The Daily Zeitgeist - More Like Suck-preme Court (Rhiannon Hamam is Back!) 08.13.24

Episode Date: August 13, 2024

In episode 1724, Jack and guest co-host Caitlin Durante are joined by co-host of Popular Cradle and 5-4 Pod, Rhiannon Hamam, to discuss… Trump Vs. United States, SCOTUS Helping Him Get Elected? And more! LISTEN: Strange Things by DoubleSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

what's up rihanna how's it going what's up what's going on i'm down the jersey shore so it's gonna be a lot of that okay yeah yeah i was wondering where that vibe was coming from down the shore. Yeah. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project.

All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds

and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. In California during the summer of 1975, within the span of 17 days and less than 90 miles, two women did something no other woman had done before, try to assassinate the President of the United States. One was the protege of Charles Manson.

26-year-old Lynette Fromm, nicknamed Squeaky. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer, this season on the new podcast, Rip Current. Hear episodes of Rip Current early and completely ad-free and receive exclusive bonus content by subscribing to iHe true crime plus only on apple podcasts hello the internet and welcome to season 351 episode 2 of their daily zeitgeist a production of iheart radio this is a podcast where we take a deep dive into America's shared consciousness and it is Tuesday

August 13th 2024, Tuesday the 13th, famously spooky. My name is of course the spooky Friday the 13th ghost who comes around and goes, Jason

Vordy's famous line. Yes. Yes. My name's Jack O'Brien, a.k.a. J.J. Redrick. Tracking down a tweet. J.J. Redrick. Is water ice not pee? J.J. Redrick.

You don't believe me, but it's the truth. It could have happened, oh, to you. Not P. That is courtesy of Halcyon Salad on the Discord. Kind of a mashup reference to a run of rhetoric nicknames that Miles and I got on last week for reasons I don't remember. We hit Rhetoric Taylor, Dredrick Taylor, Simpsons reference,

and of course, JJ Rhetoric Taylor, Dredrick Taylor, Simpsons reference, and of course, J.J. Rhetoric. And then also referring to the time I went on a scary ride at Ocean City's Wonderland Pier and might have peed my pants as a full adult. I might have. I don't. This calls for another. Ooh, scary. That is what I did after I said, ooh, to try and distract people. I don't know. My pants were just wet. I don't think I peed my pants, but everybody else thinks I did.

Also, update on that theme park. I am down the shore, and that dilapidated amusement park I grew up going to, it's just this like massive dirty smells like roller coaster grease even though they shut the big roller coaster down in 1999 when it killed two people a few days ago they announced it has been sold and is shutting down after like 94 years in operation it's what a shame like and it's like a i think the owner or the person who like the landlord is like a hotel developer like a full 80s movie bad guy trying to shut down the like the children's like break dancing the community center yeah i was like what the fuck

anyways uh r.i.IP to Wonderland Pier. I will be taking my kids there tonight. And I will not be pissing my pants. That is the Jack O'Brien guarantee. I am thrilled to be joined in our second seat today by a very special co-host, talented writer, stand-up comedian, co-host of the Bechdel cast, one of the great film podcasts. They also happen to have a master's degree in film,

the most anagrammable name in the English language. So if you've been given their name in a jumble of out-of-order Scrabble tiles, you may know them as Lauren D. Titanic, Latin Dancer UTI, Nine Tit Dracula, but to us, they will always be

Caitlin Durante! Pew, pew, pew! Thank you for having me. I have a new one, Caitlin Durante, a.k.a. And do I feel silly saying this in front of such an esteemed guest? We've already just jumped off the cliff of good taste, so don't worry about it. You're talking about piss in your pants, etc. I thought that would maybe take the pressure off.

Thank you so much. You're welcome. Okay, Caitlin Durante, a.k.a. A Rancid Loon Tit. A Rancid Loon Tit. Yeah, this is a new one. I haven't discovered this one until today. L-U-N-E. L-U-N-E, which if you're like, what's that? I thought it was L-O-O-N, you know, a bird maybe.

I'm not sure. But a loon, L-U-N-E. Let me just do a quick Google. And of course that is, and we all know it, folks. So I don't know why I'm even having to tell you. Yeah, I just want to get this exactly correct. It's a crescent-shaped figure formed on a sphere or plane by two arcs intersecting at two points. And we all know exactly what that is.

The moon-like crescent. Ah, yes. Caitlin, the the moon like crescent ah yes caitlin the moon like crescent amazing well it's great to have another caitlin durant a anagram in the family in in the in the zeitgeist and it has entered the zeitgeist the rancancid loon tit. Thank you so much. And I would be remiss, my responsibilities as co-host today, I have to say that today, August 13th, is National Filet Mignon Day.

Okay? National, sorry, International Left Handers Day. So if you're left-handed, it's your day. I was pumping my right hand but i am left-handed okay very good um and then also national prosecco day so we've got two um kind of fancy you know prosecco filet mignon if you're if you're feeling fancy i'm a fucking fancy have a dinner i don't think prosecco really goes with filet mignon you would have probably a red wine with with a steak but you know prosecco is like a

non-champagne yeah it's the poor man's champagne yeah sham champagney but not fully champagne it's sham champagne it is in no way the filet mignon of champagne. It is. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It is. Yeah. It's the skirt steak. It's the, the, the hot dog.

The hot dog. Yeah. Anyways. Yes. Caitlin, we are thrilled to be joined by one of the hosts of popular cradle podcast, a podcast about Palestine. hosts of Popular Cradle podcast, a podcast about Palestine, also co-hosts Five Four, a podcast about all the ways the Supreme Court is a fucking disaster. She's a supervising attorney at Texas Law, has worked as a public defender in Rio Grande City, Texas, and an activist who

got arrested for protesting Israel's ongoing atrocities against Palestine. Please welcome back to the show, Rhiannon Hamam! Hey, it's me. I didn't prepare any AKAs, but yeah, I guess that Rhiannon Hamam, aka Jailbird, I don't know. Yeah, that's right. That's right. You've been arrested since we last spoke. That's right. Yeah. Great to be back. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being here. Yeah. You got arrested protesting on the campus of University of Texas.

