Trump's War On Blue States Will Fail

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Trump's War On Blue States Will Fail"

As The World Churns’ episode titled "Trump's War On Blue States Will Fail", hosted by Andy Levy and Danielle Moody, delves deep into the political turbulence surrounding former President Donald Trump's recent actions aimed at blue states. Released on June 17, 2025, this episode captures insightful discussions, key events, and expert analyses that shed light on the evolving political landscape in the United States.

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1. Contrasting Events: Trump's Birthday Parade vs. No Kings Day Protests

The episode opens with Andy Levy highlighting the stark contrast between two simultaneous events:

• Trump's Birthday Parade in Washington, D.C.

  • Attendance Issues: The parade struggled with attendance despite significant promotional efforts.
  • Military Participation: Soldiers appeared disinterested, symbolizing waning support.
  • Andy Levy (01:13): "I thought it was sort of a sad day for the army for having to be there and going through with all of this crap."

• No Kings Day Protests Across the Nation

  • Mass Participation: Estimated between 4 to 6 million participants, marking it as one of the largest protests in American history.
  • Public Sentiment: Demonstrates a collective rejection of Trump's influence and a reaffirmation of democratic values.
  • Elliot Morris (02:36): "One of the biggest days of protest in American history, I think, beyond a doubt."

2. The Assassination Attempts in Minnesota

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around the violent incidents in Minnesota:

• Events Overview:

  • State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband were killed.
  • State Senator John Hoffman and his wife were wounded.
  • Perpetrator: Vance Bolter, a Trump supporter with a hit list targeting Democrats and institutions related to abortion rights.

• Legal Proceedings:

  • Bolter was arrested and charged with first-degree murder.
  • Andy Levy (07:17): "This is just an awful day in Minnesota."

3. The Link Between Rhetoric and Violence

The hosts and guest Elliot Morris explore how Trump's rhetoric has potentially incited violence:

• Violent Rhetoric:

  • Bolter's Motivation: Influenced by Trump's and the GOP's inflammatory language against Democrats.
  • Elliot Morris (07:17): "MAGA is violent. Donald Trump spreads violent rhetoric that results in physical violence."

• Media's Role:

  • Mainstream media's portrayal of events often downplays or misattributes causes, enhancing divisions.
  • Andy Levy (09:31): Criticizes Republican senators and Elon Musk for spreading misinformation post-assassination.

4. Public Response and Polling Insights

Elliot Morris introduces data-driven insights from guest analyst Elliot Morris (likely an error in the transcript, assuming it's someone else, perhaps Jack):

• Protest Impact:

  • No Kings Day: Estimated 5-6 million attendees, potentially surpassing historical protests in scale.
  • 3.5% Rule: Suggests that 3.5% of the population engaged in mass protests can significantly influence political outcomes.
  • Jack (22:11): "That's 3.5% rule doesn't really matter if there's no press coverage of the protests."

• Public Opinion on Use of Military:

  • Poll Results: Higher disapproval among those closely following LA protests versus those less informed.
  • Jack (29:56): "There's a general American tradition to like, not have military in the streets."

5. Democratic Strategy and Public Perception

The conversation shifts to how Democrats can navigate the current political climate:

• Immigration Policy:

  • Distinction between "border security" and "immigration" in public perception.
  • Jack (37:26): Emphasizes the need for nuanced policies that secure borders while providing a path for legal immigrants.

• Impact of Protests:

  • Historical data suggests that large-scale protests can sway public opinion and electoral outcomes in favor of Democratic candidates.
  • Jack (34:50): "These protests helped Joe Biden."

6. Escalating Tensions and Future Implications

Guest Jonathan Metzl joins the discussion to provide a broader perspective on gun violence and political instability:

• Normalization of Violence:

  • Increasing frequency of politically motivated shootings indicates a troubling trend.
  • Jonathan Metzl (42:46): "What we're seeing is on one hand the normalizing of political violence which has gotten, it's almost every day."

• Institutional Challenges:

  • The balance between maintaining democracy and addressing violent extremism is delicate and currently strained.
  • Jonathan Metzl (56:53): "When the system breaks down, this creates the fodder for the kind of takeover that we're worried about right now."

7. Closing Thoughts and Call to Action

Andy Levy concludes the episode by emphasizing the disconnect between Democratic leadership and the party's grassroots:

• Democratic Leadership Critique:
  • Highlighting a high-profile wedding attended by Democratic elites on the same day as mass protests, symbolizing detachment from the general populace.
  • Andy Levy (60:18): "I cannot think of a better way to show how out of touch they are with the party faithful and the country in general."

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Elliot Morris (02:36): "One of the biggest days of protest in American history, I think, beyond a doubt."
• Andy Levy (07:17): "This is just an awful day in Minnesota."
• Elliot Morris (07:17): "MAGA is violent. Donald Trump spreads violent rhetoric that results in physical violence."
• Jack (22:11): "That's 3.5% rule doesn't really matter if there's no press coverage of the protests."
• Jonathan Metzl (42:46): "What we're seeing is on one hand the normalizing of political violence which has gotten, it's almost every day."
• Andy Levy (60:18): "I cannot think of a better way to show how out of touch they are with the party faithful and the country in general."

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Conclusion

This episode of As The World Churns provides a comprehensive analysis of the escalating political tensions in the United States, underscored by mass protests and tragic acts of violence. Through expert insights and data-driven discussions, Andy Levy and Danielle Moody navigate the complex interplay between political rhetoric, public sentiment, and institutional responses, painting a sobering picture of America's current state and the challenges ahead.

Transcript

[Heather]

Heather is a nurse practitioner from UnitedHealthcare.

[Jack]

We meet patients wherever they live.

[Heather]

During a house call, she found Jack had an issue.

[Jack]

Jack's blood pressure was dangerously high.

[Andy Levy]

It was 217 over 110.

[Heather]

So they got Jack to the hospital and got him the help he needed.

[Jack]

He had had a stamp placed in his heart preventing a massive heart attack.

[Andy Levy]

If it wasn't for my guardian angel, I wouldn't be here.

[Heather]

Hear more stories like Jack's at unitedhealthcare.com benefits, features and or devices vary by plan, area limitation and exclusions apply.

[Danielle Moody]

BetterHelp Online Therapy bought this 30 second ad to remind you right now, wherever you are, to unclench your jaw, relax your shoulders, take a deep breath in and out. Feels better, right? That's 15 seconds of self care. Imagine what you could do with more. Visit betterhelp.com randompodcast for 10% off your first month of therapy. No pressure, just help. But for now, just relax.

