Weekly Skews - Weekly Skews – 1/07/25 – A Mad King and Manifest Destiny for the North Pole

Episode Date: January 8, 2025

Today we’re talking the continuing anti-immigrant fallout from an American guy killing some Americans, somehow. Plus the coming Sino-Danish-Panamanian-Canadian-Mexican War Trump’s agitating for, being egged on by Mr. Perfect from Shark Tank and the heir to Estee Lauder. (Seriously.)Support the show

what's up everybody welcome back happy skews day the first one in a while it's been a minute this is the first time in two three weeks i'm not good at my you know we've had two shows off because of christmas eve and new year's evening we're back the first skeers of 2025 and i'm try that's mark we're coming to you from the depths of hell that's right we're out here in the los angeles area in southern california parts of which are on fire but we're used to that it happens all the time not in this part of year but yeah we'll be okay and we're here mark how you doing over there yeah man what'd you call it i'm in that more peaceful zone you're in the middle what'd you call it a fire hurricane a dry hurricane it could turn into a fire

hurricane very quickly apparently but yeah if y'all don't know we're talking about there's like insane level winds blowing out here and everything's dry it's so this is supposed to be the rainy season in southern california january and february the past two rainy seasons have been very very very rainy indeed which has been awesome but i remember i brought it up to mark i think on this show talking about how awesome it was like last year whatever and mark was like actually they say that that can lead to a you know much larger amount of foliage and greenery that when it does dry out presents a much higher fire hazard and i was like okay mark that sounds good appreciate that yeah and that's that's where we're at right now that's what has happened so yeah this is the

rainy season and the wildfire season is typically september october but that was so this fire can't be happening because climate change isn't real, except climate change is real, which is why we have to invade Canada in Greenland, which was what we're going to be talking about later. Naturally. As I was telling you earlier, the funniest part of the local fire coverage was like the TV news was like stopped some guy to mask who was like coordinating like a civilian, like a neighborhood response to like the wildfires who's wearing a mask and he pulled down his mask and it was Steve Gutenberg.

So if you're wondering what he's doing. I was. I was being a hero. I have, I have genuinely. been wondering what Steve, not all the time, but periodically, I'll be like, I wonder what Steve Gutenberg's doing, you know? Yeah. Yeah, because did you mention that this fire, we're talking, the biggest fire that's happening right now, the main one, it's in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, right? Which is like, that's one of the nicest neighborhoods. It's like,

it's a fancy-ass neighborhood. Uh, yeah, so it makes sense that Steve Gutenberg would be there. I'm glad he saved his money and he can have a house in the palisades. Um, but, uh, before we get to the show, moving on from wildfire, it's just another, uh, civilization. civilization destroying calamity. Let's talk about artificial intelligence for a second. This guy, first funny story, this tech exec by the name of Mike Johns posted video online that went viral. He was stuck in a Waymo robotaxie. He was trying to fly back from Scottsdale to Los Angeles, and the robotaxie was just circling a parking lot to the degree that he almost missed his flight. All right. So it's easy to do at LAX, dude. You just find yourself in an

endless loop sometimes. I'm never going to make, oh, he was coming to L.A. from Scottsdale, I'm not familiar with the Scottsdale Airport. Me neither. So, yeah, so he, so he posted a video of himself driving in circles in this robo taxi, talking to a quote-unquote customer service rep who could not help him or figure out what the fuck was wrong with the car. Now, the funny twist in here is he works in artificial intelligence.

And all I want, through the bottom of my heart, is for that customer service rep to have been an AI that was created by his company that he was arguing with why he was stuck in a fucking robotaxie. That's all I want in this world is to find out that he's caused his own problem. I fucking hate this shit so much. Yeah. I've been seeing a lot. Well, I saw

I was in Hollywood one day for a thing and I saw three or four different waymos like in a short span and then I went to San Francisco and I saw a bunch up there and this is obviously not as bad as what happened to Mr. John's here. But I saw I saw two waymos in San

Francisco and Fisherman's War cause a, not a accident, but a huge bottleneck backup because they got like confused at each other in the middle of an intersection. Like they just stopped in the middle of an intersection and neither one of them knew what to do. So they were just sitting there and people were stuck behind them and getting out of their cars going up and like looking like they're going to do anything. There's no fucking driver in the car. What do you do about it? People are taking pictures and stuff.

So it seems to be kind of a work in progress, this driverless car thing. they're working on. Human drivers are fucking suck too. I understand that. Of course. And like these things are a huge problem for first responders. Like they block ambulances and fire trucks all the fucking time. And so if they worked, it'd be great.

It'd probably be safer than human drivers if there were all these robots were coordinating each other. But they don't quite work yet. So why the fuck on the road blocking firefighters is my question. And nobody can answer it. So do you think it? Well, let me ask you, do you think this is an answer? I don't know.

I'm saying. Do you think it's the type of? of thing where in order to get to the place where they do work that way and it solves all traffic problems and all that works, you have to, you have to at some point put them out there in a small degree to make it there, you know? To make an omelet, you got to break a few grannies dying in ambulances. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Got to kill a few grannies in a car fire if you want to make an omelette. Yeah. That's certainly the thought process, except that I, me and you did not sign up to be part of a beta test. So there's always that part of it.

So, I mean, I want to quote here from that guy, Mike Johns, I can't get out of the car. Has this been hacked? What is going on? I feel like him in the movies. Is somebody playing a joke on me? Yes, buddy. You're playing the joke on me. Yes, exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. Congratulations, you played yourself. This is what happens. I'm sure he's like, well, my AI implements would never do something like this. Mine are foolproof. This is, someone needs to be fired for this. Yeah.

Here's another tech story about a large language. large language models and AI connecting to our political dystopia. The Tesla cyber truck bomber guy in Vegas who's the former Green Bray blew himself up on New Year's Day a few hours after that other former

Army guy did the terrorist attack in New Orleans. Turns out he planned his terror attack using chat GPT. Now see, now how does that work? Because like I, look, just everybody knows. I have not done it. I've never tried it. I've read on the internet that You don't plan a terror attack?

I've read on the internet that chat GPT won't, if you try to trick it into saying some racist shit or say the N word or something like that, again, not for me, not my thing. But if you do that, that it won't. It'll shut anything like that down. But you can straight up playing a terrorist attack using it, though. Like, it just seems.

