Weekly Skews - Weekly Skews - 3/05/24 – Skews Book Club: “White Rural Rage”

Episode Date: March 6, 2024

Skewers this week we are thrilled to welcome Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman, the authors of the much debated new book about the threat to democracy percolating in our homeland: “White Rural Rage”! Gonna be a good un!Support the show

what's up everybody welcome back listen here's the deal i'm going to start this way we're having some technical difficulties i know that's hard for y'all to believe but it does happen sometimes doing this here program live we have some issues at times this one i think what's happening is i don't know if y'all've heard but uh facebook is having issues today technical issues my wife has been keeping me up to date she stays up on facebook problems and uh We think maybe that's given us some issues with our stream. We really hope that's not the case and that maybe now it'll be fine and we won't have any more problems because we've got a great show for you all tonight. We've got the authors of the hotly debated new book, White Rural Rage, Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman, joining us a little later.

So hopefully we get our damn shit together. Either way, I'm Trey. That's Mark. Mark, let's try to start again. What's up, man? Yeah. Do you act like we just ended up the first two minutes of show already? I guess so.

So some quick things to get through If we get to the show, a lot of news happening. It's Super Tuesday, I voted. Trey's a bad citizen. He hasn't voted yet. I just want to say I'm a good person. Kristen Sinema, and now she's not in the long running for re-election. The Canada atop the Republican ballot for Missouri governor,

Daryl McClanyhand, the third said he was only an honorary member of the KKK. So take that for what it's worth. The Florida State Senate passed a bill that would remove local government's authority to adopt heat standards. such as guaranteed shade and respirates for workers. So basically, if we can't get around to deporting you, we can give you heatstroke as this official policy of the state of Florida. Putin plans to weaponize deep fake porn against Western democracies. My thing is, you know the AI is going to fuck it up.

So what do we get first? Joe Biden, the babysitter or Joe Biden the milf? Yeah, well, are you familiar with Rule 34, Mark? You ever heard of Rule 34? That is an Internet maxim that states that basically any scenario, you can envision has a existing porn version of it or take of it somewhere out there on the internet some sort of some sort of smutified to take on whatever you can come up exist already so if they ain't already got joe biden as a milf you know just give it time the technology is there

we have it we can do it so what you're saying there's probably a porn somewhere about vladimir putin making deep-peg porn yeah very possibly yeah you know i know for a fact that there's a written porn of me, Corey, and Drew, the well-read guys, fan fiction about us, you know, railing each other and stuff. So, you know, it's out there. I bet you've probably got some. We could look deep for it. But anyway, go ahead.

You've done my buddy Brian Cook's old show competitive erotic fan fiction, right? Yeah, I did. Yeah, I actually won the episode that I was on, yeah, years ago. Supreme Court, so two separate decisions, one, putting Trump back on the primary ballot, be Colorado, but yeah, everywhere. And they also interfered in his prosecution in a way that just basically delays his trials so we probably can't happen before the election.

And there's not, the lot, wondering what the logic is, is because there's a higher law than the Constitution, and that is the rule that Donald Trump is a special little guy. And that's basically in the Magna Carta that goes back to way before. Seems to be the case.

It seems to be trending in that direction. Yeah, he got his own constitution with poem stars and bullshit. in it. I want to talk about this Trump Bucks thing for a little bit. So there was NBC had this report out about this new scam that's being run about somebody, not Trump as far as anyone can tell. What they do is they sell memorabilia called Trump bucks, but basically they're treating them like it's real currency. For $999 and 99 cents, you get a $10,000 dollar Trump buck, which you should be able to redeem, well, and the fine print says it's just

memorabilia, but the promise is you can redeem it at banks. Retail is like Walmart. Mark Costco and Home Depot. So for $100,000, $10,000 to hell over return, this one guy named John Ammon, who is a Trump supporter, said he bought $2,200 worth of Trump bucks and realized he got burned when he tries to deposit them at a bank. So, my God, bro. What? I would rather, imagine you're the bank teller.

Like, I would rather have somebody hand me a note saying that I'm being robbed than me have to explain to this poor old guy how he got taken for $2,200, right? It really is kind of a genuine insight in the way their brains work where Trump is concerned that they think that, like, Trump bucks is, you know, legal tender. They will be accepted everywhere that you, that you buy that. Like, that's so crazy to me, but it does make sense coming from his cult. Yeah. That's wild. I mean, part of we're going to talk about today is like, like, you know, rural and mega people's distrust of, like, the economy and it sort of manifests itself.

There's, like, other, like, conspiracy theories about how Trump's going to destroy everyone's debt and all this stuff. But, like, I do want to say this guy, Amman, like, he did everyone a solid by coming forward because he looks like an idiot. He's trying to get the word out and keep other people from getting scams. So I'll give him that much. But this funny quote for him says, talking about Trump and the scam said, I'm questioning whether he's aware of this. As if Donald Trump would care about somebody getting scam. Right. That's his whole thing.

It's like it's immoral to let a sucker keep his money, right? Right. And NBC tried to reach the Trump campaign. He couldn't get any response about this. The genius of this scam, they're talking about. I'm kind of mad at myself for not thinking of it because like these are like security. So it's supposed to take like a while to mature or whatever. So people won't even realize their scam to go to try to deposit it like a year or two later,

in which case you're already into Caymans with their fucking money. But one of the reasons that ways they're pushing this, if you have this artificial intelligence Elon Musk video, Matt, like watch this and see if any part of this, like if any part of you could ever believe this is real. need to know this that troop certificate is not a joke it's real and everyone need to get as many they can i spend one million dollars on trip certificates and this week i'm going to cash out my trip items soon i will be the richest person on the planet again need to know this i mean i would i wouldn't not believe it coming from him you know i wouldn't not believe that

he said something that that stupid you know what i mean but uh no he is he is stupid like he lost a bunch money in Dogecoin, but I'm saying, like, the lips don't even match the words. No, right. Like, it's like, yeah, that reality, that's footage from a TED talk in 2022. The funniest part of this, this woman talked to NBC about how her mother-in-law fell over this shit three different times. The first version was like, when I talked about the other, the other, you know, scams about having to do with, like, conspiracy theories and money, one's called Nassar we might

have talked about before, but basically that Trump's going to do a radical reset of the entire U.S. economy and all debt's going to be wiped out. out. And so she bought it to that the first time and took out a bunch of debt thinking Trump was going to get rid of it. That didn't work. And she bought a bunch of Trump bucks. So this woman drove her mother-in-law to a bank to try to get her to try to deposit it to show she'd been fucking scammed. And then she did that. And she realized the woman admitted, the mother-in-law admitted that she'd been scammed. But then her conclusion was she had just bought in the wrong Trump bucks. She bought a different version of the same scam. It's like Jesus Christ, man. Yeah. I got stand by somebody

selling fake Trump bucks. I was looking for the real Trump bucks, and I got taken by a con man. It's like, yeah, you did. Either way, you did. All right, let's get into it. Again, we've got an exciting show for you all tonight. We're going to welcome Tom Schaller and Paul Walman a little bit later.

