Some More News - Some More News: Trump 2: MAGA Infighting, Pathetic Zuckerberg, GOP Politicizing LA Fires

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

Hi. Now that Trump is president... again... we're going to look at how he and his party are always focused on problems that aren't really problems (DEI, immigrants, and censorship) instead of problems that are (climate-enhanced wildfires, oligarchy, and actual censorship). 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. Support Los Angeles wildfire recovery: --GoFundMe's Wildfire Relief Fund: https://www.gofundme.com/f/wildfire-relief-fund-2025 --California Fire Foundation: https://cpf.salsalabs.org/disasterrelief/index.html --Direct Relief: https://donate.directrelief.org/give/406660/ Hosted by Cody Johnston Executive Producer - Katy Stoll Directed by Will Gordh Written by David Christopher Bell Additional Material by Cody Johnston Produced by Jonathan Harris Post-Production Supervisor - John Conway Researcher - Marco Siler-Gonzales Graphics by Clint DeNisco Head Writer - David Christopher Bell AG1 is offering new subscribers a FREE $76 gift when you sign up. You’ll get a Welcome Kit, a bottle of D3K2 AND 5 free travel packs in your first box. So make sure to check out https://DrinkAG1.com/morenews to get this offer! Indoor cats and indoor humans agree - Pretty Litter helps my house smell fresh and clean. Go to https://PrettyLitter.com/morenews to save 20% on your first order and get a free cat toy. Terms and conditions apply. See site for details. You can get 50% off a new SimpliSafe system with professional monitoring and your first month free at https://SimpliSafe.com/morenews (60-day satisfaction guarantee or your money back.) Chapters: 00:00 - Intro 01:16 - Actual Current News 04:10 - Blaming Everything on Immigration 14:09 - So Much Corruption Already 20:35 - MAGA infighting 28:57 - Elon 38:35 - Fascism / Zuckerberg 46:50 - This is the beginning 50:54 - Regular people helping each other

When a fire starts to burn, there's a lesson you must learn. Something, something, and you'll see, you'll avoid catastrophe, ha! Remember that from when life was better and we didn't have to evacuate our homes? Like literally pack up our pets and look around our space and have to assess which of our belongings we absolutely need and which we have to possibly let burn in a fire.

Yeah, The Simpsons was great. Anyway, hey, sorry if I seem a bit frazzled. My neighborhood lit on fire and I was forced to flee my home. I'm fine, I'm exaggerating. The neighborhood a few blocks away from me lit on fire and I fled my home due to an understandable sense of caution. Many of my friends and the people who work on this show and their friends and family

also had to evacuate and some of them even lost their homes. The words I am saying were written while surrounded by fire. Again, exaggerating. And now countless people are displaced from their homes and have had their lives completely devastated. People have died because of that damn DEI. Anyway, happy inauguration week. This is fine. 2025, feeling fine.

I'm Cody, by the way. Hi. Oh, how are you? I forgot to ask. If you're in Los Angeles, I sincerely hope you are doing all right. Also, same to people who are not in Los Angeles, I guess. Things are moving very fast these days.

We'll be talking about the multiple fires some more, but also here's some news. As of the release of this episode, Donald Trump has presumably, officially, become the President of the United States. Again, thought we were done with him, but we weren't. So retro, we're making America great again, again.

He's back, kids. Like like the R word, apparently, at least for that one guy. Also for this sad anonymous person referred to as top banker who's grateful he can say ableist slurs and pussy without getting canceled. Thanks, banks. So I guess it's time to talk about all of this nonsense now because that's my silly job.

Should have gone into plumbing, but my parents had to nurture my creative side. Oh, you're so talented. We love your little stories. Shut up, Mom. Now I gotta do puppet shit during wildfires? Sorry. Kind of hard not to just talk about the fire

if I'm being super honest. But this is the first episode we wrote after the holiday. And my goodness, there's just so much terrible news that keeps happening and good news. There's apparently a ceasefire deal actually happening between Israel and Hamas as we film this, the timing of which was extremely predictable. It sounds important.

Feels like we should look into that some more, which we will. But my goodness, the news refuses to stop. Like, oh, hey, like a wildfire. Did you hear about that fire? Anyway, this is all to say that we had to revamp the show a bit and find a way to keep up with all the news. Get with the time, you know?

All the other news perverts have live reporting and those cool wraparound screens. So why not us? That's why I'm happy to introduce our brand new boots on the ground, on the scene correspondent with to the minute high tech updates on what's happening right now in America. Check it out.

