Weekly Skews - Weekly Skews - 8/15/23 – FELONIES ON FELONIES ON FELONIES

Episode Date: August 16, 2023

Trump’s indicted once again, prompting the usual caterwauling. We get into it, then dive into what a good ol’ Middle American political prosecution actually looks like in the case of one small town newspaper. Also an important ALIENS update.Support the show

what's up everybody welcome back happy skews day to you it is august 15th the aides of august it is 2023 i'm tray crowder that's mark aie what's up mark uh none trade has been dealing with uh air in my apartment or central a c has been pouring water for like a couple days I don't know. Like a gallon or two a day just running out of the ceiling. We're collected in a bucket. Out of the vents? Out of the main vent from the central AC, right?

And we filed a couple work orders, no response. Then we get into those one of those notices they're going to be coming in the unit to show it to whoever holds the mortgage and they immediately fix it. I'm like, goddamn landlord's rule. It's fixed now. I love landlords. A couple things before we get to the show. We're going to talk about that sci-up country singer who went viral in a minute. But one, important aliens update, or my friend Elizabeth, who watches the show a lot,

sent me this article after listening last week. Does Peruvian alien we talked about? Yeah. This story, so the Peruvian Navy and cops actually took the 10-hour boat ride out to the village that was being harassed by the aliens that looked like the Green Goblin. And after talking to people for like 10 minutes, like, yeah, these are definitely people who work for a mining company. who are doing fucking trickling you guys and they're wearing jet packs

they showed like one of the tissue works in the village Googled images of humans flying jet packs and like oh yeah they're choosing jet packs I mean that look Called my shot baby It's exactly what I said was happening You did You fucking called it

You did and like Like you know obviously I'm bummed It's not aliens of course I am But like that also is wild That like Merck's for an illegal mining operation have jet packs. Like that's like a Jason Statham movie or something. You know what?

That's the type of thing you'd see like him fighting dudes with jet packs. You'd be like, these guys wouldn't have jet packs. But apparently they would. But I mean, you know, to be fair, I'm sure there's a shitload of money to be made in illegal gold mining. So I guess they can afford to outfit them with jet packs. But still, that's some, I mean, that's wild. Yeah, it was this, I was this dying.

I was like, fucking, of all the things they do in the Amazon, this is like one of the less evil ones. So I'll give them, at least they're being creative instead of just killing everybody. But I imagine that's probably step two of this plan is to start killing people. But I just like, they're doing a Scooby-Doo plot, man. This is a fucking,

how do we get these people to leave this amusement park? I'm going to pretend to be a ghost. Yeah. It's like just like, it's like we said last week. I wonder if they were like what you just said, like we got a plan. We're going to pretend to be blank.

and I wondered last week if they were they decided to pretend to be that mythical monster that they have there that we talked paracalus or whatever it was you know like if and it's funny to me thinking that that was their plan we're like we're going to make them think it's this bigfoot thing they got or whatever and then they were like fucking green goblin they're aliens or whatever they and then these guys were like I didn't well shit I didn't see that coming but I guess we'll take it it reminds me of a CIA op and war two in the in the Philippines The main resistance force against the Japanese occupation were the hooks who were a communist like guerrilla group. And they were getting too powerful when the, it wasn't say, yeah, it was like whatever the precursor intelligence agency was. But they didn't, when they knew America was going to retake the Philippines, so they didn't want to actually have to fight the hooks too. So to diminish their numbers, they spread rumors that these vampire-like creatures that lived in the jungle were killing people so that people would be afraid to join the communist militias. and they would catch stragglers and drain them of their blood and hang them upside down. And it works.

The CIA was bragging about that as a successful operation on their fucking website. Well, I mean, you know, I can see why that worked. If you're worried about vampiric monsters in the woods and you come upon multiple drained corpses, you know, what else you got to think? I'm not going to the jungle. I'm scared enough to the Japanese already. I'm not going to fucking fucking goddamn monsters, too. speaking of weird sciops

so the right wing has found a new favorite country artist his stage name I guess it's his stage name it's really hard to tell because this guy's backstory his guy named Oliver Anthony and he had this song go viral starting late last week over the weekends called Richmond North of Richmond and it's pretty standard bog standard right wing talking points like he sings about like

what's the line about welfare he says like if you're 300 If you're 5 foot 3, 300 pounds, my taxes shouldn't pay if you were fudge rounds. Fudge rounds, yeah. It is whatever. The song, musically, it hits for me because he sounds exactly like Tyler Childers. Yeah, I'm a fan of. But it started asking all these questions because how does a guy go super viral like this? Like, it's sort of happened with Lil Nas X on TikTok, but Lil Nas X was working at it for years, right?

And this guy, he's near where I'm from, if you believe, his backstory, Farmville, Virginia, which is like 30 minutes from long. So I thought like I laughed at it at first because I didn't even know people were calling it a SIOP or Astor Tofring or anything. And I read the art with like one of this Rolling Stone article first came out about this guy. And it just said that he identifies as a farmer from Farmville, Virginia. And like that was funny to me. Like that sounded fake. I was like, yeah, I'm from queer city, Tennessee.

That's where I'm from. But that's a real place. Yeah, so you quickly inform me. You're from the Farmville area, so it's a very real place. Yeah, my sister went. There's two colleges there, Hampton, Sydney University and Longwood College. Hampton, Sydney, I think, used to kick Drew's ass in football, he said. That's right, right.

So, like my mom talked, Longwood, my sister went, my mom went to Longwood, too. It's in Prince Edward County, which you might have heard of as one of the three bad guys in Brown versus Board of Education. They're one of the towns that shut down their school system instead of integrating. So it's a nice place to be. from. I'm proud to be from there, as you can tell. So Oliver, this guy,

he claims to be a libertarian and he says this song is about human trafficking, which is sort of is like there's a vague allusion to Epstein's Island. He has a Wikipedia page, which was just created yesterday. The song is supposedly written by a guy named Christopher Anthony Lunsford,

who was either this guy's real name or whoever really wrote the song. But his backstores, he was like a drunk, depressed, drunk alcoholic until 30 days ago when he prayed to God, give him a music career, and he'd get sober, and then this happened. But side note, you put it another new song since this one. It's all about smoking weed and how Virginia hits. So that song actually, I actually enjoyed that song. But, like, so.

