The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3555 Protests Erupt Over Ice Murder Big Oils Dc Influence Operation W Nick Cleveland Stout
Episode Date: January 11, 2026It's an Emmajority Report Thursday on the Majority Report On today's program: ICE agents kill legal observer Renee Good, shooting her point-blank in the head. Donald Trump takes to Truth Social to spr...ead false claims of self-defense and smear Good's character. In lockstep with the president, Jesse Watters delivers a glib monologue attempting to justify the killing by pointing to the fact that Good had "pronouns in her bio," was a lesbian, and was a protest disruptor. Within an hour of the murder, Kristi Noem hails the agent as a hero who "saved the lives" of fellow officers—despite video evidence showing the exact opposite. Here is a link to a Go Fund Me to support Renee's widow and children. The New York Times publishes a piece highlighting the 9 ICE-involved shootings since Trump took office. An eyewitness to the murder panels on CNN to recount what she saw and debunk the self-defense lie coming from the Trump administration. We take a look at some stills from the shooting which clearly show that the officer was in no danger and shot offensively. Nick Cleveland-Stout, research associate in the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft , joins Emma to talk about Big Oil's involvement in policy shaping think tanks and their role in the Venezuela invasion. In the Fun Half: Brandon Sutton joins the show. Brandon and Emma continue the conversation about ICE's violence. Dan Bongino returns to the podcast world with his tail tucked between his legs. Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) claims the U.S. removed an illegitimate president who was not democratically elected, but he has no answer when pressed on whether the newly elevated vice-president was democratically elected. AOC and Graham Platner reactions to the state sponsored murder in Minneapolis show what real leadership looks like. All that and more. Today's Sponsors: WILDGRAIN: Get $30 off your first box + free Croissants in every box. Go to Wildgrain.com/MAJORITY to start your subscription. SUNSET LAKE CBD: Use coupon code "Left Is Best" (all one word) for 20% off of your entire order at SunsetLakeCBD.com Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey 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
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The Majority Report with Sam Cedar.
It is Thursday.
January 8th, 2026.
My name is Emma Vigland in for Sam Cedar, 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.
On the program today, Nick Cleveland Stout of the Quincy Institute will be with us later on to talk about big oil's influence on Washington's foreign policy infrastructure.
But also on the program in Minneapolis, one mile from the site of George Floyd's murder.
An ICE agent murdered legal observer Renee Good yesterday, a mother of three,
shooting her in the face multiple times at close range in her car.
The video also shows ICE officers blocking a physician from helping her as she bleeds out.
Trump administration officials rush to gaslight the public, calling Good a domestic terrorist.
thousands of people poured into the streets of Minneapolis and across the country last night.
And right now, there are protests in New York City, right across the river over there.
As Christy Noem visits ICE ICE offices here, Democratic Congresswoman Robin Kelly says she'll file articles of impeachment against Christy Noem.
Good to hear. Today, the Senate will vote on a bipartisan war powers resolution.
to limit Trump's military actions in Venezuela, hopefully.
However, Energy Secretary Chris Wright says the U.S. will control the country's oil sales,
quote, indefinitely.
John Federman comes out in support of purchasing Greenland, the Democrat, John Federman.
The Trump family crypto firm World Liberty Financial applies for a banking charter with the U.S. government.
what's going to happen?
On pins and needles, will World Liberty Financial get the approval from the Trump administration?
The U.S. to withdraw from over 60 international agencies, mostly U.N. related, because Trump says they're too woke.
Kathy Hokel bends the knee, agrees to fund two years of Mamdani's free preschool program.
Hmm.
And lastly, 86-year-old Steny Hoyer is retiring.
Glad he got that APAC sponsored a 20-second trip to Israel in beforehand,
but he still has an opportunity to go for a few more times.
Yeah, take a few more.
One of the most powerful Democrats in the House for decades.
All this and more on today's majority report.
Welcome to the show, everybody.
It is an majority report Thursday.
We have a lot to get to today.
Obviously, yesterday was a.
historic day and not in a good way. We were able to kind of react to the breaking news at the end of
the first hour yesterday, but we have more information, obviously, about the victim of the murder by
the ICE agent in Minneapolis, less than a mile, a mile around from where George Floyd
was killed, was murdered by Derek Chauvin. And
This woman, I should also say, hello Brian, hello Matt.
This woman, Renee Good, was a 37-year-old, a U.S. citizen.
She was a mother of three children.
She had two children from her first marriage and another six-year-old from her second marriage.
That child will now be an orphan because the father of that child died in 2023.
Renee grew up in Colorado.
She moved to Minnesota fairly recently with her partner.
And she and her partner were coming back from dropping off her six-year-old at school when they ended up encountering some ice agents.
This is how her ex-husband describes her to Politico.
And then we'll see how the Trump administration chooses to describe her here.
But the Trump administration officials, Politico writes, painted Macklin Good as a domestic terrorist who had attempted to ram federal agents with her car.
Her ex-husband said she was no activist and that he had never known her to participate in a protest of any kind.
He described her as a devoted Christian who took part in youth mission trips to Northern Ireland when she was younger.
She loved to sing, participating in chorus in high school, and studying vocal performance.
performance in college. She studied creative writing at Old Dominion University in Virginia and won a
prize in 2020 for one of her works, according to a post on the school's English department Facebook page.
She also hosted the podcast with her second husband who died in 2023. That is who Renee Nicole Good
was. Here is how the president of the United States chose to respond to this killing. In contrast,
I have just viewed the clip of the event which took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
It is a horrible thing to watch.
The woman screaming was, obviously, a professional agitator,
and the woman driving the car was disorderly.
Now, if you see this video, you'll see that there are a number of women screaming.
At one point, her wife is screaming.
Her wife was outside of the car.
It appears.
I think they had their dog with them.
and her wife was screaming out in agony after what she saw.
So there was a lot of screaming happening
because people just witnessed their neighbor
shot in the face by an ice officer.
And fascists were pointing guns at people before that?
So not sure which woman he's referring to,
the widow of the victim or one of the witnesses to the murder.
The woman screaming was obviously a professional agitator,
and the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting,
who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE officer,
who seemed to have shot her in self-defense.
Based on the attached clip, it is hard to believe he is alive,
but is now recovering in the hospital.
The situation is being, I mean, every word I read, I just, I'm in disbelief.
The situation is being studied in its entirety,
but the reason these incidents are happening is because,
of the radical left is threatening, assaulting, and targeting our law enforcement officers and
ICE agents on the daily basis. They're just trying to do the job of making America safe.
