wellRED podcast - Evening Skews - Week of July 28, 2020

Episode Date: August 1, 2020

As to not inundate y'all with files, we have combined the audio from both of this week's Evening Skews into one. Hope that hits. This week, Trae and Smart Mark talk about Trump curing coronavirus, Billy Barr's avalanche of shit, Trump wanting to move the election, Herman Cain's death, masks, state level politicians being lunatics, and a whole bunch more fun stuff. Enjoy. 

And we thank them for sponsoring the show. Well, no, I'll just go ahead. I mean, look, I'm money dumb. Y'all know that. I've been money dumb ever, since ever, my whole life. And the modern world makes it even harder to not be money dumb, in my opinion, because used to, you, like, had to write down everything you spent or you wouldn't know nothing. But now you got apps and stuff on your phone.

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practicing any Spanish for, you know, pertinent two years now or something like that. Also, a fun one I'd said it before, but I had a, I got an app, lovely little app where you could, you know, put your friends' faces onto funny reaction gifts and stuff like that. So obviously I got, I got it so I could put Corey's face on those two, those two like twins from the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland movies, you know, those weren't a little like the cue ball looking twin fellas. Yeah. So that was that in response to? What was that reply I give for just when I did something stupid. Something fat and stupid. Something both fat and stupid. But anyway, that was money well spent at first, but then I quit using it and was still paying for

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What are things Trace said with losing his virginity? Oh, well, hey, there we are. We are fired up. Good timing on that one, everybody. Welcome back to evening skews with me, Trey Crowder, and my venerable co-host. Smart Mark, smart Mark's over there. No, where's my whatever side? I forget, I think it's reversed, but see my screen name?

No, I've already rebutted that. Oh, yeah, his screen name is not Smart Mark. If y'all can see it, y'all can see it. So here we are, and we like to start out the show, typically. with whatever the dumbest thing that is happening presently in the country. I don't know people picked up on that, but we like to start with stupid shit that's going on. And we've got a doozy today.

This is one of the dumber things in recent memory. Trump, Trump Jr., and nearly every prominent conservative media, social media presence, latched on to a speech given by a doctor on the subject of coronavirus. She had a video go viral a couple days ago. They got 20 million views before Facebook could figure out how to take it down.

It's still floating around because they can't control their own platform because people keep re-uploading it with different digital tags or whatever. But yeah, so that's how she got famous. but today, yes, she spoke on the steps of Congress. And yes, and if you haven't seen it, you should definitely check it out. Her name is Stella Emanuel, and you think, you know, obviously if you don't know about it, you already can tell Trump is retweeting a doctor talking about coronavirus.

That doesn't sound right. Well, that's because this doctor didn't say anything actually medically accurate. In fact, she said that masks are not required. mask are unnecessary. They will not stop the spreading of the virus, but she said more importantly, the virus doesn't have to spread. We don't have to worry about the spreading of the virus because the virus can be cured. And she herself has cured, quote, hundreds of patients of coronavirus, primarily using the treatment of hydroxychloroquine. Did I say that right, Mark? Yeah. Right. And yeah, she claims to have cured hundreds of people herself.

off of coronavirus and the only secret is hydroxychloroquine. And again, the president shared it, the president's son shared it, as you will be stunned to learn, I'm sure. All of that is bullshit according to pretty much everybody else who's any kind of authority on the subject. And that would be bad enough because it's bullshit, then it started getting taken down by Twitter and Facebook, and they limited Donald Trump Jr.'s access to Twitter as a result of him breaking the rules by spreading COVID-19 disinformation, which has led to them claiming, you know, discrimination against conservative voices on their platforms, and it's, you know, typical liberal big tech and whatever the hell else. And all of that would be bad enough if that was it.

It was just a doctor saying some, just a quack saying some bullshit that they then spread as facts. But that is not it. It goes so much further and gets so much stupider than that. Mark, you want to take over and talk about some of the other things this doctor has purported? Well, she alleges that alien DNA is currently used in medical treatments. And scientists are cooking up a vaccine to prevent people from being religious, which I would absolutely take if they had it, but that's just me. And she also claims that gonachological problems like cysts and endometriosis

are caused by people having sex in their dreams with demons and witches. So and she's a pediatrician, so I don't know why she's treating in thinking about gynaecological issues so much. anyway the whole I don't know man these people jump off and they go viral because they tell people things they want to hear like you can't die of COVID

if you just take hydrochloroquine which they're back on hydrochlorquine I don't fucking understand sorry for cursing I'm not sure never been clear on whether we're cursing or not fuck it now I don't understand why they're back to it now we came up this three months ago we've been in this COVID hell

for five months now There's so many cycles of it and they just can't like they just want to be right so bad, which is not how science works. Science works deductively where you take swings and you miss and you go back and start over. It's okay to be wrong. But like it's not okay to be wrong a third time. And yeah, and it's like I was laughing because it is the sheer lunacy of this lady is just objectively funny in my opinion. But also like, you know, let's be real.

this is supremely fucked up because, I mean, this is actively dangerous. You know, it's incompetent to the level of endangering more people. We've already, 140,000 plus people have already died from this virus. And now leadership is actively spreading disinformation like this. And it's like, it is funny, but it's not funny, right? like so many things where Trump is concerned. Yeah. I would say for a second about something about how disinformation works and why it's such a problem right now because we have all these like social media companies have put themselves in tech companies that put themselves on this box where they either have to decide whether to take things down or not take them down and it becomes an argument about the First Amendment in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

But in reality, the problem is the algorithms prioritize engagement of everything else, right? So like if disinformation is more popular on social media networks than information because it's less boring. So it gets more actively shared. So the algorithm steers more people to it. Like there's a famous case a couple years ago where like this video of a man beating a child mega viral. And there was our interview with a social media exec about how that worked. And basically, as people are outraged, they shared it. Like, we got to find this guy.

But then, of course, the algorithm sees that engagement and thinks you want to see more videos of child abuse. Right. Because it's like, it'd be like the algorithm seeing you slow down and look at car accidents and then saying we need to make more car accidents. So if they just turn the algorithm off, you wouldn't need to take the videos down because the algorithm wouldn't prioritize crazy stuff over regular stuff like what happened to your local school board meeting or whatever. So it's just a crazy.

time to be and no one wants to solve the problem it seems like right um so back to emmanuel and her uh her medical opinions for a second do you think that the uh the issue revolving around sex with dream witches is that is that a choice thing like are people at fault for continuing to have sex with dream witches or Or does she think that like that's a thing that happens to you? And it's not just women, by the way. It's not endometriosis and cis, but also for men, infertility and impotence. Those are caused by sex with dream witches.

She calls them spirit husbands or spirit wives. And I'm just wondering if, you know, this is just a thing that happens to somebody. Like, you know, you go to sleep and the dream witch comes to you and has sex with you to dream and it's out of your and now you got cyst or if she thinks this is somehow the fault of the person who's stricken with this dream demon sex situation personally i was born wanting to have sex with dream witches so i don't think it's a choice i do is the funny thing about this to me we're joking around about like like the problem those like people don't believe like my neighbor he's harmless so it doesn't matter, but he's one of those guys who thinks that Tom Hanks is a leader of a pedophile ring.

And the proof of this seems to be that he lives in Greece part of the time. Right. And that he had COVID, which is obviously a hoax. The fact he pretended to have it means he's in on the whatever stuff is happening. I don't know. It doesn't matter. But like, there's no actual. People just decide to believe this and believe it without any proof.

And it's literally, like this lady's literally preaching us all goody proctor in the wood speaking to the devil. like we're we're undoing the enlightenment with the most advanced technology the world says to offer it's like it's it's a crazy dynamic and i don't know how we pull out of it nose-d-up anyway drink do you think right but it's like you said earlier about people anytime you tell people things they want to hear people automatically respond to being told what they want to hear they also like to they like to think that they're the ones who are right about anything you know well when you got a bunch of of dumb people who are upset about a global pandemic and are, you know, not doctors. And so, of course, they look at the whole thing incorrectly, but they're going to spread and propagate disinformation because it checks those boxes. You know, it tells them that they're right and they understand that everybody else is wrong and that, you know, they're smart, we're dumb, all that type of shit. We're all being radicalized and driven in. same. This is a really hard time for everybody,

which adds to this dynamic, but like the, you can't, people think, really think they're uncovering global child sex traffic and cabals by piecing together three different photoshopped images they found of Jeffrey Epstein

shaking someone's hand. It's like, I don't know what skills people think, or abilities people think they have or what they're seeing, but it's like, you just, I don't know. Right. No, they do think it's like a skill set that they have. My wife was talking last night about how she's got to get off Facebook. She says this at least every other day because she gets on Facebook and she ends up in a fight with another person on Facebook who is an idiot because, you know, that's what happens.

And she was talking about it was actually the Tom Hanks thing. It was somebody talking about Tom Hanks being the leader of this pedophilic global sex ring or whatever. And first of all, side note, that's one of the things I have. hate most about all that ridiculous conspiracy shit is that they've wrapped America's sweetheart Tom Hanks up in this. Like if anybody doesn't deserve to be accused of being like the Voldemort of pedophiles, it's fucking Tom Hanks. It's complete bullshit. But anyway, I digress. The only bad thing Tom Hanks has ever done is Chet Hanks. That's it. That's the worst of the world. Yes. Is his rapping son? By the way, if you're not familiar with the work of Chet Hayes.

Oh, my God. Tom Hanks' rapper son. Have some fun on the internet for a little bit. Yeah. Juan, Juan, he talked like this man. He, Tom Hanks' son. He, white is man on earth, but he talked like this all the time. He's a rapper.

He seems to have big brain injury. Anyway, the level of thought these people put in their conspiracy theories, I saw somebody the other day was like, why else would anyone live in Greece? Because I guess, because they think it's like still like, 500 AD or whatever. It's like, well, first of all, they got sweet beaches and good food.

That's one thing. I hear I've never been there. But two, it's like, do you think you can't extradite Tom Hanks from fucking Greece? It's like it's not a third world. It's right there. You can go get Tom Hanks if it doesn't matter. Yeah, but anyway, my wife was in a Facebook argument with someone about that because they were posting about that specific thing about Tom Hanks.

and children disappearing and all this stuff and Katie and I don't know why you know and she knows that this type of shit doesn't work but she does it anyway you know it's human nature I guess she like went and found various sources about all these like child abduction cases being you know bullshit statistics and fake news and disinformation and all that and posted them on the person's thing and the lady just disregarded all of those with way overhand and said, don't tell me about this. I've been researching this for five months. And it's like, you ain't researching shit. Like, you don't even know what research. Like, by researching it, she means sharing memes about it when they pop up on her Facebook.

But like, that's how they think about it, though. Like in their head, they're like, no, I've researched this. No, you haven't. I've been trying to be harder on myself about this stuff too. trying to be a little more dubious about stuff I see online or whether it's like, whether it's like retweeting a picture from a protest because it like blazing in my, blazing on my prior, what I want to be true or what I think. It's just like it's really hard, man. And then I think kids do better with this than like boomers do because there's more media literate when it comes to the internet.

