It Could Happen Here - Executive Disorder: White House Weekly #31

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

The gang discuss the school shooting in Minneapolis and the shooter’s obsession with mass killers, how Trump is trying to fire the Federal Reserve Governor, and a possible nationwide National Gu...ard deployment. Sources: https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/india-us-lose-trump-tariffs-russia-wins-2025-08-27/ https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_14986.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed.htm https://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/domestic-market-operations/monetary-policy-implementation/repo-reverse-repo-agreements https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RRPONTSYD https://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/rrp_faq.html https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RPONTSYD https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2022/01/how-the-feds-overnight-reverse-repo-facility-works/ https://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/goldvault.html https://fortune.com/2025/08/09/trump-fed-pick-stephen-miran-existential-threat-central-bank-independence/ https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/the-12-trillion-u-s-repo-market-evidence-from-a-novel-panel-of-intermediaries-20250711.html https://www.stlouisfed.org/in-plain-english/who-owns-the-federal-reserve-banks https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/forthcoming/1202mart.pdf https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/us/politics/lisa-cook-fed-governor.html?unlocked_article_code=1.hE8.oyr3.s4yYTqcf14ZD https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/08/prosecuting-burning-of-the-american-flag/  https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/08/measures-to-end-cashless-bail-and-enforce-the-law-in-the-district-of-columbia/  https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/08/taking-steps-to-end-cashless-bail-to-protect-americans/  https://www.justice.gov/maxwell-interview  https://www.foxnews.com/politics/national-guard-mobilizing-19-states-immigration-crime-crackdown   https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/08/additional-measures-to-address-the-crime-emergency-in-the-district-of-columbia/  https://nbcmontana.com/news/nation-world/kennedy-announces-nih-study-into-psych-drugs-after-second-trans-school-shooterSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This is an I-Heart podcast. There's a vile sickness in Abbas town. You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. From IHeart podcasts and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky, this is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater Audio Universe, starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havocetown.
Starting point is 00:00:30 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Honey German, and I'm back with season two of my podcast. Grazias, come again. We got you when it comes to the latest in music and entertainment with interviews with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition?
Starting point is 00:00:47 No, I didn't audition. I haven't auditioned in, like, over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there. Oh, yeah. We'll talk about all that's viral and trending, with a little bit of cheesement and a whole lot of laughs. And of course, the great Vibras you've come to expect.
Starting point is 00:01:02 Listen to the new season of Dresses Come Again on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York state number, and we own it. you listen to shock incarceration on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts i just normally do straight stand-up but this is a bit different what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club answer a new podcast called wisecrack where a comedian finds himself at the center of a chilling true crime story does anyone know what show they've come to
Starting point is 00:01:58 see. It's a story. It's about the scariest night of my life. This is Wisecrack. Available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, it's James here, and I just wanted to share Bashir's fundraiser again. He has a court date coming up, and I know he's still hoping for any help you're able to provide with his legal fees. I know it looks like we've raised a lot of money we have and we're super proud of that immigration legal defense right now costs an awful lot of money. So if you have the means to give, I know it would be hugely appreciated. The address for that is gofundme.com slash F slash standing
Starting point is 00:02:43 with our family. We'll include that in the show notes too. And if you would like to reach out to us for anything else, you can reach us at the email, cool zone tips at proton.com. Me. If you send from an encrypted address. It will be end-to-end encrypted. We are encrypted on our end with Proton Mail. This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. This episode, I'm joined by Mia Wong and Robert Evans. We're covering the week of August 21st and August 27th.
Starting point is 00:03:25 Yeah. We sure are. I can't believe Cracker Barrel would do that. It's outrageous. Yeah, that's clearly the biggest news. Thankfully, they switched it back.
Starting point is 00:03:36 They took the cracker out of the barrel and thankfully, though, they've reversed course. And put the Cracker back in. I really don't understand how it's awoke. I mean, I do understand because I understand how this messaging works,
Starting point is 00:03:47 but... It doesn't matter. Anytime anything happens and they can see a backlash forming, you after the fact because people were starting to get pissed off about the fucking cracker barrel thing in the same way like that hasn't with fucking games workshop earlier this year like they redid their logo in a shitty way and it's the same like minimalist bullshit yeah it's just the flat minimalism
Starting point is 00:04:07 it's it's not it's not woke yeah it's just incentivizing like capitalist conformity this is why they they've changed all of the buildings of like you know McDonald's a pizza hut to the same structure so you can use the property and resell it over and over and over again without having to do big renovations it's just all about capitalist efficiency. It's not, it's not about woke. It's got nothing to do with woke, but there's people whose whole, like Chris Rufo, whose whole job is sitting around, and as soon as you started to see the backlash forming and realize, like, oh, there's probably going to be a spree of these companies coming in with these new minimalist logos, because it's clearly a trend in,
Starting point is 00:04:41 like, consultancies, right? Like, it started happening. This is not the first one. So I'm just going to look around until I see one of these that feels like it's got culture war potential. and Cracker Barrel is an obvious one. Like, if I'm looking, if I was looking out there, that's one I would pick, right? Like, I think they're also responding to, like, you know, the past few years where we've been removing, like, racist characters from logos, right?
Starting point is 00:05:03 With, like, Aunt Jemima's and, like, Landau Lakes, and using this in a similar way, except they took away the white guy leaning against their barrel. Yeah. So it's part part of that whole backlash as well. It's funny, though. I have seen, like, I don't, I don't know if it's from Chris Rue. Rufo, but, you know, people similar in that orbit talking about how this thing actually is
Starting point is 00:05:25 wokeism, because minimalism is based on brutalism, which was invented by communists. So actually, turning everything into this minimalist design is actually a plot from the Frankfurt School, the communists are taking over. I mean, look, it doesn't matter. Outside of the fact that people, whenever you buy into it, like, you're helping to feed like if you like even dunking on that's part of like the problem is that like yeah just talking about this shit at all fuels the feedback loop right and that's that's what this is is a feedback loop that they're very good at manipulating for political purposes and i'm not going to sit here and lecture you
Starting point is 00:06:05 and say like stop commenting on this stop talking about this stuff but we do need to understand that this is the olds in the audience remember the old simpsons Halloween episode where the different like mascots from different companies, like come alive and start murdering people in town. And the solution that's an old ad man gives everyone is like, well, if you want to stop the monsters, just look away. Advertising feeds on attention, you know? And once everyone ignores the monsters, they go away. And unfortunately, that's not how things actually work, because there's 350 million people in the country. And so whatever you choose to do about this isn't going to matter. But the feedback loop is going to continue unabated. That much I can say.
Starting point is 00:06:48 Cracker barrel has fallen, and like Christ, after three days, has rose again. Yeah, great. Anyway, speaking of memes, unfortunately, we should talk about this horrible mass shooting. That is probably going to be the big story this week. I mean, I hate to reduce it to that, but yeah. We're recording this on Wednesday a few hours after the shooting. Yeah. This is in Minneapolis. Yes, there was a mass shooting at a Minneapolis.
