It Could Happen Here Weekly: RNC Edition

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
All Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
of the week that just happened is here in one
convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
you can make your own decisions. Robert Evans here and

(00:27):
this is it could Happen here a podcast out Things
falling apart, and boy they share seem to be, don't they.
The twenty twenty four election is terrifying a lot of
people at this stage after a disastrous debate performance by
Joe Biden. And this episode will be coming out on
the Monday that the Republican National Convention starts in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

(00:48):
A lot of people are terrified about a Trump dictatorship,
about Project twenty twenty five and all that that entails.
And I want to tell you first off, you know
we will be having a lot of coverage from the convention. Garrison,
Sophie and I are all going to be there all week.
We'll start dropping our convention episodes on Wednesday and Thursday
and Friday, and then we'll probably have some summary content

(01:11):
after that the next week, So we will be getting
you our experiences here and everything that we encounter on
the ground during what I think is going to wind
up being a pretty important week for the American fascist movement.
But right now, what I want to address is the
sense of kind of unbridled terror that I've seen from

(01:31):
a lot of people around me, not just leftists, but
regular people that I know in my life, Folks who
are just kind of like casual democrats, not the kind
to think much about politics, but have suddenly seen the
potential of what a Trump second term might bring with
it and are rightfully terrified. So I want to first off,
tell everyone in that bucket, don't panic. That's what this

(01:54):
episode is about. And I'm going to try and give
you some good reasons not to panic, some reasons why
our situation is not as dire as it seems. And
my goal here is not to lull you into an
action or stop you from preparing. You should, in fact
be preparing, And we talk about the various things you
can do organizing in your community, taking action to support migrants,

(02:16):
to support each other, to support your LGBTQ friends, women
seeking reproductive justice. That's our daily bread and butter. Right now,
I want to give you some reasons for optimism about
victory and the overall struggle against these fucking maniacts so
as most regular listeners will know, Back in the spring
of twenty nineteen, I published the first season of It

(02:38):
Could Happen Here, which was originally a scripted podcast about
the very real possibility of a civil conflict in the
United States. The years since have proven several of my
predictions painfully accurate. I started the series with fictional vignettes
from the perspective of an American civilian watching American tanks
roll through the streets of their city. Within a year,

(03:00):
thousands and thousands of listeners had variants of that exact
experience thanks to the George Floyd uprisings. I was humbled
and more than a little frightened by the response that
some people had to the first iteration of it Could
Happen Here. During twenty twenty, while I was on the
ground in four different states, dozens and dozens of people
told me the series had influenced their own choices for
how to act and organize on the ground with their

(03:22):
friends out in the world, and that is humbling and
a little bit frightening. And I promise you I'm not
laying this out to brag or try to make an
argument from authority. I'm not saying I predicted something five
years ago and was right, so you should listen to
what I have to predict now. In fact, I kind
of want to do the opposite because in another podcast
I recorded in twenty nineteen on the anti VAXX movement,

(03:44):
this would have been an episode of Behind the Bastards,
I laid out a theoretical pandemic and I described it
spreading almost exactly the way the COVID nineteen pandemic really
did spread just a few months later. And yet, in
February of twenty twenty, when COVID nineteen had been confirmed
to have entered the United States and was spreading over
other parts of the world like wildfire, I had friends

(04:07):
ask me what I thought was going to happen, and,
you know, thinking back to stars, thinking back to bird flu,
thinking back to the Ebola, you know, epidemic in twenty fourteen.
My answer was, I don't know, It'll probably be fine. Right, someone,
surely there's some adults out there who are gonna, you know,
lock this thing down. They're not just gonna let it

(04:28):
run rampant over the population. Right. There's a term for
what happened to me there, and it's called normalcy bias.
Normalcy bias is the tendency to assume that whatever has
gone down in the past will keep happening, often despite
evidence to the contrary. Something like eighty percent of people
display attributes of delusional thinking caused by the normalcy bias

(04:49):
during disasters, Emergency responders sometimes called this negative panic. We
got a great example of negative panic a couple of
weeks ago. Video went viral of a bowl that got
loose during a rodeo in rural Oregon, and it started
just just absolutely goring random yocals who were like wandering
around in between chiro stands and beer carts behind sort

(05:09):
of the stands. And a few of these people had
the presence of mind to run. One guy even pulled
a gun. And I don't know entirely how we want
to rate that as a response, but a lot of
folks just stared at the bowl, which a blank looks
on their face is utterly uncomprehended. You can tell from
their body language that they just couldn't believe what they
were seeing. And some of those people got rammed right

(05:30):
in the fucking gut by a bull a second later.
The immediate danger that their eyes were telling them was
there just seemed too far fetched to take seriously. The
normalcy bias is an important cognitive error, but it's just
one of the cognitive errors that regularly pushes mankind towards catastrophes.
And while we're on that subject, I should warn those

(05:52):
of you who'd like to try their hand at predicting
the future of a separate cognitive delusion, catastrophizing. This is
the tendency to assume that the absolute worst case scenario
will come to pass, and it's often a trauma reaction.
When you've been blown up, you kind of always expect
the world to blow up around you. If you've been
in a relationship with someone who blows up, who screams

(06:15):
or gets violent or threatens to kill themselves during arguments,
you might find yourself expecting that from anyone else that
you date, even if they've never displayed that kind of behavior.
And if you've watched an in the bag sheer thing
presidential election collapse and usher in a new era of
fascist political capture in your country. Well, you might see
that kind of thing happening and expect it whenever the

(06:36):
polls open up again. The tricky part of actually predicting
the future with any accuracy, which is a thing that
I have been both professionally successful at and personally bad
at doing, is balancing your normalcy bias with your catastrophizing.
This is easier said than done, and I have noticed
that my effort to reach this state has produced some

(06:57):
peculiar cognitive effects of late. In the six months that
led up to the first presidential debate, I felt constant
growing anxiety about a second Trump term. Only some of
my anxiety was based on polling, which didn't look great
for Biden, but wasn't apocalyptic either. I was anxious because
I saw so many people around me, and I'm not
talking about folks on Twitter, but in the real world, go, well,

(07:18):
obviously Biden's gotta win, there's no way Trump gets elected again,
and then go about their day. Then the debate happened.
Joe went on stage, barely able to speak at a
legible volume, coughing slurring his words and dropping into tangents
rather than making cogent cases to the country. Everyone around
me started to get terrified all at once, and the
mainstream media did what it does and pivoted to round

(07:40):
the clock coverage of the issue of Biden's competency. You know,
some people have alleged that this is because the media
has some sort of an agenda here, and I really
don't credit the media, as someone who has spent his
life working adjacent to the mainstream media with that kind
of capacity to plan. What these people, what these reporters,
what these news organs were doing was pivoting to the

(08:00):
issue that was doing the most to raise our collective
blood pressure, because, among other things, that's what social media
has trained them to do, because that's where the fucking
money is, right, you know, not that this issue didn't
exist before that. If it bleeds, it leads has been
a long time axiom in the field. But that's what's
happening here too, right, And because the money is in

(08:24):
saying and talking about the things that gets people's blood
pumping the most. The question of is Joe Biden doomed
soon yielded to is democracy doomed? As analysts and pundits
started hyping up Project twenty twenty five, a blueprint for
fascist takeover of the US published by the Heritage Foundation
last year. Now, I am not a polster, and I

(08:44):
don't claim debase any of what I say next on
some kind of mathematic expertise. But I don't think we're doomed.
I don't think fascist takeover is inevitable, even in the
likely event that Biden loses, and I think our position
is a lot stronger than most people realize. This is
why right wing influencers and strategists have started going so
hard on rhetoric that makes them sound like fucking Cobra commander.

(09:08):
The best example of how mask off the fascist right
has gotten is Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation,
who said this during a recent press conference.

Speaker 3 (09:17):
The reason that so many anchors on MSNBC, for example,
are losing their minds daily is because our side is winning.
And so I come full circle in this response and
just want to encourage you with some substance that we
are in the process of the Second American Revolution, which
will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.

Speaker 2 (09:38):
Another of these guys is Jack Pisobic, a former Navy
intelligence officer turned supplement salesman and fascist political philosopher. Jack
spoke on a panel hosted by Steve Bannon for Seapak
where he said this, but I just.

Speaker 4 (09:51):
Wanted to say, welcome to the end of democracy. We're
here to overthrow it completely. We didn't get all the
way there on January sixth, but endeavor to get rid
of it and replace it with this right here, will
replace it with this.

Speaker 5 (10:06):
Amen.

Speaker 2 (10:07):
Now I should note, folks, when he says this right here,
he's holding up a cross necklace on a change. Jack's
not a subtle man, but he does speak for a
frighteningly large and influential block of Republicans. Both of these
guys are end results of eighty years of conspiracy theories
and hate speech funded by generations of wealthy businessmen and
their fail sons, and at this point fail grandsons. The

(10:30):
mainstream media and most voters in this country did their
best to ignore these guys for far too long. Now
they're pounding on the doors to the halls of power,
mouths watering, Dick's hard guns loaded, and people are freaking out.
Biden's poor debate performance and the minor civil war within
the Democratic Party over whether he should remain the candidate
has zeroed a magnifying glass on these people now. Obviously,

(10:53):
Jack and his fellow fascists have been poking on the
fringes of the American right four years. There nothing they're
saying is new, but Trump's likely victory in the Supreme
Court's recent ruling on executive immunity have led a lot
of people to conclude that Project twenty twenty five is
Trump's plan to execute as soon as he takes office.
This is something guys like Pasobac and Roberts want you

(11:16):
to believe because they want you terrified, hiding, shrieking away
from confrontation. Like all fascists, they have an instinctive understanding
that if they can just convince you that the fight
is already lost, they win. This is why Jack has
spent the last two weeks since the debate quote tweeting
every left wing media person he can find and saying

(11:37):
six months to insinuate they'll be dead or in camps
after Trump's inevitable victory. He wants you to panic. Jack
is a veteran, and while he was not a great soldier,
he is familiar with some very basic concepts of military strategy.
One of them that I bring up often because I
think it illustrates something important is the ODE loop. This

(11:57):
is the process by which people make decisions and act
in combat situations, and it stands for the different stages
of this process are observe, orient, decide, act. If you
can disrupt any part of the ODA loop, you can
stop an opponent from taking effective action, from deciding, or
from carrying out their actions. Jack and his peers want
you to panic. They want you to make plans to

(12:19):
leave the country, to go to ground, to hide all
evidence of your political sympathies. Ideally, and I don't make
this allegation likely, he wants you to commit suicide. He
wants you to feel hopeless. He wants you to believe
that nothing matters any longer, because what matters most to
him is that you and people like you are out
of the picture. You know, either dead or so scared

(12:40):
that you are disrupted from acting in any concerted way
against him and his friends. Now, my job, as a
semi professional Cassandra, and as a guy who reports in
the far right, is to tell you this. A Trump
dictatorship is not inevitable. These fucks are weaker than they look,
and we will talk about all that after some ads.

(13:13):
We're back now. I am not primarily an election guy,
and my work has never focused on the horse race stuff.
The polls are bad for Biden, and I have no
interest in trying to delude anyone to thinking this's all
some big nationwide polling error. The only thing I will
say about the Democratic Party's actual electoral chances is to
note gently that online discourse has somewhat inflated the polling

(13:35):
fallout from the debate. Trump is now the odds on
bet but if you average the swing state polls, he
and Biden are generally within the margin of error pretty
much everywhere. Now you're going to get a different analysis
depending on which pole expert you trust. The new guys
at five thirty eight still have it mostly as a
coin flip, although one that slightly favors Trump. Nate Silver
himself gives Biden under a thirty percent chance, which is

(13:57):
terrible and also about where Trump was November of twenty sixteen,
and we all do know how that election ended. People
are often very bad at understanding probabilities, but saying he's
got a twenty nine percent chance of winning doesn't mean
it's impossible for him to win. Right. The situation is serious,
but the future is not written, and you should remember that,
for good and for ill, the final results of this

(14:19):
whole thing will come down probably to one hundred thousand
voters or so in five or six states. Now, it's
also worth me saying this. Both of these candidates are
old men, and statistically it would not be unheard of
or weird if one of them was dead before the election.
Joe Biden could still lose in a palace coup from

(14:39):
the rest of his party and get replaced. Anything can happen,
and in US politics it often does. Hey, everyone, Robert here.
Two days after I wrote this, something happened. There was
an assassination attempt against former President Trump. I am recording
this a couple of hours after it happened. A lot
is unclear at the moment than that somebody shot at him.

(15:01):
It looks like he was wounded with from glass shrapnel
when the teleprompter is hit. That Secret Service is currently
claiming a shooter appears to have been outside the venue
on a roof. Not much more I can say at
this point. I will note again, there's a lot of
catastrophizing going on, people saying like, oh, this means he's
definitely going to win reelection. When Reagan got shot that

(15:22):
Trump you know, rocketed him to a reelection victory. You know,
that's possible, that could be what happens here. That's definitely
a solid case to be made for that. That's what
happened with Reagan, But that's not always what happens when
there are assassination attempts against sitting or former presidents. On
September twenty second, nineteen seventy five, Sarah Jane Moore, a

(15:43):
member of the Manson family cult, attempted to assassinate President
Ford with a thirty eight revolver. He did not win reelection.
So you know, that's just as a note like sometimes
what happens it's impossible to say what's going to happen
with this, But if you're looking to past us history

(16:03):
for president, you're still kind of in a situation where, well,
really unclear what's going to go down. Now that's all
the Horse Ray stuff I'm gonna subject you to. We
are now going to move forward with the rest of
this episode trying to answer this question what happens if
Trump wins, and I'm going to give you some very
good reasons not to freak the fuck out. The first

(16:25):
has to do with Project twenty twenty five. In short,
this Heritage Foundation document maps out a path to place
the whole federal bureaucracy under President Trump's control, effectively ending
separation of church and state, utilizing law enforcement to go
after dissidents, making recreational sets illegal, and criminalizing daily life
for millions of LGBT Americans. In short, it is a

(16:47):
roadmap to Christian dictatorship. Now, I'm not going to tell
you you shouldn't find this chilling, but let's be clear
about what Project twenty twenty five is. It is a
nine hundred page document written by a think tank that
has lost a lot of its influence and access to
power over the last ten years. The Heritage Foundation was once,
as Molly Ball described in an article for The Atlantic,

(17:08):
the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement. But during the
Obama years, the tremendous influence of the Heritage Foundation started
to get pruned back by establishment Republicans because it became
clear that in a lot of ways these guys were
dangerously out of step with voters and kind of hard
to work with. The pullback actually began in twenty fourteen,
when the Heritage Foundation was suddenly banned from the Republican's

(17:30):
Study Committee Retreat over a conflict around a farm bill. Now,
the think tank remained influential, but its decline accelerated after
Trump took office. Some of this was the result of
the fact that conservative tanks have seen a general decline
in influence from the good old days, the height of
their power. The Republican Party has won the popular vote
in exactly one election this century, and as of twenty

(17:51):
twenty two, we have seen them go through two disastrous
midterm elections in a row and one disastrous, losing presidential election.
An interesting piece of reporting on the Heritage Foundations decline
from twenty twenty two by the Washington Posts Jeff Stein
and Yagana Torbati. They quote one conservative on Capitol Hill
as saying, people do not walk around in fear of

(18:12):
the Heritage Foundation the way they did ten years ago.
And the main reason why is because Trump and the
people around him were gaining a lot more influence. Right
These old think tankers just didn't hold the juice that
they used to now. That article was published in response
to a switch in leadership for the think tank, which
is how Kevin Roberts wound up in the position he occupies,
and why the Heritage Foundation pivoted from focusing on economic

(18:35):
concerns to shit like stoking panic over the existence of
trans people, critical race theory, all the culture war stuff
that we have been bombarded with now for years. This
is shit that fires up a chunk of the Republican base,
but the last three election cycles have shown it's dog
shit at getting regular Americans on board, because regular Americans
look at this stuff and go while these people are

(18:56):
fucking out of their minds. I think the near around
Project twenty twenty five is potentially useful. It has the
potential to line a lot of voters up, and crucially
not for Joe Biden or for the Democrats, but against
a Republican party that has almost entirely yielded to the
fascists in its midst But I also see a lot

(19:18):
of people describing Project twenty twenty five as Trump's plan
for when he takes office, and that's just not what
it is. These people will note that a lot of
former Trump people have worked for the Heritage Foundation, to
which I say, he hates a lot of the people
who worked with him the last administration around this is
very common knowledge. Some people will also point out recently

(19:38):
unearthed video of the director of Project twenty twenty five
back in twenty twenty three telling a right wing podcaster
that Trump was very bought in with Project twenty twenty five.
And maybe that's true, but I don't feel like you
should necessarily believe this guy isn't just tooting his own horn. Now.
That kind of belief, though, does merge with statements you'll
see from prominent p aggressive media figures, people like Chris Hayes,

(20:02):
who recently tweeted a big reason Project twenty twenty five
is so salient is because the actual Trump campaign has
essentially zero policy apparatus and the platform is just Trump
social posts strung together. Now, I like Chris, and I
agree that it is important to set the stakes here
for voters and to talk about Project twenty twenty five
because it's fucked up and we should do something about

(20:25):
the fact that these people feel confident putting out open
plans to in democracy and institute a Christian nationalist dictatorship.
But what Chris says is not strictly accurate because Trump
has a platform and it might have been influenced by
Project twenty twenty five. I think it probably was. But
his platform is called Agenda forty seven, and we have

(20:46):
covered it on It could happen here our daily news program.
This is something you should care about Trump. In his
Agenda forty seven plans, Trump advocates for mass deportations of migrants,
for an attack on the legal rights of the press,
and the imprisonment of his political enemies. He threatens the
use of special forces and air strikes against cartels on

(21:06):
Mexico's sovereign soil. There's a lot of crazy shit in
Agenda forty seven. This is very serious stuff, and it
is crucially the stuff Donald Trump has promised to do
if he gets elected. Now, a few days before I
wrote this, the former president took to truth Social to
officially disavow Project twenty twenty five. Now, do I think

(21:27):
he's lying? Do I think he was aware of it?
Do I think he cribbed some of it for Agenda
forty seven. Yeah, he's Donald Trump. He lies all the
fucking time. But I do think it's noteworthy that he
feels a need to publicly and vociferously disavow Project twenty
twenty five. And this is part of a general split
between Trump and the faction of the party who want

(21:47):
a strong man dictator type but who aren't Christian nationalists,
and the chunk who are. This is a natural cleavage,
and we can see further evidence of this in the
fact that, thanks to Trump's intercession, for the first time
in quite a while, the Republican Party platform does not
call for a national ban on abortion. And if you
watch Trump during the debate, you can tell he's uncomfortable

(22:09):
taking the standard right wing light on this because Trump
is not a conservative Christian and doesn't really give a
shit about abortion. He also knows it's not a vote winner.
You know, he can't entirely push back on the party
on this, but he's clearly not motivated to do so.
Now does this mean Trump wouldn't sign such a ban
into law. Now, of course not. But it means he

(22:30):
understands that while the Jack Posobics of the world have
their use to him, he needs a lot of votes
from people who rightly see those Republicans as scary if
Trump does take power again. These natural cleavages will become
more pronounced, and Trump will also have to wield power
in a severely divided country that does not like him
or his policies. One thing that nearly all recent polling

(22:52):
has made clear is that Biden's historic unpopularity has not
made Trump more popular. Poles generally show a ceiling of
around forty two percent the country who like the guy,
and that ceiling is remarkably stable. There is also evidence
that the sudden media focus on Project twenty twenty five
and the fact that Republicans are actively planning to in
democracy has cut into Trump's support. Right before I finished

(23:14):
this episode, on Thursday, July eleventh, IPSOS published a poll
showing Trump down a point from their last poll taken
after the debate, which put him in Biden close to
a tie. Now, this still isn't great for Biden because
they all writes this election should not be close. But
I think a lot of people have made the mistake
of conflating disgust for Biden with surging support for Trump,
and that just is not what we're seeing. More evidence

(23:36):
for this comes from a recent ABC Your Voice poll,
which showed fifty percent of the country having an unfavorable
opinion of Biden and fifty nine percent having an unfavorable
opinion of Trump. Part of why so many of these
outright fascists have gone mask off is that they see
these numbers too. They know that this moment right now
is their best shot, maybe ever, at taking this country,

(23:57):
crushing their enemies and inflicting the pain that it is
their only purpose in life to inflict. And they might win,
They might get to do that. The Heritage Foundation is
not at the heart of the Trump campaign, but any
step closer to total power for these people should ring
alarm bells in every heart and head in this country.
Yet the severity of the situation does not change this

(24:19):
absolutely crucial fact. The fascists snow the wind is no
longer at their backs, and I'm going to talk about
that when we come back from this ad break. Despite

(24:41):
how confident the Trump campaign and guys like Jack Pisobac
are talking right now about their chances of winning, of
dominating the government, of taking control of America for generations,
and purging the left, the reality is that their position
is not nearly as stable as it seems. And part
why I think a lot of folks buy into a

(25:01):
lot of folks on the left in liberals buy into
the claims that the right is making right now about
their guaranteed victory, about their looming inevitable victory. Is that
Americans tend to be pretty self centered when it comes
to politics, and it is understandable that this nail bier
of an election in Joe Biden's calamitist debate performance has
people here feeling doomed and feeling like a new fascist

(25:24):
world order is inevitable. If you feel that way, though,
I urge you to look around the world. Look to India,
where authoritarian near dictator Narindra Modi was just dealt a
startling setback in the Indian general election. His party, the BJP,
failed to win a majority for the first time since
twenty fourteen. Now, this is not the end of Modi,

(25:45):
but it is a shocking sign of where the wind
is blowing and the backlash that has started to form
against the far right worldwide. In the UK, the Labor
Party just won a landslide election against the Conservatives, tapping
it into more than a dozen years of conservative power.
And in France, the snap election called by President Emmanuel
Macron inspired the creation of a popular left wing front

(26:08):
against the far right, which defeated the far right in
another historic election. Among other things, this new left alliance
has promised to recognize the state of Palestine and increased
support for Ukrainian resistance to Russia's invasion. I could go
on Turkey's all but dictator President Erduwan has been bleeding
support for years now and recently suffered a massive setback

(26:30):
in regional elections around the country. The opposition Republican People's
Party took the five largest cities in the country in
an upset vote, including the capital Istanbul, where Odouin's party
had invested massive resources. Now, these upsets in India and
Turkey are so worth discussing because both countries are years
into their own version of the nightmare scenario that Donald

(26:51):
Trump Season two represents. Right, they voted their fascists into power.
These guys took control of the courts, imprisoned dissidents, harnessed
civil violence for political gain. And yet even with all that,
even with all the power available to a modern security state,
their hold on power is slipping. Just as I read
these words. For many years, neo Nazi activists sought to

(27:14):
influence and build support within the Republican Party and talked
about hiding their power level as they did so. Now,
this is a term they cribbed from dragon ball Z,
and it means, in essence, pretending not to be a
crazy ass fascist in order to get enough support from
the normies that you can act like a crazy ass
fascist with the power of the state. Well, the masks

(27:34):
are off now. Nobody is hiding their power level anymore.
And I am not so arrogant as to claim that
I know that their defeat is around the corner. But
I will tell you one thing. This is a make
or break moment for the sons of bitches. If they
fail now, they will find themselves exposed in a country
that knows precisely who and what they are. And this
means we will have the opportunity to destroy them. Now

(27:58):
how would we do that? Well, first, if I'm not
going to give you a detailed, perfect roadmap for how
you can participate in this and how we can easily
destroy the fascists, and the next you know, five or
six minutes of a podcast. But I do have some theories.
I will elaborate on them more in subsequent episodes. And
I want to emphasize right now that this is possible

(28:18):
because the cultural power of the far right, which seems
so mighty right now, actually does rest on a house
of cards. The Republican Party today is funded primarily by
a coalition of car dealers who donate more than any
other profession because their job depends on being able to
scam consumers, multi level marketing corporations, supplement sales, affiliate marketing, megachurches,

