Some More News - Even More News: DOGE Email Debacle and GOP Reps Berated At Town Halls

Episode Date: February 26, 2025

Hi. On a special Wednesday episode of Even More News, Katy, Cody, and Jonathan discuss Elon Musk's demand for "five bullets" from every federal employee. They also touch on the potentially turning political tide and the GOP members of Congress getting ripped apart (figuratively) at town halls. Get the world's news at https://ground.news/SMN to compare coverage and see through biased coverage. Subscribe for 40% off unlimited access through our link. PATREON: https://patreon.com/somemorenews MERCH: https://shop.somemorenews.com You’re going to love Hungryroot as much as we do. For a limited time get 40% off your first box PLUS get a free item in every box for life at https://hungryroot.com/smn and use code smn. Upgrade your business: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com.morenews - ALL LOWERCASE.

Hi, hello, surprise! Welcome to Even More News, the first and only news podcast. My name is Katie Stoll. You're up. Yeah, and welcome to the 319th time I've said something similar to, thanks, I'm Cody. You're welcome, Cody. Hi.

And Jonathan is also here. I'm here, hi. On a Tuesday. What? On a Tuesday. What's that like? Yeah, I think that there are some eagle-eyed viewers right now going, what's happening?

What's going on? This isn't some more news. Where's the news dude? And to that I say he's right there. He's right there, I'm pointing at him on my Zoom screen. And here I am in the studio. Yeah. Cody, what's going on?

Why are we here today instead of having a normal episode? We, I guess we'll explain briefly, we had an episode that we were filming last week to come out today, Wednesday. And as we were going through it, we just sort of, it felt off. There was something off about it. It didn't quite feel like an episode of the show.

And we had a long discussion during the filming of it. And we just sort of came to the conclusion that there's more to be done to the episode to make it worth making to make it seem like an episode of the show that wouldn't feel off. And so we decided that we were going to take a little more time with that and punch it up and expand it and make it a bigger thing that would feel closer to the spirit of the show. And instead of that episode, which will come out in some time, in weeks, we're working on it. We're filming something else tomorrow

that will come out next week. But yeah, so in the meantime, we thought we would just do a little extra news because as we, other E.C.I.D.E. viewers may have noticed, we don't always get to all the things that happen in the news. There's just so many things. This is an interesting opportunity for us

to give you guys a little peek behind the curtain. Sometimes we get comments like, why aren't you talking about this thing? Or you're not reacting to my input specifically. We have scripts in the pipeline for months and we've got a very tight schedule in order to meet this weekly demand, which we love to do, but sometimes,

and actually this is, I think the first time this has ever happened, so I feel pretty proud of us. Wait, you mean Katie, it's hard to have a 7 to 10,000 word script ready to go every single week? It sure is. Sorry, keep going. It sure is.

He's right folks. It was a tough decision, and it wasn't that tough, but what are we going to do? We have to release something. I feel very proud of us and our team for always putting out stuff that we're actually proud of and that we feel really confident about. And being able to make a decision that might not be the easiest decision, but to say like, no, we want to stand by our values. We want to stand by our show and the quality. So here we are today.

Also, we have been flirting with the idea of doing two episodes of Even More News a week. That's true. Because as Cody said, it is just impossible to cover everything. So now we're workshopping that. because as Cody said, it is just impossible to cover everything. So now we're workshopping that. We're gonna have another episode of Even More News

in a couple days, my babies. How exciting. And some of you are watching this for the first time and I hope you fall in love with Even More News. I hope you fall deeply in love with us flirting on the news. I don't hope you fall in love with us flirting the news. I think we need a little bit of some boundaries, some distance.

People said more me and it's more me. More me, more me. More Jonathan, more Jonathan. Me meaning Jonathan, yay. We're all happy, more of him. And we will be back next week on Wednesday, our regularly scheduled programming full episode. As you see, Katie's in town,

so she will be in that episode. This little guy might show up. This little guy might show up. We'll see. Some more news viewers and listeners who don't watch even more news. We shout out holidays because there's always something to celebrate.

Today we just have one, but it's an important one, perhaps the best holiday we've ever called out. Thursday, February 27th is National Small Dog Day. Nick, throw up some pictures of adorable small dogs. Bark bark woof. Oh wait, this was created by Purina? Nestle Purina. Nestle owns Purina?

Mm-hmm. Please. Come on. Dogs can't eat chocolate. I mean they own a lot of stuff. One would hope that they would keep the chocolate factory away from the Purina factory, although with RFK, who knows? They might just combine everything.

