a, they do not, evidently, it's self-evident that they do not actually have a deep moral and philosophical basis that is irrefutable and they are unmovable from. If they did, this would all be impossible. What they are is the ultimate pragmatists.

They have a practical outcome and they don't really care who burns at the stake in order for them to get to the end result. The means justify the ends. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I wonder how far we're going to have to bend in our morality to match them, right? Because there's only so many pieces you're willing to take off your board.

And there's only so much shit you're going to want to eat before you decide that's not going to work for me. We know that we've heard Michelle Obama say, when they go low, we go high. And that was 10 years ago. And now people are saying, no, fuck that. That's stupid. We're not doing that anymore. Yeah. So I wonder where this leads.

Do we just keep digging down? Are we each just handing the other one the shovel to say let's go down farther and farther and farther? Because it doesn't feel like morality can win out. Yeah, well, I guess I want to draw. So here's where I make the distinction, and maybe this is self-serving. So if it is, call me out on it. I believe that the ideals of the left, broadly speaking, are ideals that protect the least privileged amongst us. I'm willing to do some unsavory things in order to help more people.

It feels like a trolley problem to me, right? Sure, sure. I'll run over three guys to save 100 guys. I think on the right, the difference is not all the people are the same value. So they're willing to run over 100 guys to save three because these three are more important three. They're the real three. They're the actually valuable three.

They're not, you know, people of color. They're not poor. They're not gay. They're not trans, right? So for me, it's a trolley problem. It's plain and simple. Like, what's the greatest good? I'm willing to do some unsavory things to get to the greatest good.

I think that, for me, is where the difference lies. Maybe that is self-serving. I don't feel like it is because I'm always trying to think of who will this serve? If we accomplish the thing we want to accomplish, very often, I don't win. And we talked about this at the election time. But like one of the things that I knew in my personal life, in my professional life going in, if Kamala Harris had won, there was a real possibility that the industry that feeds my family would be destroyed.

That it was on the chopping block from the CFPB and from the federal government. They were really looking at whether or not it should even exist. And I still looked at that and thought, yeah, okay, but it's still the right thing for the world. It's still the right thing for people. So even though it might hurt me in my family, I know. where my values lie and I'll figure the rest out. I think there's a difference there. I hope that there's a difference there. I just am curious what crimes we would allow the president to commit. Yeah. I know. Because you talked about four things and how, well, let's bring up a different one here

while we're at it. There's a story in here about how Trump has made $2 billion. This one is from PBS, Trump, $2 billion income in 2025 raises fresh questions off profiting off the presidency. How much are we going to allow a Democratic president to profit off the presidency? How much will I allow that? How much will I say, well, the last guy did it because they've lowered the bar enough? Or am I going to stand up and say, no, we've got to stop it. Now, President Cecil would profit the fuck off of it as fast as possible to get Congress to change the law and then I donate the money. That's what President Cesar. Cecil would do. But I don't think that there's a, there's a person out there that would, I feel like there's

probably, what we're probably going to start doing is attracting, and I hope it's not the case, Tom. I hope I'm wrong. I hope someone clips this and sends this to me in 2028 and says, God, were you wrong, Cecil? This is what I hope. But my, my thought is, is that we're just going to keep lowering the bar for both our sides until we're both just electing outward, grifters, but they are grifters for our party that will help the people who they say they're going to help when they move in. And in some cases, it's the billionaire class and a bunch of mouth breathers don't give a fuck about that. They just want to hurt other people that they're going to hurt. And the other side maybe gets a little wider swath of the population that gets helped.

I don't know, but I hope that's not the case. I hope the next person isn't somebody who's like, I'm going to profit off the presidency. I'm going to sexually assault people. I'm going to, you know, you can start naming all the bad things. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm I'm going to make us look like a laughing stock on the world stage. I'm only going to do self-interested moves when it comes to foreign policy. I mean, gosh, Tom, I could go on all day about all the bad things that Trump does. I'm going to attack, I don't know, pick a fucking nation, you know, one that makes me feel like it's going to build myself up as long as I'm doing the same things that will help a few people

than the last guy. Yeah. Here's what I hope is true. I don't know that this is true, though. So I hope it is true that those things just can't operate the same way. I think so, too. Because what I mean by that is that the ethos of the right is the individualistic ethos. And the ethos of the left is a more collectivist ethos.

