It Could Happen Here - King Trump Yells at Congress

Episode Date: March 6, 2025

Garrison, James, and producer Sophie discuss Trump’s first joint congressional speech declaring WOKE dead, and the lackluster response from Democrats. Sources:https://www.npr.org/2025/03/05/nx-s1-5318104/trump-joint-address-congress-takeawayshttps://www.npr.org/2025/03/04/nx-s1-5318102/trump-joint-session-al-green-protesthttps://www.thepinknews.com/2025/03/05/january-littlejohn-donald-trump/https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/03/05/trump-social-security-fraud-claims/81508815007/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Call Zone Media. Welcome to an It Could Happen Here special report. I'm Garrison Davis. I'm joined by James Stout and Sophie Rae Lichterman. So excited. We are here to discuss Trump's first joint session speech of his second term. This is basically the equivalent of a State of the Union, except it's too early to really give a good State of the Union, even though this month has felt kind of like a year. So we are doing a special report here,

in addition to our regular Executive Disorder episode, because there is just so much to talk about that we cannot fit it all in our regular ED. Just let it go. Pause. Pause for effect. Okay. You can't get me, Garroth. Speaking of, this was the longest

uh... Wow. joint session speech in American history. And man, it felt like it lasted forever. Yeah, I was gonna say, and boy howdy did it feel. Never ending. It went on so long.

Not a great feat of oratory, really. I was supposed to watch some yaoi with a friend last night, and they came over, and I was like, Haha, gotcha! Actually, I have to watch this speech first, don't worry. Usually it's only like an hour or so. I did the exact same scam. Two hours later. I did the exact same scam. Two hours later. I did the exact same scam to my friend Sarah. She was like, you know, I seriously love you, right?

Because this is horrible. Horrible. Two hours later, it finally ends and they're like, okay, we can finally watch Yowie, right? And like, no, no, no, I have to watch the Democratic response speech. Don't worry, it should be shorter. And thankfully it was. But yeah, let's just start by talking about the beginning of this speech or rather, what the general overview of this speech was.

This was not a leaning across the aisle speech, right? This wasn't trying to unite the country. No, it was not. But you know. This catered to core mega supporters and new issues at the center of the modern right-wing media machine. The version of the speech I watched on ABC frequently cut to Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro sitting together overlooking Congress as they were special guests of the President and the

First Lady. Yes. Magic. They did the same on CNN. I switched back and forth between Lady. Yes. Magic. They did the same on CNN. I switched back and forth between a couple channels. I noted this to our team, but when I first looked up what time the speech was starting, I turned on my TV and went to CNN. I happened upon them talking about if Dems should not applaud or if they should heckle and some motherfucker I don't care

about said that Dems should find places to applaud him to show unity. Cool. Sure. Yeah. That's always worked well. Dems should find places to applaud him to show unity. Applaud the king for ruining the government. Yeah. For firing all the workers!

Give him a clap, why don't you? Sorry, James, I realize that got a little insensitive. Wow. JARED Yeah, Garrison, this is why we have to watch those videos where the bad actors talk about how they feel. GARRETT Not anymore! JANELLE Talking about our workplace harassment videos! GARRETT CEI is over, James!

No more of those videos here in the Free State of Georgia. That's illegal. Unfortunately, here in California, I have approximately 75 little, little red bells when I log into my workday. But no, like a single time early in the speech, Trump asked Democrats, why not join us in celebrating America? After he complained, I could cure any disease and these people sitting right here, the Democrats, they would not cheer. I could cure any disease and these

people wouldn't cheer. No, no, that was weird. I mean, like some Dems didn't even show up. They had the sub cave of wearing certain, they did the same performative bullshit they always do. And they had what I can only describe as like church paddles with little catchy sayings on it. They weren't even like, I mean, like, come on. Like a ping pong paddle. Ping pong paddle is a good description. But no, some Dems did not show up in protest. Others wore black kind of like in mourning.

Yeah, who cares? Some of the women's caucus wore pink, very cool, very feminist. And others wore the colors of the Ukrainian flag. Sure. That'll help. But, you know, Trump just pointed towards the Democrat side of the chamber throughout the night and just referred to them as the radical left lunatics. Like this was not a across the aisle speech.

No, it wasn't. This was, this was, if anything, emphasizing the divisions within the country. One of the things that happened before the speech even started was like he drove in with Melania and Elon. First lady and first bitch boy. Yeah. First buddy, Garrison. First buddy is first bitch boy. Yeah. Weird. First buddy, Garrison. First buddy is the official term. First buddy, yeah.

