Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 936: Trump Lies About Vaccines

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

The U.S. Is Burning Through Weapons in Iran. Russia and China Are Taking Note. - The New York Times New Evidence Shows Agents Using Slurs, Bolstering Profiling Claims Fact-Checking Trump's Claims About Childhood Vaccines After Executive Order - The New York Times Ocasio-Cortez says Democrats are 'unifying,' focused on 'working people' in midterms - ABC News Socialists Are Winning Because They Listen to People - The New York Times Crenshaw weighs in on 'dumb' $20 burrito sparking debate over affordability

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Matt. Today is Wednesday, August the 12th. See, so I'm going to tell you a funny story. So this, I'll narrate it for those that aren't watching, for those who are watching on YouTube, you may see behind me just off my right hand shoulder. I've got a speaker and on that speaker there's a little, like it looks like a little sign. So I'm, I've kind of gotten into the vintage audio seen a bit. And I have vintage audio gear that I really like and it's in my office and other parts of my house. And so I thought it would be fun

to, I've got a receiver for vintage audio nerds. I have a Sansoui 8080. And I was like, you know what, I'm going to find the original advertisement from 1974 that was out and about in the wild for that when it was being sold.

And I'm going to get it. I'm going to frame it. I'm going to put it on my equipment because it's just kind of cool. Like, hey, here's this thing. It's 50 plus years old and, you know, I just think it's near. So I find the Rolling Stone ad from like an original Rolling Stone ad from 1974. And I find it on eBay and I buy it. And it's just like a very nice cut right out of the magazine. It's like, oh, this is really cool. So I get it. And without thinking too much of it, I turn it over. I look at the advertisement. It's cool. I'm going to frame it. I turn it over. And Cecil on the other side is the middle of an article that is an interview of Truman

Capote. And he is told. talking extensively about how the Jews control the media. I'm not even kidding. I am not kidding at all. I am not. He's talking about Jews in Hollywood control the media. And I'm like, this is the most racist thing I've ever bought in my life. It's like you bought one of those old cookie jars.

You're the ones that I'm talking about. Everybody who knows when I say that, everybody knows about the racist cookie jars and racist sugar jars. that like littered American, Americana fucking homes for like most of the beginning of last century. Oh my God. You've seen him at like fucking thrift stores. You're just like, Jesus, that's the most racist shit. Racist thing ever. It's so, it was so funny.

Because I was like, oh, I wonder what's on the other side of this old magazine. And I was like, oh, it's a yikes on bikes. That's what it is. Good thing is, is that it's a double sale. Either you sell it to an audio file or you sell it to a. pedophile. God, so it was really is really funny.

I'm still keeping it. You know, because I'm just going to put the edge side out. And don't let anybody leave the back, Tom. Yikes. Come in your house and they're just like, I didn't know Tom was so into the great replacement theory. It was Truman Capote's quotes all over.

Little uncomfortable. I have an inside agent who told him that you're an international. Here's your false identity papers and your. passport. I have an inside agent who told him that you're an international investor and an art collector. Don't take your weapon. Okay. I don't need to carry a weapon. I am the weapon. All right, so let's start off with this story from New York Times. The U.S. is burning through weapons in Iran. Russia and China are taking note. The Iran war has depleted U.S. weapon stockpiles resulting in a significant erosion of firepower, more drawn-out Iran conflict benefits Moscow and Beijing, some analysts say,

no shit, says everybody who could have predicted the most predictable possible thing. We've been talking about this for a couple weeks, and you've said this a couple times about how they're depleting this. And this is sort of been going around in the news. This is the first story I've seen that sort of really encapsulates all the deep problems with it, right? There's been a lot of reporting about it, but each piece sort of was taken individually. This one is a great in-depth sort of article to say, here's all the problems with that. And there are a lot of the things that you've already sort of talked about in the past time. You've said that it's showing people all the cards. You get to show them all your cards so you never have any surprises. You're depleting your own.

So one of the major exports we have is we sell that shit and we give it to other countries for aid in different ways so that they aid us. And so if we do that and we use them all up, we don't have stuff to sell them. It very specifically weakens it weakens Ukraine because Ukraine is relying on us for a lot of weaponry

to try to protect them themselves against the invasion from Russia. And that benefits, outwardly benefits Russia. It outwardly benefits China because it makes us look like we can't fund Taiwan and other places that might need our protection there. it makes us look so bad in every way.

And it makes our, you know, the things that I think America tries to strive for is to try to be that sort of the biggest kid on the block. Right. It's always tried to be the biggest kid on the block. And now everybody's just like, now you're the kid from a Christmas story who got socked in your nose and you're crying while you're bleeding and you can't. Like, you're not the bully anymore. Right. you're not the big bully anymore because you've you've played all your hand and they know what's in the rest of your hand. So they already know the worst cards you have and you don't have a lot of

them. Yeah. This is, you know, one of the most, one of the most valuable weapons that any major superpower has is the power of its own mystique and narrative. And America, I mean, let me give you a corollary or an analogy. Prior to the Ukrainian invasion, Russia was seen as the, as the probably second, maybe third, but often the second largest military superpower in the world, right? So there was the United States, and then there was Russia. Many would argue that maybe China was vying for dominance over Russia, and that might be accurate at this point.

That's debatable. But nevertheless, top two or three, right? Sure. And so the day that they invaded Ukraine, good money, smart money, was on, this is a four or five day invasion. This is Russia. This is one of the largest, most powerful militaries on the planet. And four and a half years later, they've made incremental progress along many fronts, but they've nowhere near accomplished their strategic military goals, not even close. They've all these weaknesses and strategy in planning, in execution, and equipment, all of that has been exposed to the world.

What that does is it destroys the mystique, right? And the mystique is part of how your leverage is built. The United States is exactly the same, right? So in terms of numbers, specifically like this is about our defensive missiles, so the missiles that shoot down other missiles, right? Yeah, the Patriot stuff. The Patriot missiles are the primary missile that's used. I hate that they're called Patriot missiles. I fucking hate that too. We hate it. We've fired, based on the best estimates that I've read, we've fired somewhere between 1,500 and 1,700 of these. Yeah. In order to shoot down. an incoming target, the U.S. typically will use two missiles for every one missile that they're

trying to shoot down. It's a part of her. And sometimes they'll use as many as three. So we've fired between 15 and 1700. We have somewhere around that same number left. That's not a lot. The Iranian conflict in terms of like the actual like deepest, heaviest part of the fighting didn't last that long. It wasn't months and months and months of time. It was weeks of time. Right. And half of that supply is now gone. It takes about two years to make a Patriot missile. That's how long that process takes.

