It Could Happen Here - Executive Disorder: Iran Ceasefire Expires, Corrupt Military Contractors, Florida Election

Starting point is 00:00:00 This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

Starting point is 00:00:24 These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the Survivor Files, with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island to serve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.

Starting point is 00:00:58 Yeah, I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. Listen to Pro Society on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you hear the new episode of The Hey Jonas Podcast? We are at D23, so we'll see who stops by. The cast of Frozen stopped by, Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, and Adina Mansell. I audition for Frozen. What? For Christoph.

Starting point is 00:01:19 They said, okay, what are you going to be singing today? I said, I don't know. That must have been why you didn't get it. Oh, you probably won't. Plus, John Stamos, Hayden Christensen from Star Wars and more. And I guess I can share that... No way. Listen to the latest episode of Hey Jonas on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Starting point is 00:01:39 Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast, Hollywood Handbook. Each week, we talk to someone in show business and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. Everyone has a good time and no one gets mad at their publicists for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, Adam Scott, Danny McBride, Ben Stillard, and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 00:02:07 AllZone Media. This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what this means for you. I'm Garrison Davis, today I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Robert Evans. Hoodley Do. This episode, we're covering the week of August 12th through August 19th. So I guess I'll start with, I've seen reports, ICE is using. parked vehicles, I guess, as staging points for cameras. And I have seen videos of what appear to be license plate flippers on ice vehicles.

Starting point is 00:02:45 You're not familiar right. Like, there has been lots and lots of reports of ICE agents, like manually changing license plates. This just appears to be a device that goes, whoop, rotates 180 degrees, so you've got two license plates available. A lot of the pictures, we saw a man being, I'm not sure if he was arrested or just, like, harassed for saying, like, why don't you have a license plate on your vehicle? why don't you have a license plate on your vehicle? And it very much appears that vehicle had a license plate fliper on the front.

Starting point is 00:03:12 Secondly, CBP is pausing all construction in Big Bend. This is according to Rodney Scott, who's the CBP Commissioner, who says he is personally on his way there to conduct a, quote, personal evaluation. It's entirely unclear, like, what that means and what are the criteria for this evaluation, right? Like there are dozens of laws, treaties and regulations that cover the kind of thing that they are doing in the place that they are doing it. And they have waived all of them. So this is what we get now, right? We get Rodney Scott going on a plane and just like giving it the like the imperial thumbs up or thumbs down like some kind of Roman emperor, I guess.

Starting point is 00:03:51 Like this is a thing that wouldn't fly in like a hereditary monarchy like the UK, right, where we now have one person making this choice that everyone will have to live with forever. that they are destroying a place, which is beautiful, and one of the places that has not been ruined by capitalism and the state, one of the few large areas of public land in Texas. So I will keep you updated on what Rodney Scott decides to do. I will probably do an episode on my other show, Natural Courses, about Big Bend soon. And then finally, I guess, as we're talking about border wall stuff from me, people are conducting a tree sit in a cottonwood tree in Arizona. The cottonwood tree, it's very old, cottonwood tree.

Starting point is 00:04:30 sometimes called grandmother tree. These people are trying to protect it from being destroyed due to border wall construction. They've been sitting in that tree for several weeks now. I will eventually go visit them. I was going to go visit them, but I went to Spokane when those fires struck instead. They have been joined by someone on the Mexican side. So now there are two tree siters making this the first international tree sit that I'm ever aware of. That rules.

Starting point is 00:04:56 Yeah, no, it's great. Hell yeah, hell yeah. Well, like, trees don't know borders, right? Yeah. As I highlighted in my other podcast, Natural Cause, is the US left really fucked up when NAFTA came in by not saying if you're going to try and pay people less in Mexico, then we will try and organize people in Mexico and together we will demand dignified wages and conditions. I'm glad that people are not taking that approach anymore because that didn't get us anywhere. I'll keep covering the situation there as well. So speaking of, I guess, the long-range effects of NAFTA, KOSPI, which is the Korean Stock Index, hit its circuit breaker, which is the breaker that hits if you lose too much percentage of the stock market's value again on Wednesday. I genuinely have lost count of the number of times that it has been triggered over the past few months. This has become a regular recurrence in one of the

Starting point is 00:05:48 largest and most important stock markets in the world. This time, it was fueled by a collapse of tech stocks and the Brent Fruit Index hitting $90 a barrel. We will be getting into some more of the impacts of that later. I don't know. My guess is that it's going to rebound as everyone buys the dip tomorrow, but any one of these could be the one where it doesn't rebound, and we will let you know whether the global economic collapses on. Yay.

Starting point is 00:06:14 Yeah, what happens if there's not a rebound? What is that going to look like? Everyone's fucked? No, I mean, like, in terms of, like, what is you're expecting? cascade of events if that goes down. Oh, the entire global economy goes under, because the Korean stock market right now is basically a kind of tragedy

Starting point is 00:06:32 as far as version of the American market where most of the, almost all of the value is congealed into these three... Yeah, AI. Yeah, three companies that, yeah, basically make AI chips, right? And then the rest of the value down the chain is people doing weird gambling stuff

Starting point is 00:06:45 on different AI components. If the market just actually crashes, that is those three companies, and, you know, we're talking like Samsung here, right? These are vital components in the entire AI. I mean, not just the AI sphere, obviously. Samsung, right?

Starting point is 00:07:02 Like, we're talking about, you know, things that are vital components. The big tech companies. Yeah, yeah. And like all of the manufacturing of, like, tech all over the world. If that stuff goes down, that takes the American markets with it. That takes all of global markets that are reliance on these AI surges go with it. And that's kind of just the beginning of the popping of the tech bubble. Yeah, yep, yep.

Starting point is 00:07:23 I just wanted to get to that because it's like it is it is this mirror of exactly what's gone in the United States. I guess the big difference is that so far the obvious signs of trouble in South Korea have not set off alarm bells in at least in American investors to the extent that you might expect, but I'm sure. There's there's been some like it tends to be the other way around where Cosby tends to kind of be following the American markets, but there have definitely been days where like because of the time difference in Korea,

Starting point is 00:07:54 all of the American investors wake up to watch like 10% going down, like 10% of the value of the Korean stock market disappearing in one night, and that lowers American stocks, and then Trump says something about the war ending,

Starting point is 00:08:04 and it goes back up again. So there has been some notice of it, but our grand collective delusion to maintain the functioning of capitalism continues. Great. Good, good, good. On Tuesday,

Starting point is 00:08:18 there was a JUP debate for the South Carolina U.S. Senate special runoff election. So it's a special election and a runoff. And in this debate, sister of the fallen, Lindsay Graham, Darlene Graham, could not answer a pretty rudimentary foreign policy question because it is not her area of expertise. Let's take a listen. Senator, are Taiwan and the South China Sea national security issues for the United States? If so, why? I'm sorry, could you repeat the question? Are Taiwan and the South China Sea national security issues for the United States?

Starting point is 00:08:59 And if so, why or how? I'm just going to be honest here. I'm not on national security. I'm not that informed on national security. So, but I do support the military. My brother was in the Air Force for 33 years, so I will do everything I can to support the military. military. Great stuff. You know what? Honesty.

Starting point is 00:09:26 That's what we need in politicians. I love hereditary seats. This is an amazing feature of what is supposed to be a representative of democracy. It's so good. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:09:37 I don't know shit about fuck, but I love the army. That's incredible. No, she later goes on to literally say it's on her quote unquote area of expertise. It just talks about how, regardless, she will always support the U.S. military.

Starting point is 00:09:52 It's astounding. Lindsay Graham rolling over in his grave. So that is Darlene Graham, sister of Lindsay Graham, who is facing Republican Ralph Norman in this runoff election, the winner of which will then face the Democrat, Dr. Annie Andrews,

Starting point is 00:10:11 for this general election in November to replace Lindsay's seat. Pretty cool. God, I hope she wins the primary. I want to see more of this. Yeah, yeah. This will be highly amusing, if nothing else. Oh, man.

Starting point is 00:10:28 I want to briefly mention some new information regarding the federal investigations into anti-ice protests in the Twin Cities based on some newly released court documents. This was first reported in the New York Times, and I have read through the 30-page motion filed by the defense that unveiled these documents, and a number of the 30-some exhibits.

Starting point is 00:10:52 And I'll report on this in full probably next week with its own episode. But I do want to discuss with the group here a little bit. So four days after CPB killed Alex Preti, DHS open investigation into labor unions and left-wing activist groups that they thought were involved in funding the anti-ice protests and, quote, providing material support to violent opportunists, unquote. This HSI investigation amounted to a massive spying operation called Operation Puppet Master and later Operation Whipple Shield. God, I hate these people.