Starting point is 00:07:18 Catholic school. Annunciation Catholic School. This happened earlier the day that we're recording this. So that's going to be Wednesday, August 27th. As of right now, at about 2.11 p.m. PST. Two children are dead. 17 people, mostly children are wounded. The shooter is also dead. And the shooter has been identified as Robin Westman, who graduated from the school in 2017. Their mom also worked at the school until very recent. Yeah. And that's not at all an unusual kind of situation. Mass shooters at schools often are either attending the school or recently graduated. There's been a couple of cases where a family member worked at the school. Like, this stuff is all pretty standard for somebody shooting up a school. What's different is one of the things that's different is that the shooter basically followed in Brenton Tarrant, the Christchurch shooter's footsteps by covering their firearms and the gear that they were wearing in draw, like I guess drew or painting. it on. I'm not sure. It looks like with like a white paint pen. Like white out or something like that, a white paint pen. And covered it in the names of other mass shooters, references to racial annihilation memes like the removed kebab meme, which is, in short, a meme celebrating the Bosnian genocide. And it was a meme that was specifically Brent and Tarrant had signaled in his manifesto.
Starting point is 00:08:42 And I think on his gun, he had to remove kebub reference. But it's something he signaled and was on the shooters. firearm as well as the names. I mean, Tarrant, there's references to Tarrant on there. Timothy McVeigh, Tim McVeigh's name, just the word McVeigh is painted on there. Ted Kaczynski. Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. A whole bunch of other more recent mass shooters, people who are in like the mass shooter fandom. Yeah. As well as just a collection of memes from like old memes too. Utterly unrelated to shooting. Like there's a loss meme on there. And if you're a lot of people are going, wait, what the fuck really?
Starting point is 00:09:18 And if you're too young for loss, there used to be a, well, I think there still is, a webcomic called Control Alt Delete that started in like the early 2000s, it might have gotten started in the late 90s. And it was part of like this, there's this boom in web comics in the late 90s when suddenly people are able to make their own comics
Starting point is 00:09:35 online and make livings off of them. A whole bunch of guys made gaming comics after Penny Arcade, which was like the big one that blew up. And one of them was Tim Buckley, who did a comic called Control Alt Delete that was not good. And he tried to have a series, storyline where his character's girlfriend has a miscarriage and the strip in which he finds her
Starting point is 00:09:54 having a miscarriage is called loss and it's gotten to the point where people are abstracting the four panels into like a minimalist line representation of how the blocking looked like it's a bit people have done everything like put loss memes on everything like that's the joke at this point more than a reference to the show is like look at this new crazy place somebody put a loss meme and so yeah it's a game and a lot of what we're seeing with the shooter is like, oh, this is the natural extent of a bunch of things. And a fucking mass shooter putting a loss meme on the barrel or on the side of their gun before shooting up a school is the natural furthest, craziest extent of the loss meme, right? If this is
Starting point is 00:10:33 anything, it is like a memetic shooting. It is based on a whole bunch of memes about other mass shootings as well. Specifically in the way that engages in like anti-Semitism and racism and includes slurs and catchphrases. It's not in the way that the shooter actually believes these things ideologically. It is just to gesture to them as they exist in the lineage of other mass shootings. It is, like, it's a perfunctory use of slurs and of messaging that just kind of wraps around this whole, like, nihilistic fandom culture around other mass shooters. And, like, that is, that's what this shooting is. I've watched now, like, 17 minutes of video of the shooter, like showing off their weapons, going through their like diaries and journals,
Starting point is 00:11:19 inspired by a whole bunch of like Eastern European mass shooters as well. And this shooter reminds me of participants of what's called the true crime community or TCC, not as in like the genre of true crime podcasts or documentaries, but it's more of an online fandom based on a personal obsession with mass killers themselves and specifically school shooters. And this community encourages reenactments and, tries to get some people to do their own mass shootings. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:11:48 And this is not the first one of these we've had in this past year. No. The shooting in Wisconsin last December by Sementtha Rupnau, which we reported on it could happen here, was also in this variant of like a column biner true crime community shootings. Rupinau's name is on one of this shooters, rifles. Yes. There was a shooting in Tennessee a few months later, which also referenced Rupnau, done by a black white supremacist in-cell whose manifesto was full of
Starting point is 00:12:14 like plagiarized memes and other manifestos, it's, it's about this like, yeah, this complete lack of meaning. Like, they, they scatter shot all of these memes and references and like bits of manifestos and, like, images to just to make this whole like mess of stuff to look at, but none of it actually like means anything. Well, and the draining of meaning, the flattening of meaning is part of the point. That's the point. Is taking, yes. Is taking a man who shot fucking 50 people to death and turning that into the same thing. as a 20-year-old joke about a comic strip in terms of its impact and severity
Starting point is 00:12:48 because if that's no more serious or meaningful or painful than fucking a joke about Tim Buckley's dumb-ass cartoon, like once you get someone in a mindset where they accept that, they're willing to accept a lot of terrible things, right? And the goal here is creating content
Starting point is 00:13:06 in the form of mass shootings, right? Yeah. Like that is the goal, and that is also what people are consciously, a lot of people want to be a part of themselves, You mentioned the last year shooting that committed by Samantha Rupnow, but there's also, I found a December 30th, 2024 article in Wisconsin Public Radio, WPR.org, their website. It talks about Rupnow, but it also gives the story of 13-year-old Jamie Sites, who killed herself
Starting point is 00:13:32 in 2024 and was a member of the true crime community. The police went through her phone, and they found a bunch of memes and reference, and, like, her contributing to online discussions and telegrams and stuff for, PCC. She was obsessed with the Columbine kids, right? She, like, engaged in a lot of those conversations. And she was posting about her plan to kill herself, but she was not interested in carrying out, like, a mass shooting or killing other people. And that fit in fine within the discourse. Like, people encouraged her, basically, right? Like, yeah. I think part of the thrill Hill is just wanting to feel like you sitting on your ass on the computer, you are impacting
Starting point is 00:14:10 the world, in part because, like, you feel like that's the only chunk of the world that you've got. right like and that's you know tied into like the hopelessness and the nihilism of all of this i found a just random poster on reddit in a discussion of the tcc community like i actually really liked this person's summary of it and this is like seven years old interestingly enough it's not a new phenomenon it dates back to interwar period germany there were many germans at the time who were fascinated with the topic of extremely grisly murder and torture especially such instances where sexual arousal was involved the german language even has a word for it lust murder. Serial killers were on the rise at the time, and many of them claimed to get
Starting point is 00:14:47 extreme amounts of carnal pleasure from the act of killing or maiming. And there is this weird vein. I found another study, as I was looking into this, that uses the true crime community term. It's from 2015 by Naomi Barnes of Utah State University. And it was like looking into fandoms that had grown up around serial killers and around spree killers online. And Naomi is using the word true crime community for just that general term of people who were interested in true crime, not in the way that you and I have been using it. Yeah, because we're using this term to refer to like a specific fandom around like these shootings, not the general milieu of like true crime podcasts and like documentaries and people who are into that sort of
Starting point is 00:15:29 content. We're referring to a much more niche group of people online who yeah operate on like telegram, discord, Tumblr, and other social media accounts. Right. It's based around like specifically like an obsession over actually doing these acts and like in and like they like cause play as these people this isn't like your you know average white woman who likes listening to true crime podcast this is this is something very different no and that's that's important but it's also important to note that like what you've been talking about this this need to recreate and not just prior to actually carrying out a shooting because most of them don't ever do that there's this need this obsession with the aesthetics to want to own clothing and objects and whatnot that like
Starting point is 00:16:10 look like Erica Dillon or whatever, right? The Columbine Band shirt. Yeah, right. And this does extend to the shootings. Like, there's a number of shooters who have, like, worn that KMFDM shirt because one of the Columbine guys wore it. Sement they're up now. And I believe this recent shooter also had a KMDF shirt picked out.
