Weekly Skews - Weekly Skews 6/8/2021 - A Fiery Space Death and Taxes

Episode Date: June 9, 2021

Tonight Trae and Mark talk about Spaceman Bezos and the reality of "taxing the rich" (i.e. they just don't pay em anyway). Plus some wonderful Dumbasses and other fun stuff. Join us! Support the show

Howdy, everybody, and a happy skews day. Today is June 8th, 2021. I'm Trey Crowder, and that's Mark Aegee. What's up, Mark? What's up, Trey? Just recovering for a brutal sports loss, which I know is a special of yours as well. Yeah. Yeah, the Mavs, your Mavs, lost in seven.

to the Los Angeles Clippers. I'm sorry. How are you holding up? Yeah, we're up 2-0 and we lost four out of five, so it feels good. Are you still, how affected are you still at this point in your life by sports losses like that? Because I've been ashamed so many times as an adult man by how much I let that stuff affect me still. Like college football especially, which I've kind of given up on at this point because I have nothing left to kill inside of me. when it comes to college football as a Tennessee fan.

But, yeah, I get mad at myself for how much I care sometimes. It's stupid. It's so stupid. I made this joke the other day about how, like, sports and dogs having eight-year lifespans are, like, God's way of teaching as nihilism. But, like, even I learned about death from having pets, right? But even though I know, I know the only one team can win a title every year. And it's definitely not going to be mine.

And I still get so upset when they lose. I never fight. It's a loose thing in the football, except it's, like, way. sadder than that. It's like Lucy and a kangranate or some shit. I don't know what it is. Yeah. It's just, it is sad and it is stupid, but hey, what are you going to do? It's just part of our cave

membrane, I guess, is just like, it's my thing that do good. I want it, don't make it make sad. Yeah, and I was reading this thing about psychology of sports fandom, it's like your self-esteem the gun's been entwined with the teams and you feel like their accomplishments are there

are yours, and their failures are yours. Which is not, they don't even know I exist. No one in the team knows like, no idea. Yeah, and dude, a lot of them as professionals, it's like, I mean, I'm sure the, so a lot of them get very torn up about it too. But I think that there are like plenty of professional athletes who don't get as upset as some sports fans get when they lose and whatnot, you know. Because they made money during the game and I lost money during the game. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right. Well, we are thrilled to welcome back, producer Matt, to the show. He's back, everybody, and we're so glad he's here. This is weekly skews tonight. We talk about everybody's favorite feudal overlord Jeff Bezos and his latest dalliance with space travel. Will he stay there? Will he die there?

Probably not, but we'll see what happens. That will lead us into a larger conversation about the Uber wealthy in this country when it comes to paying taxes. Spoiler alert, they kind of just don't. So that's going to be a few. fun conversation. We're looking forward to it. We hope you are too. But first, as always, we begin with the Daily Dumbass. Matt,

graphic, please. Tonight's dumbass, French President Emmanuel Macron for believing that he could not be challenged to a medieval duel in 2021. Matt, play

the clip, please. all right well uh okay uh okay'll be one of them yes it looks like it might be we'll see what happens with the rest of the clips we'll uh we'll see how they go as we're playing them but uh that one in slow motion kind of works a little bit. Sacre blue, Mark. You love, like, I just, the only thing you would make that better for me

if that dude was dressed as a mime when he did it. Yeah. But then we'd lose the great, like, you couldn't really hear it on that clip, but he's like, I don't know. He just yells some French shit before he does it, Abbas la Marini,

and slaps him in the face. And it's just, it's so theatrical and wonderful. Man, we got to get at one of them parliamentary or mixed systems or whatever it is French has, but we get to punch the president because that's fucking rock. I know. Who among us haven't wanted to bitch slap the president? You know what I mean? They're making dreams of reality over there in France, man.

Yeah, it's like in England, people walk up and literally just tell Borence Johnson to go fuck himself. Well, you can't get within a mile of the American president without being searched 42 times. Dude, I saw this literally just popped into my head so we don't have a clip for this or anything. But the Australian president or prime minister or whatever they got down there, I'm American. I don't know. but he was given like some press conference out outdoors and during the wallfires right yeah during the wallfires last year right I think so but in the middle of it this dude apparently he was like standing kind of on the lawn of some guy in the local community

he's just in a local community doing a thing the Australian president and in the middle of it the dude that owns the property steps out and he's like oh my you're going to get off the grass I've only just receded it. He's like, sorry about that. They have a very different relationship with their leaders, it seems like, in a lot of other Western countries. Because, dude, I think if you bit, you think you get shot for that, like, by the Secret Service, I mean,

if you attempted to bitch slap our president. You would not be able to, you can't get near it. You wouldn't be. You would never have the opportunity to do that, right. But the, uh, there were, I thought you were talking about there's another video clip from Australia a couple of years ago when they were being ravaged about real bad wildfires and they have like a pretty right-wing dumbass president too like we did at the time

who had cut firefighting budgets and doesn't believe in global warming. And this guy who was a firefighter, he's a firefighter fighting the fires. The president's giving a speech down the street from one, drives him by and goes, hey, fuck off, Mike. This is good trouble. The dude works for the government and he's not worried like getting fired by the president. Great. But I was trying to figure out why the French dude hit,

hit Macron and like there's no real reason to be good because french politics is nuts right he could be a yellowjack protester he could be anti-lockdown guy he could be a he could be a cute guy or he could be mad about cutbacks and government benefits i don't know idea why he hit him but the funny part to me well the thing he yelled when he hit him was down with macrone so it's pretty pretty vague um but uh the two separate macrone spokesman refer to that as the attempted slap they're already pretending like he didn't actually get hit when you could hear the slap yeah Yeah, you could see the slap, too. That was clearly a slap.

