Weekly Skews - Weekly Skews 3/07/2023 – Bad Bipartisan Business

Episode Date: March 8, 2023

Tonight, we're talking some recent Biden Administration/Big Dem moves that have us shaking our heads. Namely: siding with Republicans on a crime bill in the nation's capital, and gutting expanded food stamp benefits, plunging millions of Americans into poverty. On a lighter note: CPAC was a sparsely attended and sad affair. Join us!Support the show

Thank you. What's up, y'all, welcome back. Happy Skews Day to you. It's March 7th, 2020. I'm Trey Crowder, and that's Mark Aegee. What's up, Mark? What's up, Trey? We've got a, you know, fun show today about some big, big, brain, damn bullshit that hurting people to win over non-existent votes. It's found it pretty frustrating.

But we got some fun stuff before we get to that. Before we get the show, it feels like Tucker Carlson overstepped. He finally started airing that all that January 6 footage he got. from Kevin McCarthy is part of his deal to become speaker. Agreed to hand over 40,000 hours of unedited January 6 footage to Tucker Carlson. Yeah, that's such a wild, like, condition for the speaker of the House to have to agree to in the first place. You know what I mean? To give the, to give all that footage to, like, you know, the nation's preeminent right-wing propagandist.

It's just like that's just public information and everybody knows it. It's pretty crazy. But so anyway, that happened, and now what's Tucker done with it? He's pushed him off. He narrated over the footage that we've all seen saying that the stuff we're seeing on the screen didn't happen or something. It didn't make any sense. Like, he said that the footage of Josh Hawley running away was a lie because other people also ran away. It doesn't really make sense.

The point of roasting Josh Holly was he egged the protesters on. That's why they're making fun of him for running. Everybody was running. Nobody wanted to fucking die. But anyway, it feels like you overstepped because Mitch McConnell slammed the day and a bunch of Tom Tillis said it was bullshit. And like so you got the rare Republican senators versus Fox News thing, even though a bunch of House members who, the House members didn't even more crazy. We're on the floor saying that we got this proves that all January 6th was a setup and they got to release all day prisoners. Anyway, it'd be fun to watch them.

You get each other alive because it's such a weird thing. Sorry, go ahead. Well, I was just going to say, yeah, I'm into. but, you know, they'll be back, uh, suckling the tape before too long, I'm sure. Like, uh, it won't last, uh, it won't last, uh, very much longer, I'm assuming. But it's like, it's so weird. They have such a parallel, Fox News viewers have such like a parallel universe they live in that they'll never see Mitch McConnell, you know, call out Tucker or Tom Tillis or whatever. But I was thinking, like, they could just pretend

Trump's president and be happy. Their viewers would never know if Trump, the Trump wasn't president. that's funny yeah just do some yeah just do a whole fantasy camp thing for them the whole time just pretend that's a good idea mark i don't know how you get them well i mean they would make the same money either way right you can maybe sell them on that i don't know if you could but somebody could sell them on that you know uh because that's interesting i did just present this fabric they already presented fabricated version of america but do the well but see they don't want them to be happy like that's the that's the problem you don't what I mean, they want them to be fucking riled up, not content. So they'd be more inclined to do

the opposite. It like, if Trump was president still present a version of America where Biden's pulling the strings and everything is fucking terrible, you know what I mean, just to keep everybody pissed off. Yeah, I mean, you're right. Their ratings are always way higher when a Democrats in office, just like MSNBC's ratings boom when Trump was in office. Yeah, I don't know what to make of it. Tucker was a fucking shit bag, especially to push

for this hard after he got caught in court filings texting that his viewers are idiots and he knows the election wasn't sold.

So there we go. All right. So this story came out today. You want to talk about some spy shit, Trey? I love spy shit.

Well, I love like fake spy shit usually. Yeah. You know, spy movie. Like,

I love Tom Clancy or whatever. Yeah. But real spy shit is often infuriating, I find. But yes, sure. Let's talk about it. For sure, because, like, movie spy shit is, like, doing porcour on the top of a train,

trend, or retrieve stolen documents. Like, real spy shit is like, you know, do an ecstasy with a member of the society rule of family. So he'll tell you which members of his families are pedophiles, you can blackmail them. So it came out today that sources inside the U.S. government, that's the multiple sources, but say that they think someone affiliated with. Ukraine are who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines. I remember what we talked about a little bit when they had blown up like earlier in

the Ukraine war. Yeah. Yes, the pipeline that supplies Russian natural gas to Western Europe or Germany or something like that. Yeah, exactly. So Ukraine, obviously, the number one suspect, they have the most clear motive. But like, the thing about spy shit like this is you know, all you ever see is smoke, right? no one ever tells you where the fire is so it leaves open the door open for a lot of conspiracy

theorizing or just like reading tea leaves so like it no one suspect ukraine number two us to try to keep you know europe from fucking going uh you know wobbly legged in the face of russia because they they don't want to be cold this winter um and then like then you get into like third and fourth tier things where like somebody doing it to like frame ukraine or frame us to escalate tensions then you get into like bond bill and stuff where like maybe somebody had shorted Russian natural gas companies like in the plot of Casino Royale they were trying to do a terrorist type of point.

It doesn't matter. It's like, everybody's just fucking guessing. But the question is like, why this week? And the real answer is, and Matt wanted to talk about this a couple weeks ago. We're kicking around story ideas. Seymour Hirsch wrote, you know who Seymour Hershey is, Trey?

Only because of the outline. I didn't recognize the name, but he like, he uncovered the Ma Lai Massacre and a bunch of other, like, major moments in American, uh, whatever, uh, military espionage history. Yeah, or yeah, that type. Yeah. So he's a pretty legendary investigative reporter. He's also, he's got, he's sort of gone off the, uh, pretty far out of the mage stream, uh, the last couple years. Like, for example, he's old as shit, right? He's like, yeah. So like he's, he said, he

wrote a whole, uh, book, I think, or at least a long investigative piece that like, we didn't kill Osama bin Laden that the Pakistanis handed him over. Oh, we didn't do the raid. They handed him over and we executed him. And that doesn't make any sense to me as far as what I know about Pakistani politics or how the intelligence services work. It also doesn't make any sense because like the bin Laden raid didn't go perfect. Like we crashed a helicopter and had to shoot a couple in armed women, right?