Starting point is 00:16:29 And what's interesting about that 2015 study is that it is looking at the true crime community because Columbiners were already a thing. There'd been a number of copycat attacks. but the kind of social fandom around, like that aspect of it had not really taken hold at a mass level in a way that the internet and virality could really make use of. It evolved on Tumblr in that era. Yes. It's more like an infant compared to like the fully grown version that it is now.
Starting point is 00:16:57 Yeah. And what's interesting to me is this paper kind of catches the communities that's starting to calve off. And so there's a chunk of the paper where she's quoting from a couple of different people who went and visited in one case they visited like Adam Lanzas house and the Sandy Hook Elementary School. And it's people visiting places like that, sites associated with like mass shootings and the like. And she gives this mix of people being like, oh, like the first person she quotes who went to Lanz's house is like, I was actually just really sad and I just wish
Starting point is 00:17:26 none of it had ever taken place. Like it was all really horrible and it made me feel bad. But then a bit later, she gives you responses from people who have the opposite reaction. Like there's this fellow, Paul, who does not specify which murder site they visited, but specified that it was a place where a murder victim's body was found. And Paul responded, honestly, I felt ecstatic. Like, wow, I'm going to a place someone was killed. What if there are ghosts, the murderer, him, or herself? I was absolutely off my kid. We dug up some dirt and we keep it in a little glass bottle. It's like a religious pilgrimage. Right, right. And that's the static. And that's what this starts to document. And that's where I'm like, oh, this is, this study is mostly about an
Starting point is 00:18:08 unrelated just a normal fandom but you can see the bits like already popping up in 2015 these people who are having these ecstatic almost again like almost like psychosexual experiences being at the site of a mass shooting yeah and the further extension then is then doing one yourself and obviously this also is like a part of like a suicidal drive a suicidal intention a lot of these people kill themselves in the course of the act right it's a way of making your suicide not just be about yourself. Right. And there's more to say about like the culture of fame in this country and like how how how virality and whatnot has made it so that like these people tend to get what they want or at least they know they've got a good chance of getting what they want, right? They're obviously
Starting point is 00:18:52 not around to experience it. But like as long as you do something sufficiently like weird and bloody, you're likely to get a good amount of attention for a while. So that's the actual like background of what this shooting was. I think now we should probably mention how the shooting's being talked about more broadly. Yeah. Because it takes a very different angle from the actual, like, nihilistic, like, TCC fandom aspect.
Starting point is 00:19:17 It is making this more about, like, woke contemporary politics, I suppose. Yeah. Cash Patel has announced that he's investigating this as an anti-Catholic hate crime. Yeah. Which is just not. true. I mean, it's almost certainly by a Catholic or somebody who was raised Catholic. Yeah,
Starting point is 00:19:38 all the people who hate Catholics most are often lapsed Catholics. Very early on, people started claiming that this shooter was trans. Now, a few years ago, they did change their name to Robin, and the name change petition stated that at the time, they identified as female. At this point, we still know very little about the actual shooter, beyond like the videos they posted on YouTube of their weapons and a journal written in Cyrillic, and a note that they left to their parents discussing their fear of dying of cancer due to vaping. I've not been able to look at their internet presence or activities in the intervening years since changing their name, and their current gender identity is still not very clear. In a translation of their Cyrillic journal,
Starting point is 00:20:24 they discussed detransition, quote, I don't want to dress girly all the time, but I guess sometimes I really like it. I know I am not a woman, but I definitely don't feel like a man. I regret being trans. I wish I was a girl. I just know I cannot achieve that body with the technology we have today. I also can't afford that. I only keep my long hair because it is pretty much my last shred of being trans. I'm tired of being trans. I wish I never brainwashed myself. I can't cut my hair now as it would be an embarrassing defeat, and it might be a concerning change of character that could get me reported. It just always gets in my way. I will probably chop it on the day of the attack, unquote. Now, discussion of gender takes up a very small percentage of the journal. Most of their
Starting point is 00:21:16 writing is about admiration for previous mass shooters and fantasizing about killing children from a very young age. On the cover of their journal, alongside a bunch of other gun stickers, they do have a Defend Equality Progress flag sticker with an AK-47. For my perspective, this is just another one
Starting point is 00:21:36 of those memes that they're wrapping into everything. On one of their magazines, they wrote, I am the Wokler, why so queerious? Right. And the other side of the magazine had an anti-queer slur. So I view this type of stuff in the same,
Starting point is 00:21:52 way I view the inclusion of like the loss meme or like Ted Kaczynski or all this other stuff, this like meme-fied version of trying to throw everything at the wall just to make everything mean nothing. Right. And it's it's extremely like obnoxious and annoying. But it works. But yeah, it works. And I don't know what else I want to say on this on like the trans angle. We don't want to deny that like this is going to cause a problem, uh, that this is going to be used by the right. Like there will be there will certainly be rhetoric. And I've all, already seen rhetoric from, you know, Jack Posobic and that crowd around it about trans people targeting Catholics.
Starting point is 00:22:28 This is why these people shouldn't have weapons or whatever. Like, this is why we should put them all in. And I'm not going to minimize that. That didn't start with this, that kind of rhetoric, that conversation, and this is useful to that crowd. And, you know, that is bad. I don't, we don't know what's going to happen. Or to what extent this is like, we're talking right now that they clearly would like
Starting point is 00:22:50 to use this and are trying. to use this. One thing that I would point out, and I don't know, this is certainly not an on-balance optimistic thing, but making Americans focus on a mass shooting for more than a day or two, not as easy as it used to be. No, yeah, which is really devastating. It's not good that we're there, but, like, two people dead. I'm just saying, like, Americans ignore way bigger numbers all the time. Now, the right, you know, there's not always a media campaign like there's going to be with this beyond trying to make this huge, but also they've done that before, right? They did that with the Rupnow shooting, right? Like there were attempts to make that and it didn't. Every mass
Starting point is 00:23:32 shooting, they have tried to paint it's being done by a trans person. And I think in some ways, that is depowered this rhetoric as a tactic by claiming every shooter is trans. Most Republicans already believe that to be the case. So whether this person either was trans or used to be trans, it may not matter that much to the right because they already think every shooter is trans. Like Trump's already targeting queer people. The right doesn't need an excuse to go after queer people. I don't think an event like this will make the hammer come down much harder. This could be a boy who cried wolf situation for the anti-trans right, since their base already thinks that every mass shooter from the past three years is trans.
