Loading summary
Transcript620 lines
- [00:00]
Andrew Sage
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:02]
Iris Palmer
Guaranteed Human if the world were like a Sleep Number mattress, everything would adapt for your comfort. Because as your life changes and your body changes, Sleep number mattresses adapt and shift to give you personalized comfort night after night. And now everything's on sale during our Memorial Day event. Save up to $1,200 on mattresses for a limited time. To experience a whole new world of comfort, visit a Sleep Number store or go to sleepnumber.com Sleep Good Life Sleep
- [00:36]
James Stout
American Soccer is about to explode.
- [00:38]
Garrison Davis
The World cup is coming. Ramos sending on Ernie Stewart the chip.
- [00:45]
Robert Evans
I'm Tab Ramos.
- [00:47]
Garrison Davis
I'm Tom Boke. On our podcast, Inside American Soccer, you'll
- [00:50]
James Stout
get the real storylines, the biggest decisions, and the truth about the U.S. national team.
- [00:56]
Robert Evans
It wouldn't be a huge surprise if
- [00:58]
Garrison Davis
our team ends up in the quarterfinals
- [00:59]
Unknown Guest 1
or potentially a great run into the semifinals.
- [01:02]
James Stout
Listen to Inside American Soccer with Tom
- [01:04]
Garrison Davis
Boger and Tab ramos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:10]
Iris Palmer
Working full time and thinking about graduate school, Post University offers flexible online graduate programs built for working professionals with personalized support. Continue your education on your terms. Become a Post person. Learn more at Post.
- [01:26]
Unknown Guest 1
Yes you can. A five minute quick and easy calorie burning workout. Give it a try.
- [01:32]
James Stout
Come join our sweat sesh on TikTok.
- [01:43]
Garrison Davis
Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to
- [02:02]
Unknown Guest 2
be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Hey everybody, this is it could happen here. And I am Robert Evans and initially
- [02:13]
Garrison Davis
this was supposed to be a slightly different episode.
- [02:16]
Unknown Guest 2
I have been pondering over the fact that recently that I feel weirdly optimistic, particularly in the last couple of weeks,
- [02:23]
Garrison Davis
especially compared to a lot of the
- [02:24]
Unknown Guest 2
people that I know and spend time around. And I think it's because I've been interpreting some of the same pieces of news differently than they have, and because I've been coming across some different pieces of information than they have. And I wanted to kind of walk people through why I've been feeling so optimistic. And so I wrote something and I recorded it around Thursday of last week and then over the weekend a gunman attacked the White House correspondence dinner. And actually this hasn't really changed any of my overall feelings we'll talk about that this week, probably on ed. But I did make some alterations to
- [03:01]
Garrison Davis
the episode as a result of that,
- [03:02]
Unknown Guest 2
although I do think it reinforces my primary point, which is that the political era that we now find ourselves in is one dominated by extremophiles.
- [03:12]
Andrew Sage
Extremophiles are organisms with unique cellular and molecular mechanisms that allow them to survive and thrive in extreme habitats. I'm talking about places like volcanic vents at the very bottom of the ocean, or the Dead Sea. If you've ever wondered why it's called the Dead Sea, it's because for a very long time people thought it was too salty to host any life. Modern research has disabused us of this notion. The Dead Sea hosts life. It's just weird life, because the Dead Sea is a weird place. The term extremophile was coined in 1974 by R.D. mcElroy to describe microorganisms scientists were increasingly finding in places that should have been devoid of life. The word is a hybrid term that literally means love of extremes. And while it is usually used in a scientific context to describe small organisms in very odd locations, some experts have over the years pointed out that the label might well apply to humans too. In the journal article All About Extremophiles, Johns Hopkins University's James A. Coker wrote that despite common perception, most of Earth is what is often referred to as an extreme environment. Yet to the organisms that call these places home, it is simply that home. They have adapted to thrive in these environments, and in the process have evolved many unique adaptations at the molecular and atomic level. In our human centric view of the planet Earth, we tend to think of ourselves as being in the Goldilocks zone, not too hot or too cold, protected from radiation, and filled with all the things necessary for life to exist. To some extent this is true. However, this view keeps us from acknowledging several basic facts, including that the Earth is mostly a cold place. Over 90% of its oceans are at or below 5 degrees Celsius, and it has an average temperature of around 15 degrees Celsius. And several conditions we humans consider normal, that is 20% oxygen in the air, actually make us extremophiles from the point of view of other species. Now, I have a bad tendency to want to apply literal knowledge like this metaphorically, to my understanding of politics. It's a bit of a sickness, but it also makes more sense sometimes than you'd expect. There's a tendency among many millennials and even Gen Z and Alpha kids too young to have known the 90s to look back on that decade as a sort of cultural Goldilocks zone, as if the brief period post Cold war and pre 911 was some sort of cultural peak for our species, and everything since has been a slow downhill slide. People have different reasons for this. Some of them blame 9 11. Some people will argue that we were in that sweet spot where the Internet existed and could tap you into cool and interesting things, but social media hadn't come along yet and ruined it all. You know, different people come up with different justifications for this, but this view keeps people from acknowledging some very basic facts about the 1990s, which is that they were full of genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia, just to name two, and repeated US military adventures and misadventures in other parts of the globe, some of which ended disastrously, as in Mogadishu. Our president for much of the 90s was a sex pest and and members of the far right staged a series of bloody terrorist attacks, including the Oklahoma City bombing and Olympic park bombing. And while all this was happening, a new and more openly extremist Republican Party captured Congress, while hapless, outmaneuvered Democrats gawked in awe. The reality is that the 90s were a time of extremity, of extreme weirdness and darkness, just like every other period of human existence. And the extremity of the era helped birth a new conservative movement, one radical enough to wrench power from the liberals and bring us ultimately into the slavering jaws of the Bush era. Today, those same neoconservatives seem tame next to their modern descendants, the MAGA movement. But in their own time, they were the craziest bastards out there. And this hits at a fundamental reality in American politics. If survival in extreme times requires extreme adaptations, then it's no wonder that for much of our lives, the extremists are the ones who have primarily thrived electorally. Democrats like to forget this, but Bill Clinton felt like a pretty big swing to folks exiting the era of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. bush, just as Barack Obama was seen as the most extreme choice imaginable by roughly half of this country. In fact, he was such an extreme choice that the conservative movement had to birth the Tea Party and eventually the MAGA movement in order to unseat the Democratic Party and repeal the changes from the Obama years in power. I like thinking about this stuff because I find it interesting that one common theme from evolutionary biology to modern politics is in extreme environments, extreme adaptations are necessary to survive. We Homo sapiens have been in the business of extreme adaptations for as long as we've existed. That's all. Central heating and air, vaccines, antibiotics and the AR15 are adaptations to extreme environments and situations, many of them extreme environments and situations that we created for ourselves. The problem is, our adaptations have a nasty tendency to drive even more extreme circumstances, which in turn foster further adaptations, and so on and so forth until we invent the Internet and satellite guided thermonuclear bombs. Extreme adaptations are not always good. But once you've found yourself thrown into an extreme environment, you can't just wish the weather was different. You've got to adapt. That's the bad news about our current political situation. The good news is that the pendulum has started to swing back our way. The extremism of the Trump era is provoking its own equal but opposite reaction, and you can see the first stirrings of that in the popularity of Zoran Mamdani, or the fact that a former pillow of neoconservatism like Bill Kristol is currently advocating for the abolition of ice. We are in the process of deciding the next extreme that will dominate American politics, which means we have the opportunity to adapt with policies and changes that are every bit as good as the ones the Trump administration has forced force through our bad. To do that, we're going to have to be brave and we're going to have to start getting our shit together now, because this window of opportunity won't last long.
- [09:14]
Garrison Davis
The way I see it, the GOP
- [09:16]
Unknown Guest 2
entered office this time around intent on waging the political equivalent of a shock and awe campaign. They burnt up any goodwill or benefit of the doubt they might have had in an orgy of careless and brutal cuts to basic government functions carried out by the least sympathetic group of groipers imaginable, one of whom was nicknamed Big Balls.
- [09:35]
Garrison Davis
A flurry of state and local legislative
- [09:37]
Unknown Guest 2
pushes and criminal investigations aimed at hurting left wing activists and queer, particularly trans people, have done tremendous damage, as have relentless ICE raids on mostly non white Americans. It's been bad, and yet we're still here. I won't pretend we're in a good situation today, not at least in terms of what we'd like good to mean in the everyday sense of the word. Many of us haven't survived the first 16 months or so of the second Trump presidency. Fewer of us are going to make it to the end. But this regime came to power with the knowledge that their success or failure hinged on speed and violence of action. They had a limited window to make resistance impossible, and they missed it.
- [10:16]
Andrew Sage
You can see some evidence of this in our war of choice against Iran. President Trump wanted a quick, brutal triumph that would look good on the evening news, so he told his military to bear down on Iran with all the speed and violence of action they could muster. That plan failed, and the reasons why are weirdly similar to how the Republican Party has overplayed their hand in our ongoing culture war. Back in Trump's first term, the DoD established the algorithmic Warfare Cross Functional Team, nicknamed Project Maven. The goal of the project, as per Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, was to automate the analysis of drone footage and other data humans previously would have gone over by hand in order to speed up the rate at which targets were identified and struck in wartime. Project Maven, from the jump was a product of the worst kind of military thinking. How can we automate as much of our planning of warfare as possible? This is the kind of project you pursue when your finest military minds still believe that victory is as simple as killing or destroying a preset number of bad guys, causing them to give up. The goal was to create a system that could collate and synthesize huge quantities of data in order to allow 1,000 targeting decisions per hour. Kevin Baker, writing for the Guardian, notes that this means 3.6 seconds per decision, or, from the individual targeteer's perspective, one decision every 72 seconds. Now we're going to talk about where this kind of thinking has led us in our conflict with Iran. But first, here's some ads.
- [11:54]
Garrison Davis
We're back.
- [11:56]
Andrew Sage
Now if you listen to the advocates of this kind of military buildup, the people who are really bullish on AI for military purposes talk in their podcasts and on their blogs. The reasoning behind why you need to be able to make a thousand targeting decisions per hour is pretty obvious. They're obsessed with the idea that a future war between the US and a peer or near peer adversary, most prominently China.
- [12:19]
Robert Evans
Right?
- [12:20]
Andrew Sage
That's what they're planning on.
- [12:21]
Garrison Davis
Now.
- [12:21]
Andrew Sage
The Chinese military is also heavily invested in AI. There was a major New York Times article earlier this month, in April of 2026, titled Mutually Automated Destruction the Escalating Global AI Arms Race. I'm going to quote from that. Now China and Russia are experimenting with letting AI make battlefield decisions on its own. Two US Officials said China is developing systems for dozens of autonomous drones to coordinate attacks without human thought, while Russia is building Lancet drones that can circle the sky and autonomously pick targets. They said even as the specifics of the technologies remain veiled, the intentions are clear in 2017, Mr. Putin declared that whoever leads in AI will become the
- [12:57]
Garrison Davis
ruler of the world.
- [12:58]
Andrew Sage
Mr. Z said in 2024 that the technology would be the main battleground of geopolitical competition. In January, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed all branches of the US Military to adopt AI, saying they needed to accelerate like hell. Now, my interpretation of what I've read from most of these guys is that they see future conflict as a massive but almost instantaneous chess game. Right? Whoever has the AI that can most quickly and effectively sort through their intelligence, come up with target packages and then strike those targets first, wins.
- [13:30]
Garrison Davis
Right?
- [13:31]
Andrew Sage
If we can make a thousand decisions and a thousand strikes in an hour and they can only make 800, then we'll destroy more of them and we'll win the war.
- [13:38]
Robert Evans
Right?
- [13:38]
Garrison Davis
It'll all be decided right at the start.
- [13:40]
Andrew Sage
And this may well be how a shooting war between China and the US would proceed. But given that very few people in either country want that war to happen because it would kill us all, I think we might do best focusing on the war our country is currently fighting, where this logic has resulted in a catastrophic failure for at least the second time in my life. In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq. After more than a year of buildup and years of intelligence gathering, our military planners put together a list of 50 high value targets. The idea was if we could use our incredible super advanced spying equipment and our precision guided weapons to wipe out the most important figures of resistance in Iraq, we could hobble any response to the invasion. All 50 targets were struck. None of the people targeted were killed.
- [14:25]
Garrison Davis
Now that doesn't mean no one was killed.
- [14:26]
Andrew Sage
It just means we missed all the people we thought we were going to hit. To quote from Kevin Baker's great article, again, the targeting cycle had been fast enough to hit 50 buildings and too fast to discover it was hitting the wrong ones. Fast forward to earlier this year. The Trump administration orders the launch of Operation Epic Fury and unleashed a nightmare arsenal of hyper advanced weaponry on on the people and leaders of Iran alongside the Israeli Air force. In the first two weeks, US forces hit 6,000 targets picked with the help of Project Maven. One of them was the Manob Girls Elementary School which was destroyed by a missile, killing 156 and wounding 95. Now Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir's Hyper Advanced AI and a multi billion dollar network of satellites backed up by decades of intelligence gathering by the CIA and the Mossad wasn't enough to stop us from striking a school that that we knew contained none of our targets. We had data that the people we thought were there at one point were no longer there, and it was a school now. But some of the data maven relied on was old and outdated. And these machines aren't capable of real judgment in the way we think of it. And because people trusted them so much, no one thought to check before ordering the strikes. This is a human error. This is not an AI error. But it illustrates a massive flaw in the fantasy that winning a war could be as easy as building a smarter machine. Now, to be accurate, and it is important to note, a lot of those 6,000 targets were what we thought, and they were accurately struck and killed. In the opening salvo of the war, President Trump and his mouthpieces celebrated their successful assassination of Iran's supreme leader. Alongside many other prominent military and governmental officials, this seemed at first to be way more successful than the opening strikes against Iraq.
- [16:08]
Garrison Davis
They didn't get any of those 50 guys.
- [16:10]
Andrew Sage
We got a bunch of our initial targets in this first wave of strikes. Maybe we just didn't have the right technology when we invaded Iraq. Maybe now we're doing it right.
- [16:18]
Garrison Davis
You know, finally we'll be able to
- [16:20]
Andrew Sage
win a war this way. However, that quickly proved untrue. All of those strikes put together were not enough to break Iran's will or its capacity to fight and fight back effectively. Now Donald Trump finds himself trapped in an expensive quagmire, one that is already bleeding him advanced munitions and equipment while it crashes the global economy. The most recent AP NORC poll puts Trump's overall approval at 33%, which is down 5% since just back in March. Only 32% of Americans approve of his leadership on Iran. Because most of this country can still see a man shooting himself in the
- [16:54]
Unknown Guest 2
dick for what it is.
- [16:56]
Andrew Sage
Pete Hegseth is our most lethality obsessed Secretary of Defense and history. And in him we see the result of a long sickness first incubated during the Vietnam War, when embarrassed generals needed to spin their failure to make progress as a kind of victory. So they turned to bragging about how many fighters they'd killed, inevitably defining many civilian dead as enemy combatants, and bragging about the tonnage of trucking that they destroyed based on wildly incomplete and inaccurate intelligence. Ever since this calamitous era, informed students of military theory have seen doing body counts as the death knell of a military entity's ability to make intelligent decisions that move their forces closer to victory. But because the entire conservative project in this country is built on the thoughtless worship of military prowess and power. We've seen this kind of thinking trickle down to the sorry cadre of influencers who call themselves right wing intellectuals today. I'm talking about dudes like Matt Walsh and Chris Ruffo who've built their reputations on picking targets to drum up mobs against and use as the basis of attack ads. These people have proven legitimately good at stirring up hate, enforcing laws all over the country, restricting things like drag shows or the use of chosen pronouns on government documents. All these people are by definition huge assholes, and so are their followers. And thus when those people get radicalized to take action in their communities, they make those communities worse. This pisses off their neighbors, which has resulted in significant backlash across the country. As an example, Moms for Liberty was formed in Florida on January 1, 2021 by Republican activists and former school board members who were outraged about pandemic safety protocols in schools. They became a vehicle for the parental rights movement, a nebulous and deeply toxic force in American political life that sees the parent as a kind of absolute sovereign over the life and mind of their child. Any influence that might lead that child to become a different kind of person than the parent envisions must be pruned away. The group used the then fresh moral panic over critical race theory as a lever from which to force themselves into American life. In June of 2021, they started filing what would become a long series of criminal complaints against books available in specific school libraries across the nation. Schools started removing books, and Moms for Liberty inspired candidates began winning school board elections around the country. It looked for a little while, like a popular wave of hysterical fear might yank America into a Fahrenheit 451 style future slightly ahead of schedule. But just a couple of years later, a funny thing happened. Moms for Liberty backed candidates started losing major elections. First, a series of school board races in 2023 in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Iowa. But even as the Biden administration careened towards a disastrous new election in 2024, one in which the far right seemed to have all the momentum, regular people kept rising up and organizing to protect their schools. One of the first was Karen Svoboda, a mother of seven in Dutchess County, New York. In 2023, she told NPR reporter Jim Zaroli, I looked into the local Facebook page of Moms for Liberty and just browsed through some of the social media of some of these individuals and what I saw was very upsetting. As a mom of kids who are members of that community, it was very concerning to think that these people would be trying to get onto the school board because what does that mean for my kids? So she started a group of her own, Defense of Democracy, which organized like minded parents in her community to warn each other about Moms for Liberty. They defeated an entire slate of Moms for Liberty backed candidates in 2023, all with the infrastructure of a Facebook page and weekly zoom calls. And the really remarkable thing is that Even while the 2024 election took over the national discourse and the Democratic Party completely shat the bed, people kept connecting and organizing in school districts across the country to fight for their children's educations. In November of 2025, the Houston suburb of Cypress, Texas saw Democratic candidates sweep three school board seats and take the majority, ending two years of Republican dominance. This trend was repeated elsewhere that same month, per a political article by Liz Crampton and Madison Fernandez Quote In Pennsylvania, Democrats slipped at least two dozen school board seats per an ongoing tally from progressive recruitment group Pipeline Fund. The under the radar trend was enabled by voters increasing weariness with the culture wars that helped the MAGA movement engineer school board takeovers and generate hyperlocal interest in politics as the COVID 19 pandemic raged. In addition to Texas, Republicans lost seats in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio and the national battleground of Pennsylvania, the result of well funded campaigns orchestrated by local leaders. Now one of my favorite details from that piece is a quote from one of the new school board members, Leslie Gilmart, who stated, folks just wanted their school boards to be boring again. They wanted normalcy. Once the board was taken over by a super partisan extremist majority, folks across the political spectrum were dismayed. Now I continue to be an advocate of the thought that Tim Walls might have made a more effective Vice presidential candidate if he'd kept calling the Republicans out for being freaks because they are. Their obsession with the lives and behavior of their fellow citizens and their naked slavering need to control their neighbors is upsetting and unnatural. The way I see it, we're in a time of incredible opportunity right now. The devil has played his hand and wound up slipping on a puddle of his own flop sweat along the way. The momentum is with anyone but these fucks, at least right now. Which is why a bunch of tertiary Trump supporters like Tucker Carlson have been cutting bait. Donald did the thing fascists often do. He kept reaching until he reached for something that exceeded his grasp. I don't know what's going to happen next in our absolutely unnecessary struggle with Iran. I think there's a non zero chance Trump tries to extricate our forces, save for some token so Israel won't say we abandon them, and tries to take out the Cuban government next. It's also possible he'll escalate the violence against Iran in some massive, apocalyptic, hideous way. In either case, the human cost will be nightmarish, but either action would just be the flailing of a busted gambler putting everything he has on a fantasy that Americans want to see foreign enemies broken while they can't afford to fill their car at home. Every poll of the American people seems to suggest that most of us have a pretty low appetite for unnecessary wars. Outside of Florida, it's hard to find regular people who are scared of the Cuban government. The idea that they represent any kind of threat to folks in Michigan or Kansas is absurd on its face. The further Trump reaches, the angrier people get. Fascist governments rely on the complicity of the masses even more than their enthusiastic support, and many Americans have proven themselves unwilling to be complicit in most of what the Heritage foundation and their friends want for this country. And that's a nice note to roll the ads on.
- [23:36]
Garrison Davis
We're back.
- [23:38]
Andrew Sage
If you want a direct example of how weak the cultural conservatives are right now, think back to the stunt President Trump pulled with DoorDash earlier in April. He ordered several bags and had them delivered by a dasher who was there to get photographed praising the President's no tax on tips policy.
- [23:52]
Garrison Davis
While they were standing outside the Oval
- [23:54]
Andrew Sage
Office, Trump asked the dasher if they thought trans woman should be allowed to compete in women's sports. And the dasher in question was 58 year old Sharon Simmons, who was a I mean, it's been widely reported, is a Republican activist. She'd previously spoken out in favor of the no tax on tips policy at the House Ways and Means Committee field hearing. And even when she was under the gun next to the President, Simmons wasn't willing to agree with him on the weird anti trans stuff. She replied, I don't really have an opinion on that, and I'm not here to call her a hero for that. She's not, but it shows a crack in the rhetorical wall these people have built for themselves. A Republican can't just support low taxes now they have to endorse a whole raft of psychotic vengeance politics and anti scientific views that are deeply alienating to anyone who has a chance of being called normal. Any discussion of life after Trump nowadays has to include an acknowledgment of the big, lurking question of our what if he won't give up power. And that's a bigger question than the just Trump. A large number of government officials, of elected leaders, military officers and law enforcement officers have implicated themselves in the crimes and what we might call the ought to be crimes of this administration. It's not unreasonable to ask what if they won't leave power without a fight? And I don't have a comprehensive answer for you that I feel comfortable putting in the last couple pages of a podcast script. But I will point out that just in the last month as I write this, Viktor Orban and his entire political movement faced sweeping defeat at the polls. Orban had been previously referred to as a quasi dictatorial figure. He was the leader of the Hungarian government and he had led a massive right wing crackdown that attacked schools, that attacked the LGBT movement, and that became a major funder for much of our own right wing movement. It's come out that the Orban government was sending money helping to fund cpac. They were sending money to specific right wing influencers like Rod Dreher. And despite the fact that Orban was the guy that people like Tucker Carlson a couple years ago was saying, this is the future of American politics. Urbanism is what we want. Despite that fact, when they lost an election, he and his cronies backed down without a fight. Now, ultimately they did this because they still think they're bulletproof, right? We've got enough people in the government that we can stop Peter Magyar, the new guy, from doing any damage to us, right? And thus temporarily leaving power is an acceptable sacrifice because that lets us avoid a civil war. And the rest of the EU won't look kindly on that. I'm sure that's a lot of their thinking. And obviously the US is in a very different position geopolitically.