I already put a bunch of Oompa Loompas in charge and now it's chaos. The L'Oreal is gonna be mixed in with the with the cat food. Yeah they're gonna fill the... You own L'Oreal too? The water is gonna mix with... They own a lot of stuff. You should look at it. No I know I'm being purposely dumb here. I don't think I I think it's fine. It's fine to not know all the companies that Nestle owns. I know that they own an astounding amount of random companies. A lot of water companies and cereals. Shall we get into it?

Okay. I'm trying to flirt with the camera. Okay, are you getting that folks at home? I hope we're entertaining you on a Wednesday. Happy Wednesday everybody. Oh, we, oh, here's some more news. That's not how this show goes. Jonathan, what's going on in the news?

Oh, well, it was a big weekend. If you work for the federal government, you got an email on Saturday from Doge following a tweet from Elon Musk who said, consistent with President at real Donald Trump's instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week. Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.

Then the email went out a few hours later that didn't say that. It said the first sentence, but not the failure to respond will be taken as a resignation. But it said deadline was Monday at 1159 p.m. EST this is Matt. This is It's mad. Just Sir, it's wild. It's absurd. It's ridiculous

It's sloppy, but there's so much to unpack we will but I had to interject this is assuming that all of these millions of federal employees, A, I guess are on Twitter. You have to be on, I literally saw people alerts in threads be like, yeah, they should be checking the website. What? No. The Twitter website?

They shouldn't be checking the website now. You want people on Twitter at work? I make sure the bears aren't eating the campers at Yosemite, and I'm supposed to be checking doge.gov. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Go do the important business. Yeah, it's absurd. Just a random email that may or may not go into your spam folder.

Probably go into spam folder. Probably, I can't say that with absolute confidence, but we do know that this is what happened at Twitter. It's exactly what happened at Twitter. And that was a thing that- It's exactly what happened at Twitter. Literally exactly what happened at Twitter. And a lot of people didn't see the email because it was in their spam folder. Although it does look like this was from OPM, I believe.

It came from HR at OPM.gov. Yeah. So it's like an email they're probably familiar with. It's an internal email instead of like, you know, musk at Elon dot word or whatever, dot based, God, you would. So you know, maybe it didn't go to spam this time. The whole thing is very absurd. Also, I would posit that these millions of emails that they would potentially receive wouldn't be read by anybody. No one's going to read these millions of emails about what the five things you do in a

week. Other than Grok. I mean, Grok's obviously going to read it, but Grok will read it in a sexy voice. We'll get to that, I guess. It's just so silly and I keep seeing people be like, oh so like government workers are like upset they have to prove that they do work. That's not what's going on. You live in a vacuum. Stop living in a vacuum. Everybody needs to stop living in a vacuum as if like nothing has happened before this and Elon Musk isn't involved and there weren't all these things that have been done in order to get people to quit or be forced To get fired or whatever. I think there's more information to be dispersed out here Jonathan. What happened?

Next yeah, I'm happy to disperse. Yeah, they caused widespread confusion. Sure Doge caused widespread confusion Well one no one from any of these agencies knew what to do and a lot of the agency heads who again were appointed by Donald Trump, who also appointed Elon Musk, were saying don't respond to this whatsoever. Cash Patel at the FBI said, for now, please pause any responses. The Defense Department, which is almost one million civilian employees, almost half of the entire federal workforce was like, no, we'll deal with our own people.

So that made Elon look dumb, I think. Elon threatening to make you resign in an ex post. Uh-huh. Is legal? Well, he doesn't have the authority to do that. But again every week now I'm like, you know, Elon doesn't have legal for him to do that Maybe someone with a briefcase should stop him from doing that. Sir. This is not who we are right, I'm sure not 2.3 million, which is the number of

federal employees, but I'm sure HR at OPM.gov received a lot of emails, many of which were not from federal employees. Maybe some of you decided to chat. Maybe our beautiful listeners decided to send some emails, Godspeed to you all. But I do want to get your thoughts on Elon's follow-up reasoning for doing this. In a quote tweet to Libs of TikTok, where Libs of TikTok is like, why wouldn't you want your manager to know what you're doing? He said, the reason this matters is that a significant number of people who are supposed

to be working for the government are doing so little work that they are not checking their email at all. In some cases, we believe non-existent people or the identities of dead people are being used to collect paychecks. In other words, there is outright fraud. This is so fucking wild and dumb. Okay, Cody, you got a hot take. I was gonna say this is so fucking wild and dumb. See? One thing that I think that Elon Musk could do in this case is prove it. Like there are ways to prove this, I would posit, that aren't this weird email scheme

that clearly didn't work, that half the government was like, don't answer this stupid email. What does Elon know about any of your jobs? Why are you emailing Elon Musk about what you do at your job to prove that he's not, he didn't buy Twitter again. This isn't his company. Although I'm sure he imagines that he did buy America,

which he technically did buy America. He bought the election. He keeps saying there's fraud. Prove it once, once. Show me one. Do it. If you are scamming the federal government and you have taken the identity of a dead person

so that you can receive a paycheck, a paycheck, nothing and you are clever enough to do that scam but he thinks you're not clever enough to respond to the email with five bullet points to make something up. Log on the grog, say make up a job, make up a guy, write five things for me, What about the grocs? They make up a job, make up a guy. Write five things for me. Send email. And you could be like totally found fraud in the Department of Health and Human Services.