They know that everything on the internet's fake. Right. But because they make a lot of it. well you can you can just you can just I saw there's a picture of that went viral of Obama given Jeffrey Epstein the presidential medal of freedom and it was it was the world it was the world's most obvious Photoshop because the head was the wrong size and it was pretty easy to find the original photo it I don't know if I'm not mistaken that that particular one you're talking about the picture of Obama giving Epstein the presidential medal of freedom was

accompanied with the headline or the caption of it or the caption of it whatever, said that it happened in 2007. He wasn't the fucking president in 2000. Like, they make it so easy to disprove this shit, but, but they still totally buy it. But I got to say, Mark, like, I don't know, we might ought to watch it here. We'll be lucky to get through this episode, I think, before all of Facebook comes down, because Dr. Emmanuel, who we were talking about earlier, when Facebook limited her, took down her page and all this for disinformation. she has made it clear that if Facebook does not restore her privileges and her videos,

that Jesus Christ will tear Facebook down in vengeance for her. So I'll go back to church. Yeah. Yeah. That was how Jesus finally does come back is on Facebook. I mean, that's like the thing about the, Obama Epstein meme that's like that could have been made by somebody ironically to show how stupid people are for sharing it. They don't even know when Obama was president. It's like the people who

blank who say stuff like well when a 9-11 happened when Obama's presidency and what do he'd do about it. It's like what that was man you don't remember shit about 2000s. But people make these things ironically and they still go mega viral and I don't it's I don't know I'm not sure a point that anyone's making this point. I guess just try to be more responsible everybody, please. All right. So moving on, there was plenty of other bullshit today to talk about. And the chief, one of, maybe the chief bullshitter of the day was Attorney General Barr,

who, William Barr, who had to testify before Congress today about a variety of issues. Jim Jordan, Republican congressman, opened it up by noting that the only, the only reason that Democrats don't like A.G. Barr is because he was the only person who had the balls, Jordan said courage, but had the courage to call out the spying on President Trump's campaign. So just really setting the bar out of the gate for, you know, how this was about to go. And then... Yeah, go ahead. I would say, like, to frame how people are thinking about this all wrong, like, the purpose of a counterintelligence

investigation like yes they were watching who they thought were Russian spies contacting campaign but what they were trying to do was protect the campaign they're trying to keep the campaign for being drawn into traps or infiltrated or whatever like they were they were like they were like they would go to the campaign and be like hey by the way this got Carter page he's got some weird hinky business dealings in Russia and they'd be like oh word that's crazy and then the FBI thought they'd do something about it like you probably shouldn't be associated with him because he's kind of like he's got he's doing some weird stuff with some weird money laundering and you just don't you know but they just kept doing it and it so when

they say spying on it they meant trying to help them out so that's right um well then bar proceeded to play many of the trump administration's greatest hits um just the the number of things that he said and were brought up that will piss you off was um varied and myriad. For example, he started, he denied the accusation he has politicized the Department of Justice. And that would take the form of him using the DOJ to help out Trump's other cronies, namely Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, with reduced sentences and things like that, an abuse of the power of the office.

but Barr denies that saying he was never politicizing the DOJ. He was never giving Trump's friends preferential treatment. He only intervened because he thought that they were being treated too harshly. They were being treated unfairly by the systems, and he had no choice but to swoop in and write that wrong. He said that the president's friends don't deserve special treatment, but they also don't deserve to be treated more harshly than others. He got into a basically a principle.

Right. He got into a screaming match basically with a Democratic congressman about this and ended up yelling at him about Roger Stone. Do you think it's right for a 67-year-old man to go to prison for seven to nine years? Are we talking about Harvey Weinstein? or the BTK killer was pretty old but he got caught. Right. What the fuck does that have to do with any, like just that alone,

how old the guy is, you know, seven and nine years, not that bad, not that long in the scheme of the grand scheme of prison sentences. And the age of the offender has shit to do with it. But like, he said it with this righteous indignation, you know,

like it was obvious. If you're going to put me in jail for 7 to 9 years, I would choose literally the last, seven to nine years in my life. That's when I would want, we think of that so backwards. I don't want to spend my 20s in jail. I want to spend my 70s in jail if I'm picking a chunk of time. So it doesn't even make sense when you think about it perhaps a second. He then, it was then this, this comparison was made in the hearings. This isn't my thing, but I'm glad that it got made this way. He's talking about that, about using, only using the power of the DOJ to keep

these guys, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, from being treated unfairly by the system, right? So they're not facing unjust persecution at the hands of the American criminal justice system, but has done literally

nothing to address any of the countless number of examples of police brutality, murder by American police departments over in the amount of time that he has been in charge. In fact, not only has he not done anything with his office to try to address any of that,

he explicitly said that in his opinion, there is no systemic racism within American police departments. He doesn't believe that it exists at all. So he doesn't believe there's any systemic racism, but he does believe there's systemic oppression against old rich white guys. a funny a funny position to take but here we are in a country where literally almost basically no one goes to jail like on a crime he doesn't believe systemic he doesn't believe systemic racism exists in american policing he further's taught he said that his opinion defunding the police would be a catastrophic measure and I actually wanted to take that as a little segue here to talk about the idea of defunding the police um it's one of the most controversial and misunderstood sort of catchphrases or political slogans in recent memory in my opinion because it almost seems like literally no one can agree on exactly what it even means like it means something different to everybody but everyone on the right they interpret that as we ain't going to have any law enforcement in any capacity anymore anywhere in America that's what

the liberals want and obviously we can't let that happen one of these people crazy that's it means to them, but that's not what anybody means by it, right? I mean, there are prison abolitionists. I don't think that's what most people mean. I think it's more like, like, I don't think, one thing I've realized in the last few months is people don't seem to have any idea what police actually get up to in their day to day. They don't think about what their days actually like because most of it's just driving around kind of bored taking intermittent breaks to annoy people, right?

Yeah. And they get paid. They're not under, I mean, you can argue whether or not they're over, underpaid, but they're paid a good amount for what's essentially a job for a person with a bachelor's degree or,

or community college degree. Like a police sergeant in, in L.A. makes like a $130 grand base pay once you factor in overtime. And they have great benefits to pension. So you can easily with overtime, make over $200,000 a year and have great benefits and retire after 20 years, but a huge pension,

then go guard, sets for $300 an hour. So it's not like they're an oppressed a group of people. And they like while they are a prison abolitionist, most people just want to be like, let's like, there's a bunch of stuff you could do to save a lot of money and de-militarized stuff without me. It's just some of the stuff is just an abject waste of money. Like here in LA, the sheriff's department's, like, actively resisted any sort of de-sillionizing of anything. So, like, their social media team is a sergeant and an officer. So they pay two-way people a total of, like, probably 300 grand a year plus benefits

and pension to do a job that most private companies use an intern for. They're really just tweeting and Instagramming all day. And, like, the movement in New York, they try to get their budget cut by 10, like, by 15% or something, which would have been a billion dollars, which would have just taken it back to like 2015 levels. We're not, no, no one has outside of Minneapolis and I think one other city has that started, uh, started the, uh, toward the police department down and started over. But like, Kansas New Jersey literally did that a few years back and has seen some good results from it, although not perfect. But it's just like, like, think about this, for example, like, um, parking enforcement, meter maids,

what everyone to call them, they're not police officers. They drive around Prius. They write you a little ticket for being in the wrong place. What is the reason you need an armed law enforcement officer to write speeding tickets? Right. And what people always say is like, well, what if there's a body in the trunk? It's like, oh, would they see a body in the back seat? It's like, well, what would a meter may do if they saw a body in the back seat? They'd call a real cop, just like I would if I saw a body in the back seat.

I'm not doing a civilian's arrest. So, like, there's just all this pointless stuff. Like, we pay somebody six figures to drive around armed all day with $5,000 worth of equipment to write speeding tickets. And it's just an absolute waste of resources. You could use the stuff that actually help people. Like, sorry, I'm being long-winded right now. But my buddy was like, well, how are we going to deal with the homeless problem if we

dial back cops? It's like, well, what are cops doing to solve the homeless problem? Right. Why should cops even be the ones responsible for the fucking homeless problem? You know what I mean? And while they weren't arguing to cut their own budgets, police have made that complaint for years. Like, we don't have the resort.

Like, literally all we can do is shoe a homeless person off. or put them in jail. So now you're paying to house them in the most expensive way possible. Right. You can put them in an apartment for much cheaper. You can put them in jail. It's just a huge waste of resources. It's more expensive to do the wrong thing.

That's what we do here in America as we pay extra to be worse. Yes. Yeah, right. Like you said, there's a lot of different things we could do that would fall under the banner of banner of defunding the police, which honest, like if I've been completely honest, that is part of me.

I support the notion behind this. 100% but I don't know entirely about the slogan just in and of itself because of how many different ways it could be interpreted and misinterpreted, you know, but regardless of that, there's many different things you could do. You touched on a lot of them. Like there's no reason that an armed cop has to show up to basically any kind of problem that anyone ever has. You know, there's plenty of different what like mental health problems, drug addicts, the homeless, that type of thing. You don't have speeding, like you said, minor traffic violations. There's no reason that an armed police officer should just automatically be required for a huge

chunk of day-to-day problems that people encounter. Any kind of civilian community oversight, you know, like having like accountability is obviously a huge problem, make them accountable to some entity that isn't a law enforcement. It's a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, community board that has oversight of the local community police department, shit like that. Like people act like they say defund the police. They just shoot it down and then they're like, you know, it's just ridiculous. But there's a million different little things that could be done, you know,

if we were just open to the conversation about it. Also, though, a lot of times what the opposition says, like, no, what needs to happen is better train they need more training we need to put more we don't need to defund and we put more money into training them and like maybe but it depends heavily on what the training is mark do you know about this guy Dave Grossman have you ever heard of that guy uh he's the warrior cop guy right he's uh he trains police all around the country goes around the country giving training seminars to police departments. Okay, this guy, his program is called Bulletproof Mind, Dave Grossman's Bulletproof Mind, teaching law enforcement agencies across the United States militarized tactics in which officers

are told to see themselves as being at war on the streets. He's a retired Army Ranger and former West Point instructor who's been teaching these cop classes for more than two decades. He focuses on a concept that he has dubbed kill ology or the study of killing and he uses it to teach officers to kill with less hesitation. And he gets it, I mean, this guy is a straight up fucking psychopath. Like if you get like the specific quotes he has about his whole kill ology philosophy that he has, it's all about making police officers able to kill with less hesitant. but he says shit like how killing someone is like can be comparable to having sex and shit i mean

like lunatic shit and again this guy has been he's been everybody any more training this is one of the motherfuckers training them for over two decades yeah so like you can't just say it's a training it depends heavily on what you mean by training and the kind of training they're getting and when these protests first started like the the san diego police literally shot the guy who runs their anti-biased training program. They had a protest, with that rubber bullet. So, like, yeah, I mean, they've been through the training. They know, they know what they're supposed to be doing.