The screen grabs have I've seen people working around that stuff. Like, for example, if you ask to draw a picture of Mickey Mouse, it won't draw Mickey Mouse because it's copyrighted. right but if you ask it to draw a cartoon then you'd have to draw a cartoon mouse wearing red pants with white ears or whatever like oh this sounds like I'm going to ask me to make a mouse I won't draw a mickey mouse and you go no no I don't mean Mickey Mouse he goes okay and they don't give you Mickey Mouse right right so whole perv so he's like tell me how to draw a car bomb he goes like we can't help with a terror attack you go no it's not for a terror

attack okay what you do anyway if you want a reason why it only killed him and barely injured seven other people and didn't do any real damage it's because Chad GPT told him to make a car bomb using fireworks and gasoline. And it didn't work. Yeah, it is funny how often AI is wrong now. Google is like supposed to be the top of the game in a lot of this shit, but their AI is constantly getting on. You send probably three screenshots a week to our group chat of Google's AI being

comically incorrect. So yeah, I don't think I would trust my life or my, you know, my planned terrorist attack to any kind of AI system. You got to put in the people are getting lazy. Nobody wants to work anymore. They just won't put it off on a robot. You got to put in blood, sweat and tears yourself if you want to plan a proper car bomb.

Let me ask you something about this guy, though, because he's like your typical right-wing lunatic, right, which they almost always are. But he did this in a rented cyber truck, which screams Elon Musk in front of Trump's hotel in Las Vegas, right? Like, what was the rationale behind that? You know what I mean? Like those two were not targets.

They were like, it's like putting on a uniform or waving a flag to do the thing you're going to do. Okay. He explicitly said in his writings he left behind. And by the way, I went and read it. And his politics were very, very clear. I don't know why the media is doing this. We have no idea what to make of them thing. Like, like, only if you have, only if your brain was encased in Amber like 20 years ago with this guy's politics, not make, make sense to you.

But he explicitly said he loves Musk and Trump. And he was self-immolating to try to get other vets to go occupied. to understand that America's collapsing he used the word hard reset which is a word you find on the right wing internet to like, it's very common in the space is used by a group that calls itself No Lives Matter, which by the guy

was just arrested in Virginia with a bunch of explosives in his house and targets of Joe Bodney was shooting that as part of the No Lives Matter movement and he wanted his fellow vets to go occupy D.C. and purged of all the Democrats even if it meant killing them. Okay. And the mainstream media looks at this like, well, his politics are inscrutable

because he said some stuff about how he hates the one And he felt guilty over the war crimes he'd participated in. In our current universe, even to the mainstream media, feeling guilt over war crimes is now fully left-wing-coded. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That feels fucking weird and bleak to me, but I'm not in charge of anything. Well, let me say, so, like, I feel like anybody, well, I don't know, maybe this is overly simplistic.

But I feel like the vast majority of people who will come up with in. follow through on a plan like this with or without the help of fucking nefarious robots is is a they're they you know they ain't right in the head they got some shit going on upstairs and so you start looking at their politics and it's like well first and foremost they're crazy but this is another one of those things where it's like when it comes to right white supremacist or whatever it's like not everybody who has your politics as a white supremacist but every white supremacist has your politics and I feel like it's like that with lunatic murderers or would be murderers too.

Like, am I wrong about that? Like, generally speaking, it feels like that's the way that that goes, you know, so there's still like a correlation to be drawn there. Do you understand what I'm saying? It's like, I get that he also was crazy, but that doesn't automatically discount whatever his politics were because the politics you guys have drawn for yourselves seems to attract crazy-ass fucking people, crazy-ass-violent people or whatever. Yeah, I mean, it's almost.

like we got to like conflate a bunch of different stuff like politics is part of it worldviews part of it that values are part of it which is separate from politics but not completely and then they got like the fact both these guys both the New Orleans guy and the Vegas guy

had both gone through awful divorces okay which is part of this too you might you might want to put both of them in like the in-cell school shooter sort of category too that's part of it yeah even let me read quote here he talked about masculinity I got this why can't I find it um he taught anyway I can't find it is

calling a manifesto is not because it's basically two short emails but he talked about how you got to make America more masculine masculinity is good we stopped got uh you know stop being anti-masculine which right so he was red-pilled yeah a family court judge told him to stop beating his wife and he's like this fucking yeah what's his country coming to man can't even be a man anymore so yeah I don't know why I mean like anyway I will admit, like, it's hard not to be conspiratorial when, like, both these terrorist attacks, like, both army vets, both would decloid to Afghanistan, both were stationed at Fort Bragg, both used rented cars using the same fucking car rental service, but Fort Bragg is 50,000 people stationed there, there's no reason they ever would have met, the Vegas guy was a green beret, the New Orleans guy worked on human resources, so unless the New Orleans guy helped the Vegas guy, and get set up with paternity leave. I don't know what the fuck they would have talked about.

But also their politics are completely different. One guy was an ISIS and the other guy was a purely homegrown white-wing American psycho. So in Turro, by the way, it took me like two seconds of Googling. Do I talk about this on Friday? Turrow markets to the military for fairly obvious reasons. I'm not familiar with it, but like as basically a car rental Airbnb service, who's leaving their car state side while they still have to make car payments being unused for, right? So of course they're both.

Plus, they're sweet-ass brand-new Dodge Chargers with a really high interest rate they've got to pay off. So you can't just leave them sitting there for a long time. You've got to get some money back on that. You've got to spend that, you know, enlistment bonus on something. Might as well get a charger that you can't pay for when you realize you've got to go to Afghanistan for seven months. That is the move. Yeah. Anyway, I guess we have finally found a use case for Chad GPT that isn't just writing shitty book reports.

If we just get all the right-wing dipsets to plan their terrorist attacks with large language, models, we can probably get the body count down to just them in every single one of these cases. So, also, we'll also destroy the environment, but that's killing everyone long term, not really in the immediate, so I guess we'll take it as a trade-off. Another tech angle here is the New Orleans shooter used meta-smart glasses for recon when he planned his attack. So if you're keeping score at home, we had one American use a Mark Zuckerberg product to plan

his attack, and another American use an Elon Musk vehicle to make a car car. bomb and what we're talking about is the border because immigrants or something. Well, the one guy, the guy in New Orleans still counts as an immigrant, Mark, even though he's like born and raised American citizen because he's got a Muslim. He's got a Muslim with a super, super muslimy name. Jabar. Yeah, and brown skin. So I mean, that still counts.

Let's be honest here. But I mean, yeah, obviously I'm being facetious, except I'm not. That really is how it worked. people will see that dude's picture and read his name and that's that's that he that he counts as an immigrant and like because this guy like he apparently originally planned to kill his family but then instead decided no way instead I'll join ISIS all right so now among us right yeah so now instead we're going to invade Syria we're talking about foreign policy of venturism today and the stupidest fucking light and so like first of all don't kill your

family either just skip my head to the killing yourself part and leave the rest of the fucking out of it and how in the fucking world can you order an ISIS flag on the internet in the United States in 2024 and the government doesn't notice? I thought that, wasn't it? Because I saw very early on, like right after it happened before people knew

and of course I haven't kept up with it. I don't keep up with shit. I thought that people were, there were grainy pictures of his ISIS flag and people were like, that's like a bullshit secondhand knockoff ISIS flag. I thought people were saying he couldn't order one. And so he like,

you know, he made his own or had someone else make his own or whatever, which is also fun. I wonder how much time he put into, like that dude sitting in his basement, like very meticulously working on an ISIS flag that still ended up looking not great.

