It Could Happen Here - Make America Wealthy Once Again

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

Robert, Gare and Sophie report from the first official day of the Republican National Convention.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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CallZone Media. This is It Could Happen Here. call zone media this is it could happen here i'm garrison davis and joined with robert evans and sophie lichterman for day one of the official rnc the republican national convention robert sophie how's your day been well i'm tired it was a long day. It was very red. Yeah, a lot of red. It was very loud. The drinks were very expensive. Yeah, we got so many free drinks yesterday and not today. No, not once you're in the convention center. I don't know.

We were trapped in a room with a lot of people who were either used car salesmen or spiritually were used car salesmen. Also, a lot of people who wanted to kill me specifically. Yes um we'll talk about that more later yeah today just structurally what happened is you know it was a series of speeches so you had first off the big floor vote right so we got to watch all of the different states had their delegates and they have to form even though everyone knows what's happening they have to like formally follow robert's rules of order or whatever and like confirm that trump is the nominee and then they announce and confirm the vp who you all know by now was jd vance we'll talk i might as well talk a little bit about him now jd vance is a guy who in the wake of trump's initial victory he's a a dude who came from appalia, sort of part-time, went to an Ivy League school,

did some time in the Marines, and then made a bunch of money in business. And then when 2016 happened and a lot of liberals were like, wow, how could Trump have won election? He capitalized by writing a book trying to explain the Appalachian experience, even though, again, he only kind of lived there part-time and mostly, yeah, those people and that part like the book is about him abandoning that part of his life as soon as he possibly can not a great book by my opinion as someone who grew up in a really fucking poor town in the deep south but is he technically a millennial yeah he's the first millennial who might become vice president that's a big part of why i think he was picked agreed yeah that's a big part of why so it was time it was time for

them to announce jd vance they officially approved him delegates officially approved him which happened very quickly and he came out to chance and ohio where he's from was very stoked to have him there lots of chants of jd jd you're right he had a hype man yeah and he advanced his way out there with uh his wife and looked emotional and yeah all i know is that he really fucking hates lbgtqia people and i really fucking hate him yeah i mean he he he said that he kind of like turned the corner finally on what side, because he had said some anti-Trump stuff once in the day, but he turned the corner when his movie got really bad reviews.

So if we wind up going into full-fledged fascist dictatorship, we can blame Ron Howard for some of that. And to be honest, we always knew that was going to be the case. Yeah. Valid. Yeah, after that, yeah, marjorie taylor green gave a speech a couple other people tim scott had a speech so there was a break between sessions we came back for the second session the second session uh opens up with what i could only describe as I was like, Christopher Nolan, are you here? It was like

inception sounding music dramatized thank you for that, dramatized video of like in a world showing crime and people losing money and women and babies crying and then there's like

literally bad clip art of money on fire bad clip art of money on fire, bad clip art of money on fire. And it's about, it was like three to five minutes long, very long. Cause I took a video of it. It felt like a really bad, like action thriller trailer.

Yeah. Could have been partly AI. There was certainly some CG animation towards the end. Cause they were, they had this camera that was sweeping through this fake city. It was all CG. And it landed on this this this floodlight on top of a roof this broken flickering we go into the floodlight gears are turning the music is ramping up and finally it enlightens and we see trump the trump signal shining in the cloudy sky

calling calling the hero, the masked Avenger. As if it was the bat signal for Batman. Yes, it was shameful. And then after that... Very silly. People loved it. Yeah, it got a great reaction.

There was also a video of all the scenes. If you've ever seen clips from rallies, you've probably seen little clips of Trump like fake dancing. Doing that weird dance

where he's moving his hands. He does this little dance when he's excited, when he's in a good mood. You know the dance when he's excited when he's in a good mood you know the dance it's what we would describe as a little wiggle anyways it was a very long wiggle video and people loved it no it looked like the type of video that liberals would post to make fun of trump yes and the fact that it was used as a hype video shows how useless that style of like political propaganda is. It means anything. You can't make fun of Trump for doing that little dance that doesn't, it doesn't do anything.

You can't make, there's no use in making fun of Trump. There is no value in satirizing him. There is no value in laughing at him. Like if it helps you personally, that's great. If you need that to get by, um,

we all do it sometimes, but it is no, it does no damage to them. Like the, not to shit on John Oliver, but the Trump stuff was a wild and spectacular failure. None of it accomplished anything. And everybody who ever thought that you could make fun of Trump and have any positive impact was wrong, and you should feel a little bad. I do.