There's also the thing, like the crash in the helicopter revealed that we have stealth blackhawks, which I guess they'd rather not do. But then you get into the conspiracy theory part, it's like, well, other countries intelligence agencies would have known we have stealth black hawks. So us revealing it gave away nothing while making it look more real because of helicopter crash. But you've got to also deal with the fact that some Pakistani dude who lived in the neighborhood live in the neighborhood live tweeted it. Remember that?

Yeah. Right. So anyway, so going back to this article, Sirehurst had worth this whole piece based on one source. And he also made the mistake of using a bunch of specifics about what Norwegian ships were used. And there was public tracking data available. So that was pretty easily debunked. as far as the rest of it, I don't know. But he said that Joe Biden ordered the Navy SEALs to do it,

and we partnered up with Norway to do it. So, but it is weird that the intelligence community felt the need to respond to a blog post by an old guy working in his basement. Right. Yeah, but he's like, you know, I mean, I know he's gotten older and whatever crazy. He's lost some of his cash-a, but he's still like, you know, he's a name in that world. Yeah. Yeah.

I saw a bunch of people taking it serious. but then it was then a bunch of people debunked it and none of us never fucking know who blew it up right i don't like it's this anyway whoever blew it up probably didn't need to because it was an unseasonally warm winter in europe and germany actually ended ended the winter with more natural gas reserves and they usually have even despite not having russian gas so like thank you uh you know to global warming global warming yeah yeah climate change for the wind adding the war effort Yeah. Before we move on, though, just because I'm dumb, will you explain to me the version where we did it? Like, why is it that we did it? We wanted Europe to not be beholden to Russia.

Right. So would not be incentivized to kowtow to Russia because of the gas so they couldn't have the gas held over their head. Right. The option wasn't there. Okay. Right. Like Germany is supplying a lot of weapons to Ukraine too. And at least anomaly being vocally in support of the war effort and in support of, you know, Ukraine during NATO, I think. So it's a, yeah, we would do it to remove the leverage Russia head over Europe if we did it. But somebody with a lot of skills dove to the bottom of the Baltic Sea with a thousand pounds of explosives and did like a couple billion dollars with a damage to a Russian gas pipeline. And I saw, you know, the online, you know, public intelligence outfits like Bellingcat trying to figure it out today.

And they were like, well, we, we think it, they think it was like somebody rented a Polish yacht to launch the operation. It's like, it's like, good luck guys, trying to figure it out. It's always wild to me thinking about these dudes actually like, somebody did it. You know what I mean? Like, it's wild to me that these people are real somewhere. like you know like uh i don't know it's pretty wild it's not like you say it's never as cool or as sexy as in the novels or the movies or whatever but like those dudes still exist and they're doing the weirder dirtier version of the same thing it's pretty crazy depending on what the

motives are i mean let's remove morality from it for a second it was cool as fuck i'm sure they do yeah right whoever did it was a fucking badality from the equation is like that's chapter one And it's like day one of the spy training. Without their knowing their motives or they're having a control universe where it didn't happen. And we don't know how the war played out or is played. We don't know how it ends already. Like it's like we don't know. Anytime you do something like this, you don't know the down the line effects of it.

But like anyway, in that moment, the couple hours they did the operation, bad ass mad. Rad. Super rad. Yeah, right. Of course. All right. Well, let's get into it with us as always his producer, Matt. Although he's joining us from a different location.

That's right. He's out west. He's down here with me and Mark. We're all going to get together a little bit later. You guys jealous. You better be because you're not going to get to see him. That's right. Me and Mark get to see Matt.

Y'all don't. The man of mystery is now crossing state lines. Hold on, Mark. You're going to tell people where we're going? Somebody might come and see Matt. Okay, I'm about to say, we got to protect Matt's identity here. So anyway. A steakhouse.

I won't say a name, but me and, me and Trey and Drew love. And it's like this old good, this old Hollywood vibe. And it's like the kind of place you feel like, yeah, Mobster definitely got like a hand job for Marilyn Monroe in here. That's the place rules. Yeah, narrowing it down a little bit. But anyway, he is with us on the ones and twos behind the scenes right now. This is weekly skews.

Before we continue, I, of course, want to remind you of the requisite items of business. Number one, if you'd like to see me perform live, go to Trey Crowder.com. I'll be in San Diego on Sunday. And then later this month, we're going to be in Virginia, Frederick, Maryland, Philly. A lot of good dates coming up after that. It's still adding plenty more for the rest of the years. So go to Trey Crowder.com. Check it out. Come and save me.

Number two, my special is out. It's called Damn Boy. You can get it on Amazon right now. You can also get Corey Forrester and Drew Morgan's specials. Respectively, you can get them all together as the well-read comedy special extraordinaire. Or you can just get them individually, whatever you want to do. Either way, go on Amazon and check them out. Finally, number three, if you enjoy this program, I would like to show your support,

you can do so by signing up on Patreon. go to weekly skews.com slash more or just go on Patreon and search for my name. You'll find it either way. $5 a month get you access to full length bonus episodes. We're going to do another one later this week, right? Or do we just do one? I can't remember either way.

We do them every other week. We're having a lot of fun with it. We did one Friday. Yeah, we just did one. So yeah, check that one out. We get into things we don't have time for on the main show or things that come up in between or just shit we want to talk about. But we're having a lot of fun with it.

We hope you'll check it out. Like I said, weekly skews.com slash more or go on Patreon and look me up. Sign up on there. Get some more skews in your life. Now, as for the show tonight, as Mark alluded to, up top, we're nothing, if not even-handed here at the skews. And tonight we're going to be talking about some moves at the Biden administration and big Democrat are making and have us scratching our heads to say the least,

siding with Republicans on a D.C. crime bill and gutting the nation's food stamp program, plunging millions of Americans into poverty. Fun. But before that, we've got some. other good stuff to talk about, including, of course, where we begin the Daily Dumbass. My hat graphic, please. Tonight's D.D., all of us as a society for making Ron DeSantis think he needs to wear high heels if he wants to be the president.

That's right. So if y'all don't know, president's got to be tall. We ain't voting for no short motherfucker out here, all right? Ron DeSantis is 5'9. That's the American average heights for a male, all right? So not quite a short king, Ron DeSantis. But all of our recent presidents have been 5-11 or higher. So you got to be tall or don't even try to show up.

