Weekly Skews - S6 Ep36: Weekly Skews – Taco Bell Innocent!

Episode Date: July 22, 2026

It’s a hot diarrhea summer, and Taco Bell has been framed! We will not stand for it. Then we break down Trump’s big speech from Thursday night which said very little even though some people heard a lot.Weekly Skews is brought to you by Fast Growing Trees. Visit https://www.fastgrowingtrees.com/skew and use the code SKEWWeekly Skews is brought to you by Leesa. Go to https://Leesa.com for 30% off select mattresses PLUS get an extra $50 off with promo code SKEW, exclusive for my listeners. Weekly Skews is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. If you believe religious freedom is supposed to protect everybody, not be weaponized to turn away good families, visit https://www.au.org/crooked to learn more and become a member today. 

What's up everybody? Welcome back. Happy Skews Day to you. It is July 22nd, 2020, 26. We're recording this on Monday, July 21st at about 1 o'clock in the afternoon on the West Coast. Hope you're staying as cool as possible out there in the dog days of summer. I'm trying. That's Mark.

How you doing, Mark? Good man. I got a quick story for you about my neighbors for a second. So it has a point to it. I'll get to it. So my dog, she getting cranky in her old age. she likes to determine where she walks, right? Normal shit for a old person or dog.

She has not been wanting to go out a specific door of our apartment complex. And I did not know why, although it did smell weird in that entrance. So then Saturday night, about 10 o'clock, I'm taking her out and I spot my neighbor. Now, my neighbor, this particular family, I don't know where they're from. I know they're white and they don't speak English. So I'm a guess Eastern Europe. Yeah. I don't know for sure.

Usually a good guess, yeah. the dude is taking his cat out for a walk on a harness Love it And then the cat We go out afterward the cat is peed in the in the in the stairwell Where we go out where we were where we were my dog is not bidding one to go out that entrance Right oh shit that's the weird smell she didn't smell in the cat piss and she thinks she'd get it mulled by a fucking alley cat Right. Mm-hmm

So what I'm realizing is I'm going to turn into like an old guy with a very specific anti-immigrant complaint is like we got to get the immigrants out they walk the cats Yeah. I mean, I'm not going to lie. I've seen people, I've seen cats be walked before in harnesses and stuff. I've always thought of that in my head as being a like super like, like the only the whitest of white American, like goopy, Gwyneth Poutrewee type type people would walk a cat in this country. I would not have thought of like a sort of, you know, salt of the earth, you know, potato eating. peasant from Eastern Europe, Mark, that obviously your neighbor is. I don't know anything about them. I'm saying, I wouldn't have thought that they would be the put a harness on a cat and walk it type. I would have thought it'd be like,

you know, like a yoga studio lady thing. Yeah, bump potato whole family, but cats go for a walk. Yeah, it seems counterintuitive to me, but you know, takes all kinds. I mean, again, like a lot, like I know you're a cat guy, you don't like hearing this, but for a lot of people,

a litter box is fucking disgusting to have in your house. So it could be. Maybe some cultures don't want cat poops in their kitchen. I get that. Right. So before we get to the show, I wanted to ask, speaking of cat poops in your kitchen, Trey, have you come down with a turbo diarrhea yet? No, but I'm way, I know it's coming. I actually was just reading about it.

It says symptoms appear two to 14 days after exposure. So I'm sure I already have it. I just don't know it yet. And then it says it lasts like a month or can last a month. Because see, I've got like a month off the road. And I was like, as soon as I heard that, last a month. I was like, well, I'm going to spend this month pooping the whole time. That's what's going to happen. It's somehow coming. But no, knock on wood, not yet.

Katie's fastidiously washing all of our berries and stuff every day. It doesn't help, but go ahead. Great. Well. It's like, yeah, my understanding is like the disease is called cyclospora. The path is called cyclospora. So the disease is cyclosporiasis. You need a, you got to get an about, yeah, it's like a vicious case of the shits. And you've got to get antibiotics for it, I think. which I've never had to get antibiotics for diarrhea before.

It doesn't sound like fun. But so, yeah, my nephew doesn't eat vegetables, which I think he's on the right track. He turns out he's the health nut because it is a hot diarrhea summer. I want to read this to you. And we're talking about the American Century of Humiliation. Let me read this headline to you. Mexico warns of diarrhea risk when visiting United States. It must have been so, it felt so great to write that out of Mexico.

Yeah, absolutely. Are they calling it like Washington's Revenge or something? something like that. Yeah. You know, because Monizuma's revenge. Yeah, I was trying to think of an old-time

the American leader guy. Yeah, it turns out Montezuma's revenge is a dish best served cold. So, yeah, Mexico has issued a formal travel advisory warning citizens

about a growing diarrhea causing outbreak in the United States as cases linked to a food-born parasite continued to climb across dozens of states. So, yeah, so the only thing, the relevant part here

to, like, government stuff is a year ago the CDC made cyclospore surveillance optional, which when you make stuff optional for companies, they don't fucking do it. Even though they should, because Taylor Farms, the companies have to recall the lettuce, is probably going to lose millions and millions of dollars and have to rebrand. Change the name of the fucking company.

Because it's the diarrhea company now. Cyclospor had been tracked for 28 years. It's one of six pathogens of CDC stopped tracking last year after cutbacks. They also stopped tracking Listeria. Which we had an outbreak of a couple years ago. That was tied to Boar's Head meat. remember because that I was convinced that I had that one too. And that, but like, and I'm not, I swear I'm not normally like a hypocondriac-y type guy, but like, I just had, I was like, this isn't diarrhea.

This is dysentery. That's what I was saying. I was like, this is just, I was like, I think I can die from this. Like, that's how bad it was. And, and that was during the Listeria outbreak. And I had eaten Bore's head meat. And I was like, well, that's it. I've got Listeria.

I was telling everybody, it's like, I've got the Listeria. It's like, I've got the Listeria. And then one of my, like, smarter friends, Donnie was like, I'm pretty sure that'll, like, kill you if you don't go to the hospital. He's like, plus all the cases that are only in the Northeast that they've confirmed her from the thing. I was like, shut the fuck up, Donnie. But anyway, I guess it wasn't Listeria. But I thought I had it, which is why I remember that being a thing. Yeah, yeah, it's 2026.

