The Daily Zeitgeist - It's Trend One Week Since You Geisted Me 2/19: Trump, Anti-Trans Military Order, National Parks Jobs

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

In this edition of It's Trend One Week Since You Geisted Me, Jack and Miles discuss Trump's anti-trans military order getting shot down, Apple's new "cheap" iPhone, Trump axing a thousand national parks jobs and much more!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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trend one day. You guys did me. Sorry. I forgot I did the Hello, the Internet up top. I've only done this show 3000 times. My name is Jack. That over there is miles. And these are some of the things that are trending that uh

It's trend is courtesy of the nadium silver the discord okay, always on point with the trending titles and Yeah, that's your you're welcome for putting that song in your head. Yeah, I love those songs I was just thinking I saw a clip of I don't know why it just popped up on my feet of blues traveler performing on Howard Stern. That shit is unshakeable. He was hitting the hook so hard. The hook brings you back.

I mean, they knew that shit was hooky and they named the song after it. They're like, and yeah, motherfucker. Is he talking about a shepherd? Is he talking about like performing on the at the Apollo theater? And you get ran off. So I don't think those travelers ever performed at the Apollo, weirdly, which is weird. You would have expected.

John Popper, bro, you could get in there. You can get in there with that voice and your harmonica skills. Come on now. I've talked about my kid's favorite musician, Perry Grip, who has a bunch of songs that are just manufactured earworn. Like it seems like his music, he used to be in a band that a lot of people know

that's name is escaping me right now. But when I brought him up, people were like, are you talking about this guy? He's a child children's musician now. He is. And his songs. Oh, Nerf Herder. Nerf Herder. Yes. His song Pillsbury Grip is his full name.

His songs seem like they were manufactured by the CIA for the purposes of like enhanced interrogation. They're like, oh, hell, yeah. My kids fucking love them there's one that goes turtle turtle don't don't don't that turtle then don't don't don't that dude that's a tortoise turtle and then turtle and I have it stuck in my head every morning when I wake up. Turtle, dun, dun, dun, dun. That's Jerry Ferrara. Turtle, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. All right, we introduced ourselves.

Let's get into some of the things that are trending. Well, allow us to reintroduce ourselves. My name is Jack. O to the B, Ryan. O to the, all right, we'll work on it. Ryan. Yeah, all kinds of trends. I mean, look, I think the one,

let's start off with a bit of good news, right? Because right now, from everything we read and the words that Trump says out of his mouth, feels like he's gaping, gaping? I think I was thinking of his gaping mouth. He's gearing up to potentially never listen to a judge ever again. But for the moment, some of

the courts are able to at the very least delay some of this bullshit until the Supreme Court probably hears it. But for now, that's fine. But with specifically Trump's anti-trans military ban, it just got fucking destroyed in court by Judge Reyes. They had the fortune of this this case being heard by DC's first openly gay federal judge and she wasn't having any of this bullshit. I just want to read a few excerpts from the court transcripts. So first is just like again the whole thing is about pronouns or trans people being in the military actually is bad for everything. So that's why

we can't, it can't happen. That's why we need discrimination. So this is Judge Reyes. Can you agree- Can I play the role of DOJ attorney Jason Lynch? Absolutely. Absolutely. The role I was born to play. Be very nervous too. Be very nervous. Here we go. Judge Reyes, can we agree that the greatest fighting force is not going to be impacted in any way impacted in any way by less than 1% of the soldiers using a different pronoun than others might want to call them? Well, now, I can't agree with that here. Okay, would you agree with me that if the military is negatively impacted in any kind

of way that matters from the use of pronouns, we all have a lot of bigger problems than pronoun use. We have a military that is incompetent. Any common sense, rational human being knows that it doesn't. It is pretext. It is frankly ridiculous. If you can get me an officer of the United States military who is willing to get on the stand and say that because of pronoun usage, the US military is less prepared, I will be the first to give you a box of cigars Oh a box of cigars. Now you talking my language Okay, that wasn't in the transfer was not in the transcript The judge did say like I'll give you ten fucking days

Go ahead like I'll even let you try and find someone that would debase themselves in front of the court like this go up You go see go go see what you got then went on to talking about, this isn't even like half of the fucking wild shit that was coming out of this exchange. Another one was talking about, cause there's all this stuff about quote, radical gender ideology in the executive order. This is what the judge asked Jason Lynch of the DOJ. If you can't articulate what radical gender ideology means,

how is the defense secretary going to know what it means? I'm really loathe to speculate what the president had in mind when he signed this order. Okay, well, it's not like I randomly picked you off the street. You're the government's representative here. That is so good. That's so filthy. It's not like I randomly picked you up.