They don't want to be doing it. I mean, they're literally in Portland. The federal judge court ordered them to stop shooting reporters, and they were still doing it last night. The reporters were recording themselves being shot with rubber bullets in tear gas, and had to, even though a court, a judge's ordered them not to do it. They just don't, they don't, they don't believe in the concept of oversight. It's not that they don't know the rules,

because they don't think the rules should apply to them. And it's like, look, take a step back for a second about like the idea, like the guy also, one of their slogans, the warrior cop stuff is like the killology stuff, it's better to be tried by 12 and carried by six.

It's one of the slogans that it's better to be, you know, face prison for murder than it is to possibly die. But like, you miss the point of the whole thing, which the job you're volunteering for is to evaluate. value your life less than the people you're protecting. Right.

You're supposed to be willing to risk your life to save other people. That's the whole premise of the job. It literally says to protect and serve on the side of the cars. But also, like, being a police officer is not that dangerous relative to either how dangerous being a police officer was 30 years ago or other jobs today. It's not even the top 10 most dangerous jobs, like crabboat fishermen and logger and farmer. or more dangerous, construction worker. Those people don't kill with impunity.

And lastly, like, thinking that way actually gets police officers hurt more. Because, one, they shoot each other a lot. Like, there's a lot of friendly fire deaths with police officers because they're so amped up. They miss and hit each other. Two, they dine a lot of car accidents. It's actually the second most common way police officers die in a line of duty. And I was reading this conservative expert on police psychology or whatever. about one of the problems of that is during ride alongs he's done,

guys will be doing 80 miles an hour without their seatbelt on. And the reason they don't wear a seatbelt during pursuits or responding to calls is they want to be able to jump out the car ready to be in the middle of a gunfight. Right. There aren't a lot of mass gunfights in America, but there are a lot of car accidents. It's literally not understanding statistics or how with risks you're actually under and they're dying because of it. So they're killing themselves with your own ideology.

Yes. So it seems to be that there's a problem with cops, generally speaking, in this country. And, of course, the Trump administration's response to that thus far has been to try out super cops, super secret cops. We've talked multiple times on the show about the federal agents and that he's deployed in Portland. Well, that came up with Barr today before Congress. And, of course, he defended the practice saying that they are necessary. to defend the federal buildings in Portland, specifically the courthouse.

That's the only reason they're there is to stop these crazy protesters from burning down the courthouse, and they had no choice but to deploy them. And he also said that it's unfair and could potentially put their lives of danger to call them things like stormtroopers. Nancy Pelosi and tons of other people

have called them Trump's stormtroopers. and Barr admonished that practice saying that it's irresponsible and could put them in further danger. Well, I mean, all they've done is like, look, we're to real loggerheads here because neither side appears to be back in now. The protests are getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bars than are getting more and more officers. So like eventually one of two things are going to happen. One, there's going to be a Kent State like a masker there or two, the federal agents let the pullback and the protesters will burn the courthouse because they've basically been dared to do it.

But I don't mean to sound like Alan Iverson right now, man, but we're talking about buildings. Right. It's graffiti. You can build a building again. If it's what it takes to let this be over with, let them burn down the building. Graffiti some shit. It's graffiti. Right.

Like the lawsuits that come out of this are going to cost the government way more than rebuilding the building with. So, I don't know, man. I guess it's also frustrating because it's just a bunch of. bunch of stubborn dumb ass you know the government just being a bunch of stubborn dumbasses with refusing to concede an inch and they're going to lose a mile because of it yeah um so yeah just in summation fuck bill bar but um i think you had said you wanted you had something else you wanted to say on this subject before we got off of it if i'm not mistaken uh or do you you you don't want get into it yeah it's it's a long subject was it was about jim jordan and russia and all that

I wanted to, it's a long rant we can move on because we already halfway the show. Well, maybe we'll do it Thursday, but yeah, because I do want to at least a little bit talk about another subject that we have planned on hitting on, which is the looming housing crisis in America and how we seem to be just waiting for it to happen and not doing anything about it. Why don't you take the lead on this one, Mark, sort of break it down a little bit, what is the coming storm? we're looking at. All right. So every year about 2.3 million American renters are evicted. So they're expecting to be 11 million in the next couple of months. So the 2.3 million we could have it in one month.

Now, that's not just a crisis for those people who have to leave their housing and move back in with their parents or for shelter or their cars or whatever. It's going to be a crisis for the landlords and then the banks, the small banks behind them. So really, this is all the chain reaction. actually leading to mass like bank consolidation, which we all know how that goes. And it's, it's going to make the pandemic worse because it seems to spread real quickly in household. So when you cram three generations back in the same house because they can only afford to split rent, that's going to be bad or shelter, same thing. Two, if you think these riots or protests are bad, Jesus, man, imagine a country where like 20, 30 million people are without housing.

and what that's going to look like in the streets and um i i just i just don't know what congress is doing like like the the republican proposal today they put out um included more money for the dod they want they wanted to reinstitute a full write-off for uh business lunches which no restaurants you can fucking open right now and more money for the f35 the plane we talked about last week that doesn't even buy it's it's the thing is it's real it's real marie antoine that shit and um I guess they're, I don't know if they're trying to die. I don't know what they're trying to do. It's like if you were trying, like if you were trying to cause a matter,

like any of these bills, social safety net bills are just trying to save capitalism from itself because if you want a real malice uprising, holy shit, we talked about kill your landlords and shit in the pre-show, but like, man, good Lord, it's going to get bad. Aaron Blythe O'Brien commented, says this is a quote from Bill Moyers. The rent moratorium is,

some 20 million people in rented apartments face eviction, meaning the adults thrown on the street will have no address from which to vote. I hadn't considered that as like a factor in this necessarily. Is that also a potential problem? Because like there's so many different things, you know, coming down the pack to fuck with the voting process in the elections. It's not like we need another one. I mean, I would always hesitate to ascribe any sort of organized thinking to anything the administration does, especially it requires more than two steps to accomplish.

Like, even like the kind of scams they run for their own personal profit is stuff like Charles, Charles, Charles Church Secret Service triple for rent hotels and Trump property, hotel rooms of Trump properties. Like, that's the highest level of scam they thought about. So I don't, I don't think, I think it's just they don't care. And the housing collapse in 2008 is how. Steve Mnuchin got super rich because he bought a bunch of smaller banks and foreclosed on houses. And so he has friends that are poised to make a lot of money doing that and thinks this is the free market at work and the rules of the rules. Yeah. You said in the pre-show, you said you saw a statistic that said maybe 60% of renters in the state of Tennessee, my home state will be evicted.

when this comes down. That's a fucking crazy high number, man. 60, like, that's more than I would have guessed. I knew it was bad, but I wouldn't have put it as that high. Like, that's fucking nuts. I saw it at 27% in Cal, like, it was like state by state, like 27% in California, which seems low to me because rent so high here. But, right, but I mean, renters by definition are often people who live check to check,

especially in, like, in California, everything, I mean, in cities, everything's an apartment. So even like well-off, people will live in apartments and condos often. But like in a state like Tennessee, like, I mean, when I live in Dallas, my mortgage was $400 a month. I don't know what it would be in a rural Tennessee. But if you live in an apartment in a small town in Tennessee, that's probably a financial, you know, workaround. Carmen Estrada says that's a possibility, talking about the voting, the voting problem part of it. That's a possibility in certain states.

poll goons poll goons have already signed up to watch the voting polls. What's to stop them from harassing voters with list of people who have been evicted? Or I guess like checking addresses and whatever else. Sorry, Apraja Henry Fisher.

I'll probably saying your name wrong. Trey's going to learn to read before Thursday. Don't worry, I guess. It would be okay if people can vote by mail, but this administration is trying to block absentee voting. And that's what I was saying, like there's so many different separate attacks on voting already kind of floating around in the ether right now with the election looming. And it just all kind of points to them trying to do anything they can to, you know, fuck the election over. And that has been the main thing that I'm worried about is them succeeding in that way. But

you know everybody's just got to come out and do it yeah i mean i don't know what it looks like if they uh they win dude i don't even want like i i i know like i the i because to me like this all this shit that's going on and i know they didn't fucking it's not like they invented coronavirus or whatever but like all this this perfect storm of terrible shit that has you know forms above the calendar year of 2020. It's like it's not just the sort of general decay of the American Empire or anything like that. Like this is what happens after, you know, the cumulative effect of four years of this kind of leadership and this kind of administration. and like things are really bad and just the sheer notion of like you said if they do win however that

whatever shape that takes like i what the next four years i can't even i shudder to think what that would even mean man it's fucking terrifying yeah i mean 40 years of hollowing out of everything of selling off the the public uh like uh cutting funding for everything that's not the army and like a technocratic democratic democratic administration can at least keep the wheels on the road but yeah I feel like we need to reinvest in some stuff man public health education hospitals

I mean we're talking about like like the defunded police earlier it's like one one percent of now one calls or anything approaching violent crime I think and like they have funding way bigger than the fire department and health insurance companies pay for ambulances. So like what are you even doing, man? Yeah. Michael Sanford said, and to think this year started with Australia on fire, like that's like so much bad shit. The things that are really bad that have happened that people have like already forgotten because you can't help it because of the constant flood of other terrible shit is also pretty crazy. Like the Australia thing, that, um, that,

de facto assassination of that Iranian general or whatever remember that that was like going to be potentially World War III it was earlier in 2020 you know it's it I remember briefly the fucking murder hornets popped up and uh

it's like any other year we might have got some some fun little mileage out of that but 2020 it was just like get the fuck out of your bullshit murder or hornets I will say the boy legs here the Soleimani thing of Iran was Like, it's kind of the one upside of Trump's presidency is like he doesn't have the attention span for any sort of major conflict.

