3554 - The Lost History of Nagasaki; Democratic Spam Scandal w/ Greg Mitchell & Adam Bonica

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Majority Report with Sam Seder Episode: 3554 - The Lost History of Nagasaki; Democratic Spam Scandal with Greg Mitchell & Adam Bonica
Release Date: August 6, 2025
Host: Sam Seder

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Introduction

In Episode 3554 of The Majority Report with Sam Seder, released on August 6, 2025, host Sam Seder delves into two major topics: the forgotten history of Nagasaki and a significant fundraising scandal within Democratic-affiliated groups. The episode features insightful discussions with journalist Greg Mitchell and Stanford political science associate professor Adam Bonica. Additionally, the show touches upon current political events, including threats against voting rights and controversial actions by former President Donald Trump.

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1. The 60th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act and Current Challenges

Sam Seder begins the episode by commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, highlighting the precarious situation of Section 2 amid Texas's aggressive gerrymandering efforts.

• Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act:
  "Section 2 is the part of the Voting Rights Act that ensures in the wake of Jim Crow, that large communities of underrepresented people, black, brown people, often cannot be gerrymandered out of having their will as a majority in certain districts kept from essentially electing people of their preference." ([00:00])

• Impact of Texas's Gerrymandering:
  "The redistricting would strip the ability of Latinos to exercise their political power commensurate with the size of their population. And not just Latinos, but also black people." ([07:50])

• Donald Trump's Statements on Gerrymandering:
  Seder discusses Trump's alarming remarks about potentially enlisting the FBI to "kidnap" Texas state lawmakers involved in the redistricting, reflecting heightened tensions around voting rights.
  "Trump says meanwhile that he may enlist FBI to kidnap those Texas state lawmakers and bring them back to Texas." ([05:30])

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2. Greg Mitchell on "The Atomic Bowl" and the Forgotten History of Nagasaki

Greg Mitchell, a journalist and filmmaker, joins the program to discuss his documentary "The Atomic Bowl: Football at Ground Zero and Nuclear Peril Today," which sheds light on a lesser-known event following the bombing of Nagasaki.

• The Atomic Bowl Football Game:
  Mitchell recounts the 1946 football game played in Nagasaki's Ground Zero, a mere three months after the atomic bomb was dropped.
  "A military commander had the idea of having a football game in Japan with an all-star military team... it was played on New Year's Day 1946 and got a lot of early publicity. It was dubbed the Atomic Bowl." ([21:48])

• Symbolism and Aftermath:
  The game, held on a devastated field where 175 students and teachers had been killed, symbolizes the complex emotions and propaganda efforts of the US government post-bombing.
  "The symbolism of playing a game right at where you had just wiped out 75,000 people... the message could be different for different people. But when people hear about it today, they're horrified." ([24:50])

• Lessons from Nagasaki:
  Mitchell emphasizes the unique lessons from Nagasaki, contrasting it with Hiroshima and drawing parallels to modern conflicts such as Gaza.
  "Nagasaki shows that civilian casualties can become a horror story, which we see echoed today with conflicts like in Gaza." ([33:06])

• Truman's Reaction:
  Contrary to popular belief, President Truman was initially unaware of the second bomb's impending use on Nagasaki and reacted strongly against further bombings thereafter.
  "Truman was surprised and, the next day, ordered explicitly no more bombs to be dropped. He didn't want to see any more kids killed." ([28:54])

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3. Adam Bonica on the Democratic Spam Scandal and Mothership Fundraising

Adam Bonica, an associate professor of political science at Stanford and publisher of the On Data and Democracy substack, discusses a disturbing fundraising scandal involving a firm known as Mothership.

• Introduction to Mothership:
  Mothership is identified as a Democratic fundraising consulting firm that has raised approximately $678 million since 2018, with a significant portion funneled back to themselves rather than to candidates or causes.
  "159 million was paid directly to Mothership Strategies for consulting fees. That's more than half of what Mothership has been paid by all of its clients." ([43:00])

• Churn and Burn Strategy:
  Bonica describes Mothership's predatory fundraising tactics, where deceptive methods are employed to solicit donations with minimal returns to actual campaigns.
  "Churn and Burn is essentially doing anything you can to raise a buck, including deceptive tactics like lying about matching funds or creating urgency." ([45:44])

• Impact on Donors and the Democratic Party:
  The scandal has eroded trust among donors, many of whom were unaware that their contributions were not supporting legitimate campaigns.
  "It's heart-breaking that people have been taken for a ride, believing they're supporting legitimate candidates when the funds are funneled back to the firm." ([65:21])

• Lack of Response from Democratic Leadership:
  Despite awareness among some Democratic operatives, there's been no substantial response from major Democratic committees like the DCCC, DSCC, or DNC to address or dismantle this fundraising malpractice.
  "I have not heard anything from the DCCC, DSCC, or DNC regarding this issue, and I'm unsure how they're going to respond." ([61:47])

• Potential Solutions:
  Bonica suggests that the Democratic establishment needs to actively police and cut ties with unethical fundraising firms like Mothership to restore trust and integrity within the party's fundraising mechanisms.
  "The party has a responsibility to cut off Mothership and anyone associated with them to prevent further damage." ([65:45])

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4. Current Political Climate and Trump's Influence

Throughout the episode, Sam Seder addresses the broader political climate, including President Trump's misleading statements about his approval ratings and the potential economic downturn marked by stagflation.

• Trump's False Approval Ratings:
  Seder criticizes Trump for falsely claiming a 70% approval rating, while actual polls show it to be significantly lower.
  "The shorter answer is no. He completely lied. He's not anywhere close to 70% approval rating." ([09:01])

• Economic Concerns:
  The discussion touches on signs of stagflation, job losses, and shrinking GDP, suggesting that Trump's economic policies may not be yielding the promised benefits.
  "We're starting to see signs of stagflation, job losses, and a lack of productivity, the GDP shrinking." ([05:00])

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5. Fun Half: ICE Footage and Public Protests

In the lighter segment of the show, often referred to as the "fun half," the discussion shifts to a disturbing piece of ICE footage from a protest in Los Angeles. The footage shows ICE agents restraining a protester while another individual attempts to document the event.

• Analysis of ICE Actions:
  The footage reveals ICE agents physically restraining a protester and hindering the efforts of a photographer, raising concerns about their methods and intent.
  "They are using excessive force to restrain someone who is just trying to capture the event." ([81:50])

• Comparisons to International Practices:
  Sam draws parallels between ICE's actions and similar tactics used by authorities in other countries, such as El Salvador's Bukele.
  "It's exactly what Bukele's doing in El Salvador... making glossy promotion videos." ([82:35])

• Call for Accountability:
  The segment ends with a call to action, emphasizing the need for accountability and vigilance against such abuses of power.
  "There's really no mechanism for accountability, but we need to document and respond to these abuses." ([82:51])

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Conclusion

Episode 3554 of The Majority Report provides a compelling mix of historical analysis and contemporary political scrutiny. Through Greg Mitchell's exploration of the Atomic Bowl and Adam Bonica's expose on Democratic fundraising fraud, listeners gain a deeper understanding of both past and present challenges facing American democracy. The episode underscores the importance of transparency, accountability, and informed activism in safeguarding democratic institutions and values.

