Everyone Hates Them: Trump, the Media and Jimmy Kimmel

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Everyone Hates Them: Trump, the Media, and Jimmy Kimmel"

It Could Happen Here – September 30, 2025

Hosted by Mia Wong with guest Vicky Osterweil

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the paradoxical and unsettling state of American society and politics in 2025, particularly focusing on Donald Trump’s declining popularity, the machinations of media conglomerates, and the symbolic fiasco around the firing and rehiring of Jimmy Kimmel. The hosts analyze the disconnect between the reality of Trump’s lack of broad support and the alternate reality projected by captured media and corporate interests, discuss the infrastructural and cultural failures of U.S. authoritarianism, and reflect on the deeper roots and vulnerabilities of the spectacle that underlies American politics and commerce—with Disney as a symbolic epicenter.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. “Why Does It Feel Like This?” – The Trump Paradox

• Despite the omnipresent aura of Trumpism in the media, Trump’s actual approval ratings remain low, hovering around 41%. Mia highlights how even his “most popular” policy (immigration) garners just 42% support (04:00).
• Quote: “No one actually likes him or anything that he does...41% is still like a lot of people, but it's not the majority of the country.” — Mia (04:31)
• The sense of public alienation is growing even in areas considered Trump strongholds, illustrated by a special election in Iowa’s deep-red, gerrymandered district flipping to Democrats (05:00).
• Structural discontent is visible: American farmers feel alienated, economic bailouts aren’t working, and even foundational alliances (pharma, military, bureaucracy) are fraying due to erratic administration policies (06:00–07:30).

2. The Economic Spectacle and the “AI Boom”

• The disconnect between ground reality (rising prices, job scarcity) and metrics watched by the elite (stock market highs, tech GDP numbers) is discussed as symptomatic of a deeper illusion (07:50–10:00).
• Tech’s overrepresentation in GDP growth—a “35 to 45%” chunk driven by just a handful of big companies, especially Nvidia—is cited as evidence that “the whole economy is candles” (09:45–10:38).
• Quote: “We are actually living through the famous old tweet...‘Someone help fix my economy.’ We're living in the candles tweet. The whole economy is candles.”—Vicky (10:29)

3. The Media Reality Tunnel

• Localized economic suffering (“on the ground in Wisconsin”) is not being reflected in mainstream narratives, contributing to widespread unreality and disorientation (11:18).
• Quote: “Part of what is so crazy making about this current moment is precisely that disconnect between the on the ground experience...and the fact that like, AI is very obviously not interesting or good and no one likes it.” — Vicky (11:24)
• The so-called “vibe session” economy (during Trump’s first term) is deconstructed as largely an illusion propped up by small business optimism and spectacle, not real material improvement (12:37–13:49).

4. Media Capture: Trump, Musk, and the Corporate Bourgeoisie

• The Trump regime’s partial yet effective takeover of mass media is underlined. Trump allies now exert strong influence through ownership (Elon Musk and X/Twitter), buyouts, and financial leverage (20:41–22:30).
• Senior management purges and positions taken in favor of publishing authoritarian rhetoric are detailed as contributing to a media-created myth of Trump’s popularity.

5. The Charlie Kirk and Jimmy Kimmel Moments: Disinformation Meets Reality

• A recent, failed attempt by the conservative media machine to manufacture mass mourning for Charlie Kirk (after his death and “martyrization”) is cited as an example of the system’s crumbling credibility. A hastily assembled memorial video on Sinclair and YouTube garnered fewer viewers than Mia’s own show (24:08–24:30).
• Quote: “This means that I am very, very proud of this. More people listen to me complaining...than watched the stupid fucking Charlie Memorial.” — Mia (24:08)
• Contrastingly, the firing of Jimmy Kimmel and subsequent mass boycott pressure forced Disney to reverse course within a week—a rare instance where public sentiment forced a corporate hand (27:12).
• Quote: “It’s not really about Jimmy Kimmel. It’s because everyone hates this man [Trump].” — Vicky (27:44)

6. Disney, Copyright, and Corporate Fascism

• Vicky details the argument from her forthcoming book on Disney as a state-like actor, wielding intellectual property as a main source of power and exemplifying broader trends in asset-light, image-heavy capital (35:51–41:30).
• Disney’s unique status (owning physical territory and wielding outsized lobbying power) is explored, showing how the company upholds a fantasy of innocence while enforcing draconian control over its creations.
• The tension between Disney’s corporate interests and Trump’s demand for public displays of loyalty highlights fractures in the coalition that enables modern authoritarianism (41:30–43:57).

7. The Collapse of the Spectacle: Trump’s Failure to Control Reality

• Trump’s power, in part, has stemmed from puncturing the media spectacle—the elaborate facade that mediates public consensus—a feat previously enabled by compliant institutions. Now, those institutions are purged and only mimic his rhetoric, producing visible seams in the constructed narrative (43:24–45:26).
• The “spectacle remains torn,” so even as the machinery of message coordination intensifies, ordinary people increasingly see through it (45:28–46:46).
• Quote: “Now they all just repeat what he says. And what ends up happening is that the spectacle just remains torn and people see through it. It's just not working anymore.” — Vicky (45:28)

8. Unpopularity, Resistance, and Limits of Authoritarian Power

• Despite terrifying policies (notably on immigration), Trump’s regime is unable to generate broad active support—large-scale raids provoke resistance, even in former right-wing strongholds (47:21–48:40).
• Examples include direct actions stopping ICE raids in Wheaton, once the home base of the Christian right (48:15–48:40).
• Organizational blunders and purges (including at the FBI) make the regime less able to identify and suppress genuine resistance (51:36–53:56).

9. The Limits of Media-Powered Autocracy

• Comparisons are made to other authoritarian states (Modi’s India, Erdogan’s Turkey, Orban’s Hungary, Milei’s Argentina), which either built power gradually or collapsed quickly when overreaching (54:18–55:51).
• The American regime’s inability to fully fuse media and state power (as Disney and the Nazis did historically) may ultimately be its undoing—a “material limit” is reached when spectacle alone cannot sustain power (55:51–57:12).

10. Resistance and the (Dis)integration of the State

• The regime’s ongoing reliance on spectacle is brittle; all parties, from state bureaucracies to the public, can disrupt compliance. Examples: the pharmacist workaround on vaccine policies; institutions quietly resisting enforcement (60:30–60:49).
• Quote: “That’s the fun thing about existence is that they can’t just make it real unless you help them.” — Mia (59:18)

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Notable Quotes

• “The entire terrain of the world is shifting beneath us while all of these people constantly try to like, paint over this, like, little tiny scaffolding they've set up to be like, no, no, the ground's still there.” — Mia (49:35)
• “Disney designed...that if you can control the way your product appears in the market and you can control the images...you can really do whatever you want materially behind the scenes.” — Vicky (40:24)
• “Trump is too perfect a product of that, and this regime is too perfect a product of that. And now it’s all, you know, it is its own gravedigger.” — Vicky (43:26)
• “If it was possible to just speak reality into existence, we would all be living under neoconservatism, right?” — Mia (56:00)

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Important Timestamps

• Trump’s approval rating, special election, and real unpopularity: 04:00–06:00
• AI and tech sector “candle” economy: 09:31–10:38
• Media’s alternate reality and the spectacle’s collapse: 11:24–13:49, 43:24–45:26
• Charlie Kirk memorial and Jimmy Kimmel firing/boycott: 24:08–28:04
• Disney as fascist state and IP regime: 35:51–43:00
• Comparison to other authoritarian regimes: 54:18–55:51
• On enduring and resisting autocracy, “you don’t have to comply”: 59:18–60:49

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Concluding Thoughts

The episode argues that while U.S. politics and media are deeply corrupted and authoritarian, the regime’s inability to generate broad legitimacy and relentless overreach have generated new, visible forms of resistance. The hosts encourage listeners to look for cracks in the spectacle, embrace the power of noncompliance, and recognize that even the most entrenched propaganda cannot wholly control reality. In the closing, they point out: “As we saw...the Charlie Kirk special doesn't go up...these massive institutions, they can't really get them in line. So why are you letting them get you in line?” (60:30)

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Links and References

• Vicky Osterweil’s Book: The Extended Universe – Preorder at Haymarket Books
• Collective Writers/Work: cawshinythings.com (C.A.W.)