It takes about two years. They have to grow them in these fields. It's water them every day. It's a whole thing. It is. It's tough. And you know, you don't want those ones that are antibiotics, you know, and all that stuff. Wednesday is Patriot Missile Day.

They grow on trees. Yeah. So we are, it is, even if, even if we like put the pedal to the metal. Yeah. These are missiles which are produced by Lockheed Martin, but there's a number of suppliers that have to be, there's factories that have to be built out. It takes a couple of years. So replenishing that supply is not something we can just decide to do. We have contracts with independent companies. They have to build factories, hire workers, train workers, buy the supplies. We get materials. Some of the materials are produced at different companies. assemble them.

You know, I think these are assembled or assembled somewhere in the south. I want to, I would be lying if I said or remembered where. It's a complex process. And we've damaged the mystique. So to your bully point, like the strongest bully

never fights anybody, right? The most feared bully never actually has to fight anybody because he might fucking lose, right? Or he might win, but win just by a little, right? Or somebody might watch him fight

and be like, hey, you know what? That guy isn't as fast as I thought he was. Like, whatever it is. I know how to beat. that guy now. Exactly. So we've damaged the mystique. The mystique is the leverage. That narrative that America is indomitable is just like, well, just fucking roll over everybody in a matter of moments. That's what we're selling to the world. That's the leverage. That's the fear. That's gone. Yeah. Now the whole world can read the same fucking New York Times article about how like,

hey, actually a big factor in Trump not escalating this militarily and instead moving to a pressure, an economic pressure campaign on Iran and backing off some of his militaristic threats, that's because he understands it. Like, I can't use up all these missiles. We need a certain amount in reserve for other shit. So now, like, we're a paper tiger. How awful of a situation you went from like, we're feared across the world and that's the leverage to paper tiger. And if you're Taiwanese and you're Ukrainian right now, this is an existential danger to you.

Well, and one of the things that they talk about in this article, which I think is hilarious, is how every time Trump is asked, he's just like, or Trump or Caroline Levitt or whoever, whenever they're asked, they're just like lie, like 100%. Look at the camera, like blow snot out of one of their nostrils. and then they're just like, yeah, that's all bullshit. And you're just like, a bunch of people say that's not bullshit. You say that's bullshit. Like, no, we're great.

Also, by the way, this is Biden's fault. Yes. Hold on. Which is it? Is it Biden's fault? Or is it actually happening and it's Biden's fault? Or is it not happening? Because both of those feel like a lie.

Both of those feel like dog ate by homework line. It is amazing. I was thinking about this this week. Tom, the presidency seems like a complicated job. It seems like it would be a very complicated job. Sure. But I think if you break it down, it really is just two major components. Well, I guess there's three.

One is a public speaking component, right? Like you think you should be able to read off a teleprompter and give a speech and also sort of give impromptu remarks. That's sort of one quality of a president. I think you have to be able to do that. I think some presidents are way better at that than others. Almost certainly, like if you were to compare Obama to Trump, it's light ear is different, right? It's totally different.

But, like, I think that's one of the things you have to do. The other two pieces are essentially kind of one, because really good managers have to be able to know who they hire and how to hire and when to let that hire go. Right. So, like, I think managers need to know that stuff. So my, I'm sort of putting two together and saying, you got to be able to hire. hire good people, and you've got to be a good manager of those people. I think if you have all three of those things, you could be a phenomenal president. That's it.

Again, I don't know kind of all that happens behind the scenes, but I see a guy who is genuinely probably one of the stupidest people to ever hold the office, hold the office just fine, right? Right. In a lot of different ways. I mean, he's not doing a good job, but he is able to do sort of the functions of the president. mostly. He does it badly, but he can do it. It's not a difficult job, right? Like, you just have to be like, know who you're going to hire, know when to cut fucking cut that person off because this is a bad hire, right? You're bad at your job. Listen to the right experts at the right times and follow,

mostly follow their advice and make the hard decisions. That's really the whole job. He is so bad at every single piece of this job. He's so unbelievably bad at it. Because you hired the worst people. Those people have ingratiated themselves to you so much they'll never be fired for anything, nothing. I mean, they can't do anything that's bad, right? They'll say blatantly racist shit.

They won't answer to the people who are in power that they should be answering to. They'll basically, like, pull their dick out and slap the table in Congress with it. They're just like, make me do something. You can't. So they are the worst hires you could possibly imagine. You've hired incompetent people. And then whether or not you followed the incompetence advice doesn't matter because it's just bad advice or you just chose your own path. It doesn't matter. And any of the qualified people you've discounted,

you're so bad at this. Like, you're just like, like this in particular, Iran in particular, she shows how awful a president this president is. Yeah, I completely agree. I think it's interesting because when you were talking, I was like, you know who is an effective president, who I, listeners will know, I fucking hate to this day. But George W. Bush was effective. And when I say he was effective, I mean, he was able to accomplish many of the goals and policies that he needed or desired to accomplish.

And in large part, that's because he didn't get in the, the way of the people that he appointed to be in charge of him. And that is part of how being, I think, being a good manager works, right? You hire people and you say, hey, in this respect, you're kind of in charge of me. Yes, I might have final say. I might have questions. But at the end of the day, you're the subject matter expert. I need you. I respect you. I want you to make this decision. I'll stamp it at the end. I'll ask questions. Maybe I'll get two experts in a room and kind of fight it out and decide which of the two experts I agree with more. But at the end of the day, there's an intellectual humility that's required to do the work

you're describing. And you have to be able to say like, hey, you know what, I'm not, I don't know best. So who knows best? Oh, it's that guy. Awesome. Let me listen to that guy. Hey, you're in charge of this piece because I don't, I can't know everything. I can't build a depth of knowledge deep enough and fast enough to know everything.

You know, like, it would be an impossible job if you were to run it the way Trump is running it. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Right. Because, like, what Trump is trying to do is he's trying to be the expert on the economy. He's trying to be the expert on foreign affairs.

And, like, think about what it means to be an expert just on foreign affairs. That's not real. An expert on foreign affairs would not say, like, oh, I'm an expert on Iran and Russia and African nations and conflicts in Asia. And instead, there's subspecialties for all of these things, right? He's a micromanager. Yeah. And that's the worst.

I've never worked for a micromanager? dude, they're the least competent managers. It's the worst because they're constantly trying to do your job for you. Or there's checking so deeply on the things you're doing that they can't do their own job because they're constantly check up on you. It's the worst. It's genuinely the worst. The best managers ever work for is like, you're the expert, get it done, please.

