The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3631 - Foiled Correspondence Assassination Attempt; The Myth of Red Texas w/ David Griscom
Episode Date: April 27, 2026It's Fun Day Monday on The Majority Report On today's program: Foiled correspondence Assassination plot After the shooting outside the White House Correspondent Dinner, Donald Trump goes on 60 minut...es for an interview about the incident. 60 Minutes' Norah O'Donnell reads to the President a brief excerpt from the shooters manifesto that mentions Trump being a rapist and pedophile, Trump responds in the way the guilty people do - by hurling insults. David Griscom, author of The Myth of Red Texas: Cowboys, Populism and Class War in the Radical South joins the program for a conversation about his book. Check out's David's podcast - both of which feature Majority Report's own Matt Lech, The Jacobin Show and Left Reckoning. In the Fun Half: Russell Brand is on a book tour, and it is not going well. Brand flounders on Piers Morgan, failing to find a Bible passage he intends to read on air at Piers' request. In another interview, Megyn Kelly expresses skepticism about the sexual assault allegations against him, saying she believes he is being railroaded by the media. In response to Kelly, Brand goes on to admit things that Kelly was attempting to dismiss. Footage from the White House correspondent dinner incident shows Donald Trump falling, Stephen Miller using his wife as a human shield and RFK, Jr. abandons his wife. Trump spins the shooting into a case for his ballroom and coincidentally a massive amount of right-wing X accounts also tweet demands for a White House ballroom. Ben Stiller's tweet about the Knicks winning gets misinterpreted by right-wingers as a boast about the attempt on Trump's life. At a Substack party over the weekend, Michael Tracey got into a spat with Julie K. Brown. Jim Acosta allegedly stepped in, prompting Tracey to challenge him to a fight outside a Hampton Inn. All that and more. To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is (202) 224-3121. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. 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 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: DELETE ME: Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to joindeleteme.com/MAJORITY and use promo code MAJORITY at checkout. ONE SKIN: Get 15% off OneSkin with the code MAJORITY at oneskin.co/majority SMALLS: Smalls is giving you 60% off your cat's first order, plus free shipping and free treats for life when you go to Smalls.com/MAJORITY SUNSET LAKE CBD: Use coupon code "Left Is Best" 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.
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And now time for the show.
Adjality report with Sam Cedar.
It is Monday.
April 27,
26th,
My name is Sam Cedar. 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, David Griscombe, author of The Myth of Red Texas, also the host of the Jackman Show and co-host of a show called
left reckoning.
Also on the program today
White House
press conference dinner shooting
the shooter
apparently even expressed shock
at the lack of security
in its wake
Trump acolytes
push Trump's
ballroom project
this as the New York Times
reports that the White House
had a shady deal
with that very same ballroom
contractor. No. Shocking.
So unlike them.
As the U.S. delegation
cancels the trip to Pakistan
after Iran
cancels negotiations,
Ron overs a deal to open
the straight,
but not to discuss
nuclear weapons.
Congress stated, slated to
attempt to pass
702 FISA
reauthorization.
DHS funding and a farm bill this week.
Unlikely.
GOP lawmakers, meanwhile, are introducing a bill to extend some U.S. veteran benefits
to veterans of the Israeli so-called defense force.
As the U.S. Supreme Court formally reinstates the pro-Republican Texas,
map. The Virginia
State Court hears arguments
over the newly approved
Virginia redistricting maps.
Main Governor Janet Mills
vetoes legislation on Friday
on a data center
moratorium. And then two days later,
the worst of the worst of big tech
drops a $2 million
anti-platiner ad.
California billionaire tax
qualifies for the ballot, despite Gavin Newsom's opposition to taxing billionaires more.
Chief Science Officer at PEPFAR resigns because of Trump's plan to leverage HIV drugs for rare minerals.
New report Iran did far greater damage to U.S. military bases than the Pentagon has admitted.
And lastly, King Charles is visiting.
Whatever.
All this and more on today's majority report.
I really, it is Monday.
Funday Monday, Monday.
Thank you, Emma.
I saw the news that, you know, Prince Charles or King Charles is coming.
King Charles.
Yeah, King Charles.
Get it right.
I apologize to our monarchist friends.
And I was like, I don't care at all, but it's like the, you know, it's always like the number two news story.
And I always feel obligated like I'm not going to pretend it's not happening because I don't care that much that it, I don't care that it's not happening or it is happening.
I don't care at all either.
What portfolio does he have?
Like, honestly, like, what do you mean?
Like, is you going to come and say, like, you know, we're going to negotiate with Donald Trump to.
like you can't, you know, wear these jewels or whatever it is.
Like, I don't like...
Maybe they'll just commiserate over, you know, his brother being embroiled in the Epstein files, a scandal just like Trump.
So they have a lot more in common than we think.
I imagine.
Also a little incestuous.
Trump likes his daughter.
Yeah.
You can talk about that.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, interesting to...
Yeah.
Yeah.
Anyways, putting that aside, as you may have heard, there was a shooting outside of the White House press conference.
White House correspondence dinner on Saturday night.
Now, in the main, I don't give an absolute F about that event.
It was, there was one time, Stephen Colbert was quite good in 2006.
Michelle Wolf.
That's the all-timer, I think.
I don't even remember that one.
When was that?
2018?
Yeah, that was Trump.
Oh, 2018.
Before Trump got rid of it because he was upset that he was getting made fun of.
Although it is significant in that many people draw the White House correspondence dinner where Obama made fun of Trump to his face about birtherism and played the Lion King video and said it was his birth video.
Many people say that's when Trump decided to run for president.
And I think there's something to that.
But for me, like the best of the White House correspondence dinner is when the correspondents are being indicted.
The failure of the media in the aughts was particularly acute.
Now they don't have the same power.
The people in that room don't have the same power they had 20 years ago.
They simply don't because there's a lot more competition in terms of like narrative building.
Maybe not necessarily in terms of reporting.
There's a lot less.
But in terms of narrative building and make no mistake about it, the vast majority of those people in that room are narrative builders,
whether they claim to be or not.
Certainly there are competent reporters.
But nevertheless, so I generally don't care.
about that event at all.
I had no idea it was going on.
I think even YouTube at one point asked this.
Like, are you guys going to cover that?
And I'm like, wait, what?
No.
And, you know, people have parties down there.
But this year, it got more attention because a shooter who has been identified,
apparently, like a very well-educated guy,
oddly, despite the fact that the president says he was anti-Christian, seems to have been quite Christian, belonging to like a Christian brotherhood or something like that.
