Weekly Skews - S6 Ep39: Weekly Skews – Eminent Domain and Data Centers

Episode Date: August 12, 2026

Looks like Dr. Phil is going to be Ernie Pyle of the Greenland invasion? Then, the anti-data center Butlerian Jihad has spread to Mark’s home county amidst the impending use of eminent domain to build transmission lines, which is important so the economy can support the vital AI-dogs-making-podcasts sector. After that, a lot of Republicans seem to be determined to lose very winnable elections just so Trump can declare them fraudulent.This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp makes it easy to get matched online with a qualified therapist. Sign up and get 10% at  https://www.betterhelp.com/skews This episode of weekly skews is brought to you by Quince. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to https://www.quince.com/skew  for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.This episode is sponsored by ZBiotics. Go to https://www.zbiotics.com/SKEW now. You'll get 15% off your first order when you use SKEW at checkout

What's up, everybody. Welcome back. Happy Skew's Day to you. It's August 11th, 20th. We're recording this on Monday, August 10th at about 1.20 p.m. on the West Coast. I'm trying. That's Mark. How you doing, Mark? Good, man. So you remember a while ago, I've been workshopping this theory, basically, that the Trump presidency exists inside the Taylor-Shared and Cinematic Universe. Okay. That kind of checks out. It's like a chicken or egg thing. know. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So, but no, but I really do like, like, for example, I feel like

they get like the ideas about Western land management from Yellowstone and like oil and gas policy comes from like Billy Bob Thornton modelogs on land man. Right. Cicario was the drug war. And the foreign policy is special ops line S. All right. Now to give an example, what I'm talking about, special ops line S season two, which aired in the fall of 2024 right before Trump took office for his second term. And that season, what's the same? And that season was, they did was they bombed drug cartels and invaded Iran. See what I'm going here? And so I think Trump thinks he's the president on special ops lioness, is what I'm saying.

Right. So I thought, season three just started and it's about like, it involves the Russia-Ukraine war and AI drone swarms. So expect to hear a lot more about AI drone swarms in the recent future. And also Trump to more firmly pick a side of it. You know, he switches sides rhetorically between Ukraine and Russia like the week. but depending on whatever Taylor Sheridan decides the bad guy is and that, I feel like we're going to stick with.

So. Yeah. And further cementing his place is the most important man alive. Yeah. I feel like, most important white man alive. I can't, like,

I can't be the only person in the world to have noticed this. So I feel like every spy isn't seen the world is trying to honeypot Taylor Sheridan at present to try to figure out how to manipulate Trump into whatever war they want to be. Anyway, so I wanted to talk about the area of war for a second, which is still somehow, fucking going on.

Trump, there's a Wall Street Journal piece over the weekend about basically how Trump is trying to surrender but cannot figure out how to do it.

Right. He, like, said to be quoted here, Trump has privately been floating to AIDS that he declared victory and walk away from the Iran war without a nuclear deal

if Tehran fully opened the strait. So if they, quote, if they go back to the status quo, we will forget the reason we started the war. Do you have anything?

Like, like, like, the whole point, like on the nuclear concerns Trump has told senior aides privately in recent weeks that Tehran is likely unable to revive its nuclear work during his presidency after the U.S. destroyed three nuclear sites last year. Right.

But brother Christ, the whole reason we'd bomb them in February was because we didn't destroy them last year, right? I know, but right, but weren't we saying in February, but I thought we'd destroy, I thought we took it out already. Do you know what I mean? Like even when we, even in February when we went back, we thought we was like, I thought you said we had taken

care of this already and now you're saying that we haven't and now they're saying that we did again and whatever else like it's never really made any sense from the very beginning I feel like. But he's saying that he accomplished it last year before he bought them again and earlier this year to redo the same thing that he already did. It's fucking like it's like geez right.

So basically the dynamic of the negotiations right now is Trump keeps agreeing to shit and then Iran jacks up the cost more. He's agreed to give them basically I think $100 billion a year to pay to use the straight of whomews. But then they're like, okay, we have to abandon all your Middle Eastern military bases.

And he's like, okay, I'll do most of them. And now they're like, we want war reparations. And today he got on true social and was like, I'm not paying you war reparations. You're paying me war reparations. With what? We fucking sanction them. We have their money. So I just, yeah.

I mean, it's really like he illustrated for them how much leverage and power they have. Like, they didn't even really fully understand it. And he, in doing this totally pointless shit in the first place, has like outlined that for them and now they're you know they're exploiting it or trying to utilize as best they can so it's just uh i don't know a quagmire's quagmire this situation and like the thing they're in is like for most americans the cost is like pretty like this is just a thing happen on tv right except for the handful of americans who died or the people who have like traumatic brain injuries are probably number of the thousands over there were lying about

them right from like concussions from blasts so uh but like we get a gotta hope the gas prices, I guess, get high enough that he'll just stop doing this and won't start World War III in full. Because like, like, I saw this story in the Washington Post of the day. I got this video story about people, there's a gas station in upstate New York who's offering people 20% discounts if they'll dance while the cashier records a TikTok. Uh-huh. Look at this. Yeah. Have some fucking dignity, man. This is the type of thing that's like, I'd walk to fucking Pennsylvania.

before I dance for you to give me the fucking the gas to drive there or whatever. Like, it ain't, it ain't no way. How are the history books going to fucking, like, describe this? Because it's going to be like, if you, like, right now somebody around outside of Buffalo is like, dad, why was mom shaking her ass on the internet? All my friends at school were making fun of me. And the dad's got to be like, well, in 632 AD, the Shias and Sunni split off after the death of the prophet Muhammad. And this is going to be a long fucking story.

Oh, God, damn it. I just like, this is like, anyway. So we're already escalating on to the next disaster. Trump really wants to, he just really wants to pivot to Greenland. And he hasn't forgotten about this. And this is a new story out of Greenland from a couple days ago. There's the American oil company named Greenland Energy, which is not in Greenland, is founded in Texas just last year.