I don't know, but like, you know, Trump starts off the speech with- America is back. And like, how far back are we talking? Cause you're not wrong. Yeah, like 1864, I think is the goal. This is the same phrase that Biden opened his first speech with as well. I think Biden was referring to like, we are back to pre-Trump America.

And now Trump is using this phrase to refer to like this like mythical America, right? Sure. But no, Trump took the stage to USA chants throughout. Yeah. Throughout the rotunda. I grew up watching the Houses of Parliament, so I'm used to the boomers getting unruly, but this was something else. They're just so feral.

It's weird. So cheesy. The speech was outlining a new golden age of America and the renewal of the American dream. Trump talked about how he has accomplished in 43 days more than most administrations do in 4 to 8 years and that we're just getting started. Cool. He referred to this wide popular mandate, a quote, a mandate like this has not been seen in many decades.

Referring to like winning all swing states, winning the Electoral College and the popular vote. And reference to this mandate kind of sparked the big... Boo? Big disruption of the night. Specifically when he started saying, we won the popular vote. Which like, is that heavily disputed? No, I don't think that's not specifically what Mr. Green was talking about. I'm not necessarily talking about when he specifically was sitting there.

That's when the crowd had their biggest reaction of the night, which like weird, in my opinion. That's great. It's the thing that Democrats are doing now, which is trying to be like the Republicans but live like kind, I suppose. But not really, because they didn't follow fucking through. Without any, like, strength. Like, without any actual, like, momentum. Right, like, we saw, like, the sort of blue-and-on attempts

at election denial, like, after the election, and, like, I don't think that's what they were doing here. Agreed. They gave off this, like, yeah, this very ineffectual kind of half-arsed attempt at booing and then aside from Green, they all just sat down and waved their ping pong things. Yeah. So, Representative Al Green from Texas, old man with cane.

It's a good cane. It's got a gold handle. That is snazzy. I thought, I mean, it's a sort of cane you normally see a sword coming out of, if I'm honest. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That would have been cooler. That would have been cooler. But instead, he just waves the cane around, talking about how this mandate doesn't mean that there's a mandate to, like, you know, cut Medicaid, cut Medicare. That was specifically what he was talking about.

Yeah. Television mics did not really pick that up. No. And a lot of reporting didn't either, which was shitty, I thought. Like, a lot of reporting just mentioned that he had shouted and not what he had shouted about, which I think is like, really when you like, you see what the media is doing is serving as like the propaganda arm of a certain class of people when they're more upset that he was shouting than that he was protesting

the fact that people are going to lose their healthcare and probably die because of it. Yeah. And like Trump started like yelling over these protests. There was like a brief maybe like, like, you know, minute or so like yelling match in the chamber. Mike Johnson was like, what do I do here? Eventually, you know, Mike Johnson threatens Mr. Green, gives a warning, and eventually directs the sergeant of arms to restore order and remove him from the chambers. gives a warning and eventually directs the sergeant of arms to restore order and remove him from the chambers. Not a regular scene in American politics, but a scene that you

might be more familiar with in overseas politics, specifically in democracies that are in trouble. You'll have more and more scenes like this. Yeah. We didn't get any smoke grenades like you see in Serbia. You know, it's still 2025, James. We still have three more, three more years. Yeah, three more years for them to break out the ass off smoke grenades. Whether or not this is like, you know, performative or cringe, it's like, it's something that demonstrates, hey, like, this, this actually isn't normal, more than holding up a cheesy sign next to Trump reading, this is not normal, which some others did in protest. This actually is treating it like a serious situation and more Democrats should have done this. They should have staggered their protests

throughout the entirety of the speech, continually disrupting it, making the speech basically unable to end, pushing this past midnight, having an endless procession of people having to be escorted out, you should force Congress to censure half of the sitting Congress people. Like if this really is like an actual existential threat to our democracy, if Trump represents right now a genuine constitutional crisis, which he does, he is ignoring the courts, the people in Congress should fucking act like it.

100%. They should have gone literally single file, one by one. Stagger it every like three minutes, so that he just is unable to finish the speech. Yeah. Like have Mike Johnson do this every time. Because he was thrown. Yeah, he was thrown.

