Andrew Egger (2:35)

Like that's exactly why he said it in the first place, to get a.

Bulwark Colleague (2:37)

Rise out of you, you know, triggered you.

Andrew Egger (2:40)

Hand wringing liberals.

Bulwark Colleague (2:41)

Yeah, exactly, triggered you.

Andrew Egger (2:42)

Gotcha. And at the same time there's this whole undercurrent where all the stuff that he's supposedly joking about, he, he's kind of doing a lot of that stuff all along, right? He actually is like creating these giant.

Bulwark Colleague (2:57)

Geopolitical waves with regard to Greenland.

Andrew Egger (2:59)

He actually has in the past tried.

Bulwark Colleague (3:01)

To steal a presidential election and is in fact like giving his underlings directives to do all sorts of interesting work ahead of this upcoming one.

Andrew Egger (3:13)

So I mean, it's like, I don't know what, when you, I'm curious because.

Bulwark Colleague (3:18)

You jbl, your whole thing is sort of like trying to ferret out which of these things are like real plausibilities and which of them are sort of smoke and mirrors. Like when you hear something like this from the President, do you kind of like roll your eyes and say there he goes again, the big dummy doing little bits for his hooting base or do you react in a different way?

JVL (3:40)

No, I mean I react in a different way, which is that he is. So we should say before I answer this that Carolyn leave. It was asked about this today and her response, well, I didn't see it, but you did, Andrew. What was her response?

Bulwark Colleague (3:55)

Just very straightforward. President was joking. It was a big joke.

JVL (3:58)

Ha.

Bulwark Colleague (3:59)

My question is President Trump has talked twice in recent days, once at the Kennedy center and then to Reuters again last night about canceling the election. Why is he talking about this?

Pure Storage Representative (4:07)

Ms. I believe you're referring to the President's interview at Reuters last night. I was in that interview. It was a closed door interview. Obviously there was not audio or video. The President was simply joking. He was saying we're doing such a great job, we're doing everything. The American people thought maybe we should just keep rolling. But he was speaking facetiously, you know.

Bulwark Colleague (4:25)

That'S all.

JVL (4:28)

Just joking. I don't think he is serious in the sense of he is suggesting to the reporter from Reuters right there that he is toying with the idea of canceling the midterm elections. So I don't think that is serious and that's what he's doing. I do think he is serious in that, in his bones, fundamentally he doesn't believe we should have elections. He views them as, at worst threats and as, at best, annoyances, not as celebrations of democracy. In that he has spent quite a lot of time thinking about, are there ways I can get around elections? He's floated this before. I remember he had a meeting with Vladimir Zelinsky where he was like, you know, it's interesting. They're, you know, in Ukraine, they can't have elections when they're at war. So, you know, if three and a half years from now we're at war, maybe we can't have elections in America. Right. Of course, the Ukrainian constitution is written that way for a very specific reason, because Russia is next to them. We are not. Blah, blah, blah.

Bulwark Colleague (5:31)

He said the same thing about Venezuela as well, by the way. I mean, Venezuela's own laws stipulate that if for some reason the government is decapitated and the president can no longer serve, you need to have a new election within 30 days. Trump has said, well, of course we're not going to do that. That'd be crazy. We're going to just have.

Andrew Egger (5:48)

We're just going to continue with this US Puppet regime in the form of, of Maduro's former vice president. So, yes, I get where you're coming from, and I also get where you're.

Bulwark Colleague (5:54)

Coming from in terms of, I mean, the context in which he said this in the Reuters interview was very interesting because he's sort of bemoaning the sort of, like, historical reality that usually a sitting president loses the midterms. Right. I mean, like, this is a thing we're hearing a lot from Republicans these days because due not only to those historical realities, but also many other uncomfortable facts on the ground, it really does look like Republicans are gearing up for, like, a real shellacking this November.

Andrew Egger (6:22)

And so he's talking about this and he's saying it's like, almost unfair.

Bulwark Colleague (6:24)

It's almost like this cosmic injustice, given how much we're getting done, that this historical trend is likely to befall us. And that's when he says, you know.

Andrew Egger (6:33)

Like, it's not that this is just.

