Red Scare - Putin's Puppy

Episode Date: October 1, 2020

The ladies discuss last night's presidential debate, Trump's tax returns, Amy Coney Barrett's Supreme Court nomination, and the situation in Nagorno Karabakh.

I'm recording. Hello. We're back. We're back. It's our 200th and first episode. Oh yeah. I hate odd numbers. I was so exhausted after we did our our Bloomy special. Me too. It really took a lot of walking and podcasting at the same time. Yeah. Not for the faint of heart. I was really like in a hunger fugue after that. I know. Which I haven't been in any time in recent history. I ate McDonald's. Where did you go? I got a chicken sandwich and like a cheeseburger. I pounded them down in succession. I felt like shit. Such a bad person. I love McDonald's. I eat there every day if I could. Yeah. I'm a big fan of the fries and the McFlurries, which are kind of like a probiotic in the sense

that there's so much disgusting like phlegm and bacteria and hormones in those shakes and like if you can drink one like once a week or something, your stomach is like iron clad. Yeah. It'll build up your tolerance. Yeah. The cure for COVID. Yeah. It's drinking McFlurries. It's a shamrock shake. How are you Anna? I'm fine. Maintaining. Pounding headache. You still have a headache. Yeah. Damn. You're drinking water? Yeah. I mean, no, I'm slugging down a medium ice latte or something from Dunkin' Donuts, so I'm going to have an even bigger headache. I'm going to be like on that Joe Biden tip today. All confused. Yeah. Bumbling. Yeah. Messing up his words. Like when we didn't know what Super

Tuesday was. Yeah. I still don't know what Super Tuesday is. It's when a bunch of people vote. Yeah. I don't know. I didn't realize that people were already voting. Well, they have to write because the mail-in ballots take time to be mailed in, then be counted and sorted and processed. I liked when Chris Wallace was talking about the mail-in ballots taking, being time consuming to process and how we might not know who the real presidential victor is maybe for days, weeks, and Trump women, maybe months. I love his brainless chiming in. Yeah. His penchant for gross hyperbole. So who do you think won the debate? I mean, Trump, obviously, but I also clearly don't know that there's a clear-cut winner

or a loser because everything is so fraught against partisan ideological lines. Every side is going to rationalize who the winner was according to their preconceptions. I somehow ended up, I think someone is trolling me and putting me on a progressive voter turnout. Some email list that I'm on, and their emails are getting more and more pathetic, and I got one today, even though it seems like I've unsubscribed many times. That was like, we think Biden really did exceptionally in the debates last time. It's like you're just lying to your like the amount of cognitive dissonance of people pretending like he's not demented and wasn't totally humiliated as astounding.

He did okay. I mean, he did granted considering his tremendous cognitive and motor difficulties at this stage in his life, I think he did fine. I mean, he's not the most articulate guy in the room. He like frequently stumbles over his words and like mixes them up and seems confused. Yeah. Well, for me, it really early on, Trump's victory was kind of clenched when he said the word ballot. Ballot. China. No, Biden like mistakenly said something was on the ballot that wasn't and then Trump like very, he is very very womanly in this way. He's a catty bitch. He's a catty. He's a real, he was a real yenta last night out in fall for us. And he was like, ballot, it's not on the ballot. And just kind of like

clinging onto things, little gaps that Biden makes and like extrapolating on them. I thought was a interesting strategy. Like, you know, a classic Gemini, he's really talented and skilled at seizing on people's weaknesses and anxieties and leveraging them to his own benefit. And I don't, I don't say this like provocatively or in a trollish fashion, but it's very hard to do well on a debate stage against Trump, not because he's particularly articulate, which he isn't, not, not because he's particularly informed, which he also isn't, but because he's basically doing standup roast comedy. He's, I think Bernie would have done well, just because he's more informed and truly like ideologically opposed to Trump. Whereas Biden has a difficult time

substantively debating him because his constituency is basically the same as Trump's. Yeah. And his policies, everything. Exactly. Well, that's the thing. I think like somebody, for example, somebody like Bernie, yes, would have done, uh, we've seen Bernie kind of a mega mockery out of Trump in like a debate type setting because he, um, yeah, has kind of substantive, uh, objections to Trump. Exactly. Yeah. That he can voice with clarity and purpose and stuff. Yeah. But people are so alienated by the yelling Jewish man. Well, Trump's a yelling Jewish man. Well, he's a yelling Jewish woman. Exactly. Which is why I think they'd be well, well, I think Marianne would have done well.

Right. Yeah. Because I think also she's, I mean, she's literally a public speaker. And I think she can appeal to like the spiritual and ethical, uh, uh, as she said in the dem debate, she will meet him on that plane. Yeah. Meeting a metaphysical plane. But okay, let me, let me, um, uh, redact my comments a little. I think there's nobody in the kind of democratic like DNC field who is any match for Trump. No. Because like you said, they don't have any substantive disagreements with him. Exactly. It's all purely symbolic conflict. And they in fact cannot launch a substantive attack on him or critique of him because that would involve telling on themselves. Yeah. Like every step of the way. Yeah. Because they're

equally guilty. I mean, we'll talk about the Trump tax article, which I did not fully read because it was a real slog. Um, I tried to read it this morning and I was like reading it and I was like, Jesus Christ, this is like a fucking novella. It's like reading like the Lord of the Rings or something. Um, but they spend 50% of the article, at least, uh, describing how they're going to explain what's in the article, like these tax disclosures. Right. And you're just like waiting for them to get to it, get to it. It's like watching a porn movie from beginning to end, you know, not trying to get to the money shot. Yeah. Yeah. Um, it really, the conversation about the, the debates really drove home to me how much politics is kind of sexual pathology

or Freudian pathology. Because I do think the enthusiasm that I do see for Biden primarily from like white liberals seems to be a kind of misplaced kind of like daddy. He's, it's like watching their, their aging, bumbling father be humiliated and disgraced. So it's too painful. So they have to kind of double down on his poise and restrained. Yeah. And then be like, yes, he called him a clown. Oh, shut up, man. Hey, man, why don't you, why don't you just shut up? They're like, Biden looked positively presidential in that state next to Trump on that stage next to Trump. It's like, well, yeah, okay. I mean, not really. He looked like a lost old man who got separated from his family at like stop and shop. As he said, he has the eyes of an

abused puppy mill dog. It does make me, it is, it did make me like sad. Yeah. It's Trump has a, he's very good at, I remember feeling badly for, for Hillary Clinton even in the, in the previous election cycle, because I was like, God, she just wants it so badly. And he's not going to let her have it. Yeah. And when he was like, never say, Oh, did you just say the word smart? Yeah. Never say the word smart to me. You're not a smart guy, Joe. You consistently scored the lowest marks at like, yeah, whatever. Yeah. I mean, he kept like roasting him, which is like, this was like, this felt like a debate that was like, kind of like focused grouped by Redditors. It was like a Reddit ass debate, like that level of like, just like back and forth, like substanceless vitriol.