And they should have continued to do this. The fact that no one else did is pretty disappointing. You could see Vance was very uncomfortable as well. Like he did have that nervous smile for most of what he normally does when he's confronted with a human being. But later on in the speech, after Trump talked about, you know, trans women in sports and the price of eggs, you had you had a group of Democrats wearing resist t-shirts walk out of the speech in protest.

And like, that's so much more pathetic than actually like standing up and talking about how this guy is ignoring the courts and is actually breaking the Constitution. Like, that's what they should have all been doing instead of wearing resist-lib merch performatively. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it, uh, you could write an Onion article parodying this, but you actually couldn't because they would just do that next time. Mm-hmm. Like, if they really think this is the last, uh, the last joint session of Congress they're ever gonna have,

they sure didn't act like it or whatever. But this is going to be the first ad break in a series of two mid-episode ad breaks that we are playing on this show. So, here's the ads. that we are playing on this show. So here's the ads. [♪ music playing. Why would you do that to me when I thought we were friends?

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

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

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Not made by unions. All right. Let's, let's talk about transgenderism. One of the first topics Trump discussed at length was the anti-trans culture war, declaring that the government will be woke no longer. Oh, God, that fully fucking sent me. I forgot about that. It's just so asinine, like drunk old man at pub.

He bragged about signing an executive order establishing that there's only two genders, as well as an order preventing quote-unquote men from playing in women's sports. He first pointed out to someone in the audience who was a former volleyball player who got hurt by a volleyball and then decided to quit the sport. And they now blame this on the fact that a trans woman was allegedly responsible for probably spiking the volleyball, which yes is painful. For playing sport the way that everyone else plays sport. Yeah. For trying to win.

Yeah. In a team volleyball context. So, so yes, this was the first kind of these political props that Trump brought along to kind of point out and demonstrate some of the things that he was talking about. Frankly, it just seems like this person was not a very good volleyball player. But the next example Trump pointed to, I think James can speak better on, but Trump said that essentially there was a quote-unquote man who beat a woman in a race by five hours to the shock of the audience. Yeah, so look, it was shock listeners to hear that most of what he said is wrong. He directly referenced a friend of mine. He was referring to Austin Kilips, who is a woman.

She's a trans woman. She's a very good cyclist. The reason she was doing the race, which is the Arizona Trail Race, it's an 800 mile ultra endurance race. I used to do these kinds of things. The reason she was doing it is because of a UCI, Union Ciglisi Internacional, the governing bodies stopped trans women competing. She did these races which were not sanctioned by them.

She did get the record. The previous holder of the record was a cis man. The cis man had previously beaten a cis woman, Lea Wilcox. It's interesting that in this particular discipline, actually, like, cis women have been doing as well as, if not better than men. Like, Lea Wilcox owns nearly all the long distance records in the United States. She's a phenomenal athlete. The idea that there's some inherent biological advantage is particularly

nonsense in this sphere of cycling. But the reason that she was five hours ahead is because this race is 800 miles long, like those, those records are broken by that kind of period, not all the time. But when you have athletes like Austin coming from the higher paying areas of the sport into this, which has been a much less well paid and much smaller area of the sport, you're going to see these records getting broken. And again, she broke a record that was held by a cis dude. Crazy.

Yeah, it's fucking ridiculous. I mean, like the level of like propaganda and lie. I mean, my mom watched the speech and she was like, that doesn't seem possible. And I was like, because it's all bullshit. Yeah, it's the second time he's picked on Austin. And obviously it pisses me off. You could read her op-ed in The Guardian where she wrote about this the last time he cited her in his executive order.

And I would encourage you to. So after this initial dive into the trans topic, Trump followed up by talking about how egg prices are out of control. Take a shot. Which happened about 15 minutes into the speech. trans topic, Trump followed up by talking about how egg prices are out of control. Take a shot. Which happened about 15 minutes into the speech. But near the end of the speech, Trump returned to the trans topic, pointing to the anti-trans activist mom named January Littlejod, no comment, whose kid secretly used they-them pronouns

at school, with Trump discussing how wrong it is for schools to secretly transition students. And this actually just isn't true. Surprise, surprise. The parents in this case knew that their kid wanted to use a different name and pronouns at school and actually were the ones to inform the school of this, according to school emails obtained by CNN. Not that this matters. And I will say, during this clip, when the camera cuts towards his mom, all of the people that were used as political props that were cut to, they all had the most bizarre look on their face. Like, completely blank, like soulless, not even like really excited.

