Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 458: Schrodinger’s Origin (w/ Special Guest: Steve Sladkowski)

Episode Date: August 21, 2026

The boys welcome back friend of the show to talk mostly about foodborne illness among other topics. Get Steve’s New Record Here: https://ovalwindowrecords.bandcamp.com/album/steve-sladkowski-joe-sorbara Catch Steve on tour with PUP here: https://www.puptheband.com/#tour

Well, Steve, as a music head, an expert. Yeah. Guilty? As a music guy. As charged. I want to know if this music is good or not. Oh, my God. Here we go.

I can't decide on my own. This is from the newest Pat McAfee drop, Diary of the Polarizing figure. Okay. This song is called Smoking, a plant that's been very, kind to my hyperactive mind. It slows me down and lifts me up, not a clover, but brings luck. Sleepless nights find a hush for speaking. It's a mightest touch. From a piece pipe to a cone, baby, buzzed like a beehive. Feels like home, baby. This is good stuff. Wow. He's a poet. This is good. Boys, I want to tell you something. I had the same dream Pat had for a while.

I did. I gave it up around the time I was 22 years old. maybe 23. Being a polarizing figure? Well, a white rapper, but yes, I guess. Oh, yeah. I guess a polarizing figure. You could still smoke weed if you want, man. I think it's like, you know, that was a dream that's been in Pat's Heart every day since

8 Mile came out, and he just has not known how to let it go. And he's like, you know what? I have enough money and upper mobility now. I'll just take this off of my list of things I want to do with my life. I sympathize. I sympathize with not knowing how to stay in your own lane, like trying to branch out into other art forms and mediums and failing miserably. I feel like he's not that unique in that regard, right?

Like at McAfee, I mean. Yeah, it's like Michael Jordan trying to play baseball. Yeah, or like Master P trying to play in the NBA. Hey, Toronto Raptors legend. Hold on a second. Yeah, Toronto Raptors legend, Summer League legend Percy Miller. A lot of actors do this. Like Russell Crow has a band Johnny Depp.

Yeah, Johnny Depp played on an Oasis record. You mean the Hollywood vampires or a fake band? He's got like Alice Cooper's in there with him. Because like vampires have to be invited into the venue. Is that why they're not. They don't exist until. Don't let them in. Yeah, I mean, he sucks.

I think is kind of the thing. Pat McAvey? Yeah. What are you talking about, dude? I mean, he's got bars. Don't get me wrong. Name one reason why he sucks. I think he's a much better rapper than he has a broadcaster.

That's my, that's my opinion. Low bar. The first song on this album is Pitbull and a Mugshot. Rest in peace to the greatest dog of all time, Valerie. But they don't show you on Genius.com, they don't tell you who Valerie is. Who's Valerie? I guess that's the dog's night. The dog, was the eponymous dog.

Yeah. Now, Pat, maybe perhaps, as a matter of PR concern, probably not going to tell us what happened to Valerie, but my hunch is. A man doesn't typically rap about a dog that died of natural causes. Uh-huh. If DMX is owed to boomers in a, to be believed, you know. So you're saying, like, either dog fight,

Christy Gnome. Hit with a car, Christy Nome. nomified nomified. There's something that's happened to this dog that's not above board. I'm just seeing that he has he maybe is an artist after all. He has very choice words for his critics.

He does. What does he have to say about? Let's see. I wrote and sang every word. We could tell. Yeah, my my, my, my choices. What is Suno? My, my, all of these lyrics I wrote.

wrote and sang t-shirt. Raising a lot of questions already answered by my t-shirt. What else? Yeah, he, apparently he made an emotional confession. Yeah. He's got a song called Blue Collar Symphony. Yeah. Grew up where the old Mills roared,

a blue-collar symphony pops long haul working, mom's preaching, an epiphany, a bunch of smart assholes and rivers running with steel. Can I get sued reading this stuff? This is for educational purposes. It's criticism. Cultural criticism. It is his culture criticism.

Finance, I learned from Robin Hood. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Finance, I learned from Robin Hood. Is he talking like the OG Nottingham or like the app-based investing tool? What do we think? Is that a product placement? well I'm gonna go to limb and say he probably wrote these songs when he was about 17 so maybe

yeah they've been sitting in a blocks he's been sitting on it for a while they've been sitting in a Microsoft word doc for 20 years now he did play in the NFL right he did he's with the cults played college at west Virginia so presumably if he's been sitting on these then these are the smartest like because I assume he has CTE as a kicker you don't know yeah oh that's true right He may have came out unscathed. Yeah, that's true. Never mind. So I guess if he's been sitting on these since he was 17, they could be better.

I was just thinking his brain would be Swiss cheese. Yeah, they were better. This is the best he can probably do. Yeah, like it's like inflation, like buy goods several years in advance because you know they'll be way more expensive in several years. It's the same thing with like this. I'm going to write all my lyrics down before the NFL draft. Exactly.

If you play football, write all your lyrics. I get all the songs out of it. of my heart while I'm still intact. He's like trading on musical futures or something. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, man, he's got a song on here called Cheers to the South. Oh, yeah, I saw something that was like, it ain't a slur if it's country talk or something.

Something real. Ain't a slur if it's country talk, huh? Where is it? Drinking by the fire as a fire-ass day at night. That is fire-ass. That's fire-ass date night? Like it's like a good date night? Drinking by the fire, yeah.

A little about buckshot, keeping it in the truck shot. He did three amigos. What the what shot? I see what he's going for there. It doesn't really work for me. Yeah, most of these lines are pretty, they're pretty, dull. There's really not a lot of good

stuff in here. What are the beats like? That's what I need to know. Also bad. Can we play some of the show? Did you actually listen to it? I just heard some of the clips going around. I did listen to some of it, yeah.

The diary of a polarizing figure sounds like even too cringy for Taylor Swift. Hmm. Yeah. Like, you know, like a... It is. It's kind of riffing on like the life of a showgirl. Yeah, there's a bit of that.

for sure that's true well I read this article about how um fans are getting angry because the vinyl releases of their albums aren't the same as the digital releases I I yes I Matt McAfee's record or just everybody just in general but but I'm wondering if Pat is also facing the same criticism I'll yeah no like his uh his record store day exclusive is like getting in the way of the 15th repressing of rumors by Fleetwood Mac. So they're going to have to shorten. They're going to have to take. I'm sorry, this version of rumors isn't going to have the chain on it.

Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. We're overloaded here at the one life in the Czech Republic. Yeah, that was in the Guardian, Terrence. I think the article you're talking about. That's the one. Yeah, I had a tweet about that when I read the article that, like, crossed over into, like, pop music stand, Twitter, and it wasn't ideal. Were they mad at you? No, they just were sort of like, they were like, Taylor Swift would never do this.

Only Charlie XX would. And I'm like, okay. Tough medicine coming at you. All right. That's what I needed to see today. What makes, why? So, yeah. I don't know what the thinking there is.

As I understand it, the article was basically, like, in today's day and age, you've got deadlines for physical media, and you've got to get them, and because, like, these, as you guys alluded to, like, the lathe operators or whatever for making these wax records. I don't even know if they're made of wax anymore, but, like, they can be, like, backed up, and so you kind of, like, have to get them in on a strict deadline. And so if the album's not finished by the deadline, they'll just send it anyways. Yeah. So, like, people are complaining of, like, songs without guests, contributors on it. You know what I mean? That was the big Charlie X-EX one because they cut the-David Kronenberg. The Kronenberg monologue at the end, which, again, an act of violence on the city of Toronto.

