Some More News - Even More News: The Right Uses A Mass Shooting To Ramp Up Anti-Trans Hate

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

Hi. Labor journalist Kim Kelly joins Katy, Cody, and Jonathan to talk about the mass shooting in Minneapolis, the leadership purge at the CDC, the attempted purge at the Federal Reserve, and of course, Cracker Barrel.Note: The school in Minneapolis is at Annunciation Catholic Church. Jonathan says “Annuncion” by mistake.PATREON: https://patreon.com/somemorenewsMERCH: https://shop.somemorenews.comYOUTUBE MEMBERSHIP: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvlj0IzjSnNoduQF0l3VGng/join#EvenMoreNews #DonaldTrumpPluto TV. Stream Now. Pay Never.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Oh, hello, and welcome back to even more news, the first and only news podcast. My name is Katie Stoll. That's what they say. Hi, I'm Cody, Johnston. That's what they say. very excited to welcome back journalist and author

whose newest book is called Fight to Win Heroes of American Labor the Young Reader's Edition of Fight Like Hell Kim Kelly Hello Can people see me? Yes

Or is it just audio Unless you don't want them to Oh yeah It's a video podcast as well now Oh it's fine I put on lip glass We're good Hello I should have brought

I got a copy somewhere in my house, but the book does exist. It's out there you can buy it. Well, what we're going to do is throw an image of it up on the screen. The magic of editing. Oh, who's that other voice I hear? Jonathan's also here. Hi. There would be chaos in the streets if ever there comes a day where Jonathan is not here.

The president would have to tweet about it. We'd have it would be miserable. If Jonathan's ever not here, it's Trump's fault. I can tell you that right now. Hopefully I'm not in El Salvador. I'm somewhere else. Kim, how are you? How are you doing?

I'm good. The listeners didn't get to hear all the unhinged pre-show chat. There was a coyote involved. Kim, what stories are you working on these days? What's the latest in working class union news? Well, today, I am, once we hang up, I have to finish up this story for In These Times, my main little writing home about how

the Trump administration continues to fuck over coal miners who are kind of the only group of workers he really pretends to like on any sort of regular basis and yet his administration is making it

so much easier for them to die from black lung a life-saving regulatory situation like a rule that would have made it so coal miners underground are exposed to less incredibly toxic silica dust, which is a primary factor driving the black line crisis among younger

minors. Folks have been pushing for this regulation for decades. We knew about the problem with silica back in 1974. They finally got a rule through all of the Byzantine sort of red tape architecture that is the regulatory world of the U.S. government, and they're so close to getting implemented and then it didn't get through because a bunch of industry like basically coal bosses sued and we're like we don't want to do this and they just kind of keep being able to kick the can down the road so I'm going to write a little thing about like as Trump's war on workers is such a bigger wide ranging situation that we're seeing from the gutting of labor laws and the NLRB RIP situation

and this anti-regulatory agenda and that creepy lady who was supposed to be kind of chill but turned out to be another regular demon Secretary of Labor Laurie Chavez-Damer was just recorded in a meeting the other day doing the most

like North Korea-style deal leader ass-licking I've seen in a minute it's not good it's not good Labor Day's coming up Labor Day's fake it's a heck of a time to be a labor reporter but, you know, we do our best. And you've been on this specific story for a long time, I feel.

Yeah, and sometimes people listen to me, but not really. It is interesting that coal miners are such a specific population of workers to focus on in this country. They have, there's so many complexities and like social, political, economic, and environmental. There's so much stuff that kind of surrounds them as workers and as people. And no, they don't get a lot of empathy, I find. because of all those complexities. And I have a chip in my shoulder. Like that whole underdog vibe

is something I identify with a lot. And I also spent a ton of time getting to know coal miners in Alabama and Appalachia. So I get personally like angry when people are making it easier for them to be killed at work. I don't know. It's just me, a little quirk. Do you see a lot of like awareness sort of like complaints

about this sort of adversarial relationship that Trump has with a lot of coal miners? and folks, because I know, you know, there's that, that sort of tension between the sort of, like, right-wing, like, conservative, like, stereotype, uh, culture war stuff when Trump is, like, you're saying, like, terrible for workers across the board. Um, does that sort of break through? Do you see, or like a sort of affect, uh, a lot of folks sort of opinion or, uh, approach to these, these kind of negotiations and I think it's all so individualized and specific. Like, Like the UMWA, the coal marriage union, they don't really pull punches.

They try, it's interesting because their leadership, and I know they're not listening so I can say this, are a lot more forward thinking and progressive than a lot of the membership because the membership is predominantly retirees because the coal industry has been so decimated. So it's interesting seeing them kind of tow that line. But in terms of the general Trump bad for workers, why workers vote for Trump sort of dichotomy that we keep seeing dissected to death by people with like fancy degrees and nice houses, it's like, I think a lot of the information that perhaps we have, because we're giant nerds who read the news very closely and have access to broader news sources, things that seem very simple, very basic, very

obvious to someone like me or someone like you, that we have that free time, right? Our political biases are such that we are open to listening. to experts, to people that study things, to, you know, sources of news that might make us sad, but don't make us, like, challenge our worldview in a way that is upsetting. Like, we're not going to Bright Bart or Daily Wire for our, or Fox News for our, like, labor coverage. But not everyone's like that. And the lack of, like, media literacy and, like, just access to actual news and actual facts and actual just reality in this country is not equally distributed. Well, and like you mentioned, uh, labor secretary at that cabinet meeting, if you all haven't