Starting point is 00:11:32 Whipple is the name of the federal building that was at the heart of a lot of the protests in the Twin Cities. And these operations ended up probing three years of financial records from organizations like Sunrise Movement, the communication workers of America, and the healthcare union SCIU, as a part of a quote unquote financial investigation into quote unquote domestic terrorist financing. I think it's really important to point out here is that this three-year time span of documents extends far beyond the time span of Operation Metro Surge and the protests, right? This is not a probe into financing specific processes. protest groups responding to ICE. This is just a general dragnet into labor unions, into left-wing

Starting point is 00:12:24 non-profits, environmental groups, a racial justice activist group in the area. Like, this is a huge probe. They're looking into Venmo transactions. They're requesting bank records. I guess this is a massive probe of like the interior of like some very major national unions. Yeah. It's interesting when you look at who they're looking into, right? Because it's, it's a really, really wide swath across the political spectrum of the left. Like SEIU, like obviously there are like locals of SEIU that

Starting point is 00:12:56 like do good work, but like nationally SEIU is not like a radical organization, right? Like of the major unions, this is like an extremely, extremely milked toast union. Right. Yeah, I guess context with SCIU particularly would be that they arrested

Starting point is 00:13:12 David Huerta in Los Angeles in June of last year, right? It's union leader. Yeah. Yeah. And I know because Alex Prady was a healthcare worker, SIEU as a healthcare union. Like I went to like a solidarity protest to put together by a bunch of different unions in New York City following the death of Alex Prattie. Yeah. It's interesting that the federal government picked up on that sort of union solidarity and then started investigating it. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:13:40 And I think that is that is really telling. Yeah. Part of what I'm getting at here is like they're just going after everyone who's even like tangentially involved. in these protests, right? Yeah. The way the state sees this is they're incapable of organizing, like, spontaneous and, like, horizontal solidarity, seeing that, right? They understand, yeah, SEIU folks showed up in New York where Garrison is.

Starting point is 00:14:02 And I think they're not called the AFT in Minneapolis. Maybe they're called the Federation of Educators or something like that. MFE looks like, yeah, like another union, right, for educators, evidently. And 5051 and some more explicitly socialist and leftist groups showed up against showed up in solidarity after Alex Prattie was killed. And the way the state sees this is, therefore they are nationally and vertically integrated and someone is pulling the strings and paying the funds.

Starting point is 00:14:28 Not like they are fucking mad. Yeah, it's like, the way that they see it is like, yeah, like SCIU national has like handed down like the riot orders. It's like, no, no, XIU like. But she's right. Like that is how they understand it. It's like time traveling militants for the 1970s kidnapped SCIU's leadership and held him at gunpoint

Starting point is 00:14:47 and said, we will let you go. if you order mass riots, they still wouldn't do it. Like, that's not what this is. But the feds have a hammer, and they're trying to hammer down every single thing that even vaguely looks like a nail. Yeah. So they can do sort of the broadest

Starting point is 00:15:01 and widest-ranging repression that they can deal with. Yeah. And we have, like, an example of how HSI is envisioning this sort of conspiracy, like what we're talking about, because as a part of the new exhibits that were released to the public, We have this slide that was sent to grand jurors for the indictment, which we'll soon talk about that targeting 15 protesters. The grand jury was shown this slide that is labeled the conspiracy that has about 15 different organizations, all with arrows pointing towards direct action Minnesota Dam, which is the protest group that the government alleges the 15 people.

Starting point is 00:15:46 were involved with in some way. I want to read through some of these organizations that are part of this conspiracy diagram. There's the Monarcha Rapid Response Line. There's Ray Rainbolt Memorial Gun Club, Red Pine Revolutionary Collective, SCIU 26, showing it for racial justice, socialist alternative,

Starting point is 00:16:07 Veterans for Peace, Whipple Watch, Workers Solidarity Circle, AFLCIO, Black Cat Workers Collective. It's all of it. The Democratic Socialist, Socialists of America, the Greece pit, which is a local bike shop.

Starting point is 00:16:20 Hell yeah. Left jab. Minneapolis Federation of Educators, Local 59, Minnesota Association of Professional Employees, Minnesota Ice Watch, and Minnesota 50501. Pretty incredible.

Starting point is 00:16:37 Pretty incredible collection. They're all supposed to be sending like a council member. That's what the diagram has, is that there's a council member from each of the organizations. That, like, is part of direct action Minnesota

Starting point is 00:16:53 that is, like, orchestrating all these protests. It's incredible. I love to see, like, Creminology overcoming, like, a DIY bike shop that opens for a few hours, a few afternoons a week. Like, it's...

Starting point is 00:17:08 The Politburo of Minnesota is populated by, like, bike co-ops. It's just the Shadow Council, James. The Shadow... They're running everything. It's incredible. This is what happens when socialist alternative and DSA can overcome their differences. And support council communism,

Starting point is 00:17:28 descend a member to Direct Action Minnesota High Council. Black and red, United States. It's incredible stuff. Now, of course, none of these organizations themselves have actually faced charges stemming from this investigation. But this investigation did result. in 15 people being indicted on, quote, conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer for allegedly planning to block a roadway, among a few other charges against specific

Starting point is 00:17:58 individuals for participating in Ice Rapid Response. So although DSA, the Greece pit, and like SCIU are not themselves as organizations, you know, charged, this sort of huge, like very broad investigation into into nonprofit organizations, into electoral organizations, into labor unions. This did result in charges against specific people, many of whom are not part of these 15 council member organizations. The defense lawyer Kevin Riyak wrote in a motion, quote, Homeland Security Investigation's investigation extended far beyond any potential threat to law enforcement safety. it concluded with no evidence but obvious political animus that numerous twin cities unions and non-profit organizations

Starting point is 00:18:48 were involved in a widespread conspiracy to violate 18 U.S.C.1-1, assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers or employees. And it surveilled and surptutiously gathered financial records generated by these organizations despite the lack of any connection between those organizations and criminal conduct. Yeah, it's co-intel pro shit. It never ended.

Starting point is 00:19:14 They're just doing it again. I've always been doing it. Yes, and part of what these new docs reveal is much more details on the covert surveillance of organizer meetings at libraries and churches. And the way in the extent that Homeland Security infiltrated signal chats and how undercovers try to entice people into discussing or committing crimes. And I want to discuss that in more detail. detail in its own episode, because I think that requires a very careful focus on how that actually went about, because I think that can very easily be turned into, you know, panicking or maybe overstating certain things regarding, you know, were ICE the ones actually, you know,

Starting point is 00:19:57 directing all the protests against ICE? And like, no, obviously not. So I think that that requires a distinct focus. Specifically, in these core documents, there's a, there's a reference to an undercover discussing with someone at like a sunrise movement meeting about getting more involved in direct actions and maybe building quote unquote devices for direct actions. So it's that kind of stuff. And I want to discuss that more in detail. But this new batch of court documents in this case has revealed a lot about about how this investigation went, how it started off very, very broad, against a lot of organizations. And like what, you know, National Security Presidential Memorandum number seven wrote about looking to the finances of a lot of different non-profit groups.

Starting point is 00:20:42 But then from there, realizing that maybe they are not going to be able to prosecute all these unions for terrorist financing. Instead, they find 15 people who are engaged in First Amendment activity that they think they could maybe, you know, turn into an Antifa boogeyman and get that past a grand jury because you certainly could not get the rest of this shit past a grand jury. Yeah. Talking of pushing the boundaries of the Constitution with regards to policing is a good tie-in to this next piece that I have, which is to talk about the national defence areas.

Starting point is 00:21:15 So the DOJ has issued a new opinion this week, suggesting that military forces in the national defence areas that span much of the border can now detain people, not just inside the NDA, but also those near the NDA who leave it before they have time to arrest them. If you're not familiar with the NDA, these are areas along the BORDA, these are areas along the BOR. border wall that have been transferred to the military and are being managed as extensions of military bases. For example, NDA number three, the California NDA begins, I think at the western edge of Otai Mountain Wilderness, stretches all the way to the Arizona border in Imperial County. That is an extension of NAF El Centro, so it's Naval Air Facility El Centro. So that's patrol by

Starting point is 00:21:58 Marines. The New Mexico one is an extension of Fort Huachuca, and that's patrolled by the Army. There is one in Texas, which is an extension of Fort Bliss. Fort Bliss expands those two states, but that NDA goes into Texas more. The bases themselves are being extended, therefore, the logic goes from the Justice Department that they are not violating the Posse Comitatis Act because there are recognized exemptions, they say, for military installations. So they're saying because the base is being extended to generally, but not always, it is the Roosevelt Reservation, right, which is a 60-foot area to the north of the physical border. But some of these NDAs span areas larger than that, they are claiming that that area is therefore exempt from PCA if the military is prosecuting or, in this case, arresting or detaining people for trespassing on a military institution.

Starting point is 00:23:02 They think that the military can also enforce federal law on its installations. So by definition, anyone eweeing, ewee entry without inspection, right? So that's someone entering between ports of entry. Anybody doing that in an NDA, which is a large amount of the southern border right now, would be trespassing on a military installation, right? You can also see in this opinion they're like hinting at adding more NDAs soon. This is the same legal reasoning that they are. are using claim it is illegal to photograph things inside an NDA, I think this one is incredibly

Starting point is 00:23:38 suspect, right? So statutory law does ban photography of, quote, certain vital military or naval installations or equipment. But I think you'd have a very hard time arguing in court that like a pile of razor wire and some rocks is vital military equipment, but that's what they're going with, right? This is important because what we are seeing here is the Trump administration and pushing at the boundaries of constitutionally what it can do. And as I've said hundreds of times on this show of the last four years, this always starts at the border and it never stays at the border, right? Everything we see with mass surveillance now has been a reality in border communities for some time. Everything we see with the increased presence of ICE, of CBP, this has been

Starting point is 00:24:25 something that border communities have dealt with, right? This is this particularly violent form of law enforcement that is particularly unaccountable. If we see this at the border and they get away with it at the border, then I'm sure it will continue in other places. It doesn't take like a brain genius to look at, for instance, what happened in Portland six years ago, right, and see how, like, we could edge towards the PCA Possecomitatis Act waivers in other parts of the United States as well. So I think this is worth keeping an eye on and, like, I would like it to get more attention in reporting. Let's go on an ad break and then we'll discuss in honor of Lindsay Graham. the U.S. military, who we support, but we don't know where they go.