But his politics are decidedly anti-Trump policy.
And apparently in his manifesto, he cited some rather generic complaints about Donald Trump.
It wasn't tax cuts for the rich.
It wasn't, hey, you guys are undermining the IRS.
You are undermining the Department of Education.
It was more sort of like general corruption critique.
Like if Cash Patel were to drunkenly type into Chad GPT, come up with a manifesto for a shooter at the White House correspondent's dinner and it would come out like that.
Like just in theory, that's what it could be, right?
I have no idea.
Did you know that the bullet casing said ballroom?
No, they didn't.
No, it didn't.
Right?
But here, Donald Trump sat down with Nora O'Donnell.
This is from the bulwark.
I guess they pulled this already.
So arrest them 60 minutes.
Exactly.
But this is the president addressing apparently Nora O'Donnell's audacity at mentioning
the manifesto and some of the more sordid parts of it.
The so-called manifesto is a stunning thing to read, Mr. President.
He appears to reference a motive in it.
He writes this quote,
administration officials, they are targets.
And he also wrote this.
I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist,
and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.
What's your reaction to that?
Well, I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would,
because you're you're horrible people yeah he did write that i'm i'm not a rapist i didn't rape anybody
oh you do you think he was referring to you excuse me i'm not a pedophile you read that crap from some
sick person uh i got associated with all stuff that has nothing to do with me i was totally exonerated
your friends on the other side of a pause for a second i just you know i don't want to get nip
here. I'm not exactly sure what he was totally exonerated from. I do know that a civil court,
which does have a lower standard of proof, but a pretty high one in and of itself, but lower than a
criminal court, found him liable for rape. Now, again, as a civil matter, not as a criminal matter.
I don't know what he was fully exonerated from, ever.
He's said that ever since the Epstein files have been released.
I'm just trying to take him at face value.
Now, apparently his name was in the Epstein files more than anyone else's, which, I mean.
It tracks with what.
The hottest guy in the country.
Everything is so hot.
Everyone cares to stop talking to me.
If everybody's files were released, that'd be the number one guy mentioned.
That's what Michael Wolfe said that Epstein and Trump were best friends for over a decade.
Well, that's what Epstein said to him.
What would track?
I'm not a friend.
I'm not a friend.
Credit to her for saying, oh, you think he's referring to you?
Oh, right.
Yes, that was pretty well done.
I got associated with stuff that has nothing to do with me.
I was totally exonerated.
Your friends on the other side of the plate are the ones that were involved.
Pause it for one second.
What the hell is at me?
On the other side.
friends on the other side of the plate, you got a lot of lesbian friends or gay friends.
Other side of the plates, because he was going to say other side of the aisle.
Then mid-sentence, remember, he's talking to a journalist.
Not a Democrat.
He's not talking about it.
Or he's just hungry.
Yeah.
On the other side of the plate, the people who.
Go right.
Plate are the ones that were involved with, let's say, Epstein or other things.
But I said to myself, you know, I'll do this interview and they'll probably, I read the manifesto, you know, as a sick person.
But you should be ashamed of yourself reading that because I'm not any of those things.
Mr. President, these are the gunman's words.
Excuse me.
You shouldn't be reading that on 60 minutes.
You're a disgrace.
But go ahead.
Let's finish the interview.
The other thing that he wrote in the.
You're disgraceful.
The other thing.
I mean, the, the, the.
These critiques of Donald Trump could have come from really across the board.
I mean, we're hearing, you know, disaffected Trump supporters say very similar things.
The Epstein stuff, a reminder, all of the Epstein stuff was really, really hyped by the right.
I mean, and to be sure, there's some very important.
important questions that need to be raised and some very high placed people and the questions of like a two-tiered justice system is present here.
But, I mean, if he's concerned about the being tagged with the Epstein stuff, it really is.
And largely like, you know, live by the sword, die by the sword.
It's the, the Epstein controversy was certainly an element of his getting really.
elected? Yeah. I mean, I even think like we can go back and look at Q and on and wonder where
that originated from. I maintain that it's very interesting that Bannon and Epstein had such a
close relationship and at the same time with Bannon's familiarity with Fawchan. There was somebody
who came up on Fichan, then moved to A. Chan, called themselves Q and said they had all of this
inside knowledge about pedophiles and drinking.
blood and all being associated with the Democrats. It would be a very convenient way to distract from
Epstein and Trump's relationship for that long of a period of time ahead of an election where
there were a lot of controversies about him being, yes, an accused rapist. We didn't know
too much about the accusations of pedophilia yet, but we did see those videos of his daughter
sitting on his lap if people want to look those up and him talking about how attractive she is
or whatever.
Yuck.
Swann.
Go ahead.
Wasn't he barging into
Miss Teen USA's locker room?
That's what I was going to say like swanning around these pageants like a great white shark.
Well, nevertheless, Donald Trump is offended by it.
That's what's important.
In a moment, we're going to be talking to, we'll have more on the shooting at the White House correspondence dinner.
later in the program.
Yes.
In a moment, we'll be talking to David Griscom,
host of the Jacobin Show,
co-host of Left Reckoning,
and author of The Myth of Red Texas,
Cowboys, Populism,
and Class War in the Radical South.
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Quick break when we come back, David Griscombe, host of the Jacobin Show,
co-host of a show called Left Reckoning,
the author of The Myth of Red Texas, Cowboys, Populism, and Class War in the Radical South.
We are back. Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland, on The Majority Port. It's a real pleasure to welcome to the program.
David Griscombe, host of The Jacobin Show, co-host of Left Reckoning, author of his book, The Myth of Red Texas, Cowboys, Populism, and Class War in the Radical South.
David, welcome to the show.
So nice to see you, Sam. Great to see you, Emma, and everybody.
Great to see you, buddy.
Great to have you here. All right. Let's just start.
with this. Like, what is, what is the myth of Texas? And I mean, it's a pretty rheumetric question,
but why is this intervention is so important? Yeah, I mean, you know, I don't know how familiar
you all are with our little governor, lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick. You know, he is somebody
who's overseeing one of the largest economies of the world. And he is regularly involving himself
in the programming at the Alamo, right, which is a truly, like, ridiculous thing, that somebody like that is so
focused on museum programming. And there's a reason for it is I think that in Texas, there's a
certain kind of myth that is really important for the Republican Party to maintain. You see this
a lot with the way that like somebody like Ted Cruz, you know, in his recent Senate campaign,
his slogan was keep Texas, Texas. And there is this anxiety in Texas that Texas is changing.