- [26:17]
Unknown Guest 2
But the rapidity with which some former Trump stalwarts like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson have abandoned MAGA suggests one thing. They think it's more personally profitable for them to not be seen standing next to the President or the MAGA movement right now.
- [26:34]
Andrew Sage
And here's more good news. Remember how basically every social network is now owned by an openly evil right wing billionaire? Well, Americans have responded to this by discarding social media in ever growing numbers. This has been about one of the most consequential shifts of the last few years. And just this week, University of Amsterdam professor Peter Thornberg published a study on on shifts in U.S. social media use from 2020 to 2024. Quote, Online platform reach declined, driven by growth in the share of Americans, especially the youngest and oldest cohorts who report using no social media, visiting and posting activity on Twitter X and Facebook have fallen by nearly 50% since 2020, with the decline on Twitter X driven primarily by reduced participation among Democratic users. Now, this is, broadly speaking, a good thing for the mental health of Americans overall and for the future of our body politic. But the Americans who remain in social media aren't all doing so hot. Over the same time period, traffic on Twitter and Facebook grew markedly more right wing as both sites shrank. In his paper, Tornberg as casual users disengaged while polarized partisans remain vocal, online discourse becomes narrower and more ideologically extreme. Or in other words, as the algorithms that govern what gets seen on these shrinking social media sites reward more extreme content, less extreme users leave, and the ones who succeed and become more widely shared are the most extreme. It's, you know, another extremophile kind of situation. Part of why the people near Trump all believe they're winning is they live in these same Internet fever swamps, and they've gotten used to the Internet mattering a lot more than it does right now. I don't mean to suggest that what happens online isn't important, but that importance has been softened by the sheer deluge of AI slop, spam and weird right wing propaganda that we've been forcibly drowned in for years. Less people are using these things than they used to, which means their reach has declined because people find them off putting and gross. The data shows that folks, particularly over 65 and under 24, are increasingly fed up with not just social media, but the whole state of affairs we've been locked in politically. In the recent Virginia governor's race, Democrat Abigail Spanberger won by a comfortable margin. Republicans devoted a huge amount of their budget against her to anti trans attack ads, writing high off their inaccurate belief that anti trans propaganda had won Trump the re election in 2024, but only 4% of voters in that election listed transgender policies as a top issue. Now that alone might just point to the overwhelming impulse towards centrism shared by much of the American middle class. People don't like to stand out, particularly as a political radical. But a year after Spanberger's election, a majority of Virginia voters approved a radical redistricting measure. This was entirely framed as a response to the Republican Party fighting for the right to redistrict several states in their favor. The usual chorus of voices piped up to say, oh, I don't know guys, we shouldn't do the same thing they keep doing in order to defend ourselves. That doesn't seem fair. And this time, thank goodness, most people ignored them. The controversial measure outperformed Kamala Harris by eight points. And yes, a federal judge did immediately rule the measure unconstitutional. But you know how these things go. We're off to a series of court battles now, and however those end up, two useful things have been accomplished. The liberal majority of a state has banded together to fight the Republicans on their own terms, and a clear message has been sent to those same people that Republicans benefit from a different set of laws than Democrats. Now, any anarchist or leftist political organizer you've ever known would have told you that the right wing always benefits from an interpretation of the law that she shucks seems to deny their opponents the right to do the same things in self defense. It's bad that things work this way, but good for rank and file liberals to be reminded of that reality. If it weren't, the current gatekeepers of our news media wouldn't be rallying so hard against this measure. The same day I wrote all of this, the Washington Post published an opinion column by Theodore Johnson titled why Virginia Went Back on Its Word. It opens with a particularly idiotic paragraph. Partisanship did its best impression of democracy in Virginia. On Tuesday, voters approved a referendum permitting the state's congressional districts to be redrawn to help Democrats win four additional seats. It's retaliation to recent redistricting by Texas to hand Republicans five more seats at the behest of President Donald Trump. It's a red versus blue tit for tat over who can gerrymander more efficiently. A necessary evil, the parties say, to protect democracy. That's actually not necessarily. I mean, not that it's a necessary
- [31:02]
Garrison Davis
evil, the parties say.
- [31:03]
Andrew Sage
It's that one party was already doing this for years, the Republicans. And you didn't speak up the Washington Post. You know, this guy didn't write the same column when this shit's been happening other states. He only does it when Democrats do it in Virginia. Right, And I also might point out to Theo that a majority of voters approving a measure is democracy. You know, if your only concern is the overall health of democracy, redistricting that favors Democrats merely corrects a structural imbalance in our political system that favors loosely populated rural areas with an unfair proportion of political power and marginalizes the greater number of citizens who live in urban areas and tend to vote Democrat. Anyway. There are other good reasons to see hope for a fierce swing in American politics. Not merely back to the middle, but far to the Left simply as a matter of practical necessity, the Republicans have spent their time in power gutting the Parks Department, the. The Post Office, the va, the faa, and every other useful part of our state structure. And this is a big part of what's radicalized people because they very quickly come to notice that things are missing and shit is not working.
- [32:02]
Garrison Davis
Right.
- [32:03]
Andrew Sage
For decades, the government has been the enemy to millions of Americans who went out in the world and relied on government services every day of their lives. And yes, that's irritating and unfair. And no, we don't have time to fix that right now. What we can do is use the fact that the Republicans broke all these systems to point out to people, actually, you don't hate it when the government does stuff. You just hate the way Republicans run the government and the fact that the Democrats have usually been too scared to push for policies as extreme as they need to. Right. This is an opportunity to convince a lot of people. Oh, shit. Paying taxes to support a vibrant civil society with extensive and functional infrastructure is a lot better than letting big balls delete half of civil service.
- [32:45]
Robert Evans
Right?
- [32:46]
Unknown Guest 2
Like that's.
- [32:47]
Andrew Sage
I think, the opportunity we have right now. And pushing that basic line on as many Americans as possible in the next two years is, I think, one of the most important things we can do at the moment. Along with that, we need to keep building support for enforcement of consequences against the cadre of billionaires and their lackeys who have been robbing our shared heritage blind this whole while. If I had my way about it, I'd point out to people that there are an awful lot of billionaires who we knew colluded to take over the federal government and put something like Elon Musk's Doge in place. You can just see that in some of the texts between Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. These people are enemies of the state with an awful lot of money that we could confiscate to do things like replace the books Moms for Liberty tore out of public libraries. Now, we also need to see consequences for the criminals who have weaponized the organs of the state to fight their war against transgender Americans. This is an issue you can in fact get centrist voters to support. The average swing voter may not be particularly woke on gender theory, but. But they don't like seeing the government bully people who are just trying to get by. The widespread suffering created by the MAGA movement also creates potential for widespread solidarity between its victims. If the midterms go badly for the GOP and the 2028 elections go even worse, the USA's new elected officials and surviving citizens will find themselves in the same situation as the man who just unseated Viktor Orban and his supporters. We all learned how temporary a victory can be after 2024.
- [34:13]
Unknown Guest 2
I've seen more than a few comments online by liberals who decided Orban's defeat was a good time to attack a strawman caricature of a leftist, and these posts were generally laughing at this idea that a lot of people on the left express that electoralism can't defeat fascism. Now I do share a frustration with the blanket rejection of electoral politics that some people on the left champion, but every online and real life lefty that I know was thrilled to see Orban get the boot. However, they all did share a fear, and this is one fear that I've seen in common with every analyst and expert on Hungarian politics that I've read, which is winning the election isn't going to be enough for Magyar. Orban is an extremist, someone who took power because things were extremely shitty in Hungary and voters got angry enough to vote for a guy who promised to burn things down. They did come to regret that, but things are still extremely bad in Hungary. Joe Biden was a moderate who tried to govern in an environment of raging extremes. His promise was that he would bring things things back to the normal of the Obama era. He failed to do that because it's impossible, and his failure opened up the way for Trump 2.0. If we don't want to repeat that cycle, the failures and ultimate collapse of the MAGA movement have to be met with new strategies, new tactics and new politics as we seek to fill the void that they're going to leave behind. I wrote and recorded the first draft of this piece.
- [35:33]
Garrison Davis
As I said earlier, just a few
- [35:35]
Unknown Guest 2
days before a gunman stormed into the correspondence dinner. His manifesto has made it clear that he wanted to harm the president and members of his cabinet. Within hours, his social media accounts were archived and his life was put under a microscope, as always happens with gunmen these days. All of this revealed a liberal man, one who had previously expressed very common centrist opinions, including a dislike of firearms. I've seen this used by people to justify a conspiratorial narrative that immediately followed the attack.
- [36:04]
Andrew Sage
This guy is a perfect patsy. Obviously they cooked this up in a
- [36:07]
Unknown Guest 2
lab as an excuse to crack down on Democrats. I don't believe that, and here is not a place for an argument as to why. Again, we'll talk about that, I'm sure later.
- [36:14]
Garrison Davis
This week.
- [36:15]
Unknown Guest 2
What is interesting to me is that before any of this happened, I'd been planning to revise the ending of this episode by commenting on an article that came out in April of 2025.
- [36:24]
Garrison Davis
It's published by Axios and the title was Democrats Told to Get Shot for
- [36:29]
Unknown Guest 2
the Anti Trump Resistance. Here's a quote from that article at town halls in their districts and in one on one meetings with constituents and activists, Democratic members of Congress are facing a growing thrum of demands to break the rules, fight dirty, and not be afraid to get hurt. One of the lawmakers that they talked to for that article related a conversation that he'd had in a meeting with the constituent quote, I actually said in a meeting, when they light a fire, my thought is grab an extinguisher. And someone at the table said, have you tried gasoline? So many regular liberals are embracing extreme rhetoric and measures today because they know on some level that that's the only way you survive in an extreme environment. We see this in the thousands of normies in Minneapolis who have been willing and eager to confront armed federal agents in bathrobes and risk their own life and limb to protect their neighbors from ice. And we've also seen a very dark reflection of that in the actions of that gunman last weekend. Now, the fact that an educated and informed 31 year old man decided to buy a firearm that he hated and attacked the President represents many failures. One of them is a failure of the Democratic Party and the liberal project to provide him with anything that felt like a useful outlet for his rage and hopelessness. When people start talking and acting like this guy was acting, you can either throw your hands up and back away, or you can try like hell to present them with a counter offer. In this case, I mean a set of policies, activist campaigns, and organized actions to make this country a less horrific place. The victory and wild popularity of Zoran Mamdani is proof that you can in fact do this. Even in 2026. The widespread support for formerly extreme positions like abolishing ICE, taxing billionaires, radically redistricting states, halting the construction of data centers, and expanding and packing the Supreme Court are more than enough evidence to show that people will get in line to back a candidate and a party who promises radical change. Moreover, everything I've seen lately suggests that people are starving for a movement like this, hungry for their own candidate who feels like Mamdani, hungry more than anything to feel hopeful again. When Oregon Senator Ron Wyden posted See youe at Nuremberg 2.0 after Kirsty Noem got fired. I watched a coalition of left wing radicals and centrist Dems who never came together over anything else express wild glee at the very thought. We can do this. We have the tools and we have the opportunity. It's going to take a big, bold step into the unknown, but that's our only option. Besides waiting until we get another chance to look through the social media archives of a gunman.
- [39:13]
Iris Palmer
At Energy Trust of Oregon we know it isn't easy the tremendous weight of today's operating costs, working in cold, drafty spaces with inefficient heating systems or under lights that have seen brighter days. But we also know how to help you upgrade those systems, lower those costs and meet the demands of your business with smart, energy efficient solutions. Find cash incentives@energytrust.org Energy Trust of Oregon More power to you.
- [39:42]
Unknown Guest 1
Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged. It's the Enhanced Games. Some call it grotesque, others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year.
- [39:59]
James Stout
Within probably 10 days, I'd put on £10.
- [40:02]
Unknown Guest 1
I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [40:11]
Iris Palmer
I'm Iris Palmer and my new podcast is called Against All Odds. And that's exactly what the show is about. Doing whatever it takes to be odds. Get ready to hear from some of your favorite entrepreneurs and entertainers as they share stories about defying expectations, overcoming barriers, and breaking generational patterns. I'm talking to people like award winning actress, producer and director Eva Longoria.
- [40:34]
Garrison Davis
I think I had like $200 in
- [40:37]
Iris Palmer
my savings account and my mom goes, what are you gonna do? And I was like, I'll figure it out. We had a one bedroom apartment for like $400 a month and we all could not afford. Like I was like, how am I
- [40:45]
James Stout
gonna make $100 a month?
- [40:47]
Iris Palmer
I'm opening up like I've never before. For those of you who think you know me from what you've seen on social media, get ready to see a whole new side of me. Listen to Against All Odds with Iris Palmer as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. A T shirt and jeans, Mac and cheese. Some things in life are an obvious match, like RIAs and Schwabadvisor services, the number one choice for independent advisors. The difference is so obvious it's Schwabvious. Learn why@schwabius.com.
- [41:25]
Unknown Guest 1
So by the time you hear this, the situation may have evolved in any number of directions. I'm speaking in the immediate wake of the United States and Israel's brutal invasion of Iran. Thus far, over a thousand have been killed, including over a hundred schoolchildren and the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In response to this American Israeli aggression, Iran has retaliated by targeting both American bases and civilian and energy infrastructure in the neighbouring countries that have facilitated American presence in the region. With the strategically and economically critical Strait of Hormuz in jeopardy, with France, the UK and Germany, AKA the usual suspects indicating potential involvement, and with the potential Russian and Chinese involvement also being floated in some circles, it seems to me that without any formal announcement, the war on the world has escalated potentially to a point of no return. Hello and welcome to It Could Happen here. I'm Andrew sage andrewism on YouTube and I'm joined again by it's James.
- [42:33]
James Stout
Hi Andrew, how are you doing?
- [42:35]
Unknown Guest 1
As well as I can be.
- [42:37]
James Stout
Yeah, that's about the best we can hope for these days, isn't it?
- [42:40]
Unknown Guest 1
Yeah. And in a time like this I want to take a look back at history, particularly how past U.S. interventions have left devastation in their wake. Today I want to look at the fate of Libya, a country still dealing with the simmering tensions following the end of the post intervention civil war. So I suppose we should begin in mid February in 2011 when the Arab Spring was sweeping the Middle east and North Africa. Among the countries caught up in the fervor against the prevailing states was Libya, a North African state ruled for the previous 42 years by the Colonel Muammar Al Gaddafi's government. Masses had taken to the streets across the country, starting in Benghazi. The government had some successes in putting down the revolt, killing hundreds of rebels and demonstrators alike and some failures as the masses managed to hold position. The people had many motivations, spanning Islamist to democratic to militant to tribal, to just disaffected against a government intent on its continued survival. Revolutions, uprisings, protests, revolts, they tend to be messy affairs. I'm sure James, you're well aware of that.
- [43:54]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah. I think it's really easy as like outside observers or when we're looking back at history to be like, oh, this revolution was an Islamist revolution, this was a Marxist Leninist revolution, this one was an anarchist revolution. But every revolution that I have been at that I have witnessed happening, it's an everything revolution. When it starts and it later becomes a something revolution. But especially in the Arab Spring. Right. Like in that time, it was just like, we've had enough of being under the boot of these regimes. And it was extraordinarily heterodox. And that was quite beautiful in the. In the early days.
- [44:38]
Unknown Guest 1
Exactly, exactly. The heterodox nature of revolutions is really what I want to drill here because I think it's very easy people to caricatureize and sweep a broad brush and just determine, oh, this is. In the case of Iran, people are saying, oh, it's only monarchists. It's monarchists and Zionists going out in the streets when they were protesting. When the situation on the ground is always more complex than that.
- [45:03]
James Stout
Yeah, maybe I'll just take a second to address the annoying campist tendency. I understand. Every time the United States rains down death on some part of the world, it's terrible. Right. It's sad. As you've just said, Andrew, in Iran we've seen a girls school bombed not once, but twice. It seems. Right, like what they call a double tap attack. That doesn't mean that your response has to be to support the other people who are killing those same civilians in that same place. It is possible for two things to be bad. And like in Iran. Yeah. There is a monarchist opposition. It sucks. I spoke just this morning to a Kurdish group which is opposing the regime in Iran, and they had nothing but bad things to say about the monarchists. Right. They said, this is the Pak, right, the Kurdistan Freedom Party. I'm quoting here. They do not have a foothold in society to actually achieve anything. The lies and delusions of a group of people sitting in nightclubs cannot make any real impact. You're free to use that one next time someone tells you all the opposition in Iran is monarchist. It's nonsense.
- [46:13]
Unknown Guest 1
Exactly. I mean, just on its face, it's obviously nonsense. This notion that these people are hive minds, it's really a racist notion that you see popping up again and again.
- [46:25]
James Stout
Yeah, very Orientalist.
- [46:26]
Unknown Guest 1
Yeah. Anytime people step outside and they have something that they're upset about, they just get labeled with this one broad, sweeping ideological moniker. What, they personally subscribe to it or not?
- [46:39]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [46:39]
Unknown Guest 1
And even within the ideological monikers, there's always a lot of nuance in how people understand those ideologies. You know, no two Islamists are necessarily alike. No two monarchists even are necessarily alike. And those are both ideologies that I absolutely abhor, you know?
- [46:56]
James Stout
Right, Yeah. I don't understand how you can Be a leftist and spend your life as such, and then also think that in other parts of the world people don't want the same things. Like, I believe it is inherently human to want dignity and respect and the same for others and to want our communities to govern themselves. And I don't believe that it's any less human if you live in North Africa or the Middle east or South Africa or an island in the Caribbean or an island in the Pacific. I believe it comes from our human nature. And so it strikes me as therefore obvious that there cannot be a country where people's human nature is fundamentally distinct. And they're all just like knee jerk monarchists. I wouldn't see the world the way I see it if I was able to believe that.
- [47:44]
Unknown Guest 1
Yeah, yeah. These movements, they're always composed by the choices and actions of sometimes millions of people, each with their own motivations. And while it's easy, particularly in retrospect, to pick particular leaders or organizations as representative of them all, that doesn't make it so.
- [48:02]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [48:03]
Unknown Guest 1
One of the things that defined the Arab Spring, as you mentioned, was its leaderless nature. You had neoliberals, you had monarchists, you had socialists, you had most of all, I would say, people without any ideological commitments at all. The majority of the human population is not ideologically committed one way or the other. Most people are just trying to live their lives and meet their basic needs.
- [48:25]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [48:26]
Unknown Guest 1
And they're submerged in a society that lends them towards a particular inclination, but that's not set in stone. Most people in the Arab Spring likely sought just the end of whatever it was that they were suffering under before. And of course, in these kind of incidents, geopolitical actors will choose to back particular factions, lend them credence and prominence according to their geopolitical interests, but don't give them undue credit. You know, during the Cold War, for example, the US would have backed rebellions that they believed would benefit them and vice versa. The USSR backed rebellions that they thought would benefit them. And even today the US is claiming to care about freedom, but has continued to work with the Saudis who infamously invaded Bahrain to crush the Arab Spring that occurred there. Yeah, and at the time, France's love for democracy didn't exactly match their offer to aid Algeria and Tunisia in putting down their own Arab Springs. Now, as I've been saying, quite often pointing out, hypocrisy is kind of a baby's first geopolitical analysis. Right. None of these governments have any consistent values beyond their own interests. But I think it's important to make this kind of heterodoxy in movements clear to contextualize what happened next. There's another notion that US intervention is entering these countries during these conflicts to uphold humanitarian aims, to liberate the woman or to liberate minorities in that region. The United States, like all governments, is opportunistic, right? It is taking advantage of often genuine struggles by people to serve its own situational goals without a care for what happens to those people, either openly intervening or covertly intervening. The most obvious recent example is with the Kurds in Syria. At the time, they were convenient to the United States interests until they weren't and they were banned on. And this is especially the case when resources like oil come into the picture and Libya is extremely oil rich. So tragically, the west saw this uprising in Libya as an opportunity following a timeline in Encyclopedia Britannica. On 19 March 2011, Libya was attacked by the combined forces of the United States, the UK and France. These countries now condemned Gaddafi as an oppressor of the civilians they were swooping in to save. Though for years before the UK and France were selling him weapons, they, alongside their Qatari and Saudi allies, took advantage of the protests to assert their military might. This move was authorised by the UN Resolution 1973 and NATO would soon take command of the operation. While claiming to protect civilians under a responsibility to protect doctrine, they bombed them and allegedly humanitarian intervention led to the deaths of tens of thousands of a national population of just over 6 million. Key infrastructure was devastated by the NATO bombing campaign and by the struggles between the government and the now armed rebels of the National Transitional Council. A quick note by the way, the NTC appointed themselves as the leaders of the movement and despite the struggle being kickstarted by mostly working and middle class militants, often of an Islamic orientation, the NTC was composed mainly of regime defectors, businessmen and exiles who had a broadly pro Western conservative and free market stance. Some of the elements in Gaddafi's government and military had defected to the rebels and equipped those previously unarmed protesters with firepower. And up to now we only have estimates regarding the civilian death toll, infrastructural devastation and arbitrary detentions, disappearances and kidnappings carried out by both pro Gaddafi and anti Gaddafi forces. Not to mention the deliberate targeting of black Libyans and sub Saharan African migrants by rebel forces that took place during and after the 2011 war with the claim that they were Gaddafi's hired mercenaries. Many of those Africans, attempts to escape were met with callous disregard by Europe.
