It Could Happen Here Weekly 175

Summary

Episode Summary: "It Could Happen Here Weekly 175"

Behind the Bastards delves into the alarming actions of the Trump administration concerning immigration enforcement, highlighting a stark departure from established legal norms and drawing disturbing parallels to historical injustices. In Episode 175, released on March 29, 2025, hosts Harley Quinn Smith and Garrison Davis engage in a critical discussion with Kevin Smith about the administration's controversial use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants to El Salvador.

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1. The Alien Enemies Act and Trump's Deportation Strategy

Overview of the Alien Enemies Act (MM:03:40 – 04:11) The conversation begins with an exploration of the Alien Enemies Act, a legislative measure enacted 226 years ago, primarily intended for detaining nationals from countries the U.S. is at war with. Historically, its most notorious application was the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II—a "shameful" chapter in U.S. history.

Deportation to El Salvador (MM:04:11 – 08:35) The Trump administration has repurposed this outdated act to label approximately 300 migrants as members of terrorist organizations, specifically targeting the Venezuelan gang "Trenderague" and the Salvadoran gang "MS-13." These individuals are being deported not to their countries of origin but to El Salvador’s notorious SECOT (Terrorism Confinement Center), a facility infamously likened to a "torture camp." The conditions at SECOT are egregiously harsh:

• Overcrowded cells with more than 100 inmates per cell
• Minimal bedding and harsh living conditions
• Restricted communication with the outside world
• Forced head-shaving and uniformity in attire

Harley Quinn Smith emphasizes, “[...] this is completely inhumane. It’s horrific” (04:35).

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2. Legal Challenges and Judicial Response

Judge Boasberg’s Rulings (MM:22:41 – 24:33) Judge Boasberg, presiding over the case, has consistently blocked these deportations, arguing that due process is being flagrantly ignored. Despite his rulings, the administration persists, with officials like Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt dismissing the judge’s authority by declaring “no lawful basis for the ruling” (12:13). The Trump administration contends that verbal orders override judicial directives, a stance that undermines the checks and balances integral to U.S. governance.

Administration’s Defiance (MM:22:41 – 25:17) Trump’s vehement response includes attacking Judge Boasberg’s credibility, labeling him a “radical left lunatic” and calling for his impeachment. The administration’s disregard for judicial authority signals a potential constitutional crisis, with the executive branch overstepping its bounds and encroaching upon the judiciary’s role.

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3. Conditions in SECOT and Human Rights Concerns

Inhumane Detention Practices (MM:09:05 – 11:03) Harley Quinn Smith provides a harrowing account of SECOT’s conditions, comparing it to historical internment camps. The facility operates under El Salvador’s President Bukele, promoting an "iron fist" approach against gangs. Smith describes SECOT as a "super prison," highlighting:

• Overcrowded and unsanitary living conditions
• Constant surveillance with lights on all day
• Limited access to basic necessities and human contact

Kevin Smith echoes these sentiments, asserting, “[...] it just sounds like a torture camp” (10:21).

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4. Administration’s Justifications and Propaganda

State Media Manipulation (MM:11:32 – 14:01) President Bukele of El Salvador defends the deportations by portraying them as a collaboration with the U.S. to combat organized crime. He claims that the U.S. benefits economically by funding SECOT, while El Salvador aims to become self-sustainable through its “Zero Idleness Program,” which includes forced labor and minimal rehabilitation efforts. The administration uses media tours to legitimize these practices, presenting them as necessary measures for national security and public safety.

Notable Quotes:

• Bukele: “Today, the first 238 members of the Venezuelan criminal organization Trender Agua arrived in our country...” (12:13)
• Kevin Smith: “It just sounds like a torture camp” (10:21)

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5. Parallels to Historical Injustices and Potential Constitutional Crisis

Comparison to WWII Internment (MM:05:00 – 07:05) The use of the Alien Enemies Act today mirrors the internment of Japanese Americans, raising alarms about the erosion of civil liberties. Historical reflection by Smith underscores the gravity of this repetition, noting, “it’s a pretty shameful part of United States history and it’s great that we’re going back there” (06:50, likely sarcastic in context).

Potential Constitutional Crisis (MM:24:33 – 26:02) The administration’s blatant defiance of judicial orders hints at an impending constitutional crisis. The continued deportations without compliance to court rulings demonstrate a systemic breakdown of the separation of powers, where the executive branch unilaterally overrides the judiciary.

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6. Call to Action: Building Community Resilience

Strategies for Resistance (MM:25:17 – 32:05) Harley Quinn Smith and Garrison Davis advocate for proactive community engagement to counteract authoritarian measures. Key strategies include:

• Relationship Building: Foster strong ties within communities to monitor and support vulnerable individuals.
• Community Defenses: Organize local networks to provide assistance during deportation efforts, ensuring that individuals have resources and support.
• Awareness and Advocacy: Educate the public about the inhumane practices and legal violations, pushing back against misinformation propagated by the administration.

Notable Advice:

• Smith: “All of the people have stories of watching people be shot. The brutal repression of protests, state violence, economic collapse...” (07:05)
• Davis: “You need to set aside the savior mentality and start meeting folks where they're at” (25:17)

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7. Conclusion

The episode paints a grim picture of escalating authoritarianism within the U.S. immigration system, drawing direct lines between historical injustices and contemporary policies under the Trump administration. By exploiting obscure legal provisions like the Alien Enemies Act, the administration not only undermines civil liberties but also perpetuates inhumane treatment of migrants, reminiscent of past atrocities. The hosts emphasize the urgent need for community solidarity and vigilant resistance to safeguard democratic principles and human rights.

Final Remarks:

• “This is what it looks like. I don't know if people expect like fireworks to go off or like some confetti to drop and it to be like, separation of powers is gone...” (24:33)
• “It is a constitutional crisis. Like, this is what it looks like.” (24:59)

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Key Takeaways:

• The Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants to El Salvador’s SECOT prison is a severe breach of due process and human rights.
• Legal challenges are mounting, but the administration’s defiance of judicial rulings signals a potential collapse of the U.S. constitutional framework.
• Community resilience and proactive engagement are essential in countering these authoritarian measures and protecting vulnerable populations.

Listeners are urged to stay informed, build strong community networks, and advocate against the erosion of civil liberties to prevent such dystopian scenarios from materializing.

Transcript

[Kevin Smith]

Hey, kids, it's me, Kevin Smith. And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith. That's my daughter, man. Who my wife has always said is just a beardless D? Ckless version of me.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And that's the name of our podcast.

[Kevin Smith]

Beardless D Me. I'm the old one, I'm the young one.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And every week we try to make.

[Kevin Smith]

Each other laugh really hard.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Sounds innocent, doesn't it?

[Kevin Smith]

A lot of cussing, a lot of bad language.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

It's for adults only.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Or listen to it with your kid.

[Kevin Smith]

Could be a family show. We're not quite sure. We're still figuring it out. It's a work in progress.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Listen to Beardless me on the iHeartRadio.

[Kevin Smith]

App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here? Ow. Go slower. From Blumhouse TV, I Heart podcasts and Ember 20 comes an all new fictional comedy podcast series. Join the flighty Damien Hirst as he unravels the mystery of his vanished boyfriend. I've been spending all my time looking for answers about what happened to Santi and what's the way to find a missing person? Sleep with everyone he knew, obviously. Listen to the hookup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or. Or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This is John Cameron Mitchell and my.

[Robert Evans]

New fiction podcast series, Cancellation island stars Holly Hunter as Karen, a wellness influencer who launches a rehab for the recently canceled. In the future, we will all be canceled for 15 minutes, but don't worry, we'll take you from broke to woke or your money back. Cancellation Island's revolutionary rehab therapies like bad touch football, anti racism, spin class, and mandatory ayahuasca ceremonies are designed to force the council to confront their worst impulses. But everything starts to fall apart when people start disappearing.

[Kevin Smith]

Karen, where have you brought us Cancellation.

[Robert Evans]

Island, where a second chance might just be your last. Listen to Cancellation island on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, host of the podcast the Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told. This season explores women from the 19th century to now. Women who were murderers and scammers, but also women who were photojournalists, lawyers, writers, and more. This podcast tells more than just the brutal, gory details of horrific acts. I delve into the good, the bad, the difficult, and all the nuance I can find because these are the stories that we need to know to understand the intersection of society, justice, and the fascinating workings of the human psyche. Join me every week as I tell some of the most enthralling true crime stories about women who are not just victims, but heroes or villains or often somewhere in between. Listen to the greatest true crime stories ever told on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Garrison Davis]

Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Hello and welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about the world falling apart. And was mostly just about that at the minute, but we do sometimes talk about how to put it back together as well. Joining me today is Garrison Davis. Hi, Garrison.

[Kevin Smith]

Hello. Hi.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And we're on the falling apart theme. Seems like we've been on that one quite a lot the last few weeks. But today we are specifically talking about the what I'm going to call the rendition of non US Nationals by the Trump administration over the last week. The reason I'm calling it, I guess, rendition and not deportation is because these people aren't being sent back to the countries they're from. They're being sent to El Salvador. Specifically, they're being sent to a place called Secot.

[Kevin Smith]

So.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

So the Trump administration has attempted to send 300 people who it accuses of being members of a foreign terrorist organization. We're going to get to how they get there under the Alien Enemies act to a prison in El Salvador where they will be detained for a year at the expense of the United States. And we're going to break down exactly how we got there over the course of this episode. So the Trump administration has accused these people of being members of two different gangs. The majority of them, there's 238 people, are accused of being members of Trenderague. Trender is a Venezuelan gang that the Trump administration recently declared a foreign terrorist organization. Another 23 it's accusing of being members of Ms. 13, which is a Salvadorian gang. The Trump administration used something called the Alien Enemies act to remove these people. The Alien Enemies act, we actually spoke about it in November of last year when we were looking at provisions of U.S. law that the Trump administration could use for its mass deportation agenda. This is one we spoke about. The Trump administration in the past has been quite good at finding obscure provisions of the United States law to exclude migrants. You can hear my whole series about Title 42 on that. That's kind of the paramount example. Right. The Alien Enemies act is a 226 year old piece of legislation. The last time it was used was to inter Japanese people during the Second World War. Right. So that's a pretty shameful part of United States history and it's great that we're going back there. So who are the enemies in this case? Right. It's generally like, I should probably point out, the Alien Enemies act is intended for like the people you're at war with. Right. So if the United States is at war with, let's say Canada and there are Canadian citizens in the United States or people who have dual citizenship with Canada, and those people are individuals within that group are suspected to be spies or suspected to be like serving the interests of Canada, not the United States, then they could be excluded or detained under the Alien Enemies act or sent out of the country, as is the case here. And as we saw in this instance, there is very little recourse to appeal. Right. This isn't like a deportation hearing or an asylum hearing where you have a lawyer representing you where you have even a hearing. Right. These people were rounded up and booted out the country in very short order.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah. And like with or without due process, like we should not be black begging people and sending them to the like El Salvador labor prison. Right. Like this is like just doing this at all, even with due process would already be horrifying.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

The fact that they're just doing it like without even any like court process entirely and like trying to like bypass that just adds like another level to an already like horrifying and, you know, evil and shameful action.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, it's terrible. I want to define some of the categories here. I want to start with trend. Aragua Spanish understanders will will notice the word tren meaning train. That's because they came out of construction unions who were building trains as part of a Venezuelan infrastructure project. In Aragua, which is part of Venezuela, there are other Venezuelan gangs. Trent de Leano is the other one that springs to mind, which also come from the same place and thus have similar names. But just people should understand that they're different organizations. They also have a strong presence in Venezuelan prisons. They have in the past been accused of doing violence on behalf of the Venezuelan state. But in 2024, Maduro blamed them for the protests after election. People remember that that election was widely seen as fraudulent and I covered that in my series on the Darien Gap. If people want to learn more about Venezuelan politics or migration to the United States. In 2024, Biden named Trent a transnational criminal organization and then Trump named them a foreign terrorist organization. He labeled several cartels as FTOs as well. @ the time, there's a lot of speculation about why was it to. To allow for like drone strikes or covert operations. I think we're now seeing that this was part of this, this larger ploy of deportation.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah. Because like, quote, unquote, terrorists have even less quote, unquote rights than quote, unquote criminals.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yes.

[Kevin Smith]

Right. Like it's, it's like. Yeah, in like the, in like the triangle of like, which. Which deplorable class has the least amount of rights? Terrorists are always like the ones with the least.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. And we've been doing that for 20 odd years now with Guantanamo Bay and renditions to Egypt and Syria and other places. In this case, people are being sent to secot, which is this prison in El Salvador. It's sometimes referred.

[Kevin Smith]

Can you spell that?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. C E, C O, T. Centro Sekot. Yeah. Secot, I guess it stands for Terrorism confinement, Terrorism Detention Center. It is largely referred to as a super prison. Right. It was built in El Salvador by Bukele as part of his like iron fist would be the way you translate it. Iron fist policy against gangs and against crime. And it has been widely condemned for human rights abuses. People are crammed into cells with more than 100 people, but there are fewer bunks than there are prisoners. Right. So they can't even all lie down at the same time. The bunks don't have bedding, they're just flat metal sheets. They're four high, so you have to climb over other people to sleep. For more than 100 prisoners, there are two open toilets. That's the only access to a bathroom that you have. They might be allowed out for half an hour each day. They're not allowed to communicate with their families or the outside world. They're forced to shave their heads and they all wear white. The lights are left on all day. As I said that they're provided by. With no bedding, no contact with the outside world, very little access to anything other than standing in that cell. There's two Bibles in each cell as the only sort of entertainment they're allowed.

[Kevin Smith]

It just sounds like a torture camp. Like.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, this is completely inhumane. Right. It's horrific. And for a couple of years now, Bukele has been doing like these media Tours of Sekkot like, like using it to generate content. It's very much designed to generate this image of like this is what will happen to quote unquote, what will happen to you if you're quote unquote in a gang. It's sort of been used to promote his image of someone who's taking an iron fist to gangs. And as we saw when these people were sent to El Salvador, this tendency to use, I don't know what you would call it, incarceration as a way of making content was, was very much the case here. Right?

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

When a break for ads, when we come back we will be consuming content that is people being stripped of their human rights. And we are back. Garrison, do you want to go ahead and play this? So the, the tweet in question, the Z in question, it's by Naib Bukele, the President of El Salvador, Right? Should I read out?

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah, I think you should. I think it's worth noting that like this style of propaganda closely mirrors a lot of what like DHS and the Trump administration is doing on their official accounts. A lot of, A lot of the like memeified content creation format like aesthetics being used to just display like torture and deportations and human rights abuses is very common among government accounts in the States right now. It's pretty, pretty horrifying to look at and this, this kind of follows suit and is possibly even more bleak. Yeah, but yeah, we should read, read this whole, this whole message and then, and then we'll price. Skip around on the video and talk about what we're seeing.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, so I'll just read it. Obviously you don't understand it. I'm quoting here directly from him. Today, the first 238 members of the Venezuelan criminal organization Trender Agua arrived in our country. They were immediately transferred to secot, the terrorism confinement center for a period of one year parentheses renewable. The United States will pay a very low fee for them, but a high one for us. Over time, these actions combined with the production already being generated by more than 40,000 inmates engaged in various workshops and labor under the Zero Idleness Program, will help make our prison system self sustainable. As of Today, it costs 200 million per year. On this occasion, the US has sent us 23 Ms. 13 members wanted by Salvadorian justice, including two ringleaders. One of them is a member of the criminal organization's highest structure. This will help us finalise intelligence gathering and go after the last remnants of MS.13, including its former and new members. Money, weapons, drugs, hideouts, collaborators and sponsors. As always, we continue advancing in the fight against organised crime. But this time we are also helping our allies, making our prison system self sustainable and obtaining vital intelligence to make our country an even safer place, all in a single action. May God bless El Salvador and may God bless the United States. I should probably just add that the US sent $3 million to pay for these $6 million. I'm sorry, to pay for the 300 prisoners it intended to send.

[Kevin Smith]

The Zero Idleness program is like one of the most sinister things I've read recently.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. I mean, you could pull it out of a George Orwell or like Aldous Huxley or something, Right. And it wouldn't sound out of place.

[Kevin Smith]

I mean, it's even like, you know, it's almost cliche now to point to like German work camps, but like, come on.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, I mean, come on. Yeah, yeah, we're doing it again, so.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah, we'll probably play a clip of the music and then I'm going to skip around on the video. We can just talk about what we're seeing here. At first we have a shot of an airport with three different planes and people getting rounded up and pushed on in single file. It has like this like action movie type music, lines of soldiers. So as, as the people getting loaded on the plane, they're getting like forced, forced down. There's like people with like guns, police, military, like manhandling people, pushing their heads down, physically removing clothing.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, they're showing their tattoos there. Right? That's what they're pulling up. His shirt. Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

But like, even the way that they just like walk around with these people, like, like, like forcing their heads, almost like they're concrete as they make them shuffle along the ground. Just like basic dehumanization.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

It shows them getting transported onto buses.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

So this said, they're arriving at SECOT now. Sort of bright white, very sterile facility. Now they're being forced onto their knees. Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

And shaved, getting their beards, shaved, heads shaved, getting shackled, all while being forced onto their knees on the ground.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Then the cops doing this are all wearing, I guess, balaclavas. I would describe them as face masks and hats.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah, all of, all of the military and police officials are trying to hide their identity as they, you know, publicly display the actions that they're doing. As when they're, you know, shaving and holding people's heads up for the camera.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

So it, it's, it's a lot of that kind of stuff. You see, you see them like pushing, pushing people all in matching white clothes in single file into cells.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, this is the cell so we spoke about before. We'll include this link in the. In the sources.

[Kevin Smith]

It's basically just three minutes of torture porn. Like, that's. Like that's what. That's what they're doing.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, it's pretty bleak, honestly.

[Kevin Smith]

Like, I don't know what else to say about it besides, like, it's. It's just. It's just like channeling pure evil. Like, I. Like it's. It's. There's nothing else to say.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. I mean, I don't know how anyone can watch that and think, good. So we should talk about how they're identifying these people, and we should talk about the process by which they were sent there. EYES policy says a person can be deemed a gang member if the officer notes two, quote, gang membership identification criteria. One of the criteria that they seem to be using in this instance is their tattoos. So there are some gangs that have a process of tattooing to enter the gang. Right. Ms. 13, Mara Salva, Strucha. It's what the Ms. Stands for, being one of them. These, like Mara Central American gangs have tended to use that in the past. This isn't really something that happens with trend, as far as I'm aware of. Some people, they've pointed to tattoos of trains. In a document that Gaya found from the Texas department of public Safety, they're pointing to stars as evidence that people were part of Trenderagua. As far as I'm aware, Trenderague does not have a policy of tattooing people specifically because this is a thing that has been used by law enforcement to identify members. Right. Like, it would be silly to keep doing that once it's become so clear that the state uses that. So the one sort of case that I've seen legal documents on, of these people, the one name we have, one of these people who's been sent, is a man named Herciraes Barrios. He was a footballer, professional footballer in Venezuela who protested against the Maduro regime, was tortured and detained as a result. I've spoken to probably, I would imagine, thousands of Venezuelan migrants. Right. Again, I would like you to listen to my series on the Dalian Gap. If you haven't, I put a lot into it. All of these people have stories of watching people be shot. The brutal repression of protests, state violence, economic collapse, persecution for supporting the opposition in the country. Right. And this is one of those stories. The criteria that they used to identify him were a tattoo which had a football with a Crown over the top and then the word Dios God in English underneath. Reyes Barrios lawyer says that this is an homage to the logo of Real Madrid, his favorite football club. They have claimed that it's evidence of gang membership. That's what the government is claiming here. The other criteria that they used is a picture of him throwing up the horns, I guess, which I believe it means I love you in sign language. I'm not sure if that's like a urban legend or if that's the case. And there are obviously different sign languages. But this is a hand gesture that's especially common in the Spanish speaking world. If you're not familiar, I have my little finger and my index finger extended and my two other fingers curled up as if I was making a fist.

[Kevin Smith]

Almost like a. Almost like a spider man hand symbol, I guess.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Sure, I'm not familiar, but if you.

[Kevin Smith]

Say so to visually reference for people.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

If you were making a little cow like a bull with your hands, that's what you would be doing. Shadow puppeting. It's very common.

[Kevin Smith]

Like, yes, it's a very typical hand symbol.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

It's the thing that people do when they're taking photos. Like I've even seen it. Like when, you know, if there's. If I'm working with a photographer and they're snapping photos of large groups of people, people just do it. Just like people do the peace sign. It's a thing to do with your hands. Those are two criteria they used. So I should point out that none of these people have been accused or convicted of a crime either in the United States or in El Salvador. Right. Even if they had been accused of a crime, even convicted of a crime in the United States, it's very unclear what legal basis there would be to then detain them in El Salvador. Right. Like the United States doesn't have a system whereby we can send people to penal colonies. At the time of writing, this has of course been challenged in court. Right. A district court judge attempted to block. The district court judge did block these removals. Now he actually blocked them before the people had arrived in El Salvador. However, despite this, the planes didn't turn around. And I'm just going to quote directly from what the judge said here, quote, any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States. Then it's a little. Another quote later. This is something you need to make sure is complied with immediately. This didn't happen. Right. The planes went from the US To Honduras, Honduras to El Salvador, they didn't stop even when the judge had given this order for them to stop. Now, normally, in illegal proceedings such as this, the government or one of the parties may not agree with the findings of the judge and they may choose to appeal it. Right. That's very normal. You still comply with the order, then appeal it. Right. You don't just keep doing whatever you feel like doing because you don't think the judge was right. Like, that's in theory, not how this works. Now, in practice, what means does a judge have to force the executive to listen to him? I don't know. We're not seeing any of them on display at the minute. The government has cited various reasons for ignoring the ruling. One of them, Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt, claimed that there was, quote, no lawful basis for the ruling. Go back to my previous statement about how you're supposed to appeal things. They also claimed in court that a verbal order is not the same as a written one. That's not something that's generally understood to be the case. And that because the flights were over international water, the order did not apply. This was then part of the foreign policy powers reserved to the President. That last one is particularly worrying. You effectively don't have your rights in international waters. Rather, humans don't have rights in international waters.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah. It's just allowing the US Government, or the US Government trying to say that it's allowed to do whatever it wants if the actions being taken are not immediately on US soil or other foreign soil.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. So we're going to take another break, and when we come back, we will talk about their response to this judge's ruling.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

All right.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And we are back. So Trump's response to this, Judge Boasberg's ruling was. I'm just going to read. This is a. A true social post, AKA a truth quote. This radical left lunatic of a judge, a troublemaker and agitator, who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein ob, was not elected president. M Dash. I'm not going to say when it's capitalized. Just understand that it's sporadically capitalized in the fashion that Trump likes to do. He didn't win the popular vote. Parentheses by a lot, exclamation mark, comma, he didn't win all seven swing states. He didn't win 2,750 to 525 counties. He didn't win anything. I won for many reasons in an overwhelming mandate, but fighting illegal immigration may have been the number one reason for this historic victory. I'm just doing what the Voters wanted me to do this judge, like many of the crooked judges I'm forced to appear before, should be impeached. We don't want vicious, violent, and demented criminals, many of them deranged murderers, in our country. Make America great again. Tom Homan, the border czar, also told Fox News, quote, I don't care what the judges think.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

We made a promise to the American people. The President Trump has made a promise.