Notable Quotes:

• "Section 2 is the part of the Voting Rights Act that ensures in the wake of Jim Crow, that large communities of underrepresented people... cannot be gerrymandered out of having their will as a majority." — Sam Seder ([00:00])
• "Trump says meanwhile that he may enlist FBI to kidnap those Texas state lawmakers." — Sam Seder ([05:30])
• "Section two is on the chopping block." — Sam Seder ([07:50])
• "He completely lied. He's not anywhere close to 70% approval rating." — Sam Seder ([09:01])
• "Churn and Burn is essentially doing anything you can to raise a buck." — Adam Bonica ([45:44])
• "It's heart-breaking that people have been taken for a ride." — Adam Bonica ([65:21])

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Resources:

• The Atomic Bowl Documentary: PBS Link
• Adam Bonica's Substack: On Data and Democracy

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This summary aims to encapsulate the key discussions and insights from Episode 3554, providing listeners and readers with a comprehensive overview of the topics covered.

Transcript

[Sam Seder]

You are listening to a free version of the Majority Report. Support this [e-mail] and get an extra hour of content daily. The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Wednesday, August 6, 2025. My name is Sam Seder. This is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, Greg Mitchell, journalist, author, writer, director on his most recent the Atomic Bowl, Football at Ground Zero and Nuclear Peril today then Adam Bonecke, associate professor of political science at Stanford and publisher of the On Data and Democracy substack on the scam fundraising by a major Democratic affiliated group. Also on the program today, in a massive blow to Public Health, RFK Jr cancels $500 million in funding for MRNA vaccines. Today is the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights act and Section 2 is on the chopping block as Texas's gerrymander is one of its cleavers. Trump says meanwhile that he may enlist FBI to kidnap those Texas state lawmakers and bring them back to Texas. Speaking of which, the Trump regime meeting in a dinner at J.D. vance's house to discuss the Epstein problem. They have this as convicted child trafficker who enabled child rape. Ghislaine Maxwell claims Trump never did anything that she saw that was concerning. Yeah, what a surprise. Thanks for telling me. You should have said so. Thank God you have a high bar. Microsoft's cloud platform used to surveil every call and text in Gaza since 2022. Trump regime to target JP Morgan and bank of America over supposed MAGA discrimination. You'll recall that interview we did with Lauren Windsor about the right going after bank of America because of their green energy investing. Trump regime reassigns FEMA employees to ICE and it's day two of 3,000 Boeing workers on strike in Missouri. And lastly, Miss USA 2025 files a restraining order against a Florida Republican congressman. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Welcome ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for joining us. Emma is off today. We will, we will get to all of those stories and more. Of course, today is not only the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. We're going to have somebody on over the next week or two to talk about not just the Voting Rights act, but more importantly relative to the Voting Rights act is Section 2 Supreme Court last week, I think it was Friday night took a case that is directly aimed at section 2. You'll recall this is the same Supreme Court that has been dismantling the Voting Rights act bit by bit since 2013. Section 2 is the part of the Voting Rights act that ensures in the wake of Jim Crow, that large communities of underrepresented people, black, brown people, often cannot be gerrymandered out of having their will as a majority in certain districts kept from essentially electing people of their preference. So the idea is that, you know, if you gerrymander in a certain way, you could take a state that has a 40% black represent black population and diminish the black vote by taking bits and pieces of that 40%. And usually people are, you know, you have communities. So people are living next to each other, geographically segregated, often in these areas, and just taking bits and pieces, shoving them into other districts and preventing any black representation in those districts. And Section two is on the chopping block. We will get to that over the next week or two. But it's an important thing to keep in mind because that's what's happening in Texas. The redistricting would strip the ability of Latinos to exercise their political power commensurate with the size of their population. And not just Latinos, but also black people. More on that later. In the meantime, you'll recall yesterday we played a clip of Donald Trump on Squawk Box. He's getting nervous, I think, because of the jobs numbers and somehow his magic tariffs and his immigration policies are not working the way that he's been told or he is under the impression they're going to work. Or maybe he doesn't care. But we are starting to see signs of stagflation, job losses and a lack of productivity, the GDP shrinking. So he was on Squawk Box yesterday, and you'll recall he claimed that his approval rating is at 70%, which would be very astonishing. You'll recall Republicans are at 94 and 95%. No, I'm talking about generally. I have. Let me put it this way. There was a gentleman on Harry Emden yesterday on cnn and he went crazy over how well Trump was doing. Now, you know, you don't put that on because I think CBS is a shade. Actually, CNN's a shade better than NBC. I think NBC is probably the worst of them all. But if you check CNN tomorrow, watch Harry Emden and you'll see about the numbers. But that's okay. We have to defend. So we decided today is tomorrow and we decided to check in with Harry Emden. And after not being able to find Harry Emden, we ended up settling on Harry Entin. Listen, was the president correct about the polling, though?

[Harry Enten]

No, I don't think the President was correct. You know, I give him a fair shake. I don't give him a positive spin. Look, he is not at the highest point he's ever been. Take a look at his net approval rating. Where it is right now. It's negative. He's underwater. Right. You compare that to where he was at the beginning of this term. He, he was six points above water. Now he's nine points below water. If we are comparing him to other presidents at this point in their presidencies, he is the second lowest on record, compared only to himself, who does worse. If we're comparing him to other second terms, he's certainly in the bottom of the list, not nearly all the way at the bottom. Richard Nixon was at a worse position at this point. But when you're comparing yourself to Richard Nixon and you're saying that you're doing better than Richard Nixon in your second term, that's not exactly a good position to be in.

[Sam Seder]

Now, what I find a little bit annoying about this is that the shorter answer is no. He completely lied. He's not anywhere close to 70% approval rating. He's closer to 30% approval rating than he is 70%. He's at something like, I don't know, 43% approval rating. I wonder if they're a little bit nervous in being that explicit. But the short answer is no. Of course, Trump completely lied. And what's fascinating is he lied with a citation that wasn't. It's not like you have to go. It's not like you have to get a J Store, you know, registration, library. Exactly. They just turn on your stupid tv and of course they're talking about it the next day. I just wonder if he doesn't. If they, like, as soon as they showed him highlights, if as soon as the poll comes up, they run to cover the top where it says approval and disapproval, and they just think it's the opposite. Watch Harry Emden.

[Greg Mitchell]

But I know I said Harry Emden. It's not Harry Enten.