All right. So how is Ron DeSantis approaching this? Cowboy boots, baby, big healed cowboy boots, which seemed to be doing the trick, Mark. I don't know. He's looking taller in pictures. I think he's pulling them off. If you got this picture of him next to Tiger Woods map. There it is.

Tiger Woods is 6-1. See? Yeah. Yeah, so Danza, DeSanza's clocking in, six, two, in that pick, unless he's standing on an apple box or something. This is, like, so DeSanta's an Italian guy from Florida. It means where it, uh, uh, cowboy boots. The cowboy's coming to a bunch of different varieties. He's got the ones the absolute highest heels, which you would only wear for actually riding horses, all right?

Right. They, there's no other reason to fucking wear them. And there he is. Because of stirrup raisins. They fit the stars fair, the ones with the big ass heels on them. Yeah, right. Yeah, so, yeah, trade the debt. I mean, no, also there's, if you, you know, don't want people to think you're short and thus not vote for you for president, that's the other reason why you might wear a mark bat and riding horses.

I can't get over. Like, who was the last, who's the last bald president we had, Teddy Roosevelt? Ooh. Oh, yeah. Wasn't Eisenhower balls? Oh, yeah, Eisenhower. Yeah. I guess Jimmy Carter had a bad, had like the bald spot in the middle.

But yeah, you got a good hit in general. you have to have a good head of hair, which is why Biden has hair plugs. And you got to, like, be at least 5.11 and a half. The last shortest president was Jimmy Carter, 5.9 and a half. Biden's six-foot even, if you're wondering. I looked it up. And Trump is supposedly 6'3, but he quite obviously wears lifts because he can't help to lean forward all the time, like a centaur.

So the last actually truly short president we had, according to this piece, was William McKinley. It was 130 years ago. So definitely not since the ad of television. We can see how short people are. It's so funny, the things that, like, genuinely do matter to who can become president in this country, like, objectively speaking, you know, and fucking, like, height, hair, the whole, the whole classic, like, who do you want to have a beer with, all this shit that, like, none of which matters at all in terms of their capacity to lead or govern or anything like that. But, you know, we're just, that's just America, baby. We can't have no fucking short-ass bald dip shit up there.

Well, actually, we can have the dip shit part's fine. But, you know. Yeah. Well, I'm 5'9 and bald, so my presidential dreams are over. Yeah, I think we're out. So I, like, it's so weird. I was reading a writer's room once where, like, it was a bunch of people that were like all over six feet. And they started roasting me for being a short one day.

And I was like, I never occurred to me. I was short. Never thought about it. I could reach everything I want to reach. So I never. Well, dude, I don't know how you're going to react to this, but I was in Texas this weekend, and there's this kid who opens me sometimes, his name is Maverick, and he's, uh, he's 5'9, right? And he's got a whole bit that he does about how short he is, how it's hard to date when

you're short guy, like Tinder sucks when you're short, because the whole thing, you know, it got to be six foot on Tinder or whatever. This whole thing about how girls talk to him, like, oh, what's up, little fella, all this shit. And like, it all just, it all plays. you know what I mean like the audience like it's totally going with it like he is a little guy and I'll tell him you're like you're like the average height you're not that short he's like yeah but you know look at how everybody X when I say I'm short so yeah when you started that story I was

going to say I bet that's a fun dating app thing because like I've read about high discrimination dating apps but I never personally experienced it because like you know I'm old but so whatever yeah so but speaking of the Santa's I somewhat missed this story from last fall, and Harper's speaking of a lot of talking of Desantis. I knew that DeSantis

was in the Navy after Harvard Law School in the Jag Corps. I did not know he was stationed to Guantanamo Bay. And I also did not know that his job there

was supposedly to make sure that America was following human rights laws. But instead, he was enthusiastically participating in torture. He was the interview with a guy who was there.

He's interviewed by American Combat veteran his last time is Prisner. This inmate's name was Adafi, a dafi, a dafi. And just because of the way, like, we never tried any of the guys in Guantanamo Bay. And we let them, we just let them a lot of them go. Because, like, the war was such chaos. We're paying people cash for tips that, like, a lot of people just sold their, you know, people that didn't like to America.

And we tortured them for 20 years. All right. Maybe this guy was in Taliban. Maybe he's just a guy. I don't fucking know. But either way, I don't think they were trying to do a hunger. strike and DeSantis helped like hold these guys down and force feed them insure and then also gave them medicine and give him diarrhea and he was there for a lot of beatings this kind of

remembers DeSantis laughing in his face so yeah yeah this is evil yeah right and I feel like this whole thing totally checks out with with everything we know about Ron DeSantis you know what I mean where it's like so he can say not well not that he would considering the side he's on but it's like you know his job was to make sure the prisoners at Guantama baby were being treated humanely, right? But that makes him kind of like a nark to the guards and the people there at the facility, right? So instead, to ingratiate himself to them, he just totally, just, you know, actively participates in it and shirks his, you know, ostensible job duties in favor of, you know, getting in good with the other people there. And also, look, and also I'm sure he just enjoyed

watching these dudes get tortured. I'm not trying to. downplay that part. I'm sure the laughter was genuine and the guffawing as they were fucking choking on the insurer they were being force fed and then throwing back up onto the shoes of the guards and stuff. I'm sure he found that to be a laugh riot very genuinely. But it also just like, it just fits. It fits perfectly in, you know, who I view Ron DeSantis to be the whole thing. You said not fulfilling his job duties, but also wasn't fulfilling his duties as, you know, you know a naval officer a lawyer a human being human being yeah right yeah um and the laughing is like you can't even do the okay i understand the height of the war on terror people are pretty jacked up and stuff you can do the just following orders bit but the orders were not to fucking laugh and enjoy it like this so uh yeah uh fuck around desantis we talked about on friday on the patreon and we got into whether like disantius is worse than trump and i'm pretty confident but i

this is just a look at my opinion that desantis is worse than trump so yeah yeah All right. Our first honorable mention for Daily Dumbass, speaking of Trump, our first honorable mention is Joe Biden for thinking he could beat Donald Trump in a game of wall, hide, and seek. Matt, if you got this clip, go ahead and play it for us. The wall was sitting there waiting to be installed, the easiest part. And Biden, they took it away so that Texas and Arizona couldn't use it. Texas and Arizona said, could we use that wall? We'll finish it right up. and they said no and they actually took it away

and they hit it they put it in a hiding area which of course was revealed pretty quickly well you have to send a couple of helicopters up all right

yep Joe Biden the hiding area the hiding area Joe Biden put the Trump had built the wall he hadn't it was almost finished

it wasn't and Joe Biden took it away he didn't and put it in a hiding spot he didn't which you can see from helicopters that Trump apparently

still has control over which he doesn't yeah this is this is this is from CPAC over the weekend. It's also, it's like, like Arizona and Texas sitting there being like,

hey, can we please use that wall? And Joe Biden was like, no, I'm taking the wall. The whole wall. It's like, how did he transport the entire wall?

