The Daily Zeitgeist - Weekly Zeitgeist 21 (Best of 4/23/18-4/27/18)
Episode Date: April 29, 2018The weekly round up of the best moments from DZ's Season 28 (4/23/18-4/27/18.) Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informat...ion.
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Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit,
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Hello, the internet, and welcome to this episode of the weekly Zeitgeist.
These are some of our favorite segments from this week,
all edited together into one nonstop infotainment laughstravaganza.
Yeah.
So without further ado, here is the weekly zeitgeist.
Waffle House.
I shouldn't have said it in such a joyous way.
But Waffle House.
Why do you really have to just go, Waffle House.
Let's bring it down here.
No, there was a mass shooting there in Nashville.
Waffle House, the guy who, the perp, has a long history of making threats.
He was naked but for a trench coat.
Very strange story, but four people were killed,
and he was wrestled to the ground by like a real life
john mclean action hero yeah like where as it was happening you know they're they're asking him like
you know what were you thinking and he just said i'm going to have to try to find some kind of flaw
or a point in time where i could make it work for myself and by making work for himself he bum rushed
this dude and tackled him to the ground and got the gun away from him and then the dude eventually escaped and as of just recording we found out that he was apprehended
uh so yeah it's interesting to see you know there was a real hero there uh and this guy was also
another person who had a very clear record of having problems uh with his mental state and he
had his guns taken away but then they were given back to his father,
who then just gave them back to him.
And when you look at sort of his,
like he was a known entity to law enforcement
for like saying stuff like Taylor Swift
was actually stalking him and shit like that.
Which, I mean, we don't know whether to believe that or not, right?
Like, no.
If Taylor Swift, I mean, I don't know.
We don't know.
But do you remember, I think like last year, there was a guy who bum-rushed the White House lawn
and tried to get into the White House and was like, I'm a sovereign citizen.
That's this guy.
Right.
So it's just, again, we need to be doing more about our gun control because clearly this
is another person who clearly should not have been anywhere near any kind of weapons.
And obviously gun rights people are going to say, well, he broke the law, but our laws need to be more strictly enforced and need to work around the fact that anybody can get a gun at any time, given the current just flood of guns in the United States.
So, yeah, we need to work around that because there are a lot of mentally ill people out there and there are a lot of guns out there.
And when those two ingredients are put together, we're going to have shit like this until we start getting guns off the street, I think.
Yeah.
It's just weird how fucking normal this shit is now.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Like, even when I saw the headline, I really thought, oh, only four people were killed.
Right. And that's a fucking terrible place to be in mentally where that's like the calculus in my mind of like, oh, is there like a number that makes it a tragedy in my mind?
Or like that's how I've had to compartmentalize.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
had the insane like non uh instinct for self-preservation but just instinct to you know go do the thing that uh i think 99.9 of the population would not have the guts to do and
like tackle and you know he said he was only looking out for himself but i'm sure he saved
a lot of people's lives 100 of republicans that are for guns would never do that stuff
right they would never ever ever and. Right. They would never,
ever, ever. And I don't even think if they had
a gun on them, they would actually shoot another person.
They wouldn't. Because this is the other thing, what we were talking about
earlier, is like, I don't think, at least the
gun owners I know, they don't own guns because
they have a fantasy about using them on other people.
Like, gun owners I know are
people who, like, target shooting, or
just, like, are part of, like, a culture
of, like, you know, their parents were veterans and things like target shooting or just like are part of like a culture of like you know their
parents were veterans and things like that or in law enforcement so they they just grew up around
guns or whatever but they don't this idea of a person who's like always packing a pistol or
whatever and is just ready to enforce the law on somebody you know I think you have to really look
at our fabric as people like we're not built to be doing shit like that yeah because it's bad
shit crazy I i wish i
heard more from sane gun owners like this because the whole conversation is so black and white it's
like either guns go away or you have crazy people screaming that or like i would have killed away my
guns and i would have killed them and it's just like it'd be great to hear from sane regular
people who who like use guns well i think recreationally right
and i thought it wouldn't think that there should be a lot of laws yeah you know regulating it but
i don't hear from those well we did for a second right after parkland right there are a lot of
people who were not a lot but there was this there was like this sort of uh it was like fashionable
for people to be like i was in the military this is my ar i'm breaking it because like fashionable for people to be like, I was in the military. This is my AR.
I'm breaking it because like citizens shouldn't have it.
And there was that kind of thing.
But yeah,
I feel like there could be a lot to this debate when you actually have like common sense people or like,
or even gun owners who aren't seen as immediately being these sort of like
doomsday prepper type people.
It's really a shame that the NRA has chosen the direction they've chosen
because the NRA is when you buy a gun,
they are, you go to a training course immediately
that is sponsored by the NRA.
They are pro-responsible gun ownership.
It's just that their public persona,
their public brand has become this like crazy,
like fucking vigilante justice thing.
And yeah, I mean, there are two camps.
They're the same gun owners who buy a gun or two
and keep it in a safe or take it to target practice.
But then there is this gun culture.
Like if you look at gun magazines,
there are all these stories,
there are ads written to be like,
protect your family with this
automatic or semi-automatic
assault rifle and
those are the people
that the gun industry is focused on because
those are the people who buy 50 fucking guns
and are going to be the most
energetic when defending the
right to own a weapon
I guess it really is two camps, it's those people
who are responsible and other people who, yeah, they're responsible
and other people who are really operating
in this bizarre fantasy world
where they have to protect themselves
from the evil of the world.
I think we need to put pressure.
I think it's not even a bizarre world.
It's very much a world that's been cultivated
by this xenophobic racist.
For sure, yeah, you're right.
Like, they're coming to get me.
Yeah, these thugs are going to invade your home.
They're going to rape the white women.
It's just like, just, you know,
I would love for us to just talk more openly about,
like, just call a thing a thing.
It's just like, you guys have been brainwashed
with racist and xenophobic ideas about
what's going to get you.
Right, by your local news, by fucking everything.
You've never been outside of wherever you're from.