It was entirely yelling at the same time over each other and calling each other liars. Yeah. And it was like a debate that was like entirely void of political content as a Layla from Twitter pointed out, there was nothing like expressly, meaningfully, materially, substantively political about it, no, which is crazy. I mean, I mean, it makes sense, I guess, the day and age that we was like a social media debate. Yeah. But you would think that their respective handlers would at least kind of pre-program them or saddle them with information. I mean, Biden seemed to be referring to some of his notes, but it was hard for him to get a word

in edgewise, which I don't understand if they wanted them to have at least a more substance of debate. Why wouldn't they just cut Trump's mic while Biden was talking, right? You know, and then when they have the open conversation after they do their two minutes, they can, they can proceed to yell over each other. Yeah. And I mean, the problem yet is that the, there's this whole kind of, I mean, they don't, I don't think anybody in the media or the political classes want them to have a substantive debate because having a substantive debate means basically acknowledging, admitting that the Democratic Party is in shambles and does not at all stand for the interests of the vast majority of people.

I can't believe they have to do this two more times. I know it sucks. And then Pence and Kamala are going to go at it. That'll be a little bit more interesting maybe because they're both profoundly boring, but at least they're, they're more kind of like armed with facts and data. Yeah. I don't know if I'll tune in to be honest. Yeah, maybe not. But no, but it's like, okay, we, we just did an interview for an unspecified magazine and I'll repeat what I said there, which is that like Biden's base is affluent suburbanites and welfare recipients, which as a friend of mine mentioned, should not be confused with working class people. There is no kind of like the, the Democratic Party has no core.

Sure. Yeah. I don't know who the, I guess who the party is compromised up. Yeah. And there's like, I don't know if you have to basically focus on things like protests and riots and a critical race theory and racial sensitivity training and not so much the actual realities of climate change, but like the symbolism. Right. Do you believe in climate change? Trump had that weird tangent about how the forest floors are covered and loaded, loaded with leaves and someone drops a cigarette and someone's in, he said, kept saying forest city. Yeah. All this kind of forest city sounds like kind of like a late 19th century utopian building proposal by like some European architect. It actually sounds pretty nice.

It does. They both threw Bernie under the bus. They both, as Liz Brunig pointed out, it seemed kind of like they were really debating over who hated the left more. Trump sort of accusing Biden of pandering to the quote, radical left. Yeah. Biden denouncing Bernie and the Green New Deal and spinning his wheels in the opposite direction. And it's, I mean, it's really shocking also and it's astounding how many leftists or like, you know, self identified, self purported leftists are also kind of unenthusiastically, but adamantly on the Biden train. I really can't wrap my brain around it. Keep yapping, man. Yeah. It's like, but they too are like totally convinced of, I mean,

that was one of the most disappointing things about Bernie is when he insisted on harping about how Trump was like a fascist threat and the worst president in US history. Yeah. Which is like simply just objectively, empirically untrue. I'm not saying he's a good president or that you should support him. Right. But like this kind of like mythos is so draining and destabilizing like to live constantly in this unreality. It really does feel like the Soviet Union. Well, the only people it seems to even marginally benefit is the media class. Yeah. Is that they, you know, they don't, they don't want them to have a substance of debate. They don't want, I mean, even Biden kind of being the nominee makes me feel like

the media class is invested in having a Trump victory so that they can keep kind of the machination, the apparatus that they have constructed that's very profitable to them that's based in the hashtag resistance movement. Yeah. I mean, you made this point to this interview where you said like they, the media and academic classes or whatever actually want Trump to win. Yeah. On some level. I mean, we've said this in earlier episodes. I wonder how true that is. Like, well, they don't, I mean, I think it's maybe they're in denial about their own, their own kind of motivations, but all of the, the MAGA hysteria. Yeah. I don't think anyone can deny that that's been like enormous, enormously profitable. Yeah. And there's, you know, and

initially, I mean, they kicked it off even with these debates over Obamacare and Roe v. Wade, where like, again, I'm like truly not being provocative or like controversial here. But the pre assumption, of course, is that Obama and Roe v. Wade are better than nothing at the very least. And that pre assumption seriously needs to be examined or reexamined. That was doesn't go without saying, especially in the case of Obamacare. Yeah. I mean, and that was the Biden flood. But he said he was the one who invoked Roe v. Wade, apropos of nothing, and then said that it was on the ballot and then tried to kind of backtrack and said it was on the ballots in the courts. And that's when Trump did his kind of yen to ask like, it's not on the ballot.

What are you talking about? Joe, Joe, are you sundowning a little, a little rapid? And then, of course, Biden kind of made a mistake or bad move and bragged about how much he beat Bernie is a very kind of Trump-esque boast, which was not great. I mean, they were both kind of like pounding on Bernie a little there. Yeah. I mean, Biden threw him under the bus really viciously, I thought. Wait, remind me what he said. Yeah. Well, he talked about how he beat him. He kind of distanced himself from the Green New Deal was really out of that not being his policies when they were having the climate change conversation. Right. It just seemed like, yeah, he seemed very interested in disavowing the left and

pandering center right, basically. I don't know. The whole thing was just very like noisy and weird. Yeah. And like disjointed. Sean McCarthy made a good point that Biden's argument for why he's not a socialist is that nobody would qualify for the public health care option, which is, you know, Biden spent the vast majority of the debate like literally telling on himself every step of the way, like, you know, when he was talking about Trump's abuses of the tax code. Right. He was, you know, I said this on Twitter, but like basically like Trump's, you know, Biden kind of covering for his rich donor class supporters and constituents. Yeah. Who also, by the way, benefit from the same tax codes that Trump does.

Yeah. Him kind of like, you know, going to bat for that is almost as bad as like conservatives trying to own him by claiming that he's like radical left or whatever, which is also patently laughable on the face of it. And I don't know that anybody. Yeah. I mean, I wonder how many people actually buy the line that the Democratic Party is being besieged by like radical left. I mean, I just think it's there's a problem with on the right of just not of conflating liberals and leftists. And when they say like radical left or like the radical revolution taking place regarding like critical race theory. Yeah. That's, it's just there. There's just like a lot of like confusion.

Yeah. Like willful confusion. I think the conflation is actually accurate, but not in the way that they think they're right, but in ways they don't know. They think BLM is the radical left and not the status quo. Yeah. They think that liberals are leftists when it's really leftists are liberals. That's, I mean, that's what it is. Yeah. And like, you know, I think like also Amy pointed out, and I think she's absolutely correct in this Biden, you know, Trump goes for the ad home and like roasts you on the spot and does some like Rodney Dangerfield style Borscht belt comedy Biden critiques hypotheticals, what Trump wants, what he might do, what he could do. And that's like, that's like the typical liberal line when it comes to Trump.

Yeah. That's what they basically ran on in 2016 is that we have, you know, a vote for Trump is a vote for kind of apocalyptic chaos. Yeah. But they never actually say what he has done or examine it in any serious capacity. They basically speculate and hyperventilate over what he might do. Yeah. Or what his intentions are. Is he or is he not, you know, a white supremacist, like this sort of thing? The COVID seem to be a big, you know, that's all of the kind of COVID deaths or Trump's falls. Yeah. And Biden at one point actually said, well, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have a plan. It's like, no, they don't. I was rewatching the, some of the Marianne footage from the Democratic debate when she did her like harnessing love for political purposes.