Yeah. And how much time, again, did they have? 48 hours? Yeah, a little over 48 hours. Ten out of Saturday when people aren't working. Well, no, people aren't working. Many people don't work on Saturdays and have to buy Monday.

Many people have jobs where they're not constantly checking email also. Just because you have a company email doesn't mean you have an email job. Like a lot of people are in the field. They're in the field. And maybe maybe many of them have like classified things they've done that they don't want to just send HR about. Things you literally shouldn't be emailing to people without clearances. Yeah, Mulder and Scully didn't respond right away,

so they're gone. Number one, I believe. So we're paying dead people. What are you talking about? Prove it. Which one? Prove it. I'm still waiting for proof about all the dead people

collecting Social Security benefits. Because they're cashing these checks. Are you like in this world, right? Like, okay, you're paying people, they were dead, and they're cashing those checks. What? Name a person. What do you, like send only those people the email. If someone in Pensacola, Florida is receiving a paycheck

for like Martin Van Buren, birth date 1793 or whatever. I don't think I got close. Like, okay, sure. Show me that. Like let's see that money leaving the coffers every week. Show it. Maybe, maybe there's one person out there. Someone died at home.

Maybe one person is collecting someone's social security checks. Maybe prove it. But that doesn't mean that it's widespread or wide scale. In fact, it's not. We know it's not. Prove it. Also, like, we already went through all the COBOL stuff, where it's like, prove anything. Don't just say stuff. And obviously it's working, so you can just say whatever. It would be different if it was like, well, this system is outdated, and we need to update it with my special Doge technology, which also I think is a bad idea

because I don't think he should be rummaging in and doing anything technologically or having any of our data, but whatever. But he's not even saying that. He's just saying like, yes, there's millions of people who've received this and he shouldn't. What, millions of people. Who was supposed to read these emails to?

I've heard that it was gonna be, yeah. Do they just want to feed Grok? Yeah. Micah Johnson is out there talking about this as if he knows anything that he's actually talking about. But he's out there like, yeah, Elon's out there. He's got the algorithms. He's got the data.

The data doesn't lie. What do you mean by that? Wired just put out an article. Doge is working on software that automates the firing of government workers. Operatives working for Elon Musk's Doge appear to be editing the code of AutoRiff, software designed by the Defense Department that could assist in mass firings of federal workers sources

tell wired. If you automate the firing of people, even if you you don't get rid of critical infrastructure on day one, right, you fire 50 office workers who aren't holding up a bridge or something. That's going to have a trickle down effect within a week or two. Things aren't going to be updated. Things aren't going to be managed. We already have, Katie, we've talked about this, forests don't manage themselves. We've heard so much like Trump's been yakking about forest management in California.

Let's fire all the people who would be doing the managing of the forest. And then the algorithm is going to make mistakes. We know AI has a generative. AI has hallucinations all the time. So if it's analyzing everything, it's going to fire a Secret Service officer. Trump's bodyguard is going to be standing right there and be like, I'm fired.

Yeah, they're going to fire people because their initials are DEI, right? Like they're just going to like these algorithms don't like they're not making these decisions based on anything. It's just this blanket way of getting rid of people and you don't know what you're doing. They're getting rid of all kinds of data and information based off of words like transition and equity because those are the bad words, but they mean multiple things, especially in the context of like the government and laws

and taxes and things. And they're just, it's just this wrecking ball that is, it's so absurd. The way this all wrapped up yesterday so far, Donald Trump met with Emmanuel Macron, but they asked him about this and he says, I think it's great. Because we have people that don't show up to work

and nobody even knows if they work for the government. So by asking the question, tell us what you did this week, what he's doing is saying, are you actually working? And then if you don't answer, like you're sort of semi-fired or you're fired. What does semi-fired mean? Well, it's his classic catchphrase, you're semi-fired. We all remember that.

Semi-fired kind of life. So he said it's great a lot of people aren't answering because they don't even exist. But then hours later, the Office of Personnel Management told all agency chiefs that employees could ignore the email and that nobody would be fired for not responding, which must have been a little bit embarrassing for Musk because he then tweeted, the email request was utterly trivial as the standard for passing the test was to type some words and press send.