But yeah, obviously fuck that guy. That was awful what he did. But, yep. All right. So, producer Matt is with us tonight. He's back there.

Just so y'all know, I realize I probably should have said this earlier. Me and Matt, Matt is at a hotel. near us. He's in Southern California for the day, but we don't allow him to be physically present, so he's still in a hotel room. But

I think it'll be fine. It should be fine. Just so you all know, if the power goes out here or something because the tree goes down or whatever, if I vanish, Mark will let you guys know what we're going to do. We'll circle back later and figure it out, but hopefully that doesn't happen. The perils of being live on the internet, which is what we are.

This is weekly skews. We're all here together. Before we continue with the show, I want to remind you a few things. First of all, go to Trey Crowder.com, check out my upcoming tour dates. Had a slight break, a little bit of a break for the weekend, which was rad, but for the week, for the holidays, which was rad, but we're getting back at it.

I'll be in Tacoma, Washington this weekend, then Spokane, Washington next weekend, Santa Barbara, after that left coast hitting. That's what we're doing, then a whole bunch of other places, Salt Lake City, Louisville, Kentucky, the Carolinas, Florida, everywhere, all over

to place in 2025, go to Crouter.com, come see me. Also, if you like this program and we'd like to show your support, you can do so by signing up on Patreon. You go to weekly skews.com slash more, or you can just go to Patreon and search for my name. Either way it works. Look at that new graphic of the two of us. Real quick, just because we haven't seen this graphic yet, a very funny person on Blue Sky, a very funny skewer who, I'm sorry, I didn't note your username, said that I love this graphic because this graphic implies that Mark is the sunny, upbeat disposition one while Trey is always cynical and fatigued by everyone else's stupidity or something like that.

It's like good, good call, boys. The username is the person's name, the username is Drinari and she, I believe it, she says, I like how the new artwork makes it look like Mark Age's a ray of sunshine and Trey Crowder and it brings people down with the truth. Looking good, fellas. Yeah. So good call on that matter. It is funny.

Subvert those expectations. Anyway, if you pay $5 a month on our Patreon, you get two full-length bonus episodes. We do skew and a as we answer questions. We cover things that we don't get to in the main show or things that come up in the interim. Just stuff we want to. It's literally just this show, but there's more of it.

So if you like this show, get some more of it in your life and support the show in the process. Sign up on Patreon $5 a month. Now, as Mark said earlier, as for the show tonight, Manifest Destiny back on the table, baby. That's right. It's time for another Louisiana purchase. Time for another westward trek,

although this one's up to the north of the Arctic Circle. We're doing what we do. American imperialism, taking land. It ain't ours. Kicking the natives out, telling him to kick our ass. This is Trump's mandate for his second term. He's got his eyes set on a lot of prime real estate all around this hemisphere. And we're going to talk about his designs a little later.

But first, we start with the Daily Dumbass, Matt, graphic. Tonight's D.D., great American patriots who didn't realize that New Mexico and New York will both henceforth be referred to as New America. Listen to Trump's plans. We're going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which has a beautiful ring that covers a lot of territory.

The Gulf of America, what a beautiful name. And it's appropriate. All right. It's appropriate. I did cut up back. So this is from Trump's press conference this morning. We're already going to do to show him this topic because he seems like he's serious about it. And then I was like, wait, is he serious?

Then he gave the most deranged press conference I've ever fucking seen in my life talking about invading using military force against Panama and Greenland using economic pressure against Canada to Greenland and Panama about seasoned territory using economic pressure on Canada forcing to become the 51st state which all of Canada being one state feels fucking insane it's our what was it nine provinces then all this is about war with China he's threatening the fucking UK Denmark

all the like he's still working on invading Mexico just the just the dumbest craziest shit I've ever seen in my entire life One thing I wanted to know is back in 2012, a Democratic congressman by the name of Steve Holland introduced a bill. You know, it's at the state level. I'll forget what state it was. It was a state rep. I wanted to rename the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America as a bit to make fun of anti-immigrant talking points.

And then Trump just takes his bit that he was doing ironically and sarcastically as a bit of broad satire and just proposes this as legitimate fucking policy. Right, which is very indicative of the time we live in. But I do just want to raise the question. Like, has anyone done, if people run the numbers on this in terms of usable coastline or whatever, like, when's like, how did it become the Gulf of Mexico to begin with? Does anybody know how that happened? Because I'm looking at a picture of a map here, Mark, and I'm not entirely convinced that we don't have more coastline on this here Gulf than Mexico does, all right? Perhaps it's fair and equitable, but it's, that it should be America's Gulf.

I don't care what anybody wants to call a bottle of water, but it's been to the global. of Mexico since the 1500s because it was Spanish territory. There you go. Okay. So, whatever. Yeah. It was Spanish control waters. You know, they had, they were there. It's back when they were the dominant empire. Oh, bro. They were running shit

down in that part of the world in particular. I know that primarily from a pirate show that I watched that I really in. Black sales. Like sales. Yeah. You can't trust the dastardly Spanish in the Caribbean about 500 or 500 years ago. You got to watch out for them. But yeah. Yeah. Black sales rules of the show, by the way. We do both recommend it.

It is very, I feel like it flew under the radar a little bit. It was on stars, but please watch black sales. It's fantastic. I think it's on Netflix now, if you guys want to check it out. So, uh, so, uh, Americans never fucking vote on foreign policy despite the fact that we're always at war. We've been at war constantly since like the 1890s and no one ever seems to care about it.

And like, for the first time ever, actually, we're not under the last month or so of Joe Biden. and if you ignore the people were army to do conflicts, we're not actually engaged in an active conflict right now and that's about the fucking end. So anyway,

it's a good thing everybody voted on egg prices so we can invade Greenland. Well, haven't we mostly either been in a war or like heading towards or gearing up for a war for most of our existence as a country?

Because it's one of those things, it's like, was that, but was it Christopher Hitchens, I think, was that who wrote that book, War is a force that gives us meaning that was assigned to me in college.

That's why I read it. But it's about the military industrial complex, which Dwight Eisenhower warned against and his ex-speechist president or whatever. But we're like, I mean, that's what we're a militaristic. We have to find a way. We spend all this money on all these shooty-killy toys that we have.

And we had to find a way to use them. You can't just let them all sit there. You can't have a fire-ass fucking, you know, PC sitting there and not play any video games. You know what I mean? That's how America treats tanks and shit. Right. So it's like we're always either in a war or headed towards a war, I guess.

