Fourth Reich Archaeology - #103 - Fourth Reich of July, Year Two

Episode Date: July 3, 2026

It’s that time of year again, this time with the pathetic spectacle of Trump-Amerika’s 250th birthday bonanza in the background. But rather than just taking the easy pot-shots at the absolute horror and humiliation on display, we discuss a few of the concrete failures of this “experiment” in “democracy” that inform our consideration of whether there is anything to salvage of the institutions atop this melting glacier of an empire. We begin, predictably, with the utter failure of the empire’s aggression against the people of Iran. Trump lives in a world where his say-so makes it true that the U.S. military “did an amazing job” and the like, and millions of people choose to join him there, whether out of old-fashioned greed, or out of some bizarre lust for humiliation, or maybe just because we are so conditioned to confer authorities unto the powers that be without question… Since Trump couldn’t defeat Iran in War, he tortured their soccer team. We also cover a few of the Supreme Court cases showing what a failure “the courts” are against abuses of power, both presidential and corporate. This term alone, the Supreme Court has (1) gutted the voting rights act, (2) aided in the mass expulsion of TPS immigrants, (3) expanded presidential control over regulatory agencies, (4) given (IG Farben) Bayer/Monsanto a licence to poison people with RoundUp, and much more. With checks and balances like these, who needs checks and balances?We end on a positive note. Do data center protests - encapsulating so well the deserved sense of anger against tech-surveillance-pervert-billionaire freaks - light a path forward? Maybe, we’d like to think so.Happy holidays, one quarter-century is quite enough, thank you. We need to start this thing over again, but this time NOT on the basis of genocide and slavery–on justice and liberation. We can do this; we can declare independence.

Man telling that word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps it's faith that today is the 4th of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom. Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution, but from annihilation, we're fighting for our right to live,

to exist. And should we win the day? The 4th of July will no longer be known as an American holiday. But as the day when the world declared in one voice, we will not go quietly into the night, we will not vanish without a fight? We're going to live on. We're going to survive.

Today, we celebrate our Independence Day. Colonialism or imperialism, as the slave system of the West is called, is not something that's just confined to England or France or the United States. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. So it's one huge complex. combine either you are with us or you are with the terrorists and this international power structure is used to suppress the masses of dark-skinned people all over the world and exploit them of their natural resources we found no evidence of a conspiracy foreign or domestic

the warring commission of science i'll never apologize for the united states of america ever I don't care what the facts are 1945 we began to acquire information which showed that there were two wars going his job he said was to protect the Western way of life the primitive simplicity of their minds renders the more easy victims of a big lie than a small one for example we're the CIA now he has a mom he knows so long as I'm afraid of we never be secure

It usually takes a national crisis. Freedom can never be secure. Pearl Harbor. A lot of killers. We've got a lot of killers. Why you think our country's so innocent? We're not going to see a day. The United States is Fourth Reich Archaeology.

I'm Dick. And I'm Don. Welcome, listener. Welcome back for another holiday special. That's right. It's hard to believe that it's come around again. but it is the 4th of July weekend. And you know what that means.

It's the Fourth Reich of July here on Fourth Reich Archaeology. Before we get into it, as always, we want to just warmly, warmly thank you for tuning in for supporting our work, for supporting our intervention into this implacable discourse, as it were, on this year. internet, the greatest mass surveillance and mind control tool ever developed by human beings by many orders of magnitude. And the way that you help us as a reminder, just so that you know, in case you've forgotten, is to like, rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast.

Also, telling your friends, family, loved ones, and anybody with an ear to listen to check us out because, you know, that's how we really keep it growing and we keep the word spreading. And of course, if you're willing and if you're able, head on over to patreon.com slash forthrightic archaeology and consider giving us your support. We love our patrons and we appreciate all the support that they provide every single day. We get up and we, we thank our lucky stars to have such a vibrant and a beautiful community around this little project of ours. And I think these episodes that we do on a periodic basis, like this 4th of July special that we're doing today, I think they serve as a very good primer for those of you out there

who happen to be tuning into our program for the very first time ever. So a lot of our ongoing series, they do sort of require that you tune in from the beginning and sort of follow along as the series develops in order to get the full benefits of the experience in order to fully enjoy what we are laying down. We do recommend you start from the beginning. But I think today you'll see, or I should say you'll hear, listener, that we tend to cover a lot of ground. We are a program that handles things both at the 30,000 foot high-level view, but we are never ones to be afraid to get into the nitty-gritty. And we cover it all. We're covering history. We're covering social commentary.

We're covering economics. We're covering public policy. We cover it all. And we do that through all of the different programs. that we have, all the different serieses that we have, and they are in no particular order. Of course, Jerry World, where we started it all, where we started it all, the series about the accidental president and everything that surrounds him in his place in history. And really, I would say that everything we are doing is sort of branches off of Jerry World. It all, it's all Jerry

World. And if it's not clear to you yet, Jerry World is about our 38th president. Gerald R. Ford, who we believe, I think I can speak for you here, Don. We believe that Gerald Ford was much more than just the accidental president. No, there was no accident with this president. He was, I think it's fair to say, the usher, the midwife, the person, the choke point. for the new world order that we are living in today. And so if you haven't already, please do start at the beginning and go back and start listening to our series from the very first episode of Jerry World. Now, it's not all Jerry World here at Fourth Reich Archaeology because we pretty soon, pretty early on, moved on and developed other different programs covering, all sorts of things for example are geopolitic series which covers that pseudoscience of pseudo-political science of geopolitics

followed by the ongoing series we have the big congress which covers the goings-on in the u.s congress and then we have our program down by law which takes a look at at the different components in the legal system. And so today, we've started with the legal regime known as asylum. And next, we have some of my favorite episodes, which are the political theology episodes, with our guest host, Marcus, from the Return of the Repressed podcast. And more recently we've had interviews with Doug Valentine in the show in the program we call