- [52:54]
James Stout
Yeah, Callous disregard is. I mean, there are no words strong enough to express the way I feel about the. The way the European Union has treated migrants in Libya. It is absolutely disgusting and continues to be.
- [53:07]
Unknown Guest 1
It's despicable.
- [53:08]
James Stout
Yeah. Have you read Sally Hayden's book about this?
- [53:11]
Unknown Guest 1
No, I haven't.
- [53:12]
James Stout
It's called My Fourth Time We Drowned. Very good book. Difficult read. I would say it very much is some of the type of reporting that I try and do myself on migration and that it talks about people, not numbers, and it centers migrants as individuals with stories. It's a great book, but probably not one to read right before bed.
- [53:34]
Unknown Guest 1
I could imagine it sounds heavy.
- [53:36]
James Stout
Yeah, definitely heavy going.
- [53:38]
Unknown Guest 1
And so, following a stalemate between the pro and Gaddafi camps, in late spring of 2011, the rebels, assisted by NATO forces, took Tripoli and toppled Gaddafi's government. And the NTC was recognised internationally almost immediately as the legitimate government of Libya. As Matt Willgress notes in Jacobin on the day Tripoli fell, the New York Times headline the Scramble for Access to Libya's Oil Wealth Begins was telling Libya's vast oil reserves, long prized by the west for being the largest in Africa and incredibly close to Europe, were now open to business for foreign investors. As is the case with all imperial interventions, the attempt to get profits flowing for multinational corporations comes long before any ideas of reconstruction, such as essential infrastructure projects or insurance services. And really up to now, that infrastructure has not been established and even access to Libya's oil is not yet secured, even though they allegedly managed to loot some of that oil in 2012. Now, Gaddafi himself fled after the fall of Tripoli, but he was found, NATO bombed his convoy and he was captured alive, then executed by NTC forces in October 2011, after which the war was declared over and the NTC declared Libya an Islamic democracy. In their constitutional declaration, The NTC estimated 30,000 dead, and a UN report from 2012 estimated that more than 900,000 people had to leave the country since February of 2011. Many were not Libyan nationals, but more than 660,000 Libyans also fled and an estimated 200,000 people had been internally displaced. Continuing with our timeline, in 2012, the NTC handed power over to the General National Congress, or gnc, and despite a formal end to the war, Qaddafi loyalists, local militias and tribes chafed against each other and the gnc. The militias wouldn't disarm, the Gaddafi loyalists continued to fight and the GNC failed to put forward a new constitution. So in 2014, they were ousted by the newly elected House of representatives. And in 2014, a second civil war would begin in Libya, with the nation split mainly between the House of Representatives, or hor, with its Libyan national army, or lna, based in Tobruk to the east, and their rival, made up of mostly Islamists from the former GNC with their Libya dawn militia based in Tripoli to the west. They didn't win the election, they didn't consider it legitimate because of its low turnout and they didn't appreciate the amount of former Gaddafi supporters in the new government. So they rose up to fight claiming to be the National Salvation Government, or nsg. So you have the HOR and you have the nsg. Beyond these two factions, you also had an Al Qaeda affiliated militia and the Islamic State. Both engaged in insurgent struggle around the country, sometimes holding entire cities. Eventually, the two governments came together to sign the lpa, the Libyan Political Agreement to form the Interim Presidential Council and Government of national accord, or GNA, in late 2015. But that attempt at cohesion didn't really work out as the UN backed gna, now based in Tripoli, couldn't consolidate power. By the end of 2016, factions affiliated with the NSG still resisted the GNA and the HOR, still based in Tobruk, refused to endorse the GNA's appointments. So they went from having two competing governments to kinda having three, though the main opposing forces were now the GNA and the hor. The GNA was backed by Turkey, Qatar and the eu, especially Italy and the un, while the horizontal was backed by Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and to some extent France, who technically recognized the GNA but also provided support to the HOR for their struggle against the Islamists. The US was also supposed to be back in the gna, but Trump jumped out to praise the HOR at one point. So the U.S. s position was exposed as a lot more ambiguous in practice.
- [57:54]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [58:06]
Unknown Guest 1
So the GNA and the HOR would keep on struggling against each other for control over the Central bank and oil companies and territory over the years. By the end of one particularly significant offensive in 2019, which saw the country's largest oil field brought under HOR control, the situation was such that the HORS leverage came from their control over the oil fields. And the GNA's leverage was that it was internationally recognised and could legally sell the oil. GNA leader Fayez Al Siraj and HOR leader Shalifa Haftar seemed to be developing cooperative relations. And In March of 2019, they were supposed to have a national unity conference. But Then the HOR tried to take Tripoli. Whoopsie. So they kinda had to postpone that confront. The resulting fighting led to the HOR taking Syrte, a major city between Libya's east and west halves. With Turkish support, the JNA successfully repelled the HOR from Neitropoli and the situation was stabilised with a battle line just east of Syrte in 2020.
- [59:09]
James Stout
Yeah, not just Turkish support. Turkey deployed the Syrian National Army, AKA the tfsa, the Turkish Free Syrian Army. They are widely believed to be rebadged Islamist from previous iterations of various Islamist groups in Syria that Turkey has formed into kind of its own proxy force. I mean, I'm sure if you go to their Wikipedia page, there are like 17 million different war crimes listed. Like they are. They are. They are well known for their affinity for war war crimes.
- [59:42]
Unknown Guest 1
Yeah, I could imagine. The fact that Turkey. Turkey's back in them tells me everything I need to know, I think.
- [59:49]
James Stout
Yeah, right, yeah. And that they're considered like a deniable proxy. Right. Like they could be like, Turkey can be like, oh well, that wasn't us, that was these Syrian guys who we happen to arm and equip and run esport for.
- [60:02]
Unknown Guest 1
Yeah. What is their situation now? Now that Turkey is kind of back in the new government in Syria, they
- [60:08]
James Stout
have largely been folded into the STG's armed forces. So like Abu Hamsa is I think a general or a brigadier, I can't quite remember his rank, but this guy who has been widely condemned, is now a military officer within the STG's Ministry of Defense.
- [60:28]
Unknown Guest 1
Huh. Okay, so a more accurate description then would be that Turkey sent their war criminal proxies to support the GNA in repelling the HOR from their Tripoli. And the situation stabilized with a battle line just east of Syrte in 2020. And after other attempts to reach an agreement failed, they agreed to share oil revenue, establish a permanent ceasefire and get both Turkish forces and Russian mercenaries out of the country. So the second civil war was officially over in October 2020. According to reporting by Al Jazeera, the UN initiated a new attempt at a unifying government in 2021, which was approved originally by both rival parliaments, leading to the establishment of the Interim Government of national unity, or GNU, in March 2021, thus replacing the previously UN backed GNA. So we went from GNA to GNU, but then the GNU would be opposed by the Horizontal, which withdrew from the GNU in September of 2021 and established the Government of National Stability OR GNS in March 2022. So the GNA was replaced by the GNU and the GNU was now opposed by the gns. And thus the country remains split in two up to today between the UN backed GNU and the HOR slash Libyan national army backed gns. And in all of this chaos, the people on the ground have been suffering. They've been suffering human rights abuses, disappearances. Up to recently, the GNU imposed a morality police. And there have been numerous reports about open slave markets in Libya where migrant black Africans are auctioned to the highest bidder. Yeah, this is a result of human trafficking and debt bondage. So not exactly the same as chattel slavery. But the experience and racial undertones are all too familiar. The suffering in Libya has also spread beyond its borders. Following Gaddafi's fall, the weapons of his military stockpiles ended up in the hands of militants across the Sahel region of Africa and even in Syria. You'll remember in my episode on the situation in Nigeria, some of those weapons ended up in the hands of Boko Haram and other Islamic militant groups in the region. Pulani herdsmen and so on. Tragically, because Libya just can't seem to catch a break at all. September 2023 also saw catastrophic floods devastating the country. The hurricane strong storm Daniel caused two dams to burst in the coastal city of Derna, which is within GNS territory in eastern Libya. The flooding killed at least 4,000 people, though potentially even more left thousands missing and displaced more than 40,000 others. The nation still wrought by civil war and still unrecovered from the devastation of the NATO bombing campaign surely could have mustered a more adequate response to the tragedy if not for those conditions. In fact, it is theorised that the tragedy could have been avoided altogether because according to reports by the Middle East Eye, a Turkish company was supposed to rehabilitate the failed dams, but their works were reportedly interrupted by the 2011 uprising and subsequent civil war.
- [63:56]
James Stout
Yeah, it's always the cost of war that we don't count. Right. Like if you look at the 2023 earthquake that killed people in Syria and Turkey. Right. Like, undoubtedly that would have done a lot less damage if it hadn't been for the fact that war had been raging in those places for so long. So, like, everything else got put on hold. All the normal infrastructure repair and such that you would expect had to stop.
- [64:20]
Unknown Guest 1
Yeah.
- [64:21]
James Stout
Because of that war. And that made things like the earthquake worse.
- [64:25]
Unknown Guest 1
Yeah. I don't think the people who rose up against Gaddafi and fought and died back in February of 2011 had sought this outcome. Unfortunately, in a world dictated by the whims of imperialist powers. This was the end of the actions. I don't want people to get it twisted though, because in the time since, as people have observed the devastation wrought by these civil wars, there has been an effort to almost whitewash Gaddafi and to limit our vision of possibilities to a binary of either perpetual Gaddafi rule on one end or perpetual civil war on the other end. Those are not the only possibilities. So we've discussed the legacy of NATO intervention which deserves condemnation in this episode and it should be an indication that further Western invasions and war is not going to liberate anyone. Yeah, but aside from that accurate analysis of Libya since the fall of Gaddafi, I want to bring in some conversation on the man himself in the next episode. Until then, all power to all the people. This has been It Could Happen Here I've been Andrew Sage, Peace. Hello and welcome to It Could Happen Here. I am Andrew sage andrewism on YouTube. YouTube and joined again by.
- [66:05]
James Stout
It's James again.
- [66:07]
Unknown Guest 1
Yes, I've noticed a phenomenon, I'm not sure if you've noticed it too, where anti imperialist solidarity somehow goes a step beyond opposing imperialist aggression itself and crosses into lionizing or whitewashing the targets of that aggression, or rather the ostensible leaders of the target to that aggression.
- [66:32]
James Stout
Yeah, I have noticed this too. It's one of the things that makes me most angry in the world. What's been referred to as the anti imperialism of idiots. Yes, not so relevant now, but I used to like to apply the Assad test to anybody who claimed to be interested in the politics of liberation. Right. If you, if you think Bashar Al Assad is a based anti imperialist people's socialist hero, then your politics are shit. I have nothing good to say about that. Like you're an idiot.
- [67:01]
Unknown Guest 1
Yeah, yeah, it should be a fringe phenomenon. Right. But I haven't seen it getting increasing traction.
- [67:09]
James Stout
Yeah, Even in like relatively, you know, like I won't start a war with various US leftist publications, but I went to pitch some people this, this last week thinking like there is speculation that the United States will once again ally itself with Kurdish groups who I'm sure it had then planned to once again abandon when that became politically more expedient. But I happened to have some insight into these various Kurdish groups, having spent some time there and having contacts there. And so I went to the websites of these various, you know, big publications which are left or left leaning or even sort of liberal and I saw these borderline campus takes on what's happening in Iran and It's just so, so frustrating to me. Like, it makes me so angry that people continue to view the world through this binary Marvel movie lens, which sees it as impossible that two things could be bad at the same time. Yeah, it's infuriating to me.
- [68:08]
Unknown Guest 1
Yeah. And if I was more inclined to conspiracy, I might say that this binary is intentionally constructed. You know, that it's by design that the most vocal anti imperialist voices also just so happen to align themselves with state power.
- [68:31]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [68:32]
Unknown Guest 1
And camp ism. But I'm not inclined to conspiracy, so.
- [68:37]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah, one could make a pretty reasonable argument for that. Right?
- [68:40]
Unknown Guest 1
One could make that argument.
- [68:41]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [68:42]
Unknown Guest 1
I won't, but one could.
- [68:46]
Garrison Davis
I might.
- [68:47]
Unknown Guest 1
I think one of the best examples of this is the sort of odd obsession that some people have with Colonel Muammar Al Gaddafi. Now, last episode we spoke about the long term consequences of Western intervention in Libya, beginning with the 2011 uprising during the Arab Spring against the 42 year rule of Muammar Gaddafi. What began as a broad, largely leaderless protest movement was quickly shaped by foreign intervention. In March of 2011, the US, the UK and France launched a military campaign through NATO under a UN mandate to protect civilians. The war toppled Gaddafi, but killed tens of thousands and devastated infrastructure. In the aftermath, Libya fractured into rival governments, militias and foreign backed factions, triggering yet another civil war in 2014. And despite a ceasefire in 2020, the country remains divided between competing administrations. While ordinary Libyans face instability, human rights abuses and economic hardship, I think it's fair to say that the NATO intervention was a net negative for the country. But in the same breath, I cannot agree with those who seem to believe that Gaddafi's rule could have continued. Either that he was some force for good in the country. And in this episode I really want to get into the why to identify and dissect the actions of the man Gaddafi. According to his biography in Insects Pedia Britannica, Muammar Al Gaddafi was born in 1942 near Sirte, Libya. 69 years later, he would be captured and killed in Sirte, Libya. After spending his early years in a tent. He graduated from the University of Libya in 1963 and then graduated from a military academy in 1965. In 1969, at the age of 27, Gaddafi pulled off a bloodless coup to seize power from King Idris I of Libya. For the next four decades plus, he would be the de facto ruler of Libya. Gaddafi was both a passionate Arab nationalist and a Muslim. In power, he tried to push both of his ideologies. He expelled Western military forces expelled remaining Italian settlers and Jewish communities in Libya, nationalised the country's oil industry, banned alcohol and gambling, tried to unify with his Arab neighbours occasionally by attempting coups in their countries, and stood against normalisation with Israel. So a very mixed bag so far.
- [71:22]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [71:23]
Unknown Guest 1
Until 1977, Gaddafi ruled the Libyan Arab Republic. But the culmination of his Cultural revolution period from 1973 to 1977 would sideline his political and religious opponents who were beginning to see him as unstable, hubristic and authoritarian. That period would instead cement Gaddafi as the sole ruler of what he would rename the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. As recounted in the History of Gaddafi's Pariah State by John Oakes, Jamahiriya was a term he coined in his Green Book, likely inspired by Mao's Little Red Book, published during the Libyan Cultural Revolution period. Jamahiriya was his idea of a state of the masses, governed by people's congresses and popular assemblies. And if it's one thing that makes a political movement, it's empowering. It's slapping the people's and popular label on everything, regardless of any additional context.
- [72:24]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [72:26]
Unknown Guest 1
So they had these democratic local assemblies called basic People's Congresses, that met three times a year, and those congresses appointed executive People's committees which did most of the day to day stuff. And above it all was the General People's Congress. This period was simultaneously an effort to encourage popular participation through these congresses while suppressing dissent through his control over the secret services. It was clear that Gaddafi was still in charge even after he stepped down from his former position as secretary general in 1979 and simply and humbly dubbed himself the Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution.
- [73:07]
James Stout
Yeah, some of his, like, hubristic stuff, like his rhetoric, his outfits, his reference to himself is like, you couldn't parody some of it. It is where the parodies of dictators in this part of the world come from is Gaddafi's kind of effect, I guess.
- [73:26]
Unknown Guest 1
Yeah, he was a character.
- [73:29]
James Stout
Yes, that he was.
- [73:30]
Unknown Guest 1
Yeah, he was definitely a character.
- [73:32]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [73:34]
Unknown Guest 1
So, I mean, anarchist critiques of democracy are easy to find. And although Gaddafi's Libya was never solely directly democratic, even in his project, you could see some of the flaws and the issues that anarchists have identified in this approach to popular power. As the congresses or the people's congresses were poorly attended and easily manipulated, issues were often raised and were rarely resolved. And of course, compounding those flaws was the fact that these people's congresses had no actual power over the Things that mattered in Libya. Yeah, the oil industry, the armed forces, the security services and foreign policy, where Gaddafi and his compatriots still ruled. Gaddafi decided where the oil money went and he directed some of it to a great man made river project that would extract from the ancient and non renewable aquifer under the Libyan desert to supply the coast with a more stable water supply. Frustratingly for him, I could assume. Gaddafi did not get what he wanted out of the revolutionary people's congresses. So he created revolutionary committees to mobilise the people and safeguard their rule through commandos that answered to Gaddafi directly. These revolutionary committees could arrest counter revolutionaries, establish revolutionary courts and eliminate enemies of the revolution at home and abroad. The people he called stray dogs. All of this for the people, of course, and for the revolution. So on paper his system had some degree of people power and people voice, but in practice he exercised near total control and suppression of opposition both within the country and outside the country. The same went for workplaces, of course. He spoke about worker partnership and power in the Green Book, but it was a state controlled and state distributed economy in Libya run by oil money with very few worker run enterprises. There was also no real freedom of organisation or strike in Libya as independent unions were banned. And Gaddafi explicitly rejected class struggle, despite claiming to be a socialist. So in the Return of Muammar Gaddafi by Tunisian academic Haytham Ghassemi, he highlights the cult of personality that was forged over the years of Gaddafi's rule that has resurfaced up to today. His proponents often point to the good that he did for the country, establishing basic social services, free healthcare and education, housing and land distribution, accessible loan programs, women's rights and so on. And with that welfare state came naturally some base of popular support for a people who had little to nothing before. Other fans of Gaddafi point to what I like to call hype moments and aura. So there was a time when he was in the UN General assembly and he had what was supposed to be a short time to speak, and he just went on and on and on and on and on and on. And he tore up the UN Charter hype moments in aura, right? And that's like something that a lot of people point to. He was also at one point in time, the Chairman of the African Union and he wanted to keep that position permanently. And he was proposing a whole United States of Africa. Like he had a whole period of African solidarity, which we'll get to.
- [77:19]
James Stout
Yeah, okay, good. Yeah. His Pan Africanist arc is fascinating.
- [77:24]
Unknown Guest 1
Yeah. So none of this, however, erases his Dark, dark side, for one. For all the women's rights that he put forward in Libya, he was not that great to women. The Green Book presents Gaddafi as someone who cared about women's dignity and rights. But even in that book, you see a very complementarist take on women's place in society. It's like, yeah, they're equal to men, but also their role is in the household. They're supposed to be mothers above everything else.
- [77:57]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [77:57]
Unknown Guest 1
He was like, they need to be mothers, but they shouldn't be treated as property or objects.
- [78:02]
James Stout
Yeah. I think he based a lot of this in like his interpretation of Hadith or the Quran. Like his. His idea that, like, there was some kind of divine guidance on gender roles. Right. I've actually seen this in recent days. You can go and find Hame and I's tweets, right? Like ayatollahi, not his son. And you can see his stuff where he's like, you should not mistreat your wife. You can literally find the other side in his timeline on Twitter. Right. He was a big poster and people have somehow attempted to construe this as like, he was a leader of enlightened feminist regime in Iran, which. I don't know.
- [78:39]
Unknown Guest 1
It's benevolent patriarchy all over again.
- [78:42]
James Stout
Yeah. You have to be really on a special fucking truth trajectory to convince yourself that that is the case. It takes remarkable capacity for self delusion to, rather than listening to women in Iran, women from Iran, many of whom I have spoken to, to look at the evidence of the killing, for example, with Jina Amini, right? To be like, oh, no. But I found this tweet from 2013. So we're good here. This is fine. It's just remarkable. People's tendency to do that.
- [79:17]
Unknown Guest 1
Yeah, it's remarkable. And stupid.
- [79:20]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah. Stupid is a good word.
- [79:22]
Unknown Guest 1
Yeah. And going back to Gaddafi, aside from that sort of benevolent patriarchy take on women's equality.
- [79:32]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [79:32]
Unknown Guest 1
Investigative reporting by Anakogin also gathered testimony since his fall that alleged his procurement, coercion and sexual abuse of women inside his compound, aided by a network of officials. Unfortunately, many of these women are far too afraid to come forward, even all these years after his death, due to the persistence of pro Gaddafi sentiment in the country up to today. So not the best for women. What about for Africa? Right. His whole Pan Africanist arc. He styled himself as a Pan African who would support the struggles of people like Mandela and would fund infrastructure projects around the continent. But he had a history of attempting to overthrow governments in Africa and support Oppressive ones, including IDI Amin of Uganda and Charles Taylor of Liberia. Since Pan Africanism was never concerned with the freedom or well being of African people, it was I think very much according to his own self aggrandizement.
- [80:44]
James Stout
Yeah, like he didn't he propose like a African Union which was more akin to like, like a United States, like a federal Africa.
- [80:52]
Unknown Guest 1
United States of Africa. That was his proposal.
- [80:55]
James Stout
Fantastic. Yeah, yeah, great.
