wellRED podcast - Evening Skews - Week of September 15, 2020

Episode Date: September 22, 2020

Me and Smart Mark went in on many a shade of dumbassery last week, from Barr comparing COVID to slavery and Trump learning how trees work, all the way to everyone at LSU apparently having the Rona and... Antifa living rent free in Republican's heads. Also, a big W for the MAIL and so, SO much more. Love y'all.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 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, 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.
Starting point is 00:00:19 It's just like you can just, it makes it easier to lose count of, well, your count, the count every month, how much you're spending. A lot of people don't even know how much they spend on a per month basis. I'm not going to lie, I can be one of those people. Like, let me ask you right now. Skewers out, whatnot, sorry, well-read people. People across the ske universe, I should say. Do you even know how many subscriptions that you actively pay for every month or every year?
Starting point is 00:00:41 Do you even know? Do you know how much you spend on takeout or delivery? Getting a paid chauffeur for your chicken low mane? Because that's a thing that we do in this society. Do you know how much you spend on that? It's probably more than you think. But now there's an app designed to help you manage your money better, and it's called Rocket Money.
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Starting point is 00:01:44 I used Rocket Money and realized that I had apparently been paying for two different language learning services that I just wasn't using. So I was probably like, I should know Spanish. I'll learn Spanish. and I've just been paying to learn Spanish without practicing any Spanish for, you know, pertinent two years now or something like that. Also, a fun one, I'd said it before,
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Starting point is 00:03:12 Howdy y'all? Welcome back. Today is Tuesday, September 15th. I'm Trey Crater and that's Mark A.P. What's up, Mark? What's up, Trace Fis? How you doing, bud? Yo, doing good.
Starting point is 00:03:23 This is evening skee. As always, we begin with our dumbass report. And now this one tonight requires a little bit of a personal disclaimer for me, I think, because it's important that y'all know that many of the things featured in tonight's dumbass report. I am generally speaking a big fan of things like college football, the state of Louisiana, the person at Orgeron, or at least the coach at Orgeron. In the macro sense, I'm fans of these things typically, but still the honor is bestowed
Starting point is 00:03:52 where the honor is bestowed. And for those of you who missed it, a couple days ago, coach Ed Orgeron of the reigning national champions of college football, Louisiana State University's Tigers, said in a teleconference that most, not all, but most of his team has contracted COVID-19. Now, as far as I can find, there's not a good amount, there's not a good clip of this out there because it was in a teleconference. so I can't play a clip for you guys, so I'm forced to just give you my best approximation of this exchange and how it went down. So here it goes. We're in a press conference.
Starting point is 00:04:37 Coach, Oh, could you talk a little bit about the state of the program in the time of COVID and the regulations that are result of the pandemic and how it's affected you as a team and an organization and family? Yeah, so most of the kids, Not all the kids, but most of the kids, they got the rona. But they're doing good. They rebounded. They're doing good.
Starting point is 00:05:01 And except for two or three of the big boys up front, they're on the men. And we think that, you know, they're not going to catch it again. And most importantly, they're not going to miss any of the ball games this fall. Go Tigers. Next question. That last part, Mark, was an actual quote. He said the most important thing, they're not going to miss any of the ball games this fall. That is the most important.
Starting point is 00:05:24 Thanks, right. It really is. We're all living and die. I mean, like, you got to, you got to, you know, be happy for these kids that all their medical decisions and information are being given out and decided by a guy who talks like a cartoon alligator. Which if you guys aren't familiar with that Ors you're on, he's a, he's a character. And it's usually a fun one, but he's like, these dudes really do live and bleed football. I think it's the most important thing in the world.
Starting point is 00:05:49 It's their whole life. It's made them rich. And it's made them kings of the little towns they live in. if you've been to Baton Rouge, I mean, unless you want to drink a drive at 10 of the morning, ain't a lot else going on. So you got a bunch of industrial oil plants
Starting point is 00:06:02 and LSU football, baby. Baton Rouge. But no, I mean, I know, I know he was just answering the questions and he was saying, like, you know, we expect to have them all back by the time the game start, you know. But I still feel like in the context of the question
Starting point is 00:06:23 what they were talking about. It comes across as like that scene from a not another team movie or whatever where one of the football players gets ripped in half and the head coach is like, can he play? Can he? It's like, coach, he can't walk. He's not even a whole person. Can he play? And luckily the tigers will be able to play.
Starting point is 00:06:45 For whatever reason, sometimes like sports makes all this stuff really clear. Like it's just the biggest examples of shit that's fucked up about. planet, but like, okay, for the past six months, we've got to go back to work, right? Work, which is a very American thing, we've got to work, we got to work, got to work. These kids are getting paid. It's not their job, right?
Starting point is 00:07:06 And so it's just like, no, we got to, these kids have to go back to work so we had Orgeron to make money. I'm sure it's not how he sees it, but it's basically what it is. Well, I think most, I think, I mean, there's plenty of programs that this doesn't apply to that are playing college this fall, but I think that like a lot of the players, you know, for a program like LSU, you're right, they don't get paid, but they still like look at it as a job. Do you know what I mean? Like, because a lot of those guys are hoping to get drafted or whatever. Like that's a really high
Starting point is 00:07:40 level. And so they probably approach it like a job, I would imagine. A third to half the starters are going to play on Sundays probably. And I at some point. I get that. But they also like, that doesn't that doesn't necessarily simplify the decision making because some of them will be i got to play to make the pros but other ones are like i'm getting drafted anyway if i get covid maybe have a heart defect that leave makes me that makes me drop four rounds you know so i don't know how you i don't know how you do that do that do that can also i should also say like like i said you know i've talked about before on the show i'm a huge college football fan i'm from tennessee i'm a vals fan it's been hell on their own time now but you know i'm going to do
Starting point is 00:08:18 I was born to it. And you should also say, you should be up front about your biases here, man. Pretty much LSU, Auburn, Clemson, Carol Baskins, Tigers do not hit for Trey at all. It's really, you're doing his life. Don't hit for me. LSU, I used to go to a lot of, I used to go to a lot of Tennessee games. I live in Knoxville, and I will say, the most fun we ever had with an opposing fan base was with L.U fans, because they were walking around the different tailgates, like giving people boo down and shit, like just a bunch of drunk Cajuns having a good time.
Starting point is 00:08:48 and it was fun. Yeah. But, but anyway, all I want to say is this is not specific to just the LSU Tigers, because last week would have been the first game for the Tennessee Valls, but they changed the schedule because of COVID months ago. But it came out that had they not changed the schedule, and they had their first game this past Saturday, Tennessee would not have been able to play in it because of the amount of players that were on the COVID list.
Starting point is 00:09:18 They wouldn't have been able to field a team where if they were only barely. So it's not just the LSU thing. So it seems like it's so weird to me because I see these like multiple reports from SEC teams about how they've been ravaged by the COVID regulations, you know. But yet other conferences, other schools have been playing college football games for like two or three weeks now.
Starting point is 00:09:40 And also the NFL just came back this past weekend. And it was a big story for them Sunday morning. Not one single player or coach in the NFL tested positive for COVID. Not a single one of them. When you put them all together, it's like, I don't know, more than 2,000. It's a couple thousand people. And nobody tested positive for it. But yet these SEC college programs, like I said, have been just ravaged by it.
Starting point is 00:10:11 It's like, yeah, most of our players, over half of our players have caught it already. And that, I'm not trying to be like conspiracy theory, E, but that seems weird to me. Like, how do you reconcile those two things? I do think, well, I think, well, there's several possibilities. And I think it's true. There's probably somewhere in the middle. Like someone, so some football beat writer was suggested her conspiracy theory was that they're using the European standard for testing where you have to have a higher viral load in order to test positive, which would enable them to juke the stats a little bit.
Starting point is 00:10:44 but also like the kids the kids don't have the financial incentive to stay clean because they know players if you don't follow sports closely their contracts aren't guaranteed so they can literally be cut I think up until game four and not be guaranteed the full season contract so they have financial incentive to stick to the rules and wear masks and all that stuff to you know the college players they have to do a bunch of other activities that they're required to do to be able to play that are outside of football they literally have to go be around other students they have to go to like the um they can only eat at the dining hall because boosters can't buy them sandwiches they can uh they have to go to class right they have to pass i mean we all know
Starting point is 00:11:26 their workarounds but in general they have to they have to go through the routines of looking like students even though we all know tutors are doing a lot of their homework but um NFL players can avoid a lot of stuff even though what the Seahawks do got caught sneaking a girl into his hotel room and got cut for it again got cut right he got got cut immediately, but that guy was like an undrafted free agent or like a light round draft pick or something. If it was Russell Wilson, you know. No, yeah, he wouldn't be in trouble. But also, Russell Wilson is like, he has a $40 million, $35 million your contract because he's instantly committed to football to begin with.
Starting point is 00:12:00 So he stays at home with what's his wife's name? Sierra, right? Sierra, yeah. So, and also like the, what's going to say? say the at a point. I don't know. It must have been not
Starting point is 00:12:17 that good. All right. Well, so the last thing we'll say about football before moving on. I mentioned that the NFL came back this week
Starting point is 00:12:24 and coronavirus wasn't the only socio-political the agenda for the NFL. Social justice is also a huge thing as it is in all major sports leagues
Starting point is 00:12:37 right now. The NFL came back this week and there saw a bunch of different ways of protests. or making a statement for social justice or unity or whatever. Some teams have players stay in the locker room for the National Anthem.
Starting point is 00:12:53 They didn't come out. Some of them came out and took a knee in Kaepernick style. Some of them, you know, some players took a knee. Other players didn't, but they all like locked arms or held shelter pads or something to show that they were all together in their statement or whatnot. They did a bunch of things like that. And I mean, I'm for all of that. but a couple of things I wanted to talk about about it.
Starting point is 00:13:15 First thing is the NFL, the official NFL Twitter for the NFL took a lot of those screenshots about happening and posted it and was like the NFL is proud to support the players in their quest for social justice or whatever. And like, again, I'm a huge football fan. That just seems like a bullshit to me when, you know, where was the NFL when Colin Kaepernick started this shit a few years ago? You know what I mean?
Starting point is 00:13:43 It was a completely different story now. But now in 2020, and like, I don't know. I also, because I'm from the South and everything, I don't want to be the type to demonize changing for the positive. Do you know what I mean? Like I'd rather have, I'd rather have the NFL come around to be on the right side of things than them not. But still, it just like kind of feels like bullshit to me. It's all corporate brandy bullshit, but it is better than to pretend to be on the right side of stuff than to pretend to be on the wrong side of stuff.
Starting point is 00:14:11 So it's like hypocrisy is the tribute, vice pays to virtue kind of stuff. But some of it's a little gross. They were using Kaepernick in their commercials, which is like, you're still blackballing a dude, but pretend it like to support him. And there is, of course, going to be a point where Colin Kaepernick is just too old to play in the NFL. We're probably rapidly approaching that. Yeah. But he would have been, it's fairly unarguable that when they started blackball on him,
Starting point is 00:14:34 he would have easily would have been a very good backup, if not a bottom. Without a doubt. Without a doubt. He would have been like, I don't care how you fit. because I'm a huge football fan. I watched it for years. I don't care how you appraise Kaepernick as a player. To me, it's objective that at the very worst,
Starting point is 00:14:54 he would have been an upper tier backup in the NFL at that time. And he wasn't for a reason. And that reason is pretty clear to everybody. He got blackballed for taking a stand by taking a knee. But. Yeah. And they have a, And by the way, like, if they were just honest about it, like, at least respect it,
Starting point is 00:15:13 but like, look, we have deeply, we have a deeply conservative fan base who's annoyed by this stuff, and we can't sign him. At least that would have been honest as opposed to the line and say he's not good of football. I mean, I'm a Cowboys fan. And like, if they had a, you know, Jerry Jones just said, like, look, we're in Texas. And he'll get booed every time he's on the field. Even if he throws a touchdown, every single snap. So we just can't sign it.
Starting point is 00:15:35 It would just be honest, you know. So speaking of that, that was the other thing I was going to bring up. up with football before we move on. They had all these displays of unity. The very first game of the NFL season was Thursday night football last Thursday, between the Super Bowl champion, Kansas City Chiefs, and the Houston Texans. And they, as two teams agreed upon, a display of unity. They didn't take a knee or anything like that.
