QAA Podcast - Madison Square Garbage (E300)

Episode Date: November 2, 2024

To celebrate 300 regular episodes we have brought on a special guest: Julian Feeld. And what a beefy episode number 300 is. First we cover Trump’s lively Madison Square Garden rally and a conspi...racy theory that sprang up in the wake of stand up comedian Kill Tony’s appearance there. Plus, the return of the “Panda Eyes” conspiracy theory at a Trump event. If you don’t know what “Panda Eyes" are, then just assume the worst before listening to the episode. Then we dive into the bizarre claims among some liberal posters who believe the first Trump assassination attempt was “staged.” There’s a new twist, with new lore, and the plot has thickened. Get ready for quality ear analysis. Finally we go through the ways the US election is being besieged by efforts to skew the vote and apply some well honed election denial tactics, including an app by an organization you might remember from the last cycle: True The Vote. It’s a window into alternate realities and a preview of the kind of paranoid delusions that will become popular as America struggles through the first presidential post-election cycle since January 6th. Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: www.patreon.com/QAA Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com) https://qaapodcast.com QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Keep mehame If you're hearing this, well done, you have found a way to connect to the internet. Welcome to the QAA podcast, episode 300 Madison Square Garbage. As always, we are your host, Jake Rockatansky, Julian Field, Liv Aker, and Travis View. Beloved listeners, welcome to the celebration of the 300th episode of QAA. As is custom, we have a very special surprise for you this week. our guest is Julian Field.
Starting point is 00:01:01 You may know him from the Q&On Anonymous podcast. We are so happy to have him here. And let me just say that it's an honor to podcast with him. Thanks. I appreciate that. It's always a great experience to return to the podcast after a deep depressive episode because it all feels fresh to me again. Speaking of handsome people this week,
Starting point is 00:01:17 we've got a real banger for you. First, we'll be covering Trump's lively Madison Square Garden rally and a conspiracy theory that sprang up in the wake of stand-up comedian Kill Tony's appearance there. Plus, the return of the panda eyes conspiracy theory at a Trump event. And if you do not know what panda eyes are, you're in for a horrible dream. Then we'll dive into the tenacity and creative writing that is somehow still going very strong among some liberal posters who believe the Trump assassination was staged.
Starting point is 00:01:42 That's the first Trump assassination, the one that actually drew blood. First blood. That's what we should call it. Assassination first blood. I want people who are like really into the second one. Yes. I'm really passionate about it. Well, the second one was kind of cooler.
Starting point is 00:01:56 Like there was more there. Once you looked into the guy, there was more content, that's for sure. So, yeah, there's a new twist. There's new lore. The plot has thickened, so I think we're going to have a lot of fun with that one. There's a third shooter. Yeah, there's a third shooter. Not me. I'm not going to have any fun with it.
Starting point is 00:02:11 This shit is driving me crazy. This is like my white whale. Jake, you have been hired as an ear analyst, and you will do your job. How do ears work? How does cartilage work? How does blood work? How do presidents work? How do presidents die?
Starting point is 00:02:28 Not easily. Finally, we'll go through the ways the U.S. election, even before it actually yields any results, is being besieged by efforts to skew the vote and apply some well-honed election denial tactics, including an app by an organization you might remember from the last cycle. True the vote. I'm sorry about the election by. When it comes to elections, I only know two things to be true. one people vote two people don't
Starting point is 00:02:57 okay thank you thank you so much Mr Flynn always a pleasure to talk to you it's an honor but before we jump into all that we wanted really really to thank all of you our listeners
Starting point is 00:03:15 for getting us to 300 main episodes and six years of going strong now well you know based on the last few weeks of my life not going so strong, but, you know, strong in a kind of general set. Strong is a group. You know, no man left behind is what I hope others are saying, because otherwise I'm going to be left behind. Yeah, so I did want to tell you as a listener, and, you know, that we are very, very happy with you.
Starting point is 00:03:41 You've done a good job. You're a good boy. You're a good girl. You're a good non-binary person. We're patting you on the head. And, yeah, the truth is we've published over 600 episodes, if you count the premiums in the miniseries. is just, it's not, it's not good, folks. People, people, people will hit me up sometimes on X.
Starting point is 00:03:59 Um, that's how, that's how long we've been podcasting is a website has two names now. And the second one sucks. So we want to call it Twitter, but that's not factually correct. So I got to say X, but people call people, people, people hit me up on X and they're like, oh my God. They're like, when you said this, like that was so, that was so funny. And I'll be like, ha ha ha, yeah. And in my mind, I will have like no recollection of the joke or the bitch.
Starting point is 00:04:22 or the bit or whatever because just so many like I've got to reserve a small amount of my brain to like memorize like lyrics from music that I'm currently listening to and the rest is like just like podcast nonsense like pushing you know new stuff pushing the old stuff out yeah yeah yeah well you know it's like uh when you have a USB key and it's got like uh you know half a gig there's just not that much you could put on well especially if that USB key is in the shape of um a boot or a hat. A Trump. You know, especially hats.
Starting point is 00:04:58 I mean, you can't hold a lot of space in the brim. You know, you got to hold all the data in the bucket area of the hat. So, yeah, very difficult. What are we talking about? I don't know. I mean, the next part is where I say that, you know, thank you to the listeners. We all are thanking you, but specifically I'm thanking you. You ruined my life.
Starting point is 00:05:18 And also, if you want to subscribe to QAA, let it be said now. And furthermore, that you should not, you should definitely not sign up for the Patreon through the Patreon app on an iPhone. If you've done that, unsubscribe, go back on a browser, resubscribe or something like that because these motherfuckers at Apple, that's what I really came back for, is to say, fuck, Apple. They're trying to fucking take, they're trying to fucking take a big chunk of our fucking money through that shit, you know? Your money, not ours, that you're, but you're paying for.
Starting point is 00:05:50 No, once they pay it, once they pay it, I think it's ours. They don't, Apple has, Apple doesn't yet have the, the kind of Pinkerton-like ability to just go take people's five, or 30% of people's five bucks or whatever. They have to wait until we actually draw the client in, you know? And once we've converted the sale, which we talk like this all the time when we're not on the podcast, we talk about like, what's this freaking sale funnel? Sales funnel. Is it working? Are we monetizing? So yeah, do not, do not use the Patreon app on an iPhone to sign up. Thank you very much. Just use a browser and go to patreon.com slash QAA. where you can sign up for five bucks a month so I can afford psychiatric treatment.
Starting point is 00:06:27 You have 10 hours starting now. Yeah. So you want to call out. I know where you live. Hurry, he's melting. I know where you live. Speaking of live, see that? Oh.
Starting point is 00:06:39 Yeah, I know where you live. Speaking of Liv and Travis and Jake, what's up, friends? How are you feeling about our big milestone? How has the podcast fucked your life up? And what is next for you rascals in 2025 and beyond? I'm feeling great. I bet my girlfriend $500 that Kamala would win. I'm all in. Nothing's going to happen. I think everything's going to turn out wonderfully. You know, Liv, there's actual betting sites. You can make a lot of money. You can make way better money right now with the odds on Kamala, which are like, I think 42. Last I checked, it was like 42 cents to buy a dollar of Kamala if she wins. And it was 58 cents to buy a dollar of Trump. They have just integrated that into like Robin Hood.
Starting point is 00:07:21 like before the election. That was one of their new... Oh, yeah, I saw that. I saw that when I opened... I opened the app recently and it was like, you can now bet on the election. I was like, Jesus Christ! Yeah, this is fucked.
Starting point is 00:07:32 We are so cooked. We are so... We are so fucking cooked. We don't need polls. We just need markets. Yeah. How has the podcast ruined my life? It has it.
Starting point is 00:07:41 And I would say like 95% of the ways my life is so much better. I mean, decidedly better since starting the podcast. However... Conspiracy theories aren't as fun for me anymore, and I really can't talk about, my, my idea of politics and just general concept has completely destroyed me, you know, so I really can't talk about politics with my friends or my family, and I try not to do it with my wife, but it's, it's tough. It's, I wish I could be, I wish I could be like a kind of like a red, v. blue, you know,
Starting point is 00:08:17 sort of person like I was before I, before 2016 happened. I guess. Yeah, the blue blood of Hillary Clinton as she devours the red blood of children. That's what you fucking mean. But like, yeah, it sucks because I'll see cool conspiracy theories. And then, you know, I sort of like look over my shoulder and it's like the watchful eye of Travis View. I'm like, he would be so disappointed in me if I believed in that.
Starting point is 00:08:42 The biggest problem, the 5% of your life that, you know, because you say 95 is great. But the 5% is feeling watched. And I hate that for you, man. A little bit of shame. A little bit of shame. Never change. Never change, man. We need you your old self forever.
Starting point is 00:08:58 I've considered getting pilled again. I posted the idea on Twitter and people seem to think it was a good idea. I'm telling you. They love it. We need one pilled guy, I think. We need a devil's advocate. We do. We do need a devil's advocate, which is what I was for the first seven episodes of the show that I believe have just been deleted.
Starting point is 00:09:17 I think if you go to our website, you can hear me, be like, I don't know, Julian. I think they were up to something weird. Meanwhile, since I'm disenfranchised in this country, even though I pay taxes, I've recruited three to four very soft-minded, like, 18-to-19-year-olds that weren't going to vote, and we are going to show up for Trump. I think that's a bad idea. Okay. Please, the psychiatric help, please listeners, subscribe.
Starting point is 00:09:44 Travis, how? Yeah, yeah, tell us where you at. Yeah, I mean, it's been really interesting. You know, the first, I guess, couple years of doing this podcast was a process of me just kind of wondering when people would stop caring about this subject matter or when it would be irrelevant anymore, because I'm just sort of used to being really interested in things that are very fringe and something that a small group of people are really fixated on. But my small fixations became more topic of national conversations. And that moment when, like, it all kind of like went away and I just went back to my regular life just never happened. You know what? At this point, I've made peace with a possibility that never will.
Starting point is 00:10:25 And that's fine. I'm enjoying it, actually. I mean, it's something I really enjoy sort of breaking down. It's like now when I discover something like, you know, interesting or wild online, I have so many people I can talk to about it who are interested in what I have to say. So, yeah, man, it's awesome. I'm having a good time. I give it about a month before you're in rags, dragging yourself up the capital. Stairs yelling about consensus reality
Starting point is 00:10:49 It's gonna be good I do hope this election Continues to break everybody and it will There's just literally no result that will not break a portion of this country's mind There's no result Yeah, no, you're right I was gonna say Kamala landslide But no, that's probably one of the worst ones For like a certain portions of population
Starting point is 00:11:07 Either way it's gonna be bad But you know Yeah I guess my life has been changed less Because I already had a fake internet job before this, but I got a better fake internet job, so I'm not in grad school or on OnlyFans, which are two possibilities that are much, I think, worse than what I'm in right now. I think you're limiting yourself. You could do all three of those things. I probably could, but I don't want to. I was thinking about opening a feat Onlyfans, you know,
Starting point is 00:11:35 if things go really bad after this election as in like, you know, the infrastructure goes down, I think Onlyfans will survive. And I do know that there are at least, like 45 people out there listening probably right now, probably, you know, over the next couple of days as they check into their, you know, podcast apps, jacking off, that would be interested in buying feet pictures. So I'm... Jake, a reminder, a reminder that on your wiki feet, somebody uploaded the feet of a hobbit from the Lord of the Rings and you for a second thought they might be yours. Yeah, well, I got to correct the record because my feet are skinny little piggies now no hair on them whatsoever are right there wait you shaved your feet
Starting point is 00:12:18 okay maybe you are ready for the big time i haven't shaved them but the i don't know maybe the i don't know i don't know um what's the episode about we already went over that uh i think it's about time to stop bullying jake which by the way one of the main things that i got communicated while while i was taking my little leave of absence for mental health reasons is uh you know that I had to come back and rain in Jake. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. There was somebody who commented that was like, Julian, we need you to come back. Like, Jake has way too much mic time.