stopped by the Department of Labor, Mr. President, I invite you to see your big, beautiful face on a banner in front of the Department of Labor because you are really the transformational president of the American worker. On the, so you're going to see that, you're going to see that on the news. you're like, okay, well, that's what they said. Yeah, and there's such little, like, they're not having labor reporters or labor historians on Fox News. They're also not having us on CNN or whatever. Like, there's no one necessarily who's going to draw that,

besides being like, this is bad. No one's going to say, oh, this is on the side of the Francis Perkins building, the transformative woman, woman, who was one of the architects of the New Deal, who is the reason we have Social Security, who desegregated the cafeteria and, her office before anyone else in the capital who stood up for Jewish refugees trying to flee Nazi Germany. That's that context that you lose when you don't know that history or even know that present. Don't say that out loud. They're going to change that name. As soon as they find

out it's going to become the General Sutherland or whatever honorary. Not for nothing before we move on. One of my hobby horses that does fit into this is that there's just a lack of labor journalism out there like not general reporting not oh some guy has to write about this strike what a bummer it like there's only a handful of us right and so you there's so many stories that aren't being told because there's like 15 people if that who write about labor in this country in a like on a serious basis it's like their beat yeah yeah and it's like i complain all the time that philly doesn't get any attention philly doesn't get any respect we had this massive citywide, beautiful worker strike that didn't get very much attention here, but

rocked our entire city. And there's so many stories like that. Like, we can talk about the destruction of media, but that, and, you know, the Democrats were paying, you know, freaks eight grand a month to tweet about how Gavin Newsom is daddy. But like, I'm one of the better known labor reporters in the country, I guess. I don't have a job. I've been unemployed since 2019. I'm a freelancer you know like there's a lot of reasons people aren't hearing these stories cody katie were we approached for that democrat dark money warmbo was warmbo was he turned it down though oh well good for him well he doesn't need money he's a little monster and we pay for everything in his life exactly we were not approached by that organization so well it feels like it's time to transition

more bad news. There was another mass shooting this week in Minneapolis and we're going to get into some of the specifics here but just it's a horror. It's a horror show this country, what we're allowing to happen. Just the fact that gun control

hasn't even been uttered out of the mouths of our elected politicians in the last election cycle for a long time i honestly can't even remember when that was the conversation and uh once again babies are dead when was the last one that where there was even a part of the discussion parkland parkland maybe yeah parkland um where that was like please like please uh anything but ever since then i i just don't you don't even see anybody even bringing that issue up and then it everything moves so quickly. We have a moment of collective outrage, finger pointing, finger blaming, and meanwhile,

these kids that survive even are left with a lifetime of haunting memories. The text threads that I've seen shared of mom groups checking in and saying my neighbor's son was shot, it's so, I honestly can't even wrap my mind around it. But Jonathan, why don't, we walk through some of the specifics here. Yeah, so the shooting yesterday, two children are dead and 17 people. Children and adults are injured. The shooting was during morning mass at Anuncant Catholic School in Minneapolis. The shooter reportedly had a rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol, and fired all three weapons

through a window from the outside. Were they in mass? Sorry? Was it during mass? Yes. Their service? Yeah. And then apparently took their own life.

The conversation is not about guns, obviously. Nope. The conversation, at least in the right wing sphere, and as a result, the mainstream media is about this shooter's identity and possible gender identity. Multiple outlets confirmed that the shooter, who was 23 at the time of their death, filed for a name change in early 2020. and that they identified at least at the time as a trans woman.

That shooter also had a bunch of racist things written on gun magazines, anti-black things, anti-Semitic, and things like Kill Trump. Six million wasn't enough. Waco, McVeigh, things like that. And then there's also this- A whole grab bag of gross. Yes, a grab bag of everything. And then there was an emblem on the guns.

And this has not kind of made it to the mainstream. media yet, but there's enough of a discussion about it and enough evidence that I think it's worth bringing up, an emblem that potentially references this online neo-Nazi nihilism movement called 764 or 09A, and it's kind of a, nothing matters, everything's fucked, and there's this lionization of mass shooters, this person also clearly idolized mass shooters and mass terrorists but of course

all you're going to hear if you go on Fox News or on Twitter is see that well it's clearly that being trans makes you violent is the message yeah that's the claim

and just the the blatant misinformation circulating of how all of these mass shootings are done by trans people when that is blatantly false that is blatantly false the vast majority are of course

cis white men it's this is a sickness that is spreading that is contagious in our country made even more apparent by our incredibly easy access to weapons

that have no business being in just a regular citizen's hands and so of course this just obfuscates the actual conversation which is what are we going to do about it how do we fix this if people are having mental health crises how are we reaching out to them what is the quality of life what are the different circumstances that are leading somebody to have this break we're not touching any of these conversations sorry i'll last one else to talk yeah we um we don't like having

any real conversation about it um and so of course yeah all these outlets are just going to jump on this I'm sure we'll get more and more information about this person who we won't really be discussing specifically generally because again

the common thread is this sort of like weird like nihilist kind of neo-Nazi soup of ideologies you're taking all this sort of stuff you're kind of getting your you're getting cooked by the internet and like on telegram and

all these alleged you know again, we're not sure of this specific case, but like these groups who are like trying to like influence young people into doing things like this. They clearly had an affinity for mass shooters. That's that's the type of person we're talking about. It's not like, oh, well, they were trans. There are right wing trans people. There are left wing trans people. It's not the identity is not the thing. We've seen in recent years all these people who are not white, but they are also clearly like neo-Nazis.

