The Texan Podcast - War, Protest, and the Golden Escalator: SMSS Ep. 17

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

In this episode of Send Me Some Stuff, Cameron and Rob dive into the complexities of current events, starting with the volatile Israel-Iran conflict and its potential implications. They move on to discuss President Trump's evolving immigration policies, reversing initial stances on farm and hotel raids. The duo also covers the nationwide No Kings protests, sharing firsthand experiences and reporting. Wrapping up, they reflect on the decade since Trump’s iconic golden escalator announcement and debate his lasting impact on American politicsListen to more Send Me Some Stuff podcasts from our team wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what you hear, subscribe and leave us a review.

Hello and welcome back to Send Me Some Stuff, episode number 18. It's hard to believe that we've been doing this now for about a year and a half, isn't it? I think you said the exact same line. Well, I say a year, of course, because I've only been doing this for about a year, but you've been doing this for about a year but you've been doing this for about a year and a half. Well and we appreciate all the loyal send me some stuff listeners everyone that sends us stuff to talk about we get your emails we love them keep sending them in. Keep them coming. It's been a crazy week. It's been a

crazy month really. It's been kind of a crazy year if think about it here, the decade honestly has been a kind of a beauty so far, so there's lots of stuff happening all over the place, um, the Israel, Iran conflict, there's stuff happening domestically. There was the no Kings protests that happened over the weekend. Um, which your hosts got some personal experience with the no kings protests. So that'll be exciting to share some anecdotes or stories. Yeah, and there's also a date that we passed over,

a little bit of an anniversary. Very important date in American political history. And that'll be, I think that'll be our closing story and I'm very excited to get to that one Yeah, and there's also been some changes Movement on the Trump administration's approach to immigration So we'll get a chance to talk about that as well. But before we get in to all this I wanted to start off Just on a lighter note. You mentioned to me you're going to a movie premiere.

I am going to a movie premiere this weekend. I'm going to go see the new 28 Years Later movie. 28 Years Later? 28 Years Later. Is this the first movie premiere you've ever been to? Or have you gone to other movie premieres? I don't normally go to movie premieres. I don't normally see movies on opening weekend, but this time I was on the website with just enough time to get a good seat.

Because I like to have a good seat when I watch movies. I'm fine with waiting a week if it means that I'm not gonna be craning my neck in order to watch the thing. So yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I watched 28 days and 28 weeks earlier this week. So I've got to prepare for it because I hadn't seen either movie. They're both really good movies. I'm not really a zombie guy and they're not really zombies in that movie, but still great filmmaking, great cinematography, great acting, very dark movies. Yeah. Kind of depressing honestly so I'm interested to see where the series goes

that trailer that they dropped I think it was about six months ago for 28 years later with the famous recorded reading of Rudyard Kipling's Boots a poem that is meant to convey the kind of monotone, boredom-inducing insanity of soldiers on the march in the middle of a war where they they don't know how much longer they have to go and this this idea that humanity is fighting a zombie plague that we have no idea how long we're gonna have to fight it. It went absolutely viral. It was everywhere. So it made me excited to see the movie. So I'm looking forward to it.

Well, I just feel like the movie premiere Mystique has faded since COVID. Yeah, for a lot of people Avengers Endgame was probably the last movie they saw in theaters. Yeah, yeah. I remember when I was younger, in the Harry Potter movies were coming out. That was a huge thing I never went to the premieres but I remember seeing photos and hearing about people dressing up like their favorite character and Going to the movie premiere man. I liked going to see the movies But my dad's rule was I had to read each book before I was allowed to go see that was the rule that was the I wasn't Allowed to just watch the movie. Yeah, so which is is good because you know I read the books as well and enjoyed them. I mean it was Harry Potter.

Yeah, they're great books. It was arguably the biggest cultural youth phenomenon of the 2000s. Yeah. So, and I believe Alamo Drafthouse is going to be having a Harry Potter movie marathon I saw in August and September. They're going to be playing each of the eight movies every Sunday for eight weeks. So, it'll be exciting. Free plug for the LMO drop-out.

I don't mean to, you know, we're not sponsored or anything. Not sponsored. Do you have a favorite Harry Potter movie? Oh, I gotta go with the original Sorcerer's Stone. That's fair, but I like Prisoner of Azkaban best. I think that's the best movie. I think the cinematography's great, I think. It has is great. Yeah, it has a completely different vibe too. Absolutely. It was a different, I can't remember if it was a different director or a different

cinematographer who created the really unique like visual style of that film, but it really captures the kind of magical secret. I mean that's when the series was starting to get a little darker, right? Yeah. A little less kiddish. So I think they did a good job with that movie well I like the first one just because of the innocence of all the characters and there it's them being initiated into that entire world and you as a viewer as well because you Go down die-gone alley and you get to see the the train everything so well And you're gonna be very excited about the new Harry Potter series being made less than like 20 years

after the old one. Yeah. So woohoo, we're already remaking it. But speaking of things that just keep coming back, Cameron, what's our first time? What a transition. Fantastic. I'm getting better with the segues.