Yet so many failed. Even that inane test urged on in some cases by their managers. So now it's that inane test urged on, in some cases, by their managers. So now it's an inane test. But also trivial. It's a trivial test, all of a sudden. An inane, trivial email that you have to respond to. That you have to respond to. Yeah, you just told Libs of TikTok.

It's critically important. Which is it, man? This is a side note. First of all, Martin Van Buren, born 1782. So you weren't that far off. You were close. 11 years, so close. So Musk is doing this Libs of TikTok response, right?

I have seen more than two, at least three, new government appointees and like official like big government positions directly replied to Libs of TikTok in the past like two days about like there's just one TikTok or who is like she hasn't said she hadn't filed taxes in eight years and she called for Elon to be assassinated. So Libs of TikTok like posted it and then tagged the FBI, US attorney for DC replied, noted, we're taking care of it. And I believe, I don't know if it was Bon Gino, some other person directly replied to one of her tweets

and then Elon's doing this. It's just like, so the official investigator for the government is libs of TikTok and all these freaks follow her. They like they hang on her every word and I've just noticed it the past couple of days like people like oh I'm uh Hegseth Hegseth replied directly to her like these like you're the secretary of defense and you're on that website and you

shouldn't be on the website at all. You certainly shouldn't be following Libs of TikTok. Obviously he's going to, he's a Fox News man, but like you shouldn't be replying either. What are you doing? Just something to look out for. A lot of Libs of TikTok reply guys are now in the highest echelons of our government.

We'll talk about the Bong Gino of it all, either today or later this week. They're just the trigger the Libs movement. I mean, that's all he cares about, right? That's what most of them care about. That's what Libs of TikTok is about. Let's piss them off. And now they are the people in charge.

Your motivation is to literally mock half the country, not half of whatever, but a significant portion of the country of the people that actually vote and that actually care about stuff. Your whole aim is to literally just piss people off. It's weird how they wanna like, it's all about mocking the libs who according to Elon don't really exist, right?

Hasn't he said like, there's really no opposition, everyone's on board with doge and trump It's not even a significant number of people at all They're all bots like the 10 actual leftists in the country just created a network of bots that they can't possibly track down He's a dumbass Uh, I can read I can read some more news man. Um, I would uh, just you mentioned bunch, you know, I just I I some more news. Dude man, I would just, you mentioned Bungie, you know, I just, I, he's listening, I know, I'm sure.

I urged the United States Deputy Director of the FBI to unblock me on Twitter. Yeah. Dan. What did he block you for? I forget. It might've been one of those things where like, because we've also made videos,

Christopher Ruffo blocked me and maybe the sub-ordnance account the day our critical race theory episode came out. We didn't even mention, we didn't tweet at him. We weren't doing anything. He just saw it exists on YouTube and went and found us. But I don't remember. So if you don't know what we're talking about, Dan Bongino, he's a conspiracy theorist and right wing podcaster. He is now deputy director of the FBI. Has he ever worked in the FBI? No, he was a New York City cop. I know the answer.

No, he wasn't. Oh, okay. That's the point. I know the answer. No, he was a New York City cop and a Secret Service person and failed runs for Congress, I believe, and then became a podcast. I was, is he gonna keep this podcast? Why not?

I can think of reasons why not. He very well may take this super seriously and say I'm gonna not do the podcast, but would that be the 10th biggest scandal of the week if Dan Bongino kept his very popular podcast. Yeah, but I'm like, I just, you know, deputy director of the FBI, the big fat mouth, loving to troll the libs. I think that that's a problem. It's going to be a big problem. Apparently, my best guess is that, uh, it's either like a blanket block list or he blocked me for

Replying how so to a tweet he has since deleted You don't remember. I don't know what it was about. I just asked how so it's interesting because There may have been a time When guys like that would want to delete tweets where they may have encouraged Guys like that would want to delete tweets where they may have encouraged January 6 people etc. And now they there's no need There's no reason for them to have deleted those tweets because now they will be praised and elevated. Oh, yeah Exactly. Maybe Elon can go in and like Apple F J6 inside job or something and mass

Undelete those tweets for these people to get people the cred that they require and they need now. They need to get that sweet January 6 was good cred. I know that we're always in unprecedented times, etc. I was watching a- I'm so tired of it. I was watching a clip from ABC News and they were talking about Bongino's promotion. He didn't work for the government. Bongino's hiring, they described it as for the government, Bongino's hiring, they

described it as he'd heard of. His career change, his drastic career change. Huge career change. You know, the FBI is not supposed to be a political position. The deputy director is not confirmed by the Senate. It's almost always been someone who has been in the FBI for years or a career, quote unquote, career civil servant. I'm not saying the FBI are the or a career, quote unquote, career civil servant. Not saying the FBI are the good guys, don't get me wrong,