Those are the best people to work for. Yeah, I think like the best most competent managers are like, hey, here's the vision. Let's all work together to accomplish the vision, right? And then it's like, I'm not good at this. I'm going to hire somebody who is. And hey, you're good at this? You know about this? Let me see how this fits into the overall vision.

Trump doesn't do any of that. He'll literally stand at a podium and say, I know better than everybody. I know better than the Federal Reserve Chief. I know better about tariffs. I know better about domestic policy. I know better about fucking how we should handle a pandemic. Yeah, vaccines. I know more about vaccines.

What the fuck? Like, it's like, what don't you know, man? Like, where's your humility? Well, and then he'll be like, well, I know so much because my uncle one time was a professor. Oh, my God, I know. Those will be the ways in which he knows. It's insanity, man. I can't believe we're here.

I literally every day, I look at the paper, I read things and I'm thinking, how on earth did we get here? Do yourself a favor and just read like a tiny bit of this article, even if you're just searching for the times that Carolyn Levitt or Trump speaks, because they're just so genuinely stupid or outright liar. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, driving their just powers from the consent of the government. And whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish.

So this stories from New York Times, new evidence shows agents using slurs, bolstering profiling claims. Body camera videos and other court evidence capture federal agents using slurs and targeting Latinos while bypassing white bystanders during immigration sweeps in Chicago and Los Angeles. And is there anything more predictable, right, also than this? This just feels like everybody saw this coming. When Brett Kavanaugh ruled at the Supreme Court level that racial profiling is totes amaze,

of course this is what's going to happen. Yeah, man. Literally nothing else could happen because they came to the Supreme Court and said, can we do racial profiling, please? and they were like, yeah, sounds good. What's also amazing about this article is all of the authorities that were asked about this sort of thing,

deny that it's happening even though there is literally camera footage of them doing it. Right? Like this is the craziest shit. They will literally look you in the face and be like a little kid covered in chocolate after like there's no more cake

and you're like, what happened to the cake? I don't know what happened to the cake. and then you say, well, I think you ate the cake and they'll be like, no, uh, and they are covered, covered in it, right? This is the same thing.

There's literally tape after hour after hour of tape of these racists walking through our neighborhoods, picking people up sometimes perfectly, like we're talking about, they make it seem like. And I think this is a really interesting framing that they've done

in a way to make it seem like the effectiveness of this group is worth the cost, right? They've done a very good job. And I say good in the sense that it's devious, not good in the sense that it's good, but a good job of making it seem like they are, you know, once in a while there'll be some collateral damage. We'll pick a person up,

but we're really out there catching all these bad guys, right? That's kind of the narrative that they've had. This is a big drag net, and we're getting all these people. They're fucking up like crazy. And then they're racially profiling and saying racist remarks about American citizens

that they're grabbing in this. They're sometimes being presented with actual evidence that these people are American citizens and ICE instead decides to just take them in and be like, fuck you. How about that? Fuck you.

Because there's no, there is nothing. You have given this group essentially unlimited authority with no checks and balances on their power and no punishment if they overstep their bounds. This is a group of people that are acting like they run the place because there's nobody there

who can say you don't run the place. Even when American citizens stand up and try to protest against them, they will sit on buildings and shoot pepper spraysray balls at them or spray them in the face or run them over with cars or beat them with them

with sticks. This is unbelievable. The thing is, like, if the government people were changed, the right would be flipping their shit over this. Yeah, they would. Yeah. And I would hope that the left would be flipping their shit over this too. When there is an outreach of, when there's an overreach of the government, we should all take a step back and be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's not agree to do this. Let's not continue this escalation. Yeah, man. And a couple of things. I think there are two excuses that get made around this kind of activity. And the first one that you hear is like, well, a bad apple doesn't define the whole bunch, right? There's that there's that idea.

Yeah, yeah. You know, you can't say that this is like a policy of the whole of ice, you know, just because you have a couple of examples. That is fucking nonsense. I would believe, look, there is a truth to like a bad, one bad actor does not define the entire group. That is generally speaking true. but when you have many, many, many, many, many examples, and then those examples are institutionally excused, what you have is implicit policy.

So you don't have at that point a bad apple who then we're all like, hey, we're not going to let Joe on our team anymore. We saw that footage. We're going to have an investigation. We're going to, you know, none of that, none of that's happening. Instead, what they're trying to tell you is that we're not going to do anything about these racists at all. We're not looking into it. We're not trying to root it out. We also find it disgusting and

unacceptable. They're not saying any of that stuff. They're saying what you saw wasn't real, which is insane, right? Or if you saw it and it was real, it doesn't matter because we didn't write down anywhere that they're allowed to do it. We just walk around going winky face at everybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Instead, right? So that's the first bullshit excuse. And it's bullshit. And we should call it out for being bullshit. Because if it were a bad apple, people would root it out. This is exactly the same kind of shit that the church pulls, right? We all got upset when the Catholic Church was like, oh, well, yeah, so, you know, it's just, there's a pedophile here or there, and it's like, yeah, everybody understands that an organization of that size, there's going to be people

who are shitheads. But the question is, what did you do about? Yeah. Oh, you help to hide them and move them around and excuse it. Now that's the actual heart and soul of the problem, because that allows it to exist at scale, right? And that brings me to my next excuse. You also sort of hear this excuse being made, and I don't phrase it exactly this way, but it's the same excuse, that we can't do this work at scale if we have to do it well. Right. And so the way that's often phrased when you hear it from apologists is like, well, you know, you're in any drag net of this size, you're going to scoop up some innocent people. And what that means is we can't do the work at scale and still do it well. And the response should be, then don't do it at scale.

Don't do anything that infringes upon the rights of the citizens of this country if you cannot do it well. Hey, the reason your rights were violated is because we wanted to violate the rights of lots of people at the same time. What the fuck? How is that an acceptable world for any of us to live in? Like, where are the libertarians at? Like, where are the same people that, like, defended, like, where are the people who are outraged about Waco, you know? Where are the people that were outraged about Ruby Ridge? Like, those are hard right people who see government overreach as existentially threatening.

And they seem to be fucking dead. There was all the militia nuts. Like, those people didn't disappear. That ideology didn't disappear. But it's not being, it's not being sort of like activated because they don't see themselves in the people that are being caught up, right? They can't identify with the brown people that are being caught up. up. So because they can't see themselves in the faces of the people that are getting, you know, beaten on the streets and shot in their cars and scooped up in these dragnets and deported to countries they're never even heard of and aren't even from, they can't see themselves in that. They never really believed in those ideals as ideals. They only believed in them as the freedoms I

want for me. And I don't actually defend them for you. I think here's another President Cecil first day. First day in office, just like they took and they released Fauci's text recently, I would release all of their texts publicly. Fuck yeah. I would take all their phones and I would release all their texts publicly and I would release all the emails publicly about how they handled this particular thing, how they handled racism.