And after we finally left Afghanistan and all that, it's like, well, what's next? Why not Canada? You know, I didn't expect it to go that way. But Americans love saber rattling and beyond. I can't really. I mean, I understand there are a few material reasons and people lobbying forward or whatever. But as far as why Trump's so gassed up to do this shit, as far as I can tell, it's just because he's freed of all constraints and. Great men conquer shit.

Right. It's a legacy thing. Yeah. It's like, yeah. It's like, you know, it's like, I don't know. It's like a dick measuring contest or whatever. Right. You know what I mean?

It's like, I claim land for America. This is what the great leaders used to. That's what, you know, empire. For most of humanity's history, that's how human civilizations worked. You take shit and make it yours. And we've only. It's still, what still works that way, except we're more subtle with it. Because we've got smarter with it.

He's going back to the old. school goon way of doing it, not knowing that there's a better way to do imperialism now. Right. Yeah. So like, so like that's how stupid this is. Like we have a playbook for how to how to take Greenland's national natural resources without invading and killing people. We know how to do it. You bribe them and you get to give you a mining contract. You don't have to do it this way. Right. So like, but anyway, if Trump just wants to be remembered as an immortal great titan or whatever, can we just build him a fucking pyramid? Like right. Like, like, maybe. maybe we tell we're building a sphinx we will that's why he'll let some migrants in to build it or

some shit uh that's actually genuinely kind of not a bad idea in my opinion i'm not saying necessarily a pyramid but some kind of statue or monument or something in a like i don't know in a place that's easily obscured where you can hide it and pretend it's not there but so that he doesn't recognize that but just give him some kind of monument to to his ego and everything that might kind of they might back him off a little bit be like this is all i needed make him a bigger fifth head on top of Mount Rushmore. All right. So that's all this headline on, I think it was New York Times, emboldened Trump suggests

to the territorial expansion. And no, that's not fucking at. One, he's not emboldened. And two, territorial expansion is not a fucking thing, all right? Like, it's not like, there's not territories out there to be claimed in the planet Earth in 2025. Right. Like, even like colonial empires pretended the lands weren't, were unclaimed when they took

them. Their argument was basically like, well, the residents of him. Hispaniola don't even have flags, bro. Where's their anthem? They're not a country. We just fucking take it. But like, Greenland's a country. Canada is a country.

It's not territorial expansion. You're conquering fucking other sovereign countries. Correct. If I'm wrong. Greenland in particular, they are a country, but they're, they were a colony of Denmark, right? And they want, they, not only do they not want us to own them. They want to be fully independent from Denmark, don't they?

They're not trying to trade. Denmark for us. They're like, they've been trying to throw off the yoke of their colonial oppressors or whatever for a long time. And then we're like, well, what if we just bought y'all? We could, we could. Right. But that's not even, like, it's not like the yoke of the colonial oppressors isn't quite right because they can vote to leave anytime they want. They've been talking about maybe they'll do it next year. And Denmark's like, sure. Oh, it's like a Scotland situation. Yeah. Yeah. So they're all. Okay. So Denmark has given them. All right. Shout out Denmark. Good for them. Yeah. They got a woke king over there. So your internal questions with all

Trump shit is like, is he, is he this stupid? Is he trolling? Is it dangerous? Does he mean it? Can he persuade people to actually go through with it? And right now the answers to those questions are in my mind, yes, sort of. Yes, yes. Maybe who knows? And unfortunately, we will fucking find out. All right. Yeah, I was thinking earlier, I've got a, I did one of my videos today, but it was too late in the day. So I'm going to put it out tomorrow. So it's not out. But I was talking about this and how, like, I don't know if you said it, but I've seen, I saw people, not people saying watch Trump. There's all these people talking about how he's shrewd and whatever.

I saw some articles saying it's like, no, you guys don't understand. See, this is a, what this is, this is a shrewd negotiation tactic. This is Clive, this is business 101. That's what this is. Because what you do is, you come in and you threaten with some extreme proposition or some extreme requests, you know, you say, I'm going to do this and you know you're not going to do it. So when you get, you know, comparatively less.

in that in a compromise, it's still a good gift for you because you started from such an extreme position. And that's all Trump is doing here. And I read this and I was like, well, that's, I mean, I could see how that would work, but I feel like the initial extreme position

should be at least somewhat feasible or realistic. Do you know what I mean? Like I've said the, it's like, if I went up to my neighbor and I was like, hey, either let me, I'm going to store,

all my shit in your kitchen if you don't let me borrow your car once a week right you're not going they're not going to hand me the keys they're going to say did you fall down the stairs what's wrong with like you that's not you don't have the power to do that first thing but then i thought well if i had an army to send into their kitchen then you know it might be a little different like but but they have armies too i know i know but i mean i know but not like hours though nobody he's got one like hours. Oh, bro, but that's not, but that's the backwards the way it works.

Canada has to launch a nuke first. They cannot get into, right. You can't just fucking, like, that's the way this analogy falls apart. It's like, like, oh, he's just sticking out of the maximumist position as negotiating tactic.

You can't go around the world popping your fucking mouth off against people that have nukes. I know, I think it's absurd. I'm saying I also thought it was ridiculous when I read it's a negotiation tactic because it's a completely unrealistic.

He's just like, he's just, spouting off about shit that's never going to happen which by the way to be that's what he's done that that's his whole thing he's done that for a long time in his first term he did that too but like but then I started thinking it's like

but yeah but what if he takes it as far as actually engaging the military deploying people or whatever like how quickly that can unravel or become very shitty you know let's get to the news that people know what we're talking about because we haven't talked about like the actually

like an event shit they can come back to her take some of this Sound good? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I do, so, uh, um, uh, uh, because you brought up Eisenhower is like, like military industrial, uh, uh, military industrial complex speech, which is on YouTube. You guys should go watch it.

But he basically is, for a member of a line from it's like every dollar spent on a gun on an ammunition is one that isn't spent on books or butter, right? Right. Not for nothing. Been saying it. Been saying it for my whole damn life. We all have. But anyway.

Yeah. Trump apparently called Jimmy Carter for advice on how to deal with China in 2019. for whatever reason, and both sides confirmed this phone call happened. And Carter's advice to Trump was China has not wasted a single penny on war and that's why they're ahead of us in almost every way. So obviously to take on China,

which is what Trump says is about, we've got to get involved at a bunch of stupid fucking wars. So to get to the Canadian part of this really quick, Trudeau just resigned and Trump used the opportunity to dunk on him about it because like many people in Canada love being the

51st state. The United States can no longer suffer suffer the massive trade deficits in subsidies that Canada needs to stay afloat. Justin Trudeau knew this and resigned. All this is bullshit. Trade deficit doesn't mean we're paying Canada. It just means we're buying more shit from them than they're buying from us. Which if you guys don't want to, everybody wants to stop buying maple syrup and beaver pelts or whatever, then if I can go, I know it's timber and oil, but yeah, I'm just. I can't live with that. My beaver pelts, Mark. What are you talking about? So maybe if we merge with our economies of Canada, we could create a no tariff zone,

and maybe call this new country the North American free trade area or NAFTA for sure. We already fucking do this. This is like, oh my God. And I thought NAFTA didn't hit for Trump. Of course it does it or you would think it doesn't. Do you know what the electoral implications of this would be?