Right, exactly.
You've never met that kind of person.
Right, right, exactly.
You're scared of them and want to shoot them so it's anyway i think people let's put pressure on responsible gun owners to
kind of have more of a more of a voice like find your own nra right because they have like yeah
sane nra snra i want to see i've had people together message me on twitter and instagram
talking about their gun like especially around the parkland time and we're talking about it
saying like i'm a responsible gun owner.
I don't think people need this and that.
But I think, yeah, it's important
that we can still talk about gun ownership
in a way that is divorced from this idea
that it's either taking all your guns
or guns for everybody.
There is a same middle ground.
Yeah, totally.
The smartest person I've ever talked to about gun ownership
is this guy jason
pargin who writes uh at crack as david wong and he's a gun owner but he has this inside look at
the gun industry because like he grew up around gun magazines and so he knows like how crazy that
part of it is but you know he's also a responsible gun owner so uh yeah i i think those are the
people to sort of help us reel this crazy conversation
in a little bit because i think on the right many people view people on the left as every liberal
person wants to take away all of your guns and then there are people on the left who think
everyone on the right in regards to guns are just crazy gun obsessed people who just want to keep
guns everywhere out in the open and i think people need to understand that it's much more nuanced.
I feel like, yeah, the discussion is really so black or white.
It's a little bit.
And to me, like the saddest part is like whenever I read about it, it looks like it just comes
down to sales.
It just comes down to like if the conversation isn't black and white, then it hurts our sales.
Right.
Oh, yeah.
It's like if we have any kind of sanity going into this, then, you know hurts our sales. Oh, yeah. It's like, if we have any kind of sanity
going into this,
then, you know,
our shareholders don't make money.
Because it's an industry
where not people are,
it's not like a refrigerator
where every home needs one,
but they want you to think
that every home is incomplete
without a weapon in it.
Like, if that is what needs to get hurt,
then that thing needs to get hurt real bad.
Like, those sales need to vomit.
Well, and that's why you're seeing
a lot of manufacturers, like, I feel like it was Remington
or Mossberg recently, they had to file for bankruptcy.
I think it was Remington.
Yeah.
Because yeah, like sales are declining and because I think most people are kind of catching
on.
Not everyone needs a gun.
Right.
But sales aren't declining to the point that, I don't know, the industry still did really
well during the Obama presidency and I think maybe got a little greedy and maybe overexpanded and that's why Remington fell down. But yeah, David Hogue, the kid from Parkland,
has been talking about these financial industries like Vanguard and different big banks have a lot
of their money in the gun industry. And if you have your money with them-
Divest.
Yeah, divest or let them know you don't want any of your money in the gun industry
and, you know, get it away from those funds that are helping to support this shit.
And just real quick, we actually have late breaking news because we're doing this a little
earlier than normal.
We just had a story added to the doc by our writer on the ground in Toronto, Mr. J.M. McNabb.
He lives in Toronto, and he was pointing out that even though racists on Twitter were quick
to call the attacker a terrorist or a jihadist and blame the city's Muslim population, people
who looked at his Facebook post before they were taken down, found that he had lauded Elliot Rodger,
the California shooter from 2014
who raged about a number of women turning down his advances.
He also used the word incels, meaning involuntary celibate.
He said, quote,
the incel rebellion has already begun.
We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys.
Tucker Carlson just had the
hardest time understanding how the government of Canada could say there was, quote, no connection
to a jihadi group. So this makes a lot more sense because I was thinking, even if there was an
absence of motive, even if it was just mental illness, they would still speculate that he was
motivated by ISIS or could be they would fill that motive
in they did that with the Vegas shooter
for instance because we like never figured out
what he was on about and
in this case they just like completely
disappeared the story and I think it's
because his politics
were this sort of weird
men's rights kind of shit of like
blame women for their own
shittiness kind of mentality
which aligns perfectly with the alt-right.
Which is crazy though too because Chad's
are like the... The handsome alt-right.
The peak alt-right male you could be. So even
the fact that he's like, he is clearly
so on the incel side that he
can't look at anybody who has
some kind of sex life or social life.
Yeah, I don't think it's
red and blue. I don't think, I mean, I think they're taking a different red pill, blue pill situation.
Right, exactly.
That is a fascinating and so sad world with broken, lonely people.
There's nothing involuntary about your celibacy.
What's involuntary is the self-examination,
the tiny changes that you would have to make to progress as a person,
to not get fucked, dude,
but to connect with other humans
on a physical and emotional level.
There you go.
You are not doing work.
You're just not doing the work.
You're not doing the work.
You'll get a sandwich made for you
if you do the work.
People make you sandwiches
because they love you.
Sorry, I just.
So we also wanted to take a look at Sean Hannity and his real estate empire.
Right.
So it came out that he basically owns 870 homes in seven states.
What?
Yeah.
Which, you know, he had talked about how Michael Cohen helped him with real estate stuff.
And you assumed it was like, yeah, hey, could you look at this contract with my landlord
for me or something like that?
Hey, the foundation might have a crack in it.
Should I go through with this?
So he's bought like entire like condo buildings.
Yeah.
So the thing is, in The Guardian, there was this report that showed that he basically
is in control of these shell companies that have spent at least $90 million on properties that are mostly distressed homes, homes that are about to be foreclosed on, and was just mass purchasing them.
I think he has two condos that actually have agreements with HUD, with the Housing and Urban Development Department, which also makes it weird when you have Ben Carson on your show
and you're praising him but not disclosing it.
It's like, I also have some buildings that he knows.
Is Fox News trying to get in that HGTV business?
Yeah, right next.
And he's going to be flip or flop?
Right.
Flip or flog.
So you had Ben Carson on.
What did he talk to him about?
It was just kind of, oh, how great of a job you're doing.
