Weekly Skews - Weekly Skews – Let Them Eat Ballrooms

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

First we talk about a fun development in China, that our overlords are certainly jealous of, where the government is forcing people to stop being sad on the internet. Then, we talk about a pretty big special interest group in America called ‘People Who Eat Food,’ and the Trump administration’s plan for everyone to live on Hamburger Helper while he cosplays as Jay Gatsby in a ballroom apparently designed by ChatGPT.Support the show

what's up everybody welcome back happy skews day to you missed out a little bit thanks for being here oh it is weekly skews i'm trey and that's mark it's uh october 28 2025 happy spooky season Halloween coming up in just a few days uh we're recording this on monday october 27th at about 1.30 p.m. Pacific time. How you doing, Mark? You got a costume picked out? Nah, not really my thing. You know, mirth. I heard that. Yeah. Normally, Katie, makes me, you know, have something. But she's been so, we just bought a house last year, and she's been so tied up with home. She's a huge Halloween person, but she's way more focused on the house, Halloween decorations this year.

that, like, worrying about mine and her costumes or whatever is kind of flown under the radar, which hits for me just fine because I'm not super into it either. She has made an extremely kick-ass costume by hand herself for my 14-year-old son. So I'm looking forward to posting that on it. It's the type of thing that, like, he could wear it a Comic-Con and I think would get some, like, kudos for it. It's pretty fucking sweet. But I just been sitting on my fat ass. That's a – somebody's got to do it.

So, speaking of scary stuff and nightmares, let's talk about nuclear weapons for a minute. So before we came on, I was asking you about if you'd seen, because you brought up point blank, point break. I was like, all have you seen Catherine Bigelow's new movie, House of Dynamite, which is supposed to be like a searing thriller about the world we live in where, you know, a nuclear missile is incoming and nobody knows where it came from and trying to figure out how a more way to respond that doesn't get everyone killed. And it's just like, at times like these, it's nice to know that responsible. sober-minded people are in charge of these doomsday weapons. So let's talk about what's going on to your old employer, the Department of Energy.

Read this headline to you. Man stores AI-generated robot porn on his government computer loses access to nuclear secrets. Yep. I'm kind of surprised. I'm a little bit surprised that he lost access to said secrets because when I worked there,

there were multiple people. I worked there for like six and a half years there were multiple people that got caught with like porn on their work computer or whatever and I don't think any of them I don't think lost they definitely didn't lose their job they had like a little probationary period thing

but I don't think they lost their clearance or none of that shit but none of these people that I'm talking about where this dude was probably in one of those human reliability program type things where they have like a higher standard for that type of shit fuelers your parents you're fucked I think one of the things this guy got trouble for is a sheer volume of it some equality

A man who works at a people overseeing America's nuclear stockpile has lost his security clearance after he uploaded 187,000 pornographic images to a Department of Energy Network. So he put it on the network, not just his own computer. What could you possibly do with that amount of porn? Like, you're no, it's like, what's he squirreling it away? Like, I'll get back to that one later. Like, no, you won't. Not when there's 187,000. Also, images?

Images is funny, too. What was it? Yeah, we have movie pictures. Yeah. Yeah. we got talkies now in the porn world but see what he was trying to do apparently was he was trying to back up his personal porn collection

so yes he does have 170,000 images but what he was trying to do what his goal was to use the 187,000 images collected over the past 30 years as training data for an AI image generator so he's tired of 180,000 images but he wants to use a computer to generate a new set of images based upon the ones he uploaded

which is using government computers for here's a funny point part here. We only know about this. Usually these kind of proceedings, they would keep it quiet, right? It only becomes public if you appeal. We know about this as it's public because he's trying to appeal to get a security clearance back because he feels like he was personally wronged. Yeah. I thought this was America. But I mean, you know, people often feel that way. You know what I mean? It's like incensed and wronged, betrayed. Yeah. He told investigators he felt his bosses is spying him too much

and the interrogation over the porn snafu was akin to the quote Spanish Inquisition don't be a fucking nerd let me put my titty pictures on the government computer I used to

I was sort of like this dude but with random drug testing when I worked there you know what I mean like I you know just like it was completely outrageous and a clear violation

of our constitutional rights and stuff which I mean I do actually believe by the way but like it was a funny like he'll die I don't especially, you really had to like understand the environment and atmosphere of the office that I worked in.

It was a bunch of like, you know, 50 plus boomers that were square as hell. And I was like calling union meanings and shit to try to get rid of the drug testing policy clearly. So I could go back to smoking weed like I did in college in retrospect. Well, it wasn't that great of a look, but, you know, who gives the fuck? In your defense, like, the problem with the drug testing is like weed stays in their system for 30 days. So, like, you can't even smoke weed in the weekends and work for the government in this scenario, right? Which is like this, but, but this guy's, like, at work doing the porn stuff. Like, like, the equivalent would be if you were smoking a bong in your cubicle.

Right. Yes, 100%. Right. But so, so he said, uh, he told me when he got caught, he said he had depression, which is something you struggle with since he was a kid. Um, he was basically felt lonely. So that's why he was doing this robot pornography. That's a gordon. He called a robot pornography.

So you can't take away his AI porn. That's his emotional support AI porn. He's depressed. which you feel bad for it? Yeah. So another one of these fucking, I can't believe, I know it takes all kinds. You're going to have lunatics work for nuclear weapons too.

But another one of these cases where a guy appealed from Blizzard late last year, a Dewee contractor lost his security clearance after getting catfished by someone online who he thought was a famous actress. The contractor sent the celebrity $3,800 in money he'd embezzled from a nonprofit, and then he got into a physical fight with his son

when his family find out. The fight landed him in jail, and when he got out, he failed to report the arrest and embezzlement to his employer. When the Department of Energy asked why, he told him he assumed the forms the DOE and sent him were part of an elaborate fishing scam.

