What A Day - Not Everybody Loves Royalty

Episode Date: September 13, 2022

Mourners are paying their respects to Queen Elizabeth II as her remains make the journey to London ahead of her funeral, but protesters are also turning out to hold the royal family accountable for the misdeeds of its past.The Department of Justice filed papers on Monday signaling that it would accept one of the candidates that former President Donald Trump’s legal team recommended as a "special master" to review the documents taken from Mar-a-Lago last month.And in headlines: Ukraine's military made more headway against Russia, a new rule in Montana bans birth certificate changes for trans people, and about 15,000 Minnesota nurses took to the picket lines.Show Notes:Vote Save America: Fuck Bans Action Plan – https://votesaveamerica.com/roe/Crooked Coffee is officially here. Our first blend, What A Morning, is available in medium and dark roasts. Wake up with your own bag at crooked.com/coffeeFollow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/whataday/For a transcript of this episode, please visit  crooked.com/whataday

It is Tuesday, September 13th. I'm Josie Duffy Rice. And I'm Travelle Anderson, and this is What A Day, reminding Alex Jones to spend quality time with his money before it gets taken away in yet another Sandy Hook trial. He can always just pretend it was a false flag and he still has his money, but all of us will know the truth. It is gone. You know, living in delusion does no one any favors. It doesn't do anybody any favors, correct.

On today's show, Ukraine's military continues to make gains against Russia, plus iPhone users can now send riskier texts due to a new edit function. But first, a quick update on the ceremonial journey before Queen Elizabeth II's state funeral next week. After a stop in Scotland, the Queen's coffin is headed to London today. It's expected to arrive at Buckingham Palace around 8 p.m. local time, and then on Wednesday, it'll be escorted by gun carriage in a silent procession to Westminster Hall. As her body has been making its last tour, many mourners have had the chance to pay their respects.

In Scotland, some people waited upwards of four hours for the opportunity to do so in person. But there are also some folks using the occasion of the Queen's death to hold her and the entire royal family accountable for its various misdeeds. deeds which feels like a too mild way of putting it because like the british monarchy literally built its wealth and power off the lives of countless cultures and communities that they pillaged and the queen was very much not a silent participant in much of that a number of anti-royal protesters have been showing up to some of these memorials. Travelle, how have they been received? Well, as you might imagine, not well. A number of these anti-monarchy protesters, they're known as Republicans across the pond. No relation, if you know what I mean. They actually have been arrested.

In Scotland, police detained a 22-year-old woman holding a sign that said, quote, fuck imperialism, abolish the monarchy. She was outside St. Giles' Cathedral where the coffin was lying at rest until this morning. According to police, she was detained, quote, in connection with a breach of peace, whatever that means. There was also a 45-year-old guy who was arrested after yelling out, quote, who elected him when Charles was proclaimed king in Oxford on Sunday. Shout out to that guy. Love that moment. It gives very mean girls. And then on Monday, a third incident happened outside the Palace of Westminster in

London, where Charles was scheduled to deliver his first address to Parliament as king. A protester stood outside the gates, holding up a sign that said, not my king on one side and abolished the monarchy on the other. According to reports, this person was just escorted away, though it's unclear if they were also arrested. If your goal is to prove that a democracy and a monarchy can exist hand in hand. I don't feel like arresting people for expressing their opinion is a good way to make that point.

That's assuming that that is these folks' goal. That's true. That's true. And also, again, Barbara Streisand, in fact, would never have known about these signs if they hadn't gone and arrested the guy standing on the corner who nobody was paying much attention to anyway. Right. Well, things are also getting a little violent in some places.

Take a listen to this moment captured by a reporter for the Scottish news magazine, Holyrood. It happened during the procession of the Queen's coffin in Edinburgh, which included King Charles and Prince Andrew. According to reports, a protester yelled out to Andrew, quote, Andrew, you're a sick old man. Reminder here that he was accused of sexually assaulting a minor that was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein, so not good business there. And in response, what you'll hear in this clip is others chanting, quote, God save the king, while the protester is

thrown to the ground by a couple men in the crowd, then escorted away by police. Disgusting! That's unnerving. Yeah. But look, these protesters are not alone. Broader anti-royal sentiment has been brewing for some time in other parts of the world too, right? By some time, we mean like many centuries?