Okay, so it's just a warm bow in front of a crayon drawing. Not sure what else it was going to be. Frankly, it's your fault for expecting different. But the point remains that it seems like anything can happen right now. It's been a bad year so far. And 2025 literally began with not one, but two terrorist incidents that happened

within five hours of each other. Remember those? Both of which involved weaponizing trucks and both were seemingly perpetrated by a single individual who had been radicalized to some extent, albeit in completely different ways, and both of those individuals were former or active

United States soldiers who were very clearly dealing with a lot of pain and mental health anguish. The first attacker was three times divorced, apparently had a lot of financial problems, and was radicalized by ISIS sometime early last year. His original plan was to attack his own family, but decided to drive a truck through a crowd on Bourbon Street instead.

Seems like a dick. With the second attack, it's less clear if the perpetrator intended on hurting others or just himself. That is, of course, the dude who blew up a cyber truck outside of Trump International Hotel in Vegas with the help of chat GPT, because we're in a Robocop now.

We're just Robocopping every day. While that's being investigated for terrorism, it's way more clear that the perpetrator struggled with paranoia and mental health issues, as well as PTSD. We're not here to talk in detail about either of these events or dig into who these people were

or what their specific motives were, or if they were false flags that resulted in everybody forgetting about them the next day. Also, I'm sorry that this video is a real bummer so far. I promise it'll get way more fun later when I talk about the fires more. What I really wanted to point out here is that these are two US citizens and service members

who served in Afghanistan and were clearly left to twist in the wind and become radicalized to the point of murder and or suicide. And there are over 1.3 million veterans just from the so-called war on terror. And perhaps these events are a good reminder that those people need to be taken care of. And you know, Americans in general are hurting mentally,

not to mention the PTSD caused by stuff like COVID and climate disasters, you know, like a massive wildfire. So it would be a good time to have some kind of a nuanced. So we're hearing that the vehicle was traced to coming across from Mexico into the United States at Eagle Pass, Texas. Well, President-elect Donald Trump responded to the attack on social media

long before a suspect was even named. He has issued a series of true social posts through the evening into this morning and essentially making the point, I told you so over the course of my campaign and the Biden team took their eye off the ball. Just this morning saying, but the Biden open borders policy.

I said many times during the rallies and elsewhere that radical Islamic terrorism and other forms of violent crime will become so bad in America, it'll become hard to even imagine or believe. Cool, I guess we can do that instead. So aided by a series of sloppy reports from Fox News, our new elderly president used these events

to go off about immigration, because of course he did. That's what he does, despite both people in question being American. And he continued to lie about the cause of these incidents even after Fox corrected their story. Because as we all know and have to re-remember, Trump is at his core, an old guy who watches Fox News and posts about it.

But to be fair and balanced and fairly balanced, Trump is also an old guy who really wants to mass deport brown people. Dude is thirsty for mass deportations. And so what we've seen and what we will continue to see is Trump, now the president again, using any major event to try to blame immigration. No matter what the actual problem,

it will be immigration's fault. And that's really going to be the theme of today's episode. 2025 is already highlighting a series of very real problems. And I'd like to contrast that with what the GOP is actually focused on. Just looking at Trump's day one executive order promises, he wants to, of course, do his deportations and close the border.

He wants to pardon the January 6th rioters. He wants to end the electric vehicle mandate and increase drilling and fracking. He wants to roll back protections for trans kids, cut funding for schools that teach whatever they decide CRT means. He's going after vaccines, ending birthright citizenship, which is in the Constitution, by the way.

And let me ask you, in the midst of these fires and explosions, do any of those goals seem like urgent issues that need to be fixed on day one? He wants to ban trans women from competing in sports on day one. With the stroke of my pen, on day one, we're going to stop the transgender lunacy,

and we will keep men out of women's sports. Thank goodness that on day one, Donald Trump will address the pressing concern of like 100 transgender people playing sports at school around the country. That's really going to help all the people struggling to pay for groceries. All the people displaced by climate disasters can sleep easy,

knowing that the woke won't get them. In fact, the House of Representatives has already gotten a head start on this for him. So Trump can better focus on his big brain solution for preventing wildfires, which is to go after the Democrats for their environmental protection of, quote, worthless fish. My guess is that it's a little more complicated than that. I don't mean to be controversial, but it feels like people shouldn't have voted for him.

And while I'm not gonna sit here and say that perhaps this time people will realize their mistake because they won't, I do think it's striking how immediately the GOP began to show how little they actually have to offer even before Trump officially took office. They've gone back on promises, become the absolute soarest of winners, and unraveled

into a series of embarrassing infighting. And now, in that infighting, these high-level Trump freaks are showing their true colors. It's a real mask-coming-off-while-in-headlock situation. Specifically, we're seeing how, no matter what the actual issue is, the plan will always be to blame it on immigration and wokeness and I guess, Boy Meets World. Oh boy, that's right.

