It Could Happen Here - Executive Disorder: White House Weekly #3

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

The gang discuss Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine, sanctions on the ICC, U.S. Treasury bonds and the ongoing war on wokeness. Sources: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/imposing-sanctions-on-the-international-criminal-court/https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/28/israeli-spy-chief-icc-prosecutor-war-crimes-inquiryhttps://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2p19l24g2o https://prospect.org/economy/2025-02-11-vought-restores-cfpb-procedure-that-sustains-mortgage-markets/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/02/10/politics/tariffs-steel-aluminum-trump https://www.reuters.com/markets/rates-bonds/bond-traders-waver-trump-questions-us-government-debt-figures-2025-02-10/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/trump-says-us-might-have-less-debt-than-thought-2025-02-09/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Why would you do that to me? Los Angeles, 2021. A friendly neighbor appears out of nowhere and promises to make all my dreams come true. Let's not forget that David Blum was a professional con artist, so you didn't stand a chance. But my dreams soon turned into a nightmare. I'm Caroline DeMore. Listen as I take down my scammer on Once Upon a Con on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. What would you do if mysterious drones appeared over your hometown? I

Started asking questions. What do you remember happening on that night of December 16th? It actually rotated around our house looking as if it was peering in each window of our home. I'm Gabe Linners from Imagine, iHeart Podcasts and Linners Entertainment. Listen to Obscura, Invasion of the Drones, wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Don't miss Real Life Amigos, Wilmer Valderrama and Freddy Rodriguez in their new podcast Dos Amigos where they have candid conversations with special guests about anything and everything. Join them in Wilmer's speak-easy for genuine moments, laughter and a toast to good times. Remember here in this commercial, are you between the ages of 14 and 16 years old?

Do you think you got it takes to be a TV personality and commercials and you know, Saturday morning shows. Listen to those amigos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey man, what are you into? I have the hookup. The hookup? The hookup for what?

I'm solving a mystery through sex and haven't made a private dick joke until now? Poppers? Why are there so many poppers? All roads lead to the hookup. You think it's causing people to turn aggro? I'm gonna rip your arms off and use them to- Yeah, that's a word for it. Listen to The Hookup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,

or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Coolzone Media. shows. Welcome to the Birds and the Bees, a podcast where James Stout makes animal noises and also we talk about what's going on in the White House this week. That's right. This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling of our world, and what this means for you. That is Robert talking previously.

James Stout is also here. I'm Garrison Davis. I'm also joined by Mia Wong. This episode, we're covering the week of February 6th to February 12th. Currently, Mia and I are inside New Orleans, Louisiana. And I am proud to report that fascism has been defeated. The Philadelphia Eagles have beat the KK Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl. Drake has been executed live on stage.

It's a great week. That would have been kinder than what actually happened to Drake. Look, as someone in my Blue Sky Mansion says, capitalism currently, the rule of capitalism seems inescapable, but the divine rule of the chiefs once seemed undefeatable too, and they were fucking humiliated. Oh my god, they lost so bad. They lost so badly.

I can't even say that they were beaten up and down the field because they'd even fucking get down the field. Obliterated. Generational beat down. And, yeah. When I arrived here in New Orleans on Monday, this is the Monday after the Super Bowl, so a complete nightmare.

But there was just an ocean of... An ocean of out-and-proud Eagles fans. And the funniest thing I saw is, when I was waiting for Mia to fly in, there was this, like, half- full clothing rack of leftover Chiefs merch that no one bought. And all of the Eagles merch were gone. I will see that Chiefs merch again somewhere in like a resource poor setting in a market in three years from now.

Yes. Yes. That's going to be the uniform of a future Civil War. It's Kansas City Chiefs jersey. I love it when it's you that's you. Literally, literally, Taylor Swift themed Kansas City Chiefs merch. Ah, yeah. Huge alpha capitalism. So funny. Oh, man.

Well, I guess, yeah, the big losers this week, Drake, and unfortunately, the nation of Ukraine and most of the rest of Western Europe. Yeah. I guess we'll start with the big news today, which is that Trump just had a really great call with Vladimir Putin, went super well. They're going to be meeting maybe in Saudi Arabia. There's been some floating of the fact that they might meet at the White House, which

I don't think it ends well for Putin if he visits the United States. I don't think it ends well for Putin if he visits the United, I don't think it ends well for anybody if he visits the United States. This country is too heavily armed and crazy right now, but they're doing this because Putin and Trump have evidently reached some sort of agreement about the end of the war in Ukraine. Zelensky was not really consulted on this.

He's made a couple of statements like, yep, we're hoping that this is what pushes everything towards peace, but it's very clear that what's happening is Ukraine is going to be made to give up a decent chunk of their territory. Now, they do have Russian territory still to bargain with somewhat, so it hopefully will not be a situation where Putin gets his entirely his own way, but that is kind of the what's happening. And the sea change that will accompany this is that new Secretary of Defense and alcoholic Pete Hegseth made a statement at a meeting in Brussels that the United States will no longer

be the guarantor of peace in Europe. Specifically, he stated that we're not going to tolerate an imbalanced relationship, which encourages dependency. But this was an announcement that the post-war sort of status quo is no longer something that we can rely on going forward. And that is a really significant admission from the SecDef. Yeah, it's sick. It's really cool. And it's gonna be great.

