Pirate Wires - Hurricane Milton, Trump/Kamala On Media Tours, & Is Elon Really The Presidential Candidate?!

Episode Date: October 11, 2024

EPISODE #73: Welcome back! Hurricane Milton approached Florida as a Category 5 Hurricane. The lead up to landfall was filled with insane discourse. Harris & DeSantis went at it, and the hard right called the entire thing a government made conspiracy. Trump & Harris took to the media tours this week. The stark differences in which shows they went on highlighted the gaps in voters. Speaking of the Presidential race, Trump currently owns a large lead on Harris. But is this all because of MAGA whales and Peter Thiel? Finally, Pirate Idol returns with the next round of quarterfinals. Is Elon musk the secret Presidential candidate behind Trump? Featuring Mike Solana, Brandon Gorrell, Riley Nork,  We have partnered with Polymarket! Download the Polymarket: Election Forecast app https://apps.apple.com/us/app/polymarket-election-forecast/id6648798962 - Disclaimer: Not Financial Advice, For Entertainment Purposes Only. Sign Up For The Pirate Wires Daily!  https://get.piratewires.com/pw/daily https://piratewires.co/free_newsletter Topics Discussed: Pirate Wires Twitter: https://twitter.com/PirateWires Mike Twitter: https://twitter.com/micsolana Brandon Twitter: https://twitter.com/brandongorrell Riley Twitter: https://x.com/rylzdigital TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Welcome Back To The Pod! 1:30 - Hurricane Milton Hits Florida   15:55 - Hurricane Conspiracies & Hypothesis For Storm Intensity 38:30 - Trump & Harris Go On Media Tours 45:50 - Trump Takes A Big Lead In The Betting Markets - Sponsored By Polymarket 59:20 - Pirate Idol! - Is Elon Musk The Secret Presidential Candidate?! 1:26:00 - Thanks For Watching! Subscribe To The Daily! Like & Subscribe  #podcast #technology #politics #culture

She's been vice president for three and a half years. She has never contributed anything. You see the aerial satellites of the bigness of this thing. The storm of like insane takes on the internet did however very much live up to expectations. I don't know what it is about hurricanes and like floods. Maybe it's like the flood myth because we deserve it and it's gonna cleanse away all the bad people.

Would you have done something differently than President Biden? There is not a thing that comes to mind. Both Trump and Kamala are stepping up their media hits as the election is like less than a month away now. Trump as a pirate idol judge, I got to say, would be fantastic, by the way. I think he would show for you today. First of all, we're going to talk about the hurricane. Stay tuned a little later for our polymarket segment. We're going to look at the polls between Kamala and Trump that are widening now, or not

polls, sorry, the betting markets where things have widened, but they've widened the polls as well. I think the polls are just starting to reflect what the serially addicted gamblers already know. And we're going to talk about the discourse, I think, a lot today surrounding the hurricane. There are some funny things there and some horrifying things there. We're going to get to all of them. I think first up, just what happened. So two weeks after Helene, one of the largest hurricanes in recorded history formed in the Gulf. We were looking at a Category 5.

It was and then wasn't and then was again. There was one weird story, sort of, I think it was a little bit of a fear-mongering thing like, should we be creating a category six? And what does that look like? I think they were saying if it was over 198 miles per hour winds or something, maybe they would consider that. But I think this tapped out around 180 or so, but it was crazy. We knew as it was going to hit the Florida Gulf Coast, it was going to dip down to about a category three, but the question was, where was it going to hit? And it looked for a while as if it was going to hit Tampa, which would have been a direct hit on a very crowded coastal city.

The first of which we've seen in, I don't know, I think since Katrina would have been a three that hit New Orleans. And I think that people were not really prepared for the kind of damage that was going to do. It ultimately touched down in Sarasota, just a little bit south of Tampa. And we are still kind of assessing the damage at this point in recording, which Thursday, there are not, there's not a lot coming out of the area. My sister is, lives in Tampa with her family and they are evacuated. They're all in my place in Miami. They have not been able to see the damage. And I think that's probably what's happening right now as of Thursday, probably over the weekend, you're going to start to get a sense

of the disaster. And I think it's going to be pretty bad. We were looking at, you know, enormous winds. We were looking at one crazy thing. I think as it approached the coast after, you know, days we were watching this thing, tornadoes just across the southern part of the state, like something out of the fucking apocalypse, even in Miami, which was the one weird pocket that was safe. It was crazy to see people say, you know, take safety and have a map showing you sort of what was safe and what wasn't. And the thing that was not safe was all of the Florida Peninsula. Just a massive, massive, massive storm. Still figuring out what's going on there. I do want to talk a bit about, I think as we wait to see more about the damage, just the way that we've talked about

it. And I think that one interesting thing that always sort of happens with these crazy hurricanes is they're in the middle of an election, right? So we got to talk about the various conspiracy theories that are floating around. We have to talk about global warming, I think. And we have to talk about just the straight political sort of the feuding, I would say, at this point between Kamala and Rhonda Sanders on the topic of this hurricane that involves Biden. Riley, why don't you start us with that story? Just tee it up and tell us what's going on. Yeah. So in case you guys didn't get the memo, the first thing that you're supposed to do when a deadly storm is approaching is to immediately think about how you can fit that into your politics.

It's not look for shelter. It's not, you know, any of those things. It's politics first. So, and like you said, you had actual politicians taking this approach with Kamala trying to make a big deal about Ron DeSantis not taking her call with Hurricane Milton approaching something she called, quote, utterly irresponsible. DeSantis responded by saying, look, you've been like vice president for three and a half years. You've never called me about a storm. And I've been in touch with both

FEMA and the president, as well as marshalling all our state agencies and working to support our local communities. And so for Kamala Harris to try to say that my sole focus on the people of Florida is somehow selfish is delusional. She has no role in this. In fact, she's been vice president for three and a half years. I've dealt with a number of storms under this administration. She has never contributed anything. Biden himself confirmed that and said DeSantis had been, quote, very gracious in coordinating with the White House on the hurricane. So, yeah, Kamala clearly trying to leverage that for politics. You had media outlets as well as just like everyday people on X trying to politicize this.

Of course, the climate change takes coming in from the left. When Helene happened, I remember The Guardian had an article about it affecting the campaigns of Trump and JD Vance, calling them climate deniers, essentially implying they got what they deserved. But on the other side of the coin, you had people implying that this storm was created by the government, possibly to interfere with the upcoming election, like you said, and stop Florida, obviously a red state from voting. So yeah, while Milton itself, like thankfully didn't end up being as catastrophic as it could have been still a ton of damage, obviously been all like a category five direct hit on Tampa, the storm of like insane takes on the internet did however very much live

up to expectations. I want to start with the Ron Kamala stuff. So I was really just surprised that she did it. I was surprised that she... So the story broke down with, it seems like, one of Ron's staffers told the press that they had received a call from Kamala that they didn't answer. Kamala then was asked about this, and she said quite a lot. And this is now in the middle, the storm is bearing down on the Gulf coast. We don't know where it's going to hit. It seems like it's going to hit Tampa. It seems like it's going to be a three or a four when it does. We're talking about like massive carnage if that happens and destruction, unlike anything, again, we've seen since Katrina. And she calls him selfish and says, you know, we should be putting politics aside

at times like this and just doing what the people need and blah, blah, blah. Again, sort of there's the obvious read, which is just that this isn't her job. And there is this enduring curiosity I have over like, is she in charge or not? Because she's having it both ways, right? We're supposed to say she was leading the, uh, the country for four years. And don't you dare say that she wasn't a part of that. If you do, you know, it's sexist. You're sort of taking away the authority that she has. But then also like she's running as a change candidate. that she is a part of. So pick a lane. Are you in charge or are you not in charge? I think in the case of hurricanes, it's pretty clear that she's not in charge. The person who is, is, well, there's the president, there's FEMA, and there's the governor. And this is a dance that we see in

every single election. And it usually goes the same way. It usually involves bipartisan cooperation that is really loved by the press and by the people who doesn't love that in the time of a crisis. You saw that, I remember the one that comes to mind is Chris Christie, also during an election, coordinating with Barack Obama at the time in a sort of big public way that many Republicans were upset about because they felt like it cost the election. You've seen Ron over the years coordinate with every single, I mean, with both Trump and Biden. And I was surprised that she walked into this in the way that she did. She even then took a call that she recorded with the mayor of St. Petersburg to sort of, again, try and pretend that she had some sort of role here. You don't see that from

