We ONLY read Fox News this week | Ep. 071 Lemonade Stand 🍋

Summary

Lemonade Stand Ep. 071: "We ONLY read Fox News this week" – July 15, 2026

Podcast: Lemonade Stand
Hosts: Aiden, Atrioc (Brandon), DougDoug
Theme: The crew spends a full week consuming only Fox News and shares their findings, reflections, and the biases, quirks, and ironies of getting all business and world news through one outlet.

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Episode Overview

This experimental episode sees Aiden, Atrioc, and DougDoug restrict themselves to reading only Fox News for a week. They break down the type of stories that dominate Fox’s coverage, analyze its framing of major events, and reflect on the site’s structure, target audience, and comment sections. The tone is irreverent, insightful, and rich with both humor and media critique.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. Fox News as Sole News Source: Structure & Editorial Choices

• The hosts open by poking fun at Fox’s limited and curated subcategories in its US news section: Blue City Crime, Campus Radicals, Border Crisis, and True Crime.
  • Brandon (03:15): “There are only four categories… These are the four categories of all US News.”
• Noted absence of news about “red city crime” and bias in category selection.
• The site’s overwhelming focus on culture-war issues and alarmist headlines, often at the expense of conventional business or policy reporting.

Notable Quote

“Is it implying the blue city crime is fake?”
— Estet Herndon, 03:52

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2. Headline Sensationalism & Content-Neglect Gap

• Many Fox articles feature bombastic headlines with surprisingly bland or even neutral article content.
• The focus is often less on new information and more on framing (“woke” angles, celebrity drama, AOC criticism).
  • Aiden (91:36): "Every headline here is intermingled with way more inflammatory language... packaged between a couple celebrity stories and how AOC fucked up this week."

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3. Fox News Comments Section: A Portal to Its Core Audience

• The hosts spend considerable time reading and dissecting user commentary, which they note consistently reflects an older, boomer demographic.
• Discussion about the comments on everything from vaccines to the Iran war, with running jokes about recurring references to military experience in the late 1960s.

Notable Moment

“I was in army basic training over 50 years ago… using exactly this [jet injection] method.”
— Commenter, read by Estet Herndon, 71:18

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4. Major News Topics, Fox-Filtered

a) World Cup Coverage

• Sports news is sparse unless searched for directly; even then, the coverage frames the event in culture-war terms.
  • E.g., opinion piece arguing “Commie Dems” threaten what Europeans love about America: road trips, Walmart, free refills—used as a paean to American capitalism.
    • Quote (04:46): “If you look at what amazes Europeans about our great nation, they're almost all things that Marxists… would seek to destroy.”

b) Senate Absenteeism: Mitch McConnell

• Fox frames McConnell’s month-long absence primarily through criticism of AOC’s commentary, rarely addressing Republican concern.
  • Brandon (11:15): “Every single Mitch McConnell article on Fox News makes sure to do it through the lens of AOC… whataboutism.”

c) Lindsey Graham’s Death & Trump Relationship

• Extensive reminiscence over Graham and Trump’s tumultuous past—detailing mutual insults, even Trump leaking Graham’s number.
• Aiden reads from the Fox article and summarizes the unlikely “rock-solid friendship” forged after years of public feud.
  • Notable Quotes:
    • Aiden (16:56): “In the Fox News article, it said riots.” (about Jan. 6—hosts marvel at Fox using that term.)
    • Brandon (18:15): “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed…” followed by modern comments celebrating Graham’s loyalty turn.

d) Housing Act Passage

• Coverage of the bipartisan 21st Century Road to Housing Act, with Trump ultimately allowing it to become law unsigned as a protest maneuver, hoping to pressure passage of the Save America Act.
  • Discussion of what the bill actually does: speeds up housing approval by exempting certain affordable projects from federal environmental review; bans large institutional investors from buying homes; incentivizes local zoning reform.
  • Estet Herndon (42:48): “I have never heard of this before… As we see in the headline here, he took an unusual step. …He just ignored it and it is now officially law.”

e) Iran War: Reality vs. Fox Narrative

• The evolving Fox narrative, which jumps from “Iran is losing” to “war is over,” back to renewed conflict and blockades.
• Hosts remark how Fox and its commenters are often all-in on the administration’s choices, regardless of outcomes.
  • Brandon (45:23): “Back in March, Iran is losing this fight… By June, they've agreed to give up nuclear ambitions… Then by July, Trump is touting good meetings… then the ceasefire is over.”
  • Aiden (53:06): “They picked Trump, they picked Fox News. All the comments are like, President Trump is the only president in 47 years to confront Iran…”

f) European Energy Dependence on Russia

• Fox coverage criticizes Europe for hypocrisy—buying Russian energy while supporting Ukraine.
  • The hosts discuss the limits of sanctions, and Lindsey Graham’s push to penalize EU energy purchases, ultimately noting global commodities just shift buyers rather than disappear.
  • Brandon (66:24): “…the point is if they all switched their contract to American LNG, then someone else somewhere is not buying that because it's going there now. The price just shifts…”

g) Vaccine Technology & AI

• Surprised at how neutral the article itself is, and how the comments section becomes a nostalgia-fest about Army shots in the 1960s, with occasional vaccine skepticism.
  • Estet Herndon (71:18): “A lot of the articles are perfectly neutral… it’s the comments…”
  • Aiden (76:51): “It's so crazy to see the confirmation that they really are that old.”

h) National Monument Shrinking for Coal

• Fox frames reducing monument land (in Utah) as “returning land to the people” and a victory for energy development.
  • Brandon (79:41): “Now this land could be sold to developers to be used for great all American clean coal. Which is what I found out through the comments…”

i) AI Regulation and the State as Shareholder

• OpenAI’s Sam Altman proposes U.S. government taking a 5% stake in OpenAI if all labs do the same.
  • Hosts are surprised at the ambivalence toward “communism” in comments if it’s a Trump policy.
  • Estet Herndon (86:19): “This is communism. Whether the name is Trump or Xi, selling or demanding private equity for gov for protection is communism by definition.”

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Reflections on Fox News—Meta & Media Insights

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The Audience: Who Is Fox News For?

• Hosts consistently highlight demographic signals: references to Vietnam-era military service, homeownership, and inside-joke-level culture cues.
  • Aiden (89:24): “It really appears to be an extremely old audience… Like, these are boomers. These are like genuinely like the oldest generation we have right now.”

Consumption Experience: Clickbait as Business Model

• Fox and sites like MSNBC prioritize free access, with an ad-heavy, sensationalist, click-seeking design—contrasted with paywalled but more “straightforward” sources like NYT or FT.
  • Aiden (93:54): “…the divide in news media is: is it subscription or free ad-laden headline factory?”

Media Literacy Takeaways

• The dangers of echo chambers: reading one source alone shapes not only what you know, but how you interpret it.
  • Aiden (94:20): “Even if you have a solid news source that you like… this is an affirmation: don’t read all your news in one place.”
• The subtlety of bias: Both Fox and MSNBC “tell you how to think before you click,” but through different angles.

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Memorable Quotes & Time-stamped Highlights

• On site design:
  "Where do I click on the website if I want to hear about maybe crime in red cities? They actually solved it this year. There is no crime in any red cities as of last year.” — Aiden (03:31)

• On headline spin:
  “Commie Dems would destroy everything World Cup fans love about America.” — (04:22, Fox’s framing read aloud)

• On the comments:
  “Drafted into the army in 1969, all of the draftees in my basic training got multiple shots at an airstream injector.” — (71:18, representing the median Fox commenter)

• On bipartisan housing action:
  “Trump takes an unusual step and lets a bipartisan housing bill become law. Unsigned.” — (27:13, Fox headline read aloud)

• On energy markets:
  “Every barrel of oil and all the LNG on a tanker gets sold. There’s none of it sitting there like, ah, well, no one wants to buy it.” — Brandon (65:53)

• On news consumption habits:
  “Every headline here is intermingled with way more inflammatory language… packaged between a couple celebrity stories and how AOC fucked up this week.” — Aiden (91:36)

• On Fox News output:
  “It just guides you right to a conclusion.” — Estet Herndon (95:09)

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Useful Timestamps

• [03:15] — Fox’s US news category oddities
• [04:46] — “Commie Dems” and World Cup coverage tone
• [11:15] — Mitch McConnell’s absence, Fox’s AOC lens
• [14:09] — Lindsey Graham’s death, Trump/Graham public feud history
• [27:13-42:48] — Bipartisan Housing Act (details, passage, Trump’s non-sign process)
• [45:23-57:24] — Iran war, conflicting Fox editorial stance, Joe Rogan segment
• [61:09-68:40] — European energy, sanctions, Fox’s blame framing and commodity realities
• [71:18-77:32] — Tech & vaccine coverage, boomer-dominated comments
• [79:36] — National monument shrinking, coal justification
• [82:14-87:51] — AI regulation, OpenAI, Altman/Trump/Bernie angle, “Is this communism?”
• [88:20-94:52] — Big takeaways on Fox News as a single source
• [95:09-95:20] — How Fox News guides its readers to ready-made conclusions

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Final Takeaways

• Media diet experiment: Reading only Fox News yields a narrow, often sensational, and distinctly boomer-focused worldview.
• Bias by design: Framing, not facts, are Fox’s currency—especially evident in headlines and comment curation.
• Comment section as demographic window: Fox News is writing for, and is read by, an aging, deeply conservative audience.
• Advice to listeners: Diversify your sources—the way stories are told drastically changes your understanding of what’s happening.

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This episode stands as both a comedic send-up and a revealing audit of how large, legacy news sites curate not just information, but entire realities for their selected audiences.

Transcript

[Estet Herndon]

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[Brandon]

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[Estet Herndon]

Ladies and Gentlemen, today is January 14th. It is 4pm this is lemonade Stand News. Today we are doing a hotly anticipated unbeknownst to them, partnership with Fox News, where every single article and story today is coming directly off of the Fox News website, which we are delivering the truth to you in. Eliminate stand rebranding. Brandon, what have you been discovering as you've researched Fox News to learn about the world?

[Brandon]

Listen, on this show, we've had a problem in the past. We've been pulling from a bunch of woke lib sources. Financial Times.

[Estet Herndon]

This is sometimes even multiple sources for different perspectives.

[Brandon]

Yeah, like this one, Financial Times. The main story today is some bull spit about IBM shares plunging. Who cares?

[Unidentified Guest]

Boo.

[Brandon]

Go to the next one. New York Times. Something about Trump's flip flop on the straight of Hormuz. Bias. Boring. Boring and bias.

[Estet Herndon]

And woke and woke.

[Brandon]

And then on Fox News, which is where we're getting all of our sources today, everyone is required to bring stories only that they could find through Fox News.

[Estet Herndon]

Right.

[Brandon]

The number one story in the world is that school deans give stunning answers when grilled on tense hearing on men giving birth. This is what's important. This is the big deal. Okay? And if you scroll down, there's stories about how the Lord of the Rings director is going to have white people in it, which is a huge bombshell.

[Aiden]

And then I've been worried. I've been worried sick.

[Estet Herndon]

New York Times won't cover it.

[Brandon]

And then Kamala Harris is giving a speech to a WNBA team. These are the stories that I'm worried about. Okay? So I did a quick Exploration of the Fox website. Because I'll admit I have been out of touch on this great source. I haven't explored it fully until this week, but there's a plethora of information.

[Aiden]

And I believe you found what I found, which is a gold mine.

[Brandon]

A gold mine of information. So we're exploring the website and one thing you'll notice is the US Category has four subcategories.

[Estet Herndon]

There's politics, world opinion, media, entertainment, sports. The US Gets its own dropdown category. And if you click it, the options

[Brandon]

are blue city crime, campus radicals, border crisis, and true crime.

[Estet Herndon]

Why is true crime in there?

[Brandon]

And there are only four categories. There is no fifth option. There is nothing else you can click. These are the four categories of all US News.

[Aiden]

And I know what you're thinking. Where do I click on the website if I want to hear about maybe crime in red cities? They actually solved it this year. There is no crime in any red cities as of last year.

