Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 308: No Statesman Left Behind

Episode Date: September 14, 2023

Probably against our better judgement, we decided to do the Romney article. Please forgive the bad audio...I've been sick in quarantine and this was the best I could do :) Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

okay so the goal today is not to make me laugh you gotta make you gotta be as straight lay here as possible demure as possible as dry as possible yeah you can't make me laugh or i'll start coughing well uh in that case i gotta i got something to start us off with. Something that's not only dry and demure, but the manliest of manly topics that I've been seeing trending on Twitter. I've been seeing people post about it. Fellas, what's your favorite plane? Do you have a favorite plane? And do you often think of the Roman Empire? I do often think of the Roman Empire.

I often think of the Roman Empire. i don't have a favorite plane when i was a kid i used to like the stealth bomber because that shit went fast as fuck and it was like and it was like the the shape of it like like yeah i was like oh man they're doing incredible shit with jet technology now like jets don't even look like they used to they came out with a new shape they got dorito shaped jets now and they're and like i don't even know like what potential scenario they would have even been using the stealth bomber in like what the fuck like the whole thing about american imperialism is like you don't need stealth because at all points like we just bomb the shit out of everywhere yeah why would you need stealth they know we're coming they know

right you mean the picture you're fucking watched by it i like the a10 thunderbolt. Just the classic. What's the A-10 Thunderbolt? What does it do? It's the platonic idea of a beautiful warcraft. Oh, that's like that World War II kind of bummer.

Or is it not that? Why do you like, it's got those two big jets on the back that kind of look like titties you know i'll be honest with you it kind of reminds me of the jet plane from the x-men cartoons yeah it does okay this is 70s i was thinking way too early yeah this is kind of tight this looks like this this would have been um i don't know if you guys know but uh or used to be in a collecting this stuff but um i used to be in the collecting like i guess they were cast metal like casted like vehicles like planes i had an sr-71 blackbird this looks like one of the uh the jets i would have had the toy jets i would have had

yeah oh yeah i didn't ever remember that stuff uh anything that had to do with military history, I tuned out immediately. I don't know why. I always liked the machines. I always liked the machines. I hate war. I like the weapons of war. Yeah, exactly. I got older. I was like, hey, they use those things to kill a massive amount of people

in a little amount of time. That's pretty brutal. I like that. God damn it. I like to read about the men leading the war. The great men of history. The Napoleons and the...

General MacArthur. And the Mansa Mooses. Seen nobody ever talk about my brother Mansa. Yeah. I know. The richest man that ever lived. Never in that conversation with Bill Gates and stuff. Convenient, huh?

Yeah. Always got to leave the black man out. I wish a lot of times I do long for a time when you could trade spices and beaver pelts for what you needed. You know what I mean? Yeah. What would be the equivalent today? Would it be like a unreturned blockbuster DVDs versus a, let me, let me,

I just broke my bowl, brother. Let me get that. And I'll give you this copy of a, you've got mail that I forgot to return. Copy of half bank starting Dave. Um, that's a,

that's a DVD scratched all the hell. Nah, that's not, that's not a fair trade. Cause that's like a, that's like a, that's like that, uh,

that short story. Uh, was it the three magi or some shit it's the couple where she buys i think him a watch or some shit like that or a chain for his watch but he sells his watch to buy her a cone but she sold her hair see if i sell you if i trade you half baked then you can't smoke because you don't got the pipe anymore you know that's true that's true yeah well checking an egg con and egg conundrum. I could see a scenario in the future where you're trading CDs and DVDs as currency.

You know what I mean? In the Middle Ages, there was several different currencies going around at once. You had your ducats. Is that how you say it? I've always said ducats. But I've said it as slang for money. Ducats. Is that how you say it? I've always said ducats. Ducats. But I've said it as like slang for money.

Ducats and frog skins are my favorite things to call money. I thought it was Ducat, like the dude from Star Trek, Ducat. Ducats. We have several different mispronunciations here. In their day, they probably didn't even know how to say it. They didn't want to sound stupid

like, I'll trade you this chicken for 10 you let them say it first you let them say it oh right that's what i was that's what i mean right yeah yes of course right uh-huh well i was reading about the republic of ragusa it was a short-lived it It was a short-lived... It wasn't a short-lived action. Star Wars, dog? What's that?

A Star Trek planet? It sounds like it's from a galaxy far, far away. Well, the funny thing is it was on the Dalmatian coast. It was pretty close to Italy. You had another thing that seems like something out of georgia well it's got the it looks like it's got the word ragu in it and that's why it was funny to me i was like oh italians lived in a place called ragu but also tarasola dogs so you tell me dog bitches are named after a place in italy no less oh god man well this place used, this place used to be called Elyria in ancient Rome times.

Is that why it's called Lyra, the cash? No, I don't think that's connected, is it? I don't know, I feel compelled to do this. Johnny Football, Moshe. That's what Elyria said to me, brother. But Elyria was Italian currency, wasn't it? I mean, I guess it still is, right? Well, the euro. I don't even know what's happening over there man surprisingly though for as dumb as i am i'm really good at that

uh import and export game you know where you like guess the country that cradle all the cradle yeah that game i'm fantastic at cradle dude i didn't want to tell anybody this but i really did start that and had three one-hit quitters and then my results dipped off after that but i thought well if i tell people they're gonna think i'm lying but i nailed ireland and then the next day uh day was like norway maybe what's norway's export biggest export i forget now but it's just whales or some shit well no when everything comes up and i just see the composite like social democracy brother get that right happiness

i'll talk about how happy those scandinavian countries are just about not having sunlight yeah i don't believe that shit they say jamaica is one of the happiest countries i believe that it's warm it's warm there all the time i'm terrible at that fucking game mostly because like i don't believe in concepts man or categories or nation states or anything so like i'm gonna be bad at a game like that i don't believe in reality man i don't believe in reality what i'm drawn to is is trade though you know you do love trade i do i love bartering all forms of it and so if it pops up and says who sells um uh vaccines salmon beaver pelts and oil and i'm immediately going to know who who it is yeah that's true dude tom

you would have made a great like i think about this a lot like part of the thing that sucks about living now is currency like currency i'm sorry but dollar bills just don't go as hard as fucking silver and gold coins imagine being able to fucking slap some of those fucking coins down or a big bag of that shit on the counter dude a bunch of galleons especially if it splashes a little bit you're telling me that currency is paper like come on man it's just i'm saying that like tom you would have excelled in a world where we you trade in five or six different regional currencies you know how sick i would have been on the silk road dude handling my wares oh shit i said well who do we have here boys the old the old venetian hornswoggler himself marco polo

pull you right up my pull you up a seat my friends i've got beautiful fabric silks rugs what do you like oh man that is so true like you would have been a not to say that you now isn't the best you could ever be but like you would have been wiggle room though he has no imagination that's the thing about dude i'm you can call this the fever dream episode i was like running 102 degree fever a few days ago. Damn. And I was like. That's literally mind numbing. Like your brain starts to belt at that. I don't say that like. Yeah.

That literally could cause brain damage. In between reading the Wikipedia page for fever, which I recommend, it's fun. page for fever which i recommend it's fun i was thinking about one of the great tragedies of life which is that or i won't call it a tragedy is an open question a question we'll never have answered but one of the great mysteries of life and like one of my great fears is that past civilizations will always be unintelligible to us and future ones that we are all islands unto ourselves historically that like, if time travel were possible, we could never commune with anyone in the past.

Even if, you know what I'm saying? Like it would be like going to a different planet, you know, because there's this concept called deep time where there are intervals of time that are so far and expansive that it's like you can't even really we don't even really know what happened how many civilizations rose and fell and whatnot you know so yeah yeah it's just uh you know i i i i was thinking like

in my fevered reverie just staring at the ceiling like oh oh, man, what if what if we are ultimately alone? Like there's no meeting. I guess what I'm saying is this after we die, perhaps from a hundred five degree fever, there is no there's no waiting room where then you get to sit around with all the great personalities and whatever of history. Like you don't get to meet up after the game and say like that was mad that was crazy like there's not a post-temporal like lobby for you to chill out that would be sick though what if you went in there and i'd be like i have one regret boys and the only regret i have is that i didn't live during the time when the road connected china and rome other than that i feel fine about how it shook out.

Could have played a little better at certain points, but... I've been born a couple thousand years before, but you know. I watched a movie a few years ago. I don't even remember the name of it. It was being advertised on Netflix or something. It was a movie with John Cusack.