That's not like I really picked you up. Motherfucker, you're here to argue that shit. What is going on? I simply could not. I'm low to speculate. I'm just a simple country lawyer. I'm just a simple country man. Yeah.

Holy shit. And then goes on to just talk about like the animus of all of it. And then just saying like in this executive order, you're calling people who are transgender or have different, or want to use different pronouns described as dishonest, dishonorable, undisciplined, immodest, lack integrity, like goes on to like all these things like how is this like how is this not expressing animus? And he's like well no and just and she's like let me answer this for you and then just continues to cook. Right now this is now, this is still being heard,

so we don't have any sort of conclusion to this, but it feels like this is not going to go the way that the transphobes wanted to. And also, a federal judge did grant a preliminary injunction because the Bureau of Prisons was again, they wanted, there was another order that would require like transgender women to be in like male in like inmate facilities. And that was, thank God stopped. Yeah. Like just nonstop violence. Yeah. And so Trump's response to this is to

write an executive order being like, I'm King actually. I, nothing apply. I say what the law is. Is that basically, so that like the headlines were new Trump executive order that only he and the attorney general, uh, will are that like basically the arbiters of what the quote law is. And a lot of people took that because of everything Trump is saying to me. And he will decide which laws apply to him and which laws do not apply to him. But what exactly?

I am the law. Yeah. I am the law. Where's Rob Schneider for that comic relief next to him? But anyway, what this EO is about specifically is like basically taking away any independence from agencies like the SEC. So what he's saying here is that like, they will have final say over what these agencies decide what new regulations and laws are over what these agencies decide what new

regulations and laws are rather than rather than these agencies having the independence to do that in terms of what is the best for x y or z. So that's that's what he's doing. He's basically again saying no I get to tell everyone what to do. Sorry. It really is interesting all the ways that like America's soft like like just all of the bad habits that we've been in for the past decades, just thinking about the judge dread thing that like judge dread is explicitly a movie or a comic series that's about fascism and where judge dread is like bad guy. And then they're made the Hollywood movie version of it.

And they're like, well, we got to make Stallone the good guy. And so they just make a movie about how fascism is good. Right. And that's what we have as like our main touchstone for a guy screaming, I am the law. Right. It's like it wasn't wasn't one of the guys like like one, one of the judges who had half a brain, they're like, all right, you got to go to the curse of the earth, bro. We've heard enough of you. We heard enough of you.

Yeah. I mean, it's pretty bad. We've been pretty lazy for a long time. Our ideas, the ideas we let get through are pretty fucked. And so I feel like we're super set up We've been nicely tenderized for this a fascist Roasting that we're about to undergo. I don't obviously I'm not a chef So I know that culinary metaphor probably didn't make sense

But anyways, hey, here's some good news miles. iPhone is releasing a new iPhone. I, uh, I love that company because it's going to be the cheapest one that they're offering. It's got, it's got cheapest in the headline, which might lead you to believe, wait a second. Did iPhones just get cheaper? Um, unfortunately, no, they did not. So Apple just announced,

it's interesting how this is framed. Apple just announced its most affordable phone will now be the iPhone 16E, which will cost $599 and feature their AI system. Apple intelligence. Go back, what? AI now stands for Apple intelligence because they got AI in the iPhone and it works.

It works good and never gets anything wrong. Yeah, it's like $150. I think more than the last SE of like model device, like the comparable device. And they're trying to fucking wow. People have been like, well, it's got AI in it that nobody fucking uses. I have it and all it does is tell me weird summaries of text threads of things that have happened.

Like our friend Danil joined some celebrity entourage when that didn't happen, but that's what the AI summary said when I didn't read the texts. Yeah, yeah. They just get, they also summarize a series of BBC news stories with this Luigi Mangione shoots himself Syrian mother hopes Assad pays the price people are like wait what? How?

Shoots himself in did risen got that incorrect didn't didn't quite nail it Apple intelligence hasn't exactly been a slam dunk But yeah, just so it's the least expensive model currently on offer. It is 40 percent more expensive than the last introductory model, which is I think that's inflation. And they are that's what we'll call it. But they're like, how does this not get called inflation? They're choosing to charge more because people are buying fewer iPhones.

