It Could Happen Here - The High Water Mark: Trump's Coronation

Episode Date: July 22, 2024

Robert and Gare discuss the final event of the 2024 RNC: the Trump Coronation Spectacular.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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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. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, Call zone media. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast that basically all of last week was about the 2024 Republican National Convention. A four day period of time that I'm not sure ever ended or ever really had a beginning. As of right now, we are stuck in the hotel because what we initially thought was a hack and may just have been a fuck up pushing an update by cloud strike, but by any measure of the word,

it's like the greatest computer disaster of modern times has stranded every Republican in the country, in the city of Milwaukee. We are trapped with every single republican in milwaukee wisconsin as we wait for airports and flights like a stephen king story it's it's feeling quite dystopian we've already been dealing with a great deal of like time dilation just this past week this week has felt it first just felt like a month then it just felt like an eternity.

Like we were just always reporting on the RNC. This is all we have ever done. Every single day of this was longer than my childhood. Yeah. No, I feel like all I've ever done as a person is be someone

who reports on the RNC. This is just the entirety of my existence and life purpose. It's like that Star Trek episode where they have like the fake casino because they found a, these aliens found a stranded astronaut and to try to make him comfortable like recreated a dime store novel and all of these fake people have only ever lived in the casino experiencing the same day

forever that's us that's us at the RNC I was only created to report on the RNC. Did I have a before? Did I have an after? Absolutely not. Yeah. Anyway, so we're doing well, is the short of that. Yeah, we're mentally healthy and well suited to handle this political task. I guess the big story, the one that's really worth us talking about right now

is that last night you and I went to see the Trump speech spectacular. Now, every day of the convention, during the early part of the day, you'll have some speeches and you'll have even some outside of the event. Different groups and organizations will rent out hotel ballrooms, conference rooms, they'll give speeches, they'll do panels, there's workshops. And obviously, inside the wire, so to speak, you have different dignitaries, politicians. Ted Cruz will come by and he'll sit down to be interviewed by a podcaster or a radio host. Rudy Giuliani is doing the same thing.

You've got all these people who do their shows live from the event. And then in the evenings, usually starting around like 5 to 7, something like that, you start having speeches. And part of what speeches at the RNC are, it's obviously it's a way to hype up the base this is the base and one of the things i i try to get across to people i posted on day one while there were some very dystopian shit coming out marjorie taylor green speech and whatnot how empty you know the the stadium was um to be like look there's not that many people here and someone was like well it's kind of dishonest to say that because this is an invite only event that you need credentials for and well that's my point though is like as crazy as a lot of this stuff is and we're going to get into

a lot of the crazy you don't also you don't want to discount it because these people are very powerful and they can do a lot of damage and they there's a very good chance they're going to wind up with very close to total power but they're also not representative of like a massive chunk of this country. Like these are the weirdest of the weird. These are the high freaks of Republican Party politics. These are the nabobs and priests and shamans of their political class. And so you shouldn't overextend the craziness to think that like, well, every one of my neighbors who is a conservative is this kind of person. Now, some of you do have neighbors who are this kind

of person. So. And Trump's speech was certainly much more well attended than any other. Yes. And it was it was also a very different vibe because all of those other nights, all of the speeches, you know, a big part of what this is for the people who get speeches is like, we want to give you a reward for being a good party soldier but no one wants to promise you a cabinet position right now you know we can't get like so we'll give you a speech at the rnc you can lead and you can get them right before tucker you know or you can come on right after tucker or whatever like that you know and it's kind of how you it's one way to dole out favors right because it's good for people's you

know if you if you head up an organization, it might get you some fundraising. At any rate, it makes you look more connected. It's something you brag about to your friends. You get to go backstage and be around the VIPs and whatnot, be a VIP yourself. I mean, and that certainly is the case for someone like Vivek, right?

Someone who doesn't hold a elected office, never has, but is trying to position himself as being, you know, an active part of this political project franklin graham billy graham's sure sure and gave a speech that's not a guy who's you know an elected leader but it's he's a guy you want on your side so let's give let's give him a nice position we'll put him right after hulk hogan oh my god which i guess is you know that that kind of gets at why Thursday was so different from the other nights. Because while the other nights felt like a political convention, because the dims do the same thing, right? Like their speeches occupy roughly the same role in their party. Last night felt like a concert.

