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- [00:01]
A
This episode of I've had it is brought to you by booking.com. since 2010, they've helped over 1.8 billion vacation rental guests find places to stay. That's billion with a B. Head over to booking.com and start your listing today. Get seen, get booked on booking.com. so we supposed to start the podcast. Patriots Gay Trots, they treats, Black Trio, Brown Trio. Welcome to I've had It, America's top DEI podcast. We are a beaver down Pumps. My glorious co host is off in Maine, and Josh, my husband, is subbing for her.
- [00:47]
B
Hello, hello, hello.
- [00:48]
A
And we have a very special guest, Emma Vigilant from the Majority Report. And, you guys, I want to start a rumor about pumps. You know, I've always told pumps she'd be a good lesbian. So she's off to Maine for a girls weekend.
- [01:01]
C
Oh, fun.
- [01:02]
A
So the rumor I'm starting is that she's in Maine doing lesbian things.
- [01:07]
C
I. I'm happy to further that rumor. Right, right. Yeah. I've heard similar rumblings. Yeah.
- [01:12]
A
Have you heard that, Josh?
- [01:13]
B
I've heard it for a couple of days now. For a couple of days. I think there's some truth to it.
- [01:19]
C
Many people are saying, isn't that what Trump would say?
- [01:22]
B
Betty's talking about her be in her J. Crew sweater on the beach holding hands with another woman.
- [01:26]
A
Yeah.
- [01:27]
C
I mean, Maine is the place to do it. I feel like there's a lot of flannel. There are a lot of Subarus. I'm not trying to be too stereotypical here, but it's also absolutely beautiful up there. And hopefully Graham Platner is the next senator.
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A
No, I hope so, too.
- [01:40]
C
From. From Maine. Maine is one of the more beautiful states in the country. It should get talked about a little bit more. You got Portland. It's great coastline. Look, I'm an east coast person, so I'm a big fan.
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A
Yeah. We've got to get rid of Susan Collins.
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C
Oh, yeah. I mean, there's no reason that she should still be in office. Like, the problem is, is that we keep putting up these corporate Democrats that keep losing and not connecting in Maine because it's a very specific area. As you know, coming from a red state, it's a different dynamic. Obviously, it's more rural and it's northeastern, but you have to be of the community to beat a Republican like her.
- [02:14]
A
Yep. So, all right, let's everybody go around the table and share their grievances for today. I'll start. Okay. I've had it with people abusing your Cell phone number. And let me give you an example. So my real job, I'm an interior designer, not a podcaster. And I've been doing that for over 25 years. And now we've all shifted from landlines to cell phones. So my clients have my phone number. And oftentimes I wake up and I get up really early at like 5, and I'm in the zone. I'm doing Wordle, I'm doing Connections, I'm doing the crossword puzzle. I'm very busy doing things right, drinking espresso. And then I get these 911 panic texts at like 6:01am from clients. And I love you, my interior design clients, I do love you about their paint colors, the fabric choices, molding choices, cabinetry styles at 601. And I'm thinking to myself, I did not go to law school. I did not go to medical school. I'm an interior designer. We should not have crises at 6am and. And yet, because we've shifted from the landline to the cell phone, you get abused because everybody's got a way right to your number. And I just think there should be a rule. If it's before business hours or after business hours and it's business related, you don't text, you email.
- [03:43]
C
Yes. You're preaching to the choir. I think it's because everybody's dopamine receptors are so messed up from the cell phones and that if they don't get an immediate alleviation of their anxiety, like they're having anxiety about your design or like their renovation or whatever. I'm not sure what the situation is. They have to get it immediately and they expect an immediate response. And then it makes everybody more anxious. Right. Like, part of what we're experiencing right now is this mass psychosis, a little bit anxiety. People constantly on edge. And I feel like that's a part of it where it's just like constant response or whatever you need right there in front of you.
- [04:22]
B
Everything is so much more accessible to. Everybody is accessible. You think that when you get off Facebook that you're really going to eliminate yourself from people. Doesn't happen like that. Then your cell phone, spam, all this stuff just hits you day in, day out. Makes you want to put your cell phone down, throw it away until you start yearning again for what's on my cell phone. Yeah, like, it's a cycle.
- [04:44]
C
Look. And I feel like I'm my generation. I'm 31. I'm probably one of the last people that remembers a period before having a Cell phone. Like, I think I got my first. I mean, my. My first smartphone wasn't until at least midway through high school. We had flip phones, but it wasn't like I could go on social media all the time. Like, you know, the Internet was just starting to become a thing. I remember having a secret Facebook page when I was in middle school so my mom wouldn't get mad at me. Yeah, my mom loves your show. Shout out to. To my mom, Lynn, if she's watching or listening. But, yeah, no, I mean, I feel like, become way too quotidian that it's a part of everybody's life like this. It's a little ridiculous, but you're right.
- [05:26]
B
When Facebook first started, it was the red dot. That when you saw the red dot, somebody had liked something that you had posted. Or it was.
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A
What about the poke?
- [05:35]
C
Oh, my God.
- [05:35]
A
That was kind of creepy. Do you remember the poke?
- [05:37]
C
Yes.
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A
And then you'd get some, like. I know. I remember, like, when it first started, I'm like, why is my friend's husband poking me on Facebook? It was so sexual. I thought the poke.
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C
Oh, I think it was. I think that it was meant to be a flirtatious thing. But poking is not flirtatious. Poking is annoying.
- [05:54]
A
It's creepy, too.
- [05:55]
C
Yes.
- [05:56]
A
All right, Josh, what have you had it with?
- [05:58]
B
Well, I've had it with. And I just experienced this on the way here.
- [06:01]
A
Okay.
- [06:02]
B
I've had it with. To go drinks with insecure lids on top of it. It's the demise of my existence.
- [06:10]
C
Yes.
- [06:10]
B
It doesn't matter if it's coffee in the morning. You've got a suit on, and, you know, I'm trying to carry this in a file, and so you're trying to put the drink right here, and then you realize it just ends up here. But in my situation today, we were working out at the gym. I got a protein smoothie. I'm on the phone with my law partner. I'm doing all these things. I get in the Uber with Jennifer, and the smoothie just literally collapses in my lap, and the lid comes off of it, and it's just these flimsy little lids that just fit on top that never work. Never. And so I've got this thing, and I have to go back in the gym, and I say, hey, can I have a towel? And I'm not going to give you this towel back. It's got to go with me.
- [06:51]
C
It might be ruined anyway.
- [06:53]
B
And so I'm cleaning this down. The Uber guy's just looking at me like who in the fuck is.
- [06:57]
A
Do you remember the curb your Enthusiasm episode where Larry David is so mad because they're not securing the takeout orders and he goes back in and he's like talking about securing the containers and how insecure they are and it's like a whole episode. Yeah, that's a very real thing. No, it is secure the carry out takeaway items. They need to be secured. We can't be wearing this shit.
- [07:20]
C
I know, it's crazy. We need more cup holders in every area, by the way, to add on. To your point. It's an addendum. We need cup holders to help us out in this situation.
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B
Is this A1A.
- [07:31]
C
Yes, exactly, exactly.
- [07:33]
A
I'm adding to it. Emma, what have you had it with?
- [07:36]
C
Okay, I have had it with people who are habitual bad reviewers of restaurants or people who go out of their way to give one star to an Uber driver or to a Lyft driver or something like that, repeatedly. Look, people are struggling enough right now. You don't need to go out of your way. If it's a horrible circumstance in like an Uber or something like that, and you were in an unsafe situation, or if the restaurant was really, really horrible, a one off, a two off, I'm not gonna, you know, be all upset about that. But if you're the kind of person that's going into restaurants and like, oh, I'm gonna give a three star here or there's no need to bring that negativity for these businesses. They're already struggling so much because corporations are buying up everything and consolidating everything. I don't understand the impulse of people to be such hall monitors when you're just paying for a lunch. Relax. I have never, like, unless it's an extenuating circumstance. I'm not like one starring Uber drivers. I either five star or I don't rate at all. That's kind of my go to. Unless, you know, I'm saying if it's an unsafe situation, go for it. Right?