Oh, sure. Yeah, they made that American really safe when they shot her in the face multiple
times. We need to stand by and protect the law enforcement, whatever. So, I mean, they're
laughing at the public on this front. This is what fascism is. And a lot of people have been
pointing out that they talk like, you know, Israelis talk about Palestinians or calling everyone
terrorists. And that's true, but it's true because Israel is just an outgrowth of fascism.
It's the same thing that happened in a Jakarta method in Indonesia, same thing that happened
in Operation Condor. Fascists, when they get to take power, get to kill people who they decide
are too far, away from fascism ideologically. That's just what's happening now. It's why Jesse
Waters will defend all this. It's why every, like, you know, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,
sort of mentally a streamer on the right will defend it.
They'll just defend this.
You can't reason with these people.
We need to organize and squash them.
It's a bit trite, but to Matt's point,
you have to just, when you understand fascists
and this level of, you know, how empowered they've been,
you have to look back in history,
and you can read the Jean-Paul Sotra quote
that is still so resonant to this day,
is referring to the Nazis here,
but you can refer to them as fascists in general
and apply it right now to the Trump administration.
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware
of the absurdity of their replies.
They know that their remarks are frivolous,
open to challenge,
but they are amusing themselves.
For it is their absurdity,
sorry, for it is their adversary
who is obliged to use words responsibly
since he believes in words.
The anti-Semites have the right to play.
They even like to play with discourse
for by giving ridiculous reasons,
they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors.
They delight in acting in bad faith,
since they seek not to persuade by sound argument,
but to intimidate and disconcert.
If you press them too closely,
they will abruptly fall silent,
loftily indicating by some phrase
that the time for argument is passed.
And that is exactly what Trump
and Stephen Miller and Christine Nome are engaging in here.
And I've spoken about how, you know,
I feel that Trump is a bit of a surrogate or a proxy for reactionary feelings of empowerment
by a for her for his base.
Often those are along lines of white supremacy or misogyny or homophobia or transphobia or xenophobia.
When Trump gets to say slurs and lie with impunity, there's a thrill to them because there's a vicarious.
experience for a population that feels aggrieved and disempowered.
And in many ways, the American population is deeply disempowered.
But that's not just MAGA.
That's across the board.
And what Trump has provided for the population and for them is a circus.
And the Democrats have abandoned populist material messaging to such a degree
that violence as a catharsis for these fascists and for the, and for the,
the MAGA base is basically that's all that's being offered that's visible.
And so people can't buy houses and rich people are as rich as ever.
And the Democrats think like we need to work with them on abundance.
Right.
Or on, you know, I mean, there's yesterday.
Yesterday, Chuck Schumer was hugging Marco Rubio in front of the press.
The opposition leader.
I miss this.
Yeah.
Go to Ken Clippinstein's feed if you want to get your heart monitor up.
There, Matt.
But, and we have it in the sound sheet.
Maybe we'll show it later.
But we've also talked about how Trump's followers kind of transpose this like evangelical,
um, religious framework onto him and how they're primed to do so in many ways because he takes the
form of a, like a televangelist at a megachurch.
It's why it's like we could the arguments about his lack of immorality, the arguments about
his philandering and, and, and I mean, we know he's like a predator as well.
didn't land because he represented like this authority figure because of his wealth, his celebrity,
and like just decades of prosperity gospel brainwashing for that base.
So if Trump is this godlike figure, then the ICE agents in that framework basically act as
agents of his, like, of God Trump's divine will.
like they're executing his judgment against all of the enemies of the MAGA base,
which includes leftists, immigrants, Muslims, Somalis, you know, what have you?
It is all about like that kind of, it is set up as a religiously motivated political movement.
It's a Christian nationalist movement at its heart is really what I'm getting at here.
And when you see them deny the reality that we all saw in that video,
it's because they are operating from a place of blind faith
and they are operating within that framework.
Or they're completely insincere and just fascists,
but it's one of the two.
This picture, I mean, he said he's disappointed by Garibu or whatever.
This is just two fascists.
This is a Christian fascist and Zionist.
Go to the second one.
Exactly.
Go to the second one where they're legit hugging.
Yeah.
I mean, we don't, this is, this is our government and both parties are occupied at the top by fascists.
So listen to Chuck Schumer just a year ago, talk about, about what he viewed his role is,
which is to keep the left pro-Israel.
Yeah.
And we wonder why this is continuing.
I mean, half of these people, I mean, Debbie Wassman-Schultz, Shantel Brown,
I looked at the list of all the Democrats that thanked ICE for,
their beautiful service to the nation last summer is there are people in the progressive caucus
I mean and but you can that then diagram is going to overlap that took Israel money with who took
Israel money so they shouldn't be allowed in there purge them from the progressive caucus it's
time to address this shit I mean everyone says it's not the time the time was yesterday for all
of this right you know I was uh I was talking with with somebody last night you know another
colleague in the space and they were like, you know, is it too late? Like, could we have done,
could this have, have we gone too far, basically? Could this purge needed to happen before that,
to your point, to build up the opposition party. But when you look at history, this is how
fascist governments rise is you have to have, you have a weak centrist opposition that is
unable to meet the moment. And it's very much echoing in our ears at this moment. And so,
like when you look at the rights reaction you have those two buckets you've got the uh the followers
who treat this as like you know an active faith essentially and the fascists who get the thrill
out of lying and those groups are sometimes not entirely distinct but that's what we're
looking at right here and so you know i mentioned earlier that i happened upon that video of
Renee Goods' wife crying.
And as soon as I saw
she had a pride flag
in her bio, as soon
as I saw that she was in a relationship
with a woman, I knew
immediately what the right was going to run
with. And you know what? What all the Twitter
Nazi bots were going to run with? Because
they charge, they rev up that engine
really quickly. And I tweeted
out the go fund me
for her wife
and son. We can maybe
put that in the description as well.
And of course, the immediate Nazi bots on Twitter, that is what they've, that's what
they've decided on is they're going to go with homophobia.
But we don't need Nazi bots on Twitter to do so because we have primetime Jesse Waters to run
with it as well.
The woman who lost her life was a self-proclaimed poet from Colorado with pronouns in her
bio, a 37-year-old white woman named Renee Good.
The Daily Mail says she leaves behind a lesbian partner and a child from a previous marriage.
She was a disruptor, though she considered herself a legal observer, but there's no evidence she had a law degree.
That's not what the legal observer is, you dummy.