And an interesting talking point of hers is that she, in that, in that debate was always reiterating kind of wonkery and plan. Like she was like, we're not going to defeat Donald Trump by having a plan by like more kind of insider politics as usual. So it was very interesting the way that Biden kept, you know, saying that the Dems had a plan, that there was some plan that they were going to have. But also they don't have a plan. Of course they don't have a plan. Because they do have some say and some agency in how COVID was handled in New York, for example. Yeah. And every step of the way they've showed their kind of commitment to offloading their own responsibility in the matter and responsibleizing your average citizen.

Yeah. And I think, you know, like Biden did that super sappy, like how many of you woke up to breakfast and the chair was empty because someone in your family died of COVID and like appealing to the kind of, yeah, ambient tragedy of it all. Yeah. I mean, okay, Biden, the other thing that was like so revealing in this debate is just how much of like a victim monger and trauma minor he is. And you can see like a direct lineage from him to the squad, particularly AOC and Ayanna Presley, like the way that they leverage victimhood and trauma to their own advantage. He really took a page from the AOC playbook when he pretended to confuse his son Beau for his son Hunter.

Mm-hmm. When Trump was clearly talking about the political corruption of Hunter Biden, my son is dead and he's a hero. Yeah. The Moscow, the mayor of Moscow's wife. Yeah. A lot of good alliterative terms of phrase from the sitting president, Putin's puppy, mayor of Moscow. But yeah, the whole, and then Trump said, I don't know Beau, I know Hunter. Yeah. I don't know him. Yeah. Trump was like your crackhead son, Hunter. And he was like, my dead son, Beau. Yeah. And it was like so. Yeah. Biden did a very poor job of kind of even like making it clear that he had two sons. Yeah. Yeah. But he was like leveraging his dead son. And it's like, you know, it's like funny to see him like Amtrak Joe doing the same thing as like

bartender like barista AOC pretending to be working class and leveraging his family trauma for political clout, which is like the bread and butter of the Democrats. They love to do this. Didn't Hunter fuck his dead brother's widow? Oh, yeah, he did. Very cool. Yeah. I mean, hey. Hunter is the most likable part of the Biden campaign to me. Yeah. He's, he's a a crackhead in a playboy, but I don't think he lies about that. He's like the Charlie Sheen of politics. He's very above board about who he is and what he is. He's troubled. Yeah. He's a breath of fresh air. So I'm glad that the Bidens managed to raise somebody right. But yeah. And I mean, the squad is literally like to me in my mind, like those ladies are like, they're not like a

diff, they're not a distinction from the DNC. They're a continuation of the same like legacy. Right. Blaming and shaming or whatever. Yeah. You see it with AOC is kind of like Pelosi camaraderie. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What else happened in the in yield debate? See for the forest floors are loaded up with dead trees. I want like a t-shirt that says this. Um, yeah. Um, but yeah, it's really interesting because, um, I think the best, I guess Trump was at his best when he was pushing back against all the anti-racism stuff. The, well, I think he should have just at least symbolically renounced white supremacists. Yeah. The way he kind of did last week where he said that both Antifa and the KKK were like

terrorist organizations or whatever. And a lot of people see his unwillingness to disavow white supremacy, um, or his hate and quickness to liken it to the Antifa as a sign of his ultimately racist inclinations. Um, I don't really see it that way. I like, I like, I like the thing that like Michael Tracy said on Twitter, which I have here. He talks that Trump has rejected the premise of, of will you disavow type questions? Because they're almost always like virtually almost virtually always asked in bad faith. And so the term white supremacist has been like distended, bloated beyond recognition. Um, so it's unclear who, who exactly he would be condemning, but he still could, you know,

he could, but I think that that would be like, I actually appreciate that he didn't. I think it would be symbolic pandering to again, like in elite class, what I take umbrage with in Trump's response to that is that he's a huge, it's a huge misopportunity, everything about his presidency. I think he's totally right in denouncing critical race theory and like racial sensitivity training. Um, but he has to provide people with a material alternative, which he refuses to do because he's actually not interested in, uh, helping out the American public either. Of course. Um, that's, but it's also, it's a complete joke to think that Biden is less racist than Trump when his policies, you know, reveal something very different.

I liked that he went for the jugular and was like, crime bill, super predator. Yeah. And he said they, they haven't forgotten. They haven't forgotten that you call them super predators. That's true. Actually, technically I look this up. There was like a BBC article or something. Biden actually never used the word super predator. But they're part of the same. Yeah. Like camp, I guess. He may as well have in the, you know, um, I, I mean, I agree with like Trump pushing back against this kind of like centrist lore that we live in a uniquely horribly beyond repair racist country. And as, as I said, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, like promoted by media and academia, which is horrible because white fragility is the

perfect example of like a white woman who wrote a book about basically an HR guide to racial sensitivity training. Yeah. Yeah. But like, I mean, I would like to see him, which she will never do of course, cause he's also like a pimp and a coward. Um, say like, actually, yeah, this country is not as racist as libtards want you to believe, but there is glaring horrific income inequality that needs to be, you know, clipped at the bottom. Well, he's never going to, he's never going to say that. That's the real disappointment. Yeah. Just how Biden won't say law and order. Yeah. I love that part too. Um, the suburbs. Oh yeah. The invocation of, of the, the suburbs as this kind of symbolic space. I felt like when Biden, um, said that Trump was

dog whistling, that he was sort of, and then went on to talk about how diverse the suburbs are, he seemed to me to be really be telling on himself. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. As having like a fundamental misunderstanding of what, what diversity accomplishes. Yeah. Yeah. Um, he, yeah, he made this like really a corny quip that he wouldn't know a suburb unless he took a wrong term off Fifth Avenue into like the suburbs of like a Yonkers or something. Um, yeah. I mean, I think like when, when Trump, um, made the comment that you can't even say law enforcement, because if you say it, you'll lose your radical left supporters. That was like kind of a highlight. People want law and order and you can't even say it. Um, and he was right about this idea that like

you, you call burning down, um, storefronts and destroying cities, peaceful protest. Um, so in that sense, yeah, he really kind of cornered Biden. Yeah. And Biden really posted out on by saying that he's not, um, because Chris Wallace asked him if he, why he doesn't reach out to the, uh, the mayor of Portland or the governor of Oregon or Democratic to like bring in the National Guard to stop the like 100 days of riots or whatever. Yeah. Um, and he said like, well, I don't have any, any power politically, but of course he does. Um, purports to represent the Democratic establishment. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the problem isn't that Trump is so good. It's that Biden is so bad. Yeah. And Trump, he's such a mediocre liar.

