July 17, 2024 • 39 mins
Robert, Gare and Sophie report from the first official day of the Republican National Convention.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
This is it could happen here. 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? Ben?
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Well, I'm tired.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
It was a long day.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
It was very red, Yeah, a lot of red. It
was very loud. The drinks were very expensive.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Yeah, we got Sony free drinks yesterday and not today.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
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 2 (00:43):
Also a lot of people who want to kill me specifically.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
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 first off, the big
floor boat, right, So we got to watch all of
the different 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 and confirm
(01:08):
that Trump is the nominee. And then they announce and
confirm the VP, who you all know by now is
jd Vance. We'll talk I might as well talk a
little bit about him now. Jd 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,
(01:30):
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 trying to explain the Appalation experience,
even though again he only kind of lived there part
time and mostly yeah, had abandoned those people, and that part,
like the book is about him abandoning that part of
his life as soon as he possibly can. Not a
(01:52):
great book by my opinion, as someone who grew up
in a really fucking poor town in the Deep South.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
But see, technically a millennial, Yeah, he's.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
The first millennial who might become vice president.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
That's a big part of why I think he was picked.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Agreed, Yeah, that's a big part of why.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
So it was time for them to announce jd Vance.
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 JD.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
You're right, he had a hype man.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
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 QIA people and
I really fucking ate him.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Who has his.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Movie got really bad reviews? So if we wind up
going into full fledged fascist dictatorship, we can blame Ron
for some of that. And to be honest, we always
knew that was going to be the case.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Yeah, valid, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
After that, Yeah, Marjorie Taylor Green gave a speech, a
couple other people, Tim Scott had a speech.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
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?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
It was like a reception.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Sounding music like, Wow, traumatized. Thank you for that dramatized
video of like in a world, yeah, like showing crime
and people losing money and women and babies crying.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
And then there's like literally bad clip art of money
on fire, bad.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Clip 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 2 (03:52):
It felt like a really bad, like action thriller trailer
could have been partly AI. There was sort of some
stege 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 room, this broken flickering in
the floodlight. Gears are turning, the music is ramping up,
(04:15):
and finally it lightens and we see Trump, the Trump
signal shining in the cloudy sky, calling calling the hero
the mass Avenger as.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
If it was the bat signal from Batman.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
It was shameful.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
And then and then people loved it.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
They 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.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Doing doing that weird dancer.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
He does his hand, he doesn't dance, he's excited, he's
in a good mood.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
You know the dance.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
It's what we would describe as a little wiggle. Anyways,
it was a very long.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Wiggle video and people loved it.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
No, it looked like 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 property end
is like, No, you can't make fun of Trump for
doing that little dance. That doesn't That doesn't do anything.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
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
(05:31):
ever thought that you could make fun of Trump and
have any positive impact was wrong, And you should feel
a little bad I do.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
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 all. It's
also it's all country music, right, there's country music cover bands.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
It was not all country. No, there was a lot
of like nineties stuff.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
There was a fucking it's played in the style of country.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
But there was some bye bye by your boat guy.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
There was the talk about they had a they had
a Fleetwood Mac song someone did you was?
Speaker 1 (06:17):
There was like a essentially like the the run of
the evening.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
And and country music. My apologies, it was dad rock
and country music.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
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 seeds, yeah,
(06:47):
and uh you were very happy. Is the same exact
or you went to a Game seven of the NBA Finals.
That's exactly the the reaction that the people in the
crowd were having.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
It's a mix of like a sports event, a concert,
and like a mega church. 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 is.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Not all that different from how Trump rallies feel totally.
