Pirate Wires - Trump Assassination Attempt Reaction, RNC Report, JD Vance Is Good For Tech, Elon Creates $45M PAC

Episode Date: July 19, 2024

EPISODE #61: Welcome back to the pod. The world changed since we last saw you. We're catching up on all the Trump related news and reactions. Comfortably Smug is joining us again! Giving us a live report from the Republican National Convention. We also get into JD Vance selected as VP, Silicon Valley getting behind Trump, Elon Musk's $45M PAC For Trump, the right cancelling people for wishing Trump had been k*lled, and Morning Joe taken off the air. Enjoy!  Featuring Mike Solana, Brandon Gorrell, Sanjana Friedman, Comfortably Smug, Riley Nork We have partnered with Polymarket! Get your 2024 Presidential election predictions: https://polymarket.com/elections Sign Up To Pirate Wires For Free! https://piratewires.co/free_newsletter Topics Discussed: https://www.piratewires.com/p/thoughts-and-prayers-trump-assassination Pirate Wires Twitter: https://twitter.com/PirateWires Mike Twitter: https://twitter.com/micsolana Brandon Twitter: https://twitter.com/brandongorrell Sanjana Twitter: https://twitter.com/metaversehell Smug Twitter: https://x.com/ComfortablySmug Riley Twitter: https://x.com/rylzdigital TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Intro 1:00 - Welcome Back Smug! 1:30 - Trump Assassination Attempt - Report Fr 22:40 - Polymarket! We have a new partner! Looking at the betting markets for Biden 33:35 - JD Vance Selected As VP - Why It’s Good For Tech 44:55 - The Identify Of The Republican Party - Amber Rose Speaks At RNC 49:45 - Right Wing Cancel Culture 01:09:40 - MSNBC Doesn’t Trust Morning Joe To Report The News 01:19:00 - Thanks For Watching! Like & Subscribe #podcast #trump #technology #politics #culture

Obviously, the entire world changed, I would say, on Saturday. It was shocking. You could almost not believe that it had happened at the time. And you're really seeing not only excitement among the Republicans here, but you contrast it to what the mood is like on the other side, where they're wondering if their candidate can, you know, walk up a flight of steps or is currently quarantined. You've been saying this person is a threat to threat to the lives of americans and their families for years and i wonder how many people actually believe that directly following an assassination attempt i don't know what i would say it would not be that measure okay like i don't know what it would be What's up, guys? Welcome back to the pod.

We have the living legend in with us today, Comfortably Smug, reporting live from Milwaukee. What's going on, man? Hey, thanks for having me. I always love doing Pirate Wires, and this is the place to be right now. I know. I wish I... So Smug hit me up like a week ago. He's like, you got to come out. And there literally was no way. Back-to-backs all week. I had to be here. It is killing me. And I made the decision, honestly, that was before even Saturday, which we've got to talk about, honestly, at the top of the pod, unfortunately, or I guess fortunately, because the man survived. Could not be taken

down uh but uh yeah i couldn't make it to milwaukee i'm glad we've got you here to report live on sort of what you're seeing what the vibe is um and i think before we get into all that uh you know i would love to smoke just like your general read of the room and you know what's going on but i we've got us to start with the with saturday um the attempted assassination on Trump, because we haven't seen you guys in the pod since. And obviously, the entire world changed think it would be great to start with what is the vibe of everyone there on this topic specifically, the topic of Trump and what happened. I mean, it's crazy. None of us have ever seen anything like this with a presidential candidate in our lifetime. Sort of felt unthinkable for a bit. You were shocked out of that. It took me a minute,

I think, even while watching it to accept that it was true, that that had happened. So what are you seeing among the diehards? Yeah. I mean, I think I can completely relate how you said it was shocking. You could almost not believe that it had happened at the time. I think that what happened in the aftermath, that immediately after being shot in the head, Donald Trump gets up and has the presence of mind to kind of like, you know, pump his fist and say, fight, fight, fight. And immediately in that, you know, at that rally, you saw the energy change from one of like panic to one of, you know, I'd say more like unity. You know, whenever you see something like that happen, it's historical. And so everyone there, I think that energy has continued on this week. And you're really seeing not only excitement among the Republicans here, but I think a lot of it is also if you contrast

it to what the mood is like on the other side, where they're wondering if their candidate can walk up a flight of steps or is currently quarantined with COVID, that comparison is really apparent to everyone. So I think that has really energized the crowd here. Are they feeling nervous at all that it's going to happen again? Because it seems, my read is that no one is really thinking about that it seems like he survived it so i guess he's immortal but um i mean following the news that we've seen the bit of the news that we've seen on uh on on the secret service uh it it just feels a little bit clownish and like sort of we're a lot less safe or certainly our presidential candidates are a lot less safe than i thought they were sure um there was a moment last night during the convention when the director of the Secret Service was present here. And you had a couple senators, Marshall Blackburn, I believe it was

also Senator Barrasso, who were chasing the head of the Secret Service around the building, you know, asking questions being like, how could this be allowed to happen? So there's certainly, you know, like you said, a lot of folks who are concerned that that was absolutely clownish that it could happen in the first place. In terms of if you're looking at the response in the wake of that, I would say the security here has been tighter than pretty much anywhere I've ever been. Even beyond the level of when I've been to the White House of how many checkpoints they have set up. You see tons and tons of Secret Service, you see, you know, like attack dogs that kill terrorists wearing the goggles. So if they needed to parachute in somewhere, so like, the security situation is extremely, you know, tight here. And I think a lot of that is,

they can't risk having anything like that happen again. I guess this is a really stupid question coming off of just you know the assassination stuff but i didn't see many deranged protests outside i did see i think i saw one sort of sad lonely woman outside yelling about fascism um has there been any sort of any any stupid antics uh so not especially um like during the day there's not really much of like an organized presence like marching through the streets of milwaukee or anything like that uh last night after uh jd uh accepted the nomination for vice presidency as you know everyone was leaving the

building there were a couple of you know like nut jobs like there was a guy who i mean it was very clearly to try and provoke a response a guy who held up a massive picture of you know the the would-be assassin that says like an american hero uh on a sign he was just hoping someone you know leaving the building would take the bait but everyone's just basically just disgusted and continued walking so there's there's like an attempt to try to go to response but um sort of on that you you just painted this disturbing picture of a dude outside and i get what you're saying he was trying to provoke whatever crazy person um one of the things i want to talk to you guys all about today was uh was the discourse surrounding donald trump

leading up to the assassination attempt and um i don't know just the way that we talk about this canon i wrote a piece for pirate wires Wires called Thoughts and Prayers for Literally Hitler. And the basic premise of this is just the inherent sort of the apparent contradiction in the notion of, or the idea of really demonizing this person, not even demonizing, just sort of arguing that this person is going to dissolve democracy. He's going to kill your family. He is literally a Nazi, capable of sort of anything. He's a clear and present danger, I believe the phrase has been used to all of us. This is a sort of mass casualty scenario in a single person. And you've been

saying this for years and years and years. And then all of a sudden, there's an attempted assassination. And you say, oh, my God, thoughts and prayers. I'm glad he's okay. Now I wonder how many people actually believe that. And so I try to parse this question of like, do the politicians and pundits who've been saying this really believe it or not? And one of the things you would hope is after the attempted assassination, that rhetoric would sort of stop. If you you if you say that someone is a is a danger to to that degree um i think it actually inherently justifies violence i mean you know if you actually we all ask this question it's a classic sort of like college you know you're wasted with your friends you're like yo if you could go back in time and kill hitler would you do it it's like of course you would kill baby hitler would be fucking done you You know, this sort of, at this point, we're sort of at this