So you want to get what kind of plans are going on. It's a company connected to Trump. And I bet if you, it's sent to Trump through a guy named Larry Sweets. You knew a guy named Larry Sweets. You know a guy named Larry Sweets with me involved in this, right? He's a Florida guy. He's one of the big investors in Greenland Energy. And he's like a Moralago hanger on, right?

So that's how he's fucking connected to Trump. Although, I bet you've got a hold of the real financials. I bet Don Jr. has like a 30% stake. So they're like just full on like going to Greenland to drill with no permission. Right. So Greenland's the government last week issued a quote, strong warning that no approval had been granted to land their equipment.

All future logistical matters must be advised and approved by the Mineral Resources Authority before they are carried out. And Trump responded by posting this meme on true social. This is I responded to the official fucking government of Greenland. Is him... He's peering ominously over the mountains into Greenland. Yeah. Those are like...

I mean, I guess I don't know what housing looks like. Those look like pure Danish fjords or whatever, but I don't know, whatever. So they had a, there's a meeting in this like rural peninsula where they're going to be drilling, hypothetically. And they lodge locals that they had permission to be there, and they've already started unloading equipment. And they like, they have like, here's the plot twist here. Greenland Energy has retained Phil McGraw, better known as Dr. Phil, a prominent former right wing chat show host who served on Trump's Religious Freedom Commission to make a documentary series. that will quote, capture the mission of these modern-day wildcatters.

So I am imploring the government of Denmark to send soldiers to seize Dr. Phil. You must do this. But they're like, why would they want Dr. Phil? You know, they're like, well, then we have to have Dr. Phil. Then we've got to listen to him talk. I just like, I just like, I don't feel like we need to be shaken out of her stupor for how dangerous and dumb this all is. I feel like Dr. Phil being forced at gunpoint to read a statement denouncing Donald Trump on TV would sort of get would sort of hammer the point home while he's trying to blink in Morse code some message to Trump. So it's just like there's way more Dr. Phil involved in the fucking late stage of this country that I thought.

Yeah, right. Yeah. I expect. I know. I know. Yeah. Fuck Oprah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I know. Man, the horror she's unleashed upon the world. Uh-huh. All right. Well, let's go ahead and dive further into it. We got a lot of show for you today, and so we're going to go ahead and kick it off with, of course,

the Daily Dumbass. Matt, graphic, please. Today's D-D. Anyone who won't surrender their family farm so some dickhead can make dog podcast. Today's guest ran from Dinosaur. He was human co-stars. Please welcome Starbucks from the end of Oak Street.

Thanks, guys. It's nice to finally speak. All right, that's enough of that. I fucking hate the show. So, man. I can't stay. So we're talking

about data centers. I just have to put like, like everything, like I'm, the earphones are not on the dogs. Ears. They're on their jaws. Yeah,

right. That's not where dogs' ears are. No. Yeah. So I'm fucking losing it. Like I, like, I just wanted to talk about

data centers today for a little bit because like, this is what the economy is now, is Warner Brothers making dog podcast, promote some movie that nobody's going to watch. Yeah. for well you're making me

not want to watch it now but we were we were probably going to watch that movie but this is it's got dinosaurs in it Mark I've got four of that

teenage boys but anyway this is inexcusable I mean you know to be fair there's nowhere in the Constitution show me we're in the Constitution

it says a virtual dog can have a podcast Mark it's like what if Airbud become the liberal Joe Rogan? Yeah exactly it's like

Airbud for the new media age they revived Airbud franchise and he like a right one grifter thought leader podcaster and has to reckon

with the implications of that behind the scenes later um oh my God so Charlie Kirk is a good dog's name so the ominous tagline

you have to understand some out's from the perspective of the deep state but it's who's a good boy that's what it's the deep state asking dog Joe Rogan who's a good Yeah. Who's a good boy could be flocks company motto, honestly.

So I wanted to like, so to get to this, sometimes I think I'm the, like all of us live in algorithmically driven bubbles, right? Your internet, your news feeds show you whatever makes you mad. I see a lot of AAS stuff and flock stuff, right? Like I see, I have to ask you guys last week, are you seeing a lot of like flock rebellion stuff? Because I wanted to get a gauge on whether, because like every third video I'm served on social media platforms is a tutorial on how to, how to, how to, how to, how to, how to, how to, how to. tear down flock cameras. Yeah, I mean, to be fair, you said that, that came up because I sent you a screenshot from one of my, like, back home Discord chats where one of my, like, rural Tennessee buddies

was trying to convince all the other old boys in the Discord chat to tear down flock cameras with him. He had found, he had found, like, LED sort of Iron Man mask things, that he was like, we could all wear these and it'd be super cool. You know, you wear these for your vigilanteism as you tear down the net. People were skeptical. They weren't really going with it. But anyway, I sent you that, and that's when you were like, you know, I see this shit all the time.

I mean, no, dude, you know, you know. I mostly see like, Alien Reddit stuff. Yeah, and like Fusion cake videos and things like that, you know. So because I'm pretty supposed to hate that, but I'm a fucking, I make my living as a writer. So either, like, either way, if AI works, if AI doesn't work, it's insulting to me to tell me that a robot can do my fucking. fucking job, replace me as a human being. But if it does work, my life's ruined. So either way, it's bad, right?

So, like, I'm, I'm self-waring up to know that. So I fucking hate data centers, right? But then I wonder, like, is anybody else give a shit? So I want to talk about, like, my home county, when I was home for my grandma's funeral a couple weeks ago, a month ago, I saw signs saying, like, say no to data link. It's to ValleyLink, like,

opposed to ValleyLink or whatever. I was like, okay, this is interesting. What's going on? ValueLink is a transmission line proposal that is getting a lot of pushback in central Virginia. The basic idea is to build a transmission line, 200 foot tall towers, sorry, 200 foot wide, like 150 foot tall or whatever, across nine counties so they can feed power to northern from western Virginia to northern Virginia, basically. And the data center's made more than half of the demand for this new power, and it is not fucking going over well,

which I find encouraging because it agrees with my potential priors, but also I was just interesting to see that out in the real world. You know what I'm saying? So my home county is Buckingham. The idea, in eight out of nine counties that it passed, that is just supposed to go through a past resolutions opposing it, which is not really that important because it's a state level decision, but it does show some local pushback. And back in May, there was a board of supervised meeting in Buckingham. And to give you a vibe, I want to quote here from a woman named Amy Crawford who

owns a flower farm. She said, quote, this line brings zero benefit to our community. It doesn't create jobs or revenue. It doesn't improve anything for us. Dominion and Valley Link plan to rape and steal our land because they think we're stupid and not paying attention. They think we and our land are disposable and they intend for us to be collateral damage and building a monstrous massive extension cord running through rural Virginia and service to billionaires and their data centers in Northern Virginia. She's starting a revolution? We're not a sign up.