Starting point is 00:12:50 Like, this is unbelievable. I'd like to say to that person, fuck you. And also, I love you. Thanks for listening to the podcast. Ah, well, that's perfect. We've insulted them. We've gaslit them. It's time to start the episode.
Starting point is 00:13:04 Trump. Whop. I just called Travis Trump. Travis. Trump's Madison Square Garden secret. Oh. So Donald Trump decided to make his closing argument with his usual inclination towards showmanship by hosting a rally at Madison Square Garden for a capacity crowd of 20,000 people.
Starting point is 00:13:27 Speakers such as Elon Musk, RFK Jr., Dr. Phil and Hulk Hogan all made the case for Trump in their unique ways. Many people, including Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, compare the event to a 1939 pro-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden, though that event was officially billed as a pro-Americanism rally. That one featured a giant portrait of George Washington flanked by swastikas. I'm just really happy that we went back to just calling Trump Hitler. He's so like Hitler. He's like Hitler. This is not going to, this is not going to backfire in any way. It is funny, though, that Trump gets to be like, the Democrats, they're literally evil and they're going to kill all the
Starting point is 00:14:06 babies and then and then Biden is like their garbage and then they make that like such a cultural thing. It's funny that it goes only one way. Like I just feel like Dems might as well at this point. It's like well if you're calling us like I feel like Trump is probably called the Dems Hitler at some point. I will pay a painter to do that dogs playing poker, smoking cigars, but it's Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Dr. Phil and Hulk Hogan. Because that is like such a fucking American basket there. Like what a beautiful fucking basket of human being. American fascism is so stupid. It sucks.
Starting point is 00:14:39 Of course. They got all the best guys. All of the wrestlers, the favorite wrestlers. They've got all the best doctors, the TV doctors. And they've got all the best presidents, secret presidents, Robert. Now, the moment that got the most attention from this rally was, of course, the bizarre and politically stupid swipe at the island of Puerto Rico. Liv's going to go into more details on that one soon. But instead, I want to talk about how.
Starting point is 00:15:06 Trump again wielded his particular gift for capturing people's attention and stimulating their imaginations by making a cryptic reference to some secret happenings. Longtime fans of the show will recall that this kind of thing actually helped ignite Q&N in the first place. Back in early October 2017, Trump summoned present members of the White House press corps to the state dining room where they saw the president gathered with his top military commanders and their spouses. As they snapped photos, Trump told the reporters,
Starting point is 00:15:35 you know what this represents, maybe it's the calm before the storm. When asked what the storm was, he simply said, you'll find out. So that phrase appeared in headlines at all major news outlets. Some of those reports offered speculation about what he could be referring to. A New York Times report was headlined, what did President Trump mean by calm before the storm, and suggested that it might have been connected to promise aggression against North Korea. But it also more accurately stated, quote, but it is equally plausible that Mr. Trump was merely being theatrical using the backdrop of military officers to stir up some drama.
Starting point is 00:16:11 Yeah, I think the whole idea was like, I'm up here with my boys. Oh, you want to know what's going to happen to you next? Like to the media, yeah. He was doing a little trolling. Yeah, this is a guy who's like, you know, he like dropped out of military school. He's got all of this wealth, you know, and here he is. He's the president of the United States. He's got, you know, a supreme power.
Starting point is 00:16:31 He's standing up in front of all the military guys. But, you know, he was too scared or lazy to be. And he's like, hey, you know, we could do, me and my boys, we could be really doing some damage, you know. This is, I do kind of think that it's like, it's just him being like, you know, it was like on last weekend I went to an event with the Los Angeles Ghostbusters. And like, I was too nervous to like really talk to any of them or get a picture. I was kind of shy. By the way, you've received an envelope that looked very suspect and is full of little like patches. and stuff that they sent you. Oh, man. Shout out to the homie, Chris. Let's, uh, but, but if I had been,
Starting point is 00:17:09 you know, if somebody was like, hey, Jake, stand with all the Ghostbusters and we'll take a picture. And, and, you know, I stand with all of them. They got the packs lit up. You know, and they go, you know, do you have anything to say? And I'll be like, ghosts better watch out, you know, or Bustin makes me feel that, you know, I would have said something to kind of, you know, honor the moment. You know, honor the moment. And, and, you know, Trump, after years and years of being a public person of being a television reality star trying to cultivate, you know, the personality that he so desperately wanted to be seen as, you know, I wouldn't put it past him to like come up with something kind of good and dramatic in that moment, which he did.
Starting point is 00:17:44 And it altered the course of history forever. There was no storm, but a lot of people lost their minds. This has got to be one of the more oblique ways of inserting Ghostbusters into our conversation. I'm really proud of this insert. Yeah, it does. Yeah, I understand. I agree. bit better now. Okay, but this is what's happening when I'm not around. You can't just yes and, Lou. You have to bully when I'm not there. We like it. Of course, the most deranged online conspiracists insisted that calm before the storm had to have some significant meaning. Perhaps the storm referred to a brutal crackdown on Hillary Clinton and the rest of the andrine chrome chugging child abusers who are controlling the world. Weeks after the statement,
Starting point is 00:18:25 the very first cue drop appeared on 4chan and the fantasy of an imminent storm. storm of mass arrests and executions became central to its lore. And here we are, seven years later. One would hope that by now, people would have learned that sometimes Trump just says shit that has little real function besides trolling and generating headlines. But no, it seems like Trump's deteriorating mind still has that old magic. At the Madison Square Garden Rally, Trump yet again made a reference to some hidden information that is very important but will be revealed in the few.
Starting point is 00:18:59 future, and in doing so, he got countless people to speculate about its true meaning, like a dog owner who can get a pack of Labrador's to run down the field by pretending to throw a tennis ball. This latest instance came in the form of Trump bragging about a, quote-unquote, little secret between him and House Speaker Mike Johnson. Because we can take the Senate pretty easily, and I think with our little secret, we're going to do really well with the House, right? Our little secret is having a big impact.
Starting point is 00:19:28 He and I have a secret. We'll tell you what it is when the race is over. What? What is he doing? That's it. I'm ready to say it. Trump has a pussy. What did he mean by this? So when asked about this little secret,
Starting point is 00:19:42 Speaker Mike Johnson played coy by saying this. By definition, a secret is not to be shared. And I don't intend to share this one. A secret is not to be shared. It's like, yes, like a fucking riddle or something. He's guarding a bridge. Yeah. A secret is not.
Starting point is 00:19:58 Not to be shared. How Speaker Littlefinger reacts to something said by Varis. However, Johnson reversed course when speaking to reporters at a small rally for a congressional candidate in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. When asked about the little secret by reporters, he claimed that it was a particular get-out-the-vote tactic. But he was enjoying all the wild speculation. What was the secret? Oh, the secret. There's too many cameras.
Starting point is 00:20:24 I can't take it. It's not scandalous, but we're having a ball with this. today because the media their heads are exploding what is the secret it's this it's this thing we have about it's a get out the boat it's a one of our tactics on get out the boat but they're convinced like you got this like I said I call them this morning I said Mr. President should I just like bloating no no magnet we're just having sport with them but he just came up with that spontaneously on the stage I mean he really does call it our secret you know what they're like but it's not that it's not diabolic i'm convinced now that like he actually
Starting point is 00:21:03 has no clue what the folk trump was talking about of course he doesn't like he's no trump isn't talking about our little secret there this is like a thing he's saying like yeah no we have an inside joke mike johnson like is doing trump impressions in the middle of it i know this video actually like made me like him a little bit like he was so willing to jump into the impression and he was so willing to sort of like make up an explanation i don't know guys i I think he's cool. This is the Jake. Jake Devil's Advocate, Trump supporter.
Starting point is 00:21:35 I've never actually listened to him speak before. His Trump impression isn't bad. The entertainer, Mike Johnson, rated by Jake. That's what the next Republican candidate is going to be, because they're like, how can they replace Trump? It's just someone doing a Trump impression. Yeah. And if he was here, you know what he would say?
Starting point is 00:21:52 Hello, my little kiddies. You're so beautiful. So beautiful tonight. So, I mean, it can't rule it the possibility that Mike Johnson just lying there, you know, or, but, you know, I wouldn't be, well, also wouldn't be surprising if it did refer to, like, something just small and mundane that was just sort of hyped up by Trump. You know, some more liberal leaning people thought that the little secret was actually a corrupt scheme to overturn the results of the election if Trump loses. Now, I have no doubt that Trump and his allies have corrupt schemes to overturn the results of the election. election, but not because he made a strange reference to a little secret, but because he already spearheaded many corrupt schemes to overturn the election last election. He
Starting point is 00:22:36 declared victory before the results were in. He pressured the Georgia Secretary of State to find votes for him. He asked Republican state legislators to reverse certified election results. He fired officials who defied him and replaced them with loyalists. His allies filed 63 lawsuits, all of which failed. Mike Flynn publicly called on the president to suspend the Constitution, silenced the press, and hold a new election under military supervision. Rudy Giuliani coordinated a plot to send fake electors to Congress. They pressured Mike Pence to reject the results of the election, even though he couldn't do that.
Starting point is 00:23:08 And when all else failed, he attempted a self-coup by sending a mob to Congress on January 6th. It sucks, man. This is their version of the Night of the Long Knives, and it's so fucking shitty. They're like, no, we weren't really ever going to do that. We weren't going to, like, you know, call and do a purge and, you know, put in a military government. Hitler would be so disappointed in him. He'd be like, what did they do? They killed a couple police officers and smeared shit on the wall.
Starting point is 00:23:37 Come on, man. Yeah. So for all those reasons, I think it's perfectly legitimate to speculate on the corrupt schemes that he might be involved in this time. But the reference to a little secret, I don't think is a mystery that's actually worth taking time to solve. Representative Dan Goldman speculated that the little secret might involve using the Republican control of the House to somehow overturn the election. We don't know, but I suspect Donald Trump's little secret plan with Mike Johnson is a backup plan for when he loses, and he tries to go to the House of Representatives to throw out the electoral college, the certification from the states, and have the House of Representatives under the leadership and the control and the gavel for Mike Johnson. Johnson and try to overturn this election. Sounds like a lot of news to me.
Starting point is 00:24:26 Yeah. It's great because Little Secret is so vague and weird that, like, everyone can make it whatever they want it to be. I mean, it's like, it's like the cheapest and dumbest form of clickbait you can get. Click here to learn a secret. The secrets that doctors don't want you to know. It's like, it doesn't have the same kind of artistry of maybe it's the call him before the storm.
Starting point is 00:24:45 It's just the dumbest, cheapest marketing curiosity gap bullshit. He's like, my father taught me a valuable trick in real estate sales when I was very young. And it was when you're ever down on a sale when you're losing it. You tell your opposition that you've got a secret. And they don't know what it is. They won't know what it is. And they'll drive themselves mad trying to figure out your secret. Okay, so perfectly applaud.
Starting point is 00:25:13 Like, I could totally see that he's like, ah, time to bring out the old I have a secret. In America, there are two types of politicians. one has a dream, the other has a secret. So Goldman there seems to be referring to a scenario in which for some reason no one wins the electoral college, possibly through a corrupt scheme. And then Republicans install Trump through a contingent election whereby the House of Representatives votes to determine the president. Now, to the best of my understanding, this is a hugely unlikely scenario. I do think if they're like obsessed about not spreading like Democrats stealing conspiracy theories, they shouldn't say when he loses.