But first, I want to let you all know about a couple quick things. Matt, I'm going to do this real quick. If you want to see me do stand-up live, go to traycrowder.com. Check out my upcoming tour dates. We got plenty. coming up soon in the future i'll be in dc and northern virginia this weekend so come see me and also if you want to support this show you can do so by signing up on patreon go to weekly skews dot com slash more or just go on patreon and look me up you get two extra full link bonus episodes a

month for five dollars and so you get some more skews in your life and support the show in the process now before we get to our esteemed guests very very shortly let's first begin as always with the daily dumbass matt graphic if you could please Yes, it's a professional show we got here. He's going to get it a little later. Anyway, our DD tonight is anyone who thinks Trump could name a second black hero. Listen to this. This is wild.

He's talking about North Carolina lieutenant governor Mark Robinson. but you know i heard him coming in on the plane i was listening and i said to the people in the plane watch this this is martin luther king on steroids okay now i told that i told that i told that i told that to mark i said i think you're better than martin luther king i think you all right you can cut it matt so martinson's the frontrunner to be uh the republican nominee for a governor of North Carolina. If you can't tell from what Trump's talk about him, he does happen to be black. But like the idea, he's calling him MLK. I want to read some quotes here. And you tell me if any of those sounds very important Luther King like. At the time, he called school shooting

survivors, quote media prostitots, end quote, for advancing gun control policies. He posed a meme mocking a Harvey Weinstein accuser. I don't, I don't know why they were a huge Democratic donor. So I don't know why they feel they need to defend Harvey. I mean, I know why, but it's a whole other thing. He made fun of women for wearing poor dresses to protest sexual harassment. He predicted the rising acceptance of homosexuality would lead to pedophilia and the end of civilizations we know it. He talked about arresting transgender people for their bathroom choice. He does this is a bunch of anti-Semitic shit.

He put one on Facebook and called Harry Clinton a Heifer and Michelle Obama, a man. And the thing about this primary is like there were other Republicans running and tried to stop him. But they were complaining about the National Party of banning them to leave them to fight the sky. But as always, it's not clear whether they actually have a problem with this hatefulness or whether it's just, you know, bad for business in a swing state. Right. But their problem here is that people say it's fake news when you tell them the stuff this guy said. There's like this weird thing in Republican primaries where electability doesn't matter

because they don't believe any criticisms of their favorite candidates. Like the reporters tried asking for his supporters about one of his most scrutinized Facebook posts, which is a 2018 screed against the film Black Panther. that references Israeli currency and uses a Yiddish slur for black people and the guy said I can't help but think

that's been manufactured by some opposition the post is still accessible online you can still go look at it on his Facebook page like he basically said he talked about it with Black Panther

he doesn't understand how people can get so excited about a fictional quote unquote hero created by agnostic Jew and put the film by satanic Marxists you ever seen the movie

a face in the crowd Trey Andy Griffin with uh with yeah with Andy Griffith was yeah he's basically like this like like a like a sociopath who rises to pick up like the face of like a real America becomes this like like superstar like broadcast slash by anyway he gets caught talking about like his supporters being idiots on a hot mic or whatever then his career falls apart and says I'll be back you know it will because that's the day it's a pretty for 1950s movies

pretty pressuring criticism of me a modern american media culture right this guy was this guy was a nobody in 2018 he was working he was working he was a I don't even nobody mean like he was just like like regular people aren't important to somebody. He wasn't in politics. He was working in a factory and just posting like right wing Facebook screens like the one I just mentioned. And he's sort of like a bizarre version of you in a lot of ways because what happened was he went, he had a viral video where he was at a, I think was a Charlotte, whatever town he's from in North Carolina. I went to the city council meeting and railed against like and the idea of gun control. after the Parkland shooting, and it went mega viral,

then he was invited to speak at the NRA convention. Greensboro City Council meeting, sorry, he's from Greensboro. So yes, the NRA put him in a commercial, and then two years later he was lieutenant governor of North Carolina, and now he might be governor. Right. This is another good example of how much better it is if you are, you know, sociopathic and lacking all scruples

to be on that side of the, of the, like, viral fence. Do you know what I mean? Like, I don't think that, I don't think that Democrats would elect me a ship because they would be like, well, he's not actually smart. He couldn't do that, right? But this dude, he yells in his truck and they're like, we need him in the governor's mansion. Right.

And then he ends up there. So there's no better. Honestly, that's a good way to describe it because there's no better like, like the difference between being successful in the left and successful in the right is like, you go viral. And you're like, I'm going to be a chuckles this weekend in Cincinnati. And he's like, I'm going to be the governor. Yeah. Right.

Exactly. Yeah. honestly yeah sorry they're here we go ahead brother yeah let's do it I was going to say speaking trying to make sense of things that are sometimes patently nonsensical let's get our guests out here we're very very thrilled to welcome the authors of the most hotly debated book in America right now I don't think I'm out of bounds by saying that called white rural rage the threat to American democracy everybody Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman bring them out here Matt hey there we are are. Hello, gentlemen. Thank you for joining us. We appreciate it. I'm Trey. That's Mark. I wanted to start by just saying, as a white from a tiny town in Tennessee with no traffic lights, jobs or hope for the future, who is fueled by no small amount of rage, most of it impotent in nature. I just want to say, who the hell you think you are? Out there talking shit about me and mine from your damn ivory towers on the coast, your big universities and stuff, huh? You think you're better than me? No, I'm kidding. But you guys probably get a lot of that, huh? I imagine. We have gotten a lot of that. And mostly from people who haven't read it, of course, that's not to mention the Nazis will, you know, put them aside for now. There's a lot of them in my Twitter mentions, if anyone wants to go and see. But yes, the reaction from people who have not actually read the book, which is actually subtle and nuanced and complex, although you might not know it from the title, it's been negative in some quarters.

But, you know, we knew that was going to happen going in. I'll be honest, we didn't choose the title. That was something our publisher came up with, and they wanted to really hit it hard. And, you know, we knew it was going to be provocative, and so we tried to be ready for it. But it's been interesting, no doubt. Yeah, no, that's something that people don't realize. When you write a book, like, yeah, I've written two books, not bragging. I know you guys written like eight combined.