Absolutely. At her death, Queen Elizabeth was the head of state in 15 countries and the ceremonial head of the much wider commonwealth that's the name for this loose collection of 56 member states that occasionally benefit from the crown but before the push for independence across asia and africa in the 20th century the queen presided over 2.5 billion people from canada to australia jamaica to Ghana. And to put it quite simply, many folks in those communities are also questioning, have been questioning for some time, their historical ties to the monarchy. And King Charles isn't exactly popular in many of those places either. So we'll see how this all

plays out during his reign. Okay, and news about what's going on stateside. On Monday, the DOJ filed papers signaling that it would accept one of the candidates that former President Donald Trump's legal team recommended to review the documents taken from Mar-a-Lago last month. We talked about this so-called special master in our episode on August 30th, but just as a reminder, this is the person charged with independently reviewing those documents. Now, this comes after a federal judge last week granted Trump's request for a special master, which the DOJ opposed. After that request was approved, both the DOJ and Trump's team each submitted two nominees for who

they think should serve in that role. Okay, so both sides each had two suggestions that they provided for who should be in the role. Got you. Right. Which of the two people that Trump recommended did the DOJ signal they would support? So according to CNN, the DOJ said that senior judge Raymond Deary would be, quote, acceptable. So Deary was nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York by Ronald Reagan back in 1986.

He took senior status in 2011. Senior status is basically like semi-retirement for federal judges. They only have to keep a 25% caseload, but they still have a staff and a lot of the perks of being a judge. Gotcha. So what else do we know about Judge Deary? Well, we don't know everything yet, and certainly more will come out over the next few days. It's worth noting that even some Trump critics have said he's a pretty upstanding judge. But what we do know is that he signed off on the 2017 warrant against Carter Page. Remember that? Okay, I don't remember that name. Remind us who Carter Page is again. Okay, so Carter Page was a former Trump advisor who was

a main focus of the investigation of Trump's campaign and its relationship with Russian officials. So he was a focus of the Steele dossier. Remember those days? We can't get into what that all was today because we would need a lot of time. But suffice it to say that Carter Page was a subject of the Mueller investigation way back when. Gotcha. So he signed off on this warrant. What does that mean? Well, it turns out that signing off on that warrant was a controversial move. In 2019, the DOJ actually determined that the warrant signed by Deary that approved surveillance of Page was invalid. Page later sued the DOJ for $75 million for unlawful surveillance, and that suit was actually dismissed just a few weeks ago.

Gotcha. So who was the other Trump pick for special master, the one the DOJ did not accept? Trump's other nominee was Paul Huck Jr. He's a former partner at Jones Day, the law firm that represented the Trump campaign in 2016. He's part of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization. I just hear that and I go, uh-oh, red flag, red flag, danger, danger, danger. Federalist Society should give you the red flag. Right reaction. Okay, cool.

So, Josie, the Justice Department seems to be okay with one of the Trump team's picks. Have Trump's lawyers said they would accept either of the DOJ's nominees for special master? No, actually quite the opposite. So Trump's team rejected DOJ's nominees, both of whom are retired federal judges. One of them, Judge Thomas Griffith, was appointed by George W. Bush in 2005. More recently, he co-authored a report, quote, debunking Trump's lies about massive fraud in the 2020 election. That's according to CNN. So it's not super surprising that Trump's team was not into him.

The other, Judge Barbara Jones, was appointed by Bill Clinton in 1995. She was appointed special master to examine the evidence seized in the FBI raid of Rudy Giuliani's home and office back in 2021. So also not super surprising that Trump's not into her. Gotcha. So now what? Where do we go from here? Well, now we wait and see if the court will approve Judge Deary as special master. If the two parties agree, it seems reasonable to expect he'll be approved. And then we wait to find out the timeline for the review. So the DOJ wants it to happen quickly by October 17th. Trump's team wants a longer review period of 90 days, which means it would end after the midterm elections.

I'm sure he does. Yeah, I would also not want this to come out before the elections were over if I were him. And that's the latest for now. We'll be back after some ads. Let's get to some headlines. Headlines. A big January 6th update yesterday. Over the past week, officials from the Justice Department have seized two phones belonging to top Trump advisers and sent out about 40 subpoenas to the former president's aides. That's all according to reports first published in the New York Times. Some of the subpoenas seek information related to a new target for investigators,

Trump's fundraising vehicle, which is called Save America. Not to be confused with Vote Save America. Don't confuse those. Ukraine made more headway against Russia as its new offensive strategy continued yesterday. The Ukrainian military announced it freed another 20 settlements in 24 hours. The advancements are happening on multiple fronts, including Kherson in the south and in the east near Kharkiv. A U.S. military official said Russian troops are dealing with low morale and logistical issues, though they retaliated with more airstrikes in Kharkiv yesterday.