I'm just saying that the way it always has worked is someone who's been there for a long time is elevated to this position. Obviously, Bongino is there to continue to weaponize the FBI and go after Trump's political enemies. There's lots of jokes to be made, and this is ridiculous and absurd, obviously, but it's also terrifying,

because these are the people that will be in charge of, yeah, prosecuting anybody that, let's say, was prosecuting January 6thers. Yeah, no, I'm not the biggest fan of the FBI, but I certainly don't want it to be weaponized. Yeah, it's just like being filled with like clowns and podcasters with access to grind. Like, what do you... That said, I am available to...

Oh yeah, we've got access to grind. ...if you need another podcaster to run the FBI. I mean, we do the FBI podcast. We could run the FBI's official podcast, give us access to the files. The files that they're gonna release? Well, right, there's a thing about, there's JFK files, right, and then there's Epstein files. But the Epstein files have not yet been released?

I don't think they'll make Donald Trump look good. There is reporting. One of them was like whistleblower to that Schlesinger guy. I don't know if you're familiar, he's like a journalist. He's very intellectual dark web coded, I guess, if that's even still a thing. Big Elon fan was way into the Twitter files back in the day, if you remember that era. And according to whistleblower talking to him and some other reports from Websites, I'm not really familiar with you mean the Express Tribune things like that That's a new one to me. But yeah, like Patriot News and the the great

Information or things of that nature according to them the FBI is shredding and getting rid of all the Epstein files. I would posit that maybe Cash Patel got in there and now is deleting the relevant parts of the Epstein files that implicate his best friend of 10 years, Donald Trump, who's the president now, considering that when Trump was asked if he was going to release the JFK and Epstein files, he said, yes, yes, and maybe not the Epstein files. You know, it's complicated. They kind of hemmed and hawed for a little bit and implied that he wasn't going to do that. So the idea that I didn't realize what name you had said.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no for at least 10 years. You fucking people. God. Should we show that video where he's dancing with Epstein and pointing at the women? Why not? But Jesus Christ. He has like eight of Trump's phone numbers were in Epstein's Little Black Book. Like all of his phone numbers.

Why does he have so many phone numbers? Why do we think he had all those phone numbers. Why does he have so many phone numbers? Why, Dee, we think he had all those phone numbers. Why do you think? I can think of a lot of things. You can think of a few reasons. Different women, shady business deals. One was just for free because it's a bonus. Why not?

You buy in bulk. Yeah. They throw in a little extra. I love Mint Mobile, they won't stop giving me free phones. I have so many phone numbers. Ryan Reynolds, love him. Hi, Cody here. You know, it's not the year 2085 yet,

at which point you'll get the day's news lightning ported into your magnetized skull chip. For now, we've gotta just read it. So that's why I want to tell you about Ground News, which you can find over at ground.news slash smn. We specifically ask them to sponsor us. It's a website and an app that gathers news from across the political spectrum

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With that link, you can save 40% off unlimited access. What they do is extremely important right now, in the present, so I encourage you to check them out. Again, that's ground.news slash SMN for 40% off unlimited access. The link is in the description. Bleep, blorp, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, zeep, making up things that I think other people might say has been effortless. But one thing that takes too much effort is grocery shopping and meal planning. I don't have time to write out the ingredients to 21 different meals a week while I'm also practicing my good day mates.

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about one assumes a shark named Jim. We're here to talk about the secret to Jimmy's success. That is Shopify. Bah! Oh no, get it out of here. The bells are coming. Nobody does selling better than Shopify. They have the number one bestest, bestest,

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You know? Gentlemen, let's move on to a topic that's different but also the same. Town hall meetings. How's, how's, how's, how's things going in the town halls, Jonathan? Yeah, I made a little compilation of videos here. A lot of GOP representatives have been going back to their districts and getting yelled at by constituents because of Doge's slashing of federal funding and government jobs. But they keep, they rehire some of them after they panic and realize they fired too many people.

That is just so fucking chaotic. Let's give them credit where it's due. This is not like Republicans who are suddenly furious. Although some of these guys are in, you know, they're all GOP members of Congress and some I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just...

I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just...

I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just...

I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just...

I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just...