Trump because it's not true. And well, who knows what Trump will do? I would not have been surprised if Trump threw himself in there in some sort of stupid way, but, but I expected, um, I don't know. I expected Kamala's handlers to be a little more savvy than this. It looked really, really bad. It still looks bad. They're sort of not letting it go again by releasing the mayor footage and the mayor of St. Petersburg. It was sorry. That was it just seems like she doesn't quite get it. Like you weren't a part of this. There was a crisis happening. Your boss threw you under the bus. And Brandon, you might have some thoughts about this. I'll let you go. But I do want us to circle back to that piece next, which is, you know, thee biden of it all because it was crazy the way that he just straight up smacked it down like no they were he was being asked about her he it was she this thing happened with her is that true and he was like no multiple times actually and now the two of them are like you know trading compliments back and forth. It looks terrible for her. Brandon, what do you think? I was just about to fact check you in real time. Let's go. This is forgivable. Apparently. So I'm looking at Newsweek right now, three, three hours ago, literally Trump put out a video,

um, just like wishing everybody, um, hoping everybody's safe and like doing the standard thing. But he also said that he's in contact with, with the Santas. Uh, but I, but I, I told you, I stopped and I said,

I wouldn't be surprised if he did something stupid. Yes. Yeah. Well, I don't even think it's that stupid. He's just like, I've been in contact with, like,

it was like one, it seems like it was like five seconds. I was, I was, you know, it's also different, but it's also so different to be like, I'm wishing you the best.

And how can I help? Yeah. And and i guess my my take is also another it's kind of on the obvious side but if i mean obviously kamala's behavior around the hurricane was super cynical and political. But I think if you just put yourself in DeSantis' shoes, you probably are, you can't, you don't have any time to talk to somebody who just wants to do a sort of communications move, you know, and put that in their sort of like back pocket and promote it later as like, I talked to DeSantis and, you know, like, it's just not useful. You're probably actually triaging every minute of your time as this hurricane approaches. And I think

probably DeSantis was probably just like, I actually don't have time to talk to somebody who doesn't have any valuable information to give me right now. And so, I think that pretty much those two things explain the interaction. And I'm sure that, you know, DeSantis would have time for Biden because Biden probably does have something valuable to say or contribute to the recovery efforts. this this this um the relationship between a president and a governor during a disaster and and it's it's it's very important it has to do with i think funding as part of it um just like resources in general as part of it and i think part of it also is um is just the i think people are really scared if you're not if you've never a lot of people not from florida or familiar with florida or familiar storms, I think don't fully understand how dangerous this is. We're talking about like entire, as if you took a rag and you're just wiping out entire parts of the state, like all of the houses. We're talking, I mean, anywhere from 10 to 15 foot storm surges. Many, many people probably did. I mean, we have, I think a dozen plus at this

point are confirmed, but the hurricane hit yesterday during the middle of the night. So it's going to take a minute before we know how many people have died. Many people have died already. And the real thing is, I think in terms of what you were saying, Brandon, like he's busy, they were evacuating millions of people at that point out of Tampa Bay, which also I think most Americans don't realize how big it's a real city, right? It's like there are millions of people in the Tampa Bay region. You have the entire state evacuating. There's nowhere to go that's safe on the peninsula other than like the Southern tip, a little dot in Miami. And then you got to go way up north, close to the southern, close to the border is like the

next safest spot. So it's like a mass state exodus. And she wants to have a photo op. Again, obviously frustrating, but I am surprised that she thought she was going to be able to like eke a victory out here. Just one point on the Biden thingiden thing so i guess and i just saw this before we started the pod but i guess biden has since said um that when he was like praising desantis and stuff for the hurricane effort he he said he didn't know that desantis uh had rejected kamala's call earlier so sort of like trying to save face there um and maintain this like turning into a partisan narrative um but did he take back what he said? I don't think so.

I haven't read the article, but I don't think so. Well, I mean, there is a growing conspiracy theory or a theory, let's call it, that he hates Kamala and the staffers were at war. It was him wearing the Trump hat. It was him praising Ron DeSantis after the call. It was him. I've noticed they're very keyed into counter-programming. So Kamala, and we're going to talk about this in a minute,

has been on this press tour. She was on The View, I think, when Biden delivered an address, I believe, about the hurricanes. And you've seen this sort of building, and the rumor is they just, um, they really don't like each other at this point, but I read a rumor from a really bad right wing guy. His name's Jack Poso, Poso BX. Did you know who this guy is? I think he, he might've like, I've seen his tweets. I don't know him. I think he invented, I think he was like the guy that did Pizzagate. Really? I think so. So royalty. Yeah. Yeah. A royalty in the retardosphere. And he alleged Jill Biden's staff had a physical altercation with Kamala's staff recently at the White House. It's on his twitter account i'm trying to find it right now well i'm choosing to believe it because it's funny so that's that's

that for me that's how we're deciding that one um i don't i mean i don't know if it's worth i don't know if it's true it's like a rumor i don't know if it's worth i mean read it if you want to read it i'm trying to i can't find any tweets a million times a day all these people tweet too much i'm only one hour into his timeline this is crazy i don't think i'm gonna be fine i don't get it man my style of tweeting is one a day and they all go viral and that's how you do it jack retweets around here yeah um i think the other piece of this that's interesting actually so i want to move on past the kamala piece for a second. We'll get to her sort of pure Kamala discourse in a bit, separate from the hurricane. But also on the hurricane, you saw the rise of this, and this is going to be a huge story, by the way. And I knew it as it was happening. I was slacking everybody on the team days ago.

I actually picked up on it for the first time in Helene, and I was surprised it didn't pick up speed there. There is a belief among a certain subset of it seems like the right that believes the hurricanes are being, you know, there's a, there's a broad range of ideas in the space of hurricane creation, um, conspiracy. I think some people believe that the government is doing something to them to make them stronger and sending them to people. There are some people who believe the government is straight up creating the hurricanes. A lot of this has to do with radar, like these lines that you see in the radar shots that they're just like, look, it's a line that clearly goes from this place

very quickly to this hurricane. Obviously, they're being created. Marjorie Taylor Greene has been involved in this conspiracy theory, ginning it up to a certain extent. And it is, of course, become a misinformation story. It's frustrating because it's very crazy and most people don't believe it, but it's being used as yet another reason why we have to shut down discussion of things online. And that's always how these really just like evocative examples of disinformation are used. They're sort of lifted up to say, you shouldn't be able to speak. theory. However, there is... So here's what's true. What's true in the context of both the global warming discussion and the government's creating these hurricanes discussion is the Gulf of Mexico, the water in general is warmer. We've talked about that before. I was in Miami, I remember last September. So not this one that just passed, but the one a year ago.

I was at the beach and the water was like 100 and something degrees, which I didn't think was possible, genuinely. I thought that that was not a thing that could even happen. And I thought, man, the hurricanes are going to be really bad. We're just waiting for a bad one. The hurricanes intensify over warm water. We know this. The warmer it is, it's not a direct correlation, but it has a huge influence on the size and power of the hurricane. So water is warming. This, I believe we do know. People

might disagree with me, but I just, I don't agree with you preemptively. The question is like, Um, the question is like, why is that? And Democrats generally have the upper hand here. And I think they're correct that we have contributed to a certain extent. I think there's some natural warming. I think we probably also contributed by pumping carbon into the atmosphere. But recently, Brandon, I believe that you were looking into this, uh, so you can maybe break it down. There was an environmental regulation that was put into place that prohibited the use of sulfur in fuel, I believe. And we need to talk about the impact that that has 2020 by the International Maritime Organization. And it drastically reduced sulfur dioxide emissions by global shipping containers, mostly in the Atlantic Ocean. The intent was to improve air quality, reduce air pollution, but it had an unintended consequence.

It actually reduced the cooling effect that sulfur dioxide emissions have, which a paper published in Nature in 2024 alleges caused an abrupt increase in global warming. So the regulation basically had the opposite effect of its intent. Some background on the science here. Sulfur dioxide increases the reflectivity of clouds. And so when we had a lot of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere above the Atlantic, the clouds were just reflecting more sunlight, which had a cooling effect on the climate. Now that we reduced sulfur dioxide by 80% in North Atlantic shipping, all of that or a lot more sunlight is actually hitting the ocean and warming the ocean. And the paper alleges that there has been an increase in ocean temperatures because of this very regulation. This is fascinating, obviously.