Last night was the vibes of like a show. You are going to get hyped up and see a show people were ecstatic there was actually music acts like not just the band that plays in between speeches but kid rock came out and did a set um it was all a big put on performance yes it was it was in many cases well put on yeah yeah it was very competently stage managed there's no no denying that um we can talk about the content of the speech and i've seen a lot of it you know same cedar who i you know i like i'm not trying to shit i'm not gonna shit on sam or anything but i i saw his take being like i felt like this was kind of this seems like it's a weak speech it's not very coherent you know people in

the audience looked sleepy that was not the vibe during trump speech i see where he's coming from because this was one of the quieter trump speeches trump is quieter sure i think this this this was an intentional effort to to blend some of his more classic talking points with this elder statesman kind of vibe and selectively utilizing the assassination attempt To talk about both yourself As this broader political figure That people should unite behind Because this incident really shows How divided we are And what we really need to do

To unite the country Is stop attacking Trump And that's the only way to do it This was all on purpose And using that more sympathetic Unity messaging To squeeze in all of his same Extremely right talking points just slipping in between you know calls for like unity and ending division and all of that and also the fucking the boys are playing in women's sports

and hannibal lecter the late great he had a hannibal but we should we're getting ahead of ourselves but i do want to just kind of say up front, my take differs from what I've seen from Sam's theater and what I've seen from a number of folks who watched, you know, the closed circuit version of this. The audience loved it. Yeah. Like they loved it. And you can you can taste in the air the degree to which they love Trump. This is like not if you have not been to one of these rallies. And even this is different because I've been to a regular Trump rally. This was different than that because this is, again, like the most dedicated chunk of the base. It's very much a religious experience for these people. Yeah, no, it definitely had that spiritual vibe. So the first speaker we wanted to really get to in person to hear talk was Tucker.

And Tucker gave a very efficient speech. He did not read off a teleprompter. He was ad-libbing the whole time. Best speech at the convention, technically. He was a pretty good speaker. And I know we often will make fun of Tucker's mode of speaking on television, which can come off as a little bit disjointed and kind of just confused. He has that resting, confused look on his face

he was a very good live performer yeah this he he gave a stronger live performance than i think would have a lot of his televised performances come off as he was he gave an erudite and smooth summary of fascist ideology of specifically what used to be called the Führerprinzip or Führerprinzip, which is this idea that came out of the Nazi movement of a nation being embodied by a man, and the man is accountable to the people, not in a sense that we would consider like checks and balances, but in some deep spiritual connection that they have. And Tucker very directly, like, like hearkened to that. He made a comment about, like, you know, Trump talked to me and he was like, you know, when I got shot, I expected to see the crowd running, screaming, stampeding, panicking, and no one did. And Tucker was like,

that's because you're the leader and the leader, the people follow the leader and they, you know, you didn't panic, so they won't panic. Yeah. It's the most direct old style. This is 1920s Nazism stuff that Tucker is throwing out. And he discussed it in a way that was very smooth and very palatable to American ears. And that was the most chilling part of the night for me. Because Trump's speech was not a particularly – I think back to 2016. And I was at the RNC in 2016. Trump's speech on the last night of the RNC was his blood in the street speech.

It was a, he was angry. It was aggressive. It was a violent speech, right? And there were moments certainly of violence in his speech, but not much. That was not the overall vibe. That was not what he built towards. It wasn't the thing he ended on, and it was never really a focus. But what Tucker was focusing on was getting people on board the concept that they are bonded to Trump in a spiritual sense and that the nation is, and that Trump is the leader, not by dint of having been elected, but by dint of some sort of psycho like psycho religious mystic bond tucker was also the first guy i heard of the convention to mention antifa at all um person only saying antifa is the democrats own militia which is you know something that you would hear

four years ago and right before tucker's speech I actually was talking with Robert being like, hey, I've not heard anyone mention Antifa this entire week. And like this was used to be such a big thing in their political messaging, both like four years ago, two years ago. And this week, it was just completely absent. And now obviously, it has been replaced by some of this like gender ideology, groomer, kind of trans panic type stuff. But it is a noticeable absence in the current talking points of the Republican Party, save for this one mentioned by Tucker. Yeah. And during Trump's speech, I don't even recall him bringing up the radical left. He made a couple of jokes. And two of the jokes that got the best crowd response from him is

he would bring up Biden, but he would say, I'm not going to mention his name. I promise I won't talk about him. And that got a laugh every time that he did it, which I counted twice. He did make one reference to the shooter and said he tried to stop our movement, greatest movement in the history of the country. And that was interesting to me. I think that he was kind of playing, easing off the gas on that one because there's still so much that's uncertain about the shooter and his motives. I think that he was kind of playing, easing off the gas on that one because there's still so much that's uncertain about the shooter and his motives. I went to work out today because the morning after convention, that's kind of how I purged the hangover from my body. And I was watching Fox News on the TV in the gym. And I don't watch television news much because I'm a