Bulwark Colleague (6:35)

A quirk of sort of like thermostatic US Politics and American voters like to throw the bums out.

Andrew Egger (6:41)

It's like he sees it as like.

Bulwark Colleague (6:43)

This strange and unfair rule of the game that he's been thrust into, that he's going to have to have his people go to the ballot box.

JVL (6:51)

Yeah. And I. The other thing is, so people talk about there's like a sociological idea of context collapse, right? Where, where people suddenly, you know, have a Total inability to understand the context in which a thing is said or posted. This is most often used when sociologists talk about social media and the evils of social media. There is like a context collapse aspect to this, which is that if, if Barack Obama or Joe Biden or George W. Bush or Bill Clinton or George H.W. bush or Ronald Reagan or Jimmy Carr, just go back like, you know, any, any president of our lifetimes had said something like this, you could put it in the broad context of their administration and say, okay, does this look like a joke or does it comport with some very dangerous things we're seeing? The president this morning talked about, you know, invoking the insurrection act in Minnesota. We, he has sent thousands of masked, totally unaccountable federal agents into Minnesota. They are going to door too. In Minneapolis. They killed a woman last week. The, the President and his administration maintain that this, this agent won't even be investigated. And that of course they were, they were happy to do it. He did. Did you notice this was, I wrote about this today. We did the first sale of Venezuelan oil. Did you see that, Andrew?

Bulwark Colleague (8:21)

Yes.

JVL (8:21)

So we sold $500 million worth of Venezuelan oil and the President put those proceeds into an account in Qatar. Qatar, not the US treasury in Qatar. Why did he do this? Because he doesn't want it to go to a place where Congress can oversee the funds and he wants to place those funds outside of the boundaries of the law because there are a whole bunch of creditors lined up to recoup claims and debts that Venezuela owes them. So he wants his own funding stream totally independent of the Congress. That is kind of a king like thing. Right. Also, he did attempt a coup. He did attempt a coup once. So this is why, again, it is one thing to like, ah, he's just joking. But you do have to understand that everything he's done has been, you know, in service of making himself a totally unaccountable autocrat. He's trying to be a dictator.

Bulwark Colleague (9:27)

Yeah. The thing that is really striking to me at kind of like an anthropological level in all of this is if you think back to like when Trump was first arriving on the scene, he was coming up right around the same time that people were hearing for the first time about the alt right and like the online radical right and all these sorts of things.

Andrew Egger (9:44)

And these people and the ways in.

Bulwark Colleague (9:46)

Which they sort of approached the world and, and moved through, moved through politics were so alien to, to a lot of us. And, and it was basically like, it's so strange the way that these Guys live in this, in this state of.

Andrew Egger (9:58)

Like permanent half irony, right, where they, where, you know, they're, they're constantly hatching.

Bulwark Colleague (10:03)

These little, these little plans and these little, in jokes and memes that are.

Andrew Egger (10:07)

That are sort of.

JVL (10:08)

I really love Hitler. I'm just kidding.

Andrew Egger (10:10)

Unless I'm not snuggling up against white.

Bulwark Colleague (10:12)

Nationalist stuff or, or, or trafficking, trafficking.

Andrew Egger (10:14)

In open neo Nazi stuff or like.

Bulwark Colleague (10:18)

Creating new symbols like Pepe the Frog or the okay sign being white power and basically saying like, you know, we're going to get people to associate these things with white nationalism and then we're going to do them a lot and then we're going to make fun of them for calling us white nationalists, right? It was like this bit, but like.

Andrew Egger (10:35)

You live in that bit for years.

Bulwark Colleague (10:37)

And years and years where like, the only thing that really matters to you is like this sense of like, permanent transgression and the kicks you get out of it.

Andrew Egger (10:45)

And suddenly you are like, just find.

Bulwark Colleague (10:47)

Yourself actually not ironically at all, inhabiting all of these things that you supposedly.

Andrew Egger (10:53)

Were only putting on to make this.

Bulwark Colleague (10:55)

Sort of like, meta bank shot point about like liberal sensibilities and, you know, over, over censoriousness and things like that before.

