The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3540 - Trump's War on Free Speech, Elon Musk is Poisoning Memphis w/ Chip Gibbons and Ren Brabenec

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

Fun Half link: https://youtube.com/live/DoFQZw-geTc It's Thursday which means it is an Emmajority Report Day. We start the show with the Senate Rescissions bill that passed in the wee hours last night.... PBS, NPR and USAID are now defunded. We are joined by Policy Director of Defending Rights & Dissent, Chip Gibbons, to discuss Trump's war on free speech, specifically around Palestinian activism. Then we are joined by Ren Brabenec to talk about his piece in the Tennessee Lookout that covers Elon Musk's unpermitted Ai data center that is causing massive environmental damage in Memphis. In the fun half we are joined by Brandon Sutton and Matt Binder as we continue the coverage of the Epstein caused MAGA / Trump fissure. Charlie Kirk's gaslight's his fans and they are furious. We close out by enjoying Ben Shapiro's review of Superman. It's as bad as you imagine it to be. All that and more plus phone calls.   Follow us on TikTok here!: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here!: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here!: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here!: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the ESVN YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/esvnshow Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors EXPRESS VPN: Get an extra 4 months free. Expressvpn.com/Majority NAKED WINES: Head to NakedWines.com/MAJORITY, click ‘Enter Voucher’ and put in my code MAJORITY for both the code AND password for 6 bottles of wine for JUST $39.99 with shipping included SUNSET LAKE: Head on over to SunsetlakeCBD.com and use code NewSticks to treat your aches and pains to some much-deserved relief. This sale ends July 20th at midnight Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech Check out Matt’s show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon’s show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza’s music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com/ The Majority Report with Sam Seder – https://majorityreportradio.com/

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 You are listening to a free version of the majority report Support this show at join the majority report comm and get an extra hour of content daily It is Thursday July 17th 2025 my name is Emma Bigland in for Seder, and this is the five time award winning majority report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America downtown Brooklyn, USA.
Starting point is 00:00:39 On the program today, Chip Gibbons will be with us to talk about Trump's war on free speech as it relates to Gaza and later in the show Ren Brabineck Nashville-based journalists will be with us to talk about Elon Musk's supercomputer polluting the city of Memphis Also on the program overnight Senate Republicans rescinded $9 billion in funds to public broadcasting and foreign aid. Sending it to the House and they'll vote for it too. Russ
Starting point is 00:01:18 vote says more is coming. The DOJ fires federal prosecutor Maureen Comey, daughter of James, who also did work on the Jeffrey Epstein case. Are we still talking about that guy? The Epstein case, that stuff will not go away for Trump. A Reuters poll finds that just 17 Americans approve of his handling of it and nearly 70% think the government is hiding something. 17%, not 17 total.
Starting point is 00:01:52 Yes, yes, yes. Just 17 Americans. Is that what I said? Yeah. Honestly, I would believe that too. Found out 17. Thank you guys. The AP finds that only one in four US adults say Trump's policies have helped them. Over 1500 good trouble rallies in honor of John Lewis are happening today to protest the Trump administration.
Starting point is 00:02:19 Zoran Mamdani made his way down to DC yesterday to meet with Democrats organized by Bernie and AOC. He posted an interesting photo with Chris Van Hollen on social media, and I'm going to bang this drum that that's got to be our next Senate majority leader. A U.S. citizen army veteran was jailed for three days by ICE after they raided the California cannabis farm. Israel kills at least 22 people yesterday, including bombing the church that the late Pope Francis used to call every day. The Trump administration is being sued by over 20 states to block FEMA funding cuts.
Starting point is 00:03:05 Experts warned that Trump could crash the market if he fires Jerome Powell. And lastly, Trump declares that Coca-Cola will start using real sugar. And that appears to be news to Coca-Cola. All this and more on today's majority report. Welcome to the show everybody. I am not a soda drinker, but I have heard that like, isn't that the difference between Mexican Coke or Mexican Sprite? They use real sugar. Exactly. And you know, like my husband likes the Mexican Sprite and I, I, I've always felt weird ordering it, but I guess it's a different product, right? Yeah. And it's And it's glass bottle for the hippies.
Starting point is 00:03:45 Right, right, right. But it tastes better? Is that the thing? Yes. I mean, arguably. I don't know about that. I think it's significantly better. I did enough time in Atlanta, Georgia to be a Coke expert.
Starting point is 00:03:55 Okay, fair enough. Don't clip that. Yeah. Clip it. In fact, you should clip it now. So last night at like 2 a.m., you know, when you're passing bills that you're really proud of, Republicans seem to be doing this. This is a very long voterama right now. Democrats appear quite frustrated, but this is what happens when you have an administration
Starting point is 00:04:21 that cares about getting its agenda through. It's a contrast to many Democrats who will let things like the parliamentarian get in the way. Unfortunately, for the entire country, what they are enacting is horrific. So last night, they passed around $9 billion in rescissions, functionally gutting public broadcasting, but deeply cutting foreign aid as well. The legislation moves to the House and this is a rescission of already appropriated funds. This is exceedingly rare. It hasn't happened in over 20 years.
Starting point is 00:04:58 Trump tried in 2018. It did not pass the Senate at the time. And basically we've talked about impoundment on this show before, but under the Impoundment Control Act passed in the 70s, the president may request for Congress, because Congress has the power of the purse, for the rescission of funds that have already been authorized. And they have a 45-day timeline deadline to approve it. And if they don't approve it, then the money should be spent as has been allocated. But we know via these like doge cuts and also it's really the Project 2025 Russ Vote agenda, the Office of Management and Budget, that they have already just been not spending certain money cutting things illegally.
Starting point is 00:05:54 This is the legal avenue by which Trump can basically gut the federal government. Public broadcasting is essential for rural communities. We'll hit on that angle in just a bit. But here is Patty Murray, Senator, confronting Russ Vote. This was two days ago, this questioning here. This was June 25th. Oh, it was June 25th? I'm sorry about that. I thought she posted it two days ago, I think. So appreciate that, Brian. But this is just a good exchange because it explains how they're going to move forward with these rescissions. Russ Vogt says Moore is coming and she lays it out here when questioning him in the Senate.
Starting point is 00:06:37 You even publicly said you may well try to do an end run around Congress by requesting rescissions in the last 45 days of the fiscal year and then pretending that even if Congress fails to approve them, you can rescind those funds anyway. So let me tell you, that is not how the law works. The President does not have a line item veto. Your notion of this pocket rescission defies common sense and by the way the plain text of the law. Director Vought, will you commit to this committee that you will not attempt to do an end run around Congress with this so-called pocket rescission, something members on both sides of this dais have made clear is outright illegal? Senator, there's a lot of mischaracterizations
Starting point is 00:07:25 into my previous comments. I would just say that we believe that we have, under the law, numerous options with regard to how to achieve savings, including rescissions that are timed at the end of the fiscal year. General accounting office has articulated that earlier in the life of the atomic control act.
Starting point is 00:07:48 This should be a yes or no, and what I hear you is all kinds of word salad to make sure that you are letting us know that you intend to do things that are outside the intent of the law. Yeah. So this involves basically exactly what they're doing here, where they're transmitting this precision proposal to Congress so late in the fiscal year that it kind of just basically formalizes what they've already been doing and the this seems to be something that they're going to be pursuing going forward with more of these kinds of pocket rescissions. Here is Representative McGarvey of Kentucky, a Democrat.