Rise of the Phoenix and our returning our returning guest Matt Farwell and our latest episode with him is the new Western Frontier so we do have a lot going on and there are many other series within our Fourth Reich Archaeology umbrella that I am

failing to mention here fail to come to mind, but with just this layout, I'm sure you've put together already, listener, that we cover it all. We try not to be too niche and cover both broad and deep. But in this episode today, I think we'll do just like we did last year and sort of take this opportunity, this cherished federal holiday, and take this time to refer. reflect and to do what we do best. And that is address some serious questions. So I have a question for you, Don. On this, on this, the weekend, this, this, this, this, this, the weekend of our Independence Day. Is there anything to salvage in this American experiment? This is a perennial

question, I think. You know, it depends what you really mean by salvage. And I think that that is a question that will kind of build this entire episode around as we explore just all of the ways in which the so-called American experiment has failed. Has failed to meet its stated objectives, right? In any system, remember, don't just take. the word of the people who run the show that what they are doing is in line with the stated values of the goals that they purport to pursue. And as we have, I think, covered on topic after topic, time after time, after time, rarely is it the case that here in America,

America, America, North America, the United States of America, not to be confused with the name given to the entire landmass of the Western Hemisphere, you know, there's just a stench emanating. There's a stench emanating from this land that can be whiffed from the four corners of the earth. because we are a full year plus, a year and a half into what I think can fairly be called the most insane, corrupt, and overall criminal presidential administration in American history. Now, of course, back in the day, we know that there was enormous criminality at the highest levels of power. We know that there was mass genocide and that there was slavery and the distinction between those past crimes and today's criminal enterprise is, I think, the degree to which just any pretense of the ideal has been abandoned now. You know, they're doing crimes. They're really talking openly about doing crimes.

they're dabbing on us all the fucking time. It is embarrassing to be subject to the whims of these absolute ghouls. And to kind of get back to your question, Dick, you know, I would say, what's to salvage? Well, we don't want American people to die en masse, you know. We got love for the people, of course. and so the people are always worth salvaging. But the system of government, the framework of which was set down in that pro-slavery document, the U.S. Constitution way back in 1789, well, I think that that has proven to be a fraud upon the people.

And I don't think that it can very safely be salvaged, reformed, or otherwise sort of picked out of the dustbin of history. We got to start this shit all over again. There are no checks and balances. There is no accountability. There is no democracy. And by the looks of it, you know, whether through the judicial system, which is supposed to, apply the law equally to all, or whether at the ballot box, which is supposed to offer an avenue for the will of the people to be expressed in selecting the leaders of the people, to make decisions

on their behalf, all of these paths, I think, have been cut off and can no longer be relied on to swing the pendulum back to something like normalcy. And so it is ultimately in the tradition of that slave-owning child rapist, Thomas Jefferson, that we advocate not an armed overthrow of the United States government, but serious thinking about what it will take to throw off the fetters, to throw off the weight of all of these dead, generations that are strangling us as we even speak here this evening. And so fetters and the fetter men.

Oh, yeah. The fetter men and the women, too, of this terrible, terrible, sad state of affairs. I agree. I need an earth mover to throw that fetter man off. I agree. I think, you know, there's the question of, is there anything to salvage? there's also the question of what is even left in the American experiment. And as far as I can tell these days, it seems like the dual pillars of what we have to offer the world are this one pillar

of just financial services or services and banking and legal services and consulting and like bullshit make-believe job functions that we export throughout the world, all of which are effectively just ways to consolidate capital and to bring capital into the imperial core. That's number one. And then what else do we got, basically, the thing that we export everywhere and anywhere we can. And that is by my account, entertainment, right? It used to be just actors and musicians and whatnot. But now it's your, the Instagram that we have and the Facebook that we have and the things that we do online. that we are able to export throughout the world as a mechanism to distract and to smooth over the fact that we are living under such terrible, terrible conditions. And I think that's what's left because as we have seen in the last six or seven months or so, it's not really the place of America anymore to sort of even work as the world's police.

right? We have seen that this, what was once may be considered to be this great empire, ain't so great anymore on the world stage. That's right. That's right. And I think before we actually examine all of these string of L after L after L, this straight F report card for the American Empire of today. You want to say the magic words? Oh, yes, I almost got ahead of myself here. All right, here goes.

Let's get digging. Yay. Go home. Thank you very much, Charlton Heston. Mayor Rizzo, Governor Schap, Reverend clergy, distinguished members of Congress, distinguished guests ladies and gentlemen. The verse from Leviticus on the Liberty Bell

refers to the ancient Jewish year of Jubilee. In every 50th year, the Jubilee restored the land and the equality of persons that prevailed when the children of Israel entered the land of promise. And both gifts came from God as the Jubilee regularly reminded them. But it is important to remember that final success in that struggle for independence, as in the many struggles that have followed, was due to the strength and support of ordinary men and women who were motivated by three powerful impulses, personal freedom, self-government, and national unity. Her say

To freedom And believing in freedom Are willing to fight To maintain freedom We and all others Who believe as deeply as we do Would rather die on our feet Than live on our knees

But the struggle for life Liberty and the pursuit of happiness Is never truly one liberty is a living flame to be fed. It is fitting that we ask ourselves hard questions even on a glorious day like today. Are the institutions under which we live working the way they should?

Are the foundations laid in 1776 still strong enough and sound enough to resist the tremors of our time? Are our God-given rights secure our hard-won liberties protected. The very fact that we can ask these questions, that we can freely examine and criticize our society, is cause for confidence itself.

We must create a more beautiful America, making human works conform to the harmony of nature. We must build a more stable international order. We must continue to unlock the secrets of the universe beyond our planet as well as within ourselves. The American adventure began here with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence. It continues in a common conviction that the source of our blessings is a loving God. Thank you and God bless you.

I think when the history books come back and reflect on this time period, the middle of 2026, I think it's one of those rare occasions in history where the historians will point to this time period. And they'll say, look here is the moment that the Americans, the United States, lost its war for empire. Because it has been proven, like, beyond, if there was any doubt, beyond a reasonable doubt here, that the United States has suffered a humiliating loss in its aggression, its military aggression against the country of Iran. And everything that it's been doing to date has been, you know, it's used a lot the term, but I've got to say it. I mean, it's been a joke. Yeah, truly has.

