The Daily Zeitgeist - Weekly Zeitgeist 25 (Best of 5/21/18-5/25/18)

Episode Date: May 27, 2018

The weekly round up of the best moments from DZ's Season 32 (5/21/18-5/25/18.) Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Good point. So, where are we headed? Into the unknown, and welcome to this episode of the or wherever you get your podcasts. Trust us, it's out of this world. Hello, the internet, and welcome to this episode of the Weekly Zeitgeist. These are some of our favorite segments from this week, all edited together into one nonstop infotainment laugh-stravaganza. Uh, yeah. So, without further ado, here is the Weekly Zeitgeist. All right, let's get into what people are thinking and talking about right now around the world and in America, more specifically. At the end of last week, there was another shooting in Santa Fe High School in Texas, of last week there was another shooting in santa fe high school in texas and yeah we're just another round of the debate that is getting pretty yeah it's just crazy like as i was just kind of writing

about this up for us to talk about how like i was kind of taking a flippant angle or just i think it just speaks to sort of the exhaustion that we have that we're still just in this fucking cycle of shooting and then dumb ass finger pointing of anything but the fucking guns. Anything but that. Last time it was, I don, scapegoat du jour. And Ritalin. And Ritalin, yeah. So I guess the first up. Ritalin was a new one.

Yeah, Ollie North, who is the new NRA president and OG gun smuggler of America, he went on Fox and, yeah, blamed Ritalin and a bunch of others. Yeah, check out this explanation. We're trying like the Dickens to treat the symptom without treating the disease. And the disease in this case isn't the Second Amendment. The disease is youngsters who are steeped in a culture of violence. They've been drugged in many cases. Nearly all of these perpetrators are male.

And they're young teenagers in most cases and they've come through a culture where violence is commonplace all we need to do is turn on the tv go to a movie if you look at what has happened to the young people many of these young boys have been on riddling since they were in kindergarten that's such a hard left on like it's like he even started like making a good point of like all these young shitters are male all these young like right that could be a discussion about what toxic masculinity is and things like that right but then it turns into a riddling it's just well later on he goes well look i'm not a doctor i'm a marine right so blah blah blah and it's almost like well then don't fucking begin to speculate as to what Ritalin has

to do with any of this. So anything but the guns. And then it seemed like this was kind of a theme because then the lieutenant governor of Texas, who, by the way, when he was lieutenant governor, was like in a real battle to fight against gender neutral bathrooms. Side note, went on to blame. I think now it's abortions in video games of all the north was riddled in video games and then this is the

lieutenant governor of texas we have devalued life whether it's through abortion whether it's the breakup of families through violent movies and particularly violent video games which now outsell movies and and music uh... psychologists and psychiatrist will tell you that students are desensitized to violence, may have lost empathy for their victims by watching hours and hours of video violent games.

Ninety-seven percent, George, of teenagers, according to psychiatrists and psychologists, watch video games, and 85% of those are violent games and then of course George we have our schools that are not hard targets okay wait is he the guy who then went on to blame the number of doors in the school yeah he was like there too many points of entry to just be like a prison yeah the doors thing really puts into perspective how far they will go to blame literally everything other than guns. And they're literally running out of new vantage points

to come at this issue without tackling the actual issue, which is why I feel like we're getting into the B-sides of shitty arguments with Ritalin and then recycling old points. It's just, it's crazy. Yeah, and also that theory that it's the media and video games. George Stephanopoulos goes on to say, well, that media is available all around the world.

These video games are available all around the world, yet this still seems to be a uniquely American problem. Isn't it an access to guns thing? And he was like, abortion, like whatever. So yes, again, blame everything but the guns. And again, if you want to come for people's video games, then you'll see some people fucking go crazy, my man. Don't come for the games.

Okay, I'm telling you right now. I love my games. And I'm not, these are not, it's such a sort of dated idea too, because this, that video game media thing has been studied so hard because people want it to be video games so bad. Because people...

It's the same way that when comic books came out, there was this governmental commission into comic books and how they were corrupting the youth. Well, now video games are the new thing. They wanted so bad for video games to be a cause of violence or cause people to be desensitized to violence. And statistics and studies have shown either that there's no correlation or that it's the exact opposite. And basically by keeping people who have violent urges in their homes doing violence on video games, you actually cut down on actual violence.

It's been like a national initiative to get that opinion to take for so long. Yeah. The last time I was home, I found an essay that I had written in the fifth grade where it was like, we were studying in school why video games are bad for you. And like, here's what I learned. I was like, really? We've been doing this for like. Oh, like your teachers were having you write about that?

Yeah, like it was like a, it must have been some unit that we were taught because I found an essay I wrote when I was 10 about why like- Video games is bad. Video games is bad. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

We wanted to talk about the upcoming meetings between Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Miles, you had some interesting updates for me on this. I'm just reading about this, and it follows a pattern that Donald Trump really likes, which is spiking the football when you're on the 50-yard line. Right. Like you scored the motherfucking touchdown,

and you're not even in the red zone, my guy. So look, the past few weeks, he has been pumping up his own little peepee talking about, I'm the real peacemaker. I should get a Nobel prize. You know, these guys are about to fully denuke because of me, blah, blah, blah. And now we're starting to get reports that Donald Trump is kind of starting to get cold feet because he's worried that this thing could turn into an embarrassment. And there are a couple of things to look at why this could possibly seem. Again, we talked about how dangerous it was for people with very fragile egos to meet up and begin to make concessions.