Like a regular president, we would have probably ended up in some sort of sustained military fight with them. But he just like got tired of reading the reports and got bored in the meeting. So the war just kind of went away, which has had a couple of those. Yeah. Do you remember when Iran was shooting at our naval ships and then all of a sudden and Trump yelled about it on Twitter? And then we didn't have any sort of response. and then Iran stopped shooting in our naval ships. They feel like whoever was trying to do a Gulf of Tonkin right thing right there

just sort of like they're depleted and work because Trump doesn't read at the end of papers. Right. And yeah, it makes you wonder, you know, we're like just now heading into August. Like there's fucking a few more months of this bullshit year left. Like who knows where it's going to go, what the final act is going to be. Jesus Christ. But anyway, see what y'all are. y'all got for us if anything anything that's going on that we didn't talk about again i know

it's hard to keep up um and matthew thulin just said well then tray is trump being reelected the ice the icing on the cake of 2020 i fucking hope not and yeah i hear you brother but you know the way year is gone again i don't even like to like talk about that out loud or think about it too much I'm so pessimistic about the just the idea of that happening let's see here yeah I mean I mean it's definitely within the role of possibility

although it seems extremely unlikely by now so that like Nate Silver was like the economy is projected to rebound by November so that can help a few percentage points and I'm like how the hell is it going to rebound what planet is everybody on um Morgan Vorhe

said the fucking FBI announced we had aliens and no one even cared you know what he's talking about that yeah they've announced several times the last few years aliens are real and no one seems to care that is hilarious to think about it that way

but yeah the FBI like acknowledged contact with a genuine UFO that they don't have an explanation for with video evidence of it and it's just like we ain't got time for that shit that would be a good final act for 2020

is the aliens finally show up you know I do love how we think about aliens like we we think aliens one would come here to visit for some reason we do the same thing with aliens that we do with like religious figures we give them like very human qualities

like it's like which we don't know what their motivations or how their brains work so they so like oh they come here to conquer us it's like well maybe they're not evil like we are I know we do that we find a new place. We can't create disease and death, but maybe they're better than us. No, I'm with you on that. I've never, I've never automatically subscribed to the idea that, you know, I think it was, I think it was Stephen Hawking who I popularized that, the analogy of like, what happened when Europeans came to the new world, what happened to the indigenous people,

like, well, that's going to be similar to what happens when, if aliens ever do show up here. And I've never, I've never saw any reason to think that that's just automatically going to be the case because of what you just said. Like, we have no reason to think they'll operate in the same way we do. Or that if they're that much more advanced than us technologically, that they wouldn't also be that much more advanced than us from a, like, morality or ethical perspective or whatever, you know? I mean, I think de facto they would have to be to achieve space, like,

low-range space travel. Right, without having destroyed themselves before that. I mean, look, like, we went to space like three times and gave up and decided instead of to keep going, keep killing each other. Like, like, if you think about how the future works, like, there's basically two, two main conceptions in science fiction for how the, how the future humanity could look. And it's either like Star Trek or Robocop. And we continually choose Robocop. Like, we keep voting Robocop over and over again.

So, like, I don't think, I don't think there's any way we ever really get the deep space because we're just going to like keep robbing and stealing and killing each other. Someone asked, well, first of all, somebody said, hopefully the third act of 2020 is Trey trimming that beard. but not yet. I think that's good, man. I'm just letting it go. You know, why not? If there's ever a time to sort of let yourself go, it seems like right now. But I think you got to keep leaning into the Civil War general look

and just adopt like a cosplay name. Like, to Willick or P. Jimaloggin or whatever. Someone asked, and again, as always, like I can't have trouble keeping up with who is saying what over here, but I know someone asked us, do we think Joe Biden can unify the country? No, but the short answer for me, no. And I'm not an anti-Biden Democrat at all.

I don't mean that. I just think that the people, you know, we talked about a few episodes ago, Trump's like hardcore base, the 30 or so percent that are like ride or die for Donald Trump. Like, I don't know how there is. any getting them back? Like,

talking about unifying the country. I don't know who could do that or how. And so I definitely don't think that Joe Biden can. I still think he can hopefully, you know, at least start the process of riding this ship. And if nothing else, it will stop the bleeding,

you know, without a doubt, in my opinion. But specifically unifying the country, I just, I don't know how we even go about doing that, man. I don't know if the country's ever been unified. And I don't, and I think we talked earlier about, like, internet radicalization and algorithm's work.

And I don't think it's possible to have a president that almost everybody likes at this point, because I have everybody can see information and where they get it from and such, like, like, self-selected silos. But also, I think it's bad even thinking. I just like, like, like, thinking of those terms because it feels like falls in this national, the president being our national daddy. It's bad, you know. Yeah.

It's the politician. A lot of people are commenting on our little discussion of aliens and the general consensus seems to be some version of like, dude, aliens, are you going to fuck with us? Like, somebody said, Earth is clearly the Florida of the cosmos. Somebody else said, they're presumably searching for intelligent life. Why would they stop here? Somebody said, people, aliens drive by Earth and lock their doors.

you know, they'll take one look at this shit storm and get the fuck out of here. Earth is the shithole country of the universe, stuff like that. So as long as everybody's generally on the same page over here. To borrow from the well-red glossary, there's no reason to think that we hit for aliens at all. No. You can not worry about it. Seeing a lot of dudes saying in support of the beard and a lot of women. saying hard pass on the beard.

What does Katie think of it? She said she thought it was fun. That's what she called it. Fun. That's fun, which is like, that's more of a response than I typically get out of her over any of my, like, aesthetic or sartorial choices. Normally she just gives me a shrug, like, I don't, I don't know, who gives a shit, you know?

Yeah, you've been married for years. She didn't even look at you. Who cares? Now, look, to talk seriously about my beard for a moment, now we've for a very brief window of time they made barbershops legal again in California but then they shut them back down although now they're like kind of open if you go outside or whatever but essentially since March I haven't been able to get a haircut Katie offered to cut it I told her not to even fucking think about it stay the hell away from

I do not trust her with a pair of clippers but um and she doesn't trust herself with them either but I knew I wasn't able to get a haircut I'm still not able to get a haircut in the foreseeable future so I just thought like you know what what, just let it just let it all ride for a while. Like, why not? I ain't going nowhere. You know, like just, let's see what happens. It's your playoff beard for humanity. Humanity's playoffs right. Yeah, fourth quarter of humanity. Let's see. Vanessa Blank said, Joe Biden won't make anything better, but he won't make anything worse either. I feel like that's probably a lot of people's perception of it on a bumper sticker.

I actually think if they get all three houses, I mean, if they get like both houses of Congress and their executive branch, things would be so bad, they'll have to make things better. Like it won't be, I mean, like, I'm not sure how we rebuild the economy or the country without some form of like access to medical care for everyone. Because otherwise, I mean, shit, dude, I saw people, people getting billed $1,000 for COVID tests they thought it was free. And what are people getting evicted? People are the next $1,000 right now? A couple people have asked again, Biden's VP pick is coming up soon and who we think it's going to be. I've seen some chatter recently about Susan Rice, the former national security advisor, which like, and it seems to me that most of the basis for that speculation is that her and Biden are real tight.

But like, I don't know. That feels like that would be an odd choice to me. Yeah, I mean, what we definitely need is to argue about Benghazi for four months. right now. It seems like definitely what we should do. Right. Yeah. And then other than her, Kamala Harris has gotten a lot of talk to. And like that one, that one I feel like, politically speaking, that makes sense to me. Like I could see that one. It's going to, I mean, if it does backfire, it's going to be a lot of like hitting Biden from the left on criminal justice type stuff. Right. They're already doing that. But it's going to be the

Kamala, the cop stuff coming from the right, which I don't, it doesn't make any sense how they're sending federal agency into crackheads and also going to complain about how common was too hard on drug offenders but it doesn't think things don't have to make sense for uh no no right exactly that like consistency logical consistency or anything there's never been a priority of there so you're right the goal of that kind of attack would be to drive down uh black turnout so right it might work uh let's see Anthony Sterling says you do you, Tray. Thank you, Cheryl.

I will. A lot of talk about the beard over here. Connie Gage, I like the mustache, the beard, but, you know, your body, your choice. Becky Mabry said, my husband could shave his mustache and I wouldn't notice. Yeah, I think you and Kate are on basically the same page there. Denise Starp says, my daughter has a set. for Biden t-shirt.

I mean, yeah, you know, sometimes, it's not always the wrong move to settle in life. You know, like sometimes that's really what you need to do. Look, there's, no one politician is going to fix everything, right? And you don't have to think of the, like I said earlier, like the president is your national daddy. There's lots of stuff that other ways can be fixed. and they always say the wrong thing before they settle on something, a compromise, somewhere in the middle.

Like today, Tammy Hoyer was like, oh, we're willing to totally give away the extra 600 bucks and the next bailout bill. And then Nancy Pelosi's office was like, no, we're not after they got yelled at. So like, you can't yell at these people to get them to do what you want. They're not, they don't have to be good people. You don't have to care about them that much personally. You can just yell at them. Yeah.

And Zarnetsky said Joe has a plan if you actually listen to it. I think I agree with the general sentiment of that. Like I've come to the point. Like I sort of feel like Biden is getting a little too much shit from a lot of the left, in my opinion. Like part of me is like I don't really know what else or how much more you reasonably expect him to do. He's moved quite a bit to the left already.

and if you're actually going to look at his platform, like, there's a lot of good shit on there. Now, will he actually, like, accomplish any of that? Probably not. This is America. But, like, it's a good starting point, in my opinion. The way I think about it is, like, first of all, he knows his name's going to be in the history books. Probably he's going to be in history books because he's going to be either a tremendously consequential president because the whole we're going to be in or he's going to be in the hall of mediocre presidents from the Simpsons. Right.

So you've got to think go big now or go home And like like Comparison might be LVJ Where like LBJ at the time Kind of had a failed presidency in Vietnam Was a huge morass he got sucked into But also he signed the Civil Rights Act The Voting Rights Act and passed the world poverty

And Great Society like you LBJ was a racist He instinctually did not want to sign the civil rights act He got pushed into it And locked into it by people effectively leave mobilizing. You can do that to Biden, you know, you can instinctually, he might not want to pass the national health care bill, but you can push him that way. Right. Yeah. Yes, I agree. Right. Like, you can push him into that. And I mean, I guess I think that's already like happening

to a certain extent. At Ruby Moon, Ruby Moon says it's Joe Biden or fascism. And I mean, I agree completely. Like that, the whole like debate, we can all, All of us on the left can talk about Joe Biden back and forth as much as we want. But like at the end of the day, there's only one choice just because of what the alternative is. I mean, that really is ultimately the only thing that matters in my opinion is that he got to go. I don't think anybody who's listening to this right now is trying to decide whether to vote for Biden or Trump or whether to vote for Biden or not vote. They're trying to decide how optimistic they can allow themselves to be, you know. Right.

So that's that's all we're doing right here is trying to be like, well, it could be good. Yeah. Gene Lowe's Pasquiletti says, we want change in 2024. Like, just me like, look, I interpret that as, you know, we'll worry about our revolution a little further down the road. Right now, it's just, again, stop the bleeding, you know. Let's see. We'll see what we got. I see here we got like a minute left.

But I think this is another important point. Michael Sanford says Biden will most likely put in cabinet members that are much better than the crew that's in there now. I mean, that's another thing. Oh, yeah. Like the sort of like down the card kind of effects that switching Trump out for him would have are also huge and often overlooked. Like obviously the courts are a huge one. But yes, the cabinet and the different agencies and all that. that's massive.

Yeah, I mean, like, Republicans in general have a habit of appointing cabinet secretaries who have a long record of actively arguing that they should destroy the department. The thing that they're in charge of, right, well, because the small government, Mark, small government's important. You don't want big government.

Then you might have stuff like government agents occupying your city during peaceful protests. If you had a big government, that'd be bad. Yeah, if you let the EPA regulate, keep a company from ducking toxins in the water. That's that's that's that's that's that's communism. Yeah. But it does have funny side effects of believing in your bullshit.