So let's say I am, let's say I'm president and I'm on the left. And I'm going to say, I'm going to profit. I'm going to make $2 billion personally off of the presidency. But I'm also going to restore USAID. and, you know, 30 million lives get saved. I'd be like, yeah, okay, I'm okay with that. I don't think, and I would hate that, I wouldn't be okay with it, but I would say 30 million lives are worth you, one guy getting rich.

The difference on the right is like he gets rich and 30 million people die. Like, it feels just functionally like there's difference there that, like if I win on the left, then the ship that rises is the ship that is, hopefully is the ship of the underserved. And I can't see how that, I just can't imagine how that functions in the same way as on the right, where it's like, well, I consolidated a bunch of power into the hands of a thousand billionaires.

Yeah. You know, it just doesn't feel like it can function the same way. I could be wrong. I could be, and let me just say, I could be idealistic and stupid and short-sighted and just wrong. I just deeply hope I'm not. Yeah. Because these systems are already broken,

And we've talked about this. One of the fears that we've had, and we've been talking about for years now, is that once you break these systems, they cannot just be unbroken. That's not how this works. So, like, once a system has been shown to have cracks and faults, and, you know, the Supreme Court rules on it and says, hey, now these cracks and faults are law. That's it. It's not like we elect somebody new, and then we go back to the way it was before. that's just never the case again.

I mean, the Supreme Court just ruled basically that like there's unlimited money allowed. The campaign finance reform is a dead concept and there's essentially unlimited money that we're allowed to pour into these things. When we know that that just creates like grift and greed and corruption, they basically said, yeah, we're fine with that. We're never going back to we're not fine with that unless we get an entirely new Supreme Court. Yeah. There's so much structurally now that's different. They'd have to revisit that entire thing and then change their mind on it.

At this point, it just feels like that will never happen. That's not a thing that could ever happen unless somebody comes in and expands the court, unless somebody comes in and expands Congress, like massively expands Congress, the size of Congress, abolishes the Senate.

Like, those things could feasibly change things, but you've also pulled all that power away so much with that theory that you'd have to somehow reinvest that power into Congress. Right. Like, look at it. how much time and effort. I think about this sometimes. Look at how much time and effort it took to get Obamacare passed. Obama care has lots of problems. It's a landmark piece of legislation. And we all benefit

from it, whether you were a supporter of Obamacare or not, just think about like the preexisting condition shit that's now not legal. Right. So it's a bit like whether you like it or not, whether you feel it was sufficient or not, you set that aside. What's important to notice how much time and energy it took to build one thing that wasn't even good enough. and how little time and effort it takes to break something and destroy it forever. We've broken so many things that will take more time and effort to build back. They cannot be built back. We're just not going to be able to.

It's generational now to just go back to where we were two and a half, three years ago. It's going to take 25, 30 years. And some of these things, we don't have time to fix. And people are dying in the meantime. And that's just the way it is now. It's just not the case that you're just like, well, I have four years or just turn to the fucking dial back to the other direction. Building is harder than breaking.

Breaking is so easy, man. Yeah, I am incensed that we live in a time where the president has such wide powers that he can look at his own wealth and multiply it. Because Trump wasn't a double billionaire, I don't think. last year. I don't think he was either. This is a guy who's making more and more and more money and he's not supposed to.

We're not supposed to allow that. You saw that that Jet, that Jet, that Katahe Jet came in and they were saying, yeah, that's going to go to Trump after it's all over. I mean, that is literally a bribe. It's literally a bribe. There's no way, I don't know how anybody can steal

man that argument to me to make it make sense that Trump should be able to keep that thing after it's all over and he got it as a gift while he's a president. I don't know how you make that argument to me that says that a half a billion dollar jet gets given to Trump. Is that how much it was? Was it a half a billion? It was a 500 million dollar chat. That's a, that's a, that's a, dude, I can't even think of what 500 million dollars even is. I know. I can't even put that in my head to figure out what it is. But he got that given as a gift. He got essentially Joe Rogan's

entire career given to him as a gift. And it's directly unconstitutional. Yeah. I mean, it's literally, it's not going to do anything about it. It's in the emoluments clause. It's that it is. It's literally in there. Yeah.

because he gives you all kinds of gifts. All kinds of gifts you shouldn't get. son, they asked about his sons. I don't know if you saw this. They said, they said, well, do you think your sons are, get any kind of insider information from you? And he said, yeah, of course they get inside information from me. Yeah. He's like, yeah, like, they're around this kind of information all the time.

