← It Could Happen Here
It Could Happen Here
Executive Disorder: San Diego Mosque Shooting, Trump Settles Lawsuit with Trump
01:03:39
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This is an I heart podcast. Guaranteed human.
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This is Dr. Joy from therapy for Black Girls.
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A fresh sparkling kitchen.
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Yes, please. The scrubbing it takes to get one. Not a favorite. That's why you'll love Dawn Powerwash. Just free. From everyday dishes to the toughest messes, it makes cleanup twice as fast. Less scrubbing, more living. Find Dawn Power Wash Dish Spray at your favorite retailer. Dawn is a proud sponsor of the Elton John Impact Awards, honoring those who have helped shape a more inclusive and compassionate world with their advocacy and unwavering commitment to equality. Don't miss the Elton John Impact awards podcast, available June 1 on the iHeartRadio app. And everywhere podcasts are heard.
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Help is always ready before, during and after your stay. We've planned for the plot twists, so support is always available because a great trip starts with peace of mind.
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I am wearing my Women Want me Fish Fear Me hat.
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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 G. Davis. Today I'm joined by Proper Evans, Mia Wong, James Stout and James's hat and James's hat.
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A
What does it say, Garrison?
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B
Oh, they heard. I think the audience heard.
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A
We gotta leave that one in. Are we?
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D
Yeah. Women fear him. Fish want him. Something along those lines.
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A
Yeah, fish want me. It's a whole thing with fish.
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D
Fish fear women. Women want fish. Something like that. I don't know.
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B
Del Toro made a movie about this yes, he did.
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D
Yes, he did. Garrison, what happened? Did nothing happen this week? I guess we can all go home. It seems like an uneventful Newsweek, right?
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A
Yeah.
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D
Nothing happened with the IRS or anything. Shootings overseas, all good. Cuba, Fine.
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C
Nothing happening in Bolivia.
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D
Nothing happening with Bolivia. Raul Castro.
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B
Well, that does it for. It's Not Happening Here. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next week.
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D
Yes, It's Not Happening Here. A podcast brought to you by marijuana
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A
and sleeping pills. Should we start with some little things and then and move on to some big things? Not that the little things are unimportant, but we're just covering them in less detail now and maybe more detail later.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Former Interior Secretary, now Representative Ryan Zinke is once again attempting to delist brown bears from the Endangered Species Act.
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D
He hates those brown bears.
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A
He fucking hates them.
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C
He really does.
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D
They're trying to do the same thing with grizzlies, too. They're a little further behind, but there's a push going right now to, like, grizzly numbers have recovered a lot. They're starting to do bad stuff. We gotta start hunting them.
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A
Yeah. The ground bears and grizzly bears are the same species. They're just. Brown bears would be the term I would use to describe all of the Ursus horribilis, I guess, in North America, like Kodiak brown bear and grizzly bear. But, yes, you're right. The justification that Zinke has given is that populations are getting higher. And he specifically cited a tragedy in which a hiker lost their life in Glacier national park and another attack on two tourists in Yellowstone.
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D
Yeah.
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A
The Endangered Species act has nothing to do with how dangerous an animal is, not its population size really play a role in these. It's not like these bears attacked these people because they were hungry, because the other bears had outcompeted them for food. Now, one person walked up on a sow with cubs, or that group. Yep. Came across the source cubs and the other one, I think the bear was probably foraging for berries and a person surprised it in some thick timber. A lot of people thought that they would de list the grizzlies, but they didn't straight away in January, and they. So if I haven't. I'd wrote a whole 2,000 words on this, my newsletter. If you want to learn more about bears, a lot of bear content. We will also bring you a bear episode in the coming weeks in which I talk to Molly about bears. Because. Because it seems like you like me talking to Molly about animals. Talking of animals, Trump administration Has reapproved an exciting way to kill them. The M44 cyanide trap has been reapproved.
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D
Thank God.
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B
Single issue cyanide voter.
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D
That's been my one issue for years. Garrison, you know, this I'm all about. And it's not just this. I'm just in general supportive of anything that increases regular Americans daily access to cyanide, you know, that's why I'm also against clean air regulations. Continue, James.
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A
I will. I bumped into a few of these. Like maybe you have two. It's not a coyote getter. Coyote getter is a different thing. But what this is is it's like a spring loaded trap. It's a little thing poking out the ground, normally covered in cloth and baited. And it's triggered when something bites and pulls it. So it's designed to then squirt cyanide up into the mouth of it's normally canines. Right. There's not much else. Yeah, bites and pulls them. These things have killed dozens of pets and livestock.
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D
It's a pretty fucked up kind of trap. Like it's really bad.
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A
Yeah, it's pretty bad. The old ones, they used to use like a.38 special blank. That would really fire the cyanide up.
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C
Jesus Christ.
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A
That was a massive fucking issue. That's cool. That was a coyote getter.
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D
See, I just want to put those in my normal.38 and just conceal. Carry a cyanide pistol.
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A
Everyone dies. Get really close. Get really close. See what happens. Unless they attack you from like upwind, you know, and then, then it's just you. Yeah.
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D
Why don't you open your mouth and get really close to me, you know?
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A
Yeah, I guess like people will maybe be familiar with these from an incident where the 14 year old boy was injured and his dog was killed. This was back in the 2000 teens. In that case, the M44 was not on the family's property, but it was less than 100 yards from their house.
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B
Wow.
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A
And they've discontinued using them in Idaho after that. But the dog BLM as a whole discontinued their use only like late 23, early 24. Trump administration hates every living creature. So it's not really surprising that these are back. Obviously the issue here is livestock. Right. Like they're protecting livestock from canids. Yeah. There are better ways of doing that. We shouldn't be fucking putting cyanide in our public lands.
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D
It's not.
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A
Sorry. This one gets me kind of annoyed. Yeah.
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D
Just the general belief that anything that might interfere with a livestock animal justifies like widespread genocide of crucial species is really bad.
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A
Yeah.
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D
And also dominant in a lot of the American West.
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A
Yes. And like coyotes are some of the smartest creatures we have. Right. They've resisted all attempts to control their population. They continue to thrive. But even all 50 states, I think there are maybe not in 49. I don't think there are any in Hawaii. But yeah, incredible animals. Coyote America by Dan Flores. Good book about them. In the Channel Islands. Channel Islands National Park, a fire has already hit over 14,000 acres. It is on Santa Rita. It's threatening a grove of very rare Torrey pines. Torrey pines, really? They, they. We have some here in San Diego and some up there. The initial reporting suggested that the Mariner himself had fired distress flares and those flares had ignited the fire. What the Coast Guard is now saying is he was on like a 52 foot boat by himself. Boat. People mad about me saying boat not whatever. I know. I don't care. The boat had run aground and it was rocking. I'm guessing that rocking either shorted something or cut a fuel line that caused the vessel itself to ignite and then the vessel igniting caused fire on the island. And he then fired flares standing within a previously burned area. So the fire had burned past him. He fired flares. Quite why he wasn't able to signal with his radio or if he was able to signal with his radio and then the radio got burned or other means of communication. Right. Like at a personal locator beacon. Epirb? I don't know. All I know is what's been reported so far. But nonetheless, this is really tragic for one of the very few areas in California which has been less ravaged by capital. Moving along to immigration, I have seen evidence that USCIS income is plummeting. And this is because they're processing fewer applications. Right. Then they're moving much, much, much more slowly with. With actually processing the applications that give people the right to. To have visas or to permanent residency citizenship. The agency is normally funded by fees, and it seems that it will soon not be funded by fees anymore. So despite all these Doge cuts and efficiency cuts, the agency is going to end up costing taxpayers more money, which is great. Today, United States Marines boarded the motor tanker Celestial, which they, quote, suspected was en route to Iran. Flights from Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan are facing new arrival restrictions due to the outbreak of Ebola in the region. With USAID funding slashed, the US would have normally led a response to something like this, or at least helped fund it now it won't. This means that the outbreak will be bigger and more people will die. Scott Besant has said that the United States will temporarily allow, quote, the most vulnerable nations to access Russian oil selectively and temporarily lifting sanctions. Also, Ukraine has begun using unguided rockets on first person view drones. And this is a pretty serious development for like remote control warfare. They're using them to suppress Russian air defenses. But they released videos of that for the first time this week. Finally, from me, it appears that a large batch of new immigration judges will be starting work. Immigration judges, it's worth noting, are not judges in the sense that we understand the word for other judges in the legal system. They're more like bureaucrats like Robert.