God really came through, by the way. Yeah. Like, sorry to all those pediatric bone cancer patients out there. had the guy that had to make this guy hit. Yeah. Country music. Yeah, God really made it happen for him fast. He had a fun weekend.

He played a farmer's market in North Carolina. They were in a town of 600 people, but a thousand people came out to see him. So he's really hitting right now. It's having a moment. But the order of events here is very confused and weird because he went mega viral instantly. We're talking millions against an amount of hours. Yeah. And he was being pushed by the guys like Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro.

And this guy named Jason Howardton. whose job is, he's a CEO of a company called Reach Digital. He's like a Christian marketing guy. He was involved in helping make this video and make it go viral. And he says, according to him, a quote, someone reached out and asked him to come record a song for his YouTube channel. So he's saying that Oliver didn't write the song. But either way, it was definitely pushed.

The question is if it's just normal music business bullshit? Right. Or is it like culture war bullshit? Or is, since that's a griff too. yeah like who's what's the actual goal here is this guy being used the thing is if it's a grift it's like who's the mark here well it's so over over on the well read podcast part of the extended ske universe me cori and drew have been saying for years now talking about like the difference between like you know tyler childers and sturgle

simpson jason jason iswell and chris stapleton all those dudes and like nashville country right and the big like golf there and how much Nashville country sucks and how these guys are legit. We've been saying for years that at some point they're going to like Nashville lies a version of that, right? Like that they're going to like manufacture in a studio sense a version of the Americana thing and try to, you know, capitalize on that. And I'm not saying that's what this guy is, but like I'm saying it, like you said, it might just be music industry bullshit. Like, I could totally see that, you know, because we've been sort of expecting something like that to happen for a long time, you know, to try to capitalize on the affinity for Americana music, as they call it, which I've always said, Americana music, as far as I can tell, is just country music that's good. That's what we call Americana now. Yeah.

So the question is, like, when I say normal music industry bullshit, is it like Taylor Swift pretending to be from a farm or Jay-Z pretending that he was an interesting. state drug trafficker, vanilla ice pretending is from the mean streets of Miami, it was like from a suburb of Dallas, or is it like, you know, the CAA helping the Scorpions go viral with winds of change. It's like, I don't know. But like all this stuff, like Paola goes back to the beginning of time in the music business where, you know, record companies have paid DJs to play songs. And that's kind of looks like what they did with Jason Aldeen song, pushing that to number one.

He had the top three songs on Apple Music. This guy did. two songs he has a he has his two songs but he's the top three songs and i don't fucking know what's happening here it's utterly bizarre well i'll say i just want to see what else comes out because like as far as i'm concerned 80 plus percent of this song super hits for me frankly because 80 percent of it is all about like you know normal working class people we can't catch a break we're all fucked you can't afford to live anymore all this like working class shit and i'm like hell yeah brother And then really it's just when he gets into the welfare queen stuff,

which he has changed welfare queens from being black people to being fat people, right? But either way, you listen to it and you're like, it's just like, dude, do you not realize that, you know, targeting this amount of your ire towards like welfare recipients, whatever, is exactly what the rich man north of Richmond want you to do? Like, that's the whole thing. That's what they want you to do. That's what they want us to do. is like get pissed off at each other and blame each other for all that.

Like the idea that are there lazy people on welfare? Yes. Are they the majority? No. But they do exist. They're not a fraction of the actual problem, you know, that contributes to the high cost of living and the working man struggle emanating from the rich men north of Richmond.

It's not their fault. So that part is just like, that's just falling into their trap as far as I'm concerned. You know, like, and that's why I don't like it. Drew said this to me the other day is like, it's kind of funny that you got a guy being like, I make $25,000 a year and the reason I can't afford to get ahead in life is because of taxes. It's like, buddy, you're not paying enough in taxes. Like if the government gave you, like, let you get off scot free, you still can't afford a fucking house in this country on that, most parts of it anyway. Right. Yeah, that's, I mean, that's another, I mean, that's a good point.

The idea that like taxes in general are the problem, like, no, taxes could be the solution. If they were taxing the right people, you know what I mean? Yeah. At a commensurate level, then, like, taxes would solve all the problems that you're worried about, you know? Massachusetts just passed a millionaire's tax, like a 4% tax on millionaires and gave every kid free lunch and free breakfast. Free lunch, yeah, free lunch for all the kids, right? Yeah, like that might help those working class kids get ahead. Anyway, like, this guy's also, like, it came out today.

Someone went through his YouTube playlists because that's basically the only thing is public about them. And it's a bunch of like 9-11 was an inside job bullshit and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. So he's already been milkshick. Yeah, it's already been milkshick ducked. So there you go. Well, it's funny that like the whole 9-11 being an inside job thing, that's like I get that like all conspiracy theories are wrapped up together now or whatever.

But, you know, like I'm super, super, super huge liberal queer or whatever. And I've said on the show before, you know, I like smoke too much weed one night and watch Loose Change on YouTube. And I was like, fuck, 9-11 was an inside job. You know what I mean? Like I, because like to make the villain was like, you know, George W. Bush did 9-11 or whatever. Right. Like, yeah, he totally did.

It was a, but you got to remember when you see the world the way these people do. Like, one, it took like 15 minutes for the Bush did 9-11 to get around to all the Jews called in sickle 9-11. Right. Yeah. And then it's, then it's like they all think everything's the same. It's all, the politics. TV's all the TV show and it's it really the new world they want a one world government run by the Zionists and so like it's it all it takes like five minutes for any conspiracy theory

to get boiled down to anti-semitism yeah or aliens yeah yeah mark I say it all the time let's not wrap aliens up in this okay that's a different thing all right well uh moving on producer Matt is with us as always this is weekly skews before we continue I want to remind you of a few things. Number one, if you'd like to see me perform live, go to traycrouter.com, get your tickets. I'll be in Burlington, Vermont, this here weekend, Austin, after that, and then a whole bunch of big Ohio run, a lot of things. Coming up, come and see me, go to traycrouter.com. Also, at traycrouter.com, you can find a link to pre-order the book I wrote with Corey Ryan

Forster, our senior Georgia correspondent. It's called Round Here and Over Yonder. It's a travel, a comedic travel guide. and if I do say so myself, it's pretty damn funny. So, yeah, pre-order that, get you some of that action. If you, lastly, if you enjoy this program and would like to show your support, you can do so by signing up on Patreon. You can go to weekly skews.com slash more, or you can go on Patreon and look me up.