Starting point is 00:16:01 They locked arms at midfield both teams as a display of unity. And when they did that, and you could hear it on. the broadcast, they were booed loudly by the crowd in attendance, but it's very important to note, in my opinion, almost every stadium in the NFL doesn't have any fans present because of COVID. Only a few do. And one of them is Arrowhead in Kansas City, Missouri. They're allowed to have fans there, but it was only like a fraction of, 20,000, I think, yeah.
Starting point is 00:16:36 Yeah, like spread out all across the stadium. And in my opinion, there's definitely a little bit of confirmation bias going on there where you think of like, think of the people who are most likely to ignore a pandemic and go to a football game. The Venn diagram of those people and the people who are most likely to boo a unity display overlaps a shit ton. So I don't think it's that surprising, but it still was pretty painful to see happen. We, I mean, this is good, this should not be construed as a defense of these people, but one thing I would say that I find fascinating about moderate American culture is like, people rarely say what they mean. So we're all conditioned to hear the meaning behind the things people aren't saying, right? We all, we communicate memes in America now because people are just so afraid of actually being honest. So everybody who's doing what the NFL was doing.
Starting point is 00:17:29 They were offering, they were doing a half-ass co-opting of Black Lives Matter movement and trying to take the teeth out of it to keep the play. players happy enough to keep playing while not offending the fans, right? So that the players do this arms locking moment of unity thing, which is like that lets JJ Watt feel okay being at the center as a team captain for this protest because he can tell himself it's not a Black Lives Matter protest because he's Mr. Captain America. But the black players could feel like they're actually doing something and they try to split that line just fine.
Starting point is 00:17:59 But the fans know exactly what's happening is the NFL is pandering. So honestly, you could boo it from either direction. But they're definitely booing it from the right way in direction there because they know what the NFL's meaning, even though it's not what they're saying. Okay, okay, all right. Because I mean, there's no one to boo unity. It's fucking, it's a green card. Okay, but I think, and I mean, I think we're saying different versions of the same thing,
Starting point is 00:18:23 given the people who are booing it. But that was my big takeaway from it. And a lot of people, it's obvious. Like, it was never about the kneeling or the disrespecting the anthem in the first place. Do you know what I mean? It was about what's behind it, but like what's behind it is
Starting point is 00:18:40 saying that systemic racism is a problem in America. And anyway, you got, because at the time they were like, you know, before the kneeling, and this has all been said a million times, but before the kneeling, there was Ferguson and all that,
Starting point is 00:18:52 and these same people were saying, it's fine for black people to protest, but there's a right way to do it, and that ain't the right way. And then they start peacefully kneeling, and it's like, well, that ain't it either. And then they come out in Kansas City and just don't kneel. They lock arms and they display of unity.
Starting point is 00:19:10 Who booze unity? But these same people are like, no, we know what you mean. That ain't it either. So there's just, there's no way that you can't, there's no way to go about it that will appease those people in my opinion. So like, why try? Like just do the fucking do your thing. That's what I'm saying.
Starting point is 00:19:32 Just say Black Lives Matter screw cut. cops they're going to boo the same matter what because it's just like why even do the half-ass thing is everyone knows everyone everyone's been through everyone's been through PR the same PR school we all know what you're saying what you're not saying right so just say it and yeah oh I forget I remember my my COVID point this relates to that my anti-conspiracy theory point with the COVID test was if it got out that a team was covering out positive tests and risking your player safety it would be a pretty huge scandal in this environment and the player The players are already on the verge of it feels like pushing for an actual union. Instead of the bullshit players association and striking for better working conditions and more respect and more guaranteed contracts, which the NFL would rather die than see. So my point to all this is to me that isn't COVID-related. I don't think the NFL would trouble themselves with trying to hide COVID
Starting point is 00:20:26 because it could lead to a disaster of much more biblical proportions to their bottom lines. Right. Yeah. Right. Okay, so we will move on from football to many of your approval, I'm assuming, but still sticking with dumb shit. So, okay, I got another disclaimer for this one. We're of course going to talk about Trump for a little bit. Mark, you and I live in California. Trump's visited California, and weirdly, that's led to a lot of dumb-ass sound bites. Now, before we play some of them, my stance on these is I'm going to make a clear up top.
Starting point is 00:20:58 I don't know shit about forestry, okay? I don't. But these things are objectively. These things are objectively funny in how they play. Okay. So here's one of them for it. This is Trump talking about the situation in California and on the West Coast with the wildfires. When trees fall down after a short period of time, about 18 months, they become very dry. They become really like a matchstick. And they, you know, there's no more water. pouring through and they become very very uh they just explode they can explode also leaves when you have years of leaves also leaves leaves on the ground yeah it just sets it up it's really a fuel for a fire so they have to do something about it okay now no uh it's funny like the stuff the stuff his brain gets stuck on because the leaves thing he got made he got made fun of a couple years ago for talking about how we have bad wildfires because european countries don't have these wildfires
Starting point is 00:21:59 because they rake the forests. Right. And everybody roasting forests. He don't have the wildfires because they rake the forest. And like you said, he gets hung up on certain fact poids that he gets in his briefings and whatnot. And so. But I'm saying he's still mad about being made fun of for us. He's still trying to prove himself right from being roasted by late night hosts 26 months ago.
Starting point is 00:22:19 Here's another. Here's another sound by this from. Apparently he's going to be a weekly participant on Fox and Friends. I don't know why that took this long. But here we are. And here's some more of his. thoughts on the wildfires. Well, look, Brian, you have
Starting point is 00:22:33 all over the world. You don't have fires Lafona. You know, in Europe, they have forest cities. Australia. You look at Australia. How about Australia? You look at so many countries. They live in the forest. They consider it forest cities.
Starting point is 00:22:45 So many of them. Forest cities. Okay. They don't have fires like this. They're elves. They have elves. They have more explosive trees. Easier. But they maintain their fire. They have an expression.
Starting point is 00:22:58 They thin the fuel. The fuel is, what's on the ground, the leave. All right. So, yeah, they live in forest cities in these countries in Europe. They're forest people. Like you said, they're elves, their ants. They are forest people over there.
Starting point is 00:23:13 And they don't have these fires. Now, my argument would be like, well, of course they don't. You would expect forest people to be better at, you know, maintaining forest fires than, we have beach people. We are beach people in California. Those are forest people over there. It's not apples to ask. Apple's comparison.
Starting point is 00:23:31 Obviously, I'm just fucking around. I don't know what the fuck this is all about. Like, he just keep, someone told him, I know that certain types of trees in, in the middle of a raging wildfire can explode, right? But like, he heard that in a meeting and is now talking about, he just keeps bringing up exploding trees and how explosive California's trees are versus Austrias, where they have all the forest cities.
Starting point is 00:23:59 and they have even more explosive trees, but yet they're not exploding. And it's like, what the fuck even is all of this? Yeah, what was the place where the hobbits lived in Lord of the Rings? The Shire. The Shire. The Shire, yeah. The Shire, yeah.
Starting point is 00:24:17 The, I'm trying to think of, like, where to start with this, because let's start with the universe where he's right, where, like, Austria doesn't have these fireworks because they have an amazing forest service or whatever. Can we talk to, to pay for a better forest service can we do that because like if that is a solution let's try it i don't know well a lot of the i don't have the exact number but a whole lot of the the forest area that's covered in the state of california is federal land covered by the bureau of land management or the u.s.
Starting point is 00:24:47 forest service or whatever so you know what's going on there is that part of it not burning versus the part that the you know liberal commie state has control of or whatever And he never brings up I mean of course he doesn't But like never bring climate change at any point Like again I think that I think behind all this wacky shit he's saying There are kernels of truth to a lot of like of course if you have a forest floor covered with a bunch of kindling and tender and I
Starting point is 00:25:21 You know falling trees and leaves and stuff That's a fire hazard like I mean of course that is true But but the larger problem clearly is climate change at a macro scale but that never gets brought up. It's just blamed on the
Starting point is 00:25:39 liberal state and the mismanagement of forest or whatever and that's the thing that makes it bullshit. I mean, we have they have mismanaged it. Like we, the land use policies aren't great and they, like, but it doesn't, you're right, it doesn't use the fact that the plants getting hotter and that's why
Starting point is 00:25:55 like we, you know, we're talking about before the, before we went live, that the, uh, global warming has shrunk the window where you can do control burns and then this year because of budget cuts have to do with COVID and lack of resources they did this did way less control burns even what they could have done within that small window so now like now we're living with that everything spirals it's all connected and if you I don't understand why making this is a this isn't really a partisan issue like the the hollowing out of American you know infrastructure and agencies and resources is been go by a bipartisan consensus for 30 years and so So, uh, okay, but you, I mean, but you do, you do know why it's a partisan issue. I mean, he's been upfront about it the whole time. It's because the states that are affected by this, California, Oregon, Washington are states that don't like him. They're blue states that are not Trump fans. And that's why, you know, they have to be admonished as opposed to being assisted in a time of crisis or whatever. And he literally just basically comes right out and says that shit, you know.
Starting point is 00:26:59 It's also just really stupid because the parts that are burning of Washington and Oregon are like, like, like, one of the reasons Portland so hated in larger Oregon is because it's like Austin and Texas. It's an extremely blue little dot in a sea of red and it controls the state's politics because it's highly populated and has more votes. So like the areas that are burning are, you know, for broadly speaking, a lot of his supporters, but he doesn't care because it won't win. the election and I don't know what to do about it. I mean, it's a really stupid way to look at governing because, again, public service, you're supposed to care about all of us. You're supposed to care if me and you get murdered even when I vote for him. It's just like, I don't know, but speaking of a, the partisan issue, and by the way,
Starting point is 00:27:48 Republicans are the only major party in the world that in general disbelieves in climate change. But do you have the clip of him talking about sciences, how he knows better than science? Yeah, yeah, yeah, just a second. So, yeah, this is from this, a lot of these are from the same, I actually know this is a different one. Hang on, pulling it up here. I'm going to throw you off. I'm stage correcting, I'm sorry.
Starting point is 00:28:16 No, that's all right. No, that's all right. We got it. We got it. We got it. You're talking about science, not knowing shit, basically. There's, there is an amazing partnership on the ground, and there needs to be. As the governor said, we've had temperatures.
Starting point is 00:28:33 explode this summer. You may have learned that we broke a world record in the Death Valley, 130 degrees, but even in greater LA, 120 plus degrees, and we're seeing this warming trend make our summers warmer, but also our winter's warmer as well. So I think one area of mutual agreement and priority is vegetation management, but I think we want to work with you to really recognize the changing climate and what it means to our forest and actually work together with that science. That science is going to be key. If we ignore that science, and sort of put our head in the stand and think it's all about vegetation management,
Starting point is 00:29:07 we're not going to succeed together protecting California. It'll start getting cooler. You just watch. I wish science to agree with you. Oh, wow. I don't think science to know it, actually. Yeah, like, I, I mean, what the, what do you? I mean, that's exactly what he said about COVID on,
Starting point is 00:29:32 that was the big story last. week with Woodward's book everything, you know, because he was coming out saying about COVID, like, it'll go away. It'll disappear. That's what happens. It will disappear. But then he was getting on the phone with Woodward in private and saying like, oh, yeah, this is a huge problem. And I just can't help but wonder now, if as dumb as I've always thought he is, I can't help but wonder now if that it's same kind of thing with this. If he's like behind closed doors, he's like, Oh, yeah, the planet's fucked and it's because of us, but, you know, what are you going to do? Got an election to win. I don't think it's, yeah, it's like this isn't, there's a, this isn't just Trump as a, huge problem among our entire, like, leadership class about how much they think, like, it's like the power, like, the power, like, positive thinking impacts everything. Like, we basically elected the secret president, two of the last three presidents were, like,
Starting point is 00:30:28 we elected the book the secret. And just like, if you, if you just don't put out global warming or COVID, or COVID vibes out in the universe and it won't be true and we can all make it go away. It's just like it's just asinine bullshit. And I hate it so much. I really hate it. But science doesn't know, Trey. Science doesn't know.