(28:41):
and of course are old friends in the oil and
gas industry. And there's a lot of ways to attack
these different pillars of right wing power, these people who
are actually funding their media operations, who are funding a
lot of these more radical candidates, and who are lobbying
for changes in laws that hurt you and help them.
And again, I'm not going to be able to give
a comprehensive list of how you go about dismantling all

(29:04):
of this. It is a formidable task, but you could
do a lot of damage to the power of the
far right by regulating car sales and punishing dealers who
scam consumers, which is close to one hundred percent of dealers.
You can ban the sale of unregulated supplements marketed as
medical treatments, a thing that should be illegal, but effectively
as not. You can ban pyramid schemes and prosecute the

(29:24):
criminals who have made fortunes off of them. These are
counterattacks that will improve daily life for huge numbers of
voters and do functional damage to the right's ability to
move and maneuver. Now, I don't mean to suggest that
the only way to move on any of those issues
is just to vote right. Democrats have had decades to
fight back against this shit, and they have failed by

(29:46):
nearly every measure. But we have the potential of a
general strike coming up in twenty twenty eight if the
UAW has their way, and the catastrophic failure of the
Democratic Party in this election has I think created some
space for new kinds of o organizing. The last point
I want to leave you with is one more piece
of evidence that the juggernaut hurtling towards us is not

(30:07):
so hail and hardy as it seems. In April of
this year, The Atlantic published an article based on analytics
of the most popular right wing news websites in the country.
They wrote, this past February, readership of the ten largest
conservative websites was down forty percent compared with the same
month in twenty twenty. According to The Rtening, a newsletter
that uses monthly data from Commscore, essentially the Nielsen ratings

(30:30):
of the Internet, to track right wing media. Some of
the bigger names in the field that have have been
pummeled the hardest. The Daily Caller lost fifty seven percent
of its audience, Drudge Report, the granddaddy of conservative aggregation,
was down eighty one percent, and The Federalist, founded just
over a decade ago, lost a staggering ninety one percent. Now,
these numbers are startlingly consistent across right wing media, and

(30:53):
they are vastly worse than what liberal and left leaning
media has seen over the same time period. A number
of ostensibly liberals sites like The Times have seen an
increase in subscribers over the same period, and I can
confirm to you that here at cool Zone we have
more listeners and subscribers than we did in twenty twenty. Now,
should you feel like there's nothing to worry about just
because the right wing media is taking a fall, No,

(31:15):
But what this should be evidence of is that, again,
their support has always largely been built on their ability
to generate huge amounts of money and essentially buy attention,
you know, and that's largely where guys like Ben Shapiro
have gotten their cultural power. And that's made Ben Shapiro
a wealthy man, but it hasn't actually brought him a

(31:36):
lot of people who give a shit what he has
to say. The actual number of people paying attention to
the scary motherfuckers that you see in these clips that
spread in liberal and lefty social media is very small.
And it's very small because these people are crazy assholes
who most of the folks around you, who are basically
decent people, because most people are decent, fucking hate what

(31:59):
we have seen here. What we are seeing here is
the shattering of an illusion, and the popularity of a
lot of right wing media was only ever an illusion,
popped up by an infusion of cash from billionaire fail
suns desperate to hold on to their money. Most people
don't like or trust these folks, and the arrogance and
certainty of victory that the Trump campaign and the Sobics
of the country have been showing now, well, it's caused

(32:23):
them to expose themselves. There is precisely one thing you
can always count on from fascists and it's that they're
dogshit at estimating risk. Time and time again. They convince
themselves that they cannot be stopped in pick fights that
they wind up losing. And that is perhaps the most
reliable thing that we can predict from their behavior, and
maybe the most comforting thing I can tell you going

(32:45):
forward now. I also just retyped and re recorded this
ending in the wake of the assassination attempt against former
President Trump, and I want to talk a little bit
about that before we go out, because that is certainly
potentially a game changer. You know, people saying this could
shack the whole election are not wrong, but at this
point far from a guarantee. As well, as I said earlier,

(33:06):
there have been assassination attempts against sitting presidents and former
presidents that have not moved the needle in an election
either at least not in a really clear way in
favor of the person the attempt was against. So we
don't know how this is going to play. One thing
I have seen in the immediate wake of this, within
minutes of the attempt itself and video of it going up,
is liberals, I think mainly liberals, but also some people

(33:29):
on the left immediately being like, this is a Reichstag
fire situation, this is staged, This is obviously a fake attempt.
I don't see any evidence of that in the video
that's out there. I do not believe this was faked.
I do not need a conspiracy to believe that somebody
would want to take a shot at former President Trump.
The video does not show any clear weird signs that

(33:52):
would make me suspect something odd was going on. One
of the things that's come out it looks like the
shooter was on a roof nearby, pretty clear evidence of that.
At this point. There are some reports from people in
the crowd who say that they pointed out the guy
on the roof to police and were basically ignored. You know,
the police didn't do anything. That also does not seem

(34:14):
weird to me, and if it does to you. I
want to explain something about these events because I've been
to a number of events during presidential campaigns with the
Secret Services doing security and other kind of large scale
you know, events like this where there's a lot of
different law enforcement agencies, and at all of them you
will see snipers on the roof. It is not hard
to find them. These guys. Some of them I assume
are very well camouflaged. I'm not saying I know I've

(34:36):
seen everyone that's around at one of these things, but
you see a lot of them, right, and so do
the cops. Right, It's just not abnormal, And there are
always a ton of law enforcement agencies. You know, this
was just another Trump rally, so relatively minor as events
in you know, a presidential campaign go. But you still
have state and local cops. You still have at least

(34:56):
the Secret Service, probably more than just the Secret Service
when it comes to federal agencies. So you know, conservatively,
at minimum, probably at least a half dozen different law
enforcement agencies covering this event, right, And there's definitely going
to be some people there who know where all of
the snipers are supposed to be, right, presumably within the
Secret Service, But that is not the average cop on

(35:17):
the ground. The average cop covering this event, especially walking
around doing foot patrols, does not know where federal law
enforcement has every single sniper set up, and they are
like anyway, I started this episode talking about the normalcy bias, right, Well,
that's not just a thing that you can trip you
up when you are trying to predict the future months
or years in advance. It is a thing that can

(35:37):
trip you up predicting something a minute in advance. Right,
you see, as a cop walking through this event, someone says, Hey,
there's a guy up on the roof with a gun. Well,
you've seen a half dozen guys on the roof with guns.
You've been told there's a bunch of different Secret Service
and DHS sniper teams up there. Maybe your agency has
some guys up on the roof, you know, sharpshooters, not
at all weird. You go, yeah, maybe you even see

(36:00):
the guy And the pictures I've seen, looks like he
was wearing CAMA. Looks like he was wearing the kind
of combat gear that cops wear, but also that anyone
can buy, because cops look like you know a lot
of people who just buy this shit and do it recreationally,
you know, go go shooting and training in the woods
or whatever, like a lot of It's not hard to
gain access to gear that at a glance would look

(36:21):
enough like a cop. And my guess is that this
guy counted on the normalcy bias. He figured my best
shot at being able to get away with this is
if I post up on a roof somewhere and assume
that the cops that spot me immediately won't know right
away what I am right. And that does seem to
be what happened at this moment, And you know, I
take that as a lot of things very unclear. This

(36:42):
is going to again affect the election, but take it
as a warning against falling for the normalcy bias, because
just because something seems like it's not weird, like it's
not a sign of a change of something very different
about to go down, doesn't mean it isn't. Yeah, you
can never trust your assumptions, and that goes both ways,
with both ways with this, I am seeing a lot

(37:04):
of understandable catastrophizing. This is a terrifying thing. I am
someone who's about to head into the RNC not thrilled
that this has happened. But that doesn't mean we know
what the fallout is going to be. It doesn't mean
we know what the reaction and the result is. I mean,
for among other things, this is not necessarily fully optimistic.
But I don't know how much this moves the needle,

(37:25):
because I don't know how many people who can be
convinced would be swayed by something like this for how
many people this could change their opinion on the election,
and how many people are going to believe that this
was real and not. You know, I've even seen people
claiming that, like, yeah, Trump bladed himself the way a
wrestler would. Again, I think that's all nonsense. It's just
really unclear how people are going to react, right, It's

(37:48):
not worthless to look back to. You know, there's an
attempt on Reagan to try and see and other assassination
attempts and how they've affected elections. But all of that
shit happened prior to the modern era of social media.
All of that shit happened prior to everyone's brains getting
broken by the internet. So I'm not going to tell
you this is a good time. I'm not going to

(38:08):
tell you things are chill. They the fuck aren't. But
I am going to tell you the future is not written,
and don't panic until next time. I'm Robert Evans and
this is It Could Happen Here. We'll be back later
this week with coverage of the Republican Convention. Welcome to

(38:38):
It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart
and nothing says, things falling apart better than as many
Republicans as possible jammed into as small a place as possible,
with half of the cops in the United States of
America there as well. With me is Sophie Lichterman and
Garrison Davis are on the ground hoarding team for the

(39:01):
Republican Convention National.

Speaker 6 (39:05):
Wow, it's true.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
We're here.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
We are at the Republican National Convention, the day after
former President Donald Trump was nearly struck down by an
assassin's bullet. And uh, yeah, it's been a pretty fun.

Speaker 7 (39:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:21):
The vibes are great. Vibes are great. Actually, that's kind
of the thing we should start with. We, I mean,
the president for a president was shot yesterday, and the
shit online has been absolutely unhinged. And I was expecting.
I was expecting a lot, but certainly a different vibe
at the thing, which was I think basically the same

(39:42):
vibe it would have had if the president hadn't been shot.
People were by and large not acting different.

Speaker 7 (39:49):
Okay, so set the scene. All. We went to this red,
white and Brew kickoff party.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
Shocking amount of free alcohol.

Speaker 7 (40:00):
Shocking amount of free alcohol. How many people do you
think we're there? I don't know, thousands, That definitely thousands
of people.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
Yeah, the not crazy crowded, but it was big.

Speaker 6 (40:09):
The flyers said they were estimating ten to fifty thousand
people over the course of like five six hours.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
Yeah, that sounds about right. Yeah.

Speaker 7 (40:14):
Trace Adkins performed and sang a song with the lyrics
Garrison Well.

Speaker 6 (40:22):
This was actually a spoken word intro to.

Speaker 2 (40:24):
This was in the middle of the songs.

Speaker 7 (40:25):
Yes, We're we were.

Speaker 2 (40:28):
If you haven't heard, Trace is a country music star,
and not a good one. I'm not sure if it
was him or if it was Toby Keith that Christofferson said,
did the country music what pante Hoose did to finger fucking.
But that is the kind It's a famous line, Sophie.
He's a terrible musician.

Speaker 1 (40:45):
He just died. Anyways.

Speaker 7 (40:48):
The line that was said was Garrison.

Speaker 6 (40:52):
Well, he had this little preamble about how he was
getting really handsy with like with his nurse.

Speaker 2 (40:58):
He's sick recently. He has a nurse. She's taken great
care of him and she hasn't gotten angry that he
keeps touching her against her.

Speaker 6 (41:05):
Getting really handsy, and she would actually press charges if
they weren't married, which is the punchline, ha.

Speaker 7 (41:13):
Ha ha ha is that is that and that was
kind of the energy of the entire event.

Speaker 6 (41:19):
So just raping your wife not even a joke, just
like just like a celebratory statement. As we are walking
around a crowd of like, yeah, at least five.

Speaker 7 (41:28):
Thous we walk into this event and there are like
balloon wavy noodle guys inflatable arm flame a US car dealerships.

Speaker 2 (41:39):
Never seen that many of them in one place.

Speaker 7 (41:41):
Yeah, And then there's there's there's women on platforms.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
So there's a red carpet and all fifty state flags
are lining it, and periodically in between the flags there
are plints where there are what would we used to
call booth babes, which is, if you would go to
like E three would was the video game convention, there
would be scantly clad women. Car conventions do the same thing.
Cees used to do this too, women wearing very little

(42:08):
who are there to like stand next to products or whatever.
In this case, they were just mostly naked women.

Speaker 7 (42:14):
Dancing and waving at people. They came in and one
of them winked at me, thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
I hope she had a fine night me too.

Speaker 6 (42:22):
We did not I hope she got paid more than
we're getting paid.

Speaker 2 (42:25):
Almost no way, not fastly. Because I have asked a
couple of different service industry people, including Uber drivers tonight,
how are the tips, And everyone said, dog shit, Yeah,
nobody's been happy with the tips.

Speaker 7 (42:36):
Yeah. And it took us quite a while to actually
get to this place because of all the different security
checkpoints and roadblocks and just the absolute chaotic, unhinged amount
of out of town cops.

Speaker 2 (42:52):
And this is not just the R and C. If
you've never been to a political convention, you will be
in whatever city this year. It's the RNC is in Milwaukee,
and the DNC is going to beat Chicago. But whatever
city it's in, you will run into LAPD cops, Dallas cops,
like every cops from every part of the country, in
addition to secret Service, FBI, homeland security investigations, like all, like,

(43:14):
all of the kinds of cops are here.

Speaker 7 (43:16):
Correct.

Speaker 6 (43:17):
The most interesting kind of cop that I've seen a
great a great number of is US Capitol police cops.

Speaker 2 (43:24):
A lot of Capitol police.

Speaker 6 (43:25):
Here, which is just a little bit funny considering what
happened like uh, just about four years ago.

Speaker 2 (43:30):
This crowd assaulted Capitol Police Office.

Speaker 6 (43:33):
It's kind of an odd dynamic because you have like
these Capitol police here, you know, priding security essentially and
you know, protecting attendees to some degree. Well, there's you know,
a decent chance that many of them were just engaged
in combat with many of these same people where there
was casualties on both sides, just which is just a
kind of an odd dynamic that you don't really see
very often.

Speaker 2 (43:53):
Yeah, honestly, again, it's the vibes have still been pretty
much chill for an event like this. It has not
been heightened in terms of like levels of anger. We
did see as soon as we arrived at the airport,
literally the second we got to baggage, there was a
guy wearing a shirt with the picture of Trump with

(44:14):
a bloody ear right after he was shot on it.
He clearly made it last night himself.

Speaker 7 (44:18):
Yep, and it said the iron don.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
The iron down. But that was kind of it in
terms of maybe, you know, it's going to take a
little longer for there to be more shooting merch out there,
but I don't. But more than that, I just didn't
hear a lot of like we sat down, we got
some food and some drinks. When we were at this big party,
we sat down with these two ladies who were delegates
from Texas, older women. One was clearly in her eighties,

(44:42):
one looked like she was more in her sixties. Talked
with them for quite a while, and they were very
far right, very strong views on religious conservatism, very anti
trans the older lady that I talked to. None of
them said a single word about Trump getting shot. It
absolutely did not come up, which I was kind of
surprised about it.

Speaker 6 (45:01):
And I got here a little bit earlier than Robert
and Sophie, and I was hanging out with some of
the delegates from Idaho and North Dakota, and similarly, no
one was talking about that. Yeah, it was, it was
just not mentioned.

Speaker 2 (45:13):
It was.

Speaker 6 (45:13):
It was on Fox News in the background. Yeah, you
could see on the TV every building. Yeah, it's constantly playing.
But nobody in person seems to be thinking about it
or like discussing it as like it's like a thing.
And possibly it's just because they've assumed that Trump is
just always under this kind of attack, right, it's like
the most attacked man, right, Like this isn't even like
a big deal for them. This is just like realizing

(45:34):
what they've already built up in their head. Right, So
I think that that could maybe just be a factor.
This isn't like as impactful for them because like you know,
of course, like he's he's he's obviously being treated so unfairly.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
I think there's a lot of aim in that. The
only other thing I could think of maybe would be
that just it hasn't sunk in yet because it's so
big and so recent and everyone coming to this probably
like us, was just crazy busy packing and like getting
their lives in order for this. Sure, but I think
you're probably onto something with that.

Speaker 7 (46:01):
Yeah, I mean it's not a small thing. I mean
the people that we talked to, one of them was
a delegate for the state of Texas, and they said
they had to travel all the way. They got their
hotels in Madison. Oh, so they have to commute back
and forth from Madison to Milwaukee to come to this event.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
You know, Yeah, that is that is a long time. Yeah,
speaking of ugh, you know what doesn't make me go ugh?

Speaker 7 (46:28):
These products and services.

Speaker 2 (46:29):
Yes, we are sponsored first off by Woodman's, the grocery
store that won't sell you a hard liquor. Past midnight Woodman's.
Everyone lied to you about Wisconsin being proper alcoholics.

Speaker 7 (46:51):
And we're back. And I have to say that the today,
the scariest part of our day was going to this
Woodman's grocery store, which is opened twenty four hours, seven
days a week.

Speaker 6 (47:04):
It was not walking into a crowd of ten thousand Republicans.
It was, in fact, walking into Woodman's at midnight was
astronomically more frightening on like existential levels.

Speaker 2 (47:16):
It's like one of these like massive, massive, like Walmart style,
but like really big Walmart style stores. They had a
whole isle of Maraschino.

Speaker 6 (47:24):
Cherries, a Marashido cherry asle.

Speaker 2 (47:27):
There were a shocking number.

Speaker 7 (47:29):
There was a fried onion aisles.

Speaker 2 (47:31):
There were a shocking number of like four to seven
year old children leaving the stores, walking freely in and out.
It was leaving this just so going somewhere, but it
was that there was.

Speaker 6 (47:43):
There was twenty five numerical aisles, plus a full like
alphabetical aisle.

Speaker 7 (47:49):
There were so many aisles they had to switch.

Speaker 6 (47:51):
From numbers would not sell us beers, and they wouldn't
have said credit cards either. Fascinating stuff.

Speaker 2 (47:57):
Anyways, you Wisconsinites think you people are alcohol I have
gone there's there's nowhere that won't sell me liquor in
fucking Los Angeles. You know that's a drinking city. God
damn it, God damn it.

Speaker 1 (48:08):
Garrison.

Speaker 6 (48:08):
What else, Well, there was also a security guy roaming
inside woman's do you know where? There was also security oh,
everywhere else, literally the entire city of Milwaukee right.

Speaker 7 (48:18):
Now, on roofs, in the street, on bikes, on boats.

Speaker 2 (48:22):
We knew. But well, I honestly, this is not abnormal.

Speaker 7 (48:27):
I know.

Speaker 2 (48:28):
I did not notice anything that I didn't recall from
previous conventions. It did not seem I think it just
might be because there's so many there can't be more cops,
Like they could not have had more cops. I'm sure
people are more alert. I'm sure, particularly the rooftops sniper
teams are under the gun right now. But I didn't
notice anything more intense than usual.

Speaker 6 (48:50):
Well, and we were talking with some other people from
out of town who we were just getting rides with,
and like the amount of the amount of barricades and
blockades that have been put up over the course of
a Sunday, like.

Speaker 7 (49:04):
It changes constantly.

Speaker 6 (49:05):
It's constantly changing which roads are blockaded. Like like earlier today
people could commute downtown.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
That might be a little different, fairly easier.

Speaker 6 (49:12):
And progressively throughout the day that became much much harder,
to the point where now downtown is almost like you
just you just can't drive like that. Like most of
downtown is just literally blocked off by the type of
fence that was developed in Portland back in twenty twenty,
and that is covering almost all of Milwaukee's downtown right now.

Speaker 2 (49:28):
The fence is familiar from previous conventions. I don't remember
the moving blockades of streets that that actually might be.
If it's not maybe if it happened the last convention,
I didn't recall it.

Speaker 1 (49:41):
Were there any.

Speaker 7 (49:43):
At this party? Were there any booths or things that
you saw that surprised your well.

Speaker 2 (49:49):
There was this fifteen. There sure was Daniel Defence at
the US Concealed Carry Association.

Speaker 6 (49:55):
A little bit of poor taste, one might say.

Speaker 2 (49:57):
You know what, in a way, because Daniel Defense is
number one, is the company that made the air fifteen
that the Evaldi shooter used. If you don't know guns,
the Daniel Defense is most famous to people who aren't
gun people. For it was the company that made the
gun that the Uvaldi shooter used. In general, they are
like a middle high end ar company. They're not like

(50:18):
the very nicest on the market, but they're not cheap.
They're expensive guns. They're pretty well made, and they have
made direct kind of buy in and inroads with a
lot of right wing culture war gun figures. Like they
have outreached more to like fascist types than most because
most big gun you go to, like SIGs Hour six

(50:39):
hour is not going to sponsor a Nazi type adjacent
person or a Christian nationalist gun type person because they
they do big contracts, right, Like Daniel Defense has has
gone out on a limb with some like real assholes.

Speaker 6 (50:54):
It's weird because they didn't used to be like that
as well. Like even like five years ago, Daniel Defense
was typically like one of the more apolitical, not a
political but like very like less partisan gun companies. I
remember when we were first talking about about like different
gun brands back in like twenty twenty, it was definitely
it was definitely different, and they made some small shifts
in the past few years.

Speaker 2 (51:14):
Yeah, it may just have been that just everything was
a little bit less politicized than in that space. I
don't I don't know if I don't know enough about
the company in the back end, but I'm not surprised
that they were sponsoring. And you know, the thing they
were sponsoring was the US Concealed Carry Association booth, which
offers like insurance for people who have concealed handgun licenses
and the like. But they were doing a free AR

(51:35):
fifteen giveaway, which is definitely some would say in bad
taste after what happened to the President. To be honest,
no one would have thought about it at all. I
kind of think it's like you are the people that
you are.

Speaker 6 (51:49):
No, you know, yeah, I don't think anyone thought twice
about that note whatsoever.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
And by God, I signed up to win the guns,
so me too, I did not, Ah, Sophie, we could
have had an extra attempt.

Speaker 7 (52:00):
Sorry, not sorry. Was there anything today that you know,
surprised you, or like a feeling you had that was
like unexpected or anything like that.

Speaker 8 (52:13):
Not.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
I had a long conversation with the older lady who
was a delegate from Texas. We talked about because she
she first kind of wanted to know is press. She
asked like, basically, are you liars and in a nice
old lady way, right.

Speaker 7 (52:27):
Yes, yes, that's that's the We basically had that.

Speaker 6 (52:30):
We had the same conversation the table where where.

Speaker 2 (52:33):
I come from. You know, there's truth and there's lies,
and like one one is one is real and one isn't.
I was like, well, you know, I've been in a
lot of situations where different people have different recollections of
the same event, and like, I don't know because I
was I wasn't there like who's telling the truth? So
you just kind of try to gather as So we
got onto the subject of religion, and her attitude was

(52:54):
that people should be free to do whatever they want
to do, more or less, but they should have to
admit it's bad, which was interesting as a take. I
hadn't really heard that one before, where she was like, well,
you know, my husband likes to do stuff that's not godly,
but he just says it's bad. And I don't think
that gay people should be punished by the law, but
I think that people should have to say that it's bad.

(53:18):
And that was that was a peculiar stance to run into.
You know. Her attitude on Trump was that he was
a fundamentally honest and good man. She didn't think he
was perfect. You know, she knows she's done some shady
things because he's a businessman, right, but she thinks he's
basically really good. It was interesting like hearing her kind
of lay some things out that way her. We talked

(53:40):
about trans issues, and she is fully convinced that little
kids are getting mutilated all the time with transgender surgeries.
But I asked, like, what if a twenty two year
old or a twenty four year old wants to get
on hormones and she or a gender you know, transition surgery,
And she was like, well, adult should be able to
do whatever they want, which was interesting. But yeah, you know,

(54:02):
from a lady in her eighties or whatnot. Like, we
had a relatively pleasant conversation even though she is clearly
someone who thinks that Christianity should be the law of
the land and the official religion of the state, and
everybody should have to acknowledge that Christians are right. That
was interesting. I'm always fascinated by actually like trying to

(54:22):
drill down with people at these events what they believe in.
How much of the rhetoric that like we see online
is specifically transferred over to them, and when you get
right down to it, they often believe in a lot
of like the heart, like you know, believe that there
are kids being mutilated or whatever. But also a lot
of the rhetoric you get around, like well we need

(54:43):
to make it legal to believe other things isn't as
widely shared. Although I don't think that lady would actually
fight against or have any real issue with people's people
being criminalized for not being Christian, it's just clearly not
her primary a focus either.

