Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 221: But Anyways

Episode Date: October 21, 2021

This week we look at the New York Times's Jan 6 profiles in courage. Then we discuss the various reactions to and takes on former Secretary of State Colin Powell's death. Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Pandora. Paramount? No, Pan... Oh, maybe it was Pandora? It wasn't the Panama Papers. It wasn't the... It was the Pandora Papers. The new one.

Was it? Yeah. Was it? They published everybody's Pandora preferences from 2007 to 2009. When people were still using Pandora. Yeah. I remember when I was an early adopter of Spotify and I was like, guys, there's a better way.

And everybody's like, nah, man, I'm cool with like Fall Out Boy right here. That was one of those things that just kind of flopped. But I guarantee you that in two years, you'll be seeing tweets and stuff that are going to be like, the Pandora Papers told everything we need to know about the ruling class and y'all just ignored it. And now look, the world's on fire. Yeah.

Because they did that with the Panama Papers. Like, you could absolutely, your shit would do numbers if like 2018 you were tweeting about how no one had paid attention to the Panama Papers, but you were. Yeah, you were so dialed in. All I remember about Panama Papers is Lionel Messi was a tax cheat. That's all I remember from that drop.

Well, it is weird. There's the Pentagon Papers, the Panama Papers, the Pandora Papers. Well, I don't think it had a fancy name, but I was frothing at the mouth over those Epstein lists, and then that meant nothing either. By the time you got to Chris Tucker, you were like, God, everybody was in a mess. What's the P? What's the significance of the p i wonder i don't know um pit um pancreas papers pancreatic pancreatic papers oh god

um pencil pituitary papers pituitary penetration penetration papers prostate paper who's gonna drop the prostate Who's gonna drop the Prostate Who's gonna drop the Poonstang The Poontang Papers Poontang Papers I like to say Poonstang List of everybody who's got an S Ever

God That's it One set of papers I won't be on No that's in there Keep looking Go to the index yeah go to the appendices i promise i'm in there i'm in a footnote yeah the pickle papers um pit i ran up on a paper one time pit bull papers i i hell i ain't too proud to mention this i'm sure i read up on this paper one time

bunch of people sitting around one night and listing ranking everybody they'd slept with and yeah in order and like oh i know this story yeah the best of the work i'm assuming best of the worst i ranked a strong 11 out of 13 for this one girl. I was like, god damn. For some reason, that cuts me to the core to this day. It's fucked up, because you can have an off game, you know? Even Michael Jordan had his. We were sleeping for about a year and a half.

I think she had a pretty good sample size to rank me from. Everybody has an off year, man. Everybody has a bad two years in bed, man. Talking about. Ain't no thing. God bless her, but I mean, had it not been for her,

I probably never had any confidence at all. I found that later for you just lying her ass off for years. Wow. Incredible. Oh, boy. I've rebounded, though i don't um kovid's really brought back everybody's sex life you're doing fine now um yeah i've never thankfully i've never found out where i rank anywhere on anyone's papers well it was the sexual equivalent of walking in on your friends talking shit about you you know what i mean i was like yeah i didn't need to see that

yeah of course i sort of went snooping i don't know rankings cleaning up the table rankings do cut a little deeper than just a little like average shit talk because you can slip out of shit talk that ain't you don't even really mean you know but to write it down in numbers you've thought on that yeah that's that is uh intentional definitely it was i'm glad that i was sandwiched right there between evan and joey from the bar i left a fucking Halloween party One time and the next I just got obliterated And the next morning I had no numbers in my phone Penguin, cowboy

None Penguin papers Penguin papers Joey from the bar We could riff this out for an hour Think of all the P's Let's kill an hour by riffing out The punani papers

We were already repeating ourselves Pac-Man papers The paper papers The paper papers The patchouli papers. The Pac-Man papers. It's just every exploit of David Pack. From getting David Blaine to do magic for him

to the time he skated backwards down Pine Mountain on roller skates. God, that was him. Son of a bitch. That was before they widened the road, too, mind you. God, imagine what he could do now. He could make it rain out there Oh so check this out I was reading the other night On the Bohemian Grove Wikipedia page

Incredible Do you have that bookmarked? Be honest. I don't. I'd love to see your bookmarks. I don't. I wouldn't want to see your whole browser history. I couldn't handle that. Just the bookmark.

I needed to look it up real fast. I'd be interested. There's nothing on it though. Of course. They're not going to put anything good on the Bohemian Grove. Does it mention the classic the cinema classic Eyes Wide Shut? On the Bohemian Grove Wikipedia page? Yeah. It does good.

No, it does not. It mentions Nicole Kidman on the Wikipedia page. Well, under the controversies tab, there was something about logging. Isn't the whole thing controversial? Well, that's what I thought was funny. Like, it's like there was like a logging permit that they were, whatever. But it made me think,

because like Bohemian Grove is like up in the forest, right? I guess. You tell us there, John Ronson. You've been on the Wikipedia page, not I. Well, it made me think of this scenario. I think it could make for a pretty funny movie. Imagine that a logging operation threatens the Bohemian Grove land.

Grove. Grove. It threatens the Bohemian Grove. Bohemian Grove. And so the board of trusteesens the Bohemian Grove. Bohemian's Grove. And so like the board of trustees at the Bohemian Grove is like, fuck, what are we gonna do? Who is that? Who's the board of trustees? Let's name them.