The premise is ridiculous. John Cusack. The premise is ridiculous. John Cusack plays a Roman general. John Cusack of all people. That's awesome. He's on an expedition and he stumbles into China where he meets Jackie Chan, a Chinese general. That's awesome. Which is like this historical like what if that people have always talked about like did the

Chinese and Romans ever meet and I think it's like I think it's like I think it's still up in the air I don't think they ever did at least not in China halfway like on a trade route or some shit like that wait when you've got a booty call that's like 13 hours

let's meet halfway I got this chick man with a fat old ass in Uzbekistan I like that. When you've got a booty call, that's like 13 hours. Let's meet. Exactly. I got this chick, man, with a fat old ass in Uzbekistan. Let's meet in France. Straight up. Straight up.

I got to get there. Are there any, are there any, are there any trains heading toward the Orient by chance? Yeah. I'll meet you halfway in Istanbul. Yeah. It's even like nine months later oh man uh yeah i can mess with a post-temporal uh uh uh lobby room you know but not like a

purgatory though i don't want i don't feel like i'm languishing there i want to have time to talk to all the greats of history you know that's the thing like i guess what i'm saying is that like one of the great tragedies of life is like you don't get a post uh game recap you don't get to you don't get to watch tape you know you don't get to know of that we know of but let's be real let's be real like let's there's no there's no lobby after the game where you meet up and you say like oh man let me tell you about my game let me there's no post-game discussion you're not gonna get to sit down with fucking gang is con and um some plebe from like the ninth century who is like oh they're they're coming up with some crazy shit in social relations dude it's called feudalism check it out you're like no

like that didn't turn out that didn't turn out so well brother no no i lived in the logical conclusion of that my friend did it work out so well for the fish or the people that for that matter see that guy over there he had 105 degree fever just the other day a very preventable illness that we all got like nine times and we're walking around with fucking permanent internal damage permanent brain damage at that uh uh currency though man it just doesn't it just doesn't hit like it used to well here's what i would like to experience just once is i don't know if you guys have ever bought and sold rugs from uh you know gentlemen from the you know muslim world but one line they always drop on

you that i love is but for you my friend but for you my friend but for you my friend yeah but for you my friend i did i did i looked at this guy and I was I was, you know, that line in the Bible where the apostle or King Agrippa says the apostle to the apostle Paul. Paul, you almost persuade me to be a Christian. I almost looked at that rug salesman, sir. You almost persuade me to be a Muslim. And he winks like I almost got your brother. like i almost got your brother um well well guys uh there's a few things in the news do you want to read the atlantic thing on mitt romney i i mean i honestly i i i was that that quote that i sent you the excerpt about him um i mean if we read it you know he'll he'll go through it but uh just him sitting down in this uh uh dining room by himself quote dining room with this large huge like cinema style cinema huge size tv and eating uh salmon and

ketchup sandwiches while watching ted lasso that was endearing to me so i'd be i'd be curious to see i'm gonna be 100% honest with you i've never felt more connected to exactly only because that is a that is a classic he's just like me for real situation a little makeshift dinners and bullshit tv nothing that's just what we've been doing last three uh you you know when you know when people were said said this about uh obama and they said this is about bush that you just want a guy that you can sit down and have a beer with. This is the guy that they're talking about. You know, this is the actual guy. I don't really want to sit down with him.

I think I would rather be pathetic on my own instead of with Mitt Romney. this is, it seems like the, uh, um, sort of, uh, Mitt Romney, equivalent of the, the Bill Clinton, Doug band thing, just like a man sort of at the end of his career, just drifting off,

gazing away and thinking about his legacy. Yeah. What it all, what it all meant. Yeah. A lack of a legacy yeah 100 that is literally what this is uh he i don't know we can read it if you want there's some there's some choice shit in there uh only if you want to i feel like it might be played out by the time this airs that's my only

hesitation christopher rufo is latched onto it. He says Mitt Romney does not understand why political opinion shifted dramatically between 2015 and 2020, which is why he is on the way out and JD Vance is on the way up. Chris Rufo should be on the way out in a body bag now. Speaking of JD, speaking of JDd vance have y'all been following this stuff with the uaw potential uaw strike and like jd vance trying to like favor with the auto workers yeah i saw today is today they're supposed to uh declare a strike

today right supposed to start today in it yeah and was he tweeting something about ev cars or something like electric vehicles or some shit like that hilarious and then the other thing too that he's doing is he's doing this thing that well a lot of people on the left like some of our more annoying friends that like are latching on to the oliver anthony thing they're like eating up jd vance's like can likeance's nod to UAW. There is a certain segment of the left pining for a right-left. I'm not talking old-school hell, like old-school communists sometimes had to work with reactionaries and stuff like that.

I think they really just want to be in concert with right-wingers. I think that you could be right some of them do have like latent conservative thoughts that they don't know how to acknowledge or act on but i do think a big thing is just opportunism just straight up just cynical opportunism like they just see any politician in the mainstream giving any kind of like acknowledgement or whatever even just the most like feeble acknowledgement to like workers they immediately think like i don't know it's like a form of kind of like entryism or talism you know what i'm saying it's just completely opportunistic i mean also too i mean it's

probably a moot point but i think also too like the overlapping two big circles things with those two groups are always these like quote oversights when it comes to race or gender or sexuality you know what i mean like i don't want to use the word class reductionist but yeah these people think that like well they hate the capitalists too no they're just anti-elitist and they also think the elites are jews and they hate trans people you know so i mean like i don't know it's just it's just this oversight that's convenient you know yeah i mean these people will i don't know like it seems to me that like jd vance is kind of just playing the friends of cole uh playbook because he even mentioned like something about just transition oh my god this is gonna be the fucking oh fucking shit i can't i can't find it

now but he was basically like jd vance's whole thing is that we need to be driving gasoline guzzling vehicles and we don't need a just transition oh here it is it's right here he says um this is in response to that more perfect union twitter account like they asked trump for his remarks about the uaw strike and trump you know released a statement that's you know uh he says time after time i rescued the u.s auto industry from certain destruction withdrawing from tpp overhauling the korea deal to restore the protective tariff on pickup trucks canceling obama's job killing cafe rules in replacing nafta with the usmca while insisting on unprecedented protections for american labor

if i had caved on any of those promises to workers the u.s auto industry would be gone it'd be dead gone gone um crooked joe has sold you out to appease the environmentalist extremist in his party do not surrender um basically like i don't know like saying all that stuff is probably not good for the auto workers you know and if they're negotiating right now. But regardless, J.D. Vance said, this is really gross. It's not fooling anyone. He's talking about the more perfect union tweet. Oh, not Trump's comment.

Not Trump's comment. OK, OK. He says the premature transition to EVs is destroying the auto industry in our country. Yeah, because everybody you see is driving one exactly well anytime you see one it's like oh that's a cute novelty thing somebody's driving exactly well and it's also i'm it's also like the american auto industry went into crisis probably like three decades ago you know what i mean it's got nothing to do with it's got more to do with like offshoring manufacturing and you know nafta and a lot of this other stuff than it does with fucking electric vehicles electric vehicles that's like

that's like that's like saying some shit like because i mean i mean at some point it is now like sure like this um this sort of i don't call it luxury item because i guess they're affordable affordable electric cars but they'll become more affordable i guess as the technology is more i don't know cheaper or i mean i don't even know what that means because where we get into tech from the batteries and shit to do this right but at the same time though it's like that's like saying like you know like the like cell phones put like like uh house phones out of business or some shit like that you know what i I mean? You should be mad. Like the company, the telecommunications companies, because now this new cell phone technology, the people that were using house phones or foot,

you know what I mean? It's just like stupid, dude. You see this all the time in industry. You saw this on the coal industry collapse. There was that brief moment where everybody was pointing toward the gas companies. And like anybody that was in bed with the gas companies and like Eastern

Kentucky and West Virginia, and these places were like considered like traitorous until you realize that oh well all these same guys on all these same fossil fuels you know what i mean exactly and so it's all just some fucking stupid thing another thing i was thinking about when you're saying that terence is it seems like every administration that comes through has to have some kind of plan about how to like save the auto industry. Like you remember Obama had like, what was their cash for clunkers?