What you're effectively talking about is geoengineering by accident. So you've proven out that stratospheric aerosol injection is a method of cooling the planet. And this is something that I just continue to be very excited about is just the entire space of geoengineering. You have the big sort of scary ones. People are talking about giant solar shields and things like this to cool the whole planet or whatever, but you just don't need to do all of that. Like clearly we've been doing it by accident for a while. It's like the Republicans are always not all, you know, in, in general, you see a lot of denial on the right that, that, uh, people have an impact on the planet at all. On the left, what you see is an

obsession with the fact that we have impacted the planet, but then they sort of forget that they believe that humans can impact the planet. Like if we have had an impact on the planet, that means that we have agency over the natural world, which we do, we have, and we do, there are things that we can do to the planet that changed the environment. And this is where maybe the sort of like right-wing conspiracy theorists about the government controlling the weather, which is wild considering they don't believe in global warming, um, have a little bit, they're like, there's like a, if they bit... If their story was a metaphor, they would be roughly correct. The government... It was actually Palmer had a funny post about this. The government did control... The government is responsible for this hurricane in a way.

If government regulation has led to the end of sulfur in the atmosphere, which has led to warmer waters, then that regulation is in part responsible for these giant hurricanes. And that's a conversation that no one seems prepared to have. Because again, it's like the right is very incented right now or incentivized right now to deny that any of this is even happening while the left is really obsessed with more regulation for the environment and focusing on the fact that we've created the problem, but really not open to any solutions other than we have to use less energy, which is only, that's not a solution. That's just a recipe for mass starvation, I would say, throughout mostly the third world.

And we're not doing that. So we're in this weird deadlock, but I want this, I mostly the third world. And we're not doing that. So we're in this weird deadlock. But I want this, I'm interested in this, in this path between the two global warming discourses where, yeah, we accept that we have had an impact on the world. And then we try and have a better impact on the world. This is what we learned. As I learned about global warming, you know, the first time decades ago, I immediately applied it to Mars. It got me excited about a foreign world. If we have changed our planet by increasing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and that warms the planet, then there's a path to do this elsewhere. There's a path to terraforming.

But terraforming can happen here on Earth as well, and I think it needs to. And that's not what we're talking about. It is very crazy to me that we learned this. This was nature. I mean, didn't nature just endorse... Was it nature or scientific American that endorsed Kamlova president? These are left wing journals. I think it was nature. Yeah. And even if they didn't, I mean, we've seen super left wing stuff from them for years. These are places that you're supposed to, these are reputable sources, right? I mean, these studies are real. We really did this. The regulation really happened. We really stopped releasing sulfur into the atmosphere and the planet really warmed. And now we have some consequences that you can maybe say,

I don't want to say that it's a one-one, we know for sure that this happened and now these hurricanes are happening, but I think there's a link there worth exploring. And certainly there's an impact that we can have, that we can make to cool the planet. There are all sorts of people working on this on the private side, trying to sort of get geoengineering companies off the ground, doing things like stratospheric aerosol injection, temporary measures to put more sulfur in the atmosphere and cool the planet. We need to start looking at this stuff. If you're serious about, this is actually my, this is my line on it. If you say that you're serious about global warming as a problem, you're afraid of what we have done to the planet. You are afraid of the warming air, the warming waters. You're afraid of the rising sea levels. You're afraid of the hurricanes.

You accept all of those things and you're not interested in geoengineering at this point. That says to me that you're lying. That says to me that you don't actually believe in global warming. You just want to reduce energy consumption and that's your primary goal. And I think I really do believe in global warming. I really do believe that we've had an impact and I really do believe we have to do something about it. Riley, what do you think about this?

Yeah, just on the sulfur versus space lasers creating hurricanes um i it so reminds me of like covid when you had some on the like the very far out there saying um china cooked up a bioweapon and unleash it on america and then you had like a few steps below that which was like no but we did have this lab over here and they were doing research on like a more scientific backed argument for it. And it's like, both of those got lumped into the same argument. And if you even like dipped your toes into one, you automatically got lumped in with the other. I think that's a very similar thing that we see going on here. Yeah. It happens. You know, I think I probably participated in it myself, unfortunately, to a certain extent, because there really are a lot of people who believe that the government is controlling these hurricanes right now.

There are enough that I think it's it's not fair to use this in the way that obviously the left is now is using it throughout the media. But I mean, there are people who believe this. I don't know why Biden's talking about it. I don't know that this is the other thing. It's like people are saying it's dangerous misinformation. I'm not actually sure how it's dangerous. I'm not actually sure. It's like no one is saying the hurricane's not coming. Everyone was saying, get the fuck out of Dodge. Like you don't want to be here when this thing hits. There was just a question of whether or not, you know, Nancy

Pelosi created it herself in her basement. And like that's no one got hurt in the making of that disaster conspiracy. It is a little bit frustrating just to see people say such stupid things. And like you said, I think maybe the real reason that it's frustrating is because like, once you poison the well in that way, it makes discussion about these things in any sort of contrarian way, impossible because you're lumped in with the true crazies of the retardosphere. Um, and now I don't know, it's just discourse hell. It always is. I wish there was a better way to, I mean, this is, this is the enduring problem of our age, right? It's how do we, how do we come to any kind of collective agreement on anything? And it just seems like we never will.

And, and, and, and the And the longer that we persist in this state, the more I think crazy people become on the left and the right. I mean, remember, keep in mind, yes, we're talking about lasers creating hurricanes or whatever, but there are also people who believe that Donald Trump staged his assassination attempt twice. And that's crazy. That's the blue and on shit that we've talked about um everyone's a little bit not everyone there are a lot of crazy people online they seem to be proliferating at this point i feel like whenever they're like extreme like hurricane weather events especially to do with water it deranges people like and it totally i don't know what it is about hurricanes

and like floods maybe it's like the flood myth, you know, like the deluge myth, this ancient feeling of like the flood is coming because we deserve it. And it's going to cleanse away all the bad people. And there's going to be a reset afterwards. I don't know if that's what's activating in people, but I feel like the craziest conspiracy theories happen when there's like a hurricane. It's like FEMA is like, you know, killing people. They're like they're harvesting bodies.

I mean, the craziest stuff comes up during these news cycles. And I feel like there's something uniquely deranging about hurricanes. I am so glad you raised that point. It is what I have been feeling online for a couple of weeks now. It's like this darkness that has descended upon the land. I have no idea what it is. I will say that when you're in a storm, there is, I was once in, I was in Miami and we got the outer curls of like a tropical storm. It barely passed over us. It was unlike any other storm. There was something when you're in it. I mean, the sky goes black and it just feels different than

there are thunderstorms all summer in Miami. Not like this, this for moments, it felt like you were encountering some kind of cosmic malevolence. It is a scary story, a scary storm. And that was, like I said, the wisps of a tropical storm. It was not even a hurricane. When you see images of this thing coming into land, you should look up, Matt, if you can find them, these pictures of the tornadoes that were striking all around the state, the hurricane approaching, you see the aerial satellites of the bigness of this thing. And it does feel like it, I agree. These giant storms that are so completely, the feeling of them is like, you feel small in the face of something so big and terrifying and looming and coming to you slowly. It's like, you have days, days where you can think about this thing coming after you,

days where you can think about this thing coming after you, um, drives people insane. And, uh, yeah, we, we saw it throughout Helene first and continue to see it in the context of, um, of the FEMA stuff and the way people discuss this. And now you see it again. I, I don't even on other topics, like while the storm was coming, I found people to be nastier online. And, um, even for an election, it felt uniquely toxic the last week or so. I will be curious to see if there's a sort of hostile to FEMA narrative around Milton, like there was around Helene. I haven't seen that yet. And I wonder if that's just because DeSantis has been visibly in charge and people feel like he's in control. And so, we don't have this partisan... Because I think the FEMA stuff, I don't... I mean, maybe FEMA is not doing...

Didn't do as good as they could have. And there was some corruption that caused that, right? And Helene, I don't know. That seems like what's being alleged generally by the retardosphere on the right. I haven't seen that in the Milton media cycle. And I'm curious how that's, how it's going to play out and how FEMA gets treated. I want to be careful with how we use the word retardosphere too, though. Really just, I'm going to push back a little bit. I don't, the FEMA stuff feels very different to me than like invent, like the government's creating hurricanes. Um, and the FEMA stuff, I felt, I agree with you on it. I don't think they've done

anything wrong or at least I haven't seen any proof for that, but the allegations feel more grounded in reality. And also, I don't know, I'm willing to listen to more here. I'm willing to listen to more about it. I mean, if you know about the government hurricanes, please fucking email me. I would love to know everything that you've got. But I think on the FEMA, it's interesting what you say about FEMA.