Starting point is 00:30:44 Well, in keeping with science not knowing. There was another big story from this weekend. There were a couple stories having to do with coups. Prominent Republican figureheads or spokespeople basically calling for
Starting point is 00:31:00 straight up coups. And one of them, was the spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, Michael Caputo, and a lot, he, who lost his mind on his own Facebook page. You went live on Facebook, and, you know, far be it for me to criticize a man for making that decision to go live on Facebook. But in his case, it seems to have been a bad idea, because Michael Caputo, the spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, went live on his personal Facebook page this weekend and said a lot of wild shit. But a lot of it had to do with the attack on science because the health and human services,
Starting point is 00:31:49 part of what's under their umbrella is the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control. And Caputo last week had come under fire for trying to revise an alter or block the CDC's COVID reports because they looked bad for Trump. That had already happened. And then this weekend he got on his Facebook and went nuts and was talking about how there are scientists at the CDC who don't want America to get well until Joe Biden is president. That they're gaming the system.
Starting point is 00:32:26 They're rigging the numbers. And they're actively trying to keep the COVID pandemic from getting better. until Donald Trump is out of office. And he's talking about the scientists at the CDC, most of which our career scientists have been there through many different administrations, from Bush to Obama to Trump or whatever. And that's just the tip of the iceberg
Starting point is 00:32:50 and the crazy shit this motherfucker said. Yeah, and now he's said he's taking a leap for mental health, right? He needs a... Yeah. Also, I mean, I guess, I don't, don't know. I don't want to give him any kind of like leeway really because of the shit he was saying. But at one point he did say early on and he said he straight up said
Starting point is 00:33:13 that his own quote mental health has definitely failed. But he talked about laying alone in his apartment in D.C. and seeing shadows on the ceiling and all of this. And he said to the audience, you're not waking up every morning and talking about dead Americans. And now listen, all of that I sympathize with. A person going through all of that, like, that's horrible. And it has an effect on you. But then where he took it from there to villainize the scientists is not just that. He also talked about like Antifa hit squads.
Starting point is 00:33:53 He said there are hit squads being trained all over this country. You understand they're going to have to kill me. And unfortunately, I think that's where this is going. And he just, he talked about, like, the coming civil war, basically, and all these, all those Antifa buses and shit that were coming out and just all the, like, just checking all the right-wing conspiracy boxes right now. And the thing, like, this guy is not only a high-level Trump administration official. He's a public relations. he's a PR specialist like his whole
Starting point is 00:34:32 thing is messaging and spin and all of that and he's on here just going full Alex Jones full Q&on shit live on social media and like that's where we're at
Starting point is 00:34:48 right now is this type of thing it's fucking crazy uh yeah the uh yeah he's been a asshole for a long time before he before he work for Trump so I don't want to like I don't give him too much the benefit of the doubt but uh but also like it's like he alleged they're like uh paris paramilitary squads within the CDC which I don't know how like these
Starting point is 00:35:10 disease nerds got time to to train up in poor core and like Jason bore and weapons handling um but it's just I don't understand how we get this divorce from reality and how you can be this high up in government and uh and you know and keep your job after being this crazy it's uh it's uh It's bizarre. I don't know. The things are, societies turn itself apart, and the people at the top are leaning into it. It's very weird. Yeah. Even after this happened, after he did this on Facebook, he then went to Twitter. And on Twitter, he was, like, commenting on, like, posts from it, there was a post from a
Starting point is 00:35:48 journalist who had a video saying they were about to be tear gas by police at a protest, and he was commenting gas them all, gas all of them. and just going in on all these, you know, different liberal. He was like picking out random commenters who were opposed to him and saying like, hey, douchebag, you have four followers and just like flexing his fucking social media deck on there. Just like, just all like. You're a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, man. You're dunking on people of a follower account.
Starting point is 00:36:22 The Department of Health and Human Services is calling. Twitter trolls, douche bags. You and I had a talk last week about the content for this show, and we were talking about how, like, there's a lot more fun stuff we could do, but we feel the need to be responsible and not actually spread to misinformation or, like, bad spin.
Starting point is 00:36:42 Right. Weird two people who work in fucking comedy on a goddamn Facebook show. Yeah. Meanwhile, the spokesman of the Department of Health and Human Services, salary pay for that taxpayers who's supposed to communicate information about health to the public is just ranting about a goddamn. It's just like,
Starting point is 00:36:58 I don't know. I don't know how to... No, no, you know what? Since you brought it up, I guess I'll just jerk us off for a minute, but I, like, you really are on to something with that, I think, because you're right. The last episode we did, we talked about, before the show, we talked about bringing up the Sturgis rally from last week and how dumb that was, and it was a super spreader event and all that.
Starting point is 00:37:23 But we ultimately decided not to bring it up because, There were a lot of conflicting reports about the degree to which it actually exacerbated the pandemic. And like, it was at the very least, it was cloudy. Like, of course, generally speaking, it's a bad idea to go to a biker rally in the middle of the pandemic. But we weren't comfortable with spouting these statistics about the billions of dollars of damage and the hundreds of thousands of cases it called. and whatever else because the statistics were dubious, right? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:38:00 And so we didn't talk about it. We didn't bring it up. And like you said, we're two fucking comedy jackoffs with a internet show, you know, and we don't want to do that. This dude is the spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, and he's not the only one at all. Another big story from the past few days, obviously he doesn't currently hold a major position in the Trump administration, but everybody
Starting point is 00:38:33 knows he's extremely close to the Trump administration. Roger Stone went on Alex Jones's show. I can barely even say this shit with a straight face, but it's true. So long time Donald Trump confidant and strategist Roger Stone went on Alex Jones's info program. And there again, said a bunch of crazy shit, among which he said the president should declare martial law to seize power if he loses the election. And Stone was saying he probably will lose the election. But if he does, he should declare martial law and seize power and refuse to step down because, in Stone's opinion, clearly the election has been, the integrity of the election has been compromised.
Starting point is 00:39:25 So like, I, this shit scares me so much that I, like, hesitate to even, it worries me playing too much of a part and even sort of like building this narrative just because of how terrified I am of it. But it seems like they're, they're starting to sort of, they're starting to put it out there, you know, that no matter what happens, it's going to be some shit, which is what we've all been worried about this whole time. but now they are actively talking about it because Bill Barr also was talking about, he didn't go so far as saying any election results will be compromised and Trump should declare martial law, but he was calling into question any hypothetical results from a vote-by-mail election.
Starting point is 00:40:14 You know, like they're planting the seeds for people to just immediately call bullshit on Joe Biden winning and when that happens after that, fucking all hell breaks loose. Well, I mean, here's to me the, I mean, we game out what could happen, what couldn't happen. I don't think declaring martial law, I'm not even sure Trump would be able to figure out how to do that and what would follow next.
Starting point is 00:40:43 Like, like, it would, and plus, like, you're, to make that plan work, you're relying on a bunch of, um, career bureaucrats who, even if they might sympathize with Trump, they need to risk going to prison for life to pass on orders to do stuff that they know is plainly illegal and unconstitutional. And I don't think they're going to, I think you're going to see a bunch of people shrugging and like trying to look busy
Starting point is 00:41:07 and not doing anything if he even tries that, which him declare martial law would mean would mean tweeting about it. Right. But there'd be other people who have to figure out how to do the follow through. I don't think they would. To me, the bigger concern is on election day and the lead up to it, a bunch of like private right wingers like um stone was the guy who organized the brooks brothers riots in florida in 2000 which uh brett cavanall was a foot soldier in where they just a bunch of
Starting point is 00:41:35 college republicans and a republican activists got bust into florida she just physically stopped boat counting but walking in and in massive loud protests now if you i can see of there being a bunch of stuff like that happening on election day and during and during mail ballot counting right Right. To me, that's the bigger concern that that would throw doubt on the election results as opposed to official government action doing anything. So that's the stuff I'd be worried about. But to me, to me, the bigger takeaway is that like a political party that 40% of Americans support 40 to 45 has just gone completely fucking insane and is now pro authoritarian and anti-democracy. And that's going to that's going to be around. It has been around for a while and it's going to be around long time after Trump's heart clogs up on the. toilet. Right. Like they're pretty much like calling for him to declare himself dictator. And like you said, 40-ish percent of Americans, that maybe 35 to 40, whatever, percent of Americans are
Starting point is 00:42:38 completely on board for that. And most, it's fucking insane. So Mark, keeping with the disinformation, tell us about the, um, right? Still there? If I lose you or you leaves me? All right. Well, I can't tell if I'm still alive or trees. Okay. So, anyway, Oregon.
Starting point is 00:43:24 I think we're back. Are you there? Okay. I'm here, yeah. Hopefully it won't split it up. I don't know what happened. We lost the connection. I'm sorry.
Starting point is 00:43:32 I don't. Hopefully it won't split it into two things. But that's the first time that's ever happened. I think we're back now. I was, God damn it. Okay. Anyway, I was saying,
Starting point is 00:43:41 Mark. Yeah, Oregon. Disinformation. Yeah, Oregon, Antifa. So there's a bunch of viral stories on spreading on Facebook and Twitter and the normal disinformation channels about like all the fires in Oregon and Washington being started by Antifa. Now, the core of this is a couple different things happened and sparked this. But like, like for example, people heard BLM on the police scanners and talking about fires
Starting point is 00:44:08 and took the mean Black Lives Matter when they met Bureau of Land Management. And that's a, that's sort of a big cultural divide. One of the things like, like, so right-wing Americans in the west, the western half of the country have been primed to hate things, the initials BLM for, for decades, right? The Bundy's big beef is with the Bureau of Land Management. That's who they had the, the guns drawn standoff with over the taxes they pay to feed their cows. If, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, I think if people had known, maybe people would have picked a different name of the Black Clouds Matter movement, that would have a different acronym. and maybe it would be probably would have been clear marketing, but anyway, it doesn't really matter.
Starting point is 00:44:46 Who cares? But some people heard that and started these wave of stories. And a couple police were spreading them doing viral videos on Facebook to two police groups. There's been no evidence of any sort of, there'd be no political reasons for these fires. I can't even think of what it would be. People are blaming the governor, Governor Kate Brown for backing it because she couldn't get federal funds to rebuild Portland after the riots.
Starting point is 00:45:09 So now, of course, this is a trick to get federal funds, which is like you get federal funds, but you have to spend way more money. It doesn't seem like a good plan. People are refusing to leave their houses because they think the fires are a scam so Antifa can come loot their property. So people are probably going to die
Starting point is 00:45:29 because they believe this bullshit because they're not evacuating. Militias were setting up their own checkpoints looking for Antifa, stopping people at gunpoint, which were slowing down the evacuations. this one couple, they live in Portland. He's a videographer who've been covering a lot of the protests,
Starting point is 00:45:46 but she lived in a suburb. She's from a suburb. So they went out to take pictures of the fires because they're journalists. They just like taking pictures and what to see what they're going on in her hometown. So they had gas masks and they're wearing the flag jackets to say press. That gas masks in the protest. When people saw them in the gas masks, as soon they must be Antifa planning to start fires.
Starting point is 00:46:06 So they found out that people thought they were. Rantifa when this girl was looking and scrolling through her phone book on a Facebook on the drive back to Portland and saw her own license plate been circulated by the people she went to high school with saying that her and her boyfriend were Antifa and to shoot them on site. They're trying to track them down to execute them. Everything's going insane. This is really bad. And no, I don't know what people are going to do about it. So yeah. Yeah. And you know, and I brought this up before and it's probably like it's overly simple. and reductionist or whatever, I admit that. But it's weird to me that like, that they, the, the overarching opinion of those of us on the left is that we are like limp-risted, weak-willed, overly sensitive pussies, right? Like, we're overly sensitive snowflakes who can't get anything done.