person who has to do things. But it is useful sometimes because it connects you with how an unfortunate number of people in this country do intake their news and this morning one of the reports was about the shooter and how the fbi had found that he had three encrypted accounts offshore overseas that they're trying to break into they are referring to i think uh discord kind of accounts and stuff like that like uh he might have like an we have like a whatsapp he might have like an account yeah an encrypted email possibly yeah the stuff that like i have most people have but they were like so this makes it even more likely that iran is involved you know that there's some sort of a rate because like overseas that means iran that's like oh man there's lots of of companies that have encrypted apps that aren't based in the...

I used to shill for a VPN that was based, I think Nord is based in Switzerland. Maybe I'm wrong about that. But some of the VPNs are based in Switzerland. And like, these are not, it's not... The fact that it's overseas does not mean there's any tie to anything other than this kid. Like a lot of people had, was used encrypted messaging platforms. other than this kid like a lot of people had was used encrypted messaging platforms um obviously i'm interested you know when if the fbi when it when if or when they get into that stuff what they find but i don't think they're going to find that the fucking ayatollah gave this guy a 500

ar 15 and 50 rounds of ammunition that is certainly doubtful um i mean yeah i think tucker had some of the best audience reactions since marjorie taylor green's speech uh he called jd vance a friend said that vance's politics are closer to the average trump voter than anyone else in washington and yeah just an overall very very polished speech yeah we should probably do an ad break now, huh? We should. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes,

entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire,

join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola mi gente, it's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes.

You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. we're back so after tucker we had a couple other people come on there was a woman who worked for uh an educate a conservative education political activist group who her whole thing was you know i

i worked in prisons for a while and then i i switched over to working in schools and the thing that shocked me is our schools are so much more of our schools are like prisons which i was like well actually there's a lot to be said about the way in which some of the same yeah right yes no this is there's a lot to and then she was like because children are much more violent than convicted felons and you're like oh okay a lot of what she was saying is that like schools are completely out of control and obviously in the wake of the the height of the covid pandemic and the lockdown uh school violence did soar it's been coming back down overall yeah schools have been getting less violent in every

single way but shootings for 20 straight years and And that is the case now. Like in Joe Biden's America schools, like violence that is not related to shootings is going down. But what she was saying is that like we need to be able to expel and suspend kids, particularly suspend kids more often for bad behavior. There is actually quite a bit of data that shows that when you suspend children, it makes them more likely to offend and disrupt class in the future. Like it increases the problems that you are supposed to be stopping. Like most conservative measures that are kind of like punitive in nature, it doesn't actually do the trick. It doesn't actually do the trick. I don't know why I'm arguing with this lady, but it is important that like that's a big part of how they're pitching. What ultimately is a plan to win the Department of Education to parents is like your schools are so dangerous for your kid.

You need to be able to have a voucher to send him to a private school. And we need to be able to kick these underperforming black students out of schools um in order to make them safer for everybody right like yeah and shuffle them off into the carceral system this whole speech was kind of a coded way of talking about like urban crime she blamed this problem on an obama biden policy to limit suspension rates which trump undid and yeah said that the solution is both more suspensions and more school resource officers which the cato institute says actually increases the number of violent incidents in schools so but again of course they're going to call for more police this is the republican party honestly i don't know why we even bother like fact checking this is important because

i care like and you care and but like our audience knows the lady that gets up to talk about school policy at the rnc is not going to be bringing out good policy but this is just how everything works like this just kind of underlines the the alternate world that that is formed in places like this yeah and you can't you can't fight these people with facts that is the the mistake liberals always make is like well if we can just out argue them, if we can get them, get them in front of the American people and see how bankrupt their ideas are. And that's not how you do it. Now, that's not to say that you shouldn't get out and engage with them, because what does work is showing the American people, reminding them, these are freaks. These people are weird. These people are off-putting. These people are scary,

and you don't want to be around them. And by God, you don't want them with their finger on the button. Like I do think that consistently works. And unfortunately, that freakish nature can sometimes help them. Like when you pull out Hulk Hogan onto stage, waving an American flag, calling Trump his hero and his gladiator. And talking about how, yeah, all of America are going to be the Trumpites. That's what they're going to call them. Trump mania. Which apparently he used to do with NWO back in the day, back in his glory day.