And, you know, as of late, Somali pirates are back and that Oregon Trail diseases are back. We got just doing it all over again. As of today, 4,000 cases across 40 states or so. We don't really actually know the case count because the states are having to do on their own because the CDC apparently can't track it anymore. They just threw their hands up at it. Maybe we have a confirmed source, which is Taylor Forums, and most of them appear to be in Michigan. Did you see, so Taco Bell is taking a blame for this. We'll get to that it's why not their fault in a second.

Did you see Katie Miller's tweet about, like, there were like 4,300 cases in Michigan at one point? This is Stephen Miller's wife, and she, she, Stephen Miller's podcasting wife, and she was like, 4,300. people ate at Taco Bell in Michigan, like she was surprised by that. And I was like, how fucking out of touch are you people? Sure, it's way more than that. That's one day at one location. Yeah, right. Yeah.

Anyway. So, yeah, Taco Bell, like, I, okay, did they, I found out later, they, like, self-reported or something, because when I first heard they were, like, looking into Taco Bell, I was like, I don't know the right word for this. I was like, but that feels like the restaurant version of racism. I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, They're stereotyping Taco Bell. Of course, when the turbo diarrhea comes up there, like, you know it was Taco Bell.

And I was like, and that is bullshit. But then my other smart buddy was like, well, they self-reported. And I was like, okay, never mind. Well, they did, but that's what you're supposed to. They did the responsible thing and they're going to fuck for it. But like, I was thinking about this because like, you know, whenever. So we've talked about before about how vastly America's food options have expanded over the course of like my lifetime. You're a little younger than me, but yours too.

But like, when I first ate Taco Bell, it was, I think maybe my first experience Mexican food other than my mom's hard shell ground beef tacos. Definitely true for me 100%. Ground beef with olives in it. Yes. Which is delicious. I love my mom's cooking, but like it abuela would hit you with a fucking wooden spoon

for calling that Mexican food. Yeah, not exactly authentico. Yeah. So like I always thinking like, I've heard Taco Bell Diarrhea jokes my whole life and though I've never personally had it gotten sick for eating Taco Bell. Me too. Yes. So like, is it just a racist thing? Because America's first experience with Taco with Mexican food was

We mixed all up with Mottosuma's revenge and don't lick the water and shit? Right. I mean, I've always kind of thought that. Yeah, I've always been a big time Taco Bell apologists just in terms of like, no, it actually hits, but also the diarrhea thing. I've always been like, that's just a stupid. People have heard other people say that, so they all just say that. I was like, but that's fucking bullshit. But anyway.

So, yeah, so Taco Bell, I didn't, I'm quoted here. Taco Bell identified the source before the FDA did and promptly pulled it. Basically, Taco Bell is now more reliable authority than the food and drug administration. What they did was notice it, and I'm quoting here from Epidemic. neologist. Strong supply chain records at a single restaurant chain, Taco Bell, likely helped a lot with determining the actual cause. So what they did was realize what was making people sick and take it all out of their food products. Right, which is smart. It's like you said earlier about the Taylor Farms and the brand, like it would hurt them way more. It's like they,

they were getting out in front of it because they know how much worse that would be if they didn't do that. But people acting like Taco Bell did something wrong. If anybody, look, not to obfuscate too much here but like disease outbreaks in food happen that's why you have a CDC and an FDA right shit happens the reason you have them is to be able to track it and to be able to figure out what the source is to recall as quickly as possible and that's where they fucked up is we don't have that capability right now so let we left it to talk we've decked about deputized taco bell as Department of Health and Human Services is what's happened so see you can't that would hit for some of these people to hear

Do you know what I mean? Because that's what they think. Like the hardcore, like capitalists and stuff, I feel like they would try to use that as an argument for being like, yeah, right. That's why you don't need the fucking FDA and all that. And we've got Taco Bell. We've got good capitalist corporations who'll take care of that for us naturally as a result of market forces. That's how, you know, shit like that.

I would say that might be fair except for the fact that Taco Bells, and he tossed, excuse the turn of phrase, a shit ton of fucking business for doing the right thing. Because they made a noise about it, right? and try to keep their customers like, like, you know, healthy. So like, we're talking about doge cuts here. And I, like, I just want to point out that, like, I'm not sure what they did with the fucking money unless Elon just Venmoed himself out of the CDC budget, right? Because it just like disappeared.

But I feel like right now the CDC has three employees, but five brand new shiny cyber trucks. All right. And I just want to ask, like, as a person who believes in a certain amount of public goods, and stuff. Would we all have chipped in a half a cent more in income taxes so people of Michigan didn't all get crippling month-long cases of diarrhea? I mean, yeah, you'd like to think. I would. Especially because you just, especially because you pitch it as like, you know, today, Michigan, tomorrow, wherever you live, you know, you don't want the diarrhea, do you? It's as it's in like, I forget 40 states total, but yeah, but the bulk of the cases are in Michigan. But if you want

what this is like, I read the federal, a 44-year-old nurse who's had, she's brought a sick day. She's having to wear a diaper to work. Even after she got antibiotics. So this is a good sign for your health care system where the nurses are working with shit in their underwear? Yeah, no. So the actual corporate bad guy, well, I'd say bad guy. Again, some of this stuff is unavoidable. It's going to happen or whatever.

How they've handled has been the problematic part. So it's a company by the name of Taylor Farms. And they seem to be their pre-bagged lettuce options, which just because if you don't buy Taylor Farms, you're like, I'd buy the Broder brand and the Whole Foods brand. Nope, that's them too. Right. If you want to be getting anything extra for paying Whole Foods prices for bag lettuce, the answer is fuck no.

Yeah. It's the same lettuce. Right. And so the CEO of Taylor Far as a big Trump donor. So the FDA announced a recall of Taylor Farms lettuce. And the CEO went to the White House, had a big meeting, and came out and announced the FDA was apologizing to them. Right. Yeah, I saw all of that.