[Andy Levy]

Hey everyone. Welcome to a new episode of as the World Churns. I am Andy Levy and as always, here with my brilliant co host, Danielle Moody. So over the weekend we had, on Saturday, we had the sort of dueling events, which was the sad spectacle that was the Trump birthday parade in Washington, D.C. and that was countered and I would say easily eclipsed by the hundreds, the thousands of no Kings Day protests and rallies that were held throughout the nation. We don't know the full number of people who attended these rallies. We know it was, I think the technical term is fucking huge. And there are estimates around 5, 6 million. But again, none of that's official. We don't know, but it was huge. One of the biggest days of protest in American history, I think, beyond a doubt. Danielle, what do you make of the fact that that the no Kings Day protest seemed to be a rousing success and the sad little boy King birthday party was not very well attended?

[Elliot Morris]

I mean, well, here's the thing. When you're seeing ads on Craigslist to try and get people to attend the birthday party and that you'll be paid. And then you lie to people and you say it's going to be over 250,000 patriots are going to be ending on Washington D.C. i think we all knew that it was gonna be more embarrassing than Trump's first inauguration and the fact that the second inauguration they held indoors and they said it was because of weather, but funny enough, I remember being bundled up from head to toe with the same temperatures for Barack Obama's historic outdoor inauguration the first time. So what Do I make of it? I make of the fact that Americans are saying, sick to death of Donald Trump. I make of the fact that they do not want to be ruled, that they still believe in democracy. The numbers were absolutely historic and encouraging and hopeful because I think that the point of protests and rallies is for people not to feel alone, to recognize that you are one of millions, Right. Who want to stand up for this country and fight for this country and you know, and frankly to the world as well, that think that because we managed to elect a adjudicated rapist and a felon to become the president of the United States, that the rest of us here must be buffoons in the United States. So I like the fact that no Kings also maybe restored some faith that the world has in the American people that we're not all MAGA wearing, mindless sheep who believe every tall tale, every lie that Donald Trump spins. So, you know, for me, my favorite Andy, to be honest, was the video of the army tank that was squeaking along. I think it was Pennsylvania Avenue squeaking along. You could hear it because there were no people there. Yeah, right. Like, if there had been cheering crowds that were loud, you would not have heard the. Of the tank. So, yeah. Very emblematic of, you know, just Trump.

[Andy Levy]

Yeah, No, I think that's totally true. And the army itself, the soldiers who were involved in the parade, for the most part, the videos I saw, could not have seemed less interested or less thrilled to be there, which, as I think I said in our last episode, having been dragged into having to do a couple of parades when I was in the army, nobody wants to do those to begin with. And so there's. I think there's a lot of that. But it also did seem like they didn't want to be there for this particular thing. So I thought it was sort of a sad day for the army for having to be there and going through with all of this crap. I also thought it was kind of a good day for the army to see soldiers completely disinterested in propping up Donald Trump. So. So, yeah, obviously the big thing that happened on Saturday was the, well, assassination, I guess you would call it, of one Democratic lawmaker in Minnesota and her husband and the attempted assassination of a second Minnesota politician and his wife, a gentleman named Vance Bolter, I guess it's pronounced, who has now on Monday was found and arrested. He's being charged with first degree murder for now, which I've seen people complaining that he hasn't been charged with terrorism. I just want to Point out that initial charges are almost, you know, I don't want to say almost never, but are often not all the charges. And to charge someone with terrorism, you probably need more evidence than they have at the moment. But it would not shock me if those charges get bumped up at some point. State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband lost their lives. State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, who were both shot, I think I read eight or nine times, but managed to live. And apparently this bolter had a hit list with dozens of names on it, including people with ties to the abortion rights movement. He apparently went to the homes of two other lawmakers with the intent to kill them. And I guess they weren't home, thankfully. So, Danielle, just a. Just an awful day in Minnesota.

[Elliot Morris]

I think that what is so horrible about these tragic events is that anybody that has been paying attention knew that this was coming. That there it is not a long leap to make from Donald Trump's violent rhetoric and maga's violent rhetoric and his Cabinet members violent rhetoric and members of the GOP in Congress, in the House and Senate, and their violent rhetoric to violent acts. And what I find terribly troubling, frustrating, is the fact that corporate mainstream media still likes to pretend that there are both sides to this issue, when there are not. Still like to pretend that both sides say things that could warrant violence. It is just not the fucking truth or the fucking case. And the fact is, is that you have one party that has had websites with Democrats in crosshairs of, of a rifle on their website. You have had one party that has talked about their political opponents as vermin and has said of their political opponents that they are scared scum, that they hate this country, right? All of those types of things that have led to the insurrection on January 6, that have led to the murders of Representative Hortman and her husband and the attacks on State Senator Hoffman and his wife. This comes from someplace. And the fact that we don't. That we allow mainstream corporate media to lie to us, to gaslight us into believing that, like, you know, we don't really understand the motives or really understand, like, what has happened yet. And the fact that Twitter was filled with a bunch of people spreading disinformation and lies about Vance Boltler is the point of why Elon Musk took over Twitter, right? To plant seeds of doubt and to distort information. But the fact is MAGA is violent. Donald Trump spreads violent rhetoric that results in physical violence. And my fear, Andy, is, is that it's going to get worse. This is just the beginning.

[Andy Levy]

The stuff on Twitter, the disinformation and misinformation and yeah, there's a couple people in particular who need to be called out for that. Two of them are Republican senators. Bernie Moreno from Ohio tweeted about, about the, the murders. He tweeted. The degree to which the extreme left has become radical, violent and intolerant is both stunning and terrifying. And of course, as we saw, the murderer was in fact a Donald Trump voter who was part of the extreme right. And Mike Lee, senator from Utah, Republican, goes without saying, I guess. Kept talking about Bolter as being Marxist. He even pinned a tweet saying this is what happens when Marxists don't get their way. And he was talking about the shootings. As far as I know, those tweets are still up, or at least they were for a very, very, very long time, long after we knew who the actual killer was. And you know, the third person that I want to call out on this is, and this is no shock to anyone is Elon Musk, who also was on the very site that he owns, trafficking and misinformation and pretending that this was, that the killer was a lefty. And look, we know this is the world we live in. It wasn't just Twitter. The New York Post was trying to angle that in that direction.

[Jack]

And.

[Andy Levy]

Not only is it their rank and file that does these things. And you mentioned the January 6, the insurrection. What message do you think pardoning those people sent to people who want to commit violence?

[Elliot Morris]

Go ahead, green light. Go ahead.

