Some More News - The Red Wave That Wasn't, DeSantis' Bad Trump Impression, and EVEN MORE Gizmos

Episode Date: November 11, 2022

Hi. Robert Evans (@IwriteOK) joins Katy and Cody to talk about the way-better-than-expected midterm results, the GOP's many problems going into 2024, Donald Trump's anger at Melania, and Ron DeSantis' attempts to be charismatic. Plus, they weigh in on Elon Musk's rapid destruction of the company he just bought for $44 billion. Please fill out our SURVEY: https://kastmedia.com/survey/ Support us on our PATREON: http://patreon.com/somemorenews Check out our MERCH STORE: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews?ref_id=9949 SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh   Subscribe to the Even More News and SMN audio podcasts here: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1 Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/even-more-news  Follow us on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenews  Get a 4-week trial, free postage, and a digital scale at https://www.stamps.com/morenews. Thanks to Stamps.com for sponsoring the show! Athletic Greens is going to give you an immune supporting FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free travel packs with your first purchase if you visit https://athleticgreens.com/morenews today.Support the show!: http://patreon.com.com/somemorenewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello and welcome back to even more news the first and only news podcast my name is katie stole that's the name of you and the name of me hello is c Cody Johnston on the show. Wow. Wow, wow, wow. Here's a real big wow coming your way. Joining us today, our friend, our colleague sometimes, our pal, host of Behind the Bastards, and it could happen here, Robert Evans. Hi. God, yes. Hello.

Gosh. Oh, my goodness. Hi. Wow. goodness hi wow wow wow wow i didn't know what things are starting here powerful powerful to be here good to be here be here good to be here today november 10th powerful day 2022 it is also international accounting day international accounting if i didn't say that clearly enough that something to celebrate to be clear not not accountant's day accounting day yeah oh okay if it was accounting day international international accounting boy that's a big job that's you know that's not just national i mean well i gotta say i think most people who are international

accountants are probably committing some pretty serious crimes. Absolutely. That's a job you only get into to break the law. You got to do some crimes. Yeah. International accounting. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's crime stuff.

That's some serious crime stuff. Yeah. Oh, boy. And November 11th is International Origami Day. Well, that's good, too. Also Veterans Day. Yeah. International Veterans Day. No, Origami Day. Talk, that's good, too. Also Veterans Day. Yeah. International Veterans Day.

No, Origami Day. Talk more about that. Yeah. This is normally where we interview people. How you doing, Robert? I don't feel like I need to get to know you, but what's going on? Ouch. Ouch.

You're painful. Well, I feel like I know you. We're going to dig deeper. We're catching up. So, Robert, you're like a fucking piece of shit that we don't care about. What's up with you? It's the tough love that keeps me coming back. Yeah.

I'm okay. I'm, you know, dealing with a variety of complicated emotions in the wake of the midterm elections. Yeah. Relief that most of the conservatives who are the worst people, guys like Christopher Ruffo and Ben Shapiro and fucking Matt Walsh are like really unhappy right now. Yeah.

Which makes me smile. That's good. I like them being unhappy. And that's something of a relief. And also like frustration that this counts as like a really good reaction and there are still or a really good result.

And there's like, there's some horrible, J.D. Vance is gonna be in fucking Congress. Some real ghouls got through some shit. You know, Florida and Texas are effectively locked in as GOP one party states for the foreseeable future. There's some bleak shit in this. I'm also personally not wild with the new gun control measure that Oregon is almost

certainly passing, although it's close enough that they're still not officially calling it yet. But that's, you know. So yeah, a lot of different things going through. Although I'll say I am pretty excited that Dr. Oz lost. Yes. That was, I would probably still be drinking if that motherfucker was going to be in i swear it would have been too much to handle i want dr phil to

run so he can lose too yeah that'd be good just like get them all out you know that'd be nice i think dr phil was actually dr phil might win though knows what he is yeah i i think he kind of does and i think dr oz yeah like has has no limit to his ambitions he had oh yeah he doesn't even know what state he's from he had we had to break him with a giant i do think that there's a chance that if dr phil wanted to he could eke through a lot of what you said robert yeah i can i agree with you completely i'll shout out that old phrase it's weird i i was relieved in many ways seeing as the evening progressed in the next day but it's bizarre that this big this was a big win i mean it wasn't for democrat and it's not great. And some great things, some great takeaways from this, some kind of hopeful takeaways, true. But the other parts are pretty bitter.

I think one of the things that's really hopeful for this is that this was not specifically a good night for Democrats. This was a good night for progressive Democrats. good night for Democrats. This was a good night for progressive Democrats, because wherever the dims ran, kind of what you what you used to call I don't think people still use the term blue dogs very often, but what you used to call blue dog Democrats. And I'm thinking about like the the individual who ran against and I've already forgotten his name. And so will we all soon, the guy who ran against JD Vance and like had to make a big statement saying that by student loan, Tim Ryan, that student loan forgiveness was a bad idea. The same fucking thing happened to,

um, one of the other, there was one other candidate, one other Republican who had come out against student loan forgiveness and lost. And then you had those, like those two congressional candidates, Democrats in Florida who were like former cops and running on a,

I'm law and order, but I'm a Democrat. They got their asses kicked. Whereas like, you know, Fetterman's an american politician which means he's he's got fucked up attitudes towards palestine and there's a number of things to criticize the guy over but more on the sanders wing of the party than the

biden wing and that's what people are responding to yeah his take on palestine but you know well because he's the fucking he's running to be a congressman in pennsylvania and he's clearly from pennsylvania and like he's very but it's like it's but even like performatively in that category um he wasn't trying to position himself as like oh i'm a moderate we're gonna do this he you know he's positioning himself in that way even if he doesn't necessarily agree with everything like you're saying he a politician. He's a big advocate of like sentencing reform and second chances for people who've been convicted of serious crimes. He hired a couple of felons on his campaign staff. And when the right tried to make it into a big deal, he like stood by them.