Starting point is 00:25:13 You've heard the chaos. Now you can see it. Do we want to jump right in? Watch all your favorite podcasts from start to finish right inside the free IHard Radio app. Make some noise. Catch every laugh and eye roll on shows like Bestie Listen, Hey Jonas and Las Culturistas. Now with full video. I'll just leave that there. It's the same hosts and the same chemistry with all the hilarious moments you've been missing right on your side.

Starting point is 00:25:37 screen. Open the free IR Radio app. Search video podcasts and tap watch. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything.

Starting point is 00:26:07 Every week, I'm with survivors who lived through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. There's stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

Starting point is 00:26:49 This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsesives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.

Starting point is 00:27:35 Listen to Pro Society on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook on the Big Money Players Network. Our show is extremely accessible to first-time listeners. Each week, we talk to someone in show business, aka the biz, and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us.

Starting point is 00:27:59 Everyone has a good time and no one gets mad at their publicists for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, not that great. Actually, can you help me shape this? How about we flip it on his head, right? How about we flip the script? What is the surprise woman? Actually, you think is the straight man is actually the one who's acting weird. Adam Scott.

Starting point is 00:28:23 This entire time, you've been expecting Adam Sandler to come to the, visit the show. I would never let go of that. I have. I would never set expectations for something like that to happen. If the universe allows for something like that to happen,

Starting point is 00:28:40 I'm open to it. I'm always going to accept. You know, Danny McBride, fine. Yeah. It's all this fragile masculinity. Exuding. I could smell it walking on the hallway, to be honest with you. I was like, I was like, is that weed?

Starting point is 00:28:54 Nope. It's fragile masculinity. Ben Stiller, no. Because a lot of times out of context, people don't get it or even know what a circle is. You know what I mean? They're like, oh, it's so stupid. Everyone's so dumb except for you. And fake. Right, fake and also not interested or just like, oh, I've got my life.

Starting point is 00:29:14 I don't care about your life. And a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Oh, and by the way, Will Ferrell told us personally he loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode, but he's just so busy. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast. or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. There's a lot of military news this week. That ship does not look like it's doing too well.

Starting point is 00:29:43 Let's start with the sad boat. The sad boat. Anyone here old enough to have watched the love boat on Nickett night? No, none of you. Okay. All right. Well, he shouldn't have that where I grew up, Robert. Okay.

Starting point is 00:29:54 That's hurtful. This is all very hurtful. Anyway, the sad boat is the USS Abraham Lincoln. How sad is this? Yeah. Yeah. Why is Apesat? Well, yeah.

Starting point is 00:30:06 Mia, you want to start? Yeah, so the U.S. is Abraham Lincoln. It's actually funny because we have now reached a point where when you say the sad boat, I actually couldn't tell which of the boats you were referring to. Because it was the Jerry Ford before it was the Abraham Lincoln. And the Gerald Ford had longer to be sad. Well, there was also a destroyer deployed the South China Sea where the power was out for three days. Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 00:30:30 So they didn't have running water. Which one was it where they were blocking up all the toilets by like jamming them with toilet paper? That's the Jerry Ford and I think the Lincoln. All of our newest supercarriers have serious issues with the bathroom plumbing. So the primary means of First Amendment expression that is available to say this. That's why they practice the two-man poop over the side technique, which is an actual thing they have to do whenever the bathrooms don't work. Which it's so funny reading about these ships and being like,

Starting point is 00:31:00 This is shit from my like my like slum lord fucking apartments in Chicago. Except for the DOD is your slum lord. Yeah, like they're happening aboard like the most like the most advanced and expensive military in human history. Oh God. Where do we even want to start with with the USS Abraham Lincoln? I mean, I guess I guess I guess we could start with the fact that they have been hanging nets over the side of. of the aircraft carrier because sailors keep trying

Starting point is 00:31:34 to jump off to kill themselves a thing that I last saw with like Foxcon factories in Shenzhen. Yeah, that's the last time I heard that as well. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:31:44 But at least in Shenzhen, to my knowledge, nobody is shitting into the nets, which appears to be from what Robert has said. You know, the shitting would be incidental. We have covered on this show before.

Starting point is 00:31:56 I think it was, was it Temu? I think was the, one where their Chinese branch had like timers over the toilets to show how long you've been in there for. Now you say that. I would not, would not rule that out in Shenzhen as well.

Starting point is 00:32:10 Good, good, good. Yeah, but this ship has not been getting resupplied. It has been out for significantly longer than the original plan duration. The sailors are just kind of trapped on board. Sailors who have, you know, attempted to commit suicide

Starting point is 00:32:26 because they've been stuck on this fucking ship are getting like their careers destroyed because of this. Oh, wow. It's just a nightmare. And this is running into one of the, what I guess is turning into one of the themes of this week's episode, which is that there are a whole bunch of elements of the U.S. Navy and also of the world economy where them functioning correctly

Starting point is 00:32:50 are based on the U.S. not fighting a forever war on Iran and are based on the assumption that eventually this is going to end. Yeah. And it's just not. And so the ship is also just physically breaking down. Well, yeah, they're running low on all of the, like, necessities. And part of that is because of the success of Iran's attacks on bases, like U.S. bases overseas and U.S. bases on, like, foreign countries.

Starting point is 00:33:14 There was an article that came out just within the last couple of days on August 14th in the New York Times by John Ismay. That traced a lot of the supply issues that the Abraham Lincoln's been having for its entire. deployment to like right after the first day of the war when Iran launched a massive attack on a U.S. Navy base in Bahrain, which destroyed a massive logistics hub that the Navy has relied on basically the entirety of the global war on terror up to the present moment. And that's what's forced them to switch over to using Diego Garcia as a supply hub. If you remember Kier Starrmer over in the UK initially was like, no, you guys can't use Diego Garcia as a, as like the supply hub for your legal war. And then immediately changed his mind when he got threatened

Starting point is 00:33:57 a little bit. Yeah. Our brave as who are in. Good stuff. Good stuff. Yeah. I think like, I mean, it's so obvious, right, that Iran, a country which, like, the U.S. has been saber rattling out for decades, would very obviously have a plan of what to do

Starting point is 00:34:13 in the event that the United States struck it and they executed their plan. Yeah. Trump, for his part, has repeatedly stated that the length of the deployment of the Lincoln and the Ford before it are not big deals. when he was asked earlier this week if carrier deployments were too long he responded, no, no, no, not nearly long enough. See, he's really going to get into it

Starting point is 00:34:34 with Lindsey Graham's sister over this one. No, he's also, she's just been very personally meddling with and fucking with a bunch of Navy stuff. He sure has been. There's a whole kind of side drama to this story where Trump has ordered the Navy to go back to using steam catapults to like launch aircraft off of the deck of the ship,

Starting point is 00:34:52 which is like a significantly worse thing. than the electromagnetic systems that the Navy has been using, but Trump, like, heard that some pilot liked them a long time ago, and so he's been trying to force the entire Navy to do this since the first administration,

Starting point is 00:35:07 and he's finally succeeded, which means you're going to have to, like, refit, like, 40% of these ships, and they're probably going to have to design new ships because the ships are not designed around having these things, and they're just going to be worse because the emperor has decided that he likes steam catapults. Oh, yeah, no, no, no.

Starting point is 00:35:24 there's a piece in the Guardian just about a week ago. Trump orders Pentagon to redesign U.S. aircraft carriers to use steam catapults to launch jets. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Yeah, because he thought the digital systems were too complicated. I had missed this in the long list of, like, bullshit. Oh, it's insane military stuff he said recently. Yeah. Yeah, he signed an national security memorandum directing Pete Hegseth and the acting Navy secretary to make this change.

Starting point is 00:35:49 That's great. That's good. It's this astonishing combination of, like, he's made the, the, the, the cardinal mistake that all of these people make, which is that American military and economic supremacy is premised on having the world's most expensive army and not using it. Yeah. And now he's used it. And then also he's doing all of this weird emperor fucking with it stuff at the same time, which is...

Starting point is 00:36:14 There's amazing quotes from this. Apparently it started back in 2017 what he told Time Magazine about a conversation that he'd had with an unnamed Navy officer, quote. So I said, what's this? Sir, this is our digital catapult system. Trump went on. It sounded bad to me. Digital.

Starting point is 00:36:29 They have digital. What is digital? And it's very complicated. You have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out. And I said, and now they want to buy more aircraft carriers. I said, what system are you going to be? Sir, we're staying with digital. I said, no, you're not.

Starting point is 00:36:40 You're going to goddamn steam. The digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it's no good. He's also trying to get him to move the fucking control tower of the aircraft carriers into the middle of the ship, according to the Washington Post. This is beautiful stuff. I hope he gets his way. I hope he gets his way.