This woman, who was kind of one of also the faces of Florida's Don't Say Gay Bill, just yeah, completely blank expression. because this thing that the president's talking about is just a flat out lie. Like, you know it. You lost a federal lawsuit over this lie. But here you are on national TV now, the prop of the president. Yeah. On national TV in front of both houses of Congress, attacking your own kid. Yep. For trying to be who they want to be.

Subject on which you lost a lawsuit. Like... And then Trump directly asked Congress to pass a bill banning trans healthcare for children. Saying, Wokeness is gone. Our country will be woke no longer. Whatever. Such a loser.

The next topic was Elon Musk's Doge. As Trump essentially just read out a list that mischaracterized aid programs or scientific research grants talking about how Health and Human Services paid for housing for displaced immigrants in the United States, money for Middle East Sesame Street for making mice transgender and an LGBTQ education in Africa, as well as DEI in Burma, which I will now pivot to James again to fill in some context here. Yeah.

So I'm aware of this scholarship because I'm aware of the people within the civil disobedience movement who were talking to the State Department about it, and they begged for it not to be a DEI thing because they could see this happening, right? It's the Lincoln Scholarship Program. I'll link to it in the show notes, but it exists to empower people in Burma, right, with technical skills and to rise up young leaders in Burma. It's not a DEI program, but for some reason it was categorized as such, right? It talks about respecting diversity because as long-term listeners will know, Myanmar is an extremely diverse country, right, with

more than 50 ethnic groups and hundreds of languages spoken. So like that's why it talks about respecting diversity. This is one of the few things the United States has done for the people of Myanmar after pumping up their economy, pumping up real estate and then doing nothing when the military seized power there and started to brutally repress the people. The US is also, I should add at this point, holding a billion dollars of the Burmese people's money that it froze when the coup happened. If it doesn't want to give them these scholarships, it could give them back their money, but I'm

sure it won't. I know this one pisses me off in particular because obviously I'm very invested in the cause of the people of Myanmar and they are my friends. Yeah. And this is very emblematic of the way Trump and Elon talk about a bunch of these aid programs, how like, you know, HIV prevention programs will be LGBTQ use aid money, right? Like they find a way to mischaracterize it in the most, like, culture war way. Yeah, talking about public health programs as circumcisions. Right.

Yeah, exactly, right? They'll try to find every single, like, health or education program and turn it into some, like, LGBTQ or DEI culture war issue. Trump claimed on stage that they've found hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud. Now the Doge website previously listed $105 billion in like found savings, but this very week the website scrubbed to the five of the highest dollar value receipts after journalists found massive errors in Elon's estimated count. Shocking. And now it's wall of receipts totals around 8 billion, though that might also be an overestimate, according to some journalists.

Amazing. Trump also talked about alleged social security fraud, claiming that millions and millions of dead people are getting social security. Like, this just isn't true. The math is not math-ing. Yeah, this has been their thing for a while, right? Dead people are voting, dead people are getting social security. Trump's own social security administrator has, like, said as much. been their thing for a while, right? Dead people are voting, dead people are getting Social Security. Yeah. Yeah.

Trump's own Social Security administrator has like said as much. The super old people in the database simply don't have death details logged, but they are not receiving payments. There is improper payments in the Social Security system, usually around 1%. Mostly that's overpayments or underpayments to people who are actually alive. And there is a system for resolving those already in place. Because social security is a pretty old system that we've had for quite a while. And like, I don't know, Trump's skirted by a lot of economy issues, and the way he did so was just by repeatedly claiming

that Doge and cutting this fraud will magically fix the economy, right? This is how he wants to frame this. Eggs are too much money, all of these things. And he has no actual solution to it. So instead, we're going to fix the economy through Doge. Through finding all this fraud, somehow we will locate this like pot of gold hidden somewhere that will magically make our economy better. And this is his solution because he doesn't have any real solution.

Yeah. I should have pointed out that Lincoln scholarships were in fact a Trump. Right. They started in 2019, this round of them. So like- Good job, cutting your own fraud, Donald. Do you know what else started in the first Trump era, Garrison? Advertising.

Advertisements. Was, I believe Trump's first executive order. He established the podcasting advertising industry, which, you know, supports us to this day. Today is the backbone of the American economy yeah I mean that's actually unfortunately more true than it should be I know if anyone wants to buy any colloidal silver. No no no The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and batter than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila.

And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. With guests like Corinne Stephens. I've never seen so many women protect predatory men.