- [80:58]
Unknown Guest 1
And as he's proposing this Pan African vision within Libya itself, he was pushing for an Arab Libya. The Amazigh and other non Arab Africans in Libya were mistreated. You know, his vision of an Arab Libya led to the suppression of the Tuaregs, the Tebus and the Amazigh. He had policies as reported in the BBC, in New Internationalist Al Jazeera and elsewhere, he had policies that included the banning of minority languages, the banning of minority names, the discouraging of cultural expression, and sometimes denying citizenship to groups outside the Arab identity. So naturally many of these minorities took part in the 2011 movement. And after Gaddafi's fall there was a revival of language, cultural institutions and publications. However, the NTC and those that followed have continued to ignore the minority plight. Minority groups are still struggling for constitutional recognition, representation and equal rights in a country that is of course still divided. And some minorities have chosen to boycott the national political process entirely in favor of pursuing local self governance. Also, minorities were not the only people being persecuted in Gaddafi's Libya. On the political front, despite calling himself a socialist, Gaddafi was really all over the place ideologically. Now internationally, he may have backed the Palestinian struggle, the Irish struggle, the African American struggle, but he was consistent in suppressing actual leftists in Libya. Marxist.com identified some of these repressive efforts in their article on Gaddafi. Gaddafi was very clear in expressing his anti communism. In 1971, he sent a plane full of Sudanese communists back to Sudan where they were executed by Nimeiri. In 1973, the regime published an official document to commemorate the fourth anniversary of Gaddafi's rise to power under the title Holy War Against Communism. Quite eccentric. Later on, however, he would get more chummy with ussr. Yeah, but Gaddafi was no Marxist Leninist. And communists and leftists and workers were not legally capable of organizing independently in Libya. Aside from them, you also had the murder and torture of civilians and journalists, the assassinations of rivals in Libya and around the world. It was not the free speech utopia that Gaddafi tried to paint it as. Instead of emboldening the leftist elements, he emboldened these tribal groups and set the foundation for The Libya that we see today.
- [83:42]
James Stout
His consistent through line is that he likes strong men and sees himself among them and wants to associate himself with them. At some point in the early 2000s, he was supporting Jorg Heide, a neo fascist in Austria and telling Europeans they needed to get past their obsession with the Second World War. He had no like consistent politics.
- [84:04]
Unknown Guest 1
Well, I mean that tracks with his expulsion of Jewish communities in Libya. Yeah, he didn't only expel Jewish settlers, he expelled Jewish communities that had arrived prior to Italian colonization that had existed in Libya for centuries.
- [84:19]
James Stout
Yeah, that maybe. I guess anti Semitism can often be the link that brings terrible people together.
- [84:26]
Unknown Guest 1
He had a lot of other notorious incidents of suppression, but one of the most significant was the Abu Salim massacre. In short, as recounted by John Oakes, Abu Salem was the site of a prisoners protest on 28 June 1996. The prisoners escaped their cells and were protesting their mistreatment as guards shot at them from the roof. Two top security officials came and took command, ordering the shooting to stop and promising to address the prisoners complaints if they returned to their cells and gave up the guards they had hostage. And the following day, shots fired from 11am to 1.35pm, a mass slaughter of approximately 1200 of the 16 to 1700 prisoners in Abu Salim. The families who suffered that blow were among the first on the streets of Benghazi 2011. But those families were not originally told that their loved ones had been killed. Some of them continued to visit the prison for weeks, months, years after bringing gifts for their relatives who were already long dead. In the twists and turns of Gaddafi's ideological development, or lack thereof, following the fall of the ussr, Gaddafi would also pursue economic liberalization. He started opening up to the west ever so slightly. There was slow progress and a brief hiccup. But by 2003, free market advocate Shukri Ghanim was appointed Prime Minister. Before long, 360 state enterprises were privatised. By 2007, Libya was laying off as many as a third of the government workforce, 400,000 public sector workers. And according to a New York times article from 2011, the IMF had actually praised Libya's economic reforms. So by 2011, conditions were so unbearable for so many workers, especially young people, that it's no wonder that some of them fought with nothing to lose. The last aspects of Gadaffi's rule that I want to touch on was his complex relationship with Western powers. Early in his rule in the 70s and 80s, he did style himself an anti imperialist revolutionary. And that is the image that our people uphold of him to this day. Libya funded and armed revolutionary and militant movements worldwide. From the African National Congress or the anc, to the Palestine Liberation Organisation or plo, to the Irish Republican army or Iraq. He aligned himself with the so called radical camp in the Middle east, including baatha, Syria and Iran. And Western governments accused Libya of supporting international terrorism. Libya was considered a rogue state, but as noted by Syrian anarchist Mazen Kamalmaz in an interview with Jose Antonio Gutierrez, even when Gaddafi was declaring himself an anti imperialist long ago, it was just a lip service while he engaged as an authoritarian in trivial terrorist acts that never meant to support the libertarian objectives of the victims of imperialism. Still, Reagan called him a mad dog and the US bombed Libya in 1986 after attacks in a West Berlin nightclub were attributed to Libyan agents. Those bombings narrowly missed Gaddafi himself, but they killed his adopted baby daughter. Libya was also blamed for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, which led to sanctions by the United nations and the US which isolated Libya economically and diplomatically. In the 90s, however, with the fall of the USSR, Libya began slowly shifting toward cooperation. They handed over the suspects in the Lockerbie bombing and sanctions began to loosen as they attempted to normalise relationships. Western intelligence services soon started cooperating with Libyan intelligence against Islamist militant groups, including the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group which is a thorn in Gaddafi's side. The early 2000s had Libya renounce its weapons of mass destruction program following the invasion of Iraq. The US and the UN subsequently lifted sanctions and diplomatic relations were restored fully with Western countries. Qaddafi hosted Tony Blair of the uk, Nicolas Sarkozy of France and met with Obama as well. And many of these meetings with Western leaders produced multi billion dollar energy and business deals. Yeah, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, TotalEnergies, they were all getting pieces of Libya's wealth. As Libya began adopting more neoliberal economic reforms like currency devaluation, trade liberalization and more openness to foreign investment. Libya was also able to cooperate closely with Western intelligence during the war on terror, including assisting the CIA and MI6 in rendition and torture as uncovered by Human Rights Watch. So by the mid 2000s, Libya had mostly reintegrated into the Western led global system and the west for their part, simply ignored Gaddafi's continued human rights abuses. The Counter Terrorism Corporation, the oil and gas contracts, and don't forget the brutal African migrant control were all too valuable for America and Europe.
- [89:57]
James Stout
Yeah, I remember this period quite well. It was when I was in my undergraduate university and Gaddafi was invited to speak the Oxford Union. I did my undergraduate there and myself and a number had friends.
- [90:10]
Unknown Guest 1
So you met Gaddafi?
- [90:11]
James Stout
No, he spoke via video conference.
- [90:15]
Unknown Guest 1
Okay.
- [90:16]
James Stout
Which they paused while they removed us for protesting Gaddafi's. Like it just seemed like this decades of abuse of his own people had been completely forgotten. Right. Because he was now prepared to do abuse of other people that was beneficial to the United Kingdom, the United States. And we, we felt that that was abhorrent and wrong. So we went to make our feelings known. And the Oxford Union is a very silly institution. Right. Which prides itself on free speech and really it just does kind of class reproduction for the most part.
- [90:49]
Unknown Guest 1
Right.
- [90:50]
James Stout
And of course like there was not freedom of speech for people who were going to be rude to someone charge of a state, even if they were being rude on behalf of the thousands of people he's had murdered and tortured. And yeah, that was my little personal run in with Gaddafi when I was what, like 18? But yeah, I can't remember if we were like not allowed in or we were booted out because I am like two decades and half a dozen traumatic brain injuries since my teenage years. But yeah, I do remember just being like people are treating this like it's some kind of novelty and this person has real blood on his hands. Like real people have suffered tremendously and died because of actions he's taken. Like it's not funny or cute.
- [91:33]
Unknown Guest 1
Wow. What year was that?
- [91:34]
James Stout
It would have been in the early 2000s, the Bush era. Because that, that's when I was in my undergraduate second Bush term. So like it would have been bought in 2006. Some of somewhere there.
- [91:48]
Unknown Guest 1
Yeah. Thankfully I never had any run ins with Gaddafi.
- [91:51]
James Stout
Yeah. Even at that time I can remember just being sort of somewhat appalled by the Marxist Leninist tendency to excuse crimes against humanity as long as they were done by people who said the right things, who had the right vibes, who condemned the right people. And the liberal tendency to excuse crimes against humanity so long as they were done in service of capitalism and the state.
- [92:17]
Unknown Guest 1
Yeah, yeah. Shockingly similar tendencies in some ways.
- [92:21]
James Stout
Yeah, right. Like this fundamentally not rooted in the idea that people have a right to dignity. Both of them hold people as less valuable than other things. Right. Be it capital or I mean the Marxist Leninist tendency or honestly like it's not even the revolution that they believe is more valuable than people, it's the revolutionary rhetoric.
- [92:44]
Unknown Guest 1
Yeah.
- [92:45]
James Stout
With Assad. Right. Like you can murder your own people with chemical weapons. So Long as you, you pretend to give a single shit about Palestinians even though you've spent decades using your weapons to kill your own people and never once use them to, to actually help the people of Palestine, to actually protect people.
- [93:04]
Unknown Guest 1
Exactly, exactly. So at this point now you know Gaddafi, Shana be all chummy with the west after he spent some time being chummy with Africa and spent some time being chummy with USSR and with rebel groups around the world. But that was just the thing, right? He had this track record of flip flopping, you know.
- [93:28]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [93:28]
Unknown Guest 1
And even though relations had normalized, these Western powers could not trust him. They still saw him as that mad dog. They still saw him as unpredictable and unreliable. In fact, even while he was cutting deals with these multi billion dollar corporations for the oil contracts and so on, when he wasn't getting what he wanted, he would threaten to nationalize to get what he wanted. And so the west being opportunistic, were just waiting for an opportunity. They were done with playing his game. And that opportunity came when the people organically rose up against Gaddafi in 2011, not long after NATO intervened. In the years since, Libyans have suffered and died with no end in sight. It shouldn't be uncontroversial to say this. Gaddafi was not a true anti imperialist. I don't think it's possible for a statesman or a government to be truly anti imperialist. Government is foundationally exploitative internally and when turned externally that drive exploitation is what we understand as imperialism. All the markers of imperialism worthy of condemnation, be it economic exploitation, cultural dominance, military violence, etc. Is carried out under the label of governance when done within its own borders, when done against for example the non Arab minorities in Libya. I think what's missing from now popular anti imperialist narratives is that connection, that analysis and a gap in the analysis is what's creating this false consciousness that leads people to come to conclusion that anti imperialism means that XYZ government is anti imperialist and good and ABC government is imperialist and bad. That's not how the world works. States are never going to be liberatory. They're not able to produce a liberatory framework. At their best they function as a welfare state. At their worst you get mass suppression and cults of personality. Sometimes you get a combination of both as with Libya under Gaddafi. And that's my message for today. Please stop lionising leaders. Stay woke. Yeah and all power to all the people. I've been Andrew Sage this is it could happen here. Peace.
- [96:08]
Robert Evans
On Sunday April 12th I went to the Basement nightclub in Queens. Like usual, someone scanned my ticket at the big gate off Flushing Avenue. I had to wait in a winding line outside the door, went through security and finally reached the DJ and bar. But instead of the regular collection of twinks, dolls and bisexuals, the room was full of city workers, politicians, journalists and DSA members, a decent number of which probably were bisexual. I suppose technically, we were directly above the basement nightclub in the Knockdown center event venue Gathered this Sunday afternoon to attend Mayor Zoran Mamdani's 100 day address. I'm Garrison Davis. This is It Could Happen Here, a show about things falling apart and sometimes putting stuff back together. This one is one of those rare episodes focused on the latter. Earlier this April marked Mayor Mamdani's first 100 days in office. This episode I'll discuss what Zoron has done these first 100 days, some of the challenges he's faced, if he's been able to deliver on the promises of his campaign and how he's adapted to the power and constraints of running the biggest city in the country, and finally, what all this could mean for the future of working class and left wing politics in the United States. Let's first return to the 100 day address above the basement nightclub. Upon entering the venue, you found yourself in a museum of the administration's first 100 days. This little installation displayed the Mayor's snow shovel from the historic blizzard during Zoran's first few weeks in office, a tenant organizing suggestion board from the rental rip off hearings and a child sized mayoral podium used to announce a new free ChildCare program for two year olds. Museum plaques detailed victories for labor and tenants rights as well as infrastructure accomplishments like scaffolding reform and a pothole blitz that filled over 20,000 potholes in just three days. Before the mayor's speech, a Bronx parent, two tenant organizers and a city worker from the Department of Transportation spoke to the crowd about how life is different under the new administration. Mamdani's speech was effectively a State of the Union for New York City. The Mayor outlined the campaign promises the administration has fulfilled so far in their short time in office and connected his style of governing to the Sewer Socialists of Milwaukee from the first half of the 20th century who focused on strengthening public services because for too long City
- [98:46]
Zoran Mamdani
hall had not just failed to meet expectations, it had lowered them. After years of broken promises. No one in this city could be blamed for doubting that government held either the ability or the ambition to upend the status quo. It, as I said on that freezing January afternoon to more than eight and a half million New Yorkers. We will make no apology for what we believe. I was elected as a democratic socialist and I will govern as a democratic socialist.
- [99:23]
Robert Evans
This speech was really the first time since the inauguration that the mayor has talked at length about what it means to govern as a democratic socialist and the example that New York City can set for the rest of the country. The address was mostly attended by city workers who the mayor invited to enter into a ticket lottery. For most of the speech, I was pinned between a group of uniformed Department of Sanitation employees and workers from the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. The event in general was focused on uplifting civil servants and celebrating public service, whether that be bus drivers, school teachers, or the sanitation workers that kept the city running during the worst snowstorm in years. It feels like for the past few decades, the only public sector job that gets regularly celebrated as noble by those in government or in the media and promoted by pop culture is being a police officer. Being a cop is the only public sector job that gets uplifted with propaganda. Zoron's little videos promoting 311 city call center workers is, to quote front of the pod Ben Lorber, rolling back decades of neoliberal propaganda reasserting the dignity of public sector work and workers. A common turn of phrase uttered by Mayor Mamdani is if you can't solve the smallest task in someone's life, why would they ever trust you to solve the biggest one? So let's go over some things, big and small, that Mamdani has been able to do in his first 100 days. One of Mamdani's core campaign promises was to freeze the rent. On February 18, Mayor Mamdani appointed six new members to the nine member Rent Guidelines Board, which each year is tasked with determining the rent increase percentages for the more than 1 million rent stabilized apartments in the city. Under Eric Adams, the board approved a 3% rent increase for one year leases and a 4.5% increase for two year leases. In just a few weeks, the new board will hold a preliminary vote to freeze or raise rents before their final vote in June. Public testimony on rent adjustments is currently underway. Housing in general is one of the top issues affecting affordability in the city, and the mayor's approach has not been limited to filling vacancies on the Rent guidelines board. After Zoran's inauguration speech on January 1, he went to a neglected apartment building just east of Prospect park to sign an executive order revitalizing the mayor's office to protect Tenants and appointed a tenant organizer to lead the office. This apartment building was owned by a literally bankrupt landlord called the Pinnacle Group, who was responsible for more than 5,000 housing violations and 14,000 complaints. The revamped office to protect tenants and the mayor intervened in the bankruptcy proceedings and successfully secured $30 million in repairs and upgrades for tenants, as well as protection from future displacement. Through this office, the administration has continued to crack down on bad landlords who violate New York City law and mistreat tenants. Just a few weeks after the inauguration, Mamdani announced a $2.1 million settlement from a and E Real Estate Properties for tenant harassment and hazardous conditions across 14 buildings in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens. As a part of the settlement, A and E was also required to correct more than 4,000 building condition violations. In February, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development released a public list of the 250 buildings with the most severe housing code violations citywide and put them under heightened oversight via the Alternative Enforcement Program, with the city stepping in to make repairs, then billing the landlords if they fail to address violations.
- [103:19]
Zoran Mamdani
Since January 1, we have won more than $34 million in settlements, judgments and repairs for tenants, delivered improvements to 6,070 apartments so far, and issued 195,829 violations. New York City will no longer tolerate exploitation as a business model.
- [103:47]
Robert Evans
In March, Mayor Mamdani announced a quote, unquote landmark victory against famously bad landlord Seth Miller of Aegis Realty. You can say the landlord was egregious. At realty, the city brought a case against Miller for dangerously derelict conditions at 919 Prospect Ave. In the South Bronx. And for the first time ever, courts imposed the maximum penalties under the city's nuisance abatement law. A $1,000 fine per day until housing violations are addressed and $2.174 million in retroactive penalties. During the first 100 days, the city held five rental ripoff hearings, one in each borough, providing New Yorkers a platform to discuss various problems with their landlord, from poor conditions to repair delays or junk fees. This was a dedicated public forum for tenants to speak directly to city officials and collectively shape housing policy going forward. A month into office, the Mayor announced a $38 million investment to install modern heating and cooling in 712 of New York City's public housing units at the beach, 41st street houses in Queens. And technically, this is after the first 100 days, but I think it's worth mentioning that just a few days ago, Zoran announced a $2.5 billion investment in public housing to deliver new energy efficient lighting and faucets to 45,000 homes, heat pumps and 20,000 and 10,000 new induction stoves, all affecting the NYCHA public housing in New York City. On Zoron's very first day in office, he also signed two executive orders to accelerate housing construction by building on city owned properties to increase the supply of affordable housing and cutting red tape to make it faster and more affordable to build. The development approval process for building affordable housing has been reduced by more than two years by the Administration's implementation of the new voter approved expediated land use review procedure combined with a new program called the Neighborhood Builders Fast Track which will pre select qualified developers to shorten the pre development timeline by eight months for certain projects on city owned land. Another of Zoron's core campaign promises was universal childcare. On his eighth day in office, Mehramdani announced a partnership with Governor Kathy Hochul to provide free child care for thousands of two year olds in New York City with a $1.2 billion increase in state funding. Since then, the Mayor has expanded the free 3K program for 3 year olds to more than half of all school districts in the city and announced 2K fall enrollment for school districts 18, 23, 10, 6 and 27, which serve lower income neighborhoods. 2K applications open for the first time on June 2 with the program operating on a full day schedule from 8am to 6pm all year round. As a part of the 3K expansion, seven new early child care education centers are opening in Western Queens, Staten Island, South Brooklyn and the South Bronx. And on March 30, the mayor announced the city's first pilot program for free on site childcare for city workers based at the David Dinkins Municipal Building with applications opening on April 30. The city also created a new accessible child care provider map with interactive features to filter by location, age group and cost. The Mayor says that all these steps will lead to free childcare for every 3 year old and 2 year old in the city by the end of his first term. Another key promise was fast and free buses. The administration is making headway on the fast part by building more bus lanes, redesigning streets as well as adding protected bike lanes on McGinnis Boulevard, 31st street in Astoria, Ashland Place across Flatbush, East Flatbush, Midwood and Brooklyn and Kingston Avenues in Central Brooklyn. Hamdani restarted the stalled Madison Ave Bus lane redesign to make buses faster and more reliable for 92,000 daily riders. The city announced a new bus lane for the Bronx crosstown bus service to Yankee Stadium and restarted the Fordham Road bus Lane project to improve the busiest bus corridor in the Bronx, servicing an average of 130,000 daily riders across four routes. Just this week, construction began in Brooklyn for the redesign of Flatbush Avenue with the goal of improving bus speeds by over 40% for 132,000 daily riders. And before the World cup this summer, Zoran has promised to complete new bike lanes and pedestrian upgrades in lower Manhattan. As for the free part, that will be a bit harder. Mamdani maintains that his administration is working with the state government in Albany and the MTA to eventually make New York City buses free and proposed a five week free bus pilot program during the World cup, though it's unclear if that will happen. It's not all sunshine and rainbows in New York City. Upon taking office, Mehrmadani discovered the city was facing an unexpected financial crisis in the form of a hidden $12 billion deficit left by former Mayor Eric Adams, stemming from years of fiscal mismanagement and the under budgeting of essential services like rental and cash assistance, shelters, health insurance and special ed. As mayor, Eric Adams covered up this massive budget deficit by leaving the gaps grossly understated, gaps that were made worse by divestment in New York City by the state under former governor Andrew Cuomo, the mayor is actually required by law to have a balanced budget. So rather than sweeping this under the rug by continuing to cook the city's books like his predecessor, Zoran chose transparency about the financial crisis he's inherited and signed an executive order to designate chief savings officers in every city agency to streamline processes and eliminate waste. Some of these savings so far include canceling $20,000 of Slack subscriptions to saving hundreds of thousands of dollars by foregoing vacant office space. Through his relationship with Governor Kathy Hochul, the mayor secured $1.5 billion in state aid in February. That, combined with higher than expected Wall street revenues and savings measures, shrunk the deficit to 5.4 billion. Zoron's preliminary budget, released last February, sparked criticism for failing short of promises to increase funding to parks and libraries. While campaigning, Zoron advocated for city libraries to receive 0.5% of the city budget. But the preliminary budget only allocated 0.39%, which is actually a $29 million cut from the last Adams budget down to $456 million. Meanwhile, the park budget remained effectively flat at about 0.5% rather than boosting it to 1% of the total budget. As Mamdani previously hoped, though. In March, Mayor Mamdani announced new capital investment of $50 million to reconstruct 10 parks in underserved neighborhoods. This February budget is preliminary and subject to change as Zoran's negotiations with the City Council and the state continue. In February, Mamdani reversed a previous policy against the forced removal of homeless encampments after 20 people died in the street during a horrific blizzard and sudden cold snap in late January. Despite the efforts of outreach workers visiting known homeless people every two hours to offer warm shelter and check if they needed help, 1400 people were placed into shelters and warming centers during that first freeze, with 85 people involuntarily moved or hospitalized. The new encampment suite policy will be led by the Department of Homeless Services rather than the nypd, as they were under Eric Adams, which Mamdani said put homeless New Yorkers in danger and was ineffective in moving people into shelter or housing under the new plan. After posting a removal notice, outreach workers will visit encampments every day for a week with the goal of connecting people to shelter and establishing a pipeline to stable housing while opening new shelters across the city, including New York City's first ever PET inclusive transitional housing facility for families. Much of the criticism levied at Zoran revolves around his choice to retain NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, something he announced before the election. Zoran did cancel an Eric Adams plan to add 5,000 more NYPD officers, but as promised, their budget remained effectively the same despite the financial deficit. But Tish specifically has been seen as a rare moderating force in the administration, an outlier that may be preventing police reforms that Zoron campaigned on, like disbanding the srg, the strategic response group tasked with responding to both protests and terrorism, as well as getting rid of the NYPD gang database. Critics have noted that Zoron seems to be moving towards quote, unquote, reforms of the gang database rather than his previous call to get rid of it, saying in early April, quote, I've made my critiques of the database clear, and the NYPD has also implemented a number of reforms as per the recommendation that came through, and the implementation of those reforms and the results of that are part of the active discussion that we are having, unquote, the gang database in New York has shrunk by 40% in the last two years. As for the SRG, Mayor Mamdani still maintains that he remains, quote, steadfast in my commitment to disband the SRG and to do so in a manner that upholds both First Amendment rights of New Yorkers and keeps New Yorkers safe. And that is the subject of an active conversation that we are having, unquote. Commissioner Tisch has been particularly resistant to the idea of disbanding the srg, though earlier this month, Mayor Mamdani's chief of staff, Elbisgard Church, said on the news that the administration remains committed to fulfilling the campaign promise of disbanding the SRG and that a delegation of City hall and NYPD officials traveled to Columbus, Ohio, to learn about their protest policing model focused on, quote, communication and, quote, de escalation over mass arrests and aggressive force.
