Best of 2025: 10 Ways to Prepare for Trump's Return w/ Daniel Hunter

Summary

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The Majority Report with Sam Seder

Episode: Best of 2025: 10 Ways to Prepare for Trump's Return w/ Daniel Hunter
Date: December 24, 2025
Guest: Daniel Hunter

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Overview

In this 'Best of 2025' episode of The Majority Report, Sam Seder and guest Daniel Hunter—a movement organizer, coach, and author—discuss “10 Ways to Prepare for Trump’s Return.” The episode focuses on practical, psychological, and strategic guidance for progressives, activists, and concerned citizens as they face the potential and reality of authoritarian policies under a second Trump administration. The conversation is both a candid assessment and a motivational roadmap, balancing frank warnings with the encouragement to find grounding, solidarity, and new strategies against authoritarianism.

The episode also features Sam's signature irreverence and humor, and opens with a classic 'war on Christmas' cable news appearance, followed by cutting, satirical analysis of the right-wing media’s defense of Elon Musk’s controversial gestures at the Trump inauguration.

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Key Segments & Insights

1. Holiday Satire and “War on Christmas” Flashback

• [09:00-18:57]
  Sam reminisces about his appearance on CNN discussing the "War on Christmas" with Bob Knight, lambasting the manufactured outrage over secular holiday greetings. He lampoons right-wing paranoia, comparing it to the Iraq War pretext, and deftly skewers the self-victimization that shapes much of conservative media's culture war narrative.

  Notable Quotes:

  • Sam (as a satirical 'war on Christmas' hawk):

    "I believe that Christmas—it’s almost proven that Christmas has nuclear weapons, can be an imminent threat to this country, that they have operative ties with terrorists. And I believe that we should sacrifice thousands of American lives in pursuit of this war on Christmas..." [09:28]

  • Sam on exclusion and faux outrage:

    “Are you suggesting, Bob, that someone can't celebrate Christmas in America?...What else would Bob Knight have an opportunity to do? How else would he get on television if he wasn’t pretending to be attacked?” [12:01]

  • Bob Knight (earnestly):

    "The war on Christmas is really the culmination of a war on faith." [10:56]

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2. Introduction to Daniel Hunter and the 10 Ways to Prepare

• [23:45-24:55]
  Sam introduces Daniel Hunter, an organizer and author of "What If Trump Wins?" and "10 Ways to Be Prepared and Grounded Now That Trump Has Won." The tone is warm but sober—acknowledging that while community is crucial, the reality is daunting.

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3. 10 Ways to Prepare for Trump's Return

With Detailed Guidance and Commentary

1. Trust Yourself

• [24:55-27:57]
  Hunter emphasizes starting with psychological preparation: trust your own perception of reality, fortify your sense of self against gaslighting and manipulation (referencing 1984), and connect to others for mutual reinforcement.

  Quote:

  • "You can't internalize the crazy-making...ground ourselves back in. You’ve got to trust yourself. The things you’re seeing are there." – Daniel Hunter [24:55]

2. Build Community Trust

• Pandemic and division have eroded trust. Reach out, connect, and share perspectives to reinforce collective sanity and build resilience.

3. Grieve

• [27:57-32:50]
  Accept the difficult realities—losses, threats—and allow space for real grief. Daniel draws a parallel to climate denial and doomism, noting that both extremes are ways to avoid living with uncertainty.

  Quote:

  • "Humans do not like living in uncertainty...but that is the human condition, and that’s the condition we’re in right now under a President Trump." – Daniel Hunter [30:58]

4. Release What You Can't Change

• [32:50-35:49]
  Accept limits. Deploy energy wisely and accept that you cannot fight every battle or control every outcome.

  Sam reflects:

  • "Deploy your resources in such a way that you don’t deplete yourself...make a wise assessment as to what the landscape is and where you are best suited..." [35:49]

5. Find Your Path

• [37:01-42:36]
  New strategies are needed: Outrage and mass protests may not deter authoritarians. Identify roles, including:

  • Protecting the vulnerable
  • Disrupting/Disobeying
  • Defending Civic Institutions
  • Alternative Institution-Building

  Quote:

  • “A bully doesn’t care about your feelings. A bully wants you to be in pain.” – Daniel Hunter [37:01]

6. Do Not Obey in Advance / Do Not Self-Censor

• [49:02-51:42]
  Announce your boundaries and refuse to preemptively comply with authoritarian demands. Hunter references the psychology of repression: a few high-profile punishments can chill resistance; don't let the threat lead you to self-censor.

  Quote:

  • "The primary way that authoritarians ... are able to claim control isn’t through a lot of repression. It’s through occasional repression that scares people." – Daniel Hunter [51:42]

7. Reorient Your Political Map

• [53:01-55:17]
  Move beyond traditional binaries (Trump voter/not Trump voter). Focus on specific policies and their real-world effects, and be open to strategic alliances—even if uncomfortable.

  Sam’s candid struggle:

  • "There are going to be voices ... who are going to be like, oh, you’re making common cause with the generals ... But in this instance, like, maintaining a focus on where the threat lies..." [42:36]

8. Respect the Ecosystem of Resistance

• Recognize the value of varied strategies and appreciate others playing crucial roles.
• "It's all going to be hard work … If we're not in appreciation mode and just in criticism mode…we're going to spend a lot of energy attacking each other..." – Daniel Hunter [48:15]

9. React Bravely to Political Repression

• [56:08-60:08]
  Don’t let the targeting of dissidents/officials create fear or shame. Model strength: celebrate, not hide, acts of resistance.

  Story:

  • Bayard Rustin encouraged Montgomery preachers to demand arrest as a form of collective resistance, turning oppression into a badge of honor [58:19-59:16].

10. Get Real About Power & Envision a Positive Future

• [60:08-65:58] Hunter shares the “upside-down triangle” model from Thai activists: authoritarian power is precarious, propped up by pillars (media, bureaucracy, etc.). Widespread non-cooperation—like general strikes or bureaucratic slowdowns—can collapse the system.

  • Quote:
    "Non-cooperation always starts small. It’s always ineffective in the beginning...but very targeted non-cooperation has a history of success..." [62:58]

  • Vision:
    Even in dark moments, imagine and articulate a better future; this both inspires and guides the movement.

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4. Audience Questions: Division, Alliances & Cleaving Trump's Base

• [68:48-70:56]
  Sam probes whether fissures within Trump’s coalition can be exploited, referencing RFK Jr.’s inconsistent positions and the possibility of "cleaving off" parts of the base by highlighting real policy impacts.

  Daniel:

  “...I think the most effective way for us to do that is to really be rooted in our own values and asserting what's the vision that we have to become attractive...I’m less trying to get to the elites and I’m more trying to cleave off the supporters...They need a place to land.” [69:36]

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5. Current Events: Elon Musk’s Nazi Salute Controversy

Segments [74:21–118:48]

• Sam, Emma, and Daniel Hunter dissect right-wing and centrist media contortions after Elon Musk made a gesture at Trump’s inauguration widely interpreted as Nazi-inspired. They lampoon Ben Shapiro, Joe Rogan, and Patrick Bet-David as they excuse, minimize, or normalize Musk’s behavior, citing everything from autism to supposed misinterpretation.

  Memorable Analysis:

  • Sam: "There is no doubt...that this guy definitely came up with this as a troll. Like, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna say, my heart goes out to you, and I'm gonna play it off that way." [78:44]
  • Emma: "A far right fascist symbol meant to signal something to Nazis and did signal something to Nazis. Does it make it better?...even if [Musk] wasn’t obsessed with Western birth rates and natalism, even if he didn’t hate unions and communists...what he did empowered and made those Nazis excited.” [112:19]

  Recurring Theme:
  Musk’s gesture is less important than the enthusiastic reception it received from the far right and the elaborate mental gymnastics his defenders engage in. The panel mocks the infantilization of oligarchs—"he’s a little baby,"—and the inability of right-wing media to honestly confront the authoritarian undertones in their midst.

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• [24:55] Daniel Hunter:
  “You’ve got to trust yourself. The things you’re seeing are there. You can’t internalize the crazy-making…”
• [30:58] Daniel Hunter:
  “Humans do not like living in uncertainty, especially when it can be things as deeply personal…”
• [37:01] Daniel Hunter:
  "A bully doesn’t care about your feelings. A bully wants you to be in pain."
• [51:42] Daniel Hunter:
  "The primary way ... authoritarians are able to claim control isn’t through a lot of repression. It's through occasional repression that scares people."
• [62:58] Daniel Hunter:
  “Non-cooperation always starts small. It’s always ineffective in the beginning…very targeted non-cooperation has a history of success…”
• [112:19] Emma:
  “That was a fascist symbol, a far right fascist symbol meant to signal something to Nazis and did signal something to Nazis. Does it make it better?”

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Takeaway

Daniel Hunter’s “10 Ways” offers a clear-eyed, stepwise guide for psychological, collective, and strategic preparedness for facing authoritarianism. At every step, Sam, Emma, and Daniel combine practical advice with the sardonic, cutting humor that distinguishes The Majority Report, whether they're debunking culture war panics or calling out the normalization of far-right symbols and rhetoric in mainstream discourse.

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Listen to this episode for:

• Practical, psychologically grounded activist strategy
• Unfiltered critique of culture war media tactics
• A deeply human—and at times hilarious—approach to facing political darkness

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[Further Reading & Resources]

• Daniel Hunter's Book: What if Trump Wins? An Interactive Pick Your Path Adventure
• Article: “10 Ways to Be Prepared and Grounded Now That Trump Has Won”
• Podcast: Majority.fm

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Transcript

[Sam Cedar]

The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. The destiny of America is always safer in the hands of the people than in the conference rooms of any elite. Sam Cedar. They are unanimous in their hate for me and I welcome their hatred. We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The Majority Report with Sam. Either ever get the feeling you've been cheated? It is Wednesday, December 24, 2025. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live to tape steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. This is where I would play some bells, some jingle bells or some happy Hanukkah music. I don't know what that is, folks. It is Christmas Eve day. Is that what you call it? Is that what you call it? It's called Christmas Eve Day. Well, it's not Christmas Eve because it's a daytime. I mean, I think you could just say Eve day, Christmas Eve day, just Christmas Eve, whatever.

[Daniel Hunter]

Already attacking Christmas.

[Sam Cedar]

Tomorrow is Christmas. And so we have started our end of year vacation, which means a series of best of shows. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the first I am communicating to you from the past and have recorded this prior to today. And we're gonna feature a best of from. Oh, I just had it right in front of me. Daniel Hunter. Daniel Hunter, educator and activist and we brought him on the show on November 13, 2024. If you'll recall that our best of year, our best of fiscal year goes from November 1st in the prior year to November 1st of this year. And we brought him on a couple of days after the Trump election to talk about how to deal with Donald Trump. This is back before we knew exactly what Donald Trump was going to do, but we had a good sense that there was going to be a problem and there was going to be a certain amount of authoritarianism and knock on wood, maybe we have gone through the worst of it. Maybe we've got a while to go in terms of the threat of like, you know, full capitulation. I don't know. Brian's shaking his head and he's saying, but nevertheless, this is important stuff and we're gonna the best of, over the course of this week or so that we're on vacation, are going to sort of track the year a little bit, at least a little bit. These were voted by you folks and by us, whatever. It's not, it's not like we have an accountant that's overlooking the Votes, So stick around with it. Now, Emma is out today even though we're all out, but she'll be back tomorrow, which is actually, we're not going to record tomorrow. It's. Everything's getting screwed up. But just so you know, we're not going to be doing anything tomorrow on Christmas Day because apparently that's when people get together and open presents and do other stuff like that. Celebrate Jesus, which is what I'm going to be doing. And celebrate Jesus. Now. I am actually, generally I don't celebrate Christmas, but I am going to be at my girlfriend's parents house and without my kids as a shield.