Yeah. And Trump really does what he does best, which is kind of lay bare and illuminate the inconsistencies and corruption of the DNC, you know? Yeah. That was his sort of, yeah. It's not that Trump won. It's that he like revealed Biden to be what he is, which is a kind of ineffective, bumbling loser. Yeah. Yeah. Um, what did you think about the balloting portion of the evening? Oh, like how are we going to count the, I don't know, they're both Trump is kind of harping on election fraud because of the fake news and the anti-Trump sentiment. And Biden, I don't really get what Biden's doing. He's encouraging people to vote. I, as a non-voter, I tuned out during that portion a little bit. Yeah, me too. I think they have,

they both have an outsized kind of paranoid view of their own chances. Maybe, I don't know. I think mail and ballots, will they really hurt Trump's chances? People be preference falsifying every step of the way. And also like Biden, um, you know, is not really that popular with anyone, again, but affluence of urban white women and like urban welfare recipients. Well, I don't know, but it also, the balloting is very connected to like the politicization of COVID. Right. Cause it's like, um, Biden is sort of advocating for mail and ballots because people can't go to a polling place, but of course they can. The same way people can go to a grocery store, if they wear a mask, et cetera. There's like normal precautions can take place at polling

places. There's no reason why. More so than at protests and riots, which like, it really brings out the contradictions or whatever. Um, I think this balloting issue can be sidestepped if some like Silicon Valley company gets in on the grift and codes like a digital balloting app, where you can order like some Asian fusion from like a hip hop listening, like Korean celebrity chef and then registered to vote and cast your ballot in the process. It's like Instagram. Um, what else happened in this utterly boring and depressing debate? I was entertained by it. Yeah, it was, it was entertaining, but I like, I like roast comedy when it's, um, when it has kind of like a principle and a purpose when it's just like

being a bitch for a fact. It's funny. It's funny. I don't know if it's worth it. But what did I, oh, I laughed, um, really hard when, uh, Trump pulled a little mask out of his jacket and was like, yeah, I wear a mask, but Biden, this guy's wearing the biggest mask you've ever seen. Every time I see him, he's got, it was so just like, it's very metaphoric and masculating. And it's the same. It reminded me of kind of in 2016 when he, um, his whole thing was not using teleprompters. Trump. Yeah. And like all these other like phony establishment politicians rely on the, the kind of prophylactic, if you will, of the teleprompter and he's like going in raw. He's doing it. It's very, um, libid and elite charge. I think in a way that's smart

and similar with like the masking stuff. It's like, um, it does make Biden seem kind of cucked and weak to constantly be masked. Yeah. Did you see that he kind of let out a silent little cough right at the beginning? Yes, I did. Of course. Of course. Yeah. Wrong move. Yeah. But Trump did that weird thing with his tongue. Oh yeah. It was like very sexual because it was like kind of the gesture that like pedophiles make at children. Yeah. It was quite gross. Um, but he probably had some serious dry mouth from snorting all that out or all. It was like, yeah, that, that really freaked me out. I want screen caps wetting, wetting

his little lizard lips. Yeah. Um, and then let's see what else happened. Um, Trump bypassed Wallace's question, uh, about why, um, it turns out that murder rates are spiking just as much in Republican, uh, run cities as Democrat run cities, which I would have liked to hear. Yeah. Him try to rationalize that one. Biden accused Trump of running a shitty economy and running manufacturing into the ground, which was, is not actually true under Trump manufacturing jobs rose and then they took a hit during COVID. So he has, you know, whether through his credit or not has his presidency has had yielded some positive effects. Yeah. But Wallace said that Obama created more jobs

in the last year and a half of his presidency than Trump had over the last three or something. There was some numbers he threw out that I thought were interesting that were like too ill-equipped to fact check on this podcast. We're not doing fact checking here. Um, afterward, some like pundit called Trump a fraud, a bully and said he has no plans. Again, with the plans, why is everyone so obsessed with plans? And then Biden is out of it and captive of the left, which was also funny. Hardly. People, people were asking us to discuss their choice of ties, which I actually didn't even pay attention to believe it or not. They were both ugly. Yeah. They, yeah, I don't know. I didn't read it. I didn't perceive anything particularly

special about their ties, I guess, but they looked like they were from Ali Express. Yeah. Some Trump's ties look like they're manufactured from the same material as like the bed linens at Trump hotels. Like cheap satin. Yeah. Um, some like female women pundit called Casey Hunt said she was grateful that her son was too young to watch the debates. Um, and talked about how, how early like debates back in the day made kids want to get involved in politics. And I was thinking like how depressing it is to want your kids to get involved in politics, to offload your own guilt at being a shitty and selfish and self-involved parent. Because that's all that is. Yeah. Um, I don't know. I guess my thesis is I don't see a meaningful

difference between Trump and Biden. Yeah. And I think the anti-Trump hysteria is unwarranted on that count. Gone to your head. Cast, you got to cast a vote. Um, who would I vote for? Yeah. For Biden. Um, I'd vote for Trump. I'll say that. Yeah. I'll say that because I would at least like to see him, um, sit out a second term. Yeah. Let's give him another four years. I'm not a Trump supporter. No, of course not. Or let me put it this way. I think Trump is funny and entertaining as an artist. Yeah. I definitely, I don't know if I would vote. Gone to my head. If you had to choose, right? If you couldn't, or you'd get, you know, shot in the head. Yeah. I guess I'd vote for Biden out of a vague feeling of kind of harm reduction, if only to make the Trump

derangement syndrome stop. I think. Yeah. If, you know, Biden had kind of a placating effect on the, on the country, it might be bad in the long run, but okay in the, in the short run. I mean, look, again, I'm not an accelerationist. I'm not a Trump supporter. I think that, um, you have to accept the consequences of your own actions and like the Trump derangement syndrome as exhausting and demoralizing as it's been has really revealed, I think on a massive scale that there's something terribly beyond wrong with politics in this country. And I don't think there's any going back is what you mean. I think, I mean, it's like, again, do you want your, um, poison to act immediately or be extended relief or whatever release?

Freudians. Yeah. I don't see, I don't really see, I mean, it's again, it's like, I just don't see really, um, kind of a, um, substance, a substantive meaningful difference between Trump and Biden is what I'm saying. Um, and you know, personally, I'd like to see Trump retire from the presidency and like host a podcast or do a reality show. I don't really need to see him as president. No. And like, I think that again, a lot of Americans, especially American liberals really hate him because he forces them to confront how they look to other people across the globe. Mm hmm. I mean, he's the president we deserve for sure. Yeah. On some level, um, I think like, yeah, he, I don't think also, I don't think he's the worst president in history as Joe

Biden's Twitter account kind of tweeted out. I mean, there's all this seems to be all this like amnesia about George W. Bush. Yeah, totally. People almost like think back on him with fondly when I think he was probably substantively much worse than Trump. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, he certainly has more blood on his hands and, and like also like the people who are the most vociferous in their denunciations of Trump are the people whose presidency has been overwhelmingly good for them. Well, yeah, again, the media class. So I like, I just find something like completely like unabidable. I just made up that word insufferable about people in my milieu who are six figure making affluent millennial liberals beating their drum about how bad Trump is.

