Panic World - How long will Trump's base support him?

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

Last time we had Charlie Warzel on, it was to determine whether the insurrection had been a political success. Now, 100+ days into Trump 2.0, he joins us again to answer some simple questions: Should we be worrying about the survival of American democracy now? And also, with the fallout from tariffs revealing the first cracks in Trump’s base, is this whole thing good for anyone? Plus, are we ready for Dave Portnoy 2028? Our guest Charlie Warzel is a writer for The Atlantic and for his Substack, Galaxy Brain (https://warzel.substack.com/). You can follow him there or @cwarzel on X and Instagram, or @cwarzel.bsky.social. Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to the Garbage Day Discord? Sign up for just five bucks a month at: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Sponsors Want to sponsor Panic World? Ad sales & marketing support by Multitude, hit them up here: ⁠http://multitude.productions⁠. Credits - Host: Ryan Broderick - Producer: Grant Irving - Engineer: Rebecca Seidel - Researcher: Adam Bumas - Business Manager: Josh Fjelstad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So, Charlie, welcome back to Panic World. Things are fine now, right? Because last time we spoke, you know, we were kind of worried about the direction of the country, but it feels like we figured it out. Yeah, there's a real course correction basically since, you know, January 20th. We're on the right track now. Do you? Do you, okay, I don't really know how I feel about this, but I'm hoping maybe you do and you can help me through this feeling. do you worry about the actual survival of American democracy now?

Is that a thing that is actually beginning to sort of like feel serious to you? God damn it. Okay, I want to hear your answer, but let me set up the episode first. I'm Ryan Broderick. With me, as always, sometimes throughout the episode, unfortunately, is our producer Grant Irving. It will be popping in from time to time. This is Panic World, a show about how the internet warps our minds, our culture, and eventually reality. And nothing really sort of exemplifies that warping of reality more.

than Trump's first 100 days in office. Today, I want to look back at the fallout from the inflation panic, the first time we really saw the cracks amongst his supporters, which leads me to ask, is this going well for anyone? Is this great for any of his supporters? Joining me today is writer for the Atlantic, Charlie Warsall. Welcome back. I think you might be our first, second timer.

Hell yeah. Wonderful. Yeah. So, congrats. That's how you know things have really spun out of control. we're bringing you back in for Apocalypse Beat. And yes, last time you're on, we had talked about whether January 6 was a success or not. And we both spent an hour being like, I don't know, until the end being like, I think it was. It truly, like, cracked my brain open.

Like, I left that and I was just like, sort of stared at the wall for two hours. So that was fun. Hopefully we can have that happen again. Dude, our guests keep saying that for some reason. So we're now four months into the victory lap of the January 6 rioters. They're now running the country. And we're finding out, you know, what happens when people who are in charge are really horny for human suffering and also suffer from like various forms of conspiracy theory brain rot. It's a tough time for everybody.

So yeah, my question at the top, before we get into all the people starting to panic, are we going to survive this? Like talking to me today about this, I feel like has me at a level of concern that I may not have even had, I don't know, five days. ago. So I just, I took a couple days off. Congrats. Humble bragged. And it wasn't like I was like digital detoxing or whatever. Like I wasn't like tuning out information, but I was like, I'm not going to like dip in and seek out bad news, right? You're using the internet like a civilian. Yeah. And it was astonishing how little information came in. I think there's this assumption right now that like information, if it's bad enough, right, like we'll find you. And I think there was that a little with some of the tariff stuff, right?

Like, it's just like the economy might be melting down. Like, you know, when the Dow plunges a specific amount, like, that information shows up to, like, the most normie of normies in the world. But outside of that, it was, like, really alarming to me, just how little information came through. And just, like, also how good I kind of felt about everything, right? It's like, it's spring. Like, yeah.

Like, it was really nice. And then it absolutely rocks. I plugged in, like, you know, this morning, like, it came back in to certain things and, like, you know, I opened up blue sky. The constant, like, Trump administration five alarm fire of, like, the blue sky timeline, which sometimes can feel overwhelming just like when you're in it and you're, like, plugged into information. It, like, hurt, but it also made me feel like, whoa, whoa, like, this is hysterical, right? Like, I was just out in the world for a few moments. Like, this is like, like, this is too much. Like, maybe I shouldn't be here.

And then you sort of realize that's part of the problem, right? Like the places that are sort of attuned to the emergency are freaking out, I think probably rightly so. But like if you're not in emergency land going into that, like if there's so much friction switching these spheres that like there's like a barrier to entry almost. This is why I'm worried to go back to the answer there. Like the reason I'm concerned about this is that I'm like, oh, it's, I'm, I'm, I totally get that like a vast majority of Americans just like aren't paying attention.

Like at all. Yeah. No, I know exactly what you mean. There's a surrealness to it. I've experienced it twice, actually, in different ways. Like I, you know, I've written and talked about like living in London through Brexit, which was essentially what we've done the last three months, but over the course of five years. So obviously it was a little slower.

But there was this experience where like you'd go online and like it's the end of. the world and then you'd go outside and it's like okay things are like a little shudier than they were but like i can still like take the bus and i can go to wagamama or whatever i used to work next to the waga mama where that guy got poisoned by the russian government so like it was kind of a tourist attraction for me that's your humble brag yeah exactly humble brag uh and i also sort of experienced this very briefly when i was in hongong in 2019 during the last uh wave of protests so like the city felt like totally normal to me as an i'd never been there before but my friends we were living there, like, it is different. I was like, okay, but it's a normal, you're walking

around, it's normal. You're reading that the Chinese government is obviously like freezing the city down and it's like cracking down. And the last protest happens and it's this big protest, it happens and then it's over and it goes like back to normal. And I do wonder if like the average American is like sort of expecting like if things are bad like it'll be like on TV. You know, it'll be like tanks in the streets and stuff. And it's like that's just not really how this plays out in my i don't think in the modern world and there might be a way to that like this all happening with such proximity to covid sure because it's like well like i mean i remember when i couldn't take my kids to school right like clearly if if like there's if the breakdown of

you as of united states democracy is as bad as like the people online braying about it say it is then there will be these disruptions to my day to day and it's like well not really unless like you know, but then, but then there are, there are these real things. Like up where I live in, in Western Washington State, there's a lot. There have been like a number of these like big ice raids, right? Right. And like you'll see it in like the local paper. And it's like a big headline, but it's not done in that like national news way.