Either way it works. $5 a month gets you access to full-length bonus episodes. Like we just did a two-week-long skew-a where we answer the burning questions from you, the skewers. but we also cover things we don't get to and the main show are just things we want to talk about. It's a lot of fun so you can get access to that and support the show in the process for $5 a month.

That's right, weekly skews.com slash more. Go on Patreon, get some more skews in your life. Now, as for the show tonight, as Americans, we've all come to expect that every other week or so, the former president will be hit with a new series of increasingly nefarious charges. And this week was no disappointment as Georgia prosecutor Fannie Willis

has levied a bevy, levy to bevy she did, of new felonies against Donald Trump and his co-conspirators. It's pretty wild. We'll talk about it all very short. It involves demon babies. Yeah.

Yeah. You thought it couldn't get wilder? It always can. That's America in 2023. But first, before we get to that, let's do the Daily Dumbass. Matt, graphic, please.

Tonight's D.D., anyone who won't vote, vote for Ron DeSantis in exchange for a boiled egg sickle. Let's watch whatever this is. And then you do like, fry them sometimes or don't you do it? It's just if you're only listening, it's Ron DeSantis putting popsicle sticks into boiled eggs. And I ask, do you fry them? What do you do?

How do you eat these eggs, human? Did you, uh, did you hear the guy? I say, I'm just here for the eggs. No. So is it the Iowa State Fair? It's so funny. To be like lining up at a state fair, be like, I want to make it clear to you, I just really want an egg on a stick.

Like you don't, you don't hit for me. I don't want no part of you. I just really, really, really want an egg on a stick. So that's why I think. Literally everywhere he went at the Iowa State Fair the last couple of days, crowds chanted, we love Trump and we want Trump and go back to Florida. um and just the egg thing i was like what is like it's boiled eggs on a stick a thing in iowa apparently the iowa state fair uh putting everything on a stick is the thing so they try to put every

food in a stick you're like why a boiled egg you either because dude they're running out things to put on sticks like you go to you go to fairs like state fairs food has to either be served on a stick deep fried or both otherwise it's not you know it's not you know it's it's not a state fair buddy that's just how it works yeah but but an egg already has a case it's like like me putting a banana on a stick like it already has a sense yeah look at up the iowa state fair is bragging about how they have over 70 foods on a stick so everybody get out there the i state fair let me know what other kinds of food let me tell you i'm gonna tell you right now here's here's the type of trash i am if they could what you do is you cut the egg in half you make like

deviled egg filling and you put it back in the egg and then put the egg back together and then batter and fry that, so it's like together while on a stick, so it's like a deep fried, deviled egg on a stick, and now I'm listening. Yeah. Okay, I'm into that. So if you want, let's watch his next video clip of see how I was going for DeSantis. Like, he's giving up his

whole life to do this. Now watch this as it happens. Matt, skip ahead a little bit, please. Sorry. Because it's playing music. Yeah, it plays music. Wait till they go to the state. Here you go. There you go. Yeah. For hanging in there with us. so much. We really appreciate you being

here as we have the opportunity. Well, first of all, welcome back to the State Fair. Ron, it's great to have you here. So welcome back. No, it's great to be here. We're really excited to see everybody. Cut it, Matt. That's Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds. She later on tries to get the crowd to rile down.

I just listen to Ron DeSantis and literally no one's interested in it. There was a slate that an article where they interviewed a bunch of political consultants, a lot of Republicans to try to figure out what they would do if they were advising Ron DeSantis. And universally to a person, they had two suggestions. One was quit.

And two was become a different person. Yeah. Yeah. So quit. Yes. Everyone hates this motherfucker. And it's driving him kind of insane. Here's a reporter asking him about his unpopularity,

where he turns into the Joker pretty much immediately. Today, your whole number behind President Trump have been pretty substantially behind. And you don't hear. Wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on, keep you up. To me, the best part is the very end, dude. Like, it's like, does he say not in here? Is that what he says? Yeah, he says your poll numbers are pretty bad girls at the Trump, and he goes, not in here.

Not in here. Not in here. Ha, ha, ha, ha. And this weird fake laugh. And then at the very end, where Matt's got it pause right now, he just like, you can just say the existential crisis on his face. I mean, it's classic, dude. He can't, like, like, he did an interview, him and his wife, Casey, where they were trying to humanize him. And she was going on and on about how much, how great of a husband he is.

And honestly, she was the Oscar for her. Because her anecdote about what a loving husband is was when she had cancer, he picked up the kids from school. Oh, that's heroic. And she said he put me all the time and Katie ain't even sick. I need to get there and get on her ass. Like, well, you got me doing this shit. for you ain't dying god damn she also phrased it as he picked up my kids from school and then started oh that's weird and i was like oh my god and then the reporter's like she was talking about the

children they have together and she said he picks up my kids for that's super weird that's not a normal thing to happen i know you don't have kids but like that's uh right that's very odd it's it's a it's a tell that he's a i know governors are busy but it's a tell that he's a very involved father that one time he picked up his kids on the occasion she had cancer and she refers them as my kids. But anyway, so Trump, there's another thing that happened where Trump's team in Iowa's been wearing merch as his back-to-back Iowa champs, 2016, 2020, and DeSantis has taken offense to it because Trump did win the state in the presidential election, but he very famously lost

the primary to Ted Cruz in 2016 and then claimed, wait for it, Ted Cruz stole it from him. that was his first bout of election theft was the very first first thing of election theft was the first primary of his first run for political office uh so does there's a bar where i guess disances his team and trump's team was hanging out and they almost got in a fight over the back-to-back iowa champs 2016 2020 merch there's like screaming each other and throwing shit and i'm like you you're the same people right it's like very much narcissism of small differences here and they just hate each other because they're in their way

and it's very very fucking weird and yeah but i mean dude you knew it would be like that you know what mean we were talking about that for a while like i couldn't wait to see them at each other's throats because you knew that's how i mean you're right they are essentially the same people but you knew they that it would be like this because it's like you're either trump or you're not you know what i mean i mean that's that's the that's the whole deal but yeah i didn't i mean we like months and months ago before we really got into it with the poland and all this stuff before he really rolled his campaign out. I mean, I really thought, I really thought that DeSantis and Trump was going to be like a bit of a slobber knocker.