[Brandon]

I mean, maybe that would be under true crime, but unlikely. Unlikely. I don't. What do you mean? It's funny because blue city crime and true crime are separate.

[Estet Herndon]

Is it implying the blue city crime is fake?

[Aiden]

Is it fake crime?

[Estet Herndon]

Okay, okay.

[Brandon]

I just like that. Campus radicals is one fourth of all of all news.

[Estet Herndon]

Right.

[Brandon]

And then. Okay, so big thing going on in the world now is the World Cup. We talked about it last week. I will say we probably owe a mea culpa to our audience because last week we did predict with certainty that Morocco would win the World cup and they are already out.

[Estet Herndon]

Another way of putting that is we would predict that France would lose, which is technically kind of.

[Brandon]

You did a long. Yeah, we got there. So anyway, I thought, okay, let's check what's going on with the World cup on Fox News. I went to the sports section. There is no World cup news in the key highlighted articles. There is a stat update at the top, but no World cup articles until I search World cup into the search bar. And I got this. Commie Dems would destroy everything World cup fans love about America. And I think you did a deeper dive into this, Doug, so.

[Estet Herndon]

Oh, I'm knee deep in this Fox News reporter. Okay. David Marcus wrote this opinion piece. Now, I. Look, I'll, I'll say up front, we've got a variety of different stories today, including about things like Senator Lindsey Graham passing away or Mitch McConnell not maybe passing away on the Iran war, Iran updates, interesting vaccine development. But all of these stories will be through the lens of Fox News. Now, this one we're going to open with, with just this is an opinion piece and I want to give you some of my favorite quotes throughout this article. Perry, if you pull this up, two stories, quote, have captured the attention of our nation over the last few weeks. One is the rise of Communist candidates within the Democratic Party and the other is the zeal with which the European World cup tourists have come to love America. Turns out these are related. Now this is actually a phenomenon that has been happening for people. It's like on Twitter and YouTube. I've seen various videos of like British guys like Joss and Jay Z. I don't know how to say their names. This was recommended to me, this YouTube video of these guys to talking about their experience at the World cup in America and how it has defied their, you know, stereotypes, what America is like. And so quote, if you look at what amazes Europeans about our great nation, they're almost all things that Marxists like Zoran Mandani would seek to destroy. What the Europeans love are road trips with cheap gas, big box stores, air conditioning, authentic small towns and free refills. These are all blessings of capitalism when it comes to our giant stores. Europeans are treating trips to Walmart, Costco and Buc EE's as if they are in a museum. It's like the Europeans are Charlie Bucket in Willy Wonka's Everything Factory. To cap it off, these marvels of 21st century consumerism are detested by the communists, which is why New York City has no Walmarts. And make no mistake, if these people take national power, the entire country will have no Walmarts. Now, most of the comments, as you can imagine, are in strong, staunch support of this and attacking socialism. There's one comment from opwi01 which says, I do not believe in the human caused climate crisis. Where my house was built was a prehistoric ocean millions of years ago, before humans even existed. Where did that ocean go? Climate changes are facts of the earth's cycle. So now this is like an interesting phenomenon that is happening of at least on social media. I've seen a ton of, let's say Europeans visiting America and being like this cool town is awesome. And that is genuinely a really cool thing. And one of the sentiments I heard, which I thought was heartwarming actually in this video by these two British guys was them talking to Americans who were saying, this is before we lost in the World cup, but who were saying, I hope the World cup never ends because it feels like people are actually united under one thing right now. And that we aren't back to like screaming at each other and divisiveness and there is a real sense of heartwarmingness and I just hope the commies don't ruin it.

[Brandon]

Me too. Yeah. You know, it's funny, I saw these videos. I think the first wave of these videos was awesome. The first wave was so cool. But then they got so popular that there's like this, there's people doing it obviously for likes and then they pick up like a fucking piece of trash in America. This is the coolest trash I've ever seen. And then a bunch of people will give it a million likes and they're leaning it. It feels so pandering.

[Estet Herndon]

Have you been in a Walmart though? It's hard not to just come with Walmart. One of those dystopian things. I mean, I guess it is, it is a real product of capitalism. To be fair, I.

[Aiden]

If you had to pick between the two, I mean Walmart or like the Louvre.

[Brandon]

Yeah, I would pick Walmart every day

[Aiden]

of the week as I know Walmart probably has groceries.

[Estet Herndon]

If you could live in a Walmart, would you live there instead of moving to Sweden? Like if they set up a little room for you?

[Aiden]

Oh, absolutely.

[Brandon]

If they set up a room in a Walmart, you would live there over Sweden.

[Aiden]

Yeah, I mean it has probably all the same parks.

[Estet Herndon]

Aiden, I believe you have a little story about the World cup for Fox

[Aiden]

News and I figured we'd, we'd touch on a brief World cup update. You may be touching into this, tuning into this episode and looking for updates through the lemonade stand. Well, Spain just defeated France 2 0. I did check out a small article on the website the other day previewing the match and I wanted to see what, what the fans and our listeners thought about the match and there is just an array of excited opinions about the World cup at this time of year. I, I really appreciated this one from John Doe 62. Soccer is boring. When does NFL training camp start?

[Estet Herndon]

Amen. True. I will speak for the true patriots who are listening here. Fucking true. Unironically. NFL, so much better. Give me all the hate comments you want. I have watched the World cup games. It is wonderful and delightful and the NFL clears it. Fucking give me your hate.

[Unidentified Guest]

I don't care.

[Brandon]

I'm worthy.

[Unidentified Guest]

I don't care.

[Aiden]

I mean original Templar tapped in and said those don't look like France and Spain people. And, and there and there and back, there and back. Had to weigh in and said many of the Switzerland team are definitely not folks that are from Sweden.

[Brandon]

So let's just, let's say many of the Switzerland team are not folks that are from Sweden.

[Aiden]

Yeah. And then, and then one of my favorites from user unions are communists by definition. Said. Said.

[Brandon]

Oh, you found my account. You found my account.

[Aiden]

Yeah, I believe that's yours.

[Brandon]

Yes.

[Aiden]

That's your username on a lot of sites.

[Brandon]

A lot of sites I use that. It's a powerful username.

[Aiden]

A communist nation versus a socialist Nazi nation. I hope their fans see the promise of opportunity, of freedom, go home and work to fix their countries with a capital C. And I read that comment, I was like, I'm so, one, God, I'm so happy this event's bringing so many people together.

[Brandon]

Yes.

[Aiden]

And two, I made me think, which one of them is the communist nation and which one of them is the socialist Nazi nation?

[Brandon]

Oh, of Spain and France.

[Aiden]

Between Spain and France.

[Brandon]

That's a great question.

[Aiden]

But I do not want to waste any more time on this globalist event or globalist news. I want to hear what's happening here in America and where it might be happening to one of our most well established senators, Mitch McConnell.

[Estet Herndon]

We're going to throw it over to a truck to talk about one of our top living senators.

[Brandon]

So that's what I thought.

[Estet Herndon]

We like to talk about people who are alive on this show.

[Brandon]

Go ahead. One of our biggest people that are alive.

[Aiden]

People are alive. Dead people won't talk about them.

[Brandon]

Not interesting. Just not interesting to us. And before we started this FOX News journey, one of the top stories I heard rumblings about, was there something with Mitch McConnell? So once we got Fox News only that was the call. I was like, let me search on, let me search on here and find out. Here's the thing is a weird thing that I noticed. If you search for Mitch McConnell, they will talk about his prolonged absence, but only through the lens of AOC. Every single Mitch McConnell article on Fox News makes sure to do it through the lens of aoc, thinking it's weird or bad. And then when I go to the comments, they're just mostly about how AOC is. What about isming whatever problems are with Mitch McConnell and how she doesn't get in touch with her district at all and how she had to get a GoFundMe to get an apartment and how she was saying how Biden was brain dead or didn't know that Brian was brain dead. So here's as far as I can tell, because they kind of BURY Underneath the AOC stuff is that Mitch McConnell has been missing in action for over a month from his Senate duties. And recently, after many people asking what the hell was going on, posted a proof of life photo of him holding today's paper, but has not.

[Estet Herndon]

Oh, he did. He posted a photo.

[Brandon]

Well, someone posted a photo of him with his wife holding today's paper.

[Estet Herndon]

Okay.

[Brandon]

Which is a good thing for a senator to do so that you know they're alive.

[Estet Herndon]

Right.

[Brandon]

But has not been seen.

[Estet Herndon]

Are the eyes open in the photo?

[Brandon]

He's squinting. Maybe we can find the photo.

[Estet Herndon]

So I guess we can't look at the photo unless it's on Fox News.

[Brandon]

So, yeah, I couldn't find it on Fox News. But he is. He is seemingly alive, but has not been voting or showing up for senatorial duties. And there is growing action. Now, what's interesting is, even according to these articles, some Republicans have spoken up against it, like wondering what the hell's going on, including Thomas Massie before he's on his way out. And those are not mentioned. Only AOC is mentioned as the one last.

[Aiden]

Well, she is the predominant figure commenting on the news. It only makes sense.

[Brandon]

So, yeah, I don't know. I guess I'm interested in it, you know, Mitch McConnell not being able to vote. Right. There's the photo. You can see. Oh, he's smiling, he's trucking.

[Estet Herndon]

He looks alive.

[Brandon]

He's cooking. No, he's definitely alive. And he's got the paper.

[Estet Herndon]

That being said, could theoretically taxidermied. I. There's no movement.

[Aiden]

Mitch McConnell's wife is weakened at Bernie.

[Brandon]

Got a puppet string back there.

[Unidentified Guest]

I don't know.

[Brandon]

Mitch McConnell does insist that he is going to serve the remainder of his term, which ends in 2027. So healthy as an ox, I assume.

[Aiden]

Fantastic. But you know who's not healthy as an ox? Yeah, Lindsey Graham.

[Brandon]

How unhealthy is he?

[Estet Herndon]

Over to Aiden for our next living. I shouldn't say that, sorry.

[Aiden]

As it turns out, Lindsey Graham has passed away rather unexpectedly due to a tear in his aorta. And reflecting upon this on Fox News, lots of articles about his rocky relationship with Trump over the years and how it transformed into one of rock solid friendship. Rock solid friendship. I thought it was really interesting because the article that I was going through on Fox News really, really told you the full story of how much they didn't like each other in the. Within the context of this, like Republican senator passing away, this article spends a remarkable amount of time giving you.

[Brandon]

Oh, it doesn't literally giving you the

[Aiden]

shitty things that Trump has said about him historically really?

[Brandon]

Does it include the things that Lindsey Graham said about Trump?

[Aiden]

Yeah. So their relationship started a long time ago when they're running for president in the Republican primary at the same time in 2015. Long time ago now. And Graham, Lindsey Graham, you might remember, once likened Trump's potential candidacy to being shot in the head. And Trump, nine years ago, he also mentioned to a crowd in South Carolina at one point that Graham was a, quote, disgrace and quote, one of the dumbest human beings he's ever seen. Trump adding, I don't think he could run for dog catcher in this state and win again. This is all from the Fox News article. This is Trump. Trump continuing. I really don't. Other than that, I think he's wonderful. That's the same quote.

[Brandon]

I mean, wait, I have this quote

[Estet Herndon]

from Lindsey Graham audio listeners. We're looking at photos of them, like, hugging and smiling and giving thumbs up together in the background packaged between these quotes.

[Aiden]

Later on, Trump at one point getting so angry with Graham that he leaked Graham's phone number online.

[Brandon]

Wait, really?

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Estet Herndon]

Wait, did they include that in the article? What?

[Brandon]

His, like, death article?

[Aiden]

Dude, this is all in the article.

[Brandon]

Trump leaked his phone number because he was mad at him.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

What's your phone number again, Aiden?

[Aiden]

It's.

[Brandon]

I'll mute it.

[Unidentified Guest]

Don't be.

[Brandon]

Don't bleep it.

[Aiden]

And your address is.

[Unidentified Guest]

Okay.

[Brandon]

Different type.