[Daniel Hunter]

So.

[Sam Cedar]

I, I'm, you know, I'm. I love that you have to do this and I'm not going to. I don't. Please do not, please do not comment on this. But I will. It's. I'm. There's no drink in there at this house. Yeah. So gummies going on or something like that. But you know the words to Jingle Bells. I know the words. Jingle Bells. I know all the. I'm not going to be doing any of the Christmas caroling, but that does happen.

[Daniel Hunter]

You should participate a little bit.

[Sam Cedar]

You know what I did last year, you know, it was very effective for me last year. I don't know if you remember this, Matt. Maybe you remember, but when I got there, I. Within a day, I had enormous pain in my tooth. I needed an emergency root canal. So I was able to stay in the room. And I was in agonizing pain. Agonizing pain. Pain like I've never experienced before. But not as bad as Christmas, but not as bad as celebrating Christmas. So this is gonna be, this is sort of like a first for me. But to injure yourself, you're gonna bite a rock. You're gonna put a rock in your mouth and just chomp. But before anybody thinks that I'm some type of Johnny, come lately to the war on Christmas, I want to play what I think is my favorite appearance on cable television. People. People don't know like you people all too young. But from like 2004 to 2015, I was on cable news multiple times a week. And back in 2000, I think it's from 2004 or 5. I mean, the aspect ratio is. Yeah, there you go. I was on cnn. I did a lot of msnbc, but I did some CNN back then. And I had, I had this dream in the back of my head that I could somehow get on with Bill O'Reilly because he was like one of the biggest war on Christmas warriors. But I was blacklisted from Fox News, which I found out later. But I got a call from CNN to do that very thing. And I'm brought on with Bob White, who of course was the head of Concerned Women for America. And is he trans or what's going on? It just, you can't listen when the women are concerned. They can't be trusted to run an organization. Get us a six year old white man here. This is like. You guys think things are bad now. Like they. Back then they were really bad. And this is only like 20 years ago. Sweetheart, you can't run the organization. Yeah, just let me. The broads are concerned. And here is the best thing, the most fortuitous thing to happen. You're in a room, you're just looking at a camera that you don't see anybody. And they went to Bob White. They were going to go to Bob White first right at the beginning, but his earpiece, there was something wrong. So they went to me first. And that really ruined everything for Bob.

[Daniel Hunter]

Do you see how many Christmas miracles.

[Sam Cedar]

You'Ve experienced with your root canal and with this guy's earpieces not working? Not only, not only did the root canal, the root canal. My girlfriend's uncle is a dentist and so I got like the least expensive root canal one could ever imagine. Like I almost wanted to like have one. I just had another one. And I was trying to hold out, but. All right, so Sam keeps getting dental surgery every time he comes for Christmas. Here is me on. This is my, probably my favorite clip ever, although only rivaled by the time where I was on Dylan Ratigan with Thomas Friedman. And I said, don't you think the, the 1% is telling the 99%? Suck on this. I get to say those words to Thomas Friedman, which is a whole nother story. But this was from 20 years ago and it's my, my contribution to the war on Christmas.

[Emma]

Well, Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays. A Christmas tree or a holiday tree.

[Sam Cedar]

Which should it be? Depends on whom you ask.

[Emma]

We've seen controversy, most notably prompted by the White House.

[Sam Cedar]

It sent out cards.

[Emma]

This card, matter of fact, wishing a.

[Sam Cedar]

Holiday season of hope and happiness.

[Emma]

No mention of Christmas.

[Sam Cedar]

Some thoughts now on the subject. Sam Teeter hosts the show Majority Report.

[Emma]

On Air America Radio.

[Sam Cedar]

Bob Knight is the director of the.

[Emma]

Culture and Family Institute. It's affiliated with the Christian conservative organization Concern Women for America. Gentlemen, great to have you with me.

[Sam Cedar]

Thanks for having us on. All right, well, let's start with the holiday card. What do you Think, Sam. Well, listen, you know, as far as the war on Christmas goes, I feel like we should be waging a war on Christmas. I mean, I believe that Christmas, it's almost proven that Christmas has nuclear weapons, can be an imminent threat to this country, that they have operative ties with terrorists. And I believe that we should sacrifice thousands of American lives in pursuit of this war on Christmas and hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money.

[Emma]

Well, Sam, is it a war on Christmas, a war on Christians, a war over political correctness, or just a lot.

[Sam Cedar]

Of people with way too much time on their hands? Well, I would say probably if I was to be serious about it, too much time on their hands. But I'd like to get back to the operational ties between Santa Claus and Al Qaeda. I don't think that exists, Bob. Well, we have intelligence here. We have intelligence. You have intel.

[Emma]

And where exactly does your intel come from?

[Sam Cedar]

Well, we have tortured an elf, and that's. It's actually how we got the same information from Al Libie. That's exactly the same way the Bush administration got this info about the operational ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam. Okay, Bob Knight, Sam, is tying in now the lack of information regarding weapons.

[Emma]

Of mass destruction and somehow moving that into.

[Sam Cedar]

To Santa Claus.

[Emma]

Help me out here.

[Sam Cedar]

What's going on?

[Emma]

I mean, is this a war on Christians, a war on Christmas? Is this too much political correctness?

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, well, it was very first. I want to compliment him on his dry humor, but this is actually a very serious subject because a lot of people are waking up to realize that the war on Christmas is really the culmination of a war on faith. And the idea that the public square has to be cleansed of any religious exceptions expression, particularly Christian religious expression. You know, at one time, Happy Holidays was a welcome addition to Merry Christmas. So you wouldn't say the same thing over and over again, but a lot of people now see it as a substitute and it's very gratuitous at times, and it's actually insulting when you're talking about Christmas Day or a Christmas tree and you can't bring yourself to use the word for fear of offending someone in the name of diversity. We're a less free country when that happens. It's interesting, Sam, because I mean, this is a time where, if anything, we.

[Emma]

Want to be even more sensitive to diversity, considering everything that's happening with regard to war on terror. We're learning so much more about different religions, different ethnicities, and trying to become more of one versus being segregated.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, well, Kara, I mean, listen, I would like Bob to tell me who is the person who has been offended by someone saying Merry Christmas to them. I've never met that person. I don't celebrate Christmas. But if someone says Merry Christmas to me and I either think, well, it's a little bit odd. It's like me saying Happy birthday to you on my birthday, but, you know, no one cares. But I'll tell you this. As we wage the war on the war on. The war on the war on Christmas. On our radio show, News Corp. Fox News, those people who have started this entire war on Christmas meme, fake war. They're having a holiday party. President Bush saying Happy Holidays, Tokyo Rose. Laura Bush saying Happy Holidays to her dogs in the video. I'm sure you've seen it. I mean, these are the things that we should be talking about when we are waging this war in Iraq. We should be equating it to the war on Christmas. What else would Bob Knight have an opportunity to do? How else would he get on television if he wasn't pretending to be attacked? You know, this would be funny, except it is serious to a lot of people who have seen their faith cleansed from the public square systematically. Are you suggesting, Bob, that someone can't celebrate Christmas in America? I mean, I'm talking about the person who can escape these things. Get a word in here.

[Emma]

Go ahead, Bob. Go ahead, Bob.

[Sam Cedar]

I'm talking about things like in Ridgeway, Wisconsin, where the school children in the public school were told they couldn't sing Silent Night, so they substituted oh, Cold Night. You know, I think when you take Jesus out of anything, it gets pretty cold. So it's apartment but it's outrageous. They had children actually singing a bastardized version of Silent Night. But I don't consider Jesus the Messiah. And so if you're going to ask me to praise Jesus, I'm going to be a little offended. Well, I'm not. I don't think the singing of the song that you can find other songs to sing. So what about Silent Night? So what? Because you're offended? None of those other kids can celebrate the great heritage of Christ. I'm not the one who said they couldn't do that. No, I'm not. The way you're a Grinch. But you're trying to force. Why are you trying to force conversions on people? Let me ask you guys. You are singing A Christmas Carol? Absolutely.

[Emma]

Let me ask. Let me ask you guys about the pressure that's been put on on stores. For example, American Family association called for the boycott of Target stores the weekend after Thanksgiving, accusing the chain of banning the phrase Merry Christmas from its stores.

[Sam Cedar]

A charge that Target denies.

[Emma]

Pressure from conservative groups look like it.

[Sam Cedar]

Has an impact here.

[Emma]

Complaints from the Catholic League. Walmart agreed to create a Christmas page on its website rather than a holiday page. And then Macy's, which is, you know, perhaps more closely associated with Christmas than any other retailer, sent activists a letter touting its use of Merry Christmas in ads and store windows after it was the target of a small scale boycott last year. I mean, this is pretty amazing, all these boycotts, pressuring all these stores, these businesses, Bob.

[Sam Cedar]

Well, these businesses are taking millions and millions of dollars in from Christians in particular and others who celebrate Christmas, giving gifts in the name of the Christmas season. And yet they're so worried about offending people like my opponent here that they don't want to mention the word Christmas. People are sick and tired. It's a holiday time. I'm not your opponent, but I'm. There you are. I do agree with Bob that I think what should happen is companies should calculate how much money they're getting from people who are celebrating Christmas and provide exactly that much amount of Merry Christmas, because that is exactly how I would want any type of religious holiday to be celebrated.

[Emma]

Would I be having the same argument about Hanukkah? I'm curious.

[Sam Cedar]

Would we have the same argument about Hanukkah? Hanukkah is not the same as Christmas. It's not a major holiday, for one thing. And, and this is the Christmas season. That's why billions of dollars are really being spent. It's Christmas. Also, the winter sold for a minute. I don't know about Bob. People might argue that Hanukkah is just.

[Emma]

As big as Christmas.

[Sam Cedar]

Well, no, I mean, I would have to agree with Bob. I would have to agree with Bob. None of them says Hanukkah is as big as Christmas. No, Hanukkah is not a high holiday. Our high holidays are Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, which I'm sure Bob has been protesting. Why there aren't more Yom Kippur sales or Rosh Hashanah sales. I mean, why shouldn't they be? Right, Bob? Well, if that was associated with that holiday, then maybe I would join you, but never has been celebrated. Bob, have you ever protested Martin Luther King Day not being celebrated? I mean, do you resent when people don't say Happy Martin Luther King Day a month out in advance? You know what? Let's put this in perspective and Bob.

[Emma]

I want you to be able to respond. But what's interesting, the CNA USA Today Gallup poll, the question was, is it okay for people to say Merry Christmas? 88% said yes. 11% said no.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, well, 96% of Americans celebrate Christmas. Christmas. So why would we care about the 4% that get offended by it? Yeah, I know anybody who'd be offended by someone wishing someone a murder. Why don't we care?

[Emma]

Why are we making all the changes, Bob?

[Sam Cedar]

I mean, we do, Bob. Where's the war? Where are the battle lines? I mean, you can tell me. Silent Night can't be sound in one school in Wisconsin. That's just one example. That's not the totality. So don't. What is the tal. Man, the totality is 80. You brought it up. The totality is 88% of the American population has no problem with it. You don't care about the people who don't celebrate Christmas, Fine. But I don't celebrate Christmas and I don't care. So why are we wasting everybody's time? It's so that you can fundraise. That's why. Bob, I'd like. And I think you know that, Bob, I got to let you have the.

[Daniel Hunter]

Final, final thought, Bob. Okay.

[Sam Cedar]

You know when the Nazis moved into Austria. Oh, that is an expensive bomb to raise Nazis from the street schools. Hold on, Sam. Let Bob make his point.

[Emma]

Make his point.