There's only one hole in this plot line. It's almost certainly the guy that in charge of the deforestation project would be himself a member. He's on the board of trustees. Entertain me for just a second and let's just assume that like the only people left on the board of of bohemian grove are like old blue-blooded aristocrats from the northeast who have no interests in like logging or oil drilling operations. Bernie Sanders. Okay. Yeah, Bernie in his four houses. Bernie in his

four houses. Multi-millionaire. Won't release his tax returns. Yeah. Every time he comes on screen, the OJs for the love of money. They're releasing doves when it comes out. And so to stop this permit, they have to go to

a large environmental non-profit like the natural resources defense council or sierra club and so to do so they have to get like a young you know organizer like to go out there and you know you know how they would do strip mining permits they would have to go to like the permit hearings and organize people to go to the permit hearings like imagine you have to work with bohemian grove as in sierra club organizer to stop this logging permit you have to work it's like well yeah facing down the we want to stop a prison are we going to work with the nimbys right right it's like who are you willing to to get in bed with the bohemian everybody's like oh that ain't real right yeah they're like that doesn't exist that ain't real

what are you talking about? Yeah. Well, I liked it. I thought it will. Screw you guys. I thought it was good. No, I think it's got legs. I'm just trying to fill in some blanks here. Yeah, this is already going to be rough, I can tell. Anytime we record after 4 p.m.,

anywhere in the 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. window, it's rough because I start getting grumpy and fuzzy in the head blood sugar just doing weird things i've been staring at a screen all day yesterday i got a migraine from looking at a fucking computer and today i feel fine because i got good and stoned but sometimes you know there's a there's a line you can't cross you can't get too high to record yeah i think i'm good you crossed it though i don't know it looks to me like you crossed it you're hiring damn grocery yeah quick what's two plus two you cannot pass field sobriety right now i don't think i could sober as the morning dew.

I couldn't pass any of those tests. Here's a test. This is a sexy sex ed test. Okay. Is it safe? And the answer is yes already because I've seen it demonstrated in the environment. Is it safe to use saran wrap as a condom?

You've seen it. Because you saw someone fuck a glory hole in a tree branch no i did have a friend in high school who did that one time you know safe i think safe means different things safer safer than are you able to say it's safer sex. Sure. Oh, wow. Why not? What about parchment paper, though? That's very... I think that's pretty ripable. Once you get the cheesecloth, you're in a world of trouble.

Yeah, definitely not. My cousin used a Food City bag one time. It'll probably protect you from even more than a condom. That's probably true. Probably more durable. Protect you from sc more than a condom That's probably true Probably more durable Protect you from scabies and who knows what else Like I wonder how that worked To do that yeah

You would have to tie it around your whole Hold it down Actually I do know of someone using A grocery bag to Suck a dick And I was like Did they like cut a hole in it? No, no holes.

Ashkenazi. You know, nature will find a way. People are going to do what they got to do. They cut a hole in it, though. Wait, they didn't cut a hole in it. How did they use, and why did they use a plastic bag? They sucked the plastic over the dick

they didn't want to touch that dick the fabled here's the fabled condom blowjob here's the thing heard about this here's the thing about that i guess it seemed like the grocery bag was better than a condom also condoms taste like lube i mean what's a grocery bag taste like here's the thing hopefully it was a one use only if there's a dick bag taste like? Here's the thing. Hopefully it was a one-use only. If there's a dick that you won't suck without putting a Walmart bag on it, you probably don't need to be sucking it to begin with. Still clear. I understand there's some exceptions, though.

You know what I mean? Just say no. You find yourself in a pinch and you have to improvise. I get that. You do hear a lot of wild things in the sex ed classroom what is the candy cane boys oh that's easy that's when there's cum and blood yeah uh when i was asked that i couldn't come up with it as quickly i was like i mean they just inevitably start quizzing you,

you know, as a tactic. You've never gotten asked about saran wrap? No. Really? Well, I have now. Wow, interesting. My guy was fucking in the backseat of a car and didn't have a condom.

But he did have saran wrap in the back of a car. I figured that was a kitchen situation. Here's the thing about Saran Wrap. Saran Wrap will not tear. That's for sure. You need talons to really rip that shit. Good God. Uh-huh.

We go any further down the road here. If our current trajectory is any indication, I just want to say we do not endorse saran wrap as a condom alternative. Lest we be accused of continuing to perpetuate dangerous ideas. Now you're giving this? We've got five years worth of dangerous ideas. And I always try to say, listen, I'm a sex educator. I cannot condone this.

But it don't matter. Well, it did have to qualify, though. It's safer. It's not necessarily... You're not to the finish line or the promised land of safe, but, you know, it's safer. Yeah. You know, I'm a

sex educator. I'm not a doctor, which I say often. I can lead us to find more knowledge. Well, your humility is admirable. But I'm not a doctor. Your humility is very admirable, Tanya. I don't know all the best uses for saran wrap.

Halloween pranks. Yeah, toilet seat. That's probably the best use. Speaking of which, we should pull off some sort of Halloween prank on some unsuspecting fool. I don't like pranks. Really? They make me feel... I'm not a prankster.

Not a prankster? I'm not a prankster. I figured you had a little... How do they make you feel? Prankster. No. They make me feel guilty and bad. Oh, to do the prank?

To be the pranker? Yeah. What about the pranky? Well, I definitely don't want to be the pranky Nobody wants to be the pranky You don't want to be pranked Somebody has to be But nobody wants to be

Punked I don't want that I'm reminded of the time I Showered y'all with glitter And you were not Impressed An example of how no one wants to be the pranky Right

No one actually wants that Well So speaking of people that no one wants to be Frankie. Right, no one actually wants that. Well, so speaking of people that theoretically exist in the world but you've never met, like for example, I think the most common example that we threw out like a year ago was like the person who had not heard of COVID

but had heard of cancel culture, for example. That guy, yeah. Found in a Serbian cave, according to a lot of people. They did find him. I think actually he didn't know about cancel culture, but knew about COVID. Right. Well, I read this really long article in the New York Times about like,

it profiled like eight different people who drove from around the country to go to the january 6th thing they're still on that they're very much we are too shit they're very much still on whatever dumb beats they're on here we linger little bitches um they actually didn't want to know if anybody, if any weird shit's happened. Anybody else turned up dead who's facing charges or any shit like that? No more police suicides that I know of. You hate to hear it. This article did start out pretty funny, though. This is literally the first sentence, the first paragraph.