But, yeah, that's true. Toronto's one of Toronto's favorite sons, along with Master P. Yeah, I mean, the funny thing. thing is, is like, the turnaround for vinyl is like shorter now than it has been in a long time. But it's still, you know, but it's funny. I think the thing that was more funny to me was that it kind of gives away the fact that like most of these artists aren't like finished the records. Yeah. Like they can't coordinate finishing the record and a release date because that's kind of like you need to have the record done and delivered usually with a vinyl master

in order to actually get it out there but they're so stressed about first week sales because that's basically the only time you can you can cash in and any pre-orders for vinyl or you know when Costco used to still like have vinyl like that's how adele would like like hit number one because oh that was the big one that everybody was mad about right because Because Adele's like, we're going to put out a target exclusive gatefold or something. Right. Because all the pre-orders. Pushed everybody else out.

All the pre-orders count toward first week sales. That's why everyone rushes to have vinyl ready. I don't know if this was real or engagement bait, but there's all this interview with Adele where she was like, yeah, I left my husband because he disgusted me. And he was like, like, he wasn't as the relationship went on, he started to absolutely disgust. trust me. It's like, dog. That's... Well, now isn't she married to Rich Paul?

If not married, then certainly... Otherwise... Who's Rich Paul? Is this embarrassing to have for me then? LeBron James's agent. Yeah, the founder of Clutch Sports. Yes. Oh. Biggest sports agency in the world.

That's romantic. Rich Paul. Mm-hmm. They're engaged. That's just... so matter of factual. Like, no, you're disgusting. Yeah.

Honestly, at first I liked him and his time went on, he became gross to me. That's what she said. She was like, I was disgusted by him. That's, you know, sometimes that happens. Hmm. Yeah. Well, this is some more music news for you all. Welcome to the show, everybody, by the way.

We're joined by Stephen Slet. What's that, Tom? So joined at the hip. We're joined at the hip with Steven Sladkowski from the band Pub. Who's here to talk about just, just groovy tunes and crunchy. And food recall. And the reintroduction of Kentucky's leading export into the Canadian market. Oh.

Thanks to Prime Minister Carney. The bourbon's back. The bourbon spigot is now back open. It's fucking back, baby. Technically. I'm going to tell you, there are people in Kentucky relieved to hear this.

I'm sure there are. No, I'm dead serious. People have been like, man, fuck, ever since everybody quit drinking here and then Canada's quit buying the shit, we're all like,

we're all week to week. It's like, damn, it just proves how life goes. Sometimes you're on top of the mountain, and then the other times you're just waiting for Canada to loosen up a little bit. Is Carney advocating like BDS,

but for American birds? He's basically saying like boycott American bourbon don't buy it. So in the aftermath of the like initial round of tariffs like way, way back, one of the first retaliatory things that was like, because alcohol is like province by province for us, right? Some of us can handle it others. But no, they had like a, you know, they had like an emergency meeting of all the the premiers, which be like our governor and they all agreed to ban uh like u.s alcohol like overnight right um so they pulled all the californian wine all the liquor from kentucky and kind of wherever and basically there's just been a giant hole in the liquor store uh where like you know uh your

your californian whites used to be or uh whatever bourbon now they're on the l i likers that's right And, you know, a couple of provinces, like Alberta, obviously, because there's a whole sort of pipeline, you're Texas of the North, however you want to do it, they're like, ah, fuck it, we're going to let bourbon back in. So people in Alberta have been able to get U.S. spirits, you know, even basically in an attempt to capitalism our way out of problems of capitalism, which is essentially what tariffs and retaliatory tariffs are. even our country can't stay united which should say should say a lot but yeah it did have an effect as Tom as you were just saying but yeah it looks like it looks like that's one of the things last night when we were going back and forth about topics it does look like bourbon

and and all that is going to be back on the shelves seemingly with a deal imminent Not a moment too soon. I'm telling you, everybody I know in the whiskey business down here has been like just waiting with bated breath for Canada to open it back up. Yeah, it's, uh, it. Apparently, y'all are doing your, your fair share of the market. Yeah, we are. We are. I mean, so like the, the government of Ontario, which is, it's similar, I think, to North Carolina, right, where the state of North Carolina controls basically all of the alcohol sales, right?

is one of the largest importers of alcohol on the planet as far as I understand it. I'm going to double check this, but... Damn. You know, and I'll be honest with you, that's not just a one-sided relationship either, Stephen. I've cited this for years, but a lot of people think that hillbillies drink bourbon,

and in reality, most of us drink Crown Royal and even worse, Canadian Club. Hey, we all have made bad decisions. The American Hillbill loves Canadian blended whiskey. That's a truth not a lot of people will tell you that I'll tell you right now. That's why I can get Buffalo Trace down the street, usually. Yeah, we can't. I'm trying to find this.

The primary importer, blah, blah, blah, blah. What was the statistic again? What was the... As I understand it, there... one of the largest importers. Who is? The Liquor Control Board of Ontario. Basically, basically my, my,

my provincial government. And the cool thing, I mean, the cool thing about that. We're drunk as hell. This is the easiest way to ignore reconciliation and your genocidal history is to just be drunk as hell all the time. That's what we've kind of figured out. Yeah. No, but like, I think, I think, like, our province does a billion dollars plus of sales every year.

God damn. That gets funneled into what eventually becomes, like, social, like, medicine. Like, it goes into the health care system. That's kind of the, that's sort of the feedback loop. You may increase the problems that necessitate a robust health care system. Brother, they feed us. the poison and then they feed us the antidote. It's, it's, what's hilarious.

You're a turn fond hour already, meager education. What's hilarious is we have a similar, like, system. We have a similar thing going on, similar dynamic, but it's not fun and whimsical. It's just like you eat blueberries and you might have glass in your stomach and you'll probably die. And then you go privatized health care. Only if they're frozen in a lot of it. organic, you know. It is wild. I was at the story the other day, like in the baby food aisle,

and there was like a recall on one of the baby food brands because there was plastic in one of them. It's like, it's more than just like bacteria showing up in food right now. It's like objects. Like there's plastic, there's glass. Shards of metal I'm hearing in sourdough, which is bad news for me because I like sourdough. It is funny. I remember reading this thing a few years ago about how in the Middle Ages, even up until the 1700s, like 18th century,

like the average loaf of bread in Europe the like at any given moment had like upwards of like 70% sawdust in it. Because like they were like cutting bread flour with sawdust to like make that

flower go farther. Added fiber. That's where they got the idea for enriched bread, right? Yeah. Yeah. That strikes me as an Argentine tactic. We are somehow regressing even farther because I would rather have sawdust in my bread than glass in my, you know. Yeah, I like my chances of digestion with sawdust.

I think they're better. I think they're better with the glass. You risk internal bleeding and shit. Uh-huh. Metal. I'd rather have the sawdust than the metal. That's how bottom of the barrel it is,

how bad it is. I'd rather have a sawdust. Pick your filler. We can't have pure sourdough. This is up to 40% sawdust. I'm trying to... What else was on that... Yeah, on that list.

There was a long, long, long list. Boys, it was... This has only been in the last three months, too. And this is like the shit that... That is tough. But there was an update to the blueberry thing where they upgraded to an imminent risk of death. Of death, yeah.