I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... I just... It's fun. It's fun is good and we encourage it. I'll pause whenever you want and you can go and yell you want. What you, Congressman, and your fellow congressmen are going to do to reign in the megalomaniac in the White House. I remember having the same discussion with Republicans when Biden was elected. The funny thing is you're sitting here and a lot of you would probably say those January

6s who are yelling just as loud as you, who are upset just like you. Let's go ahead and move on because if you want to... if you're not going to listen... There is no law and there is no order and there are no consequences. Nobody is held to account. The end result of the fraud and abuse that has been discovered already? No. Name one.

Name one. I'm like, don't interrupt! Please! Show me! Please! Show me! Show me! I agree. Show her. I don't want him in charge of it.

He is police-prone to be. I thought it was your job. It is your job. He doesn't want to go to the accident. Not his. It is your job. It is your job. It is your job.

It is your job. It is your job. It is your job. It is your job. It is your job. It is your job. It is your job. It is your job.

It is your job. It is your job. It is your job. It is your job. It is your talk. Elon Musk and the president have argued that if there is any potential conflict with the president, it is your talk. This is bad. Little rowdy. Little rowdy. Little rowdy. I want to say, your caveat is well taken. We're not saying this is necessarily Trump supporters who are enraged,

but it's not not Trump supporters who are upset. It's not only Democrats. This is affecting everybody. And the louder we are, the more other people will also be loud. And you are seeing people online, you know, I'm sure we've already talked about this, but being like, sir, I supported you and I've lost my job. The tide has turned of people liking my charming mountain stories, but here's one. Yeah, a lot of people are getting fucking fired. And it is a big conversation even in this little rural community

and people that probably supported him and are saying this isn't what I voted for, because it's not. Some people think that they voted for this. Some people wanted this. But the vast majority of people wanted the price of eggs to come down. And maybe you want to be able to say the R word

or whatever the fuck. And the mass deportations. They're okay with the mass deportations. That was the one sign they made for their thing. Everyone gets mad, like, you don't know, you don't know. I'm like, no, I don't know. There's obviously a variety of reasons why people voted, but I can tell you, I talked to some people last week, guardedly, but talked to them last week

about that deport, that ASMR deportation video and the look of horror on their faces. You know, there's a group of people that their faces, you know, there's a group of people that are like, you know, I do think we need to do something about immigration, but also not this version of it, right? Didn't maybe think mass deportations were actually, but yeah, let's get a start. Or didn't think about what it might look like. And I need to be clear, I'm not defending that when I'm saying it.

I am not defending people when I'm put this caveat. I'm giving context as to why this isn't going to fly in the long term because it's horrifying. The reality is horrifying that we were right and they were wrong. I'll get off of my fucking high horse here. I mean, I just, yeah, we'll see. Argue with me. I'm not defending that is my point.

I don't even wanna argue. I just, I find stuff like that, like I think it's good to point it out and I encourage other people to like talk to people in the live and be like, yeah, this is what they always said they were going to do. I just still find it frustrating to be like, this ASMR video, this is so cruel.

Yeah, they're cruel. They've been cruel for 10 years. Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed about them. It feels worse than it did last term. For sure it does. That's changed. But it's not like magnitudes,

like crueller or anything like that, really. Like I feel like an ASMR like deportation video would have been like, it would have fit perfectly in the first. I'm not disagreeing with you by the way. I completely, completely agree with you. I'm, and it's of course, it's so frustrating. It's just frustrating.

It's like I had a huge bubbling, boiling anger in my stomach when I'm telling you this story that I showed them that video and people were like, wait, who put this out on set? The White House. The White House. No, yes, this is I'm telling you that this has always been and the look of horror is both infuriating and I'm like, thank God. You're horrified by it. Yeah, thank God. Thank goodness you're horrified by it. Yeah, thank goodness you're horrified by it.

If you thought it was awesome, like many people seem to, still that would be alarming too. I would just, whenever I hear stories like that, I'm just like, okay, so take this feeling you have and try to apply it to literally everything else that has happened over the past eight years. Try to apply it to other things They've sure try like try to view this project

They have and this administration and this regime and this whole movement through this lens of like, oh my god They're actually like disgustingly cruel and horrifying. Maybe that actually applies to everything else They're sure And I don't know. I'm on a journey right now, everybody. I'm figuring out how to talk to people. Godspeed. And how to, like honestly, these are the same people. They're like, project 2025, that's,

you guys are overblowing it. They're not even talking about it, you know? And so it's a different sect of people out there that don't believe that the worst happens. They think, whatever. The point is, again, not defending it. The point is where this started was those town hall meetings were assuming are mostly Democrats.

But I don't know for sure. And I think that that will continue to change. Again, it's been four weeks. It's only been four weeks. God. And RIP my four weeks. Oh God. And RIP my mentions for sharing that story. It's fine to mention things like that. It's fine.