How they handled racism in the department. I would 100% be the first day. I'd be like, I want the Justice Department to go in. I want to take everything that they talked about, and I want to release that to the public and show the public what they were saying behind closed doors. Because I guarantee you, Tom. I know they tried to release Fauci's text to make it be a big gotcha.

And it was really just him being like, hey, let's figure this out because it's all brand new. It's nothing. It's like a literal nothing burger, but they released it very specifically because they want to try to make it seem like there's more there and there's more questions there that we need answers, right?

They want to make it seem like he's the bad guy who was sort of like pandemicing the whole thing. Well, you know what's happening right now? There's a bunch of people who are getting complaints and shitty messages and a bunch of back and forth between a bunch of people behind the scenes that we don't get an opportunity to see. And I guarantee you, there's a bunch of people in there

that are with a gigantic broom and a really lumpy rug sweeping a ton of shit underneath to just try to get through all the policies that Trump wants to get through. And the racism is the collateral damage that's just fine for them. And they will all probably,

I guarantee you if you release those texts, all of the texts would show, yeah, we're gonna just have to deal with the racism. That's just how it's gonna have to happen. That's just how it's gonna work. Yeah, part of me thinks that it's even worse than that. Like, part of me thinks that like, it's not that the racism is a collateral

or corollary to it, but it's literally just the outright point. It's the point. It's just the point of it. I don't disagree. I think that they're almost certainly amplifying messages like that, for sure. Fuck, is he dead? You're not a doctor? Maybe he's not dead. I'm not a doctor, but I can tell you this motherfucker's dead.

So we alluded to this a little earlier, New York Times. Fact-checking, the Trump administration's claims about vaccines. Tom, you have to just read this article a little. Oh, my God. It's short. It's like, it'll take probably to maybe two or three minutes. But you have to, even if we don't read the whole thing, I feel like you have to read at least the pieces where Trump is talking, where they're quoting him verbatim on the things that he's saying about the vaccine. Because it's fucking nuts, man. All right, so let me go ahead and just read through this here.

President Trump signed an executive order on Monday calling for scaling back the number of vaccinations American children receive. At an Oval Office event announcing the order, Mr. Trump suggested falsely that vaccines were linked to autism and that the combined measles, mumps, and rebella shot could be lethal, among other claims. While it is not clear yet whether the order has any legal power, experts said they were concerned about the statements from Mr. Trump, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and others at the event would so further doubt and confusion about the safety of immunizations. Here's what the evidence shows on some of those claims. A combined shot for measles, mumps, and rebella is safe and convenient. Mr. Trump directed health officials to split the measles mumps and rebella vaccines, which are currently given as a combined product into three separate shots. Let's stop there for a second. The reason why you keep those together is so you don't expect three separate visits from the parents.

Exactly. It's easier to just give them all at one time instead of saying, okay, why don't you come back in three months and we'll do this? They're perfectly safe to have at one time, 100% safe. We've seen this time and I don't want to say 100, but you know what I mean? They're saying they are very, very unbelievably safe to give to your children. And if you decide to space them out, your kid cannot be particular. against one thing for a much longer period of time, and people may neglect to get those follow-up shots. Yeah. Like, I also think it bears pointing out that every single time you go to the doctor,

you get charged an office fee, and you may get charged like a co-pay, and you get charged. You get charged money for this. You took one thing and you tripled the cost of it. Yeah, you got to take time off of work. Probably. Yeah. So there's a time cost to it, right? Because you can't do everything on nights and weekends, and then there's just a dollar's cost. Whatever it cost you for a doctor's appointment visit, it now costs you three of that. You tripled the cost of the fucking thing. And like, there's no fucking reason for it. There's no reason for it at all.

He said, together, there could be a possibility they're quite lethal. There is no evidence that the combination MMR shot is dangerous and many decades of evidence for its overall safety. It is associated with a small risk. seizures if a child develops a fever, but that type of seizure, which can occur during any high fever, does not often cause long-term harm, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's called a febrile seizure. They're fairly common in children. Individual shots... Did you say common?

Febrile seizures are fairly common in children. So a febrile seizure is a seizure that occurs when a kid gets a fever, and they are not at all uncommon. They just, they happen from time to time, and they're not particularly dangerous. So just getting a... temperature as a kid might occasionally cause one of these febrile seizures, but they are not the same as in terms of like danger as like a grand mal seizure or like an epileptic seizure. They're just kind of like a nothing burger event. You take your kid, you get them checked out, and it's like, yeah, that's nothing. And you're like, yeah, I know, but I got to come check them out. Then that's over. Okay. Individual shots for the three diseases are available in some countries,

but would need to be tested in the United States because they're not even fucking available before they could be administered. Requiring parents to bring their children in for multiple visits may deter some from getting the required shots. Oh, there you go. There it is. Splitting the MMR vaccine serves, quote, no medical purpose and would force parents to make multiple appointments, needlessly take time off work and make child care arrangements,

said Dr. Richard Besser, the president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and a former acting director of the CDC. Yep. Seems like the New York Times figured this out, too. Oh, shocking. Aluminum salts are safe and beneficial in vaccines. the executive order calls for alternatives to the small amounts of aluminum salts used in some vaccines, which Mr. Kennedy has persistently claimed are unsafe.

But aluminum salts, which have been used for nearly 100 years in vaccines to induce a stronger immune response, have been thoroughly studied for safety and efficacy. Clinical trials conducted over many decades support their use. One study published in 2022 suggested a possible association with asthma, but it was small, and this study's methodology meant it couldn't show cause and effect. A second study in Denmark did not find a link with asthma or any of dozens of other disorders. So that's fucking nothing. That's just made up fucking scaremongering bullshit.

Sure. A narrower schedule could cause serious harm. Mr. Trump maintained that nothing bad can happen from what we're doing. Not true at all. Again, what a fucking unbelievably uninformed and dangerous statement by the president. Even if the only thing that was bad, Cecil, even if the only, and it's not the case. we'll talk about it second as the article will. Even if the only thing that was bad is that we tripled the cost of this for people across

this country, we pay money out of pocket. It's not like we're in Europe where like if I have to go to the doctor three times, it costs the same as going to the doctor one time. It costs three times as much. Yeah. Like that alone is a prohibitive expense for so many people. Mr. Trump maintained that nothing bad can happen from what we're doing. But many diseases have been kept at bay in the United States by high vaccination.

rates. A study published in 2024 by the CDC found that for children born from 1994 to 2023, routine vaccinations prevented approximately 508 million cases of illness, 32 million hospitalizations, and 1.1 million deaths. As vaccination rates declined, some of these diseases are coming back, most obviously measles. Less than two-thirds of the way through 2026, there have been more measles cases than in any other year since the disease was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000. Hmm. The executive order lists vaccines that it says should only be recommended for high-risk children.