It's just sort of like 36 immigrants who worked for this roofing company are no longer there. And like the roofing company is, you know, going out of business because of it. And it's just sort of like, oh, fuck. Oh, they were all just rounded up. sent back home and it's weird because it's like it's very tangible it's like just it's happened in your community but also it's not done in that way where it's like you know it's not like the rachel madow like monologue about this right it's just sort of like happening it's like it's like some kind of police force that's secret like some sort of secret there's no analog for this this has

never happened anywhere i mean um not to shit where you eat but there was an Atlantic story yesterday that was like Trump is doing some sort of cultural Marxist project. And I was like, like a nationalist. There's no analog for this. This has never happened anywhere. Like a nationalist social. Like a, is there a word for, okay, we are freaking out. But it seems like the Trump supporters aren't liking what they voted for as well.

So let's look back at the tariff panic because I think it shows that this is way more insane than even his most public supporters wanted. And yet that somehow has no real effect on us inching closer to full. fascism. But let's start with what I think are the three main factions. And all three had very unique reactions to these tariffs. So you have the Manosphere podcast world, like the Theo Vons, the Joe Rogans, the Dave Portnoy's, UFC, apparently as an entire company. Then you have reactionary Silicon Valley. So you've got like the all-in guys. You've got various South Africans living in San Francisco trying to do techno-apartheid. And then lastly, you have the white nationalists. You have the TP USA people who have giant misshaping foreheads and too much gum for teeth as a ratio.

And like those three groups effectively broke their coalition, I think, around the tariffs this month. What do you think? Yeah, I think so. I mean, but only to a degree. I'll put it this way. The most interesting group to me are these like this, the Silicon Valley types. And because they are sort of looking at Trump. as like a portfolio company right it is right it is an investment like i remember this or like seeing

this really for the first time this mindset of like what happens when like the venture capital and silicon valley crowd goes out of the realm of technology and into like a broader like political cultural social thing like the thing that stood out was february 2020 with covid when some of these investors like that guy ballagy the crypto angel investor guy and And some of the Andreessen Horowitz people were like, we're not going to, we're going to do a policy of no handshakes, right? Like there's this virus in China and it's coming around maybe. And like we just, we don't want to do that. Like we're going to wear masks inside the office.

We should, we should do that. And people being like, this is, these guys are weird freaks, right? Like what the hell? And then obviously everything changed like they're making bets, right? They're always, like they think of the whole world as like risk assessment and like long term bets. And how do we like do this? And it's both financially but also reputational. And this was like a huge reputational win for them.

Oh, so you're saying that like the way that they think about, you know, the risk they take investing in companies or managing companies is how they see the whole world. Right. That was like kind of turned like the light ball on in my brain of like, oh, they don't just look at companies this way. They look at literally every single thing in their lives as like a potential stock or portfolio company or investment or whatever it is. And that's, I think, obviously how they've responded with Trump, but you could see it in the tariff thing. Like, I made this reputational investment on Donald

Trump. It was really interesting to watch them figure out, like, when to cut bait on the investment, like when to sell shares of Trump. Some people sold all their shares, and some people sold, like, some of their shares and, you know, like hedge. And it was just like, it was really fascinating to see them treat this, like, actual literal crisis that they helped cause. as like a market fluctuation. In line with that, Zach Beauchamp at Vox wrote this really fascinating piece, kind of addressing this idea. And I want to read a section of it.

So he writes, people like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Mark Andreessen all had demonstrable track records of success. The basic thinking was that they would serve as the rough equivalent of adults in the room. That's, of course, not what happened. Instead of restraining Trump, Musk has become perhaps his most dangerous enabling. Why? Because he and the people around him genuinely believed what they were saying in public. The bizarre claims about government waste, the broke conspiracy theories, the unshakable faith, and their own ability to reinvent government oversight. Musk and those close to him said much the same things behind closed doors as they do on X.

And here's a quote from a guy that I want to talk about next. So are you familiar with racist substacker and Silicon Valley? Alia Luminary, Richard Hananian, Hanania. Of course. Of course. One of the premier minds of our generation. Hanania. So he wrote, talking to these guys privately, there's no distinction.

Hanania says, he told Vox, it really is people radicalized by social media, which is a thing that Richard has been doing recently because he's clearly trying to like figure out where to pivot next because things are so clearly blowing up. And so, yeah. What is your kind of read on Richard Henania right now? Because I feel like most, let's assume that people listen to this podcast do not know who he is. Like how would you sort of describe his function in this reactionary Silicon Valley work? I would say, again, I don't know like, you know, I'm not like deep in on him, but he apparently.

I mean, you pay for his, you pay for his. Yeah, but I pay for a lot of people. It's a patronage model on the internet. It's just people I want to see, I want to see him do well, you know. You can expense it. So it's totally fine. Exactly. Exactly.