I'm getting better. Yes. But you're absolutely right. We have increasing tensions, almost a full-out war right now. I don't know if we're, if it's being labeled that as such or just a hot conflict, but Israel and Iran But Israel and Iran were recording this on June 18th, so they're entering their sixth day of confrontation here. As of June 17th, I'm reading from the USA Today timeline on the conflict. They reported here that more than 220 Iranians have been killed and at least 100 or 1,200 injured

since the bombardment began, Iranian state media reported two dozen Israelis have been killed in Iranian missile strikes, officials said. And this is a longstanding conflict within the region. That's not what we're going to get into here. But what we're going to sort of talk about is how U.S. officials have sort of reacted to that. We'll start with the man at the very top, Donald Trump.

He has consistently said, you know, to his credit, and to the White House credit, they've put out a number of tweet threads where Donald Trump has said that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, and he's reiterated that in recent days. It's been a topic that Trump's been harping on for a decade now. I mean, he has been talking about this.

This was one of his major criticisms of Obama, is that he thought that Obama's nuclear deal would make it easier for Iran to get a nuclear weapon. So Trump has been, as you said to his credit, consistent on this issue for a very long time. Right, and he's been really ramping up the negotiations with Iran over the past let's say two months trying to work out a new Iran nuclear deal. Those have

seemed to stalled out since this conflict has started to really heat up over the past week. And some of the statements from Trump since this conflict has started has painted a picture of not quite sure, how do I say this? The American public is not quite sure what the US is going to do at this point. Yeah. Because we've seen things coming from the Trump administration saying Trump put out I think it was a truth social post saying we have complete and total control over the skies over Iran. That was earlier this week.

Again, we're recording this on June 18th, so things could change. Yeah, by the time that this podcast comes out on Monday, hopefully our analysis isn't That was earlier this week. Again, we're recording this on June 18th, so things could change. Yeah, by the time that this podcast comes out on Monday, hopefully our analysis isn't completely outdated over the time the weekend is over. Then later Trump called for unconditional surrender. In normal Trumpian all caps fashion, to the point where it kind of makes you wonder,

what does he really mean by that? Yeah, well then he also said later, we're not going to take him out at least for now. Our patience is wearing thin. Referring to the supreme leader. Correct. Yeah. He then the next day while on the, while on Air Force One was asked about how the United States might was asked about how the United States might work together with Israel to strike Iranian nuclear sites, stating, I might do it or I might not.

No one can predict my actions. He also warned Tehran's residents to evacuate, saying Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran. So, lots of strong statements, lots of capital letters, lots of exclamation points from Trump over the course of this past week. And here in Texas, we've actually seen a number of elected officials also provide

some statements on the ongoing conflict. We saw Ted Cruz tell reporters at the U.S. Capitol, quote, a single bombing run historically has not been understood to require congressional authorization to engage in sustained hostility, to engage in continued warfare. Does require congressional authorization. I'm reading from a Dallas Morning News story here that sort of collected a lot of these statements. We've also seen John Cornyn say they ought to finish the job when asked about the situation in Israel. And we saw a number of US House reps from Texas also provide comments. We see here Lance Gooden saying, quote, I'm sleeping well at night knowing Donald Trump is in charge and I will enthusiastically

support whatever decision he makes. Representative Beth Van Dyne saying, I agree with President Trump, Iran can never have a nuclear weapon capabilities and I trust he is receiving the most accurate information upon which to make decisions. I'll just read one more here. Rep Keith Self said in a statement that Iran must not become a nuclear power

and that a Supreme Leader is not to be trusted. So, lots of support for Trump, for Israel in this conflict here. With all that, what's your initial thoughts based upon what I've sort of presented so far here, Rob? Well, you know, I think there are a lot of people in the online right who are very opposed to the idea of the United States going to war with Iran on behalf of Israel, right? There's a lot of people – I think especially a lot of young people who don't remember 9-11, who don't remember the Iranian hostage crisis, but who do remember very clearly the

sort of war on terror and what is perceived to be these failures of the war on terror. And so I think for a lot of younger conservatives, or you could say newcomers to the Republican fold, they're very skeptical of the idea, especially given the fact, of course, that one of the justifications used to invade Iraq was that they had weapons of mass destruction, which, you know, is said that they never found weapons of mass destruction. So I think a lot of young people are extremely suspicious of the United States government's motives, which leads to them, you know, they don't, they're afraid also, of course, if

they have a nuclear weapon. Nobody wants nuclear war, right? Nobody wants duck and cover or anything like that. But I think what's interesting is to see as well the way that many of these people, I think, assumed Trump was on their side, whereas as Trump has made clear, he does not believe Iran should ever have a nuclear weapon,

and he is willing to take action to prevent that from happening. I think it's one of those cases where the kind of gulf between commentary and political reality becomes a little bit clearer in a moment like this, especially with a lot of Republican congressmen coming out and saying, oh, we support Trump with whatever he wants to do on this, in a way that a lot of these, the anti-war commentariat is finding themselves a little bit marginalized right now. So.