And I feel like a dip shit now because he's just getting rocked, dude. Which I'm enjoying, obviously, I don't want Trump to end up, you know, doing anything in the long run. But I do like seeing DeSantis flail the way he is because it's pretty hilarious. Yeah. that Trump actually polls better than DeSantis versus Biden. So it's a, pick whoever you want to read for, go for it. But I did mainly just,

this just makes me feel sorry for the people of Iowa. You're just trying to go to the state fair, took kids down there, rat a little tilt a whirl and eat a boiled egg on a stick. And I don't have to put up with all this shit going on, but you also have to do. That's a good point. I took my sons to the California State Fair earlier this summer.

And there wasn't no politics shit going on the day we were there. And it would have really, that would not have hit for me. Even like, even Gavin knew some Democrat shit. I would have been like, well, why are we doing this here? This is like, we're going to eat fucking corn dogs, you know, ride tilter worlds and stuff. I mean, nobody here for this shit. I read that there were 14 presidential candidates that Iowa State Fair this weekend.

Yeah, well, because, you know, I was the, that's, you know. Right. But I can't even name, I can't even name 14 presidential candidates. How many people are in Iowa that retain the fair is like a full 1% of the people at the fair running for president? There's like 10 dudes walking around just like, you see this pig, vote for me. You know, like, hey, guys,

Cover, look at this pig. How about that? Hey, my name's Tim. I'm running for president. Like, in no way they all were drawing crowds. Yeah, Iowa's governor, J.D. Pritzker was there to help unveil the butter cow. It's like, I don't even know why he's, I mean, I know why he's there with like going to run for president eventually. But like, you imagine you're just trying to, you just trying to have your boiled egg with your kids and then, and get yelled out by a carny.

And you have to listen to Vivek Ramoswamy rap. We have video of him. Happing finally. So, I mean, what he wrote down, the whole crowd goes so loud. That song rules. That song's an all-timer. But I don't think it's about 2003, something like that. Something like that, yeah, about 20 years ago, something like that.

But, hey, Mark, that song is a timeless classic, just so you know. But like Eminem just last week, like publicly went on the record trash and Trump and how big of a piece of shit. Did you see that? It like went viral. I'm talking shit about Trump or whatever. So like, there ain't no fucking way this would hit for Slim Shady. This dude's probably going to get one of those cease and desist letters or whatever I would imagine. But I just don't understand why this is even the go-to for him considering his target demographic, you know.

I'm not quite trash I guess so every time I've seen him rap including a video from in college uh he's this song it might be the only song he knows yeah um so yeah uh this guy sucks he's already all over tv saying he if anybody has the juice to take trump spot if he's gone i think it might be him because he's the most he's he's the one who's got the smartest lane which is like i need to take the rain so i can pardon trump is that is that kim reynolds standing beside him there? Yeah, she's agnostic in the primary. Okay, I was about saying she's just hosting all of them? Yeah,

except for Trump, because Trump's mad at her because she is agnostic because she hasn't endorsed him. Okay. So yeah, that's it. That's your Iowa, that's your Republican primary Iowa caucus update. Going normally for Rhonda Sandra. All right, our next,

our honorable mention for dumbass is whoever never told Caitlin Jenner about history. Let's see you here, Matt. for human being to be around. And, you know, I am a proud American. I love this country. I am the child of a World War II veteran.

I grew up a patriot. I was the first person to put up a flag at the finish line, the good old US of A. Why? Because I was so proud of my country. And I have to say today and watching all this come down, this is the first time I've ever been ashamed of my country. And what's going on? So she's, this woman.

to live through the Vietnam War, the Malai Masker, Watergate, Iran-Contra, Abu Ghra, Gitmo, and Trump getting indicted in Georgia, for the fourth time, the first time she's been ashamed of the country. Also, she's currently living through shit like the Bud Light

boycott and stuff like that. You know what I mean? Like, she's currently living through the active demonization of trans people on a very, like, large and public, scale, you know, like, and that's just, that's all, that's totally good. I guess because it's like a, you know, I'm not trans. I'm Caitlin Jenner, you know, you know what I mean?

Like, uh, like O.J. Lois with being black or something. Also, I just want to call a book called bullshit and her saying she's the first Olympian athlete to wave the American flag. What the fuck is that about? I can't possibly be true. Right. So anyway, uh, Trump got indicted in Georgia last night, or the indictments came down.

And people have sort of run out of steam losing their mind. There's not, there's a, there's a, there's a lot of interesting stuff in here. Some of what we already knew, none of it's super revelatory, but there's lots of funny shit in here as far as how it was approached. So look at this image of all the people charged here. This is the main thing that's different about it. She charged Trump and 18 other people. That's like, that's a lot of fucking people who are on the hook. All of them are charged with Rico stuff, which is a five-year mandatory minimum sentence, five to 20.

there is no probation eligible for this charge. So they've convicted, they're all going to fucking jail. Although, I mean, we've talked before with the logistics of jailing Trump, but whatever. No one knows, none of them know what to fucking say anymore. Like, here's Lindsey Graham on Fox News. Matt, if you can cue up this video clip. This is from earlier today. So I've got questions about all of this in a minute after we watch this.

What's he think headed Matt? Yeah, play this forward. How do you run for president in 2024, moving between courthouses in New York City and Washington, D.C., and Florida and Atlanta? He's spending more money on lawyer fees than he is running for office. January the 6th, I was there. I saw it. He was impeached over it. The American people can decide whether they want him to be president or not.

This should be decided at the ballot box, not in a ballot box. not a bunch of little... All right, we'll cut it back. We did decide. That's like, that's kind of the whole thing, right? That's the whole thing. It's right. Like, we did decide it to ballot box.

That didn't hit for him. And he did a bunch of treason in response to it, which is what these charges are about. Like, that's what... Yes. We decided the ballot box. He shouldn't fucking be president. He said, no, I still want to be president. And here we are.

This is the whole point of the fucking thing. And they, they seem like, yes, uh, Fahny Willis, I've been, it's not Fanny, it's Fawnee. Oh, okay. All right. I did not know that. Yeah, it's Swahili for, Swahili for prosperousness or something, I think. I saw that really taste.