You know, is it in this feeling of the last time we heard a lot about, we always hear a lot about FEMA, but during Katrina, we heard a lot about FEMA too in the opposite direction. It was like, you know, they don't, um, they don't care about New Orleans because it's a black city. Um, and now you're hearing really the, an echo of that more than an echo. It's, it's the mirror image of that and reversed, right?

Uh, they don't care about the, the Appalachia region of North Carolina or whatever, because it's all poor white people. Appalachia region of North Carolina or whatever, because it's all poor white people. And now you have DeSantis who, like you said, seems like he's in control. And if you just have that other figurehead that can take heat off of FEMA, maybe that's what does it. I think the other thing though, again, is just, we don't know what happened still, you know, we're recording right now. It's Thursday 2 PMm. Eastern. I was looking as best I could. People aren't there yet. I think by the time that this airs Friday, 4 p.m., we'll probably have a better sense of what the disaster is. It takes them a minute to even get in there to start helping

people. So it's anybody's guess how the FEMA narrative will evolve. It'll be interesting to check it out next week though, I think think one other observation I had is that FEMA is seems to be perennial perennially out of money. Every disaster that happens, there's a new story that comes along with it. We're like the FEMA director is like, we don't have enough money. It seems like every single time I think this happened in COVID you can actually Google this. I did it the other day. it seems like every single time, I think this happened in COVID. You can actually Google this. I did it the other day. And it just, every, every time FEMA is called to respond to a disaster, it seems like the spokesperson like admits they don't have enough money. First of all, pay us. Yeah. We need more. Yeah. They use it. And so it's, it's kind of weird.

You know, it's like you bring a lot of, um, sort of negative energy around FEMA by saying we don't have enough money. But they also are using I'm presuming they actually use disasters to get more money. Oh, yeah. And I know that sounds pretty crass, but it's maybe their only opportunity, quite frankly. Right. Because when you're not in the middle of a disaster, it's kind of out of sight, out of mind. only opportunity, quite frankly, right? Because when you're not in the middle of a disaster, it's kind of out of sight, out of mind. And it's probably easy for Congress not to increase their budget or fund them as much as they did last year. Yeah. I mean, this one was, there was the funding controversy. Did they take money out of FEMA or whatever and give it? And that was

much more complicated than the way that it first broke, but not so complicated because money is still going to, and now they're out of money for North Carolina. That did not happen. No money was taken out of a FEMA checking account and given to the immigrants. this is again, this is another instance of where the, the, the crazy right is they're like metaphorically correct about something, but not factually correct at all is we're giving a lot to people who just got here to live for free in New York city, for example. And there are people who we still can't find in North Carolina and you have families that are getting what $750 or something. I don't know what the approach should be. I feel bad for FEMA to a certain extent because people are looking for you to fix something that's unfixable. It's an act of God just

bore down on a community that hasn't seen flooding like that ever in the case of North Carolina or in the case of Sarasota, we'll find out I think a little more later today and tomorrow. But the nation's priorities is really what we're talking about there. Are you prioritizing Americans right now when they are really in need? And I think that probably the government could be doing more. And I think the thing that they could really be doing more of, and this is on both sides, is having an honest conversation about global warming, having an honest conversation about, you know, what is going on? Are things, so the waters are warming? Okay. Yes. Why is that? Is it the sulfur thing? Is it something else? What can we do right now to stop that? Because

you know, it's not going to stop that. If the waters are warm, reducing the amount that we consume right now is not going to stop anything. If we could go to, we could go to zero emissions right now, and we would still have all that carbon to stop anything. If we could go to zero emissions right now, and we would still have all that carbon in the atmosphere, and we would still have these warm waters, and we would still have these megastorms that we're looking at. And it's like, what is the plan to get that carbon out of the atmosphere or to alter the atmosphere in some way so as to cool the planet down? That's what needs to be done now. And I just wish these people who are literally there

to represent us could fucking represent us. We should celebrate the fact that we are so dominant on planet earth that an alien from light years away could recognize that we exist because by like, you know, sampling through a spectrometer, the different gases, the gas composition in our atmosphere. That's like fucking cool. We're here and everybody knows it because we work. We're in founder's mode. Let's go. Yeah, the whole species. I was thinking about in the shower this morning, as I was getting ready to come to the studio, I was thinking about the aerosol injection thing. So if we don't, and God knows China's not going to stop burning shit. So the carbon is going to keep going into the atmosphere. But if we start altering the planet with something like stratospheric aerosol injection with the sulfur,

that has to be replenished. It is very temporary. So you now start this process where you're seeding to a certain extent, the sky to cool the planet, and you're doing it all over the world, and you have to do it consistently, but we're still dumping carbon in the atmosphere. And maybe we're increasing the sulfur to sort of cool down or whatever. If humans ever stopped doing that at that point, you know, like let's say we don't change our behavior other than we add these new precautions that are temporary 20 years from now 30 years from now 100 or 200 years from now if we forget how to do it the world will end like we're talking like like there'll be so much carbon in the atmosphere we become like venus um it's like the global warming is so insane that life on earth dies and that is sort sort of like, you know, it's like, uh, it's like we're

holding the rest of life that all known life hostage or something. Um, that is the power of us. Yeah. It's ours, man. Let's go. We gotta, we gotta take care of it though. But that doesn't mean, you know, Ferngully shit. That means solar punk future where we, where we alter the world and make it better. Go us. Let's talk about Kamala's press tour. So, uh, both Trump and Kamala are sort of going on, uh, stepping up their media hits as the election is like less than a month away. Now Kamala has made stops on the view where, like you mentioned Solana, um, she said, uh,

something about like, uh, she wouldn't change Solana, she said something about like she wouldn't change a thing from what Biden did from his presidency, which a lot of people on the right touched on. She's also been on Stephen Colbert, Howard Stern's show, 60 Minutes, as well as an alternative media appearance with Call Her Daddy, where Kamala and host Alex Cooper primarily talked about reproductive rights and other women's issues. But Trump has also been on the podcast beat for quite a while now. He's been on Full Send as well as the Theo Vaughn podcast. All In, obviously, most recently did Flagrant with Andrew Schultz. Still hasn't done Rogan yet, though.

I wonder if they're working behind the scenes to sort of make that happen closer to Election Day or something. But it's clear that both candidates know that like podcasts is just like a new part of campaigning now. So I guess, yeah, Trump, Kamala, if either of you want to come on the Pirate Wires podcast, we would love to have you. Trump as a pirate idol judge, I got to say, would be fantastic, by the way. I think he would be good. Yeah, he'd be great. He would be great. I would love that. Yeah. Both have been on the podcast beat and we'll see if any do any more

stops in the future. The, there was also the 60 minutes interview. So part of her press tour was the 60 minutes interview, which I thought was the best of all, maybe any interview that we've seen so far of either candidate. I thought it was hard and challenging and the dude was unrelenting. He would ask questions again on everything from... I mean, the main thing that I... When it comes to the different candidate, for me, my big question with Kamala is what do you believe in? And this has to do with the fact that she has espoused very radical, crazy left-wing policies just a few years ago that she hasn't actually repudiated herself or explained why she changed her mind. Things like de facto open borders, things like free

exchange operations for prisoners and for illegal immigrants. I would say her gun policy previously, obviously her tax policy, but i don't really care the one the it's like the border shit is the craziest and like the it's like the that's where i'm like what do you what do you actually believe and what is actually your plan and most importantly of all i don't mind when a politician changes their mind i just want to hear why i want to hear how you got there you know what don't you agree with? And he was good at that, but they're getting attacked now, the CBS for the 60 Minutes interview, because they released longer uncut footage where they really dramatically edited some of her answers and did make her sound, I think,

better. Just objectively, she did sound better when they edited her. And maybe even, I think, better. Just objectively, she did sound better when they edited her. And maybe even, I think there was one where they moved around. I feel like overall, the substance didn't change of the interview. And I think you do have to, people don't realize this, we're not editing themselves. I mean, you do have to edit the video in some way. A raw transcript of anyone talking, if you did a raw transcript of me right now, I would sound terrible in a transcript. You would hear all of my ums and ands and my meandering little stories that you tell to get to a point. Conversational dialogue is very different than what we consider in our mind to be crisp, clear dialogue. And it doesn't bother you when you're listening, but it really would bother you if it was in, you know, what was supposed to be a tight interview or if it was written out, it doesn't bother me. Um, but that's kind of, I don't know that