After the break, we will talk of course, about the big fight. You know the one, E versus L versus V. Be right back unless the studio burns down. Well, howdy folks. I'm trying to say howdy now with my new thing. It sure is a mixed up, topsy turvy world out there. I'll tell you what, chap,

but at least amongst the Blaze, we can enjoy the fact that Steve Bannon and Elon Musk are fighting. I actually read about that over at Ground News, which you can find with the QR code on the screen. That's a sponsor we at the showdy sought out, which is both a website and an app that gathers news from around the world

from the entire political spectrum and allows us to compare coverage and verify our information. It's also helpful to just get the vibes of how the right or left feel about a story. and verify our information. It's also helpful to just get the vibes of how the right or left feel about a story. Like with the Musk v. Bannon stuff, over on the left they highlight

how Bannon called Musk an evil guy. While over on the right they highlight how Bannon called Musk an evil guy because nobody likes him. But if you go to the bias comparison on Ground News, they do point out that while the left is more focused on Musk being a racist, the right is actually being racist against Musk,

who is a racist. It's like a Russian nesting doll of racism, which I guess is that racist too? What a neat world we live in. Anyway, you can get all these headlines plus context on each publication over at ground.news slash SMN. With that link, you can save 40% off unlimited access.

Ground News gives you all the tools you need to stay informed, such as a factuality chart and a blind spot feed that shows you stories the media isn't covering. So check them out. I do declare they are cracking gov. Howdy! Again, that's ground.news slash SMN

to get 40% off unlimited access for yourself or someone you know. The link is in the description, howdy. Hey, hi. Let's get real for a second. Crime is down in the United States, and that is good hooray. But there are many reasons someone might want some extra protection around their homes. What if a Dracula is trying to get you? I don't know. That Nosferatu wouldn't have gotten far with SimpliSafe, I can tell you that much, and that is why I use it.

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Nosferatu three. Nosferatu three, Nosferatu three.feratu three Nosferatu three I'm so sorry I'm so sorry please accept my apologies and right now you can get 50% off a new simply safe system with professional monitoring and your first month free at simply safe.com more news again that is simply safe.com slash more news. Get it. It says here you need four to five years working under another electrician. I mean, it's the AI overview. So who can say it's fun how Google just lies now.

Who am I? Ah, hi, it's Cody again. We're covering the Trump inauguration kind of and all the fire sort of, but not actually. But just in case, hey, Warmbo, any news to report? Give me more one at Golden Globe. That was weeks ago, Warmbo. Weeks ago, what?

You're supposed to... It's fine, not gonna engage with Warmbo. New Year's resolution. In other entertainment news, Nasrothu is a surprise slammo at the box office! What? Fucking what, Warmbo? Warmbo gives the Wobbled Eggers we imagining 16-17 Golden Warmbos! Starring Bill Skarsgård, Nasveratu tells the story of a mustachioed bachelor

forced to flee his evil hometown in search of new love in the big city. Cut away from Warmbo. We're not doing this. We're not doing Warmbo movie reviews, right? Please say we're not doing Warmbo movie reviews. Please somebody confirm for me that we are not doing this ever again. I'm not hearing confirmation.

Okay, so before the break, we were talking about Trump's transition to office and how it's already proving to be a rat's nest of broken promises and fucked up new promises as he immediately begins to scapegoat immigrants and seek personal retribution over any goals aimed at helping Americans. You know, when he's not speculating

about starting another world war. My gosh, the Gulf of America stuff. Do we even have time to talk about that? We probably should do a whole other episode about how when one would point out that Trump is a fascist demagogue, his supporters or reasonable centrists would try to talk about how anti-war he is.

And certainly this developing and good ceasefire deal will contribute to that perception. Despite that ceasefire being purposefully delayed until after the election, specifically because Netanyahu wanted Trump to win the election. Anyway, a huge part of the is he fascist debate involves pointing out, sure, he is that in tons of ways,

but he's not imperialist or expansionist. And while some of it is probably trolling or bluster or his weird brain being weird and annoying, he is now thinking of and talking about being those things, imperialist and expansionist with relation to the Panama Canal, Greenland, and Canada. Geez, who would have thunk really weird he was allowed to run again and that people voted for him

and that he won, the felon won. And now Trump is using the highest office in America as a legal loophole to get out of jail. Because as was just revealed, if he didn't win the election, he absolutely would have been convicted for January 6th. Hey, maybe they should have started that process

a little earlier. Like maybe even immediately. But no, he succeeded at the most elaborate low-level grift ever pulled. And everyone is just trying to navigate this huge and weird problem that never should have been allowed in the first place. Never before has this court been presented

with such a unique and remarkable set of circumstances. This court has determined that the only lawful sentence Therefore has this court been presented with such a unique and remarkable set of circumstances. This court has determined that the only lawful sentence that permits entry of a judgment of conviction without encroaching upon the highest office in the land is an unconditional discharge. Unconditional discharge? I think I had a few of those when I went through puberty.