It was just like a softball thing,
just making him look really great. Good publicity for the housing and urban
development office. Exactly, when Ben Carson is
fucking up an insane
amount. Right. And then, but also
then we find out that not necessarily
that Ben Carson, like, you know,
put these new regulations into effect
that the same buildings
that Hannity owns, like, they're part of a
program that in 2019, like, you owns, they're part of a program that in 2019,
they will be allowed to turn it from subsidized housing units into condominiums that they can
just package and sell on their own. So before it was like, okay, well, look, we'll give you
these loans. We'll subsidize the housing if you're allowing people to stay there because they need
cheaper housing. But then they're saying, but look, just wait a couple years,
and then you can flip the building, sell for condominiums,
and then nobody has to live there, and then they can figure it out on their own.
So the we in that instance is HUD.
They're like, we will help finance this so that we have cheap housing, and then, yeah.
But that's not necessarily the entire game of HUD, but that's a thing to just take. They're supposed to be good.
Yeah, they're supposed to be good.
They're trying to. They're supposed to be good they're trying to but
on our side that's what that's what kind of makes it more infuriating when Sean Hannity
goes up there and is just that disingenuous right and it's talking about how great Ben Carson is at
his job when yeah like you said that HUD is supposed to be the good guys who are helping
poor people who like need places to live and instead, even this morning, there was a news alert that he was suggesting that they raise the rent in subsidized housing
and make people get jobs in order to live in places.
So basically his read on the situation is, well, these poor people are just
too lazy. Well, yeah. I mean, that's how all conservatives think though. Like everything is
a hand up. Just smoke weed and fuck and make 900 babies. So, I mean, he is part of this huge trend,
which all comes from the financial crisis in 08, 07, 08, where lots of people lost their homes, their homes were
foreclosed on, and Wall Street just bought up all of these houses and then started renting them out
to people for hiked up rents. So a lot of people in Wall Street are making money off of these home foreclosures that they caused in the first place.
But they see a financial crisis as an opportunity to make more money off of the people who are in crisis.
Everyone has – I don't even know who I'm meaning when I say everyone.
But I've heard from multiple people in the real estate world.
They're like, another crash is coming.
And I'm like, no, I thought that you had to put down 20%.
And they're like,
oh,
no,
no,
no,
no.
Like,
it's coming.
Like,
if you want to buy a house,
wait three years
because it's bottoming out again.
And it's,
I don't know if it's going to be as bad as 07 and 08.
Yeah.
But like a new wave of it,
like prices in New York have already started to drop.
And that's like a indication of like,
oh,
fuck,
it's going to happen.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, the thing with these companies, especially you know blackstone is like this huge uh private
equity company that they have they're like one of the biggest offenders like of this sort of trend
yeah well it's mean yeah it sounds like a fucking uh as jm mcnabb says a harry potter bad guy yeah
right blackstone yeah these companies're just kind of like,
hey, look, looking at Wall Street,
we have an opportunity to just buy all these houses
that are going on the cheap.
And in some cases,
someone that Hannity was in business with,
he went to jail for
artificially tanking prices
at these auctions
to be able to buy them at lower prices.
Once those houses are bought,
that's money that probably
could have gone to the homeowner
probably to pay back their debt.
But anyway,
and that guy went to jail,
but that's a side of the point.
The thing is,
the sort of thing that's happening is they're taking these foreclosed on
homes and basically buying them up cheap and taking away these assets from
the people who were victimized by the financial crisis.
So Sean Hannity is like the guy behind the guy behind the guy,
like making shit loads of money off of the people who watch his show and are
like,
there's a normal everyday American right there.
Meanwhile,
Hannity,
he's making money off of you and putting you out of your fucking home.
Or even just saying,
Oh,
you know,
look at the home ownership is going down.
Obama,
look at these foreclosure rates.
And it's like,
my man,
you are the destroyer.
You are the same person who is taking advantage of this situation.
I feel like there is sort of this dialogue of like homeownership is going down because our generation is like bad.
Like we've ruined chain restaurants.
It's like, OK, we don't want to do it.
It's like, yes, we are afraid to buy homes.
That wasn't our fault.
We were young kids.
We were just like in high school, college, and buying a home became this catastrophic, terrible thing.
So, yeah, now we don't want to buy a home.
And there will be people that are forever renters.
And guess what?
We didn't fucking make that happen.
You guys did.
And also the fact is that wages don't really match.
Younger people aren't making the kind of money you even need to begin thinking about buying a home.
Right.
Depending on where you live in a huge urban center.
I mean, clearly there are other places
where it is more achievable.
But like, for example, California, New York.
I mean, you can't-
DC, Chicago.
Owning in the city.
Yeah, big cities, it's a huge thing.
And, you know, when they look at,
like when a lot of these houses went to auction
when they're being foreclosed on,
you know, you'd have people who were trying to buy a house, like maybe first-time homeowners, like maybe people of color who traditionally had a really hard time buying a home.
You have these Wall Street people come in with cash up front and go, we'll buy this shit for cash right now.
And that already puts people who are traditionally trying to buy a home at a tremendous disadvantage.
So when they buy up all these houses, they amass this like
massive revenue stream of just renters. And then they've also started selling the bonds of taking
all the rent that's being paid and selling that off too. Right. And package that into a bond,
which I guess is more sort of predictable than the mortgage that they had before,
like all those shitty mortgages they had before.
But when you have a home that is essentially owned
and tied up in a Wall Street bond,
your landlord does not give a fuck about you.
They're not in it to help you out.
And there are all these horror stories
of people who are paying rent for these houses
that are owned by giant private equity firms
who there will be a crack in their ceiling
and they'll be like, it's getting worse.
It's getting worse, guys.
Nobody's been by to look at it.
And then their fucking ceiling caves in.
Right.
Or one where there was water squirting
through a light fixture, which seems dangerous.
A live wire with water shooting out? Yeah,
that sounds fine. And then you try and call your landlord like, sorry, look,
we're way too massive to look at the actual renters. And that's a problem too, because
if the renters are not satisfied, they will leave. And now that is going to affect the rent that's
being paid on those properties. Part of those bonds being healthy too, is that you can keep
people actually in those units or in those homes. And if they're not doing that, that's why a lot of
critics are saying like, if you can't even keep people happy or safe in their homes,
how do you expect to maintain, not have super high turnover without a real plan to address that?