There's all kinds of like kind of goofy. He had like an auto czar. And then the big thing was, remember when they bailed out Detroit or, you know, the four or whatever, it's like, it's almost like in the same way that the university of kentucky and the

state of kentucky sort of like props up the coal industry is like a proud legacy thing because they got these relationships the united states does the same thing for ford motor company and by extension probably the others but ford seems to be sort of the poster child for well i'm pretty sure this could be entirely wrong, but I'm pretty sure one of the bailout or bailout, Jesus, COVID relief bills that they passed within the last few years has a stimulating demand for that and that's why that's that is why you are seeing more factories open up in the south that are specifically geared around eb production well even last year andy beshear in kentucky announced they were going to open a ford plant here that was specifically geared toward, I think, the F-150 Lightning. Yeah, Ford is trying to get into it. But J.D. Vance said the workers don't need lectures about just transition.

They need someone who stands up for them and fights alongside them. Kudos to Donald Trump for saying what needs to be said. And shame on these progressive advocacy groups pretending to stand up for workers um but i think jd bantam his whole thing you got it brother man yeah his whole thing is kind of like a worker like a petro-based workerism you know what i mean it's like um i don't know i mean the thing about that is like okay i guess if you want to put all your eggs in that basket you want to like go you know full steam ahead with that um you got like maybe 15 20 years of like you can get like maybe 15 years 20 years of like carbon-based fascism out of that exactly like a fascist steampunk world or some shit like that right

i mean because like you're gonna run out it's like if you run out of the political economic basis for your political project yeah you're fucked brother i mean yeah you might be able to like kill a lot of people in the in the process which is not discount that it is a possibility but on the on the other side of it you see like a lot of like progressive groups liberal groups and stuff like fighting for legislation that that really hasn't been relevant for 15 years like you know what I mean? And they will die trying to get this passed, and they don't understand that the world has moved on,

and the suppositions in this thing that you've been devoting your life to are not even relevant. Yeah, they're completely hollowed out. Well, both approaches to purchases are completely fucked i mean the market for like carbon trade-offs or whatever the fuck uh is from what i understand uh completely weighted to one side it's not like a profitable market in any way like i think i think it's been well documented that a lot of companies are lying about like how much decarbonization they're doing yeah i just saw this fucking ad from apple where

they got uh is it octavia spencer the olivia rodrigo no never mind not that one the actress octavia spencer octaviaavia Spencer right like they got her Apple Climate film with Octavia Spencer it's like a whole movie or some shit a whole ass movie with Octavia a whole ass movie

a whole ass movie brother oh man speaking of currency could you imagine being on the Silk Road in 2347 and Tom steps out of the shadows and says, I've got some carbon tokens for you.

Also, I'm an oracle. In addition to being a peddler, I'm also an oracle. It's going to come in handy in a couple of millennia. You might not live to see it my friend i i think the larger point though is like the libs they can try all this like carbon trade-offs and ev production and everything but like that's a there's a contradiction inherent in that too uh so neither side here is now it's always kind of like what was so hollow and um

side here is now it's always kind of like what was so hollow and um sort of silly about just transition it's like okay you can use this term all you want and it's disparaged by the right wingers um but when the left when the live libs use it it doesn't mean anything either doesn't mean anything either yeah you know no go ahead sorry no you go no i was just thinking when we were talking about this um i was just thinking when we were talking about this um i was just thinking about and this is ironically an apple plus tv show i think i mentioned it before in the show uh extrapolations which is like a mini series um about it's like an ensemble cast mill street actually plays the last humpback whale in it it's it's a fucking it's so speculative fiction yeah it's interesting but it's also just kind of like, it's just like, like, I mean,

it's hella liberal because essentially, I mean, they, I think the showrunners understand the showrunner understands the same guy who did the show Contagion that we could just keep kind of like staving off the inevitable, you know? But like, it seems as if like in the show, I think that they have like a UN climate, like Paris climate accords, like a summit or something. And they keep changing like the the goal post about like um about what's what's what is it about the how many degrees centigrade you know about what that limit should be before companies like really i'm like dude like

and at some point the show kind of like in its own ideology cement cements that well we really can't do anything drastic and radical so this is the best that we can hope for and it's just like yeah man this is all this sort of like i don't know all this like the carbon credits all this shit is just like dude these companies not only are lying about it but if if we don't even have the going in with the supposition that this is existential battle to verify that these companies are even doing it to hold people accountable you know then what's the fucking point what's for it yeah i got a question did you say that meryl streep plays a humpback well in this she plays the last she plays not only not only the

last that's like if you got uh jeremy irons or ben kingsley to play aqua man i mean jerry did play alfred so i mean jerry i did play alfred so i mean like i guess yeah not too far from well that's a regal butler though you know he's a regal butler and he's a badass but see that's what i was getting at earlier like there's no there's gonna be no post-game press conference where I get to sit down with the last humpback well and say, how did you feel

being played by Meryl Streep? Thankfully, people have no idea what you're talking about, thank God. Yeah, he just makes noises. What I'm getting at is like the tragedy is that on on on earth that we could be alien to our own species like across millennia and that like people four or five centuries from now living in the

wasteland of what we've created you know rot yeah you know like not only will you not be be able to speak to them after the game and then they can say like why didn't you do anything even if you could speak to them you couldn't even answer that question adequately yeah because you don't even have the context for it yo you know what brother you're so right brother because i saw this tweet the other day man where i'll be just talking about alien shit in the past dog like it was it was one of those fucking accounts man where i don't think it was one of those fucking accounts, man, where I don't think it was one of the trad accounts, but it was definitely one of those like classical accounts that post shit

from like, you know, this is the Roman empire. And I don't know what the fuck is called dog, but it's like this stick with like cotton or some shit wrapped around it that everybody like would use to wipe their ass. You know what I'm saying? And then they'd all wash it out and then, you know, share it and use it around. I'm like, like dog i'm coming from like the 21st century i have like triple ply you know what i'm saying at the very at the very least the shit that they got like in

the hospitals and like you know public like public services that's not that bad like in elementary school it's kind of chafee but even that is better you know what i'm saying that's some alien shit dog like that's true that is very true that's a shit stick man that's what they wouldn't return to that is very true good on that man i've never i've never felt strongly about toilet paper i've been criticized for having single ply at my house one time yeah and i was just like i just kind of grab whatever's cheapest i'm not particular about what i wipe my ass with but apparently some people are i'm a little particular a little particular well yeah what do y'all recommend here i i always go with charmin ultra soft yeah i always go with charmin ultra soft man sometimes uh too thick of a ply is uh you know you don't want to

use too much you don't want to clog your drains you don't need that much but uh you know a little bit and you're fine to go, man. That's kind of my experience with Cottonelle. In a way, as long as you don't, paradoxically, I will say. Sometimes if you just double up on the single ply, which I guess you could just do two ply and that'd problem solved. You get more integrity than the Cottonelle that's a little too soft and all of a sudden you got poopy fingers all right well speaking of doo-doo ass and toilet paper um let's you want to you want to read this you want to dive in on this yeah let's let's see how sad romney i mean if it's if it's just boilerplate bullshit at least we've given

people close to 40 minutes and they yeah they can just turn off and say i've already heard all my favorite podcasts do this fucking stupid ass article i don't need to listen to the trail billies do it exactly or i need or maybe listen to them uh uh for them to do it uh how they'll do it you know maybe we'll uh maybe we'll glean something that uh that anyone else who has covered this before hasn't the tardy boys at it again you know well i would say as a preamble uh there is some interesting stuff in there about how in here about how the senate works and some interesting tidbits about like the sort of culture of the senate and the culture that mitt romney is not a part of and there's some very you get some very good play-by-play january 6th

oh i don't even think about mitt romney on january 6th dog that's like i mean not that he's a ned flanders character but it is, dog. That's like, I mean, not that he's a Ned Flanders character, but it is kind of like Ned Flanders. You know what I mean? He's a little Flanders. He's a little Flanders. He was like that Under Armour commercial on January 6th. He was like, we must protect his home.

Yeah, he was. He was ready to put a posse together and go after the QAnon shaman and the boys. He got some Mormons in his office. That's what I was wanting to know. If he sheds any light on the Latter Day Saints church's internal practices. There is some

interesting Mormon stuff in here too. Well, there's one thing in particular. Let's dive in there, man. What Mitt Romney saw in the Senate is an interesting headline off the bat, right? Let me tell you, Dad, first of all.