Andrew Egger (11:04)

And the degree to which that kind.

Bulwark Colleague (11:07)

Of mode of politics has just completely.

Andrew Egger (11:09)

Swallowed like the entire political right because.

Bulwark Colleague (11:12)

Of the person, because of the person.

Andrew Egger (11:13)

Of Donald Trump and the fact that's.

Bulwark Colleague (11:15)

The only way to kind of process him and not like completely lose your sanity if you are on the right today.

Andrew Egger (11:22)

I mean, it really is remarkable that is, that it's not just like some.

Bulwark Colleague (11:25)

Bozos on the Internet doing memes.

Andrew Egger (11:27)

It's the President of the United States sitting in the Oval Office and being like, wouldn't it be nutty if I were to cancel the election like I.

Bulwark Colleague (11:34)

Have actually tried to do in the past?

Andrew Egger (11:36)

And everyone's like, is he kidding? Is he not? We don't really know. But we do know that you are.

Bulwark Colleague (11:40)

Dumb for caring is kind of the, is kind of the posture. So I don't know. All very bleak.

JVL (11:44)

Andrew. It's not even just that there are bozos on the Internet. It's that a lot of those bozos on the Internet now work for the United States government, right? So I, I have now written three times this week about like, we. And I just keep writing pieces that are like, hey, there's this weird, like, not even really crypto Nazi, but like kind of Nazi thing coming out of parts of the federal government. Isn't that a problem? And the first one Was somebody had forward minted me a picture from October of a portrait of Greg Bovino that had been shot for a photo shoot for cnn. Which he shows up with this top coat that. I am sorry, is. Is just my first thought was like, oh, he looks like Doogie Howser at the end of Starship Troopers. Right? Which is. Which is then, you know, was modeled on the Nazis. And it is. It just looks like Hugo Boss. Right. It was straight out of the ss. And then we had. They posted lyrics or no, they. They titled something a song that is bel. By white nationalists. And then last. Last night or yesterday they posted a. This very bizarre thing. It's like a little picture of a sled dogs in Greenland. And you know, one way is America, the other way is China and Russia. And the caption is which way Greenland, man. And there's no way you're like looking at this. And unless you follow neo Nazis. And you know, you would look at that and be like, wait, what is. That's a weird formulation. Who would say that? The reason is because somebody who is there has read the book which Way Western man, which is a neo Nazi tract in which, you know, this. It was written in 1978 by this White supremacist who posited that the Jews control everything. And Hitler was right. And it was a whole plot against white people. Somebody who knows that is running the White House Twitter feed. And not only that, but like, thinks it's super cool to go kidding on the square about it. I mean, again, these are the people who are gonna run the Republican Party for the next decade because they are not just guys in their basements. They have government jobs. They're part of the party apparatus.

Bulwark Colleague (13:57)

Now, the one that you alluded to a minute ago, and this was the most striking one for me, was when I think the quote is, we'll have our home again. Right. Which is not a very like, common way of phrasing anything. Right?

JVL (14:10)

I mean, like, these things are all weirdly phrased, right?

Andrew Egger (14:12)

It's sort of like where we go when we go all.

Bulwark Colleague (14:14)

Where. It's not like nobody accidentally stumbles across the phrase we'll have our home again. So what is we'll have our home again?

Andrew Egger (14:19)

It is explicitly a lyric from a song about being sort of like outnumbered.

Bulwark Colleague (14:25)

By foreigners in your own country who you are going to expel.

Andrew Egger (14:29)

That is exclusively beloved by blood or sweat groups.

Bulwark Colleague (14:34)

Right?

Andrew Egger (14:34)

Yeah. And, and, and, and look like this has been like a running theme all.

Bulwark Colleague (14:38)

Through this administration, you know, going all the way back to you Know Elon.

Andrew Egger (14:41)

Musk and did he do a Heil Hitler stuff and things like. And I personally, I have kind of dug in my heels a little bit about this. I sometimes have thought to myself that this stuff is, is not great for people to get hung up on. Because, because why would we go digging for like, you know, plausibly evil, like symbology and stuff when the stuff that's just happening out there in the open is so evil and shouldn't we be focusing on that? But recently, I mean, it has over.