It had it had that vibe, and it felt more
more like a concert than the twenty sixteen RNC diad.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
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 1 (07:39):
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 RNC.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
Well it was live when we recorded.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yeah, 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 2 (08:02):
But first ads, Okay, we are back, and now we
will tune in to our recording we made on the
convention floor.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Doun dun dun.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Okay, we are well recording live, broadcasting 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 record
some of our immediate thoughts before our little debrief tonight.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
I guess let's start with Robert Evans.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
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 over majority of people here are extremely conservative, the
most dedicated and active members of the party. But it's
(09:07):
not like the Proud Boy Crew over Definitely some of
those people here, but.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
These are electoralists.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
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
(09:34):
a ton of it, nor have I seen a ton
of direct references to it.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
I guess the sophie here, I think that guess the
main reference that I've seen is when they did the delegate.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
Official photo, that would be the big one.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Yeah, 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 3 (09:56):
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
(10:17):
be sort 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
(10:39):
it makes 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 2 (10:50):
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 the younger people that I've
seen attending the convention, but like still still like an adult,
like a very young adult, maybe twenty one, maybe twenty
at most.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
He couldn't have been older than twenty one, because he
said this is his first election. He'll be able to
vote in yes presidential election, so probably a little bit
younger than me.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
It's interesting because yesterday we talked with some, you know,
very old people, and today we talked with some very
young people to yet 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. That was that was kind of his main
(11:34):
his main.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Issue, 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 the
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.
(11:55):
He expressed that the only places he gets his news
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 2 (12:11):
Well, and that's 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 find
that very interesting, And I assuen that's probably like, you know,
influenced by his family. You know, whatever is on, whatever's
(12:32):
on the family TV.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
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 2 (12:46):
Yeah. No, he expressed a lot of frustration that we
were giving lots of money to Ukraine, that he felt
that Zelenski was suspending on himself instead of on the military.
And yeah, I mean he seemed like a good old
Christian boy. He was very very in to the praying
section of the night. I asked him and ed ed
at some point when when JD. Vance was coming out
(13:07):
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?
Speaker 4 (13:15):
And he said yes, if it's fair.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
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
(13:39):
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
(14:02):
wanted to say, how deranged, but then he was like,
you know, it's like Kamala and Joe. She was really
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 1 (14:21):
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.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
And I think that's what he brings to the table.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
He brings those three things as well as 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 Gare.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
That was after Vance came up. They did the benediction.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
It was 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, like kids glowing like glowing like
like the heavenly glowing light, like the the the whole
(15:20):
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,
it was a typical Christian dominionist moment where you have
(15:41):
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 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.
And I don't know, they spent like almost like the
(16:05):
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.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Language prayer for the hostages.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Talking about how the hostages are being kept against their will.
But no, all 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.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
The prophecies can come true for Jesus'.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Second coming, and like that that is that is the
entire the entire bit.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
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 2 (16:47):
No, this will certainly stick stick out in my mind.
Like everyone knows Republicans are, you know, the more Christian party,
but just the the shar like a consensus about it here,
just like everybody is, like even if they aren't themselves Christian,
most people are, but like everyone 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
(17:11):
convention kind of carries.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
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 Gar 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
(17:34):
to talk 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 cops.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Mine has been on the shoulder by like a couple
of different what I would describe them as, like uncle codd,
guys 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.
(18:14):
It hasn't happened to me before. Maybe everyone's just 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 2 (18:23):
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 was very
excited about about this, about this whole deal. As Vance
was coming out and you know, the crowd was going
(18:45):
crazy and everything, he very quietly remarked that he was
like gonna start crying because it was just like so
like an impactfully, I think it was. I think it
was mostly to himself. He was just 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 prayer posture during the prayer.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
And that's just a good portion of the country, I guess.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Yep, yep uh.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
It was interesting. We were talking about Ukraine for a
while because 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 felt like Zelensky wasn't fighting, which I thought was interesting.
It is kind of it makes sense to me if
you've skimmed the way the right reports on Ukraine a lot,
that would be his attitude. But He also said he
(19:35):
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?
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (19:49):
That was interesting.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Yeah, interesting, just immediately asked that. Oh, one other note,
we did run into a fan of the show who
was working, who was wearing a USS Liberty hat. 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
(20:10):
be publicly critical of the Israeli military, at least at
the RNC, without most people knowing what you're doing. Yeah,
I thought that was funny.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
The very last thing I'll say is that right as
we exited the first session, we ran into friend of
the pod 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 were sitting next
to you know, I'm curious about his thoughts on the
future of the party and I asked him specifically about
(20:41):
the VEK, and he said he likes for VEK because
the BEC is a businessman, just like Trump, and he
wants someone to run the country like a business.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
I should also note that the VEK was followed by
a swarm of like I'm guessing, his entourage. All of them,
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. Groper types, Yeah, groper types,
which JD vance. It's one of the things coming out
(21:10):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
All right. Well, back to future us talking about the
rest of the Republican National Convention Day one.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
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
(21:46):
we're at a convention. We don't have a car, We're
taking ubers everywhere, we're eating at restaurants.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
And this has taken over almost all of the central
area of Milwaukee, and there were.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
Because of a lot of fuck ups. For one thing,
a lot of places that in downtown we're 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 worker
(22:18):
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 large
(22:40):
the workers. 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 to.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
No one's tipping. The extreme negative views not just because
of like the politics right, just.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Because about more than half of them don't really care.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
To 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
dn't 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 whunch of people from out of town.