I didn't pick the title of either of them. You know, like that's something that people don't know that. Publishers do that. And they want to make it as incendiary as possible. But I actually want to ask you got you sort of start the book by saying that Jason Al Dean's mega smash hit, try that in a small town was a good example of the type of thing that inspired this book as a massive hater of Jason Al Dean and all he represents. I just want to ask you to elaborate on that, elaborate on that a little bit, how that inspired

you that song. I know Tom has, I know Tom has a lot to say, but I know also know that he's going to let me talk about Jason Al Dean because, I mean, I mean, Okay, look, I don't have to, I don't want to tell anybody what to like or who to like. Anybody can like any, any artist they want. I do think, just as a matter of objective reality, that Jason Aldine is a purveyor of some of the most derivative, repetitive, broke country. That just kind of mad libs like dirt roads, pickup trucks, dog in the back, cold beer. Let's just kind of mix and match it all around.

Anyway, so the thing about the reason that we started. telling the story of try that in a small town was because it was so indicative of the moment. You know, it's not the first song like that. I mean, if you go back and you look at all the way back to Oki from Muskogee, Merle Haggard, you know, songs like Country Boy Can't Survive, Hank Williams Jr., kiss my country ass. You know, there's been a lot of songs like this and have that kind of belligerent tone about how cities are dangerous. And here we are, you know, strong and good and honest people who also love guns. That's been a long history of that in country music.

But it happens in 2022, or 2023, excuse me, and Jason Aldeen comes out with his song, and immediately some liberals start to criticize him for some of the racial undertones. You know, he said that didn't have anything to do with it, and he didn't know that that place that they shot the video once had a lynching. I believe that.

I don't think anybody's accused Jason Aldean of having a subtle grasp of history. But in any case, it's all about this idea that, like, the city is dangerous and they're going to bring their mayhem here and we're going to meet it with violence. And it hits at a particular political moment when liberals criticize them and then Republicans like rush it and they're like, yes, this is the greatest thing ever. And they start playing it at their rallies. And the narrative around it is all like, Jason Aldeen is being canceled by the lives. Well, of course, he wasn't canceled. It was his biggest crossover hit of his career.

Went to number one on the Billboard Hot 100. We thought that was kind of indicative of a lot of the issues that we are talking about. And that's why we led the book with that, that vignette. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. What bothered me about that song was like, you know, as somebody from a very small town, like, you know, Jason Aldean's from Mike in Georgia.

They got like two targets or whatever. That ain't a small town. You know what I mean? In the first verse, he talked. He's like, yeah, hijacking old lady at a red light. See what happens. I was like, a red light. what is this time square you know so anyway that's what bother me about it among many other things

but i'm sorry mark i know you have plenty of questions too go ahead oh yeah i was going to say like part part of the big argument the book is like like the disconnect between sort of this is like the idea that like um like the way small towns and people from small towns are talked about is like i did like a noble and i do want to say i actually i did read the entire book because i'm a hardworking American from a rural community and that's just like we just get up in the morning put our work boots on Raid bucks

yeah yeah so the the backlash I mean like I got it like I was like I bet someone's compared this to Hillbilly LG and it's like the which is totally unfair it's the thing I did and I googled it and of course somebody had and it was somebody who had tagged Matt saying to go

talk to Matt about this instead I guess he had to broker ceasefire between you and some well-meaning activist lady which all that is very funny to be. But the criticisms on the right is like interesting to me because like basically you guys like you'd be like

go like you're calling all rural Americans racist which you're flatly not doing in the book. When in reality of some of the hardworking you know salt to the earth people it's like you're doing the exact thing we're talking about right fucking now. It's like you can't do any criticism because everybody in small town

is like perfect and noble or whatever. It's just sort of the same way to live. Yeah, well, a big part of the book is just trying to demystify this idea that some people are more real than others. And my take on this is drawn, stolen from my TV girlfriend, Tina Faye, from 30 Rock, who's my favorite comedian after you, of course, right? But a little pantern goes a long way, right? So if you remember, there's an episode there where she talks about this whole idea about

who's real or more real. And she's like, all Americans just want to have a same. sandwich and a diet spright and a quiet place to eat it for lunch. The sandwiches may different, right? But that's essentially true. And I think when you say, okay, a 65-year-old white male married veteran grandfather from northwest Oklahoma is somehow more real than an Afro-Latina 22-year-old woman who's, you know, working at a cafe and Ubering around at night for extra money is somehow less than him. I think that's when you start down a bad path, right? When you start putting labels on people as less or more real. Now, there are some things about rural Americans.

They do serve at higher rates in the military, and they should be applauded accordingly. Their patriotism, I don't think is in question, and we don't question their patriotism in that showy way. Our criticism, and we appreciate you reading the book, by the way, Mark, because most of our critics didn't get past rage. They got through the, I don't even think they made it to the subtitle, many cases, but they, you know, what we're saying here is it's about commitments to democratic processes. It's about commitments to democratic norms. It's about commitments to a pluralistic secular government and an inclusive society. And there, I think we make the case pretty strongly that, again, and every time,

every statistic in there, we put a, compared to a statistic, we say that according to the Trevor Project, which studies gay rights and gay issues, that 49 percent, half of rural kids say that their communities are hostile to LGBT, LGBTQ people, and it's only like 25 or 26 percent in cities and suburbs. So we don't say nobody in the suburbs thinks that their communities are hostile. quarter of kids do, but it's 50% in rural America. And that's according to them. And so if you read the book, it's usually superlatives, most highest lowest. We don't say exclusively. And as you pointed out, we don't say every problem in America is exclusively white and rural. And we don't say everybody in

white rural America. There's a lot of good white rural hippies. And we met some of them. And they're just as liberal. In fact, they're more liberal than most of the guys I went to high school and college with in suburb of Albany and certainly a lot of buddies of mine who got surprised this week because I was on a tweet list with a bunch of my fraternity brothers most of whom are in Long Island like Nassau County they're sort of bridge and tunnel guys first generation college guys and they're like shallow and they were can I use a dirty language on the podcast? Yeah yeah please like this pussy duch how dare he blah blah blah and a bunch of people who don't have my phone number and I'm like the pussy douche is right here fellows let's go after it you know and it's like