Like take it to the officially designated wall hiding area that we have. It's just, The whole thing is so comically sophomoric and stupid. Yeah. Like, I wonder like, you watch this stuff and like, did people listen you to this?

I mean, I know they enjoy it. But did they believe it? You know what I'm saying? Is it just like, no, I guess it doesn't matter. I think so.

Yeah. I think they do. Most of them. Yeah, this is a CPAC over the weekend, which is a real scene for the, uh, dozens of people that actually showed up.

And that's why I wanted to make Donald, I mentioned, uh, the next I don't want to mention, uh, crowd shots for misleading a, about the strength of our movement. Check out this applause line,

Kimmel de Guilfoil a guy. Yeah, this is great. All of us in this room have one message to Joe Biden. It is time to put America first. I've done some shows like that, Cam. There's another video I saw.

Yeah, I've done that show too. It was too long for the payoff, but Wayne Lafierre, you know, the guy runs the NRA, it was given a long speech about, you know, because the government was suing NRA because of the rainierlo up here

it stole a bunch of money, essentially, and he was saying it was politically motivated, which maybe it was, I don't know. But you say, like, we cannot be allowed to stand

a big applause line, and literally one guy goes, boo! His big moan with one guy. Here's what, here's what I don't get about this. I love seeing this, of course,

but like, I don't know. They still win elections and shit. Do you know, what I mean? Like, I don't understand. Like, you see this and it's like, oh, people are losing enthusiasm or whatever, but I don't know. Then it doesn't seem like that on election day. And also, like, you know, they seem to get pretty fired up and they seem to be pretty, you know, you go through certain parts of the country, they seem to be pretty ubiquitous. But maybe they

just ain't got CPAC money or maybe CPAC's one of those things. You're like, ah, if you've been to one, you've been to all of them. And they keep having fucking five a year or whatever. So, Maybe even these people are like, I'll skip the next three. Maybe I'll go back in 2024. I don't know. I just. Well, they had, Trump was their big headliner, obviously, and they had some of the big names there. Marjorie Taylor Green was there, Jaira Bolzano, Donald Trump Jr.

But a bunch of big names like DeSantis Pence and Kevin McCarthy skipped it. And the reason why was one of the things that affected the tennis this year is the guy who runs these, but his name is Matt Schlapp. And he was accused of groping a male staffer of Hugh Herschel Walker. campaign back in the fall he's being sued for it um they said the story goes he was driving him back to his hotel and match slap just grabbed his dick and tried to get him to come out to his room and because this guy's a republican staffer he has more credibility than you know a woman would to these people um so so like yeah the quote was um let me find this guy's quote interview with NBC news one anonymous GOP operative said that top Republicans had already come to the

view come to view the conference as a chore in recent years and someone said to me quote we all wanting the excuse not to go and Slap gave it to us. So, yeah, these things are boring and Matt Slap being a pervert, allegedly let them off the hook. They had a bunch of, like, real banging events. You get a couple of my favorite panels they had. No Chinese balloon above Tennessee hosted by Marsha Blackburn, your home stater. Take a stand, Marsha. No Chinese balloon above Tennessee.

You're doing great. Doing great, Marsha. Seems like, since there aren't any or whatever. whatever so it's fine finish the wall build the dome was another one they want to cover america in a dome to kill it illegals from coming in through treboshae i guess and then another one was don lemon has passed his prime time which like no one except for don't lemon thinks about don't know what the fuck these people i think it i think it was that's about him saying a couple weeks ago saying that niki haley was pastor prime or something um my least favorite

moment was a guy named Michael Knowles who writes for Ben Shapiro's website. He got a loud cheer for saying that quote, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life. I don't want to show the clip because it's fucking gross and fuck that guy. And he threatened to sue people that quoted him accurately for saying he was

approaching genocide or rhetoric. Because his argument's like, well, I'm saying I want to ban transgenderism. I don't want to like kill transgender people. And my thing is like substitute another enderism for that. Judaism? Right. Seems pretty. Yeah, no.

Yeah, I mean, it's literally genocidal rhetoric. Transgenderism should be eradicated from public life. I don't see any other way to interpret that. I saw also somebody, they're passing around this photo of that dude with a drag queen or trans person or someone. Did you say it by the name of Lady Maga, like Lady Gaga, but it's Maga. It doesn't really work. It only works if you don't say it. It's when I was approximate, you know, situation.

But anyway, sitting there with a big smile, which doesn't prove anything. Those people take pictures with whoever. Either way, it's fucking, it's, yeah, they're just like the whole saying the quiet part out loud thing. They've been getting way more brazen about in recent years. And now they're just, especially with trans, again, ever since, it's like ever since they either found out, remembered or started to care that transgender people exist around about 2016, you know. they've just really zeroed in on them and they're seeing how far they can push it, you know, and it keeps getting wilder and wilder like this.

There's a bunch of really gross laws being passed recently trying to ban trans-affirming care, not just for kids, but for adults as well. So now 40-year-old people can't have decided to do with their bodies. So they're branched out for women and coming out to everybody. To finish up with Trump's speech, because he's quite clearly in campaign mode, it was pretty fucking apocalyptic.

I mean, that literally said, the country is in an epic battle against sinister forces. The nation's becoming a crime-ridden, a crime-ridden, filthy communist nightmare. In 2016, I declared, I am your voice. Today, I add, I'm your warrior. I'm your justice. And for those who've been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. He is a terror that flaps in the night, Trey. It was.

Yeah, I'm true. I wonder, but they had to talk him. I, like, I wonder who removed the word divine from that last statement. You know what I mean? Divine retribution. I'm sure he wanted to throw that in there. I'm surprised he showed enough restraint to not do so. Yeah, the rhetoric is pretty clear because the movement can live on without him, but he's trying to say, like, if you don't elect me personally, then you will have lost, right?