We could replay it and circle it on the video there, Madden's style. You can see right here where the five fingers meet the face. But yes, no, I just thought that was, you know, there should be more of that. There should be more presidents getting slapped as far as I'm concerned. Not actual assaults, just a slap. Just a slap. A slap is fine. Presidents, they got to come, you know, people want to say.

slap them. They should be able to slap them as far as I'm concerned. All right. Our first honorable mention for Daily Dumbass tonight is whatever poor person gets tricked into accepting an invitation to Mark Zuckerberg's Island. Why would that be a mistake? Because you will definitely be hunted for sport. How do I know that? Because Zuck has been practicing.

Matt, throw up whatever you got there. Show the good. It's a boozy Woo It's a boozy We don't miss that's a It's a boozai Hit it once hit it twice

Never miss is a boozy Hit it once did it He hits the rest of them But hang Just show you it's not He's diversifying his Huntsmanship Just so y'all know

It's not just archery So before you show it We need to be clear Two things. One, we did not put that music track in. That's Zuckerberg's music that SoundCloud trap beat. We're talking about how fucking awesome he is while he's shooting archery. By the way, that's really good.

I used to be into bow shooting. He hits like, it takes like eight shots to all six bowling pins, whatever he's shooting at. So like, I'm not fucking with him in archery contest. Right, which it's legit, right? I mean, you know, that's what else is they doing? The song over top of the second video, which we can't, we have to play it sound down because we'll get dinged by YouTube's automatic

algorithm like for copyright infringement it's audio slaves the one singing about how uh uh god made us didn't teach us how to live or whatever so he's just like like new metal tracks from 2002 mark Zuckerberg is throwing spears too so he did that we did and we just can't show it to you but let's watch the spear throw yeah watch this yeah so look i don't know enough about spear chucking to really comment on it but that looked like a good spear chuck to me i mean he hit the bull's eye i don't know the distance how impressive is it i don't know i also don't know about spear chucking form it looked comical to me but hell maybe that's uh just you know by the letter perfect spear chucking for mark zuckerberg

I don't know. I don't want to be hunted by him. No, but also, here's the fun part. We had no technical difficulties during that clip. Zuckerberg also put that in slow motion. So Zuckerberg's slow motion to delve in my hand from my creator gave me life, but show me how to live. There you go.

Yeah. We need to have a whole segment of you doing no metal track. I think it would have that out in my... Could you clarify that? Because, yes, the first, the, the, the, uh, the Macron's slap clip was not supposed to be in slow motion and just turned out that way. But yes, just so you all know, Zuck put that one into slow motion for the benefit of the people. Uh, I mean, this is just like, you know, this is what, when you're a tycoon, this is just what you do. You just learn to, you know.

hunt with caveman style or whatever like I mean what else is he going to do he's probably got a bunch of hobbies like this you know but is also like him just you know the nerd the nerd wanting to be badass you know yeah throwing the new metal

tracks over the archery things like just so y'all know I can fuck you up with these primitive murder techniques that I've been working on yeah he's a he's the kid in class with throwing stars except he can afford full of spheres happen yeah uh so so something gizmodo said is the reason zuckabberg has been doing this stuff

and posting videos about it is he's mad because that's he's in hawai he has it like a big huge estate in hawaii that's where that is i'm not sure if it's his own island or just half of an island but he owns a big chunk of some some island in hawai um so hawaiia is really stringent COVID protocols uh so they give permits for hiking so many people can be on the trail. They've limited, there were too many hiking permits handed out for him to get a hiking permit his favorite trail, but they still have hunting permits. So he's trying to get it, he's showing how he's training to get his hunting permits. So he's, he learned archery to own the Hawaiian state government, basically, is what he did. Okay. Yeah. I can actually support

that kind of petty activity. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Or did he just, you know, sort of download archery protocol version 2.4, you know what I mean, into the, the, uh, the port into the back of his skull that he definitely has since he's a robot. The world may never know. All right. Our next honorable mention, all of us, all of us lefties, for not understanding the nuances of satire. Mark, what am I talking about?

It's our favorite subject, the January 6 people. So one of the ringleaders from January 6th, this dude from Texas, who's a 3%er, wrote an anonymous letter. We know he wrote it for reasons we'll get to in a second. but he circulated an anonymous letter that was group signed by basically everyone in the cell block they were all rioters in January 6th and it basically

says that this was an ironic coup attempt but they were just kidding and you know they were just joking around and going through the motions of an ironic coup attempt because if they wanted over the government they would have just done it because they're that guy dude these guys having that

like we totally could have won state if coach would have just put them in a game or you know what I'm like we totally could have won state if I hadn't had my knee fucked up like these guys having that energy is so perfect you know being like just so y'all know if we really wanted to we could have overthrown the government we only didn't because it was a goof and you guys don't get it yeah good things weren't trying this guy uh whose name is uh garrett something starts it's called just called Garrett So there are a couple of funny things in this piece.

One, they wanted to have, because they're all in the same cell block, they wanted to theme everything. So they wanted to name every cell in the block after a different U.S. president. There are 20 cells. The thing is, this group of patriots couldn't name 20 presidents. They didn't know 20 presidents. So he had his wife, like print off the Wikipedia page list of U.S. presidents and mail him the list. So he currently lives in the Garfield suite. So did he give himself the Garfield suite?

Because first of all, on the list of presidents that I would imagine hit for them, Garfield don't, you know, he's pretty obscure, I feel like. Also, he's a fat orange cat who hates Mondays and loves lasagna on top of that. Every time we ever talk about these people in any capacity, it is so over the top comically ridiculous with the level of, of stupidity, that it just almost defies reason or believability. But here we are, every way. So the way we notice, the way we know that the letter was written by him is because

his wife helped him write it because apparently he can write that good. And she immediately snitched on him when someone asked if he wrote it. So she said, yeah, it's like, and what's funny about this is at least the third time his family had snitched on him, this letter's going to keep him in jail without bail. right, by the way, because he fucking bragged about how cool the coup was. So two other times his family stenchered him. One, his college-age son called the FBI about him two weeks before January 6th to tell them this was going to happen.