Starting point is 00:47:05 but yet at the same time we're behind this like underground black ops like large spanning covert liberal
Starting point is 00:47:20 operation that includes like murder and bombing and terrorist attack and all these like high level like you know operations
Starting point is 00:47:34 how does any of that make any sense? Like basically I'm just like it's funny to me like that they watch like that on Fox News they play footage from like Chaz when that was the thing, you know, downtown Seattle or whatever. They're playing footage from it. It's like a dude in a banana suit smoking a joint and twirling a baton and they're playing it with like Terminator music like the enemy grow stronger every day. Like, how the fuck? I don't, I can't, I cannot wrap my mind around the mental gymnastics required to believe both of those things at the same time. It's fucking insane to me.
Starting point is 00:48:18 But that, that's always the fascist jig, though, is that we can't let the web take power because they're so, they're so weak and corrupt. They'll weaken our nation. But also, they're so strong and secretly influential that you need to empower us to kill them. It's why the liberals and conservatives that lie with the Nazis to cross the communists in Germany. It's like you're watching Trump will do it here in simultaneous breasts. It'd be like, oh, they're too weak. They won't defend America. Also, they're in the streets murdering all these people.
Starting point is 00:48:49 Right. No, I mean, I guess you're right. It's like, I mean, that's essentially the same dynamic that the Nazis have for the Jews and whatnot. Right. Like, they were like, vermin. or whatever, but also that they all powerful. That they all power that, yeah, also all powerful.
Starting point is 00:49:05 I mean, yeah, you're right. That's always been their M.O. But it makes no fucking sense. So, but, you know, none of that shit does. Yeah. And there's, and there, but they're, these are things we can, like, like, they're, I was reading the thing the other day about what you're
Starting point is 00:49:20 expecting in the, uh, in the coming decade or so. And there were probably are on the verge of about, uh, of, um, a time. that does have left-wing terrorism. It's probably going to happen. It's not happening right now. It's just not.
Starting point is 00:49:36 Like, the, the, the, the, the, we had the shitty thing that happened in the day in LA where somebody walked up on two cops and shot them. And I hope those people recover, one of them's a mom. No one should be shooting random people. The whole point of Black Lives Matter is that less people should be shot. You know, it's like that's, that's, in general, that's what should happen. Less people should die and less people should be shot. Let's say nobody.
Starting point is 00:49:58 Nobody should be shot. But that was the first two, like the guy in Portland, that was the, he wasn't, he didn't declare himself a memory of Antifa, but he said he was there doing security for the protest. So if you want to hang that body on Antifa, the guy that killed the proud boy in Portland. Okay, that's the first body connected to anybody associated with, they would call themselves Antiva. Right wing terrorism is constant this country. It's just constant.
Starting point is 00:50:27 It happens all the time. And like, something like 90%, the data came out last year, 90% of terrorist deaths last year were due to right-wing domestic terrorism. And they do these categories really weird because, like, they put Islamic terrorism a separate category, which is weird to me because that's also a right-wing terrorism, but we can have that debate another time. It's just, I don't know. It's a bizarre time to be alive. And we need to figure out a way to talk about this, intelligence without taking blame for it, conceding them. wrong because when when left winger start blowing up and a military recruiting stations post offices in five years we need to be able to say that's wrong but also are so
Starting point is 00:51:08 argues the people that are oppressing them yeah you're right and this is a weird segue but happy birthday mark we're going to go to the we're going to go the we're going to go the comments over here and see what y'all are saying but in the meantime we want to make sure and say it is smart mark he's still smart mark it's smart mark's birthday today how about that Thanks, Trey. I'm 40. My wife just, she brought me a birthday tequila cocktail, a few seconds ago, which I have to try. You gave you a big ass bottle of whiskey for your birthday? Yeah, I got a bottle of bullet, a bottle of bullet about the size of my leg. So that's going to be my evening. And also, what I'm doing for my birthday is in a couple weeks. The American Cancer Society is really important to my wife, because she's a, I come from our family of breast cancer survivors.
Starting point is 00:51:58 and not survivors. And they couldn't do relay for life this year because of COVID. So what she suggested is, it's her idea to do an actual relay where people are spread out and you walk 27 miles and she wouldn't do that alone. So I'm walking 27 miles a week from Saturday to raise. So anyway, if you want to throw five bucks to your American Congress for Society, that'd be awesome.
Starting point is 00:52:19 That's what I want to say. I want to shout out, give some love to my aunt, Linda, whose mom passed away a couple days ago. I love to Aunt Linda. Yep. All right. So Alisa Maria Holt says, do you think the Lincoln Project is actually helping?
Starting point is 00:52:39 Their ads are pretty ruthless. And I know we brought them up on the show before, but I like, my basic thing on it is like, I don't know about their actual reasonings or rationales that they have or how, you know, how solid those are, but I still am glad that something like that exists right now in this moment, like a Republican source that's going after Trump or whatever,
Starting point is 00:53:12 although I don't know how much, you know, Republicans are even sharing their shit, but, but still. I remember talking to, um, uh, I've made a lot of my living working on political talk shows, and we're talking to a buddy money used to work on a daily show. It was talking about how little he thought that John Stewart's impact on the election was. And this is going to make sense in a second, I promise. But he was saying that satire never has any effect. And roasting people doesn't really do anything because it doesn't persuade anybody. And my thing was like, what Stewart was good at was shaming media figures because they watched the show.
Starting point is 00:53:48 It wasn't like he was persuading conservative voters. But what he would do was like, they would do stuff roasting Bill O'Reilly. would feel they need to do a segment responding to it about to show he was in fact being responsible and he would like it would make their practices on their talk shows more responsible and for god's sakes Stewart got tucker crossfire canceled when he went on there and roasted tucker cross and so his impact was in in I think he alter he altered media coverage by making fun of them now if the extent lincoln project is do anything I think they're probably because in people inside the beltway watch those videos they're change the tenor of campaign coverage a little bit by expanding the parameters by which you can
Starting point is 00:54:31 criticize Trump. So it's probably, it's getting airplay on CNN, it's getting airplay on MSNBC. It makes Trump tweet about it, which means Fox has to talk about it. So I think that's the degree to which they're affecting stuff. I don't, I don't know if they're going to change an actual voter's mind unless, except for second degree effects through that stuff. That makes any sense. Right. Yeah. And like I said, I mean, I, I mean, I, I agree with everything you just said, but I also, like, you know, like I already said, I just appreciate the fact that things like that exist now. So John H. Player says, so what we're doing in 2024 when we get the DA Kamala as the option compared to a progressive. And I'm not voting Biden.
Starting point is 00:55:24 I'm not for Biden. I'm just against Trump. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, that last thing is the thing that matters the most to me right now. As long as you're on that, you know, you're in that column of liberals, meaning you will still vote for Biden because you are that much against Trump than me and you are on the same page because I also would prefer a much more progressive candidate. As far as what happens in 2024 when, well, first of all, the assumption there is, that Biden will be a one-term president, which I know there's been a lot of speculation on that. And, you know, they'll go right to Kamala or whatever.
Starting point is 00:56:06 I don't know. I don't want to, I don't want to give a shitty answer to the question, but I'm just not, I'm not as worried about 2024 right now as I am about, about 2020. Like, I'm like, we'll fucking set that bridge on fire when we get to it as far as I'm concerned. And I, you know, I, like, I mean, whatever.
Starting point is 00:56:27 It is what it is, man. Like, for right now. Whatever I can solve myself to is America is a writer's center country politically among its populace. And it's a very right of center country government-wise, even more so than the voters for a lot of different reasons. And we've never actually had a left-wing president outside of FDR who's still rounded up Japanese people.
Starting point is 00:56:48 So I don't really know what to. I mean, it's just like, we'll get them next time, man. I don't know what to tell you. But it's just, it's just, we've got to convince more people to think, oh, it's, again, we bring this up with 70% of people are for Medicare for all and we can't get it. So that's, that goes back to that we're going to have left-wing terrorism because no one doesn't matter what you vote for anymore. People get frustrated. But anyway, like things, I can't imagine government getting worse than it is right now. And there's also, like, a lot of inspiring graduate stuff happening in lower levels.
Starting point is 00:57:23 Like there's a bunch of positive happenings. congressional campaigns, the Senate campaigns, and get involved there. They'll drag Kamala to the left and she's president, hopefully. Right. So, and I'm going to butcher this name. I apologize. Sahira Daquah,
Starting point is 00:57:40 Sahira Daquah says, I think the Lincoln Project is aiming for quote, centrist parentheses, whatever those are at this point. And, I mean, I know what you, because I don't, they talk a lot about like
Starting point is 00:57:57 swing states and people that are on the fence and swing voters and undecided and all that type of shit and like I cannot picture in my head the person who fits that definition this year given everything that's going on I know they do exist but it's just crazy to me like what how do you operate as a centrist and independent
Starting point is 00:58:21 a swing voter whatever you want to call it in 2020 with all the shit that's going on. I mean, I think it's like, there's something to be said for firing up people who are already going to do stuff, but maybe on the fence. So if you're like a moderate Republican, like,
Starting point is 00:58:38 for whatever reason, Democrats are going to make a lot of like ads with their name on it, call in Trump and out and out traitor, right? Lincoln Project will. So that might fire up some, you know, people who aren't motivated to vote.
Starting point is 00:58:53 I don't think it's going to be a lot. Again, I think it just changes the definition. It changes the bounds of the debate a little bit on those cable talk show. That's it. Because they have to talk about the ad. They have to talk about the ads go viral among the people who are on those shows. So, um, okay. I think it's a bank shot if it's doing anything.
Starting point is 00:59:08 But like Lincoln Project aside, like what is, what is a swing voter? What is somebody on the fence right now in your opinion? Like what are, like, what are they waiting to see? What are the factors there weighing? in their head right now? Well, real life voters aren't, like real life swing voters especially. I mean, voters in general don't have like issue profiles
Starting point is 00:59:32 that make sense, right? So an actual voter is like, I want Medicare for my daughter. I love guns. I want football to, I want Super Bowl to kick off at 3 p.m. instead of 7. And I want to. and it should be
Starting point is 00:59:51 black all content should be 0.10 to drive and it's like it's a random grab bag of shit and then whatever they choose to emphasize when they walk into the voting booth is different right it's a it doesn't make sense so you can't really try to come with a coherent worldview to pitch to vote
Starting point is 01:00:07 swing voters seems like a lost cause to me that's why it's all about messaging and turnout because and kitchen table issues but Democrats always want to talk about healthcare because it's the one thing they know everyone cares about it you can get to be the number one issue over guns or immigration or whatever, then you win the election. All right.
Starting point is 01:00:26 TIGRAHoff says, you think we'll ever see a real third party since these two aren't working together. I wish we had a multi-party system in this country. I've wished that for a long time. I think that would be preferable. As far as the reality of that actually happening, I mean, I'm going to be honest. I'm pessimistic, at least in the near term. I think that would be great if that came to be at some point down the road. But we're just so entrenched in the system and also so like polarized and divided along the lines that we currently have.
Starting point is 01:01:01 You know, it's hard for me to imagine it. I don't know how you feel about it. No, I mean, they, they, we arrived at the two parties through a natural sort of selection process because there's the system of government sort of makes it that way. There are like, what, two independents and all of Congress maybe? you get Bernie and then somebody in the house can you remember right now. So I don't,
Starting point is 01:01:24 it just like, it just is two parties because it's always going to be two parties. Now whether the two parties when Democrats or Republicans is different. Like they did. We kind of have a viable third party right now and it's Q and I.
Starting point is 01:01:38 So, yeah. Well, you know, I mean, like, the Tea Party, right? Which obviously, not a fan of but like when that first came up
Starting point is 01:01:52 and became a thing it got a lot of action and I really hated it the entire time and I remember at the time I was just like a baby comic working my day job in Oak Ridge, Tennessee or whatever and I found a flyer on the ground one morning
Starting point is 01:02:06 for the coffee party because the tea party was huge at that moment and the coffee party according this flyer and I never heard shit else about it was like basically the exact opposite of the Tea Party, meaning it was like a super progressive leftist party, you know,
Starting point is 01:02:23 branching off from the, from Big Democrat on the left or whatever. And again, I saw one flyer about it and nothing else after it. But I remember at that time, Tea Party had become a thing. I'm looking at this flyer for the coffee party, and I remember thinking, like,
Starting point is 01:02:39 I think this would be good if we had a multitude of these things. And I was very worried, at the Tea Party, but like, you know, and now the Republican Party is just pretty, basically, but like, you know, what is it? Six, eight years later,
Starting point is 01:02:58 we're back to just the two. And they've just been, the right has been drug farther to the right. And it just seems like that's sort of how it how it works with our system. They just sort of, yeah, but I would say that the Tea Party, the Tea Party totally
Starting point is 01:03:14 won and it took over the Republican Party is what happened. But at the end of the. the day two parties you know yeah that's that's why like the most effective way is to like like you work within a political party who you broadly agree with at least their larger goals and like aOC and uh you know the the the squad or whatever and you try to just try to like uh work you know you you've uh started an insurgency from within yeah yeah all right well revolution will not be televised all right well that's it we're out of we're out of time but it will
Starting point is 01:03:48 Facebook's, Trey. Yes, and Twitter and all of that. Restream. We'll be there. We'll be there every Tuesday and Thursday. And with that, that's if this edition, excuse, we'll see you in 48 hours back here, same time, same place, same channels, same people.