Right. It's distasteful or like lamenting the, the loss of Robi Wade that won't won't won't happen. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, I mean, it's so convenient the hypotheticals again. Yeah, it's so convenient for them to take on battles that are like, no goals, no stakes for them personally. I mean, they never have to face any consequences. Yeah. So I think like, I don't know, I mean, well, that's why they the, you know, you know, liberal feminists after RBG's death made such a like performative outcry about Roe v. Roe v. Wade being repealed, which because that's like, they have to kind of imagine this handmade tail-esque dystopian,

which they are oppressed and based their politics around that because in reality, they simply aren't. Yeah. And like, look, I mean, I'm not a repulsed or disgusted by anybody who's like kind of like an old school leftist and is like, I have to vote for Biden because I, I think he sucks and I hate him, but I just, I can't bring myself to vote for Trump. And I feel compelled to vote. I completely understand that mindset. But for me personally, instinctively, it doesn't feel right, you know, because there's some level of self deception in it that I also can't abide by, I guess, I'm not being like very articulate. You know, I saw somebody on Twitter complaining about how

the organizers of the women's march are planning an action to protest like the appointment of this Amy Mconi Barrett woman. But, you know, and she was like, well, where were they for BLM? And it's like, well, you know, me too and BLM are basically equivalent liberal movements. Yeah. Yeah, who do very little to help the kind of, the vast majority of people. Sure. Fuck, I forgot what I was going to say. Um, yeah, I don't know how you get out of this. I mean, I think probably, well, if you believe, for example, that eight years of Obama are what got us Trump, yeah, then a vote for Biden would be extremely irresponsible because,

you know, logically follow that something worse would happen. I mean, like, I mean, I don't know. I think a lot about how you even begin to get out of this. And like at the risk of science sounding like utopian or idealistic, I think maybe you do have to like get involved on a grassroots local level and not just in politics explicitly, but I think you have to change people's thinking about certain things. Yeah. Like, um, like they're pre like on some level, um, well, their understandings of like their own class interests. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of like being disabused of the lies they tell themselves to protect their own class interests. They're pre political relations to other humans,

like this kind of thing. Yeah. Which I don't feel optimistic about. No, no. No. And I think we're like even past the point of like dunking on like leftists or libs because like I totally understand how everybody, like I see things from all sides. I understand how everybody feels the way that they do. Of course. And everybody's like feels like they're between a rock and a hard place, you know? But at the same time, I really like truly do not mean, I don't think that that the difference between Trump or Biden in the White House will be a meaningful difference. And of course there's also the, the chance that Biden will die in office as Patrick

Psychic predicted. Of course. I mean, so yeah, it definitely seems that way. I did do a compatibility chart between Trump and Biden. Yeah. Astrologically. Yeah. And it says that they're prone to like violent acrimonious debates. Oh. Okay. What's Biden's sign? He's a Scorpio. So he's deceitful and lying. Yeah. And Trump's a Gemini. So. He's like creative and two-faced. It's about right. One of the first, I guess we can, do you want to talk about the Supreme Court nom?

Sure. I don't. Well, the first question that they post them was about, yeah, the Supreme Court nomination, which Biden said that Trump didn't have, that it was unconstitutional or something, for Trump to nominate that woman. What's her name? Amy Ocasio-Cortez. Amy Adams. Amy Coney Barrett. Amy Coney Barrett, God. And, you know, Trump said that he won, you know, Farron Square four years ago, and that's, he has the right to nominate a Supreme Court justice, which he does, no? It's true. Yeah.

That seemed, I don't know. I don't understand how there's any ambiguity there. Yeah. Or like substance of reason to oppose Trump nominating a Supreme Court justice. Biden's rationale is that a vote for the president and the Democratic party is essentially then a referendum on who they want to appoint as- Because we're in an election cycle. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, that's, I didn't come up with your, with the checks and balances system.

And, you know, when Obama was president, Mitch McConnell repeatedly stalled the Democrats' ability to vote on justice. So there's a lot of like politics going on on both sides. But I think, you know, I think all the hubbub over this woman is also a lot of like proxy mudslinging. Right. I like that he came out the gate who's like, she's a phenomenal nominee. One of the best. Yeah. Top academics. She has accolades from Notre Dame and other universities such as Notre Dame, which is a Catholic university as far as I know, right? Yeah. Yeah.

She's getting a lot of heat for being trad Catholic. Yeah. She is not, she's part of some, she is Catholic, but I think the specific sect that she's a part of is more, seems more like evangelical style. But there's, as we could have predicted, there's a lot of like handmade tail hysteria about her. Yeah. She actually, I kind of looked into this and she like in her own words said twice and once in 2013 and then again in 2016 that she actually didn't think that anybody would seek to overturn

or repeal Roe v. Wade and that they wouldn't touch it. Yeah. And what does she say here? Non-issue. Let's see. Yeah. She says, I think it's very unlikely at this point that the court is going to overturn Roe v. Wade, the fundamental element that the woman has a right to choose abortion will probably stand. This is from a 2013 lecture at Notre Dame on the 40th anniversary of the

Roe v. Wade ruling. And then in 2016 she said, I don't think abortion or the right to abortion would change. I think some of the restrictions would change. The question is how much freedom the court is willing to let states have in regulating abortion. Right. This is from 2016 remarks. Okay. So she hasn't done anything except for be Catholic that makes people think she's going to like draconian. I mean, it's hard to say, right? She's saying one thing. It's unclear what her intentions are.

But, you know, she seems to think that it's unlikely. I think the second comment is more ominous than the first in terms of like states restrictions. But I also don't think like, again, the problem with Roe v. Wade is that we're not talking about the actual case or about women's actual right to abortion. We're talking about the inflaming of their respective bases in where they stand on this issue, which by the way is a serious and meaningful issue, but not by any stretch the most important issue facing America right now. Right. Like there's other, you know, stuff. But women love to love to be victims.

They love to make it about themselves. They do. And that's like, they'd like to believe is the most like pressing threat to their autonomy, especially if you're an upper media class, like upper middle class, like media girl, you know, who hasn't had any real material challenges. All you really have is like the right to quote, choose. Yeah. And like, as you, as you mentioned, Liz Braining wrote this op ed. Yeah. No, but that's a good point that like, yeah, it comes down to like your personal individual selection preferences in life. Yeah. Yeah. Liz, Liz wrote a op ed that was basically talking about

how whether her religious faith will interfere in her legal decision making and her ability to quote discharge her judicial duties. Right. And that there's a kind of America is a Protestant nation. So in a lot of ways, Catholicism is kind of does run counter to the Protestant ideology, the Protestant ethic. Right. But Catholics, I really know they're not nearly as like oppressed as they'd like to believe they are. It's funny that during the debate, Biden talked about being oppressed for being an Irish Catholic. It's like, dude, like no one's oppressing you. You guys are oppressing yourselves. Exactly. But yeah, I think like people were kind of miffed about this op ed or no, I didn't really catch the reaction to I think Trump may have Trump was miffed. Okay.

He seemed to reference it in a not like Bruneck by name, but he said something to the that effect. Yeah, I don't really know. Yeah, I don't either. The Supreme Court seems like a really antiquated and stupid. It's just way over my head. I can't I have to like literally read more and bone up. I don't want to like dig my own grave. The House, the Senate and the the executive branch, the judicial branch, and the legislative branch. Proventilating, I don't know. When you're when a bill gets to Capitol Hill, we're trying to remember like that song. No, I don't I don't know. But I think even Liz's op ed, which I thought was fairly like, inoffensive and benign, misses the point. And I don't know if it deliberately does so or

not deliberately or whatever. But it seems to me this is the wrong. And actually, maybe she's not even asking this question. But the question of whether Coney Barrett's faith will interfere in her judicial duties. It's like the wrong question to ask. Of course it won't. Right. Like, she's a professional and operator. I don't think her Catholic faith is going to impede like the real question. This is like a proxy question for the real question. And which is, is she a faithful servant of the law? Or will she do politics? Right. And I don't know how to answer that question. Because I don't know anything about this. I read that she's a constitutionalist. So she's like, I don't even really get what that means.

