It Could Happen Here - Inside the Heritage Foundation RNC Party

Episode Date: July 19, 2024

Robert and Sophie infiltrate the private Heritage Foundation afterparty, and Gare talks with a conservative environmentalist group.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T, connecting changes everything. Cool Zone Media. America is Trump strong, okay okay it is so funny welcome to it could happen here a podcast recorded from the republican national convention specifically the the hotel where the idaho and north dakota delegates are gathered yeah um fascinating elevator rides and we're we're thinking today about the memory of that guy that Trump does not know the name of who got shot to death. Corey Kurzweil.

They've definitely pronounced... Every time they've said it wrong. Every single person who spoke the last few days pronounced his name differently. And I was like, well, finally, they have somebody's name

to pronounce more incorrectly than they do Kabbalah Harris. Or Ramaswamy. Or Ramaswamy. Oh my gosh. And it's, look, folks, I'm not going to laugh at his kids. You know, that's a tragedy for them. But what I will say is that objectively, it's really funny that this guy died for Donald Trump and Trump very obviously

does not care. Couldn't could not be less important to him. Like there is nothing that matters less than this election. The man who took a bullet for him. And that's really funny. That's really funny. Anyways, this is it could happen here. I'm Sophie Lichterman. We're like Gare said at the RNC. I have Gare said Davis with me and Robert Evans. Very professional, Sophie. Thank you so much. I am your boss. Do you want to tell me a little bit about this morning? Well, I think first let's talk about some of our late night escapades. Oh, wait. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. Time travel noise. Cigar bar. Yes. Wow. I did not go with you to that event. Good call. I agree.

Yeah, that was a good call. I counted on the main floor of the cigar bar where the young Republicans had their party and six of 40 people had cigars. I had a cigar. You did. You had a cigar. You did. You had a cigar because I brought a selection of my finest Cubans. That's very, very kind of you, Robert.

I had one of John F. Kennedy's favorite cigars that I had been aging for two years waiting for this moment. I did like that you had the foresight to bring cigars to the RNC. To bring extremely high quality. Our buddy Lenny had a three-year-age Partagas. You had...

But I've been drinking. And I had a lovely Uppman. Oh, really, Robert? Have you been drinking? The best cigars there. I talked to everyone who happened to be smoking a cigar and they were all smoking trash. Nicaraguan and American garbage because none of them had any kind of...

Look, I don't get into this often i don't want to be like some of our friends in the in the far right and and use cigars as a totem i enjoy my cigars privately but we were going to a cigar bar so i brought my nice cigars and it was it a cigar bar were there cigars there you just said the word cigar seven it was not lost on me that none of them smoked good cigars because they're children. All right. You know what? We had an interview with Rudy Giuliani and Rudy would have understood.

That man has nice cigars. I'll say that about Rudy Giuliani. He knows his cigars. That's all I'm saying. Great. So we've been trying to hit kind of the after party scene at the RNC just to see kind of what's up. This little cigar party was put on by some of the young Republicans from New York. Primarily New York. They are very confident of a victory, potentially a statewide victory,

in a national election. And, you know, the evidence doesn't make it impossible. It doesn't look like it's going to happen from this cycle, but 2028, New York could be in play. And one of the interesting things is that Florida also seems to be tightening. Two polls recently show Trump just four points ahead of Biden. He won by 10 in 2020. That's a significant tightening and within kind of swing state margins. And so it is kind of interesting to conceive of the possibility that by 2028, both New York and Florida could be in play. Yeah. So I dressed like a 1950s fbi agent in trench coat and smoke well done one of these cigars as best as i could how'd you like it it was fine it's a nice cigar it's no clove um good god oh my fucking so give me a gun it was it was it was a nice little party

we talked we talked to some people the the best thing about the party though is that there was a nice little party. We talked to some people. The best thing about the party, though, is that there was a series of speeches put on by these guys from New York that kind of just kept going on. And the longer that these speeches, like these three different guys kept going on, the music on the roof started to get slowly louder and louder and louder until it was completely draining out the speeches until they just stopped. Because like, okay, the music's too loud now. Now and again, there are heroes. So someone was on that dial just every two minutes, bumping it up a little bit. There's a guy I follow who followed me back in 2020 who was like an election poll analysis expert. And was like, and is not a political guy but was like look if you show up at a convention after party to talk fuck you like people are there to drink all you should say is

the bar is open and uh i agreed with that and then you know what to skip ahead credit to the heritage foundation nobody ever said anything but that we could drink all we wanted at the heritage foundation party that is right which we will get to later so we were up way way too late way too late uh at some of these after parties the other night and we had to get up pretty early in the morning because we had an interview with the ceo of the texas public policy foundation which is kind of like a mini version of the heritage foundation, but just for Texas. The former guy who ran this now runs the Heritage Foundation itself. So it's kind of like a little bit of a training ground, and they kind of swap members often.

We had a pretty long interview that we will turn into some kind of future piece of content, discussing everything from woke ideology to the moral rot infecting america to why mass shootings happen in this country yeah yeah he was he was he was very polished very media trained easily the best interview subject in terms of his like skill at talking yeah yeah that we've had and similarly i i don't think he was quite prepared for our line of questioning either you know so that he he got he got taken aback a little bit by some of the questions we were lobbing him. Probably very different from the rest of the interviews that that he's been doing. I'm trying to think if there's anything specifically about that interview that's worth mentioning now. You know what really interests me?

Because the shooting is so relevant, I will bring up the shooting. We talked about why the guy who tried to kill Trump had done it. And he and I were kind of of the same mind, the same mind that you are, Garrison, which is that this was a school shooter type thing. And that was the primary reason behind the ideology. And this is before now some some stuff has come out since that has made that seem even more likely. kind of have that not be a controversial part of the conversation. This was not a radical left shooting. There was no sort of attempt by him to claim it as that. He was like, yeah, this seems like a guy, we have a deep sickness in this country. And we clearly disagreed with him about the specifics of where the sickness comes from. But the sickness leads to some people who just want to do mass shootings that are not political. And that was interesting to me. No. And one of the big things talked about in terms of this moral rot is that there is something lacking in our country specifically with young men

there's there's there is this lack of purpose among young men which makes them do these kind of violent acts i don't disagree with that sure i i think i think again i disagree with yeah his it's his solutions and some of his diagnosis in certain ways right because he he'll attribute that lack to certain things that we might not morality at the home and sure right you know pornography all those all those kind of things but you know that was that that was kind of his his take you know and then we also talked about everything from like the influence of of billionaires on these right-wing think tanks and political candidates catholics versus evangelicals it was an interesting conversation that i'm sure you'll hear in the coming weeks.

And we'll kind of explain why we want you to hear from this guy who's, you know, typically probably pretty adversarial to the type of stuff that we talk about on this show. But after this interview, I met up with Sophie Lichterman. Hey! And we talked to the people at the actual Heritage Foundation booth who had many a pamphlet. And I collected all of the gender ideology pamphlets, which will also be a future deep dive. Kind of curiously, they did not have a single pamphlet about Project 2025. Nope.

No, and they didn't like talking about it either. They said that Project 2025 is, you know, a coalition effort between both Heritage and all these other groups. But they're not really talking about it here today because it's not Trump's policy platform. Trump has his own policy platform. This is just a list of policy suggestions for lawmakers once they get into office. So they like to talk about a whole bunch of other stuff, you know, certain things that are kind of a part of Project 2025, but nothing about the actual, you know, document itself, partially due to the kind of negative backlash that it has received. And, you know, it seems to be kind of widely unliked for various reasons. So I think it was interesting that they weren't even pushing it at an event like this. You know, again, with the

Texas Policy Foundation guy we talked about, when we brought it up, he was pretty open about the fact that it's not popular. Yeah. And his attitude was that in the future, once we win, we can try and build consensus around it. But he didn't try to deny the fact that, like, it's widely disliked by the electorate. And it is against a lot of things that are on the Republican policy platform for the actual party. Sophie, you had a wonderful conversation with some of these heritage folks let's just say that my very blonde hair and the pigtails that i wore most of this week made it very easy for these folks to talk to me which is

unsettling a little bit frightening but useful but very very very scary yeah a question i've been asking a lot of the folks that i've talked to this week is mostly about their opinions about education and you know if there is a shift in power with trump being elected in november what exactly they would want to do and the overall majority answer from these groups is that they want to take away power from the federal government and bring it to the states. And that would be universal school choice. Yeah. And so got a little bit of that from them. They also mentioned something about one of the biggest roadblocks being student loans. While also being very against student loan forgiveness specifically. So it's kind of a it was

it was an interesting position i'll want to read some more of their pamphlets on that but anyways that just talks to them more got more of their pamphlets and garrison and i asked them about the states that they choose to operate in and specifically for their for their lobbying group as opposed to just like the think tank they have this this other thing i think called heritage action which operates differently because of certain laws around lobbying it's kind of where they try to train a lot of new people up they had a lot of advertisements that they did something like 50 more on the ground activism type stuff and gary what was the answer they gave it i thought it was interesting you you asked the question

for why they didn't go in certain states yeah so they had this map of what states they were active in and there were certain states you know like oregon washington a whole bunch of the like new england states so they just weren't active in because they didn't think they would be very effective they wouldn't make any leeway it's just it's just not worth it it's not going to move towards actual electoral victories but there was other there's other states like wy Wyoming and a few others that they weren't active in for different reasons, because of specific regulations regarding donor transparency that they were strongly against, the states that require there to be transparency for people who donate to these kind of political groups. And in protest of those regulations and laws, they are completely inactive in those states, which is a

funny way of saying we just want to hide whoever gives us money. And that is that was a little interesting piece of information regarding, you know, there's just states they just don't operate in because they do not want to see or have it made public where their kind of money is coming in and out of, at least for the heritage action part of the group. Yes. It was overall just interesting that there was, you know, at this booth, there was about five different, I would say 20-something women. 20-something dyed blonde women.

Yes. And they invited me to their heritage social party that they were having that was across from the main convention where you needed an access code to get in and they gave having that was across from the main convention where you needed an access code to get in and they gave you that flyer and you will hear all about that we took advantage of that at the end of the episode you will get a special inside look at the heritage foundation's private invite only exclusive rnc party was off the record now does it count no of

course not i promised that lady that what she said to me was off the record. And I won't say any more about that. But I didn't promise that to anyone else. Do you know what's on the record, Robert? What you said later? These products and services? No, the products and services that support this podcast. Sure, that also is off the record.

On the record? Whatever. Here's the ads. On the record, whatever. Here's the ads. of AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology, I just hate the people in charge

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. We are back. And don't worry, you will hear about this special Heritage Foundation party in a sec. But first, I want to play for you a whole interview that I collected just down the hall from the Heritage Foundation booth. A whole interview that I collected just down the hall from the Heritage Foundation booth. The American Conservation Coalition had a pretty large section of the RNC convention fest. You know, list of vendors, kind of more typical, like, you know, convention type stuff.

You know, if you go to like a Comic Con or something, there's a lot of like vendors and booths. This kind of section of the RNC. So they had this pretty big booth, and it was the only time I've ever seen anything mentioned about climate change. So I was interested to see what conservatives talking about climate change sound like, what they're saying, and I'll just play that interview here right now. Do you mind introducing yourself and the organization you're with? Sure. My name is Carly Matthews. I'm the Vice President of Communications at the American Conservation Coalition, which is the largest conservative grassroots environmental organization in the country. So there's a few things that interest

me about your group. I mean, especially if you look back in the last hundred years, like environmental conservation has been historically a much more conservative standpoint. You can look at presidents in the 1920s. There was a huge push for that. And somewhere along the lines, that's kind of been lost for a number of reasons. I guess, what is your main mission here with this organization? Yeah, well, it's interesting you bring up kind of the history of conservative conservation, because we have a timeline here at the RNC showing all the Republican presidents who have really engaged on this issue issue from Ulysses Grant to Teddy Roosevelt to more modern presidents like Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and even H.W.

Bush. So what we're really doing here with the American Conservation Coalition is building the conservative environmental movement, specifically among young Americans who frankly feel kind of disenfranchised by both parties on the issue of climate and the environment. The left has taken a really doom and gloom approach to these issues that isn't very inspiring for a lot of young folks. And in the last 30 years, conservatives haven't engaged very productively. So we're here showing that conservation is conservative. Those values are inherently entwined, and it's okay know call for action on environmental issues like climate change. I guess yeah let's let's start more on like the big topic which is which is climate change and we can get into like local conservation. What is your take on the current climate scenario because

like ever since ever since the early 2000s there's been this you know for a lot of young people slightly worrying trend of half the politicians just either either seriously downgrading you know the scale of this problem or just thinking there is no problem. What is your take both on that part and then how you see the climate crisis, the climate issue that we are dealing with? Where do you see it heading? Yeah, so ACC was founded because conservatives weren't engaging on this issue. So for the last six, seven years, we've been really pushing conservatives, especially conservative elected leaders, to re-engage in a productive way. And I think we've done that really effectively in D.C., where I live. The Conservative Climate Caucus in the

House, which is a group of Republican lawmakers interested in tackling the issue of climate change, has 87 members. It's the fourth largest in the Republican conference. So we're seeing a big kind of shift in the Overton window there. But yeah, I think young people want elected leaders who recognize that we have an issue, recognize that we have a challenge in climate change, and want practical solutions like expanding clean, reliable nuclear energy, like pursuing permitting reform to actually allow American energy projects to be built. So I think we take a really kind of level-headed, rational approach to these issues that really

resonates with young people. What's the main difference in how you view the climate issue, as opposed to someone like AOC, right? Or like these more like progressive Democrats who view this as a very existential crisis. You have to get fossil fuels under control. These kind of timelines that we hear, you know, by 2050, by 2070, by even like something like 2030, right? How this becomes like a cascading problem. How differently do you view the current situation than, you know, these progressive Democrats? Sure. Like I said, climate change is a challenge. It's certainly something that we need to tackle. But we don't view it through kind of this doom and gloom lens where we're going to die in 12, 10, 5 years, whatever the current timeline is on the left. But we do see a need for all of the above energy. So

we recognize that energy demand is continuing to expand, but we also need to protect our environment. So we need to kind of consider that trilemma, reliable, affordable, and clean, when we're looking at our energy portfolio in the future. And I think that's what really kind of distinguishes us from the left in that we're not calling for a divestment of fossil fuels. We're calling for a rational level-headed energy strategy that will lower emissions, but in kind of a more realistic way. Do you think that timeline is going to be more stretched out? Because I mean, if you look at, you know, the way current levels are heading, as soon as we hit like 2.5 degrees, not just that change, but the level of cascading environmental effects, right? One thing changes,

now everything gets worse, because when stuff melts, then it changes the way like thermal regulation of the whole planet works. And then it becomes this kind of cascading problem. And I feel like we're trying to get out in front of it before it happens that every day that kind of feels less and less likely, at least for a lot of people like my age, and it can be a very doom and gloom scenario, because you feel like no one's taking this problem seriously. Even Joe Biden's climate policy is very inadequate, according to a lot of the people that I talk to. I guess, how do you view the scale of this problem right now? Yeah, climate change is the kind of environmental challenge of our time, right?

It should be what we're thinking about and focusing on when it comes to environmental policy. But I really think we need to kind of take a step back. And that kind of push for urgency hasn't gotten us anywhere. To your point, you know, Joe Biden is kind of branding himself as the climate president. But, you know, a lot of young people are unhappy with the platform that he's put forward. So I think when you're talking about the timeline, we're talking about what we can do right now to kind of unleash American energy, to reduce American emissions, but also global emissions

and really think of this on a global scale. So that urgency piece isn't quite realistic or isn't quite what we want to focus on because I don't think it leads to action. There's kind of two trains of thought in terms of climate policy stuff. There's kind of two trains of thought in terms of like climate policy stuff. There's taking like adaptation routes, right? Trying to adapt to a changing environment that we're going to have to face. It's going to happen versus mitigation, right? For a

while, we were trying to find ways to mitigate the problem to kind of get ahead of it, right? And that is feeling less and less likely. And we are seeing more of these adaptive strategies getting adopted, right? There's everything from, like, you know, people are trying to develop better carbon capture, which has its own problems as a technology. And, you know, everything from, like, geoengineering even to, like, solar blockage. There's a lot of things people are thinking, like, if we don't get, like, emissions under control, we're going to have to go to some more of those extreme measures.

How much of your focus is on adaptive elements versus just mitigation? Well, we definitely need both. To your point, we have to adapt to a changing climate, but we also need to be reducing emissions to kind of prevent future effects. So I think we kind of set a balance between adaptation and mitigation. And frankly, I think sometimes they can be really kind of connected and entwined. So something we focus on, for instance, is regenerative agriculture, which lowers emissions associated with agriculture, but also helps the land kind of adjust to a changing climate, keeps the soil healthy, things like that. So I really think when we're talking about climate, we can talk about adaptation and mitigation kind of at the same time. How do you try to do outreach to a vast number of Republicans,

conservatives, who simply don't think this is a problem, who like just deny this is a problem, think this is like a scam in some way? How do you try to tackle that as, you know, coming from similarly like an also conservative position? Yeah, so I mean, we're here at the Republican National Convention. And it's been really interesting talking to a lot of folks from diverse backgrounds about the issue of climate and also environmental conservation. I really do think it matters how you start the conversation. We talked earlier about kind of our timeline of the legacy of conservative environmentalism. Starting there and talking about how we can carry on that legacy and how we can tackle kind of this environmental issue of our time has been really effective. And we've gotten a lot of positive reception. You know, there's always going to be disagreement. There's always going to be detractors. But I do think that

there's more and more of kind of that acceptance that we need to take care of our own backyard. And that includes, you know, tackling climate change. How much stuff do you end up having to, you know, talk about or not necessarily focus on, but at least talk about like actual fossil fuel emissions, fracking, these types of things that are like mainstays of politics because of how much money goes into them, but undeniably are a massive contributing factor. And we do need to move to probably some more nuclear options, to forgive the expression, I guess. And, you know, as well as like a solar hydro, which are, you know, less good than nuclear on like a large scale. But like, you know, especially for like the for the Republican Party, trying to trying to point out certain things about how we will have to scale back some degree of fossil fuels, if not, you know, a majority of it in the next 25 years.

If we want to if we want to not have like a pretty bad scenario, at least not even just for humans, but for animals and other parts of the environment? Yeah, well, I think that goes back to the all of the above energy approach and really diversifying our energy portfolio, which frankly is not only good for the environment, but good for energy security. We've seen hacking of pipelines or other kind of cyber energy attacks. So by diversifying sources, we're really setting ourselves up to have a more secure energy grid. So I think there's other ways that you can talk about, you know, environmental actions, climate actions that have co-benefits. And we can talk about that in a really productive way with Republicans. Do you also focus on like local

ecology efforts? Like, you know, like some of the more like Roosevelt style, like conservation, is that something that you also kind of try to? Also, it's an on-ramp to talk about these broader climate issues. Absolutely. I love that framing that you used as the entry point to climate issues. We have 50,000 young members across the country in about 100 branches, either on college campuses or in young professional communities. And they go out and they plant trees in their communities. They do park cleanups. They clean up a waterway. They have educational speakers to learn more about these issues.

And we found that that's really, really effective in building this conservative environmental movement and showing that these values are connected, they're compatible, and then that can lead to advocacy on the national level for things like we talked about nuclear energy or other clean energy sources. So that's been really effective for us. What would you like to see as a conservative climate policy in like 10 years? Like what would you hope gets adopted to help curtail like, you know, these more catastrophic scenarios? Great question. And I would hope it perhaps a little bit earlier than 10 years. Absolutely.

But I'm just, based on how things have gone. Sure. So we have kind of a big three that we're focused on right now. Permitting reform, so getting the government out of its own way, frankly, to fight climate change and unleash American energy in the form of clean energy, nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal, hydropower, and really kind of expand what we can build in this country. Again, nuclear energy is really one of the focuses for us because it's a baseload energy source that can run 24-7. It's clean and it's really secure.

So we're really focused on nuclear. And then the last thing is American energy dominance. Here in the United States, we produce energy safer, cleaner, and more efficiently. And we really want to be a leader on the world stage when it comes to energy. I think that there is a lot of people, both like, you know, progressive Democrats who really care about this issue, as well as, you know, a lot of Republicans and liberals who have a lot of skepticism about nuclear energy, right? For some good reasons, there have been some unfortunate events that have happened. And I know fission and fusion have been slowly getting better. I feel like we're close to some kind of breakthrough,

but we do have a limited time. How do you approach talking to people who have a level of risk in terms of nuclear energy and the possible dangers that it's had based on a few accidents, even though a lot of these plants are relatively safe? Yeah, I love this question. I grew up an hour south of Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. So I have a lot of experience with nuclear skepticism. Look, I mean, nuclear energy is the safest and cleanest form

that we have in our back pocket. Yes, there have been some unfortunate incidents. Frankly, they're human error. And we understand nuclear power a lot better now. We have more safeguards in place since incidents like Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. And we haven't seen a nuclear meltdown that we were promised in the Simpsons or the China Syndrome or something like that. The fact is nuclear, quote, waste is really nuclear spent fuel, and we can recycle that and keep producing clean nuclear power. We have incredibly well-trained nuclear experts at all

of our power plants across the United States, and they produce clean, reliable energy for consumers all over the country. So we really need to kind of get over those messaging hurdles with nuclear and expand the industry here. What do you think will happen if your concerns go unheard? Like if this just doesn't work, if things kind of continue at the scale and like a timeline they have been, what worries do you have? Yeah, that's a really existential question. Yeah, I mean, I think we're in the seven years since

we've been founded, we're working really hard to build coalitions with a lot of different stakeholders and be heard by a lot of different folks in power. And frankly, I'm hopeful that we will, you know, pursue solutions to climate change, that we will, for lack of a better term, get our act together and pursue these solutions. And really, I think the biggest thing that I like to focus on when it comes to climate advocacy is optimism and this idea that, you know, the planet is our one common denominator and we can unite around that. And, you know, already in Congress, we've seen bipartisan legislation in a really polarizing time that focuses on climate. Probably the last

big package in the 118th Congress was a nuclear package to unleash next generation nuclear. So I know I'm not exactly answering your question, but I am extremely optimistic about the future. Do you think there is a path towards some kind of bipartisan advocacy, not just in like the Senate, but also like in terms of like environmental movements and like protests? And obviously there's certain people who employ very theatrical tactics that maybe don't correlate to much improved means. But do you see there's a possibility of like, you know, a larger public call for action on this issue? I mean, something that we've covered on our show a while ago is like, will it take something like a general strike to even like get people to like realize like, we need this to be done? Like, not necessarily that option,

but like, do you see like a route towards more bipartisan activism and advocacy of this issue? Yeah, that's a great question. We do a lot of bridge building work. I was actually in Los Angeles earlier this year with a group of conservative climate advocates and progressive climate advocates. And we talked about solutions where there's common ground. And then we finished the day by doing a beach cleanup together. So I really do think there's a lot of opportunity to kind of unite on this issue, especially in younger generations. When I talked about hope earlier, they're the ones who really give me hope. And I think there's a lot of common ground that we can pursue together. That's all I had, unless you have any other notes or points

you wanted to mention. If you want to find ACC, you can find us at acc.eco or acc underscore national on social platforms. But that's it for me. Well, I hope that was slightly informative. And now we will inform you about the Heritage Foundation's private exclusive party after these messages. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists

to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things

that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hey, I'm Gianna Prandti.

And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking,

yay, I can finally buy a new phone. Mm-hmm. But you also have a lot of questions, like how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single

year you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15 percent. I'm not saying you're going to get 15 percent every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world

as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house.

So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Okay, we are back. We are back and we are ready to tell you how my pigtails let us infiltrate famous hate group, the Heritage Foundation's social house party. We got all up in there.

First off, a lot of microwave grade food. It was the worst food we've had in all of Milwaukee. Was the Heritage Foundation catering? Great meals. Yes. That is very notable that the Heritage Foundation had the worst food that we've had this entire week. Not shocked. First of all, they let you two as well as another one of our friends come in off of my access code, which is very funny. And then we took one of the most hilarious photos we've ever taken

together. And then we, then we met with one of the producers, the daily wire and watched him try to figure out who we are. As I introduced myself by name, he was, he was just calculating. And then some lady came up and disrupted him.

We just fucking. You can see the little like thinking, thinking circle in his head. Like third grade edition. And it wasn't the math was not math it was like that one bbc sherlock scene he was trying to pull up he was trying to pull up the files yes didn't work didn't work just didn't have enough time we stayed in that party well robert you've seen that party for like five straight hours i was there for a long time

for every drink i wanted to drink i would order another and just pour it out um because i wanted i wanted to make them spend money i knew it was going to go somewhere free for us but not free for them so as robert was was schmoozing with the heritage foundation party attendees guys me and sophie went into the convention center to hear some speeches and most of them today honestly pretty boring and even even the notable ones were also kind of boring the one i guess we'll'll talk about just very briefly is Don Jr.'s speech. First, he brought out his daughter, Trump's granddaughter. Before you get to that, do you want to go over what the theme of the day was? No.

I mean, maybe. We can mention it. I don't feel how relevant it was to any of the speeches. It was just make America strong again. It was make America strong once again which is strong once again sorry once again all right interesting that they didn't want to sound out massa you know anyways i i guess i guess it's really not that relevant i just just to point out that on the previous days for the different themes there was very intricate backgrounds that were up they did not really have anything for the strong

again they were like they phoned it the fuck in yeah and there was no interesting background anyways gare what were you saying so donald trump jr's daughter so trump the actual real one's granddaughter gave gave this little this little speech meant to humanize her grandfather is a nice guy that was basically the speech calls me and asks me how i am that was basically the speech which is lovely is sure why not it was her first speech i don't think any of the other grandchildren have have given speeches before no this is like kind of the first appearance of one of trump's grandkids yes and the way it was framed is don jr came up and then was like she just called me it was very intentionally propagandized it was also the most happy i've seen trump this entire week though he might actually care about

his granddaughter yes definitely more than his son it's hard it would be hard to care less i'm not sure how much they they've shown it on tv TV, but I had a view of him the entire night tonight, right from where I was sitting. I was at an angle where I could see his face, and they showed his face on the Screamer Bunch, and he was genuinely stoic, I would say. He smiled for his granddaughter definitely the most, and maybe once during Kimberly Guilfoyle's speech

at the very end. But other than that that i did not see much emotion from him today and it was pretty similar the rest of the week i think you again you have to keep in mind with him whatever i mean we hate him he's a bad man he's he's a monster would be the worst possible president we could have but um he's also a person who got shot and he's traumatized you know and like you don't have to like make up excuses for that like he is a human being who is scared because a man shot him in the head and that's really not not a complicated thing to diagnose so after the granddaughter gave

her a little spiel trump jr himself had a little speech that he was basically just doing an impression of his father for the entire time dog shit impersonation not a very good impression but compared to vance it was still it was very impressive we'll get to that in a sec i will say the crowd did really really they seemed to like him there was chance of you know trump trump jr 2028 it reminded me of uh when i was at my first trump rally This would have been in the late spring, early summer of 2016 when fucking Chris Christie conceded to Trump. There was a British naturalized citizen in the crowd of the rally. And I was like, you want him to be president for

eight years? And he was like, well, I want to be president for eight years to start. And I was like to start what happens next? He's like, well, he's got three kids, doesn't he? Then he like walked through his basic plan for Trump to have a dynasty like the royal family. And I I wish I had said, go back home, go back home to your fucking country with your goddamn royal family. We don't have that here, but we might. They wanted it. Yeah. The idea of a king is becoming increasingly popular. You have told me that story and i am unwell thank you i got some

great audio of that guy thank you so much uh that is going to haunt me tonight garrison what else yeah i mean trump jr had a few funny lines making fun of build back better making some corn pop jokes made a corn pop joke there were a couple of the corn pop jokes. You mean a corn pop joke? There were a couple of corn pop jokes. The corn pop jokes in the moment, very funny. The one line I do want to mention is that he talked about how the left wants to use the First Amendment to show kids explicit drag shows, but they want to put you into jail for making a meme, something that has never happened.

Not a single time. Not once. Not once. They barely put people into jail for assaulting the capital yeah so that was most of his speech we then heard from vance's wife who gave a typical vice first lady speech it wasn't notable and then we heard from vance himself the the the hopeful future vice president. What?

Sorry, I was taking a nap. What? Wait, Sophie. Sophie, wake up. Wake up. We're recording a podcast here. Wow. Sorry.

Just the sound of J.D. Vance's name put me right to sleep. He gave what I would describe and people have since described as kind of a bad speech. What a slop. You guys were in the stadium. I was sitting at the Heritage Fun Ocean party on an upper roof deck. Oh yeah, what'd they think? There were three people during most of it and then four others filtered in when those guys left. Every single one of them was

disappointed. The only guy who liked it was a Fox News reporter. And when he left, the people who had been like, well, he was okay, said, well, I hate that I had to lie in front of that guy, but he was media. I was kind of just sitting on my phone pretending to be texting and listening to them. So they didn't really notice me.

But the ultimate feeling that they expressed repeatedly was that was really disappointing. It was really boring. It was really long. He is not a great speaker. There was one guy who repeatedly said, I don't like that his wife isn't white. I wish his wife was white and then there was a guy who was kind of a more libertarian member of the republican party who i chatted with who came in and like sat down to have a drink and you know was expressing that he liked vance's speech and the guy said what are you a cuban and the guy said no and he's like well you're not white so that that was great. Amazing stuff happening at the Heritage Foundation private party.

Heritage Foundation party was a good time. Yeah. So this is something I was even seeing in the convention. People there, you know, there was some, like, you know, respectful clapping. But people weren't super into it, at least in the sections that we were at. The lady sitting next to me, who's, you know, just like a Republican woman in her maybe 50s or 60s very very lucid kind of just like kept dozing off just because she was so bored not like because she was sleepy just because she was bored wasn't a good speech no she looks at me and she said he's so dry yeah so at a certain point i just i just kind of

whispered to sophie i'm like wow vance is a really dry speaker and she kind of she kind of whispered to Sophie, like, wow, Vance is a really dry speaker. And she kind of like nodded awake and started like nodding her head in agreement and repeated the same thing to us. And I asked her, you know, like, well, who do you think would have been a better pick? And she said, well, I don't know. I just expected Vance to be a better rhetorical speaker. And that was all she would say. And I feel like that was kind of generally the vibe. Like something else I noticed that he was like actually okay at the certain things he was talking about,

what he was actually saying. There were certain things that were interesting. It was more like the way he was saying it. It was specifically he had no ability to do crowd work. He was just reading off the teleprompter and kind of doing a slight smile every 30 seconds. that's all was he wasn't actually it really seriously engaging people make fun of the bits where trump dances or whatever his little moves but those play those work with the crowd even like pointing at people using gestures kind of anything to connect you to

the audience vance was just so was so dry was so plain i think the biggest action from his speech was just the people in the crowd who like to chant things just really into chanting really love to chant ted cruz gave him a great he like that he kind of lost them early in his speech the night before and won them back because he gave them a chance to chant he went through they like that they like to chant their chanters want to give us some of the chanting highlights, Gary? Yeah, so he was definitely leaning into his hillbilly or faux hillbilly background. Motherfucker. Sorry, your parents made $175,000 goddamn dollars a year.

Speaking of somebody who grew up in a fucking rural-ass Oklahoma. Like, fucking carpetbagger. That was what he was using for most of his speech. He was telling stories about the woman who raised him when his own mom was was dealing with addiction who he referred to as his me ma uh-huh and fucking god damn it the first big chant i took note of is he told a story about how he was hanging out when he when he was like a kid or like a teen he was hanging out with someone who was known to be like a local drug dealer and his me ma told him that if she saw him hanging out with that guy again she was gonna run him over

in a truck run over the drug dealer and no one's gonna find out about it and the crowd ate this up they started chanting me ma me ma so they were just they were chanting about killing this drug dealer right they were chanting about murder about murdering this drug dealer. J.D. Vance never met a drug dealer in his fucking life, I'll tell you that much. So that was the first one. And the next little be-moth story he told is that when she was a little bit older, he said that after she died, they found 19 loaded handguns all over her house. And they realized it's because she wasn't able to move very fast

So she always wanted a gun no matter where she was She wanted to be an arm's length of a gun whether that be in the cutlery drawer By the TV remote under the bed just get a shoulder ring because because she wanted to protect her family Even though she was old and this this led into another chant. Specifically, the 19 loaded handguns just, again, went. The crowd ate that up. And the crowd even started just chanting about how good they were at chanting. It became very self-referential, very like patting yourself on the back for chanting. It was very funny.

These people love chanting. And, yeah, that was most events' speech. It wasn't very good. It was too long. Almost unanimously, people at the Heritage Foundation Party did not like it. So they did not get that. That was most of Vance's speech. It wasn't very good. It was too long. Almost unanimously, the people at the Heritage Foundation Party did not like it. So they did not get that seal of approval. One positive, one pseudo positive, which was the Fox News journalist. Who I'm sure is contractually obligated.

To like it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And who the people there made fun of when he left. Yes. Well, we talked to a campaign manager earlier at the Heritage Party just regarding kind of the race in general, mentioning stuff about the upcoming vice presidential debates, which the Trump admin put out a statement saying they don't want to lock down any details on this until they actually know who the vice president's going to be.

That was good. That was solid on their part. Which is a good piece of propaganda. And we were talking about that and bringing it up to some of these people at the Heritage Party. Like, who do you think actually is going to be the Democratic nominee? Many of them did not believe it was going to be Joe Biden. Many of them thought that it either could be an unknown candidate at this point or more likely probably Kamala. And this is something that I've been noticing is that every time in these speeches where they're talking about Joe Biden's policies, they're not just saying Joe Biden.

They're saying Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Well, well, Kamala Kamala Harris in one instance, Kamala Harris's policies. So they are already preparing to start shifting their rhetoric onto Kamala. That is something that the opposition's already planning to do. That is something that the opposition's already planning to do. And, you know, as of today, which is Wednesday night, we have heard that both Biden made announcements in the same day that he would step down if that is kind of a brief glimpse into the heritage foundation party i guess the the vibes were more similar to what is i think well known now as the least good episode of the boys that that private tech night party uh combined with like a frat a frat bro bar hop what i'll say about this is they had an edm track set to country road take me home and i will say that like if you were to if you were to put that side by side with the plane crash that killed the author

of that song i think he would agree with you. This party was worse. One more thing I wanted to note was I did not go to the party for 700 hours like the two of you. I went home after all the speeches. At home. I went back to the hotel after all the speeches. Did that country road take you home? That country road took me home. To a place you belong.

And I had a very, very, very nice Lyft driver. Sir, if you by some chance listen to podcasts, you were very nice. Thank you. After what was a very loud day. There was a guy holding a rest in peace sign with the photo of the guy who attempted to assassinate the president with the caption, an American hero. Great stuff. Yes, I took a photo of it. an American hero.

Great stuff. Yes, I took a photo of it. And the amount of people leaving the RNC that just shouted their worst, many slurs at him, were countless. And I don't know

if anything else happened further after that, but very strange choice. That is an interesting move. All I know is that based on the last postings of the victim of that shoot and Corey Comparatore.

Comparatore. He'll get over it. The Japanese did. Well, anyway, that wraps up our coverage this week of the Republican National Convention. We will lead next week with Trump's first public speech since the shooting. That'll be dropping Sunday night. Maybe just maybe. A little bit of Mayor Rudy.

A little sprinkle of Rudy. Squeeze in some Rudy as a treat. Squeeze in, like he's squeezed out some of that hair juice. That's right. Jesus Christ. Well, thank you for listening to our initial coverage of the RNC.

We have more scripted episodes, more kind of polished deep dives about the people and conversations that we have had here in beautiful milwaukee wisconsin and remember folks if you're going to take a bullet for somebody donald trump does not care not interested at all he's not making the funeral he is not he's not going to show up at your funeral wow that's a loud chair painfully loud chair you know what else is painfully loud? The Heritage Foundation party.

Anyway, we're done. Good night. Good night. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards.

That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Blacklit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while running errands or at the end of a busy day. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Blacklit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T. Connecting changes everything.