I know that there are people, people that I've known for 15, 20 years who are offended by this argument, but I think it's an argument that needs to be had, and not just in rural communities, I think it needs to be had nationally. Well, I mean, look, if somebody, again, first of all, I totally relate with what you just said about your buddies, so I'm like, this pussy, because same thing happened with me when I was like, he's the redneck that everybody's listening to, you know what I mean? So I got a lot of that, too, so I understand what you're saying. but I also like I got a lot of I and still do sometimes get comments from people on the coast and stuff like that on some of my videos who say things like you're like a unicorn you know like we I didn't know you existed and that type of thing and that makes you kind of defensive you're like no it's not just me there's more of me we're not we're not exactly legion but we do exist but having said that me personally I see the title of your book and I interpret it similarly to when like Chris

had a bit about rap songs or whatever if they denigrate women or whatever and they're like saying all this shit about hoes and people are like he ain't talking about me right that's sort of how i feel when i see the title i'm like oh i'm one of the good ones it's all right you know what i mean i don't i don't interpret it personally but a lot of people are going to do that regardless just by nature of the fact that you guys are i mean that you are who you are you know your academics and scholars and writers and that means you're full of shit and you think you're better than them i mean that's just how they look at it you know well i mean We did share a plate of avocado toast and wash it down with a couple of quartados. And by the way, kale cheesecake, it's got a bit of an earthy dirt taste to it, kale cheesecake. Let me tell you, it's my favorite. I mean, if people, you know, if you can see the cultural insults that are leveled against me as like an out of touch of Letus, who's never been out of rural America. They obviously hadn't read the book. We've been to five rural communities in five different states in doing the research for this book. And I'm just as comfortable in the round robin bar downtown at the, uh,

at the Willard Hotel, where Martin Luther King finished the I Have a Dream speech, where Mark Twain lived for a residency, where Abraham Lincoln did his transition between his election in 1860 and his installation in March of 1861, maybe the most famous hotel in all of D.C. That's still standing. But you'd be surprised how comfortable I am in some absolute rural, you know, dive bar in the middle of the Adirondex where I've spent a ton of time in my life because I grew up in Albany and I love the Adirondex. So it's just a sort of assumption, the ad homin and metabolism.

they get they get a little harsh and if I showed you some of these hate males you'd be shocked but it's when you stick your neck out somebody people are going to take a swing at you but you know you're right right like if oh I was going to say is you know if you look at voting patterns and maybe 70% or so of rural whites voted for Donald Trump in 2020 well that means the 30% of people didn't and so you know if you're if you're in a place where it's like 70, 30, conservatives and liberals, that's still a lot of liberals. And even though they may feel outnumbered, and, you know, one of the things as we went around to different places, a lot of people told us, especially the liberals, they said that

politics has really gotten meaner since Donald Trump came along. And it used to be that, you know, these fights that wouldn't be that big a deal. And I get along with my neighbors. But since Trump, like now, I really feel like, you know, things are bad. And like, one of the people we talked to was this librarian in Ashtabula County. Ohio, who ran for state representative. And she said that people would come up to her. She's a Democrat.

She said people would come to her and literally whisper to her like, I love you. I'm going to vote for you, but I can't take a sign because if I put it in my in my lawn, my neighbors are going to take a shot at me. Yeah. So that's the way a lot of liberals in rural America are feeling right now. I wanted to, so just rough numbers you guys are working with. So roughly 20% of America's rural and. Only three quarters of that as well.

I say only three quarters because people think 100% of rural America is white, and that's not remotely accurate. And you actually devote a whole chapter of your book about the experiences of, you know, different rural minority communities and make it a point that if you're talking about as a percentage of population, the most rural communities are, I mean,

like most Native Americans live rural as opposed to like, that's not just as true for white people, yada, yada. But like, you make the, but you also make the point that like, when you take to those large populations and think about the way people react to like politics and public.

events. Like you say in the book, if it was just about material concerns, why aren't rural black people storming the Capitol? Right? Well, can I tell you why we wrote Chapter 7? We did it for a Cicia reason and a strategic reason. The Cicere reason is that they're 24% of rural America. You think they get 24% of the attention in the national media and the state media? My clever little line here is that the national media, since Trump came down on that escalator, has been climbing over each other like puppies trying to get out of a cardboard, to interview the next 10 rural white Trump, red hat, Maga wearing people in some southeast Missouri diner.

But there are plenty of rural African Americans, Latino Americans, and, of course, the nation's most rural population, Native Americans, and you don't see anybody sitting down to talk to them and meeting them where they're at. So they're entitled to some treatment, and frankly, one out of eight chapters undersells that. We only gave them one out of eight, but we spent some time in places like the Albemarle region where there's seven counties, cluster. Just south of the Virginia border on 95, they're on both sides. In fact, the first exit when you come south across the Virginia, North Carolina border, it says Enfield, which is the county seat of Halifax County. And the mayor of that town, who came to my rural politics class tonight, is a guy named Mondale Robinson, and he has given me permission to share his story. This is a guy who started the black male voter project about five or six years ago to try to mobilize black men, rural urban or suburban. And then he decided to put his own activism to test. He went back to his hometown of Enfield, the

poorest city in North Carolina, and according to the sources we put in the book, the eighth poorest city in America. It's 2,200 people. It's majority black. It is so downtrod. We went there and Mondale was out of town, but like 90% of the storefronts are boarded up. And Mondale told us some of the storefronts, because the windows have been knocked out by birds or kids with rocks, there are trees growing in some of the storefronts downtown. And he is now running the city from back where he used to live here, and I don't want to say where, in the DMV area because he's been docks and there's death threats in the largest active chapter of the KKK is after him because he took down a Confederate statue there.

So he's literally mayoring the town from Maryland two states away because he and his wife saw guys with guns in their yard. This is what's happening. Do we talk about like centering white people in these conversations. There was interesting. I'm going to like how what's the old quote like when you're used to like like preferential treatment, equality feels like oppression or something like that. But like, when like half the culture is telling them that you're awesome just because your skin color and where you live, you're a more noble person, you get up the morning, go to work harder than everybody else, yada, yada, yada, but then when anybody criticizes you,

it's like you get a huge backlash and see the right wing media is great at generating this where it's like, how dare they say this about you? But you couldn't like, I was thinking about your book and like the sheer number, the annoying number of books are written by academics in the 90s and 2000s about like stuff that's broken or wrong in black American culture or whatever. And the books, a lot of them were bad or whatever, but there was never this organized yelling at people about it. Like even I agree with a lot of you guys said in the book, but even if you're wrong, it just doesn't deserve this amount, but it's just because people feel entitled to like an inherent respect. Like, does that make any sort of

sense? Am I conveying that? Yeah, absolutely. That's part of the rhetoric. You know, we always hear politicians talking about how we need small town values and how that's so important. And, you know, if you don't agree with that, then you hate people in rural America. And a couple times people have brought up, you know, well, don't the, don't liberals just look down on people? Like, remember that thing Barack Obama said about people clinging the guns of religion? It's like, first of all, okay, he said that in 2008, 16 years ago and people are still talking about it. One thing he said, and if you look at what he actually said, he was right. He said that people here feel like neither party was doing anything for them people kept telling them oh the jobs are