Starting point is 01:04:03 I'm Trey, that's Mark. See y'all later. Howdy y'all, welcome back. Today is Thursday, September 17th. I'm Trey Crowder. That's Mark Aegee. What's up, Mark? Great cool.
Starting point is 01:04:18 What's going on, bud? Yeah. And this is the... Evening skews. As always, we begin with our daily dumbass report. And tonight's honorary is one that I feel like should have made an appearance before, but I'm not sure that he has somehow. But I'm talking about U.S. Attorney General William Barr, who on Wednesday said that the idea that what we need is a nationwide lockdown,
Starting point is 01:04:46 another nationwide lockdown, to stem the spread of COVID-19. were, quote, the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in U.S. history other than slavery. So on the one hand, he's like, you know, he's still giving slavery the top spot, Mark. But I feel like the idea of like drawing a parallel between trying to stem the tide of this horrific pandemic that has obviously gotten out of hand again. to slavery, probably not the best idea. Yeah, also like to say, like just skipping over a Japanese internment altogether.
Starting point is 01:05:34 And also saying that the same week, we found out there may be or may not, I don't know, not clear a more of the story at this moment, it might be mass forced sterilizations happening at ice facilities. So I don't, it's crazy. we're such a nature, a nation of drama queens, man. I don't know. Like, then this, you're, yeah, it's, people have small businesses that are suffering.
Starting point is 01:05:58 I really feel for. It sucks, right? People lost a job. But if you're just working from home and watching Netflix, it's not slavery. You know, it's just not. So. Right. Well, yeah, I mean, yeah.
Starting point is 01:06:13 Right. People obviously are struggling mightily in the time of the coronavirus. Obviously, that's true. But. I mean, I'm not having fun. Right. But also, like, the idea is when people, when experts and whatnot bring up the idea of like, hey, we need to have another lockdown to sort of stem the tide, that's aimed at saving
Starting point is 01:06:38 lot. That's aimed at making it better in the long term for everybody. So any, any, like, comparison of that to the enslavement of him. human beings, you know, in the early part of our country's history is obviously ridiculous. But like, I feel like they have the sort of, I don't know, this is like a go-to play for them to bring up slavery in this kind of context. Do you know what I mean to sort of like indirectly downplay it or whatever? Like, they always tell black people to move on and whatnot, you know, it was forever ago. Walk it off. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But
Starting point is 01:07:19 they also but they continuously bring it up in a you know disrespectful and absurd manner yeah i mean it's like the who we think of as obsessed with the race is totally weird like the president's really upset about because he spends too much time online uh like he's basically always just upset about whatever bill ben shapiro is upset about so like like uh he's really mad about critical race theory now which i went to a hippie college and had a liberal arts major and i I didn't, they didn't, I never, nobody was shoving any sort of critical race theory down my, it was English major. So we'd like, like, oh, here's what a Marxist interpretation of this would look like,
Starting point is 01:07:55 but nobody like made us be Marxist or anything. And so I don't understand. He's obsessed with that right now. Like, this guy's thinking about race all day every day. And, and I mean, everybody compares too many things to slavery. Nothing is like slavery. Can we just say that? Nothing's like slavery.
Starting point is 01:08:10 Right. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's not just, it's not just Republican politicians or whatever. Also, there was a, I mean, one that jumps to mind for me. a big story years ago in the sports world, Adrian Peterson, renowned running back and child beater compared the situation with NFL players and the owners of the NFL franchises
Starting point is 01:08:32 as being akin to slavery. And yeah, that also was silly and ill-advised. You know, you're making millions. Like you said, nothing is like, like nothing is worse than slavery. I mean, other than, you know, we're talking about the Holocaust and shit, but otherwise, like, you can't, you can't and should not be bringing up slavery to sort of frame an argument about any kind of political debate. Delete both slavery and the Holocaust from the analogy dictionaries because they broke this scale. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:09:14 I did also, I wanted, I had an honorable mention. for the Daily Dumbass. And it's my, it's my regional bias coming in because, you know, I'm a Tennessee and I'm from Tennessee. And I just, this is one of my least favorite people on planet Earth right here. She sucks.
Starting point is 01:09:31 She sucks. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know, because I'm from Tennessee and I am biased, I don't know how much of an appreciation people elsewhere have for how much she sucks. But her name, she's one of the senators from Tennessee. her name is marcia blackburn and she really
Starting point is 01:09:50 sucks y'all if you're not familiar with how much she sucks um a i kind of feel like you you know you need to equate yourself with her suckiness but also at the same time if you are ignorant of her I'm jealous of you and that's a good thing but
Starting point is 01:10:04 um but here's what i just wanted to show everybody this is a tweet she had that i had nominated for the daily dumbass she tweeted we will never rewrite the constitution of the united states well I think we might have a few times
Starting point is 01:10:22 those are called amendments yeah there's like a whole slew of them it's not that weird and also for the record just so you all know Marsha Blackburn herself is currently a co-sponsor of three different proposed constitutional amendments in the Senate
Starting point is 01:10:40 so you know like I don't know what she thinks that I don't know. That's the thing with these people. It's how their brains work. Like, anything we do is just bad. Yeah. And what also is bad is disrespecting the Constitution.
Starting point is 01:11:02 So when we talk about that type of thing, it's bad. But her proposed constitutional amendments, see, those are good. so they're not changing the Constitution because that's bad and what she's doing is good so it can't be that because that's bad
Starting point is 01:11:26 and that's how their brains work I think her proposed changes to the Constitution represent the pure will of God therefore they're not really changes it's just achieving its final form whereas anything we want to change it to is I don't know against God I guess I don't really understand how to interpret it
Starting point is 01:11:43 But it's like, this stuff is, um, maddening for a lot of ways because you can't, like, it's the, the founder worship we suffered through in America is a bit insane. And the actual founders would be really grossed out about it. They, they assumed we would be constantly rewriting the thing as we figured out how to govern ourselves. They didn't have, they didn't have like a template to how to make a democracy. It was like we're one of the first ones. And they were the first constitutional republic.
Starting point is 01:12:09 And, uh, and they built, that's why they built an amendment process. It's like saying we're not going to change the Constitution is like saying, I'm not going to update my cell phone software. It's like it's built to be updated, man. It's designed into the thing. That's why they put an amendment process in it. And if you're not changing the Constitution, I guess the second amendment's out now. We're going back to the basics.
Starting point is 01:12:31 And also, you never can tell how much this stuff they actually mean because it, does she know she's full of shit and she's saying like essentially lying? Or does she really not know anything about history? You can never tell these people because they, they don't, No, I don't, I mean, look, you know, I don't know, but I'm saying that, no, I don't know, maybe it's naivetea, but I don't think she knows she's full of shit. And all, but I also don't think it's, I'm sure she is aware of the idea of a constitutional amendment and that that would, that that would constitute rewriting the U.S. Constitution. But I really don't think they, they don't look at it that way, because it's like I said, what she, her attempts to do that are justified and good and the founders and Jesus would support it.
Starting point is 01:13:23 And so it's not in the same category as the thing she's railing against on Twitter right now, even though it's literally the same thing. Like, I don't know, I don't know if this personal anecdote is going to play, but it's one of those things that I think about frequently. And my old day job that I have when I was getting started in comedy, I worked with a lot of conservatives. One of them was this kind of Marsha Blackburny type
Starting point is 01:13:47 like middle-aged white woman super conservative, super religious like that. And me and her used to get into arguments all the time. They were always good spirited arguments, you know. Like we got along fine, but it was always some political shit. And we used to have to take like required
Starting point is 01:14:03 training sessions you know. And in one of those trainings we had because I worked in contracts and it had to do with like contract law and whatnot, the instructor gave like set up a little thought experiment thing
Starting point is 01:14:19 basically. And she said let's say, because this is in Knoxville, Tennessee, she's like, let's say the state of Tennessee is proposing a bill that would make it illegal to smoke cigarettes outside,
Starting point is 01:14:36 right? Anywhere outside. She's like, as contract professionals, what kind of problems could you see with a bill like that? And I, just being a smart ass, and also at the time, a smoker, as opposed to a vapor nowadays, I said, she said, what kind of problems could you see with a hypothetical bill like that? And I said, this is America, right? And she was like, okay, personal freedom, that's valid, whatever, who else?
Starting point is 01:15:05 And the lady I'm talking about, the super conservative I used to have these arguments with, she was sitting in front of me when I said that, uh, this is America, she turned around and said, typical liberal and turned back around. And I was just like, what? That,
Starting point is 01:15:19 that's the most Republican shit I've said in six months right there. Like, that you can't tell me that I can't smoke a cigarette in your baby's presence because of freedom. Like, that is the opposite of, like, liberalism.
Starting point is 01:15:36 That was some fucking redneck Republican shit. that I said as a joke, but I'm saying I realized in that moment, like, the fact that it was coming from me and she knows what I'm about and the fact that she herself does not smoke and did not smoke, that made it a like liberalism, you know, in her mind. Because what I say is bad and wrong. And it had nothing to do with the actual substance of the thing I had said. said. And I think that's how a lot of them generally
Starting point is 01:16:13 operate, including Marsha Blackburn. Well, I think, I mean, you can find examples of Lib's doing it too. And conservative says something that's pretty common sense, but because it's, you know, a bad person saying it, they'll take the opposite tack. You know, it's
Starting point is 01:16:28 pretty, it's always pretty funny. It's like, does this person even know what they actually believe? And I don't know. Yeah, it's like, I was working on a show and we used to whenever we would make fun of Obama this relative of mine would be like I like it when you make fun of Obama except we were making fun of Obama from the left right
Starting point is 01:16:50 they didn't care that it would we actually saying it was just like we were on his side because we were roasting Obama right yeah yeah right so travelism baby moving on the mail continues to be a story, but actually for now... It's almost 20, 21, and we're talking about the mail all the time. Yeah, yeah, all the time. Which is it, which is in the Constitution.
Starting point is 01:17:19 It's something the founding fathers literally thought we could easily accomplish was at-home mail delivery for universal mail delivery for all Americans in 1787. So, yeah. But as you all know, the mail has been under fire from this administration recently, and the postmaster general, Lewis DeJoy, but there's actually some rare good news where the mail is concerned today because a federal judge has blocked the proposed changes to the Postal Service that would otherwise slow the mail,
Starting point is 01:17:54 saying the states have demonstrated the defendants are involved in a politically motivated attack on the efficiency of the Postal Service. So, you know, take it where you can get it. Hopefully the mail will make it through. This is also like the typical Trump administration story. Like a lot of the worst stuff Trump's attempted to do, they failed to doing because one, they didn't follow the pre-approved rules process
Starting point is 01:18:22 for doing the evil shit they wanted to do. All they do was follow the rules and they could have done it. And two, the lawyers can't argue that the changes to be made in good faith because some like administrative choice because Trump already went on Fox News and said they're doing it explicitly to stop people in voting. So DeJoy didn't go through the process where he took the changes to the board first. So that's strike number one and straight number two was Trump announced on Fox & Friends
Starting point is 01:18:46 that what his lawyers were about to argue in court was full of shit. So evil and incompetence and loose lips. Yeah. So that's some rare good news about the mail, but we've also got some bad news about the mail because some recent repressive surface that indicate that the White House abandoned a plan to send 650 million face mask across the United States via the mail back in April. So that seems right. Fairly straightforward, just like, oh, the post office will send everybody five masks.