It's gonna be great if you're in the German arms industry, it's gonna be a banger year for you. You're gonna be making some left-footed tanks. I think we can all agree the future is bright for German weaponry. Once again, Germany will rise to its former glory. Huzzah. You say that as kind of a joke, but like genuinely the fact that we are doing a bunch of stuff that is leading to the full rearmament of the German army at the moment when the German fascist parties are like about to take power. Yeah.

When AfD is getting into power. Yeah, it's great. And the Luftwaffe hasn't even bothered to change its logo since the last time. So that's cool. Well, and what you bring up there Mia is probably worth discussing in concert with all of this, which is that AFD, AfD, the alternative for Deutschland, which is the new Nazi party in Germany is not the majoritarian Deutschland, which is the new Nazi party in Germany, is not the majoritarian party, but is taking enough seats that it is going to be included in the next

governing coalition, which is something that has not happened in the post-World War II era. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, every Western European nation basically came to a tacit agreement, referred to as the cordon sanitaire, which is when a right wing party starts to gain power, you do not coalition with them under any circumstances. Germany is actually like the last of the European countries to give up this idea. But the fact that the cordon sanitaire has fallen in Germany is real bad news.

Yeah. And the ADF, like it's worth mentioning, right? Like the ADF is so right wing and so Nazi that like the the Italian fascists who are in power right now will not work with them. Like, yeah, yeah. A bunch of stuff leaked a little while ago about these people at meetings openly talking about deporting every single Jew and every single immigrant from the country like these people are you know I mean

they're just Nazis and yeah so now we're fucking handing them the fucking justification to fucking rebuild their entire arms industry so yep mm-hmm great stuff it is dark I mean and again when we say the Italian fascists, this is literally Mussolini's party, as in his granddaughter is a member. So yeah, that's bad. I think that's probably most of what we can say about what's going on in Europe and with Ukraine right now, but it's not good. Yeah, it's not good.

It doesn't point to a great future. This is the multipolar world that Russia has wanted for some time, coming to fruition. And I didn't want to talk about, so there was a time when Vladimir Putin, some of you remember, was sanctioned by the International Criminal Court for his war crimes in Ukraine. The United States, however, the United States has not been a signatory to the Rome statute, so it wouldn't necessarily have enforced that arrest warrant anyway. But this week, Trump signed a little executive order titled, in block capitals, as we've come to expect, imposing sanctions on the International Criminal Court. And in doing so, he followed the example of Putin, who in 2023 put out arrest warrants for ICC prosecutors after

they put out a warrant for his arrest. Trump didn't cite the Putin example. He called the ICC's actions against Israel illegitimate and baseless. That's a quote. He specifically called the warrants against Yoav Galant and Benjamin Netanyahu baseless. He then went on to claim, quote, both nations are thriving democracies with militaries that strictly adhere to the laws of war. This is a thing that is not true. His order then goes on to outline what it calls protected persons. For people who aren't familiar, a United States person is distinguished from a United States citizen.

It also includes any permanent residents. It also includes US armed forces, government officials and contractors working on behalf of US armed forces. Contractors? Yeah. The people who could do no wrong. It then goes on to include US allies, including all of NATO and sometimes contractors working on their behalf.

It says that if the International Criminal Court investigates any of these people, Trump will declare a national emergency. It also imposes material sanctions and travel bans on both ICC prosecutors and people acting on their warrants as well as the families of those people. Interesting. Yeah, this is an unprecedented American politics. Sometimes it gets reported like it is. I want to throw back to what they called the Hague

Invasion Act. That wasn't its real name, but that was George Bush's. It authorized the president to use any means necessary to release United States people held by the ICC or at its request. Trump did also sanction ICC prosecutors and their families in 2020 for looking into US war crimes in Afghanistan. I think that happened in June of 2020. So you can be forgiven for having this set because some stuff was happening at that time. Oh, was it? Yeah, things were going down.

I'm sure the Philadelphia Eagles were, you know, beginning their rise to glory again. That was a big thing. Kansas City Chiefs were doing some racist shit, shockingly. Shockingly. I'm sure Taylor Swift was doing something too. But yeah, this is like, Israel has for nearly a decade been trying to hack, smear, surveil and threaten the court. In the show notes, I'll include a link to a Guardian article that came out last year about Israel's attacks and attempts to undermine the international criminal court. And just, if I've been talking about something and you're like attempts to undermine the international criminal court.