Ryan Grimm showed the world how to deal with Jesse Waters, and people can Google that.
I won't say anything more.
Yeah.
I, I, they've got, there's nothing about the facts here.
that will change the minds of the base of this party at this point.
They have decided that this is some sort of, you know,
almost like religiously ordained war between good and evil.
And that's why I bring up the evangelical framework is because now we can slide her into this bucket
because she was in a relationship with a woman.
I know, of course, immediately you see the discrediting of her on that basis.
It's really disgusting.
And, you know, as we talked about trans people being canarians in the coal mine
and that, of course, they're going to come for Obergefell and gay marriage
and LGBTQ rights more broadly in general on that basis,
that that is what is going to happen.
I mean, I would not be shocked if this is how the right reacts.
Finding a hook as a way to make her into one of the political enemies.
that they can completely remove their humanity from.
This is why we had a problem and it got us accused of being max left by other commentators
with playing footsie with the right on this stuff and acting as if, oh, if you just scratch
below the surface, they secretly want Medicare for all.
No, the organized right, the like hard right on this country that turns out for this sort of
stuff, they don't, they didn't just want mass deportations.
people will support, and I am not exaggerating, they will support death camps for gay people,
for immigrants, they will support it, just like the Nazis did in Germany.
It's the same fucking people.
They support concentration camps right now.
Right now.
How many deaths have happened in the-
In ICE custody, over 50 this last year.
It could be 50,000.
They wouldn't, you wouldn't hear anything different from the people that supported it.
Right.
Because of, of really the mentality that we were just outlining here.
This is a movement based on domination, based on racism.
And it's not motivated by the realities of policy.
It is a fascist movement.
The policy is kill people until the conditions improve.
Exactly.
Where have we heard that before?
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All right.
So let's break down some of the lies from this administration.
on the murder that we witnessed yesterday, the ICE murdering Renee Good.
This is just hours after the shooting. You saw that there was an ICE statement that we read on air.
I think this was right before or right around the full video came out. The rush to get ahead of the story is immensely telling, defining the narrative.
If they attempted to do so, the problem for them is that we have two eyes, some of us.
Yeah.
I mean, the phrase arrest to judgment actually comes from the JFK assassination.
And that was a different media environment than what we have now.
We have a different where things could like, you know, you have newspapers and it takes a long time for information.
Now it's so fast that the right has realized that, oh, just lie.
Like what you saw with the Charlie Kirk thing, just throw out initial.
information. There's all the shootings that they initially blame on trans people.
Get out there because you need to actually mess the judgment up for everybody and say,
like, again, the shooting in Minnesota earlier that they blamed on folks.
Like, they'll just say things.
Chrissy Noem said this, like just hours after the shooting.
This was the press conference where she claims.
once again that Renee Good was committing an act of domestic terrorism.
Questions there? You asked about a shooting that we just had in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Just had it. It was an act of domestic terrorism. What happened was our ICE officers were out in
enforcement action. They got stuck in the snow because of the adverse weather that is in Minneapolis.
They were attempting to push out their vehicle and a woman attacked them and those surrounding them
and attempted to run them over and ram them with her vehicle. An officer of our
Hars acted quickly and defensively shot to protect himself and the people around him.
And my understanding is that she was hit and is deceased.
We're continuing to gather more information, but this goes to show the assaults that our ICE
officers and our law enforcement are under every single day.
These vehicle ramming's are domestic acts of terrorism.
We're working with the Department of Justice to prosecute them as such.
We will continue to protect our ICE officers and in cooperating.
with other law enforcement agencies as well.
You've seen me in the last couple of days deploy over 2,000 more officers to the Minneapolis area.
And in the last two days, we've...
Okay.
We'll break down those lies, but should be noted that this is the excuse that they are now running with,
and it isn't just in the ICE murder of Renee Good.
The New York Times has this from yesterday.
In the last four months alone, is number 12.
Immigration officers have fired on at least nine people in five states and Washington, D.C.
All of the individuals targeted in those shootings were, like the woman killed on Wednesday, fired on while in their vehicles.
In each case, officials have claimed that the agents fired in self-defense, fearing they would be struck by the vehicle.
At least one person died as a result of those shootings.
they also list some of these other examples that have gotten less attention.
A Mexican immigrant named Silvio Villegas Gonzalez was shot outside of Chicago.
The Homeland Security officials claimed that he had hit and dragged one of their officers with his car
and that the officer who shot him was acting in self-defense,
but at times analysis of video calls into question key aspects of the government's account.
Shocking.
They also talk about this Mexican man living in Los Angeles.
Angeles named Carlitos Ricardo Parais. I'm sorry again if I'm butchering the pronunciation.
Federal officials said he tried to ram officers as he fled the scene and Homeland Security
officers fired shots hitting the man in the elbow. The federal marshal was struck in the hand by a
ricochayed bullet. And there's more examples of this as well. So the point is, is just that
there are good Samaritans. There are people who are being racially profiled in their cars,
who are having these interactions with ice.
And if there is any violence that the Gestapo inflicts upon these Americans and these human beings,
the claim is going to be that they were trying to use their car as a weapon.
So we were justified in using our actual weapon in killing them or shooting at them.
So, you know, just to be like they have not, they have tried.
to use this repeatedly, this excuse, over and over in these instances.
Oh, it's, yeah, it goes beyond this and it's probable cause.
A judge has already said, one of the judges that said, hey, they're just lying to us.
When we actually go back and review this body cam footage, or the footage that they send
us supposedly showing people threatening them with their cars, it turns out that it's these
ice convoys that are driving erratically.
And the judge suggests that they're doing so in order to have an accident.
so they have a reason to do to take action against people like that's insane yeah and uh there
there was a a cnn contributor that went on there last night one of their legal contributors i'm trying
to find it but essentially he went through the um the the the like department of homeland security
guidelines and you are not supposed to be shooting into a car it says it so explicitly so even by the
own DHS charter.
They have violated the rules.
And I love that the excuse is adverse weather in Minneapolis in January.
They're upset about the snow.
I mean, it's not like it was snowing.
We saw that it was an incredibly clear day.
This is an eyewitness here, number seven.
Erin Burnett interviewed her.
Her name is Emily Heller.
And she says exactly what she saw discrediting the last.
lies from the federal government, or I should more accurately say, the White House and the Trump
administration and Republicans.
What's your response to that version of events?
I mean, that's the only reason why I'm here.
I don't think I'm the most articulate person.