- [08:41]
A
If the Uber driver is masturbating, go in with a one star. Of course.
- [08:45]
C
Right. But people don't need to be that nitpicky in their day to day life. Agree that people that are working gig jobs, they have it as hard as it is.
- [08:53]
A
I completely agree with you. And there's this whole thing that's happening that we need to talk about because it's where like pop culture meets with politics. And right now the consumer feels so aggrieved because the corporations are not paying, paying their Employees, a livable wage, and so we're having to tip on everything. Here's an example.
- [09:15]
C
I saw your rant about this. It was great.
- [09:17]
A
Yeah. I went, yes, just yesterday to get a bottle of water at the gym. And I opened up the refrigerator, I got the bottle of water, I walked to the thing, I did the checkout, and then she. I scanned my item, and she scanned it, turned it around, and then there was a tip option. And I'm thinking, I'm a tipper. I waited tables in college. I understand the grind. I understand the hustle. And this doesn't warrant the tip. This is not a tippable purchase. It just simply is not. So I think all of that has kind of been an incubator for this consumer rage combined with Facebook culture and keyboard warriors. And then you introduce kanks, kankles, McTaco, tits on top of it. We got Kanks out there who just makes everybody mad on both sides. Like, if you're for Kanks, he gets you mad at the people he's mad at. And if you're against Kanks, you're wound up like a cheap clock all day long. And that's how I feel. I'm like, God damn it. This fucking guy. And so it's like, I feel like we're all in an incubator right now with all this shit.
- [10:20]
C
Yeah, we're all on edge. And I think. I mean, it's in part because the economy is so precarious, and there's an affordability crisis, not just here in New York City. It's across. Across the country. And corporations are putting the onus on regular people to supplement them, not providing living wages for their workers. And that's how they pit us against one another. The way Kanks is pitting Americans who maybe were born here against folks who became citizens or who are undocumented. It's very beneficial for very wealthy people to divide folks who are either working class or just like in their community, because the more divided that we are, the easier we are to oppose.
- [11:02]
A
Go ahead.
- [11:03]
B
I want to circle back to your had it and say that who. Because sometimes you see paragraphs that are written on these reviews, and I'm just thinking to myself, because I recently went to a neurologist and I read the reviews. He's a hypochondriac, a complete hypochondriac. There's nothing wrong with that. But I took my mri, my disc, and nothing wrong with it. Did not need the mri, Took it there anyway. I read the reviews of the Doctor and these people had written three, four paragraphs bitching about the service or they weren't nice to this person.
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A
I'm just thinking, these are your hypochondriac peers.
- [11:34]
B
I know. And I'm thinking, who the fuck has time though? Like in my day if I thought, okay, I went to get a cheeseburger and this guy was a dick to me at the checkout line, who would think I'm gonna go write a fucking paragraph about that, about what an asshole he was. I've got other shit I've gotta do. I've gotta try to get people out of prison. You know, other stuff.
- [11:53]
A
You've got MRIs to take MRIs.
- [11:56]
B
I've gotta read reviews, self harbored MRIs. I gotta read reviews for my new neurologist. I've got all this stuff to do, but I literally would not sit down and type just a hate filled message about someone being an asshole.
- [12:07]
C
It's like about what do you give your energy to? And I try to imagine that most people, if you've had a bad experience of like the front desk of a doctor's office, that they just had a really bad day. And they are often dealing with crazy people or they're overworked or whatever. And that's usually what I try to make an assumption about. Although perhaps that's a bit naive, I don't know. But not naive enough to make me take back my habit. Right? People should still not be going over the top with this crap.
- [12:37]
A
And to the point about corporate exploitation. There are two things that really piss me off. There's a lot, but two that are every are relatable to everyone. Number one is the fact that Walmart, the heirs are so wealthy that they all still make like the Forbes 400 list after the wealth is divided, right? And then the people that work at Walmart because they pay their employees such a shitty wage they have to go get supplemental yep. Income from the government or food stamps, snap, et cetera. And so we are subsidizing the Walton family and these people are rich as shit. They have an airplane hangar full of PJs, they haven't flown commercial in ages. And then the very people that work at Walmart go and vote against the people that can help them. And for the billionaires that are fleecing them, that pisses me off. But here's something that's really pissing me off and it's Jeff Bezos.
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C
Oh yeah.
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A
That uses more infrastructure than anybody on the planet. Roads, airspace, etc. The infrastructure that Amazon uses is off the chart. He should be paying an infrastructure tax because he doesn't have retail stores and he uses so much more infrastructure than any other business on the globe. And so all of these roads and highways that service all of his cars we are paying for. And it's insane how many people that make 50, $60,000 a year go fight for Jeff Bezos and the Walton family. It makes me crazy.
- [14:14]
C
Emma, we, I think my argument on that would be that I think we could get a better education for some of those folks if we had an opposition party to the Republicans that were more focused on class. You know, there's like a lack of class consciousness in this country where it's very, very different in Europe. I mean, I don't know if you've seen some of these strikes like in Italy in protest of sending weaponry to Israel. They shut it down. Millions of people in the streets because they have a long tradition of labor solidarity and of working class people kind of coming together. And then they also get great vacation time too. But it's just the United States is so backwards in that area. But like, you know, I totally agree with you about especially the Walmart point. We give them tax breaks already because they're so big and they're able to buy off our politicians and then we are supplementing them being horrible to their workers by I think Walmart. Some of their employees might be the top recipients of things like Medicaid and snap. They're at the very least in the top three, if my memory serves me correctly. And that is because they have double dipped. They have bought off the government in terms of tax breaks and then they have allowed because, you know, our health care for some reason is provided via our employer. They have given bare minimum health care, if that for upper level employees. But if you're just somebody that's working there and you're not guaranteed health care, we don't force employers even to guarantee healthcare in all of these circumstances either. It's insane.
- [15:55]
A
Go ahead.
- [15:55]
B
It's amazing. I always think about, you see these people that have all this money, they've acquired this fortune. Then I saw, I sometimes thought about Elon Musk or whoever. They spend all their fucking time on some social media outlet and they want to prevent other people from doing better. And it's really sort of, if I had that much money, like, wouldn't you want to just spread some sort of goodness in the world? Wouldn't you want to just maybe help somebody instead of being some vile fucking asshole who's tweeting mean shit to people.
- [16:26]
C
But that's because you could never be Elon Musk. The reason he's there is because he was okay with it. Yeah, like you can't make billions of dollars and not be okay with exploiting people. It's just not possible. You can't get to that point. I mean, perhaps if you inherited it, but then it's incumbent upon you on giving it away, to give it away, in my view. I mean, it was Bill Gates ex wife is trying to do that to a degree. Like, I don't think that you can be a billionaire under capitalism and not be inherently exploitative. And then it gets to a point where like, okay, say you meant well. I mean, you made all this money. But when you're a billionaire, you're so sectioned off from the rest of people that it becomes its own psychosis almost where like you don't have a connection to a shared humanity that creates a snowball effect where you don't see other people as regular people. Like we talk about aliens coming down from other planets. The aliens to me are the billionaires that are just there to extract and then, you know, have other people serve them but not really understand what it's like to be a human being in society.
- [17:32]
A
And they demean, they extract and demean. But you are so right about Europe. We, the last few times we've been in France, you know, the French are always on strike.
- [17:40]
C
Yep.