Do you, I'm sure you've talked about it. I know you've talked about it on 5-4. I heard you talk about it on 5-4. Yeah. But can you talk about kind of what that experience was like and has been like? You know, it was, it was, it was super crazy. It was super crazy. It was really quite random. You know, if people kind of followed this, of course, you know, like things like the student encampment movement and that kind of like tactic of protests on campuses was

really intense and widespread over the spring. At UT on the day that I was arrested. There wasn't even a student encampment. It was just students gathering for like, you know, a teach-in and some art activities and talking about the genocide. And yeah, state of Texas through UT basically just called the cops on this crowd, called the cops on a bunch of kids standing on standing on the lawn at their school so um yeah i got arrested there it was really it was it was so wild you know it's hard to like derive really like any like strong lessons out of it uh like about the law or something like that because it's just like no the lesson is like the state will call in cops to beat up some kids if they don't like what you're saying. Right. Like that's that's kind of it.

And we'll arrest you and do and do violence regardless of whether you respond, you know, respond to what they're telling you to do. A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. All for exercising your First Amendment. Exactly. Yeah. All for exercising your First Amendment. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Kind of go through with this i already have like the shit on me like i have all the got way too much shit on me i brought my huge baton very uncomfortable and i also brought 30 massive horses so can i right can i just let loose on these 19-year-olds or what?

That's right. All right. Well, I'm sorry you went through that, but thank you for your courage in the face of state violence and just fucking the ongoing horrors of this civilization we live in. We are going to talk a little bit about the supreme court with you another horror another horror uh specifically i want to talk about trump v united states yeah i knew this was bad when it happened i didn't really get how bad it was until listening to 5-4 the supreme court decision that was basically like we have king now yeah i know i know you thought that was like one of the founding things no we have king now yeah so yeah i want to talk about that i also want to talk about the first episode of 5-4 was about bush v gore throwback that's right throw way back yeah but no it sounds topical to me i know it turns out i don't know it's i've been thinking a lot

about that lately just because it feels like the the trump or the trump campaign is gearing up to try to do another election where the supreme court determines who won the election so we'll talk about that and we might get to uh navajo water rights which another recent opinion where written by none other than brettavanaugh, just fucking killing it. Just what a Jesus Christ. You don't even need Trump for that kind of evil. No, yeah, it turns out. Supreme Court is delivering, doling out those decisions with or without the Trump as president. Yeah, can do bad all on their own.

Exactly. But before we get to all of that, we do like to get to know you a little bit better by asking what is something from your search history that's revealing about who you are? Okay. Search history right now is a lot of used cars. And you know what? I know we're going to go into underrated and overrated. And this is very much connected. So right now, used cars.

I'm looking at how much is a Honda Civic going for these days? How much is a Kia Soul, you know? Yeah. So that's the search history really stacked with used cars right now. Are you in the market for one? Well. Nope. Should I go ahead and tell you my underrated um i think so yeah so underrated

r.i.p 2014 kia soul 150 000 miles on it it served me so well uh salute the 2014 kia soul because she died she died just last week. Thank you. That's some Michael Winslow. I know listeners at home think Justin is piping that in from an actual military funeral, but no,

that is our very own Caitlin Durante revealing themselves to be this generation's Michael Winslow. Yeah. So underrated is that beautiful hamster car, the Kia Soul. Yeah, that was the hamster car. Oh, yeah. I forgot.

What a swing. What a beautiful image. What a big swing. And she did so much for me. Yes. What a big swing. And she did so much for me. Yes.

The car commercials have been the same for the past 20 years. They have been, for the most part, a glamour shots of the car driving through a, for whatever reason. The windiest road that's ever happened. Yeah. Completely depopulated landscape for some reason yeah and yeah they were just like what if we like some fun giant human-sized hamsters yeah just fucking speeding around on this motherfucker hamsters in clothes and also like dancing to the beat of an lmfao song yeah and that was that was the kia soul marketing uh plan yeah and it worked it

worked it clearly worked it clearly worked and you know what it was a good car i'll say it i'm brave and the 2014 kia soul is one of the best cars ever made well maybe maybe i'm feeling sentimental you know 2014 that's that's a good run for a car 10 years yeah 150 000 miles not crazy but it is a lot yeah yeah is that one of those cars that got in before everything became computerized like the oh yeah no no it didn't by no, it didn't. By the end, it didn't even have Bluetooth. Okay. My car doesn't have a backup camera, so I'm using my... Oh, no camera. I'm swiveling my head around like a peasant when I'm trying to back out. No camera, no lane assist, nothing. No, it was a car in the real sense of the word. A car, not a computer, you know?

Amazing. Yeah, fuck your computer. Elon Musk. Computer on wheels. What a fucker. Fucking drive around on my iPad. Fuck out of here. What is something you think is

overrated? Alright, this one also quite close to home. I think, you know, it's overrated getting a full set, getting your nails done, having 10 beautiful, gorgeous, brand new acrylics. You know why? Because it's been so long since I've gotten my nails done that I have one thumb acrylic left. And I've just been rocking that for weeks at this point. And I am, yeah, I'm telling myself it's because it's overrated to have a fresh, beautiful, sparkly new set.

I'm doing just fine with my one thumb acrylic nail. I personally would assume that was intentional. Thank you. The way that like, okay, let me tell me how much of this I have correct. Is it like people who do cocaine, they leave a long pinky nail? Long pinky, yeah. Yes.