So there was one bit of, I don't hate to call it levity, but he talked about, we talked about Friday about his future cities thing he wants to do. He wants to build Jetsons like cities with anyway, but play this video because the end is pretty, The end's pretty funny, Matt, you got it. Maybe it won't play. It's buffering, everybody. You guys? Matt's in the hotel, guys.

It's also the Twitter's been for buggy lately. Anyway, so you can take it off, Matt. I'll just tell people what he said. So he talked about the future cities and how we need to, like, the government needs to regulate architecture to do different. But anyway, at the end, He's got a plan to help solve America's population crisis by baby bonuses. So he says the baby's basically going to pay families to have new children, which any

improvement of social network, social safety net I'm in favor of. But what he said is like, I'm going to pay women to have more kids. And it goes, you men are going to be so lucky. So even then he frames that as paying women to fuck their husbands more. yes and i agree i agree with you about that it's very trumping the whole thing's like you men are so lucky you're so lucky we know god we're gonna have a baby boom it's gonna be great but like uh you alluded to this that's like if any like democrat politician said that i feel like they'd lose their minds we're gonna get we're gonna give women money to have more babies they would automatically

interpret that as like black welfare queens or whatever you know what i mean like immediately and they would lose their minds booing and hissing and everything but he says it and they're like yeah it's gonna be great more fucking we get more get more fucking in here that's america baby it's like it's just uh i don't know it's also it's also how can you it also like we're talking about we're talking about their effort to end food stamps in a little bit and it's like so it goes it goes along with a Republican idea that every baby should be born and there should be more babies born, but the minute they leave the hospital, life is a fucking nature, red, and tooth, and claw, right? Yeah.

So, yeah, so anyway, if you're wondering how the fuck it's possible for Democrats to ever lose elections to fucking idiot, moron, animals like this, we're about to tell you. So Joe Biden did two things in the past week, or that they're coming to fruition this past week that I find absolutely maddening and furrating. I don't even understand it. The policy ramifications are pretty horrific. but also don't understand the politics of it because the people that like Trump aren't going to switch over to Biden because he pretends to be harder on crime or something.

Right. So this first piece I want to talk about is why Biden stabbed D.C. in the back. So basically, Washington, D.C. passed a bill to restructure their criminal codes. And right-wing media did a bunch of fearmongering about it, saying a bunch of shit that's absolutely untrue that we'll get to in a second. And because DCS home rule, the, you know, Congress and the president can overrule anything they do. Republicans tried to pass a bill to do so. They did with one Democratic vote Joe Manchin because Biden had signaled that he would veto it.

So he had covered every Democrat to vote against it. And then after they'd all committed to voting against it, he tweeted that he was going to sign it and fucked them into looking stupid. And now a lot of them switched to vote for the bill. they had previously that they're going to vote against. So this is also the context of Biden has argued that D.C. should be a state, right? Right. So D.C., they, you know, their license plates in D.C. So taxation without representation, because, you know, they don't have any representation or very little autonomy. They're like kind of just, they don't have much in the way of self-governance, which Biden has always said is bullshit.

and should not be. Now they make an attempt at self-governance. The Republicans move to shut it down, and then Biden at the 11th hour, switches course and sides with them in doing so, while still saying he thinks they should be a state and has some autonomy, which is some both sides of your mouth talking type bullshit.

Yeah, let me quote Joe Biden himself. Any denial of self-governance in D.C., he proclaimed, is an affront to the democratic values in which our nation was founded. Okay. Let's talk about the actual bill, because for some reason, the media doesn't ever actually talk about what's in the fucking law. You heard a bunch of stuff about legalizing carjacking or something, which is absolutely not true. The basic idea here is they hadn't reformed their criminal laws in like 122 years, I think.

So there's a bunch of stuff that, like, it was just written weirdly to modern context. For example, the current statute had one robbery statute with a maximum penalty of 15 years. It covered everything from nonviolent pickpocketing to beating a victim. from the point of near death. All right? Also, they had an inability to prosecute people for shooting guns off

and thin city limits if they didn't, if they weren't trying to, if they couldn't prove they were trying to harm or kill somebody. You had to have intent to harm somebody. Otherwise, you could just fucking shoot cans

or shooting the area to use somebody sand style. Right. Because, yeah. As I said before, as I said to you before we started, because when their current criminal code was written,

you know, it was like, if Grover Cleveland wins re-election, you just fucking, you start shooting out of the air on the White House lawn or whatever, you know what I mean? It's like, it's just a little good old,

good old fashioned frontier fun or whatever. You're not going to criminalize that. Everybody needs to be able to shoot their guns in the air, you know, Simony Sam style in celebration, but probably not in 2023, but the way their laws are written, you can still do that type of shit.

So like they have these ancient criminal codes they're trying to bring up to speed. It gets reported on and talked about, especially by Republicans, as them being softer on crime, and Biden doesn't want to seem soft on crime, so he sides with the Republicans on it, even though the bill is not necessarily soft on crime.

It's just like a modernization effort, pretty much. Because they also say, like, D.C.'s often, our nation's capital is, you know, crime-ridden hellhole. It's insanely dangerous, and now they want to do this. Also, and I, look, I know there's different parts of every city, but I go to D.C. pretty much every year, and I fucking love it. And it's like, it's not Fallujah. for anybody that's not been to D.C., you know.

So, like, they overstake the issues in the first place and then act like D.C. actively wants it to get worse, and only the Republicans care enough to stop it from getting worse or whatever. And Biden is, like, tacitly supporting that narrative, basically. My beef with the law, I think it was still overly draconian. Like, the purpose of the law that someone ever got lost in here was to make it easier to prosecute crimes. They were trying to lock more people up. That was the purpose of this bill. but somebody got construed as being soft on crime.

Like, for example, the thing that people talked about in cable news all the time was, like, they lowered the carjacking maximum from 40 years to 24. The way they did that was they surveyed the census people actually got and found the judges were usually giving people about 15. So they lowered the maximum 40 to 24 because no one was getting 40 anyway. And also, like, they left a little room above the 15 in case somebody did something especially egregious, like, I don't know, kidnap, I mean, like steal a car with kids in it or something. But, like, I want to see the, I want to meet the carjacker, since this is about incentives.