He couldn't stop himself from talking about beating Andre the Giant at WrestleMania. I think it was like 1983. He made two different Andre the Giant references, both of which were very mean to Andre the Giant, who I wish... Oh, Andre. The wrong one died.

Hulk Hogan compared the energy of the RNC to a WWE match, which he is not wrong about. He's not wrong. It is very similar. Look, Hulk Hogan understands this crowd. Oh, absolutely. More than maybe any other actual speaker. Yeah.

Tucker kind of understands them, but Hulk Hogan even more so. They loved him. Yeah. When he ripped his shirt off oh yeah to reveal the trump vance tank top underneath that was the best moment of the rnc that was the moment where i was like all right fuck it no he said that he usually stays out of politics but after what happened on saturday he could no longer stay silent and then spent you know the rest of the speech just praising trump saying how tough he is saying that you know he's survived all these court cases these investigations impeachments and we need a tough man to take on like politicians criminals and drug dealers

and no it was it was a in a week full of kind of surreal moments where you're seeing these people that you only interact with on a screen yeah you just see them walk past you like all the time every day. This was certainly one of the most surreal moments. Madison Cawthorne nearly hit me with his wheelchair, and I'm not the only one I talked to with that story. He's a little reckless, I'm going to be honest. Maybe he thought you were a tree. Maybe he thought I was a tree.

I love that we saw two people, two Republicans at this convention, both of whom have a tragic tree story. I'm talking about Greg Abbott. They made the kind of baffling decision on the schedule to put Franklin Graham after Hulk Hogan. Not nice to Franklin Graham, to be honest. No? Yeah, because he did the thing that usually gets a good reaction, which is the prayer, right? He's there to do the prayer.

And this is a good crowd for a prayer, right? That's not a lame thing to these people. They love doing that. But no one's heart was fully into the prayer after Hulk. You can't get people- It's a tough come down. It's a tough come down from Hulk Hogan ripped his shirt off on stage to now let's bow our heads and thank God. But if you didn't grow up in evangelical circles, Franklin Graham is the son of Billy Graham, possibly the most famous pastor in American history, at least in the past hundred years.

Since sinners in the hands of an angry God, like the most popular man of faith in the country. And he closed his prayer by saying, all authority comes from you, speaking about God. And we ask if it be thy will that you will make America great once again. Just a wonderful, a wonderful Christian message. Uh-huh. Grand. So that was nice. Eric, Trump gave a very, he tried his best, which is basically what Trump said.

Again, Hulk Hogan has just been on. Trump is about to be on. It is the last night of the RNC and everyone is absolutely certain of victory. So as a speaker tonight, you couldn't be more teed up for a good reaction. And he could barely get laughs. He could barely get cheers. reaction and he could barely get laughs he could barely get cheers like even when he did the anti trans stuff it didn't get it got a muted reaction not because people aren't bigoted because they loved it when marjorie taylor green did the say they loved it when trump did eric trump just

sucks yeah at speaking probably at everything but he but he did not get a reaction. I cannot overemphasize to you how little this crowd wanted to listen to Eric. Yeah, no, I mean, he shouted out Monster Liberty, said that the Trump admin will fight against brainwashing in schools, will fight against homeless people, specifically taking resources from veterans, and of course, trans people in sports. He kept bringing up Ukraine, too, stealing resources from Americans. And of course, trans people in sports. He kept bringing up Ukraine to stealing resources from Americans. He was like the most brought up Ukraine in a derogatory sense more than I think any other single speaker at the convention, which is interesting because his dad took even a bit of a different tact with that. So, yeah, I found that interesting, but I did not find his speech interesting because he is a bad speaker now the only line i found interesting was when he was talking about how all of donald trump's political enemies aren't just happy going after him they're also going to be going after every republican and he said the greatest retribution

will be our success yeah and they've been using that word a lot this year retribution retribution and you know he did kind of in the end get get get a little bit of applause it was like the fifth or sixth best standing ovation of the night so again he at his best was never able to really rile them up especially when he's talking about the assassination attempt i mean yeah the crowd chanting fight yeah that's what got them back yeah on board and interesting they loved talk about that i think at bar because it had been so absent earlier yeah it was talking about way more today than all basically all the other days of the week combined yeah yeah and that makes sense i mean it was the day that trump came out to speak yeah you know and you know what we're going to talk about now or not talk about assassinating your thirst with hopefully a soda

company advertising on the podcast otherwise this ad segue is not going to make much sense. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, the running interview show where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast Post Run High is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the

pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real inspiring stories from the people, you know, follow and admire, join me every week for post run high. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you.