Maybe we all got to stay in like on a Tuesday and rewatch the big short.
Right.
Because it's like that just came came out. How have we already,
I mean, I haven't seen it.
I've fallen asleep
three different times
trying to watch it on a plane.
Really focused.
It's a tough plane movie.
But it's like,
I think it's about this.
Yes.
I think we need to like,
I think we need to regroup
because if this happens again,
it's going to be pretty embarrassing.
Right.
And like,
in one of the reports,
they say that like,
you know,
the difference with these sort of
other,
these bonds that they're selling now is like, you know, when banks will repossess a mortgaged home as collateral, there's at least the assumption that the homeowner has probably defaulted on the mortgage.
And then it makes sense for this person to be, you know, to be ousted or evicted from their home.
from their home. Whereas like in these bonds, like if a bond blows up, so many families are tied up in them. Like one bond melting down could lead to a ton of evictions, just even if you never
were late on your payments. So it's just a very weird situation. I think what, you know, obviously
it's not that Sean Hannity is exactly this company, but he's employing the sort of same sort
of tactics and he saw the same lucrative opportunity to do this. And people need to be aware that this company, Blackstone, I think they own up to like 80,000
single family homes. That's a fucking racket. You know what I mean? And people don't realize that,
wow, like even the housing market created a new corporate overlord for your rent. It's like they
had their eyes on this shit from the start. They're like, hey, well, look, the market will
bottom out and we can just jump in with cash and buy massive amounts of properties at once. President Trump has even said before he
was president, he said he sort of hoped for a housing market crash. So, quote, people like me
will go in and buy like crazy. So, I mean, that's right. Yeah, that's kind of scary. All right.
We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.
of scary. All right, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.
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President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today.
And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president.
One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson.
I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman.
The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground.
Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore.
The story of one strange and violent summer.
This is Rip Current, available now with new episodes every Thursday.
Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
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Come up here and document my project.
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Should we wake her up?
Absolutely not.
What was that?
You didn't figure it out?
I think I need to hear you say it.
That was live audio of a woman's nightmare.
This machine is approved and everything?
You're allowed to be doing this?
We passed the review board a year ago.
We're not hurting people.
There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing.
They're just dreams.
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They're just dreams.
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And we're back. All right, let's talk about the upcoming midterms, Miles.
Yeah.
Let's talk about that.
You said your headline in our doc is,
Fuck Mueller, Focus on the Fucking Midterms.
That's right.
Because, again, everybody, all the liberals were dancing in the streets,
being like, oh, man, Cohen's going to flip.
Mueller's going to, ah.
You know, I get it get it look this fucking presidency
is a nightmare and we were trying to look at any way to get out of it to end this thing but I think
people need to be really realistic right I think the most important thing is that we have an
effective check on the executive branch because right now with the Republicans controlling all
the house all the chambers that that that means people can, like in the
House and in the Senate, can use their power to just simply obstruct or keep the Democrats
from properly investigating or getting answers to things or just generally holding the president or
his cabinet members accountable. So let's paint a picture that is an actual nightmare for Trump.
It's 2019, okay, and they are swearing in the whole new batch of
Democrats that have basically given the Democrats control of the house. Nancy Pelosi maybe gets her
gavel back if it, if Nancy Pelosi does in fact become the speaker again. And now we have 21
subpoena wielding house committee chairman waiting to just this full on investigation season. So,
okay. So there are 21 committees in
the house where their chairmen's actually have subpoena power. So they can, you know, some of
them, there's a committee vote or a consultation with a ranking minority member, but none of them
actually give the minority like any veto power. As we saw in the house's investigation, quote,
unquote, into Russia, where Adam Schiff was
powerless as the ranking minority member.
All he could do is be like, oh, Devin Nunes is fucking around.
And he had no nothing.
He could do nothing except to just be like, they're fucking around.
So these 21 different committees are always led by whoever has the most.
Whoever's the majority party.
Okay. That means whatever the ranking member is, you've suddenly become the chairperson or you
become the ranking minority member. So based on the power, how it's distributed. Now, the crazy
thing is when you're checking the executive branch, it can be one chamber. The Senate can do
that on their own. The House can do that on their own. It's not like legislation where both houses
have to agree on the legislation and then has that its own process. When it comes to accountability and things like that,
any one chamber can do that on their own. They don't need the other chamber to do that.
So that's very interesting because right now, as we've seen, is that basically the GOP has
used their power to just gum up any investigations or they use their subpoena power to get fucking,
just to obstruct Mueller's investigation or just protect the president.
But we're starting to see that using the you know, using their majority as like a human shield is not really the best practice because there are many people who are getting off the fucking ship very quickly.
As you can see with the number of retirements, they don't like what's written in the sand.
what's written in the sand. So on the retirements, a question I've had is, is this just an unprecedented number of retirements or are all of these people coming to a point in their career when, you know,
they might normally retire and it's like an either or thing or like, I mean, I think like a very
diplomatic reading of it would be, there'll always be people retiring. There'll always be people
switching offices or looking to get other positions.
So that always happens.
There's always a set number.
I think we're above 44 now, which is actually not normal.
Like it's the number of it which kind of transcends the sort of normal turnover when it comes to the Congress.
And now we're seeing a lot of people just being like giving weird examples.
Like other people would be like, I'm actually going to go into the private sector to do this or whatever.
To make money and exploit.
Exploit my,
like John Boehner did.
It's like,
look,
let me get out a little bit and then I'm going to get all the GOP to come
around on medical marijuana or whatever.
Anyway.
So you look at like Jason Chaffetz.
He was like,
I want to be with my family.
Or like Paul Ryan was like,
I want to be with my family,
which I get.
I get that.
We all want to be with our family.