- [114:33]
Iris Palmer
The commitment is to disband the srg, and I think that the Columbus visit showcases that we are committed to a really disciplined approach here. We want it to work and we want, want to do it in collaboration with the nypd. So the mayor is in regular conversation with his police commissioner, and our teams also meet regularly so that we can design something that is best suited to that commitment being fulfilled and not compromising any of the safety and the protection that New Yorkers deserve.
- [115:03]
Robert Evans
In an April interview, Mayor Mamdani did express to the New York Times that when unable to reach an agreement with Tish, he does have the power to overrule her on police policy if needed. Quote, ultimately, I hold the final decision, no matter which department or agency we're speaking about, unquote. Mamdani has not exercised this power with the NYPD as of yet. In March, Zoran took the first step in establishing the Department of Community Safety by opening the Office of Community Safety, led by Deputy Mayor Renita Francois, who directed de Blasio's Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety and advised Campaign Zero, which opposes the gang database. The new Office of Community Safety will develop strategies and coordinate efforts to combat gun violence, mental health, crisis response, hate crimes and substance abuse issues. At the announcement, Francois said, quote, the evidence is clear. Addressing what ails our communities, whether that be crumbling physical infrastructure, social disconnection, or a lack of access to economic opportunity, is how we best ensure that our communities are safe, unquote. It's too early to judge the impact of the office, but such an office or city department has the potential to challenge the police's monopoly on public safety. The other common critique of Mamdani is based on his endorsement of liberal Governor Kathy Hochul and his decision to focus on governing rather than dedicating resources and political capital towards further uphill primary challenges. Zoran has said, quote, the success of our movement will be defined by the success of our government. Through his Working partnership with Governor Hochul, the mayor has been able to extract wins from the state, particularly for universal child care and the $1.5 billion in state aid. In the realm of discourse, some leftists, anarchists or ultras have jumped on any fault or policy shift as a sign that Zoron has wholly moved to the right or betrayed the movement. Such opinions are rewarded by the social media economy, which tends to encourage whatever is seen as the most radical, extreme or divisive opinion. This tendency has been present even among some of Zoron's earliest online supporters. Behind this tendency is a willingness and frankly hunger, to turn on Zoron not necessarily for anything he has or has not done, but because of the position he now occupies. Zoron used to be an outsider challenging the democratic establishment embodied by Andrew Cuomo, but now he's one of the most popular Democrats in the country. DNC social media accounts are hosting Zoron memes and hype videos. This could be viewed as a massive accomplishment, evidence that the Democratic Party can be forced to bend toward left wing populism because of the working class voters and mass organizing that put Zoron in the position he's currently in. But others view Zoran's acceptance and select promotion within the party as a sign he's been corrupted, co opted, recuperated or made palatable. Both of these things can be partially true. The democratic elite certainly have their own motives for dipping their toes into the Mamdani hot tub, just as Zoron and the New York City DSA have their own aspirations for influencing the direction of the party towards social democracy and democratic socialism in general. There's a lot of confusion or disagreement on what it means to be a democratic socialist in a position of power. As an executive, Zoron is in a unique position that not many other DSA members have ever had. Being in such a position of power informs and shapes the way someone interacts with the systems of party and state in a way that those outside of power cannot fully understand. It filters ideology into material actions. This idea frightens many, but differences in political horizons also affect the way people interact and move with these systems. The question is not what should Zoron do if there were no constraints on his power? Because then obviously he should just implement utopian communism. But his power obviously does have constraints. If the goal for the left is to build a working class movement to that end, as a function of Zoron's constraints, it may actually be more effective for him to operate down certain state pathways that allow him to facilitate the building of a working class movement and avoid other more extreme pathways that because of the current constraints on executive power, would either be ineffective at best or self destructive at worst. As the mayor, Zoron's job is to run the biggest city in the country. And as a democratic socialist, that means using government to make life better for the working class. His task is to govern in a way that alleviates economic conditions, to make it easier to organize and build a working class movement. But building that movement is not his job. It's yours. It's the job of the people. And such a movement is the only way of holding elected leaders like Zoron accountable. Zoron is not a revolutionary, nor is he an organizer. He's the Mayor of New York City. And as mayor, he has to serve more than 8 million New Yorkers, not just the 14,000 members of New York City DSA. The mayor may join the picket line with striking nurses and fight for working class New Yorkers in City hall or even open an office of mass Engagement like Zorn has done. But it is up to those outside City hall to move in tandem by working to rebuild a labor movement. Assuming that Zoron or some random public official can just do whatever is the most extreme, radical thing, mistakenly sees the state as having more power than it actually does. People often see the state as an ahistorical, abstracted seat of power. But no, the state is just the mediator between capital and labor. The power of the state to support labor is exercised by doing things that are in the interest of labor and society as a whole, rather than just capital. But this ability is directly linked to the extent that labor is organized. So if labor is largely unorganized, then Zoron is more restrained in what he can do. What he can do then is use his position to help build working class power, which will then enable him further so on and so on. The state has no power against capital outside of the power that labor gives it. Our situation is one where capital is very strong, which means when the state serves capital, it's quite strong. But in its function of serving labor, it's rather weak. Because the left has failed to reckon with the fact that right now, labor is actually quite weak, which means that state actors, even those on the pro labor left, are very constrained. So the main thing they can do to strengthen labor is providing better conditions for which labor power may be built. And importantly, organizers must utilize those conditions to build the labor movement. Zoran's other task is to demonstrate that left wing working class Politics can actually govern, not just critique. Whether or not he succeeds at governing and delivering for working class New Yorkers determines the perceived viability of democratic socialist politics nationally going forward. As Mamdani has said, the worth of an ideology can only be judged by its delivery. Mamdani is not the first democratic socialist to be put in such a position. In his 100 day address, Mayor Mamdani spoke about the so called sewer socialists of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who 100 years ago built the greatest public park system in the nation and weathered the Great Depression better than almost any other American city. Milwaukee purged corruption, built the first municipally sponsored public housing development in the nation, and transformed the city's sewage disposal system. Mehrmamdani is trying to revive this legacy of municipal socialism by acting on his mantra, there is no problem too big, no task too small. On day six of office, Mamdani fixed the infamous Williamsburg Bridge bump that has long plagued cyclists. And in response to the historic winter damage affecting city streets, the administration launched a five borough pothole blitz, filling 100,000 potholes in less than 100 days.
- [124:06]
Zoran Mamdani
This is Pothole Politics, our 2026 answer to sewer socialism, where government is not too busy, not too self important, not too mired in paperwork to fix the problems of this city no matter their size.
- [124:22]
Robert Evans
This quote unquote pothole politics has extended to scaffolding reforms reducing the time that sheds clutter our sidewalks. In January, the mayor announced a new program to expand modular public restrooms. And starting this summer, the roof of the historic David Dinkins Municipal Building will be open to the public for free viewing and tours. Fighting for workers from within City hall isn't just an abstract ideal. In the first 100 days, the administration secured $9.3 million in restitution.
- [124:54]
Zoran Mamdani
No longer will city government be afraid of its own shadow. If anyone should be afraid, it is those who take advantage of working people.
- [125:03]
Robert Evans
On January 15, the city filed a lawsuit against a predatory delivery app called Moto Click for violating worker laws like minimal pay rate. At the end of January, Zoron announced more than $5 million in worker restitution and penalties due to minimum pay rate violations from three major restaurant delivery apps, Uber Eats, Fanton, and Hungry Panda. This money will be paid to almost 50,000 workers. And as a part of the settlement, Uber also agreed to reinstate 10,000 wrongfully deactivated delivery workers. In March, the administration won almost $2 million for over 800 fast food workers at Taco Bell and retail workers for violations of worker protection laws against unpredictable scheduling. The mayor signed executive orders strengthening consumer protections by targeting hidden junk fees and impossible to cancel subscriptions, and expanded the protected time off law to 4.3 million previously unprotected workers and issued compliance warnings to nearly 60,000 employers. Speaking of sewer socialism, at the end of March, Mehrmamdani announced a $108 million investment to upgrade and replace more than 6,700 water catch basins to combat flooding. This quote unquote pothole politics lays the groundwork of public trust needed for larger systematic transformations.
- [126:27]
Zoran Mamdani
If government can't do the small things, how could you ever trust it to do the big ones? How can we promise to transform our city if we can't pave your street
- [126:38]
Robert Evans
at the end of the 100 day address, Mayor Mamdani made a series of announcements. The administration is restarting trash containerization and will make buses faster for 1 million New Yorkers by speeding up buses by up to 20% along 45 priority corridors and constructing new rapid bus routes for 100,000 New Yorkers who live more than half a mile away from a subway or rail stop. But the big announcement was an update to another of Zoron's core campaign promises. The first of five city owned grocery stores will open next year, with one store being opened in each borough by the end of Mamdani's first term. The location of the Manhattan Municipal Grocery Store has already been selected. Le Marchetta in East Harlem, a public market opened by the New Deal era Mayor Ferro LaGuardia. The city will build a 9,000 square foot store at the site to offer cheaper groceries than the capitalist competitors.
- [127:38]
Zoran Mamdani
I know there are many who use socialist as a dirty word, something to be ashamed of. They can try all they want, but we will not be ashamed of using government to fight for the many, not simply the few. We will not be ashamed of adding more heat pumps to NYCHA buildings in the Rockaways, or building more supportive housing in Harlem, or standing steadfast alongside our trans neighbors. We will not be ashamed of investing in youth mental health clinics or working to close Rikers or fighting for immigrants targeted by ice. To any New Yorker, whether you're under attack from the federal government's cruelty or suffocating under the affordability crisis. We will stand beside you. Because government is a series of choices and socialism is the choice to fight for every New Yorker to extend democracy from the ballot box to the rest of our lives.
- [128:55]
Robert Evans
Three days after Mamdani's 100 day address on tax day April 15, the mayor announced that he and Governor Hochul had agreed to a new tax the rich proposal. New York State will have its first ever hedotear tax, a wealth tax on second homes in New York City valued above $5 million owned by out of state elites. This tax on the ultra wealthy is projected to generate $500 million in annual revenue. And if owners want to avoid the tax by moving into the residence, that's fine too, because then they'll have to pay New York resident taxes so you get taxed either way. Part of pushing back against the libertarian ethos in America by showing that government can actually make your life better is actually showing people what local government is doing. Since taking office, Zoron has employed the same widely successful messaging style that helped get him elected to make PSAs and inform new Yorkers about what the administration has been able to accomplish. This is something Democrats have largely failed to do by either just not doing this sort of outreach while governing, making any outreach inaccessible or hard to understand, or having your outreach come off as cringe or out of touch. Regardless of how much effort is put into outreach, the people have to also see the improvements being talked about in their own lives or in their own neighborhoods. A dense population and having a cohesive city culture like New York helps with that. Millions of cyclists cross the Williamsburg Bridge every year, so when the mayor fixes the bump during his first week in office, that's an easy reference point for people. The success of the administration's comm strategy has been by using Zoron's popularity to promote the public sector and public sector workers while actually showing people how social services help city residents. As the mayor says, New York belongs to all who live in it. While in office, Zoran has largely declined to explicitly talk about how his administration may impact the future of democratic socialism across the country, instead keeping his vision laser focused on improving the lives of working New Yorkers and making the city more affordable. To quote the mayor, we cannot burden ourselves with the question of what this means beyond this city. But before the mayor went on stage at the 100 day address, they played a clip of the progressive New deal Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia saying that the greatness of New York City is in the services to its people, where public problems are really the problems of all the people. Quote, and if we succeed here, surely it can be done elsewhere. When former Socialist Mayor Bernie Sanders made a surprise appearance during Zoron's speech, the Senator spoke about how what's happening in New York is influencing those outside the city.
- [132:01]
Garrison Davis
And I want to tell all of
- [132:02]
Robert Evans
you and the mayor that what you guys are doing here in New York City is important not only to the people here.
- [132:12]
Garrison Davis
What you are doing and what the
- [132:13]
Robert Evans
mayor is doing is providing hope and
- [132:17]
Garrison Davis
inspiration not only to people all across our country, but honestly all across the world.
- [132:27]
Robert Evans
As a part of Mamdani's first 100 days press circuit, he was asked on CBS News about the future of the Democratic Party and if his socialist politics are really viable.
- [132:40]
Zoran Mamdani
You know, what I find is that New Yorkers ask me less about how I describe my politics and more about whether my politics includes them. And I think what we can see is that a democratic socialist politics is one that should be judged on its delivery like any ideology. And what we're showing in this city is we can, we can pursue the big things like universal childcare and do the pothole politics at the same time that we're showing. And not just filling in the potholes, changing the catch basins, but also repaving over a thousand miles of roadway.
- [133:07]
Unknown Guest 1
But Mr. Mayor, presidential and statewide elections are often decided in battleground regions that do not look like New York City.
- [133:13]
Zoran Mamdani
Yeah, I'll be honest with you. Before I was the mayor, I was an assembly member of Astoria in Long Island City. At that time, I was told that you could only be a democratic socialist in Northwest Queens. Then I became the mayor. Now the next question is the state. Then it'll be. The next question will be the country. I think that this is a politics that can flourish anywhere because frankly, there is only one majority in this country. That's the working class. And it's time we have a politics that puts them at the heart, part of what it is that we're pursuing and not as part of the appendix.
- [133:40]
Robert Evans
Mamdani still has over 1300 days left in his first term. And there will be more challenges along the way. Challenges with the nypd, the mta, state government, federal government, the billionaires and the blood sucking monsters among the Democratic Party elite. Attempts to hold politicians like Zoron truly accountable to their politics will require more than Twitter, Maoists and your small DSA caucus. Navigating all these problems will require not just principal leadership with a commitment to working class politics, but also growing the mass organizing apparatus that helped get Zorn elected and continuing to build power in city hall, state government and in the workplace. That does it today. For it could have happen here. See you on the other side. 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 am joined by James Stout and Robert Evans this episode we're covering the week of April 22, April 30. Anything, anything interesting happen this week?
- [135:03]
Garrison Davis
Very little.
- [135:04]
James Stout
Not much news.
- [135:05]
Garrison Davis
Oh, not much. I mean Garrison, you've joined the ranks of the vaccine injured, right?
- [135:13]
James Stout
I got also joining us of four live vaccines inside Garrison's body.
- [135:17]
Robert Evans
Thank you, thank you for having me and my four live vaccines which have obliterated my body and mind this week as I scrambled to finish the Mamdani piece. But news happens whether or not I feel bad. So let's get to it.
- [135:32]
James Stout
In fact it seems to happen a lot when we feel bad then you sometimes conspires that way.
- [135:38]
Robert Evans
Now we will talk about the thing. Obviously we'll talk about the thing. But first some smaller news items. To start, Congress has voted to end the 76 day DHS shut down without funding for ICE or Border Patrol. The bill now goes to Trump today and if he signs it, the shutdown will be over. The House voted to reauthorize FISA Section 702, the Warrantless Surveillance Authority. 42 House Democrats voted to reauthorize. 22 Republicans voted against. The bill is expected to be stalled in the Senate at least this version of the bill as it included an amendment about digital currency which the Senate will fight over. The ATF released a new list of proposed reforms and regulations repealing the Biden pistol brace rule as well as requiring quote, unquote biological sex be used on ATF forms. The State Department is releasing a limited edition passport for the United States 250th anniversary featuring a portrait of President Trump superimposed on the Declaration of Independence and an American flag with his golden signature below. Google Trump golden signature for more.
- [136:50]
Garrison Davis
Look, I'm just going to say if we have any foreign border control agents listening, you have to detain anybody you see with that passport.
- [137:00]
James Stout
It is now possible for Nicki Minaj and only Nicki Minaj to assemble the most unique collection of United States government documents in history if she becomes a citizen because she is apparently the only recipient of the gold card, the golden visa. Yeah, yeah. So she could really, she could really get a unique, you know, Pokemon combination here of. I guess it would, it would be. She'd have to advance pretty quickly from.
- [137:24]
Robert Evans
She would.
- [137:25]
James Stout
I'm not clear how one goes from gold card citizenship. And the only way we'll find out is by closely following Nicki Minaj, the
- [137:32]
Robert Evans
doj indicted former FBI director James Comey for the second time. This time for posting An Instagram image with the numbers 8647.
- [137:42]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [137:42]
Robert Evans
Once again, Trump's FCC is going after Disney's ABC licenses by directing Disney to file an early renewal order after Jimmy Kimmel made a joke a few days before the White House correspondents dinner about first lady Melania Trump having the, quote, glow of an expectant widow. It pains me to say critical support to Jimmy Kimmel. President Trump, David Ellison, Todd Blanche, Stephen Miller, Barry Weiss, Paramount's chief legal officer, and several CBS journalists met in a closed door dinner in Washington D.C. last week as the Paramount buyout of Warner Brothers and CNN progresses. Nightmare blunt rotation. Maine Governor Janet Mills vetoed the state's 18 month data center moratorium, the first of its kind in the country. Days later, Mills dropped out of the Senate race, paving the way for populist candidate Graham Platner to receive the Democratic nomination and go up against Susan Collins in the midterms.
- [138:38]
James Stout
Most of Dems seem to already be behind him. I saw a post from the Democrats account, picture of Graham.
- [138:44]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see how the Democratic Party kind of falls in line behind this guy given the fairly unique degree of controversy over the Nazi tattoo and a couple of other things that have come up. But this has been in general, the gap between kind of how random progressives and Democrats online talk about Platner and how people in Maine feel about him has been massive from the jump. And I think a lot of it has to do just with the fact that this guy went about campaigning in a very dedicated way. He visited basically every county that like he could. And it goes to show that the consensus that builds online around candidates will never matter as much as like what they're out there actually doing in the world. And it's, it's useful to get a reminder of that whether or not you think this is a tremendous disaster. Just the degree to which all of the talk about this guy online had no impact on his ability to actually like, win. Now this is a unique case. There aren't a whole lot of seats that are like the seat that he's going to be taking. Right. In terms of both the weakness of your primary rival and the weakness of the other party if you should happen to win the primary. Like this is not, not every congressional district, but it's still kind of an interesting case study.
- [139:59]
James Stout
Maine is also like, it's not California, you know, like Californian. So discourse happens online because we're a vast state and you know, these big cities and such. And Maine is different. Like he has good ground game and that matters more there, it seems.
- [140:13]
Robert Evans
And this signifies like a rejection of democratic establishment politicians, like a hunger for change.
- [140:18]
Garrison Davis
Yep.
- [140:19]
Robert Evans
And the fact that someone with all the controversies that come with Platner was able to beat the democratic establishment, I think shows how hungry, how hungry people are to upseat these, these blood sucking monsters.
- [140:31]
James Stout
Yeah, we'll keep reporting on that. I'm kind of interested in this race, so.
- [140:36]
Robert Evans
Yes, no, absolutely. I mean, Susan Collins plays a unique role in the Senate right now. Finally for me, on Saturday, a car bomb exploded at a police station in Dunmari, Northern Ireland outside Belfast. A group calling itself the quote unquote New IRA claimed responsibility and a 66 year old man has been arrested.
- [140:57]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, New IRA, 66 year old man.
- [141:02]
James Stout
Well, the New IRA, it grows out of the Real IRA, right.
- [141:06]
Garrison Davis
Was it the New IRA who killed that journalist a few years back in Belfast?
- [141:11]
James Stout
You know what? I don't know.