[Aiden]

But it's interesting because after settling into that first term, Graham tried to build up a more positive relationship with Trump at the time, seemingly successfully so. And that's where the strength of their relationship started to form. However, on January 6th in 2021, when the riots occurred on Capitol Hill, Graham. And it was interesting because it did say riots in the article.

[Brandon]

Really?

[Aiden]

In the Fox News article, it said riots.

[Brandon]

I didn't know they're getting woke up.

[Aiden]

Graham turned his back on Trump, quoted saying, trump and I, we've had a hell of a journey. I hate to end it this way. Oh, my God, I hate it. From my point of view, he's been a consequential president. All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough.

[Estet Herndon]

That's right after January 6th.

[Aiden]

And this is right after January 6th. But upon Trump's on Trump's reelection, enough was not enough. And you know, the one thing that I remember Lindsey Graham for is that he loved to rebuild relationships with people, that he just felt sour. And Trump also, interestingly enough, remembering Lindsey Graham as of the past couple days, had also said that reflecting upon Lindsey Graham's career in life, uh, he had one bad moment in the January 6 thing when he stood up. Uh, all right, now I've had it. That's it. I can't do it anymore. Then he called me about 40 minutes later and said, did I really say that? I can't believe it. And he took it back. So I give him a 99.9 instead of 100.

[Estet Herndon]

I'm sorry.

[Brandon]

In response to his death, he said that.

[Aiden]

It's like, yesterday, dude.

[Brandon]

It's crazy. I got a Lindsey Graham quote here from his social media from 2016, where he said, if we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed and we will desert. And then I'm looking at your article here. I want to thank the big guy. God. Graham said during a speech last month, Trump comes later. Mr. President, you're not far behind.

[Estet Herndon]

God.

[Brandon]

But we're gonna start with him.

[Aiden]

Well, the thing is. The thing is, to his credit, by the time he said that and had won that Senate race again, Graham had already 180 his support on Trump during his second term. Kind of walking. Well, apparently 180, 40 minutes later, according to Trump.

[Brandon]

Yeah, very quickly.

[Aiden]

Which is great.

[Brandon]

Which is great.

[Estet Herndon]

He did call me. This is in public. Graham has never said this, but he did call me and retracted it right after.

[Aiden]

And during the second term, he's been, like, one of the leading advocates for the One Big Beautiful bill as the Senate Budget Committee chair. And he also championed Trump's flagship election integrity legislation, the Save America Act. And for those who don't know, that act is meant to provide deeper citizenship verification on voter rolls nationwide. It's also meant to require that states share their voter rolls in a federal database, which I'm sure will have no negative consequences. And generally more strict photo ID requirements from enforced by the federal government for all in person and absentee voters across the states. And Graham was one of the biggest supporters of this bill, trying to push it forward for Trump because, you know, other than the two times that he's, you know, publicly denounced him in the past and said that he hates him. Yeah, he's been very supportive.

[Brandon]

Yeah, of course.

[Aiden]

And I thought that was a beautiful. I thought it was a surprisingly beautiful and nuanced recap of their relationship over the years.

[Estet Herndon]

Heartwarming.

[Aiden]

It really spent, like, a remarkable amount of time on the negative things that Grant said. It's like. It's like he fucking hated it.

[Brandon]

What did the comments say? I'm actually interested. Do they. Can you scroll?

[Aiden]

Yeah, this is the top comment. Okay. So the top two comments, which are both from the same account on this article are, quote, trump's a race baiting, xenophobic religious bigot. He doesn't represent my party. He doesn't represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for. Lindsey Graham December 8, 2015.

[Brandon]

So I gave that an American flag and a fire react because it shows people can change and learn and grow. Lindsey Graham was foolish in 2015. He adapted, he learned, he grew.

[Estet Herndon]

What would you say? Maybe either you guys know this are the more most like notable things that Lindsey Graham was known for, for, for people who are maybe not as tapped in.

[Brandon]

Lindsey Graham was extremely focused on American interventionism worldwide. He's a very, he's like, he's anti isolationist, isn't he?

[Estet Herndon]

Very pro support Ukraine, pro support Israel.

[Aiden]

Isn't he pretty? Like classically, my mental image of him is like the classical idea of like a neocon. Yeah, he, he fucks with the war.

[Brandon]

We should have a military and we should use it for American strategic interests. Constantly is like a Lindsey Graham. He, I mean he spent, he died coming back from Ukraine, which by the way, you know, I'm personally in support of America helping Ukraine. But he was flying out. He's trying to get this big sanctions bill passed on Russia and I think they're also including Iran in it now.

[Aiden]

It's interesting because that's one of my follow up stories later about how he was leading the charge on that, also sourced from Fox News.

[Estet Herndon]

There's a great, okay, I apologize for using WOKE resources. But from the Atlantic, there's a quote from Lindsey Graham.

[Brandon]

Whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm not, I can't listen to that.

[Estet Herndon]

All right, Adesh, go ahead and just bleep out the entire next one minute of quote. So Graham was asked why he is so bold about asserting himself in foreign policy. So he says, quote, when I was first elected to the House, I looked for the they, they who run things, they who know how things really work, they who know what they're doing. But I couldn't find the they. I went to the Senate, but there was still no they. Then I started to get invited to the White House and to closed door briefings and to meetings with top officials. No they. What I finally realized, he concluded, is that there is no they. There's only we. And we usually don't know what the fuck we're doing.

[Brandon]

That's sweet, not comforting.

[Estet Herndon]

I mean, this reflects my experience in every like corporate gig ever, which is that from the outside you're like, why are they doing? Why are they doing? And then you get inside, you're like, oh, this place is a clusterfuck.

[Brandon]

Duct tape.

[Estet Herndon]

Everybody is just improvising as they go and really there's no idea of what's going on. So, you know, took that and then grabbed it by the reading about Lindsey Graham.

[Brandon]

There was a tribute to Lindsey Graham written by Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who said that he was saying that Israel needs to wean itself off of US funding. And he's like, I'm gonna get rid of it. And then he said, my good friend Lindsey Graham came up to me and shook my head and said, no, no, don't you have to take the funding.

[Estet Herndon]

That's awesome. Second parents are paying you allowance. I'm like, no, you've gotta take my parents money. You have to take it.

[Aiden]

Support for this episode comes from Serval AI. Both of you know about my long winded career in it.

[Estet Herndon]

I have many careers you've introduced prior

[Aiden]

to esports, prior to this show.

[Brandon]

That's not true.

[Aiden]

No, you maybe you don't know very much about me and you aren't a very good friend. You ever consider that? And one of the thing I hated the most when I worked in it. You hate most work in it, admittedly, is that I spent so much time doing these menial tasks and I couldn't do other things like I want to read the news, read books in my free time. And if I could have automated those tasks, I would have had more time.

[Brandon]

That's why you moved on to podcasting

[Aiden]

and then I ended up moving on to podcasting.

[Estet Herndon]

Well, Serval AI Aiden allows you to build automations in plain English instead of drag and drop workflow builders, you can describe all sorts of IT products or workflows that just get things done. That means faster support and fewer tickets, slowing everyone down. Servil AI is specifically designed to eliminate repetitive tickets so that you as an IT person can focus on strategic work instead of constant firefighting. Which is certainly true of all the IT people I have spoken to. And apparently you as well, Doug.

[Aiden]

I can't imagine shortening my workflow without involving consultants somehow.

[Estet Herndon]

Actually, Aiden, you can learn more about server or start a free four week pilot at serval.com lemonade that is S E R V A L.com lemonade serval.com

[Aiden]

you have so much to learn about me. Still, he spent money. Do you know what I did before that? Years ago, Netflix said that its main competitor wasn't some other streaming service.

[Estet Herndon]

It was sleep.

[Aiden]

And maybe that explains why all of a sudden Netflix has games it has tons of reality shows. It has video podcasts, and maybe going forward, it even has YouTube videos. This week on the Vergecast, we try to figure out what Netflix is going forward and whether it's still a streaming service we want. Plus, the future of smart glasses, what's going on with quantum computing. And yes, we have a Trump phone. All that on the Vergecast. Wherever you get podcasts.

[Estet Herndon]

Is Kamala Harris running for president again? Listen, I might, I might. I'm thinking about it. But does anybody want that?

[Aiden]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so.

[Brandon]

Well, I don't see why not.

[Aiden]

Absolutely. I think Kamala Harris should run for president again. I don't think there'll never be a woman president in the United States.

[Estet Herndon]

Now, wait, wait, wait. You can't just walk away on that. Tell us why. I know it's still early to talk about 2028, but as we build to our post Trump future, it seems to be a big question about the Democratic Party. Kamala Harris leads all of the presidential polling. So does this mean that the person who led the ticket in 2024 is going to lead the party again in 2028? The campaign needs to be called Bye Bye Biden. It's just a tainted brand. Do you think from a donor community largely that there's any appetite for a Harris return?

[Aiden]

I don't.

[Estet Herndon]

I'm Estet Herndon and this is America. Actually, catch us Every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Brandon]

Okay. But on a more serious note, there are some real pieces of news that we're finding today. And you had one, I think you found three.

[Estet Herndon]

Fox News, very funny that Mitch McConnell's alive. But let's get to something serious.

[Brandon]

Let's get something more serious.

[Estet Herndon]

All right, so the 21st century road to Housing act just finished. And from Fox News, quote, Trump takes an unusual step and lets a bipartisan housing bill become law. Unsigned amid save pressure campaign. So this actually ties into what you were just saying. Trump has been pushing, along with others for the Save America Act, I believe is the name, which is all about, like the voter ID and such.

[Brandon]

He's doing a huge apparently, I found this on Fox News. Literally, there's going to be a nationwide televised address Thursday night for him stomping for election interference and needed for the Save ID Act. So it's, it's a big push coming up to the midterms.

[Estet Herndon]

Right. So I will give an overview of what this is and then give you the truth, which is the quotes from FOX News. So there, this is like an actual Good story of, like, our politicians did a thing that everybody wants, which is great. So earlier this year, we started voting the Senate and the House on this bill again, called the 21st century road to Housing Act. Although it's taken multiple forms from both sides, this is genuinely bipartisan and has a whole bunch of different things that are going to help improve housing in various different aspects of the country. In June, The House voted 358 to 32 to pass this. And in July, just now, the Senate voted 85 to 5. You'll notice that doesn't add up to 100 because some senators just don't show up to work for some reason. The Mitch McConnell thing, he just doesn't show up to work.

[Brandon]

It doesn't say anything. Just to be clear that the reason, you know, someone getting sick when they're old is not the problem is. The problem is that he literally disappeared for a month and didn't say anything until so much pressure built from both sides of the aisle that he had to post the proof of life. And he just. There was no investigation, no follow up, nothing. You just stopped showing up as a leader of the.

[Estet Herndon]

Anyway, sorry, yeah, it's, it's a little silly. It's crazy that the people who represent us and do our laws and use our money don't have to show up to work, actually.

[Brandon]

Or say anything.

[Estet Herndon]

Or say anything. There's no accountability.

[Aiden]

Most people can take some time off work without saying anything.

[Estet Herndon]

Your fucking office. Every time you tell us about how Mogul moves is run.

[Aiden]

Wait, wait, wait. You think I'm talking about me? I have to, I have to tell people that I'm taking time off. I think just most people.

[Estet Herndon]

You think most people.

[Brandon]

Ludwig told me he thought you were dead for three months because you went on a trip to Sweden and didn't say a damn thing.

[Aiden]

Oh, that's because Ludwig doesn't check his phone.

[Brandon]

That's true.

[Estet Herndon]

You were texting.

[Brandon]

Okay.

[Estet Herndon]

All right, so this bill, I'm going to give some, I think, most interesting pieces of it that I found.