The famous actress hitting up on the face. Dude, getting into like a teary-eyed fist fight with your adult son because he's trying to convince you that Scarlett Johansson does not want to date you or whatever is fucking hilarious. You ought to be, it's like, no, she really likes

me. But like this is a when I first went to the DOE and at the age of like 23, fresh out of grad school, I was so worried every day because I was like, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I'm some dumb kid. They made a mistake hire me. They're definitely going to realize and fire me pretty soon. And I think a lot of people start fresh out of college,

feel that type of way. And it's like one of the most illuminating experiences of your adult life, especially if you work in a place like that where it's like we had a nuclear weapons complex. There were people with access to nuclear secrets and all that shit at this job and realizing, like, looking around and slowly realizing, like, oh, a lot of these people are fucking idiots and fuck-ups and don't have a clue, been there for 30 years and still don't have a clue what they're doing. A lot, you know, not all of them. There's plenty of people that were competent in that tent, just like in almost every office, the 10% of actually competent people were responsible for 85% of, you know, the work or whatever. but it was just like it's actually oddly kind of comforting when you're like you know a young adult and you know worried that you're going to fuck all that up when realizing like oh fucking

no adults really know what the fuck they're doing well there's a picture my mom has and me like wearing my dad's work boots right and kids all do that they all try on their parents or adults clothes and stuff well that's to me that's what everybody everybody's just like little kid wearing a suit and like what they think their parents act like it's like it's all fucking fake. But that's what drives me crazy about the contours of our political day to America about what's big government versus small government. So the small government people do not want the government to be able to have the resources to feed people, which is what are we talking about today, but do think it should have the resources to end all life on

earth 10 times over. That's small government, right? I flip it. I consider myself a small government leftist or liberal or whatever because I think the government should be able to feed people and give the medicine, but you're not able to blow up the planet. Right. Because at the end, you have the guy like this in charge of in charge of like whether or not life survives on earth and then he quit at the hearing this is after his sons beat him up

and he's lost his security clearance he's trying to get a security clearance back at the hearing the individual testified that he was still not sure who he had been talking to online but when ass did not rule out that it could have been the actress right

he's like you don't know that it wasn't Mariska Hargatay right? Yeah it wasn't her you call up Mariska get her on the phone and say I get her to say it's not me

Yeah, and then she's also not under physical duress. You've got a gun to her head. It's obviously a Moreska. Oh, that's hilarious. All my old stomping grounds takes me back. All right, but let's move forward for now. On with the show. However, first, of course, I got my business to handle.

If you'd like to see me do stand-up comedy live and in person, go to Trey Crowder.com and check out my upcoming tour dates. Had a little bit of time off the road, but that's ending soon. Getting back out there. Madison, Milwaukee, Oklahoma City, Dallas, Fort Wayne, Indiana. Nashville, home for the holidays with Corey and Drew, well-read Christmas shows like we do every year. Always fun. Sacramento, Spartansburg, Wilmington, Chicago, Denver, and a bunch of other ones already on the website, Trey Crowder.com. If you'd like a palette cleanser from this effort of ours, you can check out producer Matt's audio exclusive addendum or a sister show called Good Skews, Good People Doing Good Things. You have to get that from the podcast versions of the audio-only version. version of this show. As for this one, if you enjoy it, it would like to support the show and get some more of it. You can sign up on Patreon, $5 a month, get you access to two full-length bonus

episodes. We're in the middle of our quarterly, our fall 2025 skew and a. We take questions from the patrons and answer them. Those are always two parters. We're halfway through one right now. So if you join this week, you'll get the second half and retroactively every bonus episode we've ever done. So consider it. But with that said, as for the show tonight, is Mark. tease when we're talking about a subject near and dear to my heart, stomach, family, childhood, life, and everything in between food stamps, the availability thereof and all the implications surrounding it. But first, we begin with the daily dumbass. Matt, graphic, please. Today's DD, the Chinese, for just now importing the 90s.

Frustrated by the growing uncertainty and lack of economic opportunities, young Chinese are resorting to this new buzzword by Lon to express their attitude toward life. It means voluntarily giving up the pursuit of life goals because they realize that they are simply unattainable. Someone has to be a loser, why not me? It has become the iconic slogan of the waste group. Similar Chinese expressions include to smash a cracked pot or dead pigs are not afraid of boiling water what are the

behaviors are by lunch it is a like Chinese it's so all over the world I like I like checking out

what's going on shot every now because it's like a funhouse mirror of us in the sense

that like it's not even it's not even it's not even it's not it's the same just with like a slightly

different contours and dynamics but yeah turns up where they've had like capitalism

is stuff for long for long enough like a rat race for the amount of time that's required for a country to have a rat race before the youth becomes disillusioned

and says, fuck everything. This is all bullshit anyway, you know, like you did in the 90s, like you said, slackers. You've also got a generation of kids that grow without brothers and sisters because the one child policy. And the birth rates collapsed there because women have freedom and opportunity there. And there's a whole thing called leftover women there where they, the government tries to run an ad campaign where like if you're over 30, you don't have kids, you're a huge, like you're an old crone.

And the women just took it as their leftover women as their own. label because it's like fuck man we don't like them so now there's like parental speed dating parties where parents get together and try to match their kids up even though the the boys are all in cells the women are all feminist it's like it's it's it's fascinating sort of you know it's not not that different from here but like so but their but their solution to this is try to stop people for being sad on the internet because when you're sad on the internet it gives other people permission to be sad and tune in tune out drop out right so like let me quote here of this headline cheer up or else china cracks down on the haters and cynics um yeah

Basically, they're not just going after political dissent. They're punishing bloggers and influencers who's like sad posts or like resonating in the country. Specifically, they punish bloggers who advocated for a life of less work and less pressure. An influencer said that it made financial sense not to marry and have children. And a commentator known for bluntly observing that China still lags behind Western countries in terms of quality of life. So basically, they're taking away their accounts for being performatively sad or being honestly sad, however you want to put it. And thinking about in America where the best way to go viral to make a living off the Internet is to be either outrageous or depressed. Yep.

Like, that's half of our economy. Who you telling? Fucking, yeah. I go with both, you know, sometimes equal parts, more outrage publicly. But there's plenty of depressed in there, too, I think. Yeah, if you can't, we can complain to be depressed on the Internet. Our own fucking business model goes away. That's right.

So the two-month campaign launched by the cyberspace administration of shining late September is aimed at purging content and incites excessively pessimistic sentiment and panic or promotes diffuse ideas such as hard work is useless. Basically, people complain about being overworked and sad and not advancing in life. Imagine that, right? So, to be quoting from a Chinese state broadcaster, the Internet is not a dumping ground for negativity. I mean, I don't know what internet they've been on. I mean, I do understand that China has their own sort of internet over there, right?