that was sort of like the cherry on top of, of her Sunday is like, even this, this is the, like the whole tour is bullshit. And this one at 60 minutes was totally manipulated in her favor. I don't think that was quite fair. I think it's smart they're going to podcast. Riley, you had a great take about that this week in the Daily, which you guys should subscribe to if you haven't already. We're constantly referencing this thing. This is where we live in the PirateWire's Daily. Go to PirateWire.com and subscribe to the Daily. It's free. And we send you three takes a day and that's where we discuss you know, discuss the news really. You were saying like, this is what it is to be a modern president. And I agree, or a modern candidate. You have to talk to the people in this way. I think it's interesting

how they kind of go to their own ideological echo chambers and don't really dip a toe out. And I think it's interesting what she said on the view where she very clearly didn't know. She doesn't know. This is maybe what we should really talk about here. Like she does not know if she is a change candidate or if she is the Biden administration. She has not figured that out. I don't know how you run a campaign

if you haven't figured that out. You've really, really, really, really got to pick a lane. I guess I just wonder how much this is changing public opinion um as it relates to the the outcome of the election well um yeah i've seen you know we speaking of that yeah we're going to polymarket but finish finish your thought no no i wanted to talk about that i keep seeing the difference between so we're going to talk about that polymarket there's a screenshot going around of trump's chances and kamala's chances sort of sharply diverging and um they actually like if you zoom out on that chart, so this is a favor represented in that screenshot are actually, they seem to be insignificant. Um, but a lot of people are like getting hyped up about it.

I've seen on Twitter. Um, and I've been following Nate. I, I trust like Nate is like my, like, I don't actually, I just, when I like, I'm wondering about the election, I just look at Nate's Nate Silver's Twitter account. Um, I know a lot of people have problems with him, but I don't see what the big deal is with him. I think he seems to be a pretty smart guy. And he just put out a tweet today that I think Trump gained... The race has moved by 0.3 points toward Trump over the past week. He says, should trump feel a little better about the race sure has there been a major change no so i guess to bring this back to kamala

um either her press tour has done nothing or slightly hurt her you know and i wonder if there's any anything that can happen i I wonder what can happen until election day that may move the needle significantly such that it won't just be a toss up until the very end. I think it's hurt her and I was surprised by that actually. I thought that I was surprised. She was right to not say anything it seems. But I'm going to unpack a little bit more of, and I'm going to respond to a little bit more of what you just said in a second. I want to get to our Polymarket segment, and I think it just works well with this conversation. So thank you to Polymarket. This is one of our partners here at PirateWires that makes all of this possible.

Love you guys. Love that Polymarket. I don't know. Should I be funny about this? Polymarket cash that fat polymarket check that like polymarket scrooge mcduck pool that we swim in it's not that it's not like that i promise um but they do pay us so thanks guys um they have become i will say i'm polymarket and this is they're not paying me to say this they have become a major part of this election which

is fascinating to watch the betting markets are being taken seriously in a way they have never been taken seriously before. You've always, because you can bet on the candidates in Vegas and always could. And we saw a lot of that. And it would be like this interesting data point that would come up eventually, but it matters. And they tend to do well. And here we are now, I would say part of it's the real time. You know, you can, you get updates every second on, on where people are putting their money, who they believe is going to win. And this is coming from a mix of things. I imagine you're a whale betting for Donald Trump.

You're looking at probably your own internal polls. You're not just looking at sentiment in the news. Like you're, you're basing this off of something so you can win money. Trump's reunion rally with Elon Musk in Butler, Pennsylvania, that was the iconic Elon jumping happily, joyfully behind him. Wild, wild picture. Don't know how it happened. Glad it did. Matt, pull it up for a second. pull it up for a second. Thank you. Moment of Zen. Back to it. That led to a surge in his odds for winning the presidential election, jumping to a 54% to 45% lead over Kamala Harris. Critics on the left quickly attributed this shift to Elon's promotion of the polling site to his right-wing audience, noting Peter Thiel's investment in the platform. This is a fun conspiracy theory

we can talk about in a minute. My sense is just sort of like, if you don't, and the theory here is, okay, Founders Fund, first of all, I don't know if people know how Founders Fund works. Joey Krug led this investment into Polymarket. I'm not even sure how aware of it Peter was. He was certainly at the meetings and stuff, but he's not out there like championing it. That was Joey's. Joey brought that in and he was really excited about it and continues to be. Peter's down, but it's not like Peter steals money. It was a Founders Fund investment, but because Peter is a general partner of Founders Fund

and Peter is a notorious Republican who has- He's a right-wing gun. He's the right-wing George Soros to some of these people. They believe that Polymarket is an instrument of Peter Thiel. And that's why the betting market is showing favor for Donald Trump. That wouldn't make sense though either. It does not. I would just make leftist preach.

It's not. It's just so... Yes, exactly. But then also, this is coming to... Because I believe Polymarket is in some kind of partnership with Nate Silver now. They hired him in some capacity. I'm not entirely sure of what's going on there. And so they're also saying, you know, Nate Silver is in the bag for Trump because of the Peter Thiel money, which again is not Peter Thiel's money. And even that doesn't make sense because Nate's been mostly indicating from what I've read until recently, odds in favor of Kamala. In any case my read of this is just like if you think that then just bet against it if you if you think it's not fair if you think it's wrong then you should bet against it put your money down and and come out a hero if you think it's

wrong then you have an unambiguous opportunity to get rich. And that's all there is. Also, it's like a measure of... Yeah, that's all there is to say. There's a measure of conviction that betting markets show that polls literally and categorically cannot, right? Nobody that is being polled has their money on the line. And in betting markets, you literally have their money on the line. And in betting markets, you literally have your money on the line. Yeah. I mean, again, I'm a little... You can go back to what we saw with

the waltz debate bet in Polymarket. That gives me this question mark where I wonder, for all of the money they have on the line, are they still just not aware of how this works? I see. So I was looking just according to perplexity. I just asked it how well did betting markets perform in the past 10 presidential elections. And it tells me that, again, this is perplexity, so I don't know. And it tells me that, again, this is perplexity, so I don't know. According to Newsweek, betting odds have successfully predicted the winners in 77% of elections over the past 35 years.

In 11 elections since 1980, betting markets correctly predicted the winner 10 out of 11 times but there's one big caveat in 2016 betting markets heavily favored clinton over trump this is the so we all know what happened then that was actually the only time um betting markets uh got, got an election wrong since 1980. So, well, that was, uh, I have an answer for that one. I think that speaking of polls, I think the betting markets generally look to polls, all different kinds of polls. And some of them are, I think private polls, some of them are internal polls. Some of them are public polls, but I think polling is where a lot of the huge, the huge money in the betting markets gets their information that shapes their opinion on this specific

question of the election. And in 2016, people were not honest about who they were voting for. I think there was so much hatred of Trump and it was different, honestly, before he won. It was like also, it was just unthinkable. He was considered so beyond the pale that you would have to be a broken, stupid person. You were highly incentivized to lie about who you were supporting, even in polls. You don't know who was on your phone. I think people were genuinely scared to say the truth. And I think

that's what impacted the betting markets. I think we were just totally wrong, but I think they've been roughly correct since. I think the polls and especially, I mean, I think in 2020, people were pretty honest. And I think people are being very honest right now about who they're voting for. I'm very confused about the polymarket conspiracy. What do people think? Because polymarket shows Trump with a slight lead, if someone was going to vote for Kamala, they're like, oh, now I'm team Trump. The conspiracy makes no sense to me. It's also, we know that internally, well, this is what Nate Silver was saying today. He was saying, there are people in both camps

that he is in communication with. And he's like, you know, it seems Republicans and Democrats both think polling data that indicates Kamala is losing works in their favor. I think on, I don't know why on the right, they think this generally the psychology of thinking you're losing and having to get to the polls. That makes sense to me. Certainly people are hoping on the Kamala side that, you know, this for them, this, you know, I just saw a CNN clip where this woman was accusing him of Hitler-esque policies. She believes this is like an actual Hitlerian figure. This is one of their, this is one of their main hosts, not like a random ass guest. And, and if you believe

that and you think that he's winning, you know, you really want to get to the polls and you have some ammo there. And so, and so I agree. I don't understand. I don't understand. They think what's happening here. I just don't think they understand what betting markets are. That's pretty much if you actually think that Peter Thiel's dark money is for some reason incentivized to sway a betting market one way or another, like you just simply categorically do not understand what a betting market is for or what it does or what its value is. Yeah. I guess what you could do is take all that money and bet just for your guy, but then you would lose it. So who would do that?