Yeah, it seems like that kind of candidate, too. It's like, yeah, that's it. That's the way it is. That's what I believe. So I'm going to stand by it because i am too tall to run very fast yeah and you know he's gonna like a lot of these people are they're you know they're gonna do uh the dem thing they're gonna tow the party line and a lot of things but at least again performatively it's uh quite the positive. Yes. Maxwell Alejandro Frost, the first Gen Z member of Congress, won in Florida.

And like his platform is mostly like, yeah, like gun control and like Green New Deal, health care for everybody. It's very like just no apologetic, no apologetics. Pro-union just that's who he is and who he said he was. Yeah. And he won in Florida. So I think it's, that's,

I think also a very positive, good sign of just like in contrast of DeSantis winning. Yeah. Who's always going to win. He's doing, he's out there doing a bad, bad Trump impression and getting some laws passed for the culture war. That's,

you know, what feels clear from like a bird's eye view war. That's, you know, all you need. What feels clear from like a bird's eye view looking at this, the results, because obviously you can get down into different races and districts and you can take different conclusions, you know, places where abortion was on the ballot,

how that affected turnout in even in areas that are red and in different places. But what you're seeing across the board is yeah the message of progressivism is taking hold in a lot of different places and it's hard and we'll talk about this i'm sure later but you know there's the conversation of who's running for who's going to be running for president and whether or not it's going to be joe biden i mean it's going to be joe biden yeah i know it is but this isn't a win but my point is that this is not a win for joe biden this is almost like in spite of joe biden in many ways it's uh weirdly like it's the

thing that he said in his campaign he's like i'm campaigning to save the soul of america and he has a pretty low approval rating right now he sure does the issues surrounding it that i think he would probably describe as the soul of america that he was fighting for that's what is still staying strong um and recognizing like no these are all clowns and weirdos and grifters and they are saying things that i just disagree with and so we're going to go out especially young people obviously and hopefully it's the kind of thing that quote inspires or at least pushes the biden administration to get a little uh you lean even more into the brandon of it all actually do even more things to make people even more because this was like almost a resistance

to the things that have happened and in some ways it was like well yeah you did student loan debt like you said like to a point and there are things that that are getting people out but ideally it's just a signal to do even more and then you can win even more um instead of the because the expected thing midterms it usually goes the other way it wasn't even expected like red wave where it's a red wave no it's like the standard thing that happens and it didn't i think yeah for sure and abortion that's what yeah that's what i mean like but like but more right i know but that's that is beyond even more than student loan relief and you know all of that but oh yes absolutely is just how universally unpopular overturning roe v wade was and is and i'm stunned and think it's funny that they are continuing to double down on that you know like right it's very funny to see the surprise, right? They're like, wait, what? Young women went out and voted against this thing? Like the shock that they're, whether it's they're feigning it or they actually feel it is very funny and entertaining. And they're not going to learn that lesson. It's funny. It's like the Matt Walsh's and the Ben Shapiro's like, oh, I can't believe this happens. Like happens like no you did the thing you wanted and

here we are it's unpopular yeah you you guys tried real hard you made this all about trans people and whether or not schools were talking about the fact that some folks are are queer you made it all about abortion and christian nationalism like you went so you you caught a little bit of feeling that maybe there was some wind in your sails and you went full bore into the craziest shit that you've ever wanted. And Americans were like, well, I don't like Joe Biden, but this that's nuts. That's scary as shit. No, exactly. I mean, another piece of cool thing that I found exciting was that the first trans person ever elected to the Montana state legislature, Zoe Zephyr, won her election. I don't know, two nights ago, whenever the fuck it was.

And that's pretty cool. Now, that is a lot of people who don't know anything about like the West are being like, oh, my God, in Montana, this is a huge. No, no, this is in Missoula, which is a veryleaning city and also has an incredibly like large trans population like missoula's like it's a it's a it's a thing trans community in missoula so it's not surprising that she won but it is good it's good and cool yeah uh a lot of stuff like that um a lot of stuff even a medicaid expansion uh in south dakota i think like it's just like again it's like this sort of yeah fucking kentucky being like yeah we're not going to ban abortion right like just aside from like the things that were

kind of gimmies and like okay yeah de santa's gonna win he's doing this trump impression and he's like a loser but he's like a little smarter than him he's gonna win he's got his like strangle hold there but largely people don't like their unpopular ideas and good things for people are popular and uh there's gonna be a back and forth just because of how elections and politics work but it's just nice to see like when you get down to it like yeah people don't like this shit and they like they like having health care for people they like all these things it feels good to see it starting i mean i hope this is what i'm watching happen but seeing it starting to take hold yeah the lessons of the last few years and more and

more people realizing just how fucked up everything is and like yeah we need these things yeah we need to band together. Like these different little communities, like this one community, what's the state we were just talking about? Montana, South Dakota. Montana, but it's everywhere. All of these conservative pockets

have liberal pockets within it or different communities that are growing. And I do believe that this will continue to change. I know that there's lots of different hurdles. Well, it's that one of the things that I think is really important for people to keep in mind is that a big part of the story of these midterms is not Democrats held on to half of Congress, you know, with the skin of their teeth. It's a shitload of local elections went well and Democratic for the last 20 years. The Democratic Party has been dog shit at keeping local legislatures. It's a big part of why we're in the mess we're in now is because they failed consistently.