Starting point is 00:08:32 He went on MSNBC and he spoke a bit about how this gutting of public broadcasting is going to affect rural communities that are already about to see major hospital closures. This affects things like disaster preparedness, communication in rural areas that don't have the infrastructure that cities do. And he explains that well here. With devastating consequences. And so there have been senators who have raised those kinds of concerns, not just in Kentucky, but in
Starting point is 00:09:05 states like South Dakota and Maine. And that being said, it still looks like this package is going to go through. So then where does that leave your concerns? Does it mean that the state has... No, that was out. I'm sorry. The in is at 114. Yep. It's okay. But specifically when it comes to the public broadcasting piece, you've talked a lot about the way that those kinds of cuts to radio programs in your state could hamper people's ability to even be aware of what's going on in an emergency, which comes against the backdrop of questions of whether people were warned in Texas. Talk us through the implications of clawing back this funding.
Starting point is 00:09:41 Yeah, this bill is another slap in the face to Kentuckians, because look at Kentucky, we're a rural state. Already this year we have had 46 extreme weather events, floods, tornadoes in Kentucky. Your local news station doesn't cover every corner of the state. The cell phone reception can be spotty at best when you're in rural Kentucky, and these radio stations are the lifeline.
Starting point is 00:10:04 It's the way we get alerts, it's the way we get warnings to people. And when you're talking about a tornado coming down in western Kentucky, or eastern Kentucky getting flooded in between the mountains, seconds matter. This isn't just minutes, seconds can matter. And it can be the difference between getting you and your family to safety or not with devastating consequences. And so there have been senators who... Devastating consequences. And that, we're going to see more of this in rural areas. I don't understand, I don't know if people are prepared for the impacts that this is going to have on places that already have such threadbare infrastructure. Like this
Starting point is 00:10:45 rescission essentially cuts over the entirety of the federal appropriation to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. There are going to be major media layoffs and the NPR, PBS, that's going to be at the front of people's minds. But it's the broadcasting in these rural areas, in these areas that need communication, that it's going to have a major impact. People will likely die because of this, because there aren't going to be fair warnings about storms or tornadoes or flooding, in addition to the fact that the administration is gutting our ability to accurately predict the weather, cutting weather balloons, cutting staff. We already saw the deadly consequences in Texas of a austerity mindset with the Republican
Starting point is 00:11:41 Party down there, exacerbated by the austerity mindset from the Department of Homeland Security and that insane rule by Kristi Noem that any grant over $100,000 has to go through her personal approve, get her personal sign off. She waited over 72 hours in that instance. There are probably kids that or people that could potentially have been saved if she didn't have that rule in place and they expedited things. These things matter. They have impacts. This is part of a long-term fascist attack on our information ecosystem and the end,
Starting point is 00:12:19 and the coming at a time where local newspapers aren't picking up the slack, they're actually folding or being bought up by giant venture capital firms or something like that. We have less and less actual reporting from these communities and public radio plays a massive role. Like the Grand Forks flood in 1997, Minnesota public Radio was all over that. But you have people like Matt Taibbi saying, well, it's actually too partisan. And people that don't actually know what role these institutions serve and can only think about it in terms of what they've meant for their career. Right. And I should correct myself. This isn't technically a pocket rescission because the
Starting point is 00:13:04 next fiscal year begins on October 1st, but that's what we should expect is coming. Because it's a workaround to get this radical agenda of slashing the government to the point that it doesn't function. It's a way that they feel that they can formalize it. This rescission though, hey, if the House passes it and Trump signs it into law, this is like the legitimate way
Starting point is 00:13:30 that you're able to do this. And it just is another piece of evidence to show how completely beholden the Republican Party is to this cult of personality at the very top. Like all of these Republican lawmakers, Republican lawmakers disproportionately represent rural communities. This isn't news to anybody. They are voting to immiserate their own constituents because of the cult of personality at the top. And these rescissions are gonna keep
Starting point is 00:13:59 coming as vote has warned. So I mean, and the bigger piece of the bill too that we should definitely touch on is the $8 billion that is being clawed back for foreign aid. So John Thune was able to save the George W Bush era program of a meager $400 million for PEPFAR, which is the HIV program that radical Marxist George W. Bush put into place at the beginning of his first term. So they did include that, but save that, they're just completely doing whatever Donald Trump says, rubber stamping. This whole rescission stuff, and I don I don't you know this is basic constitutionality and you look at like oh where did this start where presidents started saying oh you know that
Starting point is 00:14:51 agreement that Congress had about how to appropriate funds I don't like that anymore. Oh how about Richard Nixon in 72? Yep. What a great, this is again like the long-term like fascist attack on this country by the right This this is basic constitutional stuff Congress should determine how to appropriate funds and the president should be able to come back after those agreements are made saying But not the stuff not the stuff for them. Yep, right Especially because this was appropriated by the previous administration But you know, that's- What's the point of Congress?
Starting point is 00:15:27 Exactly. Trump, Trump, the Republicans have successfully corrupted the judiciary and have made Congress basically a completely immobile and incapable body except to do whatever Donald Trump wants. President Nixon broke president when fresh off an overwhelming electoral victory in 1972 he refused to spend money that hadn't been appropriated for several social programs. Oh yeah, what happened then? Yep. In a moment we'll be talking to Chip Gibbons, but first a word from some of our sponsors.
Starting point is 00:16:00 Have you ever browsed an incognito mode? Well, it's probably not as incognito as you think. Hate to break it to you. Google recently settled a $5 billion lawsuit after being accused of secretly tracking users in incognito mode. Google's defense? Well, incognito does not mean invisible. Yikes.
Starting point is 00:16:21 In fact, all your online activity is 100% visible to a ton of third parties unless you use ExpressVPN. Visit expressvpn.com slash majority and you can get an extra four months free. Without ExpressVPN, third parties like your internet service provider, your mobile network provider, your wifi, etc. on school network admins, they can see every website you visit even if you're in incognito mode. ExpressVPN reroutes 100% of your traffic through secure encrypted servers so third parties cannot see your browsing history.
Starting point is 00:16:54 ExpressVPN is the best because it hides your IP address, makes it extremely difficult for third parties to track your activity online, and it's easy to use. You just fire up the app, you click one button, and you get protected. It works on all of your devices, your phone, your laptop, tablets, and more. So you can just stay private on the go and it's one click and you're good. ExpressVPN, it's a must for me when I'm in airports, as they mention. I sometimes like to do some work, some in coffee shops and things like that. You gotta just fire it up, but it takes a second.
Starting point is 00:17:28 One click and you're good to go. Protect your online privacy today by visiting ExpressVPN.com slash majority. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash majority and you can get an extra four months free ExpressVPN.com slash majority We'll put a link to ExpressVPN in the description wherever you're listening to or watching this Our other sponsor of the show today is naked wines I'm a sucker for wine. It's a vice of mine, 100 percent, but it's not a vice. It's just like in moderation. You're good. You're good. And especially now that the wedding's over, I'm back to like kind of my regular wine consumption. And I'm not
Starting point is 00:18:22 dieting anymore. And naked wines is really helping me out in that regard. Ever walk into a store and you have no idea what wine to get? Yeah, me too. I've stopped wasting time at the store and staring at a giant wall of wine and not knowing what to pick. And that is why I love our next sponsor, Naked Wines. There's nothing that screams summer like a good bottle of chilled rosé. I love wine. you know, I may not know exactly how it's made, the ins and outs of it, but Naked Wines, they figure it out for you. This podcast is sponsored by Naked Wines.
Starting point is 00:19:00 Naked Wines is a wine club that directly connects you to the world's best independent wine makers, so you can get a world-class wine delivered straight to your door. And if you use code MAJORITY for the code and password at NAKEDWINES.COM, you can get six bottles for just $39.99. I had this Chianti from Naked Wines that I really loved, I think it was last week. I love cracking open a bottle of wine, putting away my phone and just being present in the moment with my family and friends and Naked Wines helps me do it. Naked brings you amazing wine straight from the winery at up to 60% less than what you would pay in store by cutting out extra costs like middleman markups.