It's all deductible. So from what I understand, really kind of like did a lot of race science dabbling and I guess continues to still do that. But also kind of, you know, positions himself as one of those reactionary like kind of centrist types, right? Like on like the race science issue and other stuff, he's dabbling with, you know, measuring craniums and things like that. Phrenology, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But he's sort of, you know, one of those people for whom, you know, folks who are employed by news organizations could potentially quote tweet and be like, that's fascinating, that's interesting, you know, and like it wouldn't, it's not the same thing as quote tweeting, you know, Alex Jones or Richard Spencer or somebody like that, right? So exactly. There's that kind of level. And from what I noticed, you know, he was a Trump supporter. And I the big thing that I saw blowing up is this notion of like, wow, I guess Trump derangement

syndrome really was accurate after all. Like was the most accurate reading of the world. Yeah. And you could see that it was this amazing attempt at a pivot to be like, I'm going to be the first person to raise my hand and be like Trump's bad. And if I can be the first person out of the door, you know, before this whole thing collapses or before, you know, it's only the truest, most hardcore, like, you know, deport all brown people administration. Then, you know, maybe I have a shot if this thing comes falling down. And again, it's one of those great examples of, like, I don't know if he actually cares.

It's not up to me to, you know, analyze that. But it was just such a risk assessment and such a, like, okay, I made a bet. It's wrong. I need to make another bet now. and here's where like the wind appears to be blowing. And that was sort of right at the peak of like, oh, is Donald Trump going to actually crash the economy in like four days over this tariff stuff? To me, the Silicon Valley guys are the most sort of defined by the idea that like they truly thought they were building like libertarianism 2.0, right? But just a little background for Hanania, like all great substackers.

he got his start writing as an anonymous white nationalist forum user. That pipeline is very well known. And he then published a book in 2023 titled The Origins of Wokeness, which does have some impact on Project 2025. He's sort of, he's in the mix, right? But I think the point about the Silicon Valley guys, seeing this as a math equation and thinking like, okay, like, we don't really care if Donald Trump is super, super duper racist because like we actually kind of like some of that stuff. And two, if, like, he's willing to build, like, feudal style techno city states, like, it's all good. But then, you know, you end up on tariff day with Bill Ackman having a complete meltdown.

So you recently wrote about the VC kind of reaction. I guess let's call them the VC. The VCs, the Silicon Valley guys. You've recently wrote about their reaction to backing Trump. The same thing, you know, I don't want to say that you and Hanania are writing similar things, but you also pointed out a similar, you know, a similar skull shape. No, a similar connection between sort of what they're saying offline and online. So do you mind if I read your words to you or will you be uncomfortable?

Bring me on this podcast and you just ruin my reputation. I'm honored. Yes, no, please. Please read my words back. Okay. I love it. Okay. So this is you in the Atlantic.

For many outspoken VCs backing Trump was a bet, much like investing in a portfolio company, one that came out with substantial risk. Should Trump's tariff scheme backfire completely by causing a recession or worse, their reputations as risk managers and complex systems thinkers would naturally be tarnessed. See Bill Ackman, who then spent tariff day bitching and moaning and pleading for Trump to, this is me interjecting, by the way. Unless, of course, they chose to double down and create a fictional narrative in which they cannot be wrong. The truthers are, in essence, taking up their reputational investment,

as if the Trump administration was a stock they were holding. as Trump himself has proved throughout his political career is often easier to double down and build a fantasy world around your mistake than to admit you were wrong. So what I would love to sort of understand from how you see it is like, why didn't the VCs do the Trump thing? Like why did we start to see people like Bill Ackman be like, uh-oh, like they couldn't buy into the illusion the same way the ideologues could? Some of them did, right? So I was looking at, I don't know how you say his last name, but like Keith Rabeau or Keith. were boys I don't know like again like a yeah yeah investor long time guy totally down the Trump rabbit hole right and this was like

and his was he and this guy I believe from Sequoia Sean McGuire who's been really vocal the two of them were actually doing the like basically the Q&on thing right like this like no no no this is all the plan like this is this is what what he's doing and right the reason that I know that he's hovering over the target like about to, you know, fix everything, like, and, you know, put forward this masterful gambit is because everyone in the mainstream media is freaking out about it, right? Like, all the people we don't like are really, really concerned. So clearly, Trump is on the right track.

And then somebody responded with, to one of these guys, I remember just seeing on the everything app, they were like, What about like the legion of economists and like people like, you know, economists famously not like socialists. Right. They're all freaking out about this too. What about them? And it was just like famously every academic is a leftist. Like that was their response.

Right. It was just this total like I. Sure. Anyone who says that this is wrong in any way is clearly audience captured or radicalized or clinically insane. Whereas I am I am not insane I am the contrarian because I am looking at You know at my net worth being cut in half and saying this is good

It's all like predicated off of off of the you know the web to model of like people being like well you know Connecting kids who go to college with like you know weird accounts that say what the relationship status is is like not a you know is not a major business this and they say well look we we saw around that corner we saw facebook whatever um but anyway the other crew who's not like the bill acmonds of the world they i mean i think the reason just speaking about bill acman who is a is a fund manager like he's actually in charge of of a bunch of people's money and not necessarily um making it's not quite the same as as venture capital he's not really an investor he's like he's a money guy but he's not like a he's receiving the money money. He's not sending out the money. And also, like, the job is to, like, make money, right? Like,

to deliver a rate of return for very, you know, wealthy people. Like, there are, there are folks in that Trump tech and VC world who the straight up, like the Andresans of the world, those types of people, like, they've kind of become, they definitely do the investing venture capital thing, but a big part of who they are and who their reputation is is being like ideas people right and so they actually have a little more leeway i think with all this but the people who are in charge of like responding to markets on a day by day basis this was a good example i think of just like the trump defiance of reality like crashing against the rocks of like no no no like markets are just actually like a thing like you don't like you know they they respond to very like basic inputs and outputs and output

and if you, you know, levy tariffs against the entire world, like the stock market is going to react. Like, it is maybe the most, you know, in this particular circumstance, like one of the more rational elements of, you know, of the global economy. I saw this great quote from an economist, a leftist academic economist during the tariff crisis who was trying to explain that like Donald Trump doesn't understand trade deficits. And his quote was like, yeah, I have a trade deficit. with my barber. He's never bought anything from me. You know, typical leftist.