It's like that, but different. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. But more glamorous. Yeah. So is it the only long nail on your hand? Yeah, that's the only one I got.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because the other ones fall off. The other ones are short. Yeah, they fall off or they break, so you take it off or whatever. And then so here I am with just one and nine short little nubbies. I agree that it's, I like, i've never gotten acrylics at all i get a manicure once every 10 years roughly i've had like three in my life and um i don't know i mean if that's what if that's what people want to do and that's how you want to spend your money go for it but i'm just like what if though my shitty three dollar nail polish that i apply

myself badly uh-huh right what if that and then and i think it's great yeah i'm i'm for that as well you know i i generally yeah what i'm uh what what with with this one nail is doing to my psyche is that you know i'm a te a Texas girly, you know, it's a big hair, it's a lashes, it's a nail lifestyle and acrylic set full set lifestyle. And so, yeah, these past few weeks, you know, I got arrested. I have my, my, my life is maybe summed up in, I just have this one acrylic nail holding on for dear life. Yeah, yeah. I think that's a beautiful metaphor.

Yeah. I think having 10 nails done now, now that I've seen your one nail, I think 10 nails done is corny. Thank you. Yeah. Why are you trying so hard? Why do all your nails match? What the fuck is that? That's unnatural.

Yeah. And thumb definitely preferable to pinky finger i feel like yeah finger although you could probably pull it off i don't think i could pull off one really long pinky finger i think it would yeah thumb it's the it's the whatever it's the digit that sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm just like accentuating it. Yeah. Rubbing it in the animal kingdom's face. Yeah. You go to your cat and you say, oh, do you have opposable thumbs? No.

Well, look at this. And it has an accessory on it. Yeah. You throw the cat a beer. Oh, sorry. You couldn't catch that. You didn't catch that? I forgot.

All right. Let's take a quick break and then we're gonna come back and talk about the Supreme Court boo we'll be right back

boo oh guys I'm a fan tomato tomato oh no oh no this is gonna be so awkward it was December 2019 when the story blew up. In Green Bay, Wisconsin, former Packers star Kabir Bajabiamila caught up in a bizarre situation.

KGB explaining what he believes led to the arrest of his friends at a children's Christmas play. A family man, former NFL player, devout Christian, now cut off from his family and connected to a strange arrest. I am going to share my journey of how I went from Christianity to now a Hebrew Israelite. I got swept up in Kabir's journey, but this was only the beginning. In a story about faith and football, the search for meaning away from the gridiron, and the consequences for everyone involved. You mix homesteading with guns and church and a little bit of the spice of conspiracy theories that we liked. Voila! You got straight away. I felt like I was living in North Korea, but worse, if that's possible. Listen to Spiraled on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Laurie Santos, host of the Happiness Lab podcast.

As the U.S. elections approach, it can feel like we're angrier and more divided than ever. But in a new, hopeful season of my podcast, I'll share what the science really shows, that we're surprisingly more united than most people think. We all know something is wrong in our culture, in our politics, and that we need to do better and that we can do better. With the help of Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki. It's really tragic. If cynicism were a pill, it'd be a poison. We'll see that our fellow humans, even those we disagree with, are more generous than we assume. My assumption, my feeling, my hunch is that a lot of us are actually looking for a way to disagree and still be in relationships with each other. All that on the Happiness Lab.

Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. mtv's official challenge podcast is back for another season that's right the challenge is about to embark on its monumental 40th season y'all and we are coming along for the ride that would be me devin simone and then there's me devon Rogers. And we're here to take you behind the scenes of, drumroll please, the Challenge 40 Battle of the Eras. Yes. Each week, cast members will be joining us to spill all of the tea on the relentless challenges,

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. And we're back. And we're back. And Trump v. United States. Is that how we pronounce it? We pronounce the verses as v?

Yeah. Yeah. In the realm of supreme. The supremes. You got it. Yeah. So a lot of people have talked about how scary the prospect of Trump next Trump presidency is in the context of Project 2025. And they are right. Yes. However, this ruling is just straight up feels like the Supreme court intervening on behalf of donald trump to say he can do whatever

he wants like including i feel like everything he did in the first in his first presidency right like they're just like yeah he's the president he can do all of that shit like if january 6th happened with this being the law the only thing he did wrong really was not make it a military coup if he had used the military then that would have been okay in line with this ruling because then that's part that's him using his official capacity yeah as president yeah yeah that's right so like the question here is like okay when do presidents get immunity and like well you have to step back and think like why why is there such a concept in the law of presidential immunity and it's because you want the president you want certain government

officials to like be able to do some stuff that the normal person wouldn't be able to do. You already talked about like, leading the military, the president, commander in chief, like, you know, you order the military to do some stuff, there's going to be consequences that for me to order somebody to do that, that would be a crime, right? But we want the president to be able to do it. That's why there's presidential immunity. And so the way courts in the past have like decided like what does where does presidential immunity lie is if basically is if the president is doing an official act right if it's an act that the president is doing because the president is the president right so right you know you could you can hold them legally accountable for for doing something yes they're the president

but they're not doing an official act so you know the president the president and i get an offender bender you know six blocks from my house yeah i would be able to sue the president he's not doing his presidential duties in rear-ending my car you know yes but especially he kind of fucked up your 2014 kiosk that's right yeah that's absolutely he should be he must pay that's right um but yeah so in this case the supreme court this is a majority decision written by John Roberts, basically says, if you're the president, almost anything you do is going to be an official act. Including treason? Basically?