They're not like charging for a new, better feature. Like nobody wants the fucking. I heard it said Apple intelligence. You can do like fucking creepy images of your kid with the image playground and your kid can be playing Mortal Kombat with a friend in Vietnam. If they wanted to just don't understand how like what the disconnect is between like stories like this where it's like yeah now it's gonna be 40% more expensive but it's the least expensive model so just think of this as inexpensive. Yeah. And then when

people are like I think inflation might be caused by corporations choosing to charge more. People are like, that is a child's understanding of what inflation is. Right, how dare you. You're a fool. Well, I mean, cause I think at this point, it's stories like this, and just generally looking at our own media literacy in this country

and what the media is doing, it's not real. There are journalists out there, but for the most part, these are communication PR machines for corporations to tell consumers what's happening in the world. Rather than community, like not rather than things that consumers think they need to know from like just other people being like, what the fuck? Like there's MSNBC seem like, what the fuck? Why is this thing more expensive? This sounds like greed. They're gonna like they'll be like, wow, it's got the Oh, I love playing with the image playground. All right, next story. So I'm gonna be a casino. Don't we love it. Okay, next one it folks

Yeah, look at these cool designs that they have for Gaza Like people are doing the research, you know, because obviously these companies are doing research behind closed doors Asking like man like it're, I had always assumed, okay, people are excited about AI, the way these corporations are acting, people must be fucking psyched about AI. And so people, you know, the media has like gone out and done the polling and the research has shown that consumers don't give a shit about having AI in their phones. Basically, their sales are down 2% from their peak in 2022, and they need something and they don't have

anything else. And so they're just going with this thing that is contributing to climate change, the climate catastrophe. But yeah, like the surveys have found AI hasn't been a major reason that people are buying new phones. The research director at Counterpoint Research said, people are buying phones for the same reason they always have. The battery isn't recharging or the phone is aging and not working. That's it. Yeah. Just go back to your planned obsolescence model. That's it. Don't even fucking, yeah, just make my phone break so I have to go to the fucking store and get another one because no one, look at the polling around, no one fucking wants.

Yeah, a study from last year found that 73% of iPhone users think the AI features, quote, add little to no value to the product. Yeah. I mean, yeah, Brian in the chat also raised the point. Yeah, like the tariffs and component costs, those are going to go up. So of course they're being passed along. But again, that's another dimension of a store you can bring up too. It's like, yeah, well, President Asswig decided to just go fucking full on, like fuck the

economy up mode. That's another reason on top of corporate greed is the malfeasance of the president. But anyway, I'll say, I'll say it's got right now. Yes, exactly. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. Why would you do that to me when I thought we were friends? We are friends. Why would you do that to me when I thought we were friends? We are friends. Los Angeles, 2021. A friendly neighbor appears out of nowhere and promises to make all my dreams come true. Let's not forget that David Blum was a professional con artist, so you didn't stand a chance.

But my dreams soon turned into a nightmare. Blum generally targeted people with money. And I was not alone. He took over 100 people for over $15 million. One of the victims was his own grandmother. I was married to David for almost 10 years. It was insane. I was barely functioning.

And I just had this realization that he will not stop until he kills me. Getting a con artist to pay for their crimes isn't easy. Charge David Blum! I'm Caroline DeMore. Listen as I take down my scammer on Once Upon a Con on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Santi has been missing ever since. The hookup, what is that? I'm solving a mystery through sex and haven't made a private dick joke until now? Like, no matter how hard I try, all roads lead to the hookup. You think it's causing people to turn aggro I'm gonna rip your arms off and use them to Yeah, that's a word for it. This is such terrible representation. I'm so sorry poppers

These aren't just any poppers mama always used to say God gave me gumption in place of a gag reflex No, not my psychiatrist didn't laugh at that one either Poppers. Mama always used to say, God gave me gumption in place of a gag reflex. No? But my psychiatrist didn't laugh at that one either. Listen to the hookup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Welcome to My Legacy. I'm Martin Luther King III, and together with my wife, Andrea Waters King, and our dear friends Mark and Craig Kilburger, we explore the personal journeys that shape extraordinary

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People like Courtney Cox, star of the infinitely beloved sitcom Friends, EGOT winner Viola Davis, and former Prime Minister of the UK, Tony Blair. And now, Minnie Questions is returning for another season. We've asked an entirely new set of guests our seven questions, including Jane Lynch, Delaney Rowe and Cord Jefferson. Each episode is a new person's story with new lessons, new memories and new connections to show us how we're both similar and unique.