going to come back the jobs never came back and so yeah now they are angry at both parties and they look to issues like guns and religion to define their political identity because they've given up on any idea that democrats or republicans are going to do much for them and the argument that we make is that is a huge gift to the republicans because they don't have to do anything you know people talk about how democrats have abandoned rural america and a lot of places that's true but republicans have abandon them too because all that's necessary for you to win if you're a Republican is you just walk in a couple days before election day and say you know don't you hate those elitist liberals back in the cities and people say yeah and they vote for you and then and then that guy leaves and

he comes back four years later and does the same thing and doesn't do a damn thing to actually improve people's lives and so uh you know the republicans know that they don't have to and so it's a huge gift to them to uh to kind of remove economics and material concerns from what politics winds up being all about. Yeah, I mean, you guys asked Chip, Congressman from Texas, Chip Roy about what his plan to help his rural constituents was. And he didn't even understand the question, right? Yeah, I can, I don't know if you, I'll tell that story. So we were reporting in Texas. We go out to see he's, he's got this big district. It starts in the suburbs around San Antonio and Austin. It stretches 150 miles west. And so we found that he was going to do an event in this place

called Hunt, Texas, which is unincorporated. Somehow, at the one establishment in Hunt, which is this sort of restaurant slash store, they managed to get 50 or 60 people to come. So we go there, he kind of rolls in with a bunch of A's. They've all got these really nice matching embroidered white shirts with his name on it, an American flag and everything. And, you know, Chip Roy is a smart guy. And he gives them, you know, gives the people just sort of like a discussion of what's

going on in Congress. And then he agreed to talk to us for a few minutes afterward. And one of the questions we asked him, was, you know, you've got all these real constituents, what, you know, what do they need? Do you have, like, a rural agenda that is particular to them? And he kind of looked at us like it had never even occurred to him. And then he said, what do you mean, like appropriations? And we said, well, it could be anything.

And he said, well, you know, we started talking about how everybody cares about immigration. And then he went off on the farm bill, which they do every five years or so. And he doesn't like it because even though it gets a lot of subsidies to farmers, it also is where food stamps are funded so he doesn't really like that and in the end like he had no answer and that just the fact that you know this is a guy who's who's a pretty prominent Republican he's got a he is never going to lose an election his seat is gerrymandered so that you know he doesn't have to do a thing and uh his he's got all these real constituents and it hasn't even occurred to him that maybe they need something special that he could help them get

uh-huh yeah i mean not here go ahead no no go ahead go ahead double standard here right the republican party is never told that they need to go into urban america and talk to african americans the voters least likely to them and sit and be respectful and not condescend and then digest all that information and go back and cogitate for a couple of months and build a white paper or a massive plan an 80 page report on how they're going to help solve the problems of african americans in the city now they talk about those problems all the time you turn on fox news and oa and newsmax every day and you turn on talk radio, there's a talk radio, conservative talk radio host right now, either on live or on

tape repeat, from Maine to Maui talking about cities and crimes and homelessness and thugs. So they're very interested in cities and crimes and the problems, and they blame the Democrats for it, okay? The Democrats, on the other hand, are expected to go to rural white America, their least likely voters, come and listen and show up in a car, hard chat, and really listen and try to reach their least likely voter. So the party that's won the popular vote, seven of the last eight elections needs to try to appeal to its least likely voters. But the party that's lost seven of the last popular votes, seven of last eight doesn't have to do anything.

And in fact, they're not only encouraged, they're rewarded for attacking. J.D. Vance, that little pinhead. I hate that guy. This is a guy who in New York City many, many times. He worked for a company that represented Purdue Farmer that poured all those opioids into his state and into his rural community. He goes to New York during the campaign for a fundraiser and he goes, Is it more like season one or season two of The Walking Dead, implying that the city is in a zombie flesh-eating apocalypse, you know, hellscape. Imagine Chuck Schumer says,

I got to go do a fundraiser in the suburbs of Cincinnati. Do I bring my own methanol overalls or do the rural folks? He would be crucial saying something like that in trafficking in an unfair and wrong stereotype. But Janey Fance doesn't get, doesn't lose any votes. He gains votes. Tell me that's a fair standard as that's asymmetrical. What is it? Right.

I wanted to, like, you know, I've, again, as someone from this place, I've since the beginning of like the rise of Trump and people were asking like, what the hell is going on here? Which, for the record, I still to this day have found it kind of wild that Trump was, became their champion considering his background and everything about him. But I know you guys have something to say about that too. But first, from the beginning of the rise of Trump or whatnot, my position on this like, people were talking about like,

what's going on these white rural people and their love for Trump? I've always been like, well, look, they have very genuine grievances. They have good reason to be upset and to feel fucked over and left behind. Like, what has happened to my town is brutal and tragic, right? But they direct that anger in the wrong direction. They're not mad at the right people from my perspective. And they don't hold anybody to account for actually fixing anything. And they just blame it all in the Democrats like you guys were just saying.

And I'm like, how did that happen? Why is it that easy? Why is it like all this bad stuff that can happen in my town? They just automatically blame the Mexicans, the liberals, and, you know, the coastal elites instead of, you know, the corporate fat cats and everybody else that screwed them over over the course of. Well, that's the other double standard, right? After they do this very earnest piece on crime and homelessness on Skid Row in L.A., they go the Democrats and the minorities and the white liberals who live in those cities and elect the politicians, the mayor and the city council should be held to account. Fine. That's what a representative

government does. They should be held to account when there's problems in the cities. But what happens in rural America? There are hundreds of counties of our 3,000 counties that are more than 90% white and have fewer than 20,000 people. And those people are represented. The local elections may be nonpartisan. But everybody knows the school board and the sheriff because 71% of sheriffs in the country in a poll identify as conservative. 95% of them are white and 97% of them are meant. That's true. Okay. Your sheriff and your superintendent, your county legislator and your county executive, your state assembly man, your state senator, your U.S. congressman and your two U.S. senators and when Trump and Pence were in white are literally an entire chain of command from the Oval Office

to the school board of not just Republicans, but conservative white male Republicans. And when Something goes wrong there. What do they blame? The cities and Obama phones, right? So apparently the representative form in our representative democracy, the Republican form, small R, is only held accountable to Democrats. But when anything goes wrong in right world America, none of that litany of conservative white Republicans are responsible for anything that happens in those small rural counties. That is a complete lack of accountability and responsibility. And it needs to stop because our big recommendation at the end is not that they need to vote for Democrats, is that they got to get a better class of Republicans.