[Garrison Davis]

To the American people.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

We're going to make this country safe again.

[Garrison Davis]

I wake up every morning loving my.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Job because I worked for the greatest.

[Garrison Davis]

President in the history of my life. And we're going to make this country safe again. I'm proud to be a part of this administration.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

We're not stopping. I don't care what the judges think.

[Kevin Smith]

I don't care what the left thinks. We're coming, Jim. I just love seeing you going through these. Protesters just crunching on the apple as their liberal tears just flood the hallway. Tom Holman, thanks so much for joining the program. You got it. Thank you.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

This is open defiance of the courts, right? Like, I don't really know.

[Kevin Smith]

It's what we've been talking about the past month on Executive Disorder, how we are just continually ramping up this clash between the executive branch and the judicial branch. The congressional branch has already basically given up all of their power. And, yeah, this is like an actual constitutional crisis. Very few people are taking this as seriously as what it should be. And even the courts seem a little bit tepid to actually enforce their own power or try to.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. I mean, Boasberg mentioned contempt once, from what I can find on pacer. But, like, obviously these judges, I think, are somewhat concerned that if they, you know, they find the government in contempt for court, then what happens? Because if you, like. Yeah, if you play your trump card and no one cares and you have no cards left to play.

[Kevin Smith]

It's. It's kind of odd how the judges themselves are seemingly afraid of, like, pushing this constitutional crisis into, like, explicit territory. Right. To be like, what if we do the thing that then makes it clear to everyone else, like, what's happening? We have no power. Like, like, we actually have, like. Like, it is just authoritarianism via the executive branch.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

It's almost like they're trying to, like, backpedal from this, like, very obvious accelerationist push of like. No, we need to actually test. Test this out.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. Because we need to know where we're at.

[Kevin Smith]

Like, and they're scared to. Because they're scared. What if. What if that testing causes like the Trump side to win.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, but they're already winning in the, in the absence of the testing.

[Kevin Smith]

Exactly. And the problem is, is that in absence of that, you are just giving up and letting Trump win. Yeah. Like after Trump called to impeach the quote, unquote, radical leftist lunatic of a judge who tried to temporarily halt the, the deportation of, of these 300 Venezuelan immigrants, Chief Justice John Roberts made a, a rare public statement rebuking calls to impeach judges for rulings that don't align with political agendas. And that's as far as they're going right now. They're, they're making rare public statements saying you probably shouldn't call to impeach a judge. Meanwhile, Musk complains on Twitter.com about a quote, unquote judicial couple and it mistakenly calls for 60 senators to impeach leftist judges. Now of course, the Senate does not do impeachments, the House does. And The Senate requires 67 votes to convict and remove someone from office once impeached. So. Haha. We got you. We got you, Elon, you made a mistake. Notes co theft thing.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, it's where we're at right now with this case. We're recording this on Thursday. Boisberg gave them a 24 hour extension to provide details about the flights. The government has suggested that it might claim that these are state secrets, despite the fact that it has widely publicized its flights, including in the video that we discussed.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah, they're turning these into fucking like TikTok Instagram real hype videos. They're not state secret. You're publicly displaying these to show that these people are not human.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

Like you're trying to scare everyone into saying, we decide if you are a person or not. If you're not a person, this is what we can do to you.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yes. We can do whatever we want to you. Yeah. It should be noted as well, there is actually a process in US Law through the Alien Terrorist Removal Court for the expedited removal of terrorist suspects without revealing classified information publicly. In fact, Boasberg was chief judge on that court for five years.

[Kevin Smith]

Jesus Christ.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

But we are not using that process. Right. We're using the Alien Enemies act instead. So yeah, this is a new exciting territory in on Monday. So that's the day that you're hearing this. A panel of judges from the District Court in D.C. will hear an appeal by the United States government against Boasberg's tentative restraining order, the one that it didn't obey anyway. So we will have more on this and we'll keep updating you on this. And suffice it to say that I guess again, this is a constitutional crisis. Like, this is what it looks like. I don't know if people expect like fireworks to go off or like some confetti to drop and it to be like, separation of powers is gone. But if the government can ignore the courts and that is what is happening. So I guess we will see. In the meantime, these people, many of whom, one of them was a musician, one of them was a football player, right? Like, I've interviewed hundreds if not thousands of Venezuelan migrants and most of them, it will shock you to hear are just people who don't want to live with the boot of the state on their neck. People who want to make a decent living for their families. For what it's worth, none of the Venezuelan migrants I met in the Darien Gap are in the United States or have come to the United States, to my knowledge. Just for people who are wondering how those stories kind of resolve, they resolve with people currently stuck in Mexico in pretty terrible conditions, either working for very little or unable to work at all and trying to work out what to do. It's pretty bleak for them. It's pretty bleak for us too. If this is the direction that things are going, I don't know if I have much more to say.

[Kevin Smith]

No, I don't know what else there is to say about dev. Just bypassing the courts to do a complete authoritarian over grab so that they can send hundreds of people to essentially like a labor camp black site in a different country for an unknown period of time without any legal process. Like it's.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And to be clear, not all of these people even entered the United States. Between ports of entry, which has been charged as a misdemeanor, generally isn't charged. Some of them came with CBP1, the fucking app, the thing you're supposed to do.

[Kevin Smith]

These are not proven criminals like these. These, these are just people, some of whom who immigrated legally and have been detained by ice, I don't know, shipped off to a, like torture labor prison in a different country where they're going to stay for at least a year in parenthesis, renewable. So like indefinitely. Like, it's like they can be forced.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

To labor for the rest of their lives. A thing that has happened before in human history.

[Kevin Smith]

No, like, if you're like history understanders should look at what's happening, be like, oh, we're doing that again, huh? And the only way that this ends is with people getting angry enough to start doing something about it. And I feel like we are. We're so, like, everyone's become so complacent that it's even hard to get people to like, care or like, hear about this sort of thing from happening.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. And you don't have to be like, I want to phrase this in radical terms, like you don't have to be like anywhere on the left to understand that, like, this is an assault on basic human rights. It's assault on the foundational principles of the United States government. And everyone should be concerned about this. It shouldn't be a left right issue. This should be like a right wrong issue. And so hopefully you can all have some talks with your family this week. I don't know. Like, I think it's really important to push back on the idea that these people have done any crimes because they have. Not that they have been convicted or found using any reasonable degree of evidence to be members of gangs like Trent Aragua.

[Kevin Smith]

And even if they have been convicted, they should not be sent to the El Salvador torture labor camp. But the fact that they're not even convicted, these are just random in some cases, like random Venezuelan men who have been rounded up for the crime of.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Having tattoos for the most part.

[Kevin Smith]

Fucking horrifying.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

It's petrifying.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah, it's happening.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

It is happening here.

[Kevin Smith]

Every day we're getting closer to the cool zone as more and more people start taking this situation seriously.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. So, yeah, take it seriously, you know, advocate for these people. Best of luck. And if you want to email us, you can do at coolzonetipson Me. That's an encrypted email address, but it's only encrypted end to end. If you also send from an encrypted email address. Do your due diligence and yeah, send us, send us tips if you have tips. Ideas, if you have ideas. And we will be back tomorrow with more things that are happening here.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

You. Is this a good time? It's me, Dylan Mulvaney, and my dear friend Joe Locke from Heartstopper.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

And Agatha all along is my very.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

First guest on my brand new podcast, the Dylan Hour. It's musical mayhem and it is going to be so much fun.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

I like a man.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

You like a man. What do I like?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Joe, you like a man too.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

We often.

[Kevin Smith]

There's quite similar.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

There's some cross pollination happening in here.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Not like.

[Robert Evans]

No.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Have we. No, no, not yet.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

Never say never. I cannot wait for all you girls.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Gays and they to join me on this extremely special pink confection. Of a podcast.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

There is so much darkness in this world. And what I think we could all.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Use more of is a little joy. Listen to the Dylan hour on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

Listen to your podcasts. Love ya.

[Kevin Smith]

Hey, kids, it's me, Kevin Smith. And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith. That's my daughter, man. Who my wife has always said is just a beardless D? Ckless version of me.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And that's the name of our podcast.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Beardless D?

[Kevin Smith]

Ckless Me. I'm the old one, I'm the young one.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And every week we try to make.

[Kevin Smith]

Each other laugh really hard.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Sounds innocent, doesn't it?

[Kevin Smith]

Lot of cussing, a lot of bad language.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

It's for adults only.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Or listen to it with your kid. Could be a family show.

[Kevin Smith]

We're not quite sure. We're still figuring it out. It's a work in progress. Listen to Beardless me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here? Ow. Go slower. From Blumhouse TV, iHeart podcasts and Ember 20 comes an all new fictional comedy podcast series. Join the flighty Damien Hirst as he unravels the mystery of his vanished boyfriend. And Santi was gone. I've been spending all my time looking for answers about what happened to Santi and what's the way to find a missing person. Sleep with everyone he knew, obviously.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Mmm.

[Kevin Smith]

Pillow talk, the most unwelcome window into the human psyche. Follow our out of his element hero as he engages in a series of ill conceived investigative hookups. Mama always used to say, God gave me God gumption in place of a gag reflex. And as I was about to learn, no amount of showering can wash your hands of a bad hookup.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Now take a big whiff, my bruh.

[Kevin Smith]

Listen to the hookup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This is John Cameron Mitchell and my.

[Robert Evans]

New fiction podcast series, Cancellation island stars Holly Hunter as Karen, a wellness influencer who launches a rehab for the recently cancelled. In the future, we will all be canceled for 15 minutes. But don't worry, we'll take you from broke to woke or your money back. Cancellation Island's revolutionary rehab therapies, like bad touch football, anti racism spin class, and mandatory ayahuasca ceremonies are designed to force the council to confront their worst impulses. But everything starts to fall apart when people start disappearing.

[Kevin Smith]

Karen, where have you brought US Cancellation.

[Robert Evans]

Island, where a second chance might just be your last. Listen to Cancellation island on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Welcome to It Could Happen Here. A podcast about bad things. Usually, I don't know, this is mostly a bad things episode. I am your host, Mia Wong. And one of the kind of things we've emphasized on the show a lot is that a lot of the structure of the kind of open fascism that we're seeing now is stuff that was put in place under liberal administrations and it's practices that are carried out by Democrats and one of the biggest ones of those. And this is something that I think you can trace the violence here and you can trace the politics that inspired directly to how we got to Trump being in power is the just continuous crisis in the US of governments doing sweeps of encampments of unhoused people. And to talk about, really one of the most horrifying things that happens regularly in a country of just unhinged and hideous horror is Emma, who does advocacy work for unhoused and disabled people in Alameda county, and Satya, who does support drink sweeps in Oakland when, yeah, this fucking unhinged shit happens. So both of you two, welcome to the show.

[Kevin Smith]

Hi.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

Thanks for having us.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, thank you.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

Appreciate the chance to talk with you.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yeah. I always want to say that I'm excited and like, it is true. However, I wish I ran a podcast that was about like, good things so that when I could talk to people, it wasn't like. Wasn't me being like, yeah, I'm excited to talk about like the worst thing that's happened. So I think a place to start on this is when we talk about what a sweep actually is on a physical level of what happens, because I think people really don't have a sense of that.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

Yeah. I think Satya, maybe you want to take this one?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I'm happy to take this one. Yeah. Thank you. I feel like, first of all, before I even go into it, yes. I think a lot of people who have never experienced a sweep or don't have loved ones who have been been swept, I think a lot of people have no idea what a sweep actually consists of, even if in a general sense, they feel that it's a bad thing or a wrong thing. And I think part of that is deliberate sweeps usually happen during business hours, during nine to five hours, because at least in Oakland, they're conducted by the Department of Public Works. They're city employees. They work nine to five. So except in cases where they work overtime or when the city uses loopholes to get around posting notice and ends up doing a sweep on the weekend, they're usually happening when a lot of middle class housed folks are at work and not, you know, out and about seeing what's going on. So a sweep. And I'm primarily talking in the context of Oakland, California, but I think it's safe to assume that these operate in similar ways around the country. Generally, what'll happen is you, let's say you're living in an encampment, a sweep has been posted in Oakland. There is policy that states that you're supposed to have received at least a week notice. However, a lot of people don't receive this notice. So you might not even know that it's happening. You might wake up at around 9am to a bunch of heavy machinery pulling up, dump truck, small bulldozers, other types of sort of like heavy equipment. And then you'll have somebody from the city administration, like a city administrator's assistant going around announcing that the city of Oakland is there, you know, making noise at your tent or your car or wherever you're staying, saying, hey, this encampment is being closed down. You have to be out of here. They're usually our representatives of the city's contracted outreach organization called Operation Dignity. They're supposed to be there. Very rarely do they actually have a referral for somewhere to go. They'll basically just be like, hey, do you want services? They won't usually specify what the services are. They'll just show up and be like, hey, do you want services? If you say yes or have questions about what services are available, they may give you a sort of very vague rundown of whatever might be available that day. Because they don't usually even find out what openings are available until 10am on any given day. So at the time that they roll up, they usually don't even know what's available yet. So it kind of progresses from there. I mean, every sweep is a little different, but the commonality between all of them is that what the city is there to do is essentially to erase all sign that anybody ever lived. So either you are able to pack as much stuff as you can and get it out of the eviction zone before the city decides that it's your turn to be targeted, or all of your stuff ends up in the back of a dump truck. There are other sort of specific pieces of policy and operational things that can vary from time to time. Like, for example, they're supposed to follow a Bag and tag policy, which means that they're expected to store up to a cubic yard of somebody's belongings for 90 days at a storage location in East Oakland. They rarely do this unless hounded to do so. And most of the time, the actual process of going back and reclaiming your belongings from that location has enough barriers that almost nobody ever manages to do it.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yeah. So to just make this clear, the thing that they're doing is they show up and then they fucking destroy all your property.

[Robert Evans]

Yep.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Like, the thing that it most closely resembles is like, we're doing our own miniature ethnic cleansings. Like, that's just like, what that is.

[Robert Evans]

Yep.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

Yeah. And every sweep, there are at least several police. You know, depending on the size of the suite, they can be even more. And so there is a very real threat of police violence, like, underlying every single encampment suite. And so the sweep that Oakland this week, practices that Oakland has set up are, like, very kind of odd. And they are associated with different, like, lawsuits that have occurred in the past couple of. Actually since the 70s. But. So there are certain requirements that the city of Oakland is obligated to follow and, like, certain provisions and offers that like. Like homeless people are technically supposed to be receiving and for a bunch of complicated reasons, like, rarely ever are. So, for instance, like, the bag and tag policy that Satya was just discussing, like, they've recently somebody did a PRA request to see whether or not to sit. He was actually following, faithfully following that policy. And I think in like, over a year, there were, I believe, eight bagging pads that were registered in the city system. And that was in that same period, there were, like, well over a hundred sweeps. You know, Jesus, don't have the exact number on me, but. Or, yeah, actually, 537 closure, two instances of storing property. So, you know, that's people's. Their whole lives. All their possessions, like. Like precious items that they. They're able to hang on to are just. Yeah. Destroyed and they never see them again.

[Robert Evans]

And I would also add to the piece around, like, the quote, like, offer of services. Like, that's also something written into their policy that they're supposed to be connecting people to housing ahead of sw. And that's what they use to continually justify the way that they operate is that in, for example, city council meetings and homelessness commission meetings, where city admin is questioned on their procedures because they get complaints, like, the homeless commission gets complaints constantly of people being mistreated, losing all their belongings, never getting referred to housing and so forth. And the justification that's constantly used is like, well, we're offering people services every time and they just refuse them. And I think that that is pretty much the number one mythology that continuing to spur a lot of the, like, pro sweep discourse in Oakland specifically, and I'm sure in other parts of the country as well. And people are not, like, to be clear, most of the time people are not actually being offered services. It's just not happening.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yeah, yeah. This is a national discourse. You hear this all the time. You know, I think a lot of it kind of is concentrated in the most unhinged, like, tech sectors in the bay. But like, you heard like, for sure, like Elon Musk has talked about, like, oh, there's like, there's like a homeless industrial complex. And like, all of these people are just like, they want to live on the street and like, they're like, turning down houses all the time. And it's just like, it's so. It's so completely unmoored from reality.

[Robert Evans]

But what's funny is I've actually used the term homeless industrial complex myself. I didn't know that was. There is one that's hilarious. There is a homeless industrial complex. It's just that the people making money off of it are the people who are perpetrating the sweeps. Reason that they're not actually putting forth real solutions that will get people into safe shelter and housing is because they're the ones benefiting from the perpetuation of these economic conditions.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

Yeah, there's so many things that I like, want to pick up on, but I guess just on that point specifically, like, there was an audit into California's spending on homelessness. I believe it was over a period of, of seven years. And it showed that there was $24 billion spent on grants to nonprofits or cities to provide people with different services that are kind of designed around homelessness and providing housing or legal services. Like, there's a whole range of things that's out there, but a lot of the time, like, these are the only options that are available to people and they tend to produce less than stellar results. So out of the $24 billion that was allocated to help homeless people in that same period of time, homelessness in California just, like, skyrocketed. Right. So rates of homelessness increased while this money was getting pumped into the pockets of, of the bank accounts of, like, landlords and developers. It is an issue that people on every, like, side of the political compass, like, they like to, to use this point to their own, like, ends, right? So Elon Musk talks about it, and, like, people on the left will talk about it. But I think, like, the experience that people on the street have is. Is very different than any of these narratives that you tend to hear in the media.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yes, unfortunately, we need to take an ad break. I don't have a good transition here. I don't know. We'll move from one set of horrors to a slightly different set of horrors and come back to the first set of horrors.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

All of this money is being, like, dedicated to these programs, and homelessness is only rising. I think, like, one thing that I've heard before that's a kind of useful way to think about this kind of government spending is if homeless people would be better off if you just gave them the money directly, you know, then that kind of way, it's really hard to justify these programs when that can't be said of them, you know, And.

[Robert Evans]

I think the thing that you pointed out, Emma, about the fact that we have huge amounts of money allegedly being spent on, like, homelessness abatement or homeless services at the same time that homelessness is skyrocketing is really not an accident, because what that money is really being spent on is to fuel exactly what is it like the homeless industrial complex. There's a reason that most of that money is going into the pockets of landlords and developers and then sort of like these sort of large, like, nonprofit, almost like conglomerates of, like, service providers. And it's because the primary point of homelessness services as it exists in this country is not to get homeless people into housing. It's to line the pockets of the people that are making the most money off of the real estate market anyway. And so because of that, it is not an accident that you see homeless spending and homelessness, like, escalating at the same time. It's because this is the feedback loop. Like, this is the way that our, you know, economic priorities in this country are structured are such that those two things are going to feed into each other, because that money doesn't actually exist to, like, serve the populations that they say that they're using it to serve. What they do get to do is by claiming that that money is going into homelessness abatement when clearly it isn't. They then get to spin a narrative where they say, oh, we've spent all this money, but the problem is just getting worse. That must mean that it is the fault of unhoused people and that they're choosing this. Clearly, the services must exist to get them off the Street. In reality, that's not the case at all.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

Yeah. I think also it's super important for people to understand that these programs, housing programs, shelter programs, they are out there, but they are decoupled from the sweep operations that are occurring. Right. So the city of Oakland, they are contracted with a nonprofit safdia that Vincent mentioned earlier called Operation Dignity, and they are required to check in with different, like, encampments that are scheduled to be closed at least a week before the sweep. And the purpose of that is to, like, notify people that it's happening. They're. The city of Oakland is required, per the terms of. Of this lawsuit back In, I believe, 2019, the Morales lawsuit, and there was a settlement that resulted in the city being required to provide clear notices whenever they're going to close, like, a site. So, yeah, this nonprofit provider is supposed to, like, notify people and try to get them connected with services. However, the services, for the most part, like housing for people who are unhoused, is largely funded through the federal government and through this very, like, complex and inaccessible system called Coordinated Entry. The Coordinated Entry system is not something that the city of Oakland or Operation Dignity, that is not something that they're providing people with during a sweep. So when the city of Oakland, like, for instance, in one of the Commission on Homelessness meetings, the city administrator, Harold Duffy, he presented actually in response to a question about somebody's wheelchair being destroyed by public works. Yeah. He gave this really, like, roundabout, deflecting, like, answer where he said basically that everyone who is at an encampment at the time of a sweep has, like, expressly refused services like shelter or housing or whatever. And that, like, kind of presumes that the city actually has opportunities that they can provide people with, which is just not the case. The Coordinated Entry System, it is a program that is, first of all, like, only people who are disabled can get what's called permanent supportive housing through the program. But also it is in such high demand and is so inadequate to the needs that. That Alameda county is currently, like, the situation that we're in, that the wait list is, like, thousands of people long, and it can take well over a year before someone can get housing through that system. So it's just like, it's not true. They do offer people what are called community cabins, which are tough sheds.