People will get a lot of money to all these
(23:18):
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, weird scheduling area.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
We we went to dinner earlier tonight with some friends
and we asked one of the restaurant workers like 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
(24:00):
we were all going to make a bunch of money,
and it's happening. It's just not happening.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
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
(24:28):
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
(24:49):
a lot of sense, made a lot of things click
into place, because it does everyone 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 1 (25:01):
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 just the one to one example
(25:23):
I'll 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 2 (25:44):
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 1 (25:55):
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 very large backround, some bags
that were bigger than me, and yeah, you know that's
just interesting to note.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
One less thing on the service worker thing. On our
ride home from the RNC or back to the hotel,
we sat in anu Berg 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
(26:34):
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 cops just to have have made have made
functioning in this city just so challenging to any of
(26:55):
these locals. And yeah, that was a very fascinating conversation
that we might discuss that at a late 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,
(27:17):
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 amongst some of
these people.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
And I found a very.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Interesting move to somebody who talked shit on the Catholics earlier.
The l the old lady that we 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 thing that Born Again have an issue with Catholicism
(27:55):
is don't believe you have to accept Christ to go
to heaven. Like if you do good thing 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.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah, so I found that very interesting. Wasn't really expecting
to see an opening Catholic prayer and that that was
I want to talk to some more more people tomorrow
about that is Chance's Catholic. That that that makes it.
That's probably why is a Catholic.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
Convert, just like the Red Scare Girl. He is a
Catholic convert millennial who has taken a bunch of money
from Peter.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Teel 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
(28:51):
the RNC 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.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
She was the.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
Mascot exactly and was a lot more popular than dance.
Oh yeah, in terms of floor reaction.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
No, 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 of the first things she
(29:39):
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. There are a lot of
words there, a very extremely loaded language for the founding
father of the America First Movement. She then spoke about
(30:00):
the wonderful family man whose life was unfortunately cut short
from getting shot in the attempted assassination attempt of Donald Trump,
uh saying that that Corey embodied the America First spirit.
But no, she 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
(30:20):
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 is
factually because Easter changes holidays, transvisibility days on the same day,
(30:41):
you know, 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 sh 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's a few other
mentions about you know, men and women's sports, that kind
of thing that got you know, the big, biggest, the
(31:04):
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 gonna keep saying it. That hyped
up the crowd just just more than anything else.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
Yeah, she said, life be clear here, there are only
two genders, and the crowd went just nuts bananas.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
She right after that made a statement about needing to
stop sending money to Ukraine, that Zelensky was going to
embezzle or something about half the volume, not not.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Not a tiny compared to the rest of the cheering
of a pretty loud reaction.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Like not a bad reaction, but it was clearly about
half the volume with the anti transfer and mind.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
You listeners, she spoke for like what it was like
three minutes top.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Yeah, I would be surprised if the whole speech typed
out was more than about a page.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
No, it was wild.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
She's basically a bullet point list of like hate speech.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
If I kind of want to go back through video
of the I remember the speeches at the twenty sixteen
R and C being longer, but that's a million years ago.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Yeah. No, she had, you know, the the usual comments
about you know, how we have to stop the globalists,
the wealthy and the powerful few, which is just which
is just an interesting thing to speak to an RNC
crowd because it's one of the most powerful thing, the wealthy,
powerful few. You are talking to them and her the
line that came right before this was talking about how
(32:27):
how we 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
(32:49):
all the 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 yeah, that was her speech. Definitely the
(33:09):
biggest 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
(33:30):
interesting movely. He didn't immediately like take over the convention. No,
he's kind of playing this more like statesman role.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
He almost looked like he was tearing up.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Yeah, he was sitting in the crowd.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
Quiet, subdued. Even Yep, he looked worried at point.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Worried, anxious or somber.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
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 2 (33:55):
Yeact the last time you were in a crowd.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
Yeah, like he is a person, right, That's just how
people react, just oftentimes when that kind of thing happens.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Yeah, I know. He was sitting next to Carlson, JD.