Yes. Yes. Yeah. What's so, so wild is what the Supreme Court says is, or what the majority, the majority, let's be real, the hyper-conservative six maniacs. But John Roberts is the middle of the road guy who was going to save us all, I thought. Let this past Supreme Court term be the death of that idea. this. We've got Roberts on decisions all over the place where he is articulating a frankly psychotic conservative vision of the law and of the Constitution. This guy is not a moderate. Please stop saying that. So yeah, in this case, they're saying like, yeah, basically everything is a presidential official act because, you know, we can't decide whether something is official conduct or unofficial conduct by looking at by inquiring into like the president's motives. Right. self-interested it doesn't matter how violent as long as it's like draped in the shroud of the

presidential office then the supreme court says the president is insulated from prosecution right so it's like kind of like i think peter said this on the on the on the episode that we did about this case but he's like okay if if basically like if the office of the presidency is like a gun, what the court said here is that when you become the president, you gain the completely unfettered right to use that gun however you want. It doesn't matter who you shoot at. It doesn't matter why. It doesn't matter how you abuse that access to the gun. Right. abuse that access to the gun right right the only thing that matters is it's your gun it's an official act and so you you are immune from prosecution for any criminal acts that you do with that gun right yes um it's it's really really really it's really wild yeah and like you said at the beginning like we have we're doing monarchy now and if trump gets back in the white house it feels like he's going i mean he's gonna really

explore the studio space with this like this is like it feels like it's like a like a request like a band that's doing a request for somebody like he's like could you play this one like it's so like a dare like i dare you to test the limits of this limitless power question mark there are limitations like i i think you guys brought up like the president doesn't have the right to regulate emissions or force federal employees to be vaccinated those are executive powers like a democrat might use but he has the green light to orchestrate a coup and subvert an election. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a little bit different, but it is related. Like, it's a good point. But like, it's a little bit different because this is about criminal

prosecution. Right. So. Right. But yeah, it's like saying like, yeah, there are other areas of the law that are going to like rein in executive power, rein in the administrative state. Oh, no, you can't do that. No, you can't. You can't. You know, the EPA can't say as part of a presidential administration that EPA can't, you know, regulate waterways in this way because all of our waterways are polluted and water is poisoned in the U.S. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's like a that's too much power. Right. But all these crimes, you can definitely do that. And what's crazy, you know, you brought up like, okay, like the next a next Trump term, he's gonna really be trying this stuff out and really empowered by this crazy decision. And that's true. I mean, like, the decision itself is not just saying like,

this crazy decision. And that's true. I mean, like the decision itself is not just saying like, oh, yeah, in general, you're getting carte blanche, although it does say that. But it is about specific acts that Trump took leading up to and are on January 6th. Right. And so, you know, that, you know, the accusation that Trump like leveraged the Department of Justice, right, to like open sham investigations or to threaten sham investigations into voter fraud so that states would be like coerced into changing their electors. He also threatened to fire the acting attorney general for not cooperating with that. Like those are the specific accusations that Trump or anybody else could be criminally prosecuted for. you know the supreme court

john roberts in this decision says well no that's like part of being that's just part of the office yeah he's the president yeah of course he's going to fire the like remember how big a deal it was when he fired comey we were like holy shit we have entered. And then he like went on that Lester Holt interview and was like, yeah, I didn't really like that he was looking into me. So I, you know, it was like, oh my God, we've like entered a new world where he's just going to try and get away with it. And now the Supreme Court's like, yeah, no, that's like totally fine. What? Yeah. Like shut the fuck up stop complaining everybody right and so if you can like misuse abuse your power with like ordering the doj to do illegal sham shit

right then yeah in the second term like that you there's really no telling and and the court said yeah it's not just this stuff for which he's immune. It's also like, here's how you think about these cases in the future. And again, that's just like if it's connected to the office of the presidency, if it's, you know, just kind of draped in this, if he can say I did this in my capacity as the president, then, yeah, he's immune from criminal prosecution for anything that comes out of that. And it really felt like a broad and unapologetic collusion between like the Supreme Court and Trump. Like they delayed the ruling for him and then found even more strongly for him than what he was seeking yeah like it's just like now in

retrospect i think we're having a hard time getting our mind around just like how off the rails this has gone like no yeah yeah just listening back to like earlier episodes of your show of like any show like from before this you know like when i i remember being like oh i'm coming back from a trip with my family on uh july 11th so that'll be like when trump is sentenced so we'll find that out then like that's just gone it's like the worst case scenario was like him not seeing jail time and now we're just like oh no actually maybe what he did is legal maybe like he's not a felon because because the supreme court is like he can do whatever the fuck he wants everybody absolutely yeah no it's super crazy

like the yeah like the discourse was about like you know i never thought trump was going to see prison time right but it was like okay like maybe he would be like on house arrest for like a couple weeks or something and then he's just like on probation and like that would be crazy and ha ha ha cleaning up the side of a highway yeah like the secret service has to go with him on community service days just the photo op you know right yeah no it's like erase all that and he is king yeah yes he's going to be king if he was yeah yeah well and he's like he's like explicitly saying this he's saying like if you vote for me you're never gonna have to vote again yeah like he's ready to just post up and be like i can't commit a crime like yeah we're good here it's done

yeah yeah yeah i really feels like we'll never get him out of office the if he wins this time and yeah i in the next act i want to talk about how i like it feels like he's specifically signaling that this is his plan is like his ace in the hole is that he has like the supreme court on his side or at least a lot of judges and election officials but the day that this came down he was like we should be thinking about prosecuting liz cheney for treason like he knows yeah he's ready to use this power yeah like the the doj is like is his gun now he's going to be able to do the thing that he was joking about joking in quotes but like clearly you know has always wanted to do which is like shoot someone in the middle of fifth avenue and like get away with it like yeah exactly he's like it's like not

that far off from what he's been talking about right for for years now and it's just about like him that's that's what's so dangerous about a trump administration in terms of things like Project 2025, all of that that comes with it is we've already seen it in a first Trump term that he installs the people who allow him to do this, right? Who build up, who change laws, who interpret laws so that when he has power, he can do exactly what he's saying he wants to do with it, you know? And so like, you know, from our, from, from my perspective, like watching the Supreme Court, you know, you always have to go back to Trump had three nominations to the Supreme Court, got them, you know, got all three confirmed. And, you know, you just have to be real. I think, you know, like legal analysts, political analysts, all of that kind of thing. We you have to be real that Trump installed those three people for very specific reasons. Right. One, which they've been super upfront about and which they already achieved was overturning Roe v. Wade. He put those three conservatives because he knew those three conservatives would vote that way.