Listen to many questions on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, seven questions, limitless answers. And we're back. We're back. Um, there was another plane crash. And we're back. We're back. There was another plane crash. So I do feel like we're at the point with the plane crashes where we're now reporting every plane crash.

And so there was a private plane crash in Arizona. That was a Boeing. The guy messed up. It was like, ah, there it is. Yeah, yeah. They're like, somebody found a screw. I'm not saying definitely the Air travel has grown way more precarious. I just want to distinguish between the commercial

air crash in DC and You know the commercial plane flipping over after doing a belly flop in Toronto And then you know when there are private plane crashes, I just feel like those are, uh, more those, those were happening for the past like decade that those hadn't been made obsolete. Um, it, the whole system is a fucking disaster and, uh, is vastly underfunded and underemployed and, uh, they, they don't have enough people. And obviously Trump is to blame for that. But I just also wanna make sure that we're viewing

all the stories in the proper context. Right, right, right. Yeah. So obviously never want to. Yeah, so lay off Trump, man. So lay off Trump and let him cook with these national parks. I do just wanna talk about the national parks. You know, lots of different parts of the federal government are continuing to be

dismantled by Trump and Musk, but they just fired a thousand employees from the national parks. Then they're reinstating 5,000 seasonal jobs, which were rescinded during last month's hiring freeze, which makes sense to me because it feels like they're trying to turn working for the national parks into like seasonal gig work. Uh, like they do with everything. It's like if they got one cushy federal job, no, they should be flipping around, cobbling together three, two to three jobs to survive. Yes.

And then our, uh, employment numbers go up. So it seems like things are going well while the jobs just get fucking way, way worse. That's something that both the Democrats and Republicans can agree on. But yeah, I mean, Democrats sent a letter warning that the freeze meant the national parks would be short staffed in the summer, which would lead to potentially life threatening situations if anyone needed medical attention. And so they're like, fine, you can have these 5,000 gig workers. Right. And yeah, I mean, but people like workers at Yosemite are talking about

how this is going to kill the longterm health of the parks. Yeah. And just the shit that they have to forego because of these cuts, like they have actual, they have to do like burns controlled burns to help the shit from fucking erupting in flames. they're like we can't even we had to put that off because They just cut up they just cut the money off. So now we're sort of at higher risk now because of all of this bullshit Yeah We will be more vulnerable to a catastrophic fire in the future as a result of not being able to do the prescribed burns a federal firefighter with direct knowledge of the situation said.

So bit of good news. Some have theorized, and by the way, this good news is completely fictional. Some have theorized that Trump's plan will be to give the parks back to indigenous nations, which is a good idea that activists have been pushing for for years. Shockingly, that doesn't seem to be his actual plan. He has previously announced his intention to exploit federal lands, including national parks, for resources including oil. And he's already signed an executive order that allows him to do this, which was easy to miss in the flurry of evil executive orders. That's

one of the things that- It is wild though, the thing about like sort of the pseudo land back aspect of returning national parks to like indigenous Americans is it feels like the way the language is sort of presented feels like someone trying to convince a conservative to do it. They're like, yeah, and they give it to them because then it's going to be their fault. So then maybe that'll work. I don't know. Just, just an idea. I don't know. Maybe it's not coming from a good faith place, but anyway, I'm an oil lobbyist and can you make me in charge of the Bureau of Land Management? Oh, yes. Great. Thank you. Yes. So the plan to like open it up to

drilling is straight out of project 2025 and specifically a chapter that was written by William Perry Pendley, who is basically Daniel Plainview from There Will Be Blood. He sued a Denise Sue Paul Thomas Anderson because he said he was completely ripping off his whole life. That's my shit. That's my whole shit. You just told my whole shit. I fell down a tiny mine shaft and broke my arm in the opening scene. Opening scene.