[Sam Seder]

I think, honestly, at cnn, they're probably like three days away from changing his name to Harry Emden just so that they don't get in trouble with Trump. All right, in a moment, we're going to be talking to Greg Mitchell. He has, he has directed multiple movies on documentaries, I should say, on the dropping of bombs on Nagasaki in Hiroshima, and specifically the way the US Government has what they have done in terms of propagandizing this. And his latest is the Atomic bowl. And it is now playing on PBS. Today is the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. His documentary is about Nagasaki. That 80th anniversary is tomorrow. Is it tomorrow? No, the 9th. The night. I believe that's Friday. Oh, today's the 6th, right? Three days from today. We'll be talking to him in just a moment. Just a couple of words from our sponsors. 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It is a pleasure to welcome back to the program Greg Mitchell, journalist, author, writer, director of multiple documentaries and his most recent the Atomic Bowl Football at Ground Zero and Nuclear Apparel today. Greg, welcome back to the program.

[Adam Bonica]

Thank you. Always happy to be here.

[Sam Seder]

Today is the 80th anniversary of Hiroshima and we're three days off from the 80th anniversary of the bomb being dropped on Nagasaki and characterized for us how I mean the thing that you focus on seems to me in terms of like, you know, with a decent sense of your body of work, at least in the context of the atom bombs, is both to reveal what's been covered up and the idea that it was covered up at the time and that history was revised almost contemporaneous. Contemporaneous to the dropping of the bomb. You start with a football game. This is nuts. I mean, I had no idea about this. But a football game that was played at ground zero. Walk us through that football game and why you started there. Okay.

[Adam Bonica]

Well again, the bomb was dropped on August 9, 1945. The US occupation of Japan began about six weeks later. Tens of thousands of troops then went into Hiroshima and Nagasaki and began this occupation which very few people really know much about. Much of the focus is on the European occupation. Not much know about Japan and certainly even fewer know about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The huge number of people in there. So, and of course, so the first part of the film talks about the soldiers arriving and the problems they faced, the radiation they were still exposed to. They weren't warned very much. It was not monitored very well. And there are all sorts of, you know, conflicts with the Japanese and attempts at friendship and so on and so forth. And then in December 1945, a military commander had the idea of having a football game in Japan with an all star military teams. And for some reason he decided to have it in Nagasaki of all places. And they even cleared a field in front of a middle school where 175 students and teachers have been killed in by the bomb. This is like four months later. So it was a true killing field you might say. And so they scheduled this game and it was quite a, got quite a bit of publicity at the time. It featured a Heisman Award winner, Angelo Bertelli, a quarterback from Notre Dame, and one of the top pro running backs, Bill Osmansky of the Chicago Bears. So it got a lot of press attention at the time. I go into sort of, this is first real exploration of this game. I've got the first photos and first hand accounts and so forth. So none of this has really come out before or very, very, very little. And. And it got a lot of publicity for a couple days in the US Press. It was dubbed the Atomic Bowl. This was back in the days when all the bowl games were played on New Year's Day. It was what you did on New Year's Day. And so this was played on New Year's Day 1946 and got a lot of early publicity. And then for Some reason it got sort of lost to history. The media never printed any photos, they never returned. Nagasaki itself has gotten very little coverage over the years. But this game kind of disappeared the start. The players never talked about it with their children. I talked to several of the children of players and it really kind of disappeared in the history. So, you know, we can speculate on exactly why that was, whether they ultimately the Americans felt shame or not. It wasn't that important in the scheme of things how we were viewed after the use of these two atomic bombs. And you know, that kind of, you want to say backlash set in later.

[Sam Seder]

Was the impetus to, and we should say the. They had to play two hand touch because of both like shards of glass on the field. But also there was a sense of like there could be because of maybe the radiation fallout. And was the game itself a way to sort of say like, I mean, was there rumors or, you know, the US Government had a sense of what the implications of this radiation was not as widely known outside of that. Was this a sort of a way? Was this, I guess like analogous to, I don't know, Barack Obama going and drinking Flint, drinking water and saying like, I mean, was it one of those type of things?

[Adam Bonica]

Well, it's interesting it wasn't covered that way, but it's certainly the image. I mean, I'm sure many people at the time when they first read about it, some would have said, oh cool. And some of them would have said, really, they can play football there. But the fact is that soldiers have been stationed there and going in and out of ground zero and clearing the rubble and drinking the water, as many said. And already by January 1st, you know, there were many who were complaining of health effects. You know, we talk about it a bit in the film, you know, that they were suffering from, you know, teeth falling out and all sorts of skin issues and hair falling out and things like that. And then of course when they came back to the States, these reports continued and ultimately there were reports of, you know, leukemia and cancer and so on and so forth. So, you know, the government denied it for many decades. They then started offering some compensation many, many years later, 50 years later. So you can't, it's not like with most things with radiation, you can't say X caused Y. But certainly the symbolism of playing a game right at where you had just wiped out 75,000 people, I guess could. The message could be different for different people. But you know, it's certainly when people hear about it today, they're horrified. And just to Mention another kind of incident that kind of goes with it in a way was about three months after the atomic bowl, you know, and I write about this in my book and in the film the military sponsored a misatomic bomb.

[Sam Seder]

That was my next question because that's.

[Adam Bonica]

A beauty pageant in Nagasaka. I mean, Japanese women and they had missed atomic bomb beauty pageant in the Nagasaki. So, you know, there certainly doesn't sound like there was a sense of we should really turn the page and quietly go about our business here.

[Sam Seder]

But it does feel like that Ms. Atomic Bomb sounds to me like trying to, you know, make the bomb feel like a friendly. Like a friendly thing. On some level, we would call that.

[Adam Bonica]

Normalizing or sane washing. You might watch this film and say this is a great example of sane watching, as we would call it today. But yeah, I mean, that happened. And of course, the occupation went on for a few more years and then the US left and this whole incident got lost to history. And I think it's. I mean, we could do four more shows just talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And with Nagasaki, I've always written more about than a lot of people because it's always been the forgotten bomb. And there are so many lessons and warnings from Nagasaki that aren't, you know, even beyond Hiroshima. So I was happy to be able to do a film focusing mainly on Nagasaki, which, you know, to this date is still the, you know, little explored and, you know, little talked about.

[Sam Seder]

Well, what I did not know until your film, and we should say also there is a companion book as well, that Truman didn't even know that this was gonna happen. How is he.

[Adam Bonica]

Okay, go on.

[Sam Seder]

How does that happen?