Starting point is 00:19:44 Naked Wines has been around for over 15 years and backed over 90 independent winemakers around the world to make the wine that you love to drink. Now it's the time to join the Naked Wines community. Head to nakedwines.com slash majority and click enter voucher and put in my code MAJORITY for both the code and password for six bottles of wine for just 39.99 with shipping included. That's 100% off your first bottles
Starting point is 00:20:11 at nakedwines.com slash majority and use the code and password majority for six bottles of wine for 39.99. Check out the show notes and you can get six bottles of wine for $39.99. Head to NakedWines.com and use code MAJORITY for both code and password and that will be linked below in the description. Alright, quick break and when we come back we'll be joined by Chip Gibbon. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:20:46 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:21:02 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:21:38 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We are back and we are joined now by Chip Givens, Policy Director of Defending Rights and Descent, contributor to Jacobin, here to talk about the state of free speech in the Trump era, specifically with Gaza and Mahmoud Khalil and more. Chip, thanks so much for coming on the show today. Well, thank you so much for having me.
Starting point is 00:22:10 Of course. So, you've been updating people on defending rights and dissent on the, it's called Gaza First Amendment Alert. You're doing this on a weekly basis, kind of collecting all of the egregious free speech violations under the Trump administration as it relates to speech on Gaza in particular. But obviously there is a war on free speech on multiple fronts. I mean, we could talk about the CBS thing for a while, but let's just stick to the Gaza stuff for now. Zoran Mamdani, this victory, the fact that it's sending such panic throughout Washington
Starting point is 00:22:56 is hilarious to me on one side, but then you have things like, as you wrote about in your latest First Amendment alert, Representative Andy Ogles calling for him to be deported, Donald Trump talking about Zoran Mamdani being deported. Just speak about that case a bit and how dangerous it is to be speaking about deporting somebody based on their political speech. Well I have to thank my colleague, Nathan Fuller. He's the one who wrote that article for the Gaza First Amendment alert.
Starting point is 00:23:28 He did a really good job. But no, the Madami calls for deportation are part of a larger trend that we've seen. It isn't just Trump. It goes back to Hoover and the Palmer raids, when we would use immigration law as a tool for political policing. It's very disturbing to see somebody, obviously, defending rights and dissent as a C3 is nonpartisan.
Starting point is 00:23:51 We have no position on the election. But it is disturbing to see someone win a democratic victory, and the response of people who are unhappy with what the voters have done is to try to deport that person, denaturalize them, expel them. And the various things they're bringing up as grounds for deportation, he was in DSA or is in DSA, I mean, that's straight out the Red Scare, both of them, or that he had a rap song where he said, give my love to the Holy Land Five, I think that's the impermissible
Starting point is 00:24:23 line. The Holy Land Five were five Muslim Americans who were ridiculously persecuted for providing aid to the people of Gaza, the Palestinian people of Gaza. And the U.S. government has this theory of terrorism per the U.S. government. In the prosecution, they said Hamas had three parts to it, Per the US government and the prosecution, they said Hamas had three parts to it, a military wing, and of course that military wing engages in acts outside of international humanitarian law that I condemn, a political wing, a social wing. And if you give money to charity to help orphans,
Starting point is 00:24:57 to help hospitals, to help feed people, and that charity goes through a Hamas controlled charity network or charity committee, you are guilty of material support for terrorism and we will put you in prison. The US government never alleged the Holy Land Five bought guns. They never alleged they were involved in violence. They were literally accused of helping orphans and funding hospitals on the grounds that those were Hamas hospitals, Hamas-protected orphans.
Starting point is 00:25:27 And of course, today Israel bombs hospitals using that same logic that the US government introduced in this case, in part through Israeli intelligence. And every single civil liberties group, every single human rights group, every single group that just gives humanitarian aid overseas that I know of, oppose that prosecution because it is such an affront to the First Amendment, it is such an affront to humanitarian aid, and it is such an affront to basic human decency.
Starting point is 00:25:56 And you know, if you say, okay, give my love to these five political prisoners convicted of humanitarian aid, you have to be denaturalized and deported. That's material support for terrorism. So I think it's always disturbing to see immigration law used in a political context, although political policing is arguably the original purpose of US immigration law, going back to John Adams, and certainly going back to J. Edgar Hoover. But it is even more concerning when you know the crime is basic support for Palestinian rights, basic support for political prisoners, and basic free speech. So this is an incredibly disturbing case. It is deeply rooted in the American tradition. I wrote a piece
Starting point is 00:26:39 for Jacobin called Crushing Descent Through Immigration Law, which predates this, that looked at sort of the Palmer raids, the attacks on Harry Bridges, a famous labor leader, the Los Angeles Apes, Simuutamamut Halil, Palestinians. And it's just a long trend. And the Trump administration is able to tap into the worst parts of the American national security apparatus in order to carry out its war on free speech. And it's worth pointing out, we didn't start the Gaza First Amendment alert under Trump, we started it under Biden. Yes, it's though, because
Starting point is 00:27:14 we said we are enduring the worst crisis for civil liberty since the war on terror. Now, Trump looked at that and said, let's go back to McCarthyism. Let's go back to the former raids. So I, you know, I no longer say it can't get worse because they always proved to me in Washington it can. But you know, yeah, so we are we were in a war on terror like situation, and we are rapidly devolving into a Palmer raids type situation. Well, if you if you don't mind expanding on the Palmer raids, because I think a lot of our audience is familiar with the parallels to the Red Scare. I mean, you'd have to be blind not to see the parallels there.
Starting point is 00:27:52 But the Palmer raids, and there's also a lot of discussion about historical parallels. There were many to the Vietnam War and the lead up to the 2024 race, but there are a lot of parallels to pre the Gilded Age and pre Great Depression time periods. Talk a little bit about that that period of history and you know, Herbert Hoover's racism as well and how he used the Palmer raids and immigration for similar ends. Sure. So the the Palmer raids are part of what's called the first Red Scare. The US historians generally divide the Red Scars into two categories. The first Red Scare, which happened under Woodrow Wilson after World War I, of which the Palmer
Starting point is 00:28:34 raids were a huge part of, and the second Red Scare is what's generally called McCarthyism. There's a very famous quote from Alan Shresker, the leading historian of McCarthyism, that if we knew then then what we know would call it Hooverism. And J. Edgar Hoover is the driving force in both Red Scares. The Palmer Raids are the named after the Attorney General Palmer. They are the brainchild of J. Edgar Hoover, who at this point heads a division within the nascent FBI called originally the radical division, which why is there a radical division? It wasn't because they were radical, they were policing radicals. And then it becomes General Intelligence Division. And Hoover is really
Starting point is 00:29:16 into using intelligence to spy on political speech. Some of the tasks he was given was to prove the wobblies and the Soviet unions were behind the fact that black people were fighting back the lynch mobs, because why else would you fight back to a lynch mob unless Lenin or the IWW told you to? You know, real, real, real galaxy brain thinking going on in the US government. Why would you protest a genocide if you're not being funded by Qatar, obviously? Yes, or Cuba or Iran. Every day they pick a new evil doer who's funded this. When the Wall Street Journal came with Cuba's behind them, like, okay, you guys really are scraping the barrel. But he didn't have a legal basis to be doing this. And what he looked at was he said, I'm going to use immigration law. And part of the reason why Hoover liked immigration law so much was because it was outside the normal court system. And
Starting point is 00:30:09 Hoover's belief was that you had no constitutional rights in immigration proceedings. So he there's something at the time called the Anarchist Exclusion Act that allows someone to be thrown out the country being an anarchist. And Hoover raids, originally it's the Russian Workers Union, later it's various communist parties because there were two communist parties who could not get along with each other. I'm sure we're so shocked that the communist could not find themselves in one party for differences that none of us can understand either now or then. And they do these really abusive raids. They get at the time immigration enforcement through the Department of Labor. And in some of these
Starting point is 00:30:51 situations, they raid headquarters and arrest everyone. And they get warrants via telegram. They telegram the names of the people after they've been arrested. In other cases, I've heard they use John Doe warrants, just a warrant for no one. And they arrest these people, they subject them to conditions that are tantamount to torture, and it's considered a really ugly stain on our history. Whenever you're an FBI, whenever you're nominated for the FBI Director, Emma, they're always going to ask you, has the FBI ever done anything wrong? And the answer is always the Palmer Raids and King. That's how bad it is. And it's eventually ended because Hoover has no deportation authority. And the new Secretary of Labor comes in and says, you guys have to stop doing this. This is
Starting point is 00:31:40 ridiculous. And Hoover immediately concludes, logically, of course, the Secretary of Labor and the Wilson administration is a secret wobbly. Because who else? Who else? But what's so important to note about this is that he loses his intelligence division for about a decade. But he brings it back. And this is the same division that carries out, you know, 10 year interregnum, 10 year interveiw, that carries out cointel pro spies on King. And that really for Hoover, immigration law was a pretext for political police. He lacked the other authorities at that time to do so.