They used it as a hype video. They used it to stitch between their different musical acts, their different segments, and oh boy, the music. So the music was better than the music at the welcome party that we talked about in our last episode, but that bar is not very high. It's all country music, right? There's country music cover bands. No, it's not all country.

No, there was a lot of like 90s stuff. There was a fucking... It's played in the style of country music buy your boat guy that was the talk about the buy buy me a boat they had a they had a fleetwood mac song someone did you could go your own way there was like a essentially like the the run of the evening and dad rock and country music my apologies it was dad rock and country music you know what i have to tell you we do not care enough to argue about this anyways the music was fucking mid it was like the way because i of course like a bunch of people have texted us today

and been like how is it and the only way that we can describe it is if a normal person went to their favorite concert and had great seats yeah and uh you were very happy is the same exact or you went to a game seven of the nba finals that's exactly the uh the reaction that the the people in the crowd were having it's a mix of like a sports event a concert and like a mega church correct if there was if there was some kind of concert that a whole bunch of boomers really enjoyed that was the general vibe of the convention today which is not all that different from how trump rallies feel totally it had it had that vibe and it felt more more like a a concert than the 2016 rnc did yeah i mean there was also there was so much music and so few speeches.

The speeches were only like two minutes long each and there would be like extended like 10, 20 minute musical performances in between each speech. Like mostly it's just people playing songs on stage. That was most of the RNC today. There was several different speeches that came after those strange videos

and we'll get into that. But first, we're going to go to an ad break, and when we come back, we're going to play live us from the RNC. Well, it was live when we recorded it. Yes, that's what I'm saying. Live us. We were live back then, and now questionable, talking about what we were experiencing in the moment. But first. Ads.

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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, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hey, I'm Gianna Prandenti. And I'm Jemay 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.

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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.

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And now we will tune in to our recording we made on the convention floor. Dun, dun, dun. Okay, we are, well, recording live, broadcasting a little bit later, but recording live on the ground at the Republican National Convention. We've had a very, a very busy morning. It's now mid-afternoon. We're in between sessions. The first session just wrapped up.

And we thought we should record some of our immediate thoughts before our little debrief tonight. I guess let's start with Robert Evans. Yeah, well, first off, my main overwhelming kind of takeaway is that the tone and tempo of this is a lot milder than I expected. And I think it's because the overwhelming majority of people here are extremely conservative, the most dedicated and active members of the party. But it's not like the Proud Boy crew over, definitely some of those people here. These are electoralists. These are electoralists. Most of them are a lot older.

You know, I would say the average age is somewhere between the late 40s to the 60s of like people you encounter here. And it is interesting to me that I have not, you know, as soon as we, like we said yesterday, as soon as we landed, we saw a guy with a Trump after he got shot sticking his fist in the air shirt. I haven't seen a ton of that on the ground here since. I've not seen a ton of it, nor have I seen a ton of direct references to it. I guess the, Sophie here, I think, I guess the main reference that I've seen is when they did the delegate official photo. That would be the big one, yeah. They all turned around and raised their fist in the way that Donald Trump did after the attempted assassination, which was fascinating to me.

Yeah. Yeah, especially given the lack of otherwise direct emphasis on what happened. And maybe that's coming up. I kind of do. The way I'm interpreting it now is because the thing that just dropped a few minutes ago is the FBI got into the shooter's phone. So far, preliminary findings, nothing in there that makes it clear why he did it. So I kind of think they may just be sort of confused as to why one of their own seemingly carried out the shooting. Not really clear what the rhetoric on the shooter should be,

but very clear on how they should respond to the Trump photo, which is the primary takeaway from that is the photo is the pose is him cementing his image as this indestructible, you know, man who's constantly under attack, right. And so it makes sense to me that they've adopted that hand sign. And I expect we'll see more of it. And boy, howdy, does does it just look exactly like that the hand sign from the far right that everyone's familiar with so as we were kind of in between uh speakers they had this little band playing and and we happen to be sitting next to one of one of the younger people that i've seen attending the convention but like still still like an adult like a very young adult, maybe 21, maybe 20 at most. He couldn't have been older than 21. Cause he said, this is his first election. He'll be able to vote in presidential elections. So probably a little

bit younger than me. And it's interesting because yesterday we talked with some, you know, very old people. And today we talked with some very young people to get, and it's, it is a, it is an interesting contrast. So yeah, this young conservative from California, but now lives in South Dakota. And I don't know, we were asking him about like what focus he has in politics. He seemed really concerned about the economy. That was kind of his main issue. Almost the only thing he wanted to talk about was the economy. He was, one thing I'll say, very good natured.