sort of strange crossroads where they really are making that argument. And it's really not even, it's really not even cooled down. I see right now, Joy Reid has sort of slightly changed it up instead of just saying he's a clear and present danger. She's also saying uh she also seems to be arguing that uh donald donald trump staged the assassination um himself we still don't know for sure whether donald trump was hit by a bullet whether he was hit by glass fragments whether he was hit by shrapnel we don't have those details i know what do you make about the discourse stuff smug i mean is that maybe too or is much to do about nothing or um know, was that possibly a contributing factor here? How should people be thinking about it moving forward? you know, clear and present danger and this existential threat to the existence of the country. And you've been saying, oh, he's completely analogous to Hitler, then that is the logical conclusion. And you saw in the aftermath, there was this attempt by, you know,

a lot of elected Democrat officials and more of the left leaning medias to try to say, okay, we need to cool down the discourse. And so we got maybe, you know, 48 hours at best of that. And then, you know, the demagoguery, it seems like has just gone right back to where it was. There really hasn't been any sort of attempt to examine the kind of atmosphere that was created as a result of this kind of message being put out there. of this kind of message being put out there. And I think a lot of it is, you know, completely partisan and cynical. And I don't think the people putting out the message actually believe it themselves. They're just hoping that they can get, you know, voters and grassroots activists to buy in on it. And they've been, you know, largely successful in that. Well, the thing that's kind

of impressed me the most, actually, is how much decorum Trump has shown in the aftermath of the assassination, how he really hasn't, like, taken the bait, I would say, that he very easily could have. And I think, arguably, 2016 Trump, you know, I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone Trump may not have had that same self-restraint. And it's, I think, really just playing in his in his favor, because essentially he's sort of standing back and letting the craziest, you know, exponents on the left who I don't think necessarily. I think most people, when they saw the assassination attempt, were horrified. But you have these, you know, crazy people who are willing to come out and say uh like i think the new republic which ran that hitler cover a few weeks ago published a piece a few days later somehow suggesting that like

marjorie taylor green was was like somehow stoking uh you know violent rhetoric, which of course, you know, makes no sense in the wake of the assassination. But Trump, I think, has really conducted himself kind of unimpeachably after this attempt. And I think it's probably, I would assume that it's won over a lot of voters who sort of, you know, might have been a little bit put off by to say the least by his rhetoric in 2016 and seen him as kind of you know out of control um and you know vindictive whatever uh he's thanked the secret service despite what seems now to be like pretty dramatic failures on their part. I don't think Trump has, has really like pursued that line himself. So I've been impressed really with how he's handled it.

Well, I think he has to, he probably feels a great deal of appreciation and gratitude for the men who actually rushed to the stage. And, you know, in a moment that traumatic, I imagine that probably built some kind of a feeling.

And you have to walk that line now between defending them and going after the administration in charge of that, which I saw his son, Eric, do last night at the convention. He was sort of walking that thread of thanking the servicemen and being like, no, these people are great and criticizing the other. On something you just said, Sondra,

you brought up two things. One, Trump's restraint, and two, passing. You mentioned Marjorie Taylor Greene. So CNN directly following, like directly, like within two hours of the assassination attempt,

there was a woman on CNN who criticized Donald Trump for rising up and saying the words, fight, fight, fight. Former President Trump got up and said, fight, fight, fight. Former President Trump got up and said, fight, fight, fight. I think what we're hearing from people is that's not the message that we want to be sending right now.

We want to tamp it down. It's like, are you fucking kidding me? First of all, I don't care if he got up and said something unhinged directly following an assassination attempt. I don't know what I would say. I don't, I don't, it would not be, it would not be that measured. Okay. Like, I don't know what it would be, but it would not be that chill. Like you definitely just get a, at least 60 second grace period after somebody tries to kill you in which you should be able to say whatever the fuck

you want. But then on Marjorie Taylor green, I read this New York times piece also maybe like the next day, I think, um, sort of going over the reaction to what was happening. And again, like you can't really go after Trump because as you said, Sanjana, it was like an unimpeachable reaction. But they did mention Marjorie Taylor Greene. think it was a couple months ago tries to strip donald trump of secret service tries to pass a bill um he has supportive i think there are five congressmen who co-sponsor it with him maybe i think four congressmen who uh left democrats who co-sponsored this with him um they want to strip donald trump of his secret service uh protection and they want to do this not because uh for some stupid reason like oh he doesn't need it he's not the president whatever i don't know they didn't even try to lie they just straight up said he needs to be punished. There needs to be a consequence for the felony convictions. So you're not saying it's not dangerous. You're sort

of saying it is dangerous and we don't care. Now, that was horrifying enough before the assassination attempt. After the assassination attempt, that's obviously, you look back on that, you're like, this is insane. These people probably shouldn't even be in the Congress anymore. But it gets worse. Because one of, there's a question, obviously, of like, well, do the Democrats literally want to kill Trump? Is that what's going on here? Like, are they actively trying to kill this man? And you kind of have enough information at this point to say like, it seems like some of them definitely are. But to just put a bow on it, one of his staffers actually comments on social media that it was unfortunate that the shooter missed. Staffer obviously was fiery, but I'm sitting here

wondering, what is the climate internally that you have to have in which one of your employees thinks it's okay following an attempted assassination of a presidential candidate to publicly say that she wished that it actually happened. Like you have to be saying the most unhinged things every day. And my general read was actually what Marjorie Taylor Greene said, which was the Democrats are trying to kill Republicans. So the New York Times catalogs the Benny Thompson thing. They bring up Marjorie Taylor Greene and saying the Democrats are trying to kill Republicans. And they're like, this is extremist speech. We got to stop all of this kind of stuff, drawing an equivalency. Now, I'm not here to defend Marjorie for everything that she said. But on this,

it looks to me like some of the Democrats are trying to kill Republicans. That is just, let's just call a spade a spade. Yeah, I don't know. I think there's two thoughts that I have. The first is I don't think most Democrats actually wanted Trump to die, though would be secretly relieved if he did. Yeah. They would never say that out loud, though. I think if he died tomorrow in his sleep, there wouldn't be much sympathy, and people would be absolutely relieved. there would not be one, there wouldn't be much sympathy, right? And people would be absolutely relieved. The second thing is just going back to your comment, Smug, about there being a lot of cynicism at play here. I totally think that's correct. I think there's sort of an analog here with global warming and the discourse around global warming, where a lot of people are like, yeah, like global warming is going to cause the apocalypse, but they're like working from their

desk job and they go home and they have a drink and then they go to sleep and watch TV or whatever, which is not what you would do if you actually think that global warming is going to cause the apocalypse. So I think that a lot of people are, you know, like the Democrats know that saying, you know, he's going to end democracy as we know it. It's a, it's probably a good talking point. Maybe it's pulled well or something like that, but I don't think that many people actually believe that to be true. Well, it seems like some, you're right. I think most don't. And then some actually do. And that's the sort of problem that we need to address is like, how do you, so we're talking about something huge, like assassination, but you know what I'm also thinking? I don't know how much we can talk

about this cause we're on YouTube. I don't want to get demonetized. Um, but I'm wondering like, if you actually believe this person will end democracy, then what are you justified to do to stop him? And we don't have to talk about murder. We can talk about all sorts of other things. And I'll just allow you guys to use your imagination on that because I'll be labeled with spreading misinformation or something for sharing my basic opinion or fear. But I do think, you know, following this, something so shocking is watching that man. I mean, I was with my family, fortunately, because I felt like we all had like support with each other. My sister sent her kids to the other room and I watched it with my, you

know, my little sister, who's not that little anymore. But my little sister, my mom, my dad, my mom, once he, y'all were like, what's going on, right? Once he stands up with the blood on his face, and I was the first one to notice that because I think we're all piecing it together, the reality set in. And my mom cried and it was just very surreal, crazy moment. And it just puts everything into context for what here are the stakes? Politics is violence to a certain degree. Let's just be philosophical for a second. That is what it is. It is the monopolization of violence. The whole point of politics, government, is to monopolize it, to keep us from doing violence. They are violent in a sense,

and it's quite violent historically, like the emperors, presidential assassinations, like it's dangerous. And we're sort of seeing all of that there. I don't know. It was pretty shocking. Smug, last thought on Marjorie, New York Times, the media reaction to all of this. For example, during the summer of 2020, we were told it's okay to riot. This is simply the voice of the unheard if you burn down cities. And you had police officers who were killed. You had federal courthouses which were besieged and destroyed. We had people also who were killed,. And, you know, in many cases, insurance doesn't cover burndown due to riot. So that was told, well, this is OK because it is in the name of our partisan belief. Right. And then you could have, you know, six months later, a riot occur at the Capitol. And then instantly it was the media's message was, well, this instance of writing is not okay. This is totally different because it's not the partisan belief that we subscribe to.