So. Right. The CEO met with Trump or whatever. And then the FDA was like, no, it wasn't them actually. But it was. So what happened? Okay. So this is where it gets really confusing. And what you want is really confusing public health messaging in the middle of a public health care crisis. Right. Right. And this isn't the world's worst one. No one's died. Like we're laughing about this because it's diarrhea. Right. Right. So there was a positive, false positive test, but it was not the main one. Okay. So telepharm me read here. Taylor Farms, New Mexico has been implicated in the cyclospora outbreak. The recall of shredded iceberg lettuce from last week still stands. The false positive test was on lettuce coming over the border from Mexico that was not yet part of the recall. If that positive had been accurate, it would have meant more lettuce need to be recalled. So what got canceled with the second test was the possibility of an expanded recall, but the first recall still stands.

So the CEO was just fucking lying when he said the FBI was apologizing. They were just informing him that when they did the second test, to confirm the first result, they found out the first test was false. Right. The positive test was false. But that wasn't the main thing. Right. Anyway, I just want to offer a reminder here that we still don't have an FDA commissioner right now because the last one resigned after being pressured to prove fruit flavored vapes.

Because the vape industry paid Trump a bribe. Right. So now we got a second bribe-related controversy because the Taylor Farm CEO paid Trump to let everybody get diarrhea. Well, now, if you're, you know, pooping in your diaper, at least you can unwind with a nice fruit loop-favored vape option from your local 7-11. Everyone, we're not eating lettuce this summer. We're eating fruit-flavored vapes. Yeah. All right.

So, anyway, I guess it could be worse if you've got the turbo diarrhea because let me read here. General Mills today, I think, announced a recall of 736,000 Pillsbury rolls over glass contamination fears. So do you not eat a lettuce sandwich on glass bread. Right now. Would you rather? Would you rather, Trey, poop lettuce or glass bread? I mean, I got, I think I have to say glass bread. Really?

Because, again, I heard this poop lettuce makes you poop for like a month. You just talked about that nurse. You having to wear a diaper. It's like, as long as I survive pooping out the glass bread, I don't know. then you got like it turns up your I'm going how much class

we're talking about in this bread Mark no one knows how much class talking about this bread the people in charge of testing it

all got my whole fucking unemployed right now so yeah all right well we got a lot more to cover

with y'all so we're just going to go ahead and dive right into it starting with um the daily dumb ass

as usual so Matt hit me with that graphic if you got it please This week's DD is the TV for giving us nothing but reruns even when it's presidential speeches. The president is continuing to look backwards.

At 2026, he gave a speech about the 2020 election last night. I would like to see him move forward and get off that topic. I'd like to get back to what we're really trying to accomplish, you know. And that's, even today, I want to hear where we're going. You know, I'm not all for that conversation at all. What do you want him focusing on instead? Well, let's get Iran figured out. Yeah.

All right. That's a Trump voter being asked about, like, what is opinion on Trump's speech from Thursday night and being like, yawn? Which is basically everyone's response to it, which I found fucking fascinating. Yeah. Fascinating in a good or a bad way. Because I feel like the positive interpretation of it is like, because I was in Arkansas, my buddy Caleb that was with me the next day, he was like, he was talking about. that and how it seemed like no one cared or whatever.

And he was like, yeah, man, he's just, just like it just feels like he's, he's losing it. He's losing his juice or whatever. Do you know what I mean? It's become a more like, uh, pap Paul, shaking his fist at a cloud type feeling with him, which would be a, uh, that's a good thing, right? Or no, because Stephen Miller's still there doing shit or like,

but I'm saying, I feel like there's multiple ways to interpret the fact that it seems like people don't give a fuck about his ravings as much as they used to. well like you got to we're going to get into the various parts of it but like you've got to break down what he actually said versus what people were trying to hear in it right but if you want to go for the part that people were assuming he was going to say and we're trying to find in there who is essentially calling for some sort of authoritarian crackdown so the fact that everyone just yon's on is probably a good thing but i'm not sure what to do when we have a lame duck president who no one's listened to with three years to go and fucking third right so but like literally like even fox news like basically like basically they aired the speech but didn't cover it afterwards. Like the entire Fox News, Fox and Friends is a three hour long show. And the next morning they didn't fucking mention a presidential prime time address. Right. Didn't a lot of people like a lot of whatever, stations and stuff end up like cutting away from it?

Yeah, most networks didn't, which is not unprecedented. Biden gave a speech about the dangers to democracy at the end of his term, near the end of his term the last year. And none of the networks cared. So there's also, there was one big Obama speech that a bunch of names. So it's not unprecedented. People think it's like boring or like repetitive or purely political in nature, not presidential in nature. They will choose not to carry it fairly often.

But in the age of stream, you can find it if you want to watch it. It's not you have ABC has to carry it or whatever. So. Right. But I want to emphasize here to talk about what was actually in the speech for a second. At no point in the speech had Trump directly claimed that the 2020 election was stolen. His speech about attacks on elections was the only time in six years he didn't say his re-election in 2020 was attacked.

That's fucking crazy. They got him to stick to the teleprompter in his speech where he was trying to go ham. And for normal people, there's usually some connection between what they say and what they do, right? Which is part of our reason we're through the looking glass here. And what people were like thinking he was going to say

let me call here from Senator Bernie Morano of Ohio Ohio before Trump speech. This may be the most important Oval Office addressed since the Cuban Missile Crisis. they were expecting him to say that John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock were illegitimately elected in 2020. They both were elected senators of Georgia in the same election. Yeah.

And that that was rigged somehow and they were going to like you can remove senators from office. It didn't be voted out by the rest of the Senate, which the Senate isn't going to do based upon some made up bullshit because they don't want to keep their jobs. So like it anyway, so there's a disconnect between what people said he was going to say. Yeah. what he said what he said was in the docs

that he declassified and released and also what the docs said and there's also a huge disconnect between all of that and what he's doing about any of it which is jack fucking shit

yeah I mean I remember in the lead up to it I saw these like articles speculative articles and stuff on Reddit and everywhere else from people being like internally high level members of the Republican Party

you're freaking out over what Trump is going to do or say you know on Thursday night and there's people bracing for like I don't fucking know calls for civil war and shit or that type of thing.