Like not in the, I am doing a PR thing, I am trying to put on an image, but just in the not at all aggressive, did not react kind of negatively to the fact that we were media, which you get a lot of that at events like these. He expressed that the only places he gets his news is Fox and News Nation on TV. He is not on social media, which I found interesting. on TV. He is not on social media, which I found interesting. And statistics suggest, obviously, that's not the norm, but it is a growing number of Gen Z and Gen Alpha kids who avoid a lot of the internet. Well, and especially among conservatives. I mean, there is a lot of young conservatives who do get their news on TikTok, who do get their news. Podcasts are one of the biggest ways that young people to the right get their news. Obviously, The Daily Wire is very dominant in the podcasting scene.

But no, I find that very interesting. And I assume it's probably like, you know, influenced by his family. Yeah. You know, whatever's on the family TV. His uncle is about to be the mayor of Huntington Beach, California, and is the sheriff. Huntington Beach is the most conservative city in California, probably a pretty wide margin. Yeah, no, he expressed a lot of frustration that we were giving lots of money to Ukraine,

that he felt that Zelensky was suspending on himself instead of on the military. And yeah, I mean, he seemed like a good old Christian boy. He was very into the praying section of the night. I asked him at some point when J.D. Vance was coming out on stage to be announced the official vice president, like, if he thinks that they're going to win this year,

like, do you think that the Republicans are going to win? And he said, yes, if it's fair. Yeah, that was the same. That was the first thing I asked him, and that was the same answer he gave me. And, you know, speaking of Vance, because Vance is my first thought and a lot of people's first thought. And I think this is probably the accurate thing to say about Vance.

He does not provide a lot to Trump. Right. He's not a guy who won by a wide margin. I'm not even confident he on his own does anything to deliver his state, Ohio. But what this kid brought up and what I suspect Trump sees in him, because when I asked, what do you think about J.D. Vance? He repeatedly said, I think he's loyal. I think he really likes Trump. I think he's loyal. And I did bring up the fact that Vance has said bad things about Trump in the past. And then he went on this thing where he was like, I think that DeSantis and Trump really like each other. It's all politics. And I wanted to say how deranged. But then he was like, you know, it's like Kamala and Joe. She was really mean to him during the debate. And now she's his vice president.

I was like, well, that's actually a pretty reasonable way to look at the situation. I don't know that I think it's actually accurate, but I see the logical through line there. And I was kind of thought that was interesting. I thought it was interesting when they were bringing out J.D. Vance and he was advancing, vamping. I'm going to call it advancing. Advancing. Advancing. That, you know, they were quick to call out that he was a Marine, quick to call him a patriot, quick to call him a family man.

And I think that's what he brings to the table. He brings those three things as well as his age. And I think that's what he brings to the table. He brings those three things as well as his age. And I think that's what the GOP is focusing on. Yeah, I mean, other than that, there was a really weird prayer thing, Gare. Yeah, that was after Vance came up. They did the benediction. Yeah. It was, what I could only express is a little bit, like, spiritually disturbing.

All of, like, the LED screens behind, behind, like, the speakers all flashed, like, very, like, Facebook-esque, like, images of, like, you know, the Bible, of, like, families praying. It's just, like, kids and, like, white families. Glowing, like, glowing, like, heavenly glowing light. Like, the whole environment changed. It's usually very, like, sports debate, you know, red versus blue. It's very traditional, like Americana. And it was a very intense shift to this strong Facebook Christianity almost. That's the best way I can describe it with words.

And I mean, you know, it was a typical Christian dominionist moment where you have, you know, the, the, one of the largest of two political parties just fully, fully embracing the, uh, and fully, you know, putting out that, you know, this is, this is a, this is a religious party, almost more than anything else. The religion is so important to the ceremony and specifically not just any religion, of course, just Christianity. And I don't know, they spent almost the last half of the prayer talking about Israel. And specifically saying the children of Abraham and the holy city of Jerusalem. And all of that kind of language.