Starting point is 00:32:20 And when he expanded into broad based surveillance of what he called subversives, he moved beyond it. And I think today's attacks on the student protesters who are non-citizens absolutely are following the Hoover playbook. A lot of this comes from the Heritage Foundation, who has played a very long role in formulating U.S. national security policy, going back to the Reagan administration. And they come up with the idea of going after visa holders, but they're very clear,
Starting point is 00:32:50 their ultimate goal is they wanna come after citizens. They want to make supporting Palestine akin to material support for terrorism. And obviously we should not be attacking immigrants. Obviously we should not be deporting people on the basis of their speech. But if you believe for a second, this will stay limited to non-citizen holders if it's not opposed. Just look at how Hoover used the Palmer Raids to launch his horrifying semi-totalitarian intelligence apparatus that still haunts us to this day to a certain extent.
Starting point is 00:33:25 Yeah, well, can you expand a little bit on how these systems of suppression, surveillance, and criminalization of speech shifted within federal law enforcement, say, from focusing on communist subversion, the threat from within, to a counter-terrorism effort to suppress. But they're basically similar systems. It's just more about terrorism versus maybe like explicitly saying we're going after communist subversion. I'm writing an entire book on this subject that will be out from Virgo in 2026. It's called the Interior Bureau. But no, you're correct. The original sort of apparatus that Hoover built was based on what's called a counter subversive belief. And it's very rooted in late 19th century, early 20th century
Starting point is 00:34:20 beliefs that we should spy on anarchist, communist, socialist. During the Cold War period, he's able to elevate it to a foreign policy. He's able to use the foreign policy concerns with communism, elevate his surveillance apparatus to that level. But in the mid 70s, there's an attack on the surveillance, on the CIA covert actions, on war in Vietnam, and almost instantly in the mid-70s.
Starting point is 00:34:49 And you'll see people talking about this, and I think it was Counter Spy magazine, they shift from talking about communism to terrorism. And one of the dissenting opinions in the church committee from Barry Goldwater, this is the mid-70s, says these performance will prevent us from tackling terrorism. And then the Heritage Foundation arrives on the scene and they get Samuel T. Francis, who was later fired from the Washington Times in 1995 for being racist. How you're too
Starting point is 00:35:17 racist for the Washington Times in 1995, I don't know. And a former House Un-American Activities Committee member, and they write this ridiculous white paper called The Coming Threat of Terrorism. If we don't do something about terrorism, we'll end up like Rhodesia, an apartheid state, which is an interesting comparison. And they go through all of the reasons we're threatened by terrorism. The FBI had to end its 26 year investigation of the Socialist Workers Party. The Subversive Activities Control Board
Starting point is 00:35:49 no longer exists anymore. Police Red Squads no longer keep lists of communists. So all of the anti-communism stuff we're now being told is about terrorism. And the Reagan administration plays into this. And in the early 80s, there's a terrorism subcommittee that is absolutely key to the sort of rebranding of political policing for communism
Starting point is 00:36:15 as being about anti-terrorism. The Nation magazine and places like that are writing in the 80s, they're bringing back McCarthy, this is decades from 9-11, they're bringing back McCarthyism under the guise of counter-terrorism. And the big thing they wanted to do to sort of bring back the Hoover policies as far as they ever went away, and in my research they really never did, was this argument that we have to do preventative surveillance.
Starting point is 00:36:42 We have to spy on people before they become terrorists and the way you do that is looking at the same people you always look at. And after 9-11, that became the official position of the FBI. The FBI was no longer going to use law enforcement to prosecute terrorists. They were going to use intelligence to prevent terrorism before it happened and proactively go out and find them. And, you know, part of the FBI guidelines now are that FBI agents have to engage in proactively finding terrorism and in order to do that, they're allowed to open investigations into American citizens called assessments with no factual basis to believe that person is committed a crime or threatens national security. And of course, the FBI defines terrorism in ideological terms. The terrorism categories are
Starting point is 00:37:31 anarchist extremists, Puerto Rican extremists, black extremists. So if you're trying to find an anarchist extremist before it becomes a terrorist, you look for an anarchist or a Puerto Rican or a black person who doesn't want to be killed by the police. It's fascinating, right? Whenever Black Americans don't want to be lynched or murdered by police, we treat that as some sort of national security problem, as opposed to stop killing people. Well, I mean, we have the reporting from Trevor Aronson and we had him on the show about how it's been documented that the FBI infiltrated Black Lives Matter protests via this shady character in the instance that he kind of highlighted as well. But I mean, bringing it back to the terrorism piece, because I think it's just so important to nail this down here. The fact that it went, the turn maybe happened
Starting point is 00:38:30 on terrorism earlier than I thought, right? I would have said that this is when it's kind of formalized in the post-911 war on terror era, but is your contention that it kind of just more expanded and exploded and perhaps the surveillance technology to deploy these tactics that it just kind of grew out of, was an outgrowth of the War on Terror and was less like, just it didn't begin basically under Bush? No, it didn't begin under Bush. I have documents that I got through a lawsuit that show what the FBI were doing right before 9-11.
Starting point is 00:39:12 They're spying on World Bank protesters, the same JTTFs, Joint Terrorism and Fast Force, that are going to be investigating the Pentagon plane and the Twin Towers are spying on World Bank protesters. And what my contention is, is that there was a very deliberate project. And again, you can go back and read what they were saying in the nation and elsewhere in the 70s and 80s to rebrand counter subversion, McCarthyism,
Starting point is 00:39:39 anti-communist counter-terrorism. And 9-11 really escalates that project. I think the analogy would be the Iraq war. Iraq had nothing to do and 9-11 really escalates that project. I think the analogy would be the Iraq war. Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11. Clinton was bombing them once every three days. They were being sanctioned. You had all of these people sort of advocating for bombing Iraq and going in there and after 9-11 they were able to sort of use that to make that the policy. So the lie we were told after 9-11 is that the FBI, the NSA, the CIA, etc. couldn't stop the attacks because of the church committee restrictions and the protections of civil liberties. And that narrative, even though I have files that show them taking pictures of
Starting point is 00:40:18 everyone who attended a college meeting about the World Bank and identifying them. And if you can do that, you can certainly find Al Qaeda. I think so. Right. You have the authority to do so. That became the official narrative. And then which is quite convenient, which is quite convenient given what we know that basically Bush hand waved away in the months leading up to the attack because of his own incompetence. Then the answer is just more surveillance, which is what they always wanted, or an, and invading Iraq, which is what Cheney always wanted to anyway.