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This episode balances sharp, critical humor with deep analysis of political spectacle and resistance, painting a picture both dire and unexpectedly hopeful for listeners navigating the chaos.

Transcript

[Lauren LaRosa]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Narrator (Cool Zone Media)]

The murder of an 18 year old girl in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved for years until a local housewife, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[Lauren LaRosa]

America, y' all better wake the hell up.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Bad things happens to good people in small towns.

[Narrator (Cool Zone Media)]

Listen to Graves county on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast and to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

[Narrator (Havoc Town)]

There's a vile sickness in Amstown. You must excise it, dig into the deep earth and cut it out.

[Aaron Manke]

From iheart Podcasts and Grim and Mil from Aaron Manke. This is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater audio universe starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ed (Comedian in Wisecrack)]

I just normally do straight stand up but this is a bit different.

[Wisecrack Host]

What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? A new podcast called Wisecrack where a comedian finds himself at the center of a chilling true crime story.

[Ed (Comedian in Wisecrack)]

Does anyone know what show come to see? It's a story. It's about the scariest night of my life.

[Wisecrack Host]

This is Wisecrack available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Lauren LaRosa]

I'm the homegirl that knows a little bit about everything and Everybody knows Lauren LaRosa.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Did you hear that exclusive? Lauren came in hot.

[Lauren LaRosa]

I came in telling the truth. Every day I'm bringing you the latest in entertainment. Breaking down the headlines you can't stop talking about and giving you my very unfiltered on the biggest stories in the industry from exclusive news and y' all know I got it to us breaking down the interviews cause y' all are my co hosts now. I'm giving you the deep dives on some of the biggest moments in pop culture.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Oh my God.

[Lauren LaRosa]

Listen to the Latest with Lauren LaRosa weekdays on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Narrator (Cool Zone Media)]

Call Zone Media.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Welcome to it could Happen Here a podcast about why everything feels absolutely awful and deeply unhinged. I am your host via long and oh boy thing feel bad.

[Vicky Osterweil]

I don't know.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

This is my most. This is my most Robert esque in a while with me to talk about why everything sort of feels like this and the disconnect between the fact that like everyone actually hates Trump and the way that's Being not covered and reflected in everything that you interact with is Vicki Osterweil, who is a writer and editor at the Collective Journal call doer of many things, agitator.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Busy. I'm very busy.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

I think it says Bricklayer Mason.

[Vicky Osterweil]

That's right.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Yeah. Who also has a new book called the extended universe out April 14th of next year that is about the way that Disney sort of took over the world through the deployment, expansion and usage of the violence of the copyright regime. A thing that is suddenly very relevant again in our weird Jimmy Kimmel hours. So we'll be talking some more about that and about Disney's long history of fascist bullshit towards the end of the show.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's a pleasure to be here, Mia. Thanks. And yeah, we are all Jimmy's Kimmel. You know, in this moment, I think. Oh God.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Oh no. Jimmy's kibble.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Shout out to posted that. I love you.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Okay, so I think that the place I wanted to start is with this, like, question of, like, why does it feel like this? Yeah, and I think part of the reason it feels like that is that Trump's approval rating is really low. Like people don't actually like him. It's like 41. His river rating is 41%. It's down like a point in September. Even with all the Charlie Kirk stuff, it's still down.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yep.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

His most popular policies is immigration policy, which is terrifying, but his most popular policy is pulling at 42%. So no one actually likes him or anything that he does. Right. And like, like 41% is still like a lot of people, but it's not the majority of the country. Yeah, notably like biomass works.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

There's been a few things I think are interesting about this. There, there, there, there are signs that this is actually really, really there's something substantive happening here. One of them was a special election that I think people paid attention to for about two days and then forgot about, which was a special election in, in Iowa which, like, prevented the GOP from getting a 2/3 super majority in, in the state legislature. And the Democrats, somehow, miraculously, even though the Democrats are hideously unpopular, they won a special election in a district in western Iowa that was plus 11 for Trump this year. And this is not like a, like, this is a district that is like just Sioux City or something or like, you know, this is a, this is a gerrymandered ass district that is like a little bit of Sioux City and then stretched out all the way into a bunch of rural areas, like diffuse the vote. They won this district by 11, like last year. They lost this election by 11 points in Western Iowa.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Unhinged. They're doing like, all the elections are like this. Like, it's. It's ridiculous. Like, and again, this. This is like, this is again, like voting for people who are like, not popular. But it's like literally any alternative. People are like, holy shit. Western Iowa is like, nah, fuck this. This fucking sucks ass. Like, it's.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah. A thing that, you know, I've been following a bit is that farmers are freaking out.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Yeah.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Soybean. Soybean crops and corn crops are going to be rotting in the fields. You know, I think soybean. Soy. Soy in particular, something like 50% of the US soy crop is traditionally exported. And by traditionally, I mean every year exported to China. This year, China is not buying any American soybeans. Yep. So literally half of the market is going to die. And I don't know, you know, sometimes these numbers don't. Don't really do justice. If half of an economy collapses, that's the whole economy collapsing. That's not. That's not like, oh, yeah, they just like took, you know, a haircut. Like, that's massive.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Yeah. American farmers are like the most bailed out class of people who are not like major corporations in the entire world. And it's not working. Like, they keep. They keep being like, oh, it's okay. We'll just like give you a bunch of money. And it's not enough because China has decided not to buy any of this soybean crop. But it's like, okay.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

And this is something we talked about, like, at the beginning of the administration, which is that like, this administration has been going through and systematically alienating every single part of the coalition.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

They're pissing off, like, the farmers, they're pissing off, like, the major pharmaceutical companies. They're pissing off the military. They're pissing off a whole bunch of the parts of government bureaucracy. Like, they've kind of stripped the FBI to the bones over, like, comey stuff that they're still mad about. And. And then the guy they put in charge of it is just like, completely incompetent. And it's like, okay, there's only so long. You can sort of go like, systematically alienating every part of your coalition, just like basically attempting to drop a bomb on the economy every single week. And sometimes it drops and sometimes it doesn't.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah, exactly. I think there's actually an interesting sort of parallel here with tech stocks and with like the economy in general that has been sort of, you know, on the ground for most of us has felt like it's been in recession since 2020. Right. You know, of, of different sizes and local. It's felt bad for a while now. It's really bad. No one can get a job. Right. Like, things are really like, prices are going up, up, up, Everyone feels bad and yet the stock market is still achieving highs. And I think there's sort of a generalized equivalent strategy of like make it look like things are normal and good and that will actually support things materially. And like, I mean, maybe it will forever. Maybe the bottom will never fall out. I don't know. I don't think that's, I think that's a bad bet. But like. Okay.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Yeah, well, but. And I think the interesting part of this too is if you look at what's going on with the economy and it's also worth noting, right? Like the economy nominally in sort of econometric terms looks fine or not fine, but it looks sort of okay. Right. The stock market's still growing. There's technically like economic growth, but comma. We both sold this chart a couple of weeks ago. That is the most unhinged thing I've ever seen in my entire life, which is there is a GDP chart by a JP Morgan analyst which shows that tech in the last year, roughly, and like in the last sort of like short term window, it's been 35 to 45% of all US GDP growth.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

And when I say tech, by the way, like to be clear about this, it is technically a composite of like all sector. Right. But like it's basically just the, like the top, like the, the five big tech companies, right?