So I guess that's kind of what we're talking about. They're trying to police it into being, you know, shiny, happy post only, I guess. But not around these parts. They have a great firewall of China, right? Which it can be closed off somewhat, but people have VPNs, even though they just finally made VPN. But the dirty little secret is like this candidate was kind of open. like you're not supposed to speak publicly or whatever but most days you can log on in New York Times and when they block it is not really doesn't really make any sort of sense like the

thing about our current aspiring authoritarian government is they don't know how to do it like China does not like they don't like they haven't done Tiananmen Square since 1989 for a reason I think they determined it didn't fucking work right where their government's like let's do all Tianan Squares all the fucking time because we're stupid yeah um but it's that have to have Like, yeah, it's like, if you can't put negativity on the internet, where the fuck are you supposed to put it? They're trying to take it back to the 50s where you have to be happy in public, then go home and be your wife and kids, I guess. Exactly, yeah.

So as part of this, let me quote here, in recent years, some young people have opted out of the rat race in favor of a minimal life of, quote, lying flat or giving up on goals altogether and, quote, letting it rot. And two bloggers who promoted a minimalist lying flat lifestyle were blocked from adding followers late last month. So when you talk about laying flat, it's sort of like planking but depressed. People literally take the pictures of themselves doing it If you got this picture, Matt Yeah, just like

So That's a lifestyle You described it as the lying flat lifestyle Like how do you You can't only ever lie flat Unless you just do it in one place until you die Like you have to somehow transport yourself In between all the various places

Where you will be lying flat And otherwise doing nothing Yeah So you gotta figure that part out you got it you basically like if you've ever heard her in melville short story borrow be the scrivener it's just that but yeah it's basically like just their gen x slacker stuff the fucking 90s right it's just like it's that um and like like the the tone of this Taiwan news report from Taiwan is very sad but I want us to enjoy the images this lady newscaster's talking over if you have this video about

in China graduated from university the problem is many of them have no jobs to enter as China's youth unemployment rate rises above 20 years and the post-COVID economy stagnates. Traditional pictures of students throwing their hats and gowns in the air have been replaced by photos. You get the gist. For the audio only listener is pictures of kids in graduation caps who are just lying strewn about stairways, outdoor staircases in the middle of streets and shit. This is like this is celebrating graduation is by pointing out how they're never going to

succeed in life when they're already giving up. Right. Oh, Jesus. So, let me quote, Beijing is concerned as such pessimism doesn't just

discourage citizens that are being productive members of society. It could turn into criticism of the ruling communist party. The internet regulator

ordered platforms to root out posts that use isolated news events to point to broader social problems, a style of commentary that the authority condemned is, quote,

malicious misinterpretation that fuels sentinism. Again, that's our show. Right. So, like, the stuff you're worried about, you're warned about talking about in public, you can't talk about parents having, like, unloving children, you can't talk about the workplace being fooled of unmotivated young people. You can't talk about men are being surrounded by materialistic women, and you can't talk about women who are trapped by bad men who cheat. That's the whole internet. These kids don't want to work.

These kids don't want to work. These hos be trifling and men are dogs. I mean, I guess they still have cat videos, right? Cat pictures of cat videos. So that's a pretty important part of the Internet. And draft kings. Parlay bets. You get cat videos and parley bets is all you can do.

Nice. Yeah, I mean, I don't, you know, it's one of those things where you hear all the time about their, like, do they not have like a social credit score or whatever? Like, that's a real thing, right? like over there that like that episode of black mirror not but not i mean not bad hardcore but like and that you're monitored what you say and all this and you can't criticize them and everything and it's like um it just sounds like you know i don't know how to put it's like the government is like listen stop being all negative or you might get the wrong idea uh about the government being bad and if you don't listen to us you know something bad will happen to you from

Us, you know, the beatings will continue until morale improves, uh, type of thing. That's basically it. Uh, but yeah, so I don't really call it up on this, but I know it's a right wing meme that, like, China has the social credit score thing. I would a dystopian nightmare it is, but also, it, we have credit scores. Uh-huh. It's like, uh, so I did, uh, thanks to, uh, well, was it looking into some chat of stuff and one of our skewers, Tunggitong heart sent me this story about the origin of maybe of our frog costume protesters. I don't know those trade. This has been going on in China that people protesting, not really protesting and

turned into protests, but people wearing these inflatable frog costumes in the streets going back to like 20, 23. This is a trend called frog selling their babies. Okay. Basically, the contours, and like, basically the sequence of events here, if I, if I'm describing it accurately, which forgive me, I can't read Chinese. All I know is American English translations of what's going on over there. It started with a 32-year-old former teacher named Tong from Nanjing.

She designed the frog costume, taking her inspiration from a villain in an 1890s cartoon they have over there. And she began wearing the frog suit around Nanjing while selling little frog balloons. It was like her gimmick to sell frog balloons was pretending they were her babies as she was selling her baby frogs. Yeah, that just sounds like cute shit to me. Well, there's also, like there's an added element here that doesn't quite translate. I'm trying to think of another, like a similar idiom, but I guess frogs in Chinese culture are like thought of as sad, depressed animals.

Okay. So like, kind of how we think of owls is wise, I guess. Right. Yeah. Do we have a sad, depressed animal? I mean, I just keep thinking of like Eeyore who's not, you know, not, hashtag, not all donkeys, you know, I think most of them. Well, dog, when you call somebody a donkey, that's a bit stupid, right?

I know, that's why I said, not all don't know. I can't, um, I don't know. We don't even have sloths in this country, and they're just slow. They're not necessarily sad. I don't know what frogs ever did to the Chinese, but also now I'm back to being confused. If frogs are, is this, so this is related to the thing you're talking about. Frogs are sad and pathetic. A lady dressed up like a frog and starts selling frog balloons, which a generation ago no one would want because they're sad and pathetic.

But right now, everyone's like, yeah, we're all sad and pathetic. I'm going to be sad and pathetic my whole life. In fact, I want to be. And so now frogs are having a moment and they're related. Okay. I mean, quote here from my Chinese commenter on their internet, quote, if life wasn't so hard, who would be so cruel as to sell their own children? And that became a popular meme on the Chinese internet, right?