- [141:13]
Garrison Davis
The new IRA. Yep. Admitted responsibility. Yeah, yeah, that's the new IRA as well. Lara McKee is the name of the journalist who was killed, I think just out of negligence and incompetence during an action these people were a part of.
- [141:26]
James Stout
Yeah, this is like just before COVID Times. Yeah, vaguely remember. So. Two large vessels including a tanker have been seized by pirates off Somalia. Another attempted hijacking by pirates was prevented. I'm just gonna quote the UKMTO here. Quote. The master of a cargo vessel was approached by two small fishing vessels with armed persons aboard. One vessel approached within 600 meters. Warning shots were fired and the suspicious craft returned fire. The suspicious boat moved away and made clear of the vessel. All crew are safe and accounted for. Vessels are advised to transit with caution and report any suspicious activity to ukmdo. Authorities are investigating. I saw another incident where a, a ship had fired a flare at people who were allegedly attempting to board it. Right. But it seems like there has been an uptick in instance, especially as ships generally are having a hard time right now. The United States has also been boarding a number of vessels to inspect them as part of its, its blockade on Iran and Iranian goods. Secondly, jnim, that's Jamat Nusrat Al Islam Wal Muslim and the Aswad Liberation Front in Mali launched a shock offensive this week that saw them sweep into Mali's capital, assassinate the defense Minister and force the military junta and its allied Russian forces to abandon whole cities. They also abandoned a number of bases. Right. The JNIM have captured like massive amounts of Russian Africa core material. But this is a pretty ground Shaking offensive. Since this is a big change for Mali, the junta in Myanmar, I think I'm going to still keep calling them that. They've rebranded themselves as a civilian government. They're not. No. Min Ahlan gets retired as a general and just become president. It changed clothes and done the same. Like the hunter reclaimed Falam this week, which is in Chin State. It's capital of Chin State. Fighting has been happening there for months. I've been talking to people pretty regularly who are taking part in the, in the battle there. They're obviously, you know, they lost friends in the battle. They are not happy about this. But I think it's fair to say that spirits among the resistance Germany remain pretty high and they hope that they'll return to Falam soon enough. Doug Burgum has announced a United States Geographic. Is it geographical or geological survey?
- [143:50]
Garrison Davis
USGS Geological Survey. Yeah, I know that because of the film Evolution starring David Duchovny.
- [143:57]
James Stout
Not familiar.
- [143:57]
Garrison Davis
This is an important piece of news for the listeners. There was a brief period of time in between X Files and Californication where we thought that David Duchovny might have a career as a comedic actor. And no, he, he did not that
- [144:09]
Robert Evans
he might have a career. Hey, I love career.
- [144:14]
Garrison Davis
He's had a great career, just not as a comedic actor.
- [144:18]
James Stout
Yeah. Okay. So Doug Burgam has announced that the United States Geological Survey found enough lithium to replace three centuries of imports in Appalachia.
- [144:29]
Garrison Davis
Enough lithium to do that or make one American small town normal for a weekend.
- [144:37]
James Stout
Yeah, I want to read from this because it's kind of interesting. Quote, the southern Appalachians hold an estimated 1.43 million metric tons of lithium oxide concentrated in the Carolinas. And the northern Appalachians hold an estimated 900,000 metric tons concentrated in Maine and New Hampshire, according to estimates in a new USGS scientific paper. That is like, I guess big Appalachia, like going up into Maine, there's leaving that aside, lithium mining is incredibly disruptive to the environment.
- [145:09]
Robert Evans
Right?
- [145:10]
James Stout
Yeah. Generally there's two ways you could do it. You can extract it from brine like they do in Chile. And I think other places they're trying to do that in California. Otherwise it's open pit mining. The water use, energy use, ecological damage will be huge. The potential for disasters is not zero. And the people of Appalachia should be be more than familiar with how this tends to go. Right. This is a long history of mining and mining disasters. Moving on, Donald Trump has reposted a tweet about changing the name of Ice to nice.
- [145:45]
Robert Evans
Nice agents.
- [145:46]
Garrison Davis
They should do this. I want them to do this.
- [145:49]
James Stout
Yeah. It would be absolutely disastrous for audio journalism.
- [145:54]
Garrison Davis
It'd be like, look, we understand, you know, it's 1943. People have a lot of issues with the Gestapo, so we're gonna call him the Fun Stoppo now.
- [146:01]
James Stout
Yeah, The Nice Stoppo. Yeah.
- [146:05]
Garrison Davis
The Great Stapo USS now stands for super sweet. Actually,
- [146:11]
Robert Evans
the White House account and the DHS account have posted nice images or hype videos since this as well.
- [146:18]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [146:19]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [146:19]
Garrison Davis
We have to consider there's like a 40% chance this happens at least.
- [146:22]
James Stout
Yeah, no, this might happen.
- [146:24]
Garrison Davis
This could very much happen. Like, we're laughing, but this could be the future.
- [146:28]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [146:29]
Robert Evans
What does the N stand for?
- [146:30]
James Stout
Natur. National.
- [146:31]
Garrison Davis
National.
- [146:32]
James Stout
It's just. It's what they call a backronym.
- [146:35]
Garrison Davis
I know. Garrison, with these guys, the in could have stood for a couple of things, a few things.
- [146:40]
James Stout
Yeah, sure. Trump Truth. Great idea. Do it. That is how policy is made these days.
- [146:48]
Robert Evans
This is how government policy works now. Via. Via Truth.
- [146:51]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [146:52]
Garrison Davis
This has made something clear to me that I was kind of dancing around for a while, which is that I am in support in general of any policy that just pulls the wool off of people's eyes. Like this. This is one of those things where it now should be clearer to even the really stupid people where we are as a country when we do, when something like this happens.
- [147:08]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [147:09]
Garrison Davis
And so I'm supportive of it. Like, we can't have any artifice. The more you dress things up, the more people get deranged. So at least this. Everyone knows what's happening. Yeah, it's really clear.
- [147:19]
James Stout
I'm also generally in favor of, like, they have a budget. It is vast, but it is fixed. And if they want to spend it all, rewrapping their vehicles to say, nice. Yeah, fine.
- [147:27]
Garrison Davis
Also, it's gonna make them feel lame, dude.
- [147:29]
Robert Evans
Are they gonna do that by buying end stickers or do they have to get the whole new sticker, do you think? Right. Are they slap the end?
- [147:35]
Garrison Davis
I hope they just slap it in.
- [147:38]
James Stout
I don't know if we want to open the. Open the door to them having stickers with Annon, but yeah, who knows, Garrison? They. They. They had previously spent quite a lot of money wrapping vehicles, so it's not beyond them to get. Maybe they'll get a whole rebrand. Maybe it'll be nice and a picture of someone, like, holding cake.
- [147:54]
Robert Evans
Or they gotta find some way to spend the seven bajillion dollars that they have.
- [147:58]
Garrison Davis
So either that or, you know, when we get someone better in, we could keep the name but just create, like, a brand partnership with the city of Nice. And I was gonna say that. Yeah, it's like. And turn them into advertising. Instead of pulling people away from their families, they can tell people about all of the new deals on airfare to France that are available right now.
- [148:17]
Robert Evans
We don't even need to abolish Nice. We can just reform it.
- [148:20]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, we could just. We could just reform it to a. A tourism agency for one city in France.
- [148:25]
James Stout
There is a type of biscuit in Britain, which I suspect maybe comes from Nice, but it's generally referred to as a nice biscuit because it has nice stamped on the biscuit.
- [148:33]
Garrison Davis
Sure.
- [148:33]
James Stout
So perhaps we could, instead of guns, give them biscuits and they can hand those out.
- [148:38]
Garrison Davis
Think of how much better it'll be. Some guy shows up for his, like, you know, immigration court meeting, and he finishes that, and on his way out, there's a delegation of guys from. From Nice just being like, you want to go on vacation? One of France's top five or six
- [148:52]
James Stout
cities, I assume the Nicoise cops. Yeah. They give you, like, one of those special salads they make there with. Yeah. So many.
- [149:01]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [149:01]
James Stout
It could be great. Hit us up.
- [149:03]
Garrison Davis
This could be it. This could work. Yeah.
- [149:04]
James Stout
If you're the mayor of Nice, we can. We can introduce you.
- [149:07]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [149:08]
James Stout
Finally, the United States has indicted the governor of Sinaloa on drug trafficking charges, which is a pretty significant thing.
- [149:17]
Robert Evans
Well, that's not as funny.
- [149:19]
James Stout
Yeah. No, no, no. Well, they're not going to be brand rebranding at Sinaloa, clearly, are they?
- [149:23]
Robert Evans
So, speaking of not being funny, let's actually talk about the bad news this week.
- [149:30]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [149:31]
Robert Evans
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana voting map as a, quote, unconstitutional racial gerrymander, unquote, that effectively created a black voting district. The ruling was split six, three. On ideological lines. Alito wrote the majority opinion, saying that the district violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution. The new ruling substantially undermines the 1965 Voting Rights act, reinterpreting Section 2 provisions against racial discrimination to require evidence of intentional racial discrimination, not just discrimination, as the effect. So in the future, proving discriminatory motives may be needed in order to win legal challenges against gerrymandering. By citing the Voting Rights Act. This ruling specifically depowers black voters while enabling Republican gerrymandering to continue. Republicans in the south will now be able to redraw House district maps that lean Democrat that have a high number of black voters. NPR estimates at least 15 House districts are now at risk of elimination. In the dissent, Justice Alana Kagan wrote, that court's decision will set back the foundational right Congress granted of racial equality in electoral opportunity. Unquote.
- [150:55]
James Stout
Yeah, this is bad.
- [150:56]
Robert Evans
This is possibly the worst escalation of the continued undermining of the Voting Rights Act.
- [151:03]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah. Right?
- [151:05]
Garrison Davis
Yeah. I mean, this is inarguably the most important thing going on this week. Even with the shooting that we haven't talked about, like, the gutting of the people died for, like, the Voting Rights act has a body count attached to it.
- [151:16]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [151:16]
Garrison Davis
The court has to be packed the next. Like, if there's ever another Democratic or left of center administration and they don't pack the court, there's simply no chance of improving or fixing any of the problems this country has. Like, it's a necessary prerequisite that there's
- [151:32]
James Stout
no coming back from this.
- [151:33]
Robert Evans
D.C. and Puerto Rico also need to become states and have their own congressional representation. Like any future opposition administration has to go completely gloves off. Like.
- [151:43]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [151:43]
Garrison Davis
And we have to imprison a bunch of the people currently running things.
- [151:46]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [151:47]
Garrison Davis
Like, there's a lot of stuff that has to happen, but one of those is the Supreme Court needs to get packed because, by God, these people are not going to approve of anything that isn't insane.
- [151:55]
Robert Evans
It's unclear if this ruling will have. Have immediate impacts on the upcoming midterms, but by 2028, it will certainly have impacts.
- [152:04]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [152:05]
James Stout
Yeah. They had filed for an emergency decision on redistricting or I guess not redistricting. Like. Like pre. District. I don't know what you would call that. But. But to get this in effect before the midterms, basically. Yeah.
- [152:19]
Robert Evans
The Supreme Court also sent this to a lower court to work out more details. There's going to obviously be ongoing litigation about it, just as there will be about Florida's redistricting measure that they are trying to finalize before the midterms as well.
- [152:33]
James Stout
Yeah. And indeed California, as I think there have been some arguments made, like, now that this decision has been made by the Supreme Court. Right. Like other states will have to consider this in their redistricting. Should we take a break?
- [152:45]
Robert Evans
We shall. And then we can talk about the dinner.
- [152:48]
James Stout
Yep.
- [153:00]
Robert Evans
Okay. We are back. Let's talk about the dinner. Let's talk about the shooting that happened at the dinner, the thing that everyone else has been talking about for the past five, six days. So. Yeah. On April 25th, during the White House Correspondence Dinner, everyone's favorite event.
- [153:16]
Garrison Davis
It's a Shame we weren't there.
- [153:18]
Robert Evans
It is unfortunate that we were not there to point our vertical video at our face as the news happens in front of us.
- [153:24]
Garrison Davis
Oh, I would have been filming just your face, Garrison. And just like really tight in. Like to the point where it's difficult for you to get up and move. I keep wedging. No, Garrison, face the camera. Come on. The people need to see this.
- [153:37]
James Stout
I'd be assuming the war fighter posture.
- [153:41]
Robert Evans
You're gonna get up like egg Seth and storm around. Yeah.
- [153:45]
Garrison Davis
I would also be shielding myself behind Stephen Miller's wife.
- [153:50]
Robert Evans
Hey, that could have been either way. He could have been protecting the wife.
- [153:53]
Garrison Davis
I know it. We don't know either way.
- [153:55]
Unknown Guest 1
Yeah.
- [153:56]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, it's funny.
- [153:57]
Robert Evans
Yeah, at least. At least Miller wasn't. Wasn't getting cucked. Unlike the FBI director.
- [154:02]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, that is funny that he abandoned his wife.
- [154:06]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [154:06]
Robert Evans
Girlfriend. Girlfriend.
- [154:08]
James Stout
Girlfriend.
- [154:08]
Garrison Davis
Sorry.
- [154:09]
James Stout
I guess we should just go. Let's recap the events for people who live under a rock.
- [154:15]
Robert Evans
So shortly before 8:30pm the alleged shooter approached the Secret Service security screening checkpoint located on the terrace level of the hotel. This was the level above the ballroom level where the actual dinner was taking place. James, we should probably just read from the court document.
- [154:36]
James Stout
Yeah, I think I'm just. Yeah, I'm just gonna read this straight from the. The government's DFJ statement in court. Right before the dependent approached the checkpoint, he discarded a long black coat that concealed a 12 gauge pump action shock. The defendant then sprinted through one of the magnetometers at the checkpoint and ran in the direction of the stairs leading to the ballroom where the President and members of his family and cabinet were located. As the defendant did so, he held a shotgun in both hands in a raised position parallel to the ground. A United States Secret Service officer observed the defendant fire the shotgun in the direction of the stairs leading down to the ballroom. The Secret Service officer and others at the checkpoint heard the gunshot. The Secret Service officer drew his service weapon and fired five times at the defendant. The defendant fell to the ground and was restrained by law enforcement and was placed under arrest. The defendant suffered a minor injury to his knee, but was not shot. We can in a second talk about whether he shot the Secret Service officer.
- [155:37]
Garrison Davis
Yeah. Because there's an interesting Washington Post review that's out too.
- [155:43]
James Stout
Yeah. And a couple of court documents just filed today.
- [155:46]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [155:46]
James Stout
Let's talk a little bit about the just circumstances this. Right. This person had purchased. According to court documents, he purchased two weapons from separate firearms dealers in California, buying the shotgun on or about August 17, 20, 25. And the pistol on or about October 6, 2023.
- [156:03]
Robert Evans
He had the pistol for a while. The shotgun was a more of a recent purchase.
- [156:08]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, yeah.
- [156:09]
James Stout
The pistol is a fascinating choice.
- [156:12]
Garrison Davis
Amazing choice.38 super.
- [156:15]
James Stout
Yeah. I have never seen a.38 super handgun outside of. They're very. They're common in Mexico because they have a certain cachet and cultural value.
- [156:27]
Garrison Davis
Every.38 super handgun that I have personally held was embossed in gold and silver and usually a Mexican flag, but not a exclusively.
- [156:35]
James Stout
Yeah. Or like some sort of heraldry that denotes. That is associated sometimes with organized crime. Like I'm. I'm not. When I say associated with organized crime. A few weeks ago.
- [156:46]
Garrison Davis
Right.
- [156:46]
James Stout
I talked about a material support for terrorism case which centered on a firearms dealer who was selling grips for 30.38super pistols with images that are associated with cartels.
- [156:58]
Garrison Davis
Like when.
- [156:59]
James Stout
Yeah, when you buy a.38 super, someone at the ATF gets an email. I bet, like these things are very rare and they have a certain consumer base.
- [157:09]
Garrison Davis
Now Obviously there are normal.38 super pistols that exist. They're just like today most people buy. Because it's a weird moon round too. It's not a normal. Like there's nothing wrong with it, but it's not a round that's commonly carried. It's expensive. It's primarily something that has like cachet for drug dealers. But I guess also. So my, my interpretation, and I guess we're. I know maybe this is getting too much into my side of things, but I do have a theory as to why he would have picked this gun and the shotgun that he picked. But we can talk about that later if you want.
- [157:41]
Robert Evans
We'll get to that in a sec. Yeah.
- [157:42]
James Stout
He also had a. I believe two knives and four daggers.
- [157:47]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [157:48]
James Stout
Six bladed weapons.
- [157:50]
Garrison Davis
Really want to see pictures of those bladed weapons?
- [157:52]
James Stout
They are in the court documents. Buddy, let me have you.
- [157:55]
Garrison Davis
Let me.
- [157:55]
James Stout
Let me just find those for you.
- [157:57]
Robert Evans
We have an enhanced image of some of them too.
- [158:00]
James Stout
Yeah. So we should talk about this. The government submitted a quote unquote enhanced image in the court case. Mr. Allen took a picture of himself at about 8:03pm so about half an hour before he rushed past the magnetometer. There in the picture we can see he is wearing black suit pants. He is wearing a black shirt. He has a red tie, which inexplicably is tucked into his pants. He has a shoulder holster and a large KA bar knife in a downwards draw configuration. He is carrying a pair of pliers and a pair of wire Cutters in a holster on his left side. On his right side, he is carrying a small leather bag which allegedly contained more shotgun rounds. And the 1911 is in a cruster or shoulder holster.
- [158:53]
Andrew Sage
Right.
- [158:54]
James Stout
None of this screams highly trained.
- [158:56]
Robert Evans
The quote unquote, enhanced image was basically a zoomed in.
- [159:00]
James Stout
Oh, yeah.
- [159:00]
Robert Evans
Copy of this photo that, if I were to guess the word enhanced means that they use some kind of sharpening or AI image sharpening tool.
- [159:10]
James Stout
Yes, yes.
- [159:12]
Garrison Davis
None of which are real in terms of like. None of which are actually enhancing or sharpening.
- [159:18]
Robert Evans
The details that you are seeing should not be allowed in to be, like, viewed in court.
- [159:23]
Garrison Davis
Right.
- [159:23]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [159:24]
Garrison Davis
The AI is guessing there's not extra data in the photo that the AI is uncovering. Like, the AI is basically attempting to clean up an image, which is fine if you have like a blurry photo of you and, like, your wife when you got into your first apartment together that you want cleaned up.
- [159:39]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [159:40]
Garrison Davis
But that's not. It's not valid.
- [159:41]
Robert Evans
It should not be important.
- [159:42]
Garrison Davis
It should not be.
- [159:43]
James Stout
Yeah. I'm sure we'll see the defense challenge this and I'll be interested to know, like, what AI they used. And, you know, did they ask for various iterations of the enhanced announcement or did they, you know, like, this will be interesting. I don't think that it materially inserted anything. We can see the same Samsung phone. I can see the handle of the knife in both images. I can see the handle of the handgun.
- [160:03]
Robert Evans
This is more of like a principal thing.
- [160:05]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [160:06]
Robert Evans
Then, like, did this specifically affect the photo in this case in any way that would lead to the evidence being more useful?
- [160:13]
James Stout
Yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah. This is a bad slippery slope. So talking of his phone, he kept it with him as he traveled across the country on a train, taking notes about the landscape as he went.
- [160:24]
Robert Evans
Amtrak.
- [160:25]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah. He. He took Amtrak. And, like, he was enchanted by, like, the deserts and the. He liked Chicago. He thought the woods on the east coast were great.
- [160:34]
Robert Evans
He kept like a. Like a journal where he wrote about the trip.
- [160:37]
James Stout
Yeah. In the notes app of his phone.
- [160:38]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [160:39]
James Stout
And then the day of his attempted shooting, he used open sources to track the President's movements. Should we move on to did he fire his gun?
- [160:48]
Robert Evans
Yeah, that's a big. Because that is a big question right now. That's one half the question. The other half is, did he shoot a Secret Service agent? Which.
- [160:56]
Garrison Davis
Right. Did he shoot anybody?
- [160:59]
Robert Evans
The DOJ is saying he fired a gun.
- [161:02]
Garrison Davis
The DOJ claims that, but is not
- [161:05]
Robert Evans
really affirmatively saying that he shot an Agent?
- [161:09]
Garrison Davis
Yeah. No, they've said a couple of different things. They've said that an agent was struck by gunfire. They've said that it was not friendly fire, but they have not said that he was struck by the assailant shotgun by the gunman's actual weapon. And that's partly because there's not hard evidence yet that the gunman actually fired his shotgun.
- [161:32]
James Stout
Let me read to you what they filed in court today.
- [161:35]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [161:35]
James Stout
The evidence gathered and analyzed to date establishes that your client fired his Mossberg 12 gauge pump action shotgun at least one time as he ran past the magnetometers on the terrace level of the Washington Hilton on April 25, 2026. When the weapon was recovered. It had once been cartridge case in the chamber, which has been identified as having been fired in the Mossberg shotgun. The government's preliminary ballistics video analysis showed that your client fired his shotgun in the direction of Secret Service Officer vg, which Officer VG observed. Additionally, at least one fragment was recovered from the crime scene that was physically consistent with a single buckshot pellet. That fragment was recovered from a location at the scene consistent with your client firing his shotgun in the direction of Officer vg. The government is aware of no physical evidence, digital video evidence, or witness statements that are inconsistent with the theory that your client fired his shotgun in the direction of Officer vg or the Officer VG was indeed shot once in the chest while wearing a ballistic vest. They go on further to say the government also recovered 5 spent 9 millimeter Luger cartridge cases, each of which which was determined to have been fired from Officer VG's service weapon. The government also identified five separate bullet holes in the walls opposite from Officer VG, consistent with the directions that Officer VG fired his service weapon. That's like the most. Yeah, that's the most detail that we've seen from them of their case. Right. His defense had previously suggested that the. Because of some of the public statements Attorney General Blanche had made, the government may have exculpatory evidence either that he didn't fire his gun or that he didn't shoot the Secret Service agent in
- [163:14]
Robert Evans
question, which administration officials have gone on the news to say that the Secret Service agent did not shoot himself, which is not saying that another Secret Service agent did not shoot him though.