And so in the aftermath of that, when you keep the language ratcheting up and up, and it already, you know, writing and burning buildings is acceptable if it's in the purpose of this partisan belief system, what's the next logical step? And so as that language continued to be put out there that, you know, this individual is an existential threat, you know, we're going to have fascism. If they're ever, you know, this is a dictator and you vote for him, then, you know, as we know, all dictators get voted in. But when you had that kind of message being pushed to every American, essentially, and it's by media outlets, it's by, you know, the Democrat Party, individual elected

officials, it's going to have a profound effect on people's beliefs. And I think we're seeing, you know, the horrible conclusion of that. You bring up a really interesting parallel in the capital writing and the reaction to that and it reminds me of a conversation we had on this podcast with ben smith previously buzzfeed now semaphore um on the riot and he was really pressing me on uh on the coup the insurrection type stuff and he was like really adamant that that's what happened and i was like he wanted me to own that he wanted me to own that i was like a coup denier or something and i am it was not a coup it was a riot uh and um i sort of snapped back i was like no my problem with this is that it was a riot just like the preceding six months of writing and it was treated in a

completely different way and i said said, what I think should have happened if there's a riot happening, they're breaking into the Capitol, people's lives are in danger. If they're not willing to disband, they should be shot. You need to use police force to stop them and put it down. And he was shocked. He was like, oh my God. And he tried to frame me as this crazy person. He's like, I'm not talking about shooting them. That's just crazy. Should have been shot. Jesus. I's just crazy like it's been shot jesus yes i don't think they should have been shot you don't think that you're a hard line someone who is ostensibly you just said they were trying to take over the country i was

is it really crazy you just said they were trying to seize the country it was an insurrection like do you believe it was an insurrection or a coup attempt or not like the my bar is very low for rioting alone like if you're putting people's lives in danger and you won't stop, you need to be put down. But the punishment for treason is a capital punishment in America. So what do you mean when you use these words that you're using? And I think for a lot of these people on the left, on the media left, on the state left, I don't think there's a great question that I have, I think that we all have, that we don't quite know what the answer to is at this point, which is like, how much of what you say do you

really believe? What degree of this do you believe? How much of an insurrectionist do you believe Trump is? And what are you willing to do to stop him because of that? I don't think we have an answer. I thought that maybe we would have an answer following the horrifying scenes that we saw on Saturday. I think we still don't. But we're about to litigate it all in the ballot box as a country. And there, I would like to do, I want to bring in a little more information for us to sort of tease out right now.

We have a partnership now with Polymarket. And this is a great sort of trading platform for making predictions about the future. We've talked about it a handful of times already, just because I think this stuff's interesting. And I think it's kind of an interesting extra piece of information. It's like a new dimension on what's going on, where we typically rely on polls. This is sort of like, put your money where your mouth is. If you really believe this is going to happen, how much money are you willing to bet on it? And we tend to get these really interesting results. I've seen a lot of... I've seen them be right a lot. And what they're saying now, so sort of like an election

recap, basically, ahead of the debate on June 27th, the likelihood that Biden was going to be the Democratic nominee peaked at 94%. So following the bad performance, the debate performance, he fell to 35% on July 4th. This Monday after the assassination attempt, it shot back up to 70%. So there was an immediate, I think, sense, it looks like that, well, Trump can't lose now. And so why on earth would you bring in somebody else? You just let Biden's insisting he's going to run. You just let him eat the loss. So with reports that Democratic establishment is accepting the Trump presidency and doesn't want to lose a rising star. As of today, the odds that Biden is the nominee are 26% and Kamala 60%. So something shifted in the last few days. And despite the assassination attempt, it seems like the Democratic bigwigs believe that there's a chance to win. What is your read of that?

And Smug, I would love to know, not only what do you think, I mean, is the swap happening? It seems like now we're hearing Biden's got COVID and Axios is reporting, they're hearing that he's going to be, over the weekend, possibly he's going to be over the weekend, possibly he's going to step down. We're hearing reports of Kamala's staff attacking Biden's staff and telling him to step down now and all this crazy shit at the White House. One, Smug, I want to know, do you think he's swapping out? Is it happening imminently? And then two, what do you make of the strategy there? Because to me, it seems not smart, but I could be wrong. So there's a very interesting dynamic at play here at the

convention right now where you have many reporters who are hesitant to report information that could be potentially damaging to Democrats. And as a result, you know, almost get them, you know, kicked out of their friend groups of fellow journalists if they're seen as helping, you know, fascism rise to power. But an example of this was on our show Ruthless. We revealed a couple of days ago that Majority Leader Schumer had met privately with Biden at his home and told him he needs to consider dropping out of the race. And it took a full 24 hours for ABC to report the same news, claim credit of that. So there's a lot of

skepticism among journalists to report information that could potentially hurt the Democrats. Along those lines, this morning, there's been a buzz going among reporters. You'll be breaking this on your show that Roy Cooper, the current governor of North Carolina, is going to be visiting D.C. today to meet with Kamala Harris about potentially being a vice president. And the Democrats are trying to keep that under wraps because that would look like it's in progress, that it's already over. That would be a monumental shift. That would be a significant political decision, given that right now you have the lieutenant governor of North Carolina, who's actually a Republican.

The governor, Roy Cooper, is a Democrat. You then have a Republican take over as governor, and he's currently running to become the governor. So that would be, you know, one state, which is considered a swing state, might be taken out of play. And the other interesting dynamic here politically is a lot of the names being thrown about by the Democrats in terms of who could then take over if Biden dropped out, because they do not want Kamala. They say, you know, Gretchen Whitmer or Gavin Newsom or Shapiro in Pennsylvania. None of these folks want to do it because they feel like they'd be thrown in a situation where they're already bailing out water from a ship that's already going down. Right.

They'd much rather wait till 2028. And politically, they would calculate this further, you know, the argument for how cynical the nature is. calculate this further, you know, the argument for how cynical the nature is, they feel their chances would be better after four years of Trump if they could run as like, I will save us from the damage Trump has done to this country. So they don't actually believe he is a threat to democracy if they're like, I want to run after he's term limited, because it would help me politically. So it's just an absolute mess. And it's all cynical political calculations on their side right now. Who was the New York Times? I believe he's a New York Times writer who was reporting on the congressional Democrats who were like, no one thinks he's actually a

threat to democracy. Yes, it was Ezra Klein who was reporting that. But Smug, what about the strategy here? What do you think? Because is Kamala just the only person stupid enough to want to do it anyway? I think so. I really think so that she's the only one who would be willing to take it because it's what she's wanted for so long. She couldn't even make it to the Iowa caucuses. Voters didn't want her. So if she could find a way to be thrown onto the ballot to run for president, she'd take that in a heartbeat. It does sort of feel like her only chance. There's no way that she makes it through a primary. She'd never win a primary.

