The Greg Bovino Episode Extravaganza!

Summary

Behind the Bastards: The Greg Bovino Episode Extravaganza!

February 12, 2026 | Host: Robert Evans | Guest: Jack O'Brien | Producer: Sophie Lichterman

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Episode Overview

This episode of Behind the Bastards delves into the life and career of Greg Bovino, a high-ranking Border Patrol official who became the public face of some of the Trump administration’s most notorious immigration crackdowns and abuses. The hosts explore his unexpected rise, his family and early personal history, his immersion into the warrior cop ideology, and the disturbing consequences of his actions in recent years. True to Behind the Bastards’ tone, the discussion is equal parts insightful, darkly funny, and deeply critical of American systems and the individuals who exploit them.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Fascination with "Bad Guys" ([00:05])

• Robert Evans reflects on why history focuses more on villains than on positive figures, humorously noting the lack of documentaries about Eisenhower compared to Hitler.
• He introduces the episode’s focus: the rise of Greg Bovino within U.S. immigration enforcement.

2. Who is Greg Bovino? ([03:42]–[08:26])

• Jack O'Brien and the team joke about the rarity of a "Greg" as a major villain in American history.

• Evans notes Bovino isn’t a “natural” villain; no one from his past recalls him as destined for brutality. Instead, his rise seems more like surprising mediocrity turned monstrous through circumstances and choices.

  “It’s again, like, if this guy in your school who wasn’t super bad at anything but wasn’t very good at anything… winds up on the news dragging Americans out of their home and tear gassing them in the street for no reason, you’re like, is he dressed like a Nazi? Is that Greg?”
  — Robert Evans ([08:32])

• Stephen Miller is described as the “LeBron James of Nazis”—someone obviously headed toward infamy—but not Bovino.

3. Family Background & the Irony of “Chain Migration” ([10:58])

• Bovino’s family immigrated from southern Italy in the early 20th century, benefiting from “chain migration” — the very policy right-wingers like Bovino later attacked.

• Discussion of American anxieties about immigrants, eugenics, and legislative history leading to restrictive immigration law and the founding of the Border Patrol ([13:08]–[18:49]).

  “The melting pot is a very chaste way of saying a lot of people came here and started fucking each other and everything kind of mixed together.”
  — Jack O'Brien ([19:15])

4. Early Life in North Carolina: A "Rockwellian" Childhood? ([20:34])

• Bovino's early years in Blowing Rock, NC, are described by his sister Natalie as idyllic and prosperous, though the hosts note a whiff of family business (bars and "sacks of money") possibly being less than squeaky clean ([24:30]).
• Jack and Robert speculate the bar may have been a front or involved in illicit activity, based on Natalie’s unwittingly incriminating details.

5. Formative Influences: Gun Culture & Warrior Cop Ideology ([30:40]–[39:41])

• Bovino’s obsession with Border Patrol began with hunting magazines and columns by gun-worshipping lawmen like Skeeter Skelton—a literal "wild west" vision of law enforcement.

• Airs a passage from Skelton illustrating early "warrior cop" logic:

  “It is argued with some justification that an officer who fires a Magnum in a crowded city is more likely to kill innocent non-combatants... Not much is given to the fact that the same officer runs a hell of a lot more risk of being killed himself when his low powered .38 fails to put an armed opponent out of action.” — Skeeter Skelton via Robert Evans ([36:29])

• Bovino also cites the film The Border as inspiring his desire to be a "good border cop," but the hosts suspect the gun magazines came first ([39:41]).

6. Trauma and Teen Years: Family Tragedy & Unremarkable School Performance ([40:09])

• At age 11, Greg's father, drunk, kills a woman in a car crash. The family is shattered; his father spends time in prison and leaves for New Mexico.

• Classmates and coaches recall him as pleasant and unmemorable, not an ambitious or cruel kid.

  “It wasn’t a dick. I wouldn’t become a cop. Good talking to you, comrade.”
  — Robert Evans, paraphrasing Greg’s coach ([45:57])

• No evidence of the prodigious ambition or psychopathy often found in “bastards”; he simply fades in and out.

7. Online Rumors vs. Reality ([47:41])

• Internet rumors about Bovino’s high school days (shoe sniffing, yearbook slander, hazing) spread, but are unverifiable and probably just spiteful rumors ([49:07]).

  “Now we’re getting to, like, pretty good lies to tell about someone ... those are real.”
  — Jack O'Brien ([49:50])

8. The Books That Shaped Him ([53:01])

• Bovino was a voracious reader of cowboy novels and military histories, especially Heinlein’s Starship Troopers—an unabashedly pro-military, fascist text.
• Robert Evans unpacks the myth that Starship Troopers is satire (“the movie is, the book isn’t”) and notes its influence on people who fantasize about military rule.

9. Becoming Border Patrol: Steady Rise & Self-Inflation ([54:09]–[56:48])

• Graduates college, quickly advances in Border Patrol, claims he was “the best shot” (likely self-mythologizing), and is steeped in the “Green Machine” culture.
• Early career narratives cast Border Patrol work as a “fight”—dehumanizing the migrant experience.

10. Overseeing Violence & Spreading Propaganda ([57:24])

• Under Bovino, El Centro sector is notorious for cruelty to migrants; numerous allegations of excessive force and child separation emerge.

• Pioneers the use of Border Patrol video propaganda, amplifying stories of “dangerous criminals” and stoking fear disproportionate to reality:

  “If you’re trying to make the case that... every week multiple people are getting raped by immigrants and it’s like, yeah, your one example was from a news clip from 10 years ago.”
  — Robert Evans ([71:28])

• Only about 1% of stopped migrants have criminal records—far less than the U.S. population ([72:13]).

11. Personal Motivations and Dark Ironies: “Drunk Driving” Obsession ([69:35])

• Bovino repeatedly cites the risk of drunk driving by immigrants in public forums—a deep-seated obsession likely born from his own family tragedy.

• Evans and Jack compare this to Tucker Carlson’s personally motivated crusades:

  “You didn’t want to go to therapy, but you’re just taking your anger at your dad out on some random people, almost none of whom did anything wrong.”
  — Robert Evans ([70:09])

12. Trump Years: Brutality, Power, and Spectacle ([73:27]–[79:41])

• Raised to national attention for his willingness to spearhead mass raids and publicize them with viral content.
• The 2025 LA and Chicago cracking down on immigrants and protesters, including mass detentions and unauthorized force.
• Becomes the “commander at large”—essentially a scapegoat role—paraded as the face of hardline policy, meant to absorb public anger.

13. The Jacket & the Fascist Aesthetic ([79:41])

• Bavino’s infamous overcoat draws accusations of fascist cosplay; he claims it’s just military tradition, but the hosts (and public) see through it:

  “We know why you’re doing it, Greg. Come on, man. You like it because it makes you look like Doogie Howser at the end of Starship Troopers.” — Robert Evans ([79:41])

14. The Endgame: Exile and Probable Comeback ([80:31])

• After highly publicized deaths during a Minneapolis raid, Bovino is made the sacrificial lamb—quietly removed from his post but likely set up for future gigs (possibly in media).
• The hosts suggest this is unlikely to be the last we hear from him.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the aesthetics and absurdity of “bad guys”
  “It’s just hard to imagine a Greg being, like, the mouthpiece of a fascist dude.” ([44:53])

• On right-wing nostalgia and contradictions
  “Italians did it. It’s what everybody did—it’s kind of the entire point of the country... The melting pot is a very chaste way of saying a lot of people came here and started fucking each other and everything kind of mixed together.” ([19:15])

• On the performative propaganda of law enforcement
  “They catch three of them in, but one gets away and sneaks into Anytown USA, where he murders an American citizen... and the message, ‘Every apprehension matters. Do you know who got away?’” ([71:39])

• On the weaponization of trauma as public policy
  “You didn’t want to go to therapy, but you’re just taking your anger at your dad out on some random people, almost none of whom did anything wrong.” ([70:09])

• On the omnicompetent mediocrity of evil
  “No evidence of the prodigious ambition or psychopathy often found in ‘bastards’; he simply fades in and out.” ([Summary of early life section])

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Important Timestamps

• [03:42] — Introduction to Greg Bovino and Border Patrol's "Gestapo" rhetoric
• [08:26] — Bovino's surprisingly unremarkable early profile
• [13:08] — Family background and immigration law context
• [24:30] — Bovino’s childhood and “Rockwellian” upbringing
• [30:40–36:29] — Influence of gun culture and “warrior cop” magazines
• [40:09] — Family tragedy and the absence of exceptionalism
• [53:01] — Cowboy novels, Starship Troopers, and the roots of his ideology
• [69:35] — Obsession with immigrant “drunk driving”; projection of personal trauma
• [71:28–72:13] — Border Patrol propaganda, selection bias, and violence
• [73:27] — Transition to national notoriety during Trump’s raids
• [79:41] — The infamous coat and the aesthetics of American fascism
• [81:26] — Removal from post, likely future comeback
• [82:00] — Final thoughts and humorous speculation about Bovino’s “second act”

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Tone and Delivery

• The episode is consistently irreverent and darkly funny, with hosts riffing on the absurdities and dangers of both policy and personal myth-making.
• Serious moments (family tragedy, state violence) are not trivialized but woven with insight and justified anger.
• The podcast uses humor (into “Greg” as a villain name, shoe sniffing rumors, “Green Machine” as juice) as both coping and critique.

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Conclusion

The Greg Bovino Episode Extravaganza! is both a case study of a modern American enforcer’s banality-turned-brutality and an exposé on how personal trauma, mediocre ambition, and state power intersect to create today’s “bad guys.” The episode dissects the propulsive power of myth, the militarization of border policing, and the dark irony of America’s immigrant history.

Listeners gain both a concrete understanding of Bovino’s path and broader insight into how American institutions cultivate and protect individuals who become the faces of authoritarian violence.

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Further Listening:

• The Daily Zeitgeist — Jack O'Brien's news show
• Iconograph — Deep dives into cultural icons
• [Against the State by James Stout] — Book plug at [86:20]

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For full video episodes: Now streaming on Netflix every Tuesday and Thursday.

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“We love about 40% of you. Statistically speaking.”
— Sophie Lichterman ([87:14])

Transcript

[Sophie Lichterman]

Call Zone Media.

[Robert Evans]

Welcome back to behind the Bastards, a podcast that is about bad people. And it turns out there's a lot of those in the world, only more of them every year. It feels like to commiserate with me about that point. My guest today, Jack O'. Brien, Dr. Jack O'. Brien. Mr. Colonel Jack O'. Brien, President Jack O'. Brien, Pod dad, all of the titles. Esquire, Esquire. What other, what other titles are there do we have titles for like, I.

[Jack O'Brien]

Don'T know, I like the Honorable Colonel. The Honorable Colonel, because that, that's one that when they give it to you, you can just start calling yourself that. Like we just did an episode about Elvis.

[Robert Evans]

That's the dream.