[Andy Levy]

Exactly. And you know, this is, this is not, as you said, this is not a both sides issue where there's like, well, the right does it and the left does it, the Democrats do it and the Republicans do it. No, this is as one sided as it gets and it's urged on. We've been talking about this for a really long time. We were talking about it on the thing we did before this. I can never remember the name, but we were saying they're going to get people killed. Like we were, we were straight up saying that and we said it a lot because there were a lot of instances where the rhetoric turned to actual violence. And, and it was a very clear path and this is part and parcel of that. So yeah, this is, this is not a, you know, everyone's problem. This is a, a MAGA problem, a Republican Party problem, a right wing problem. And, and the thing is, like you said, you worry that it's going to get worse as long as they keep pardoning the People who do it. Why wouldn't it get worse?

[Elliot Morris]

I mean, and you know, why wouldn't it get worse when you also, right, have a sitting President of the United States who still at the time of this recording has not reached out to the Governor of Minnesota where these horrific terrorist attacks took place, to Tim Walls to offer his condolences, to offer his support in any which way. And instead what Donald Trump did on Sunday night posted this to his broke down social media platform, quote, we must expand efforts to detain and deport illegal aliens in America's largest cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, where millions upon millions of illegal aliens reside. These and other such cities are the core of the Democratic power center where they use illegal aliens to expand their voter base, cheat in elections and grow the welfare state, robbing good paying jobs and benefits from hardworking American citizens. These radical left Democrats are sick of mind and hate our country and actually want to destroy our inner cities. And they are doing a good job of it. There is something wrong with them, Andy. That is what the sitting President of the United States posted on social media following the assassination of a House representative in Minnesota and her husband and a wounding of a state senator and his wife. And the fact that we now know that the assassin is a Trump fanatic, is a religious fanatic, had a list, targeted list of 70 plus people, health centers, abortion clinics, et cetera. This is what Donald Trump does.

[Andy Levy]

Yeah, and look, it's obviously not an accident that he's naming Democratic cities as if cities with Republican mayors in red states like, I don't know, Houston, Miami aren't filled with immigrants. But it's also, it's just the outright lying. The, you know, they use illegal aliens to expand their voter base. Not true. Illegal, you know, undocumented immigrants don't vote, cheat in elections. I think we know, I think we.

[Elliot Morris]

Beg to fucking differ.

[Andy Levy]

Yeah. And then he also says, and grow the welfare state, robbing good paying jobs and benefits from American citizens. Well, which one is it? Are you coming here for the welfare or are you coming here to take the jobs? Like they can't even make sense within their own paranoid propaganda. Yep, it's absolutely unreal. All I think when I see these things now is in the pre Trump era, he does at minimum four or five things a day that would have led to impeachment. And this is one of them. Like for a sitting president to say this, to order federal troops into Democratic led cities, the cities that are, you know, run by the other party and to say all these Things that would have been. And that would have. These would have been impeachable offenses. These would have been. You would never think anything like this would happen. And now, like I said, it's for. Happens four, four, four or five times a day. And, and absolutely nothing is done about it.

[Elliot Morris]

You know, and I, I love the fact that you brought that up because again, this has been the normalization of Donald Trump, of violence, of violent language for the last 10 years. It has been 10 years that we have been dealing with this. 10 years. And, you know, and no one is surprised. And yet, like, we have all been forever changed by Trumpism, by maga. Right. What is acceptable and what is not. The, the lines don't even exist. They're not even blurred. They just don't even exist anymore. Right. Because guess what? They'll say, oh, he doesn't mean it. Oh, it's just a joke. Oh, it's just really. Because that's what you say after people are assassinated in their homes because of their political party, because of what you have stoked. And then you say, you know what, let's double down. Right? Because that's what Donald Trump is doing. He was embarrassed by his fucking paltry military parade. His ego is bruised. And what I have said is that this regime will get increasingly violent the more scared and fragile they become. And that is what we're seeing.

[Andy Levy]

Yeah. And look, that's why, you know, to everything that you've just said, particularly to them getting more and more violent, that's why we have the National Guard in Los Angeles. That's why we have a Marine battalion in Los Angeles, because this is a guy now who, I can only think that the people like Putin and Kim Jong Un had to be laughing as they watched that parade.

[Elliot Morris]

Embarrassed for him.

[Andy Levy]

Yeah. And Trump knows it. And, you know, but, but the response of someone who is embarrassed and who has, you know, a very small ego to begin with, where he, he can't handle being embarrassed. And, and, and his, you know, something for him not being the biggest and the best is to lash out. And, you know, and, and I really do think, obviously sending the troops to Los Angeles predates the parade. And, but it's all of a piece. It's all, you know, he sees that his approval ratings aren't that great. I'm going to send the National Guard in to Los Angeles. I'm going to send the Marines into Los Angeles because that's the only thing they know and that's the only thing they understand. And so I am absolutely with you. That we are going to see as Trump gets more and more cornered, maybe too strong a word, but as he feels, you know, sort of, sort of less and less of a man, he's gonna lash out, as, you know, insecure men do when they can't handle something. And that's usually with violence. So I'm 100% with you. Unfortunately, I think everyone is gonna have to be on guard for the violence to grow.

[Heather]

Heather is a nurse practitioner from UnitedHealthcare.

[Jack]

We meet patients wherever they live.

[Heather]

During a house call, she found Jack had an issue.

[Jack]

Jack's blood pressure was dangerously high.

[Andy Levy]

It was 217 over 110.

[Heather]

So they got Jack to the hospital and got him the help he needed.

[Jack]

He had had a stent placed in his heart, preventing a massive heart attack.

[Andy Levy]

If it wasn't for my guardian angel, I wouldn't be here.

[Heather]

Hear more stories like Jack's at unitedhealthcare.com benefits, features and or devices vary by plant, area limitation and exclusions apply.

[Elliot Morris]

Out here, it's not only the amazing views, but the way time stretches out a little longer, how laughter bellows louder among friends and how the breeze hits.

[Heather]

Just right at the summit.

[Elliot Morris]

With alltrails, you can discover and experience the best of nature. With over 450,000 trails worldwide and navigation right at your fingertips, find your outside with alltrails. Download the free app today and find your next outdoor adventure.

[Andy Levy]

G. Elliot Morris was the editorial director of data analytics for ABC News and is a former senior data journalist for the Economist. He currently publishes Strength in Numbers, where he writes about politics, public opinion polling and [e-mail] and he joins me today to talk about what the numbers can tell us about both the Los Angeles and no Kings Day protests. Elliot, thank you so much for being here.

[Jack]

Yeah, thanks for having me on, Andy.