[Sam Cedar]

Go ahead, Bob. Okay. Maria Trapp wrote the story of the Trap Singers that's in the Sound of Music. And she said she sent her kids to school after the Nazis took over. And they came home and said, mama, we can't say the word Christmas anymore. It's now winter holiday. I think that ought to disturb people kind of attitude in this country. The puritans also outlawed Christmas. The founding fathers of this country would fine you in Massachusetts if you celebrated Christmas at the beginning. So don't talk about Nazis, Bob. I think that's really inappropriate. Why do you have to bring hate to this Christmas and holiday season? That's so sad, Bob. Well, it's the truth. You want to read the book yourself, Bob? It's just sad that you have to raise Nazis when you're talking about Christmas and the holiday season. And we all know that Christmas actually Tannenbaum. It's a German holiday. Bob, I'm really, really disappointed. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but if you're. If you can't understand the force of history to bring up Nazis. Gentlemen, who are you calling a Nazi?

[Emma]

We gotta Let it there. We could probably. You are sir Sam Cedar.

[Sam Cedar]

I'm offended.

[Emma]

Air America Radio, Bob Knight, director of Culture and Family Institute. Gentlemen, obviously. Hey, it's a discussion. Everyone's.

[Sam Cedar]

That was. I had a lot of fun on that. Like when you feel you very aggrieved. Like, how dare you? How dare you, sir, I am offended. Calling me a Nazi. I have you no decency. I've never run into Bob Knight since then. I think it's probably. He was probably unemployed about five minutes after. I think that didn't work out so well. He was so, so excited about. I think it's a pretty cold night without Jes. He really. They had written that and tested it for a long time and then the whole von Trapp story and yeah, it got a little bit ruined for him. In a moment, we're going to have Daniel Hunter, who's going to talk about 10 ways to prepare for Donald Trump's return. This, of course, was from November 13, 2024. But first, a word from our sponsor. Delete Me makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. Delete Me is actually one of those products that I was using years before they approached us to be a sponsor. Sometimes we reach out if there's a product I use that I really like, sometimes it's just a complete coincidence. And that's what this was. I obviously use Delete Me for. To keep my private stuff private. I mean, information, as it were, because of the nature of this job. But more and more people want to do that because they want to talk about stuff online. But also it's become more and more of a problem in terms of identity theft, in terms of phishing. What happens is data brokers make a profit off your data. Your data is a commodity. Anyone on the web can buy your private details.

[Emma]

And.

[Sam Cedar]

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[Daniel Hunter]

I feel like that's the way I've been having lots of conversations with friends and gatherings and so forth these days, which is it's good to be with other people. And I wish the circumstances of which we were gathering were different.

[Sam Cedar]

Yep. All right, let's go through these, these, these 10 steps. Really, I mean, very helpful. And you know, I've been sort of winging it over the past couple of days just largely from like, you know, my experience the first time around. But this is really, really helpful. And I also found it interesting and you know, for someone who is not necessarily immediately inclined to think this way, where in preparing yourself to help others really in this, you have to start with sort of like making sure, like it's psychological what you need to do first before you start to actually get into any type of sort of like broader activism. And so for number one, it's you write trust yourself. Tell us about that.

[Daniel Hunter]

So I'm a strategist. My interest is how do we win? How do we actually beat back, you know, the policies that Trump wants to put in place? So I surprised myself because I thought, well, I want to write an article about how we organize that. And for a while I thought we'll, we'll start with strategic principles. But actually we have to back up a little bit, which is what is Trump? Trump? Is Trump part of a global phenomena of right wing populace? And they're not emerging from nowhere, they're emerging from, they're emerging from a condition in which people are feeling greater and greater distrust of social institutions. Greater, greater distrust from each other. There's greater distrust. I mean, if you remember what Covid did to a lot of us, distrusted with our families and our friends. And as a person who works on climate, that's my heart. Even greater distrust in the weather. I mean there's just, it's in the atmosphere. And so one of the things that authoritarians do so strongly is they add to that feeling of distrust, including just by our own selves. And I'm remembering The quote from 1984, that great book, what did they say? The party told you to reject the evidence of your own eyes and ears. It was its final and most essential command. And so we have to just ground ourselves back in. You've got to trust yourself. The things you're seeing are there. You can't internalize the crazy making or at least you can't do as much as you can to create boundaries around the crazy making us out there. And so that became the starting point.

[Sam Cedar]

I had been reading, come across some reading in terms of just abusive person, personal relationships. And this is also like, sort of one of the, sort of like core principles within the context of that is like how do you get past the gaslighting? Before you can do anything, you need to be confident that your assessment of what's going on is in fact what's going on.

[Daniel Hunter]

That's right. And so I think there's two steps, which is one step is building some trust in ourselves and the second is testing it out with people that we trust, extending that trust outwards into our community, which people have been doing naturally. I mean, reaching out to friends, texting. I've noticed I'm making like an own mental list of who are the people who check in with me during this particular time and noting that as a kind of. That's a trust building measure. And so we've been gathering, and sometimes that's gathering around a fire pit, sometimes that's just hanging out. But it's also a chance to share assessments, not just about what happened, but about where do I want to be in these times, what are the pieces that I have to offer in what look like an uncertain environment. And so to use each other to help find grounding. So trust with ourselves and then second, trust with each other. Finding spaces to be together with other folks.

[Sam Cedar]

And this goes sort of dovetails into the third step, which you say is grieve. And before we get into that, too, I want to say, like, you know, based upon the first two, like, how much. Yeah. How do we assess whether we're overreacting? Right. Like, I mean, the, you know, the, the. There is a tendency, I think, for some people to be like, you know, I've got to get out of the country, etc. And frankly, you know, for some people, I don't think that's. I think that's within the realm of, you know, that's not unreasonable. I mean, you know, if I was involved in, like, let's say, you know, if I was on the prosecution team, the Manhattan DA's office, I might be concerned that they're coming for retribution. And I mean, I might, you know, like, the idea of leaving the country might not necessarily be, you know, extreme. How do we get a sense of calibrating what the threat is to us as individuals and what the threat is to different constituencies? I mean, we just spoke to an immigration lawyer, and there's like, the, the idea of, you know, deportation for a couple of million people is on the table. Not in any way a overreaction to anything. And, you know, and there are other cohorts of people out there. How do you like. And tie this into the grieving, too? Because that's also like a full assessment of, like, what the implications of this are.

[Daniel Hunter]

Yeah. So, I mean, overreaction means that you're in reaction, you're in reaction to something else. In this case, we're in reaction to a future that's uncertain. And so when you're in reaction to a future that's uncertain, you can't know if you're fully one way or another. Right. There's no way to tell exactly what will Trump do? How extreme will it be? There's different scenarios about how that could go. So we have to check in, I think, a little bit with ourselves. And I think that's part of the community grounding, that's part of the grieving, which is to make our best assessment. And I work on climate change, and so one of the psychological dynamics that I'm familiar with is extreme thinking. So in climate change, we talk about denialism, which is the idea that in the face of uncertainty, it just isn't real. And so there's a set of people who just can't imagine climate change is real and they deny it. There's another version of inability to handle uncertainty, which is doomism. It's just over and there's nothing we can do about it. Both of those are. The therapists tell me that both of those are psychologically the same position, which is attempting to handle uncertainty by creating an absolutely certain worldview.

[Sam Cedar]

Right.

[Daniel Hunter]

And so neither of those are necessarily accurate. Neither of those are backed up by sort of a scientific perspective, certainly not journalism and not doomism either. And so what that means is there's a window of uncertainty that we have to be able to tolerate. Grieving is the process of assisting us to acknowledge the things we know to be true, grieve the things we think to be true, and allow some amount of uncertainty in terms of what might happen. And that may be very uncomfortable. Humans do not like living in uncertainty, especially when it can be things as deeply personal, as passionate as, you know, what happens to my family, what happens to my own personal safety, etc. Etc. But that is the human condition, and that's the condition we're in right now under, under a President Trump. That's not to say that we can't find some pieces. And I think that the grieving process is about starting to name out, yes, he will attempt to do a mass deportation program of some sort. Yes, he will absolutely roll back climate policies at the federal level. Yes. And on and on like that. Beginning to name, acknowledge, and let go of and whatever feelings arise around that, anger, frustration, sadness that were in those conditions. But that grieving process is so important because even if you're not necessarily a feelings person, we all remember the number of people who ran around in 2016, in this days, saying, I can't believe he's doing this. I just can't believe it. And that's a signal that people didn't do grieving, that they didn't accept the reality that's coming towards them. Because Trump told us his plan, just like, again, he told us his plan and he intends to implement it. And it will be a more extreme version of it's not the last 2016 experience. It's a more extreme version of that that he's planning to do. So we have to accept it, believe it. Let's. Let's deal with the reality.

[Sam Cedar]

And so it's a two. I guess the next part of that process is release that which you cannot change. So it's one, an acceptance of, like, this is all real and this is going to suck, and we just don't know exactly how it's going to suck and it's going to be dangerous for people and we don't know exactly how it's going to be dangerous for people and for whom. And then the next part of that is saying, okay, starting to assess. And I am the type of person where it's like, I will prepare for the worst case scenario and I'll try and get that done first so that, like, I can relieve myself of some of that anxiety. Like, I've done everything I can do. I may be overreacting, but it's easier to course correct if I'm overreacting than it is to course correct if I'm underreacting.

[Daniel Hunter]

I feel like my pessimist friends have been in better psychological shape at this moment than folks who are holding on to greater amounts of optimism. I do want to just caution, though. I think one thing I just want to remind people about, because you said it's going to suck, and that's absolutely true. It's also the case that it won't only suck. And so just for folks who are in the position of sort of heading into a dreary landscape of it's just going to be. It will be chaotic, it will be rough. There will be bad policies after bad policies. 3am tweets that Trump comes up with a national policy that will twist the federal instruments into a new thing. All those things are true. There will also be many beautiful days that we will experience. And so part of the protection psychologically for us is to remind ourselves to be rooted not only in what Trump is up to and tracking that, but also in the beautiful lives that we have in the family and folks around us. So just to affirm, yes, it will suck, it won't only suck. And that's a reminder that I keep getting reminded to by colleagues of mine who are living under authoritarian regimes, who keep pointing out, yes, it's bad, some parts of it are bad, but also there's a lot of beauty. And that's a little bit of the part of, like, releasing out. We're not trying to control everything. We don't have to get involved in every fight. We don't have to respond to every tweet. We don't have to track every wild conspiracy theory that Trump's going to put out there. That may be important for certain people. I mean, I think, Sam, you're phenomenally good at tracking all of these things and, and being, you know, educating the rest of us about what's going on, but that for all of us, we don't necessarily have to have to invest ourselves in all of those. And in fact, that that's going to be important because we just can't psychologically. I think most of us hang on to all of those things. And so therefore, we have to let go. And so I use the serenity prayer coming from Rail Niebuhr as the example of that because he wrote it while he was watching the rise of Nazism.

[Sam Cedar]

I did not realize that. I didn't know where that came from. My perspective on it has changed insofar as, like, you know, I've seen it on doilies and, you know, in knittings and I'm like, oh, boy. But really, when you take that, you know, grant me the God, I guess, but really you can grant yourself the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference when that is developed. In the process of watching a fascist regime come to power as a result of that, it's really basically in many respects saying like, you know, take stock, deploy your resources in such a way that you don't deplete yourself and, and, and, and don't, you know, and make a wise assessment as to what the landscape is and where you, you are best suited to, I guess, to, to deploy those resources, which is number five, find your path. Yeah, yeah.