Starting point is 00:24:17 I did a whole episode on this last year called Fake Trans Terrorists. The Gun Violence Archive says that there have been 286 mass shootings in the United States so far in 2025. If one or two trans people do a mass shooting, that would still mean trans people at 1% of the population are less likely to do a shooting compared to cis people. There was like one legitimate trans mass shooting targeting a school a few years ago in Nashville, and if this happens to be the second, I don't think that this new brain-rod,
Starting point is 00:24:49 Columbine, true-crime community shooting will make much of an impact on trans people nationwide. Think of how quick conservatives moved on from the Zizians. And certainly, being trans is not a motivating factor of this shooting, if you look at their writing
Starting point is 00:25:06 and videos posted on YouTube before they did this. This nihilistic meme maximalism has no trans causation. It has nothing to do with being trans. There's no coherent or ideological leftist screed. There's no pronoun pins. Their journal talks both about, quote, unquote, hating fascism and inequality, while also hating Jews, Arabs, Mexicans, Indians, calling Somalis subhuman and criminal, writing that, quote, white people should rule the world, unquote, but that minorities should, quote, have rights.
Starting point is 00:25:39 While talking about ideological Nazi killers, they remarked, quote, I don't often find. find myself aligning with these killers' specific ideologies, unquote. They said that they disliked racism, but also were racist. They wrote about killing, quote-unquote, fags, while also calling themselves one on one of their weapons. This shooter and all the memes and rhetoric they use is most similar to the Repnau shooting last December in Wisconsin, in terms of the Neo-Columbiner school shooter obsession, as well as the white supremacist
Starting point is 00:26:11 Mimetic black in cell shooting in Anok Tennessee last January. All these shootings are heavily referential, contradictory, and intentionally incoherent. Every single extremist political faction is represented there because that that is the point is combining all of these references
Starting point is 00:26:31 to previous mass shootings. So they're incorporating everything they can and things that they just think are funny. Like just a whole bunch of like meaningless memes. Yep. And that's vastly more important than whatever gender identity
Starting point is 00:26:44 the shooter happens to have right now at this point in 2025. All right. Well, anyway, folks, there's going to be a lot of people going, the sky is falling over what this is going to mean for people and how this is going to be used.
Starting point is 00:27:00 And obviously, this is terrible. I'm not telling you not to feel terrible about a mass shooting. You should feel bad about the actual mass shooting. You should feel bad about the mass shooting the sky I mean the sky's been falling right yeah let's let's give this one a little bit to see if it makes the sky fall any faster or if in a week we're like no this guy's still falling at about the same rate which isn't good it's just what happens it's where we are all right
Starting point is 00:27:26 ads there's a vile sickness in abysstown you must have Excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. The village is ravaged. Entire families have been consumed. You know how waking up from a dream? A familiar place can look completely alien? Get back, everyone!
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Starting point is 00:28:20 starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc Town on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The devil walks in Abistown. Check out Behind the Flow, a podcast documentary series, following the launch of San Diego Football Club. We go behind the scenes and explore the stories of those involved.
Starting point is 00:28:46 San Diego coming to MLS is going to be a game changer because this region has been hungry for a men's professional soccer team. We need veteran players and we need young players. Like you're building a team from scratch. And so the succession plan of long-term success needs to be defined. We need to embrace this community. When I was 13, my uncle took me to a qualifier. And we watched Ottawa against Chile, pouring rain, just watching the fans jumping up and down.
Starting point is 00:29:15 I think that was definitely a watershed moment for me. Not only was that going to be my game, but it was going to be my life. Listen to San Diego FC behind the flow. Now on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Get fired up, y'all. Season two of Good Game with Sarah Spain is underway. We just welcomed one of my favorite people and an incomparable soccer icon, Megan Rapino, to the show, and we had a blast.
Starting point is 00:29:46 We talked about her recent 40th birthday celebrations, co-hosting a podcast with her fiancé Sue Bird, watching former teammates retire and more. Never a dull moment with Pino. Take a listen. What do you miss the most about being a pro athlete? The final. The final. And the locker room.
Starting point is 00:30:03 I really, really, like, you just can't replicate, you can't get back. showing up to locker room every morning just to shi-talk. We've got more incredible guests like the legendary Candace Parker and college superstar AZ Fudd. I mean, seriously, y'all. The guest list is absolutely stacked for season two. And, you know, we're always going to keep you up to speed on all the news and happenings around the women's sports world as well.
Starting point is 00:30:27 So make sure you listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. Our I Heart Radio Music Festival, presented by Capital One, is coming back to Las Vegas. Vegas. September 19th and 20th. On your feet.
Starting point is 00:30:46 Streaming live only on Hulu. Ladies and gentlemen. Brian Adams. Ed Sheeran. Fade. Glorilla. Jelly Roll. John Fogarty.
Starting point is 00:30:54 Lil Wayne. L.L. Cool J. Mariah Carey. Maroon 5. Sammy Hagar. Tate McCray. The offspring. Tim McGraw.
Starting point is 00:31:02 Tickets are on sale now at AXS.com. Get your tickets today. AXS.com And we're back. We can safely leave the brain rot in the previous section. And now talk about something totally real, the economy. Yes, the economy, which never kills people. Okay, so speaking of things that have never killed any one, that's so not true.
Starting point is 00:31:34 The Volker shot killed so many people. but a very, very critical rubicon was crossed on Monday of this week when Trump attempted to fire a member of the Federal Reserve Board, Lisa Cook. Now, Lisa Cook is refusing to step down under the fairly obvious justification that the president does not have the power to do this. Trump has been cooking a very weird thing accusing her of mortgage fraud as a way to remove her from the Federal Reserve Board
Starting point is 00:32:07 but Trump does not have the power to do this so we are in the midst effectively of a confrontation over this where Lisa Cook has continued to just not actually leave her position at the Federal Reserve
Starting point is 00:32:25 and is going to court this is an extremely significant escalation of what up until this point had largely been a series of attacks on the Federal Reserve's governor, Jerome Powell. There are a few factors here that one of the most important things is Trump's anger over continuing high interest rates or sort of high interest rates. Trump wants to slash
Starting point is 00:32:49 interest rates because he thinks it'll make the economy grow more. Now, when I said this was the crossing of the rubicon, what this is is this is the beginning of the fight over whether the Federal Reserve is going to be an independent density, right? Trump has been attempting to, as we've talked about on this show, appoint Stefan Mirren as another one of the governors on the Federal Reserve's board. Mirren very explicitly wants to eliminate the independence of the Federal Reserve or what to talk about exactly what that means in a second. But I want to read this quote from Fortune magazine's report on it,
Starting point is 00:33:25 describing a J.P. Morgan analysis of the situation because this has really spooked a bunch of major. financial institutions for very obvious reasons. Quote, in a note on Friday, J.P. Morgan analysts led by chief economist Bruce Casman highlighted key proposals, such as giving at-will power to the president
Starting point is 00:33:46 to fire Fed board members and Fed Bank presidents, giving Congress control of the Fed's operating budget, and shifting the Fed's regulatory responsibility over banks and markets to the Treasury. So this is what Seffen Miron has been proposing.