Prayer for the hostages. Talking about how the hostages are being kept against their will. But no, all of the language reminded me a lot of like the, my childhood and the rhetoric around Israel as this place to secure so that, so that, you know, the prophecies can come true for Jesus's second coming. And like that, that, that is, that is the entire, the entire bit. I'm trying to recall if there was a big benediction at the end, at the 2016 RNC when Pence was nominated, and I'm sure there was, but for whatever reason, it doesn't stick out in my mind the way this one did. No, this will certainly stick out in my mind. Like, everyone knows Republicans are, you know, the more Christian party, but just the sheer, like, consensus about it here,

just like everybody is like, even if they aren't themselves Christian, most people are, but like everyone's in on this thing happening. It was just an interesting moment contrasted to the overall, you know, like a concert kind of sports vibe that the rest of the convention kind of carries. Yeah. I mean, the only other thing that I pointed out, at one point I went to get water and I came back and I mentioned right before we started to record to both Gare and Robert, I was like, cops keep touching me and like putting their hand on my shoulder. And, you know, as one cop just wanted to talk to me about my day and I was like trying to get water and going back into the convention. And then I mentioned that to Gare and Robert and they both said that they've been touched quite a lot too and I just think that's interesting to note

and you know I don't particularly like to be touched by strangers especially cops. Mine has been on the shoulder by like a couple of different I would describe them as like uncle coded guys. Yes. Who I don't know and was not talking to just like walking past me putting a hand on my shoulder

like someone who is a family member would do casually like a Yes, yes. Who I don't know and was not talking to, just like walking past me and putting a hand on my shoulder. Like someone who is a family member would do casually, like a family event, you know, when you're on the way to do something else. But I've never met these people we did not talk. That was odd. Hasn't happened to me before. Maybe everyone's just in a very good mood because they're that sure they're going to win.

Maybe we just ran into a lot of creepy uncle types. Unclear. It'll be interesting to contrast with the DNC. But no, it certainly has been a pattern. It's a lot more like just casual touching here. And yeah, I think that is most of our thoughts right now. I guess the last thing I guess I'll add is the young kid that we were talking to, who was very excited about this whole deal.

As Vance was coming out and you know the crowd was going crazy and everything he very quietly remarked that he was like gonna start crying because it was just like so like impactful i think it was i think it was mostly to himself he was just like acknowledging that verbally um and then said he wants to become a cop and that just you know that is that is the entire base and then he was then immediately went a very, a very intense prayer posture during the prayer. And that's just a good portion of this country, I guess. Yep.

Yep. I, uh, yeah, it was interesting. I, I, we were talking about Ukraine for a while because his,

his stance on it was he's fine with them getting weapons, but he's sure they're getting a lot of money that Zelensky is doing something shady with. And generally it felt like Zelensky wasn't fighting, which I thought was interesting. It makes sense to me if you've skimmed the way the right reports on Ukraine a lot, that that would be his attitude. But he also said he wasn't supportive of yielding to Putin on any of Putin's demands. And then when I talked about it, because I chatted with him about some of my experiences in Ukraine, and when he found out that I had done war reporting, his first question was, have you ever been to Israel?

Yeah, that was interesting. Yeah, interesting. Just immediately asked that. Oh, one other note. We did run into a fan of the show who was working who was wearing a USS Liberty hat. The USS Liberty was like a U.S. Navy ship that was struck by Israel. And it's under very shady circumstances. And it's kind of like one of the better ways you could be publicly critical of the Israeli military, at least, at the RNC without most people knowing what you're doing. Yeah. I thought that was funny. The very last thing I'll say is that right as we exited the first session, we ran into friend of the pod Vivek Ramaswamy.

Oh, yeah. Who was walking around. Right past Vivek. Who was a little shorter than I expected. Not a tall man. Not a tall man. And I did ask the kid that we were sitting next to, you know, I was curious about his thoughts on the future of the party. And I asked him specifically about Vivek.

And he said he likes Vivek because Vivek is a businessman, just like Trump. And he wants someone to run the country like a business. I should also note that Vivek was followed by a swarm of, I'm guessing, his entourage. Nearly all of them were very young men who I would describe as Nick Fuentes coded. Yes. Like they really had that physiognomy to them groper types yeah groper types which jd vance it's one of the things coming out right now is that he's in a group chat with a bunch of 16 year old groper so i am excited for some of those more of those chats to come out

all right well back to future us talking about the rest of the republican national convention day one wow that sure was great. We had such a fun time. You know what else is fun? Here's some more ads. 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, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hey, I'm Gianna Prandenti. 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. 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 Toot, 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%.