And there's a number of failures there. The Democratic Party, again, dog shit, especially at the state level in a lot of states. But this is also when we get down to like the issue with a lot of the left being anti-electoral um one of the problems with that is that you know fuck the national elections you know don't if you don't want to vote for some asshole to be president don't do that but like there's a shitload of little local elections that matter um and that allow and that and that having not like yielding that shit to ghouls uh to either a ghoul or a fucking concern of landlords and small business owners can allow you to make things better for people. And hopefully we're seeing a corner turn there. like candidates in these local elections there are measures and propositions that you can like again like medicaid expansion things like that that indicate maybe where more mainstream democrats should be headed just a thought i don't know yeah i love i will say well it's a little premature

uh we mentioned jd vance recently and he was always gonna he's probably gonna win ohio daniel vance but i will say i'm very thrilled and maybe this is jumping the gun it's not official yet it seems as though blake masters has eaten shit it does seem as though it does seem like he ate some shit and doesn't that feel nice it feels great and specifically him like if i had to choose obviously i'd be like well neither of them uh neither of teal's little goonie little freaks would win but if i had to choose one i'd be like well neither of them uh neither of teal's little goony little freaks would win but if i had to choose one i'd prefer jd vance because i think blake masters is like more insidious and yeah absolutely a much bigger uh freak who like wants to you know

inject like teenagers bone marrow into his own bones and shit like that mark kelly is like a better legislator than tim ryan would have been too sure yeah yeah um and an astronaut come on get out of here come on it's so funny that like the idea that like this weird like soul vampire could beat an astronaut in arizona like give me a break yeah uh so that's still something in the American spirit that goes, well, yeah, but that guy's an astronaut. Come on. Get out of here. He's been to space.

Yeah, we can shit on Elon Musk and his bullshit at the same time we elect an astronaut. I will say 100% of the reason why he's gotten away with so much is because he was able to play act as a spaceman. And as Americans, again, we're deeply vulnerable to spacemen. We love them. We do love a spaceman. lol at the end, so I can claim it's just a joke. And if you have a small business, you should check out Stamps.com. They give you access to the USPS and UPS services you need to run your business right from your computer. No holiday hassle, no long lines, it's just you and your little notes. Your perfect little notes. All you need is that computer and a printer and you can print postage whenever to go wherever you want

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After all, I know what you did just kidding ha ha ha okay well let's let's talk about about the georgia runoff because it just always seems to come down to georgia here doesn't it it might not come down to, but one of these days we're not going to be holding special elections in December just in Georgia to save democracy. One of these days, yeah, surely. One of these days Georgia won't have to vote again a month later in winter, but not yet. They should promise $4,000 checks this time. It is kind of like we're punishing them for not making up their mind enough.

Yeah. Like now you have to do more of this shit. Yeah. During the holidays. Like you want time off. No, no, no, no, no, no. Get out there. No, fuck you.

No. Figure your shit out, Georgia. We're going to make this miserable. And you have to or else society might end. Yeah. No pressure. Like let's put a lot of pressure. A lot of pressure.

Yeah. A ton of pressure during the holidays, which are already trash. Yeah. Yeah. Do we have a, is there a date for the runoff? I think it's December 6th. Yeah, I believe it is. Okay, okay.

So it's like a little before the holidays. That's nice. So at this point, Warnock is a little bit over Herschel Walker. So that's good. Not enough. No, not enough to cross that 50% threshold. You know, there's a lot of speculation about what could happen or likelihood. We don't know until we get there.

I have been impressed by Democratic turnout in Georgia specifically during special elections. But you can assume that they'll be doing that, too. But hopefully it won't come down to that race either. We still might pick up one more. I mean, Nevada could still, we could get enough of those mail-in ballots in Nevada for that to go for Masto, but that's a lot to hope for.

It's probably going to come down to the long shot. Okay, well, I hope you saved up some donations. You're going to getting Texted a lot Over the next four weeks Yeah, you're gonna see a lot of fucking Promoted tweets God, no we're not Because Elon's going to allow us

Elon, being a child of South Africa Is going to allow us to segregate our Twitter It's in his soul. He can't escape it. He can't stop it. He can't stop it. As far as he hasn't changed it to Twitter green, just to remind him of his fucking emerald mine.

He's going to throw Drill in prison. Oh my God. So funny. Like that's like the, we don't need to get into the Musk stuff yet. Well, we're going to later. We will, we will. You can put a pin in this.

But just the mention of Drill, it's so funny because like elon is so pathetic and like once he wants all the people to love him and like him and he loves twitter so much even like though he doesn't understand it very well clearly he does not have the heart of a poster but like you know that seeing drill shit on him is so hurtful to him yeah it breaks his heart. For those who are not terminally online, Drill is the person who's best at Twitter. Everyone agrees. For reference of how beloved this individual is, they were anonymous for years,

and then someone doxed them, and the entire website decided to pretend it hadn't happened. Yeah, it's like, no, what? I don't know. You mean Drill? People compare it to that scene in Spider-Man where he gets his mask taken off on the train yeah yeah and they protect him and that's a really good explanation um and yeah he's a like predictive um uh representative of certain types of guys he's

very very good at it um and you know that him shitting on twitter blue and Musk's management of Twitter is like the deepest cut for him. Yeah. But the, the unkindest cut of all. You guys have really thrown a wrench in thing because it's hard to pivot away from this when so clearly it's time for us to talk about some Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.