Another reason the FBI was in his, was out of his ass not being able to fucking defend against this. The third time was after he stormed the Capitol. They called him, turned him in when they saw him on TV. Yeah. So, and we've actually reported to him before. Well, we talked about him right after the coup attempt. He was one of it.

He's the first two-time returning. dumbass who's not a public figure because what he did was when his kids turned him in he threatened to execute them as traitors if they had done yes yes because that's what happens to traitors they get shot he said that to his children who's going to execute his children and they turned him in anyway I mean yeah like I mean real talk his kids are uh you know genuinely pretty awesome it seems like He's not taking their dad's shit, being like, no, fuck that. You don't hit.

At some point last year, his son went to a BLM. His son is a, like, he went off to college and became left wing, I guess, which happens to a lot of us, you know. Yeah, you go there. You learn shit. Next thing you know. So they got in an argument about BLM,

and he threw a coffee mug in his son's head. And then his son went to a BLM protest. He went and counter-protested his own son with a gun with the militia dickets. It sounds like a real fun family. Yeah. And they just say this is like just a short button on this. Like these guys stay so fucking stupid.

There was another story about a different guy who the FBI tricked into confession, confessing because they had him. Like you were at the Capitol? And he goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I didn't do anything bad. Okay, just write down everything you did do. And will that be fine? So he wrote a book report about his day at the Capitol.

It's like what I did on my summer vacation fucking type stupidity. God, to be an FBI agent right now is so fucking easy. The best part, the statement, the essay he wrote about the shit he did to Capitol again, this is a different dip shit we're talking about here. The best part to me is like he took a little aside in the middle of this confession that he didn't know was a confession to also be badass. There's a point in the middle of it where he goes, he goes, I did not break anything, the police were present, I was not asked to leave.

I fist bumped and devil horned the SWAT line and then left after about five minutes. So it's him making a point to make sure everybody knows that he took a moment to be fucking metal and hardcore and shit with the SWAT guys on his way out. That article only includes like excerpt, but I wish I could read the whole thing is I guarantee you it starts with Webster's Dictionary

defines the capital as. Yeah. fucking idiots all right let's see let's move on our next honorable mention we will see if this video works

Matt when you start to play this if it's fucking up just turn it off and we'll see what happens but our next arm we'll mention is always used to make dogs go crazy

so we have a friend who's a political candidate down here right and her campaign manager has two of these little yappy dogs and they would not stop I couldn't be in her house

for more than 20 minutes because it would drive everybody crazy. Even growing up, we had Alsatians, we had black Labradors. They just didn't like me at all. The dogs don't bark at me anymore, and it happened almost overnight. Now they seem to quite like me. And it sounds as the stupid thing in the world. Okay, if you didn't recognize him, that's Milo, Milo Yaninopalopalopoulos.

and what he's specifically talking about, why don't dogs bark at him anymore? Because he cured himself of the gay. Happy Pride Month, everybody. That's what he's talking about. He used to be gay. He's not gay anymore because he got that fixed. You know how that works.

And now, ever since doing that, dogs no longer bark at him. So, you know, maybe take that into account when you're thinking about being all gay and stuff. So I guess dumb ass here is cats for having terrible gay d'ar. So, Milo was a huge grifter. He was like, in 2015, 2016, he was a Senate. It was a, had a book deal for millions of dollars, whatever.

He had canceled because he went on, he basically went on British television and said that, um, pedophilia was like natural in the gay community, right? He's like, he basically said that part of being gay is when you're a young gay child, you have a sexual relationship with an older gay man. He said that shit. It was like, yeah, that's just how it's supposed to go. And, yeah, got his book deal canceled and all that. He's a lunatic.

His book deal canceled, got fired by Bright Martin and beef with Steve Bannon, and then ended up getting kicked off social media platforms and went dead fucking broke. So he's emerged from his broke-ass cocoon as now I'm a paleo con who's against gay people now. And now he's starting a conversion therapy place in Florida. And now he went on that horrible anti-gay pastor's YouTube channel to try and get people start sending him money again and it'll probably work. Specifically, like, he specifies that he's talking about his friends like yappy little purse dogs. I refuse to believe that that particular type of dog doesn't love gay dudes.

You know what I mean? I'm sorry. You know, I got a gay uncle. He loves dogs. His dogs love him back. But I'm saying you think of those, like, those dogs and gay dudes were made for each other. okay there's no way those dogs specifically are homophones German shepherds maybe hey they're the cops of the dog world

I could see it but fucking little yappy purse dogs they're not homophobes come on now that reminds me of one time I was working like retail at a holiday season and uh I'd like I don't want to say the name of the store because I don't know but it was like it's like one of those like outlet mall kind of places so it's like a fancy places outlet and a dude comes in and he's looking at like Louis Vuitton pet carriers and for like a little yappy size dog and he goes like do you have any more masculine Louis Vuitton pet carriers

I was like I mean I know what you're asking I know I know what you're asking for man but like what are we doing here yeah yeah just get a pit bull or whatever if that's like if you're worried about like you know looking like a badass while you walk your dog or whatever or maybe don't have that particular dog. Nothing wrong with having that kind of dog. You carry your eight-pound dog to the airport. You want to look super masculine. I get it.