Starting point is 00:25:53 Because, like, have you seen the polls? Like, he might win. It's pretty close. It's pretty close. The money is betting on him, but I think that's also a bit of opium because they want the kind of deregulated economy. That part might be, because there's a bunch of, like, really big Trump whales. I mean, this is, like, baking or whatever, but they might want to make the national
Starting point is 00:26:11 environment look more Trump-focused, like, they think that's intrinsically valuable. Yeah, I think they think it's intrinsically valuable to have a type of poll. Like, a lot of people, you know, if they're into the magic of the market and the market reveals all truths and is perfectly efficient, they think, yeah, like, this is more real than whatever Rasmussen is cooking up. Like, they want wealth voting to be real and this is their way of doing this. Oh, 100%. This reminds me a lot of, like, people trying to draw conclusions from, like, early voting data when, like, it's just you want to know something. Is there something that I can think about beforehand to prepare myself? It's like, you know, psyching yourself up before you order something in a restaurant if you're nervous.
Starting point is 00:26:52 It's like, there's something I can do before we get there. I believe in us. I don't think that there is. You just have to, like, fall into the void to some extent. I think we can achieve a Trump win and the replacement for like the woke woman outraged meme. We'll find a new one. That photo will be replaced. And we don't have to see that the girl with like the glasses and shit that they love posting.
Starting point is 00:27:15 I think it's worthwhile to speculate on how. they're going to try to subvert democratic norms this time because they're going to do it, you know, if he loses. I just object to giving Trump so much credit that you think every strange utterance he makes is worth decoding. Of course, Q and on had their own theories
Starting point is 00:27:31 about the significance of this. Twitter user Red Pill Patriot said this. They've been running a sting operation for the last eight years and the hammer comes down after Trump wins. Okay, the hammers. The hammers, it's so, it's crazy how like the iron has been
Starting point is 00:27:47 so hot for so long and the hammer is also about to strike. The hammer has been like just slowly in extreme slow motion coming down since 2016. And it was meant to, it was 2024. The whole time is 2024. We're trying to get the hammer to fall, but there's
Starting point is 00:28:03 a sickle. There's a sickle in the way and it keeps blocking the hammer. At the last moment, like the phone's like memory capacity for slow-mo runs out and the hammer just like comes down very quickly all of a sudden. The QAnon podcast X-22 report speculated that the little secret was some sort of big revelation, possibly connected
Starting point is 00:28:24 to Epstein or Diddy, that would guarantee Republicans to win. But we know something is about to happen, or he wouldn't have mentioned it. So there's something that's going to happen that's going to allow the Republicans to win. And that could be Epstein clientless, could be Diddy. It could be anything that's actually going to bring light to who these people really are. But let's see how this all plays out in the end. And you can see the Patriots, Trump, he's very, very confident. I do believe he has the people.
Starting point is 00:28:56 He knows it. And he's ready to go after the bad guys. And he's letting us know this. Why? Because the Patriots are in control. Well, I'm still astounded by this faith that if Trump says something, he has to be deliberate and it has to have significance. Like, part of this axiom is really what's driving a lot of, a lot of,
Starting point is 00:29:16 people to break their brains. God, all the promises are just not coming true. It's like four years of Democrats and we were told like, oh, we return to normalcy, you know, no more crises. Like, we won't have to talk about Trump wrong. And then this one, it's like, oh, Trump's going to fucking bring the hammer down, man.
Starting point is 00:29:33 The deep state's going to be hurting. And it's like, wrong. We've had four years. Four years for in both of those cases. How are there still people holding hope? It's crazy. Well, because they've gotten one more pedophile. You know, that's like, for eight years, it was like Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, Epstein.
Starting point is 00:29:49 And I was like, could be Epstein and Diddy? You know, like, we got one more. Like, there's one more name that we can list. Epstein and Diddy, really the salt and peppa of, uh, yeah, he said, yeah, he really, he, he said it so quick, did he, you know, like, did he even say it? I, like, I don't know, it was almost as if he's kind of embarrassed to sort of bring up that reference. What they're probably hoping for, and I'm just, you know, goose in a little bit is like, uh, they're hoping it's going to be like Beyonce. Like somebody who endorses the Democrat, like that'll be enough. It doesn't actually have to be any kind of a Democrat leader.
Starting point is 00:30:22 It'll just be somebody who like sang at a function or endorsed them because then they go look who endorsed. And if they, you know. Well, they could do like a Diddy's voter die campaign to like bring out the vote. Remember that? Right. Oh, that's right. Damn. I guess culture. Yeah, we are getting a bit of Hillary Clinton with the celebrity endorsement like ratio.
Starting point is 00:30:42 So maybe that's like what the Diddy's reaction to among these guys. Because it's like, yeah, what fucking kid rock? Like what Republican endorsements do they have that associate with Diddy? Yeah. Q&N podcaster Nino Rodriguez had a different interpretation. He claimed that some unnamed source told him that the Little Secret was somehow related to a routine training exercise involving helicopters and emergency vehicles, which was conducted at the U.S. Capitol on October 28th. I'm hearing that those drills are a direct result of Trump's Little Secret. So that's what I'm getting.
Starting point is 00:31:20 Now, I'm not going to say the source on that, but there's a lot of fear at the Capitol right now. There's a lot of fear. Nobody knows what moves are going to be made. They're preparing for them. This is not going to be like, this is not going to even be like 2020. It's not going to be like 2016. This is going to be a completely different animal. Nobody knows the sinister thing that's going to happen and who's going to do what.
Starting point is 00:31:44 We're all preparing. Yeah, I know. But, yeah, I mean, I have a feeling that the little secret is either something mundane or nothing at all. And Trump is not making a covert reference to a coming history changing plan, despite the fact he is almost certainly going to be involved in some sort of corrupt schemes to overturn the election if he loses. I will say, like, there's a Nick Monbitt of a conspiracy theory is that it's like, you know, we're going to destroy this. towers, but first off, the clues. And I will say, like, if there's anyone to do a conspiracy and leave clues,
Starting point is 00:32:17 it would be Trump. I don't think in this case, it works. Doing stand-up at a clan rally. Well, we've talked a little bit about Trump's Madison Square Guard in rally, and a couple of the speakers, perhaps the most noteworthy one in terms
Starting point is 00:32:33 of impact, was a comedian named Tony Hinchcliff, also known as Kill Tony, which is a sentence that I never thought I would be saying out loud in a thousand years. For those who are unaware of who he is, or I guess who were unaware before he made headlines, Tony is an Austin-based stand-up comic who hosts a show that's premise is bringing up random amateurs to do stand-up and potentially bomb in front of a panel of people, generally much funnier than Tony himself.
Starting point is 00:32:56 The show is large enough that some stand-ups drive to Austin and sleep in their cars just for a chance to be randomly selected for it. So a stand-up golden ticket, if you will. Mm-hmm. He's been a rising star in the right-wing alt-comedy scene. Because I've got a golden trance joke. I've got a golden trance joke. I've got a golden slur.
Starting point is 00:33:20 He's attached at the hip to Joe Rogan and his media affiliates, who've been trying to make some sort of entertainment scene that's free from quote-unquote cancel culture. And I've all made it their goal in recent years to ruin Texas's most liberal city, Austin, by concentrating themselves there. I've always thought of Tony, for my vague impressions of his show, as a culturally conservative comic,
Starting point is 00:33:38 but not an explicitly political one, which is like a very classic kind of stand-up guy, meaning he says absurdly racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. jokes, but then explicitly maintains that, you know, that it's not true, that it's all for the fun of it, and it's not political, et cetera. Which is not a defense of him, but, like, that's the general political landscape I thought he was.
Starting point is 00:33:57 But I was apparently proven wrong when he was booked for Trump's massive rally in New York, where he did all of the insanely offensive jokes he's regularly known for, except at a Trump rally. And as many of you likely already know, the context didn't translate all that well. Some of the jokes Tony made include a comment about a black person in the crowd eating
Starting point is 00:34:13 watermelon, the Israel-Palestine conflict being a game of rock paper scissors, where the Palestinians throw rocks, and, quote, the Jews have a hard time throwing that paper. Oh, fuck. And Latino is having a lot of children because, quote, they come inside, just like they do to our country. Okay. So he's saying that Mexicans are cream-pying the border? Yes, that is the Trump rally. statement he's making. That's funny, man. That's good. That's good. That's like a good, what you
Starting point is 00:34:41 want to do is that this is the conservative party. Yeah, but they don't want the racism to be blatant. They want the dog, the dog whistles is what they like. But when somebody gets up and actually starts saying like, like really just flat out like racism, like naked, naked and unafraid. Like you could tell even in the crowd that people are like, ha ha ha, uh, uh, you know, like it's. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, it's, it's interesting though, because Trump started with the, like, Mexicans, they're coming and they're raping people or whatever. Oh, yeah. He's vile.
Starting point is 00:35:12 But one of the potential differences relates to the joke that grabbed the most attention out of his 12-minute comedy set, which was his comments on Puerto Rico. I don't know if you guys know this, but there's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. Yeah. I think it's called Puerto Rico. Okay. All right.
Starting point is 00:35:33 Okay. We're getting there. Yeah, it's just like the normal kill time. I watched, I've watched Kill Tony before. YouTube wants me to be big fans of Kill Tony. Yeah, my TikTok is like, have you seen this Kill Tony guy? Yeah, YouTube is basically like, are you interested in Kill Tony police arrest videos or like guys like showing off their firearms in their living room?
Starting point is 00:35:54 Like that's what it basically wants. Shane Gillis is also in there. It's like, we want you to be into Shane Gillis, Guns, and Kill Tony and a little bit of body cam footage. In typical Trump campaign style, it seems that while he's elected, to say almost anything, even those around him have to follow the normal rules of political discourse in America, as the backlash from this joke in particular has been quite massive, with Tony receiving front-page headlines in most major American news orcs, and, among other
Starting point is 00:36:19 things, Google searches for Tony Hinchcliffe, becoming more than twice as common as searches for Taylor Swift in the last week. RIP, your Algos, anybody who's searching for Tony, that's all you're going to see now. Following coverage of the joke, a few major Puerto Rican celebrities endorsed Kamala almost immediately, such as Bad Bunny, Ricky Martin, and Jennifer Lopez. Okay. Puerto Rican singer Nikki Jam, who campaigned with Trump in PA and was introduced by Trump as a reason that every Puerto Rican should vote for him, also withdrew his endorsement of the candidate
Starting point is 00:36:48 a few days later. Another example is on October 31st, LeBron James endorsed Kamala, and in the tweet where he did so, he attached a clip of the Kill Tony set. But it seems like this may not have only swayed celebrities. A piece from Politico, for instance, observed a handful of Puerto Rican voters' opinions on the joke who live in Pennsylvania. And it seems that it may have meant something, to quote from the piece. This was just like a gift from the gods, said Victor Martinez, an Allentown resident who owns the Spanish language radio station LaMega, noting some Puerto Rican voters in the area have been on the fence about voting at all.
Starting point is 00:37:18 If we weren't engaged before, we're all paying attention now, Martinez said. He added, the morning radio show he hosts was chock full of callers Monday, sounding off on the Trump rally comments, including a Puerto Rican Trump supporter who is now telling people not to vote for the former president. Well, yeah, I mean, it's not great to have someone at your rally call. an entire voting block of Floating Island of Garbage. It's also not even a very well-crafted joke, to be perfectly honest. Like, it's not that funny. Yeah, it's just a bad joke. It's absolute hack shit.
Starting point is 00:37:47 No, a lot of Tony's kind of hack. Like, it's, people aren't used to a part of stand-up that used to be like a very saturated market, which is just guy who's like super offensive. Yes. It's like, oh, you know, I'm saying, like, Jimmy Carr was like an example. Like, he used to do just like kind of hack. Like, oh, I'm like, look at how insanely offensive I'm getting. Jesselnik was like that.