Right. And now with that, like kind of it's very direct, like a quid pro quo. Like I put you on the court to do X, Y, Z. And here we go. This like crazy conservative supermajority. They're ready to do it. They're there. Yeah, they're doing it more than willing. Yeah, they're X, Y and Zing it. Exactly. Do we? It does. You're right. It does feel like

this has been the plan all along. I was wondering, like, because John Roberts had been more like he hadn't been this out and out, like right wing crazy. Had he or am i was i just like not paying attention it's entirely possible i wasn't paying attention but like it feels like i don't know that like brett kavanaugh got in there and he's just like a bad influence on everyone or something like it feels like it's like a total it's taken a real turn i think think that's right. John Roberts has always been a conservative. He's always hated things like voting rights. His legal career before he was ever a judge shows a lot of super conservative positions on a lot of things. I think this past term might show us, the past couple of terms at the Supreme Court might show us maybe maybe two

things. One is that John Roberts now is the chief justice presiding over cases at the Supreme Court where the Overton window has shifted dramatically. Like the cases now being decided are not like, OK, what's this little tiny what's this little tiny tweak that we could make in the conservative direction on Roe v. Wade? Right. Yeah. But it's like literally like is the president immune from criminal prosecution when the president does crimes?

Right. Right. And so it's like the conservative, the hyper conservative inside of John Roberts can totally jump out because the cases in front of the Supreme Court right now are on issues that are just wildly, wildly conservative, right? So there doesn't have to be the appearance of like the questions they're answering within those questions there doesn't have to be this kind of like sham appearance of like moderation right or um sort of institutional legitimacy from the court that john roberts was like kind of using as a tactic in sure in years

prior right yeah and i think another thing too is that john that John Roberts and the rest of the conservatives on the Supreme Court and everybody on the Supreme Court is a human being who is influenced by the political moment and media and, you know, shifts in popular opinion and shifts and development in conservative thought, just like everybody else is yeah and so you know fox news is writing is rotting their brains too yeah they're you you can absolutely tell that they're just mainlining fucking jesse waters and yeah oh yeah i mean in the case of alito as we'll get to fucking like q conspiracies but yes yeah it's it's so wild i mean this is how fascism happens right like the rule of law is not like it's not like fascists come in and just like say no more supreme court it's the rule of law i think it was said on 5-4 by Peter, like the rule of law is whatever fascists need it to be in a given moment. Yeah. It's inconsistent, but it is, you know, they will use it like a cudgel, you know.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I mean, and there's so many cases from this past term that show that, you know, I think when we were talking about like fascism and the rule of law and that kind of thing that was probably on our episode about Snyder which is a case about like bribery like bribing elected officials where the supreme court said like well actually you know this this check that a trucking company gave to the mayor of this Oregon city for $13,000 for awarding that trucking company trucking contracts that's not bribery like yeah and that's exactly like you know all of these cases like on their own you're like oh that's fucked up oh that's another fucked up decision but when you see them all together and you realize like what the supreme court is doing like that is the overarching goal is about ushering in, right, a legal order where these conservatives are in charge.

These conservatives are the ones saying what the law is. And they will always use that to they will always use that to reach the results that they want for their policy preferences, for that vision they have for the world. And whoever has the most money becomes the most powerful. Exactly. Totally. world and whoever has the most money becomes the most powerful exactly totally because you know if trump becomes president again uh and he exercises this ability to commit crimes with his god-given right his god-given king right yeah the supreme court will just be like yep we ruled that that was the choice and that's great and good do whatever you

need to do buddy versus if not trump is elected and then that person tries to commit crimes i feel like the supreme court would be like well in this case actually no and on blah blah like there's no objectivity yeah yeah no and you see the tools that they use. Right. So like they put like the appearance of legal analysis and they say, well, like, well, you got to decide first if something is an official act or an unofficial act. Right. And so you see that they're like building in the tools that they're going to use to reach the completely opposite result when they don't like the president who's doing the acts right so in the future what they can say is well no that wasn't you know if if um let's say kamala wins right well no kamala

wasn't doing an official act as part of the office of the presidency that was an unofficial act and you don't get presidential immunity for unofficial acts right so it's all about just like recognizing like the law isn't like a mathematical equation where you go two plus two and you know what the result is going to be like the law is a tool it's a political tool and that's what these conservatives on the supreme court are using it as right they're like deliberately building in loopholes that they can exploit for whatever agenda they want. A hundred percent. So that Biden can't actually do Supreme Court reform. Right, right.

How do you think about the Supreme Court reform that Biden has very cautiously hinted at wanting to explore? Like, obviously, he probably doesn't have the time to do it left. But is he at least looking in the right direction? Is he at least starting the right conversations? It's absolutely looking in the right direction and starting the right conversations. It was looking in the right direction and starting the right conversations four years ago when he ran on a platform of court reform and when he took the presidency and, and struck the Biden commission on Supreme court reform had people,

lawyers, judges, law professors from quote unquote, both sides of the aisle come together and talk about where necessary court reform could take place, how it could take place, how it could take place, what it would entail. Biden and the Democrats, I think, are speaking to that, at least at the very least giving lip service, if you're kind of cynical like I am, because they know that actually

it's publicly quite popular. Like people know right now that the Supreme Court is super fucked up and that there needs to be court reform. And so, yeah, the Democratic Party will kind of throw that out that they're willing and able to look at it and and, you know, want to get the conversation started and that kind of thing. So, yeah, the conversation. Yeah, it needs to be started. It should have been started. And I think it's about like demanding that like the reforms actually happen. There was just a really intense earthquake in california oh my god whoa are you okay yeah yeah justin victor everybody okay yeah i'm good uh shook my house though pretty hard yeah oh my god oh it's still going i'm still feeling like victor died victor said I died. Victor has reported that he died. I'm sorry, Victor. Oh my god.