Right. You don't have to be white to be a neo-Nazi. Even today we're talking about how little is actually understood and known about the folks who are just in this soup. The 09-A Order the Nine Angles, which is like an established like satanic neo-Nazi kind of complicated thing. O-9A is kind of a big ugly rabbit hole itself. But apparently that person, like the account that people were using, assuming that it was the shooter, is still posting today, so maybe there isn't even a satanic aspect here, which is, yeah, good news for the goss, I suppose. But in general, it's like, this is such a mental health crisis. Like you're saying, there's so this, the people who are, like, depressed or confused or alienated, like, people are having problems looking for companionship, looking for community, find their way in these online spaces where mass shooters are venerated as same. I think they had a Bauer written on on their pieces, too.

Like, people are... Yeah, they're a bunch, yeah. Yeah, it's a mix of this sort of, like, irony-pilled, black-pilled, nihilistic, fuck everyone, anti-human, anti-life, anti-everything sort of mentality. Everything's terrible. I hate myself. Why not go out no horrible blaze of glory? Like, it's...

I don't know who exactly should be keeping an eye on these spaces. I do not necessarily want to volunteer. I am not equipped. And I don't, clearly the government is not someone we could trust in any way, shape, or form for anything, but especially not that, because how many of them are fans of what's going on. But it really is a poorly understood and deeply malignant, almost subculture. And it's so much of it ties back to mental health and the lack of access to care and lack of community and lack of empathy and just hopelessness that people. people feel? And so they reach out and they lash out and they end up doing these unthinkable horrific things because they just either don't care anymore or like just life

has no meaning to them. And that's not how it should be. No, it's not. And I do think this deserves serious study research onto what's happening to our brains. I think with all the inputs we're getting with access to information online to different, you know, propaganda, et cetera. And yes, the mental health crisis, that is obvious, not even just manifesting as someone shooting up a school, but in general, people are struggling. So there's that. But yeah, I don't, I don't fully understand it. There's something about wanting your pain to be seen widely, wanting it to be very visible and impossible to ignore. I don't. I don't. know. There were some screenshots circulating from this shooter's note to their family. And it's so

disturbing because there seems to be an awareness of how wrong this was and how bad it was going to affect their family and saying, I'm sorry if you need to change your names. I've been struggling for a long time. I've been having these thoughts for a long time. And there's some amount of, it's chilling. It's truly, there I go using that word. Every week I use that word, but it is. And I don't share that to give any ounce of sympathy, but to say it is so complicated and so dark and painful. And we have got, we have got to do something about this. There are millions of alternative things to do than what this person did. I know. I mean, that honestly pisses me off to have the awareness that,

these are the wrong thoughts to be having, but to do it anyway is beyond me to understand, to comprehend. I think there's just like any way to avoid talking about what this is really about is the pathway that we as a society take. J.D. Vance yesterday kind of just spent the day arguing on Twitter with people who were calling him out for doing a thoughts and prayers tweet, right? He's first that we're praying for the, we're monitoring the situation, join us, and praying for the victims. So, of course, people are like, what are you going to do about it?

What is the, you know? And he decided to dig in because he's just an online troll. That's his job. And he wrote, it is shocking to me that so many left-wing politicians, I don't know any politicians who are calling him out. But anyway, it is shocking to me that so many left-wing politicians attack the idea of prayer in response to a tragedy. Literally, no one thinks prayer is a substitute for action. We pray because our hearts are broken and we believe that God, is listening okay they were praying when they got shot they were praying when they got shot no one's

saying that you can't pray we're saying we're saying prayer is not a substitute for action which you just said back to us what's the action right nothing you yeah you're making a group of people no the prayer what that's the prayer is doing and I'm not trying to dis anybody that if this is what your practices are for praying but I think for the most part A prayer is an individual thing that brings you comfort, that gives you guidance. And I'm all about you doing that for you. Tell me what we're going to do for us. Tell me what we're going to do for the country.

Right. And no one's like, he's just such a, he's so dishonest. And he knows it. But yeah, he's made, he make, he's made the argument for everybody by saying, yeah, prayer's not a substitute for action. Well, what are you going to do? Well, I'm going to tweet about this a little more. About how prayer is not a subsidy for action.

Right. And also, no one's saying, like, you know, people, uh, anybody can't pray or send thoughts and prayers, but you are the vice president. You are a politician. That is who we're talking about. Um, also this is, it's just stuff like this and he does it too. It's similar to when people say like, wow, God really was watching in Butler that day. God guided that bullet and saved Donald Trump's life.

Well, but then the other guy died. So what do you mean? What is this God you're praying to and talking to and thanking for guiding the bullet over here? It's just a horrific thing. And of course, Vance needs to make it about how he's right about everything. Just do it some adult Catholic convert nonsense. Like, it's about me. It's about me.

So there's that. And then also, you know, I don't even want to get into this too much. because it's just so dishonest and gross and Katie you alluded to it where all these people sharing these memes of like look at all the trans shooters look at all this and this pattern and you see I kind of don't even want to like say this out loud

but the fucking New York Post their headline just big letters demonic and then transgender maniac shoots up Catholic school morning mass killing two kids like they know exactly what they're doing it's so fucking gross and I just maybe we'll bleep it honestly I just reject this whole conversation

wholeheartedly, you already see the Matt Walsh's of the world, the Michael Nilses of the world. Jesse Waters did a monologue about it. Scott Jennings did, like, CNN and Fox News have these people on talking about how like, now we need to

talk, finally, we can talk about the transgender problem. And that's all they've wanted to do for so long. They've just needed to read. It's not about, it's not about, it's not about sports. It's not, it's just about this. And they're, um, their, Their project, they get a boost for it.