[Daniel Hunter]

So, yeah. So then, then we're drifting into more strategy pieces where I thought, oh, we'll get right into it, but actually, you know, take some time to get to that point. Taking care path is starting to identify what are the different pathways of resistance. So eight months ago, we began doing scenario planning with different activists. I brought them in and we, we did a kind of role based, turn based option. So Trump would do a move and then people would do a counter move as, as unions and activists and so forth. And initially when we began doing it, activists picked essentially two big strategies, which was, let's keep doing petitions, let's get a lot of people to say this is outrageous in some way. And the second was, let's get a lot of people to show up at marches, rallies, protests, etc. And Trump didn't care about either of them. He just kept implementing policy. Trump would do this, we'd do march, and he'd say, okay, and then he'd keep going. And so we started to get more clear about we need to help people understand certain roles will be more important. It's not to say there's not a role for marches, not to say it's not a role for outrage, but it's a different ballgame. We're not dealing with a man who values democratic spirit. We're dealing with someone who is a bully and authoritarian. And so a bully doesn't care about your feelings. A bully wants you to be in pain. So expressions of pain don't actually isn't the thing that's moving him. So that means we have to find out different roles. So I just identified four that we started to see over and over again that were strategies for combating. So one of them is just protecting people. Huge amount of people are going to be lives disrupted, trans folks, immigrants, et cetera, et cetera. So the role of developing mutual aid conditions, developing mechanisms for us to protect people who are politically targeted. I hope some of these people who are targeted don't flee overseas, that they don't go overseas, and that we can, in fact, give them a lot of security support in our own communities. Second one is disrupting and disobeying. That's the one that I come from. That's the place that I have the most experience, and that's strategizing acts of non cooperation. So, in fact, the Fed chairman, Jerome Powell, is now in our. In that category, as he just announced. Will you resign if Trump asks you to resign? He said, no, I will disobey what I believe is a wrong order. And that's, that's the, the behavior, actually, that will be very helpful for stopping an authoritarian.

[Sam Cedar]

We should also say that announcing that is also very important. Right, because it's the flip side of what we saw with Bezos and the endorsement for Kamala Harris.

[Daniel Hunter]

That's right.

[Sam Cedar]

I don't think that endorsement would have meant anything. What it really signaled to me was like, oh, this, at the very least, this billionaire. I mean, this is the model, right, for how the fascism grows. Where the billionaire goes, I can do what I've been doing, but it's. I'm going to go with the path of least resistance, and I'm going to take that path before I even get to the turn in the road. Like, he doesn't even have to threaten me, I'm going to do it in advance. And Powell sort of like he could say, well, I'm not going to address this now and then have done. But by saying it out front, he's emboldening other people to take a similar position without it having to happen to him.

[Daniel Hunter]

That's right. And that's a signal for the rest of us. So for those of us who are in government jobs, for example, to not resign, not make this easy for them to have a power vacuum, but to hold on and to use our professional ethics, remind ourselves, remind people of we have codes of conduct, we have internal ethics processes that we want to uphold and stay, stay despite the Trump administration's attempt. Okay, so we've got to. Protecting people. I'm just going to name the four here. So protecting people, disrupting and disobeying and then defending civic institutions. And so all the folks who are both bureaucrats who are inside will be involved in hopefully a defense for that institution, for the EPA to continue to do the thing that it does. And for the, for the US Military, for example, who's been told, we've been forewarned, Trump has intentions of using the Insurrection act to deploy military against protesters in the streets. Me and the military knows that will forever politicize them if they were to be using live bullets against protesters and doing lethal damage. And so that they understand Trump's putting them between a rock and a hard place, either disobeying orders or outright or engaging in what will be the end of the military as we know it in this country. So defense. So every, every one of those civic institutions has its own strategy. And those on the outside also get to support them, partially by holding up a mirror to how resistance can look and encouraging them. Celebrating the people like Jerome when he does that thing. Yay, Jerome. And celebrating people who get fired when they get fired for the right things and so on. And so we have a role and responsibility and in playing that.

[Sam Cedar]

You talk about this later in the piece. The idea of like, you sitting down, like, I know you've done some like other sort of like, you know, game theory sort of conferences with, you know, military or ex military people. And, you know, you saying like, it was weird for you to be sitting there because that's. Those aren't the type people you tend to strategize with. And, you know, I'm sitting here like the hegseth is going in to clearly be part of a process of purging the military of people who they think is not going to be loyal to Donald Trump as opposed to the institution or the Constitution, which, you know, supposedly are aligned. And, you know, me having to get over my sort of like, I don't know if I would call it prejudice because my disposition towards the military, I don't think it's unfair prejudice, but like, I have a healthy skepticism about the military. But in this moment, like, we're in, like, popular front mode for these type of things because it could be that serious. I mean, that's the, that's the, that's the tricky part is that there is, there, there are going to be voices out there. And I, you know, I obviously, I conceive of this in, in my world, but there are going to be voices in my world, in my universe of like, of YouTube and Twitter and whatnot, who are going to be like, oh, you're making common cause with the generals, or something like that. And it's going to trigger my, like, I don't want to make common cause with the generals. I don't like the generals. I don't like the military. But in this instance, like, maintaining a focus on where the threat lies in this moment, like, how do you do that? I mean, you know, on some level, we saw it with like, Harris getting together with, with Lynn Cheney now or Liz Cheney. You know, the problem I have with that is I just think it was going to be effective. You know, I mean, I was like, if they're going to do that and it works okay, for the time being, I can fight this other fight later. And I mean, I even remember a story like an Israeli general was like, told at one point. Like, you realize the, your supposed allies in the United States, these Christian Zionists, they want you to burn in hellfire when the second coming goes and he goes, I'll deal with that bridge when I get to it. And they have made that, you know, alliance. I mean, but I mean, that adopting that mindset is, seems to me to be a big, you know, it's much easier for me to do it with EPA scientists. Then it's much easier for me to do with like, some people in the doj, maybe depending on where they are, are, and in, you know, the National Labor Relations Board or, or et cetera, et cetera. But there are certain areas where I have a reflex of like, ooh. But you can't have that because it's about the civic institution and not almost like what fills it.

[Daniel Hunter]

Yeah, I mean, I think there's two aspects of it. I mean, one, we don't have to play all roles. So I'm not a defense civic institution person. By my nature, I have a different belief system, and it's not in defending the current version of democracy that the US Has. But I am aware how destructive it will be if some of these institutions are fully taken out. In the case of the military, it's very practical, though. It's a second. The second one for me, which is, I don't want to get shot in the streets, and there are folks inside who also don't want to shoot me. Right. And so those are aligned in that aspect of it. And I think what that means is that what we're doing here is we're not building a sort of framework of common cause, of we're all aligned in the movement together, but instead it's more understanding we have overlapping interests here about not getting the military to be involved in this particular set of behaviors. So I think both of those can go hand in hand. And you're mentioning this so important because it brings up the fourth category, which is alternative institution building, which is it's not enough. I mean, for those of us who are deeply unhappy with the current system as it exists, we're not interested in just defending the previous version of democracy that the US has had. Instead, we're interested in new. Can we get rid of the electoral college? Can we talk about developing participatory democracy mechanisms? Can we talk about strengthening education? Because you cannot have a meaningful democracy without education, representation, participation, and we barely have representation. So I think the alternative institution building is a place for those of us who want to pour our energy into tracking all the many things that need to be changed and creating those institutions to do that. And so the reason I find those four roles so helpful is because we're not going to be attracted to all of them.

[Sam Cedar]

Right.

[Daniel Hunter]

But it will be helpful for us to observe other people doing some of those roles that will be useful for us at some other moment. And I want to flag it and.

[Sam Cedar]

Having some respect that they're. That they're doing it, like being able to say, look, this is not what I want to do. I don't like it. I'm allergic to this. But being able to accept, like, it needs to be done, and I'm glad that somebody's doing it.

[Daniel Hunter]

It's all going to be hard work. Protecting the EPA is going to be hard work. Supporting people who are undocumented to find safe places, it's going to be hard work. It's going to be hard work all around. And so if we're not in appreciation mode for just in criticism mode of that strategy isn't the way I think you that everyone else should go, then we're going to spend a lot of energy attacking each other rather than appreciating the movement ecosystem and appreciating the different roles, including. What I'm finding with some of my own friends is that roles that I used to play last, you know, four years ago or eight years ago. I'm finding I'm feeling called to something new and appreciating that within their own selves that maybe I didn't want to be a disrupt person, but actually this is now too extreme.

[Sam Cedar]

Number six, you have do not obey in advance, do not self censor. I mean, we sort of touched on that in terms of like, you know, Jerome Powell in the Fed. I mean, he is announcing beforehand that, like, if you do this thing, I'm not, I'm, I'm not, I'm not going to do it. And, you know, I, you know, in the context of this job, when I was doing Air America, we were all like, we're going to get audited, probably. I mean, we didn't. And which I frankly was surprised about. And I wouldn't be surprised if I get audited in this situation just because of the nature. You know, one of the reasons why I got fired from MSNBC was because we went after Mike Cernovich and, you know, he got Jack Posobiak to dig up an old tweet, they got Don Jr to retweet it, and then it was off to the races. And, you know, the, that, that specter of like, do we keep our head down or something like that. And in the meantime, I mean, would.

[Daniel Hunter]

You do it again, Sam?

[Sam Cedar]

Would I do that tweet? Oh, that tweet. Yeah, it was a funny tweet. That experience worked out quite well for me. I mean, you know, at the end of the day.

[Daniel Hunter]

But that's, that's the story to tell, fam. That's exactly it. That's exactly the point. Which is it's, it may be the case that you might lose your job at the EPA by doing a resistance something. And it may be the case that you will be so proud to tell your kids and grandkids that you are part of a very important resistance campaign. And so that's the historical moment we're in, which is. It's a great moment to take great pride in acts of resistance, tweaking, you know, noses of the elites, whatever it is. And so in that way, it's almost a different relationship to repression than the relationship of. I'm so worried about getting repressed. And absolutely, I believe people should make good calls. I think people. I have no judgment of anyone's individual circumstances. But what we're aware of is the primary way that authoritarians. We see this across the globe in Hungary and Brazil and Turkey. The primary way that authoritarians are able to claim control isn't through a lot of repression. It's through occasional repression that scares people. So they know what to do in this administration and therefore they see power right away. Power you don't use, you lose.

[Sam Cedar]

It's sort of this, sort of the Fonzie theory where he told Richie, I mean, I'm talking about Happy Days. Nobody knows what I'm talking about because I'm so old.

[Daniel Hunter]

Sorry, Sam, you gotta have to bring me in. Bring me in.

[Sam Cedar]

It's almost not worth it. I don't think there's anybody alive who knows what I'm talking about. But there was a show called Happy Days. It was very popular. Fonzie was the tough kid. And Richie wanted to know why it was that everybody listened to Fonzie. He's like, I hit somebody once. That's all I had to do. And then everybody else knew not to mess with me at that point. But this is also a little bit more like, you know, getting people to self censor. And, you know, it doesn't mean necessarily you read the epa, you quit. It could mean you stay in there and you fight. And, you know, people have got to make that decision. Reorient. Your political map was what we were talking about like earlier in terms of your. You were, you know, doing some game theory essentially with people that you otherwise, you know, could just have easily been protesting in another circumstance. But it's about assessing the moment and understanding and prioritizing sort of like what's. What's going to keep you from getting shot at, I guess, out on the street.

[Daniel Hunter]

Yeah, I mean, just to affirm my. My credentials here, my first arrest was against Fort Benning, Georgia, for its support for training people to assassinate human rights workers overseas. And so, yes, so that the common. And I told the generals that. I told these ex generals my story and they shared their story. And here we are in.

[Sam Cedar]

That wasn't the School of the Americas, was it?

[Daniel Hunter]

Or the School of America.

[Sam Cedar]

Okay, okay.

[Daniel Hunter]

So the rearrangation of the political map.

[Sam Cedar]

I think, has to do with.

[Daniel Hunter]

When you have an authoritarian. It takes a while for people to catch several nodes. I think one of them is right Now, a lot of us are really oriented around who voted for Trump and who didn't. And that's one way to analyze. It's not a very great way to analyze because, in fact, on lots of policies, on lots of issues, the way these things split is very different. And progressive policies are very popular. They remain very popular. When you ask people, do you want clean water, clean air, do you want to deal with climate change with renewable energy? Do you want to keep people who.