Let's do it. So, you know, I'm back on the Trump train. Let's do it. We're no, no, I mean, Elon ship is out do it. We're no, no.

The Elon ship is out of here. Speaking of drill, Trump's whole week has been the drill. I swear I'm not mad. I'm not mad. Don't tell them I got mad. Don't tell the newspapers. Don't put in the paper that I got mad. Don't tell them I got mad. But Melania is really regretting her terrible decision.

Oh my God. All of her bad decisions. He just shit on his wife. It's so funny. That's so like, classic. If like Bill Clinton had blamed Hillary for bad midterm picks,

or Obama, Michelle, we could have all been like, well, yeah, I mean, they're both political thinkers. They're both very political. I guess that's feasible. But like Melania. Yeah.

Melania Trump. You took Melania's advice yeah melania melania had strong midterm advice huh also just the like the the absurd idea that he listened to his wife about anything yeah all of it like no no no no no i don't think so god he's so entertaining uh Yuck. It sucks. It sucks. I hate myself. Did you see this Fox News tweet that says, Major announcement.

Trump puts his supporters on high alert after clearing up rumors he's upset about midterm results. And then it has a graphic with a picture of Trump and a quote that says, There is a fake news narrative that I was furious. It is just the opposite. I have seen that. It is pretty beautiful it's great what a what a disgusting spectacle that we have to pretend isn't so fucking entertaining no it's awesome no we should we should lean into the fact that it's one of the funniest things that we have to enjoy our fun while we have it and i know it's just there's so much about the spectacle of of life and of all

these things and part of how they thrive is our attention uh because attention is a currency these days and elon knows it that's why we're all watching his little train wreck and this trump de santis thing is like it's very funny and it's going to keep being very funny don't get me wrong but the end result could be disastrous in so many different ways that like we're just like laughing at this uh yeah train wreck again i don't know uh i'm of two minds and the loudest mind currently is the one laughing very loudly well that's because at this point it is, it is funny. Well, just like seeing like, it's like,

I keep seeing these like tweets from operatives and Republican operatives and folks in the punditry and whatnot. And they're like, Republicans have a Trump problem. It's 2022. Excuse me, sir. What?

It's 2022. And now you're saying, wow, they got a Trump problem. No, they did the second. They've been saying that since 2015, I guess. They were right then. They, they did the second. To be fair, they've been saying that since 2015. I guess.

They were right then, they're right now, I guess. They continue to be right. They have a Trump problem, a Gen Z problem, a woman problem, a LGBTQ people problem. They got a lot of problems. A lot of problems over there. A lot of problems. A lot of problems.

You know, there's a drill tweet that something along the lines of i'm turning a dial that says racism and listening to the whether or not the audience applauses like the price is right and and and finally the applause seems to have stopped at least it's quieter it's also like one of those it's the uh it's the it's a it's a uh randy we randy uh of like dems are gonna lose and look in the mirror and say i gotta get more racist uh that's from that's from a little while ago but like this this this republican party like where are they gonna what are they gonna amplify what are they gonna not what what not how many notches are they gonna kick up and in what category they're not gonna back off they're gonna ramp it up because their their claim is that like oh we that was uh it's weirdly not like the culture war stuff

doesn't work they're trying to hedge their bets because everyone is like everyone participated in that like you see shapiro and daily wire freaks like ah the uh need to we need to recalibrate and stuff the culture war stuff is fine that wasn't the problem it was like the lack of like a unified message like it's just hard for them to grasp what's going on but de santis de santis is doing a bad trump impression and doing the culture war stuff he's the don't say gay bill guy he's's all that. He's done these things. So when they're like, we're done with Trump, we got to go to DeSantis. It's the same guy. It's just one is a pale imitation of the personality with more legislative ability.

And like, which is worse for them? It's this weird calculus they're trying to do. And it's like, I don't know. They both suck. Maybe just like for us, though, disband the party. Yeah. Pack up. Go home. home it's done boys and girls but i uh i will say i here's this is an important thing for me to get out on the show publicly i will absolutely renounce and dedicate the rest of my life to attacking betterman if he wears a suit to Congress and not another Carhartt hoodie and shorts. Hoodie and shorts, man! He'll be dead to me.

There's no way. Is there a dress code that you have to respect when you enter the... There is. It's usually brought up in the... It's usually brought up in a sexist context where they're like oh, women can't...

wearing heels or whatever it is. Or they should be required to wear heels i forget it was like nine years ago but really probably like four but yeah so there is a dress code of some kind but you know we will see yeah i'm just saying maybe maybe you might be disappointed on that i'm not positive yeah if he has to sign some contract saying he'll cover his knees at work yeah uh you've seen like there's like like ted cruz and a bunch of people yeah uh you've seen like there's like like ted cruz and a bunch of people have like they've voted when they're like just getting from the gym yeah that's happening he should be fine i think he should be fine do you think he's gonna announce running for president this no i now or is it too embarrassing right now, guys? What do you think? Trump? Trump? I think he's got to, right?

He'll be weak if he does it. Huh? He did delay it, right? He was planning on. Well, so he was planning on doing it right before the day. He was planning on doing it today or like a little earlier also at one point. Yeah. And he postponed it out of respect in big, big quotes.