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C
Yes, Robert's more real of a judge.
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A
They're certainly not reverend judges. Their ranks have been purged by the Trump administration since early 2025. I know lots of them have retired or quit or been fired. I can imagine that this new cohort might be more favorable to the Trump administration's immigration goals.
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C
So there's been in the past few days a massive intensification of month long protests in Bolivia that has escalated into a general strike. It's also turned into one of the traditional Bolivian protest tactics which is a series of roadblocks blocking access to the capital. These are largely the result of two different kind of, different kind of related fights. The first one was an attempt at agricultural reform that would have done a whole bunch of sort of, I guess you'd call it like 1994 style Mexican constitution, like neoliberalization of like collectively held indigenous land. And then now the protests have been gaining steam over dire economic situation and neoliberal reforms passed by their right wing president after the MAS effectively imploded during 2024 and 2025, leading to the first right wing president in Bol since the early 2000s. And also the reemergence of Carlos Mesa, a guy I literally never thought I would hear about again, but apparently is back somehow after getting ousted by like basically effectively these exact same style of mass roadblock protests in 2005. He's now also back for some reason. But yeah, these protests are probably going to continue to escalate. We've reached the miners throwing dynamite phase of oblivion protest which tends to precede governments collapsing. We will see how this story progresses.
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B
For our first main story, we'll discuss the shooting at an Islamic center in San Diego. James, do you want to start us off?
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A
Yeah. So the, the shooting happened on Monday 18th May. Three people were killed. We'll go over a little bit about them in a second here. It happened at the Islamic center of San Diego, which is the largest mosque in San Diego County. People might be familiar with the Islamic center of San Diego because of other stories about surveillance on the mosque over the years. In this case, the two shooters were Caine Clark, 17, and Caleb Vasquez, 18. Shortly after the shooting took place, police searched Kane Clark's house. It took them a long time to get a warrant. Normally, they can use an E warrant for these things to get one very quickly, but it, for some reason took several hours. Officers were actually at Clark's house when the shooting began. This was because his mother had called police to report her son was missing in her car in camouflage and had stolen her weapons. She called them two hours before the shooting began. Despite that, they were able to make it to the Islamic center of San Diego, kill three people, then move further down the street and fire at a landscaper who seems to have been largely uninjured or not injured in a serious way. Then they proceeded further down the street before ending their lives. I think one of them shot the other and then shot themselves. I think it's worth noting that, like San Diego, has driven itself into debt, spending massive amounts of money specifically on cops and specifically on surveillance. And neither of them did anything to prevent this. The San Diego Police Department received a call two hours before the shooting to quote Police Chief Scott Wall, quote, she believed her son was suicidal, and she began to share information that several of her weapons were missing, her vehicle was missing. In addition to her son, Wall said she also said her son was with a companion. They were dressed in camo. That's not consistent with what we would typically see from someone who is suicidal. They tried to use their automated license plate readers, commonly referred to as flock cameras. Flock actually doesn't provide the hardware in San Diego. Their only lead was a single hit in Fashion Valley, which is several miles away from where the shooting took place, Also further from Clark's house than the site of the shooting was. But Vasquez comes from Chula Vista, which is much further south. There is no way that I can see to get from Fashion Valley to ICSD without passing automated license plate readers. You can't take surface streets and avoid them. I've ridden most of that route. This was the way I used to commute on my bicycle when I was teaching. In the end, that didn't make a difference. They weren't able to get there and prevent the shooting. Not a single officer discharged their firearm Last month, the San Diego officer did discharge his firearm. And a lady with a ballpoint pen missing several times in a busy street. Let's talk about the three people who were killed here. Yeah, I think they're more important than these.
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D
Well, yeah, because they undeniably saved any of those kids from getting killed.
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A
Yeah. In a way that, like, is genuinely laudable and heroic. Yeah. So Amina Abdullah was a security guard at the mosque. I saw it reported he had eight children. He seems to have significantly delayed the shooter by exchanging fire with both of
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D
the shooters and initiating the mosque's lockdown protocol.
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A
Yes. So he used his radio to initiate the lockdown protocol. The shooters livestreamed the shooting, and I've reviewed some elements of that, and you can see they basically get into the entrance of the mosque and then get holed up there.
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D
Yeah, because they moved past him and he engaged them.
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A
Correct.
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D
Yeah, because they were attempting to get past him to the kids, and he engaged them, drew them back and. Yeah, I mean, all of this would have been so much worse if he hadn't done what he did, which cost him his life.
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A
Yes, exactly. Like, yeah, he engaged them. He continued to draw their fire, like, until, obviously, he passed away. Other two victims, Mansoor Qaziha, known as Abu Aziz, who worked at the mosque for decades. Like, since they broke ground. He was managing the store, like the. The little gift shop, snack shop. And Nader Awad, his wife teaches at the school, and he lives right next door. He actually was at home when the shooting began. And he ran toward the mosque when he heard the shooting. Yep. And it seems that both of them were in the parking lot directing people away from the mosque and again, drawing the attention of the shooter. Right. So that unfortunately resulted in them both losing their lives. The shooters, as I said, then fled in a white BMW, shot at a landscaper, and then took their own lives. It appears that they met online. Vasquez lives in Chula Vista, like, a good distance away from where the shooting took place. There was a press conference shortly afterwards where the mayor was heckled. Gloria is a pretty unpopular mayor for a number of reasons, making San Diego very unlivable for poor people. He's consistently attacked our unhoused population, I guess, notably in this case because of the presence of a pro Palestinian artist. He boycotted our Pride March. For what it's worth, Gloria himself is gay city has had a really bad record of hate crimes. And I think in San Diego, because of this long history of hate crime and bigotry and anti blackness and anti Semitism and Islamophobia and the deep roots they have here. People assumed that these two young people would have come from east county, which is, I think sometimes it's this myth. Right. They're like, like all bigotry exists kind of east of the 15 and it's fine after that. That is very much not the case. And these two people do not come from that scene. They do not come from that world. There are groups that are white supremacist in east county, without a doubt, many of them. And individuals who, I mean, Metzger was not living that far away. Right. This is not that. Claremont, where Clark lived, is one of the most diverse neighborhoods. I have taught in high schools in Claremont. I taught in the community college there. Tons of my students over the years have been people who attended this mask or they have children who go to the school and the preschool there. So, yeah, this is like very close to home for me. I guess we should discuss a little of the shooter's kind of accelerationist worldview, I guess. Yeah, yeah.