- [17:41]
A
One time we're there with the kids and the trash is piled up everywhere. So you like see the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde and there's just heaps of trash everywhere. And they are so fucking mad, the French people, because they didn't give the trash collectors a race. So the whole country just went on strike and they're like, yeah, we're not picking up the trash. Right. And another time we were there and it was like the yellow vest. I can't remember what they were mad about. One time it was the retirement age. And they really have a lot of pride. We have some really close French friends and they have a lot of pride in their health care and they have a lot of pride in maternity leave and they have a lot of pride in paternity leave and that the government helps sponsor and facilitate these things. We don't have any pride in any sort of government assistance or government mandated things that government can do for us because the Republican party has done such a good job propagandizing that if you need anything from the government, you're a lazy piece of and you're a moocher. When really the parasites and the parasitic people in the country are the billionaires. And I think your analysis that they get into a psychosis is so spot on because it's. The more you open up your eyes to it and the more you see the way they're behaving. Like Josh was saying, like, can you imagine being a billionaire? And you would think, okay, like remember when we think, okay, what am I going to do if I win the lottery?
- [19:09]
C
Right?
- [19:09]
A
What would I do? Right? You think freedom is what you think, right? So when I watch these billionaires go to Kanks's dementia hour show and tell where we all have to sit around in the circle jerk and tell him how great he is, I think they aren't free at all. They have to go make up awards like Tim Cook brought some trophy, humiliated himself and they have to engage in this humiliation rituals for this man that is not even remotely likable. I hear that. I haven't been around him in person, but I hear that he stinks. I mean, a lot of credible sources in courtrooms say that he wears a diaper and that he his pants. Can you imagine that you have all of this financial freedom and a bank account that could choke a bull and you have to go make up some trophy and give it to that fleabag of a human being. It just blows my mind.
- [20:03]
C
Well, it becomes like a dick measuring contest between billionaires, to put it crudely. And then it's also incentivized by capitalism, builds bills itself as being able to be a system that can support endless growth. And we know that there can't be endless growth. There has to be an endpoint to a degree, like some of these social media companies. The reason that they are, I think, trying to monopolize your time in the way we were talking about earlier is because they, they need your time on your phone. They need you on your phone all the time. Because if they want to come back to shareholders and show them that we're growing, even though this company could not possibly be bigger, everybody's on Facebook, everybody's on Instagram. But we've got to show more growth, more time, more stuff that we can show to advertisers. It creates more and more toxic business incentives and things that are hurting, say kids or people's attention span or their ability to have critical thought. I mean, the Trump administration in this era is a little bit of a part of that where it's about a dopamine response or the way he makes people feel more than it is about the facts. And I think the tech companies, despite having this green branding and the Obama era, have become a deeply toxic force in that. The focus on cities, too. I mean, you're here in New York. I don't think it's the hellscape it's been described as. Right. I think is really important to understanding it too. Where they're putting all these very heavily racialized content to the very top of people's feeds and making it feel like this is the most unsafe place on the planet. Because multiculturalism and bunch of different people of different walks of life living amongst one another in a densely populated area like this is a genuine threat to fascism. Because your neighbor may be somebody that the Republican Party tells you you're supposed to hate, but you know your neighbor and you like them. Or you learn more about their culture or why they came here. Say they're from Venezuela. They were fleeing, you know, a U.S. sanctions regime that was a part of immiserating them. Or they are from a different country where there's been political unrest. You'll understand that more, maybe have empathy for them in a way that I think is a real threat to what the Republicans are trying to do. And so they focus on cities for that very reason. This is where, like, art and culture happens because of that mixing of people. And it's a beautiful thing, in my view. That's what's American to me.
- [22:34]
B
It's almost like they don't want people to get along or like each other.
- [22:38]
C
Yep.
- [22:38]
B
So.
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A
And the cooperation it takes to live in a city like this is also a threat to fascism. Yeah. You have to cooperate with everybody to cross the street, get on the subway. And that type of cooperation with people that you're supposed to hate is difficult because in order to walk down the street in New York, it takes a lot of cooperation among people. But I have been so disappointed. And we can revert back to middle school about the three CO/ of government. Right. And we have seen little Moses, Mike Grinder Johnson, who has been neutered and whose balls are in Kanks's desk in the Oval Office. We have also seen the Supreme Court completely abdicate their co equal branch of power. And listener. You all, a lot of, you know, Josh, new listeners. He is a criminal defense attorney and he's going to talk to us about this very dangerous shadow docket and what Kanks plans are with the Insurrection act, which Josh pointed out to me on our way here. He was like, the irony of him.
- [23:40]
B
Using the Insurrection acting Trump invoking the Insurrection Act.
- [23:43]
C
Unbelievable.
- [23:44]
B
It just seems like, where the fuck are we living? Like, what is going on here? Because I remember sitting like everybody else and watching 1 6, and you just. You're just like, wow.
- [23:54]
C
Yep.
- [23:54]
B
It's like, how do I process this? Yeah. The shadow docket is. It's pretty scary, let me just say, in the legal community, for people who are somewhat scholars. And the reason why it's sort of important is because for those of you that are non lawyers, case law is precedent. There's a history of cases that helps other courts and other judges make decisions as to how they reason and why they decide what they decide. And what the shadow docket sort of does is it takes a case from an appellate court and the Supreme Court's able to issue a one or two, sometimes one, sentence decision and not provide any rationale or reason for why they're issuing that decision. And more importantly, and the way that it impacts judges is it throws a whole line of cases in flux and tells the lower courts nothing about their decisions and why they decide this. And so you have all these district court, federal judges and appellate judges that are all just about ready to pull their hair out. I think the New York Times had a piece on interviewing maybe 80 judges, half of which were Republican, half of which were Democrats. And they're all just. And to get that many federal judges, number one, to even give an interview and talk about something like this is rare. But that shows the gravity of this situation because it throws everything into chaos in the lower courts. And ultimately, what it's doing is diminishing the rule of law. Like nothing means nothing. Like, you used to have certain principles and fundamental things that stood for something. Now you don't, because the Supreme Court. And for those of you that don't know, the shadow docket is just like an emergency docket where you can go to the Supreme Court, and if they decide to accept your case, both sides don't brief it. Both sides don't give argument. They present very limited information to the court. And they can, if the court thinks that an emergency exists, they can issue a ruling or opinion. And literally, if you read an opinion on the shadow docket, it can be two or three sentences, and it provides no guidance. And for example, one of the significant things they ruled recently was that you could take someone's racial, ethnic background and factor that into whether or not you can detain that person under the Fourth Amendment. You can decide that just because that person's Hispanic, you've got a right to seize him temporarily and ask him for his identification. And there's decades of case law that talks about how that's unconstitutional. And just within one or two sentences on the shadow docket, they've undone years, decades of precedent to talk about that. So that's the danger of it. People don't realize that that's what's going on in the legal system.
- [26:44]
C
Well, if you were to have to write an opinion, you would have to have a variety of different footnotes that would explain the case law that you're describing, that the precedent would inform the decision that they're making. But because they're making it the fuck up, basically they rely on these shadow dockets. And it's really a major problem, I would think, for the legal system going forward when hopefully we get out of this era of fascism. But is this whole era going to basically be a black hole for precedent? I mean, maybe that's a good thing given the nature of the decisions, but it's definitely not a good thing for the legal profession and for judges in this country.
- [27:23]
B
It's not. And it diminishes. Most people have a respect for the rule of law, whether you agree or disagree, like, you know certain things about it. That's what it does here. It diminishes. Like we have a son who's a first year law student and we're so proud he's going to go be a lawyer. But in the back of my mind, I'm thinking everything that Trump and this administration and the Supreme Court and others are doing is diminishing the value of all of those things. And in some ways, it also enhances the need to have good litigators. But at the same time, how can everybody be complicit in this? How can you have nine justices, six of which have decided that they're going to bankrupt their souls and vote in favor of Donald Trump?