But it did take off as a meme. If you got this video, Matt, here's a one from a Webo, which is basically their internet. It's their Facebook combined Venmo with Uber. Oh, I mean, that's literally the same fraud. isn't it? Yeah. I mean, pretty much. I thought you were...

No. I thought that might be a stretch. I was going to... Well, that's not exactly... But the guy in Portland, it looks like an, you know, an inflatable costume version of that exact same frog. Because I just thought, you know, it was just... And I was going to be like, I don't know, did I mean, fucking people like frogs. I could, it might not be related.

But that literally looks like the same frog. So, yeah, I do it is the inspiration. I do the idea if it's a one-to-one or maybe he's inspired separately. But we don't tend to have a lot of cultural crossover with the Chinese the way we do with like outside of Hagen movies and stuff. Yeah, with Japan and South Korea, K-pop shit. So, but then because it became a meme about where people were expressing their sadness and economic desperation about pretending to be a frog who's selling their babies. The Chinese cops started cracking down on street vendors doing this. They have their police force instruction differently than hours.

They have urban management is sort of like their parking and code enforcement and also like beat cops. they started like babies trying to arrest people for not having permits selling these fake baby frogs so yeah like you said the beatings will continue until morale approved here's a gift I found a frog's rank from the cow

man so this is a worldwide phenomenon we got yeah you have more in common with a sad lady selling her frog babies on the Chinese street and you do anyone in either one of her fucking governments man solidarity across the Pacific

All right. Honorable mention for Daily Dumbass people complaining about beef prices for not realizing that squirrel meat is free. One trend and true brand is making a big comeback as consumers tighten their wallets. And here it is. Hamburger Helper.

The mix of mac and cheese and ground beef is seeing a surge in sales and lowly. It's one trend Does she just, did this Fox News lady just define hamburger helper? What do you mean? she said hamburger helper a mixture of macaroni and cheese and hamburger like she just he defined it am i am i that out of touch that i feel like everybody knows what fucking hamburger helper is

oh yeah i don't know i didn't even uh i didn't even realize that that's how she had described it but that's it it is funny that i don't know i didn't see the whole rest of that segment or broadcast but that i don't know that they're like upside to things being terrible right hamburger helpers back remember how much you loved hamburger helpers They're crushing it right now. Before we can get in this, let me preface this by, you know, disclaimer for everyone. I do love hamburger helper. But, yeah, it's just a funny way to spend, you know, economic hardship or impending, impending hunger, famine in the fucking country.

And they're like, let's talk about how good hamburger helpers doing. It's like they're trying to frame, like, being broke as nostalgia for your childhood. Right. Yeah. It's very, very weird. But, yeah, so basically, because, let me quote here from the Washington Post, in the absence of the official government data, social media users are casting about for hints, even music festival-related ones, about the true state of the American economy.

And one of them is, yes, hamburger helper sales are up 15% this year. So rather, Ginzi loves the hamburger helper spokesman hand because they're so into gooning or they're fucking broke, right? So, like, so let's talk about this for a second, because, like, there's some other fun economic indicators that aren't from the government. Corboard boxes are another economic indicator because cordboard box sales and manufacture go down when the economy tanks because people are buying less. People aren't buying houses?

Yeah. Corbore box sales are down 5% this year. So the corporal boxes go down and we stop buying stuff and back up and move into them to live, I guess. Thrift shopping is up and job hopping is down. So yeah, the plan to cook labor and economic stats is definitely working and everyone is totally full. They're not noticing that they're having. to buy hamburger helper at a time when B prices are through the roof it's like why do I not is it just because I'm not plugged it I mean I've I get everything from you pretty much and also when I actually look on the internet and everything but like you just say yeah people definitely aren't you know they're not noticing you're fooling them for sure they're not going to notice what's going on in their own house but like all I ever heard during the Biden administration you know was about how furious everybody was about about

all of this type of thing, even though, and inflation was bad, but the other economic indicators were good, right? But it's like, all you, that, and, you know, he's papal-brained is the only two things you ever heard every fucking day. But now it's like, it seems to be the opposite where it's like they're not even releasing stats or numbers because they know that it's actually bad, but everybody's pretending it's good, but we're saying all, but they really, how could you not know? It's your own refrigerator that's, you know, emptying out. But, like, I just feel like I'm not generally hearing the same outrage or whatever yet, manufactured or otherwise. Do you know what I'm saying?

Is it because there's so many other things that, you know, you can point to to be mad about or bitch about or whatever or just not quite there yet or are people just going to play along? Yeah, I mean, like, what percentage of the news would you spend talking about inflation if you ran CNN right now, Trey? Yeah, fair enough. Like, it's like, like, so it was kind of funny. like one of the cable news I think it might have been CNN saw a funny clip where they were talking about how like the economy doesn't pull at the top of anyone's list

of big problems right now like with some victory for the Trump administration's like you might want to consider thinking about that thinking about that a different way right yeah the other problems yeah there's like there's like 10 wars going on we're about to invade Venezuela and people have been kidnapped off the street it might that might be it might affect how people rank the problems going on in the United

States. Right. So, but yeah, the basic theory of how to distribute data is that people don't notice if they're hungry, if the line is green. And hunger will also be harder to measure now if the USDA has canceled an annual food and security survey calling it redundant and politicized. This is on the cusp of about 42 million people losing their SNAP benefits. Snap benefits, like, a bunch of people, we're about to go through Thanksgiving and the holidays with one in eight of Americans not having food increasing their food insecurity and their plans to have state media announced to people

actually you're full and for non-American listeners to frame things we're talking about here a few different things as we talk about food stamps and SNAPEBT food stamps are a figurative expression because back in the day when you had welfare they were a book of stamps right

and that the program that funds it's called SNAP that supplemental nutrition something program, whatever. And EBT is the card, right? Yeah, supplement nutrition assistance program. And EBT is like the debit card. They put the money on so you can buy food. Right, okay. So.