A Kremlin spokesperson said, quote, the special military operation continues and will continue until the initial goals are achieved. Moscow came out with similar statements earlier in the conflict, including when Russian forces abandoned their push to take Kiev in April. Montana health officials adopted a new rule over the weekend that permanently bans transgender people from changing the sex listed on their birth certificates to match their gender identity. Before this, Montanans could change their sex at birth if they've had gender-affirming surgery, surgery that is often expensive and inaccessible to trans folks as it is.

But this new rule has made that virtually impossible. The only way residents can change the sex on their birth certificate now is by proving that their sex was listed incorrectly with medical testing. The ACLU of Montana already filed a lawsuit asking a state judge to block the rule. And the judge will hear arguments on the issue this Thursday. Just fucking awful. About 15,000 Minnesota nurses took to the picket lines yesterday, likely making it the largest private sector nurses strike in the country.

This comes after five months of contract negotiations between their union, the Minnesota Nurses Association, and hospital executives. The union represents nurses from 16 hospitals throughout the state. And like other medical workers throughout the pandemic, they're demanding safer working conditions, help with staffing shortages, and better pay. The current strike is set to last for three days. It's not clear when both sides will return to the negotiating table. And meanwhile, the medical facilities affected by the strike promised to stay open and continue

treating patients during the work stoppage. A new level of mind games was just unlocked in iMessage because Apple released a software update yesterday that allows users to edit and unsend messages after they've sent them. The feature is available in iOS 16, but it does have some limitations. For example, you can only delete or edit a message within 15 minutes of sending it, and the other person will be notified if you've done either of those things. Plus, if you edit a message, people still have the option to see your original unedited message, meaning Apple does not have your back if you have a wild heart that makes you say crazy things. If you feel like you're ready for this new great

power and the great responsibility that comes with it, the update is available to download now. I'll just note, I don't know why we're doing this. If they can still see the unedited message, it defeats the purpose of editing it. It does.

The point is that you should delete it and resend it. There you go. Because they can see you deleted it, but they can't see what you deleted. That's for all my reactive friends out there who tend to say things they regret. A new kind of free return for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Yesterday, a rocket launched by his company, Blue Origin, went up in flames a minute after launch, free returning, carrying an uncrewed capsule filled with experiments, which actually landed safely after parachuting out, filled with experiments. The troubling part is that this rocket used the same design as the one that shuttled celebrities and people with money for a ticket close to space in the past. This is Blue Origin's first failed launch, and the FAA has started an investigation to

figure out what happened. In the meantime, Bezos' rockets will be grounded until their findings are complete. Someone finally managed to abolish the police, and specifically, the ones in a new video game called Multiversus. The free-to-play game pulls in characters from the Warner Bros. Discovery Universe for an experience like Super Smash Bros., and until last week, players who chose Velma from Scooby-Doo could defeat their opponents by summoning a police car to whisk them away. Bugs Bunny's ass without exposing him to our broken criminal justice system. There was even a Change.org petition to that effect, though it didn't mention kicking Bugs Bunny's ass specifically. Thankfully, an update removed Velma's special Karen attack by swapping the police car out

with a mystery squad car. And it is in this moment that I am realizing that perhaps Velma, the most fashionable of the Scooby-Doo gang perhaps I would say, was always a Karen. She was. That's very sad to me. We always kind of knew it. This is why we need media literacy

in schools. Absolutely. We need people to know what's going on really in Scooby-Doo. And those are the headlines. That is all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review,

release Bugs Bunny, and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just raw, unedited text messages like me, What A Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at cricket.com slash subscribe.

I'm Travelle Anderson. I'm Josie Duffy Rice. And just be cool, Velma. You ain't gotta call the police on nobody. Relax. Stay out of it. Just turn the other cheek. That's what the Bible say. What a day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Bill Lance, Jazzy Marine, and Raven Yamamoto are our associate producers. Our head writer is John Milstein, and our executive producer is Lita Martinez.

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