And that's how they're treating it. And it's really, really, really disgusting. I think you need to bleep that. I think it's valid. Oh, just it's a, it's such a smokescreen. It's just so, and I saw earlier today, like, Loebbs of TikTok had some graphic, like, oh, like listing some shooters and saying, oh, alleging, whatever, saying this person was trans, this person, gender fluid. And, okay, there's like a couple people. And then if you would like to look into the statistics for all the other. ones.

Like, trans folks are like 0.8% of the population. One of the most demonized, one of the most like just hunted down vulnerable

populations we have that are under increasing attack from the entire weight of the federal government. And now they're having to shoulder

this new wave of scrutiny, this new burden. And it's just so, like, obviously like it's fucked up, but it's unfair.

It just made me so mad. It was like, that's the last thing any of my friends need to deal with right now. I just took one of my girlfriends who's a trans girl to like go buy her first gun because this world is not safe for her and for so many other people in her position. And all these people are making it clear now. Like we're going to go after every trans person in the country. That is a very interesting and important other conversation to have, which is how do we keep

them safe. Yeah. Like aren't trans women. I'll teach y'all how to shoot. it's it's this country is is very good at going after vulnerable minorities and trying to crush them into dust it has a lot of experience as a deep history of doing just that and it's been enacting this kind of slow moving attempted genocide on the trans population for years and it's really heightening and now they're grasping onto this truly horrific situation where like babies were killed entire families and communities were torn apart and they're using it to further this agenda that harms a couple million people out of this enormous country of suffering. And it's just so disgusting.

And I feel like anybody who isn't a proudly identified like Magafreek, like MSNVC heads or regular liberals who are just asking questions, they should never sleep another wink in their goddamn lives. Like, I'm just so angry that these folks have to put up with this more shit every day. And they're just trying to goddamn live. And people like Matt Walsh always think, well, now's the time to drop the pretense. He tweeted something like, now it's, we, it can, there can no longer be any doubt that no doctor can help any adult or child transition. By the way, we have no idea if this shooter saw a doctor, went through any medical transit, like that we have no idea about any of that stuff.

But anyway, Matt Walsh. As if that's what did it. Right. But, but, but, but, right, he's taking this opportunity to do that. The same people who say, how dare you politicize a shooting so soon are using it to do their evil pet project of eliminating transgenderism, as Michael Knowles said. Like, they're going to take this thing. They know it has nothing to do it or maybe they've convinced themselves.

But it's just on an evil project and they said, okay, this is going to enable us to ratchet it up to the next level. Yeah, they did it in seconds. in seconds they did it they're like instantly all you need to do is look i mean michael is a good example who said who has been saying it for a long time this we need to give a not he doesn't say trans people he says trans ideology well what does that mean what is the end result of that all you got to do though is look at the fucking bellwether all these fucking freaks and their lies chris rufo tweeted about it uh i believe yesterday um we should what we should now put to rest the libertarian delusion that transgenderism is a matter of personal choice

or live and let live. It's an ideology that has done grave damage to millions of Americans and has unleashed a nihilistic wave of violence on our society. Enough. That's very interesting because he knows really what's going on. He used the word

that is the actual thing going on but he's just mapping it on to trans people generally because of this one incident. He said libertarian? It's so obvious. He's just pushing back on other libertarians out there because there are a lot of libertarians.

You're like, leave them alone. Leave him alone. So he's talking to people he thinks he can bring into his project of getting rid of all of these people. And using that as a mask to be like, actually, this nihilistic wave of violence suddenly popped up. Very suddenly with these trans people, like, that's, I think you are making things up and not paying attention until this exact moment. Also. It's so obvious and dishonest. That's ignoring decades at this point.

We've talked about this aspect of these mass shootings for years and years and years and years. It ebbs and flows. Sometimes it's about something else. Sometimes they're manifestes as whatever. Sometimes it's just it's. Well, when we were in college is when it started being, started with the in-cell community targeting women. Those were the first times I remember mass shootings. And then throughout my 20s, it's ramping up in 20s and 30s. And now we've got 20 years of data here. It's not something new. but it has increased in frequency. And it's so dishonest because also these same people will share very specific images of this shooter's guns with very specific messages that align with what they want to paint this person as. When as we've already discussed, it's all over the place.

There's nothing coherent about this beyond this sort of nihilistic soup that we've been talking about. and maybe we'll learn more and more and more but like if you share images of all of those words then it doesn't you can't push your agenda that they're trying to do if you're sharing like I said it said killed Donald Trump and it said it said this well what else did it say contradictory things

things that are like very like joker-pilled like I'm you know I believe they had yeah it's like I believe in nothing stuff of that loss web comic some people you might not even know what I'm talking about but if you know the lost web comic from like 20 years ago there's a representation of that on one of these it's just the trollolo guy is in there I think

like it's yeah toxic brain rot it's like weird nihilistics and a lot of these shooters are pretty young it's like this whole generation that's been left completely unmoored like and it's it's I remember column I was like too little but I remember like

when Columbine kind of kick started, I think, the public consciousness of mass shootings. And I guess, yes, Columbine was the first one. And they've gotten, it's not to be like the internet's bad, but one might say that there has been an uptick in these horrific incidents as alienation and inequality and like the lack of access to health care and community and anything worth living for in this goddamn country combined with incredible amounts of screen exposure and. all the worst possible parts of the internet being accessible to everyone, it seems like maybe there's some correlations that have nothing to do with how someone would like to identify as a human. It seems like there's bigger broken problems out there. But those are hard to fix.