The frozen blueberries is possible E. coli. That one was for Publix. Iceberg lettuce with the cyclospora. Shell eggs. Shell eggs. Mixed berries. A lot of these are bacteria and stuff, but it is blowing my mind just how many, like,

objects are being found in various... Shards of metal and sourdough really sent me. Like, what are you doing over there? Like, are you fucking making the sourdough with a goddamn sawmill? Like, what's going on? It's like that, uh, that Simpsons episode where they go to the Duff Brewery

and they do the brewery tour. And Barney stops the guy on the quality control line. And in the two seconds, they have a chat. It's like a rat in a bottle and then Hitler's head. I love the comments to this online of the Trump people. They're like,

He actually originates in Mexico, smart guy, and it's just like you just want to just, if you're going to be belliger, just at least have a third grader's understanding of how trade works. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, yes. I think not understanding how trade works

is sort of how we gotten into this mess with. So can you really blame, you know? That is true. Well, the state of Kentucky is doing their part to educate, at least in Lexington. There is a big sign that says two big signs I've seen out that says tariffs take a big buy out of your wallet.

I don't know who paid for that or who chose tariffs as the battleground in August of 26. But there's some resistance being mounted at locally, is all I mean to say. I mean, surely at this point, like, you know, I haven't, I was like in Portland over the weekend and have been in the U.S. a little bit this year. but I haven't been down to Kentucky yet this year, which is unusual for us. Your absence has been noted. Yeah. That'll be changed. We'll rectify that later this year.

But surely, like, people are, even in red states, people are feeling it, right? Like, they have to be. There's no. Feeling which aspect, inflation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Metal shards in the bread. Yeah, yeah. Tasting it and feeling it.

Taste it. Yeah. Yeah. like is like not that it seems to matter you know like uh trump's telling people to live like grass or whatever but oh that's oh yeah that's great i love that that makes sense for like a guy who's so solipsistic like a guy that is like so clearly convinced that he is the protagonist of reality and i am convinced also that you for that matter you're convinced too.

Yeah. It would make sense that he starts saying stuff like that because, like, he knows the end is soon. And, I mean, I say soon, probably in the next 20 years. Like, he's going to live to be, like, 97. Right, yeah, yeah. But he's going out like Kissinger, aged 100 and wondering how he made it the last 20 years. Mm-hmm. But it makes sense that he would start talking as an almost sort of, like, mystical way.

Like, you know what I mean? Like we're all grass, like we've returned to grass, like dust to dust. I will say he had one of the funniest quotes I've seen from him lately yesterday. He said, we're ensuring that America remains the undisputed leader in technologies like prediction markets. The classic technology. It's certainly not food safety. Well, you know, I tell you got to crack a couple eggs and make an omlin. And if you have to make some, you know, downgrades to your regular.

environment in order to usher in, you know, new ways to get hooked on your phone. In order to allow your son-in-law's brother to buy the Los Angeles Lakers? Well, by God, that's a trade we should all be willing to make. Also, maybe connected to why all the Lakers are white now. Although, to be fair, that began a little before. That's true. That's true. In fairness, yeah.

The Trump people are having a rough week, okay? Like, they've, you know, yesterday they, you know, threw up the $40 trillion debt number that kind of got a lot of, let's say, bondholders a little freaked out. I mean, we've kind of at this point where, like, setting new records, baby. Yeah, so many, there is so much American debt out there. It's kind of got everyone a little rattled Both carmic and You know Actual money

Material Yeah But it's It's You know It's It's made Scott Besson Have a really tough week too

The Treasury Secretary Oh boo fucking who I saw a quote for him It's actually Besson Monsieur Besson Monsieur Besson

Messon Besson He said We've got a spike in oil prices today That I really don't understand Oh, who could say why, really? Well, it's, I mean...

God damn it, dude. That rocks. It's one of those things where, like, if America, I mean, if America had kind of, like, chosen to launch that war of its own volition, the politics of the current moment would be a lot different. I don't know if you would have Scott Besson saying that, But because the origins of this have to be missed. They cannot be acknowledged in any way.

It cannot be acknowledged that this was a joint U.S. Israeli operation. But at the same time, like, because we can't acknowledge that Israel was behind it, we also can't acknowledge that America was behind it. Like, we can't. Does that make sense? Like, it's this feedback loop thing where it's like you can't acknowledge any of the origins of it. It's Schrodinger's origin. That's right.

Yeah. You go. Episode time, but as a result, you're just getting really funny stuff like that. Like, we don't know why the oil prices are. I think I saw Marco Rubio say something similar, like, a few days ago. Like, specifically about the Strait of Hormuz. Like, we don't know why the straight's close. It was weird.

You know, who can say for sure? Oh, my God. Did you see the thing out? I dropped it in the group, Chad. You see the thing about, Hague Seth, keeping it under wraps that the Iranians

had completely destroyed our base in the region, and that's why conditions are so shabby on the USS Lincoln or whatever. He did that Iran destroyed main U.S. military base. Uh-huh. Seems fine. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Which base? I think they've destroyed like 11 or something. You've got to be more specific. Let's have a look. How many... How many bases

Has Iran destroyed? How many U.S. bases? Has Iran destroyed? Not enough. This is a video clip from MS. Now, of course. It's damaged or rendered unusable at least 15 to 20. Damn, if not even Google can keep the propaganda... It must be pretty bad.

These guys tend to think all these things stay in house, I guess. Somebody said, I don't know if this was just engagement made or not either, but somebody said that there was a LinkedIn job posting for a naval mortician. What is that? They put you on a raft and push you off into the sea and shoot flaming arrows at it. Well. Yeah, have to be Scandinavian. It must be Scandinavian and North Pacific Islander.

Well, there's like a big, okay, so the way, so that, like, I guess I kind of buried the lead on Scott Besson's week because he, in order to kind of ameliorate the market panic of the United States, having $40 trillion in debt, and it's like 30-year bond yield, just going up and up and up. They tried to, the treasury tried to basically buy a lot of its own debt.

If you're wondering what that means or how it's done, you've come to the wrong place. I have no idea. I think it has something to do with maybe they buy their own short-term debt in order to prop up the long-term debt, something like that.

We need a jump cut to Margot Robbie in a bathtub. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Not even that, I don't think could explain adequately what's going on here. But suffice it to say that the markets were kind of calmed by this yesterday. And then early... Were they a little colloquy before?

They were a little colloquy. And then they woke up this morning and went right back to being colloquy. Yeah. And I don't know. The New York Times, like, headline about... about it was just so defeated. It's just like, it's just, I don't know, you see this, like, here's the headline. Markets, this is the way that I, my brain read it.

Markets rally after U.S. Treasury eases bond investor stress. It didn't even matter because, like I said, they woke up today and they freaked out again. So it's not, they've not. You know, I'm curious at what juncture do we exhaust all the bandage tools in our, financial toolkit you know what i mean and we just kind of accept the fact that we've been had hasn't happened yet somehow what that's the craziest part to me what that's the thing it's what at what point okay so like the reason that investors are uh not buying it this time is because you've got the big beautiful bill about to be enacted and the big beautiful bill is

What is it? It's tax cuts for millionaires. I couldn't imagine a worse time for that to become law than simultaneously with shards of meddling or loaves of bread and any number of pestilences in our produce. Yeah. It doesn't seem like that's the thing that's going to be like, oh, well, that's going to, like, solve that issue. No.