- [28:04]
A
And I also want to point out to a lot of listeners that have groups of friends and relatives that say the following. I am fiscally conservative, but socially liberal. And where we live, that statement provides a lot of people cover to go vote Republican because they care about their own personal tax spend. And then they can say, but I'm socially liberal, so that they can go to their gay hairdresser and feel like they're multicultural and that they're not just crusty old white fuckers, right? So here's the problem with the erosion of the court system for the fiscal conservatives. Fiscal conservatism is all about business. Laissez faire business. Let it Rip, let's go. Right. When you don't have a court system to take a contract in.
- [28:55]
C
Yeah.
- [28:56]
A
Then the economy starts eroding and it starts eroding and it starts eroding. And you can look no further to than Russia to see what has happened here. You have inflation out the wazoo. You have all of these oligarchs that went and bit the, bent the knee to Vladimir Putin. And then Vladimir Putin decides, I kind of want that company. And then this billionaire that bent the knee to Vladimir Putin is knocked out of a window. And here's the thing, you guys, it is not hyperbolic at all at this point to say that. Look at the phones. Trump's kids. Dumb and dumber. Eric and Don Jr. Of course. Dumb and dumber. Like we're going to have Trump phones. Look at this. We have Trump phones. Trump phones. You see Tim Cook up in the knee. Give him the trophy presentation. Humiliating. Especially considering the fact that Tim Cook is gay. But that's another podcast entirely. When we dive into the psychology behind internalized homophobia. Yeah, but at some point, if he keeps getting all of this unchecked power, Kanks is going to be like, you know what? I really like Apple. Why don't we just take that and call it Trump? Why don't we just rebrand that whole thing? That's what he does. It's not like he comes up with any new ideas. I mean, he's building a ballroom, for God's sakes. And he can't even dance. He does that double jerk off old man dance thing all the time. And the centerpiece of this administration, the thing that his own press secretary says that he's top priority is, is building a $300 million ballroom.
- [30:28]
C
Yeah.
- [30:28]
A
And he can't even dance.
- [30:29]
C
No, he can't even dance. But it's modeled a little bit off the Russian ballroom. I don't know if you've seen some of those images because, like, you know, Vladimir Putin is a good example of what he's trying to emulate where it's casino capitalism. He is trying not to change our economic system in any egalitarian way. He's trying to use the power of the presidency to enrich himself in very direct ways. But also the merging of corporations and the state is the definition of fascism. Like you see right now this headline that was just so horrifying to me that there's this injection of private money into the United States military and they're seeking out further private equity investments. We already have enough financial incentives to go to War. There's this thing called the military industrial complex, but the United States military should be inculcated from that kind of thing. I mean, statutorily, I would imagine it is. But given what we're talking about with the legal system, it's very difficult to see how some of these challenges all make their way through. It's really horrifying. And then you just step back and you ask the question, how did so many people take our democracy for granted? And how did democracy. Why was democracy not enough for people not to bring Donald Trump back into office after January 6th? Like, his approval rating leaving office was horrific. It's only beaten now by his -18 net approval rating that we're seeing right now. It's the lowest it's been. I think when he was in office, it might have been lower after January 6 when he left office. But. But putting that aside for just a second, the problem is that people weren't sold on the idea of democracy because, one, I don't think the Democratic Party is practicing it internally. They're not listening enough to voices like yourself who are talking about AIPAC money. I mean, only 8% of Democrats in the poll in August, per Gallup, support Israel's military action in Gaza. An overwhelming majority. I think something like 70% say that Israel is committing genocide. And yet a great majority of the Democratic Party is still supportive of Israel. Is that democracy between your voters and your core constituency and the party, or is that corruption? And then you even have the Joe Biden issue. A majority of Democratic voters didn't think he should run again. They took him at his word on that front, and he didn't listen. The party mechanism kept going and going. And we could have had a debate where that would have been the performance of democracy, where people could have heard, what do Democrats stand for? Or we could have hashed out those issues in the primary and people could have voted for somebody based on their viewpoint that would have been more representative of it, of them, and it would have given that candidate more legitimacy than, unfortunately, Harris wasn't able to pull through in that way, even though I do think, in part, not in part, she was handed a horrible hand by Joe Biden. But how do you sell people on the idea of small D democracy if you don't practice it yourself? And then it gets to the overarching question of what is people's experience with democracy? And when you don't have democracy in your workplace or you don't feel like you have the freedom to spend money or to build a life or to buy a home or work towards goals because you're in a cycle of debt or your wage isn't increasing or the prices of everything keep going up and up. There has to be some sort of egalitarian democracy for the economy as well, where people feel like they can move up or that they can have a chance. And so I do think that the Democrats lost on just selling the political democracy of showing up on election day where they're not showing the requisite democratic responsiveness. That would be an opposition party, an effective opposition party to a fascist like Trump. They're getting there, hopefully, but not this leadership. It's gotta be something different.
- [34:26]
B
I mean, Emmy, you said something that resonated with me, but when we're talking about 1 6, then we talk about how did we end up here? I mean, in a nutshell, I would say the Democrats.
- [34:36]
C
Yeah.
- [34:37]
B
I mean, I hate to be that blunt about it, but from where we live and where we sit in a red state in Oklahoma City, having an understanding of that environment and that rural upbringing that I had, the Democrats played it horribly bad.
- [34:53]
A
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B
Cold.
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A
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- [36:32]
D
What I like about BetterHelp is it's so convenient and my therapist allows me to be in my home so I feel less restricted. And the holidays are really hard and you're supposed everybody thinks you're supposed to be super duper happy, but sometimes I get kind of down about it. So it is so nice to have the option of Better Help.
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A
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- [39:09]
C
And I don't mean to keep returning to the Democrats, but you know, the point is is like what you're saying, how can we make change right? And we are not in the constituency of the Republican party. They don't care What I have to say about their failings. And the Republicans have been the villains my entire life. It's just, how are you an effective opposition party? How can you sell people on your vision? And we can talk till we're blue in the face about how the facts are on our side. We get it. But what you've been so good on, Jennifer, and it's just like pushing this forward. We've got to get the money out. We've got to. Because it hamstrings the opposition. They're not able to say what they should say because they're corrupted.
- [39:47]
A
We've got to get the money out. Democrats have got to quit doing focus groups and being disciplined about their answers. You know, when after I kind of got into it with Cory Booker, I told Josh about it, and Josh's response was, this is why they suck. Do you think Trump would blink? Do you think he'd hesitate for two seconds if you asked him a yes or no question? He'd fucking answer it. And then if one of his aides corrected him the next day, then he just, just change his mind again. But this whole word salad, I'm so disciplined. I'm not giving people a straight answer. It gives this elitism that I think I know better. I'm up here and all of the electorate is down here. And, you know, Josh was raised in Hugo, Oklahoma, which is a town of 5,000 people. And I guarantee you Trump won that county by 50 percentage points or something. And the thing with people in rural areas, and I found this statistic so fascinating. So when you look at Oklahoma, so red, not one county has gone blue like the last five election cycles. They're real proud of that.
- [40:52]
B
Like, there's 77 counties. They've all gone.
- [40:54]
A
Yeah. All gone Republican. If you ask people individually, do you want marijuana to be legal? They did that like five or seven years ago. And the electorate voted to legalize marijuana. If you ask them, are you for choice? Up to a point, the majority of Oklahomans say yes. If you say, are you for the rich paying their fair share in taxes? They say yes. If you ask everybody on an individual thing, even in deep red religious, Bible thumping, Oklahoma progressive single line item issues win. But the Republicans have done an incredible job propagandizing in red states via churches.
- [41:37]
C
Yes.