I saw that exact, that exact frame, except it was the grocery store. I have a trade deficit with the grocery store from Ron Paul. Ron Paul. If you've lost Ron Paul, you're in serious stuff in trouble. It was amazing. It's such, it's such like great logic, right? And it actually shows the sort of, I think, the mad king nature of, of this tariff thing. He was on Air Force One and like Fox was interviewing him about about this going on. And he was just like they would ask him a question and it would just be like this like vacant stare from Trump. And he'd be like, they're ripping us off.

And I was like it was just so clear. It was like this man just like he just doesn't know. Mentally just doesn't understand what is happening. And so I think like folks like Ackman were seeing that and saying like I actually like my primary reputational duty is this end of year rate of return. And like if I don't have that, like it doesn't matter what my reputation is. My pathway to success is not having like 40,000 like megafolks with like pensions investing, doing retail investing like in my fund.

Like he has to worry about like billionaires giving him money. Right. That's his bread and butter. And those people do respond to the market. after a while. And that's why I think the tariff thing has been this really great sort of reality test for this, right? Like it was just this excellent way to sort of, as you were saying, breaking them down into like the three crowds to look at all that and say like, okay. So who who is like, where is somebody down, you know, like the MAGA rabbit hole? Like there are clearly the people like the Charlie Kirk's

of the world or the Benny Johnsons of the world who are so far down. And then there are these people who have made the investment but are willing to cut bait like acman if if if it went you know tits up or whatever so i want to talk about kind of like the mad king idea and the cult of personality and you know what i think is like you know the driving force of that cult of personality which is it's not an accident we have not mentioned a woman yet like the the the lifeblood of this thing is misogyny and i think that there is a sort of a derealization at certain levels of toxic masculinity where like reality starts to warp. And so right after the ad break, I want to talk about probably our most casual faction

here who have had probably the funniest reaction to everything that's been happening. So right after a word from our sponsors, which is a new brand of creatine, you can absolutely buy at the online Panic World store. We're going to be talking about how the Manosphere did with the tariffs this month. All I know about creatine is what I learned at all boys high school growing up, which is that it makes your muscles watery if you don't work out. prop throughout taking it. You get like watery muscles. I'm going to always continue to edit out anything bad you say about creatine. Are you on creatine? Are you take you take you are you are you

this? I cannot believe we do this every four episodes. Are you is that you are you joking? Is this a bit? Dude, I record and then like I have no memory of what happens and if you edit anything out of these episodes yeah like I don't know that I said it. I'm leaving this in because we've now talked about you making some of the watery muscles thing on microphone. Can I Can I just say that I have, as a listener, I have sometimes, you go to the ad break right before, like, teasing like the worst thing ever. Like, it's just like, here are some men who are going to be like fucking a jar of mayonnaise after a word from our sponsors. And I'm just like, man, what is all birds, like the rep from all birds or whatever, you know, whatever who's just like or like the Chobani yogurt person who's like, cool, sweet. That's good.

That's great. I love it. It makes me laugh so hard. Patreon.com slash panic world. That's really the only option for us, please. Yeah, and we do pickups where I'll just cycle through like a bunch of them to see like if we can come over with a really good one, you know? Like it's a, it's a bit now. So unfortunately.

It's time to talk about Dave Portnoy. That's the 48th president that you're talking about. Just be careful. Charlie, Charlie, that is. So, okay. The line that Grant wrote in the script is, all right, now let's briefly talk about our next president of Dave Portnoy. So congrats. Hell yeah.

Congrats. I assume at this point, Panic World listeners know Dave Pornowers, but if you don't, he is the founder and sort of head of Barstile Sports. He's been kind of a fascinating figure throughout all of this because he was really quick to kind of be like, uh-oh. And also, unfortunately, came up with the term Orange Monday, which fucking rocks. Like that rock's so hard. That's like a typical Boston piece of shit like reaction that I really find endearing, unfortunately, even though he's a very bad man. But I think he is important to look at because, like, he is such a casual in all of this,

but he's also kind of like a foot soldier in the misogyny that like fuels the movement on a base level. All right. So if I can just like the reason why I made the joke about Portnoy being the next president is precisely because of what, what you just set up, like the idea of like it all just echoes. Trump pre-Trump going down the golden escalator like so well orange Monday is an amazing term that Donald Trump tweet about Diet Coke right like like yeah I'll keep drinking this garbage my whole life right like it's like like there's stuff that he says sometimes where you're like man I got to hand it to him like I don't like this guy but like it's it's funny right and also like just

in the same way that Trump's medium of Twitter like pre again pre coming down the escalator declaring his candidacy, all that. Like, his sort of ability to be like a savant there and intuitively understand the medium, like, that is him, that is Portnoy and Barstool with, like, short form video, like, TikTok stuff, podcasts. Like, he instinctively understands, like, Barstool is just a reality show about a bunch of bloggers that is somehow, like, one of the most popular things in the world. They live stream, like, six guys sitting in Barkle-Longers watching.

football games and betting on them and reacting. And you don't even see the football game. Like, it is literally just like... No, you just watch that. It is a wild thing. And he seems to have this really innate understanding of like the media ecosystem. He echoes everything from like 11, 12 years ago of Donald Trump in this way where it's like, yeah, there's a lot of really kind of like messed up and misogynist like shit in Portnoy's

past. But if you don't know that, there's also like... like he's got a bunch of rescue dogs that are like kind of like adorable and like he you know he did the pizza reviews does the pizza reviews and like and sometimes he just like goes off and dunks on somebody and in that you know like mass whole way like sometimes it's like absolutely like cathartically hilarious and so it all reminds me exactly of somebody who like isn't attuned to you know all the allegations of you know around Donald Trump or the fraud or the bankruptcy or the whatever and just sees him as the apprentice guy and it's like yeah this this guy sure like

why not you know i anyway it just it feels like like history echoing in a really hard way around that guy that's right and i think we are seeing portnois speak to a part of the mega coalition that could turn against trump if portnoi also turns on him so let's run through a ticking clock of tape let's run through a ticking clock of Dave Portnoy's big week where he slowly realizes that he may have voted for more than he thought. April 3rd, Dave Portnoy fires off this post on X. Should I do a Boston accent? Oh, God, yes.