Starting point is 00:37:01 It'll protect the rest of the world from us. Yeah, the rest of the world would be better of all these ships who are not deployed right now. This is an, yeah, outstanding. Great stuff. Great, amazing shit. Oh, God.

Starting point is 00:37:12 Very normal. This is how a successful military is organized. Yeah. I should point out that, like, the latest statistics on people wounded in action now suggested they're about, 700 U.S. service people who've been wounded in the six-month operation. Allegedly, the Washington is coming in to replace the Lincoln.

Starting point is 00:37:33 Unclear what will happen to the destroyers and also unclear when this is actually going to happen. The destroyers have to come back so they can put a mast on them. Yeah. Because that looks more epic and a big fucking cannon, like a black powder cannon on the front. Yeah, the last I heard from Trump, he said that a replacement for the Lincoln is, quote, moving right now or very shortly, and it's being replaced with another very similar ship. So that's what we've got so far.

Starting point is 00:37:59 It is worth noting, just in terms of a general update on the situation in Iran, that the ceasefire that no one has really been holding to has come to an end or is in the process of coming to an end and does not look like it's going to be renewed for all of the good that that did everybody over the last 60 days or so. Yeah. The Trump administration has gone back and forth. forth up until earlier this week, he had been claiming that he was in, that the U.S. was in active talks with Iran, but he said earlier this Tuesday that the U.S. is not in and he talks with

Starting point is 00:38:31 Iran and has no plans to start new ones. This is around the same time that he started saying that the Strait of Hormuz is open and that the U.S. is going to take it and make it a new U.S. territory. This has just been something he released as a series of truth posts or truths, including one showing a map that circled the Strait of Hormuz with the word. New U.S. territory straight of Hormuz above and below it. So, again, hard to say what's going to happen here, other than that oil prices are continuing to rise.

Starting point is 00:39:04 The same day that he announced that there were no talks going on and that the ceasefire was not going to be extended, U.S. forces fired on a Panama flagged ship, and around the same time, Iran struck a ship as well, killing at least one sailor. Since the war began, 17 sailors have been killed in 65 attacks. Most of those have been the result of Iranian strikes, but three of those deaths have been caused by a U.S. Navy ship that struck a merchant ship in June. So sailors are getting killed all around. The USS Abraham Lincoln's probably getting rotated out.

Starting point is 00:39:38 The ceasefire's over, and I guess we're trying to take the straight. Although, I mean, there's no way to know what any of this actually means or what Trump's going to do. He could announce that they've got a new ceasefire tomorrow. Like, it would be silly to take any of this as a final word on anything. Yeah, let me pick up on that where Robert left off there. It does appear that in response to Trump continuing to just post insane stuff, Iran has been having talks with Oman, probably talking about, like, joint tolling the straight, right, which is something we've spoken about a lot on this podcast. Trump did interview with Trey Yinks. If you're not familiar with Trey Yinks, his job is to kind of be a credulous nodding head to broadcast shit that Donald Trump says, his chief foreign.

Starting point is 00:40:19 correspondent Fox. Now I asked the president about these parallel talks that are taking place between Iran and Oman about control of the Strait of Hormuz. And the president told Fox News, if Oman gets in the way, will bomb the S out of them. That is Donald Trump threatening to bomb the shit out of Oman. A fantastic U-turn in the United States policy. This is a wild thing for him to be saying, right? This is a country that obviously the U.S. has had previously good relations.

Starting point is 00:40:49 with. Yeah, this is like a CIA outpost, like, brand new country to do, to do Middle East War with. Yeah, exactly right. We're running out of countries. We're having to turn on our own. Trump has also claimed in the same interviews, Trey Yinks, that he has a back channel to the IRGC.

Starting point is 00:41:04 Interestingly, President Trump confirmed to Fox News that there is a back channel with the IRGC. These are the hardline officials inside of Iran and that the United States and officials in Washington are speaking directly with IRGC. officials in Iran? So yeah, there he's talking about the United States negotiate directly with the IIGC. I would assume that they have had back channels in the IIGC, right? That is something one would assume.

Starting point is 00:41:31 Yeah. This is very normal when you have two states of this size which are frequently kind of squaring off against each other. And generally, it is something that can be used to de-escalate conflict. Obviously, that ain't happening right now. It was later reported that these, and you don't have to be a brain genius to work out that these probably came through to Kurdistan,

Starting point is 00:41:49 region of Iraq, right? Southern Kurdistan. In related news, Iran then attempted a drone strike on Barzani. What? Yes. President of the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Yeah, they sent two drones to Barzani's residents, I believe. What the fuck? Yeah. Sorry, I missed this. Why was this not front page? What the hell? Yes, they sent two drones to the office of the Kurdistan region Prime Minister Mosul Barzani and the residents of the head of the Kurdistan region's security agency. The drones obviously did not cause any casualties. I think they were intercepted. This was reported by Axios, right, that this link between southern Kurdistan and the IRGC back channel was reported by Axios on the 16th. And then on the 17th, Iran attempted to drone strike

Starting point is 00:42:37 Marsaul Bazani, the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Yeah, they attempted to drone strike his office and the residents of the Kurdistan region security agency, both in the Abil province of Kurdistan and like this again is a single like I've reported extensively I think that Iran is bombing Southern Kurdistan and has been for some time but this is a hell of an escalation. Yeah, try to what's sad like, but Barzani is like the political figure in in this part of Kurdistan. Yeah. And like the Brazzani family has been, has been a political faction powerful enough that like a lot of politics revolves around whether you're not, you're like in their client networks for a long, long time. This is this is kind of like trying to, like,

Starting point is 00:43:18 I mean, he literally is like the Prime Minister of Rocky Kyrgyzhan. Like, this is like attempting to assassinate the Prime Minister. Yeah, yeah. It's a staggering escalation. Like, Barzani Zieted, I tweeted, X, that it was dangerous escalation and direct threat to the security and stability of the Kurdistan region. He's not wrong. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:43:35 When you combine this with the U.S. having a scheduled withdrawal from Iraq, right? Like, this is bad. And, like, it is very clear that Iraq is continuing and even escalating its policy of punishing the Kurds for, United States aggression, right? There's this perception that the Kurds and U.S. are like always aligned. As Robert said, Iran has continued to strike dassals and straight of Hormuz. What's interesting about this recent strike and the number of strikes that came in the days before it is that normally there has been a pattern by which the bombing relaxes. Iran strikes a vessel. The U.S. bombs Iran, things peter out, lower intensity. Iran strikes a vessel. The U.S. strikes a vessel. The U.

Starting point is 00:44:18 hits Iran, right? Like, yeah, yeah. The U.S. has not hit Iran yet in response to these most recent ones. And I think part of the reason that might be is something we've talked about before, that the United States is not capable now of doing what it did in February. Like, it has significantly diminished its stockpiles. Yeah, by an estimate of around 70% plus, depending on the munition in terms of, like, our long-range cruise missiles and our interceptors. Yeah, so just to de-jogging that for people, that's like attack and defense, right? It's your ability to hit Iran,

Starting point is 00:44:56 also your ability to stop Iranian things. It's all the stuff that lets us hit Iran without endangering the lives of U.S. airmen, and it's what allows us to defend our bases and all of the allied bases and increasingly fuel infrastructure in the region, right? And it's low enough that, in part, why they don't want to continue burning more, even though they have, like, a third or more left,

Starting point is 00:45:19 is that they have to keep a stockpile in case shit goes down with China or, you know, expands with Russia, right? Like, these are our primary weapons. With Iran, they're completely unnecessary. Yeah, or Amman. Yeah, or our new war with Amon. Yeah, if we were to theoretically get into any kind of anything approaching a near-peer conflict. We're not in a good spot right now. This would be our only weapons other than nukes.

Starting point is 00:45:45 Yeah. So I know we're going to come back to the US, like a defense procurement situation. But I do want to just point out that the president, I don't know if this is related to the fact that gas prices are still bonkers six months into this. But he has posted an air image of a trimmer version of himself ripping the keystone pipeline out of the ground with a banner reading buried by Biden in the background. Not clear if he understands how pipelines work. What? Yeah. Your guess is as good as mine.

Starting point is 00:46:15 that one. What? Like, it's, I mean, here, let me just drop the link, I guess. Sometimes I'll just scroll his true social page. It's wild up in there. That is not a task for the faint of heart. No, like this is one of the things I do for work, you know, that traumatizes me. I've put it in the chat, the Zoom chat.

Starting point is 00:46:34 We don't want our oil in the ground, in those pipes. We want it straight from the straight of Hormuz in barrels. Well, yeah. Right. Like, what is he thinking? What does he think? The Keystone Pipeline. I should have a note also has a plaque affixed to it that says Keystone Pipeline,

Starting point is 00:46:49 completely free, energy jobs, America first. No, and there. The buried by Biden is on a gravestone. The pipeline also has some handles. Trump's kind of in sort of a stable, wide stance there, pulling it out the ground. Like, it's got roots on it. I don't know what the fuck is going on here, but there are also some soldiers in the background, like underneath an American flag.