You don't want to be the whale that totally distorts the market. Because it's easy money. If you know that it's wrong, you just bet in the other direction. Absolute silliness through and through. Very silly. But it is interesting that she has, I mean, to go back to your original question, Brandon, I think Riley,

you guys were both mentioning this. After all of this press, where are we? It seems like this parting. Kamala is definitely at this moment losing between both polling data and the betting markets seem to indicate this. There is the interesting question of why or how, what is it about this press? I think a lot was going on this week. A lot of people didn't see the interviews. Well, Call Your Daddy, I mean, that blew up. I mean, that was, that blew up.

I mean, people definitely tuned in the 60 minutes thing. People are still talking about, but there's the hurricane. I think it's, I mean, am I, I don't want to be, it's, it sort of seems like the more people hear the less they like her and, or less they know what she thinks. And maybe it's a, maybe my opinion here is roughly shared, which is like, what do you believe in? You know, what, what is it? Are you, are you the change? Do you believe in change? Which was, was what she's run as is a change candidate. If so, then why, when Sonny asked you what you would change. You said nothing. Yeah.

Who are you? Noticeably in absence is the joy that she came out the gate with. The weird meme. Yeah. The white guys for Kamala. I'm not seeing quiet. I'm not seeing this crazy buzzing enthusiasm anymore. And that's, so we're in like this hangover,

right. Or they are the Kamala supporters. And I don't know what it means for the outcome, but I think what we do know is you can't restart that. I don't think, you know, and so that's, that effect is no longer in play and I don't think, you know, and so that's, that effect is no longer in play and I don't think it's coming back.

No, you need things to move the race now. Like you needed these interviews to do something. There needs to be a bounce or something. And like, or you need some new events to pop up. You need, I mean, what's the October surprise? What is the October? What can they do to, they can't do anything to Trump. Can they, I mean, what are you going to say about Trump? What October surprise? What is the October? They can't do anything to Trump. Can they? I mean, what are you going to say about Trump? What possibly be there trying to do this Putin thing?

You know, like he's on the, he's on the phone all the time with Putin. Have you heard about this? I have seen a little bit of this and he gave, he gave some, he gave some COVID tests also. I'm like,

that's cool. That's like, I don't, is that a problem? Not to me. I agree. Cause the pandemic, it's like, I thought that we were all coming together in those early hours of the pandemic. That was my recollection of that event. It was scary. I wasn't thinking like, fuck. Even then, I think I was not even thinking, fuck China at that point.

I really wasn't. It took me a minute to be like, wait a minute. Where did this come from? It was like in the movies where aliens invade and you feel like there are no borders or different languages. We're all one global citizens. And I think I never had a problem when he talked to Kim Jong-un. I thought it was awesome. I thought that it was great that he went over there and talked to him. I thought it was great that he was talking to Putin. I remember not having new wars when Trump was in office. And I think that maybe he thinks he's going to win and he's going to go in there and have a relationship with Putin again, which is what you need. That's what diplomacy is. Condoleezza Rice famously had a relationship, not a relationship. She had a relationship with Vladimir Putin. And they had a lovely sort of like charismatic, like she spoke Russian and he found her charming. And that's what you have to do. Um, that's how

this works, but also the average American doesn't give a shit about Russia. So they don't care about Ukraine. They don't care about Israel. They care about, there are two things the average American cares about. They care about the fucked up economy and they care about the fucked up immigration system. Those are the things. And in different directions, you know, they all left and right has their own version of sort of approaching these things. But my sense is that outside of the polar extremes, that's where most Americans are sitting.

And that's what's going to determine, I think, where we go with this, which is why you see Kamala pretending that she has different views now on, I think, both of those issues. But the golf has begun between them. Maybe it will keep up, we'll see next week. I think for now, the thing that we really have to do is get the pirate idol. We are approaching the second round of quarterfinals. Matt, hit the music.

And we are back to the greatest show on YouTube, the internet, on television, I think all of the above. It's Pirate Idol. The quarterfinals are upon us. We have three contestants back. They are going to battle to the death or to the end of the segment. or to the end of the segment on the topic of whether or not Elon Musk

is running for shadow president. First of all, welcome back, guys. Thanks for joining us. Give us a little wave. We got Chris. We got Jack. We got Grant, who cut his hair for the show,

I'm assuming. Taking it seriously. We like that. We'd love to hear it. Riley, do us a favor and tee us up. Sure thing, contestants. So this week, liberal ex-commentator and losing Minnesota House candidate Will Stancil speculated that Elon's embrace of Trump is a way for the foreign-born billionaire to essentially run the White House while Trump rots in front of Fox News.

This prompted some like Noah Smith to say that they had heard the same thing and others like America's favorite billionaire, Mike Solana, to comment, literally nobody is saying this. I say to my own, to my own. I mean, it's a good tweet. The tweets are good. I got to say what, what, here's what Will said exactly. So apparently the word in the tech world is this. Elon's embrace of Trump is because Elon thinks he can essentially run the White House while Trump

rots in front of Fox News. It's a way to circumvent the natural-born citizen requirement and let Musk serve as de facto president. A lot to work with here. I have my... I have so many things to say about this, about Noah. But why don't we start?

Chris, welcome back to the show. What do you make of it? I guess the question is, you know, is Elon running for – I mean, you can take it in any direction you want. I have some questions like, is Elon running for shadow president? Is Trump able to be controlled in this way? Is someone already controlling Trump? Or if it's a take about Will Stancil, I'm all ears.

Yeah, you could go a lot of different ways in this. So the first one is I've worked in tech my whole career, and we don't have some kind of secret cabal coffee room where we talk about things away from the public. Or we do, but it's just Twitter. It's literally just everybody is tweeting at each other all the time and it's in public. And it's actually insane that you can go see what Marc Andreessen is up to or Bezos is up to or wherever Zuckerberg is on threads or whatever, what he's up to and see what the richest,

smartest, most powerful people in the world are doing all the time. And so if you want to know if this is the case, you can just go look at what Trump and Elon are actually saying. In fact, the only person really that we can't see what they're thinking about and doing is Peter Thiel. And that's really Mike's fault because he's the CMO at Founders Fund. And so we'd like to see that change. But the next thing I'd say is, this definitely just sounds like an opening for lawfare. And if there is something vaguely illegal or salacious about the way that Elon Musk and Trump are interacting, could be prosecuted or could be immoral or something, then it sounds like they're trying to sort of gin this up. They're trying to push this to the point where potentially there could be something unearthed. So in general, it just seems sort of underhanded and manipulative. And that's because it is. And Republicans will absolutely fall for it. Because again and again, when we are faced

with these situations, the Republicans just always take sort of the literal approach and often lose because they're not very good at dealing with these kind of gray areas. And so you see that as a repeated theme where Republicans lose because the left is much more comfortable with stretching the truth. The left is sort of in a place where they've been eaten by toxic compassion. So we're having a lot of these late stage Republic vibes. And one of them we're seeing in the Democratic Party is where they value being nice over getting results for long enough, then you see a lot of these people like Will and Noah taking over where they're very comfortable stretching the truth or lying. And there are solutions to most of the problems we're facing, but the left isn't

willing to talk about them because they want to stretch the truth and they want to lie about silly stuff all the time instead of getting results. So there was this they did this study with little kids where they asked they poured salt and lemonade and they asked little boys like, hey, how does this taste? And the little boy said, like, this tastes awful. This is terrible lemonade. But the little girls were like, oh, you worked really hard on this lemonade. It tastes great. And they lied about it. And so you see this all across the left right now where this like toxic compassion has taken root and now they just lie about a lot more stuff and these are sort of the end results of that slippery slope if i'm hearing you correctly you're saying that will stancil and noah smith are essentially little girls is that yeah they're they would fail the lemonade test they're victims of talk well that

i agree with i i will say um first of all i think it's interesting to link this to the lawfare stuff uh i think probably what i really agree with you on is that it's just a lie these you're right most of us are on twitter but the people who are also on twitter are are will and noah and the the framing So when I, I mean, I tweeted something about, about Will and it went viral and he was like, Oh no, is this true? And Noah jumped into sort of fact check on the tech voices. Um, Noah Smith is just a random writer who doesn't know any of these people that he's talking about. Will Stancil knows none of them. I mean, Will knows truly none. I think Noah actually at least lives in San Francisco. So he might be friendly with some tech workers, but he's not one of them. Certainly, nobody,

no one has ever thought for a second, no one who's not stupid has thought that Elon Musk is going to run the government. No one can control separate from the tech of it all. Nobody can control Donald Trump. Like that's the one thing I think that we know about him is that he's, he's uncontrollable and sort of unpredictable. And, um, it's just very delusional to think that there's some sort of puppet master behind all of that, but no, it will are not delusional. They, they do know that no one has said this.