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yep.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

It's like Apple, it's Microsoft, but basically. And this is the one that's like unhinged right now is that like the most valuable company in the world is Nvidia, a company that makes graphics cards.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Yep. And this is all because this is all of his GDP growth quote unquote, is AI boom stuff. Right. It's like massive fixed capital investment. Sure. It's like, yeah, there's, there's like incredible fixed capital investments, but the fixed capital investments are just. We're building a diesel powered AI data center somewhere in Tennessee that is going to poison the entire population for no benefit.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

And, and it's like all of these companies like have gone just completely, totally all in on AI. A thing that doesn't make any money, can't make any money, and structurally will not make any money. And this is like a third of, like the growth of the economy.

[Vicky Osterweil]

We are actually living through the famous old tweet. The drill is a drill about the candles. Someone help fix my economy. We're living in the candles tweet. The whole economy is candles.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Yeah, yeah. And this is something that our colleague at Zitron argues that there's just. There is not enough money in the world to just continuously bail these companies out.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Like, there just isn't. Right. The cash flow of these companies is like, they've managed to achieve a cash flow rate that like, can't be replaced by government contracts, which is just unbelievable. And I think this is one of the disconnect things, right? Because, like, it's interesting, you're starting to see a little bit of stuff crop up from like, local level politicians where every once in a while you get them be like, oh, yeah, no, it is like a recession economy, like on the ground in, like, Wisconsin.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

But I feel like in the media and this is one of the things that I think makes everything insane. It's not being treated that way.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah, no. And I think, you know, you went exactly where, you know, we talked about going, but we were going to go. Which is that, like, part of what is so crazy making about this current moment is precisely that disconnect between sort of the on the ground experience that everyone's been having for years now, but is, like, especially intense. And, like, the fact that like, AI is very obviously not interesting or good and no one likes it. And even the people who sort of are, I think, mostly in good faith, like, trying to take it seriously and who are like, yeah, it's going to change everything. Like, you know, like normie people in work stuff, like, they don't really use it very much or if they do use it, like, it's not effective. There wasn't a campaign to force everyone to buy smartphones when the iPhone happened. Everyone wanted one because it was, like, obvious what it did for you. Now there are obviously whatever. That's not. This is not a defense of the smartphone, but, like, there is this broad recognition that that is nonsense. Right. That, like, the AI economy is nonsense. That, like the economy that everyone says is doing fine feels bad. And this has been going on since, you know, Biden campaigned on, you know. Oh, it's just a vibe session. You know, the economy is fine and the economy wasn't fine.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

No.

[Vicky Osterweil]

One of the charts I really am obsessed with is a chart from like Bloomberg, which is like small business owner confidence from like 2010 to 2025. And like, if you look like from 2016 to 2020, which is the first Trump term, it goes up like 500%, right.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Jesus Christ.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Just goes up. It just, it just is huge. It's the highest. It's been by huge margin and it just drops again in 2020. So it finally made me understand why so many libs were like so committed to the vibe session analysis. Because there was a massive vibe inflation under the first Trump administration. Mm. So the reason people felt like the economy was good was because small business owners, and this is the classic analysis of fascists, right. Is that the petty bourgeois, the small business, they were like, this is the best times you've ever lived through based on no evidence. And if you work for a business and your boss is like, things are booming, we're doing great. You know, if you don't run the numbers, you're likely to believe it. You know, like, if everyone around you is saying that, like, there's no reason to doubt it. Unless, I mean, you know, you don't, you don't really believe your boss a lot of the time, but you know what I'm saying, like, it's just, it hasn't, it has an effect of, of making everyone feel like things are better. That chart started to creep up again after Trump's election, November 2024, before Liberation Day. But on the announcement of the Liberation Day, tariffs, tanks. So that's gone.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Yeah, it's gone. Yep, yep. And I think that's a really vital sort of component of what's happening is like, you know, we talk a lot about how. So there's sort of these like, self contained, like reality tunnels that people are gone down, but it's also really diffused by class.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yes, yes.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

And this ties back to the stuff, for example, where it's like, if you are in the tech sector, AI is kind of useful because the one thing it can sort of, kind of do decently well is program.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Right.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

And if you're, and if you are in this sort of like world, which is again, enormous portions of all of the economic growth, right. That is happening is coming out of these places and it's like, oh, this really does look like the future is here. If you've, you suddenly have this machine that can do your job for you and it's like, well, maybe coding, which wasn't that hard to begin with, maybe. But like, you know, like I say this is someone who learned to code and hated it. But like, you know, but like it creates these sort of like self reinforced like reality tunnels. But every, the thing about the reality tunnels is like every once in a while like the actual world comes in like a giant arrow and punctures it. And that's what happened to the small business people was they were like, oh, what do you mean they got rid of the de minimis succession? What do you mean they're putting all these tariffs up? What do you mean they're like just straight up taking a sledgehammer to the entire logistics system that have been like, that's the basis of like most American small businesses are like our shipping businesses. Right. Like, or they're either either directly shipping businesses or they rely on, on cheap imports from a whole bunch of different countries. And this even goes into like the grift economy, right? Like massive portions of the grift economy are just like shipping. Yeah, like drop shipping grift bullshit supplements stacks.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like you know, it's another reality tunnel, Mia.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Oh, these products and services, damn it. That was a better one than I was gonna do. I was gonna do. You know what else is a scam but these products and services that support this podcast.

[Vicky Osterweil]

All I know is what I've been told. And that's a half truth is a whole lie.

[Narrator (Cool Zone Media)]

For almost a decade, the murder of an 18 year old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[Vicky Osterweil]

I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her.

[Narrator (Cool Zone Media)]

We know a story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national tv.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran.

[Narrator (Cool Zone Media)]

My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist producer and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

I did not know her and I did not kill her or rape or burn or any of that other stuff.

[Ed (Comedian in Wisecrack)]

That y' all said.

[Lauren LaRosa]

They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on har.

[Narrator (Cool Zone Media)]

From lava for good. This is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame.

[Vicky Osterweil]

America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people and small towns.

[Narrator (Cool Zone Media)]

Listen to Graves county in the Bone Valley feed on the iHeartrade radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and to binge the entire season ad free, subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

[Narrator (Havoc Town)]

There's a vile sickness in Amstown. You must excise it, dig into the deep earth and cut it out.

[Vicky Osterweil]

The village is ravaged.

[Narrator (Havoc Town)]

Entire families have been consumed.

[Vicky Osterweil]

You know how waking up from a dream, a familiar place can look completely alien.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Get back, everyone.

[Narrator (Havoc Town)]

And if you see the devil walking around inside of another man, you must cut out the very heart of him, burn his body and scatter the ashes in the furthest corner of this town.

[Aaron Manke]

As a warning from iHeart podcasts and grim and mild from Aaron Manke. This is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater audio universe, starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoctown on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Vicky Osterweil]

The devil walks in Abbostown.

[Ed (Comedian in Wisecrack)]

My name is Ed. Everyone say hello, Ed.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Hello, Ed.

[Ed (Comedian in Wisecrack)]

I'm from a very rural background myself. My dad is a farmer and my mom is a cousin. So, like, it's not like.