[Robert Evans]

They're not even offering people that. They're full. They're full.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

Yeah, that's what they say they offer.

[Robert Evans]

Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. I feel strongly about this. So I Think it's also worth saying, like, in terms of. I feel like that's a really. A really useful layout, Emma, in terms of, like, the way that the system is actually structured for people not to be able to access services. I feel like it's also worth pointing out that just day to day on the ground, I feel like I get to see a lot of sort of like, minute details and changes in the way that they're operating in response to what their internal systems actually look like. And what we have seen over the last six months to a year is not only this pattern that Emma's talking about of, like, people are consistently not getting connected with services and then being accused of refusing services just due to the conditions that they're living under, but also everything that Oakland has that approaches, like, livable transitional housing, which is kind of laughable in this case because we can also go into the conditions of the transitional housing programs and shelters in Oakland, which are abysmal. But everything that they have that approaches livable transitional housing is full. I very rarely, every few weeks, maybe I see one or two people get referred to one of those programs. And far more often I'll be in a situation. For example, I was at a Sweep over near 23rd and Northgate a couple weeks ago, and I was there when Operation Dignity rolled up. And I heard what they were saying when they were talking to people. And this one dude was going around talking to folks, and he kind of. He wasn't even approaching talking about services. He was approaching being like, hey, I'm just here to let you know that this area is going to be closed down. Like, there's a sweep that's going to be happening, so you guys have to be out of here. So that was what they led with. And then I prompted him because I was there chatting with one of the guys that he was talking to. So I prompted him. I was like, do you have any services to offer? And then he was like, oh, you can go over to St. Vincent de Paul, which is a congregate shelter in West Oakland with about 40 beds, big room, and nobody is guaranteed a spot. It's just a room full of cots. A lot of people refuse to go there because the conditions are so terrible and they don't feel comfortable or safe sleeping in a room full of a bunch of strangers with no kind of security, no guarantee of being able to hold onto their stuff. People are only allowed to bring in, like, a backpack's worth of stuff, I'm pretty sure. And you also have to. It's first come, first serve. So you have to line up outside every single day. And you are not guaranteed an indoor place to sleep even if you line up outside. So what we have is a situation where the availability of services varies from day to day. I cannot think of a single sweep in the last year that I have been to, and I'm at usually multiple sweeps a week where there were enough guaranteed spots available for every person being swept. So the implicit assumption at every single sweep and the operation dignity, people know this too. Like, they know this. The implicit assumption when they roll up and the assumption that colors even the tenor of all of their conversations that they're having with people is that the majority of people are just gonna have to figure out how to pack their shit up and find another place to camp. It's the assumption. And it's gotten to the point where like, OD employees will roll up and like I said, they won't even necessarily lead with an offer of services. They'll lead almost in the hopes that the majority of people already have a place to relocate. They'll ask, do you have a place to go before they offer services or ask if people are interested in services. They'll. They'll ask like, do you have another spot to move this stuff first? Because what they're hoping to do is eliminate as many people as possible from their list of people that they feel obligated to offer services to because they know they don't fucking have anything.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

Yeah, I think it's super important to just emphasize that point. The city is telling the media, they're telling like, businesses, anyone that comes to them with problems related to like, homelessness or concerns, they're telling them that everyone is being offered shelter and housing, and it's just not true. And that is reflective in the city's own publicly available data. So they actually publish like a list of all of the encampment suites that they. They do throughout the year. And in the Commission on Homelessness meetings will like, report back to the commission about like, service enrollments that they've done through a certain period of time. And like, from May to September, they had enrolled, I believe it was 60 people into services like non specified services.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Jesus Christ.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

And during that period there was approximately 80 sweeps. And if you assume there's at least five to 10 people at every encampment when they do a sweep, and usually it's more, that is like 9%, 4.5% of people like, getting enrolled into. Into services and like, of those, maybe a smaller fraction getting into shelter and when they get into shelter, they just languish there. Right. They aren't connected with caseworkers who help them get through this really convoluted coordinated entry process and like lengthy coordinated entry process. And so within a few months, they're just right back on the street. You know, it's just ridiculous. And unfortunately, because homeless people have very little, like, I guess you could call it social capital. You know, the city can get away.

[Robert Evans]

With a lot of this stuff.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

They do like, blatantly illegal things that are against even their own policies and nothing happens. And I guess like, maybe we should back up a little bit and discuss the city's policy.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Just run second ad break and then we will come back. More ads, I don't know, buy them. Question mark. We are back. Yeah. So yeah, let's talk about, I think what, what the city's policies are supposed to be versus, like, what they're actually doing on the ground.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I mean, their policy is their cover your ass technique.

[Kevin Smith]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Their policy is what they refer back to whenever they want to. Sort of like, like Emma said, if they're interfacing with businesses or house people, you know, and we have a whole range of house people calling 31 1, which is basically their tip line for like, oh, you see a homeless person that you don't want to be seen. But there's a whole range of people. There's people that are actively malicious and violent and there's literally people going out doing vigilante shit and like destroying homeless people stuff on their own. And then you also have people that are well intentioned and really think the city is offering services. So you have this whole umbrella. And the narrative that the city sells to everybody is bolstered by their policy. The purpose their policy serves is not to inform their actions, but to inform their pr. So I think it would be helpful. Emma, how do you feel about if you want to kind of give a breakdown of the city's policy and then I can kind of give a breakdown into what that translates into on the ground.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

Yeah. So this is like, it's kind of a complicated situation, but the city has what's what they call their encampment management policy. And it was initially passed in, I believe, 2020, but it's gone through like several evolutions over the past ten years or so. And it is related to different Supreme Court cases and the settlement that I mentioned earlier. So this policy, it provides certain very limited protections for people who are homeless in the city limits. The city is required by this policy to offer shelter I believe it's a week for any person who's like, subject to one of their encampment closures. And also we mentioned the bag and tag policy. So if somebody, you know, they are evicted and they move somewhere outside with a tent, they bring all of their possessions with them. They are provided with a, I believe, three foot by three foot, like, storage space. And this facility that is super inaccessible and kind of like. Like, I don't even know if it's actually real, to be honest, because it's just like nobody ever. I've never heard of anybody actually like, getting their stuff stored and getting back back. But technically that is a possibility. However, the city will only hold on to it for so long before they throw it away. And then the last protection or provision is the city was until recently supposed to provide people with shelter. So a few different Supreme Court cases are behind that provision specifically. And I think a lot of cities kind of of had a similar policy framework that they were following until the grants passed ruling. And I guess maybe we don't need to get into that too much. But basically the whole idea of that policy was like, if somebody is outside living outside, and the city sweeps them, they have to provide them with some kind of alternative accommodation. Because according to, like, the ninth District Court, it was considered like, cruel and unusual punishment to penalize somebody for being homeless without, you know, offering them some kind of temporary, like, accommodations. And so that was more or less the city's nominal framework for several years, basically. And the degree to which they actually followed these policies, you know, they. They really didn't, except for in certain situations where there are like, for instance, legal advocates who will file injunctions to stop the city from doing a sweep on the basis of, of, like, failure to provide an alternative accommodation. And typically those arise when there is a very large encampment clearing operation that is scheduled and a contentious issue. You know, a lot of the time, for instance, there'll be people staying on city or lake California state land, and the city will force them to move because of some development project that they're planning to do. And so in those situations, when the media has kind of narrowed their, their focus and begun like, discussing some of this stuff in the local press, then like, something like that became possible. But after the grant's pass ruling this past year, the city was no longer obligated under federal law to follow those policies. And in September of last year, the late Mayor Shang Tao, she issued an executive order that more or less like, just totally like, rendered that policy framework irrelevant. So she put forth a new framework that allows the city to sweep encampments under a tiered system of what are called emergency suites. So if, for instance, the encampment is blocking a roadway or a sidewalk, then it is a hazard to the public, quote, unquote. Or if it's somebody has a tent that is up against a building of some sort, it's a fire hazard. And so in this tiered system, there's like different levels of safety hazards that they're doing now. And basically what that looks like is like a fire marshal and the city administrator will convene after somebody calls in a complaint about somebody that's staying outside by their business. And with the fire hazard, one, I believe that they can just sweep without any prior notice, whereas the other two, there is some, like, level of notice that they're technically required to provide. But yeah, so the shelter provisions and the notice and storage like it, they're technically still supposed to follow that by their own city resolution. But there is this provision that, like, if, for instance, they issue somebody like a. No. Or a one hour notice to leave because of like a fire hazard and like advocates can't make it there because they don't really know. They nobody knows it's happening, then the city can just do that and not offer people anything. Right. So these policies have the effect of disempowering our ability to respond to like a scheduled operation. Then the city can. Can really just like, do whatever they want because nobody's watching what they're. What they're doing.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

I guess we can. I think we can take this here towards something I think would probably be good to start closing on, which is like, what can people actually do about this?

[Robert Evans]

First of all, I think listening to all of this, it can be really easy to feel disempowered and to feel like the walls are closing in and there's nothing that we can do. And that remains not the case. I think people should feel empowered to be able to physically intervene because the most effective way of physically intervening with this kind of violence is to commit to relationship building. Something that I've talked about a lot with sort of like fellow advocates and folks that are kind of involved in like Sweep's response and crisis response in Oakland is that the one thing that the city cannot take away from us, that we have an advantage over them in is relationship building. Part of the reason that, for example, the Operation Dignity employees are so inefficient and so seemingly bad at their jobs is not just the fact that they don't have anything to offer, but also because everybody on the street knows they're full of shit because they never show up with anything real. And addressing housed people in particular, right? Like, one of the things to get out of is sort of like the savior mentality or the guilt mentality of like, oh, like I don't have any housing to offer, therefore I can't do anything. Like, I can't fix the problem, I can't fix the route, so I can't do anything. In reality, all you really need to do is to learn to set that mentality aside and show up and like, start. Start meeting folks where they're at. Start meeting your neighbors where they're at. Start building relationships. You need to know, like, if you live in a particular neighborhood, think to yourself, I need to know that if any unhoused person within a mile radius of my home was disappeared, I would need to know. You know what I mean? Like, I would want to know if that happened. So if you go out with that understanding that you're starting to build lifelong relationships with the folks that are living outside in your neighborhood, ideally a lot of other people in your neighborhood too. You know what I mean? But, like, what they're banking on is right now while. While they're still trying to use a PR cover for what they're doing. What they're banking on is people not talking to each other, people not finding out about the abuses, people not finding out about the violations, people not being there, and people not having relationships that will remain strong even as they try to physically scatter people's communities. And, and what you can do to start is start investing in those relationships. Make sure you know what people's names are, make sure you would know if somebody's routine was suddenly disrupted. Hey, that guy used to be on that corner, you know, every couple days out of the week, and now I never see him anymore, what happened to him. And I think you can start there. And there's much more that you can concretely do. I mean, one of the ways that I'm accustomed to showing up at this point is direct on the ground sweeps response. So we're still able to keep track currently of what their schedule is on a weekly basis, more or less. Like, there's definitely operations we're. We don't find out about until after the fact, but the majority of their weekday operations we do still know about ahead of time. And so we'll show up, we'll make sure we get there before the city does. So like by 8am Ideally, right like we show up, talk to people, be like, what do you need? Do you need physical help moving your belongings out of the eviction zone? Do you need to borrow somebody's phone so that you can call somebody who said they were going to come help you? Do you need help pushing or pulling your vehicle? Any number of things really. But just like, like being willing to show up and ask questions without necessarily knowing what answers you're gonna get and being down to follow up and like do aftercare with people and check in on folks and like keep building those relationships. I think that those are the building blocks of the organizing that we're gonna need to be doing in the future. Because you know, what the city is counting on is that they're gonna be able to successfully create a scapegoat. Right? They want to create like a faceless, nameless mass of people that they can pin all their problems on and then incarcerate. And the best thing that we can do is make sure that they can't successfully do that because we all have relationships to each other.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

Yeah, I really appreciate those sentiments, Satya. And I think the Oakland advocates doing eviction defense for people who are living outside. It's grown in size and capacity quite a bit in the past here and like the city has noticed that. So they've actually like, they've passed various resolutions and honestly a lot of their practices and their policies, like their encampment management team, they seem to be like responding to the increasing effectiveness of this response, just like network of community defense. And, and so I think that like all of those things are, are so important, especially as the Trump regime starts to eliminate the very like modest social safety net that, that there was. And you know, before we end this conversation, I just want to emphasize that in Oakland, like a majority of the people who are homeless and are subject to state violence, they are non white, mostly black, and are homeless in neighborhoods where they used to be housed. And so the gentrification that has happened, particularly in like West Oakland and the influx of high income tech workers that displaced them and moved into their family homes, they are the same people who are calling three one, one to push the city to displace them again, but from a tent or a car this time, and I think it's just so, so important that that particularly like housed people try to tap into the networks of community defense that exists in their areas. I'm sure that most cities probably have something comparable to Oakland, but with the measures that we're seeing cities begin to take, such as in Fremont which is, is about 30 minutes south of Oakland where they basically banned or criminalized mutual aid with unhoused people. So you can get $1,000 fine or up to six months in jail for aiding and abetting a homeless person. And you know, that's an extremely vague law.

[Robert Evans]

So like giving someone a blanket could fall under this. So you could be fined or put in jail for giving an unhoused person a blanket in Fremont currently.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

So it's very important that people try to be aware of their city government, how they're maybe passing anti homeless measures in their cities and trying to mobilize against that from happening.

[Robert Evans]

I also have one more thing to add to that. I'm so sorry specifically for anybody thinking about getting involved or organizing strategically around community defense, sweep defense, whatever that looks like in your particular area. I would say first of all, especially if you're a house person in this case, invest valuable time into getting to know people on an interpersonal level and getting to know people's needs first instead of falling into the trap of sort of imposing what you might have learned through like other sort of direct action organizing. Because this is not that, you know, like I think, yeah, first of all, just making sure that your organizing is being led by the needs of, you know, homeless residents that are expressing what they need to you. But also on top of that, when it comes to this particular draconian waves of legislation that are being passed around, like anti homeless laws and stuff, don't preemptively obey, you know what I mean? Like, if you live in Fremont, don't preemptively say, ah, fuck, I better stop passing out blankets. Because what we've seen in Oakland with the particular iterations of anti homeless legislation that they've passed here is that just because they've passed legislation doesn't mean that they feel confident enforcing it yet. And what you need to do really is step up real hard and show them you can't enforce this the way that you want to. And they're going to push back. There's going to be this back and forth interplay that we've seen, you know, for example, in Oakland with the Safe work zone ordinance, which we can probably get into another time because it's way too much to get into right now, I think at this point in the episode. But it's a two way street. It's this fight that you have to play to show them. Just because you've passed this legislation doesn't mean you can enforce it in a particular way. You have to give them something to fight against. You know what I mean? So that's just the other piece.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

And like, and the rest of their policy is absolutely 100% evidence that, that if, if the state doesn't want to follow the law, it isn't real. But that also means that like, if they can't enforce a law, like, it also effectively ceases to exist. That's just the sort of balance of forces here.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there is a lawsuit currently against that. And it sounds like, you know, the, the city of Fremont is probably going to be removing that aiding and abetting clause from the resolution. But because that specific provision is actually like in the city's municipal code as a general provision. So you know, even if they, they do remove it, charges could still be brought against somebody. So like really the entire ordinance needs to be eliminated altogether.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yeah, I guess. Do you, do you have anything else that you want to make sure that you get in before we close the summer up?

[Kevin Smith]

I don't think so.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

Not nothing that comes to mind, but yeah. Again, super appreciate you having us on to, to talk about this. Yeah, you know, is rough right now. I think for me personally it's been really helpful to direct my energy towards things in my social network in a way that's like constructive and helpful to others. So I would definitely suggest if you're feeling any despair or worried about becoming black pilled or whatever, just try to tap in and focus on things that are happening in your community. It's good for you and it's good for the people in your community.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, just seconding that, that I think being able to tap in specifically with the types of unhoused organizing and underground economies that exist wherever unhoused people exist and being able to tap into that. And again, speaking from the perspective of a house person, really humble yourself and learn from that. You're gonna learn a whole lot more relevant life skills just hanging out in social settings with people in the street than you are in any other area of your life. So just go balls to the wall, just start hanging out. Just like spend all your time loitering. Like just that's, that's where we need to be right now is loitering in the street. That's where the organizing is happening.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

So yes, reclaim the space.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Oh yeah, this has been Naked Happened here. Go loiter on street quarters and make the state's life miserable until it cannot do the things it is doing.

[Garrison Davis]

Right.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Is this a good time? It's me, Dylan Mulvaney and my dear.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

Friend Joe Locke from Heartstopper and Agatha all along is my very first guest.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

On my brand new podcast, the Dylan Hour. It's musical mayhem and it is going to be be so much fun.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

I like a man.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

You like a man. What do I like, Joe?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

You like a man too.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

We often. There's quite similar.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

There's some cross pollination happening in here.

[Kevin Smith]

Not like.

[Robert Evans]

No.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Have we?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

No.

[Kevin Smith]

No, not yet.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

Never say never. I cannot wait for all you girls.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Gays and they to join me on this extremely special pink confection of a podcast.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

There is so much darkness in this.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

World and what I think we could all use more of of is a little joy. Listen to the Dylan hour on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

Listen to your podcasts. Love ya.

[Kevin Smith]

Hey kids, it's me, Kevin Smith. And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith. That's my daughter, man. Who my wife has always said is just a beardless d Ckless version of me. And that's the name of our podcast, Beardless Me. I'm the old one, I'm the young one.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And every week we try to make.

[Kevin Smith]

Each other laugh really hard.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Sounds innocent, doesn't it?

[Kevin Smith]

A lot of cussing, a lot of bad language.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

It's for adults only.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Or listen to it with your kid.

[Kevin Smith]

Could be a family show. We're not quite sure. We're still figuring it out. It's a work in progress.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Listen to Beardless me on the iHeartRadio.

[Kevin Smith]

App, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here? Ow. Goes lower. From Blumhouse TV, iHeart podcasts and Ember 20 comes an all new fictional comedy podcast series. Join the flighty Damien Hirst as he unravels the mystery of his vanishing boyfriend. And Santi was gone. I've been spending all my time looking for answers about what happened to Santi and what's the way to find a missing person. Sleep with everyone he knew, obviously. Hmm. Pillow talk. The most unwelcome window into the human psyche. Follow our out of his element hero as he engages in a series of ill conceived investigative hookups. Mama always used to say God gave me gumption in place of a gag reflex. And as I was about to learn, no amount of showering can wash your hands of a bad hookup.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Now take a big whiff, my bruh.

[Kevin Smith]

Listen to the hookup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Robert Evans]

This is John Cameron Mitchell and my new Fiction podcast series Cancellation island stars Holly Hunter as Karen, a wellness influencer who launches a rehab for the recently canceled. In the future, we will all be canceled for 15 minutes, but don't worry, we'll take you from broke to woke or your money back. Cancellation Island's revolutionary rehab therapies, like Bad touch football, anti racism, spin club, and mandatory ayahuasca ceremonies are designed to force the council to confront their worst impulses. But everything starts to fall apart when people start disappearing.

[Kevin Smith]

Karen, where have you brought us Cancellation.

[Robert Evans]

Island, where a second chance might just be your last. Listen to Cancellation island on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Garrison Davis]

Oh, welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about how it's happened here, and it continues to happen here. Sorry about that, but we're not changing the name of the podcast, you know, because we're not. Anyway, I got James Stout with me. I got Garrison Davis with me. Woot, woot.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Huzzah.

[Kevin Smith]

So the past few weeks, myself, as, as well as probably everyone else on this, on this call, has been getting a lot of questions from listeners via the various social media apps that we damage ourselves by logging into on a much more than needed frequent basis. But one question that's been kind of on a lot of people's minds and something that, that we've been discussing as like, a group is the idea of, should you flee the country? Is the party over? Do we need to use the time we have now to get out? The Trump administration is cracking down on a whole bunch of groups of already marginalized people, people with fewer resources, immigrants, people who are here for asylum, trans people, queer people in general. It's getting pretty scary out there, and the thought crosses your mind, maybe, maybe there's somewhere else that's better. And this has always been a tough question for us to kind of think about because we don't want to, like, inspire panic. That's not the purpose of what we do here.

[Garrison Davis]

You should try to spread calm when times are bad, if you can.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah. But the situation politically in the country and in many parts of the world right now is extremely fraught. And it does feel closer towards, like, the bad nightmare scenario than kind of I've ever thought it has before. So it's. So it's a really tough question.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

And I think what we're going to be doing this episode is just kind of talking about this question and our thoughts around, you know, various responses to this line of thought. And, and I guess Robert kind of has a. A Baseline, like kind of quasi answer that I think we can use as a jumping off point, you know, if.