Starting point is 00:38:04 He was like very dark, very offensive, yeah. Because that market doesn't exist anymore, like the fact that, like, Tony is able to occupy that and exist in an area where, like, quote, unquote, cancel culture isn't affecting him. Gives him an opportunity to be, like, especially hack, I feel like. Yeah. And besides just being morally reprehensible, Tony's joke blowing up in his face may also have been a strategic blunder for the Trump campaign. As 450,000 Puerto Ricans live in Pennsylvania, one of the narrowest swing states in the country that Biden won by less than 100,000 votes in 2020. Oh my God, this would be so insane if Trump fucking lost because he brought Kill Tony up on his thing because some campaign, you know, somebody told him they were like, oh, this guy is like hot and they've got, you know, conservative young men is their audience, you know, this. Baron Trump has been doing his social media strategy, like all those interviews and shit that he's been doing with comedians and stuff like that with like, you know, whatever, streamers and YouTubers and shit.
Starting point is 00:39:00 That's all like his son Barron. Yeah, White Hat Baron going around and actually doesn't want his dad to be president again because it's such a pain in his ass. So he's going around, White Hat, behind the scenes, he's like, he's blowing it up from the inside. Shout out to you, Baron. And if you want to text me back about the thing we talked about, our little secret, you can hit me back on Signal, please. They're playing 2K. Aaron and Jay. He's going to get me a face scan of his dad so I can ball on the court as Trump.
Starting point is 00:39:31 and lose. It's a way that I can be bad at the game and not feel, and pretend like I'm doing it on purpose. It was inevitable that Jake would look up to Barron, who's a tall man with good hair. He is so tall, and his hair is so good. And he's a white hat. He's going
Starting point is 00:39:47 on Logan Paul. Logan Paul, they're drinking prime. They're eating Mr. Bees. I like my cheese. Ripie, bro. They're eating Mr. Bees, moldy luncheables. And he's slowly destroying my campaign from the inside, but he's pretending like he's helping,
Starting point is 00:40:05 but he's much smarter than me. I should have never set him to school, Baron. We should have kept him in front of Gall of Duty. Gull of Duty, killed K-D-Ratio high, but now it's low because he's going on Logan Paul and he's eating luncheables with Mr. B, Mr. Bistibles, full of mold. I'm going to stuff you into a ballot box and light me on fire. I will say also there was a clip of Joe Roken in August. saying that Trump should hire kill Tony to do, like, roast jokes about his opponents? So, like, yeah, no. That's great, Joe.
Starting point is 00:40:38 So is the Republican response to this. While many politicians, including Trump, would distance themselves from Tony's comments, some of the less politically savvy right-wing operators would initially stand behind him, with Trump's VP candidate, J.D. Vance, saying this. Again, I haven't seen the joke. I, you know, maybe it's a stupid racist joke, as you said. Maybe it's not. I haven't seen it.
Starting point is 00:40:59 I'm not going to comment on the specific. specifics of the joke, but I think that we have to stop getting so offended at every little thing in the United States of America. I'm just, I'm so over it. Another very intelligent right-wing operator, Matt Walsh, immediately reacted to the outrage surrounding Tony in a tweet that read this. I hope everyone appreciates the masterful strategy here. Trump is goading the Dems into spending their final week crying about jokes. They are absolutely taking the bait.
Starting point is 00:41:24 They can't help themselves. Just a master at work right now, Matt Walsh. a genius of getting people to vote. Tony himself also pushed back against negative attention by, for instance, Tim Walds, who spoke negatively of Tony's stand-up set on a Twitch stream with AOC. He would quote tweet the Kamla HQ Twitter account
Starting point is 00:41:42 when it posted a clip of Tim talking about the joke, saying this. These people have no sense of humor. Wild that a vice presidential candidate would take the time out of his quote-unquote busy schedule to analyze a joke taken out of context to make it seem racist. I love Puerto Rico and vacation there.
Starting point is 00:41:59 I made fun of everyone. Watch the whole set. I'm a comedian, Tim. Might be time to change your tampon. Which is this fucking thing. They love to be like, Tim Walls wants to put tampons in the boys' bathroom. It's like, who gives a fucking shit?
Starting point is 00:42:14 They're mad that it's in the girls' bathroom, aren't they? They're like, no one should have access to tampons. I feel like that's the line. Why are you thinking about tampon? What? These people don't make any fucking sense to me. I don't know. They're just so fucking obsessed with the genital stuff.
Starting point is 00:42:28 but also it's like taken out of context like what other context do you need like you're at a Trump rally like you changed the context you're did you or did you not call fucking Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage well and also I think it's you know I think this could also
Starting point is 00:42:46 be interpreted as that like 90s misogynist like humor that's just like oh you got your panties in a bunch or time to change your tampon you on your period you crabby you know like that kind of like There is like a contingent of comedians, I think specifically around this sort of like Austin collective, you know, that is trying to like take comedy back to 97, you know, you could say retard, you could say F slurs, you could say this stuff, it's just comedy, like, you know, everybody's so offended. We can't do our jobs anymore. But it's like, I saw Anthony Jessenlich talking about this.
Starting point is 00:43:21 He made a good point. He's like, if people are offended, like you fucked up. Like you didn't do your job. Like you can get away with saying like horrible shit. But if you do it in a way that's like smart and clever and like, you know, that you're kind of... He said funny specifically. It has to actually be funny. Yeah, funny and punching up, you know, not punching down on people.
Starting point is 00:43:40 There is ways that you can get away with that and have everybody laughing and on your side. And when you don't, it means like you just kind of didn't do your job. Like, and I agree with that. Yeah, the joke just didn't land. It's interesting that like that sort of, you know, it's just joke standup culture is coming back a bit. but it's explicitly political. Yeah, totally. It's like people, like,
Starting point is 00:44:01 Tony's still pretending that it's like not, but then he's doing it at Trump rallies. So I guess like the defense is pretty fragile here. Yeah. Unless he put out like a Nathan for You style video that showed him videotaping like the months, the weeks up to doing the rally, he's like, I'm fucking infiltrating.
Starting point is 00:44:18 They're idiots. They fucking hired me. I'm going to get up there and do a fucking bunch of like racist-ass jokes for these like these white MAGA supporters and like we're going to fucking, we're going to tank. it for it. See, Jake is able to detect and come up with the most common
Starting point is 00:44:31 conspiracy theory. He's amazing. You don't even know what you just did. You're a fucking genius. Is that what they're saying? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, buddy. Maybe I am still billed. Still peeled. Still still still built. Wow. He's still got it, folks. 300 episodes
Starting point is 00:44:47 in. In relation to the politically neutral vibe that I said I got from Tony before, it seems like a lot of his fans generally agree with me. As the Kill Tony subreddit has been pretty upset about him doing his at a Trump rally. One of the highest up-weighted comment chains on the main thread about his set, user said this, for instance.
Starting point is 00:45:03 Call me crazy. I don't think roast comedy and political events mix, like, at all. Nah, not at all. He's endorsing Trump while telling racist jokes. That's like making a Jewish joke at a Holocaust museum and acting surprised people think you're anti-Semitic. Lemafow. I was wondering what you were going to...
Starting point is 00:45:19 I was wondering how you were going to pronounce that last word. But while Trump and Kiltony fans alike have distanced themselves from his set. It seems that for the most part, Trump's staff had okayed what he said. According to Mark Caputo for the bulwark, staffers claim that Tony ad-lib the line about Puerto Rico. Yet besides basically this line, the rest of the absurdly offensive jokes Tony said on stage had been pre-approved. According to staffers, only one joke of Tony's was rejected by them, where Tony reportedly planned to call Kamala the Seaword. That's so awesome. Uh, yeah, you, uh, well, yeah, they're like, calling the vice president a
Starting point is 00:45:57 cunt would be so fuck. I mean, you're not in Australia, bro. To quote him. Campaign staffers had asked all speakers to submit drafts of their speeches ahead of time, before they were loaded into the teleprompter, according to the aforementioned sources. Once the objectionable cunt joke was...
Starting point is 00:46:12 Jesus Christ. Once the objectionable cunt joke was spotted, the sources said, a staffer asked Hinchcliff to strike it. He complied. The sources insist that Hinchcliff ad-libbed his most offensive material, but were divided over whether the campaign knew about the joke, accusing Hispanics of having unprotected sex, a double entendre about how they, quote,
Starting point is 00:46:28 come inside the country. That's good. That's good. Comedy. Yeah, we've missed the most absurd reaction to Tony's joke of all, the right-wing conspiracy theorists, who seemed to claim that Tony was some sort of undercover white hat,
Starting point is 00:46:40 supposedly working for the Trump campaign, but only in order to sabotage it from within. Oh. So there you go. My theory, exactly. Exactly. No, I didn't say that that was my theory. I was just saying, like,
Starting point is 00:46:51 he could have come out on top if he did that. That would have been funny. That would have been the only way those jokes would have been funny. Yeah, exactly. Why are you so defensive, Jake? I'm not. Okay.
Starting point is 00:47:01 Known more on Jack Prasobiak, for instance, found it fishy that Kamala Harris posted her plan for providing economic aid to Puerto Rico on October 27, the day of Trump's Madison Swear Guard an event. He quoted Kamala's post on it by saying this. How did the Kamala campaign know to release a Puerto Rico video earlier today? Curious! Makes you think. Which, that is crazy luck, I will say, by Kamala, that it literally is the day of.
Starting point is 00:47:26 It's like, yeah, by the way, like, Trump ruined Puerto Rico economically and didn't properly respond to, you know, this disaster. Like, I won't do that. From the guy who tried to live stream the basement underneath common ping pong comes another awesome theory based on timestamps. They love their time stamps. It's difficult to find the exact origin of the theory that Kill Tony was a secret plant. In a post-QAnon world, there are, of course, no such thing as coincidences. And the fact, Kamala released her plan to aid Puerto Rico if she becomes president the day of the floating. pile of garbage gaff was enough for many on the right to draw some sort of connection here.
Starting point is 00:48:00 I saw this take in some capacity basically everywhere I looked where there were right wingers on 4chan, Twitter, and Reddit, many pointing out how Tony has a supposedly gay voice and some speculating on whether or not he's Jewish, while Tony is neither Jewish nor gay, that did not stop users from speculating, of course. I do feel like this is where our Patreon comments kind of like join the chance, because that people are constantly debating whether you have gay voice. That's true. Does she have gay voice or not? Guys, really, please,
Starting point is 00:48:30 come and comment under our 300th episode. Especially those who just always comment Live Agar, like that there's so many people, they just go, Live Agar. Tell us, what do you think? Gay voice or not. Am I a plant? This is more important than the presidential fucking polls.
Starting point is 00:48:44 I'm more interested, do I have Jewish voice? Which is... Do not. Do not weigh in on that one, please. Yeah, which is kind of what... It sounds like somebody who has a cold or, you know, bad sinus problems. Yeah, weigh in on the comments or message me personally or publicly on Twitter.
Starting point is 00:49:03 Okay. With our powers combined, we make Tony and Chklee. We make it. It's like Voltron where like different pieces of me and live formed together to make one gay Jewish robot. We need Julian to make the offensive jokes as well. Julian, yeah, Julian can be the gun. Julian can be the gun that forms in our hand. No, I am not the slur gun on a gondom.
Starting point is 00:49:29 Yes, you are. Yes, you are. Travis, you can be the sword, I guess. The light sword. Which isn't an analogy. It is just a sword. If you put a gun to Travis's head and ask him what we're talking about, you couldn't tell you.