[Jack O'Brien]

The, his colonel was just like, just like, somebody called him that one time. I think he like helped someone get a parade permit in like New Orleans and they were like, we'll make you honorable Colonel, sir. And he was like, started signing his name on legal documents that way.

[Robert Evans]

If I ever, if I was ever made a Kentucky colonel or whatever other kind of anytime, the second I get made a colonel, I am never introducing myself any other way.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Like I, I like to think so. When we went to the RNC and dnc, they had this display of President's shoes. I like to think if there was like a podcast version of it, it would just be Jack's Jordans.

[Jack O'Brien]

My Jordans. Yeah, I have some behind me right there.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yeah, yeah, that's what I think.

[Jack O'Brien]

That's very nice of you, Sophie. I don't think I can take credit for all pods.

[Robert Evans]

You know what's not nice of me, Jack? Oh, good. Jack, I've thought telling you the life story of Greg Bovino.

[Sophie Lichterman]

No, I really like the. Robert, can you share the working title that you did? Because it's a great working title.

[Robert Evans]

I don't know, you see, I went back and forth on it because I feel like it's too obvious. I just called him America's Kirkland brand Gestapo chief.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yeah, yeah, I love it.

[Jack O'Brien]

I like it. I like that a lot.

[Robert Evans]

There's a thing because he gets angry that people compare ICE to the Gestapo and he's not with ice, he's border patrol. But you know, they're all Gestapo esque and people get angry about them. And there's like three different kinds of people here. There's like normal people who are like, yeah, it seems like some Gestapo kind of thing. There's like closet Nazis and Trump administration being like, first off it's Gestapo.

[Jack O'Brien]

And second, second, you're using the wrong font to make that accusation.

[Robert Evans]

And then there's guys like me who tries to switch between the two. Yeah, just because I've read too many books and watched too many documentaries about the Gestapo. Wow, we're doing good. I'm not being sus shocked to hear.

[Sophie Lichterman]

That about you, Robert Evans, host of behind the Bastards.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Atlas Obscura Narrator]

This is an I heart podcast. Guaranteed human.

[Brandon Kyle Goodman]

It's me, Brandon Kyle Goodman, but you can call me Messy mom, because on my podcast, tell me something messy. My fantastic guests are bringing their message, like singer, songwriter Duran Bernard suggesting we reinstate adult sleepovers with friends.

[Brandon Kyle Goodman (guest voice)]

Here's the thing. Get a group that's mature enough not to be putting your hand in warm water and tickling ya.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Brandon Kyle Goodman (guest voice)]

You know what I'm saying? I mean, granted, I might be doing, but, you know, like, listen to.

[Brandon Kyle Goodman]

Tell me something Messy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcast.

[Robert Evans]

So, Jack, what do you know about Greg Gregory? About time we had a Greg commit, like, crimes against humanity in this country. Greg.

[Jack O'Brien]

Yeah, Greg.

[Robert Evans]

It was not about time, but I feel like it hasn't happened before.

[Jack O'Brien]

I think, you know, diversity of first name is really important. So I was also welcoming when Greg showed up on the scene.

[Robert Evans]

Finally, finally, some Greg representation in the crimes.

[Jack O'Brien]

I host a daily news show called the Daily Zeitgeist with Mike.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, shit. Yes, you do. I thought as a man, you were a man who needed no introduction, but clearly that's irresponsible.

[Jack O'Brien]

Well, no, but I mean, due to that show, do have some experience covering the latest happenings, but we do that show twice a day, and therefore I don't. I didn't have a lot of time to dig into his backstory to really see what makes this guy tick, you know? Yeah, I have a feeling I. I was just like, kind of you using context clues and making educated guesses about what makes him tick. But, yeah, I don't. I don't know that much other than that he. His rapid rise and precipitous dismissal.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. And that's actually happened once before in his career, which we chat about a little bit. Yeah, not Greg Greg again. You can't. You go back to, like, the other crimes against humanity this country has committed. You can't imagine, like, a Greg having some significant role in, like, the displacement of the Native Americans. Right. Or like, you can't imagine Greg like Gregory. It's not an old. It's like, yeah, I have trouble imaging. I can imagine a Gregory. I can imagine, like, a Gregory something either being involved in one of this nation's great crimes, I can see that name signed on to like the order to intern people, but not a Greg. You know, like there weren't Greg's until very recently. I feel like it's certainly not in a position where they could do crimes against humanity like Greg.

[Jack O'Brien]

Greg. It's like kind of got like a Gen X like, quality to it where it's just like, yeah, you can just call me Greg.

[Robert Evans]

Would it be better or worse if he was a Craig? Like, would we believe him more or less? Because I feel like Greg, I do believe Greg doing crimes against humanity more than Craig.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Firmly Greg is worse.

[Robert Evans]

Craig is a, is a trustworthy name. You know, Greg. There's a little something sketchy about it. Yeah.

[Jack O'Brien]

When did Greg's first start showing up? Just not Gregory's but Greg's Greg.

[Robert Evans]

It had to have been like the.

[Sophie Lichterman]

70S, like Cousin Greg's succession.

[Robert Evans]

There you go. That's the birth of the bad Greg.

[Jack O'Brien]

Greg is a young person's name for.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Their point, but literally in that show, he decides he wants to be taken seriously and he's like, asks people to call him Gregory, but he says it.

[Jack O'Brien]

Like, Gregory Fascists on the wrong syllable. Yeah, yeah, the wrong syllable.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Jack O'Brien]

I recently met a 70 something year old man named Corey and I was like setting you're. Are you the first Corey?

[Robert Evans]

Like, and I did, I did ask.

[Jack O'Brien]

Him that and he didn't think it was funny.

[Sophie Lichterman]

I think it's funny.

[Jack O'Brien]

Corey is such a young person's name. Yeah, yeah, Greg.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Well, we've, we've all tried to learn about this guest hearing more because it's going to be so upsetting.

[Jack O'Brien]

But I will be over on my end googling historical Greg's the first Greg history, comma.

[Robert Evans]

So I sat down to write this episode the week Mr. Bovino lost his special job dressing like a Nazi while overseeing border patrol operations alongside ICE in Minneapolis. He'd made the news several times for his statements in the wake of the murders of Renee Goode and Alex Preddy, and during the first year of the Trump administration had generally turned himself into the physical embodiment of the regime's violence towards Americans. It's too early to say what the future holds for Greg, but given that he just took a turn a sin eater for the Trump administration, I think it's time we look into who this guy and where he came from. And in short, he's not quite the guy I expected. There's very little in Bavino's early life and even in most of his career with the Border Patrol, that would have led one to predict he'd have turned into this. I'm not saying you'd have expected him to be, like, a great guy, but that, like, the fact that he wound up in. At this moment in history doing this thing is, like, a little surprising. Most of his former. Yeah, he's not. He doesn't seem like he was built for this his whole life. And you don't get a lot of quotes from his people who used to know him being like, oh, yeah, that makes sense for old Greg, you know?

[Jack O'Brien]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Most.

[Jack O'Brien]

More of just like, they don't really remember him type no.

[Robert Evans]

More of like, aha, that guy. That guy's doing that. Huh. It's the general reaction. It's again, like, if this guy in your school who wasn't super bad at anything but wasn't very good at anything and never really stood out at anything, winds up on the news dragging Americans out of their home and tear gassing them in the street for no reason, you're like, is he dressed like a Nazi? Is that Greg?

[Jack O'Brien]

Whereas, like, Stephen Miller is like the LeBron James of Nazis. Like, where everybody in high school was like, this guy is going to be.

[Robert Evans]

A Nazi on the world stage.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Did you just say the LeBron James of Nazis?

[Robert Evans]

I think it's a good comparison.

[Jack O'Brien]

So that he was a standout Nazi from the very earliest ages.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Wait, that you couldn't miss the chosen. He was the chosen one.

[Robert Evans]

If you knew LeBron or Stephen Miller in sixth grade, you knew what they were growing up to do.

[Jack O'Brien]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

This guy's gonna be the best basketball player ever. And this guy's gonna be a fucking Nazi.

[Jack O'Brien]

Yes.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Wow.

[Jack O'Brien]

Wow, guys.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I think you're right. Spend the money with that check. Not. Not really. No. There's maybe one piece of evidence, but it's not good. So most of the evidence is that he's kind of like, not the guy you'd expect to have done this. Now, that said, we don't have a lot about Greg's early life. The only journalists who have really dug into Bavino's life in a credible way are Dan Mihalopoulos and Lauren Fitzpatrick of the Chicago Sun Times. And they did great work. They did both a podcast and a. An article looking into his backstory. Aside from them, there's just one Daily Mail article that talks to his sister. And so we have a lot from his sister, who I don't consider the most credible witness about this guy. Right. So there's just not a ton of detail and then there's some sketchier sources on the. On the matter. So we got some open questions still. That said, Greg was born on March 27, 1970, in San Bernardino, California, which I bet you didn't call San Bernardino baby. You know, that's. That's good.

[Jack O'Brien]

I didn't, because. I don't know. I cannot differentiate any, like, any of those LA pieces.

[Robert Evans]

That's such a West LA thing to say to Jack.

[Jack O'Brien]

It's a. I. I'm bad at LA stuff, too. I'm just like.

[Robert Evans]

I'm just bad at.

[Jack O'Brien]

I grew up on the east coast, and I'm just like, San Bernardo.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Inland Empire, Jack. Inland Empire.

[Robert Evans]

In the episode, I know about San Bernardino from the Frank Zappa song San Bernardino. And hearing that Greg Bovino was born in San Bernardino makes me also think of the Frank Zappa song Baby Snakes. Because at this point, he's a baby snake, you know?

[Jack O'Brien]

Yeah, those are bad, right? They can pump you full of a.

[Robert Evans]

Lot of baby snakes. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. It's not their fault. They're just snakes. But yes, yes, he's born there. And. And because he would embark on a career of arresting and facilitating the brutalization of immigrants, a lot has been made of the immigration history of his own family. And I have some qualms with this because you're mostly bringing this up to be like, you're hurting these people, yet a generation or two ago, your family was in the same situation. Can't you see why that's fucked up? And my answer to that is, no, they can't. They're bad people. Right? Like, it's like, at a certain point, are you, like, again, people do the same with Stephen Miller's background or Trump's, and it's like, I mean, they're bad. They don't care. They don't care. They're bad people. They suck. Oh, that.

[Jack O'Brien]

That didn't work. Pointing out the.

[Robert Evans]

The hypocrisy of their behavior, of their background.

[Jack O'Brien]

Yeah, I feel like the 3 millionth time we do it, it's just gonna, like, break through. It'll be like a dam. And they'll be like, yeah, holy shit.

[Robert Evans]

Too many people believe their moms when they were like, that bully, you know, if that bully knew he was hurting you, he'd feel bad. It's like, no, he's a dick. Nope. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not how they work. So, yeah, it's also just like, yeah, basically every white person, if you go back two generations, has, like, an immigration story in this country because it's the United States. That's kind of how it happened here for most people. But as you might have guessed from the name, the Bovinos were originally Italian. In 1909, Michel Bovino, who is Greg's great grandfather, left the village of Alprigliano in the mountains of southern Italy. His home was racked with poverty and dominated by organized criminal cartels. Much like certain countries, our administration doesn't think should be sending us immigrants today. So it is a pretty direct comparison.