- [41:37]
A
And I remember growing up and there are megachurches fucking everywhere. And I was on top of all of the prayer lists in all of those mega churches. But that's another podcast as well.
- [41:47]
C
Oh, you told me about that story. It was a great story. About. Yeah. Your background in that area and how Trump is like a evangelical preacher.
- [41:56]
A
But the marquis on the this church, I remember seeing this is, you know, a long time ago, it'd be like, vote George Bush today.
- [42:01]
C
Yeah.
- [42:02]
A
And this is at the church. And if you think about this portion of the electorate and how much this portion of the electorate, I'm not talking about Christian light. People don't freak out. I'm not talking about Catholics. I'm talking about white evangelicals. They are the people who have us so hard because they started this decades ago, long before ascended, and they are the people who leave us vulnerable. Where does Vladimir Putin enter the United States through the prayer breakfast? Where does the NRA go through the prayer breakfast? Project 2025. All this shit is rooted in white evangelicalism. And the Democratic Party has not answered the Republican Party crazy Christian component of this. This because they think, oh, separation of church and state. We're not going to talk about it. You up. Because these crazy Christians that have their roots in the kkk.
- [42:59]
C
Yeah.
- [43:00]
A
Have made this a political issue and you have to answer it. And that's why somebody like James Talarico in Texas is very important now for me, I, if it's a Muslim, if it's Jewish person, if it's a Christian politician, they start talking about their faith. I'm an atheist. It's nauseating to me. However, this is a very religious first world country and I think it's going to take some politicians like Andy Bershear and James Talarico to go run as progressive Christians in these red states and take the same message. The Zoron has exact same.
- [43:35]
C
You got to focus on class, though. They can't just do.
- [43:37]
A
Yes. Tellarico has a very great line. He says, and he won't throw the trans population under the bus. He said everybody's worried about less than 1% of the population. They're worried about the wrong 1%.
- [43:49]
C
Great line.
- [43:49]
A
We need to focus on the other 1%. And then he talks about his faith and Jesus, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But this to me is such an effective way for Democrats to move forward. And it pissed me off to no end when Ezra Klein suggested that the Democrats should run pro life candidates in red states. They've done it and they all lose. Pro life Democrats get their ass beat because rural people aren't as dumb as you think. They just cannot stand people that are inauthentic. We all know Kings is not authentic, but he reads to people as being authentic because he came out in 2016 and I remember Josh and I kind of liked it at first. He's like, lying, Ted.
- [44:37]
C
Oh, it was funny.
- [44:38]
A
I was like, finally somebody's fucking calling out these sleaze bags.
- [44:42]
C
Yeah. And he was also saying things like, marjorie Taylor Greene's doing this right now where there are existing fractures in the MAGA base, where she's saying stuff that other Republicans aren't saying, like criticizing Israel or even criticizing some of Trump's tariff policies because she's trying to set herself up for 2028. That's my. That's my.
- [45:00]
A
She sees a post MAGA world because the strong man is frail and that's. That's when autocracies and dictators crumble. Because this dementia world tour in Asia that we have all seen is very alarming. I mean, he had the Prime Minister of Japan babysitting him and still got lost.
- [45:16]
C
Yeah. I mean, it feels like it happens at the end of every month long cycle. And there's, I mean, this is just hypothesizing, but that hand thing, there's some Alzheimer's drugs, Adderall.
- [45:26]
A
Yeah.
- [45:27]
C
You know, you gotta do it refresh every single month. But I mean, I think what you're hitting on is actually, you know, really important. So the Ezra Klein thing, I mean, that pissed me off to no end too, because how many different people are we gonna throw under the bus to avoid talking about class? Like the, the part of the elitism you're talking about is, is like, what, what Cory Booker, he couldn't get away with on your show, he gets away with in every room that has donors in it, because he will talk about his identity, he will talk about being a black man. He'll talk about where he lives in. I'm from New Jersey. In New Jersey. And you know, I think that kind of representation is important, but it can't be the only thing. But he'll rely on that because wealthy white people that want to think of themselves as anti racist and donate to the Democrats, they want to hear that when they're in a room and it flatters them and then they get money. But for regular people, they're like, what the hell are you talking about? You're being asked a direct question. Can you answer it? It's this inauthenticity. And then with Ezra, the impetus to be like, what can we throw under the bus? What can we abandon in order to win these people, right? Ye women. People who can get pregnant. Like, who it was trans people. Now it's like victims of incest. United States.
- [46:39]
A
Fuck you.
- [46:40]
C
Yeah. Exactly. Except that you don't need to do that. We have seen that if you just lean into, people want their material conditions to be met. And you can have a candidate like Dan Osborne in Nebraska who doesn't have all of my social beliefs but is focused, he's supported by unions, and he's running as an independent because a D next to your name is a little bit of an issue in that state. But you can have other candidates that run similarly with an economic populist platform in other states that are more representative, say, of my full politics. You don't have to abandon people. You can avoid certain topics, but just emphasizing you're going to change people's material conditions is really important. The problem is that there's a, a consultant class that you mentioned earlier that gets paid millions and millions of dollars a year just to avoid that question. There is a whole rotten infrastructure in the Democratic Party that needs to be done away with because they are avoiding the simple answers in favor of donor money. And I go back to 2016 when Chuck Schumer said this openly. He said, for every, and I'm paraphrasing, but for every person we lose in rural America, or maybe it wasn't rural America, it was for every X person we lose, we will gain a suburban Republican voter. I'm paraphrasing a lot. I remember that it was about basically reorienting the party more towards disaffected suburban Republicans. How has that worked out? How has that worked out? It is about micro targeting a small sliver of the population with ads, which makes consultants, consultants very rich. They get fees on TV ads. You know what doesn't get fees? Canvassing like Zoron did, turning out people and volunteers. That doesn't pay consultants their fees. That's just good politics. But the Democratic Party has a whole infrastructure in place to avoid doing that kind of thing. And Obama was better at that. And look at what happened in 2008. So it's not just about, you know, the politics of it, which I'm trying to focus on this as somebody who's a Democratic socialist. Right, right. But it's also about the infrastructure that is rotten as well.
- [48:49]
B
Well, and let me make two quick points for me from, from my perspective. Number one, people do appreciate candidates that have conviction regardless. Sometimes you disagree with their policies, but if they have conviction, for the most part, that's going to gain you a lot. And number two, where we sit, where I sit now in Oklahoma, we, we were so upset with Democrats, not necessarily just the candidates, but the way that they message to people that live in rural red states. There's no chance that they're going to watch and listen and vote for, for that particular candidate. And it's just if you don't understand rural America, then I would urge anybody running for any sort of national office to go spend time, go to a church, go to a rodeo, go do the things they do. It's completely different. And if you just don't get it, you don't get it.
- [49:51]
A
Here's the problem that's happening right now and you kind of brought it up with Marjorie Taylor Greene. And Josh can attest to all of this. So in flyover states where we live, people don't think about Israel and Palestine at all. They don't. There's barely any Jewish popular population, barely any Muslim population. And it seems like a very far off place when you get in major political circles. Aipac money and Benjamin Netanyahu and genocide. It's, it's a very pressing issue. But for swaths and millions of people all across the United States, they don't know. Recently Josh was like, so what exactly is a Zionist? And so, you know, I'm kind of explaining it to him. And he's an attorney.
- [50:41]
B
Yeah, I'm a lawyer. And it's just not something my nephews.