[Adam Bonica]

Well, it was, I like to call the. Or I hate to call, I'm not sure which, the Nagasaki bombing, the assembly line, or the first automated atomic attack because he did give an order weeks earlier for to use the bombs as they're ready. Okay, so you had this momentous Hiroshima blast. He had a. They'd worked for weeks on it. And now how it would be announced. They would also be announcing the fact that the Manhattan Project, the invention. There was a lot to unpack 80 years ago today as we're speaking, and Nagasaki was like an after. It was like three days later. Thanks to General Leslie Groves, who pushed. Was a super hawk, you might say, on this head of the Manhattan Project, thanks to him pushing, promoting, they really pushed that second bomb forward. And Nagasaki wasn't even the primary target. But that's a whole other story, I guess. So Nagasaki gets bombed and Truman, who's coming back from Potsdam on a ship, is surprised to learn of this. Yes, he knew they we might have other bombs to drop or it might happen, but he hadn't given a specific order. In fact, Groves bragged that he didn't need Truman's okay in this. So there's evidence that Truman was surprised and that in whatever case, the next day he ordered the explicit order no more bombs would be dropped. We had one more ready and could have been others soon. But he explicitly and even referred to he didn't want to see more. More kids killed, as he put it. Of course, maybe 100,000 kids had already been killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but he didn't want any more kids killed. So Nagasaki is, in some ways, it's always, I don't say left a bad taste. With many members of the media and historians who have embraced the Hiroshima bombing, there's always been this kind of, well, Nagasaki kind of sounds like a war crime maybe. And so let's not. Let's ignore it. But there have been others like Marty Sherwin and Kurt Vonnegut, of course, called Nagasaki, next to human slavery, the worst crime of last 300 years. And others said similar things. So in that kind of plays into the film and the bomb, the football game, because there was a sense of Nagasaki. It's a third rail. It's a raw nerve. It's kind of nasty. So I think it's worth exploring that and then bringing it to the present day. What are the lessons or what's happened since then?

[Sam Seder]

Walk us through some of those lessons relative to. To Hiroshima. We should also say one other thing I found fascinating was the orders were that if you did not have clear vision of the target, you don't drop the bomb. They did not have clear vision of the target. They dropped the bomb not where they had anticipated it or were planning to. And I think it was maybe to a mile to the. I can't. Off of target, which ultimately may have actually inadvertently saved lives. Right. But walk us through what are the distinct lessons of Nagasaki as opposed to Hiroshima?

[Adam Bonica]

Yeah, well, that's a good question. I mean, just talk about distinctions of Nagasaki. One was that unlike Hiroshima, it did not have a major military base and there were less than 500 military personnel were killed, and the rest were all civilians. So you get a little bit of that. I mean, the fact is we could, you know, if Hiroshima showed that we could, in a way, consider civilians, you know, collateral damage or acceptable loss of life, Nagasaki really made that kind of a horror story. And, you know, we see the lesson today with all the, and we should.

[Sam Seder]

Say Nagasaki, I mean, up to, I don't know, 70, 80,000 people. I don't know if we can know exactly. But I mean, certainly no less than 50,000 people die.

[Adam Bonica]

Yeah, yeah, probably more than that. But that's, that's a low end. But that's fine. But I mean, but the, you know, so you have that. Of course, we see this in Gaza today. There are people who compare images of Gaza from the air with what Nagasaki looked like. It's really not that far off, not as limited. You didn't have, you don't have fallout today, radiation, things like that. But so, I mean, that's one thing. You mentioned this, the bombing of Nagasaki and the cloud cover they went on. Nagasaki was not the primary target. It was almost like a drone attack of today's modern drone attack. It's like they sent General Grove, sent this plane off with the payload and it got to Kokura and then decided, well, that's too much cloud cover. So this plane, or like almost drone flew on to Nagasaki. It also was covered by clouds and they found that. They thought they might have found a small gap, so they dropped the bomb. No matter what, they were going to drop the bomb or ditch it in the ocean. So they dropped the bomb again, something a drone might do. And, and as you said, it landed over a mile off target. And then the plane barely made it back to the base because of a broken fuel pump. And again, it's sort of like the crew was expendable and the ship was. The B29 was expendable. So again, sort of like a drone today. It also has, in a way, has elements of AI where AI is making decisions to go ahead with this bombing run at the earliest possible time instead of Groves making a decision. It could have been an AI decision. It's going to go ahead and this is how it's going to be carried out. It's going to be carried out no matter what. And of course we see this warnings today about AI in our nuclear systems. So that's just a couple. There are even more. But the Nagasaki bombing is, you know, it does have these lessons and, you know, of course some people feel it was justified.

[Sam Seder]

Okay.

[Emma Vigeland]

I'm still here.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah. Has the, has the, is your sense that there has been any sort of significant change in the perception of both Nagasaki and Hiroshima or specifically one or the other over the past, I don't know, several decades? I mean, I know you've been writing about this topic for years in different ways. And really, I mean, you know, I think to the extent that there have been people's minds changed, I would imagine that you're one of, you know, the, one of the main, you know, one of major reasons at least out there in terms of pursuing the reinterpretation of this stuff. But has is it your sense that there's a people reflecting on this differently?

[Adam Bonica]

Well, actually, it's a very timely question because just last week I was writing about a new Pew survey. Gars Pugh is a very well respected pollster and they did their first poll in a long time on this very question. And so you'll be interested in the results. Traditionally, Gallup and others who've done polls have found about maybe 53% support the bombing of Hiroshima and maybe 41 opposed it, and the rest don't know enough to say anything. This Pew survey found kind of a dramatic change. So roughly, I don't have the number, but it was roughly 35% supporting the bombing, 30% opposing, and 30% who didn't have an opinion, of course, reflects the maybe lack of knowledge that a lot of people have now today, but it was the closest we've ever seen to an even split. And then a lot of other people, let's say persuadable. And the other interesting thing is that the first time I've ever seen they did a gender and age breakdown and there's a tremendous gender gap of women who oppose the bombing and a tremendous age gap with younger people opposing it. So it's quite dramatic, maybe a turning of the tide on this. So we'll see. But I do think that the Hiroshima narrative is changing a bit. I will add though that this poll, I've never seen any poll, did not specifically ask about Nagasaki. They didn't say, what do you think about the Roche bombing then? What do you think about now? You would have had a lot more people would have said, I don't have an opinion on the Nagasaki because I don't know hardly anything about it. But nevertheless, I've never seen it broken down with the two separate bombings.

[Sam Seder]

Greg Mitchell, the movie is the Atomic Bowl, Football at Ground Zero and Nuclear Peril Today. And of course, there is also a book we will link to. Both folks can watch the film right now on, on, on pbs, his site. Is that the case?

[Emma Vigeland]

Right.

[Adam Bonica]

It's, it's airing on PBS stations, but on different nights and different places. So I can't really give it like Ken Burns might be able to give you a date, but, but it's PBS.org it's streaming any PBS app you have in your TV or on your phone. You can find it easily. So it's streaming everywhere and it's showing on stations around the country, but on different dates.

[Sam Seder]

And again, we will link to that in the podcast and YouTube description. Greg, thanks for coming on and talking to us about this.

[Adam Bonica]

Thank you, Sam. I appreciate your interest.

[Sam Seder]

All right, folks, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to be talking to Adam Bonica. He is an associate professor of political science at Stanford, publisher of the On Data and Democracy substack. And he did a deep dive into an enterprise called the Mothership, which has raised millions upon millions upon millions of dollars from presumably Democratic donors, likely online via emails. You've definitely gotten emails from them. And it turns out something like I can't even say 2 cents per dollar has ended up to candidates. We'll take a quick break. We'll talk to Adam Bona right after.

[Greg Mitchell]

Live.

[Sam Seder]

We are back. Sam Cedar on the Majority Report. Emma Viglin is out today. Want to welcome to the program Adam Bonica, associate professor of political science at Stanford, publisher of On Data and Democracy substack. We'll put a link to that, of course. Adam, am I saying your last name right?