All this like really, really kind of hyping it up and then, and then it actually happened and it was just like, it seemed like just a fart in the wind,

as they say. So. It is the, it is the most far, it's the most windy fart to ever be farted into the wind. It's like, like, but it did like,

so to add to the general air, because like, like, so back during the air, uh, lead up to the Iraq war, Bush's White House officials would say stuff like this all the time. You're like, we must prevent another 9-11.

We must overthrow Saddam Hussein. Right. Those are two separate sentences and separate thoughts. But if a person just barely paying attention to get up to their own conclusions to think you're saying, like you're saying them from some. A lot of people still believe this Saddam had something to do with it. A hundred percent. Yeah.

Right. I mean, I know at the time, I remember vividly at the time, other people, like guys in my high school and stuff, 100 percent thought. we had to go after Saddam in Iraq because of 9-11 and they were directly related. And there's never, but then when they get called on it, you're like, well, I didn't, I didn't lie. I didn't say it. Right. And they didn't technically say that. So, yeah.

But we all know what you're saying. People know what you're saying. Anyway, the point is like the air of fuckery around the shit Trump's saying is way different from the actual words he's saying. But like, what was in the docs he did release? It's pretty funny because what was in there was stuff about how Russia really wanted. to frame Joe Biden with some bullshit story about corruption in Burisma.

Trump can only release that because his followers aren't going to read it, right? Right. And then it's also like there's a bunch of CIA. I like reading this. One thing I do like about Trump's White House is he declassified as a bunch of

intelligence documents. So for made up bullshit reasons. But I like, it's not really reading, it's not really looking through the CIA's underwear drawer. It's more like looking at what the CIA is found in China's underwear drawer. So I don't. do find it interesting.

But like part of this, their conclusions were basically like adversary governments who have maybe probed our election infrastructure and found them hard to penetrate or rigging an election like basically would not be worth the trouble because here's the interesting part. They have concluded that they would not need to actually hack any of our elections. They would have to just have to announce that they did it and let us fucking kill each other. Yeah. Right. So.

So. so you get a foreign adversary's like we have to do shit we just have to get them to accuse each other of cheating in elections and then you have Donald Trump being like these documents say that there's cheating in their elections he's just doing the GRU's job for them it's wild to think about that process that like you have to think months at least long an elaborate process taking place in dark rooms and Russia and in China or wherever else where they're considering and you know undertaking actual electoral interference and the world's biggest superpower and all this stuff and then one day one guy is like, what did we just say we did? And they're all like, that's just crazy enough to work, you know, or then realizing that it could actually work that way. And it's like, well, let's just do that. Well, that's way easier. It's like the, just the internet version of like Operation Mincemeek, where the British

floated to the body up on the shores of France with fake Nazi invasion plans. Yes. Yeah, but that was like, that whole thing was like super elaborate and stuff. you know what I mean, the actual, like, practicality of pulling that off, you know, like a real body and all that shit. But anyway, yeah, that's a cool story. Yeah, yeah. Good movie on Netflix, Colin Furf's in it.

So I don't want to say here, like, we, one thing or a bunch of people make a lot, I've gotten very rich from an obfuscation in this era of our media. And, like, one thing we as people watching the news should be tried to do is to make a distinction between influence operations and rigging elections because they're not the same thing. The first one's more of like, because people would spend a lot of time blurring the distinction between the two, but like an influence off can be as simple as just like an advertising campaign.

Giving Tim Pool $400,000 a month or something, yeah. Yes, yes. Right. So more cheaper than that, you can like, you know, just boost post on Facebook. Yes, yeah. And it's not necessarily inherently political. Sometimes they're not even going to be a political out. It would be like, you know,

you can make any sort of piece of content go viral. that causes people to argue on the internet. Yeah, right. Like, find the useful them. And, but they, actually hacking a voting machine

is an act of fucking war. Right. And you got, like, you've got to, you've got to, you got to, keep in your head,

there's a distinction between a Facebook ad, and hacking critical infrastructure. You know what I'm saying? Right. But people don't, for whatever reason, I think going back to,

like, a lot of Russiagate stuff, is sort of the lines sort of been blurred between it. And Russia did, Russia did, did actually hack into some election software. They didn't do anything or change anything, and you just saw if they could do it.

I think it was in Georgia, right? But they did do a bunch of influence operations, going back to 2020 and 2016. So anyway, so Trump is right about some of our election infrastructure's vulnerabilities to foreign influence campaigns and cyber attacks, which, you know, can delay results, which can throw another monkey wrench in. Like, you don't have to actually flip the results in election.

If you just delay the results a month, you can cause all kinds of fuck green shit, right? So, but here the thing is the thing about that, cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency, what helps harden state election systems against data breaches and other threats, got doged along with the CDC. So Trump also shut down an FBI task force on foreign influence

and fired a federal commission and helped states administer elections. So are we concerned about this or not? Right. I am. The White House appears not to be. I know they say they are, right? Even in the night of Trump speech, do you know what John Solomon is, Trey? I don't think so.

He's a like former like right wing reporter who works in the White House. now and he basically is Trump's point man on trying to find electoral fraud in 2020, right? And he was speaking from the White House after the speech and basically was like, yeah, we haven't there's been no efforts to hack the elections.

We can't find any, we can't find any proof that any single vote was flipped in 2020, 2020, 2020, or 2024. But we're not through all the documents, he said. So maybe we'll, maybe, say only six years have passed, right? You've got to give more time. There's also another big distinction here between downloading versus hacking.

One is like anonymous, capital a anonymous. Like the cyber hacking group, cyber warlord stuff. The other is just right-clicking. And because a lot of us are computer illiterate, I'm going with me and said, we don't really like think about the distinction a lot. But because Colorado got a mention regarding China, it was a local story there. Here's a local reporter in Colorado named Kyle Clark trying to sell up the documents

better than I can as they pertain to China and Colorado. You started going for these documents the minute they came out. Yeah. So as soon as the White House released the documents, I went through each one looking for references to Colorado, and there are two such pages. There's a White House Task Force report that says that Colorado was among the states where voter registration rules were, quote-unquote, compromised by China. Sounds scary, right? It's not. The second document says that China got Colorado's voter rolls the same way that literally anyone else in the world can because they're public document.