[Andy Levy]

Absolutely. So let's start with no Kings Day. You've been leading a crowdsourcing effort to try to determine just how many protesters there were across the country. Before we get into what you found, tell us how you're doing this.

[Jack]

Yeah, that's a great question. And I'll say why we're doing it also. And the why here is that it's just very hard to come up with, like, nearly official count of how many people show up at these protests. As journalists especially, this can be problematic because the, the data that we have to rely on is like, accounts from organizers which tend to be inflated or anecdotal accounts of like, how many people the press maybe saw at this One location in LA or New York or what have you. So you really want to try to get as much data from the ground as possible. So that's. That's what we did. And I don't think we're coming up with an official estimate, but at the very least, we're being a lot more comprehensive and systematic than other people. So I can keep going if you. Or it sounded like you were gonna.

[Andy Levy]

I was gonna say you are very careful when you write about this to say that it isn't an official number, and I appreciate that, but. So what did you find? What would. What is your estimate, based on the sources that you've used, of how many people attended at least one of these rallies?

[Jack]

Yeah, so what we did is we asked people who were at these rallies to tell us how many people were there. That requires some guesswork by them. And. And we also just collated reports from the press. You know, lots of local news websites tend to report credible estimates, so we got those, too. What we found is that in about 900 out of 2100 protests, where we currently have data, around 3 million people say they showed up, or we have testimony from people that around 3. 3 million people were there. Right. That's not complete data. So if you extrapolate based on the data we don't have, then it's somewhere around 5 million people. We think could be as high as 6 or as low as 4, because there's some error. So that would make the no Kings Day protests the second largest mass protest in American history, second to the 1970 Earth Day protests, which were 20 million people, like 1/10 of the US population at the time.

[Andy Levy]

Wow. There's a concept that I've seen bandied about a lot on social media in the wake of the no Kings rallies. And that's something called the 3.5% rule, or 3.5% threshold. Can you explain exactly what that is?

[Jack]

The 3.5% rule is a threshold proposed by a Harvard social scientist by the name Erica Chenoweth, with the idea being if 3.5% of a population, in this case the US population, is engaged in mass protests about something, then they have a near 100% probability of achieving whatever they're protesting. So in this case, I guess it's democracy or like. Or against Donald Trump. Yeah, they're not going to be able to kick it out with 3.5%, but they might be able to, you know, make their statement about rolling back executive, you know, powers or something. It's not perfect. So. Right. Like 3.5% rule somewhat over interpreted to mean like the thing you're protesting will happen? No, it's just, it's just a statistical estimate. So it's not like predetermined that a 3.5% of people had showed up this past weekend, then like, yeah, Donald Trump would be rolling back his immigration agenda. In fact, that does seem to be what happened, but for other reasons.

[Andy Levy]

Right. We didn't hit the 3.5% threshold over the weekend, did we?

[Jack]

No, it seems like we'll be around 1.1 to 1.4% of the US population, which is still huge. And if you only count adults, it's closer to 2%. So that's big turnout for a protest like this. I mean, the earlier protests in the years were about half the size, maybe two thirds, if we're generous. So it's still enough to make a message. And then I'll just sort of say by way of TV comparison, it's also enough to probably make the President feel a little bit embarrassed about the turnout for his sort of counter, you know, counter programming over the weekend. And that is powerful in the press. So 3.5% rule doesn't really matter if there's no press coverage of the protests or people in power talking about the people that are, that are protesting and why they're protesting. So that's a, that's another variable here to keep in mind and it might magnify the significance of the 1% of people who did turn out.

[Andy Levy]

Sure. And there is data that shows that like, if 1, 1 and a half, 2% of the population turn out for these protests, there's still a really decent chance of the goals being achieved.

[Jack]

Yeah. So the same study that presents 3.5% rule as your, like, you know, best shot, you're nearly 100% chance of, of achieving your goals. That study also shows that if you have about 1 to 1.5% of the population showing up, there's between a 50 and 60% chance that they're achieving their goals. So again, these are all like estimates and there's cases that break the rules, but in this case that would suggest like a pretty good chance. That's like, that's enough. It's a critical mass. That's, it's a good rule for us to attach some meaning to the amount of people that are showing up. And I guess that's. Yeah, I would say that's how it should be used.

[Andy Levy]

Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. So obviously we can't know with a strong degree of CERTITUDE how many people were at the no Kings protests. But we can know fairly well the number of protests that were held, right?

[Jack]

Yeah, that's right. We do have to take organizers at some point at their word for this, but they say there was 2,100. We have data from, like I said, nearly half of them. It doesn't make sense to me that they would lie about that. They have, like, partner organizations at lots of these local events, so it's, it's sort of a question of, like, how trustworthy the sponsor organization is.

[Andy Levy]

Right.

[Jack]

So if we take those 2100 at their word now, we can verify them later. And that's what some social scientists at Harvard, including Erica Chenoweth and the Crowd Counting Consortium, will do over the next couple of weeks. I guess this is a pretty huge batch, so it might take more like, more like a month. So, so if those are verified, then we can compare them against verified protests from the past number of protests. And, and that data pretty, is pretty solid. There's no real debate whether or not there were protests in, you know, Charlotte for the first batch of protests against Trump. The 50501 protest, I think they were called. Like, we know that happened. Right. And so we can compare what we had this time with which how much we had in previous months. And we can do that also with the number of protests we had in 2017, for example. And those numbers are a lot, a lot more credible. There's less uncertainty. And for the impact, it's a lot worse for the Trump administration. There's about 15,000 protests cumulatively since he took office. At this point in his second term. At this point in his first term, there was closer to 5,000. So we're like 3s increase in protest activity since this point in Donald Trump's first term.

[Andy Levy]

Wow, that's pretty incredible. And as you said, that's over the same timeframe in both terms.

[Jack]

Yeah, about five months.

[Elliot Morris]

Wow.

[Andy Levy]

I want to shift a little bit to the ongoing anti ICE protests in Los Angeles. What does the public polling tell us about that? Are the protests themselves popular? Are the Trump policies and actions that have led to the protest popular? What's going on there?

[Jack]

So there's a bit of a paradox here. The polling shows us both that the average American responding to these surveys does not view the protests or the protesters themselves very favorably. It's not that they're unpopular. It's about an even split between the share of people who think they're favorable and, and those who are unfavorable or Those who approve and disapprove of their actions. But at the same time, polls also show that Donald Trump's response to the protests have been negative and, and have been, have been worse than the popularity of the protesters themselves. So across three surveys conducted last week, that's pretty early. So not everyone has heard about the protests yet. So take that with, you know, some amount of uncertainty. The average poll shows between a negative 5 and negative 10 approval rating for Trump on his response to, to the LA protests, which is significantly worse than how people view about the protest stores themselves. And they're particularly opposed to the use of military force and the deployment of the Marines as well. So that makes sense because I guess there's a general American tradition to like, not have military in the streets, like policing First Amendment rights. But, you know, before we even get there, the polls typically say this is, this is unpopular.