Like there's a string of Republican HUD officials who end up in, indicted or in jail because they, they assume that no one believes in the mission of the department. And what Democrats do when they run the department is hand out free money to cronies. So they take it over. They do it. And they get caught and they end up in prison. They're shocked because they think it's how everybody does the game where

they don't, they don't believe anyone would actually think that the housing or urban development department should help people get housing and develop the urban areas. Yeah, that would be ridiculous. All right, well, we're out of time, our own arbitrarily self-imposed time. We are out of it. That's it for another edition of evening skews. We'll be back the day after tomorrow on Thursday.

We'll see you right here. Bye. This whole big boy out of that motherfucker Crueloo This whole big boy album Just kind of skated by Yeah I agree

It's a great one All right Here we are I do believe I do believe we are live You know how it goes I always have to figure it out Every time

But I think we are here Everybody Welcome back to Evening skews Today is Thursday July 30th I'm Trey Crowder with me as always is Mr. Mark Aegee. Mark, how are you doing today, buddy?

Good, buddy. How you doing? I'm doing pretty good. As you all know, we like to, we always like to start out here on evening skews with whatever is dumb in America on that given day. There's always a lot to choose from and for today. What better source than our dip shit in chief, as I'm sure all of you have seen by now earlier today during his multiple times daily rambling nigh and coherent Twitter tirade that have become the hallmarks of the Trump presidency. Donald Trump cast doubt on the legitimacy of the upcoming federal election this November. But he didn't stop at casting doubt on it. He took it a step further. So Trump tweeted.

with universal mail-in voting, parentheses, not absentee voting, which is good, close parentheses. 2020 will be the most inaccurate and fraudulent election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA, and here's the kicker mark. Delay the election until people can properly, securely, and safely vote. Three question marks. And I figure three question marks is the appropriate amount in his mind to, give him plausible deniability when someone asked him if he openly suggested we should delay the election or not. He's just, he's just opening up for a conversation. Maybe we should maybe talk

about thinking about delaying the election, maybe three question marks. Yeah, it's a, Mr. President, just asking questions here. No, that's not saying anything. Just asking questions. But as it should have this set the American political landscape a fire for much of the day. Later in the day, He didn't walk it back. He just sort of like waffled even more so by saying, I don't want to delay. I'm just worried about the election, you know. But as many people have pointed out,

since he broached the subject, that the American president does not have the power or authority to delay the election. That would have to come from Congress and one half of our Congress. as the U.S. House of Representatives is controlled at present by the Democrats who are never going to allow that to happen. But further, even if they did delay the election, still Trump's current term as president would expire on January 21st, 2020 or 23rd, or inauguration day, 2021.

His terms as president would expire no matter what hypothetically happened with delaying the election. And a fun little fact about that. that came to pass, according to the Constitution, Nancy Pelosi would become the acting president of the United States. So I highly doubt they're going to allow that to happen either. And to avoid that eventuality would require a full-on constitutional amendment, which is completely out of the realm of possibility. So put simply, this is not a thing that he can make happen,

regardless of how many question marks or how much, you know, how much doubt he has about the legitimacy of the election. He can't do this whether he wants to or not. It's how stupid I am. I don't even understand how Congress could lay out. I don't know the Constitution set the date for the election. And even then it's like it's 50 separate elections run by the states and run by various counties. Like I'm not even sure what happened if like California Secretary of State said we're voting and then Tennessee's didn't. Right.

It's like, I think the Constitution says a plurality of electoral college votes, which is 270 if everybody votes. But if some states don't submit electors, doesn't that mean you just have to win California electoral votes? And then the House of Representatives certifies the election results so they can just certify it. It's a perfect Trump idea because it's stupid, it's fascist, and it probably ensures he would lose. So I don't really understand the point or he was just thinking out loud. But like, that's, he's, we elected the guy at the end of the bar drinking a lone president. So we get these kind of ideas. He just floats like, you know, you're sitting in a bar and got a corner like the news is

on. He goes like, I tell you what I do about the Middle East, blow him up. And you're like, okay, yeah, sure, man, whatever. And that would solve the, I'm sure somebody's thought of that. Right. You know, it's like, so we just get these kind of ideas. There's one sentence sort of ideas that the problems are always easy to solve, but just nobody wants to do it, which isn't true.

which I mean, like he's not wrong. There's a lot, I mean, he is wrong, but I'm saying like there are a lot of problems with mail, male votes, male votes get tossed out a lot more. And I'm not sure why. I'm sure part of that's probably the advocates parties have it at polls, no, the Republicans know that more Democrats vote by males. They're probably harsher looking at those. I don't know.

What? Let me ask you this, Mark. What is, because he went out of his way to explicitly, uh, delineate between mail-in voting and absentee voting in this very tweet, like I said. He calls out mail-in voting, but then specifies that he was not talking about absentee voting and went on to say, it's good. What is the difference in his rationale between the two? Like it's just that it's on a much larger scale, like absentee voting is a smaller segment typically

versus having everybody vote by? a mail-in ballot or what does he think how does he think that works well some states have where you you can do absentee ballot with no cause you can just decide to vote on mail and do it yeah which is what he's afraid of but like actual absentee voting where you have a reason is probably because you you live in a different state than you're voting in so rich people with third houses is who he's saying she'll still be allowed to vote in the military that checks out um but you You know, this is happening at the same time. We talked on a previous episode.

This is happening at the same time as his assault on the Postal Service, right? So he's sort of coming at the election from all different angles right now. Also, they just, his campaign and Donald Trump's super PACs have just stopped, halted all spending on campaign ads in the state of Michigan, saying all that just to say, this is all just because he, he's reeling from the likelihood of losing, right? Like that's what this is. He, like, sees what's on the horizon and is frantically flailing about trying to do something about it.

Yeah, I mean, I don't even know, like, why he, I mean, look, the guy's lazy. He's never held a job. And I doubt he wants to keep doing this one. That's the whole problem. Like, the whole thing's running autopilot for three and a half years, but then COVID actually required him to do stuff and he just decided not to do it. and here we are. Yeah.

I don't know. It's oddly bizarre. Even a lot of Republicans have dismissed the very notion of moving the election, pointing out that that's literally never happened in the history of America. When the civil war was going on,

we held the election on time. So even a lot of conservatives, including, you know, the chief turtle in charge over there, Mitch McConnell, have come out and said and dismissed the idea of even doing that. So he seems to have no real support for this either. And this is like you said, it's the guy sitting at the bar at the end of not just like postulating about what he would do, except he's, you know, he's the leader of the free world or whatever. So it feels differently.

But like what I'm trying to say is there's no support or backup for this notion at all, even on his side. And but yet he still just throws it out there anyway. You know, like there's no keeping him in check at all and never has been. Yeah, I mean, he just, I don't even know if they, I don't know, some of them got to be thinking by now that like, man, we got to, we don't, we don't, we don't. want to still be here after he's gone and we don't want to god god forbid we have to get a real job right um these man these guys they they fear getting a job more than anyone i've ever seen in my entire life like these guys will throw their mom in a wood chipper to stay in congress it's a it must be an amazing gig um back in march or april joe biden said mark my words he's going to

try to delay this election and when joe biden he said that publicly he got skewery from a lot of different directions from people, the Washington Post had an op-ed about it talking about, you know, it said Joe Biden has suggested that Donald Trump, I want to delay the election. Joe Biden should know better, you know, calling it a low blow and that even raising the possibility of that reflected poorly on him and, you know, even Trump wouldn't stoop that low and things like that.

There was a lot of that kind of chatter after Biden said that a few months ago, And now here we are. You got to love calling people out for too harsh rhetoric in a Trump era. I know. I know. Exactly. The second thing is like, why is that out of bounds? Like, like, that's my favorite movement in politics when he pretends to be offended.

They all pretend to be offended all the time. It's just like, how dare my opponent slander me with such language. It's like, come on, man. He's trying to win the elections like you are. He's going to say mean stuff. Everybody can grow up, me and move on. So yes, so despite all of this, we very likely are still going to have our election on November 3rd. I mean, the whole world could just end before then at this rate.

But barring that, we are going to have the election. I've seen people on the left posting online trying to, I guess, raise awareness to point out to people, like if you're in a mail-in state or you're doing mail-in voting and make sure you do it early because of all this fuckery we mentioned earlier with the Postal Service and things like that. And I don't know about the legitimacy or how much any of that would matter. I know I just got my, I didn't get my mail-in ballot, but I got the sort of pre-ballot here in California. And it said it had to be postmarked by Election Day. So knowing me, that's probably how it'll go.

But either way, I just want everyone to send. me in one way or another, you know, just get it done is all that matters. Vote your ass off. Remember that a couple of years ago? No, no, I don't. Who was us? Os off. As off. Oh, awesome. Okay. Yeah. That's a good. Yeah, that's a good one. He's trying hard. So on the other end of the spectrum completely, um, while Trump was deliberately attacking our presidential election, his predecessor, Barack Obama was talking about the importance of the election during his eulogy for the late congressman John Lewis. But that's not all Obama had to say. He had quite a bit to say at the eulogy today. So Mark, you want to take us through this one a little bit?

well he rightfully uh talked a lot about how brave um uh uh john Lewis was and how young you was when they took on this fight and how he almost died several times and uh and how fighting for the right to vote was the uh cause of his life and somebody online who's kind of beautiful thoughts said that like if you if you think of the America not actually becoming a full democracy till you know mid 60s and maybe it's still not like john Lewis as a founding father kind of think about it that way It should be thought of as such. Obama also listed concrete stuff we could do to honor John Lewis, like making Election Day of National Holiday, reestablishing the Voting Rights Act. And the big ones were adding D.C. and Puerto Rico as states and getting rid of the nuke and the filibuster in the Senate. And I like all those ideas.

And I don't understand it's so funny to me, it's living in a country where only one party wants power. like right should have made dc and porto rico states the only reason north dakota and south dakota are two separate states is because um the republicans wanted to run up their senate majority uh in 80s or whenever they're they were admitted it's like this this is in like it's not out of bounds or unconstitutional it's normal political uh policy it's it's constitutional to try to expand your power base within the rules those are the rules you can admit them in states and you get two more votes so i know i know i know with porto rico is a little more complicated because they

keep voting to not be a state i'm not sure we can make them a state against their will but uh no reason Samoa can't be a state. Make Americans Samoa eight different states. It gives a shit. Like it's in the rules. Play by the rules and win. Yeah. Yeah, you know, my man stepping back up to the plate,

a lot. I've missed him. But it's always good to hear from Obama. But also just to me, the sort of the stark contrast between the two things, between the bullshit that Trump was up to today, because that's the thing also. Trump was, of course, absent from this few years.

funeral. That's becoming a trend with Trump. He doesn't, for a long time in American politics, the differences between the sides has typically been put aside whenever a prominent figure on either side passes away. They all have tended to, in the past, show the respect, show up at the funeral, that type of thing. And, you know, George Bush was at the funeral today, plenty of other Republicans. but Donald Trump, he don't play that. He very famously skipped John McCain's funeral, you know, his arch nemesis on the right. And then he skipped Lewis's funeral today too.

Now, part of me, and I ain't in this world. I don't know none of these people or whatever, but like I can't imagine anybody who's close to John Lewis or cares about him really gives too much of a shit that Donald Trump wasn't there. you know what I mean? I would imagine. He kind of just besmirches the occasion with his presence in a way.