You can go get them. I can go get them. They don't show how anybody voted. It's stuff like your name, your address, your party affiliation, the things that candidates and parties use to target voters. Now, it's well known that China vacuums up available information about Americans. Unsettling, for sure. Proof of election interference? Not at all, even though that's how President Trump framed it.

Okay. So do we somehow, like, I wish we were more British about this stuff, like a stiff upper lip kind of thing. Because, like, we somehow don't have a speed, but, like, between, like, we can't describe something as, like, a bit distressing, but not worth shitting your pants over. Right. It's either like not real or not a thing at all, or it's fucking def-con to four-alarm fire shit.

You're supposed to be freaking the fuck out about entirely. As opposed to maybe a guy the FBI should be working on this. We should have laid him off. Right. But you don't need to like lose sleep over it. No, you don't. But let's take a very quick break and then we'll continue to talk about

the ways in which these things get blown out of proportion right after this. Weekly skews is brought to you by fast-growing trees. Now look, who wants to spend an entire Saturday in the summer driving 45 minutes to a garden center wandering around, end up coming home with some busted up shrub, getting dirt all over the back cargo area of whatever you're driving, dirt all over the place?

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in Select Theaters July 24th. We're back. So, yes. All right, so there's another example of how this stuff can get spun out of control and like become exaggeration. rated even if it should be like somewhat concerning. So let me create the quote here from the CIA note that got passed around the internet.

Separately, in mid-2019, the Chinese government strategy against the United States was focused on undermining domestic confidence in the U.S. president. That was Trump at the time. The strategy included efforts to use Chinese contracts within big U.S. companies to influence U.S. business leaders to turn against the U.S. president. Chinese government sought to identify U.S. journalists as the part that got focused on. Chinese government sought to identify U.S. journalists who had reported negatively on the U.S. president and paid them to write more

negative articles about him. The Chinese government wanted the U.S. president to lose the next election. Okay, so paying reporters to write stories. What that says, it doesn't actually claim that journalists were paid. It says that China, someone in China, maybe not with the knowledge of higher-ups in the Chinese government, sought to identify and pay journalists to write negatively about Trump. It doesn't say it succeeded. It doesn't say what journalists or they tried to contact.

or if it came from mainstream athletes or whatever, what resulted from it. If there's any evidence of actual payments to American journalists by the Chinese government, you'd fucking bet we would know about it. Right. And again, to reference it another time, we do know about the equivalent of that in the other direction,

but from Russia, right, with all the podcaster. I mean, those guys are not journalists. But, I mean, fuck,

I mean, they're thought leaders or whatever they are now. But, like, we do know for a fact. That, you know, that same thing happened, but, you know, to the advantage of the right, though. If you guys, if you guys don't know what they're talking about, we're talking about it was a Tim Poole, Benny Johnson, if you were the other concern. Yes, a couple of years. They were getting paid like $20,000 a YouTube video per week.

They were actually one video per week. Yeah, like six figures a month just to do the shit that they already do, you know. They were cut out in Canada, the Canadian conservative media company. and they say they were just duped. They were just getting this free money for no reason to espouse their normal opinions, which are just very helpful to the Russian government. Right. And like, so while we're doing this, like, if we're really,

I did, I personally, this is one of my, like, stupid nationalist beliefs. I don't think anybody ought to be working for, if you're an American, I'd be working for a foreign fucking government. Mm-hmm. And especially ought not be taking money under the table. to espouse opinions you do not hold. If you really are enthusiastic about the Kazakhstan oil business, right.

If that is just your personal passion project, go for it. But if they're paying you $30,000 and then also you read an op-ed in the Wall Street journals saying actually we should be best friends with it. What's the name? Your rapping dictator you love. You can still have to say in his name. Gerben Gouldy Bertie Muhammadov. Yes, that guy.

Grip and you say that again, I love it. My man, Gerben GERbing, GERBin-Gooley, Bernie, Muhammad. Yeah, sir, if you're like, if you want to take a payoff to write about your best friend Gerben Gouli and how he should, how someone should pay more attention to his great DJing career, then feel free to do so. But like when, when China cat is used, because we talk about China a little bit, fucking working against their interests for on behalf of a foreign government while you live in their country, they'll just fucking kill you.

Right. And like, for something out here, all you have to do is follow some paperwork with the government, and you can work on behalf of like Saudi Arabia, even though they did not 11. And you worked in the Bush White House like fucking Ari Fleischer, and now you're a paid spokesperson for Saudi Arabia. And then no one bats an eye about it. But like,

but we're supposed to be worried about China maybe paying somebody, even though half the fucking half of DCs in the payroll of foreign countries, including the White House press secretary. Carolyn Leavitt, before she worked in the White House, was paid to put her name on a series of opeds in right-wing publications. praising a fugitive Chinese mogul

who's since been convicted of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from fans of his purported anti-communist movement. He was just convicted and sent to prison in New York three weeks ago. I'm talking about exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wingui who goes about Mao's Guo. We know she was paid, but pretend that Carolyn Leavitt wasn't paid.

Maybe this is her personal passion project to defend the legal interest of an exiled Chinese businessman. that's her fucking hobby. So, Guo got rich off real estate. This is going to sound familiar to you because it seems like how all these guys around the world are exactly the same. Guo recently got rich off of real estate in China after some sort of ploy where he had a Chinese mayor's sex state. That's the same thing that Jared Kushner's dad went to prison for, basically. If you want to be in real estate in the wealth world, you better be entrapping some.

somebody with a fucking sex tape. Okay. He, like, blackmailed a mayor by having a sex tape into giving him, like, permits and that type of thing

for real estate development deals or some shit. I think what he did was he would, the mayor was the corrupt one. What he did was obtain the mayor's sex tape and snitch on the mayor to the government and get favor for the, the mayor was compromised because of the sex tape.