I'm not saying you're going to get 15% 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. We're back. To conclude, we've got a couple of things to talk about. One of them is, you know, obviously we're at a convention. We don't of things to talk about one of them is you know obviously we're at a convention we don't have a car we're taking ubers everywhere we're eating at restaurants this has taken over almost all of the the central area of milwaukee and there were because of a lot of fuck-ups for one thing a lot of places that in downtown were supposed to be booked are not booked businesses are not getting the kind of

business they had expected to get during this because of some of those fuck-ups yeah and kind of most interesting to us so coming into this one of the things the republicans even put up billboards in milwaukee over this and this is a big thing that trump is campaigning on to try to get service worker type people to vote for him is no tax on tips and to make a long story short, it works out to be much worse for service workers. Kind of the compromise here is that they can continue to pay far below minimum wage and there will be no attempts to raise that at all. And of course, the kind of people who vote for Republicans

don't tip, by and large. No, because they hate service workers. We have been talking to every Uber driver, to all of the waiters, waitresses that we've had and pretty overwhelmingly nearly 100 of them say like yeah we're just not getting no no one's tipping there's extreme negative views yeah not just because of like the politics right just because about half more than half of them don't really care absolutely not they're just doing business and like they're just they're these are just bad patrons these are simply people that are they're

not nice to be around and correct like these types of events like the rnc the dnc these are like cities campaign for this under the notion that this will like you know boost local business right it'll bring a whole bunch of people from out of town people will get a lot of money to all these local businesses and because of how the security set up this year in the at in in milwaukee so many businesses just can get no business because they're completely inside this like fence perimeter and uh and the rest are not are not seeing very good business from what from from what it sounds like and even even like hotels downtown are are uh large largely vacant because of weird weird scheduling errors we we went to dinner earlier tonight with some friends and we asked one of the restaurant workers how it was going.

And obviously, she said the same thing that we've heard so many times, which is not great. Not good. Not making a lot of tips. But what was interesting is she said, and they really tried to throw in our faces that this was going to be a good thing for all of us. And we were all going to make a bunch of money. And that is just not happening we chatted to uh timothy faust who was a writer great writer great guy uh and a local here we had dinner with him and he pointed out that milwaukee has been and was on the verge of bankruptcy still having a lot of problems with that and a big part of why they took the rnc

was because republicans in the legislature, that was basically the bargaining point so that they would allow a sales tax, which was kind of necessary in order to, there's more to it than that. But a big part of like how the negotiations broke down was the Republicans wanted this in order to make it possible for the city of Milwaukee to not collapse because it was on the verge of bankruptcy. And hearing that made a lot of sense, made a lot of things click into place because it does, everyone we have talked to who is a local and who is working in any job that interfaces with the convention and convention goers talks like they've been scammed. Yeah. And just one more thing before we get into the rest of,

you know, what we experienced speech-wise and other, is the difference in security today versus the outdoor event we went to yesterday for the welcome party. Very surprising. Very surprising. So just the one-to-one example I'll give you listeners is yesterday,

they took every single item out of my bag that I had after putting through a scanner and unzipped everything. Today, they zipped it up because they didn't want anything to fall out and didn't open it, didn't touch a single thing, went through a scanner. I was through security in like four seconds. Yeah, no, it was super weird. It was way more lax

getting into the actual convention center than it was to get into the outdoor welcome party, which is just, it came off as a little surprising to us. They made such a big deal about what you can and can't bring in and had specific measurements for like bags and stuff. But we saw people with some of the largest bags.

Very large backpacks. Some bags that were bigger than me and yeah you know that's just interesting to note one last thing on the service worker thing on on our ride home from the rnc or back to the hotel we we sat in a new in an uber with a very nice man who i would describe as the average wisconsin voter yeah he had he had a teamster shirt and you know of a variety of like of both liberal and kind of conservative opinions you know it's i think he kind of leaned more liberal but he certainly had you know of a variety of opinions and he was both expressing the same thing in regards to tips but also uh immense frustration at the way police were treating locals, the way police were treating local drivers. Just the sheer influx of cops just have made functioning in this city just so challenging to any of these locals.