Speaker 7 (55:01):
Besides the mistrust of media and press. The conversation that
Gary and I had with the other woman, she was
giving her version of, you know, her opinion on Roby Wade,
an abortion and things like that, and one of the
things she said to us was when she found out

(55:22):
that we lived in Portland at a time, she was like,
what was like living in a city with liberals? And
I think that's funny and yeah.

Speaker 6 (55:35):
But it's like a different species to them.

Speaker 1 (55:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:37):
I played around with saying when people would ask where
I'm from, either Texas or Portland, because both of those
are technically accurate, And every time I said Portland, you
got it like you got a look. Every single time
you bring up Portland, you get a look. You can
definitely tell that it's a shibboleth to these people. No,
it is something.

Speaker 6 (55:57):
It's like it's the city of the enemy, like it
is like the.

Speaker 2 (55:59):
Rep em Yeah, and that was really interesting. The other
thing I noticed was just saying you were media, people's
attitude changed a bit. But when we mentioned that we
worked for the radio station that we worked for, I
think most of them ever heard, because there's a lot
of right wing talk radio that are technically co workers
of ours that changed their attitudes back. And I think
like radio, weirdly enough, it is register. It's actually it

(56:24):
makes total sense.

Speaker 6 (56:25):
It's like a nostalgia thing, right.

Speaker 2 (56:26):
Yeah, it's not just said it's like radio is right
wing media. Sure, the right owns, particularly talk radio. And
I think that when we set when you say radio,
when you say media, they start to think one thing.
But when you say radio, that's not something that people
have a negative attitude.

Speaker 6 (56:43):
Not tied like the coastal eleitism of like newspapers, TV channels. Yes,
speaking of coastal elitism, here's these ads brought to you
by companies probably based on one of the coasts, maybe
not maybe a Midwest company.

Speaker 2 (56:57):
God, I hope not, because the Midwest again doesn't sell
liquor at Woodsman's after after midnight.

Speaker 7 (57:03):
You're twenty for our grocery store. Let us have some alcoholic?

Speaker 2 (57:05):
What is wrong with you people?

Speaker 6 (57:17):
Okay, we are back.

Speaker 2 (57:19):
We're back. So at the end of this we are
going to talk about the assassination attempt on former President Trump.
More has happened since Monday, so we're going to catch
you up on what we're thinking about that and kind
of the conclusions that we've drawn. We wanted to talk
a little bit about. One last thing are the convention,
which is kind of what we're expecting for the coming days. Tomorrow,

(57:41):
there's an AI panel there is there is is.

Speaker 6 (57:44):
It Women in AI, Women and Democracy?

Speaker 2 (57:47):
Oh my God?

Speaker 7 (57:49):
By Microsoft?

Speaker 2 (57:50):
Sponsored by Microsoft, So that's going to be great.

Speaker 6 (57:53):
There's there's a number of other interesting panels. Unfortunately, all
of the Turning Point USA panels are closed to press.

Speaker 2 (57:58):
Yeah, real bummer.

Speaker 6 (58:00):
Another another event that close press is about two or
three times every day there is a film screening of
a new Ronald Reagan movie.

Speaker 2 (58:08):
Start Reagan the Movie. Reagan the Movie.

Speaker 6 (58:10):
Starring John Voyd, which we've received some free merch for
we have these wonderful hats made in totally military fine,
totally chill. That's going to be showing every single day
multiple times. Also closed depressed, so that's unfortunate. There's rumors
and talk that Trump might make an early appearance, that
he might they might try to secure the nomination a

(58:30):
little bit early, just so he gets extra secret service
detailed because of weird laws.

Speaker 7 (58:34):
Interesting. Some of the speakers that are supposed to come
are Nikky Haley, Jadie Vance, Ricky Rubio for me, Ricky
and were so close. That's an NBA player from Spain.
Marco Rubio suicide.

Speaker 2 (58:56):
I wish the Ricky Rubio from Spain was the vice
president Spain's coming.

Speaker 1 (59:00):
He's so sorry.

Speaker 2 (59:01):
I guess he doesn't know much about our laws. That said,
neither is jd Vance putting.

Speaker 6 (59:07):
Ron's gonna make an appearance.

Speaker 7 (59:10):
Good old Pudding Ron interesting to me, but to neither
of you had any name recognition. But Ember Rose is
going to speak.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
I don't know that bro who used to I'm at
the Republican Convention. I got to blend in.

Speaker 1 (59:24):
She used to.

Speaker 7 (59:25):
I don't know if she currently does, but she used
to run a thing called slut walk in LA and
dated Kanye West. Anyways, I guess it makes a little
bit more sense when you add the Kanye West to it.
But she's speaking.

Speaker 2 (59:37):
Used to date Kanye Ya if we were like nothing,
nothing about what she's doing could surprise me now, and.

Speaker 7 (59:44):
Like all the Trump relatives are speaking besides Ivanka anyways,
because she's not participating this time around for her kids.

Speaker 2 (59:54):
O good for her. Yeah, well that's good, although I
don't know if she doesn't participate in enough, she might
wind up on a golf course too.

Speaker 7 (01:00:02):
Wow. Dark Anyways, I'm just saying he did it speaking
of that, speaking of death. Oh no, no, sorry, bad transition. Anyways,
It's gonna be great. Guys, super super super optimistic about it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:17):
Everyone was worried about it. It's it's it's it's pretty chill.
There were some protests, but the only protests were people.

Speaker 7 (01:00:24):
That were complaining that the that the that the GOP
was not pro life enough.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
I talked about this when talking about kind of like
fracture points that are already starting to appear in the GOP.
One of the big ones is Trump removed mandatory national
abortion ban from the Republican platform, and there were a
group of people protesting out in front of the RNCA
very angry about that. Ye, most of the people who
I heard a couple of people talking about them, seem

(01:00:49):
to think they were idiots, which is interesting. Yeah, had
that experience.

Speaker 6 (01:00:55):
Yeah, only protests we've seen so far as people from
as people farther farther to the right on certain issues
than I. Guess it won't last tip, but I will share.
That kind of segues into our next discussion involving firearm.
So I had I had a little room mix up
with the with the with another with some like North
Dakota delegate because we have the same last name. So

(01:01:18):
we got our room switched. So I was just sitting
on my laptop working and this this guy you know,
scans in it starts opening the door. It's like, oh, sorry,
I didn't realize, you know, blah blah blah blah blah.
We figured it out, we were both So then we
got in the elevator, both to go down to the
front desk, like get this sordid, And he remarks to
me saying, well, I'm I'm sure glad you weren't pack.
And when I when I busted in the hotel room,

(01:01:40):
and I'm like, yeah, yeah, I guess, And it's just
it was just a fascinating little glimpse that like that
was the first thing that came into his mind. Is
that if someone opens your hotel room door, is that
you're gonna just You're just gonna You're just gonna start blasted.
Like that was that was that was like, it's like
immediate thought, is that the good thing, good thing you
didn't have your gun on you, And like there was

(01:02:00):
just such like an assumption of that's like of like
that is like the correct thing to do, Yeah, is
if you see your door you start to get open,
you just start fireing away. And I found that to
be a really really interesting moment. Speaking of firearms.

Speaker 2 (01:02:13):
Speaking of firearms, let's talk about that dude who shot
the president and then got show barely and also killed
that guy whose Twitter presence wasn't great. Yeah, So I
want to talk about this shooting a little bit because
we're we're now at the point where some stuff is
started to settle out and we have it's at the
point where I think it's very unlikely we are going

(01:02:34):
to find much more on his social media. It would
have been found by now, based on the way these
things work, could be a manifesto somewhere, could be a
treasure show of info somewhere, but I think something would
have come out about it. So my guess is this
is like the Vegas shooting. If you think back Stephen
Paddock shooting where he killed like seventy something people at
that country music show. Something that's going to be an

(01:02:56):
enigma to people for a while. And it makes a
lot of sense to me. I know it makes a
lot of sense to you too, Garrison, and I kind
of want to talk about why, because what we do
know about them that is confirmed is some of their
former classmates have talked depressed. Some of those classmates have
said I don't recall the shooter being particularly political. There

(01:03:17):
are some people who said, no, he was really conservative.
You know, when we would have like class debates, he
would sometimes be the only guy on like the right
wing side of it, you know, arguing a point or whatever.
But no one seemed to say that he was like
weirdly right, Like he was conservative the way that like
right wing kids in a school are, but not in
a way that people are like, oh, that kid's a fucking.

Speaker 6 (01:03:35):
Not see and in a way that makes you just
kind of like anti social, alienated because yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
And he was not a very social kid. Some people
say he was bullied. Most kids are. I was, you know, bullied,
so I don't know that he was exceptionally bullied. He
tried out once for the school rifle team, was not
very good. Was so bad they didn't let him try
out again, which is interesting.

Speaker 7 (01:03:57):
He wore hunting geared to class here.

Speaker 6 (01:04:00):
That's like it's like real tree camo. We're in the Midwest,
Like that's not that's not uncommon.

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
Not wildly weird.

Speaker 6 (01:04:06):
I guess he's in Pennsylvania, but still in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 2 (01:04:09):
It was nothing that really set anyone off. But it
is also like all pretty conservative stuff. And just like
the the gun YouTube channel who's wearing a Demolition Ranch shirt.
Demolition Ranches probably the largest gun YouTube channel. They are
effectively like a media company, like they're a small media empire,
but they're also you know, they're definitely conservative. Some of

(01:04:32):
the guys who work at that company you can tell
associate with further right guys. But the video they go, Yeah,
they their videos are relatively free of politics because they're
big enough that that's bad for their business, right.

Speaker 6 (01:04:47):
Really they don't indulge in like partisan politics or like
political opinion.

Speaker 7 (01:04:51):
It is.

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
It's not like there are guys like a there's a
guy like named Lewis Botkin who does a lot of
videos where he will be doing like literally assassination drills
where he's basically planning to like murder people in their cars.

Speaker 6 (01:05:01):
Or people who you know, pepper their videos with like
anti trans joke rights, which we're seeing.

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
Lots more of. Is this was not that, And I'm
not saying that. Some people on Twitter when I bring
this up get like angry, being like you're trying to
protect the concern. No, I don't care about that. I'm
just saying, this isn't the shirt you wear if you
want to signal that you're like far right. This is
the shirt you wear if you're kind of into guns
but maybe not very good with them, right, Like, it's
just kind of yes, yes, it means about as much

(01:05:28):
as a guy wearing a John Wick t shirt, right
like that that is kind of the level of that
that like of what that implies more or less. So
I guess kind of where we're standing is when we
think about why he did this and that's the question
everybody's kind of asking. I don't get the feeling that

(01:05:50):
this guy was motivated by what most people call politics.
I think he was a guy who was certainly more
on the conservative end of things. I don't get the
hint that he thought Trump was a dictator he needed
to stop. I don't get the hint he may have
been an accelerationist and that he thought that this would
push some sort of civil war to completion, and you

(01:06:11):
know that that would go well for the right. That's
not impossible, but I haven't seen any evidence of that.

Speaker 7 (01:06:16):
The most interesting that you said to me about it, Robert,
and I think Gary, you also said the same thing
as like he was local, this was local, it was convenient.

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):
I think the feeling I get is that if Biden
had showed up, he would have taken a shot at Biden.

Speaker 6 (01:06:32):
Now, I think that the model that we can look
at this is the same model people have used for
a lot of school shootings. There is a degree of
like apathetic, a degree of just like suicidal action, and
a degree of wanting to make some kind of impact,
wanting to do some kind of thing that gains a
sense of like infamy and school shooting simply just don't

(01:06:52):
do that anymore. Mass shootings don't really do that anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:06:54):
You could kill five or six people, ten people at
a grocery store, it doesn't move the needle.

Speaker 6 (01:06:58):
I believe there's a decent chance based on kind of
the very like unpolitical online presence this guy has had,
including from his Discord account, there's just simply no evidence
he was like he had any kind of real political motivation,
and instead all of what we've heard about his behavior
and his politics seemed just way more similar to the
profiles of mass shooters. And this I think the Trump

(01:07:21):
thing was was a convenient was a measure of convenience
having this happened in your hometown. I think it possibly
could be just as likely if Joe Biden was doing
a role, he might have tried the same thing. I
don't think this was any more politically targeted than that,
because we simply don't have any evidence to suggest that,
and the few evidence we do have matches up with
a lot of the profiles of these older kind of

(01:07:43):
like more like Columbine style mass shootings.

Speaker 2 (01:07:46):
This seems like a Columnbiner more than anything Columbine. There's
been well over one hundred different mass shootings inspired by
that mass shooting, and the thing overwhelmingly that occurs to
me just with what we get oft this kid is.
I would if I had to describe his politics as
relates to the shooting. It's not he's a right winger

(01:08:07):
or a left winger. His politics are he's a mass shooter, yes, right.
This is a guy who worships the probably did to
some extent, was obsessed with the aesthetics of mass shootings.
This was a guy who wanted, yeah, to be famous,
and he saw an opportunity to do it in a place.

Speaker 6 (01:08:26):
Where he wanted books was the only way.

Speaker 2 (01:08:29):
And he did. He'll be in him, you know, And
I'm interested in what that means because we had a way.
We've had a wave for years of people doing mass
shootings in public places because it used to get you
into the history books. Not anymore, not anymore. This kid
is in the history books now, And I kind of
wonder if this is going to lead to a shift

(01:08:50):
in the people who have previously been shooting up schools
and grocery stores going. Well, if I want to get noticed,
shooting up a school won't do it. But if I
take a shot at insert political candidate please see service.
This is theoretical.

Speaker 6 (01:09:05):
I think this action reminds me of a great deal
is like this feels more similar to like the John
Lennon shooting. Honestly, like is that is I think a
much closer model. And I think a lot of people
who are viewing this as political violence have find this
to be a very confusing incident, and I don't think
it's useful to view it the way that we typically
view political violence. I think it's much close. I think

(01:09:25):
it's much more understandable as being a kin to something
like Colin Buying, the Las Vegas shooting, the John Lennon shooting.

Speaker 2 (01:09:31):
And when you bring that up to people, it makes
them angry because it's a shooting of Donald Trump, the
most politicized man who maybe has ever lived in the
most politicized election of anyone's lifetimes. And people get really
angry when you suggest this might not have been political
in the way that you under conceive of politics, because

(01:09:53):
they want it to fit into even if it's a
scary box, a box that makes sense, and there's something
so alien at about a guy who this was just
the best way for me to be to die and
be remembered is so different.

Speaker 6 (01:10:09):
And this guy is younger than I am twenty. Trump,
for him has been a forever character of politics.

Speaker 2 (01:10:16):
He was twelve.

Speaker 8 (01:10:17):
He's just.

Speaker 6 (01:10:20):
A political character. This is just someone who represents what
politics is. Yeah, he's not like an abnormal, you know,
fascist threat, the same way that people who've studied polics
for a long time can view Trump historically being like, oh,
this is like a worrying trend. This is just like
what regular politics are to people younger than me.

Speaker 1 (01:10:39):
Mm hm.

Speaker 6 (01:10:39):
So I think that's also another interesting way to view it,
when it's like this is just like this is just
who you grew up with as being the guy.

Speaker 2 (01:10:46):
This is just the guy. And you know, we started
this talking about why it seemed like, at least from
the conversations we were having, the assassination attempt was such
a mild topic or so such a non topic or
the people we met. And I wonder if some of
it is confusion about what it means.

Speaker 6 (01:11:06):
Because this isn't This clearly isn't like an antifa guy.

Speaker 2 (01:11:08):
Yeah, it wasn't. It was an antifa guy. It wasn't
you know, a trans person with blue hair, right, It
wasn't something that fit into their narrative, like.

Speaker 6 (01:11:15):
Probably a lot of people's like grandkids. Yeah, right, like
because most people here are are considered considered old.

Speaker 2 (01:11:22):
Wearing a gun T shirt that probably a third of
the people in this have or at least they watch
the chan right.

Speaker 6 (01:11:27):
Isn't it is an interesting what to view It is
that the mass shooter looks like a lot of these
people's like grandkids. Yeah, that is that is an interesting aspect.

Speaker 2 (01:11:34):
Yeah. Well, anyway, folks, I hope this has been enlightening.
This is just the start of our week. So we're
in for five more days that I'm sure each will
be a worse time than the last. We're all going
to go to sleep now and never.

Speaker 7 (01:11:48):
Go to Woodmands ever again.

Speaker 2 (01:11:51):
No, but we're going to find a place to get
liquor tomorrow. I promise you that. God, gentlemen and Garrisons,

(01:12:12):
this is it could happen here.

Speaker 6 (01:12:14):
I'm Garrison Davis and joined with Robert Evans and Sophie
Lichterman or Day one of the official RNC, the Republican
National Convention. Robert, Sophie, how's your day?

Speaker 2 (01:12:25):
Ben? Well, I'm tired. It was a long day. It
was very red.

Speaker 6 (01:12:30):
Yeah, a lot of red.

Speaker 2 (01:12:31):
It was very loud. The drinks were very expensive.

Speaker 6 (01:12:36):
Yeah, we got Sony free drinks yesterday and not today.

Speaker 2 (01:12:39):
No, not once you're in the convention center. I don't know.
We were trapped in a room with a lot of
people who had were either used car salesman or spiritually
were used car salesman.

Speaker 6 (01:12:49):
Also a lot of people who want to kill me specifically.

Speaker 2 (01:12:52):
Yes, we'll talk about this that more later. Yeah, today,
Just structurally, what happened is, you know, it was a
series of speeches. So you had a first off the
big floor vote, right, so we got to watch all
of the different states had their delegates and they have
to form even though everyone knows what's happening, they have
to like formally follow Robert's rules of order or whatever

(01:13:13):
and confirm that Trump is the nominee. And then they
announce and confirm the VP, who you all know by
now was JD. Vance. We'll talk might as well talk
a little bit about im now.

Speaker 3 (01:13:24):
JD.

Speaker 2 (01:13:24):
Vance is a guy who in the wake of Trump's
initial victory. He's a dude who came from Appalachia sort
of part time, went to an Ivy League school, did
some time in the Marines and then made a bunch
of money in business. And then when twenty sixteen happened
and a lot of liberals were like, wow, how could
Trump have won election? He capitalized by writing a book

(01:13:46):
trying to explain the appalation experience, even though again he
only kind of lived there part time and mostly. Yeah,
had abandoned those people in that part, Like the book
is about him abandoning that part of his life as
soon as he possibly can. Not a great book by
my opinion as someone who grew up in a really
fucking poor town in the Deep South.

Speaker 7 (01:14:05):
But is he technically a millennial.

Speaker 2 (01:14:07):
Yeah, he's the first millennial who might become vice president.

Speaker 7 (01:14:11):
That's a big part of why I think he was picked.

Speaker 2 (01:14:13):
Agreed, Yeah, that's a big part of why.

Speaker 7 (01:14:15):
So it was time for them to announce JD.

Speaker 2 (01:14:19):
Vance.

Speaker 7 (01:14:19):
They officially approved him. Delegates officially approved him, which happened
very quickly, and he came out to Chance in Ohio,
where he's from, was very stoked to have him there.
Lots of chance of JD.

Speaker 1 (01:14:32):
JD.

Speaker 2 (01:14:33):
You're right, he had a hype man.

Speaker 7 (01:14:34):
Yeah, and he advanced his way out there with his
wife and looked emotional, and yeah, all I know is
that he really fucking hates lb gt q IA people
and I really fucking ate him.

Speaker 2 (01:14:48):
Uh huh Yeah, I mean he said that he kind
of like turned the corner finally on what side because
he had said some anti Trump stuff once in the day,
but he turned the corner. Who has this movie got
really bad reviews? So if we wind up going into
full fledged fascist dictatorship, we can blame Ron Howard for
some of that. And to be honest, we always knew

(01:15:09):
that was going to be the case. Yeah, valid, Yeah,
after that, Yeah, Marjorie Taylor Green gave a speech, a
couple other people, Tim Scott had a speech.

Speaker 7 (01:15:17):
So there was a break between sessions. We came back
for the second session. The second session opens up with
what I could only describe as I was like, Christopher Nolan,
are you here? It was like a reception sounding music, Wow, traumatized,

(01:15:39):
Thank you for that, traumatized video of like in a world, yeah,
like showing crime and people losing money and women and
babies crying.

Speaker 2 (01:15:49):
And then there's like literally bad clip art of money
on fire, clip.

Speaker 7 (01:15:53):
Art of money on fire, and it's about it was
like three to five minutes long, very long, because I
took a video of it.

Speaker 6 (01:15:59):
It felt like a lea bad like action thriller trailer.
Could have been partly AI. There was certainly some CGE
animation towards the end because they were they had this
camera that was sweeping through this fake city. It was
all CG and it landed on this this this floodlight
on top of a roof. It's broken, flickering, the floodlight

(01:16:19):
gears are turning, the music is ramping up, and finally
it lightens and we see Trump, the Trump signal shining
in the cloudy sky, calling calling the hero the mass
avenger as if it was the bat signal from.

Speaker 2 (01:16:34):
It was shameful and then and then people loved it. Yeah,
I got a great reaction. There's also a video of
all the scenes. If you if you've ever seen clips
from rallies, you've probably seen little clips of Trump like
fake dancing, doing doing that weird dancer his hand. He
doesn't dance, but he's excited, but he's in a good mood,
you know. The dance.

Speaker 7 (01:16:54):
It's what we would describe as a little wiggle. Anyways,
it was a very long wiggle video.

Speaker 2 (01:16:59):
And people loved it. No, it looked like that.

Speaker 6 (01:17:02):
This is the type of video that liberals would post
to make fun of Trump, and the fact that it
was used as a hype video shows how useless that
style of like political propertyanda is. You can't make fun
of Trump for doing that little dance. That doesn't that
doesn't do anything.

Speaker 2 (01:17:16):
You can't make There's no use in making fun of Trump.
There is no value in satirizing him. There is no
value in laughing at him. Like if it helps you personally,
that's great, if you need that to get by, we
all do it sometimes, but it is no it does
no damage to them, like the not to shit on
John Oliver. But the Trump stuff was a wild and
spectacular failure. None of it accomplished anything, and everybody who

(01:17:38):
ever thought that you could make fun of Trump and
have any positive impact was wrong. And you should feel
a little bad.

Speaker 6 (01:17:44):
I do because and because they used it as a
hype video. They used it to stitch between their different
musical acts, different segments, and oh boy, the music, so
that the music was better than the music at the
at the welcome party that we talked about in our
last episode. But that bar is not very high. It's
it's all it's it's all country music, right, it's country

(01:18:06):
music cover bands.

Speaker 2 (01:18:06):
You It was not all country. No, there was a
lot of like nineties stuff.

Speaker 6 (01:18:09):
There was a fucking it's played in the style of country.

Speaker 7 (01:18:12):
There was some bye Bye by your boat guy.

Speaker 2 (01:18:17):
There was at they had a they had a Fleetwood
Mac song someone did you Can There.

Speaker 7 (01:18:24):
Was like essentially like the the run of the Evening and.

Speaker 6 (01:18:28):
Dad rock and country music. My apologies, it was dad
rock and country music.

Speaker 7 (01:18:32):
You know what I have to tell you. We do
not care enough to argue about this anyways. The music
was fucking mid It was like the way because I
of course, like a bunch of people have Texas today
and been like how is it? And the only way
that we can describe it is if a normal person
went to their favorite concert and and had great seats, yeah,

(01:18:54):
and uh you were very happy. Is the same exact
Or you went to a game set of the NBA Finals.
That's exactly the reaction that the people in the crowd
were having.

Speaker 6 (01:19:06):
It's a mix of like a sports event, a concert,
and like a mega church. If there was if there
was some kind of concert that a whole bunch of
boomers really enjoyed. That was the general vibe of the
convention today, which.