I don't care. Let it, it's water off a duck's back. I think there's, I understand the attempt to like analyze where might we go? How might the tide turn, right? Like approval ratings go up and down, right? A lot of people aren't fixed. Some people are, right?

There's like a third of the country, or 30% or 40%. Some segment of the country that's not good. They're never going to abandon Trump. The Bonjinos of the world. They're never going away, yeah. Right. If for no other reason, then it would take a certain amount of mental gymnastics

that people are very uncomfortable doing, us as well, with any number of things. If someone, if it came out that the Beatles were, in fact, a terrible band or something, it would be very hard to convince me of that, right? So, like, I understand that. Misinformation, for sure. So I get that approval ratings are going to go up and down. But for the people who are like, yes, this is what I voted for,

but not this slim segment of it, to me, I don't know what to do with that information. Yeah. Like, oh, of course you wanted all this stuff, but you didn't personally wanna be fired. Like, you don't need to convince me that that's happening. Like, you thought other people were going to be hurt and not you.

I'm not saying these people you've been talking to, but I know that's a segment of The population and I don't I don't take satisfaction Really from that like I don't find it to be fun. Like yeah, I was right and Like it is affecting you now like that episode we did is is not Schadenfreude, you know, it's just like loading where I wish're not gloating. I wish you knew, I wish you believed us, you know. And I wanna say that I understand where people are coming from when tweeting, I have no sympathy, lose all your savings, I don't care.

Fuck around, find out. I get it, it scares me a little bit that we're so quick to just say, fuck those people, I was right. Not that I'm getting it from you guys. It makes me nervous, but all of this, it's like I want us, the future that I see is one of empathy, the future that I see is one,

it's frustrating of course, because nobody ever agrees on everything, but there is a much better way to be navigating this, and we all have a common enemy. Some people were duped by them or wanted it. And some people wanted this. It's just so fucking ugly. And in personal relationships throughout our lives, we're told to protect our energy, but

also the best way to happiness is forgiveness. And I believe all of this stuff, that I believe that if you carry toxic energy, then you become toxic and you make yourself sick. And I selfishly and with empathy, I want us to not lose our kindness. Yeah. Well, you know, it's not it's not also not like one of the other, right? It's not like we can either be like kind and forgiving and forgive all this stuff, or you have to be toxic and cruel and stuff.

No, no, no. I just am aware of this energy and how heated everything is, and I feel myself trying to find the balance between firmly maintaining my values and trying to create space for empathy, and it's tough. Yeah, and growth and stuff. And that's good.

I just find, you know, this is it's always nice to hear like, oh, yeah, people are upset about this. And like, people even voted for him or like, wait, what? It's just hard to do anything with that. Totally. It's like, OK, do they feel bad? Do they regret it? Do they like are they thinking about this other stuff? Do they think like are they rethinking anything or is it just like, oh, that's horrible. The White

House did that. Oh, my gosh. And then just moving on. Right. Like that's part like part of what I see a lot of words like, oh, yeah, this is bad. But they still want them to be the president, you know. It's funny how unprepared some of them seemed. The first guy there was Rich McCormick. He's a Republican from Georgia. And he's the one who said, this is just like the January 6th. We're mad as well. And they're like, well, we're here at a public forum that you are hosting.

We're not shoving people and breaking windows and trying to get in. We're not. The certification of the electoral votes is not a public forum for you to bash people in the head. Yeah, we're also not operating under a blatant lie. This massive lie brought us here. And the second guy was Wisconsin Republican Scott Fitzgerald,

who was like, well, they've already found a bunch of waste and fraud. And then they got yelled at. And he seemed genuinely stunned That people were not well, what do you mean? What do you mean? You don't believe that they found a lot of waste and fraud. It's You're the fraud you all got fired. Yeah, like you're the fraud you were the fraud Are you how are you not happy that we got rid of you? There's a representative from Kansas City, Missouri got yelled at a lot because there's a big

IRS office there and about 100 IRS workers got fired there this week. And then they're like, well, I can't remember what the exact quote was. I apologize. But he was like, well, listen, you know, some people are going to lose their jobs throughout this process and some people need to lose their jobs as a part of this. And it's so funny that we're a month after inauguration, we're a few months after the election, two, three months before an election, you never hear, you know, like Mitt Romney was a big scandal when he said, like, I think you should be able to fire people. Like, he just said that one thing.

And it became this huge scandal in 2012. But now they're like, hey, a couple million people might need to be fired. A couple million Americans might need to lose their jobs. You're not on board with this? How is, I thought that's what you wanted, I guess? That's what you wanted? But don't worry, again, they're hiring some of them back. It's okay.