I don't think I've ever done one on the show before. All right, I have a dumb Bitcoin crypto question. If the point of Bitcoin is to be independent of the U.S. dollar and not regulated, Why does it basically trade exactly like the U.S. stock market nowadays? Market up, Bitcoin up, market down, Bitcoin down. So there you go. It's just fat as Peter Griffin. Yeah, just, yeah, mac it, mac it up, Bitcoin up,

mac it down, Bitcoin down. April 4th, the next day, Portnoy says, Portnoy reveals that he's lost $7 million. He reveals that he's lost $7 million. He claims he's lost $7 million in stocks in crypto. April 7th, he declares it Orange Monday. And then he starts like making like kind of veiled threats against Trump, which is really funny. And then on April 9th, Trump pulls back. Portnoy is seen dancing and singing to celebration in a short video.

And then on April 12th, he is seen. hugging Trump at a UFC event, which I feel like if I had to explain like what this world is, that is essentially all of the things there. Yeah. It's so weird how, like, there's that that like phrase, right? It's like it's a big club and you're not in it or whatever that is often like deployed about like, you know, elites in whatever thing. It's sort of like the same thing to me like Portnoy hugging Trump is.

And that way after like just roasting him all all week and like declaring him the enemy, it's like kind of similar to when like right before the inauguration, I think it was Jimmy Carter's funeral. Like Obama was like kind of like smiling sitting next to Donald Trump. And you're like, oh, is it just like, is it all just like a game? Like is it really like, does anyone really care as much as the people who care? You know, I'm not articulating myself properly. But you know, it's like the people who have to care. Right. If you don't have to care, if you can lose $7 million in stocks in crypto and still have an internet connection that works in your home, you know, like if you can still afford to post, if they haven't repossessed your phone, then yeah, I don't think it really does matter probably.

Yeah. But anyway, to that point, I mean, it's, it is also just amazing how there's guys in this like manosphere space, right? Like, you see it with, you see it with Joe Rogan sometimes. you see it with Theo Vaughn. Like Joe Rogan a couple of weeks ago, I saw a clip of him being like, this is really hurtful to the movement when we like deport people to El Salvador

who are like very clearly innocent, right? And like, boy, I sure wish he wouldn't do that. And it's like, it's like him, it's like the equivalent of like, oh, I caught him. Yeah, I got the quote right here. So he said, the thing is you got to get scared that people, should I do a Boston accent for this? So the thing is,

you've got to get scared that people who are not criminals are getting like lassoed up. An incredible visionary thinker Joe Rogan is. You have to get scared that people who are not criminals are getting like lassoed up and deported and sent to like El Salvador prisons. Horific is the quote. God.

Like, but it's just the way that these guys are like, like that quote unquote condemnation, right, of like extrajudicial renditions to foreign countries. It's similar to like the way that like, like someone would criticize like, I didn't like that, you know, how he comported himself. Like it's like almost like it like has the tone of like, like, I wish this would all be a little more civil, right? And like, there's just this weird way that these guys in this universe acknowledge like the

most heinous authoritarian tendencies of this guy. But the way they speak out against it is like as if he like, you know, set a swear word or something like that. Like it's like that level of outrage. like, again, they're like, they're hedging their bet, their portfolio investment just like ever so slightly, but they're absolutely not like, you know, they're not shorting Donald Trump here. Actually, much in the same way the Silicon Valley guys are like, wait a minute, I thought we were doing like techno-libertarianism. I don't know we were going to go like full authoritarian lunacy.

I think these guys are the same deal with like, wait, I just thought like women weren't going to like have good jobs anymore. Like I thought like that's what we were doing. Some of it is just a content plate, right? Like, I think you were talking with a couple episodes ago with Felix about this with some of these guys, like the Nelk boys and whatever. And it's like the pivot is always just like Donald Trump's good for content. Like Donald Trump's like this is interesting. Like Donald Trump is funny. Are we are we part of it right?

Are we doing that right now? Is that? No, we're good. Please subscribe to our Patreon for $5 a month. more about all of this. No, but you are exactly right. He is very good for content, especially if you're on his side. The savvy that you can actually like apply to Trump, like it's never policy. It's never like the grand strategy. But it is this idea of like finding these people and being like, oh, they need content. I'm really good at that. Right. And like this is like this is a natural

partnership, right? Just like Trump in the Sharper image in 1994, right? It's like, Like, he understands partnerships in that way. And these guys understand it too. The Trump movement could not have worked as well as it did this time around without that entertainment arm. Like, essentially, as we understand it, like, it was Baron Trump, which is like an insane thing that happened where he was like, hey, dad, here's how entertainment works now. Get on these shows. And it works too because of the way that this podcast ecosystem works, right? Which is that they all like.

And again, it's not. coordinated in some, like, you know, backroom, Cabal way, but, like, so many of them are friends or so many of them have realized that having, you know, this cinematic universe where the O'Von's on Rogan and, you know, like, like Shane Gillis is on every single podcast in that sphere and then... No, no, you can just say every single. Yeah. I think he, dude, he's on, he's on this one right now.

Like, he's coming on right after you. He and Pose Malone are going to drink 46 Budlights. Hey, don't threaten me with a good time. Let's fucking go. It would be pretty sick. That's when we're covering the mayonnaise fucker. You get the dystopia episode. That's amazing.

Yeah, Post-Bloan gets a fun one, yeah. Damn, he gets all the good stuff. But these guys are always in those spheres. And the results of that is just repetition, right? And like, repetition changes culture. These guys, maybe don't even necessarily know what they're doing, but they do have this instinct that it is like in this cinematic universe of podcasters.