I remember reading this book by Carlos Fuentes called, what is it? The Life of Artemio Cruz. Is that what it is? It was a while back. The Death of Artemio cruz my bad sorry brother it's hard to get your hopes up not a lot opposite quite the opposite

you know it's like basically like a deathbed confession of this industrialist in mexico and uh like citizen kane yeah this is kind of modeled off the deathbed confession in fact let me read you the first paragraph for most of his life mitt romney has nursed in morbid fascination with his own death suspecting that it might assert itself one day suddenly and violently just missed the mark brother maybe next time i think that that's supposed to give you some sort of like premonition. In storytelling, we call this, what is it? Foreshadowing. Foreshadowing.

Foreshadowing, yeah. You think he's going to die on January 6th or he might get assassinated because of his brave outspokenness against President Trump. But he says he would live to 120 if he could so much is going to happen he says i want to be around to see it but some part of him has always doubted that he'll get anywhere close well you can join me in the post-game press conference yeah this is true there is that he has never really interrogated the cause of this preoccupation, but premonitions of death seem to follow him. Okay, this... God damn.

This got me, dude. This presents a very convincing theory that Mitt Romney is in fact the hat man that people see in their Benadryl deliriums. That makes him a lot less scary, I'll be honest with you. Nothing about Mitt really intimidates me. Well, listen. Once, years ago, he boarded an airplane for a business trip to London,

and a flight attendant whom he'd never met saw him gasped and rushed from the cabin in horror. When she was asked what had so upset her she confessed that she dreamt the night before about a man who looked like him exactly like him getting shot and killed at a rally in hyde park he didn't know how to respond other than to laugh and put it out of his mind but when a few days later he happened to find himself on the park's edge and saw a crowd forming, he made a point not to linger. You know what's hilarious? Mitt's giving his tale here. Because if I ever met Mitt Romney, I'm going to take him aside

and I'm going to say, Senator, Governor, there's something I have to tell you. Senator, Governor. I had a dream no less than three nights ago that you were felled by an assassin's bullet and right as it pierced your skull you shit your doo-doo ass in front of everybody. Not only does he not go to Hyde Park, but he makes a point to wear a diaper everywhere

they go i think i think what it is is he's deathly afraid of getting killed by a trump person like which is a hilarious concept and i and i sympathize with it because i've had this thought too yeah yeah it's like dude if i get fucking shot and killed by one of these fucking morons, I mean, you want to talk about the post-game press conference, holy fuck. I don't even want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it.

I don't want to talk about it. Right. But you can tell that this is a big concern of his because for all he's done for the Republican Party to get blown away by one of those fucking morons like you would you know i mean if they were if they were talking about hanging president pence and trump was joking about it then what do you think they would do

to mitt romney dog you know i mean like he's not safe either mitt romney does have a very funny i have to give it to him. He has a very funny line in here about Mike Pence. But all of which is to say that there's something familiar about the unnerving sensation that Romney was feeling late on the afternoon of January 2nd, 2021. It begins with a text message from Angus King, the junior senator from Maine.

Could you give me a call when you get a chance? Important. What are you doing angus i'd say you don't you don't tee anybody up like that yeah yo you know you don't fucking frighten me before i call you to figure out what the fuck it is dog come on man you would if democracy was on the line it's on the line no the democracy and democracy needs now then. We need to be immediate about democracy. You wouldn't fuck around. You would... Hey, can you talk on signal real fast? I think the government's about to be

overthrown, bro. Yeah, amen. Amen. Switch over to signal. So they're not... Romney calls and King informs him of a conversation he's just had with a high ranking Pentagon official. Law enforcement has been tracking online chatter among right wing extremists who appear to be planning something bad on the day of Donald Trump's upcoming rally in D.C. The president has been telling them the election was stolen.

Now they're coming to steal it back there's talk of gun smuggling bombs and arson of targeting the traitors in congress who are responsible wait can i ask a question real quick terence did you say is bad they were gonna do something bad is that a direct quote from one of them it's just the way mckay coppins wrote this or mckay coppins i don't know hey it just sounds funny because it after that it's like yeah they were gonna bring in guns and all types of contraband and shit like that, but they were doing bad things like naughty children.

They're going to assassinate some representatives. It's like zip ties for Nancy Pelosi and AOC, but they were being bad children. My question is why they chose Angus King to be the messenger. It looks like a motherfucker. Man that looks like if Errol Flynn would have made it to old age. You know? Very marginal figure.

It's the name. Walt Disney looking motherfucker, yo. It sounds like a steak. That's a man you can trust. A slab of meat. I also like it's reminiscent of the Usher song uh everything i've been doing is all bad i've been playing in january 6th with my friends and i'm gonna

overthrow the government uh romney's name had been popping up in some frightening corners in the internet which is why king needed to talk to him he isn't sure romney will be safe romney hangs up and immediately begins typing a text to mitch mcconnell mcconnell has been indulgent of trump's deranged behavior but he's not crazy he knows that the election wasn't stolen that his guy lost fair and square he sees the posturing by Republican politicians for what it is. He'll want to know about this, Romney thinks, and want to protect his colleagues and himself. Romney sends this text.

In case you have not heard this, I just got a call from Angus King, who said that he had spoken with a senior official at the Pentagon, who reports they are seeing some very disturbing social media traffic regarding the protest planned on the 6th. There are calls to burn down your home, Mitch, to smuggle guns into D.C. and to storm the Capitol. I hope that sufficient security plans are in place, but I am concerned that the instigator,

the president, is one who commands the reinforcements the D.C. and Capitol Police might require. Mitch hits him back with a voicemail could you switch over to signal it's just what it is a secure line it's what it is is It's in a secure line. It's what it is, is it's four days. You know, when you're getting someone's texting you back and it has the three dots that someone is four days of that. And then I immediately after January 6th, it just left on Reddit.

man if you're still if you're if you can if you're still with us are you safe if you've not been felled by an assassin's bullet switch over to signal so we can be brief you good bro you good what's funny is like uh mitt feels like um oh my god you know that he's being sort of chased by something you know like like some sort of horrible death awaits him and and mitch is living that reality right now he just sees like a demon named like pizzazzo or something it's like nobody else can see him he's just not even not even chasing it yo that shit is like fucking paying rent like within his corporeal body you know that's a hell on his trail just holding up yoke yeah um okay so then we go to so yeah mitch mcconnell never responds then we go to then we go did he really not respond he never responded how do you how do you what do you see

him next time after what do you say my bad, dog. I got off late and I went to sleep. My phone was on silent because I was so tired. Two Zannies. I was knocked out, bro. My bad. But you was good, though. Everything was good. You're good, though, right? Nobody tried to follow you, right? No assassins, right?

Okay, cool. So, anyways, now we go to Mitt's house um um he lives in a brick townhouse uh the place had not been romney's first choice for a washington residence when he was elected in 2018 he'd had his eye on a newly remodeled condo his wife ann fell in love with the place but his soon-to-be staffers warned him about the commute so he grudgingly you're gonna say his wife and fell in love with the place, but his soon-to-be staffers warned him about the commute. So he grudgingly...

I thought you were going to say his wife Ann fell in love with another man. Fell in love with the designer. Okay, we'll put a tab in that. He grudgingly chose practicality over luxury and settled for the $2.4 million townhouse instead. Practical, $2.4 million townhouse,. Practical. $2.4 million townhouse. Practical, Aladin. What a humble guy.

So, you know, he tried to make it nice so that Anne would be comfortable when she visited. By the way, I just watched Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy for like the 30,000th time because I was sick. And you just watch movies you've seen when you're sick. 30,000th time because I was sick. And you just watch movies. You've seen music.