And yeah, that was a very fascinating conversation that we might discuss at a later time. What we will talk about now are Catholics, those little fiends. later time. What we will talk about now are Catholics, those little fiends. So, after the very evangelical Children of Abraham prayer that we talked about in our archival audio, as soon as we came back for the second session, there was an opening prayer led by the Archbishop of Milwaukee, which is kind of interesting because a lot of the attendees here are very evangelical. These are not Catholics. And you could definitely see there was, you know, a little bit of groans amongst some of these people. And I found it a very interesting move.

We talked to somebody who talked shit on the Catholics earlier. The old lady that we, or at least that I was talking to last night at the party, made a couple of comments about catholics because she doesn't believe they really worship jesus because catholics yeah and well it's not even the papistries because catholics this is a thing that born agains have an issue with catholicism is don't believe you have to accept christ to go to heaven like if you do good things catholics think you can go to heaven sure and that is deeply offensive to a sizable chunk of the Christian community in the United States.

Yeah, so I found that very interesting. Wasn't really expecting to see an opening Catholic prayer. I want to talk to some more people tomorrow about that issue. Vance is Catholic. That's probably why. Vance is a Catholic convert, just like the Red Scare Girl. He is a Catholic convert millennial who has taken a bunch of money from Peter Thiel. Many such cases.

So one of the first people to speak after this archbishop was famed Republican figure Marjorie Taylor Greene, who we could have a lot to say, but I think the first thing that I want to mention is that she feels more representative of most of the RNC attendees than anyone else who we've seen speak. Like she has the same energy and vibe as most of the attendees. Like that is why they love her so much

because she is one of them to the point where like she was like a republican fan who just happened to get into office and now she's this major figure she was the mascot exactly and was a lot more popular than dance oh yeah in terms of floor reaction no she she is she is beloved among this crowd she she is she is them right she the audience members can see her and they can they can see themselves in her and she got the biggest reaction out of out of the crowd probably save for trump making a short appearance uh but her speech had the biggest reaction and we will we will get to that now one one of the first things she said is you're talking about the assassination attempt

and stuff is that is that trump she referred to him as the founding father of the america first movement which is a lot of interesting loaded language there are a lot of words there a very extremely loaded language for the founding father of the america first movement she then spoke about the wonderful family man whose life was unfortunately cut short from getting shot in the attempted assassination attempt of Donald Trump, saying that Corey embodied the America first spirit. But no, she had all of the typical lines that you would say about someone who was killed in an incident like this. And then she talked about the thing that got the loudest applause out of anything else today, which is which is the whole gender ideology issue.

She talked about how how President Biden turned Easter into Trans Visibility Day, which is factually isn't true because Easter changes holidays, Trans Visibility Day is on the same day, you know, but Easter changes the actual day it's on. But that got a massive boo, and there was people sitting next to us who were just shouting evil, just super loud, shouting evil. This is the most hyped up I've ever seen the crowd. You know, all the other mentions, there was a few other mentions about,

you know, men in women's sports, that kind of thing. That got, you know, the big, biggest, the biggest boos and the biggest cheers, like, respectively, you know, people saying there are sports, that kind of thing. Just that got, you know, the biggest boos and the biggest cheers, like respectively, you know, people saying there are only two genders. We're brave enough to say it. We're going to keep saying it. That hyped up the crowd just more than anything else.

Yeah. She said, let me be clear here. There are only two genders. And the crowd went bananas. She, right after that that made a statement about needing to stop sending money to ukraine that zielinski was going to embezzle or something about half the volume like not not not a tiny chunk of the audience compared to the rest of the cheering of a pretty loud reaction like not a bad reaction but it was clearly about half the

volume of the anti-trans and and mind you listeners she spoke for like what it was like three minutes talk yeah i would be surprised if the whole speech typed out was more than about a page no it was wild you know she had basically a a bullet point list of like hate speech if i i kind of want to go back through video of the i remember the speeches of the 2016 rnc being longer but that was a million years ago yeah no it was a lifetime ago she had the you know the the usual comments about you know how we have to stop the globalists the wealthy and the powerful few which is which is just an interesting thing to speak to an rnc crowd because it's one of the most powerful people

the wealthy powerful few you are talking to them to them. And the line that came right before this was talking about how we have to stand up against the establishment who promise unity, but promote division. And I'm like, this is the most we're all trying to find the guy who did this moment ever, right? You're talking about how there's these powerful establishment figures who talk about unity, but actually just promote division. And like, you were talking about yourself.