Yeah. And on many vectors, too. So maybe we could tick down a few of them. I mean, for one, should we talk about this so-called ceasefire deal or whatever they're calling it now? Yeah, which one, right? Which one? Which week are we talking about? Right, yeah. The war has been marked, and this I think is brand new, right? This is another one of these things that we have not really seen on the world stage before of this conduct of a war where

almost on a weekly basis, you know, the losing side keeps declaring victory over and over and over again. It's like the boy who cried wolf, the boy who cried win. is Donald Trump. And somehow, just like Charlie Brown, you know, going to take a kick at the old pigskin before Lucy deftly lifts it up and he falls on his ass, the markets, all of these financial wizards whose acumen, you mentioned, create one of the few remaining economically viable sectors of the American economy. they go along to get along.

Like you can only at this point point the finger and say that these market actors are involved in the ruse. They're playing a witting role when they take the president at his word when he says that, oh yeah, all those economically disastrous consequences of this war that I started, they don't need to happen because the war is actually over and what's even better is we one and it's going to everything is going to be great. So it's like a in that respect, a big financial fraud untold amounts of insider trading on this information, both in your traditional securities markets, but more importantly in these

new prediction markets that, you know, if they are within the purview of any regulations, it's fast and loose doesn't even come close to describing the level of scrutiny that's being applied there. And so a lot of people make a lot of... Hey, now, isn't Don Jr. on the board in at least two of these, two of the major ones? Yeah, which goes to show you exactly the caliber that we're talking about. So, yeah, not only is it an awful, awful sort of new industry, but it's of the caliber of the Trump iPhone or whatever it is, the Trump. Oh yeah, whatever happened to that by the way. Exactly. That's exactly right. Whatever did happen to that, by the way. Today we're here to introduce

Trump Mobile. We've partnered with some of the greatest people in the industry to make sure that real Americans can get true value from their mobile carriers. Kind of the three technologies are all going to come together in some way, shape, or form. Obviously, the hard devices, the cryptocurrencies, which we so believe in, again, especially after kind of the financial wars that we were put through and the financial hell we were put through. A big part of what we've done right now in the world has been focused on technology for people who have been underserved, whether that's been in crypto or anything else. But one of the places where we felt there was lackluster performance was in the mobile industry. And obviously freedom of speech, which is kind of the last pillar.

A lot of people are getting ripped off to say the least because they don't pay attention to our cell phone plans. So I think we can do it better. We can do it cheaper. We plan to build phones in America. All of our customer support is in America. You're speaking to Americans, so we're building a mobile network by Americans for Americans. And so we started Trump Mobile,

and it's been, you know, the reception that we've received is absolutely amazing. With Trump Mobile, we're going to be introducing an entire package of products that people can come. They can get telemedicine on their phone for one flat monthly fee. Roadside assistance in their cars. Unlimited texting to 100 countries around the world. and we've partnered with some of the best to really bring something unique to the American people.

People are petrified of speaking over the phones. I can't tell you, half the country doesn't even want to use the phone anymore based on some of the weaponization of government they see. And so made in America products, obviously service in America at better prices. Exactly. Well, it's available right now.

You can go to TrumpMobile.com. You can sign up. You can get ESIM. Literally in two minutes, you can have an ESIM and put it right on your phone, $47 a month. And yes, it works with all the major carriers. That's the whole purpose of it.

You know, I don't give a damn if we make Kleenex in the United States, but we better be making high-tech products, mobile phones, cards, you know, all the high-end technologies, right? All the microchips, we better be able to manufacture those products because it's vital to America. We need to lead the way in terms of that and frankly every other technology. Here we are in May of 2026, and there appears to be no sign of it. Okay, here it is.

Here is the long-awaited Trump mobile phone. The phone is taller than an iPhone 17 and comes with 512 gigabytes of storage at a relatively cheap $49, which the company says is promotional pricing. Truth Social, pre-installed on the phone. The phone looks different from how it was originally advertised. The original language on the website said the phone would be made in the USA, language that has since been scrubbed from the website, now saying American proud design, with an American flag that has only 11 stripes.

Experts say the phone resembles a phone made in Taiwan. It looks very similar. It has a very distinct shape. Yeah, that does look really similar. Almost identical so far. set up for a mid-range kind of mid-budget phone to be made in that in that way here in the United States. If I had to put money on it, I would say that's the HDC U-24 Pro. Mine never came in the mail, you know. I've paid you know $20,000 to replace my iPhone with a made in the USA Trump mobile.

preloaded with Rumble and with truth TV or whatever the streaming service is called. Nothing. Nothing. That was for me the last straw. I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt until they stiffed me on my Trump phone. But that's like the perfect metaphor, right? It's just like, and this is at this point might even be cliche, but it's just like the reflecting pool. But I like the phone metaphor.

It's so great because it's like this gold-plated piece of shit that's, doesn't even work and it's supposed to be made in America but none of the component parts are really made in America and maybe it's assembled in America maybe and at the end of the day it's actually functionally no better than any other phone that you got and probably worse because it's using all the same parts yeah yeah and again they don't actually exist yeah that's that's in the theoretical perfect world where it actually is fabricated at all totally totally just like even the illusion of the thing is degraded like it's not even a copy of a copy it's like a false promise of a copy of a copy that goes eternally unfulfilled

that is the United States of America of 2026 and you know the in light of all these losses in light this humiliation whereby, you know, obviously, I think if there's one thing that we can actually grasp onto, it's that no matter what the empire does, the government of Iran does have effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, right? This is the unavoidable takeaway from all the theater that's been on the stage over the last six months. And to make up for it, the administration has started to try to get wins in the only way it knows how, right, by bullying. You want to talk about a little bit of the bullying going on?