And Anne is the name of George Smiley's constantly infidel at his wife. So I don't know. It's a weird. So, so, you know, we said that Mitt Romney has this death incarnate, like it's constantly shadowing him. Like,

is it the same thing with his wife? Does he imagine that she's going to cheat on him with the interior designer? I don't know. I'm just saying, listen to this. Listen to this anecdote. I just thought it was kind of strange. He tried to make it nice so that Anne would be comfortable when she visited, but his wife rarely came to

Washington, and his sons didn't come either. And gradually, the house took on an unkempt bachelor pad quality. Son's got a new stepdad dog crumbs his i like maybe it's like there's a reform movement in mormonism and the women are like no we should actually get to do poly uh we should have we should get to do like what is it called when you marry multiple people not polyamory i guess like polygamy she's like mitt i have a i have a third husband though i have i have three brother husbands since you've been gone since you've gone off to washington uh crumbs litter bit goes to washington go ahead sorry crumbs littered the kitchen counter soda and seltzer occupied the otherwise empty fridge

as i mean dude brutal you live like a college student dog what's going on yo old campaign paraphernalia appeared on the mantle clashing with the decorator's mid-tone color scheme and a bar of trump small hand soap a gag gift from one of his sons was placed in the powder room in the dining room a 98 inch tv went up on the wall and a leather recliner landed in front of it romney who didn't have this is the most divorced guy despite not being divorced he is the most divorced guy i've ever heard of i i think it's kind of weird honestly romney who didn't have many real friends in washington ate dinner alone there most nights watching ted lasso and better call saul as he leafed through briefing materials uh on the day

of my first visit he showed me his freezer which was full of salmon fillets that he had been given to him by lisa murkowski uh he didn't especially like salmon but found that if you put it on a hamburger bun and smothered it in ketchup it made for a serviceable meal i mean it's that's divorce gas shit yeah man i mean like being a multi-millionaire with political power being a senator sure from utah but you're a senator you know from this esteemed august uh institution of the most powerful country in the world and you are living like a broke college student dog you're living like me on a like lonely saturday night you know what i mean when all my boys are out i'm like

depressed and i'm watching star trek and like eating like you know snacks dog there's some things here that just don't add up all the way in my opinion it's like why did he i remember when he ran for senate in 2018 i was like why is he doing that like what is he trying to prove is it because of trump is he like trying to like this article you don't run for president and then take steps back exactly exactly yeah um um it's not money yeah he talked about how um yeah mckay coppins talks about how handsome he is how absolutely handsome he is he looks great he is he is a great looking old man he's very uh craggy craggy uh you know yeah craggy handsome features he's mormon he's never had a single fucking moment of like uh regret like waking up after

having blackout drunk the night before you know what i mean man's never had a full flavored coke just just caffeine free yeah never had a sprite remix brother gotta live it up man um what i didn't expect was how candid he was ready to be um blah blah blah uh he kept all of his old stuff uh personal papers deposited stacks blah blah he explained because he thought he might write a memoir one day but he decided against it i can't be objective about my own life he said which i mean i mean that's not what a fucking memoir what are you talking about dog i see if it's a fucking memoir how could you be objective about it, dog? It's your own life.

You're a subjective human being. Now, he's really worried about he's going to get assassinated. He's going to get killed before he gets to write it. Nobody's going to read the Mitt Romney autobiography and think, oh, man, this is a man that's going to cast himself in like a very, you know what I mean? Yeah. Bombastic.

Have you ever read a music autobiography that's like really authored by somebody else they never really like they they never tell the bad shit they do they always cast themselves in the best lie well that's that's the funny thing about this article is that he basically got this guy i mean was this article because i know he's coming out with like a book he didn't write the book. I think someone wrote the book about him. Oh, no. The guy who wrote this article wrote the book about him.

Oh, my fucking God. He basically pitched his life to him like as a biography. So this is a fluff piece written by the dude who did the fluff biography. Yes. Or like an excerpt to kind of tease the forthcoming. Yeah. Yes. Or like an excerpt to kind of tease the forthcoming. Yeah. A very large portion of my party, he told me, doesn't really believe in the Constitution.

He'd realized this only recently. I would love to. I would love to be these people, dog. Like, ignorance is bliss. It's like little puppies, little baby, not even babies man mitt romney may well be the only man that in the republican party that has a moral compass like i genuinely believe that he strives to be a good person but he doesn't know like you know what i'm saying well he doesn't know how because there's so many things that he's sort of pollyannish about this whole thing even then

though i can't you can't let it go that like in 2012 he ran on a on repealing obamacare after when he was governor of what was it massachusetts yeah the fucking health plan that they implemented in massachusetts was basically to the left of obama instituted by his father actually right i think first right i think it was actually yeah dad was his dad was governor of michigan michigan but i think it wasn't it yeah wasn't it something similar like that they had instituted before that they were calling romney care which yeah basically was like that was the basis for obama to become to become obamacare well obamacare be way more watered down but yeah my point is that like my point is that like okay so you clearly didn't

have any principles then like you were totally fine on running on this platform in 2012 that was totally like revanchist and reactionary and all these other ways not that like obamacare was good because yeah obamacare but you know what i'm saying it's just like if your whole thing is like i'm a principled man and i stand by my convictions and like and to his credit he does acknowledge at multiple times in this thing that like in this piece that like i lost in 2012 like i am a loser basically like i now juxtapose that with clinton's i was the leader i was leader of the free world for eight years and met romney i was the biggest loser biggest loser to ever set foot in the halls of power

oh god dude i had never encountered a politician so openly reckoning with what his pursuit of power had cost earlier this year he confided to me that he would not seek re-election to the senate in 2024 um blah blah blah uh shortly after moving his senate office romney had hung I thought this was interesting Romney had hung a large rectangular map on the wall first printed in 1931 by Rand McNally the histo map attempted to chart the rise and fall of the world's most powerful

civilizations through 4000 years of human history when Romney first acquired the map he saw it as a curiosity after January 6th he became obsessed with it he showed the map to visitors brought it up in conversations and speeches more than once he found himself staring at it alone in his office at night the egyptian how did it happen are we next the egyptian empire had reigned for some 900 years before it was overtaken by the assyrians then the persians romans, Mongolians, and Turks.

Each civilization had its turn and eventually collapsed. Maybe the falls were inevitable, but what struck Romney most about the map was how thoroughly it was dominated by tyrants of some kind. A man gets some people around him and begins to oppress and dominate others, he said. It's a testosterone-related phenomenon, perhaps. I don't't know but in the history of the world that's what happens america's experiment and self-rule is fighting against human nature my man is fully based he is fully he's having an existential crisis right now this is you were saying earlier that you know he had never dealt with any sort of crushing blow to his psyche like this is it dog almost getting uh you know people threatening to hang him on january 6th i love kate want to read this this is the most interesting this guy's ever

appeared to me this same yeah i love how he's gone full-on nihilist to where like he's like the american experiment democracy defies human nature but but what he's saying also is that like we can't have we can't go back to like monarchy or like strict oligarchic rule or anything either so basically what he's saying he's adopting a kind of like nihilist position which is like nothing's possible dude fuck it all maybe we'll just get maybe we'll all fucking die man fuck my life dude we'll just eat sammy ketchup sandwiches and watch ted laugh until the end of time see me and i'm sitting there eating fucking tv dinners and salmon dude fuck oh i'm probably gonna die of miserable pain my only

friend is fucking angus king bro oh shit he said this is a very fragile thing authoritarianism is like a gargoyle lurking over the cathedral ready to pounce wait the gargoyles are there to protect the cathedral that's like when terrence botches an idiom it leaves a lot to be tired you be desired motherfucker like a like a scarecrow drawing all the crows into the field that is so funny like you can tell he's a mormon just because he doesn't know what a cathedral even is he He grew up going to churches that were like built in old shopping malls and shopping malls or like cabins. Yeah.

So then we you know, this section, I won't get into this section because it's kind of boring, but it basically recounts how he went into the senate in 2018 and it recounts the whole story of how he um voted to convict trump in the impeachment proceedings and like his whole internal deliberation about that which whether he was willing to risk his life it got a good guy like that was the thing like his his staffers he literally talks about the night that he decides that he's going to vote to impeach trump and literally he like he has staffers in his office hanging their heads in their hands for hours like before we drop the bomb or some shit like that and they're deliberating they take off their fucking brow line glasses the tortoise glasses they're smoking cigarettes throughout the night and shit like that undoing their ties at their collars gotta go out and get coffee it was

yes it was like houston mission room fucking nasa i i don't know apollo 13 it was like yes they were they were devastated well some of them were devastated some of them were supportive but mostly it was a very tense and stressful thing um and then he talks about how uh he you know he goes and visits mansion on mansion mansion has a boat called uh what is it almost heaven yeah almost soon you get a ride now and if you need to leave the country or some shit like that. Yeah, Manchin has a houseboat called Almost Heaven. Anyways, and then it talks about how Paul Ryan

called him on the phone once he heard that Romney was going to vote to convict Trump for impeachment. And Paul Ryan was like, no. They're going to kill you, bro. Paul Ryan was like no they're gonna kill you bro Paul Ryan's like bro can you switch over to Signal and then they switch over to Signal and he's like

bro I got two tickets to rage against the machine and run the bills you in get yourself out of Washington tonight probably good for you okay so now we come to january 6th this is the i mean this is like if we're in a if we're in a movie this is like the apocalypse dude i guarantee you they're gonna make a movie about this with like george clooney playing you know

you know what i mean absolutely absolutely they're gonna they're gonna have a measure they're gonna have a measured um moderate republican who's gonna to be like the audience's point of view. That's going to be traversing through this world of a mutilated American politics. Right. That's 100 percent the case. I can already see it's like the states. Yeah. Yeah. George Clooney playing Mitt Romney's a lock as much as Giancarlo Esposito playing Obama one day. Lock of the century. As far as it has happened already. Early on the morning of January 6th, 2021,