So first of all, like, you know, when Mike Pompeo had his secret meetings, it seemed like the news came out of there. It was pretty good that North Korea was open to completely denuclearizing. And, you know, again, Donald Trump got that football out, started raising his arm. And then John Bolton went on TV and started saying buzzwords like Libya, which are on the no-no list when it comes to North Korea, because that is the exact scenario that Kim Jong-un wants to avoid. And then the North Korean chief negotiator was basically kind of making clear is like, yo, the idea of total denuclearization, probably not going to happen. So that worried Trump to the point that he called President Moon of South Korea and was like, but earlier he said he was going to do that. What's going on? And so that

started to add a little bit to his nervousness, because also, as we've said before, that he is so thirsty for like a real political win, like one that even people on the left are like, you know what? OK, maybe you did. Maybe you did pull that off. Right. And just in general, he needs something to really hang his toupee on and he doesn't really have that. And he doesn't really have that. So now this is kind of getting a little bit more nervous because of the just desperate need for the optics of him being an effective leader. And then when you add to that also that he knows functionally fuck all about the North Korea nuclear program, it's a little worrying, too, because there are a lot of aides writing about how he just is like doesn't really understand the complexities of the nuclear program and how that could hinder him when he's trying to actually negotiate things because there's things like uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing and things like that that are vital parts of making these kinds of deals.

And meanwhile, he was trying to take credit or just be like, oh, well, they're going to close this one test site, you know, because of the pressure. That was like a site that had like literally collapsed under the sheer like nuclear testing induced earthquakes that was going on. So that really wasn't much of a win. So a lot of these are kind of coming together to sort of create a mood around the White House that Trump is sort of worried that he's not going to be able to do the thing where he flies in on a golden eagle to Singapore, tells Kim Jong-un, you know, hand over the keys to the nukes. And then he flies back being like, OK, America, number one piece achieved level 500 leader of achievement unlocked. So I don't know. We'll see what happens. These again, these aren't things that he's like actually said, oh, we should cancel it. But these are

the grumblings and rumblings around the White House that he's increasingly kind of beginning he's starting to get a little insecure about the meeting well I think I think from his point of view the meeting will go you know he'll get there and he'll be like okay I will show you my peepee you show me your peepee whoever has bigger peepee wins the meeting and maybe he's learned him getting some intel that someone has a bigger pp than him yeah or just is knows how to actually negotiate because this is like all part of his thing my god it's like the same thing with just as an aside is the trade war with china like he just announced that he's gonna put the trade war quote on hold because like some not real concessions the chinese made

they just sort of like sort of suggested that they may increase purchasing certain crops or whatever. And that was enough for Trump to be like, OK, let's put the trade war on hold. Meanwhile, the whole entire campaign, he was like, oh, China is screwing us. We are going to really hit them. We are going to punish them. And he has also just like completely just sort of caved at the first sign of pressure or whatever. I don't know. We'll see what happens. But this seems like the trend of him being Leon Lett in that fateful Super Bowl match

where Don B.B. comes behind him and strips the football from him before he can even get to the end zone. Right. He's celebrating at the one yard line and gets the ball stripped. I feel like it's actually more like that kicker who jumped up to celebrate a early season field goal and tore his MCL because he had a small success very early in the process and celebrated it and celebrated it so hard that he has now sort of fucked himself in terms of confidence. That he has now sort of fucked himself in terms of confidence. Also, just in terms of the leaking, because this is something that just comes up over and over again when it comes to the coverage of this White House. It's pretty remarkable that the people preparing him for a historic summit with North Korea are just talking open shit about him being like, he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about. He's scared about that and he's incompetent.

What the fuck are we going to do? People who are siding with him seem to think that this is because there's some deep state conspiracy against him. Is that more likely or is it more likely that he treats everyone around him like shit and everyone who is working with him sees up close how incompetent he is and are scared for the future of our country? No, that's exactly what that is. The leaking is not a single person who has some agenda. The leaking is just everywhere. No matter where Trump is, someone's going to be like, you're not going to believe what the fuck this guy just said about this.

Exactly. Well, that just seems like long game thinking on everyone's part, too, because it's like you want I mean, hopefully there's someone in the White House who has the better interest of people, although I'm not convinced that's true. better interest of people although i'm not convinced that's true but like you know like a couple years on when the trump thing is ideally behind us they want to be able to be like well i said something look remember when i i i leaked something i said oh that was you oh i'm not i'm not that bad i'm complicit but i'm not bad you know i was that anonymous source oh yeah i was source from this uh new york times article i like people are going to come back and claim that they were the source when this nightmare is fucking over. Well, that's kind of like how those suspicious activity reports that Michael Avenatti got his hands on with Michael Cohen. That was someone at the Treasury Department, I think, or SEC.