Starting point is 00:49:46 He was one example of a post like this on 4chan's politically incorrect board, the same one that brought us QAnonon. It was a coordinated attack. Somebody somewhere booked this. this no-name Jew to well-poison shills and bots on standby ready to deploy manufactured outrage attack. Look at that goddamn nose, those teeth, that smile, you know in your heart it to be true. Why the fuck was a comedian doing a set at a fucking Trump rally? That doesn't happen. It's a great question. It's the same question that I was asking myself. What's going on here?
Starting point is 00:50:17 I mean, don't they have like Jim Brewer and like Rob Schneider? Like they have a couple comedians in the bag, you know? They know better than wheeling either of those morons for a fucking Trump rally. Yeah, kill Tony is like a huge get. But the thing is, Tony is at his best when he's commenting on other people's stuff and then getting made fun of by his friends. That's, he's kind of like me in that regard. You know, he's sort of best in the pocket like where he is on his show. Front and center, you know, I, and maybe I'm just unfamiliar with his, his comedy, but front and center, it definitely felt like he was out of it, you know, out of his place. Yeah, it was a little It was a little weird.
Starting point is 00:50:53 Although this is kind of a perfect conclusion for that kind of Joe Rogan, edgy, like, Austin, anti-cancel culture, like, click, which is them, like, thinking, oh, okay, cool. Like, I guess cancel culture isn't a thing anymore. Like, we've defeated it. We can just start saying offensive shit. It's kind of what happened with, like, Elon buying Twitter where he's like, oh, like, the cancel culture stuff is gaykeeping. We can just, like, make all of our offensive shit again.
Starting point is 00:51:15 And they realize the consequences of saying offensive shit, which is that a lot of people don't like it. Like, that's why this happened in the first place. Was because people were like, no, I don't like it as a Puerto Rican when you say that Puerto Rico is a floating heap of garbage. Yeah. Yeah. So beautiful conclusion, beautiful self-October surprise from the Trump campaign. Yes, we love it.
Starting point is 00:51:36 Panda Eyes goes mainstream. On Halloween night, former President Trump appeared at a live Tucker Carlson event in Glendale, Arizona. But before Trump and Tucker spoke, RFK Jr's former running mate, Nicole Shanahan, took the stage to promote a Q&ON conspiracy theory. Shanahan was referenced in a recent New York Times story about Elon Musk. The Times story said that Musk has offered his own sperm to friends and acquaintances. Apparently, this is part of his general campaign to increase the birth rate. I like the idea that he's offering it to like his male friends too.
Starting point is 00:52:12 Yeah, yeah. Like, in case you need it. Musk suggested to Shanahan that he could offer his own sperm via in vitro fertilization, should she want to expand her family. For sure, yeah, it was like only in vitro, though. If there's any other methods you were thinking of, definitely, Zelomask, I'm not going to do those ones. Shanahan, who has a child with her former husband, Google co-founder, Sergey Brin, is said to have declined the offer. So she's, like, in with the insane Silicon Tech.
Starting point is 00:52:43 Oh, yeah. Okay, that's great. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it sounds like, I mean, like, yeah, recent, recent reporting about her have not been flattering. She seems like a real social climber in the tech world. At this event, Nicole Shanahan made an odd reference to a Halloween costume worn by First Lady Jill Biden. She wore a simple, like, zip-up panda suit, and this was a reference to the fact that the Smithsonian's National Zoo welcomed two giant pandas from China just a couple weeks ago. But Shanahan suggested that the panda costume was actually something much more horrible, but she didn't specify what. So she actually alluded to a particularly deranged QAnon conspiracy theory, which claims that the cabal uses panda symbolism to refer to children who are so severely abused that their eyes wilt.
Starting point is 00:53:30 They are hurt so badly that the area around their eyes swell and blacken so that they have panda-like eyes. Jesus Christ. I know. It's very dark. It's very sick. What are you doing thinking about this kind of stuff? Like, oh my God. This is like early Qaeda and stuff too.
Starting point is 00:53:47 Like, your mind is so ruined. If you see, like, a panda suit and you think of, like, abused children. Yeah. And not just abused children, but ones who are so bad that their eyes wilt and darken? Like, oh, God. Yeah. It's pretty sick. And it's also, like, just based on nothing real.
Starting point is 00:54:05 But the crowd seemed to recognize what she was talking about. Oh, great. Right in front of our eyes, the parading of Jill Biden at a panda suit. yesterday right in front of our eyes what the hell is this mockery no more no more
Starting point is 00:54:30 no more no more no more narrator there would be many more and these people would do nothing to stop it it's so weird that she didn't even bring up the conspiracy theory that like if you're in the like no one knows who pandas is in that crap they're like oh i guess the panda suit is bad i don't like oh okay we're not doing pandasuits anymore
Starting point is 00:54:59 i suppose it's possible i suppose it's possible that they that they didn't know but they were just so caught up and like you know sort of like taking the lead of the speaker that they were like they were shouting and stuff i don't know it seemed to me that they were they were reacting to what she was talking about as if you know as if they knew it's tough to say say. I would love if a portion of that audience was like, yes, we should not, the pandas should be left alone in their natural habitat. No more, no more mocking, mocking that we, you know, capture these majestic animals and put them in captivity. There's probably a, like, portion of them that just think that that means Joe Biden's enthrall to China. Yeah, probably. That was through, yeah. Well, that's possible. No more, no more. But they, you know, it doesn't matter. The speaker's mad about it. She seems to know something about it, that it means something. And I can just interpret what it is.
Starting point is 00:55:49 I know that it's bad. Is it Joe Biden in China? Is it imagining abused children? Like, it doesn't matter. They all already think Joe Biden is a Chinese pedophile, so it's fun. Of course, Q&N followers online immediately picked up on what she was talking about. One said this. I grew up in the 60s and 70s and 80s celebrating wearing Halloween costumes to go trick-or-treating,
Starting point is 00:56:13 and then adult parties slash events and I never saw anyone wearing a panda costume or panda face makeup. The evil people are making fun or signaling their sick intentions towards children. Like, no one would ever think of a panda costume on their own. Like, it has to be a reference to beating children. No, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:56:31 No one considered animal costumes, specifically pandas, until the cabal is, you know what, we're going to start doing panda sort of costumes to reference something really, really sick. Panda masks are like a standard at like, you know, dress-up stores. Yeah. And it was really wild is that this was not from like a QAnon event. This is an event in which Tucker Carlson, one of the most mainstream right-wing pundits,
Starting point is 00:56:54 interviewed Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president. And they're like straight up talking, not just like QAnon shit, but like this years old, really sick Q&A, like Pizza Gate level conspiracy theories. In 2020, especially like after the election, I thought like, oh, okay, QNon is mainstream. It's fully integrated in the right. I didn't realize the extent to which they could integrate it. I feel like we haven't seen anything yet. I think it's going to get worse.
Starting point is 00:57:18 Regardless of which way it goes in terms of the election. Well, Liv, your training is complete. Well, all right. You've earned your stripes. Think it's only going to get worse no matter what. Welcome, welcome. You are officially one of us. Still staged.
Starting point is 00:57:38 Brett Mizellis sat nervously in the vast intimidating conference room. Large glass letters, MSNBC, were mounted on the pristine white walls looming over him. It was the last place Brett wanted to be. In fact, he never wanted to be a journalist at all. How the fuck did he go from editing videos for the Ellen DeGeneres show to running one of the most credible media outlets of all time, Midas touch. Everything they touched turned to news. And the news was business, and business was booming. So what the hell was he doing here, waiting to talk to a bunch of amateurs at MSNBC
Starting point is 00:58:23 about a surprise so October it could get him and his brothers killed? It's because I'm a patriot. Brett whispered softly to himself as the suits poured into the room, each with their own personal assistant trailing a few feet behind them. Once everyone had settled, an older man towards the head of the sleek-looking conference table stood up and gestured to Brett. Our guest needs no introduction. Brett, we are honored to have you here.
Starting point is 00:58:47 We always knew the Republicans would believe any sack of beans you sold them. Boys over at Fox have had that market corner for decades, but you, my friend, you were able to do something far more impressive. You unlocked the secrets of the neoliberal brain and discovered the precise
Starting point is 00:59:02 temperature at which it boils. And we couldn't be more grateful to you and your three brothers. I think he's only got to. But for some reason, I wrote three and I'm not going to change it. Okay. Brett blushed a little. He tried to nod in a way that exuded humility, but it was tough to be humble.
Starting point is 00:59:21 Four billion views, 113,000 posts, 16 podcasts. That's a lot of podcasts. Brett leaned forward in his chair and coughed a little, clearing his throat. I wish my brothers could be here with me. I could use their support with what I'm about to tell you. you. Everyone leaned in. The assistants raised their notebooks. You could hear an uncrustable rapper hit the ground. We at the Midas Touch Network have uncovered proof that the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Butler, PA was 100% staged by the Trump campaign itself. Everyone in the
Starting point is 00:59:57 room gasped. Brett kept going. We've got the shooter ready to talk. He's willing to go on the record as well as the three police officers who helped him up onto that roof. One reporter in the conference room shook her head in disbelief, asking, and what about the firefighter, the hero? Is he willing to go on record as well? Brett sighed and shook his head. Uh, uh, uh, unfortunately, ma'am, uh, that death, uh, was real. Brett noticed some of the journalists losing interest.
Starting point is 01:00:24 The senior editor, the stern older gentleman at the head of the table, spoke up. Go on, son. Tell us what happened. Brett was sweating a little bit. It was the first time he had broken the story out loud. Until now, it had been nothing more than some blurry JPEX, a whisper of a post. The gun was supposed to shoot blanks
Starting point is 01:00:42 Brett stammered Trump had ketchup packets in his shoes The shooter would fire 45 falls to the ground He gets up catch up from his shoe And Secret Service picks him up for the photo shoot Time magazine person of the year
Starting point is 01:00:55 He wins the election Brett paused for a moment to catch his breath He looked down the table Locking eyes with the man at the end of the table But Something went wrong Whoever loaded the blanks They fucked up
Starting point is 01:01:07 And when the actor they hired to play the shooter, pulled the trigger. Blam! Brett's head slammed against the conference table, a stream of blood pouring from one of his nostrils. One of the journalists unscrewed a silencer from the MK23 Socom pistol. They delicately handed the still smoldering weapon
Starting point is 01:01:20 to one of the assistants who handed it to another assistant who then disappeared. The man at the head of the table began passing leather-bound dossiers out to everyone in the room. These are non-disclosure agreements, guaranteeing that the events that have just transpired inside this conference room are never spoken of again. Should one of you even get
Starting point is 01:01:38 the inkling of an idea to go public with this, remember what happened to Don Lemon. A couple of the journalists shuddered. So unless being drunk in Times Square on New Year's Eve sounds like your idea of a fun time, I highly suggest you all suffer short-term memory loss. But, sir? All heads whipped around to see a younger reporter,
Starting point is 01:01:57 barely 24, holding up her hand. Don't you think the people have a right to know that Trump stage the whole thing? The man laughed. Not if we want him to win. A couple of the other senior reporters laughed, mocking the young woman as they filed out of the conference room. As room emptied, only a handful of assistants were left. One of them was typing furiously into their phone.
Starting point is 01:02:19 Turns out, there was another patriot in that stuffy conference room, besides the now-deceased Midas brother. If MSNBC wouldn't publish this story, it was up to her to leak it. On October 26, 2024, former congressional candidate and current conspiracy theorist Rebecca Jones tweeted this. A friend who works in one of the newsrooms that was pitched the secret Trump story says it wasn't about groping a minor. She says it was about the staged assassination attempt in Butler. Apparently, everyone is too afraid of political retribution to touch it. 5.6 million views. 63,000 likes.