And to keep Texas the same way to be true, a true Texan is to be a Republican, be a conservative.
So my book, one, goes all the way back throughout Texas history to say that what, in fact,
Texas is not an inherently conservative place.
There was large movements of populace of radicals,
of people fighting against things like private property.
They go all the way back to the beginning of the state.
But even in recent history, the success of the Republican Party
has been, yes, taking advantage of some conservatives that exist in Texas,
but also bringing in many new Republican voters, right?
It's not an accident, for example, that Dan Patrick is from Maryland.
The Republican Party sort of become more and more successful in Texas
once Texas experienced massive migration from the rest of the country.
So northern Republicans, Midwestern Republicans, and California Republicans start moving here during the 80s and the 90s.
So, you know, the book really is challenging this idea that Texas is automatically conservative,
automatically Republican.
And I think it's a really important thing to be able to do just because the right is very focused on this,
because they understand that they're not really offering much materially for people,
but if they can kind of promote these myths that to be a true text and is to be a Republican,
to be a conservative, it's very helpful for them, I think, politically.
Before we get into some of that history that they would rather people not be aware of,
where do you think that came from?
I mean, I guess like, you know, I'm old enough that I grew up in an era where, you know,
John Wayne was still relatively prominent.
And like that, and John Wayne himself was a pretty conservative guy.
And obviously, like, sort of the quintessential cowboy.
I mean, when was that myth really propagated?
I mean, I would say certainly in like the 50s and in the 60s, this kind of moment of feeling that, like,
you know, that America was disappearing, America was changing, and the cowboy is, you know,
one of the most American myths that you can imagine, right? So that really becomes, I think,
a major kind of political force to kind of re-imagined the cowboy. And it is kind of, I mean,
we'll get into the history, I guess, in a minute, but, you know, it is kind of ironic looking
at the actual history of, like, cowboys and cowboy and work. This kind of idea of, like, a lone
individual kind of flies in the face of what was actually being done. But, like, you know,
the right has been very effective at this, not just in Texas. I mean, Ronald
Reagan, you know, really played this up to great success to kind of promote himself as like
the return to like the true American values.
And in history, too, it's very interesting.
You know, there's a cliche, obviously like the Victor Wright's history, but going and doing
the research for this book, you can start to see how the narratives of these kind of left-wing
and radical movements in Texas that involve cowboys and figures like that, how it starts to
shift in the 50s and 60s away from like actually a court of history to.
a very specific interpretation that lent it itself to be more conservative.
Yeah, the individual, an individualized myth of the cowboy, the loner who is operating and
colonizing on his own, is like one of the earliest myths that you bust in your book,
talking about how in the 1880s, I believe, there were cowboys that organized and were on strike.
if you could just tell us a little bit about that history
and the conditions that set up the Cowboys strike in the 1880s.
Yeah.
I won't,
I'll do it kind of briefly just so people know, though,
that Texas is very economically devastated after the Civil War
but doesn't have the same kind of like infrastructural damage
that other southern states did.
So land's really cheap and there's a lot of people moving to the state of Texas.
And there's also this new class of people,
particularly like Northern and British capitalists who start moving in Texas.
and buying up significant portions of the land.
They really start to change the way that cowboy work is being done in the state of Texas.
And this is around the same time as a new invention, Barb Wire comes onto the scene.
So what ends up happening is traditionally, like the old Western ideals of Texas cowboy work,
meant that if you were a cowboy, you could kind of manage your own herd alongside the bosses' herd, right?
And this was seen as like the way that everyday people could maybe get a leg up and get to live the American or Texan dream.
as this new class of kind of bosses and landlords comes into play in Texas,
they start to see that as competition.
So they start to really change the way that cowboying work is done.
And they move this kind of romantic vision of the cowboy as a kind of like independent worker
into somebody who very much becomes like a wage worker.
So in Tuscosa, Texas, and there's a really great book about this by Mark Laos as well,
in Tuscosa, Texas, there is this group of cowboys who get together.
And it's notable because the people who are leading the strike are actually the people at the higher end of the wage spectrum.
So these are the wagon bosses.
These are the people who interface with the bosses and interface with the merchants.
And they organize themselves together and they have this meeting where they start to put in very specific wage demands for cowboys, the way that this work is going to be done.
And they go, they organize themselves into kind of proto-union and they go on strike.
And this is where this story, my story, and Mark Laos's story really diverges from the one you're going to be told if you read about this strike.
It's because the way this story is often told in Texas is, oh, this was an interesting affair.
These cowboys organized themselves into a union, but then they just got drunk at the saloon and they spent their entire strike fund and they had to go back, you know, hat and hand to the bosses and accept the demands.
But as I argue in the book, and Mark Laos also, I think, makes very clear, the Cowboys strike was just a tremendous success.
What ended up happening was they went on strike at the exact time when the big cattle drives would happen,
which meant that the bosses had a lot to lose if it was delayed.
And the bosses just had to accept the demands of the cowboys.
And in fact, you know, the United States federal government also listed this strike as a successful strike.
The reason that the story is often told as a loss or a failure is because most of the accounts that people are using
are accounts that came directly from the mouths of the bosses.
and these big ranchers.
But being able to look at the historical record now,
it seems very apparent that these cowboys went
and they won their strike.
And the fact of the matter is,
this is a very American story
and a very typical labor story
where people go on strike,
they win, and then the bosses kind of undercut them
and screw them over in the long run.
So why is it in Texas that instead of having this be a part
of the grand tapestry of American labor history,
we get told this story that like,
oh, Texans and Cowboys could never go on strike,
when the story is actually very typical.
People went on strike and the bosses screwed them over in the long run, you know, rather than there being some exceptional aspect of Texanness or Texan history that prevented it from being successful.
Well, that's what struck me also in this chapter in particular.
I mean, you have to sift through all these kind of archival, this archival material that doesn't portray the actual reality that you're talking about here.
And a lot of it, it's like instructive for people to learn now when you see how even media at that time was taking the boss aside or frame.
it from their perspective.
Like, you know, maybe this is a little bit in the weeds about your process, but I'm just
fascinated by how you were able to disaggregate false claims from like these newspapers
in your research versus how it actually shook out.
Well, I mean, I think this is something that we all experience doing what we do is, you know,
you sometimes have to question and look into like where the source, you know, the information
that like a newspaper article or some kind of pundit, what they're using to make their argument.
For most of these kind of accounts of the strike that were happening in newspapers,
they were happening far off, right?
These were things that were happening, like they wrote about it in Boston.
