Executive Disorder: Iran Deal, UFC at the White House, Dialog Hack

Summary

It Could Happen Here — Executive Disorder: Iran Deal, UFC at the White House, Dialog Hack

Podcast: It Could Happen Here
Hosts: Garrison Davis, Mia Wong, James Stout, Robert Evans
Release Date: June 19, 2026
Episode Focus:
This episode of "It Could Happen Here" covers a whirlwind week in American political and social disorder, featuring Trump’s surprise Iran nuclear peace deal and $300B in reconstruction money, the dystopian spectacle of UFC at the White House, a breakdown of a mass casualty plot that wasn’t, and a rare data leak exposing Peter Thiel’s secretive billionaire “Dialog” club. The hosts also analyze election updates, escalating police violence, and the increasingly dark theatre of American power and wealth.

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Main Topics & Themes

1. News Round-Up: The Collapsing Horizon

• Elon Musk Becomes the First Trillionaire (02:22)
  • SpaceX goes public, skyrocketing Musk's wealth.
  • “[...] There's no other kind of trillionaire. It's all on paper.” — George Taveras (02:48)
• Federal-State Power Struggles
  • DHS refuses to comply with Virginia’s new anti-mask law for federal officers; DOJ sues Virginia over “attempts to regulate federal law enforcement.” (03:11)
• Election Interference Allegations
  • French government suspects Israeli cyber firm Black Core of meddling in French, UK, and NYC elections. (03:35)
• FBI Slush Fund Scandal
  • Rep. Jamie Raskin accuses Cash Patel (FBI director) of using bonuses as a personal slush fund for loyalists; over $1 million allegedly awarded. (03:48)
    • “Some of these payments were made so rapidly that they bounced back, like he was sending money.” — Garrison Davis (04:45)
• Public Lands Under Threat
  • Trump rescinds regulations limiting off-road vehicles on public lands; potential for “massive and irreparable damage.”
  • Sen. Mike Lee sabotages bipartisan Wildfire Prevention Act to open lands for sale (05:14–07:30)
• Endangered Species & Protest Crackdowns
  • US Fish & Wildlife prosecute wolf killings (07:41).
  • 15 indicted for criminal conspiracy in Minnesota protests (08:29).

2. Election Updates: Shifting Power

• No ranked-choice tally in Maine; major DSA victories in DC (Janice Lewis George for mayor, Aparna Raj for city council)—signals progressive momentum (08:51).

3. Police Violence and Shoplifting Panic

• Mississippi Police Kill 1-Year-Old Cohen Wiley (10:48–16:25)
  • Harrowing first-hand account from the mother, Valencia Wiley (11:21).
  • “By the time I sat my baby down, there were like three to four shots. One... hit him in his rib cage…” — Valencia Wiley (11:38)
  • History of local police violence—tackling, tasing, high-profile child arrests, protest crackdowns.
  • Discussion: How media narratives around “vehicle weaponization” and “shoplifting panic” justify escalating police violence.
  • “Police are trained that their lives mean more than the lives of infants. That’s what this is.” — George Taveras (12:43)
  • Protests met with teargas at the same Walmart; hosts reflect on the unending cycle of police brutality in America.
  • “The only thing that's changed...is the police have more money.” — Mia Wong (17:39)
• LA Police Kill a Dog (16:25): Compared as part of a broader systemic problem of US police impunity.

4. Iran Peace Deal — Historic and Fraught

• Contentious Trump-Iran Memorandum Announced (22:29–32:46)
  • Immediate and permanent ceasefire; nuclear non-proliferation commitment; $300 billion in US funds for Iranian reconstruction and sanctions relief.
  • Strait of Hormuz opened for trade—future governance ambiguous.
  • “Oil will flow on both ends again for the region and the world.” — James Stout quoting Trump (23:17)
  • Debate on the risk of US reparations echoing “preconditions for fascism” (29:47).
  • Israel refuses to recognize the deal: “Trump’s agreement does not bind us. Israel is not subject to the United States. We are an independent and sovereign nation.” — Ben Gvir, Israel’s National Security Minister (31:28)
  • Geostrategic analysis: US ends role as global trade lane police, Iran normalizes its ability to strangle global trade in crisis.

5. Surreal Sporting Spectacles and Immigration Restrictions

• NBA Finals, World Cup, and UFC at the White House (32:46–46:07)
  • Knicks win first championship in 53 years; peaceful but boisterous city celebration (33:09).
  • Trump’s travel bans disrupt the World Cup—athletes/coaches and fans from several countries denied or delayed entry; “visa bond waivers” confusingly half-applied (35:22–37:08).
  • Iranian team forced to train in Tijuana, Mexico (37:34).
  • ICE threatens to flood NYC during World Cup (38:14).
  • UFC Freedom250 “Idiocracy” at the White House: South Lawn converted into a $60M octagon arena, live broadcast with billionaire-heavy audience, AI-generated ‘Americana’ interludes, and product placement galore (Ram Trucks, Crypto.com, Meta Steak, Monster, Bud Light, Gambling).
    • “Man, this is the most Cardi ass I’ve ever seen.” — George Taveras (41:17)
    • Post-fight transphobic slur from champion Josh Hokett about Michelle Obama, cut from UFC's official videos but viral on social. Dana White: “I hate that kind of nonsense.” (43:23–44:08)
    • FBI claims it foiled a left-wing terror plot against the event; Vance and Fox News immediately politicize and warp the story (44:36–46:07).

6. Dialog Hack and the Billionaire Social Club Leak

• Peter Thiel's Secret “Dialog” Network Exposed (62:02–72:41)
  • Story of a data breach revealing 222 members’ names and activities in Thiel’s invite-only Dialog club, which combines private “off the record” retreats, matchmaking, and “build a cult”/“build a party” workshops (63:26–66:46).
    • “If you let us know who you’re looking for, we’ve got this network of influential people. We’ll hook you up.” — George Taveras paraphrasing Dialog’s pitch (64:09)
  • Star-studded list: CEOs, economists, conservative activists, and LinkedIn self-help grifters.
  • Workshop topics include: Money Does Buy Happiness; Navigating WWIII; How’s Your Sex Life; Build a Cult.
  • Founders and organizers: Raffi Grinberg (author of “How to Be a Grown-Up”), “empty-eyed” Steve Gatina (CEO of prey.com and LinkedIn poster extraordinaire).
  • Confusion over whether Jeffrey Epstein (the convicted sex offender or the Oracle CFO) was a member—turns out, just a name coincidence. (71:32–72:41)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Passion is negotiable. Deadlines are not.” — George Taveras (02:16)
• On public lands: “Not only is [Mike] Lee trying...to sell off public lands, he's also probably ruining the future of the Wildfire Prevention Act.” — James Stout (06:16)
• On the Iran deal: “This is a move [Iran] made because they were at a tight spot and had to pivot...we've normalized it.” — James Stout (29:17)
• On police violence: “We just continue to live in this country where the cops just murder Black people constantly. And the only thing that's changed...is the police have more money.” — Mia Wong (17:39)
• On UFC at the White House: “The incredible ratio of billionaires to guys with 31% APR loans on a Ford F150...has it existed before in this small a space?” — George Taveras (42:21)
• On the Dialog hack: “There’s a series of off the record discussions including: Money Does Buy Happiness, Bring Back Nuclear, Navigating World War III Battlefield Technologies, and How’s Your Sex Life.” — George Taveras reading from leaked agenda (66:22)

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Key Segment Timestamps

• News headlines, Musk's trillions, public lands: 02:22 – 08:51
• Election updates: 08:51 – 10:48
• Mississippi police shooting of Cohen Wiley: 10:48 – 17:46
• Reflections on continued police violence: 17:46 – 18:47
• Iran Deal details and analysis: 22:29 – 32:46
• Sports spectacles – NBA, World Cup, UFC at the White House: 32:46 – 46:07
• Dissecting the “Foiled Leftist Terror Plot”: 50:12 – 61:58
• Dialog Club hack revealed: 62:02 – 72:41

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Tone & Style

Conversational, darkly humorous, and deeply cynical—equal parts news breakdown, exasperated banter, and bleak American social commentary. The hosts’ chemistry sharpens their analysis, with sardonic asides, pop-culture allusions (“Idiocracy”), and satirical jabs at the powerful.

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For Next Episode:

• A deep-dive on the foiled UFC terror plot and its online organizing dynamics.
• A possible investigative episode on Peter Thiel’s Dialog network.

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Bottom Line:
This packed episode lays bare the chaos of mid-2020s America—endless police violence, political scandal, bizarre and lucrative peace deals, dystopian sports pageantry, and the insular machinations of the ultra-rich. For listeners, it’s an illuminating and disturbing snapshot of collapse and power in contemporary America.