Assume we let Canadians vote? Yeah. Or are these in territory? No, like Canadian, like obviously this is never going to happen. I'm saying if this did happen, do you know how it would affect America electorally? It moves to the left. some of that in general, but they're about to elect a

reactionary right-wing government. I know, right. That's what I, because I always got the impression of Canada, you know, they're more progressive than those. They're further left. They're more sane. So selfishly, I'm like, hell, you know what? Make them come down here. It might force them to make everything better around these parts. But, but yeah, they

Trudeau resigned. And yes, they're on the verge of bringing in their own. He ain't Trump, but like a Canadian Trump-light version. It's just happening all over the world. So. But by the way, That doesn't, that doesn't translate to being Trump ally. Electing Canada, electing another nationalist means they're more likely to fucking attack America.

Of course, dude, if you, yeah, you put two trumps on each side. They're not going to fucking join hands and frolic through the fucking wildflowers, whatever. They're going to fucking start a pissing contest and get people killed fucking measuring dicks against each other. It's what's going to happen. So Kevin O'Leary, in response to this, you know, Mr. Wendover from Shark Tank has volunteered to go to more large. and start negotiations about merging Canada with the United States because, quote, we don't want Trudeau negotiating this deal because he doesn't like Trudeau.

Fucking Mr. Wonderful could even close a deal on Dude Wipes. He lost $300 million on dude wipes. So some lunatic context here. I think I mentioned this to you earlier. There's a right-wing friever swamp idea that's adjacent to this that Trudeau has had to comment on, and so has Pierre Poulavre, the right guy who's going to be the next Prime Minister. I was really hoping you.

knew how to say his name. I don't know how to say it. Okay. We're in the same boat. All right. So there's an idea that Alex Jones has been pushing to his Canadian audience called Diagallon, Diagallon. I don't know how to say it. But it's like basically the idea is to form a white nationalist ethno state that stretches from the top of Canada to Florida down the east coast of North America. So that's part of what's pushing this here. And I like I hate having to be the guy reaching the fever storm so that you guys know what's actually expiring these ideas, but apparently somebody in Trump world is familiar with the Agilion. I also assume when to take Canada is about it's being rich in natural resources and us

having access to the Arctic. So now let's talk about Greenland. Okay. So let's watch this video. Here's Trump's former national security advisor, Robert O'Brien, on Fox News. We'll watch a couple videos from this bit because it's fucking... The Danes can either put the frigate that's necessary there, they can put the airwings, they can put the missiles in Greenland, and they can put the infantry there that they need to defend the country, just like the Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia are doing it in Eastern Europe, or they can pay us to do it, and we'll do it, but they can cover the cost of the defense, or if they don't want to do either of those things, they can let us buy Greenland from them, and Greenland can become part of Alaska.

I mean, the native people in Greenland are very closely related to the people of Alaska, and we'll make it part of Alaska, but they can't have it. Greenland and Alaska are on the opposite sides of the fucking. Continent. Problem one. What's a Greenland to Alaska flight? 14 hours? I don't fucking know.

You actually probably fly over the North Pole. It's probably shortened that. Yeah, but Mark, you know, they're all snow Indians up there. They all got egg glues and eat seals and shit. What more do you need to know? I'm being facetious again. Right. They are heavily indigenous.

He's right about that. I didn't realize that all the Vikings basically died off of disease or intermarried with the native population. So it's mostly Inuits. I looked it up earlier, too, because of the via, yeah, it said the thing I saw said 85 to 90% indigenous Greenland Inuit people are there. And like you said, Greenland is pushing for total. A lot of Greenlanders are pushing for total independence from Denmark.

And this led to us just getting royally dunked on by Greenland. Let me read you this statement they put out on social media. Denmark, right? Greenland or dead. Sorry, Denmark. Yeah, sorry. After rebuffing Donald J. Drum's hypothetical proposal to purchase Greenland, the government of Denmark has announced

to it would be interested in buying the United States instead. As we have stated, Greenland is not for sale, the spokesman for the Danish government set on Friday. We have noted, however, that during the Trump regime, pretty much everything in the United States, including its government, has been, has most definitely been for sale. Denmark will be interested in purchasing the United States

in its entirety, with the exception of its government. Man, we believe. Getting dunked on them by these wooden shoe wearing motherfuckers. Fucking, what, like, this is what It's what happens with Trump, right? Yeah.

We believe that, you know, is Holland? I don't know. We believe. You're right. It is Holland. Holland is the Dutch and I make that. Hell, they wear wooden shoes too. Who knows?

Why not? So we believe that by governing the U.S. in educational system, but we believe that by giving the U.S. in an educational system in national health care, it can be transformed from a vast landmass into a great nation. This book has been said, holy fucking shit.

Please conquer us, Denmark. Absolutely. I thought the same thing. It's like, dude, they're fucking, you know, they're taking swings and they're roasting as hard, but also like, they're spitting too at the same time. You know what I mean? The idea of someone being able to forcibly push this country to its full potential as a nation, you know, it makes me so happy, but it'll never happen because it ain't going to be Denmark.

But, yeah, I mean, they're right, though. Yeah, we can skip this next video, Matt, because we're running behind, but just in case you're wondering, O'Brien, the same guy in that same interview we're just talking about, explicitly says we need to take Greenland because the polar ice caps are melting due to climate change. We can't let other countries have those natural resources. So they've pivoted,

that's the wrong word. They're doing climate denial and eco-fascism at the exact same fucking time. And so, like, they're trying to talk like keeping China from getting a hold of Greenland's natural resources, which we'll get to in a second. But like, I was trying to I googled China and Greenland. And the closest thing I could, I found two things.

One of them is totally fake, which we'll talk about, what we're going to talk about first. There is a company called Greenland Holdings, which is a Chinese state-owned real estate company that owns nothing in Greenland. They own apartment buildings like Los Angeles, London, and Australia. But they named it Greenland, so we might be in a World War, okay? Wait, hold on. I'm sorry. I don't follow that.

What do you mean? There's a Chinese company called Greenland Holdings, but they don't actually hold anything in Greenland, but why did they? they name at that? What, like, they want to, because they want to own Greenland? I don't know.

Okay. Greenland. All right. Okay. So it's not related to Greenland, the nation, which were, okay, okay.