[Andy Levy]

Gotcha. Yeah, there used to be a, you know, we used to be sort of proud of the idea that we did not send in the Marines domestically.

[Jack]

Yeah, I mean, like, imagine lots of the, the Tea Party protesters, like the things that they were saying in 2009 was like, you know, hands off my guns, do not like police my speech. Those are some of the same people now who are saying, send in the Marines. Right. So political coalitions do shift over time and so do priorities, I guess. Yeah.

[Andy Levy]

You noted in the piece you wrote for this, about this, you noted an interesting fact in the cross tabs of one of the polls that the more closely Americans are following the news in la, the less they like the idea of soldiers in city streets. Can you break that down?

[Jack]

So the, the people who told George Mason poll with the Washington Post that they follow the news closely and that's just how much they say they follow the news. There's no rule way to verify that. Just for what it's worth, those people disapprove of Marines and National Guard being sent to the LA protests by about 10 to 15 percentage points. And there's about a 20 point gap on the other end in favor of military response among people who do not pay attention to the news. And there's a couple reasons that this, this might happen. First off, like, you could side with the protesters, the more you watch them. That's completely plausible. It's also possible that the people who follow the news are just more Democratic on average. We know that's typically the case. Democrats read and watch a lot more news than Republicans do. So it's also possible that that group of people is just more Democratic. I Suspect it's somewhere in between, because we do see this finding repeated across surveys and in some experimental evidence in our Strength in Numbers Verisite poll from a couple of months ago. If you informed people who did not listen to the news about immigration policy, they tended to become less favorable of the administration's response on immigration policy, particularly in the case of Kilmar Virgo Garcia. So, and that's just suggestive evidence that maybe if people are watching the LA protests more, they tend to side with the administration less? That's plausible.

[Andy Levy]

I mean, could it also be just that you could have people who don't side with the protesters, but if they.

[Jack]

See images or against the administration.

[Andy Levy]

Yeah, yeah, but. But if they see images of armed soldiers in, in the streets of an American city, they sort of instinctively don't like that.

[Jonathan Metzl]

Yeah.

[Jack]

And there's some footage as well, I'll say, from the last couple days of, you know, people dressed in military fatigues, holding M4 rifles, slinging them behind their back and throwing protesters to the ground. We know from our study of American history that those images of troops taking actions on civilian protesters are very negative, pretty much regardless of the context of the protest. As long as it's not like, you know, they're burning down police stations, that can compliment things or that can sort of confuse things a little bit. So I would expect that to have a negative reaction, produce a negative reaction among the public, and the people have told us they don't like that anyway, so that's. I think that's what we should expect.

[Andy Levy]

So one of the things that we've heard a lot from some folks, including some folks in the Democratic Party, Democratic politicians, is that the LA protests are playing right into Trump's hands, at least so far. It doesn't feel like the polls are showing that. Am I wrong?

[Jack]

No, I think it's nonsense. I think that this narrative is the press's first reaction, or most people in the mainstream press's first reaction when they see images of cars on fire or they just hear about unrest in the streets. I think probably because of the initial reaction from Donald Trump in 2020 in which he really tried to take advantage of the Black Lives Matter protests against killing of George Floyd. And that seems to play well with him, at least in the images in the press. In reality, what we know from 2020 is that those protests helped Joe Biden. So studies of those protests after the fact find that places there were more protests, there was about an extra 0.5 to 1 percentage point change and Democratic vote share So I think we should probably expect the same thing here. And I think that these pundits probably need to read some of the political science more and just sort of steep themselves in the polling data and that these assumptions that like protest activity and potential violence are bad normatively and baking that onto the public's reaction are probably just some lazy assumptions, some priors that need to be updated with data. That's how I characterize them in, in my articles.

[Andy Levy]

Yeah, no, that, that, that to me is so interesting because it seems to be sort of a truism that anytime there's protest. Protest activity on the left, it's good for Republicans, but also anytime there's protest activity on the right, it's good for Republicans.

[Jack]

Right. Or like, the use of military force against civilians would somehow, like, work out to Trump's advantage if those people were troublemakers or troublemakers are like, speaking up for their, for their rights if they weren't. If they weren't. If they, in fact, weren't violent. So, yeah, I just think there's like, all sorts of assumptions going on here in people's brains, and this is a case where being data driven and empirical probably gets you closer to the truth.

[Andy Levy]

Yeah. So you've got a new poll just out today, right? A strength in numbers Vericite poll.

[Elliot Morris]

Yeah.

[Jack]

So we're doing a survey every month and we're changing up the questions. Some of the questions we ask, we ask every month, but we do ask Trump's approval rating, which this month we find is relatively unchanged compared to May, maybe a point higher, but that's statistical noise. And we find he's unpopular on immigration, on deportations. In fact, he's unpopular on 10 out of 11 issues we asked. The only exception is on border security, where he's pretty popular. I think his border wall might even be the most popular part of his immigration policy platform, funnily enough, considering how it was covered in 2015. And, and there's lots of other goodies in there as well. There's some advice on Democratic strategy based on other survey experiments we ran similar to this one I've referenced. Don Abrego Garcia. We'll keep doing it, and we want it to be interactive. So if you have ideas about, if your, if your listeners and watchers have ideas about what questions they want to ask, they're welcome to come suggest some, some things for us so we can prod the American public on things that the public actually cares about.

[Andy Levy]

That's, that's great. I thought it really interesting that. And you, you mentioned it that on border security, Trump has, I think it's 53% approval, but on immigration, he only has a 46% approval. I think it's interesting to me that those two things seem to be distinct in the. In the minds of the people who were. Who were polled.

[Jack]

Yeah. There's just a classic problem I've seen come up where people take smaller issues and wrap them into bigger ones so they can, I guess, generalize more about politics. It makes narrativization easier in this case. What's happened, I think, over the last five or six years, people have wrapped up a little. A little card that says border security into a bigger package that says immigration. And in fact, that doesn't seem to be true because immigration also contains a lot of other smaller issues like deportation, which we poll about, and maybe even like protests about deportations and about immigration can also be coded as immigration. So this is another case, I think, where there's some assumptions being made about what the people think of when you tell. When you say the word immigration. And I think what we found out is that that is actually different. The pictures people have in their brains about immigration. It's different than the pictures that lots of political writers and pundits have in their head when they write about or when they think about immigration. And it's time to recalibrate that as well.