And he postponed it out of respect in big, big quotes. But now he's being like called like Jason Miller was like, please don't like just wait until the runoff is over. Like, just wait a little bit. But this is also the guy who didn't evacuate Mar-a-Lago when the tropical storm was coming. So I responded to your tweet robert i feel like way back at the beginning of worst year ever we made some predictions and i kind of think somebody said he would die at mar-a-lago in a hurricane or some sort of thing there's a non-zero it's still a chance it's an obvious thing that like i'm sure they've got that thing like fortified to the point where it could withstand i mean they probably literally haven't fortified to withstand yeah it can withstand hundreds and hundreds of big macs yeah but it

would be funny it would be funny if he just got swept out to sea just just and also you know i i don't i'm not a florida hater but we don't need that part of florida the whole little peninsula he's on that could go like that could go. Like, that could go. Evacuate everybody and then let him go off with it. Yeah, let him drift off. I do think he's still planning... He's still planning to announce on Tuesday, though. On the 15th, right? That's the thing.

Like, he said he's like, now he moved it to the 15th. That's when the major announcement is happening. Can't do it again. And I just don't think he's got... I don't... I think he's too himself to push it again. It looks weak. Exactly. And like think he's got I don't I think I think he's too he's too himself. It looks weak. Push it again. Exactly.

And like he's so now that DeSantis has won now that like the election technically is like over ignoring the runoff that he should probably be concerned about a little bit. But ignoring that, he's good to go. He's like war mode now. Right. He's like, I got to go after DeSantis. I'm sticking with Ron DeSanctimonious. You know, that's what... That's not such a good one.

I don't think it's a very good one. It's too much. It's a little better when he says it out loud, when you hear it. You're like, all right, you little weirdo. Go for it. In order for it to be really effective, it needs to be like a universally understood and used word.

And I think Sanctimonious... Dopey Ron. Imitation Ron. i can't believe it's not ron i don't know uh he'll he'll figure it out because also i think he'll need to point out that he's doing him right ronda santa no i think that would endear sloppy ron with everybody ronda sadness ronda sadness is pretty good sadness is much better I'm sure he'll workshop a bunch of stuff. He's got a year of doing this. He'll be fine. Don't worry about it.

The thing about DeSadness. Ron DeSadback. Okay. What did you say? I mean, like, everyone's talking right now about whether or not, like, he, Trump could beat him in an election or vice versa, you know? Does he have the momentum now because of how strong Florida was? Well, a lot of the rest of, a of like Trump endorsed candidates specifically did really poorly.

That's always also kind of been the case to like, give or take. This isn't new. And I think like, outside of whether or not Trump's insults will hold in a vacuum, like, like, assume Donald Trump just decides I'm done with politics or get swept out to sea in a hurricane or something. He's he's out of the picture. So we don't have to worry about like Trump giving DeSantis a nickname or throwing up dirt. Can he win? And I really I don't know. I'm never going to say, especially after 2016, that he can't.

What I will say is that he is he does not have the kind of charisma that Trump has, which doesn't mean he can't win. Obviously, most US presidents win election without the kind of charisma that Trump has. But he is a very different kind of authoritarian. In a lot of ways, he's a scarier one. He's good at methodical power building. He's good at extending his ability to exert control throughout a government apparatus in a way that Trump was not. Trump was not able to do that in a concerted way. He had a bunch of different underlings who were trying to do versions of it, but all kind of looping back to themselves.

And it's one of the reasons why his, his coup attempt was so like spotty and, and, and slapdash. Whereas DeSantis isn't the kind of guy to carry out a coup attempt. He's the kind of guy to, if a coup attempt he's the kind of guy to if he were to get and if he were to like be the president that would be a very frightening situation because i think i agree but i don't know i don't the man can't i don't think the

man has the ability to electrify a base in the way that i think that donald trump is palatable and what he's like everyone under a lot of people understand and accept that he's a piece of shit and they're going to vote for him anyway because they kind of like him. They kind of think he's funny, but like Ron DeSantis, DeSantis, sorry, does not have that. So it's interesting. It'll be interesting and terrifying to me to see how people receive him because it's not the uh sparkle it's just the um the the shitty beliefs because he has also this uh this weird armor i was gonna um i'm glad to talk about this i was gonna say like because i i agree like predictions are not helpful, really, at all. I personally don't think he has the juice.

He just doesn't have it. The razzle dazzle. He doesn't have it in him. He's not. That's partly why he's doing a bad Trump impression, because he just doesn't have it in him to be, like, his own interesting man. And the thing about, you know, a strong man is they also have to be somewhat charismatic and uh interesting to like and like be able to fire people up but also there's this uh perception of him a little bit that uh he's not these other maga freaks right like there's a uh people on uh

on television talking about you know this is this is an indictment of the republican party it's trump and stuff the republican party needs to do like a deep introspection and look in the mirror and go towards people like moderate republicans like ron de santis and like that is a perception that he's a normal moderate guy but he's not he is do it and like because even like you know don't do the culture war stuff do like ron de santos his camp like that's that's he listens to the lips of tiktok like that is like where he's getting so much of his information and that's part of why i i i don't know that i actually think he's an electoral threat in the same way that that trump is trump won election once, right? And I also, I think it's, you know, his star has

faded to a significant extent, so maybe he can't again. DeSantis does not have the kind of ability to ignite a base, I don't think, that Trump does. He's just not that kind of charismatic. But he's also leaned so hard into the culture war stuff that it's undeniable. There's no, there's no like smiling authoritarian aspect to him. The stuff that he's done as governor of Florida is like ghoulish and horrific. And I don't know that I don't know that I think he's actually. I mean, if you're looking at like who the front runner is, as a Republican to replace Trump as an authoritarian candidate,

it's certainly him at the moment. But I don't know that I think his chances of getting elected are particularly high in the current political environment that's yeah well i don't know people really don't like joe biden yeah but that yeah i mean but that doesn't seem to have influenced things yeah that's yeah it's tough because also like yeah there's an aspect of um of this sort of like sure then everything could be i mean joe biden wasn't on two years again i stand by i think that what we saw in the midterms this week was in spite of joe biden um i mean i know that he's done some stuff ultimately but you know joe biden isn't inspiring people from the other side to come, you know, vote. Yeah. And less and less as the months go by, you know, you know, abortion. I don't know, but I could be wrong.