Anyway, so, so she, uh, she's a Democrat, yes. But every single witness, every single witness, plus the 18, is a Republican in this case. If people are lying, it's Republican or Republican slander, all right? All the evidence they heard was from fucking Republicans. Now, what's different about this case from Jack Smith's case, because it's a lot of the same evidence and stuff, is basically how many people she charged. Like, if he's, if he's using a sniper rifle, she unloaded a whole belt from an M60, all right? Right. Yeah, you get a charge, you get a charge, you get a charge, you get a charge, you get a charge.

Well, that was part of one of the questions I have is like, I say all the time how law dumb I am. But this one in particular, I feel almost overwhelmed by like the whole RICO thing. 19 defendants. She says he's going to, like, try them all at once or wants to. It reminds me that same from the dark night. Remember that saying the dark night? Like, uh, fucking Harvey Dent does that in the dark night. And it's like this huge stun or whatever. And, uh, I just like, yeah, as just a regular civilian, I feel almost overwhelmed by the circumstances of the circumstances of this particular case. Because it's like, it seems pretty complex to me. And there's a whole lot of moving parts and a whole lot of shit going on.

you know yeah so other people charged include Rudy Giuliani John Eastman Jeffrey Clark Kenneth Cheesebroe Jenna Ellis and Sydney Powell there's a couple of these people who are already on indicted co-conspirators in Jackson in the Jack Smith last indictment Mark Meadows is also indicted remember he's a main witness for Jack Smith and she's saying as Fannie Willis said they have until noon Friday August 25th 10 days from now to turn to voluntarily surrender Trump's lawyer has already announced he'll voluntarily surrender and this time he has to do a mudshot because it's George Law.

Also, they're going to have a cameras in there, right? Like when he actually goes in the courthouse to get a indictment or whatever? Yeah. This would probably be televised. So it would be a huge circus. So that's probably why you went all 19 to them won't trial at the same time. Which I don't imagine any of them will, I don't imagine that some of them won't flip. Because like Jenna Ellis especially, they've already, Trump's already announced he won't cover her legal bills because she said nice shit about Ron DeSantis.

And she's been posting through it, posting Bible verses about how this. is all part of God's plan for her life or some shit. It's like, I don't know. Man, if God wanted me to go to jail, I might pick a different guy. Trump's first big defense to all this has been reading Fannie Willis's Wikipedia page. You see, her dad was a Black Panther. So therefore, I guess this is illegitimate. Right.

Therefore, she's a racist, according to him. I guess, but it's funny to me because, like, if you know a little bit about Black Panthers, her dad went on to be a defense attorney, which makes sense for a Black Panther to do, What it doesn't make sense for a Black Panther to be proud of their kid is to become a fucking cop or a prosecutor. Right. So I can't imagine it's like, oh, her dad was a Black Panther. It's like, yeah, her dad was a Black Panther and a defense attorney. And she's a prosecutor and therefore like this is clearly all some big conspiratorial scam or whatever.

But like you said, it's like those two things don't, they don't track. Well, it's just like you said, like the whole everybody involved. in terms of, like, providing evidence and witnesses and all this and bring it. They're all Republicans. And that's the case for, like, pretty much all of the felonies he's charged with, right? Like, all of the, it's all Republicans. Like, but, like, they keep saying it's the, you know, Joe Biden's Department of Justice on a witch hunt to take down his political opponent and all this.

And it's like, there ain't even no Democrats here, you know? I mean, I get like a judge here or there or whatever, but it's like that, but, but I mean, none of that shit matters. like they just don't they don't care about any of that you know it did right i don't know yeah so it is a cop it's both complicated and simple as an indictment um like for so all 19 of them are charged under riko statute which riko stands for recatory influenced in corrupt organizations um the act uh so it there's a federal one which everyone's probably familiar with from watching you know law and order or the sopranos and then like 30 some

states have their own version of statute for prosecuting state-level crimes, including Georgia. So they're all charged under RICO, and because of various different acts, they're also, a lot of them caught subcharges, but the general thrust is they're all in service of the same conspiracy. Right, right. It was like a mafia thing, right? It was like a way to like, if you're part of a larger group or organization that's doing some

nefarious shit, even if you didn't do this particular thing, you're part of the group that's doing all these things and services. this larger criminal act, which means you're all responsible for it, which is the, yeah, the basic idea, when the mob was at its peak and its heyday, and like, you know, well, a heyday is probably 20 to 30s, but when it's still very powerful in the late 60s, early 70s, that's when the federal government passed the first RICO statute. It was signed by Richard Nixon, I think. And the general idea was that a mob boss is never going to do any actual crime.

Right, exactly, right. Right. Yeah. But he still needs a way to hold him accountable. Now, I am, as a hardcore civil liberties advocate, I kind of think the law is a little, I mean, I understand the theory of it. It kind of bugs me a little bit the way it's applied sometimes because like, Fannie Wilson has asked about this yesterday. She made the point, this is her 12th, I think, RICO chart she's brought since she's been. Another one I brought up before is against Young Thug and his rap group for just like lyrics and stuff.

And you're just trying to like, well, you're the head of this. One guy had drugs, another guy was involved in a shooting and you're all in the same rap group. So you're all with the same color T-shirt. so therefore, I mean, like, a lot of gangs have literally been caught up in criminal charges for wearing the same color clothes. I think that's bullshit. But again, I don't, this is not bullshit. This is a real crime they did. Right.

This is a real, there's so many people involved in this. Like, there are 30 unindicted co-conspirators, but like, among the people who are actually indicted was Kanye West's former publicist named Trevi and Cuddy. She, the actual, like, scariest part of this crime was the two women Ruby Freeman and her daughter they testified from the J6 committee about how scared they were for their lives

and part of this was Trivia and Cuddy and two other people will get to in a second were basically continually harassing these two women trying to get them to change their story to air quote come clean about the election fall they would come in and there's a video it's too long and not interesting enough

to show here but it's pretty chilling the women didn't want to talk these people on their own. So they met Cuddy at a police station. And they're on camera from closed circuit TV in the police station. And Cuddy's like, you know you need protection, right? You got to do this in order to be safe. Right. Your freedom is a shame of something were to happen to you. Right. You know, it's a nice face you got there. I'd hate for something to happen to it. Yeah, right. Yeah. So yeah, the Freedmen are definitely scared. They just had them for the J6 committee

about how they've been in hiding for a while and scared people come to kill them at their houses because it's not just these people harassing them, but also the general Trump mob harassing them online and stuff, calling their house, driving by their house, honp and warrants and shit. The other two people who were charged directly in connection with harassing the Freemans are a guy named Stephen Lee and a guy named Harris and Floyd.