Vans and Michael and and Mike Johnson with his kids
sitting behind him.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
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 crowd. He doesn't want
them anywhere near him. Life is short.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
I just want to point out what they showed Trump
on the screen with with Mike Tucker and who is
the fourth person.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Oh, Jenniebants.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
I've already forgot. His face curiously goes nightmare blood rotation,
and they are correct.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
And that that that was day one of the convention.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
That I do want to get into one other thing
because this again we had our big don't panic episode
a day or two before that, you wild 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 to hear is not an unreasonable reaction to
(35:12):
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, uh, And most
(35:35):
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, so if you 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 rn
C just because of their general vibe, yeah, and because
the lanyards, yeah, to try to get us too. Because
(35:55):
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 full because
this is a political convention. It is not open to
the masses. I don't know that it would have filled up.
(36:17):
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 extremity and the
weirdness of these in a lot of cases freaks, assholes,
(36:39):
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 most of it,
and a lot do a lot of the nuts and
bolts of making the Republican Party run. These are not
(37:01):
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 that much.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Yeah. No, And it is worth pointing on 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 the confirm the nomination. It's
like it's it's a very it's very ritualized, a very
theatrical experience.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Yeah. There is one point where Robert and Gear were
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 (37:59):
Yeah, welcome to the Republican Party, so correct.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Yeah, and as they pointed out earlier, definitely a lot
of unwanted touching.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Yeah, but he you know, welcome to the Republican Party.
And you know what, it's a lot of unwanted touching.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
Unwanted touching is essentially part of the main party platform.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
It literally and it is only day one.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
It is day one, four, well, three more to go
and we will be covering it a night.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
We'll be back tomorrow with morey. Any final thoughts anyone?
Speaker 2 (38:36):
Nope, nope, Tip your service workers.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
And wash your hands. 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, 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.
(39:05):
Thanks for listening.
Also media.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
This is it could happen here. 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? Ben?
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Well, I'm tired.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
It was a long day.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
It was very red, Yeah, a lot of red. It
was very loud. The drinks were very expensive.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Yeah, we got Sony free drinks yesterday and not today.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
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 2 (00:43):
Also a lot of people who want to kill me specifically.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
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 first off, the big
floor boat, right, So we got to watch all of
the different 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 and confirm
(01:08):
that Trump is the nominee. And then they announce and
confirm the VP, who you all know by now is
jd Vance. We'll talk I might as well talk a
little bit about him now. Jd 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,
(01:30):
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 trying to explain the Appalation experience,
even though again he only kind of lived there part
time and mostly yeah, had abandoned those people, and that part,
like the book is about him abandoning that part of
his life as soon as he possibly can. Not a
(01:52):
great book by my opinion, as someone who grew up
in a really fucking poor town in the Deep South.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
But see, technically a millennial, Yeah, he's.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
The first millennial who might become vice president.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
That's a big part of why I think he was picked.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Agreed, Yeah, that's a big part of why.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
So it was time for them to announce jd Vance.