So what Buckingham did was they approved $250,000 to fight the project in legal fees to get lawyers to basically sue the state and the power. power company. And I was like, where do they get the money for all these legal fees? Solar farms. But county, like, I did, like, a lot of stuff's changed as I left, I guess. So anyway, the people are running this project are being very coy about using eminent domain to just take people's fucking property, not, you know, buy it at gunpoint, basically.

And they're saying we prefer voluntary sales and eminent domain will be a last resort. Last resort means you're going to do it. going to do it right yeah exactly and i mean i feel like that's pretty deliberately implied you know what i mean it's like listen we we want to not take everything you own but if we have to do it we want you to put up a fight but we're going to take your fucking land right and if you make us do that that would be unfortunate and that would make us a little sad so hopefully you don't make us do that and you just let us do that instead yeah just give it to us yeah don't make us take it give it to us yeah right You know we have the gun in our pocket.

Don't make us take it out and pointed at you. Right. Right. So like, and I know, like, I'm not naive, not like, like,

nimbism or whatever, like the same instinct that not leads to not letting, like, not having anything new in your community. It's, it's not always a good thing. This is also what segregation was. So,

like, I don't think, and also I'm not always opposed to eminent domain. If you're going to build a fucking church, like a school or a hospital or something, we at least debate about where the best place to put it is. But you're taking a, a power transmission line

so people can make dog podcasts. Right. And I don't think you should be able to take fucking people's land to do that. That's your problem. You find your own power source, which they're going to make, they're making their nuclear reactor.

This is another fucking problem. We'll talk about it another day. But this is happening all over the country, and this is a story from CBS mornings on a fight happening in Georgia. They aired a couple weeks ago. House that fed your family. When you talk about what being on this

property means to you. Yeah. Right. It's y'all's. It's ours. It's ours. It's my mom's. It's mine. It's my daughters. It's our family. We belong here. But Anzley Brown's childhood home likely won't be here much longer. That's because the state's largest utility, Georgia Power, says it needs the area to make way for a 35-mile-long transmission line. Georgia Power has been here. So 80% of the power for the, 80% of the demand for this new power line comes from artificial intelligence. And this is according to the power company. The power company here is like being made to be the bad guy, but like they're just a middle man here.

Of course they want to sell more electricity, but they're not once creating demand for their own product. Right. And the gun against everyone's head here, the general public's is if you don't let us build more capacity to power the data centers, they're not going to stop sucking of electricity. It just means that you will suffer brownouts and power shortages. Right. Right.

So like, like, they, this Georgia Power won't even say who the real customers are, who the data centers are because they say that they're, uh, uh, uh, the customer info is private. I want to remind you, they're taking these people's lands with eminent domain. Eminent domain is for quote unquote public use, but they won't even say who the people are who were taking the fucking land ultimately. Right. I mean, yeah, are you even supposed to be able to use eminent domain for something like this? I get that like a utility company. I mean, I guess the middleman makes it. kind of a gray area or whatever, right?

Yeah. It's like a public utility or whatever, but it's servicing some shadowy corporation that they won't even tell you who it is. Bro, when I lived in Texas, they just got done using eminent domain to knock down a bunch of poor black and brown people's houses to build a new stadium for the Texas Rangers.

Right. They claim to us to cause crime and blight, but it was taking poor people's houses. Right. So like, it's a stop crime or plight, sorry. But like, so you can, people use it for private projects all the time. Like when I say like eminent domain in theory is necessary for stuff, but like I'm not also I know that like a lot of public highways were coincidentally put through black neighborhoods.

Right. So like anyway, I just I find it gross from somebody's private profit. That feels like something you should do on your own without the government sending a armed danger to the state to seize other people's property. Right. So I just want to point out here like did the I want to play this next video and then talk about part of the irony of what these data companies in AI. companies have unleashed if you got this map. We never want to do. To us it's theft.

It's literally a billion dollar company stealing land from smaller people, people who can't fight back. We don't have the money to fight Georgia Power. So that's why a few months ago, Anzley took her story to TikTok. My childhood home is being taken by Georgia Power. Her videos went viral, and she began sharing stories of others in similar situations, like Cynthia Van Epps. What is it taking from her?

Look behind me. It's taking this entire backyard. The pool and everything. All right. So that girl's TikTok went viral. All right. They're saying, right? Which means it got up boosted by an algorithm.

Right. It's kind of weird. Is it? Because people are drawn to rage bait, right? Right. So their own product, that video went viral. physically inside a fucking data center.

Yeah, right. Yeah. I just find this like deeply ironic. Like like the data company, these AI companies are saying that a lot of the opposition to this. They first of all, sometimes they claim it's inorganic. Like it's this, we've talked before where they say it's a Chinese sci op, right? But they, but also like when they, what they're saying it's like viral misinformation. And I'm like, that's hilarious to me because what you're saying is like this, a lot of people is like they're

misinformed about this because of the information they see that's gone viral. Well, what goes viral? How is it being spread? Well, the algorithms push up stuff that drives people crazy. That's what's in the data center. You've created your own fucking Frankenstein and you want more electricity, use them in the domain to fucking make more Frankensteins. But you're mad about the one time it's affecting you. Right. I just find that. No, I mean, all they do is push out misinformation. It's like there's been whole congressional hearings and stuff about the misinformation and the damage has caused to society and they've you know shrugged it all off as much as possible but now they're using the same argument to you know diminish the backlash against

you know the AI data centers and whatnot when it's the same thing well it's not the same thing though right is it because it's like this shit that girl that wasn't misinformation what that girl was saying no they're taking her land they're literally taking it but they're saying like this stuff about like water use is exaggerated that uh the environmental impact is is is is misunderstood because you're not comparing it to other industrial like buildouts. You're comparing it to nothing being there, right? Which all that's accurate, but I still don't like, I don't like the business. I don't care of like, that doesn't move me, right?