[Garrison Davis]

You'Re someone who is being targeted, you know, or in a community of people who are being targeted, you know, you're a naturalized citizen, you're here on a green card, you're, you're trans, you're any kind, any of the many different groups of people that are being targeted right now, and you have the opportunity to leave and you think that that's the right thing for you, then you should do it. You shouldn't feel bad about it. You know, if you've got a job that is in demand in other countries and you, you know the process and can get, start the process to like get residency somewhere else and work somewhere else and, you know, make, make your life work that way, then I don't think you should feel bad about doing that if that's what you decide thing for you. That said, it's not, it's just simply not going to be a realistic possibility for most people. What is more realistic for a lot of people is, for example, moving from states where the risk is higher to states where maybe the risk is lower. Hard to say how long the risk will be lower, you know, but I, I, you know, I certainly that's more achievable for a lot of people than getting set up in a foreign country, as James will talk about. If your hope is just, I'm going to try to go somewhere else, like Europe or whatever as an asylum seeker. As again, James will go into more detail on life ain't easy for asylum seekers. And that's not really, again, it may not be as nearly as much of an option as you think that it is right now. I, you know, had to go through kind of my own process after the election of like, well, am I going to like, you know, get my finances in order and move to another country and basically try to like, like pay my way into getting a visa somewhere like in Spain, which is an option for, for someone like me. And I, I came to the conclusion that like, nah, you know, if the worst case thing happens, I'd rather like die here or, or whatever. It, it's just not worth it, you know, to try to get out. So I'm committing to trying to like, hold the line here with everybody basically that I love in the world because, like, what else are you going to do, you know?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, like, I will just say that, that, you know, I probably have met more asylum seekers than most people, you know, and it is one of the More miserable fates available to a human. It will, if large numbers of people start leaving the US Only get worse. If you're someone who's a US citizen, you have probably not experienced much in the way of like, strict immigration enforcement. If you have traveled around the world, right, you have one of the more high value passports in the world. You can, you can go almost anywhere with a visa or in many cases without a visa. Seeking asylum is an extremely different process. If you think you're just going to get on a flight and leave and stay somewhere, like, understand that many countries will probably begin to require reciprocal visas with the United States soon. If we continue our current sort of pathway with more isolationist immigration policy and that you'll have to get that visa. And then, you know, if you overstay, you will be subject to enforcement. The sense of permanence that you enjoy here might never be something you enjoy again. And that's just if you're able to fly somewhere and say you try and overstay a visa or you try and apply for asylum. I have people I've met in every facet of my life. Like, I know guys who I met as a bike racer who have applied for asylum, guys I met on a bike race who are staying on that barge in the uk. It is, it is a miserable fate. And I think that's that. I'm not saying don't do it. I'm saying that you need to understand that it is highly unpleasant and it strips you of all dignity. And in some places it strips people of like, their lives. Right. People die migrating. It's also like incredibly expensive to do the things that migrants do because that everyone is trying to make a buck off them. Right. I was just talking on another podcast about how the, the journey that people took up through the Darien Gap who tried to come to the United States, it would have cost them way less just to fly, but they couldn't because they couldn't get the visas. Right. That doesn't mean, like, if you, you know, if you have a historical right to citizenship through various, you know, certain people have rights to Spanish citizenship or German citizenship or Irish. Irish is one that many people have access to, then.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Why not? Not why not, you know, if you have the financial resources, why not try and see where that will go? Why not begin pursuing that?

[Kevin Smith]

Totally.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, sure.

[Kevin Smith]

I think becoming a dual citizen if you have the capability to is a fantastic idea that I will like, never dissuade someone from.

[Garrison Davis]

No, I would go so far as to say, even if you plan to stay here if you have the ability to get dual citizenship, you should be pursuing that right now.

[Kevin Smith]

Absolutely.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Like, is it something that you should do it. It's often not hideously expensive and it's something that. That might be. Yeah, you have options and options are good.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah. I am very hesitant to, like, openly call for, like, now is the time to leave the country. I do not feel comfortable saying that for a number of reasons. Like, some of them are more political, as in, like, I don't really subscribe to a politics of escape. Even the idea of, like, fleeing states. States I feel a little bit iffy about now. There's certainly, you know, a lot of cases where families are trying to move, you know, outside states that have more restricted access to trans healthcare for minors towards more friendly states, which I totally understand. But I have greatly enjoyed getting to know a whole bunch of trans people in the south. And a whole bunch of trans people here are not willing to leave their home. This is. This is their home and it always will be. And they're going to stay and fight for it even as things get, you know, harder. And I don't think you should write these people off. I don't think you should write these places off. These. These places are still a terrain of battle, and they're going to be places where trans people can still live and still live fulfilling lives in many cases. And that is. That is worth acknowledging, that's worth putting effort into, to the point that, like, after the election, I was already considering maybe, you know, trying to travel around the country some more. And after this last election, my line of thought was way more on the side of I would actually like to spend as much time in Georgia as possible. I would actually want to stay in the south for as much as I can, because this is, like, not a place that I think people should be walking away from. And in some ways, that does come from, like, a slightly privileged point of view for multiple reasons. As someone who's white and holds a Canadian passport as well as an American passport sort that is, you know, something that I like to have as a back pocket option. But that's something I'm not, like, considering, like, at all. Like, I do not want to move to Canada. All my friends are here. My life is here. There's certain scenarios where things get much, much, much worse, even though things are already getting quite bad. But there are certain scenarios where, yes, that passport will come in handy. And that's why I do encourage, like, no matter what, you should. You should see if you have any options to become a citizen in more than one country. It is a great thing to be. It's good to not be just tied down to one place. But the process of trying to immigrate somewhere where you do not have a citizenship is already quite challenging. And we will probably discuss some more of this later because I think there's also a sort of like onion of threat of people when you're thinking about this question, like which people will, will be or are currently being targeted the most and how that kind of affects the options in terms of like relocation to places. View it as like safer havens. And I would like to jumpstart that unnie enough protection discussion after these messages.

[Garrison Davis]

We're back and we're talking about onions which you need to wear around your neck to protect you from evil spirits. Garrison, that's what you were getting at, right?

[Kevin Smith]

Yes.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Wrap this one up. That's done. Move on to the next topic where.

[Kevin Smith]

Five different onions to drive away the various secret police forces trying to hunt down individuals.

[Garrison Davis]

Yes.

[Kevin Smith]

Speaking of, I guess like the big thing I'm thinking about right now or one of the big things is there's different levels of, of scrutiny being placed on individuals currently in the United States. One, you have like people who are completely undocumented, right? You have people who are, who are currently here on like valid asylum claims who are about to get those rights like stripped away. I'm trying to think of like the, the, the list of refugees that were allowed under Biden that are now like, like imminently going to get their stuff stripped away from the Trump administration. I know Venezuelan.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, I know.

[Kevin Smith]

Venezuelan immigrants are one, Haitian immigrants are another Afghan. But groups that have, that have been able to come here the past few years that are going to be now seen as like quote unquote illegal by the White House and Immigration Customs Enforcement. You then have student visa holders which are already like currently under threat, getting visas taken away. You have people on work visas, you have green card holders and you even have naturalized citizens and among just regular citizens, unnaturalists, I guess, people that were born here. You have other factors that could lead to potential hardship based on political affiliation or based on gender and sexuality. And that's kind of like the bracket breakdown I'm, I'm working off of. So as much as it's like dangerous to be like, you know, like a trans anarchist, right, in the United States, I think that is, that is fairly different than a Haitian immigrant who's about to get like literally hunted down by ice, right? And these People have wildly different realities, wildly different options for how they're gonna, like, handle this question and handle, like, the decision of, you know, preemptively choosing to relocate somewhere else. James, do you have any kind of thoughts on this, like, onion? I guess.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. I mean, I think you described it well. Right. Like, I think a lot of folks are, for the first time finding themselves in that onion at all call. Right. And certainly with respect to, like, immigration enforcement or potentially being forced to leave this country. And I think it would be good maybe to look at folks who have been there for a long time and look at how they've done. Right. Because there have been people whose existence was precarious in this country for decades. Right. Maybe we go back to 1994 in Operation Gatekeeper. Maybe we go back further. Whatever. I don't care. Care. Maybe we go back to the operation whose name is also a slur in the 1930s. And I'm not going to say.

[Kevin Smith]

I mean. And indigenous people here have, like, for all of America.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, sure. Have Been.

[Kevin Smith]

Been. Been people that, like, exist in a wildly different reality than, like.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

Most US Citizens. Right.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. Where. Yes. This country is predicated on the genocide of indigenous people. Well.

[Kevin Smith]

And even in the ways that they're. They, like, continue to live here. It's. It's like a different world from.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. Like, that genocide is ongoing. Like, it's not a. It's not a thing that stopped.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

It's not a historical thing. It's the thing that exists as long as this country exists. I would look to those people. Right. Like you said, Garrison, Indigenous communities. Indigenous people continue to exist in this country despite the best efforts of this country to eradicate them. Undocumented communities. Right. Migrant communities of mixed status have continued to exist for a very long time. And like. Like, the way that they have got through this is together. And that's the way that we will get through this, too. When there have been threats to migrant communities, migrant communities have shown up for each other. Right. They're doing that right now. You see groups like Union del Barrio in San Diego. Right. Like, going around announcing when there are ice, the presence of ICE officers in the neighborhood. The way that they have gone through it is through other people in positions of precarity showing up for one another and taking care of one another. And if that is a new position for you, if finding yourself, like, further along the intersectional matrix of oppression is new for you, then, like, it's scary. I do understand that that precarity is petrifying, but understand that communities and people have been here for a long time and look at how they've got through it. I mean, queer communities, too, to a degree, have been persecuted in this country for a very long time and have developed ways of not just, like, existing, but also, like, continuing to center joy and experience joy and not just, like, live in fear. Because I think if you live in fear, like, you've kind of given up to a degree or you've let them win. To agree, I should say, like, I do understand that being new to this is petrifying for people. And, like, I don't want to just say, like, oh, you shouldn't be scared. Or, you know, you should look at how migrant communities have taken care of one another. But, like, now is the time to begin establishing solidarity as well. So, like, those communities which have been precarious for some time, they're not closed spaces, right? Like, you can be in solidarity with them and you can learn from them. And I think that now is the time to do that. Like, now is the time to build stronger links. If you're really worried about things being really bad in this country and you have good reason to be, right?

[Garrison Davis]

Like, oh, yeah, shit's up.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And, yeah, it's really bad.

[Garrison Davis]

It's all really bad. Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Like, you know, we're sending people to labor camps.

[Garrison Davis]

If you're scared, panicking, thinking, I gotta get out of here, I get you. Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

No, I mean, I think the thing that you should be doing regardless of who you are, is you should be giving yourself options. Yeah, you should be increasing the amount of options that you have. And, like, that is something that is never a bad idea. That is something that you could never do too early. It's something that you should have already been doing, frankly. Like, I've been advocating for people to get passports, including an American passport, because that does make it easier to leave the country. You should be getting that. And it's going to be harder, especially if you're trans now, to get a passport that matches what you look like. Right. But this is still something I think is worth doing because it gives you an option and you should be increasing the amount of options you have.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Have, Yeah, I think, yeah, it's never a bad thing. And, like, that community structure is an option too. Right? Like, people showing up for you and you showing up for them, that is one of your options. Don't forget that. And, like, that will also bring you joy and you will feel safer when you, like, we're supposed to live in communities. And, like, I, you know, I've. I've seen a lot of people in very difficult circumstances. And one of the Kurdish guys once said to me in the. In the desert, he was like, whatever we do, we do together. And I thought that was very profound because they were at that time like dancing around a fire in the midst of what was like an open air concentration camp, you know? But if you can find community and you can find a way to continue to experience joy, then I promise that things won't be as bad as they seem right now.

[Garrison Davis]

Yep.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Within the Kurdish freedom movement, there's a phrase that is commonly used, a slogan you could say, I guess in Kurdish you would say, means resistance is life. And we should remember that for whole groups of people, many of whom we featured here. If they had all just left, they would no longer exist in the way that they exist now.

[Garrison Davis]

Right.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Kurdish people have been oppressed by various states for centuries.

[Kevin Smith]

Right.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Turkish, Iraqi, Iranian and Syrian. They've been subject to genocidal violence and they've still remained there. Right. And they've continued to fight against that state oppression. And they've created something beautiful today as a result that we can see in Rojava. The same is true of the Karen and Kareni people we've spoken to in Myanmar. Right. They. They decided to remain rather than to leave. And in doing so, that they created a culture that was based on resistance and that resisted the ability of the state to exercise a monopoly on violence and to determine their outcomes. And I think we should look to those examples as we consider, like, what does it mean if the state. State becomes more hostile here now?

[Kevin Smith]

Something that, like, I think. I think Robert said in our work group chat, which thankfully has not been turned into an Atlantic article.

[Garrison Davis]

I did invite Pete Hegseth, so we'll see if he. If he hops in, you know, he's rejected us. That'll be good times.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. We've been trying to add the Atlantic editor in chief for years.

[Garrison Davis]

No, he is not welcome. He's absolutely not welcome.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Fuck that guy. We just need him to manufacture consent for bombing another country in the Middle east on our podcast. Podcast.

[Garrison Davis]

It's so funny because it is like. That is like the dream of every journalist that you just get added to the entire government's war planning chat and he just uses it to dunk on the Trump admin, like, not to. Not to get more info. Unlike anything else.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Then he, like, homers back into the hedge.

[Garrison Davis]

It's. It's. It's fucking hysterical.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. They could have had four years. Maybe not Maybe it was only a one off chat.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, no, it would. They would have, they would have accidentally invited a different journalist. It was going to happen eventually. Eventually.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

But yeah, magnificent.

[Kevin Smith]

But something Robert said in our chat is that like, if you already had like plans or the ability to move to a different country of your choosing, then yeah, why not? Right? Like if, if you already were thinking about moving to, to Germany, which is very funny to say now. Right, but if you already had plans and you had the ability to do that, that then, then sure, that's something that, that you should, that, that you should like, consider. If you do not already have pre existing plans and means, maybe it's not something to put all of your effort into doing right now because that is such a massive undertaking in general and, and not everyone has that option and there's going to be people stuck here. And you know, part of like my thinking on this is, is like I'm in a relatively privileged position. I would rather use the sort of benefits and stability that I have to help other people that are going to be living in this country. So I'm going to stay here to do that. And that's part of kind of my thought process. On a personal level, do I, you know, one day maybe want to live off the continent? Yeah, but that's like, for personal reasons, not for political reasons. That, that's because I think Glasgow looks pretty. And if you also think Glasgow's pretty and you want to move there, then that's fine. But I, I guess like the, the politics of escape I do find a little bit troubling in some ways. And I guess I would like to talk about that a little bit more after this ad break. All right, we're back. James made a horrible face when I complimented Scotland. What was up with that?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

It was when you said Glasgow, like it just brutally. Also Glasgow, not a city that's traditionally aesthetically prized, I guess.

[Kevin Smith]

Okay, well, that's European.

[Garrison Davis]

Maybe Edinburgh is where, if I was gonna go to Scotland, I'd probably aim at it.

[Kevin Smith]

I'm not gonna live in the Harry Potter town. Are you kidding me?

[Garrison Davis]

Oh, it existed before?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. That is rude. Garrison.

[Garrison Davis]

Don't take that away from Edinburgh. Don't give her that.

[Kevin Smith]

All the coffee shops are like fucking wizard themed now. Absolutely not.

[Garrison Davis]

You haven't been to Edinburgh. Don't tell me that shit.

[Kevin Smith]

I've seen your travel pictures, Robert. I've seen.

[Garrison Davis]

They were mostly hard liquor themed.

[Kevin Smith]

Okay, that's fair.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Edinburgh is a nice city. Glasgow's a nice city. You can enjoy the Best stop by Carlisle on your way down the. Where my family are from.

[Garrison Davis]

My favorite Glasgow fact is that there's a beverage called buckfast that is 20% alcohol mineral wine made by monks that has as much coffee as a Red Bull. And in Glasgow, Scotland, for a significant period of time, roughly 1% of all violent crimes were committed with the bottle.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, Bucky is, it's, it's a whole subculture.

[Garrison Davis]

Buck fast gets you fast. That's right, folks.

[Kevin Smith]

So a term I've used for like the past few years to like, discuss this, to discuss this question of like, can you like, outrun American fascism is the politics of escape. And, and for a while I really was vocally opposed to this sort of politics because it felt like the entire world was going through a global far right power grab and no matter where you run, you can't really get away from it. And now kind of curiously, you know, some of the, some of this is still happening. Right. You can look at the AfD in Germany, but, but some of what's happened with this Trump administration has almost weakened a degree of like this global far right power grab. Like for a long time it looked like the Conservative Party of Canada was about to just completely take control over the whole, over the whole country tree due to like pent up frustration over Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party. And now due to the actions of the Trump administration, the Liberals have retaken a significant portion of like, popular support and are probably going to do a big sweep in the general election. That's going to happen, I'm guessing next month with the new prime minister, like about, about to call one, which makes sense because he should call one at the, @ the peak of, of support for the Liberal Party. Yeah, after the Conservatives have taken like a 12 to 17 point dip, depending which poll you use. So for a while I was like, it doesn't even really make sense to flee to Canada because Canada's right on the coattails of America. Canadian politics are kind of historically about like 10 years delayed from American politics. And, and, and now the new Trump administration has kind of thrown a, throwing a curveball in this. British politics are always really hard for me to diagnose because all of their parties there are pretty wacky in my mind.

[Garrison Davis]

Oh yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

Like, you know, what the Tories have been doing has been extremely worrying. Like the nhs, like trans stuff is pretty bad. Now that the, you know, Labor Party is in, it's hard for me to figure out kind of where the country is going because this Labor Party is a pretty Conservative Labor Party. But like, this idea of like being able to outrun American fascism is still something I find like unconvincing, I guess. Like you, you can't fully run away from all of these problems and there may be certain people that, that it still like makes sense to start making these moves to, to start planning for that option. Right. I'm, I am, I am pro options. Even if this idea of like total escape I still find troubling.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

I don't know. Anyone else have any kind of thoughts on this?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, I mean look, as goes the US Goes to the world. Right. And I know, but that is changing. But like, maybe I think if it gets to the point where large numbers of people are fleeing the US we might see some of that same anti migrant rhetoric that we've seen in the US in even relatively liberal Canada, the United Kingdom. Sure. Other Anglophone countries. Right. Like it's already very hard to immigrate to Australia.

[Kevin Smith]

It's not the easiest to immigrate to Canada, frankly.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. I've not, I'm not as familiar with.

[Kevin Smith]

The Canadian one, especially as like an American.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

Unless you have like a job that you need to do in Canada and you're the only one who can do that job or you get a Canadian girlfriend or that's. That makes it slightly easier. But still not, still not like completely, you see, or frankly.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. That is a. I guess that's the alternative. Yeah. I think like, I know like a lot of people who listen to this, listen to this because they have a fairly radical politics, right or left politics and like.

[Kevin Smith]

Or you're a journalist or you're a federal worker.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're looking to steal our stories. Fuck off. If I may say so. But like, yeah, we've all grown up on the stories of people who stood up for what they believed in. Right. And Margaret makes a whole podcast about it and Robert does on Christmases.

[Garrison Davis]

Yep.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And like there's a reason why they did that. Like, you know, they. I know that the idea of running away and being safe can be tempting, but like if this country gets as bad as it needs to be, people to run away in large numbers, then like the world gets markedly less safe.

[Garrison Davis]

Oh yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

You're going to be running for the rest of your life.

[Garrison Davis]

Just look at how much food the US produces, how much medicine. 70% of all of the blood used in every single country's medical system around the world is exported from the United States.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Oh, wow.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

That's crazy.

[Kevin Smith]

And like, particularly for, for like U.S. citizens, right. Looking, looking to flee. The people who are going to be able to pull it off are people with pretty, pretty extraordinary means in, in most cases, I'm not, I'm not saying all cases, but like if you have the capacity to move from, from the United States States to Germany, you're, you're probably not living on the poverty line, right? Like this is, this, is this, this takes a considerable financial investment. So instead part of what my opposition to this is that you're essentially abandoning a whole bunch of like the like most at risk people. Yeah, a part of this even extends out to like moving from state to state. I'm obviously in support of free movement. I've traveled around, I'm going to continue to travel around. I want to see as much as the country in the world as I can. But like I, another facet of this politics of escape is that something I hear very consistently from my, my friends in Atlanta and this is something I can attest to like personally. The most amount of like, like vocal transphobia from people like on the street that they have faced has not been in Atlanta where they live. It's been when they're visiting people in Seattle or Portland. Like you actually get a lot more like, like weird anti queer harassment in Seattle just, just like on like the street level. It's bizarre. Like cities all have different kind of like modes of operation. People have different like informal like manners in terms of how, how you like behave on the street. And it's, it is, this is something I've definitely, I've definitely experienced. There's, there's a lot more like open openness towards like certain types of, of like anti trans harassment in like these like liberal safe havens like quote unquote. Yeah, I've been called slurs on the street way more in Portland, Oregon than I have in Atlanta, Georgia. And this is, this is another like interesting aspect which I, I'm not saying Atlanta is a quote unquote safer city than Seattle if you're trans. I'm not saying the vice versa either. But this is like just an aspect of like the politics of escape. Like especially in the, in the United States. Like there's like, is really no like real escape. Like there, there is no mythical safe haven where you can live your, your free life and, and frolic through the park and never have to face any kind of hardship or like political disenfranchisement. If you still want to relocate somewhere, that's something that you should consider and again create options. But I also do not want to, like, abandon my friends here because I just, you know, have a more stable job. Like, I, I, I want to be here for them and, and help them, and not in like, a patronizing way, but in like a solidarity way. Like, that's like, really important to me. And I think people who are, who are thinking about these same things and kind of running these same questions of, of if they want to commit to staying in the United States, I think should also make those considerations of is like, you know, which, which one of your friends is not going to be able to make the same calculation. Yep. And frankly, I, I feel, I feel like, better as a person and like, my mental health feels better knowing I'm gonna be here with them rather than going to a Berlin nightclub, which does sound fun. And I still might on vacation.

[Garrison Davis]

Oh, you definitely need to go to Bergain, Garrett.

[Kevin Smith]

Oh, yeah, I have, I have plenty of.

[Garrison Davis]

You need to spend three days that feel like about four hours in Bergain.

[Kevin Smith]

I am, I am, I'm excited. I am for the first time planning to leave the continent this year, which is a little bit scary because reentering the United States is pretty tricky right now. Which should also play into your considerations.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Also the general safety of air travel at the moment.

[Kevin Smith]

General safety of air travel now that we don't have a gay man running the planes.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

It turns out he was actually all right at that.

[Kevin Smith]

Woke. Was keeping those planes in the air.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

You know what?

[Garrison Davis]

Kudos to him. Turns out he was okay at that shit job.