How would that work? Because even like, think about those dogs, I've seen them before. If you put like a spike collar on them, even gayer, I think. You don't know what I mean like that's like? There's nothing you can do with one of those dogs to look like, you know, a mercenary or whatever this dude was going for. And that's fine, Mark. Yeah. No judgment. I was like, you don't want to be, you're masculine, you identify as a super masculine gay dude. You don't want to be stereotyped. So you want, but it's like it was just, it was a very funny conversation. I get it. But it's just weird. All right. Our final, final honorable mention in the Daily Dumbass segment this week, Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks, who's had a hell of a week. This guy was one of the inciters of the January 6th. uh sedition not that but he doesn't admit that california representative eric swallwell has been

uh attempting to fight well i guess he did file a lawsuit against mo brooks for this but has been attempting and failing to serve him with that lawsuit for a long time but it finally happened in the past few days and brooks was not happy about it mark no so so for a frame of reference uh so mo what mo did was he was at the trump he opened for trump in january 6 and he said that and basically gave one of those speeches about how the tree of liberty used to be refreshed with the blood of tyrants or whatever. And so Swalwell included him in a lawsuit along with Trump and a few other people. He's accused them with civil rights violations or something like that. It's a nuisance lawsuit, but it's a funny one of the targets are stupid.

So let's go for it. But Discovery will probably open up on what kind of ship. Anyway, so he's been ducking the process server since March. And it's been fairly easy for him because they can't come into the Capitol because the Capitol has military level security. because of the aforementioned coup attempt. So he, the processor eventually caught up with Brooks's wife and served him at his house in Alabama.

And Brooks is pissed off with the guy coming on his property and tweet, he didn't know how to do a screen grab. So he took a, he called up the law that this process server supposedly violated. It took a picture with his cell phone camera and tweeted out. Now, what was funny about this is he had

posting though in the bottom of his computer monitor with his Gmail password and bank pin number on the bottom of the fucking the computer. Again, every single time we even touch upon January 6th,

some abject dip shittery is included. Like some self-parity over the top level, there's no way that really happened. Type of dumbassery is part of the story every time, even when congressmen

are involved. And yes, We've got it here with him tweeting out his own username and password. That's that email security. They're all so worried about, Mark. Also, there's something funny to me about this dude getting so upset about somebody forcibly coming on to his property, you know, to serve him in the circumstances surrounding the lawsuit. An effort to show how bad his wife was harassed.

He put out the surveillance camera footage from his yard of his wife getting served. it just shows her SUV pulling at the garage car pulls up behind the guy hops out jogs up the garage comes out 10 seconds later she chases him out looks like she considers laying down behind his car to keep him from leaving and so the level of intrusion on his property is the same as basically the meter reader from the election electric company or the mailman somebody dropping off a package or whatever it is but also it's like this is how as I understand it this whole process survey thing works you know like that's yeah that's what that's for that's how it's supposed to work

like what else are they supposed to do and he could have waived service meaning the guy understand it being sued you don't have to actually track him down a hand in papers he refused to do that so basically they've been in a game of three and a half month game a tag he's been on base it's fucking stupid these guys are all these are all children man it's like yeah yes they are speaking of these guys are all children the Uber wealthy let's talk about toys they don't just have Ninja Stars they don't just have Ninja Stars Trey they have

fucking full on rockets Rockets, they love them What every kid wants Yeah hit that first video there Yeah talking of course about Jeff Bezos And Matt let's try to play this first video And see how it goes I mean, that was just Jake Tappers saying that

Jeff Bezos has officially beat Elon Musk into space, which is all this is about these two dudes. Absolutely. Dick measuring contest. Bezos's rocket literally looks like a painting. I mean, I know like all rockets kind of look like dicks, but I'm saying, his rocket specifically, it's got like a mushroom head.

I mean, it looks even more penise than most rockets look penise. And yes, that's all it's about. He's got to beat Musk up there because that's like all they have left at that level is this type of shit. Who's going to be the first one to the goddamn stars or whatever? But yeah, Bezos is going to space. Maybe going back and forth over the past year to see who the richest man in the history of the world is currently, like a stock ticker.

and it basically depends on the daily value of Elon Musk's fake cartoon dog money. And so. Right. Yeah. These are also ridiculous. Like, Jeff Bezos is definitely more evil, but I just find Musk so much more annoying. But, like, we can't play the video.

Why? Because he's like, he's like the cool billionaire, like his cult of personality that surrounds him, where it's like Bezos is just, everybody just acknowledges Bezos as this like, you know, billionaire overlord guy whereas Musk is supposed to be like he's like in his head he's like Tony Stark or something in real life like that's sort of his deal is that what is that why

you find him more annoying I think one it's I mean there's lots of reasons the fact you get that Musk annoying it's politics his personality the fact like the the fact he thinks he's funny like he tried I knew a bunch of writers he hired to work he's like so the onion kept making fun of him

so he tried to fund a startup up that would beat, topple the onion. They never actually published a website, but he paid writers to work for him to come to his house every day for like two years and tell him his ideas were funny. And so, like, he's just a fucking weird loser. To do what? So he was, like, trying to come up with a competitor to the onion, like the apple or something. Well, I guess you couldn't do that.

The orange. But what, like, to do what? Just tell actual not satirical headlines? because that's just news. If it is still a joke, how does that even work in reverse? Like, that idea don't make any goddamn sense. So, okay, so here's a couple examples about Elon interpersonally.

So if you write a bad review of a Tesla, you work for an automotive blogger magazine, he will work his ass up to get you fired, right? He's done that to a bunch of people. There was another, there's another dude who was a whistleblower about labor violations at one of his plants. someone cough cough milan musk called the cops and said the guy was a troubled

troubled dude was going to be a workplace shooter and they should come stop him so you try to get this guy you get from you always swatting it as he tried to get a guy killed for whistleblowing about some rules violations for workplace safety shit um he does he there's like a long list that's like yeah i feel like he kind of got exposed a lot with the pandemic and everything too

because like he was flipping out and loses his mind about not been able to keep his factors open and shit like that, like early on in the pandemic where he showed it like, you know, like he's just another fucking industrialist tycoon who works his people to the bone.