Starting point is 00:34:03 This is what looks to be the long-term plan of Trump and the people around him. Eliminating the Federal Reserve is a long, long-time goal of the far right for a extremely convoluted a variety of reasons. The Fed, in and of itself, is an extremely confusing entity. Its creation has spawned a full century of academic arguments about what the states even is, and it's complicated to describe also because most of the information, well, not most, but a significant portion of the information about it
Starting point is 00:34:36 is just anti-Semitic conspiracy because this is eliminating the Federal Reserve and the return to quote-unquote sound money is one of the key elements of a massive network of sort of right-wing, very old right-wing conspiracy theories. But I think that the thing that's best understood by people kind of is just about the Federal Reserve is the Fed printer meme
Starting point is 00:34:57 and the Federal Reserve is the body that creates money that is authorized to create the U.S. dollar, that is why it's the Federal Reserve Bank. It is critical on a level that is difficult to express to the entire functioning of the world economy. Now, the Federal Reserve Board is technically a government entity,
Starting point is 00:35:20 but it was set up explicitly to be quote-unquote non-political. Now, the extent to which that's true is fuzzy, obviously, but the point of it was so that there would be a large-scale financial institution that controls the money supply effectively, that controls enormous portions of U.S. sort of macroeconomics policy through its due as control of interest rates would not be able to be like directly interfered with by the president or Congress. That is the whole point of this, you know, it is effectively a measure to instill confidence
Starting point is 00:35:56 that the U.S. isn't going to just like turn the printers on and print a bunch of money from every other capitalist in the world. Yeah, and like so much when that promise goes away, what happens? I don't know. Yeah. Well, and this is something that I think is not understood very well, right? The current conflict is largely over Trump wanting to be able to control the Federal Reserve's interest rates, right? So he wants to lower federal interest rates to make it cheaper to borrow money because he thinks this will pump more money back into the economy, and this will make the economy grow and he thinks that he's being, like, sabotaged by the Fed. The Fed's worried about inflation. But I actually think that focusing just on that part of the Federal Reserve is significantly
Starting point is 00:36:39 underestimating how important the Federal Reserve is to the entire structure of the economy. There are so many just sort of random things that it does that are not particularly well understood. I was talking about this earlier in a meeting, but a significant portion of the goal. held by countries around the world is literally just kept in a vault under the New York Federal Reserve building and that's just a sort of seemingly random thing that it does.
Starting point is 00:37:08 I was reading about its payment system for reasons that I'll talk about in the episode I'll do about this next week. In a footnote about the payment system there is a part where it says that the Federal Reserve runs the payment system for the World Bank. So this is something that is
Starting point is 00:37:24 a critical, critical an extremely complicated center of the entire capitalist world, right? Its payment infrastructure has trillions of dollars a year and moving through it. If this infrastructure stops working or breaks a little bit, a lot of the very subtle management of the economy that the Federal Reserve does can stop working. And, you know, again, we've been talking mostly about interest rates and its ability to sort of print money, which is oversimplification. But, you know, for example, the Fed also does these things, like, carries out these, like, massive overnight repo agreements, like inject liquidity into the market.
Starting point is 00:38:05 There's all of these massive, we are talking billions and billions of dollars of financial interventions that you basically never even hear about that have been stabilizing the economy since 2008. And this apparatus, if it is dismantled, if it is directly seized control of by Trump and part of what's going on with this. board is that Trump is trying to get a majority of the people on the board of governors of the Federal Reserve to be his appointment so that he can control it directly and so they can start bringing it directly under the control of I mean the president effectively right this is something where if you unleash the Doge people on the Federal Reserve and the payment systems the settlement and clearance systems stop working we are talking about a catastrophe that it's unclear to me whether it's even been modeled.
Starting point is 00:38:57 There are so many different complicated things that this institution does that these people do not understand particularly well at all and think that they can use to just sort of permanently create a bubble economy that they can ride. And this is the first sort of shot over the bow isn't even the right where this is the first engagement
Starting point is 00:39:17 over the fight for that. There's also been a lot of sort of taco analysis of this arguing that this is actually Trump backing down from trying to fire Jerome Powell, if you just tried to fire one of the reserve board members, that's not backing down. There's also a chance to help that if this works, he's going to try to fire Powell, too. So we're going to keep watching a situation. I'm going to talk more about it next week when we know more and also talk about what the Federal Reserve is as an institution. And we're going to continue monitoring the situation because it is extremely important.
Starting point is 00:39:47 And handing the keys over to these people is something that is dangerous enough that it is creating significant pushback among the actual people in finance and in the banking system who matter. Great. Well, it's so good. I mean, we'll see if this means anything other than more suffering for, you know, people. I guess that's where I am. Is there even a level of fucking with the money that Trump can do that that's enough to seriously cause consequences for him? And there must be, but it's just hard to imagine. If there was, it's this. We'll see. I mean, that's the fun thing with the big stories we've got this week, is they're all like, well, could get a lot worse, could just stay as bad as it is right now.
Starting point is 00:40:33 Well, we'll continue to wait to see what's going to happen with all of that. Speaking of something that we don't have to just wait and wonder what's going to go on, because the news changes every single week, here's the tariff song. Oh boy. So in yet another instance of the thing not happening. The tariffs on India that Trump had been threatening for the purchases of Russian oil have in fact taken effect. The tariff rate on India is now 50%. This is a significant barrier to any trade. between India and the US. It is again sort of unclear whether India is going to bow to the political pressure here, because as with many of these tariffs, we've talked about this situation with
Starting point is 00:41:32 Brazil fairly extensively on this show. The thing about imposing tariffs on a country to get them to fall in line with American policy is that it pisses off everyone in the country, regardless of whether or not they would traditionally be U.S. allies. And so there's, you know, it creates a massive countervailing pressure against the financial incentive to fall in line and stop buying Russian oil. I also very briefly want to talk about something that I think is sort of part and parcel of the tariff policy that Gerson, you have mentioned to talk about, which is like the U.S. purchasing 10% of Intel. Yes, socialism has been achieved. We did it. Now you can finally call Trump a national socialist. That's right. Yeah. And this,
Starting point is 00:42:20 This is sort of a intensification, I guess, of a degree we talked about a while back, where Intel was talking about giving part of its profits to the U.S. This is just the U.S. government is just buying a stake in these companies. And this is actually a very, very weird maneuver by the U.S. because the U.S. has obviously bought companies before, right? This is how a lot of the bailout worked. But the thing about, if you look at the bailout from 2008, you look at the bailout. the U.S. like purchasing the automakers, the U.S. got these really weird specific shares that don't give any kind of controlling interest. And here, the direct rationale for this is that the U.S. should just own part of the chip manufacturers because they're effectively like domestic
Starting point is 00:43:05 national security resources. Significant portions of the market think that this is going to be a continuing trend and the U.S. is going to continue buying stakes in these companies. There is a sort of symbiotic relationship here in the sense that like, on the one hand, it's obviously not great to have sort of stakes in you bought by the U.S. governments and have U.S. government federal policy directly dictating what these companies do. But on the other hand, it creates, for these actual companies themselves, it creates a sort of symbiosis, right, where these people now have effectively guaranteed state backing. I can bail them out of all of their unbelievably terrible business decisions around basing all of their production around AI.