I don't think that I don't want to be here, but I knew that this would be twisted and it
would be self-defense, and that's absolutely not what happened.
But it's just, my life is forever changed from having witnessed this, and I'm, I'm, I'm,
I just can't let this narrative that it was self-defense go any further because it's absolutely not what it was.
And yeah, my neighborhood, my neighbors were all going to be pretty traumatized from this for a long time.
When in that video that you shared with us that I just played, the 34 seconds, you know, you're obviously incredibly distraught and there's a doctor next to you or near you.
We can, you know, hear him saying, I'm a, I'm a physician.
I can help. And they say, no, we have our own medics. But the doctor is there offering to administer
CPR standing right there. I don't want you to have to relive what you were looking at when,
the horror of her death. But how did agents respond to him? Was there a speed and a desperation in
trying to get any sort of assistance to her? Because it didn't sound like that from what you gave us.
Yeah, they wouldn't let him near. And they said they had their own medics that were on their way,
which it was, I mean, I don't know, it was at least 15 minutes before the ambulance arrived.
And then the ambulance couldn't even get through because the ICE agents had all abandoned their vehicles in the road.
So the ambulance couldn't get through.
So they parked at the end of the block.
And about five paramedics came in and examined her for, I didn't see this, but I just, they were with her for a few minutes.
and then they carried her limp body away by her limbs,
not even on a stretcher,
just carried her down to the end of the block
where they could get a stretcher
because they couldn't get through with their ambulance.
We can't show that video
because you can see her lifeless body
and the blood in the background,
but there is somebody who is shouting
that they are a physician
and that they want to get through to him.
help and ICE agents say that they don't care and refuse to allow that to happen.
Murders, I mean, they need to be arrested. And it's nice for Jacob Fry and Tim Walls to talk
about things. You need to push us to a constitutional crisis. If Trump's going to overrule
any action you take against them, you need to let him do that. You need to have, you need to
take some kind of official action. It appears like ICE was attempting to get him out of Minnesota
state lines for that very reason, because while, yes, if he were brought on federal charges,
which is not happening under the Trump administration anyway, yes, Trump would be able to pardon him,
but not state charges. So this is where we have to see leadership from state attorneys
general and state governors, obviously, and mayors and local leadership. This is essential. They
they cannot allow the federal government to big foot this investigation here.
It has to be locally controlled in a very tightly controlled manner.
You have to assert some kind of authority over this.
And if it's going to be overruled, then you have to let it be overruled.
And I mentioned that thing about the line.
404 Media, DHS is lying to you.
A great thing.
U.S. District Judge Sarah Ellis wrote more than a 200-page
opinion that large part catalog, DHS's official bullshit, parts of the opinion we're scaling.
Here's another one. DHS shared a video. The court believed was an attempt to show agents constantly
face danger from cars ramming them on purpose. Instead, it, quote, suggests that the agent
drove erratically and brake-checked other motorists in an attempt to force accidents that
agents could then use as justifications for deploying force. That is fucking insane. And
officials have to act on that. It's a public safety.
crisis. If you're going to about protecting your citizenry, that even if you're the fascists that
loves seeing brown people rounded up by ice, they are causing accidents in your community as a pretext
for further crackdowns because these ice agents, some of them, you know, you're reading about
have rap sheets. They haven't gotten any real training. The fat ass pig that killed her was like,
you know, looked out of shape. I'm sorry to be body shaming.
here, but like, we're talking about the fascists that came up off the street and are getting a thrill
out of this. Who knows what they're doing before? What drugs they're doing? You just got to read
Seth Harp's work to know that there's a lot of crap that happens when people feel like they have
total impunity. And they're all jacked up, getting ready to shoot a woman in the face. We have no
transparency here. We should know this guy's identity right now. And we still do not. But,
let's go through these freeze frames here just to just to to make sure that we have
uh our our bases covered these are the specific moments when the ice agent draws and fires his pistol
three times killing the woman we'll pull up each of these images here you see he's drawing it
as the car is turning in front of him we don't have this video but before this he goes behind her
car and around it as she's kind of slowly turning there is
another video of her waving a car, waving another car in front of her to show that she was trying to
leave. Because also, it appears like the ICE agents were giving her contradictory information.
One was about saying getting out of the car. One was saying leave. And it appears that she was trying
to leave. Okay, so here he draws his gun. Now the car is turning. You can see the wheel pointed
away from him going down, ready to go down the street. Right. This is where the first shot is fired.
You can see both of his feet, and you see the front wheel is not hitting him.
It's not hitting his feet.
It's pointed away from him.
And there is a gap between his torso.
We can't see it fully because there's another thug that's chasing after the car.
But you can see that there is space in between the vehicle and that far officer as the shot is fired.
Now third freeze frame here.
This is when he shoots her again.
Like, I mean, at least two feet in between him and the car, but he's already hit her at this point.
Anyone at this point arguing that he is in self-defense is just a Nazi that wants, like, the government to be able to kill people.
And the Nazis lie is also here that they talk about how her car accelerated at this point.
We'll do the final fourth.
You know why the car accelerated?
Because she's dead.
She fell forward, almost certainly.
This happens in any car chase in a movie that you've ever seen.
And they're pretending like he, as she's turning here,
she was trying to accelerate towards the officer.
It's why, even not to give them too much credit,
but trained officers,
don't shoot people that are operating a fucking giant vehicle.
And that's why that was supposedly DHS policy.
So you can see, this is the shot here
where she is driving away.
And as we said, as we reacted to this live,
he's chasing the, he is shooting her.
It seems like either he's parallel to the drivers,
side at this point, or
turning his body to continue shooting
her as she drives away
and eventually hits into something, because
by this point, I'm sure
she's already dead.
So,
there's no, there's nothing in dispute
here. But, you know,
with George Floyd,
they all, they had
their laboratory for excuses, too.
They had their, oh, the, the, the, he had drugs
in his system. It wasn't the fact that this
cop was on his neck.
for multiple, multiple minutes,
and we all saw the video of him being slowly
exfixated and killed.
It couldn't be that.
No, it's some other reason.
And I'm sure they'll figure out a way
to blame her in some way,
and it'll likely be on homophobic grounds, as I mentioned.
So, you know...
They killed a mom.
They killed a mom.
And lastly on this,
this is an outgrowth of...
the war on terror and a multi-decade at this point policy of cementing a security state.
That involved the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.
I didn't remember this, that that was actually a Lieberman push to make it about the homeland.
I was seeing people have discussing about, discussing that.