They require money. They require the government to do things. They require people who, yeah, to admit they were wrong. That's all to take it seriously. I'll just say living is good and killing is bad. and there are a lot of great things out in the world that everybody should be sharing in and this isn't one of them and it's just a tragedy there's a reason we aren't saying this person's name and we don't say these people's names and venerating anybody who does this kind of thing

is so disgusting and sad and there's better better things out there and what's in the news Rick Perry, watch him, he's a summer of cinema, that's right. The summer of cinema keeps on chuglin along. When will it end? Who can say? You'll never want it to end, though, with some of these hot action titles they've got over on Pluto TV. Movies you know and love, like Gladiator, Beverly Hills Cop, Tamagotchi Death Squad, Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol, the ancient Manticore Assassins, Goodberger, McGruff,

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So last night or Wednesday night, the Washington Post published this exclusive story that HHS had fired CDC director, Susan Menares. She had refused to sign off on some of the new COVID vaccine guidance, which was that FDA and RFK say, okay, the new COVID booster is good for people over 65 or if you have an underlying health issue. And otherwise, we'll like leave it up to you and your doctors, but maybe not. Maybe insurance won't cover it. Maybe if they're very clear, concise messaging. Who has a doctor? It's not exactly. Yeah, right? I was like, what is the world you live? So a flu shot rules are out at the window. Right. You're not, you're not going to be able to just go to CVS, which you can right now and get last year's COVID booster,

which is going to be kind of the same thing. But no, I think diagnoses of asthma are about to go up 800% because that will be able to get you the COVID shot. At any rate, she refused to sign off on this. So they were like, well, resign or be fired. And then she was like, I'm not going to resign. And there's some dispute about whether she's been fired or not because she says I was appointed and approved by the Senate,

Senate, only the president can fire me. That's ongoing. And then after that, a bunch of other people, a high profile CDC officials resigned in protest, the chief medical officer, the head of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. I mean, I think that I probably would want to if I was in their position, but I also desperately don't want you to leave. It is, no, make some fire you in. Such a difficult position to be in. And I understand this sort of like Spartacus thing they want to do but you're all we've got

like what like who like just like just imagine you're going to be replaced by like Dana White or something like like what are you doing don't go don't go

Chris Rufo is going to take your spot just stay there and do sabotage yeah or maybe try to do good stuff well they won't let you do good stuff make it hard to do bad stuff But I do understand and can appreciate this sort of like this idea of like, well, if we're going to resign in solidarity or like bring attention to this. But all you're doing is whittling down these institutions even more, which is what they want to do.

If Doge could have fired these people, they would have instantly. Doge, you put all of our social security numbers on an unsecured server. I'm not even touching it. I'm just saying, we're aware of it. Jesus fucking Christ Anyway It's so weird

Because Susan Monar as the Maybe former CDC Director was just appointed by Trump In April And I think as part of a deal With Senators

Bill Cassidy And Susan Collins Where they were like Hey we care about vaccines And public health So we'll We'll like Kind of let you run stuff

If you put someone Who's qualified And who's a government Scientists and believes in Science in charge of the CDC and I don't even, I haven't not even seen strongly worded statements from them now that a couple months later she's been fired and is going to be replaced the Chia Rachech or whoever the

pick. Yeah. Can we play this clip of RFK Jr. just a few hours before all this news broke because I don't want to hear him talk. But we must. We must hear him talk because this is the kind of stuff that the person running the show says. And I know what a healthy child is. is supposed to look like. I'm looking at kids as I walk through the airports today, as I walk

down the street, and I see these kids that are just overburdened with mitochondrial challenges, with inflammation. You can tell from their faces, from their body movements, and from their lack of social connection. And I know that that's not how our children are supposed to look. He's just staring at kids and diagnosing them with mitochondrial what? Mitochondrial challenges. You know when you're at the airport and you're looking at children who might have been on a flight or something and because of the way they look like a kid, you think they have mitochondrial challenges and inflammation and a lack of social connection? What the hell? The words you're saying makes sense to me, but your tone makes it sense.

sound like I'm the weird one? Do you not do that? Yeah, this is absurd. What an absurd weird man. And his conclusion is vaccines, right? What's alarming to me? Here comes another mountain down antidote. I'm not sure how people are feeling about Donald Trump.

I've had plenty of conversations where people are like, I don't know. But at the next breath, they'll be like, but RFK Jr. really has a good mission to clean up our food and you're like, no, he's as, I'm not going to say he's more terrifying than Trump, but he is as terrifying. And the work that he is doing, the work that he is doing stands to set us back for generations to really fuck with us. And that is terrifying to me that people just seem to gobble up the actual crud that comes out of his mouth. Yeah, it's very, it's alarming. because I've also seen him reference on my

my favorite podcast what is Bill Maher's stupid podcast called? Club random Club random thank you my favorite podcast Club Random with Bill Maher Chris Pratt was on it and he was talking about RFK

because he's related to that family now and he was talking about how like you know I just don't get it I don't get like why you can't just like hand it to him when like he's getting you know I understand like politics and you disagree with this you disagree with this but like he's also getting rid of this and our foods and it's like why can't you just like praise him for that like

that's good right and i first of all i don't think that like getting rid of like the dye in skittles is like making us like that much healthier um but surely a person can understand that if and i'm gonna use an extreme example right now a really extreme example and i'm not making this isn't a one-to-one really extreme example imagine hitler and hitler gets rid of some like chemicals in your food that like maybe you don't trust but he also does like all this other bad stuff you're not gonna hand it to hitler because you know that you're just softening unless you're a nazi because you know you're going to soften his image and say well he does some good stuff i disagree with him on some things that's the point of not handing it to rfk for some of this healthy food stuff because he's also going to going out there talking about mitochondrial challenges and going on Fox and saying he's like earlier today he went on Fox and friends and was complaining about how the CDC includes vaccines on its website as one of the 10 greatest advances in medical science. Are they not? Excuse me?