I'm old enough to remember the literal stamps. And my mama, you know, using those as currency for her pill trade and stuff. We ain't got to get into all that. She also paid my babysitter in food stamps. It wasn't all bad. But anyway, old school with this food stamp lore, baby. but yeah, in my home, I looked it up, because I talked about this last week, brief, this got like announced last week that this might happen and I put it in the video I did

and that made me look up my hometown or my home county, Clay County went like almost 85% for Trump and a quarter of the people there, 25% of the people in Clay County are on food stamps, you know, which I thought might even be higher, but still, I mean, a quarter's quite a bit. yeah so also there's so when this stuff comes up like I've seen a bunch of right wing influences

be like I can't believe 42 million people that rely on the government for food like basically we should like they shall get jobs like for the record 55% of people

on food stamps have jobs right like most Walmart employees are like on food stamps and shit which is just corporate welfare which everybody's fine not everybody's fine with

but everybody on the right is fine with but yeah all kinds of shit like that like I have a I have a relative. I'm not going to be specific to try to preserve some of the anonymity. Who used to work at Walmart was a single mom, was on food stamps.

And she would have gladly worked more, but Walmart kept her hours low in order to make sure she did not qualify for health insurance. Yeah, benefits and insurance and stuff. Yeah. It's all rigged and fucked. Uh-huh. And the right-wing response to that is, well, nobody makes you work at Walmart. That is true. But Walmart would like people to work there, I bet.

Also, I bet you would like people to work. Well, maybe not like senators. They probably don't go to fuck. But either way, it's like, that's what always kills me about. this shit is it's like you use these services and shit the world in society and ever needs you know cashiers and fucking janitors and service people and waiters and all this all these jobs that you know you look down on and talk shit about all the time so i don't know if they just think teenagers are supposed to do all of those jobs part time you know while they're in

high school like and that's the only people that should ever work a job like that or how the fuck they think it's supposed to work but it's so stupid so either like we do the kids go to school and shift so some of them are free during the day and go to class at night or we just don't have Walmart open between the hours of eight and four or something right i'm not i'm not sure what their plan for everyone society is um but like yeah like you said it's like it's basically a subsidy for walmart that's another way to think of food stamps also a subsidy for the people who shop at walmart because your goods are cheaper because the government is feeding the people who work there instead of walmart right yep um but reactionaries are so

this sort of connects the china the china thing like reactionaries are so easy to fucking anger that the most guaranteed way to make money or grow viral and get cloud on the internet is by making them mad because they will scream about stuff to no end. Which is why if you open up TikTok or basically any internet platform, you'll see a mix of AI generated videos

of black women, it's always black women, screaming to the camera about losing their EBT, right? Or another fun thing is here is people, actual human beings lying about being on welfare and gloating to people who are gladly shared the videos who think they're being honest. I saw one of a woman who's like, I'm still getting my $5,000 a month in welfare.

I guess you guys don't know how to play the system. I'm like, you guys are, people getting mad at that should not have driver's licenses. Mm-hmm. No one's getting $5,000 a month in welfare. Right. So there's also a new thing happen in the lunatic internet where because the number 42 million people being on food stamps

seems incomprehensible to them, that the new conspiracy theory is actually America has, way more than 340 million people in it. It must be like a billion. Because there can't be that high a percentage of Americans on food stamps because I don't know any. Right. Or you don't think you know any. Yeah.

I mean, I don't know who the people are that, I mean, again, I just said, like in town. I'm from a place that's hugely MAGA right now and also filled with people that are on these programs and stuff. So, like, to me, it's weird even hearing the idea. But I know what you mean. It's like suburban white people. It's like the people that always talk about how like, you know, racism is over and not real and finished and everything because they spent their entire lives and still live in like a 99 point whatever percent white fucking suburban neighborhood or something and don't ever interact with any other race of people other than white people and shit. And it's like, you know, how would you literally how would you possibly know anything about racism one way or another? It's like that, too, with, you know, food stamps and poor people, except it's actually, well, no, it's not more malicious than how they are about racism.

But it's also malicious because the two overlap a lot, obviously. But they have a lot of opinions about food stamps and welfare and ship, because, as you already alluded to, because they don't know any. So they don't know it, you know, but they're convinced that they're all getting $5,000 a month that it's easy to be broke, you know. Like they've just got their feet kicked up living a lavish lifestyle on the government, on the taxpayer dime because they're lazy. That's what they're all, you know, convinced of when, generally speaking, none of those things are true. But it's just like, you know, they're terrified of trans people and Muslims and shit, and they don't know any of them either. These people just build this entire reality, this like fucking, you know, evil, liberal matrix in their heads that they have to navigate as good, God-faring Christian conservatives. And they're driven crazy by all these boogeymen that they make up that don't really exist.

and it applies to basically every aspect of their fucking ethos, but especially poor people and poverty. And you and I have been, I've never, I've never, like, had to miss meals or anything, but like my parents are pretty lower working class. And then I dove head first in the poverty as an adult. You were poor as a kid.

And I can tell you, like, if there's some sort of like cushy safety, social safety net, I've never been able to find it. No. Right. And so, so in this context, So because the, you know, the Graham mentioned the government shutdown yet, but mayors and House Democrats this week urged agriculture secretary of Brooke Rollins to fund November's benefits using a SNAP contingency fund estimated by the center on budget and policy priorities to contain about $5 billion. That amounts to 60% of the cost of one month benefits.

So they could keep people, could keep SNAP going for another three weeks or so, but they're choosing not to as a gun to people's heads to try to force Democrats. to pass a continuing resolution that does not fix any sort of problem long term in this environment and so and then people will blame the democrats for like not doing it right that's i think that's their hope yeah um but i'm not sure i mean we're i don't like i think there was the um the u sda website if you go there right now if you like if you're a person who's if you guys aren't familiar they this snap is funded through the department of agriculture because it's basically it's not it feeds people yes but it's in the farm bill because also the the food that's bought from american farms it's also like a corporate welfare subsidy and it makes things work i'm not complaining about that aspect of it i'm just saying that like there's also fucking farmers here which are going to get to it a little bit but the uh yeah they're uh so the us day website if you go there it says the the the reason you're not getting your your food stamps is because of trans people and illegal undocumented immigrants right so that's the game they're

trying to play um and u.s food banks are fucking bracing for like a huge um a ton of turnout they're already like begging for extra donations and stuff um hunger in the u.s is already on a multi-year rise after we dialed back all the the COVID era um you know social social safety programs and many food banks going here from a guardian piece many food banks reporting higher need and they saw at the peak of the pandemic Cynthia Kirkhart for the CEO of facing hunger food bank in huntington west Virginia has already had to explain to customers this year whether the organization is rationing bags of potatoes. We are the Von Potato Whole Family Nation.