Well, hope everybody listening also okay. Yeah. Listening a day in the future. Alright, let's take a quick break to gather ourselves to just steady our quaking houses and quaking hearts.

And we'll come back to talk about how the Supreme Court might. We've already talked about how if Trump gets elected, we're fucked. Let's talk about how the Supreme Court can help get him elected. We'll be right back. Get him elected. We'll be right back. It was December 2019 when the story blew up. In Green Bay, Wisconsin, former Packers star Kabir Bajabiamila caught up in a bizarre situation. KGB explaining what he believes led to the arrest of his friends at a children's Christmas play. A family man, former NFL player, devout Christian, now cut off from his family and connected to a strange arrest. I am going to

share my journey of how I went from Christianity to now a Hebrew Israelite. I got swept up in Kabir's journey, but this was only the beginning in a story about faith and football, the search for meaning away from the gridiron and the consequences for everyone involved. You mix homesteading with guns and church and a little bit of the spice of conspiracy theories that we liked. Voila! You got straight away. I felt like I was living in North Korea, but worse, if that's possible. Listen to Spiraled on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Laurie Santos, host of the Happiness Lab podcast. As the U.S. elections approach, it can feel like we're angrier and more divided than ever.

But in a new, hopeful season of my podcast, I'll share what the science really shows, that we're surprisingly more united than most people think. But in a new, hopeful season of my podcast, I'll share what the science really shows, that we're surprisingly more united than most people think. We all know something is wrong in our culture, in our politics, and that we need to do better and that we can do better. With the help of Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki. It's really tragic. If cynicism were a pill, it'd be a poison. We'll see that our fellow humans, even those we disagree with, are more generous than we assume. My assumption, my feeling, my hunch is that a lot of us are actually looking for a way to disagree and still be in relationships with each other.

All that on the Happiness Lab. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. along for the ride. Woohoo! That would be me, Devin Simone. And then there's me, Davon Rogers. And we're here to take you behind the scenes of, drumroll please, the Challenge 40 Battle of the Eras. Yes. Each week, cast members will be joining us to spill all of the

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. And Donald Trump. You guys heard about this guy? Have you seen this? Have you heard about this? He has been talking a lot about the Georgia election board and how much they're fighting the good fight. Basically, they got like three mega people on a board of five and they just want to do everything they can to fuck with the process and get in the way of certification if Donald Trump doesn't win.

This past weekend, they ordered an investigation into the 2020 results. They're going back to that one. Also, there's that great New York Times article about Trump's challenging three months by Haberman and co. where all his big mega donors had a meeting with him where they were like all his big mega donors like had a meeting with him where they're like okay like how are we going to change the messaging on this and he was like okay first of all we need to stop the steal they're like are you still talking about the 2020 election the fuck but anyways he's still stuck on that But given what we know about the state of the Supreme Court following Trump, the United States, I feel like there's no doubt that they would cooperate in an attempt to fuck with the certification, the counting of votes, if there's any chance that they can do it. And this has made me think a lot about one of the first political moments that I remember, which is the election between Al Gore and George W. Bush, which is what the first episode of 5-4 is about. And it is straight up the Supreme Court being a 5-4 conservative majority determining the 2000 election. Yeah. Along partisan lines based on nothing so much as like, yeah, well, that's who we want to win.

I think probably they do. Yeah, I think people like really forget. I mean, you know, we're all pretty young. I was in eighth grade during the 2000 election. So like, I didn't even know it then. So was I, I think. Really? Yeah. Were you born in 1988?

I'm 38 currently. I was born in 19... I just forgot how numbers work for a second. I was born in 86. Yeah. Okay, I was 88. I was maybe, I was a freshman or, I don't know. I was some age. I was in my mid fifties, but I just hadn't paid attention to politics before then. Yeah. So I learned more about this case in law school and it is, it's so wild and it's so wild

to hearken back and be like, oh like oh okay so the exact same thing could happen cool yeah so george w bush al gore running for president it came down to florida whoever won florida was gonna win the presidency right like literally neither one of them had enough electoral votes you had to get florida and florida was contested so because of the chads the hanging chads there's that's right there was yes it was hanging chads it was all kinds of issues with counting the votes in florida so and jay leno's jokes about hanging chads is what got me interested in comedy in the first place there's so many good ones you guys seen this you heard about this

so what happened was now florida did get for Bush, right? The Florida Division of Elections like called Florida for Bush. But the thing was, is that the margin of victory was so low. It was less than 2000 votes, which put that in, according to Florida state law, said that there needed to be a mandatory recount right so there was this machine recount and that came back again with bush winning but it was by even fewer votes right it was like 300 votes right proof that the counting system is not accurate right right like and that sometimes at the margins right like the recount does need to happen. So they're like, so Bush won and they were like, yeah. So what happened, you know, when it when the machine recount showed that like Bush had won maybe by something like 300 votes total in the entire state, the Gore campaign requested a manual recount in some of these counties, right? And then the litigation was off to the races, right? That's where the court cases went cuckoo. It was in Florida State Court. It went up to the Supreme Court. The Florida Supreme Court ordered

a statewide manual recount, okay? No more machines. Across the state, every county, recount your votes by hand. We need to figure out how many votes each candidate got. OK, seems reasonable, right? Florida Supreme Court. Like, let's just do a recount, you guys. Let's make sure everybody's vote gets counted. Right, exactly.