Well, I'll read here from a Newsweek story talking about some recent polling that was conducted by YouGov, where they found only 23% of Republicans say the U.S. should be involved in the conflict between Iran and Israel while 51% say the country should not be involved. Among all respondents, only 16% support U.S. involvement while 60% are opposed. On the other hand, the majority of Republicans, 61%, support negotiations over Iran's nuclear program with only 18% opposing negotiating with Iran according to the poll. 56% of all Americans support negotiating while 18% are in opposition. I think the average person would be deeply opposed to the idea of like an invasion of

Iran, you know, in Iraq or Afghanistan style, like US military invasion to topple the supreme leader of Iran. I don't think the majority of people would support that. But I think that if it was phrased more so as should the United States conduct like strategic bombings in order to destroy Iranian nuclear sites, I think that would fit, I think that would be more, what's the word,

comfortable maybe. There's probably a better word for it. But I think a lot of people would be more comfortable with that. I think what people are afraid of is either the idea of getting bogged down in another Middle Eastern quagmire that we're gonna run in, topple the Islamic Republic, Iran is gonna descend into chaos and warlords, and you're gonna have, like just like how after Saddam Hussein was overthrown, you had ISIS, right? Come in to kind of fill that void, or of course, that it's going to prompt

a nuclear war with Russia, which is a strong ally of Iran. So, you know, there's a lot of worst case scenario thinking, but I'm not certain that the US government is actually considering anything like a ground invasion of Iran. I think that the much more likely idea, if they're going to do anything, would simply be to participate and join Israel's bombing campaign against Iranian nuclear sites. So that's, I mean, even, you know, this distinction between the kind of what you might call the online right versus the actual politicians. You see I think today as we record this an interview is coming out between Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson who is a big critic of...

Tucker Carlson being a big critic of the US intervention. And Iran, exactly. In the conference. Yeah. And, you know, Carlson released a video of himself asking Cruz, you know, how many people live in Iran, and Cruz didn't have the exact answer, which is like 92 million. He asked him, like, what's the ethnic breakdown? Cruz didn't have that off the top of his head either. And the argument, you know, Carlson is making is you don't understand this country that you're claiming you want to overthrow. And I'm not sure if Cruz actually says in the interview that he wants to just topple

the Islamic Republic or something but yeah I assume like many Republican politicians he would certainly be fine if it happened you know that's the thing of course most you know it's on the side nobody really likes I think the government of Iran exactly maybe you have a few people, right? But the argument is just it's not our fight. Because that's the lesson that a lot of people took from Afghanistan and Iraq was it's not our fight, why should we be involved, that sort of thing.

And of course, the counter argument is if they have a nuclear weapon, Iran, which does sponsor terrorists in the Middle East and elsewhere, that they are going to use that against the United States and that that is a threat. Right, well Sagar and Jeddy, he's a reporter over at Breaking Points formerly of the Hill, he was commenting on that Ted Cruz Tucker Carlson clip and he posted something that was similar to the situation that we're experiencing now with the invasion of Iraq here and he

posted a news clipping and I'll just read from it here an old news clipping a year after his axis of evil speech before the US Congress President Bush met with three Iraqi Americans One of whom became post-war Iraq's first representative to the United States that three described what they thought would be political situation after the fall of Saddam Hussein During their conversation with the president Gala brief claims that it became apparent to them that Bush was unfamiliar with the distinction between Sunnis and Shiites Gabriel reports that the three of them spent some time explaining to Bush that there were two different sects of Islam to which the president Allegedly responded quote. I thought they Iraqis were Muslims. Oh

The Bush isms are great. I do love, I was a little bit too young to really remember the Bush presidency, but I kind of wish that I had been born just a few years earlier so that I could see all these Bushisms in real time. Well, and this is, but to broaden out the discussion a little bit, I think this is, you know, first, I want to make a distinction on something that you mentioned between what you called the online right and the elected politicians. I don't think it's exclusively, basically, you know, I just read off some polling and also who isn't online at this point? We're just...

Oh no, that's true. And so I think when we say online right, that could cast some of these voices in a somewhat darker light or muddle their opinions because they are confined to this online space. But like I just mentioned with some of this polling and maybe just the average person is feeling a bit apprehensive about, like you mentioned, us getting into a another protracted conflict in the Middle East, and in in that region. And so I'll just say when I said online, right, you know, I didn't mean

to imply that these are people who are all like kooky or something to use a presidential term. I meant more so that these are people whose sphere of influence is more or less confined to the online, in the sense that they are not, you know, in the halls of political power actually making decisions. I mean in the sense that they are the, the, the commentary, right? The Twitterati, the, the, the chattering classes, right? These are people who professional opinion havers as opposed to the professional decision makers. I think that there is a golf.

It obviously is paper. I don't know if there's a golf, but there's a, there's a, there's a small chasm. There's a river they got across. So I'll, I'll mention this if I can find it because I came across some interesting, again, commentary from some of these individuals you mentioned as being online, where Kurt Mills, he is writer editor over at the American Conservative. He was commenting on a post by Sohrab Armani.

Amari. Amari. And Sohrab said, younger millennial staffer, who is telling Sohrab here, not one Trump staffer in my cohort supports this. This is so demotivating, for which Kurt Mills says a word I heard to describe the general mood in the admin among young staffers today, quote, funeral. This could just be more of a generation thing, I wonder, honestly, if there really is that big of a gap between people who remember, say, the Iranian hostage crisis and people who don't. Yeah, and again, like I mentioned,

I completely agree with you on the generational split. Well, I'm glad to hear that you completely agree with me. And like you just said, it just is dependent on the issues that were occurring at the time someone was forming their opinion about this issue. Right. And so it's like that thing Napoleon said, if you want to understand a man, understand the world when he was 20.