They are just lying. And I, when you were saying, you know, the left is more open to lying the right. I disagree with that, you know, to a certain extent. I think and I think most people would would think that's not true at all that, you know, the right is much more open to misinformation. I think that what you see in terms of misinformation on the right tends to be like really crazy shit. So the misinformation we're all sort of steeped in right now, which we were just talking about a little bit earlier in the pod, was the like the secret government hurricane lasers, you know, like like that's the kind of shit that we're doing on the right. And it's clownish and you immediately clock. It is not based in reality and conspiratorial. And maybe, you know maybe there's some sort of interesting, it's like a metaphor for something interesting happening in society that we could talk about, but that's really all you can say about it. The left's lies are like this. They are certainly, I don't want to blame all leftists for this, but certainly the lie that we're looking

at here in the sort of the Will Stancil form, that to me is more insidious than the secret government hurricane laser, because people will believe this. You know, the average person doesn't realize that these guys don't know anybody in tech and all they're really seeing is Twitter. And no one on Twitter is even saying that other than Will Stancil and Noah Smith. And I think it's probably being used just to, you know, scare people because there are a lot of people who hate Elon. Though I guess I am curious, like who hates Elon at this point that doesn't already hate Trump? I don't know. That's not, that's a little bit confusing to me. Jack, what do you think, man? So I actually didn't know if Will Stancil was a real person until a few days ago um like i've

seen him i've seen him tweet a lot but i thought he might have been like a russian deep fake that was put in there to stir up controversy then i saw that he actually lost uh for the he lost an election for the minnesota state house of representatives district 61a in their um like state election but i mean i think he's just addicted to twitter and he realized this was a really good way to become the main character on Twitter again, which we're talking about him. So it kind of worked. I was, I was looking at his Twitter feed as we were doing this and I called a perfect screen grab where he had tweeted a meme and then deleted it and tweeted the same meme with a different caption because the first one didn't get enough likes. His most

recent tweet probably now says Elon Musk musk big plan that's a picture of musk at the podium with trump behind him he tried to tweet how elon musk sees the world before that with the same picture and it didn't work so like it's i mean i've we've all posted a tweet it got like three likes we deleted it posted a different tweet that was a banger this is an engagement thing right like he was like oh what's really, what's a take that nobody can both, like nobody can verify that it's true or false. Like it's an, like it probably isn't true, but it's going to take way too much effort to like ask every single tech worker if it's true. Like somebody said, what's your source? And he said something like, who knows, or we'll see,

or something like that. Just very vague stuff. So I think, I think this is very much a, what's the hottest take I can do that could plausibly be believable by one person? The Intelligencer, New York mag put out, they wrote a profile on him a couple of months ago talking about how he just went berserk on Twitter back in December. And they said by rough count, Stancil tweeted about the economy 150 times in December alone or five times a day. This dude honestly just loves posting. So I think the entire thing is bullshit, but I respect his commitment to the game. He just won't break character.

Yeah, you can't take away the fact that he is a poster. Yeah. I mean, that's like- He for sure is. I admire it. I mean, the thing that does- I do think the thing that bothers me the most about this is that the two of these people are pretending they know people. That's really, it bothers me. It really bothers me. The people they're

pretending they know, we're talking like the big guys, they're pretending, especially Noah, pretending that he's sort of at the table with the Patrick Colsons of the world and the Mark Andreessons and Elon and Peter and stuff. They don't know him. They like do not know him. They do not care. They're not reading his stupid little blog. They don't know any of the things about Noah that he's saying that are not true. This is certainly true of Will Stancil as well. And, um, they're not delivering any kind of insight, but again, maybe it doesn't matter. Like what you said, it doesn't matter. Like, like he's not, there's something like like he's not there's something not do you think there's something not serious about it you know he's not maybe actively trying to lie

there's like a sort of joke that i think the i think the best way to view will stancil is from an entertainment perspective instead of an information perspective like if you just look at his tweets for like pure entertainment like this is kind of like a character in a sitcom back in december he tweeted for the crime of pointing out the economy looks very strong I was already getting pummeled by cosplay Twitter communist thanks to Nate Silver's entry into the debate I'm now being sworn by the right-wing anti-vax types who love him this must be how Poland felt in 1939 pause reply this time Poland's gonna win though like he's I love his Twitter feed yeah you gotta you gotta give it you gotta he's

entertaining but no i think it's all just like crap like he's totally larping the whole time and i think he's trying to larp into maybe becoming an actual like main character but you know right now just treat him like entertainment and he can be very entertaining you know his tweets did well though and i I think that I guess the way I kind of try and figure out where people sit and what they think about generally beyond the sort of main characters on social media is just what's happening in the comments. are no shortage of bots and there are, you know, foreign agents and just people joking around. But in aggregate, when you're looking at, you know, hundreds or thousands of comments, I think you do get a sense of at least what now the subset of the world, which is called, you know, Twitter users are thinking. And there were a lot of people who, who agreed, I would say, you know, he has, there are people out there who are like, oh my God, this is so true for them.

I think it's more maybe of like a billionaire, billionaires controlling Donald Trump thing, which is another, you know, there's sort of in the same, I guess, the same species as like Noah Smith and Will Stansel as Matt Yglesias. And he does this a lot where he's like, oh, this is all, it's billionaires protecting billionaire interests or whatever. And that's a more classic, I guess, leftist attack attack path and i do think that's a little bit of what's happening with the elon thing like people just see okay rich powerful person well they're trying to take the george soros archetype of manipulating behind the scenes puppet master and who's the younger rich guy who seems to like a politician musk therefore of course your source is true

yes i think the source one is a little bit i mean he does it to himself his son is now what posing with these people as if they're you know prize beasts that he's hunted in in the forest oh it's crazy like you know here's amy what's her face the one from minnesota um uh the one who's famously like throwing her shoes at people and stuff that She's got this reputation for being violent. What is her name? No idea. Klobuchar?

Klobuchar. Klobuchar. That was the one I saw. Yeah, I remember back when she ran for president, there were all these staff leaks that were like, yeah, she like, one of them, I'm pretty sure, fact check me, but I'm pretty sure she threw a shoe at someone. She was in founder mode.

Grant, thoughts? Yeah, I was going to say that this feels like almost a mashup of like two great political conspiracies. So one is Trump's birtherism. So, right, there's like the immigrant angle here. Like, you know, it's explicit in the constitution that Elon can't be the president, but it's like the looming, like, you know, American citizen, foreigner, billionaire.

And then kind of like the Obama shadow president narrative, re-Biden, you know? So it is this, like, there's already some psychological fit here of pushing these different types of things. So now it's the billionaire immigrant running the government from behind the scenes. And then I'd say the other piece is... I mean, this is smart in the sense that... The other element is that like Trump, it's tough to hit him again. Like when you've hit him for the thousandth time, it just doesn't do anything. So I feel

like the strategy has really been to focus on people who are not Trump, but are associated enough with him. Like that's the way to drag him down. Like the successes have been around Project 2025 and being like the heritage foundation you know or jd vance or you know whatever so i think pulling musk in as this um figure is just very much a political move and i'd say that um you know like you know you're talking about matt iglesias and some of these other people like you know matt will uh start beef with people on his own side like i think they still listen to him a lot. Like, I think he really does, at least on certain policy matters, have the ear of the White House.

But Noah doesn't do that. Noah is very much like on the team. You like scroll his feed. He's sharing like Kamala wins like political party. Like, he's very much like a true political, like good boy. So I think for him, he's just he sees it as this move, and just jumps in and backs it. So I think it kind of makes a lot of sense. And it also makes sense that Elon has, you know, decided to back Trump regardless of their Why is that? Do you think?

Just because I mean, the government has been very hostile to him. So every time he turns around, he's getting sued. He obviously wants his company to succeed. He has his vision. So I think just going for it and being like, well, you've been pretty clear that I'm your enemy. So I guess I don't really have any other options. So it just seems pretty rational for everyone involved, just kind of my greed. Yeah, I just saw, I forget now what show it was. Maybe it was MSNBC. I can't remember now, but it's one of these shows that Kara Swisher was on. And she was on it. And it was a panel of people talking about Elon. And one of the Democrats on panel was lamenting the fact that the Democrats had lost Elon Musk. And he was introspecting and saying, you know, like, what have we done?