[Brandon]

But first, I heard good things about it. Fox News, what I was saying, I heard good things about this bill.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

But I heard that Trump was temporarily blocking it, refusing to sign it.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Estet Herndon]

The bipartisan policy.org has a good, like, explainer of the many different things in it. But there's, there's a lot and they're kind of hard to piece. I will highlight a couple of these and I think it hopefully will become clear why this is fairly bipartisan across the board. Everybody's realizing housing is a real critical issue. The Bill has like 100 different things that it is addressing. This is not like suddenly housing is going to pop up everywhere, but it's tackling a lot of different things. Here's a couple really core pieces. One, there is a federal environmental review that we have called nepa, the National Environmental Policy Act. And basically if the Housing and Urban Development Department is contributing money to a project that's being built, you have to get cleared by them for environmental review. I'm simplifying this slightly, but that's on top of local and state review. And this can add months and a whole lot of money to a project. Nixon Peabody is who I read. They're the law firm that kind of gave an overview of this particular thing. So the idea with this bill is they're now going to give some carve outs and say, hey, for certain types of projects, not for everything. If you're doing like a massive project, you still need to get environmental review. But if you, for example, are making affordable housing and the government is helping fund that, that's most likely going to be exempt now. And you get to move through your process faster. If you're constructing infill housing, which means like in a city, if there's a plot that is unused or it's currently not being used in some way and you want to convert that into usable housing, like build something that now is no longer going to have to go through as much process on the federal level. Rehabilitation projects, converting office buildings to residential developments, there's a bunch more. So this part of it doesn't suddenly make housing appear. But if you think about like most housing built in America is not Federal.

[Brandon]

I'm a 72 year old. Fox News lovin'.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

Boomer. Own my own home.

[Estet Herndon]

Well, you're a little older than that.

[Brandon]

But I look 72.

[Aiden]

You look.

[Estet Herndon]

You're 72 looking.

[Brandon]

I'm a youthful 72.

[Aiden]

You look a young 72.

[Brandon]

I'm a young 72. I own my own home. I bought it through hard work and grit for $120,000 in the 70s.

[Aiden]

Absolutely.

[Brandon]

And it is appreciated. Am I hurt by this in any way?

[Estet Herndon]

No. Okay, so here's the pitch for this.

[Brandon]

Cause I'll get real angry if I ask.

[Aiden]

No.

[Estet Herndon]

And that's fair. And that's fair. And Trump has said repeatedly that he wants to make sure that people's home values don't go down. If the Department of Housing and Urban Development is not going around making the suburban homes that you probably bought, ok. These types of projects are things like affordable housing that are hard to get built because by definition you are selling the homes for cheaper. Right.

[Brandon]

They're not going to build these affordable housing units near.

[Aiden]

They're not going to be near mine.

[Estet Herndon]

Well, you're not in a city which probably you aren't. You're probably in.

[Brandon]

I'm in the burbs. Good.

[Unidentified Guest]

All right, Good.

[Brandon]

And I'm happy with it.

[Estet Herndon]

Yeah, there are.

[Aiden]

So not. Just to be clear, they're not going

[Brandon]

to be near his house because I don't even want to see him on my drive. I don't.

[Estet Herndon]

You know what I'm going to have to do. The Fox News article didn't go in

[Brandon]

depth or whether my drive will have actually.

[Estet Herndon]

So where does he live? Again, we can check this off.

[Brandon]

Let's not include any specifics.

[Estet Herndon]

So it does look like on

[Unidentified Guest]

that

[Estet Herndon]

it should be clear of the affordable

[Brandon]

housing black box over the mouth, too. I don't want anyone showing up at my damn place of residence.

[Estet Herndon]

The reason this stuff is important is not because of the person buying a new home in a suburb, but because projects like affordable housing are the most likely to need federal assistance. Right. And these regulations were making that like even more prohibitive to build and that is now clearing that. So the type of building that is most likely to need funding assistance is the type that's being cleared for this.

[Brandon]

I have a question. This is a question I don't know the answer to. Yeah, there was this fight. This passed overwhelmingly with the votes. Trump said, I'm refusing to sign it because I want you to pass the SAVE act. First for voting. Yeah, then I heard it passed. Anyway, he backed down. So is this law? This is happening?

[Estet Herndon]

This is law. This just passed. So I'll get to that piece.

[Brandon]

I'm sorry.

[Estet Herndon]

Yeah, yeah. So I'm describing the bill and then we will say, did it pass or not? I mean, the answer is yes, but in a weird way, okay, it passed. So the. I will highlight two more quick things that are like, cool, this is great. Well, kind of. One is we banned institutional investors from buying homes. Quote from Trump, homes are for people, not corporations. He personally pushed for this. And that is beast and cool.

[Aiden]

Right.

[Estet Herndon]

Except it's only for large institutional investors who have 350 or more family homes. So I think it's a real easy villain to say that institutional investors like Blackstone are buying all the housing. And that's not really true. So if you pull this up, Perry, this is from Totality, not Fox News.

[Brandon]

This is Your source.

[Estet Herndon]

This is bullshit. But this is looking at the actual investors who buy homes.

[Aiden]

I'm getting a little uncomfor because this is a source that I just don't trust this source.

[Brandon]

But I'm willing, I'll hear.

[Aiden]

I like that we've stayed true to one so far. Like that's been really easy for me.

[Estet Herndon]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Unidentified Guest]

Okay.

[Brandon]

I think I'm like, I'm gonna hear you out, but I'm also in my head thinking, not Fox News, right? Like it's like a little bit think

[Estet Herndon]

of what I'm doing right now is building a giant steel man that will dismantle with the comments in Fox News. Just, just start like putting in bullets to strike all of this down. Okay. Even though this is something Trump personally supported. Right. Okay. So if you look at this right now in 2025, in terms of every year, the number of homes that are bought by investors rather than like single families, it's about 30%. So 30% of new homes.

[Brandon]

That's a significant number.

[Estet Herndon]

It is a significant number. That's a lot, right? That's totally fair to criticize. And you can see here, it's basically fluctuated up and down. The pink line is the non investor purchases as in like, you know, families. And then the investor purchases has been here. But if you look at what investors actually breaks down as the large and mega investors, these are the companies that have a hundred homes or more. They're only actually buying about 5% of of homes every year in total. It's actually the medium and small investors that are buying like 25% of it. So another, to put this simply, the vast majority of quote, investor, you know, purchases of homes are actually by really small landlords. It's by people who have like one to 10 homes. That's the vast majority. And you pull it down.

[Brandon]

I've heard this. I heard, I heard like Airbnb flippers are a much larger percent than like a BlackRock. They buy a bunch of these and they try to rent them out and then.

[Estet Herndon]

Yeah. So of the 86 million single. This is from batch data. Of the 86 million single family homes in the USA, 20% are owned by investors. But of that 90% are by small investors. Only 2% of all housing is owned by these big investors.

[Brandon]

And as a mom and pop investor owns 349 homes. I'm a little worried this is infringing on my right to add two more.

[Aiden]

I'm a mom and pop investor with 248 homes and I'm Actually, not worried at all.

[Brandon]

Right, well, you've got some wiggle room, but I'm approaching my cap here and, like, I'm, I think, simple man who wants to own 400 homes. And I don't understand why there's funny

[Aiden]

ins and outs with this. Right. Because on paper, his quote and outlook on this is actually a positive thing. I think there's the issue of, like, to what scale is this problem a reality? I think even if the percentage is small, you can find instances of institutions like BlackRock. Forgive me, this is not from Fox News, so tread carefully.

[Brandon]

Yeah, I'm treading.

[Aiden]

BlackRock. Controlling a housing supply in a specific area or, like, a park of, like, small homes or the majority of homes in, like, a town. So they're able to influence the market in that particularly particular area in a really negative way, even if they don't have the major, like, a significant stake in homes. When you consider the national market, that makes sense.

[Estet Herndon]

Quick correction. I think you're thinking of Blackstone.

[Aiden]

Excuse me.

[Brandon]

Yep.

[Estet Herndon]

Not Black Rock, but.

[Aiden]

Yes, but then you look at the actual function of this law, and if we were to reconcile with the data that you just presented us, I think you have to start cracking down on people's purchases of, like, second and third homes, which is a much more common occurrence. I mean, even, like. I think it'd be way easier to point to, like, you know, parents or grandparents in our lives that, like, own multiple properties in multiple places. And the influence that that has on the broader market and the regulation.

[Brandon]

Yeah, I mean, the average coming through

[Aiden]

this bill is not influencing that at all.

[Brandon]

Of a housing buyer keeps going up. I just think they have all the money. So it's like, not like they have three or four homes because that's. They have more money. They have all the.

[Estet Herndon]

Yeah, I would actually. I'd be more concerned about the medium size because of that number. We looked at, like, 13% of homes are being bought by people who have 10 to 100 houses. And that's the point where that's not your summer home anymore. Like, you have 40 homes. Like, you know, that's. Well, that's not just like a wealthy boomer who saved up and worked hard

[Brandon]

every year with the.

[Aiden]

I would argue who doesn't know somebody that has 12 homes,

[Estet Herndon]

but, like, all

[Brandon]

in the superior uncle could be your nephew. People in your Life. Someone has 40 homes and they're. They're being harmed by laws that crack down on that.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Estet Herndon]

So what's interesting about this, is this going to be hugely impactful probably not in this way.

[Brandon]

Can I do zoning stuff in there? I heard the best part of this bill, or one of the best parts of this bill, is that it, like, has a carrot and stick thing for states or local governments to reform their zoning.

[Estet Herndon]

Yes.

[Brandon]

Okay.

[Estet Herndon]

So, yeah. Third thing to highlight, there's two things. There's a new fund that they're adding, which is like $200 million a year that's going to go to localities that actually increase the amount of housing permits or completions. And then also the Community Development Block Grant is like 3.3 billion that is spent every year to help with building. And now there's more avenues for where that goes. But they are going to score how much money you get based on the zoning changes you've done or how many buildings you've actually made. So what's notable about this is not that it's like a crazy amount of money, but it is more that we passed a thing at the federal level that instead of saying we're going to give you a ton of money to explore the idea of more housing, instead it is, you get money if you actually do the fucking thing. And there's going to be, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars for that first one, billions in the second one that are now explicitly being tied to outcomes, which I think is fantastic because that's been a major problem and theme that we've seen recurring in the various books that we've read. And to say, like, hey, look, you just got to get stuff actually made should be what this money goes towards. To be honest, I spent two or two and a half hours maybe, like, reading through. It's. It's not like a bombshell. I think it's more. It's hitting in small ways, many different aspects. There's things like getting blurring restrictions on modular housing being built that were in place, which felt really weird and arbitrary. There's more stuff for veterans. There's a whole bunch of pieces of this that are hitting thematic things in small ways. It's not the housing is fixed now, but it is a bipartisan. This is helping alleviate pressure in many different areas. There's a ton of them. I think it's great. And again, super bipartisan. Like, almost everybody was on board with this. So now let's go to what happened with Trump. So this passes again with. With flying colors. This is very unusual in our modern legislative system to get something like this passed. Elizabeth Warren is one of the authors. It's like two Republicans and two Democrats, and they're all being like, this is amazing. And it passes and all the yimby people are celebrating and whatnot. And it goes to Trump's office for signature. Of course he's gonna sign it. And then he says, quote, this is from Fox News now real truth. I will not sign the housing bill, which has been fully approved by Congress and sent to the White House in protest over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing the Save America act, which has polling at 97% with the Republican Party and very high with the non politician Democrats. He declared on truth social Friday morning, Trump went on to call the housing bill, quote, a big yawn, adding compared to the Save America act, just about everything is a big yawn. And at one point he called Senator Warren Pocahontas again, like on a different, different true social things.

[Aiden]

You sprinkle, you gotta sprinkle that in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Estet Herndon]

He called it.

[Brandon]

Otherwise it's a big bill.

[Estet Herndon]

He called it the Pocahontas bill, despite it being bipartisan. And she was one of four authors. So this was sort of a shock to a number of people being like, my God, we passed a big housing bill. This is fantastic. We're focusing on the right things now. And then Trump doesn't sign it because he is trying to basically use this as hostage to force the Senate to pass the save bill. And so what did he end up doing? I've never heard of this before. As we see in the headline here, he took an unusual step. It turns out that instead you have a third option. You could sign the bill, you could veto the bill, or you could just ignore it. And if you ignore it, according to the constitution, after 10 days it does become law. So he just ignored it and it is now officially law as of, I believe yesterday.