We're talking about Joe Biden's incentives here for a second, but like, in a second, but like, I want to meet the carjacker who's like, I will carjack if I only have to give up 24 years of my goddamn life in prison, but not 40? Right. Who is this fucking person? Yeah. Like, if these people thought about what's like to even spend like a year in jail, it's not fucking pleasant. It's not a year in prison. It's like, this fucking stupid and awful. but like it gets so lost

what the actual truth of this is no one it like the media does to talk about the politics of it the horse race shit no one talks about what's actually in the bill like look at this idiotic framing I want to I want to talk about and meet the press talked about this on Sunday if you got the BMA

let's say here so if you're all behind the scenes what Matt does he skips ahead trying to get ahead in the rundown and then he President Biden essentially said he was not going to veto the Republican override of this law. And essentially, Democrats are saying he doesn't want to look soft on crime. Is the D.C. City Council out of step with where the National Democratic Party is on what has become a really critical issue? Oh, no. In fact, the bill that is getting all this controversy is,

is a version of the model penal code that many, many states have adopted. That's what's so frustrating about this. But the bill has been reframed by the Republicans in the House and the Senate. So, I mean, let's just take the crime of carjacking. Our current law has a 40-year maximum penalty. Judges don't sentence 40 years. They sentence 15-15-15 years. Our revised bill has at 24 years.

Let's take Tennessee where Senator Haggertie's from. Their maximum is 12 years. No, we're not out of step. Got it, Matt. It's amazing what arguments look like if you put actual facts in them, right? Why am I having to tell people this? Why is the news not fucking telling people this? Right.

Why is the news lady giving a bad faith argument in the form of a question to this guy and leave it to him to say some actual facts? You're the fucking reporter. You can read the bill, right? And I just like, I need Joe Biden to show me the guy who was going to vote Republican when a carjacker got 24 years. Boy, now I'll vote for him because a carjacker got 40 when he's not going to get fucking 40. Right. Also, that guy is not going to know any of that anyway.

But just like, they're not going to know any of those specifics. And even in a broader sense, like, show me the guy that was going to vote against Joe Biden. But then he's like, oh, okay. I'm with him because he sided with the Republicans on this thing. You know what I mean? Like, oh, all right. All that dude is going to look at is that as Biden being, you know, whipped into submission by the people who he's with anyway, you know what I mean?

So it's just like a victory for his people. And yeah, that's what you get fucking Biden. That's the only perspective he's going to have on that. Anybody who remembers this when they go to vote is going to remember that Joe Biden was on the verge of being very soft on crime, but was defeated and browbeaten by manly strong, tough on crime Republicans. He doesn't get any points out of this. He fucked over Washington, Washington, D.C. He fucked over anybody who has the bad luck to get caught up in the criminal justice system. He fucked over, you know, Democrats in the House and the Senate. For what? I can't, I can't

even figure out what the goal was. And we're so, like, the only thing you figure out is that Joe Biden saw this ad put up by the National Republican Senate Campaign Committee. Because it's fucking terrifying, and it makes it like this, Joe Biden was legalizing this or something. Should we be softer on crime like Democrats want, or should we be tougher on crime like Republicans and the American people want? That is the debate. The D.C. Council voted today to completely overhaul the district's criminal code. Removing most mandatory minimum sentences. Residents who live in the area say they do not feel safe.

who are concerned about their safety. A violent weekend in the district. That's fucking, that's dystopian, right? It looks like D.C. is like Mad Max or some shit, or escaped from New York. I tried to watch the Fox Code, Fox News coverage of this. And when I clicked on an episode, a clip from Neil Cavuto,

the pre-roll ad in the Fox News website was for the show Cops. Yeah. Which felt so fucking perfect. It's all copaganda all the time. So, anyway. I mean, I hate how draconian America is about crime in general on both sides, really, like, we don't really believe in second chances people get thrown in the trash.

It's all about like it's all entirely punitive. There's no rehabilitation involved. And you can't say any of that without people thinking you're soft on crime. Like you're just okay with crime. Like nobody's okay with crime, right? But if you catch these people, desperation leads to crime. People commit crimes. And if you take that person and you remove the few options that they did have from them forever,

What the fuck do you think is going to happen after that? Like, it just doesn't, it doesn't make any common sense to me to treat crime in general the way that we do. You know, like we got a massively high recidivism rate. We fucking imprison way more people per capita than any other, like, developing country. Oh, I got the numbers right here. Let me read them to you. The United States has 4.2% of the world's population and houses around 20% of its prisoners. If locking people up stopped crime, America would have zero fucking crime.

Right. Exactly. The freest country in the world locks up more of its people than Russia, China, Saudi Arabia. See, that's crazy. And like you can't, but you can't say any of that. I mean, we can say it, but you know what I mean? Like, because now you're soft on crime. Like, what are we supposed to do?

Just let them roam the streets. It's like, try something else, you know. Try fucking education, rehabilitation. and all that type of shit and social welfare, make people less desperate, take care of people more generally. There's a million things you could do to try to address it that don't involve just cracking heads, which is all they want to do, which doesn't fucking work. I looked it up, by the way, in court of the Metropolitan Police, D.C.'s crime was down from 22, from 21 to 22. Whatever, it doesn't fucking matter. I do want to say, like, crime is bad. I wish there was no crime. Being robbed sucks, all right? I'm not saying that we should legalize crime, let everybody out of prison, although it would let a lot of them out that don't need to be there.

But my friend's house got robbed recently. They're really well off. They live in a gated community with private security. They had guns in the house. They happened to not be home. But they literally could not be any more safe. They could not be any more safe. I'm not saying guns.

I know those statistics don't make you safe. I'm saying they're doing everything they could to protect themselves. They still got robbed, right? The cop who's assigned their case, a detective, told them two big lies. One, he said he probably couldn't solve because LAPD had been defunded. their budget went up like 10%. That's just a fucking brazen lie that's very easily googlyable in like 10 seconds.

The second one lie was that but even if they caught the guy, Los Angeles's prosecutors who's mild reformists probably wouldn't prosecute him anyway. Now that's more egregious and cynical because the one thing reformed prosecutors do that might affect this case at all would help them solve it.