Speaker 2 (01:19:17):
Is not all that different from how Trump Ralli's feel
totally had. It had that vibe, and it felt more
more like a concert than the twenty sixteen RNC did.

Speaker 6 (01:19:28):
Yeah, I mean there was also there was so much
music in so few speeches. The speeches were only like
two minutes long each, and there would be like extended,
like ten twenty minute musical performances in between each speech.
Like mostly it's just it's just people playing songs on stage.
That was most of the R and C today.

Speaker 7 (01:19:46):
There was there was several different speeches that came after
those strange videos, and we'll get into that. But first
we're gonna go to an AD break, and when we
come back, we're gonna play live us from the well.

Speaker 2 (01:20:01):
It was live when we recorded yea.

Speaker 7 (01:20:02):
As what I'm saying live us. We were alive back
then and now questionable talking about what we were experiencing
in the moment.

Speaker 6 (01:20:09):
But first, ads, Okay, we are back, and now we
will tune in to our recording we made on the
convention floor. Dunn, Okay, we are well recording live broadcasting

(01:20:32):
a little bit later, but recording live on the ground
at the Republican National Convention. We've had a very, a
very busy morning. It's now mid afternoon. We're in between sessions.
The first session just wrapped up, and we thought we
were we should have record some of our immediate thoughts
before our little debrief tonight. I guess let's start with
Robert Evans.

Speaker 2 (01:20:53):
Yeah. Well, first off, my main overwhelming kind of takeaway
is that the tone and tempo of this is a
lot milder than I expected. And I think it's because
the overwhelming majority of people here are extremely conservative, the
most dedicated and active members of the party. But it's

(01:21:14):
not like the Proud Boy Crew over definitely some of
those people here.

Speaker 6 (01:21:17):
But these are electoralists.

Speaker 2 (01:21:19):
These are electoralists. Most of them are a lot older,
you know. I would say the average age is somewhere
between the late forties to the sixties of like people
you encounter here, and it is interesting to me that
I have not, you know, as soon as we, like
we said yesterday, as soon as we landed, we saw
a guy with a trump after he got shot, sticking
his fist in the airshirt. I haven't seen a ton
of that on the ground here, since I've not seen

(01:21:41):
a ton of it, nor have I seen a ton
of direct references to it.

Speaker 7 (01:21:44):
I guess the sophie here, I think that. Guess. The
main reference that I've seen is when they did the
delegate official photo.

Speaker 2 (01:21:52):
That would be the big one.

Speaker 1 (01:21:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:21:54):
They all turned around and raised their fist in the
way that Donald Trump did after the attempted assassination, which
was fascinating to me.

Speaker 2 (01:22:03):
Yeah, yeah, especially given the lack of otherwise direct emphasis
on what happened. And maybe that's coming up. I kind
of do the way I'm interpreting it now is because
the thing that just dropped a few minutes ago is
the FBI got into the shooter's phone. So far, preliminary findings,
nothing in there that makes it clear why he did it.
So I kind of think they may just be sort

(01:22:24):
of confused as to why one of their own seemingly
carried out the shooting. Not really clear what the rhetoric
on the shooters should be, but very clear on how
they should respond to the Trump photo, Which is the
primary takeaway from that is the photo is the pose?
Is him cementing his image as this indestructible you know,
man who's constantly under attack, right, and so it makes

(01:22:46):
sense to me that they've adopted that hand sign, and
I expect we'll see more of it. And boy, howdy,
does it just look exactly like that the hand sign
from the far right that everyone's familiar with.

Speaker 6 (01:22:57):
So as we were kind of in between speakers, they
had this little band playing and we happened to be
sitting next to one of one of the younger people
that I've seen attending the convention, but like still still
like an adult, like a very young adult, may maybe
twenty one, maybe twenty at most.

Speaker 2 (01:23:13):
He couldn't have been older than twenty one because he
said this is his first election. He'll be able to
vote in yeesh presidential election.

Speaker 6 (01:23:18):
So probably a little bit younger than me. It's interesting
because yesterday we talked with some, you know, very old people,
and today we talk to with some very young people
to get and it's it is a it is an
interesting contrast. So, yeah, this young conservative from from California
but now lives in South Dakota and I don't know.
We were asking him about like what what focus he
has in politics. He seemed really concerned about the economy.

(01:23:39):
That was that was kind of his main his main issue.

Speaker 2 (01:23:42):
Almost the only thing he wanted to talk about was
the economy. He was one thing, I'll say, very good natured,
like not in the I am doing a pr thing,
I am trying to put on an image, but just
in the not at all aggressive, did not react kind
of negatively to the fact that we were media, which
you get a lot of that at events like these.
He expressed that the only places he gets his news

(01:24:05):
is Fox and News Nation on TV. He is not
on social media, which I found interesting and statistics suggest
obviously that's not the norm, but it is a growing
number of gen Z and Jen Alpha kids who avoid
a lot of the internet.

Speaker 6 (01:24:18):
Well, and especially among conservatives. I mean there is a
lot of young conservatives who do get their news on TikTok,
who do get their news. Podcasts are one of the biggest,
biggest ways that young people to the right get their news. Obviously,
like the Daily Wire is very dominant in the podcasting scene.
But no, I found that very interesting, and I assume
that's probably like, you know, influenced by his family. You know,
whatever is on whatever is on the family TV.

Speaker 2 (01:24:40):
His his uncle is about to be the mayor of
Huntington Beach, California, and is the sheriff. Huntington Beach is
the most conservative city in California, probably a pretty wide margin.

Speaker 7 (01:24:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:24:53):
No, he expressed a lot of frustration that we were
we were giving lots of money to Ukraine, that he
felt that Zelensky was suspending on him self instead of
on the military. And yeah, I mean he seemed like
a good old Christian boy. He was very, very into
the praying section of the night. I asked him at
ed ed at some point when when JD. Vance was

(01:25:13):
coming out on stage to be announcedly the official vice president,
like if he thinks that they're gonna win this year?
Like do you think that the Republicans are gonna win?
And he said yes, if it's fair.

Speaker 2 (01:25:24):
Yeah, that was the same That was the first thing
I asked him, And that was the same answer he
gave me. And you know, speaking of Vance, because Vance
is my first thought and a lot of people's first thought.
And I think this is probably the accurate thing to
say about Vance. He does not provide a lot to Trump, right,
He's not a guy who won by a wide margin.
I'm not even confident he on his own does anything

(01:25:46):
to deliver his state Ohio. But what this kid brought
up and what I suspect Trump season him, because when
I asked, what do you think about JD. Vance, he
repeatedly said, I think he's loyal. I think he really
likes Trump. I think he's loyal. And I did bring
up the fact that Vance has said bad things about
Trump in the past, and then he went on this
thing where he was like, I think that DeSantis and
Trump really like each other. It's all politics. And I

(01:26:09):
wanted to say, how deranged, but then he was like,
you know, it's like Kamala and Joe. She was really
I mean to him during the debate and now she's
his vice president. I was like, well, that's actually a
pretty reasonable way to look at the situation. I don't
know that I think it's actually accurate, but I see
the logical through line there, and I was kind of,
you know, I thought that was interesting.

Speaker 7 (01:26:27):
I thought it was interesting when they were bringing out JD.
Vance and he was dancing vamping. I'm going to call
it dancing vancing advancing that. You know, they were quick
to call out that he he was a marine, quick
to call him a patriot, quick to call him a
family man, and I think that's what he brings to
the table. He brings those three things as well as

(01:26:49):
his age, and I think that's that's what the GOP
is focusing on. Yeah, I mean, other than that, there
was a really weird prayer thing.

Speaker 2 (01:27:00):
Yeah, that was after Vance came up. They did the benediction.

Speaker 7 (01:27:05):
Yeah. It was.

Speaker 6 (01:27:08):
What I could only express is a little bit like
spiritually disturbing. All of like the led screens behind behind,
like the speakers all flashed like very like Facebook esque
like images of like you know, the Bible of like
families praying.

Speaker 2 (01:27:22):
Like kids, like glowing like glowing.

Speaker 6 (01:27:24):
Like like the heavenly glowing light, like the the the
whole environment change from like you know, it's usually very
like sports debate, you know, red versus Blue. It's you know,
it's it's very traditional like Americana. And it was a
very it was a very intense shift to like to
like this to this like a like strong like Facebook
Christianity almost. That's that's the best way I can I
can describe it with words. And I mean, you know,

(01:27:45):
it was a typical Christian dominionist moment where you have
you know, the the one of the largest of two
political parties, just fully, fully embracing the UH and fully
you know, putting out that you know, this is this
is a this is a real religious party. Almost more
than anything else. The religion is so important to the ceremony,
and specifically not just any religions of course, just Christianity.

(01:28:08):
And I don't know, they spent like almost like the
last half of the prayer talking about Israel and you know,
specifically saying the children of Abraham and the Holy City
of Jerusalem and you know, all all of that kind
of language prayer for the hostages, talking about how the
hostages are being kept against their will. But you know,

(01:28:29):
all of the language reminds me a lot of like
my childhood and the rhetoric around Israel as this place
to secure so that so that you know, the prophecies
can come true for Jesus' second coming, and like that
that is that is the entire the entire bit.

Speaker 2 (01:28:43):
I'm trying to recall if there was a big benediction
at the end after the twenty sixteen RNC when Pennce
was nominated, and I'm sure there was, but for whatever reason,
it doesn't stick out in my mind the way this
one did.

Speaker 6 (01:28:54):
Now, this will certainly stick stick out in my mind.
Like everyone knows Republicans are, you know, the more Christian party,
but just the year like a consensus about it here,
just like everybody is, like even if they aren't themselves Christian,
most people are, but like everyone's in on this thing happening.
It was. It was just a it was just an
interesting moment contrasted to the overall, you know, like a
concert kind of sports vibe that the rest of the

(01:29:17):
convention kind of carries.

Speaker 7 (01:29:20):
Yeah, I mean, the only other thing that I pointed out.
At one point, I went to get water and I
came back and I mentioned right before we started to record,
to both Gary and Robert, I was like, cops keep
touching me and like putting their hand on my shoulder,
and you know, is one cop just wanted to talk

(01:29:42):
to me about my day and I was like trying
to get water and going back into the convention. And
then I mentioned that to garon Robert and they both
said that they've been touched quite a lot too, And
I just think that's interesting to note, And you know,
I don't particularly like to be touched by strangers, especially.

Speaker 2 (01:30:00):
Mine has been on the shoulder by like a couple
of different what I would describe them as like uncle
coded guys, yes, who I don't know and was not
talking to, just like walking past me and putting a
hand on my shoulder, like like someone who is a
family member would do casually, like a family event, you know,
when you're on the way to do something else. But
I've never met these people. We did not talk. That
was odd, hasn't happened to me before. Maybe everyone's just

(01:30:23):
in a very good mood because they're that sure they're
going to win. Maybe we just ran into a lot
of creepy uncle types unclear.

Speaker 6 (01:30:30):
It'll be interesting to contrast with the DNC, But no,
it certainly has been a pattern. There's a lot more
like just casual touching here. And yeah, I think that
is most of our thoughts right now. I guess that.
The last thing I guess I'll add is the young
kid that we were talking to who was very excited
about about this, about this whole deal. As Vance was

(01:30:50):
coming out and you know, the crowd was going crazy
and everything, he very quietly remarked that he was like
gonna start crying because it was just like so like
an impactful. I think it was. I think it was
mostly to himself, like acknowledging that verbally and then said
he wants to become a cop and that just you know,
that is that is the entire base. And then he
was then immediately went into a very a very intense

(01:31:11):
prayer posture during the prayer, and that's just a good
portion of the country.

Speaker 2 (01:31:16):
I guess, yep, yep, I uh, yeah. It was interesting.
We were talking about Ukraine for a while because his
his stance on it was he's fine with them getting weapons,
but he's sure they're getting a lot of money that
Zelensky is doing something shady with. And generally it felt
like Zelensky wasn't fighting, which I thought was interesting. It does,
it is kind of It makes sense to me if

(01:31:37):
you've skimmed the way the right reports on Ukraine a lot,
that would be his attitude. But he also said he
wasn't supportive of yielding to Putin on any of Putin's demands.
And then when I talked about because I chatted with
him about some of my experiences in Ukraine, and when
he found out that I had done more reporting, his
first question was, have you ever been to Israel. Yeah,
that was interesting. Yeah, interesting. Just immediately asked that. Oh,

(01:31:59):
one other note, we run into a fan of the
show who was working who was wearing a USS Liberty hat.
The USS Liberty was like a US Navy ship that
was struck by Israel, and it's, you know, under very
shady circumstances, and it's kind of like one of the
better ways you could be publicly critical of the Israeli military,

(01:32:21):
at least at the RNC, without most people knowing what
you're doing. Yeah, I thought that was funny.

Speaker 6 (01:32:26):
The very last thing I'll say is that right as
we exited the first session, we ran into friend of
the podk Ramaswami, who was who was a little shorter
than I expected. A tall man, not a tall man.
And I did ask the kid that we were sitting
next to. You know, I'm curious about his thoughts on
the future of the party, and I asked him specifically

(01:32:47):
about the VEK, and he said he likes for VEK
because Vivec is a businessman, just like Trump, and he
wants someone to run the country like a business.

Speaker 2 (01:32:55):
I should also note that the Vek was followed by
a swarm of like I'm guessing his entourage. All of
the nearly all of them were very young men who
I would describe as nick Fuintes coded. Yes, like like
they really had that physiognomy to them.

Speaker 6 (01:33:12):
Groper types.

Speaker 2 (01:33:13):
Yeah, groper types, which JD Vance. It's one of the
things coming out right now is that he's in a
group chat with a bunch of sixteen year old groper
So I am excited for some of those, more of
those chats to come out, all right.

Speaker 6 (01:33:25):
Well, back to future us talking about the rest of
the Republican National Convention. Day one.

Speaker 2 (01:33:30):
Wow, that sure was great. We had such a fun time.
You know what else is fun? Here's some more ads.
We're back to conclude. We got a couple of things
to talk about. One of them is, you know, obviously

(01:33:52):
we're at a convention. We don't have a car, we're
taking ubers everywhere, we're eating at restaurants.

Speaker 6 (01:33:57):
And this has taken over almost all of the central
area of Milwaukee, and.

Speaker 2 (01:34:03):
There were because of a lot of fuck ups. For
one thing, a lot of places that in downtown were
supposed to be booked are not booked. Businesses are not
getting the kind of business they had expected to get
during this because of some of those fuck ups. Yeah,
and kind of most interesting to us so coming into this.
One of the things the Republicans even put at billboards
in Milwaukee over this, and this is a big thing
that Trump is campaigning on to try to get service

(01:34:25):
worker type people to vote for him, is no tax
on tips. And to make a long story short, it
works out to be much worse for service workers. Kind
of the compromise here is that they can continue to
pay far below minimum wage and there will be no
attempts to raise that at all. And of course the
kind of people who vote for Republicans don't tip by and.

Speaker 6 (01:34:46):
Large because they hate service workers.

Speaker 2 (01:34:48):
We have been talking to every Uber driver at all
of the waiters waitresses that we've had, and pretty overwhelmingly
nearly one hundred percent of them say like, yeah, we're
just not getting.

Speaker 6 (01:34:57):
No one's tipping, the extreme negative views just because of
like the politics, right, just.

Speaker 2 (01:35:01):
Because about more than half of them don't really.

Speaker 6 (01:35:04):
Care, absolutely not, They're just doing business and like they're
just they're these these are just bad patrons. These are
simply people that are they're not nice to be around.
Interact like these types of events like the RNC the
d and see these are like cities campaign for this
under the notion that this will like you know, boost
local business, right, We'll bring a whulench of people from
out of town. People will get a lot of money

(01:35:24):
to all these local businesses. And because of how the
security set up this year in the in Milwaukee, so
many businesses just can get no business because they're completely
inside this like fence perimeter and UH and the rest
are are not are not seeing very good business from
what from from what it sounds like, and even even
like hotels downtown are large largely vacant because of weird,

(01:35:45):
weird scheduling area.

Speaker 7 (01:35:46):
We we went to dinner earlier tonight with some friends
and we asked one of the restaurant workers, like how
how it was going, And obviously she said the same
thing that we've heard so many times, which is not great,
not good, not making a lot of tips. But what
was interesting is she said, you know, and they really
tried to throw in our faces that this was going
to be a good thing for all of us and

(01:36:07):
we were all going to make a bunch of money,
and it's happening. It's just not happening.

Speaker 2 (01:36:12):
And chatted to Timothy Faust, who was a writer, great writer,
great guy, and a local here. We had dinner with him,
and he pointed out that Milwaukee has been and was
on the verge of bankruptcy still having a lot of
problems with that, and a big part of why they
took the RNC was because Republicans in the state legislature
that was basically the bargaining point, so that they would

(01:36:35):
allow a sales tax, which was kind of necessary in
order to There's more to it than that, but a
big part of like how the negotiations broke down was
the Republicans wanted this in order to make it possible
for the city of Milwaukee to not collapse because it
was on the verge of bankruptcy. And hearing that made

(01:36:56):
a lot of sense, made a lot of things click
into place, because it does. Everyone one we have talked
to who is a local and who is working in
any job that interfaces with the convention and convention goers
talks like they've been scammed.

Speaker 7 (01:37:08):
Yeah, and just one more thing before we get into
the rest of you know, what we experienced speech wise
and other is the difference in security today versus the outdoor.
But we went to yesterday for the welcome party. Very surprising,
very surprising. So just the one to one example I'll

(01:37:30):
give you listeners is yesterday they took every single item
out of my bag that I had after putting through
a scanner and unzipped everything. Today they zipped it up
because they didn't want anything to fall out and didn't
open it, didn't touch a single thing, went through a scanner.
I was through security in like four seconds.

Speaker 6 (01:37:51):
Yeah, no, it was. It was super weird, way more
lax getting into the actual convention center than it was
to get into the outdoor welcome party, which is just
a It came off as a little little surprising to us.

Speaker 7 (01:38:02):
They they had. They made such a big deal about
what you can and can't bring in and had specific
measurements for like bags and stuff. But we saw people
with some of the large, very large background, some bags
that were bigger than me. And yeah, you know, that's
just interesting to note.

Speaker 6 (01:38:19):
One less thing on the service worker thing. On our
ride home from the RNC or back to the hotel,
we sat a new in an uber with a very
nice man who I would describe as the average Wisconsin voter. Yeah,
he had he had a teamsters shirt, and you know
of a variety of like of both liberal and kind
of conservative opinions. You know, it's I think he kind

(01:38:41):
of leaned more liberal, but he certainly had, you know,
of of a variety of opinions. And he was both
expressing the same thing in regards to tips, but also
a men's frustration at the way police were treating locals.
The way police were treating local drivers. Just the sheer
influx of of cops just to have have made have
made functioning in this city just so challenging to any

(01:39:02):
of these locals. And yeah, that was a very fascinating
conversation that we might discuss that at a later time. Well,
we will talk about now are Catholics those those little fiends.
So after the very like evangelical Children of Abraham prayer
that that we talked about in our in our archival audio,
as soon as we came back for the second session,

(01:39:24):
there was an opening prayer led by the Archbishop of Milwaukee,
which is kind of interesting because a lot of the
intendees here are very evangelical. These are not Catholics, And
there you could definitely see there is you know, a
little a little bit of groans amongst among some of
these people. And I found it a very interesting move.

Speaker 2 (01:39:41):
To somebody who talked shit on the Catholics earlier. The
l the old lady that we that or at least
that I was talking to last night at the party,
made a couple of comments about Catholics because she doesn't
believe they really worship Jesus because pop Catholics. Yeah, and
well it's not even the papstries because Catholics. This is
a that born again have an issue with Catholicism is

(01:40:02):
don't believe you have to accept Christ to go to heaven,
Like if you do good things, Catholics think you can
go to heaven. Sure, And that is deeply offensive to
a sizable chunk of the Christian community in the United States. Yeah,
so I found that very interesting.

Speaker 6 (01:40:17):
Wasn't really expecting to see an opening Catholic prayer that
I want to talk to some more people tomorrow about.
That is Chance's Catholic that that makes it.

Speaker 2 (01:40:27):
That's probably why is a Catholic convert just like the
Red Scare girl. He is a Catholic convert millennial who
has taken a bunch of money from Peter Teel.

Speaker 6 (01:40:36):
Many such cases. So one of the first people to
speak after this archbishop was famed Republican figure Marjorie Taylor Green,
who we could have a lot to say, but I
think the first thing that I want to mention is
that she feels more representative of most of the RNC

(01:40:58):
attendees and anyone else who we've seen speak like she
She has the same energy and vibe as most of
the attendees like that. That is why they love her
so much, because she is one of them, to the
point where she she was like a Republican fan who
just happened to get into office, and now she's this
major figure. She was the ascot exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:41:18):
And was a lot more popular than dance. Oh yeah,
in terms of floor reaction.

Speaker 6 (01:41:24):
No, she she is. She is beloved among this crowd.
She she's she is them right. The audience members can
see her, and they can they can see themselves in her.
And she got the biggest reaction out of out of
the crowd. Probably saved for Trump making a short appearance,
but her speech had the biggest reaction. And we will
we will get to that now. One one of the

(01:41:45):
first things she said is you're talking about the assassination
attempt and stuff is that Trump. She referred to him
as the founding father of the America First Movement, which
is a lot of interesting loaded language there.

Speaker 7 (01:41:58):
There are a lot of words there.

Speaker 6 (01:42:00):
Very extremely loaded language for the founding father of the
America First Movement. She then spoke about the wonderful family
man whose life was unfortunately cut short from getting shot
in the attempted assassination attempt of Donald Trump, saying that
that Corey embodied the America First spirit. But no, she

(01:42:20):
she she had all of all of the typical lines
that you would say about someone who was who was
killed in an incident like this, And and then she
talked about the thing that got the loudest applause out
of anything else today, which is which is the whole
gender ideology issue. She talked about how how President Biden
turned Easter into transvisibility Day, which.

Speaker 7 (01:42:43):
Is factually true because.

Speaker 6 (01:42:45):
Easter changes holidays transvisibility days on the same day, you know,
a bit, but Easter changes the actual day it's on.
But that got a massive boo And there was people
sitting next to us who were just shouting evil, just
super loud shouting evil. And this is this is the
most hyped up I've ever seen the crowd. You know,
all the other mentions there were, there was a few

(01:43:05):
other mentions about you know, men and women's sports, that
kind of thing that got you know, the big biggest,
the biggest booze and the biggest cheers, like respectively. You know,
people saying there are only two genders. We're brave enough
to say it. We're going to keep saying it. That
hyped up the crowd just just more than anything else.

Speaker 7 (01:43:21):
Yeah, she said, be clear here there are only two genders,
and the crowd went just nuts bananas.

Speaker 2 (01:43:31):
She right after that made a statement about needing to
stop sending money to Ukraine, that Zelenski was going to
embezzle or something about half the volume like not not
a tiny.

Speaker 6 (01:43:42):
Compared to the rest of the cheering of a pretty loud.

Speaker 2 (01:43:44):
Reaction, like not a bad reaction, but it was clearly
about half the volume with the anti transfer and.

Speaker 7 (01:43:49):
Mind you listeners she spoke for like what it was
like three minutes top.

Speaker 2 (01:43:54):
Yeah, I would be surprised if the whole speech typed
out was more than about a page.

Speaker 6 (01:43:58):
No, it was wild and she had basically a bullet
point list of like hate speech.