They wrote about it, you know, in the Midwest,
and papers that were very, very far off from the actual cowboys, from the actual strike.
So who are the people who are able to communicate that far?
It tended to be the wealthy and the bosses, and they were the ones who were talking to people
at the railheads, right?
So this was a very clear example of the fact that, you know,
there was a different existence for working class people and the rich.
Like the rich got to go into town.
They got to travel to Chicago.
They got to travel to Dallas.
So they got to tell their story.
And that gets picked up by reporters and becomes the national story that kind of set for a long time until people have been able to kind of dive deeper into this history.
I mean, I think that extreme sort of the, the isolation of the average person at that time and inability to communicate outside of like very limited circles.
you see that, I can compare that to like what's going on with Starbucks today.
Yeah.
Like, I mean, honestly, like that is a, you know, Howard Schultz got out there and tried an entire campaign.
The guy's a billionaire and could not compete.
Just one more question about the Cowboy Strike.
Do you have a sense of why the, why it started with almost, you know, arguably what was management or low-level management?
management.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's an interesting thing.
And this is something I get into in the book.
I mean, I argue that, you know, there's many stories.
The Cowboys Strike is just one of the kind of chapters in this larger history of the Texan left.
But, like, I argue that like there is this kind of neighborliness and solidarity that existed amongst working
class Texans.
And I think, you know, when it comes to labor organizing, anyone in the audience who's done it,
you know, you know, obviously we want to appeal to people's better selves, but there's an aspect of
self-interest.
And even though somebody like Tom Harris, who is like one of these leaders,
He was actually, the amount that he was getting paid by the big ranches was way more than even what they were, these striking cowboys were asking for, right?
So he actually was like taking a huge risk, literally just for everyone else.
But there's an aspect, I think, that he understood, and he understood correctly, that if they started accepting these demands, if they started accepting these lower wages for people on the bottom end of the wage scale, it would sooner or later come to those at the top end.
So, you know, these folks, I mean, again, like this is why I think, I think this story is really interesting, is because,
they're often written about or talked about in the historical record as kind of like illiterate, stupid individuals who didn't understand what was going on when, in fact, somebody like Thomas Harris had a very strong, long view of history and could see what was coming next.
You want to go?
I just wanted to just ask about the Farmers Alliance.
I mean, so much of this, particularly at this time, there's two things that strike me about about what's happening in Texas.
So much of it is land oriented because of both what's happening in terms of America expanding at this time and railroad barons and, you know, just the idea of like you write about the development of barbed wire, which is specifically just to sort of keep people out of land.
you don't need barbs if you're keeping people in
and
how this is all taking place
in either reconstruction or post-reconstruction.
Talk about the Farmers Alliance
and the Kleborn demands,
but also in the context of it being
in reconstruction.
Yeah, so yeah, I mean, this is kind of like
towards the end of reconstruction.
I mean, this is like after the redeemer's
come back into power. So we now have like conservative Democrats who are very much aligned with
business undoing all the work of reconstruction, right? As we all know, reconstruction was a project
that was not completed and it certainly wasn't completed in Texas. So you have this ruling,
you know, political class in Texas that has completely gone into bed with major industry.
Then it was the railroads. And that very much rhymes with Texas today, right? I mean, they were
really screwing over everyday people. So at first, like, the farmers started asking themselves like,
hey, why are we getting screwed? Like, you know, we're working extremely hard. And every year we go and we kind of sell our crops and we find ourselves deeper and deeper and deeper in debt. In fact, like the debt crisis for farmers in Texas got so bad that farmers oftentimes could end up being renters to be tenant farmers on land that their family might have owned. They might have been born on land that their family owned. And one day they start paying rent to this merchant class. So the farmers in Texas get together and they start coming up with solutions. And at first, it's things like, oh, what if we do?
crop diversification or more scientific improvements to our farming.
But the problem wasn't so much their capacity or their production.
It was the fact that they had a rigged economic system that was screwing over everyday people.
So the Farmers Alliance organizes itself.
And S.O. Dawes, who's one of my favorite figures in this chapter, he starts asking the
question and saying there's something radically wrong when those who work most get leased
and those who work least get most.
And at first they start organizing themselves as like a kind of economic organization.
They start to produce things like cooperative stores and other kinds of like economic alliance
strategies that they can do to push back against the merchant class.
But as they start to do that, the merchant class unites themselves together and kind of prevents them from being able to compete at a kind of equal footing with their cooperative stores.
So they sort of realized they need to create a political movement.
And that's when they at first start participating within Democratic Party politics for a while.
and eventually have this full-on revolt.
And the Kleberne demands is a really fascinating document
because one of the first things that they say in this
is a set of demands that's happening right as all of these massive railway strikes are going on.
One of the first demands from the Kleberin demands is the recognition of unions.
So what's really fascinating about the movement in Texas,
and I think this is why this kind of radical history I think is so threatening to folks
is that it's not just, oh, some farmers got together and they started advocating for themselves.
it starts to become like a full-on class revolt.
And they start to understand themselves,
not just as like agricultural people and workers and farmers
who have specific interests,
but as members of like this larger working class.
And you can read the early demands from the Kleber demands
to the populist party and later to the Socialist Party.
And they read very similarly to like a Bernie Sanders campaign.
You know, there's demands for Medicare for all.
There's protections against debt.
There's recognition of unions.
And again, I just want to remind people like these are tech.
These are the people who, these were mass movements that included the best majority of people, the everyday people.
And if you are somebody who's a six, seven generation text, and they're very likely related to be one of, to one of these people versus the ruling political class in Texas.
And we're approaching kind of the political elements of this here in your book.
And when, you know, this emerging third party movement as well and populism as a movement in and of itself,
There's also lessons in this section about the Democratic Party quite literally co-opting
that energy that we could learn today.
But just take us through that period and where, you know, kind of politically in the late 19th century, this energy went.
Yeah, I will just say if you're somebody who's listening to this and you're saying, well, you know, this sounds interesting, but I'm not too interested in Texas.
Like, I don't need to dive into this book.
I will say that if you've ever engaged in the debate about whether or not people should run as
independents or as members of the Democratic Party, like this is really, you know, the book for you
because we go through every example of this, right? Running within the Democratic Party, see the successes
and the failures of that, running as independent, seeing the successes and failures as that,
and then running as out-out-socialists and seeing the successes in the failures at that. And, you know,
one thing that I come away with with the book is kind of an ambivalence to that question itself,
because what you ended up seeing is what really ended up mattering was like how organized everyday
people were. But the populist party, yeah, they first start kind of like operating within the
Democratic Party and their big demand is like, we need to regulate the railroads. The railroads are
screwing everybody over. We need to regulate corporate America. And they get a kind of a champion
with Governor Hogg, who people, you know, who grew up in Texas, they might know him as the governor
who made the unfortunate decision to name his daughter. I'm a hog. As in I'm a hog.