[Sam Cedar]

Are here, standard Social Security, health care, whatever, name it.

[Daniel Hunter]

So they're very. They continue to be very.

[Sam Cedar]

Excuse me.

[Daniel Hunter]

They continue to be very positive. And so sticking to the framing around Trump, not Trump, won't necessarily be helpful in the long term. So at some point, we're going to have to break apart our political map a little bit. And it's not about, did you vote for this man or not? It's more about, and therefore sort of the party element of it. And it's more about going back to the policies, going back to the ways these policies harm or don't harm real people. And so that's one aspect of it. And I think another aspect of it is under an authoritarian regime, there will be new. We use the word common cause and then said, don't use it, but some version of common cause with people who we do find abhorrent. What do we do when Liz Cheney gets arrested? What's our relationship to showing up for her in this particular moment of watching him attempt to scare other people? And I think that's part of it is then dealing with the political repression.

[Sam Cedar]

That's honestly the perfect example to, like, really freeze me in my tracks. Because just even at the words Liz Cheney gets arrested, I'm like, there's a. I felt like I felt a smile brewing inside me, but that's exactly what I have to fight against.

[Daniel Hunter]

Well, no, no, you can still.

[Sam Cedar]

I know.

[Daniel Hunter]

I think we should figure out how way to be both. I think we should be able to say, yeah, it's a shame she's getting arrested for the wrong reasons or, you know, whatever it is for us. But honestly, I think the truth is that we do have to do a kind of reorientation around people who are, particularly when we're seeing visibilized repression, even if those people aren't necessarily in our milieu. The political repression is not attempting to just freeze us, it's trying to freeze a population.

[Sam Cedar]

Right.

[Daniel Hunter]

And so I'm jumping ahead here to number nine, but I'll just walk into it.

[Sam Cedar]

It's like focusing on the act that is taking place, rather than who is it subject to.

[Daniel Hunter]

That's right. And so the attitude we have in terms of when that happens. So one aspect of when political oppression happens is we can share the story. That's horrible. Can you believe that they arrested Liz Cheney or Daniel Hunter or Sam or whoever? That's one way of telling that story. Another way of telling that story. I think I'm inspired by a group named APOR in Serbia. So they were dealing with a dictatorship who was very repressive. They regularly beat up poor folks, and they used to have a saying that they would say, it only hurts when you're scared. And what they meant by that was they were attempting to create a story that says, we're not going to engage in fear. The major tool of an authoritarian is fear, and we're not going to feed that fear. In fact, quite the opposite. We're going to express and show bravery in the face of it. I did ask one of them, does it hurt less if you're scared? He said, no, it hurts the same amount, no matter what. But. But the point here is attitude, that we're going to take a different attitude than being nervous, scared, joke about, oh, I don't want to get on a list. I want to get on the list. So one response. Politically, for example, I'm just. I think I tell the. The article is a story from someone I've learned a lot from. Bayard Rustin. He was dealing with Martin Luther King at a period of time when Martin Luther King was very young and new to nonviolence theory. He and a bunch of other folks in Montgomery were being threatened with arrest. So they went underground. A lot of the preachers were, like, hiding out in other people's houses. King himself had, like, left the city for a while, and Bayard Rustin walked around and said, this is not how we should be. He was trained by a Gandhi and had a Gandhian philosophy. And he said, you shouldn't be hiding, worried about what's going to happen to you. Go the opposite direction, go towards it. And so he convinced a couple of people, pastors who were likely on this list of arrests, to go down to the police station with their congregation and to demand that they get arrested there and then. And so they went in. Several of them got booked, and more people began to show up as the crowd, like, swelled as people came out holding their citations proudly. And in fact, some leaders went into the room demanding that they get arrested, were turned away because they were told they weren't on the list. And they said, I'm a leader. What are you talking about? I should absolutely be arrested as well. And so they began arguing that they should get arrested because what would their people think if they didn't get arrested? They weren't really a leader. So it became, instead of being a fearful, fear inducing tactic, the, the arrest themselves became part of a signal of strength.

[Sam Cedar]

Well, you're, you're also in that moment taking power because you get to dictate, you get to dictate at least one element of this. If you're going to arrest me, you're going to do it on my terms. And that's going to be right now, right here. That type of thing.

[Daniel Hunter]

That's right. And you're doing, you're, you're doing it with your people. You're getting to see, say signal again. This is attitude, this is about expressing an attitude towards repression, which is rather than grinning, bearing and being scared of it, that we, it's not always that we invite it. That's not at all what I'm suggesting here. But it's about the attitude that we take when it comes our way. And so I think we have a lot of control, in fact, everybody has a lot of influence about how to, what kinds of stories do we tell when so and so gets arrested out of the government or fired or whatnot? We should cheer. Congratulations, welcome to the club.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, let's talk about the, get real about power. This is really interesting. The, the upside down triangle. What, what does that tell us about power?

[Daniel Hunter]

So the upside down triangle comes from folks in Thailand were some of the first originators of it. And what they did was it's a power, it's a theory of power. So you imagine an upside down triangle and it's not stable. An unjust power is not actually a stable power. It needs pillars of support to keep it up. And those pillars may include mainstream media that tells a positive story about them, or most recently from the last election that treats them like, you know, equivalence. There's this and that and Trump said this and Harris said that as if they're in equivalent worlds. There's military, there's any number of different institutions. But also that those things, all of those aren't done, They aren't implemented by the elites. People in power that we think of traditionally empowered, they don't do anything, they tell other people to do things and other people obey. When people don't obey, these systems start to fall apart very quickly. And that is the long arc around dealing with authoritarianism. So in other Regimes like when we're dealing with regime change in other parts of the globe. The pathway to resistance is developing a long story about why people should stop obeying an unjust authority. And if Trump turns out to be the person that many of us believe him to be, he is and will be an unjust authority in the authoritarian style. That kind of style doesn't respond to democratic norms. That style may or may not even respond to whether or not the next election pushes them out. The reality is, is that we have someone in power who's attempt a coup, and so we have to get real about power. And that means convincing large swaths of the population to potentially not obey. I'll just give three examples of it. I'll give one clean example that tactically that's being talked about now, which is the idea of a general strike is a way to disable parts of the economy such that the whole system can't keep grinding forward. So that's one conversation that's happening around the non cooperation circle of people. I think I just want to say this, which is at this stage where we are, it can seem impossible to imagine Trump being kicked out because we're just, we're so far out of that period. So I just. We're not there yet. Non cooperation always starts small. It's always ineffective in the beginning because it doesn't.

[Sam Cedar]

It's.

[Daniel Hunter]

You're not at the size to be able to work, but very targeted. Non cooperation has a history of success and has an ability to change national policy in a way that just pleading and asking for government officials isn't necessarily successful. I tell a story from one of my mentors who recently passed away, Dick Taylor. He was involved in a thing called blockades, where they were trying to stop the US who was supporting a dictator, Yaya Khan of East Pakistan, what we now know as Bangladesh. Yaya Khan was involved in mass murders. Huge amounts of people were dying, and the US Was the sole country basically arming him, sending ship or armor shipments. So this group found out in Philadelphia, a group of Quakers, that the armed shipments were being loaded here in Philadelphia. And so they said, you know what we're going to do, we're going to stop them. We're going to organize the naval blockade. And they, with their 25, 30 people, jumped into boats and began blocking, blocking these massive arm shipments. As expected, they were pulled out by a coast guard. And, you know, they weren't successful on their first forays, but they began doing it over and over again. Eventually they got to international longshoremen and the longshoremen are the folks who load those arms shipments on and off. And the longshoremen said, if you guys set up a picket line, we won't cross it. They were moved by these stories of what was going on, and they realized they had a role to play in history. And so they refused to load these arm shipments. As a result, US was no longer. I mean, first they stopped using Philadelphia ports, then New York City ports, then on and on until eventually they got the longshoremen all across the east coast to stop loading arms shipments. That's non cooperation. That's not a protest in the streets. That's not asking for, that's not pleading for. It's saying there's a thing we're going to get in the way of, either as the Quakers who are jumping into the boats or as the longshoremen who are saying, we're not going to load, we're not going to obey. And that's. That was the major contributor towards shifting US Foreign policy in terms of supporting that particular dictator. So that, that's a history I want us just be alert to because it tells a story about how non cooperation can be successful in this country. And that stratagem of understanding that the pillars of support is. But if you pull enough pillars, it doesn't mean we have to convince the elites to go along with us. We're not going to convince Elon Musk, we're not going to convince Donald Trump, we're not going to convince the Trump family. But if we're able to pull pillars, they don't have a choice because they don't do anything. They don't work, they don't do real things. They don't do things with their hands. People who do things with their hands, they can make decisions about how we actually do things when we do it in united fronts as we can collectively do. Non cooperation. That's the pillar of power. That's the upside down triangle. When you pull those pillars away, the triangle falls.

[Sam Cedar]

And number 10 is envision A, a better, a positive future. And I think, you know, you know, we're going to spend time here, obviously, and like, talking to authors and people. I mean, yeah, a plan is better than no plan. And it's important for us, even in eras where we don't have the immediate ability to make, to shape society in the way that we want it to, it's important to have a sort of a northern light, I guess, and some ideas about what, what we would do if we were in power, both as an inspiration and you never know. Like, I mean, you just. You never know. And that is. That is a big deal. Well, this is. Daniel, this is really, really helpful, and we're going to put a link to this and to your book, and we will check back in with you, hopefully soon, to get a sense of, like, where we're at and what's. What's turning. One thing I just want to ask you about that is sort of off this list. You know, I see things like, you know, how we can make. Create fissures within the constituency that has been supportive of Trump. I mean, you've talked about that a little bit, but, like, you know, I'm looking at, like, this Bobby Kennedy stuff, and I don't know if he actually wants to get into the administration or he's just trying to raise money or what the deal is. But a lot of the stuff that he proposes is completely antithetical to Trump's agenda. You know, like, they want to get rid of the administrative state, and he supposedly wants to make the fda, the epa, the USDA more effective. He also wants everybody to get hepatitis or, you know, other diseases. But there are elements of what he wants to do that people are attracted to, people who are supportive of Trump, and they don't seem to realize that it's fundamentally at odds with the other part of Trump's agenda, which is to get rid of the administrative state. You know, there's. Corporations are not going to take Yellow die number seven out of Captain Crunch by themselves. And, and so are there. Is there a. A concept of, like, strategically creating cleaves within their constituencies? Like, is that a strategy? Is there, like, what are the tactics associated with that?

[Daniel Hunter]

Yeah, I mean, I think, yes. I mean, the reality here is this is an organ, sort of. This is a riotous group of people who've been out of power for quite some time. They are not in alignment, they're not in agreement, and they're basically being held together by loyalty, an authoritarian loyalty system, which is perhaps more dangerous than being in alignment in some ways, because it allows them to move on a dime. Trump says, we'll do this, and they say, okay, that's. That's the way we're heading. So that is, in some ways, certain ways, potentially more dangerous. But it is true. They're not in agreement, they're not in alignment. And some of those things, I think, can be taken advantage of. I think the most effective way for us to do that is to really be rooted in our own values and asserting what's the vision that we have to become attractive because infighting can be handled and managed if we don't know if that's handable, manageable. But Trump is very relaxed about a lot of chaos in his administration. That's what we've seen. So the idea that there's infighting he likes. So I don't think it's attempts to just kind of add drama to that, but I think it's about cleaving off parts of it and saying for folks who either supported Trump or folks who, you know, didn't vote for whatever reason, I think there's opportunity here to say, here's a vision that you have that we're in alignment with and to cleave in that way by being attractive, because the future that we're going to need is going to need a lot of people to have increased trust in us and our vision and a sort of progressive worldview that is not well understood, actually, by a lot of the folks in sort of that group. So I'm less trying to get to the elites and I'm more trying to cleave off the supporters, people who back Trump. But we'll find out that he has every intention to screw them. That's why he's putting billionaires in. He's not going to represent them and their interests. So they need a place to land. And so I think we need to create some open invitations, some places to do it.