Oh, yeah. I think you're referring to the World Cup and the tragedy that has befell on the men's soccer team, the Iranian men's soccer team. Look, I'm going to say it, I always do these disclaimers. From the top, I am a big time fan of the team of Mali Iranian soccer team. I have been since I was a little boy. It is a time of my life every couple, every four years or so, when the World Cup does come around, that I get into it and I follow my Iranian brothers through the World Cup. And I got to say this year, it was an absolute tragedy, the bullshit that was fell upon them. Starting with the fact that they were, what, not allowed to stay actually in the

country. They had to go back to, they had to start out and train in Tijuana and actually go back to Tijuana after every game. So you can imagine what that's doing to these players, right? You're going on from a in some cases a very long travel day into the country every time you go into the country you have to go through customs and anyone who's been through US customs knows that that's never a fun ordeal or an easy ordeal and these guys had to do it every time they had a game and they nonetheless showed up and they weren't defeated in any one of their games they never suffered a loss despite this, right?

And it goes beyond that. It goes beyond that because there are so many other components of this, right? Like the team itself was not allowed to have many of the personnel that any of the other teams got, right? Like on average, I think that most of these countries, they have traveling with them upwards of 100, maybe 125 staff that goes. to your sort of like your physio department, your doctors, your support staff, your administrators, people that are supposed to make the process easier. Well, guess what? For the Iranian men's soccer team, they were allowed something like 50 visas for their team. So approximately, I would say like half. And you know what the really fucked up part of this is, is that most of those people that

weren't allowed to travel with the Iranian men's team. Those were people that were in like the physio department. So they're doctors, their medics, the people that were there to make sure that these athletes are in tip-top shape, ready to go. If anything were to happen, they would be taken care of. And those folks were left behind under this guise that they had connections to the IRGC. that's really fucked up because as anyone who knows anything about Iran, Iran is one of these countries that has mandatory service. So every man of a certain age, I want to say it's 18, but it might even be 17. They have to do a tour of duty.

So they have to serve for a couple years and the IRGC. And now they could be doing any number of things, right? It could be something as straightforward. It's just serving as like, um, uh, like a traffic cop or something, right, effectively, like someone who's just, uh, handling like a checkpoint or, uh, handling like, um, uh, traffic stops or something like that. Once you do that, you do that for a couple years in your teens, maybe, right? Then you go off and you live your life as a private citizen. And so like basically anyone, anyone in Iran that's of

a certain age will have had ties to the IRC. So you have these doctors who are now in their 50s or or 60s or whatever, and they're getting flagged by the U.S. and being denied entry into the U.S. to help the Iranian team because of their supposed ties. And so that's just like another way that this team from the get-go was facing headwinds to say the least. And, man, I got to say I saw the game on Friday against Egypt and that was gut wrenching it was gut wrenching to see that sort of technical um rejection I guess clawback I should say of their game winning score and it's something that I you know ever since it happened I just keep thinking to myself if this were a more mainstream team and a more mainstream player that that shot that what I would consider game winning goal maybe there

wouldn't be such scrutiny. Maybe there wouldn't be this video assisted review that overturned the score in the game. So, you know, as Iranians, we, I think, are never strangers to this sort of, facing these sort of headwinds being sort of labeled pariahs in so many circles. And so none of this, I think, to me, was new hat. But it was, unfortunately, unfortunate nonetheless. Yeah. And, you know, it's an example, one more in the list, a long, long list that the only way that this absolutely degenerate and decadent empire can rack up a W is by cheating, right?

This is the ultimate gaping abyss at the center of the myth of meritocracy in the United States that you hear all these people just endlessly patting themselves on the back about what a fair and an unbiased society we have where anybody can make it if they just follow the rules and try their hardest and work the hardest. And meanwhile, like who's at the very top of the pyramid, just like the biggest cheaters, the biggest crooks imaginable, and the only way that they can eke out a victory over anybody or, you know, beat quote unquote Iran through this technicality. And again, remember FIFA, the organization that organizes the World Cup and administers it, is rife with past history of corruption.

and the head of FIFA created a special FIFA Peace Prize just to give it to Donald Trump when he didn't win the Nobel Peace Prize. Like, they are in this pathetic, corrupt relationship with the Trump family as well. And so, you know, I think we were saying this before we hit record. but if that goal had been not by the Iranian team but by let's say Cristiano Ronaldo or Messi or you know one of these big money winning star athletes of FIFA one of their cash cows I think that game might have ended very differently I mean this was your insight dick so I don't want to take credit for it but I think it's an accurate one that bears repeating here. that's sort of what I was getting. And as you were talking, it reminded me of another part of this that is sort of just sort of illustrates like how fucked up the situation is for Iran and the men's soccer team. And you've heard this, I think, a lot of people saying this, which is like, let's separate for a moment the regime, the Islamic Republic, and just talk about these players that are athletes at the top of their game in, you know, Iran or are Iranians at the top of their game in this sport,

who are competing on the world stage. And let's just focus on them as, you know, as athletes and as people on the world stage, as you would your Messies or your Rinaldos or whoever. But the other part of this that I wanted to get on the record here is the jerseys, the Iranian jerseys. You know that you cannot go out and buy a men's national team jersey through FIFA's official store. FIFA does not recognize.

or sell Iranian jerseys because it cannot license them. So, so fucked. Is that because of sanctions or is it just petty? No, it's because, well, so like, if, let's say, let's just how it would play out, right? Like, let's say Adidas decides to have Iran men's soccer jerseys, sell, selling them through the FIFA store. There is, because of the way the intellectual property laws and the regime works against the Islamic Republic, like there is no sort of way to protect the counterfeit concerns, right? And of course, the importing, you know, all of the sanction stuff plays a role in it too,

but it's like there is no, there's no intellectual, there's no way for the, the business apparatus to protect the intellectual property. And so it doesn't go about, you know, offering that to, to the fans. It's pretty messed up. And the final thought about the soccer thing is that, you know, Dick, who was the Trump administration's World Cup czar or liaison? No, who was it? Fellow by the name of Andrew Giuliani.

That's right. Rudy's fucking fail son. No way. Was put in charge of basically the dirty tricks against Iran. campaign on behalf of Donald Trump. Amazing. Amazing. Yeah.