Starting point is 00:43:49 So, yeah, and this is all sort of part of the same hyper-nationalist direct... National socialism, if you will. Yes, kind of national socialism. But the most stupid form we've ever seen... Yeah, yeah. I don't know. There's going to be a lot of hype about this being like American state capitalism or something, and just ignore that.
Starting point is 00:44:13 Just ignore it. It's bad. I think it's in the same category as a lot of... other things here, which is that the Trump administration is trying to consolidate as much power over the economy as they can, both the Federal Reserve, and through just straight up taking controlling parts of companies. This is a trend that's going to continue, and it's not good. Do you know what is good, though? You beat me to that exact pivot. That's right. The fact that we get a nice 90 to, I don't know,
Starting point is 00:44:42 a 120 second break to listen to these ads. There's a vile sickness in Abbas town? You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. The village is ravaged. Entire families have been consumed. You know how waking up from a dream? A familiar place can look completely alien?
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Starting point is 00:45:50 Check out Behind the Flow A podcast documentary series following the launch of San Diego Football Club We go behind the scenes And explore the stories of those involved San Diego coming to MLS is going to be a game changer because this region has been hungry
Starting point is 00:46:10 for a men's professional soccer team We need veteran players and we need young players Like you're building a team from scratch and so the succession plan of long-term success needs to be defined. We need to embrace this community. When I was 13, my uncle took me to a qualifier, and we watched Ottawa against Chile, pouring rain,
Starting point is 00:46:31 just watching the fans jumping up and down. I think that was definitely a watershed moment for me. Not only was that going to be my game, but it was going to be my life. Listen to San Diego FC behind the flow. Now on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Get fired up, y'all. Season two of Good Game with Sarah Spain is underway.
Starting point is 00:46:56 We just welcomed one of my favorite people and an incomparable soccer icon, Megan Rapino, to the show, and we had a blast. We talked about her recent 40th birthday celebrations, co-hosting a podcast with her fiancé Sue Bird, watching former teammates retire and more. Never a dull moment with Pino. So take a listen. What do you miss the most about being a pro athlete?
Starting point is 00:47:17 The final. The final. And the locker room. I really, really, like, you just, you can't replicate, you can't get back. Showing up to locker room every morning just to shit talk. We've got more incredible guests like the legendary Candace Parker and college superstar AZ Fudd. I mean, seriously, y'all. The guest list is absolutely stacked for season two.
Starting point is 00:47:40 And, you know, we're always going to keep you up to speed on all the news and happenings around the in sports world as well. So make sure you listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. Sometimes it's hard to remember, but... Going through something like that is a traumatic experience, but it's also not the end of their life. That was my dad, reminding me and so many others who need to hear it, that our trauma is not
Starting point is 00:48:09 our shame to carry, and that we have big, bold, and beautiful lives to live after what happened to us. I'm your host and co-president of this organization, Dr. Lyotra Tate. On my new podcast, The Unwanted Sorority, we weighed through transformation to peel back healing and reveal what it actually looks like, and sounds like in real time. Each week, I sit down with people who live through harm, carried silence, and are now reshaping the systems that failed us. We're going to talk about the adultification of black girls, mothering as resistance, and the tools we use for healing. The unwanted sorority is a safe space, not a quiet space. So let's walk in. We're moving towards liberation together.
Starting point is 00:48:49 Listen to the unwanted sorority, new episodes every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we are back. There has just been so much news this week. It's kind of outrageous. Trump is continuing his attacks against the Smithsonian for going one. woke. He's promised a Department of Justice lawsuit against California for their new redistricting map. A GOP House probe has begun to investigate if the D.C. crime stats have been faked this whole time, making it look like crime is low, even though it's obviously super high, as we all know. Yeah. As Mia said, we have socialism now with 10% of intel. And Trump and Hague says announced
Starting point is 00:49:38 that they want to change the name of the Department of Defense back to the Department of War because it, quote, unquote, sounds stronger. All right, guys. This is the only one of those that I actually agree with. They should do this. Like, calling it anything other than the Department of War is incredibly dishonest. Yeah, I wonder that'll make it a harder to get people on board increasing funding. So it used to be called the Department of War, and it had a stronger sound.
Starting point is 00:50:10 And as you know, we won World War I, we won World War II, we won everything. thing. Now we have a Department of Defense with defenders. I don't know. If you, if you people want to, standing behind me, if you take a little vote, if you want to change it back to what it was when we used to win wars all the time, that's okay with me. All right? That's coming soon, sir. You let me know if you want to do it. I think Department of War, it just sounded bad. He said, sir, in behalf of the Department of Defense, defense, I don't want to be defense only. We want defense, but we want offense, too, if that's okay. So you'll make a decision. But, you know, as Department of War
Starting point is 00:50:44 we won everything we won everything and I think we're going to have to go back to that. All right man cool stuff happening in the Oval Office I mean I do like that when he starts that speech he has to go like we won World War
Starting point is 00:51:00 one like he's like there's like there's like he's like giving an AIDA and look like double check that one for me just make sure I don't really remember if we won that one or not but we definitely won the second one and others when as to how he would go about change the name as it requires an act of congress trump replied quote we're just going to do it i'm sure congress would go along if we need that i don't think we even need that but if we need that i'm sure congress will go along i don't know
Starting point is 00:51:31 that we do i don't know if what you need to change the name of the department of defense you do yeah you do that make that makes sense to do that on a macro sense right what trip is suggesting here is wouldn't it simply be more efficient if there was simply a fewer, a single person to make all the decisions? He said a lot of things in that vein recently is like Congress being a more of a symbolic, symbolic branch of government that if we need them, they'll probably just agree with me, but like we don't really need them. That's your standard dictator stuff. That's how he's been talking about it recently. Now, early this week, a redacted transcript of Gilene Maxwell's meeting with Trump's DOJ has been.