- [50:44]
A
That are attorneys, one's a federal marshal. They're both Democrats. We're like, yeah, that whole Palestine's getting kind of up and I don't really understand what's going on there. Here's where Marjorie Taylor Greene and I'll be God damned if she's this smart. Her saying the following things is going to hit very hard with rural voters that don't pay attention or suburban voters that don't pay attention. When she says the following MAGA and the Democrats are not America first, they are Israel first. People in Israel have health care and they get to go to college for free and you pay for it and you're going medically bankrupt. Now, Marjorie Taylor Greene is an anti Semite, she's a bigot, she's a homophobe, road. She's a grifter, she's an opportunist, yak yak, blah, blah. But Josh, who lived in a town of 5,000 people, that is a simple message that the Democrats should be owning. 100 screaming brow beating instead of nuanced conversations. It's so simple to say it, but everybody feels like they've been checkmated. Like, oh, I have these Jewish friends and I don't want to hurt their feelings. And the situation is the Democrats should take leadership on this and say what we're talking about is different than you supporting your Jewish friends. It's completely different. We're talking about a regime that deserves to be criticized. In the same way that you hope as an American right now that people criticize Donald Trump. I don't see any criticism of Donald Trump a criticism of my being an American. Actually, the patriot in me, which I rarely use that word, welcomes that sort of criticism. And I wish that our allies would act more like President Xi did with him. And I wish that they would quit bending the knee and kissing his ass like the oligarchs do. And I think that is one of the more pro American things you can do. So we're in a very dangerous situation where you have a large majority of the electorate that doesn't understand or know about this foreign policy issue, number one. And number two, and this is going to hurt a lot of people, but a lot of them don't give a fuck because they're going to the doctor and the doctor says, you need an MRI and I'm so sorry, your insurance isn't going to pay for it. And we think it's cancer, but there's nothing we can do.
- [52:57]
C
But Marjorie Taylor Greene is connecting those two issues disingenuously, as you say. You know, I really am scared about that because she is actually anti Semitic. You are seeing the rise in anti Jewish hatred on the right, in particular with figures like Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson. Just had Nick Fuentes on who was a neo Nazi. I mean, he's being, oh, I, I, I think that's a good hypothesis. I think Marjorie Taylor Greene's got her eye on that, too, but she's got the whole woman thing. That might be a little bit of a problem with Republican voters. But I digress. I think that simple message, it's isolationist, where you're saying, as if, I don't know, we couldn't also have health care here as well. I mean, we could tax billionaires and keep funding Israel. I don't think it's a binary choice, although I do not think we should be definitely funding a country that's committing a genocide. But you hear the way Marjorie Taylor Greene frames it, right? Simple, where it's, it's very simple. It makes about people's material reality. When you dig a little deeper, she's a Christian nationalist and she is like anti Jewish in the way where she tweeted back at AIPAC something about, I'm not going to take your, shekels or something. It's like, whoa.
- [54:07]
A
Well, and she's a rapture prepper.
- [54:09]
C
Right, right.
- [54:09]
A
Josh said to me when this whole Israel thing, you know, really started steaming up during the last election, Josh goes, why is it that all the politicians I hate, like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, they're the biggest Israel thumpers.
- [54:24]
C
Because it's about being bought by the military industrial complex. Because the reason that this issue is so important isn't just because it's like the fundamental human rights issue of this current time. It's also because it's a stand in for are you bought by corporate interests or are you not? Can you be brave on this issue or can you not be. And people trust you if you can be brave on it because it's a shorthand, okay, that person's not bought by X amount of money. They're going to say how they feel. And so I think that's part of what the Democrats are slow to catch up to about.
- [54:56]
B
Well and that's unfortunate because you then have politicians that can't speak their mind and give honest opinions and answers like Cory Booker on your show.
- [55:10]
C
You're just, you're handicapped credibility of the party.
- [55:12]
B
But there's also, and this isn't to sound, to minimize this issue, but most of the people in rural America don't care about this issue. And I'm not.
- [55:23]
C
I hear you on that. I just get on my soapbox.
- [55:26]
B
No, and I agree, but I do and so does Jennifer. Like we care greatly about it.
- [55:31]
A
Well, I think the Democrats need to message. And Zorin talks about this, this universal human rights.
- [55:36]
C
Exactly.
- [55:37]
A
And they can message it, but they take advantage of the fact these, these rural voters and suburban voters, people that live in very homogeneous neighborhoods, whether that's urban, suburban or rural, like white areas, they take for granted these voters because they know they're already in their silos. And the Democratic Party is looking to, to flip these elusive independents and they're always looking for this elusive voter. And I think the reason that our, this podcast is so popular is because of the optics of us, you know, Southern.
- [56:13]
C
Yeah.
- [56:14]
A
Middle aged white women. It's like, oh shit, they're progressive. I thought they would be. You know, we look kind of fox news coded, etc.
- [56:21]
C
But it's so condescending.
- [56:22]
A
Right.
- [56:22]
C
I'm sorry, it just is.
- [56:24]
A
I also think it's kind of sad.
- [56:26]
C
Yeah.
- [56:26]
A
I, that the, the reason we're novel I think is also somewhat sad. But I think that there is a movement forming and I think there are fissures in the MAGA movement. And I think there are fissures in the Democratic Party right now. And these fissures are really, really getting traction. The. On the right, you have the Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Tucker Carlson that they are seeing that the strong man is frail, and that's what, what ultimately crumbles these forms of strong men when he's frail, Dementia, all of the stuff they're seeing curtains. And, you know, Moses, Mike Johnson is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. He's going down with Kanks. And then on the right, you have these fissures forming and, you know, Hakeem Jeffries chuckles Cory Bookers, they're going to have a hard time surviving.
- [57:15]
C
Yeah.
- [57:15]
A
Because hopefully the Democratic base is. Was really, really pissed. And when I think about it, and Josh was so mad about this before me that Biden didn't drop out sooner. He was so mad and he was like, I'm so mad at the Democrats. It pisses me off. I can't believe they didn't do anything about January 6th. He was so mad. And it's a. It's unfortunate that the burden always falls on our side to do the right thing, but look how. How depraved the right is.
- [57:49]
C
Yeah.
- [57:49]
A
They are so morally depraved. And they have no problem passing the big heaping pile of dog bill and telling people that somehow, you know, like Mike Johnson and Ted Cruz, they Christian signal. They use their faith to make it sound like, oh, we're doing everything that Jesus wants us to do. And it's really abhorrent. But I have seen so many white women who have a lot of money lately whose husbands are now calling them communists because that's how far left they've gone. And that's anecdotal. But the more and more I talk to people, the more I realize one thing happened. One of two things happened to you with Trump. You either became worse of a human being. If you triple trumped with each time that you did that, you became worse and worse and worse. And you could look no further than, like, Marco Rubio and his lost soul to see how damaging it is to do that, or you've become more and more progressive and you have, like, I used to be a good MSNBC Democrat. I was really good at it. And no disrespect to msnbc, a lot of people on there do a lot of good work. But I really started digging deeper, like, why are they so robotic? Why can't they beat these people? This should be a layup, a layup and they can't beat them and you start digging into it and the corporate Dem thing is so real. Listener the Hot Book of the Summer. Oops, I have it the wrong way. Take 2. Listener the hot book of the summer is now the cool book of the fall. It is in Trump's America. I can tell you with absolute certainty the best book that has ever been written. And believe me, a lot of people are talking about it.
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We took a cognitive test and it was book write done.