Right. And so it's, it's just interesting seeing this split and how with Trump running in this podcast election quote unquote being presenting himself to a younger audience as being a president that has kept us out of wars. He said repeatedly on the campaign that he would end wars when if he were to be re-elected. So we're seeing many of those younger voters, maybe previously non-Trump voters, switch their support to Trump based upon this non-interventionist mindset that he was promoting for his administration.

And with what's happening now, people are upset because if the reason they supported him is backtracking on that, then they feel like they've been duped essentially. But again, it is June 18th. There hasn't been any explicit mentions of the United States pushing the button to use weapons directly in the conflict. Of course, there's intelligence sharing. There's weapons provided to Israel, intelligence provided to Israel.

So the United States is not directly involved right now, but things are subject to change. No, it's true. If the US gets involved, if Iran hits an American base, things could change very quickly. And I assume the situation will have already changed by the time this podcast goes out. Yeah, because it's changing by the minute. Speaking of another issue on a supposed sort of reversal from the Trump administration, we also have as another topic Trump officials reverse guidance

exempting farms, hotels from immigration raids from the Washington Post. Trump said in, was it a speech he was giving or was he on a news appearance or press conference where he said, you know, well, we're not going to go after, you know, our farmers need migrant labor. He said, we're not just going to necessarily go after all those people. Right. So what did you think about that? Well, similarly to the non-interventionist talk in the lead-up to the 2024 election, Trump ran, like he did in 2016, on this border security, on the illegal immigration issue, and he was promising mass deportations if he were to be elected. And we've seen increased enforcements by ICE officials, DHS, across the country, and people were expecting larger numbers, let's say, of deportations to be recorded by this time.

And instead of saying we're going to ramp up the enforcement and the deportation efforts, he initially, like you mentioned, said they're not going to go after these illegal immigrant farm workers, which caused a bit of a stir with people because again it was a reversal of some of the promises made on the campaign trail. Stephen Miller had been very vocal about saying we're going to we're not going to slow down on deportations or anything like that so it's I mean who could expect that Trump would, you know, sort of throw a curveball with the statement he made. It's frankly shocking. Yeah, but with this Washington Post story, they say the Department of Homeland Security on Monday told staff that it was reversing guidance issued last week that agents were not to conduct immigration raids at farms, and restaurants a decision that stood at odds of President Donald Trump's calls for mass deportations of anyone without legal status officials from ICE including its Homeland Security Investigations Division

told agency leaders in a call Monday that agents must continue conducting immigration raids at agricultural businesses hotels and restaurants according to two people familiar with the call. They go on later to state an official from DHA had sent an email Thursday telling agents to quote hold on all worksite enforcement investigations operations on agricultural and restaurants and operating hotels. So just an interesting reversal here. What do you think cause it, you know, we just moved on from the Israel-Iran conflict and US intervention there and I mentioned how there's younger staffers who are expressing some

dismay with how the Trump administration is handling the conflict, their messaging on the conflict. We're seeing here a reversal on some of those policies. We also mentioned the idea of the online right being very confined to the the level of influence they might have. Do you think that similarly with this story, with a lot of noise being made on the, on X and whatever other social platforms, where do you think that has any sort of influence on how the Trump administration

is approaching some of these issues? Or do you think the quote-unquote online riot is just screaming in to avoid? I would say that one of the defining features of Trump's political thinking is, I think, that he is a pragmatist. I think he sees himself as a pragmatist. He said in one of the, I remember, it was a Fox News interview where he said something to the effect of, I'm not a conservative,

I just have common sense. And I think we've talked about this actually before on this podcast, because a Republican president coming out and saying, I'm not a conservative, is a pretty interesting thing to say. I think he'd agree he's a conservative. He might also agree he's a liberal and everything else. But I think he views agree he's a conservative. He might also agree he's a liberal in everything else, right? But I think he views himself as fundamentally a man with common sense and who takes like

a pragmatic approach to things. Whereas the people who rise to the top in commentary, in giving the professional opinion havers are people who are usually pretty smart and also pretty intellectual in that they like rigorous argument. They like, you know, they like logical debate. They enjoy having a lot of intellectual consistency. Whereas I think the people who really rise to the top in politics themselves are people

who are a lot more flexible than that. So for Trump to come out and say, you know, well, these businesses wouldn't be able to survive without it. To some people that would seem like hypocrisy. But I think that to Trump and the people who will support him no matter what, it's just, it's just like sort of, you know, honesty, accepting reality, pragmatism. And I think, you know, this is, I think also relates to the Iran thing. I just think Trump is, is at his core, more of a pragmatist than he is some kind of like principled conservative.

Right. And you know, the saying politics is the art of the possible. Exactly. And so where many of the staunch Trump supporters online who were advocating and promoting the mass deportations and Trump ran on that, he won on that, and then once he's in office, he is getting hit with opinions and advice from all sorts of different angles. And it's interesting though, what I was trying to get at is what is the influence for Trump on a decision like this with immigration? Is he making a statement like that off the cuff?