Romney slid into the back of an SUV and began the short ride to his Senate office with a Capitol Police car in tow. Ann had begged him not to return to washington that day she had a bad feeling about all of this i should say not to return home but like i'm good all my needs are made steve are good me steve and the kids are good wait steve he's been blowing the back back walls we're fine here brother we're fine um in the year since his impeachment vote her husband had become a regular target of heckling uh they shot a traitor from car windows and confronted him in

restaurants romney had tried to make light of her concern if i get shot you can move on to a younger more athletic husband steve yo she's already on it dog i like it maybe maybe mitt romney is like hey i'm gonna be in dc do you want to open up the relationship maybe they opened it up yeah um a special police court escort had been arranged for him that morning but now as he looked out the windows at the streets of dc he found himself wondering about its utility if somebody wants to shoot me he thought what good is it to have these guys in a car behind me? And then he immediately regretted the joke.

He gets the Senate. The Senate chamber is a cloistered place with no television monitors or electronic devices and strict rules that keep outsiders off the floor. Is it a doctor's office? Yeah. There's those little home and garden magazines.

They got what Jet Magazine, what Ebony Magazine. It's like all the fucking pages are stuck together. It's like, hang his king. Have you been taking any to the bathroom again? You just grab together it's like hang is king have you been taking it he's in the bathroom again yeah you just gave uh the october 2011 edition of southern living none of those magazines and waiting areas are ever up to date be like an issue of the source from 1997 or some shit like that, bro.

There's nothing worse than just having health anxiety and you're sitting there waiting to see a doctor and you're already tripping out. And the only thing to divert your attention is just fucking Better Homes and Gardens from 2009. The last person who touched that is dead. They've already died. the last person who touched that is dead yeah tom's uh man of the year uh issue from um oh man um okay he gets to the senate he doesn't have any any idea anything's really going on wait so he walked into this shit blind he walked into a blind

basically at 2 p.m and he was having premonitions and he still walked into he still walked up in that bitch bro what are you doing he has a death wish this is where this is where you turn around brother make it a belt face you do an abe senson and walk out the fucking door dog wow at 208 p.m romney's phone buzzed with a text message from his aide who had been communicating with capitol police protesters getting closer high intensity out there he suggested that romney might want to move to a hideaway romney looked around the chamber the hideaway was a few hundred yards and two flights of stairs away he didn't want to leave if he didn't have to he stayed put he decided he unless the protesters got inside the building a minute

later romney's phone buzzed again they're're on the West Front, overcame barriers. Adrenaline surging, Romney stood and made his way to the back of the chamber where he pushed open the heavy bronze doors. George Clooney pushed that shit open. Let me see the pecs. Go do it, bro. He was expecting the usual crowd of reporters and staff aides, but nobody was there. A strange, unsettling quiet had engulfed the deserted corridor. He turned left and started down the hall toward his hideaway when suddenly he saw a Capitol police officer sprinting toward him at full speed. Were they running away from something?

Who's playing this? Who's playing this police? I was like Giovanni Ribisi or something like that. Sprinting. Usain Bolt sprinting. Go back in. The officer boomed without breaking stride you're safer inside the chamber chamber romney turned around and started to run he got back in time

to hear the gavel drop and see several men secret service agents presumably rush into the chamber without explanation and pull the vice president out then all at once the room turned over to chaos wait can i say something real quick real quick i don't mean to interrupt because this is a really good narrative but if i didn't know this was about january 6th and you just read it read an excerpt i think would they get chased by a demon or something is this a bot like a senator swallowing entity like what the fuck is going on i've been living in a cave the last four years i would say this is like a james patterson novel the one he co-wrote with Bill Clinton? Yeah. Well, also, I don't know if you noticed, but it says he heard the gavel drop.

Like, metaphorically or, like, seriously? Did someone hit the gavel? The gavel? Did they drop the gavel because they ran? They were so scared? I guess. I'm keeping that thing. I'm fucking, I'm hitting QAnon shaman in the fucking nose.

Maladog. It's like, how much better would this story be if Mitt just sort of waddled out there and then took that gavel and just cracked that motherfucker out in the head? Just knocked one of these motherfuckers out.

He gets the guy on Nancy Pelosi's desk and he pulls his nuts out and he starts beating him and beating him. He starts malleting his nuts? He's now malleting his nuts out and he starts beating him and beating him. He starts mouthing his nuts. He's mouthing his nuts. He's like, while,

he's doing the Wu Tang thing. Yeah. Method man's playing. And he's like, yeah, I'm just like, got a spot bad. And he's just like putting the QAnon shaman's nuts on the table.

It's just played in the background. He's, yeah, he's cut off the Nancy Pelosi pelosi guy's eyelids just keeps taking his picture officials are scampering around the room in a panic slamming doors shut and barking at senators to move farther inside something about the volatility of the moment caused romney a walking amalgam of prep school manners and mormon niceness and the practice cool of the private equity set to lose his grip i forget we forget about that bane capital remember this

motherfucker ran a private equity yeah i shouldn't i shouldn't get you know too excited i shouldn't say too much about him being a yeah because he's a piece of scum scum to earth yeah i forgot about that yeah private cool yeah private cool of the private equities practice school the private equity set to lose his grip and he finally vented the raw anger he had been trying to contain he turned to josh holly who was huddled with some of his right-wing colleagues and started to yell you mean the motherfucker that was holding up a fit the fist to these motherfuckers like an hour before january 6th josh holly that motherfucker and then was seen running down the halls pulling his skirt up i dude i just i just want you to all dial just like step back and like take in the whole like mckay coppins doesn't do

this but take in the whole fucking holistic scene here you've got like several hundred dipshits storming the barricades on the outside of this building like guys hanging their nuts like teabagging nancy pelosi's desk and shit meanwhile mitt romney is yelling at josh holly on the inside and josh holly's probably pissing his pants because mitt romney is yelling at him like oh my god it's the first time he's ever had anybody yell at him in his life. Probably. Oh, my God. And it's a Mormon. He's got.

Of all people, it's a fucking Mormon. Apparently, Romney. Were you going to say something, Tom? No, I was just going to say, I think it's hilarious. Josh Hawley wrote a book about masculinity when he's the most light in the ass guy in the Senate. Totally like closeted quarter zip dipshit guy that's what he reads to me but you know whatever romney turned to him and said this is what you've gotten guys whatever the words the sentiment was clear this violence this crisis this assault on democracy this is your

fault soon romney was being rushed down a hallway with several of his colleagues the mob was only one level below so they couldn't take the stairs instead the senators piled into elevators 10 at a time while the rest loitered anxiously in the hallway i didn't know that that's what happens they all get to safety and the mitt stands up and says oh my god what is it senator i'm going back for angus we left angus no senator you can't it's not safe save yourselves i'm going back for angus go on without me a senator never leaves his fellow countrymen behind going back for the king for the yeah i I like 10 at a time in an elevator like you're really pushing the limits of that thing

what if the fucking thing just failed and it plummeted like 20 stories that was the real disaster on January 6th all these motherfucking bags in the elevator died what if let me ask you a question you're building the January 6th monument to commemorate the assault on our democracy.

And you had 15 senators die, but not at the hands of the QAnon shaman and the invading hordes. But because the elevator hadn't been properly inspected in over two years and it snapped and killed them. Do you still put those dead senators on the monument as casualties that day yeah yeah can the bottom bit be an elevator could it be like a large like rectangular block i think we shouldn't i think so i no i think you're right i think that they they should um construct like a mock gallows but instead of like a noose it's an elevator it's an elevator instead of coming down and it's like this is democracy and it looks like it's hanging democracy and it's like inside the hanging by a thread democracy only goes up or down

like this underserviced elevator is hanging by a thread oh man tag live for the movie starring george clutie the statesman Oh, man. Tag live for the movie. Start with George Clooney, the statesman. Yeah. The statesman. There we go. That's good.