Yep. Eastern Blocky around here, which checks out. You know, Trump, otherwise is Putin and his whole thing. So sort of makes sense for being turned into that. Yeah. And so military is also not getting paychecks right now. Let me quote a year of my piece from late last year. Food insecurity among military families, unacceptable, however I could say.

Basically, 325,000 military families at that point were struggling with hunger and financial hardship. And according to a 2023 study by Rand, which is like a military think tank, 26% of active duty service members are considered food insecure and about 15% rely on food stamps or food banks to support their families. So I think they got a pay raiseer this year from the one big beautiful actor or whatever, but I doubt they're getting caught up on bills and currently aren't getting paid.

So basically we're going to make them invade to Venezuela on an empty stomach so oil companies can get rich. Right. Seems like a good way to engender loyalty in the troops. Isn't that like literally the most important thing about like people that understand military

like logistics and tactics and that type of thing is not about like battle strategies and shit? It's like food logistics and rationing. The most important part is keeping your soldiers fed above all else, if possible. We're just casting that aside while, like you said, gearing up to start multiple unnecessary wars. Yeah, the expression you're searching for, I think,

is an army fights in the stomach. That's what makes Ukraine some of those valuable ways to lose state of the planet, because it's called the breadbasket of the world. And, yeah, so, yeah, isn't that, like, one of the things that made Ulysses Grant a brilliant general, was he figured out a forge off the land so he could break the supply chains and that's what like able to move around

quickly. Anyway, we're not, we're not getting to dad history channel stuff right now. But so, um, as a side note, Timothy Mellon, um, Earl returning mega billionaire,

air of the Carnegie Mellon fortune or whatever. Uh, somebody donated $130 million to true to, to pay true paychecks. It turns out it was Timothy Mennelon who talked about in a recent episode because he's the mega billionaire psycho who's obsessed with finding Amelia Earhart. Remember this right?

And Trump How could I forget? Yeah. Trump released some some classified files about Amelia Hart's disappearance and everybody wondered why and it was like, oh, it turns out

Melon's obsessed with that's probably why. What the fuck they're going to do with $130 million? Like, nothing. About to say, like, I'm no, you know, I'm no math doctor or whatever and I haven't literally run the numbers, but I know for a fact that $130 million is not enough to keep paying

America's troops for any a day like you know we have I thought we I thought we have someone did the math and said it comes to about a hundred dollars per service member but I thought it'd be less than I thought we had four minutes anyway it doesn't matter but like it's like basically the government's like turn to the troops and like here's a week's worth of hamburger helper on us go crazy exactly yeah

and roll them in the jelly of the month club like in fucking Christmas vacation and get ready to charge a machine gun nest in the Amazon So this, I saw this and it's fucking, I don't really understand anything more, but if you got this news story, Matt, cue it up. And I'm told that she's leaving tomorrow. Now, Taco Zil Fluffy has become increasingly popular over the last couple of years, even serving free meals to military service members during the shutdown. But now they are closing their doors as the mother of the business has learned that she has an unexpected deadline to leave the country. all right so this lady has been here forever she has a work visa they just decided to take away when she reapplied for it her son owns a taco restaurant use her recipes and she's been feeding the troops and now she can't even feed the troops like if you were trying to design a system to make everything fail at once what the fuck would you be doing differently right but is the theoretically them like pissing off the troops like this and the military establishment and the leadership, too, like, through Hexeth and everything, from our perspective,

obviously on an individual level for those guys that aren't getting paid, like, that sucks. But, like, that should be good, right? Like, meaning for those of us who hope not to end up in a full-blown, you know, authoritarian dictatorship. They're not going to be loyal to him, is what I'm saying, which he'll need that to make something like that actually happen, right? You would think so, but they think they're so gassed up in their own supply. They really do think that everyone worships Trump as a god emperor. This is what he experienced all day.

So even like a troop who's hungry, who doesn't understand why he just deported the lady who gives him tacos is going to obey his orders to fire on American citizens or protesting his term trying to occupy that White House for a third term. Right. But anyway, I guess this lady was taking a job from an American and see if anyone wants to apply to be that guy's mom. What the fuck, man? It's all so stupid. And this is all like, the food banks are also fucked, preemptively fucked by Trump because the federal government also supplies food to food banks to backstop the people who don't get enough food stamps. So the food banks have already cut way back on distributing meat because that's the first thing they cut back on. They're rationing potatoes because in the spring, the Trump administration abruptly cut 500 million deliveries from a program that sends U.S. produced meat, dairy, eggs, and produce to food banks and other organizations across the country, which is a spring.

about a quarter of the funding the program were to receive last year. Basically, milk eggs in Turkey are the first to go because healthy stuff is more expensive, right? And the red states are the most fucked, not just because they get the most food stamps, but also because the food banks in red states tend to get less state support because the elect Republican governors who don't fund shit like food banks. And like I said, the farmers are also fucked because the emergency food assistance program was created in 1983 under Ronald Reagan to purchase farmers surplus food and distributed it's low-income people.

Right. Yeah. But I, you know, I just remembered some arguments I used to have with people back in Tennessee about this type of stuff. People that, like, live in these places and are affected about these types of things, but don't think these programs should exist. You know, hardcore small government conservatives, like you're talking about earlier, the thing taxpayer dollars shouldn't go to any of this shit. If you ask them like, well, who should, should we just let people starve this?

I know, of course not. You're like, well, who should do it? And they'll be like, you know, well, you know, the church, churches should do this. that, right? And it's like, it's funny because it's like, and where does the church's money come from? It's like, well, all the people in the church give the church a certain percentage of the money they have. And then the church did this is that out to take care, you know, appropriately to people who need the support of that fund or whatever else. It's like, okay, so just just putting God into it makes it okay. But also, they very won't. I mean, some churches fucking walk to walk,

but like they're not going to like, in places like my hometown, they're not going to step up and fill this void if it gets real bad, even if they want to. I don't know that they'd be able to, you know. It's too big of a void. That's what I'm saying. I don't think they could do it even if they wanted to, which a lot of them don't. So it's just people are going to be fucked. What kills me about that is like, let's follow this to its logical conclusion, right?