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- [63:56]
A
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- [64:54]
C
I think that you're right about, like the fight between the Republican base might end up being more fracturous than what I see unifying momentum right now, at least within the Democratic base. The politicians. That's the disconnect is the Democratic representatives and our leadership are not stepping up here. But I do see that the base is kind of understanding. The billionaires are the problem here, and we can tax the hell out of them and provide incredible services for a population. And that's de. Radicalizing in and of itself. There's academic papers on when people's material conditions are worse. Things like domestic violence increase because men feel like they have no agency in their professional life and they take it out on their spouse. And there's different other kinds of crime that that leads to or violence. Because the way to make a safer society is to make sure that people's basic material needs are met. And that's been something that's been really radicalizing. And at my old gig, I was going to basically one Trump rally a week, and it would be like in eastern Tennessee or in northern Florida or whatever. So I'm not saying I've lived in the south for a while, but I did do that for a little while early on in my career. And. And what you notice is that it's a perverse sense of community. But when you go to these MAGA rallies, it's people that feel like they have some sense of community. And we're so atomized and we're in our cars and going to work and nine to five and you come home or maybe you have to do another job as an Uber driver because you can't support your family. And people feel like they're on a razor's edge economically, and so they retreat to something like that, whether it's the mega church or it's the Trump rally, where they feel like they have a common purpose. And what I hope can come out of this is that the liberals and the left base can come together with a common purpose of building a durable opposition to fascism. Because when you talk about not prosecuting January 6, everything that Biden did, it's just wiped out. I mean, there's no durability because they didn't provide a movement.
- [67:03]
B
It's easy just not to want to just be mad about that every second of every day. And I try my best not to be. But another thing, and I posed this to Jennifer on the way over here, if you're in an argument or if I'm in A jury trial against opposing counsel and they're lying or they're cutting below the belt and I stand up and I am full of integrity and I am going to do the right thing and then I am going to get my ass kicked every single fucking time. Now, it doesn't mean I have to to be a liar, but I have to be able to recognize that and call it out. And the Democrats, if they don't get a solution for that, if they don't have some kind of fundamental understanding that they play this game and we're playing this game, if there's no appreciation for that as just a premise, then they will lose every single time. Because you're dealing with people that are pathological fucking liars that spread propaganda and you want to truth your way out of that, and you want to integrity your way out of that and you want to do this and you're gonna get your ass kicked every time.
- [68:08]
A
This is why I'm a proponent of fuck you politics brought to you by progressives. I mean, I just think we have to like right now, Glenn Beck and Fox News and what's his name, Temple, are really mad at me and I'm going viral. Like I, I only am on Instagram. It's the only social media that I do, and that's just tennis videos and French bulldogs. So I got on my Instagram and it's like, die, you're a tranny. All of these horrible, horrible things. So I text the producer of our show and I'm like, kylie, am I going viral right now? And she goes, yes, you are Fox News, Glenn Beck, Temple. And I'm like, what's this about this time? And they said, they say that you want to kill conservatives. I'm like, what did I ever say what? And it was that clip of this wine, fine mom, like older than me, even at like no kings. And this Christian commentator is like, are you sad that Charlie Kirk's dead? And the lady was like, no, I'm really not. He was not a good person. Yeah, like, I don't like the guns, but I'm not sad. She's like, would you be sad if I died? And the lady's like, well, I'd have to think about that. So after that clip, I say to our podcast audience, this is where the Democrats are right now. It's more of a fuck your, your, your feelings, you know? And so of course they're melting down. Stage 5 meltdown by Once self proclaimed alpha male Temple, who clearly is a titty baby.
- [69:33]
C
You should go back and check out my debate with him if you want some fun. Some. Some fun content. He had a complete meltdown.
- [69:39]
A
Okay, Emma, let's have a little bit of fun.
- [69:41]
C
Sure.
- [69:42]
A
We're gonna play our world famous game, had it or hit it. And Josh, I'm gonna. I'm gonna leap you. You can do this too, since you're our guest co host.
- [69:50]
B
Oh, I get to participate?
- [69:51]
A
You get to participate.
- [69:51]
B
Thank you.
- [69:52]
A
Oh my God. Welcome to Pat it or hit it. I would hit it. I hit it every day. Sometimes twice a day. Had it or hit it. Ice.
- [70:05]
C
Had it with ice. I mean, this gestapo that's terrorizing communities is absolutely out of control. These fat asses that have no training, they are disgusting, disgusting thugs that should be treated like pigs on our streets. They are horrible, horrible people. And AOC in 2018 was being called a radical for saying abolish ICE. ICE didn't exist before 9 11. We can abolish ICE. It came out of the war on terror and it does not need to exist. We can have a much more humane immigration system than what we're seeing right now.
- [70:38]
B
I do want to add to this. There are two ICE agents in Illinois that refused to participate. That they walked off. And so I, I've. I hit those guys.
- [70:51]
A
Okay.
- [70:51]
B
That's the rest of them. I've had.
- [70:52]
C
Had it there.
- [70:53]
A
Okay. You guys had it or hit it? Katie Miller.
- [70:56]
C
Oh, had it.
- [70:58]
A
Okay. Josh. Katie Miller is the wife of Stephen Miller. Stephen Miller is the little four foot troll.
- [71:03]
B
I didn't know who she was. I'm sorry.
- [71:05]
A
And this. She just did a whole. She started a podcast and now she's been on like. Well, she was on Piers Morgan, had a stage five meltdown and got in a fight with, I guess. Is it your former boss?
- [71:15]
C
Yeah, yeah, I saw that. And. And it was amazing. She accused. It was like an anti Semitism accusation because I forget what he said.
- [71:24]
A
She's raising Jewish children. She said. And he goes, nobody's talking about your kids or you being Jewish.
- [71:28]
C
I mean, I've had it with her and her Nazi ass husband.
- [71:33]
A
Okay, how did her head it. Centrism.
- [71:35]
C
Had it.
- [71:36]
B
I would have to say that goes against.
- [71:39]
A
Pick a side.
- [71:39]
B
Having any kind of balls and standing for something. There's no way everybody's going to agree with you. But have some balls. Stand up for something. Have some conviction. People respect that more than they do. People that will lie and say, speak out of both sides of their mouth and say whatever.
- [71:53]
C
Right?
- [71:54]
A
I agree. And I think centrism is like the pick Me of politicians. They don't want to make anybody dislike them them. Therefore they are forgettable.
- [72:02]
C
It's also why we're here. Exactly. You can't make milquetoast centrist cases. You have to make your argument. Don't be afraid of making your argument. And that is how you build a political brand. I don't know if we're doing lightning round, but this is just one point I wanted to push in. There is just like after 2012, the Republican Party sent out a memo saying we need to rehaul all of our immigration because they lost so badly with Latino voters. We need to rethink immigration. We need to be more friendly to immigrants. That was what the Republican internal memo was saying. 2016, next election cycle Trump, or presidential election cycle. Trump comes in, is vicious, disgusting to immigrants, and the metrics didn't reflect that. But he has indelibly changed for the worse the immigration debate forever because he just made his argument. Yep.
- [72:48]
B
I agree.
- [72:48]
A
I agree. Okay. Had it or hit it? Riley Gang had it.
- [72:53]
C
I mean, do you know who she is?
- [72:55]
B
I don't.
- [72:55]
A
Okay. Josh is so mediocre.
- [72:57]
C
Swimmer tied for fifth place.
- [73:00]
A
She is this woman that tied for fifth place against a trans female swimmer, and she has made a career off of tying for fifth place. So here's the thing.
- [73:09]
B
They're still trotting that if the trans.
- [73:11]
A
If the trans person hadn't swam in that race, she still would have gotten fifth.
- [73:18]
C
She's just mad she had to tie. She tied. And now she's like a conservative influencer about it. I mean, this. There's nothing more that right wingers get mad about than white CIS women like you or me, defending trans women because they like to think of themselves as the savior of white women. Because trans women, they say, are like either rapists or threats or gonna ruin our sports. They didn't care about women's sports until they got to crap on trans women. They were making fun of the WNBA my whole life. Totally. But because we look like the kind of women that, like, you know, white supremacists like to hold up as the ones that they're saving from the racist black and brown and trans and LGBTQ hordes, they get really triggered when you stand up for trans people. That's my experience.
- [74:01]
B
Let me add that I want the Democrats to be as diabolical as Republicans are on this issue of trans athletes.
