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- [00:00]
Alex
Foreign.
- [00:05]
Brad
Flooding has struck Texas. Over 100 people are dead and about 20 or 40 are still missing. Here's how the Economic Times is covering this. From London. Donald Trump hides on golf course as dozens killed in Texas flood. About 28 kids so far have been reported killed. And this is an absolute tragedy. And this is a reminder that government cannot be run like a business. Government is to provide safety services for its citizens. We all know that climate change is absolutely real. And if you don't think it's real, capitalism thinks it's real. The oil and gas industry had reports in the 1970s that proved it was real. And they've covered it up just like the tobacco industry cover covered up cancer and death. This is a country that has always valued, in times like this, deference to corporations and profit over ways to insert preventable measures to make sure this doesn't happen again. There are stories everywhere that this has to do with the Doge cuts. From Elon Musk to the National Weather Service. They're understaffed. And whenever you see a preventable tragedy, you would think your government would do everything in their power to try to prevent a future one. But in the United States, we've been primed to say our government doesn't care. Our government supports the lobbyists and billionaires. Look at the gun industry. We still continue to have shootings every single day in the United States of America. Nobody does anything about it.
- [01:54]
Catherine
What is so heartbreaking about this is that, like you said, it was preventable. According to what I have read, there were 600 people that could have helped alert what was going on in Texas that had been fired. And there were no sirens. All of the predictive weather, they weren't, they didn't have it. And so people died. And when I, when all these cats came to the National Weather Service, we live in Oklahoma. Tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding. This was absolutely foreseeable that because of these cuts, American citizens would die, full stop.
- [02:30]
Brad
And why are we paying taxes? Why are we doing all of this stuff if we don't have an faa? Why are we doing this stuff? Now, Trump is still talking about he wants to completely dismantle fema. This is the MAGA movement is a party that attacks the poor and the weak. That is their number one goal, is to have rich, powerful people, people squash and smush the vulnerable and the weak. But let's see how these MAGA Christians are responding to this. Here's Marjorie Taylor Green. I am introducing a bill that prohibits the injection, release or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the Atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate or sunlight intensity. It will be a felony offense. I have been researching she personally. I have been researching weather modifications and working with the Legislative Council Council for months writing this bill. It will be similar to Florida's Senate Bill 56. We must end the dangerous and deadly practice of weather modification and geoengineering. She posted this on July 5th. This is their response. Conspiracy theories. They cannot take accountability. This is not rocket science, Marjorie. Climate change has been documented since the 70s. We've done hardly anything to combat it because we value money. And MAGA Christians like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Moses, Mike and all of the other psychos in the Republican Party, they use the re the Christian faith to lure people in, spiritually abuse them, hold them spiritually hostage and manipulate them to believe that billionaires deserve everything, that industry deserves all the breaks and nobody can keep you safe.
- [04:18]
Catherine
What is so unbelievably ridiculous is she is acting like, and she did this during the campaign, that the Democrats affect the weather in red states. If that were true, if any of that was true, why wouldn't now that magazine charge protect a mag estate? Because she's full of shit. This woman is a netball. And the fact that people believe her is terrifying.
- [04:45]
Brad
Well, the whole MAGA movement is, you know, facts. Science is not on their side. So they try to dismantle facts and science and then lean into magical thinking and conspiracy theories. That's how all of this lives. And I just, I say this all the time and I'm going to keep saying it. Trump is not a spring chicken. It's very obvious to me he's in poor health. His brain is dwindling at a very rapid rate. And I don't think he's going to be around a whole lot longer, maybe three, five years tops. But what remains after him are the people like Marjorie Taylor Greene. And outside of Marjorie Taylor Greene are the tens of millions of Americans that it's not enough for them just to deport somebody. They want them tortured, right? They want them locked up and potentially eaten by alligators. They want them sent to sea, caught, and they want them tortured. And these are MAGA Christians that want this.
- [05:40]
Catherine
They like it.
- [05:42]
Brad
This is an obscene, obscene political party. And something like this should never be politicized. A natural disaster. And when you find out that Elon Musk and Donald Trump cut all of this and you look at Project 2025, which calls for dismantling of the national weather systems, they want the public to be vulnerable little peasants that have to go to the ruling class, to the oligarchs and beg for services or for, you know, pennies. It's just, this is such a sick, psychological political party. Next up, we have all of this is going on. The White House tweets the following coming on the 4th of July, a UFC fight at the White House. The white trash White House continues. If Barack Obama ever did anything like this, I mean, we all know what would happen if he did a fraction of what Trump has done this far. He'd be locked up. And this is this political party. It's so difficult to sit here and talk about it because what it means is that we are living in the decline, rapid decline, and I think probably the defeat of American democracy in just a few months, they've defeated it and we all still go about our lives. And you're driving down the road and there's senses of normalcy. You're listening to your favorite song, you know, the lights are working and all of these things. But all of this degradation is happening on a very daily basis. And they lean into the lizard brain population with this UFC stuff.
- [07:22]
Catherine
Well, and I saw this picture, you know, he's so proud of it. It's on the Homeland Security is what posted looks like a gladiator ring to me. And I know that's what a normal UFC ring, but when you put it in the White House and you have the Homeland Security website or social media posting it to me, I'm like, are we going to start putting, like, migrants in there to fight?
- [07:44]
Brad
Like, they've talked about that before.
- [07:46]
Catherine
There's no bottom to the cruelty. There is no bottom to the depravity that they are pushing and that people are consuming in that party.
- [07:56]
Brad
And I just want to flag that while this is going on, while there is a direct link between defunding the NOAA and the National Weather Service, there's a direct link that the defunding of that led to improper and incomplete weather reporting that could have saved lives of people in Texas. They always go back to race baiting. And here are two MAGA influencers, one of which is Trump's top advisor, Laura Loomer. Can we normalize putting white people back in TV commercials? If you don't have white people in your commercial, I'm not buying your product. I'm tired of DEI commercials. Okay? This, the racism is just. They are so proud of it now. And this is something that so many people have tried to fight the good fight for social justice and reckoning this horrific racist past that we have. Laura Loomer is the same person that identified that alligators could kill 65 million immigrants. Ironically, there are 65 million Latinos in this country. If that isn't Hitler Nazi, then I don't know what is. But then Ann Coulter has to jump in and she since deleted this tweet. But Marina Medvin posts she's a a professor of Native American studies and she's talking about the problems with colonization in this video. Ann Coulter wants no part of it because she's she's a white supremacist and she retweets it and says we didn't kill enough Indians. And there's a through line through every single bit of from MAGA to the rural MAGA voters. And it is a white supremacist through line that they do not think black and brown people deserve the same level of wealth or access to wealth or equal footing to access even a livable wage as they do. This is the absolute through line and it is a problem that we've had in the United States of America from the jump. But please support our show, you guys. You've got to support our sponsors pumps and I love the NPR Politics Podcast. We go there to decode what goes down in Washington and what every decision out there might mean for me and you. And you might think that's weird that podcasters would listen to podcasts, but I'm telling you guys, this NPR Podcast is so clear and concise and it rips through all of the spin and gives you facts. And the hosts are very calm. I'm telling you guys, I love the NPR Politics team. Every day, the NPR Politics Podcast team will focus on one thing. They focus on one topic and they boil it down to 15 minutes or less. Think of it as your political multivitamin. So, listener, listen now to the NPR Politics Podcast only from npr. Wherever you get your podcast, does the.
- [11:02]
Diana
Idea of listening to political news freak you out? Well, don't sweat it. The NPR Politics Politics Podcast makes politics a breeze. Every episode will break down the day's headlines into totally normal language and make sure that you walk away understanding what the day's news might mean for you. Take a deep breath and give politics another chance with the NPR Politics Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.
- [11:27]
Brad
Okay. And moving along, let's see the Republican response to this horrific tragedy. Let's look at J.D. vance. J.D. vance says our nation's heart breaks for the victims in Texas and their families. Just an incomprehensible tragedy. I hope everyone affected knows they're in my Prayers of my family and of millions of Americans. And Representative Jack Kimball responds, if only there was some kind of government agency assigned to monitor and give advance warning, something like a National oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, that would be a great agency to fund well and never get its funding to give early warning to save lives in these situations. The thoughts in prayer crowd is these people are charlatans. They use faith to manipulate religious Americans into thinking that they're on your side and they're not. The Republican Party and the MAGA movement is a death cult that values profits over people. They've done it for decades now. It's just more brazen. If you still buy into this thoughts and prayers, I don't know that you can be helped.
- [12:43]
Catherine
No, I don't either. And what I look at is they're cutting all of these funding for all of these agencies of National Weather Service, all of these things that keep people safe. Where is the money going? Are we ever going to see the money? Because we see that taxes are going to go up for the middle class oligarchs are going to make more money. What are they doing with the money? Are they doing anything to regulate and keep the United States of America safe? Or is it just a big fat grift and Trump's going to walk out and the federal coffers are going to be empty.
- [13:13]
Brad
I, you know, I mean the, they can cut this and the budget is so massive.
- [13:19]
Catherine
Right.
- [13:19]
Brad
It's not like it's just going to be sitting somewhere in a savings account, you know, unspent. And we could get somebody on here that understands, you know, budgeting and all and allocation. The problem is this administration is already cooking the books. They're already cooking the books on job reports. We are not going to have accurate detailing of budgetary spending. They are already cooking the books on job creation. They're already cooking the books on inflation. We are not going to have statements out of the United States government with any veracity in them concerning any of this. That is in the past. That is gone. Transparency and accountability are completely in the past. And pushing this Christian nationalist agenda to the detriment of people, kids, little girls at a camp didn't get warning to clear out. And the thing about weather is it, it builds up. You have time to realize we've had a drought here due to climate change, so the soil is going to be very compacted. The rain is not going to absorb into the earth. It's going to build up. We live as pumps mentioned earlier. We live in tornado alley and it's a part of living in Oklahoma. People ask me all the time, are you scared of tornadoes? And I always say, no, I'm not Because we have alert systems that alert you exactly where they're forming, where they're coming to, so that you can get out of the way or take shelter. And lastly, we have big MAGA Christian who prayed for the passing of the big budget bill, the big bullshit heaping pile of shit bill. He prayed with all of the other MAGA Christians on the House floor to take away money from the most vulnerable, to take away health care and to take away food from the poorest of Americans, which by the way, are disproportionately white people in rural towns. But that's neither here nor there. They want to blame it all on black people, as they always do. But here's Moses Mike with absolutely zero answers as to how to solve a very solvable problem. Play the clip. State and federal resources have just poured into that area. Is there anything more that can be done congressionally, legislatively to help these folks.
- [15:35]
Alex
In a moment like this? We feel just as helpless as everyone else does. I've talked to my colleagues there in Texas, Chip Roy and August Pfluger, whose families you know, that's Chip's district. August's daughters were at the camp. We also had Betty Carter of Georgia, had grandchildren there. It touches so many families. And all we know to do at this moment is pray. Every, every available resource has been deployed. The President of course, is dialed in and watching this develop moment by moment, as we are, and we will.
- [16:01]
Brad
Okay, that's a lie. The President was not watching it moment by moment. The President was playing golf, posting about his UFC fight and trotting around being a. Just a big fucking prick is what the President of the United States was doing. Secondly, Moses Mike, there are a lot of things you can do. You could immediately, you're the speaker of the House, you could immediately demand via Congress, get it to the Senate and get it to the President's desk that the National Weather Services and the NOAA has to be funded to the nine. So does the faa. But you don't give a. You don't give a Moses Mike. And you performatively trot out that you're going to pray just like tens of millions of Americans that outwardly are racist, but then they wrap it up by saying they're good Christians, sit around and pray. This is a white Christian American problem. That is a cancer. And I don't know if we survive this unless people in the Democratic Party grow a pair, drop APAC donations and get serious about addressing this. That's all we have for today, and we'll see you later.