Honk a honk, now we're all gonna die. Anyway, as we've previously talked about, Trump has already begun loading up his administration with the most overtly scummy and corrupt people imaginable. Because why not? When the Democrats or government completely refuse to punish acts of insurrection or any crime, and the unelected world's richest man

can just openly threaten to use his wealth to bend the will of our government? What's a few sex pests and oligarchs and key cabinet roles? There are no rules. I spit directly on the floor wherever I go now. Helps fight fires. I'm sorry, wait, I actually scratched that. There are rules, but not for them.

You're quite sure that every general who serves should not go directly into the defense industry for ten years? You're not willing to make that same pledge? I'm not a general, Senator. You'll be the one, let us just be clear, in charge of the generals? That's Fox News personality and alleged sexual assaulter, Pete Hegseth, who at his confirmation hearing for secretary of defense was asked about his proposal that after retirement, generals should be banned

from working in the defense industry for 10 years. Not Pete though, because Pete will be in charge of the generals. See, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see,

see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see,

see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see, see I mean, those are certainly words. Hegseth also wouldn't commit to not violating the Geneva Convention and left open the possibility of using force to take over Greenland. Good luck to Pete on his future money via the death machine, I guess is my point. But to the actual point, another such money sack is Sriram Krishnan, now named Trump's senior policy advisor for AI.

Krishnan has, as far as we can tell, almost no actual background in AI. He wrote a single op-ed that sort of mentioned AI, I guess. He's mainly an ad guy. So it's weird to pick him. I mean, it would be weird to pick him if he wasn't a friend of Elon Musk. Aha, yes, not weird at all, it turns out.

Also, considering all the bizarre and fucked up applications of AI for marketing and advertisement and for lying, it actually makes a whole lot of sense. So here we maybe see the problem. The world's richest man has purchased the president's ear and is using his position to enrich his wealthy friends. That's the actual issue this story presents.

But it's not the issue that everyone talked about thanks to Laura Loomer, who X'd out a rambling shart about how Krishnan was in favor of skilled immigration and went against Trump's America First agenda. This sparked an online debate around the H-1B visa program, which allows American companies to outsource labor to other countries specifically for skilled jobs. So basically, Loomer, a racist,

thinks that there should be no exceptions for allowing immigrants into this country, even through the H-1B program, which first of all, is not an immigration program. It's often used by people like Elon Musk or Trump as a shield for their anti-immigrant stances because it's an example of the legal immigration that they actually support for reasons we will get into.

But it's not an immigration program. Literally, it's described as a non-immigrant program. It's a temporary guest worker program. Meanwhile, Elon Musk, a different kind of racist, is a big fan of the program because he can exploit it to hold overseas employees hostage by threatening their legal status in the United States.

The H-1B visa program is absolutely a corrupt system used to exploit workers. But of course, no one is talking about that. I mean, aside from Bernie Sanders, who perhaps should be president. But no, the debate became Loomer accusing Musk of being a fake maga-poser and debate became Loomer accusing Musk of being a fake MAGA poser and Musk calling Loomer a racist.

And then temporarily and also hilariously pulling her blue check mark, thus demonstrating everything we keep saying about who he is. And ultimately they were both right and both wrong, like an MC Escher illusion of a swastika. But then as a rainbow in the storm, something beautiful happened.

Vivek Ramaswamy entered the chat, weighing in on what he thought was the real issue with the H-1B visa program. Quote, the reason top tech companies often hire foreign born and first generation engineers over native Americans isn't because of an innate American IQ deficit, a lazy and wrong explanation.

A key part of it comes down to the C word, culture. Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long, at least since the 90s and likely longer. That doesn't start in college, it starts young. A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math Olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian will not produce the best engineers. A culture that venerates Corey from Boy Meets World,

or Zack and Slater over Screech in Saved by the Bell, or Stefan over Steve Urkel in Family Matters will not produce the best engineers. His name rhymes with cake, you know. We're the only ones who pronounce it right. Okay, so spoilers. I am going to talk about this tweet for longer than I should. And by doing so, I will be demonstrating the exact issue

with how off the mark the Republicans are when discussing any serious problems in this country. First and most importantly, Corey from Boy Meets World becomes a history teacher, the vague. The show's premise is that he learns about the world and improves himself. Zach Morris scored a 15.02 on the SATs,

which incidentally is not possible because the test wasn't scored in multiples of two. But in the show, Zach Morris ended up going to Yale, Vivek. And importantly, aside from Steve Urkel being one of the most popular sitcom characters of all time with one of the most popular catchphrases of all time, in the final few episodes of Family Matters, Stefan Urkell proposes to Laura Winslow