And just, if I've been talking about something and you're like, what is the international criminal court? Very briefly, it's based at the Hague. So if you've heard, you know, you will stand trial at the Hague. That's what they're talking about. It has its most immediate roots in the tribunal's investigative perpetrators of genocides in Rwanda and Yugoslavia. The US and Israel are not members of the court. They never signed the Rome statute. Russia withdrew in 2016. and Rwanda and Yugoslavia. The US and Israel are not members of the court.

They never signed the Rome Statute. Russia withdrew in 2016. Curious time to withdraw. Interesting, fascinating. Yeah, they just decided that it wasn't for them and off they went to do some war crimes. The ICC has been criticized probably recently for the vast majority of the people who have actually been prosecuted, the ICC being outside of the core neoliberal states. It's prosecuted a lot of people in Africa.

That doesn't mean that African people can't do war crimes in Africa. Of course they can, but it means that they're held accountable more often than when countries in the global north do war crimes, which they can do too. Okay, so Trump, just like everything else he does was condemned internationally for this, right, including by several NATO allies in so much as they really are NATO allies anymore, given everything we've just talked about. However, it's also worth noting that some of the countries like France who condemned Trump's sanctioning of ICC prosecutors also allowed someone with an

ICC warrant, i.e. Benjamin Netanyahu to transit their airspace. So, like, their full commitment to the ICC perhaps can be questioned. This is a problem with the ICC, right? It doesn't have an integral enforcement mechanism. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, Canada previously promised, quote-unquote, promised to arrest Netanyahu if they were ever able to. And like, yeah, I'm very curious to see how this is going to shake down with the US taking like an extremely firmer stance at least than we previously had. We already like, you know, quote unquote, like condemn Canada. But like, I'm interested to see Trump like be more interested in actually

pushing this further than it has been. Yeah, I guess we'll see how it goes. For people who are unfamiliar, I do want to like really quickly mention that like Palestine is a signatory and therefore war crimes that happen within Palestine are covered by the court, even if states such as Israel are not signatories, right? And therefore they're still under the court's jurisdiction. So that's how, in this case, this is happening.

Yep. It could also make the ICC's life very difficult in terms of using technology, right? The tech backend of everything the ICC does, trying to remove that from any United States involvement would be very hard. Well, let's go on a quick ad break and return to talk about, I don't know, the Treasury or something? Yeah, let's talk about the Treasury. All right. Cool. helicopters, hot air balloons, and birds. But what if there's something else, something much more ominous, that appears under the cover of night? Silent, unseen, watching.

They may be right above your car late one night as you cruise down the road, or look like mysterious lights hovering above your home. Drones. Or are they? We used the word drone because it was comfortable to other people. One minute it was there, one minute it wasn't. Oh that is beyond creepy. Do you feel like this drone was targeting you specifically? Yes, absolutely. Listen to Obscurum, Invasion of the Drones, on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Why would you do that to me when

I thought we were friends? We are friends. Los Angeles, 2021. A friendly neighbor appears out of nowhere and promises to make all my dreams come true. Let's not forget that David Blum was a professional con artist, so you didn't stand a chance. But my dreams soon turned into a nightmare. Blum generally targeted people with money. And I was not alone.

He took over 100 people people for over 15 million dollars. One of the victims was his own grandmother. I was married to David for almost 10 years. It was insane. I was barely functioning and I just had this realization that he will not stop until he kills me. Getting a con artist to pay for their crimes isn't easy. Charge David Blum! I'm Caroline DeMore. Listen as I take down my scammer on Once Upon a Con on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Don't miss Real Life Amigos, Wilmer Valderrama, and Freddy Rodriguez in their new podcast, Dos Amigos. Each episode is a party where the good friends get real with each other about life, careers, and everything about everything. And you're right there with them. When I discovered acting, I've just found my calling. But a lot of that was just because I wasn't, I wasn't good at anything else, you know?

Join the two amigos straight from Wilmer's Speak Easy for toasted good times. Don't be surprised if some special guests and good friends drop in. And always expect lively candid discussions, plenty of genuine moments, and lots of laughter. I remember hearing this commercial. Are you between the ages of 16? What is it? Oh man. Are you between the ages of 14 and 16 years old? What do you think it takes to be a TV personality and commercials and you know, Saturday morning shows. Listen to Dos Amigos as part of the MyCultura Podcast Network. Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here? How? Goes lower? I met Santi at a luau party in October. I'm Santi. Damien. Oh, it was bizarre. The guy just disappeared one day. Santi has been missing ever since.