Bulwark Colleague (15:08)

The top that I can't even like construct that argument for myself anymore. I mean, like, it's, it's just, they're.

Andrew Egger (15:14)

Just like, I have seen people make.

Bulwark Colleague (15:16)

This, this point online and it's also a point that has occurred to me myself. You almost can't talk about these things with people who aren't paying attention to them because they are so ludicrous, they're so grotesque.

Andrew Egger (15:26)

It's just nuts that any of this stuff is happening. Like, just, just to narrate it, the.

JVL (15:31)

Department of Labor published a tweet with one homeland, one people, one heritage. Remember who you are.

Bulwark Colleague (15:39)

American.

JVL (15:40)

Like, I'm sorry that, that worked better in the original German.

Andrew Egger (15:44)

You just can't talk to people. You have to, you have to actively make, you have to like, like sane wash the stuff that the administration is doing while you speak to normal people in your life just to not get written off yourself as crazy. Like, like, like, if you just do like baseline narration of like, oh, the kid lunatics who run these social media accounts are doing open white nationalist posting. And here are six examples. They will just think you're over talking.

Bulwark Colleague (16:13)

It because it just sounds like that.

Andrew Egger (16:15)

If you're not paying attention, this is like a real problem we all have to deal with all the time. It goes back to the thing we were talking about right at the beginning. How can you say Trump's joking around about canceling the election and not sound crazy to people who have not been following along?

Bulwark Colleague (16:27)

So it's a difficult thing.

JVL (16:29)

Last thing I want to talk about, about the canceling the election thing, is that the way the, the kidding stuff, oh, he's just kidding stuff works, is that the, the respectable people or the people want to be respectable, say he's just kidding until he then says he's not, at which point there they go silent and then once he tries doing the thing, they say, well, of course he should do that. It's obvious we see this, I mean for, obviously we saw this with the 2020 election. This was all of it. It was like, you know, what's the harm in humoring this last little bit? Right? And then they all went in and were like, yeah, absolutely, you ought to be doing it. Of course he should try to steal the election. See, with Greenland. I don't know if you remember when this first, when the Greenland adventure first started. It was all, look at you libtards getting all torqued up. He knows just how to push your buttons. And now here we are.

Bulwark Colleague (17:24)

Even some of the lips felt that way. By the way.

Andrew Egger (17:26)

There you go again, haring after the crazy, the craziest things.

Bulwark Colleague (17:30)

Donald Trump. Yeah, that sort of thing.

JVL (17:31)

But, Yeah, I remember 13 months later and there are a lot of people, not the whole of the Republican establishment, there are still Republicans who are like, well, obviously this can't happen, but a bunch of Republicans are like, well, Greenland is key to our national security. And I mean, it just does seem like we ought to have it. Of course we should purchase it, you know, now, like, we should purchase it because it's key to an act. Believe me. If he drops Seal Team 6 in Greenland, they're all going to be on board, aren't they?

Andrew Egger (18:04)

Yes. It'll be a spectrum, right?

Bulwark Colleague (18:07)

There will be the people who fall silent and there will be the people who clap along like trained seals. But the, the, the sum total will be like an information and like social media environment where all you see is open celebration, which then creates the next permission structure for everybody else to feel like open celebration is fine. And that just kind of, you know, torques the wrench 1, 1/8 of a turn forward. Invading Greenland would be more than an eighth of a turn. But, but, yeah, but it's the, the same phenomenon.

JVL (18:33)

That's how this works. And that's what I just. What I want people to understand. So Donald Trump jokes about, like, you know, there shouldn't even be elections. But if and when he does attempt to cancel elections or attempt to invalidate the results of elections or attempt to not seat certain people who are the product of elections that he doesn't like, or all the people who today say are just, oh, it's just kidding, they're all going to be on board and saying, absolutely. Well, of course it's right that he does that. In fact, he must do that because that's the world we live in. Hey, guys, hit, like, hit subscribe, follow the channel. It really helps us out because God knows you want more content like this. Andrew, thanks a lot. We'll see you guys again soon.

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