- [18:58]
B
The imagery and associated manifesto that leaked online after the shooting.
- [19:05]
D
I mean, just the shortest thing we can say before getting into it is that this is a Christchurch inspired attack motivated by anti Islamic Islamophobia. Right, Obviously. But also these shooters were very motivated by anti Semitic beliefs, by incel beliefs and by general fandom of mass shootings, you know?
- [19:25]
B
Yeah, yeah. The first inclination we had that this was linked to neo Nazi accelerationism was some pictures that were released of the shooter's vehicle where a gas can had an SS sticker on it. Eventually pictures came out of their weapons which had slogans like race war and hate speech written. Literally the words like hate speech written down on the weapon.
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D
Yeah, yeah.
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B
As well as wearing Nazi imagery on tactical clothing.
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D
Garrison will have more to say and we'll. We'll look at more about these shooters. But first, here's some ads.
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Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers. And guess what? We have some big news. What's the news, Nick?
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A
Huge news.
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We created our own podcast called hey Jonas.
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A
We invented a podcast. Well, we didn't invent it. We.
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We just contributed to it.
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First people to do podcasts.
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Pretty. Yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts, but this one's extra special.
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So how did we. How do we actually come up with the name hey Jonas?
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Guys, I honestly don't remember.
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I think it was on a call about what we should call it, and,
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well, we were thinking.
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I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band before Jonas Brothers. This is how you guys remember it going down? Yes.
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I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing a bit for the podcast where people could
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D
call in and say, hey, Jonas.
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B
And then I wrote down on my little notepad, hey, Jonas. And offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys, listen to hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast, just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Premier Protein.
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- [23:08]
B
All right, to start off, I pretty much agree with extremism researcher Jared Holt, who's one of the best in the business that, quote, these kids could not have been any clearer that they cooked their skulls on neo Nazi accelerationist slopes. Their manifestos are as sloppy as they are extremist. But they do make clear they sought to be copycats. Unquote. Yeah, that's an entirely, entirely correct.
- [23:36]
A
Yep, yep.
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B
Analysis of what happened.
- [23:39]
D
It's one of the laziest manifestos in some ways. It's very patterned off of the Christchurch shooter's manifesto, which was, you know, say what you will about it, a fairly original work. Like, there's one of the more notable segments of this is a chunk where. And they're talking about their beliefs, they talk about the Freemasons, and whichever one of them was writing that portion is like, I don't actually know anything about them, but I know that they're bad, basically. Like, I haven't had time to get into this part of the ideology, which is like, it's very. It's very sloppy. It's very online. It's very much a product of terrorgram, you know, like, in, like. The sloppiness is part of the humor I kind of expect for these guys.
- [24:18]
A
Yeah. Large parts of it were just, like, parentheses, unfinished. Yep, yep.
- [24:22]
D
And I think that's part of a bit, you know?
- [24:24]
A
Yeah.
- [24:25]
B
So the manifesto was titled Sons of Tarrant, named after the Christchurch shooter.
- [24:30]
D
Yeah.
- [24:30]
B
About half of it was written by each of the shooters, and it states that Tarrant was their biggest inspiration. The manifesto shows a deep referential knowledge of Nazi accelerationism, but in a very, like, regurgitated sense. Right. Almost as if you asked ChatGPT to make a neo Nazi acceleration manifesto. I'm not saying they actually did that, but it. That's the sort of, like, vibe that it has.
- [24:54]
A
Yeah, it's very generic.
- [24:55]
D
Yeah, it's sloppy.
- [24:56]
B
There's really nothing like, new at all in there. It's mostly just referential.
- [25:00]
D
And it has that ChatGPT vibe, in part because they're just copying these other manifestos that were written by guys who were somewhat more original than them. And they came by it, I think, primarily not even from initially scanning the original documents, but from seeing chopped up pieces of them in these conversations that they're having in these, like, groups that they're in. And so it's just kind of inculcates this slop mindset. Like, they're like, this is kind of. It's not just the manifesto that slop. The way these people were radicalized probably was also slop.
- [25:34]
B
Yeah, yeah. There's this big element of, like, gen Z irony throughout, stuff like this. And you can see that on the shooter's TikTok and their Steam page, which has a whole bunch of, like, anime Nazi edits. Little TikTok dances with accelerationist imagery and, like, anime art. The way that these two shooters identified with Nazi accelerationism and mass killers is very close to the way a lot of people just identify with pop culture fandom. The Columbine aspect is also pretty crucial here. And one of the shooters writes about that in the manifesto on their Steam. They had a anime Columbine edit.
- [26:13]
A
Yeah.
- [26:14]
B
Trying to understand a shooting like this as just primarily ideologically driven has its limits. Right. That's certainly an aspect of it that's very clear.
- [26:24]
A
Yeah.
- [26:25]
B
Ideological imagery is front and center, but there's also this copycat aspect and, like, the saint lineage of these shooters trying to make themselves infamous by associating themselves with these other mass killers. And the in group signaling is what the. The fashion of ideology is resting on.
- [26:41]
A
Yes, the.
- [26:42]
D
The in group signaling is key because when you just say they're trying to, like, copy their copycats, they're trying to copy these other killers, then that makes people think of someone who is kind of purely narcissistically so focused on the outside, on how people see them as a result of their act. But at least equally important is this group of folks that they socialize with in these telegram chats and other communities that they think are cool and that they like and they are trying. That's why the manifesto is the way it is. That's why the Christchurch Manifesto was the way it was. They're trying to signal to their differing communities of people online.
- [27:17]
B
It's like part of a fandom. It's like the way that we think of pop culture fandom. That's what this is for a small number of young people online.
- [27:25]
D
Yeah. And it's like, it's not just even Nazi stuff. Like, I've seen a lot of people making a big deal about the fact that one of the shooters had a profile image of a character, Ashley Graves,
- [27:35]
B
from the incest video game.
- [27:37]
A
Yeah.
- [27:37]
D
A video game called the Coffin of Andy and Laylee, which is like a really fucked up incest video game. And she's like. She's like, specifically, like, a really bad evil person. And it's like the comments I've seen are basically like, yeah, I'm not surprised that he would idolize someone who would do this, would, like, idolize a character like that. It's a bit. Yes, it's a bit like that's These are all things that are, like, popular in these weird little chunks of the Right. Like, it's an encompassing thing. It's not just these people are Nazis or these people want to be famous. And if you're just looking at that, then you're gonna be confused by this, like, very sloppy seeming manifesto unless you understand it's there to make their friends laugh, you know?
- [28:16]
B
Yeah. I mean, like, and as ideological as this is, it's just as memetic.
- [28:22]
A
Yeah.
- [28:22]
B
Even if the overt Nazi stuff is very strong in this case, and as much as people will focus on the Nazi stuff in a lot of the reporting, we can't overlook this sort of like, fandom and like Columbine aspect. You know, crucially, there's two shooters here that's very, very Columbine esque. And that's something they acknowledge in the manifesto. They did live stream the shooting in a discord call. So there were people aware that this shooting was happening since before the shooting started. People to hop onto this call.
- [28:51]
A
Jesus Christ. They said in their manifesto they were going to wait until they had a good number of people on the call before starting so they could ensure someone recorded it, which indeed someone did.