[Kevin Smith]

But, but yes. I don't know what I was saying, but I'm sure it was really important and well thought through about not abandoning people who maybe don't have the same resources that you do.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. To your point about, like, coming back to the US like, understand that like, one of the things that migrants deal with, even if they get to a place and they have some degree of permanence and they feel safe there, is that they will never be able to go back to where they're from in most cases. Right. That means when someone in their family passes away, they can't be there for the funeral. That means that when they have a grandchild, they have a niece or a nephew, something happens in their community and they want to be there to help. It's a natural disaster. They are just stuck. And that's not something to like, to discount as something that's not important. Like, that is really hard. And if you have a community now, especially for trans folks. Right. Like, I just think that, like, there are so many places where, like, like you say Garrison, where bigotry against trans folks is being more and more normalized. So, like, if you have a community where people, where you're experiencing joy every day with the people you're around, like, leaving, that should be something that you really think hard about, because that can be hard to find.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah, yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Especially in Edinburgh because they're all turfs in the cafes. It's not true, just to be clear.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah, I mean, this is kind of the discussion I wanted to have. I'm sure we all have more thoughts on this that we will express very eloquently as soon as we close this recording session.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

That's how we do it.

[Kevin Smith]

But, but I know this is the type of stuff that we've been thinking about. I know, I know listeners have been too, because you're asking us these questions. It's certainly annoying that we don't have a, a concise yes or no answer, but there isn't a concise yes or no answer. I think the most concise one I have is that you should be giving yourself as many options as you can. If that includes applying for Irish citizenship because your grandfather is Irish, then, hey, why not go for it, right?

[Garrison Davis]

Ireland's great. Nice country. You'll like it.

[Kevin Smith]

But I, I am, I am trepidatious, I guess, about, about, you know, public calls to flee the country at this point and kind of the underlying politics and ideology of that, let alone the kind of the logistical aspects of trying to relocate to a different country where you are not a citizen. And frankly, I think there'll be a lot of countries that are not super eager to take American immigrants. I think Canada is typically kind of, kind of low key. Been one of these places, especially if we're going to go to war with Canada to make it the 51st state, then it might also create some, some, some tricky aspects.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, it could make it harder, but.

[Kevin Smith]

I know if anyone else has any, any other thoughts, air them now or forever be beholdened to angry Reddit comments.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, I don't know. Please don't burn each other down on Reddit. Like, now is the time to give people a little grace and be kind to other people.

[Garrison Davis]

People don't flee to Belgium. Stay away from Belgium at all costs.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

I had a nice time in Belgium.

[Kevin Smith]

What do you have, what do you have against Belgium? I have a friend in Belgium.

[Garrison Davis]

As an Italian, I, I think we need to go to war with them again. You know, it's what made Caesar great. It could make us great again. That's that's my stance on Belgium. It's Italian territory.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

I stand with the Belgian people.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Is this a good time? It's me, Dylan Mulvaney and my dear friend Joe Locke from Heartstopper.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

And Agatha all along is my very.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

First guest on my brand new podcast, the Dylan Hour. It's musical mayhem and it is going to be so much fun.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

I like a man.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

You like a man. What do I like, Joe?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

You like a man too.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

We often there's quite similar.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

There's some cross pollination happening in here.

[Kevin Smith]

Not like.

[Robert Evans]

No.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Have we?

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

No.

[Kevin Smith]

No, not yet.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

Never say never. I cannot wait for all you girls.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Gays and they's to join me on this extremely special pink confection of a podcast.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

There is so much darkness in this.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

World and what I think we could all use more of is a little joy. Listen to the Dylan hour on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

Listen to your podcasts. Love ya.

[Kevin Smith]

Hey kids, it's me, Kevin Smith. And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith. That's my daughter, man. Who my wife has always said is just a beardless dickless version of me. And that's the name of our podcast, Beardless Me. I'm the old one, I'm the young one.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And every week we try to make.

[Kevin Smith]

Each other laugh really hard.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Sounds innocent, doesn't it?

[Kevin Smith]

A lot of cussing, a lot of bad language. It's for adults.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

Home or listen to it with your kid.

[Kevin Smith]

Could be a family show. We're not quite sure. We're still figuring it out. It's a work in progress. Listen to Beardless me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Ow.

[Kevin Smith]

Go slower. From Blumhouse TV, iHeart podcasts and Ember 20 comes an all new fictional comedy podcast series. Join the flighty Damien Hurst as he unravels the mystery of his vanity boyfriend and Santi was gone. I've been spending all my time looking for answers about what happened to Santi and what's the way to find a missing person. Sleep with everyone he knew, obviously.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Hmm.

[Kevin Smith]

Pillow talk. The most unwelcome window into the human psyche. Follow our out of his element hero as he engages in a series of ill conceived investigative hookups. Mama always used to say God gave me gumption in place of a gag reflex. And as I was about to learn, no amount of showering can wash your hands of a bad hookup.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Now take A big whiff, my brah.

[Kevin Smith]

Listen to the hookup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Robert Evans]

This is John Cameron Mitchell and my new fiction podcast series, Cancellation island stars Holly Hunter as Karen, a wellness influencer who launches a rehab for the recently canceled. In the future, we will all be canceled for 15 minutes, but don't worry, we'll take you from broke to woke or your money back. Cancellation Island's revolutionary rehab therapies, like bad touch football, anti racism, spin class, and mandatory mandatory ayahuasca ceremonies are designed to force the council to confront their worst impulses. But everything starts to fall apart when people start disappearing.

[Kevin Smith]

Karen, where have you brought us Cancellation.

[Robert Evans]

Island, where a second chance might just be your last. Listen to Cancellation island on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Foreign.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Here, a podcast trying to figure out why some of the most powerful people in the world want everyone to think that they're gamers. It is.

[Kevin Smith]

It is.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Your host, Mio Wong, with me as Garrison Davis.

[Kevin Smith]

Hi. I've. I've played a video game before. I'm not very powerful, but I. I.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Too, have played many, several video games.

[Kevin Smith]

See, I. I wouldn't. I wouldn't say several. I've. I've played like a few.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

I. Many. I have played too many, simply too many video games. So, okay, this is in some ways kind of a lighter episode because Jesus fucking Christ, everything's really depressing.

[Kevin Smith]

Is something going on out there? It's all really bad.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

And one of the people who's been making everything really, really bad is Elon Musk, who has somehow managed to, like, piss off the gamers.

[Kevin Smith]

The PayPal guy.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

The PayPal guy.

[Kevin Smith]

The owner of X. I've been locked in my gamer cave for the past five months. I've not left. I'm just hearing about this now.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yeah, you might know of him as the guy who paid another guy to play Path of Exile two for him. We will get to that.

[Kevin Smith]

See, I don't play those games. Those games are gay. I only play Nintendo, Mecha games and Helldivers 2 like a loser.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

That's reasonable. That's reasonable. Those are. Those are. Those are fine games.

[Kevin Smith]

Oh, and Sonic.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Oh, God.

[Kevin Smith]

Okay, pushing aside the subject of Sonic.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

So, okay, I want to take a look a bit about why this sort of matters and why all of these fucking really rich assholes are sort of trying to pretend to be gamers. And I think the place to start here is with the fact that Gaming is an $184.3 billion industry. Todd Harris, who is an extremely annoying guy, but is also right, points out that this is more money than tv, movies and music combined. So this is the largest entertainment market in the world by such an astounding margin in terms of just dollar value. Right. Something like 3 billion people play video games. It's mostly mobile games, which makes the story I'm about to tell very weird because the actual people who play these games, again it's, it's a lot of mobile games and it's also mostly people who are women and non white. And yet however, comma, when people think about like the gamer tm, you are not thinking about that.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah. Like as a political class.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yeah, yeah. You know like when people say the word gamer. Yeah. You're thinking of a bunch of weird incel. Right wing dipshits who are white and suck ass. And this is in large part because Gamergate was sort of the first like truly effective political mobilization of like the gamer as a political identity. And obviously this is, you know, this is a fascist movement. Now part of the reason this works, and we're going to be getting more into why this sort of works later, but part of the reason this works is that this is an extremely large group of people because it's new. No one has sort of defined it as a political identity before. And it's also filled with people who are extremely insecure about their identity as a gamer because this is a relatively new medium. Which is why everyone fucking either wants their games to be like treated like movies or some shit or they want it to be sports because those are sort of cultural things with enormous amounts of money in them that are taken like quote unquote more seriously.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

And so the, the effect of this is that the cultural affect of being a gamer is extremely important to these people. People. And this is true actually really both on the left as much as it is on the right. There are a lot of like sort of political figures. I don't know, you're sort of like online people who, who come out of gaming like H. Bomber Guy, I guess as an example, like Hassan to some extent there's just like a lot of people who are like gamers and then they sort of like become political. But on the other hand, gaming has always been like a. Not always, but has traditionally been an extremely right wing space. Oh God. Garrison, I feel like you will actually appreciate how fucking shit this is. Have I told you the story about Kebab the German?

[Kevin Smith]

No.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Oh boy. Okay, so back in the dawn of time, I played a lot of Hearthstone as a kid and I was like. I wasn't like, good.

[Kevin Smith]

Is that like a resource management type game for like, gay autistic people?

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

No, this is. This is the World of Warcraft card game.

[Kevin Smith]

Okay, that's. That's even more embarrassing.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yeah, really bad. Really bad. I think. I think I peaked at like 2k legend North America, which like, technically speaking is like top like half a percent of players in the world.

[Kevin Smith]

Digital collectible card, video game. Come on.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Oh, yeah, yeah. But 2K Legend NA is like ranks. It's bad. I was never like, good good at it. I was just like, okay, kind of. But, you know, this is like a thing that I did growing up. And something I remember is like all of the fucking Hearthstone streamers and these were like, like really big streamers would play music from this guy they called Kebab the German. And it turns out that his actual name was Remove Kebab because he was a fucking German Neo Nazi.

[Kevin Smith]

Well, many such cases.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yeah. For people who like, are not aware of like, like mid-2010s German fascism, remove Kebab is like a slogan calling for the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Turkish people in Germany. So great stuff, great stuff. This is. This was just sort of like the water you were swimming in if you were a gamer in like the 2010s. Now this goes some way to explaining something that I noticed kind of recently, which is the absolutely bizarre obsession. These tech CEOs, like, who want to be thought of as gamers. And so the two examples we're going to look at are Sam Bankman Fried's. And this is. This is really technically on both sides of the political spectrum. Right? We're going to look at Sam Bankman Fried, and we're going to look at Elon Musk, our new overlord, I guess. So we're going to start with Sam Bankman Fried. And you know, as we go through what's happening here, we're going to sort of unravel why it's so important to them to be seen as gamers. And I guess it is important to note, like, Sam Bankman Fried, like, is, I guess, like he is a gamer in the sense that like, he's like, addicted to video games effectively and just plays them fucking literally constantly.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah, he looks the part too. No offense.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yeah, yeah. Before. Before he was put in prison for 25 years for fraud.

[Kevin Smith]

Well, probably not anymore. He's probably gonna get partisan.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

God, maybe. We'll see. We'll see.

[Kevin Smith]

I don't know. Crypto vote. It's the most valuable voting bloc now. All, all young Americans are too poor to open bank accounts, so they put all their money in crypto. So now they're going to vote for whoever makes line go up.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

I'm going to become the joker. So, okay, the thing about Sam Bankman Fried, for people who have forgotten who SBF is, he is the guy who was the founder of ftx, which was like a crypto exchange that was actually effectively a giant scam where he took everyone's money and bet it on the stock market and lost it. And you know, Robert did a sort of behind the bastards on him. And one of the things that happens constantly is that he's just like always fucking playing video games. Video games. He's playing this really dog game called Storybook Brawl Gene Meetings. He is a League of Legends addict, which is like as, as, as any gamer will know. A person who plays League of Legends all the time, like one of the worst categories people who's ever existed. And one of the things that that SBF did as, as a sort of PR thing, right, was let the author Michael Lewis of the Big Shorts, we're gonna get to Moneyball in a second.

[Kevin Smith]

Blindside other books, reputable financial advice books is what I'm hearing.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

But you know, like a very, very powerful, influential and like wealthy American journalists just let him sort of tag along. And Michael Lewis's sort of angle on understanding him, this is something that like SBF was like, you know, was like projecting, right? In order for this to be the image of him was him as like the game. And this sort of just like baffles Michael Lewis, right? Because he just like doesn't understand someone who just has ADHD and plays video games all the time and doesn't give a shit. So he plays video games meetings. Like no one has ever been like this. I have no idea what you mean. I actually don't play video games meetings because it is too obvious.

[Kevin Smith]

But I play, I play video games once a week. That's, that's, that's kind of my.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Oh God. This is the one part about Sam Bankman Free that's relatable to me. I play so many video games. It is my like antidepressant strategy basically. Like when I need to not think for a while, there's just me playing actually path of Exile 2, one of the games that we're going to be fucking talking about today. Something that I play a lot of. I, I, I've done so much fucking gaming. Like, God, I used to play this game called Smite which is like a, it's like a mobile, like League of Legends, but like third person. And I played so much Smite that there were pros showing up my casual games. When the Zuma revolution comes and they execute the gamers and they execute me, I'm going to be like, yeah, you know, that's reasonable. Like, can't argue with that.

[Kevin Smith]

I'll inform the council, I'll. For our next spokes council meeting, I'll bring it to the.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

That's reasonable. But you know, so, so what, what happens with this sort of thing is that, is that Michael Lewis image of SBF becomes as this gamer who's doing these completely incomprehensible things whose mind must be so unbelievably brilliant.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Because he's just like playing fucking video games all the time. And, and this gets you one of the aspects of why these people do this, this sort of like pretending to be a gamer thing. And they, and like, and like SBF like is a gamer. Right. But like why they, why they make us part of their cultural image which is that a lot of the traditional media people, even though gaming is an enormous industry, it's extremely profitable and is enormously culturally powerful, it doesn't have the same kind of critical culture around. It doesn't exist that you would see.

[Kevin Smith]

For something like movies or like respectability in some way.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

Except in like the reversed Sam Bakeman Friedwood where like the schlubbiness is part of what makes him like an eccentric genius. Right. Like, like, like that era of like Silicon Valley guy. Yeah, that's like he's, he's so different. Right? Like he's, he's, he's not like put together. And this like shows how he's like a new and innovative thinker. So it's kind of like, it's kind of like a double edged sword in like that specific way.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yeah, well this, this is all a feedback loop, right? Because like part of it not being respectable is that someone like Michael Lewis, right. Who was like as establishment of a journalist as there's ever been in. These people don't play video games. They're one of the few groups of people who just like don't game. Are these like traditional mainstream sort of access journalists. Right. And so they run into this shit and they have no fucking idea what the hell is going on. And it's just really, really easy to sort of like bamboozle them by just doing something that any Gamer, like, you know, you, like, you show a gamer like a League of Legends addict and they will instantly be able to just like, read this person like a fucking book. Also, by the way, gaming addiction, like, is like kind of a fake thing. I'm like, mostly joking here, but also like, League of Legends makes you a worse person. It simply does. You just get mad all the time. I know too many League of Legends players in my goddamn life. Holy shit. Terrible game.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah, but arcane though, right? All right, continue.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Oh, God. Okay, we're going to take an ad break and then when I come back, I'm going to explain part of why this worked, which is the unique incompetence of Michael Lewis.

[Kevin Smith]

Well, I look forward to that. I love hearing about unique incompetence, confidence.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

So we are back now. Okay. Obviously, part of the reason this works too is, you know, as I've been talking about, right, like these, these really out of touch, sort of like mainstream journalists who just don't understand an enormous market, right? But Lewis is in some sense kind of a special case because he is really, truly an unbelievably gullible dumbass. And to get an understanding of this, I'm going to go into something that Lewis, in theory, understands a lot better, which is sports. So he. Lewis has written two of the most famous books ever written about sports, right? He wrote Moneyball, which is the book that we're going to be talking about, which I'll get to in a second. And he wrote the Blind side, which is another book that like, they talk about on behind the Bastards. You can go listen to that. But I want to go in on Moneyball. Moneyball is supposed to be this book about how this underdog oath and athletics team invented like, baseball metrics and they use saber metrics to like, like, build this roster out of nothing that like, went to the playoffs and did really well.

[Kevin Smith]

And.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

And like, I'm not going to get into the extent to which this was kind of a mirage about that Oakland A's team, like, whatever. I'm not going to argue about baseball statistics. What I will argue about is that one of the characters in, in this fucking book, right, who's one of the sort of like, underdog geniuses that like Michael Lewis loves to find, right? Is this guy named Paul Podesta. He is like one of the main figures in this book. He's like, he's kind of like an assistant coach, basically.

[Kevin Smith]

What baseball team is this?

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Oh, this is the Oakland Athletics or now the Las Vegas Athletics or some shit. I Don't know. They moved to Vegas. I don't know what they're called.

[Kevin Smith]

They're called the Athletics now.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

No, no, they were originally called the Athletics. I don't know what they're called now. They've always been the. Well, everyone just calls them the Oakland A's. They've been the A's forever. But, yeah, they've also been stolen. Las Vegas has now stolen both the football team and the baseball team of Oakland.

[Kevin Smith]

Oh, see, I was thinking of the football team. Yeah. Because I was like, wait a minute. Didn't. Didn't Las Vegas.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Didn't the Raiders go there too?

[Kevin Smith]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

They stole both of them.

[Kevin Smith]

That's what I was thinking. And I am more of a baseball head than a football head, but, yeah.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

So, okay, unfortunately, we're gonna be talking about football here.

[Kevin Smith]

Bummer.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

So this guy, right, Paul Podesta, is like one of these sort of geniuses. He later goes on to be. It's kind of unclear exactly what he was doing in the organization, but he is hired by the. Be just absolutely wretched, the football franchise, the Cleveland Browns. Now, to get an understanding of how wretched the Cleveland Browns are, my opening statement for him on the Browns is it is genuinely unclear how responsible Paul Podesta is for the Browns over the course of two seasons, going 1 in 31, which is a feat of like just absolutely sucking. That is unrivaled in any other major American sports. I think until the moon crashes into the earth. Earth, no one is going to fucking go 1 in 31 in 2 cross two seasons of football again. So again, that is a 1 in 15 season followed by an 016 season. It's the second 016 season ever. Unclear how responsible for. For this he is, but what he is responsible for is the Sean Watson trade. Okay? It's like, Mia, why the are you talking about this? Part of this is also like, these people are just evil. Deshaun Watson is a serial sexual predator. I couldn't get an accurate estimate of how many women, specifically massage therapists mostly, have accused him of sexual assault. He is like one of the worst people in the entire NFL, which is a league of a lot of people who absolutely fucking suck. Shit. So. So that. That's the first thing you have to understand about Watson is that he is just really fucking, like, morally reprehensible, Right? He is like a bad enough sexual predator that the NFL actually fucking suspended him for a season. And Paul Podesta, who, again, is the guy who Michael Lewis is supposed to be like, touting as like this genius analytics guy decides that he is going to set up this deal for his team to trade for Deshaun Watson, who've been on the Texans. And again, like Garrison, like imagine how evil you have to be for the Houston Texans to trade you on fucking moral grounds.

[Kevin Smith]

Mia, do you expect me to know anything about the Houston Texans?

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

It is a team from Houston, Texas. That's, that's all you need to know about this. And they traded this guy.

[Kevin Smith]

Hey, at least it's not Austin. No offense to our Austin listeners.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

They fucking traded this guy, right? And Paul Podesta orchestrates this trade. That is three is the. It is the worst trade in the history of football. It is three first round picks, two thirds, two third round picks and a fourth round pick. And they hand this guy, who again I kind of emphasize this enough, is a serial sexual predator, right? They hand him 230 million guaranteed dollars, the largest guaranteed salary in the history of the NFL. So okay, so how does Deshaun Watson like again this guy who's being held up by the guy who like is now laundering being a gamer as like the great symbol of sort of like cultural like being a rogue outsider, right? How, how does desean Watson, his like greatest fucking project do on the field? So in his first season he basically got injured immediately. In his second season, in weeks one through five out of, out of 759 quarterback since the year 2000 to start weeks one through five out of again 759 quarterbacks, he ranks 753 out of 759 EPA for drop back 753 out of 759. They traded three first round picks for this guy. He has a mind boggling an EPA of negative 0.3. Which means every time the serial sexual predator drops back to make a pattern ass, they are expected to get 0.3 less points than an average team would.

[Kevin Smith]

How did you trick me into being on a sports episode? I only agreed to this because I thought it was video games.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Don't worry, we're. We're almost done. We're almost done with the sports part of it. But there, and I promise there is actually a reason why I'm doing this. Which is, which is the argument that's that that sports and the sports and gaming actually serve very, very similar cultural roles for the run. Right.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah, of course, Yes, I, I understand that. I can, I can see that.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yes. Also, I've always wanted to fucking complain about this on air. And this is, this is the best fucking chance we're ever going to get.

[Kevin Smith]

So Jesus fucking, like what I talk about, like movies or something, is this.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yes, yes, this is what it feels like.

[Kevin Smith]

Is this what I sound like?

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yes, it is. It is absolutely what you sound like. So this guy is like a generationally awful quarterback. They sign away basically the entire future of this team, hand this guy who is a serial sexual predator $230 billion, and this is the guy, guy that Michael Lewis expects you to think is like a analytics genius. And this all comes back to again, like, you know the sort of mythology, the basic mythology of the nerd is that they're like picked on like by the jock or whatever, right? That's like, that's like, that's like the fundamental base of their mythology, that they're like oppressed by this, but like it's just like the same masculinity all the way down. And you can watch like just like the worst people in history just trick literally exactly the same people into thinking that they're fucking geniuses by using both of these fucking affects. So I want to read something in looking at the way that this stuff functions, the way that gaming functions specifically in the culture, and why these people choose to use gaming as the sort of affect they're trying to project into the world. I want to read something by a friend of the show, Vicky Osterweil, in a piece called Game Boys. Video games also emerge at a time when technology facilitates an increasingly administered life in which alienation and isolation feel like a prerequisite to social engagement. Consumer choice is a form of control and unbounded economic competition produces widespread anxiety to structure as pleasurable the repetition, learning and boredom that one must master to live under current economic conditions. Games rely on affects, moods and ideas that are capable of producing not only forms of violence directed towards non normative groups, but also forms of intimacy, fantasy and play that point towards a horizon outside of capital's clutches. Games provide different compensations for people who are differently situated in the social hierarchy. They give white men aggrandizing power and vengeance fantasies that modulate their sense of self importance under conditions that disempower them. But they are also capable of giving everyone else the fantasy of an alternative to white supremacist patriarchal capitalism. This has been particularly clear in how queer creators, writers and fans have found space in and around games despite the organized harassment campaigns, intensely misogynist industry advertising campaigns, and widespread critical and cultural degradation of games that aren't played by CIS men. So I think the important thing here, and this is Something important to remember both for Sam Bankman Fried and also show for the construction of right wing gaming movements in general and for. What we're going to talk about with Elon Musk is that gaming is contested ground. As much as we think of gamers as right wingers, there are a lot of what you would call traditionally left limiting demographics that play video games and have made spaces here because as much as they are in some ways this force of discipline that is something that you learn, the kinds of like ability to tolerate boredom and repetition and things like that that you know, you use for work, they're also a, a thing that people use to like escape the hell world.