I remember that detail.
How do you do that?
I'm not like...
I've never met anyone actually named IMA.
It's always just a setup for a joke, except in this situation, it's real.
And it's a tragic because she was a really wonderful woman in many ways.
Very unfortunate decision there.
But, you know, he ends up basically taking large parts of the populist platform and puts him in the practice.
That's why we have a railroad commission in Texas, which is a very progressive institution, at least historically.
here and it's because of the demands from the populace.
Now, he starts to see that like, okay, I'm getting all this stuff and I'm getting this kind of
popularity.
I don't want to have to share it with these upstart farmers.
So he starts waging war against the movement within the Democratic Party, which to basically
jump over a decent amount of kind of foreshadowing, it ends up creating the situation where
the populace decide we need to run as our own party, run as the People's Party.
And the People's Party in Texas is not just a footnote.
It becomes like the second major political party in Texas.
And for a 10-year period, after most of Texas' history just being a one-party state effectively,
you actually have like two-party competition between this populist party and the Democratic Party.
And, you know, mixed back, you know, they're able to kind of force the Democratic Party to make more and more concessions.
So you actually do get, you know, some decent reforms in the state of Texas.
The People's Party is able to elect representatives, so they're influential in government.
And in 1896, they come officially within just a few percentage points of winning.
But many scholars, including myself, argued that the Democratic Party just rigged the elections.
And it's very easy to prove they were stuffing ballot boxes, threatening people at the polling place.
And effectively, after this popular revolt, you see the institution of things like the poll tax and the mass disenfranchisement of black people.
And I write in the book, and there's an excerpt up on Jackwood magazine about Grimes County, which is one of these counties that went like over 70% for Trump recently.
It was the site of this very incredible kind of pitched battle and gunfight between a white populist sheriff and his black deputies against the kind of white supremacist mob that had been whipped up by the Democratic Party to try to rid populism from the state of Texas.
So, you know, these were very serious movements.
and we can tell that they were serious because the government and the kind of ruling elites in Texas did so much to try to crush them.
I would just say like on the positive side really quick, like these movements were, they did these things called encampments where they would have these big parties in the summer in Texas and people would have barbecues and big bands.
And you'd spend the entire summer hanging out with your neighbors and members of the populace party, educating people teaching them how to read that are just really fascinating, beautiful to read about.
they had incredibly charismatic figures like Stump Ashby, who was a long-time rodeo clown turned politician,
who ended up effective.
Cyclone Davis, who ends up betraying the movement, but got the nickname because he apparently
put together a speech of Thomas Jefferson and the Bible and populist ideas in such an incredible
fervor that he left his opponents with their heads spinning, like the big cyclone from Texas
that come through, just these really incredible larger-than-life characters as well, just kind of traveling
around the state of Texas and across the country, in fact, because the People's Party was a
national movement at this point. That are just, you know, totally fascinating, very Texan figures
and very much forgotten, unfortunately. Well, you say, you mentioned the national populist party,
and, you know, part of this split, too, that you explore in the book is there's this lack of
cohesion from the National Party with the populist movement in Texas. Specifically, I guess,
stemming from the panic of 1893 as well,
and the crackdowns on labor by the railroad barons
created this particular environment,
if you could talk about this section of the book.
Yeah, I mean, I think that what ends up happening,
and this is just a lesson for any kind of organization,
is that one of the big problems with the populist movement
is that it allotted representation in the party
by population of the state,
which meant states like New York,
which had very large population,
but not a very active and successful populist party,
ended up having a lot of play of our states like Texas
and other states in the Midwest and the South
where the populace party ended up being fairly effective
and influential.
And Texas is interesting because most people know,
you know, the story of Williams Jenning-Bryan,
you know, the Cross of Gold speech.
And by the way, he literally, he did do this.
Like when he gave the speech, he put his arms out
like he was on the crucifix.
And most of the populists,
including particularly like the northeastern populists ended up wanting to fuse back and rejoin the
Democratic Party. But it was the Texas delegation that kind of stood the most firmly against
fusion with the Democratic Party. And while populism, you know, does start to decline in Texas over
the next few years, unlike the rest of the country where it effectively collapses once the populist
fuse with the Democrats, the Texas populist party stays fairly influential for a very, for a much
longer time. And in fact, as I was noting earlier, the 1896 election, being like their watershed.
moment. So, you know, when, you know, obviously a lot of people, when they think of populism,
they think about Kansas and, you know, Thomas Fink's excellent work there. But I would argue that
you should think about Texas as well.
Well, what is it about Texas? I mean, the whole idea, or at least in part, the of the utility
of burying this type of history by conservatives is to simply say like, you know, keep Texas,
Texas.
What is it about Texas that is so
there's like this
well, let me put it this way. I grew up in
Massachusetts. Massachusetts has been around for a long
time in this country, longer than Texas.
And I don't think I ever heard
let's keep Massachusetts, Massachusetts.
There was certainly like a very
deep parochialism
that existed in Massachusetts
I mean from town to town. Like, you know,
that dude's from Lowell. Well, I don't know what the hell's
going on over there. It's exactly like the same
places where you grew up. But it's
but what is it about Texas
that is like got this
attitude?
I don't know what
better like that
the idea that it's important
to hide this history so that we can
employ the idea of like Texas
you know, keep Texas, Texas.
It's not that old of a place.
And it's, and I mean, and it's changed like a lot, too.
I mean, you know, the, the population, you know, today is significantly different than like the population at this period of the book as well.
You know, I mean, it is fascinating thing.
And you think also I should just add, like, based upon the names of a lot of the cities there, that the keeping Texas, Texas would be like, let's keep it sort of like Mexico.
No, I mean, I think 100%.
And I think that, you know, Sam, one of the things that you're getting at here is that like there has been, you know, a long time right wing project, I think here.
Again, of like associating certain kind of values and perspectives and maybe even a racial idea of like what a true Texan is versus what a fake Texan is.
And I mean, like as to like why is the case.
I mean, you know, I could talk romantically.
It's a big state.
It's beautiful.
It feels very wild.
I mean, if you've ever been here, you know, I'm.
I'm from Austin and the way that the weather can change here.
You understand why so many people were Baptist because it can feel like God hates you,
you know, just so quickly.