Was he already thinking about this, where he thinks, oh, I maybe need to pull back some of my immigration efforts. Was he being told by friends of his who own hotel chains or are in the ag business, or is he being influenced by people who are part of his cabinet to either implement or reverse certain policies. I'm just not sure because at points it seems like Trump is his own man in many of these instances, saying things for himself. And then there's other times you can see where someone's opinion might influence him

to change course or dig in deeper on certain issues. I don't know, what's the sort of impression that you get? I just, I actually just ran out of something to say. Well, because for example, with Stephen Miller being such a border hawk and being very consistent in his messaging, something that's funny to see is my social media timeline has been dominated by the Israel-Iran conflict. And then I'll come across a Stephen Miller

tweet saying, we need to up the ICE deportation. Yeah, Miller is laser focused. He's not deviating or anything. At all. And he's very high up in the in the Trump administration Well, I think Trump is fine with bringing in people who don't necessarily agree with him on everything because in his mind You know Miller does this job and so as long I think this is also the big Lesson if you will Trump took from his first administration, which is you need to hire people who are loyal to you, right? I think his problem in the first administration is he had, you know, he had a very high turnover on a lot of his staff because they were willing to like

push back against him on a lot of issues. And his mentality is like, that's not why I've hired you to do this job, right? And Trump's mentality is I've hired you to do this job because I want you to do what I ask you to do. So, um, he, I think he's think he's fine with having people who have maybe some personal disagreements with him, just so long as they're not, so long as they're still basically doing their job, right? And I'm pretty sure that if Trump ordered Miller to stop doing certain things like,

oh, we're not going to go after, we're not going go after we're not gonna go after like like you know the service industry we're not gonna go after restaurants or agriculture anything like that I'm sure that I doubt Miller would just up and quit you know but it's also possible that Trump was doing that thing he does where he just says stuff you know Trump's just he's I mean this is the thing is he is just kind of like a schmoozy New York, oh it's all gonna be great, oh we're all gonna be, you know, it's like imagine a guy signing a business deal, it's like we're all gonna be happy,

we're all gonna be great, everybody's gonna be loving it, you know, kind of like Al Cervick from Caddyshack, right? Just kind of everybody, oh everybody's gonna have a group, we're all gonna be, you know, it's gonna be great. It's just gonna be fantastic, it's gonna be the best you've ever seen, right? Just a big schmoozer. I think that's the thing is he wants to

schmooze the country, if you will, in a way that like is different than a lot of... that's just different than how a lot of political rhetoric operates. So a lot of people of course interpret his, perhaps you could argue, indifference to objective fact as a clear sign of lying, right? I think it's more just the case that Trump just kind of wants to schmooze people. Well, it schmooze other people but also willing to step back some of his policy positions for moving forward other positions he has on other issues. For example, he struck a deal with China on rare earth minerals.

And in that post where he announced this agreement, he said, quote, we will provide to China what was agreed to, including Chinese students using our colleges and universities. With- This has been a big claim. There are a lot of people saying, you know, with all of the fighting over, what was it? I believe Harvard University had its permission revoked, if I recall correctly, to bring in foreign students, or was it federal funding that was revoked if they continue to bring

in foreign students? I don't know the details on that story. But this has been a big fight, right? A lot of Trump supporters believe that you know, the universities are just churning out progressive activists that they're serving foreign students at the expense of American ones, you know It's a much more distinctly like nationalist tinge to this argument Whereas I think again Trump is a bit more pragmatic on this Trump's mentality is you know Well, you know, it's good to have Chinese students coming over and studying in America right long as the Chinese government makes a deal on

certain economic policies what Trump's mentality is just that he does he believes the US is taken he believes the US is just too nice he's like sure you can come over here if you give us something right right like Trump's mentality I mean, you know, he's been talking about this since the 80s, of course, with talking about, you know, oh, Japanese products flooding our shores, right? This is not a new, this is the funny thing

about a lot of his economic positions. They're not new for Trump. But I think he is less committed to any individual idea. Like Trump, I don't think he's gonna come out and talk about how, you know, the universities are the bastion of intellectual progressivism that you know takes over the American government or something. He's just gonna be like we're getting ripped off. You know we're getting ripped off. We're getting a bum

deal and what we need to do is just equalize it. And I think for him sometimes the the the parity is more important than the individual issue necessarily that he's giving up, right? So it's like you can send students, but you gotta give us something. Well, and I think that's true for Trump and his approach to the variety of issues we're talking about.

But when I'm trying to think about who is influencing him to actually, once he has that paper and the pen to sign a piece of legislation into law or sign an executive order, who's influencing him to that point? That's why I try and think who in his administration has the most pull, who is he connected to, who's providing influence.