Would there still, do you think there would still be a primary? At this point, I have no idea. So I know there's a rule set in 2022, where if the president becomes infirm or drops out for whatever reason following the convention, the party mob bosses get to pick, basically. But that's not until August, I believe, is the Democratic National Convention. So what, I mean, maybe that's not that far. They have actually been furthering this proposal to just do a virtual online convention that just says, okay, Joe Biden's the nominee,

and that's it, and then just essentially show up in Chicago for a party, which is very interesting that the party, which is saying that we are going to be the stewards of democracy are going to just like throw out the 14 million votes for Joe Biden that primary voters cast and decide themselves. I think either way, whoever is the candidate for the Democrat party this November, it's going to be decided by their party bosses. You know, they are not going to allow, there's no desire on their side and it will not be allowed to have any kind of an open convention, any kind of a floor fight. Nothing like that is going to be allowed. It's going to be decided who their nominee is going to be. For me, the interesting thing here is the certainty that Biden would be the nomination following the assassination,

thing here is the certainty that Biden would be the nomination following the assassination, followed by a plummet a couple of days later as all the machinations begin to leak to the press. I mean, I sort of tend to think that people are constantly surprised by how quickly the news cycle moves. And there might be sort of this thought that, whereas on Saturday and Sunday, all people were talking about was not only the assassination, but also, whereas, you know, on Saturday and Sunday, all people were talking about was not only the assassination, but also Trump's, like, how masterfully Trump conducted himself after the assassination. And by the way, I think that's probably why some Democrats have, like, conspiracy theories about what happened is because it just seems like, you know, he pulled it off, in some ways, his response perfectly. I mean, the picture was world historical. And,

you know, and as I said, he's conducted himself in a very statesman-like way since. But I sort of wonder if like part of what's happening is just the news cycles moving quickly and they maybe think, you know, people are going to forget about this assassination, as crazy as it sounds, attempted assassination in a couple weeks and then maybe you know the conversation which a couple weeks ago was completely monopolized by the biden debate performance uh maybe there will be some room for us to kind of uh field a less you know um skeletal senile candidate i mean kamala i think yeah it seems like um i'm really skeptical of those polls that showed her beating trump in some swing states i mean that seems to me like uh totally insane i don't know i just i feel that most i've i've read in some outlets that like

kamala feels very sidelined by this administration because she's gotten no sort of airtime throughout the past four years to make any connections with voters. And I feel like that's kind of true because most people I talk to really sort of think of Kamala as this kind of wine mommy. Like, yeah, she's just sort of this kind of weird politician. No one really knows that much about what her sort of broad vision for the country is. So yeah, maybe she is the only person like gullible enough or sort of like manipulatable enough to eat the loss. to eat the loss. On that, on the conspiracy theory stuff that you were just alluding to with, you know, maybe because it was so perfect

for Trump, right? He just looked so, he came off so incredibly well and has since that it does feel like, wow, maybe that's, there's like a seed of this. Like maybe that,

maybe it's a little bit true. Yeah, I want to, just asking questions kind of thing following that. You know, maybe that's where it's coming from. I did want to talk about is how crazy the conspiracy theories have been um or just let's just talk

about what they are i mean let's not but i don't think you know i'm not going to call anybody crazy but the conspiracy theories are um there's a lot of questions about his ear you know it did he cut it himself did the secret service cut it for him um did the shooter ever shoot was it a was it a government job um there's never any answer really about like well why did everybody else get shot behind him if trump was just cutting himself and the noises were made up or something uh but anyway there are a million sort of sprawling theories in there i think one thing that's interesting that i didn't have on the docket today, but I do want to kind of quickly bring up, and it relates to my first point. I wish I remembered it, actually. You saw Taylor Lorenz come out really targeting the blue and non-conspiracists. And a lot of people took that as a moderation of Taylor. They were like, oh, wow, look at her. Can I fix her? And I guess I would say broadly, I do think there's a chance that Taylor Lorenz could be red-pilled. It feels very much in the cards for someone like her. That could happen. I don't think that's happening now. I think what's happening now is the blue and non-conspiracists are being raised up for us to look at these really crazy Democrats that even we're criticizing because they don't want to sit with the much more important conspiracy theory, which is the totally normalized way that they talk about Donald Trump as a dictator, as someone who's going to dissolve democracy and whatnot.

The most unhinged speech about the shooting could not possibly matter as much as the reason that he was shot. That is the thing that actually matters, that they're obfuscating with the Blue Anon stuff. The Blue Anon stuff, though, is pretty fucking funny, and we are gonna like follow it relentlessly as it evolves and i think it will evolve um but right this second i want to talk about the tech stuff um smoke we've got jd vance in in the vp seat what this is a man really i should just full disclosure from the teal orbit

uh i've known j JD for a long time. We're acquaintances. We're not friends. I don't even know that he would remember me. But I know him through Teal stuff, right? Like I've invited him to events. He's been around. He worked at Mithril, which was a different firm, but it was like in the Teal universe.

It was another one of Peter's entities. I mean, I can absolutely assure you he does. Everyone knows you, Solana. Everyone here knows you. I'll say that. millennial in one of these positions, which is also this very interesting piece of the JD story that's not been talked about at all. The fact that we millennials have not had a candidate yet. And I know that he's, you know, for political reasons, a lot of people probably really hate him, but he still is a millennial. And that's just interesting to me that we've got one finally. My friends, things did not work out well for a lot of kids I grew up with.

Every now and then, I will get a call from a relative back home who asks, did you know so and so? And I'll remember a face from years ago, and then I'll hear they died of an overdose. As always, America's ruling class wrote the checks. Communities like mine paid the price. For decades, that divide between the few with their power and comfort in Washington and the rest of us only widened. From Iraq to Afghanistan, from the financial crisis to the Great Recession, from open borders to stagnating wages, the people who govern this again. Well, I mean, I would say, you know, high level, just 30,000 foot view. He did incredibly well when he spoke last night at the convention. His speech absolutely resonated with his audience. I think the speech itself accomplished many of its goals in terms of when you bring up the millennial aspect of it.

I think that is an incredible strength for him. There's, you know, ahead of the assassination for the longest time, this was kind of being this election was being encapsulated as one between candidates no one wanted. And it's just, you know, the boomers just will not let go of power. One between candidates no one wanted. And it's just, you know, the boomers just will not let go of power. And so, you know, when you have someone on the ticket who's 39 and then as he's, you know, in his speech saying that, well, when I was a freshman in high school, Joe Biden did this. When I was a sophomore in high school, Joe Biden did this. And then in the aftermath of September 11th, I enlisted in the military. So I think that had a very strong connection to folks who were millennials in the audience. So it was a tremendous success in that aspect. I think also one thing that he did, which is very powerful, is opening kind of the aperture of what a Republican ticket and a Republican candidate looks like and what kind of beliefs are allowed into the tent that if this is going to be a working class party, you know, you can't just do that by saying, oh, well, you know, we have someone playing country music at a rally.

That's not a working class party. When you have someone who actually espouses the policies and described how it is, you know, on a personal level affected them and the community they grew up in. and the community they grew up in, that's a whole nother level. And that's far more effective in letting working class voters know that, hey, you are one of us and we do care about you. So it was a tremendously, I think it was the perfect pick for vice president. I think, you know, as an advocate for Donald Trump, he's going to be a strong campaigner for him throughout the fall. From what I see, J., JD Vance has supported aggressive increases in tariffs for Chinese imports. And he's sort of generally struck to a pretty hard line on China as it relates to tech and also sort of bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US. So he co-sponsored a bill, I think with Tammy Baldwin, that would have basically prevented government-funded

cutting-edge tech from being sold to foreign companies. So it's kind of this interesting combination of nationalism and then also kind of tech protectionism, basically. He has had some good things to say about Lena Kahn, interestingly enough. I know. This is something he's gotten a little bit of flack for, I think, from tech Twitter. But he basically said, you know, I think the exact quote is that she's doing a, quote, pretty good job in antitrust enforcement. And, you know, this is a reminder that, you know, Lena Khan's FTC has tried to block some acquisitions that Meta has been doing.