And that was just, he did that. He wanted to keep his factories open because he had a stock issue targets to hit in order to pass Bezos. That was all like he just like, it wasn't any sort of long term problem. It was just he needed for this second quarter of 2020. He needed an X number of Tesla's

delivered in order to hit his revenue goals or whatever so he could get his big bonus and pass Bezos. That was fucking it. It's just psychos. All these guys are psychos. So anyway, so back to Bezos. So Bezos is going to space and he put out this

really, hey, we can't show the video obviously, but I'll tell you what was funny about it to me. It's Bezos talking to his brother about he wants his brother to go to space with him and how it would be what a treat will be for him, yada, yada. In the video, him and his brother, Bezos is wearing a cowboy hat while he interviews his brother. And it shows footage of them.

The pictures they have at this time they spent together was apparently doing some sort of firefighter camp where they went to adult play act as firefighters. I'm like, buddy, you can just get a job. If you want a fucking job, if you want to be a cowboy or firefighter, you can do that shit. Nobody's stopping you.

Yeah. He's guys really easy. Yeah, no, he, yeah, they're, yeah, him and his brother go on, like, Western, you know, fantasy day camp type shit where they're both riding horses and wearing cats. cowboy hats and stuff like that. And it's like Zuckerberg with the fucking

Bezos is the cowboy and Zuckerberg's the end in. Bezos there fucking rooting and tooting and all that and Zuckerberg's working on his bow and arrow game. It's all leading to a climax, guys. They're all the fucking opposite of hunger games at out at some point

with each other, except they'll use us for avatars and make us fight to the death. But you know what I'm saying. So, yeah, there is a firefighter way. So, so Elon Musk has his own space program too, SpaceX, and Richard Branson has his, like,

Virgin Galactic or whatever. It's like this is the new, like, having your own personal space program is like the new billionaire, conspicuous consumption, instead of getting a yacht, it's like us getting the new Jordans or a basketball if you live in the middle of America. You said yachts, islands, shit like that.

Now it's space. Space is what that is for them now, you know. Yeah. And if you're wondering, like, how come they have money for space programs while NASA is doing budget cuts? Here's the thing. It's because they don't pay any fucking taxes.

They take it the money to should go to actual NASA and use them to build their own goddamn rockets. ProPublica came out with this big, God damn expose today. Somebody, they didn't, Popepica didn't say how they got it because whoever gave it to them definitely did illegal shit to leak it to them.

But I'm guessing if somebody works inside the IRS, but they leaked like thousands of thousands of tax returns to Pope Publica. And they went through the 25 richest Americans to find some trends about what they're paying. So here's a few, some few stats. So the median American taxpayer makes $70,000 a year. The median American household is $70,000 in income a year. It pays 14% in federal income taxes. Okay. The average, the top of the top 25 people, richest people in America over the course of the past decade or so, paid about 3.4%.

percent of their wealth increase in federal income taxes. They're paying as a percentage about a quarter of the median American household, right, which is fucking garbage. The funniest, the worst one is Warren Buffett, who's always agitating for rich people to pay more taxes. He paid 0.1%. For every $100 he made, he paid 10 cents. He's like the sweet old papal of these guys, right?

Like the way he presents himself and everything. Yeah. And then, yes, he, yeah, 0.1% is what he's actually paying. The actual anecdotes in here are fucking nuts. So in 2007 and 2011, Bezos paid zero. 2018, Musk paid zero. Michael Bloomberg also paid zero that same year. Carl Icon managed to pay zero twice. George Soros paid zero federal income tax three years in a row.

So I'm going to go along with Ted Cruz right now and say George Soros sucks for the moment. Here's the part that drove me crazy. So go about that $70,000 figure. you want to know what you want to do bezos is the actual salary for amazon his trade it's 80,000 dollars a year that's what his salary is on paper this man is paid 80,000 dollars a year but when he when he files stocks and all that shit yeah yeah yeah his net worth is his net worth is 180 billion dollars while his average income is 80,000 dollars year so if you can square those two mathematic formulas then you'll understand the american tax system because well so kind of on

that note and I don't you know this may be an unfair question because I know you're not an economist and I'm not either but like we all we of our political persuasion and all very much want to tax the rich more and everything but as long as like this shit is possible whether these are loopholes or whatever that allow them to do this shit does that even matter you know what I mean like taxing them in a higher rate or whatever what's the fucking point if they don't pay the taxes they're supposed to pay in the first place and what do you actually do about that? Just like dive into the full-own tax code and close all those loopholes and whatnot because who even understands the fucking financial wizardry gobbledygook that goes into what makes

all that shit up, you know, it's just, uh, I don't know, it's disheartening because what do you even do about it? This is the unintended result of a Supreme Court decision. This isn't like, the difference between capital gains taxes and income taxes is like, I I didn't know this while I read this article, but like the, it wasn't to change the law. It was the way the Supreme Court decided that capital gains are not income. They just like this one lady in like the 1930s was paid as a dividend to her stock to other shares and she paid, she paid it.

But then she took the court case to court when all the Supreme Court and they were like, yeah, she got two shares. She didn't get any money. So like, so they decided that. And we've been living under this fucking system ever since where if your wealth, your wealth goes up, you don't pay shit until you extract it, which there are paperways you never extract it, which is what Bezos has done. His empire has grown. He's never extracted it yet. So he's just the world's most powerful richest guy who on paper is cash poor, even though he

fucking owns everything, right? So, I mean, you're just like, the scandal here is not that this is, they're doing something shady and illegal. They're doing something shady and illegal, right? They get people make a shitload of money figuring out how to exploit these like loopholes.