Exporter of Israel, Joe Lieberman.
Right.
Well, I mean, you know, and someone made a great point, like that homeland is supposed to be a place that you, like,
return to and that you're estranged from it sounds very Zionist.
It's blood and soil. But there you go, right? Joe, but Joe, the most conservative Democrat,
one of the most conservative Democrats at the time having, like using fascistic blood and soil type
imagery to refer to the United States. It is the erasure of our indigenous genocide of Native
Americans here in the same way that referring to Israel as the homeland is an erasure of the
genocide of Palestinians as well. Like, you see how these things work towards the same ends.
And prior to 9-11, there was no Department of Homeland Security. There was no ICE.
We protected our borders pretty well prior to 9-11. Immigration enforcement and the security
state that that is a part of is an outgrowth of the war on terror. We can abolish ICE tomorrow.
We can't, and we can reallocate those funds to a more humane immigration system.
ICE isn't even old enough to rent a car right now.
ICE has turned their vision away from sex traffickers and towards kitchens.
So, like, and, you know.
Yeah, and, and.
So, Eddie, this is keeping us safe as a joke.
But, but I just mean, like, when, when you have people act like this is so intractable,
it is important to remind folks that ICE's, you know, what, I think like, 20,
23, 22 years old.
These are choices, and they can easily be reversed.
If Trump can take us back, you know, 50 years or something like that, we can reverse and build
something's better, too, as well.
And there's always the canary in the coal mine.
And at the start of the 21st century, it was Muslim people in this country.
They bore the brunt of the fascist security state first, and a lot of people stayed quiet.
And then it kept going.
And then Islamophobia became central to justifying our foreign policy abroad, but also our domestic policy of mass surveillance.
That's how it was justified on these grounds.
And so you have the imperial boomerang in action right here.
The war on terror and the security state being justified to support that, securing financial interests abroad in that region.
saving on you know, participating in
great power competition
over resources and then if that
is the case, immigration and immigration
enforcement here is also
about securing those same interests
domestically. It's
in part, there's the
Nazi fascist part, yes,
but there's also the overarching
power interests here are about
creating a population of
folks with sub-citizen status
who live in fear, who don't
have the ability to stand up to their
boss to power.
They are a
sub-citizen, like, labor
force. That's how they're essentially treated.
That can be easily exploited
and enrich the same people that put the
surveillance state in
in
place.
The media that spent the last few years
talking about Israel's
as a right to defend itself
will not be much better at
you know, talking
about this American
government killing your neighbor.
It will fall for the same fucking shit.
And, you know, it's nice to, it's very, maybe it'll be moderately better.
It's nice to see Grand Platner on Morning Joe this morning.
Nice, yeah.
Maybe we can play some of that later.
But there will be plenty of people, including at CNN, that will, after saying, well, maybe we've got to hear both sides, especially the higher you get in these organizations.
You'll, we have to hear both sides.
I mean, Tony Dolcapill, I see already doing fluff pieces with ICE agents.
So like there is an apparatus here to normalize this death and allow it to continue.
And we need to fight against it.
Absolutely.
All right, folks, quick break.
And when we come back, we're going to be talking to Nick Cleveland Stout about some of his work at the Quincy Institute tracking DC think tanks.
And why they might be a little bit more invested in plundering Venezuela for its oil than they should be because of some financial ties.
We'll be right back.
We are back and we are joined now by Nick Cleveland Stout Research Associate in the
democratizing foreign policy program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Nick, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Hey, great to be here with you, Emma.
So glad you were able to join us because last year, I saw this, I think it was last year,
you funded the think tank funding tracker where you've been looking at D.C.'s think tanks,
foreign policy think tanks and where they actually get their money from. Maybe we can start from
really the basics here. What is a, what's a think tank for the audience that may not be fully aware?
Yeah. So, um, especially for the folks outside of D.C., think tanks are almost impossible to ignore
when it comes to, to U.S. foreign policy. Um, you know, they are oftentimes the experts that get
called up by journalists for quotes. Um, they oftentimes testify to Congress, uh,
they oftentimes will write laws themselves.
So they serve as this kind of like intermediary oftentimes
between the legislative process and the American people
or the media or even academia.
You know, they produce research, hot takes, all kinds of things.
And I, you know, I should say I work at a think tank.
So I, you know, I have an interest in think tanks being as for the people as possible.
And one of the things, though, that we know is that think tanks present themselves as these very kind of objective research organizations that are, you know, purely working in favor of the national interest.
And while they might believe that, you know, it's also true that a lot of them take funding from corporate sources, foreign governments.
So we wanted to kind of like look under the hood.
You know, New York Times did a long investigation into think tank funding about over 10 years ago now.
And so it hasn't it hadn't no one really touched it since then.
And so we wanted to create a living database where folks can kind of go in and check out what sorts of conflicts of interest exist at a lot of these think tanks.
And I want to get to the big oil piece in just a bit because that's very operative right now as it relates to Venezuela policy.
But, you know, you see just on your tracker these think tanks, top 10 think tanks that receive funding from foreign governments.
top 10 think tanks that receive funding from Pentagon contractors.
Like this is these are the incentives and this is the laboratory where foreign policy kind of gets written.
And you'll have say secretaries of state that go join think tanks after they leave service or, you know, other members of the blob, as it were, or they'll start a think tank then come back into the federal government.
Can you talk just about the biggest ones and where some of those funding sources are coming from broadly?
Definitely, yeah.
So some of the biggest think tanks include the Atlantic Council.
The Atlantic Council comes in at number one in our tracker is taking the most funding from both Pentagon contractors and foreign governments.
Then you've also got the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
They're a very prestigious think tank.
They're actually the think tank that testifies to Congress more than any way more than any other think tank.
You've also got Brookings taking a significant amount of money from these sources.
And kind of by the numbers to give people a sense, you know, we looked at the last five years and found that the donors from foreign governments gave $110 million to these think tanks.
and Pentagon contractors, meanwhile, gave $35 million to think tanks.
And, you know, they're not just giving this kind of money out of the goodness of their hearts.
You know, they have an intent.
They want to get something out of it.
And it's this kind of game where, you know, think tanks, on the other hand,
they want to signal a certain kind of independence from these donors.
But, you know, there are even like built-in ways in which these donors can get influence.
You know, CSIS, for instance,
says that in some cases, like if you take a good close look at their policy, like they even say
that there are cases in which they would accept donor recommendations for their research agenda.