I think it's yeah, so she honors kind of the original meaning of the Constitution. Yeah, I think so. So she's probably like big into maybe the second amendment right to bear arms. And I don't know. Oh, my God. I'm like so glad I deleted the subreddit finally because I like that's good. I didn't handle the distraction anymore. Yeah, that's but I'm already dreading what they're going to say. This portion of the episode is being like, what's the Constitution? It's super Tuesday in the Constitution. Is it constitutional to be this thin?

You're out of order. Tell it to the judge. She's what I find to be impressive about her is that she's a mother of seven. Oh, yeah. She's like 48, I think she's relatively young and an accomplished judge. Yeah. This is what's so crazy for me. Just on the level of individual example and not political or ideological example, conservative women live the liberal feminist dream of having it all. They somehow manage to have high powered lucrative jobs and also have 14 kids. Yeah. If she's this religious sect that she's a part of that people seem to think is highly patriarchal, how did she ascend to such a position of power? It seems like if she was really under

like her husband's thumb, all a handmaid's tail, she wouldn't be able to. I mean, with a fleet of cash only undocumented nannies, I'm assuming, I don't know. But even like working outside of the home seems like she's not that conservative. Yeah, you can't be. I mean, I don't know how women personally rationalize their- What's Sarah Palin up to? I don't know. It's a good question. Her back in the mix, honestly. Yeah. Those big gnats. I really love the combination of her kind of like chunky glasses and big tits, which weirdly became a template for every like e-girl Marxist. Interesting. Yeah. Think about it. They all have that- You really ran with that. The MILF aesthetic. Yeah. Yeah. And they all have that calm down.

You're just a whore who found glasses. I'm such a nerd meme look, which I like. By the way, I'm not knocking on it, but they all look like Sarah Palin. Smirking over the cleavage. And what I always liked about Sarah Palin, too, is that she had great legs and also a faint mustache. Oh, I never- She had like a downy, like peach fuzz. Alaskan. And you go, it's cold in Alaska. That's why. You gotta grow out your fuzzy body and facial hair. Speaking about fuzzy bodies, should we talk about Armenia versus Azerbaijan? Yes. The Borat Bowl. Someone called it on Twitter. Sorry, I'm uninformed, Anna. No, that's- It really is your Belarus.

Yeah. It's my Belarus. Yeah. My personal Belarus. It's almost as if geopolitics is developing in a way of just for us to talk about on this phone. Yeah, yeah. I literally had the thought- I was like laying in bed kind of sleeplessly last night, and I was like, God, why do Dasha and I have to be from such shitty places in the world? I know. Forged in flames. Yeah. That's how the takes get so hot. Yeah. Yeah. So my people, they eat stones. That's a direct quote from Larry Gugosian. Wow. Very cool. They eat stone. The Karabakh is a hybrid word of the Russian-Turkish and Persian. It means a mountainous black

gardens, which is beautiful. I mean, I think- Yeah. Like a forest city. Yeah, it's a forest city. Yeah. But it really kind of describes my essence, I think, like a bleak French feud of humanity from lofty height. Yeah, it's like- So there- Armenia and Azerbaijan are fighting over Karabakh, which is like a semi-autonomous republic in a disputed territory, my ancestral homeland. Yeah. My family's from some place called Gudru. I don't know anything about Armenian culture or history. I don't speak Armenian. Well, are you Armenian or are you Jewish or are you Russian, Anna? Which is it? People want to know. I know one phrase in Armenian, which is danakunes, which means I have a knife,

I think. I don't know. Somebody can fact check that for me. My grandpa taught me that. That seems like a useful, one of the most useful phrases. I have a knife and social media account. So, yeah, Karabakh declared martial law, mobilized all men over 18. There's like a real war going up in there. The Armenian prime minister was tweeting about how- Sorry, it's loading. What is the kind of ethnic makeup of the disputed territory? So, Karabakh is a landlocked semi-autonomous republic in Azerbaijan. It was handed over to Azerbaijan by the Soviets. It has been the seat of conflict. There was a big one in 1988 when

they declared independence and tried to take it back. There was like pogroms. My family members were living in Baku at the time and they flee without their belongings because Armenians were getting slaughtered in the street because of this alleged act of aggression. I think it's something like 90% Armenians, predominantly Armenian territory, but it's literally within this Azeri territory. Why is it happening? I think Azerbaijan wants, probably, they want the Armenians out and they want to take over this parcel of land. I think Karabakh, Armenians want Karabakh to be incorporated into the Armenian nation. What's Nagorno? Like mountainous. Oh, I see. Nagorno, yeah. Nagadia.

Got it. Nagadia, of course. Kara is black and in Turkish and Bakh is garden and Persian. Wow, beautiful. It's beautiful. Armenians call it Artsakh, but the Prime Minister was talking about how Azerbaijan launched a missile and aerial attack against Artsakh. Peaceful settlements have been attacked. Armenian side has shot down two helicopters and three UAVs, destroyed three tanks. We stay strong next to our army to protect our motherland from Azeri invasion. But, you know, as somebody was explaining to me who's much more knowledgeable in this, typically this kind of thing pops off when somebody has an electoral cycle, but neither country seems to have one on the horizon. Interesting. The other thing is, Azerbaijan

is backed by Turkey. Turkey is in fact supplying them now with missiles and drones and weapons, which is an outright act of hostility. There's also reports, I don't know how corroborated they are that Turkey is deploying native mercenaries and Syrian militants into the area. Georgia is possibly in the mix because allegedly, they're letting Turks smuggle arms into Azerbaijan, and they allegedly also closed off their airspace at the behest of the U.S., so that all Russian or assistance to Armenia has to go through Iran. Also, obviously, Armenia is huddled up to Russia as it's historically been throughout the ages, throughout the years, for obvious reasons. But basically, you know, you have like two, again, it's like Belarus. You have two small

nations that nobody cares about. Yeah. Fighting a proxy war on behalf of... NATO and Russia. Yeah, like two larger powers trying to check each other's influence in the Middle East. Yeah. And this is kind of like the gateway. I don't know. And I also like, I'm like, I don't know. I don't know if I want to ramble about this forever because it's just like a sighting of tendentious facts, but I don't think it's fair to even call Azerbaijan a proxy of Turkey. I think it literally is Turkey. It's a direct extension of Turkey. Yeah. I mean, they're kind of... That presents the same Turkish interests. Yeah, they're ethnically, ideologically aligned. I don't mean that as a judgment or a dig.

I think Erdogan has been very clear about his designs in the Middle East, and he wants to kind of like restore a caliphate. So ethnically, people in Azerbaijan are Turkish. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. They speak a Turkish dialect. The way that people in Belarus are... Russian essentially are like... Otherwise Eastern European. Yeah. Turkey's also financially backed by Qatar and China. And of course, and they have interests in Syria, Libya, like Iraq, and Turkey and Azerbaijan are friends with Israel. Sounds like a real shit show. Yeah, real shit show. Yeah. And I think Armenia is kind of at least symbolically backed by Syria, Lebanon, and Iran.