Everyone wants to be with their family,
but you know, it didn't prior to Trump, you seem to have no problem like being like you were getting my family the fuck away from yeah you're like dude i'm chilling in my condo in dc man you
know like whatever so we're seeing people kind of looking at it of being kind of in the gop in this
administration is sort of an untenable situation for some people now that people will spin their
reasons for doing it but it's clear to see that some people would rather just retire than
even try and put up a fight for their seat i'm not letting any of these things that i'm seeing
give me any kind of hope in the democratic party i'm still very much waiting to see what they do
even if they do get control of the house let's see how they use it because i just don't right
so here's the belief no yeah totally because I think already the Democrats as a party, the platform is fucking whack.
It's fucking whack.
It's not resonating with anybody except for the old people over in D.C. who think it's effective.
There was a front page article in the New York Times yesterday about how the Democratic Party is actually trying to get people to drop out of the races
so they don't split the Democratic vote, essentially.
And they're always, always choosing the centrist.
The establishment person.
The person who used to be a Republican and now is a Democrat
because that gets them physically aroused.
The idea of somebody who can appeal to both sides.
Or a veteran.
Right. aroused like the idea of like somebody who can appeal to both sides or a veteran right and so
they're like get the people who they're encouraging to drop out are like you know outsiders who are
like i was a social worker right or women who like didn't don't aren't like establishment people
and that's bullshit because as we saw in 2016 like we want outsiders. That's what people want right now.
But this is exactly why.
Right.
We can trust them.
Right.
I totally agree.
Day by day, don't show that they've learned from 2016 at all.
Most people in the base want to go way the fuck left.
We want to go way.
You know who surprised the shit out of me?
Cynthia Nixon.
She did this video about legalizing marijuana and called out how racist marijuana has been in the past or whatever, arresting black people for it while it's been legal for white people for a long time.
And she literally said that.
And I was just like, you might make me want to vote for a celebrity.
I never wanted to vote for a celebrity.
I got nervous for a second.
I was like, wait.
Am I being ghastly?
You literally said it's disproportionately affecting people of color.
Exactly.
I was just like, whoa, she's really coming out swinging.
And I was just like, that's what you have to do to grab our attention.
Especially people of color because with white candidates, they like to dance around shit like that.
They'll never full throw to be like, hey, man, the criminal justice system is completely fucking up an entire section of our population.
completely fucking up an entire section of our population. If we learn anything from the Trump presidency,
it's that the majority of the country is not okay with honesty.
Like we are not okay as a country saying that the president is racist,
saying that the GOP is racist,
or just talking about things as they actually are.
Like we're not okay with reality.
And the way that the Democratic Party, seeing clearly
that there is this crop of black women, I'm a black woman, so obviously I'm going to talk about
stuff because this is what I feel like is, just looking at how the Democratic Party doesn't
support and uplift black female candidates, even though these people have been on the ground.
And delivering election after election.
Delivering election after election for you, building your campaigns, volunteering for you, doing all of the grunt work, and yet we're never elevated, even though I think that black women could possibly save the party.
When you have someone like Michelle Obama in the wings, who literally helped Barack Obama become president, and you're not using this insane resource that you have.
Well, there's a record amount of women and women of color running for office this cycle.
It gives me chills.
Yeah, it's crazy because now I think people are actually, what's great is to see people
be empowered and go, you know what?
Fuck this.
I can actually do something.
I don't give a fuck about what the traditional knowledge was around this.
I know what I'm capable.
I see the energy and I will now apply that to running a campaign.
Meanwhile, the DNCC's test for whether you are a viable candidate.
They take your phone, they go through the list
and they're like, okay,
how much could you get this person to donate?
How much could you get that person to donate?
Are they like a fundraiser?
Are they like basically how well connected
are you to rich people?
Right.
Essentially.
Yeah, because they're like, look,
we can't have any broke people.
Right.
You can be woke, but don't be broke.
But isn't that their job?
Yeah, exactly.
Aren't they the ones that are supposed to be connecting them and helping them fundraise?
Do you want to do your job?
You know, there are plenty of candidates who are raising with small donations or away from using super PACs.
I mean, Kamala Harris just, I think, over the weekend was like, I'm not taking PAC money anymore.
Someone's running in 2020.
But yeah, there are plenty of people.
I know Elizabeth Warren raised a huge ton of money
off small donations.
There are a lot of people who are able to raise
off small donor money because yes,
the reality is in politics,
people, when they look at a candidate,
they're like, well, is this guy funded?
Because if they're not, then the DNC has to go,
well, great, now we're gonna have to fucking pitch in
or whatever because they don't have their own hookups.
But if we can get a lot of these candidates
to not rely on the traditional forms of fundraising or their traditional donors or benefactors, then we can start to empower
actual candidates that are more, you know, that they reflect the values that I think people want
to see. And so I would tell you, if you see a potential candidate that embody the values that
resonate with you as a voter, I would recommend giving them money because the money does add up
and you can get them off of this idea
of having to be beholden
to a lot of these huge donors
and then protect their interests
once they get into office
because let's be real,
that's sort of the game.
Right.
At the same time,
if somebody who's not establishment
gets the ability to like raise money
from a super PAC or something
and they're having to compete
with like the Koch brothers,
take that shit.
Sure, sure.
But again, all that money comes with strings attached.
You know what I mean?
There are expectations on once you kiss the ring.
George Soros.
Oh, fuck.
We know what's going on.
I think what they're doing is,
so they see they have this blue wave,
as people are describing it,
or a blue tsunami,
depending on how excited voters get.
I'm Japanese.
OK, how excited and motivated voters are totally determines how, you know, how many seats the
Democrats take. And they're just taking it for granted that their base is going to come out in
record number because they're mad at Trump. But they should not be taking it for granted because if you have some candidate who
is just another inauthentic person who is just playing politics that's not going to do it that's
not going to get people out and the Republicans are going to the base they are and again the
Hillary campaign took us for granted yes she assumed that we would vote for her despite all
the shit show that was going on in the DNC and those emails about, you know, trying to undermine Bernie's campaign.
And it was just like, we don't like that shit either.