Speaker 2 (01:44:05):
If I I kind of want to go back through
video of the I remember the speeches at the twenty
sixteen RNC being longer, but that was a million years ago. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:44:14):
Now she had the you know, the the usual comments
about you know, how we have to stop the globalists,
the wealthy and the powerful few, which is which is
just an interesting thing to speak to an RNC crowd
because it's one of the most powerful, the wealthy, powerful few.
You are talking to them, and her the line that
came right before this was talking about how how we

(01:44:35):
have to stand up against the establishment who promise unity
but promote division. And I'm like, this is this is
this is the most We're all trying to find the
guy who did this moment. Ever, right you're you're talking
about how there's there's these these powerful establishment figures who
talk about unity but actually just promote division, and like
you were, you were talking about yourself and all the

(01:44:56):
times that these like these like people who work in
Washington start bashing like the establishment and stuff like you
you are the establishment, that is you, that that is
your job, but that those are very very common talking
points and stuff like that. I'm sure many listeners are
familiar with this, with this sort of like double speak
and and yeah, that was her speech. Definitely the biggest

(01:45:16):
reaction we saw the crowd have. Trump and his family
made a very brief appearance, kind of kind of a
surprise appearance, but to some people's surprise, he didn't He
didn't actually give a speech. He instead, I think, took
which was the smarter play, show up with a very
large bandage on his ear and instead sit down and listen,
just become part of the audience. It's an interesting movie.

(01:45:38):
He didn't immediately like take over the convention. No, he's
kind of playing this more like statesman role.

Speaker 7 (01:45:43):
He almost looked like he was tearing up.

Speaker 2 (01:45:47):
Yeah, yeah, he did.

Speaker 7 (01:45:48):
He was sitting in the crowd.

Speaker 2 (01:45:49):
Quiet, subdued, even Yep, he looked worried at point, worried, anxious,
or somber. I wouldn't be I wouldn't be surprised if
it was a natural reaction to being in your first
crowd after being shot and nearly died.

Speaker 6 (01:46:01):
Yeah, the last time you were in a crowd.

Speaker 2 (01:46:04):
Like he is a person, right, That's just how people
react oftentimes when that kind of thing happens.

Speaker 6 (01:46:09):
Yeah, I know. He was sitting next to Tucker Carlson, JD. Vans,
and Michael and and Mike Johnson with his kids sitting
behind him.

Speaker 2 (01:46:19):
Look, when you have a near death experience, you know,
when somebody somebody shoots at you and damn near hits,
it crystallizes a lot. You know what's really important, and
you also know what you don't want to waste your
time with anymore. And that's that's why the Trump kids
were in the back of that, the back of the crowd.
He doesn't want them anywhere near him. Life is short.

Speaker 7 (01:46:37):
I just want to point out what they showed trumple
the screed with with Mike Tucker and who is the
fourth person, Jni Man's I've already forgot his face curiously
goes nightmare blood rotation, and they are.

Speaker 6 (01:46:54):
Correct, and that that was day one of the convention.

Speaker 2 (01:46:57):
That way, I do want to get into one other
thing because this again, we had a big don't panic
episode a day or two before this. You'll have heard
one episode in between those two and posting stuff today,
posting comments on like how extreme the rhetoric is. I
see people getting scared again. You should like, you should
be very concerned if here is not an unreasonable reaction

(01:47:19):
to seeing all this happen. But this is also something
that I think will contextualize the scale of the actual
number of people that we're talking about here. When we
were sitting, we found a quiet place to record the
middle bit that you heard. So we were in kind
of an empty area, and I would say close to
half of the or about right about half, maybe even
a little more of the actual stadium was empty, and

(01:47:41):
most of them were clustered in the area that had
and so there were a lot of areas where there's
just absolutely nobody. And several times, what was it, three
or four times, Sophie, probably we had different people who
were I either worked for the RNC or worked for
the venue come by, but I'm guessing the RNC, just
because of their general vibe.

Speaker 9 (01:47:58):
Yeah, and because the lens, Yeah, to try to get
us too, because even the areas that were full had
a lot of patches in them, they weren't all that full.
So they wanted to get us to get up from
the empty areas and move to fill in the areas
that were going to be on camera so it looked
like it was fuller, and they did that because it
was not very full. Now, as someone it's not very

(01:48:19):
full because this is a political convention. It is not
open to the masses. I don't know that it would
have filled up it was open to the masses, but
there's an inherently limited guest list. But it did seem
to be less people than I recall from the twenty
sixteen RNC. And more to the point, everything that you
see and everything we're talking about, and all of the

(01:48:40):
extremity and the weirdness of these in a lot of
cases freaks, assholes, creeps that we see. This is a
couple of thousand of the most dedicated Republicans in the country.
This is the elite of the party. These are the
people who have a lot of the money, if not

(01:49:00):
most of it, and a lot do a lot of
the nuts and bolts of making the Republican Party run.
These are not representative of most of the people who
live around you, unless you live in a place that
is real hardcore Trump country, in which case a lot
of these folks are familiar. But they but they got
a lot more money than your neighbors, I'll tell you

(01:49:21):
that much. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:49:22):
No, And it is worth pointing out that they were
trying to make an effort to move people around to
make the seats look more full. Because also everything that
we're also seeing is theater. There's all these rituals that
they're doing to confirm confirm the nomination. It's like it's
a very it's very ritualized, very theatrical experience.

Speaker 2 (01:49:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:49:39):
There is one point where Robert and Gear we're walking
around and I was sitting in our intersection by myself,
and I had three separate twenty something males come up
to me to try to give me Trump signs, and uh,
all three, in a very unsettling way, pointed out that
I was sitting alone and it made me feel very unsafe.

Speaker 2 (01:50:06):
Yeah, welcome to the Republican Party.

Speaker 6 (01:50:08):
So correct.

Speaker 7 (01:50:10):
Yeah, and as they pointed out earlier, definitely a lot
of unwanted touching.

Speaker 6 (01:50:16):
But he you know, welcome to the Republican Party. And
you know what it's touching.

Speaker 2 (01:50:23):
Unwanted touching is essentially part of the main party platform.

Speaker 7 (01:50:27):
It literally and it is only day one.

Speaker 6 (01:50:31):
It is day one, four, well, three more to go,
and we will be covering it a night.

Speaker 7 (01:50:37):
We'll be back tomorrow with morey any final thoughts anyone.

Speaker 2 (01:50:42):
Nope, nope.

Speaker 6 (01:50:44):
Tip your service workers.

Speaker 1 (01:50:48):
And wash your hands.

Speaker 2 (01:51:04):
Welcome back to it could happen here a podcast recorded
at the Republican National Convention, which I do not very
much like. We're having a great time.

Speaker 6 (01:51:13):
Though, well not really. This is the worst day we've
had so far.

Speaker 2 (01:51:16):
This is one of the worst days I've ever had. Yeah,
we did get to talk with Rudy Giuliani, which was
a highlight of the day. Hearing more about that later,
but first let's go around. Let you know who's going
to be talking on this episode. First off, we've got
Garrison Davis hello, finally identified as she her by the
Secret Service. There you go.

Speaker 6 (01:51:34):
Congrats, They're going woke.

Speaker 2 (01:51:36):
They're going woke. That's why it happened. That's what Rudy
talked about, and I guess he was right. And then
speaking of woke, de supervisor Sophie Lichterman.

Speaker 7 (01:51:51):
I've had a day.

Speaker 2 (01:51:52):
Yeah, I'll bet make fun of me. We are in
the like the chunk of the there's like the main
stadium where all of the very red and botox people
give their speeches, and then there's this part where all
of the different like media companies have booths set up.
Iheart's got a booth. There a very large booth very
large booth, and we are kind of above that right

(01:52:15):
now because it's a relatively quiet place to record.

Speaker 7 (01:52:17):
For some visuals. Here we are sitting in this part
of a arena.

Speaker 2 (01:52:22):
The Panther Arena, the Panther Arena.

Speaker 7 (01:52:24):
There's red carpet everywhere, and there are cubicle style booths
for various publications.

Speaker 2 (01:52:30):
Let's see, I see O A N.

Speaker 6 (01:52:33):
We are sitting right above the iHeart to end the
Daily Wire booth. They have a whole wall of Matt Walsh,
a wall of Walls Walsh, if you will.

Speaker 2 (01:52:41):
Bright Bart's got a tiny little cue, very small.

Speaker 6 (01:52:43):
Frank's speech has a little booth, you know, a lot
of a lot of local radio, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:52:47):
For there was that when we met Rudy earlier today,
he was a the wvo in booth, which is a
local radio station. They did not let him speak this
year at the r n C. Did not really seem
to want him to be here. That's too bad. He
claimed to be happy that that was the case. Well, yeah,
interesting guy. Took a little tumble today. Took a little
tumble today, fell and then kept falling on the floor

(01:53:10):
of the event. Classic Rudy. And when we went to
lunch earlier and wound up in the same room as
Ted Cruz briefly, who was also at that restaurant. A
lady came up to us, a Republican alternate delegate, and said,
are you a band? Are you musicians? You look like musicians?

Speaker 7 (01:53:28):
Solely based off of Robert having tattoos.

Speaker 2 (01:53:31):
I do think it was entirely based on the fact
that I have to.

Speaker 6 (01:53:34):
We probably look cooler than anyone else here.

Speaker 2 (01:53:36):
Thank you, thank you, I said, we that's the first
time you've said that to me, Garrison, and it really
you know what, I took a convention.

Speaker 6 (01:53:44):
I took a convention republics older than my grandparents.

Speaker 7 (01:53:48):
I will say that at this restaurant, the restaurant worker
did give us all free shots of vodka because she
said we had looked like we had had a week.
And boy, howdy is she right.

Speaker 2 (01:53:59):
I'm sure she's been having one too.

Speaker 7 (01:54:00):
Yeah, she was very nice. So Garon, Robert, you want
to take me We weren't together for most of today.
Do you want to take me through your day? And
then I can tell you about.

Speaker 2 (01:54:09):
My really fun day.

Speaker 1 (01:54:11):
God.

Speaker 2 (01:54:11):
Yeah, so we'll start by talking about our morning. So
yesterday was a pro Palestine March that was Monday. From Monday,
Fronce kind of build us a march on the RNC.

Speaker 6 (01:54:22):
It was a sizable demonstration, at least five hundred.

Speaker 2 (01:54:26):
At least five hundred I'm cluded to me the exact numbers,
but not tiny March is a little bit of a misnumber.
It was located in the park that's kind of closest
to the RNC security area today. It was a very
different vibe. There were counter protesters, but there were also
like there was like a church group who was there
with signs.

Speaker 6 (01:54:42):
It's like a Westboro Baptist church styles the street preacher group.

Speaker 2 (01:54:46):
They do not like Catholics.

Speaker 6 (01:54:48):
They don't like gay people or Catholics, or fornication or adultery,
that sort of thing. You know, if you can picture
the big signs that people carry around, it's.

Speaker 7 (01:54:56):
That sounds sounds fun. Guys.

Speaker 6 (01:54:59):
We saw an amazing T shirt today, Robert, do you
do you have a do you have a recollection of
the best T shirt that we saw today?

Speaker 2 (01:55:05):
Oh God, is that the prolapsed rectum tissure is atal
sex equals prolapsed rectum? And then wow, god, it felt
like a John quote. There was a book of the
Bible that I know does not refer directly to prolapsed
rectors romans romans Paul, So you know Paul was not
talking about rectums.

Speaker 6 (01:55:23):
Well, but Paul is the most homophobic out of all
the New Testament writers. But basically we talked to some
of these types of people gathered at this little this
little squares little park. There was maybe like one or
two people protesting the RNC itself, just holding signs, you know,
someone with a megaphone, But the rest of the people
gathered where these were these street preacher types. And then
we went over to this media section earlier this morning.

(01:55:45):
That's where we talked to our good are now good friend,
Rudy Giuliani.

Speaker 2 (01:55:49):
So again, if you're picturing this floor, it's like a
bunch of large cubicles. So you've ever been to a
trade show, it looks like a trade show, right, But
each of the cubicles is a different radio station or
internet media company. And Rudy was just sort of chilling
at a local radio station booth with Laura Lumer When

(01:56:10):
we first walked up Amazing vibes, she thanked God love
and I will say Laura Lumor famous on the internet
for looking very peculiar, one of the more normal looking
people at the.

Speaker 6 (01:56:21):
RNC, which I don't think is a testament to how
normal Laura Lumor looks. It's a testament to the types
of people that we are seeing every day at the
RNC that everyone kind of looks a little Lumor esque. Yeah,
so she looks a little bit less bizarre in comparison
to just everyone else we're seeing, who all has, you know,
a curious amount of facial surgeries, Yeah going on that

(01:56:41):
makes them just look just look a little different, just.

Speaker 2 (01:56:43):
A little different. We saw the Fox News had anchored
today whose face was as smooth as a baby's ass.

Speaker 6 (01:56:49):
It looked like carved marble.

Speaker 2 (01:56:51):
It looked like carved marble and was clearly bloated with
Bachelin toxin.

Speaker 7 (01:56:55):
Incredible.

Speaker 2 (01:56:56):
Yeah, it was a beautiful man, Sophie, He was a
beautiful man.

Speaker 7 (01:56:59):
I thank YOUSU is retinall well, he must.

Speaker 2 (01:57:00):
Use retinal And he had a chin as wide as
like glory days. Bruce Campbell, very wide face.

Speaker 7 (01:57:06):
I bet he never forgot to wear sunscreen unlike you two.

Speaker 2 (01:57:09):
So yeah, kind of the last thing we did at
the convention before coming back was. We had a little
conversation with Rudy, primarily about Ukraine. His basic stance is
that Ukraine is stealing all of the money that the
government gives it. When I pointed out that that money
was primarily coming in military subsidies and like military weapons,
he said they were stealing the weapons and selling them.
And I asked to who, and he said he didn't know,

(01:57:31):
at which point his handler got him out of there,
and we wound up walking over to the iHeart booth
where one of our coworkers, Dan O'Donnell, who's a more
conservative guy in the network, but who through a law
enforcement contact, got the story that a man had just
been shot outside of the RNC security zone, but by
police who were in town for the RNC. It wound

(01:57:51):
up that they are Columbus, Ohio police, So we rushed
down there, split up with him pretty quickly because I
think he was mostly interested in talking to the police scene,
and we wound up right in the middle of you know,
what is the poorest neighborhood in Milwaukee, the poorest zip
code in the state, one of the highest rates of
incarceration in the country. It is a deeply deprived area.

(01:58:14):
The first guy we talked to. He was with Lighthouse
Ministries I think was the name of the organization, which
is essentially he was running like a Christian halfway house,
and we saw another larger halfway house even closer to
the shooting, Like there were two half way houses effectively
right next to each other. That's the kind of neighborhood
this was. And when we got there, police had just

(01:58:37):
started setting up cordons. They had started it with about
a block or two fenced off with police tapes, but
were widening at every few minutes. They were adding new blocks,
quickly expanding, and a large number of cops were on scene.
There were horse cops on scene. We could not get
close to about a block from the site of the
shooting itself, but we were able to get into a
park where there were a lot of local people who

(01:58:57):
were very angry at what had happened. And one of
the first things I encountered was a couple of guys,
you know, one of whom was filming on his phone
yelling at the police, a couple of whom were sitting
in lawn chairs, and one of whom was speaking about
like you know, who had clearly witnessed the shooting, saying, like,
you know, they were just having an argument. If you'd
let us the neighborhood handle it, we would have handled it.

(01:59:20):
The most there would have been was a black guy.
What the fuck is wrong with you guys. We talked
to him. His name is Emmanual And I'm actually just
gonna play a clip from that interview with the Manual.

Speaker 3 (01:59:29):
Right now, here's what all these on the bikes I
want to let you see now.

Speaker 2 (01:59:34):
So they parked in the King.

Speaker 8 (01:59:36):
Center, abum, and they were just basically patrolling watching us, right.

Speaker 2 (01:59:40):
So the two guys have a little braw about the ball.
That's about the fight. So they didn't really fight for
Kobe's shopping Freeze shot him. Empty the clip. Every twelve
officers on.

Speaker 8 (01:59:55):
The bike empty their clinton because you speak cockbi Anpty
the Clintons. And then whenever done, they're turning guns on
us and then now their person.

Speaker 2 (02:00:03):
Let's further further away, we're an issue.

Speaker 8 (02:00:05):
Because they don't want us to tell you guys what
really happened when they could have tasted in the restident
city in the jail. They shot him and they was
going to shoot the other guy and way, so they
turn the guns are about sixteen of us Robert. Yeah, yeah,
so yeah, they were others why I didnt shoot because
they realized their guns were empty, so they caught the backups.
And that's why they have more backups and more backups

(02:00:25):
and the backups, and that's why we.

Speaker 2 (02:00:27):
Are backing up.

Speaker 10 (02:00:28):
Yeah, and is that the that's the plan now, is
my guest?

Speaker 2 (02:00:34):
Yeah, I don't know if they're think were the r
n C.

Speaker 10 (02:00:37):
The yep, tear gas and masks. Well, thank you, Emmanuel,
nice to meet you. Yeah, yep, tear gas and masks
and starting to feel like Portland again. And yeah, I
would say that what a manual said is consistent. We

(02:00:59):
talked to two other people who had witnessed the shooting,
and then a couple other people who had been close by,
and they all agreed with the gist of what Emmanuel
had said.

Speaker 6 (02:01:07):
Well, Manuel told you something before he started recording there
about how like they felt this was like a very
very solvable problem. Yeah, for like the community, like this
is just like an average fight that they could they
could have ended themselves. Yeah, and you know, in the
next hour these people would have been friends again. Yeah,
And instead police from out of state showed up and

(02:01:28):
just started shooting.

Speaker 2 (02:01:29):
And that is what the initial thing we heard through
our you know, coworker who was talking to law enforcement
was a man had had a knife or knives was
brandishing them. Police told him to drop, he didn't and
they had to shoot him. Locals on scenes said police
did not tell him to drop anything, ran up and
just started shooting. And as you heard from Manual, his

(02:01:52):
experience at the event was that police then turned their
guns on the crowd, and you know, he felt threatened
deeply by this. For reasons that Abous and I will
say that everyone we talked to in the neighborhood had
broadly consistent stories. This was not a serious fight, This
was not a thing that would have escalated to lethal
violence in the normal course of human events. But a

(02:02:13):
huge number of out of state cops rolled up to
the altercation unnecessarily and drew their guns and started shooting.

Speaker 6 (02:02:22):
So there was a fairly nice homeless encampment. They had
a wonderful community garden, really nice garden, just like a
block away, and we figured, oh, this, this guy might
might have been houseless, and we started to talk to
more people who knew him, and yes, we found out
we actually walked right past his tent on the way
to the shooting. He had he had a tent by

(02:02:43):
himself in this little alleyway. I guess, Robert, you talked
more to that, to that guy that knew him.

Speaker 2 (02:02:48):
I talked to a guy who knew him who he
said his nickname was Jehovah because he was a Jehovah's witness.
The guy who I was speaking to was a Muslim
and specifically stated to me, like, you know, I'm a Muslim,
He's a Jehovah's witness. But we always got it was
a really nice guy. He didn't deserve this, Like he
wasn't a dude who generally caused problems. He was not
a dangerous person. He was maybe a guy who was
having a little bit of a heated moment with another dude.

(02:03:10):
And again there happened to be a bunch of out
of state cops who decided to make it everyone's problem.
That was his attitude. And a couple of things were
notewhere they I mean, we talked to a woman who
was kind of dropping her daughter off at work who
lived nearby. This is a lady who lived in a
little bit nicer of a neighborhood. She wasn't quite there,
an older black woman who was like, you know, the
cops show up to do this, but there's no cops.

(02:03:32):
Like if this had been any other time of the year,
there would have been no cops in this neighborhood ever
at all. Like they're never around when anybody wants them
to be. But they show up to kill a guy
because the RNC is in town. And that was very
much the consistent response we got from everyone in the neighborhood.
You know, we stayed there a while. Yeah, that's what happened.
One of the things that I couldn't not notice is

(02:03:53):
once we were down in the RNC, you know, earlier
in the day, very cool, a lot of shade, tall buildings.
When we were in that neighborhood near a fourteenth and Boulette.

Speaker 6 (02:04:05):
Right outside the Martin Luther King Junior Community Center.

Speaker 2 (02:04:08):
Yeah, sun was beating down us. There was very little cover,
it was very hot. The streets were notably poor repair.
The buildings were in a lot poorer repair, but there
was actually also evidence of like street life like here,
the RNC is all of downtown Milwaukee has been sanitized, right.

Speaker 6 (02:04:27):
They swept encampment's close to the R and C perimeter
and stuff. People have had to move around, and no one.

Speaker 2 (02:04:32):
You encounter lives here right not during the event. That's
just the way that it goes. A lot of the
local buildings are shut down. And one of the things
that was interesting about this was the degree to which
all of these people in the most deprived neighborhood Milwaukee
had a really clear understanding of what had happened near
and around them and knew each other. And we're talking.
There were a couple of people we saw who were
going around different chunks within a block or two of

(02:04:54):
each other and clearly knew all of their neighbors, which
was very different from kind of the vibe that we've
gotten Downtown Milwaukee is as nice as it is, and
I think we've all really enjoyed the city. One of
the most segregated cities in the country, and that was
very clear because I think there was one white person
who was a resident of the neighborhood that we talked to,
that woman who was next to the guy who knew Jehovah.

(02:05:16):
And I guess that's most of what I have to say. Yeah,
I mean, more and more place kept showing up.

Speaker 6 (02:05:22):
There was this basically like a riot squad with mace
and gas masks showed up. You know, there was biite cops,
mounted patrol cops. They just they started to flood this area.
Eventually they slowly kind of you know, dispersed out as
this scene got more under control and they realized there
probably wasn't going to be a huge protest at this location.
I believe there's gonna be a vigil tonight, yeah, at

(02:05:43):
eight pm, near the side of the shooting. So yeah,
I mean, it's just tough to go from the RNC
with you know, massive police presence all of these extremely wealthy,
rich white Republicans and then be reminded the real people
exist and put events like this people get killed by
police to make sure that that that people feel comfortable, ye,

(02:06:04):
going to these sorts of events and just completely unnecessarily. Yeah,
and that's that's just a good, a good, a good
reminder every time I walk through one of these police checkpoints.

Speaker 2 (02:06:13):
Yeah, Donald Donald Trump, you know, survived his brush with
the shooting. This young man didn't, and he died because
this event was set up in his town. We know
that the Secret Service and the you know the other agencies,
because it wasn't just the Secret Service that was responsible
for Trump getting shot. There were a lot of other
law enforcement agencies there failed at their job, you know,

(02:06:34):
last Saturday, to stop the former president from getting shot.
Failed very badly at that. But still at the RNC,
the only thing that the Security State knows how to
do is flood the zone with cops. And the only
thing those cops know how to do is when they
encounter anything a little bit hostile, draw their guns and
empty them. You know, that was my impression, And uh yeah,

(02:06:56):
I think that's probably all we need to say about
that right now.

Speaker 6 (02:06:59):
Sophie tell us about her experience as me and Robert
were walking around this side of this police murder. After
this short break.

Speaker 7 (02:07:15):
And we're back, Well, my colleagues were out on the ground,
I went to a super super fun event called Giving
the Americans a Voice town hall hosted by the Moms
for Liberty. It was interesting, to say the least. It
was a three hour event with various long event very long,

(02:07:40):
and I recorded all of it so we can put
that out at a later date. Let me just give
you a quick a quick rundown of what the event was.

Speaker 6 (02:07:48):
And Moms for Liberty is like a like a lobbying
group for parental rights.

Speaker 2 (02:07:53):
Very supportive of banning books.

Speaker 6 (02:07:55):
Banning books, parental rights, a lot of stuff around education
in school. They they're very active in Washington. They're the
sponsor of a lot of these really really like horrible
bills about limiting information to children, limiting the rights of children,
that sort of thing.

Speaker 7 (02:08:09):
Yeah, And additional sponsors for this event where Conservative Partnership Institute, Heritage.

Speaker 6 (02:08:14):
Characterge Foundation, authors of Project twenty twenty five.

Speaker 7 (02:08:16):
Young America's. I can't even read this logo.

Speaker 6 (02:08:19):
It's like the Young Republicans Voting Association.

Speaker 7 (02:08:22):
Young Americans Foundation.

Speaker 2 (02:08:24):
We did it, great job.

Speaker 7 (02:08:26):
And Public Square, which is a very strange app and
there were three panels and some of the people that
were featured on the panel were Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida.