And all the times that these like people who work in Washington start bashing like the establishment and stuff like you, you are the establishment. That is you. That is your job. But those are very, very common talking points and stuff like this. I'm sure many listeners are familiar with this sort of like double speak. And yeah, that was her speech. Definitely the biggest reaction we saw the crowd have.

Trump and his family made a very brief appearance, kind of a surprise appearance. But to some people's surprise, he did not actually give a speech. He instead, I think, took what was the smarter play, show up with a very large bandage on his ear and instead sit down and listen just become part of the audience it's an interesting mood like he didn't immediately like take over the convention no he's kind of playing this more like statesman role he almost looked like he was tearing up yeah yeah he was sitting in the crowd quiet subdued even yep he looked worried at points worried anxious or somber i wouldn't be i wouldn't be surprised if it was a natural reaction to being in your first crowd after being shot and nearly died yeah last time you were in a crowd yeah like

he is a person right that's just how people react oftentimes when that kind of thing happens yeah no he was sitting next to tucker carlson jd vance and michael and and and mike johnson with his kids sitting behind him oh yeah look when you have a near-death experience you know when somebody somebody shoots at you and damn near hits it it crystallizes a lot you know what's really important and you also know what you don't want to waste your time with anymore and that's that's why the trump kids were in the back of that crowd he doesn't want them anywhere near him life is short i just want to point out what they showed trump on the screen with uh with mike tucker and who was the fourth person oh jd vance i've already forgot his face kirsten goes nightmare blood rotation and and they are correct and that that that was day one of the convention that was i do want to get into one other thing because this

again we had our big don't panic episode a day or two before this you'll have heard one episode in between those two and posting stuff today posting comments on like how extreme the rhetoric is. I see people getting scared again. You should like, you should be very concerned. Fear is not an unreasonable reaction to seeing all this happen. But this is also something that I think will contextualize the scale of the actual number of people that we're talking about here. When we were sitting, we found a quiet place to record the middle bit that you heard um so we were in kind of an empty area and i would say close to half of the or about right about half maybe even a little more of the actual stadium was empty uh and most of them were clustered in the area that had and so there were a lot of areas where there's just absolutely nobody

and several times what was it three or four times, Sophie, probably, we had different people who either worked for the RNC or worked for the venue come by. But I'm guessing the RNC just because of their general vibe. Yeah, and because they're lanyards. Yeah, to try to get us to, because even the areas that were full had a lot of patches in them. They weren't all that full. So they wanted to get us to get up from the empty areas and move to fill in the areas that were going to be on camera. So it looked like it was fuller. And they did that because it was not very full.

Now, as someone, it's not very full because this is a political convention. It is not open to the masses. I don't know that it would have filled up if it was open to the masses. But there's an inherently limited guest list. But it did seem to be less people than I recall from the 2016 RNC. And more to the point, everything that you see and everything we're talking about and all of the extremity and the weirdness of these, in a lot of cases, freaks, assholes, creeps that we see, this is a couple of thousand of the most dedicated Republicans in the country.

This is the elite of the party. These are the people who have a lot of the money, if not most of it, and do a lot of the nuts and bolts of making the Republican Party run. These are not representative of most of the people who live around you, unless you live in a place that is real hardcore Trump country, in which case a lot of these folks are familiar, but they probably have a lot. They got a lot more money than your neighbors. I'll tell you that much. Yeah. No, and it is worth pointing out that they were trying to make an effort to move people around to make the seats look more full. Because also everything that we're also seeing is theater. There's all these rituals that they're doing to confirm that confirm the nomination it's like it's it's a very it's very

ritualized a very theatrical experience yeah there is one point where both robert and gare were walking around and i was sitting in our intersection by myself and i had three separate 20-something males come up to me to try to give me Trump signs. And all three, in a very unsettling way, pointed out that I was sitting alone. And it made me feel very unsafe. Yeah, welcome to the Republican Party, Sophie. Correct. Yeah, and as I pointed out earlier, definitely a lot of unwanted touching.

Yeah. But, you know... Welcome to the Republican Party. And you know what? There's a lot of unwanted touching. Unwanted touching is essentially part of the main party platform. It literally is. And it is only day one.

It is day one. well three more to go well and we will be covering it every night we'll be back tomorrow with more any any final thoughts anyone nope nope tip your service workers tip your service workers and wash your hands. 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. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while running errands or at the end of a busy day. 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 Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T. Connecting changes everything.

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