When they realize they've made a terrible, terrible mistake, they simply say, it's your fault, but come back, please. You know what creates a really healthy and productive and efficient work environment? The terror of the unknown and how you can be fired via tweet overnight. Yeah, via tweet that misrepresents an email that you may not get. Yeah, everyone knows what it's like now to work for a scrappy tech startup run by a megalomaniac. That's the thing too, where it's like, you know, and hammer this home, we can say this as many times as we want, it doesn't matter, but like, it's not and never has been about

any of these things they're saying. It's not about efficiency. It's not about fraud. It's not about waste. It's about getting rid of as many people as they can so they have loyal people to do what they want. The goal is to terrify people. It's not to get them to be like, oh, I'm going to work harder. We're going to be more efficient. No, it's to terrify them to quit or have to be let go because they didn't respond to an email.

So then they're gone. And then they can hire fucking, I don't know, Dan Bongino Bongino's neighbor Whoever like they just want all these freaks in there raffle I want to get rid of as many people who know what they're doing who have that institutional knowledge While they mine all the data in the government and put it on some fucking private server probably and then feed feed it all to grok for all the while I also noticed one of those congressmen mentioned that Elon was going to police himself about conflicts of interest. Well, okay, then problem solved.

The Federal Aviation Administration has agreed to use SpaceX's Starlink internet system to upgrade the information technology networks it uses to manage US airspace. Raising new concerns about conflicts of interest for CEO Elon Musk. No, raising the same concerns. Raising the same old concerns everybody's had. Is there any company he runs that doesn't have federal contracts? The Boring Company? Maybe Neuralink.

XAI. I'm sure they will. I'm sure they would now because of what they're what all the amazing things X AI is doing for doge. What about boring? Probably not still exist. I don't know. I just it exists. They used it recently to make They used it recently To make like these stupid fucking tunnels as these stupid fucking tunnels, and a cyber truck factory,

so the cyber trucks roll out through the tunnel. So they make tunnels. They make tunnels for Tesla. They make tunnels from New York to Los Angeles? That tunnel? No, they make it from one part of a town in Texas to another really, really close part of that same town in Texas.

That's silly. That's the last I heard of the Boring Company. So the Boring Company is basically like, you guys know The Incredibles? You know how the Underminer comes out of the ground at the end and it's John Ratzenberger on there? So it's Elon riding in one of those little boring machines and he's like, ah!

Just to get him and his stuff places a little quicker. Jerk. Oh, they just inked a new deal to do something in Dubai. Who's they? The Boring Company. Boring Company inks deal to tunnel wormhole under Dubai. I hate this fucking guy. And he always calls it shit like that

where it's like, no man, it's a tunnel. It's a stupid little tunnel for one of your cars to go through at a time. It's not a wormhole. It's less efficient than most roads. He's like, essentially we are creating the event horizon. This is what we call, it's the event horizon. You're like, no, it's a wall.

It's a wall. You're not making event horizon, it's a wall. No, but you see. Also event horizon's bad. Also event horizon's bad, we shouldn't be doing that. It was a wall. It's a wall. You're not making Event Horizon, it's a wall. Also, Event Horizon's bad. Also, Event Horizon's bad. It was a horrible thing that happened in the stupid movie, it was bad. Oh, God.

So, I guess we learned a lot about the boring company. All right, fucks. We're gonna wrap this up. All right, fucks? Sure, all right, ya fucks. We're gonna wrap this one up for today, but don't worry, because we're gonna be back in just a couple days.

That's true. With even more news. More of it. And a great guest. Mm-hmm. Does anybody wanna see a drawing of a bear? More than anything in the world. Good, because it's already right here.

Oh, look at that. It's pretty good, huh? It's pretty good. It looks like a... This bear. Sorry about that. You got look at that. It's pretty good, huh? It's pretty good. It looks like a circle. Is that the one that left the paw prints on your door? Yeah. No, I was Googling. I'm trying to get my mic in the thing.

I was Googling how to draw a bear, so I was just copying this online. Somebody wanted it painted on their bear box, which is where you put your trash so the bear doesn't get into it. So you should have the circle and the line through it. We don't want the bear. No bears allowed. No. And then a drawing of a box next to it so people know. Yeah. I mean, they should know, but yeah, we'll make it really clear. Anyway, we're ending the show, but not before I tell you, we love you very much.

You fucks much. our brand new podcast, Tactful Pettiness. Now on Podcast One. We have a lot of opinions. Flip flops in New York City? You don't love yourself. If I'm not seated, I'm not tipping. Do I want to see a picture of your baby? No. If I have to scroll more than 10 seconds, he's not cute.

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