We love the fail son of a dirty old rapist, don't we? We just love it. Love a good fail son story. Honestly, that's like a true American story. Yeah. It's like something straight out of like one of these old movies. You know, sick your boy on him, Jim. And that's what they did.

Sick Rudy's boy on him. They sicked him good. And now, in the same vein, they are sicken our good old friend Jefferson Davis Vance. And I look at the American media these days, and I hear people who are attacking the president of the United States for negotiating. I think Prime Minister Netanyahu, look, he governs a country that has obviously been a very close partner of the United States. But even when we've been close partners, sometimes we have interests that are perfectly aligned, and sometimes we have interests that are missile. What I will say, and this does bother me, is that you've seen people within BB's cabinet

who have come out and attacked the deal and, in some ways, very personally, attacked the president of the United States. And I guess my message to them would be twofold. Number one, Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time. If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world. You get an argument with one of your kids who's in college and the kids like, I don't care what you think, man. And you're like, whoa, son, I'm paying the tuition. It's not an expression of hate toward the child. It's a reminder to the child that you are not independent. You're not an adult.

How do we know you're not an adult because you're not living independently? That's why. And that's pretty much what J.D. Vance said to Israel. Not, I hate you, but hey, wake up, guys. I know you're all spun up into a state, but, like, here's some reality. Because the Iranians were shooting at commercial ships. So we dropped some bombs. We applied some leverage. And we've had free commercial transit for the last three days,

to the last three days, to the last three days. To fundamentally be focused on what is in the United States' best interest. So they've been a great partner in a lot of ways. But we also have to focus on what is in America's best interest and where that diverges. We unfortunately, for the Israelis, have to choose the side of the American people. Do you believe the prime minister has made any mistakes in how he's worked with the United States on Iran? Look, he's certainly gotten some things wrong, but fundamentally... Like what?

Well, I think that those conversations sometimes are better left than private. I'm actually fascinated by Nixon as a character in history. that his historical legacy is enjoying a bit of a renaissance, but I think deservedly so. As I joked with Robert backstage, if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story. The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy. And by the way, if you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon, it's not all that different from what the same groups of people, the same institutions tried to do to Donald Trump and the first Trump administration.

You know, nobody's ever alleged that J.D. stands for Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America, but I think that he has now earned that nickname. So we'll call him that. But, you know, in his sort of publicity tour to fall on the grenade of lies that was packed so tightly with dynamite by this administration in defending their failed war effort, you know, we saw a lot of JD having a very different message about the war and especially of. about the main, one of the main drivers behind the war, talking about the state of Israel. And boy, I don't know about you, Dick, but the way that he was talking about Israel, those words and even the cadence in which he spoke them was eerily familiar to me. What about you? He is laying it on thick to say the least, right?

What was it? he said exactly like if i were israel i i wouldn't be alienating my only friend or something like that yeah yeah exactly and i would think i would think twice before i would think twice before alienating the only the only friend i have on the international stage yeah um and when i was listening to him i closed my eyes and i saw tucker carlson uh he was also talking about a lot of these lines. And listener, if you've been with us for a while, you'll know that we've been predicting this. And like clockwork, the prediction comes true, right?

This kind of distancing of the Republican apparatus from the kind of dead man's gambit that they are in with the state of Israel. in this like death cult race to global genocide, we have been predicting for a while that the way in which the likes of Tucker, even Marjorie Taylor Green, and others in the right-wing media sphere have been starting gingerly to call out the state of Israel, you know, first and foremost for the crime of harming U.S.

national interests and of taking the hard-earned tax dollars of the American people that would be better spent on mass deportations and things of that nature here at home rather than abroad, you know, propping up this ethno state, this Jewish ethno state of all things, which to somebody like Tucker can't possibly taste good. But as we have been calling for, as we have been predicting, sure enough, that message has trickled up into the administration, into the mouth of J.D. Vance. And, you know, I still don't know if there's any sort of serious thought that J.D. Vance has the juice to win a contested presidential election, just given the man's utter lack of charisma, but to the extent that he is positioning himself to have

a viable shot, well, obviously he needs to do something to take the lodestone of the Israeli genocide and the disastrous war in Iran off of his neck. And so he has been hitting the airwaves to try and do just that. And of course, notwithstanding Tucker's very histrionic display of leaving the Republican Party and, you know, talking all kinds of shit about the Republican establishment, when asked what he thinks about J.D. Vance, of course, he becomes fully engorged and, you know, turns that beautiful Tucker beat red. that we all know and despise.

You say, Tucker, I also think that it evinces the Marjorie Taylor Green sort of vibe as well, right? It's a very popular thing now to be anti-Israel, especially on the right, especially when you consider all of the money that is being spent out there for, this completely insane military aggression. And when you consider all of the money we've given, the United States has given Israel over the years on its genocide of the people of Palestine. And the way J.D. Vance is starting to sound is a lot like the Marjorie Taylor Greens of the world. And I, for one, am here for it. Because I think the crazier he sounds, the funnier it's going to be when he loses.

Because this guy has gone from someone who, you know, he came on the scene as like this measured sort of more of an old school Republican, right? Like very much like what would happen to the era of Republicans being decent, you know, that kind of shit. And never Trumper, right? and to see him now like fully ozempic glp1 out you know wearing the foundation he's got the he's got he's trying to do like the looks maxing thing and then he's taking the most extremist like maximalist approaches on these things it's just i mean you love to see it yeah and even trump right like all these leaked Barack Ravid fake ass stories about Trump saying the F word to Netanyahu on the phone. Right. Totally.