The hookup. What is that? I'm solving a mystery through sex and haven't made a private dick joke until now? Like, no matter how hard I try, all roads lead to... The hookup. You think it's causing people to turn aggro? I'm gonna rip your arms off and use them to f-

Yeah, that's a word for it. This is such terrible representation, I'm so sorry. Poppers? These aren't just any poppers. Mama always used to say, God gave me gumption in place of a gag reflex. No. Not my psychiatrist didn't laugh at that one either. Listen to the hookup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

All right, we are back. Before we talk about the Treasury, I first want to do some breaking news, well, kind of breaking. So when I was flying to New Orleans, I was able to fly past the brand new Gulf of America. It was a life-changing experience. It really warmed my heart. And then luckily, a few days ago, Georgia representative Buddy Carter

announced legislation to empower Trump to enter into negotiations to quote unquote purchase or otherwise acquire Greenland and importantly to rename it Red, White and Blue Land. God. Let's get some quick reactions from the panel. Sorry, as a person born in Europe, the idea of Buddy Carter authorizing the formation of Red, White and Blue Land is simply just like the fact that this is not a parody is just too much for me.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, well, what it is, is purposefully ridiculous. It's a, it's a flex. It's a statement of the power that they have over their own party and the country. It is purposefully absurd and everyone is going to go along with it because the chief, the king supports it, right? Like, that's the point, in my opinion.

Yeah, it's the emperor's new clothes of invading places. Like, it doesn't matter. We can be as silly as we want. Genuinely interested in hearing from people in Greenland. Yes. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised because I would assume, and maybe this is still in the works, if Elon Musk can find a way to call this thing excellent is really my concern. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But no, I'm really interested in hearing from Greenlanders, genuinely. You can contact us at CoolZoneTips at proton.me, which is an encrypted email address that you can send emails to. Yeah, all right. Let's talk about Trump potentially crashing the entire world economy. He's taking more shots to just literally blow this all up. Yeah, okay. So let's talk about the treasuries thing and him potentially talking about not paying out our fucking treasury bonds. Okay, so many recent quotes from Reuters. So this is Trump.

We're even looking at treasuries Trump Trump said. There could be a problem. You've been reading about that with treasuries, and that could be an interesting problem. Now, treasuries again, are of course U.S. treasury bonds. We will get to what those are in a second, but I need to read the rest of this. Quote, it could be that a lot of those things don't count. In other words, that some of the stuff

that we're finding is very fraudulent. Therefore, maybe we have less debt than we thought. Now, that's a very scary thing to say. Yeah. Treasury bills are the primary underpinning of like economic stability in this country. T-bills are what large corporate institutions, when they have a lot of cash with like very wealthy people, it's where you park your money and it's where foreign governments park a lot of their money. And it's how our government gets a lot of its money because it's a good, reliable investment.

So saying, maybe we're going to declare some of these T-bill investments bullshit is very dangerous. Yeah, for the global economy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I want to read this next line because one of the things that's happening here, right, is that people just simply, and this has been a real problem for this entire administration, people simply do not believe that he means to do the thing he says he's going to do,

right? Quote, this is from Reuters again. It could be treasury payments, which is not linked to treasury bonds. Said for shop Bahani, investment chief for Asia BMP Powerboss Wealth Management. I would be very surprised if they ever stopped a payment of treasury bonds to a holder. It would be like shooting yourself in the foot, he said. Now, this is something where these institutional investors, like they still have not quite wrapped their head around the fact that no

He really will do this shit because he doesn't understand at all he thinks that American debt works the same way as like his own personal debt and No, it doesn't. I mean, it's worth saying some bits. So I mean just a very very basic shit about How national debt works right like all of our money? Literally every single dollar that is in circulation every dollar that is in a bank account That is literally government debt right like that's that's what money is Right and these Treasury bonds are as you're talking about earlier, right? This is like the investment asset for literally the entire world

There's trillions of dollars of these. Actually, Japan is the largest holder of treasury bonds. China's sort of been selling some of theirs, but they have a lot of them. Yeah, probably good to be doing that. Yeah, and it's also, you know, like, the fact that he's saying he's not going to pay these, yeah, like, this can start a massive crisis

in which I've been talking for a bit about, you know, every day we sort of get closer to credit rating agencies, like downgrading the quality of US debt, which is a real problem for us trying to like, get money from people. And, you know, even if you listen to what that what the sort of bond analysts is saying, right, he's like, well, it's fine, they'll just stop paying like US debt to other things, which is like, unbelievably unhinged would also in and of itself like the destroying the full faith and credit of the United States would absolutely just fucking annihilate the world economy and it's also another example of Trump not understanding how the Empire of his inherited works

because like one of the one of the ways the US funds his government is by getting its client states to buy like trillions of dollars of assets like this partially why if you look at who's who buys us assets like it's china and u.s tributary states like japan for example which is just purely in american military protectorate right it's it's an it's sort of incredible system for the u.s right you get a bunch of people and you you know you just you just sort of perpetually keep borrowing money from them and it's this thing where they don't understand who actually holds the power in the relationship, which is that the US having all this debt is the one with the power and is the

one that's getting everyone else's money for this sort of secure asset. So you know, who knows what's going to happen with this? If this actually starts happening, like, yeah, this is world rending economic crisis levels of stuff. Well, we'll see if he moves on it, he may simply forget about it or we're going to wake up one day and like the US's credits going to be downgraded to like junk bond status and Yeah, everything's gonna be chaos. So speaking of Trump trying to sort of like take shots at pillars of the global economy Starting in March. He's trying to implement a 25% tariff on all imported