And on that list, there are vaccines that protect against several diseases that can be fatal for anyone, including hepatitis A, B, and meningococcal disease. They hate those hepatitis shots so much. They talk about them all the time. It's like they're one talking. It's insanity. Yeah. It's fucking ridiculous.

The number and volume of childhood shots are not caused for concern. This is the most hilariously, like, cartoonish set of claims. Mr. Trump emphasized the volume of shots given to children at various points, calling it the size of a bottle of soda. Just like, we got to pause there real quick. Have you just never gone and gotten a shot? And they never come out. They come out with a needle that, like, just, you can see it with your eyes.

Like, do people not have eyes that are, like, part of this world? I don't feel like... whenever Trump talks about regular things that everybody's experienced, I feel like he's an alien and someone described these things. Yes. Because he talks about how you have to go to the grocery store to buy like groceries and you need to present your ID. It's because he's never experienced it. I wonder if, have you ever seen those videos of the pediatrician who does like the little dance? They'll be like a bupah, blah, blah, blah.

And they got like a little, the needle in their hand. and they're making the kid distracted. Yeah, yeah. Tap it on their legs like, pop, pat-p-ta-ta-ta-p-ta-pap-ta-pop-pop. And they're doing like a little Neil Peart drum solo on them. And the little kids like all like, oh, and then they pop them. And then they give him one and they're like, oh, I feel like they have to do that to Trump.

I feel like when he goes in, they have to do like the wib-boop-boop-gut-you-boop-boop-boop. And then they give him one. And then they give him in the leg or whatever it is. Because he has no idea what he said, what are you talking about? It's a bottle of Coke. Are you the stupidest person who's ever. breathed air? Yes, yes.

What is happening? You're in charge of everything, man. It's so fucking. Can you imagine if a grown-ass person injected a bottle of coke is 20 ounces. It just injected 20 ounces of fluids in their, like, arm. You would be like the synthal guys or whatever. Yes, yeah, those guys. Oh, my God.

That shit looks so fucking funny. That's what Trump thinks you get is the big, the big weird bicep that's all liquid or whatever. God. Talking about gallons and vats of vaccine, spacing out shots would let time elapsed between visits so the body can handle this massive amount of fluid being pumped in. He's such an idiot. God, it's so fucking annoying and stupid.

Oh, guys. So this is my favorite paragraph in this whole article. It is unclear to what Mr. Trump is referring. Most shots contain between 0.25 and 0.5 milliliters of fluid, roughly, 1-20th to 1-10th of a teaspoon. Cecil? The fuck, man. He just says shit.

He just says shit. And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is his, like, is his benchmark for all this stuff? And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. doesn't know fucking anything about this stuff. Or he does, and he makes it up because he's got some dollars to make on it. I don't know which. Well, and I think the real issue that everybody should be paying attention to is that the president's words matter. They mean something in the sense that they will carry weight and convince people to become more vaccine hesitant because of this. This is a terrible policy instituted by terrible people

that will murder children. That is it. That's 100% what's going to happen. There will be kids who die because if this goes into effect and somehow affects policy. Now there's a possibility. It might not do anything at all, right? It could just be performing. by these people who are saying we're going to do this thing. And it might not be able to be enforced or do anything. It might just be like one of these fluff executive orders that they write where they say that they should do this, but they're not doing it, et cetera, et cetera. So we have to see how it plays itself out. But if something like this convinces people who are watching, the people at home, the people that when Laura Ingram plays this clip on her show, when Sean Hannity plays this clip on his show, when any show on Newsmax, plays this clip on their show, this is going to convince people to become more vaccine hesitant, and that is going to directly injure people. 100% true. There's no way you could say that that's

not an untrue statement. Yeah. And I want to add to this too, because like many of these vaccinations, you only get once in your life, or you get them a couple of times in order to build up your tiders, and then you don't have to get renewals or boosters of these shots, which means that the reason you don't have to worry about measles when you're 60 or 50 or 38 is because you got that shot when you were a kid. So like when later in your life you have, I don't know, like a cancer treatment and your immune system is suppressed. The reason you don't have to worry during that time about catching fucking measles and dying

of it is because when you were fucking seven years old or whatever, you got a fucking MMR shot. That's the reason you're protected when you're 84. That's the reason you don't get mumps. That's the reason you don't get rebella. That's the reason you're not going to die of whooping cough when you're going through something as a fucking adult person. These shots that we give them to kids, but they protect us our entire lives.

And if you think about the scope of a human life, there are likely to be times when you are vulnerable. That is a likelihood as we age. That is not a maybe it'll happen. That's an almost certainty that it will happen. point over the course of a human life. And we are protected because the decisions our parents make for us when we are children, we are protected decades down the road. Decades and decades. So it's like, yeah, some kids are fucking going to die. And then some adults are going to die.

This is something that will echo across generations. When you fuck up like this, you can't just fucking fix it. You can't just fix it. The damage that gets done is a fucking ripple in a pond and it spreads and it spreads and it spreads. And so this fuck up here, this is going to be something that echoes through a generation. Yeah, I also want to add to this. The Wright hates the HPV vaccine. They fucking hate the HPV vaccine so much. But since the HPV vaccine has become standard, rates of cervical cancer and throat cancers have fucking plummeted. And Cicel, they've plummeted to fucking almost zero. in vaccinated populations.

Almost zero. Because the primary driver for those vaccines was HPV. And as soon as we made those standard, when they do a, I just read this the other day in a science magazine that I read, when they do a study of vaccinated cohort for the HPV vaccine, those cancers have been nearly eliminated,

almost to zero. That's how effective that is in getting rid of these cancers. So, like, the folks on the right, they're like, oh, why I give my kid a prevention against a sexually transmitted disease? It's like, well, because, like, you don't want that fucking person to grow up and get cancer. And you don't want that person to spread something that gives someone else cancer. And it's that effective. So now we're going to also see a rise in those cancers because you know vaccine hesitancy

spreads to all vaccines. It's indiscriminate because it's foolish. Yeah. This sort of bagging on vaccines and attacking vaccines really does inoculate the public from getting vaccines. Yeah. Oh, God, yeah.

It's not that I can do the fascism, or any isn't for that matter. Isms, in my opinion, are not good. A person should not believe in an ism. He should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, I don't believe in Beatles. I just believe in me.