Starting point is 01:02:55 15,000 retweets. The only thing that makes me feel good is that all of those stats are, of course, fake, because it's Elon Musk. You can keep telling yourself that, Liv. I will say, as someone who gets a lot of Twitter likes, I get way more. now. They did the Reddit thing where it's not the actual like amount. It's like some weird simulate. Like it's proportionate. Like the ones who are getting more likes, they're getting more likes. But I feel like it's like half at least. So you're saying that Elon Musk is empowering young women. Exactly. That's exactly what I'm saying. He's amplifying their reach. He's
Starting point is 01:03:26 an ally. He is basically. Thank you, Elon. That was quick. That was a nice. I think we should end the episode there. Now, to provide a little bit of context, Jessica Jones was the woman who claimed to be a whistleblower in 2020 after she was fired from her job managing a COVID-19 data dashboard. She claimed that Florida health officials had forced her to manipulate data to hide positive COVID case numbers, but after conducting an investigation, Florida's OIG found zero evidence supporting her claim, that in fact her firing had not been related to any kind of political retaliation, but instead because she kept posting confidential information online. This feels like a weird one where like God forgot to make her
Starting point is 01:04:08 conservative before she was born. You know, like there's a wire. Yes, totally. Oh my God, that's such a funny way. There are a couple people like that, I feel like, nowadays. Despite this, Jones posted a document online that she claimed was a dismissal letter from the Florida Commission on Human Relations that seemed to validate her claims. This letter turned out to be a forgery. Awesome.
Starting point is 01:04:29 This also wouldn't be the first time that Jones posted misinformation. On September 1st of this year, Jones claimed to break the story that Melania Trump had filed for divorce over Labor Day weekend. and included a doctored newsweek headline to support her claim. After the story was found to be completely false, Jones posted this. Within two hours, I made up a rumor about a presidential candidate. AI generated, quote-unquote, news sites reported it as fact. Journalists shared it.
Starting point is 01:04:53 Community notes incorrectly fact-checked it. Nothing stopped its spread. Millions saw it. Key influencers knew what was happening and played along. Imagine if we organized and decided to create real disinformation. Imagine if we were the alt-right. Like, is this a pitch? Is she pitching this idea?
Starting point is 01:05:10 Oh, no. This is so bad. She's out of her mind. She's out of her fucking gorgie. She has like a pretty long legal rap sheet too. I figured it wasn't necessarily relevant to this topic. But like, yeah, problematic person for sure. Like blue and on by never Trump Republicans who are like temporarily pro-democrats is amazing.
Starting point is 01:05:33 This is my, like talk about being pilled. My little pet theory is that the never-Trump. like Republicans switched political like sides but never actually changed. And so what's happening is they are funneling their own conspiratorial selves that they always have been, but with different, you know, with different targets and are trafficking conspiratorial thinking to, you know, a neoliberal audience. I don't have any proof. But every time, every time I click on one of these fucking people who's like doing some outrageous Bluenon baking, they're retweeting the same like eight to ten people
Starting point is 01:06:09 it's all the same I'm not gonna name names but like it's a very concentrated group so despite the poster's history of lying and posting conspiracy theories the quote media killed the fake assassination story tweet went viral earning 5.6 million views and 63,000 likes as we said before
Starting point is 01:06:29 as I scroll through the replies to the tweet all of the usual suspects began to pop up like flagrant conspiracy theorist and former MAGA supporter Jack Hopkins, not his real name. He writes three fire emojis in response to this and goes, bring it. Now, the fire emoji is kind of Jack's like signature sign-off. And just as a sidebar, if you go through his replies, it's mostly just hundreds of flame emojis and little elves.
Starting point is 01:06:57 Why don't you, I would like the podcast posts to scroll down. Now, the first image is, you know, you can see like, I don't know, probably 20 flame emoji. replies. But look at that second image. See all those tiny little lines in the middle of the page? Those are all flame emoji replies to random users. There's a hundred flame emoji replies. Easily, easily a hundred. He must have like a flame emoji bot. Yeah. Now, the listener, unfortunately, Ken, I wish you were here next to me in my living room, sipping my coffee, arms around one another. You could, you too could be looking at these screenshots, which are essentially just a Roman column of flame emojis. And words cannot describe how impressive. the amount of replies is. Let me just repeat. So wait, so if a listener's in the room, you'd be like hugging them. Yeah, of course. You'd both be watching the same screen. Arms around the shoulders, you know. Friends, real friends.
Starting point is 01:07:48 Hell yeah. Real friends. Not fake, not fake podcast ones. Yeah, yeah. Jack also retweeted Jones's tweet to his 279,000 followers, this guy is so he's like twice and then some as many followers as our podcast has. Not that I'm jealous
Starting point is 01:08:05 or anything. I'm just saying these, this is big, these, this is a massive reach. And he writes, staged assassination attempt, we knew it. Yeah. We knew it. It's true. And Jack was an early supporter of the staged assassination theory. In fact, this was his pinned tweet as of July
Starting point is 01:08:21 27th, two weeks after the assassination attempt in Butler, PA. And it reads, the FBI has some answering to do. We've seen a close up picture of Trump's right ear that was posted by at Pete Sousa and presumably taken by the Associated Press. The assassination attempt was just
Starting point is 01:08:37 14 days ago. Trump is 78 years old. 78 year old human beings heal far more slowly as the tweets cut off, but I guess that's what he's saying. Trump is healed too quickly for an old man. Yeah, he's got that wolverine blood. But not that wolverine hair, unfortunately. I'm seeing skin in the picture under, you know, under the hair. I know that pain. So I went to check out Jack's Instagram page to see what his other content is like. And it is an absolute nightmare. I've included his screenshot for our hosts. And the vibes are like somewhere between ancient aliens, life coaching, and political influence. A real nasty stuff. We got front of the show Tom Arnold on.
Starting point is 01:09:21 Yeah, Tom's on. And it's so funny. Like, it makes a lot of sense because before Jack catered to terrified liberals, he wore many different hats, calling himself, quote, the anxiety doc, a quote, body language expert, a quote, hypnotherapist. and a quote, alpha male. Oh, yeah. That's the most, the highest paying job of all, the alpha. That's, you know how they have, like, the, like, I don't know, like, white men for Kamala. I think, like, anxiety docs for Kamala, body language textbooks for Kamala, hypnotherapist for Kamala, alpha males for Kamala.
Starting point is 01:09:57 Let's do it. We're going to get this woman elected folks. And, like, all of his content is essentially, like, he's still doing the anxiety doc stuff. Like, if you watch his little kind of, like, Twitter videos, he'll be like, look, I know a lot of you guys are unsure about the possibility of World War III. Oh, God. And it's okay for everybody to be terrified. But, you know, when human beings are terrified, there's a piece of our brain. And it's built to actually support us.
Starting point is 01:10:24 Like, he's doing, like, fighter flight, sort of, like, life coach type of stuff, but just, like, applying it to the filter of politics. And so he, of course, needs politics to be chaotic and dangerous and constantly on the brink of chaos for him to kind of step in and be the rational voice telling you to calm down, you know, calm your brain, you know, say your mantra, quietly step into the ballot box, vote Kamala, you know, like, it's very weird. Wow. But just to give you an idea of like where this guy came from, here he is on the quote, rational male podcast in 2019 before he realized the error of his past ways. and totally changed. Fun fact, that was the name of this podcast before I joined. Travis would disagree. He'd be like, well, two of the hosts are very irrational.
Starting point is 01:11:12 I think that the challenging thing for my current wife, and I think, frankly, a challenging thing for any woman I would be involved with or married to, as we've talked about before, Pat, I'm an alpha guy. I'm very much a believer in that I'm the man here at home. And for me, that has certain connotations. It means that we can make all kinds of joint decisions. And sometimes you make a decision that I go, cool, that's fine. But ultimately, I'm the buck stops here guy.
Starting point is 01:11:49 When we can't agree, there has to be someone who is the decider. And that is me. It's really incredible to like hear someone talk about being an alpha men. which is a categorization among a kind of gathering of men, right, where you're the alpha of that pack. But instead you're referencing just you being alone with your wife. You're just like dominating her or whatever, like as the best male in your living room.
Starting point is 01:12:16 Yeah, I was going to say, like, anytime you start a sentence with the challenging thing for my current wife, like, how many wives have you had? How many will you have? Yeah, what's going on here, buddy? Or I think it's totally fair to assume that one possibility could be that their ideology hasn't changed at all. They just realized where there was more money. You know, they found a new grift.
Starting point is 01:12:40 I mean, and this guy has had, you know, a bunch of different online grifts where he's been an ex, you know, he's positioned himself as an expert of something. And he saw where the winds were trending and decided to hop in. I mean, it could very well be that they believe none of this, that they don't believe any of this stuff. I think it's very telling that he gets so many views. on like this fucked up blue-in-on conspiracy theory garbage, and he has a blue check mark, which means he's probably monetizing them. Sure is.
Starting point is 01:13:08 Another booster of the theory was former DNC consultant, journalist, researcher, and podcaster Andrea Chalupa. In fact, she quote-tweeted Jones's post and reminded followers that she had been pushing the staged assassination theory all the way back on July 13th of this year with a post-reading... Trump with his NRI supporters
Starting point is 01:13:27 and sci-op experts are crazy enough to stage this so he can be the invincible strong man. And she's included the very famous picture of Trump with his fists up. So, you know, I know that Andrea follows Travis on Twitter, which is crazy, because how can you be a fan of Travis M. View and then post garbage like this without being a little bit ashamed? I mean, look at me. I basically had to stop fooling around with conspiracies because Travis had become my friend and coworker. And every time I felt that XR red pill seeping into my bloodstream, I would imagine his watchful eye and do something healthier. So,
Starting point is 01:13:58 So, shame on you. Wait, why is Travis M view? What's the M stand for? I just made up like a middle initial because I thought it would be funny. Okay, but make up, now finish the creative exercise. What do you mean? What's the name? What's the name?
Starting point is 01:14:12 What does the M stand for? Oh, Mateus. I feel like you'd be like Murdoch or something. And of course, we already know what the damage is. Liberals on Twitter already understandably nervous about a horrifying election spin off further into conspiracy land. And in addition, right-wing operatives and influencers gain more fodder in hypocritically criticizing the left
Starting point is 01:14:39 as conspiracy wackos. So this is a two-fold. You are doing damage in two areas. One, you are helping liberals or, you know, center-right Republicans detach even further from reality. And you're giving, like, the far-right talking points to be like, look at these conspiracy theories. Look at these guys.
Starting point is 01:14:57 Like, it's stuff that they can pitch to their followers to make them go, oh, wow, at the very least, they're the same. Like, we're not as bad. You know, it's just awful shit. Cut it out. You're not going to. You're making way too much money. I understand. I love you.
Starting point is 01:15:10 Go for it. So to end this segment, here are how regular folks are reacting to the evolution of the staged assassination conspiracy theory. This is someone quote tweeting Rebecca Jones. Damn it. Stage assassination attempt would have been a much bigger story than groping. I know that's gross, but it's true. If every institution preemptively bows to him, it won't be difficult for him to carry out his fascist plans.
Starting point is 01:15:32 Another guy says, be patient. Too big a story not to have someone leak it. My bet is on one of the truth tellers like at Keith Olberman or at Midas Touch or at Michael Cohen 212 or at J.B. Thinking, who have been on top of the story. I have no idea who J.B. thinking is, but he did quote tweet Rebecca's tweet and said, been tagged several times on this. Yes, all caps. I do believe we are just one all Capp's brave patriot away from the truth, all caps, about Butler P.A., staged exclamation point, all caps. They talk like Trump, too.