We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el te caliente

and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. All right. Time for Donald Trump himself. He's coming out. They set this stage. They got everything ready. And I'm proud to be an American. And then they announced Kid Rock. Ha, ha, ha, ha.

Oh, my God. And he comes out and the whole stage is wreathed in massive screens, like dozens of feet tall. And they all are portraying fire and American flags. American flags that look kind of like they're on fire. Kid Rock comes out and does a rap set to burning American flags surrounding him. It was kind of just a fascinating image for the RNC. The refrain is, they call me cowboy. He said that like 40 times, and he just kept going, Trump, Trump, Trump, fight, fight, fight.

They loved it. It was very high energy. It was a concert. Everyone had a great time. Yeah, yeah. it got a good reaction people were hyped up it is the loudest stupidest thing i have ever seen in my life but it got a really good reaction people loved kid rock coming out um it's interesting to me that they chose to have kid rock basically lead directly to the president rather than the hulkster but i don't know if i were If I had been setting this up, I would have done Franklin Graham, school lady Eric Trump, all the weak ones up first, and then probably Tucker, the Hulkster, Kid Rock.

Yeah, the RNC should really hire you to man their schedule. I'm available, guys. So after we all kid rocked out uh technically dana white gave the introduction or dana yeah they bring in dana white who has who is the ufc ceo yeah who is also on video hitting his wife in the face this is not a debatable he said she said he is on video you can watch it yeah and uh he gave a very very typical strength and security speech introduced trump who emerged from behind one of the big the big screens well proud to be an american place and like the entire crowd stands up and they're all singing along to proud to be an. They love that song.

He'd started his speech and one of the interesting things is that he said that he's going to tell the story of what happened at the assassination attempt here right now, but won't tell it ever again because it's too painful to tell. Yeah. I'll be interested

to see how often he does bring it up. If that is true, yeah. Just based on his body language, because he's been out every night but not saying anything, and he that'll i'll be interested to see how often he does if that is true yeah it is like just based on his body language because he's been out every night but not saying anything and he does has looked a bit different not i'm not going to do the whole thing some of the fucking you had some like politico being like it's a new trump he's become a statesman they definitely that's what the rnc is trying to sell you on exactly's nonsense. But he is changed in the way that, like, you would be

if you were shot in the head and survived. Yes. You know? Like, anyone is, like, he's not a robot, right? Like, anyone is going to be affected by that.

And he might not have been lying. He might just have been like, look, I have to talk about this once. I really don't want to keep talking about this because it's fucked up. I mean, one of the parts actually felt genuine were certain sections of this where he was like saying like i'm i'm i was not supposed to be here tonight and the crowd was

like yes you are yeah he was like no man no that was really close you know he was thanking god i i i don't know how genuine that is for him and how much that's political posture yeah that i don't necessarily believe that's that's just kind of Yeah, that I don't necessarily believe. That's just kind of what you have to do. He certainly knows that he barely made it out of that fucking speech. Yeah. And he pointed to the assassination attempt as a sign of how divided this country has been. A very we're all trying to find the guy who did this moment.

And he called in Democrats to stop the witch hunts if they want to unify the country saying quote we must not demonize political disagreement and the democrats should quote stop weaponizing the justice department against trump and labeling him an enemy of democracy so he's saying the way to actually unify this country is just to stop stopping me to be bad yeah stop saying orange man bad that's really what was. That's what he was getting at. Well, and I, you know, you get if you want to see the things that you can gain from this that are useful in how to fight these people, they are scared of the attacks that portray Trump as an enemy of democracy. The Project 2025 focus was hurting Republicans in polling.

And the fact that the Dems have pulled back, maybe that... It was not mentioned in a single speech this week. Yeah. Nobody talked up 2025. Even the Heritage Foundation people were notably cagier about it than you might expect in their interviews with the press, because they do know that it's not a good, it's not great for them to bring up now. It's not popular. Yeah. And slowly Trump's not popular yeah and you know slowly trump's speech got more and more trumpian right saying that democrats are destroying our country talking about uh you know immigrants invading our country as he said he said the word invasion many many times yeah uh saying that that they're that saying that illegal immigrants are killing

hundreds of thousands of people a year. Yeah, it's the fentanyl thing. It's even though 90% of fentanyl is brought into U.S. ports of entry by U.S. citizens. Yeah, that line actually was one of the through lines that was almost every day of this. I heard someone mention that we've lost as many or more Americans to fentanyl as we did in World War II. At one point, it might have been in trump's speech i it was even framed as like more people have died from fentanyl than died in world war ii and like well no no no a lot a lot of people died in world war ii just not that