[Aiden]

I didn't know that.

[Estet Herndon]

Isn't it?

[Aiden]

I didn't know that. I thought you, you had to sign or veto.

[Brandon]

I didn't know that not signing was a veto. That's what I always thought. I thought by not signing, that's the veto, that's the veto.

[Aiden]

No, a vetoing is writing veto in

[Estet Herndon]

all bubble letters on the bill from two outspoken 1. No, this is in the comments. No Democrat would have been big enough to do what Trump did. He disagreed for the most valid reasons, but he did not stop it from becoming law like the petty authoritarian Democrats would have done. He did them what the majority wanted, not what he preferred. Even though. Oh, and then Biden screwed America. And Harris's best accomplishment was her cackle. That doesn't wait if he didn't sign

[Aiden]

it, it is functionally a veto. But it passed because they had enough. They passed the two thirds majority that you need to, like, supersede.

[Brandon]

Oh, it is a veto.

[Aiden]

He didn't veto it. But if he did veto it, it would have passed anyway.

[Estet Herndon]

Yeah, they could have done. Yeah, they would have the majority to force it through. So he just.

[Aiden]

It.

[Unidentified Guest]

He.

[Estet Herndon]

It was just this kind of weird symbolic dance that he did. I have never heard of this of a president. Just not. I guess it's a weird protest of being like, I'm gonna eat my veggies, but I'm gonna frown the whole time while doing it. Very strange. It's very strange, I think, to do this on a bill that everyone likes. You know, I shouldn't say everyone. 90% of legislators like and then seemingly kind of piss off everybody. But whatever. The fact that you let it through is great. This law is in. It is good. It is good momentum. It is not saving the world, but it is some bipartisan stuff that slowly moves us in the right direction. I'm really glad this got through.

[Aiden]

I think it's nice to have such a solid base for stories all in one platform like this. And a story that's been confusing to me recently has been the Iran war. Because I tune it, I open the New York Times, they got a different headline about it every day. It's open, it's closed. It's open, it's closed. We shot some people, they shot us. What is that? What does Fox News have to say about this?

[Estet Herndon]

You're my New York Times.

[Aiden]

New York Times. Stop telling me like it is and give it to me straight.

[Brandon]

Yeah, give it to me straight.

[Aiden]

I want. I want someone to explain to me what Fox News has to say about the Iran war.

[Estet Herndon]

And ideally through a headline and not through substantial information.

[Brandon]

Okay. The Iran war. So the Iran war has been a very big piece of news lately, and I wanted to figure out what was going on through our news source, Fox News. So I went back and I looked how they've covered this Iran war through every stage of the process.

[Estet Herndon]

Good.

[Brandon]

So back in March, Iran is losing this fight. Do we have it again? Losing this fight tremendously. Got that. Iran's under mounting pressure. Epic fury advances Reagan style. Peace through strength is back. March 12th. This Iran war is closer to its end than its beginning in April. Okay. Later April. The Iran regime is at war with itself at this point.

[Estet Herndon]

That's nice. So we're off the hook.

[Brandon]

Yeah, we're off. Yeah. If it's A war. It's only between themselves. Then by June, they've agreed to give up their nuclear weapon ambitions. So it's like the military strike worked and now they're giving up. Then we have forecasting an Iran deal by June 8th. Then they're confident on the deal progress by June 23rd. Okay. Then in July, Trump is touting very good meetings even as Iran threatens key shipping lane. And they're now mentioning Hormuz for the first time. Then the ceasefire is over. Then we're back to blockading their ports again. Then as of today, art of the deal, we've hit Iran with a brutal reality check as we announced an oil partnership with their neighbor. So the truth of the matter is, I don't know if you guys, we talked about this before the show. During the Iran war, we did a second blockade of their blockade. Then we had negotiations. We got rid of that blockade and we're like, okay, you can send oil out. So the Iranians did send oil out. 80 something million barrels. It was a lot of money for the Iranian regime because we had a good faith, ceasefire agreement deal. Turns out there was no deal. They just got a bunch of money. And now Trump is mad that they're still not opening Hormuz, and so he's striking them again. When asked whether it was a good idea to, I guess, go all in on this deal and give a bunch of money to the person you're fighting in a war, this is a Fox News question. Let me see if I have this right here. This is what he said.

[Estet Herndon]

Do you have any regrets about lifting

[Aiden]

the naval blockade or giving the sanctions waivers?

[Unidentified Guest]

No, no, I gave them a chance. I wanted to give them a chance at making a deal. You know, we had a deal two days ago, it was done, and then all of a sudden, they couldn't do it. They didn't like something about the deal. They couldn't do it. And they shot first. And that was a big mistake that they shot first because we have been knocking the hell out of them. They're very difficult people. 47 years we put up with it. The SS Cole, you go back all the way. Thousands of people, thousands of Americans were killed. A lot of soldiers were killed. A lot of soldiers are walking around or not walking around. I mean, they've been so badly injured.

[Brandon]

He's talking about the SS Cool.

[Unidentified Guest]

For 47 years ago, the Soleimani with the bomb. They call it the roadside bomb. Most people call it the roadside bomb. It's a disaster. And I killed him in my first administration Had I not, it might be a different story today. He was a mad genius. He was a mad. Probably a madman, but he was a general and he had total control over the country. And I actually think the leaders of Iran were afraid of Soleimani, but I killed him. And by the way, with him went a very bad person. Also, they had happen to be meeting each other at the airport.

[Brandon]

Okay, this goes on.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Estet Herndon]

Okay.

[Brandon]

This is him giving the latest and greatest on what's going on. But the key is that actually does

[Estet Herndon]

not sound like the latest.

[Brandon]

Yesterday I saw the latest. No, it's not. Yesterday he said, okay, the new or the second blockade is back on, and America will be charging a 20% reimbursement fee to make up for our war effort. So everything going through this is the straight has to pay us 20% of what they're making.

[Aiden]

Well, if you're really tapped into Fox News like I am, and you were checking updates on the story right before we recorded. Yeah, the 20% fee is gone, baby. They pulled the fee.

[Estet Herndon]

Okay. And they've replaced it with when the ship goes by, they turn around an iPad that says, give the US A tip.

[Aiden]

Yeah, it's just all. It's. They do it on square now.

[Brandon]

No, I mean, you can see it here. They're replacing it with. He talked to Middle east leadership, and instead they're gonna invest more in America, which counts as like, that's our fee.

[Aiden]

Well, he said, based on highly productive conversations with Middle east leadership, I have decided to replace the 20% United States United States reimbursement fee with trade and investment deals that the various Gulf states will be making into the United States.

[Estet Herndon]

Okay, so let me make sure I'm understanding what's going on here. We are blockading Iran now, and nothing gets through the Strait of Hormuz. And if it does get through, though, they have to invest in America. But also, Iran is still sending drone attacks at them.

[Aiden]

So what I thought was funny from the Fox News report is the underlying basis for this is Trump is like, we have taken all of this action in this region of the world, and it's provided so much benefit to everyone that we've done this, and all these other countries need to pay us back somehow. That's the quote in the Fox News video from this morning is like, that's the reason for the fee. He's like, we've done so much good work here. It's time to start getting paid back.

[Estet Herndon]

If I, like, blew up your neighbor's house and they started getting generally upset in the whole neighborhood. I don't know that you owe me money.

[Brandon]

Well, you do.

[Estet Herndon]

Oh, sorry, sorry.

[Aiden]

Fox also did say that Trump, he said he pulled back the 20% fee because he believes in the principle of free trade on these waters.

[Estet Herndon]

Okay, great.

[Aiden]

And we just need this investment deal as a replacement because we do need to be paid back for the body of work.

[Unidentified Guest]

Okay.

[Estet Herndon]

So I feel like I'm missing something here. Wasn't the straight still not usable when Iran was attacking ships, even when we had the blockade? Is the idea that we're now, like, personally escorting ships through and stopping?

[Brandon]

There was nobody going through the blockade because there was two blockades at once.

[Estet Herndon]

Okay.

[Brandon]

Then there was a brief ceasefire for this deal to get made. Trump, I guess, jumped the gun on this ceasefire and said, Strait of Horboos is open for business. People started stealing through without paying Iran any money or tolls. They shot them. It was realized that it wasn't really open for business. Ok. Trump, in response, said, fuck you guys. There is no deal. There never was a deal. I never trusted you guys to begin with.

[Estet Herndon]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

However, during the time that was open, Iran did ship out 80 million barrels of oil and made a ton of money. So it was open basically only for them, apparently.

[Aiden]

Apparently. Iran's explanation for breaking the deal is that within the deal, it says, like, to the best of our efforts, we will open the strait in order to accommodate safe passage of vessels for 60 days.

[Unidentified Guest]

Mm.

[Aiden]

What? Iran is at face value, you know, if you're a normal guy like you or me, you might say, oh, that's great. It's going back to the way it was for 60 days.

[Brandon]

Right.

[Aiden]

Iran's argument is there's a few channels in this strait. We're going to open one of them. It's going to be only the one that's closest to our shoreline. And if anybody else tries to move through, we. We still can take action against them.

[Estet Herndon]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

And that's what Iran's explanation is for.

[Estet Herndon]

That's their best effort.

[Aiden]

And then they attack. And then. And then Trump was like, fuck the deal. I never wanted to work with you anyway.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

And now here we are.

[Brandon]

Yeah. And it was just funny because every step of the way, all these headlines and the comments with them are like, they're just on board. It's crazy how on board people. Like, at the beginning, I guess this is because this is not a particularly popular war, to my understanding, even in Republican base. We'll actually get to that with the Joe Rogan thing in a second.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

But on Here, it's. It's like we're crushing them. It's over. We're winning. The deal's about to get done. That's great. It's about to happen. Oh, there's no deal. They've. They fucking scum and they never deserve to do it again.

[Estet Herndon]

I don't have them up, but they're so. I did look at some of the comments on some of the Iran ones, and a lot of them are like, this president is the first one who had the courage to actually push back against the regime. There is a lot of pot. If on. On Fox News, it's like, that is the preserved group of people for whom this war is good.

[Aiden]

I think if you're like the person that is reading fox news in 2026 and making comments is a very different conservative than like the Nick Fuentes fan on Twitter.

[Estet Herndon]

So much older.

[Aiden]

They're just, they're just completely different demographics.

[Brandon]

Like you could just tell. I mean, listen, I love Fox News, as I could say today, but the vibe you get on the website is that it's four the elderly. These are the oldest people. Anyway, we'll go to the Joe Rogan thing because that kind of ties to what we're saying. There's an article on Fox News that says from Joe Rogan said Trump fucked it up and may have handed the country back to the Dems in 2028 with an unpopular Iran war. This is, I mean, Joe Rogan, even in this quote, very Republican and clearly attracts a certain base of Republicans. And I was wondering how the comments would be on this because it kind of tears me apart mentally. I love these two goats. Fox News, Joe Rogan, I don't make me choose.

[Aiden]

You hate to see him fight.

[Brandon]

You hate to see him fight. And the comments, they picked Trump, they picked Fox News. All the top comments are like, President Trump is the only president in 47 years to confront Iran and stop getting a nuclear weapon and pay for thousands of the Americans killed. And I thank God every day for him. Wrong, Joe. Because Trump refused to kick the can down the road and risk a nuclear catastrophe. He looked at the country's welfare instead of popularity. Trump did not start the conflict with Iran. That's debatable.

[Estet Herndon]

854 upvotes.

[Brandon]

These are the top three upvoted. Had he done nothing to stop Iran from getting nukes, that would be even less popular, which I'm just not sure is true.

[Estet Herndon]

I wonder if we can see the comment history. I can't imagine these folks were stoked about Joe Biden's foreign policy and the perception of starting foreign wars.

[Brandon]

But yeah, it feels like that was

[Estet Herndon]

the big movie, like no big thing.

[Aiden]

It couldn't have been more clear he didn't start the war. It was a comment with 850 upvotes that says Trump did not start the war.

[Estet Herndon]

When Trump and J.D. vance repeatedly campaigned on the idea of no more foreign wars in the Middle

[Aiden]

east, maybe Iran, when Iran started this war we had to resolve. That's basically in Asia.