Starting point is 00:47:13 So, yeah, this is the guy. who just decided we were at war with Iran and now was killed a shit ton of people over it. Yeah, I guess now the response to the war with Iran and gas prices being up is more pipelines at home, which is sick. I should add, I guess, there is a continuing ecological disaster

Starting point is 00:47:30 in the Strait of Hormuz because people keep shooting boats, which are full of fuel. And Iran is having to clean up these oil spills. Well, there's also a further ecological disaster in that you have an enormous fleet of vessels that are just sitting around waiting and accumulating a huge number,

Starting point is 00:47:45 of different kind of like mollusks that you don't want to spread around the world that are definitely going to. And it's also getting stuff is getting sucked into like their water tanks and their, what do you call it, their ballast tanks and shit that's going to get shot squirted out somewhere else. Like there's a lot of potential problems. Yeah. There are some procedures for like dumping ballast and stuff. But yeah, this is all the problem is right, everything is delayed.

Starting point is 00:48:09 Every shipping company is losing money, hand over fist. Yeah. And they're going to want to get moving pretty fast. this if the straightforward moves ever opens again, and yeah, we will see more environmental damages. Like every war is an ecological disaster, but this one that isn't getting as much reporting on. But it's great that we're bringing that home with the Keystone pipelines, so we'll get a little piece of that too.

Starting point is 00:48:32 So I wanted to give an update on a story, because I talked about two weeks ago, something like that, about the General Dynamics Artillery Shell Factory in Mesquite, Texas that was meant to by now be producing somewhere between 20 and ideally 30,000. shells a month of specifically the kind that were being used most rapidly in Ukraine before Ukraine pivoted to using drones for a lot of style. I mean, they're still burning through 155s, but like that was, I mean, they incurred a shell debt of something like 3.6 million shells in the United States as a result of that. And so it's a massive issue to get these shells being produced because in any kind of modern war, we're going to be burning through a shitload of

Starting point is 00:49:10 them. We have 100 something years worth of heavy artillery in warfare to know that you never have enough shells. So this is a problem the U.S. has been trying to get its handle on for a while. And as I noted, this factory that was supposed to be producing like a third of the total of all the shells in the United States has not produced any so far. And a few days after I discussed that on E.D., Jesse Coburn at ProPublica published a beautiful investigation into that General Dynamics factory in Mesquite that opens with just a great lead. A robot was on fire again. And it's talking about the fact that all of this factory is like filled with, because it was supposed to be meant to be heavily automated,

Starting point is 00:49:51 which is why it was supposed to be able to keep up with such a high level of production. And it was automated using these robots that had like giant metal arms, clamps for hands. And because of the way they were designed, wound up soaked in oil constantly. And that oil would combust because they were moving steel blocks that had been heated to about 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit into and out of a machine that also would periodically belch flame at them. And the robots were not roofed

Starting point is 00:50:15 against this much flame. Per the ProPublica article, one blaze that summer, melted a robot's cables, putting it out of commission for a week. Now, the series of fires in the factory came just a few weeks

Starting point is 00:50:25 before Trump administration, defense officials, and executives for General Dynamics, the company that made the factory, toured and threw a gala opening event there to celebrate that it was supposed to be up and running by now. Exploding robots were not

Starting point is 00:50:38 the only method of uncontrollable failure that workers had documented at the factory by that point. For one thing, the robotic arms had a tendency to flail uncontrollably and destroy equipment. They also would periodically drop heavy loads at random. The most sensitive and expensive equipment in the

Starting point is 00:50:52 entire factory was a machine that was meant to stretch metal in order to make artillery shells. It cracked them nearly constantly. The factory was filled with smoke at all times and was usually over 100 degrees inside. Every description of the state-of-the-art arms factory sounds worse than the ones that were operating in World War I.

Starting point is 00:51:09 This is probably my favorite part of that article. Then there were the giant press machines, which required regular pounding with a sledgehammer to function properly to still watch the shaping of nearly every shell. We didn't really have any standardized practice,

Starting point is 00:51:22 said Quantel White, a former employee. It was just a bunch of guys taking turns going at the machine with a sledgehammer every night. This is Warhammer 40K shit. Warhammer 40K works a lot better than this. There would be a priest. He'd be reading from a Bible.

Starting point is 00:51:37 There'd be ungence and oil. My God. Well, there's lots of oil. I love this. Now, by last summer, which is when reports first started coming out about the difficulties the factory was having, by that point, General Dynamics had missed eight deadlines to get this thing up and running. Their factory still has yet to produce a single usable shell, despite $533 million in Pentagon funds going towards refurbishing old machines and ordering new ones from Turkey.

Starting point is 00:52:03 Even so, the Pentagon continues to sign contracts with General Dynamics. and two months ago, the company announced a new solution to all of their ill-fortune factories many issues. Can you guys guess what the magic bullet that finally is going to fix everything that this factory that doesn't work is supposed to be? AI. Yeah, it's AI. It's fucking AI.

Starting point is 00:52:21 Of course it's AI. Quote, a news release from General Dynamics and the new company, deterrence, was filled with techno-business jargon. AI-enabled capabilities and intelligence and connectivity would be added at Mesquite and other General Dynamics factories. The companies wrote, AI transforms production facilities into strategic assets, deterrence the CEO said on the release. We're building autonomous manufacturing systems that learned, adapt, and scale in real time. By the way, what that CEO said,

Starting point is 00:52:45 I'll guarantee it was written by Chad GPT. The whole AI transformed, that's, yeah, very clearly. Yeah. These pronouncements have baffled former mesquite workers. What are they talking about? There's nothing to learn or adapt or scale once said, it's all broken. It's a good thing. It must have been fun writing this. It's really fun because no one who actually works at the factory and no U.S. military officials who are allowed to speak their minds openly, have had anything positive to say about General Dynamics and how they've proceeded with this project. The article quotes a former official in an army office supervising the factory is saying, it's an absolute disaster. The Army should have gone after recovering money

Starting point is 00:53:21 from General Dynamics. Yeah, no, I mean, they should have. Yeah, but that gets the central contradiction of the American War machine, which is that the point of it is to give money to defense contractors. You're not actually supposed to have to use the stuff. Like, I should say here, General Dynamics is one of the companies most responsible for inventing that state of affairs. This is that we're going to talk about these folks because they keep coming up when you look into like defense-related golduggery and fuckery and like U.S. history. I feel like now is probably is a good time to talk a little bit about their history. I'm going to give a brief overview of these guys because we're in an illegal war that's currently shuffling a fortune to defense contractors and we should probably talk about one of the most corrupt members of that family. The General Dynamics Corporation was founded at the tail end of the 19th century.

Starting point is 00:54:06 by Isaac Leopold Rice, a businessman and a musicologist who was born in Bavaria and raised in Milwaukee. He made his fortune doing a mix of railroad law and publishing sheet music and eventually got into the electric battery and vehicle business. This ended with him involved in submarines because early Navy subs ran on electric power when submerged. In 1899, he purchased the Holland Torpedo Boat Company and named it the Electric Boat Company. The electric boat company remained a submarine manufacturer after his death in 1914, providing subs for not just the U.S. government, but the Peruvian government, and gradually spinning up to produce other kinds of boats, including PT boats for the U.S. and Canadian militaries.

Starting point is 00:54:45 After World War II, it purchased Conver, which made anti-aircraft missiles, jet fighters, and the Atlas rockets used in the first U.S. crude orbital flight. This new company, a mix of the electric boat company and Conver, became General Dynamics. In more recent decades, General Dynamics became the manufacturers of the the feared Tomahawk cruise missile, arguably the most iconic ballistic missile in the entire U.S. arsenal. It also kept making subs, including the famous Los Angeles class. And as time went on, the company got really, really good at corruptly fucking U.S. taxpayers out of their money. Investigative reporting first started shining a light on constant cost overruns and blown

Starting point is 00:55:21 budgets in a series of GD defense contracts, per a 1985 time article by Charles Alexander. A federal grand jury first started investigating the company's cost overruns on submarines in 1979, but dropped the probe in 1981 for lack of enough evidence of fraud. Now the Justice Department has reopened the case in light of new information from P. Takas Veliatis, who in 1977 became head of electric boat, the company's sub-building division in Groton, Connecticut. His word is hardly unimpeachable.

Starting point is 00:55:46 In 1983, he fled to his native Greece to avoid being tried on charges of perjuring himself before a grand jury and taking 1.3 million in kickbacks from a subcontractor. Veliatis has produced tapes in company documents that he claims reveal a pattern of waste, corruption, and cover-up at General Dynamics. In a tape of one talk he had with Lewis, the chairman, for example, the chairman suggests that

Starting point is 00:56:04 Valiatis reassured James Ashton, a discontented electric boat executive, that he is still in the running for a promotion in order to keep him from popping off about shoddy work at the yard. So we have all of these tapes from this equally shady dude Valiadus because nobody who's in a high position in the defense contracting industry is not constantly committing crimes. And the tapes that he provided showed several things that are very familiar to the Mesquite factory case. For one thing, Valiadis provided a 1977 tape of the company. executive vice president Gordon McDonald, telling him that the company had issued an impossible

Starting point is 00:56:35 delivery timetable for the first Trident submarine because the CEO of General Dynamics wanted to, quote, keep our stock price from sliding. In other words, every time that the stock price slide, you can announce, oh, we're about to release the Trident and you get a quick boost in the stock price. Yeah, yeah. As a result of this kind of fuckery, the sub was not produced until two years after this date. Now, that's pretty bad. But the incident that actually sparked the first known criminal investigation of a defense contractor came in 1983 when General Dynamics

Starting point is 00:57:02 tried to charge the Air Force $9,600 for a four-inch long wrench. And this revealed a bunch of, if you've ever heard stories of like $6,000 wrenches and yada yada, you know, $4,000 plungers, it's general dynamics that people are talking about.