[Wisecrack Host]

What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? I know it sounds like the start of a bad joke, but that really was my reality nine years ago.

[Ed (Comedian in Wisecrack)]

I just normally do straight stand up, but this is a bit different.

[Wisecrack Host]

On stage stood a comedian with a story that no one expected to hear.

[Ed (Comedian in Wisecrack)]

On 22 July 2015, a 23 year old man had killed his family. And then he came to my house.

[Wisecrack Host]

So what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? A new podcast called Wisecrack, where stand up comedy and murder take center stage. Available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Narrator (Chinatown Sting)]

In early 1988, federal agents raced to track down the gang they suspect of importing millions of dollars worth of heroin into New York from Asia.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

We had 30 agents ready to go with shotguns and rifles and you name it.

[Narrator (Chinatown Sting)]

But what they find is not what they expected.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Basically, your stay at home moms were picking up these large amounts of heroin. They go, is this your daughter? I said, yes. They go, oh, you may not see her for like 25 years.

[Narrator (Chinatown Sting)]

Caught between a federal investigation and the violent gang who recruited them, the women must decide who they're willing to protect and who they dare to betray.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Once I saw the gun, I tried to take his hand and I saw the flash of light.

[Narrator (Chinatown Sting)]

Listen to the Chinatown sting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or anywhere you get your podcasts.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

We are so back. We have never been more back. I want to kind of also talk about what's been happening structurally with the media as this has been going on, which is that Trump and his party has staged a pretty successful takeover of a lot of it. You know, you had, I mean, Elon Musk obviously buying X, but like they're in the process of taking over CBS basically by using the fact that quote unquote, free media is actually capitalist media. And you can just buy them out and bully them by threatening them with losing money. You can in fact just completely get them to fall in line or have your own rich backers just buy it. And I think this, this is refueling the disconnect, right where there was also this, this post 2020. All of like the senior management level of all of the newspapers kind of lost their minds in 2020 because their staff was like, no, we don't want to print Tom Cotton calling for the US army to be deployed against protesters. And these people were like, okay, fuck it. We're just like, you know, you see, it was like the Washington Post. They were like, yeah, we will literally rather burn the post than have that happen again. And the Post obviously is like under the control of Jeff Bezos, who is a style where Trump ally. And I think this has been contributing to it because they've been able to take over social media platforms and they've been able to take over the sort of corporate bourgeois media. And it's created this incredible unreality of this image that he is this staggeringly popular leader and that the things he do are popular and that there's been a giant cultural shift towards his stuff. And it's like, well, I mean, there kind of has been a cultural shift in terms of, you know, elite liberals are allowed to be racist again, which, you know, it's like all of the people who always wanted to be eugenicists are like, you know, on that shit now.

[Vicky Osterweil]

And they, you know, they cracked their knuckles and warmed up under Covid. Right. Like this is, this is also contiguous in a way. And. Yeah, but yeah, no, I think that, that's exactly right. And I think part of what we saw in the last week, I mean, I know we were going to talk about this a bit that, like the last week when we're recording this, which was the week of the Charlie Kirk memorializing, when everyone pretended that ventilating a Nazi was the greatest tragedy that had befallen American heroes. And I saw a lot of people who had been up until then relatively level headed suddenly really start to panic that week and feel like things were really. And I think part of that was because with a man as absolutely rizzless and as obviously malicious and uninteresting as Charlie Kirk getting that treatment like he was, you know, Robert Redford or whatever, he also passed, I think that happening in unison across all the media. I think people finally realized, like, oh, everything is totally captured. And the people who hadn't really thought that felt like that there was sort of this unanimity, the unanimity you're talking about. Because they're able to project this unanimity through this one sort of media voice. And like the fact that that was punctured by Jimmy Kimmel getting fired and there being like a genuine upswell of popular ATT about the man show guy, like, like who hasn't been funny like probably since he was 14 or whatever, I think a lot of people have focused on that as being extremely embarrassing and cringe. Which, like, yeah, accurate. But I think like also, like they couldn't even hold it together for a week, right? Like they couldn't even hold this full court press together for a week. They had that Charlie Kirk documentary. They were like, we're gonna film it on, you know, on Sinclair. All the places where we would be showing Jimmy Kimmel. They just canceled it. They put it on YouTube.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Yeah. 26,000 views. This means that I am very, very proud of this. More people listen to me complaining about the way that everything everywhere, all at once was spreading the bourgeois patriarchal ideology of the family. More people listen to me talk about that on this show than watch the stupid fucking Charlie Memorial.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah, sorry to that, man, but people do not care. Like people don't care about that guy. And, and it didn't. And also, as you said at the opening, his polls have gone down. People are like, shit, shut up about this. Like they don't care. It doesn't work. Holes aren't everything. But like, I think that this disconnect that's so hard is that if you are mostly getting your information from a media environment, which all of us do, like, that's how most of us get all of our information. That's. This is not a judgment. It feels like everyone is like, you know, is at like half mast, you know, for their, for their beautiful. Their beautiful boy. Look what they did to my beautiful boy with his tiny little face and his huge neck that like apparently was made of steel and caught bullets. Like a Fox News article said that he was like strong bodied and he's kept. He saved other people.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Okay, I need to talk about this for a second because this is so fucking unhinged okay. So his, like, surgeon or whatever was like, oh, yeah, he was, he started. His surgeon wrote a thing about, like, this bone that doesn't exist in your neck. That he was like, oh, yeah, he had this really thick bone there that stopped the bullet. And this got, like, picked up by like, Fox News, who's now running a story about this magical iron bone in Charlie Kirk's neck that like, God put there or something to save. I just, it's, it's so.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah, I can read the headline for you. Hang on, I've got it here.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Oh, God.

[Vicky Osterweil]

This is Fox News on X. There's a picture of Charlie Kirk. It says, surgeon says Charlie Kirk's body stopped bullet in, quote, absolute miracle that saved others. TPUSA says. And then, quote, man of Steel, Charlie Kirk's body stopped a bullet that would typically, quote, just go through everything. And it was, quote, an absolute miracle. Nobody else was killed. His surgeon told Turning Point usa. So that's weird behavior that people don't like. That's not. Yeah, no. So I think, like, basically they have this capacity to do this, like, really, really intense, unified message across the entire spectrum of the media. And we're seeing it again right now with like, NPR publishing, basically, does Tylenol actually cause autism? So the science isn't out yet, you know, or whatever, like, as their headline, you know. So, like, obviously, like, that's scary if you're used to a reality which is shaped largely by the media. And, and Trump has gotten into office twice based on a media reality shaping effect. The media has been the main tool, both social and mainstream, for putting him into power. So it's understandable to take it seriously because it does need to be taken seriously. But there's other stuff going on.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Well, and like, the funniest version of this was just how fast Disney caved on bringing Jimmy Kimmel back.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yes.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Which was like sub one week.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah, no, it was sub one week. And you know, to me that says that actually the boycott spread real fast and real far. Like, there was a Disney Adult on TikTok, right. Who was sort of like, giving people instructions on how to cancel their Disney World vacations and was like canceling his Disney World wedding, you know, and like, this was like, all happening really, really fast. People were really mad. And, you know, yeah, it's again, it's goofy that it's over Jimmy Kimmel, but it's not really about Jimmy Kimmel. Right. It's because everyone hates this, man. They hate this.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Yeah. And people don't actually want this dipshit to just literally. And you know, and he's trying to do this again. Right. He's apparently trying to sue Disney. Like, they don't want the fucking orange guy to be able to just straight up say what is legal to say on tv.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Which is the thing that he is attempting to do right now.