Starting point is 00:52:13 released where she denied that she ever witnessed President Trump engaged in inappropriate behavior saying, quote, I actually never saw the president in any type of massage setting. The president was never inappropriate with anybody. And at the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects, unquote. She also denied allegations that Prince Andrew ever had sex with a minor in her home saying that a substantiating photograph is quote unquote fake. Well, I can't imagine why she'd lie. And also claim that there is no Epstein quote unquote client list. Yeah. Yeah, that all about wraps that up. I think we got to the bottom of the whole Epstein case. We don't need to worry about this anymore. I would say of all of those, the one of those that I might
Starting point is 00:52:53 have believed before she denied it was that there wasn't an additional client list outside of what we've already seen, like his black, well, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't keep all of that many notes on a criminal conspiracy. Yeah, I don't think he has a list of being like, here's all of my pedophile friends in one place. Here's what does make me wonder now. And this really is the first time I am, which is that they clearly came to her with a list of here is all of the things you need to say you didn't see. Like, maybe. Or she's just savvy enough to know what to say. Like, I even think, we don't even need to unallege a larger conspiracy here. I think everyone involved in this is quite savvy and knows what they should say and shouldn't
Starting point is 00:53:29 say. Yeah, I mean, I think the conspiracy is obvious. Like, that's, that's all there is. There doesn't need to be an explicit quid pro crow here. Yeah, I don't know. It's interesting to me that she brings up Prince Andrew. If nobody brought that up to her, she was asked about it. That's what I'm saying is, I believe there's a conversation we're not privy here to where she got marching orders in exchange for getting, you know, she's basically out on work release, right? I don't need to jump to such outrageous conspiratorial beliefs such as that. I'm okay with it at this point. Yeah. I don't know what, to what extent it was, but yeah, I don't know. This is, this is pointless. Like, you, I don't know if this helps with his base. I don't know that his
Starting point is 00:54:11 base is going to be like, well, if Gillen Maxwell says it. No. Yeah. I mean, people have responded positively. Like, Marjor Taylor Green, who was previously going on a slight offensive on the Epstein thing, has now fully come around being like, well, there you go. It's, it turns out Trump isn't a pedophile after all. Thank goodness. That was a close call there. I know this is being disseminated to his influencer network, right? And to the network of people that he, like, uses for stuff like this. I'm wondering about the actual, like, voter base, fan base, like... Time will tell, I guess.
Starting point is 00:54:46 And the folks who are a step or two further than Marjorie Taylor Green, like, the people who are more like on the Rogan side of things, like, does this really move the needle for them? Sure. I hate having the cares, like, is Joe Rogan going to buy this schlop? But this does seem, like, shameful even. for him. I mean, I think a lot of people can see that there's an incentive for Galane to say certain things. And I think people are smart enough to understand that I don't think she's
Starting point is 00:55:14 going to tell the Trump's own DOJ about like a smoking gun involving Trump. Why would that help her try to get a pardon from the president? Yeah. I think I think the important thing for this is that like the people who are going to believe this are the people who just don't want to believe that Trump did this and this is this is a reinforcing thing that you can feed them. but the question is what happens for everyone else and it's not particularly compelling for them. All right. We have four executive orders to get through before we close this episode, starting off with cashless bail. On Monday, Trump signed two executive orders targeting cashless bail, one specific to Washington, D.C.,
Starting point is 00:55:49 which directs law enforcement to charge people federally and hold them in federal custody, and to use federal funding and services as leverage to pressure D.C. to change its cashless bail policies. The other executive order targets cashless bail nationwide and asks the Attorney General to make a list of, quote, states and local jurisdictions that have, in the Attorney General's opinion, substantially eliminated cash bail as a potential condition of pretrial release from custody for crimes that pose a clear threat to public safety and order, including offenses involving violent, sexual, or indecent acts, or burglary looting, or vandalism. The Attorney General shall update this list as necessary. Unquote. So using that list, Trump's cabinet will then, quote, identify federal.
Starting point is 00:56:30 funds, including grants and contracts currently provided to cashless bail jurisdictions that may be suspended or terminated, unquote. So it's trying to bribe states and local municipalities to cease cash as bail policies using federal funds, the same way that they've tried to do for a whole bunch of other, like, anti-woke policies Trump has tried to force onto unwilling states. Second executive order from August 25th, titled, Prosecuting Burning of the American Flag. Let's start with a clip from Trump. I don't want to just play super long Trump clips because I know that can be annoying.
Starting point is 00:57:06 But the way that he talks about this order is kind of more interesting than the way the order is written. But we will talk about some of those smaller details included in the actual text. But here's a clip from C-SPAN. Flag burning. All over the country, they're burning flags.
Starting point is 00:57:22 All over the world, they burn the American flag. And as you know, through a very sad court, I guess it was a five to four decision. They called it freedom of speech, but there's another reason which is perhaps much more important. It's called death. Because what happens when you burn a flag
Starting point is 00:57:40 is the area goes crazy. If you have hundreds of people, they go crazy. You can do other things. You can burn this piece of paper. But when you burn the American flag, it incites riots at levels that we've never seen before. People go crazy. In a way, both ways.
Starting point is 00:58:00 There are some that are going crazy for doing it. There are others that are angry, angry about them doing it. Do you want to discuss that? What the executive order does, sir, charges your Department of Justice with investigating instances of flag burning, and then where there's evidence of criminal activity where prosecution wouldn't fall afoul of the First Amendment and instructs the Department of Justice to prosecute those who are engaged in these instances of flag burning.
Starting point is 00:58:26 And what the penalty is going to be, if you burn a flag, you get one year in jail, no early exits, no nothing, you get one year in jail. If you burn a flag, you get, and what it does is incite to write. I hope they use that language, by the way, did that? Insight to riot. I love that he has to check. Yeah. Because God forbid him actually read what he's citing. Trump, Trump, Autopin.
Starting point is 00:58:54 That's right. So included in the order, it says, quote, notwithstanding the Supreme Court's ruling on First Amendment protections, the court has never held that American flag desecration conducted in a manner that is likely to incite imminent lawless action or that is an action amounting to, quote, unquote, is constitutionally protected. See, Texas v. Johnson, unquote. The order directs the Attorney General to enforce criminal and civil laws against acts of American flight discreation that cause harm unrelated to First Amendment expression, which could include charging people with violent crimes, hate crimes, illegal discrimination against American citizens. What? Violations of American civil rights, crimes against property and peace, as well as conspiracies and attempts to violate and aiding and abetting others to violate such laws. So it's like an anti-rioting thing.
Starting point is 00:59:44 The DOJ will also look for cases where American flag discretion could violate applicable state or local laws, such as open burning restrictions, disorderly conduct laws, or destruction of property laws. will refer such matters to state and local authorities for potential action. Finally, the Secretary of State shall deny, prohibit, terminate, or revoke visas, residence permits, naturalization proceedings, and other immigration benefits, or seek to deport any foreign national that has engaged in American flag desecration activity. So that's how they're going to go after it. Robert, do you have anything to say on this flag-burning thing?