When they reached the basement, Romney asked the pair of police officers, where are we supposed to go? One of the officers replied, the senators know. Romney's aide spoke up. are the senators then they don't know so where are we supposed to go i like i like this cop was like had no idea who mitt romney was no idea who any of these guys were so weren't the cops the people who were like some of these cops are moving the barricades to let these motherfuckers in so what if he said actually you want to go right out those doors right right they're waiting for you outside they're waiting for you with the nooses licking their fucking lips yeah doing a birdman hand rub yeah he got another one boys um romney was mystified by the ineptitude but he knew the situation wasn't the police's fault

he thought about the text message he'd sent to mcconnell a few days earlier explicitly warning of this scenario. How are they not ready for this? It is an interesting question. I'll be honest with you. I've been racking my brain for a few years now thinking about that. Let's see. Let's see.

Eventually, the senators made it to a safe room. There were no chairs at first, so the cell shocked. Legislators simply wandered around murmuring variations of i can't believe this is happening when someone wheeled in a tv and turned on cnn the senators got their first live look at the sacking of the capitol a sickened silence fell over the room as anger and outrage were replaced by dread i like how they're like i don't understand why this is happening as if if like, I'm not, you know, as if like you've not just spent your entire career trying to figure out how to like make immiserate all these people out here descending on this. And I'm not saying it's right or anything like that, but I'm saying like,

you know, gee, I wonder. And also even at a more, even at a more sort of like, facile level, like, this was happening literally because Trump told him to do it. And like, you all fucking went along with this. Yeah, you all created the condition, literally created

the conditions for this to happen to you. I like, you know what, I'll put it this way, man. Like, if, like, there are tens of millions of people, right. That feel fear and dread existential dread every day of their lives. Right. For just, you know, trying to get a job, trying to find something to try and take care of their kids. And like, I'm not saying that any of this is right.

Right. But for these guys to be truly afraid for the first time in their lives, probably the way that they immiserate and terrify millions of people i mean i can live with that you know that is kind of that is kind of the irony it's kind of like the thing that makes it so interesting about like mitch seeing the grim reaper every 10 days it's like it's like dude you can't traffic in this kind of like evil without letting in something through the portal without something without something grabbing onto your hotels and like riding through the portal yes and it's like you open the tome of the dead you know what i'm saying what do you think something wasn't gonna come back out and grab you exactly so it's like all the shit that you went along with and did invading the invading two countries the war on terror

crashing the economy you fucking name it welfare reform you fucking name it every genocidal thing they've done it's like did you really think that you would get away scot-free that like there wasn't some sort of universal right the universe finds a way to like and you know and again it is a tragedy that like it wasn't us that was scaring them yeah but they would have mowed us down if they if it was but yeah exactly that is the irony it's like dude if we that is the thing like people it really can't be said enough that like if we if the left were the ones out there doing this, they would have brought in attack helicopters

and just started... They would have been droning. Mowing us down. First time we're going to use a drone on US land. Get some! We're having a holiday after that, dog. What this story needs is a third act double cross.

Here's how I'm envisioning a habit because you get you get a little artistic license with these type of things y'all ever watch that movie toy soldiers yes the terrorists made that yeah with the actual toy is that a joe dante movie movie no it's it's a uh like uh these prep school like these terrorists take over this prep school. Right. There is a Joe Dante movie about. That's small soldiers. That's small.

Yeah. I was thinking of small soldiers, but the toy soldiers. That's what I was thinking about. Sorry. Continue. Continue. Well,

here's how the, this double cross is going to go. It's like things finally quiet down and Mitch looks down and sees a text message light up on Angus King's phone and it's from Donald Trump. And he doesn't say anything. He kind of keeps it to himself. And then later on, after the smoke's cleared, Angus says to him,

Mick, can you believe this happened? He's like, no, I can't. And then he just walked in and he said, and then as Angus King's walking out the door, you just hear Mitt say, you knew, didn't you, son of a bitch? Because Angus King does look like a villain. You know? He turns around and he says,

that goddamn mustache. He turns and he says, what do you mean? What do you mean, Mitt? But I told you days ago that this is, you knew, you're in this with this the whole time aren't you and then you know he just feels that you somebody's a better rider than me can workshop that but that's how it needs to go or like mitch yeah like mitt goes out to get some ketchup late at night for his salmon burger and like he sees angus scurrying underneath the awning of one of those buildings

six pack of like getting a zero percent not alcoholic and yeah some ketchup for his fucking salmon you see like a butterita some shit he sees angus scurrying beneath the awning of one of those buildings next to the capitol building and he's like removing one of the pipe bombs he put in the potted planter there and putting it in his jacket and like and like and mitch gets out of the car and he's like standing there as like angus is putting it into his thing and then like angus angus looks up and he looks past the camera and then like the lens focuses first on angus and then on mitt and angus doesn't turn around and he says you knew all along it was me, didn't you? And it just ends, cuts scene. And then there's a gunshot, like,

a fucking bullet explodes through Angus. Wait, wait, wait, before that happens, though, they just nod and kind of share, like, you know, like kind of a laugh for old time's sake. And then Mitl at him says what happens now angus and then angus says i think you know what happens now and then that's when no no okay yes i mean yeah i think you know what happens and then it explodes out and you see all this blood and then and then mitt walks up to him and then angus is writhing around but then he looks up

and he goes wait and he what and he putsithing around but then he looks up and he waits and he goes wait and he what and he puts his hand in it and he looks and he goes ketchup that's right you son of a bitch and he throws his salmon burger he dips his salmon burger in it like that's his signature calling card the it like i would never slay my fellow senator senate uh but you must you know you have to get out of the country now you're we're shipping you off to mexico where they don't have democracy you can't run for election you're a disgrace you're a disgrace angus uh so anyways it goes on to talk about how like mitt was shocked that the republicans doubled down on this the steel um that like the election had been stolen um what bothered

romney most about holly and his cohort was the oily disingenuousness. They know better, he told me. Josh Holly is one of the smartest people in the Senate, if not the smartest, and Ted Cruz could give him a run for his money. Okay, okay, let's not jump off the deep end. All right. I think Mitt is mistaking credentialization for intelligence. Exactly, exactly.

Or just even like any any uh understanding of you know cause and effect you know you can graduate cause allison or harvard and still be essentially fucking stupid and dumb as a brick yeah yeah um so you see yeah for a blessed moment after january 6th it looked to romney as if the fever in his party might finally be breaking but obviously it didn't but the republicans flirtation with repentance was short-lived uh some of the reluctance to hold trump accountable was a function of the same old perverse political incentives but after january 6th a new more existential brand of cowardice had emerged one republican congressman confided to romney that he wanted to vote for trump's second impeachment impeachment but chose

not to out of fear for his family's safety um uh as dismayed as romney was by this line of thinking he understood it most members of congress don't have security details uh blah blah by the time that's an interesting fact fact just just putting that out there just throwing it out there throwing out to our listeners that they don't have and you wouldn't become the fulcrum of history it's a change in entire nation you too can do it yo by the time democrats proposed directly speaking there's no impediment to that by the time democrats proposed a bipartisan commission to investigate january 6th the gop's 181 is complete um in spring 2021 romney was invited to speak at the utah republican party convention in west valley city suspecting that some of the

crowd might boo him he came up with a little joke to diffuse the tension as soon as he went on stage he would ask the crowd of partisans what do you think of president biden's first 100 days when they booed in response he'd say i hope you got that out of your system but when romney took the stage he quickly realized he'd underestimated the vitriol the heckling and booing were so loud and sustained he could barely get a word out as he labored to push through his prepared remarks he became fixated on a red-faced woman in the front row who was furiously screaming at him while her child stood by her side he paused aren't you embarrassed he couldn't help but ask her from the stage uh afterward romney tried to reframe it as a character building extra experience

a moment in which okay this is interesting A moment in which he got to live up to his father's example. When he was young, Mitt had watched an audience stacked with auto union members vociferously boo his dad during a governor's debate. George had been undeterred. He was proud to stand for what he believed in, Romney told me. If people aren't angry at you, you really haven't done anything in public life. so it's like his dad's like profile and courage is just getting his shit stuff shit pushed in by like auto workers getting rotten fruit and shit throwing it they gotta pull the decay from offset the stage and grab him pull yank him off and shit oh god he talks about like he really feels more danger really feels more at danger. He talks about in 2012 getting heckled by Occupy Wall Street and anarchists and stuff,

and he feels literally more at danger now than he did back then. Oh, yeah, that makes sense. He says there are deranged people among us. People carry guns. It only takes one really disturbed person. The dissonance is amazing really yeah yeah um in some ways romney settled most fully into his role as a senator once trump was gone he joined a bipartisan gang of lawmakers who actually seemed to enjoy legislating, blah, blah, blah. But as Romney surveyed the crop of Republicans running for Senate in 2022, it was clear that more Hollies were on their way.