And then me too happen. And then everybody else wanna get pissed off because the white said it was okay. Problem. My oldest daughter, her first day of ninth grade, and I called to ask how I was doing. She was like, oh dad, all they were doing was talking about your thing in class.

I ruined my baby's first day of high school. And slumflower. What turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like I feel the moisture between my legs when a man sends me money. I'm like, oh my God, it's go time. You actually sent it? Listen to the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast

every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you go to find your podcast. Why would you do that to me when I thought we were friends? We are friends. Los Angeles, 2021. A friendly neighbor appears out of nowhere and promises to make all my dreams come true.

Let's not forget that David Bloom was a professional con artist, so you didn't stand a chance. But my dreams soon turned into a nightmare. Bloom generally targeted people with money. And I was not alone. He took over 100 people for over $15 million. One of the victims was his own grandmother.

I was married to David for almost 10 years. It was insane. I was barely functioning. And I just had this realization that he will not stop until he kills me. Getting a con artist to pay for their crimes isn't easy. Charge David Blum! I'm Caroline DeMore. Listen as I take down my scammer on Once Upon a Con on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty and my latest interview is with Kai Dickens.

It was remarkable to be in that room and see someone reading someone else's mind over and over and over again. When you see it, you can't unsee it. Have you listened to the telepathy tapes? Non-speaking children on the autism spectrum are able to read the minds of people. It is mind blowing. Kai is the host of people. It is mind-blowing. Kai is the host of a new podcast series called The Telepathy Tapes.

Please welcome Kai Dickens. How would you describe or explain what telepathy actually means? Telepathy historically is reading someone's mind. You know exactly what they're thinking. Parents start saying right away, this isn't just sheer telepathy. We think we might be sharing a consciousness.

These abilities that those of us that are mere mortals can develop. I think that everyone has these in us to a certain degree. The amount of messages parents were telling me that they were receiving from the other side through their child was wild. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Jon Stewart is back at The Daily Show and he's bringing his signature wit and insight straight to your ears with The Daily Show Ears Edition podcast.

Dive into John's unique take on the biggest topics in politics, entertainment, sports, and more joined by the sharp voices of the shows, correspondents and contributors. And with extended interviews and exclusive weekly headline roundups, this podcast gives you content you won't find anywhere else. Ready to laugh and stay informed? Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, we are back. On top of trans issues, the other, I would say most cited element in this speech was the border. Trump referenced the Lake and Riley Act, which requires DHS to detain illegal immigrants who have admitted to, were charged with, or convicted of theft-related

crimes or any crime related to serious bodily injury. They're not necessarily illegal. They could just be undocumented people or they could be asylum seekers. Correct. Correct. Yes, that is a good point. I just want to note it was incredible the amount of sad looking children and or family members that he had as his propaganda prop people. He had a lot of props for this speech. A lot of props for his speech. I had a friend watch with me and she just kept going, how did he find like these people?

These people have been figures of his campaign for years. Yeah, I explained that. I explained that. Yeah, he's brought these same individuals out, as Gare just mentioned, over and over and over again and used them. Same thing with Fox News, same thing with One America News. Like, their entire life revolves around being political props. It's an industry.

Right. There was nothing new here. Trump signed an executive order on stage to rename a wildlife preserve in this, like, anti-immigrant propaganda move. He called for mandatory death penalty for anyone who kills a police officer and asked Congress to sign that into law, which is mostly like an anti-immigrant dog whistle, essentially trying to find a way to kill immigrants who are charged with the death of a police officer. Yeah, they proposed the same thing for people smuggling drugs into the United States, like

effectively charging them as if they were going to give all the drugs to one person to murder them and therefore giving them the death penalty. Now that he wants to label all these people terrorists or has labeled these groups terrorists, it gives the government a lot more leeway to do stuff like that. Yeah, I mean, approving membership of those groups would be a challenge. Sure. I mean, so is approving membership to Ant groups would be a challenge. Sure. I mean, so is proving membership to Antifa. Yes, exactly.

Yeah. We haven't seen how they can, well, we've somewhat seen how they're going to try in the latter case, but none in the former, I guess. We'll see. I'm sure at some point in the next year or two. But like Trump said that like previously America has quote unquote buckled under migrant occupation, but now we are achieving the great liberation of America. That's the sort of language he was using for this section.