And being like, you know, no more Mr. Nice guy. I was joking that the next thing, you know, there's going to be a Barack Ravid story where Trump calls BB the casler, you know. Because that's where that's where. this all ends. And you do love to see it because at the end of the day, right, the positions of both the populist mega right wing and the Democrat establishment that's so pro-Zionist, they have these untenable, deeply unpopular positions to defend to the public. And now that they're trying to triangulate some middle ground where they're not fully full-throatedly endorsing the genocide you know obviously with holdouts like the ogre himself john fetterman and like um what brian

masked the the congressman from idf and all these other fuckers but the sort of big uh critical mass on both sides of the aisle has got to do something and it will attract the ire of the Israel lobby, you know, to the extent anybody steps out of line and that's where the left, to the extent it exists at all in mainstream politics, must play the consistent, coherent line, the only coherent line there is, which is, you know, not a single penny for the state of Israel. And not only that, but we need a tribunal of some kind for accountability, not only of the Israeli genocides and war criminals, but also their American enablers and co-conspirators in that genocidal endeavor. And, you know, you see a lot of negative talk like, oh, it's never going to

happen. And, you know, of course, it's not a given that it will happen. But if you take it as a given that it will never happen, then probably it will never happen because you, the person saying it's never going to happen, is kind of the person that's got to buck up and actually make it happen by demanding it and by, you know, advocating it in every single way possible. And I, for one, wouldn't, you know, give up on something just because it, you know, isn't in the interests of the powers that be for that to happen. Absolutely. And I'm pretty sure. that you are teeing up the next and last section of this episode, which is going to be about the Supreme Court and all of the big ticket decisions that have been coming down in June.

For those of you who don't know, this U.S. Supreme Court holds its sessions. It's the term start in October of the year. So this last term started in October 2025. And June is when the session ends. and to beat the summer heat, the Supreme Court usually puts out all of the heavy hitting decisions before the end of June. And so here we are in early July. And I think it's a good opportunity to see how the Supreme Court has been working as of late. Well, working, I guess, is one word that you could use to describe what they've been doing.

certainly if you are like a billionaire or a cristo-fascist then it has been working overtime for you yeah working when i say working i mean more like operating like a machine does or function yeah running yeah so yeah you're absolutely right and you know we'll see maybe tomorrow we'll need to record an addendum that's now monday night and tomorrow is the the big day when the birthright citizenship decision is going to come down where, you know, what hangs in the balance is this Trump executive order that says that people who are born in the United States to undocumented parents do not, notwithstanding the plain language of the Constitution, enjoy the protections of citizenship. And of course, I think we've talked about this before, but that's just the first step

towards depriving actual U.S. citizens of their citizenship and denaturalizing people who have gained citizenship after immigrating here, et cetera, et cetera. So we'll see. That one is still on ice. Hi, folks, Dick here in post-production, just to say that the case Don is talking about in the episode right now, Trump v. Barbara, covering birthright citizenship. Well, that case went against the Trump administration, and Justice John Roberts penned the majority opinion, and in brief, it is a rules-oriented approach, pretty much a common-sense reading of

the Constitution and common law, but this decision, Trump v. Barbara, it's probably going to require its own episode because the way the court split its opinions and there are some dissents that require some serious analysis from you guessed it alito and thomas and these dissents they go through these broad and sweeping analyses of talking about things like domicile and foreign allegiance and immigration status and it really does reflect an effort to rebuild the doctrine around citizenship to a more narrow conception of citizenship and at least for now this decision what it means is that the executive order is no good but we I do really mean it when we say that this one deserves probably its own episode but for now we can

consider it a win of sorts and with that let's get back to our episode. But meanwhile, there's plenty of damage that the court has done not only to the alleged rights that the Constitution was purporting to guarantee to the people, but also to the very rule of law itself and the notion of an independent judiciary as that check on executive authority. So I'll take this first one that we've got on the list. And it's one that is another one of these sort of lightning rod issues that has divided the administration from the MAGA base or in this case, the MAHA base, the loose network of influencers. And this has been happening, I think, as of late, right, in the last year of this administration. there's been this widening gap. There's been much more daylight in between the MAHA supporters of the Trump

movement, which were very, some would say, very influential during the actual campaign and election process and the policies that Trump is actually backing and the actions that Trump's administration is actually taking, right? For sure. For sure. And it's also a case that's very forthright coded. Okay, let's just say what it is. This is the case involving the pesticide roundup that was produced by Monsanto, of course, Monsanto was acquired by Beyer, the infamous Nazi member of the IG-Farbon chemical cartel during the Holocaust and during the war that produced, among other things, you know, of poison gas used in the concentration camps. And so it's fitting, right, that they produce this poison.

Indeed, the chemical formula for Roundup and for a lot of these American manufactured defoliants and pesticides came from Nazi scientists that were brought over in Operation Paperclip, they started out, you know, in the laboratories of the military industrial chemical companies during the Vietnam War to make that whole rainbow panoply of poisons, Agent Orange, Agent Blue, Agent White, Agent Pink, and on and on. And now they're sold over the counter as consumer pesticides in some form. And surprise, surprise, they are carcinogenic. They are making people sick.

They are causing birth defects. They are generally not good for people. And for our purposes, they are perfectly safe according to the EPA. Yeah. Yes, exactly. So this is the case. A Missouri farmer was awarded not like a crazy amount. I think it was like just a million and a quarter or something like that.

Yeah, it's a little more than a million, which let's just, I mean, that's a lot. of money, right? But it's not a crazy amount for someone that has been harmed this way. I don't want it sound like we don't think a million and a half is a lot of money because it is. Sure, sure. It's not a lot out of the bottom line for a company like Bayer-Monsanto. Put it that way. They spent 10 times that much on legal fees defending the case, I guarantee you. Totally. And I would say it is definitely not as much as what a human life is worth. Absolutely. Unquantifiable. Unquantifiable. That is unquantifiable. And so this guy won this jury-awarded verdict that basically the theory of liability was, you know,

there were undisclosed risks of using Roundup repeatedly, and he had been using it repeatedly over a period of many, many years. And so the lack of information besides his habitual use of the product harmed him and entitled him to this money. And the theory of the defense that the company took up to the Supreme Court and ultimately prevailed on was that because there exists already a federal regulatory regime for labeling harmful chemicals, and that regime had determined that this was a safe chemical, therefore it preempts. It's called preemption doctrine. So the federal regime preempts the private right to recover for the harm caused by the lack of a label on the roundup bottle. In other words, what the court said was what you're asking for, what you're saying that, should have been on this bottle, couldn't have possibly been on that bottle. And it would have actually