What could we have done differently to not do this? I think that we shouldn't we should have maybe given him more of his accolades. And, you know, he stands for things that we all say that we care about. Right. He's he's like the space guy. We're the party of JFK. Like, this should be a natural fit. And it was for years.

We saw that. Right. Like, I mean, he was waiting in line to go hang out with Barack Obama. He supported him. And I think Joe Biden as well. And there was shock at the table. I think that we've given him his accolades. And how has he not gotten his accolades? Cara actually defended the person who was saying... She raised a couple of things that we've done. But the big one, I think, is the lawsuits. I mean, there are lawsuits all over the country and it's very eerily similar to what's, I think, happening with Trump at this point. And then, I mean,

you see stuff with the FCC, the reward for Starlink taken away would have affected the regions in North Carolina that are now going in and being saved by Starlink. There's clearly like a government. I don't want to say it's just not overt. It's never overt. It's never like the state has officially said Elon is an enemy or something. It's just death by a thousand cuts in a thousand different ways. And yeah, he felt it and reacted to it. But I also think, I mean, I think that he spent a lot of time on Twitter.

I mean, I think that he spent a lot of time on Twitter. And I think like all of us, we just saw what people were saying in the year 2020 and 2021. And we were like, that's really crazy and bad. And we need to change things. He actually talked about a big thing that the number one thing that turned him away from the left was when his child came out, you know, started to go trans or whatever. And some of the things that were happening there were like they weren't communicating honestly with him and his ex-wife. Like they were withholding. I think they were like withholding information. And then, like, I think that his kid transitioned and he was like very against that happening at a very young age, which is, this isn't an irreversible process. It really damages children. It, um, we've seen actually professional medical societies all over the world come out against these procedures for minors. Um, and yet they're

continuing to be performed. And it's actually really sad because I remember I didn't know... I made a lot of dumb decisions when I was a kid. And I'm really thankful that in a lot of ways, society was there to stop me from going too off the rails. And so these irreversible surgeries are not something that teenagers or young kids should be having performed on them. And I think that's enough for all the parents out there. That's enough. And especially if the school is hiding things from you or professionals are hiding things from you about your children, that's a pretty crazy situation. Right. I mean, you can't even get a tattoo when you're a kid. So I understand the argument for

sure. And I also agree that that was the thing. I think that it's sort of an uncomfortable topic because it's inherently so volatile and so politicized and so divisive is the word I'm looking for that I think neither like Elon supporters nor Elon detractors want to touch it. It's much easier to go after him as an arrogant billionaire who wants people to say nice things about him. And I think Kara said he wanted to be invited to this summit at the White House, which he was angry about. It was the electric vehicle summit where he was completely ignored as the guy who basically pioneered the trend of electric vehicles in the country by

building the first successful auto company in many, many decades. But I don't think it was that. I think it was, I think it's like what happened to his kid and how the schools handled it and then how people in media and government were talking about it. And it's like, do you want to have that conversation with America as a mainstream Democrat? Or do you want to talk about a sort of arrogant billionaire? And it's like, you don't want to have the first one because I think that probably the trans youth stuff, we don't hear about it ever, which is actually confusing me. I don't know why it's not coming up on the right wing side. But my sense is that people in America

are generally not happy with it. I think for Elon, I was just going to say, I think there's very material things too. Like, right, he needs a lot of power to do AI. There's all these regulatory things he needs to deal with SpaceX, with even just expanding Tesla. There's obviously been a bunch of subsidies

that he's received or his companies have received for electric vehicles through the Inflation Reduction Act and things like that. So some of it's a hedge to write like, you know, his some of his businesses are aligned with kind of the Biden Harris agenda. Other ones are basically being stymied by all these regulatory forces, I think. And then there's really not a lot of concrete plans. I mean, in general, I mean, I'm not following as closely as I was before, but there's not a lot of concrete plans for reforms coming from, I guess, either like campaign formally.

They've talked about a lot of things, but I haven't seen, you know, kind of the nitty gritty, like think tank style stuff. But anyway, you need the regulatory reform. Like Trump is at least like, you know, we're going to put in the people who are going to remove a bunch of these people who are stymieing these things. There are, you know, policies proposed by Congress that will move those things forward.

But, you know, I think, I think there's also like not to get too much into psychology, but just like material things he's trying to do. And he is very aligned that his vision of actually succeeding you know becoming a multi-planetary species or whatever whichever these uh objectives you want to put out there how much of it do you think is the um the sort of i mean i would say anger to even ranging on hatred people on the left seem to have for him How much of that do you think is about the fact that he's an African-American? I don't think so. It's an uncomfortable question, but I think it's worth addressing.

Nothing, huh? I think there are, I mean, like, okay, this is, you know, kind of spicy on the other side. Like, I think there are a lot of reasons why people could just be turned off from Elon, excluding the, you know, like he's a billionaire or that he supports Trump or something. Like, you know, he identifies as a transhumanist. He wants to put, like, machines in people's brains. Like, if you go to the middle of the country and start talking about that un unprompted and people will look at you like you're weird you know like um yeah i don't know i think it's easy people in the middle of the country are it's it's spaceships and

stuff and they're gonna be like that's cool i i think it's more just it's people online and leftist specifically who don't like his tweets which i understand if i didn't agree i agree with him on probably most maybe 70 percent of the five percent of the things that he says online um if i didn't agree with him so much you know it would be very grating to be on the other side of that he has a huge he has a huge microphone i think it's just simple it's just tribal it's just like basic tribal politics i think if you agree with the things he's saying you're on his side and if don't, you're not before he was speaking so much politically, it was less, it was more confusing why people had a problem with him. And I think also more interesting, um, you know, when the leftist would really go after him hard to me, that felt more like

it was because he was such a good example of what a billionaire can do. Um, and, but generally people didn't go after it. Like generally he got a lot of love and support in the press. Um, and then he bought Twitter and I would say that was the end of that. Like there were no more glowing profiles on the Mars mission. Guys, we gotta wrap it up though. Last, last thoughts on, uh, last thoughts on Elon, last thoughts on the sort of online influencers who say they know people that they don't last thoughts on Elon, last thoughts on the sort of online influencers who say they know people that they don't. Last thoughts on the link between Elon and Trump, the shadow presidency. I mean, I think it would be great if he was. I guess that's the take that no one said was like, wouldn't it be great actually if Elon were president rather than Trump or Biden would

actually, I mean, I would sign up. They're saying, oh, we're hiding it. That's the new that's the new, no, no, no. They're all lying because it's so clearly the thing. I mean, again, it is partly a meme or a joke or whatever, but I just, I wish, I guess is my main thing. I really do wish that that was the case. I wish Elon was up there. He was one of the choices, but what do you guys, last thoughts on this? I think there's like a pretty simple core part of this whole beef that flipped him, just that he literally started the entire like EV revolution of everything. And then multiple times Biden came out and like called General Motors like the front runner of electric vehicles in America. And it's like, dude, like he built Tesla. Come on.

And that's not even like that's not even a clever cover up. Like anybody anywhere on the political spectrum can see like, like everybody drives Tesla's. It doesn't matter if you're like alt-right with a cyber truck or like you're a complete lib who was the like first Tesla owner in California. So I, I think a big part of it is just like, we talked about all the lawsuits and stuff and that's a thing, but Tesla was like his original baby that put Musk on the map. And he like,

he people, Oh, did he found Tesla? Whatever. It doesn't matter. He's the one who built it to a like trillion dollar company at one point and just getting completely ignored on the national stage by the president multiple times about that. Yeah, I actually like everybody. Everybody's a little bit petty when they feel disrespected.

And I think like a big part of it is literally fuck this guy. Like and now his vice president's running fucker to like they wouldn't give me the respect I deserve for what I did. that's running fuck her too. Like they wouldn't give me the respect I deserve for what I did. I just want to say that many people are saying whatever I said, many people are saying on Twitter. So if I ever do this, I do know them and don't doubt it. Chris, last thoughts. Yeah. Elon's talking about maybe cutting 90% of the government if Trump and Elon get elected. And if that happens, then the handcuffs are off and we will have the greatest five or 10 years of the US economy that we have ever seen if we fire all these bureaucrats. So let's do it.

Let's go shadow government all the way. It's time to vote for Elon, folks. You heard it here first. I was lying the whole time. He is running for shadow president. And I think you know what you have to do. You have to rate. You have to subscribe.

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