[Emma Vigeland]

Bonica.

[Sam Seder]

Bonica. Okay. I always have to ask because 90% of the time I am not saying it right. Anybody's last name. This story, I mean, it's not so much. I mean. Well, walk us through that. What is Mothership? Let's start with that.

[Emma Vigeland]

Okay. So Mothership is a Democratic fundraising consulting firm. It is a outgrowth of the dccc. So the Democratic Campaign Congressional Campaign Committee. So it's one of the big national party committees that focuses on fundraising to help Democrats win election elections and congressional seats.

[Sam Seder]

Mothership, we should say Mothership is a, is a firm. It's an outgrowth in the sense that for that people who used to work for the dccc.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes.

[Sam Seder]

That's what it essentially privatized, decided they're not going to work for the D triple C anymore. They're going to do what they were doing at the D triple C, but they're just going to do it for themselves for profit.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

Yes.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. And so they left the dccc. There are three former staffers there and they founded this firm and they took the sort of dirtiest tactics that were being used by the party at the time to fundraise and they just turned up the knob to like 11. And early on what they did is they started up their own pac, which was called N Citizens United. Some of you may have encountered it because they spam you all the time. And they started to use that as their first client. And they started to build a business off of this. Fast forward. That was back in 2014 when they founded it, 2015, when Incidence United came out. And they have been sort of in the shadows of democratic fundraising for quite some time now. And over time, they have sort of built this network of PACs that have been using these tactics, like the spam tactics, to fundraise a lot of money, and most of it has either been spent on fundraising expenses or been funneled back to Smothership Strategies as a firm.

[Sam Seder]

So it's almost like I'm trying to make an analogy that people would understand, but it would be, I start my podcast, and then I also start an advertising business, and I pay myself the advertising. I pay the advertising business 35% of what podcast does. And then also I have a temp agency that sends out producers, and I pay the temp agency to send me producers. So I'm basically just. I'm dealing with myself. I've. I've. I've opened up all these different satellite shops around me that ultimately pay me in, like, I have six different revenue streams. So this is out there. We should also say, I think in Citizens United right now. I read somewhere that they actually were like, sending out an email with a poll talking about corruption, which I thought was rather poetic. So this mothership, these guys come from the thing. And I remember that era of DCCC emailing, there was a lot of concern by activists and people sort of like, in the fundraising world, that this whole strategy of sending emails saying, like, we're gonna lose. We're, you know, like. And every 15 minutes, we're doomed. Yes. Well, there's a term for it that you use in your piece, like churn and burn, essentially.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, yeah. So churn and burn.

[Sam Seder]

Tell us the different philosophies that you could have theoretically for fundraising. We get to the sort of. Really the most grotesque part about mothership.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. So, I mean, I should state up front that in terms of the fundraising strategies, the reason I started investing, looking into all this, is because this approach to fundraising, where you're essentially being deceptive, predatory, and trying to find marks who will donate to you, is just hugely detrimental to the party's reputation. And so one of the strategies that has really taken hold among a lot of these sort of powerful fundraisers is this churn and burn strategy, where you just Say whatever you need to say. You make up stuff. You try to confuse people to like click on your links. You say that like, you say like there's a $800 match. These are all lies, right? These are very deceptive tactics. So that Churn and Burn is basically do any you can to raise a buck. A better fundraising strategy is one where you inspire donors through having good policies or doing something courageous to donate to further the cause. And I think that's the dichotomy here where you can think of getting people to donate to you because you're doing good things and you're inspiring them. That's the model that should be forefront. The model right now of this Churn and Burn is just, it is doing so much damage to trust between the party and donors and trust between the brand of the party now is the party.

[Sam Seder]

And I want to make sure that we distinguish here between the party in terms of like and mothership. With that said, and then we could talk about though the problematic sort of, you know, they would call it synergy or that exists there. But I want to, you know, like, it seems that the Churn and Burn is not as intense as it was at other periods and that some politicians choose to use it and some don't based on that. I mean, you know, and. But if your mothership, you don't pass policies, right? Like, you don't, you're not people. The deceit is a lot of times where it's like Zoran Mamdani has won and you know, help support Zoran's, you know, policies by donating here. And it's really just like anybody could say that about anything, right? Like I could say, you know, you know, America's, you could, I mean, this or on thing is a perfect example. They probably done that, I would say. And that's the deception, right? Like the idea that somehow this money is going to go somehow support Zoran and in fact it's not, but it's not even going to support anybody. That's really sort of the most scandalous thing. I mean like we can have debates, it seems to me, about what's, what's an effective email strategy and are there moments where we desperately need money to get people on the ground game? And so yes, we're, we're, we're, we're going to sacrifice, you know, best long term email practices over the next three months and, and do it. But I mean that's, that's, you know, sort of debatable, arguable I guess. You know, but the Rest of it is just astonishing. Walk us through how you found out where the money was going.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, so that was. I started out with the debate that you were just talking about. Like, I just thought it was not a good strategy. And so I looked into. Okay, so who is sending me all these texts? I literally just received one right before I got on about Texas redistricting. That has nothing to do with it. I was getting these spam texts. Well, there's an identifiable set of packs that are sending it. And so I went and just started looking at those packs. So I spend a lot of time in campaign finance data. It's sort of the area of my research. And so I started pulling on this thread of, okay, all these spam packs. Where are they? Where are they? Like, who are they paying? What are the firms that are central to this operation? And they all led back to this one operation, Mothership Strategies. And it was not a difficult thing to find. And so I've included, like, all the data online. You can just sort of look it up yourself on the FEC website. It's just a very clear pattern of. You just look up these packs. If someone spams, you look up the pack on the FEC and see who they're paying money to. They happen to be this sort of nexus of PACs where they're doing transfers between each other. And so, for instance, Progressive Turnout Project is one of the main ones where a lot of the other PACs, like Stop Republicans will send money to Progressive Turnout Project. And then Progressive Turnout is sort of like a shell game where they'll raise a bunch of money, transfer it over to another pac. And so it's harder to track. But it doesn't take that much work to just look at these patterns of transfers and these patterns of spending. And you can sor. To track how much money is going back to Mothership. And it's. It's most of it.

[Sam Seder]

Okay, so who. Who started these packs? Like, I. I was not terribly savvy to how a PAC can be a scam in and of itself. Like, and years ago, I knew a guy who, you know, I was sympathetic. He was setting up a PAC to help unions. And so I did a little something to help promote. Promote it. I may have interviewed him. I can't remember exactly, but it wasn't until later where I'm like, wait a second. He's not taking any money from the pac, but the PAC was sending him, was covering all his expenses to go and give talks to unions who would pay him money. And the whole thing was like just a way to get other people to cover part of his essentially business thing. And I became very skeptical of PACs. There are some, obviously, that are good and are genuinely. And they're transparent. But who owns these different PACs, like, who started them?