Starting point is 00:57:18 That was a real series of like news articles and eventually congressional investigations into the fact that they were charging absurd amounts of money for bullshit. Now, part of the reason for this was that like Navy and Air Force procurement was completely fucked in this point, and they just did not keep a backlog of, like, the material they needed to repair their shit on hand. But a lot of it was just massive,

Starting point is 00:57:38 rampant corruption with companies like General Dynamics in particular. Now, charges like this inspired further investigations into how GD functioned, and this eventually led to a congressional inquiry. It came out that in 1982, General of Dynamics had asked the Pentagon to pay almost $19 million in overhead costs for their company HQ. These were not what you'd call unavoidable expenses. Quote, $491,840 for Lewis's, that's the chairman's personal flights on corporate jets, often to and from his farm in Albany. $538,781 for contributions in memberships, including country club fees for top executives, and $155 for the kindling of a dog named Fursten, while its owner, a General Dynamics executive, attended a company conference at a South Carolina resort.

Starting point is 00:58:22 At last week's hearing, Congressman Dingell quizzed Lewis about a $571 charge for a king-size-sert-perfect sleeper mattress and a box spring set, which was delivered to the Clayton Inn in suburban St. Louis. It was for Mr. Valiatus, said Lewis, who explained that the executive said he needed the bed for times he came to St. Louis for meetings. added Gordon MacDonald, a general dynamics executive vice president, Mr. Valiatus, being a very large man, complained so much to the secretary of the company that he got tired of hearing it and bought the bed. Veliatis denied that the bed was for him.

Starting point is 00:58:51 So just very funny stories consistently. When you look into like 80s defense contractor, procured. issues, specifically around general dynamics. Now, I know what you're wondering, how did they get away with such corruption? Well, that $19 million, the U.S. government spent on complete bullshit fees, was matched with $1.24 million in a general dynamics account meant purely to entertain Pentagon officials. In 1977, they gave a $1,125 diamond earring set to the wife of Admiral Hyman Rickover, head of the nuclear propulsion program. Now, to be fair to Hyman, the real reason they were trying to butter him up is that he had repeatedly complained about the company, but this is the kind

Starting point is 00:59:32 of shit that they have been doing forever. Like, the fact that they have now spent half a billion dollars of taxpayer money on a factory that does not work is nothing new to General Dynamics. And I'm sure they've now promised to put another $200 million into the factory and that it'll be producing 20,000 shells a month at least within a year. I'm sure at some point they'll get it working if they keep shoveling a bunch of money into it, but make no mistake, it will not be General Dynamics money. It will be money one way or the other that U.S. taxpayers have given them that winds up eventually maybe making this factory produce a single shell.

Starting point is 01:00:04 Anyway, General Dynamics. Let's go on one more head break and then talk about bonds in Florida, I guess. Yeah. Wild. Our radio experience with Cameron Wickham. Live at the Rhyman. I see how I'll be to say I'm gay. You and a pal with flights and.

Starting point is 01:00:30 two nights in Nashville. To see Cameron Whitcomb at the legendary Ryman Auditorium. Plus a thousand dollar spending cash. Just listen to Pure Country for 10 minutes a day on the free IHard radio app and you're in to win. Cameron Wilcombe. Stream the new single, Kingdom of Fear. Available now.

Starting point is 01:00:55 When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived and I've spent my life exploring how other people. survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the survivor files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up. Don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.

Starting point is 01:01:27 I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started to Remaing. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's.

Starting point is 01:02:04 That's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. So I'm obsessed. From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments,

Starting point is 01:02:28 nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside. compelling characters, and that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro Society on the Iheart Radio app,

Starting point is 01:02:49 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. Hey, this is Hayes, Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook on the Big Money Players Network. Our show is extremely accessible to first-time listeners. Each week we talk to someone in show business, aka the biz, and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us.

Starting point is 01:03:11 Everyone has a good time and no one gets mad at their publicists for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, not that great. Actually, can you help me shape this? How about we flip it on his head, right? How about we flip this around? What is the surprise woman who actually you think is the straight man is actually the one who's acting weird?

Starting point is 01:03:33 Scott, this entire time, you've been expecting Adam Sandler to come to visit the show. I would never expect, I would never set expectations for something like that to happen. If the universe allows for something like that to happen, I'm open to it. I'm always going to accept. You know, Danny McBride, fine. Yeah, it's all this fragile masculinity exuding. I could smell it walking on the hallway, to be honest with you. I was like, is that weed?

Starting point is 01:04:06 Nope. It's fragile masculinity. Ben Stiller, no. Because a lot of times, out of context, people don't get it or even know what a circle is. You know what I mean? They're like, oh, what's the state? Everyone's so dumb. And fake.

Starting point is 01:04:20 Right, fake and also not interested. Or just like, oh, I've got my life. I don't care about your life. And a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Oh, and by the way, Will Ferrell told us personally he loves the show. show and he wants to be a guest on every episode, but he's just so busy. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 01:04:42 Speaking of unbelievably corrupt bullshit that is directly tied to the American War efforts in Iran, okay, so bonds are not normally an extremely exciting topic. So let's start off with the glaring part, which is that early this week, the yields on U.S. Treasury bonds, specifically 30-year T-notes. hit highs not seen since 2007 several weeks before the collapse of the American stock markets it's also noted by several analysts that the other times

Starting point is 01:05:20 that we've seen peaks like this were like 1939 right before that and I think there was another one of these I forgot the other economic collapse but there was a giant one of these right before it like the 1920 1931?

Starting point is 01:05:39 Is that like Black Fright? Yeah, there's one more. I think it might have been the dot-com bubble or something. I forget which other. But experts suggest that bond markets only do this when they are in extreme distress. So what does this actually mean?

Starting point is 01:05:55 Bonds are a thing that in this case you can get from the government and you pay the government money and the government promises you to pay back more money later and the yield is like how much more money they're giving you back. Right. High yields on bonds means, you know, an increase of the cost of borrowing. And high yields on U.S. government bonds is a sign of growing distrust in a long run economic feature of the U.S. Usually these bonds pay like absolute shit, but the reason they pay like shit is that it's the U.S. government you're guaranteed to get your money back. So they're supposed to be an extremely safe asset, right? And when these rates are up, it's because everyone is, you know, looking at something happening in the market and something happening structurally in the U.S. economy and panic.

Starting point is 01:06:36 Now, one of those things is they're looking at the U.S. debt in panicking and, you know, whether or not that's like a great way to evaluate how panicky they have to be is an open question. This has been one of the lines that's been coming out is that they're looking at, you know, the U.S. date increasing faster than expected. The main thing, however, that has been setting off this particular wave of like mass selling of bonds is the collapse of that 60-day peace deal that, Robert was talking about earlier, which, you know, I don't think anyone who was actually following the conflict really thought that was going to go anywhere. But the thing that was important about it strategically from the American side was that this was the thing that investors and financial analysts were hanging their hat on. And, you know, these people had convinced themselves that this process was actually going to result in the end of the war and that quickly ending the war was going to, you know, restore economic growth, et cetera, et cetera, and save off inflation. and this was sort of the week, as, as I mentioned earlier, the Brent Crude Index hit $90 a barrel and the peace talks formally completely collapsed, that there was a growing realization that this war is not going to end.

Starting point is 01:07:48 The economic conditions caused by the war not ending are going to continue, which means inflation is going to increase and it's going to have sort of far-reaching and long-lasting economic impacts. Now, this is a global squeeze that's been hitting most developed countries. Japan has also been very badly hit by these sort of shocks in bond yields. Now, what's interesting reading analysis of it is that you're actually starting to see a lot of firms. J.P. Morgan is a good example of this. What J.P. Morgan for, like, basically since the war has started, J.P. Morgan's analysis has been the war is going to end, and when the war ends, things will go back to normal, so we're just going to keep projecting things are going to be fine. they are finally pointing out the things that we've been saying,

Starting point is 01:08:32 which is that, yeah, no, the war is not ending and it's wreaking havoc on global supply chains. Now, the other thing that's been causing this run-up, there's two sides of this back-to-back that seem very conflicting, which is, on the one hand, there is growing fear over the fact that the AI bubble looks like it's going to collapse, right? And we've seen this with sort of like the Koseby shock I was talking about earlier, where, you know,

Starting point is 01:08:58 like stock market like 10, 5% of the stock markets, Korean stock market's value keeps disappearing overnight and then reappearing the next day. But then, and this is sort of fascinating, one of the other things that's been happening is that there has been an unbelievable proliferation of bonds issued by AI companies because these AI companies are having to go to the finance markets to like fund all of their weird data center bullshit. And this has gotten a bunch of investors to pull their money out of very safe. U.S. bonds and put them into

Starting point is 01:09:31 hideously unsafe AI bonds. A thing which I don't even this obviously is going to go catastrophically wrong. I don't have a sophisticated analysis for why like taking the money out of the U.S. government and putting it into this AI company is going to create a transcendent god is a terrible idea.