Let's actually count the votes, maybe. Like, that was the proposal. Crazy for this one, Florida. Right, right. And so what did the bush campaign do the bush campaign challenged that order for a recount they challenged it at the supreme court and the supreme court took the case and they granted a stay meaning they were saying stop the recount until we fully decide and justice antonin scalia ultra conservative yeah psycho one of the worst yeah one of the absolute worst um at the time he wrote that they were granting the supreme

court of the united states was granting the stay like saying no no we really need to pause the recount and take this seriously because there's a threat of irreparable harm on the Bush campaign if there is always like this shroud of like a question that maybe Bush's win isn't legitimate if they do the recount, like that that would be irreparable harm. And the other justices, there were liberal justices who were like, irreparable harm and other justices there were liberal justices who were like how would it be irreparable harm if we count all the votes and determine the actual legitimate outcome of the election yes exactly it starts from the premise that we want bush to win or bush has already but it's going to be so harmful to his legitimacy if he doesn't win the election. Yes.

Then people won't even let him be president. 100%. It was that crazy. Because he didn't even win. What? It was that crazy. So then the Supreme Court considered the whole case and they decided that the Florida Supreme Court was wrong when they ordered this statewide recount because it would be impossible for Florida to do it fairly because each county in Florida, here's the hanging chads issue,

each county in Florida had different methods of counting, right? Like each county election board had a different system for counting. The Supreme Court said that would be unfair. The Supreme Court said that would be unfair. So we're not going to do a recount. No recount. Now, super unfair. It would violate equal protection of the laws. And it would hurt George W. Bush's feelings. Can we not take that into account? It will hurt his feelings. Right. So that's the story of Bush v. Gore. It really is that kind of boldly political, boldly partisan. is that kind of like boldly political boldly partisan it is it was at the time the five conservatives on the supreme court being like we want bush to win yeah i so i took the l set at one point really whoa i did yeah that's right i did okay Here I am over here with a measly master's degree in screenwriting from Lawson University, which I would never mention. But I've never taken the LSAT. No, you know what the real brag is, is that Jack took the LSAT, but then didn't go to law school. That's actually the flex.

Right. I talked my way out of it by that time, fortunately. But there's a whole logic section on that test where you're supposed to be able to suss out the arguments. based on logical arguments and their logical argument for this finding that determined the presidency of the united states like didn't it doesn't make any sense like on a surface level like you can't explain it in one sentence you can't explain it in a thousand sentences no that's right but yeah so this is what the supreme court is like the supreme court yes is it it claims to be like these balls and strikes impartial philosopher kings and queens who will you you know, they're just there to, like, call it like it has no political influence. And they are just increasingly an apparatus of the Republican Party in a way

that is really fucking scary. Scary. That's right. Jason Voorhees is back. So, like, you could say like yeah but that was a unique situation where like there was this recount and everything was very strange but we have like one of the supreme court justices seems to be on the like queue like samuel alito was flying a upside down american flag in the immediate like on january 6th or like right after like yeah on um inauguration day right on biden's inauguration day yeah he's fully like bought in on the like the big lie he's fully bought in on like i i'm pretty sure he has to be

like reading q shit like and so i i don't think they're going to necessarily need things to be as fucked up as they got in florida to intervene this time around because trump already seems to be like openly working with election officials to like throw things into chaos like the way he was trying to do the last time around yeah so yeah i don't know like what are your thoughts on that like do you think there's a a way for them to without the initial controversy of like man this was so close in florida and they designed the ballots like at random just randomly designed them so like do you think there's a way for them to get involved and give the turn the election towards Trump without something like that.

Yeah, there are there are plenty of ways. And it's like, I don't think it's the most legitimately hoping you're like, well, not really. No, no, no. There are a shitload of ways. No, there are a shitload of ways. And I don't even think it's about like necessarily predicting the specific way that it'll happen in this election, you know, from, from the vantage point of August 12th, August 13th, 2024. But the point is, and I think Bush v. Gore is the really good example because it's like, that was also unforeseen, right? You couldn't, you couldn't have seen, you couldn't have foreseen that like hanging chads in two counties in Florida were going to, you know, put into question, you know, a few thousand votes, right? But it was about installing a system, an apparatus,

in this case, a legal one, right? That would be ready, primed, right? Political and biased in a specific way so that when that issue came before them, right, the decision making power was with people who, you know, were primed to come out a certain way. And that's the same thing with Trump, right? This Supreme Court has six maniacs on it. This is not six, right? Like, we think about the Supreme Court as like, we say this all the time, it's got to be be you know, these are the smartest, best lawyers, judges in the country. Right. It is not true. Sam Alito. I would guess Sam Alito. It's not even it's not just Fox News. He's watching OAN. He's watching the crazy shit on YouTube. Right. Yeah. And YouTube just broke him. Right. Exactly.

And elsewhere. I went down a real YouTube rabbit hole. Right. I mean, four years ago, Clarence Thomas, another one, another absolutely cuckoo psycho. Right. His wife, Ginny Thomas, putting out that, like, you know, the Bidens were going to be like imprisoned on a barge at Guantanamo. Right. Like this is not this is this. These are these are. Yeah. Conspiracy theory, rabidly conservative, quite violent in their world vision.