Starting point is 01:19:25 And then that'll take care of everybody for a couple of weeks before masks got, you know, absolutely, they just became this cultural award totem. back when they were just small pieces of the cloth they were maybe mildly uncomfortable to wherever your face and that's about it um yeah everything's so dumb man so there uh this is a quote from a unnamed trump administration official in a cnbc report about this subject says there was concerned from some in the white house domestic policy council and the office of the vice president that households receiving masks might create concern or panic. So it's like- Give a press conference where you tell them while they got them,
Starting point is 01:20:10 it's fine. And like you said, you know, had that happen, like you said, they've become this gallum now, ultra-politicized signifier of where you stand on everything, whether you wear a mask or not, in the middle of the pandemic. All of that could have been wiped out by this too, back then. You know, the opposite
Starting point is 01:20:31 of creating a panic, you know, like you said, hold a press conference, explain what's going on. It comes from them. It's not going to turn into this buggy man that it has today. But I mean, obviously, that ship has sailed. There's nothing that can be done about that at this point. But it's just one of the myriad ways in which
Starting point is 01:20:47 they just bumbled the fuck out of this entire situation where COVID is concerned. Yeah, it's a good example of how upside down everything is because of the mask is. I don't enjoy wearing them, but it's not, it's not a big deal. It's just not. But like not, having to wear a mask in a store is not freedom, but constantly having constant anxiety over whether or not
Starting point is 01:21:11 going to lose your house, if a member your family gets sick is freedom somehow. I don't, I don't understand our priorities. It's a depressing one, Trey. Let's let's trust me some jokes about this. I don't know, man. I got, like, it just, everything sucks what you want me to say? But there's, speaking of, um, mask and the pandemic and all that, Trump has been on, you know, numerous war past recently, but one of them has been targeted at the director of the CDC, Robert Redfield.
Starting point is 01:21:52 Yeah. Redfield told Congress on Wednesday that, A, he said, a vaccine wouldn't be widely available into the second or third quarter of next year. At the earliest. At the earliest. And Trump straight up said, no, that was a mistake.
Starting point is 01:22:11 He made a mistake when he said that. He must have been confused. Trump said about the director of the Center for Disease Control. But the CDC director also made a very strong endorsement of mask, again, in keeping with the messaging they've had,
Starting point is 01:22:29 this entire time about the efficacy of wearing a mask. He said, this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine. If I don't get an immune response, the vaccine's not going to protect me. This face mask will. And Trump also said he was wrong on that. Trump said he hopes mask help and they probably do, but there are still some people who, quote, feel that mask have problems. So, like, Why? I don't, why? I don't know, man. I don't even know what to say. Like, why, this is the guy who's in the position and has the job to do exactly this, to provide information like this.
Starting point is 01:23:11 Like, why can't you just let him provide it? Like, yeah. He was actually, he was actually pretty brave, too, because he didn't backtrack after Trump said he was mistaken and he still has his job somehow. The, uh, but yeah, I mean, it's like, it's, all this stuff is pretty straightforward. Basically, we have a president without object permanence who, thinks wishing things makes them true. And so we'd all wish there was a vaccine we could take tomorrow and we go, we just go back to our lives.
Starting point is 01:23:35 But it's just wishing does not make it come true. Yeah. Yeah, this is also Redfield, the head of the CDC. This is also the guy that was involved in that clash with the, with Caputo, the PR guy from the health and human services agency that we talked about on Tuesday because Caputo, before he went on his lunacy tirade on social media that resulted in him stepping down
Starting point is 01:24:04 that we talked about in the last episode. Before that he was taking Redfield and the CDC's reports and trying to like edit or revise them or delay them or whatever because according to the emails he was sending they might hurt the president or they could come across as like
Starting point is 01:24:21 hip pieces or whatever. So basically the Trump administration in general is not, they are not happy with this guy's facts like this guy needs to get some different facts and bring those better facts to them uh because right now the facts he's he's got are just not doing it for them yeah i mean uh next time i get my physical when doctor says my cholesterol is high i'll be like no it isn't and they help my eggs right you're like no no see that being true that would really
Starting point is 01:24:55 hurt me and my prospects i'm going to need you to really really hurt me and my prospects i'm going to need you to evaluate that. Tell me a different thing. If this was true, I couldn't go to Lobster Fest when I leave here. So therefore, it's not true. Right? I can't have my Cheddar Bay Biscuits, right?
Starting point is 01:25:12 You got to get them Cheddar Bay Biscuits, but I ain't had cheddar by Biscuit in a long time, unfortunately. My mom makes them homemade at Christmas. So good. Yeah, now I'm thinking about biscuits. Ain't a damn thing wrong with that. fun little side note my my kids are back in school but they're in virtual school and every year
Starting point is 01:25:34 their school does a multicultural night you know um because it is a very multicultural school that it's like kids from you know all different kinds of ethnic backgrounds and stuff go to it and every night they do this big event at the school where you come and there's all these different like presentations and things set up about the different ethnic backgrounds and things that of the kids that go there and they base it on the information from the kids themselves. They fill out forms like, my family's from, you know, wherever. And the example is I was given, you know, it's like, my family's from Mexico. And you talk about your food and your culture's food and that type of thing or whatnot.
Starting point is 01:26:17 And we always use Tennessee, even though I don't know that that's like it tends up, you know, like everybody else is using countries. But in my head, I'm like, no, it's different. enough like yeah he's different enough from california we're from real america yeah yeah but no it's like my family's from tennessee we eat biscuits and that's literally what i had them put he's like we only put for what we eat like what do you want to put for what we eat and i said put biscuits and when i said that uh bishop was like he was like oh man we do love biscuits
Starting point is 01:26:52 because uh we do biscuits are a big hit but um yeah you know, they're in second and third grade now, and I've been doing that every year. And, you know, I'm not saying it's a hit, but it seems to be fine so far. So anyway, back, back to the bullshit. Honestly, we just thought out biscuits if you want. The news is not fun today. People don't understand, I think, well, I don't know. I mean, I like, I fuck around in the kitchen.
Starting point is 01:27:24 I have for a long time. I'm a home cook, you know. uh and biscuits are hard man in my opinion like i feel like but people don't appreciate how difficult biscuits can be like the mammals is really on their shit because i can approximate some cinnamon rolls or some like i i can make some damn good cornbread you know but biscuits i don't know they're they're not they're not as simple as you might think they are no no and everybody thinks they've had biscuits but they like like this this writer i think was from georgia she wrote this long magazine piece a couple years ago but why she could didn't find any good biscuits in New York or why she couldn't even make her own good biscuits in New York.
Starting point is 01:28:02 And apparently, like, there's different kinds of flour. And if you don't pay attention to the small print of the flower, one kind of flour is pretty much only available in the South because people use it to make biscuits. And it's not sold wide because people use it for different purposes. So you can't get the, you can get the same. This is the biscuit hour. We're going to do the evening skews biscuits, biscuit talks next three months until Election Day. Yeah. Now we, you know, look, man, biscuits.
Starting point is 01:28:28 tip. What do you want me to say? Yeah. But yeah, anyway, back to the bullshit. Trump's, uh, I was going to say he's been on one lately, but I mean, when is he not on one? But, um, another, so he's been,
Starting point is 01:28:40 you know, Trump versus your immune system, Trump versus COVID, Trump versus everything. And another one is, um, Trump versus history, apparently, uh,
Starting point is 01:28:50 because he's just announced the launching of a commission called the commission for patriotic education. which just like for me I don't even need to hear anything else about it other than just that a commission for patriotic education to know that it's some probably racist bullshit. If I took you awake in year 2000 and told you 20 years later we'd have a Department of Homeland Security and a Patriotic Education Commission, what fucking country would you think you were living in? Right. This sounds like some shit of like George Orwell wrote a. book about America. It sounds very un-American to me.
Starting point is 01:29:32 And all this stuff is like, this is the reaction to, we're talking about earlier about Trump being too online. So conservative pundits have been real mad about the New York Times of 1619 project for a long time. Like, like, anybody who's obsessed with the New York Times editorial page is like an alien to me, but there are people for whom they talk about it and think about it a lot. And so New York Times had this 1619 project,
Starting point is 01:29:55 basically tracing the thought of America not to 1776, but at 1619, when chattel of slavery became race-based, yada, yada, yada. Basically, they talk about how much modern society still impacted by slavery. Now, you can go read historians' various opinions on, like, what perspective is accurate, whatever. You can think it's a good idea or bad idea
Starting point is 01:30:13 to put it in school curriculums, although the small points that have been put in school curriculums are very simple in fraud, because you're teaching eight-year-olds. They don't want to be in-depth on slavery. Anyway, so that's what Trump, this is in response to. It's called the 1776 project as opposed to 1619 project because he's really, really mad that people wrote articles about slavery a year and a half ago. And this is obviously just dog whistling to racists and to the intellectual class of racists who are like conservative pundits.
Starting point is 01:30:44 Right. Well, I mean, like you said, I mean, there have been historians who have come out and been critical of the 1619 project and all of that. And I'm not a historian, so I don't know. But what I do know is, you know, I grew up in the South. the rural south and like misinformation where the subject of history is concerned is absolutely a real
Starting point is 01:31:04 thing like everybody from the south knows about the war between the states or the war northern aggression and that type of thing like I was straight up not by every teacher I had some teachers who kept it real but you have a lot of different history teachers as you go through school and I was taught by some
Starting point is 01:31:20 teachers that like that the civil war wasn't about slavery like straight up full stop. It had nothing to do with slavery. It's about states rights and all that and people are familiar with those arguments but like that shit happens and
Starting point is 01:31:35 that ain't that ain't it like that needs to be corrected, right? So like something like again I'm not a historian, I don't know the intricate historical accuracy or not of
Starting point is 01:31:52 the 1619 project but anything that sort of tries to reframe that conversation and talk about the massive impact that slavery actually had on our nation is something that needs to happen, right? But the Trump administration literally calls it toxic propaganda,
Starting point is 01:32:10 left-wing, indoctrination, and they want to institute a new patriotic education that would develop, in Trump's words, a pro-American curriculum that celebrates the truth about our nation's great history.
Starting point is 01:32:29 Yeah. Somebody, somebody, it's not my joke. Somebody said on Twitter earlier that it's like basically school's going to have to teach that Vietnam was a tie. Because like this American exceptionalism is a hell of a drug, great. And like basically we're God's perfect country. Therefore, we cannot have done anything wrong. So if you find out we did something wrong, that's anti-American propaganda. We're a country, man. We're a country full of currently 330 million people as a
Starting point is 01:32:56 huge government. It's really powerful with a lot of different entities in it. And some of them have done some screwed up stuff. Some people are trying to make it better. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a real world. Like, like, like, but it's really frustrating when like the stories come out about like, like the border, um, hysterectomies. Um, and we don't know how organized it was or who exactly was involved or how many happened because it's still disputing reports. But like, people say like, this is not who we are, but except like it is. And it's okay to acknowledge it and try to work these things are done it done in our name. We can be like, we should stop that and prove as a opposed to just memory holeing it and acting like we're not a country who does those things.
Starting point is 01:33:29 We just fucking did them. Well, like we're not a country that does those things. Like we're a country. Like I have to imagine pretty much any country you can point to has some unfortunate shit in their history. You know what I mean? It's not cool for any of them to wash over it. I have no idea how they teach history in the United Kingdom.
Starting point is 01:33:52 Obviously, I didn't grow up there. I don't know how they go about it. but if they're whitewashing the fuck out of their colonialist history, that also is fucked up and they shouldn't do that. You know, like, I remember, we have a whole thing. Like our,
Starting point is 01:34:09 like you said, American exceptionalism and the degree to which we take patriotism, whatever you want to call it, with the flag, worship, and all of that seems to be on another level for democracies at least. You know what I mean?
Starting point is 01:34:25 side of like full on authoritarian dedicatorships and whatnot, we seem to be on an animal than everybody else. I mean, the example is the stuff we just straight up, like, first of all, like we've, we've kind of memoryholded the Iraq war already. Like nobody remembers what we did or why.