Perhaps most disconcerting was J.D. Vance. I don't know that I can disrespect someone more than J.D. Vance, Romney told me. They'd first met years earlier after he'd read Hillbilly Elegy. Romney was so impressed with the book that he hosted the author at his annual park city summit in 2018 um blah blah blah he then talks about like vance switching or whatever he said i do wonder how do you make that decision romney mused to me as vance was degrading himself on the campaign trail how can you go over a line so stark is that and for what um romney wished he could grab vance by the shoulders and scream this is not worth it it's not like you're going to be famous and powerful because you became a united states

senator it's like really you sell yourself so cheap is he looking at the mirror when he's saying that shit i know it's like you are a senator dude i dude. I don't know. But he goes on to talk about how people have approached him and Manchin and asked them to both run for president and to start their own party, which I got to say, I really want that to happen. I really want one of those two dipshits to run for president. Again, in Romney's case, the first time in Manchin case as an independent i think that would be hilarious i think i think if they do their mascot should be uh for some reason the quail is uh is brought up to mind you know yeah or a pheasant or some shit like that you know like a foul like a like a lay like flightless

landfowl you know his working slogan for the party is stop the stupid which is very reminiscent of that like john stewart like restore sanity rally or whatever bullshit yeah yeah you know i'll just say too man you know i think romney is of uh like like a statesman the statesman that he is i think not that he has this vision but he seems like he wants to affect this like cincinnatus kind of statesman yeah like kind of you know august like you know well i took up the mantle to save my nation you know but instead of retiring to live back on his farm he's in a fucking hotel room or wherever his fucking brownstone is watching eating somebody catches eating fucking tv dinners and watching andy griffith that can mean that can mean only

one of two things both of which are hilariously not in their favor one is that the lives of elites have so thoroughly degraded since the time of the roman empire or roman republic that it's like is this really what you're defending is this really what you're defending? Is this really what you're like, there's a fascination to defend? Okay, that's bleak. But the alternative is also really hilarious. The alternative is that Cincinnatus didn't retire to a farm. Cincinnatus also probably retired to like a lonely hubble, like a cabin somewhere and was like eating salmon with-

Wrong. Wrong. He would move to the ohio valley and start the best city in america the first cincinnatus of course the first mayor of the his eponymous town um it was hard but it was hard to dispute that the battle for the gop soul had been lost and romney had his own soul to think about he was all too familiar with the incentive structure in which the party's leader were party leaders were operating he knew it would take he knew what it would take to keep winning the things he would have to rationalize you say okay i better get

closer to this line or maybe step a little bit over it if If I don't, it's going to be much worse. You can always convince yourself that the other party or the other candidate is bad enough to justify your own decision across that line. And the problem is that line just keeps on getting moved and moved and moved. So that's the end. This is like, it's just also remarkable that like, you know, these people that spend inordinate resources are willing to like do the bidding of i mean he's he was you know a venture venture capitalist himself so it's not

really doing the bidding of is just in a different elevated position of the same kind of fucking work nobody held a gun to us and tell me to do to have the career yeah exactly dog and you don't even have any inkling at all that this is what you're going into that you're probably going to sell your soul are you not looking at mitch mcconnell like that guy is undead you know this is what happens well and also like romney ran in 2012 trying to capture the groundswell quote unquote i don't even know how much of it was organic and how much of it was astroturfed but whatever of the tea party yeah so it's like dude i mean sitting here and like pointing out romney's own like long sort of like storied uh you know implicate implicate you know like i don't know like how he's implicated in all this is like you know it's whatever but it's like

don't don't pretend like you didn't have a hand in this you can't start the pot too yeah that's probably what this is is to like some revisionist history to wash his hands of like what's coming you know yeah yeah you can't stand outside of it like you can't i mean you it's like you wore the uniform man you don't get to take it off when you go home i mean like that's you don't get to like once it like once it manifests and it's like truly ugliest most fucked up genocidal form you don't get to then go home and take off the uniform and say oh no i knew all no no you need aldo rain to carve it in your fucking head now you've just uh switched out the uniform for a target on your back you know by the same fucking people in your same

fucking party yeah i will say he did have a funny line about pence though um romney has long been put off by pence's pious brand of trump sycophancy no No one, he told me, has been more loyal, more willing to smile when he saw absurdities, more willing to ascribe God's will to things that were ungodly than Mike Pence. Yeah, I see. I see what you're saying, Tom, earlier when you said that, like for all of this is not to lionize or sanctify Romney, but like, I guess he truly does believe that he has a moral compass and for him to say that pence is pretty much a dog eating trump scraps is pretty funny you know it is i mean that's pretty funny yeah coming from mitt romney that's pretty funny that is pretty

exactly who was even who was beholden i mean i guess it's better to be beholden to an astro turfed like fake ass movement than it is one man i mean that's the thing like he was eating coke brother shit you know what i mean like that's that was like the that was the uh lib villain before trump was like the coke brothers uh but like you know romney was like fucking your platonic ideal of like a Koch Brothers candidate in 2012. So it's like, dude, come on. Well, now it's just a little bit too ugly.

You know. Yeah. Well, we made it through this episode and you know, I'm shocked I did it but I'm proud of myself. You should be. Unlike Mitt Romney but uh i'm proud of myself it should be it should be unlike mitt romney you should be a proud of yourself yeah and the path that you have forged in this past

hour would change um well i think that about covers it guys uh i the only other thing I want to add is that this week they are currently negotiating once again the debt ceiling. Is it 2012 again? There is a looming government shutdown and once again, McCarthy does not have the fucking votes

to avert it. Are we going to drive off the fiscal cliff? We might drive off, bro. Should Jesus take the wheel? What happens when to drive off the fiscal cliff we might drive off bro should jesus take the wheel what happens when you drive off the fiscal cliff does uh does the uh the uh the hand of the market you know the invisible hand come in i just find it i just find it very funny how the the reason why the reason why this comes to a head right now is because the hardline conservatives are trying to push through an impeachment of Biden currently. And that is getting mixed in with the looming government shutdown. So it just makes plain that all politics from here on out will be one party trying to impeach the other.

And shutting down the government um like that like it really is in like final stage collapse we've been doing that for a while though yeah i did we have been doing it for a while but it is increasing with frequency it's so predictable now also too it's bleeding over and i mean not that this hasn't been the case too but um i just saw some shit that um the i think it was from the either one of those sites like the southern poverty law center or something like that that said that um no you're not you're not imagining it like there's been more like fascist like all like like far-right violence you know for the past like in 2022 alone so it's like all of that institutional beef and sentiment

has been kind of reified i guess like with these you know with these psychos who have guns you know totally so that's that's what makes it uh a little bit scarier or not even know well i mean luckily we got mitt romney too we got we got mitt romney who's gonna the... who's going to be a barometer of moral strength. Yeah. We're in good hands. We're in good hands. Handsome, capable hands.

Handsome, craggy, craggy hands. Alright, thanks for listening everybody. Please go to the Patreon and support us over there. We would very much appreciate that if you could do that. P-A-T-R-E-O-n.com slash trailbilly workers party uh thanks for listening this week we hope you'll tune in over on the patreon on sunday uh i just want to say as a preview of the patreon you could you can go over there and listen to tom save me from thinking Zach Bryan is cool. Dude, you saved my ass.

I was about to go forth into the world and say Zach Bryan was cool, but you saved my ass. So thanks for that. Bam, man. Tom's looking out for me. He's looking out for your boy. There you go. So anyways, go check that out.

Until next time. See you out there, folks. Adios.