- [163:26]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [163:27]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [163:29]
James Stout
And it doesn't seem like he shot into like a plasterboard wall, it seems. Right. So he didn't maybe get splash back, which is.
- [163:36]
Garrison Davis
So the only holes we've seen look like they came from pistols. And that's Something the Washington Post actually did, like, look into, because there's at least one, there's a couple, I think, of livestream videos that showed like holes from a bullet in the wall. But the Post talked to Rick Vasquez, a firearms consultant and former chief of the Firearms Technology branch at the ATF, or what was then the atf, who said that the holes were consistent with handgun rounds. Now, that's not like a firearms technology. There's a lot of woo there. But it's also pretty easy to look. I mean, sometimes it can be kind of messy because like the, the balls in like a double aught buck shot shell are kind of similar in size to 9 millimeter. Right.
- [164:17]
James Stout
Somewhere in a 30 caliber range. Right.
- [164:19]
Garrison Davis
But they don't tend to hit with the same kinds of patterns. Right. Like it does. There does tend to be a significant difference, especially at that kind of range. The night of the shooting or within a few hours of it, Trump posted security camera footage and the Post got a hold of a higher resolution copy of that footage. And they went through like a frame by frame analysis of it because as you noted, James, they claim that Cole discharged his shotgun while he was passing through the magnetometers. The magnetometers, right. They didn't say it happened elsewhere. They said it like, as he was going through that checkpoint that you could watch him sprint through like he's fucking Naruto running his way into the correspondence dinner. And in their frame by frame analysis, the Post only found evidence of four muzzle flashes, all of them from the agent who was allegedly struck by something's weapon. Right. So first off, I mean, and you can hear in other footage, you can clearly hear more shots than that. Like, I, I don't doubt that there were. That he discharged five shots, but the video only shows four. And crucially, it does not show Cole's shotgun firing. And the video follows him until he goes off screen. So maybe whoever wrote that out should have written after passing through the magnetometers. But they seem to pretty clearly be saying it was while he was in that little security area. And there's not evidence in the footage of him firing. We don't see anything that looks like firing. Like, nobody reacts as if he has fired. Like there's just no evidence that he shot. And, you know, they're hinging a lot on the fact that there's a spent cartridge in the chamber of his 12 gauge. But number one, that's actually not an uncommon way to store that kind of 12 gauge shotgun with a spent shell in the breeze. Because it makes it easy if something were to happen. It makes it easier to basically get a fresh round in without needing to have a chambered round at all times, which a lot of people, most people don't like to do.
- [166:12]
James Stout
Yeah. And they're not drop safe either. Like it's a bad idea to do that.
- [166:16]
Garrison Davis
You don't want to do that with a shotgun. You know, Is it possible that he was storing it that way? Is it possible that he loaded one, an empty round in there intentionally? Because he didn't actually. He was hoping to do a suicide by cop and he didn't intend to actually shoot anybody. Is it possible he just fucked up? It's also perfectly possible he fired later. But it's really weird that they wrote it out that way if that's what they're alleging. Because we see him when he's at the security checkpoint at the Magnanometer and he doesn't fire in the footage that we have.
- [166:50]
James Stout
Yeah. There's been a lot of press statements that are sort of talking around. Exactly. Not making the explicit statement he fired his shotgun and he shot the officer in the chest.
- [167:03]
Garrison Davis
Right.
- [167:04]
James Stout
And certainly, like, I don't, I'm not sure about the distance we're talking about, like. And then thus the spread that would would happen with it would be minimal
- [167:12]
Garrison Davis
spread even with a sawed off in a, in a narrow corridor like that.
- [167:17]
James Stout
Yeah. I mean you go by an inch per yard. Right. Like that's the amount that it generally spreads. And so if you hit this person once, assuming this person has a chest at 20 inches wide. Yeah. That doesn't line up. Right.
- [167:29]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [167:29]
James Stout
Might be different with bug shot.
- [167:31]
Robert Evans
I mean, obviously if they had evidence that the Secret Service agent was shot by Mr. Allen, we'd have seen it. They would be running with that. The fact that they do not have evidence that, that the agent was shot by Alan is, Is shown in the way that they're like talking about this.
- [167:47]
James Stout
Like he was shot.
- [167:48]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, yeah.
- [167:49]
James Stout
And the guy discharged a shotgun. Separate statements. Exactly.
- [167:52]
Robert Evans
Two. Two separate statements.
- [167:53]
Garrison Davis
Yep.
- [167:54]
Robert Evans
They're still affirming that the agent did not shoot himself, which does not mean that he was not shot by another agent.
- [168:00]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, yeah. And there's a. In that Washington Post article, they talked to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch and asked him to explain, like, why. Why are you guys never willing to say like where the round that hit the officer came from?
- [168:14]
Andrew Sage
Right.
- [168:15]
Garrison Davis
They asked him the question that we've been asking and Blanche answered, we want to get that. Right. We're still looking at that.
- [168:20]
Robert Evans
There you go, right.
- [168:21]
Garrison Davis
And that is a big change. As the Post notes, a day earlier he told ABC that officials believe the gunman had shot the officer. So he has pulled back, which leads me to think maybe this guy didn't shoot at all. Or maybe he fired later, maybe even totally by accident. Maybe when he was falling down, he like discharged. I mean, but if so, also you would think there'd be a photo somewhere of where he discharged the shotgun. It's surprisingly easy for bullets to get lost. Right. And by that I mean just get so destroyed and whatnot by impact that there's not really much of anything to find. That happens all the time. It's really rare and I would argue impossible to discharge a 12 gauge shotgun with any kind of shot shell in a fucking hotel like this and not have there be some sign of what you.
- [169:07]
James Stout
Yeah, they make holes in things. That's what they're for.
- [169:09]
Garrison Davis
They make multiple holes, unless it's a slug, but then they make a really big hole. Hole. And Cole had specifically written that he was not intending to use slugs. In his manifesto, Suicide, now, whatever you want to call it, he specifically stated that he was using a 12 gauge loaded with buckshot because he wanted to reduce the chances of over penetration and of injuring or killing someone he did not intend to hit.
- [169:31]
Robert Evans
Yeah, let's talk a little bit about his background and maybe a few other things from that manifesto. I know, Robert, you've. You've done some digging into that.
- [169:40]
Garrison Davis
I did the normal thing that at least one of us does generally all of us do in some form ever after every kind of mass shooting or like publicly notable terror attack or whatever. And just found myself looking through a stranger's social media. Yeah, there's been a bunch, a couple of good articles out about him. Now, most of like the first things that we knew about this guy, like the very first fact is when his name came out, there were two different guys who kind of lived in the Torrance area who were immediately like. There were responses under Cole Thomas Allen. They're Cole Allen. And one of them was like some fucking white dude who worked at, I think it was a consulting firm or something. I don't know, it wasn't very. But he just looked like he might have been 30. And the other was Cole Thomas Allen. And it was him winning a teacher of the year award at the. He worked at a company that was basically doing like top college test prep tutoring, right?
- [170:31]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [170:31]
Garrison Davis
So he was a teacher. Some people got really angry at the description of him as a teacher. Because they're being like, he's trying to like, badmouth public school teachers. He's not a public school teacher teacher, but there are other kinds of teachers. He was the teacher of the month at the tutoring academy that he worked at.
- [170:45]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [170:47]
Garrison Davis
I had found by the time I got there, which is like 20 minutes after the name started spreading, the Facebook page of the school that he worked, or the tutoring academy, whatever that he worked at, which I'm not going to name, but it was hundreds of posts already being like, good to see this is who's teaching your kids. You know, like, you hired a terrorist. All this kind of like, like, yeah, the issue. Yeah, it's bleak. It's the normal thing that happens with anything related to this. In this case, right after that, Trump posted a picture of the detained and stripped mostly naked gunman that was obviously the Cole Allen who had won the teacher of the month. Like immediately visible, like you could. It was a positive ID was very quick from that point on. So at that point, a couple other things started coming out because, you know, I had looked through from that Facebook page, I had found a couple other posts about Cole Thomas Allen or different places where he had accounts, which made a couple other details of his background obvious. He was a mechanical engineering student in Caltech kind of during the first Trump administration. You know, that was honestly like most of what was like, immediately obvious is that like he'd been an engineering student at Caltech, he'd worked as a teacher, and he'd been a part of. In his LinkedIn, you can see that he'd been a part of Caltech's Christian Fellowship and the Nerf club. Right?
- [172:07]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [172:08]
Garrison Davis
Now, Ken Klippenstein talked to one of his co fellow peers during this period of time who knew that while he was at Nerf Club, Cal had like, kind of led. There was like a conflict within the club over people modifying and otherwise altering their Nerf guns to make them more resemble real weapons. As Nerf has also come out with more guns that look like real guns over the years. And he was really against this. Like, he was very against the idea of like Nerf guns that were modified to look like real guns or just like, like people playing with things that looked like real guns. Now fast forward to the actual day of the shooting. His Blue sky account got found fairly quickly alongside the LinkedIn. Obviously that got deleted in very short order, but it was archived, thankfully by a very nice person who realized that it was probably be useful to have actual documentation about what this guy was doing online rather than rely on a bunch of different articles making claims. So I went through all of that, you know, as soon as it came out, he had about 500 followers. He was following about 114 people.
- [173:11]
Andrew Sage
He did not post often on his
- [173:13]
Garrison Davis
own, but when he did in like the. The two different occasions I could find of him, like posting on his own in this incomplete archive of his blue sky, One of them was him posting in like sympathy and solidarity with Ukraine, which is something that was very consistent. He reposted a ton of different fundraisers from different Ukrainian military units.
- [173:33]
Robert Evans
That was in his user bio as well. Support for Ukraine.
- [173:37]
Andrew Sage
Yeah.
- [173:37]
Garrison Davis
He was massively supportive of Ukraine.
- [173:39]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [173:40]
Garrison Davis
And very angry at the Trump administration's failure to like, follow through with US
- [173:45]
Andrew Sage
Obligations in that regard.
- [173:47]
Garrison Davis
And the only other post of his that was like him writing something that I saw was him basically critiquing an article about using AI in the classroom. And like people who were advocating the use of AI in the classroom. He's very much against.
- [174:00]
Robert Evans
He was a reposter though.
- [174:01]
Garrison Davis
He was a reposter. And we'll talk about like some of the things he reposted. His bio read, hi, I'm a random Californian guy with posts about American politics, support for Ukraine and observations of small creatures. And then he includes a quote. I choose my own battlefields not through my blood, but with my heart. I stand on the battlefield to protect what I want. So that is. I like type that quote in. And that is a quote from an anime. The same anime that his. His profile picture was also from this like, specific anime, which is Kagura. I don't know how that's pronounced. I think the character that he had is PFP of was Kagura. It's this like red haired lady with these weird, like, ball things on either side of her hair. Like, I don't fully know how to describe this lady's hairstyle. It's kind of like vaguely Princess Leia esque. And that appears to be who his PFP photo is. The series is called Gintama. I don't know much about this. I've heard people online being like, oh, he was a fan of like this anime that means something or other. But like, I don't actually understand enough about the anime to give much of an analysis of that. I think it's just people being like because of the character he likes. It makes sense that he's a guy who would do something very extreme. I don't know enough about the anime to say how relevant that Is. But. But the quote kind of does sound relevant to what he actually did. Like, I stand on the battlefield to protect what I want.
- [175:26]
Robert Evans
And you can read. You can read stuff like that in his manifesto.
- [175:28]
Garrison Davis
Yeah. And you can read stuff like that in his manifesto, which we'll talk about. His actual reposts are very normal, lib coded.
- [175:34]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [175:34]
Garrison Davis
He's a liberal, hugely supportive of Ukraine. Nothing about Palestine in there, nothing about Israel in there. A photo has since come out that appears to be legitimate of him wearing like an IDF shirt some time ago.
- [175:45]
Unknown Guest 1
Yeah.
- [175:46]
Garrison Davis
He doesn't say anything. Again, in the limited.
- [175:48]
Andrew Sage
We don't also have.
- [175:49]
Garrison Davis
We don't have his whole blue sky in here. In the limited archive, we have. I don't see anything of him like him talking at all about Israel. So I don't have enough to say that he was strongly supportive. But he certainly. There's a real discrepancy between how he talks about Ukraine and him mentioning anything at all about what's happening in Gaza. Right.
- [176:08]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [176:09]
Robert Evans
What is believed to be his Twitter account has also been scraped and not as well archived, but there's screenshots of reposts on Twitter reposting Brianna Wu with some criticism of pro Palestine protesters or things that are critical of Palestine and in a nominal way, supportive of Israel.
- [176:29]
Garrison Davis
Yeah. And it's kind of hard to tell. Was he just more quiet about this online because he wanted to avoid, you know, getting dogpiled, or is this just something that, as the genocide got worse and worse, he became less willing to. To talk about? I don't know. But it's. It's kind of. It's just noteworthy how much, like, how absent that kind of discussion is next to how often he talks about Ukraine
- [176:50]
Robert Evans
next to the Ukraine stuff.
- [176:51]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, yeah. He also reposted a bunch of very normal posts. There was one from a user, you know, if you guys remember, like a week or so ago, the New York Times published an interview with Hasan Piker. The streamer and the. The article was titled the Rich Don't Play by the Rules, so why should I. Why Petty theft might be the new political protest. It's where Hasan tried to introduce the term microluding to the discourse, which I don't support at all. But it was like a pro shoplifting kind of cat, like, argue. Kind of a casual and jokey pro shoplifting argument. Right. I don't want to. People are blown this out of proportion. But it's interesting that he came down against Hasan's side on that. He was basically reposting Someone who was like, hey, I've been a lot of. I've spent a lot of time in countries where graft and grifting are, like, normal. And it's really bad for that to happen. You don't want that to happen to your country. So he's certainly not, like, on the far left. Like, direct action is good. I love committing crimes. Anarchist side of things. He is not at all that kind of guy.
- [177:48]
James Stout
Yeah, he's a liberal.
- [177:50]
Robert Evans
He is a Will Stancilite.
- [177:51]
Garrison Davis
He is a lot of Will Stancil reposts.
- [177:54]
Robert Evans
Lot of Will Stancil posts.
- [177:55]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, yeah, he reposted me a couple of times. He posted me, like, talking about, like, the Pope, right? Like, making fun of Trump for calling the Pope soft on crime. Like, not any of my, like, spicy takes, right?
- [178:08]
Robert Evans
Yeah, just like, viral posts on Blue Sky.
- [178:11]
Andrew Sage
He didn't do a lot of spicy takes.
- [178:13]
Garrison Davis
He reposted a lot of, like, normal viral stuff you'd expect. He was really angry about COVID 19. He hates Elon Musk. He reposted a lot of, like, you know, Elon Musk wants poor African children to die. Like, kind of content. Talking about that after some of the more recent articles about how many people died as a result of, like, the American, like, aid cuts that Musk was a major part in. He was very angry about that. He reposted Bill Kristol saying, abolish ice.
- [178:39]
Robert Evans
Okay.
- [178:40]
Garrison Davis
And there's a couple of different posts that he shared about or from people who were criticizing the White House Correspondents Dinner. And particularly, like, when Jake Tapper fucking made a post about, like, here's the napkins that we've got that have, like, freedom of the press, you know, the First Amendment stuff on it that, like, it was supposed to be like, this is our protest against the president, right? Like, we've got these. These monogram napkins. And he made fun of that, like, a lot of people did. He was. He was generally critical of anyone who would be at the correspondence dinner, which was reflected in his manifesto where he said that, like, the journalists and other people at the event who are not in the administration aren't my targets. And, you know, he said he didn't
- [179:22]
Andrew Sage
want to hit them.
- [179:23]
Garrison Davis
But also he was, quote, I would still go through most everyone here to get to the targets if it were absolute necessary on the basis that most people chose to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist and traitor and are thus complicit. But I really hope it doesn't come to that. Right. Yeah.
- [179:38]
Robert Evans
Another interesting Bit from his manifesto is, quote, administration officials not including Mr. Patel, they are targets prioritized from highest ranking to lowest.
- [179:48]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [179:49]
Robert Evans
Interesting. Interesting. Parenthetical.
- [179:52]
Garrison Davis
I wonder if that's just because some people were joking after that article came out about how Cash Patel, they had to, like, break down his door because he was too drunk to reach. People were joking, like, maybe it's best if Cash stays in office because he's so. I wonder if that was the joke he was making.
- [180:07]
Robert Evans
Unclear what he meant by that.
- [180:08]
Garrison Davis
But he doesn't give us any reason to believe possible. And he doesn't share any jokes like that. Right. So that is kind of legitimately baffling.
- [180:15]
Robert Evans
No. Most of the manifesto is like, apologizing to people he knows.
- [180:20]
James Stout
Yep.
- [180:20]
Robert Evans
For how this will be, like, disruptive.
- [180:22]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [180:22]
Robert Evans
And then talking about his own, like, rules of engagement.
- [180:25]
Garrison Davis
Yes.
- [180:25]
Robert Evans
Which he says, quote, probably in a terrible format, but I'm not military, so too bad. Unquote.
- [180:31]
Garrison Davis
Yeah. And it's interesting because he had also shared at least one post on Blue sky that was like kind of pro gun control. That was like talking about how it's bad to have a gun. Basically. Like, it increases the danger that you're in. Which it did for this guy. But it is interesting in terms of the firearms he chose because this is clearly a guy who supports more gun control. He seems to find it distasteful certainly to like celebrate guns. Right. And celebrate, like, military style weapons. I kind of wonder if he picked the firearms he picked because they did not look like the pistol didn't look like a Glock or like the standard police guns that he sees people owning. And a shotgun doesn't look like an AR15.
- [181:11]
Robert Evans
Like an AR15.
- [181:12]
Garrison Davis
Yeah. I kind of wonder. Although he says it was to minimize penetration, so maybe that's more likely.
- [181:17]
Robert Evans
Other thing I want to mention is because the shotgun was purchased in August, and he does make a few references in the manifesto to thinking of having done something like this for quite a while. But this was his first opportunity that he saw that seemed semi possible.
- [181:32]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [181:33]
Garrison Davis
And I also had the thought that, well, when he bought the shotgun, because he specifically states that he wants to use a shotgun to minimize, like, casualties, then the date at which he bought the shotgun might be the date at which he decided he was going to do this. Right. Or it might be the point at which he started taking action.
- [181:49]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [181:49]
Garrison Davis
It would make sense that maybe that would be around when he had started planning to do this. And you know, there's so much different shit happened around August of 2025. It's kind of impossible to say. This is definitely it. I did notice that August 25, 2025, is when Trump issued his additional measures to address the crime emergency in the District of Columbia executive order.
- [182:12]
Robert Evans
Yeah. The military occupation of D.C. yeah.
- [182:15]
James Stout
Okay.
- [182:16]
Garrison Davis
So. And this is when Trump is really. And a bunch of. There's a bunch of different news stories around Trump trying to deploy the National Guard in US Cities. And I kind of wonder if maybe that's when he. But that's purely theoretical. There was a lot of other bad stuff happening, you know, so who's to say? He also seems to be angry about our war against Iran. Like the fact, like the war of choice that Trump launched against Iran. He doesn't get a post a lot about it, but there are some references in the manifesto that kind of make me feel like that. That that may have also been, like, a major thing that helped push him to make this decision.
- [182:49]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [182:50]
Garrison Davis
Because he specifically stated that I'm a citizen of the United States of America. What my representatives do reflects me, and I am no longer one to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes. Right. Like, there's some reasons to believe that that probably played into it as well.
- [183:05]
Robert Evans
Interestingly, he does sign the manifesto with his Blue sky username.
- [183:11]
Garrison Davis
He sure does.
- [183:11]
Robert Evans
Was Cold Force.
- [183:13]
Garrison Davis
Yeah. He thought that was cool.
- [183:14]
James Stout
Yeah. Perhaps that was a name he used, I don't know, in his nerfing activities or like, it was. Maybe meant something to him.
- [183:22]
Garrison Davis
Another thing that's probably worth talking about, because Trump has made the claim several times that this guy was anti Christian. That hatred of Christianity is what drove him.
- [183:29]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [183:29]
Garrison Davis
As I said before in Caltech, he was a member of the Christian group. I'll talk about that in a second. But in his manifesto, he specifically justifies what he's doing as a Christian. There is a segment in there where he's going through, like, some objections he knows people in his life will have and kind of rebutting them. Yeah. An objection. One is, as a Christian, you should turn the other cheek. Rebuttal. Turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed. I'm not the person raped in a detention camp. I'm not the fisherman executed without trial. I'm not a school kid blown up or a child starved or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration. Right. So he specifically is justifying this as a Christian.
- [184:04]
Robert Evans
On Christian grounds.
- [184:05]
Garrison Davis
On Christian grounds. He thanks his church, which seems to have been a major part of his Life.
- [184:10]
Andrew Sage
Life.