and she rejects him for Steve Urkel, who then goes to space and comes back and they get engaged. Urkel won. Vivek, what the fuck are you talking about, sir? It is so damn funny how these squares will try to slum it by pretending they know anything about pop culture or understand art in general. Like he goes on to say,

more movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of Friends, as if Whiplash is fewer reruns of Friends, as if Whiplash is a film about the merits of hard work. Really giving me those Democrats didn't understand parasite vibes, you know? Also, my goodness, The Vague, you know they make new TV shows, right? Like just to bang around the theory real quick,

maybe there's an inexplicably popular and award-winning sitcom that ran for 12 years about a bunch of geniuses? Anyway, this 1990s children's sitcom manifesto really angered the MAGA crowd because it turns out that white people don't like being told their culture is flawed, especially not by a brown person.

We say that about them, you see. But the vice president, remember him? Remember that guy? I don't. But the vice president can build his entire legacy off of a book about the follies of white culture. But how dare a man with a name like Ramaswamy speak ill of a Slater. And just like that, I've completely forgotten

what we were even talking about. See what I mean? You see how stupid they made the debate around the H-1B visas. At no point in their online opining did these thought leaders address the corruption around the visa program, nor did they really address the problems they are circling, did these thought leaders address the corruption around the visa program? Nor did they really address the problems

they are circling, did they? Like the problem with the H-1B visa program, aside from the fact that maybe it should be an actual immigration program, is that employers are abusing it to hire overseas labor, pay them less, thus also bringing wages down for potential American workers, and force those people to stay in jobs

under threat of deportation. Instead of putting money into training workers. The problem is actually a lack of training, right? Because all labor is skilled labor. And if employers aren't going to retrain American employees, then the conversation should be around education. If there's actually a lack of skilled American workers,

then that means we need to put more money into our education system in order to update curriculum to prepare young people for the modern job market. Of course, that would require funding the education system. And as Elon Musk points out, funding education is hard. Aren't you a rich genius? God, what a dumb piece of shit. Anyway, unfortunately, the guy that Elon and Loomer

and Vivek are all sucking up to is Trump, who treats books like evil urns that trap woke spirits inside, and is specifically trying to eliminate the Department of Education. And so instead of talking about this like a normal human being, you gotta talk about the misguided

and destructive veneration of Corey from Boy Meets World, because you can't actually talk about the real problems and causes. So what's left is two sides having this heated debate, and neither of them are even close to being correct. Racists versus racist oligarchs. It's like watching 1700s doctors discuss whether typhoid

is caused by evil spirits or lustful wounds. And these are some of the top minds the president will be reaching out to, moving into the White House apparently. And I sure hope that the American people are watching and noticing this. Specifically, I hope they were watching when Papa Trump finally came home to settle the H-1B visa debate. Of course, considering that in his first term, he suspended new H-1B visas, I think we all

know what side he'll take. He said, I've always liked the visas. I've always been in favor of the visas. That's why we have them. I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I've been a believer in H-1B. I've used it many times. It's a great program.

Right, the billionaire. Obviously, he sided with the billionaire. I can't stress enough how much I'm not on Laura Loomer's side about this, or anything. But you gotta wonder if his America First MAGA base is paying attention. Most likely they'll just pivot and say how good and smart it is that Trump is siding with the South African billionaire who wants to cut out American jobs and make everybody poor and uneducated so they have more babies, just like they'll probably justify why the guy who claimed to be hard on China is suddenly fighting to keep TikTok unbanned until he can pursue

a political resolution to the situation. That resolution no doubt involving his hotel property. Because remember, he's still a hotel guy, folks. Under all the fascism, Trump is still just a money guy. It is not complicated. And so he's going to throw anyone under the cyber truck right before it explodes, if it means siding with the people bankrolling him.

And sometimes that'll be the racists and we won't care. Other times it'll be the racists plus everyone else. And it's not going to be subtle or surprising. The logical evolution of the Trump movement is allying with a racist industrialist and media mogul who is now promoting a far-right party in Germany and happily and stupidly spreading Nazi propaganda and Holocaust denial. But maybe some people will start to notice that it seems a bit weird that, for example, Elon Musk can secure a $1.5 billion SpaceX deal

with Italy within days of their prime minister meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, the place that Elon Musk is crashing. That doesn't seem like a thing that should be allowed, that a very stupid and very rich guy has just purchased his way into this semi-official position, circumventing the entire democratic process, and is now using his ambiguous authority

to personally enrich himself. That's the kind of thing we used to tar and feather people for. And what's worse is that Musk isn't just protecting his wealth, but actively butting into the actual governing of the American people. It comes after 38 Republicans last night