[Kevin Smith]

Totally.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

And like, I mean I know this, right? Like I am like I'm a Chinese trans woman who better, who's better at video games than both the people I'm going to be talking about in this story, right?

[Kevin Smith]

Like, well I, I heard, I heard his Path of Exile character was actually quite advanced, but.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Oh, we're gonna, we're, we're gonna talk about the Path of Exile character fucking that next, you know, but, but I mean it's worth, it's worth mentioning like speedrunning, right, which is a, a very, very trans genre.

[Kevin Smith]

Competitive gaming in general. Competitive fighting games.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yeah, it depends, it depends a lot on the genre. But yeah, like competitive fighting games, like yeah, melee. I, I'm going to briefly mention Sonic Fox who is a black non binary furry who's like one of the greatest fighting game players of all time, incredibly beloved, the only person history ever to beat someone 13, 0 in a first to 11. Absolute legend, right? But you know, these are the people that these sort of like fascist adjacent people are trying to drive out so they can use gaming as like, as a sort of cultural force. And this functions both in gaming and also fuck it in real life right now that these people are in power. And you know who else is in power? It's the products and services that support this podcast.

[Kevin Smith]

All hail.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

We are back. Now obviously, the other part of this, you know, we've talked a bit, we've talked mostly sort of about racial politics, but there's, there's an incredible sort of gender politics in gaming. And you know, the thing about gaming, right, is that it is to some extent a tool that people use to cope with like you know, the realization of the violence of the gender system. And like I am also doing this as much as, as the fucking weird white guy Nazi like gamer dipshit, right?

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah, that's why I boot up FF7 Remake to stare at cloud strife for hours on end when I'm feeling sad.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

But, you know, the problem with what's happening here, right, is that like the. Right, like that we're experiencing violence in sort of. In different ways, but it's like this systemic violence from the gender system that is the same system, but these people's solution to it is to blame it on women. Right? And this is, you know, I had a conversation with Vicki about this where a lot of this stuff is sort of drawn from. And like, I would compare it to, like, you know, lots and lots of people deal with social isolation, right, and deal with this violence. But, like, you know, on the other hand, most of us don't become mass shooters.

[Kevin Smith]

Most. Most. Yeah, I would say that's. That's true.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yeah. Right. And so, and so we can look at the structural forces that produces people and also just go like them, like, eat shit. Like, I'm sorry, you've. You've become Nazis. Like, fuck off.

[Kevin Smith]

Skill issue in some ways, among other environmental factors. But.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yeah, yeah, but, but also a lot of times these people aren't fucking, like, they're not dealing with shit at all mostly. Right? I mean, like, yeah, like, okay, like, Elon Musk's weird insecurity is to some extent because of the gender system, right? But like, also, he's the richest man in the world. He's the most powerful man alive. He, he's one of the most powerful people who has ever lived. And he still has the same sense of, like, aggrievement that powers all these people. And this is like one of the key things of, like, the gamer mythos, right, is that these people, people constantly believe that they're being oppressed by like, jocks or whatever. And now it's, it's been shifted into this.

[Kevin Smith]

Not anymore.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yeah. Now. Now they believe that they're being oppressed by, like, women and minorities. Right?

[Kevin Smith]

And. And it's actually. The people who are actually doing the oppression is now all of the Doge nerds at the.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

Top of the system now. It's, It's. But we have, we've had, we've had a, we've had a full uno reverso.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

But the thing is these people have always been at the top of the system, right? And like. But, but it's this affect. It's just, it's this feeling they have of their. Of them being the ones who are oppressed that like, you know, made them into the shock troopers that we saw with Gamergate. If you're going to Read one Vicky Oswald thing and I'm citing her a lot because I think she's done a lot of the best critical reporting on video games, which is a field that I feel like we just haven't done much critical with. Like, I mean, there's been lots of stuff about working conditions in the games industry, which are terrible and it's good. But like, as a medium, there hasn't been anywhere near as much critical engagement with it as there's been with like film or music. But if you're going to read one thing from her, read a piece called Goon Squad, which is about the sort of like fascist reaction to the really broken state of Cyberpunk 2077 when it came out. And one of the arguments that she makes is that these gamers are being literally being used as scabs and pinkertons against people who make video games. And this expands out to workers more broadly. They're literally being used to silence anyone who talks about the problems with this game that when Cyberpunk 2077 came out, it was literally giving people seizures because it was. It had just like fucking strobing flashes and bullshit in it that they didn't warn anyone about because it was a broken, shitty game. And you know, they're also used for just like anti queer and like anti feminist harassment campaigns. And that's, that's how they're sort of mobilized in real life too. And that gives you an insight into why these people sort of like do this signaling, right, Is that they're also like signaling to their base that like, I am one of you, et cetera, et cetera, like, you should fucking support me for this. This now pivoting a little bit. So when, when I was first talking about this episode, I kept on accidentally saying Sam Altman instead of Sam Bankman Freed.

[Kevin Smith]

Because like many. Yeah, many such cases.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yeah, like the last, the last white boy scammer named Sam has been replaced by a. An additional subsequent white boy scammer named Sam. And it turns out though I looked up Sam Altman and he has also been doing this like, gamer stick thing, like specifically in interviews with Elon Musk.

[Kevin Smith]

Musk, yeah.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yeah, it's fascinating. They're both fucking doing it now. And this brings us to the man who has spent the most time publicly lying about fucking video games recently, which is Elon Musk. And Elon Musk is like, not really a gamer, I would say. Like he sort of plays video games.

[Kevin Smith]

He's a ketamine user. He's a Twitter power user. He is the shadow president.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yeah. The richest man in the world. Richest man who has ever lived.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah. Also that.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

But he's, he is really obsessed with everyone thinking that he is like he's an elite video game player in like multiple games. He's obsessed with this.

[Kevin Smith]

He's also, I believe the term is a meme Lord, if I'm reading this right.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Oh God. One of his Path of Exile, two characters, I didn't put it in the script because it's actually not the one we're going to talk about, but one of his characters in that game was named Kekius Maximus. So like this is the level of mind that.

[Kevin Smith]

That is one of his favorite names. In his White House office. Office. He has a Kekius Maximus portrait hanging behind his desk which is an AI generated image of like Pepe the Frog and like in like Roman, like, like Caesar attire.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

I hate everything.

[Kevin Smith]

So yeah, this is the guy who runs the country now.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

Oops.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

So Elon Musk has been lying about being good at video games and the, the preface to everything we're going to get to is that he has actually he, he's like for a long time been doing a like I'm a gamer thing. So his, his kind of problems and I think really the origin of the weird paying people to make him look like he's good at video games thing that we're going to get to in a second. This is something that that Blue sky user gay Dog reminded me of because I'd forgot he, he has so many gaming scandals. I'd forgotten about this one, which is that he at one point posted his build for the hit game Elden Ring, which is very difficult game and he had two different shields build equipped which makes literally no sense. It's like over encumbered. Like it's okay. Like the, the best explanation I've tried to, I figured out for like how bad at this game he is is that posting this build on Twitter is the video game equivalent of going like, hey, look at my sports car stepping into like the shittiest car you've ever seen. And then like slamming the accelerator with the parking brake on.

[Kevin Smith]

Hey, I love the Mazda Miata.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Like that's that, that, that's like the gaming equivalent. Everyone who looked at it immediately was like dumbest man who has ever lived. This man has no idea what the fuck he is doing. He is just like, like unable to understand basic fundamental systems about this game. Like just baffling, incomprehensible bullshit. And this was like kind of A scandal for him. It wasn't like a huge one, but like, especially like this is one that sort of broke onto the left a lot and people were giving him shit about it. So the next time he wanted to brag about having been good at video games games, he very clearly like, paid someone else to like, accomplish some stuff in this game called Diablo 4. I'm not going to talk about Diablo stuff much because I'm a Path of Exile player, not a Diablo player. The Diablo and pathfax are like very much the same kind of game. Basically, like, you click somewhere and your character goes there and it. You click other things that it does attacks. But famously, like this year, he pretended to be one of like the. The best path of Exile 2 players in the world world. And he was doing this on his Alt account, which is. Has the handle, It's Cyber Gamer 420. But the all the E's are threes. So it's CYB3R G A M3R420.

[Kevin Smith]

Wait, wait, wait. Say, say. Say that again.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

It's at CYB3R G A M3R420. So.

[Kevin Smith]

So I think I found something. I think the 420 at the end is actually a. A reference to Hitler's birthday. April 20th.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

God damn it. So, okay. He, like, claims to have one of the, like, the best characters in hardcore, which is a mode of Path of Exile where if you die once, you get kicked out of it. So it's very hard. It's to like, prove that he actually did this. This. He like, does a live stream where he tries to play Path of Exile, like on a Twitter live stream, and it is immediately obvious that, like, he has no idea what he's doing. Like, it's not just obvious. People who play the game. I hadn't played path of exile 2 at this point, right. I had only played the original one like a decade ago, like a little bit of it. And I took one look at what he was doing and immediately was like, this guy has never played this game before. Like, has no idea what he's fucking doing. Like, it was so unbelievably obvious. Like he like walked past one of the most valuable currencies in the game. Just, like, walked past it, didn't notice it. It's like staggeringly obvious. Anyone who plays video games, this guy has no idea what the fuck he's doing. And this actually explodes on him. And eventually he's forced to reveal that he paid someone to level his path of exile 2 account. And then he claims that, he never claims that it was his path of exile 2 account. And this genuinely has been a real problem for him because it pissed off like the entire gaming system seen. So you have videos with like millions of views from guys like Asthma Gold who was like a, he's a very famous right wing streamer who like sucks ass. Like is like a, a turbo right winger, like spends his time screaming about how like black people in video games is DEI and woke and how it's destroying the video game industry and Asthma Gold is watching this video and being like this guy is a lying piece of what the. And like everyone fucking reacts like this. It's, it's, it's genuinely wild. I've never actually seen people like react to this to like, to Elon like this and like, like again like this is his allies on the right taking one look at this and being like wait, this guy's just like lying. Now what's interesting about, about this to some extent is that like again his, his whole thing here is he's trying to like pretend that he's like a pro gamer or whatever, but his affect is still largely targeted towards non gamers gamers in the sense that like there's no way, I mean, okay, I guess it is possible that he genuinely is so ignorant that he believed that he could just pretend to be a top level of path of Exile player on a stream using someone else's account. But like there's no way anyone who plays video games could fall for that. And, and a lot of people he talks to about this stuff are people like Joe Rogan who aren't like gamer TM people. Right? It's like a lot of, it's a lot of people who aren't gamers that he's like sort of hyping up his reputation with. And so he's weirdly on the one hand, yeah, he is signaling to his sort of fascist base space, but on the other hand he's trying to use the sort of like cultural cachet of, of gaming as like this sort of renegade right wing phenomena to like launder his reputation. Except he up because he, he, you know, spent all of this time trying to like pretend to be a gamer. But the thing about gamers is that like there is literally an entire genre of video like on YouTube that is very, very popular that is just like people exposing people who cheat in video games, cheated records of video games. And Elon has walked just like directly into this bear trap, right?

[Kevin Smith]

And that means we got him folks. Mission accomplished. Wrap it up we beat Elon Musk.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Got him.

[Kevin Smith]

It's over.

[Robert Evans]

He's.

[Kevin Smith]

He's been cast out of civil society for the high crime of pretending to play a video game. He's lost all respect among. Among the farthest reaches of the Right. So what's next?

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

We have what he.

[Kevin Smith]

He has.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

He has one more scandal that we actually have to talk about.

[Kevin Smith]

Is this about the one video game he hasn't played? Which is the funniest Elon Musk gamer story, in my opinion.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Which, which are you. Which one are you talking about?

[Kevin Smith]

That's the one that, that, that he. He had to publicly announce that he. He does not play GTA 5.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Oh, that was funny. I forgot about that.

[Kevin Smith]

Because he doesn't like, quote, unquote, doing crime and GTA 5, quote, required shooting police officers in the opening scene. Just couldn't do it, unquote.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Oh, I completely forgot about that.

[Kevin Smith]

So that proves that at least he has some integrity.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

God.

[Kevin Smith]

Now some, some gamers might be sick individuals acting out, you know, violence, power fantasies, but at least Musk has some integrity to not harm police officers in GTA 5. That really shows that there's like a moral compass behind all of this, you know, at times, strange behavior.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yeah, that's also like. That's also him signaling to like a different, like the weird Christian part of the base that's like, oh, violence and video games is bad.

[Kevin Smith]

Which way?

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Because he's trying to signal to all of his groups simultaneously and all of them are like, this guy is a loser who sucks ass and we hate.

[Kevin Smith]

It is pretty embarrassing. That doesn't bring me much joy because again, he is the most powerful man in the world. No, but it is mildly amusing.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yeah, but, but I. So that there is a sort of serious note to this, which is that like, the pushback he is getting here is like, I think actually kind of is significant. So the last thing I want to talk about is him pretending to have been like a Quake Pro, which is the thing that he did.

[Kevin Smith]

Quake Pro.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Um, and there's a very interesting video about this by the YouTuber Karl Jobst, who is like, his thing is like people who fake, who like, fake things in video games, basically. And he is like, not a leftist. He's like, like a center right guy, basically. I mean, there's arguments about exactly how far right he is, but he did a video about, about Elon claiming to be a Quake player and what he found. So Elon, like, apparently did actually play in an early Quake tournament, but none of the good players were there. And he, he came. His team came in second, but they came in second because they had better WI fi than everyone else else. And so they had less latency, which made them invincible until they ran into a team that also had good WI fi. And then he got destroyed, which I just, I just think is funny, right? That's like a classic Elon Musk story, which is he, he, he. He has this thing claiming that he's like a gamer legend, but it's actually because he had more money than everyone else until he ran to someone who had the same amount of money that he did and just got destroyed. But the reason I bring this up is that, like, at the end of this video, Jobs just like, goes on this whole thing about how. And this is like a stronger statement against Elon Musk than I have seen from anything in the mainstream press, where he literally goes on a thing where he says, yeah, every single thing that Elon Musk has been saying here is a lie. And because he is just obviously lying out of his ass about literally everything in a field that I know, this means that I literally can't trust him when he says anything about any other fucking field that I don't know. And this is a real shift, right? I have never seen a mainstream journalist write down Elon Musk is just clearly a liar liar about this. And so you should not be able to trust anything else he fucking says. This is a larger degree of pushback than anything else ever fucking seen outside of, like, the left about what Elon Musk is doing. And like, just the willingness to just be like, this guy is a fucking. Just, just a serial liar. Like, everything he says is a lie. He literally calls him a con, like, says his activities like a con man. He says the things that he's saying are like, either lies or delusional. There is a kind of like, shift happening right now where people, like, really are turning on him. There was a thing that happened literally today where Ubisoft, you know, Ubisoft is a famously, like, not a leftist company, right? Like, they've done a lot of horrible up sexual assault stuff. So Elon's mad at Ubisoft because one of their games has a black guy as a. As like a character in it. And, and the. Literally, the official Assassin's Creed account replied to one of his tweets saying, is that what the guy playing your path of exile 2 account told you? You in, like, replied in reply to a thing about Hasan. Like, we are, we are genuinely seeing a shift in this space Right. This thing that had been like a really, really consistent base of support for people like Elon is kind of fracturing against him and is sort of being polarized against him by just like the fact that he's just. Is so obviously cynically pandering to them and how unbelievably transparent it is. And like, obviously, like, I don't think like the gamers are going to like fucking rise up or whatever, whatever, but the actual serious point to all of this, other than like looking at the ways of fascism, like why these people do this, and like game versus like a demographic that's important to these people, is that like the way that you destroy a coalition by. This isn't necessarily by flipping everyone over to your side. Right? That doesn't happen that often. But the. One of the ways you can do this. And this is, this is, you know, to take a really, really dramatic example, this is how the Bolsheviks won the October Revolution. They got their opponents to allies to stay home. And that was enough. Enough people just staying on the fucking sidelines when the Bolsheviks like came for Kerenzi's government was enough for them to take power. And I think like the actual, like the actual serious point of this is that the only way that we get out of this mess is by just systematically tearing away these people's coalition so that when the confrontation with these people comes, there are enough people who would be their supporters who just fucking stay home home that they can, they can be stopped.

[Kevin Smith]

So this is at Mia Wong publicly calling for the start of Gamergate two.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Gamergate two is already happening. Damn it. This is Gamergate three.

[Kevin Smith]

This is an. An open call to, to begin gamergate 2.5 right now. On behalf of Mia Wong, make sure you at Mia.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Oh no.

[Kevin Smith]

And then hopefully, hopefully it'll finally usher in the American Bolshevik revolution after we get enough gamers to stay home or even better rise up, right? We can make some kind of graphic with like a fist holding a controller or a keyboard if you're a nerd about it.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Gamers are the Cossacks. We've got to get them to not back the regime. That's actually the February revolution where they stood down, but, you know, same point, same point. Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

Come on, Mia. Geez.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Look, I am one of the biggest things of like people need to remember that, that, that Lenin did not overthrow the tsar. He overthrew Kerensky, who was kind of a socialist e guy who was from the provisional government in between the first. Okay, we're done. We're done here. We're done here. We're fucking out. We're leaving.

[Kevin Smith]

What games are you playing?

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

What games am I playing? Path of exile 2. Don't play Brotato. It will consume your Life. Okay, play RoboQuest. RoboQuest is great. RoboQuest dares to ask the question. What if like the art style of Borderlands was used for a game about rehabilitative justice, but also you're doing a roguelike with like Doom's combat.

[Kevin Smith]

That sounds very gay, so I probably can't do that then. I do Hell Divers two nearly every Monday. Armored Core six, Armor Core six rules.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Love that game. Love that game.

[Kevin Smith]

Sonic X Shadow Generations, Final Fantasy 7. And I'm waiting for Mecca break to come out for like their, their official release now that the beta is closed. Unfortunately the character selection is very Gooner coded.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Many, many such cases.

[Kevin Smith]

So I made sure to make the small, smallest, the smallest chest size available on my, on my model. But the gameplay is fun.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Oh, this has been, it could happen here. I, Good Lord, they, they pay me for this. I, I, I had, I had to watch so many videos about Deshaun Watson and clips of, of, of Elon Musk playing video games for this.

[Kevin Smith]

Oh.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Is this a good time? It's me, Dylan Mulvaney and my dear friend Joe Locke from Heartstopper.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

And Agatha all along is my very.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

First guest on my brand new podcast, the Dylan Hour. It's musical mayhem and it is going to be so much fun.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

I like a man.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

You like a man.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

What do I like, Joe?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

You like a man too.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

We often. There's quite similar.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

There's some cross pollination happening in here.

[Kevin Smith]

Not like.

[Robert Evans]

No.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Have we. No, no, not yet.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

Never say never. I cannot wait for all you girls.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Gays and they's to join me on this extremely special pink confection of a podcast.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

There is so much darkness in this world. And what I think we could all.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Use more of is a little joy. Listen to the Dylan hour on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

Listen to your podcasts.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Love ya.

[Kevin Smith]

Hey kids, it's me, Kevin Smith. And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith. That's my daughter man, who my wife has always said is just a beardless dickless version of me. And that's the name of our podcast, Beardless Me. I'm the old one, I'm the young one. And every, every week we try to make each other laugh really hard.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Sounds innocent, doesn't it?

[Kevin Smith]

A lot of cussing, a lot of bad language.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

It's for adults only.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Or listen to it with your kid. Could be a family show.

[Kevin Smith]

We're not quite sure. We're still figuring it out. It's a work in progress.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Listen to Beardless me on the iHeartRadio.

[Kevin Smith]

App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Ow.

[Kevin Smith]

Go slower. From Blumhouse TV, iHeart podcasts and Ember 20. Come see an all new fictional comedy podcast series. Join the flighty Damien Hirst as he unravels the mystery of his vanished boyfriend and Santi was gone. I've been spending all my time looking for answers about what happened to Santi and what's the way to find a missing person. Sleep with everyone he knew, obviously.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Hmm.

[Kevin Smith]

Pillow talk, the most unwelcome window into the human psyche. Follow our out of his element hero as he engages in a series of ill conceived investigative hookups. Mama always used to say God gave me gumption in place of a gag reflex. And as I was about to learn, no amount of showering can wash your hands of a bad hookup.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Now take a big whiff, my bruh.

[Kevin Smith]

Listen to the hookup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Robert Evans]

This is John Cameron Mitchell and my new fiction podcast series, Cancellation island stars Holly Hunter as Karen, a wellness influencer who launches a rehab for the recently canceled. In the future we will all be canceled for 15 minutes, but don't worry, we'll take you from broke to woke or your money back. Cancel Appalachian Island's revolutionary rehab therapies like bad touch football, anti racism spin class, and mandatory ayahuasca ceremonies are designed to force the council to confront their worst impulses. But everything starts to fall apart when people start disappearing.

[Kevin Smith]

Karen, where have you brought us Cancellation.

[Robert Evans]

Island, where a second chance might just be your last. Listen to Cancellation island on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Kevin Smith]

This is it could happen here. Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by James. James Stout and Robert Evans.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, you are.

[Kevin Smith]

This week we are covering the week of March 20th to March 26th.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Short week because we did a late recording last week.

[Kevin Smith]

Yep, we did. So it's minus one day. If my math is correct. It's been a hard week for many of us because we all really care about group chats and group chat Security is super important.

[Garrison Davis]

Oh, yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

To kind of anyone involved in politics. And whenever we see a breach of this magnitude, it's really a warning and like a threat to all of us. So it has. It has been. It has been a tough week.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Like a threat to one is a threat to all. So, like, the way I see it, any group chat that gets compromised.

[Kevin Smith]

First they came for Houthi PC small group.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, that's right.

[Kevin Smith]

Next they're gonna come.

[Garrison Davis]

Could be any of us. Could be any of us. Jeffrey Goldberg could be lurking in your small group. That's you and your girlfriend talking about what kind of pizza to order. It could be there, reporting for the Atlantic. You wouldn't know. Unless you, like, looked at who was in there and saw his name, then you would know, which is true of all of the people in the Houthi PC small group.

[Kevin Smith]

I guess it is actually pretty easy.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

You don't know, Maybe Jeffrey Gobbard's signal name is like CIA super spy or something, and everyone just assumed he belonged there.

[Garrison Davis]

I'm gonna start at the beginning because I do assume that actually, as impossible as it sounds to those of us who, like, wake up and imbibe fucking social media in the morning, like an addict takes their first hit of crack cocaine, but in a way that's less healthy for both our hearts and our brains. A decent number of people who listen to this podcast have just kind of like, heard vaguely like some bits about this.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, they're wondering what the fuck we're talking about.

[Garrison Davis]

What are you doing? What are you guys doing? This.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

So we're going to talk about this group chat. So first off, a couple of basics. So Signal is an app that is end to end encrypted. That means that if you have Signal and your buddy has Signal and you're messaging each other, it's encrypted. And it is very hard at this point. Unless one of your phones is directly compromised by a non state actor or an ex who's really good with computers, no one else can see what you're messaging each other. So if you and a friend are like planning what to order on fucking GrubHub tonight, when you go play Super Smash Brothers or whatever, whatever, you can keep that secret. Or if you and a friend are planning what substances to buy that the government might not want you buying, you can keep that secret. Or if you and your friend simply don't want various media companies taking every detail and phone carriers taking every detail of your life's conversations and turning that into analytics data, you can stop them from doing that. And if maybe one day you might be engaged in speech that the government might not like, you can continue to engage in that speech privately without danger.

[Kevin Smith]

Or with less danger.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, or with. With less. With as little danger as it is possible to do.

[Kevin Smith]

Especially if your messages automatically explode after anywhere between five seconds to one week.

[Garrison Davis]

Right.

[Kevin Smith]

Which is a feature signal has.

[Garrison Davis]

Yes. You can automatically set it to delete stuff over a period of time you want to. If you're going to use it, turn off the thing where it, like, pushes messages so that you can, like, see visible notifications. Yeah. Notification. Turn them off. Because that's a. That. That'll fuck shit up.

[Kevin Smith]

Because then your operating system. System can read the messages without the encryption.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

Similarly, never open a QR code. This is the, really, the only way that signal can. Can get compromised on, like, scale right now, beyond, like, physical infiltration. Right. Like what accidentally happened with Houthi PC Smell Group. But the main other way that signal can get. Can get compromised is through malicious QR codes and unknown links. So really be careful about links, as always on the Internet, and especially be skeptical of QR codes.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. There's a quote from Herman Goering. I think it was from Herman Goering. When I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver. And I have adapted that Goering quote to the modern era. When I hear QR code, I reach for my Glock 19. That's right. Do not use QR codes.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

The work of Satan. Let's explain what Houthi's PC small group is for the people who.

[Garrison Davis]

I'm getting to it. So you've got. You've got this app which is normally used by, and has been used for a long time by, like, protesters and dissidents and journalists to communicate with sources, because it's very secure. The Trump administration takes office. One thing that they are annoyed about is that when you are government employees, even if you're doing top secret shit, especially if you're doing top secret shit, the kind of meetings about national security, planning for, like, military actions that you are supposed to only have in something called a skiff. And a skiff is basically a room in, you know, the West Wing, I think, or the Pentagon. Right. I'm not 100% sure where all the skiffs are, but it's like a room that is incredibly secure, and it is the only place that you are supposed to have certain kinds of conversations. And in fact, if you are having one of those kinds of conversations in a skiff no one, not even the president or the vice president is allowed to have a phone in there. It is a very strict rule. You don't take phones into the skiff because none of them are fucking secure. Now, the problem is all these communications. All of this stuff is documented and potentially FOIA able. Maybe not immediately because there's always security concerns. They have the ability to redact stuff.

[Kevin Smith]

But in 20 years, perhaps.

[Garrison Davis]

But at some point, yeah, it might.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Be archived, even if it's not foiable.

[Garrison Davis]

People who are in charge of our military now didn't like that and were like, hey, hey, what if we all just did it through a single group? And they did. To plan for an attack that started March 15th against the Houthis. Now, you will remember the Houthis from the episode James and I did. I mean, from other stuff, too, because they're all over the news from, you.

[Kevin Smith]

Know, the Houthis, the Houthis stuff.

[Garrison Davis]

James and I did an episode recently about irregular naval warfare. And you check it out. That's all still pretty relevant.

[Kevin Smith]

Better known for their other work.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, better known for their other work. The Biden administration was like, we can probably take care of these guys with airstrikes. And it didn't really work. And the Trump administration was like, we can do a better job of taking these guys out with airstrikes. And at this point, it's too early to say if it worked or not, but I'm going to guess probably didn't.

[Kevin Smith]

Probably not.

[Garrison Davis]

Just generally, given the history, maybe they say they killed a lot more high value targets and top missile guys, main.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Missile guy, quote, I don't know.

[Garrison Davis]

I'm not. I don't know. I'm not privy to the information they're working off of or how much it matters at this point. Right. So we'll see.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

You're not in that signal chat, Robert.

[Garrison Davis]

I'm not in that signal chat. They have not accidentally aired.

[Kevin Smith]

I'm in too many signal chats, frankly.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

I could be. And I might not know.

[Kevin Smith]

We all are in too many.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

I might be in several government ones and be totally unaware of it because there's too many notifications on my phone.

[Kevin Smith]

That shit's muted. I'm not seeing that.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

So they decide we're going to plan an attack on some Houthis, we're going to be hitting them with stuff and we should probably all get. We need to get all of these different kind of people from different chunks of the, you know, the government together. So we got to have JD Vance and His representative. Because usually Vance is too busy to respond. And we got to have the Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, and his representative. We got to have the dni, Tulsi Gabbard, her representative. We got to have the head of the CIA, his representative, you know, that kind of thing. There's a few more people in there.

[Kevin Smith]

Mark Rubio.

[Garrison Davis]

Mark Rubio, right. Sex estate, you know. And his representative, Stephen Miller. Stephen Miller. I don't know that Miller had a representative. He feels like he handles a lot of this stuff on his own, but. Yeah, on his phone. Too much. Stephen Miller, Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

Chronically online. Stephen Miller, Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

And you have the head of. I think CENTCOM was in there. Anyway, you got all these people in there, and while they're setting this up, all the invites are going out. Because the way you do it with Signal is you click a button that says, like, start a new group, you name the new group. In this case, they named the group Houthi. PC Small group. Right. And shit. What does PC stand?

[Kevin Smith]

Politically correct. Which, honestly, I thought that we were over.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, you'd think so, huh?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Don't say any slurs in the group chat. That's what. It's just a reminder.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah. No slurs in the small group chat.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Planning committee, I'm guessing.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, planning committee. Houthi planning committee, Small group. Sorry, I had that written down somewhere. So they make this group chat and they invite a bunch of people. And here's the way. One of the ways Signal works is that, like, if you're just importing your content contacts into Signal, it'll find the guys who have Signal and it'll just like show you, based on whatever your name you have for them in their phone, right. That they're on Signal and you can just invite them. Otherwise you can set what your Signal name is going to be. And so when people type in your phone number or whatever, they'll see that. Or if you send them an invite, that's the name. The name they'll see. And this brings us. I got to take an aside to talk about a guy who is not a member of the Trump administration and who is not a member of government. A man named Jeffrey gold. Born in 1965, he is currently the co editor of the Atlantic. Prior to this, he had what some people would call an illustrious career. He grew up in Malvern and Long Island.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Surely Malvern.

[Garrison Davis]

And I'm. Malvern. Yeah. I'm looking at his wiki here, which just has the line that his neighborhood was mainly Catholic and he described it as a wasteland of Irish pogromists.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Oh, geez. I bet he had a fun childhood.

[Garrison Davis]

So.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Okay.

[Garrison Davis]

Interesting, interesting, Jeffrey, Fascinating stuff there.

[Kevin Smith]

Interesting.

[Garrison Davis]

So after college, or kind of while he's in college, he leaves and he goes to Israel because he wants to serve in the IDF during the intifada. The first one as a prison guard.

[Kevin Smith]

Jesus Christ.

[Garrison Davis]

Which is where Palestinian participants in the intifa were being held. And yeah, he had like an interesting conversation with this PLO leader who was also like a math teacher who I guess they were able to like discuss their Zionism or whatever in some way that he found useful. Anyway, weird guy. Not a. I bring this up to be like, not a left wing radical.

[Kevin Smith]

Like not one of quote, unquote, our guys.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

Right.

[Garrison Davis]

Not one of our guys. Not a guy who's probably broadly opposed to most of and in fact to most of what the Trump administration is.

[Kevin Smith]

Doing over, especially with the airstrikes, frankly.

[Garrison Davis]

Yes. Now he has pissed off. It's fair to say he has really pissed off Trump a number of. Of times. Right. Because he wrote some articles. He wrote that 2020 article in the Atlantic about when Trump said. Got caught saying that Americans who died in wars are losers and suckers.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yes.

[Garrison Davis]

Which is, you know, based on sourcing that he had. So he's also attracted their ire. But he's again, generally, I would say, like more on the bootlickery side of things. Like he's just kind of like a NAT SEC Cheerleader. Right. That. That would be a fair way to describe Jeffrey.

[Kevin Smith]

Totally.

[Garrison Davis]

I don't know that he would entirely disagree with that description of himself, you know.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah. Like a neolib guy. Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

That said, he's not, he's not so much of one that he's unwilling to report critical stuff, which is what happens here. So he gets an invite on his phone that it just takes him into this PC Houthi small group and people have done the work. There's another guy in the Trump administration.

[Kevin Smith]

Whose initials are J.C. john Greenbrier, I believe.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, I think it was John Greenbrier and the person who, because there was some debate initially about like, who invited him because after this came out, there were allegations that he snuck his way in or whatever. We now know, based on the evidence that he was inadvertently invited by National Security Advisor Michael Waltz. Right.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

As evidenced by the signal. Screenshots.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Garrison Davis]

There's lots of screenshots. Jeffrey did his, you know, the job.

[Kevin Smith]

Of document eventually, right? Yes.

[Garrison Davis]

Well, he documented it right away.

[Kevin Smith]

Yes.

[Garrison Davis]

So now here's the thing from the beginning here. Jeffrey is having the natural reaction. I will say this for all my critiques of him. He has the reaction I think any minimally competent journalist would have. Someone's fucking with me.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

This is like, something to get me. Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Like, you don't get invited into a chat with the SEC Def. And the head of the CIA planning a military strike. Right. That just doesn't happen.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

I've been a journalist for a while. That's not occurred to me.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, it's not. Does not really go down. So he's, like, trying to figure out what the fuck's going on, like, what's happening. And he's like. He's making a note. He's documenting stuff. Is there. And they're talking about, like, weapons packages. Like, these are the kind of weapons. This is where they're striking. And then as the strikes go in, they're being like, this guy headed into his girlfriend's house. We're hitting it. House blew up. He's dead. Right.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

That particular exchange was very funny because the way he phrased it was like. It completely baffled JD Vance.

[Garrison Davis]

Yes.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Let me pull this up, because it was. It was pretty funny.

[Garrison Davis]

No, please, please.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Michael Waltz, VP Full stop. Building collapsed. Full stop. Stop. Had multiple positive id Full stop. Pete Carilla, the ic Amazing job. JD Vines replies. What? Michael Waltz typing too fast. Full stop. The first target, M. Dash, their top missile guy. M Dash. We have positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend's building. And now it's collapsed. And then JD Ro replies, Excellent. @ this point, Michael Waltz responds with the fist emoji. American flag emoji. Emoji. Flame emoji.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. So it's great. And once it becomes very clear what's happening, number one, rather than stay in the group, see if maybe he could get invited to other groups. Just kind of, like, keep track of what was going on. Again, being a guy who's, like, primary concern. And I really do think Goldberg's primary concern here was the security of US Soldiers.

[Kevin Smith]

Like, the national security of the United States.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

As opposed to, like, is any of this legal? Are they, like, what? Like, his is just, like, these people are not being secure, like, with. I mean, like, this. This could. If the wrong person got invited into a group like this, it could potentially endanger the lives of airmen and stuff. That's not my primary concern with all this. Right. But that is his. You know, and so he hops out of the group, he leaves, and he puts out this article, and he redacts most other than the what's happened which is a story in a and of itself. He like goes out of his way. Like there's people who are like in intelligence that are in this, that he has their names and he's like, I am not naming them because they're serving intelligence officers. And that's a no, no. He doesn't like specifically give up other than that this is happening anything that's like particularly dangerous. Right. But this is the kind of thing as soon as it comes out, obviously it's a, it's a Fuhrer and it's unlike most of the time when everybody gets like pissed, it seems like it might have some legs because it's just such a what the fuck moment. Right.

[Kevin Smith]

And it's so contrary to like so much of the messaging coming from, from the Trump administration regarding you know, like digital security, Hillary's emails, prosecuting individual soldiers.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

For any like, like you know, losing a night vision goggle. Right. Is kind of the classic one leaking.

[Kevin Smith]

Leaking information, how this administration's going to, going to, going to crack down on all information weeks, you know, that sort of stuff.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

At one point he says we are clear for opsec, which I thought was pretty funny.

[Kevin Smith]

The funniest message in this signal group is that we're all good on opsec. Yeah, that he says in a group chat with a journalist.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah, it's super funny. Everything that's happening here is very funny. I basically want to move on to like what's, what's going to happen next, which is they are going to try to nuke Jeffrey Goldberg. Like they're going to try to send him to a prison. Prison. If not a literal like El Salvadorian work camp. Right. Like that, that is going to be their next goal here.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, he embarrassed these people like to an extent that it's, I mean anyone in uniform would have been court martialed for this kind of security fuck up.

[Garrison Davis]

Oh yeah, yeah. I mean in times of war in the past, if like the version of this had happened in World War II, they would have just executed whatever soldier did this.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Like, yeah, you don't have to be a spy if you're incompetent enough to just bumble into shit. It's the same reason result. I did want to address really quickly like a couple of things. One, I saw this USA Today article that was like, oh, it's so relatable that they made this mistake of adding someone to the group chat. That was not the mistake. The mistake was coordinating things that should be classified, things that should be quote Unquote, high side on personal devices using signal, as opposed to a State Department or government issued device which doesn't have your personal contacts to avoid all this. Like a device which is not hackable, a device which has not been exposed to QR codes, for example.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah. Make sure that in your context there's not two guys named jg.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

So you might add the wrong JG to your Yemen bombing chat.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Haven't we all added the wrong person to a group chat? And it's like, I mean, yeah, but I've never like, bombed Yemen.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

Like bombing Yemen.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, yeah. It's not the same thing. It's not the same thing as a birthday party.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Like, I have two friends named John and I added the wrong one to a group about, like planning a mutual friend's birthday party. But, like, again, minimal damage.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, yeah. No, no service people's lives are put at risk. I did also want to point out this. At one point, Waltz says, or Michael Walls, who's a National Security adviser.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Not, not, not the other one.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, that would have been pretty funny. They have him as well, who was just in there.

[Garrison Davis]

They're like, yeah, he seems cool. Put him in the group.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

It dude likes to shoot pheasants, apparently.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Seems nice.

[Kevin Smith]

He seems to be friends with J.D. vance. Wouldn't be surprising.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

So one of the things Walsh says, which is bizarre, is that European navies are incapable of defeating Houthi weapon systems, which just isn't true. There was a coalition of 20 different states running operations in the Red Sea last year.

[Garrison Davis]

And against, like, France has a navy, they've got nuclear submarines, they could end the world.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Just to cite one example, HMS diamond, which is a British ship, shot down a Houthi missile last year. The UK also airstruck Houthi targets last year.

[Garrison Davis]

Like, I've watched the UK carry out airstrikes, I feel like they're very capable.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Look, what the Houthis have is Iranian 358s to just get really nerdy for a second. Right. Which are not really a threat to modern fighter aircraft. It's like a loitering munition. Maybe a drone.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

But no aircraft. Not a manned or personed aircraft.

[Garrison Davis]

The primary point of how the Houthis are conducting their strikes is not we're going to knock all of these ships out of the sea. It's. It will, it will create an unsustainable insurance situation for a lot of merchants if there's just always kind of missiles, even if we never really, or almost Never hit anybody. That doesn't really matter. You got to deal with the insurance thing.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

They're going to make that much more expensive and that, that, that particular part of global trade much more difficult to conduct. So far, the Trump administration has doubled down on its response. This is pretty funny. Carolyn Levitt on Twitter X, I guess called Goldberg.

[Kevin Smith]

She's the White House press secretary, I believe.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Press. That's correct, yeah. White House press secretary. She called Goldberg a, quote, Trump hater and also claimed the story was a, quote, hoax and a, quote, sensationalist spin. They are also right now claiming that, quote, war plans and, quote, attack plans are different things. The information they leaked was too specific to constitute a war plan plan. Both of these things are kind of ludicrous claims. Right. Like, very clearly, this is stuff that should be classified very clearly. It's stuff that put those people's lives at risk in the event that the Houthis had any means to respond to, like F18s, which I don't think they do really. Like, I don't know. But, you know, Iran, who, who absolutely is a state backer of the Houthis, does have the ability in, at least in theory. They, they kind of haven't. They've kind of shown their ass a bit in the last year or two with Israeli strikes in Iran.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, it's not the ability to easily interdict these kind of strikes, but certainly the ability and more importantly, kind of the ability to survive them, to mitigate the damage that they can do.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Sure, sure. To go underground or go somewhere else. And those planes are vulnerable when they're at certain points in their trajectory, I think. So it's generally very poor to broadcast exactly what you're doing when, where and how.

[Garrison Davis]

It's kind of just a basic of military stuff that you really don't want people to know exactly when you're sending dudes in to do what?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, yeah, there was a very funny meme going around which basically had like, imagined if the same discussion had been had about d Day in 1944. And yeah, that wouldn't have gone so.

[Garrison Davis]

Well if they had broadcast a lot of great posts. I'm looking at one by Katie Nautopoulos on Twitter right now. Having read through the full Houthi PC Small Group blogs, I've come to the sad realization that I am the JD Vance of my group chats. Overly emotional, slightly unprofessional, confused by what everyone else is saying because I won't scroll up continually derails plans with later J.

[Kevin Smith]

That's so Good. Oh, that's so good.

[Garrison Davis]

It is. That is. That is really funny.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

That is brutal. Yeah. It is interesting to see their dynamics. It's interesting to see kind of Stephen Miller seemed to have the decisive word on like, let's go ahead with this. Miller.

[Garrison Davis]

Oh, yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Speaking directly for the President.

[Garrison Davis]

That's it. What's interesting is no one ever says the President has approved this. The President has said, do this. Like, Miller says something along the lines of like, we're going forward with this, or I've been told we're going forward with this. Which is again, not in terms of like, it's a very Hitler way of doing things.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Right.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yeah, right.

[Garrison Davis]

Like, there's this, I talk about this in the show. There's this decades long debate about like, did Hitler literally order the Holocaust or did he just kind of like keep making it clear to people that if they kept moving in a more holocausty direction that would like endear them to him?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Intentionality aspects of both are true. But like, yeah, this is definitely kind of an example, that latter thing where Trump is probably, probably like, yeah, somebody should probably fuck up those Houthis. And then Stephen Miller goes like, yeah, Trump said, you know, we're good, keep moving forward. But he's also, Miller's not dumb. He's not going to say Trump said to do this.

[Kevin Smith]

He's going to say he's been delegating so much more than his first term to the point where his presidency is just projecting a certain vibe that then other people have to carry out all of the details for.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, this is very similar to the Hitler regime.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah, yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

There is a term for this at the time in the Third Reich. It's called working towards the Fuhrer. Right. Where you're not going to get direct guidelines. You're supposed to figure out what he wants and move closer to it.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah, no, exactly. Yeah. No, that, that's kind of been his, his new governing style.

[Garrison Davis]

It's a lot smarter in terms of.

[Kevin Smith]

Like, just like, you know, getting documents to sign and then projects certain, certain like slogans or vibes that then everyone who works under him, which is at this point maybe like roughly 200 people tops, have to all like figure out to like how to enact this thing that they think he wants.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. Like even to the extent that he himself was, was saying he didn't sign the evocation of the Alien Enemies act that Rubio did and his signature is on it in the federal record, but clearly it's kind of a Rubio or it seems from that. That it's a Rubio concoction that he just greenlit. Just a quote from Miller in case anyone's wondering exactly what he said. As I heard it, the president was clear colon greenlight. But we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in response return. So, yeah, it's. He never. He never specifically says the president has okayed this. But yeah, that's obviously people in Europe really pissed. I've seen some statements from government ministers in the United Kingdom like the, The. The sort of maligning of. Of Europe and its military powers is obviously going to piss those people off. Talking of pissing people off, should we pivot to advertisements?

[Kevin Smith]

We should. Which does not piss me off. It makes me really happy to consider.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Garrison personally consumes all the products and services that support this show.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah, that's definitely not true.

[Garrison Davis]

It's the only thing that Garrison consumes.

[Kevin Smith]

That's also not true.

[Garrison Davis]

Which is why they have Pella.

