Factually! with Adam Conover - Trump Has Finally Lost His Mind

Episode Date: September 24, 2024

(In addition to your weekly Factually! episode, this week we're bringing you a monologue from Adam. This short, researched monologue originally aired on the Factually! YouTube page, but we are sharing audio versions of these monologues with our podcast audience as well. Please enjoy, and stay tuned for your regularly scheduled episode of Factually!) Let’s be absolutely clear: Haitian migrants are not eating people’s pets in Ohio. This absurd lie, pushed by J.D. Vance and Donald Trump, isn’t just bizarre—it’s downright dangerous. But where did this claim even come from? In this monologue, Adam explores the origins of this story and how it represents a final break from reality in the Republican presidential campaign.Visit https://ground.news/factually to stay fully informed, see through biased media and get all sides of every story. Subscribe for 40% off unlimited access through my link.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a HeadGum Podcast. So it really seems like Donald Trump and J.D. Vance have lost their goddamn minds in ways that are freaking out even other Republicans. I mean, Trump has always been pretty incoherent, but during the debate it felt like we were watching his brain turn into mush on live television. Now she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison. Oh yeah, Grandpa, the country that charges you 1,400 bucks to get a splinter removed is just out here

snipping dicks for free. I'm sure that's true. And then of course, there's the song of the summer. Eating the cat, eating the cat. Oh yeah, we're songifying debate moments like it's 2012 again. Someone tell the Gregory brothers, we're back baby! You know, one thing's for sure.

Trump and Vance don't know the first thing about eating the cat. If you know what I mean. Was that a wink? Did I wink? Wrong eye. If you know what I mean. Now saying s*** this unhinged would normally be a bad political strategy. For a lot of busy Americans, memes like this are all they really hear about politics.

So for those people, the only headline of the last debate was that Biden was so old he was about to die. And the only headline of this debate was that Trump went off on some weird sh** about people eating dogs. He didn't talk about the economy, he didn't talk about inflation, he just rambled about his deluded fantasies like Grandpa when his Ambien kicks in. I mean, even Fox News started to get worried.

Make no mistake about it, Trump had a bad night. And we heard so many of the old grievances that we'd long thought that Trump had learned were not winners politically. This was rough. This was pretty intense at times. I mean, this is crazy. Trump has a whole news network that's basically made it their job to gas him up. But even Jesse fucking Waters, a man genetically engineered in a lab to lick Trump's ass,

couldn't spin that shit into gold. Now let's be clear. The claim that Haitian migrants are eating the pets of people in Springfield, Ohio is simply not true. There is no evidence of it happening whatsoever. But Trump and Vance's strategy is that when questioned, all they do is double down. So that is what they were forced to do.

If someone calls your office and says they saw Bigfoot, that doesn't mean they saw Bigfoot. But nobody's calling my office and saying that they saw Bigfoot. What they're calling and saying is, we're seeing migrants kidnap our dogs and cats. Yeah, JD, but the point is that just like Bigfoot, migrants eating dogs and cats is not real.

I mean, apparently if you called this guy and told him you saw the flying spaghetti monster, he'd demand a congressional investigation. The closest they got to even trying to prove this is when Vance gave the Wall Street Journal the contact information of one of the women who called his office and said that her cat was eaten. But when reporters investigated, they found out that the woman's cat was actually found safe in her own basement and that she had apologized to the neighbor she had falsely accused. Ooh, sorry for telling the news you ate Mr. Fluffy.

Turns out he was just gobbling birds and banging tabbies under the porch. My bad. The local police in Springfield, the Republican mayor of Springfield, and the Republican governor of Ohio have all said that this is a lie. So, where did the lie come from, and why do Trump and Vance apparently believe it? Well, I'm going to tell you, but before we do, I want to remind you that if you like stand-up comedy, come see me on the road. I am on tour now in all these fine cities.

AdamKonover.net for tickets and tour dates. Head to Patreon.com slash AdamKonover if you want to support the show, and I hope you do. And if you want to see every side of every news story, you gotta check out our sponsor, Ground News. Ground News is an app and website that pulls together related articles from all over the globe and provides context on each source. This way, you can think critically about the news you consume. Ground News combines ratings from three independent news monitoring organizations to rate each source based on the subjectivity of their printed language.

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And as someone who cares about dealing in facts, I know you will too. So go to groundnews.com slash factually and subscribe through that link for 40% off unlimited access. Once again, that's groundnews.com slash factually. So Trump and Vance have been falsely saying that Haitian migrants are eating dogs and cats. Where did this idea even come from? Well, it all started with a screenshot of a Facebook post, which was paired with a random photo of a black man from a different town who was cleaning up geese who had been hit by a car. These posts went viral on the right-wing internet, and Trump and Vance are

such chronically online engagement addicts, they jumped on the meme like a Reddit poster panning for gold. I mean, Vance literally told CNN that he did it for the upvotes. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do, Dan. You just said that this is a story that you created. You know, they could be talking about actual problems faced by real Americans, but instead these dudes are sh** posting Pepe memes for internet clout points. This is so brain dead as a political strategy that other Republicans have started begging

them to stop. Lindsey Graham called Trump's debate performance a missed opportunity and a disaster. And even Ohio's Republican governor, who has endorsed Trump, is fed up. This is a piece of garbage that was simply not true. There's no evidence of this. These discussions about Haitians eating dogs and cats and other things needs to stop. And you know, he's saying that because this lie is causing real harm to his community. Since Trump and Vance have started on this Haitians eating pets bullsh**, the entire city of Springfield has basically been pizzagated.