OK, we're going to take a quick break. God, I love breaks. Love it. We love to see it. You guys love to hear it because you get to hear our ads. What a treat. What a treat. We'll be back after those treats for even more treats.

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News. News. Treats and gizmos abound. Treats and gizmos abound. What's the latest about Twitter, Jonathan? It's going well. How long do we have? Where is the implosion currently? I mean, here's the latest. It jonathan yeah where how long do we have where is the implosion currently

yeah i mean here's the latest it'll be totally different by the time anyone listens to this however uh a bunch of executives have left including the people who were trying to put a positive spin on this uh so the trust and safety guy uh left the the vp of u.s client solutions has left and elon musk held an all-hands meeting today he held an all-hands meeting today where he said the work from anywhere policy is over it's gone you got to come back into the office unless you can't right he said if you if you can if you are able to come into the office you have to be here for 40 hours a week at least or you are resigning also just a note the all hands was announced

an hour before it started and he was 15 minutes late oh beautiful and the website is currently overrun with fake Rudy Giuliani's and fake Joe Biden's multiple fake Eli Lilly and companies now like brands are just furious and the actual Eli Lilly in companies now. Like brands are just furious.

And the actual Eli Lilly has had to address like, we are not giving away insulin for free. I'm looking right now at a verified Tesla account, username TeslaReal, that says breaking a second Tesla has hit the World Trade Center. It is chaos. It is chaos. And Elon's, the way he's he's doing again he's

doing the i'm not mad don't put in the newspapers that i've got mad that i got mad thing by being like we're having the highest traffic we've ever seen and everybody who gets banned for impersonating someone is eight dollars in our pocket and it's like yeah but number one people have done the math there's a good chance you're losing money on every verified subscription because you're having the ads. And like number two, man, I don't know. How much money did Eli Lilly put into Twitter? Is it more than the people giving you eight dollars? Unbelievable.

What is this? Best businessman on the planet. He's hemorrhaging money right now. It's so funny. He's admitted it. He says Twitter might go twitter might go bankrupt might go bankrupt he had to get like four billion in from tesla to keep the company yeah he's already done yeah he already did that was the big stock sell-off that led to another

i think was 16 point plunge in tesla stock price it is remarkable how fast this is happening i do still i mean i kind of think that maybe it'll reorient itself once he loses the place once he loses the company well yeah like that's what's gonna like they're gonna go bankrupt he will lose all of his money and respect by the way elon who is listening it's gone all respect uh but then, the fucking banks will own it. And they'll put somebody else in charge. And they will operate as all social media CEOs should operate. They will do exactly what the old people were doing. Don't tweet.

Just let people fucking post on the site. There are some ads there. The end. That's what people want. We'll fucking post about who owns it. Ban the Nazis. And do everything. Vulnerable for pressure

from both sides. Yeah. You know? Try to make people try to make it a comfortable place for brands to exist. Like that is that is your job.

It's what the old people were trying to do. I mean, it is funny. It's ridiculous to watch. I don't know what will happen in the in between time though yeah it's incredible I can't

he just keeps saying like again he's just every other tweet is the laughing crying emoji yeah and he keeps saying like yeah it's the most it's like there are all these users coming in first of all I'm pretty sure that I'm pretty sure that i'm pretty

sure that number includes the bots that he's trying to get rid of yeah but also uh because it's based off of this number that he was trying to discredit when he was trying to get out of the deal um but also like and i pointed this out on twitter i'm not the only person to point it out but like people can't look away from train wrecks people love spectacles yeah i don't know if you saw nope this year elon but you are it that is you yeah and also alternative alternatively you are the monster in the sky the we are watching you implode the crowd full of the crowd at the at the cowboy ranch who gets devoured is the former Twitter employee. And just like, if it was sentient, it'd be like,

wow, actually, I'm full. Drill is on a horse. I've eaten all these people. Like, yeah, why do you think? Until it disappears. You'd think the guy that knows so much about car crashes would understand that people can't look away from them. Yeah.

He's also also i don't know if you guys know the difference between bird watch was what is the old fact check thing and community notes which is his new fact check thing but he says it's a game changer for improving accuracy on twitter i love this and this guy so much every step of the way like his twitter um and this they've been criticized for this they have a lot of things in development uh they take their time with them they roll them out to a few people and they roll them out to a few more people and they get feedback and they figure out if an idea is good based off of customer feedback not just people angrily tweeting at the bad ceo that just wants the memes to flow uh so you have a situation where he comes

in and he historically is the kind of guy who takes credit for other people's ideas as his own people's inventions as his own he wants to be like yeah i invented this great idea so a lot of these ideas that he's rolling out are other people's ideas that were already in development that he's like oh this we're dropping this now and a lot of them are not ready but he just wants to like overflow with like these things like look i did this i did this i did this i did this i did this yeah they were all already being developed and weren't ready but like with the birdwatch birdwatch community notes it's just a change in the name. It's the same thing.

And he's on multiple occasions been like, yeah, it's great, isn't it? I'm great at it. Like, no, no, no. This was before you even were in the picture. This was a thing that existed. And it's just every step of the way. Plus, you got to pay eight bucks to get your tweet seen.