I forget. Anyway, someone there who was monitoring that gave it to him because he felt that some of the activity reports were being suppressed and and not coming out and they were like this is fucking bad and just was like here check this out so i feel like at many levels there are people who yeah who have been like lifelong servants of certain departments and are just like this cannot stand right there was a article towards the end of last week i think it was from the washington. I need to find that and we'll put it in footnotes. But the journalist went and asked these people who are sources on the Trump White House, why do you leak?

And what is it like being a leaker in this White House? And it was interesting. The reasons they leak are basically what you would expect. They're concerned for the future of the country. But then the ways they leak are really interesting, too, because they will study quotes by people who they work with and use vocal tics of the people they work with to cover their tracks to make it seem like they're not the leaker and that the other person might be the leaker. Wait, what? So they'll look at quotes from somebody and then use that voice, essentially, to give direct quotes to the White House.

What a wild Adam Sandler-y approach to leaking information. I don't think they do an exact, like, well, you know, I am, it's me, Mike Pence. It's me, Mr. Mike Pence. One of the podcasts I was listening to, I think it was the Ringer Weekly podcast with David Shoemaker, where they do a media deep dive.

I think they were speculating that this could be somebody who realized they betrayed themselves with a leaking quote and then were like yeah I cover my bases by pretending to be that other guy. Wasn't that genius?

Yeah. So I don't know. It's an interesting time to do. Leak culture is interesting time to leak culture is fascinating right weird hacker culture is fascinating i think that you know we should just if if you're leaking or hacking just visually identify yourself by uh getting frosty tips and wearing tiny tiny little sunglasses it'll be way easier for us to break these stories but But the other amazing thing is that almost a lot of these people who are leaking have to have been put there by the president himself. And this is something that

we're also seeing, and I want to move on briefly to the Mueller investigation. We keep seeing the conservative base sort of assuming that people who Trump has appointed, who were hired by him, given the job by him, are in a vast conspiracy to take him down for reasons that nobody is clear on. I think I've now heard that Mueller is out to get him because Mueller is friends with Comey and he wants to get back at him for that. But it's not clear why Rosenstein is out to get him because Trump hired him and appointed him. Oh, you're saying the sort of conservative people are spinning that like these appointees are actually I thought you were saying that there is this concerted effort. No, I'm just saying, yeah, the conservative take on this in order to

explain away all of these sourced leaks that are pointing to just vast incompetence and corruption, they're having to formulate this, quote, deep state cover up. Right. That is this vast conspiracy that is all out to get him and coordinating to create this narrative. But Trump would have had to hire all these various conspirators on his own and like put them in place for that to be true. Well, yeah, or they just have the complete disregard for the fact that, yeah, many of these people are in positions that were appointees or whatever, or lifelong Republicans. So I guess it's at this point, you know, because the stories get worse and worse or just the smoke is getting more intense and the coincidences, if you want

to call them coincidences, become more and more frequent. It's harder to imagine a version of events that is completely benign. Yeah. This weekend, there were revelations that I assumed were going to take the entire country, both the 42% that approves of Trump and the 52% that disapproves of Trump in the 52% that disapproves of Trump in the direction of, well, let's see this Mueller thing out. Let's see this Mueller investigation out. But instead, it seems to be a case where things are continuing to every piece of evidence causes both sides to accelerate in the opposite direction. We've talked before about how this is one of the key ingredients for civil war is when you have two separate sides of the country and everything that each side hears

takes them further and further apart. And so this morning, there was a huge op-ed that is the number one trending article on the Hill that is a former Democratic party operative named Mark Penn, who is saying it's time to end the Mueller investigation. He basically lays out the argument that I've heard. The conservative argument is fairly consistent against the Mueller investigation, that it's this deep state thing and that there was never evidence in the first place and never evidence that anybody can point to in concrete Right. a Russian Kremlin operative by saying, I hear you have information for us. That doesn't play into, doesn't add any fuel to the suspicion that something might be going on here.

And now there's evidence of more conversations that happened at Trump Tower. This new meeting was between the guy who headed up Blackwater. Eric Prince, Betsy DeVos's brother. Eric Prince, the just shadiest dude in the world, and an operative from the UAE in Saudi Arabia, this guy George Nader, and a social media expert for a firm which employed several Israeli former intelligence officers who specialized

in collecting information and shaping opinion through social media. Which is a fancy way of describing social media manipulation campaign. Yes. I literally can't keep all these people. We need like a guess who board for these people. I can't keep it straight. There's not enough red string. Right.

And it's crazy because there's just this abundance of information that is like, well, that's clearly the behavior of a guilty person. But anyways, so it is technically illegal for a campaign for a public office in America to work with foreign powers. Money, anything. Foreign people, foreign money anything yeah foreign people foreign money and these conversations have people saying you know y'all need some cash basically the social media expert being like we will here's our multi-million dollar proposal to help your father become president yeah and just right because then he will allow us to continue the fuckery. It's a very clear choice.