been illegal for the manufacturer to put that label on the bottle unless it was ordered by the proper regulatory body. And interestingly, in this case, the Biden administration, and here's one of these very narrow kind of insidey baseball ways in which the presidential administration can make some difference, not that the Supreme Court's ultimate decision of the case would have come out differently under the old administration. But the Biden administration took the side of the farmer and said, no, the federal regime does not preempt recovery in this case. And when the administration changed, they changed sides and supported Monsanto, of course, lining up with the Fourth Reich company to defend the right of corporations to poison people

and of the EPA to be a captured regulatory agency. Of course, these revolving doors put the same scientists in high-paying research jobs at the companies and spend a little time at the regulator and go around and around and around. picking up them checks all the way to the bank. And it's a interesting case because like we kind of started out with, all of these influencers, you might call them Bobby's brainworms, his little wormies that are squiggling all over the country on their TikToks and their Instagrams, they're squiggling pretty vehemently to protest the

sense of betrayal that they feel now that the environmental lawyer, Bobby Kennedy, has taken the side of the companies that he used to try and hold to account for clients like the plaintiff in this case. So it's an interesting real encapsulation, again, of just not even private rights of action anymore can be relied upon to, as you. recourse as a form of recourse against this coagulation of forces under the banner of the Fourth Reich. I'll let you do the voting rights one, but the one I wanted to talk about is the FDC decision. I think it came out today or yesterday.

Oh, yeah. The Trump v. Slaughter decision where the court basically has overturned, what, a hundred years worth of law and precedent in this idea that the basically the president can fire members of certain agencies and certain levels without any sort of check right and in this case it stems from these members of the federal trade commission federal trade commission or FTC that's the government agency that is powered to provide oversight and sort of rulemaking and decisions around things like consumer protection, right, like our false advertising laws under the federal regime or also, I think the FTC also covers antitrust issues as well, right?

I sure do. Okay. So that's like the agency, right? And so the agency has commissioners and members, and those are the folks who are working the, you know, working the agency and sort of furthering the public good in that area. And people might be familiar with Lena Kahn. She was like the FTC commissioner, chair under Biden and was very famous as like a liberal regulatory crusader.

Totally, totally. And until now, the sort of the rule was that the president, to make sure that the agency served in more of an independent, nonpartial, bipartisan manner so that it wasn't sort of under the control of the whims of any one party. A sitting president could only fire these members in cases of what was called like neglect of duty or malfeasance or they were somehow derogating their duties. And so they had to be some cause, right? But in this case, in this decision, the Supreme Court in a six three ruling, right, six of the justices went for this one. They say that no, no, no, that is not required. And what some of you might have picked up on is that what this does is it gives the president broad powers. It's a major victory for the proponents like my namesake, Dick Cheney.

the proponents of the idea of like the unitary executive, right? This idea that the president is all powerful and can execute the powers of the executive branch without any sort of checks or balances. And so this case is, the focus of this case was, of course, the FTC, but you can see this ruling really applied to any number of federal agencies, right? like the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has the same sort of regime that's been affected by this. Same thing with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. So this ruling, I think, is going to have broad impact and broad effect on federal agencies

and is just another way in which the executive has really ratcheted up in terms of its power. Yeah, remember in the first Trump administration when Steve Bannon was in the government and his big thing was openly saying that we're going to destroy the regulatory state and this is exactly what they're pursuing because among those agencies that you mentioned a lot of them they don't even have a quorum to conduct the business of the agency at all 100%. 100%. So like for example, one that is almost comical, the federal election commission, the FEC, that is supposed to monitor elections and voting procedures and campaign finance and all of this stuff, the laws against corruption,

for example, it hasn't had a quorum and I don't know how long. It only has right now like two members out of five or something, so they can't even do anything. And with this ruling, it kind of insulates that status quo so that these corrupt mafia people that run this country can continue their gravy train with absolutely nobody in their way, no obstacles. They can smash the obstacles. And speaking of smashing the obstacles, it was interesting that you mentioned the vote count on that case because I forgot to do that with. the Monsanto case, it wasn't even six to three. It was seven to two. And both Sotomayor and Kagan voted with the majority. Wow. Gorsuch and Jackson were the two dissents. Wow. And so, you know, you can kind of understand this logic. And this is why, you know, to back to our thesis here,

that this experiment has failed. You could put yourself in the shoes of a Sotomayor or of an Elena Kagan who believe that it's a good thing to rule in favor of an expansive view of regulatory power, right? Because, you know, the day after tomorrow, when the smoke clears on all this and we're back in sane liberal hands in this country, goes their thinking, the Democrats are going to want to do the same kind of thing by preempting, let's say, a state immigration law that's more restrictive than the federal law or whatever the case may be. And so they are not necessarily ruling from a position of, oh, Monsanto has to win

so that they can poison people, but from a proceduralist perspective of, oh, we want to preserve the federal government's power in this way so that in the future, when saner heads prevail, you know, they will not be hamstrung by a bad law created out of bad facts. And then, you know, this is the thing, right? I certainly am not placing any bets that saner heads are ever going to prevail because, as we've talked about, when the pendulum swing, this far to the right when it swings back like it's not it's not going to be equidistant from the

center the center is what moves to the right and meanwhile like i think this next one that we can cover very quickly the voting rights act um it almost guarantees that these fascists will be in control of the levers of power in perpetuity in this country because the recent voting rights decision basically authorized states to gerrymander including gerrymandering like all the black people in the state into one congressional district so that they don't have equal representation through the electoral process through the districting process as long as it can be explained by reference to partisan preference. So in other words, do you take one of these southern states where like 90% plus of black voters vote Democrat,

you can gerrymander them all you want and just say that you're doing it on the basis of party, and that is totally copacetic because they threw out the old voting rights test in favor of this requirement for all voting rights plaintiffs that you have to affirmatively show that the challenged practice or policy is not on the basis of partisan affiliation, but is on the basis of intentional racial discrimination. It's just intentional, right? It can be intentional racial discrimination as long as. as everything is still tied to party affiliation.