[Vicky Osterweil]

And the other thing about it that I think is really important and relevant is that a better dictatorship doesn't go to the press and fire this man. They pull strings behind the scenes. They get him to retract, like on his show in a way that causes no attention. And the people who follow Kimmel see it enough to understand that power has been pulled behind the strings, but they probably don't really think much about it. Right. That is how, like, real, really smooth, smooth repression of a free press into a bot press involves a lot of strings being pulled behind the scenes. And in fact, it has been happening for 20 years in America. There has been a lot of that going on. Part of what's so obscene about this whole situation in a certain way is that Trump just needs to do less. Things have been set up for fascism for a while. He just needs to do less. And he can't help himself. They can't help themselves because they're, you know, because they need it to be in this sort of public mode. And also he's lost his, you know, his juice.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

But yeah, yeah, well, and it's also just like, I mean, this is also partially. Trump is just like pathologically obsessed with late night comedy.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Right.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Because he's a TV guy and so he's just mad. Red and mad and nude online. Except like the previous version of it where like you were just like throwing shit at your television set in like 1955, which is a really terrifying thing to have in the presidency. But, you know, speaking of having things in the presidency, these products and services, look, if they paved you more, you'd get better transitions. But they don't.

[Vicky Osterweil]

So vote for them. All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half truth, is a whole lie.

[Narrator (Cool Zone Media)]

For almost a decade, the murder of an 18 year old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[Vicky Osterweil]

I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her.

[Narrator (Cool Zone Media)]

We know a story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national tv.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran.

[Narrator (Cool Zone Media)]

My name is Maggie Freeling I'm a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist producer and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

I did not know her and I did not kill her or rape or burn or any of that other stuff.

[Ed (Comedian in Wisecrack)]

That y' all said.

[Lauren LaRosa]

They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her.

[Narrator (Cool Zone Media)]

From Lava for Good. This is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame.

[Vicky Osterweil]

America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns.

[Narrator (Cool Zone Media)]

Listen to Graves county in the Bone Valley feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

[Narrator (Havoc Town)]

There's a vile sickness in Abbas Town. You must excise it, dig into the deep earth and cut it out.

[Vicky Osterweil]

The village is ravaged.

[Narrator (Havoc Town)]

Entire families have been consumed.

[Vicky Osterweil]

You know how waking up from a dream, a familiar place can look completely alien.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Get back everyone.

[Narrator (Havoc Town)]

And if you see the devil walking around inside of another man, you must cut out the very heart of him, burn his body and scatter the the ashes in the furthest corner of this town.

[Aaron Manke]

As a warning from iHeart podcasts and grim and mild from Aaron Manke, this is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater Audio universe starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ed (Comedian in Wisecrack)]

The Devil walks in Abbostal My name is Ed. Everyone say hello Ed.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Hello Ed.

[Ed (Comedian in Wisecrack)]

I'm from a very rural background myself. My dad is a farmer and my mom is a cousin. So like, it's not.

[Wisecrack Host]

What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? I know it sounds like the start of a bad joke, but that really was my reality nine years ago.

[Ed (Comedian in Wisecrack)]

I just normally do straight stand up, but this is a bit different.

[Wisecrack Host]

On stage stood a comedian with a story that no one expected to hear.

[Ed (Comedian in Wisecrack)]

On 22 July 2015, a 23 year old man had killed his family and then he came to my house.

[Wisecrack Host]

So what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? A new podcast called Wisecrack where stand up comedy and murder take center stage. Available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Narrator (Chinatown Sting)]

In early 1988, federal agents raced to track down the gang they suspect of importing millions of dollars worth of heroin into New York from Asia.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

We had 30 agents ready to go with shotguns and rifle, and you name it.

[Narrator (Chinatown Sting)]

But what they find is not what they expected.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Basically, your stay at home moms were picking up these large amounts of heroin. They go, is this your daughter? I said, yes. They go, oh, you may not see her for, like, 25 years.

[Narrator (Chinatown Sting)]

Caught between a federal investigation and the violent gang who recruited them, the women must decide who. Who they're willing to protect and who they dare to betray.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Once I saw the gun, I tried to take his hand, and I saw the flash of light.

[Narrator (Chinatown Sting)]

Listen to the Chinatown sting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you get your podcasts.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

We are back. So, you know, I. I think it's worth noting that, like. Yeah, no, like. Like the immediate financial pressure of, you know, just. Just the collision of. Wait, hold on. Like, the people who buy things, which is most people, admittedly, like Disney adults are a very narrow subset of people. But, like, the. The. The speed and rapidity of which reality, which is people don't. Like, this guy hit the, like, sort of, you know, just. Just, like. Just like, sort of smashed through this, like, tunnel of. Of the Charlie Kirk stuff was just unbelievable, you know, and, like, part of this. This is something that Marisa Kabas from the Hand Basket reported, which is that part of what was going on was Disney was about to roll out a price increase.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

And so they had to bring it back so they could do their price increase, which. Well, brother, just delay the price increase if you're trying to do authoritarian whatever. Okay. You know, I am happy. These people suck at doing this. It's great. We like it. We like that they're, you know, like, Disney is being pressured here. But I think it's worth talking about something that you have been spending a ungodly amount of time in, the minds of, which is Disney and fascism. Oh, boy.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yay. Yeah. I mean, part of what's been so funny about this week for me personally, and that's what really matters, obviously, is that, like, you know, when we went into this administration, we started seeing what they were doing. I was like, I can't believe I'm writing a book about free trade and lawfare. Right. Like, warfare by law. Like, you know, like, sort of this. This massive corporate legal apparatus that has been supported by global trade regimes because they're ripping it apart. Right. Like. Like, yeah, like, the pharma tariffs is like, a huge blow to the IP Regime, Sorry, the intellectual property regime. The IP regime is what I analyze in the book I've just written and is coming out in April. And it's about how Disney really was like a sort of pioneer in understanding the value of intellectual property and manipulating it and how you can see that through the entire corporate and artistic history of Disney studios. So it's about Disney movies and how they're all connected. They actually all sort of tell stories about IP in certain ways and how we sort of miss that angle on them very often, very frequently and misunderstand how much IP functions in the broader society. Because, for example, fast fashion companies. Now, I know you said talk about Disney, I'm talking about something else. But fast fashion companies, they actually own very, very little materially. So their offices are leased mostly. Their factories are contracted. You know, everyone who makes the sewing is contracted. They might own their stores, but they probably lease their stores, right? Yeah, they like have very few direct employees other than like store level. If they don't franchise. But they might even franchise. They might not even employ the store level people, but they probably do store level people, corporate employees. And then they own their IP and maybe they own a headquarters building somewhere. Right. Like that's a fancy building. Yeah. And everything else is, quote, unquote, owned by them, controlling the designs, the logos, the images. And they can guarantee that they can make almost infinite money off of that because the global trade regime enforces copyright law in a way that would make people who would like to see any human rights thing enacted blush with shame. And it is incredibly effective. It is the one thing that international law does quite well is enforce copyright and trademark and patent. So when you have stuff like the, you know, you can no longer ship under $800 without tariffs. Like those companies are entirely reliant on being able to move these products as cheaply and as quickly as possible, because they don't own ships, they don't own factories, they don't even really own the, you know, they. They own the shirts only when they arrive on American shores. Really.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

This has always been the dream with reproduction of capital, which is to have a company with no assets that makes money.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Exactly.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

And they're so close. They're so close.