Do you want a world where Hillary Clinton is the president and is going to try and enforce things? Or some guy who's sleazy and you can just pull up to Trump Tower and be like, hey, how much you need, man? Let's work something out. I do need the people who are the 52% who

are critical of Trump to just be a little bit more focused? Because I feel like you're hearing all of the information, just all these different stories. And for instance, there was a story a couple of weeks ago where a judge came after Mueller about Manafort and saying, how do you justify going after Manafort? It has nothing to do with the case. And that was the last I heard of that story. But apparently they explained their case to the judge and the judge was like, oh, okay, I get it.

And they moved on from that. But that was a key piece of evidence. I think because the 42% that approve of Trump have fewer pieces of evidence. And so they like cling to them and use them more carefully. Whereas the people who actually think there might be something here in the Mueller investigation are just, they're just burning through every new revelation.

Like it's junk food. They are, they are doing the Homeland thing. They got their, their wall set up with all the red string. And yeah. And on the, I think on the other side for conservatives, if there aren't like real indictments or things like that, they're not really paying attention to those kinds of developments because that's, again,

just part of the noise of this witch hunt that they don't care about because nothing happened. You're at the Mueller cookout and you're serving up nothing burgers. And like then making too much noise around any single story always works because yeah like the 52 that are critical of trump just get exhausted like if you scream in someone's ear about some stuff that's relevant and some stuff that isn't for long enough it's like you just get you know like fatigue yeah you get exhausted and uh don't know and if you're like me you lose track of who's who because there's a new name every two seconds and there are people entering the story and people exiting we can't

accept you to keep up i mean you're you're a woman on the go you have to do quick you know shallow grave burials i gotta dig a shallow grave on my way home the revolving door of characters you have to keep track of is so complex and i understand why people get exhausted but it's also like yeah that's what they want no and i think i have too especially like as we talk about it more and more and i sort of slowly have just adopted the mentality of kind of like look yes let's investigate this i can't put all all of this faith in this that this is going to correct everything because i don't think it will and also also, I don't know how much political will there is in D.C. to actually do anything to rein this president in, at least not till the midterms.

Yeah, I think it's partially that because there is less evidence on the side of the 42 percent, they just have a single argument that they're relying on, and therefore it becomes more coherent, and it has the appearance of their argument being more disciplined, whereas the left doesn't have a single opinion-based outlet that is their clear and obvious mouthpiece the way that the right does in Fox News. journalistic institutions and journalistic institutions just have the mission statement of reporting facts, not coming up with a coherent argument one way or another. And I think that also keeps things somewhat scattered. Because I think also, I mean, even with MSNBC, obviously being the most left leaning, you'll get versions of it, but they don't quite venture into the world of fantasy like Fox does. You know, it's very rah-rah Democrats on MSNBC. And sometimes, you know, people like Lawrence O'Donnell completely overlook things, which, whatever.

But I think, yeah, I know what you mean. There's nothing that's quite as aggressive as the sort of media machine on the right. Yeah, and it's a lose-lose because they're, like, oversimplifying stuff to the point of, like, fantasy and farce and craziness. And it's like, you don't want that for the left, but what is a way to present,

you know, everything you need to know and filter out the noise. Like it's so hard to do. I think the only way to do it is for everybody to listen to the Daily Zyka. Thank you. That's what we're here for, for just really unchecked information. The whole Republican Party has a very disciplined information architecture that is coming down from Fox News.

And, you know, Fox News's loudest voice speaks to the president every night to like decompress. And Fox News was started by Roger Ailes, who was a Republican political operative for Nixon and was like, there's room for me to create a political machine and make it a key player in politics. Well, I'm pretty sure our podcast is still bigger than the Fox News podcast, so we're on our way. Yeah, we're going to nail this. Yeah, Rush Limbaugh

doesn't have shit on us. What are you saying? He's been in the room. He's been here the whole time Guys, I'm high back here This show is just fucking hungry Just handfuls of Percocet They're Norco, okay?

I only ride the yellow submarine Alright, we're going to take a quick break And we'll be right back Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist And we'll be right back. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia.

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And we're back. We wanted to talk about something that 60 Minutes has covered. A lot of different respected journalistic outlets have covered the possibility that the upcoming election will be hacked. Yeah, the midterms, right? Midterm elections being hacked. There's just all sorts of evidence that points to foreign powers infiltrating various election security networks..S. agency charged with ensuring that voting machines meet security standards was itself penetrated by a hacker after the November elections. So they've been testing the fences and getting through the fences easily.

And it's like Jurassic Park. All of these signs. Exactly. The Raptors are testing the fences. The Russians, in this case, are testing the fences. Clever girl. And the really scary thing is that a lot of states in America don't have paper ballots that back up their electronic ballots. Yeah.