Like, this guy is not a bad person to be, you know, somewhat aligned with. That's right. And when he was running, he was organically good for everyone's business and good for Trump. But now these guys are starting to hedge. They don't want to sell to really and hurt their brands. But I think we are seeing. that they're getting nervous. Recently, Portnoy amped up the language

and posted that the stock market as Trump's doing and to not, quote, piss on my leg and tell me, hold on, piss on my leg and tell me it's raining. So this is very, you know, this very well might be a group that could defect if Trump's governing becomes worse for their bottom line, then his cultural cachet helps them feel strong

and proud as, you know, annoying white guys. But that doesn't seem to be slowing down the fascism, which is the problem, which is aided quite a bit by the last group we need to discuss, these spineless demons willing to contort themselves into whatever Trump gets up to. And we're going to talk about all of that after a break from our sponsor, Prager University. You can learn all about how the Civil War was based on states' rights with Prager University. One of the most interesting figures in the tariff crisis to me has been whittalist, whittlest, whittle boy, Ben Shapiro.

Because he was probably the biggest ideological figure to break the earliest. And this is what he said in the midst of the chaos. The idea that this is inherently good and makes the American economy strong is wrongheaded, he said about the tariffs. It's untrue. The idea that this is going to result in massive reshoring of manufacturing is also untrue. And then basically just like spent the week like, aptly freaking out about the tariffs, which is not what the rest of his ilk would do.

And it does show a split because he's effectively a conservative from like 1993, teleported and shrunk down to fund size into 2025, which I think is a fascinating, you know, it makes him a fascinating comparison to the magabrained, you know, full-size influencers that we typically deal with. Yeah, I actually, you saying that, I saw, I read this like one of those New York Times, like long interviews with people and it was in Megan Kelly and she like takes credit for him but takes credit for him when she was at Fox right and Megan Kelly at Fox was this sort of like I'm the straight news person and like clearly flogging right wing you know talking points the

entire time but he kind of came up in that that side of it right and I think that he's always sure again like the best way to think about all these people I think is just as brands right Less as ideologues and much more as brands. You know, back in 2016, I remember the Anti-Defamation League released this report of like, who are the journalists who are being harassed on Twitter the most? Ben Shapiro was orders of magnitude more harassed than anyone else, right? Like anti-Semitic, just like the recipient of anti-Semitic hate, right? Like nobody has had their face photoshopped into a gas chamber more than him.

And, like, he was very vocal about that and very vocal about, like, Twitter, like, fix your problem. Whereas, like, the movement was actually moving towards trying to court those people. So he was always, like, positioning himself on the outside of that. I think it's, like, a relatively savvy play, right? Because he, Daily Wire was huge on Facebook for a reason, because it's like that normy version of that, right? It's the posts that sort of, like, have an ideology around it that is, of the broader MAGY ecosystem, it's one, it's like a quarter step removed, right? Yeah, that's right.

And on the other end, the people who wanted to recruit, you know, gas chamber, photoshoppers, these guys, the vast majority of them, they reacted to the tariffs as necessary for a very specific reason. They justified it as a step towards a world where women won't work anymore. Like, and I watched the monkeys with typewriters that weekend, and they used to do this on Fortune, now they're doing it on X, which is much easier to use. So that's great for me.

If you sit in those spaces, you can watch them over a period of time, create a narrative that ends up on Fox News the following Monday or Tuesday. You can set your watch by it. And that's when you start seeing the guys being like tariffs or this. And it's like a photo, it's like a video of like girls dancing or whatever. Or like you get, you know, Milianopoulos tweeting, men are depressed and addicted and broken because they have nothing left to do. They get no stimulation or satisfaction from BS email jobs.

telling you white Americans will love working in factories again making things in the image and likeness of god the maker yeah when you're posting that bud like things have spun out of control yeah like like i mean to to to be fair he he's lost the plot like 400 times like yeah do you remember that brief moment when he exposed that like connie west has dental surgery related like nitrous addiction and brain damage and was trying to like get him safely removed from an environment? I mean, the man is...

Truly unbelievable. It's like, it's such that, that right there, like, if that happens to be true, which I have absolutely no freaking clue. Once again, no idea. What an unbelievable, you know, like, boy who cried wolf's situation.

Like, he's just trying to do something good, but he's just like 80 layers of insanity and blown trust on everything. It's just nobody listens. Like, yeah, whatever, who cares? I think a bunch of Nick Fuentes fans stole his cat. Who's cat? So he's like,

Milo's cat? Milo's because Milo keeps, Milo keeps threatening to release material that would prove that Nick Fuentes and the streamer or destiny are in a homosexual relationship with each other. So yeah. Can't unlearn that. This world is, this world is a mess.

This whole world is a mess. But like another, unfortunately another important Milo post in this sort of story. is him posting calling only fans whores creators quote unquote is a direct and conscious insult to our lord these women who must be sent away to convents the men running the company should beheaded on the capital steps and the reason i say that that's important unfortunately is because like it is probably the most earnest kind of like wait we're going to crack it's not that we're crashing the economy for our culture war it's our glorious leader has crashing the economy and we need a reason for it.

And actually the reason is that we can send American men to factories and get women out of email jobs. And like that's the order of events as far as I understand. That post honestly sounds like like ISIS. Yeah. No, it is. It's white ISIS. Of course it is.

It's like, I mean, which is, which is truly fascinating. I think that that this is a really like important contingent. to track because it's obviously not a message that will ever like broadly resonate in terms of in terms of like give men the factory jobs right so that they will um you know have purpose again and uh and it will allow women to stop working in jobs and just you know procreate and stay at home and you know bake apple pies or whatever what just feels really true about it is that it is just such a good reflection of rage, right? Of like rage in this idea, like, biblical level punishment, right?