Right. No, he doesn't believe that. In conjunction with that, I don't think we need to praise him for getting rid of some stuff in Skittles. Well, also, he's replacing it with beef tallow. Like, like the stuff is going to get like there is an open competition in this administration to see who can ultimately be responsible for the most deaths right i think elon with the USA stuff is probably in the lead right that but like rfk is going to catch up this stuff is going to result in people dying it will not make america healthy he was in texas for the signing of texasksis make america healthy again legislation which was like we're going to require that kids learn about nutrition in K through 12.

They do? We do that? I mean, we did the food pyramid in the ages. Isn't that like Michelle Obama-style communism or something? The thing that kills me, besides the fact that he's trying to kill me, actually, is it even all of these sort of hard-quosed accomplishments that this Make America healthy situation that he's on about have notched? Don't fucking matter.

How many Skittles are you eating? You're not five. Like, oh, he's going to make Coke change his formula a lot. little bit. Okay. Like, Kim, there's people who are dying. Like, that's your big focus. If you actually cared about making this country healthier, what about health care, perhaps, being something we invest in? Or if you really want to get spicy, go head to head with the corn lobby. Do we need corn syrup and everything? Probably not. I haven't heard of say a goddamn thing about that. Like, there are so many actual challenges and problems in this country around food insecurity,

around a lack of access to healthy, good food. He's not giving millions of dollars to urban farms like the one my husband works at. He's not investing in these kind of Zoron-style community grocery stores. No, he's doing push-ups in his jeans and trying to take away people's actual access to what little bits of health care scraps were allowed to have in this country. And I think there's an aspect of this that

kind of ties into this broader fucked up kind of, I don't want to say toxic masculinity just because that's kind of turned into a nothing phrase but there is this undercurrent of masculinity to all these things that he and people who are part of this

kind of trad wife sort of neo like, yeah, neotrad lifestyle that they're trying to push people into. He's doing push-ups. He's talking about beef tallow because cow fat is for men and seed oils are for girls.

So we're going to invest in that. Like sugar and sweets are for wimps. We're going to feed everyone push-ups. Like they're trying... It really kind of factors into this ethno-nationalist project that they're part of. They want Americans to be healthy, but they want them to be a very specific type.

Like, there's a reason that the Department of... of, what is it, whatever the fuck, real fake name there is for the, you know, the ICE department is, is tweeting photos of these Aryan white dudes, classic, like Nazi Germany era propaganda saying, like, we're going to take our country back. Who's we? People that don't fit into this specific ideal do not matter to them. And this is very clear through the policy of this administration and even just clear through his signaling on social media. Him, Pete Hags, Seth. J.D. Vance can't do it because he's a fucking twerp. But there is this kind of like violent masculinity that's underpinning so much of this or this violent idea of masculinity because a real man is about people. A real man doesn't want to do the things that these twisted little freaks are doing. They're also tying and they've done it for a while obviously like it's not a new concept but tying physical ability, physical strength, these little

tests to their value and worth as like leaders and thinkers. People may might have seen Zora and Mamdani do a bench press. And then you see like Cuomo and all these people being like, he can't even bench his own weight. How can he bear the weight of being mayor and stuff? And like, that is part of what you're talking about. We're like, well, because I'm physically this way, that means I am worth more. I'm more capable. It's denigrating, you know, anyone with a disability

and all kinds of people and tying physical strength to moral worth, which is just fascism. And it's really, really, really gross. And I agree completely. It just dehumanizes people that don't fit that ideal

and makes it easier to say that they're expendable. that they're disposable that they don't matter so why bother investing in them because they're not good enough anyway which leads to again more of more fascism

at least so like you know all this is bad but they are doing they're doing they're still doing science RFK still doing science he still doing studies he announced that he was going to solve autism and figure out what causes autism

months ago and he called his shot and said in September and we got an update about that recently at that cabinet meeting where the secretary of labor was like you're so beautiful mr president you're so beautiful uh trump said the autism is such a tremendous horror show how are you doing on that so we love our president r fk responded and we love his language man uh and rfk said we're finding certain interventions now that are almost certainly causing autism we're going to be able to address those in September. So they're still on track to reveal the thing they've always wanted to reveal the thing that they planned on doing, the thing that they have all ready to go, which is the vaccines cause autism.

So get ready for that report. I'm getting ready. Also, just to say, there's nothing wrong with being autistic. Jonathan, what did you have? Oh, RFK was also on Fox and Friends Thursday morning. And Brian Kilmead asked if there's something about gender transition drugs that make people, homicidal and suicidal and I guess to his

credit he didn't answer that but not to his credit he was like well we're doing studies on SSRIs and other psychiatric medications and there's potential contributions there so medications that everybody responds to differently

everything they don't like is going to make you kill people an entire country of unmedicated Americans is the scariest thing I can It really is. Possibly conceive of. I can't believe

kill me to ask that. Ice coffee and Prozac are the only things holding this place together. I can believe that. Okay. One more quick. Well, not quick, but let's see how we do. Speaking of

this administration firing their enemies or people they didn't disagree with or people that don't want to do exactly what they want to do even if it's the wrong thing to do. What's going on with the Fed Governor, Jonathan?