Starting point is 01:34:43 We just like it didn't happen. We're just all like, yeah, guess that didn't happen. We didn't do that, right? But the, like stuff like, like the Tulsa Race Masser, which came back into the Black Wall Street, which came back in the public consciousness because of the watchman. But people who lived, grew up in Tulsa had, like, had to go Google that that really happened.
Starting point is 01:35:04 Because even in Tulsa, it's not top. It's just people, that was an Air Force attack. People dropped dynamite from airplanes to kill, like 300 black people, I think. And it just didn't. Nobody knows it happened. Yeah. Yeah. And like the, like, I thought about.
Starting point is 01:35:25 as an adult, you know, and I mean, a lot of other people have said this too, but like the Pledge of Allegiance, you know, like you brought up, you said it was Orwellian earlier, the current state of our society and everything, but like, I don't know, that's weird. If you like remove yourself from it and look at it, you know what I mean? You got like a bunch, like. Yeah, a bunch of five-year-olds doing little children, right, little children standing up every morning and. hailing to the flag, basically. I shouldn't have done the Nazi salute, but you know what I mean. But, I mean, like, that's fucking weird, but you don't, of course you don't think anything about it.
Starting point is 01:36:05 Because I was one of those kids. We all were. I never thought twice about it because kids don't. And it wasn't until I was like, way older, full-grown adult and sort of looked back on it with a different perspective that I was like, that's kind of creepy.
Starting point is 01:36:22 Like, that's, like, how is, that not indoctrination, you know what I mean? I know, no, it is. It wasn't instituted to, like, we didn't start making kids do it in school until the Cold War. By the way, that's when they added under God, too. It wasn't always, the pledge didn't always have under God, and it added that as a middle finger to the communists. But now we act like we always did it.
Starting point is 01:36:41 Just like we act like players always had a stand of the National Anthem. When they didn't start doing that, with it, players used to stay in the locker room until 9-11. Then it became a thing. Or like, in favorite statues or monuments and stuff, like they were always there after, but that's not true. a lot of them came up in the civil rights movement and everything. There was one built. There's a statute of Robert Lee built in Arizona in 1980s, right? It wasn't like it's not an act of God that that's there.
Starting point is 01:37:08 It's not a natural rock formation. It's lunacy. Yeah, all right. So what else we got? So Antifa, we talked about Antifa before. You and I, both corporals. hoping to move up in the ranks. By the way, I'm in charge of payroll this week.
Starting point is 01:37:31 Antifa, get your time cards in because they'll get those stories next to send out. So why don't you take this with Mark? The FBI director spoke before Congress brought up Antifa. Trump got upset. So Chris Ray, the FBI director, testified from a House committee today. And of course, because it's an election year, they tried to have people trying to grow sound bites out of them. So you have like Republicans trying to get him say, that Antifa is the biggest threat since a Cobra Commander.
Starting point is 01:37:59 And then you have, you, uh, you Democrats trying to make the point to talk about right-wing domestic terrorism as a relative threat to, to left from domestic terrorism. So, um, everybody tried to get their talking points out of him. And basically what he said was, which is the truth in my opinion, was that there are people who identify as Antifa. Um, he also said they're tracking some, some people with potentially violent domestic extremists who, uh, or anarchists who associate with Antifa. But, but Antifa is not.
Starting point is 01:38:25 an organization. Okay. So Fox News headline was Antifa is real and it's coming to your house to kill you probably. And then the left wing headlines were like, it's not an organization, which it's like, it's not. We talked about this before, but if you were a person of the mindset that America's rapidly descending into fascism and the government is fascist and will kill you for opposing it, would you put your name on a membership list of a group of people who go out and fight that in the street? I submit that you would not because that would be stupid if you were under those beliefs. Anyway, so Trump got mad about this and was tweeting angrily about Director Ray. But anyway, my takeaway from it was he's doing the same thing they did in the
Starting point is 01:39:09 60s, which is like he's, they're doing pre-crime by tracking dissident movements before they've even done anything to try to, to try to break up attacks like they did, you know, with the Black Panthers and Martin Luther King, you know, where they try to get him to kill himself. And it's just the FBI just never changes, man. It just never change. right well and like to that point like it's obviously with the Mueller report and all that I knew and was aware that the FBI became a bad guy for the right you know and I knew that had happened but still I didn't really think about it that way until I know this is weird but it's true I watched son of a bitch Richard Jule the Clint Eastwood movie Richard Jule about
Starting point is 01:39:55 that guy who, uh, the security art at the Atlanta Olympics who, you know, saw the bomb and saved a shitload of lies, but then was villainized later afterwards. And if you watch the movie, the FBI villainized him,
Starting point is 01:40:08 which as I understand it, is that pretty much what happened. But there was this whole thing at the time because like, look, you say what you want about Clint Eastwood, whatever, he's made some really shitty movies that do seem like straight up propaganda.
Starting point is 01:40:22 I thought that was a well-made movie. I watched it just watching a movie. people on the left calling it like conservative propaganda because it villainized the FBI and whatever Clinton Eastwood was thinking at that time I read that and I was like hold on what? Like the FBI
Starting point is 01:40:54 is like a commie liberal organization now like when I know the Mueller report and all that shit But like, people can't really think that, right? Like, they're like, they are literally the man. And I'm not, I'm not trying to villainize the FBI right now. But I'm saying the idea that there's some, like, liberal buggy man is fucking ridiculous to me. But, like, we've sort of got to that point because they're the deep state and whatever else. But it's just like nothing fucking makes any sense.
Starting point is 01:41:31 in this country anymore that the G man are like you know convert liberal ops that's crazy yeah I mean I really like Richard Jewel too
Starting point is 01:41:45 I haven't seen it I think I watched it right Christmas but they did to the extent it's like conservative propaganda would be they villainize this poor woman reporter who's dead now and can't defend her so and that
Starting point is 01:41:57 and they hoard her up a little bit but like Clint'swood's politics or they aren't mine, but they're more, he's a Republican, yes, but also, remember then he yelled at the chair at the R&C? Yeah, yeah, of course. He was criticizing Obama for not getting the troops out of Afghanistan. That was a substance of his speech, right?
Starting point is 01:42:16 So he's a kind of class. His politics are his own individual. But obviously, the FBI was the bad guy in that movie. And the moral of that movie, if there is one, it's don't talk to cops, because that was Richard Jules' mistake because he wanted to be a cop-to-compet. Well, that's the thing.
Starting point is 01:42:33 Like, I mean, right, like, the, you know, the left is very much opposed to law enforcement right now, you know, according to the narrative. Yeah, the narrative. Yeah, yeah. The left is opposed to law enforcement is the narrative. The FBI is the federal law enforcement agency, but they are leftist operatives.
Starting point is 01:43:00 or whatever through the deep state or something apparently and I know I'm barely making sense because it barely makes sense to me like what how does any of that check out for people like I mean on the one hand they're cops trade but on the other hand they went to college so yeah yeah smart cops those are our cops smart cops dumb cops that's that's y'all yeah we get we get the we get the we get the we get the we have the cops of master's degrees and they get the cops with that. But it's like, but anyway, they're just funny, like, they're being held up as like an anti-right boogeyman
Starting point is 01:43:36 when, again, what we're just talking about if they're doing what they, these were, these were, FBI was formed to chase interstate bank robbers, right? Kind of made sense. It's like, oh, well, but John Dillinger would rob a bank in Oklahoma and drive to Kansas and now he's like free, right? So that, that seems like a problem. We should stop that. But now it's like they use their,
Starting point is 01:43:54 their, their counterintelligence mission to track domestic political movements and try to break them up if they can do any sort of left wing change. It's like, seems a little weird to me. I don't like it. You heard those stories about there being Black Panther meetings where literally everyone there was an FBI informant. So there's kind of no reason to even have the meeting.
Starting point is 01:44:12 Yeah. Another thing FBI Director Ray said that pissed Trump off, and I'm sure there was a lot of things he said. But another thing specifically, they asked him about Russian election interference in the coming election. and Director Ray said, quote, we certainly have seen very active, very active efforts by the Russians to influence our election in 2020
Starting point is 01:44:38 to both so divisiveness in discord and to denigrate Vice President Biden. And that's like a, that is a direct quote, but it's chopped and screwed a little bit. In the middle of that, he also talked about it saying that they so far hadn't seen the type of like direct like, technological assaults on manipulating the election itself is just all like culture war type stuff with malign foreign
Starting point is 01:45:08 interference or something like that but just like pissing people off basically sewing divisiveness and discord Trump took that quote and he tweeted but Chris you don't see any activity from
Starting point is 01:45:24 China even though it is a far greater threat than Russia, Russia, Russia, they will both, plus others, be able to interfere in our 2020 election with our totally vulnerable,
Starting point is 01:45:37 unsolicited, parenthetical counterfeit ballot scam. Check it out. So, I mean, what? Well, I think it's funny.
Starting point is 01:45:51 I mean, it's another example of how far away away from any sort of substance, but like the China stuff is mentioning, there was an, there was an, like an intelligence community report and his briefing a month or two ago that went public,
Starting point is 01:46:03 they basically just said that China would probably prefer Biden to be president because he's sane, right? That was essentially, he's a sane negotiating partner, but they're not doing anything. So what he's referring to is basically an intelligence summary that says that China doesn't like talking to Trump because he's impossible to deal with. And that's what he's using is proof that China's a big threat. So you just reminded me something we were texting about earlier. Apparently there's a report that
Starting point is 01:46:33 China would prefer Biden because he's sane. And that reminded me of what we were talking about earlier, this thing, and I know it's gotten brought up briefly before on the show many episodes ago, but like one of the things that drives me the most crazy when people talk about Trump versus Biden or whatnot
Starting point is 01:46:51 is this narrative that absolutely exist out there and get brought up pretty often of like Biden being afraid or if he's not afraid he should be afraid to debate Donald Trump because Biden
Starting point is 01:47:06 is like mentally unsound and Trump will just like mop the floor with him in any debate or whatever and I like that shit blows my mind each and every time I see it because like put take Joe Biden out of the equation for a second
Starting point is 01:47:22 like I don't understand how anyone who has ever seen Donald Trump speak, at least, especially in the past year or so, publicly speak, or give an interview or anything, could be that confident
Starting point is 01:47:37 that he could just mop the floor with anybody in a debate situation. Like, he barely makes sense. Almost always. He's like, nigh incoherent. However you feel about Joe Biden, like, Trump is not the heavy
Starting point is 01:47:54 in the debate situation. Like, why and how does this even, this argument even exist? Well, I mean, like, to extent, I mean, I wouldn't want to debate him because he's just going to steamroll you and talk over you, right? So, like, out of context, a lot of voters that looks weak when you're just trying, when you're trying to make sense and trying to make sense with the other person saying, they're just yelling at you. So I wouldn't know.
Starting point is 01:48:18 But anybody, like, anybody's listening to Biden speak recently. I know, like, he seems, he has moments where he, because he's talking to memoraneously on TV. Like, he'll, he'll wander a flub words, and it's not ideal, but he doesn't seem like his brain's not working. It just seems like he flubs a line here and there. Right. If you transcribed us talking on this podcast, it would look like nonsense.
Starting point is 01:48:38 Yeah, be a bad read. It largely is, yeah. No, I mean, yeah, you're 100% right about, because, you know, I mean, I remember the debates in 2016, and I, obviously, I felt that Hillary won. however you qualify winning a debate, but I felt like she won all of the debates, but that's not how, that's not how the opposites I felt about it.
Starting point is 01:49:03 You know what I mean? Like they presented it the complete opposite way, and they'll do that regardless. Like it doesn't even, I mean, that is the thing and that is true. Like, he'll just do what he's going to do regardless and act like he won regardless. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:49:20 I mean, if I remember the post-debat polling last time, She won all three about pretty clear margins, and one was like 70, 30, which is like, it begs the question, like, what are the debates for? Because I'm well-versed enough in the issues to know that nobody's really saying anything substantive. So what are we, what are we doing this for? If the substance doesn't matter, because you all know it and they're bullshit lying about it, both everybody does or changes the change the subject. If that, the subject doesn't matter and nobody cares about the actual style of it because you're going to vote for the person you want to vote for, even if the other person dominates them. then why do we even go through this ruse? It seems very weird to me.