steel and aluminum most of that's actually from Canada and Mexico I think in their minds is the thing about Chinese steel but yeah it's mostly from Canada and Mexico this is also a fucking shit show because the US manufacturing capacity that we still have and we still actually do have a decent amount of like a very high tech manufacturing capacity right relies on this stuff and this is going to make it more expensive it's bad it will do nothing to deal with the fact that it just doesn't produce steel anymore which is the product of that one day i'll do my structural chinese steel over capacity episode but you know it's it's the

product of like half a century of of the global manufacturing economy you know, it's the product of like half a century of the global manufacturing economy, you know, becoming zero sum and they're simply not being a large enough consumer markets for all of industrial goods, which means the production becomes increasingly, you know, it becomes impossible to expand production in one place without, you know, getting ready production in another place. And Trump thinks you can solve those with tariffs. You can't. Mostly it's just another like throw things at the economy shit

Now you know Trump is sort of throwing bombs at the economic system. What are the largest ones that he's thrown? is He just straight up stole 80 million dollars in FEMA funding that they had already paid out I just straight up stole it from like New York a New York City bank account They're like so we've been paid to the government in New York. Right. This happened earlier today. Right. This is literally, literally this is breaking news, breaking news on Wednesday. This is coming out Friday. The steps is being recorded on Wednesday.

Everything that you hear, if shit has happened in the last few days, that's from the future. We didn't know. But yeah, yeah. He literally like they have taken 80 million dollars just from this bank account. They just stole it. The US federal government is just straight up robbing banks. It's okay that came out today and said that don't worry your bank accounts are still safe everybody. Yeah, and this is like appropriated funds like for FEMA being safely secured in banks that have like

literally been stolen. Funds that were approved by Congress for a specific purpose, right? Yeah. And what's actually going to happen with this, right? Because you would expect a even like a normal shitty mayor of New York to like go sicko mode. However, however, comma, here's some Yahoo news, quote, Eric Adams has said he will not publicly criticize Trump or his administration. Instead, he'll take his concerns to Trump in private. On Monday, Adams convened a meeting with his own top officials to urge them not to speak badly about the president in public,

saying if they were to do so, it could risk federal funding. Later that day, that same day, Trump's Justice Department ordered the prosecutors in Adams' criminal case to drop the charges against him, in part arguing Adams must be free of the burden of his corruption indictment to help carry out Trump's immigration agenda in the city. Great. Cool. This is the most like quid pro quo thing I've ever seen. It is the single most corrupt thing I've seen out of US politics.

Yeah. Like blatantly. It's staggering. I mean, it would come from Trump plus Adams, right? Yeah. Like we're gonna see it. That's what we're gonna see. We've hit a singularity of corruption, yes.

Istanbul is always the first stop. The only way they can go further than this is that Eric Adams is going to appoint Rob Legoiwicz as head of bank robbery or something. One can dream, Mia, one can dream. There are a few other ways they can go further with this, I'm afraid to inform you, Mia, but we'll be hoping those don't happen. On the corruption index, on the corruption index. Okay.

Speaking of corruption, let's pivot to ads. Have you ever looked into the night sky and wondered who or what was flying around up there? We've seen planes, helicopters, hot air balloons, and birds. But what if there's something else, something much more ominous, that appears under the cover of night, silent, unseen, watching? They may be right above your car late one night as you cruise down the road, or look like mysterious lights hovering above your home. Drones. Or are they?

We used to word drone because it was comfortable to other people. One minute it was there and one minute it wasn't. Oh, that is beyond creepy. Do you feel like this drone was targeting you specifically? Yes, absolutely. Listen to Obscurum, Invasion of the Drones, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Why would you do that to me when I thought we were friends?

We are friends. Los Angeles, 2021. A friendly neighbor appears out of nowhere and promises to make all my dreams come true. Let's not forget that David Blum was a professional con artist, so you didn't stand a chance. But my dreams soon turned into a nightmare. Blum generally targeted people with money. And I was not alone. He took over 100 people for over $15 million.

One of the victims was his own grandmother. I was married to David for almost 10 years. It was insane. I was barely functioning. And I just had this realization that he will not stop until he kills me. Getting a con artist to pay for their crimes isn't easy. Charge David Blum!

I'm Caroline DeMore. Listen as I take down my scammer on Once Upon a Con on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Don't miss real-life amigos Wilmer Valderrama and Freddy Rodriguez in their new podcast Dos Amigos. Each episode is a party where the good friends get real with each other about life, careers, and everything about everything. And you're right there with them. When I discovered acting, I've just found my calling.