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 JD.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
You're right, he had a hype man.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
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 QIA people and
I really fucking ate him.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Who has his.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Movie got really bad reviews? So if we wind up
going into full fledged fascist dictatorship, we can blame Ron
for some of that. And to be honest, we always
knew that was going to be the case.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Yeah, valid, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
After that, Yeah, Marjorie Taylor Green gave a speech, a
couple other people, Tim Scott had a speech.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
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?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
It was like a reception.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Sounding music like, Wow, traumatized. Thank you for that dramatized
video of like in a world, yeah, like showing crime
and people losing money and women and babies crying.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
And then there's like literally bad clip art of money
on fire, bad.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Clip 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 2 (03:52):
It felt like a really bad, like action thriller trailer
could have been partly AI. There was sort of some
stege 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 room, this broken flickering in
the floodlight. Gears are turning, the music is ramping up,
(04:15):
and finally it lightens and we see Trump, the Trump
signal shining in the cloudy sky, calling calling the hero
the mass Avenger as.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
If it was the bat signal from Batman.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
It was shameful.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
And then and then people loved it.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
They 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.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Doing doing that weird dancer.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
He does his hand, he doesn't dance, he's excited, he's
in a good mood.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
You know the dance.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
It's what we would describe as a little wiggle. Anyways,
it was a very long.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Wiggle video and people loved it.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
No, it looked like 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 property end
is like, No, you can't make fun of Trump for
doing that little dance. That doesn't That doesn't do anything.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
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
(05:31):
ever thought that you could make fun of Trump and
have any positive impact was wrong, And you should feel
a little bad I do.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
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 all. It's
also it's all country music, right, there's country music cover bands.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
It was not all country. No, there was a lot
of like nineties stuff.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
There was a fucking it's played in the style of country.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
But there was some bye bye by your boat guy.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
There was the talk about they had a they had
a Fleetwood Mac song someone did you was?
Speaker 1 (06:17):
There was like a essentially like the the run of
the evening.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
And and country music. My apologies, it was dad rock
and country music.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
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 seeds, yeah,
(06:47):
and uh you were very happy. Is the same exact
or you went to a Game seven of the NBA Finals.
That's exactly the the reaction that the people in the
crowd were having.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
It's a mix of like a sports event, a concert,
and like a mega church. 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 is.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Not all that different from how Trump rallies feel totally.
It had it had that vibe, and it felt more
more like a concert than the twenty sixteen RNC diad.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
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 1 (07:39):
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 RNC.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
Well it was live when we recorded.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yeah, 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 2 (08:02):
But first ads, Okay, we are back, and now we
will tune in to our recording we made on the
convention floor.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Doun dun dun.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Okay, we are well recording live, broadcasting 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 record
some of our immediate thoughts before our little debrief tonight.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
I guess let's start with Robert Evans.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
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 over majority of people here are extremely conservative, the
most dedicated and active members of the party. But it's
(09:07):
not like the Proud Boy Crew over Definitely some of
those people here, but.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
These are electoralists.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
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
(09:34):
a ton of it, nor have I seen a ton
of direct references to it.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
I guess the sophie here, I think that guess the
main reference that I've seen is when they did the delegate.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
Official photo, that would be the big one.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Yeah, 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 3 (09:56):
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
(10:17):
be sort 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
(10:39):
it makes 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 2 (10:50):
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 the younger people that I've
seen attending the convention, but like still still like an adult,
like a very young adult, maybe twenty one, maybe twenty
at most.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
He couldn't have been older than twenty one, because he
said this is his first election. He'll be able to
vote in yes presidential election, so probably a little bit
younger than me.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
It's interesting because yesterday we talked with some, you know,
very old people, and today we talked with some very
young people to yet 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. That was that was kind of his main
(11:34):
his main.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Issue, 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 the
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.
(11:55):
He expressed that the only places he gets his news
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 2 (12:11):
Well, and that's 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 find
that very interesting, And I assuen that's probably like, you know,
influenced by his family. You know, whatever is on, whatever's
(12:32):
on the family TV.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
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 2 (12:46):
Yeah. No, he expressed a lot of frustration that we
were giving lots of money to Ukraine, that he felt
that Zelenski was suspending on himself instead of on the military.
And yeah, I mean he seemed like a good old
Christian boy. He was very very in to the praying
section of the night. I asked him and ed ed
at some point when when JD. Vance was coming out
(13:07):
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?
Speaker 4 (13:15):
And he said yes, if it's fair.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
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
(13:39):
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
(14:02):
wanted to say, how deranged, but then he was like,
you know, it's like Kamala and Joe. She was really
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 1 (14:21):
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.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
And I think that's what he brings to the table.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
He brings those three things as well as 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 Gare.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
That was after Vance came up. They did the benediction.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
It was 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, like kids glowing like glowing like
like the heavenly glowing light, like the the the whole
(15:20):
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,
it was a typical Christian dominionist moment where you have
(15:41):
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 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.
And I don't know, they spent like almost like the
(16:05):
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.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Language prayer for the hostages.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Talking about how the hostages are being kept against their will.
But no, all 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.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
The prophecies can come true for Jesus'.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Second coming, and like that that is that is the
entire the entire bit.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
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 2 (16:47):
No, this will certainly stick stick out in my mind.