Yeah. And I like that. I want to say, so going back to J.D., he's actually a good, like, because he writes he'll be the elegy. And the thesis of he'll be the elegy is like, oh, you don't even feel bad for these people. They're all making terrible choices. Even my, my dumb whore mom slept around and got hooked on pills, right?

And then when he starts running for office, he pivots to actually, none of it's any of y'all's fault. It's all the illegals and globalists. And it's like, nowhere. in there is any sort of political response or like action plan. Yeah, absolutely. Go ahead, Paul. Yeah, you know, his book, if you read it,

it is pretty brutal in some places. You know, he's talking about all the drug use and the violence, and he calls people lazy, and you're right, then he decided, and he was critical of Trump, and then he decides, oh, I think I'd like to be a United States senator. So then he starts talking about how Joe Biden is bringing fentanyl into places

like where I grew up to kill my family and you're a family. And, you know, it's clear he had a pretty good read on what people want to hear. And, you know, as you said, Trey, there are so many communities that really have suffered. You know, the manufacturing jobs went away. They've got health care problems. They've got mental health problems. They were targeted by the pharmaceutical companies in one of the most, you know, horrific crimes in American history. They just poured opioids into these places. And, And so I think a lot of people over time just decided that, you know, nobody's going to make this better. And I just want kind of an emotional satisfaction. And I think that's what Trump provided for people is that if, even if he's not going to solve the problems, at least he'll tell me that he hates the same people I hate.

Right. He will not just say like, we need to fix this. He will literally say almost, you know, fuck those guys. Don't you hate them. And, uh, and people, you know, shout and scream. And he also, he also lied to them about what was going to happen. But I think in a lot of places, people knew it was a lie. But it was what they wanted to hear. Like I'll tell you an example. We did some reporting from Mingo County, West Virginia, which is really poor. It's coal country. I think the median income there is about $38,000 a year for a household. And Trump goes to West Virginia in 2016, and he literally puts on a hard hat and says, and I quote, get ready all you minors because you're going to be working your asses off. Well, guess what? He didn't bring the coal jobs back. When he came in office, there were 52,000 jobs in the entire U.S. coal industry. When he left, there were 38,000 jobs in the whole U.S. coal industry. There were more people working at Panda Express than in coal anywhere in America. And guess what? Well, did he lose votes? He did not. Right. Mingo County, where, you know, it's one of the poorest places. They used to have coal, but like there's barely anybody working in coal there anymore. He got 83% of the vote in 2016. then in 2020, after not bringing back the cold jobs and after not doing much to actually improve people's lives, he got 85% of the votes. So, you know, it's clear that people don't want to have any kind of strict accountability, but the emotional satisfaction that he gives them is something really power.

Well, that's what, I mean, that does seem to be what it comes down to, right? It's like, I remember when he first got elected, when he won in 2016, I was my naive ass initially was trying to be somewhat optimistic. And I was like, well, look, he told these people, he told my people everything they wanted to hear and I know he's full of shit and he's not going to deliver on any of that. So maybe, you know, give him enough rope to hang himself. Like, let him prove that he's not going to deliver on any of that over the next four years and maybe they'll see the light. That's what I was saying in 2016. And the opposite has happened, right? It's like you were just saying. And it really does come down to just that type of

pandering towards, like, the, the culture war bullshit that they've all bought into, right? It's like the emotional satisfaction of just sticking it to the lives, only in the lips, yeah. Right. The libs are the bad guys. As long as he owns the libs, that's all that really matters, despite the fact that their lives continue to get worse actively because of him and his ilk's policies. But not always.

Not always their lives get worse. So, for example, when Barack Obama became president, 24% of rural Americans were uninsured. And Obamacare was passed in 2010. And nine years later, by 2019, that 24% had been reduced to 16%. So that's 8% net. That's 1 out of 12 rural Americans who were uninsured when he took office, were insured by the time he left. And since 8 is exactly a third of 24, that means it's a 33% reduction. One out of three rural uninsured had insurance by the time Obama left office.

And yet, what did you hear? 52 times the Republicans in the House had to put a language in a bill, including not even health care bills, calling for repeal and replace. Donald Trump ran on repeal and replace, if it wasn't for John McCain, he maybe would have got it. And now we know people like Jonathan Metzell, who's a doctor and has written about this, dying of whiteness, dying from whiteness, his book, the states that have adopted Medicare expansion, like Kentucky, they don't call it Obamacare. They call it K-Y-N-N-N-C-T, because Steve Beshear news, if you call it Obamacare, people would revolt.

And then it's next door neighbor, Tennessee, which is one of only 10 states that still haven't adopted the Medicare expansion under Obamacare. The health care metrics are going in the opposite direction, even though these two states have very similar profile, very similar economies, very similar black, white chairs. And so Republicans are literally killing their own voters. I'm sorry to say that, but it's true. And it's the rural voters, it's the rural voters most of all, too, because they're the ones who need that Medicaid expansion most.

No, we were reporting in North Carolina. The town has shut down twice in the past like four years and it's currently shut down. It's shut down. They managed to get it back open and now it's shut down again permanently. Like we have no hospital in my hometown. It's because of what you guys are talking about, right? But that's exactly right. And there have been hundreds of rural hospitals that have closed in recent years and they absolutely depend on Medicaid and they can't stay open without it. And then you have these states like Texas and Tennessee that refuse to accept the expansion of Medicaid at the expense of their rural constituents. on whom they build their power. You know, we were reporting in North Carolina in that majority black area. We're talking to a county supervisor. And she said, you know, not only do we not have a hospital in this county, we don't have an urgent care center. Like, you got to get in your car and drive half an hour to get somewhere where you can get

even the slightest bit of medical treatment if you spray in your ankle, let alone if you're having a heart attack. And so, you know, they finally approved the expansion in North Carolina after 10 years of fighting. But in those places, it's the rural people that Republicans, take their votes, and then refuse to give them something that is literally a matter of life and death. And, you know, you hear all this rural anti, you should see the emails I get. After all the kite faggot libtards insults, a lot of people just sort of want to make an ideological critique.