But I also know that some communities have seen a ton of financial benefits from putting a data center and getting free tax money. We talked about that before. But like the public facing stuff, it's not just a dog podcast. We mentioned flock earlier. One of them, not everything people hate about AI is because of misinformation. someone was because of fucking information, right? We've got to talk about Flock soon, I guess, because like the amount of scandals I've seen from cops being caught using it to stop their

ex-wives is like through the roof. So like 50 people have been arrested for it. So if 50 cops have been arrested and fired for it, that means five million cops have done it. Yeah. So, and like, so one of the main investors in Flock when it started up was Indreason Horowitz, Mark Andreessen's company. Mark Andreessen Horowitz is also a, uh, invested in a company, Israeli startup called Toka. Have you heard of Toka, Toka, Toka, they're a defense contractor.

What they do is hack into surveillance footage, CCTV footage and change it. Can you think of a non-belivalent reason to change surveillance footage? Yeah, right. That's their like stated purpose as a company? Yeah. In, like, a wartime setting? What do they say that that's for? What are they?

Governments. Right. Like, so if you want to frame people for crimes, you like the government, you can just. I mean, like you said, that's like, yeah, normally there's at least some kind of like stated benign purpose that they'll lie about, but what is it even supposed to be? I would have thought we, I would have thought we got a data center moratorium just based upon Jeffrey Epstein's emails.

Because pretty much every fucking AI company, their origin stories, Jeffrey emailing emailing somebody either offer for financing or a startup idea for a company. One of the co-founders of Toka is Ahud Barak, who's a former prime minister of Israel, who was like lived with Jeffrey Epstein. Like he, Barak got into AI because Epstein cced them on an email to, to, to, uh, Palantir guy with that. What can't think of it?

Peter Thiel. Right. So like, why can we, what can we say? Hold on. Let's slow down for this for a second. The world's most evil people are all in the origin stories for all these

fucking companies with no stated good purposes. Can we not give them our farms? Right. That way? I don't know. So, and also like, why should we trust these people? Mark Zucker. He writes these long manifestos about what's going on his brain every now and then.

He wrote one about data centers and it was partly about data centers and the opposition to it. He tried to push back against it by saying in Zuckerberg's future, they're powered by power infrastructure that meta owns itself, which is not the case currently. And they create lots of high-paying, long-lasting jobs, which is also not the case part currently. So you've just got to trust him going forward. This is how it's going to work out for you if you give him everything, right? Here's another story about Mark Zuckerberg in the last few days. Cruise ship helped stranded skiff and crew in southeast Alaska as Zuckerberg Yacht stands by. What happened was this fucking ship was stranded, sent on a distress call.

Mark Zuckerberg's yacht was the closest ship. They ignored it. They basically did new boat, who's this? Yeah. Stans by, I don't know, that like that almost implies that, you know, like. Right, it's poorly written headline. They didn't want to label one of them. That just implies like they were there.

in case they were needed or something. Do you know what I mean? They were standing by waiting to see if the rescue attempt failed so they could swoop in and help out as opposed to just not picking up the radio. Just do it. Yeah, right. Right. So like literally not helping the obligation to help your fellow sailors or stranded sea is like one of the world's oldest. It's Zeus's law.

Right. And it's like, nope, not the helping them. Another story about these AI dipshits recently. Elon Musk company is currently suing. the state of Minnesota because they passed the law that forbids you're using AI to make nudes of people without their consent. He's suing to stop the law from going into place so that XAI, so GROC can keep making child pornography of your children. Right. But we're supposed to trust him to how they're going to handle the payouts for data centers, right, and what they're going to do with them.

So, yeah, one guy wants to let you drown. The other one demands the right to make nude naked pictures of you and your kids. and the main public facing use case remains dog podcast, child porn and tyranny. The U.S. economy is now just a trillion dollar death call which aims to eliminate jobs, privacy, art, relationships, emotions, bodies, and physical places, and they're shocked that people fucking hate their guts

and won't give up their land for it. Right. Who doesn't like dog podcasts? Did you see the dogs? Did you see how cute the dog was? It's like you people don't even fucking care. a fake interview with a fake dog who's voiced by, I don't know, it doesn't matter. So I wanted to, but we were out to pivot talking about election stuff.

I wanted to mention the story real quickly. Sid Miller, who's the longtime agricultural commissioner in Texas, he said Thursday the Republicans are going to lose some statewide elections this year because of data centers, which is becoming heated issue for Texas across the state. In an interview with the Texas Tribune, Miller also called out Governor Greg Abbott for what he says inaction on data center development in Texas. The lame duck Republicans said, that data centers are not a partisan issue,

but declined to say who he might vote for come November. I haven't committed to anybody, Miller said. There's some Republicans that may have to leave blank. I just can't do it. This is not, again, this is an elected Republican. I remember him for when I lived in Texas. This is a dude who fucking sleeps in a cowboy hat, basically. His big issue when I lived there was legalizing the exportation of horse meat.

Yee-ha. Leaving a lot of money on the table, Mark. Yeah, well, yeah. Let's let that horse meat just lay around. Let's just let him die. and not eat them. That's stupid. I know I sound like a smart ass,

but I know that's one of those things that's like really weird, I feel like to Americans and they find out that a ton of other countries just eat horse the way that we eat cows or whatever. And it's like, I mean, you know,

why not? It's all kind of arbitrary, I feel like. If I remember right, what he was trying, there had been like a horse butchering like meatpacking plant in Texas that was exporting to France was like their business model

and there was an effort to make, they had made that illegal sort of back I'm accidentally because of some animal rights activists, and they're basically like, well, nobody cared. These are, these aren't horses that are people's pets. Like, anyway, I have a person who eats meat, so I can't really come up with any intellectual distribution. These are dumb old meat horses.