Stephen Lee is a former cop termed Lutheran pastor, whose main bag is ranting about, quote, demonic births. I told you a demons are going to come up here. He went to the Freeman's house for people. and to the point where they called 911 on him three times. His solution to that was because he's a white guy, he needed to get black people to talk to these women because they haven't to be black.

So that's how Harrison Floyd and Trevi and Cuddy get caught up in this. He's like, there were the two black people he knew to call. All right. Stephen Floyd is the head of a organization called Black Voices for Trump. And Trevi and Cuddy has been doing a bunch of, was involved with the Trump's White House. It's not clear whether she got hooked up with them to Kanye or Kanye got hooked up with Trump through her.

Anyway, it's all very confusing to me. But if you're the fun pick of Cuddy on Mike Lindell's private jet, if you got that, Matt, she's fun. Look at the Mike. Mike's just chilling, baby. Fun factor on this picture. This is the night that Herman Kane called a fatal case of COVID. We're having a great time.

Yeah, she does look a little pain right there. I got to say, like, you know, she looks like, yeah, like he looks. looks like he's having a better time than she is to me. Yeah, she posted this picture on Instor or whatever and said, we're on Mike, we're on Mike Lindell's G6 and someone reached out to Mike Lindell to confirm that

was that was, that was her on his plane. And she goes, uh, yes, this is her, that was me, but my plane is not a G6, it's a Vennem 50. He was very, like, he's a wrecked my father. He's got a more hitting plane than that, I guess. Sure. So, back to Trump's party in Dietbit, he,

there's, this, this, this 41 total film. any counts in here. He got hit with 13, which brings his total. He's facing now to 91, I think. 91. Yeah. Impressive. Not quite triple digits yet. But, you know, doing pretty good. I got, I got faith in it. He can get there. In addition to the communal racketeering charge, he also got a hit with solicitation of violation of oath by public officer, conspiracy commit impersonating a public officer, conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree, conspiracy to commit false statements and writings, and conspiracy to commit

filing false documents. They also, Sidney Powell's been in furtherance of this conspiracy. I'm using the language the indictment uses here. She hired a data firm to hack a bunch of voting machines, and then they passed around that information among each other. So that's part of why this conspiracy, like that's part of the conspiracies.

They share a bunch of voters private information, so theft of data could be coming here for some of them. But this is a Don Jr.'s girlfriend, who's name I can't remember right off the top of my head. Gilfoil, right? Kimberly Guilfoyle, yeah, used to be married to California Governor Gavin Newsom. Hit this. This has to be.

RICO charges, RICO charges 19 defendants altogether. Kind of weigh in on what that's going to look like for Fannie Willis. Well, it's a disaster and it's a sham. She's really using this for her own political purposes and advancements and fundraising off of this. She's one of four sham, you know, investigations and indictments. They, you know, jumped the shark and released on the doctor. actually the indictment before it even came out so then she had to do the dog and pony show you know last night it's just absolutely ridiculous and john goddy okay can you imagine riko okay violations john goddy never even had four indictments at one right love it so it's such a funny self-owned like obliviously you know what i mean like john goddy never even had four Donald trump's got 91 come on I mean, I think they got Gotti for six murders.

So I don't know, like she, she means in four different locations. So I guess John Gotti didn't have the foresight to commit all his murders in four different jurisdictions. He just did them all in the Southern District of New York. But either way, it's funny to bring up John Gotti here because it turns out him and Trump had the same lawyer, Roy Cohn. Roy Cohn at one point only had six clients, the heads of the five families, and Donald John Trump. How about that? I don't know why there's not a Roy Cohn movie If there has, I missed it

But it'd be a hit and ass movie We're not familiar with his life story He was like the lead counsel For McCarthy during McCarthyism Then was sort of disgraced Then became a mob attorney Then there were rumors that he had AIDS And not he had AIDS

While he was dying of AIDS He tried to trick one of his clients And he was signing over their whole estate To him before they died Then he died of AIDS And in between he was Donald Trump And John Gotti's lawyer And I'm like, I want to

watch them i want to see that movie yeah um so the funny part about the rico charge is rudy gilani got getting hit with it it kind of killed me because rudy giliani if you guys aren't familiar made his name using a new law named riko to take down the mafia right yeah that was his whole fun cleaning up the streets and all that shit that was that's yeah yeah before john got he got hit with a riko charge uh in involving murder for hire i mean cool of here from a story from 1986 in New York Times. The federal trial in Manhattan attained national significance as the first case to focus on the commission of top crime leaders portrayed by the prosecution as the border directors of the mafia, Lacoste. These are heads of

Lucezzi and Colombo crime families, plus Fat Tony Salerno from the Genoveses, who was also a client of Roy Cohn, and a famous business partner of Donald Trump's, who allegedly engaged in concrete bid-rigging schemes within Trump construction projects. And if you remember, when Stormy said that a guy threatened her in her parking garage to keep their affair with Trump's secret, she always assumed he worked for Fat Tony Salerno. So there you go.

It really closes the loop on this. Just to clarify, we're talking about an actual real-life human being here whose name is Fat Tony Salerno. Yeah. That's wonderful. I'm sure he's a murderous piece of shit, but I'm still glad that guy exists.

I get just for comedic purposes. Like they have fucking fat. Tony. That's great. Yeah. If Trump has such a thing as a best friend, it was probably

Fat Tony Salerno. So going back to the idea that we can skip over this next video, Matt. This guy and Lieutenant Governor Jeff Duncan testified for the grand jury yesterday. Yesterday was kind of a mad scramble

because Trump was tweeting at witnesses who were scheduled to testify that they read online were scheduled to testify. They shouldn't testify. It was literally live tamperable witnesses. They sped up the grand jury.