[Andy Levy]

Yeah. And that's what I found interesting about it, because they are really. They're 2. They're not 100% separate. Like if they overlap in a Venn diagram.

[Jack]

Right. There's two circles there, but it's not the same circle.

[Andy Levy]

Yeah, right, exactly. Thank you. That's what I was trying to say. And like you said, you know, we saw. We sort of. You know, when you see polls of other polls and when you hear people talk about it, it is all lumped into one thing. But you can want to have a strong border, you know, a strong and secure border, but also be in favor of immigrants coming to this country. Right.

[Jack]

Yeah, that's true. And it's great setup as well. That's one thing we tested in our survey. So we wanted to know whether, you know, there's a bigger debate about whether or not Democrats should be talking about immigration less. Setting that partially aside for now, we tested the efficacy of a more moderate, let's say, position for the party on immigration, which was, and I'm putting moderate here in quotes for people that are listening. It's moderate seeming because it's a strong border security position. Secure the border, build the wall Militarize it, you know, do, do what you have to do to decrease illegal crossings. That's the position that we're putting forward for people to test. But we also say create a path for immigrants who are here. So amnesty. This will be familiar to anyone who's aware of the 2013 border compromise that never passed in the Senate. This is pretty much the Democratic party's position before 2016. And we find that that is a pretty significantly persuasive message to people and potentially it is the stronger one for the Democratic Party. But yeah, we don't have conclusive evidence on exactly what they should say. But that is suggestive that people can both want immigrants who are here, who have been here for 10 years, even if they crossed illegally, they have kids, whatever, to stay and also to limit border crossings. That's like, you know, it's completely plausible that people would have those IDs in there at the same time. Who would have thought?

[Andy Levy]

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Elliot, this is all super fascinating and thank you so much for joining us. And folks, go to gliotmorris.com that's Elliot with two L's and two T's.

[Jack]

That's right. Thanks, Sandy.

[Andy Levy]

Yeah, and thanks again for being here. I really appreciate your time.

[Jack]

Yeah, thanks for having me on. This was great.

[Heather]

Heather is a nurse practitioner from UnitedHealthcare.

[Jack]

We meet patients wherever they live.

[Heather]

During a house call, she found Jack had an issue.

[Jack]

Jack's blood pressure was dangerously high.

[Andy Levy]

It was 217 over 110.

[Heather]

So they got Jack to the hospital and got him the help he needed.

[Jack]

He had had a stent placed in his heart preventing a massive heart attack.

[Andy Levy]

If it wasn't for my guardian angel, I wouldn't be here.

[Heather]

Hear more stories like Jack's at unitedhealthcare.com benefits, features and or devices vary by plan. Area limitation and exclusions apply.

[Danielle Moody]

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[Elliot Morris]

Folks, I am so excited to welcome back to as the World Churns. My friend, author, best selling New York Times author, Vanderbilt scholar and professor Jonathan Metzl, who has written the book Dying of Whiteness, which you all have read and what we've become living and dying in a Country of arms and Jonathan, I'm bringing you back here. Today was like emergency text to you. Can you come on because what you and I for so many years on our woke AF check ins every single week we've been talking about America's love affair with guns, right? The fact that we have more people, that we have more guns in this country than people. The fact that it doesn't matter how depraved these shootings get, how often they happen, we continue to shrug them off. This past weekend, Minnesota Assassin Vance Boteler, 57 year old white male, creates a hit list of 70 individuals and institutions, Planned Parenthoods health centers. He shot and killed Melissa Hortman and her husband. She's a state representative in Minnesota. Shot and wounded John Hoffman and his wife Yvette, another state representative and had a target list for so many more. After a two day manhunt. He was taken of course unharmed and unscathed into custody by police. Violence in Utah, violence in other parts of the country. Talk to us about your initial reaction to what happened in Minnesota over the weekend.

[Jonathan Metzl]

Yeah, I mean you're right. We've been talking about this for years and I feel like it's our worst nightmares coming true in a way. It's what we've been worried about and warning about and also just watching happen. I started to even there's this thing called Twitter in the old days. I started to tweet about it being a gun issue and then I didn't even finish the tweet because I thought this isn't even really a gun issue anymore. I mean guns obviously are the vehicle. And this follows from all the stuff we've been talking about. Guns. Really what we're seeing is on one hand the normalizing of political violence which has gotten, it's almost every day. I mean remember like the first mass shooting we had, you know, got our attention 10, 15 years ago, the whole country stopped and they were like, who are we? This is not us. And then mass shootings happen so often as you and I have talked about a bunch, that we habituated it. And that's kind of what's happening with political violence right now. And it's not just the violence itself. It's this really pathological cycle, right, which is an act of violence happens and then there's this immediate rush to figure out what the agenda is and what the ideology is. And if it's something you agree with, then you highlight the issue. If it's something you don't agree with, you show the pathology of the other side. And you say liberals are this or conservatives are this or something like that. And so it becomes really a dialectic in a way. I mean, what happened over this weekend is such a horrific example of that, which is initially the stories were, oh, this is a Democrat and a Tim Wolves appointee. And all of a sudden everybody's like, and look how violent liberals are. And then it turns out he had a hit list only of Democrats. And he was what, the, you know, horrible murders that he committed upended the power structure in Minnesota. And all of a sudden it's. It. It's a sign that, oh, conservatives are this or things like that. And so it just becomes this back and forth. And there's never a place really to step back and say, man, what's the. You know, this is not who we are. Which is what we used to be able to say, and now we. We can't even say that.

[Elliot Morris]

You know, and it's funny because every time that I hear people, and I've said it myself, this is not who we are. That is a lie. Because America. Because it is who we are. It's who America has been. You know, I would argue, even before mass shootings became our norm, right? America was a country born on violence, born on genocide, born on. On the Atlantic slave trade, born on misogyny and racism. Like, it is a violent nation. And, you know, and, And I would like to lay blame, right, solely to Donald Trump. But again, this is a country that is. That has had a gun lobby backed by billionaires who have done everything in their power to ensure that Americans remain unsafe. Whether you're at a church, whether you're at a mall, a concert, a school, a playground, like the NRA has made it so that Americans remain safe. We had. Jonathan, remember we talked about this. House Republicans removed their flag lapels a few years ago and replaced them with AR15s on their. To show their allegiance to the NRA and not to remove a flag, to put up a weapon of mass violence and destruction is. I'm not a psychiatrist. You are. Is psychotic to me. So, like, when we. When we look at this through a political lens and we say, oh, well, the right says, oh, look at the Democrats, blah, blah. Let's be very clear that when we're looking at the records of shootings and how they've been politically motivated, it's not Democrats. So I refuse to both sides this as if, like, oh, one does one and one does the other, because that is not the truth. It is the seeds of doubt that the Republican Party has spread that makes you believe that this is a two sided issue when domestic violence rests surely on the right.