So there's just so many people and there's, especially in his cabinet, quite a number of people with a diverse set of views. So on these different issues, like for example example on the Iran-Israel Conflict there's people who are more interventionist than not They're on the immigration people Issue there's people that are much more strict on the border and there's people that would Would promote bringing in these Chinese students and foreign students at a higher degree. Many of those people being on the tech side

of this new right-wing tech faction. No, exactly. The Brolegarts, some have dubbed them. So it's interesting when it comes down to it, who's really influencing Trump on these individual issues it's tough to say but no and if you want of course the proof of Trump's willingness to tolerate intellectual diversity in his cabinet look at a man like Robert F Kennedy jr. who is a liberal yeah the man is not a

conservative I mean he has of course many but like it's you know being being super health conscious and everything and you know Oh, I'm worried about the additives in our food and everything was a left-wing coded belief for a very long time, right? I mean this goes back to the Obama administration and Michelle Obama's, you know school lunch initiative and everything So, you know Kennedy is is not a conservative. He is a. But Trump's mentality is why I hired him to do this job. I don't care what his other beliefs are, because that's not why I hired him, right? If Kennedy tries to implement his beliefs about like climate change into his other stuff, I think Trump would tell him to stop. So that's I think his

mentality on stuff is, I hired you for this yeah, that's that's that's I think his mentality on stuff Is I hired you for this job, so? Do what I hired you to do yeah Well, we're and we're talking about the diversity of opinions in the Trump cabinet within his administration But over the weekend there was protests nationwide these no Kings protests. No kings. Where these protesters were essentially rallying against what they

perceived Trump as being this authoritarian figure, rallying against tyranny. And these were incredibly well attended protests. Over 5 million people across the country, right? Yeah. And just here in Austin, I went out to the protest over at the state capital, thousands of people, thousands. Oh, it was a lot. It was massive.

And I wrote about this and redacted, but what the protests were advertised as was a bit different when you were there because it wasn't just a rally against Trump and his administration. There was a diverse set of issues being presented by the protesters. One of the funniest ones that I mentioned in the newsletters, I saw someone with a sign asking, where's David Miscavige? The Scientology leader. And there was a number of people with Epstein signs asking about the Epstein files. So it was actually kind of funny. I don't know. what did you think? Because you went out there, right?

So I did actually. Unlike you, who was actually covering it for the Texans, I had family in town this weekend, this past weekend. And said family was like, let's go check it out. Let's just walk around for a little bit. So I saw a lot of signs. I saw a lot of people make, it was an opportunity for people to do their arts and crafts, make a funny sign. I saw, you know, a lot of normal people like that, people with flags, and then you see

the people who have their faces covered in the backpacks, and you're like, I wonder what they're planning on doing, right? And, you know, as far as I'm aware, there wasn't really, I don't know if there was that much violence at this protest or anything. No, there wasn't anything at this one. There has been some instances in Austin of people getting a bit out of control surrounding the federal building here in Austin. Really a lot of the protest violence has occurred in Los Angeles with the anti-ice protests there. But over the weekend there was some instances of violence where most notably, the Minnesota was a state representative. She was assassinated along with her husband. Another state senator was killed.

Very odd individual who conducted these assassinations. The suspect right now, right? Yeah, so there's still a lot of investigations that need to be had into what happened there. If you've seen the photo of this, of the suspect dressed in a fake police officer uniform with a rubber mask, it looks like a slasher villain. Yeah, it's very creepy.

Yeah. It's very tragic what happened there. And, and you know, the Texas, um, House, I believe the Texas Democratic House caucus and, uh, Democratic Senate caucus and I believe Republican Texas Democratic House caucus and Democratic Senate caucus and I believe Republican Senate caucus have all released statements condemning the political violence as did you know many across the country. Well because there was a threat here in Austin against some of our state lawmakers. Early Saturday morning of the protest or it was like Saturday afternoonish they did close the Capitol grounds because there were, I believe they said,

DPS said credible threats made against the lives of state lawmakers. Yeah, so. Unfortunately, these kind of things do tend to inspire copycats, right? Some crazy person sees another crazy person on TV and goes, well, this is my opportunity now. It's an unfortunate case of monkey see monkey do.

So that's just a brief overview, Mark, You know, it's a it's an unfortunate case of monkey see monkey do you know, so That's just a brief overview Of the no Kings protests if people want to know more about that. We've reported on it I wrote my entire newsletter redacted on that you if you're interested go check that out on the Texan dot news, but Something we wanted to talk about as well is the anniversary of the Golden Escalator. You brought up this Atlantic story here, a decade of Golden Escalator politics. From June 16th, 2025. On June 16th, 2015, then just businessman Donald Trump took down the Golden Es escalator in Trump Tower to announce that he would be running for president and he instantly became the

most controversial candidate in the race with his famous line of they're sending crime they're sending drugs they're rapists referring to illegal aliens from Latin America which of course immediately set the American political scene on fire right his very first speech was already, still I'd argue, one of the most, probably most controversial things he's said, so still being quoted today. And yeah, I mean, I think Trump already kind of knew what he was doing at that time with realizing, you know, if you want to get big, he's not a, he's not an established politician. If you want to get big in this know if you want to get big he's not a political he's not an established politician if you want to get big in this race you have

to get media attention this is what he did during the 2015 Republican debates he went after people in ways that you know I think Shane Gillis the comedian has a funny bit about this where he says you know everybody's talking about you know political issues oh we need to talk about taxes oh we need to talk about this and then Trump comes out and he says like Rand Paul is ugly and he's Everybody's talking about, you know, political issues. Oh, we need to talk about taxes. Oh, we need to talk about this. And then Trump comes out and he says like, Rand Paul is ugly. And he's like, whoa,

I didn't even know you could say that in the debate. You know, Trump changed the rules of the entire debate, right, with there's entire YouTube compilations of just Trump dunking on people, calling them ugly, calling them losers in the middle of the debate. And you know, he succeeded in gathering all that attention to himself and he hasn't stopped doing it now for 10 years. Yeah.