[Sam Cedar]

Daniel Hunter, the book is what if Trump Wins? An interactive pick your path, adventure and 10 ways to be prepared and grounded. Now that Trump has one, we'll put a link to all of that. And I hope to talk to you soon. Thank you so much. Really help. Thanks, folks. Well, we're gonna head into the fun. Half.

[Daniel Hunter]

The fun half hour.

[Sam Cedar]

The fun half hour. There you go. The fun. Yes, exactly. Not quite. We're not great with math here. Well, I think, you know, we'll talk about this, but I think we should clip Daniels and maybe rerun it soon because sometimes I get lost. You know, we didn't. You got too long. And they were both very important relative to, like, sort of the immediate things that we're going to be facing. But we will, we will both clip Daniel's interview, either as a standalone or within the next three or four weeks. We'll just play it again as if it was, you know, a quick repeat because I think it's really helpful to give people a. I found it incredibly helpful just to read it, to get a sense of like, okay, this is how we're going to approach this and here's the value in doing it this way and that way. I think it's really good. Donald Trump did everything he could not to get overshadowed this inauguration. Last inauguration he had, he had to spend all of his energy sort of like backfilling why or sort of retconning the idea that there was nobody at his inauguration because he was embarrassed by it. He likes to have a good audience. And so this time they did it indoors. But then some of the speakers went to like, what is it, the Capital One thing? Is that where. Yeah, where? And how many is that? How many. How many is that seat? Is it, is it 200,000 people? Oh, no, it's the Bachelor.

[Daniel Hunter]

A little under 21,000. Little 20,000. 20 little under 21,000. Excuse me.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah. Oh, okay. So like a wizard's game, like a big comedian, like a draw from like a, like a mid level comedian. The Wizards never get it this far. Okay, so there was 20,000 people there. Interesting. Was there a huge, huge. There must have been throngs of crowds outside of it because there's, you know, the people. Elon Musk went over there to give a speech and, you know, he's neurodivergent. Oh, God. And he gets really excited and he's never had any friends and he spends his time having to pretend that he's so smarter than he is, paying people to play video games for him so he can seem like he's cooler than he is. I know people who were at parties of his, like back in the day before he, you know, really was as big as he is now, back when he was in the PayPal mafia and they would basically hire girls to come to the party and it was very weird, apparently.

[Daniel Hunter]

Wow.

[Sam Cedar]

So he's awkward. And so here he is. Here he is, just getting a little awkward. At the beginning of this speech is number eight. This was a fork in the road of human civilization.

[Daniel Hunter]

Okay?

[Sam Cedar]

This, this, you know, there, there are elections that. The elections that come and go. Some, some elections are, you know, important, some are not, but, but this one, this one, this one really mattered. And I just want to say thank you for making it happen. Thank you. Whoa, whoa, whoa. This is number eight, right? Clip number eight? What was the thank you? What? That's a thank you? Is that the international symbol for thank you? Could you just go back a little bit? That is an interesting thing because he really, from my heart outward. Thank you? Is that what he's saying? Go ahead. And I just want to say thank you for making it happen. Thank you. Turn around. Yeah. My heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you. My heart. Is that what he says next? My heart goes out to you. There's a little shiver in his voice when he's saying that. Huh? My heart goes out to you. I see he really. That's the classic my heart goes out to you. And then you just lust your arm, throw it up. Throw your heart at a 45 degree.

[Daniel Hunter]

Angle towards the roaring crowd.

[Sam Cedar]

Okay. And then. Well, all right. I mean, everybody makes a mistake once. It was obviously not a premeditated thing. He's just getting excited. Apparently NBC edited out the second one. Is that right? Okay, play these. And I just want to say thank you for making it happen. Thank you. My heart goes out. Oh, he did it both. He did it to both sides. Isn't that awkward? Isn't that awkward? Now a lot of people are trying to pretend that somehow this is some type of Nazi fascist salute when Elon is just. He's neuro Divergent. Okay, and let's compare it. Here is. This is from last year in January. This is. The CBC has a footage of dozens of. Of of Italian fascists giving a salute during a far right rally in Rome. Here it is. Okay, now look, do you see? None of them are touching their heart and thrusting their arms out. They're just thrusting their arms out. He clearly. Musk was clearly saying, this is my heart. I send it out to you. Like thrusting it out. And you know, if that was the case, like, and some people have suggested it could be Rome. A Roman thing too, right? Now the Roman thing was actually just made up in the 1800s by theater people. By theater people. And then I guess apparently the. The Nazis adopted that in the same way that they also came over here and took like the Massachusetts State police uniforms. They found them to be the most sort of like Nazi ish. I guess what they were going for, open influence. But let's look at this guy, famed Roman theatrical guy, played a lot of Roman performances. Here he is. I don't speak Italian.

[Daniel Hunter]

What was he saying?

[Sam Cedar]

Well, didn't they speak Latin in Rome? Oh, yeah, that's right. Right. Yeah, he's speaking Latin and he's doing some type of theater production. And that's why he's doing the thing from his heart and going out. Right? Yeah. Give us a one more time. Let's see that one. Does Zeke Heil mean my heart goes out to you? Thank you so much for doing this. This is a fork in the road. We're at the crossroads of civilization. My Heart goes out to you. I give my heart to you. Everybody. You know, Gilbert Gottfried had a great joke about Kurt Waldheim, who people don't remember, but he was at one point the UN chief, and he was a. He was from Vienna. And it came out, while he was head of the UN that he may have had a Nazi past. And Gilbert Godfrey had a great joke where he was talking that Kurt Waldheim and his wife were on vacation, just like, in the late 30s. And he was in front of. They went to Germany, and he was in front of some fountain, and his wife was about ready to take his picture, and they saw some Nazis come walking through. And Valdheim said, wait, don't take the picture. Don't take the picture. Don't take the picture. And that's when she snapped the picture, and that was what the problem was. So, look, there is no doubt in my mind that Elon Musk. Remember, remember, you have to remember who this guy is. He pays people to play video games with him for him so that he can look like he is a top video game player. He has a team of, like, writers coming up with something, like where he wanted to go on Saturday Night Live and pull out a rubber chicken out of his pants and say, do you want to see my. My C word? Because he's juvenile and has no friends. And there is no doubt in my mind that this guy definitely came up with this as a troll. Like, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna say, my heart goes out to you, and I'm gonna play it off that way. And he practiced it, and he practiced it without a doubt. And it was like, watch what I'm going to do to whatever friends he pays to be around him. And they're all going to get a huge laugh out of it. But understand, there's not a huge difference between that and a fascist doing it earnestly. These symbols have. They exist for a reason. They create an in group and an out group. And if you're in on a joke like this, you're part of the in group. And if you're on the out group, you're on the out group. It's not a coincidence they do these things. They do these things to create that in group and out group, secret handshakes. I mean, all of this stuff, sometimes they can be benign, and sometimes they can represent other things. So. And, you know, at the end of the day, the symbolism is one thing. The actions are going to be more important, and we're going to go through the actions that Donald Trump has taken already as president. Remember, destroying things and hurting people is a lot easier than building things and helping people. It just is so that stuff can move quick. You remember this was a long time ago on Monday when Elon Musk desperately tried to show how much of his heart goes out to you and he mistakenly ended up doing some type of thing that everyone interprets as being a Nazi salute.

[Emma]

Including like actual white supremacists who were very excited about it. He did it not once but twice. And as AOC pointed out, repeated for emphasis and clarity. Oh yes, but we're in the era of don't believe your lying eyes because a lot of wealthy people own our communications platforms and they can just promote all of the accounts that will gaslight you about the very obvious thing that you just saw right in front of your face.

[Sam Cedar]

Now.

[Emma]

Love this post truth era.

[Sam Cedar]

And there is no better way to suss out a complete bootlicker than someone who has made their built their reputation on being the Pope of the Jews. And one of the things that you have to do as Pope of the Jews is also police things like anti Semitism.

[Emma]

And.

[Sam Cedar]

We have the actual Pope of the Jews. As you know, he is Jewish and is very sensitive to anti Semitism, but also has incredible interests in staying in the good graces of this oligarch, Elon Musk. So let's tune in. Let's hear is this is a little bit suspenseful because we have Ben Shapiro and we're going to see where will Ben Shapiro. Can you guess what Ben Shapiro is going to A really handed to Elon Musk and say hey buddy, what are you doing with your Nazi salute? Or B, you guys have him all wrong. I gotta say no, I have a pretty high radar for Nazism.

[Daniel Hunter]

I like a bit of a stake.

[Sam Cedar]

In this particular game. I feel like I can spot some Nazis when I see them. My Nazi radar does not go off around Elon Musk. You know why my Nazi radar doesn't go off around Elon Musk? Because he's not a damned Nazi. In fact, I got one other reason why his Nazi radar may not go off around Elon Musk. It's because Elon Musk is a friend of mine. He's extremely wealthy. In fact, I rely on his good graces in many, many aspects of my life.

[Emma]

That's because his Nazi radar is a little bit more updated to the current conservative context where it only goes off and beeps when somebody criticizes the state of Israel.

[Sam Cedar]

That's a good point. Go Ahead. Yeah, I mean, he must have been really good with that Nazi radar when he hired Candace Owens.

[Emma]

Hmm.

[Sam Cedar]

Well, sometimes that radar gets jammed, buddy. Go ahead. My Nazi radar does not go off around Elon Musk. You know why my Nazi radar doesn't go off around Elon Musk? Because he's not a damned Nazi. In fact, Elon and I, one year ago this week, were in Auschwitz together. Visiting Auschwitz together. We did an event where he spoke about anti Semitism and how evil it is and the evils of Hitlerianism. Like, what is wrong with you people? Hold on for a second. I didn't know this.

[Emma]

Wow.

[Sam Cedar]

I didn't know this, Emma. He was at Auschwitz. He. He went to Auschwitz. Well, of course, if you go to Auschwitz, you are definitely not a Nazi. Unless, of course, you were there the, you know, early on in Auschwitz's existence.

[Emma]

Right.

[Sam Cedar]

But going to Auschwitz and saying you're not anti Semitic, wow. What? I really wonder what inspired him to do that. Do you have any idea, Emma?

[Emma]

Well, it is interesting because prior to that visit, why? What? It was just coincidental that he went there after this. Elon Musk. November 2023. So this is five weeks after the Hamas attack. Elon Musk agreed.

[Sam Cedar]

So this is about a year ago, right?

[Emma]

Just like almost a year and change.

[Sam Cedar]

A year and change. So just before a year ago, when Ben Shapiro went to Auschwitz and Elon Musk went to Auschwitz and spoke. Antisemitism is bad. Okay.

[Emma]

Elon Musk agrees with tweet accusing Jewish people of, quote, hatred against whites. Can we go down to the tweet? This is back when the ADL criticized him and they said that they felt it was anti Semitic. At this time, the tweet said Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites when they claim to want people to stop using that they claim they want people to stop using against them. Then Elon Musk responded, you have said the actual truth.

[Sam Cedar]

Now hold on. Now hold on. Everybody's sitting there going like, oh. When he says, you've said the actual truth, that sounds like what he's saying is you have said something that's true.

[Emma]

Right? But your truth goes out to me.

[Sam Cedar]

People don't know. He's awkward. He's awkward in certain situations. So by saying you have said the actual truth, maybe what he meant was you are saying things that I disagree with.

[Emma]

Right.