I mean, it's kind of coming down on you.
And the utility of it for the right, I think, has been the fact that as Texas becomes
more of a kind of economic powerhouse and the changes that have happened here,
not just culturally, but also economically are so felt.
I mean, I'm in Austin.
and like this town feels completely different than it did when I was a kid, right?
And there's a lot of anxiety about what that means.
Just thinking culturally, you know, I don't think there's the same sense of a shared culture that we used to have.
And if the right can kind of speak to that anxiety and say that like, oh, it's because these Californians have been moving here and they're bringing their California ideals to Texas,
that's more effective than them having to make the pitch that they should have to make, which is that we've run this state for 30 years.
and, you know, we lead the country in humiliating statistics like childhood poverty,
maternal morbidity, you know, gun deaths, you know, hunger.
And that's a direct connection to the Republican Party's rule over this state.
So they need to play on this kind of mythic level because that allows you to tell stories and myths and, you know, fantasies and sell that
instead of having to actually stand on your own two feet about what you've been providing for everyday people.
And how much of that was oil, too, that, like, cemented that myth?
I mean, when it's that much private capital and that much kind of corruption flowing, like, it kind of incentivizes more mythology.
I think that that's probably true.
I mean, you know, Texas, and I think especially how Texas kind of got introduced to the rest of the country as well, right?
You know, because for a long time, Texas was just the kind of backwards agrarian state, right?
and, you know, it really was the kind of oil boom.
And then obviously our introduction to the country through LBJ that really kind of promoted a certain view of the Texan.
As a kind of new money individual, they don't have that kind of northeastern, you know, waspy culture.
And also kind of very gruff, aggressive, uneducated, shoot from the hip kind of figure.
And I think we've always kind of been struggling, you know, with this myth and image of ourselves, both on one hand of
maybe trying to disassociate with it and also in many ways trying to associate with it as well.
There's like a, there isn't, you know, and I guess I think about this.
I'm somewhat prejudiced by George W. Bush going back to Midland, Texas, and clear and brush.
And that was the way that he was, you know, going to, when his family came from Connecticut.
And her his grandpa's name was Prescott.
And like, like there, like there was a quality of, um, there's a self-consciousness.
And sort of like a, uh, there's a, there's an esteem issue.
And so you compensate by, I mean, I just remember I, a buddy who's a comedian, like,
would have this bit about Texas, like, don't mess with Texas.
And like, you know, just going up and picking a fight with.
the state or something.
Like, that just seems like, you know, instead of like welcome to Massachusetts, it's don't mess
with Texas.
It just seems.
But let's let's take that up to, you open up with the book with Beto and the, comparing it to Colin
all reds campaign.
And Colin all right.
Break it down for us because one thing that perennially has happened over the years is Texas
is in play.
is in play. Texas is in play.
And very often that's because
you've got Democratic consultants
who get paid a share of the
media buys across
the country. It's different than
Republicans. They don't do it this way.
So if I'm a Democratic
consultant, I get 15% of any
media buys. Texas is a
big media rich market.
And so if I can convince people
that somebody's going to win,
then we
get all these donations, then I buy, you know, $10 million worth of, of media buys, and I get $1.5
million from my Democratic consultant company.
That's generally what it's been like over the past couple of decades.
I mean, I'm old enough to remember Lloyd Benson, so who was, I think, probably the last
Democratic senator from Texas, if I remember correctly.
and and so you know it's not that long ago but um and it feels like tall rico has as good a chance as we've seen in
texas in you know despite all the excitement about better but but but talk about the difference
between those two people's campaigns and like how real what's happening in texas this year is
how real is it there's two like major uh
cliches in Texas politics that if you've done any work here or even just read enough, you know, kind of vapid op.
It's in The Washington Post, you'll come across.
The first one is that, you know, Texas is not a red state.
It's a non-voting state.
And the other one is that demographics is destiny.
And as the Anglo population, Texas, ceased to be the majority population, Texas.
There was this idea that, you know, particularly buoyed by Hispanics, but also by black voters,
that Texas would just become Democrat by the fact that, like, it's no longer a white state.
well unfortunately Trump I mean has shown that that you know isn't the case and I would just note and remind people that even though Trump did really well in 2024 this was we could you could see this in the data in 2020 and 2020 and 2024 it wasn't just something that happened to one election there has been a kind of right word move particularly South Texas amongst Hispanics so that was the fantasy totally wrong the other one is that the non-voting state look I think the gerrymandering and anti vote the voter suppression stuff we experience in Texas is terrible but we found out is that a lot of people who come out to
to vote are very willing to cast their ballots for the first time as, as Republicans.
And there's this assumption that the Republicans are sitting on their, on, you know,
on their hands here. They're not really having to fight or contest. No, they have a very serious
ground game operation, Texas, and that's why they've been so successful.
And again, this is the Democratic Party fantasy in Texas, is that, like, God, like, literally,
it's like, like, God is going to give us, like, this victory through some accident instead of, like,
doing the actual groundwork. So, and Colin Arroyd, I think, really embodied that versus Beto,
who I think showed a different path.
Colin Allred, you know, did the complete opposite of Beto, where Beto said, I'm going to go to every county in Texas.
Colin Alred very much, like, kind of sat back and let his ads and the ad buys do the talking for him.
People weren't particularly interested in that.
He also regularly was tacking right, you know, which I found to be a completely full of strategy.
And it didn't really win him many of these kind of Republican or right-wing voters.
And people, again, like they'll note that, you know, Colin Al-red did, you know, as bad as somebody like, you know,
as like people who ran for a Senate in recent years who people don't even remember or know their names.
Like he didn't really put up a significant improvement despite being one of the most well-funded
campaigns in the history, not just of Texas, but of the country.
Beto, on the other hand, I think, showed a different kind of path.
And it's notable.
Beto had to build up his entire campaign apparatus himself.
He did not really have the Texas Democratic Party running that campaign.
And, you know, he did do the every county strategy, which it's totally true, by the way.
I know some people always will remind me of this.
You know, it didn't really look like it helped him out that much in those super, you know,
blood-red, conservative counties in Texas that he went and visited them.
But you know what it did is it let people who were supporting him feel like they were actually
fighting for something and they were actually like participating in Texas politics?
And I think Tala RICO has that same kind of energy around him, too, with this Christian, you know,
appeal.
Will that actually effectively be able to pull evangelical voters over to Tala RICO?