many americans really yeah speaking of world war ii era germany in trump's little section we sure did get a mention there in trump's little section we sure did get a mention there in trump's little section about inflation he gave a fascinating comment yeah saying quote you can go back to germany a hundred years ago unquote to see the negative effects of inflation yeah pointing to like weimar era germany yeah yeah he's talking about weimar he's talking about like what immediately preceded the nazis coming to power yeah and and but like also framing it as like i'll be the one to get us out of inflation which is very similar messaging as the fascist movements did saying to germany that was in you know in in a real economic issue like we will be the ones to fix this through

through nationalism through closing our borders through putting germany first like that is it's it's it was it was a very a very odd comparison for trump to make i i don't know how well he thought through that i i don't believe that was this was like an intentional coded message it didn't seem like i don't think trump works that way yeah um he definitely does have teleprompters sometimes but he also he is like a good public speaker he doesn't just stick religiously to it yeah and that did strike me as a line that may have just come right out of the heart now he had a few other interesting things in the economy he was talking a lot about increasing car manufacturing jobs including saying the the leader of the united auto Workers should be fired and promising to put tariffs of 100% to 200%

on all foreign-made cars, which would, I'm sure, do some real... Stuck up on your Toyotas now, folks. Well, they make a lot of them in the U.S. I'm sure that would really help the economy. Yeah, which is like, I mean, part of the... There's a lot to say about that. One thing that's interesting, someone had told you,

because you were the first person to bring this up to me there were strong rumors that really a midday before the speech started percolating that elon musk was going to show up and introduce or either introduce or endorse i i heard this from uh like thursday morning which may mean that they were just getting some bullshit it may mean that there were just getting some bullshit. It may mean that there were actually talks, right? Because Musk has been trying to get Trump's attention. Yeah. That's beyond debate. He wants Trump on Twitter. And he wants Trump, you know, he's been making all these statements

about how much money he's going to donate to Trump, and now he's endorsing him. Now, do I actually think he's going to give the RNC $45 million a month? No, he's going to find some bullshit way. He's going to give him something, but he's gonna give the rnc 45 million dollars a month no he's going to find some bullshit way he's gonna give him something but he's gonna fight like he's he's he never spends give like that's too much money for him to want to spend on them right like i think he's going to fuck them the way he fucks everybody over but it i it was interesting to me how much talk there was of him showing up and absolutely no elon and in fact there was a moment where trump was like hey

electric cars are fine for some things but like we got to subsidize gas cars. Yeah. He talked about, you know, increasing drilling in the United States and kind of the last big topic that he went to was the border. He pointed to the to the little Border Patrol chart that he looked at the split second before those shots fired which saved his life so you can thank the border patrol chart for that he said that mexico and south american countries are sending murderers and people from asean asylums into the united states it was interesting because naib bukele of uh uh el salvador it keeps getting brought up as like a trumpian figure is like this is the kind of leader trump wants to be. Look at how good he's done at stopping

violent crime in El Salvador. Trump shat on him. Trump accused him of sending all of El Salvador's violent criminals and psychopaths to the United States, which I thought was interesting, actually. Was it El Salvador or Venezuela? Both. He brought up both because he also brought up Venezuela and accused them of doing, he said El Salvador, but he also brought up Venezuela and accused them of doing, he said El Salvador, but he also brought up Venezuela and said, maybe next election we'll hold the RNC in Venezuela because it's so peaceful now because they sent all their rapists here. Exactly. Then he had the late great Hannibal Lecter line. And then immediately afterwards, he said that he will enact the largest deportation program in American history. And that's just a what a very beautiful snapshot of the current

american politic and it got a great reaction and i would say that by far the most aggressive because he really didn't play any of it much of the much of if any radical left stuff but he really even didn't other than to say that joe was like a bad president the country was in bad shape he didn't like yell at democrats much the hate was mostly reserved for migrants and immigrants yes he closed by saying that we're gonna be building an iron dome in the united states oh yeah that one was a curveball yeah and then he pivoted to saying that we will not have men playing in women's sports which is the first trans reference in his whole speech and he just kind of dropped it and then changed topics.

And then he immediately continued to something else. And the crowd did not react to that nearly as much as they reacted to any of the other mentions of like trans people. I think because it just kind of, he just kind of threw it out there, but then we're right back to- It was almost like a perfunctory line.