[Estet Herndon]

That's not even part of the East.

[Brandon]

And so this comment, that was funny. Joan of Florida says a significant number of Democrats lay the blame at Trump's door. But long before his entry into office, Tehran was destabilizing the region, attacking neighboring countries and shipping lanes. Okay, and then this comment said, so what has changed? That was funny because like, ok, if you think that is horrible and Trump needs to do something, well, so far that is exactly what is still happening. There is no progress. The war is still going on. It's funny that there's no discussion of the fact that there was this period of like guaranteed deal and it's just gone. It's just memory hold. There is no deal and the war has no end in sight. They're bombing again. And the true story, if you want an update, an honest update, not even talking about whatever Fox News is, like in the past four days we are back in open bombing like the beginning of the war. It's like we've had as many strikes in the past four days, like in the beginning four days. It's, it's bombs all over Iran. I, they're striking back on ships and in Gulf states and nothing's changed. We no progress from months ago on anything ending in this war. I don't know if they're gonna bomb harder this time and that's the plan. But this could go on a lot longer is the honest truth of it. I, well, they didn't bomb that hard the first time. So maybe it's an amount of bomb situation. Yeah, maybe we throw more money at it. I know Trump wrote to Congress and is like not asking but like saying we're gonna get a new war declaration, a new 90 days or something that he doesn't need to ask Congress for, but he's asking for it anyway to re begin like a whole new wave of strikes. So it's day one again, which is kind of cool. It's like a fresh start. You know, we tried the ceasefire, we tried all that bullshit. Let's get back to the fresh start on the Iran war.

[Aiden]

Do you guys have. Because through, even through the periods of time where I'm reading and trying to follow this story as closely as possible, it still feels confusing to me. And I was like, if you're paying the most attention to this every day, is there like, is this more sensical

[Brandon]

than I would say paying the most attention? But my read on it is that it's like a, it's like a quick. I mean, it's really hard to just walk away. It's not easy to walk away because you can't leave Hormuz not how you found him. Yeah, it's like very damaging. And so they're trying to get it open and then walk away, but they can't set that up without it falling over. So that's the problem. It's something that it's like a one way door that they've walked through and they can't go back through it. And Trump really seems like he wants to get out of this, he wants to be done with it, but there is no way to do it. So they're kind of like flailing between give a bunch of stuff and like try to do a ceasefire. Doesn't work. Okay, we'll try double down on attacking, but that's probably not going to work. And then they're probably going to be back to us, you know, giving up more stuff. Yeah, that's what it seems like is that it's just the flailing of someone trying to get out of this, but they can't walk away like they could somewhere else.

[Estet Herndon]

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[Brandon]

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[Estet Herndon]

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[Brandon]

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[Estet Herndon]

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[Brandon]

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[Estet Herndon]

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[Aiden]

I'm standup comedian John Marco Cerese.

[Brandon]

And I'm actor penis model Russell Daniels.

[Aiden]

The downside is our podcast where we bring on guests to talk about how miserable their lives are are. Because let's face it, things are not getting better. Every episode we talk about what's wrong with our lives.

[Estet Herndon]

Our guests lives the world, but in a fun way.

[Aiden]

Bottom line is you're Gonna walk away feeling better about your life. We've had so many cool guests. Caleb Huron. Busy Phillips, Stavros Halkias, Laverne Cox, Hassan Piker.

[Estet Herndon]

Alana Glaser.

[Aiden]

I promise you're gonna have a good time. Now on the Vox Media podcast Network work.

[Brandon]

This is the downside.

[Estet Herndon]

It all started with Call me maybe. Over 10 years ago, we created Switched On Pop to listen closer, uncovering the songcraft behind even the glossiest of pop hits. Since then, we've released almost 500 episodes. We've defined the sounds of our modern soundtrack and interviewed hundreds of musicians and music insiders, including the singer of Call Me maybe herself, Carly Rae Jepsen. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm songwriter Charlie harding. And on July 14, switched on pop is embarking on a new chapter. We're stepping out from behind our microphones and in front of the camera to stream our podcast on Netflix. Now, you'll still be able to listen to the show anywhere you get podcasts, but now you'll be able to watch us each week, breaking down the sounds of the moment, digging into musical minutiae with your favorite artists, and offering questionable dad jokes. As always, we're kicking off our Netflix debut with a four part series on the art of the song. With help from artists, producers and songwriters like Aaron Dessner, Audrey Hobert, Trevor Horne, Cypress Hill, and Tayla Parks. Stream Switched On Pop on Netflix, and anywhere you get podcasts Every Tuesday starting

[Aiden]

on July 14, we could follow the energy crisis to somewhere else in the world.

[Brandon]

Okay, what's going on elsewhere?

[Aiden]

So on Fox News, I was. A beautiful headline caught my eye. Europe Bankrolls Putin's war Machine even as NATO Races to bolster defense. And it talks about how an environmental watchdog group releases a report about shipping data coming from an Arctic port in Russia and, like, where those shipments of liquefied natural gas are ending up. And I think there is. There is some perception that a ton of Russian oil goes to China and it points that out. And while that is the case, I think it's like Overall, something like 20% of the LNG from Russia is going to China right now. A huge portion of that still goes to the European Union, which is sort of the lens that this article is like, attacking the problem through being critical of. While Europe continues to be the most vocal, most vocal force supporting Ukraine, they are simultaneously getting a lot of their energy from Russia through this time period

[Estet Herndon]

still, and presumably through boats. Right. Cause the pipeline was blown up.

[Aiden]

Yeah. Or in this case, this is A shipment from a bunch of boats like of the 140 looked at, 136 are going to ports in France, Spain and Belgium, whereas only four of these boats of liquefied natural gas are going to China. And it's, you know, I would say the article is very much framed as Europe being a hypocrite for continuing to do this. It does note that Europe, they are in this like phase out plan where they're trying to get to a point by which I think by the end of 2027 they are no longer reliant on Russian natural gas at all. And that date is like looming because still such a significant portion of that gas comes from them. And Europe's argument against this is that like the oil coming in now is from previous contracts that we like signed before this deadline. We're not being hypocritical. This is just fulfillment of deals made in the past. And we're still working towards this situation where we're gonna be fully ready to phase out. And then it goes into. You mentioned Spain specifically, where there's like internal disagreement. There's people that like work within the shipping and port industry that disagree with the politicians in charge in Spain of whether or not this deadline is realistic to hit on time. But when you consider the amount of energy, I think it's over 50% of Russia's exports and it's 2026 right now. It does seem like it's going to be a really, really difficult transition.

[Brandon]

I don't know. I think this whole thing is silly because even if you sank, I think sanctions on a country as big as Russia for oil and gas, which are untraceable commodities, it just doesn't, it's just like provably doesn't work. Like if Europe goes, we're not going to buy Russian oil. What happens is they just sell it to India and then India sells it to Europe, which has happened. Like they just. Someone buys it and they're the middleman. They take a little cup and then they like. It just gets to you because you need it and it exists and it's a global commodity market and they put it on shadow tankers and you can't. This is what happens every time. Like it's not.

[Aiden]

That's what it was talking about is like the kind of the heroic efforts of a couple Republican senators, including Lindsey Graham.

[Brandon]

Right.

[Aiden]

Pushing forward the effort of a secondary layer of sanctions on European countries that continue to engage with Russia and energy.

[Estet Herndon]

Oh, he was pushing for European countries to get sanctioned.

[Aiden]

Yeah, technically everybody Technically everybody but Europe being one of the huge participating parties of like who, who is in this oil market. The other thing that, to add on to what you're saying that there's a way to circumvent that to begin with is that through periods where there has been a drop in Europe's demand for this Russian lng, they just pick that demand back up with China or Japan during those down periods. So Russia is able to maintain their level of output even without Europe. These aren't necessarily like who knows what this could be over the course of years, but over these like week long periods or month long periods, the demand is just picked back up by other countries outside of the European Union.

[Brandon]

There's just no, like, like every barrel of oil and all the LNG on a tanker gets sold. Every amount get. There's none of it sitting there like, ah, well, no one wants to buy it. They always get sold. So I don't know, it just feels like a huge waste and it's crazy. I mean I'm getting off my Fox News.

[Estet Herndon]

No, no, no, tell, look at this.

[Brandon]

Lindsey Graham wants Europe to have more expensive natural gas to help fight the war effort. But it's like easy for us to say because we have a huge glut of natural gas. So it's like not the sanctuary is not hard for us to take part in.

[Aiden]

I think there's, there's two layers to this one to give Lindsey Graham a minor bit of credit. Actually this isn't really giving him credit. It's bipartisan. Technically it wasn't Lindsey Graham and another Republican. It's Lindsey Graham and there's Democrats.

[Brandon]

Actually from an American bov, it's like easy to say because it's not a hard sanction for us to do.

[Aiden]

But the reason that I think this is even brought up in the Fox News article and a huge angle of the comments surprisingly is this is good. Put the pressure on Europe so that they become reliant on our American natural gas. Like figure out a way to make Europe engage with us because we have the capacity to give them tons of natural gas, tons of natural gas. Why are they working with Russia at all? And these sanctions are part of the effort to make Russia to make Europe more reliant on American energy, not just because like we want to help Ukraine.

[Estet Herndon]

I mean, is there validity to that strategy from the U.S. perspective?

[Aiden]

I mean, absolutely.

[Estet Herndon]

I mean, yeah, I can see if you're Lindsey Graham that that seems like a win.

[Aiden]

Win. Yeah, I mean he did think that.

[Estet Herndon]

Yeah, it's Interesting. I mean I guess that's, that's the way you stop people buying from Russia, right? Is you offer more gas, right. You sell more to Europe. You have Venezuela's new oil ramp up and go to.

[Brandon]

No, it's fine. It's just the point is like every, like if they all switched their contract to American and they bought American lng then someone else somewhere is not buying that because it's going there now. And then the price just shifts around and they export to them.

[Aiden]

Like the Russian LNG is still ending up somewhere. And then I also think the twist in this article is the way they present the Data. They're like 136 ships out of 140 are going to Europe and I bet you will think they're all going to China. It's like they took a group of ships from one port at one specific time and if you look at the actual data it's like OK a lot of it is going to Europe over 50% but like 20 some percent is going to China as well. And that's not the number they're presenting. But that's, you know, that's off Fox News stats.

[Brandon]

I don't know, it's just, it feels kind of butyl or like wish. Like the main thing that's helped Russia more than anything is the Iran war because it literally took supply off the market. So it made oil more expensive. So they made a lot more money. Like that was the biggest thing. More than like individual sanctions which you just get around.

[Estet Herndon]

It helped our allies, Venezuela. True.

[Aiden]

I think the number one place I'd like to read about vaccines is probably Fox News.

[Brandon]

Yes, absolutely.

[Estet Herndon]

There is some great vaccine news. It combines all my favorite things. Vaccines, AI and Fox News. Comments.

[Brandon]

Oh wait, can I say that?

[Estet Herndon]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

It was the funniest part of exploring the Fox News website to me which is great. Don't get me wrong. I constantly is that there just is no tech section. Like it's just not like if you are interested in tech news you maybe can find it by individual headlines.

[Estet Herndon]

But I would go to US and I would go to campus Radical.

[Brandon]

Probably campus.

[Aiden]

Why would I need, why would I need tech if I have Blue City crime?

[Brandon]

I mean but nowhere not there is no like business or tech news. It is not important if I, if you like.

[Estet Herndon]

Okay, all right. Of these sections, by the way, if I go over, over media I was like maybe media would have like technology AI. The only dropdown is Fox Nation coverage and then if I go to entertainment it's Taylor Swift. Royal families and country.

[Aiden]

I found it. I found it. You go. If you go all the way to the right.

[Brandon]

Okay.

[Aiden]

And you go to. There is an AI section.

[Brandon]

Okay.

[Aiden]

If you make the browser as big as possible. And then if you go into more, you can find. Wait, is there still not a. There's a science in tech section in the more section.