Starting point is 01:16:06 Yeah, they do. Stage exclamation point. Staged. Their brains are so cooked. There's another guy named Patrick Spooky Tomlinson, and he says, I'm not saying that this is true, okay, all right, a little bit of reason here, I'm not saying that this is true, but I am saying, okay, I am saying that less than two days after rumors of this quote, campaign ending story first started, two major newspapers refused to endorse a candidate
Starting point is 01:16:33 for the first time in decades, and the story remains unpublished. Something is terribly wrong. Like the Bezos endorsement stuff really has cooked a lot of like liberals' brains further in a way where it's like, yeah, I mean, that's pretty insane that happened. It's just always good to have the liberals finally be open to talk of an oligarchy that we live in. Now that they, inevitably hate Donald Trump and are starting to see other billionaires as bad people? Yeah, yeah. Travis, would you read Riden with Kamala
Starting point is 01:17:05 what their tweet says? If they show the Butler assassination attempt was planned, that means Trump and the plotters would be guilty of murder allegedly. I love sprinkling and allegedly. Allegedly, allegedly. The next person, however, isn't being so reasonable.
Starting point is 01:17:21 Julian, would you read this one? Tell your friend to give them to me. I'll publish them, and I don't care if they kill me. This isn't a hyperbolic statement. I'll happily risk my life to let Americans know the truth about Donald Trump. I grew up in the streets of New York, and I don't give a fuck about Trump or MAGA cowards. 4.7K likes.
Starting point is 01:17:41 Yeah, by the way, I'm picking, like, the replies that have, you know, likes in the thousands. These are very popular replies. And then we get this reply, which is so beautiful. It's so perfect. It's so encapsulates the art. of the conspiracy theory and why it is just so sticky, and it's from, I'm sure, a pleasant lady names Veronica. She's got the pepper, the coconut, and the tree in her, in her, you know, name at her. What's the pepper?
Starting point is 01:18:11 I know. Maybe spicy Latina? Maybe. I don't know. We don't know what they mean, but we know what coconut pill means. She has an accent over the O. It's a gift with a little kitty cat who's putting his paws together, and it says, please report this story and validate what we already knew. We already knew it.
Starting point is 01:18:28 Validate what we already knew. Catchup packet. Travis, you had a funny point about this when I texted you this screenshot the other day. What were you saying? Well, yeah, it's like, well, it doesn't really make any sense because it's like, well, if you already know it, then why do you need it validated? Is it just feels good? Like, I don't know, is it like when you look good one day and you know it, but then someone else says, hey, you know it, you're looking good today. It's just very validating.
Starting point is 01:18:55 Is it like in that sense? Yeah, but it's like the news? Well, that's what I, they want it to hit the news. So they want like Keith Olberman. Like what would be perfect here is just doing a deep fake of Keith Olberman saying what they want to hear. Right. Yeah, it is very strange, especially since there's, there's so much fretting, I think, legitimately about the ways in which Trump tried to degrade the trustworthiness of the press, not because he had any legitimate critique or because like he really wanted the press to do a better job, but because he really wanted. the press to sort of cow to his particular narrative and he was very mad that they weren't doing
Starting point is 01:19:28 that this is like a very weird thing they made up a story that like there there's a trump assassination attempt and all of the media is sort of in coordination to cover this up in service of trump and it's uh for some reason they got a lot of people to buy into it even though it's nonsense twenty twenty four election nonsense bulletin now there are lots of benefits to early and mail-in voting that are available in most states, primarily makes voting more accessible. That's a good thing. But it also allows us to get a sneak preview of the flood of voting and election conspiracy theories that we're going to see on the election day itself and perhaps months or years
Starting point is 01:20:07 afterward. That's a very optimistic, perhaps. Yeah. So that's why we're going to be confident that they're going to be conspiracy theories about, for example, voting machines switching votes away from Donald Trump. There was already one promoted by Representative Marjorie Taylor Green. On Twitter and then on InfoWars, Green relayed a story from a voter who claimed that the machine switched her vote. And so when this voter printed their ballot and they looked, it had changed.
Starting point is 01:20:35 It was not Donald Trump. It was not me and it was not the other ones they had voted for. It had switched. And so they went up to one of the election workers and they said, here's the problem. the machine switched it and my printed ballot, I did not vote for these people. So they had to start over and they went through it several times and it kept on making the same error. According to local election officials, the incident that Green is referring to was the product of a simple user error. She just pressed the wrong button and the printed ballot didn't reflect the voter's choice and then a poll worker immediately fixed the issue by spoiling the wrong ballot and assisting them in making.
Starting point is 01:21:16 a correct one. So not a big issue. On the program of Face the Nation and already exhausted looking Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffinsberger explains why this was a non-issue. Have you seen any evidence of fraud? No. And what happened with Phil County was the lady thought she had pressed a certain selection. And then when she printed out the ballot, she knowed that. She saw that. And so then she made them aware of it and they got corrected. And then it got blown out. proportioned by people that like to use, you know, Twitter and other forms of social media. But we're going to respond quickly to these sorts of things in 2024 because it's not supported by the facts.
Starting point is 01:21:57 There are also going to be conspiracy theories and disinformation about campaign workers destroying ballots. There was a viral video which seemed to depict just that, even though it is totally fake. The video claims to be from Bucks County in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania. It shows a man opening up sealed envelopes, and upon seeing that the ballot is for Donald Trump, the man says, fuck Donald Trump and tears the ballot up and throws it the way. But upon opening up a ballot marked for Kamala Harris, he resealed the ballot and places it back. So let's see what we have here.
Starting point is 01:22:32 This box county. Fuck Donald Trump. Wait, what? Is that a guy like opening somebody else's ballot? Yeah, that's what it seems to depict. And destroying it? And destroying it. Now, the problem is that it's not real.
Starting point is 01:23:00 As the Bucks County Republican Committee explained on Twitter, there are many telltale signs that the video doesn't actually depict Bucks County ballots being destroyed. The video is fake. With such things as the color of the envelopes being the wrong shade of green, The paper is not the same quality used by the Bucks County Board of Elections. The envelopes lack a return address, and no employee at Bucks County Board of Election meets the description of the person in the video. The Bucks County District Attorney investigated the video and release a statement saying that the video was fabricated in an attempt to undermine confidence in the upcoming election. Which is unsurprising.
Starting point is 01:23:35 Why would you, like, feel, even if some evil person was doing this, why would you, like, film yourself committing a federal crime and then upload it to social media? It's very strange. choice. It's clearly, they clearly put a lot of effort into it, though. Like, it does look like a proper, like, ballot. I don't know. There's surely some story behind this. Who knows if we'll, like, find it out. As a matter of fact, so according to Clemson University's media forensics hub, the video was produced by a Russian influence operation actor that researchers call Storm 1516. I will say credit, credit to Russia on this one, that one's pretty good. Usually the Russian offs I've seen are very
Starting point is 01:24:13 unconvincing. Yeah. This is fun. Even I was fooled by this. I thought it was for sure going to be just like another chapter in the tale of Republicans having to fabricate the oppression that they claim to be under. So it's like, you know, they're like, people are destroying, people are destroying ballots.
Starting point is 01:24:30 Well, like we're going to have to produce that content and put it out to make it seem like it's real. Well, honestly, with these critical minds, I am just grateful that live as Canadian and Jake lives in California. Yeah, so apparently they've upgraded to now
Starting point is 01:24:46 like recruiting actors for these little things. 20,000 mules. Yes, of course. There are also going to be conspiracy theories about and disinformation about so-called mules stuffing drop boxes with ballots. People will claim that adjudication software
Starting point is 01:25:03 is corrupting the vote count. And of course, there'll be claims, unsubstantiated claims about non-citizens voting in droves. But you know what? I kind of want to see the real conspiracy theories. Because these ones promoted by like billionaires by Elon Musk or like members of Congress or like some like Russian agents trying to figure out what might make people mad in Pennsylvania.
Starting point is 01:25:27 I mean, what happened to good old American conspiracy theories? The stuff that real American citizens are making. I wanted to get to that. Well, it's a real shame because what happened was during the kind of neoliberal reform, a lot of those jobs were sent overseas. Americans are no longer capable of producing them for themselves. Detroit is in ruins because of this. So to see what people on the ground are doing, I turn to an app specifically designed
Starting point is 01:25:56 for the people most paranoid about the integrity of the election. Vote Alert. So Vote Alert is an online app designed by the org True the Vote. You know, you may recall True the Vote as the Group featured in the discredited denetion. Desusa documentary 2,000 mules. Now, through a vote alert, they found a way to crowdsource information about alleged suspicious activity relayed to the election. So it allows you to, like, post images and descriptions of anything about the electoral process
Starting point is 01:26:26 you don't like or read a feed of what other people have posted. So here's how they describe themselves. Help your fellow citizens across the country as we work together to support our elections. Ask questions. Report suspicious activity. follow trending events and join a Boots on the Ground Coalition dedicated to safeguarding our representative republic. So I went ahead, I made an account to see what these citizen poll watchers are observing.
Starting point is 01:26:51 Once again, a case of Travis participating in the very worst activities of our fellow countrymen and then saying, I'm just here to watch, to observe, to monitor. So Vote Alert allows users to upload videos. They'll very few people have. It's still in its early days. but one person who did was from Lansing, Michigan. And according to themselves, they download a PDF of the location of local drop boxes,
Starting point is 01:27:18 and they say that they personally inspected 300 of them by driving by. You know what? That's their right to observe the security of their drop boxes themselves. But he was concerned because some of these so-called drop boxes appear to be entire buildings, not just like some sort of box. Now, the video records an exchange between himself, and a Lansing clerk who then simply explains why some so-called drop-box locations are just buildings. Well, I found that those drop-box locations are actually some of them, residential addresses unsecured.
Starting point is 01:27:51 In small rural communities, I do not disagree, but they actually, by law, now must have a drop box in their community, at minimum one drop box. And it can be a slot in the township hall building, for example. example, a mail slot, but by law, you have to have a minimum of one drop locks for any population up to 15,000. And then for every 15,000, you have to have a second of registered voters. I don't like dropboxes. I don't trust them. They're all under cameras. They have to have some kind of camera. Cameras can be played. Oh, God, cameras, cameras, cameras can be compromised. Defects can be made. most insulting thing about this or the most upsetting thing is someone who's like neurotically polite is just bothering some random woman with your theory like she doesn't give a shit that you don't
Starting point is 01:28:47 like drop boxes like this is some lady somewhere like I don't what are you doing I guess he wants to get a video of him like being tough on these like election stealing weirdos or whatever yeah it's this weird as he uploaded this himself like I guess there's like I'm confronting the clerks about the lack of security of these drop boxes but here's that she's like calmly explaining the law. It's like, well, sometimes it could be like a township building if it's a low population area. By law, they all have to have to have at least one. You know, she's very polite and knowledgeable and eventually comes down to like, well, I don't like drop boxes. That's basically it. He has a feeling and he doesn't really want to hear the detailed explanation of like how
Starting point is 01:29:25 things are handled. In the video, uh, so he isn't, he says he isn't satisfied at the current level of security. He suggests like some form of tracking technology for the ballots and the clerk explains why this is a bad idea. And so all of us voters are supposed to sit here and we're supposed to trust our elections and I want to trust it. I do, but I don't. And I just see it as a vulnerability. I think they could be more secure.
Starting point is 01:29:49 I don't. I mean, why can't we put an RFD chip or something on the envelope so it goes in? You know what I mean? Or something. You don't how wacko people are about any kind of tracking? Yeah, I know. Why don't they like freaking like microchip me, man? So, yeah.
Starting point is 01:30:04 Yeah, so that's how that went. So other people just sort of offered sort of their own personal stories and commentary. One voter from North Carolina was disappointed that they were allowed to vote with their old ID, saying this. I voted Saturday. I accidentally pulled out an old ID with my old last name. Still got to vote under my new name. Old address, different last name. And I look nothing like my old ID.