Yeah. These are not, like, pretty trained horses that a little girl got for a 13th birthday. Yeah. The French would eat those, too. No, we said those are, the French will pay top dollar to eat a little girl's horse, a birthday horse. It was like a lobster tag of horses and, like, I don't want the old plow horse.

Give me the one with a ribbon and tear. That's what French people ate. Some of the horses that were someone's pets. See, Republicans in Texas, we're about to talk about some elections and stuff, but I was going to point out that the Republicans might have lost an elected Republican official

who in 2011 wrote a bill to allow hunters to shoot hogs from helicopters. Yeah. I like this guy. This guy sounds like a little American to me. Yeah. All right, we'll take a quick break and we'll be right back after this. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

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optimist that's right Matt let's see this video this is an interview with tie Cobb who was on Trump's White House legal team the first time around. If the midterms don't go Trump's way this four, is there any world in which Todd Blunt stands up to Trump if he's asked to find some fake evidence of voter fraud,

or are we screwed now? We're screwed. Great. It's just a, just a snapshot of life in 2026, especially the fact that the guy that, that delivered the punch line there,

whatever that got. The guy that said, you know, the optimist in question that he looks like a cartoon character of like an old style lawyer or whatever that. Oh yeah,

he loves, he's got, you guys always listening, Ty Cobb, he does a handlebar mustache that curls up and like a, like a,

it fully curves around. So they're talking about the, Todd Blanche was just like confirmed as Trump's Attorney General. Right. He's formerly Trump's personal lawyer and he's basically Attorney General. Bill Cassidy was the deciding vote. Bill Cassidy, the Republican from Louisiana, who's by trade as a doctor who was basically primary, Trump backed his primary opponent because he held a grudge over impeachment stuff from 2020, I think. And he, so he's free to cast whatever vote he wanted, but he voted to confirm Blanche because Trump, I need to explain this.

Trump openly threatened to nominate someone more crazy and destructive to be the act. acting attorney generally, Blanche wasn't confirmed. I've never before, I don't remember a president promising to be worse at his job as leverage to get another guy, to get a guy confirmed. A age old tactic of malicious compliance or whatever, you know, but on an executive level. Yeah. You know. See, I just want to talk about the absolute farce. It's going to be this fall when Trump cries voter fraud after a bunch of the worst politicians in America lose races. They're aggressively trying to blow.

Like in fucking, in in Michigan, for example, Mike Rogers, who's running against Abdul al-Zayed, is like he was a Trump critic over election fraud stuff in 2020. And now he's pretending to believe in election fraud because two years ago, he lost his race to Elisa Slotkin in Michigan. Trump won Michigan. Trump out of his ass last week said that Mike Rogers got screwed by election fraud because he lost his race. even though Trump won the same state. So Trump is alleging that Democrats rigged Michigan for Trump but against Mike Rogers. And Mike Rogers, who's not stupid, is pretending to go along with this. Right.

Well, you know, yeah, what's he, I mean, you know, what's he supposed to do? You got to just go with the flow if you're in, in Trump land. I mean, it's not like anybody's going to, like, fact check that or remember it or point out that it, not anybody that, you know, would vote for him anyway. I mean. Well, I think it's actually a matter of practice because, like, this, stuff that they, that race specifically, you could probably win a few, you know, centrist Democrats who were, who, uh, annoyed the proposition of Abdul al-Sayed, but voter fraud stuff is a big

turnoff for them. If I were having to get my fucking mouth shut about it, because you probably, you might win, but anyway, he already fucked that up. But anyway, I want to talk about a few other candidates who have screwed this all up. Um, and I'm talking about Ohio and Texas mostly, but I want to first talk about this guy who just dropped out in western North Carolina. Here's an interview TMZ did with Chuck Edwards, uh, House Republican. So there's a new report that came out that you gave two guns to female staffers and are under investigation. Just wanted to get your reaction to that. I'm cooperating fully with the ethics committee.

Okay. So I'm not sure why they asked about the guns he gave for the women to work for him. That's kind of the least fucking interesting part about this. Yeah. I mean, in North Carolina, there could just be a fucking birthday present for somebody that works for you or whatever, you know. Especially if you're a Republican. The implied context is he's been married. for a long time and he was pressuring

his employees to have sex with him and part of it. Like it's like there's a bunch of stuff that reporters not asking him about that's important to the story. Right. But anyway at 3.30 a.m. last Wednesday Chuck posted a statement on Twitter saying he's dropping out of the race. So you tell you what a lot of attention on it because he's 3.30

a.m. So the afters committee's report found that he found had written notes he gave to his employees personal guests drinking outings, casino trips. Edwards would run a staffer a flattering poem that he read aloud while becoming teary-eyed at her office going away party.

She was quitting because he's sexually harassing her. I need to feel like we need to put that up. Oh my God. No way, dude. Are you kidding me? She was leaving because he sexually harassed her and on her last- If you were going away party and read her a poem. That is insane.

There are degrees to not taking no for a fucking answer. So he told another staffer that she had quote written a complex chapter in my heart, end quote, surely before she was set to leave his office in another three-page handwritten letter. You got to see a picture of this. You want to throw this next thing up, Matt. Edwards gave the staffer a custom puzzle that when you put together revealed an image of Adam Sandler with a handwritten note, inviting her to attend one of Anne Sandler's comedy shows with him. This guy's just an old-school romantic, Mark.