[Brandon]

Oh, okay. If you scroll all the way to

[Estet Herndon]

the bottom to this. Easily, Easily navigable.

[Aiden]

But I mean, it is interesting because you can see what. What gets the most clarity. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Estet Herndon]

Okay, so this is some cool vaccine news. So it's a mix of interesting vaccine news, plus the Patriots giving comments. So researchers from universities of Cambridge and Southampton developed a, quote, universal vaccine designed to protect against multiple coronaviruses, which they explained in news release, is the large group of viruses that occur in nature which caused the COVID pandemic. So to explain this in English, what I found interesting. I don't know if you guys did too, as we explored our beloved homepage of Fox News, is that a lot of the articles are perfectly neutral. Right. And then it's just kind of describing a thing that happened. I mean, this is not that different than other articles I read that were of the same thing. Right. It's just recapping some news.

[Aiden]

I. What my experience was there was articles like this, and then there would be news articles that have an inflammatory headline. Yes. Like, the headline is ridiculous, but the actual meat and potatoes of the article was, like, surprisingly neutral.

[Estet Herndon]

The opinions are very intense, but.

[Aiden]

Yeah, yeah. And then the opinions are like. They're using Marxists every. At least every paragraph.

[Estet Herndon]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So this article is basically just recapping a research report that was just posted in the virology journal, I believe by some pretty legit researchers. And so here's the general concept of it. There are, like, 10 strains of coronavirus in humans, but there are, like thousands in animals. Right. Like in bats and whatnot. And so normally, the way we develop a vaccine against some kind of virus like this is that we look at what the current strain is, and we say, okay, we're gonna find an antigen that essentially represents the shape of the virus. And then we're gonna manufacture that. We inject it into our bodies. And now your body knows how to look for that particular thing. Right. That's how a vaccine works. That's how we do with coronavirus. But then when a new coronavirus comes

[Brandon]

out, vaccines work by sending my data through 5G to Bill Gates.

[Estet Herndon]

So they added that. No, the antigen.

[Brandon]

They don't all do that?

[Aiden]

No, no, that was like. They all do it now, but it's like the last 15 years.

[Brandon]

The recent. Yeah, yeah, as tech evolved. Okay, that makes sense.

[Estet Herndon]

It's like Batman Begins where Morgan Freeman is sitting in the Batcave and he's looking at all of the screens of all your antigens. Except it's Bill Gates.

[Brandon]

But it's Bill Gates. It can see. Okay, I got you.

[Estet Herndon]

So every time a virus mutates, you gotta make a new vaccine. And that's part of the problem with it, why there's new Covid vaccines all the time. So what Cambridge did is they had machine learning analyze hundreds of different coronavirus strains, like the genetic sequences of it. And the idea is, hey, instead of looking at whatever the most recent virus shape and DNA structure is, what if we look at all of them, including the ones that are in nature, and we use this analysis, we let a machine do a ton of data crunching on this and find the common structures that exist amongst all of them. And that's what they did. The model was then able to make, hey, here's an antigen that's gonna represent and basically defend our body from not only the current coronaviruses we know about, but any future shapes they might take. It is future proofing against future versions of how viruses might mutate. This could be huge, single virus that takes care of this forever. Quote, first time a vaccine whose active component was designed entirely by computer simulation has been tested in humans. They tested this with 39 volunteers, triggered an immune response, and seems to work for all of them. From the trial's chief investigator, Saul Faust. If we can develop and clinically advance this new class of vaccines before a virus outbreak begins, millions of lives could be saved, lockdowns avoided, and the economy preserved. We could get ahead of viruses because we can see the entire family of patterns that you see across an entire family and then prevent against that entire family and not just individual. Really cool. Really interesting. Obviously, there's the question about, like, how involved, you know, how do we test and make sure that something that an AI designed is extraordinarily safe and it's in the early stages. Super minor note in this article about how it's administered with like a microfluid jet, which is like a newer vaccine thing, but that's like a minor thing that's not related to the AI. So this is. This is really interesting. This is a potential world where, as we've talked about a couple of times, medicine could be really transform with AI, not because you're talking to ChatGPT. But because it is extraordinarily good at processing huge quantities of complex data and finding patterns. So this is really interesting. So what are people in the comments saying? I was surprised by this, to be honest. I thought it would all be talking about vaccines being bad. And there's some of that. For example, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fauci did a lot of damage in the public's confidence in Jack. This is not Fauci. That's the wrong person. This is Faust. This is a different person. But almost all of the comments getting back to how old the people who seem to read this website are are about the way the vaccine was administered, which was one sentence and is not the point of this article and is not what AI did. Here we go. Apparently artificial intelligence is not that intelligent. It came up with using a tiny high pressure stream of liquid and does not require a needle. When I was in army basic training over 50 years ago, they ran us through an assembly line injecting who knows what into our arms at station after station using exactly this method. Okay, this tiny high pressure stream of liquid was used by the army over 60 years ago. Let's keep going. Drafted into the army in 1969, all of the draftees in my basic training got multiple shots at an airstream injector. In 1969, I was enabled boot camp in San Diego. There are hundreds of people who were in boot camp almost always 50 years ago, whose entire reaction to an incredible new potential form of vaccine is to complain about the type of injector they used. Which is not the point of the article. Anyways,

[Brandon]

As a young kid, I was definitely afraid of shots.

[Estet Herndon]

This one. Yeah, some people are just complaining about shots.

[Brandon]

I managed to kick one out of the doctor's hands one time. The irony is, later diagnosed as a type 1 diabetic and a lifetime of needles.

[Estet Herndon]

I hope this quote new microfluid jet works better than the last time it was tried in the 60s. It's just. Anyway, that's so they're really latched onto that.

[Aiden]

It's so crazy to see the confirmation that they really are that old.

[Brandon]

They're old. It's the old. Like, that's what I found is they're the wisest and most experienced among us is across his website, they do have

[Aiden]

a lifetime of boot camp, naval boot camp experience that I do not have.

[Estet Herndon]

When I went through basic training in the summer of 1968. There are four people who were in basic training in 1968 through 1969. You guys have any thoughts on the vaccine's cool, right? I mean, look, this is very much to be clear. This is not like a working vaccine. It's going to cure everything. This is an interesting indicator of the possibilities that might happen. And using this type of technology remains to be seen.

[Aiden]

It's awesome.

[Brandon]

I mean, as a streamer, I prefer if we had another coronavirus and there was no way of stopping it. So I'm gonna.

[Estet Herndon]

Oh, wait. I should say the particularly interesting thing about this is not only could we have a future proofed coronavirus vaccine, you could do this for other viruses like influenza. We could potentially just come up with an influenza vaccine that's permanent. Harder because it mutates faster. You know what another one that could work for?

[Brandon]

And I won't have any excuse to get out of things.

[Estet Herndon]

And you're not going to like this because I know this is one of your favorite diseases, Ebola. We could do this with Ebola and you future proof it with a vaccine instead of going off the current strain.

[Aiden]

Because if we got rid of Ebola, then I couldn't talk about the outbreaks on the podcast.

[Brandon]

Yeah. Like, what would Aiden bring?

[Estet Herndon]

It would hurt our viewers.

[Aiden]

So far, we're just talking about things that hurt this show.

[Brandon]

Yeah, disease outbreaks are really a big part of our dollar and trade.

[Estet Herndon]

Dude, your stream is going to pop off during the Ebola pandemic.

[Brandon]

During the ebola slash. Corona 20.

[Estet Herndon]

It's going to be a great month while people are alive.

[Aiden]

So I was taking a peek at our run of show.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

And one of our last stories is Trump to shrink national monuments.

[Brandon]

Oh, I saw.

[Aiden]

And I was wondering if he. If we're actually going to go around and make them smaller.

[Brandon]

Great question, Aiden. Listen, I was on Fox News and I discovered something that I thought I'd be angry about, but I changed my mind really quickly. Trump is gonna shrink two Utah national monuments. If you don't know what a national monument is, I'm gonna answer that question for you right now. I'm gonna preempt your question. It's like a national park, but a president can create it unilaterally. You don't need an act of Congress. And they are being shrunk by 90%. This is grand Staircase, Escalante and Bears Ears. They're going from 3 million acres to 300,000 to allow the rest of the land to be used for development and natural resources. This is the new maps.

[Estet Herndon]

Okay. I think a lot of people, myself included, when I heard monuments were thinking they were gon like make the Mount Rushmore faces smaller.

[Aiden]

That's what I thought was going to take the presidential shrink ray and kind of make the.

[Brandon]

So this is a park? Yeah. Two federal land areas. Big federal land.

[Aiden]

No shrink race.

[Unidentified Guest]

No.

[Brandon]

Well on the map.

[Estet Herndon]

How would you get the map to be smaller? It doesn't make any sense. And of course they've shrink so this

[Brandon]

land could now be sold to developers to be used for great all American clean coal. Which is what I found out through the comments because I thought people might be actually angry about this one because national park is a fun thing to go to or national monument with your family. It's beautiful, untouched American unspoiled terrain. These are the top comments. Something a lot of people forget is that one of the largest deposits of low sulfur clean burning coal is on the Grand Staircase. Long overdue. When was the last time millions of acres of land were taken in a so called blue state the way this land was? And when I say taken they mean they're talking about when it was turned into a national park.

[Estet Herndon]

When was the last time millions of acres of land were taken in a

[Brandon]

so called blue state the way this land was? Which is.

[Aiden]

Dude, what do you want to talking.

[Estet Herndon]

California is so much.

[Brandon]

Yeah, a lot of national.

[Aiden]

I want to give the top comments some credit.

[Brandon]

Okay.

[Aiden]

Because something a lot of people forgot is that one of the largest deposits of low salver clean burning coal is in the grand staircase. I did forget that. I'm not going to pretend like I

[Brandon]

Princess Roxanna says it's not about preservation of native antiquities, but it's about removing huge chunks of our natural resources from the economy. When they created this national park, the goal of previous presidents like Bill Clinton was to take the resources out of our economy. That's why he did it. He didn't want us to have clean burning coal. And now, thank God, years later we can shrink these damn things and get more coal back in the economy.

[Estet Herndon]

This ties right into stopping Russia from selling lng. We send this coal over to Europe.

[Brandon]

Yep.

[Aiden]

So did the article give you any insight as to the return or the surge of coal industry that will return to the United States in order to. Because my understanding is leading up like we're on a pretty consistent decline in the amount of people employed in the coal industry in the country, even under Trump's rules.

[Brandon]

So instead Trump said they, referring to previous presidents, took the land from the people, quite honestly, which is not really what a national monument is supposed to be for the people.

[Estet Herndon]

Exactly.

[Brandon]

And now he's giving it back. Utah governor praised the move. The original size of the monuments is far too expansive. Protections for national monuments apply to the surrounding landscape as well, preventing drilling, mining and construction. But now we can do that because they have large deposits of coal and uranium. So how about that? Yeah. Treasury Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has pushed for using more federal land to expand U.S. energy production, clearing the way for mining and oil drilling in Alaska and as well. So this is good for the economy. Aiden. Okay, so get on board.

[Aiden]

Well, what does Fox News have to say about the government's potential 5% investment in OpenAI? Look, as a site that doesn't highlight

[Estet Herndon]

tech, it's a great question, Aiden. You know why? Because I was curious, what do people on Fox News think about AI? Genuinely curious what was going on. They even had a little poll at one point. So interestingly kick this off. 77% of people in a Fox News poll said that we need to either it is extremely or very urgent to get government regulation on AI. I was surprised by that. You know, most of the people in power are pretty anti regulation at the moment when it comes to AI, but yes. Okay, so this is a story that's been going on for kind of a couple weeks now. Sam Altman, actually, I'll read the title. OpenAI. Sam Altman wants to negotiate a 5% stake in the company for us if competitors agree to a key provision. He has gone to Trump, Trump, Besant and Howard Lutnick and proposed that the government should take 5% of OpenAI, but that all of the leading AI labs, such as Meta, Anthropic and Google, should also do the same. You might be wondering, like, what is going on here? So as a reminder, the government under Trump has invested in, I think, a dozen companies. Now, one of the most notable was the 10% stake in Intel. And this is somewhat interesting and strange for a government to take direct ownership in a company like this, something like Intel. We've talked about it a couple times, and I'm gonna be honest. At first I, when Sam Altman was proposing this, thought, he's a fucking commie. Because government should not control the means of production. Government cannot control shit.