And we don't want your socialism to take over. Oh, really? Socialism? So Social Security disability rates, is there higher dependency in rural America than in urban America and suburban America? Yes, there is. Are there 400 federal programs targeted to rural America? 70 at the USDA alone? Yes, there is. Do I begrudge that? Do I begrudge my taxes going there? No. Is there rising dependency on the earned income tax credit, which is for the people who basically make the minimum wage? Or the children's tax credit, yes. Is there rising homelessness? Which we don't see because it's not in a little park in the city where there's government services, but it's people living in other people's garages in the loft there or on their couches and couch surfing because it's invisible homelessness, as all the homeless experts explain. It's rising. In fact, it's rising 12 times the rate. Now, granted, it's starting at a smaller.

number, but it's rising faster than urban homelessness right now. Rural people are hurting. We spend an entire chapter explaining that and part of the race chapter explaining how non-whites are hurting as well. We want this problem to be fixed. Let me make another confession. I forgot to tell you about the strategic reason we wrote the race chapter, but let me make another confession. I wrote a book called Whistling Past Dixie, it came out in 2006, and I got harassed by Democrats. How do you abandon the South? How can you, last three presidents, Bill Clinton, LBJ, and Carter were from the South. And I said, Bill Clinton got 279. southern electoral boats you can build a coalition and two years later Barack Obama a black man did it

and I said I'm right now but I want to be wrong for the long term I want states to start to turn and Virginia did and Georgia did Paul and I want to be wrong about this book we want to be wrong in the long term because we want people like Matt Hildrith who's the producer of this show to build a coalition that's pan racial and pan ideological where white and black and brown brothers and sisters in rural America say you know what enough of this shit we're going to hold a Republican Party to account And if they don't, we're going to join with the other side, and then both parties will be held to heal. And when there's a real fight between those two parties, then rural America gets with its need. And I'll apologize and retract the book in a decade if that happens.

I think one of the things that I found most depressing in the book that hadn't really thought about is like you guys say that the average age of a rural white American is 43 and 60 percent, something like 60 percent of people in rural white America tell their kids they should move away. something like that. Is that right? Yep, 16%. That's, and there's other data in the book that most people would like to live in, like, the idea that people in the country look down on isn't quite accurate considering most people would like to live in the country because they think of it as a nice place to live. So the two things are at such cross purposes. Yeah, Paul, you know, it's really, it's about, yeah, Paul's got some great stories in Arizona. So this is something that we heard everywhere we went, whether it was white people in West Virginia, Latinos in Arizona, Native Americans,

everywhere we went, people told the same story. They said there just isn't enough economic opportunity here. And somebody graduates high school and they're smart and they're ambitious. And they look around and say, what am I going to do? Go work at the dollar store? I'm going to go out. You know, so for instance, we talked to this woman named Mila Bessich in Superior, Arizona. And she said that when she graduated high school,

her guidance counselor said to her, look, you know, the local copper mine is closing. there's not going to be any jobs around here. I'm going to help you get a scholarship, but you need to get out and don't come back. Well, she got out, she got a college degree, and then she did come back, and now she's the mayor. But we heard the same thing, a few hours away at an Indian reservation with a woman named Shauna Claw, who's now on the Navajo Council. She said she's got two kids, one of them's in the Air Force, lives in Seattle or wherever he's

mobilized to. And the other one, she said she's going to be a cosmetologist, but we don't have a salon on the reservation. So she lives in Phoenix. And it's the same story over and over again that people just don't see enough economic opportunity. And the young people who have a lot to contribute, they end up leaving. And who does that leave behind? Well, at least behind older people and more conservative people.

And then you get kind of caught in this cycle where, you know, some of these kind of political pathologies end up getting worse and worse. And yeah, I mean, I was, you know, and I'm sure Mark was too. Like I was that kid in Salina in my hometown, you know, like I made good grades and everything. Everybody, universally, my family member, you know, my parents, grandparents, my teachers, guidance counselor, everybody. Their message was like, you've got a golden ticket. You can get out, you know, like you can use this to get out. And that was like the message that was sent to me. And then so I did.

I leave and I still have all this love in my heart for where I'm from. But it's like now people in my hometown think, you know, like that I, whatever, that I talk shit and make them look bad or I hate on them or whatever. and I have a negative opinion of the place or whatnot. It's like, well, I spent my whole life growing up being told to get the fuck away from there as soon as I possibly could by every authority figure in my life. You know what I mean? Because it's just the reality in these places, you know? You know what's unfortunate for you guys?

I assume you grew up in rural area too, Mark, is people are going to reject us, right? I mean, I grew up in the suburbs. Paul grew up in northern New Jersey. And I spent a lot of time in rural America. All four of my grandparents spend their end years and living in rural America, and not in some fancy house, right? But nobody's going to listen to us. You guys are arm's length.

And the unfortunate thing about politics is nobody's going to listen to us because we're a football field away, but they will listen to you. And I think if you arm yourselves, which you have, I'm not criticizing. I'm encouraging it. And I'm trying to tell you not to get despondent. I think this conversation can be had. But it's really like one-to-one, peer-to-peer kind of stuff. Our book is probably going to, unfortunately, maybe move some people away in the reactionary.

And if that happens, I'll feel sadly about that because that's not what we're trying to do. We're trying to save the country in the short term from the brink of losing its democracy. But in the long term, we want people to live and to thrive and have great lives and livelihoods. And when you see, you know, mortality rates going up and life expectancies going down in some of these poor communities, 91% of gun deaths are white people in the country that's only 61% in the states with the most liberal gun laws, you know, not liberal left, but have the most gun access is where the suicide rates are the highest. So, I mean, we're not trying to, you know, just trample on people who are already struggling.

We want them to be uplifted, and we're writing a book that I think is maybe painfully honest and maybe does have a provocative title, guilty's charge, but we think needs to be out there. You, I mean, you guys, like, see, I didn't, so the backlash to the book's weird to me because, like, you guys are not talking down to people at all. Like, you treat people like the responsible adults who have agency and can make different choices.

And like you said, you don't even tell them to vote Democratic. Your point is, like, the way our political system's rigged, it's rigged so rural people have all this power because of gerrymandering, every state having two senators, gerrymandering, both in the state legislatures and in Congress. It's the, it's a light, like, you, if you got organized, you could ask for legitimate material changes. You could get your potholes fixed and get Medicaid expansions. You could, like, make it so my mom doesn't have to drive, like, wait two months to get a doctor's appointment, which needs an antibiotic. Do you know what we and so our argument is that they have all this power that but the only use to which it's being put is to make sure Republicans keep getting elected and they could use it for something better for themselves and that's why we say that they that real people need a rural movement one that's really expansive because if you think about it you know they are one of the core elements of the Republican coalition and every other element of both parties coalitions they got a set of demand. You know, if a Republican gets elected president, they got to sit down with the gun advocates and big business and evangelical Christians.