The American flag became a blunt instrument in the bearded man's hands. Welding the flagpole like an axe, he swung once, twice, three times to beat a police officer being dragged down the steps of a United States Capitol under siege. I thought that sounded pretty dope. That was pretty tight. I'd like to hear Dale sing that. Personally.

Here's my thing with January 6th that I keep going back to. They just talk about it in such grandiose terms. Well, the article is... There's a movie called Under Siege, and it... That's saying what this was, you know what I mean?

This article, it has all your standard lib... You know, like just that okay just continuing on just just to give you an idea of the tone of the article this isn't why i read it i read it because of the profiles and courage in the article itself but the tone is pretty funny other officers also fell under mob attack while the rest fought to keep the hordes from storming the capital and upending the routine transfer of power. Sprayed

chemicals choked the air, projectiles flew overhead, and the unbridled roars formed a battle cry din, all as a woman lay dying beneath the jostling scrum of the January 6th riot. For the love of God!

The moment was a flicker in the chaotic panorama. People are so fucking bored. They are just bored beyond tears up in a basement tapping this. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty funny. So they went through, like I said, they found seven or eight different people to profile on this. And I thought two of them were really funny. I've selected

them here. The first of them was this... Any Kentuckians? Yes, actually. You knew there was going to be. Yes. I could have guessed. He was a self-made businessman from Kentucky named Clayton Ray Mullins. Clayton. God, and a Mullins, no doubt.

Clayton Mullins. Can you think of a more Kentucky name than Clayton Ray Mullins. Clayton, god, and a Mullins, no doubt. Clayton Mullins. Can you think of a more Kentucky name than Clayton Mullins? That's the only place he could have been from. Son of a bitch. I thought it was funny because this guy is fascinating. He claims to not read any news. He doesn't watch any TV, doesn't watch Fox News or OAN or read Facebook posts or anything like that.

Only 4chan, eh? Nothing. Not even that. He literally just gets his news from his neighbors and fellow church congregants and heard about this and was like, Hell no, man, I'm going to D.C. Hey. No. So he doesn't know about COVID.

They don't talk about that at church. That's fascinating. Because it's like, if you adopt that strategy, you're totally at the mercy of where you were from. Like, that can have drastically different consequences depending upon where you're from. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Truly. Like in Kentucky, you're going to go siege the Capitol, and somewhere else you're like, you know, I might try sucking dick. I don't buy it. Everybody's talking about it. I hadn't thought much about it, but, you know. I'll make sure I put some saran wrap.

A paper bag over it first. Yeah, of course. I mean, I've got to be safe, but I'm going to try it. Food City bag. I just don't believe clayton mr mullins mr mullins has no social media presence and is relatively new to text messaging he watches little more than reruns of the andy griffith show and gun smoke i mean that is influential this no i tell you this guy this is the guy that moved to neon after he

watched Fire Down Below and got his ass kicked. Oh my god. Where then does he get his news? Word of mouth, Mr. Morin said. Oh my god. I love that. I love that. The word of god

only. But many in his circle are active on social media including his sister who accompanied him to dc um okay well sissy picked him up what they i mean i imagine being that credulous he was just a tag along he didn't have shit to do dc ain't but an hour drive eight hour drive i mean why not the the tone of this is amazing what ensued in the capitals hallowed halls and chambers over the next two hours has been seared in the national consciousness the hostility and

fear the valor and violence the shocking but ultimately failed attempt to derail the republic's democratic process in the name of Donald J. Trump who had closed his incendiary speech at the ellipse with God bless you and God bless America. I mean,

the funny thing about this Mr. Mullins guy is that he's in every major battle, every major scene in the siege, quote unquote, he was there. He's always in the background just

looking on like whoa man imagine hearing about this word of mouth at church and being like oh damn i gotta see what this is about and then you get there and then it's just and they're whipping police officers with american flag poles you got one guy that's wearing the goddamn buffalo horn shirtless. And you're not acquainted with any of this stuff. You're just like... Cool, cool, cool. And then he claimed to be in all the major spots. Like he's just a little fucking butterfly floating through here.

He didn't claim to be. The video surveillance of that day. He's on video in all the rooms. All of them. Yeah. He's just like... Just creeping in the background. Like a Waldo, yeah. He's just like...

Wow. The Waldo of January 6th is Clayton Mullins from Kentucky. Where in Kentucky is this bitch from? He's in western Kentucky. I mean, obviously. You know nobody from easternentucky's going y'all go ahead people from martin county went i heard but i don't know oh they probably did um they're whiling out apparently i mean they ain't got clean water they get any any chance to storm the capital they're there nothing else fucking

works let me in here. I'm going to fill up my water jugs while I'm here. That's what I was saying. To every liberal that's just like, oh, this is a disgrace to our democracy and all this stuff. What if you live in a place like Martin County where you've literally expended every fucking thing you could do and you can't leave because you don't have the money, but people are getting flesh-eating bacterias and all this stuff. because you don't have the money, but people are getting flesh eating bacterias and all this stuff.