So it's just like you guys continuing to take things for granted, our vote, our voice or whatever it is.
And I'm just like, there's clearly no learning.
There's been no learning.
Right.
Which is the problem with the Democratic Party to me in general
is that they don't learn
from mistakes.
Yeah.
Well, the left in general
is like a Thanksgiving dinner
where everybody wants to say
the polite thing about something
and nobody's drunk enough
to just start truth speaking
at the table.
Yeah, right.
And right now,
once we saw a little bit
of truth speaking work,
people were like,
oh, shit.
Yeah.
What they have to realize now
is that is actually
a very sexy,
there's a lot of appeal to say, yo, the country is fucked up.
It's fucked up. We have real fucking solutions.
We're not just going to say, hey, man, we're going to get you back to work.
No. Talk about income inequality. Talk about like how hard it is to own a home as a person of color.
Talk about how hard it is to go to college in this country.
Talk about how how like unequal education is in this country. Even if you do go to a public school, are you going to go to a good one or are you going to go to college in this country talk about how how like unequal education is in
this country even if you do go to a public school are you going to go to a good one are you going
to go to a shitty one talk about the fact that there's no water in an american city there's no
clean water or no power in the commonwealth in puerto rico yeah right like talk about how there's
people coming up into waffle houses and little like schools and little kids and shooting it up
in movie theaters and like this is like, this is batshit crazy.
Don't paper over the cracks and be like, no.
Don't paper over it.
Let me talk about, let's hold Wall Street accountable.
Like, no, we're past that.
And plus, you guys didn't hold Wall Street accountable anyway.
Yeah, I'm sure Hillary mentioned all those talking points.
But then she also met with all these Wall Street people and was taking money from them.
And you knew she wasn't gonna do shit about it yeah well i mean she never said anything that resonated
with people of color like once on that campaign trail like not that that campaign was what
reminded me that hillary was white i was just like oh yeah yeah like aside from a couple like
boilerplate sort of like talking points i was never like whoa she's she's really talking that
shit yeah right and i and again that's because i, she's really talking that shit. And again, that's because
I think she took for granted that, in general,
it just seemed like an easy choice. Like, look,
you can vote for me, or you can vote for this
fucking shitbag over here. She took for granted
that Bill was the black people's
president ever since he played sax on
Arsenio Hall, and he
ain't anymore. And you're not
the black people's president. And I think their
cat had a video game on Genesis.
Socks the cat.
Or at least he had a comic book.
So, I mean, that was cool.
What a time.
How did she lose you after that?
I don't know.
I mean, back to what I was saying, though, about the midterm.
So, right.
So, if the Democrats do take control, right, think about all these committees that have the subpoena power and how they can deliver all these congressional colonoscopies to the administration.
For example, the Ways and Means Committee.
And this is from an article on Slate.
They're talking about all the possible investigations that could happen with Democrats in power.
The Ways and Means Committee, they can sharpen the national discussion around tax fairness and subpoenaing the president's tax returns.
OK, what about the Financial Services Committee?
That would be chaired by Maxine Waters. I have a feeling if she was the fucking chairwoman, she would subpoena the shit
out of. So for what's in their purview and the financial services, they have the authority to
look at like sort of the phenomenon of, you know, foreign oligarchs laundering their ill-gotten
gains through purchases of luxury condominiums, like the ones that are in Trump-owned
buildings in New York or that weird building in Miami that he sold for like a 300% profit
inexplicably. And you look at even just sort of like the Armed Services Committee, they can convene
like proceedings to fucking talk about why it's bad to share state secrets with people who don't
have security clearances, like basic things that Republicans want to act like,
oh, it's not an issue, it's not an issue.
You know, there is the ability to actually be like,
hold on, you need to come in here and explain what the fuck is going on.
Expose the wildly corrupt shit that is happening.
Yeah, the swamp.
Nobody likes corruption.
It's going to be hard to argue with,
although Trump supporters, I'm sure, will find a way.
But yeah, if Democrats are a sober Thanksgiving,
Republicans have become like Irish St. Paddy's Day.
Like everybody's just fucking wasted
and saying the first thing that comes to mind
because they are just going to the base hard.
All of these house elections,
they're wearing MAGA hats.
They're basically talking about how like Trump is their
savior of America you mean like this new crop of candidates for the midterms yeah exactly they're
like lock her up uh in their campaign ads yo she's saying you're not running against Hillary
Clinton and you're saying lock her up still uh what the guy who said that has actually been to
jail for uh killing 29 people by uh violating safety standards in the mine that he owns.
Oh, yeah.
And his talking point is we don't need to investigate our president.
We need to arrest Hillary.
So, yeah, they're just going back to the 2016 election.
And basically the thing that they have going for them is, you know, the Democratic Party kind of went away from their authentic groundswell of support and the Republicans went with it.
And they're realizing, OK, go to this horrible, toxic wave of, you know, aggression that has been bubbling up.
What a weird. I mean, I guess we'll see two-year-old campaigning style will still hold up
i mean it clearly didn't work for the countless republicans that try to brand themselves as like
trump clones uh in the special elections in the last eight months so that's one thing to somewhat
rest easy about but yeah it it feels like they're like well fuck it man just play the greatest hits
right you know maybe look maybe they'll keep dancing. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm not going to play these ads for you,
but there's just crazy shit where, like,
the guy spouting off about, like,
a guy running for the Senate in Missouri
is talking about, like,
how Trump is the savior of our country.
He has also said that feminists have snake-filled heads
and he hopes his daughters don't become she-devils.
So this is where we're at.
Anna Hosni, you have a shirt that says feminist on.
Yeah, Super Producer Anna Hosni.
How many snakes you got in your head?
Uh-oh.
Your seven tongues said it all.
What the fuck kind of thing is that?
Snake head?
Snakes in their head.
These guys don't get laid.
I don't know what it is about Republicans
and their fear of women and pussy. head snakes in their head these guys don't get laid i don't know what it is about republicans
and their fear of women and like right like they just it's like a force field they don't understand
or something like just the way they talk about women is bananas clearly that's to be like evoke
you know the fucking garden and that's the yeah exactly the beast or whatever it's very evocative
like let's play out in their mind if feminists
took control of the country. What does that mean?