But a lot of that was just because I wasn't good at anything else, you know? Join the two amigos straight from Wilmer Speakeasy for Toast to Good Times. Don't be surprised if some special guests and good friends drop in. And always expect lively candid discussions, plenty of genuine moments, and lots of laughter. Remember here in this commercial,

are you between the ages of 16, what is it? Oh man. Are you between the ages of 14 and 16 years old? What do you think it takes to be a TV personality and commercials and you know, morning Saturday morning shows? Listen to Dos Amigos as part of the MyCultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here? How? Goes lower? I met Santi at a luau party in October. I'm Santi. Damien. Oh, it was bizarre. The guy just disappeared one day. Santi has been missing ever since.

The hookup. What is that? I'm solving a mystery through sex and haven't made a private dick joke until now? Like, no matter how hard I try, all roads lead to... The hookup. You think it's causing people to turn aggro? I'm gonna rip your arms off and use them to- Yeah, that's a word for it. This is such terrible representation, I'm so sorry. Poppers? These aren't just any poppers.

Mama always used to say, God gave me gumption in place of a gag reflex. No? But my psychiatrist didn't laugh at that one either. Listen to The Hook Up on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. All right, we are back and I'm going to close by talking about the war on woke, my new favorite news beat that I'm forced to pay attention to every week. There was a transports ban that that that Trump did an executive order about using a whole bunch of children as a prop, very clearly trying to steal steal the charisma from whatever that governor who lost the election did with his free school

lunch there. Anyway, instead now you just hurt other children in the school by not making them be allowed to play sports. So that happened. And then a few other things have happened the past few weeks that I'm kind of just like catching up on, because I've been really focused on like reporting on like musk is specifically and there's been a lot of other stuff the past few weeks So I'm gonna kind of get to that now the State Department's travel website

Changed the acronym LGBT to LGBT on a web page like warning about like how dangerous it might be to like Travel to like travel to like other countries with like worse legal protections. Say, LGB travelers can face special challenges abroad. Laws and attitudes in some countries may affect safety and ease of travel. Many countries do not recognize same-sex marriage. Many countries don't recognize the ex-gender marker in passports and do not have IT systems at ports of entry that can accept sex markers other than sex marriage. Many countries don't recognize the X gender marker in passports and do not have IT systems at ports of entry that can accept sex markers other than female and male.

So they've only changed the title part. They haven't even bothered to edit the text. No, because they also have another info page where they have just like control F LGBT to LGBT as well. So this is this is like one of like many changes we're seeing across a whole bunch of federal websites in relation to Trump's order to like remove wokeness and gender ideology. Previously, the CDC removed like HIV and trans-related like health info pages from their website. And as of yesterday, February 11th, the webpages for the FDA, Health and Human Services, and the CDC were allegedly brought back online, restoring their January 30th status.

They did this like right before a court-mandated deadline to restore these pages. Like, I can now go back onto the CDC's HIV page. Verge first reported on this and they said that, they've been unable to verify that all of the pages have been restored exactly to how they were before. This is something that we're still working on because this literally happened yesterday.

But this is like a small part of their current war on wokeness. Another aspect of this is there's been a whole bunch of orders from federal agencies to ban specific woke keywords across their databases, their websites, training information, including from agencies like NOAA. So just like the weather and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, they released a memo banning specific words across the agency, including words like ability, acceptance, access, affirmation, aggression, allyship, androgyne, asexual, belonging, bias,

binary, bisexual, black, culture, DEI, discrimination, diversity, empathy, empowerment, equity, ethnicity, fairness, gay, gender, gender dysphoria handicap homosexual LGBTQ intersex pansexual queer transgender transvestite as well as words like impartial inclusion indigenous intersectionality Justice the word white has been banned space social justice underserved communities race privilege power dynamics, Native American, multiculturalism.

So just all of these, like again, this is like the party of free speech has banned all of these words. And it's not just NOAA. Also the National Science Foundation has released memos saying that they cannot have these words included in their documents because it could cause them to lose grant funding. Well, it's the end for race science then, because they can't do race science anymore. There's a lot of similar words flagged in the National Science Foundation list of banned words, like activism, activists, advocacy, barrier, bias, black, Latinx, community, diversity, equity, cultural differences, cultural heritage, culturally responsive, diverse, you know, diverse community, diverse groups, diversified, diversifying, all this kind of stuff.

Ethnicity, equality, inclusion, inequality, LGBT, institutional, marginalized, trauma, underappreciated, stereotypes, systemic, under-representation, undervalued, victim. I love that you can no longer do scientific papers about systemic infections of your internal organs. Like, yeah, no, there's a lot of issues. Anything that has a barrier. Yeah. Exactly. There's so many words that are just used in how studies function that they cannot use because the word is too woke and then they're gonna lose their funding.

You can't look at things being equal. You can't look at any kind of scientific bias. Just very basic stuff. It may just result in the TikTok tick tock of occasion of this, like trying to spell these words with like a different letters talking about cute little boots or whatever it is. And like I'm laughing because it's all like absurd and that's kind of like kind of like a coping mechanism. But like this is all like very bad. Well, but like, like, hold on, there's something else, there's something else we need to talk about too,

which is like, like you're required by law as part of your grant proposal, like have things that talk about like how this is going to affect different communities, etc, etc. is a legal requirement for you to put that in your thing. So like, if you were to like strictly enforce this, this kills every fucking grant. And this is one of these things where it's like, like, they're literally just running straight into the federal law tells you, you must do this thing. And the Trump administration says these words are banned. So like, yeah, who knows? It's a really weird situation. Yeah, you can't do IRB right now.