[Jack O'Brien]

Not a popular source of people back then, right?

[Robert Evans]

No, no, they were not. They were the United States. Not thrilled that these people are coming over. So Mikhail, who I'm sure was immediately called Michael as soon as he entered. You can't be going by that here. Left his wife and kids behind. So they are staying back in Italy, and I guess he's sending them back money as he seeks to make a life for himself in the United States. So he's doing that for years, until this takes a while. Until in May of 1924, there's a panic over immigration in the halls of power in the United States. And this was, you know, the result of kind of a long simmering pot. From the early 1800s, most immigration into the US had been Western and Northern Europeans, aka the whitest of the white people. And. And we had some issues with some of them, right? There was some like, oh, a Welshman's here now. But like, you know, for the most part, it's like, well, they're all pretty. We're all pretty white, right? These people, you know, not to say that nobody faced bigotry when they came here, but they're all, you know, this is like the founding stock and the ideas of people. By that point in time, by the time you hit the 1800s and by the late 1800s and early 1900s, shit's starting to shift. Immigrants are now coming more from eastern and southern Europe, where the white people are not quite as white. The first 20 or so years of the 1900s also coincided with the largest surge in immigration in U.S. history. Up to that point, eugenics was beginning to become a popular topic of discussion. And among educated racists, it was believed that many different European nations were also effectively different races. Per an article in the Migration Policy Institute, the influential eugenicist Charles Davenport considered Italians prone to crimes of personal violence, while Jews were characterized by intense individualism and ideals of gain at the cost of any interest. Since eugenicists believe individual races possess different characteristics and abilities, Davenport argued the government should be careful not to adulterate our national germ plasm with socially unfit traits. And, you know, and what this was.

[Jack O'Brien]

In what small corner of the Internet? Oh, wait, this was in academia.

[Robert Evans]

This is it. This is in Congress at this point. I mean, this is.

[Jack O'Brien]

It was so pop. Like, Americans don't understand how popular that was in. In the early 20th century.

[Robert Evans]

If you've seen a picture with a man with like a stethoscope or a fucking pince nez or whatever and doctor in front of his name in 1910, he believed the most racist things you can imagine because he read it in a textbook that was like the devious Czech has these characters. It's like a D and D source book where it's like, oh, they get plus two to strike. You know, like, that's literally how these people are like learning this shit. It's in textbooks and it's in the textbooks that our congressmen are reading. And they're getting yelled at too, about all of the Italians that are coming into the country. Enter the Dillingham Commission, which was set up by Congress to study the consequences of immigration. It released a report in 1909 that's right after about two years after Michel came to the United States that argued northern and Western Europeans were just kind of better people from the other parts of Europe. And it suggested. The Dillingham Report suggested a wide range of policies to discourage immigration from unworthy places, including literacy tests and racial quotas. Right. That's where a lot of this stuff, you know, is when America really starts thinking about immigration and the border in a very modern way. You know, there'd been panics over it before and, and, you know, legislation, but a lot of our modern apparatus of how we think about immigration, of how we think about white genocide, and that sort of stuff all starts right in this period of time. And to make a long story short, the Dillingham Commission releases that report in 1911. Things still move slowly in the halls of power, but this eventually culminates in 1924 in the immigration act, which restricted immigration in an attempt to ensure most arriving immigrants were from the good places. Per the mpi, it closed the door on almost all new Asian immigration and shut out most European Jews and other refugees fleeing fascism and the horrors of the Holocaust. In Europe, one of the most restrictive immigration laws in US history, it played a key role in ending the previous era of largely unrestricted immigration. So this is when immigration as a, like a modern concept really gets started. And Greg Bevino's ancestor, this is just.

[Jack O'Brien]

A relevant context for people who are like, this is not what America is about.

[Robert Evans]

It's kind of been the way we have been for a while, last hundred and something years, you know.

[Jack O'Brien]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And Greg Bevino's ancestor knew that this post a threat to his plan because he's making money and he's sending it over to Italy. But his plan is, I want to bring my family with me right to the lane of opportunity at some point. And he sees this act get passed, and he's like, shit, that's about to get a lot harder. So within days of the Immigration act passing, he files paperwork to start the process of becoming a citizen. Once this process was completed in 1927, he brought his family over and they became citizens through a process known as chain migration. Here's how the Sun Times explains what happened. After Michel was naturalized in 1927, he was reunited with his wife and four children in a Pennsylvania coal company town after their arrival on the steamship the SS Giuseppe Verdi record show. Then the kids, including Vincenzo, 12, Gregory Bevino's future grandfather, automatically benefited from a derivative citizenship law for minors. Luigi would become a naturalized citizen. So all his. It's, you know, chain migration is kind of exactly the thing that they're trying to stop now. It's a big part of why they want to reverse some of the citizenships that have been granted, because a lot of them are granted in ways that are very related to this. Right, right. And it's what they want to stop, because they want to stop families from coming over here and getting larger.

[Jack O'Brien]

They've just. They've benefited from this random crapshoot of laws, and everyone did.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. They're just.

[Jack O'Brien]

They don't want anybody else to get lucky like they did. Right.

[Robert Evans]

And they don't. They don't want any other ethnic groups, as they see it, or racial groups to come here and start breeding. Right. Which is what Italians did. You know, it's what everybody did. It's kind of the entire point of the country, you know, kind of the whole deal.

[Jack O'Brien]

The melting pot is a very chaste way of saying a lot of people came here and started fucking each other and everything kind of mixed together.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Jack O'Brien]

I do love how rigorously Italian everything is. It's incredibly named the boat that they came over.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, yeah. The Giuseppe Inventions.

[Jack O'Brien]

Oh, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

They were nearly out of pizza by the time they hit the dock. Yes, I know. The Trump administration has cited the 1924 immigration law as an example of the kind of reforms they seek to make. They've also repeatedly cited chain migration stories like this as an example of things like why birthright citizenship and JU solely need to be revisited. For his part, Bavino does not seem interested in his family background, and I don't know that it was much of a factor in his raising. For him, the most influential thing that happened in 1924 may not have even been the Immigration act, because that is also the year the Border Patrol was created. And that's gonna be Greg Bevino's whole life. So like I said, he's born in San Bernardino because his father had just been drafted to fight in Vietnam. So don't worry. Like my native Inland Empire people, they don't stay very long. They're just stationed on a military base nearby. And two years later, when his father gets discharged, the family moves back east to Blowing Rock, North Carolina, which is the real name of a place. Don't make fun of it.

[Jack O'Brien]

You know, Blowing Rock, North Carolina.

[Sophie Lichterman]

When you first mentioned San Bernardino, I was like, confused because he doesn't give big Inland Empire energy.

[Robert Evans]

No, he's not an Inland Empire guy. No, he's only there two years. Yeah.

[Sophie Lichterman]

So this makes more sense.

[Jack O'Brien]

He does give Blowing Rock energy, though. I've gotta say. He really does.

[Robert Evans]

Jack. I do kind of wonder, is there any. And he doesn't say anything about this, so maybe I'm reading into it. Maybe two years isn't enough time. But I've lived in parts of the deep rural areas where, oh, you didn't come here till you were two. You're not really from here, boy. So I don't know if that was any part of his background or not.

[Jack O'Brien]

That new family, I. Mr. Killen, I was born.

[Robert Evans]

You coming up here. That was 20 years ago, Mark.

[Jack O'Brien]

They called him Hollywood. Here comes Hollywood.

[Robert Evans]

Hollywood. Yeah, I could see that. But they don't say anything about that. That's purely headcanon for fucking Greg Bevino. And to be fair, probably not the case because his, his, his dad's side of the family's just come here, but his mom's side of the family goes back at least, they say, eight generations in the Blowing Rock area. The Bevinos had two more children, Natalie and Nicholas, born in 74 and 79 after moving back to their part of the country. And one gets the feeling that young Greg may have benefited a bit from only child syndrome because he's a good bit older than his siblings. Right. Closer to his sister than his brother. But he's got some oldest sibling memories at least. His younger sister Natalie is one of our few semi detailed sources in Greg's childhood. Although she seems to idolize her brother, and I don't credit her with a lot of skepticism or scrutiny about him. She describes their early childhood as Rockwellian, which means reminiscent of the paintings of Norman Rockwell. Right. And is also based, I think, often on some misunderstandings of them. But like, she's. She. She's thinking of like, those nice paintings of kids hiking in the woods and, you know, idyllic Christmases with the family gathered around the fire and stuff. Right. Like, that's what she means. There are about a thousand.

[Jack O'Brien]

Was Norman Rockwell, like, fucked up?

[Robert Evans]

I actually don't. No, he. Pretty good politics. I mean, he's not perfect. There's some stuff, you know, you find with any illustrator in that period. They did some uncomfortable illustrations if you look back far enough. Right? Sure, sure. But no, he did a lot of. He was like super pro integration, super pro civil rights movement. Like, he was.

[Jack O'Brien]

It's just like the carefully curated version of the paintings that make it happen to be curated by white supremacists.

[Robert Evans]

As is often the case, a bunch of white supremacists have taken his paintings to be like, this was the ideal America before everything got ruined. Norman Rockwell was just painting pretty things.

[Sophie Lichterman]

You know, and also Rockwell.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, he was also painting like, he did some paintings of like, civil rights movement, like, protests and stuff that were contemporary, so wasn't all, but, you know. Yeah, they forgot.

[Jack O'Brien]

So you're sure she was referring to Norman Rockwell when she said Rockwell, Ian, and not the 80s artist who sang Somebody's Watching Me?

[Robert Evans]

Yes. I do not believe she was referring to the 80s artist who said Somebody's Watching Me. Thank you, though, for bringing that up.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Norman fucking Rockwell.

[Jack O'Brien]

Norman fucking Rockwell.

[Robert Evans]

There were about a thousand people in their hometown, which she describes as literally perfect. So again, she's. She. She has these idyllic memories of their early childhood. The Bavino's benefited from a tight family and an extensive one. Right. They have a lot of in laws and relatives, and they had money too. They're doing very well for a while. Their father had started a successful bar, the Library Club. And the reason why it's such a big deal here is that their town is like the lone wet county in the middle of a bunch of dry counties. So there's a bunch of bars in town and. And it's kind of like a vacation town. So it's both where people come on vacation, but also if anyone nearby wants to drink, they have to come to Blowing Rock. Right. And the Library Club's like one of the biggest places they're going to go to.

[Jack O'Brien]

You can make a good living by having the brilliant innovation of we live in a town where I can open a bar and no other towns around us can open a bar. I bet people will drink here.

[Robert Evans]

I bet people will drink here. And they should, because people talk about.

[Jack O'Brien]

Like, being able to, like, how, you know, previous generations, you could, like, buy a house for this and, like, everything was so much cheaper. It was also so easy to, like, succeed back.