What Miles did was obtain it and turn it over to the government and get the mayor sent to prison. So, anyway, he's rich now and now he's in American jail. So a lot of people, by the way, you're talking about the web you don't want to be involved in with these people. A lot of people think Guo's anti-communist rhetoric was a color for ongoing work on behalf of Chinese intelligence.

So the White House press secretary has somehow Mr. Beaned her way into being a spy for the Chinese government. Right. Okay. Caroline Levitt wrote good things about him, right? because he ostensibly says communism's bad, capitalism's good. And that's why she would support that. But she was paid to do that by China because he secretly is. She was paid by him or his legal. Basically, she was saying how he was being unjustly prosecuted.

What he did was he took, like, he pretended to be an anti-communist crusader. So China embeds, China has been discovered to be running its own secret police force in New York. They had like a police station and shit. What they do is they harass dissidents who claim about Chinese oppression. So embedding a person in the American pro-democracy anti-Chinese communist apparatus would be incredibly helpful to them just for fucking intelligence purposes. Right. Right. So that's what people think what was up to.

Either way, what he did, as reported, anti-communist activists, was solicited a billion dollars worth of donations from people who want China to be free and democratic and then just keep the fucking money. A billion. That's the number I saw, yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, so he's in prison for 30 years now for Connie as supporters. Until, you know, Trump definitely pardons him. So until someone wants to put an end of this stuff in general, I'm just bored watching people get rich off it,

complain the loudest. Like, where's it with Caroline Levin get the fucking balls to complain about China? Like, trying unsuccessfully to pay people to write stories when that's what she took money from someone. somebody associated with China to fucking write on their behalf. I know. I mean, again, I'm saying, like, I know we're, like, we're small potatoes and all that.

But, like, it just, like, they, while they're getting paid on the table like this, and it's been proven at this point repeatedly, and they still just talk about how George Soros funds, you can't even, like, you know, protest the opening of an AI data center in person that only gets covered by your, like, local news station in fucking Wichita or whatever without people saying that you're some actor that was paid to be there by George Soros and all this shit. Like everything that's like left-leaning is funded by these shadowy, what, communist or whatever the fuck it's supposed to be.

And again, I cannot stress enough, I ain't never heard a peep out of these people. In 10 fucking years, I've not gotten, you know, any phone calls, any nothing to be doing,

you know, these are my interests, my hobby is the opposite of Caroline Levitt. So I'll take China's money to just be the kind of, you know, but they're not doing it. But they're bitch about this type of thing all the time. If you want to how little money is floating around supposedly center, left, left wing

circles, like we were gifted by a mega rich left wing billionaire. He gave us these microphones. Yeah, that is true. Yes. We were like, yeah, like give, paid in kind in the form of like microphones and cameras and stuff. And I, if you, what's the, what's the girl's name that she's like an influencer on the left, Olivia something? is that right?

Juliana, the one who was supposed to get a problem, they're going to be a man or whatever. She, I think, right, she was caught.

She was getting paid in a similar way, I think, but it was like one tenth or less the amount that Poole and Benny Johnson and all them were getting,

you know, and that she's the only case I can think of. And that's nothing too. It's like, you're paying her, you know, like that about it's like,

anyway so it's not you could you could just ask Matt Matt's job is just rather raise money from these people and he'll tell you how little that's true yeah Matt works in this whole thing Matt just got a new used Toyota and he's really excited about it too

Matt just putting in the chat fuck him that's all he said so also we're known just this week it was out of a discovery reported on you remember Brad Perscale Trey no he was Trump's campaign director or digital campaign director or whatever in 20.

He got caught up in all the Cambridge Analytica stuff when Facebook was caught doing like a what is now extremely amateur AI mind manipulation fuckery with like direct average like anyway back in 2016. Yep. His current job is he's a managing director for the second biggest conservative talk show radio chain in the United States. He's also a registered foreign agent of Israel. Yeah. Well, I mean that makes sense.

that overlap, Mark, you know what I mean? That's just smart covering all your bases. Yeah. Again, I, like, this isn't about, like, I just, I am opposed to, I think all Americans should make up their interests, their minds about American elections based upon their fellow Americans talking to them about the issues and then how it relates to Israel or Saudi Arabia or whatever is fine. I don't like the fact that half the people I'm talking to are apparently on the payrolls of those countries. Right. And, we have to contend it's just a reality we're only interested in it when it's some

countries other countries are free to do it Saudi Arabia can pay you to do what the fuck ever United Arab Emirates Dubai can pay you to do what the fuck ever Israel can apparently pay you to do what the fuck ever Yeah And with China In particular it's because

You know it's like the communist thing right That's how they're viewed and also they're like Big and scary and powerful And also communist and everything So people are like They make for a very good boogeyman in that way. Also, I would love to

because, you know, obviously, Chinese government says they're communist and our government says they're communist, but also they have a shit ton of billionaire. Yeah, super rich people. I know. I've been curious about that for a long time. So, you just like,

it's like, I think the way to think of it is like they're like a, doing a new version of state capitalism, which is totally what we're turning into, where Trump takes government controlling stakes in a lot of different companies. But like, so like, the, but my favorite game we get playing in here. I honestly think when you think about like the amount of,

the countries that could just say they have to elections and cause whatever like we were talking about earlier and they haven't done it, I feel like China doesn't think it's in our interest for us to collapse. I mean, yeah, I've said a version of that about like U.S.-China relations for such a long time. And I don't know it's come up on here,

not that long ago too, but usually it's the idea of like us going to war with China or we got to beat China because they're coming. They're working on it. But yeah, what you just said, it's like, why would China want that, though, dude? It's like they have benefited mightily from a lot of our, you know, decisions in the way that this country has changed in the past 20 or 30 years or whatnot. And like their rise is directly associated with a lot of things that have happened over here. And it's going pretty well for them, it seems to me.

I don't know what, I don't know why they would want. that to happen. We've been something of a golden goose for China, right, in some regard for like a while now. I feel like we're a load-bearing, we're a load-bearing beam on China's structural ascendance. Right. That's a good way to put it. For a while at least.