- [74:10]
C
Yeah.
- [74:10]
B
I would like a Democrat with all of these issues that we have in our favor to take one of those and then just get twisted. Just go Diabolical and not just get twisted, but just nail it.
- [74:22]
A
I've got it right here. The DL Demon queen problem that exists in maga.
- [74:28]
C
Yeah.
- [74:28]
A
I don't know if it's true or not, but I think there's a lot of evidence. And I get major gay darpings from, as you know, Moses, Mike Grinder Johnson, Josh Hawley, failed drag queen, smokey eye sociopath, Jennifer JD Vance, who we refer to as little Smokey Marco Rubio, and I think Lindsey Graham. Lindsey Graham.
- [74:51]
C
Tim Scott.
- [74:52]
A
Tim Scott. And I think that here's the problem with a lot of these MAGA men. And I think we should just go number one. I read a report that the number one consumers of trans porns are red cities. The epicenter of all consumption of trans porn watching is lots of Lawton, Oklahoma. Oh, my God. Lawton, Oklahoma. And then you just sweep through the Bible Belt. And so I think the Democrats need to be this diabolical. Why are you picking on trans people during the day? And then behind your wife's back you're beaten off to trans porn? Lindsay, what's going on there? Moses, Mike Grindr Johnson. What's going on with your Grinder account? And why do you have this roommate that is an evangelical preacher that answers his door in his panties, per your neighbors when you come home, home from work, speaker of the House. And I think they should pound it and pound it right into the heart of their faux masculinity. Because at the end of the day, a lot of these MAGA men have been watching porn and here's what's happened. They saw an erect penis, and maybe that was when it happened.
- [75:57]
C
Or they came and then felt a lot of shame and then trained it. I mean, that's kind of what it is.
- [76:01]
A
Oh, my God. That was kind of gay. And then they go crazy, crazy. And it's like, I'm anti trans, I'm anti gay. Nobody gives a. Nobody cares.
- [76:09]
C
Yeah. Also, if you are insecure about your masculinity, you need to really, really define what is women and female. What is female and male. Right. Like these are men that they over compensate because they're so insecure about their masculinity that they create really rigid rules. And it's. It burns you up inside.
- [76:27]
B
But I think it's there for the taking. Like, the Democrats have these issues that would resonate with people if they can just simply get them out there. But with these Republicans, you're going to have to have some crazy in you. You've got to get diabolical you're going to have voters like it. You're going to have to get in that. You're going to have to get down in the mud with them. And I'm sorry, but you can't go low here.
- [76:49]
A
How would Hugo, Oklahoma, like that if somebody just came out, started, just Moses. Mike Johnson is clearly on Grindr and he's launched.
- [76:57]
B
All of that stuff would resonate because, and we can't underestimate this. What resonated about Trump in 16 was that he was unorthodox and would say what came to his mind. I'm not saying it's authentic. I'm not saying I agreed with it, but it resonated. He was a different type of politician. Whether you agree or disagree, he was different.
- [77:14]
C
Yeah.
- [77:14]
A
Okay.
- [77:15]
B
Resonated.
- [77:15]
C
Yeah.
- [77:16]
A
Last one. This is a tricky one.
- [77:18]
C
Okay.
- [77:18]
A
Had it or hit it, the United States of America hit it.
- [77:26]
C
It's testing me right now, but at the end of the day, why I do what I do, it's definitely not for the money. It's because I love the country and I do believe in humanity. Overall, we're in a really dark period right now, but I do think that the country can be better. I think that we can provide more things for people. We're the wealthiest nation in the world. There's no reason that we should currently have a record of credit card debt that people are experiencing. Experiencing that month over month, that people are defaulting more and more on their. On their car payments. We're getting in this amazingly economic, precarious situation. Or that we have thugs deployed by the federal government breaking up families because they tried to come to this country for a better life. I grew up with the idea that we are a nation of immigrants, and that was a value that was instilled in me, and I think we can do that again. It's just that we're in a very dark period right now, and we need an opposition, opposition party that can make that case and make it with their chest and don't equivocate and don't hide from it. And you've been doing such great work, Jennifer. Seriously. Thank you. On making it so that we weren't. My wing of the party was not listened to that much over the past eight years in our support for Bernie Sanders and people like the squad. But I think the base is starting to see that those are the real fighters and those are the people that are equipped to fight because they're not bought.
- [78:46]
A
Yep.
- [78:48]
B
I would say hit it for some of the same reasons that Emma said, but for the main reason that when I go to court in, for example, Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, or when I go to court in Mangum, Oklahoma, most people that I talk to, if you get out of this political spectrum of being on social media, all the interactions I have with people, they're pretty kind, they're pretty nice. People are inherently good in general. And if you can remove all of this bullshit, all this toxic bullshit that's in our life every day, you see that. Whether it's. You know, for a long time, I had to go visit with this one prosecutor to try to work out a really nasty case.
- [79:30]
C
You remember that one?
- [79:31]
A
This is so funny.
- [79:33]
B
And he's got the picture of Trump being shot.
- [79:36]
A
Here's the fight. Fight.
- [79:38]
B
And he's a prosecutor and he's a good friend.
- [79:40]
C
Okay.
- [79:40]
B
But I would walk in and we would talk, and I'm from a small town, so I know the drill. Like, I get it.
- [79:48]
C
No, I have Republican friends. It's.
- [79:49]
B
Yeah, but he and I were friends, and, like, I could literally, if something happened, I could call him at any point in time. He would do anything. But people just in general, like, I lost my wallet that was attached to my phone at the mall, and someone pulled it up and found my driver's license in it, and it had a credit card, and drove it straight to my house and put it in my mailbox. And it's just little things like that. When you see people, they're inherently good. Most people are. And don't lose sight of that when you're reading through all of this toxic shit that gets on our feet every single day. Don't lose sight of that. Regardless of what party they identify with, most people have a good heart.
- [80:28]
C
I will. Just one more thing. Michael Brooks was the co host of my show before he passed, before I joined, actually, tragically. And he used to say, I'm paraphrasing again, but be kind to be people, but ruthless to systems and institutions. And I think that's a pretty good guiding light. That is so good.
- [80:47]
B
That's 100%. And don't be silent or complicit. But at the same time. Yeah, that's good.
- [80:54]
A
That is so good. All right, listen. Thank you, Emma.
- [80:56]
C
Thank you.
- [80:57]
A
Thank you for joining. I was on Emma's podcast, so we met virtually, and this is our first time to meet in real life. Josh, thank you for co hosting. Listener Pumps will be back from her lesbian sex capade.
- [81:09]
C
Give her my best.
- [81:10]
A
Yeah. And maybe she'll pull up to the podcast in a u haul.
- [81:14]
C
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- [81:14]
A
That would be really exciting.
- [81:16]
C
Could she help me move some things into my new apartment? I need some help.
- [81:19]
A
All right, thank you everybody, and we'll see you next Tuesday and Thursday. Tell you what I've had it with. Let's hear it. I've had it with that. Listen up, patriots, gaytriots and matriots. We have a new podcast that has dropped. It's called IHIP News. It's Monday through Friday. Every day, 15 to 20 minute hot takes on the political landscape of the United States of America. Always served with a side of petty grievances.
- [81:51]
D
We are on all the available platforms. Apple, Spotify, Google, whatever you get your podcast and YouTube.
- [81:57]
A
Please go, rate, subscribe and review so that we will chart upwards with America's greatest legal mind. Pumps. Pumps. What does an eagle say? Caca. A little bit more enthusiasm.
- [82:09]
C
Caca.
- [82:10]
A
That's it.
- [82:11]
C
That's.
- [82:11]
A
That's caca. That's the patriotism that this country needs right there.
- [82:17]
B
There.