But maybe somebody from Trump World got on Wikipedia and thinks China's buying Greenland. So. Okay. So Greenland has a population of like 60,000 people. Their economy is like 90% fishing. And if you wonder what, like,

what would make them interested to like an outside capitalist, fucking maybe quasi-fascist want to be empire. And July of 2021, Greenland banned all new oil and gas exploration in its territory with government officials stating that the environmental,

quote, price of oil extraction is too high, end quote. Connected to that, connected to that as European Union has urged Greenland to restrict development by the People's Republic of China of rare earth mineral projects, but the government of Greenland

declined. And they have maybe a core supply of the world's rare earth minerals. Um, this is stuff that used to make smartphones, MRI machines. And here's the punchline tray, electric cars. Tesla. Okay. So, but my thing is like, Tesla could benefit from the U.S. owning Greenland.

Is what you're saying? Because of the resources they have there. Uh, dude, I was a real quick. Yep. You said 60,000 and I had to Google it because I thought you were just throwing a number out there. That's literally their population. It's like 60,000 people. I know you know that, but I'm reiterating.

That's fucking nuts, dude. that's like the that's the like population of the upper cumberland part of middle tennessee where i'm from which is one of those rural parts of tennessee it's a bunch of counties put together but they're all very rural and all together they're about 60,000 people i didn't realize that i don't know what i thought it was but i would have guessed at least i don't know 250,000 people or something like that that's fucking wild and they're having to deal with this shit yeah i think they're capital cities, 15,000 people, and like that's the, my home county is about 15,000

people. Damn, that's nuts, dude. But yeah, but they have all these rare earth minerals and other resources there, which again, has been the impetus for a lot of American imperialism over the years. You know, just take them. We'll steal that shit. A lot of rich people get richer off of it. And they also have a bunch of ruby

mines, so we can go extract their for their fine rubies to make Trump a golden hat. So, by the way, their politics is pretty much dominated by Democratic Socialists. and eco-socialists, so I doubt we'll let them have two senators. They'll probably end up some Puerto Rico fucking hell. And I think, by the way, if they

want to vote to join America, if they want to vote to leave Denmark and join America, fucking more power to you, but I would urge them to request being made a state, so they have some say in their own destiny. So, let's get to the funny part of this story. So Denmark, in response to this, has boosted Greenland's defense

spending on Greenland by $1.5 billion, which we spend on one jet. All right. The defense package allows for the purchase of two new inspection ships, two long-range drones, and two extra dog sled teams.

We're going to war with dog sled teams. Okay. Yeah. Look, dude, that's funny, obviously. We're out there mushing their way to victory. That's what they do, right? You mush. If you got dog sled teams,

I don't know how any of that's supposed to work. And I know this is not a comprehensive summary that you just gave us. But it's $1.5 billion American dollars, right? It's converted from there. They, it feels like they should get more than that. How much can two dog sled tams cost? How much, Mark?

I think the inspection ship's probably the bulk of the price. Fucking 8,000 bucks or whatever. Those are very well-trained, those are very well-bred dogs train. I imagine they're very. 16,000 bucks. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're talking about $1.5 billion.

It feels like they could do a little better than that. God damn. But I mean, yeah, I don't, you know, what are we doing here? And everything old is new again, right? We're just reliving the 1890s through 1920s and pretty much ever respected our society. This is not much different than us, you know, doing the Spanish-American War, invading the Philippines. But this reminded me of, like, one of my favorite pictures of all time from any war ever fought. If you throw up this picture, this from the Falklands War, you know, when the UK had to be in Argentina faced off over a chunk of Ireland.

That's a British Marine ducking for cover behind a penguin. Look at him. Standing at attention. in his dress blues. Look at him. The penguin's saying God save the queen. He's respectful. He's prepared.

How do you not know you're about, you're maybe about to give your life in service of nothing when you're fucking storming a beach next to a goddamn penguin? This is so fucking stupid. You said that? That's during the Falkland Islands? Is that what you said? Yeah, the Falkland War.

Yeah. Well, dude, Prince Andrew fought in that. So you know it was pretty important. A lot of real shit down there. Yeah. He probably molested underage penguin. Yeah, sheep, underage sheep, and penguins. Yes, anyway, go ahead.

So, the Danish side of this forest, the British, the Danish, the Denmark rule of family adopted a new coat of arms. They put this up, Matt. They changed it to have a buffer set of dudes on it. Hell yeah. He buffered dudes. Just a buffer set of dudes. They also, they accentuated the polar bear.

They emphasized the polar bear. This is a show of show. strength mark clearly what they're doing probably features greenland and the pharaoh islands which i guess the trouble's take the pharaoh islands too so yeah this was done in like response to trump's saber rattling so i assume that famed political cartoonist ben garrison is already hard at work on the jacked trump fucking touchdown scoring painting countermeasure that he's gonna that he's gonna deploy in the near future. But that's what it is funny about this is it's like, this is literally exactly

what Trump would do in, in this position. Do you know what I mean? Right. Oh, an underrated part of this is the entire world's run by Trump. The only difference is like Fred King, King Frederick X is like, I know it's Frederick the 10th, but I call him, I think Fred X. Fred X, that's fine. Fred X. That's fine. Yeah. Yeah. So he's a, he's, he's, he just has ceremonial powers. He can do all the dumb. shady wants, right? By the way, he doesn't seem like that unsurious of a person. I'm joking around comparing to Trump, but he also has a trained special forces guy, like he was a frogman or like in the way

that royal families go through cursory military training, you're not going to flunk the crown prince from his training. So I have no idea if he hits at special forces stuff, but he does think of himself as a special forces guy. Yeah, I mean, it's part of my own cynicism about fucking Nepo babies and rich people and stuff. I have to assume he doesn't really hit in a special Force's way. It's like maybe he does.

Maybe he does. I don't know. But I feel like you have to assume, you know, yeah, they're just like, oh, good job, Prince. Here's your medal when he, you know, don't really do you get to earn it. I will say, though, objectively, this, I feel like this is like at least a little bit of an upgrade to this coat of arms here. That's way too many fish on the first version. You need to diversify a little bit, okay?

Adding a ram, taking some of the fish out, that's a good chance. changed. I don't care how Jack the dudes are. Of course, I prefer Jack dudes. I'm a straight American man. Jack dudes are better. But adding in the ram in exchange for some fish and emphasizing the polar bear there, like, I think those were good moves irrespective of whatever Donald Trump has done. It's just my aesthetic opinion. My only hope with the Ben Garrison stuff during Trump

Trump, I wanted to fuck up once and actually give Trump like wallow nipples just to see how it goes over. so but speak why you're cloning on Prince Frederick and he not being a real military service

throw up this picture of King Frederick Matt look at all the medals he has if you got this picture he's a really tough he obviously earned all this shit how could you get all these medals

if you weren't there's literally no other way to get all of those how I want to know how you could legitimately earn all those medals you don't know what I mean Denmark

any wars are they fighting in one of those medals was for attending his mom's birthday party a month right right I'm not kidding Oh, you're being serious?