Speaker 2 (02:08:37):
Sarah Huckabee Sanders made an appearance.

Speaker 7 (02:08:39):
Governor Sarah Huckabye Sanders, Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin.

Speaker 6 (02:08:43):
The governor of Wisconsin was there.

Speaker 7 (02:08:44):
He opened the governor, the Governor of Wisconsin was there.

Speaker 2 (02:08:48):
That's upsetting.

Speaker 7 (02:08:49):
He was like one of the first people who.

Speaker 6 (02:08:50):
Spoke, not a Senator to the actual governor, the.

Speaker 7 (02:08:52):
Forty fifth governor Wisconsin, Scott Walker, Yes, correct, various groups
of attorneys general and get the Senator Oswell Ron Johnson
of Wisconsin, and it was it was it was a
strange event.

Speaker 2 (02:09:08):
What sort of things do they talk about?

Speaker 7 (02:09:10):
Well, they started off with them giving an excuse that
the reason why that there was an attempted assassination on
former President Trump was because of the media falselely compare
hip to Hitler, to which they said, there is only
one Hitler.

Speaker 2 (02:09:25):
There's actually been quite a few Hitlers, although there's less.

Speaker 6 (02:09:27):
Now also, I would I would like for them to
feel that question to jd.

Speaker 2 (02:09:31):
Vance. But anyway, yes, fair enough.

Speaker 7 (02:09:34):
And then there was, you know, as there are at
most of these events, there was a prayer and I
just thought it was super interesting that the person giving
the prayer referred to the panelists and various speakers as
great actors, which was just like an interesting word choice
to me.

Speaker 6 (02:09:50):
Extensively, like political actors, I would assume. But there's interesting associations.

Speaker 7 (02:09:55):
And like one of the one of the main things
that they talked about this event was education, and they
said their biggest issue that they have in the United
States is the creation of the federal Department of Education
and that they were going to change that, which got huge,
huge cheers from the crowd. They claim that one of
the reasons why the young man had attempted to assassinate

(02:10:16):
Donald Trump was because he had gone to a large school.

Speaker 2 (02:10:20):
They are very anti large school why.

Speaker 7 (02:10:22):
Not, and that was one of the main reasons, as
well as the media referring to foreign President Trump as hitler.
They were adamant that teachers unions do not protect kids
and that they are only out for themselves, and that
all teachers' unions have been infiltrated by the left.

Speaker 6 (02:10:40):
Well that part is kind of drown yeah, but no,
I mean attacks on teachers unions are I've seen those
more in the past four years among a lot of
either like right wing influencers or actual politicians. The teachers
unions is a very good boogeyman. Yeah, because some people,
you know, like their individual teachers. But no, no, no, the
real problem is that teachers union.

Speaker 7 (02:11:00):
Yes, that actual distinction was brought up multiple times. There
you go, there you go, And at one point somebody
in the back of the room dropped their phone. But
it was very loud and unsettling noise to the point
where everybody thought that it might have been a gun,
and everyone kind of understandably so jumped up and around.

Speaker 2 (02:11:20):
Oh they're scared of guns. Huh. The Republicans really fucking babies.

Speaker 7 (02:11:26):
And the overall energy is that they ate the federal government.
They want things to go back to a local level,
and that the Left is ruining and grooming children. Lots
of weird as you can imagine, stuff about gender, lots
of stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:11:41):
About consistent some of the biggest, biggest applause.

Speaker 6 (02:11:45):
Oh, something to note here.

Speaker 7 (02:11:47):
Anytime Elon Musk was brought up, which was quite a bit,
the crowd went bat shit. Yeah, huge wild cheers for
anything to do with Elon, which I thought was, you know,
not unexpected, but just that, like, he got louder cheers
than I think he got a louder cheer than when

(02:12:08):
they brought up Donald Trump.

Speaker 6 (02:12:09):
He's really one of their new gray heroes. What did
the Attorney's General talk about?

Speaker 7 (02:12:14):
They were mostly talking about different winds they had had
in terms of like their states and things they were
bringing the table, and mostly like personal stories of like
things that they look for in their family. The Missouri
Attorney General Andrew Bailey. His biggest reaction from the crowd
was when he said in Missouri, we don't co parent

(02:12:37):
with the government, and sure the crowd loved that.

Speaker 6 (02:12:41):
Yeah, I mean this is a big, big, big rental
rights group, And yeah, I'm interested in the attorney general
because back in twenty twenty three, the attorney's generals from
Alan these red states drafted this this very angry, kind
of threatening letter to Target, kind of demanding that because
some of their states own like an interest in Target,
they have to remove any kind of any products that

(02:13:02):
cater to trans people because this is betraying the investors
by making this poor economic decision. And really, the attorney's
general have been one of the strongest forces against trans
rights in a lot of these states. And I believe
because I I showed up near the end of the
attorney general's segment, I believe they referred to themselves as
like the last line of defense. Even if you have

(02:13:23):
like a Democrat, you know, like mayor, or you know
you have more Democrat officials in like your city or state,
the attorneys generals are are like the ones that are
going to hold it down, even if the rest have
kind of sold out or are liberals, Democrats.

Speaker 7 (02:13:35):
Yeah, I would say the AGS were the most transphobic
of the bunch, if I was doing ranking Santas.

Speaker 2 (02:13:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (02:13:44):
One of them said, you know, in a laughing way,
which again got a great reaction from the crowd. Think
about a kindergartener saying what's your pronoun?

Speaker 2 (02:13:53):
Very very funny ha ha ha ha.

Speaker 7 (02:13:55):
They were laughing and hahaha about that. Yes, And just
the last I say about the AGS was that that
same ag from Missouri said our rights come from God,
not man.

Speaker 2 (02:14:07):
And famously in the Constitution.

Speaker 7 (02:14:09):
Yes, anyways, and then DeSantis and Sarah Hackeby Sanders closed
it out.

Speaker 2 (02:14:13):
Which we arrived for.

Speaker 6 (02:14:14):
We arrived just in time to see DeSantis, thank god,
Oh meatball. Ron Dessentis and Huckeby Sanders got to be
the two most uncharismatic speakers I've seen at the convention
so far.

Speaker 2 (02:14:26):
I'm not surprised they were both shunted off to the
I would call it the shame callus.

Speaker 6 (02:14:31):
So DeSantis was wearing jeans, which is just a fascinating move,
but these were very warm.

Speaker 7 (02:14:36):
Very warned, and essentially when he got up, he basically
did like a brag list of all the things that
he has gotten done in.

Speaker 6 (02:14:43):
Florida, talking about, you know, taking the fight to Disney,
enacting universal school choice, making sure that there's no sex
at in his schools.

Speaker 2 (02:14:51):
Very cool.

Speaker 6 (02:14:52):
And then uh, he talked oddly enough a lot about college.

Speaker 7 (02:14:56):
University is correct, Yes.

Speaker 6 (02:14:59):
He was. He was talking about how like, even if
you raise your kid, right, even if we fix you know, public.

Speaker 2 (02:15:03):
Schools, put in eighteen hard years.

Speaker 6 (02:15:06):
He spent eighteen years raising your kid, you do it right,
we fix all of the public schools.

Speaker 2 (02:15:10):
Everything's good.

Speaker 6 (02:15:11):
As soon as they turn eighteen, they're gonna go after
one of these liberal colleges and they're gonna undo all
of the good work that you've put in. And that
needs to be the next thing to stop. And he
said that Florida is the first state to take on
higher education. We've had a lot of focus on lower education.
We now we have to take on higher education, including
doing like performance reviews for ten good professors every five years,
in which case they can be fired for poor performance,

(02:15:32):
which is kind of a wild concept for a Tenian professor.

Speaker 7 (02:15:35):
He also had a one off wild line where he
was like, you did see hamas over on our universities.

Speaker 6 (02:15:41):
Yes, he referred to Palestinating human rights campus protesters as Hamas,
just saying that they are Hamas. Like he didn't like say,
these people are like Hamas. You just said when Hamas
was coming to the universities, they didn't show up in Florida.

Speaker 2 (02:15:55):
Which is a very standard Republican line, it is.

Speaker 6 (02:15:57):
Yeah, and like, there's just no difference between between someone
showing up to a protest in the United States because
they don't like that thousands and thousands of Palestinians are
being murdered, and that person is now indistinguishable from Hamas
according to the Republican Party, according to all of these speakers. Yeah,
and so Sarah Sanders just tried to kind of write

(02:16:18):
on the coattails of disantist being like, hey, we're also
planning the transgenders.

Speaker 2 (02:16:22):
She did the.

Speaker 7 (02:16:23):
Same show listed you know some of her brags mentioned
it always has to do she talks about her dad.
I wrote John subsic she said, because I was like,
she said, the only war on women is on conservative
women from the far left. Where are the feminists? They
can't even tell you what a woman is.

Speaker 6 (02:16:42):
Well, someone who's famously taken a woman's studies course, where
they never define what a woman is totally. I guess
the main upsetting thing for me because the police just
killed a black man a few hours ago. I was
just reminded, you know, there's so many real people in Milwaukee, right.
All the food service workers have been very nice, but
there's all these real people facing realists use in the
poorest part of Milwaukee. And we just saw someone whose

(02:17:04):
life was ended because police were here for the RNC
from a totally different state, and people with real economic concerns,
real concerns about you know, their life from police brutality,
all this type of stuff. And as soon as you
walked into this Mom's for Liberty panel, the first thing
we heard them complaining about was that they were being
censored on Twitter, yep, and that that was their concern.

Speaker 2 (02:17:23):
Joe Biden censored us.

Speaker 6 (02:17:24):
Their hardest thing to them was that they find all
this gender stuff a little bit icky and that we're
being censored on Twitter. And that is the level of
problems that these people are dealing well.

Speaker 2 (02:17:33):
And our kids didn't turn into the people we wanted
them to. Yeah, and that should be the entire country's problem.
They are not fundamentally, they don't have real problems. These people,
they don't have real problems, but they are unhappy that
everyone in the world does not inherently act to serve
and validate them. And they are going to make that

(02:17:56):
everyone's promise. You know. That is what the RNC is. Yeah.
The people on the floor are what you would call
like successful used car dealers, like level of capitalist, right,
and they are worshiping an alliance of venture capitalists, guys
like the VEC, guys like JD. Vance, and of course
people who inherited a shitload of wealth and then eventually

(02:18:18):
succeeded in making money through a combination of vice casinos
and the entertainment industry. Trump, you know, like that's that's
who this is.

Speaker 7 (02:18:27):
And uh, speaking of a VIC. As we were getting
up to leave, they quickly announced that there was one
more person who was going to speak, and it was him.

Speaker 6 (02:18:35):
Yeah, he sure did speak. He gave a speech that
I would say was indistinguishable from AI. Yes, just about
how how good America can be and even though we're
in a tough gpt that even though we're in a
tough spot right now, I feel like America can do better.
And it was just it was like I could predict
every other word.

Speaker 2 (02:18:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (02:18:52):
Hey, this is Gear recording just outside of the main
arena at the RNC where Governor Greg Abat just gave
a speech. And now I'm giving you a short speech
to tell you to enjoy these messages from our sponsors.
We'll be right back.

Speaker 2 (02:19:13):
This is Robert M.

Speaker 6 (02:19:14):
Garrison recording from our hotel room later in the night,
because we have learned some new information about the police
killing that happened earlier today, and also we listened to
a whole bunch of the RNC closing speeches tonight which
kind of relate to this question of police violence. I'll
hand this off to Robert.

Speaker 2 (02:19:30):
Yeah. I mean, so since we were down there, the
police have released both their security camera footage body camera footage,
and we have the name of the decedent, who was
Samuel Sharp Junior. This is the guy everyone in the
neighborhood identified as Jehovah, and that was the nickname that
he went by. He looked younger. I've seen some reports
that he was like forty three, but he doesn't look
forty three from the footage, you know. And he had

(02:19:52):
just he had used a community shower earlier that day
that comes by the neighborhood for some of the homeless folks,
and you know, told everyone he loved them. Footage is
I understand like exactly how it's going to be used
and already as being used by the police, and I
understand what they're saying, which is that if you look
at the footage, is they rush on scene, I think
about fifteen of them. Five of them fired at once

(02:20:15):
and immediately open fire. You can see from a distance
the two guys are five to seven feet apart and
are kind of crossing the street together while it looks
like they are yelling. As the police rush in, Samuel
runs forward, and if you clip frames out of the video,
you can make a case that he was charging the
guy with his knife or knives. Police are saying multiple

(02:20:37):
It's a little unclear to me in the footage if
he had two or just one. But I can see
how the police showing up on scene, being trained the
way that they are, why they open fire. The problem
is that he ran forward in the first place, because
they rushed in, like these two guys were squared up
on the street and not in an encounter that any

(02:20:57):
of the locals considered to be particular literally threatening. If
you have spent a lot of time around homeless encampments,
if you have spent a lot of time in neighborhoods
that have a lot of homeless residence, it is not
wild or uncommon to see people yelling and to see
people with knives on their person, you know, even in
their hands. Obviously, that can be upsetting to some people.

(02:21:18):
But like the folks who lived in the neighborhood did
not consider this an odd circumstance. And with something that,
in the normal circumstance of events and the normal following
of events, would have been de escalated. And in this case,
it wasn't the police open fire before there was any
attempt at de escalation.

Speaker 6 (02:21:34):
Yeah, And like conservatives will always point out, you know,
why is he just following orders? Why isn't he just
just doing blah blah blah blah blah. They will they
will take they'll take low screenshots that make something look
a certain way. And the simple fact is that these
two men were not in any physical altercation before police arrived.
He started running away as police started charging towards him,
I think it would be very odd that he would

(02:21:55):
choose that moment to suddenly lunge forward and stab this
person he knew. And it's very clear that he's actually
just running away from police, as people often do. And
police have a long history of just shooting at people
and killing people who are running away. You can look
at what happened at the Wendy's in Atlanta in twenty twenty.
They shoot people when they don't follow what they're saying.
They shoot people when people try to run away from them, and.

Speaker 2 (02:22:18):
That's just how cops work.

Speaker 6 (02:22:19):
So this video came out later in the evening, right
as me and Robert arrived at the RNC second session.
And the theme today for the RNC is make America
Safe Again. And some of the first few speeches I heard,
one was from the mayor of Dallas, Eric Johnson.

Speaker 11 (02:22:37):
Democrats and power demonstrate they don't care about stopping the
killers or the thieves who terrorize black and brown communities.
They don't care about securing our border, and they don't
care about dangerous homeless encampments.

Speaker 2 (02:22:58):
And then there was also a police chief who spoke,
a former police chief who now runs a charity I
think for like wounded police officers. Yeah, but he's like
a cop who is also an activist.

Speaker 6 (02:23:08):
And so All this framing is around talking about how
the Democrats are the defund the police party, how Joe
Biden and Kamala Harris themselves advocate for defunding the police,
which is simply not true if you look at what
they say. Joe Biden will always reiterate that he always
has argued for more police funding, for more police training.
But they have framed this issue as there are not
enough police around, that's what is making cities dangerous, talking about,

(02:23:30):
you know, all the people dying of violent crime. Not
a single mention, of course, that the out of state
police just killed someone a mile away from the Republican
National Convention. The make America Safe Again rhetoric shifted towards,
you know, border rhetoric. You know, people believing, genuinely the
people that are speaking in the audience that we currently

(02:23:51):
live under an open border policy that people can just
walk in totally fine. Just a complete alterned reality view
about what's going on in America, what Joe Biden and
Kamala Harris's border policies are. And there was a number
of speeches that tried to capitalize on this, on this
almost like border framing up, like there's icis terrorists pouring
into the border only under Joe Biden, right, as if

(02:24:14):
no one ever crossed the border illegally under Donald Trump.
I know what, Robert, you were talking about some of
the Ted Cruz speech tonight on his comments around the border.

Speaker 2 (02:24:23):
Yeah, and Cruz was interesting. I've never considered him a
particularly strong speaker, and coming out, he initially went into
kind of a conspiracy theory that you'll hear on the
right about people being trafficked, sex trafficked, kids being sex
traffic across the border. He made a comment about them
having colored wristbands, which is again not a thing that happens,
but a reference to a widely believed right wing conspiracy,

(02:24:45):
and that got kind of a scattered amount of applause,
not not what I would call a reaction, given how
he saw the crowd react, Marjorie Taylor Green and how
we saw them react, you know, whenever Trump comes out
very muted. But as it went on, he started going
into the kind of fearmongering spiel about migrants. He talked
about the woman in San Francisco who was killed by

(02:25:06):
that guy who found a gun in a bag and
accidentally fired it. He talked about a number of different
other cases that were people not from the country, undocumented
immigrants who killed generally white Americans. And every time he
would tell a story, he had like a refrain line
that was something and that's what happens every damn time
or something. And every time he gave the refrain, more

(02:25:27):
and more people started to cheer in the audience. And
by the end of it, with the last kind of
couple of cases of you know, migrant on white people
crime he brought up, the crowd was like legitimately roaring
like as much as they did for Marjorie Taylor Green.
Now the cop that came up next got a much
louder response, and by far the biggest response of the night,

(02:25:47):
even maybe including Trump, was when the delegates on the
floor launched into a series of back the Blue chants.
They actually interrupted the cop with back the Blue chants
and people were roaring for them.

Speaker 6 (02:26:14):
Yeah, there was a lot of a lot of these chants.
And the Dallas mayor told a really funny story how
in twenty twenty some like anti police or defund the
police activists to shut up around his neighborhood to try to,
you know, get him to defund the police and he
got so scared by this that he changed from being
a Democrat mayor to a Republican mayor and now he

(02:26:35):
runs the biggest Republican led city in the country. And
he had this comment talking about how he grew up
in you know, poor black neighborhoods, and the thing that
they've always wanted, the thing that makes them safer, is
more cops, not less cops.

Speaker 1 (02:26:50):
Both.

Speaker 11 (02:26:51):
I grew up in high prime neighborhoods.

Speaker 2 (02:26:54):
What we wanted was more and better police, not less.

Speaker 6 (02:27:02):
And just contrasting that with our experiences today in a
very poor black community that just suffered an incident of
police killing. That is that is just a lie, right, like,
and like everyone knows this. This is theater for the convention.
Everyone at the convention is really into this sort of thing.
They genuinely believe this sort of stuff, but it's just
an alternate reality. We spend time one of the poorest
zip codes in the country and the state today and no,

(02:27:26):
it's that's simply not true.

Speaker 2 (02:27:28):
Yeah, these these people are angry about primarily theoretical problems.
You know, this kind of specter of migrant crime, which
is not really real in a demographic you can pick
out individual cases of that, but you can pick out
individual cases of doctors stabbing people to death, and that
doesn't mean we have a wave of doctor related crime. Right.
The reality of the situation is that, like, these are

(02:27:49):
super fans of the Republican Party, and they are super
fans of the narrative, and they are cheering for some
of the moments. You know, they're not there's some stuff
that's gotten boring to them, to think the child traffick
at conspiracy theories might be boring to them, maybe because
that guy from the child trafficking movie got disgraced or whatever.
There's not as interested. So you can see every now

(02:28:10):
and then as like their interest in certain things fades,
But they're reacting like an audience that like a comic
con would to see in like a Star Wars trailer
where some guy does a thing that's evidence of having
the comics or whatever people I'm waiting to see, Like
when fucking DeSantis comes on and starts talking about banning
children from receiving gender affirming care, that's like fucking Spider

(02:28:33):
Man showing up, right, And they react like the guy
next to us when DeSantis started doing this started screaming
and like sticking his fist out towards DeSantis and like
yelling at it a volume that was honestly kind of
surprising the man could project. I'll give him that. So
I think ultimately the way I would sum this up
is that these are not normal people. These are people

(02:28:54):
who love politics. And again, to be clear, I'm not
saying these are not normal people because they're conservative. Your
family are conservative, a lot of them are Trump voters,
but they would find this audience deeply weird because these
people are politics fans, and even most of the conservatives
I know really dislike politics. Most normal people do, and
I guess that's kind of where I've concluded, is the

(02:29:15):
difference between like the crazies and the normies. Normal people
don't enjoy this stuff.

Speaker 6 (02:29:21):
The term I've used the past few years is politics
as fandom, and that's all this fucking is. This is
this is a convention, just like comic con, just like
an anime con. This is a convention, and that is
how they view politics. Anyway, back to the past versions
of us to discuss a funny closing story regarding presidential footwear.

(02:29:42):
So that has been our day so far. The last
thing I say will leave you with is. On our
way to the convention site this morning, we were walking
through this hotel to get through security and we found
this wonderful section. It was it was it was called
the Presidential Experience. We walked in. There was a there
was a replica of the Oval Office. I was told

(02:30:04):
Reagan era Oval Office it was. It was pretty good,
and it was pretty good.

Speaker 2 (02:30:07):
It was not good Netflix production, but like Netflix production
level quality.

Speaker 6 (02:30:13):
Bad Netflix production quality. So we walked through and then
we found just a glorious site. And I will let
Past Robert and myself tell you what we found at
the Presidential Experience. We are hearing the Presidential shoe section.
We've got Harry Truman, Nixon, Gerald Ford, Reagan, Warren G. Harding,

(02:30:37):
who has a quote charming spat requested by President Harding
and sympathized the elegance of the Victorian era. Dwight Eisenhower's
shoes are pretty good. JFKs are a little bit more
fancy but less polished. Lyndon B. Johnson's completely unsurprising, very
very versatile, very efficient, can get off easy, slip on
and off, get those dogs out when you need to.

(02:31:00):
Abe Lincoln has some honestly, very stylish boots. Theodore Roosevelt's
as well, large foot on Theodore and Woodrow Wilson's shoes
the only white shoe in the bunch. Very small, tiny feet,
very small feet. Kind of surprisingly He's it says he
chose fashion over tradition with these white buckskins. Also they
have Ulysses S. Grant's little little riding boots. The Victorian

(02:31:25):
boots are are very very stylish. But honestly, I think
I would go with Dwight D. Eisenhower's. They're just a beautiful,
a beautiful shoe. Reagan's aren't bad, but I don't know.
The Eisenhower shoes just a little bit more elegant.

Speaker 2 (02:31:38):
I'm going for LBJ slip on life.

Speaker 6 (02:31:41):
That makes sense for you.

Speaker 2 (02:31:42):
That shows you're a man who's got things to do.
You know, you don't have time to be tie in
your shoes.

Speaker 6 (02:31:46):
No, that that that makes sense, That makes sense. Nick
Nixon's and Kennedy's are very similar.

Speaker 2 (02:31:55):
Process or I will tell you the truth, like or.

Speaker 6 (02:31:58):
Not pretty good. It looks like this was presented by
c SPAN this presidential experience. We have a Reagan era
replica of the Oval Office, not a big room, not
a big room, but overall of decent, decent replica.

Speaker 2 (02:32:16):
Nice JFK portrait Up there. There's a women's suffrage article.

Speaker 6 (02:32:21):
Interesting women's suffrage, little table. Very controversial topic among Republicans
these days.

Speaker 2 (02:32:26):
It has gotten to be increasingly so.

Speaker 6 (02:32:29):
Some old Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser newspapers from seventeen
eighty seven.

Speaker 2 (02:32:35):
Oh yeah, so this is I guess the original Pennsylvania
newspaper coverage and printing of the.

Speaker 6 (02:32:41):
Seventeen eighty seven Yeah, of the Constitution.

Speaker 2 (02:32:45):
Yeah, there's the preamble right there. Yeah, and they spell
established justice as a thab lith justith because that's a
yieldie days, a lot a lot more f's back in
the day. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (02:32:58):
But they have these little information placards about all the presidents,
the first ladies, that kind of stuff. We'll try to
talk to the to the organizer of this little shindig
in a sect. But honestly, the shoe, the shoe section,
it's the most interesting thing to me just because of
how tiny, just just how tiny those Woodrow Wilson shooes are.

Speaker 2 (02:33:15):
Hey, Jay, that's that's a that's a that's a long foot.
It's not a wide foot.