[Sam Cedar]

Or I am neuro. Atypical. So I don't know what to say in these situations except for I feel compelled to agree with you. So that things aren't awkward on the platform.

[Emma]

Maybe it was opposite day when he went to Auschwitz. You know what he said there? He said he was quote Jewish by association after going and he says he's aspirationally Jewish.

[Sam Cedar]

Huh.

[Emma]

What are people talking about with this anti Semitism? Because I never hear in a different conversations. Well, you know, when like you're just kind of like used to a specific environment and it almost becomes a part of, you know, your being and when you leave it, then you're shocked by it. Maybe it's that kind of situation.

[Sam Cedar]

I, you know, it's impressive though that he goes to dinner parties where there's no overt antisemitism. I guess maybe it's not there. It's also he's like, well maybe I should go to Auschwitz to see anti Semitism at that time. But obviously like Shapiro was his beard essentially to go to Auschwitz and get the blessing back in the good graces of the Jews.

[Emma]

I mean after that he went to Israel. By the way, Netanyahu defended him on social media as well. So that's what the right is saying. Case close. I've got news for you. Netanyahu engages in Holocaust revisionist history quite frequently. He has repeatedly said a false claim that. Here's Netanyahu's defense of Elon Musk is being falsely smeared. Elon is a great friend of Israel. He visited Israel after the October.

[Sam Cedar]

Right.

[Emma]

He visited them after he made that anti Semitic reply to that post.

[Sam Cedar]

We also know that like that Israel has been for years and years well before, you know, October 7th, making common cause with right wing anti Semitic parties in Europe. Because I mean the has benefited Israel. I mean Lord Balfour was an anti Semite right and Israel itself was promoted as a way of getting the Jews out of England. So like the idea of Israel's incentive structure and anti Semites instruction. Anti Semites incentive structure being aligned is really not that strange of an idea. It is literally a significant part of the founding of Israel. But let's go back and watch just like Ben Shapiro with it. See if he, his boot licking makes his hurts his throat or.

[Emma]

Yes, I just wanted to because I, I lost my, my point that I was making earlier. Netanyahu has said that Adolf Hitler got the idea to exterminate the Jews from the Palestinians, which is not true. It's false. So my point is that Netanyahu regularly engages in this kind of Holocaust revisionism to justify the genocide and the horrific treatment that he does with the Palestinians. So let's not go to him as some arbiter of truth on this front.

[Daniel Hunter]

And Elon's a fan of the AfD party in Germany, which also just endorsed them, which also Netanyahu's son has also voiced.

[Emma]

Far right German party endorsed by Elon Musk. But he's not a Nazi. Don't worry about it.

[Sam Cedar]

And the evils of hilarionism, like what is wrong with you people? And the answer, of course, is they know better. Of course they know better. Of course they know better. No one honestly believes that Elon Musk was giving a Nazi salute. But they have to characterize their opponents as Nazis. It's the only way. It's the only way. This, by the way, has been the tactic of the entire post World War II left. Anybody who is not a communist is a Nazi. That is the way this, that's the way it works. You know, we could also. It's not like Elon Musk is not a target rich environment. And when it comes to, you know, the casual attacks that could be launched upon him on this elk, I mean, he is, and his buddies are all from apartheid South Africa, which I had no idea at any dinner party that there was any type of racism. I never saw it there.

[Emma]

And it's funny you bring up apartheid South Africa because in the context of what you were saying about Balfour Israel actually used to be very close with the government of South Africa. And you know, when that was, it was when it was led by white people and it was an apartheid regime. And I'm forgetting the name of the leader at the time, but he was a literal Hitler fan and a Nazi apologist who, who was leading south Apartheid South Africa in, in I think the 60s and 70s, the Israeli government had no problem with making allegiances there. So, you know, how long can Ben Shapiro make this case, even to his audience, that criticism of Israel is equal to anti Semitism? Like we are at the end of the line here. No one buys this anymore after all this time. It's ridiculous.

[Sam Cedar]

All right, so we've heard from a. The Pope of the Jews, Ben Shapiro, as to why it was ridiculous that Elon Musk was. And again, you know, I personally think that it was a troll where Elon Musk was basically trying to cover his tracks with something that could be seen somewhat ambiguous, he thinks as a, as a Hitler salute, although he has some type of deniability.

[Emma]

Did you see how he was acting at the inauguration?

[Sam Cedar]

You think he was juiced?

[Emma]

I'm not saying that, but I'm saying people could look up videos of his eyes rolling back into his head and then one of his handlers having to whisper in his ear something. It seemed like that's what happened on camera. He might have been a little over enthused on stage. And then something that he practices in private, just theoretically, it's just a theory could have come out because Billy Ray Cyrus, like, there were a lot of people that were enjoying themselves.

[Sam Cedar]

I think he, I think that was practiced. I really do think that he really practiced that moment. I mean, which, which is not mutually exclusive from being hopped up on something. But, you know, we know his sense of humor. We know his sort of like whole thing. And you know, you, you on, on, on Twitter, I see you reposted a quote from Sartre, you know, saying that, like one of the things the fascists do is play with stuff like this because they can and because they know they have an advantage against people who are using language and representation as, as meaningful tools. They know that they can play loose and fast with this because they don't have to communicate to 100% of the people. They don't want to communicate to 100% of the people they know to grow their movement. They need to communicate to the dog whistle people here. It's Jean Paul Sartre. Never believe that anti Semite Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They never know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge, but they're amusing themselves. For it's their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with the discourse. For by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument, but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they'll abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. I mean, people have written ad nauseam like this is part of the, the irony.

[Emma]

Yep.

[Sam Cedar]

In the whole thing.

[Emma]

And so that's from 1946, and it applies perfectly to the far right today.

[Sam Cedar]

Yep. But here is we heard from the Pope of the Jews. Let's listen to Joe Rogan, who also happens to be a buddy of Elon Musk's and you know, relevant because later.

[Emma]

In this clip, in the second part, he does seem to insinuate that they've spoken.

[Sam Cedar]

Well, interesting. My friend Kurt Metzger told me this. We were talking about the Elon Gaff, where he's like, my heart goes out to you. Like, hey, dumb. Don't do that, though. That's the perfect example of when you see a story, you believe it's true. If you believe he's a Nazi, you're gonna see him do a silly hand gesture and see that as that. Well, he's saying, my heart goes out to you. But that is how the Nazis did it. Yeah, yeah, but this is the thing. This is what I found out. He did it twice. That's also how they used to do the Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge of Allegiance used to be done like this until the Nazis came. Came along, and then we switched it to this. Your hand over your heart. So we cut out that part. There's going to be a screen grab of you.

[Daniel Hunter]

There's already a screen grab.

[Sam Cedar]

This was funny. See, this is. This is amazing that he's using this as some type of justification. There is no doubt that I am sure that there was some type of salute like that for the Pledge of Allegiance. In fact, the Nazi symbol wasn't always a swastika. Was not always a swastika. It was an indigenous people design.

[Emma]

It's still used in certain parts of the globe.

[Sam Cedar]

You know, Nazi uniforms, well, they were based on Massachusetts state trooper outfits. But we know now that the Nazis adopted this. Like the. Like the whole point of a salute, again, is to represent something. When you do this in the US army or in the military, you're indicating that there is a hierarchy that's going on. First person to do it. There's a hierarchy going on. We do this because this is what our. You know, this is our in group. And if it suddenly changed to, you know, this. This would mean something different than it did Right. Two days ago, which is just like Nana. But if we switch this to, oh, this is the way that you signal that you're talking to a superior officer. The idea that this used to be Nana. Nana. It's irrelevant because everybody now knows. So the idea that any given hand gesture can be innocent. Of course that's the case. But to. To go back in history and even imply. Which of course this is. It's not a direct defense, but it's an implication that Elon Musk as a child growing up in South Africa, and I would say, because he's got to be younger than me. Elon Musk, Right.

[Emma]

He's in his early 50s.

[Sam Cedar]

He's in his early 50s. He did not grow up at a time where the statute, the Pledge of Allegiance, you would stick your Hand out like that. Because I didn't. And he was not in America. So he did not do the pledge of the Allegiance to the US flag.

[Emma]

I mean, yeah, he. His family, they come from all around his grandparents, according to his father, who were members of the Canadian Nazi party, who liked Hitler and went to South Africa because they liked the apartheid there. That's according to Elon Musk's, Musk's own father. But this is what Rogan is stripping into all context saying. Oh, yeah, prior to the Nazis, they made it. No, that's because context matters. Right. And now he goes into the personal agreement piece. This is what the two arguments they have here is to flatten the context. Don't believe your lying eyes. And then also, they're always coming out after us Conservatives.

[Sam Cedar]

Yes. Screen grab.

[Daniel Hunter]

If you do screen grab.

[Sam Cedar]

This was funny.

[Daniel Hunter]

Cnn during the.

[Sam Cedar]

The COVID times in particular, whenever I get in trouble, the photo they would use of me was me at the UFC weigh ins. So when I do the weigh ins, I announce the weigh ins. I say, welcome to the weigh ins, everybody. I'm waving to the crowd. That's what they did. So they would use this photo of me. So to try to make it look like I was some sort of a Nazi, whatever. Because I'm waving to the crowd and they take a freeze frame of it. Yeah, that's not what happened. There was video of Elon Musk doing it twice. Twice.

[Emma]

Right.

[Sam Cedar]

And not just like a. It wasn't a gesture. It was a slap it off. Like who? He's just got an awkward way of going, like, I give you my heart. Are you kidding me?

[Emma]

Yeah. I mean, but if you go to that second part, Bradley, I don't really care about Rogan's victim complex as a multi, multi, multi, multi millionaire, because every defender of Elon is doing the exact same thing that he's saying right now. They're posting a photo of Elizabeth Warren waving and pretending it's a Sig hail. They're posting a photo of AOC waving and pretending it's a signal. No one's posting the video. No one would have put. If I would have defended Rogan if there were all of these CNN outlets calling him a Nazi and just posting the still and then you find out that it was him waving. No, no, no, no. We know what we saw. And like all of this defense of him precedes him. Basically revealing here that they've been speaking long time.

[Sam Cedar]

First time claims they never did the Nazi salute for the pledge. It was proposed. But the Proposed gesture ended with the hand up, and it never made it into the flag code for obvious reasons. And Bull Prague makes the point. Kaepernick wasn't kneeling. He was saying he would propose marriage to the flag because he loves America so much. Good.

[Emma]

Right.

[Sam Cedar]

How's Elon handling this whole. He's probably like, what the. Yeah, he was definitely what the.

[Daniel Hunter]

And he was happy that the adl, of all people, defended him.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, that was good.

[Daniel Hunter]

Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

Well, it's obvious. Posit, actually. But what's more obvious is at one point about. About a year ago, Elon Musk said, you know what? Maybe your organization needs some funding.

[Daniel Hunter]

Mm.

[Sam Cedar]

And the ADL's ability to, like, be an arbiter for any of this stuff has always been suspect, but now it's just absolutely out the window.

[Emma]

And maybe Israel. Do you need some intelligence assistance or satellites for your military campaigns? I'll be down for that. I'm one of the Pentagon's biggest contractors. I'm not an anti Semite. I've got cold hard cash for you to commit genocide.

[Sam Cedar]

Here's anti establishment Joe Rogan continuing to carry water for the world's richest man. I defended him. Yeah, that was good.

[Daniel Hunter]

Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

Well, it's obvious, but all these people on Twitter are just chiming in, saying, it's clearly a Nazi salute.

[Daniel Hunter]

He's doing a Nazi salute. Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

No, no. So dumb. It's so dumb. It's not clearly. Yeah, it's crazy. The whole thing's crazy. But that's a sign of the times, and they couldn't help it. They saw a thing and they're like, this is.

[Daniel Hunter]

We're gonna run with it.