Right. These are the types of conservatives who are on the Supreme Court, you know, just like the crazy, just like your local crazy Republican politician from whatever county who, you know, runs on a platform of politician. And they have those same biases. They have those same foundations from which their politics are born out of. They just also know how to speak in this situation. I'm going to ensure chaos in this election and in whatever procedures there are so that whatever issue it might be that gets teed up for the Supreme Court, yeah, John Roberts and the rest of those nasty losers, they're ready for it. They're going to do whatever he wants. Yeah. Well, we'll all be out in the streets protesting after that and if you want to see how we'll all be treated just look at the protests in favor of palestine yay yeah yeah yeah and maybe uh that that's why i was like wow people really are not giving a fuck about these students and willing to just let this, let the mainstream media just discount them and be like,

well, we heard one person who wasn't a student say something anti-Semitic. Right. Right. Yeah. That's the thing. That's the thing that every, you know, you have to,

that's the thing that everybody has to realize. Like when you, you know, when you accept it for somebody else, you know, you are accepting it to happen to you too, know yeah it's uh yeah so i don't know the one thing i've heard people throw out is like well biden now has these powers of monarch supreme monarch can't he do something like can he eliminate the supreme court please or something yeah i mean

what's so crazy is like the solutions caitlin like you're talking about like court reform like it's actually not even illegal he doesn't have to have presidential immunity to do it like we just have to have like political will like just fucking do something do something yeah yeah do something here's the brilliant joke i've been trying to wedge in this whole conversation the just fucking do something. Just do something. You know? Just do something. Here's the brilliant joke I've been trying to wedge in this whole conversation. The Supreme Court, more like the Suck-preem Court.

There it is. And there it is. Why did we even have this whole conversation? Yeah. Could it have just been summed up? Yeah. We're going to change the name

of our podcast to Suck-preem Court. Yeah. More like Supreme Court. And you'reRecord. Yeah, more like Suck Pre-Record. And you're all welcome. Well, Rhiannon, what a pleasure having you on the show. Hey, it's always a blast. Thanks for having me. Where can people find you, follow you, all that good stuff?

Well, you can follow at 5FourPod, all spelled out for following the podcast. Also at Popular Cradle for my new podcast that's about Palestine, Palestinian resistance and history, all that kind of good stuff. I am on Twitter. Not so much, but I'm there at Awa Rhiannon. Awa is A-Y-W-A. So yeah, we're out here. All right. And is there a work of media that you've been enjoying? Australian breakdancing at the Olympics. Yes. That's right. And I've been a fan since way back. I knew of Ray Gunn's work coming in and I was excited for the world to experience it.

Ray Gunn and I came up at about the same time. Ray Gunn, I'm Ray Gunn. Yeah, we go way back. That's right. Beautiful. Oh, my God. What a... Well, that was a lot of fun.

Like, also bad. Like, I feel bad for any break dancers who didn't get to go to the Olympics. And I feel bad for break dancing. On the other hand, holy shit. It's refreshing to see a woman fail upwards for once. Caitlin, where can people find you? Is there a work of media you've been enjoying?

I'm mostly on Instagram these days at Caitlin Durante. You can sign up for screenwriting classes that I'm teaching using that aforementioned but never mentioned screenwriting master's degree that I have. But yeah, I'm teaching online screenwriting classes. You can find information about those on my website, CaitlinDurante.com slash classes i have a couple starting in mid-september so check those out you can listen to my podcast the bechdel cast that i co-host with jamie loftus where we examine movies through and through an intersectional feminist lens and a piece of media that i've been enjoying because i know you're gonna ask oh my god wait that's fucking crazy

i know how did you figure that out that is so wild oh my god there's something spooky the piece of meat i just saw kneecap yesterday it's the movie kind of biopic, but I think a lot of it is fictionalized, about the Irish rap group, also called Kneecap, that is, through their music, trying to preserve the Irish language. And it's a really fun movie, and it's very funny, and I liked it a lot. So everyone, check out

Kneecap in a theater near you. That's fun. Like the Irish language? Like Gaelic? Yeah. Yeah, people still speak it, it turns out. I don't believe you. That's fun. Like the Irish land, like Gaelic? Yeah. Yeah, people still speak it, it turns out. I don't believe you. They're lying.

They're just making vaguely Irish sounds. You can find me on Twitter at Jack underscore O'Brien. Tweet I've been enjoying was from John Levenstein, who, upon watching Olympic volleyball, tweeted, if I were on a volleyball team

that huddled after every point, I would start to get irritated and say, I've got nothing new for you guys. It's like, I always wonder, like, what the fuck are they saying in there after every single... I don't know guys it's

like a waste of same shit every time yeah we do we do need the touch everybody needs to like athletes need to touch each other apparently they perform better anyways you can find me on twitter it's a contact sport in more ways than one the contact heart on heart contact is really what it's about you can find me on twitter at jack underscore o'brien you can find us on twitter at daily zeitgeist we're at the daily zeitgeist on instagram we have a facebook fan page and a website dailyzeitgeist.com where we post our episodes and our footnotes where we link off to the information that we talked about in today's episode as well as that really threw me for some reason.

It's good. It's very well done. It's never been done before, so I did innovate that. Yeah. I'm sorry. That was great. Really well done.

I'm going to have to tell Miles about that. Maybe he can do it. We also like to lake off to a song that we think you might enjoy. With Miles being out, we always like to ask super producer Justin Conner if there is a song that he's been enjoying that he always like to ask super producer Justin Connor if there is a song that he's been enjoying that he would like to recommend yeah if

you love 2000s and 90s R&B this will really make you smile the kind of warm nostalgia this is a track called strange things by double it's a simple love song from 2002 but it switches between Japanese and English language singing. And it sounds like if SWV or 3LW spent some time in Japan, became fluent in the language and just sang their hearts out. So this is Strange Things by Double. And you can find that song in the footnotes. Footnotes, the daily zeitgeist of the production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

That's going to do it for us this morning. Back this afternoon to tell you what's trending. And we'll talk to you all then. Bye. Bye. Bye. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you.

Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister, or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm.

Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals.

You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, everybody. It's Katie Couric. Have you heard about my newsletter called Body and Soul? It has everything you need to know about health and wellness, from skincare and serums to meditation and brain health. We've got you covered. And most importantly, it's information you can trust. Everything is vetted by experts at the top of their field.

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