There are huge diasporas in Syria and Lebanon. Okay. Not huge, but not... And Russia. And Russia, yeah. For obvious reasons also, it's not that Russia loves its Armenian diaspora so much. It's that they have a direct economic and geopolitical interest in checking Turkey. Of course. Well, I mean, look, the craziest thing for me is that Israel is providing financial and military assistance to Azerbaijan. It's wild. I mean, it's the same feeling that you had with the Belarus thing when it feels really shitty and nauseating and sinking. And yeah, I'm kind of helpless. Yeah. And like whatever you think of Israel, this is a Jewish

nation that came about as a direct response to a genocide that was modeled on the Armenian genocide. Like we are people who are historically aligned. Yeah. I mean, that was the first genocide. Yeah. Well, the first, yeah, it was like the first technological genocide as Hitler was fond of a... Fuck, Anna. Yeah, it's very depressing. Yeah. What's Kim Katchy and doing about all of that? She was going off. She's very pro-Armenian. Yeah, they've been vocal about the genocide in the past. Yeah. And I think Kanye's on board with her. Of course. He's a good husband. And the funniest thing was kind of like Turkish national, there's like a video of some Turkish

nationalists mowing down a cardboard cutout of Kim Kardashian in like a truck while like one of those like shepherd dogs lingered in the background. Fuck. Really funny. The other funny thing is like this has also become like a proxy social media war between India and Pakistan. How so? Because Indians are pro-Armenian and Pakistanis are pro-Turkey. Yeah. Wow. And you caught some flak from Armenian Twitter for... Yeah, last night, both liberal Twitter and Armenian Twitter were mad at me, which was like a breath of fresh air, honestly, from the usual like leftist Twitter. Yeah, being mad at me. Liberals were mad at me because I tweeted something that was an apparently praiseworthy

assessment of like Melania's menswear outfit, the debate. Which I agree with. Which also wasn't that praiseworthy. She looked great, but also people don't know how to read. I said the veneer of power, not power. I wasn't actually praising her. My God. And it was like sort of mocking Dr. Jill Biden. For wearing a mask. For wearing a mask on stage and like a gross symbolic gesture. I know. She looks awful. Yeah. And also she's a doctor of education. Yeah. I'm seriously suspicious of anybody who appends doctor to their name. But the xenophobic libs came out from full force to call Melania a call girl and a Slavic prostitute. A legal immigrant. Which is Amber correctly pointed out. Melania came here on a visa that basically legalized a legal

human trafficking. Human trafficking. The Gea Tolentino visa. Yeah. Seriously. They should rename it in honor of her since we're doing the woke thing. You know, she's a woman of color. The Tolentino visa. Yeah. It's how Melania got smuggled into this country. And you said she was laggy in industries and you're right. She is. It's a fact, statement of fact, not value. But Amber's right to point out that this measure was supported by Democrats and Republicans alike. Of course. Which is always funny. It's funny to me when they can all get on board with slaves. Yeah. Yeah. It's always funny to me when like liberals get butt hurt about Trump exploiting the tax code that they helped to write, you know. Yeah. But yeah. And then

Armenians were mad at me because I tweeted about how like hot girls on Instagram were popping off about the situation in Karabakh. And it was like literally girls, you know, who take inspirational selfies while citing statistics of how many dead on the, you know, yeah, on their side. We know it. Yeah. And so I was like mocking kind of the gross virtue signaling of people who confuse you know, vanity and activism. Yeah. But Armenians were like, you are daughter of Leonid Kachyan, your bloodline from our sock. How can you disgrace our proud nation where they're protecting, they're protecting your people. I know. No, I really like this about Armenians. I have to say, and I like had some DM conversations with them. Like I actually don't

ever respond to DMs because I can't. I mean, I'm sure you don't either. It's like a little. Yeah. It's my phone's a mess. It's yeah, it's like excessive, but I will respond. I don't want to invite anybody into my DMs, but I will respond to Armenians because I feel kind of like beholden and loyal to my people. And I think that we're smart and brave and I like love Armenian people. But as much as I laugh at them, I mean, I do also think that we're like rug merchants and like bizarre hagglers. You are very brave. It's true. Yeah, I like Armenians. And what I like the most about Armenians is that they're not poisoned by like online irony. They're very sincere and earnest and they get seriously upset if they think that you're insulting them. Yeah. Like the war being

fought between Armenians and Azeris right now is very old school and very literal, even though it's being fought with cutting edge Turkish and Israeli technology. Yeah. In the sense that they like believe in their national struggles. Totally. Yeah. And then, yeah, they're not quite like having a normal one folks style discourse. Yeah. And they took, I mean, they took this tweet the wrong way because they thought that I was like glorifying hot girls when I was sort of making fun of the hot activist industrial and I mean the fact that they took it that way was, I guess, like reassuring heartening. Yeah, it's endearing. Yeah. And it is, you know, yeah, I mean, Belarus is still people are still like peacefully protesting of being met with

violent crackdowns. It doesn't seem like the NATO plot is being executed quickly. So it's all very unfortunate. How's Luca doing? Well, there's so there's a lot of tech workers in Minsk, Belarus, who are now kind of strong arming the revolutionary efforts against them. They're like turning against him and that actually does kind of bode poorly for him because they're comprise a lot of the Belarusian economy now. Yeah. So we'll see. I mean, he's still, he's not, he's, as he said, you're gonna have to kill him if they want to, if they want him to step down. So over his dead body. I mean, this is like the sad thing too. It's like whenever I talk to like Armenians who are from Russia or Armenian, they're like, Oh, yeah, like, well, you should come to

Yerevan. It's so great. Everybody speaks English. And there's like a lot of like open floor offices everywhere where you can do your work. And I'm just like, you're no, no, that's not great. The minute that like a country adopts English as its business language, it's over for these hoes. It's bad. Yeah. Like you've gotten folded into the kind of like internationalist paradigm or whatever. Right. Um, yeah, but it's, I mean, it's really sad what's going on. And it's even sadder that again, it's a proxy war being fought, you know, by countries, literally nobody cares about. Yeah. Exactly. It makes me bummed out. And of course, like, I have to take the side of Armenians in this matter. I'm like morally. Well, that seems like the

the ethical standpoint to have. Yeah. You are obligated to do so. And I think also Turkish ethnic obligations aside, it's yeah, I mean, yeah, because, you know, my, my beef is like not with the Zari's. It's with Turkey because I think Turkey is a really the Turkish government is a really disgusting, festering. Yeah. Awful operatists. I mean, you know, there was a an RT correspondent tweeting about how, um, Azerbaijan is now refusing entry to all foreign journalists. Um, and only local and domestic Turkish media are being allowed. And Armenia, of course, has flung open the doors to foreign journalists because, you know, they feel like they have nothing to hide or whatever. And they're inviting them to come in and see

what's going on. And Azerbaijan's behavior is totally in line with that of the Turkish government, which routinely cracks down on journalists to freedoms within Turkey. Yeah. I mean, I think it's it seems clear who like the, the brutal regime is. Yeah. Yeah. Israel. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's sad because I think the Karabakh conflict is sort of like the clear and spin version of the Israel Palestine conflict on the world stage. Yeah. It seems that way. Yeah. But okay. If Armenians want me to be more sincere and I think you're being very, you're very, very informed. Yeah. We stand, we hear at Red Square broadcast stand with the Armenian militias or whatever. Um, and Kanye West. Yeah. So they have that on their side.