Do you remember where you were when he announced? No. I don't. 2015 I was a junior in college. I was a rising. Sophomore in high school, you know, so so And I wasn't long time ago. Yeah, I wasn't super I was not into politics at all in college So it didn't even come across my radar. I was too worried about I was a college baseball player

I was too worried about getting all my schoolwork and practices done so I could Try and get enough sleep that night. You know, it's next day. No, that's very fair. I was interested in politics. I'd been interested in politics since I was on my middle school debate team, but I, like many, was like, you know, what's this clown doing, right? And I was like, this just, you know, I was like, oh, it's just, you know, the craziness after the Obama administration. Every Republican now knows exactly how they're going to fix all the problems. And of course, I was, like many proven wrong, as we've talked about on this podcast. My political instincts are pretty bad, Cameron.

I keep I'm never able to predict what's going to happen. Well, you know, it's just it's interesting to see they also link in this Atlantic story to the Atlantic's own 2015 story the Carnival Barker joins the 2016 Circus well in reference to for by by Russell Berman of the Atlantic from June 16th 2015 talking about how Trump Announced for president where he said quote

another great quote from him he promised to be quote the greatest jobs president God ever created. Well I'll mention this returning to the anniversary and what you mentioned about how Trump identified how to get attention in politics. I think it's a, there was a lot of different things happening at the same time. It was the sheer ubiquity of people in the rise of social media. It was like everyone was on social media at that time. And as-

Well, it was past this point that the average American did have a smartphone. Yeah. And that's what I'm, that's what I'm getting at people, the rise of the smartphone, social media. Um, it was a time of, uh, rising, um, Trump had already become famous on Twitter during the Obama administration. He was a very frequent critic of Obama. Well, there, there was a sentiment in the country

you could say at the time where people were starting to notice things were moving in the a progressive direction that was The people weren't willing to move at that point And so there's a good article actually talked about this exact topic from Vox called the great awokening by Matthew Iglesias where he discusses how Democrats, especially white Democrats had a very dramatic shift towards social progressivism in the mid 2010s. Yeah, it's because it was the rise of not really the rise, but kind of it was the rise of, not really the rise, but kind of, it was almost cresting, almost the peak of what you just mentioned, this wokening, where there was lots of DEI policies being instituted, people were

being directly impacted by some of these initiatives. And so there was an energy where America and those who were opposed to those sorts of ideas were searching for someone to speak out against. Right. The Syrian refugee crisis was also a major issue at this time, sparking massive conversations about, you know, immigration. What are the responsibilities that the Western world has to refugees? Can Muslims assimilate into American culture?

I mean, Trump said we are calling for a complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the country, which was a very bold statement. Would still be a bold statement if he remade it again today. You know, it's that's of course, part of Trump's, you know, his, his classic gusto, right? Yeah. And well, and there was also there was also energy within the Republican Party itself that the conservatism status quo wasn't working because of how

like I just mentioned they noticed the country moving in a direction they didn't agree with. So they wanted someone to either hold the line on certain issues or even take it to a step to the right. I said who is the exact opposite of Mitt Romney? You know instead of having a you know wealthy businessman who is like a very like kind of clean-cut you know kind of well-spoken you know nice Utah guy let's have kind of a crazy zany you know, kind of well-spoken, you know, nice Utah guy. Let's have kind of a crazy, zany, you know, Donald Trump, right? Yeah. Well, and this was also a moment where there was, like I mentioned, the rise of social media. It was also the fall of mainstream media. Many of these major outlets were starting to see a slide.

And so they were seeing Trump as an opportunity to, um, gain, uh, attention and gain more eyeballs, try and boost their ratings. And so, uh, what many of these mainstream outlets did is instead of focusing on a variety of issues within a 30 minute show, they would talk about Trump for 30 minutes. I think there's graphs out there showing that he got an extremely disproportionate amount of free media coverage simply because he knew how to keep the cameras on him. He'd been doing this for a long time, reality TV show host. I would say he played the media like a fiddle.

Yeah. Well, and the media used... If not like an orchestra. Well, the media used him as well to boost their ratings is what I'm trying to get at. I see what you mean. They were both participating in it. It's like this mutual... It was like a toxic co-dependent relationship. Right. And they still haven't broken up yet. It's like that one couple where you're like when are they gonna break up but they never can. Yeah. So it's he descended the Golden Escalator 2015 or a decade later. We've talked about this quite a bit. You know I think didn't didn't I was it some major news source or some historian who came out and said Trump would probably be the most impactful president so far of the

21st century and I think when they first you know if you would have told people that in 2016 they would have told you you were nuts you know but they would have said no it's obviously Obama but I think it's fair to say Trump will probably prove in the long run to have been more influential than Obama absolutely which is again crazy to think you know if you could send a message ten But I think it's fair to say Trump will probably prove in the long run to have been more influential than Obama. Absolutely. Which is, again, crazy to think. You know, if you could send a message 10 years ago

into the past, right, it's, nobody would believe you. Yeah. Or just tell them to buy Bitcoin. Buy Bitcoin. Buy Bitcoin. Back when, you know, a Bitcoin could pay for a pizza, now a Bitcoin could buy a sports car, right? So.