Starting point is 01:00:18 I mean, they're waiting, and they didn't wind up waiting long. Someone did it immediately as they knew they would. that they can get a case that they can take up to the Supreme Court. So we'll see, we'll see what happens. We'll see. Yeah. They want to prosecute one of these things and appeal it all the way to the Supreme Court to maybe change that ruling so they can apply it more broadly. Right. So it's part of the same test that they've done with a number of other things that seems unconstitutional. It seems to violate Supreme Court rulings. Yeah. But the point is to test that and see if they can change it, just like they did with abortion. Yeah. Can we go further? And if this
Starting point is 01:00:53 works if we feel like we made progress on this. Can we start pushing and saying other things our incitement to riot? You know, can we start going after people who aren't even present who write something that is like, well, this was incitement to write because they wrote about the police murdering this guy, right? Like, yeah, you know, party of free speech strikes again. This is the kind of thing where can I war game out. Would they try this if they can get that far? Yeah, they will if they can get that far. Will they get that far? You know, is the Supreme Court going to give them everything they want on this? I don't actually know. Like, I really don't know. So I'm going to try not to doom spiral too much. Just, you know, let's see. None of us
Starting point is 01:01:29 have any choice in the matter at this stage. Finally, let's address the, quote, additional measures to address the crime emergency in the District of Columbia. So it's another executive order from August 25th. Trump wants to establish an online portal for Americans with law enforcement experience, quote, or other relevant backgrounds and experience to apply to join federal law enforcement entities to support the policy goals described in executive order 1433. That's the making a D.C. safe and beautiful order from a few weeks ago. Right. The Secretary of Defense is instructed to create and begin training, manning, hiring, and equipping a specialized unit within the District of Columbia National Guard who will be deputized to enforce federal law. To quote the order,
Starting point is 01:02:14 quote, the Secretary of Defense shall immediately begin ensuring that each state's National Army Guard and Air National Guard are a resource trained to organize and available to assist federal, state, and local law enforcement in quelling civil disturbances and ensuring the public safety and order whenever the circumstances necessitate. As appropriate under law, in coordination with respective adjuncts general, the Secretary of Defense shall designate an appropriate number of each state's trained to national guard members to be reasonably available for rapid mobilization for such purposes. In addition, the Secretary of Defense shall ensure the availability of a standing National Guard quick reaction force that shall be
Starting point is 01:02:49 resource trained and available for rapid nationwide deployment, unquote. National Guard walking the streets of D.C. are now carrying firearms after first being deployed without their service weapon. And since the operation in D.C. began on August 7th, there have now been over a thousand arrests, including dozens of undocumented immigrants. Currently, the Pentagon is planning to deploy thousands of National Guard to Chicago to continue Trump's alleged crime crackdown. I would have much more respect for Pritzker if he'd call me up and say, I have a problem. Can you help me fix it? I would be so happy to do it. I don't love, not that I don't have the right to do anything I want to do. I'm the president of the United States. If I think
Starting point is 01:03:32 our country's in danger, and it is in danger in these cities, I can do it. No problem going in and solving, you know, his difficulties. But it would be nice if they'd call and they'd say, would you do it? He's hurt. Poor guy. They want to ask him for help. His widow feelings. He's going to have to deploy the National Guard without Pudskill's approval. You know, gang, in all of this focus on the people being killed and persecuted by the government, I don't think any of us has stopped and spent enough time thinking, how does Donald Trump feel? And shame on us, you know, shame on us.
Starting point is 01:04:13 But it's not just Chicago. On Friday, the Pentagon told Fox News, that upwards of 1700 National Guard troops will be mobilized in 19 states to be deployed across the country to assist ICE in the nationwide hunt for undocumented immigrants. The Guard will be activated in states like Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming. With effective status ranging from August through mid-November, and operation is expected to start in early September. Importantly, as we saw in D.C., national guard from other states might deploy to other states,
Starting point is 01:04:55 specifically in the case where Trump doesn't get cooperation from the governor, who is in control of the national guard of each state. He can deploy a national guard from somewhere else, like what he did in D.C., pulling National Guard from other red states being deployed to D.C., but mobilized in those red states. So National Guard from all of these states could be deployed in a town near you, no matter where you live. And this operation specifically with these 1,700 National Guard troops is specifically to assist ICE. His plan to do this, like, anti-crime deployment in Chicago is a separate yet similar plan
Starting point is 01:05:31 what's also pulling from National Guard. But these things are two separate operations, according to White House officials. And I think one of the important things about this is that, you know, obviously, there's the part of this where it's like, yeah, they want to, at the very least look like they're just occupying cities and they are arresting huge numbers of people. But they also just don't have the manpower to do this kind of stuff, which is why they're pulling the National Guard, is why they're trying to expand the number of people on ICE. This is why they're pulling National Guard out to do this kind of stuff, which is that like they don't actually have the repressive capacity to just occupy cities and they're trying to find the manpower to be able to do it. So we will keep an eye out in September for these possible military deployments around the country. Yep. Hey, everyone, this is Garrison recording a short update on Thursday, since we have a little bit more information about the Minneapolis-Minnesota School shooting. So right after we recorded, rumors started circulating that this shooter was linked to neo-Nazi satanic pedophile groups, 09A, and 6.
Starting point is 01:06:42 someone on Twitter found a neo-Nazi forum account that they alleged belonged to the school shooter. This account used an 09A symbol and an affiliated Twitter account made other 09A references. These claims gained a lot of traction from leftist accounts and armchair experts on Twitter and blue sky. Lots of people were very eager to talk about something else besides that this show. shooter was trans, and many pinned the blame on 764, the child exploitation group that operates on discord and telegram that black males children and encourages some to commit acts of violence like school shootings. I talked about 764 on my nihilist violent extremism episode from earlier this year. As these claims spread online, I remained skeptical because this shooter did not
Starting point is 01:07:40 seem to really fit the profile of a 09A or 764 grooming victim. This shooter did not really seem like an 09A acolyte. They more closely resembled the true crime community fandom. And while sometimes true crime community or TCC may use 09A references because other mass shooters have or because previous mass shooters have been affiliated with 09A and related groups, I do not see much evidence linking this shooter to 09A based on the videos they posted to YouTube. And while some Nazi Satanist types have helped facilitate the Columbiner or TCC fandom, there was no solid evidence linking a group like 764 to this latest shooting. The shooter was in
Starting point is 01:08:25 their mid-20s. They weren't a 14-year-old being groomed into doing a mass shooting. And then on Thursday morning, the forum account alleged to be the Minneapolis shooter and the source of claims calling them a 09A or 764 grooming victim, started posting again on the forum. It wasn't the shooter's account. The shooter did not fit that profile. They weren't an occult Nazi Satanist. They were obsessed with mass killers. And translations of their Cyrillic journal have helped to substantiate this. A journal entry discussed taking pleasure in dressing up as a school shooter, quote, today I assembled a school shooter cosplay, unquote. And in translations of their journal, they made explicit references to true crime community, TCC,
Starting point is 01:09:13 saying that they might cringe if they joined an online TCC community and it could make them not want to follow through on doing an attack, doing online TCC fandom as mostly full of posers. Quote, I think joining a community would alienate my future, unquote. And, quote, I feel a very small portion of TCC feels as I do, harbors admiration of intent, unquote. One more update before I close the episode. Earlier today on Thursday,
Starting point is 01:09:44 RFK Jr. was asked if he would now be looking into if gender transition drugs cause violence. He responded by saying that they were already doing studies looking into that, and then quickly pivoted to talking about, quote, launching studies on the potential contribution of some of the SSRI drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs
Starting point is 01:10:05 that might be contributing to violence, unquote. This lines up with RFK Jr.'s general focus on psychiatric drugs, SSRIs, depression medication, as he has previously stated. That's all for us today on It Could Happen Here. We reported the news. We reported the news. Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone 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 for it could happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Take into the deep earth and cut it out.
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