Starting point is 01:49:56 Yeah. Yeah. You're right. You're right. Let's go to the comments. See what's going on over here. I don't know. William C.
Starting point is 01:50:07 Havocott said Hillary's tank could beat the valls. Listen, I don't know how we got into a goddamn college football debate over here. But I don't appreciate it. This is our year. All right? Every ball's fan knows that this is our year. Yes, last year, the year before, and the four years before that, we're also our year to work out.
Starting point is 01:50:31 But this year, though, this is actually our year. I mean, you've got a better chance than ever because at least this year is a chance that every other team dies of a widespread pandemic viral outbreak. So you got a shot. Barbara Gros says the saddest thing is that 40-odd, of voters still support Trump. I don't get it. Yeah, and you're right, and I don't, I mean,
Starting point is 01:50:57 I don't get it either. I've talked about before, I don't, I don't understand. I mean, I know that, like, I get that the people who are firmly in his base and just fully and completely indoctrinated at this point, they're going to hold that line, and I understand that, but I don't, the sheer amount of those people that exist
Starting point is 01:51:18 is fucking crazy to me, too. I mean, watch Fox News for 15 minutes, you'll get it. It's pretty straightforward. It's like, like, there's a news narrative where, we're, uh, uh, capital T, they are coming to get capital Y, you. And he's the only one fighting them. And, uh, these, these are people who want to teach your kids that, you know, slavery was bad, you know? Yeah, no, you're right. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:51:44 They just like, they literally the world the same way, but they only look at it through one prism, you know, which is Fox News or their ilk, and they only get, they think that's the news and the only news and they'll ever hear, so I guess they're not that surprising, but it is definitely disappointing, though. Let's see here. Brad F. debating a conservative is like playing chess with a pigeon. I think I know the rest of that. It's where the, they just, the pigeon just, the pigeon just, knocks all the pieces over and shits all over the board and says they want anyway or something like that. I've heard that. I've heard that.
Starting point is 01:52:32 I've heard that one, yeah. Here we go. This is fun. John Trotter, Mark, did you have a good birthday? I did. I did.
Starting point is 01:52:40 I had some good food and my wife got me a new t-shirt and hat and a bottle of a ball of bullet the size of my leg. How many t-shirts and hats you got? the shit load yeah yeah i got i mean i like i mean i i i chose a career where i can wear t-shirts and hoodies so it's like that's that's what i do and uh so i uh i mean you i stopped growing when i was 17 so i just gradually accrued stuff but i do like i do like i have i have to wear hats so i get skin cancer on my head so it's like it's plus it just look blank i'm mannequin
Starting point is 01:53:14 how do you feel about uh so at what point did you start shaving mark shaving your head, I mean, like immediately? Yeah, I mean, I, uh, so I had a notice of receding her a lot of time I was like 14, 15. And so, uh, sophomore year of college, I buzz cut it at first and a Christmas break. My buddy thought it'd be fun to shave it for fun and I just never, never went back. I'm going to shave my heads. And so at Christmas break when I was 19. Yeah, because I've always, I've always thought like, I don't know, that seems like that's got to be the move.
Starting point is 01:53:48 Like when you're in that situation, you got to, you got to, you got to, you got to. to pull the trigger on it, you know? Yeah, I mean, it was either, I could either be a weird kid with a shamed head or be a 19-year-old with a look like Mr. Belding. So I'd write to the first route. Oh, let's see. Is that why you don't believe in God, Mark? Going ball to 15?
Starting point is 01:54:13 I don't know. It's probably probably a strike in the list, yeah. People are saying I'm too quiet compared. to you, I'm sorry, I'm going to get closer to it. Will Beckman, Trump could eat a baby on live TV and not lose any votes. I mean, you know, he said a version of that himself. He said he could literally shoot a man on Fifth Avenue or whatever in New York City and it wouldn't matter. And I mean, that's fucking hard for me to argue with, you know.
Starting point is 01:54:45 Baby. I mean, he's killed 200,000 Americans and then still nothing. I mean, he puts babies in cages all day long. And they cheer that. He killed Herman Kane and Herman Kane still tweeting about how COVID's alive. Right. Yeah. That's like a new, another thing that happened,
Starting point is 01:55:06 a new sexual assault allegation came out against Donald Trump. Yeah. Stemming from his, the 1997 U.S. Open tournament in his private box, the former model named Amy Doris alleged that Donald Trump sexually assaulted her at that time. pretty graphic account of it but I read this and you know not cynical but also just realistic
Starting point is 01:55:30 you know I read this and was like this won't this definitely won't amount to anything in the big scheme of things because that that was like a lot of people I think it was definitely my introduction to the reality of the fucking Teflon
Starting point is 01:55:47 or whatever when the Billy Bush interview and grabbing them by the pussy and all that shit came out right in the heat of the election in 2016, something that would have sunk the fuck out of pretty much any other political candidate I could think of, and it seemingly made no difference at all. And it's remained a thing the whole time and has continued to not matter to his people and for his presidency. So, I mean, how can you argue with what Thickman says? He's a he has a certain type of strategic acumen
Starting point is 01:56:27 that is if you just don't say you're sorry, don't say you're wrong, don't concede an inch and just keep plugging straight through. It's not a bad PR strategy if you can pull off that level of shamelessness. If you can look down straight down the barrel of a camera and lie your ass off without blinking or looking nervous. I can't do it.
Starting point is 01:56:46 So I can never be that bulletproof. I'm going to say before, I even read this that I don't know how to answer it but I don't think it's an interesting question Chilton Cabot Jarrett I'm sure I fucked that up I'm sorry
Starting point is 01:57:03 AP poll said that 70% of the public thinks our country's head in the wrong direction so how is Trump's approval over 40% well the magical nature of polls right like what and the way that they're framed and
Starting point is 01:57:19 tallied and red and all that Mark or yeah how does this work well i mean i think a lot of people that are going to vote for him would say it's heading in the wrong country because people in the street people in the streets rioting and looting and burning stuff down and uh and uh and uh also that uh um you know pedophiles are going to kidnap your kids you'd be in the wrong direction could mean a lot of things yeah right yeah we read that and think that it that the people saying it's head in the wrong direction think that for the same reasons we do but they don't at all.
Starting point is 01:57:54 Like, my buddy, my buddy Thompson from back home in Salina had been on the lake recently and said that, like, 70% of the boats out there were flying Trump flags, but he saw one in particular. That said, Trump 2020, enough of the bullshit.
Starting point is 01:58:11 And, like, that's exactly what we're talking about right here. Like, that guy is like, yeah, this country's going the wrong direction. Too much bullshit going on. And the only cure for it is four more years of exactly what we've had prior to this moment of ultimate bullshit. Like the only problem with it in that guy's perspective is that we ain't had enough Trump yet.
Starting point is 01:58:37 Like we need double the Trump. And then the bullshit will be taken care of, you know. And that's how he feels about it. People were losing their mind of this quote. Some reporter went to a factory in Ohio was interviewed. doing potential voters about what they think about stuff. And this guy was like, yeah, I mean, like, at least Trump's honest, you know, which is like, it's driving people insane.
Starting point is 01:59:01 But it's like to a certain type of person, if what you're saying is angry and mean and not polished, therefore you're being honest. It's like, no, he just says his lies in a very jumbly, angry, racist way. He just can't, because he can't memorize the lines he's supposed to say. But, yeah, you know, that was their, that was their whole thing with him from very beginning, you know? Who tells it like it is? He tells it like it is.
Starting point is 01:59:27 He's not a politician. He'll shake things up. He tells it like it is. That's what the country needs. What does they mean? What is they politically correct? They mean not racist because he was honest about his low opinions and minorities. He was like,
Starting point is 01:59:39 well, all the politicians have been lying this whole time. He's being, like he's obviously the most honest because he's the one that saying Mexican steel. He said Mexican, right. Mexicans are coming up here to rape and steal or whatever. He's like, finally somebody tells the truth. You know, and that's what they think. I mean, T.T.
Starting point is 02:00:00 says, what will life be like if he and his cronies win again, knowing there will be no consequences for anything they do? Now, I would say that they, like, they already know. I don't know how they wouldn't know. There's no consequences for what they do. But I assume you mean, like, specifically Trump, when he doesn't have a reelection looming. And the administration, when there is no reelection looming. And, I mean, yeah. that's a terrifying prospect.
Starting point is 02:00:26 I mean, hell, if that does happen, I bet it some it won't be too long for they start floating the idea of a, you know, just to Trump talked about having multiple terms because he got so he should get another one.
Starting point is 02:00:42 You know, there's, in my opinion, no limit to the insane bullshit. They will trot out if they win again in November and have a whole other round of it. So yeah, that's terrifying to think about. It won't, I mean, it won't just be them as the problem. I mean, like Pompeo is giving a campaign speech in Wisconsin tonight on the State Department dime after, you know, Trump used the RN.
Starting point is 02:01:06 They took, took a, to wipe his ass with the Hatch Act at the RNC. All this stuff that should be is in theory illegal and no one's doing anything to stop them. There's no like no brave law enforcement official anywhere. Democrats of Congress aren't doing ship, fish and press releases. So it's like it's, it's not just them that the media. even like reporters who are supposed to like be their job is to be you know critics in a democracy are doing like next level analysis about whether or not voters care no just you can just tell people that violating that violating the law is bad you don't have to like do this thing where you say well voters
Starting point is 02:01:37 don't care and but also like the learned helplessness of the democrats and congress is really like they will their stance the last two years has been like well i hope voters rid us this middle this meddlesome problem because we're not going to do anything no real oversight yeah So like, they're going to, their desire to lay down and not have any pushback is going to be reinforced. They're going to be absolutely hopeless. Nancy Pelosi might retire. I've seen articles talking about like lamenting the possibility. And I mean, look, I lament the possibility, too, of the Senate ended up being even a 50-50 split.
Starting point is 02:02:15 Like, not even the Republicans maintaining it, but even it being 50-50 and how horrible that will be for the next administration and getting anything done or whatever. you know what I mean? Like basically framing it as though like, look everyone, if we don't win everything in a landslide, we're just fucked forever. And that is disappointing to say the least. Like you shouldn't need that much of an upper hand to get fucking anything done.
Starting point is 02:02:45 Yeah, I think it's like, I think Democrats have to win 55% of the national vote for Congress to own the House because of the jurymandering. which 55-45-45 is a huge blowout in a democracy. So to have that be the bare minimum you need to control the chamber, is weird.
Starting point is 02:03:01 And the Senate, it's like, it's ridiculously high as well. And, like, I mean, like, well, also, like, last poll I saw in South Carolina shows Graham tied with Harris. Harrison. So, I don't know, man. Maybe democracy will save itself. I don't want to be too. I get tired to being cynical all the time.
Starting point is 02:03:18 It seems like maybe it'll be okay. I don't know. Might be. Okay, you heard it here first, everybody. Well, that's just about it for this edition of evening excuse. I didn't want to say for those of you haven't seen it. I will be making my third appearance on real time with
Starting point is 02:03:33 Bill Maher tomorrow night on HBO at 7 Pacific 10 Eastern, 7 Pacific, I believe thereabouts. But yeah, looking forward to going back to real time. You guys keep getting
Starting point is 02:03:49 your political analysis from a couple of dudes who can't subtract three from 10. No, I didn't know if it was, I didn't, fuck you, Mark. I don't know if it was nine and six or ten and seven, which I should know that too. But it wasn't the math. I am number dumb, but it wasn't the math that was talking me up. But anyway, catch me on age. I do want to say, my sister texted me today.
Starting point is 02:04:10 She got a hit up by her friend Todd who asked her, wanted to ask her if she was related to Smart Mark. So I hate you for that. Your sister's like, no, definitely not. I don't know. So fuck you to trade for that nickname once. again and a shout out to Todd. I'll be doing good, Todd. All right.
Starting point is 02:04:27 Well, HBO tomorrow night, real time with Bill and Marr. Otherwise, we'll see you next Tuesday on an evening skews. Thank you. Love you. Bye.

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