Like most grants will go through an institutional review board that will determine like if there are human subjects, they're like the ethical boundaries and like whether what you're doing is okay. But I can't see it being possible to do an IRB and not say these words. Yeah. No, and like, we have to do scientific studies on like, how various disabilities affect people's lives. Like, very basic stuff like this. All of these types of things, it's really bad. And these things like, are going into effect. I know, like, this stuff is still happening. Columnist Dr. Lucky Tran reported, quote, the CDC has instructed its scientists to retract

or pause the publication of any research manuscript being considered by any medical or scientific journal. The move aims to ensure that, quote, unquote, no forbidden terms appear in the work. Banned terms must be scrubbed. Great. It's all really bad. Yep.

And we're seeing this this sort of like lists being formed increasingly, including this DEI watch list put together by a conservative oppositional research group called the American Accountability Foundation Christ who released a DEI watch list which publishes the names, photos, occupation and personal information of mostly black employees who work under the Department of Health and Human Services. When the website was first discovered, the employee profiles were labeled under targets. This has since been changed to dossiers. Like very, very frightening. Like very bad stuff.

Like very obvious intimidation. For each target, the website lists a collection of alleged DEI offenses, which includes donations to Democrats, social media posts, having pronouns in their bio or previous work on since deleted diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Columnist Jamal Bowie says, quote, they are mostly targeting black employees. So this is quite literally just a repeat of Ridgerd Wilson's segregationist purge of the federal government. And yes, all of this push against quote unquote DEI is very clearly just like white supremacist segregation in action. The whole point is that if any employee is a person of color, that means that they must be unqualified because they were hired only due to DEI.

And to avoid doing that, you could only hire white people. And Trump's transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, sent out a memo directing staff on where to direct grant funds, and he said, quote, give preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average, unquote. Which is a very clear dog whistle to just like only hire like white Christians, hire Christians with big families, you know, parenthesis like white people. This is like very, very obviously what they're doing.

Yeah. And they're, I mean, this is extending to the military now under Hegseth. West Point has just announced effectively the banning of a number of clubs, including the Society of Black Engineers, which is like three quarters of a century old, something like that. Also ending programs that are focused on like recruiting into the military black soldiers, but have like pivoted to recruiting from NRA gatherings, even though there's internal agreement that this brings in a lower quality type of a recruit. I was going to say, I've seen some NRA members.

Yeah. Yeah. I've seen a few NRA members, right. And I, yeah, it's just one of these things, like there's a very good book that I think people need to read if you want to know kind of the operational impact this is going to have both on the US military and probably to an extent law enforcement. We look at agencies like the FBI, there's a book called the dictator's army that heavily focuses on how changes like this impact operational efficiency. And the gist of it is that the goal and clearly what Hegseth's job is, is to make the military

into something that can't pose opposition to the new regime. That's the goal here because there's a very realistic understanding that the military was one of the things that stopped him from maintaining power in 2020, right? Both because the military was not willing to be used to crack down directly on protests and because General Milley acted as a barrier to Trump's attempt to do a coup the last time, right? So you, you have an understanding, which is very common when regimes like this

take over in democratic societies. In the early days of the Third Reich, the military was the primary concern Hitler had because they were not Nazis, right? They were conservative, but they were not in the tank for the Nazi party. And there was a lot that he wanted to do that the military establishment at the time the Third Reich came to power wouldn't let him do. And that was one of the first things, and this took several years, but that was one of the first goals of the Nazi regime and power,

was reforming the military as much as possible in their own image. And so much of what Hegze is doing here, specifically with the West Point club banning, is like, these things are not DEI. These things are very old. These are pretty standard standard, standard things that have been roped into what it means to be in America. And we're now just seeing this like crusade against DEI being used to just reverse affirmative action and specifically select for white Christian applicants. And that's the entirety of this point here. They're using DEI as this magical wand to frame things that are

like pretty standard and like accepted parts of like how you do like hiring practices, how you don't do discrimination to just specifically only uplift white Christians. And that's part of this like very basic like Christian nationalist project that people like Heritage have been trying to do for a long time I Think it's also worth noting too that like the other thing that this mirrors You know and like specifically in the way that this targets queer people is the lavender scare which is a thing from like the sort of late 40s to the 60s where the US is part of this like Giant anti-communist purge. It was on basically went through and found every gay

Government official and fucking ran them out. That's like another aspect of this whole thing, right? Like the way these people understand the world in order to sort of like purify their like white state, right? Like you have to get rid of the non-white people and you have to get rid of the queers and you know, especially people who are fucking both. And so this is this sort of transformational project of changing this sort of like just changing the composition of what the US is into, like, and how how its state functions and how they can do to what like what level of violence they can bring about on people. And they've wrote these things together so closely now, like the anti-trans school executive order. Only the first half of that executive order was actually about the gender ideology stuff. The second half was aimed at curbing what they called discriminatory equity ideology,

which is DEI. Basically it was proposing a program for, quote unquote, patriotic education across the country. Basically trying to rewrite history to make like the United States like this like noble historical project. It's like stuff that they've tried to do before with that like 1776 project that the New York Times reported on. Part of Trump's order called for, quote, inaccurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling characterization of America's founding and foundational principles.