Yes, yes. It was like a ceremonial attendance ribbon for his mom's like the anniversary of his mom's coordination. You're just being a smart ass. No, no, no. It's really pretending his mom's birthday part. What a stupid planet with it want. So if you're wondering, like, because Trump, I think everybody, most people pay attention to the news are aware that Trump wanting to buy Greenland or trade Puerto Rico for it back in like in his first term. That's such a bad trade, by the way.

I'm sorry, no disrespect to the good people of Greenland. And also, I'm biased towards warmer climates and beaches and stuff. But, dude, again, no disrespect, Greenland. But if you're watching and we know you are, we appreciate you too. But Greenland for Puerto Rico, that's a, that's not a good, just geographically, that's a bad move. Even just like rum versus pickled fish or whatever. Yeah, right. Yes.

every way you break it down Yeah So It's a Trump's idea To get Greenland Was it really proposed By his longtime friend

Ronald Louder Who's the heir to The Este Louder Cosmetics Fortune Of course it And he proposed it Because when he looks at it On a map

It looks like quote On a map It looks like sweet real estate Okay Mm-hmm Show me the lie It does If you ever looked at a map

Especially It's funny to imagine These guys Are looking at one of those maps That you know How they're distorted the further north you go. It's funny to think they're looking at that

where they're like, God damn, look at all that land because it's not actually... They really do think Greenland's the same size as Africa, like it looks like on that fucking... It's own continent, yeah. Right. So they're saying Greenland's about pushing back against China, which, whatever.

They also say that Trump also threatened to invade Panama to take back the Panama Canal. That's about fucking taking back China. So like, China has bought a bunch of real estate about the panama around the panama canal and they're permitting ghost fleets to go back and forth and they control the they own the port companies on the other side of the panama canal my my thing is like why are you if you're beef with china is that they're communist how are you also mad at them for doing capitalism better than you right out capital out capitalism in you yes nobody stopped

you from putting a bid on the fucking ports of the land right like so like what are we doing here like China is an enemy because they're communists, but they're also just outbidding us for shit with money. I don't like, I can't fucking figure out the actual beef here. And Panama, by the way, they did switch from recognition from Taiwan to China in 2017. But like China is not just helping Latin American and South American economies.

They're going on a soft power stuff. They're offering foreign aid. They're building hospitals and schools and soccer fields in these countries. What are we doing with their foreign aid? Cancel it at all. And I'm not saying, that's still better than what we're doing because the foreign aid still exists. Also, I'm not pulling this out of my butt. I'm relating to you, Reddit comments I have read and stuff.

So it's basically out of my butt. But I've heard that like China, they do a lot of that all around the world, especially in place, like in Africa and place over it. And they do give money to these, you know, relief aid and that type of thing in exchange for, you know, highly advantageous fucking future deals or business arrangements or whatever that take advantage of these people

which is supposed to be what we do, Mark, that's supposed to be our job. That's what I'm saying. That's why I can't be allowed to stand. We're the ones that are supposed to take advantage

of these people, not fucking China. You know, you got swoop in there and they're fucking stealing our moves. It's our whole thing. But also like whenever, like we're doing through,

we just had a fucking like budget negotiation now. Like our four and a budget is down to basically $7. like it's like we don't when I say like we've already perfected how to do imperialism it's not you do the carrot versus the stick like they're just they just copied our playbook from the cold war it's so true it's so true and like and we're mad about it because they're spending more money than us but like right I'm sorry man they're investing in shit I don't know what to fucking tell you they're investing in education transportation green energy and foreign aid

and we're like well we want all those stuff for free only we'll pay for is a fucking military. It's like fuck. Anyway, the background to all this is Trump has beef with Panama because he got hit for tax fraud owes them a bunch of money. He also

this is from this article in the Independent. Let me read here. Besides owning them a bunch of money, Ricardo Martinelli, president of Panama at the time of the opening, has since been convicted of money laundering and has taken shelter inside the Nicaraguan embassy of Panama. One of the main

brokers who sold units in the tower, Trump's Tower. Alexandria Ventura Neguera met repeatedly with Ivanka Trump while working on the project and did business with organized crime figures who may have used the properties for money laundering earning the tower the nickname Narco Alago.

So, what I'm circling around here is like when these, nothing these people say should ever be taken in face value. And when they tell you that they're serious about winning to war on drugs or fighting to war on drugs, and I need your remember in the back of your head, the Trump is involved actively in laundering money for

fucking drug cartels, okay? As is every American bank. Yeah. And as for the Panama Canal itself, if you guys aren't super familiar with the history of it, because I wasn't, I knew vaguely, but we took the land from Columbia to begin with, so I guess we're fully back to 1903, we took the land from Columbia to form Panama, and I was going to take it back from Panama. And at the time, the reason we had to let it go,

We turned into basically a whites-only socialist paradise surrounded by squalor and the Panamanians who worked there had no rights, so there were protests and people died, including Americans. So Jimmy Carter signed an agreement to give it back to them, started the process in 1977,

and we handed it over in 1999. With help from, you'll never guess, John Wayne. John Wayne, the movie star. Yeah, okay, all right. Gave pussy-ass liberal, rest in peace, Jimmy Carter, political cover

to hand over the Panama Canal to a right-wing dictator because he was friends with the right-wing dictator. All right. So, so to finish up with the China part of this,

if China is a really big fucking boogeyman, all right, I need to square these ideas, hold all these ideas in your head at the same time. We need to take Panama off because China's controlling it.

We need to stop China from controlling Greenland because he can't have their natural resources. Elon Musk is a fully own subsidiary of the government of China while also being a U.S. government military contractor and Trump's like quasi right-hand advisor

slash dignitary all over the world. Okay. Must business in China rely on a large, on cozy government relationships. China gave him a $1.4 billion loan to build a Tesla gigafactory in Shanghai in 2019. Tesla did pay it back.

Magas fully, if you're looking for the true mega civil war, it won't be over the HB1 visa. It'll be over, Steve Bannon calling fucking Elon Musk a globalist cuck for China, which he's already doing on his show. And also, like, of all the Trump, Musk goes on Twitter, X, whatever you want to call it, and post criticisms of every government all around the world. He got to fight with the Brazilian government. He's squabbling with the UK government right now. He's supporting the Nazi party in the German elections.

He's fucking with France and the EU. He never criticizes China. Have you ever noticed that? I mean, I've never noticed it, but I'm not surprised to hear it. Not toot my own horn here or jerk myself off too hard, but I've been saying for years I've said on this show too. I've been, like, and I'm not, there's difference between this and burying your head in the same.

But like, I've said for years, like, I'm not that worried about a World War III with China or whatever because there's clearly way too many very rich and very powerful people that are making way too much money and have way too many business relationships at a very high level for, for that type of shit to happen. You know what I mean? Which I feel like and that you see that with Elon here. Like he he's playing both sides.