That's why they came out so late last night. Like, I don't know, what was it? 11 o'clock on night, East Coast time. So he gave a speech about how, like, basically, Republicans had to move on from this because he was saying, like, he was trying to make the case to Republicans, like, this is electoral poison, which is like, forget morality or legality. We're going to lose.

We can't beat Biden or frathing like this. But so if you're wondering about pardons in this scenario, obviously it can be pardoned by the federal level because it's a state-level crime. So it turns out convicted criminals in Georgia can't apply for pardons until five years. after they've served their sentences. This is thanks to an anti-political corruption amendment to the Constitution. And that constitutional amendment was added after Georgia took away. Georgia took away the governor's power to pardon because of the corrupt actions of a

clan-linked governor. He was called selling partners in the late 1930s. His name was E.D. Rivers. So Trump really got fucked by a clan guy here, which is just making me laugh. And I don't think Georgia would be able to pass a constitutional amendment just to let Governor Kemp pardon Trump, even if Governor Kemp wanted. to. Now, Kemp's all over the place. He posted today calling Trump a liar when he said the election was rigged.

He's like, there's no fraud here. It was free and fair. But also he said he would vote for Trump again. So I don't fucking know what to make of that guy. Well, that's like the line, isn't it? I mean, that's like, that's what like Pence has been saying that. They all say that. Right. It's like, oh, yeah, no, he's, he's a liar and a treasonous piece of shit and, like, deserve to be punished, whatever. It was a travesty, what happened regarding him in our country. But I'll vote for him over Joe Biden or any Democrat, though. Like, that's kind of their whole fun.

So Trump's the second level of his defense, besides noticing that Fannie Willis, her dad was a Black Panther, is that he's going to release a conclusive report. There's 100 pages long on Monday at a big press conference. It's going to prove the election was stolen. Now, this is funny because it's going to be a bunch of bullshit. But also, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. If the bank has $30, they won't give me that they own me. I still can't rob it.

you know what I'm saying no no I don't sorry what it was sorry I'm being dumb what do you mean you can't commit a crime because someone else committed a crime like if the election was stolen which it wasn't like I'm using the bank of analogy all right if the bank owes you $60 from a fee they errantly charged you they wronged you you cannot go in with the gun and get it back it's not a defense right if you get caught I'm not against robbing banks doesn't hurt you you rob all the banks you want but if you get caught you're in trouble all right but the media response to this is the depressing part of it because we're all kind of bullet frogs now here's like the new york times's main story about it trump indictment part four a spectacle it has become

serially routine right a former leader of the united states being called a felon is somehow worn off like yeah i'm that's what i that's how i opened the show talking about i was like you know we've all come to expect every couple of weeks that he's going to catch some more charges or whatever it's like it just look I'm allowed to be bored by it but how is it news that you as a reporter or bored by it that's not the fucking news here do you know what I'm saying

like the New York Times is like history's first draft of American politics but is the news not is it not because I didn't read this actual article is the news not that like hey y'all it's real wild that this has become routine that's not what they're that's not what they're saying

okay but I mean more but a country of short attention spans has now seen this three times before and growed, I'll be accustomed to the spectacle. The butt preceding that after saying it's important. And then they go, multiple prosecutors have now cumulied out in alleged presidential crimes free of epic proportions. Yet, most Americans made up their minds about Mr. Trump long before prosecutors wait out.

Maybe they've made up their minds because all you do is both sides bullshit like this with no actual reality in it. Anyway, I found that fucking frustrating. But I wanted to talk about, like, they're saying, like, the same notes about this is like weaponization of the Justice Department and the political prosecution, which is absolutely fucking not because you watched all these crimes happen on television. Right. If you want to see what a political prosecution in in another form or persecution looks like,

let's go to Marion County, Kansas for a second. Play this a little bit of this video about it. Tonight, ABC News has obtained video of police raiding a small town Kansas newspaper, the incident raising First Amendment questions. At issue, a TIPA reporter. received about a story the paper never published. Authorities are defending the raid. Tonight, the newspaper says its 98-year-old co-owner died one day after the raid because

of the stress she suffered. More now from ABC's Faith of Boube. I kind of mad. So this is an insane series of events involving episodes of minor corruption, local political corruption, have led to sort of major political corruption. What happened was this little newspaper, the Marion County record, run by a retired reporter and co-owned by his 98-year-old mother. They had a reporter trying to cover a political event at a restaurant. It involved the local U.S. congressman named Jake LaTurner at a restaurant owned by a lady named Carrie Newell.

All right? The reporter was denied entry to this town hall meeting. They wrote a story about it. Newell went to her Facebook page, slammed the newspaper, causing a local controversy. Her newspaper got a tip that she had gotten a DUI in 2008, which might make her liquor license illegal. All right? They get on public records websites, verify this is true, but decide not to write about it after getting her to confirm or deny it. they weren't going to write about this

but she's so pissed off the reason we're going to write about it is because the publisher his name's Eric Meyer got the feeling they got this anonymous tip from her ex-husband all right and just didn't want to get involved in whatever's going on with them right

so she files charges against them for like theft of public records for just looking shit up and the police chief gets a warrant allegedly even though no one seemed to fucking warrant and goes and steals the computers and photographs and electronic records from this newspaper, all right? This is fucking wild.

And now the whole world knows that Carrie Newell got a DUI in 2008, which is the information he was trying to suppress. And one of the craziest episodes, you know, examples of the Bostrizan theory that I've ever fucking heard in my life. Right. Yeah, dude, you're talking about like a middle of nowhere. tiny little Kansas paper or whatever like no one on earth ever ever what other than the you know 78 subscribers there and but fuck kansas or whatever would have ever heard this but now like

we're talking about it and we're a huge uh huge show with a massive reach right and that never would have happened but yeah no you're right like made it so much worse nobody would have known It gets even weirder and worse because this became a national story because there's nothing more of the reporters like talking about more than First Amendment freedoms and other reporters being harassed is he did a bunch of interviews, Eric Meyer, all right? And by the way, a couple of them, the story's really sad. It's like when his house got raided too because it wasn't just the newspaper office, when the knock of the door happened, he thought it was his mom's meal on wheels delivery.

there's not rich people they run this local newspaper for like community service yeah and she she didn't eat or sleep for two days and then she died now i'm not going to say the cops are responsible for this death of this 98-year-old woman but at a minimum they made the last 48 hours of her life stressful and miserable so fuck them for that all right um but another part of this backstory that would have never been public is that the newspaper had gotten a tip that the new police chief had had left his last job because he was suspected and had been accused of sexual improprieties on the job, right? So the newspaper was trying to report that out, but couldn't get to it. But they suspect that the police chief wanted to raid them and steal their computers because we could find out who their source was for that. And now they know that. Yeah, right.