[Robert Evans]

There were less. Less ideas had been.

[Jack O'Brien]

Yeah, you know, like.

[Robert Evans]

I don't know.

[Jack O'Brien]

I think people will use plastic in the future. I'm getting into plastics.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Jack O'Brien]

You become a millionaire.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, it was easier. It was easier. Most of the sources I find now, I will say, though, Jack, I don't know that we fully understand how the Library bar made its money. Most of the sources I find just describe it as a bar. And weirdly enough, the thing that made me think maybe something more was going on here was that interview I found with Natalie in the Daily Mail where I don't think she's trying to let on that her dad was a criminal. But that's kind of how it sounds, because here's a quote from her. In those early years, the family was living the good life, thanks largely to the success of the library club. And here's Natalie. The bouncers would drop huge sacks of money off stacks and stacks. He did incredibly well. The family was able to buy their house and at both they'd ride on Watauga Lake and a membership in a country club where they ran a side business, a drink stand on the ninth hole. And that's not how bars were they doing there. Just don't come to your home with sacks of money. I've known a few bar owners and none of them have. The bouncers dropped sacks of money off at their houses. That's. Your dad was moving something.

[Jack O'Brien]

Yeah, he was moving. Weight, sir.

[Sophie Lichterman]

On the ninth hole is such a fantastic detail.

[Jack O'Brien]

Wow. Yeah, well, we were basically millionaires for the time because he had a drink stand on the ninth hole of a golf course. Yeah. No, that makes sense.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. That doesn't sound like the way you bribe the judges about any case.

[Jack O'Brien]

Drove an ice cream truck and then it's like, what?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. We were at a small bar, you know, the bat. The bouncers dropped sacks of money off at the house, as is normal. Yeah. Maybe she's not remembering things right, but that sounds sketchy as to me.

[Sophie Lichterman]

And speaking of stacks and stacks and stacks.

[Robert Evans]

I was gonna say speaking of sketchy as yeah, that too. Here's the sponsors of our show.

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[Robert Evans]

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[Robert Evans]

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[Sophie Lichterman]

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[Brandon Kyle Goodman (guest voice)]

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[Robert Evans]

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[Robert Evans]

And we're back. So yeah, I don't know. Greg Grows up to be fair, whatever the truth is about their dad, the kids didn't grow up aware of anything sketchy. Greg spends his early childhood hunting, fishing and exploring the woods. His parents got him his first shotgun at age 8. He reads hunting magazines voraciously, which is how he encountered his first pieces of pro border patrol propaganda. And this is interesting because I get a different answer. Every other article I read was talked about, a thing we'll discuss later. There's a movie he watches and this is the first time he encounters the Border Patrol. And it's actually talking to his sister that the Daily Mail gets this piece of information that I think might be more accurate because it feels more accurate to me at least. The hunting publications featured columns written by old time border patrol agents such as Skeeter Skelton and Charles Askins. The young boy had found his calling. He thought it was the Wild West. Natalie Bovino told the Daily Mail. It was like a true frontier. It was those old timers that inspired that in him. And that is more believable to me than the other story. Just because, like, I too was a young boy once and I've read a lot of similar articles and a lot of similar magazines. I could see that happening to this kid.

[Jack O'Brien]

You're familiar with the works of Skeeter Skelton?

[Robert Evans]

You know what, Jack? I am. That's what we're gonna talk about next. Cause the second, as someone with a comedy background, the second I read the name Skeeter Skelton, I was like, we gotta deal with that. Skeet, Skeeter, Skeeter.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Say more.

[Jack O'Brien]

Skeeter Skelton rules I'm sorry, what is that short for?

[Robert Evans]

Like, Skeetropolis? Like, what, the. Skeeter. I've known a couple Skeeters, but I never thought it was a given Christian name. I'm going to be honest. Is it.

[Jack O'Brien]

Is it his actual name?

[Robert Evans]

That's what it seems like. It's written on everything that it's byline. I don't know. I don't know. The man's birth certificate. Check. It's just weird hearing the name, seeing the name Skeeter written in a real publication as opposed to hearing it across a bar, which is how you're supposed to.

[Jack O'Brien]

Those guys usually don't make it out of the library club. They're usually there for them.

[Robert Evans]

No, they do not.

[Sophie Lichterman]

I just am thinking of that. That Nickelodeon show called Cousin Skeeter from, like, the 90s.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, geez, I don't even remember that one. Yeah, yeah, I read the name Skeeter Skelton. I had to look into it more. And he was a lawman from Hereford, Texas, who served in a bunch of different cop roles. He did everything he was in, everything from the Amarillo Police to Border Patrol to DEA to Customs. And he starts writing for Shooting Times, which is a magazine that still exists in 1966. And again, it's one of those. Like, no one had had the idea to have a magazine about shooting. So they start having one in 66, and he's like, I'm gonna write about handguns. It's like, no one had that idea before. So he goes from pitching them to becoming the handgun editor the next year, because they're like, what a great idea. People in America are writing about handguns. You're a genius, Skeeter.

[Jack O'Brien]

This guy whose nickname is just a slang term for mosquitoes, is a genius.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, God.

[Jack O'Brien]

Skeeter Skelton.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. He's the handgun editor of Shooting Times until his death in 1998. If you want to know his main claim to fame, he's generally credited with reviving interest in the.44 special round, which is the bullet that Dirty Harry uses. So without Skeeter Skelton, we may never have Dirty Harry.

[Jack O'Brien]

So he popularized it before Dirty Harry.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, yeah. He's not the.44 real early.

[Jack O'Brien]

Yeah, okay. Yeah. Like, Dirty Harry actually stole that shit from me. I do.

[Robert Evans]

No, I gotta.

[Jack O'Brien]

So we're doing a new version of TDZ where we dive into icons. We just did a Marilyn Monroe episode, and we found this character named George Solitaire, who I can't stop thinking about and talking about because he had A claim to fame. He was just Joe DiMaggio's like drinking buddy. And his claim to fame was that he invented the phrase splitsville and dullsville. And he was, and he had a whole origin story about it. That because he was born in Brownsville and moved to Bronxville, that's just how.

[Robert Evans]

He thought about Vils.

[Jack O'Brien]

He had ville in his blood, but otherwise he was just a guy who got drunk with Joe DiMaggio and he's all over the historical record. And he was like a picket scalper.

[Robert Evans]

I love a guy like that.

[Jack O'Brien]

Having a claim to fame that is that specific and stupid is just like my hat's off to, like, what a weird world.

[Robert Evans]

It's one of those things, the second someone tells you that, like, you know, I come up with that word splitsville, you're like, you must have.

[Jack O'Brien]

No one would claim to have done that.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. That's not a thing anyone would pretend.

[Jack O'Brien]

Yeah. But like to be like, I popularized this one round that's kind of my.

[Robert Evans]

It'S kind of my. If an ancient man came up to me and said I made the.44 popular, I'd be like, you probably did.

[Jack O'Brien]

Yeah, I guess.

[Robert Evans]

I don't know. I would lie about that.

[Jack O'Brien]

To lying and like getting to just find a lie so specific.

[Robert Evans]

Really. There you go, people.

[Jack O'Brien]

Nobody would ever be like, what? Okay, Yeah, I guess so. That, that makes sense.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I, I'll believe it. And so I, I, I haven't had the time because he wrote articles for 20 something years. I haven't had the time to go through all of Skeeter's old articles on shooting times. But I found one article and I read, and I read the first paragraph of it, Jack. And this, this kind of tells you all you need to know about what young Gregory might have picked up reading Skeeter's Golems.

[Jack O'Brien]

Oh my God.

[Robert Evans]

Almost all the objections to the.357 Magnum as a police weapon come from city police departments. It is argued with some justification that an officer who fires a Magnum in a crowded city is more likely to kill innocent non combatives than he would be if armed with a standard.38 special. Not much is given to the fact that the same officer runs a hell of a lot more risk of being killed himself when his low powered.38 fails to put an armed opponent out of action.

[Jack O'Brien]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

So just like, look, some city cops say using this bigger bullet gets regular people killed because it goes through doors and stuff. Right. But have you thought about the danger of not killing a guy out of action. I love. And you see also because this is actually like, was published right after his death, but he wrote it a little before. So this was published like posthumously in 88. But you can see the early birth of a lot of the warrior ethos, like warrior cop shit here. The whole. Well, you know, you could say an officer was more likely to kill innocent non combatives as opposed to like innocent people, innocent civilians, non combatives. They still could have done something. Right. Right.

[Jack O'Brien]

Everything is in the context of the assumption that someone's attacking you. That's how you leave the door in the morning.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Jack O'Brien]

Everyone is combative or entering a combat situation.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Jack O'Brien]

With a. It's. It's worth the risk to have a gun that shoots through four people in a crowded urban environment.

[Robert Evans]

Exactly. And so this is the kind of shit he's reading as a kid. Like the early precursors to a lot of that is what Greg Bevino is the fact that like as like a 9 or 10 or 11 year old. He's. He's reading. Yes. Something like. Because he was born in 70, so he would have been born like a couple years after this guy started writing for Shooting Times. So from the time he's a little kid, he's reading stuff like this. Like, he's almost patient zero for this like warrior cop ethos bullshit. Like he. He may have been. He's among the very first kids who got hit with this stuff as a child, you know, right in the bloodstream. He's not an earlier generation. Yeah, right into the bloodstream. And it just takes over as far as we can tell. So Natalie's interview is the only place I found reference to Bavino reading these magazines. And every other piece on him lists, as I said, a very different inciting incident for his interest in the Border Patrol as a career. Here's how the Chicago Sun Times describes it. Bavino has said that he was inspired to join the Border Patrol when he saw a movie called the Border that came out when he was just 11. Produced by a distant cousin of his mom, it just starred Jack Nicholson and Harvey Keitel as agents. But the young Bavino was crestfallen that the movie portrayed the agents as bad guys and said that he was moved to join the border patrol in 1996 to show that he was the opposite, a good border cop. Making the border secure is my personal responsibility, Bavino said on a podcast in 2021. And I wonder, is it that maybe he saw the movie and then started reading the magazines. But his sister describes the magazines as kind of the first thing. So is it that Bovino doesn't want to admit that, like. Well, I read some magazines by some Border Patrol guys and thinks that because this is a more convenient right wing, modern right wing narrative. Right. That, like. Well, I saw the liberal Hollywood movie about the border Patrol, and I wanted to prove him wrong, you know, which is kind of what I suspect.

[Jack O'Brien]

And it's like, you're. Instead of having to rely on people wanting to learn more about Skeeter Skelton, you can just be like, it had Harvey Keitel and Jack Nicholson. Like, those are names you've heard before. This will stick in your brain. You don't have to say Skeeter to correct those guys. Rather than being like, well, have you read the works of Skeeter Skelton?

[Robert Evans]

Skeeter Skelton?

[Jack O'Brien]

No.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Jack O'Brien]

That's a name you just made up, man.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. That's not a real guy.