Starting point is 00:40:47 Absolutely. Yes. And the thing with surveillance is every time it fails, they get more powers. And I mean, the surveillance fails to prevent terrorism for two reasons. First of all, some competence. They're not very good at looking at terrorism. The second reason is, I think political bias and purpose. I mean, if you have people from Al-Qaeda in the country plotting 9-11 and you're too busy looking for Quakers who might do a sit-in about Moumiya Abu Jamal, right, which is your priority, if you pick the second one as
Starting point is 00:41:16 your priority, that's a problem. But I also think the problem goes back to the fact that the preventative policing mindset that they embrace is a project for political surveillance. It's not a project for keeping us safe. So FBI surveillance is very good at finding Quakers. It's very good at spying on Black Lives Matter. It's not very good at stopping terrorism. It's not very good at stopping spies. And the reason why is it's designed for the first purpose,
Starting point is 00:41:42 not the second one. But no one ever talks about that. Right. And just to bring it kind of full circle back to we started talking about Zoran Mamdani, the threats against him, but this is not hypothetical for many people in this country. I mean, we have obviously Mahmoud Khalil, who missed the birth of his child because he was locked up for months over his political speech. You've written about him fairly extensively. Can you speak about that case and its role in this overall mosaic of suppression of free speech under the guise of counterterrorism, et cetera. Yeah. Mahmoud Khalil is a Columbia graduate student and a green car holder who was arrested and detained initially under a determination by Rubio that his presence in this country posed a threat to US foreign policy or consequences to US foreign policy.
Starting point is 00:42:41 He's one of several non-citizens, including Ramesa Azturk, Moshe Medali, and Batar Kansuri, who have been subjected to similar treatment or similar persecution. He's sort of come to symbolize the Trump administration's ideological deportation policies and the way that Eugene Debs sort of came to symbolize the abuse of the espionage after World War I. But there's other individuals as well. And what we know is that Trump campaigned on deporting student visa holders who weren't sufficiently enthusiastic about Israel's genocide, or who can believe such people can exist. And in this sort of lame duck period of the Biden administration, these far right groups like Bataar
Starting point is 00:43:25 start boasting that they are preparing dossiers, including using facial recognition technology. Then Trump comes into office, he signs a series of executive orders, clearly aimed at removing individuals from the country who support Palestinian rights, as well as creating this vast social media surveillance apparatus, again, aimed at non-citizens.
Starting point is 00:43:48 But once we start spying on people on social media for their political views, I don't think it ends with non-citizens. And then we start to see these arrests, Khalil, Asturk, Madali, Kansuri, and they're all initially brought under this rubio determination and it's very interesting because it's a Cold War era law and it allows the Secretary of State to throw some out of the country if they make a determination they have consequences adverse consequences for US foreign policy and thanks to a Bill Clinton era ruling of the Board of Immigration Appeals, once the Secretary
Starting point is 00:44:28 of State signs that piece of paper, an immigration judge has to rule that person removable. There is no defense. Immigration courts aren't real courts. They work for Pam Bondi, or the Attorney General, who is right now Pam Bondi. And over the years, people have tried to challenge these sorts of immigration enforcement scenes in federal courts. And Congress has responded by stripping the courts of a lot of their jurisdiction.
Starting point is 00:44:53 But what Khalil, Azturk, Madali, and others have done is to file federal habeas petitions. And these sort of are challenges to their detention. But they allow them to challenge the constitutionality of the order. So you basically have these systems where you have one proceeding going on in immigration court and one proceeding going on in federal court, and it can be quite contradictory. For example, a immigration judge refused to grant Oz Turk, who is accused of writing an
Starting point is 00:45:21 op-ed, terrible, terrible crime, writing an op-ed, refused to grant her bail, but a federal judge did grant her bail. So it gets like this weird legal whiplash that's hard to follow. But in Halleal's case, the immigration judge who works for Pam Bondi and previously was an ICE lawyer, real neutral party, ruled he was removable. They went to a federal habeas, they filed a federal habeas court petition, which is in New Jersey, asking to prevent Rubio from making the foreign policy determination,
Starting point is 00:45:55 from stopping the Trump administration, from enforcing the policy of arresting, detaining, and removing non-citizens who criticize Israel. And the judge gave them a partial victory stating that he could not be detained based on the Rubio determination. The Trump administration then turned around and said actually now we're detaining him on the basis that he refused to tell the immigration officer he was a member of a student group at Columbia. Again, real serious crime here, student clubs at Columbia
Starting point is 00:46:27 or had an internship at the United Nations Refugee for Palestine program. And the judge eventually releases him, but both the habeas petition hearings in New Jersey and the immigration hearings are ongoing in their separate sort of court systems. And there's a fight right now about whether or not the injunction that says he can't be removed on the ruba determination means they have to stop the immigration proceedings to remove him for doing so. And the immigration judge is totally interested
Starting point is 00:47:00 in continuing on these unconstitutional proceedings. And the other interesting thing is when they slap down the foreign policy grounds, the Trump administration always runs and says, oh, but there's this second charge of him not telling the immigration officers about his student club activities or internships. The immigration judge has made no ruling on that. She's refused to hear evidence countering it or offering relief from it on the basis that the sole reason for her finding of removable is the Rubio foreign policy determination, which is just an incredibly Kafkaesque proceeding.
Starting point is 00:47:40 We bring two charges against you, one of which is unconstitutional and not permissible. And you know, but we base it off of that one. Therefore, you can't challenge the evidence under the second one. And when we can't get away with it under the first one, we go for the second one. But you can't challenge that one because we're doing the first one. But it makes no sense. It's just it's it's Kafkaesque. Well, I mean, it's, it's also just, I think, notable that the Department of Homeland Security was created after 9-11. ICE was created after 9-11. And that,
Starting point is 00:48:14 perhaps, in terms of what accelerated this level of just straight-up fascism, honestly, honestly, is that merging of that kind of nebulous immigration proceedings with the nature of homeland security, right? So it exploits this broken court system, if you can even call it that, in order to suppress free speech under the guise of national security. It's operating outside of our constitutional protections in almost every conceivable way. Yeah, I mean, and there's a long march to the sort of national securitization of immigration law. Initially when Hoover did the Palmer raids, immigration was the
Starting point is 00:49:04 authority of the Department of Labor. And because they wanted to make it more what we would now call national security focused, they move it to the Department of Justice in 1940. And then that gets a lot of bad things going. And the Reagan administration creates this committee called the Alien Border Committee that brings what was then the INS, I think that was a precursor to ICE, CIA and FBI together and announces that immigration enforcement is now the front line of terrorism enforcement and the
Starting point is 00:49:35 people who worked in immigration enforcement were very surprised to learn this. And then you know after 9-11 we put the final nail in the coffin and we put it in this new thing called DHS, this new thing called Homeland Security, which sounds a lot like the fatherland, you know? I don't know who picked that term. It was not a good one. But yeah, no, there is a long march of sort of first using immigration authorities because of their low constitutional protections to attack political speech and then increasingly putting immigration authorities in the national security realm in order to further expand the use of this.