I still very much have my dad.
in fact I think he has his doubts as well he was interviewed in in the new yorker and he basically said i don't
know how you know how effective i will be bringing over these kind of bright wing evangelicals but man you talk
to people who support him and they are so excited about him specifically because they at feel they at least feel
like they're contesting for something versus the kind of just depression that usually dominates the
democratic party campaigns in texas and accepting the fact that you think that you're going to lose so
So, you know, I think that bucking these kind of strategies that have dominated Texas Democrats for so long of, you know, demographics as destiny, kind of race essentialism thing that you're just going to win people because of their skin color, the further we can move away from that, the better.
And, you know, the Tala Rico campaign was interesting because he did very, very well in the counties where Bernie Sanders won back in the 2020 primary as well.
And that's notable because those are the parts of Texas.
Those are the communities that have been becoming more winnable for the right.
So there's certainly a lot to be excited when it comes to Talarico.
I would like it if he would support things like Medicare for All instead of the kind of weird Pete Buttigieg Medicare for Y'all that he's been pushing.
But he's really done a great job, I think, of making people believe that they could win in Texas.
Yeah.
And just to put a button on that, I guess, you know, there's parts of your book where you look at how Christianity and
socialism in Texas. And in many ways, I'm not, of course, Tala Rico is far from a socialist,
but at the very least, the embrace of this kind of, you know, good guy, Boy Scout Christianity,
especially during this period of cruelty, fascism, sadism under Trump, I think it has potency,
even though he's a cornball that comes up with things like Medicare for you all.
Yeah, I mean, I think that we live in a very cruel. I mean, I'll tell you one thing I've always
said on the left is I think that, you know, sometimes, you know, we can be too ironic and too detached.
And sometimes I think you've got to be a little bit sappy. I mean, we live in a very spiritually,
you know, a country right now that feels like it's in a spiritual crisis. I mean, the cruelty that
we see on a daily basis is horrific and it's bad for your soul. And it's very good to hear
somebody, I think, being able to speak to people on that level because I think it is something
that most people are experiencing on the day to day. Let me just ask you this, too, because
I was reminded by an I am
that
the
last sort of like
really prominent Democrat
that came out of Texas
Ann Richards
the governor there
and Molly Ivins
of course
and I mean Jim Hightower
and you know
there were certainly voices
but Ann Richards was
you know was governor
then she gets defeated by
George W. Bush
like what
what happened
to that
coalition. I mean, you know, and we should say, I think probably around that time, there were a lot of
states that went from traditionally democratic, you know, Tennessee, you know, Gore sort of like
famously lost his home state in that 2000 presidency. What, like, what, what was it? And how much of it was,
was racialized.
I mean, I still like everything, I can't remember who it was who had the, the, the statistic,
but 2008, 50% of non-college educated whites thought up until 2008 that the, the Republican Party
was to the left of Democrats on race as late as 2008.
Wow.
And so I wonder, like, you know, like how much of that was, you know, you know, you know,
And there was other projects, obviously, coming out of California and, you know, all of this sort of pushback by the conservative starting in the late 70s, early 80s.
But how much of that was in play?
Yeah, I mean, so like there's two bits here.
So maybe I can, I'll start.
I'll get to Ann Richards in a second.
And just note that, you know, Texas is unique even compared to other southern states is that like the transformation that happened here ended up happening a little bit later than it started to happen.
other states in the sense that like when it flipped, you know, that kind of happened, you know,
a bit later because this is going into the 90s in Texas.
But the thing in Texas that is notable is that when it flipped, I mean, it flipped and it kind of
held.
It was a defeat and it was done.
Where you still see, you know, even in other kind of southern states that are, you know,
very conservative.
You know, Republicans do well there.
You know, there's at least some competitive, you know, opportunity for the Democratic Party
versus in Texas where, like, I mean, they really lost and they lost completely.
And I just got to remind people, though, really quick.
that like when we talk, I don't like the term red state or blue state just because I think it really obscures a lot that's going on.
I mean, I live in Austin, which is, and I grew up in Austin, which is probably one of the most liberal cities in the country.
You know, Houston is a very, especially now, I mean, you know, has become, you know, a lot bluer.
San Antonio, Dallas. You know, it really kind of obscures, I think, what's going on for the places where most people live, actually, which are, you know, the urban areas in Texas.
Texas, despite its kind of vision of, you know, being a cowboy agrarian state, I mean, it's a very urban place at this point.
But, you know, the Republican Party, again, they took advantage of, and you can read this, you know, Carl Rove wrote a lot about this, is that the corporate relocation coming into Texas was a huge advantage for the Republican Party.
Hell, you can read Ann Richards talking about this. They brought in a lot of Republican voters who were interested mostly in that kind of, you know, pro-business, I don't know if you like that phraseology, but, you know what I mean, that kind of, you know, lowered the tax rate on the richest people in the country, and that was as far as their politics went. So that allowed there to be a base.
for the Republican Party, and then they start to get over some major defections from the Democratic Party.
Rick Perry being one of them.
Rick Perry, who ends up defeating Jim Hightower, you know, flip from being a lifelong Democrat to a Republican
around this period of time.
So there's a two-prong strategy from the Republican Party here.
It's like one taking advantage of this new class of voters until it became viable enough,
and then really also organizing women in the state of Texas.
The Republican Party did that for years, and something of the,
the Bush family is very much involved in. So my point is that like the Republican Party,
they didn't just say, hey, demographic changes are happening. We're going to start winning here.
They understood that, hey, we have a little bit of an advantage here. Like maybe the Democrats
kind of did as well with some of the shifting populations. And they said, we're going to build up
a machine and an operation that can take advantage of this. And that ended up being effective for
them. The end of the tradition of the Democratic Party in Texas is interesting. Anne Richards,
every single time I talk about my book, I say. My book is called The Myth of Red Texas. And one of the
first thing that people will say to me is, I remember Anne Richards.
Anne Richards was the governor of Texas.
And I'm like, yes, it is true.
And it is true that, you know, the Republican Party has dominated the state so long that we
look back and remember, oh, there was one time there's a Democrat that we remember.
I grew up in a household that had a photograph of Ann Richards on my refrigerator.
So I'm not coming from like a hater position, but I will say this.
By the time of Ann Richards, the Texas Democratic Party was on its last legs and kind of
didn't know what it stood for.
And I mean that in a sense of like Anne Richards, while she was very, very good at kind of like,
eviscerating Bush and that style of kind of, you know,
Republican conservative thought, you know,
this is somebody who supported NAFTA and, you know,
was, you know, somebody who really expanded prisons in Texas.
And look, it's difficult to run and govern in the state of Texas.
So I give her a decent amount of grace.