Right? So it's got to be, they have to show the challenge has to show that it's basically intentional racial discrimination only. Yeah, it's, I mean, it's absolutely bonkers. Like, it's just, again, these people, like when they tell you what they believe, you should take their word for it. talking about the Stephen Miller's of the world who go on TV and say the Civil Rights Act was a mistake, you know, things like that. And another person who I believe said that also was the late Charles Kirk. And these people that are so lionized by their fauning sycophants with absentee. no appreciation for the substance of what they are saying and doing, they have their influence

felt all the way up to the most prestigious body in the country. But the court isn't all that bad, right? The court does stand up and check Trump on his powers when it is in the interest of people, right? but when I say people I mean corporate persons who are the owners of capital and when they because this is something you pointed out and I think it's actually really really it's a it's a great point right it's like the court is willing to check Trump's powers right yeah yeah from time to time they'll step in and and they'll piss him off and that's why you know he constantly is complaining that they're always ruling against him uh because on a few occasions

you know, he's done things that are so hairbrained that they are not in the interests of the owners of capital. One of those things was the tariffs, right? And so the court ruled against him on that. Right. The court ruled against him on that. Now he's got to pay all this money back or they've got to get these companies can, you know, they reap some of these benefits. And we forget that what, you know, over the course of what how has it been like a year or something, the end consumer has eaten all those costs. And so what's go, how is, you know, how are they going to be made whole? Who knows? We'll see. We will stay tuned and report on it as it develops. I'm not going to hold my breath. And I'm, listener, I don't recommend that you hold your breath

either. Exactly. Please don't. For your safety and for those around you. But we are getting up on this hour mark and I know that we wanted to make this one a short one. So why don't we take a moment and just take stock, take a sort of a big picture view of what's going on? Yeah. You know, I thought maybe we could end it even on a positive note, which there is a positive thing to say. Love those. And that is that I think a running theme, that we've been recurring over and over the last hour is that there is this widening gulf between public opinion and between the criminality that is masquerading as a government in this country. And one of the symptoms of that gulf, one of the manifestations of the popular,

let's say, ire, the fact that people are fed up with. with just swallowing shit constantly over such a long period of time of being targeted by these continuous siops that are just lazier and lazier. You know, they're being outsourced. The siops themselves are being outsourced to chat GPT at this point. Like, it's, the propaganda is pathetic. Nobody's falling for it. And one way in which that's reflected is,

in these protests against data centers. And I saw a Gallup poll from last month that 71% of Americans said that they would oppose building a data center in their community, in their area, which is pretty astounding. And in fact, in many of these localities, you know, you see it time and again, people are rising up to oppose the construction of data centers, and they are winning. And, you know, just like what another thing that we have Ballyhooed on this program and another shout out because we never get tired of appreciating all the homies in the Twin Cities and elsewhere that stood up against ice and won against, you know, the sort of overtly fascist immigration enforcement, don't want to say that the war is over on. that front by any means. People are still being rounded up, just not so visibly. But, you know, when people actually do get together and pursue a common goal in their interests, every now and again,

every now and again, they prevail. And that to me is a real sign of hope that we should all latch onto because it's not just a discrete opposition to the construction of a data center. I really think that when somebody answers a survey question like that, when somebody gets a certain kind of feeling, a fire in their belly, when they learn about a data center that's planned for their area, it's about this entire society of the spectacle, this entire like internet slop machine that is degrading the conditions of their life every single day in noticeable and meaningful ways, right? Hell yeah. It reminds me of my personal interactions with my, with the youngens, with my friends and family members who are just getting out of high school, just getting out of

college, and they themselves, if you ask any young person out there, they tend to have a anti-AI bend, an anti-futurist perspective. At least in my experience, they see the bullshit for what it is, right? And you can think about all of the booze that AI got and all of the college and high school graduations and all the speeches that were given in the last month. The question is whether you will help shape artificial intelligence. We do not know. We do not know. We do not know. AI is rewriting production as we sit here. I know it. Deal with it. Like I said, it's a tool. We're using a new AI system as our reader. The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution.

We'll be unimaginably better for it. Like I said, you can hear me now or you can pay me later. Only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives. So I do have faith in the future. And I think that's a great point, Don, to be vigilant. And I want to remind everyone, and I want to get this right. But I think it was, we'll have to take it out if I got it wrong. I think it was Gretchen Whitmer on a hot mic that was talking to someone about these data centers and said, don't worry, even if they're not popular, we'll just get it past the voting public.

And before they know it, it'll be happening anyways. And so we'll have to make sure that that was her, or if not, we'll just have to take it out. But so the reason I'm saying that is that it's not just that we have to, you know, oppose. We have to also remain vigilant because this shit is happening and they're doing their very damnedest to keep it from ever seeing any daylight before it is too late. Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, once again, the movie Eddington comes to mind as a poignant, encapsulation of these battle lines being drawn, you know, with the full distraction machine deployed to divide the population up against itself. And that is always going to be their tool. That is always going to be the M.O. of the powers that be. Divide and conquer never gets old.

It never expires as a tactic to be used against the people. And so, you know, really seriously think about what are your strong reactions. A little forthright therapy here. You know, think about your own emotions and your own emotional reactions to these stimuli in your daily lives, in politics, in your relationships, whatever. and try to unpack how affected we all really are. And I know that I am not immune from this. And dare I say, Dick, that you're not immune either, that they get to you.

They really do program your entire consciousness around their goals. They're very evil, exploitative, nasty, genocidal goals. And I'm not saying just look within. This isn't 70s new agey type shit because we saw with squeaky Fromey where that can end up. This is an admonishment to really take stock of what matters and how these gaps between us can be bridged and how these actual humanistic goals, these liberatory goals of emancipating people, of seizing the means of production, of ending imperialism can be advanced by collective action and by togetherness and, dare I say it, by the power of love and friendship.

That's what it's all about. Happy Independence Day, everybody. We are so glad that you spent some time with us this weekend. Please be safe. Please do not drink and drive. And until next time, I am Dick. And I'm done saying farewell. And keep on digging.