Like if Twitter Blue was all of these extra features minus fake verification and your tweets are actually seen it's like it like functions the spam spam filter if you get rid of that part sure eight bucks for twitter blue doesn't matter. But when you're gatekeeping, like, you want to be the digital town square and you're gatekeeping how loud people can be. It's ridiculous. He's applying, because we know Elon is a shitty gamer. We know his Elden Ring build was trash. Yeah, we've all seen it. He's applying, like, the logic that insufferable, like, the worst parts of gaming apply to games where it's like what if people could just pay to do better that'll make everyone happier that'll make people more

excited to be on the site they can just pay to go viral like like their favorite stars and it's like no the people who are really good at going viral either have a huge following outside of twitter or are really really good at using twitter or clever or like or you have something to offer other than eight dollars a month well that's what he's always but wanted I mean this is a deeply unlikable person who's always been deeply unlikable god you know it's like he's never you think about him getting picked on in high school and you're like oh but yeah he's a piece of shit but he picked on kids in the high school I know he got shoved down the stairs for what i'm saying is like that is intrinsic in his personality and it's so transparent and like if i'm able to step outside of myself and be objective it's like actually a

tragic story of a person like there could be some uh wonderful oscar movie probably about uh oh yeah it's like it's but it is also a lot of people's livelihoods and community and um and that's the yeah no that's not funny it's funny and it's not funny but i do think there's so much that i think but every time we pay attention to it he doubles down this whole this whole verification thing i'm pretty sure i said it on this show last week or the week before one of the many times we talk about elon mus he says something, he sees the reaction, and then all of a sudden he's got to do it. You know, that's just so pathetic. Yeah, it's based off of spite and the Dogecoin account saying, good job, sir. We love you, sir. That's it. It's deeply embarrassing.

You're right, Katie. It sucks and is funny and sucks again. A great post that just hit my timeline. Why would you leave Twitter now when your chances of being the beneficiary of a class action lawsuit are increasing by a second? There it is. And like, that's the thing. And it's just like, it's one of those. It's very some of these accounts who like love him and are like trying to be like, yes, sir, please more. Ruin me more it's just like

ultimately when you get down to it because like you know yeah bots are a problem spam's a problem all this kind of stuff but when you get down to it and you sort of describe it here's this guy who is an alleged alleged genius and his and he stated many many times he wants to expand human consciousness that's why he wants to go to Mars. Expand human consciousness. Spread it out through the stars. He has these sort of lofty, purported goals about humanity and our oneness and togetherness and the expansion of all of that. And he's allegedly a brilliant man.

And he wants to solve free speech and everybody connect to each other, and his solution is charge people money. It's pathetic. It is the most embarrassing, pathetic attempt at like, just think about it for five more minutes. You're a smart guy, supposedly, so think for five more minutes and go beyond what if everybody pays me money

everybody gave me eight dollars it's just fucking it's just so it's fun to see happening is the dissolution of this myth of him like yeah you know talking to people would be like he's how can you be so such a dick about elon musk because he's trying to save the world what are you trying to do no he isn't he wants to be seen as somebody that saves the world he wants to be remembered by history he does not want to actually put in the work or come up with an idea he doesn't have any he does not have an idea he doesn't even have a business acumen ads for gizmos it's his idea ads for gizmos i i fucking i please can i read this yes please please cody so he well so this is at the all hands the all hands that he announced an hour beforehand and was 15 minutes late too and said

we're probably gonna go bankrupt and also that he sold his stock in tesla to save the company which is just the audacity yeah it's like you like you're like oh that the titanic is on the wrong route i'm gonna i know how to do it i'm gonna buy the titanic and i'm gonna veer it into this iceberg and then i'm gonna watch it hit the iceberg and i'm gonna be like i'm saving you i sold my money to save it's absurd whatever he's a ridiculous man katie you can read read it. It's fine. No, no, no. You do it. So, okay. All that happened. And then in the all hands, this is an isolated quote that I still think has to be fake.

I'd love to see ads for gizmos. And if I saw ads for gizmos, I love gizmos, of course. I'd buy them all. Click, click, click. And even if they're not that great, I still buy gizmos i love technology i'll see content for gizmos but not an ad or an ability to actually buy the gizmo so i'll have to send it to my assistant like please buy this gizmo that's how it goes generally but i would be happy to just be able to click on it and buy it. It being gizmos. What is this? What I want to see,

y'all know there's that scene in Star Trek Discovery where like one of the engineering heads is like- Einstein, Musk, and- Yeah, the great geniuses of the past who brought mankind into space. I want to see like a little scene from that where like it's some Federation Space Museum and they've got like a hologram of nicola tesla and you know a hologram of albert einstein they're all saying quotes from like

you know famous like like theories that they published and then it gets to muskety just talking about gizmo i'd love to see here rolling down john luke picard's cheek nice to think about and it's just so wait i need some clarification on this though is he talking about i mean we can do this now right like yeah it's fine i click leaks for things all the time that i want to buy it musk and he said this out loud he wants to he doesn't want to own twitter or buy twitter he wants to own another app that competes with WeChat, right? China has this app called WeChat. He's talked about this.