Starting point is 00:50:13 Well, Chip Gibbons, really, really fascinating stuff. People should check out Defending Rights and Dissent and also all your pieces in Jacobin. We will put a link to that in the description down below and wherever people are listening to or watching this. Chip, thanks so much for your time today. Thank you for having me. Of course. Quick break and when we come back, we are going to be speaking to Wren Robinek. I'll confirm the pronunciation in just a second about Elon Musk's supercomputer the pronunciation in just a second about Elon Musk's supercomputer poisoning Memphis. Yeah. I'm a man of my word I'm a man of my word I'm a man of my word I'm a man of my word I'm a man of my word
Starting point is 00:51:30 I'm a man of my word I'm a man of my word I'm a man of my word I'm a man of my word I'm a man of my word I'm a man of my word I'm a man of my word I'm a man of my word I'm a man of my word Yeah. We are back and we are joined now by Ren Brabineck, who is a Nashville based freelance journalist,
Starting point is 00:52:52 wrote a piece for the Tennessee Outlook entitled A Billionaire, An AI Supercomputer, Toxic Emissions and a Memphis Community That Did Nothing Wrong. Ren, thanks so much for coming on the show today. Thank you for having me. And just real quick, it's the Tennessee Lookout. Oh, I'm so sorry. Lookout. Lookout. That's okay. I appreciate that. That's my bad. The Tennessee Lookout. So, Elon Musk, he is basically poisoning this community. I've been reading about this in bits and pieces for a few months at this point, but your piece just laid it out really well. Tell us a bit about Colossus and this supercomputer facility that has been constructed in Memphis. And it's I think the it's going to be the world's largest supercomputer.
Starting point is 00:53:49 What's the state of things down there in Tennessee? Yeah, I mean, you really have to love the dystopian names that the tech guys give all of their various things that they come up with. So Colossus, Elon Musk started building it in 2024. It's in South Memphis or Southwest Memphis more specifically. And he really fast tracked it. It's already up and running. It's already completed. He only had a permit for 15 methane gas powered turbines to run it. But he's actually using 33 and we were
Starting point is 00:54:27 able to find that out by the Southern Environmental Law Center actually going up in the sky and using thermal imaging to look at the center and find out that there are in fact way more turbines being utilized than what was allowed for and he's essentially pulled this off with almost no public comment or decision-making from the actual communities that this center is located in. And it's kind of following this technocratic ideology of move fast and break things while paying very little attention to the communities affected along the way. And I can get more into like the specifics on the effects of the outputs of the facility and also the inputs as well. Please do. It's incredible that he is just completely violating the permit. I'm sure
Starting point is 00:55:13 that he could just eat whatever fine later, right? This is very Elon Musk, move fast and break communities, I guess. But talk a little bit more about that impact then. Yeah, so the outputs is obviously the most concerning thing right off the back because it's affecting the communities themselves. We don't have the exact specifics because it's an unpermitted structure and inspectors haven't even been in yet.
Starting point is 00:55:43 This is all like a very rapidly developing situation, but it's likely the single largest source of smog forming pollutants in Memphis, Tennessee. It's estimated that the smog from this one plant is increasing, adding to the total smog in Memphis by somewhere between 30 and 60 percent. And what that's made up of is nitrogen oxide and formaldehyde, which obviously pollutes the air a lot. There's a direct connection between those pollutants and cardiovascular disease and respiratory disease. It's estimated from our report that the plant by itself is producing more nitrogen oxide and formaldehyde than the Valero refinery, the Tennessee Valley authorities, Allen Power Plant, the Memphis International Airport,
Starting point is 00:56:32 and the Draskławska chemical plant combined. So it's this massive industrial creator of these pollutants. Yeah, I know it's huge. It's huge. And which are also planetary warming, by the way. It doesn't get as much attention as CO2, but these pollutants do warm the planet. And it's all placed in a predominantly poor, predominantly African American community as well.
Starting point is 00:56:53 Yeah. And you write well in this piece about class dynamics and climate change, right? And internationally, I hadn't seen this map, but you cited this anthropologist, Jason Hickel, who has an estimate showing that by 2070, 2 billion people are going to be in areas that are extreme, where there will be extreme heat, and it might be unlivable. And that's almost 100% of that area is in the global south in areas like Latin America, Africa, parts of Asia. That total, as you write, less than 20% of historic carbon dioxide emissions, not the the wealthier countries, they're the big polluters like the United States, I mean, China too,
Starting point is 00:57:42 and others. And the people that are going to, that 2 billion figure is just, this is going to be more and more displacement, more and more refugees. But this is being basically replicated even domestically is also what you talk about. And that was kind of the point behind the piece because it's so frustrating reporting on environmental issues in the US because a lot of these, particularly as it pertains to the class dynamics, because a lot of this we hear all the time about how the Global South contributed the least to climate change, historically at least, and now they're going to suffer the most from
Starting point is 00:58:21 it. Pretty much everybody in the US is comfortable talking about that, excluding maybe climate deniers. But you don't really talk, you don't really get a lot of attention paid to how we're actually replicating that same model on a class basis here in the United States. And that's kind of why I wanted to report on this because it's really that kind of same situation if you have this predominantly very poor, very underprivileged neighborhoods in Memphis who are being affected by something that they contributed very little to in terms of their own emissions and their own contributions
Starting point is 00:58:55 to pollution and global warming and stuff like that. But they're the ones who have to suffer the most from it. And this supercomputer, is this for his Grok thing? Yeah, it's for Grok, which obviously Grok has been in the news a lot lately for some pretty controversial stuff. Polluting a historic- Yeah, so it's kind of silly because we don't really need it. Yeah, I mean, I'm sorry to interject, but I'm just the incredible villainy of polluting,
Starting point is 00:59:22 not any community that's polluted, It's a tragedy. But Memphis is like this historic city that is like for music purposes, for American culture, for civil rights, and the guys, Mecca Hitler, AI is poisoning it. I mean, I'm just trying to highlight the insanity of it and continue around apologies. No, that's it's it's it's sort of like I just saw a headline the other day about how the onion is like having to do like rituals to come up with new different ways to like actually make funny posts that are not real, because the reality is so crazy. But yeah, it is it's insane that that's what's happening. I mean, it would be devastating in any community, obviously,
Starting point is 01:00:08 but there is a historical analog here that the communities that tend to be devastated the most in the name of quote unquote progress and development tend to be poor communities because poor people don't have a voice, they don't have political strength, they don't have money, they don't kind of have the power to influence policy. And historically, you know, those sacrifices were made inequitably in the name of progress.
Starting point is 01:00:31 But now the sacrifices are being made exactly to, like you said, to power Mecca, Hitler, Grock, you know? Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty wild. It's incredible. Can you speak a little bit more about the racial and political dynamics in Memphis and like what the state's relationship with the predominantly black areas of the community are? Yeah, it's a little bit, I mean it's unfortunate because the city of Memphis itself is
Starting point is 01:01:01 predominantly a black city. It's run by Democrats. It has a black mayor, all these factors involved with that. And Elon Musk essentially cut deals with the city's leadership, some of which were unelected individuals. There are some representatives, like the state representative, Justin Pearson, who was able to get some comments from him and also he also published my article on his feed as well. He's sticking up for the communities there because he represents them. And unfortunately it was kind of some unelected
Starting point is 01:01:36 or appointed city managers that approved this. And it's sort of like this community, you know, Box Town and this area that's being shaft as it kind of always has been. And there's been some good opposition that's kind of coming out now. And there may be some good developments on the horizon that I plan on reporting more on in the future. But it was that move fast and break things that just happened so quickly at this this this facility, they broke ground on it just over a year ago, with very little public comment. And now it's already up and running and using more methane powered turbines than they even had permits for.