[Emma Vigeland]

So often that information is only partially transparent. What you can see is that there's about four or five of the main packs that have been feeding Mothership are run by the same treasurer. So you can identify who the person who's sort of running the operations of the pack is. I believe his name is Harry Pascal. And there's like, networks of these that sort of exist. And that's. That's part of the issue. Like, so if you set up like multiple packs and you're transferring money between them, and then all this money is being funneled up to one strategy firm, that becomes. Raises a bunch of questions about what you're exactly doing with that money. And so, for instance, I mentioned Progressive Turnout Project. They're a pack that, like, they claim to focus on turnout efforts, and yet They've raised about $10.8 million so far this election cycle. And so far they've already spent 9.2, and there hasn't been an election. So it's hard to really make sense of where. If that's going towards turnout efforts.

[Sam Seder]

And so if I follow, what happens is a Progressive Turnout project will raise $10 million, let's just say, or let's just call it Progressive Progressive Project just for the sake of. And they raised $10 million and they send 5 million to, you know, Progressive Win Project, and they spend. Send 3 million to Progressive Progressive. Progressive Win Project. And now it looks like, okay, they're sending money out to other operations, but all three of these operations are funneling 80% of that money to Mothership for services rendered, essentially. And so each one looks like they're distributing to other places. They're not spending the money. We're just helping other entities that are doing good stuff. And they all just happen to use Mothership as a. Okay. And so. And this is legal, we should say.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, this is. As far as I can tell, all of this is legal. I have not uncovered any legal activity as far as I know.

[Sam Seder]

It's amazing. I mean, these are. Would they refer to themselves as political or social entrepreneurs? I guess. And so in what does then the Mothership do? I mean, aside from obviously pay their people. But I mean, there's costs associated with sending out a bunch of emails and texts and this and that. But it's all just Sort of business costs. How much money ends up going to clients like the number that you found. Since 2018, Mothership linked PACs raised approximately $678 million. This number excludes money raised by other the firm's other clients, like candidate campaigns. So they have some candidates. I mean, I went to Mothership website. It's sort of fascinating, but specifically on this sort of like, network, almost like this beltway of PACs. Of that total fundraising haul, 159 million was paid directly to Mothership Strategies for consulting fees. That's not the expenses associated with sending out stuff. That's just like, how do we do this? And that's the vast majority of, well, not the vast, but more than half of what Mothership has been paid by all of its clients. So what appears to be 60% of its business is just raising money really for themselves. And then they're surrounded. Then they sort of like put, you know, some. I wouldn't call it window dressing, but it's sort of like, it's almost like if I'm not suggesting any criminal activity here, I'm just coming up with an analogy. I'm, you know, and I'm not saying that Mothership is money laundering at all, but like, if I had a sporting goods store and was getting money funneled in there, but I'd still really try and sell sporting goods. And so I'd have two revenue streams. The sporting goods store and then this sort of like, other one that is sort of a little bit more dubious. What is the relate. So they're building relationships. I just want to make like, understand like why they have been able. I mean, surely people have, have been aware of this and you. And I don't know. I don't know if you know and it would be good if there was reporting, but I, but it seems hard to imagine that a professional in this industry wouldn't be aware of this yet. Mothership has developed. Had preexisting relationships with the Democratic Party. They're doing fundraising for other people. Like, you know, I went to his. Their website. It's also fascinating. There is no about us on the website. Like, you can't tell who this is. They just sort of forefront the their clients and they mix in their clients. It's interesting because they do you. You can go to their website and almost sort of expresses that dynamic. Like it shows like all the different people here, you know, Bold Democrats and Citizens United Equality pac. And then there's Jon Ossoff and Jaime Harrison for and Demand Justice. I mean, you know, Demand justice is a very, I think, legitimate organization and actually like, very clearly has an agenda, but it's sitting next to, you know, defend the vote and I don't know, you know, like PACs that are a little bit dubious. Does that seem to be like, what's going on there?

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, it's. There are a network of PACs that basically just exist to be in this mothership infrastructure. But then there are a bunch of packs that are genuinely legitimate and have just thought decided that these tactics, which are extremely underhanded handed and predatory, are acceptable ways to proceed. And I think that's sort of how you think about it. It's not. This is condoned by many aspects of the Democratic establishment is one way to think about it. But there's a lot of people in that arena who really dislike what this is and have been pushing back. And so I think one of the big questions is what does sort of the Democratic establishment do now? Do they try to snuff this out or do they allow it to proceed as it's been? It's technically profitable, but it's not actually producing significant resources in the way that you would want to win elections.

[Sam Seder]

It's just sort of like a. It's these guys just saying, like, well, we need a subsidy to do this, when in fact you really don't. I mean, that's a pretty juicy subsidy. I imagine you've gotten a lot of emails over the past. You published this, I think, only a day or two ago. And I imagine you've heard from a ton of people, both reporters and Democratic operatives, who are coming and going. Like, I've noticed this. Is there anything, like, in a vague sense, can you tell us, like, what you've maybe seen from Democrats, both, like, sort of like DNC people and.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. So there are a lot of people who like, work in Democratic politics who have been like, someone's found mothership. Like, they've known about this and they're like, they, they dislike it. They really hate the tactics. And so there's, there's that element of it. There's another element of people who are like, I've. And this is sort of really sad that people like I've been giving to these PACs, and I had no idea and I've been struggling to, you know, like, work it into my budget. And, you know, these are, this is where sort of like the predatory tactics come in. So I've heard a lot from a lot of those people, and that sort of breaks my heart that they've been taken for a Ride. The one group I have not heard from is the DCCC or the DSCC or the dnc. I've not heard anything from them and I am unsure how they're going to respond to this all.

[Sam Seder]

Is there anybody out there that you're aware of that has just like a clearinghouse of like, you know, you see things like charity navigators, Is there a D, you know, a center to the left, you know, PAC navigator.

[Emma Vigeland]

So a lot of people pointed to Charles Gaba's website. I don't have the exact website. Generally speaking, if you're giving directly on ActBlue to candidates, that's going to be legit for the most part. I wouldn't worry about that.

[Sam Seder]

That's why, incidentally, the Trump regime is coming after ActBlue. That's because that is the most efficient way, both in multiple ways. Most efficient way to support Democratic candidates.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes. Yeah. Is ActBlue in terms of like candidates fundraising on the site that's not implicated at all in this? I would hope that ActBlue and they are working to sort of clear out these types of less legitimate packs. And so I know that they have efforts internally where they're trying to make sure that there's less of this on the platform and more of the legitimate fundraising.

[Sam Seder]

How does these PACs get their email or phone number lists?

[Emma Vigeland]

I would love to know the answer to that. My assumption is that they purchase them somehow, but that's not transparent at all in the FEC data.

[Sam Seder]

Interesting. And you were saying that Gaba's site has at least some type of clearinghouse of ranking of these things.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes. Like when I went to a site, it sort of lists out all the different races and candidates that you could be giving to. It's just sort of a nice way to just break everything down to see like who's running in your district, who might be running in your state, who might be running in competitive districts. And it just links to that blue pages. And again, so it's just sort of an easier way to make sure that you can navigate this whole fundraising mess where you don't have to worry so much about being caught up with any of the, any packs that may not have the candidates interest at front and center.