So how could they not get it? He essentially just admitted out loud that they get, they get insider information to make more money. They literally admitted it. That's fucking insane. But it doesn't matter because there's no way to prosecute him. No. I know there's no political will to do it anyway.

There's no political will to do it, but there's also just no way to do it. Right, because he's got immunity. He's got immunity. So he can just say whatever he wants. And he could be like, what? I did it on behalf of the presidency. What are you going to do? Send it to the Supreme Court.

Yeah. I have fucking Clarence Thomas washed my underwear. So he made $2 billion in one year. It's the most he's ever made. So it's not like he was making this kind of money before he became president. He's never made that much money in a single year. He made $2 billion, over half of it on crypto. So I thought to myself, like, what's $2 billion?

I know we've done this before. So $2 billion. If the average rate of return on $2 billion for a millionaire, I looked this up this morning, is between 15 and 25%. It actually accumulates returns at a much higher rate than your investment income accumulates returns. So let's use the low end 15%, $2 billion. It means that in a year, that $2 billion will earn $130 million.

Feels like a lot of money. So let's play with that for just one. one second. The nicest thing I've ever done in my life was to say at an all-inclusive resort in Fiji when I proposed to Haley. It was like a splurge once in a lifetime thing. I looked this up. It's about $2,000 a day right now to stay there. That means that he could, with his $2 billion, he could decide to live at that resort, at $2,000 a day, live there full time. At the nicest thing I've ever seen in my entire life, he could live there. It would cost $700. $130,000 a year, which is somewhere in the neighborhood of a half of a percent of what that money

earns in interest in a single year. That's what $2 billion is. $2 billion is somebody living in the most luxurious thing that you can do, and it doesn't even cost you a percent. And that doesn't even cost you a full percent of the interest you earn on that money. And that's only $2 billion. He's worth more than that. That's what he earned off of you. the taxpayer. That's what he earned off of grifting through his presidency and leveraging his position as presidency, an amount of wealth so unbelievably vast that it's hard to think about it when you try to put it in luxury terms, the most luxurious thing you can think of. It's not even a percent. When I was a kid, all the way leaning up till probably I would imagine Obama,

Most people hated politicians. Yeah. Hated them. Thought they were crooked. Thought they were out for themselves. Would constant complain about them all the time. What do you think is going through your head now if you think this guy is on the up and up? I don't know.

How do you contend with the world if you somehow think that this story is okay? That Trump getting $2 billion when he's in office? Like how do you look back to whoever, Clinton? right? You're a Republican. How do you look back, roll back all the way to Clinton and say, I hate this fucking guy. This guy's just making money, hand over a fist. He's just a fucking liar. He's a liar. He's going to, he's banging somebody in the Oval Office and he's a liar, et cetera, et cetera. How do you get to this where, you know, the people in power out to get you before and now they're just, I don't know what. What did they do? Cecil, the same people who will,

like, they will look at you and say, oh, these guys, these guys on the left, they're just in it for themselves, right? They're just these, these, uh, east coast and left coast elites. Here's an East Coast elite. A guy who came from money, who is using you and his presidency to earn unbelievably vast wealth. A lot more. He doesn't care about you. Like he's not, yeah, but they'll defend. It's insane. Like I've heard it. I'm sure you've heard it with like, oh, yeah, he's in there for the every man. He understands the working guy in your life. Like, how? He's literally selling you fucking meme coins that almost everybody else who bought one lost money.

That's a, like there's a giant story in the times about how this stupid fucking meme coin earned him over a billion dollars and almost everybody else ate shit. He just stole your money on a dumb idea, idiot. That's what he did. And you were just like, awesome. Sounds good to me. You have C fights on the front lawn. shoot a firework right on my ass. What the fuck?

I'm just saying I think we all benefit if each of his atoms revolts and splits off into the distance, travels to another galaxy instantaneously. Whatever happens, just he unravels atomically.

That's all I want. It would be amazing. It's all I want. All right. That's going to wrap it up for our 250 party anniversary of the United States of America. America. We are not going to have a long-form show. We'll have it next week. But we are 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-Babillon bullshit. Couched in Scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quazi alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy healing, watered downward spiral brain dead pan sales pitch late night info docutainment Leo Pisces cancer cures detox reflex 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 wizards wizards Vaccine nuts shame and healers evangelists conspiracy double-speakings stigmata nonsense.

Expose your signs. 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

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