He's got us and them and there's a lot of other fucking the people that act plutocrats that actually run this world in the exact same position. And they're not going to they're not going to purposefully butt fuck their own golden goose. I don't think. Although it does seem like Elon Musk is maybe actually losing his fucking mind. Yes. So if you get a crazy. person in that position? Who to

fuck knows? But logically and reasonably speaking the spice must flow which I feel like is the general situation between China and the U.S. For sure. But wars happen by accident because countries are run by morons who fuck up and talk too much shit.

Yeah. Right. And so like we just had a almost had a government shutdown back before Christmas. Do you remember the fight about that? Yeah. Yeah. They're about to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government. And Elon must step in and said, no, you can't do this, yeah. With a bunch of lies, like he was talking about it. The government was spending too much money. He made up shit about it. Anyway, they pulled that bill, came back with another bill that actually spent more money. But what was missing from it, okay, what had been in the bill would have made it harder for Tesla to build factories in China, okay? It was about an issue called outbound investment. There's a provision in there to ban it or curtail it. Basically, China forces businesses wanting to locate factories in its country to transfer their technology and intellectual property to Chinese firms. who can then copy it to undercut competitors

and global markets with state support. Elon wants to do that. A U.S. defense contractor wants to hand over his AI IP to the Chinese government in exchange to be able to build AI data centers and Tesla factories and shit like that. Now, you can debate the merits of whether or not's a good idea or a fair or whatever.

I don't really have a firm stance on it, although in general, I think the fact that Elon's a defense contractor is a pretty big national security nightmare when he's doing this shit. We've talked about on the show before. But, like, this process was corrupt as fuck. That provision was gone out of the bill when it came back. Elon got his wish. More of our tax dollars were wasted doing pointless shit.

And the government almost couldn't fund itself because he wanted to be able to do this stuff. And we talk about how American institutions, like, there's like a loss of trust American institutions, American institutions won't stand up for them fucking selves. The DOD, the biggest department of the fact, federal government, the most powerful military on the planet, run by guys who have nicknames, like four-star general's name like George Pighart fucking Jones and like Jimmy the blood eater McGillacuddy fucking will not, when he talks to Elon Musk, you're like, yes, sir, please, sir.

Like what the fucking kill? Did we've forgotten how to assassinate people? I don't understand any of this shit. It's the importance of Luigi, dog. That's the space he should occupy in our cultural pantheon, reminding people of what's possible. So like we're betting, I want to say this one last thing for, I know you want to wrap it up. But like, like, like, so we're betting a lot on China being smarter and more restrained than Trump. And there's not a lot of reason to believe this. All right. The danger here is when

Beijing sees Trump saying stuff like Chinese soldiers are occupying the Panama Canal, which he's saying. They don't think Christ, he's fucking insane. They think American soldiers must be in places they don't know about, right? Which is probably true. I would imagine. Oh, I'm sure there are, but like Beijing's trying to track them. And if they think Trump thinks they're already in a kind of an active cold conflict, they're going to start trying to expand where their soldiers are because they think they're already fighting. So let me quote here from a China expert, okay, quote, I'm sorry, I forgot to paste over his

name, so I'm just stealing this guy's work with no attribution, but I'll come, I'll find his name and bring it back later. One of the things I think is, I don't think is well understood in China-focused space, sorry, one of the things I think is well-understood in China-focused spaces, but not well-understood in the general population. is the CCP is not hyper-competent at understanding other countries. And as we saw with the Wolf Warrior diplomacy, it makes a lot of mistakes and misreads the room frequently.

Are you familiar with Wolf Warrior diplomacy, Trey? No. It's a confrontational form of public diplomacy adopted by the Chinese in the late 2010s. The term was coined by Western media based on the Chinese action film franchise Wolf Warrior and in 2017 sequel. They have a foreign policy named after an action movie, and we're trusting them to be smarter than their leaders. Oh, yeah.

Who is it that has the Star Wars program? Is that us or Israel? Us. They have the Iron Dome. We do Ronald Reagan trying to launch the Star Wars thing to stop nuclear weapons. But that didn't work, though. That didn't. And you're trying to shoot a bullet with a bullet.

Trump tried to revamp it. It is like, in Reagan and Trump's defense, it's an idealistic idea to eliminate the fucking use case for nuclear weapons. We should just eliminate nuclear weapons. No one's going to do it. But, like, in fact, everybody's trying to get nukes right now because we elected a fucking maniac, the goddamn most powerful man of the world.

Yep. Welcome to 2025, everybody. That hopeful note, we ring in the new year. We appreciate y'all being here. Also, I want to say, I just want to tell everybody, we are very, very, very likely pretty much it's going to happen in the near future. We are going to start pre-recording this show because of all the tech issues we've had in today, talking about all day, we were like, what if my power goes out,

what are we going to do and it just it just seems the there's just really no real reason to have this show be live outside of just that's the way we've always done it and just getting married to tradition when there's a lot of things yeah we started in 2020 we had no idea we're doing pre-recording it we better creatively because for reasons it's not worth getting into it'll be less stressful for us we won't have to like have emergency lasted sub in guests and one of us get sick or has to travel for an emergency. It's a lot of like every other podcast in the world does it. And we used to do Q&A's and now we talk to you guys through the skew and A's.

And so we on the Patreon. Yes. So yeah, you can sign up for the Patreon. We do the skew and a's on there. Again, we did the, yes, everything Mark just said, we, most other podcasts don't have to have an emergency substitute if something happens or whatever. We have to do that because it's live. It's been five.

It's literally been five minutes before recording, texting Corey to see if he can, if he, if he's free and sober enough to come on the show. It's a new year. It feels like the time to do it. It shouldn't, at this point, the way we do the show, it really shouldn't change much for y'all. It shouldn't make much of a difference. We will still post it at the same time and all that stuff. But it will be pre-recorded.

Also, we will still be talking about it will be up to date. Like, we're not talking about, we're not going to pre-record an episode three weeks in advance or whatever. We're not going to do that. It'll be up to date. It's just it won't be literally live because there's just too many different things that can go wrong and have. went wrong for no real good reason.

So we hope that you all understand and appreciate that. And yeah, happy New Year. Thanks for watching. Go to Trey Crowder.com. Check up coming tour dates. Come see me in Washington State the next two weekends. Both sides of the state. I'll be on the west side.

I'll be on the east side. Come see me. And then I'll be in Santa Barbara. Beautiful Santa Barbara and a lot of other places after that. Go to Treycrouter.com. Check it out. And then, yes, consider supporting the show on Patreon, on weekly skews.com slash more

or go on Patreon and search for my name. You'll find it either way. And again, from this point forward, it'll be the only source of skew and a's, but also a lot of other stuff too. It's just more of the show, getting your life, support the show in the process. As long as you keep watching, this here version of it, we'll keep making it.

We'll see you next time. Love you by. Happy New Year. Skew.