Transcript

[Podcast Host]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.

[George Taveras]

This is George Taveras and Sam Taggart from Stradiolab. Let's be real Home comes with a lot of odors. Cooking, pets, everyday life. That's where Febreze comes in.

[Garrison Davis]

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[George Taveras]

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[Garrison Davis]

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[George Taveras]

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[Mia Wong]

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[George Taveras]

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[James Stout]

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[George Taveras]

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[James Stout]

There you go. The passion fucking fixed it.

[George Taveras]

That's what I've always been. Well, I've never said that.

[James Stout]

There's one thing that SD cards know. It's passion.

[George Taveras]

Passion is negotiable. Deadlines are not welcome to Go ahead, Garrett.

[Garrison Davis]

This is it Could Happen Here Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world and what it means for you, I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout and Robert Evans. This episode we're covering the week of June 10 to June 17. Some small news items to start. Elon Musk has become the world's first trillionaire.

[James Stout]

Oh, good.

[Garrison Davis]

At least on paper. Yeah.

[George Taveras]

What other. There's no other kind of trillionaire. It's all on paper. There's no other kind of billionaire.

[James Stout]

Yeah, yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

This is following SpaceX going public on the NASDAQ stock exchange. $866 billion of Musk's wealth is now in SpaceX stock. And SpaceX itself is currently valued at over 2 trillion on the market. Not good.

[James Stout]

Yeah, great.

[Garrison Davis]

DHS has announced it will not comply with Virginia's new law prohibiting federal officers from wearing masks. And on June 11, the DOJ filed a lawsuit against Virginia, quote, challenging their unconstitutional attempts to regulate federal law enforcement. The French government suspects the Israeli, quote, unquote, elite influence cyber and technology firm Black Core of interfering in elections in France, Scotland and the New York City mayoral race by orchestrating online smear and disinformation campaigns against left wing pro Palestine politicians.

[James Stout]

They didn't fucking work in New York, did they?

[George Taveras]

And I wanted to include this because it literally just broke as we are recording, but Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland, put out a letter today that states, quote, we have been receiving troubling reports that you and this is too Cash Patel, that you may be using part of the budget of the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a personal slush fund to make tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in unlawful bonus payments to loyalist MAGA henchmen who have engaged in misconduct. And I'm going to quote here from an article on Ms. Now by Kendallanian, quote, Committee Democrats have information that Patel has issued more than $1 million in awards. The letter says. The letter says that the money went to special agents serving on his Director's advisory team, which Raskin's letter describes as a curated group of agents who are willing to carry out your unlawful and partisan orders. There's very little else known other than that allegedly some of these payments were made so rapidly that they bounced back like he was sending money. That's what they are alleging. I'm going to assume Cash is going to deny this and so will the FBI. I don't think they've even had time to make a response yet. The FBI has not responded for comment by Ms. Now, at least according to their article. This just dropped. So that's fun for us all to know.

[James Stout]

Yeah, yeah. All right, cool.

[George Taveras]

So I just felt like that was worth including

[Mia Wong]

great, least corrupt administration in history.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[George Taveras]

Okay.

[James Stout]

Let's talk about a bunch of other stuff that isn't also great.

[George Taveras]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

Donald Trump issued a broad executive order on Friday which rescinded previous orders by the Carter and Nixon administration's limiting off road vehicle access to public lands. Although it doesn't immediately change the rules, this has the potential to do massive and irreparable damage to public lands by taking away the, the pillars really, on which they've built regulation and motor vehicle use of public land. Do the other public land thing now. Friend of the show Mike Lee is back again trying to up your public lands again. MIKE Lee, Utah Senator, if you're not familiar. So there was a bipartisan Wildfire prevention act, this 2025 wildfire prevention act that was going along smoothly in its little Senate journey until Mike Lee decided to put in a spoiler that would rescind the roadless rule. We've spoken about the 2001 roadless rule before, so I'm not going to go into very great detail. I've spoken about Lee ad nauseam. Lee used his position of chair of this committee to insert this right. And in doing so, not only is Lee trying for a third time since 2025 to sell off public lands, he's also probably ruining the future of the Wildfire Prevention Act. The funding that this will have, the effect that this will have, it's now unlikely to pass because Mike Lee has spoiled it with his public land sell off shit. Again, people might recall Lee tried to sell our public lands with parts that are better. The Better Business Bureau? No, the Big Beautiful bill. The other bbb. And again, when he attempted to justify motor vehicle use in wilderness. Garrison and I made an episode about that where he was talking about how you need roads in wilderness areas to allow border patrol to do border patrol stuff. The Forest Service had previously talked about rescinding the roadless rule through like administrative rule change. That seems to have been an extremely unpopular choice. But that process is still ongoing. But what Lee's trying to do here is lock it into legislation as opposed to something that another administration could change back. Finally, guess it's all kind of public lands and related stuff for me. This week, Fish and Wildlife Service agents served a warrant on a property in New Mexico after two collared Mexican gray wolves, which are covered by the Endangered Species act, were killed. According to an affidavit filed in New Mexico, both wolves were killed after being caught in leg hole traps. One was Left to die. The other was shot and then beaten in the head. I read this warrant today. It was kind of interesting. I saw some very, very brief reporting on it and Molly helped me find the warrant. The people on who the warrant was served on were horse breakers, but I think they worked on a family cattle ranch. It seems that the Fish and Wildlife Service agents set up cameras after the collars of the wolves told them that the wolves had died. And then they realized that they had remained in one area. It suggested that they had remained in one area for some time, then died. That is, they'd been trapped. They were able to set up cameras and film these guys recovering the traps, according to the affidavit. And so they are now going to begin their prosecution, I guess. One more from me. 15 people in Minnesota were indicted on criminal conspiracy charges for events and protests around the Whipple Federal Building and Fort Snelling. Yeah, we covered this in great detail on a show that broadcast on Wednesday, 17 June. So if you'd like to know more about that, we got some comment from a couple of lawyers and Margaret and I were present at one of the events that this indictment centres on. So we gave some more insight there

[Garrison Davis]

for some election news. We still don't have ranked choice vote tallies in Maine for the governor's race there. I will keep an eye on that. But in Washington, D.C. democratic socialist Janice Lewis George won the Democratic primary in the Washington D.C. mayoral race with 52.8% of the vote. And a DSA cadre member named Aparna Raj is in the lead for the Ward 1 City Council seat with about 47% of the vote in the Democratic primary. Both candidates are not expected to face substantial opposition in the upcoming general election. So it looks like big wins for the DDSA in Washington D.C. last Tuesday. Robert California.

[George Taveras]

Yes.

[James Stout]

What's going on with it, Robert? Why is it the way it is?

[George Taveras]

In short, James, the sun. So California US House District 14 is currently undergoing a special nonpartisan primary because Eric Swalwell, friend of the Pod in the joking sense, not literal sense. Cause we don't like him.

[Garrison Davis]

Definitely an enemy of pod.

[George Taveras]

Of the pod. Disgraced enemy of the pod. No longer can do his job.

[James Stout]

Our avowed nemesis.

[George Taveras]

Now, the fun thing about that is that Eric Swal is genocide denier and he is currently the number one person. And you know, this is just like the first round of voting is Aisha Wahab, who's at about 42.6% of the vote based on the most recent numbers. I have Melissa Hernandez is number two at about 16.8% of the vote. So Aisha's got a sizable lead here and her politics are significantly better in some important ways than Eric Swalwell's, including the fact that she is not a genocide denier. So that's kind of bracing. That's nice to see. Anyway, that's really all I've got to say.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. So in much bleaker news, on Sunday, June 14, police in Senatobia, Mississippi, shot and killed a one year old child named Cohen Wiley as they open fire on a car in the parking lot of a Walmart. An adult who was in the car, who is a friend of the child's mother, is described as, quote, critically injured after also being shot. I think it's important to hear what happened first directly from Valencia Wiley, the mother of Conan Wylie.

[Podcast Host]

It was me, my son and another friend of mine was at Walmart. As we was leaving out the Walmart, they tried to stop her, but I kept walking because it had nothing to do with me. By the time me and my baby got in the car, she came. And then they. When we was backing up, they was running out the comb. I raised my baby up because they. They redrawed their gun. She had no tent. I raised my baby up trying to show them that he was in the car. So she was backing up and she. As I was opening the door, so the door flew back in. By the time I sat my baby down, it was like three to four shots. One of the shots hit him in his real cage and the other shots hit her and her arm and her thigh. And we left and went to Senatopia Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

[George Taveras]

My God.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

That is fucking heartbreaking.