WeChat. He wants to make his X app. Exactly. He wants an app that is so, it's, yeah, he wants social media that is all like, it's like payment based

and you can do stocks. You can do all this kind of stuff on it. He wants it to be the everything app with social media. And I hate to break it to you, Elon. People don't want that but no we don't we hate most of the apps we have yeah exactly we want to be able to pick and choose and go i'm gonna spend some time on this app that i fucking hate i'm gonna spend other time on this

app that i fucking hate but he wants to do that and so when he's talking about this he's like yeah if you see an ad or if you see like somebody talking about a product or sorry a gizmo a gizmo i want a little thing to pop up that says you can buy this uh it's very dystopian it's again it speaks to like the thing again not the first person to point this out won't be the last elon musk loves science fiction novels and like oh i love sci-fi but i read them in a way that makes me like the parts that the author is trying to say are bad right yeah he's a he's a real torment nexus guy right and it's like yeah i want like i want shit flying at me all the time to say buy me buy me buy me he literally says in the quote in the ridiculous quote even if they're not that great i'd still buy gizmos yeah dude because

you're a billionaire like you have no impulse control because you don't have to have it like i there's i think the best example of just like the image of elon musk versus the reality that we've got in the last couple of days is right after he bought twitter he made like some 3 a.m in the morning post when he's taking whatever whatever fucking shulgin opioid is what gets him through the night he was like like, Twitter's a distributed consciousness net. It's really an artificial intelligence. We're all just neurons in this big brain. And then when it comes and then like a couple of days later, when it comes to what is his big idea to save the site that he has bought and financially endangered?

It's like, well, what if we let people pay to be like celebrities? Right. What if the neurons are charged eight bucks a month? You could pay to be like ketchup. Have you guys seen this sweet and red from Brianna Wu? Which, I mean, I've seen a few from her. I don't know which one you're talking about. Oh, no, just today.

It's about the embarrassing man who owns the website that we don't know. No, just about how hackable Twitter is right now. Oh, it's about the embarrassing man who owns the website that we don't know just about how hackable twitter is right now oh it's a danger it's like safety and integrity situation what was it like he's taking risks with uh your privacy and safety yeah but he also wants it to uh he also wants twitter dms to uh rival signal yes he wants the Yes, and he wants it to be a bank. You should attach your bank account to this fucking site. Absolutely not. It's all like Dogecoin, like fucking crypto shit.

Yeah, it's incredible. I think we may have talked about it on this episode already, but people broadly know that like, because of the way the deal works, the cost of servicing the debt yearly is going to be about a billion dollars a year for Twitter. What I didn't know is what their interest expense was on their debt prior. So before Elon Musk takes over, their interest expense on debt was $50 million a year. And now it's a billion dollars a year.

Oh my God. He owes so much money. That's a billion dollars a year oh my god he owes so much money that's a big difference i think i'm all i'll say it you know no bones about it that's a large amount of money that's such a problem for you elon cody while you were reading the gizmo quote i suddenly got panicked that like is this real have we been had or something so real quick i like went to check and dozens of people are asking this reporter from the information come on this can't be real so many people you're telling me he said and she's like yes this is not a joke here's the link to the story it didn't make the final story in the information but the writer gave me permission to share this with you all. She has written like a dozen times on her own tweet.

This is not a joke. That is absolutely damning to whoever edited that article. You put that quote up top. Yeah, put the quote in. That is the start of the fucking, that's the lead. That's the nutcracker. Now you're burning the lead. You're burning the lead down.

What is wrong with you? That's the best thing I've ever read. Because the headline is, Musk warns Twitter may lose billions next year. That is not the chief story. That's true. Bankruptcy. To be fair, the lead might be him saying, yeah, we're going to be bankrupt. And I had to take like four billion from Tesla.

But you include the gizmo. I disagree. You include gizmo. You start with the gizmos, baby. gonna be bankrupt and i had to take like four billion from tesla i disagree i disagree you start with the gizmos baby guys i love gizmos of course of course who doesn't i actually do but he's a silly man sorry gizmos are like appeal to the worst part of me where you're like i need to sing no so that's the other thing actually i do i do want to make this real quick point because i think that elon musk knows what he's doing in several ways and part of it is that he knows people are addicted to twitter much like him and you know he's he'll

joke like oh yeah if you impersonate somebody uh you're banned and we get that eight bucks he knows in a way that he's turning twitter into a game eight bucks a month month. Oh, I got banned. Another eight bucks. I'm going to do another funny joke. Like there's an element where he is trying to gamify Twitter and like appeal to the worst impulses of people and apps and games and money in order to like get more

because he's losing all of it. I just wanted to say that. This is where we should wrap things up for today. It feels like a good spot, a good time. Yeah, it feels good. It feels really good. Robert, tell us our listeners who I'm sure

already know you, but just remind them about your shows. Yeah, you can listen to It Could Happen Here. This week, we have five episodes that James Stout and I made about the war, the civil war in Myanmar. Excuse me, did you say five episodes this week? Yes, yes, yes.

Five episodes. It's a daily show. So the whole week is the story of these rebels we met fighting in Myanmar, people who are like 3D printing guns and rockets and, uh, you know, fighting, fighting the cops, blowing up police stations. Very cool kids. It's some actually it's some real Andor shit. I'm very excited for that.

It's effectively a real life story of how a bunch of like apolitical teenagers turned into revolutionaries. So check that shit the fuck out. And yeah, I have a novel. It's called After the Revolution. You can buy it literally anywhere you get books. Just type that name into whatever book thing you look at books on and you'll find it. He's got other books too, but that's clearly the one he's promoting.

That's the one I'm selling now, baby. If I saw ads for books, I'd buy them all. You're right. I wrote a little series called Game of Thrones that a couple of people might have heard of. So, you know, maybe check those books out too.

Yeah. Even if they're not great, I'd still buy books. I love literature. Click, click, click. All right. We will be back next week. That's it today.

Hey, you know what? What's up? We love you very much much