[Aiden]

Right?

[Brandon]

You shouldn't nationalize this.

[Estet Herndon]

You shouldn't nationalize.

[Brandon]

I've seen 50 articles on here about the dangers of communism.

[Estet Herndon]

Yes. But then I realized that once you talk to Trump and Bessant and Lutnick, it's like, okay, well, that could make a lot of sense. And they seem excited about the idea of Trump, apparently. Definitely seems Good with it. And so I realized probably it's like, you know, this is America first, making sure we get the benefit from some of the companies and we've contributed to this until I realized he is a fucking commie because he met with Bernie Sanders. If you scroll down or up, I don't know where you are on this article. He then went and talked with Bernie and they had an hour long conversation. And Bernie's been pushing for 50% government ownership of all the AI companies, right? No, no, no, no. Bernie Sanders. There we go. Bernie Sanders. We talked about this super briefly like a month or two ago, but he proposed publicly. He's trying to push it into Congress as well. The idea of us should own half of the AI companies and, you know, have some sort of like sovereign wealth fund or redistribute that to people. So Sam Altman went and met with him with Bernie Sanders and they talked this through and apparently he's on board with this idea, which is ridiculous.

[Aiden]

It is interesting because in the financial situation that OpenAI is in, would Altman balk at a US government like, 40% purchase of OpenAI at its current evaluation? Because they do need cash so desperately?

[Estet Herndon]

Well, so, dude, there's a lot of ways to interpret this thing, and the most likely is that because Trump's administration has shown over the past month that they are perfectly willing to tell AI companies you can't distribute or models like, they did it with anthropic. As we've talked about a number of times, and I don't think we mentioned on the show, the most recent version of ChatGPT 5.6 was not released for like a week or two because the US government told OpenAI and told Sam Altman, yeah, you need to hold it, it's too dangerous until we explicitly approve it. So they have set this standard of the government is going to explicitly control this private market of what products they can release. And probably what's going on here is Sam Altman is trying to say, say you should be invested in our company because then he knows the likelihood that they're going to shut stuff down like that goes way, way, way down. And so, you know, arguably, because Sam Altman is not agreeing to the 50% from Bernie and saying he really wants to work with Trump. I think he is, he is a capitalist and he's not a filthy commie until I read the comments.

[Brandon]

What do the comments say?

[Estet Herndon]

Quote, this is communism. Whether the name is Trump or Xi selling or demanding private equity and firms to the the government for protection Is communism by definition. Another comment, not in favor of the US government owning any part of the private company. The government owns 31% of the health industry and look where that has gotten us. No final verdict Communist.

[Brandon]

I mean I agree with this third guy here. Literally this is Sam asking the US taxpayer to bail out his company.

[Aiden]

It just feels like that's what, that's what I'm saying. I feel like he's in a position now where it's like that regardless of your ideological stance or something, he's just not in a circumstance where he can reject yeah. These amounts of money.

[Brandon]

Well, I mean it just like if you give 5% to Trump, your likelihood of him and the US government helping you out when shit gets bad or if you're in a tough like is way higher. It's just way, way higher.

[Estet Herndon]

Stops being a free market. Right. Like the incentive then for the US government is to ensure that OpenAI and these specific tech companies that we would be picking as winners like go on to win. But what if they, they do shitty things or they're incompetent or other competitors come up and then just don't get that advantage? It, it doesn't seem great. Like I'm on board with the idea of some way of tapping into AI.

[Brandon]

You just tax them.

[Estet Herndon]

Right.

[Brandon]

That's what always work is like they compete and no matter who wins, you get a big cut for the government and you spend it on people do

[Estet Herndon]

a value added tax like picking certain

[Brandon]

companies and you own a percent of them. It's so. It's just like there's so many bad incentives is what I would have thought till I read this article and now I've changed my mind.

[Aiden]

I don't want to talk about taxes on Fox News Week.

[Estet Herndon]

I'm baffled that this isn't portrayed as like a horrific communist thing which I'm assuming is cuz it's related to the Trump administration. But this is like, this is bizarre. This is really bizarre to come from the supposedly very free market focused administration.

[Aiden]

Do you guys feel like you had any big takeaways reading pretty much just Fox this week. Like what are your, what are your big thoughts as you kind of like went through articles?

[Brandon]

Well, it doesn't cost me any money. That's another thing. I don't know. I could cancel all my other subscriptions and I could just. Fox News.

[Aiden]

They do fit a lot of ads on them. They do fit a lot of ads on them.

[Brandon]

But small price to pay for that. Great journalism. So that's the first thing I noticed. No, I mean, I don't know. It was interesting, but I read a lot of Fox News this week for this thing, and I really had to dig through a lot of trashy celebrity stories. They are everywhere.

[Estet Herndon]

It's.

[Brandon]

It's like a third of every category is they try to angle it through a celebrity.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

Usually an aging star that someone old would know about.

[Aiden]

It's like that was kind of an odd thing, is like, I'm like, as I'm looking for Iran war updates or like a Trump news, I would also see like an article that has shirtless pictures of Harrison Ford and his new body. It's like half, half like People magazine, half kind of political news.

[Unidentified Guest]

Yeah.

[Estet Herndon]

It's so bizarre.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Estet Herndon]

How much of it is that? And, and I really, I mean, we've like joked about it, but I really appears to be an extremely old audience.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Estet Herndon]

Like really old. Like, these are boomers. These are like genuinely like the oldest generation that we have right now.

[Brandon]

Yeah. There was a Marjorie Taylor Greene quote recently where she was talking because she's totally gone off the Trump train. You know, she's like entirely their separate branch of Republican now. And she was talking about how there is a die hard group of Fox News, only very old boomers who are 100% locked behind Trump. Nothing will change. Literally nothing can change. And she's like, I'm just going for a different. Like that. Not to give credible credence to Marjorie Tyler Greene, but like that, that quote I remembered in my head and it kind of rung true reading this, this is like a. Yeah. Just a segment of like decently well off elderly boomers. Yeah. Who are like, just. That's the view. They see things through. They, they. Most people have homes. Most of these people have.

[Aiden]

There were okay stories. There was like decent.

[Brandon]

No, I mean, like the standard, like the lawn war update thing was like, it was minute by minute tracking what I would get elsewhere. It was like, you know, updates on what CENTCOM said and what happened in Congress.

[Estet Herndon]

The vaccine article did not have conspiracy stuff or anti vaccine stuff in it. It was just, this is the scientific update and that was it. And I just held to the comments.

[Aiden]

I think I'm also. It's not lost on me that basically anything you read is gonna have a level of political bias present in it. That's not even the part that I feel like I'm getting at. It's more like the presentation of it and the bombastic nature of the headlines. What I would normally. Normally read in a given week would Be okay ft, New York Times, Reuters, and then maybe like Al Jazeera and the Guardian. And I think what all of these things have in common that is so substantially different from Fox News is I feel like the headlines are just a little more straightforward. Like every headline here is intermingled with way more inflammatory language in order, like, in order to attract the attention of that like 70 year old fox News consumer. And it's, you know, it's packaged between, you know, a couple celebrity stories and like how AOC fucked up this week.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

And that's the whole site.

[Brandon]

There's a lot of culture war lens on everything and then a lot of celebrity trash on the lens and everything,

[Estet Herndon]

which is usually through the lens of like, like going back to Jesus. A lot of, you know, like traditional conservative values somehow become tied up with the celebrity stuff too.

[Brandon]

Yeah, you know, I wanted to test, so I went to MSNBC's website too. Like it, it's kind of the mirror version right there. It's also boomers watching largely and it's just a different demographic. Their shtick is that Almost, I'd say 95% of articles have Trump in them. And it's usually something like he fucked up or he's bad or you know, it's like that's the idea because that just gets clicks. That's the people that are old and don't like Trump want to hear about how he's doomed.

[Unidentified Guest]

It's over.

[Brandon]

He's all about the. Yeah, so that's part of it.

[Aiden]

I feel like the actual barrier that I realized reading this because when we do nor when we do research for like normal episodes, I feel like MSNBC or like a CBC are the types of websites that I'm going to way, way less than the outlets I just described. And there's kind of this line in the sand between subscription news and free to access news that's like packed with advertisement like msnbc, Fox, like sit in this realm of I open the page, I scroll through like three video ads, like a few image ads in like a bunch of different sections of the article. But I don't have to subscribe to read anything. And ultimately I get a more bare bones version of events, more inflammatory title compared to the like the New York Times FT situation where okay, after an article or two I have to subscribe. And there's usually a lot more depth and straightforward nature to the. I feel like that's like the real divide in news media is like, is that.

[Brandon]

Yeah, that's what I would notice from both those Websites is that the headline kind of tells you how to think before you've clicked it, you know.

[Estet Herndon]

Yeah, that's a good way to get

[Brandon]

the, what the angle is so you can kind of know what you're getting into before you click. Yeah, it was an eye opening experience. I do feel much, much more informed and now I'm going to stick to Fox News.

[Estet Herndon]

Let us know in the comments if you'd like this to be every episode or only every other.

[Aiden]

I think if there was any takeaway, if there wasn't something already, it's like even if you have a solid news source that you like checking the most, I think this is an affirmation of maybe don't read all your news in one place. Just try. Especially if there's just a story or thing you're particularly interested in. Go follow the thread across different sites and like try to picture, like put a picture together from those multi. Like the multitude of things.

[Brandon]

It gave me a deep insight. Not a deep insight, but I get a better idea. I have some family members, extended family members who only watch Fox News and I just, I almost like can see the talking points that they're saying as I'm reading through the website. It just, you get where they got it from and that's where it just,

[Estet Herndon]

it guides you like right, to a conclusion.

[Brandon]

Gives you a conclusion.

[Estet Herndon]

It's just like, you know how to fit.

[Brandon]

You know, you have to read the article because the article actually have data. You just kind of know the gist of it and you could jump to the comments and then you.

[Aiden]

There's a great, there's a great Shane Gillis bit about this from one of his stand up specials where he's talking about having a Fox News dad and how every night his dad sits and watches Fox News until he's so pissed he can't watch anymore. And his dad's goal every evening is he needs to walk away with one fact that he can say at the dinner table and that most of the time that fact is Nancy Pelosi's a bitch. Okay.

[Estet Herndon]

All right. We'll do an episode in the future where we go a more extreme version of this, which is it's a Fox News headline show. We can't do any research beyond the headlines. And then we just have conversations.

[Brandon]

We need to go to OANN or Harris.

[Aiden]

RIP Dude, I thought about sneaking. This is my idea for this video was sneaking an OANN article in and just seeing if we can notice. Yeah. And seeing if there's like a layer of disconnect between the two because, dude, if you go on, it's even crazier on there. Oh, yeah, yeah, it's, it's actually no,

[Brandon]

because half these articles, again, are like trying to be, it's the way they're packaged, right? It's like they're trying to have some facts, but they package it in a way. But Oanne doesn't give a shit. They go crazy.

[Aiden]

I think if you're in the, you, there's an unfortunate reality. If you're in this like, mainstream, more corporate news media world and you're intending on making everything accessible for free, you just have to go for like inflammatory what gets the click, what moves the ad revenue sort of shit. And you can't, you're, you can't rely on like the traditional tenants of journalism because that's not what people are there for.

[Brandon]

They need to click.

[Aiden]

But thank you for joining us this week on Lemonade Stand. Thank you for joining us for a week of FOX News prepared stories.

[Estet Herndon]

We hope that this helps you better connect with your conservative uncle.

[Brandon]

Yes.

[Aiden]

And if you want probably Thanksgiving, if you want a more normal Lemonade Stand experience for the week, you can go to patreon.com lemonade stand for an extra hour of the show. We'll see you guys later.

[Brandon]

See you guys next week. Thank you so much for watching. Bye bye.

[Estet Herndon]

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[Aiden]

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