[Vicky Osterweil]

And all this stuff is destroying it. So I was like, well, great. Now I've written this whole book about how Disney is actually really a state actor. And they have a sovereign territory in Florida that people talk about a little bit called the Reedy Creek Improvement District, which you may or may not know about. People Talked about Celebration Florida a bit when that happened in the 2000s, which is a weird, creepy company town that they run. They actually own a huge section of. It's like two counties. It's larger than the size of Manhattan in central Florida.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Jesus Christ. What?

[Vicky Osterweil]

The conflict was Desantis over the don't say Gay Bill, which people, you know, interpreted largely through the lens of the, you know, horrifyingly reactionary politics he was pushing, which is understandable, is also a conflict over sovereignty in Florida because they don't pay taxes in the same way. They make their own laws, they have their own police force.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

So basically, Jesus Christ, Disney made the first networks. They did it.

[Vicky Osterweil]

They actually did it. And they've been doing it for 30 years. Or no, that's 69 is when they get the deal for reading Creative. Holy shit. We've had it for a long time. People don't love to talk about this for some reason. I think it's really interesting. Terrifying, but really interesting. But the reason that that's all really, really connected to intellectual property is because one of the things that Disney did, despite, you know, having literally their own state lit in the middle of Florida, is maintain themselves as the Magic Kingdom. They are associated with childhood nostalgia, magic. Even as they've grown and grown and grown into this behemoth, like, they've managed to largely stay connected to this sort of image of American innocence in childhood. And there have been moments in the 90s they overreached a bit. There's been, like, you know, there have been problems, and you can read all about that. But basically they did image management on all these different levels. So they managed Mickey Mouse, they managed the law around copyright. Like copyright extensions famously were largely driven by Disney lobbying in 1976 and then again in 1998.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Yep.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Anyway, so all of these things. I'm trying to reduce a very big argument into a very small package here, but basically, Disney designed, and the other IP businesses that work around it have figured out that if you can control the way your product appears in the market and you can control the images and the feelings people have about them and the sort of thoughts and stuff, you can really do whatever you want materially behind the scenes. Right. That controlling an image is so powerful. And part of why. What's happening with Disney, why it's falling apart so fast, is because if they give in to Trump at all, it requires shattering that image. That has been a century in the making. Right. Part of what was so brutal about the thing with Jimmy Kimmel was it's just obvious that Disney did that, that the corporate people did that, and they did it because Trump did it publicly. Trump is humiliating these, these corporations publicly. Right. He's, he's, he's humiliating them. He's. He's forcing them to, to come to heel. It's not working popularly. He's not capturing anti corporate sentiment. Really. People like, why are you doing that over Jimmy Kimmel? Like, that's weird. You're a creep.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Yeah.

[Vicky Osterweil]

But then also, he's also destroying the legitimacy of everyone. It's, it's pulling everything down around him. It's a family annihilation. Right. He's so angry about 2020 and, like, being tried that he's just going to rip everything down around him. Wow. I just said a lot of different things. But all of which is to say what's so interesting about the Trump regime in some ways and the relationship to Disney is that Disney has for so long built this image of America that has managed to persist across and against a century of increasingly violent, ineffective and visible imperialism. Like in Korea and Vietnam and then Iraq and Afghanistan. It was so crucial to the image of what American capitalism was. And then Trump, a man who is just as built by images as the Disney Corporation, comes and is just like, just is ripping it all down because he's sort of, you know, one gaping narcissistic wound. Right. Like running. Running a country. Right, yeah. So if you, if you look at the history of, like, Disney in general, Hollywood and intellectual property management in general, what you can see is the way that we have, that this media apparatus has been built. When I say media apparatus, I think people tend to think, you know, when you talk about images or the spectacle or whatever, they just think about stuff on tv. But like, no, it's also all the products that circulate through society. And it's like the way that you get paid for your job with, you know, like, the idea of clout is like, actually part of that. Like, it does function as a form of payment. Right. Like, it's not like people make fun of that. Like, oh, good. But, like, then everyone acts as though it's real, right? And then when everyone acts as though it's real, it's real. It's a social relationship. So the entire spectacular economy, which is built entirely on images that rely only on being forced through a sort of massive group. Think from the top of the economy in the political class was built by these corporations, but it was built explicitly to, you know, reap as much wealth as possible for their shareholders.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. To make money. Yeah.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Trump is too perfect a product of that, and this regime is too perfect a product of that. And now it's all, you know, it is its own gravedigger, you know?

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Yeah. Report has a line about, like, the way that the spectacle sort of, like, intrudes into and, like, becomes reality. And, like, if Disney is sort of, like, the stage manager of this. Right. Like, Trump just is the thing, like, come to life and powering through it, and he doesn't, because he is the image and not the thing that creates the image. He has different interests.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yes.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Thank you. The people who create the image who are, you know, trying to make money. Trump is trying to, like, satisfy all of his, like, vindictive sort of narcissistic rage.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Exactly. It's worth remembering that, you know, although the damage he's doing is extremely real. Yeah. He genuinely is fighting over the election and over, like, Comey. Like, he is, like, he really believes these things. This is a regime that believes the things that, for example, Karl Rove would teach people to say to get away with doing what they wanted to do. Right. These are, as you said, they are the image itself. They are true believers in the spectacle and as such, break the fourth wall. Right. If we're going to use a theater metaphor here, as such, they end up just destroying it. And I think Trump's power was that he could puncture the spectacle. Right. And then there were all the people, as you described, and the people who make the spectacle maintain the image. Make the image. They were around him, so they would just. They would just close up the puncture. They would close up the suture. They would work really, really hard. Right. So what I mean by that is, like, Trump would say something absolutely unhinged, and the New York Times would be, like, the controversial statement from President Trump. Right. Which, like, completely normalizes it. And, like, everyone would sort of pretend that he hadn't just said the most unhinged lunatic shit. And this is the first administration I'm talking about. Right. Like, people would just pretend that it was normal.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Yeah. That he was speaking of Four Seasons total landscape. Right. Like, just, like, shit would happen.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Exactly. And everyone would sort of try to normalize it. And that normalization repaired the fabric of the spectacle, and it made Trump's fans really happy because you get to watch august institutions such as the Washington Post going over backwards to make an obvious obscene lie seem like a reasonable claim. Right. So they were humiliated in fixing the spectacle behind him as he punctured it. Right. But he has actually, too successfully gotten rid of everyone who did that repair? He actually thought they were his enemies. The Rhinos. Right. The Republicans who kept him in line, the Democrats, the media, they have been purged. They have all been purged and controlled. And now they all just repeat what he says. And what ends up happening is that the spectacle just remains torn and people see through it. It's just not working anymore. And I think what's scary is that it still feels like they're repairing the spectacle around his claims because the entire media is speaking as one and the Democrats are speaking as one and the Republicans are speaking as one and they're all agreeing. You know, we imagine someone else, John, Hugh, public, sitting there and seeing that and going, oh, okay, it's all pretty normal. Like, oh, Charlie Kirk was a good guy. You know, we sort of project that that person is there. But actually more and more people who would have been like that in the first regime are like, well, I don't believe any of this shit.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's also worth saying, like, the way that we're talking about this in terms of his unpopularity and reality, in terms of why it feels like this, it doesn't mean that there's not just horrible shit happening constantly. Right. And that's the other part of his ability to sort of eliminate the legitimization part of the spectacle. Was that like, that it was to some extent restraining him. Right. Like that's the reason why there wasn't just like there were a bunch of deportations under Trump. There were a bunch of deportations under Biden. The thing that's happening now is not the thing that was happening before. Right.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