A swarm of right-wing influencers have descended upon the city like a plague of content-hungry locusts. There have been over 30 bomb threats, Springfield City Hall and local elementary schools have been evacuated and closed, and local hospitals have been forced into lockdown. I mean, imagine sending your pop-pop into emergency heart surgery, wondering if he's gonna pull through, but then uh-oh, gotta reschedule, there was a bomb threat caused by your own senator's bullsh-t. It's ridiculous! But the biggest victims of this lie are the Haitian community, and that really sucks. This man, too frightened to show his face or use his name, says coworkers at his construction

job have repeatedly asked him if he eats cats. Some of them are talking about living in Swinfield. Some of them are scared for their life. Do you want to know the truth about why so many Haitians have moved to Springfield? It's because they were f***ing invited there. Since 2011, Haitians have had temporary protected status in the United States, which is something the government sometimes gives to citizens of countries whose economies or political situations are unstable.

In other words, they're here legally. So why have so many of them moved to Springfield? Well, Springfield's government and Chamber of Commerce spent years trying to lure new businesses to the town to boost the local economy. And it worked. Many businesses came. But that caused a dire labor shortage. There literally were not enough people in Springfield to do all the work required.

So when word spread that there was work in Springfield, these recent legal immigrants to America moved to Springfield, these recent legal immigrants to America moved to Springfield for work. The businesses were grateful to have them, and even the Republican governor will tell you that they are boosting the local economy. These Haitians came in to work for these companies. What the companies tell us is that they are very good workers, they're very happy to have them there, and frankly that's helped the economy. I mean, hell, these are such good, God-fearing folk, they're very happy to have them there, and frankly that's helped the economy.

I mean, hell, these are such good, God-fearing folk, they're even helping the local churches with their attendance problem. For years we've lost people, but you hope somebody else will come and take their place. That hasn't happened here. Until now. Because there are folks from Haiti who are coming to church. What's happening in Springfield isn't an invasion. It's literally the American f***ing dream.

But you know, as long as that dream has been around, there have been those in this country who want to turn it into a nightmare. New people who look different come to town and the old white people don't like it. So what do they do? They create stories. In fact, the lie that immigrants are eating pets has literally been used to slander immigrants to this country for over 200 years. This is old sh**. There is nothing new about it. It is just old ass, boring ass, good old fashioned American racism. You know, there are still people out there who think Trump is some kind of 4D chess-playing political genius, but he's not.

He's a chronically online loser who's just been smashing the racism button over and over again ever since he descended down that gold escalator to say that Mexicans were rapists. It is too dumb to even call it a strategy. But that doesn't mean it's not real. He means that s***, IRL. When he was president, he banned Muslims from entering the country, and he imprisoned thousands of immigrant children.

And if he wins this year, he's explicitly promised mass deportation. We'll have 18 million people, in my opinion, in our country that shouldn't be here, be the largest deportation in the history of our country. So I just want us to think about what that entails for a second to deport that many people. I mean there's no database of undocumented people in this country so the first thing Trump would have to do would be to build a system of unprecedented mass surveillance

and policing. We're talking cops stopping you to ask you for your citizenship papers all over the place, just because you look like an immigrant. And even if you legally immigrated, you won't be safe, because Vance has explicitly said that there's no difference. And once you've rounded up 20 million people, which, by the way, is almost two Ohio's worth of human beings, more than 5% of the current U.S. population.

What do you do with them? Well, you can only deport them if other countries agree to take them, which they won't. So instead, you'd have to build jails to keep them in. Jails that you'd build so quickly, they'd really be more like camps. Do you see what I'm getting at? I mean, look, this is racism of a variety that is extremely old and extremely dumb, but there have been times in history when it has worked and it has hurt and killed a lot of people.

I mean, remember, the Nazis didn't stage a coup, they weaponized racism to win an election. So even though Trump lost the debate and is making what seemed to many in politics to be laughable choices, he and Harris are still neck and badly tanned neck in the polls. The dude could very much still win. And yeah, that's partially because we have an electoral college system that prioritizes the votes of white rural Americans, and because of increased efforts to stop people of color from voting. But you know what? It's also because there are people in this country who will vote for racism. Racism is stupid, it makes no sense, it is completely divorced from reality.

But hatred dwells within the human heart. And that is Trump's electoral strategy to the extent that he has one. And you know what, I know that you're probably getting deluged with get out the vote calls. And I know that it feels cringe to say go check your voter registration, but you know, have you? And have you made sure that your friends and family have? Have you made a voting plan? All that s***. Because I know that we all want to tune out this election, that we're exhausted by the bulls***. But Trump is betting that he can win by appealing to the dark knot of hate and racism in the gut of some Americans.

And he proved in 2016 that that strategy can win. But only if we let it.