But that doesn't make his decision to turn his nose up at the proceedings any less shitty, you know? Yeah, I mean, he's just, I mean, it wouldn't weigh worse if he'd went. But like when people complain about him not going or saying what a scumbug, he just for not going, It's like, what you're doing is you're wishing we had a normal president who could play by the rules of fake civility and like do that. You know, in the mafia, when you kill somebody, you'll still go to the funeral and kiss his mom with the cheek, like that kind of stuff. Like, this is we expect our leaders to do that kind of stuff and he just can't, can't, I mean, in one sense, it's a little refreshing. And I mean, he can't, doesn't the mental power to focus long enough to be a hypocrite, but it's a little weird. But yeah, but again, but anyway, the stark contrast between the two, between what Trump.

Trump was up to him what was going on here. And it's one of those things we're like, I don't, because at this point, yes, the Nazis are back. Overt white supremacy, again, has a place at the table on the right in America politically. That is true. But generally speaking, like Republicans, they know better than to admit they are racist. Like they'll all deny being racist while just doing a bunch of racist shit. But if you ask him, they'll say they're not racist, right? But like this is an example of the type of thing that I just, the cognitive dissonance required kind of blows my mind with,

meaning like, I don't know how you could support a guy who skips the funeral of this guy who was nearly killed at Selma at the age of 20 and spent his life protesting and fighting for equal rights. And the guy who skipped out on honoring his memory, has also been using segregation era rhetoric to stoke distrust of the protesters in the recent goings on when the looting starts,

the shooting starts and rolling back fucking anti-segregation laws into appeal to white suburbia and shit like that. Like you got one guy's doing all that shit and also turning his nose up to paying his respects to this civil rights hero. I don't know how you could be on the side of the first guy and then try to act like race isn't a part of it or try to justify that without, you know, admitting that you're at least a little bit fucking racist. Like what kind of argument can you make to the contrary in my opinion? And it's like it's like watching like because the move here is what you want to do is you,

want to like make people think about race without making them feel racist right so you want to talk about property values when you talk about low income housing but yesterday he just straight up tweeted out the Democrats are trying to take away your suburban lifestyle dream or something like that or he capitalized all the first letters in those words the way that stupid way that he does and it's like oh you're uh you're literally telling people that low income housing is to keep brown people out you're removing you're taking away their permission to be racist by being subtle you're just basically saying you're racist vote for me which turns a lot of people law. People don't like to think of themselves as racist. So it's a very weird. It's like it's like watching

a child dude like an NBA player's move. It's like yeah, that's the move, but it's not the move. Do you know what I'm saying? Right. Well, the thing, the low income housing and suburb and the appeal to white suburbia, obviously, I know that it's racially, racially charged. But in the tweet itself, he says, you know, you're not going to have to worry about low income housing anymore. right? And I feel like that's just another, just more proof that a huge chunk of his base is, you know, working class white people. And this is just more proof that like you discussed him. Like he's grossed out by you. He hates you. You know, if you're poor, he hates you. Right. And he pretty much explicitly states it. I don't know how you keep going to bat for this guy. But,

you know, whatever. That's old news at this point, I guess. Racism's a hell of a drug, man. Yep. Yeah. So from one prominent death to another, although they're pretty different in context. Herman Kane passed away this morning from complications related to COVID-19. Herman Kane, as you remember, ran for president on the GOP side a few years back and has since become a top surrogate for Donald Trump because he's like the figurehead of black Americans for Donald Trump, right? He makes a lot of appearances kind of on Trump's behalf representing the black community. so he has stayed active in that way. One of these appearances, Mark, was at Trump's infamous Tulsa rally from back in June.

Herman Kane attended that representing the Black Americans for Trump. And this is what he tweeted while he was there. There you can see Herman Kane with a group of black, black, excuse me, I keep saying Black Americans, black voices for Trump. He says, here's just a few of the black voices for Trump at tonight's rally, having a fantastic time and then a bunch of hashtags, including Trump 2020 landslide. For anybody that happens to be listening to just the audio of this, it's a picture of the Black Voices for Trump at the Tulsa rally.

They're all grouped together closely taking the picture. Not a single one of them has a mask on. Now, in addition to that picture, Kane has also stated explicitly on the record before that mask are, you know, know, un-American, essentially, explicitly stated his opposition to wearing a mask. He's done all of that. Whoever's running his Twitter account while he was on a ventilator tweeted again last night about how people shouldn't wear masks, like hours before he died. I mean, this is, we're in a box here because I don't want to make fun of a man who just passed away. But like, it's, as our buddy Drew put

put it on our text thread, one of the reasons we're wearing masks is to protect the stupid. So it's like I don't want Herman to die. He's one of the world's top ten Hermans of all time probably. I just, I don't know what to do with this information. It's just like, every bit of it said that like somebody died for political posturing. Okay, political posturing, right. Okay, he died. People like me, I didn't say anything about it on Twitter or anything today, but obviously

I'm raising all this shit to make a point. I mean, look, I don't, I didn't want the guy to die either. I'm not glad that he's dead. But if you, if the circumstances of your death unfold in this manner, it's fucking going to get pointed out. Do you know what I mean? Like, yeah, it's a cautionary example. Right.

It's a, it's a Borrelia tale. And it should be pointed out. But anyway, you said political posturing, there have been dispatches from the right today, harshly condemning the left for politicizing his. death and dude give me a fucking break like a a like the coronavirus hasn't been political as but y'all are the ones who made it political when you went and protested over not being able to get your fucking haircut but b y'all are the kings of politicizing deaths usually it's school children who have died when you politicize a death well i don't fucking come at me for

politicizing someone's death when you just don't have a leg to stand on as far as I'm concerned I ain't trying to hear that shit yeah I think about like when a famous singer dies of a heroin overdose and everyone's like oh if you need treatment seek it out

this is like you know this could happen to anybody it's like stupid stupidity is that you know this disease of doing dangerous shit to own the lives is a drug and uh any help with it

and it's it's The whole thing is like, I don't even know how to wrap my head around it. I don't know how wearing a cloth piece of a piece of fabric over your face became the great civil rights struggle of our time. And no one's even really, they act like these are, they're, you know, stormtroopers going around cracking heads that people aren't wearing them. The governor just, I haven't seen anybody punished for not wearing one. I mean, maybe I'm wrong. I know that they said they're going to be fines and stuff, but I haven't read about many being issued outside of New York. It's just people saying please wear a mask.

That's it. There's no gun to your head. You're not standing up for anything by not doing it. Just being a jerk. It's, I mean, I think it's just, I think it's just as simple as like these people in general, they cannot stand to be told what they should be doing or be thinking by anyone who isn't, like, you know, one of their cult leaders. That's an important point.

but like you know scientists and doctors and assholes like that telling them what they should be doing they just they just can't handle that shit they yeah it's like fringes upon their live their liberty mark their freedom is threatened by such as that and they're not going to have it i've been rewatching sopranos like everybody else in america right now and uh this is episode i watched a couple weeks ago where Meadow is trying to drop out of college to go to spend a year abroad in in in Europe and uh she's like I'm 18 I can do what I want and Carmel is like yes we know you can do what you want wanting to do everything you want to the mark of a child that's not how responsible adult it is you have you have duties to yourself and your other people I'm married I can't die if I want to I made a promise

not to to hang around you know so it's like it's just it's not a And it's like somebody, people believe in, Americans believe in the freedom too, not the freedom from, which they think freedom means being able to live your best life 24-7 no matter what it means to anybody else.

I can ride my boat past your house at 80 miles an hour, blasting my music, shooting my gun. And if you're like, hey, get you turn that down, my baby's sleeping, I'm a fascist or a socialist

for asking you to be considerate. Right. That's free speech. You're infringing upon their free speech. No, I'm just asking you to be nice. That's all I'm doing. right yeah exactly again it's i think we brought it up on here before but it's that it um the title of that article that went viral on the left a while back rightfully so but it just sort of sums it all

up where it's like i don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people like that's so much of what it seems to come down to the arguing is like it just essentially amounts to like you're you're being an asshole is all we're saying like we're not saying like we're not you don't have the freedom to do some of this shit in this country. It's just you really ought not. Because I have the freedom to not have to put up with your fucking bullshit, you know. And freedom comes of responsibility. I'm old enough to remember when seatbelt laws,

when seatbelt became mandatory and the way people flip the fuck out over seatbelts, it was 10 times this for way stupider reasons. And I never understood my dad was one of those guys. I want to be thrown clear. And he got, he got a claustomy bag. And he was like, he got a note from the, from the police saying he didn't have to wear his seatbelt. And he was happy about that because he could tell the governor to go screw himself and I'd have to wear a seatbelt.

And I mean, he never died in a car accident. He does something else. But like, so he won that argument, I guess. But it was just so weird. Just put your seatbelt on. But yes, but either way, regardless of what they say to us about Herman Kane today, mask have been undeniably politicized in this country. country irrevocably so. And as you pointed out to me in pre-show, mask have kind of become

identity politics now because a state representative from the state of Pennsylvania released a statement harshly condemning the hateful comments towards the unmasked community. State representative Russ Diamond in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania put out a statement that said, I feel I must personally respond to the multiple incidents of harassment and specifically hate and intolerance directed at me that have not been reported in the press but are rampant across social media and the internet. I want to emphasize that while these individuals may think they're only expressing their displeasure with me for not wearing a mask, they are in fact hurting the thousands of unmasked Pennsylvanians who suffered directly from these

demonstrations of harassment. Your actions perpetuate a spirit of intolerance and discrimination against unmasked individuals and specifically individuals like myself who are outspoken about it. So there, Mark. Trey, I have olded up to remember when people would make fun of leftist identity politics by saying stuff like, oh, what are you going to call like people with red hair, brunette challenged or whatever. It's like that kind of shit.

Now they're like, I don't know, I don't know when the left is going to figure out this game, but the right wing just takes whatever they're doing and doubles it now. Yeah. Like when. This guy's on the right. So you know he had to bring the kids up right later in the statement. He says, our children are watching. They are watching what we do and they are watching how we act.

To all unmasked young people, it is okay to be you. It is okay to stand up for your rights and your freedom. Well, I'm glad somebody took a stand. the uh you there yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yes um they uh yeah i mean like it's like the way they the way they steal a left wing language now is so quick like like even the word canceled was like people using it playfully they took it made it serious and stole it same thing with woke woke was like a term people used to make fun of like pseudo intellectual backpack rappers or whatever and now it's become a thing the right uses to call it it's it's extremely annoying and that like like like you

see it all the time with like like milani went on tv and said she was the most bullied person in the world it's like okay i guess we got to bring back bullying now because they've taken that complain about i don't know what right yeah um so like i mentioned this guy's a state representative in pennsylvania which to me totally checks out because i'm from the south and i'm a liberal So I have noticed for a long time the rampant bullshittery that tends to come from state-level politicians in a lot of states, particularly in the South. Anytime some headline pops up about Tennessee, not anytime, but very often when some headline pops up about my beloved Tennessee, having some new measure on the books or on the ballot, and stuff like Tennessee is trying to make it illegal to say the word gay in public school. real thing that happened. Tennessee is trying to make the official state book of Tennessee

the Holy Bible, real thing that happened. Anytime something like that ever pops up, it is invariably a state-level politician that's behind it. All the silliest bullshit comes from state-level politicians, and we have someone here joining us tonight, a guest on the show, who's currently on the front lines of trying to push back against that because she's running for state.