So that leaves us very open to, I think, what we call fuckery in which the vote count could possibly be manipulated. And there's been all kinds of weird stuff that has not been really brought up in the news that is like kind of fucking like next level. So I don't know if it's next level because I don't know anything. But, for example, like they found these cell site stimulators called Sting Razor, IMSI catchers. cell site stimulators called StingRazor IMSI catchers. And, you know, it's not surprising that in certain articles, they say that they would that foreign intelligence groups or criminal groups would use this kind of hardware in the Capitol. But for the first time, the DHS sort of acknowledged that this stuff could possibly intercept sensitive political communications. There are a pair of Princeton computer scientists

have also pointed out that these cell phone simulators, which they mimic legitimate cell towers, can also be used for like inexpensive vote hacking. So basically the Stingray would intercept the vote totals from the voting machine before they're uploaded to the actual canvassing computer mainframe thing. So, and again, they're just sort of like, oh, how'd these weird cell simulators show up in DC?

There's just, there are many other sort of frightening things along with the idea that, yeah, we don't have paper records in certain states, like important states like Pennsylvania. How is this not the number one priority of anyone who has anything to do with running elections in this country? I mean, this angers me so much

that whether people are so cynical or lazy or manipulative that they saw what happened in 2016 and it wasn't their number one priority to look at how can we prevent this from happening again. Whatever your party is, just if you like America, if you like democracy, how can you not want to make sure that the integrity of the elections is protected? But if you're hyper-partisan, you might be like, well, this might be the only way to fight off a democratic wave. Well, you know, because clearly the intelligence community said that Russia clearly favored Trump over Hillary Clinton. And using that information, we assume that possibly that's – I don't think that people are going to hack in the name of progressive ideals for the left.

hack in the name of progressive ideals for the left. But yeah, I think even in Europe, because they were really worried about certain elections in the last year getting manipulated by foreign actors or whatever, that some places just did all paper. They're like, we don't even want to even mess with computers because at least we know, like we were looking at human beings using a paper ballot

and we have that, we're counting that. Right. So that's pretty scary stuff. And the DHS, the Department of Homeland Security yesterday had a presentation for Congress to which 40 members of Congress showed up. 40 to 50, they say 50 on the higher end. So that's like roughly 10 percent. 10 percent of Congress bothered to turn up. So I don't know if it's cynicism. I don't know if it's people on both sides being like, well, Trump is clearly never going to do anything about this

because it's not in his interest to plug these holes, essentially. Well, then we've done functionally nothing about it. Right. I guess Pennsylvania is still working with electronic ballots that they put into rotation in 2002. And they just got funding to replace them with new machines that will be updated in 2019. Oh, cool. Just in time.

Just in time for this blue wave. Yeah, and then I think at a few different hacker conventions in Vegas, they were easily just penetrating like these voting machines are like and hacked. And now I can do whatever I want in here. So, yeah, I mean, I don't know what it is, if they're, you know, it surprised me that only 40 to 50 Congress people showed up. I don't know if that speaks to that they felt the briefing was skewed or whatever. But when you read the headline that they gave a briefing on sort of election security and the numbers are low. Yeah, this should be the most important.

I mean, aside from just, you know, not getting physically attacked by somebody. But it's like, what's more important? Like, this is what we fought for. Yeah, exactly. This is our actual democracy. This is how we know the will of the people. Was it that hearing, though, where someone from the DHS said that they weren't aware of any evidence that the Russians had hacked the election, even though it was a publicly available report. I know Kirsten Nielsen, who is the head of DHS, said something to that effect of more like she didn't – she hadn't heard of the intelligence community's assessment that Russia favored Trump.

Maybe that was it. Yeah. Yeah. Which was weird of just sort of like, oh, really? I don't know it's like what the fuck are you saying like how are you on one hand being like our elections are vulnerable from who right oh i don't know but look uh anyway it says everything that they believe that if they were if there were a fair election that they wouldn't win well yeah that's why the

the you know the redistricting and all those efforts are massively frightening to the gop because they spent so long completely gerrymandering the districts and suppressing votes that if they're like, wait, we're not going to win a fair one. So we'll see. We'll see what happens. I'm sure as you'd hope this story will pick up some steam and there'll be some kind of more public pressure for them to do. Is there time? Is there time to fix this stuff? I'd imagine.

Certainly to harden the targets. Yeah, or at the very least, you just go all analog, and you're like, yo, everywhere's a paper ballot. Yeah, I don't see how you don't do that, because otherwise, the idea that you would have elections, and they could be compromised, and we wouldn't know it, we just wouldn't have the paper back up to see if people's votes have been changed yeah that's fucking insane there's no way around that you need to

not do that if that's your plan yeah i don't know the whole idea of like gerrymandering and now this i i just wonder if i i know that I personally was less motivated. I feel like in the past, the GOP and the right has been way more motivated to find these cracks that they can exploit in the system. And I feel like a lot of people who oppose far right-wing politics were just made aware and just like sort of activated. So that would be the possibly hopeful spin to put on it is that all this fuckery is going to be harder for them to pull off now that people have seen how bad it can get if you're not actively engaged and getting out and voting and monitoring and making sure that the electoral system is protected.