A good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus. I'd still have to bum riots up from people. All right, let's switch gears a little bit. ABC News. Ocasia Cortez says Democrats are unifying, focusing on working people in the midterms.

There's a couple of stories right in a row here that maybe we should talk about in conjunction. Yeah, let me grab the other story. So this next one is, this one's from New York Times. Socialists are winning because they listen to people. So really these two articles are telling a very similar tale, Cecil, which is that the Democratic Party for the longest time, and you and I've talked about this, you've brought this up so many times. This is something I know you're passionate about. Like the Democratic Party seems like they are figuring out that the path forward is to really take those like kitchen table policies and kitchen table issues that people are struggling with and to grab hold of them and to own them and to own the solutions for them. Yeah. And what I think I'm seeing more now from a lot of different people is talking about this sort of growing divide that's happening in the Democratic Party where you have the far left people or farther left people. Because I'm going to be real honest. I don't think there's any real far left people in the United States. I think that there's like kind of like a, it's kind of like a joke. You might find individuals who might be some really pretty far left people. people. But I think like when it comes right down to it, politicians in the United States,

like, their center everywhere else on the globe. They are like Bernie Sanders for as left as people want to do, want to, want to portray him and as progressive as people want to portray him. He literally just wants many of the standards they already have in many European countries. That's all Bernie Sanders wants. Right. This isn't like nobody, not a single, there isn't a single like mainstream politician who is, who is, who is, the Overton window with their feet up as far left as they can. That's just not happening, right? But what I'm seeing more and more of is a group of people who are farther left versus a group of people who are pretty corporate sort of Democrat, stay the sort of toe the line,

pretty centrist. There's sort of this growing schism between those two people, two groups of people. And these growing, and what really, it's not really the people, I don't think, so much as it is, the parties and the political figures that are sort of warring out right now. But what I'm seeing more and more of and what you're going to see more and more of, as we work our way towards the midterms and we get closer day by day, is there's all this talk of this schism, right? There's all this talk about how this Democrat isn't the same as you are. They're different.

They're bad. They're just as bad, in fact, as the Republicans are. And you're going to see more and more and more of that as we work our way through till the midterms in a vain hope that it will fracture the Democratic side and get people to be less motivated to vote. I think we've seen this time and time and time again. And it's not that I don't think there are vast differences in the groups of people. It's not that I think that. What I think is is that we're often easily manipulated by highlighting those small differences

instead of focusing on the big broad strokes. I don't think that some of the corporate Democrats and the centrist Democrats have the best interest of the people at heart. I think that they are often beholden to the people who are paying their bills, right? The people who are keeping them in power, the people who are funding their campaigns.

I think that they are often beholden to those people. And I think it's best for everybody to get them out and remove them and get them and primary them and remove them. But when it comes to the final product and the day of the votes, I think that we need to start being a little more unified as we work our way in there and not pay attention to the noise that is almost certainly being put in there specifically by other people that are outside of our group

that are trying to make as much of a dust up about this as they possibly can. We need to be wary of that. Dude, a thousand percent. I mean, that's so well said. The only yes and I would offer to that is that the equivalency argument that often gets made is right-wing propaganda that is spread unintentionally often by well-meaning disaffected lefties. The people who say, oh, you know, the left and the right are both the same or, you know, I can't vote for this guy because, you know, it's all the same corporatist

Democrat. Like, yeah, I mean, there's some, there's some truth to the idea that corporateist Democrats are not fucking cash money. I get that. I'm right. there like you are, Cecil, I'm right there. Let's fucking boot those people out in the primary. But when the rubber hits the road, the Democrats are not the same as the Republicans. That equivalency argument is something that is being intentionally spread as propo. That's what it is. Because it advantages the right. Yeah. It doesn't advantage the left. It's not that that equivalency argument is not what is driving this socialist revival. If you believe that there is a socialist revival right now,

ask yourself what's driving it. It's not that we have decided that we are rejecting the real equivalency of the Democrat and Republican and we're driving to this other thing that's over here to the left. No, what's driving it is that the socialists have taken a message and said, all right, we're just going to add one to it. The Democratic socialists are basically just adding one to an existing Democratic message. It's not, to your point, it's not that far left. It's just like an inch over.

It's like, yeah, all right. I mean, like, what are we adding to this? Well, I mean, basic shit that like at the end of the day, almost everybody agrees on, we just don't agree on how to get there all the time. The Democratic Socialists of America, I don't think, and I've looked at their platform, and I haven't seen this, it doesn't appear that they're asking people

to seize the means of production. No, they're not commos. That's not what I've seen, right? I've seen that they're, that they've suggested in some places that there should be more public housing. What they're talking about is more like, social democracy rather than socialism, right? So socialism itself is a different type. It's like, you know, it's not, it's, it's similar to communism and there's, there's no private property and things

like that. It's only like those, like you can have, you can have personal property, but not private property. It's like a whole thing, right? Like there's like, it's like a intellectual idea that we really haven't seen at all very much in the, at all in the United States. And a lot of people will say they're a socialist, but like, if you drill down and say, like, what part of the socialist you want, I think a lot of people will stop and say, actually I'm more of a social democracy kind of guy that's like high regulation on business, big, wide social safety nets. Like, those things are social democracy, right? I'm pretty sure that I'm using these terms correctly. I'm happy to be corrected. If you think I'm using these terms incorrectly and you

want to send me a message, I'm happy to be corrected on this terminology. But I think I'm, I think I think I'm close on this terminology, right? And I think like, but I don't know that it changes my point too much. What I'm saying is that nobody out there is like, and I don't want to say nobody, what I mean to say is the people who are in power who are fighting for these positions, not many of them are walking in and getting sworn in on the German ideology by Karl Marx or whatever, right? Like they're not, that's not how the communist manifesto is the thing they're putting a hand on

to get sworn into office. these are a group of people who are just trying to institute common sense social safety nets, common sense taxation on large earners. Like all of this stuff should just be democratic policies, right? It should just be part of the Democratic Party, much of the things that, like, Mandani's doing, right? Like, that stuff should just be what we do, right? That should just be the blueprint that we have. And we say, this is what we're going to do.

The other side's going to get, they're going to give fucking Peter Thiel another fucking like medal of honor and more money, right? That's what they're going to do. We're not going to do that. And then that should just be like the difference between the parties. But instead, they're trying to demonize the farther piece of the left by using that socialist commentary to say they are actually, they want it. They want to confiscate all your property. They want to take everything and own it by the state, et cetera, et cetera.