He gave her like a scavenger hunt. He had to put together the puzzle to see that you were invited to go for drinks to the Adam Sandler show. Man, it being Sandler, and I love Adam Sandler, being Sandler too is definitely like, that's the perfect person for it to have been, I feel like. Yeah. You know, if it was a few years ago,

like a Jeff Dunham show would have, that would have maybe landed harder, but Adam Sandler being a guy. What was the proposition here for sex in the middle of the show? So during the fall of 2025 government shutdown, Chuck vacationed with the, the then former staffer in Las Vegas where he arranged for flowers

to be waiting in her Balagio hotel room. The staffer told Edwards the flowers made her uncomfortable. The Ethics Committee wrote in this report that both staffers received numerous gifts from Edwards including jewelry tolling over $1,000 designer purses, guns, shoes, flowers, a laptop, a cell phone,

a kitchen aid mixer, a robot vacuum, vacations, tickets to performances, and one-on-one dinners. See? I'm telling you, man. This is a guy who cares. when you give when you donate money to a politician you need to know

you were buying robotic vacuum cleaners for women they were trying to fuck yeah that's the main thing you're doing but I also want out that a house member going to Vegas with an aid he's sexually harassing during a government shutdown

as pretty much like an embodiment of entire genre of congressmen for sure without a doubt no I know this is like the stereotype of what you know like of a corrupt congressman or whatever it's just this just whatever

just trying to get and blow and fucking, you know, embezzlement and Vegas and drugs and all that shit. That's what you like, that's what they do in in movies and stuff. Yeah, but also in real life. But it was, it was cool when Charlie Wilson

did it. Charlie Wilson did it to defeat the commies. So, but even like, so the rest, for his, the race he's in, he's in a district in western North Carolina, went in a district that has become more competitive in recent years because it includes Asheville, which you know, the gay capital of Appalachia. That's right.

So he was running against the Democrat by the name of Jamie Agar who has a long time roots in the regions of farmer so it was going to be a close race anyway but now someone else has to jump in I think they're deciding who it is going to be as we record this today

and figure out how to run a race to the competitor district in the next month and then when whoever the new dip shit is fucking loses they're going to say it was stolen as opposed to fumbled away but the guy who was given rumbus to like the sexual harassment victims we can't talk about this issue

the similar things happening in Ohio with Congressman Max Miller who we talked about before if you're not familiar he's in a bitter custody dispute with his ex-wife he accuses him all kind of physical abuse he allegedly threw hot water

a boiling hot water at her and broke his two-year-old daughter's collarbone Oh my God it like the context of the collarbone it sounds like in the story like he was trying to hit his wife and accidentally broke his daughter's collarbone. Well, why didn't you just say that?

Yeah. Jesus Christ. Kansas City Chief should get this guy a tryout. He, uh, well, the, well, the, uh, the browns are closer and probably more fitting. Yeah, they would do it too. Yeah. No, you're right. Yeah.

So he's also been accused, he was accused of domestic violence by a woman he used today by the name of Stephanie Graham who worked in communications in Trump's first White House. So this is not like, this is not out of the blue or random here. Also, going back to Ohio, when he's, first ran for office. There are people who called themselves his friends in high school who described him as quote,

very belligerent, very angry and super misogynistic. It was during his time in high school. It's funny to think, since you said there's people where his friends, it's funny that thinking that those are guys saying that are like, yeah, he's awesome.

You know what I mean? Belligerent, pissed off, always getting into fights, hated women. Fucking love that dude, bro. Yeah.

So it was, when he was in high school, it was a story that went around about, time at a party that he pushed a female classmate through a door and down a staircase when she wouldn't let him touch her. So, Stephanie Graham... I can't believe this guy's not a bigger name.

Yeah. The MAGA GOP. Stephanie Graham just got a fresh restraining order against him last week because when this stuff circling around, he went back to get mad on her for stuff she wrote in her book four years ago about the ones she had when they dated. Seems like I've never been more confident in my life

that the guy is going to commit suicide by cop eventually. If you want to see what this guy's vibe is like, play a brief clip of this video, my former wife has claimed that during a custody exchange at my home that day, I assaulted her. Here's what actually happened.

And I have the ring doorbell footage that backs it up. Okay. She came to my... He goes and to talk about how, like, well, she came in and made him dinner. So his basic logic is, would an abused woman make a man dinner?

For 50 plus years. More than that. But I'm saying, that was a whole. hallmark of American marriages for fucking 50-something. You know what I mean? But like, that's why they were... Never mind. Like, a fucking woman fucking up the dinner she made and then getting abused is like one of the biggest stereotypes about domestic violence that there is.

He's my fucking ain't seen raging bull. You know? Yeah. Like, yeah, bro. That's trope number one. Right. Even like make dinner so you don't get hit is the abuser's actual logic, bro. That's the implied threat.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So, yeah. So he also, like, Miller tried to, like, publish all these text, all these text messages and email, exchanges along with the big doorbell footage and pictures. He uploaded him to, like, a drop box to, like, release publicly. He accidentally included naked pictures of his two, three-year-old daughter in there, which is bad for the custody of you. It sounded to me like they were, like, bathtub photos, whatever, not the child porn or anything like that. But, like, it still seems like, fucking, you're such a hurry to try to frame your wife from making you look,

the ex-wife from making you look bad that you upload naked pictures of your daughter. the internet. Seems like a fucking mistake. Anyway, the district is in. Trump won his district, the Ohio 7th by 11 points in 2024. But Bernie Morano, who is an important element of the story because he's the father of the ex-wife who Max Miller has allegedly been abusing. Everybody knows each other, right? So Bernie Morano only won his district by one point.

Max himself, who technically won by 15 points, but he was running in a three-way race, had two opponents, like Dennis Kucinich ran as an independent. Remember Dennis Kucinich? former Green Party candidate for president. So somebody split the non-Max Miller vote, the left of Max Miller vote to two chunks. And so he deadly beat the two of them combined only by two points. And he's refusing to drop out.

Max Miller is going to lose this race because he broke his, he's accused of breaking his daughter's two-year-old daughter's fucking collarbone and threw boiling water his ex-wife. And his Republican senator father-in-law is taking his daughter's side and telling people not to vote for his fucking ex-son-in-law. See what I'm saying? And we're going to be told this was fraud. This is fraudulent.