voted against a new funding bill that was backed by Trump. The bill is not passed. Lawmakers had been said to vote on a funding bill with bipartisan support earlier this week, then Elon Musk, one of Trump's most influential and vocal allies, started criticizing what he called wasteful spending. So on the verge of a vote on a spending deal

designed to avoid a government shutdown, this greased dildo blasted out over 100 tweets filled with misinformation about how the deal was bloated with unnecessary spending. And by misinformation, I mean lies. He said the bill contained a 40% pay raise for Congress when it was actually less than 4%. He claimed it would use tax dollars to fund a stadium,

but it flat out didn't. Dude posted a screenshot of the bill saying it was gonna fund bio weapons, and even the screenshot he posted proved him wrong. That's how lazy the lies are getting. Because, as we'll probably get into in another episode, Elon Musk thinks you're stupid.

Every one of you, especially those of you who aren't watching this and who are now gassing him up in his replies on his website. He thinks you're so fucking stupid because he knows that he can literally just post an image of something and say it's something different. We can see the image, Elon. And yet as a result of all of these obvious lies, he completely threw a wrench into the process. You know, you can buy feathers in bulk, unrelated fact.

But once again, the point will be missed. And instead of being concerned about the rich guy lying and bending the will of Congress, right-wing pundits just took his side, compiling crack-style lists of the craziest things Congress snuck into its pork-packed spending spree. Stuff like a wool trust fund and a sheep marketing grant program.

Whatever could that mean? Wacky words, pork-packed? More like lamb-packed? I mean, sure, pork packed, more like lamb packs. I mean, sure, those two things are designed to fund a wool industry in order to maintain a bunch of American jobs, but such crazy, weird sounding words, it must be weird and bad. Molasses inspection, geez, what a waste.

It's not like there was an outbreak of botulism in molasses the same year they are proposing this. It's just so purposefully obtuse and incurious of them to find these slightly weirdly worded items on this list and just... Hold up. Those rat finks. I, not today, not today, not doing this today, okay? Can't do this today, one thing at a time.

My point here is that Elon Musk, who I can't stress enough, is unelected. Do they want the boars to win? Is that what they want? Fox News, more like boar news. I always, I always knew they were secret boars over there trying to act innocent, but I see you! Oh, so cute, we're talking about pork,

so we put the pig stuff on the graphic. So unnecessary to spend money on stopping the blanket of swine smothering our values like a giant hoggy flesh pillow. Fuck this country. Burn it all down. Wait. No more fires. Keep it together.

I hear HVAC is a good job. Always gonna need cooling and heating. Because the world is dying. We should cut to an ad. Let's cut to an ad. And when we come back, we'll cut to an ad. Hey baby, Cody Hollywood here telling you about the AG1 lifestyle. I'm always out making deals and spinning my wheels,

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drinkag1.com slash more news to start your new year on a healthier note. This note. Hey there Smelly. No not you. I'm talking to your cat. Meow. Meow. You little stinky. We love you stinky. It's weird though. We keep boxes of your poop in our home. But that's the weird life

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He tells meow. And so John Cleese, he's actually talking to the animals in the room, but because they all have lady names, Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline on that phone. So John Cleese is talking to the animals with lady names, but Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline think he's talking to human ladies because see, see, that's the phone. It's- Warmbo, I keep saying it. I've seen the movie. How many times do I-

Weren't you not talking to me last year? Whatever happened to that? Warmbo has solidarity with Mr. Cody because of the fires that Warmbo had nothing to do with. Did you know that Michael Palin's character was created as a nod to his character from another movie? Cut away from Warmbo. We're done with Warmbo.

I'm so sorry, everyone. The breaking news desk is not working out. We tried. We tried so hard. And I guess we'll just keep trying. Turns out you need good grades for trade school. So I'm just gonna be here still. And that's great.

I love it. So before the break, we talked about how, despite numerous disasters, the top generals of the GOP have been vying for power under Trump while he putters about how woke fish are causing fires. No one seems to be learning or growing or addressing actual problems.

Meanwhile, the Democrats have been mostly patting themselves on the back about how peaceful their transfer of power has been as they hand the keys to Republicans and watch them immediately chuck those keys into a storm drain. We're not really talking about them this episode, but liberals have prevailed in showing America

how superior they are at completely refusing to learn from mistakes. There was of course, when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was pushed out of her bid to lead the oversight committee in favor of a 74 year old dude that nobody has heard of or cares about. Because Lord forbid the Democrats put someone in a prominent position who is charismatic and young

and good at messaging and reaching out to Trump voters. You gotta turn into the blaze, you see. Give Hillary that medal of freedom and call it a day. Get some more cutesy pal pics with the guy you said was a threat to democracy at Carter's funeral. It feels like so much symbolism. Like I understand trying to get in Trump's line of sight to mitigate all the fascist shit he wants to do.