But I've never heard any of the people in the DSA or the state say those types of things, right? Yeah. Yeah, because they don't believe those things. And those aren't the policies that they're advocating for. They're advocating for policies that almost everybody, if you just go out and ask at the issues level, at the issues level, people like this stuff. It's like if you go out and ask people what their views on abortion are, people are, the majority of people are pro-choice. If you go out and ask people, you know, what do you think about and you just name the different like elements of the ACA, people generally like it? If you go on and ask people, should we have, you know, this policy in effect for social safety?

If you ask them at the policy level, people generally like this shit. The problem is that the branding of it often gets like cast into this. Like the right has been very good about taking this, throwing a big cargo net of lies over it, and then convincing people that the way to think about it is categorical rather than at the policy level. And so people vote against these policies because they're against these categories of candidates very often. or at least have in the past because they've been sold the wrong netting, right? And they're not looking at what lies inside of it. We are all, like every society is, to some degree, socialist, right?

Like, when we all agree to pool our money together and have a military. Like, the military is actually a great example. If I'm in the military, right, that is the ultimate socialist experience. If I'm a soldier in the military, I wake up in housing I do not pay for. receiving medical care, I do not pay for. I have a job that somebody gave me that I don't have to go out into the free market for, right? Like every part of the military experience, if you're a soldier in the military, is actually an incredibly socialist experience.

And the idea that we even have a military, we're all going to pool our money toward a common goal, that is ultimately like essentially just one thing that we've agreed on. We're going to build a highway. We're all going to pool our money. We're going to have a common goal for the common goal. for the common good of the people. We're all in agreement that that's what society is. It's just like a matter of degrees.

And the Democratic socialists are basically saying like, hey, you know what? If you have a lot, you should pay a little more of it. And then we'll take that little more of it and we'll do some big net good with it. And that will raise everybody's ship because that's actually what the economy and the economists show. And then, you know, that's the path forward.

The idea that like this is radical somehow, it only benefits the ultra-elite billionaires on the right. They're the ones who are driving this branding of, hey, maybe people should have a living wage as being like communist somehow. Because if they can put the wrong marketing spin on it and make people afraid of it, then they won't think about it. It's a great point, Tom. I also think too, and I want to mention the Wisconsin thing happened last night.

Did you see the results of this? Yeah, the DSA guy lost or Gail Loss. Yeah, so the DSA person lost to a more mainstream Democrat. And what I want to caution the people who are farther left to not take this as such a crushing loss, as much as they try to think about it as hopefully the policies that got this person a squeaker win will start to come left to capture all the votes

that voted in the primary for the other guy, right? We saw this happen with Joe Biden when Joe Biden was the nominee. Joe Biden was relatively centrist, but many of the people who were doing well in that primary were farther left than him, and he adopted many of those policies when he became president because he needed to capture those votes of those people who had voted for the farther left candidates.

The people on the right aren't going to vote for a Democrat. That's not going to happen, right? they're going to look, I mean, they might this fucking time because this president can't find his ass with two hands. But most of the time, they're just going to look across and be like, yeah, fuck those people. I literally don't care. They could put a fucking bear with a tie on it. And I will vote for that. I don't even care who it is. Right. He's, the bear is literally eating people in Congress. It will not matter to me. Send the bear to Congress. So actually, to be honest, I'm kind of, I'm kind of down for a bear in Congress. I talk myself into this, Tom.

But in any case, here's the thing. We have a go fund me to. to send bears to Congress? Now I want it to happen. Now I want it to happen. Can we send... Cute bears. Like cute bears, like little ones and big ones, like the whole gambit.

I want to see different colors of bears. Yes. I fully recognize that the likelihood of us actually sending like grizzly bears to Congress is low. But if we can even pivot a little and just send like burly gay men to Congress, I still think that's a win.

I still think that's a big win. Like a troop of dancing gay bears would be the, best thing ever. Yes. And they have to be dressed like Chippendales because I am dying for a bow tie, whether it's on a real bear or a gay bear. But in any case, in any case, like the thing is, is that in order to capture the entirety of the Democrats, you need to look at who voted for what and think about how your policies need to capture that group that just wanted you not to win, right? You have to think about that stuff. So I want people to not be so disheartened.

when people from these farther left places get shot down, because I don't think the opposite is true, which is they'll come in and be like, fuck you then, fuckers. Go fuck yourself, fuck faces. I'm going to do what I want, because I don't think that happens. I think they recognize that they need to somehow have some sort of olive branch

to reach out to all those voters that didn't want them in. And they need to come back and say, I'm going to learn from this other person and take some of their policies from them in order to get your vote. Because this was the most important thing to you. I will prioritize it in my campaign now. That's what I think will happen with smart people who run because if you want to capture everybody, you have to do that. So I think that I don't want people to be like, man, it sucks at that person lost. Yeah, it does suck that that person loss.

Absolutely. But I don't want you to feel so disheartened that they won't, that no, matter what, no one's going to pay attention to the things that they brought to the table because they garnered a large share of votes. Yeah, I saw one one time that said, the next week the world is ending. And in the next week's paper, they said, we were miraculously saved at the zero hour by a koala fish mutant bird. Crazy shit.

This story comes to the hill. Crenshaw weighs in on dumb, $20 burritos sparking debate over affordability. I like when I, as soon as I read the even the headline before I got into it, I was like, wait a minute. Didn't Crenshaw lose? Why is he being talked about? Why? Like, who cares? He fucking lost.

Why should we be focusing on Crenshaw? He can't focus on anything. Right. Yeah, I mean, I would say that like it's a little short-sighted for sure to, you know, it's a it's a myopic look at the issue. It definitely is. It definitely is. I like it. Crenshaw recently lost his bid for re-election.

So I think that if I'm Crenshaw, I'd be like, hey, do I have my finger on the pulse? No. They just said no to you, man. Actually, Tom, actually, Tom, if you read his comments, I think he absolutely does have a finger on the pulse of the right. Because his comments are, fuck you, you fucking losers who are fucking poor. go fuck yourself, poor people. I hope you fucking burn. If you were on fire,

I wouldn't piss on you to put you out. That's essentially what he says. Now, I'm being a little facetious, but what he does is he comes on and he literally is like, I'm gonna trigger some people today. That's all you have, dude. Why were we like,

hey, he can do an important job? That's what he thinks. This guy comes in, he's like, I'm gonna trigger people today. You know what we should do? is we should immediately be like, here's your hat, here's your coat, you're gone. We're never going to see you again.

You're gone. Go away, never speak to anyone. Go wander into the desert until you starve and die. That's the best thing that could happen to you. You're the worst. Your job, your whole job was to try to make sure that the American people's today is better tomorrow. That's your whole fucking job, right?