[George Taveras]

Yeah, that's just a nightmare.

[Mia Wong]

It's horrible.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

It looks like Benjamin Crump's representing her, which is like, that guy's a powerhouse.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, yeah.

[George Taveras]

Like any time you're trying to train people how to use firearms responsibly, one thing you have to drive home repeatedly is that, like, bullets don't stop if you miss. And they don't necessarily stop just because you've hit the target.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[George Taveras]

And so you always need to be not just aware of, but paranoid about what's. What's around you and around where you're shooting, if you're going to shoot. And police are trained to do the opposite of that. You know, they're trained that their lives mean more than the lives of infants. That's what this is.

[James Stout]

Yeah. God, yeah.

[Mia Wong]

That video, by the way, per wrg so as was mentioned in the video, the cops were nominally responding to a claim of shoplifting. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigations, per the Mississippi Free Press, claims that the car was driving towards the officers. This is eerily similar to claims made by federal agents after the murder of Renee Good. Police have yet to release body cam footage. The footage we do have, it's not very good. Cell phone camera, it doesn't show the shooting itself, but shows the car driving away from officers. We also had some of the witnesses basically described the car like driving away from the officers and the officer shooting.

[Garrison Davis]

But you're right, it's definitely following the trend that we've seen a lot with federal law enforcement, but not just them.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. This is just local. Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Of this idea of like vehicle weaponization.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

And that they have the ability to respond to, quote, unquote, vehicle weaponization with. With lethal force.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Which is something we've seen claim a number of lives just this year.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

And this is combining, and we'll talk about this a bit more in a second, but this is combining with sort of the shoplifting panic to create this nightmare of a situation.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Police in Senatobia have a history of police violence. Here's some wreg. Again, quote, last year at the same Walmart, the department came under fire after a woman had a Taser pulled on her and was tackled to the ground after the department claimed she illegally parked in a handicapped spot. The woman claimed she had just dropped her grandmother off at the store. In 2023, the case of a 10 year old boy made national news after he was detained for urinating in public in an attorney's office private parking lot. Yeah. So this is, you know, this is Mississippi. This is a place where things like this have happened before. The fact that there was a woman like again last year who was tackled like in this same parking lot by the police says a lot. Yeah. And continuing in the trend of police violence. Yeah. The police tear gas protesters on Tuesday, like in the parking lot in, like the same parking lot where protests were going on. All of this comes in the sort of context of the deployment of a nationwide panic about shoplifting deployed by the right as part of their strategy to bolster support from the police and roll back the gains of the 2020 George Floyd uprising. Everything about police killings has just continued to get worse since the Trump administration took power. We've had it now from federal agents, we've had it from the police in general. And as Garrett was talking about earlier. Yeah. This is kind of this intersection of this panic about Shoplifting, combining with this panic about sort of vehicle weaponization and turning into the cops murdering a 1 year old. I think it's also worth noting in the context of this allegedly being about shoplifting, that nobody involved, like no one who was in the car, which is the. The mother of the baby and also the woman driving the car who the police had initially confronted in. In the story we heard earlier. Neither of them have been arrested. So. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. This is one of the worst stories of a police shooting I've ever encountered. And. Yeah, yeah. Protests presumably are going to continue tonight. This is again being recorded on Wednesday, June 17. They may have escalated by the time you're hearing this.

[James Stout]

Yeah, yeah. The cops in LA also killed a fucking. A golden St. Bernard doodle.

[George Taveras]

Oh, man.

[James Stout]

This week.

[George Taveras]

Not to equivocate these fucking cases. I guess this is just in the news.

[James Stout]

No, absolutely not. No. This is just another incident of police shooting when they absolutely had no need to. Right. In this case, the lady had been watching the Knicks game. Somebody called to report screaming, which resulted in the cops coming and killing this person's dog. It's nowhere near the same as someone killing someone's child. I'm not suggesting that. It's just yet another example that cops can just shoot first and ask questions later in this country.

[George Taveras]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

Six years after George Floyd was murdered.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. And I think to close, one of the things I always remember about the protest is every single city had their own list of names.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

I don't know. Like we, we like we had our own in Chicago and. Yeah. I mean, I'm immediately sort of like just thinking about the killing of Tamara Rice and. Yeah. How we just continue to live in this country where the cops just murder black people constantly. And the only thing that's changed since then is the police have more money.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[George Taveras]

And they're working to be able to murder other groups of people more often too. You know, that's true.

[Mia Wong]

The feds are expanding out into shooting white people in cold blood.

[George Taveras]

Eventually the racism will be less noticeable.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[George Taveras]

If the violence just becomes more all encompassing.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[George Taveras]

That's the promise of the future.

[James Stout]

It won't.

[George Taveras]

It'll still be as noticeable, guys.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[George Taveras]

They're not going to come through on that promise either.

[James Stout]

Yeah. I was going to say, like this country, like after. After Elijah McClain. I feel like anyone who could watch that and be like, yeah, shit's going fine. We just. At some point, cops just decide we're never going to change.

[George Taveras]

Yeah. And it's. I'M going to guess the number of people who stumble onto our shows and don't already think like, yeah, the cops kill a lot of people they don't need to be killing. That's pretty low.

[James Stout]

So I feel like we preaching to the choir.

[George Taveras]

We've done, we've, we've done what we need to here. Like, yeah, not, not that it's not important. Nope.

[James Stout]

Just sad.

[Garrison Davis]

We'll go on a break now and come back to talk about Iran and sports.

[Questlove]

Yep.

[Narrator/Reporter]

A decade ago, the ethanol kingpin of Iowa became the king of corn in Brazil.

[George Taveras]

So we met with a lot of larger farmers, went from Bahia to Tocatines to Mato Grosso, and he brought a team of executives.

[Narrator/Reporter]

They were going to help the country get in on a gold rush.

[George Taveras]

Carbon and its derivatives are going to be really the next great commodity that the globe's going to trade.

[Narrator/Reporter]

But back home in Iowa, trouble was brewing.

[Akilah Hughes]

If you live in Iowa, your land, your water and your voice could all be at risk. Thanks to a man named Bruce Rastetter.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Now people are questioning if his climate solutions have anything to do with climate at all.

[George Taveras]

Gotta give Bruce and the guys credit. They're Republicans. They don't give a shit about any of this.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Now on this season of drilled carbon cowboys, the story of how the ethanol kingpin of Iowa became the king of corn in Brazil and what it tells us about the limits of technology and markets to solve the climate crisis. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts this Black Music Month.

[Questlove]

The Questlove show celebrates the artists, innovators and cultural voices who continue to redefine music. We're sitting down with a groundbreaking country artist, Mickey Guyden.

[Akilah Hughes]

The way that the country music community

[Advertiser/Announcer]

accepted post Malone vs Beyonce vs Shaboozy,

[Akilah Hughes]

like those are very eye opening things.

[Questlove]

Hip hop visionary, Fat five Freddy, genre bending musical genius, Thundercat. And the always legendary revolutionary voice, Chuck D. Yeah, we changed tires, man. I had 18 jobs before this became my occupation, man. Okay, I wrote Bum Russell show as a messenger. From unforgettable stories to deep conversations about creativity, culture and legacy, these are the voices shaping the soundtrack of black music past, present and future. Listen to the Questlove show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts,

[Akilah Hughes]

here's something that should not be as complicated as it is getting a racist statue removed. And here's something that should be a whole lot easier than it getting a new one put up in its place.

[George Taveras]

As long as There's a politics of race in America. There's going to be a politics of remembering the Civil War.

[Questlove]

To get to school, I had to go down Robert E. Lee Boulevard. Get to the grocery store. I had to go down Jefferson Davis Parkway.

[George Taveras]

If you're a historian and you leave out half of what the history is,

[Podcast Host]

you're not doing your job.

[Akilah Hughes]

I'm Akilah Hughes and Rebel Spirit Season 2 goes deep on both of those things. Things, the fights, the politics, the people who won, and my personal campaign to add something to the Kentucky State House that's actually worth the wall space.

[Garrison Davis]

We are more than our bodies. We contain essence. We contain spirit.

[George Taveras]

How do you represent that?

[Advertiser/Announcer]

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[Akilah Hughes]

You'll see what I mean. Listen to Rebel Spirit Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you go, get your podcasts.

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[James Stout]

We are back. And we are back to report peace in our time.

[George Taveras]

That's right, Donald Trump did it. Somehow, somehow he finally brought an end to a long, lingering conflict that he started a couple of weeks ago.