Like he knew he had to put it in. Oh shit, I gotta drop a line about, because I think it is perfunctory, because again, Trump doesn't really care all that much about the culture like the social stuff yeah and that is that's pretty much what they closed the speech on most mostly on this migrant stuff this iron dome thing um and increase increasing the uh increasing the manufacturing jobs in the united states which is you know a lot of a lot of what trump's messaging was back in 2016 as well so i mean in a way it was mostly him playing the hits you know we had the there was he did bring out corey contemporaries firefighters uniform um it was on stage behind him the whole time he kissed it at one point walked up to it and i thought he

was gonna go in for a hug and i was like oh that's gonna be weird and instead he went up behind and kissed it which was also weird kind of did a joe biden to the dead man's firefighter it was a very joe biden um and he he brought up cory he brought also up the other people who were wounded he named them all which you know you i it makes sense you have to do it he didn't really talk much about cory beyond that like cory was there as a prop he kissed it and then they gave about a five second moment of silence a very brief moment of silence and then they moved on and when his speech ended for the night garrison and i both saw this was a beautiful moment to share with you gare you and i have shared some moments but this

was this is right up at the top of the list. As all of the whole convention, the whole ceiling is balloons, right? They've got them up there. They have some sort of system by which, like at the end, they trigger it and they all start falling down and they'll fall for 10, 15 minutes.

Like there's a lot of balloons and it's rigged so that they're, and some of them are red, white, and blue. A lot of them are like gold, huge gold balloons. And the last sight we get, as trump is on stage with his family balloons are showering the crowd gold balloons everywhere screaming they're they're celebrating what they see as yeah as an inevitable victory yeah two stage crew guys take cory's uniform and wheel it unceremoniously offstage into darkness.

Just quietly wheel it backstage. As balloons pour down and everyone dances and cheers. No one notices. We're done. It's like Frank Grimes casket sinking into the dirt in The Simpsons. No one sees. No one sees. It's very unceremoniously, very quietly, very quickly just wheeled offstage.

We had what we needed from him. As the celebration continues. And also they spelled his name wrong on the firefighting uniform to be fair it was previously spelled wrong yeah yeah that's i think it was an issue of when he was a firefighter they just could only have so many letters on the jackets um but it you know there was some talk about that i have seen a lot of folks making the comparison to Horst Wessel, who was a German member of the Brown Shirts. He was also a pimp who got murdered by some communists in retaliation for acts of violence he had carried out right before the Third Reich took power. And they really made a lot out of his death. He got this massive state funeral.

They had a very popular song about him. He was kind of the individual chosen to embody all of the guys who died in the street fights prior to the rise of the party. And people have been comparing Corey to Horst. I get why, because we are watching a fascist party near power here. And there's clearly some desire in that for cory to be that horse was a the focus of almost a i'm not almost of a cult and what i saw here was a perfunctory well we got to mention this guy uh we got to like you know make a reference to him but let's let's get in and out of that we got to move on to the meat and potatoes that's not going to win us and i think what is like the america the swing voters and shit don't care about cory contemporary right that's not gonna that's our base is going to expect us to say

something it's also just like the thing you do this guy got killed at your rally with a bullet meant for you you got to bring up something but then let's move on let's get him out of there let's shove his fucking uniform into the back closet and get back to the party. And that is different from how the Nazis handled Horst. And I think that difference, maybe it signals a real difference in the structure of American fascism and how it inhabits a party. Or maybe it's just a measure of we're not all fully bought in on this to the extent, in the same way that the Nazis were, right?

Like we really are trying to just get a lot of people on board to vote for us. And we don't want to get too weird with it. We don't want to have a big cult for Corey at the RNC, the big religious state. That's got to be off-putting to Americans. So let's, we'll kiss the hat. People like firefighters, shove it back. That's how I took that. There's two other things I want to Americans. So let's, we'll kiss the hat. People like firefighters, shove it back. That's how I took that. There's two other things I want to mention. I've had JD Vance's hype song stuck in my head. Boy, yes. Because they just kept playing it at that convention. And it's an interesting

song. It has a good beat. For most of the song, it's talking about how we spend all this time trying to liberate other countries. And maybe actually we're the ones that need to be liberated. Maybe America actually needs to be saved. Maybe we aren't as free as what we would think. And it has a line about getting out of Iraq. We got to get out of Iraq, take our country back, and put America first. And that is the point where they lose me, obviously. We got to get out of Iraq, take our country back, and put America first. And I mean, that is the point where they lose me, obviously.