That, like, certain people, like, you must smite and, like, strike down certain people and this, like, this depravity inside America that is mixed with this idea of this more compelling, sort of more marketable message of men have no purpose, right? Like, it's great to make things with your hands. it's great to like, you know, have a reliable job in meat space instead of, you know, the internet. Like these things, these things will actually solve some of these broader issues, like trying to find, you know, consensus with, you know, the anxious generation and like going back to coal mines is like, it kind of freaks me out because I think that there is a market for that. but what it's actually motivated by is that other thing, that idea of like punishment, like, you know, like biblical level punishment and this like restoration of, like, you know,

white ISIS. I do wonder if part of it is like a demographic issue where like, okay, so like follow my logic here. Steve Bannon sends Milo into 4chan to enrage like gamers creates Gamergate effectively. as a Breitbart narrative in like 2014. And they realized, wow, that's really powerful, actually. Like, we can, like, we can essentially have nationalist trolls online in a way that, like, America didn't really have before. Other countries had started to have kind of like, China actually has had nationalist

trolls since, like, the 2000s. Like, we didn't really have an organized nationalist troll movement. Bannon sort of figures out a way to connect those dots there. And they start using them a lot for all kinds of stuff. Trump's first campaign, you have Pepey the Frog shit everywhere. It's like full, like, like, The Incell Army. Mm-hmm.

And they continue to use the Insel Army over the next decade. And I do wonder if that has had a mutating effect on ideological right-wingers and far-right thinkers who now, like, only understand their own supporters as psychopathic in cells and are like, we should get them off the computer and put them in fact. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, probably a little bit for sure. I mean, there is a little bit of creating the monster and trying to figure out what to do with it. It's like you're only surrounded by incels for so long. You're like, well, all men need to get off the computer and go work in the minds because they love anime girls too much.

So we've got to send them to the minds. Yeah. It's also like it's the one thing that gives me a little bit of hope, right? And I'll tell you what I mean. Yeah. Oh yeah. Which is that it is a, like, and again, I'm probably overestimating, um, rationale and like, hopefulness in the world.

But I feel like, to your point of like losing the plot, like, when, when the tariff thing was happening, right, like, and Benny Johnson is like, you know, talking about like, you won't even notice that you've lost money. Losing money does not matter. Like, it's ones and zero. And then that right wing account, the quartering, is like, you don't need an iPad. You want an iPad. You don't need a computer.

You want a computer. You don't need running water. You want running water, right? Like all that stuff. That's true. Those are all two things. Clean air. Like you just, you want it because you're soft.

Those messages, obviously they can get laundered through the right wing media ecosystem and sort of put into a framework, which is why I think the, you know, the anxious generation, like, format of that is like very scary and compelling. But this idea of like we want to send yes, your kids are not going to have the same standard of living, you know, as you did is like one message. And then your kids aren't going to go to college because somebody has to mine the coal is like not like an amazing political message. Like there is a little bit of like being so far down the rabbit hole that you do start to like lose people in a way where it's like this is not what I signed up for right or do you or do you feel like it's just going like I just feel like it's a

really bad political strategy to to basically say like no no no your kids are going to be in the fact other you know other people's kids that's one thing but it's like your kids are going to grow up and you know refit copper pipes like that I don't know well Charlie you You've walked right into our trap because the next four pages of our outline are historical proof that this is very normal in an authoritarian regime. So, Treschus, Romania. I'm leaving. 1966. He annex decree 770, banning all abortion and contraception in Romania.

And he adds an economic and cultural incentive for women to have lots of children. He designates the title, the heroin mother for any woman who bore and bra. brought up 10 or more children with the idea of raising birth rates and, of course, helping the economy. This is the inspiration for a little thing. Maybe you've heard of it. The Handmaid's Tale, Charlie? Have you ever heard of the Handmaid's Tale?

Putin's Russia, 1992. The birth rate in Russia begins shrinking for the first time in decades, the population overall shrinks as well. And so, in 2007, Putin introduces the maternity capital policy, basically creating an incentive for women to have children to work in sort of factories or monies. or what have you. Orban's hungry, 2019.

Charlie's face is like, just completely devolving that camera. I literally walked into saying, it can't happen here. It's just the worst version of what I'm supposed to be. Charlie was having such a great, Charlie was having such a great time, Pontificate.

He couldn't realize my face was doing that thing from the Grinch, where it was just slowly curling. up as like you're walking right into the final part of our episode. No, but in all seriousness, in all seriousness, what I do think is confusing and interesting and like worth pointing out about how Trump is going about this and how his ideological arm is going about this is that they are not, I think, going at it in the same direction in order as previous dictatorships that have gone down this road.

They are almost going in the reverse. Like Trump has an insane economic policy that makes no sense. based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how things work. And his most fervent supporters are creating authoritarian explanations for it. And that is different. And I think that's why you're saying, you know, like, wait, like this can't, like, this doesn't make sense. And it's like it doesn't because they're, they're going in the reverse, I think, in many ways.

Yeah. Yeah. The administration has task riveted it, you know, essentially. That's a perfect way of thinking about it because, like, I do think, tell me what you think here. I think that the far-right populism wave of the 2010s is actually ideologically distinct from what Trump is creating now, which in many ways is probably like stage two, but we've just never seen stage two. We are not in a situation where Trump has complete control over all branches of government and is doing whatever he feels like. We are in a

weirder, more modern version where he is effectively crowdsourcing his own authoritarian regime in real time in front of us. And that is a, I've never seen anything like that. I've never heard of anything like that. This is the, the flash mob version of like goose stepping. Hey,

hey Grant, hey Grant, that's the episode title. It's a, it's goose stepping as a flash mob is the episode title. Thank you very much. No, but I think you're totally right. It is,

it's open source, it's crowdsourced, it's different. It is different. Yeah. I'm trying to think of what the effect of that is in a bunch of ways. And my immediate feeling on that is like it's how he manages Trump to avoid certain criticism and like certain association, right? Like, because you could be like, ah, the guy's just like an old dude who says everything's computer, right?