[James Stout]

God, yeah. Calling him the peacemaker.

[George Taveras]

This is like three or four days after, like a really long bender when like, I'm like, wow, I actually haven't gotten fucked up at all. And it's been like 96 hours. You know, I think I've learned a couple of things about sobriety. I've reached like, a new level of wisdom that's allowed me to transcend. Like, that's, that's, that's how I, what I compare to Donald Trump right now.

[James Stout]

Yep, he is. He announced that, quote, oil will flow on both ends again for the region and the world. So we initially learned about this, this deal via true social right. And I initially wrote this based on what we didn't know. Then this morning, after a lot of people complained that nobody knew the details of the deal, State Department spokesperson read the text of the deal, allowed to report us on a conference call. So this is a memorandum of understanding, right? The MOU is titled quote, Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding. Between the United States of America and Islamic Republic of Iran. It'll be signed on Friday, so that'll be the day. If you hear this today, it comes out. That will be that day. It's already been electronically signed, apparently. It's still unclear if it's Trump or Vance. He's gonna sign it on behalf of

[George Taveras]

the U.S. i love the idea that they've got a docusign that's like binging back and forth. Sabin fucking Daron is, like, waiting. I refreshed my phone, man. I like. I'm still not seeing it. I'm still not seeing it. Did you. Okay. How did you spell my email address when you.

[James Stout]

Yeah, let me check the spam, dude.

[George Taveras]

Trying to get the Trump administration to spell your name right in an email as any Iranian politician. My God.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, Quick update here. Turns out Trump signed the Memorandum of Understanding right after we recorded on Wednesday in Versailles. So it is an MOU of Versailles. Back to James.

[James Stout]

Once they sign it, they're going to do a 60 day intensive negotiation period which will certainly focus on the nuclear issue and get to that in a bit. The MOU begins, quote, the United States of America and Islamic Republic of Iran and their allies in the current war are signing this MoU to declare the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and indicate from now on not to initiate any war or military operation against each other and to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other. And it's showing the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon. The final deal will confirm the permanent termination of the war on all fronts, including in Netherland. We're going to get onto that, don't worry. Probably the headliner, right, is the nuclear stuff. This is point eight, quote, the Islamic Republic of Iran reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons. There's still negotiation on enriched uranium, but CNN had a leaked version of a previous version of this draft and it didn't have the following. So this has been added at a relatively late stage and it seems that there is a, quote, unquote, minimum methodology for like, degrading their enriched uranium, which is to downblend it under IAEA supervision. That seems to have been added very late. So that's kind of their, like, lowest threshold that the US is willing to accept, I guess, which would be not transferring that uranium, but down blending it. The United States has committed to withdraw down its blockade and its force posture within 30 days. Today we saw Iranian tankers cross the USA's blockade without any issue, Claims about the Strait of Hormuz on Trump's true social account and those that we see on Iranian state media in the document diverge. Trump has claimed unequivocally that the strait is open without tolls. This is not something we see in Pakistani PM Shabazz Sharif's statement or in Iran's Fars news agency. Fast News Agency seems to say that the strait will be administered by Oman in Iran. And I'll just read from the. From the MoU here. The Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days only from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa. The traffic of commercial vessels will immediately start and considering the need for removing the technical military obstacles and demining by the Islamic Republic of Iran will be instated within 30 days. The Islamic Republic of Iran will conduct dialogue with the Sultanate of Oman to determine the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz in discussion with other Persian Gulf littoral states in line with the applicable international law and sovereign rights of coastal states of the Strait of Hormuz. Not entirely clear there, but it does seem to perhaps leave open some kind of Iranian Amman toll agreement.

[George Taveras]

Yeah, they're definitely going to start charging a service fee. Man, they're going to make a shitload of money off this.

[James Stout]

Yep, let's talk about a shitload of money because. Because that's only unfortunately some of the shitload of money. Yeah, they're going to make of this. So the document includes $300 billion in reconstruction funds and total sanctions relief.

[Garrison Davis]

Part of the deal.

[James Stout]

Yeah, that's why they call him Deal, man.

[Garrison Davis]

I mean, this is tough because we have destroyed massive parts of their infrastructure and we should pay for that. But also, dude, you started this war, spent billions of dollars and now are going to give them $300 billion. What is wrong with you?

[George Taveras]

Fucking 10 years ago he was like, you know, the only thing that st stopped Iran from falling off the brink was that Obama's that deal gave him $150 billion.

[Garrison Davis]

All this circle back to another version of some kind of Iran nuclear agreement.

[George Taveras]

All we've gotten is they say they won't, but now.

[Garrison Davis]

But now they get to rebuild all their infrastructure using our money because we used our money to destroy their infrastructure.

[George Taveras]

I mean, yeah, there's supposed to be like an international monitoring thing, but like, fuck, yeah, that's not new.

[Mia Wong]

And I think more importantly for like America, geostrategically, it's Like, Trump has managed to end the American protectorate of open trade lanes, a thing that has been the core of American power since, like, World War II.

[George Taveras]

And that no one was even thinking about taking away Iran. And no part of Iran's strategy was to do this. This was not in the. Like, this was a move they made because they were at a tight spot and they had to fucking pivot.

[James Stout]

This was always in there. If shit hits a fan, we will do this. And now we've normalized it.

[George Taveras]

This has always been an opt for them. And they were put in a bad enough position that they had to do that. Right. This was their helm. Steep thing. Yeah. You know, is like, well, we can strangle global trade, you know.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

This, this wasn't even like a thing in, like, the, like the. I mean, I guess it kind of

[James Stout]

was done it previously in, like, the

[Mia Wong]

worst nightmares of, like, Israeli Feswigoria about Iran getting a nuke. But, like, this wasn't even a thing that was like, oh, they could. Iran could do this. Like, it's astonishing what, what they've. What they've managed to do.

[George Taveras]

I feel like it's a good time and everything's very fine.

[James Stout]

So let's talk about 300 billion. Just because I'm interested in the preconditions for fascism. And of course, paying reparations for a war that you started was one of them first time around. In Germany, it does, if you do the math, calculate to a lot less in the reparations that Germany had to pay after World War I.

[George Taveras]

Of course.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

The document labels the 300 billion as reconstruction funds, but does not give a source other than, quote, the United States of America undertakes with regional partners to develop a definitive, mutually agreed plan with at least USD 300 billion for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran. A separate line item details. The United States of America undertakes to make fully available for use the frozen or restricted funds and assets Republic of Iran upon implementation of this mou. So they also get sanctions relief, right?

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

So they are getting all of the funds that the US has had frozen. They're getting sanctions relief. And it seems like it's conceivable with these two sentences that they're trying to include the unfrozen funds, but also highly conceivable that they're not. They don't seem to have restricted ballistic missiles. They don't seem to have mandated anything about changing in the. In the regime of Iran. Human rights, women's rights, rights for minority ethnic groups in Iran Iran. Since this. Since we first learned this, mou Iran has continued drone strikes against Kurdish groups in southern Kurdistan. Iranian Kurdish groups who are currently in southern Kurdistan.

[George Taveras]

Yeah.

[James Stout]

And then, like, it's not over yet, because. Let's talk about what Israel has to say.

[George Taveras]

Oh, boy.

[James Stout]

Yeah. Israel seems to be showing no signs of feeling itself to be in any way restrained by this. Many Israeli politicians are publicly broken with the US on this. Israel's National Security Minister, Ben gvir, famous for many terrible things, took to Twitter to announce that he had other plans, saying, quote, trump's agreement does not bind us. Israel is not subject to the United States. We are an independent and sovereign nation. Exclamation mark. Our duty is to the citizens of Israel, to the soldiers of the idf, and to the Jewish people on our historical duty to the persecuted and murdered Jews over thousands of years of exiles to provide security to Jews in the land of Israel. Every time we succumb to international pressure at the expense of Israel's security, we play the blood price with interest. So I don't think Ben Gavir feels bound by this to stop aggression in Lebanon, which will make the implementation of the whole thing very difficult. We've seen Trump really break with Bibi in a way that, like, we'd heard before, but there have now been several more reports of Trump being very annoyed at Netanyahu continuing to effectively sabotage these negotiations. Right. So, yeah, great times, very successful war, huge dub.

[Garrison Davis]

Speaking of dubs, let's talk about sports.