They've been investigating Amazon's business practices. And, yeah, I mean, Vance has also sort of co-sponsored some legislation with Elizabeth Warren. He's doing a lot of interesting bipartisan. He's done a lot of interesting bipartisan. He's done a lot of interesting bipartisan initiatives as the senator. But this was following the Silicon Valley bank collapse. He and Warren co-sponsored legislation that would sort of try to get compensation back

from bank executives. So that's not entirely... So here's... Do you have more? This is on the Silicon valley bank when i've got thoughts but are there more policies you want to um and he's he's also um cautious he's sort of broadly supported the tiktok ban although he's got some caveats um that we can get into oh he does still support it okay because so vivek was the one vivek is where i sort of first started

realizing that you have this class of people coming from out of silicon valley who um on the right or maybe framed as like this new kind of silicon valley person this new kind of tech person they feel like an aberration pretty much and um on vivek you know he was he was anti silicon valley bailout is what he is what he called it really what we're talking about are um i mean if silicon valley silicon valley bank collapsed you would have had just half the I mean, if Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, you would have had just half the startups in the Valley would have gone out of business. They would have lost everything.

And I think that is a fine position to take as a sort of principled libertarian. But what that is not is a nationalist position. And that is sort of usually what, certainly Vivek trying to attract trump's attention was trying to be he was like the nationalist guy um and uh i don't i don't think that's correct i wonder how much of nationalist thing you know jd really adheres to but the nationalist position me was like you know you want to use the state to increase your country's power even in terms of uh

you know economics and um and business you know you'd be a little bit more mercantilist and uh you would certainly be pro tiktok ban um for not even just for the national security risks but because you would want your own companies to do better and i'm interested in you know not only am i interested in where uh where jd is going to land on this stuff but even where uh even where trump is going to land on this stuff um you know he's gone out now against the tiktok bill and uh there is he's like now against the tiktok ban rather um he used to be pro so there's a pretty big interesting shift there and for me it's just not really it's not really clear how the tech thing is going to land. People are making a lot of sacks.

So you have obviously, Teal is involved to a certain degree, but he's not involved in this so far. I mean, JD might switch that up. I mean, we'll see. But Teal has not been involved in this campaign so far. You have sacks. You have Elon Musk putting he's vouched to put in, I think, $45 million

a month, which is a lot of money, man. That's a lot of fucking money. Does Trump feel some sort of allegiance to tech following that? I'm not sure. I mean, what do you make of the tech piece and the nationalist piece and how it all fits into the new right wing? Sure. So when it comes specifically to Trump and TikTok, there's a lot of, again, cynical discussion around it that the only reason he shifted his position is, you know, Jeff Yass, an investor who holds a very significant stake in TikTok, started donating significantly to Trump and to efforts to elect Trump.

And that that could have had a part in changing Trump's mind on that. That could have had a part in changing Trump's mind on that. I think, you know, if you listened to J.D.'s speech last night, it absolutely had it was a nationalist speech. It was saying, you know, America is more than just an idea. It's a place and espousing the importance of it being not just an idea. This is a country and that he was willing to die for it and had shown that through his military service. I feel like he could have a very significant impact in terms of the policy going forward. You'll often see administrations where the president acts as an executive, but they can have the vice president kind of be the tip of the spear on specific policies. Usually, you know, it's out of a positive place.

Like, okay, I know my vice president knows a lot about this subject. As a subject matter expert, given his history as a venture capitalist, to help formulate policy when it comes to tech. And I think he would be a tremendous resource to President Trump in that. I, yeah, I don't know. I was asked, someone has asked, I have a couple of people asked me for comment on jd and what i think it means and um i mean i think high level it's sort of what you know smug you touched on for sure is uh the working classification of of the republicans um to a

certain extent jd vance i was talking about my mom this morning. He looks like a sort of democratic hero of 30 years ago, someone who comes from nothing. His mom had an addiction problem. He's from rural Ohio, the Rust Belt. He pulled himself up, became a lawyer, went off to the military. He speaks to those people, and he is pulled himself up became a lawyer went off to the military like he speaks to those people and he is what the democratic ideal was for many many decades um and uh and it's not that way anymore and there's a question obviously of you know the corollary is like what what is the democratic party even at this point i'm not i'm really sure. But I do know that the right wing is becoming this. And I think Trump has really been the reason. You know, he started all of this.

He's fiscally not a libertarian. And he's, yeah, his policies are just very, very different than you would get from a classic sort of Republican, you know, like a Mitt Romney or something. Or what's his face? The one who resigned, the one who worked out, Paul Ryan. So that dude, so watching the convention, I still see some of that. Like one of the notable things to me about this convention has been how little all of these people have in common, it seems. Many of them stand up and just, they seem to represent totally different views of the Republican party or what it means to be republican a republican and and they all say this is what a republican is and and then they're sort of like yeah for sure and i don't know that everybody agrees um one of the

biggest one of the most fun uh controversies sort of in this sphere i I would say, is the question of whether or not Amber Rose should have been able to speak at the convention. You have Amber Rose is a, I think Matt Walsh characterized her from the Daily Wire, characterized her as an OnlyFans actress or OnlyFans star who has a face tattoo. Like he was really upset about the face tattoo.

And he's like, you know, this is an immoral person. This is a whore, a prostitute, whatever. She shouldn't be on stage. And Trump doesn't give a shit. Trump does not care about that. And he never has. And I am looking at all the sort of Christian nationalist types, the hardcore Christian right wing. And I wonder, they're like, oh, he's betraying us on abortion and he's betraying us on gay marriage. He doesn't seem to care about those things. I just wonder, did you ever listen to an interview of his? Am I the only one that actually listened to him when he was speaking? Because

I used to criticize the left. I'm like, he doesn't say that. He doesn't seem to care about these things. I don't think that you know who he is. He's not's not george bush um he is like the kind of guy he's like this kind of boomer businessman who goes to key west in a three-piece suit or something and like fucks around at the nudist parade and then bangs a hooker like honestly like let's be honest about who trump is he doesn't give a shit about all that other stuff and And in the sluts for Trump thing, I think we are facing this challenge on the conservative side. What is the Republican Party? Is it fiscally liberal or conservative?

Is it socially liberal or conservative? Sure. So I think that there's a very interesting dynamic here at play where for a lot of Republicans, I think the majority, the most important thing is to win. You're not going to govern. You're not going to have policy. You're going to have any say in what the government is like unless you win. Of course, everyone is interested in my beliefs should be the ones that are at the forefront. But if the Republican Party wants to espouse itself as the big tent party, then they have to live up to those standards. I think Trump absolutely understands this is a Big Ten party, you know, and every group that wants to be part of it needs to be involved.