Because what they do is they stop prosecuting bullshit low-level arrest like loitering and personal use drug possession. So cops have more resources to focus on cases exactly like my friends, which any smart-minded, well-meaning cop or prosecutor would be focused on because they were organized, they're professional, they had a plan, which means they do it professionally,

which means they'll do it again, they'll do it soon. That's the case they'd be focusing on him. He was lying saying he couldn't focus on it. It's the inverse of fucking reality, right? And it's just like the fact that you would lie like that drives me absolutely insane because, like, you do need to focus on professional criminals who were organized because, yeah, they're going to keep robin. people. It makes people who violated. My car got broke.

The only crime I've been a victim of that I know of is my car got broken into a couple times. It's not fun. It sucks. But like as long as there are bills, like you said, as long as there's hunger, there's going to be crime, right? Which is why the second part of this I want to talk about, maybe even more furious. Joe Biden is rapidly, accidentally or semi-on-purpose shrinking the welfare state that was rapidly expanded during COVID and was doing a lot of good for people. In March 1st, the federal government will shut off enhanced SNAP benefits for 32 states, D.C. Guam and the Virgin Islands. That's food stamps if you guys aren't familiar with federal acronyms.

About 42 million people are on food stamps. This is going to affect a lot of them. Almost all recipients will get $90 less per month on food aid the beginning for the last two years. A family of four considered a monthly benefit cut by $330 a month. And seniors get benefits drop from $281 to just $23. Senior citizens are going to lose $2,000. almost 260 of their $280 in food money. The total is like 31 million Americans.

It's about 10% of American citizens have been thrown up what's been called the Hunger Cliff. Why? Why? Yeah, right. Exactly. I just don't. I mean, but literally, though, why?

It's like they just don't view it as a fight worth fighting or what the, I mean, what the focus is the problem? I haven't heard any Democrat make. any noise about this at all. Republicans, the last thing we talked about, the crime stuff, screamed about this at the top of their lungs so they got what they wanted. I haven't heard one single Democrat defend what is presently the status quo. We're asking to pass anything new. We're asking to pass legislation to keep the current status. Yeah. No one's even, like, keeping the status quo is the easiest thing to do in government. It's literally a layup.

The one study from the Urban Institute found that the extra allotments kept 4.2 million people above the poverty line in the last quarter of 2021. That reduced poverty by 10% and child poverty by 14%. And no one even wanted this. Like it wasn't just effective of fighting poverty. It was also really popular. Both rural and urban Americans over when we supported the expanded

program according to the last survey done about it. How many things you know your rural and your urban Americans at this point? Yeah, right. I mean, I just don't like this type of shit this should be the easiest thing in the world for the Democrats to do, you know. It's stuff like that, you know, help people, poor people in particular.

Like you said, it's not even passing sweeping legislation to give people way more money. So everybody starts to bitching about, well, who's going to pay for this? My tax is paying for this. It's just keeping the shit that's already there, you know, that has proven effective. So what possible reason could there be for not? Is it because behind closed doors? they've been told like, hey, we're going to let that expire. And if you try to fight us, we're not going to, I don't know, work with you on some other thing.

Like they had to pick and choose some other. They didn't. It was part of a deal in December. Democrats made the Republicans to avoid a government shutdown. So they got temporary extension in government funding to eliminate this extension and SNAP benefits. And by the way, remember the context here is Democrats held both the House and Senate until January. they could have passed a government funding bill at any point at any fucking point they could have abolished the debt ceiling by the way they gave away this forget the morality of keeping people from starving to death for a second um Republicans are going to ask for some concession to raise the debt ceiling they've already said they won't they're not going to broach cutting back social security and Medicaid they'll never vote to cut defense spending what's left is essentially snap see if you're going to give it away, you should just save it to give it away later, just

from basic gainsmanship. So this is just malpractice on every level, but like this is a context where like grocery bills are 11.38% higher in January than a year earlier as food producers bank record profits. And I want to say fuck this guy for a second. This piece I'm quoting from had quoted from an earnings call from a chain called Grocery Outlet, it was a discount supermarket chain that gets a lot of snap. Discount grocery outlet? Yeah.

I go there all the time. Go ahead. It's called grocery outlet, yeah, is the name of it. The company's chief financial officer cheered to coming reductions. In many ways, it's good for a model of those benefits decline. It puts more pressure on those consumers and they come to us to stretch their dollar. He's saying it's good that people have less money to spend on food because they have to shop here. Yeah, right, because the food's cheaper there.

Yeah. Right. So fuck him. I can't even say what I want to happen to him So but like what's the politics of this This was this was popular Like show me the guy Who wasn't going to vote for Democrats

But will now because his neighbor's kids are hungry Right Show me this fucking guy So I can burn his fucking house down He sucks It's just the people don't people on food stamps Like you know Nobody gives a fuck about them

man nobody on either side and like this just makes it so clear and i know you're about to queue up this uh this video in a minute of kennedy right this is this infuriates me yeah i want to i want to say this so last week i talked about the inflation crisis and the put air quotes around it not because i want to minimize people suffering or trying to struggle to pay for groceries but the way it's talked about is a problem for the economy as opposed to the human beings that live in our country it's fucking stupid and you talk about nobody gives a fuck about him but there's To hunt 42 million people, it'd be hard pressed to find someone who doesn't know someone on food stamps. They might not tell you their own food stamps, but you absolutely know somebody probably who's on food stamps unless you live in like a wealthy gated community and come for money.

But yeah, so, but when you talk about fighting inflation, this is one of the ways they do it because if people have less money to spend on food, they're less demand for food, food prices go down. Inflation looks better. They're starving people to make the lines on that economy chart look better. And I bitched about the Fed crushing the employment market to try to bring inflation down, which is a similar strategy. I think maybe I've seen Bernie and AOC bringing up. And now here you have John Kennedy, Republican from Louisiana, the guy that sounds like Foghorn, Leghorn, and a court at all. We had a baby. He brought it up today.

You're raising interest rates to slow the economy. Are you not? Yes, to cool the economy off. And one of the ways you measure your success, other than, you're raising. than fluctuation in gross domestic product is the unemployment rate. Is it not? Yes, one of the measures. Okay.

So in effect, I'm not being critical. When you're slowing the economy, you're trying to put people out of work. That's your job. Is it not? Not really. We're trying to, we're trying to restore price stability. No, you're trying to raise the unemployment rate. And that means, I know you don't like the phrase.