- [29:02]
B
Just as a side note here, I've seen a lot of people talk about this as like a. As like a quote, unquote, 764 shooting. All right. 764 refers to a specific group of. Or a specific online community that does childlike sexploitation. They try to extract and blackmail children into providing child sexual abuse material and sometimes convincing children to also do acts of violence. There is not an explicit 764 connection that I am aware of at this point. Some of the times these communities do overlap to intersect. So I wouldn't be surprised if there is something 764 related that comes out about one of these shooters. Eventually.
- [29:39]
D
Sure.
- [29:40]
B
But this. I think that framing that, that understanding is slightly mistaken. I think people, people jump to that very often. There was obviously the sort of like, group element of this shooting. They're streaming it in a discord call. But I think 764 does. Does actually refer to a specific group. It's not just, you know, neo Nazi accelerationist shooters in general. I've seen some people question why a mosque was chosen as the target if a lot of the manifesto is anti Semitic. That's. That's kind of like the. The crux of. Of their ideology. They did the Islamic center likely because they wanted to specifically copy Tarrant. Right. That's even down to the clothes that they're wearing. The military fatigues that they're wearing are very similar to what Tarrant wore. The manifesto is even around the same length of. As Terrence Manifesto.
- [30:30]
C
Yeah. And I think a vital part of this, and when you're looking at this sort of what seems like things that are incongruent between what they're writing and what they're doing, it's that this is sort of the most advanced stage of the reduction of politics to aesthetics. And it's reached a point where, like, the aesthetic itself is like, the medically alive.
- [30:48]
B
Yes.
- [30:48]
C
In a way that's, you know, in a way that operates independently of, like, what the people who made the ideology were trying to do. And now the aesthetic itself is getting people to just do the things. And so they're doing it for the aesthetic, which is what the politics has been turned into.
- [31:03]
B
100%.
- [31:04]
A
Yeah.
- [31:04]
B
And, you know, even, like, the selection of video games they have on their Steam profile is designed with this in mind. The incest game, one example, Hearts of Iron 4, is also included on the Steam profile.
- [31:14]
D
God, of course it fucking is.
- [31:16]
B
But here's the thing. Here's the thing. The shooter unlocked no achievements.
- [31:20]
D
Yeah.
- [31:20]
B
So they weren't even playing games.
- [31:23]
D
It's about being cool to your buds.
- [31:25]
B
They weren't even playing the game. But he. But he wanted to include the game on the profile because it references or has been a part of other neo Nazi accelerationists in the past. Similarly, a lot of, like, the anime visual novels included on the profile seem to be unplayed.
- [31:41]
A
Yeah.
- [31:41]
D
It doesn't happen enough. This gets looked at because of how horrifying the actions are as something separate fundamentally from, like, all the other shit that, like, dumb shit young people do to be cool. And it really shouldn't entirely.
- [31:56]
B
Or just being suicidal, right?
- [31:57]
D
Or just being suicidal.
- [31:59]
A
Yeah.
- [31:59]
B
Extremely. Mentally, like, unwell, like under regulated, socially disintegrated.
- [32:03]
D
I think the desperation to fit in anywhere is tied with that sort of thing too. Right. Like the fact that you would lie about the stuff you're interested with in order to put on this image that is more fitting for what you think this community wants to see from you. You know, part of the tragedy here
- [32:20]
B
is that these people as kids found community in these acceleration spaces that became the primary way they socialize in a very similar vein as a lot of people socialize online about Star wars or whatever anime is popular on Tick Tock or like those other fandom spaces that are not designed around going into a place of worship. Or a school and killing tons of people.
- [32:44]
A
Yeah. I guess I should just say real briefly. The FBI removed 30 firearms from Kane Clark's family home. It seems all the firearms they use, for whatever it's worth, it doesn't make a huge difference, I guess, other than to say that, like, these were all compliant with California law. California has very strict gun laws. It's very hard in this country to stop people getting the means to kill lots of people.
- [33:12]
D
I mean, that said, it's entirely possible that that is why there weren't more people killed. You know, we really. It's impossible to say that the gun that they were using isn't wildly different from an AR in this kind of situation. But, you know, there's limitations on the amount of ammo in a mag or whatever that may have had some impact. I don't really have. I don't have enough granular detail about all of that. And it's also kind of impossible to say, but, yeah, these were all Cali legal guns.
- [33:41]
A
Yeah. You see the kid, If I would not suggest watching the video. I don't think anyone needs to watch the video. It's not good for you.
- [33:48]
B
This is no reason to watch it or read the manifesto. There's nothing in there.
- [33:52]
A
Yeah. None of this will make your grief, you know, more. More real. Or is your solidarity more complete? Like, you don't need to. You see the kid up the window for a while in a video, which is good. I wish someone had shot him when he was doing that.
- [34:06]
B
One of the last things I want to add, there has been an attempt by some popular right wing figures to try to turn this into another trans shooting.
- [34:16]
C
Yep.
- [34:17]
D
Specifically Elon Musk.
- [34:20]
B
Yes. Elon Musk has boosted claims. Completely unfounded, false, just actually outright false
- [34:26]
D
absolute lies admitted by the op.
- [34:29]
B
He's just lying false assertions that either one or both of the shooters were transgender. This is. Seems to be primarily using a picture of one of them that has long hair as the sort of quote unquote evidence. They are not trans. Neither of them are trans. They write about hating LGBTQ people in the manifesto. They are not trans. It's not a trans shooting.
- [34:52]
D
No, they write about hating trans people in particular.
- [34:55]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [34:56]
C
But, you know, they're just like these people, like Elon Musk and all the right wing people doing this. Like, they're just overtly doing the Julius Stryker, like, Dear Stormer, like, Jewish crime shit. Like, that's just. That's just all this is at this point.
- [35:08]
A
It's. Yeah, they.
- [35:10]
D
They don't think it's true any more than like we do. They just know that you've got, in this period of time right after something like this happens, if you flood the zone with shit like that, some number of people will never get corrected. That's all this is.
- [35:23]
C
Yeah.
- [35:24]
B
Reality is very malleable in those first few hours.
- [35:27]
D
Yeah.
- [35:27]
A
Yeah. I think some of them also think it's funny. Yeah. Like, I think in the same way it signals that you're cool to your friends in the same way that these people did that. Like, it's disgusting.
- [35:36]
D
Wow. It's all the same thing.
- [35:38]
A
Yeah.
- [35:39]
C
We're doing the meme genocide.
- [35:41]
D
It's arguably. Genocide's always been a meme.
- [35:45]
A
Yeah. The whole thing has been really hard on San Diego community. Right. We have a big fire at Easter. Laposta as well, getting under control. We will share a fundraiser for the families of the. The three people who unfortunately lost their lives. It's already up a half a million dollars, which is nice to see. But yeah, it. I know that that mosque specifically has spent so much time on security. I know they've applied for grants. Like, I know they've done everything they can. They have cameras, they had armed security. Like they, they. It's really sad that this community felt that this might happen and it happened, you know, that they felt that they weren't safe. I filed some public records requests that will take weeks, months to come back. But if there is more reporting on this to be done, we will do it. Especially like, this is where I live, this is my community. So, like, I'm going to try my best to find out as much as I can. But yeah, it's a tragedy right now.
- [36:43]
B
Before we go on an ad break, I have one more story here. On Tuesday, there was a primary election in Kentucky. Incumbent libertarian Republican Thomas Massie lost the election by 10 points to AIPAC and Trump backed challenger Ed Gallerain. Massie broke with Trump over the release of the Epstein files, though unlike Marjorie Taylor Greene, he did not step down but continued to serve in Congress opposing the one big beautiful bill, the war on Iran and aid to Israel. Trump selected Ed Gallerin, a former Navy seal, to run against Massie. And this election became the most expensive primary in House race history.