Speaker 6 (02:33:20):
Roosevelt's feet are pretty wide, you as Grant also very small,
also very small feet. Hmmm. Yeah. You know what they
say about anyway, who's your favorite president?

Speaker 2 (02:33:35):
Favorite? Honestly? You know, I I I think I gotta
go with US Grant. He's He's not my favorite president
in terms of what he did in office, but in
terms of like as a person, sure, he's the US
president that I think was probably the the best person.

(02:33:56):
Like he really did try.

Speaker 6 (02:33:59):
Always been a Harrison fan myself.

Speaker 2 (02:34:00):
Oh yeah, William Henry, he was my favorite ass president right.

Speaker 6 (02:34:03):
Also rhymes was my first name, So a little bit
of a bias there.

Speaker 2 (02:34:09):
He really I like a man who there. There's not
much like fat on that presidency.

Speaker 6 (02:34:13):
He really efficient, efficient, efficient time in office.

Speaker 2 (02:34:16):
You got in and out. Wow, very exciting. All those
little feet. I can't stop thinking about. You know what
I think about that's the weirdest is that they did
not have they didn't have any bush feet. Sadly well,
they didn't have bush feet. And there was one guy
who they didn't have his shoes. They just had the
US Grant. They just had they had like the model

(02:34:37):
that they built the shoe around for him. Yes, which
was weird. I was like, where's your where's your US
grant shoe? You don't want to show us the hardest
working man whoever lived to be president?

Speaker 6 (02:34:47):
But yeah, no, I thought that was some important breaking
news for our listeners to hear who had the smallest foot. Yeah,
but as of right now, that is day two of
the Republican National Convention.

Speaker 2 (02:34:57):
Until our next update, don't come here. It's unpleasant.

Speaker 7 (02:35:16):
America is Trump strong? Okay?

Speaker 2 (02:35:19):
It is so funny.

Speaker 6 (02:35:20):
Welcome to it could happen here. A podcast recorded from
the Republican National Convention, specifically the hotel where the Idaho
and North Dakota delegates are gathered. Yeah, fascinating elevator rides.

Speaker 2 (02:35:33):
And we're thinking today about the memory of that guy
that Trump does not know the name of who got
shot to death.

Speaker 1 (02:35:39):
Corey k.

Speaker 2 (02:35:41):
They've definitely pronounced every time they've said it wrong.

Speaker 7 (02:35:44):
Every single person who spoke the last few days pronounced
his name differently, And I was like, well, finally they
have somebody's name to pronounce more incorrectly than they do
Kabla Harris or Ramaswami.

Speaker 2 (02:35:56):
And it's look, folks, I'm not gonna laugh at his kids.
You know, that's a tragedy for them. But what I
will say is that objectively, it's really funny that this
guy died for Donald Trump, and Trump very obviously does
not care, couldn't, could not be less important to him,
Like there is nothing that matters less than this election
the man who took a bullet for him, And that's

(02:36:19):
really funny. That's really funny.

Speaker 7 (02:36:20):
Anyways, Uh, this is it could happen here. I'm Sophie LICHTBD. We're,
like Gara said at the R and C. I have
Garrison Davis with me and Robert Evans.

Speaker 2 (02:36:29):
Uh huh, very professional, Sophie, Thank.

Speaker 7 (02:36:31):
You so much. I am your boss. Do you want
to tell me a little bit about this morning?

Speaker 6 (02:36:35):
Well, I think first to talk about some of our
late night escapades.

Speaker 7 (02:36:39):
Oh wait, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Cigar bar, Yes, wow,
I did not go with you to that event, so
I call.

Speaker 2 (02:36:49):
I agree that was a good call. I counted on
the main floor of the cigar bar where the young
Republicans had their party, and six of forty people had cigars.

Speaker 6 (02:36:56):
I had a cigar?

Speaker 2 (02:36:57):
You did you had? Because I brought a election of
my finest Cubans.

Speaker 7 (02:37:01):
Yeah, very very kind of you, Robert.

Speaker 2 (02:37:04):
I had one of John F. Kennedy's favorite cigars that
I had been aging for two years waiting for this moment.

Speaker 6 (02:37:08):
I did like that you had the foresight to bring
cigars to the art, to bring.

Speaker 2 (02:37:12):
Extremely high quality. Our buddy Lenny had a three year
age part of goas you had. But I've been drinking
and I had a lovely have you been quality? The
best cigars there. I talked to everyone who happened to
be smoking a cigar, and they were all smoking trash
like a Rodwin and American garbage, because none of them

(02:37:35):
had any kind of look. I don't get into this often.
I don't want to be like some of our friends
in the in the far right and and use cigars
as a totem. I enjoyed my cigars privately, but we
were going to a cigar bar, so I brought my
nice cigars and oh was it a cigar bar?

Speaker 7 (02:37:52):
Were there cigars there? You're just at the word cigars seven.

Speaker 2 (02:37:55):
It was not lost on me that none of them
smoked good cigars, because they're children, are what. We had
an interview with Rudy Giuliani, and Rudy would have understood
that man has nice cigars. I'll say that about Rudy Giuliani.
He knows the cigars, that's all I'm saying.

Speaker 6 (02:38:08):
Great, So we've been trying to hit the kind of
the after party scene at the RNC just to see
kind of what's up. This little cigar party was put
on by some of the young Republicans from New.

Speaker 2 (02:38:18):
York, primarily in New York. They are very confident of
a victory, potentially a statewide victory in a national election.
And you know what, the evidence doesn't make it impossible.
It doesn't look like it's going to happen from this cycle.
But twenty twenty eight, New York could be in play.
And one of the interesting things is that Florida also
seems to be tightening. Two poles recently show Trump just

(02:38:40):
four points ahead of Biden. He won by ten in
twenty twenty. That's a significant tightening and within kind of
swing state margins. And so it is kind of interesting
to conceive of the possibility that by twenty twenty eight,
both New York and Florida could be in play.

Speaker 6 (02:38:55):
Yeah, so I dressed like a nineteen fifty FBI agent
and trench coat and smoke well, done one of these
cigars as best as I could.

Speaker 2 (02:39:02):
How'd you like it?

Speaker 6 (02:39:03):
It was fine.

Speaker 2 (02:39:04):
It was a nice cigar.

Speaker 6 (02:39:05):
It's no clove.

Speaker 2 (02:39:06):
Good god, oh my fucking so, give me a gun.

Speaker 6 (02:39:11):
It was it was. It was a nice little party.
We talked, We talked to some people. The best thing
about the party though, is that there was a series
of speeches put on by these guys from New York
that kind of just kept going on. And the longer
that these speeches and like these three different guys kept
going on, the music on the roof started to get
slowly louder and louder and louder until it was completely

(02:39:35):
draining out the speeches, until they just stopped because like, okay,
the music's too loud.

Speaker 2 (02:39:40):
Now now and again there are heroes.

Speaker 6 (02:39:42):
So someone was on that dial just every every two
minutes it up a little bit.

Speaker 2 (02:39:46):
There's a guy I follow who has started who followed
me back in twenty twenty, who was like an election
poll analysis expert and was like, and it's not a
political guy, but was like, look, if you show up
at a convention after party to talk, fuck you like
people are there to drink, all you should say is
the bar is open and I agreed with that, and

(02:40:09):
then you know what, to skip ahead. Credit to the
Heritage Foundation. Nobody ever said anything but that we could
drink all we wanted. That is a Heritage Foundation party.

Speaker 6 (02:40:17):
That is right, which we will get to later. So
we were up way too late, way too late at
at some of these after parties the other night, and
we had to get up pretty early in the morning
because we had an interview with the CEO of the
Texas Public Policy Foundation, which is kind of like a
mini version, yeah, the Heritage Foundation, but just for Texas. Yeah,

(02:40:38):
the former guy who ran this now runs the Heritage
Foundation itself, so it's kind of like a little bit
of a training ground and they kind of swap members often.
We had a pretty long interview that we will turn
into some kind of future piece of content, discussing everything
from woke ideology to the mortal rot infecting America.

Speaker 2 (02:40:59):
To why mash shoot happened in this country. Yeah, Yeah,
he was.

Speaker 6 (02:41:03):
He was very polished, very media trained.

Speaker 2 (02:41:05):
He easily the best interview subject in terms of his
like skillet talking, yeah, that we've had.

Speaker 6 (02:41:11):
And similarly, I don't think he was quite prepared for
our line of questioning either, you know, so that he
got taken it back a little bit by some of
the questions we were lobbing him, probably very different from
the rest of the interviews that he's been doing. I'm
trying to think if there's any anything specifically about that
interview that's worth mentioning.

Speaker 2 (02:41:28):
Now, you know what really interests me because the shooting
is so relevant, I will bring up the shooting. We
talked about why the guy who tried to kill Trump
had done it, and he and I were kind of
the same mind, the same mind that you are, Garrison,
which is that this was a school shooter type thing
and that was the primary reason behind the ideology. And
this is before now some stuff has come out since

(02:41:49):
that has made that seem even more likely. But it
was interesting to like kind of have that not be
a controversial part of the conversation. This was not a
radical left shooting. There was no sort of attempt by
him to claim it as that. He was like, yeah,
this seems like a guy. We have a deep sickness
in this country, and we clearly disagreed with him about
the specifics of where the sickness comes from. But the

(02:42:09):
sickness leads to some people who just want to do
mass shootings that are not political, and uh, that was
interesting to me.

Speaker 6 (02:42:16):
No, And one of the big things talked about in
terms of this moral rot is that there is something
lacking in our country, specifically with young men. There's there
is there is this lack of purpose among young men
which makes them do these kind of violent acts.

Speaker 2 (02:42:29):
I don't disagree with that, sure, And I think I
think I disagree with Yeah, his his.

Speaker 6 (02:42:33):
His solutions and some and some some of his diagnosis
in certain ways, right because he he'll attribute that lack
to certain things that we might not morality at the home,
and sure, you know, all these all those kind of things.
But you know, that was that that was kind of
his his take, you know. And then we also talked
about everything from like the influence of billionaires on these
right wing think tanks and political candidates, Catholics versus Evangelicals.

(02:42:57):
It was an interesting conversation that I'm sure you'll hear
in the coming weeks, and we'll kind of explain why
we want you to hear from this guy who's, you know,
typically probably pretty adversarial to the type of stuff that
we talk about on this show. But after this interview.
I met up with Sophie lichterman Hey and we talked
to the people at the actual Heritage Foundation booth who

(02:43:18):
had many a pamphlet, and I collected all of the
gender ideology pamphlets, which will also be a future deep
dive kind of Curiously, they did not have a single
pamphlet about Project twenty twenty five. Nope, No, and they
didn't like talking about it either. They said that Project
twenty twenty five is, you know, a coalition effort between
both Heritage and all these other groups, but they're not
really talking about it here today because it's not Trump's

(02:43:41):
policy platform. Trump has his own policy platform. This is
just a list of policy suggestions for lawmakers once they
get into office. So they like to talk about a
whole bunch of other stuff, you know, certain things that
are kind of a part of Project twenty twenty five,
but nothing about the actual you know, document itself, partially
due to the kind of negative blash that it has received,

(02:44:02):
and you know, it seems to be kind of widely
unliked for various reasons. So I think it was interesting
that they weren't even pushing it at an event like this.

Speaker 2 (02:44:12):
You know, again, with the Texas Policy Foundation gut we
talked about when we brought it up. He was pretty
open about the fact that it's not popular. Yeah, and
his attitude was that in the future, once we win,
we can try and build consensus around it. But he
didn't try to deny the fact that, like, it's widely
disliked by the electorate.

Speaker 6 (02:44:31):
And it is against a lot of things that are
on the Republican policy platform for the actual party. Sophie,
you had a wonderful conversation with some of these heritage folks.

Speaker 7 (02:44:42):
Let's just say that my very blonde hair and the
pig tills that I or most of this week made
it very easy for these folks to talk to me,
which is unsettling.

Speaker 6 (02:44:54):
A little bit frightening, but useful.

Speaker 7 (02:44:56):
But very very very scary.

Speaker 2 (02:44:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (02:44:59):
Of course, asking a lot of the folks that I've
talked to this week is mostly about their opinions about education,
and you know, if there is a shift in power
with Trump being elected in November, what exactly they would
want to do. And the overall majority answer from these
groups is that they want to take away power from

(02:45:20):
the federal government and bring it to the states, and
that would be universal school choice, and so got a
little bit of that from them. They also mentioned something
about one of the biggest roadblocks being student loans.

Speaker 6 (02:45:33):
While also being very against student learned for forgiveness specifically,
so it's kind of a it was an interesting position.
I want to read some more of their pamphlets on that.

Speaker 7 (02:45:42):
But anyways, that just talks with them more. Got more
of their pamphlets and Garrison and I asked them about
the states that they choose to operate.

Speaker 6 (02:45:52):
In and specifically for their lobbying group as opposed to
just like the think tank, they have this other thing
I think called Heritage Action, which operates differently because of
certain laws around lobbying.

Speaker 2 (02:46:03):
It's kind of where they try to train a lot
of new people up. They had a lot of advertisements
that they did, something like fifty yea.

Speaker 6 (02:46:09):
More on the ground activism type stuff.

Speaker 7 (02:46:11):
And Garret, what was the answer they gave? I thought
it was interesting you asked the question for why they
didn't go in certain states.

Speaker 6 (02:46:17):
Yes, so they had this map of what states they
were active in, and there were certain states, you know,
like Oregon, Washington, a whole bunch of the New England states,
and they just weren't active in because they didn't think
they would be very effective. They wouln't make any leeway.
It's it's just not worth it. It's not going to
move towards actual electoral victories. But the other there's other
states like Wyoming and a few others that they weren't
active in for different reasons because of specific regulations regarding

(02:46:42):
donor transparency that they were strongly against the states that
require there to be transparency for people who donate to
these kind of political groups. And in protest of those
regulations and laws, they are completely inactive in those states,
which is a funny way of saying, we just want
to hide whoever gives us money. And that is that
was a little interesting piece of information regarding you know,

(02:47:04):
there's the state states don't operate and because they do
not want to see or have it made public where
their kind of money is coming in and out of,
at least for the Heritage Action part of the group.

Speaker 7 (02:47:16):
Yes, it was overall just interesting that there was you know,
at this at this booth, there was about five different
i would say twenty something women.

Speaker 6 (02:47:25):
Twenty something died blonde women, yes.

Speaker 7 (02:47:28):
And they invited me to their Heritage Social party that
they were having that was across from the main convention
where you needed an access code to get in, and
they gave you that flyer and.

Speaker 6 (02:47:41):
You will hear all about that. We took advantage of that.
At the end of the episode you will get a
special inside look at the Heritage Foundations private invite only exclusive.

Speaker 2 (02:47:53):
Party was off the record. Now, does it count? No,
of course not. I promised that lady that what she
said to me was off the record, and I won't
say any more about that. But I didn't promise that
to anyone else.

Speaker 6 (02:48:03):
Do you know what's on the record, Robert, what you
said later?

Speaker 7 (02:48:07):
These products and the products and services that support this podcast.

Speaker 2 (02:48:10):
That also that also is off the record, on the record. Whatever,
here's the ads.

Speaker 6 (02:48:24):
We are back and don't worry. You will hear about
this special Heritage Foundation party in a sect. But first
I want to play for you a whole interview that
I collected just down the hall from the Heritage Foundation booth.
The American Conservation Coalition had a pretty a pretty large
section of the RNC convention fest. You know, list of

(02:48:45):
vendors kind of more typical like you know, convention type stuff.
You know, like if you go to like a comic
on or something, it's a lot of like vendors and
booths that this kind of section of the R and C.
So they had this this pretty big booth and it
was the only time I ever seen anything mentioned about
climate change. So I was interested to see what conservatives
talking about climate change sound like what they're saying. And

(02:49:08):
I will just play that interview here right now. Do
you want to introducing yourself in the organization you're with.

Speaker 7 (02:49:14):
Sure.

Speaker 5 (02:49:14):
My name's Carl Matthews. I'm the vice president of Communications
at the American Conservation Coalition, which is the largest conservative
grassroots environmental organization in the country.

Speaker 2 (02:49:24):
So a few things that that interested me about your group.

Speaker 6 (02:49:27):
I mean, especially if you look back in the last
one hundred years, like environmental conservation has been historically a
much more conservative standpoint.

Speaker 2 (02:49:35):
You can look at like presidents in like the.

Speaker 6 (02:49:37):
Nineteen twenties, there was a huge push for that, and
somewhere along the lines that that's kind of been lost
for like a number of reasons. I guess, what is
your main mission here with this organization?

Speaker 5 (02:49:47):
Yeah, well, it's interesting you bring up kind of the
history of conservative conservation because we have a timeline here
at the RNC showing all the Republican presidents who have
really engaged on this issue, from Ulysses Grant to Teddy
Roosevelt to more modern present that is like Richard Nixon,
Ronald Reagan, and even hw Bush. So what we're really
doing here with the American Conservation Coalition is building the

(02:50:08):
conservative environmental movement, specifically among young Americans who frankly feel
kind of disenfranchised by both parties on the issue of
climate and the environment. The left has taken a really
doom and gloom approach to these issues that isn't very
inspiring for a lot of young folks, and in the
last thirty years, conservatives haven't engaged very productively. So we're

(02:50:28):
here showing that conservation is conservative, those values are inherently entwined,
and it's okay to call for action on environmental issues
like climate change.

Speaker 6 (02:50:38):
I guess yeah. Let's start more on like the big topic,
which is which is climate change, and we can get
into like local conservation. What is your take on the
current climate scenario, because like ever since, ever since the
early two thousands, there's been this you know, for a
lot of young people slightly worrying trend. If you have
the politicians just either seriously downgrading, you know, the scale
of this problem, or just thinking there is no problem.

(02:51:00):
What is your take both, I guess on that part.
And then how you see the climate crisis, the climate
issue that we are dealing with, where do you see
it heading?

Speaker 5 (02:51:09):
Yeah, So ACC was founded because Conservatives weren't engaging on
this issue. So for the last six seven years we've
been really pushing conservatives, especially conservative elected leaders, to re
engage in a productive way. And I think we've done
that really effectively. In DC where I live, the Conservative
Climate Caucus in the House, which is a group of
Republican lawmakers interested in tackling the issue of climate change,

(02:51:31):
has eighty seven members. It's the fourth largest in the
Republican conference. So we're seeing a big kind of shift
in the Overton window there. But yeah, I think young
people want elected leaders who recognize that we have an issue,
recognize that we have a challenge in climate change, and
want practical solutions like expanding clean, reliable nuclear energy, like

(02:51:52):
pursuing permitting reform to actually allow American energy projects to
be built. So I think we take a really kind
of level headed rationalach to these issues that really resonates.

Speaker 6 (02:52:01):
With young people. What's the main difference in how you
view the climate issue as opposed to someone like AOC
right or like these these more like progressive democrats of view,
this is a very existential crisis.

Speaker 2 (02:52:12):
You have to get fossil fuels under control.

Speaker 6 (02:52:15):
These kind of timelines that we hear, you know, by
twenty fifty, by twenty seventy, by even like something like
twenty thirty, right, how it becomes like a cascading problem.
How differently do you view the current situation than you know,
these like progressive democrats.

Speaker 5 (02:52:27):
Sure, like I said, climate change is a challenge. It's
certainly something that we need to tackle, but we don't
view it through kind of this doom and gloom lens
where we're going to die in twelve, ten, five years,
whatever the current timeline is on the left. But we
do see a need for all of the above energy.
So we recognize that energy demand is continuing to expand,
but we also need to protect our environment. So we

(02:52:49):
need to kind of consider that trilemma reliable, affordable, and
clean when we're looking at our energy portfolio in the future.
And I think that's what really kind of distinguishes us
from the left, and that we're not calling for a
divestment of fossil fuels. We're calling for a rational, level
headed energy strategy that will lower emissions, but in kind
of a more realistic way.

Speaker 6 (02:53:09):
Do you think that timeline's gonna be more stretched out?
Because I mean, if if you look at you know
the way current levels are heading. As soon as we
hit like two point five degrees, not just that change,
but the level of cascating environmental effects, right, one thing changes.
Now everything gets worse because when stuff melts, then it
changes the way like thermal regulation of the whole planet works,
and then it becomes this kind of cascating problem. And

(02:53:30):
I feel like we're trying to get out in front
of it before it happens. That every day that kind
of feels less and less likely, at least for a
lot of people like my age, And it can be
a very doom and gloom scenario because you feel like
no one's taking this problem seriously.

Speaker 2 (02:53:40):
Even Joe Biden's.

Speaker 6 (02:53:41):
Climate policy is very inadequate according to like a lot
of a lot of the people that I talk to.
I guess, see, like, how do you view like the
scale of this problem right now.

Speaker 5 (02:53:50):
Yeah, climate change is the kind of environmental challenge of
our time, right, it should be what you know, we're
thinking about and focusing on when it comes to environmental policy.
But I really think we need to kind of take
a step back, and that kind of push for urgency
hasn't gotten us anywhere to your point. You know, Joe
Biden is kind of branding himself as the Climate President,
but you know a lot of young people are unhappy

(02:54:12):
with the platform that he's put forwards. So I think
when you're talking about the timeline, we're talking about what
we can do right now to kind of unleash American energy,
to reduce American emissions, but also global emissions, and really
think of this on a global scale. So that urgency
piece isn't quite you know, realistic, or isn't quite what
we want to focus on, because I don't think it

(02:54:33):
leads to action.

Speaker 6 (02:54:35):
There's kind of two trains of thought in terms of
like climate policy stuff. There's taking like adaptation roots right,
trying to adapt to a changing environment that we're going
to have to face it. It's going to happen versus mitigation. Right.
For a while, we were trying to find ways to
mitigate the problem, to kind of get ahead of it, right,
and that is feeling less and less likely, and we
are seeing more of these adaptive strategies getting adopted.

Speaker 2 (02:54:58):
Right.

Speaker 6 (02:54:58):
There's everything from like you know, people are trying to
develop better carbon capture, which has its own problems as
a technology, and you know, everything from like geoengineering even
to like solar blockage. There's a lot of things that
people are thinking, like, if we don't get like emissions
under control, we're gonna have to go to similar more
of as extreme measures. How much of your focus is
on adapt developments versus just mitigation.

Speaker 5 (02:55:20):
Well, we definitely need both. To your point, we have
to adapt to a change in climate, but we also
need to be reducing emissions to kind of prevent future effects.
So I think we kind of set a balance between
adaptation and mitigation, and frankly, I think sometimes they can
be really kind of connected and entwined. So something we
focus on, for instance, is regenerative agriculture, which lowers emissions

(02:55:42):
associated with agriculture but also helps the land kind of
adjust to a change in climate, keeps the soil healthy,
things like that. So I really think when we're talking
about climate, we can talk about adaptation and mitigation kind
of at the same time.

Speaker 6 (02:55:54):
How do you try to do outreach to a vast
number of republic Conservatives who simply don't think this is
a problem, who like just deny this as a problem.
I think this is like a scam in some way.
How do you try to tackle that, as you know,
coming from a similarly like an also conservative position.

Speaker 5 (02:56:13):
Yeah, so, I mean, we're here at the Republican National Convention,
and it's been really interesting talking to a lot of
folks from diverse backgrounds about the issue of climate and
also environmental conservation. I really do think it matters how
you start the conversation. We talked earlier about kind of
our timeline of the legacy of conservative environmentalism. Starting there
and talking about how we can carry on that legacy

(02:56:34):
and how we can tackle kind of this environmental issue
of our time has been really effective and we've gotten
a lot of positive reception. You know, there's always going
to be disagreement, there's always going to be detractors, but
I do think that there's more and more of kind
of that acceptance that we need to take care of
our own backyard. And that includes, you know, tackling climate change.