No. I mean, in fact, okay, looking at this from an account, an economist standpoint if you're going to have that much money if you're going to be that indebted right if you're going to have that much debt out there circulating you need to show

investors that like you're willing to I don't know create revenue streams right one of which would be taxes but the big beautiful bill doesn't do that the big beautiful bill is you know just and also another thing from this is like isn't that what the fucking tariffs were for wasn't the tariffs you see the

The tariffs was actually a way to like just get into our pockets and give it to companies without us actually get anything in the time for. When they said it'll pay for itself, what they meant was you'll pay for it. You'll pay for it yourself. This is pretty funny. This is in the FT from two hours ago on the, on Besson talking about the, Besson, talking about the treasury bonds. This is Joe Brusilus, chief economist at a professional services firm, RSM, U.S., quote, without a shift to fiscal consolidation, higher taxes, a slower pace of government spending, or outright declines in government spending as happened in the 1990s, the buybacks

will prove to be only temporary. Yeah, and so that's why they floated, the market sort of floated them on it for like 12 hours. And they were, they woke up this morning and read the headline in the same way that I read it. And they were like, man, we can't even keep pretending to do this anymore. Just the widespread demoralization and also like the fact that like we should really be ashamed of ourselves. Like it just genuinely is like so pathetic. It's just like you've been robbed 80 different ways through your health care, through the tariffs, through the tax handouts, through the cutting of the welfare.

You know, it's just it's so demoralizing. It's pathetic. I don't know. Like it would be less, less undignified. like armed thugs showed up at our house and demanded an attacks. A shakedown? It's your quarterly shakedown. Uh-huh.

A hundred percent, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. It's a bad time, folks. And I'm not even going to read the utterly black-pilling article. I read in the financial times about the drought in Europe. Yeah. Considing with droughts in Latin America, state point.

Or the Trump administration opening up, like what was it, like, 80,000 new square miles of public lands for drilling? Or maybe it was probably even, I think it's 180,000, something like that. It's just, it's just the biggest grand theft in. in human history. I'm not even being hyperbolic. Like, it has to be quantitatively and qualitatively

the largest grand theft, grand larceny in human history, right? It has to be. I'm sitting here jog, and I'm like, well... I would maybe think, like, uh, like colonial contact.

You could, you could make the argument that maybe the Spanish, maybe the Spanish, ravelled only about Western European, Yeah, Colonia excursion. That would, that would be where I would, you know, just because... It's a modern day. Yeah, awoke to me, Steve. Just don't worry.

Don't worry. Up here in Canada, you know, we're just doing. Yeah, no, let's see, Honduras, 80% of the country on El Nino drought alert. So, like, this is the thing where I get worried about it. It's like, okay, so there's a ton of food recall. That's what I want. That's what I'm thinking. Right.

A ton of food recall, but the food supply is. chains are also clearly being disrupted. There's some crop potential crop failure. How is anything even still functioning? That's kind of what I want to know. And honestly, I'm not even the only person asking this. I saw this thing from like Warren Buffett the other day who was like, Warren Buffett warns that the U.S. dollars on the brink of collapse.

He's not invested a single dollar lately because he says the stock market has blah, blah, blah. but he does no longer understand what's happening. And I kind of agree. I'm like, I don't really understand what's happening either. How is this even still going? I feel like when your nickname is the Oracle, and you're stumped. Yeah.

That should be a warning sign. That should be a warning sign. That's the thing. I think that like three months ago, we were being like, oh, you know, this is the Wiley-E coyote running off the cliff, running on air. Just wait until it falls.

is it ever going? I mean, yes, it will, but like, how long can... I'm not even just talking about, like, the massive amounts of debt, the AI bubble, but also just the fact that, like, the blatant overt market manipulation that the Trump administration does every day to try to, like, keep oil prices even marginally within some, you know, arbitrary set of parameter. When is somebody going to just slip a note to the invisible hand of the mark and say, hey, buddy, you know the parable of the boy that cried wolf? You're getting taken to the cleaners here, pal. I guess, like, it seems like maybe, like, would Trump just not have as much control over the Fed as he wants?

Like, even though Jerome Powell's gone, you know? Like, they're still trying to do something with monetary policy? I don't know. I'm grasping at fucking air. here. Well, he said, what was the thing he said yesterday? It's like, when the country's doing good, when the country is strong, interest rates should go down.

When the country is weak, interest rates should go up. And it's like, what's funny about that is, like, yeah, that's economic dogma, sure, or whatever, but like, or at least Trump's economic dogma, but like, it's based on an illusion, which is that America is strong right now. And it's like, it's not, it's not untrue. I mean, it is still the largest economy in the world, but it's not, he said it himself. Our biggest, we're the biggest leader. We are the leader in the world on prediction markets, not manufacturing, not anything else.

Vapor. On vapor. On soothsaying. Yeah. Well, and also, too, the thing, underwriting all that is our military force. And, of course, you know, much has been written about how. we've exhausted all that. I'm not saying that's a bad thing,

particularly for people and victims of U.S. aggression. But not, you don't, I just say that to say you don't even really have that underwriting the thing. It's hard to talk shit with an empty clip. It's so bad. It's so bad that the U.S. Army is offering four days of GTA6 in exchange for several years of additional service. What?

What the fuck? Did you just say? The United States armies offering soldiers the chance to play GTA 6 for four days, uninterrupted, early, I think, before it comes out, in exchange for them getting a few years tacked on. And here's the thing, 20 soldiers have taken that deal so far. That's just got nothing else going on. Can you imagine if you just meet your end by an Iranian missile because you wanted to play GTA 6 like a couple months early? I mean, of all the ways you could go out in war, that maybe isn't the worst way. Like, you know, but like, I keep having, like, if I get, if I let my, my mind run too much and it, you know, I let it think about other things, like, not thinking about that Merrill Haggard record I was talking about earlier.

I get to this point, like, you talk about, like, leading in prediction markets. and it just I don't see a world whereby young men accrue massive amounts of debt on sports betting and then fall into the exact cycle of poverty

that drives them to sign up for military service. That is so hand in glove to me if I think too much about it that it feels like how the entire thing is going to just be kept going. It's kind of their recruiting thing. It's like, okay, you're in Hocke to the sports books. Want to get away from all that?

Exactly, exactly, right? Oh, we'll forgive your debt. Come pull four years in the U.S. military. And it's like 1700s like gang press tactics. Right, like we actually don't need a draft because you have draft kings, I guess, is how you follow. Oh, there's something there. That is good.

That is good. But, like, you know, even when you watch, like, televised sports on, like, just, like, regular cable, right? Like, not, if you're not streaming it, because I think the ad, the ad buys, the actual, like, advertising that gets put on streaming is, is a little bit different because I think they target it to different generations. But essentially, you just see advertisements, even in Canada, like, they're advertising for the Canadian military, right? you'll see it's almost as if a global multi-country conflict might be bruno right or they or they know that they're going to let the ice caps melt and in the case of say Canada you know that when everything thaws up in the Yukon and the northwest territories defend the homeland right exactly so you know it's just like yeah if I you know if I smoke too much legal and let and let and and let the mine wander a bit. But it really does. It's hard not to feel like that is like going to be a pathway for a certain type of young male gambling addict.

Uh-huh. We used to join the military to avoid the mines. Right. That's the Mayans? The mine. M-I-N-E-S. And now it'll just be to avoid like Dickensian-F. fucking debtor's prison.

Debt Piendage to Fandle. Yeah. I owe fealty to Caesar, but not the way you'd think. Not that one. Render to Caesar's what's due Caesar's. Mm-hmm. Anyway, what was that about Blackpill? Oh, well, this, the...