But I think that if we want to talk about kind of reclaiming our radical roots,
we should go a little bit deeper than that kind of last gasp of Texas, you know,
Texas Democratic Party politics and look for something that was going to be more sustainable,
because unfortunately at that point, you know, it seemed that they understood that this project
might be a lost cause for a while, and they really haven't come up with an,
talking about the Texas Democratic Party, really hasn't come up with an answer.
There are hopes.
We have people like Greg Casar, and a lot of really exciting progressive politics are coming out
Texas.
In Austin, we have a DSA city council member.
San Antonio has multiple DSA city council members.
There's a lot of movements that are kind of pushing up and changing the politics of
the state. But it's going to take, I think, a lot deeper connection with working class and
everyday people versus the kind of base of a lot of these coalitions, which tends to be, you know,
downwardly mobile college-educated folks in the cities. We need to really expand the base a lot.
I wonder if this dummy man or two might end up sparking something. I mean, you know, stranger things
have happened. David Griscombe, host of the Jackman Show, co-host of Left
Reckoning. Author, the book, The Myth of Red Texas, Cowboys, Populism, and Class War in the Radical South.
We'll put a link to that at majority.fm. And in the YouTube and podcast description, David,
real pleasure. Thanks so much. And congratulations on the book. It's great. Thank you so much,
David. Thank you so much, David. See you all. All right, folks. I'm going to take quick break.
Head to the fun half. Just a reminder is your support that makes the show possible.
you can become a member
at join the majority report.com.
When you do, you not only get the free show
free of commercials,
but you also get the fun half.
And in the fun half today,
we're going to be featuring
some footage
from the White House Correspondence dinner.
Underscored by yakety sacks.
Yep.
Yeah, that's true.
I'm trying to, I'm not saying, thanks.
Also, just coffee.com.
Fair Trade coffee, hot chocolate, use the coupon code majority, get 10% off.
And you can get the majority report, blend.
Before Matt does his plugs, I just remembered that I should plug that I was on the I've had it podcast.
I didn't know it had it had to come out.
But my sister just told me.
I told you.
Oh, I mean, she told me over the, I guess it came out over the weekend, which I didn't know.
What?
Oh, my sister.
My sister said.
Yeah, right.
I retweeted it.
I'm like, what?
When did she do that?
Yeah, I, I, I, I, I usually,
Are you mad?
Right.
Wow, it's like, what the, what, that I've been on twice and you've only been on once?
I didn't realize you've been on twice, but yeah, now that it's a problem.
Huh.
Now that's a problem.
Yeah.
She's got a really nice studio with great lighting.
It's not her studio.
It's, they, they have other people in that studio.
No, it's, she got a new one.
That's just hers.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Jeez.
Well, excuse me.
Loddy dog.
All right.
Com to our city,
buying up all our studio space.
Exactly.
Well, folks can see that at I've had it, right?
Mm-hmm.
Dot com.
Is it I've had it, that?
No, probably not.
You go, I think it's 2004.
They know how to find it.
Just check out their MySpace chat.
AOL keyword, I've had it.
Let's get a carrier pigeon.
It's Monday.
Tye a note to the bottom.
Today, this is a weird.
It's a weird Monday for everybody in the office.
It is a weird project.
Matt.
Yeah, if you want more
David Griscom and I.
People are noting you didn't say hello
to you.
I mean, we said hi before we got on,
you know, on air.
Trouble in paradise?
Seems a little tense.
Yeah.
Well, we are talking to each other
because we just did a show yesterday
for our Patreon.com
slash left reckoning audience.
We went into some good
class messaging by Zora Mabani
and Graham Platner
and also
a failed attempt to disrupt groceries
that old-fashioned word
so check that out
Patreon.com slash Left Reckoning
actually we're going to have Emma
I think in the coming weeks
to talk about the film
Like is your lighting so good?
Yeah we got
should be coming from home
but to talk about the movie
you were never really here
which I convinced you to watch
and I'm excited to talk about that
because it is like
it's a very
Everyone should watch that.
We'll have a little movie.
What is that movie?
It's very appropriate for the Epstein era.
Walking Phoenix plays like a sort of vet type of guy who is working security, and there is, I mean, just imagine, if you will, a high-level conspiracy about sex trafficking young women involving politicians.
I couldn't imagine.
And it's a female director, so, you know, that's...
It's a great movie, so, yeah, we're going to talk about that in the coming weeks.
But yeah, there will be a new show live for everybody tomorrow.
Quick break, fun half.
Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now.
And I don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now.
And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now.
But I think around 18 months out, we're going to look back and go like, wow.
What?
What is that going on?
It's nuts.
Wait a second. Hold on for, hold on for a second.
The majority.
Emma, welcome to the program.
Hey.
Fun hat.
Matt.
Who?
Fun hack.
What is up, everyone?
Fun hat.
No, me, Keene.
You did it.
Fun hat.
Let's go Brandon.
Let's go Brandon.
Fun hat.
Bradley, you want to say hello?
Sorry to disappoint.
Everyone, I'm just a random guy.
It's all the boys today.
Fundamentally false.
No, I'm sorry.
Wait, women's?
Stop talking for a second.
Let me finish.
Where is this coming from, dude?
But dude, you want to smoke this?
7, 8?
Yes.
Yes?
It is you.
It's me.
I think it is you.
Who is you?
No sound.
Every single freaking day.
What's on your mind?
We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism.
I'm going to go to fly.
Libertarians.
They're so stupid though.
Common sense says, of course.
Gobbled e-gook.
We fucking nailed it.
So what's 79 plus 21?
Challenge met.
I'm positively quivering.
I believe 96, I want to say.
857.
210.
301.
1⁄2.
3-8s.
911 for us.
$3,400.
$1,900.
$6.5,4, $3 trillion sold.
It's a zero-sum game.
Actually, you're making a think less.
But let me say this.
Poop.
You can call satire.
Sam goes to satire.
On top of it all, my favorite part about it.
You is just like every day, all day, like everything you do.
Without a doubt.
Hey, buddy, we see you.
Folks, folks.
It's just the week being weeded out, obviously.
Yeah, sundown, guns out.
But you should know.
People just don't like to entertain ideas anymore.
I have a question.
Who cares?
Our chat is enabled, folks.
I love it.
I do love that.
Got a jump.
I got to be quick.
I get a jump.
I'm losing.
12 o'clock, we're already late, and the guy's being a dick.
So screw him.
Sent to a gulaw?
Outrage.
Like, what is wrong with you?
Love you, bye.
Love you.
Bye-bye.