Congress in my home state of Tennessee and her name is Elizabeth Madeira and I hope I'm saying that right and let's get Elizabeth in here I want to see what she thinks about why this is and what can be done to improve upon this in the future so here she comes there we go one second to join the audio Elizabeth Elizabeth are you there yes I'm here can you hear me now? Yes, hey, Elizabeth. I said, I said, I said, Madera, is that right? Madeira.

Madeira. I knew every single time. I was right. That's right. Yeah, Mark said Madeira. Anyway, that's Mark. That's my co-host, Mark Aegee there. Hey, Mark.

Thanks for having me. Thanks for joining us. We were just talking about this state congressman in Pennsylvania who has been the first to be brave enough to stand up against the oppression of people who do not wear a mask. you had to take a stand. Now that's into talking about state-level politicians and the type of shit they seem to get up to, particularly in the South.

And I was just wondering, you're currently running for office in the state of Tennessee. What do you think it is that leads to this kind of, for lack of a better word, bullshit at the state level in states like our own? Well, I think the leadership kind of starts at the top. And when conspiracy theories and is touted from the top, from the president, it kind of bleeds down to other states. And when they're trying to get favor with their very Trump-supporting constituents, then they kind of just follow his lead, even when it leads to, you know,

leads to a complete mishandling of a global pandemic. My theory on it has been they need a way to sort of get attention. Like they need some way to stand out. And when you're at that level, the best way to go about that is by doing something ridiculously incendiary and out there. It's like just taking a real hard swing for the fences. and when you play on the field that they play on, this is what that ends up looking like.

Does that sound right to you, or am I just talking out of my ass? Well, I think that it's hard to call it really extreme when it's like the whole constituency. I think part of the problem is in states where, and I would say that there would be multiple Tennessee state representatives that would say something similar to happen in Pennsylvania, but when you have a super majority,

there's not the they're not able to be there's not the same level of accountability they kind of run away with their power and think that they can do whatever they want and that's one reason that i decided to run because i think first of all we need to break the super majority and those people who have had power and think that they can get away with anything need to yeah be held accountable and not get away with everything yeah and uh after one i'm glad you're running because the guy you're running against is very much a shining example of the thing we are talking about right now, in my opinion, at least. His name's Glenn Cassata, and he's been in the state House of Representatives for quite a while, and then last year he was appointed the Speaker of the State House of Representatives

and ended up serving the shortest term in Tennessee history as the Speaker of the House because he was forced to step down amid scandal. And yet he is still running for re-election and is your opponent. I'm not trying to drag you into some kind of muckrake and competition here, but why don't you sort of give us a brief overview of this guy and his shenanigans and why he ought not be there anymore? Yeah, well, I will say it's been quite a while that I've not agreed with him on policy. I think several years ago the first time I ever saw him in the news when I was paying attention

was when he said that guns should be allowed in parks because they're no more dangerous than bicycles and bicycles are allowed in parks. So there's our starting point. And then last year there was a whole, there was an investigative journalism that turned out a whole bunch of things including there was an FBI investigation into his pet project, which was vouchers, a voucher bill that they got passed for possible, like, trading favors for votes. And then there was a whole, he was actually covered on John Oliver, if anybody here is a John Oliver fan, because he also had some, his chief of staff had some racist texts. There were super gross and inappropriate texts about what his chief of staff was doing in the bathroom and a local hot chicken restaurant, which now makes me, you know, I hate to have anything negative be done

at a hot chicken restaurant because... Heard that. So... State bird of Tennessee is a hot chicken. Listen, it's every Friday night in our house. I'm jealous. I miss it. Yeah. So I think that was part of it.

There was inappropriate talking about interns on the staff. So that's pretty gross. And then actually this year, it was revealed that he did not disclose about $100,000 worth of campaign expenditures. So, and then, of course, that was the Ethics Committee could have decided to find him up to like $2 million, but instead he got a $10,500 fine that he just paid with his pack. Yeah. So you can just keep like laying it on and nothing is surprising anymore.

Right. No, you literally can just keep going. You name so many things. didn't mention that he also hired a political operative who was tasked with discrediting the sexual assault accusers of another Republican state representative named David Byrd who represents my wife's hometown district. He's a pillar of the community there, was a teacher in the school for a long time and every and he's uh he was having he was having inappropriate sexual relations with students at the school and this is a thing that was known and he still is a representative there

and cassata hired a guy specifically just to clear that guy's name essentially so it's just like a web of of insidious bullshit oh yeah and i forgot that his Chief of Staff was doing cocaine in his campaign office. Right. So, yeah, it's like a race at the bottom. So, yeah, so I'm glad somebody's, you know, pushing back against this guy. I'm glad you're there. I do have to wonder, though, how you found it so far.

You're not the first woman I've talked to who's running for office in Tennessee on the left. And I know that it could be challenging. You're in Williamson County, which is, it covers a lot of like sort of suburbs of Nashville kind of Brentwood and Franklin, things like that. So that's like metropolitan adjacent as opposed to out in the boonies where I'm from, where my friend Carol Adney is running for office in like Clay County, you know, in the sticks. So I'm wondering what it's like for you running as a woman on the left there on the day-to-day basis campaigning. How are you finding it? Well, I'm finding a lot. I'm having a lot of Zoom conversations.

Not out to be able to like get out and battle a lot. But I think pretty much everybody that I've talked to knows who I'm running against is glad there's somebody running against him. And so, and myself, I'm a mom. I've got three young kids, a two, five, and eight-year-old. And I'm also part-time Spanish teacher. So, you know, I'm really talking a lot about how I'm not a career politician. It's my first time running for office. I'm doing it because I believe the community deserves a better leader

who doesn't care about special interests and who cares about the community and wants to support public schools and health care and all kinds of things. And we're really getting a lot of positive response so far. So I know that it's an uphill climb because we're, historically a red district, but we have, we're definitely moving in the right direction, even in 2018, Phil Bredesen, who ran for U.S. Senate, got 40% of the vote here. So that's moving us in the right direction. And, and I really feel like we're the suburbs that they talk about so much, like when they're talking about all the districts that swung

towards the cons, swung the house that in Congress in Washington blew this last time. So the Democrats took the house. They talk so much about the suburbs and the suburban moms and the soccer moms and stuff. And so we definitely have a lot of that in this district. So that's kind of who we're reaching out to and talking to. And, you know, in a historically red district and a historically red state like Tennessee, you know, it's definitely a challenge, but we're definitely getting a lot of positive reception and excitement about somebody who is a normal person. So that's exciting. Yeah. No, that is exciting. It's great to hear. that. You read a lot about, I mean, like, the guy you're running against is a, I mean, he's obviously

a mild outlier, but you read like a story a week about some like, like state senator or state house dude who's just like an absolute psycho. He's been up to some weird nonsense and you wonder how do they keep winning and one is, you know, gerrymandering. That's obviously one. But two, like, these jobs aren't high profiles. You only want them for one or two reasons. You either want to help your neighbors and care about your community and fix schools because you're a school teacher and you got three kids, or you think about all the weird cocaine stuff you can get up to where you can get $10,000 fines for paying people to harass your opponents. It's like that's fun for a certain brand of person and these jobs really appeal to them, it seems like. And I would rather

someone who care about their neighbors get these jobs, I guess. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in states like Tennessee, like there are no women, like no moms of school-aged kids or young kids in the Tennessee State House. And there's several of us running across the state. So there could be multiple ones of us that join the State House. But there's definitely an issue of representation, a lot of state houses, because there's a whole lot of barriers set up. Like, for example, the pay is only like $24,000 a year and you would just work January through April. And who could do that? Not very many people, right? most people need to work all year and have a more sustainable salary than that. But in order to fix the system, you got to get into the system.

So that's why I'm kind of stepping up and outside of my country zone. Hell yeah. Not well, fucking A. I don't know what else to say. No, that's great. And I'm glad to hear you're making inroads. And I'm just glad that, like I said, somebody's going up against this guy and people are fighting a good fight. And I hope that you keep doing it.

So thank you for joining us on evening skews, Elizabeth. We really appreciate it. Absolutely. And am I allowed to make a fundraising pitch to everybody? Go for it. Go for it, of course, yeah. So I think some folks on my team have dropped the links in the chat too, but you can go to all my socials, my website.

Everything is really simple. It's Elizabeth for TN. So F-O-R-T-N is my first name because the last one is hard to not just pronounce, but spell. So Elizabeth for T-N, and it all really helps. I mean, this guy, I mean, he just paid his fees out of his pack. He's got over $300,000 in his campaign fund. So, you know, we have a lot of work to do to have a really robust fight against him. But I'm one of those people that when I sign up to do something, I go all in.

So I'm, we're going strong. And I appreciate all the support of all of your people that have tuned in. Absolutely. Right on. Well, thank you very much, Elizabeth. We appreciate it. and all the best to you. Oh, well, thank you.

Thanks so much for having me. Absolutely. Good luck. Thanks for coming on. Yep. Bye. Bye. All righty.

Yeah, no, it's, you know, again, I feel for a long time, and honestly, this isn't as true anymore as it used to be with Donald Trump giving all of us, Americans, I mean, every single day, such a terrible name. But I used to really feel that, like I said, anytime, All the shit that got all the play that ever caught fire in the national media landscape that was a headline relating to any like Southern State or to Tennessee or wherever, it almost always originated from one of these motherfuckers. It's like you said, like you just, they're psych,

a different local level representative who's a fucking psycho pops up every week. And it's like Elizabeth said, you only make $24,000 a year so a regular person can't afford to have that job. Right. So the only way, the only way if you need money to stay alive, the reason to do those jobs, either one, you're independently wealthy or two, you're going to use that job to make money on some side angles. That's how you end up like bringing all these scams. So it's just like, they're all used car dealers too.