Like they make a bunch of fuck a ton of money selling this stuff. Right. Right. And we don't care about their human rights abuse as long as they sell stuff for reasonable prices. We don't really get in their way. We've given them South America and, in Africa.

Africa. Right. Yeah. So, like, their Belt and Road initiative. Like, like, if you go to South America right now,

if you rent a car, it's a Chinese car. Chinese car is apparently rule. You can't sell them in the United States. So, like, it's like, we,

anyway. But their favorite game is like, is China our enemy? Or guess which is that famous meme? Like, is China asshole? Let's say, I can't,

I don't do the accent. It sounds racist. Oh, yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. He says, like, Donald Trump,

don't listen to China, China is ass a whole. But, so like, I can never keep track of whether China's our best friend or our deathly adversary. It depends on what day it is. Because if we want to sell the Mayotte chips because Trump got bribed, they're fucking great, right? So here's a lady who works for Trump, who's also very confused about whether or not China is our adversary. If you play this video on that. Our elections are definitely third world. I've lived in Beijing.

And I can say that the elections in Beijing when they were there are much better than California and the United States. All right. The elections in Beijing are greatly run, better than ours, right? What does she mean by that? Like, specifically how? Because she mentioned California, too. I mean, California, it takes a long time.

People always start talking about shit, shit about that. But how do they do it in Beijing? Do you know? I have no idea, but I bet you if a candidate they didn't want to win was winning, I'm sure the winners announced very quickly in Beijing elections. Yeah, right. Yeah. so but like whoa

so you don't have a big speech to basically accuse China trying to depose him in 2020 right if there was any sort of takeaway from that is that China was trying to personally destroy him we're currently preparing to host fucking Xi Jinping for like a big like state visit

in like a couple weeks after Trump just went to China a couple weeks ago right we're doing like he's uh uh they're supposed to come in two months sorry so they offered no answer when asked whether Trump planned any repercussions for China

and response to what he claimed was a data breach of historic scale. In fact, Trump's speaking at a World Cup reception in New York mused that the next time the U.S. hosts the tournament, it should bypass its current North American co-hosts and partner with Beijing instead. So you can get the host cities of Shenzhen and Kansas City just flying back and forth.

The teams would fucking love that. I mean, sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead. Go ahead. Finish it. I'm going here from Trump. We do China, United States. You have a short flight in between games.

The players would love that. He was pitching that. He's credited the idea to Gianni Infantino, who must have been like just nodding, like, is this fucking idiot. It's the flight is 6,300 miles and 15 hours, by the way. Yeah. I thought it was kind of wild that they even,

I mean, I super, super loved the World Cup. But I was like, man, all of North America, Mexico, the U.S. and Canada, I was like, that's a lot of, you know, that's a huge amount of, and I know they tried to do it logistically where they were headquartered in various places for a long time, but yeah, putting the Pacific Ocean in,

the Pacific Ocean, which covers like almost half of the fucking planet, depending on where you're looking at it from, in between the two host countries is insane. The next World Cup is like, it's in South America and Spain and Portugal, but except it kind of really isn't because only the opening games, are in the South American countries, and then all of the rest of everything after that is in Spain and Portugal. So they clearly know that that would be insane to try to do a trans-oceanic fucking World Cup.

Also, like, for the viewing purposes, how the time zone is working on that? Because, like, you get really, it might be, it might actually honestly make more sense to put, like, some on games on one side of the globe and some on the other for a global sporting event. But I guess maybe you could do, like, Group A in California and Group B in China, and then you wouldn't have to like you have to pick a site for like the the knockout stages right so it's just California in China that hosted so it's just an all-comy world cup mark is that what you yeah so this fun side plot of this is like Trump accused basically he's like part of the game here is acting like the documents were new to him like you just discovered them so he's tasked for

separate federal agencies with investigating and this this data breach instructed them to quote, fired those involved in the cover-up and to file criminal charges if appropriate against these people. It's the same people that worked for him in 2020, to work for him now. His Director of National Intelligence in 2020, 2021 was John Ratcliffe, who's currently his CIA director. So whoever did not put this information in his presidential daily brief, according to him, back in 2020, is the same person who's tasked with finding out who not put it in his

daily presidential brief back in 2020. Right. I was forward to John Radliff arresting himself. Yeah. It's like that meme from that Tim Robertson show about it, where it's like a hot dog mobile crashes into a building and he's dressed like a hot dog. Like, look, we're all trying to find the guy who did this or whatever.

That's just playing out in Trump's White House every day. Yeah. So, yeah, another one on the Army Enemies with China thing. Quote, I'm a big fan of President Xi, Trump said, at last week's NATO summit. Praise in the country from mostly staying on the sidelines of the war in Iran, despite fears early in the war that Beijing could provide Tehran with military assistance. Four U.S. troops at least were killed over the weekend.

I had a military base in Jordan, I believe, that American troops used, that Iran targeted. And I've seen some people say that they probably couldn't have done this without help targeting from either China or Russia. So, yeah, our best friend China or Russia. Trump likes them both, so I'm not sure how to pick what they. Yeah. So anyway, let me quote here from China. After Trump levied these elections on Thursday night,

China's foreign ministry responded by saying they had, quote, no factual ground. China hears the principle of non-interference in other countries' internal affairs. We have no interest in interfering in the U.S. elections and have never done so. We urge the U.S. to reflect on its own behavior. We urge the U.S. to reflect on its own behavior. So China is basically our wife, as we're about to order a fifth beer. Right.

But, well, I mean, what, Trump, it's just whatever. It's just, he's just, it's pro wrestling. He's, right, okay. But it's like he just, him saying all he loves she or whatever, but also China's doing this. Does he separate the two in his mind at all or does he even think about that part? It just doesn't matter. I think. So going about the pro wrestling part of this, like you generate heat.

Yeah. To beef with somebody, then you make up with them. Then you beef with them. Right. Right. So are you saying it's all k-fabe? The Trump and China thing? Like, it's all just for show on both sides.