The Secretary of the Interior wasn't showing up at like 5:30 in the morning in a suburb of Chicago to blow up someone's door and drag a bunch of American citizens out of their house. Like that was like not happening.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Before. And that stuff is just, you know, it's unbelievably horrifying. And it's also not popular.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Right.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Like even, even those approval rating numbers. Right. Like, you know, like his immigration policy in theory is the most popular thing he's doing. And also, I can't do mass large scale raids because if they stay in one place for too long, so many people will show up. They can't do it. And you know, and the lightning raids that they've been doing have been really brutal and really effective. But like, those are not the tactics. A stormtrooper force that broadly has the popular. Has popular consent.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Right. They don't move like that. And you know, I talked about this. I guess it'll be like two weeks ago on executive order, but like, people are like, stopping these raids in like, Wheaton.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Like, Wheaton used to be literally the center of the base of power of like the Bush administration Moral Majority shit for like 40 years. This was like the center of, of the Christian right. And they have lost Wheaton.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

It's been like, electing Democrats. And it's not just like Democrats, like, the speed at which it's moved from election Democrats to like, a bunch of people showed up and are stopping like lightning ice raids, which is really impressive. Genuinely, very, very impressive organizing. It's very hard to do. Most times it doesn't work because you can't get there fast enough. And somehow, again, like the place that used to be the capital of the Moral Majority, it's like Jerry Farwell's fucking, like, like home domain, right? Like the, the epicenter of like, of the Christian right is doing anti ice raid. Like. Yeah, what? Like, and this is the thing that's been going on for like, you know, probably like four or five years, but like, them doing like, really serious, very good direct action. The entire terrain of the world is shifting beneath us while all of these people constantly try to like, paint over this, like, little tiny scaffolding they've set up to be like, no, no, the ground's still there. There's all these holes in the middle of it. But like, you know, we're gonn tarp that like, looks like the sky beneath it. It's like, wait, why is the sky down? Don't ask questions, just keep walking.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Exactly. And I think that's like. I think that's really important and a thing that I think happens sometimes when I sort of make this analysis with my friends, I think they think that I'm saying that, like, fascism isn't here or that like, this isn't a fascist regime or that, like, they don't want to like, do Nazism like they very clearly do. Yeah. My analysis has been like, since February. I mean, part of what's happened is like. Like in February, when the DOE stuff was going on, I was like, well, the American Republic is over. We'll never be able to go back. Now what do we do? So I think a lot of the disjuncture and the confusion and the craziness feeling that people are having is because people are coming to those realizations on separate timelines because it's really hard to accept. It's a hard and complicated thing to feel and to recognize that actually this is a dying regime and a dying empire. And that does not mean it's less dangerous. In fact, historically, it's often more dangerous in its death throes. And it does not mean. When you and I talk about him being ineffective, it does not mean that the stuff he's doing isn't terrifying. We're both trans women who organize with other trans women. Like, we know about it. Okay. Y'. All. Like, we are dealing with the fallout all the time. But, like, the situations that we could be going through, the situations that they could be achieving that with the public that they were handed by the Biden administration that had broken solidarity around Covid, that had created an effective red scare around Gaza, that had, like, you know, basically perpetuated two genocides and gotten liberals to, like, say that that was normal and good. Right. Like, that was a very, very scary public to. To hand to Nazis, too, now with nukes. Right. And, like, I think, you know, we do ourselves a disservice when the only fascist regimes we think about are Nazism. And when we think that, like, it's inevitably, like, going to be just like the Nazis. Or even if we just say, well, it could be more like Italy. Like, there are dozens of different dictatorships. Yeah. Across the history. I don't expect everyone to study all of them. But, like. But, like, it's worth understanding.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Learn a third one. Pick one. Literally, pick one. Fucking anyone. That's not the main, too. There are so many. Like, you have. You are spoiled for.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. You can do. You could do. If, you know, pick a decade, you know, you like the 70s, go for Swartho in Indonesia. You like the 80s. Brazilian military dictatorship. No problem. Like, or you could do Korea in the 80s. You got lots of choices. Oh, the 50s, go for Greece. No problem. Don't worry about it. The reason that I bring all that up is just to say that, like, things are really bad and if we don't, you know, throw down this will successfully build an authoritarian fascist state eventually, just by the sheer inertia of the power that they have available and the time that they can wait. Yeah. But as you're saying, and as I've been sort of seeing also, there's tremendous amounts of resistance. It is completely uncovered. It is not being seen. But because they live in the spectacle that they themselves have made, they also don't see and understand their level of resistance. Like, they've disorganized the FBI. Right. They fired about, like, was it like a fifth of FBI agents Like head agents and then like a bunch more are now doing like street crime and are like being put into ICE raids. And people talk about that as being terrifying. And it is terrifying. The desire they have to do really brutal ICE raids and to use every resource available to them is scary. Yeah. But also, if they don't have the FBI's eyes on the ball, which they clearly don't anymore, they have redirected the FBI. They are not nearly as cognizant of what's going on in terms of resistance as they were even six months ago.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

No. Like, if you look at the guy who shot Charlie Kirk, right, this is like Carly Kirk is like their guy. Right. The FBI is so stripped down right now that with a full court press, the only reason they caught that guy was because he didn't understand that discord wasn't private. And he like dropped his gun and didn't pick it up again.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah. And his dad recognized it. Right.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

And if he had done those two things, they wouldn't have found him. Like. Yeah, they didn't catch him. He turned himself in. Right. And that's again, someone assassinated like their guy and they couldn't find him. Like this repressive apparatus, it is really, really scary and very good at doing the thing that it's focused on doing right now, which is like dragging immigrant families from their homes at like 5 in the morning by blowing their fucking doors down and like dragging them away to a prison. Right. It's not good at anything else.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

And the thing, right, that, that is a very, very good way to create an engine of, you know, like immense human misery that whose spectacle they can sell. But it's not actually a good way to hold together an authoritarian dictatorship. We have seen very, very successful sort of dictatorships in the last like 20, 30 years. Right?

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

And you know, like, they take a bunch of forms. I think, like the most classically like 1930s Nazi party. One is Modi in India. And Modi in India has done the thing in the sense of like, has really, really successfully transformed the consciousness of people in India to this sort of like unbelievably unhinged right wing fascist version of like Hindu supremacy. That hasn't happened here.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Right. You know, it's worth knowing that the RSS, which is his brown shirts, like, has 4 million people in it.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Yeah, yeah, Right.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Like, I mean, you know, it has million. They have millions of brown shirts. Right. Like ICE is having trouble hiring 12,000 extra agents in a, in a, in a continent of 400 million people again. This doesn't mean that everything's fine. But yeah, like, if you look at that, if you look at Erdogan in Turkey or you look at Putin in Russia or even Orban to his, to a different degree in Hungary, like, they slow rolled it, right. They, they went through a few elections that were like slightly sketchy but basically normal. Like, and they like, and they just slowly built power and it took them a decade to get to the point where they were openly doing the authoritarian stuff that Trump is trying to do.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Yeah.

[Vicky Osterweil]

And like, again, there's no rules. It might work, what Trump is doing, but like compare it to Milei in Argentina, right. Who they all loved so much, who came into power similarly to Trump, started throwing truth bombs everywhere, you know, just like ripped apart, and has now had to come hat in hand begging for a bailout to the United States. Yep. Because his whole thing, his regime fell apart within 24 months.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Yep.