It's not wholly unrealistic that you would say, well, hell, I'm going to go try to do this thing with the shaman guy. Well, I mean, as the article points out, I don't know how this shakes out legally, but a lot of these people were literally encouraged by Trump to do this. I don't really know

how that works. They were cheered on by a sitting president. I was positive. Did y'all see Trump's Colin Powell stuff? I want to talk about it. You knew I was going to cover that.

I'm not going to miss that. You said you'd been off and i was like well something you might have missed no i know people know i've been off twitter but they sent me that okay um so but yeah no i mean trump was literally saying like as your president you know like you have to save democracy and if you're any one of these people you're gonna listen to that yeah um i love trump's like just his style of just putting a little plausible deniability in there it's like you know maybe it was stolen i don't know people are saying that um yeah throughout clayton ray mullins was often in the frame a zealot among insurgents in black gloves

and a gray winter coat with a distinctive crop of thick brown hair. Here he was joining hundreds of others. What's a distinctive crop? Is that a mullet? Yeah, let me see. Was he rocking a Kentucky waterfall? No, there's not a picture.

I don't have the picture of him pulled up. I just screenshotted this article. I don't have it still open. I already closed it. Yeah, here he was joining hundreds of others near the Lower West Terrace and singing the Star Spangled Banner off key. Here he was at the front of a tent standoff

between rioters and officers, separated by barricades and different understandings of patriotism as a man in a Trump cap beside him sprayed the officers with an irritant used to stop the steel sign to shield the blowback and melted back into the crowd okay except we saw that like none of that happened right like most of the cops just let them on through like why is there this revisionism about like well i think it's the thing is is i think like just like with the cia and the fbi i

legitimately think there are liberal cops i think that there are cops that are liberals and some are conservatives you know what i mean i think that most of them are probably some kind of like fascist conservative but i do think that there are cops who take their job quote-unquote seriously as like community servants and all that stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes you got to get your hands dirty. Well, and especially if you're like a D.C. cop, you know, like they probably took it seriously. Like, we've got to defend democracy.

Yeah. It's just like, maybe that's why they've killed themselves. Yeah, well. Oh, my God. Maybe that could be. Maybe this is the thing that broke them. That's the thing that broke them. Maybe this is the thing that broke them. That's the thing that broke them.

Like I said, you know, Trump had told them to go defend democracy. One was Peter Stager, 42, a burly truck driver whose long dark hair and full beard would distinguish him in any crowd. He had stopped to join the Trump rally on his way back from a delivery in New Jersey to take some photographs. His employer, Charlie Penrod, later testified. And the other thing is, he was asked by the president to show support. Had Mr. Stager instead kept driving, he would have returned to the small Arkansas city of Conway,

back to his one-story brick house. Yeah, back to his one-story brick house on a working-class street where residents, black and white, knew him as an even-killed father of two teenagers who went out of his way to help others um a next next door neighbor carmesia o'donnell recalled that when her water heater broke down mr stager installed the new unit free of charge it's a big job and he just did it for us she said um i mean this is another guy i didn't really talk about politics very often.

But then now he's getting... I mean, a lot of these people are probably going to go to prison for a long time. Unless Trump... Clayton's going to jail? Probably. I mean, it's... The article basically ends with him basically being like, how the fuck did I get myself in this? So he says now he didn't feel strongly about any

of it he didn't really know what he was getting into no i mean he does he was a trump supporter for sure um but he come to love trump without the internet or tv the thing is i think yeah yeah that's a fascinating trajectory i have a hard time like was there a parade in town that trump was in or he was a fan of the the uh what was his tv show the intern the apprentice the intern the intern yep the intern sounds like a sexual harassment yeah that's bill clinton yeah that was bill clinton show um let's see god damn clayton is very interesting yeah um another guy came to washington for what he thought was were good reasons at the time one of his lawyers later said the president of the united states of america was telling citizens something evil has happened and you all have to go fix it um and then here's my favorite one though

i highlighted that is a lot of i mean if i were a lawyer that's the route i'd take that's exactly what i was thinking if i'd be like the president told him to do it you know what are you gonna do i mean this the mullins guy that's like something out of a charles porges novel he just he just yeah he was like a pure soul yeah just like pure earnest just like show up check things out and implicated in one of the biggest crimes according to libs you know and a lot of just straight people in history uh but this was my favorite one did clayton say he regretted going i mean yeah i mean, towards the end of the article. I don't have the exact thing pulled out. But yeah, he basically is,

and the people around him too are like, yeah, this got out of hand. It got away from us. Really did. But while I was there, I figured I'd just take a look around. How many more times am I gonna be in the Capitol building, you know?

I thought this one was- Did the full tour. I thought this one was pretty fucking good. Among the actual veterans trespassing on Capitol grounds was Michael Lopotic, 57, from Pennsylvania. He's a vet. Yeah, a vet. Six foot four, well over 200 pounds,

and sporting a scraggly gray beard. He announced his military... Sporting a gorgeous eight and a half inch cock, nine inches in a paper bag, nine inches in a food city bag. It ain't shit, buddy. Six foot four, well over 200 pounds, sporting a scraggly beard.

He announced his military affiliation with his red Marines cap and his political affiliation with his red marines cap and his political affiliation with a trump 2020 t-shirt that said ptsd pretty tired of stupid democrats that was my favorite thing from this whole thing yeah i want that shirt this is this is my favorite thing not this next paragraph but the one after it um mr lapotic served in civil war tour in beirut in the early 1980s before taking part in the American invasion of Grenada, where he suffered injuries and hearing loss in a mortar explosion.

A completely senseless invasion, by the way. You imagine giving one of your senses up to the fucking invasion of Grenada. Yeah, absolutely. He left the Marines on disability, and according to one of his lawyers, has not held a full-time job in years. But his military service has remained central to his identity, as one peculiar incident would attest.