Speaker 6 (02:56:54):
How much stuff do you end up having to you know,
talk about or not necessarily focused on, but at least
talk about like actual phosiphel missions, racking, these types of
things that are like mainstays of politics because of how
much money goes into them, but undeniably are a massive
contributing factor. And we do need to move to probably
some more nuclear options to forgive the expression, I guess,

(02:57:14):
and you know as well as like a like a
solar hydro which are you know, less good than nuclear
on like a large scale. But like you know, especially
for like the for the Republican Party trying to trying
to point out certain things about how we will have
to scale back some degree of fossil fuels, if not
you know, a majority of it in the next twenty
five years, if we want to, if we want to
not have like a pretty bad scenario at least for

(02:57:37):
not even just for humans, but for like animals in
other parts of the environment.

Speaker 5 (02:57:41):
Yeah, well, I think that goes back to the all
of the above energy approach and really diversifying our energy portfolio,
which frankly is not only good for the environment, but
good for energy security. We've seen you know, hacking of
pipelines or other kind of cyber energy attacks. So by
diversifying sources, we're really setting ourselves up to have a
more secure energy grid. So I think there's other ways

(02:58:03):
that you can talk about you know, environmental actions, climate
actions that have co benefits, and we can talk about
that in a really productive way with Republicans.

Speaker 6 (02:58:11):
Do you also focus on like local ecology efforts, like
you know, like some of the more like Roosevelt style conservation.
Is that something that you also kind of try to
advocate for? Also, it's like an on ramch talk about
these like broader climate issues.

Speaker 5 (02:58:22):
Absolutely, I love that framing that you used as kind
of the entry point to climate issues. We have fifty
thousand young members across the country in about one hundred branches,
either on college campuses or in young professional communities, and
they go out and they plant trees in their communities,
They do park cleanups, they clean up a waterway, They
have educational speakers to learn more about these issues. And

(02:58:45):
we found that that's really really effective in building this
conservative environmental movement and showing that these values are connected,
they're compatible, and then that can lead to advocacy on
the national level for things like we talked about nuclear
energy or other clean energy sources, So that's been really
effective for us.

Speaker 6 (02:59:03):
What would you like to see as a conservative climate
policy in like ten years, Like what would you hope
gets adopted to help curtail like, you know, these more
catastrophic scenarios.

Speaker 5 (02:59:15):
Great question, and I would hope it perhaps a little
bit earlier than ten.

Speaker 6 (02:59:19):
Years, absolutely, but I'm just based on how things have gone.

Speaker 5 (02:59:24):
Sure, So we have kind of a big three that
we're focused on right now. Permitting reforms, so getting the
government out of its own way, frankly, to fight climate change,
and unleash American energy in the form of clean energy nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal, hydropower,
and really kind of expand what we can build in
this country. Again, nuclear energy is really one of the

(02:59:44):
focuses for us because it's a baseload energy source that
can run twenty four to seven, it's clean, and it's
really secure. So we're really focused on nuclear. And then
the last thing is American energy dominance. Here in the
United States, we produce energy safer, cleaner, and more efficiently,
and we really want to be a leader on the
world stage. When it comes to energy.

Speaker 6 (03:00:05):
I think that there is a lot of people, both
like you know, progressive Democrats who really care about this issue,
as well as you know a lot of Republicans and
liberals who have a lot of skepticism about nuclear energy,
right for some good reasons. There have been some unfortunate
events that have happened, and I know, like fission and
fusion have been slowly getting better where I feel like

(03:00:26):
we're close to some kind of breakthrough, but we do
have like kind of a limited time. How do you
approach kind of talking to people who have a level
of like risk in terms of nuclear energy and like
the possible dangers that it's had based on a few accidents,
even though a lot of a lot of these plants
are relatively safe.

Speaker 5 (03:00:43):
Yeah, I love this question. I grew up an hour
south of Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, so I have
a lot of experience with nuclear skepticism. Look, I mean,
nuclear energy is the safest and cleanest form that we
have in our back pocket. Yes, there have been some
unfortunate incident frankly, they're human error, and we understand nuclear
power a lot better now. We have more safeguards in

(03:01:06):
place since incidents like Chernobyl or Three Mile Island, and
we haven't seen a nuclear meltdown that we were promised
in the Simpsons or the China Syndrome or something like that.
The fact is nuclear quote waste is really nuclear spent fuel,
and we can recycle that and keep producing clean nuclear power.

(03:01:27):
We have incredibly well trained nuclear experts at all of
our power plants across the United States, and they produce clean,
reliable energy for consumers all over the country. So we
really need to kind of get over those messaging hurdles
with nuclear and expand the industry here.

Speaker 6 (03:01:43):
What do you think will happen if your concerns go unheard?
Like if this just doesn't this just does doesn't work.
I think it's kind of continue at the scale and
like a timeline they have been. What worries do you have?

Speaker 5 (03:01:58):
Yeah, that's a really excess to to a question. Yeah,
I mean, I think we're in the seven years since
we've been founded, we're working really hard to build coalitions
with a lot of different stakeholders and be heard by
a lot of different folks in power, and frankly, I'm
hopeful that we will, you know, pursue solutions to climate

(03:02:19):
change that we will you know, for lack of a
better term, get our act together and pursue these solutions.
And really, I think the biggest thing that I like
to focus on when it comes to climate advocacy is
optimism and this idea that you know, the planet is
our one common denominator and we can unite around that.
And you know, already in Congress we've seen bipartisan legislation

(03:02:40):
in a really polarizing time that focuses on climate. Probably
the last big package in the one hundred and eighteenth
Congress was a nuclear package to unleash next generation nuclears.
So I know I'm not exactly answering your question, but
I am extremely optimistic about the future.

Speaker 6 (03:02:55):
Do you think there's a path towards some kind of
bipartisan advocacy not just like the Senate, but also like
in terms of like environmental movements and like protests. And
obviously there's certain people who employ very theatrical tactics that
maybe don't correlate to much improved means, But do you
see there's a possibility of, like, you know, a larger
public call for action on this issue. I mean mean,

(03:03:16):
something that we've covered on our show a while ago,
is like will it take something like a general strike
to even like get people to like realize like we
need this to be done, Like not necessarily that option,
but like do you see like a route towards more
bipartisan activism and advocacy of this issue.

Speaker 5 (03:03:36):
Yeah, that's a great question. We do a lot of
bridge building work. I was actually in Los Angeles earlier
this year with a group of conservative climate advocates and
progressive climate advocates and we talked about solutions where there's
common ground, and then we finished the day by doing
a beach clean up together. So I really do think
there's a lot of opportunity to kind of unite on
this issue, especially in younger generations. When I talked about

(03:03:58):
Hope earlier, they're the ones who really of me hope,
and I think there's a lot of common ground that
we can pursue together.

Speaker 6 (03:04:04):
That's all I had And unless you have any any
other notes, who are points you wanted to mention?

Speaker 5 (03:04:08):
If you want to find ACC, you can find us
at ACC dot e COO, or ACC Underscore National on
social platforms. But that's it for me.

Speaker 6 (03:04:17):
Well, I hope that was slightly informative and now we
will inform you about the Heritage Foundations private exclusive party
after these messages. Okay, we are back.

Speaker 7 (03:04:39):
We are back, and we are ready to tell you,
Oh five pigtails. Let us infiltrate famous hate group, the
Heritage Foundations social house party.

Speaker 2 (03:04:50):
We got all up in the first off a lot
of microwave grade food.

Speaker 6 (03:04:54):
It was the worst food we've had in all of Milwaukee.

Speaker 2 (03:04:56):
Was it Heritage and Foundation Great Meals?

Speaker 6 (03:05:00):
Yes, that is a very notable that the Heritage Foundation
had the worst food that we've had this entire week.

Speaker 2 (03:05:06):
Not shocked.

Speaker 7 (03:05:07):
First of all, they let you two as well as
another one of our friends come in off of my
access code, which is very funny, and that we took
one of the most hilarious photos we've ever taken together.

Speaker 2 (03:05:18):
And then we then we met with one of the
producers the Daily Wire and watched him try to figure
out who we are as I introduced him, funny name
he was. He was just calculating, and then some lady
came up and disrupted and we just fucking.

Speaker 6 (03:05:31):
You can see the little like thinking thing to do
like third.

Speaker 7 (03:05:35):
Grade edition, and I wasn't the math was not mathing.

Speaker 6 (03:05:38):
It was like that one BABC Sherlock scene. He was
trying to pull up he was trying to pull up
the files. Yes, didn't work, didn't work, didn't have enough time.
We stayed in that party, Robert, you seen that party
for like five straight hours.

Speaker 2 (03:05:49):
I was there for a long time. For every drink
I wanted to drink, I would order another and just
pour it out because I wanted. I wanted to make
them spend the money. It was going to go somewhere.

Speaker 6 (03:05:58):
Free for us, but not free for them. So as
Robert was was schmoosion with the Heritage Foundation attendees, guys
mean Sophie went into the convention center to hear some speeches,
and most of them today honestly pretty boring, and even
even in the notable ones were also kind of boring.
The one I guess we'll talk about just very briefly
is Don Junior's speech. First, he brought out his daughter,

(03:06:20):
Trump's granddaughter.

Speaker 7 (03:06:22):
Before you get to that, do you want to go
over what the theme of the day was.

Speaker 6 (03:06:25):
No, I mean maybe we can, we can mention it.
I don't feel how relevant it was to any of
the speeches. It was just make America strong. It was
strong once again. Sorry, once again.

Speaker 2 (03:06:39):
Interesting that they didn't want to sound out Massa.

Speaker 7 (03:06:42):
You know. Anyways, I guess, I guess it's really not
that relevant. I just just to point out that on
the previous days for the different themes, there was very
intricate backgrounds that were up.

Speaker 6 (03:06:56):
They didn't know anything strong again, they.

Speaker 7 (03:06:58):
Were like, so they phoned it the fucking yeah, and
there was no interesting background anyways, Garrett, what were you saying?

Speaker 6 (03:07:05):
So Donald Trump Junior's daughter, So Trump, the actual real
ones granddaughter gave this little this little speechman to humanize her.

Speaker 7 (03:07:16):
Grand Grandpa is a nice guy, calls me and asks
me how I am.

Speaker 6 (03:07:22):
That was basically the speech, which is lovely. Is sure?
Why not?

Speaker 7 (03:07:26):
It was her first speech. I don't think any of
the other grandchildren have given speeches before.

Speaker 6 (03:07:32):
No, this is kind of the first appearance of one
of Trump's grandkids.

Speaker 7 (03:07:35):
Yes, And the way it was framed is don Junior
came up and then was like she just called me.
It was very intentionally propaganda's It was also.

Speaker 6 (03:07:44):
The most happy I've seen Trump this entire week.

Speaker 2 (03:07:47):
Though he might actually care about his granddaughter.

Speaker 6 (03:07:50):
Yes, definitely more than his son had.

Speaker 2 (03:07:52):
It would be hard to care less.

Speaker 7 (03:07:54):
I'm not sure how much they've they've shown it on TV,
but you know, I had a view of him the
entire night tonight right from where I was sitting. I
was an angle where I can see his face, and
they showed his face on the screen a bunch, and
he was genuinely stoic. I would say he smiled for
his granddaughter definitely the most, and maybe once sturring Kimberly

(03:08:14):
Gilfoyle's speech at the very end, But other than that,
I did not see much emotion from him today, and
it was pretty similar to the rest of the week.

Speaker 2 (03:08:23):
I think, you again, you have to keep in mind
with him whatever I mean, we hate him. He's a
bad man, he's a monster, would be the worst possible
president we could have. But he's also a person who
got shot and he's traumatized, you know, and like you
don't have to like make up excuses for that. Like
he is a human being who is scared because a

(03:08:43):
man shot him in the head, and that's really not
a complicated thing to diagnose.

Speaker 6 (03:08:50):
So after the granddaughter gave her a little spiel, Trump
Junior himself had a little speech that he was basically
just doing an impression of his father for the.

Speaker 2 (03:08:58):
Entire time dog shit impreson.

Speaker 6 (03:09:00):
It's not a very good impression, but compared to Vans
it was still it was very impressive.

Speaker 2 (03:09:05):
We'll get to that in a second.

Speaker 7 (03:09:06):
I will say the crowd did really, really.

Speaker 6 (03:09:09):
He seemed to like him. There was chance of you know,
Trump Junior twenty twenty eight.

Speaker 2 (03:09:13):
It reminded me of when I was at my first
Trump rally. This would have been in the late spring,
early summer of twenty sixteen, when fucking Chris Christie conceded
to Trump. There was a British naturalized citizen in the
crowd of the rally, and I was like, you want
him to be president for eight years? And he was like, well,
I wanted to be president for eight years to start,

(03:09:35):
And I was like, to start, what happens next? He's like, well,
he's got three kids, doesn't he. Then he like walked
through his basic plan for Trump to have a dynasty
like the royal family. And I wish I had said,
go back home, go back home to your fucking country
with your goddamn royal family. We don't have that here,
but we might. They wanted it.

Speaker 6 (03:09:54):
Yeah, late here the idea of the King's becoming increasingly popular.

Speaker 7 (03:09:58):
You have never told me that story, and I am well,
thank you.

Speaker 2 (03:10:02):
I got great audio of that guy.

Speaker 7 (03:10:04):
Thank you so much. That is going to haut me tonight. Garrisden.

Speaker 6 (03:10:07):
What else, Yeah, I mean Trum Junior had a few
funny lines, making fun of build back Better, making some
corn pop jokes mad a.

Speaker 7 (03:10:14):
Corn pop joke, the cookes in the bulbit, very funny.

Speaker 6 (03:10:20):
The one line I do want to mention is that
he talked about how the left wants to use the
First Amendment to show kids explicit drag shows, but they
want to put you into jail for making a meme,
something that has never happened, not a single.

Speaker 2 (03:10:35):
Time, not once, not one. They barely put people into
jail for assaulting the capital. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (03:10:41):
So that was most of his speech. We then heard
from Vance's wife, who gave a typical Vice first lady speech.
It wasn't notable. And then we heard from Vance himself,
the the the hopeful future vice president.

Speaker 7 (03:10:57):
What sorry, I was taking a nap.

Speaker 6 (03:11:00):
Wait, Sophia, soay, wake up, wake up, we're recording a
podcast here.

Speaker 2 (03:11:03):
Wow.

Speaker 7 (03:11:03):
Sorry, Just the sound of Jdbans's name put me right
to sleep.

Speaker 6 (03:11:07):
He gave what I would describe and people have since
described it's kind of a bad speech slop.

Speaker 2 (03:11:14):
You guys were in the stadium. I was sitting at
the Heritage finn Ocean party on an upper roof dome.

Speaker 7 (03:11:19):
Yeah, what'd they think?

Speaker 2 (03:11:19):
There were three people during most of it, and then
like four others filtered in. When those guys left, every
single one of them was disappointed. The only guy who
liked it was a Fox News reporter, and when he left,
the people who had been like, well he was okay,
said well, I hate that I had to lie in
front of that guy, but he was media. I was
kind of just sitting on my phone pretending to be

(03:11:40):
texting and listening to them, so they didn't really notice me.
But the ultimate feeling that they expressed repeatedly was that
was really disappointing. It was really boring. It was really long.
He is not a great speaker. There was one guy
who repeatedly said, I don't like that his wife isn't white.
I wish his wife was white. And then there was
a guy who was kind of a more libertarian of

(03:12:02):
the Republican Party who I had chatted with, who came
in and like sat down to have a drink, and
you know, was expressing that he liked Vance's speech. And
the guy said, what are you a Cuban? And the
guy said no, and he's like, well, you're not white.

Speaker 6 (03:12:15):
So that was great, amazing stuff happening in the Heritage
Foundation private party.

Speaker 2 (03:12:19):
The Foundation party was was a good time.

Speaker 6 (03:12:21):
Yeah, so this is something I was even seeing in
the convention people there. You know, there was there was
some like you know, respectful clapping, but people weren't super
into it, at least in the sections that we were at.
The lady sitting next to me, he was, you know,
just like a Republican woman her maybe fifties or sixties,
very very lucid, kind of just like kept dozing off

(03:12:42):
just because she was so bored, not like because she
was sleepy, just because she was bored.

Speaker 2 (03:12:45):
Wasn't a good speech.

Speaker 7 (03:12:46):
No, She looks at me and she said, he's so dry.

Speaker 2 (03:12:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (03:12:50):
So at a certain point I just I just kind
of whispered to Sophie, like, wow, Vance is a really
dry speaker. And she kin she kind of like nodded
awake and and started and started started like nodding her
head in agreement and repeated the same thing to us.
And I asked her, you know, like, well, who do
you think would have been a better pick? And she said, well,

(03:13:12):
I don't know. I just expected Advance to be a
better rhetorical speaker. And that was all she would say.
And I feel like that was kind of generally the vibe.
Like something else. I noticed that he was like, actually, okay,
and you know, the certain things he was talking about,
you know what he was actually saying, you know, there
were certain things that were interesting. It was more like
the way he was saying it. It was it was specifically.
He had no ability to do crowd work. He was

(03:13:34):
just reading out the teleprompter and kind of doing a
slight smile every thirty seconds, and that's all was. He
wasn't actually really seriously engaging people.

Speaker 2 (03:13:42):
Make fun of the bits where Trump dances or whatever
his little moves, but those play those work.

Speaker 6 (03:13:47):
Even like pointing out people using gestures kind of anything
to connect you to the audience. Vance was just so
was so dry, was so plain.

Speaker 7 (03:13:54):
I think the biggest action from his speech was just
the people in the crowd who liked to chant.

Speaker 2 (03:13:58):
We were just really into chanting to chant ted Cruz gave
him a great He like that. He kind of lost
them early in his speech the night before and won
them back because he gave them a chance to chair
repeatedly went through they like that, they like to chat,
they're chanters.

Speaker 7 (03:14:13):
Want to give us some of the chanting highlightscare.

Speaker 6 (03:14:16):
Yeah, so he was definitely leaning into like his hillbilly
or faux hillbilly background.

Speaker 2 (03:14:22):
Motherfucker, sorry, your parents made one hundred and seventy five
thousand goddamn dollars a year speaking to somebody who grew
up in a fucking rural ass Oklahoma, like fucking carpetbagger.

Speaker 6 (03:14:32):
That was what he was using for most of his speech.
He was he was telling stories about the woman who
raised him when his own mom was dealing with addiction,
who he referred to as his.

Speaker 2 (03:14:42):
Mem uh huh and fucking god damn it.

Speaker 6 (03:14:46):
The first big chant I took note of is he
told a story about how he was hanging out when
he was like a kid or like a teen. He
was hanging out with someone who was known to be
like a local drug dealer, and his mem told him
that if she saw him hanging out with that guy again,
she was going to run him over in a truck
run over the drug dealer and no one's gonna find

(03:15:07):
out about it, and the crowd ate this up. They
started chanting, me ma, me ma, So they were they
weren't chanting about killing this drug dealer, right, they were
chanting about murdering. They're murdering this drug dealer.

Speaker 2 (03:15:18):
Jd Vance never met a drug dealer in his fucking life.
I'll tell you that one.

Speaker 6 (03:15:22):
So that was the first one. And the next little
Bema story he told is that when she was a
little bit older. He said that after she died, they
found nineteen loaded handguns all over her house and they
realized it's because she wasn't able to move very fast,
so she always wanted a gun no matter where she was.

(03:15:42):
She wanted to be in armslength the gun, whether that
be in the cutlery drawer, by the TV remote, under
the bed, because she wanted to protect her family even
though she was old. And this this led into another
another chance, specifically the nineteen loaded handguns just again went
the crowd ate that up, and the crowd even sort

(03:16:02):
of just chanting about how good they were at chanting.
It became very self referential, very like patting yourself on
the back.

Speaker 2 (03:16:09):
For chanting money. These people love chanting.

Speaker 6 (03:16:11):
And yeah, that was that was. That was most events
is speech. It wasn't very good, it was too long.
Almost unanimously people at the Heritage Foundation party did not
like it. So they did not get that.

Speaker 2 (03:16:24):
One pseudo positive, which was the Fox News journalist.

Speaker 6 (03:16:28):
Who I'm sure is contractually obligated to like it.

Speaker 2 (03:16:30):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and who the people there made fun
of when he left.

Speaker 6 (03:16:34):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (03:16:34):
Well.

Speaker 6 (03:16:35):
We talked to a campaign manager earlier at the at
the Heritage Party just regarding kind of the race in general,
mentioning stuff about the upcoming vice presidential debates, which the
Trump Badman put out a statement saying they don't want
to lock down any details on this until they actually
know who the vice president's going to be sold on that,
which is a good piece of propaganda and so and
we were talking about that and and bringing it up

(03:16:56):
to some of these people at the Heritage Party, like
who do you think actually is going to be Democratic nominee?
Many of them did not believe it was going to
be Joe Biden. Many of them thought that it either
could be an unknown candidate at this point or more
likely probably kamalaw And this is something that I've been
noticing is that every time in these speeches where they're

(03:17:17):
talking about Joe Biden's policies, they're not just saying Joe Biden,
They're saying Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's, well, well, Kamala
Kamala Harris in one instance, Kamala Harris's policies. So they
are already preparing to start shifting their rhetoric onto kamalaw
That is something that the opposition's already planning to do.
And you know, as as of today, which is which

(03:17:39):
is Wednesday night, we've heard that both Biden made announcements
in the same day that he would step down if
he was to face this serious medical diagnosis, and he
also got COVID.

Speaker 2 (03:17:48):
The same the look on your face when we told
you that Joe Biden had COVID, you were you were thrilled. Okay,
well we shouldn't say that either. Anyway.

Speaker 6 (03:18:01):
That is kind of a brief glimpse into the Heritage
Foundation party. I guess that the vibes were more similar
to what is I think well known now as the
least good episode of The Boys, that private Tech night
party combined with like a frat, a frat bro bar hop.

Speaker 2 (03:18:17):
What I'll say about this is they had an EDM
track set to Country Road Take Me Home. I will
say that like if you were to, if you were
to put that side by side with the plane crash
that killed the author of that song, I think he
would agree with you. This party was worse.

Speaker 7 (03:18:38):
One worth thing I wanted to note was I did
not go to the party for seven hundred hours like
the two of you. I went home after all the
speeches home. I went back to the hotel, after all
the speeches.

Speaker 2 (03:18:49):
That country road take you home.

Speaker 7 (03:18:50):
That country road took me home to a place you belonged.
And I had a very very very nice lift driver. Sir,
if you're if you buy a sub chance listen to podcasts.
You were very nice. Thank you. After what was a
very loud day, there was a guy holding a rest
in peace sign with the photo of the guy who
attempted to assassinate the president, with the caption and American

(03:19:13):
hero great stuff. Yes, I took a photo of it.
And the amount of people leaving the R and C
that just shouted their worst many slurs at him were countless.
And I don't know if anything else happened further after that,
but very strange choice.

Speaker 6 (03:19:31):
That is an interesting move.

Speaker 2 (03:19:32):
All I know is that based on the last postings
of the victim of that shooting, Corey Comparatour, he'll get
over it. The Japanese dead.

Speaker 6 (03:19:43):
Well, anyway, that wraps up our coverage this week of
the Republican National Convention. We will lead next week with
Trump's first public speech since the shooting. That'll be dropping
Sunday night.

Speaker 2 (03:19:56):
Maybe just a little bit of mayor rudy, little sprink
I'll seeze in some rudy as a tree. Some squeeze
in like like he squeezed out some of that hair juice.
That's right, Jesus Christ.

Speaker 6 (03:20:07):
Well, thank you for listening to our initial coverage of
the RNC. We have more scripted episodes, more kind of
polished deep dives about the people and conversations that we
have had here in beautiful Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Speaker 2 (03:20:20):
And remember, folks, if you're going to take a bullet
for somebody, Donald Trump does not care, not interested at it.

Speaker 6 (03:20:26):
He's not making the funeral, is not He is not
going to show up at your funeral.

Speaker 2 (03:20:31):
Wow, that's a loud chair, painfully loud chair. You know
what else is painfully loud The Heritage Foundation Party. Anyway,
We're done, good night, good night. Hey. We'll be back
Monday with more episodes every week from now until the
heat death of the Universe.

Speaker 7 (03:20:47):
It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

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