I thought you were going to say Cracker Barrel Oh, we could do that too We don't have to I just like I thought that's why I could weave them together It's both of them The global economy It's both culture war nonsense you know Jonathan is a marvel

He can definitely weave them together I can keep this together So you guys know Sydney Sweeney right Let me put this in Sydney Sweeney terms So Trump is trying to fire One of the governors Or a person on the board of governors of the Federal Reserve, Lisa Cook.

Which he's not supposed to be firing. Well, there's no sense that he can do that. That's illegal, Mr. President, right? That's the name of the show. But we also remember that the Supreme Court in May in a ruling where they were like, the president can fire anyone. They were like not in terms of the Federal Reserve since that is, quote, a uniquely structured quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the

first and second banks of the United States by which they meant you can do whatever you want but don't touch the money sir don't touch the money well now he's touching the money because the guy he loves to touch money get his like greasy little finkies all over because the guy he has in charge of the federal housing finance agency is a guy bill pulte who's the grandson of this guy william pulte who started one of the biggest real estate development companies and he has charged that guy with going through his political enemy's mortgages and looking for any malfeasance. And that is why Lisa Cook and Adam Schiff

and Letitia James have all been accused by the Trump administration of mortgage fraud. As if, I think I've said this on the show, I'm going to say it again. As if Donald Trump gives a fuck about mortgage fraud. Oh, please. Anyway, he was found to have defrauded investors by lying about his real estate

value. Anyway, so now there's, now she's suing. It's unclear. All that's public information, though, so it's fine that he's doing it, right? Right. Trump claimed during the cabinet meeting where everyone was licking him. Falsely claimed. He claimed that, well, this is public. This is what you guys, the journalists, Kim, you should pay attention to this. The journalist should be looking up the mortgage fraud that Adam Schiff and company are doing, but that's not true. This isn't public information it's in the federal housing finance agency which he's weaponizing to do this and all of this comes right on the heels of cracker barrel changing back their logo he fucking did it which because this is all about like listen like this is about how we're not paying attention to what

like really matters and cracker barrel uh has decided to put back their old timer logo they put Old timer, like Donald Trump, who is accusing people of mortgage fraud. As you can see, it all weaves together. I do the weave. It's brilliant. People say, people say it's brilliant how you did that. And so anyway, they're still not satisfied, though. They're still not happy that Cracker Barrel put back its logo because they want the CEO fired

because she's a woman and is DEI or something. And Steak and Shake wants to own it. That was beautifully done. oh thank you sure that made you did it you wove it um does anyone have things to say about any of that yeah yeah yeah no i'm trying to decide which part i want to react to and how eloquent i can possibly be um it's all bullshit this is a man hellbent on just throwing all the rules out the window and firing anybody he wants even if he can't uh he wants to lower interest rates and people are resistant to that still for good reason. It's one of the few mechanisms we have

to control the economy and you do that too soon and inflation's still going up. It will cause inflation to go up. I'm not saying that there won't be a time that's right to lower interest rates and when they do, I'll be happy. That's cool. But not when it's too soon. We haven't even seen the effects of these tariffs. We don't know what's happening. What we do know is that corporations have absorbed some of these extra costs from the tariffs and as such have laid off

large swaths of people. Costs to things that are going up like crackers, barrels. Barrels. Any number of different things. Logos. No, they're going to cut the rate next month probably by like a quarter point or whatever it is to try

and combat the slow growth. but that's bad because of inflation. It's a whole mess, this economy. It's okay. You can do whatever he wants. He's the president. He said so. Yeah, I guess we just update.

We talked about how he's like, many people are saying that we should have a dictator. He just said out loud, I have the right to do anything I want to do. I'm the president of the United States. So confirmed, that's his opinion. So he'll just do whatever he wants. And people will quit in protests

and then he'll be able to do even more what he wants. Where are the money guys? He's, Okay. So I'm not, this is not my forte. I did, prior to we started recording, I had to ask you what this whole Fed thing was. Still don't quite get it. It doesn't seem like it's much of my business. But that's, which is on me. Also, I do not care if a couple people in Congress are getting bullied by Donald Trump. That's fine. If he's busy with that, whatever. But I do care about normal people having a hard time affording to live and eat. eat things. And I know that when the government messes with the money, that becomes harder. I know the

economy is not in a good spot because I have to buy groceries so I can tell. What one of the things... I can't be doing that. Yeah, the grocery. Oh, there's a new Aldi up in South Philly. Thank God. But one of, I think the

pieces of sort of common wisdom that we've seen throughout these Trump eras is that, okay, well, the money guys, the Wall Street guys, he's not going to risk pissing them off. He's not going to risk the money thing because that's how he gets so much of his support, him making it easier for businesses to profit.