This is the peculiar incident. Check this out. While in line at a Chinese buffet in 2012, Oh, boy. Oh, my God. Oh, boy. Mr. Lopatic helped himself to the crab legs, all of them,

prompting an enraged man behind him to start a fist fight. Later, Mr. Lopatic told the doctors treating his injuries that he'd been jumped in an attempted robbery. What the fuck? I just thought that was so fucking American. Just like getting into a fist fight over crab legs.

An attempted robbery of crab legs? Getting into a fist fight over crab legs at the Chinese buffet. This is something. If anybody wants to know the difference between northern conservative rednecks and southern conservative rednecks, that would not happen in the south. Say what you want, but they would leave at least some crab legs for the person behind them. That is true, dude. These Pennsylvania assholes

think everything's afforded to them. That is true. That is so true, man. It is true. God. So fucking funny. He called it an attempted robbery. Yeah. That has sent me.

Yeah. At some point on the evening of january 6th mr mullins left the fray he made his way out of the capital's restricted area he's probably going home thing well that was wild glad i'll never have to hear about this again yeah that's basically he says back to where his wife and sister were waiting. His stricken face told them that something was wrong. On the long walk back to their rental car, they later said Mr. Mullins wept. And on the long two-day drive back to Kentucky, they said he was silent.

He returned to life as it had been. Two-day drive. But it was a life seemingly oblivious to the fact that his image was ricocheting around the internet and that he too was a wanted man with a nickname, quote-unquote, Slickback, in reference to his thick, comb-backed brown hair. ricocheting around the internet and that he too was a wanted man with a nickname. Quote unquote, Slickback, in reference to his thick, combed back brown hair.

This is Clayton. Yeah, Mr. Mullins. You could do worse for nicknames than being known for a gorgeous head of hair. Basically, yeah. If you're going to be fingered in an incident of this kind, at least they're like you know recognizing your drip fucking crazy i gotta see a picture of this dude um yeah i mean you know and then there's just some other uh you know he was eventually like picked

up while driving um you know i guess guess the FBI tracked him down with the help of web sleuths. Just like snitches online. Like web sleuths? Is that what the article said? It doesn't strike me as a guy that was trying to hide either. Also, but it's like if he wasn't on the internet at all,

how'd they find his ass? I think that they... I have no idea. Web sleuth idea webs he might not be the one that the web sleuths tracked down the web sleuths did track down some of the other people involved here and they like gave the information to the fbi so happy for them they were so happy yeah i mean so proud of themselves part of this like uh new school of kids that have really embraced the FBI and CIA and so forth. Like the young class of liberals that really think that there's something cool about being part

of the national security apparatus. I thought it was so interesting that... Tom and I were talking about this a little bit yesterday. The thing that I found so interesting about reading this is that i kind of feel like all americans across the board whether you're the most rabid like right-wing maga person or the most quote-unquote progressive progressive liberal or whatever all of us have become so uh sort of comfortable in our own worlds that like anything that happens contrary to that we react so violently and um indignantly like and this is why i think maybe like the left however loosely you define that maybe the only sane people left and i can't believe i'm saying that but just because we've

all internalized how everything is shit and it's just going to continue being shit right right like the right wingers in this case they could not countenance that trump had lost it was literally they could not countenance that Trump had lost. It was literally counter to everything they had been told, believed, held dear to them. And they fucked around, and now a lot of them are facing like fucking 10 years in prison. I mean, it was like a mass Joker moment for these fools. It is kind of wild to think about that, like,

this guy Donald Trump's living in a gold tower, presumably have committed all manner of crimes against humanity and so forth fucking nuked uh solomony and fucking you know got on the joysticks in the war room and blew some shit up in yemen when he first got in there just because he could and you know among other things and he's just gonna like he'll be a pariah for a certain period of time but then he'll have a podcast with hillary clinton in about five years and then liberals will just talk about how humanizing that is oh my god he'll be rehabilitated and meanwhile how long will it take for them to be obsessed with him, just like holding hands with a liberal across the aisle of Trump? Well, he may be the one.

I genuinely think he will be the one president that they never rehabilitate. Oh, you think? And I'll tell you why. He'll be a little Nixon-like. This is the perfect place to segue into his statement on Colin Powell so I mean everyone has read it by this point it's

an absolute banger I mean the guy is still cranking it I thought it was fake I was like there's no way this is real but let's just read it for posterity. Let Tom read it.

No, no, no. I want you to do it and then the Trump voice. Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America. Wonderful to see Colin Powell who made big mistakes on Iraq and famously so-called weapons of mass destruction,

be treated in death so beautifully by the fake news media. Hope that happens to me someday. He was a classic rhino, if even that, always being the first to attack other Republicans. He made plenty of mistakes, but anyway, may he rest in peace. But anyway, what is a rhino republicans in name only that's one of the gravest sins you can commit yeah yeah i'm dude this like you know it is so amazing like i remember when remember when John McCain died and people were, um, you know,

and even Bernie like made a statement, like he was a, a, a statesman. And, you know, he was, uh,

a, uh, venerable member of our Republic. Yeah. And all this. And it's like, and I remember there being at the time, this weird debate on Twitter of people being like it's ridiculous

that bernie can't uh come out against him and then people on the other side being like it's ridiculous you would think bernie would come out against them that he would say anything bad about him and it's like funny to think about that in hindsight because like trump is the only person who is saying any of the things that any of us are thinking like yeah you're one ally in terms of like a person with a real public life right it's donald trump oh my god he said so-called weapons of mass destruction that is so he's the only one who said it yesterday only one whatever yeah monday when he died he's the only one who said that. Even Colin Powell himself said that. Didn't he say, I mean, I saw this floating around and maybe it's fake,