Now the whole world knows this police chief named Gideon Cody, fuck you, was let his last job because of sexual impropriety. Yeah. Which again, no one ever would have known on any kind of grand scale. But now people do. Right. He's never going to work the rest of his life as a police officer because his first Google search will be the Dalaii Valley, the First Amendment rights of this guy who's end up owning the fucking down. He was talking about how the dilemma here is he has to make this just, he has to sue his own hometown and fucking bankruptcy, which he doesn't want to do.

I think it's pretty optimistic. You assume he'll never work as a police officer again. But I appreciate it. Another chief. Matt, if you got some, you know, comments for us, let's hear them out here. Also, I know you've got it written down here, Mark. We should say our hearts go out to the good people of Maui in Hawaii, the wildfires there. It's a truly tragic situation, man.

And you know that, you know that like commercial real estate interest and stuff and like big real estate and shit, they're already coming in trying to buy people's property up from them while it's burnt to the ground. That's happening right now. Did you also know that that's how Marcus Crassus made his money in the Roman Empire? He was like the, some people say the richest man that ever lived. Like, you know, if you like adjust for whatever, like he was a Roman, Elon Musk motherfucker. He, that's how he made all his money was doing, except he burned, he burned the houses down himself. And it was like, you know, but secretly, and it's like, hey, I'll pay you, you know, bought it on the cheap.

But it's just like, but that's happening in real life right now to people in Hawaii. Yeah, I mean, it always happens when there's, what was the old expression was blood on the ground by land. I mean, that's what New Orleans is all like condo developments after Katrina, you know. Ken Salser says, how's the strike going? I heard from a little birdie mark that there might be a sliver of light at the end of this tunnel. That's what I heard, like coming up soon, but, you know, we'll see. studios made their first actual counteroffer on Friday and the guild's going back to them tomorrow, I think. They started with the writers for some reason, so I'm not sure.

Right. And the Riders Guild is split. There's Riders Guild West and Riders Guild East. The people from the East are flying out for that, right? Which, you know, may or may not mean anything, but it, you know, it's like, you know, it's not an email. It's not a phone call. like they're coming out here for it and uh you know people didn't start losing their minds when they looked at the counter proposals so like there's there is some optimism out there but

you know yeah there hasn't been there's also like the stuff you read in the in the online or the trades or newspapers those are all studio sources so take them with the greatest sort because the guild the guild doesn't snitch they don't talk during the media blackout so uh because they don't think it helps um but uh yeah the studios have hired a new PR for firm. They said they prepared for it to go on months. I don't know. It did six of one half dozen the other, but they also just started posting full episodes of TV, new TV shows on TikTok, which no one factored into any of the contracts.

So I don't know what to do about that. Les Carnes says we're all sitting ducks without local newspapers. Yeah, I got to say the citizen statesman in Salina, Tennessee, still going strong after all these years. Although, you know, they've never put me in the paper, which is fine, I guess. you know, it is a bone of contention for me. Like when we got a subway sandwich shop, that was front page above the fold news, right?

My buddy James, who's also from Salina, he was on NCIS, right? That was also front page news. I've been on HBO three times, not a peep. I don't know what that's about. But anyway, I'm not bitter, Mark. It's fine. I don't hold a grudge against the citizen station.

I'm glad they exist. But anyway, what were you going to say? I was going to say, yeah. I mean, there was a scandal out here with some town, County got caught. They were paying all their city councilmen and their city manager like $300,000 a year or something. And nobody had noticed because there was no local newspaper. So like the city council usually pays like 20 bucks a meeting in most cities. So it's a pretty big difference. Rich Sackett says profiting off the misery of others is as old as time. Yeah. You're right. Yeah. The misery of others super profitable. They most of like huge accomplishments in human history was like just slaves, you know, just. having slaves. So that's, yes, I mean, yeah, you're 100% correct, Rich. That's our oldest

tradition, arguably. A big innovation. Yeah, I mean, like, the, uh, yeah, if you mainlanders want to help Hawaii. This is Jason Zaha. If you mainlanders want to help Hawaii, go to Florida on vacation, leave us the fuck alone. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah, I mean, like, the conspiracy theory is about Hawaii, it's wild to me. Because like, it's like, it's a fire. Fires happen. And I was reading a TikTok of the disaster unfolding real time about what it was like for people on the ground. People were literally running for their lives. The fire was spreading so fast. Like, dipping T-shirts and waters, they can breathe

and trying to save their neighbors. And, like, fire was literally raining down on them. And then people see that and like, oh, it's a directed energy weapon. It's just a fucking fire. Directed energy. That sound suspiciously like a Jewish space laser to me, Mark.

And the people doing disaster capitalism don't help with that because they go, oh, obviously they set off a bomb to so they can buy up the land. It's like, no, buying up the land. It's just what do they can buy it because you're desperate for money because you got no place to live and you don't know you have to fight with an insurance company and they offer you like twice market value for it they can turn into result and make trillions so yeah it's like yeah it's fucking it's just normal business sucks yeah does suck uh gin l johnson says no don't come here

either signed florida yeah just everybody's got to go to the iowa state fair get their boiled eggs for vacation that's all you got left everybody I would love to have y'all come on out i would yeah i would be pumped uh all right listen thank you guys for being here i want to remind you all again a couple of things so like i said if you want to see me live go to traycrouter dot com i'll be in burlington vermont this weekend austin coming up soon ohio every goddamn city in ohio and then uh beyond after that so go to traycrotter com check the dates out and if you want to support this here show you can go to weekly skews.com slash more or you can go to patreon and look my name up you'll find us either way you get

full length bonus episodes for $5 a month and you support the show in the process which we would appreciate but the main thing is as long as you keep coming back here every skews day then we will too we appreciate y'all very much we love you like chicken and we will see you on the 22nd next tuesday so you love you bye