[Sam Seder]

And does anybody know how to get off these lists? I mean I have always had multiple email addresses that I use as like not burner accounts but like spam accounts. I was very fortunate like 15 years ago to have some tech guys say like, oh, I've got a spam email. And I'm like, oh, they'll do that. Is there any way once you're on. Because it just seems like they just sell it around and around.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, I mean, this is something that people have been commenting on. They're saying, like I say, stop to quit, like it says, and then they just send it from like another, another one of these groups. Right. So there's not, to my knowledge, an easy way to get off the list. The answer to this is hopefully having someone with authority at the party level decide that they should not be part of the fundraising ecosystem and get ourselves off, like, get everyone off the list.

[Sam Seder]

How would that happen? I mean, I know this isn't necessarily your part of your portfolio, but I mean, would the chair of the Democratic Party say anybody works. Until I am convinced that mothership is in compliance with these ethical guidelines, anybody who works with them, we're cutting off. Is that basically it?

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, you just put them on a list and say, anyone who work that firm and anyone who is a vendor for that firm is on a list of vendors and consultants that are not going to get paid by the party. And the party is going to say that they're. The candidate shouldn't pay them either. If you have a, you know, they tried to do like there was an attempt to do that with consultants who had worked for primary challengers, they have the ability to do it. And that's not something outside of their, their purview. They should be policing the space. They have a responsibility to do that.

[Sam Seder]

Again, this might be a little bit outside your portfolio, but it seems to me that there is, this is not, on its face, part of an interesting ideological battle, but one step forward or back downstream or upstream from feels like. It seems to me that it is, that there is a consultant class within the Democratic Party that we have this problem with Harris's campaign that was a lot of money. And we know that media buys enriches consultants much more than, let's say, canvassing does. And there is just a sort of corporate mentality about, like, I'm here. I, you know, the days of the company man, you know, that was a quaint notion in the 50s. It's really like, I'm here, I'm in a corporate structure. How do I enrich myself as much as possible within this sort of like consultant world? And that, to me has some ideological basis, it feels like.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, I think the framework I tend to think about it in is sort of like a more traditional establishment versus anti establishment framework within the party. For instance, there are a lot of candidates, a lot of Members of the Democratic Party who really dislike the consulting class as it exists. And that's one of the dividing lines within the party. And I think it breaks along the sort of traditional establishment versus more anti establishment element to the party and that can break across ideological, sort of like progressive versus more centrist framework. You can be anti establishment anywhere along that framework. And I think that's a really important divide within the party right now and one that's playing out that I think that this is the election cycle where the party decides whether it's going to move forward with this traditional consulting class or whether it's going to try to do something different.

[Sam Seder]

I guess, you know, and one thing to watch out in the event that that happens. There's one thing to shatter the old boy network, for lack of a better term, which undoubtedly involves people of all genders and, and ages, but the old boy network, you don't want it to be replaced by just a new boy network as much as you want one to be replaced by a competent network. And that's always a danger. Well, I hope that there are a half a dozen reporters who have contacted you and for the stories that they're going to write on this because this feels like something where the more exposure it gets and frankly the more blame the Democratic Party apparatus gets, whether they're directly responsible for this or not, the more pressure on them because they are the ones who are in most the best position to shut this down. Are there other entities aside from mothership that you've come across? Are you starting, is this like, become like a little bit of a project where you're, you're starting to look at other, other constellations of these super PACs or is this is the mothership, the mothership of this?

[Emma Vigeland]

I haven't, but there is good research in political science that uses machine learning methods to identify scam packs. And so I just wrote this a few days ago, as you noticed, but I am looking into whether, you know, I can make, you know, broader research agenda out of looking for how to identify these types of groups building off of existing research. And so it's a known problem and I'm only adding a little bit to the broader perspective. But I think this is a really important spoke and hub of this type of bad actor in the space. And so I do hope that there is a response.

[Sam Seder]

Well, we're going to link back to your sub stack to this specific piece and the substack more broadly so that we can follow up on the work you do and really appreciate it. I Feel like something that there was a. People maybe had a vague awareness that there was something wrong here. And I think this is clearly it and maybe more. But really appreciate the work and you're coming on to talk about it.

[Emma Vigeland]

Thanks for having me on. This was great.

[Sam Seder]

All right, folks, we're going to. We again will link to Adam Bonica's piece and his substack on data and democracy. Somebody making fun of my.

[Greg Mitchell]

Just, like, just announced the launching of matpac.

[Sam Seder]

Oh, congratulations. That's great. That's great. It honestly is as easy as that. I mean, you need to file. You need to file. But I mean, I. The thing is, so much of this happens on the right. So much of it happens on the right. And the real problem, well, aside from it being predatory, Trump does this on a daily basis. I mean, someone put us on the. We sign up for Republican mailers and our email inbox has emails from Trump three times a day. They're coming for me. And it's, keep your wallet out. And, yeah, here's a, you know, like a coin to buy or whatever the hell is. A bigger problem is that there's just not as much resources, broadly speaking, that are floated around. I mean, I know it looks like it, but there's just simply not as much resources, the center or left, and certainly not as much resources. If grandma's given money or you're giving money or your kid's given money, you want that to go to candidates and ideas that you really legitimately support. You know, just because the name progressive is in there, or equality or End Citizens United, Let America Vote Progressive Caucus, you know, these, you know, elect women.

[Greg Mitchell]

The whole churn and burn conversation is fascinating because, you know, I think a lot of the unpopularity is because of, you know, the support for a genocide and that sort of thing. But how much of it is because they've been doing this thing and you search churn and burn sales technique strategy where companies focus on aggressively acquiring new customers while neglecting customer retention, leading to high customer turnover, AKA something you can only do for so long.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah.

[Greg Mitchell]

And so we decided to do it for like, the past five, 10 years.

[Sam Seder]

Well, I mean, if you're, look, if you're getting paid $70 million a year, how many years do you need to work for?

[Greg Mitchell]

Who cares if everyone hates the party in five years?

[Sam Seder]

No. Well, that's the thing is that like, I mean, this is not. This is not. I mean, you know, there is. I think it's important to distinguish, at least on some level, my candidate is going to Lose unless we have the money to put out, you know, paid support staff for volunteers. And so I'm going to use tactics that are short term tactics versus I'm going to make $70 million if I do this year. And if I could do it for two or three years, I am by myself. Epstein's Island. The fools.

[Greg Mitchell]

If we say fascism is coming, they click at a 3% higher rate.

[Sam Seder]

I, I, I, the only, the only thing I would argue about that statement is that it's probably at a higher rate. But those words undoubtedly wherever the, you know, because I'm on the mothership website and there is the only thing is careers or contact us. Like there's no, like, who are we? Come work with us. It is fully remote. God knows what you're doing. Okay, today's assignment. Today's assignment. Today's assignment. Wow. Means I can work from the Isle of Man. Actually, you know, listen, they get health care, generous time off, 401k profit sharing, student loan assistant. Are they really food and snacks? They send you food.