Like everyone knows Republicans are, you know, the more Christian party,
but just the the shar like a consensus about it here,
just like everybody is, like even if they aren't themselves Christian,
most people are, but like everyone 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
(17:11):
convention kind of carries.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
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 Gar 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
(17:34):
to talk 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 cops.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Mine has been on the shoulder by like a couple
of different what I would describe them as, like uncle codd,
guys 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.
(18:14):
It hasn't happened to me before. Maybe everyone's just 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 2 (18:23):
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 was very
excited about about this, about this whole deal. As Vance
was coming out and you know, the crowd was going
(18:45):
crazy and everything, he very quietly remarked that he was
like gonna start crying because it was just like so
like an impactfully, I think it was. I think it
was mostly to himself. He was just 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 prayer posture during the prayer.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
And that's just a good portion of the country, I guess.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Yep, yep uh.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
It was interesting. We were talking about Ukraine for a
while because 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 felt like Zelensky wasn't fighting, which I thought was interesting.
It is kind of it makes sense to me if
you've skimmed the way the right reports on Ukraine a lot,
that would be his attitude. But He also said he
(19:35):
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?
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (19:49):
That was interesting.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Yeah, interesting, just immediately asked that. Oh, one other note,
we did run into a fan of the show who
was working, who was wearing a USS Liberty hat. 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
(20:10):
be publicly critical of the Israeli military, at least at
the RNC, without most people knowing what you're doing. Yeah,
I thought that was funny.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
The very last thing I'll say is that right as
we exited the first session, we ran into friend of
the pod 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 were sitting next
to you know, I'm curious about his thoughts on the
future of the party and I asked him specifically about
(20:41):
the VEK, and he said he likes for VEK because
the BEC is a businessman, just like Trump, and he
wants someone to run the country like a business.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
I should also note that the VEK was followed by
a swarm of like I'm guessing, his entourage. All of them,
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. Groper types, Yeah, groper types,
which JD vance. It's one of the things coming out
(21:10):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
All right. Well, back to future us talking about the
rest of the Republican National Convention Day one.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
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
(21:46):
we're at a convention. We don't have a car, We're
taking ubers everywhere, we're eating at restaurants.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
And this has taken over almost all of the central
area of Milwaukee, and there were.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
Because of a lot of fuck ups. For one thing,
a lot of places that in downtown we're 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 worker
(22:18):
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 large
(22:40):
the workers. 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 to.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
No one's tipping. The extreme negative views not just because
of like the politics right, just.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Because about more than half of them don't really care.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
To 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
dn't 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 whunch of people from out of town.
People will get a lot of money to all these
(23:18):
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, weird scheduling area.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
We we went to dinner earlier tonight with some friends
and we asked one of the restaurant workers like 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
(24:00):
we were all going to make a bunch of money,
and it's happening. It's just not happening.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
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
(24:28):
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
(24:49):
a lot of sense, made a lot of things click
into place, because it does everyone 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 1 (25:01):
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 just the one to one example
(25:23):
I'll 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 2 (25:44):
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 1 (25:55):
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 very large backround, some bags
that were bigger than me, and yeah, you know that's
just interesting to note.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
One less thing on the service worker thing. On our
ride home from the RNC or back to the hotel,
we sat in anu Berg 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
(26:34):
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 cops just to have have made have made
functioning in this city just so challenging to any of
(26:55):
these locals. And yeah, that was a very fascinating conversation
that we might discuss that at a late 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,
(27:17):
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 amongst some of
these people.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
And I found a very.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Interesting move to somebody who talked shit on the Catholics earlier.
The l the old lady that we 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 thing that Born Again have an issue with Catholicism
(27:55):
is don't believe you have to accept Christ to go
to heaven. Like if you do good thing 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.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah, so I found that very interesting. Wasn't really expecting
to see an opening Catholic prayer and that that was
I want to talk to some more more people tomorrow
about that is Chance's Catholic. That that that makes it.
That's probably why is a Catholic.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
Convert, just like the Red Scare Girl. He is a
Catholic convert millennial who has taken a bunch of money
from Peter.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Teel 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
(28:51):
the RNC 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.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
She was the.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
Mascot exactly and was a lot more popular than dance.