Starting point is 01:09:54 And what we've kind of seen in the past couple of days as these bond yields have risen as from a combination of these factors is it looks like the beginning of the moment where Wiley Coyote looks down and realizes that he's off the cliff. Now, on Wednesday, the Treasury began a massive buyback of Treasury bonds. I'm going to quote from CNBC here. Under the accelerated buyback, Treasury, led by Secretary Scott Bessent, will target the 10 to 20-year and 20-to-30-year portion of the market, which has seen a buyer's strike. since late June, the government will at least double the maximum size of its buyback operations

Starting point is 01:10:33 from $2 billion to, quote, at least $4 billion, according to an announcement from the department. Now, in terms of the actual size of this buyback, which is like not a great sign when the government is buying back its own debt in an attempt to stabilize the market. But that's not, you know, in terms of the size of like the U.S. market, that's really a drop in the bucket. But it does, seem to have temporarily sort of stabilized the markets on the belief that if things continue to go wrong, the government will step in. However, the actual underlying economic metrics remain bad for everything in the economy that isn't AI. And this is one of the things that traditionally heralds a fall on economic collapse. Now, it's also worth noting that, you know,

Starting point is 01:11:23 Cosby, for example, keeps hitting its circuit breaker. That's something that also traditionally has been like the prelude to collapse and it hasn't yet. So, you know, we're in it, we're in a deeply weird and semi-imprescended time in the markets and in sort of the behavior of these investors and financial actors, but it's not good. It's my conclusion on the state of the U.S. bond market and the global economy at large. Let's close with elections. And I want to start with a quick correction for one or two of my last election segments.

Starting point is 01:12:03 I keep calling Governor Tim Walls, Mike Walls, and I don't know why this keeps happening. I picture his face in my mind, and it just like auto-corrects to Mike. I've caught this a few times and fixed it before the episode goes out, but this past

Starting point is 01:12:18 time, I did not. Now, slightly more importantly, I also accidentally referred to Mike Rogers in Michigan as the incumbent, and that is not true. This Senate race is open and Rogers is a former congressman. These are, you know, smaller details and stories that are focused more on how DSA and left-wing candidates are running their campaigns, but these types of details are still important to get right, and I regret the error.

Starting point is 01:12:43 Let's turn to Florida, where I'm sad to say, the resistance has been defeated. Now, Garrison, are you talking about Florida the state or Flo Rida, the musical sensation? No. You missed a good chance to pivot with talking of regret and then... I thought about doing that, but like, no, I would rather not because... I'm just saying. I still think there's hope for Florida. That's a bold take.

Starting point is 01:13:06 But American hero, Alexander Vindman, will not be that hope. You'll be issuing another correction for that bad boy, let me tell you. I'm talking in the grads. Okay, I'm talking about in the cosmic sense, not in the short term. Yeah, okay, I agree with you. I have hope for the Floridians. The resistance has been defeated. hero Alexander Vindman, the whistleblower who testified in Trump's first impeachment hearings,

Starting point is 01:13:32 has lost the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in an upset to Angie Nixon, a state representative from Jacksonville and a Democratic socialist. Nixon won by 150,000 votes. Oh, wow. It's 56.1% to Vindman's 43.9. And this is a big upset because Nixon was out fundraised 16 to 1. She had just under a million dollars while Venman raked in over 16 million. And I think like a resist lib hero losing a primary to a socialist in Florida is astounding. Yeah. Now, Nixon, Nixon's a union organizer who's running on Medicare for All, taxing billionaires for your child care, universal jobs program, and opposition to Israel.

Starting point is 01:14:22 She was endorsed by Alon Omar, Rashida Talib, Anita Turner, Cory Bush, and Miss Rachel, who's listed in the national leaders section of the Norton's website. Good for her. Our only truly good national leader. No complains with her. Miss Rachel has shown more spine than most of Congress in the last few years. Nixon was also endorsed by Working Families Party, local unions, JVP, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Track A-Pack. She joined DSA this past June, but did not pursue an endorsement.

Starting point is 01:14:56 so is a relative newcomer to DSA as an organization. I do want to play this clip from her back in November, 23, a month into Israel's attacks on Gaza. We are at 10,000 dead Palestinians. How many will be enough? Also. One of the lawmakers Republican, Michelle Salzman, just shouted out to all of them in the hearing.

Starting point is 01:15:22 I'll continue the clip. Jesus. One of my colleagues just said all of them. Wow. One of my colleagues said all of them. One of my colleagues also stated that this is going to dry up their fundraising if we vote on this resolution. I also want that, like that's what we've become in this state. That's what we've become in this state where we don't care about innocent babies that don't even get the opportunity to blow out their first birthday. candle. So this was a ceasefire resolution, just a month into the war. Do you have the sense of like turnout versus like electoral stuff?

Starting point is 01:16:07 Like I'm wondering, is this a like people who turn out for primaries tend to be like a more politically engaged and people who turn out for generals? Or is this a like display? Because she clearly has like just looking at that speech, she has a genuine commitment to what she's talking about. And I think people. Yes. Appreciate that more than like you said, a resist lib hero. Definitely. And I mean, certainly I think in generals can attract a bigger, a bigger portion of the electorate. But there's a few things going on that created this pretty big difference in votes, like over 150,000.

Starting point is 01:16:41 Yeah, it's big. And like in my mind, this relates to two of the elections last week in Minnesota and Wisconsin. The My Pillow primary, where Trump endorsed Michael Endell lost the Republican governatorial primary to the state speaker of a house. And like this, this is kind of like the idea that a national political celebrity can just like waltz into your state and gobble up a nomination. Yeah. Both Lindel and Alexander Vindman, you know, come from like the Trump world, albeit on opposite sides, but it's still part of like, like, you know, the Trumpian political circuit. Yeah. And voters rejected both of them in favor of proven state lawmakers, you know, one, you know, a more like regular, you know, state level Republican

Starting point is 01:17:26 and Angie Nixon, who's like a community organizer with like deep connections to a lot of different communities in the state. And specifically the working class black community. Now, the other interesting thing that this race kind of continues

Starting point is 01:17:40 the conversation on relates to Francesco Hong's loss last week. As I discussed last week, Hong did not pay for any TV ads. And Nixon only spent 60,000 on ads with zero spent on broadcast or cable. Meanwhile, Vindman spent 2.2 million on ads. That's 36 times as much as Nixon.

Starting point is 01:18:01 And Nixon still won. Dumping money off the cliff. That's because she actually ran a real campaign on the ground. And Vindman did not. He ran an incredibly lazy campaign. He really thought he could just like coast to the nomination based on his resist lib credentials.

Starting point is 01:18:19 And while that maybe helped in Palm Beach, it did not help him in the rest of the state where just he got absolutely trounced by Nixon. Like if you look at like the county map, it's like, whoa. Yeah. So come November, Nixon will face the incumbent senator Ashley Moody, the former state AG who Ronda Santas appointed to fill Marco Rubio's Senate seat after he was tapped for Secretary of State.

Starting point is 01:18:47 And like, Rubio has had a strong hole in that seat for decades. So the hope for Florida Democrats is that Ashley Moody won't command as much loyalty at the ballot box as Rubio does or as Rubio did. And maybe like a critical 1% of the Republican vote thinks that she's another Nixon. Yes. Hopefully.

Starting point is 01:19:10 You never know. But like this could very likely be a much harder uphill battle than even, you know, like the Texas Senate race with Taylor Rico. In this recent election, there were around 300,000 fewer votes in the Democratic primary than the GOP primary. Like, this is going to be a very difficult race to win. Yeah. I don't want to, you know, understate how impressive this primary win, like, really is. And, like, I don't think anyone will false Nixon or her politics if she loses in the general.

Starting point is 01:19:42 I mean, someone will. Someone will write a shitty, like, is this the end of the left op-ed, right? They always do. It doesn't matter. They will try. A lot of centrist did not expect Vinman to win if he wins the primary. It's a Senate seat in Florida. It's like harder with that.

Starting point is 01:19:58 I'm reflecting on the fact that like people have taken Hong's result and been like, oh, the progressive left is dead. And then they're still treating Tala RICO like he's like the presumptive victor. And on El-Sayette. But like, yeah, I mean, I think one thing we probably should take from Hong's election is that television ads cannot be disposed of so quickly yet. At the general... Yeah.

Starting point is 01:20:24 I mean, period. I think that's one of the things that definitely hurt her campaign is that they made a big choice not to do TV ads. Yeah. I wouldn't want to write everything down to that, but yeah. That was certainly a factor in Wisconsin. Nixon's ground game in Florida was able to overcome the massive deficit in spending and just not really many funds for TV ads.