Might as well get into it. Apparently, three point... The global warming temperatures are right. rising by 3.25% Celsius. Basically, the world will be unsurvivable by the 20s, 2040s, 2080s. I got to get off Twitter. I have got to start ignoring this stuff. Like, I just can't even process it because the scale of it all is so bad,

especially after I read that financial times about drought in Europe. My question is, like, they're estimating this summer's wildfire droughts. to, oh, by the way, I got that number wrong earlier about the public acreage that Trump is opening up for clear cutting and drilling. It's 45 million acres. You said 181,000. I was like, damn, that's crazy.

I wasn't even close. That's way worried. That's like the size of like two decent-sized ranches in Texas or something. It's like being told like, oh, you've got a cancer, you've got cancer you've got lung cancer and then get it coming back and be like oh wait no

it's actually way worth your whole body it's metastasized everywhere yeah your ed's everywhere never mind there's the there's that

there's the drought thing oh I was going to say they're estimating this year's drought to have a 50 billion euro impact on the

European economy and that's just from this summer alone right so like what I'm wondering is like what point did this

capitalist class? Or is this why they're all, like, going heavy on SpaceX? Because they, like, they know Elon's going to bore tunnels into the ground so we can live underground like we're on Mars. Maybe that's why? Because, like, they, I just, I just can't see, like, there's no frontier for growth if the, you've destroyed the entire continent. It seems to me, like, all this terraforming Mars and all these sort of, like, you know,

plans out of Gene Roddenberry to colonize, the cosmos and stuff might have been rooted in something that they've been knowing for years. Uh-huh. That the climate is destroyed, yeah. I hate to break this to you, but if you supported Trump and, you know,

say any number of counties in my state, that you're not going to be on that first ship or even the 12th for that matter. Oh, man. A new heat dome is forming over the U.S. as well. This is great. Yeah, I mean, The thing with the El Nino, it's been sort of hitting some of the sort of like center podcasts.

Like there was something the Times picked it up and that Bloomberg podcast had it. But like there's a lot of thinking that this El Nino this year might be the worst one that we have any like historical record of. Yeah. Which is only going to, you know, continue having an impact on South America and the U.S. like, you know, what are kind of historically, like, uh, major agricultural areas. Yeah.

Yeah, that's not good. Well, I thought I'd heard the last of this guy in the late 90s. El Nino. Yeah. Remember that was like a buzzword around 97, 98? Right. So that was the last big one.

And apparently this year is supposed to be on par with, if not bigger than that one. Oh, yeah. Nice. Yeah. The 90s really are back, you know, that nostalgia we're seeing. We made it through that one. We'll make it through this. Yeah, that's right.

Well, I mean, you know, let's, to hopefully not send all of our listeners down the first reformed road, let's keep it a little whimsical here. I want to continue talking about Trump's week. I don't know. I saw this clip of John Ossoff from the weekend addressing a crowd. And he mentioned, like, Trump is, you know, he's fucking shit up. He's a bad dude. He's doing this, that, the other.

And he's jetting around with Natalie. And he just said one, you know, first name, didn't say anything else. And the whole crowd with Natalie. Jetting around with Natalie. And the crowd goes wild. And I was like, who's Natalie? And I've never even heard of this. Apparently, this is a big blue-in-on thing.

But it does have, it is based in some actual- Assoff is pedaling centrist conspiracy. Yeah, but it's not a conspiracy. It is real. Well, and so far as it's a thing that is not, it's a thing that is really energized the blue and on base, which I do think if you read between the lines of some of the latest election results, I don't think that, like, for example, that race in Florida,

that Angie, I can't remember her last name, that primary race she beat like a real um resist lip type guy and actually we can read an article in just second from david from about this oh jesus we'll just say you'll just say your fellow countryman your fellow countryman steve god um but uh all of which is to say though that like i don't really know how much juice blue nuns got in the tank or the resistance um i don't i don't know it seems to me you calling it by its Christian name. I wasn't sure who we were talking about. Blue it on?

No, the resistance. Yeah, no, I know. Oh, the resistance. Yeah. Yeah, the resistance. I don't know. But they are on to something with this Natalie thing, and I will give the resist lips this, because they were really ahead of the curb at this one.

I didn't know anything about this. Had I known about this, I would have talked about it much earlier on the show. But apparently Trump has an aide named Natalie Harp. and no one knows what she does. This is from the New York Times. Is she the girl that stands right by him and like the conspiracy about her tapping the buzzer? That's a different, that's a different woman.

Oh, that, yeah, his alarm clock. They thought she was like an android or her face, like she was wearing one of those. Right, or she was wearing one of those realistic silicone masks. It was like a Boston dynamic. Like this is our new, this is the fresh shit off the MIT. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

She was real, though. So we're all ostensibly. She just wasn't, or she could have been Natalie in the Silicon Man. She still could be an android. We don't, you know, that's hard to say. Yeah. We don't have, we don't have that they live goggles. We don't have that they live goggles, so we can't know for sure.

But she, okay, but so Natalie Harp, like this person, this is from the New York Times, she never takes a day off, not even on Sunday. She works out of the Oval Office, and she's got a regular seat on Marine One. Okay, so when this came. to lie was, you know how they had to snuggle, or snuggle. They had to snuggle Trump. Smuggle, I think is the word you're looking for? If only someone would snuggle Trump.

Has anyone thought that he might be less? He might be less of a fascist if you gave him a hug. If you just snuggled him. When they had to smuggle him out of Turkey in like a caterer's cart a few weeks ago, they used like a dupe plane and they put like Marco Rubio and J.D. Vanson, all these other people on the two plane. He's like, hey, we can bomb these guys.

He just basically just hung them up to drag. How real was the threat? Or was it like when you're on a, you know, like you see in a TV show, like when someone's on a bad date and they get the phone call? He's just like, man, Rubio's such a fucking drag. Like, I got to take a different flight. Like, get me on a different plane.

Very likely to learn more. well the people that were allowed on the actual flight out that he smuggled on onto in the caterer's cart one of them was this woman Natalie harp and so all these libs were like who the fuck is this person she gets to fly on the plane with Trump but like Marco Rubio doesn't and all this so um so she uh she texts with world leaders on the president's behalf she stays up late with him drafting social media opposed. She rarely speaks on camera, and yet she is never not there ever present with a wide smile and her eyes fixed on the president. She is Natalie Harp, 35-year-old West Wing aide, who is the

utmost gatekeeper to President Trump, a one-woman conduit of information operating entirely outside the usual chain of command. The public's interest in her exploded after she was revealed last week to be one of the lucky few who joined the president inside an airplane catering container to be whisked out of Turkey. they really used the term lucky few one of the lucky few yeah I think there were only like three imagine being piled you know how Trump's like

allegedly smells anyway imagine being piled up in a catering cart and just like a bunch of Diet Coke she probably by all accounts she loved that she is obsessed with them like every time they've gotten photo documentation video she's like sitting in the corner staring at him like

adoringly like lovingly like fixated on it like a Stepford wife kind of thing yes um the unique power Mr. Trump affords her says much about how he functions as president as long as she is around he enjoys an unvetted flow of information blah blah blah she supplies him with content

she fishes out of the social media gutter oh I guess she's the one who who showed him that video of Obama of the Obama's depicted as apes that really racist video we have heard of yeah we have heard of

yeah her moniker is quote the human printer because she tells the president with a portable printer so she can hand him information in a hard copy okay

um in the book reggie change by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman Mr. Trump is described as explaining to people that Ms. Harp is the only one

who loves him as much as his wife and children Do his children love him? Yeah, I think to their detriment, yes. Because he clearly doesn't love them back. He didn't go to his son's wedding. So tough. Ms. Harp collects a taxpayer-funded salary of $150,000.