Everyone's penis will have to be turned
into a vagina and then
men are thrown off the...
You know what I mean? Because it was
easy with gay marriage. They just say shit like,
what's next? A man's gonna marry a
horse and a blah blah blah.
It's hard to...
There is no argument, right? Because this What is that? It's hard to like, because it's like there is no argument, right?
Because this is just a person that's dumb
or like, I don't even want to call them dumb,
but someone who doesn't have like
a real actual point of view.
Sound opinions.
Right.
And then now I'm supposed to argue
about the legitimacy of women?
Right, right.
What am I arguing?
If I'm that candidate, I'm debating you.
I'm like, oh, well, people of Missouri,
it's clear to see.
My opponent, I mean,
look at all the fucking snakes in her head.
And I literally have like two seeds in my hair right now.
You're like, that's my hairstyle?
Yeah.
Thank you.
Well, you get where I'm coming from, don't you?
I'm really curious what the fear is.
I guess it's just that men are no longer the dominant force in society.
But they are.
No, right.
Exactly.
But isn't that,
is that like the expiration date
that they see coming?
It is the fear.
It's the fear of,
I don't know if it's their own sexual insecurity
or the fear that a woman will,
because I don't think any man has a real fear
that a woman will seduce him
unless he is a basketball player
or like, you know,
someone who has actual money
that people are coming for. And can you use
that excuse where you're like, hey, I was seduced.
Exactly. And you literally were.
But the average man, I don't think, has to
worry about being seduced.
No, men fantasize about being seduced.
They might have relationships with women who are
less assertive and
they might just think, well, I could never
deal with a woman who speaks her mind
because that's too intimidating.
And so I don't know, guys, give it a try.
It's actually very rewarding to hang out with women.
Try thinking of a woman as a person.
Yeah.
Number one, think imagine you were talking to another human being and start there.
My brain just exploded.
Holy shit.
All right.
We're going to take a quick break.
We'll be right back.
All right. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim
of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to
assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always
felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other,
a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground.
Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer.
This is Rip Current, available now with new episodes every Thursday.
Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Substance use disorder and addiction is so isolating.
And so as a Black woman in recovery, hope must be loud.
It grows louder when you ask for help and you're vulnerable.
It is the thread that lets you know that no matter what happens, you will be okay.
When we learn the power of hope, recovery is possible.
Find out how at startwithhope.com.
Brought to you by the National Council for Mental Well-Being, Shatterproof, and the Ad Council.
I've been thinking about you.
I want you back in my life.
It's too late for that.
I have a proposal for you. Come want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you.
Come up here and document my project.
All you need to do is record everything like you always do.
One session. 24 hours.
BPM 110. 120. She's terrified.
Should we wake her up?
Absolutely not.
What was that?
You didn't figure it out?
I think I need to hear you say it.
That was live audio of a woman's nightmare.
This machine is approved and everything?
You're allowed to be doing this?
We passed the review board a year ago.
We're not hurting people.
There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing.
They're just dreams. How do you feel about biscuits? Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit,
where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels,
into something everyone in the South loves, the biscuits.
I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean?
The Boone County Rebels will stay the Boone County Rebels with the image of the biscuits.
It's right here in black and white in print.
A lion.
An individual that came to the school saying that God sent him to talk to me
about the mascot switch.
As a leader, you choose hills that you
want to die on. Why would we want to be the
losing team? I'd just
take all the other stuff out of it.
Segregation academies, when the civil
rights said that we need to integrate
public schools, these charter schools
were exempt from that bigger than a flag or mascot you have to be ready for serious backlash
listen to rebel spirit on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts And we're back. I never left. list back in the early 80s who first put Trump on the list of the 400 richest people in America.
And the first time that he put Trump on the list was because he got a call from a Trump
employee named John Barron.
We're going to listen to audio from that call.
Oh, OK.
So, yeah, I mean,
listen to our mentally ill president
pretend to be somebody else.
Whenever you hear there's a call
from anyone named John,
it's always Trump.
I love it.
John Barron
because John Rich Guy
would have been too transparent.
What was the other one he said
when he talked about Marla Maples?
What was it when he's talking to a tabloid?
He used the name John something too. He pretended to be Marla Maples. He was like when he's talking to a tablet? He is a name John something too.
He pretended to be Marla Maples.
He was like, hey, Marla, aren't I good at sex?
And then he was like, yes, you're the best I've ever had.
Yeah, did you hear that?
See?
Proof.
I'm not impotent.
The New York Post knew that that would sell the shit out of a newspaper and printed it.
But anyways, so here is audio of the call that got Donald Trump to be
known as a rich person. This is 1982. This is when people started to think that he was rich.
Well, let me tell you what the deal is, just so you understand.
Mr. Trump.
First of all, most of the assets have been consolidated to Mr. Trump, you know,
because you have Dan Fred Trump. And I'd like to talk to you off the record, if I can, just to make your thing easier.
Okay, sure.
Is that all right?
Yeah, that's fine.
All right.
But I think you can really use Donald Trump now, and you can just consolidate.
I think last year somebody showed me the article, and I think you had 200 and 200.
And really, it's been pretty well consolidated now for the most part, as I also think somebody
had mentioned that you had asked about that or somebody had.
And it's been pretty well consolidated, okay?
Uh-huh.
So that's one point that you can...
Does President make money management decisions?
Oh, yeah, sure.
He's the Chairman Donald's, the President, and Fred Trump is active.
He's an excellent guy, and you know how they're very close, the relationship of the two is,
as you know, very close, as you've heard or know or perhaps you don't know.
But they're very close.
And I think that's the thing that's been really interesting, is that they're very close.
I think that's the thing that's been really interesting, is that they're very close.
And I think that's the thing that's been really interesting, is that they're very close.
And I think that's the thing that's been really interesting, is that they're very close.