Starting point is 01:02:10 And lastly, I saw that the NAACP has filed and so other environmental groups are trying to stop the usage of these turbines in the supercomputer facility? Is there any recourse? Are there mechanisms right now to slow this in any way? What's happening in terms of fighting back against it? Yeah, the NAACP is working with the Southern Environmental Law Center to essentially try to stop South Memphis from becoming a sacrifice zone. And I use that term, like, for example, Cancer Alley, Louisiana's Cancer Alley, the Flint
Starting point is 01:02:52 Water Crisis area from my home state in Michigan. They're basically trying to step in and stop this from happening. And the way they would do that would be putting in like inspectors and managers on the facility. There's talk about shifting the way that the facility does its outputs and its inputs as well. It's unlikely that the facility is actually going to get shut down. I just, I mean, I hate to be pessimistic, but I highly doubt that would happen. It is possible though that with the lawsuit, because the lawsuit basically contends that
Starting point is 01:03:21 the facility is basically denying South Memphis residents from their constitutional right to clean air, which is a constitutional and human right. So it's possible we may be able to get some adjustments to how the facility operates and actually get them up to code and kind of push back on that move fast, break things ideology. That's kind of what I'm hoping to see in the future. Well, I really appreciate you coming on to tell us a bit about this and update folks. Ren Brabinek, apologies if I... You got it. Okay, I got it.
Starting point is 01:03:55 No, you nailed it. You nailed it. Yeah. Okay. You can read his piece in the Tennessee Lookout, A Billionaire, An AI Supercomputer, Toxic Emissions, and a Memphis Community That Did Nothing Wrong. toxic emissions and a Memphis community that did nothing wrong We'll put a link to that down below. Thanks so much for your time today. Really appreciate it Thank you for having me of course
Starting point is 01:04:14 With that folks We're gonna wrap up the free part of this program and head into the fun Part of the program where we will read your IMs Take your calls and more and talk about Jeffrey Epstein. Oh, yes. I'm enjoying that story Matt What's happening on left reckoning? Yeah left reckoning will have a Sunday show for everyone this patreon.com to stuff reckoning Sunday show
Starting point is 01:04:43 Patreon.com slash left reckoning to get the Sunday show. All right. And we're going to bring in Brandon in just a second. But this show relies on your support, people. If you like it, you like listening to us, you enjoy us telling you the horrible news. Well, if you become a member, you can keep us afloat. Keep us doing what we do. Join the majority report.com. Kyle Lex says, Excuse you, Emma, they identify as Mecca Hitler, not Grok. Yes, I did correct myself to make sure that Mecca Hitler was named accurately.
Starting point is 01:05:21 502 Drew Morgan McGarvey was my state Senate representative. He's great. He has a big future in politics. I hope that's good to hear. There he is. It's me. Brandon. How are you? I'm doing great. How are you guys doing? I'm doing well. I just realized you can kind of say let's go Brandon and people don't even think about Joe Biden anymore. It's just yeah, Brandon Sutton. It's just become part of like the little lexicon has become part of the community of practice. People just say it now and now that Joe Biden, he's rolled off into the sunset like the elves
Starting point is 01:05:58 at the end of Lord of the Rings. So like, you know, it's just it's just me. I'm Brandon now. Last last Brandon standing last Brandon standing. His appearance on the view with Jill was sort of the last time anyone seen him, isn't it? He was at the unfortunately to his credit at the Minnesota like funeral for those victims of political assassination. Yeah, he was like I saw him kneeling down. I was
Starting point is 01:06:26 like, boy, you may not want to do that. But he was, you know, I guess he had some help getting up. As a former president of the United States of America, we just simply don't have the net worth to ever see him again. Like, you know, you have to be earning at least six figures consistently to see Joe Biden anymore. Yeah. Do you remember the first funeral when Trump became president and it was the Obamas and George Bush and Bush was like drunk and sort of dancing on the I think it was the funeral
Starting point is 01:06:58 for like the Dallas cop that got shot. Am I remembering all this? Really? Bush doesn't drink. Well he seemed drunk, I guess. Well. He was sort of dancing on stage at a funeral, and people didn't get to sort of remember where he was. That's pretty great. What's happening on the discourse, Brandon?
Starting point is 01:07:15 And hello to Matt Binder as well. Hello. Yeah, we're streaming every day, enjoying going over the news, going over some conspiracies. I think tomorrow we might be learning about how, and I really want to emphasize we're learning how the pyramids have been used for human sacrifice time travel in the past and also present. It's just hard because I feel like every day now I kind of devolve into ranting about Epstein and
Starting point is 01:07:45 the lawlessness of our government. Um, because something like just like triggers me. So no, the Epstein stuff is fun. And I think it's also just like, look, after this video was doctored, I don't understand how anybody can have a question anymore about like what happened or, or, I mean about foul play at the very least and it's just like Amazing we'll talk about this in the fun half, but how they're just the more incompetent deep state They're having trouble covering it up because they're just stupid
Starting point is 01:08:18 As a conspiracy theorist online is a big time for me. Yes Yes, very much. So alright guys check out the discourse Matt Binder. What's a big time for me. Yes, yes, very much so. All right, guys, check out the discourse. Matt Binder, what's happening on your shows? Just check out Leftist Mafia tonight, live at 8.30 p.m. Eastern Time at youtube.com slash Matt Binder. And I'll see you all there tonight. All right. That I want people are asking me in my chat to ask you to be back on Left Reckoning. So I'm going to humble myself by challenging you to have me back on Left This Mafia. Wait, you said Left Reckoning once and then Left This Mafia the second time. Actually, both.
Starting point is 01:08:57 I'm trying to get on both shows. Everyone is saying I should go on both shows. And so I'm humbling myself by challenging you both to have me on. Okay. No, let's do it. And you know what? I'm going to Uno card that and say, I'll be happy to be on the discourse if you would so kindly invite me.
Starting point is 01:09:18 You pulled the reverse on him. Oh, okay. Well, stream or podcast, because I would love to have you on. I think that, you know, you were ahead of the curve when describing that we live in a scam economy. And I think the scam has become the entire economy now. Like now it's just, you know, there's just scams all the way down. Yeah, no, everything's a scam.
Starting point is 01:09:38 Yeah, we're a scam country now. I saw a viral like article that said Uno was going to be in Las Vegas. And then I just look it up. And of course, it's fake because I saw a viral article that said Uno was going to be in Las Vegas and then I just look it up and of course it's fake because I saw it on Twitter. They don't have the courage. They don't have the courage. They know I would own the town by the end of the weekend. I think Uno is trying to do their own thing. That's why they knocked that down. They're trying to set up their own Uno playing locations locations like uno bars or something like that. We're talking about the card game? Yes.
Starting point is 01:10:07 Yeah. But now they're going to have money on it? No, we're talking about the Spanish word for one, not the card game. I was thinking it was some like Spanish pop star that was doing something like I don't understand people are as animated about the card game. No, it's like a thing now. They're trying to make it. There was a viral rumor that it's going to be on Las Vegas tables, but it's not going to be, I guess.