but possible it's true that he said that. Big if true. He said that he knew that that would be the first stanza in his obituary was how he misled the country. So he had some guilt? Well, yeah, he had like a... He got a million bodies on his hands. Not only that, he went out

and lied to the UN, knowing they didn't have weapons of mass destruction, and famously had a tummy ache about it. He was like, oh no. Oh no. That's the non-profit where we got we call it heartburn now yeah i'm having some heartburn around this

is that really what they're saying yeah that's the new woke term for regret holy shit yeah heartburn yeah well yeah he went out there and did it anyways because he's a coward little bitch. And a million people died. So-called. Pretty funny. So-called weapons of mass destruction. The funniest take I saw,

there was a lot of really weird, goofy takes. The funniest one, though, was our pal Brett Stevens in the New York Times who said that the world would have been a very different place if colin powell had been elected president in 1996 i was like what how you want me to read the op-ed please in the game of historical what-ifs it's worth imagining what might have been if colin pow, who in the early 90s was among the most admired figures in America, had heeded conservative pleas to seek the 96th Republican presidential nomination, won it, and then defeated Bill Clinton that November. Our first black president would have been a Republican.

He would also have been the first president since Andrew Jackson to be a child of immigrants, living proof that a country that opens its doors to impoverished strangers is immeasurably rich by their aspirations and efforts. The Monica Lewinsky scandal, which so embittered, disgusted, and polarized the country, would at most have been a disturbing story about a sleazy ex-president. The Gingrich Republicans, forerunners to the truculent populist who would elect Donald Trump 20 years later, could have been held in check by a president whose moderate instincts, military bearing, and public standing recalled Dwight Eisenhower. The bitter contest over the election of 2000, its outcome determined by the Supreme Court, would almost certainly not have happened.

Dude, he's so fucking stupid the country might have entered the 21st century with more sobriety and less division like like of all the things brett sat in the lab on monday and was like all right what's how could 96 have been different if colin powell would have won the presidency right like yeah the butterfly effect what if colin oh and he was like oh that's so embittered and disgusted america like only republicans think that like bill clinton still has huge purchase amongst liberals yeah you know what i? Even like the people screaming about like, you know, like the people that are like, you know, pointing out his various sex crimes. Like, you know what I mean? Those people just kind of have a past for him. I don't know. It's weird. The character traits that had made him an exemplary military leader and a presidential advisor were ill-suited for a bruising campaign. He had no particular ideology beyond being a problem solver with somewhat conservative instincts.

He lacked the messianic self-belief that animates most candidates. He saw himself as a soldier statesman in the mold of George Marshall, not as a politician who lived by the polls and had an elastic relationship with truth. Then why are you writing this, Brett? It is kind of funny to me to think about the first black president being a Republican kind of breaking the brains of liberals, though the identity politics just... No wonder Powell seized the chance to be George W. Bush's Secretary of State.

Here was an opportunity to tutor a foreign policy novice at a moment of seemingly unique promise for the United States. It turned out to be anything but, both with respect to the opportunity and the promise. The attacks of September 11th shattered a decade's worth of complacency about America's place atop

the global order at the supposed end of history. The administration's response to the attacks shattered whatever hopes Powell might have had to be the dominant figure in the Bush administration. Powell is sometimes remembered as the man who could have stopped the invasion of Iraq but lacked the spine or the political infighting skills to do so. This is unfair and historically inaccurate. Easily forgotten now, the idea that Saddam Hussein posed a unique threat to global security was widely shared at the time of invasion,

including by Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, and Adam Schiff. So he's saying, okay, yes, he did mislead, but at least we got rid of Saddam. Which, you know, even on blowback, they talk about that a lot. That was kind of how we reversed course. Everybody that was involved in the invasion like reverse course like everybody that was like

involved in the invasion of iraq was like i'll never make an apology for going after saddam hussein right like madeline albright when she's talking to the school kids like if like when she i think she said hundreds of thousands of iraqi school children had to die and that was like just that was about the sanctions i think in the 90s said that to school children i don't know who she said She was saying it like basically somebody had asked the question about like all the school children that had suffered in Iraq under that and she was like it was worth it to get rid of

Saddam Hussein. Right, right, right. Jesus. Yeah. As for political, and this is an aside, as for political infighting, well wait, hold on. I skipped over this sentence. The weapons of mass destruction dossier that Powell hold on i skipped over this sentence the weapons of mass destruction dossier that pal presented to the un security council on the eve of the iraq

war had the full confidence of the intelligence community but pal himself doubted it like this is on record like he literally did not think that he had weapons of mass destruction and did it anyways and yeah and let's also just talk about our famously unscrupulous, our famously scrupulous intelligence community. As it is, Powell did have a long private conversation

with Bush outlining the real challenge of invasion. A broken post-war Iraq would be America's to pay for and fix. That was the right advice, and it called for meticulous planning for the day after Saddam's downfall. Instead, Bush assigned the task of reconstruction to Donald Rumsfeld, who shrugged at post-war looting in Baghdad as little more than exuberant expressions of freedom. More destructive was the cocksure U.S. viceroy in

Iraq, Paul Brimmer, who reported to Rumsfeld and who helped lay the ground for the insurgency by disbanding the Iraqi army. Powell, who said he was never consulted on the decision, hardly deserves the blame. What? I don't mean to derail this too much, but what was Paul Brimmer doing before they had sort of put him in charge? It was something stupid.

Yeah. It's like nobody could really figure out how he made that jump. Yeah, I think it was kind of like one of those appointments where he knew somebody, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't remember now, but yeah. Hmm. Powell came of age at a time when American systems worked.