And they've all got an agenda. And they all say, this is what we want. You need to, you know, keep talking to us. Your entire four years you're in the White House. We've got legislation we want you to pass. We've got all these things we want you to do. And if you don't do it, four years from now, you might not get the help that we gave you this last time. And rural Americans form the one of the core foundations of the Republican Party.

and they have no demands. They're not even sitting at that table. And so why should the Republicans bother to make any kind of changes that might actually change in our lives? And who's more insulting? There's an old saying in D.C. That in D.C. people stab you in the front. They look you right in the eye with a nice smile

and jab it right between your ribs. So who's more insulting, us, me and Paul, who are telling you some hard truths, or Ted Cruz, who represents a state that has the most counties, 254, the vast majority of which are rural, and many of them, not all of them, are 80, 85, 90% way. When Ted Cruz goes on and says, my pronouns are kiss my ass.

What he is saying is that all I got to do is this performative politics. And these gullible morons are going to vote from me. I'm sorry to use that language, but that's the view of me. He's sitting in Joe's steakhouse, which is where all, I saw Mark Meadows six months after January 6 sitting one table over, right, eating a $65 ribeye and a $20 cocktail. And Ted Cruz is laughing because he's like, I don't have to deliver a damn thing for these people. All I got to do, he loved, and then a year later. or he did this whole thing about

they're trying to limit me to two beers and you know what I say to those people? They can kiss my ass. Ted Cruz wants people's faces in his ass, which I think is weird. You know, and by the way, there's a lot of homoerotic stuff, right?

And it's right. Like, you see the Trump flag. Colin Kaepernick is disrespecting the flag, but you go to a Trump rally and there's a U.S. flag with Trump's face with the Rambo, a bandana, and then superimposed on the Rambo

nude torso from 1925, right? And that's like, as Tina Faye said, you know, gator than the volleyball seen a top gun. And then, of course, for all the criticism of drag queens, we know, we know from John Bolton, Trump's national security advisor who meets with the president every day, except he's golfing, that Donald Trump spends 25 minutes a day on his makeup and 90 minutes on his hair. That's almost two hours. That's more time than my niece is spent getting ready for the prom. And there's only two kinds of men in America and two hours a day getting ready for. for their big performance. Donald Trump and drag queens. I went, before you go, one of the things I was really excited to ask about

because it's a personal hobby horse of mine was truck commercials. All right. I have ranted about truck commercials on this show so much. And to see my own take reflected back at me, like, it was smart. I just wanted to say thank you. Please give me your take on truck commercials. Oh, I find pickup trucks so fascinating. Once I started to delve into this, it's just like, I'm seeing this everywhere.

It's a real way that kind of these notions of rural masculinity that have really disappeared in people's actual lives still get expressed through trucks. So do you know what the three most best-selling vehicles in America are, the Ford F-150, the Chevy Silverado, and the RAM pickup every single year. And fewer and fewer people need to actually pick stuff up. They're not going and hauling. And these things now, they used to be kind of a mark that you maybe were a laborer. You know, you were like a blue collar person. And now you go to some places, like we've reported from the Hill Country of Texas. You know, we had a rental car.

I think sedans may be illegal in that area of the state. Every single car in the road is a pickup. And they are just gleaming. And, you know, there are models of F-150 that start around $85,000. This is a luxury vehicle. But it's being sold through all those commercials as something where you can get that piece of masculinity. You know, you can haul and toe. and be like that that famous Super Bowl commercial

that used the the Paul Harvey thing about God made a farmer. You can be a little bit like that farmer. Now, less than 1% of Americans are farmers now, but you could be a little bit like that farmer. You could be strong and capable and compassionate and competent and all those things that we associate with rural masculinity.

And all you've got to do is to spend 100K on this really nice truck. And then you complain about economic anxiety and gas prices, right? And then that's... Also, what happened to like light pickup, like if a Toyota light pickup is good enough to help the Taliban defeat the U.S. military, I think it's good enough for the rest of us to haul a little hay around or whatever. I got to say, you know what I've got my eye on is that Ford Maverick. It's a small pickup. They should make more of those. And it comes in a hybrid because I'm a northeastern liberal elitist. That's what I want. There you go. I want to point you just mentioned the same like the Sam Elliott narrated truck commercials and I thought like you missed an observation there that I just wanted to point out to you that Sam out like it's sort of like a meta thing that sort of makes the drive the point home Sam Elliott has made his living as an actor playing a cowboy and voicing truck commercials about how tough it is to be a cowboy and get up Sam Elliott is from fucking Portland Oregon I just want to say some of you're smart I've been watching the comments you got some smart followers

on this i'm saying that and that's not pandered they said jason aldean's from a big town you know who's a small small town of 7 000 north georgia little naz x right he's more rural yeah than jason al d and uh and kid rock who was born in the suburbs yeah like a rich car dealer car dealership on yeah yeah cunt rural rock they're they're posers man and you know at least the phonic is my personal little thing because i live in upstate new york and i spent a lot of time one of your uh one of your uh viewers said they just climbed whiteface Mountain a couple weeks ago, which is insane in the middle of the winter. They call them winter 46ers. There's 46 peaks about 4,000 feet. I've got 23 of them about halfway there, including

Whiteface. And Elise Nefonic, I know a lot about her. She grew up in Albany. I grew up in Albany. I went to Bethlehem Central Public School. She went to Albany Academy for Girls where they wear uniforms and it's a $10,000 a year or whatever it was when she's in. I went to SUNY Plattsburgh, got kicked out, finished at a Sunni Oswego, because I had two siblings behind me that my parents were trying to put through college. She went to Harvard, right? And then she worked for Paul Ryan in Washington. And then she decides to run, and the district that's available is up in the Adironic North

country. And so she runs from her home in Willsborough, which is her parents' second summer home. Now, imagine if I had did that. Imagine if I had gone to a private school and Harvard and ran for my parents' summer school as a liberal Democrat. They would have crucified me. But it's okay for her. Yeah.

You know what? Closer carpet bagger. You fuckers are all right. You know, that's that's like. like a lot of people. And I know how titles work with books, like I said, but still I saw the book title. And again, I couldn't help it. I was like, I don't know how this is going to go, but I like you guys.

So on that note, thank you so much for joining us before you go. Do that. Sell the book. Tell them where they can get the book, where you want them to get the book, and leave any parting thoughts. You can go to white rural rage.com, and it has the links to every seller from Amazon on down. So just buy it where it's cheapest because there's a lot of anxiety there. okay as little as possible right on love it all right tom shaller and paul walman thank you guys so much we appreciate thanks fellas see y'all next time all right skewers that was it it was fun right i liked it

i hope you liked it too we're out of time we're gonna get out of here but i want to remind you real quick go to traycrouter dot com get your tickets come see me out there on the road and uh support the show on patreon weekly skews.com slash more or look my name up on patreon and get some more skews in your life and support the show in the process main thing is you keep watching this here main show and we'll keep doing it. We'll see you next Tuesday. Love you by. Pugh.