And so you try to like cause them, you just move the goalpost. It just seems like it'd be really hard to devise a way to make it water tight where they they're nothing like this exists you know like with the sort of legal nature of how shit works in this country it just feels like they'll always be able to figure out some way to sort of weasel themselves out of it you know well they're always going to pay they're always going to pay as little as they're obligated to but we can absolutely we could absolutely change what they're obligated to like we could we could we could raise capital

game like the Supreme Court changed the framework for what capital gains tax was but we can still raise capital gains taxes or restructure how to pay. Like like you're right. You have to say right that we don't have the political will to do that because we're fucking broken. But other countries do it. We do figure it out. You know,

it's not like we're not over the barrel here. Jeff Bezos would absolutely pay more in taxes instead of going to prison or moving to Miami or whatever. But it's just like the shit's insane. It's a very, very frustrating. The thing that pissed me off the most, in a couple years, Bezos on paper, on paper he lost more than he made so he didn't pay me yeah what you're about to say he claimed to recrete received a four thousand dollar tax he got to earn income tax credit for

his fucking kids that is so fucking wild and infuriating that that motherfucker got an income tax credit for his child four thousand four what what even is four thousand dollars to that motherfucker like why even go through the process of attempting to get a $4,000 earned income tax credit on your children if you're Jeff Bezos other than just like it's just like a philosophy for them? You know what I mean? It's like because I can. Because I can and so I will. I can get out of paying all this. But not only that, I can also utilizing this methodology, get this money from the government, even though it's.

it's less than a fraction of pocket change to me. I'm still going to do it because I fucking can do it. And it's just, I don't know, that mentality is just so upsetting. So upsetting. Four grand is less than he paid for the endangered animal he ate for breakfast. You know what I'm saying? In the time, me and you have talked about just him getting the tax credit, just this part of this show, he's made probably 10 times four grand, you know?

in those few seconds. I mean, it's fucking ridiculous. The article is apparently they've been going over these documents for months. It's the first in a series of expose they're going to have about rich people's taxes. So let's hope it actually causes some political hay because in a, in a city,

we'll come about it, I guess, in a second, but here's a weird historical thing where you see America, like, we're literally in the middle of a fight about infrastructure spanning where they're saying we don't have the money to spend on shit. And here's all this money

that should be that is created by society's efforts. Jeff Bezos's money comes from us. Like we pay him and hell yeah. And yet we get stuff for it but also that money's circulating and just going straight in a hole that he's like his armed guards around and it's not going back in the economy for any other any

for any purpose and it's like we need roads and schools and shit like if people can't get educated and die of preventable diseases they're not around to subscribe to Amazon Jeff. This is a problem for you too and And so

Think about how they'll just simply pull the goal leave to allow societal destruction. There was this weird historical fact they learned. So the first income tax was established in the 1860s because the country was going broke funding the Civil War. And rich people got super

fucking pissed about it. They rebelled and tried to file lawsuits to stop. They tried to defund the Union Army during the Civil War. If rich people had their way, America would have fucking ended. They tried to defund America, all right?

Another thing was, the one thing that really annoyed rich people about this is public tax filings were public records. They'd print everyone's income and wealth in the newspaper, which means that America had more transparency around taxing rich people in the 1860s and they does in the 2020s, right? Right. So that bugged the shit out of me. And talking about the destroyed America thing, another story that came out today,

Joe Manchin is opposing big parts of Biden's agenda as the Coke network pressure center. So the Koch brothers are single-handedly pressuring Joe Manchin into stopping us from taking their money to fucking build schools and roads. Yeah, so they'll just keep doing it. So this is a, if America wasn't a big war right now, absolutely rich people would be trying to defund it,

unless they were war profiteers. That's the big exception, right? Yeah. Joe Manchin. Oh, my God. I mean, I don't even want to get into it because we've got a lot of time talking about how much he sucks. I mean, we did talk about it last week, how much he sucks. But it's just like, I just feel like, and maybe I'm wrong.

People could probably point, I know there's like Mitt Romney and people. I just feel like you don't see the opposite of that happening, the opposite of Jell Mansion. Do you know what I mean? Like even Mitt Romney and like when it's time to step two, he steps to, you know, the party line at the end of the day. Like the only, the only caveat to that is that some of them voted. to impeach Trump, but it's like, okay, so that's what it takes for any of them to move from the party line. Regardless of what they say in public, like the Republicans, I mean, they fucking show up and they do what they're supposed to goddamn do, right? Every time.

And then we get fucking some semblance of power, it seems like, and we just have the motherfuckers like Mansion and cinema who just, what are they? what are they doing what i just i fucking drag so crazy the counterpoint to the republican thing is like mccane doing the thubs down to save obamacare or whatever but that but that was like that was just because he wanted to say fuck you to trump and he was on his deathbed and knew he wouldn't be around the suffering sort of fall out from it like it's just like it's just i'm glad he did it but i don't know how to walk through the man's reasoning but um what you're talking about the political will about what would never change so like what would happen in a same

country right now is this would be an earth shattering story that would be leading every front page and every, every, every, every TV newscast. We know this because shit like this has happened before. And after the stock market collapsed in the 20s and into the 30s, during the Great Depression, there was something called the Pecora Commission. I think I'm saying that right. This prosecutor who led it was an Italian guy named Ferdinand Pecora. He, they had a series of hearings about banking, about banking,

problems in the finance sector and banking deregulation. They resulted in a lot of stuff we have now, like the SEC and stock market regulation and break up the big banks and shit. But what he did was he personally embarrassed all these CEOs about a lot of weird tax shit they were doing, right? His questions weren't, how would you structure the stock market or whatever? Because that's just boring if people can't follow it. It was like, how much money did you make? How much money did you pay in taxes? Did you just sell this to your, this stock to your wife at a loss?

So you could take a loss and not pay taxes on it. He did a bunch of shit like that. He led to the, like, for example, you got wide media coverage. He called in J.P. Morgan, Jr. And then J.B. Morgan admitted under examination, he and many of his partners had not paid any income taxes in 1931 and 32. And that got people fucking furious. And that's what led to Roosevelt being elected four straight times, for example.

Right. And like, in a functioning, Congress is functioning right now. this store would lead to immediate subpoenas for Bezos and Musk and all these dudes. And you've embarrassed the shit out of them. You generate media coverage. You generate inertia for bills to change the tax code because this shit sucks. It's not fair. Everyone knows it's not fair.