- [184:10]
Garrison Davis
So there's a quote from Ken Klippenstein's article about his time at Caltech. He was pretty prominent at the Caltech Christian Fellowship. Pretty Christian and mellow. If I didn't see his face eating carpet, I would have never believed it. And then I found a Christianity Today piece that just came up a few hours ago. And a line from that is, Allen's father, Thomas Allen, was listed as an elder at Grace United Reformed Church in Torrance and an evangelical congregation that describes his itself is preaching a gospel that is Christ centered, covenantal and confessional. The church's leadership page and social media pages have been pulled down. And yeah, it's fucked up. They had to have like security guards, armed guards, like escort worshipers inside and out this weekend just because of like all of the press around this.
- [184:52]
James Stout
Yeah, I bet.
- [184:53]
Garrison Davis
Elizabeth Ter Linden, who also knew him at the time, told the New York Times he was definitely a strong believer in evangelical Christianity. At the time that I knew him, she was in the Celtic Christian Fellowship with him.
- [185:03]
Andrew Sage
So this guy appears to have been
- [185:05]
Garrison Davis
like a very strong evangelical Christian. Like a liberal Christian. Yeah, we don't exactly know. Was he always. Was his Christianity always like progressive and like liberal tinted or was he kind of, you know, more conservative at a different point in his life?
- [185:18]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [185:19]
Garrison Davis
We do know that within the last couple of years he got involved in left wing activism in Los Angeles. His sister told law enforcement that after he got more involved in left wing activism, particularly a group who called themselves the White Awakes, which was. Was referencing an anti slavery protest in the 1860s.
- [185:36]
James Stout
Oh, yeah, okay.
- [185:37]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, right. Like these were some of the people who like, backed Lincoln. So he joins some group in elocates called the White Awakes for some period of time, he starts talking more radically, he starts showing up to more protests. And I think he's helping with a couple of different kinds of things with a couple of different groups. But that's when his sister says he starts making like a lot more radical statements and maybe sometimes aggressive statements. And that lines up with when he buys a gun and he starts training after 2023. So this may have just been a thing where he didn't have a full plan at that point, but he accepted the possibility that he might need to do violence in order to support, you know, his, his ideals. We don't really know, but that's, that's all we've gotten in terms of a journey. Yeah.
- [186:18]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [186:18]
Robert Evans
In October of 2024, he did make one donation to the Kamala Harris presidential campaign via ActBlue$25.
- [186:26]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, but not a lot of, not a long history of donations to the party. Not a long history of like volunteering for the Democratic Party specifically. Seems to have been a pretty loyal voter. Yeah, but this is a guy who I think really during like the, it would be during the Biden years, gets more involved in like, left wing protests and organizing. He becomes angrier. And then after 2024, he gets really, really angry at Trump and eventually, probably sometime late last year, decides to take action and for whatever reason, picks the Correspondent's Dinner to do it. It's probably also worth noting that he sends this manifesto thing out right before he carries out the attack. Like he's staying in the hotel for a couple of days before all this happens.
- [187:08]
Robert Evans
He booked two nights.
- [187:09]
Garrison Davis
We actually get him to reflect a little on the security that he's experienced while he's been there. And that's a really interesting part of this. He says, I expected security cameras at every bend, bugged hotel rooms, armed agents every 10ft, metal detectors out the wazoo. What I got, who knows, maybe they're pranking me. Is nothing. No damn security. Not in transport, not in the hotel, not in the event. Like, the one thing that I immediately noticed walking into the hotel is the sense of arrogance. I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat. Crazy stuff.
- [187:38]
Robert Evans
Most of the security seemed to be isolated around the actual ballroom and the levels immediately above and below.
- [187:45]
Garrison Davis
And again, he doesn't get anywhere close to the President or any other, like, important person. Right. So you could argue the security did its job. He was just in the same hotel. But yeah, crazy stuff. I don't know. I don't have anything else.
- [187:59]
Unknown Guest 1
Yeah.
- [188:00]
Robert Evans
Let's go on Ad break and then return to briefly discuss some of the conspiracy theories that have spawned after this alleged shooting.
- [188:10]
Garrison Davis
Love it.
- [188:15]
James Stout
Foreign.
- [188:21]
Robert Evans
We are back. Immediately after the event took place, tons of conspiracy theories started cropping up, obviously piggybacking off of the Butler, Pennsylvania ones. This was not helped by the confusion in early reports because once you get every journalist in D.C. in one room and then an event happens, that means every journalist has a kind of different version of the event that gets immediately blasted out online and on the news. So there was not, not a clear sequence of events in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. There was reports that maybe was just dishes being dropped. Eventually it was clear that, no, there was an actual shooting and Wolf Blitzer did lose a shoe in the course of the events.
- [189:04]
Garrison Davis
He sure did.
- [189:06]
Unknown Guest 2
Poor wolf.
- [189:06]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [189:07]
Iris Palmer
Out.
- [189:07]
Robert Evans
Also not helping things. Trump was basically live truthing this investigation on the night of the shooting, and it was not clear to many people that the shooting did not happen on the ballroom level.
- [189:19]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [189:19]
Robert Evans
And that the shooter did not get close to the targets.
- [189:22]
Garrison Davis
Well, also the people, people in the main room were still very scared because, like.
- [189:27]
James Stout
Oh, yeah.
- [189:27]
Garrison Davis
Had no real context on what was happening. And everyone around them just started freaking out.
- [189:33]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [189:33]
Robert Evans
Because there's the military running around, Secret Service running around. They heard gunshots. Yeah. It is a frightening thing. You're seeing J.D. vance get pulled offstage. Trump's ducking down.
- [189:41]
Garrison Davis
What I do feel is kind of
- [189:43]
Andrew Sage
interesting about this is you've got this
- [189:45]
Garrison Davis
whole D.C. class of, like, press and other important people who are not in power themselves, but are close to it. And they're. They do a lot of the things that they do because they like being close to power. And there's this illusion that comes with that, I think for a lot of these people of importance, that gets ripped away when the Secret Service pulls all of the people who are important out of the room and you're just left wondering if you're in danger. Like, that's what it'll be like if there's a nuclear war. All of these people will suddenly have the few folks who have a detail get ripped out of the room and then you'll just hear the sirens start and have nothing, no idea what's happening. And realize that your whole life in pursuit of being close to power has brought you no security. Crazy stuff. Wild times. Anyway, Garrison, one of the core pieces
- [190:30]
Robert Evans
of quote, unquote evidence that was used to assert that the shooting was some kind of false flag or psyop, was a comment made by Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt shortly before the dinner.
- [190:41]
Iris Palmer
This speech tonight will be classic Donald J. Trump.
- [190:45]
Robert Evans
It'll be funny, it'll be entertaining.
- [190:47]
Iris Palmer
There will be some shots fired tonight.
- [190:51]
Garrison Davis
Great stuff.
- [190:52]
Robert Evans
Poor choice of words there. On behalf of the press secretary.
- [190:56]
Garrison Davis
Excellent choice of words.
- [190:57]
James Stout
Yeah. Also though, like, it's not a Dan Brown novel, when people are actually plotting conspiracy, they don't go around leaving the little Easter eggs for you to find.
- [191:06]
Robert Evans
Of course. Yeah. Why else would the Deep State orchestrate, like a top level secret psyop and not decide to leave little clues beforehand?
- [191:19]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, they have to leave little clues, Garrison. Haven't you listened to Alex Jones? That's part of the deal they make with the demons, is that they have to. They have to leave little clues for the evil that they're doing while they're doing it.
- [191:31]
Robert Evans
They call that the Riddler's Law.
- [191:33]
Garrison Davis
Uh huh. That's right.
- [191:35]
Robert Evans
Now, another thing that got amplified in the conspiratorial milieu was a Twitter account with a Pepe profile picture wearing the same outfit as President Trump the night of the dinner, who tweeted the alleged shooter's name about two and a half years ago. This post is the account's only visible post. The banner image of the account is a bunch of streaks of color. But if you overlay the image of Trump holding his fist up in the air at Butler, the color streaks and the darkened areas line up with the Trump Butler photo. What now, the alleged shooter also had an undergraduate research fellowship at NASA for the summer of 2014. And the name of this Twitter account matches the name of someone at Lockheed Martin who published a NASA paper at the same time that the shooter was at NASA. And the shooter worked for the Jet Propulsion Lab, the same labs that those scientists who have gone missing also have been working out of.
- [192:35]
James Stout
Yeah, Garrison, do you want to get out the pegboard?
- [192:37]
Robert Evans
When I saw this, I started feeling a little bit scared because I thought I was getting too close, too close to the trees. I don't know, I was afraid.
- [192:44]
James Stout
Too close to us needing help.
- [192:47]
Unknown Guest 1
Help.
- [192:48]
Robert Evans
But this. But that's not all. Because the Pepe, the Pepe Twitter account was also connected to a time travel study because the color streak banner photo was traced to a website on how to build a time machine. And this photo was used on the web page for the time machine study. So what's, what's, what's really going on here? First of all, this, this quote unquote time machine website is actually a Europe based project for quote, 3D digital of cultural heritage, scanning, like artifacts and uploading them online as like 3D models. Yeah, that's their quote, unquote time machine is preserving cultural heritage.
- [193:29]
Garrison Davis
Yes.
- [193:30]
James Stout
An archive.
- [193:30]
Robert Evans
And actually this color streak image has actually been floating around the Internet for a long time. I've, I found versions of it since at least 2018. There are hundreds of people named Cole Allen in the US on data broker sites right now. The first archive of this Pepe Twitter account whose profile picture only matches Trump's because it's a tuxedo, one of the most common outfits for men at events like this.
- [193:56]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [193:56]
Garrison Davis
Yes. It is the same outfit that Trump was wearing at the dinner. It's also the same outfit Trump has worn at every dinner because it's what you wear at dinners if you're the president.
- [194:04]
Robert Evans
Tuxedo yeah, but the, the first archive of this post is from after the shooting. So we don't know what this account looked like prior to the shooting. Now, this account could have tweeted tons of random names and then deleted all the other posts to pull a stunt like this. Or people at Twitter like, you know, X, the Everything app, the people who work there could have backdated the account and the post to boost engagement on the platform. Now, those aren't any more likely than just a simple coincidence, but there are other explanations other than gesturing vaguely towards a pre planned science op. Now, spreading images of this. A Twitter account isn't necessarily putting forward a specific conspiracy theory. It just gets used as a data point among other unconnected data points to sew public mistrust and undermine reality, inferring meaning from odd coincidences.
- [194:57]
Garrison Davis
Right.
- [194:57]
Robert Evans
This is, this is seeing patterns that aren't there. And literally in the case of seeing the butler photo in a splash of colors. And again, like, why would quote unquote, they drop hints beforehand, right? Is this, is this predictive programming? But predictive programming isn't really necessary to get the public to accept an event like an attempted assassination. In fact, that would only sow suspicion, dropping these little hints just so suspicion for an event like this, it doesn't actually make it more acceptable. Right. The whole idea of predictive programming is, is sowing seeds to get the public to accept an otherwise unacceptable thing. And that's not necessary for a presidential assassination.
- [195:38]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [195:39]
Robert Evans
Now there are some other things that propped up in this conspiratorial shenanigans. In the wake of the shooting, a Fox News reporter was calling in to report her experience at the dinner and suddenly cut out when she started talking about something that Carolyn Levitt's husband said to her.
- [195:58]
Garrison Davis
He kind of leaned over and said,
- [196:00]
James Stout
you know, I watched you on tv.
- [196:01]
Garrison Davis
You did a great job.
- [196:03]
Robert Evans
You need to be very safe.
- [196:04]
Iris Palmer
And he was very serious when he said that to me. And he kind of looked around the
- [196:08]
Garrison Davis
room and he said, you know, there are some.
- [196:17]
Zoran Mamdani
Sounds like we lost Aisha's phone there.
- [196:21]
Robert Evans
Well, well, well, what? So her audio actually cuts out at different points. During this televised call, the anchor said that she was having cell service issues. And later on X, this reporter posted that she was about to say that Carolyn Levitt's husband was, quote, telling me to be careful with my own safety because the world is crazy, unquote. But it does make for a funny moment, a funny moment of television.
- [196:48]
Garrison Davis
That's a good moment. That's an incredible Time for your call to cut out. Like just awesome stuff.
- [196:53]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [196:54]
Robert Evans
There's other, other viral posts spreading video of the military storming past the red carpet or people in military fatigues storming past the red carpet after the shooting.
- [197:06]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [197:06]
Robert Evans
With one person writing, quote, law enforcement doesn't act like this. Neither does the military. This is a staged event with a shitty script and pre positioned cameras, unquote. The cameras are there because they're there to film the red carpet. They're pre positioned.
- [197:22]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [197:22]
James Stout
Because this is an organization where all the press gathers.
- [197:25]
Robert Evans
This is a press event. That's why there's pre positioned cameras.
- [197:29]
Garrison Davis
Yeah. It's how you do. You know the White House correspondents Dinner.
- [197:33]
James Stout
Yeah. Also you're gonna see some types of cops you have never previously seen. When someone tries to assassinate the President, there are a whole lot of people whose job it is to stop that happening. Lots of them aren't necessarily uniformed officers who you see every day in the Secret Service.
- [197:49]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [197:49]
Robert Evans
Other people also thought it was odd that, you know, Trump has skipped every correspondent to dinner across his two terms except for this one. And then all of a sudden there's a shooter in the lobby. How did the shooter know that Trump would go to this one? Because the shooter planned. Planned this since early April. How would the shooter know this? Well, it's actually quite simple because Trump announced he was attending this dinner in early March. And according to court documents, Cole Allen started searching for information about this dinner in early April. A month later, before then booking two nights at the Washington Hilton, Trump already announced that he was going to be attending the dinner. The. The oddest aspect of the conspiracism, post, post this event is that Trump needed to stage this not for any national security reasons or to seize more power, but to construct the White House ballroom, which has been the main thing that people on the right have been talking about after the shooting. Shooting. The people on the right have not been using this shooting to like go after liberal terrorists, but have been talking non stop about how this security breach demonstrates the need to construct Trump's massive ballroom. And that's the main thing they're talking about.
- [199:03]
Garrison Davis
It's so funny.
- [199:05]
Robert Evans
The idea that they would stage that the Deep State is going to stage a false flag just to push for the ballroom.
- [199:11]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [199:13]
Robert Evans
Is to me, frankly, very false money.
- [199:15]
Garrison Davis
Yeah. We don't get an enabling act in our new fascists. We just get a fucking ballroom. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I guess I prefer this. Yeah.
- [199:25]
Robert Evans
The Reichs take fire to construct a nice, a nice dance floor.
- [199:30]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah. Just. Yeah, I, I mean, a lot of this was like, centered on the safety and security exemption which was provided in the injunction against the building of the new ballroom. Right. The issue here is that the Trump administration already filed on 3 April a claim that the entire building was a contiguous hole. They couldn't do the security part without doing the fancy dance floor part. Right. And like, yes, Trump has also truced about this previous to this event. This, this wouldn't have really added anything. They did try and get the National Trust for Historical Preservation to withdraw their court case, which they didn't subsequently to this, the events of the White House correspondence dinner.
- [200:16]
Robert Evans
So, yeah, that's most of what I have on the conspiracy stuff. There's certainly more, but that's.
- [200:20]
James Stout
Oh, there's more. Yeah, we're gonna leave it there.
- [200:23]
Robert Evans
There's always gonna be more. Right. Like, that's, that's the way how it is. We don't have good data on, like, the widespread belief of this theory. There was, there was a poll that circulated that said like something like 47% of Democrats thought the attempted assassination was staged. But this poll, which is from the Manhattan Institute, so take that with a grain of fascism. This poll is actually polling the Butler shooting, not this recent one. And people did not acknowledge that when they were spreading this poll around. So we don't know how many people actually believe that this shooting was, was staged. But you can certainly see a lot of people asserting as such on the Internet.
- [201:06]
James Stout
Mm. Shall we move on to a couple of other topics that we need to cover?
- [201:13]
Robert Evans
Yes, this will be a super, super sized episode, but it is what it is.
- [201:18]
James Stout
Yeah, let's go. Talking of people talking about things on the Internet, I think some people got. This one got a little carried away. A 3, 0 decision of a panel of second circuit court judges has rejected ISOO mandatory detention of people seeking to deport with a few exceptions. The opinion was written by Judge Bianco, who is a Trump appointee, and it stated that, quote, petitioner entered the United states unlawfully in 2004 or 2005 and has resided here ever since. He is therefore deemed to be an applicant for admission by section 1225A. But he is not, quote, seeking admission because he is not requesting lawful entry into the United States after inspection authorization. The government's attempt to muddy these textually clear waters defies the statute's context, structure, history and purpose contradicts the Supreme Court's dictate in Jennings and long standing executive branch practice and its interpretation of the Statute raises serious constitutional questions that should be avoided, even if the statutory language were ambiguous. The statute in question here is the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant responsibility act of 1996, and specifically the fact that it has a mandatory detainer for people, quote, unquote, seeking admission to the USA. Now, this ruling puts the Second Circuit in agreement with over 370 judges across the nation, but notably at odds with the 5th and 8th Circuit. Right. Judge Bianco, in a really incredibly New York analogy here for seeking admission, wrote, if someone sneaks into Yankee Stadium at the start of the game with no ticket for admission and no intention of ever paying, and he is later found by security in a seat in the seventh inning, no one would consider that to be seeking admission to the game. So hopefully that's. That explains to people the argument that the government is making here is that someone who has been in the country for a long period of time is still seeking admission. Right? The Trump administration placed itself at odds with other administrations. Right? This has been law since 1996, as Bianco wrote, quote, for five presidential administrations over nearly three decades. It did consistently release detainees on bond whom the government now argues are covered by section 1225-B2A. Even in President Trump's first term and the first few months of his second, the agency adhered to the decades old understanding and the relative scopes of sections 1225 and 1226. Under these circumstances, the fact that no president has ever found such power in the statute is strong evidence that it does not exist. That pretty much explains itself. What I have not been able to work out is whether this pertains to people who are detained, as in who are arrested in the Second Circuit or people who are held in the Second Circuit, or both. My guess would be both, because it is the law in the Second Circuit. Right. So it applies in the Second Circuit. Certainly most detention facilities are not in the Second Circuit. A lot of them are in the Fifth, which has come down the opposite way on this. This is why the Supreme Court exists, Right? Big disagreement between these several circuit courts here. Moving on, let's talk about the border wall. Before leaving office, Secretary Noem signed several waivers for border wall construction. This was not in the week before she left office, but in this year, one of them waived 28 laws in the Big Bend area of Texas. The waiver included 175 miles of the riverfront of the Rio Grande, including parts of the State Park, national park and federally Protected River. Some of these areas are very popular for outdoor recreation. These Waivers are now being challenged in court by the Centre for Biological Diversity. They're out of Tucson. You'll see them in a lot of border legal cases is the Friends of Ruidosa Church and a Terlingua river guide named Billy Miller. It's an interesting coalition. Right. That we don't often see. Like. Like a church group has the sort of approach to this, that. That it would destroy historical and cultural heritage to build the wall there. Obviously the river guy, Billy Miller. Mr. Miller has the claim that it would be disruptive to a business and. And to people's enjoyment and of nature on the river. Currently what they are doing is focusing on Chispa Road. That's. It's near like Valentine, Texas, northwest of Martha, where they're carrying out road improvements that they did not notify county officials about, which is obviously caused to disruption. I've actually ridden my bike out there a fair bit. Did some work making a film out there a few years ago. It's a really beautiful part of the country. I'm sure a lot of people will be familiar with Marfa, which is nearby.
- [206:01]
Garrison Davis
Oh, it's a great set. Great little town.
- [206:03]
James Stout
Muff is great. I love that area of Texas.
- [206:06]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, I watched it all burn down one beautiful, beautiful afternoon when those horrible fires started. Yeah, it was wild.
- [206:12]
James Stout
Yeah, I bet. Geez. Luckily, Marfa has recovered. Great place to visit. You can go and see the Prada store, which people now think is AI generated, which is great. Our reality is cool.
- [206:27]
Garrison Davis
You can go see the Judd Foundations or the Cunati Foundation. The Donald Judd Museum. You know, a lot of good stuff out in Marfa. Pretty good cheese sandwich restaurant.
- [206:38]
James Stout
Pretty. Pretty fancy glamping set up there as well. Yep. So I checked out the CBP SmartWall interactive map, which sometimes, like, they don't always have to give notice when they're changing their plan. So sometimes you find out via the SmartWall interactive map. And right now it shows vehicle barriers and patrol road planned inside the national park, which. Right. So this will cause damage far, far beyond the riverfront. Evidently to build barriers at the riverfront, they have to build roads to get to the riverfront, which will also spread this damage over an area that like, especially in Texas. Texas is not a state which is abundant with public land. It is not like those states further west in that regard. And I know this is an area which is very special to a great deal of people. I'm really interested in writing more about this. So, like, especially people in the outdoor industry or folks in that region. I'd love to hear from you. You can do Cool Zone tips at Proton Me if you want to talk about that. Do you want to do the we reported.
- [207:39]
Robert Evans
We reported the news.
- [207:41]
James Stout
All of it. Yeah. Again, callzonetipson me for story tips for your marketing emails. You can just go ahead and flush those. We reported the N. Foreign.
- [207:58]
Garrison Davis
Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production
- [208:05]
Robert Evans
of Cool Zone Media.
- [208:06]
Iris Palmer
For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media,
- [208:08]
Robert Evans
Visit our website, coolzone media.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
- [208:13]
Garrison Davis
Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
- [208:16]
Iris Palmer
You can now find sources for It
- [208:18]
Andrew Sage
Could Happen here, listed for directly in episode descriptions.
- [208:20]
Iris Palmer
Thanks for listening.
- [208:23]
Andrew Sage
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [208:25]
Iris Palmer
Guaranteed Human.