The market should answer all problems or a charity. The road that goes by my mom's house, two-lane highway, is not a profit center. It's always roads, yeah. If you turn that into a toll road, the tolls would not fund the construction of it. The existence of rural communities is itself a government-funded program. Unless you want to be able to get around, the food you buy at the grocery store, the money you earned was transported on roads that were built by other people's tax dollars so food could get to your grocery stores. You understand what I'm saying? Yeah, of course, yeah.

You are on welfare, whether or not you get it directly or not. Because we live in a fucking society. Right. I'm glad damn. All this shit makes me want to lose my mind. So, hanging over all this, Trump's construction of a stupid fucking ballroom.

Yeah, right. Just the optics of just like not giving less of a fuck and fucking, what I said my video was our own, you know, fat, dumb Emperor Nero fiddle farting around or whatever,

but it's like that type of thing. While Rome, Georgia Burns, I said, it was pretty good line. But anyway, you know. He's don't remember Marie Antoinette with sag of your tits. Right. Right.

Yeah, although I guarantee you, at least some of our fans right now are going to tell you that you're being unfair about Marie Antoinette. But anyway, yeah. But we like Marie Antoinette? I'm not saying we like her, but that whole... I know it's apodryful. I know. And apparently, again, some people say it was not fair to her and she really wasn't so bad.

I only know this because I used to have a joke about Marie Antoinette and shit like that and come up in some of them are, you know, lady fans just really let me have it over the years. Like, stop talking shit about Marie Antoinette. It's like, Jesus Christ, okay, fine. I got that. I didn't cut her head off. All right.

So, but the sheer optics of building a golden dance hall while starving the masses over Thanksgiving is a fucking choice, man. Insane. I know. And if you don't think, this is not going to impact people who get food stamps and snap or EBT cards or whatever, because, like, sure, prices might drop in the immediate because there'll be extra food on the shelves that poor people can't can no longer buy but then that justifies the grocery store is going to be less justified in purchasing more stuff to fill the shelves yeah right no i know i almost brought sort of that up earlier when we were talking about talking about my hometown and food stamps how many people there have them and everything and i just wonder like what you know without people to spend food stamps in the we have two not great grocery stores in my you know, home county. Like, I don't think you could take 24% of their revenue away or whatever for any real amount of time without them being in fucking trouble.

And it's like, everything else is already closed in Salina. The fucking grocery stores are about to, like, there's not even going to be a town left before long. And it's all because of these fucking policies that Clay County has voted 85 to 15 for, for 20 years or whatever. I think grocery stores have like 2 to 3% profit margins. right yeah yeah so yeah so then the grocery store goes under the people that work there unemployed where they go they don't know there's no place from to buy food is a place from to work at and there's no food benefits yep um so while we're on subject of the ballroom i want i want to look at this picture of it because this is even stupider than you could possibly

imagine not as it just like cruel and like getting rid of our history isn't it i don't like the i think the west the east wing was built in a 40s so and it's not like the part of the house but like look at this okay what we're looking at right here from the model that Trump has in the Oval Office. The various plans Mr. Trump has shared have suggested a hurried process, along with the differences in the drawings, the model he displayed on Wednesday appeared to have some mistakes like a staircase leading up from the south lawn to no clear landing. That's what's on the left right there. There's a staircase to nowhere. And then the right that circle you see is two windows facing each other.

So if you look out a window, you look in another window. This is clearly somebody said make ballroom into chat GPT. Right. Yeah. Well, you knew anything that he did was at best going to be gaudy, tacky bullshit, you know, Nouveau-Riche type fucking horse shit. But it being just straight up badly, incompetently put together would also be, you know, strangely appropriate. And it ain't also, it's not going to stop at $300 million either.

I feel like everybody knows that. You know what I mean? Like, it's already ballooned up. Like, it was supposed to be $200 or whatever than $250,000, $300. It's going to just keep. And I know it's like ostensibly not tax. taxpayer dollars, so it's still going to, like, cost taxpayers' money somehow, which I can't remember. What's that about?

But they'd say it's been funded by Apple and Google and Meta and all then. But it's like you said, it's just very, it's fucking the whole, like, hunger games feel of it all. It's just, uh, they just don't care, any of them. Like, any of them involved in any one of them should have been able to go, like, and I'm, to say, hey, y'all don't feel like this kind of maybe plays? bad right now or whatever, like, but they don't give a fuck. Why would they? They feel like they don't have to and they might not have to. Yeah. And on a sad note, while Trump gave Argentina $40 billion to prop up Javier in Malay in his election that he just won, Snap cost the government $8 billion a month. So we could have ran a snap for five more months off the 40

billion he gave to Argentina. Right. I saw those results from that election that we've been talking about. So we had already given So the plan worked basically We gave it Or is it just our promise of giving the money Was enough to calm their You know stormy waters down there Long enough to get him through that election

And now we're going to follow through on sending it to them And continuing the bailout prop up thing Because I know that he won But I thought, I didn't know if I'm not being Time to send all the money down there yet But I'm not I'm not being totally fair with saying

We gave the money we did was do some currency swaps I think that the problem, right, but Yeah, but the promise of us backstopping it stopped the peso from collapsing. Right, which allowed him to survive the election, at least in theory, which he did. Yeah, and also won

like handily too, right? It wasn't a majority. I think 41% of they'd say it's the equivalent of their midterm election, so he went. I think it was 49 to 41 or something like that. It was like eight or nine points. I just read the article on CBS News like that before we got on here. Maybe the percentage

changed since last night. The last I saw was 41 to 29. So, but so, yeah, it was a handy victory, but it was a majority. Yeah. All right. Anyway, um, fuck, where were we at? Oh, here?

Yeah. We have another honorable mention for y'all as we get down to the finish line. Canada, for not knowing you can't lie in a commercial, even when you're not lying. Oh, yes, this. I don't know. They choose it on a commercial.

Ronald Reagan loved tariffs, and they said he didn't, and I guess it was AI or something. They cheated badly. Canada got caught cheating on a commercial. Can you believe it? All right. So, this is Trump complaining about an anti-tariff commercial that the Ontario paid for to air or the World Series. It just plays a clip of a Ronald Reagan speech. This is absolutely real, not AI, talking about how free trade is good.