- [37:26]
A
Great.
- [37:26]
B
AIPAC and other pro Israel lobbying groups spent over $9 million to unseat Massey.
- [37:31]
C
Jesus.
- [37:32]
B
And overall ad spending in this primary reached over $33 million.
- [37:38]
A
Jesus.
- [37:39]
C
It's like wide receiver one money.
- [37:41]
B
Yeah, it's, it's wild. It's. This is, this is crazy for A Kentucky House seat that's going to go to a revol public in either way.
- [37:48]
D
It's, it's just a Trump's ego thing.
- [37:50]
B
It's like a Trump Israel thing. Yeah, it's, it's, it's pretty wild.
- [37:54]
A
Yeah.
- [37:55]
D
Yeah. Israel too, obviously. Yes, of course.
- [37:57]
B
The pro Israel lobby funded a significant, a significant part of the ad spending here.
- [38:01]
D
Crazy.
- [38:02]
B
Another interesting factor. Pacs on both sides of this race used AI deep fake ads depicting the opposing candidate. I. I want to briefly show some of these. Oh no, not, not, not the whole ones. Just, just very short clips to get like the sense of, of what, of what the deal is here.
- [38:20]
C
Credible impending sense of dread.
- [38:23]
D
Yeah, I love it. These Trump traders, they can't stand our president and can't help but let it show.
- [38:30]
A
Like Woketti Gowrine.
- [38:32]
D
Woketti left the Republican Party after Trump
- [38:35]
A
won the GOP nomination in 2016.
- [38:38]
D
Take a look for yourself. And when did Woe Getty change his
- [38:42]
A
registration back to the gop? After Joe Biden was sworn in. Trump was in the foxhole. And look at Gowrine. Tucked his tail and ran. The Kentucky fourth Pack is responsible for
- [38:54]
D
the content of this ad. Oh my God.
- [38:56]
A
Donald Trump is participating in World War II. This video.
- [39:04]
B
This is the craziest part of the ad where a deepfake Donald Trump is in the trenches with. With a rifle.
- [39:12]
C
It just looks like a Photoshop. It look. It looks like a shitty meme Photoshop.
- [39:16]
D
It's like World War I or 2. It could kind of be either.
- [39:19]
A
I think they're giving D day.
- [39:21]
D
Right?
- [39:21]
A
Like you got the tank barriers. Like he's got the Garand got the tank barriers.
- [39:25]
D
But that looks that. Is that a garage?
- [39:26]
A
Yeah, because he fired it twice without running the ball.
- [39:29]
C
I don't think they know what war that's supposed to be.
- [39:32]
A
We've put more thought into this than they have already.
- [39:34]
D
His camo doesn't look anyway.
- [39:36]
A
Whatever. Yeah.
- [39:37]
B
TR so woke Eddie Gowen ran away as Trump was in the trenches.
- [39:42]
A
The foxhole. Garrison. The foxhole.
- [39:43]
B
My apologies.
- [39:45]
D
Under fire.
- [39:45]
B
This is the pro Masi ad. Right? So he's the pro Macy ads are trying to frame the Trump. The Trump backed candidate as woke. Woke Eddie Gowering.
- [39:56]
D
Yeah, I love it. I love it.
- [39:58]
B
Who abandoned Trump? Meanwhile, the anti Massey ads looked like this.
- [40:05]
A
Thomas Massey caught in a throttle in Washington.
- [40:13]
D
Oh man.
- [40:14]
A
No. What is happening? As he voted with the squad against
- [40:17]
D
finishing Trump's wall, he voted with them
- [40:20]
A
against hiring new border agents.
- [40:22]
B
Jesus Christ. This is worse than adultery.
- [40:25]
A
It's A complete and total betrayal of President Trump and Kentucky conservative on May 19 fire Thomas Massie, MAGA.
- [40:32]
B
Kentucky is responsible for the content of this advertising.
- [40:35]
D
I guess the upside of this is the term throuple's really gone mainstream, huh? They trust people in just like small town Kentucky to know what thruffle means.
- [40:46]
B
So this ad frames Thomas Massey is in a quote unquote thruffle with the squad showing him holding hands.
- [40:53]
D
The squad is more than three showing
- [40:55]
B
him holding hands and other other deep faked interactions between AOC and Elon Omar.
- [41:03]
D
Yeah, great. Cool stuff.
- [41:05]
A
Yeah. Wow, the cable news generation really got to be having their minds melted by that shit.
- [41:11]
B
Lastly, an ongoing story we followed on ED the past few months is whether Trump will endorse in the Republican Senate runoff in Texas. Early reports indicated that Trump would back incumbent Senator John Cornyn over MAGA hardliner and Texas AG Ken Paxton. But Trump seemed irritated that his intentions were leaked, and following that, Paxton started to make some moves in a bid to win the President's favor. In March, Paxton promised to drop out of the race if the Republican Senate killed the filibuster to pass the voter restriction bill, dubbed the Save America Act. At the time, the bill was Trump's top priority, and this gambit by Paxton seemed to work as later that month he was seen meeting with Trump at Mar a Lago. And then this past Tuesday, Trump endorsed Paxton via Truth on Truth social quote, he is a winner in all caps. Ken is a strong supporter of terminating the filibuster in all caps and very importantly, the Save America Act. John Cornyn is a good man and I worked well with him, but he was not supportive of me when times were tough, unquote. This endorsement seemed to catch Senate Republicans off guard, some of whom now worry the seat may be in jeopardy. Republican Majority Leader John Thune is still backing Senator Cornyn. Let's go into that break.
- [42:32]
A
Yeah, That was a lovely song. Or are we about to hear the song? What's the song status?
- [42:48]
B
We're about to hear the song.
- [42:49]
A
About to hear the song. Well, I am excited about that.
- [42:51]
D
That must mean it's time to learn about tariffs.
- [43:10]
C
By God, there's tariff news again. So let's run through a few pieces of tariff news. We have now, technically speaking, started the tariff refund process. People are starting to get their money back. This is going to be a catastrophe that unfolds over the course of genuinely who knows how long. My guess is I don't think this is done by next year. We've also seen a series of negotiations from the Trump administration with a whole bunch of different countries. The US Had a summit with China where Trump and Xi Jinping met and appear to be trying to wind down the trade war. There is an attempt to reduce tariffs on goods that aren't under the sort of Section 301 national security tariffs. There's also been some attempt by the Chinese government to get the US to back off of using the national security powers for more tariffs. The deals on this one are still kind of inconclusive. We're going to see more as this unfolds. There's a very good quote that I think is interesting from U.S. trade Rep. Jameson Greer. Where in Reuters. Well, this is reported in Reuters was on Fox Business News where he said, quote, it's not really a situation where we go and get China to change the way they govern the way they manage their economy, Greer told Fox Business News last week. This was about three weeks ago now that's all baked into their system. But I think there is a world where we find out where we can optimize trade between China and the US to achieve more balance. So this is effectively a pure back off of everything they've been saying about like all of the, all of the Chinese economy inherently having rigged trade because of government subsidies, et cetera, et cetera. It seems like they're kind of trying to wind this down. I think largely because they have with this war in Iran, they have dropped a second nuke on the economy and they want to make sure that the two bombs they've dropped on the, on their own feet aren't going off at the same time. So in that vein, we've also seen the EU has finally gotten together to approve Ish. It's a little complicated, a provisional deal with the administration that the details are also still a little murky on. But the short version seems to be the US imposes a 15% tariff on European goods, while once again, per Reuters, the EU would remove import duties on U.S. industrial goods and grant preferential access to U.S. farm and sea produce. We still don't know exactly what that's going to look like, but those are the, those are the preliminary details after these negotiations were thrown into chaos when Trump was trying to invade Greenland. Yeah, we'll know more about what these deals look like in the weeks to come. Now, the other piece of news we should talk about here is that on Friday, on the Friday that you're presumably listening to this on, Kevin Warsh is going to be sworn in as the new chairman of the Federal Reserve. This is, has come as part of a deal where in order to get Warsh out of committee, the Justice Department dropped their investigation into former Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. It is worth noting though, that Jerome Powell. So Jerome Powell has obviously stepped down as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
- [46:35]
B
Coward. That's all.