So, you know, there's it's a donor recommendations, meaning, like, I love that coded language,
a donor recommendations for what we'll research, for what we'll work on.
And I wonder what that donor is going to suggest.
It might be something in their interest.
Like in terms of those foreign government donors, who's the number one corporate?
I mean, is it Israel?
It's so it's actually the, there are plenty of it from the Middle East, but it's actually, and you know, Israel, we know that Israel is funding think tanks and plenty of think tanks also have anonymous donors.
So Israel is actually kind of hard to pin down when it comes to this up.
Well, they don't register as a foreign lobbyist now, right, exactly.
so they can kind of do, they're, they're subterranean a bit.
Totally.
And, you know, there was this report from the Guardian last year, which revealed that they
had even considered creating and funding a think tank of their own, which would have
been, you know, probably entirely funded by the government of Israel.
But they said that they didn't want to do it because they were worried that they would
have to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act and that their credibility would be
hurt as a think tank, which is an important point when it comes to these think tanks.
is that they are not seen as lobbyists.
You know, if you're a lobbyist in D.C., if you're a corporate lobbyist,
you have to file certain things.
If you're a foreign lobbyist, you have to file even more things about what you're doing.
But think tanks have been able to escape by without really registering under the Foreign
Agency Registration Act, despite, you know, taking a lot of foreign government interest.
And also, you know, I should say they definitely don't have to register under the Lobbying Disclosure Act,
which is kind of the domestic lobbying framework.
So they are not seen as lobbyists.
So when think tankers advise members of Congress,
even though they might be representing
the sympathetic interests of their donors,
you know, they don't come across that way.
They're seen as these objective, independent analysts.
And so I guess the Atlantic Council and others,
what did you find about,
big oil and their influence right now over Venezuela policy.
It doesn't need to just be the Atlantic Council,
but it's notable how much money they take.
You know, there is a lot of influence peddling
and a lot of drive, and there has been for decades,
to get involved in Venezuela, to be more hawkish towards Venezuela,
and a lot of people might be wondering where that comes from.
and in many ways it's this think tank apparatus that takes all of this money.
Totally.
I mean, you know, the Trump administration has been menacing Venezuela for months now,
bombing boats since September.
There have obviously been plenty of threats towards Venezuela, you know,
in the first Trump administration, sanctions, all these kinds of things.
And throughout a lot of that, these think tanks have been cheerleading.
the most maximalist positions of regime change possible oftentimes.
And so, you know, you see, like, fellows at the Atlanta Council,
which takes a million dollars from Chevron per year
and actually even has a terrace in their new building
called the Chevron Terrace, you know, promoting a lot of this stuff.
And they also take a significant amount of funding from Exxon
between $250,000 and $500,000 per year.
And, you know, they even had one of their fellows,
Matthew Kronig, publishing an op-ed in the New York Times,
very recently two days ago,
making the case that ousting Maduro was a good thing,
you know, talking about how great this U.S. military operation was,
how great it is that Maduro is gone.
And, of course, a lot of these kind of analysis benefits the very same don't
that give to the Atlantic Council, you know, whether it's Chevron, Exxon, or even the defense
contractors, right? This was a big win for the defense contractors. Their stocks are all going
up significantly. And Kronig, this Atlantic Council fellow, he gives a lot of space in this
op-ed to talk about how great it was, how great of a military operation it was. And, you know,
none of that really goes disclosed in the pages of the New York Times. And oftentimes in the
analysis that these think tanks provide on their website. And you know, I should say, like,
the Atlanta Council is actually relatively transparent about their funding sources. You know,
if you look at a lot of other think tanks that receive funding from these sources, that we know
from, you know, investigative reporting and whatnot, you know, they don't disclose anything about
who they get funding from. Like, we know, for instance, that the American Enterprise Institute
who is a long-time recipient of Exxon and Exxon funding dating, you know, I think since the 90s,
and a lot of it's towards, you know, climate change denialism.
But, you know, there's competing interests here, right?
And, you know, AEI doesn't disclose anything about its funders.
We just know that because Exxon and Chevron disclosed their giving reports or whatever they call it
and, you know, mention AEI as a recipient.
Let's pull up this chart you tweeted out here because it gives, you know, us a visual, a bigger picture of what we're looking at here.
Looking at these think tanks and Chevron and Exxon specifically, you put this together a few months ago.
And this is just about the donations that Chevron and Exxon have made to these specific think tanks.
You've got the Atlantic Council we mentioned there, the over $1 million from Chevron.
But you got Aspen Institute, Brookings, Carnegie.
I mean, that's a little bit less money, but the Heritage Foundation undisclosed.
How is this able to be undisclosed?
That's another question, I guess, here.
And the Council on Foreign Relations, that's a little bit shocking to me.
Center for Strategic and International Studies, over 250K from both.
What's your read on this chart here?
And can you explain why the Heritage Foundation?
Foundation isn't disclosing their funding here at all.
Yeah, I mean, there's a few things happening.
If you look at that chart, for instance, one of the things that jumps out is we don't
have exact numbers, and a lot of that is by design.
Like, if you look at the, you know, Atlantic Council, for instance, says a million plus
for Chevron.
Council on Foreign Relations says 100,000 plus for Chevron and Exxon.
That could mean a million in one in the case of Chevron's donations to the Atlanta Council,
or it could mean 10 million per year.
And we have no way of knowing because there really are, you know,
there's no law that requires think tanks,
which are 501-23 nonprofits to disclose their funding sources.
And, you know, it's the same for foreign government donations to these think tanks.
You know, think tanks have this kind of academic, you know, research exemption
and which exempts them from Farah.
and, you know, they don't have to disclose their corporate donors either.
There's kind of a trend, you know, if you want a certain degree of prestige,
that you would donate, that you would disclose some of your donors.
And so that's kind of what's happening in the case of those ones that disclose the names of their donors,
but not the amounts.
Like I think you mentioned Heritage, for example.
They don't really mention how much Exxon or Chevron gives to them,
but we know that those are our two donors.
And can you explain specifically Exxon and Chevron's interests in Venezuela?
We've talked a bit about it on the show, but I'm curious about your perspective.
It's a super interesting question because over the last few days, there's been a lot of back and forth around, you know, what exactly are the U.S. oil majors interests in Venezuela?
And, you know, it definitely, I should say, it's definitely been the case of the Trump administration has been leading this charge.
You know, it's not really come from the think tanks, although a lot of think tanks might cheerlead what the Trump administration is doing.
But, you know, the, in the mid-2000s, it's kind of the important starting point here for the oil majors in Venezuela.