[Jonathan Metzl]

And let me be clear, I'm not, I wasn't both sidesing it. What I was saying is that there is a, there is almost a, like. Remember when mass shootings were first happening and it became almost a parody of itself that there was a shooting and then thoughts and prayers and then consternation and then division and blame and then habituation and normalization. There's a pattern to these things. And I guess for me it's just really almost that terrifying everydayness of this kind of thing that I think I find the most frightening. Because that's a Democratic slide, really. I mean, a democracy slide. And remember that piece I wrote for Time magazine about how guns are not a public health problem, they're a democracy problem. That was kind of what I was getting at in that piece, which I'm happy to send back around, which is that we're killing off the public square, right? Democracies require a vibrant public square for debate about conflicting, uncomfortable ideas then people can decide on. And so what happens with these events is not just that there's a shooting, it's that the public square debate becomes unsafe. And I'm definitely not. I mean, you know, I spent the last 15 years critiquing the NRA and running in a gun violence prevention organization and writing books and articles. So it's not like I'm saying, oh, guns are a Democrat or Republican problem, but I am saying that the notion of kind of burn it all down, political violence, frustration, there's something bigger that's also happening here that we see in, I mean, this weekend, right? We had a shooter in a state with relatively reasonable gun laws. We had a guy bring a gun to protest in Utah, a state that has terrible gun laws but where you can't, you can't arrest somebody. Just like in the book I wrote, you can't arrest somebody till they kill somebody, basically. So there's nothing you can do when somebody's carrying a long gun. And we had all these other, all these other kind of events. And so it's almost like the overwhelming nature of it that becomes, it just, it becomes part of our dialogue, right? And so again, I'm not saying, I mean, I've spent a lot of my career showing how, how we got here with guns, but I also think that the bigger democracy issues about, you know, you just think of all the shootings we've had even over the past year, like many are exactly like you're saying. But then there are also like the Luigi shooting for example, that had a different response and other shootings like that. So violence becomes our form of not trusting that we can negotiate our problems in any other way.

[Elliot Morris]

I mean I think that we're at a place right now. So following this, following these attacks in Minnesota that led to the deaths of two people and the wounding of others, the shooting in Utah, the driving into protesters Donald Trump turned around, has not phoned Governor Walz as is customary for the sitting president to do when a state is met with a traumatic event, and instead posted to Truth Social and said that he's coming down and basically declaring war on blue states. In saying that, and I want folks to like understand it very clearly what he, what he says, quote, we must expand efforts to detain and deport illegal aliens in America's largest cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago and New York where millions upon millions of illegal aliens reside. These and other such cities are the core of Democratic power center where they use illegal aliens to expand their voter base, cheat in elections and grow the welfare state, robbing good paying jobs and benefits from hardworking American citizens. These radical left Democrats are sick of mind, hate our country and actually want to destroy our inner cities. That is what the President of the United States decided to put out over the weekend following this act of terror and these acts of terror, how does that feed in Jonathan, to the larger picture of the fact that this is also, this is the point is violent rhetoric that leads to actual physical violence that destroys our integrity and our faith in institutions and our own protection.

[Jonathan Metzl]

I mean we've seen this a bunch of other times. Not every time has a gun. But think about the Pelosi attack for example in California with a hammer and other stuff. Every single horrible thing becomes grist for the blame division industry. And so that was such a clear invasion attack crime. If you're against crime, that's a crime. Just like these things are clearly murdered. And so in a way there's no like, oh, you know, we're all Americans at this time. But again it just our system is not functioning in that way right now. But what's important now is not just to me a not surprising not calling Tim Walls. It's that it happened after such a incredibly powerful show of Democratic support with the no Kings marches across the country. I was at the one in New York. I don't know you if, if you were there, but it was a pretty powerful experience. Experience. Just because there were just everybody showed up. I went to the march in New York, and it was like, people who were 10 years old, people who were like, 90 years old. Every kind of background of person saying, basically, like, here's what makes this country great is we're all immigrants in some way, and things like that. And so Trump is doing this after these marches in a way. And so I don't think his post is the final word about this, but I do think that there's an intensity that's unfolding that validates state violence, but also individual kinds of violence.

[Elliot Morris]

Where do you think it leads? Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I don't. Obviously, Donald Trump's post is not gonna be the last of this, but also the attacks in Minnesota and Utah, they're not going to be the last of what we see. And the fact is, what terrifies me, Jonathan, we're only six months in.

[Jonathan Metzl]

Yeah.

[Elliot Morris]

Six months into this regime, and this is where we are.

[Jonathan Metzl]

I, right now, remain, at least right now, an institutionalist. And so partially, we're in this position because of. I mean, we were in this position for many, many, many reasons. But one of the key reasons is we lost the presidential election and the Senate election and the congressional election. And so the levers of power are completely stacked against us right now. And so I think we have to figure out how can we, as you know, my positional place, get back to doing something that involves winning. And so I just think that we're trying to figure out what our rebuttal argument is right now, how we can get back some kind of power. But if you're in this country with a president who's doing what Trump is doing now, and then the institutions of the Congress and the Senate are not in your grasp also, it's about as powerless as you can be. And so protest is really important. But also, as long as we have elections, like winning elections, and trying to re equilibrate the levers of power, I think is as important as anything. How would you answer that question?

[Elliot Morris]

And here's the thing, because my feeling is, one, there are several reports that are coming out putting into question some of the voting machines that were used in 2024 that have now escalated to state supreme courts for them to take action not to overturn the 2024 election, but to ask whether or not voting machines were tampered with. Right. When I hear things like that, coupled with Donald Trump's, you know, military parade topple with, you know, the escalation of violence with his base and his own rhetoric, and Kristi. Noem saying that we're not leaving California, we're gonna liberate these cities. Right? Because apparently states don't have rights when they are run by Democrats. For me, it's like, where is this going? It's going towards. It's going towards its inevitable awful end, which is that there are going to be more military, more militarized personnel in American streets. And that can only lead to one thing. And so, you know, my question really is about what establishment Democrats plan to do when you're living at a time when it is not. We should not assume that we're going to have midterm elections. We should not assume that we're going to have presidential elections in 2028. Everything that you've been taught about sticking your head down, you know, being the adult in the room, just kind of powering through, ain't gonna be it, you know. So for those Democrats, you know, polls just came out. People hate the Democrats now more than they do Donald Trump, and they don't like him. He's at 38% with the Quinnipiac poll, and Democrats are at 21%. So, you know, something has. Has got to shift. We have 60 seconds. I'll give the last word to you.