And obviously, as we've seen the fallout from these tariffs, as we've seen this kind of economic nosedive impacting people, the money guys seem like perhaps they're less happy with what he's up to. Is that an accurate reading? And if that's accurate,

why are they letting him do This is too late they already got in charge Why can pregnant do this? Well, they can say the R word now So they're fine Yeah, I wonder how that top banker is feeling now that he can say those things again But everything else is happening right one would think there would be a Place where it would get bad enough to where the money guys on Wall Street and the CEOs would say we got to do something

about this Donald Trump he's demanding we switch out our ingredients He's demanding we fire our CEOs. He could come after us at any minute. And he's making everything more expensive and making everyone hate us. You'd think at some point, the Wall Street guys would be like, we're done,

which makes it a lot easier for Congress to say, we're done. But that has not happened. They can say that they're done. He'll still be the president. Yeah, but like what I'm saying is like he's at 38% approval. He's like unpopular and everyone's still

kind of bowing to him in many circles, but there would come a point if it was like Bush 2's numbers around 2007-2008, if he gets to like 30%, 29%, and the money guys are losing money, and people who, you know, some of the less intense MAGA people even started to leave, then the bottom would fall out and Congress would suddenly start to care about all these crimes. I would hope that would happen. I hope that starts to happen. I expect it to, but...

No, I'm weaving a fantasy right here. I don't think they're going to happen. To some degree, maybe not everybody, but I think that we are... It's been eight years in the span of eight months, but literally it's been eight months, and I think that people are still uncertain how things will play out and how... I think people are hedging bets right now, some of them. I don't know. That's what I think.

Oh, like, Tim Apple is hedging his bet, right? Like, he's still being nice. If I give you over and black, then, yeah. Four more, three and a half more years left of this man. Or, J.D. Vance, if that bruise comes to fruition, if that bruise spreads all the way up to his brain. But I don't know. I think that there's just a lot of people that want to stay in good graces. Yeah.

can you don't want to make a mad he tweeted he tweeted change your logo and four hours later they did everyone's just terrified of the guy who says i can do what i want i'm the president i'm gonna send the national guard to chicago like that is just so we're gonna i want to blur the handle and avatar of this guy because i don't want to just like single out some weird maga person on here but as i was looking at cracker barrel stuff i found this tweet it's a quote tweet of uh the a i i slop with Sidney Sweeney, wearing a Cracker Barrel shirt. So there's some slop here. And he goes at Cracker Barrel, get rid of all your CEO and woke boards bullshit, microwaves and DEI hires, and start cooking your food on site. Train your servers to care about your customers and make Cracker Barrel great again or don't

and be like the fig tree Christ cursed prayer hands. And I just got like into this guy and his bio is, I am here to get the most current news. if I make a few friends along the way, praise God, I am a happily married. I'm not looking for hookups, which really tickled me because I just as I was trying to figure out why DEI is behind them using microwaves

instead of cooking their food on site, I got into him and him trying to meet people. But not. But not trying to meet people. Don't try to hook up with this guy on Twitter. I'm a married. I'm looking for friends. I'm the opposite of a reality star.

I'm here to make friends. Kim, thank you so much for joining us today. Tell us a bit more about your book, though. Oh, oh, the kids' book. That's right. It came out in May. It was my first book, Fight Like Hell, The Untold History of American Labor, came out in 2022. And it was almost as a bit.

I think I just tweeted into the void one day, kind of before Twitter became super horrible. what if I wrote a kid's version? And the response was such that I basically gave myself homework and I texted my agent. It was like, what if I did a kid's book? And various things happened and then I did a kid's book. And it's for, I guess, ages 8 to 14,

I think it's kind of a broad spectrum depending how nerdy your kid is. I would have, at 8, I would have picked it up. But it focuses more on specific people from, fight like hell so it's kind of a collection of just short like easily digestible kind of biographies with some context woven in some of them i think the most interesting people and i threw in some new ones just to mix it up that's rad and some more recent people and yeah it's been out for a little while and you can buy it anywhere that books are or from my website or from get it from the library and I'm working on my next book now.

Oh, well, we're going to have to have you back to talk about that one too. Oh, yeah, that was weird. Yeah, you guys should definitely check out that book and not to alarm anyone. The holidays are coming. Sounds like a good gift for a little one in your life. Wow.

Get them young. Isn't that wild? They are. It's just a few months away. Just a few months away is not the holidays are coming up. The holidays are definitely coming. And if you're someone like me who, enjoys giving gifts you start thinking about it in september i should be more aware of the holidays

any who yeah you always forget about presents until after the new year um that's not true that's not after the new year that's absurd um kim also are you still tweeting where can our listeners find you blue skin bluesky i am blue sky so fucking annoying but yeah yeah i'm on yeah i'm on I'm a blue guy I think it's your name and I do Twitter I post a lot on Instagram too

they're all completely different handles I'll follow you on Instagram yeah I'm more fun there because people can't talk to me so much I have a little TikTok

I'm like yeah dude I've invested in all of the social media things even TikTok I don't I'm not very good at it but it's

I don't know we got to do something nobody reads anymore so you guys get it involved but yeah I'm around I made myself a website, like a real one. Kim dash Kelly.com because there are other more famous Kim Kelly's that beat me to it, weirdly.

I've never heard of any of them. It's not just Lizzie Phillips. There's a Canadian curler. There was a former, like, porn actress. There's a country singer. There's a realtor. I've looked into this, but I think I'm winning the Google result right now. That feels like a perfect spot to end this show.

Thank you again for joining us. Thank you, everybody, for watching, for listening, for supporting us. Sometimes I do this end bit a little bit more sincerely, but sincerely feel it in my heart today. I'm super grateful for everybody that watches this and supports our show for this little community. It makes me feel more sane. So I appreciate you. And we love you very much. Much.

I agree with you completely. Thank you.