Right. So, Matt, you can start throwing up questions and comments if you see them if we can get those out there. But yeah, like it's people used to fucking care. Like what? What is it the big lie of like, you know, maybe one day you'll be. one of those people and thus you should protect them now or just the politicized

nature of it where it's like you're aligned with these rich people if you're on the right automatically and so you have to take that stance like some Israel shit or something like why why doesn't

every regular ass American care greatly about this shit about the ultra wealthy, not paying their fair share. And everyone, regardless of your political affiliation, should be upset by that. But a lot of people just aren't.

They just don't care. Everyone for it. Everyone is. Across the board polling, regardless of party, raise rich people's taxes. They fucking, if you ask Americans to chart what they think wealth inequality is and what they think it should be,

they'll always draw a chart and then make it more fair. they'll say it looks like this but it should be like this but in reality it's more like this right the people's it's like an escape velocity the rich people have gotten so rich people have gotten so rich that most of us can't even conceive of how wealth of they are like that there's a class example I'm gonna fuck it up top of my head but like like a million seconds is like a couple it's like a week or two and a billion seconds is like 30 years 33 years yeah yeah yeah it's fucking crazy you can't you brain can't conceive of it it's like I'm thinking of how big the universe is or whatever. Whisper Mason on YouTube says, but now conservatives have reprogrammed people to believe that you're wealthy

and don't pay taxes. You should be applauded for gaming the system. There's definitely plenty of them and feel that way. I think of remember Trump was being like, yeah, that makes me smart when you're talking about not paying taxes and whatnot. And I've had a argument with conservatives before about CEOs and how it's all bullshit or whatever.

And they're like, no, they've earned every penny of that. by being who they are, I guess. I was talking to a mutual friend of ours the other day about he has a mega-rich brother-in-law who's a, who's a mega dude. And they were talking about this. And he's like, you make a, you make a $10,000 times what your lowest-rate employees do. Do you think you work 10,000 times harder than they do? He's like, yes. He's like, that can't be true.

That can't be true, bro. We're at dinner right now. Like, you're not working. Right. It just can't, it's, it's just like, I don't know, there's no empathy and no fucking self-regard. And like, I don't know me this about personal moral failings, even though these guys do happen to be scumbags for other reasons. Obviously, people are going to pay as the lowest amount of tax they have to pay. Everyone's going to do that because paying taxes sucks.

It's not exciting, right? But the lack of institutional, like the lack of political will to change the tax code, even though 90% of Americans are before it, if you pitched it in the right way, is insane to me. I don't it's it's it's maddening yeah John Orbit Bainbridge says if you get if you got a hundred if you got one million dollars a year and lived on interest it would take a thousand years to become a billionaire obviously depends on the specific percentage but yeah the the difference between a million and a billion is like yeah incredibly stark and you're right like people regular people don't they can't like complete how much money we're actually talking about here

I think I've mentioned the same way I might have mentioned this in the show before but the one thing you really summed it up for me was like there was a there was a go fund me to build the wall back like in 2017 and they set they set the go fund me of a month they're trying to raise it a billion dollars

and they got to $5 million and they all celebrated being halfway there and it's like fuck yeah yeah and then you got Bezos isn't it like it's like 200 billion now or something

like that. I mean, it's just right. Like you just shut your like, I mean, it's just made up, you know, like at that point. Yeah. L.A. Gothrow says, and the stock market is the mood ring for rich people. Yeah, it's always like the whole

like talking about what the stock market's doing everything when they talk about the economy has always been funny to me because like I barely know anyone who does anything with the stock market at all and never really have my entire life. And yeah, I grew up poor, but now I just know sort of just regular-ass people. And, you know, the stock market has nothing to do with most Americans' lives,

but it's kind of a litmus test for what the economy's doing if you watch the news and everything. The stock market mood ring thing, what's funny about that to me is like, like Elon's got into doge coin now. So he's just dropped the edifice and just like, yeah, we're all buying mood rings. It's just like, that's it is. Yeah. Betty Veronica says Jen Sacky is stepping down next year

I think Corey slash the Buttercream Dream slash Kenny needs to be her successor I think we'd all love that except for Joe Biden probably wouldn't love that very much because Corey you talk about getting

broken down on the stand Corey as the White House press secretary would be some shit but his character Kenny Ray who is not named after my first cousin

but I do have a first cousin named Kenny Ray just everybody knows. Yes, is a wonderful character and we all love Corey. I would like to say Corey have to do

an actual White House press conference like in that capacity. I'm not saying I would do any better. I would just like to see that happen. By the third press conference, Corey would be shitting in his hand

and throwing it to people. He would lose his mind on some conservative blogger in the very, first session, I think, just have a complete meltdown up there. And again, not that I'd do any better. But yeah, we're not cut out for like, you know, being diplomatic in that way. I don't think.

I chose my lifestyle intentionally to have to be as undiplomatic as possible. Right. Exactly. It's like I could have, I've never had a job where I had to, uh, Even, like, my first career as a newspaper reporter, newsroom is the closest thing to backstage at a comedy club as a work environment that I could think of. Yeah. Kate Bolton Schmookler, Schmuckler, sorry, Kate, says, what about the White House Correspondents Center? Yeah, Corey would absolutely crush that, you know, if that's what you're asking.

I would too. So would Mark. We'd all crush it. We should all do it together. It'd be a great time. Yeah, that's a completely different thing. Not that that's an easy gig that make you follow the fucking press. Of course, as long as it's not Obama, it's maybe not as hard.