But it's striking how quickly we've gone from, we must stop Trump at all costs, all the way to, actually, fascism is a bit of a strong word. I never believed that it was about fascism. And for me, that made it difficult for- Kamala Harris said that he was a fascist. Yeah, well, it's like, that's her prerogative. I mean, but it's not a word that I would use.

Yeah, we know that's not a word you would use, John. You absolutely flaccid man you. You tremendous disappointment. Also, you have used that word. And hey, John, not wanting Trump to succeed doesn't mean you hate America or that you don't want America to succeed. It just means that you think the things Donald Trump wants to do are bad, and that you don't want him to succeed at doing those things.

But now is the era of capitulation and pretending to miss the point. The most obvious and fun and funny example of this intense, pathetic, embarrassing capitulation is our buddy Mark Zuckerberg. We here at Cody's Showdy first talked about Mark Zuckerberg when we didn't call this that. And when he was traveling across the country, talking to real families, getting his hands in the dirt, eating corn bubkis and fried potato snouts

with real America because he wanted to run for president. But it turned out he was too off-putting and Facebooky. We urged him to run for president because it would have been funny, but he never did. Strike one Zuckerberg. Then of course, Facebook lied about their video metrics, leading certain websites and media companies to over-invest in their platform,

which led to a bunch of layoffs and the random emergence of this new and legally distinct show. So strike two there, buddy. Many years passed and more scandals emerged. And the one good thing Zuckerberg had to offer us was to publicly beat the shit out of Elon Musk. A thing he didn't do.

We begged him to do it, begged him, but he didn't. Strike three. Luckily he's a billionaire, so he's got about 500 million free strikes left. Anyway, instead of beating up Elon, Zuckerberg announced that he's just gonna be more like him. Facebook has loudly and proudly said they're going to allow more slurs and hate speech.

And they loudly and proudly announced that they're taking tampons out of the men's bathrooms because there's no war but the culture war. He also lamented that the workplace has become too feminized and there's no more masculine energy. He of course said he loves women. You know, he grew up with sisters and he has only daughters. Admittedly, this rings a bit hollow

when the website you're famous for was originally created to publicly rate the attractiveness of the women in your life. So looking forward to more of your masculine energy in the workplace, Facebook is of course also getting rid of its fact checkers and implementing a Twitter-esque community notes type system. So watch out misinformation, you're gonna have an unpublished note on you in four days.

To celebrate this new era of one of the worst social media sites available, Zuckerberg went on Joe Rogan, and now he wears chains, you see. Because of that masculine energy, I guess. Shortly after Donald Trump threatened to imprison him, Zuckerberg went on Rogan to complain about how Democrats are mean to him. He pretended to not know why he receives criticism to the point that he brought up the CFPB

and said he didn't even know what it stands for and just referred to it as an organization that Elizabeth Warren started because he knows culturally that's all he has to do to get Joe Rogan to think it's bad. The tough thing with politics is that there's like, well when you say someone's coming after you, you're referring to kind of the government and investigations and all that. I mean so the issue is that there's the, there's what specific thing an agency might

be looking into you for, and then there's the underlying political motivation, which is why do the people who are running this thing hate you? And we had organizations that were looking into us that were not really involved with social media. Like the CFPB, like this financial, I don't even know what it stands for. It's the financial organization that Elizabeth Warren

had set up. Oh, great. And it's basically, it's like, we're not a bank. The debanking section. Yeah, no, so we're not a bank, right? It's like, what does Metta have to do with this? Rogan, like the little billionaire lapdog he is now, immediately said, oh, the debanking thing,

which is how it was incorrectly described to him in a previous interview with a different lying billionaire. The debanking thing is such a laughably incorrect description because they literally do the opposite of debank people. They protect people from being debanked because the letter CFPB, Mark, stand for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Zuckerberg surely knows that

and is pretending to not know it, or he's bad at his job because they are going after Facebook because they want to protect consumers from having their financial data used in advertising. That is publicly available information that again, Mark should know. So I guess count this as the useless community note

on Mark Zuckerberg's purposeful misinformation that he said in order to ingratiate himself with right-wing culture and media so that Donald Trump isn't mean to him. So this is where we are now. We have billionaires lying to other billionaires and capitulating to other billionaires. We have the Democrats who are just defeated and ineffective

and the Republicans who are victorious but angry about it and ineffective. And it's easy to feel really helpless, especially for anyone here in Los Angeles dealing with an immediate disaster. To be clear, LA isn't the only place in America dealing with immediate disasters, but rather the latest and most high profile at the moment,

and one that I just happen to be personally affected by right now. And for me, it highlights the reality of how useless our politicians are on a national level. I think it's easy to think of a lot of impending problems as being abstract. So when you hear the GOP talk about how they're gonna drill more and cut out green energy, in some cases outright banning it, it's been frustrating, but not often directly impactful

on our lives. When they talk about mass deportations or cutting out trans health care, we know intellectually how bad that is, but now we're going to start actually seeing it with our eyes. These LA fires, for example, are a product of the climate crisis. While the Santa Ana winds that spread them are a natural occurrence, serious and smart people have explained that the rapid fluctuation between wet and dry seasons caused by the heating planet is why these fires in particular were able to get so big and fast and devastating.