Starting point is 01:30:27 Getting angry about being enfranchised is awesome. It is so funny. They let me fucking vote. They let me, a citizen. who legally has a right to vote, vote. It's like, no, it's like you're describing a legal vote, but you're mad because you think you shouldn't have been allowed to. Well, I don't understand.
Starting point is 01:30:44 This is very odd. Yeah, how would they have, what would they have done if they showed up and they went, sorry, this is an old ID. Do you have the new one? They went, oh my God, I left it at home. They're like, sorry, you got to come back with the new ID to vote. They'd be like, this is ridiculous. Yeah, the post would be a complaint about the other side.
Starting point is 01:31:00 There was no outcome she wouldn't complain about. Exactly, exactly. They'd be like, excuse me, ma'am, are you sure? sure this is you. The picture doesn't look like you. And they're like, oh my God, they're trying to keep me from voting for Donald J. Trump because my picture, because I glowed up. You know, it's like, yeah, there was no outcome that would be, there's no outcome that would be acceptable. So one user of voter alert from Flint, Michigan, posted a notice from Facebook announcing that on a particular day, a couple of churches were partnering with the
Starting point is 01:31:28 secretary of state and the county clerk to offer local residents of Michigan IDs and copies of their birth certificates. Now, the announcement also said that the church would cover the cost of these documents. Now, a very thoughtful gesture. You know, some people have challenges in getting their documentation, and this church just made a little bit easier. You know, good for them. However, the poster on vote alert saw a more malicious intent. Flint Driven Church posted an event on Facebook that would be issuing Michigan IDs and birth certificates. I did not attend the event, and it is not known how many illegal aliens were registered so they could vote in election day. That is true. It is unknown.
Starting point is 01:32:06 It's unknown. I don't know anything. I just can't imagine that something that they would do. Obviously, no indication that the church was helping produce fraudulent documents. This is apparently what aid in the legal voting. This is apparently what this person was imagining. I want to vote in election day. E.T. Vote Kamala.
Starting point is 01:32:27 On the app, you can actually add comments to the vote alert that people post, and one user added this. Absolute treason. against both faith and constitution. This church is aiding many who do not believe in God nor America. It's cool, man. Yeah, these people are very furious that this church is helping their local community in a tangible way. We need those little stickers that say, I voted, but they just say I posted.
Starting point is 01:32:51 So one message came from someone claiming to be a naturalized citizen, and they really, they want to, like, really be integrated into American society, so they decided to be paranoid about non-citizens getting registered to vote. I used to live in California, and I was there under a work visa, then green card. Julian? It's me. I now live in Colorado, and I am a citizen, but on California DMV list, I was listed as a non-citizen and on a work visa.
Starting point is 01:33:17 They know this because they were validating my legal status with DHS in order to get a license to drive. Still today, I received an SMS from California asking me to register to vote, which is solicitation to non-citizens to register to vote. Stop them! These things are always funny because it's... It's like the way that governments keep track of people is so Byzantine, especially when you, like, as someone who changed their name, like, a couple years ago, it's like, it's hard to know, like, oh, they have my name in this way, on this database. There's, like, a bunch of different databases that, like, aren't intuitive to think about.
Starting point is 01:33:49 So I'm sure, like, at some point, it got dinged as, like, you're a citizen now. But then when they came to take up your information, it was your old, like, address or something, you know. It's just, like, complicated. I fully support you changing your name from Margaret because you don't. Like Thatcher. I changed my name from Karen, which was a mistake. I shouldn't have chose that name. Good job.
Starting point is 01:34:12 But like this shit happens all the time. It's happening to me right now. I, despite voting, I moved two years ago to like a different area of L.A. And I voted in the like midterms in my new area, at which point they updated my address at the polls because I had to go to the old polling location. But my mail-in ballot got sent to my old address. address for whatever reason because my the address on my driver's license is different from even my update like there's all there's so many different like bureaucracies that are trying to keep
Starting point is 01:34:44 track of like millions and millions and millions and millions of people's data that like you're going to have shit like that like you're going to have stuff like this happen all the time and all you have to do is just be like oh well I'm then I guess I just got to go I guess I'm not mailing in or I could go to my old address and pick it up I'm too lazy so I'm just going to go up the street to the polling location there and vote on the day. Like, no big deal. It's also just like, oh, I guess they have my old info. I should, like, update it somewhere.
Starting point is 01:35:09 I should update that next time I meant the DMV. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Also, I just love, again, this is someone, he's legally eligible to vote. And he's mad that someone texted him to register the vote. But he thinks that the person who texts him doesn't know he's a citizen, and therefore it shouldn't be allowed. I don't know.
Starting point is 01:35:26 Yeah, you'd think they would be keeping track of that. One user named J.W. from Ohio complained that their son hadn't updated his voter registration. My son moved to Indiana seven years ago. He's still registered to vote in Ohio at his previous address. This was followed up five minutes later by the same user who made this comment. My daughter-in-law moved to Indiana seven years ago. She's still registered to vote in Ohio. Update the information. I don't, like, you didn't update. it so it didn't change it's like i don't know it's like it's a ratting out is uh their son and daughter-in-law yeah i think we just should have never updated to all these text message
Starting point is 01:36:11 notifications i think it's really confusing for some of the older population they're getting too many texts they don't know who it's from it's from some weird number they can't call it back it doesn't leave a voicemail you know i think for a certain age group we need to stick to snail mail that would solve a lot maybe i'm wrong one user from Montana offered this complaint about the writing instrument options. What writing instrument should be provided at polling stations for federal elections? Recently moved and my new polling station provides black sharpies. Asked why not a black ink pen and was told that the sharpie helped people stay within the
Starting point is 01:36:45 lines. They did provide me with a black ink pen upon demand. So I guess, I guess Kamala is stealing the election. Yeah, this mother is like, hey, he's just a little bit confused and then he was ultimately accommodated for, I don't know. Weird complaints. It's like the sharpie is too, the point of it is too fat. I went to, I went to go vote for Donald Trump, and the ink leaked all the way over to
Starting point is 01:37:08 Kamala. And I know that if both circles are filled in, they're going to, they're going to choose Kamala over Trump. This app is supposed to be like the like sex offender pedophile watch registry thing, but for votes basically, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's more like next door. Yeah, more, I think yeah, that's probably better at that. More like next door.
Starting point is 01:37:28 You report all the paranoid things you see to the community. Like, watch out wild cat. Attacked my dog while I was walking. You know, keep an eye out for this address. Orange Cat will attack. Cat will steal your vote. Wild cat will sneak into the ballot. We'll tear up your, we'll puncture your skin and tear up your ballot to shred.
Starting point is 01:37:58 Very nasty cat. Sorry, Travis, go. One reporter from New Jersey claimed that they encountered problems related to bans of electioneering near polling places. Now, every single state has some kind of law that ban electioneering in order to prevent voter intimidation or influence. But this voter says that is the first time that they encountered it. So this is, to be clear, electioneering is like advertising a candidate. while people are going into the voting. Okay. Waited about 30 minutes online politely.
Starting point is 01:38:33 Poll work... Oh, do you think they meant in line? Yeah, I think so. Oh, but they wrote online. Anyways, who am I to correct them? Poll worker managing the line queue was pleasant at first, directed me where to go. I voted and paused while leaving to eat for my daughter.
Starting point is 01:38:50 Huh? While leaving to eat for my daughter... I don't know. That's what they said. All right. Like 20% of Americans are functionally illiterate. It's fine. Yeah, it's okay. Same poll workers now tells me I can't be wearing candidate clothing and I must get 100 feet from the building.
Starting point is 01:39:06 I mentioned free speech. He argued and said they had someone arrested the day before. There was a posted sign about no printed brochures or signs, but not about clothing. I looked this up and found New Jersey apparently has these socialist laws. I wear Trump hats and shirts routinely and consider this freedom of speech. Socialism is when you have like a secret ballot that you can't find. with, I guess. Yeah, but actually socialism is when you wear your favorite comfy, bright red hoodie,
Starting point is 01:39:35 Trump's face on it to the polling, to the polling place. The Radical Left wants you to wear like comfy photos of cats and dogs instead of your Trump photo. The Radical Left, they want you in drab olive greens and khaki khaki pants. They want you not to wear the face of your favorite politician, which is very unfair and goes against rule number one, freedom of speed. I couldn't even think of what to fucking call it. Rule number one.
Starting point is 01:40:04 Anyways, we're cooked. Yeah, so that's basically the main vibe of the complaint so far. There are people who are generally just unfamiliar with the laws at all, and also people who encountered a minor inconvenience, which was later very quickly corrected. So probably that's also what's going to drive a lot of disinformation going forward. Yeah, people just, they won't. want to see it so badly. They want to be a part of, you know, all the viral videos they saw in,
Starting point is 01:40:32 in 2020 with the, you know, Trump voters, like witnessing someone supposedly stuffing up. They, like, they want to be there. So anything slightly out of order for them, they're going to report on these, these sort of apps. Wow. 300 episodes and look at all the bullshit there still is to talk about. Oh, God. Great. Great stuff. Only getting worse, folks. Yeah, how is everybody feeling about the election looming? It's in a couple days. Liv, I guess you don't really, I guess you really can't vote being up in Canada. That's what you think.
Starting point is 01:41:09 Yeah, that doesn't mean that the nerves aren't still there. No, I'm voting for Kamala 50 times. We're busing her in, folks. We're busing 50 Liv Agar's in. She's going to vote one, and she's going to be wearing Kamala t-shirts at the polling location. but not in New Jersey. Very round glasses, folks, britts, sweet bangs. They're all coming in.
Starting point is 01:41:32 Her glasses are round, her hair is short. She'll be there 50 times over, casting the same vote for her hero. Travis, how are you feeling? You know, I think, you know, maybe I'm being too optimistic, but I think we can sort of limit the casualty count over the next few months.
Starting point is 01:41:50 I think we can, I think there will be minimal deaths as a consequence of the tension and confusion and anger that is. is simmering. But maybe that's getting my optimistic call. I'm not making any predictions. Yep, there we go. Travis View, folks, hoping for fewer deaths this time around.
Starting point is 01:42:08 So we know we're in a great place. Julian, what do you think? Well, he's disappeared again, folks. We had him for a very short, beautiful amount of time. We love our Julian, but sometimes he's here, sometimes he disappears, and we love him for it. And we love you for caring. You are you have crowd surfed us past not just 300 but uh over 600 episodes it seems crazy to even say that number out loud with the miniseries too which are very good and if you haven't listened to those you should subscribe on the patreon five bucks a month not through apple um I believe that is the business of the day and listener for another 300 may the deep dish bless you and keep you
Starting point is 01:42:57 We have auto-cued content based on your preferences. Amazing! He stood up and he thought about you and me. The eyes really worried about him. And then when we saw him say, fight, fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! That's the man to lead us! To lead us back to the America we love!
Starting point is 01:43:36 Do you swear to make America better and greater by voting for Donald Trump and J.D. Vance! Now go do it! Fight! How weird! It's so... It's such an honor to be here. and it's wild. Just another day following
Starting point is 01:44:01 Bobby Kennedy Jr. at a Donald Trump rally in Madison Square Garden. I mean, what? That's totally normal. You know, I've been coming to this building month after month, after month. And I've seen sold-out crowds
Starting point is 01:44:19 over and over again for over 40 years. And for 40 years, I've always asked the question. What you're going to do? Over and over and over again. What's you going to do? Well, today, after feeling the energy in this building,
Starting point is 01:44:40 I finally got the answer. And the answer is, vote for Trump. America is going to reach heights that it has never seen before. The future is going to be amazing.

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