You could say that the people who are in office, their whole fucking job is to make your tomorrow better than it is today. That should be on every wall. It should be on their fucking phone case. They should be wearing shirts with it. That should be the entire message that anybody in office does. And what this guy comes on is like, I'm going to trigger people by saying they're poor.

Go fuck yourself. I hate this guy so much. I hate him so much. And I hate him because he is exactly what everybody on the right is doing right. now. Yeah, like, what is the Republican, what is the rights message on affordability right now? So, like, the American people are united around one thing, one thing. We're not united around anything. The United American people are united around, hey, man, shit's way too expensive. Doesn't matter what it is. It is now way too fucking expensive. That's the only thing anybody

can agree on. I don't care who you talk to. Everybody is like, God damn, shit has gotten fucking expensive. And the Republican answer to that, Crenshaw's answer to that is, shut it, stupid. That's your answer to my problem of, hey, literally all of America, they're telling us, like, genuinely, the message is there is no affordability crisis. I mean, literally they're saying that. Like, no, things are affordable.

And everybody is like, I know what I can afford, man. I woke up today. I had a monies. I know that I have less money than I used to have. I know that like, let's talk about the burrito thing. I know that like a handful of years ago, I could buy a burrito for $8 or $9. And now that burrito is seriously $17 or $18. That is fucking nuts because my income didn't double.

But the costs of the things that I need have in many cases fucking doubled in just a handful of years. We've noticed. You can't gaslight me into thinking that like my lunch costs the same as it used to. What the fuck? What? I remember when I was first married, there was a. burrito place near where I lived and my wife and I used to go there

and the burritos, this is the El Burrito Loco Tom. You know how big their fucking burritos are, right? I'm still eating one I bought in college. It's the size of like, if you take your arm and you fold it back like this, it's like the size of your forearm and bicep together. And it's like about this long, right?

It's a huge fucking burrito. It was $4.95 when Sarah and I first got married. Now, granted, that's 25 years ago, right? 25 years ago. But now, I guarantee you walk in there it's probably going to be closer. Like, you'll walk out of their paying $20. You'll walk out of their paying $20 with taxes

and things like that. You'll walk out. It'll be a $15 burrito, $16, $17 burrito. Now, how much of wages gone up in those 25 years? Right? That's the other question you've got to ask. And the thing is, like, this guy hears about this problem on the internet

where people are like, hey, man, I shouldn't have to pay this much. It's like our minimum wage is $7.25. It hasn't gone up in 15, 16 years, right? $7.25. Now, when I was a young man, $7.25 wasn't even a lot of money. Right. It wasn't even a lot. That's not a lot of money.

Back when we were first married, let's presume that you were making $7.25 an hour. That's only half a burrito, less than that. That's nothing. It's not a lot of money. But now you're like, now I got to work three hours to get that same burrito. Yeah. I've got to work three full hours. That's outrageous.

That's unbelievable. And this guy walks on to basically be like, well, just eat rum and then stupid, you fucking idiots. I hope you die. Like, this guy is the worst. I can't believe. And the thing is,

is like, I know that this sells with a lot of people. Although, because the affordability crisis is hitting people so hard, it's not even selling with Republicans anymore. Because before, you could have come on and been like, you know,

you could have done this with some other issue. Let's say you were to go after trans people, attack trans people. get all the right, right people on the right, all the people on the right, all the people that are, uh, immigrants are brown or whatever, all the people on the right would come after and be like, yes, you'll be whatever you say. But the moment you start talking about affordability stuff, that's affecting your party, he's getting hammered by all the people on his side that are also struggling right now too. Yeah. Because before it was enough for that, for them to have enough

a separation where they could be shitty, awful, terrible people, racist, transphobic, and they could get away with it because they would get the ra-ra's from their party. Now they're not even getting that. They can't, they have their fingers so far off the pulse of what is happening in the United States. They can't even find where their party is anymore. Yeah. And like I just, I'll just go back to the burrito real quick because I do think that it's, the genius of the simplicity of that as an example is that everybody gets it.

Everybody understands in a microcosm how important that example is. Because you remember, like it's one thing to go back to like 25 years ago, But like I just looked this up, like a burrito in 2017. And I only thought about this because like I remember when Haley and I were dating, I was doing CrossFit. I ate a lot of Chipotle. I just ate a lot of Chipotle. It was a very like easy thing for me to eat. And I would get a burrito or a burrito bowl.

And in 2017, Cecil, a chicken burrito cost about $6.50. It now costs $11 for that same burrito. So it is almost doubled in price. Now that's like with no extra options at all. no extra meat, no guacamole, just like a basic bitch, like only the cheapest basic thing. But it went from $6 to $11 in like eight or nine years, man. Shit should not double in cost in that amount of time. That's excessive.

That's unreasonable. That's not sustainable. To your point, our wages didn't double. But all of a sudden, my expenses went way up. And everybody has noticed it. Everybody is hurting. And the only answer to that that the Republicans seem to have is, no, it's not. Yeah.

And you're like, how is that an answer? Or suck it up. Do you eat more ramen? Right? Like he literally says, like, Crenshaw literally is like, everybody should just eat more ramen noodles. Like, we all did. And it's like, well, at what point in my life do I get to stop eating the fucking ramen noodles?

And at what point is it my responsibility or is it your responsibility as a government? Because when Trump asked us to be the goddamn president, when he stood in front of front as, and he was a candidate, just in the 2024 candidacy. When he stood in front of everybody, I remember him standing in front of a table full of groceries. Yep. And I remember him saying, these are too expensive. And I remember him saying, I'm going to help bring these prices down. And prices have only gone up. And now his response to that reality is, so what? Yeah. I never gave a shit in the first place. Yeah. Or that's a stupid question. Why do you ask such a stupid question? Yeah. Right. Scam. They're just attacking the people. Like they, they don't have anything. I'm telling you

right now, don't listen to anybody. You know, and this goes to the people on the right. Like, if you run into people on the right that are complaining, be like, just ask yourself, ask yourself, does the person who I'm going to vote in an office think that my tomorrow should be better than today? Ask yourself that question, because I guarantee you, if you were to put that litmus test to most of the Republicans, that answer would be no. That answer would be no.

All right, that's going to wrap it up for our show. this week, we'll be back with a patron show, either this Thursday or next. We'll see you. It'll be one of those Thursdays. And we're going to leave you, like we always do, with the Skeptics Creed. Credulity is not a virtue.

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stigmata nonsense sense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands, bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this. Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at patreon.com forward slash dissonance pod. Help us spread the word by sharing our content. Find us on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and threads, all under the handle at DissonancePod. This show is can credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm on their hotline at 617-249-4255, or on their website at creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org.