Right. Yeah. I mean, they're going to say that about literally every race that they lose, presumably. That's why they've been

setting this up as being normal this whole, you know, this whole time. Yeah. And as I want to point out here, there's more than one,

like, there's degrees of who the assholes here are because Max Miller could have been pushed out of this race. And he's past the deadline now. So they're stuck with him. But he basically, like,

held his own race hostage to force the party to support him. As much consternation as everyone went through over a glam Platner, Grand Platner a couple, a month ago, this is the exact how everybody withdrew the support from Platner

and he was pushed out of the race. Yeah, no, I know. I mean, I think I had plenty of other people said at the time, it's like, you know, if he was, if Graham Platiner had been like a MAGA candidate,

you know, they'd have rolled with all of that, probably. Like, that's the part of the novel standard. Yeah. So, and no, but nobody pushed him out here.

And so, uh, like, I just want to, like, this is probably, it's not the word. thing you did, but it's the most comically evil thing you did.

He's accused by both Bernie Moreno and the ex-wife and the ex-wife's daughter and the state's parenting coordinator of holding his daughter's stuffed Blue Bunny hostage repeatedly. Okay. When she stays at his house, he will keep the Blue Bunny. The villain from Conair did that. Yes! These guys get this villain ideas from 90s, Nicholas Cage classics. Yeah. So basically the daughter can't sleep without her blue bunny. So to do psychological warfare against his ex-wife, so she can't sleep either. He may, he keeps the blue bunny. He'll do that every time she fucking stays in. Oh, wow. Yeah. No, that's real fucked up then. What a piece of shit, dude. Like I can't like, even, even if the other allegations are not true, this shit's in fucking writing from multiple people, including him refusing to give back the bunny.

Yeah, I thought you were, I thought at first you were just going to some like to get the girl to listen or act right or when she's act like, like as a punishment. You know. Yeah, eat your vegetables or I'll take the bunny wife for a few minutes. I'm not saying that would have hit for me. But knowing that he did it as part of psychological warfare against his ex-wife, because that keeps his two-year-old daughter from being able to sleep at night, takes it into like, you know, full-on psychopath level shit. Yeah, I mean, like, this is all resulted. Like, I want to read this email from Emily Morano, the ex-wife's lawyer.

He sent Miller's lawyers in August 3rd email that said, quote, please have Max return the bunny forthwith. I just fucking fight that. What an undignified error for a fucking country. So anyway, I hate that they're, Matt called up. Cyrus the virus point to go to the fucking stuff. Yeah, thanks, Matt. What about that though?

Cyrus the virus was like, you know, he was fucking around. He knew that that was an insane thing to do. You know what I mean? Yes. This dude's dead serious about it. You might have to be careful. If the metadata shows up, we might get fucking copyright ding there. So I feel gross to this information is public, but like this would not be in the news if Max Miller and or Bernie Moreno have both done the dignified thing for the child and fucking resign instead of trying to hold on to you a little bit of power that you have.

And so anyway, everybody should have went home. And this subcontext here is Max Miller went on TV basically and did a veiled threat to out Bernie Moreno is gay. Everyone knows Bernie Morano has a history of being on gay hookup apps. It came out in the race in 2024. No one fucking gave a shit. No one cared that he got his dick sucked in 2008 in Florida. No one cared. It's fine.

Bernie, stop being afraid of your ex-son-in-law. Shit. It took him two years to come out against the guy. So, yeah, this is. this mess is the whole the whole state's in trouble Republicans in Iran, Ohio are in trouble because the Iran war data centers are a huge issue in fucking Ohio

and now domestic abuse allegations that have wrapped up a whole family of politicians in the state and also at the top of the races Vivek Ramoswamy who's the most unlikeable motherfucker and on the planet running for governor. So anyway, this is according to the Republican Party in Ohio. They say they'll now have to spend tens of millions of dollars

in Ohio races they once were heavily favored to win this fall. So now let's move on to the fun one, Texas. Every statewide race in Texas is either being led by the Democrat or within the puck and margin of error polling wise. That's governor, lieutenant governor, Tala Rico versus Ken Paxton for Senate. This is because of a mix of a couple big issues. Besides the Latino backlash in general against the way Trump's managed the deportations that a lot of them did vote for. They just didn't vote for them to be done this haphously and cruelly. right and those other issues I'm talking about are legalized weed data centers and the generalized

sleaze-bad corruption and confidence it comes from 30 years of one-party rule and that's that's personified by ken paxton right that's where it didn't dispense with ken kempaxson who somehow makes a million dollars a year from a cell phone tower that he doesn't own and no one can explain it okay so weed encapsulates all like everything but the data centers the sleazy crease back corruption but mainly the incompetence and one thing you need to do that you need to to know, and I'm going to fuck up this description because it doesn't make sense and involves having like a hyper-specific knowledge of chemical composition of hemp and cannabis, okay, which I don't have. What happened is in 2019, the state legislature in Texas accidentally

legalized wheat. Nice. It's a house bill called 1325 that was signed a law by Governor Abbott to legalize the cultivation of industrial hemp, which they define as cannabis containing less than 0.3% of THC. This is the stuff for making rope and paper, right? Uh-huh, yeah. But also legalized possession sale of hemp-derived CBD products without the need for a doctor's approval. So, he legalized recreational CBD and industrial hemp, but they wrote the law very poorly because it also changed the legal definition of marijuana from cannabis in general to

cannabis containing greater than 0.3% THC, right? Which calls a psychoactive cannabinoid delta 8 THC to become legal when produced from legally cultivated hemp. so dispensaries could be like what we're selling isn't marijuana it's hemp containing a chemical compound called THCA and lighting on fire transformed the

THC into another compound which is THC, the Delta 9, tetrahydroha, whatever, to be exact. But this is all, I can't really describe this because potheads, like this kind of stuff turns potheads into fucking Robert Oppenheimer.

I can't speak this language. Absolutely. They fucking, yeah, equations on the whiteboard down there at the dispensary. I think, I don't know, did Texas, like lead the way on this? Because this definitely happened outside of just Texas.

Like I know this was the thing in Tennessee. A lot of southern states followed this same trajectory where whatever, they figured out this loophole and they started selling that Delta 8 shit. I mean, I know because I had buddies back home who were buying it all the time and being like, no, no, no, it's just, it's just same as well. It's just not. You're trying to like get around this by turning weed into like gas station dick pills as opposed to like.