A clear examination of how the United States has admirably grown closer to its noble principles throughout history. The concept that commitment to America's aspirations is beneficial and justified. The concept that celebration of America's greatness and history is proper. And then the order goes on to try to ban the concept of white guilt, saying that teachers can get in trouble if any of their students feel guilty about things that people of that same race have done in the past. And making sure that teachers do not teach things in a way that could possibly make a

student feel quote unquote guilt. Yeah. They use the word children actually, not students, which like is fundamentally something we don't do in education. Right? We refer to our students as students because we respect them as people. We don't think of them as like lesser than, especially when we're getting to the points where we're discussing things like race and equity.

Like these are high school students, right? Maybe we certainly do discuss these things in university. And like it's fundamentally shows a complete lack of understanding of how education works to call them children. Yeah, and I think it gets to what this is actually about. And this is something that I would argue both Trump administrations were about, right? If you look at when Trump like comes down the fucking elevator for the first time. So I think people may remember like after Ferguson in 2015, there was Baltimore where there was, you know, huge riots, massive confrontations withations with police like massive anti-racist actions and that's the that's like the thing that really truly tipped

Like a bunch of the Republican Party even further right from where they'd been with the Tea Party into into this into sort of Trumpism It was you know his reaction to that and then this entire campaign, right? Like all of the stuff that he's talking about here, you know, this is about 2020, right? This is about reversing the gains that happened, you know, and like, obviously there were incomplete gains. One of the things that did happen was that a bunch of teachers were trying to change the way the US history is taught to reflect that this country was like, again, a settler colonial empire built by slave labor. And, you know, that expanded its territory through genocide, which is a good this is just objectively true about how the US started. But the thing is like that's not good for, you know, these people's projects, right? Like saying that out loud is a fucking issue for them.

And so, you know, their their attempt to roll back everything that was gained from sort of the black uprisings is culminating all of this shit with like the purge of black workers for the federal government with all of these things ordering you to like that's why they're talking about all of these weird all they keep banning all of these weird like terms that don't make any sense. Like we're talking about like empathy, right? So why the fuck are they talking about banning empathy? Yeah, because specifically these things come from the purges they've been trying to do in the education system where they have a bunch of very specific grievances about like kinds of education stuff

that teachers were implementing, particularly in sort of middle and high schools. Well, I'm going to close here with two pieces of breaking news. One, like earlier today, we learned that the NIH has finally acknowledged that the grant funding freeze is illegal. And this is probably due to pressure from news coverage about all of the temporary restraining order violations through the continued freezing of funds. And now the NIH is saying because of these orders, we will resume funding. The first TRO was like two weeks ago on February 1st. So it's not like they just learned about

this. It's that they have in some ways like perhaps caved to pressure. Again, like these executive orders do not enforce themselves. These are enforced by people at agencies. These things do not become automatically enforced. So this is like one step now. You can go to apopular.info who has been breaking the news on this specifically. And then some breaking news that I have here on DropSight, quote unquote, armored Tesla forecast estimated to win $400 million of State Department contract funds.

What? So this could go one of two ways. This could either go a really funny way. Yeah, it's going to say. Or it could go a really funny way. Yeah, it's going to say or go a really sad way. Yeah, I do. I do like the idea of a lot of Trump appointees being in Teslas that are armored when the batteries catch and maybe the jaws of life can't cut through those. Yeah.

Yep. Yep. Yeah, it was. This is very funny because Trump went off on a tangent about electric tank. Horrible idea tanks on the campaign trail a couple of times. Horrible idea! Well, he's had a come to Jesus moment and he has changed his mind and he wants a more sustainable beast, as they call it.

What everyone always says the problem with tanks is, is that they don't explode enough when hit by munitions. Or by themselves when not hit by munitions. Or by themselves, just because batteries do that sometimes. Yes. Yeah You never know what you're gonna get. I'm excited. This is gonna make everything a lot safer for our men and women in Greenland, I'm guessing Batteries batteries thrive in the cold red white and blue

Yes, I yeah, I do love the new m1 whatever, 7 Abrams that gets 4 miles on a charge. And then again, detonates. Wait six months to use a solar panel to field recharge. It doesn't get light for six months. Magnificent. Upwards of 10 miles a year, yes. Yep. All right, well that does it for us today on It Could Happen Here.

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