[James Stout]

Oh, yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

This past weekend, there were three sporting events that I think each reflect a unique facet of current American politics. This is the NBA Finals, the World cup, and of course, the Formula one Grand Prix in Barcelona. No, this is, of course, the UFC fight in the White House.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Before we talk about the ufc, which we. We will, because there's a lot. A lot to do there. On Saturday night, the New York Knickerbockers overcame the curse of James Dolan and beat the San Antonio spurs five games to one, becoming NBA champions for the first time in 53 years. After the Knicks drought ending victory, the city lit up in celebration, literally, in the case of a school bus in

[George Taveras]

Times Square, more than one.

[Garrison Davis]

But thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers celebrated in a largely peaceful yet energized fashion all throughout the streets, buses and trains, until the early hours of the morning.

[George Taveras]

I love celebrating in a largely peaceful fashion.

[Garrison Davis]

Five police cars did not survive the

[James Stout]

night

[Mia Wong]

ripping pepperoni, as the youth used to say.

[Garrison Davis]

But come morning, everything was all cleaned up and the city was sparkling ahead of the Puerto Rico day parade. On June 11, the World cup kicked off with matches being hosted in the U.S. mexico and Canada. I think, as everyone knows, FIFA has tried to cozy up to Trump the past few years, notably awarding the president with the first ever FIFA World Peace Prize. A few months prior to Trump starting

[James Stout]

a war, well, he'd already started a couple. He invaded Venezuela.

[Garrison Davis]

That was. That was a small skirmish compared to,

[James Stout]

I think, yeah, the bigger war.

[Garrison Davis]

The scale of our $300 billion restitution being paid to Iran.

[James Stout]

Fair.

[Garrison Davis]

But the Trump administration's foreign policy and immigration restrictions have still caused disruptions to the World Cup. World cup referee Omar Abdul Kadir Artan was denied entry to the US By CPB at the Miami International Airport due to, quote, unquote, vetting concerns after being detained and questioned for 11 hours. Artan is from Somalia, which is currently on Trump's travel ban list. But Artan had actually already been vetted by the State Department and was issued a valid visa to referee at the World Cup. The executive director of the White House's World cup task force, Andrew Giuliani, son of friend of the pod and America's mayor Rudy Giuliani.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, boy.

[Garrison Davis]

Said that Artarn was, quote, talking to some very bad people right as he was coming to the United States. There's some classified information we can't discuss now at some point that may be released, unquote. Just last year, the Confederation of African Football named Artan as referee of the Year. The Trump administration currently has travel bans against four of the qualifying countries participating in the World Cup. That's Haiti, Iran, Ivory coast and Sengal, with exemptions for athletes and team officials participating at certain sporting events like the World Cup. For football fans wanting to attend the World cup, there are visa bond waivers for Ivory coast and Seagal, but not Haiti and Iran, with the admin citing a high visa overstay rate among Haitians and national security concerns related to the war in Iran. The Iranian travel ban also does have an exemption for certain religious minorities. Fans from the Ivory coast and Sengal still have to deal with restrictions as fans from those countries have reported getting their visas denied. It appears that in order to attend the World cup, they needed to apply for their visas prior to the presidential proclamation on December 16. Very few fans from those countries are in. And, yeah, many have reported getting visas denied.

[George Taveras]

Bummer.

[Garrison Davis]

The visa bond waiver just applies to the fee.

[George Taveras]

The.

[Garrison Davis]

The visa fee that the Trump administration has. Has introduced. And they announced there was a waiver for the Fee for World cup countries.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

So if they did get the visa, they don't need to pay this extra fee, but they can only get the visa prior to the travel ban going into effect in December.

[James Stout]

Yeah. Indonesia was removed as the host for the 2023 Under 20 World Cup. They don't have diplomatic ties with Israel and they had had opposed Israel's participation in the tournament and obviously weren't going to like, I believe they weren't going to allow them visas, but I'd have to check that last part. But at that point FIFA acted very swiftly. Right. They're not going to do that here.

[Garrison Davis]

And despite the athlete exemption, the Iranian team has ran into issues. Their training base camp had to be relocated from Arizona to Mexico. And the Trump administration has been making the team enter an exit through U.S. customs on the same day as their matches.

[Mia Wong]

Jesus.

[James Stout]

Yeah, they're right there in, in Tijuana actually. So like they're as close as they can be. Right. Whilst not being. Because they're playing the games up in la. I think I played in Inglewood, but still, I'm guessing they are transiting to San. They're probably crossing, having to go to San Diego and then fly north. It seems they said they flew, so maybe they fly directly to Tijuana, I don't know.

[Garrison Davis]

Despite the travel ban exemption, also technically applying to coaches and non player members of the athletic team, Iranian football officials have had their visas denied. Star Iraqi player Amen Hussain and the Iraq team photographer were detained for, in the player's case, seven hours, the photographer's case, 12 hours at the Chicago airport while going through customs. Hussain was ultimately allowed entry, but the team photographer was not. Finally, New York City is hosting eight games for the World cup, including the final. And in the lead up to the World Cup, Tom Homan threatened to send, quote, more ice agents than you've ever seen, unquote, to New York City following legislation signed by Kathy Hochul limiting cooperation between ice and local law enforcement. Following Homan's threat, Mayor Mamdani said, quote, the World cup is supposed to be a celebration of the world as a whole. And some of the decisions that we've seen being taken by the federal administration is anathema to what this tournament is supposed to be about, unquote. Let's talk about one more sporting event and of course that is the UFC Freedom 250, streaming on Paramount plus, which happened this Sunday at the White House South Lawn, which was turned into a UFC stadium arena. Trump and Dana White walked together from the Oval Office all the way to

[George Taveras]

the Octagon and like, yeah, it's. This is the most idiocracy things have been. Yeah, it's not like a. Like a. Even a comparison you can make anymore. It's just. We're just doing the exact thing, so cool. Welcome to UFC Freedom250. Here is the President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump.

[Garrison Davis]

Cool.

[George Taveras]

Yeah. That movie's aged better than I would have thought, unfortunately.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

The cold open for the event was narrated by Ron Perlman, which is kind of the saddest part of this whole ordeal for me.

[George Taveras]

Ah, that's upsetting. That's upsetting. Wait, what? Really?

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. I'm sorry.

[George Taveras]

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure UFC offered him a dump truck full of money. Yeah, Ron Perlman's well known to do things for dump trucks full of money. I don't know. That hurts.

[Garrison Davis]

In between the fights, they played a series of largely AI generated videos covering American history and showing how the UFC embodies the country's fighting spirit. Jesus, those videos are not good. You can find them on the UFC YouTube channel. They're titled Americana. There's a series of three. UFC veteran announcer Bruce Buffer kicked things off in a way that really encapsulated this entire event. And I do want to play this clip here.

[George Taveras]

Ladies and gentlemen, we are

[James Stout]

live

[George Taveras]

from the South Lawn of the White house in Washington, D.C. for USC Freedom 250, presented by Ram Trucks. Nothing stops Ram. And by crypto.com, the world's leading cryptocurrency platform. Man, this is the most cardi ass I've ever seen.

[Garrison Davis]

Crypto.com.

[Mia Wong]

yep.

[Garrison Davis]

Well, it wasn't just crypto.com that had a presence at Freedom 250. The Octagon stage itself was covered in logos for red, white, and blue. Monster Energy, Bud Light, Rumble, Meta Steak, Gambling, and Polymarket.

[Mia Wong]

Christ,

[George Taveras]

such a good country, man. I'm just. I love this place.

[Garrison Davis]

I.

[Podcast Host]

We're.

[George Taveras]

We're nailing it.

[Garrison Davis]

The 4,000 seat South Lawn arena was mostly filled by members of the military, Trump's cabinets, and politicians and billionaires like David Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg.

[George Taveras]

Man, the. The incredible ratio of billionaires to guys with 31% APR loans on a Ford F150. I don't know if it's existed before in, like, this small a space a

[Garrison Davis]

normal people had to watch from Ellipse park near the Washington Monument. This was a $60 million production. You know, there was a military flyover. The. The U.S. marine band played songs like the Boys Are Back in town and of course Trump's favorite ymca. But the thing that caused the most headlines after the event relates to UFC heavyweight Josh Hokett, who acts as a sort of heel for the UFC while making statements that pander to a mega fan base. After winning his match, he gave Trump a chain and necklace and said, hey, shout out to Trump for having the balls to put on some shit like this, unquote. Trump's balls received multiple shout outs on stage, but following that comment, Josh Hokut

[George Taveras]

said this Michelle Obama is a man. Am I right, America?

[Garrison Davis]

Joe Rogan is on stage at the same time holding the microphone for Hokit.

[George Taveras]

Yeah, he sure is.

[Garrison Davis]

Rogan never addressed the comment for the rest of the night and the UFC cut out this comment from their own YouTube upload and has issued takedown requests for this clip across social media.