I beat a guy to death with a bowling pin. Spoiler alert. But yeah, he once argued that all public land in the West should be sold off to private investors. I like it. The national parks are like one of the really good things about America. Like it's amazing that we have it. And that's what that's really what Trump just wants to make us all

appreciate it. Manifest Destiny, dude. That is the sickest prize for Manifest Destiny. Thank you. Fucking parks, bruh. Yeah. According to one environmentalist, this chapter of the project 2025 is an oil lobbyist fever dream straight out of the 19th century. Pendley was Trump's acting director of the Bureau

of Land Management from 2019 to 2021. And he was so corrupt that his list of potential conflicts was 17 pages long and a judge ruled he was occupying the position illegally, but he refused to leave. Oh, squatting. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

The new BLM director, again, Bureau of Land Management, is Kathleen Scammer. I thought it said Schmegma, Scammer. And again, currently the president of an oil and gas lobbying firm. So I don't, yeah, yeah. Uh huh. Uh huh. We'll see what happens. We'll see what happens. Again, it's like national parks are, it's not just me saying national parks are nice to have it. They're hugely popular.

So like when families start rolling up to parks only to find that they're like just full of oil drills like pump jacks and like and on fire maybe that will move the needle for Trump but I don't know we're so deep into the president biff timeline from back to the future too I just feel like we're everyone's just like okay there's not gonna be a moment where you're gonna be able to look at MAGA and say dude look what this fool did now Do you get it? No, the human ego prevents that from happening Especially people who are though this all in on their backwards idea like they're not gonna fucking see the light like that at all

I don't I'm at least I'm not convinced of that I think it's cuz they're just gonna find a way to say that it's fucking anyone but their fault or anyone but Trump's fault. It's Joe Biden. Well, actually, this is if you could trace this back to Bill Clinton, there's always some weird, you know, casual cliche, thought killing cliche they can like, you know, lean on to completely just pivot away from arriving at the truth. And I think sadly, I think maybe it's really only this, I don't even know how many people,

because you even think about people who had family members die of COVID, and that just made them go harder in the other direction. Like rather than being like, holy shit, I can't believe what's happened. Like my concern here too is even the people that are getting affected by the backwards policies of Trump will find a way to say,

actually this was a win for me. But I don't know. I mean, it's usually been not at the scale of you have no job, you have no medication. Yeah. Now, can you, can you, does that MAGA hat bring your A1C to the proper levels? I don't know. Yeah. But I think you're right. I mean, they still haven't even admitted they lost the civil war or that they were wrong about the civil war. So I feel like that's probably not going to admit they're wrong about the election that they actually won.

I think it's like a hard experience, maybe the only teacher that people are going to understand, or somehow find a way to communicate to them in a way that isn't as like in the same vernacular, like this political lexicon that they're so used to seeing and like that immediately shuts their brains off and to get people again more interested in class than politics because the politics route, you're not going to get there logically at all. And I'm sure, you know, you saw a moment of it with Luigi Mangione. You saw a moment of it, but then Fox really turned up the heat on that.

And now a lot of conservatives like, yeah, he did it because the left is making people fucking wacky. That's right. All right. Those are some of the things that are trending on this Wednesday, February 19th. We are back tomorrow with the whole last episode of the show. Really fun one. Yeah. Until then, be kind to each other. Be kind to yourselves. Uh, get the vaccines

where you still can get your flu shot. Don't do nothing about white supremacy and we will talk to y'all tomorrow. Bye. Bye. Black history month is here and we're excited to kick off season faux. Of I didn't know, maybe you didn't either. This season we're shining a spotlight on revolutionary women who redefined excellence. Give Grace Wisher her flowers. Next time you see the American flag, you just remember a 16 year old black woman helped to make it happen.

Listen to I didn't know, maybe you didn't either. From the Black Effect Podcast Network, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or simply wherever you get your podcasts. Why would you do that to me? Los Angeles, 2021. A friendly neighbor appears out of nowhere and promises to make all my dreams come true. Let's not forget that David Blum was a professional con artist, so you didn't stand a chance. But my dreams soon turned into a nightmare. I'm Caroline DeMore.

Listen as I take down my scammer on Once Upon a Con on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Calling all Yellowstone fans. Let's go to work. iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. cultural phenomenon. Our family legacy is this ranch. I'm the protector of my life. Listen to the official Yellowstone podcast now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We all have a moment that splits us wide open on my new podcast, wide open with Ashlyn Harris. I'll sit down with trailblazers from sports, music, fashion, entertainment, and

politics to explore their toughest moments and the incredible comebacks that followed. Listen to Wide Open with Ashlyn Harris, an iHeart Women's Sports production on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.