It makes it so that people who sort of see things for what they are can very easily be dismissed as hysterical, right? Because it doesn't, it comes, it's very like a morphous. A thousand percent. It comes from so many different directions. And it basically forces you, right? To grab the cork board and the red string and be like, see, so like when this happens, this happens, this happens, right? And then you're like, oh, like, I'm like Russ Cole from true detective, right?

To like anyone who's not fully steeped in this kind of stuff. And that's what I think makes it so painful, like to loop it back. to sort of what I was talking about at the very beginning of all of this, which is like you're on some of these networks, like, and when you're steeped in it, it feels so overwhelming and so

much like this like, not coordinated, but this like just multi-pronged assault on like reality, institutions, democratic ideals, like, like logic, like just like the normal like social contract

that we've all had in like modern society. And then from the outside of it, it's like it can be perfectly like unintelligible, right? Or just like something to just tune out because it seems preposterous, right? Or random even. And I think that that is like the core of the issue and why it feels so like intractable. You kind of can't wrap around it because it's not coming culturally. It's not coming from like one.

one guy. Yeah, it's like if they're if they're throwing shit at the wall, statistically 80% of that never materializes in a way that matters. And the 20% that does materialize you have a really tough time paying attention to because there's a, I mean, you're you're flooding the zone with shit basically. And so I feel like, you know, as we bring this episode to a close, the takeaway, it seems like you're sort of arguing for is that people should just stop paying attention and sort of just hang out and vibe.

Yeah, it's great. It's amazing. Yeah, it seems like that's really the way to do. It's just, just let it happen. Just let it just see what it's just. What would, what? Wait, wait, wait, wait, there's a right wing meme they kept posting during the terror fiasca that was honestly really funny. Where like they're all just like, admit it, you're curious.

I just kept saying that with like just like red economic like market charts. I just was like, that's honestly really funny. Unfortunately, that's really good. Some men just want to see the world burn. Yeah, just, you know, trust the plan, Anon. Like, trust the plan. To that, like, there, it does speak a little to, like, the way that this, like, scrambles the moment, right?

When some guys basically just, like, no, I'll do it. Like, I'll blow this whole thing up. And you, like, and you have to, like, you have to argue for institutions. And it's like, no, no, they're broken, but we need, like, we need, like, running water, you know, it's like, it's a very, it's like a tough battle to win on the internet. It's much like, uh, the movie, The Dark Night featuring, uh, the Hollywood creation, The Joker. Uh, Trump is much, much like that character, but in our world, Trump is like the Joker of the White House.

As I'm listening to you guys make sense of this, what makes, what, where, what I've done onto is, um, MAGA was put under a stress test. where like we saw the different factions start to see start to think the other side was crazy the other people that they were like oh you actually believe that you're actually into this like we started to see them turn against each other and they're like in case of emergency the thing that to break glass on was like let's say women when people were like oh like we could lose this coalition

the thing the only thing that they could come back to was masculinity and misogyny as like the thing to try to pull everyone back to the base. That kind of makes me feel hopeless because there's this intangible thing that unites them. Well, I would just say it also feels like it feels like it wasn't just like just let's go back to the winning thing. But it was also like it was sort of the like populist rage, right?

Like it was it was sort of a little like, oh God, this guy like might burn it all down. Like flips through notes like, oh, burning it down is good because like here are the reasons why this is, you know, like modern culture and, you know, is depraved. Can I, can I read you a tweet that I screenshot it? I would rather send it to you, but it's a screenshot. So it's, it's long, but I'll try to run through it. It's by this guy, D.C. Drano, who's got like, he's like a Magaduidu with like two, two and a half million followers on X.

But it's basically, it's that, it's that TikTok video, right? It's the one of the boss ladies dancing. And it says, imagine watching this video is a blue collar, worker coming home to your rented house in a tough neighborhood after being laid off from your factory job when it got shipped to Mexico while you fill out unemployment benefits and look for affordable divorce lawyers after your wife said she's leaving and taking the kids to move them to another state because their school was trying to turn your son into a girl. Meanwhile, you'd get a text from a friend about a high school classmate who died from a fentanyl

overdose. Your truck broke down again. You can't afford repairs because the interest rate on your payment's too high. Your parents tell you you can't afford basic groceries on their social security check because record inflation and are wondering if you can send them $200, but don't want to do it on Venmo because the IRS might audit you again. You grab a beer, turn to TV to relax, and see a trans TikToker taking a bubble bath with Bud Light with a Bud Light can in their hand, with some multimillionaire actress at the Oscars says everything wrong in the country is your fault. This is why they want Trump to tear off the shit out of foreign countries and burn it all down.

And like, so there's so much there. But it's all of it, right? It's like, it's the populist rage of like an underclass from these people being like, okay yeah like this guy who we like hitched you know we hitched to their wagon and it seems like because they're an idiot they're going to burn down everything so let's go back to the notebook and pivot to like why burning it down is good right and I think that that's sort of you know it's like oh yeah we predicted this guy was actually going to juice the economy for everyone and lift everybody up and that's the reason why you should vote for drop actually now it's now it's a now it's a now it's a burn down situation like

We're pivoting to end times. Charlie, if people want to follow you online, where can they do that? I don't know. Who cares? We did it, right? We broke it. We got them. Thank you so much for coming on and having a manic episode with us.

No, but in all, you know, yeah, where could people follow you? I'm posting over on blue sky at Sea Warsell. I, you know, just read, read me on the Atlantic there. I share my articles as gift links because I want people to read them. That's what we like to hear. Thank you again. This was once again a surprisingly entertaining and uplifting conversation about the end of the American experiment. So thank you for coming back.

We did it. We did it. Do you know that you sign off every podcast now saying this was, it's such a surprise that we We've had a great, miserable time. It always is a surprise. It always is true. It always is true. Panic World is a garbage day production.

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