It still is interesting for the vice president's song at the RNC to be anti-Iraq. I'm like, hey, there were people telling you back then not to do Iraq, and you really wanted to. We heard it for the first time on Monday when Vance got officially announced as the the nominee and i kind of wondered then if like is this a fuck up was like somebody they were like oh there's an a merle haggard song about america first let's throw that in there and then realized oh no there's we we can't have that we're the party who did the iraq stuff but it kept coming up it kept being played so it's very intentional clearly and and we were talking last night about this and like how how this is how these sort of nationalist projects always work.

And we've seen more America first, that exact phrase be used at this convention way more than any previous one. Trump said it a few times. A lot of speakers have been saying it. Just like, we need to put America first. And specifically in this song you know it has it has this kind of populist bent that then veers very hard nationalist yeah um which i'm sure we're all

familiar with has a political tendency yeah but i've just i found that to be the most interesting part is because for like the majority of that song i'm like yes absolutely i agree and then and and then they say the america first line and it's's like, oh, that is not what we're talking about. It's, yeah. And I just know it's been something I've been thinking about, and I'm sure we'll do some more deep dives on Vance in the coming weeks since he's a little bit less well known to many of you, I assume. I assume. And the last thing I kind of want to mention is that yesterday, right before Trump's speech, I was getting some work done. And I happened to be sitting about 10 feet away from Ted Cruz, who was talking on air about his thoughts on both this convention and this election in general. And he said a few interesting things that I half heard, that I quickly just scribbled down on a notebook.

He said that this convention already feels like a celebration, right? This already feels like we've kind of won. But he warned Republicans to be scared of overconfidence. He said that we're kind of acting like how the Democrats were acting in 2016. I have been saying that all week. Yeah. And that's what Ted Cruz was saying. Yeah.

He thinks that Biden is not going to be the candidate, that someone else is going to come into place. Now, he believes that that's going to be Michelle Obama, which is an unhinged opinion. Unbelievable. Because like, do I think Michelle Obama would have a decent shot at winning the presidency in this election? Sure. Do I think Michelle Obama wants to go anywhere near the White House again in her life? No. Absolutely not. It's like a nightmare. She's making movies. They're produced. They're in Hollywood. They're doing the thing people. They're doing what Ted Cruz wants to

do. When people are allowed to make big Hollywood movies, they don't want to get into politics. For a long time, that's how we avoided having fascists in power in this country, like direct power, like Trump kind of fascists. We're very lucky that Clint Eastwood just makes movies and doesn't do politics. The people who would be the best, we have, you know, you have fascists like stuck inside of the bureaucracy, but the people who could really have the potential charisma to be populist leaders wind up becoming movie stars tom cruise could have been a president oh yeah he's he's got what it takes but he decided to devote all of that manic kind of charisma energy into climbing the burj khalifa and that's part of the genius of the american system um and i mean guess lastly uh

milwaukee was lovely all the food service workers milwaukee's great even the poor people who were forced to work at the convention center uh consistently nice did a great job and there's there's one one anecdote that robert should mention just regarding my favorite part of the convention, some of the very fine people here in Milwaukee. I've gotten shouted at. My, my occasional enemy, well, always enemy,

but occasionally I remember that he exists. Andy, no, uh, made a series of posts about how there was a dangerous Antifa terrorist at the convention and like clipped a couple of posts of mine out of context, like he always does. And,

uh, uh, was like, you know, people in his, in his mentions were tagging the secret service and the FBI serves Laura Loomer. I continued to repeatedly enter the RNC.

I, I went through God, I lost count of how many times I went through secret service checkpoints. We snuck into the Heritage Foundation party. None of it mattered. The only people at the show who recognized me were like technical folks for the different radio. I had a couple of different people who were carrying booms, carrying cameras who like referenced, like recognized me and shouted me out, which I felt good about. What I felt best about

is as you and I were walking to the stadium to see the speech, we see a forklift driving down the street. In the middle of the security perimeter. Like one of the crowded streets.

Yeah, which is kind of crazy. It's weird. I've never actually seen a construction vehicle driving around inside during like the convention hours. So that was weird. And as we're like

watching this thing like i honestly wondered like should i like get a footage of this that's kind of wild looking as we as we see it like kind of coming up next to us the driver leans out of the side of the vehicle and he is uh uh a beautiful man covered in tattoos huge nose ring ring. And he's like, hey, Robert! We have the forklift demographic. Nothing has ever made me so certain that we're doing the right thing with our lives. We're reaching the people we need to be reaching. You know?

The forklift certified soldiers out there. So, Forklift Nation, thank you for listening to It Could Happen Here. We do this for you. We do this for you. We do this for you. We know you have our backs and we have your back. Stay safe, everybody.

Yeah. God bless. 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,

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