[Vicky Osterweil]

There is ultimately a material limit to what you can do. Yeah. You can't just speak reality into existence for that long. Yeah.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

And that's, that's the thing, right? If, if it was possible to just speak reality into existence, we would all be living under neoconservatism, right? Right. There would be like a pure, well functioning oil extracting American client state in Iraq right now. And I don't know what the fuck they would have done with Afghanistan. But like, if, if, if you could just do the thing. And I've talked about this on this, I talk about this on the show all the time, right? The thing the neoconservatives thought they could do with evidence based reality thing, right? Where like, they, they thought that what they could do was just instead of observing reality and creating your positions from it, they thought they could just purely influence and manipulate reality to become whatever they wanted it to be, and they couldn't. Right? Like where the, is George Bush right now? Right? Like where is Dick Cheney? Like, the Trump administration somehow staggeringly has managed to like, they finally found a war crime so bad that John Wu, the architect, like the guy who wrote the torture manuals was like, wait, hold on. You can't just blow up random like boats of people in Venezuela. Like, what, What? Like, I literally had not even occurred to me that it was possible for you to commit a war crime so bad that the guy who wrote the torture memos was like, hold on, hold on, hold on, wait, I ain't set up for this shit. Like.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah, they're absolutely like, unhinged. They're horrible. And thank God they are so Unpopular and so bad at this. Yeah. Because if they were just a little bit better at this, I think it's very clear what they want.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

We're screwed.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Yeah. Like, we. We go. We go under it, like, four months, but that hasn't happened because they're not good at this. And they're tearing apart the very institutional apparatus, like, Disney. Like, they're tearing apart the very institutional apparatuses that were designed to, like, propagate them. Like, yeah, Trump could have just made peace with Disney, right? Like, Trump could have just used, you know, like. Like, basically, like, the way that every other thing, like, like, the way literally the Nazis did. Right. Like, until, like, literally until they were forced to break it off during, like, which is, like, use Disney as a propaganda apparatus for you.

[Vicky Osterweil]

And Disney was gun shy because of the fight with Desantis. Didn't go that well for them, surprisingly. You know, like, they had some trouble with that, and so they were gun shy, like, going into the administration. Like, they were very quiet. Like, they were not rocking the boat. They were making lots of statements about how, like, you know, we support it. Like, he didn't have to goad them into taking a position in the culture war. Like, they were just very glad that they weren't fighting off Desantis anymore and that they weren't fighting off, you know, the Daily Wire, you know, claiming that they were, you know, whatever the woke mind virus or whatever the hell, you know. Yeah. Like, they were just. They were just putting their. Keeping their heads down, trying to rebuild after the disaster of the pandemic. Right. Like, trying to, like, get their cruise line back up and, like, as profitable as it could be. You know, they were working on, like, they were just doing their thing, and they were like, no reason Trump should stop that. There's no reason Trump should stop that. They. Is what they thought.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

No, it's like they. They were implementing, like, a lot of the culture war stuff that they wanted in terms of, like, okay, we're going back to white people. We're never having another non white in character again. Like, eat shit.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Yeah. Like, they cancel. They. They're canceling TV shows with just, like, queer characters. Like, they're just. They're just doing stuff like that. They're doing. They're doing everything that. That the. The regime wants. But as you mentioned, he's just sitting there watching TV and, like, like, throwing his remote around. And, like, unfortunately, his remote, like, dictates US Policy. Mm.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

I think that's an important note to close on because, like, his remote dictates US Policy to the extent that everyone pretends that it does. And one of the things that can start happening in the end stages of these kind of regimes is that like the levers of power become unglued from the mechanisms of the state. Yeah, right. So he just like declared that Antifa is like a domestic terrorist organization. Right. We're going to be talking about that later this week, possibly earlier this week. I don't know when this episode's coming out, but that doesn't do anything in and of itself. He's just like waving a magic wand around. But if he doesn't have the repressive apparatus to make that matter, then, okay, then, then him throwing the remote around isn't like gesturally controlling the arm of like one of the most sophisticated, what's supposed to be one of the most sophisticated repressive apparatuses ever. Right. And they rely on both the compliance of the state bureaucracy, which they've been decently good at pulling in line, but also they rely on our compliance for this and you don't have to comply with them. That's, that's, that's the, that's the fun thing about, about existence is that they can't just, they can't just make it real unless you help them.

[Vicky Osterweil]

And as we saw, as we've already talked about, the Charlie Kirk special doesn't go up, right? They say like the, yeah, the COVID vaccines are like, we're going to restrict them. And most of the pharmacies are just like, just check a box saying you need it. Like, you know, like not in every state, but again, like these massive institutions, they can't really get them in line. So why are you letting them get you in line?

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Yeah. And remember, you know, like, they had better control of their institutional apparatuses in 2020. And the outcome of that was there was a giant uprising and they put the President in a bunker, a thing that he's still mad about to this day. Right. Even when it looks like they have total control, they don't. And I don't know if he's going to like end up in a Hitler bunker. But look, as of right now, as it stands, the record of Trump administration's ending with Trump hiding in a bunker is 100%. So you know, if, if, if the past is to be a prediction of the future, we could see it again. When all of this shit goes to hell and the economy collapses and everyone's like, oh, this was all a lie the whole time. Wow. Damn. Hey, look like, you know, and.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Oh God, you can say that, but I.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Don'T know if we can. We're just gonna. We're just gonna. We're just gonna put a really long leaf over that entire sentence and we're gonna. We're. We're gonna leave that sentence as an exercise to the reader. You too. Completing the sentence, just figuring out what it was saying, not doing the thing. Okay, this has been. It could happen here. Vicky, where can people pre order your book?

[Vicky Osterweil]

Oh, you can go to Haymarket. That's who's putting it out. And they have a list of links. You can also go to my Bluesky account, Vickyacab, BSky Social, and you can find a link there.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Yeah, and where can people find you and your work?

[Vicky Osterweil]

Cawshinythings.com, it's the collective anarchist writers or any other acronym you like. C A W. That's where I'm working most regularly now.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Good crow Theming. That's great. That's great.

[Vicky Osterweil]

It's corvid based.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Yeah, we love a corvid based economy.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Thanks so much for having me, Mia.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Yeah, thanks for coming on.

[Narrator (Cool Zone Media)]

It Could Happen Here is a production.

[Vicky Osterweil]

Of Cool Zone Media.

[Narrator (Cool Zone Media)]

For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Narrator (Cool Zone Media)]

You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. The murder of an 18 year old girl in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved for years until a local housewife, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward. Forward with a story.

[Vicky Osterweil]

America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns.

[Narrator (Cool Zone Media)]

Listen to Graves county on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

[Narrator (Havoc Town)]

There's a vile sickness in Amstown. You must excise it, dig into the deep earth and cut it out.

[Aaron Manke]

From iheart Podcasts and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manke. This is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater audio universe, starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ed (Comedian in Wisecrack)]

I just normally do straight stand up, but this is a bit different.

[Wisecrack Host]

What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? A new podcast called Wisecrack, where a comedian finds himself at the center of a chilling true crime story.

[Ed (Comedian in Wisecrack)]

Does anyone know what show they've come to see? It's a story. It's about the scariest night of my life.

[Wisecrack Host]

This is Wisecrack, available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Lauren LaRosa]

I'm the homegirl that knows a little bit about everything and everybody.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Lauren LaRosa. You hear that? Exclusive Lauren came in hot.

[Lauren LaRosa]

I came in telling the truth. Every day I'm bringing you the latest in entertainment, breaking down the headlines you can't stop talking about and giving you my very unfiltered take on the biggest stories in the industry. From exclusive news. And y' all know I got it. To us breaking down the interviews. Cause y' all are my co hosts now. I'm giving you the deep dives on some of the biggest moments in pop culture.

[Mia (Podcast Host)]

Oh, my God.

[Lauren LaRosa]

Listen to the Latest with Lauren LaRosa, weekdays on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast.