Transcript
Paul Rykoff (0:00)
This level of violence, and especially political violence, is not something we can wish away or pray away or social media post away. It's deep, it's widespread, it's constant, and it's growing. And the whole world, especially outside of America, can see it. And until and unless America has a president and a Congress that can unite and develop a comprehensive national strategy to change it, we need at least a national strategy with increased resources to protect against it. Welcome to independent Americans, everybody. Welcome to episode 505. I'm your host, Paul Reikoff. It is Monday, April 27th. Monday is back. And like every Monday on this show, it is Manosphere Monday, Manosphere Monday. And I'm coming to you from New York City, usa, where the weather is nice. Very, very nice. And therefore, today's artist is nice and Smooth. Nice and Smooth, the iconic east coast hip hop duo from here in New York City that was made up of Gregory O, otherwise known as Greg Nice, and Daryl O, known as Smooth B. Smooth B Barnes, of course. The duo released a ton of albums between 89 and 97, which I think is maybe the classic time of hip hop, especially the great New York hip hop. They had songs like Sometimes I Rhyme Slowly, Hip Hop Junkies, Funky for you. Dwick, of course, with Gangstar, no Delaying and Cake and Eat It Too. One of my favorite hip hop songs of all time, of course, is Dwick by Gangstar and Nice and smooth from 1994 where he said smooth. I dropped jewels like paraphernalia. I'm infallible, not into failure like a rhinoceros. My speed is prosperous and pure Knowledge expands from my esophagus. I'm going to try to expand the knowledge for my esophagus today in a solo show as I bring you the five eyes. I bring you in every single pod, whether you're listening or watching on YouTube. They are integrity, information, inspiration and impact. Did I miss one? I don't know. Independence, integrity, information, inspiration and impact. It's Monday. Sometimes I miss them. All right, no, guess, just me. Let's try to go into this Monday and take it nice and smooth and stay vigilant. All right, folks, I think we need to discuss a top topic that kind of sits over everything that was suggested by our fearless creative director, producer, genius man who makes shit happen behind the show, Chris Rosenthal. Here's my top topic for today. Trump has made normal, non crazy people into conspiracy theorists, and it's breaking everything. I think this is really, really important. We're going to get to the White House correspondent's dinner, we're going to get to Iran. But nobody believes anything that Trump says. And now people are starting to not believe anything. Like his overall atmosphere of truth bashing, conspiracy pushing, madness, chaos, mayhem. It's making everybody a little bit crazy, and it's making everybody doubt the news. It's making everybody doubt assassination attempts. It's making everybody doubt the truth, which might be the bigger story. Beyond the White House Correspondents Dinner, Trump is created a command culture of crazy, of dismay, of anxiety. I think that's bad for our national security, it's bad for our democracy, it's bad. And it's increasingly bad for our collective national mental health. And it's another thing to think about as we go into a week which will be full of surprises and diversions and politics and extremism and who knows what else. But it's another reason to stay vigilant. All right, beneath that top topic, of course, we got to talk about the White House Correspondents Dinner. I touched on it a little bit this morning in the media blitz episode that I sent you. But if you haven't heard, I've been to the White House Correspondents Dinner before. It is a very weird event where people act like they're just at some gigantic rich person's nerd prom. But you've got heads of state, you've got media titans, you've got celebrities all mushed into one room. Now folks are finding out a lot more about the White House Correspondent's Dinner than they ever have before to include the security. I will tell you, as someone who's been before, I was struck by what I thought at the time was kind of, I won't say poorest security, but different security. And here's the key part. When you go into the Hilton, when you go into the hotel, all the hotel guests are kind of hanging around outside. Sometimes there's lots of people outside. You have to walk through that crowd. There's paparazzi, but they don't actually close the hotel, which means for a lot of people who are there for, I don't know, a class trip or a conference, they kind of hang out and watch. Which, the first time I went, kind of struck me as a potential security risk. But again, I want to reiterate, huge props to our Secret Service, huge props to law enforcement who kept everybody safe and who always keep everyone safe for the most part when these things are going on, which are incredibly complex, incredibly stressful, and we never know how many threats we don't know about. But here's what we do know the defendant in the press gal at Tech has now been charged with trying to assassinate Trump. The defendant is 31 year old Cole Thomas Allen. He faces two counts of federal gun crimes and one of trying to assassinate President Trump. We'll find out a lot more about him in the days to come. I'm sure. It looks like he displayed photos of the weapons. Sorry, The Justice Department displayed photos of the weapons in a press conference taken from him, including a black pump action shotgun and a.38 caliber pistol and a number of knives. He just bum rushed the metal detector and the agents responded. We know now that one Secret Service agent was shot in the protective vest and returned, then turned and fired multiple rounds at the suspect but did not hit him. He fell to the ground, suffered minor injuries, but was not shot. So it sounds like the Secret Service agent got shot by another member of law enforcement or another secret service agent. And as someone myself who's been in military police units, who's been trained as a military police officer, as someone myself who's done crowd control, who's run checkpoints, who's been in combat, I know that a lack of fire discipline might be the most dangerous thing in this situation. Oftentimes cops unload their rounds and end up shooting each other. So you could have imagined a much more severe, dangerous situation where bystanders like Wolf Blitzer, who was apparently right there and lost his shoe, could have been caught in the crossfire. But in the end, the subject was taken down, the subject has been arrested and now the world continues to understand and try to unpack the what happened. Let me just say again, incredible respect for Secret Service DC and law enforcement, especially after this. And I want to reiterate something I said a bit this morning. This is our new normal now, America, not just our new normal, this is our normal. Our demented and dangerous normal. Violence is everywhere. And it's like a post 911 reality that some still refuse to accept. But this level of violence, and especially political violence, it's not something we can wish away or pray away or social media post away. It's deep, it's widespread, it's constant and it's growing. And the whole world, especially outside of America, can see it. And until and unless America has a president and a Congress that can unite and develop a comprehensive national strategy to change it, we need at least a national strategy with increased resources to protect against it for all leaders and everyone around them from both parties. And it must be a top national security priority. Tackling this, facing this, neutralizing this is Much more important for our national security than Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, or anything else. Imagine if he had gotten inside. Imagine if he had taken out the president or the vice president or multiple members of the Cabinet. Then it would be the thing we're focusing on. But too often, these shooting incidents, especially ones involving kids, are just brushed aside or politicized, and the same will likely be true now. Trump will do something crazy, something will blow up in the world, and for the most part, people will move on. But maybe we can use this as a clarion call to remind, especially everybody in that room, that kids are often facing much less security, much weaker defenses, and they're much more vulnerable. That feeling of fear that those people had in the room, many of whom have been in combat situations, some of whom were veterans themselves, many of them felt helpless. Many of them felt scared. Some of them felt cool. Some of them met the moment. But our children should never have to face a situation like that. And while I'm pretty sure the White House correspondence, security is going to be changed in the days to come, our children, especially in this country facing gun violence, face the same threats. Maybe one day we can just get past the prayers and thoughts and posts and actually come up with what we need, which is a strategy. A strategy to protect our kids and our strategy to protect our elected leaders, and especially this president, who is more responsible for the atmosphere than everybody else. I am not going to both sides this shit. The Democrats do not have the podium that he does. They do not attack their political enemies like he does. They're not saying nasty shit. I like he does. They did not start an insurrection and try to overthrow the government like he did, but he is uniquely responsible. But we can all respond. And until we do, we're all less safe. And until we. Until we do, our enemies are celebrated.