Yeah, but that ain't what I mean. I remember when I still lived there, they had. fake weed and gas stations that wasn't weed at all and that shit was insane. I'm talking about exactly what you're talking. Delta 8, THC, that also became a thing in Tennessee and Georgia and other southern states too. And I was just wondering if like Texas sort of was the first domino and they kind of snowballed it all across the south or whatever. See, this is, I think what we're describing in Texas is closer to real weed than what you're describing. But like, I don't think so. Ask Corey or them. I think it's the same thing.

I mean, that's what they told me. I don't know. I don't know. I don't live there anymore, but that's what they said. Because I thought it also was the fake shit. And they were like, no, no, it's basically just real weed. It's just some loophole shit. So, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, so when you think about, like, Texas is a weird state governmentally, everybody knows who Greg Abbott is because he's the governor, right?

But reality in Texas is, for the most part, the lieutenant governor is a more powerful figure. Lieutenant Governor oversees a state legislature. The governor can sign a veto bills and oversee executions. But like, but the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the standard to override a veto is very low, so it's really a lieutenant governor who runs the legislature in its entirety. That's because of the legacy of the Civil War. After the Civil War, the federal government was appointing governor. So what Texas did to get around it was rewrite the state constitution, make the governor weak with the lieutenant governor than one actually in control.

Right. So here's Dan Pat. Dead Patrick is a committed believer in not weed. He fucking hates weed. He thinks it's the devil's lettuce. He sounds like he's from the 1950s when he talks about it. I want to play this video of him. We have no idea who's making this product. Are they terrorists? Is this a terrorist money laundering scheme in Texas? Is it a cartel money laundering scheme? Is anyone saying that they're not terrorists? Yeah. So is ISIS making weed gummies trade? Who knows?

We gotta go out of the business. They're not. Not you. You don't know they're not. So Patrick has been orchestrating a fight on various fronts to make weed illegal again. And he finally succeeded a couple months ago when the Texas Supreme Court decision reversed an injunction. They basically said, I basically decided, I think, most hemp is weed again. This is all very

fucking confusing and stupid, which is kind of the point why everyone's so fucking mad about it. Cannabis experts say the ban, which when it affects July 31st, could remove more than half the TSC products off some store shelves. I'm a quote here from Sarah Todd, who's the media representative for the Texas Cannabis Policy Center.

It's a pretty big blow, and it's recriminalizing a lot of cannabis products that have been completely legal and allowable in the state for many years, so we're taking a step backwards towards prohibition. As of July 31st, possession of less than one gram is now a state jail felon, a punishmentable up to two years in prison. So it's gone from being perfectly legal to two years in prison overnight because of a

court decision and poorly written laws by the Texas legislature. Yeah, that's not going to go over well, dude. You can't put that genie back in the bong, you know? No. And add in the fact that one of Dan Patrick's biggest campaign donors are the booze companies. Right? And we're talking about, like, we're talking about a bunch of small businesses and livelihoods. And not just talking about people going to jail for this shit. I'm talking about people that invested their life savings in opening businesses that have been open for four or five years that are now fucking fought. So there are a few of you some numbers here. There are three legal medical dispensaries in Texas last time I could find number four. Recreation of marijuana has technically always been

illegal. This third thing's in a new category. But so while there are three legal medical dispensaries, this gray area they created back in 2019, depending on how you count it, there's either now 7,000 cannabis dispensaries, which is twice. as many as California or 14,000, which is four times as many as California. That's crazy. Right, because you have to be licensed in California. There's no regulatory apparatus in Texas at all. They did this so fucked up by accident.

So this is dumb and disorderly and bad for business and freedom. And also, it's created a huge campaign, a great campaign issue for James Tolariko running against Paxton because it makes the Republican Party look fucking corrupt and out of touch. Draconian with a drug that a lot of people use just to sleep better. like back injuries and shit. And one thing Tala Rico is pointing out is that Mexico is right there. Making weed illegal again in Texas is a huge gift of the fucking cartels. So he gets to run as a common sense, law and order, pro small business guy.

Right, right. And if Democrats win, I don't think it will be easier, it could be across the slate, but if Democrats win the Texas governorship and the Senate seat, there's going to be huge meltdown from people that they're outside the state that don't think it sounds right, it sounds like it must be corrupt or rigged or whatever because it's not following what's going on down there. I don't know what's going to happen in Texas in the fall, but the idea that it could never turn Democrat is going to be a national take that's fucking ridiculous

if you pay attention to how pissed off people are on the ground there about the status quo from Republican leadership for the last three fucking decades. Yeah, I mean, you used to live there. I mean, I had a bit on my last special that was about this, but it was front of the perspective of, like, obviously really wanting it to happen. But just being like, it feels to me

like for at least the past 10 years and every like major election in Texas, there's always some new optimism about people being like, you know, Ted Cruz sucks. People like Beto, look at these polls. You know, you don't know this. Could be, look some of these polling numbers, whatever. And then every election night, Texas is just like, got you queer, jehow, you know,

and just does the same old shit. And so it's hard for me to like buy in again with Talley because now it's happening all over again. But don't get me wrong. This could be the year, Mark. Again, I'm not saying it's going to happen. You're right. This could be the year.

Could be Cowboys. Could be the year. Yeah. I actually believe that this year. Yeah. Right. I'm saying. Yeah.

Ask me again, September 28th. And I'd be like, I fucking wanted to kill myself. Yeah. Exactly. All right. Well, thank you guys for watching. We appreciate it.

Check me out on the road. Go to Treycrouter.com and look them up. Coming tour days, come see me. I've got the Midwest coming up. Des Moines, Kansas City, Omaha, then upstate New York, Hartford, Connecticut, Eugene, Oregon, and Austin, Texas. I'll be there about a month before the election.

and a bunch of other places too on the near future at Trey Crowder.com. Check out producer Matt's audio exclusive. It's on the audio feed of this show. It's called Good Skews. Good people doing good things. And finally, for this show, if you'd like to sign up on Patreon, you go to weekly skews.com slash more or search for my name on the Patreon website. And $5 a month gets you ad-free versions of every episode of this show,

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That's it. Love you by. Thank you.