He's not going to answer the question. yeah he's like yeah it's two steps for that's what he's trying to do it's like i lower interest rates companies left money to invest they hire fewer people or fire more people there's less money in the economy inflation goes down it's one of the it's one steps in the chains he doesn't want to say yes but lowering employment's absolutely part we was talked about this before but like it's not just if the economy has to live human beings fed to it to function but the fucking point of it What also just pisses me off that it's like that they've allowed or made it so that the dude like Kennedy there, as you said, fucking Senator Foghorn Leghorn, like a renowned dip shit is like on the left of the administration on this. Like he's going to like, I watch that and I don't know anything about him or whatever.

And I'm like, hell yeah, fucking go after his ass. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, get him. You know. You're going to run to left. They're going to run to the left, especially if Trump's the nominee, Trump can come in and say, I send you extra money during COVID. I raised unemployment. I expanded the child tax credit.

I fucking increased snap benefits. And what's Biden going to say? Because like Biden's let the child tax credit, which was one of his signature policies in the American Rescue Plan that had child poverty. He quietly let it expire. They're about to like cut back on Medicaid. The Medicaid expansion happened during COVID. That expires March 31st, somewhere between 5 and 14 million people will probably lose Medicaid coverage once that happens. And all these things are effective and popular.

And they're just like, when everyone's unemployed and broke and food stamps and healthcare run out next year and then fuck the elections next year, we're about to do this again. I just occurred to me earlier today. Yeah, it's not good. You're freaking me out, buddy. I just don't understand why, just the why of it all, I don't get. I mean, I guess it's that, the fucking inflation. Everybody's bitching about inflation. Oh, we've got to cool the economy off or whatever to fix inflation.

And this is just another element of that. And it's like, at what cost? Like, if poverty was halved, if poverty was halved, less people were hungry, more people were employed. I don't care what the fucking chart says, man. Also, all these companies are making record profits, too. during this inflationary period. It's like, well, something clearly ain't right there either. Like, address that part.

Like, they're gouging people and they're just getting away with it. And instead of that, they're fucking, you know, taking people's job and starving. Jeff Curry says, Amish here raised the price of a dozen eggs from $1 to $1.50. Greedy Amish. I don't think people realize Amish people are rich. They've got a ton of fucking money, dog. Because they don't spend anything. They just buy more land and accrue more real estate.

They fucking, they've got prosperous. Shell B says my friend is disabled and living on 700 a month They just cut her food stamps by $90 Yeah I do want to say Like the if you guys want to do something And try to impact this

The farm bill which covers Snap benefits of food stamps And a couple other welfare programs Comes up for a vote every five years And this is the year So if you want to call your reps And yell at them about this Feel free and it might have an effect

From the margins good yeah all right keep you going Matt Beverly Beverly Walooer says uh sorry bov says senior citizens the handicapped military families and working families are a lot of the recipients of food stamps no I mean I know like I'm just saying like I mean I was on food stamps for my entire childhood

and then through a lot of my early 20s and stuff I ate food bought with food stamps so like believe me I know I'm just saying, like, it's not a newsflash to, like, people in power don't give a fuck about the people at the bottom of the ladder, which is all I was saying. Lola Podinsky says, we measure the economy ass backwards. Yeah, absolutely.

Like, you know, it ought to be trickle up economics. You ever, I think I brought this up before, but you ever Jeff Bezos do his 100 billion humans thing? That sounds familiar, but I, no, I don't think so. Basically, his argument for what we need to colonize Mars and the moon is

like, he's like, if we have seven billion, humans and we get a Mozart and an Albert Einstein and a hundred billion we'll get that times X number but like there's so much untapped human potential what if you just fed the kids

that were hungry as they could study in school that's so true dude do you know what I mean like yes do you have me like Mozart's and Einstein's have fucking starve to death in a slum in fucking Brazil or wherever like a bunch way more than you know the ones that

we're aware of so yeah that's such a good point. We should start with that first. Kim Cousato, long-time viewer says, long-time skewer, says, unfortunately, Republicans who get food stamps still vote Republican. Yeah, that's true. That's because, in my experience, that's because they need their food stamps, camp. It's different. Yeah. I literally known multiple people like that, you know, who will bid welfare queens and food stamps and stuff, who are our own food stamps. Why need mine? You know, they're just lazy. Yeah. It's like, I'm the category of people who deserves help. and you're not. It's racist, a lot of it.

Exactly. Yes. That is true. Shep says I was on food stamps after the military for a month or so I needed help getting back into the world. I mean, yeah, look, I ended up being, like, I was on food stamps, pale grants, all that shit. Now I'm like a tax paying, contributing to society

motherfucker now. I think I've gotten more... Taxpaying. I don't think one of us really contribute to society, but that's a different... That's already for a different day. Well, I mean, taxes contribute to society. society. You're right. I mean, that what I do isn't, yeah, not important. But like, I'm just saying, like, I, the government made an investment in me as a

person and the return on that investment by the time I'm dead will be fucking massive for the government. Like, the shit does happen and the programs do work and people just that part goes completely unacknowledged. You know, it's just, they're just

drains on society as how people talk about them, but that's not fucking true. I mean, I hate to. every time somebody, and I might have done this rant before, so stop me if I have, but like every time somebody, some politician makes the mistake of pointing out that Cuba has a better literacy rate and better health care, like how it comes and life experiences in America and it's like, oh, so you're a communist sympathizer? It's like, I wish somebody would give the right answer because the answer is like, no,

there's nothing to do with communism is they invest in it. Any type of economic system can invest in their kids and their health and their people and their educational systems. We choose not to because like the real. answer is Cuba's a small country who neighbors a very aggressive country near it who wants to destroy it and they know that good health care and good educational systems are good for national security so they invest in their people so their country is strong and defend itself and that is the real answer but why don't we do that yeah it's a hell of a good question mark i don't know

one that will go unanswered for quite some time i would imagine well listen y'all want to remind you again for me mark and mac go and eat a bunch of meat here in a little bit go to traycratter dot com you can find my special there at the top of that and also my tour dates please come and see me we're having a good time out here on these streets also um you can go to weekly skews dot com slash more or you can go on patreon and look me up sign up on air get bonus episodes of the show and support us in the process we'd appreciate it either way keep coming back every skews day and we will too we'll see you in seven days see you love you bye