While there are things that could have been done to mitigate some of the damage and local and state governments have much to improve on, this was always going to be a devastating disaster. An extra $17 million or one more reservoir wasn't going to stop those winds. This is just facts. It's undeniable.

And it's literally creeping at my doorstep. It's a very real problem with very real causes, including yes, infrastructural issues we'll no doubt learn more about. And so to see Elon Musk, an unelected man who is somehow running the country now, tweet about how these wildfires were caused by fucking DEI,

brainstorming with fucking libs of TikTok about lesbian firefighters and sharing false stories about funding being given to migrants. These dipshits are miles away, unaffected by this. As of filming this, Elon Musk, world's richest man, isn't even offering any help. I mean, beyond the cyber trucks, I guess. This morning, Elon Musk announced on X

that Tesla's cyber trucks will be positioned in Malibu area, so communication is something that he wants to work on. They're equipped with Starlink internet and free wifi to support wildfire response. Two cyber trucks were spotted here at the Palisades Fire Incident Command Post. They're already in use by first responders.

Musk says the vehicles will create a grid to help connect communities in the hardest hit areas. Please take my cyber trucks. Richest man on the planet. When he's not lying about playing Path of Exile 2, he's just tweeting. Thanks, Elon. And to have the next president take

an active climate disaster and use it to lob attacks at Democrats and just lie about water policy in order to push an agenda specifically designed to make climate disasters worse, it's just beyond infuriating and exhausting because we no longer have the time to explain every lie. We're too busy dealing with the literal fires that are here that we said were going to come. The people who are supposed to be in charge

are just rambling about wokeness and fish and immigrants while the actual serious people under them have to deal with the problems themselves and while his party threatens to make disaster relief conditional, unreal, and also a perfect metaphor for what everything is about to be like for the next however many years.

We're on our own, folks. It's just gonna be regular people helping each other. And the good news there is that regular people are, it turns out, extraordinary. But what's happening that's really cool here is a lot of people, friends and neighbors, are coming with just with garden hoses, with buckets you can see in the background here. And they're just pitching in and helping out. And they saved the home right over here, this yellow home.

Don't pick and choose who's wealthy or who's poor. We all need water to put these fires out. Yeah, for sure. But we still praise them. We praise the firefighters because they're working hard, they're doing the best they can. And they're coming from other cities that I never heard of coming over here, so.

I know it's generally a bummer when the good news is that people are coming together to mitigate a lack of government care, but this isn't the case, at least not when it comes to the actual work needed right now. Firefighters are coming from all over the country, including other countries

that we apparently want to invade now. Everyone is helping out, regardless of background. Rich celebrities are donating their money. Immigrants and locals are donating their time and effort. Even the CrossFit community, which I guess is a thing, is stepping up. Some TikTok star I never heard of has created a giant donation site over at the Rose Bowl.

Communities and businesses just opening up to anyone. Whitney Cummings is out saving horses, which is good because it keeps her off the internet and maybe she'll stop getting texts from people saying people are putting gasoline in the sewers like Batman villains. There are so many ways to help out or be helped right now, which I'm sure we will post in the comments.

It's going to be very tiring, but as long as the people in charge are refusing to help or learn in any way, we will have to do it ourselves. And in learning how to help ourselves, we'll grow stronger together. Because when a fire starts to burn, there's a lesson you must learn. Something something, then you'll see. You'll avoid catastrophe. Dough. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"]

Sorry, correction. Annoyed grunt. You'll avoid catastrophe. Annoyed grunt. You'll avoid catastrophe, annoyed grunt. Thank you so much for watching, folks. Be sure to like and subscribe, leave a comment. We will be leaving links for you if you wanna help out with the thing that happened in the comments or the description of the video.

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Also, the podcast I mentioned, Even More News, will be on this channel also if you want it that way. Also, the podcast I mentioned, even more news will be on this channel also if you want to watch it with your eyes and listen to it still. Don't watch it on silent that, you know, or whatever. Consume the things you consume in the way that you do. Moving on, we got merch. So click or type, you can't,

I don't know if you can click the link on the screen, read it, type it into your internet box. It's been a while since I've done one of these folks. We're back on track and we are ending this. We stop, we're not. Thanks for watching, like and subscribe.