- [46:37]
C
I got nothing. My brain is too cooked on Federal Reserve to be able to react properly. But comma, Jerome Powell is not stepping down from the Board of Governors, which he's still on. I think he's still also on the Open Market Committee. So Warsh has his work cut out for him, we should mention. So who is Kevin Warsh? We've talked about this a little bit before. He is, I would say, more stable and more hinged than the previous candidates Trump has been talking about. He has experienced in the Federal Reserve. However, he's also very, very close to a lot of the tech. Right. Particularly Thiel and Andreessen. That is absolutely a cause for alarm that these sort of tech fascists have gotten their guy as the head of the Federal Reserve. However, he has effectively inherited a grenade. So how are things going to be going for him when he, when he takes office? In about two days? As we're recording for this, not great. The Yield on the 30 year T note is at 5.4%, which is the highest it's been since 2007. For, for people unaware of what high T note yield means. It means things bad for the US Economy and investors are spooked and kind of panicking. This seems to mostly be investors finally starting to price in. Wait, hold on. This war in Iran is not simply going to end. So he is inheriting a situation that is going to be a mess because these high interest rates means that there's going to have to be sort of Fed interest rate hikes in order to curve inflation. However, Trump wants exactly the opposite of that. So Walsh is immediately caught between a rock and a hard place. The rest of the Federal Reserve Board does not want to slash interest rates right now. And Jerome Powell, who hates him, is still on the board and is still attempting to manage a kind of rear flank resistance to Trump's control over the Fed. So who knows, there's going to be some pretty dramatic clashes, my guess, fairly soon between some combination of Trump, Warsh and the rest of the Federal Reserve Board. And we will keep you informed.
- [48:57]
A
Nice.
- [48:59]
B
Speaking of money and taxes, giving Trump
- [49:04]
C
allies control of massive pools of money and that.
- [49:07]
B
And that.
- [49:08]
D
Yeah. Of our tax money. Thank you.
- [49:10]
B
On Monday, President Trump dropped his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS after he negotiated with Trump administration.
- [49:17]
D
Nice man.
- [49:18]
B
To create a 1.8 billion dollar fund to compensate victims of political, quote, unquote, weaponization.
- [49:26]
D
Yeah.
- [49:27]
B
The lawsuit Trump levied against Trump's government alleged the IRS failed to prevent a contractor from leaking his tax returns in 2019, when Trump was also president. Part of the settlement. This is wild, right? I. I have to like. This is. This is wild. You know, a headline.
- [49:46]
A
It's.
- [49:46]
D
It's very. It's incredible.
- [49:47]
B
Trump, Trump wins lawsuits against government.
- [49:51]
D
Yeah. Against Trump's irs.
- [49:53]
A
Yeah.
- [49:54]
B
You know, technically they didn't win the lawsuit. It was settled. And part of the settlement is this $1.8 billion fund.
- [50:02]
D
Garrison. 1.776 billion. Come on, Come on.
- [50:11]
B
I was rounding up.
- [50:11]
A
That's right, baby.
- [50:12]
C
I hate this world.
- [50:13]
A
Yeah. In this case, Garrison is unacceptable to round up because they had something they were going for there. It would be a shame to miss it.
- [50:22]
D
They were cooking. They thought.
- [50:23]
B
So this fight is for people who believe they victims of political weaponization by the doj. Yeah. Acting AG Todd Blanche said, quote, it is this department's intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again, unquote. Blanche himself will appoint a five member committee to evaluate weaponization claims submitted by the public. So this is basically a scheme to usurp Congress's power of the purse by literally weaponizing the judicial process. But this story actually gets crazier.
- [50:59]
C
Oh, yeah.
- [51:00]
B
Another part of Trump's settlement against Trump is that the DOJ has pledged that Trump and his two eldest sons are to be forever exempt from tax audits by the irs.
- [51:15]
A
It's amazing.
- [51:16]
B
Quote, the United States releases, waives, acquits, and forever discharges each of the plaintiffs from and is hereby forever barred and precluded from prosecuting or pursuing any and all claims, unquote dang credible. Now, a DOJ spokesperson later told the Financial Times that this exemption only applies to existing audits. But that's not really what the document says, and that's not what the Trump administration is saying outside of this one statement from a DOJ spokesperson. So who knows?
- [51:50]
C
Again, Julius Caesar didn't do this shit. Like, what are we doing here?
- [51:54]
A
Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [51:56]
D
It's again, the standard for a long time previously was that like the President and VP were audited like yearly because it's just like what you do, like in a democracy, just because you. It should be built into the system, that you don't trust that the President isn't corrupt, that's a bad idea.
- [52:14]
B
Speaking of corruption, the whole idea of settling a lawsuit yourself against yourself, it's.
- [52:22]
A
Yeah. Using everyone's money.
- [52:25]
D
I would, I would sue myself a lot. I'm gonna be honest with you, Garrison. I'm gonna be honest.
- [52:30]
B
I don't like what the. I didn't know he could do that. I did.
- [52:36]
A
I just.
- [52:40]
C
This has somehow managed to turn me into a. They made Jimmy Carter gave up his peanut farm live like.
- [52:46]
B
Yes.
- [52:46]
A
No.
- [52:47]
B
That was literally what I was thinking.
- [52:50]
A
Like Bill Clinton. Not the most. Not exactly analogous, but like Bill Clinton used to cross the street to use a different phone to avoid transgressing the Hatch Act. Yeah. And now we're here.
- [53:01]
D
Absurd.
- [53:02]
A
Yeah. Yeah. I'm not a Bill Clinton fan, but. Yeah. Come on.
- [53:06]
D
But just thinking about the difference in severity between how Monica Gate, which is what it was literally called often at the time, was treated and how the, the president creating a $1.776 billion slush fund.
- [53:20]
C
Yeah.
- [53:21]
D
For people who tried to do an insurrection, is being treated like it's, it's insane.
- [53:25]
B
Yeah.
- [53:26]
A
Right.
- [53:26]
B
And that's, that's the other thing we should mention.
- [53:27]
C
Right.
- [53:27]
B
This is going to be mostly used by people who are prosecuted for their involvement in the January 6th insurrection. These funds are not going to be granted to like left wing activists who are. Who are being prosecuted by Trump's DOJ for political targeting. Like come.
- [53:41]
D
Although there might be some lawsuits around that. I mean, we'll see. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has said that Democrats are going to fight every element of the self dealing measure. Not only is this another heinously corrupt act by the most corrupt administration in history, it's clearly a violation of the law that prohibits interference by executive branch officials in IRS audits. So we'll see if any of that is successful.
- [54:01]
A
Good luck.
- [54:01]
D
I'm not against trying, but it's not my odds on bet, you know.