Not that that's an easy gig, but yeah, that's obviously a completely different thing, and that would be wonderful. Do you remember a couple years ago when Michelle Wolfe got in trouble for a bunch of shit she said about Sarah Sanders at the Congressional, at the White House Courts of Honest Dinner? Yeah, yeah. So that same year, our buddy Roy Wood did the Congressional Correspondents Dinner, right? Which was like two weeks a month earlier, two weeks earlier, but it's not as big of a deal and nobody watched it and uh uh i've pitched the bits for it so i helped him out with a little bit

i don't think you use anything i did so it's like this this is no reflection on me at all but he uh he went so much harder than she did oh i can't say it he literally told them all they were going to all going to go to prison he did a he did a joke where he said if if you made a law where congressional people congressional mistresses could only get affairs in the congressman's home district abortion politics be way different it was so fucking funny and and like no one and because no one was watching nothing happened right right it was like it just proved to me the whole the whole controversy was fucking fake and for sure because it's like the white house correspondence thing is like people are looking for controversy at that do you know what I mean it's like yeah this is

a thing that happens what got said there what can we get mad about whereas the congressional correspondent center no one's doing that So Roy gets up, gets to go up there and just go off. As an aside, shout out to Roy Wood Jr. You're one of the single most brilliant comics out there right now. And if you don't fuck with him, you should. He's amazing, amazingly funny and incisive and just a great dude too. I fucking love Roy so much.

Yeah, he's awesome. But the only funny thing to me that ever happened in the White House Correspondents Center was Obama embarrassing the shit out of Trump in 2011. and that resulted in Trump becoming president. And even that ended up second. Yeah. We had one of a comment up there from Donald Dubb. Donald Dubb said,

yeah, pay your taxes and maybe we'll arrange for your re-entry, talking about Bezos. Dude, what if it went full on challenger shit? You know what I mean? Like, how wild would that be? Like, what if it explodes or something? I mean, anything like that don't ever happen. they've only done 12 test flights of this thing and like this when the space shuttle blew up for texas they did way more than 12 flights of that so uh i mean like my joke i made about it was they he should take all his money up in the rocket with him that way if he blows up it would be at least he'd be remembered finally for being the money pinata over the whole country guy yeah yeah

yeah aran macaul says michelph was punished for daring to be female and trying to be funny the double standard is stupid uh i hear you generally specifically but I do think that if Roy had been doing the White House correspondent's dinner and had gone in the way Mark is describing it, because for the record, Roy Wood Jr. is a black man. I think he probably would have gotten, you know, some of the same types of shit that she got, I think. I think. Like those particular jokes, I think whoever would have done them would have been in trouble because the takeaway, the rights gotten really good at using the language of left-wing victimhood, right? So that double standard you talked about, which does exist, they use that language to say that she was only making fun of Sarah Sanders because she's a woman. So that was the whole gist there. They took that. They've taken that framing and they've run with it real hard because she had made fun of her.

She made a joke that with the setup reference to her makeup having a smoky eye. It wasn't the punchline of it, but no one understands how jokes works. So that was that. And then she made a joke about her looking like a softball coach, which they pretend it was a lesbian joke and then said it was unwoke. It's like, but you're the one saying softball player is a lesbian. Her joke didn't say that. So who's problematic here? I don't know what's happening.

What was that tweet about Sarah Sanders? It was something like Sarah Sanders looks like she just got a cash settlement and needs. She just got a big settlement and needs cash now or something like that. It's a good joke. Yeah. Fuck Sarah Sanders. Dustin, quad with the bod, Berg says I'm sad for African. because they don't have comedy.

Yeah, I mean, you know, they think they do. I mean, I always wondered, like, is like, Mike Huckabee actually funny to them? Or do they, are they, or do they have to pretend Mike Huckabee is funny? I wonder that all the time. When it comes to, like, their entertainment, like, does this shit actually hit for them just because they know the source of it is someone they agree with, you know? Or just does it genuinely hit for them, which seems unfathomable to me? you know or yeah are they pretending because it's like yeah we're because they fucking stick

together man on that side of things like they are a united front so it all seems like if you align yourself with them and you're like hey i'm making jokes that they're all gonna be like i fucking love these jokes you know no matter what the jokes are it's it's wild i'm trying like is it like i mean i'm trying to imagine the like let's hypothetically say the left wing version of Mike Huckabee. They'd go to Mike Huckabee TV taping back when he had a show and sit through the TV taping and pretend it's great to own the lives, right? Like who's the left wing equivalent where I would be like if you go to this person's terrible fucking show who's unfunny as shit just because they share your politics, if you sit through that show yada yada yada,

three steps down the road, then everyone gets health care. I'd be like, uh, I don't know. Yeah. I like this. We'll end. talking about this one because I like this comment. Will Tyson says conservatives don't need comedy to punish people. They have money and power to punish people. And I think that's a pretty astute observation in a lot of ways because comedy you know, that's what comedy does. You punch

up, you know, you poke holes and shit. It's like the weapon of people that don't have anything else. You know what I mean? A lot of times, I'm not trying to lionize you and I when I say that. I'm just saying like that's where comedy comes from a lot of times is fucking

that's the only weapon you have. have in opposition to these oppressive forces, you know, is to fucking make fun of it, make them look and sound and feel stupid, and yeah, they don't really have a lot to the sort of engine of comedy is fucking

frustration or anger or whatever for sadness for a lot of people and they're just, they have less of that to go around from legitimate sources, I think. I think that point of Punching out, punching down thing is sometimes the way people think about it.

It's a little off, but I know what you're saying. But the way I think about it is like, my wife's been rewatching friends. And she was out of the episode another day where Chandler, here's his former co-workers, who is now his, he's the boss now. They're making fun of him behind his back. And he gets his feelings heard about it. But then he realizes, oh, they make fun to me. He's on the boss. We always make fun of the boss, right?

Of course. Everybody makes fun of the boss. You may, it's cool to make fun of your boss. But when you find out, like, the fucking, those dickheads. at that chicken factory we're doing pools over which one of those employees would die of COVID. That fucking sucks, right? It's like if working people were doing pools about their bosses, I would probably think that was funny, though.

It's the thing about it. For sure. All right. Well, thank you all for joining us. That's it for this week's edition of Weekly Skews. We'll see you on June 15th. The Ides of June. Join us will be here.

See you. Love you. Bye. Scoo!