I don't, but I don't think it's a true of show on both sides. China has no part in his show. That's the thing is like, like, I think it's dangerous to play this game because China, China just got, there is professional wrestling in China. They're Americans trying to get rich over there starting pro wrestling promotions, but they just got it. They're not familiar with the idea of lying for fun. Right.

So I would recommend that we in the future, not like the president who does that. Um, so also like, I'll say this. So this is the first time China's had a hacked that or attempted to hack or whatever whatever they did in Colorado, whatever their infrastructure. They honestly, they got pretty deterred from it last time because there was a big hack back in 2015. They hacked the office of personnel management and American health care providers and other companies and got access to a basically a shit ton of Americans personnel and health records. Yeah, I actually, I remember that because I in 2015, I was still working for the government. And I remember when OPM got hacked and I was getting told about it and stuff.

And then it was one of those things. It's like, it came up and everybody was like, oh, no, well, that sounds real bad. And then I had two meals and forgot it ever happened until this moment. Yeah. You brought it back up. But our government didn't. They got sanctioned and fucking, they got whatever the, the version of the international version being called in the principal's office for doing it. They got in fucking trouble for it.

But then this time around, when Trump basically accused them of trying to overthrow him, a day after Trump claimed the Chinese government had obtained 220 million U.S. voter files leading to a quote, unprecedented election security nightmare, end quote. There was little to indicate he planned similar punishment. He's just not doing anything. The ban takeaway from this speech is whatever he said,

he wants you to think it's a big deal. But he obviously fucking doesn't. Right. So what was the point then? Like, you know like I don't get it like what's the end game or whatever it's like oh he's not really going to do anything he's just trying to stir shit up but like but why I think they continue to raising all like a bunch of fuss around like they're still trying to push to get the save act passed right

which according to him would secure elections it wouldn't and like the detail the weeds of what's in the bill are bizarre but like it would not accomplish what he said it's going to accomplish which why it's Republicans in the Senate are not going to vote for it And Republicans in the House are making a show of voting for so they don't get fussed out, but they can know they can pass it. And the Senate won't because the Senate will be responsible here. But there's something on this talking point, which is funny. And I want to talk about for a second. Here's a White House spokesman talking about the SAVE Act and voter ID.

And I've seen a bunch of people use this talking point. And, you know, I saw a tweet yesterday from Olive Garden, of all places, that in order to take advantage of their never-ending pasta pass, you have to show voter ID. And I thought, that's weird. Olive Garden takes Pasta Pass security more seriously than Democrats are taking election security. So, yes. President. All right. So I saw Virginia Fox and Steve Kulis, Gilles, make the same point about Alv Garden's new idea for never-ringed Pasta Pass, which is funny.

And also, like, Olive Garden does not, has not pre-authorized you to get the Pasta Pasta Pass by, by, by, by, by, by, by, matching your social security number with a verifiable address. Right. They also don't have the threat of sending you to prison if you're caught using duplicate pasta passes. There also is like a totally different kind of incentive for wanting to fake having an olive garden's unlimited pasta pass as opposed to whatever voting more times than you're supposed to or voting when you're not. You know what I mean?

It's like it's not the same thing. If you don't got a lot of money and you want free food, that's different than being like, I want to vote twice in a state with 20 million people voting in this election or whatever the fuck. It's just not the same situation. You get more value out of stealing of never-ending pasta pass than you do have stealing a vote. By a lot. By like a whole lot. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

So it's not. It makes sense, really, that there would be more scrutiny or security or whatever you would call it. Voting has tremendous civic. value and spiritual value, right? It is participating in a demand. It does not have any directly. Your vote likely does not fucking matter in the sense of swinging

elections, right? We know what we're talking about. You guys understand what we're talking about. So as far as a say back, like, I'm at the point where I'd be fine with voter ID if it calm people down and solve the problem of them being suspicious of elections, but it won't. Right. A bunch of people are convinced,

like they make clickbait, they make money off convincing people that elections are fucking crooked and under threat. So why where they stop, they'll just move the goalposts, but also the bill does not just require a voter ID. If it just require you show a driver's license when you voted, fucking, who gives you shit? But it makes a lot of people show passports. If I'm a county election administrator who doesn't want to end up in prison off this dumb law, I'm making people show passports. How many people in America have passports? It's not a lot. Lisa Murkowski, and we can finish up here, but she

wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. She's a Republican senator for Alaska, if you're not familiar, saying why she's voting against the SAVE Act. And the point she was making, and it's hard to understand this because most Americans live within 15 minutes, 20 minutes of a grocery store they can drive to, right? And county election offices, you can go to and register in person. The law requires people to register to vote in person. Alaska has six places you can do that, an entire state, which is twice the size of Texas. 80% of the state is not connected by roads. There are people who live on remote islands there.

she did the math would cost an $800 plane ticket and a $300 hotel room staying overnight to go to a place to get registered a vote. So that's why she's voting against it. They're making it sound like a simple common sense solution. And it's fucking not.

So I just like, it's like anyway, if everybody, if everybody agreed to shut the fuck up about election being rigged if we had voter ID, I'd be in favor of it. But until we get to that point, I'm not.

because it won't solve anything. So, yeah. All right, well, that's it. We're going to wrap it up there. Thank you guys for watching. Listen, go to traycrouter.com. Look, I'm upcoming tour dates. I've got the Midwest and upstate New York coming up next there in a little bit.

That's all at traycrouter.com. Check out producer mats, audio exclusive, good skews, good people doing good things. If you want a little pallet cleanser, that's on the podcast feed, the audio-only feed for this show. As for this show, you can get more of it and support us in the process by signing up on Patreon. WeeklySkew.com. slash more or go to Patreon and search for my name. You'll find it. $5 a month gets you add-free versions of all the regular episodes plus two full-link bonus episodes every month,

which include quarterly skew-in-a's where we answer questions from you guys. So either way, as long as you keep watching the main show, we'll keep doing them, I reckon, at least in the near term or until the world ends or whatever. Thanks for watching. We appreciate it. We'll see you next time. Love you, bye.