My friend, it's always a pleasure to see you. Good luck tonight. Don't get in too much trouble. Send us fun tweets. Everybody should follow Comfortably Smug on Twitter. That's where the action is godspeed my friend thanks so much for having me one of the things that we were just talking about

we were in this sort of sluts for trump thing and I think Matt Walsh was really going off on Amber Rose it was like she's in a slut walk she's a feminist she has a face tattoo. She has an OnlyFans and she doesn't give a shit. She's just over there sort of like in a hip hop

video, like I'm voting for Trump. You can't stop me. I think what Matt doesn't seem to understand is that Trump is just a political savant and he's identifying potential new voters through people who are able to channel like whole not just themselves but like not just their fans but whole new demographics like whole new kinds of people he's trying to bring into the trump party um but we have uh sort of concurrently with this um this sort of fierce battle for what it means to be right wing this sort of reason that matt walsh feels like he's entitled to tell trump you know who should be up on that stage um the rise of like a right-wing cancel culture thing since the assassination uh

do you want to break that down what you've been seeing yeah i just first wanted to make a comment about walsh though i mean i he seems to have forgotten that like jesus's best friend was a literal slut i know like famous like the most famous one, Mary Magdalene. Am I right? Yeah. Um, I,

I feel like the, the, the demo that Trump has found, which has always been with him, but it has not been really identified as the Hawk to a demo. It's like the, the not very, it's like the non-Christian right wing, um,

middle class, working class group of people that this is most people. I think it's like the Hawk to a demo. And I think Amber Rose fits into that. Not like it's not an uncomfortable fit. Like I think she's at least adjacent, if not there with them, with,

with the Hawk to a girl and all of her friends and compatriots um on the lips of tiktok thing yeah so so the news so there's a few there's a few news items uh this week that seem to indicate that the on that the highly online right is just as deranged as woke as the highly online left that we've that has kind of sat in the seat of power since, you know, between 2017 and 2023, let's say, um,

on Tuesday, it appears that home Depot fired one of its cashiers. And this is kind of a crazy story because they fired one of its cashiers after somebody found this cashier. This is an old lady, this cashier. They found her in the comment section of a Facebook post saying that she wished that Trump would have been assassinated on Saturday. And then somebody found that comment and went to Home Depot and found her and recorded her while he was asking her, hey, you're this lady, right?

This is your name, right? Do you still think that Trump should have been assassinated? Libs of TikTok retweeted that and tagged Home Depot. And I'm not 100% sure of the timeline here, but I think Libs of TikTok was the reason. Home Depot, shortly after that, I think this Libs of TikTok was the reason. Home Depot, shortly after that, I think, said that this employee doesn't share her values. And I think that I'm sure she's fired. I don't know if they explicitly said that she was fired.

So basically, Libs of TikTok went from being canceled by journalists incessantly a year ago or two years ago to somebody who's been on an absolute witch hunt i mean there's been a lot of this on lives of tiktok since saturday um finding just random people uh like truly random people uh who have said like a stupid thing about trump and tagging their employers it's pretty hypocritical it's definitely yeah you obviously have seen so we see the right-wing cancelers we see the people the right-wing people saying we shouldn't be canceling we're anti-cancel culture we see the left-wing people saying this is cancel culture hypocrisy they're not that much on the left to be honest and i think the reason is because at the end of the day we're still talking

about the attempted assassination of the president um so it's like it's a very extreme version still i don't know why on earth people think that it makes sense to go after like an old woman working at a Home Depot when you have a congressman still in office who tried to remove Donald Trump's Secret Service, like protection. That's where people should be focused right now. It should be getting questions from him. It should be getting questions from the Secret Service about why on earth you had random fucking MAGA fans out there pointing to the roof saying, hey, it looks like there's a killer over there. And it took minutes and minutes for someone to do something about that. And Donald Trump is still talking like, where's the focus? I don't understand. And I think I called this out when lorenz and tick and libs went after each other they had that sit down and they came they came like dressed like the sort of halloween version of each other lorenza the mask lives of tiktok had the face of taylor crying on her shirt she came with a mask to give taylor like they were doing they were both doing their thing

it sort of looked the same and i'm like you guys are the same fucking person you're just you're just coming at it from from a a different place and i think for libs it's like that she's just this like sort of instinctual creature um and she's driven she's driven to punish bad things and there's no real it's like a force of nature kind of thing there's there's a she's a poster she's not as she's not didn't actually have much skin in the game i don't think she actually cares she just hates the left and she just hates period she's a fucking hater she's like a and that hatred has seeped into her soul and um and i think you see this a lot on on the like libs of tiktok and like sort of matt walshian daily wire right wing um where these people just want to punish crazy people like how many times do we have to hear about some blue-haired

idiot teacher in the middle of the country um before we move on to the people who actually matter like those those people don't matter they're the people who matter are the people in charge people with power um and uh and i think my biggest problem with sort of cancel culture back in the day was not ever like oh you're going after mark zuckerberg you can't cancel Mark Zuckerberg. I have a problem with the coverage of Mark Zuckerberg and biased coverage in general, but the cancel culture thing was like, I remember a janitor making an inappropriate joke or something. And that's crazy. That's not okay. That's the stuff that I'm talking about. I

remember actually Taylor Lorenz doing a piece on students in high school losing their college i think it was their college admissions were being revoked in this june 2020 they were being like like racism was being being uncovered one of those racist things was a student had talked about you know well all lives matter which i think it's funny now to look back and remember that that used to be like a third rail like if you said all lives matter you want you know racism in this country you want like a systemically racist society um things were very different back then but that stuff is yeah it's really really dark well i i don't understand i've never really understood the association of cancel culture generally with just the left because to me it just seems like a manifestation of a very human dynamic, which is to say, joining a mob and just sort of like crucifying anyone you can get, you know, your hands on who you, you know, can rally the mob against.

dynamic but i do think that it takes i do think that the exceptional person is the person who can resist it actually and that that of course by definition is going to be you know not the majority of people um i think most people my sense is unfortunately most people if you're canceling someone they disagree with would like grab a pitch pitchfork and uh and join you um and i think the kind of like matt walsh's and and libs they sort of embody this very like puritanical uh instinct that i do think is kind of part and parcel of some aspect of the american experience like there is a part of america i think that is still like sort of deeply puritanical i always think of like the opening of uh philip roth's novel the human stain where he's talking about the like hysteria after the clinton monica lewinsky thing came out and how like america lost its mind over a blow was how he basically

put it um and and i do think yeah i mean it's it's it's just kind of ugly behavior. It's unnecessary. I mean, you see this kind of old, heavyset woman working this horrible job at Home Depot, and it's like, she said something stupid on Facebook, but, you know... In the comments section of a post. She didn't even post, she just commented. Yeah, and it's just, it's like... I think what scares me about it is it really does feel like a violation of privacy in some ways.

Like, I do feel that if you put yourself in the public sphere, you kind of open yourself up in some ways to cancellation. And that's like part of the contract of, you know, the like slight degree of narcissism at the, at the least that takes putting yourself in, in the public sphere. But like most people who don't do it and are just, you know, using Facebook to stay in touch with their friends or I don't know, look at AI generated cake. They don't,

they don't really, it seems like a violation of some social contract. It's perverse. You know, it feels related to that is I just saw this random instagram the other day about there was a kid who went super viral from target for being cute he was like it was like all these like teenage girls who were obsessed with him i forget his name was like something target and he was just like this like boy next door kind of kind of kid um and he he

absolutely blew up it became and this and this, I remember it. I was like, holy shit, I remember that story. And I felt like it was yesterday, but I looked it up. It was 10 years ago in 2014. This kid went absolutely viral. He was, I think like 15 years old, 15 or 16. He went on Ellen and became this like crazy,

almost like the celebrity was bigger than him. And he reports as like, he never liked it. There was not one piece of this attention that he liked. He didn't ask for it. Like what had happened was he was working at Target and someone filmed him and they uploaded their film of him online. And they were like, look at this hot guy at Target. And the internet lost its mind. They're like, who is this hot guy at Target? So he's like, I never asked for this. I didn't like it. I never felt comfortable. Everyone in his life sort of was like, oh, you should do something with this. They kind of kept pressuring him into it. And so naturally,

he ended up doing like a YouTube thing for a minute. And then he started an Instagram for bodybuilding eventually in his early 20s. And he finally left it all behind. And now 10 years later, I think he's working for UPS and he loves it. And he's like, it's a super not public job. And he's just delivering boxes. And he's very happy with that. And I agree with you. It's this weird thing now that we live in this world where you are not, we don't have to really worry about it at all, because we made the decision to be out here. And so if someone comes after like a comment, I said on Twitter, it's like must be Tuesday. Like that's just I expect that to happen. But you know, if it's like, I don't know, my, my sister decides to comment on an Instagram that bothers her,

a mom of two in Tampa, which she doesn't do, but let's say that she did. So one really pissed her off one day. And she's like, what is this stupid thing? And she's like, uses the wrong word that she doesn't know is the wrong word because she doesn't live online. Like the rest of us fucking psychopaths. And then someone goes to her job. That that's that's not only a violation but it's very scary like you that's how do you go to someone's place of work and and not realize that you're in the wrong that's a little bit crazy again the assassination thing is not is nuts you know um it's weird that people think that that's okay um but it's also just weird that people think that they're going to go to some, like some old woman's job and, and harass them.