Starting point is 01:20:48 And I think, yeah, because this is a Florida Senate seat that Vindman was not expected to win in the general, and he was the presumptive nominee. But because this race will be so hard to win, it'll be harder to, like, blame her or her politics specifically for losing. I think this race can also be a big opportunity to push the Overton window in Florida. And come November, it will be really interesting to see what the results of this election are. Because if this is a super close race, even if she still loses, hopefully she will not lose. but if this race even gets to be where it's like more competitive than what it's been for the past like 10, 15 years, I think that could be an interesting look at how much Trump is hurting Republicans in elections, like exactly how upset parts of his base are at the current state of

Starting point is 01:21:35 things and to what degree that affects turnout. But also on the other hand, if Nixon and her politics are able to form a new coalition and attract voters that might not usually vote for Democrats, might not usually vote for socialists, or might not vote at all. Because even just in this primary, her core voter base was very different than what's currently considered to be DSA's most reliable voters. Nixon did best in districts that were majority non-college educated, and that's usually the reverse for a lot of DSA-type candidates in other states. So she was getting out a slightly different voter base than what El Saeed was getting out, than what DSA candidates in New York have been getting out, especially in the primaries. So I think

Starting point is 01:22:23 she is someone to watch and could alter what's seen as politically possible in Florida. Yeah, I want to say briefly also that there is a chance that, you know, with how badly the Republicans are doing on generic ballots, I mean, like the good projections right now have them down seven points on just like a generic Democrat versus Republican ballot. Like there is a small chance that we get a 2008 style blowout and she wins, which it's not impossible in a way that it usually is. It would be historic, right? It would, yeah, no, it's possible. It's just extremely unlikely, but like, I don't think it's unlikely, but it would be like historic. It's more likely than any of the times people have said that Democrats are going to take Texas is what I'll say about this? Like, it's like actually technically possible. So while this is a big win for the left. statewide. DSA candidates did not fare as well in the recently redistricted U.S. House races in Florida. Let's briefly talk about my boy Oliver Larkin. Larkin was running for House District 25. That's Miami-Dod, Palm Beach, and Broward County. Not exactly the friendliest waters for an anti-Israel socialist. Larkin got 16,284 votes, while the incumbent House rep Jared Moskowitz

Starting point is 01:23:39 won with 28,294 votes. Larkin is DSA endorsed, and he ran a solid campaign with an impressive ground game over 500 volunteers, 40,000 doors knocked, 750,000 calls. He campaigned with Angie Nixon. Also, this past month, Larkin has gone, and this is a technical term, a beast mode in TV news interviews.

Starting point is 01:24:05 Here's Larkin getting some pushback from a Fox News anchor on abolishing and prosecuting ICE. What is the number that is fine with you? Is there a benchmark? Is it fine? How many children can be raped and it's fine? If you're in relation to the immigration community?

Starting point is 01:24:24 If we're going to talk about children being raped, then we need to hold this pedophile president, Donald Trump, accountable, and all those that have been implicated by the Epstein files that the Department of Justice is still not leaking. And they've sent APEC after Thomas Massey for having the temerity to hold accountable, the pedophiles that are in control of our government.

Starting point is 01:24:43 Thank you. We appreciate your time, very much. So beyond like attention grabbing moments like that, he's also very clearly articulated the details of his platform and defended it and DSA against bad faith attacks. He's talked about the need for a new path to citizenship and just how cost prohibitive it is for immigrants to maintain a documented status. I know Trump has made things even harder.

Starting point is 01:25:08 on purpose to manufacture a political crisis. On Fox, he argued very eloquently against providing Israel with so-called defensive weapons, which he rejected as a categorical term. And he's gone toe-to-toe with Sean, aka Scott Hannity, on tax reform. Earlier this week on Local 10 this week in Florida, host Glennna Milberg abruptly cut off her interview with Larkin after he said that Israel has committed a genocide, which she claimed was quote-unquote,

Starting point is 01:25:38 actually incorrect. Now, also, late last week, Laura Lumer and Democrat State Representative Michael Gottlieb tried to shut down a get-out-the-vote rally for Larkin, Angie Nixon, and another DSA candidate, Elijah Manley, called Chomp the Oligarchy, with a, I want to say alligator or crocodile on front.

Starting point is 01:26:00 Don't at me. It's got to be an alligator, right? Thank you. Whatever the ones are in Florida. Yeah, it's an alligator. I don't think we have any. He's crocodiles. Democrat stage rep Michael Gottlieb said the rally was quote-unquote anti-Jew

Starting point is 01:26:15 and told his constituents to not support the venue hosting the event. Laura Lumer led an online harassment campaign targeting, quote, jihadist congresswoman Rashida Talib who was slated to speak at the rally. Lumer said that Talib was, quote, bringing her band of Jew haters to South Florida and said that Oliver Larkin, quote-unquote, hates Jewish people, and that he's trying to primary Jared Masowitz because he is Jewish. Now, the venue originally contracted for the rally canceled. They pulled out when the organizers wouldn't remove Rashida Talib as a speaker.

Starting point is 01:26:53 The rally was rescheduled for August 14th, and the organizers secured a second venue, which also canceled the night before the Chompth the oligarchy rally was supposed to take place. Next morning, the organizers found a third location, which was kept secret until hours before the rally, which was then also streamed live. And the owner of that third venue, which did ultimately host the event,

Starting point is 01:27:16 said that within hours, his phone was bombarded with like 600 messages from people protesting the rally. That kind of shows like the speed and scale of the harassment campaign led by Lumer and this state Democrat. So unfortunately, Larkin did not win. I'm interested to see what he does next.

Starting point is 01:27:35 I think it would be a mistake. if he just completely disappears. I think he's a good communicator, whether something like DSA National wants to tap into that or if he wants to work on some other campaigns, like Angie Nixon's campaign, which I think he's indicated he'll do,

Starting point is 01:27:49 but after the general, be very interested to see what he does in the future. And to close, like, at this point in like big cities, you know, in blue states, DSA or left socialist candidates can only really, like, run to win. Like, that's what you have to do now. There's no more of this like participation,

Starting point is 01:28:06 trophies. It's, it's, you have to, you have to win. But it's also really important for DSA to expand their electoral efforts into red states and districts that are not solid blue. And in that vein, I think what DSA is done in Florida, this primary, reminds me of what NYC DSA was doing in New York like a decade ago. Experimenting, building, organizing campaigns, running candidates, even if there is a huge uphill battle. Campaign volunteers get to, you know, get experience. And you find your base of sport that can be built on in future races. And in that sense, I think what they were able to pull off, including in some very hostile districts, was impressive now. We'll continue in some form with Angie Nixon running for Senate these next few months. Finally, finally, before we close, I should mention

Starting point is 01:28:53 James Fishback, enemy of the pod, the Grover candidate for governor, came in third place in the GOP gubernatorial primary. He was expected to come in second. So, Wow. That is interesting. But Jay Collins instead got second place with almost half a million votes. Oh, he got waxed. Byron Donald's, the expected winner, won with 810,000 votes. Fishback got just less than 200,000, which is way too many votes.

Starting point is 01:29:27 Yeah, that's why. He should not be getting that number of votes. That is not great. his campaign was very tailored to a type of voter and also like places online and locations in the state that the other candidates were not tailoring for. So I don't want to like overstate the sort of impact of Fishbeck's campaign

Starting point is 01:29:48 because there was really no one else kind of going after that block. Especially late, Fishback was pivoting very hard into like anti-Data center stuff very late into the race to try to, you know, attract more voters. Oh, really? So like he was doing stuff that, other Republicans just were not doing and, you know, using that sneako, Nick Fuentes, Asma Gold endorsement, which got him more than 150,000 votes, which is not great.

Starting point is 01:30:15 Yeah. But it is, it is just over 10% of the Republican vote. I think Garrison and I made an episode about fish, God knows how long ago. Yeah. I don't know what he'll, he might just try to get some sort of like right wing, far right pundit job in the future. We'll see. Yeah. I want to also convey Sophie's message of fuck Byron Donald's. This guy also sucks.

Starting point is 01:30:41 Yeah, yeah. It's a Republican primary. They're all going to be like, you're in a race with the worst, second, worst and third worst person you've ever seen. So yeah. But yeah, that is Florida. Yeah. That is our bi-annual Florida check-in.

Starting point is 01:31:01 If you are in Florida or elsewhere, you can email us using the email address, Coolzone Tips at Proton.me. You want it to be encrypted. You have to send it for another proton address. Yeah, have fun with that. It's still doing it with the fucking marketing emails, by the way. Like, every time I think I've blocked all, you bastards. Unbelievable.

Starting point is 01:31:23 Put a trans girl on your couch. We reported the news. We reported the news. It could happen here is a production. of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Coolzone Media, visit our website, Coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources where it could happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring

Starting point is 01:32:06 how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your for-you page are equally important to your personality,

Starting point is 01:32:36 welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island to serve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture, with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions. Yeah, I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. Listen to Pro Society on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you hear the new episode of The Hey Jonas Podcast?

Starting point is 01:33:06 We are at D23. So we'll see who stops by. The cast of Frozen Stopped by, Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, and Adina Menzel. I auditioned for Frozen. What? For Christoph. They said, okay, what are you going to be singing today? I said, I don't know.

Starting point is 01:33:18 That must have been why you didn't get it. Oh, you probably won't. Plus, John Stamos, Hayden Christensen from Star Wars and more. And I guess I can share that, uh, no way. Listen to the latest episode of Hey Jonas on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast, Hollywood Handbook.

Starting point is 01:33:41 Each week, we talk to someone in show business and try to help them with their careers and see what they have. to offer us. Everyone has a good time and no one gets mad at their publicists for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, Adam Scott, Danny McBride, Ben Stillard, and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.

It Could Happen Here - Executive Disorder: Iran Ceasefire Expires, Corrupt Military Contractors, Florida Election

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.