[James Stout]

Huh?

[Garrison Davis]

Dana White told Time magazine, quote, I understand that the Obamas are public figures, but I'm completely against saying nasty and false things about people's families. Everyone knows my position on free speech, but I hate that kind of nonsense. Unquote.

[George Taveras]

Yeah, you make that bed, you gotta lie in it.

[Garrison Davis]

So that was Freedom250. I did. I watched about an hour's worth of the Paramount plus broadcast and the fights, I did not watch the full thing. Most of the actual fighting was just like a regular UFC fight. Right. The Hokut comment was the main thing that was like politically motivated actually on stage, besides the fact that, you know, Trump's sitting right there and you're fighting at the White House. But according to the FBI, this event could have gone very different. Here's Fox News reporting.

[George Taveras]

Good morning everyone. Breaking news out of Washington D.C. on a potential tragedy that's been averted. The FBI revealing earlier today it foiled an alleged terror plot that was set to target Sunday night's UFC Freedom event at the White House.

[Garrison Davis]

That's right. On Tuesday morning, Fox reported there was a sophisticated multi step plan involving explosives, drones and snipers targeting the Freedom250 event. Vice President J.D. vance addressed the alleged terror plot on Fox and Friends saying, quote, so much of the far left rhetoric is driving itself towards violence and also said this, Unfortunately, I think a lot of my

[George Taveras]

Democratic colleagues in Washington have got to look themselves in the mirror and say,

[Garrison Davis]

why is so much of this political violence coming from our side of the spectrum?

[James Stout]

Maybe they can do something different.

[Garrison Davis]

So according to Vance, this alleged terror plot was coming from the Democrat side of politics, a result of turning up the political rhetoric. Fox reported that the thwarted attack was targeting capitalism, billionaires and AIPAC, with upwards of 23 people involved in the plot, five of whom are in custody. With the details of the plan being uncovered on the encrypted messaging app Signal, a Fox contributor said that terrorist organizations and countries use Biden's open border to bring people inside the United States. And Vance pointed to the administration's efforts to go after left wing terrorist funding networks. Almost all of that is not true.

[George Taveras]

Yeah, it's just lies. It's just lies. Complete nonsense.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, almost all of that is at the very least stretching what actually happened to a near unrecognizable status or is completely lying about the context and background of this attack. We will get into what actually happened regarding this alleged planned attack after this at break.

[Narrator/Reporter]

A decade ago, the ethanol kingpin of Iowa became the king of corn in Brazil.

[George Taveras]

So we met with a lot of larger farmers, went from Bahia to Tocatines to Mato Grosso.

[Narrator/Reporter]

He brought a team of executives. They were going to help the country get in on a gold rush.

[George Taveras]

Carbon and its derivatives are going to be really the next great commodity that the globe's going to trade.

[Narrator/Reporter]

But back home in Iowa, trouble was brewing.

[Akilah Hughes]

If you live in Iowa, your land, your water and your voice could all be at risk thanks to a man named Bruce Rastetter.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Now people are questioning if his climate solutions have anything to do with climate at all.

[George Taveras]

Got to give Bruce and the guys credit. They're Republicans. They don't give a how they use

[Narrator/Reporter]

on this season of Drilled Carbon Cowboys, the story of how the ethanol kingpin of Iowa became the king of corn in Brazil and what it tells us about the limits of technology and markets to solve the climate crisis. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts this Black Music Month.

[Questlove]

The Questlove show celebrates the artists, innovators and cultural voices who continue to redefine music. We're sitting down with a groundbreaking country artist, Mickey Guyton.

[Akilah Hughes]

The way that the country music community

[Advertiser/Announcer]

accepted post Malone vs Beyonce vs Shaboozy.

[Akilah Hughes]

Like those are very eye opening things.

[Questlove]

Hip hop visionary, Fat five Freddy, genre bending musical genius, Thundercat. And the always legendary revolutionary voice, Chuck D. Yeah, we changed tires, man. I had 18 jobs before. Before this became my occupation, man. Okay, I wrote Bum Rush the show as a messenger. From unforgettable stories to deep conversations about creativity, culture and legacy, these are the voices shaping the soundtrack of black music past, present and future. Listen to the Questlove show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts,

[Akilah Hughes]

here's something that should not be as complicated as it is getting a racist statue removed. And here's something that should be a whole lot easier than it getting a new one put up in its place.

[George Taveras]

As long as there's a politics of race in America, there's going to be a politics of remembering the Civil War.

[Questlove]

To get to school, I had to go down Robert E. Lee Boulevard. Get to the grocery store. I had to go down Jefferson Davis Parkway.

[George Taveras]

If you're a historian and you leave out half of what the history is,

[Podcast Host]

you're not doing your job.

[Akilah Hughes]

I'm Akilah Hughes and Rebel Spirit Season 2 goes deep on both of those things. The fights, the politics, the people who won, and my personal campaign to add something to the Kentucky State House that's actually worth the wall space.

[Garrison Davis]

We are more than our bodies. We contain essence, we contain spirit. How do you represent that?

[Advertiser/Announcer]

They are just fueling a fire that is really catching.

[Akilah Hughes]

You'll see what I mean. Listen to Rebel Spirit Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Garrison Davis]

Okay, we are back. On Tuesday morning, the FBI and DOJ announced law enforcement had thwarted a mass casualty attack attempting to kill government officials, with arrests happening over the weekend in Ohio, Missouri, Nebraska and California. But rather than being the result of the FBI's excellent investigative prowess, law enforcement only learn about this potential attack because the mother of one of the members of this group that was planning the attack called the police concerned about her son's recent firearm purchases and contact with individuals online. By the time the FBI got to this person, 19 year old Tyson proper, he was already in a mental hospital.

[George Taveras]

Yeah, literally could not have done this. And just to be clear, the scale of the plan that they're describing I would think would be difficult for like a nation state actor to carry off successfully in D.C. yeah, absolutely.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[George Taveras]

These guys were LARPing. These guys were LARPing on a signal group and there was definitely some mental illness involved in that too.

[Garrison Davis]

A Group of men larped themselves into federal custody.

[George Taveras]

Yep, yep, yep.

[Garrison Davis]

Now, after police were called to Tyson Proper's home where he lived with his parents, he was transported to the Dublin Springs Mental Health center for homicidal ideations. Tyson Proper himself told police and FBI that he and others online had planned to use drones to detonate explosives on the north side of the UFC arena, forcing event attendees to evacuate south, where other co conspirators would be set up with sniper rifles to fire on the fleeing crowd, targeting politicians and other quote, unquote high value targets. At the Freedom 250 event, Proper and four others are charged with conspiracy to commit murder. A family member told officers that Proper talked about meeting up with people he had met online to conduct, quote, unquote missions and quote, unquote reconstruction. And that he allegedly spent about $3,000 of his graduation money to buy, quote, camping gear, food, ballistic plates, a new shotgun, a rifle, lots of ammunition, extra magazines and plate carriers, unquote. After searching his phone, investigators found signal chats detailing a planned attack with maps highlighting potential sniper locations and drone launch points. The day after local police first visited Proper's home, the sheriff's office contacted the FBI. The FBI then searched Proper's home and found a journal that the criminal complaint says contained a list of approximately 46 names, including celebrities and politicians, as well as pages quote, in which Proper wrote that the government sought to control people and to sacrifice children and others to a demonic figure, unquote. Family told FBI that Proper had, quote, recently began interacting with a group online that was comprised of individuals who represented themselves as ex military and that may share some Christian based ideology, unquote. Family members said that these individuals were using religion to manipulate Proper and that they, quote, expressed ultra religious and anti government sentiments, specifically citing grievances about government corruption, the handling of the Epstein files, data centers taking up all the water in communities and other government actions. The Ohio criminal complaint says that Proper family members also highlighted concerning statements that he had made in recent months, quote, such as making sympathetic comments about Adolf Hitler and posting anti Semitic comments on Facebook, unquote.

[James Stout]

When will the left stop its violence?

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, Basic. Basic antifa left wing plot against capitalists here.

[James Stout]

Yep.

[Garrison Davis]

Standard leftist Hitler appreciate sacrificing children to demonic figures.

[George Taveras]

Yeah, yeah.

[James Stout]

Well, I don't know if you know Garrison, but they're actually called the National Socialist Party.

[George Taveras]

No, these people were like Christian extremists with I'm sure some very weird views that will all get elucidated. I look forward to reading through the Signal chats. This is not really a thing. This is people who are mentally ill. And certainly, I mean, it sounds like in a. If you have a signal chat where you're passing around a map of targets, crossed a line where I'm not surprised one of them was already in a mental hospital, but there was no danger to the event.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

To be clear, he was placed in the mental hospital after first being interviewed by police. But I think it's noteworthy the police did not take him into custody. They sent him to a mental health facility after first contacting him because he

[George Taveras]

clearly had no ability to do this. Yeah.