So we shall see. A brief news flash is that a sinkhole is opening up in the White House lawn. It's growing every day. So yeah, someone who's not very subtle is writing the news now, apparently, whether it be the Veep writing staff or just... Or it's a biblical thing, you know, like hell could be opening up to swallow it. Yeah. The Old Testament is definitely not very subtle. Oh, no.

Yeah, yeah. But I love the Pentateuch. You've always been a fan. Yes. So let's get into the Michael Cohen letter that was sent to the onion back in 2013 yeah so in 2013 published a story that was okay if first of all if you're listening to this show you don't know what the fuck the onion is shame on you the onion is a satirical website is one of the great satirical news websites uh publications out there uh and in 2013, they ran an op-ed, which is fake.

Let me say that again. A fake, satirical, ha-ha, lol-lol-lol, jokey op-ed written by Donald Trump, supposedly, but it's satirical, so we know it wasn't actually written by him, called When You're Feeling Low, Just Remember I'll Be Dead in About 15 or 20 Years. And it was just a very, you know, stupid, just sort of piece about Donald Trump, you know, dying because he sucks. That's right. In the not very distant future, I will die and then be gone from the world for all eternity. You may even get to watch me in a casket on national television being lowered into the ground, never to be seen again. I bet you're smiling just thinking about that.

Yeah. And then so because, you know, Michael Cohen, he's like number one attack dog for Trump or who knows how this letter came about. A letter, very angry takedown letter was written by Michael Cohen in all seriousness to the onion. And it goes like this. Dear Mr. Hanna, I wish to call your attention to an article currently on your homepage, allegedly penned by Donald Trump, entitled When You're Feeling Low. Just remember, I'll be dead in About 10 or 15 Years. Let me begin by stating the obvious, that the commentary was not written by Mr. Trump. Secondly, the article is an absolutely disgusting piece that lacks any place in journalism,

even in your onion. I am hereby demanding that you immediately remove this disgraceful piece from your website and issue an apology to Mr. Trump. I further ask that you contact immediately to discuss. This commentary goes way beyond defamation. And if not immediately removed, I will take all actions necessary to ensure your actions do not go without consequence. Guide yourself accordingly. Yours, Michael Cohen.

Oh, yours. Yeah. Warmly. Warmly. Sincerely, Coco. So, yeah. I mean, he clearly didn't know what the fuck the onion was and it turns out uh when you ask people so our writer jm mcnab was kind of looking into this thing and there have been articles written about this moment at the onion and what happened

and like one of the people uh who used to work there speculates that it was probably Trump himself that wrote this letter and just had Michael Cohen sent it off. They point to just sort of like the words like this article is disgraceful and disgusting and essentially amounts to I demand an apology. I hereby demand. Yeah, exactly. And it's just sort of like that sort of like that just is the total Trump brand in terms of his writing style. The wording they say is wonky. It's nowhere even close to being legalese. I mean, granted, Michael Cohen went to literally garbage law school.

So, of course, we can't expect him to use real nuanced vocabulary. But Trump is the one who sits around Googling Donald Trump all day, every day. Not Michael Cohen. Or maybe it is Michael Cohen. But if so, that's very sad. But the crazy part is when The Onion put out this piece, Michael Cohen then gets on Twitter to be like, see, I knew that was a joke. Ha ha ha, you guys. It's clearly a satirical website.

So therefore, my response was also satire therefore by the laws of comedy i am the new lord of hahas i don't know i mean like was he i just read his tweet maybe all of you hashtag haters hashtag trolls missed the memo but at the onion is a news satire organization that means dot dot, dot, dot. It's not real. But no, I think he's because they just came out with an article today, I think, but he was responding. Yeah. Hashtag get a life.

I thought the story was that they hadn't responded to it and they just recently discovered that they had this email. So they said at this editorial saying, all right, we'd like to take you up on your offer to come and talk to you. And I think like we'll take that down in exchange for access to the president. They said a quid pro quo, if you will. Yeah, that's great. And so I think he was saying that that was satire or that the letter itself was. I don't know. Either way, the fact that he would have to come out, he was like, oh, that's a joke that I would do quid pro quo with the president.

But also, who is clicking on the hashtag trolls? Like, who's looking for, hmm, let me see what the trolls are trending right now. Probably the marketing people who put out the failed animated version of the Troll Doll film, Trolls. I just love the idea of him explaining to us that The Onion is satire. What a genius. He's just, yeah. Again, Trump, you know, this is John Miller. Trump has no humor.

He has no sense of humor. He is not, he is incapable of, and he's so thin-skinned. And that's one of the things that people, I think Comey wrote about it, and I think there's other people who have spent time around him who remark that the most notable thing

about Donald Trump, when you spend time around him is he never laughs. Yeah, joyless. He never smiles. It's just all... And we spent a lot of time looking for clips of him laughing. And I think we found one from many... Yeah, it was really weird. He was just like, huh. Yeah, yeah. Very odd laugh. It was sort of like an angry, passive-aggressive laugh. They were also saying in this other other piece that donald trump actually called the onion because there was no response to that email which would also lead you to yeah they'd be like oh and it has to of course it was old donnie sorry john miller you couldn't spend this one this time and i've talked about how when i was at abc news we

were creating a piece about how donald trump is as rich as he claims. And he himself called the office maybe 30 times a day. He is. Please don't drag me. Please don't drag me. But yeah, except basically threatening to sue until the ABC News legal department was like, OK. And also, if you look at Michael Cohen's writing style, where we've seen him actually send shit to other people, he'll be like, what I will do to you will be fucking disgusting right you know i mean like that's how michael cohen comes at you so

there's the other thing when you look at his past uh works uh you can tell that he's this is not his usual writing style all right guys let's get into the stories of the day and we have to open up with some hard-hitting shit because there is a new laurel v yanni and a couple actually that we want to play for you guys so first off we are going to play some rihanna for you so we're going to play just a little segment of one of her songs so that part right there i I think I always assumed was... Because I'm a paper chaser. A paper chaser.

Because I'm a paper chaser. And people pointed out that if you now think about the phrase, because I'm a big fucking slut, you get a different version. So think about that phrase as you listen to it. version. So think about that phrase as you listen to it. Yeah. Can you do that one more time, Nick? Well, that's in there too, I guess, if you really want to listen to it. I heard queso.

Because I'm a big fuck queso? No, I want some queso. Oh. Because I want some queso. Because I'm a big fuck queso? No, I want some queso. Oh. Because I want some queso. Because I want some queso. Wait, can you play that back? Let me hear that one. Something like that. Because I'm a fin for queso.

I'm a fin for queso. Very malleable, that one. I heard slit. Yeah, you guys. Yeah, yeah, totally, the things on the internet. So then there's also this piano thing that you were playing for me this morning, Miles. Yeah, so someone on Twitter, I think, hit us up. They're like, yo, check this new one out.

So on the same article from that website, I think it's I fucking love science. Underneath it, they had this version of a Stayin' Alive by the Bee Gees. But it's like they basically had this computer program interpret the song through MIDI piano. So basically this version of staying alive is only piano notes. But when you listen, I swear you could like hear the actual vocals of the song. It's a little trippy.

Listen to this. 🎵 Cut that out. Yeah, so I know it sounds like a fucking nightmare hellscape. It sounds like the Bee Gees are being drowned by piano music. Their voices are trying to sing through piano keys. Or it would be like a trippy video where there's an 8-bit sea, and they fell into it, were drowning in like a bit crushed world. And that's a very deep technical jargon.

But yes, but it's weird. You can kind of hear the lyrics in there. It was very, it's odd. Yeah. Unless there's only piano notes. So there's your auditory illusion for the day because we said this show is now all about auditory illusions. Yeah.

These two remind me of like conspiracy theories because they're like so obviously there you can actually hear it like you're finding stuff hidden in the fabric of a thing that you've heard before. But like once your mind starts to like put the shape of things on it, it's like impossible not to hear. So like with the JFK conspiracy theory, if you talk to a conspiracy theorist they're like look man right there in the grassy knoll you can see it and if you look hard enough you can kind of see a guy there but what about the lady with the camera you can't see her face

oh shit see don't get Quincy Jones in here so there's so many theories on the JFK thing and I think it's because it is the most analyzed, like, 12 seconds of film and just of reality in the history of the world. If you look at this scenario enough times, you're going to be able to come up with different versions that are equally there that your mind will tell you for certain that is happening right there. But it's actually our minds looking to put patterns and meaning in things that weren't actually intended or weren't actually there. And don't we do that anyways? Yes.

You know, in our daily lives, in our daily waking lives. What do they mean by that? Exactly. What do they not mean by that? Also, why would you open up this JFK box of worms and not allow us to talk about it? I know. Okay, dude, uncool.

Yeah, no, I just like to put it out there and then, you know, yank it back. The mob. I think it was the mob and the CIA. Together, why not? Together. I think it was the mob and the CIA. Together. Why not? Together. I think JFK was going to some more progressive ideas and CIA had other plans. Hey, we don't have time for this.

Hey, don't ask me about it, but it could have been John Connor. I don't know. But at the same time, as Scarface once said, my mind's playing tricks on me. Okay. Thank you. All right. I guess we're going to move on. All right. We right we're gonna take a quick break we'll be right back i'm not happy definitely caruana galizia was a maltese investigative journalist who on october 16th 2017 was murdered there are crooks everywhere you look now.

The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. 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. One session.

24 hours. BPM 110. 120. She's terrified Should we wake her up? Absolutely not What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it

That was live audio of a woman's nightmare This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago We're not hurting people There's nothing dangerous about, you're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. 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. on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, everyone. It's me, Katie Couric. Have you heard about my newsletter called Body and Soul? It has everything you need to know about your physical and mental health. Personally, I'm overwhelmed by the wellness industry. I mean, there's so much information out there about lifting weights, pelvic floors, cold plunges, anti-aging. So I launched Body and Soul to share doctor-approved insights about all of that and more. We're tackling everything. Serums to use through menopause, exercises that improve your brain health, and how to naturally lower your blood pressure and cholesterol. Oh, and if you're as sore as I am from pickleball, we'll help you with that too. Most importantly, it's information you can trust. Everything is vetted by experts at the top of

their field, and you can write into them directly to have your questions answered. So sign up for Body and Soul at katiecouric.com slash body and soul. Taking better care of yourself is just a click away. How do you feel about biscuits? Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves, the biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? I mean, the Boone County Rebels will stay the Boone County rebels with the image of the Biscuits. It's right here in black and white in print. They lying. An individual that came to the school saying that God sent him to talk to me about the mascot switch.