[Sam Cedar]

He's clearly showing he's a Nazi. You know, the Trump's in office and he's a Nazi, and this is. Fascism is real, folks. Here it is. This.

[Emma]

Okay.

[Sam Cedar]

My heart goes out to you.

[Emma]

Yeah, we got it, we got it.

[Daniel Hunter]

We got it.

[Emma]

We got it.

[Sam Cedar]

Goes out to you.

[Emma]

So I know people have forgotten this, but there was a Madison Square Garden rally that preceded the election by a few weeks that caused a ton of controversy because of a bunch of racist comments that were made there about Puerto Rican people in particular. It was an obvious homage to the Bund. That's what it was called. The Bund Rally of American Nazis at Madison Square Garden. They were trying to evoke it. They pretend like they're not in public, and then they snicker about it behind the scenes in private. The exact same thing that these four chan groipers are saying secretly in response to Elon's salute. He knows what he was doing. He. There's no. He never did. My heart goes out to you with that emphasis and clarity. In other contexts, he wanted to do that in front of the presidential seal of the United States in this country. And as AOC has been saying, like in the. There's a few foundational things for her politics in her response. She was saying, we hate the Confederates and we hate the Nazis in this country. And, you know, there are still World War II veterans that are alive here. And I think it's disgusting that a billionaire thought it would be really cheeky and cute for him to go up there and do that kind of symbol, let alone the number of American Jews and other people who have been victimized by neo Nazi ideology and just the literal Nazis. It's just gross. And I guess billionaire PR now you go to Joe Rogan's podcast.

[Sam Cedar]

Of course it's going to be, you know, going to be carrying Elon Musk's water. Okay, so we've heard from Ben Shapiro, who bootlicked Musk and, you know, really put his Yarmul on the line to protect Musk from any criticism of being anti Semitic. Joe Rogan just said, this is absolutely crazy. Where do people get this idea? Thank God Musk paid the adl, contributed to the adl, and, and. And got their support. Here's something funny happened at PDB at the Patrick Bet David podcast. Remember, this guy was really going off on, like, there should be an all Jew network or something like that back, you know, a year ago when he was. He was getting on bench Pierre. So Patrick Bet David, he. They're all going like, this is sort of weird. Like, you know, I mean, if people went around town doing this, I give my heart to you. I give my heart to you. People would be like, this seems like a weird gesture to give your heart. This is not like, it doesn't feel like, why are you pounding your chest so hard and then thrusting your hand out there? It's your heart. Shouldn't you like.

[Emma]

And he said, my heart goes out to you after. It wasn't at the same time.

[Sam Cedar]

Oh, he planned it so much and. But these guys now are trying to figure out another excuse. Maybe it's just like he. I don't know, just doesn't know how to work his arms. Go ahead. For making it happen. Thank you. My heart goes out to you. Incidentally, pause it for a second. He did it on the other side. He did it twice. The CNN cut away from him when he did it the second time. Yeah, but he did it twice. He turned around, did the same thing. My heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you that the.

[Daniel Hunter]

Future of civilization is assured.

[Sam Cedar]

Thanks to you.

[Emma]

Civilization?

[Sam Cedar]

Tom, that's not it. Yeah, a lot has been talked, there's been a lot said about this. I, I, I don't know, I, I, I see what people are saying. I see what he's saying, Puts it right on his heart and goes out. Then he also says, my heart goes out to you. So I, I, I don't know what was in his head, but I, and I see how people were talking about it, but you know, I don't know, I don't know if I can draw the conclusion and I think it looks a little weird, but I have a tough time with a hard conclusion.

[Emma]

Adam.

[Sam Cedar]

Well, look, Elon, there's so many good things I can say about Elon. Smart, intelligent, witty, the richest man in the world. You know, you talk about golf scores all the time. Yeah. You know, if you played Madden, he's, you know, a 99 on wealth, 100 on wealth, 99 on strength, speed, agility, all that. Listen, Elon, public speaking maybe isn't your thing. Stand up comedy maybe isn't your thing. So if, if he paid a little bit, just a little bit more attention, maybe preparation before going on stage, he would sort of avoid any gas now. Yeah, he literally did it. Positive.

[Emma]

First of all, the first like 15 seconds of what he was saying was just like slurping it up. Just, just keep it up, buddy. I mean, suck up to that guy. That was disgusting. He'd be a 90. He's giving him Madden ratings on his IQ. I thought you wanted to say something. That's why I was pausing it. But that was disgusting. Like, we get it. You want that? Sweet, sweet.

[Sam Cedar]

Oh, no, no. Yeah, he's, he's, he's on full bootleg mode. But he's got to be reasonable and be like, Elon, just, you know, he's not great at public speech. He was just winging it. But I'm sorry, like this is the time where he comes out for the first time in his life he ever goes like that. He planned this out and he planned it out in such a way that there was enough ambiguity so that it would get this type of reaction. This is exactly everything that we, we are doing, they are doing. Everybody we've covered is exactly what he wanted to have happen. And it's a fairly easy thing to manipulate if you're willing to do that. And the Point is, is that he has no problem with it being interpreted either way.

[Emma]

Right?

[Sam Cedar]

And that is what you do when you are a fascist. Like, that's the thing. You don't need everybody to see it as a Nazi salute because the Nazis see it that way. And for those people who don't see it that way, they're looking around going like, boy, anytime somebody's accused of being a Nazi, it's just overreaction. This is exactly the game plan. This is what they do. Go ahead. Any gaps? Now, he literally did a. And I go, whoa, what was that? Now, as a Jewish person, let me help you guys out out there. He's not a Nazi. He doesn't go to Nazi rallies. He's not a fan of Adolf Hitler. Stop it. I can already see the ridiculous media attacking this guy. Here it is. Reuters. Elon Musk Moss hand gesture during Trump interview festivities draw scrutiny. The guy was talking about space. I'm sure it looked awkward. I'm sure it looked.

[Emma]

No, he wasn't sure.

[Sam Cedar]

If he had a chance to do it all over again, he probably wouldn't go out, throw a sea cow out there to the atmosphere. He's more interested in going to Mars.

[Emma]

Stop it. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. He was talking about civilization. You think he said civilization after that as a mistake? You can. You're only a Nazi if you say you're a Nazi. If you go to Nazi rallies and you say you love Adolf Hitler, wow. Wow. It's crazy. That number of people, honestly, is probably in this country smaller than, like, the avowed white supremacists that are in groups that are basically Nazis but don't call themselves Nazis, but if you were to have a beer with them or two, they would talk about the Nazis fondly, Like, it's just like, okay, fine, don't call him a Nazi. I'll say that that was a fascist symbol, a far right fascist symbol meant to signal something to Nazis and did signal something to Nazis. Does it make it better? Like, I don't even care if it's. Even if it wasn't in Elon's heart, even if he wasn't obsessed with Western birth rates and natalism, even though. If he didn't hate unions and communists and leftists, which is, by the way, also part of the Nazi ideology, even if he hadn't made anti Semitic statements in the past, even if his grandparents weren't allegedly members of the Canadian Nazi party and loved apartheid, even if we didn't have all of that Context.

[Sam Cedar]

Unbanning and retweeting Nazi accounts on Twitter.

[Emma]

Right. Replatforming white supremacists. Even if we didn't have all this information, even if he wasn't a Nazi, you know what? I wouldn't care. Because what he did empowered and made those Nazis excited. In the same way that when Donald Trump said, proud boys, stand back and stand by. Does it. Donald Trump's not a proud boy. He would have had to have the outfit. He would have had to go to the rallies. He would have had to say, I'm a proud boy. Put it on my chest. Or was he just trying to signal to those groups? Because that is the same thing. It's the same thing.

[Sam Cedar]

But to be fair, he did put out a bunch of tweets saying that he really regretted. Oh, wait, no, he didn't. He did a bunch of puns using famous Nazis as a way of, like, joking around. Like, people are really taking this seriously. Even his. His crony buddies on these shows are like, it was a Nazi salute. But he did it accidentally. Because I'm sure all those times at Tesla when he had those big Tesla meetings, he said, my heart goes out to you. Oh, they accidentally give you the Nazi salute. Oh, my God. What else? Where else? These guys go a little more back, but on behalf of the Jewish community. Relax. The guy's on the good team. He's on Team America. He wants the good guys to win. Sustain this attack. He's going to be just fine for. For all the people out there. Yeah, great point. Because if you're playing the Hitler Nazi, he. Whatever. Just shut up. Just shut up. You got. First of all, the guy's autistic. He has. Has. This guy has never been in the limelight. He's not. He's done interviews, which is freaking. He's never been in the limelight.

[Emma]

He's. He hosted Saturday Live.

[Sam Cedar]

He's a little baby.

[Emma]

He's a little baby.

[Sam Cedar]

Why are you going?

[Daniel Hunter]

Iron Man 2, which came out 15 years ago.

[Emma]

You're kicking a little puppy. He's a little baby. He's just the richest man on Earth, and he's a. Like, the level of infantilization for the richest person on the planet is the most, like, insane thing I've ever seen. He's a little, little baby. How can you attack him?

[Sam Cedar]

The more they do this, the more it's quite clear, like, the. The.

[Daniel Hunter]

The.

[Sam Cedar]

How far they have to go. Like, autistic people have a problem controlling their ability to give the Nazi salute.

[Emma]

Wait, Tuneberg never did that never did that. You know, she's just a leftist advocating for climate change and, like, ending the genocide in Gaza. I mean, gosh, we could go on and on about the different people that, like, are neurodivergent, that don't do.

[Sam Cedar]

Just don't be an idiot. He's autistic. Go ahead.

[Emma]

Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

Has never been in the limelight. He's. He's done interviews, which he's freaking amazing. He will put your lights out. And he did it to that BBC reporter. Like, I don't think he never thought a million years this guy would be. Remember the last rally he went to where he was jumping? He's so excited. I don't know if you guys have ever dealt with people that have Asperger's or they have these conditions, they have autism. I have family members that do. I have friends that do. They don't go in front of crowd. They don't do this type of stuff. The guy's genuinely excited. He's telling his heart is going out to them. He's in the moment. He's not sitting thinking about it. He's not planning it. So for people to try to do another way. This story will be dead after tomorrow. Nobody gives a damn about. This guy has bigger, bigger plans. He has bigger missions. Did it look bad? Yeah. For people that were kind of looking to say, oh, sh. Hey, Hitler. Which, I mean, how many more Hitler jokes? And Holly, Charlie Kirk just walked by. Charlie, we love you.

[Emma]

How many more Hitler jokes? Actually, that's a good question. It's a good question. Because, you know, Elon Musk, if he really didn't want that action to be interpreted in the way that it did, and he was just like, whoa, I'm not a Nazi. I don't want to appeal to Nazis, he would have issued an apology and said, like, I'm so sorry. I got caught up in the moment. You know, maybe my. My. My case bag was a little bit stronger than typically. I mean, just like. Again, that's a joke. It's just. Just theoretical. Oh, this was his apology.

[Sam Cedar]

Sam, don't say Hess to noxy accusations. Hess, of course, is one of Hitler's top generals. Some will say Goebbels, some will Goebbels down anything. Goebbels was the. Basically the minister of propaganda, Stop goring your enemies. Another Hitler General Himmler. His pronouns would have been he, Himmler is another, and bet you did not see that coming.

[Emma]

I've heard that joke 7,000 times.

[Sam Cedar]

But amazing puns. Good stuff, good stuff. And once he once, you know, he had the ADL give him the stamp of approval, then he was fine.

[Emma]

I mean, why does he even need to apologize when he has guys just sucking him off on in the media for free? Sorry. Kissing his ass.

[Sam Cedar]

Jeff Bezos came, Bill Gates came. Mark Zuckerberg came, Many of them. Don Junior's nose. Wow. Majority report violating YouTube terms of service and showing a video of the PBD guys fellating Musk live on air.