- [54:04]
A
Yeah.
- [54:05]
D
It's not to demean the effort. I'm just trying to be reasonable here.
- [54:09]
A
Yeah. We can dream.
- [54:12]
B
Back in 2019, when I was in film school, I was interviewing a federal judge.
- [54:18]
A
Wow.
- [54:18]
D
Humble brag, huh?
- [54:19]
B
For some, like, documentary project. And, and, and she talked about, you're right, this is in 2019. So Trump won. She talked about how she thinks that it's really going to be the judicial system that saves us from authoritarianism. This, this is, this is our, this is the last line of defense we have against a dictator.
- [54:36]
D
Judge thinks their job good. To be fair, I knew a lot of journalists who are like the press
- [54:45]
B
will save us
- [54:48]
C
back in reality. Like the Supreme Court just like repealed the Voting Rights act and that's what I was.
- [54:54]
B
That's what I'm getting to.
- [54:55]
A
Yeah.
- [54:56]
B
On Friday, the U.S. supreme Court rejected Democrats emergency appeal in the Virginia redistricting case, leaving the decision by the state Supreme Court to block the new voter approved house map in place. The U.S. supreme Court offered no explanation in their brief one sentence unsigned memo
- [55:14]
C
that, that, that might be the shortest shadow docket yet, which is insulting because they were already like one paragraph.
- [55:20]
A
Yeah.
- [55:21]
B
The Virginia Supreme Court ruled the new map violated the state constitution via procedural error during the referendum process. Now I, I often think about the, the conversation I had with this, with this federal judge in 2019 as all this stuff's been happening. I'm like, I would really love to talk with her again. I should maybe try to track her down and like ask because.
- [55:42]
A
Yeah.
- [55:43]
B
Oh boy.
- [55:45]
A
Yeah. Like how do you conceive of yourself now? Like your role in this?
- [55:49]
C
Yeah. How do you function ideologically as a person whose job it is to do the law? When the Supreme Court has said that Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution, when it says that Congress can pass laws to regulate elections, does not actually apply to Congress passing a law to regulate elections. Like what do you do after that in order, in order to make it so that black people don't get a vote?
- [56:08]
A
Yeah. Like, where do you put your ideology now?
- [56:10]
D
It's all fake.
- [56:12]
A
Yeah.
- [56:12]
C
God, I'm extremely angry about this.
- [56:16]
B
I mean, around that time was when, you know, partisan gerrymandering was like explicitly allowed by the Supreme Court. I mean, you can, yeah, we can track a lot of, a lot of the stuff to, to that ruling as well.
- [56:28]
D
Right.
- [56:28]
B
And this was. Yeah, I think that was, that was around 2019. Between 2019 and 2021.
- [56:33]
A
Shall we move on to the war, which is not a war in Iran?
- [56:39]
B
I believe we shall.
- [56:41]
A
Okay, well, we'll start at the start of this week. Just gone, I guess, where the President set a deadline for strikes, about which we found out through a series of AI generated images and then back down from it at the urging of all that's in the region as talks continue. Meanwhile, Iran has not stopped using drones and missiles to attack Kurdish groups, largely Iranian Kurdish groups in Southern Kurdistan.
- [57:08]
B
Indigenously produced missiles.
- [57:10]
A
Yes. We're going to talk about indigenous production later.
- [57:15]
D
Yes.
- [57:16]
A
Okay. Okay. All right, I see what you're doing. Trump on Monday said he would hold off the quote unquote scheduled attacks. Meanwhile, Iran has opened an x account using x.com, the Everything website for the Persian Gulf Strait Authority. A direct contravention of my desire to not make this segment. Twitter review.
- [57:38]
B
This is the worst episode we've done in a while.
- [57:41]
D
It is like, this is, you know,
- [57:44]
A
when they, you know, 28 days later when it opens and all this bad shit is just like clicking through. Yeah, that's every week now.
- [57:51]
B
Every new sentence one of us says, I just, my. My headache grows a little. A little bit, a little bit bigger.
- [57:56]
C
Like, longing for the halcyon days. We thought that 2020 was the worst year ever.
- [58:01]
D
People are nostalgic for 2020 now. Folks are getting hopeful about the hantavirus out there.
- [58:06]
B
Oh, yeah. Please God.
- [58:10]
A
So, yes, Iran's X account for the pgsa, the Persian Gulf Strait Authority is claiming that it has established a controlled maritime zone in the straight hashtag, the Strait of Hormuz. Hormuzestrate. If you want to get in on that conversation.
- [58:27]
B
Why would you hashtag it that? This isn't important.
- [58:30]
A
You are the Islamic Republic of Iran and what you are doing is creating a hashtag because Donald Trump has bombed you for three months without declaring war yet. Like, what a world. What a time to be alive. Meanwhile, CBS see again every fucking sentence, man.
- [58:51]
B
Only the best. Only the best.
- [58:53]
A
Oh, man, oh man. Every time I see, I see it full stop. I want to just go and walk into the ocean. If I did, I might eventually float to the Strait of Hormuz, where CBS is reporting that the U.S. has identified 10 naval mines. I spoke to my mind guy that this is the life I lead.
- [59:15]
D
His mind guy, the Supreme Leader of the ra.
- [59:19]
A
Mind guy. It's gonna be my new biography.
- [59:23]
D
You could DM the old Ayatollah on Twitter. It's possible you can get the new one already. There's no way to know. Although the old one never got back to me about whether or not he liked anime. So that remains an unanswered question.
- [59:33]
A
He would post about American sports. It's very funny. These are the Maham 3 and 7 minds. So the 7 minds here are the particularly advanced ones. They apparently can absorb some sonar, making them very hard to detect. And they can go off when you're searching for them. Neither of these are contact mines, right? The Mahomet Threes, for example, they're mid water floating, whereas sevens are going to be on the bottom. They can go off using a number of different sensors. Like the Mahama Threes could go off using magnetic or acoustic sensors when a ship is nearby. So you don't even have to directly bump them, which is great. If they have found 10, one assumes that there are actually tons more than that. We are now waiting until something bumps into one.
- [60:19]
C
Great.
- [60:19]
A
For a long time there was like Schrodinger's mines. Right. Now the mines are there, the mines are real. So the cat is out of the box.
- [60:29]
D
No, no, James. I seem to recall several weeks ago Donald Trump said Iran's offensive capability has been completely degraded.
- [60:36]
A
That's correct, yeah. No navy, no boats. So they must have got these very quickly in the initial after the strikes began, I guess. And it just took this long to find.
- [60:44]
D
Well, sometimes sea turtles lay particularly explosive eggs, but Donald Trump can't be expected to have anticipated that.
- [60:51]
B
Well.
- [60:52]
C
And we've already denied the suicide dolphin program, so we couldn't stop the sea turtles.
- [60:56]
A
Yeah. Well, these are not suicide dolphins. Right. What if these dolphins intended to live another day?
- [61:00]
D
The homicide dolphins.
- [61:02]
C
Yeah, the homicide dolphins.
- [61:05]
A
That'd be a good band name.
- [61:07]
D
Or like the dolphin from seaQuest.
- [61:08]
A
Reach out to me if Homicide dolphins is the name, if you're banned, Reach
- [61:11]
D
out to me if you like seaQuest.
- [61:13]
A
Ye. Like a lot of Iranian military technology, these are entirely copied.
- [61:17]
D
Right.