[Greg Mitchell]

What the free Uber eats.

[Sam Seder]

This is nuts. I mean, I may apply.

[Emma Vigeland]

Two weeks notice incoming.

[Sam Seder]

I'm actually getting really freaked out about this fascism now. All right, well, we're going to take a break and head into the fun half. We're going to start off with some disturbing ICE footage that we've got our hands on. This footage is from. Well, actually, let's play it now. This footage is from June 30th and in, out in LA, there was protest going on around Sepulveda and trying to stop ICE raids that were happening. Excuse me, July 30, out in LA. So about a week ago. And this footage is particularly disturbing because you're gonna have to look behind these ICE guys who are trying to block the camera person because behind them you can see that they have, they have restrained a guy who is presumably. Well, it's their target. I don't know, I don't know anything about him, but there's a guy with a 35 millimeter camera who is shooting pictures of this. The subject and the ICE guys, they have him constrained or restrained. Then it appears like the photographer says, give me that again. And they drop the guy to the ground and struggle with him more as the guy is taking pictures. So we got to go through this video somewhat slowly. This is really disturbing stuff. Now I know that the ACLU in LA has filed suits against ice and I think around at least involving events on this day. Okay, watch this. I'm gonna be right here, my friends. Okay? Stop it. Right there. You see the guy in the back in the darker suit? You can just. Yeah, right there where the. He's got a 35 millimeter camera. And you know, often you'll see these ICE guys with videos that they're shooting the protesters. This is their. The. This is basically publicity stills. We don't know what they're using it for, but go ahead. They cannot see you from your airplane. So the guy is standing. Right. They've got the guy constrained. They've got two guys on them. The guy in the white shirt behind there, he comes into frame right there. They've got him. Okay, so you can see and he. They right behind there, they've already got him. He's cuffed his hands behind his back. And they're gonna take him back down to the ground to take this way. Otherwise they just dropped him. Okay, now that guy right there with that. The cap that's facing us is now shooting pictures of him on the ground. You are going to be federally charged right there. Right? Whoa, dude, that's cool. This guy's cool. Oh, this guy's got a cafia. You got his name and number? Okay. It's Good thing they got 25 military geared up, guys. Are you ready for the court? Marshal? Are you in particular? You look like you wouldn't do well in prison. Any badges or faces? Badge, please, my friend. Badge number right now. We're not police. Yes, you are. You're federal officers. Yeah, we don't have badge numbers. Yes, you do, little boy. CB12.

[Emma Vigeland]

Loser.

[Sam Seder]

What? Don't worry about it, bro. You have a CN grenade. You're such a. Oh, my God. Right there. The guy's literally got some type of like, gas canister on his. I mean, this is just absurd, but they're using. They're. They're dropping this guy down to the ground to take like publicity stills or something. It's like Bukele, all the local CB, the border patrols, like, if you look at the Arizona 1, the SoCal 1, the El Central one, they're making like influencer videos for their. They're making like fake films about their arrests and everything with like color correction and like dramatic music and everything.

[Greg Mitchell]

It's exactly what Bukele's doing in El Salvador. These really glossy.

[Sam Seder]

We saw those from C. Cot Yeah.

[Greg Mitchell]

Seekot promotion videos where you can't actually get lawyers in there, but you can get film crews.

[Sam Seder]

We will, you know, find out what happens next. But that's basically one guy.

[Emma Vigeland]

One.

[Sam Seder]

They got one guy. They got one guy with Those six cars and all that gear, all the face masks, Insane. All right, just a reminder, your support is what makes this show possible. You can become a [e-mail] when you do, you not only get the free show, free of commercials, but you also also get the fun half and you can IM us and scary mountain wizard says everyone needs to do what that guy is doing. Just make fun of them to their faces. Without a doubt. Make fun, have fun again. Sam in MacArthur Park, La, you could see the same cameraman walking around filming. It's also like, I can't imagine there isn't any type of law about, like making a publicity video. Although the problem with like immigration, it's a sort of another world of law. And there's no. They've built this system now so that there's really no mechanism for accountability. Also, don't forget just coffee, co op, fair trade coffee, hot chocolate. Use the coupon code. Majority get 10% off. Matt left reckoning. Yeah.

[Greg Mitchell]

We had Kelly Chung on last night talking about her new book coercion and why abusers love abortion restrictions. I had no idea. I feel pretty naive that a lot of states won't let you get a divorce even if your husband's abusive, if you happen to be pregnant and other sorts of horrible things like the the snitch line that Texas tried to set up where he could report women for seeking abortion. So check that out. Last night left reckoning. Subscribe on YouTube patreon.com leftreckoning if you want to support my pack.

[Sam Seder]

See you in the fun half. Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now, but I think around 18 months out, we're going to look back and go like, wow, what? What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on for. Hold on for a second. Emma. Welcome to the program, Matt. What is up, everyone? One fun hack. No me ke. You did it. Fun hack. Let's go, Brandon. Let's go, Brandon. Fun hack. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappoint everyone. I'm just a random guy. It's all the boys today. Fundamentally false. No, I'm sorry. Women. Stop talking for a second. Let me finish. Where is this coming from, dude? But. Dude, you want to smoke this? Seven, eight, yes. Hi. This is me. Is it? Yes. Is this me? Is it me? It is you?

[Emma Vigeland]

Is this me?

[Sam Seder]

Oh, it's me. I think it is you. Who is you? No sound. Every single freaking day. What's on your mind?

[Adam Bonica]

We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism.

[Sam Seder]

I'm gonna go snow white. Libertarians.

[Greg Mitchell]

They're so stupid.

[Sam Seder]

Though common sense says. Of course. Gobbledygook. We nailed him. So what's 79 plus 21? Challenge man.

[Emma Vigeland]

I'm positive. Equivalent.

[Sam Seder]

I believe 96. I want to say. 8, 5, 7, 2, 1 0. 855-0-1 1 half. 3, 8, 9.

[Emma Vigeland]

11.

[Greg Mitchell]

Person.

[Sam Seder]

$3,419 hundred. 5, 4. $3 trillion. Sold. It's a zero sum game, actually. You're making me think less. But let me say this. You call it satire. Sam goes to satire on top of it all. Yeah. My favorite part about you is just like every day, all day, like everything you do. Without a doubt. Hey, buddy. We see you. All right, folks, folks, folks. It's just the week being weeded out. Obviously. Yeah. Sun's out, guns out. I. I don't know. But you should know, people just don't like to entertain ideas anymore. I have a question. Who cares?

[Greg Mitchell]

Our chat is enabled, folks.

[Sam Seder]

I love it. I do love that Mom. Gotta jump. Gotta be quick. I gotta jump. I'm losing it, bro. Two o', clock, we're already late and the guy's being a dick.

[Adam Bonica]

So screw him.

[Sam Seder]

Sent to a gulag. Outrageous. Like, what is wrong with you? Love you. Bye. Love you. Bye. Bye.