His parents arrived in the united states from jamaica through open doors he received by his own account a remarkably good public school education the army integrated for only about a decade when he joined it saw to his promise and promoted him swiftly he oversaw the american war machine when it was at the zenith of its power decimating the supposedly formidable iraqi military with shock and awe inducing swiftness in the persian gulf war i like how i remember that a little differently yeah i like how like he just doesn't even mention the fact that colin powell covered up the me lie massacre massacre oh i'll just yeah what's that it It was like It was a massacre of this village

Called My Lai In Vietnam And I think it was like 69 Or 70 and it was like Covered up I think that they Literally killed like I don't know 90 innocent Women and children or something like that

Jesus fuck Just a butcher job Yeah but Colin Powell covered that up 90 innocent women and children or something like that. Jesus Christ. Just a butcher job. Yeah. But Colin Powell covered that up. He was directly responsible in that. Jesus. Also how you get promoted in these ranks. Literally, yeah.

In this sense, Powell uniquely synthesized two strains of American identity that had been long at odds. The radical promise of 1776 that all of us, irrespective of background, are indeed created equal and can rise as far as our talents will take us, as long as you cover up war crimes. Also, that's just not what that document

said in 1776. Right, right. Right. And the sturdy traditionalism that goes with being the product of a military hierarchy. But things went badly wrong with America's systems between the way they had shaped Powell on his way up, or between the time they had shaped Powell on his way up and the time he had a hand in shaping them from the top. Immigration processes became incoherent, public education deteriorated, social mobility stagnated.

Within the federal government, the intelligence community had become catastrophically inept. In Iraq, the United States could not get the lights to go on. In Afghanistan, it could not completely disperse foreign aid, at least until David Petraeus took charge.

Blah, blah, blah. Powell, like so many others others could not seem to get his head around the extent of the rot. He had spent days at the CIA personally vetting the intelligence on Iraq before presenting it at the UN. Even then it was garbage. A responsible case could have

been made for Hussein's removal because he was a one man weapon of mass destruction. There's one weapon been made for Hussein's removal because he was a one-man weapon of mass destruction. Yeah. There's one weapon of mass destruction over there. So in a way, he didn't lie. He's like Typhoid Mary. They're gonna shoot his body

over the walls of the Pentagon. You've never heard of Uday Hussein? But the WMD case was pressed because it seemed to be the most convenient. The decision to disband the Iraqi army was made with no interagency process to speak of. The person who defended that fiasco, then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, was chosen to succeed Powell at the State Department. Again, Powell was not responsible for this but the same combination of decency level-headedness and ambivalence that dissuaded him from running

for president prevented him from being the kind of critic and reformer that a broken system really needed i mean brett really does or of course he doesn't actually think this uh because he had a column to fire off. But it's really astonishing. Also, I'm still hung up on complacency of our place. In something. It's like, this guy gets paid a lot of money and he's saying ratting shit like that.

Just his drivel. A modest man who has much to be modest about was Winston Churchill's reputed jibe about his success for Clement Attlee. Powell, by contrast, was a modest man who, for all his achievements, was still too modest for his country's good. Oh, my God.

General Powell, you should have run in 96. Rest in peace. That's how he ends it? That's how he ends it. Oh, my God. A modest man. Oh, my God modest man Oh my god A criminal supreme

Of the free world I've got to hit the inhaler I'm struggling This man's from Albuterol Brett man Brett He took my breath away I love how he's so incompetent

They just have to throw him these softballs. Like, Colin Powell died. Can you do something? Just anything. Write something about it. I mean, it's really the best take, honestly. I mean, like, a lot of people were like, I saw one in The Atlantic, and their take was, like, Colin Powell was an example of how the system works because he rose up through the ranks of the military right after it was integrated and showed, you know, like, I don't know this like I don't know.

is way more original brett's take i i respect it brett's take is like history would be so much different if colin powell had run for president in 96 not 92 right off the you know like the the history had come to such a point that only one man could remedy what else? I said 96. That man was General Colin Powell. General Colin Powell. Right. Yeah. It's so weird. I think it's like, 96 is crucial for him because it can't be 2000. It has to be 96 because for him, Colin Powell could have staved off the Newt Gingrich Republican Revolution, which would have staved off the Trump catastrophe

or whatever. He said basically there'd be a more moderate Republican Party if he won the nomination. Which is so fucking stupid because if anyone, it's like Reagan, but then before that, like Goldwater.

I mean, it's just like all these... It's a classic Brett thing, though. Who did become president in 96? Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton, in the words of Bill Clinton. Bill.

Who is that? Boozy Badass? Has some interesting views. On Bill Clinton Well on a number of topics On a number of topics to say the least That's so funny though Like of course Bill Clinton was gonna

I don't even know who ran Was it Bob Dole? Was that who ran against Clinton in 96? 96 was yeah Bob Dole Like of course Clinton was gonna fucking win re-election Yeah 92 was H.W. Bush right? Right Like okay

Powell wouldn't have run in 92 Cause he wasnlection. Yeah, 92 was H.W. Bush, right? Right. Like, okay, Powell wouldn't have run in 92 because he wasn't going to run against his boss, H.W. Yeah. But, I mean... Oh, damn, he worked for both of them. He worked for both, father and the son. God damn. Yeah, that's untelling how many bodies he buried.

That's why, like, Trump's obituary about him is the perfect... It really is the perfect, like really is the perfect elegy. It's the perfect parting shot. It really is just straight down the line. Just being totally honest. It's in a crass manner, but there was no lies detected there. No.

Unbelievable. Yeah. Trump becomes a leftist who made big mistakes on iraq and famously so-called weapons of mass destruction be treated in death so beautifully by the fake news media so beautifully he's also got this hilarious critique of the media in there it's like well it's like fake media is like he coined that term right he's gonna keep he's gonna keep driving his own like language well funnily enough i don't know if you guys remember this the liberals actually came up with the word fake news they were saying that you remember that tom i think so yeah like i could have sworn like the liberals were saying fake news for like three, three months. Yeah, and then they just kind of latched onto it as a rallying cry.

Right. The Republicans did, yeah. But it is so fucking funny, though. Yeah, because fake news was, like, something they said about, like, Facebook. Yeah. That's fake news. I mean, he does have a point that, like, yeah, hope that happens to me someday. Like, he's going to be excoriated by the news, by the media when he dies.

Like, I mean, probably fairly fairly he's a piece of shit but it's like colin powell was also a piece of shit donald rumsfeld who died three months ago huge piece of shit but they're gonna be they're picking shoes here that yeah right i i'm gonna write something for the new York Times when Donald Trump died, and I'll just tell about all his awful deeds, and I'll say. But for all that, he did apprehend some bat-wielding thugs en route to a Paula Abdul concert in 1994. And for that, we must remember him fondly. Oh, my God. Yep, so he says. But anyway.

Wow. He also just centers himself always. Hope that happens to me one day. Hope that happens to me one day. I love that clip going around of him hearing about RBG dying for the first time. Well, yeah, that's a classic. Like, that's like golden. That is perfect.

When they put Tiny Dancer playing in the background. Because he's caught. He claimed he didn't know, right? When they told him on camera. I'm just hearing about this for the first time. He stops, pauses, and does this for like 30 seconds and then says something. He's like, I want to say this,

but I got gotta be a little measured so i have to think about it for a minute i just i do kind of love the thought of some like speech writers and shit trying to work with trump as president i mean he had to just be an absolute buffoon in the white house you know it like wasn't even fun to think about it when he was president but now it is pretty comical yeah to think about the buffoonery and people like like a speech writer trying to work with him and being like all right here's what we're gonna say yeah and people tried to like edit him i mean he fired a lot of people he just cut them left and right it's fucking hilarious oh god absolutely hilarious god i mean if anyone did make a mockery of you know of u.s democracy it was him yeah fuck it yeah um i just like what's his what do you think his long game is to have a podcast with

hillary you think that's his long game like what's is he trying to get back a tv show he just keeps like slipping little things in here and there i mean he's gonna run for president again i'm sure they're already trump 2024 flags over oh yeah he'll run for president for for sure. And he'll be a threat. It's the sick thing. Him running against Joe Biden again, though, makes me so tired. The thought of it is her. Well, you think Joe will be dead by then? It'll be Kamala. He'll be running against Kamala.

Trump will punish him. Joe, you cheated me the first first time but it's okay we're gonna get it right this time joe it's fine four years is a massive difference in a guy like joe biden i mean he was already showing signs like trump will be biden's age now in four years right i think yeah and biden will be like knocking on death's door and for sure and like nothing ages you like a fucking presidency dog we're gonna have trump around too probably trump and joe i don't know i mean i i don't want to say definitively one way or the other but i guess it depends on how this uh they can't stop him from running right i. I mean, yeah, he still has the Republican Party, so he's going to run.

Yeah. Unless something insane happens between now and then. So who runs? Who else is in the primary? I'm sure. The Republicans. Yeah. Well, there won't be a Democratic primary.

You know Jeb will pop up fruitlessly. You think so? The thing is that Trump will own him the same way he did eight years before at that point. But he won't care. It won't matter. Well, the thing is, I don't know enough about... The Hollies and the Cottons will come out. I guess so.

But they seem to me to be pretty Trump subservient. I know. So i wouldn't imagine they would run against him i would much rather trump than either of those two guys i mean i don't imagine anybody who would actually run against them what about pence wouldn't that be a fuck you that would be pretty good and pence probably has plenty of shit he could throw up on him that that might actually get him on skates unlockable p oh he is yeah he's so grotesque yeah yeah nobody's gonna want to put themselves out there to be humiliated like that so nobody with any real skeletons in their closet will go scared to death to run against trump

oh that's so funny oh my god well my question it's like joe there's no way how can legally how can joe just let kamala run what would he have to uh step down or whatever they just have to announce he's not running it's like what lbj did in 68 and his vice president ran as president but then there would okay if that's the case then there would be a democratic primary though right yeah so she would just have it would just be she'd have to do all this she'd have to do it yeah campaigning in the prompt in the primary right and she would lose i mean there's no question about it she would lose

let's just keep in mind she didn't make it past Iowa last time and somebody thought it was a good idea to make her number two that's amazing I mean somehow they got elected I don't know put that in perspective Mayor Pete won Iowa

and he's the most unlikable guy on the planet wasn't this the craziest primary Pete won Iowa and he's the most unlikable guy on the planet. Right. Wasn't this the craziest primary? He won Iowa I should say. Well I think that probably about covers it for this episode. Thanks for listening.

I don't know if this is a premium episode or a public one but. Happy full moon. But happy full moon. Wasn't that a couple days was that last night two nights ago this morning what's the latest holiday that y'all celebrate the moon's just been fucking huge the last few nights but it wasn't full till this morning i see yep the latest holiday yeah well then you know them, you know, celestial holidays. Well, there is Halloween. Well, I mean, that's all of us.

All of us, but there's usually something that you know me and Terrence never heard of. You come and say, happy Beltane or whatever. I could have looked at one of my witch calendars On the way here It's full moon in Aries That's all I know I gotta go hit the inhaler I need a beach plumb Thanks for listening

We'll see you next time