- [61:18]
A
I think there's like Norwegian, Swedish mines and French minds. But Iran does this a lot. Right. It sort of plagiarizes other people's military technology.
- [61:27]
D
Yeah. Like a smart person does. Yeah, yeah. Like the US did. Like everyone does if they see someone else make a good weapon. That's how war works.
- [61:38]
A
Yeah. And the Iranians do it in a more direct way than most. I will say. They don't even pretend. But why, if the world has cut you off with sanctions anyway, what have you got to.
- [61:45]
D
What else are you going to do?
- [61:46]
A
From my PC?
- [61:48]
D
This isn't like fucking Android copying shit from iPhone's code or whatever. This is just how war works.
- [61:54]
A
Yeah. What are they going to do? Bomb them? Yeah.
- [61:57]
D
We never. We didn't sue the USSR for plagiarism when they got a nuke. Like that's not how this works.
- [62:02]
A
Yeah. I'm sure some like French guys are mad about it, but yeah, not going to change.
- [62:07]
D
Yeah.
- [62:08]
A
Let's talk about the reporting from the NYT today that Israel intended to install Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the new leader of Iran. And the way that they intended to do this fucking.
- [62:19]
D
Of course.
- [62:20]
A
And I think this is particularly telling of the idf. They bombed his house. Yeah.
- [62:25]
D
That's the only thing they know how to do, James.
- [62:28]
A
Yeah. It says when you only have a hammer, the world is a nail.
- [62:32]
D
When I Read that. It made me think this great comedian, now dead, Bill Hicks, had a bit during the Gulf War, the first Gulf War, where he was, like, talking about the amazing guided missiles the US has that we could, like, fire down chimneys. And he was like, couldn't we theoretically use that technology to shoot food into the mouths of hungry people? I thought about that when I read that story.
- [62:56]
A
Unfortunately, they injured Ahmadinejad. There's no shit. Of course they injured again. Yeah. Because it's Israel. Right. And, like, there's nothing they love to do more than they kill a Ranger or a Muslim person. And so, yeah, spectacularly, they attempted to install Ahmadinejad, a guy who wanted to wipe Israel off the map, into power in Iran.
- [63:17]
D
This guy was the devil. If you remember, if you watched the news when he was first president of Iran, this guy was the devil also.
- [63:26]
A
A massive pusher of their nuclear program. Yeah, like, fascinating.
- [63:32]
C
Probably the world's most famous horde liner.
- [63:35]
D
Yeah.
- [63:35]
C
Maybe he's just.
- [63:36]
A
Maybe he's the only guy they knew about.
- [63:38]
C
Like.
- [63:38]
A
Right. Like, do they have some incredible compromise?
- [63:41]
D
They just have no other names.
- [63:43]
B
I mean, this is part of Israel's strategy, though. They want aggression to increase so they have justification to, like, take over the region and, like, crack down, like, even harder. Like, this is. That was part of their strategy with Hamas for years.
- [63:52]
A
Yeah, sure. But they already have justification. They're already killing a bunch of people in Iran.
- [63:56]
B
Like, they could try to rope in even more countries, broken more people. Like, like, this is like a scaling issue.
- [64:02]
A
They are the accelerationists of the. Of the international.
- [64:05]
D
No.
- [64:06]
B
Really?
- [64:06]
A
Yeah.
- [64:06]
C
Genuinely?
- [64:07]
A
No. We also found out that Israel low key invaded Iraq, setting up two bases in the Iraqi desert and shooting at Iraqi troops and civilians who came near them.
- [64:17]
B
Hey, guys. Israel low key invaded Iraq.
- [64:21]
A
Yeah, yeah, that's me. I am here to maintain our youth audience by using the language that they understand.
- [64:28]
D
Yeah, that's good.
- [64:30]
A
Let's talk about the Senate. On Tuesday, the Senate advanced a resolution, quote, to direct the removal of the United States armed forces from hostilities with or against the Islamic Republic of Iran that have not been authorized by Congress. This is more of a rebuke than anything with a reasonable chance of actually stopping the war, but still significant. Significant because Bill Cassidy crossed party lines after losing his primary election in which Trump campaigned against him.
- [64:55]
C
Him.
- [64:55]
B
Only after losing, though.
- [64:57]
A
Yeah, right. Yeah. After this guy has destroyed your whole life, you. You suddenly grow a backbone.
- [65:02]
D
That makes sense.
- [65:03]
A
He was joined by Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Rand Paul of Kentucky. While of Course. Do you guys want to guess which festering turd of a Democrat senator crossed the other way?
- [65:14]
C
Fetterman.
- [65:15]
A
Yes. Yeah, of course.
- [65:17]
D
When you said festering, I thought of Fetterman.
- [65:19]
A
Okay. Okay. Well, we can.
- [65:21]
C
It's always Fetterman.
- [65:23]
A
I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nicole again, Festerman in the chat.
- [65:28]
D
Good stuff.
- [65:29]
A
John Cornyn of Texas, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama and Tom Tillis of North Carolina didn't vote, which allowed the vote to pass. In practice, even if the resolution passed the House, I guess the president could veto it if you wanted to. It's interesting that they've been gradually peeling off Republicans. Right. Makowski switched last week, Cassidy this week. I don't think the non voting was as much about this as they just didn't vote at all that day. But Cassidy, we can see why. Right. Collins and Mikowski are the ones who they talk about, like swinging a lot. Rand Paul is plowing his own lonely furrow as he always has. But it's interesting that they have. They've gradually peeled these people away from the Republican Party. Meanwhile, in Nigeria, the United States has carried out a series of strikes against Islamic State targets. They killed Abu Bakr Al Manuki, someone who went by several other names. You'll see a lot of other names in impressors. He definitely was solidifying a power within the West Africa province as the Islamic State and definitely becoming globally relevant, especially, you know, post territorial caliphate in, in Iraq and Syria.
- [66:35]
B
Yeah, this is the stuff that, that most of that counterterrorism strategy document was writing about.
- [66:41]
A
Yeah. And they have been pursuing this into Nigeria for some time. I wrote last Christmas about them winding up for groan strikes. Right. Since then they've stationed troops. There's Trump's statement was, as always, somewhat incomprehensible. Trump said he had been hiding in Africa. That man had obviously lived in Africa his entire life, never left. Trump called him second in command globally. That's not outside the realm of possibility. But it's also not clear.
- [67:06]
D
Right.
- [67:06]
A
There's not like a direct pyramid chart that we can go to. It was a joint US Nigerian operation. We saw overhead videos. Looks to me like it's from a drone. It seems like there was a helicopter component, potentially a ground component as well. The U.S. of course, has had special and conventional forces in Africa for decades. But this is still a remarkable strike for them. It will be maybe the first of many. It seems like they were doing several almost every day this week, judging by the CENTCOM media release page, which I will link in the sources. Well, go ahead and email us. Go on.
- [67:41]
D
Yep.
- [67:42]
A
Cool Zone tips at Proton Me sure
- [67:46]
B
we reported the news.
- [67:48]
C
Arguably put a trans girl on your couch.
- [67:51]
B
RIP Stephen Colbert Is he dead?
- [67:55]
A
We reported the news.
- [68:04]
C
It could happen.
- [68:05]
A
Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our Visit our website coolzone media.com
- [68:12]
C
or check us out on the iHeartRadio
- [68:14]
A
app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources where it
- [68:19]
C
could happen here listed directly in Episode Descriptions.
- [68:21]
D
Thanks for listening.
- [68:28]
B
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [68:30]
A
Guaranteed Human.