The way she was found, I guess she was like, let's see if I could find this. Okay, so several videos shared with the Times show Ms. Harp sprinting across great distances to keep up with Mr. Trump's golf cart as it putters around his course in Scotland. So she's like running around chasing his golf cart. This is a letter she wrote to Trump that the Times got a hold of. I am sorry if I was an embarrassment walking the course in Scotland. I want things to always be right between us.

I always know I've been distracted all week, forgetting to eat throughout the days, and even for getting to sleep and only catching a couple hours at a time with all my heart, Natalie. I guess she, I don't know, she really likes him. But, yeah, I don't know. Anyway, she was featured on Fox News one time,

and that's where Trumps are. And he made her... Where did she come from? What's her backstory? She grew up in California. Her brother gave it interview that said I'd say since she was 16

she's had an obsession with how do I say this she's written letters to other presidents let me put it that way I guess she was also obsessed with George Bush so

so she's just she's got a type she's got she's got a top and there's only 48 of them this is sort of like like

it'll come out later it's like when Dave Grohl was like I've made a horrible mistake uh-huh and like you know it was like oh the masseuse that I had on to on the tour bus yeah what started out is above board that's right well so the so what happened here is she she has said that Trump saved her life because she suffered from bone cancer and that it was legislation mr. Trump signed in 2018 that provided her access to experimental treatments she has not publicly detailed which treatment. It's like, what legislation did he sign in 2018?

And then she was recounting that experience on Fox News in 2019 when Trump saw her on TV. She's one of these plants like that DoorDash woman. Yes. Yeah, yeah. So Trump saw her on TV and like took a shine to her and invited her to speak

at the RNC in 2020 and then slowly she became like his right hand aide if you want to call her that. And so now, and so has Blunon? Is she like a Kremlin plant? Like where... No, they say she's his mistress.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's, you know. But yeah, I can't, certainly can't rule it out. It's, uh, sorry, it's masseuse. It's masseuse. Yeah, my bad. My bad. I'm pronounced. Like, I don't speak friends. Um, she...

I don't know. I don't know why they've, like... They were saying that about a Laura Lumer for a while. But those charges never really stuck. Also, like, everyone knows he's a philanderer. Like, what are, it hasn't stopped anything. See, I've always, I've never really known what to make that. Like, to me, it's like, I've said this before, like, the Hollywood Access tape. It's like listening to someone talk about how they think they're supposed to talk.

Like, there's something about it. It's, like, very, like. Like the gay bartender and out cold talking about tits. Yeah. That is a deep cut reference. Trump does a reasonable fact similar how you think straight men talk about when this anatomy.

And I'm not even implying, I'm not even saying that he's gay. You're of course implying that he's a virgin. That's actually what I'm implying, yes, that he's a virgin. Anyways, well, so make of that what you will. I don't know. I mean, Natalie,

it seemed like Asoff was implying that Natalie was his mystery. and Trump world got really mad at him for doing that. Not like that's like what's there's one thing everybody in the world knows about Trump and it's like Steve is like a noted philanderer.

It's like why do you think you think that's the thing that's going to really like really dent his reputation? Dude there was an article. Not the Epstein stuff, not the pedophilia, not the general. other crimes. Yeah.

Yeah. Not him robin us blind, but, but, oh, he's got a, he's got a mistress named Natalie. Flies around with him. I don't think he's being, I don't think he's being very fair to that nice Slovenian woman. Yeah, that's true. That's true. There was like this article. He has a wife, John.

Yeah. There was like this article in Politico where they were like, Bill Clinton is 80 years old. like let's like let's take a look at his character and they were basically like he is upstanding character because he understood the attacks against him about Monica Lewinsky were ultimately politically motivated and I guess like if I I guess if I was him I would be bitter about that as well I mean strictly speaking they were political I don't think they were you know they were clearly they were browned in uh yeah plans like what you mean I could have just weathered that yeah yeah Yeah. He's, okay. Yeah, I mean, never. He's true. He's true.

Yeah. Yeah. Noted vegan, right? He's gone vegan. Isn't that, isn't that his big thing? Yeah. He was for a while, anyway. His arteries were clogged to the mag.

So he had to do something about it. Him and Trump together, like the vegan and the virgin. And they may have sucked each other off. Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. You know? Oh, yeah. I forgot about that.

That's right. Possibly apocryful. But. Yeah. Some people say. That's not a blue-in-on thing is that Putin and Trump suck each other off. But I don't know what the Clinton-Trump one comes from. Where does that one?

That was an email, wasn't it? Like in the dump of the Epstein stuff. Oh, okay, that makes it. Okay, all right, well, let's, I just got a little article here to read. Oh, God. this is in the Atlantic the resistance is over bold claim from David Fromm

The editor-in-chief War-criminal War criminal, by the way Is he the editor-in-chief? I thought Jeffrey, what's that guy's name? I thought he was the editor-in-chief. Let me double-check. The former IDF prison guard

Jeffrey Goldblum? Jeffrey Goldblum, is that it? No. A different guy. Jeff Goldblum. Jeff Goldblum, the actor. Yeah, it's the guy from Jurassic Park. A senior editor at the Atlantic.

Pardon me. Pardon me. Okay. And, you know, propagandist. And yes, yeah. That's why it was really funny listening to him pissed off about Taylor Swift. Not doing...

Oh, yeah, yeah, not the whole, like, she should have played to a thousand AI or something. Yeah. Yeah, like, it's like, dude, you're Canadian. What is it matter? Anyways, the resistance is over. The insurgent left cares more about its own factional agenda than the president's threats to democracy. Is Donald Trump over?

Can we all now relax and move on to the next thing? That's the message from a significant portion of Democratic primary voters. Just as Trump is bored with Iran and the economy and wants to play with monuments and gilding, so to our many Democratic primary voters in Florida and elsewhere bored with Trump and eager to play factional politics instead. Um, the political statistician Nate Silver summed it up. It's kind of been a rough set of primaries for heroes of the resistance 1.0. Silver then listed stalwart anti-Trumpers who have lost their contest in 2026 and concluded, people want to move on.

So like, he's referencing several races that like some of these Democrats have, like, obviously there's the one in the ones in New York where these more like establishment figures have been knocked off. but like also like some democrats that have lost like were actual like resistance figurehead like guys who like very ceremoniously brought like impeachment you know charges or whatever against Trump like every three weeks one of the guys in Wisconsin I think was that or Michigan and I guess my thing here is that like

and I guess we can get into it but like don't you think it just kind of makes a little sense? Like, why would an insurgent campaign care all that much about Trump when ostensibly his term is ending? You know what I'm saying? He's lame duck, essentially. I mean. Well, and the idea seems to be more that you want to push, if you're a Democrat,

like you want to push the same way that I think the new Democrats are trying to do appear. Like you're trying to push it more in that Mamdani direction because you know that that's playing well. And if you actually want to have any results whatsoever, that's where the juice is. So you're, you want to go that way. It doesn't really matter whether, you know, some resistance figure was, was there in the first term or not if they didn't listen on, on Gaza or something. I assume anyway, right? Yeah. He will bring that up right here, actually.