As a leader, you choose hills that you want to die on. Why would we want to be the losing team? I'd just take all the other stuff out of it. Segregation academies. When civil rights said that we need to integrate public schools, these charter schools were exempt from that. Bigger than a flag or mascot. You have to be ready for serious backlash. Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Jockeys, what is something that is underrated? Let me hit you out with this. Uh-oh. Miles, you may know something about this. Okay. Bidets are underrated.

Bidets. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Bidets. Clean your butt with water. Oh, boy. Let me tell you. If you still just using tissue, listen. Get in the game yeah, yeah. Bidets. Clean your butt with water. Oh, boy. Let me tell you. If you're still just using tissue, listen. Get in the game.

You ain't in the game. And at first, for years, I was like, oh, you're using tissue? I use baby wipes. Nah. Taking it up a notch. If you're still using baby wipes, your ass ain't clean, man. So did you just get one of those seat attachments? Yeah.

$40 on Amazon. Wow. Is it easy to hook up it was like 10 minutes to hook it up and uh and you and full disclosure you do work for this company correct i work for this company so let me plug you know let me plug it real quick no yeah yeah it has changed my pooping life uh do you have the squatty potty too i I don't. Oh, that would be the most. Then you would have the most lit fecal setup ever. Bowel movement zone. It's the best thing, dude.

Yeah. And mine has the thing where you can adjust the pressure. So if it gets too high, then you start getting water up your ass, and that doesn't feel great. You don't need a colonic. You don't need it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Unless you do.

Yeah, unless you do. Unless you do. Hey, but if you're having pressure, watch the driveway in a little bit. You don't need it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Unless you do. Yeah, unless you do. Unless you do. Hey, but if you're having pressure, wash the driveway in a little bit. You know what I mean? Try to bring it back to life. Maybe you turn up the pressure. I know in Japan,

yeah, so like in Japan, most of the seats, like most people when they go to Japan, they're like, the toilet seats are like warm. And then like a thing will like, there's like an invisible bidet. Yes, we've been on that shit for a while.

But the biggest thing is, you know, sometimes wiping does not suffice. And you just need to just, the cleansing power of a water stream is just great. It's great for you. Let me even expand on that. Just in general, like if you roll around in dirt and like mud and then just get a dry paper towel and wipe yourself all you still dirty right you can still see the mud smears right so at least use a baby wipe yeah at least use a baby wipe and if you want to get to that next level get yourself a bidet yeah yeah oh man we're just making we're just making changes over here y'all got bidets anybody in this no i had one for i airbnb'd a

house once that had one and you never left he's been there ever since yeah it was i i definitely need to i did not know that was a 40 edition was it a european style or it was one with like the fancy toilet seat fancy toilet seat okay yeah you can get a more expensive like you can get one that's like 300 bucks that has has heated toilet seats and heated water Yeah the most lit ones are made by Toto The Toto washlet Shout out to Japanese ingenuity Although who knows who invented it first

But yeah shout out to the bidet in general Shout out hit us up with your bidet stories The first time you used a bidet How did it change your life Take a picture take a photo of yourself The moment the bidet. How did it change your life? Take a picture. Take a photo of yourself the moment the bidet hits you so we can capture that moment. Just a selfie?

Everyone's saying, you're my first bidet. First bidet selfie? Ooh. Or like... Also, you ever pay attention to the face you make when you wipe your ass?

No. Think about that next time you wipe your ass. If you make a face while you do it. Like if it's like a cocked eyebrow, a pursed lip, you know? I probably do like when I wipe my face. Just be aware of So if you make a face while you do it. Like if it's like a cocked eyebrow a pursed lip.

You know. I probably do like when I wipe my face. Just be aware of the face you make when you're wiping your butt. I probably curl my lip. Probably curl it.

I think mine's just a lot of like downtrodden self-reflection. They're like I'm wiping again. It's never ending. Or it's like the like

existential crisis. Or the puppy dog guilt. Every time they like poop, they just look guilty. Right. All right. That's going to do it for this week's weekly Zeitgeist. Please like and review the show if you like the show. Means the world to Miles.

He needs your validation, folks. I hope you're having a great weekend, and I will talk to you Monday. Bye. Thank you. Defne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was assassinated. Thank you. Mathias State. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. This podcast is an intergenerational you've never heard it before. We're breaking the stigma and silence around sex and sexuality in Latinx communities. This podcast is an intergenerational conversation between Latinas from Gen X to Gen Z. We're your hosts, Viosa and Mala. You might recognize us from our first show, Locatora Radio. Listen to Señora Sex Ed on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.