Um, and what else? Yeah, what else? What else is in there? Is there a lighter note to end on? Um, I mean, there's Trump's tax story, which we sort of touched on. He paid $750 in taxes. Yeah. That's damn. I mean, when they asked him that at the debates, I had this almost like out of body moment where I was like, this is like a parody of, of politics. Yeah. Of a political system, like our milli, or like defunct millionaire presidents being asked like 750 is such a comically low number. It's not even anywhere in the like, like threshold of norm, normalcy. Yeah. And back when I had more, you know, when I identified more with leftist ideology, I guess, when like, um, before the, when the DSA kind of like interest was burgeoning in 2016, I was kind

of like, I had this, I used to think that it was almost like an accelerationist position of like, yes, like things will get bad and people will really see, you know, like how high the stakes are and how like unjust the world is. But it's now I'm like, fuck 750. Yeah. I'm like, that's too bad. Well, like you seem like there's any. Well, no, you're not wrong because the stakes do get revealed and people see how bad things are, but it doesn't galvanize them to action. It makes them more nihilistic and demoralized as we see in the Soviet Union. And all the activism takes this kind of tone to it. But it's funny because the NYT clearly thought that this would be like a bombshell revelation and a smoking gun. But of course, the real smoking gun was like the part

where they had to tuck their tail between their legs and admit that the tax returns revealed no ties to Russia. Yeah, small print. Yeah. And now kind of the libs are walking back their remarks and are saying like, but why would IRS documents reveal criminal malfeasance, which is true, but right, like who would declare their criminal activity on a tax return? But that was always yeah, like the Maddo party line. Yeah, that like we want to see the tax return shows the tax return shows the pee when the finally got like the pee tape and it's going to turn out those hookers weren't rushing after all. They were bell rushing. But I think like the story is basically catnip for like the new class of like downstream clubs who got who get buttfucked on taxes every year.

I was like, this is the decisive moment that's going to make me vote for Trump because I can really relate to the fact that he hasn't paid income tax until last year, to be fair, I was making like 10 carats. We didn't have any. We didn't have any taxes on him. And of course, AOC kind of weighed in and was like, when I was a waitress, I paid more as a bartender. It's like, yeah, this no shit. This is like, of course, she has to turn it into like a debate club competition for us. I paid more taxes. She's really in also like, she's like, you know, also kind of was Trump is almost like her spiritual mentor because he turns everything into an annoying retarded competition. He's like, I'll pay even less taxes next year.

I don't know. But it was funny because I think I was like scrolling down trying to make sense of this like boring ass article. And it, you know, the real purpose of this article is to create a new Russia gate type situation so that they could write more articles. Putin's puppy. Yeah. They need their new content puppy mill. Trump's tax returns. They literally announced in the article, like this article offers an overview of the time's findings. Additional articles will be published in the coming week. So you don't say, I can't wait for all those additional articles. And of course, yeah, it's not going to yield any real

substantive resistance or meaningful action or anything because we have a two party system in which the Democrats are like just as culpable for the tax codes and benefit from them enormously. Yeah. Yeah. And like, by the way, I'm not even opposed to paying. I would gladly pay taxes. I would gladly pay more in taxes if I knew that they were doing something useful. Of course. Yeah. We're all socialists here. We love to pay our taxes. Yeah. Instead of like financing a Zary war effort. Exactly. I mean, that's also true is that had Trump paid more taxes, they would have, you know, probably bought some nice drones. Yeah. Yeah. That's what AOC did.

She helped finance a bunch of overseas wars. So in a way, he's kind of with her barista tax. Yeah. Anyway, how are we doing on time? We're an hour 20. We could wrap it up. Do you have anything else? Do you want a dog? Oh, I want to get a dog. I'm a little ways off from pulling the trigger on that, but I'm interested. I was like, now we're talking. You know, I've become, I have a fantasy of adopting a senior dog. That's really nice. A senior miniature poodle. Because I saw a picture of one on like, on a shelter website. And then in a little description, they said he was really frightened in the shelter environment, and that really made me feel sad. And my therapist thinks it's like kind of daddy stuff. Like the

tenderness I feel for the aging neglected dog is kind of a misplaced parental feeling or something. But I think it would be, it would be nice. I'm torn kind of between getting a ancient kind of rescue wheelchair bound dog that I can like dutifully nurse through the end of its life and getting like a fucking designer French bulldog puppy. That's like so cute. So cute. You can barely look at it. Yeah. But I'm not, I'm not ready to get a dog yet. But I really am feeling a burning desire to have one. I really like dogs. Is there a way that you can come into routine contact with dogs without actually committing to fostering, which I've looked into, but I don't really have, I'm not in like a good living situation to have a dog. Yeah. And I mean,

you keep in mind you have to walk the thing like three times a day. Exactly. And I'm in a fifth floor walk up once again. And I don't think Maddie wants to have a dog around or any kind of animal care taking scenarios. But that's, yeah, it's on the agenda. Yeah. Having a cat is easier in some sense because you usually forget to change the litter and pretend that you're like avoiding toxoplasmosis or whatever. I'm doing this for my health. But I liked, I liked having, I grew up with a dog. And then of course I had icy and I liked kind of the structure and accountability that a dog brings into your life. Yeah, it's nice. It's like better than having a shrink, I think. I can't just kind of like lie in bed all day. Yeah. And Mope, you just have to, you have to get a dog to accompany

you and lying in bed all day. Yeah, I have to walk it at least a little. Can you like microdose dogs with K? They seem to have. I would never. Well, catamines, a horse, it is a horse tranquilizer actually. It's for mammals. I think if, you know, you were a veterinarian, you probably. What kind of dog would you get? You want a miniature poodle? I like French Bulldogs. I like Boston Terriers. I really like miniature, I like standard poodles too. Wait, this is news to me that you like French Bulldogs. I thought that you would be kind of ideologically opposed to them, but like, that's good to know because I think they're really cute even though they're like genetically malformed. They're not as bad as Pugs. No, on that front, even though I do think Pugs are very cute

too. But well, Russian Bulldogs were a favorite of the, like the Romanov dynasty. Oh, French, very like aristocratic dogs, which I like. Oh yeah, you soup of the, count you soup of who helped kill Rasputin, had a French Bulldog called Napoleon, which is really cute. And there's a famous Valentin Sarah painting of them together. Oh yeah, there's some, there's a lot of nice paintings of French Bulldogs in art history. Yeah, aristocratic choice. But I like, I like big dogs, but it's not a realistic kind of option in New York. So I like, I think miniature poodles are very intelligent and sweet. Yeah, I think, I think I will end up going with a rescue because yeah, you have to, you can, you kind of have to, and you can kind of anticipate what their

personality is more than when you get like an inbred designer dog that ends up being like a monster or something. Yeah, like autistic. And you have to bring it to the kill shell. Like drop it off. You might as well swing by and pick one up. It's already on death row. Yeah. No, you have to, you won't be able to like live with yourself on some level if you like shell out $1,800 for like some puppy mill puppy when you could just like rescue. A nice scrappy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's more in line with our personalities to have rescue animals. For sure. Or not really a breeder. Where rescue animals from Armenian bellies, respectively. Yeah. See you in hell. Yeah, we'll, we'll do that. See you in hell. Joe Biden.