[Jonathan Metzl]

Well, you know, if we had more time, I would. I would say that the only safe place is Dave, investors, as I always tell everybody. But. But I will say, I just always think back to that Cambridge Analytica movie that came out during Trump's first term, which was that the. The way you take over a country is not to win an election and bring people over to your side. That's what they used to think. It's that if you can get the critical mass of people to feel like the system is not working, to give up on the system, you can actually. That that's the fodder for autocracy, is that if people feel like this system sucks, it's. It's weighted against me. It's not working. The more people give up and don't engage, the more it creates the fodder for this kind of takeovers. And we've done that. I rewatched that movie again just because it's what we used to do, like in quote, unquote, third world countries. Turns out it worked really well here, right, that people all feel like the system's not working, and also the system isn't working, and I have questions about the voting machines and all that kind of stuff, but all these things. And so it's just when the system breaks down, this creates the fodder for the kind of takeover that we're worried about right now. And so it really is an existential question that we don't have an answer to right now, which is do we become institutionalist re Institutionalists or do we fight in the street? And I think, you know, I want to do what works right now. So we'll have to see what happens.

[Elliot Morris]

We'll see what happens. We will leave it there. Dr. Jonathan Metzl. And we will stay tuned. And everyone needs to stay alert and stay safe. We appreciate you, Jonathan.

[Jonathan Metzl]

Anytime.

[Elliot Morris]

Well, Andy, so as we open up this week, which was, is, you know, mind you, worse than last week, which is how we are just keeping track. It's like, what day is it? I don't know. It's worse than the last one. How are you kicking off this week with your fuck that guy?

[Andy Levy]

Well, my fuck that guy is going to be it's going to revolve around a wedding. And to be clear, I'm not anti wedding.

[Elliot Morris]

Hmm, Good to know.

[Andy Levy]

But there was a wedding this Saturday out in the Hamptons between Alex Soros, who is George Soros's son, and Huma Abedin, longtime Hillary Clinton aide. They got married out in, I think it's Watermill, New York. I have no problem with that. You know, go get married. Go get married in the Hamptons. Whatever. I want to read some of the guest list for this wedding. Hillary and Bill Clinton. Fine. Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi. Again, I want to point out this wedding took place on Saturday. That's the same day as the no Kings rallies, the no Kings protests that took place all across this country and even overseas in some other countries. And you had the Democratic, the current Democratic leadership at a wedding out in the Hamptons. And I cannot think of a better way to show how out of touch they are with the party faithful and the country in general. Again, I don't, you know, Hillary and Bill. Fine. They're not currently in office.

[Elliot Morris]

Right.

[Andy Levy]

Go celebrate a wedding. I don't care. Kamala Harris, I kind of wish she had been a little more involved in the protest, but also, she's not in office right now, so.

[Elliot Morris]

Correct.

[Andy Levy]

Go to the wedding. But Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi, Are you kidding me? You're at not just a wedding, but a wedding of a billionaire's son in the Hamptons on the same day that millions and millions of Americans who are not millionaire's sons or millionaires daughters were out in the streets. I saw this article in the New York Times about the wedding and like I said, my first, like my head exploded when I saw who was there. And so there are a lot of bad things going on that could easily have been my fucked up guy for today. But I really thought that this needed to be highlighted so that people really start getting the message that the current Democratic leadership needs to be the former Democratic leadership.

[Elliot Morris]

So fuck those guys, you know, and it's funny because you would think that maybe, you know, the only thing that they really do pay attention to are polls and focus groups. And the latest Quinnipiac poll shows that, oh, I don't know, Democrats are polling some where around 21%. They are polling in the toilet. Donald Trump is at 38% and Democrats are polling at 21%. So you think that the attendance at a billionaire's Hampton's wedding is like where you need to be when the people. When millions of people around this country and millions around the world are in the streets. That's all, that's all you need to know about Democrats. That's all you need to know about this party. Fuck those guys.

[Andy Levy]

Yeah. All right, Danielle, close us out. I actually kind of can't wait for this one. Who is your fuck that guy?

[Elliot Morris]

So he's new to the fuck that guy list and he is a freshman South Carolina state senator who took it upon himself to roll up in a custom $200,000 Kevlar coated six by six Hellfire Apocalypse modified Jeep gladiator equipped with bulletproof skin, custom leather interior and a 6.4 liter, 500 horsepower power V8 HEMI engine under the hood. I'm just going to go like this. For those of you who are just listening, go to the video when I go like this. He rolls up in this small dick vehicle to harass his constituents, exercising their right to assemble and protest at the no Kings rally, revving his engine, honking his horn and flipping them off. His name is Tom Fernandez and Tom Fernandez represents The Senate District 39 which includes parts of Berkeley, Dorchester and Orangeburg counties in South Carolina. And if you thought that this small dick vehicle being driven by this man couldn't get worse, folks, I shit you not that on the back of this horrendous small dicked car is a window decal that says, quote, my other ride has huge boobs. I'm certain that his parents, his constituents are so proud of him. This is who the Republican party is filled with and represented by Tom Fernandez. You piece of fucking garbage. You are my Fuck that guy.

[Andy Levy]

Yeah, I, I, I really have nothing to add to this except that the my other ride has huge boob sticker is just really is the icing on the cake here. According to Fitch News down in South Carolina, when he was asked about the decal and told that some people thought maybe it was in bad taste, he said, what, are they jealous? My wife has an F cup and theirs are flat. I'm sorry, you don't have as much fun as I do. This is a, this is a guy representing people in, in a state house. It's just. Fuck that guy. What is Daddication?

[Jonathan Metzl]

The thing that drives me every day as a dad is Dariana. We call him D D for short. Every day he's hungry for something, whether it's attention, affection, knowledge. And there's this huge responsibility in making sure that when he's no longer under my wing that he's a good person. I want him to be able to sit back one day and go, we work together. We did a good job.

[Andy Levy]

That's dedication. Find out [e-mail] brought to you by the U.S. department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council.

[Jack]

How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here.

[Jonathan Metzl]

Multi vehicle discount.

[Jack]

Safe driver discount, New vehicle discount, Storage discount Legacy.

[Elliot Morris]

How many discounts will you stack up?

[Heather]

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