[James Stout]

Did he get like an involuntary mental health hold?

[Garrison Davis]

There was an emergency request to put him in this mental hospital based on the homicidal ideation. The application detailed that he had also sought to join police or military specifically just to kill human beings.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[George Taveras]

And like, this kid sounds like he very easily could have become a mass shooter. Like, I'm sure there's a number of those like that. It does sound like that's something that was going on here. Ideation is certainly present. So this is very concerning. But. Yeah, but Vance's description of what happened is so. So field is to effectively be a lie.

[Garrison Davis]

Oh, yeah. As for the sort of group formation here proper allegedly told police that members of the group that was planning this attack were primarily recruited through TikTok.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

And then once they had been vetted on TikTok, they were allowed in a signal chat. The largest signal chat investigators found contained 19 members. There was also some smaller spinoff signal chats.

[George Taveras]

Even among terrorists, the danger of the spinoff group chat is impossible. Possible to avoid.

[Garrison Davis]

One of the chats was called quote, unquote Hunters.

[James Stout]

Jesus.

[Garrison Davis]

And the complaint says it contained detailed instructions for carrying out the attack, including plans to escape.

[James Stout]

They're completely delusional. They think they're escaping from doing something like that.

[Garrison Davis]

Next week I'm doing a full episode about. About the criminal complaint here and we'll get into more details about the attack and their planning. And yes, this. There's. There was no way this attack as planned was going to happen. They did not have the material, the personnel, or the logistical capacity to pull this off. No, they weren't just communicating on signal, though. They also were using another encrypted messaging

[James Stout]

app called Simple X. Yeah, Simplex messenger,

[Garrison Davis]

where they had one chat called the Vanguard of the Old Republic.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, my God.

[George Taveras]

Oh, dear. This has shades of that fucking dude in Texas who got killed by a security guard trying to attack the courthouse with a gladius on his belt in addition to his AR15.

[James Stout]

I didn't see that.

[George Taveras]

Yeah, he like opposed himself like a modern gladius to defend a modern republic. It was one of the, one of the lamer attempts at a mass shooting.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

One of the co conspirators who was arrested in California wrote on simplex, quote, to be clear, I intend to escalate this group. I don't want to take six business years to do it, unquote business here the fuck, man?

[James Stout]

Sorry. Yeah, that's a fascinating term. I guess they're just saying a long time, right? They're trying to say a long time.

[George Taveras]

Sorry Garrison, please continue.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, also writing that everyone in the group should quote, consider yourselves an enemy of the state. In this group chat, they also discussed imagining executions. Another, another co conspirator, also from California, read about the need for quote unquote guerrilla style warfare and quote unquote raid attacks with quote, skilled operators to work like ghosts to conduct quote, infiltration missions. Completely delusional stuff.

[George Taveras]

Yeah, the Call of Duty shit. Yeah, it's the same as the big what if we were really good at being terrorists? Would that work? Like that's what's going on here.

[Garrison Davis]

Tyson proper showed the FBI the TikTok profiles of other members of the group. And based on those accounts and chat logs, investigators were able to identify other co conspirators across multiple states. Part of the plan for the Freedom 250 attack was for co conspirators to meet in Fredericksburg, Virginia a day or two before the event. This obviously never happened because it appears the group never actually acquired the explosives or the drones needed for their Plans are expensive and we're still trying to figure out how to get enough money to purchase materials needed for the attack.

[George Taveras]

Yeah, yeah, that's important. Having the ability to do it is important.

[Garrison Davis]

One of the members allegedly wrote that the attack would require, quote, five teams of three, each team consisting of one sniper, one tier, one operator as support slash lookout, and one drone operator, unquote.

[James Stout]

Yeah, what tier? Sure, yeah, tier one of the signals

[George Taveras]

you got lying around. Christ, how many ex Delta guys you

[Garrison Davis]

got hanging out in the extended clan? They had like written out like four different tiers of operators and like what each tier is supposed to do and how. And how, and how if the tier ones get arrested, we have to, we have to try to break the tier ones out of jail, right?

[George Taveras]

Yeah, because they're so important. There's. They're super important. We got to get the tier ones out.

[Garrison Davis]

One of the members from California did try to drive to D.C. okay. But his vehicle had issues and needed to turn back.

[James Stout]

Oh dear. Sure.

[George Taveras]

Yeah, that's. You know, honestly, the, the Iranian hostage crisis. Delta Force got stopped from doing a rescue. Something similar happened.

[Garrison Davis]

This guy did admit this to the FBI, but he claimed that he was only going there to protest the UFC Freedom250 and that he was not involved in any conspiracy.

[George Taveras]

That's tier one.

[Garrison Davis]

But inside his vehicle, agents found firearms, tactical belt, radios and other supplies. Inside the residence of the other California co conspirator agents found firearms 30 round extended magazines and approximately 180 rounds of ammunition. One of the members of the group in West Virginia who was interviewed by FBI confirmed that the members communicated online about attacking UFC Freedom250 but claimed the attack plan was canceled on June 12th.

[James Stout]

Well, that's fine then.

[George Taveras]

Yeah, yeah. And this is, this is the kind of thing again. There's no way this attack ever would have happened the way the government's presenting. This is nonsense. This community, little community. Absolutely could have spawned one or more mass shooters.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah, totally.

[George Taveras]

Super glad that it didn't.

[Garrison Davis]

I find the sort of organizational structure of this really interesting.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

They also discussed doing like attacks on power grids. So you have certain, certain aspects of like accelerationist terrorism here but not organized on like you know, telegram. Not, not still anti Semitic but not necessarily like explicitly the sort of like neo Nazi like terrorist model. These people are on TikTok. They're obsessed with like like military tactics. They're very, they're very larpy. They wanted to do something like they discussed assassinations, they discussed various types of attacks but they were interested in, in attacks like for these like general anti government reasons rather than a specific sort of like niche political ideology.

[James Stout]

Right.

[Garrison Davis]

Or ties to neo Nazi accelerationist groups. Like I said, we will go into more detail next week. Tuesday night Vance did comment again admitting that the attack plan was quote unquote not that advanced and that the suspects quote weren't in town. They had not really done that much planning.

[Podcast Host]

Great.

[Garrison Davis]

Cool dude.

[James Stout]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

So yeah, Vance kind of changed his tune later on in the evening.

[George Taveras]

That's good. I'm glad he eventually said something that was not complete bullshit. Speaking of places where everything is complete bullshit, did you guys know Peter Thiel has a new social network? Actually it's 20 years old, it's not new at all, but he does kind of have a social network. It's a private invite only organization called Dialogue. Have y' all caught this story that's been dribbling Out?

[James Stout]

No.

[George Taveras]

So this first got onto most people's radar in like 2022 when Andrew Gelman, who's a statistician, posted on his blog that he had gotten an invite to this like dialogue 2022, which was like that year's event. It was described as an off the record retreat for global leaders and there was a list of confirmed participants. Like, this was part of the like, some of the names of people who've been in this organization we're talking about was going to be referred to as like a hack. Revealed some data that had not been like effectively redacted on the website to this organization that revealed a bunch of the members. But we already had like a list of like several dozen of the people in this group. And it included folks like Peter Brown, who's the CEO of Renaissance Technologies, Kelly Bayer Rosemaryn, who's the CEO of Optus, like you know, a lot of CEOs, but also folks like Susan Anthony, professor of Economics at Stanford. Grover Norquist was on that initial revealed list. He's an anti tax activist, I guess would be like the most basic way of saying what he is.

[James Stout]

Sure.

[George Taveras]

In the email to invite to Andrew said, quote, there are no speeches or panels, only moderated breakout discussions for eight to 12 participants. Everything is 100% off the record. The agenda is curated based on your interests and we optimize for introverts. No small talk. So yeah, there have been, I think a couple of other previous cases where like invites to this have leaked out to different people. Like several folks who have gotten invited have like posted about it. This is not a totally weird thing for billionaires to do. Jeff Bezos has a similar kind of thing where every year or so he'll have a group of people he finds interesting that he takes to a resort or to a nice property or something that he owns somewhere and they'll all hang out and they'll have like discussions. Sometimes people put on presentations for like three or four days and we've gotten that. A couple of people who have been to these have like written about the experience and in some cases critically.

[James Stout]

Yeah, there's a big one at Sun Valley, right? That might be the one people are most familiar with.