[Jack O'Brien]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

So the idyllic, perfect part of Greg's childhood also ends the same year the border comes out. When he's 11, his father drives home drunk one night from work. I'm sure it wasn't the first night. Can't have been, Right? And he winds up crashing his truck directly into a car, killing a young woman and brutally injuring her husband. Jesus. They were 26 and 29 years old, respectively. It was a bad crash. There was no sign that Bavino tried to brake before hitting the other car, which the local paper described as bowled over by the impact. Mike was unharmed. The victim's husband sued the Bovinos and sued Mike's Bar, and ultimately Mike pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of death by motor vehicle. But the judge in his case ordered he be sent to state prison as treatment for his alcoholism, and he stays there for four months. There's an article written about him while he's in jail. He tells the Charlotte observer that he'd long struggled with his drinking and that he'd gotten drunk the night of the crash because his wife had begged him to quit the sauce. And that had made him angry. He promised not to do so again after getting out of jail, saying, I've got a dead woman on my hands. Getting dead drunk just isn't worth it. I don't know how else you frame that, but that's not the best way. Maybe. I don't know. The lawsuit destroys his business.

[Jack O'Brien]

What a clever bit of wordplay.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Why do we need word? You killed a woman. Why are we doing wordplay here?

[Jack O'Brien]

Yeah, what, we could just skip the fucking Hallmark Poster and just go right to, yeah, I stopped drinking because of a horrible thing that happened as a result of my drinking.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. That's a weird way to describe it. A lady.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Thank you.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just. I killed a woman. Would have been enough to say. The lawsuit destroyed his business, obviously forcing him to sell it. Betty decided she'd had enough and divorced him. After this, gaining sole custody of their three children, Mike left the family and settled in New Mexico. Greg was 14 when his dad left. So this takes a while. You have to imagine this is a bad three years. And he enters high school right around the same time the divorce was finalized. He was not recalled by his peers as an overly memorable student. Right. He's not someone who really makes a mark. When he started at Watauga High School, he joined the wrestling team. And if you have seen photos of Greg around other people, he's not a large man, right?

[Jack O'Brien]

No, he's a wee man.

[Robert Evans]

He's a smaller fella. Right. And height isn't everything. There's weight at classes and stuff. Height's not everything in wrestling.

[Jack O'Brien]

It's great for wrestling to be small.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, it can be hand. But he's also, even in that world, kind of small. Right. And he doesn't seem to have developed in other ways to compensate for that. And everyone who talks about his time in wrestling is very polite about this, but he was not good at it. Sometimes people actually talk to his old high school coach, who it seems like a very nice man, because when they bring up, was he good? He's like, well, when he was, you know, he wasn't the biggest boy. He wasn't the biggest guy. But at the end of his senior year, he got the Most Improved award, which is something even though the team had an unusually terrible season. Which is a very sweet way to try to describe this boy.

[Jack O'Brien]

Yeah, our team got so shitty that he was actually, like, kind of par for the course for our team.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of what he's saying.

[Jack O'Brien]

How I. I am just curious, now that you've researched 3,000 of the. The worst people to ever live, how common is the, like, not remembered versus, like. Oh, yeah, I remember that shit.

[Robert Evans]

Like, mostly generally, when we come across a guy who. There's not much about their childhood or background, it's because they were like, some weird con person in the 1800s, and it's like they just hopped onto the historic record when they were 30. And we don't know what the fuck was going on previously. Or it's someone who's such a minor weirdo or creep that there's just not a lot, you know, no major. You know, they haven't been covered by a major newspaper. No one's dug into them that much. With someone like Greg, this is. It's not common to have this little. When you actually talked to a bunch of their classmates and peers. That's the weird thing.

[Sophie Lichterman]

The one thing that we. That we typically come across that's like a common commonality is like, somebody who has crazy ambition, and that's what people remember. Yeah, I'm not hearing that here for Greg at all.

[Robert Evans]

Nobody says that about Greg. Nobody's like it.

[Sophie Lichterman]

That is a very common bastard trade, is that they had way too much ambition at an early age, and then they, you know, become like Jeff Bezos.

[Jack O'Brien]

Or whatever they were. Like, yeah, yeah. He was voted person least likely for you to be asking this question about them. Because I. Yeah, he thought he wasn't gonna do.

[Robert Evans]

Because Greg. Seriously? Greg.

[Jack O'Brien]

Greg you talking about? Well, first of all, Greg Gregory.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Did you realize he's named Greg? Yeah. Sorry to the Greg's out there. I just. It's hard to imagine. It's not even an insult. It's just hard to imagine a Greg being, like, the mouthpiece of a fascist dude.

[Sophie Lichterman]

I do literally have a cousin Greg, and he is delightful. Cousin Greg, if you're listening to this, I love you, cousin Greg.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. I'd have trouble imagining your cousin Greg as the mouthpiece of a fascist regime, you know?

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yeah.

[Jack O'Brien]

We literally all have a cousin Greg, and they're all great.

[Sophie Lichterman]

My cousin Greg rocks.

[Jack O'Brien]

Except Greg Bevino's cousin has a cousin Greg. Not so great.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Not so great.

[Robert Evans]

Yep. So Greg's coach said this about him. Quote, greg was not bashful. He had no problems asking the coach questions. And, you know, he liked to tell stories, funny stories. He also expressed, when these reporters ask him, a lot of surprise that he went into law enforcement, and he says so in a way. I love this. The coach says this in a way that makes me think, like, oh, I think this coach might not like the police very much. Quote, that was a real surprise. I just didn't picture Greg being in law enforcement. He was always very pleasant, and I didn't see him as that. That, to me, didn't seem to fit his personality. It wasn't a dick.

[Jack O'Brien]

I wouldn't become a cop. Good talking to you, comrade. Hell, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

No, I didn't peg him for a huge asshole. Yeah.

[Jack O'Brien]

I didn't think he'd turn into a piece of shit.

[Robert Evans]

Didn't think he was that kind of prick.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Thanks, coach.

[Jack O'Brien]

I love it.

[Robert Evans]

Cool guy.

[Jack O'Brien]

When you go back, like, it's also interesting when they don't have anything interesting to say because I do feel like most of the time when you're asking a normal person about, they'll have made up a memory about them just to be interesting at dinner parties.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. He never stopped reading that book about Reinhard Heydrich. Just loved the guy. Like something, you know.

[Jack O'Brien]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

But no, there's very. Other than his sister being like, he read Skeeter.

[Jack O'Brien]

He reads Peter. And his coach being like, I didn't think he was a big enough asshole to be a cop.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Jason Perry, his wrestling teammate, also expressed surprise at what had become of Bevino. He described Greg in school as very polite and added, I don't think Greg would not do his job. And, like, if they're asking him to do something that's not fair to minorities, I'm sure he's hating it. This is kind of a Bible Belt community, so I know Greg was exposed to compassion, love for his fellow man, but it's dangerous to speculate what a man is thinking. I hope whatever happens, I hope it works out good for him and his family and the people that are being mistreated when he knows about it. Such a middle of the road thing. I hope both the guy hurting people and the hurt people get better. Okay.

[Jack O'Brien]

It's crazy because I know he's aware of compassion. Like, he's heard of it. Like, for sure he's aware.

[Robert Evans]

He's not supposed to. He must not like what he's doing because he's not supposed to act this way.

[Sophie Lichterman]

He's heard of compassion.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I know he's not supposed to be doing this shit. Yeah.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Now, if you spend any amount of time looking this guy up on social media, you'll run into some claims made by a purported former classmate of his on Reddit that are much more negative than the recollections gathered by the Sun Times. It opens with the op head bar 9316 writing, I just found out I know Greg Bovito personally. Here are some things you can tell him when you next see him. And the poster claims that he's a current Minneapolis resident who used to live in Boone, North Carolina, near where Bavino grew up, and that they went to the same school. And he posts a clip from a yearbook with a picture of Bavino on the wrestling team as evidence. That said a bunch of these pictures are floating around, not guaranteed that that means he actually Went to school with this guy. And then he provides a bunch of suggestions for things that protesters should say to be, hey, Greg, you are the reason your dad got drunk and killed that woman in Blowing Rock, which led to your parents divorce. And I don't think that that's necessarily accurate. I think his dad killing someone and bankrupting the family is probably enough of a reason. That might be a bit of a dick move, but I think we're just being an asshole to this guy. That doesn't really expand our knowledge about Greg, though. Right? So let's move on to the next one. Hey, Greg, do you think it's weird that the Watauga High yearbook has you listed as most likely to shit his pants in public? Now they don't burr. I've seen his ear. That's a nice burn. But also, yearbooks don't do that. That's not a thing. Like no public school yearbooks. Someone would go to jail in the.

[Jack O'Brien]

South putting that in a public school.

[Robert Evans]

You're not allowed to do that for a lot of reasons. It's abusive to the students. Again, he would have been 18. Hey, Greg, your history teacher thinks that you're a pathetic Nazi punk. No wonder you failed all his classes. This doesn't seem to be accurate. Based on. Again, it's a burn. But I don't think it's true because I think his grades were decent. At least it sounds like that. I can believe some of his teachers hate him now, but I just. I don't think he actually did fail all of his classes. I haven't found the evidence of that. So the next allegation is that a local store banned him for sniffing shoes after people tried them on. Don't have anything about that one way or the other. Right.

[Jack O'Brien]

It's a good one, though. Now we're getting two, like, pretty good lies to tell about someone.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, the last one, like, kind of.

[Jack O'Brien]

Weird and specific enough. Like having invented. Invented Splitsville. It's like, no. Yeah, he had to be banned from Payless shoes.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, the last one is really specific, Jack. And again, not one we can back up in any way. Hey, Greg, do you remember eating that? The Watauga Pioneers wrestling team's soggy biscuit. Is it still gay to eat semen off a Bojangles biscuit or was that just an 80s thing? Now, again, first off, he was born in 70, so he wouldn't have been. I mean. Yeah, yeah, that works out, I guess.

[Jack O'Brien]

80S, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, that does work out. The timing works out. The Bojangles biscuits make Sense. That said, I can't back up the rest of this. And there's enough wrong with the previous parts of this that I, maybe this is someone who went to school with him and is just like throwing out shit because they didn't like him. You know, maybe he did sniff shoes in a local shoe store. I can't prove it, but there's no evidence people are going to bring this up because it went crazy viral. I can't back any of this up. And.

[Jack O'Brien]

I feel like we can confirm both of those things happened in that guy, whoever the poster is, someone in that town. Yeah, yeah. And like, he's just like, yeah, because those are like good and specific. Like, yeah, those are real. He's probably just taking those and being like, these happen to Greg Bovino.

[Robert Evans]

And yeah, I believe some guy did those things.

[Jack O'Brien]

Yeah, for sure.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, yeah, again, maybe. But I can't, I can't prove it and I can't find any specific reason to believe that this post that people are sharing around is real. Boy, if anyone can prove that Greg Bovino got banned from a store for sniffing shoes, let's have it. But nobody else seems to be sharing this yet. Great. Some cub reporter go down to Boone, figure this out, break the mystery.

[Jack O'Brien]

So just looking through microfiche, looking for.

[Robert Evans]

Shoe sniffing microfiche in the basement of the shoe store. It's all just shoe store related articles.

[Jack O'Brien]

All right, so I'm gonna come clean here and say I like the smell of new shoes. What is. So if you're smelling. If you're at a shoe store waiting.

[Robert Evans]

For people to finish, try it on shoes, right?

[Jack O'Brien]

So are you taking their shoes while they're. Their existing shoes, while they're trying them on? Because. Yeah, that's.

[Robert Evans]

I can see how you'd shoot this in a TV show, right, where like you have, you have somebody putting on. Take off the shoe, put it up, and then you have like, oh, Greg, sneak around the corner, check, see that the coast is clear, goes up to the shoe box. I'm Jason with the fucking broom.

[Jack O'Brien]

I think new shoe, new tennis ball and new car are underrated. Like synthetic chemical smells that I enjoy.

[Robert Evans]

Like, I will hard agree on the nose.

[Jack O'Brien]

And a new pair of sneakers that I just opened the box on and take a nice deep, deep huff and I.

[Robert Evans]

Okay.

[Jack O'Brien]

Should I be banned?

[Robert Evans]

Yes, perhaps.

[Jack O'Brien]

Nobody's worn them yet. What's wrong with that?

[Sophie Lichterman]

I don't know. Shoe sniffer.

[Jack O'Brien]

All right, new shoe sniffer. Brand new shoe.

[Robert Evans]

Brand new. Come on now. All right, so that's the myth about Greg Divino that I had to. I don't know, it's not even busting. It's just pointing out. I've seen this going around. This doesn't directly comport with anything else that's independent. And I have no specific reason to believe this is all true. So, anyway, his sister describes him as a voracious reader in high school, and I've seen a few other accounts that match this. He liked military history and cowboy novels, particularly the work of Louis l'. Amour. And his favorite book was probably Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers. Surprising no one. His sister told the Daily Mail that he read Starship Troopers once a year, which completely makes sense. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. And again, so did I, back in the day. But now.

[Jack O'Brien]

Wait, I know the movie is satirical. Is the book also.

[Robert Evans]

No, not at all. Okay, so Robert Heinlein was an interesting guy, a very influential science fiction writer. One of his books, the Moon is the Harsh Mistress, is often seen as providing a lot of the ideological underpinning for the libertarian movement. Right. Like, it's a foundational text for, like, American libertarianism.

[Jack O'Brien]

Yeah, they've been coming off well in this whole thing, by the way.

[Robert Evans]

I said influential. I said influential. That's. That's not a value term. And he's a guy. He started out as a socialist, and then he had his, like, weird, super reactionary right wing, like, John Bircher period. And then he became kind of more of like a normal libertarian sort of deal. But Starship Troopers was. It's. It's often seen as a fascist novel. And that's certainly a very valid reading of it. There's a lot of it that reads very fast. It's also, if you understand Heinlein's life, there's a lot of it that's like, oh, yeah, you were a guy who, like, joined up during World War II and served in the military during that period of time. Of course, you have a very positive view on what the state and the military could do together. Right. Like, there's also a bit of that in it where it's like. Well, you just feel there's some, like, nostalgia towards that period of time too, in this. But it is. It is a book about. No, literally, the best type of government would be the military runs everything. Right. So I can see why Greg Bevino is attached to this book as a kid, especially without any of these slight mitigating factors in Heinlein's own life. And Heinlein, pretty racist guy. I'm not that Interested in mitigating it. I'm just saying there's a little bit more there than there would be with a guy like Bavino. So once he graduates high school in 1988, Bavino went to Western Carolina University where he studied natural research, conservation before becoming the first member of his family to graduate college. He then joined the Border Patrol. In 1996, he graduated as part of Class 325. One of his classmates, Jason Owens, would wind up as head of Border Patrol. The two have podcasted together, per the Sun Times with Jack, you know, is the strongest bond the two people can share.

[Jack O'Brien]

That's right.

[Robert Evans]

During their. Their podcast together, Pavino claims Owens had better grades and graduated at the top of the class, but that he was better at PE and marksmanship. And he makes this claim a lot that he was the best shot in the Border Patrol, basically. I haven't seen independent confirmation of this. Seems like he might be kind of just jazzing himself up a little bit.

[Jack O'Brien]

But pretty easy claim to make.

[Robert Evans]

Pretty easy claim for you to make.

[Jack O'Brien]

Rarely do people be like, all right, that's it, let's go to a range together right now.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, you know, yeah, you got. It's usually like at least an hour long thing to set up, you know. He starts working at the famous El Centro sector, which is on the border of California, not far from what he where he'd been born, but across the country from his home. Per the Sun Times quote, Bavino told Owens later that he was impressed when the sector chief showed up in the field alongside the agents. Bovino said it showed him the need to get into the fight. It's not a fight. It's not a fight. Hungry. A bunch of hungry people walking across the desert. Not a fight, Not a battle. See a couple of battles, they don't.

[Jack O'Brien]

Look like that enemy bugs out there.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, there are hungry people stumbling around battlefields, but you don't look at them and go, ah, the fight. You look at them and go, that guy's starving to death because he hasn't eaten in three weeks.

[Jack O'Brien]

Non combatants, we'll call them non combatants is a good. We gotta see though if they got.

[Robert Evans]

Any weapons, they might get into the fight. Yeah, that's right. So he was promoted steadily over the years and wound up transferred to Washington, where he got a master's degree in National Security at the National War College and then New Orleans, where he led a sector. In 2020, he was sent back to El Centro as a commander. He also spent some time in tactical units, per his sister who makes this dubious claim early in his career, Greg would run into cartels and be the first one in the door because he had the best marksmanship there you see that claim again, a lot of times it was drug cartel base, which he said has now infiltrated every major city with the crime and corruption. And again, I don't think Natalie knows all that much about this stuff. I think her big brother just told her this and she's like, that's the way it's got to be.

[Jack O'Brien]

By the way, if you talk to the son or like sister or, you know, children of any law enforcement officer who are gullible enough, this is the same. First. First of all, you guys don't know how dangerous it is out there. And second of all, their dad is actually secretly the sickest marksman.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And he's the best with a gun.

[Jack O'Brien]

Like it's crazy. They thought he had crazy how good. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Jack O'Brien]

That's amazing. But it's great.

[Robert Evans]

You.

[Jack O'Brien]

You know, it's a certain type of person who lies about that stuff to their sister.

[Robert Evans]

Right. Because I haven't found this claim repeated elsewhere. Clearly not anywhere credible. But we do have documentation of his career running El Centro, where he oversaw about 1100 employees. Critics say that under Bovino's leadership, BP employees were violent and cruel towards migrants. The ACLU accused one of his agents of assaulting a Salvadoran migrant in 2022, separating her from their 10 year old child for nearly a year after, presumably she was beaten. The woman was charged with assaulting an agent in detention and then the charges were dropped. The sometimes quotes Monica Longerica, a senior attorney for the center for Immigration Law and Policy, as saying, I think it was a prosecution that sought to silence her, stop her from speaking out about the assault that she experienced. We've seen it here at the border for a very long time and now obviously, you know, but Vino has taken that show on the road. And I bring this up because you can see this exact pattern and the rest of it in his most recent chunk of his career. Right.

[Jack O'Brien]

Yeah, right. Where someone is being assaulted by the people under his command and that is treated as an assault somehow.

[Robert Evans]

Yep.

[Sophie Lichterman]

There.

[Jack O'Brien]

Yeah, it's interesting.

[Robert Evans]

Yep. So for his part, Bavino has bragged that the consequences El Centro agents force upon migrants lead to fewer people trying to cross in the first place. Earlier in his career, he seems to have had more of an interest in portraying himself as a good guy to members of the public. Not long after he got transferred back to lead El Centro, a local activist, Edie Harmon, 81, complained about border Patrol vehicles harming wildlife. Bavino fancies himself a conservationist. He's gotten a degree on the subject, and he once wrote a thesis about the danger illegal immigrants pose to animals in the Southwest. So he agreed to go hike with Harmon, and he wrote her a thank you note insisting Border Patrol cared about the environment too. Per the Sun Times, she said Bavino tried to win her over by offering to install a guzzler, a watering tank for the sheep, and to dedicate it in the name of her dead husband. She said she declined because no biologist recommended that. Before Bavino left their hike, he's asked to take a photo with Harmon, each standing on opposite sides of a cactus.

[Sophie Lichterman]

And that's just so weird, man. So weird. That's weird. That's weird guy behavior. What do you mean? What do you mean?

[Robert Evans]

It was the Biden administration. I think he's trying. He's got to pretend he cares about the environment. And I think he also sees it as cuz he's got this backgr. This is a wedge you can drive between the liberal conservationists and the quote, unquote, illegals. Right. Is if you're like, well, they're bad for the environment, you know, and you're.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Bad for the environment. Greg, fuck off. Fuck off, Greg.

[Robert Evans]

And Harmon made the very good point that, like, he wanted to install a water tank for that. The reason the sheep are in danger is because the Border Patrol keeps putting concertina wire up across their grazing ground. It's the razor wire that's bad for the sheep. Yeah. I don't think they need water. They need their.

[Jack O'Brien]

They're going to want some water, Robert.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, that is true.

[Jack O'Brien]

As somebody who has done 3,000 podcasts on Hitler, wasn't Hitler also, like, very into animals and animal rights?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jack O'Brien]

He was a vegetarian.

[Robert Evans]

No, not at all.

[Jack O'Brien]

For those two things to overlap.

[Robert Evans]

No. And I think, you know, this may just. This may be Bavino. Maybe there's another version of Greg Bevino who just went into conservation. But also maybe it's just there's a degree. I think certainly by the time he's back at El Centro, there's this understanding that, like, well, maybe this is a way we can drive a wedge between the people that I want to target and the majority of the voting population of this state. Right. Bevino is one of the guys who completely drank the Border Patrol Kool Aid. Right. He loves to use the nickname the Green Machine to refer to the Border Patrol, which is what they call themselves. I think they Think it's cool.

[Sophie Lichterman]

It's like a. That's like. Like a naked. Okay, guys, it's like what they call. That's like a naked juice flavor.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Jack O'Brien]

Green machine. It is.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Jack O'Brien]

Themselves after the green juice from naked juice that like, sometimes it's real. Like, sometimes fine, and sometimes it's so bad. Have you ever had a bad green juice?

[Sophie Lichterman]

I have.

[Jack O'Brien]

I have, like, one of those. Yeah. Like 7:11. Green juice can go. Can go off.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Speaking of random products, Robert, it's about that time.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, is it?

[Jack O'Brien]

You don't want me to keep talking about how naked juice, green machine can sometimes go off.

[Sophie Lichterman]

I've never seen you drink a naked juice. I sat next to you for years.

[Jack O'Brien]

Yeah, that's because I had a bad experience once. I'll tell you what.

[Robert Evans]

You're.

[Sophie Lichterman]

You're a Mountain Dew guy.

[Jack O'Brien]

That's right. So if you've seen me at my finest.

[Robert Evans]

That'S.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Your green juice is a Mountain Dew.

[Jack O'Brien]

That's right.

[Robert Evans]

Why?

[Jack O'Brien]

What were you talking about? I once did a money phone in front of Sophie with a six pack of Mountain Dew.

[Sophie Lichterman]

I think I have that picture. If I. If. If I do have that picture somewhere, I am gonna have them put that up on the. On the Netflix.

[Jack O'Brien]

My finest work.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, man. All right, everybody. Here's ads.

[Brandon Kyle Goodman]

I'm Brandon Kyle Goodman, the host of the Tell Me Something Messy podcast. I wanted to create a safe, comfy place for all of us to talk about sex, relationships, and what it means to be human. And, baby, my fantastic guests are bringing their mess to share with the class, like singer, songwriter Duran Bernard, suggesting we reinstate adult sleepovers with friends.

[Brandon Kyle Goodman (guest voice)]

Here's the thing. Get a group that's mature enough not to be putting your hand in warm water and tickling. You know what I'm saying? I mean, granted, I might be doing. But, you know, and I think it's important for those examples of that, of us just being gentle with one another, because the world and the people in it already finding brand new ways to whip our ass every single day, 1,000%. So the least we could do is make strides to handle each other in a way that is a bit more.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, with. That's. That's.

[Brandon Kyle Goodman (guest voice)]

With care and a bit more mindful.

[Brandon Kyle Goodman]

Listen to Tell Me Something Messy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever. Listen to podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

Segregation in the day, integration at night.

[Atlas Obscura Narrator]

When segregation was the law, one mysterious black club owner had his own rules.

[Robert Evans]

We didn't worry about what went on outside.

[Sophie Lichterman]

It was like stepping in another world.

[Atlas Obscura Narrator]

Inside Charlie's Place, black and white people danced together. But not everyone was happy about it.

[Robert Evans]

You saw the kkk. Yeah, they was dressed up in their uniform. The KKK set out to raid Charlie, take him away from here. Charlie was an example of power. They had to crush him.

[Atlas Obscura Narrator]

From Atlas Obscura, Rococo Punch and visit Myrtle beach comes Charlie's Place, a story that was nearly lost to time. Until now. Listen to Charlie's place on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ryder Strong]

This is Ryder Strong and I have a new podcast called the Red Weather.

[Robert Evans]

It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea.

[Ryder Strong]

In 1995, my neighbor Anna Trainor disappeared from a commune.

[Robert Evans]

It was hard to wrap your head around.

[Ryder Strong]

It was nature and trees and praying and drugs.

[Robert Evans]

So, no, I am not your guru.

[Ryder Strong]

And back then, I lied to my parents, I lied to police, I lied to everybody.

[Sophie Lichterman]

There were years, Ryder, where I could.

[Atlas Obscura Narrator]

Not say your name.

[Ryder Strong]

I've decided to go back to my hometown in Northern California, interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can to try to find out what actually happened.

[Brandon Kyle Goodman (guest voice)]

Isn't it a little bit weird that they obsess over hippies in the woods and not not the obvious boyfriend?

[Robert Evans]

They have had this case for 30 years. I'll teach you sons of come around here and my wife.

[Jack O'Brien]

Boom boom.

[Ryder Strong]

This is the red weather. Listen to the red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Atlas Obscura Narrator]

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[Robert Evans]

And we're back. So Bavino, as I said, really drinks the Border Patrol Kool Aid. He loves reciting the agency slogan honor first with little provocation, which at least one Border Patrol whistleblower has said is often used by men in the Border Patrol to mean on her first because they like to sexually assault female agents and women in their custody. Good stuff, the Border Patrol. Bovino described the Border Patrol as his life's work and branded El Centro the premier sector. He's the one who considers it that it is a very busy sector. It's a big. It's a lot of people come through it. But he's like, no, this is the state of the art. You know, this is the best one. You know, we're the standard from which all the other sectors are set. I appreciated what One journalist for CalMatters.org said about this. It's similar to the way states have mottos on license plates that aren't necessarily used by anybody else to describe that state.

[Jack O'Brien]

Right. There's some good ones of those.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, there's some good ones of those. So during the show, me state. Hey, now, hey, now, hey, now. I got to stand. Well, actually, that. That's. That is an insult to people from Missouri.

[Jack O'Brien]

Yeah. Why do they do that? Why they do that?

[Robert Evans]

It dates back to, again, like, the 1800s, but it means that, like, people from Missouri were so dumb that, like, if they wouldn't believe you unless you showed them something. Right. Just tell someone, like, oh, there's. There's big boats now. You got. They got to see the boat because they're dumb.

[Jack O'Brien]

Right. Don't believe in dinosaurs, that sort of thing.

[Robert Evans]

Right, Right.

[Jack O'Brien]

Yeah. Calling something the Premiere. Anything is a great, like, weasel.

[Robert Evans]

Where.

[Jack O'Brien]

Like, that. That's got to be one of the MVPs of, like, bad movies posters, like, where they're like, the. The premiere crime.

[Robert Evans]

It's like Miller calling itself the champagne of beer. Yeah. Okay, guys, no one's going to call it that unless we're joking.

[Jack O'Brien]

The poetry of lying, you know?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. During the Biden years, Pavino started running into trouble. First for tweeting. He made a lot of tweets that got him in trouble. One of them was about a citizen who had been killed by an undocumented person driving drunk that his superiors made him delete because it was too political. He claimed to be apolitical and did not understand what was wrong with his post, but he would later prove to have something of an obsession with the subject. He has in the Trump years, the most recent year and change, at least repeatedly, brought up the threat of undocumented immigrants driving drunk as a reason for aggressive immigration and arrest. Yes, Robert. Wow. Nothing psychological there. Okay. Okay. That's. Okay. Great.

[Jack O'Brien]

That's like.

[Robert Evans]

That's so fucked. Okay, man. Last year's Operation Midway blitz in Chicago, which is where Bavino fish, and not where he first gained widespread national visibility, but it really, really, massively increased his visibility was in honor of a 20 year old who'd been killed in a DUI, right? Like this is a thing for Greg. And it's like, again, man, like, okay, you didn't want to go to therapy, but you're just taking your anger at your dad out on some random people, almost none of whom did anything wrong. Like, almost none of whom have ever driven drunk. Right?

[Jack O'Brien]

This is up there with Tucker. I'm sure you guys have talked about it before on the show, but Tucker.

[Robert Evans]

Carlson's we got to get our Tucker.

[Jack O'Brien]

Hatred of hippies and, yeah, women. And then his mom left his dad for like a French hippie and like his mom was a hippie. It's just like, damn, man. It's almost like too obvious. Like, how do you land where you are without being like, this is like, everybody's gonna know why I'm the way I am. This is so bad.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, that's often the case. And you know, it is. It's the case with old Greg right now. One thing that made Bavino's El Centro stand out is that he had five agents whose whole full time job was making videos, which is interesting. And it shows. Again, he understands. He, he's at least someone who sees how good a shot Trump has at coming back in the Biden years and is like, I, I know what to do to get on this fucker's radar is I need to start making some shit that goes viral. I gotta piss off some libs. Right? Here's how Calmatters describes a representative example. Two agents sit in their vehicle at night listening to a news broadcast about an undocumented migrant charged with the rape and murder of a 64 year old woman in Santa Maria. The news clip is from a real CBS report from 10 years ago. An agent shakes his head in disgust and turns off the radio saying, man, that's the second one in less than a week. Things are getting out of hand.

[Jack O'Brien]

Oh, wow.

[Robert Evans]

And if you're trying to make the case that like, wow, every week multiple people are getting raped by immigrants and it's like, yeah, your one example was from a news clip from 10 years ago.

[Jack O'Brien]

Their most powerful weapon maybe is selection bias, where they will find a crime and make it seem like it is constantly happening right next door to you.

[Robert Evans]

Yep. Now at that moment, dispatch comes over the radio and it tells the agents there's a nearby vehicle loaded with migrants. The agents catch three of them in, but one gets away and sneaks into Anytown usa, where he murders an American citizen. Taking the Man's cell phone and running off and the screen goes dark. And the message, every apprehension matters. Do you know who got away? And again, less than 1%.

[Jack O'Brien]

So much plot.

[Robert Evans]

It's so much plot for such a shitty ad.

[Jack O'Brien]

It's like 30 minutes of a Chuck Norris movie.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, that's the opening of a Chuck Norris movie. Only about 1% of the people the border patrol encounters have a criminal conviction compared to 8% of American citizens. But there's little point in bringing reality into this. They don't care. Right, right.

[Jack O'Brien]

They just get to treat these people like complete shit.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Jack O'Brien]

And so it's like a chance. Yeah, it's bully tactics where you just find the person who's the least protected and then.

[Robert Evans]

Yep. Go after them. Yeah. So Bavino was called to testify before Congress in 2023. He discussed how crossings in his sector had increased significantly and basically made the border hot case that the Biden administration was failing to protect the border. Bavino's own history came up, including what turned out to be repeated issues with social media. One relevant quote was, I think there was one post with two Yemenis terrorists. I was ordered to take that down. Vivino was relieved of command after his testimony, which the Republican House members who'd convened the hearing saw as retribution. And it probably was, right.

[Jack O'Brien]

Like retribution for him saying horrendous stuff and being bad.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. For him being a fucked up asshole. But I guess that counts.

[Jack O'Brien]

And it's also retribution. I was fired as retribution for being bad.

[Robert Evans]

He's bad at his job in this. Right. Because his whole claim is that, like, you gotta be brutal to reduce crossings. And he admitted that crossings were at an all time high and he's in charge. I don't know, man. Maybe you were just saying you sucked at your job. But he didn't suffer any consequences for his actions. Those House members complained about his demotion and he was reinstated at El Centro. And you know what happened? Not long after Donald Trump won re election. On January 7, 2025, the day after Congress certified his victory, Bavino led 65 agents in Operation Return to Cinder. Per CalMatters.org most of the official information about the raid came from Bavino's Facebook comments. He posted blurred photos of three Latino men alongside a photo of 33 pounds of marijuana in the trunk of a car. He wrote, here in the premier sector, we go the extra mile, or 500 of them, to protect our nation and communities from bad people and bad things. So congratulations, Greg, you protected California from pot. Like, great, man. Keeping that weed out of here or.

[Jack O'Brien]

Smelled it here ever since.

[Robert Evans]

That 33 pounds really put a dent in the state.

[Jack O'Brien]

Wow.

[Robert Evans]

78 people were arrested. The Border Patrol told local business owners that the raids were targeting criminal activity, but this was obviously untrue. And a Calmatters investigation partnered with evidence in Bellingcat showed that the Border Patrol had no prior knowledge of criminal history of any kind. For 77 of 78 arrestees, this was very likely illegal. And the ACLU has sued on behalf of the farm workers. Agents are accused of failing to ID themselves or present warrants and of using brutal force. In one case, they slashed the tires of a US Citizen and then arrested them for seemingly no reason. I say very. Like, this was very illegal. You know, this is all very last.

[Jack O'Brien]

Slashed the tires.

[Robert Evans]

They love doing that. They love doing it. What?

[Jack O'Brien]

What? So on what grounds were they arresting them if it wasn't for them having, like, warrants or anything?

[Robert Evans]

Here illegally. Here illegally. Here illegally. Yeah. I mean, that's their argument. Is that like they were doing. That's the illegal thing they were doing, you know, so Minju not having the papers, right? Yeah, that's who they all are. Minju Cho, a senior lawyer for the aclu, called this operation a pilot project for the ones that Babino would later spearhead around the country. He'd earned the attention of the Trump administration for his combative presence on social media and willingness to use federal forces to brutalize people. In June of 2025, he was named tactical commander of a mass raid in Los Angeles, which sparked protests across the city. And you're all pretty familiar with what happened next. We're not gonna go into crazy detail about everything Bovino did in the last year. Cause you all lived through it, right? We don't need to do a ton of that. His agents helped ICE agents as they brutally detained random Angelenos. They blew open doors to houses. They gassed people in the street. Bavino had his video division craft ads depicting his men's violence to regular working people as action movie scenes. He led his agents in an armed patrol outside of a political rally held by Gavin Newsom, which some might suggest could be seen as actual treason. Bavino claimed not to have known that Newsom was in the building, continuing his habit of giving answers to questions that present only the. The only other answer is like, well, so then you're incompetent, right? If you didn't know he was in the building, like, what the fuck was this about, dipshit?

[Jack O'Brien]

We just, like, saw a crowd, and we just, like, kind of we were like, oh shit, Border Patrol does. Was this also when they did the military rage of MacArthur park in yes.

[Robert Evans]

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Which we, we should be talking. And he was like, we're giving this back to Ma and Paul America. And it's like, man, the people who live there are the ones that you're fucking with. They're the ones who use the park, dipshit. But again, he knows this. I'm not going to give a blow by blow of every violent act has been perpetrated, but I should read this quote from an article by Gabrielle Cannon in the Guardian. Two undocumented people have died trying to flee Bavino's agents. A Mexican farm worker fell from a greenhouse and a Guatemalan day laborer was hit by a vehicle following a raid at Home Depot. In another episode, the paper reported they detained a disabled 15 year old high school student in a case of mistaken identity after drawing their guns and handcuffing him, leaving unfired bullets on the ground. So yeah, cool people just like, well trained, good at their jobs. Pavino's obviously sent to Chicago after la, where he enacts similar violence. On one occasion, he throws tear gas on camera against a crowd of peaceful protesters. He and his agency had just been enjoined against using gas without justification. So Bevino claimed that he'd been hit in the head with a rock and had no choice. Bavino later admitted that he'd lied to the US District Judge Sarah Ellis about this.

[Jack O'Brien]

This, that seems fireable, Robert seems fireable to be doing a violent thing and claiming, they hit me in the head with a rock and being like, I lied.

[Robert Evans]

Such a cop thing to do. So I'm a huge piece of shit. Sorry, guys. In October of 2025, he'd been declared commander at large of the Border Patrol, which is not a real job, but basically removed him from the normal Border Patrol hierarchy without giving him formal control over the whole group. In other words, it's the job. You give a guy who you want, you want out there in public, you want to let him do stuff for a while because, you know, eventually you piss people off too much and you want to be able to make him your sacrificial lamb. Right?

[Jack O'Brien]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Let's make him a job that'll put him out in front of everybody because this dipshit is not going to be able to help himself. He was the faceman for Trump's brutal mass deportations and his main job, again, I think was to provide a focus for public outrage, walking around in His Nazi coat looking like Doogie Howser at the end of Starship Troopers. Shit like this serves as a useful distraction. But Vino has gotten to defend his choice of outerwear several times in interviews, per globalsecurity.org, he explained that he purchased it around 1999 as a young Border Patrol agent and had worn it for more than 25 years in cold weather or formal settings without prior controversy. He pointed to a 2022 Department of Homeland Security ceremony under the Biden administration where he wore it and received only compliments. Survivors argue that the design draws from long standing US military traditions, such as the M1939 style overcoat or bridge coats used in law enforcement and formal uniforms, rather than exclusively fascist imagery. But we know why you're doing it, Greg. Come on, man. We know why you like it. You like it because it makes you look like Doogie Howser at the end of Starship Troopers.

[Jack O'Brien]

And also to be like, it's not fascist. It's from the US Military. It's like, well, let's take a look at the US Military history. Yeah, there was something we were talking on Zeitgeist about how that, like, like, they're thinking about bringing ice to the Winter Olympics. And there's just a quote from somebody in Italy talking about their prison camps over there. Like, they're deporting Albanians and taking them to, like, a black site. And they were like, it's like Italian Guantanamo. I was like, oh, we use Nazis as, like, our touchstone. The other countries use us as their. Their. Like, like, yeah, it's almost like we're America as their fascism touchstone.

[Robert Evans]

Jesus Christ. So anyway, I'm not sure how much there is to say. I mean, there's a lot more, but you've all lived through it, right? We know where he is right now. After two murders in Minneapolis, he was picked to be the face of the Trump administration's miscalculation. He was removed from his fake job and sent back to El Centro. I'm sure this is not the end of us hearing about Gregory Bevino. They're kind of keeping him in the cooler, right? He had made a couple of claims even previous to Minneapolis about wanting to retire in the next two years, which I think was part of why the Trump administration. This may have even been an open, like, look, we're gonna give you a special fancy job. You're gonna be on camera. You're gonna get to be the face of the Border Patrol doing all this fascist bullshit. You've always wanted to do. And then when stuff gets too hot for us, we're gonna cut bait. Right, and then you'll just retire with full benefits. Doesn't that sound good to you? You can get a nice job on Fox News or something. In your retirement, you get to wear.

[Jack O'Brien]

That jacket that you keep asking us to wear to every meeting. You get to wear that on the news.

[Robert Evans]

You can wear that every day, buddy. Greg, anytime you want to wear your dumb jacket, please put it on. Put it on in la. Fuck it. Like, anyway, that's my read of the Greg Bevino story. We will maybe do an update on the fucker if more becomes of him. But it may also just be a thing where he'll wait around a little while in El Centro, you know, probably get. Get his rocks off a few times hurting people down there and then retire, you know, like he'd planned to. Right.

[Jack O'Brien]

Did you see the video of the woman who was just like kind of dragging him outside of a 7 11? And his response was just, he was like, oh, that's real nice. Oh, you're being real nice. It was just like, I don't, I don't know, man. That's. I don't think your place is to tell people that they're being not nice at this stage.

[Sophie Lichterman]

He's a weird little guy that got too much power and I hope to never see him again. But I, I think, unfortunately, the way this world's been working, we probably will.

[Robert Evans]

Yep.

[Jack O'Brien]

Yeah, there's a lot of weird little guys. I feel like someone should make a show about that.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, we should probably have a show about weird little guys on our podcast network. Oh, great news podcasts.

[Sophie Lichterman]

I have a great news. Molly Conger has a show called Weird Little Guys.

[Robert Evans]

They figured out how to launch his second podcast, Incredible Jack.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Is there anything you'd like to plug here at the end?

[Jack O'Brien]

Oh, my God. Sophie, thank you so much. First of all, such a pleasure to be with you guys. Robert.

[Robert Evans]

The.

[Jack O'Brien]

My first intern at Cracked, our first intern, discovered by the great Daniel o' Brien and so fun to have been working with you in the podcast space all these years. And Sophie Lichterman, one of the greats to ever do it. So thank you guys so much. Always enjoy being back. Daily Zeitgeist is a show that I do twice a day with my wonderful, twice a day long suffering co host, Miles Gray. And we just published our 2000th episode.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Oh, congratulations, dude.

[Jack O'Brien]

2000Th main episode.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Crazy.

[Jack O'Brien]

The second, we didn't even count the second one, but we did it. We made it to 2000.

[Robert Evans]

What.

[Jack O'Brien]

What it is, we're not sure, but we did it.

[Robert Evans]

Wow.

[Jack O'Brien]

And then, like I mentioned, we have a new series that I think fans of, the Cracked Podcast, the old Crack podcast will like, called the Iconograph, where each Monday, me and a researcher do a deep dive into a different icon. What's an icon, you ask? By our definition. So our first episode was about Einstein, and our second was about Urkel. So it's just any of these big pop culture horcruxes that drive a lot of meaning and the Zeitgeist. And it lets us do a show that isn't about the news, which is so nice.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Fun, fun, fun. Sophie lore for you. My. My first ever crush was Einstein's, like, great grandson.

[Jack O'Brien]

Are you serious?

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Damn.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Yeah.

[Jack O'Brien]

I should have had you on to talk about that.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Sophie Lichterman]

If you're listening to this. Yes. I loved you. It was first grade. I loved you. Yes. Hi.

[Jack O'Brien]

You don't think you knew?

[Sophie Lichterman]

Oh, no.

[Robert Evans]

He.

[Sophie Lichterman]

I. I was not cool. You know me. I can't hide any. Anything. I've never changed. I've always been this way. Like, he. He for sure knew. He for sure knew. And the way I know he knew is I got teased about it by this other guy, so I kicked him in the shin, and then I got in trouble, so he knew. He knew. I've been this way my entire life.

[Jack O'Brien]

And I picture you kicking him in the shin and his shin bones snapping backwards like Steven Seagal.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Sophie Lichterman]

No, he.

[Jack O'Brien]

He definitely knew, but. And his name is Greg Einstein, so.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Greg Einstein, Simon Einstein. Shout out if you're. If you're listening. If you're listening to this. I loved you. I was in first grade.

[Jack O'Brien]

But yeah. Anyways, that's a. That's a fun one. Those come out every Monday morning. We're calling them the Iconograph. We just did Marilyn Monroe, which is a really fun episode. Dolly Parton, Tony Hawk's coming up, and Robert would love to have. Have you on one. So we like to reach out to the guests and be like, okay, here's our list. Who do you like? Or pitch us the icon that you want to go over. So maybe a chance for you guys to talk about people you don't. Who aren't the worst.

[Robert Evans]

Sure. People who aren't the worst. Yes. Icons.

[Jack O'Brien]

Icons.

[Robert Evans]

Yes. Like the iconic Jack o', Brien, who. Thank you for being on our show.

[Jack O'Brien]

Oh, it's so wonderful being here. Also Jackobrian on Twitter.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Sophie Lichterman]

One last plug against the state by James Stout, our colleague. His book is available now. Please buy it. It's fantastic.

[Jack O'Brien]

Love, James.

[Sophie Lichterman]

That'll do it, right?

[Robert Evans]

Robert Yep, that'll do it.

[Jack O'Brien]

Holy shit.

[Robert Evans]

Buh. Bye.

[Sophie Lichterman]

Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes of behind the Basterds are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit remind me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For clips in our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, YouTube.com behindthebastards. We love about 40% of you. Statistically speaking.

[Atlas Obscura Narrator]

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