Because he, like, lists like 2016. He airs the same, you know, set of grievances as, you know, that these people have been airing since 2016, that, like, Bernie voters handed Trump the election in 2016. And in 2024, likewise, some leaders of the activists left noisily defected from the Harris-Waltz ticket for many of them opposing Israel's war against Hamas and Gaza mattered more than stopping

a Trump presidency at home. The effect of this mobilization on the left is hard to measure, but the nation was quick to insist that the Biden administration's Gaza policy likely cost the party Michigan because many Arabs and Muslims swung toward Trump. The article did not seriously consider whether cultural politics, such as

Kamala Harris' support for transgender rights influenced socially conservative Arab and Muslim- David from, you fucking piece of shit. You fucking piece of shit. Well, what also David Frum's forgetting is that she also campaigned in Michigan in Muslim neighborhoods, the biggest Iraqi population outside Baghdad, with goddamn Dick Cheney's daughter. Fucking Dick Cheney's daughter, and also Richie Torres.

Yeah, the biggest Israel booster outside of, well, Israel. But his point, I guess his point, it's the same thing that a lot of Zionists are always going on about, You realize if you're gay, they'll throw you off the roofs in Gaza. Like, how could you possibly support those? The claim that Harris lost to Trump because of Gaza may well be active as self-medication, but this kind of story about the election is telling. This year, the dulling of anti-Trump impetus on the left is even more visible and consequential. I mean, I don't know, just to, like, back up for just a second.

I This whole thing about like For many of them Opposing Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza Matters more than stopping a Trump presidency So obnoxious At home That's so fucking obnoxious

I Yeah I'll accept that charge I mean even after everything That's happened in the last year A year and a half Which sucks I mean it's awful

Like 45 million acres of public land Being destroyed Our food supply filled with poison. I mean, just you name it, but like, it's like a philosophical thing. We didn't know what would happen in that election. We did know what genocide was happening.

So, like, what do you do in that situation? It's not a good... You know what, though? It feels like he's created a false binary. Like, like, I think there were... There was probably a pathway to winning some of that stuff if you were more interested in having an action. actual conversation, right?

Like, didn't they not let a Palestinian speak at the DNC? Yeah. Like, I think the point, yes, and this is, you're right. Like, this is well-worn territory. But, like, yes, okay. You could say that, but then you could also just say, like, why the fuck didn't the Kamala Harris read the writing on the wall? The Kamala Harris campaign reading the writing in the wall and, like, be like,

obviously they care very much about this. So we will try to make overtures. to this group. So really the charge can be leveled at the Harris campaign, that they're the ones who really didn't care about stopping Trump. And Biden, in the Biden administration, right? It's like... But this is David Frum in a nutshell.

This has been David Frum for... I hate this man so much. He sucks very much. A guy who's decided that, based on the writing of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, that he could no longer engage with left politics. Like, shut up. Fuck off. Well, that's the reason, I

Yeah. I also just think it's funny here. Okay, I'll just keep going here. This year, the doling of anti-Trump impetus on the left is even more visible and consequential. Again and again, primary voters have made choices that subordinate general election concerns to factional power seeking. That's another thing that really makes me laugh from like chate,

just from anyone at the Atlantic. It's like, it's one thing if it's like 10 or 12 people you know who just have an opinion on something. if multiple primary elections are being decided by hundreds of thousands of millions of voters who are sick and fed up of a certain way of doing politics. Across all regions of the country too, right? Across all regions of the country? It's not clustered. You cease being someone who's just like calling something out or like calling attention to someone

and being you become an old man who's screaming at a cloud. Like you are a crank. Like there's really nothing you can do if millions and millions of people decide that this is the way it should be. So like what are you trying to? I mean, actually there are people floating things. They're all stupid, of course. But, you know, like Tobias Lutki, the CEO of Shopify, another ghoul from Toronto, floated the idea that, you know, people who don't make like positive economic contributions to society should have their votes count for less. So positive economic contribution.

I'll show you. I'll show you the tweet. It was because in Toronto, this is an aside, we should get back to this. But as long as we're on dumbass Torontoans, I feel like I have a pretty wide. I feel like I don't make a very positive economic contribution. And your vote should count less, Terrence. This is what I'm saying. That's fine.

I don't vote anyway. Jokes on y'all. I quit voting two years ago. So basically we had, there was a major fight in on the lakefront in Toronto on the north shore of Lake Ontario God's country

Uh Home with a brave where um they were trying there's a small airport there that basically does like propeller planes right so you can fly like a couple of different airlines just propeller so it's like stuff you know

you can go to Boston and you can go to like like all pretty um close flights from Toronto. Like the show wings, but yeah, exactly. Canadian. And it turned out that the CEO of Shopify, Tobias Lukey, who lives in

Toronto, was one of the boosters behind trying to expand the airport for like real jet airliners. And obviously like there are apartments down there. There's like Toronto did a great job helping to kind of clean up

Lake Ontario so that people can swim in it. And basically a huge outrage, largely bipartisan, actually, of Torontonans were like, fuck that. And obviously the federal government, which controls a lot of the aviation stuff, came in. And he basically melted down once the proposal was denied and was like, oh, these are all the people who went to these community meetings to, you know, have their voices in democracy. they're all retired or fat or like he went on this like absolute Twitter meltdown and was basically like these fat losers

shouldn't have votes count so that's a negative economic right yeah like being fat or having time to go you know engaging in democratic processes yeah yeah being unemployed there was a lot of stuff like that and his solution was like or he was like you know co-signing a solution

where someone was like yeah well their vote should count for less and everyone's like oh okay brother all right so so you're mad that democracy worked. It already basically is like that. In many places anyway. He took the mask off because he was having a meltdown, which, you know. Yeah, I mean, it makes sense.

I mean, look at me. Do you want this heinous visage exercising democracy at the ballot? I know I do. That's right. I'd say it's not an election until you show up. That's right. Again and again, primary voters, just continuing here, have made choices that subordinate general election concerns

to factional power seeking. Democratic leaders, the dreaded establishment, have promoted highly plausible candidates for statewide office in North Carolina, Texas, and other suddenly competitive states, but the insurgent left has again and again upset leadership plans with high-risk choices to serve its own factional agenda, putting at risk once probable Senate victories in Maine, Michigan, in some house seats too.

He listed, like, Texas there. Like, that James Talarico guy's about as, like, milk-toast vanilla as you can get. Like, I don't really know what the charge there is. He says, that agenda, this insurgent left agenda,

seems to argue as follows. Donald Trump is not that important. His attacks on the rule of law on free and peaceful elections, on U.S. alliances, on traded markets, those are all mirror. symptoms of a disease, not the disease itself. Political energy should be focused on treating the deeper problems of which Trump is a mere passing expression, even at the risk of losing the Senate in 2026 and forfeiting the presidency in 2028.