Oh yeah, in terms of floor reaction.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
No, 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 of the first things she
(29:39):
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. There are a lot of
words there, a very extremely loaded language for the founding
father of the America First Movement. She then spoke about
(30:00):
the wonderful family man whose life was unfortunately cut short
from getting shot in the attempted assassination attempt of Donald Trump,
uh saying that that Corey embodied the America First spirit.
But no, she 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
(30:20):
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 is
factually because Easter changes holidays, transvisibility days on the same day,
(30:41):
you know, 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 sh 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's a few other
mentions about you know, men and women's sports, that kind
of thing that got you know, the big, biggest, the
(31:04):
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 gonna keep saying it. That hyped
up the crowd just just more than anything else.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
Yeah, she said, life be clear here, there are only
two genders, and the crowd went just nuts bananas.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
She right after that made a statement about needing to
stop sending money to Ukraine, that Zelensky was going to
embezzle or something about half the volume, not not.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Not a tiny compared to the rest of the cheering
of a pretty loud reaction.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Like not a bad reaction, but it was clearly about
half the volume with the anti transfer and mind.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
You listeners, she spoke for like what it was like
three minutes top.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Yeah, I would be surprised if the whole speech typed
out was more than about a page.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
No, it was wild.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
She's basically a bullet point list of like hate speech.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
If I kind of want to go back through video
of the I remember the speeches at the twenty sixteen
R and C being longer, but that's a million years ago.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Yeah. No, she had, you know, the the usual comments
about you know, how we have to stop the globalists,
the wealthy and the powerful few, which is just which
is just an interesting thing to speak to an RNC
crowd because it's one of the most powerful thing, the wealthy,
powerful few. You are talking to them and her the
line that came right before this was talking about how
(32:27):
how we 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
(32:49):
all the 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 yeah, that was her speech. Definitely the
(33:09):
biggest 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
(33:30):
interesting movely. He didn't immediately like take over the convention. No,
he's kind of playing this more like statesman role.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
He almost looked like he was tearing up.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Yeah, he was sitting in the crowd.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
Quiet, subdued. Even Yep, he looked worried at point.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Worried, anxious or somber.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
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 2 (33:55):
Yeact the last time you were in a crowd.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
Yeah, like he is a person, right, That's just how
people react, just oftentimes when that kind of thing happens.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Yeah, I know. He was sitting next to Carlson, JD.
Vans and Michael and and Mike Johnson with his kids
sitting behind him.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
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 crowd. He doesn't want
them anywhere near him. Life is short.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
I just want to point out what they showed Trump
on the screen with with Mike Tucker and who is
the fourth person.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Oh, Jenniebants.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
I've already forgot. His face curiously goes nightmare blood rotation,
and they are correct.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
And that that that was day one of the convention.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
That I do want to get into one other thing
because this again we had our big don't panic episode
a day or two before that, you wild 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 to hear is not an unreasonable reaction to
(35:12):
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, uh, And most
(35:35):
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, so if you 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 rn
C just because of their general vibe, yeah, and because
the lanyards, yeah, to try to get us too. Because
(35:55):
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 full because
this is a political convention. It is not open to
the masses. I don't know that it would have filled up.
(36:17):
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 extremity and the
weirdness of these in a lot of cases freaks, assholes,
(36:39):
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 most of it,
and a lot do a lot of the nuts and
bolts of making the Republican Party run. These are not
(37:01):
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 that much.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Yeah. No, And it is worth pointing on 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 the confirm the nomination. It's
like it's it's a very it's very ritualized, a very
theatrical experience.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Yeah. There is one point where Robert and Gear were
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 (37:59):
Yeah, welcome to the Republican Party, so correct.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Yeah, and as they pointed out earlier, definitely a lot
of unwanted touching.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Yeah, but he you know, welcome to the Republican Party.
And you know what, it's a lot of unwanted touching.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
Unwanted touching is essentially part of the main party platform.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
It literally and it is only day one.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
It is day one, four, well, three more to go
and we will be covering it a night.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
We'll be back tomorrow with morey. Any final thoughts anyone?
Speaker 2 (38:36):
Nope, nope, Tip your service workers.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
And wash your hands. 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, 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.
(39:05):
Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
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Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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