You know, there was a big round of nationalization.
Exxon and Canoco Phillips both left the country and then demanded that Venezuela get.
money to them for expropriating their assets in Venezuela.
You know, they're still demanding that money to this day.
Canoco Phillips is demanding somewhere in the ballpark of $10 billion from Venezuela, Exxon,
less around $1.6 billion.
Chevron is kind of an interesting one because they decided to stay in Venezuela.
You know, they're the kind of boots on the ground.
And these are the three, these three companies, Chevron, Exxon, and Canoco Philips,
are the three companies that would be expected to play a very big role in whatever the Trump administration has planned for Venezuela going forward.
Trump is meeting with the executives from some of these companies tomorrow.
And we're getting a slow trickle or a dump, actually, I should say, of like, you know, information about what the buildup of U.S. oil infrastructure in Venezuela is going to,
look like.
Yeah.
And yeah.
Well, I mean, it just, it feels like the, when you read about the amount of infrastructure
and investment that's going to be necessary, this is going to be really costly.
And you wonder if they're meeting with the Trump administration if they're like,
hey, you're all about the oil, I guess.
This is what he cares about.
And it doesn't, you know, I think a guy like Rubio always wanted regime change in Venezuela.
whatever Trump is fixated on is good enough for him.
But the oil executives might be playing that same game here where it's like,
we can probably convince this kind of fascist guy who's really interested in the state
merging with some of these corporate interests to subsidize our infrastructure efforts in Venezuela
because it's going to be very costly for them.
Totally.
They're looking to get the most out of this situation.
And, you know, people have made a lot about this, about how they're, you know, we don't
quite know what the oil companies want, what their interests here are. You know, it's, it's
heavy crude, which is less valuable than lighter crude oil. And but, you know, they, I think
they're playing coy because they, like you said, they want to get the most out of this situation.
And, you know, of course, you know, there's been a lot of underinvestment in Venezuela's
infrastructure. But, you know, the Trump administration seems very committed to, you know,
making this a good deal for the oil company. So I, you know, I certainly wouldn't bet against them.
I mean, he's even suggested, like, reimbursing them not only for what they would invest in
rebuilding Venezuela's oil infrastructure, which some estimates I've seen could be $100 billion
over the next 10 years, but he's even suggested reimbursing them for the seized assets
during that nationalization period, which if you're the Canoco Phillips executive or
Exxon executive, you know, Darren Woods, you're sitting there, then that's music to your ears,
like if you're considering whether to go back into the country or not. And, you know, there's a lot
that we still don't know. A bunch of U.S. senators have sent letters to the CEOs of these oil
companies asking them, you know, basically what the heck is going on? Because Congress is being
left in the dark on this military operation. But supposedly, you know, Trump is saying that he
he briefed the oil executives.
And, you know, it seems like they may have been more involved in a lot of the,
this operation than than previously known.
You know, their politico's reported that they were briefed on kind of post-operation,
reinvestment, you know, as much as 10 days before before the operation.
And so, you know, I wouldn't bet against these, these oil majors,
even as their stock kind of goes up and down as people are concerned,
about, you know, the fact that it is heavy crude, the fact that it could affect the
price of oil.
But, yeah, it's definitely something to watch.
Trump has said that he wants to increase the military budget from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion
next year.
Another insane explosion.
I mean, the $1 trillion budget blew past.
The military budget increases year over year.
budget over budget a lot, but they're usually a little bit more coy about this. This was like
the largest percentage increase in years, and this would dwarf that. I wouldn't be shocked if that
is some of what he has in mind, subsidizing almost directly, perhaps investment in Venezuela to the
benefit of oil executives who can basically at that point double their money. And the only way to
interpret that truth social post, too, is that he is high on militarism right now. You know, he sees
the success, what he sees
is the success of this operation in Venezuela.
I think I would throw
some caution on that, in that
there's a lot that we don't know yet.
We don't know what's going to play out.
Delci Rodriguez,
an acting vice president, has to walk this very tight
rope. But he sees this
as a huge success, right? And he
is wanting to, he's already
looking to Greenland, to Cuba,
to Iran. And, you know, he is
realizing where military
can take you and he is already saying that he wants this $1.5 trillion budget, which I should
point out, $500 billion increase, that $500 billion figure is already larger of a defense budget
than every other country on earth, including China. And so this would be a massive increase.
You're already seen, by the way, the chairs of the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate
Armed Services Committee saying that this is this is great.
We're so excited.
You know, we're happy about this increase.
So, you know, a lot of it is just like throwing things at the wall
and seeing what's going to stick.
And I think this is another example of that.
I think a lot of his tweets about, you know,
basically describing Venezuela as the U.S. protectorate is also part of that
in an effort to course Delsi Rodriguez.
But, you know, he is certainly high on militarism right now.
There's another figure I want to ask you about Paul Singer and just returning to the think tank piece.
I mean, he's been a donor to the Manhattan Institute, which is a conservative think tank that has been supporting regime change in Venezuela.
He has like just a name is very central in this major MAGA donor, donated millions to his reelection effort in 2024 and to Republicans.
broadly in 2024. And prior to that, I think he was pretty cozy with Marco Rubio back when
Rubio was running in 2016 as a GOP political donor kind of power player. What's his interest in
Venezuela and why is he kind of named as the guy who stands to benefit the most here?
Yeah, I'm glad you brought this up because this is another example of, you know, someone who's
donated a lot of money. I think he's given $1.3 million to, um,
the Manhattan Institute, and he's a donor to other think tanks,
but to the Manhattan Institute, and there you have a think tank
that's oftentimes promoting the interests of this donor.
And Manhattan also has taken a ton of money from Exxon
and other oil companies.
But, yeah, I mean, you, Paul Singer, you know,
he's a major Rubio and Trump ally.
He's given $5 million to Trump's Super PAC.
He's, he's, but he's one of these, he's a,
what's described as kind of a vulture capitalist.
You know, he buys up distressed assets and, you know,
tries to turn them into something after the sale of these distressed assets are sold
from, from developing countries.
And, you know, he did that with Sitgo, which is the subsidiary of PDSA,
that owns refineries across the U.S. three major refineries on the Gulf Coast.
And it can refine some 800,000 barrels of oil per day,
which is about how much Venezuela is producing in oil currently,
or as of late last year.
And so he stands to benefit a lot.
You know, he bought this, he bought Citgo for just $6 billion,
which is pennies on the dollar in what he could get.