Starting point is 01:10:30 When you have these online gambling sites where you could literally bet on absolutely anything under the sun, does an Uno card game table at a casino sound that out of the crazy? It does not. It does not. If anything, it sounds too cool because in reality we live in a world where like we people bet on slap fighting and like sperm racing like we have people placing bets on whether or not Kamala put ads on our on our stream it was insane the only thing being democratized by capitalism right now is gambling addictions into younger
Starting point is 01:11:07 and younger people. Like, why not just have, I don't know, is it Bluey? Is Bluey the child star cartoon? Have Bluey slot machines. Like who cares? I mean, honestly, I disagree. I think that capitalism is also like democratizing being in a cult with AI. A lot of people are like getting into like one person cults between
Starting point is 01:11:30 them and like chat GPT models. I think I think thinking our lives one person. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a one person cult. I think that's that stuff is the most like deranged stuff out there right now. Like the people who treat the chat bots like they're sentient and fall in love with them. I think it is the most bizarre, weird, creepy, unhealthy thing I've ever heard of. Literally just do drugs, just please, just do drugs. Well, I have a high take about that because a lot of times
Starting point is 01:12:04 people, when you watch the specials on it, they will highlight loneliness. And when you watch the specials, they don't have the courage to say what I have to say. It's not loneliness that's driving people to this. It's like narcissism. Because a lot of the people who go into these
Starting point is 01:12:17 chat bot relationships are in full other relationships. They have friends and everything, but there's something that the chat bot provides that real people can't provide. Constant validation in the same way that people get scammed online by pig butchers or other forms of romance scams. They don't resemble real relationships.
Starting point is 01:12:37 They resemble someone having 24-7 time for you and all your problems, and even also reflecting your values back at you. So it's not really traditionally what we would think of as loneliness as opposed to deep alienation from one another that is driven by, I think, a narcissism. It's like if you made navel gazing have catastrophic carbon emissions.
Starting point is 01:13:00 That's so true, because the story that I saw, I watched it for like 45 seconds over this guy who was just convinced like a chat bot was like his god-slash-girlfriend and Then they're like, oh, yeah, and his wife can't get it's like wait, he's married. Yeah, his wife and two-year-old Yeah, I don't you're talking about the go to CNN like his wife and two-year-old like can't it's like, okay I mean you can definitely be in a relationship and still be lonely But that doesn't seem to be what this is it seems to be like, know, yeah, the chatbot has convinced that he's like the Messiah or something.
Starting point is 01:13:30 Like your wife just wants you to take your kid to the park. So like that's just not, that's not loneliness. Yep. This is what people should be saying. What kind of bull is this? Yeah, exactly. By the way, Chuck Schumer, I mean, I don't know. Bailey AI?
Starting point is 01:13:45 Yeah, what's he up to? The AI, L-E-Y? Wait, what? What's going on? Why do we say way to Chuck Schumer just now? Is he doing something with the AI? You can't stand him. It's just, yeah, it's just like I... Okay, yeah, I agree. Ken Clivenstein posted something like he had some health episode in late June and he hasn't,
Starting point is 01:14:03 I don't think, done a media appearance since then not saying I did that I believe that I mean I think he's in I think he's in the Senate so I don't think he's on like death store or anything like that but it would be helpful if we have a Senate majority or minority leader who was like actually doing you know using the bully pulpit to beat back fascism but I guess In the house we have Hakeem Jeffries using his media time to say that he won't endorse Mamdani Exactly what you know him very well. He's gonna meet him tomorrow his media time to say that he won't endorse mom daddy. Zoran. Exactly what you're...
Starting point is 01:14:46 Well, he doesn't know him very well. He's going to meet him tomorrow. It's only been nearly a month since the election. Three times a week I want to go on cable in front of millions of people and say, I don't know that guy that well. I just haven't had time to have a conversation with him. I guess we're meeting in New York. All right, guys.
Starting point is 01:15:01 I also love the idea that... Fun half. We're cutting you off. I'm cutting you off. All right. All right. fun half, I'm cutting you off. We'll see you on the other side. Okay, Emma, please. Well, I just, I feel that my voice is sorely lacking on the majority report. Wait, what?
Starting point is 01:15:15 Look, Sam is unpopular. I do deserve a vacation at Disney World. So ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome Emma to the show. It is Thursday. Yeah, I think you need to take over for Sam. Yes, please. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome Emma to the show. It is Thursday. I think you need to do a cover for Sam. Yes please.
Starting point is 01:15:28 Sir, I'm gonna pause you right there. Wait, what? You can't encourage Emma to live like this. And I'll tell you why. Who was offered a tour? Sushi and poker with the boys. Tour? Sushi and poker with the boys. Who was offered a tour? Sushi and poker with the boys. Tour? Sushi and poker with the boys. Who's offered a tour? Sushi and poker with the boys. What?
Starting point is 01:15:46 Tour? Sushi and poker with the boys. Tim's upset? Tour? Sushi and poker with the boys. Who's offered a tour? Sushi and... Ah, that's what we call bids. Tour? Sushi and poker with the boys. Right. Tour? Sushi and poker with the boys.
Starting point is 01:16:02 We're gonna get demonetized now. I just think that what you did to Tim Pool was mean. Free speech. That's not what we're about here. Look at how sad he's become now. You shouldn't even talk about it because I think you're responsible for taking that. I probably am in a certain way,
Starting point is 01:16:16 but let's get to the meltdown here. Twerk, sushi, and poker with the boys. Oh my God. Wow. Sushi. I'm sorry, I'm losing my fucking mind. Someone's offered a twerk. Sushi and poker with the boys. Oh my God. Wow. Sushi. I'm sorry, I'm losing my fucking mind. Someone's offered me a tour? Yeah.
Starting point is 01:16:26 Sushi and poker with the boys. Logic. Tour? Sushi and poker with the boys. Boy, boy, boy. Tour? I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like a little kid.
Starting point is 01:16:35 I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like a little kid. Add this debate 7,000 times. I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like a little kid. Tour?
Starting point is 01:16:43 I'm losing my fucking mind. Some people just don't understand. So I'm not my fucking mind. Some people just don't understand. I'm not trying to be a dick right now, but like, I absolutely think the US should be providing me with a wife and kids. That's not what we're talking about here. Alright. It's not a real thing. That's a real thing. Real thing. Boss Willy Wonka. Twerk? That's a real thing. That's a real thing.
Starting point is 01:17:05 Real thing. What's that offer? Twerk? That's a real thing. That's a real thing. Real thing. Boss, that's a real thing. That's a real thing.
Starting point is 01:17:12 Real thing. Boss, that offer? Twerk? Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Rogan has done it again. Offered to work? That's a real thing. That's a poker with a boy. I think he might be blown out of proportion.
Starting point is 01:17:21 Real thing. That's a poker with a boy. That offer? Twerk? That's a real thing. That's to work. That's a real thin. That's that poker. Let's go Joey. To work.
Starting point is 01:17:28 Sushi and poker with the boys. Take it easy, Joey. To work. Sushi and poker. Things have really gotten out of hand. Sushi and poker with the boys. Illusional. To work.
Starting point is 01:17:38 Illusional. Sushi. You don't have a clue as to what's going on. Live YouTube. Sam has like the weight of the world on his shoulders. Hoggers. Sam doesn't wanna do this show anymore. He can't do it anymore. It was so much easier when the majority of the report
Starting point is 01:17:51 was just you, you were happy. Let's change the subject. Rangers and Nixon are doing great. Now shut up. Don't want people saying reckless things on your program. That's one of the most difficult parts about this show. This is a pro killing podcast. I'm thinking maybe it's time we bury the hatchet.
Starting point is 01:18:06 Left is best. Trump, Violet, Twerk. Don't be foolish and don't fucking tweet at me. And don't bitch. To the way that none of this cocked all these people. Love it. That's how my heart is, so I wrote my honors thesis about it. Oh, you wrote an honors thesis.
Starting point is 01:18:23 I guess I should hand the main mic to you now. You are to go right off the outflow policy. We already fund Israel, dude. Are you against us? That's a tougher question. I don't have an answer to that. Incredible steam song. Emma Viglin, absolutely one of my favorite people. Actually, not just in the game, like period.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.