I don't, I don't know. I wanted to bring up the, the assess that there is a kind of a difference and hopefully we don't get there with the right, but I, I just remembered it must've been in between 2018 and 2020, a UPS driver or somebody like that um was like just driving down the road

and he just happened to have his hand like this um which at the time there was there was like a two-month hysteria that that holding your hand up like in the okay symbol was a symbol of white supremacy this guy i think gets fired for that. Somebody pulled up next to him, took a picture, and then posted it on Twitter and was like, hey, Amazon or UPS, do you support white supremacy because your driver does? And I think the driver was not a white guy either. I think so. And so that for me symbolized like, okay, now there's making stuff up and getting people canceled for this made up thing and so i can see how like saying yeah i wish trump was assassinated that's that's in a different category right and then people going after him her is it in a different category than than the heights that we reached in

2018 2019 um with the left just going after people for um imagined offenses which you know hopefully we don't we don't get there with matt walsh and the tiktok i think the easy distinction is well first of all like you said it is these things it's a different class of thing and that sounds like you're being a hypocrite like oh my side like i don't agree with the trump assassination so like of course i think that first of all no one should agree with the trump attack we should all be horrified we should all this is not one of these things like, is it horrifying or not? We should all agree that it's horrifying. So it does feel like it's a separate class of thing. But then within the world of people who are saying this, some people should be fucking canceled. You work for a

congressman and you say this publicly, you should lose your job. Of course you should not have a job at that point. There are certain people who do need to be canceled for espousing an opinion like that and it's like is it cancellation or is it just like you said the president should die and you work in politics and so of course you shouldn't have a job anymore um i believe that the left used to call this consequence culture um i think it's just like a matter of i was always a little bit uneasy about the cancellation thing like i see people defending them now all the way. And my read of it is, or are you saying that they should be able to say anything?

Like, is there no limit at all to what someone should say before you want to fire them? Like there, I would fire. I mean, if you guys went and started trashing pirate wires publicly, I'd fire you.

Is that, is that cancel culture? Like what makes it, what makes it cancel culture? Well, at what point does your view publicly, I'd fire you. Is that cancel culture? What makes it cancel culture? At what point does your view publicly, is it just like you should have any political view you want? Does that include assassination? Are you allowed to draw lines? I don't know. I don't actually fully know what the rules of cancel culture are. I know that you should be free to say whatever you want. I know that Twitter should not ban you for saying whatever you want, though I do think

you want to have a rule against calling for violence. But when it comes to a private person wanting to work with someone else, I do think that you're allowed to choose who you want to work with. I think it's cancel culture when... I think the Home Depot, the instance of the Home Depot lady getting fired is cancel culture. I think what Home Depot should have done is said, look, if they felt they had to respond, which I don't know if they even did have to respond to that, then they could have said, look, we don't, we do not, we do not monitor our employees social media accounts and they can basically say whatever they want as long as it doesn't you know like i don't know x y and it doesn't like violate the law in some way i think that would have been an appropriate response um and they would have

risked nothing well no that's not true it's that they have a brand liability now i mean how many people who walk into like a rural home depot how many of them do you think are voting for trump 90 of them and now you have maybe for Trump? 90% of them. And now you have someone publicly saying Trump should be killed so you're not firing. Like that easily snowballs into a brand thing. Bud Light has, you have this woman who works for them talking about her job.

Like the way that we need to evolve the brand or whatever. She was fired for that opinion because she insulted the people who work there. So like there are these liabilities that these companies have to think about um i'm talking on the bud light when i'm throwing back to the sanja you and i were talking about this a little bit this morning i'm talking about the uh the the summer of the trend the trans bud light the first anti-pride last year's pride month which was fucking crazy um that was just last year i know i know man i know

it's like in 2015 i know but that was just a year ago that uh dylan mulvaney destroyed bud light but separate from that and that was a brand decision they made but then you have their employee just talking about her job on a podcast um and is fired retro like that interview was old way before the controversy but but then people find it and they end up firing this woman because she's seen as you know insulting the brand in some way um these decisions are made all the time you know they i also thought i think i defended um to a certain extent when disney fired uh gina carrow um gina carrow, she played one of the characters on The Mandalorian.

In the first season, she'd be like the tough woman character. She'd been making a bunch of sort of right-of-center comments publicly, not really egregious at all. The one that they fired her for ultimately was, and people were already mad.

They were mad. Remember, this was years ago. This is an era of like, if you are right wing in public, you should be fired. Palmer Luckey was fired from Facebook because he privately donated money to like an anti-Hillary meme thing. It was like during the Trump election. He was privately, not even publicly a Trump supporter, and they fired him for that. This is the era that we're talking about. This is where cancel culture language really became a thing because it was so shocking and one-sided. But back then with Gina Caro, she's an actress in your show. She's talking about politics all the time online. Your fans are getting really upset about it. It's affecting the way they see the character.

And then I think she said something like, we're being persecuted. Like, I think she might've, I don't want to get the language exactly wrong. I want to make it sound worse than it was, but I'm pretty sure she sort of like drew a parallel between the way that right-wing people were being treated today and Jews were treated in Germany. I think, it might not have been that,

it might've even have been that extreme, but it was in the sort of direction of that. And I thought like, I don't have a problem with what she said. I don't agree with her, but I don't have a problem with what she said i don't agree with her but i don't i don't have a problem with her saying that it was like one of especially i mean look around now like there are way more offensive things said every day but does disney have a does disney have a like do they have a leg to stand on there i mean at what point can someone who is linked to your brand be considered a liability you gotta get rid of her

but i don't think that i think that's like part of cancel culture but it's not the actual like it's sort of the second it's the consequence of it right like to me the cancel culture is amplifying someone saying something that you deem you know bad in an attempt to then cause that brand liability that the company then can't really resist like you know um and if you do it but that's what this is the whole lipo thing would count exactly exactly so like but like the the but when the bud light like if you if you kind of do it to yourself and you're working in a job and then you say something that, you know, in a somewhat public space, you know, you know, like on a podcast or something will be picked up on, then, you know, obviously, Home Depot, I think is kind of in a

tough position where like, in some ways, as you say, they can't not fire this woman and then set off this like PR firestorm uh for themselves but like the actual step of going to her workplace and almost like entrapping her by making her say this thing on camera that's the like per she say it on camera she actually said it again or she what did she say no so this that's the perverse they were like you said it it was just like it was just her looking scared in a video is all i saw they they found this random woman's facebook comment buried under some post on facebook and they went they found out where she works and they filmed her while they asked is this you did you make this comment on facebook and if that if that's true if you did make this comment on facebook do you still believe

that do you still think that Trump should have been assassinated? That's what I think is like the twist that makes us super deranged. It's a lot. I think, I mean, I don't know. I think you're right, Solana. And Sanjay, you're right. Home Depot is in between a rock and a hard place at this point or was, I still think, yeah, I mean, it's tough, you know, like they, they basically, they basically

like had no choice to fire. You're probably right. Part of me thinks they could have been like, look, as an, as an American company, we believe heavily in free speech and like, well, we don't condone our statement. We, we protect our employees' rights to, to, to free speech. And by the way, we're hiring in all these locations or something like that, you know? Um, so I'm not a hundred percent convinced that they needed to fire, or they could have said, look, like we put, we put her on a disciplinary leave, you know, we, we, and just be vague about it. Um, I'm not a comms manager. Maybe we should have Lulu on the pod this week, um, to discuss this, but you know in a kind of