And yeah, you know, he goes back,
a long time with Rubio. He endorsed Rubio's
2016 campaign. Rubio even helped
pressure Argentina into
paying this $4.6 billion
payment to Singer and other creditors to
settle some debt that they had bought.
So he's a good friend of Rubio,
a good friend of Trump,
and another major donor to a lot of these thing things.
So he stands to gain a lot from all of this.
Well, I'd really encourage people to check out
all of what the Quincy Institute does and the tracker itself.
The think tank funding tracker will put a link to your latest piece on what risk,
big investors jockeying for potential Venezuela oil rush in Responsible Statecraft
and also your think tank funding tracker down below.
Nick, thanks so much for your time today.
I really appreciate it.
Thanks so much for having me on.
Of course.
All right.
With that, folks, we are going to wrap up the free part of this show.
head into the fun half of this show where we'll read your IMs.
Perhaps we'll take some calls.
We shall see.
Matt, what's happening on Left Reckoning and with Jacobin?
Yeah, yeah, Left Reckoning, Nick Astis and Jose Luis Granonosaia talking about Venezuela on Tuesday.
Go check that episode out.
Great talking to those guys on two different perspectives on it.
And tomorrow, Ryan Grimm, talking about just some stuff happening in the news recently.
Oh.
So probably, you know, talk on that.
So tomorrow, Jackman Show, 10 a.m. Eastern time.
All right.
We're bringing in Brandon here.
There he is.
While we bring them up, we will read some IMs.
Brennan in Petaluma.
I seems reluctant to invade any state with stand your ground laws.
if they did, I'm pretty sure we'd see some of these thugs getting their asses shot as well.
Wow.
Yeah.
I don't know about that.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know about that.
I mean, they were in Tennessee, right?
I don't know what the gun laws are.
Yeah.
Louisiana, they also did some action.
Yeah.
But I do think, like, this, people need to do lots of different forms of organizing their communities to stop this.
because I don't think telling them to just get the fuck out of the city.
Like you're going to need to,
we're going to prosecute these people.
These sorts of threats need to be real.
Yep.
Hey, Brandon.
How are you?
I'm doing all right.
How are you doing, Emma?
I am doing all right.
What is happening on the discourse?
Well, I mean, every day, you know, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.
Eastern, we're just chopping it up.
We're just covering the news.
So you can go over to the YouTube channel.
the discourse with Brandon to just see what's up.
We have so many clips up now.
It feels crazy.
Oh, yeah?
Yeah.
Big expansion into YouTube.
I saw you talk about the Hat Boys, the Hat, Tim Pool.
The Hat guy is sitting in for Tim Pool?
I just don't get it.
Is it like a thing I don't understand about the show where they have to wear hats
and I'm just being like, oh, part of the branding?
Or is somebody like there's a period of time where I wore a hat on camera or?
regular like three or four years ago.
And I think it just becomes a crutch.
Like I, and for me, people, I stopped wearing it because people said I was going
bald and I'm like, no, I'm not.
I'll take my hat off.
You keep saying that.
Wow, peer pressure.
But I will say one thing that we will be covering, and I don't know if you are up to
date on this too, is that Bongino is going to be coming back to Rumble very soon.
Because obviously his tenure as the deputy director of the FBI has come to an
And people keep saying that he lasted a year.
That's not what happened.
It was way less than a year.
Yeah.
Just by nature of when Trump even became president was like inaugurated.
It can't have been a year.
But whatever.
He sort of quiet quit like starting in May, didn't he?
Oh, no.
He quiet quit starting in July when Pam Bondi fumbled the coverup that he was a part of the coverup of the Epstein files, obviously.
Which is also why he quiet quit and wants to go back to Rumble.
And so what's going on on Rumble now is that all of the cover up.
the right-wing show host who are afraid of Candace Owens are like getting themselves all pumped
up because Dan Bongino's coming back. You know, Daddy's coming home. And so they think that Dan
Bongino is going to take out Candace Owens, not that he's not in the FBI. He's going to get
decimated. No one has been more compromised than Dan Bongino has been by the Epstein cover-up,
who is in right-wing media, not Cash Patel. I mean, it's going to be a bloodbath. So I'm excited for that.
If you're excited for that, definitely go subscribe to the discourse.
I think that we're up to almost 5,000 on the Twitch channel.
And we'll be getting to 5,000.
We're going to do a little bit of a gaming, a gaming stream.
Probably we'll finish Alan Woke, too.
Or maybe we'll try that clear, obscure game that people keep yelling at me to buy.
I bought that, yeah, because everyone's saying it's the best game of the year.
And I'm like, I don't normally play these type of games, but I did just buy new gaming PC.
So I guess I need to buy all.
Oh, look at you.
Look at you.
Flexing on them.
We'll do this Bonino stuff from the Fun House.
Yes, let's head into the Fun Half.
Take a quick break, and we will see you on the other side of things.
Okay, Emma, please.
Well, I just, I feel that my voice is sorely lacking on the majority report.
Wait, look, 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.
That's cool.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pause you right there.
Wait, what?
You can't encourage how much to live like this.
And I'll tell you why.
So it was offered a twerk, sushi, and poker with the boys.
Boys, boys.
What?
Twerk, sushi and poise.
That's what we call the biz.
Twerk, sushi and ties.
I just think that what you did to Tim Poole 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.
I probably am in a certain way, but let's get to the meltdown here.
Boys, oh my God.
Twirl?
Wow.
Sushi.
I'm sorry, I'm losing my fucking mind.
Someone's offered a twerk.
Yeah.
Sushi and poker with the boys.
Logic.
Twerk.
Sushi and poker.
I think I'm like a little kid.
A little kid.
I'm not trying to be a dick right now, but like, I absolutely think the U.S. should be providing
meat with a wife and kids.
That's not what we're talking about here.
It's not a fun job.
twerk.
That's a real.
That's got a real thing.
Willie Walker.
That's a real thing.
Sam has like the weight of the world on the shoulders.
Sam doesn't want to do this show anymore.
It was so much easier.
When the majority report was just you, you were happy.
Let's change the subject.
Rangers and Nick are going great.
Now, shut up.
Don't want people saying reckless things on your program.
That's one of the most difficult parts of this show.
This is a pro-killing podcast.
I'm thinking maybe it's time to bury the hatchet.
Left is best.
Violet twir?
Be fun, Israel, dude.
Edible theme song.
I Bumbler.
Emma Viglin, absolutely one of my favorite people.
Actually, not just in the game, like, period.