Well, and we're looking 10 years back. What about 10 years forward? That's a big topic of discussion as well, is Trump can't run for office again. And so we're already seeing a bit of a split within the quote unquote MAGA movement on a number of different issues like we've talked about in this podcast, intervention in foreign conflicts, immigration issues.

Pragmatism versus idealism. And so 10 years in the future, is this coalition of voters, are they going to be able to stick together in your eyes or do you think it's going to splinter off and there's going to be new movements that form and the Republican party remains but the MAGA movement is just, is gone essentially and they find new movements to attach themselves to. Well take everything I say with a tablespoon of salt, because I'm always wrong, but I don't think that the movement will survive Trump, essentially. Because Trump was already, this is an argument I've made, I think I've made before on this podcast,

but I'll make it again. Trump was already a very famous person before he announced for president. Everybody knew who Donald Trump was back in 2015. That's why him announcing was news, right? If some random CEO of some, you know, even if it was a famous company, most people don't know the CEOs of like, most famous companies. But Donald Trump was already a celebrity.

Donald Trump was already for many people like a living embodiment of the American Dream, right? He was as was often as he was often maligned right a poor person's idea of a rich person, right? and I think that That is what helped carry him is the fact that for a lot of people, you know He'd also also had already been a big critic of Barack Obama during the during especially during Obama's second administration there's that famous White House dinner right where Obama made some jokes right where Obama made the joke saying you

know Trump says I'm the worst president well at least I will be president and you the camera zooms in on Trump and he's got this kind of grin and you can almost hear the gears turning in his head but But yeah, I mean, it's, I don't think that there is a figure who is able to capture the American psyche in the way that Trump is going to, you know, all the people who want to succeed him are politicians. They weren't celebrities. Trump was the first. Now, I won't say Trump was the first ever person who was a celebrity before he was a politician. But he was the first one to not have a military or political background. Like most like even, you know, Eisenhower had a military background, right? Before, I believe, yeah, president was the first thing he ran for, because, you know, Democrats and Republicans in 1952 both wanted Eisenhower to run. He was he was in demand. Yeah.

But, yeah, I don't know. I don't think that Trump, I think there will be factions, but the movement as a unified coalition, the reason why it survives is because everybody can say, well, I agree with Trump. And it's because in a sense, everybody likes to believe Trump. I mean, everybody likes to believe Trump believes what they believe. And guessing what Trump believes has essentially become our national pastime. That is actually Americans favorite hobby right now. What does the president actually mean by that is our main is our new hobby. Yeah. Well and I think it's interesting to note that we've moved from it. Well we we moved into this era of the celebrity

politician. It really began with Obama and now most explicitly with Trump where are we going to see, are we going to see candidates who, like you mentioned, many of the people seeking to succeed Trump and take up the mantle of this movement are politicians. their everyday life where they identify people through this partisan political lens. They are tuning in to podcasts, YouTube videos, they're getting news constantly, where celebrities now are the politicians themselves where people didn't. people still you know the US average person who their US representative is you know their district congressional representative is they they're not completely sure but they can

name you know probably ten of these really vocal quote-unquote famous Congress members because they appear all the time on their news feeds. Right. Mass media has changed the nature of politics. So does the prior celebrity, like you mentioned with Trump being this reality TV star and businessman, I'm not sure that is going to matter all that much where they kind of have to have success outside of politics to get well

known before running you can just become a celebrity politician by taking advantage of our social media age and make your name that way. So it'll be interesting to see though, we're talking. See, I'll give you one more last pushback, which is that Trump was already famous before social media. This is the other thing. Trump has been, like every generation knew who he was. This is another thing. It wasn't like a thing only older people knew,

or only younger people knew. Everyone knew who he was. He already had universal name and face recognition. But I think we've just about run out of time on our podcast. Do you have any final thoughts or anything? No, this, this was a fun discussion. There's, you know, going back to what we originally talked, started the podcast with the, with the Iran Israel conflict, there's There's such a depth of discussion that is available there that we can't get into. I encourage people to, I know this is a cliche, but do your research. You know, there's a long history of conflict in that region. Same

thing with the immigration stuff. I encourage people to read a diverse set of viewpoints on the issue and then how we ended things with the Donald Trump anniversary of his dissent on the golden escalator. Can I read one last quote really quick from this article from the from the 2015 article Trump enters the 2016 race. Holly Schulman, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee said, quote, today Donald Trump became the second major Republican candidate to announce for president in two days.

He adds some much needed seriousness that has previously been lacking from the GOP field, and we look forward to hearing more about his ideas for the nation. I think that's a perfect way to cap off the episode but thank you everyone for tuning in. This was episode 18 of Send Me Some Stuff. If you have some stuff to send us, shoot it over to us. Where can they send stuff?

They can send stuff to editor at thetexan.news. And check out all of our reporting at the Texan.News. Catch you next time.