I don't know why there's so many hot tub sales when they're bumping a party, but it seemed to be dominant. Yeah. All right. Well, it's about that time for us to go to the audience out here, see what y'all got going on. So let us know. While we're waiting on some of those to come through, a quick side note. A little fun fact from today. Mike Pence's motorcade had two separate car accidents in one day today, so that's fun. Also in western Pennsylvania, where that same lunatic was from. let's say what are we got

oh Acewood says can we talk about how the GDP decreased by 32% it's only going to get worse we are fucked no lube right yeah yes that's a very good point

a lot of people were saying that the whole thing with Trump in the election was just him trying to deflect from the issue with the GDP because you know obviously the one and only thing he somewhat legitimately was able to hang his hat on for his entire term, which I don't find it legitimate at all,

but still was the economy. And the economy's falling off a cliff with coronavirus. And the projections came out today, 32% drop in the GDP. That's horrible news for Donald Trump. And some people were speculating that that actually is why where this whole election thing was coming from. I don't know if I believe that,

but either way, yeah, it's really bad news and it don't look good for him. One, I mean, I don't know who talks about the economy in terms of GDP when you're a regular person. Like my experience, the economy is how much money is in my bank account. Like maybe some institutional investors think about that, but like that's, they're voting how they're voting any way. Like I don't, I just don't think, plus it's forest and trees type stuff. Having a nice economy is great. Having a non-authoritarian government is. absolutely mandatory. So I really don't think declaring himself trying to be a dictator is a

distraction from a temporary downturn in the economy. It seems like you're mixing up things there. I don't know. No, I kind of, I agree with part of what you're saying, but I disagree with another part of it, meaning like I think, I think the economy is actually huge for a lot of voters in the macro sense. But I, but I think that things like like, like, statistics like that, like a headline that's like 32% drop in GDP, I don't know how much that impacts your average, like, day-to-day person when they, in terms of just reading it. And I mean, I think the proof is in the lack of coverage that that's even gotten. You know what I mean? Because it seems like esoteric and not even real, kind of like the stock market and everything.

But I do think that people on a, just people on a day-to-day basis, they can tell when the economy is genuinely doing good or when it isn't. And when it isn't, that leads to people wanting something to change or something different to happen. But yeah, things like that, I don't think really permeate, although they should. Yeah, I don't think anybody, people judge how the economy is going based upon the numbers they see in the newspaper about the GDP or the stock market. I think they judge it based on how many people are coming into their store and they count the register candidate. Yeah. So, all right. Stephen Harrell said, what's y'all's official prediction on the election, do you think he will contest the results?

How big of a mess will this cause with civil unrest when he claims his loss wasn't legitimate? Okay, for the first part of that, absolutely 100% guaranteed he will contest the results. He literally contested the results of the election he won, literally. So if he does lose 100%, he's going to contest them. And for the second part, what kind of civil unrest? rest will that cause if he does that that that's the part of word i don't know for sure people will be pissed off but what i've been saying the whole time and i i don't want to jinx myself you know i'm not a superstitious person but i don't want to end up being like herman kane with my foot in my mouth

in a in a grave somewhere i get killed in some sort of fucking redneck conservative revolution but having said all that i think i'm not i'm not i'm not worried about their capacity to sort of take over this country. I'm just not. I don't think they have I don't think they have it in them to do it. I think most of them all they do is blow v8 and far be it for me to shit on somebody for bloviating but still I think that's that's the extent of what they are capable of doing is just screaming impotently into the void and they're not going to really be any kind of agent of change, I don't think. So will there be, will he be pissed and talk shit?

Yes. Will that amount to anything? Kind of sort of, but ultimately not really is what I think, because I just don't think they have it in them. I mean, we talk like contesting, do you mean like demanding recounts? Because that'll depend. That all depends. They're legal mechanisms for that stuff.

And it depends on the boat margins. So if you lose his Michigan by 13 points, I don't think he's going to be demanding a recount. And if you mean contested by Ventis spleen on Twitter at 2 in the morning, I think absolutely yes. Well, that's what I meant. Like he's going to say to his base, this was fraudulent, like for sure. And when they say fraudulent, they don't mean like, I mean, obviously, look,

there have been stolen elections in American history. they absolutely have. There's been a crooked shit. There's been people that won the popular vote. And then the House voted to give the election to other people. I'm not a historian. Somebody smarter than me. I can fill in the details or tell me I'm wrong. But the when they say fraudulent, they mean spiritually fraudulent? Like like when you, the Geneseecois, fraudulent. They mean like, oh, but I remember this dude was like once like, oh, but, but like McCain, Obama lost every group. One lost every group, but, lost every group, but, minorities and women. It's like, okay, what you're saying is he didn't win white men,

so his election doesn't count, right? That's what they, they really think, it permeates through their whole soul that other that this is a white male Christian country. And anybody's vote doesn't count as much as there. So it's, yeah, yeah, it's a way it goes. Hobie Henneger, the third said, when you scream into the void, does it scream back? In my experience, no. That's what we're doing right now, Trey. You and I'm screaming to the void and the people are screaming back. Buddy, it's one of my favorite pastimes.

I stay screaming to the void. Deb Walsh says, I think the militarization of ICE and the Department of Homeland Security is setting us up for an armed battle over the White House. Okay. Mark, as you pointed out before

on previous editions, like they're not really there's not that many of them in those agencies, you know, that he is actively military rising, especially compared to the actual military. And I don't think that the actual military is going to be about that. I mean, I just don't. I mean, also, because here's the thing,

in this scenario where that happens, where it's like an armed battle, he won't leave the White House. And there's a potential battle to get his ass out. out of there. That will necessarily, no matter what happens in the election, that will necessarily be happening in January around inauguration day. And as we talked about earlier, according to the Constitution, inauguration day, whether he goes along with it or not, his term ends. And either, and this is all in a scenario where he loses. So his term ends and either Joe Biden is now the president or if some

insanity has happened, Nancy Pelosi is now the president, but either way, he is no longer the president, meaning he is no longer the commander and chief of the armed forces. And I do not believe that the U.S. military is going to keep his ass in the White House. And even if he still has the loyalty of the Department of Homeland Security and ICE, that's nowhere near enough. Like that's just not, I don't think any of that's going to happen. But I'm saying even if it came down to that, that shit ain't going to happen. I mean, if we're inventing, like, a constitutional cosplay scenario here, like, there's no rule. There's no rule that says the Speaker of the House must be a congressman.

So the next Congress could elect Joe Biden's Speaker of the House and he could become. It's like, and so it all this is nonsense. Like, I mean, reality is like, oh, so if he refuses to leave the White House in January 20th or whatever the date is, and DHS surrounds it with a couple thousand guys, Joe Biden would be inaugurated down the street and they'll run the country out of his house for a little while because they're not going to send the 10th Mountain Division and the Slaughter Department of Homeland Security. It'll be like the opening crash to the Simpsons

where Maggie's got her fake steering wheel off the side. Yeah, right. But a grown-ups to actually drive in the car. Yeah. It'll be like that. It's like we don't have to, it doesn't matter whether you're, we talked about this another show, I think, but it doesn't matter whether you're sitting in the White House or not.

That's not what the power comes from. Exactly. the military, for the military answers to, and they've been very strongly signaling. They're not interested in getting into Republican versus Democrat politics, and they're kind of exhausted to be a driving stuff. So unless he managed to install some sort of loyal Pinochet, loyalist Pinochet like generals, all through the defense before January, I don't think that's possible. I agree.

Victoria Ann said, I'm not worried about it at all. His base is a bunch of Confederate Nazis, and we've already whipped both of those. their asses before, so bring it on again. Hell yeah, girl. What else can I say? I mean, I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid the good would lose that fight, but I just don't want to have it. Yeah, I don't want to have it either. I agree with that, but it's like, it's like I was saying, I'm just, I'm not, if, if it came to that kind of thing, I'm sorry, I'm just genuinely, I'm not afraid of them, them being like his most hardcore fervent

supporters that would actually be the ones on the front lines of that potential civil war, you know, like again, I don't know. I'm just not. I'm not, I'm not afraid of them. Yeah, and they're definitely less of them. They're less enthusiastic than they were in say like January 2017 or whatever. Like it's just it's a there was a moment when the alt right and Nazis felt like they were ascendant and it doesn't feel that way anymore. It's a you. They, they've taken this hell. It feels like, and if, like, if he loses, I bet there will be a couple cars driving into protest crowds

and maybe a couple of mass shootings from Q&O people. Yes. But I don't think it's no, no sort of organized, you know, military resistance. I agree. And that's the thing. It's like you got to be careful even saying shit like I was just now saying because, yeah, I agree with you. I think in that scenario, yes, there would be isolated incidents like that.

And probably some people would die. and that is horrible, but if we're talking about like a full-on revolution from the Trumpers, I just, there's no way. They can't, but Lara Wiz says, just get out and vote, y'all, quit trying to dream up weird doomsday scenario. And I mean, I'm with her. I'm with her. I'm with her, too. I agree completely.

Let's see. Jessica Lynn says, anyone else still feel fairly confident that Trump, actually going to win re-election. Again, it's one of those things where it's like, I'm like struggling to even form words right now because I always feel like I'm so gunshot over 2016 over us getting punched in the face of 2016 like we did that I hesitate to even say this,

but still every single metric we have and have ever had in terms of predicting elections right now points to not just a defeat, but a resounding defeat of Donald Trump. And that's an objective fact. It's an objective fact that that is what the metrics look like right now. So like, you know, I don't know. I just can't, I can't see it another way without some kind of silly bullshit that, again, I don't believe they have the capacity to execute.

We, I mean, look, we've only had, like, you know, 200 years with the presidential elections. We have a small sample size of what politics actually looks like in America, right? So no one really knows anything, but I will say this. You know that people like military historians say that like amateur study tactics and strategy while professional study logistics. Like the political, probably side version of that is like people look,

talk about personalities and campaigns, but like fundamentals decide who wins elections. Basically how people feel about how things are going, like what the economy looks like, whether we're in a war, right? So like, 538 had this thing today where like the fundamentals predict that would predict in a rational universe, Trump will be down by 36 points. Now, that's not true because we're really polarized right now. And things didn't used to be this politically polarized. But it's the people hang out.

on they're still going to vote for him or doing it for things other than material reasons, like religious like faith. And I just don't think there are enough of those to overwhelm the rest of us. Right. I agree with you. Yes. Essentially what you just said. It like at the end of like things are terrible right now and pretty much everyone in America agrees upon that. And there is a there is a minority percentage of people who would say that the reason things are terrible is because Trump hasn't been allowed to do enough for whatever, hasn't been given enough time. But the vast majority of people are going to are going to look at that and come to the conclusion that something needs to change.

I, that, you know, that that sort of excuse making drives me crazy because the job is the job, man. The job is working with, working with the courts in Congress and the world as it is. Like, like, no president has gotten to do everything you wanted to do, either, you're there. either figured a way to do it within the rules or you lose. And so I don't, I don't really, you want people operating in good faith. Like I thought it was unfair when McConnell decided to, this stated agenda was to make Obama a one-term president, refused to work with them on anything.

I thought that was extremely bad faith and bad, unpatriotic and bad for the American people. But he tried it and it didn't work. And Obama still got a second turn because I don't figure out how to be president within those parameters. Yeah. Yeah. So, but I mean, at the end of the day, who the fuck knows? we'll see what happens. But yes, I at this point, am hopeful, what other choice do I have?

Just complete nihilism. But yeah, we'll see what happens. So we are out of time. That is it for this edition of evening, skews. Thank you all so much for joining us. We will be back next Tuesday, August, whatever that is. And who the fuck knows what's going to happen

between now and then. So we'll see you all there. Could be anything. Bye.