[George Taveras]

Yeah, yeah, I think that's one of the big ones. So this is not a super weird thing. But the fact that Peter Thiel is who he is and the fact that he's only gotten more influential now that Trump is president again makes this organization a lot more relevant. Which is why it's particularly interesting that very recently there was apparently a directory in the website's code. And Swiss hacktivist Maya Arsen Crimey, who is also a friend of the POD in the actual sense, was tipped off about a directory in the code for the website for Dialogue. That basically was not. They hadn't done the things that you would want to do to protect the data of their members. Right? That's the basics of this, right? So something was left undone that should have been handled and a bunch of information was revealed. And Wired got, as a result of this, the names of 222 people and records. And these are a mix of folks who were like members of this organization. And dialogue over the years has turned into more than just every year people meet. There's also apparently like a dating app component of it where they're advertising. Like, if you let us know who you're looking for, we've got this network of influential people. We'll hook you up with another, you know, the, you know, only special and important people, you know, that's a lot of the appeal, right? These are. There's a lot of star fuckery that goes on in the Silicon Valley set. But because of all of this stuff, there's also information on a retreat, the upcoming retreat, this year's event, which is apparently August 12th to 16th. God, I'd love to get a seat at a venue near Dublin, Ireland. That's part of why and to quote from that, that Wired article and this is talking about like the program for this upcoming event, Quote, there's a series of off the record discussions including money does buy happiness, bring back nuclear, navigating World war three battlefield technologies, and how's your sex life. Other talks include Build a cult moderated by the founder of the Christian networking site Pray.com and build a Party run by a former White House national security official. Now, I haven't looked into Build a Party yet. That's boy howdy. But I did look into prey.com? and as soon as I went to the prey.com website, it informed me that the founder and CEO is one Steve Gatina, who has the dead empty eyes of the shark from Jaws. Are you guys looking at this? Steve, now in the research doc, is

[Garrison Davis]

this the guy with the Prey shirt?

[George Taveras]

Yeah, he's wearing the Prey shirt.

[James Stout]

That's who that is. Okay.

[George Taveras]

He's got like the same phenotype as Peter Thiel.

[James Stout]

It's uncanny.

[George Taveras]

Yeah, like, he weirdly looks a little like Peter Thiel.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, he looks like his grin is about to start, like spreading wider. And there's going to be an alien face transformation.

[James Stout]

Yeah, that's a lizard person case to be made here.

[George Taveras]

So I was upset hearing that there's a Build a Cult workshop at Peter Thiel's private club invite. So I wanted to look into this guy a little bit and I read up on him. Gatina was, before becoming an entrepreneur, an NCAA champion. So he used, he's used to having people take advantage of him. He played college football for the University of Southern California and won a Rose bowl championship. In 2009, he started his first company, REP Interactive at the age of 22. I run into a lot of these LinkedIn founder guys and often it's hard to tell what their many different companies do because they all have like 30 of them.

[James Stout]

Yeah, yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Or if they're like real companies.

[James Stout]

Yeah, if they're, if they're real. Like they're not just bullshitting.

[George Taveras]

This seemed. It's real. It's. It's a video agency. It's like a marketing agency that helps do video marketing. It's one of the best workplaces in America according to Inc. Magazine. I don't know if you pay to be in Inc Magazine or not, so I don't know how impressive that is, but it seems to be a company that makes money. It's a social media like marketing company. He also has a stock footage company that does like drone stock footage. And after that he started a business called prey.com in honor of his mentor and business partner who had just died. And when I started looking into this guy, I realized I've been following him before because I periodically on Reddit will go to the LinkedIn Maniacs subreddit. It's got to be good. That's got to be good, man. Steve Gatina is all over this shit because he's the CEO of prey.com and I'm going to read you one of his fucking posts.

[James Stout]

I love people who post on LinkedIn.

[George Taveras]

Yesterday I swung by a 24 hour diner after my late shift at work. I saw a waitress in her 50s sitting in a booth with a teenage boy. He had a notebook open and she was helping him tackle some algebra problems. When she got up to refill my coffee, I asked tutoring after hours? She smiled, looking a bit tired. That's my son. I can't afford a tutor, so we study here between my shifts. The boy looked up and said, she's the smartest mom in the world. It turns out she just juggles two jobs but always makes time to sit with him every night and help him with his homework. He's going to college. She said with determination. Whatever it takes. It's amazing what love can do, even when life gets tough. And to prove that this is a true story, he shows a picture of some lady and a kid sitting in a booth looking at a. A notebook.

[James Stout]

Wow.

[George Taveras]

I love these guys. And they're inspirational. Definitely didn't happen posts. Definitely not a thing that happened to you, man.

[James Stout]

It's such a genre.

[Garrison Davis]

He credits the photo to somebody else.

[George Taveras]

Yeah, he sure does. Where did you get it? Steve? Yeah, there's a lot of great, great people who are going to be at these events. Which, boy howdy. It sure would be fun to be a fly on the wall at.

[James Stout]

It's also watermarked. Yeah, yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

For illustrative purposes only.

[James Stout]

This is Odie, in case you're stuck on him.

[George Taveras]

Okay.

[James Stout]

Yeah, yeah.

[George Taveras]

So to go back into the people who helped make Dialogue the great organization it is, the executive director of Dialogue is apparently Raffi Grinberg. And he is also the author of a self help book titled how to be a Grown Up. He did not respond to Wired's request for a comment, but I looked into Raffi a little bit and his website. When you go to like Raffi Grinberg's website, he immediately tries to sell you his book directly above a YouTube video titled Do Princeton Grads Know Win Anything? And it's like a YouTube prank video where he runs to Prince, he's wearing like a green tight skin tight bodysuit, and he runs up to Princeton grads like after, right after graduation and asks like, do you know how to pay your taxes? And it's also he can like give out a bunch of copies of his shitty book about like life skills. And like, I'm sure the book sells to like parents who give them to their kids, but no one reads this. Man. When kids need to learn how to pay their taxes, if they don't have parents who know how to teach them, they like Google it or like desperately go to H and R Block or they just don't pay their taxes. But they don't read a book like how to be a Grown up and I'm sorry about that, Raffy.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, no, that's like homeschooling parent target audience.

[George Taveras]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Christ.

[George Taveras]

Oh, man. So yeah, I don't know. There's like a lot more to say about this. I think I'm gonna do like an actual dedicated episode about Dialogue in the not too distant future.

[James Stout]

This is fascinating.

[George Taveras]

It does sound really interesting and I wanna know more about this fun club, but, yeah, you should check out the Wired article.

[Garrison Davis]

It's really interesting you should mention Jeffrey Epstein.

[James Stout]

I was gonna ask if there was an Epstein.

[George Taveras]

You're right, you're right, you're right, you're right. I tried to blow through Jeffrey Epstein's involvement in this. Now, Jeffrey Epstein is tied to this, but not in a bad way. Well, mostly not in a bad way. There's one email from him where, like, someone who is a friend of Jeffrey Epstein got invited to one of these events and, like, forwarded it to him and was like, hey, should I do this thing? Basically, I don't think we know what Jeff responded, But, you know, that caused. Because there's that, like, there's an invite to their 2014 retreat in the Epstein files. There was a lot of confusion where people were like, oh, Jeffrey Epstein was a member of dialogue. And this was furthered by the fact that Jeffrey Epstein was a member of dialogue, but not that Jeffrey Epstein, the former CFO of Oracle, was also. So the fact that, number one, in the Epstein file, someone forwarded an invite to the Jeff Epstein, who's a pedophile, and number two, there is an actual member of the group named Jeffrey Epstein, just a different one, caused people to believe that he was a part of this. But he does not appear to have been, in a way that anyone has proven.

[Garrison Davis]

The former CFO of Oracle should absolutely change his name.

[George Taveras]

Yeah, I gotta say, very rarely do I extend this to especially a member of the Oracle C suite. But no one will blame you. We won't even joke about it. Like, honestly, dude, like, Jeffrey, it's not a weird name. You had no reason to expect that somebody like this would wind up with your name. And you don't deserve to bear this cross, I hope. Unless you do. I don't know you, actually. Anyway, I think that's enough.

[James Stout]

Oh, man. Okay. If you want to email us Cool zonetips, Proton me. Keep it to story tips.

[Mia Wong]

Put a trans girl on your couch.

[Garrison Davis]

We reported the news.

[George Taveras]

We reported the news. It could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for it

[Akilah Hughes]

could happen here, listed directly in episode descriptions.

[George Taveras]

Thanks for listening.

[Podcast Host]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.