And he said how they rule from mental asylums and prisons. Very standard campaign rhetoric that he's used for years now. If you're new to this podcast, you can go back, you can search the word hukumba or border and you can listen to interviews with probably hundreds of migrants. You can listen to my Title 42 series and listen to my Darien series and you can joke for yourself if these people are criminal or bad or mentally unwell. The economy had a very minimal focus compared to border or trans issues. He really skirted over the tariffs thing as fast as possible.

Briefly talked about the federal funding freeze, bragged about terminating the green new scam, something that has never existed. Briefly talked about the federal funding freeze, bragged about terminating the Green New Scam, something that never existed. Talking about withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accords again, as well as the corrupt World Health Organization and the anti-American UN War Crime Council. Very cool. Bragged about ending climate restrictions, you know, drill baby drill, going after rare earth minerals, talked about no tax on tips over time and benefits for seniors,

and then briefly discussed that on April 2nd, he will be enacting reciprocal tariffs just completely across the board for all nations. And he did warn farmers there is going to be an adjustment period. Quote, there will be a little disturbance, unquote. Certainly. When you adjust to not having a job that pays you any money anymore. Crashing the economy will have a bit of an adjustment period. It will be a bit of a little disturbance.

Yeah, I mean, just like he just kept going through these obvious ridiculous claims and making Trump side comment stupidity like calling the Middle East a bad neighborhood and... Sesame Street joke. Yeah. It's just incredible. And James, our colleague Molly Conger had a good point. She did, yeah. Of her many good points.

Trump said that people had never heard of Lesotho. At the same time, pronouncing it in a way that one would only know if one had heard it pronounced rather than seen it written on the page. Very, very funny South-Own. He also said something about Liberia, like, I would encourage people to understand the history of Liberia if they think the US

doesn't owe Liberia a thing or two. One of the last focuses of the speech was national security, promising a golden dome missile defense system, which Trump has previously talked about at previous 2024 campaign events. Obsessed with gold. Obsessed with gold. Obsessed with dome. Obsessed with gold. Obsessed with gold. Obsessed with dome. That his...

Jesus Christ. Garrison didn't even crack for those listening. Once again, he... Got him now. Once again, he announced that his administration will be reclaiming the Panama Canal, saying, we have Mark Rubio in charge. Good luck, Marco.

If something goes wrong, we know who to blame. Right? Cool. Yeah, amazing. His comments on Greenland were specifically odd, saying, Greenland, we strongly support your right to determine your own future, and if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America. But the full quote about Greenland was very odd.

He said, quote, we need Greenland for national security and even international security. So weird. And we're working with everybody involved to try to get it. But we need it really for international, for world security. And I think we're going to get it one way or another. We're going to get it. It's a very small population, but a very, very large piece of land and very, very important for military security."

Okay. Yeah. Very odd, very odd comments. Whole collection of English language words. He is continuing to say that one way or another, he will take Greenland. I think his focus on it for national security is particularly interesting. I think this has something to do with trying to make the US and Russia these like two massive like world powers that both have like, you know, Arctic land at their disposal,

considering climate change or, you know, a variety of issues. But I think that this does move towards this quasi-Duganism of this multipolar world that Putin certainly wants and Trump is kind of signaling that through the influence of Bannon, he's also moving towards with Putin and Trump, the two people who control the world. Speaking of, Trump did talk about receiving a letter from President Zelensky asking to return to the negotiating table and bragged about freeing another weed-smoking teacher in a Russian jail, returning him home to America. And oddly enough, Trump met with the mother of this teacher in Butler, Pennsylvania,

right before he got shot, which led him to point towards the comparator family, again, pronouncing it in a completely new and different way. All of the members of the family seemed very not thrilled to be there, completely blank expressions. Quite odd. Extremely weird. Yeah. So this is where he ended the speech, was talking about, you know, getting shot, and then kind of went on a very long, 10-minute, almost GPT-esque ramble about like America.

I didn't take any notes on it because it just sounded like word salad, but there is a few other miscellaneous things from the speech I do want to mention before we close out. Trump bragged about stopping all government censorship and having brought back free speech to America, saying, it's back, which is slightly humorous amidst reports of grants being pulled for using quote unquote the bad words, wrong words, as well as a truth social post, a truth made earlier today, Wednesday, saying, all federal funding will stop for any college, school, or university that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested.

No masks! So in one moment you can celebrate bringing back free speech, and in the other you can call for deporting people who protest or imprisoning students for protesting on their own university campuses. Very, very typical Trump double speak type stuff. He talked about bringing the people back to the office. These are all normal Trump. Yeah.

Well, yeah, and these are things that have happened already. Yeah. Half of this speech was celebrating things that he's already done. The other half was asking Congress to help him do more things, mixed in with these weird propaganda moves, like making this 13-year-old brain cancer survivor an honorary Secret Service agent and admitting this very square-looking teenager into West Point, who, by the way, this teenager has the most cop

phenotype I've ever seen before. It's crazy. I was shocked. I'm like, whoa, they found him. The cop phenotype. There he is. Which is two more of these weird props. It's like in the cave in Plato. Everything else is just a reflection of this cop kid, every other cop. It's so odd because Trump spent this speech talking about how, you know, like we're bringing back a merit based hiring. We have we have, quote, ended the tyranny of DEI across government, private sector and military, as he then just did two DEI hires on stage. But, you know, who might who might to say?

So that's kind of all I have to say on the Trump speech right now. I will briefly, very briefly, talk about the Democratic response. The Democratic response was done by Senator Slotkin from Michigan, who opened by saying America wants change, but there's a responsible way to make change and an irresponsible way. Trying to paint Doge as like this very irresponsible and brash way to achieve efficiencies. Something that we all obviously, you know obviously want the government to move more towards. She warned about how Trump's actions may result in a recession, warned about losing Social Security, Medicare, and VA benefits,

quoted Musk, who recently called Social Security the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time, and attacked Musk and the 20-year-old Doge members for using their own servers to access your sensitive data. Slotkin spent a lot of the rebuttal praising Ronald Reagan. Odd for a Democrat, I would say. I don't know why. Strange. Don't know why you as the opposition party are continuing to base your politics on praising Bush and Reagan.

Very cool opposition party, bros. Very fun stuff. She also said, I've lived and worked in many countries. I've seen democracies flicker out. I've seen what life is like when a government is rigged. Like, yeah, I bet you have. Former CIA agent. She also mentioned doom scrolling. So that really shows how the Democrats have the finger on the pulse here when doom scrolling is mentioned as something not to do, saying instead you should hold your elected officials, including me, accountable, watch how they're voting, go to town halls, demand they take action, and organize. Pick up one issue you're passionate about and engage. Doom scrolling doesn't count. Join a group that cares about your issue and act. If you

can't find one, start one. And that was the bulk of the 10-minute Democratic response. Oh boy, what a fun day in American politics that was. Any final thoughts, James? Sophie? Like this speech, this episode is running long. Yeah. So I really don't have any final thoughts other than bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Yeah. So I really don't have any final thoughts other than. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. The Democrats are unwilling to do anything actually serious.

Once again, the attempts at, quote unquote, fact checking the speech are also incredibly pathetic to look at. Truly. There's this New York Times fact check, which I will close on just because it made me and the rest of our group chat very upset, which outlined this long paragraph from Trump saying, Over the past four years, 21 million people poured into the United States, many of whom were murderers, human traffickers, gang members, and other criminals from the streets of dangerous cities and all throughout the world. Because of Joe Biden's insane and very dangerous open border policies, they are now strongly

embedded in our country. But we are getting them out and getting them out fast. And the fact check for this very like false claim is, quote, fast is a relative term. This statement is misleading. It's just it only it only focuses on the ending sentence saying that we're getting these immigrants out and we're getting them out fast ign ignores calling many of these 21 million people human traffickers, gang members and criminals, does not say that we never have had open border policy. Like, it's crazy. Even like the liberal fact checking is completely pathetic and toothless.

And like, fact checking doesn't work. It's not useful anyway. That's why I'm not spinning this whole episode of fact checking Trump't work. It's not useful anyway. That's why I'm not spending this whole episode fact checking Trump's claims. Sure. The fact that you're going to parrot this insane anti immigrant rhetoric and only fact check Trump saying that we're going to get these immigrants out of our country fast, calling it a relative term. And this is the reason that that the statement is misleading. This completely shows how Democrats like completely lost any momentum on the immigration topic. Same thing with the trans topic. They're actually unwilling to push back on changing populist sentiment because they're automatically agreeing with the actual conceit. Yeah. Anyway, that got me

upset and then I watched Yowie and then went to bed. So there we go. Glad you got your Yowie, Harrison. Anyways... So there we go. Glad you got your yelling, Harrison. Anyways. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonedmedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app,

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