[Kevin Smith]

I don't know what that is, but sure. Here's. Here's the ads. All right. We are so that.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. What's rending my dishes, James?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, okay, I'll just start. So very amusingly, probably concerningly for him, Judge Boasberg, the same person who issued a tentative restraining order against the Trump administration for the rendition of people to Venezuela has also been assigned a signal lawsuit, American Oversight versus Hagen. Seth, so that guy, the one who Trump already called for his impeachment.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Right.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Has another crucial case in front of him. What the Trump administration has done in the court case pertaining to the rendition of people to El Salvador is invoke the state secrets privilege in court. Very ironic. Very, very ironic. They're talking about state secrets now, having just added Jeff Goldberg to the group chat. But that's what they have done. You can go back last week to understand sort of a bit more about where that's coming from. From. If you didn't listen to last week's.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah, we did. We did a whole episode on it last week.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

So it's also continuing to claim that it didn't, quote, unquote, remove migrants after the tentative restraining order was issued because they'd already been removed. The removal happened when they were loaded onto the plane. Is this argument concurrently with this as a panel hearing? So that's a panel of three judges. Right. @ which the government is appealing the tentative restraining order. During this hearing, second Court Judge Patricia Millett said, quote, the Nazis received better treatment under the Alien Enemies act than these Venezuelan migrants. Which is true. The Nazis had hearings in the 1930s. They didn't just get loaded onto a plane and sent to a work camp.

[Kevin Smith]

Not.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Not a great reflection on where we're at. The Trump administration is trying to challenge the jurisdiction of Boasberg, saying that he should have filed the same claim in Texas. Meanwhile, Venezuelan government attorneys are filing a legal claim in El Salvador to liberate their citizens from. It's worth noting, of course, that these people, some of them have been tortured by the Venezuelan government. Right. And chose to. To flee at no small risk to their lives. Like, if people haven't listened to some of our older stuff, like, I've been to the Darien Gap, which is the way that the vast majority of Venezuelan migrants come. You can listen to my episodes about that. If you want to know more about why people are leaving Venezuela, we have a little more information on some of the people detained. One of them is a makeup artist. She's a gay man, um, who was beaten by guards as a US Photojournalist. Watch. Another one the Miami Herald is reporting had been granted legal refugee status. So it seems that they sort of randomly grabbed tattooed Venezuelans. Some of these people have been through background checks already. Right. Which they will have disclosed their tattoos. That's. That's one of the things that they'll be asked about. Um, and they would have disclosed those. So whether they control f'd it or how. Quite how they came across these people is still a little bit unclear.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Clear.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

A couple of other things regarding to immigration enforcement this week that have come across my radar, but probably don't merit a whole episode. It's been reported that the IRS is close to an agreement to hand over the tax records of undocumented people. It has claimed for decades that it won't do this. This is why most undocumented people pay taxes. Right.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah. Which is something that the conservatives just, like, don't believe.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yes.

[Kevin Smith]

They're like, all these undocumented immigrants aren't paying taxes like the rest of us. Like, no, actually they are.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

What they're not doing is receiving benefits from those taxes.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah. And yes. And this is a great way to have people want to pay less taxes if they're going to get their information sent over to, like, the Gestapo. Like.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The whole point was to not provide a disincent. This is similar to why California gives driver's licenses to undocumented people and allows them to insure vehicles. Right. Because you don't want to provide a disincentive to have a driver's license. You don't Want to provide a disincentive to have insurance. We have now provided a disincentive to pay your taxes for undocumented people. So, yeah, that will have consequences. And it will have consequences especially in industries, right. Like agriculture and construction, where large numbers of people tend to be undocumented. Talking of undocumented migration, the Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick reports that he, he said it's on the all in podcast. He is claimed to have already sold 1,000 gold cards. So Gold cards. If you didn't listen to our previous recording on that.

[Kevin Smith]

Oh, I feel like, I feel like we're gonna dizzy. I'm just like, yeah, I'm ill. Yeah, yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

There is no process for applying for receiving a gold card yet. So it's extremely unclear what this means in immigration law terms.

[Kevin Smith]

So he just got like a thousand texts from millionaires being like, yeah, I'll buy one maybe.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Like, well, multimillionaires, they're 5 million each, right? Like, so, yeah, apparently not quite clear. Like, and like, he claims that he sold them. Like, is he going around shopping these around? Is this how they're going to replace the tax revenue from undocumented people? Like, oh my God, no one knows. No, no one knows what this means. Who do you pay? Like, very unclear. So, yeah, that's great. That, that is, that is the current situation with immigration. I also wanted to add that at least three people we're aware of died in San Diego county on 14 March in a storm while crossing the border. One young woman who survived was found next to the remains of her father who died of exposure in a winter storm out here. So, yeah, the border continues to be doing violence to some of the most marginalized people alive.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Which is great.

[Garrison Davis]

We should pop in here. A story just dropped. Michael Waltz, the National Security Advisor who invited Jeffrey to that group chat, journalists have found his public Venmo.

[Kevin Smith]

No, every time with the Venmo always.

[Garrison Davis]

In bed mode, quote, unquote, it's full of journalists. I'm just gonna read a quote from an article on prospect.org yeah, please. Unsurprisingly, Fox News holds the highest headcount for reporters in Mike Waltz's phone. Griff Jenkins, whose fox.com bio lists him as a Washington based national correspondent for Fox, is joined on the list by Brian Kilmeade, co host of Fox and Friends. Porter Berry, president and editor of Fox Digital, also made the gut. But white right wing reporters are not the only ones represented in Waltz's Venmo list, which appears to be less than clean on opsec, as Secretary of Defense Hegseth wrote. Leland Vittert, a national correspondent for News Nation, is also listed on the digital account, as is Brianna Keiller, an American journalist who currently serves as co anchor of the afternoon edition of CNN News Central. Lauren Pikoff, an executive producer at msnbc, is also in Waltz's contacts. Earlier this year, Trump tweeted about the network, wow, Rachel Maddow has horrible ratings. She'll be off the air soon. But amidst the broadcasters, producers, and talking heads, one name stands out from the crowd. Judith Miller, who was summarily fired from the New York Times after it was revealed that her reporting on the Iraq war was categorically false and obtained almost verbatim from Vice President Dick Cheney. Her dismissal was the price paid for cozying up too close to an administration set on war. It's just like, okay, we don't. We don't check any of this. We haven't locked anything down. Good.

[Kevin Smith]

Having your public. Venmo itself is crazy. The fact that he's, like. The fact that he's, like, getting, like, dinner with journalists to be like, I'll send you. I'll send you a Venmo request for this. For this sushi.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Oh, man. They've downloaded his entire friends list. And you can just scroll.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, no, you can see everybody.

[Kevin Smith]

Oh, my God. He's going to get, like, a $15 Venmo requests from Brian Kilmeade for getting drinks at a bar. Like, what are we doing?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Oh, what are we doing?

[John Cameron Mitchell]

Yeah.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Also. Yeah. How.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Well, these people make hundreds of thousands, if not billions of dollars.

[Kevin Smith]

They can make so much money.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

15 bucks.

[Garrison Davis]

Just get the.

[Kevin Smith]

It's just one drink in D.C. so funny. Oh, my God.

[Garrison Davis]

Now, I think it's time, folks, that we take a little bit of a detour and talk about tariff.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Rocky.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Rocky.

[Garrison Davis]

Oh, my God. I love playing that song. I love playing that song. We don't actually have anything to say about tariffs. Mia's not here. I will note there's a graph going around about the potential cost of Guinness under Trump's tax plan, which is usually around $7 per pint in the US and will now be 22 to $27 after Trump's, you know, new, New, new tariffs for imported alcohol.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

That reflects its true value because it's also a meal.

[Garrison Davis]

Yes, yes, absolutely. Anyway, we're done. That's all I have to say on tariffs.

[Kevin Smith]

As long as the twisted tea pricing doesn't get affected, I'll be fine then. That's good.

[Garrison Davis]

Good.

[Kevin Smith]

Not going to comment now in some more upsetting news, another student at Columbia has been forced into hiding as ICE targets her for deportation. Yun Sou is a 21 year old permanent resident who immigrated to the United States from Korea with her family when she was seven. On March 9, she received a text message from homeland security investigations reading, hi Yunza, this is Audrey from the police. My job is to reach out to you and see if you have any questions about your recent arrest and the process going forward. When are you available for a phone call? So this, this message was allegedly in reference to being arrested among others, at a recent sit in protest at Bernard College at Columbia. She was charged and then released with misdemeanor obstruction. So after receiving that like sketchy text. Right. Something that you should never, never respond to, you should immediately send to your lawyer. But after receiving this text, Chung got an email from Columbia public safety reading, quote, the U. S. Attorney's office for the southern district of New York has asked us to inform you that homeland security investigation agents are seeking to make contact with you in connection with an administrative warrant for your arrest consistent with university's practice. We wanted to share this information and their request with you. If you are represented by council, it may make sense for your lawyer to speak directly with DHA. Now that same day, ICE agents showed up at the home of Chung's parents. And Chung's lawyer called, quote, unquote to Audrey from the police who revealed she was actually an ICE agent and stated that there was an administrative warrant for her arrest and that the state department can revoke Ms. Chung's residency status. We're going to talk more about what's happened with Ms. Chung after this ad break. All right, we're back. So when ICE failed to locate this Columbia university student, they started to enlist the help of federal prosecutors. I'm going to quote from the New York Times who broke this story, quote. On March 10th, Perry Carbone, a high ranking lawyer in the federal prosecutors office, told Ms. Ahmad, Ms. Chung's attorney, that the secretary of state Mark Rubio had revoked Ms. Chung's visa. Ms. Ahmad responded that Ms. Chung was not in the country on a visa and was a permanent resident. According to the lawsuit. Ms. Carbone responded that Mr. Rubio had, quote, revoked that as well, unquote. So this similar to like Mahmoud Khalid, like demonstrates that like they have no idea, idea of the, of the actual like residency status of the people that they are going after. They are just going after non citizens and may eventually start going after citizens too. Like they, they, they're just going after people that, that they assume have like the least amount of protections, whether that's a green card holder, whether that's someone on a student visa or a work visa. They don't really know going in. They're just, they're, they're just going after people.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

Then on March 13th, ICE searched two residences on campus with warrants citing a statute for harboring non citizens. The Trump administration is arguing that Chung's presence in the United States hinders the administration's foreign policy agenda. One 21 year old student who was the valedictorian at her high school is, is hindering their foreign policy agenda for attending a sit in protest. Her lawyers note that Chung was not by any means like a movement leader. She, she was simply one of hundreds of students who joined in, in nationwide protests against Israel's actions in Gaza. Her Lawyers write, quote, Ms. Chung has not made any public statements to the press or otherwise assumed a high profile role in these protests. She was rather one of a large group of college students raising, expressing and discussing shared concerns, unquote. Chung herself had previously faced a university disciplinary process which found that Chung was not in violation of any university policy policy. So in response to the actions of ICE and Homeland Security to try to locate and deport her, Chung went into hiding. Her whereabouts are still unknown as of time of recording. And her lawyers filed a lawsuit to prevent her deportation, claiming that ICE actions against Chung are illegal and unconstitutional. The lawsuit reads, quote, officials at the highest echelons of government are attempting to use immigration enforcement as a bludgeon to suppress speech that they dislike, including Ms. Chung's speech.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Speech.

[Kevin Smith]

ICE's shocking actions against Michigan form part of a larger pattern of attempted US Government repression of constitutionally protected protest activity and other forms of speech, unquote. Now, this past Tuesday, a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order halting efforts from ICE to detain or relocate Chung. The judge said that there is, quote, nothing in the record indicating that Chung is a danger to the community or a, quote, unquote, foreign policy risk or that she has communicated with terrorist organizations. The judge said that there would be, quote, no trips to Louisiana here, unquote. Referring to the movement of Khalil to ICE detention in Louisiana.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

A DHS statement said that ICE is going to, quote, investigate individuals engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization, unquote. The statement also claimed that Chung would have an opportunity to present her case before an immigration judge. Judge which is like, contrary to incidents of ICE just deporting people before Their legally required hearings, even like in defiance of like extra court orders mandating those hearings. Like ICE is just lying here. And I think it's worth pointing out like what types of people they are going after right now. One type of person that ICE is going after is like non citizens who were arrested at protests regardless of what they actually did.

[Garrison Davis]

Right.

[Kevin Smith]

This can be anything from, from standing in the street to doing a sit in protest to just like being arrested on campus and removed by campus police or nypd. Right. Like just, just any arrest, like on record that shows you at one of these protests.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

The other in the case of like Khalil, like he was never arrested. He was the subject of a mass doxing campaign by other students at Columbia, professors and other, you know, quote unquote, anti Semitism organization which target high profile activists to create like public pressure against them. And those same lists are now being used by the Trump administration to target students.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, Etah had one, right. Or Beta, the ultra Zionist people who are going around attempting to fucking present people with pagers. I think they were one of the groups that had created like a quote, unquote deportation list. So we should just mention that a Tuft student, Ramesa Ozturk, was, was essentially abducted on her way to university. Right. There's video which we'll link in the show notes here.

[Kevin Smith]

Very, very frightening video of her just standing on the sidewalk as first one man approaches her in like a, in like a, like a navy hoodie, hood.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Up, mask on his face, approaches her, stops her.

[Kevin Smith]

And then as soon as they start engaging in conversation, she gets surrounded by like five other people all wearing like what I would describe as like a gray man block, essentially.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

That they then like pull out bad badges and they detain her. And it's interesting, like as they approach, most these people are unmasked. And then as soon as people realize what's happening, like people in the neighborhood realize what's happening, they all start pulling up like half face masks, like gators.

[Garrison Davis]

Gators, yeah. They looked to me more than anything the way proud boys dressed a lot in like 20, 19. 2020.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. It's extremely concerning, like when you start seeing these people, masked people snatching people off the street. Right. She asked if we can. She asked if she can call the cops and they say, we are the police. It looks like her phone falls out of her hand at some point. They take her bag. We know this because it seems like somebody was filming from a building just above. And you can hear that people say, like, why are you Covering your, that.

[Kevin Smith]

Person saying why are you wearing masks?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Why are you covering your faces?

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah. The guy filming is like doing about what he. Given the fact that you have to assume he had no real idea, idea what was happening initially other than like something visibly up. Like I'm glad he said the things that he said.

[Kevin Smith]

But yeah, yeah. She's a Turkish citizen who is in the States on a student visa in Boston, Massachusetts or outside Boston, Massachusetts.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, she's on an F1 visa. So just a couple of dates. A few days before she was seized. She like her name was published by Canary Mission. Right. Canary Mission is a Zionist group that, that is. Has been doxing pro Palestine or anti genocide people for several years now. She had co edited an op ed in the Tufts Daily last year. That seems to be how they were able to identify her. But as Garrison said. Right. Like in terms of how they're picking their targets right now, it seems to be heavily tied to these vigilante Zionist far right groups. I did see that a judge has already ruled that she shouldn't be left, she shouldn't be removed from Massachusetts without further consultation with that judge.

[Garrison Davis]

We don't know if she has been or not already.

[Kevin Smith]

But this is, this is continuing to happen. Right. We, we talked about it this last week. I'm going to do a whole episode next week about this, about, about this issue.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

She is in Louisiana. Sorry, update.

[Kevin Smith]

She has already been moved to Louisiana.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, so I'm just reading a Truth out piece here. Officials initially did not specify where else Turk had been taken. Canarbitz, her lawyer was unable to reach her. Later on Wednesday, Hernan Arby said in a motion that she was informed by a senator's office that the student was already transferred to Louisiana.

[Kevin Smith]

It's like in a, in a matter of hours they worked to get her like outside of. Yeah, her like home state where she probably has more legal protections.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah, it's not something that's super uncommon. I've seen them do this with what they called lateral transfers under title 42 where they would move people. Under title 42 they could immediately return people to Mexico. Right. And what they would do is, is laterally transfer them along the border border and return them to another location in Mexico which obviously led to them being completely dislocated when they were dropped in Mexico.

[Kevin Smith]

Something else that I want to note is the use of this harboring non citizens warrant. Like one problem that ICE can run into often is that people can choose just to not answer the door. ICE usually likes to rely on people that have like already been arrested or already detained by like police. Right. That makes it much easier for, for immigration officials to find people. Without that, locating people can be a little bit harder. Harder with the use of this like harboring non citizens warrant that shows like they're trying to create this precedent for being able to actually break into more people's homes even though you know she had a permanent resident status. This is just like in terms of the tactics being used similar to like you know this all these like gray man block people approaching you on the street one by one. That's like a tactic to take note of. The use of this type of warrant is also something to take note of. We are already at the point where people have, are like, are like going into hiding. Right. This is like very, very like dystopian ya coded stuff where you're like, you are literally as like as a 21 year old like Junior being forced to, to go into hiding because federal agents are after you. Because you sat down.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

You, you sat down in front of a building in protest of a genocide side. You're not a, you're not even a movement leader. And this, this type of thing shouldn't even happen to quote unquote, movement leaders. Right?

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. There's a, the very first Amendment protects your right to do that.

[Kevin Smith]

Exactly. But like regardless of whether or not you're involved in like the planning, the organization, whether or not you're making statements to press, whether or not you're, you're giving speeches, if you just attend these sorts of things, you are, you are a target by what is like very obviously a modern version of like Gestato like actions.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. I think it's also quite revealing that she's somewhat successfully gone into hiding. Right. Like it suggests that their intelligence operation is not so advanced that they were able to immediately find her.

[Garrison Davis]

Well no, because again the resources to do stuff like trace somebody down by their shoes from like surveillance camera footage exists. We saw it used on those lawyers who lit a police vehicle on fire back in 2020. But like, like there's not really much in the way of crimes going on here and there. Also there's so many of these people. Like the idea that you would, you would pull all of the footage that you would need to track every one of these. It's just, it's just not feasible.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Yeah. And I think they'll just go after someone else. Right. To get the headline. But I'll be following this one with interest because it's sort of, it's Sort of an alternative outcome to the other ones that we've seen so far. So it just be revelatory to see how it goes.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

So if you want to contact us about any of this, maybe if you're seeing things happening on your campus, if you have anything you'd like to share or things that you think we've missed, you can do so. The email address is coolzonetipson me. ProtonMail is an encrypted email service. It's only end to end encrypted like signal. If you send it from a protonmail address, address. Don't copy any Atlantic journalists on your email and you should be good to go.

[Kevin Smith]

Thank you to everyone who's been sending those messages. It does take time for us to go through all of them. Not all of them will have a response, but we are, we are reading them. Thank you. I am still working on a piece on the lavender scare. There's a lot of stuff happening regarding, you know, suppressing and going after trans people in the military. This takes time, but we are working on that slowly but surely, as well as stuff regarding ICE targeting students and what's going on in Colombia. So we appreciate that. The last thing I want to talk about is this past Monday the IDF killed two Palestinian journalists in Gaza in separate airstrikes. Mohammed Mansour, who works for Palestine Today, was killed, quote, in his house in southern Gaza alongside his wife and his son without any prior warning, according to Al Jazeera. Later that day, The IDF killed 23 year old Palestinian journalist Hassan Shabbat in a targeted airstrike while he was driving his car in northern Gaza. I want to read the statement from Hassam. Quote, if you're reading this, it means I have been killed, most likely targeted by the Israeli occupation forces. When all this began, I was only 21 years old. A college student with dreams like anyone else. For the past 18 months, I've dedicated every moment of my life to my people. I documented the horrors in northern Gaza minute by minute, determined to show the world the truth they tried to bury. I slept on pavements, in schools, in tents, anywhere I could. Each day was a battle for survival. I endured hunger for months, yet I never left my people's side. By God, I fulfilled my duty as a journalist. I risked everything to report the truth. And now I am finally at rest. Something I haven't known in the past 18 months. I did all this because I believe in the Palestinian cause. I believe this land is ours. And it has been the highest honor of my life to die defending it and serving its people. I ask you now, do not stop speaking about Gaza. Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting. Keep telling our stories until Palestine is free.

[Garrison Davis]

Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

It Could Happen Here is a production.

[Kevin Smith]

Of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts you.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in Episode Descriptions.

[Kevin Smith]

Thanks for listening. Hey kids, it's me, Kevin Smith. And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith. That's my daughter, man, who my wife has always said is just a beardless dickless version of me. And that's the name of our podcast, Beardless Me. I'm the old one, I'm the young one.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And every week we try to make.

[Kevin Smith]

Each other laugh really hard.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

Sounds innocent, doesn't it?

[Kevin Smith]

A lot of cussing, a lot of bad language.

[John Cameron Mitchell]

It's for adults only.

[Mary Kay McBrayer]

Or listen to it with your kid.

[Kevin Smith]

Could be a family show. We're not quite sure. We're still figuring it out. It's a working process.

[Robert Evans]

Progress.

[Kevin Smith]

Listen to Beardless with me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here? Ow. Go slower. From Blumhouse TV, iHeart podcasts and Ember 20 comes an all new fictional comedy podcast series. Join the flighty Damien Hurst as he unravels the mystery of his vanished boyfriend. I've been spending all my time looking for answers about what happened to Santi and what's the way to find a missing person? Sleep with everyone he knew, obviously. Listen to the hookup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This is John Cameron Mitchell and my.

[Robert Evans]

New fiction podcast series. Cancellation island stars Holly Hunter as Karen, a wellness influencer who launches a rehab for the real recently cancelled. In the future, we will all be cancelled for 15 minutes. But don't worry, we'll take you from broke to woke or your money back. Cancellation Island's revolutionary rehab therapies, like bad touch football, anti racism spin class and mandatory ayahuasca ceremonies are designed to force the council to confront their worst impulses. But everything starts to fall apart when people start disappearing.

[Kevin Smith]

Karen, where have you brought us?

[Robert Evans]

Cancellation island, where a second chance might just be your last. Listen to Cancellation island on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, host of the podcast the Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told. This season explores women from the 19th.

[Robert Evans]

Century to now, women who were murderers.

[Harley Quinn Smith]

And scammers, but also women who were photojournalists, lawyers, writers, and more. This podcast tells more than just the brutal, gory details of horrific acts. I delve into the good, the bad, the difficult, and all the nuance I can find, because these are the stories that we need to know to understand the intersection of society, justice, and the fascinating workings of the human psyche. Join me every week as I tell some of the most enthralling true crime stories about women who are not just victims, but heroes or villains, or often somewhere in between. Listen to the Greatest True Crime Stories Ever told on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.