Does David not realize that like even if they won the Senate, which is a stretch, but it might happen. It might be a blue year, blue wave year, whatever. I don't know. We've talked about this lately. but Republicans have gerrymandered the country in such a way that they've already got a structural advantage pretty much. It doesn't really even matter. Like a filibuster-proof majority is essentially impossible

for Democrats to get at this point. I mean, granted, with Senate, you're talking about something a little different because those are not gerrymandered seats. But I was sort of... With the House, they'll always have... like a bulwark of right wing support. This level of U.S. like politics is like a little bit inside baseball for me, but I was

mostly like marveling at the idea that like somehow a central tenant of American foreign policy is being described as like a regional axe grinding. Yeah. As though like I'm like, wait a second. Is it so like this. this like sinkhole of tax payer money that you like you don't want to call it that you don't want to say that this is actually like a real debate in like American foreign policy that seemingly that the anti-establishment left candidates or whatever the fuck he's calling them it's like yeah no

why why wouldn't you call it what it is right you can't because then you the whole argument falls apart. Pretty much. Yeah, I think really what blew his mind, I think what broke his brain was, it says in Florida last night Democrats rejected Alex Vindman, the former national security

official who had immense personal and career risk blew the whistle on Trump's 2019 plot to blackmail Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and defabricating campaign dirt against Joe Biden. Voters chosen said, Angie Nixon,

who campaigned as an explicit socialist in a state that is home to hundreds of thousands of Cuban-American Venezuelan but that's a house race right does it really matter that much I don't know man also like are any of those people who like lost servants in fucking Batista Cuba really going to vote for the Democrats exactly doesn't it's history suggests no yeah even if it was um

a resist lib Democrat like they're not going to vote anyway let's flip the gusanos yeah that's a landing message um all right I'll just finish here

the remains of the suddenly unfashionable democratic resistance can only hope that Democrats in Texas, North Carolina, Michigan and elsewhere will rise above the factional politics and remember in November what and who remains the most

pressing danger to the nation's law and democracy okay anyways once again isn't Trump, I mean, unless he tries to steal the election in 2028, which you might, I guess, but like, essentially, like, this is last term. He's going to try. Yeah. Like, he's going to try. If I was him, dude, the fucking shit show he's in, what you really want to do is like, just do a preemptive pardon or whatever for yourself that these presidents always do. And then just let your term expire. Like, you don't really want to be a president. You're a, moron you clearly suck at this like and the iran debacle has proven and shown everybody now how full of shit you are i saw this i saw this picture circulating of these right wingers posting photos of themselves from 2016 and and being like do you remember how this felt do you remember how great this felt and it looked exactly like libs and left us doing the exact same shit for 2008 with

obama being like do you remember how good this felt when obama won and by the end they're completely disillusioned. The same shit's going on with Trump's base now. They're completely disillusioned. They don't have any. He did war. He did a grand larceny and he did old. No Epstein files. In fact, he was all over. Yeah. Yeah. Every single one of them is Shane Gillis. Pretty much, yeah. So I'm just, I'm just saying like it's, uh, if I'm him, just let your term expire or, you know, die in office. Like that would, that also would be a good. I mean, surely that's the, that's like the, the, that's like the, the underlying, like, I don't know that it would obviously be publicly said, but that's why they're trying to pump the crypto. Like, you know, they got it the crypto foundation or whatever that he started that is now, like, uh, getting accreditation for a bank.

Like there was something in the Wall Street Journal about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or all the, uh, the thing he signed where his family can never be audited. Like people that don't have anything to hide don't really do those measures, Steve. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's not ideal. So crazy.

Well, anyways, you know, David Frum says we don't give a shit enough about the rule of law and democracy. That's right. That's right. I plan on vote my ass off. It was nice of David Frum to maintain that when he was a speechwriter for George fucking Bush. Yeah. I'm calling it now. I think Assoff and AOC will be the ticket in 2008. I think that'll be the ticket.

Assov, Picasso Cortez. I think that'll... Or Accio-Portez-Azaw. Granted, Ossoff could be out there too early. But it's not going to be Newsome. It could be Kamala, which I'm really hoping. Like, that would be hilarious. Are we out on...

We're out on Andy, huh? Oh, yeah. I saw him say this week that, you know, America is not socialist, it never will be. And, like, we've, uh, you know, we gotta, like, nip this in the buds. That's right. Responding basically to, like, the insurgent left, like, DSA thing. Like, oh, brother.

Don't know about that. Okay. Don't go to Milwaukee. Um, all right. Well, but before we leave, Steve, you've got something to plug. Yeah. Um, I got a. few things. I recently, so you guys have both heard the record, but I recently put out a record

that takes like old maritime Canadian like fiddle music and we kind of filtered it through my friend and I Joe, who's a drummer, filtered it through like Ornette Coleman and like Bill Frizzell and made this like fun record where we sort of just, it kind of sounds like we threw the fiddle tunes down the stairs a little bit. I'll tell you, you all, my culture is not your costume. Well, so, I mean, you guys both know this. I don't know. I've talked about it in interviews, like, where people are asking me about stuff about

the band or whatever, but, you know, I grew up loving bluegrass and, like, one of my favorite guitar players growing up was Doc Watson and really do have, like, a deep affinity for that. and that is not just because I married into a Kentucky family or anything, but I was always kind of, there was, you'll be shocked to hear that there wasn't a huge bluegrass scene in Toronto, which I assume is why David Frum left.

But, yeah, and, you know, anytime I did kind of sit down and play like, you know, Cripple Creek or something with people, I was,

they were always like, you're a little too jazzy, you know, because I was like, at the same time was like getting into like, you know, like electric Miles Davis and like fish and all this sort of stuff. You know, I was like 16. So and, you know, this kind of felt like a natural extension of that. My grandmother and my maternal grandmother was from Newfoundland where I found these like collections of fiddle music.

And, you know, the patterns of migration, I think, are kind of similar in terms of some of the Irish and English sort of folk music traditions that that come over. And so during the pandemic, we actually recorded the music a long time ago. You coming out as Irish now? No, certainly not. No, that is me treating it like a costume, certainly. But just playing that music was always something that I found good for, you know, technical stuff. It's fast.

It's very precise. And I just wanted to kind of, treated in a way that felt a little like more like myself that was like a little more punk and a little more jazzy and stuff so that record's out on band camp it's just under my name steve slikowski and my friend joe sorbera um there's a limited vinyl run uh yeah it's cool it's out there you know um it depends on what happens with the dale obviously yeah well yeah yeah i wasn't able to get Costco in for first week sales you know so um yeah and then uh the bands The pup is on the road this year.

We'll be in Louisville in October. And kind of like we'll be in Asheville and Nashville. And where else were this year? Hockville. Yeah, no, we'll be in, we'll be in Birmingham at Saturn in Birmingham. Sorry, I said it like the British one in Birmingham at Saturn, which is a great venue. Yeah, where are we going to be? Wilmington, Delaware. This is starting October 19th. So we'll be in Virginia Beach, we'll be in

Asheville, we'll be in Gainesville, you know, this year. So we're hitting the southeast, Birmingham, Indianapolis, Louisville, and yeah, and Nashville. So I'll see you two, I'm sure. I'm going to try and make Sturgel in Lexington, but we'll see. It's TBD still. Yeah, we'll be out and about. There's music out. There's, you know, if anyone's in Toronto listening to this on, on Sunday, depending on when this comes out, Sunday the 23rd of August will be playing a big old, yeah, big old hometown show with Jimmy Eat World at the amphitheater here. It's a busy one. It's nice. Hell yeah.

It's good to be busy. That's right. It's good to be busy and to have work. I love to rock, you know, that's the thing. It's a blessing. It's a blessing. It's a blessing and occurs. Especially when your job's rocking.

Hell yeah. All right, well, please go check all that out and go support our friend Steve. I've heard the tunes. I've heard the licks. They're very tasty. They're tasty licks. Thank you. And I think my exact remark to you was, how do I get my guitar to sound that one?

That's a very tasteful record, Steve. Thank you. My answer to you was, smoke more of that good. That's right. So please go check all that out. go check out our Patreon and sign up over there. We would surely appreciate your support. So until Monday, I hope you all have a good weekend and be well. Thanks, fellas. Peace out.