Yeah, not out of context either, really. I know they later posted the whole unedited entire speech from which they pulled that clip and it's like not he met basically what it seems like he means in the ad that they played is what I'm saying

it's not like dude like I'm not a fan of Ronald Reagan but if there's one thing the guy was known for is he likes trade and didn't like Russia because they didn't do trade right so that's basically the core of the whole guy's fucking thing is no one should stand the way of anybody

making a dollar, right? And the fucking Reagan library, after pressure from the Trump administration, put a statement saying that it was, they were going to sue Canada for a speech they think they own because it's on their YouTube, even though it's in the public domain. The whole thing, everybody's such bootling and cowards right now. And just for context, like how stupid everything is, the impetus for the North American free trade zone, the NAFTA, right? That started with Ronald Reagan, who made the idea part of his 1980 presidential campaign. So the thing that everyone's convinced themselves they fucking hate was actually Reagan's idea that

Bill Clinton takes the political rap for because he decided to do a Republican thing. Yep. Story is all of his time. Here's the crazy part. Reagan was generally pro-immigrant. Like his idea for NAFTA included like a free movement zone where basically you'd be able to move from Mexico to America

without any paperwork. Or like the EU works. Like the European Union? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we're going to talk about three balls. Imagine a politician pitching that right now. dude, but fucking, like, and then they're, you know, their original king. They're, um, who's, uh, oh, Kronos. That's a Greek mythology reference.

I think he's like the father of, the original father of the gods. So Trump would be Zeus or Jupiter and Reagan's Kronos, I think. I don't know. Yeah, except they've disavowed, uh, Reagan altogether. Like everything Reagan actually, like, I guess, I actually, like, I actually think that Maybe Zeus imprisons Kronos and some kind of weird cop. It doesn't, none of that matters. But anyway, I used to be really into Greek mythology shit like a lot of bros did, I'm sure, when I was like 14, and now it's all just like a world.

I thought it was, maybe it wasn't, didn't Zeus kill his dad by cracking his head open, then another god sprung out of his head or something? I don't know. It's been a while. Yeah. So, I went to, the terrorists are just fucking going great, man. So for one example, Iowa, which went for Trump three times, probably no states, I'm quoting it from New York Times, yet perhaps no state has struggled more with these economic policies. During the first quarter of 2025, Iowa's GDP dropped by 6.1 percent more than any other state outside from neighboring Nebraska. 6.1 percent, like you would get an annualized drops in GDP of about 12, I think, at the beginning of the Great Depression. So Iowa's going through half a Great Depression. We got localized Great Depression in the Midwest. It's not just farming, soybeans and stuff.

We're talking about manufacturing inputs that come in from overseas. They've really hurt their economy and deporting everyone that works in their meatpacking plants. And hanging over all this, Scott Bissent, the fucking Treasury Secretary, was being questioned about all this shit. Because Trump, the reason I put up that video is Trump slapped more tariffs on Canada because he's mad about the stupid fucking Ronald Reagan ad. Here's Scott Besson being questioned about that shit over the weekend on Meet the Press. Of course, this week, President Trump abruptly broke off trade talks with. Canada and put another 10% tariff on Canada in response to an ad that the government of Ontario ran it features former president Ronald Reagan. Why is the president setting trade policy based

on a television ad he doesn't like? Well, Kristen, let's think about this. This is a kind of propaganda against U.S. citizens. It's Psiops. Why would the government of Ontario, I'm told that they've spent, they have spent, or we're planning to spend up to $75 million on these ads that come across the U.S. borders. So what, what was the purpose of that other than to sway public opinion? And, you know, it's some kind of propaganda that the premier of Ontario unilaterally launch. Will the 10% tariff supply to all Canadian goods, Mr. Secretary?

I mean, it moves them to do that, right? They understand that tariffs are bad and they're going to fuck everybody over on both sides of the borders. So, like, they're spending money to keep that from happening. Like, it's not weird, you know. Also, like, why are you complaining about Canada and SIAPs that are true while we're protecting the right of the Israeli government to run SIOPs and American citizens based upon bullshit and lies?

There's literally mega churches in Texas complaining because the Israeli government is sending their congregations ads based upon geo-targeting who attends their churches. And the federal government is refusing to do anything about it. And like the Trump administration's

main belief is there's nothing wrong with the Russian governments running siops and American citizens. But Canada can't buy an advertisement at the fucking World Series? And Bissett, I thought it came to do in this video, so I wanted to show you guys. He goes, he goes, by the way, I'm a farmer too.

I farm. I farm. soy beans. I'm being impacted by this as well. Scott Besson owns $25 million in real estate in North Dakota that he rins out to other people to farm, soybeans, and corn. He's a sharecropper. Right. And I bet you the rent's still obligated to be paid.

So he's not losing a fucking dime in the short term, right? So this is like, this is, I don't understand who he thinks his bases anymore because even pissed off the American, the American Cattlemen's Association, they're screaming about his fucking plan to import Argentinian beef.

Right. This is an environment where the farmers, they want prices high. The American Cattleman Association basically, fuck your, fuck your hamburger helper. And they're, so they're complaining about, their main complaint is that Argentina cannot guarantee the safety of their products being shipped in because they all have foot and, they tend to have a lot of foot and mouth disease in Argentinian herds. Trump administration concedes it's possible but says, quote,

the Trump administration warrants Argentina beef might be diseased, but U.S. may still import. They're so focused on making sure Javier Malay establishes like an anarcho-capitalist paradise where everyone has Bitcoin and no government services,

they are going to fucking import disease cattle to kill all their American cows. Mm-hmm. Fuck, man. Yep. But now regulations, that's just, uh you know big government bullshit that only stifles growth so here we are okay we'll see how it goes i reckon thank you guys for watching that's going to do it for this episode of weekly skews we

appreciate yin's being here um like i said go to tracrider dot com check out my upcoming tour dates uh next up is the midwest milwaukee and madison specifically wisconsin uh also check out producer matt's audio exclusive good skews on the podcast feed for this show show good people doing good things. And if you want some bonus episodes of this show, you can sign up on Patreon weekly skews.com slash more $5 a month, two full-length bonus episodes per month, including skew and A's where we answer your burning questions. But either way, if you keep showing up on skews days, we will too, I reckon. We'll see you next week.

Hang in there, everybody. Love you by. Yeah.