related in that it's you know you have the different extremes you have like the home people lady but then you have what happened to morning joe so let's bring in uh let's bring in riley to break down the morning joe fiasco and round out the pod this week we were talking earlier i think off the pod about uh joy and reed over at m MSNBC. And Brandon was like, is it the other... No, no, no. There are multiple crazy Joys. There was the one Joy who was fired from the Robbie Suave show for being pro-Palestinian terrorists. now you have Joanne Reed, who I don't think will be fired, but maybe, who is doing a sort of pro... She's getting into this sort of

did Trump do it conspiracy theory. But also on MSNBC, what you have, and I think that she's not on air so much right now. I've seen her little snippets, but I don't think her show is on right this second. What I've seen her on is the guesting on other people's shows. I see a lot of her unhinged threads um it seems like msnbc is really trying to navigate this difficult moment for them where they know they have a whole like

cabal of psychopaths who could say anything at any moment and we're following an attempted assassination of donald trump it's like a perfect storm for them to say something stupid and lose advertisers uh but riley why don't you break down the morning joe version of this specifically Trump, it's like a perfect storm for them to say something stupid and lose advertisers. But Riley, why don't you break down the Morning Joe version of this specifically? Yeah, sure thing. So the background for all of this, obviously, is we had somewhat of a newsworthy weekend last week with the Republican nominee for president slash former president avoiding assassination by like not even mere inches like an inch um so you would think with like such a major news event transpiring you would want your news show on the air to talk

about it um such was not the case for msnbc uh they decided to pull morning joe off the air their quote news round table um with cnn later reporting that the decision was made in order to like specifically avoid an inappropriate comment, uh, being made on live television in the context of the Trump assassination. Um, so like, call me crazy, but if your news talk show can't be trusted to talk about the news, like maybe it's time to move on to something else. So interestingly, Joe Scarborough, um, like on Tuesday threatens to do exactly that. He comes on the air the day after and essentially like threatens to quit MSNBC if he's ever pulled

off the air again. So my sort of take on the whole thing is just he should definitely do exactly that for two reasons. One, because I sort of agree with msnbc's tacit admission here that this isn't really a news show and would be better suited as like a sort of like left-wing echo chamber podcast um but number two because like joe clearly has zero introspection about the whole thing which is a trait shared by many podcasters so like it'll be an easy transition yeah he's an asshole with a mic that's what i am and i'm great at it um exactly i think that it's very smart if i were msnbc i would have done the same thing i mean i would have i don't know that i would have tolerated him trashing the network following that i would have had a hard time like joe i mean let's be honest like if you if you go after him in this

way it puts the entire network at risk and also like why do i have to even have this conversation with you that seems kind of crazy like can we not just evolve here but they had to yeah i don't know what would you have done if you were uh what is her name i just i just found it brzezinski no that's his co-host but who is the president of um ms mbc rashida jones if you had a little sit down with rashida jones the okay there's another rashida jones you have to give the actress not that rashida different rashida okay this is rashida jones uh she looks like a she has a kind of like broadcast journalist looking about her. So maybe that's where she started her career. I actually am not familiar with her career. But she is the president of MSNBC.

And if you had to sit down with her, how would you handle the Morning Joe fiasco? Or not fiasco, now it's a fiasco, but it was like they were getting ahead of a fiasco, I guess. I mean, well, first of all, I would imagine Morning Joe has pretty good ratings if they, um, you know, are still on the air in the first place. And I know that they are, or were Joe Biden's go-to show. He loves Morning Joe. So it is kind of a delicate thing. And I incidentally saw to that today, Joe Scarborough came out and said, you know, he thinks Biden should, uh, in so many words, he said he thinks Biden should should exit the race which I thought was interesting I mean I think um the minute you have a talk show host trashing your network though publicly it's kind of a hard line I would think I mean this has happened before uh you know with with Tucker and Fox where they basically just had a clean break um and I don't know i mean i think i actually think joe scarborough i it almost

strikes me that like he wouldn't have said that he wouldn't have come out and publicly criticized it if he didn't wasn't already thinking about an exit plan um but i guess if i were you're asking if i were rashida what would i have said to him or how would i have handled like the the thinking that they have here is if we do not keep him off the air today, him, either him, probably Micah, let's be honest, his crazy co-host, or one of his sort of stable of crazy, I don't think Joe would have done it, but one of his stable of crazy guests would say something in the heat of the moment that would be clipped and would go massively viral online. uh there would be a huge risk to advertisers and certainly a reputational risk that msnbc didn't want to own because they already have they're

trying to balance a lot of craziness over there already i mean you have again like i said you have joy and reed constantly implying now that uh donald trump organized this assassination attempt himself they have a lot to contend with they don't want another thing what do you do so they chose to keep him off air that one day um you know i probably wouldn't have i don't know i don't think i would have i mean i almost think that um the optics of pulling him off are already kind of a pr disaster like it's because it's a tacit admission that like they they very well could say something they're crazy insane that it's going to get clipped and tank the network's reputation forever which in and of itself is like i think catastrophic i mean it's it was really for them to say i don't know how cnn got the quote it wasn't clear to me if like someone told cnn on the record or if it was just like um but for someone to leak to cnn in

any event that like the reason was because it was inappropriate they could have come up with like an excuse right i mean like jose garbo's sick and maybe people would have said like he's not sick he just they don't want him to say like stupid shit about the assassination attempt but like i already think that um that they're out that they're out um but then there's this question of like who watches morning joe in the first place like if you i guess is it already so sort of um radical an audience that like you know well i think it is but that's what they don't want to admit i mean that's what they sort of accidentally admitted publicly and maybe why they really shouldn't have done it because they're like like you're saying right now i I mean, they have sort of, they've certainly admitted the show is

crazy, but the show is only crazy because the audience is crazy. Like who watches MSNBC? We've been living under this delusion that right-wingers on Fox News are like this danger to the world. And I mean, I'm certain there are crazy right-wingers out there. I don't think they're watching Fox News. Fox News is like normie boomer content. MSNBC is like, Joanne Reid believes that Trump created the assassination. That's what she really believes. That's who you have on air. That's very unhinged. And that's a different kind of... That far left viewer is, I think, much more far left than the average Fox news person is very far right. Now, is there a comparison on... I'm trying to think of another really... What is the right wing version of MSNBC? Is it just Stormfront or

something? The neo-Nazi one? It might be. MSNBC might actually be the Stormfront of the left. They do have some real journalists. I that uh directly following the assassination i went to msnbc to check it out and i will say to their credit they had real professionals there and that is what like that the official narrative was like yeah we we just want to go with our like you know nighttime anchors for this the following day because it's such a huge deal and i don't know why they wouldn't have just said that publicly and also like why wouldn't joe have said that publicly if i were joe i wouldn't want everybody to know that i was kept off the air because i was too crazy i would be like oh yeah no we're going with the with the anchors of course i would do

the same they did a great job i think that's because like they said they were going to do that but then different shows that were scheduled on MSNBC that day aired as scheduled. Oh, shit. Yeah. So he knew immediately something was up as soon as that happened. Poor Joe. Well, that's that for Joe.

Do you know who will be on air next week? It's Pirate Wires. And we don't have anything to worry about because we came at you promising that we would be crazy, and we still are. Thank you for watching. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment. Next week, it's going to be absolute bananas because my gut is that Biden's going to step down, but maybe not. Maybe it'll be a quiet week, but I feel like

things are just ratcheting up. So expect the craziest thing. It might be that. Regardless, we'll be here to talk about it. Have a great weekend. Later.