And I think that's the thing that's been really interesting, is that they're very close.
And I think that's the thing that's been really interesting, is that they're very close.
And I think that's the thing that's been really interesting, is that they're very close.
And I think that's the thing that's been really interesting, is that they're very close.
And I think that's the thing that's been really interesting, is that they're very close.
And I think that's the thing that's been really interesting, is that they're very close.
And I think that's the thing that's been really interesting, is that they're very close. And I think that's the thing that's been really interesting, is that they're very close. And I think that's the thing that's been really interesting, is that they're very close. And I think that's the thing that's been really interesting you know how they're very close, the relationship of the two is, as you know, very close, as you've heard or know or perhaps you don't know.
But Trump is active in the business, too.
So he's basically saying they've consolidated all the power under Donald and that he basically owns the company at this point, which was not true.
He basically owns the company at this point, which was not true.
He actually at that time was worth roughly $5 million, but they included him on the list at $100 million.
Because it's consolidated.
Right, because it's all consolidated. And apparently the rule for convincing a Forbes reporter of something is just to say it's been consolidated like five times.
Also, that dude fucked up by putting him on the list.
If he was like, well, I got this call.
I mean, I guess I'm going to have to put him on here.
So it's also like we were talking about how sad Trump is when you really look at him from
just like a psychological perspective.
Right.
This is a guy who's on the phone with someone pretending to be someone else talking about
how close his dad is to him and how much his dad likes him weren't they not close uh i think he they were okay but it's just a weird
i think his dad was a real hard ass yeah just to underline that he's like i mean they're so close
i mean you'd think it was like a like a 50s comedy they go on vacation together uh yeah it's like
leave it to beaver can you imagine like you'd have to be an empty shell to be able to pick up that phone.
Pretend, right, right.
Miles calling you.
So I got a, listen, hot guest for your pod.
Look, real into what you guys are doing, Jay.
I really like the moves you're making.
I want to recommend, this is not me.
This is definitely my client, Caitlin Gill.
I'm sorry, who am I speaking with?
You are not talking to Caitlin Gill.
That is my client.
I am a representative.
My name is Carrie Bradshaw.
My name is Cal Nithna.
Thank you for taking my...
Listen, I am a fabulous client.
Love that name.
She's just tremendous.
She's huge.
And I mean, literally, she is 6'1", 220.
She's bringing it down.
Don't worry about the numbers.
But those are consolidated numbers.
Now, listen, what I need you to know is that caitlin
is literally the funniest person alive you name a comedian okay they're probably better and more
famous but look look look what you don't know yet is you don't have caitlin on the list you don't
have her on i am definitely not caitlin i am the funniest person in the world it's just that's when
i go yo jack caitlin just called and no, no. You hear that like from a dead phone.
No, it's not Caitlin.
I'm not.
Put me on your podcast, please.
Your listeners are so engaged.
Come on.
Shout out to the Zeit gang.
It's just the saddest.
No, right.
Yeah, to take yourself there.
Because it does remind me of like, we all grew up with kids in school
who would just lie so aggressively.
My dad is a cop. I did that.
Oh did you? Oh a hundred percent.
About the weirdest shit.
Places I'd been. Stuff my
family had. Sex things
I had definitely not even heard of before
I made them up. Like I
absolutely lied to make a world more interesting
than my own and then I realized that I make my world interesting.
And then you grow, but then you start seeing some of those kids don't get past that.
And then they still do.
And you're like, oh, shit.
You're really telling people you're a fashion designer.
I have friends who are still on that.
I'm like, bro, you're wearing a woman's jacket.
And you'll be like, no, this is the new style.
Fashion designer equals shops well at the Goodwill.
Yeah, okay, this is like the new style. I'm like, all right, fam. Fashion designer equals shops well at the Goodwill. Yeah.
Okay, sure.
And then I was just like, but then you start realizing, you're like, man, like, I guess
it was different.
Like, you know, as a kid, you say shit, like you say, to make your own life interesting
to yourself or for your perception of you to other people.
But then after a while, you realize, oh, I have more control over this.
I can take agency of my life or whatever.
And then you see the other people who have just relied on that for so long that they really have just completely, you know, deluded themselves into being in a place like that.
But you just have to have such an empty, sucking wound where a soul would be to just be that desperate to put something in there.
The Forbes 400 list, like that's, he needed it.
Like it was like he was holding his breath.
And until he got on the forbes
400 list he couldn't take another breath like it was just desperation five million dollars
like at the time he's just sad he doesn't have a hundred million dollars right but i can't imagine
that getting a hundred million dollars is going to satisfy that person right it just is it's sad
i'm trying to find some kind of compassion. Right. Because this is obviously a sad person.
Right.
He's still responsible for his actions.
Right.
And what he does about that sad person.
He used that $100 million estimation of his wealth, which was a lie, to then start securing loans from other people.
Because he was like, look at it.
Look, Forbes, they got me at $100 million, so give me $20.
Dude, that shit.
Can you walk into a bank and just slap a Forbes on a desk and be like,
this is better than any formal record?
When he was trying to get one of his casinos, Nick Stump,
super producer, reminding us that, yes,
there is a scene where they're talking about how they're worried about how he's
going to secure approval from the gambling Commission for one of his casinos.
They're like, well, how are you going to get funding?
He was just like, I'm on the Forbes list.
Right.
Don't worry about it.
I'm on the – I can get that.
And that perception was enough to just be like, oh, okay.
Right.
And then he managed to bankrupt a bunch of casinos, which is so hard.
That is very difficult.
That is a business where people walk in and give you their money and walk out.
That is a business where people walk in and give you their money and walk out.
Let's move on to more messiness involving the Trump administration because his pick to lead the VA, a man with very little managerial experience, Dr. Ronnie Jackson, a.k.a. Rom-Rom Jaxxie Babies, a.k.a. the funk doctor Mr. Punk Rocker, got the drug stock up in the lunchbox wow we got ari melber over here yeah so complaints started out with uh you know he handed out a
couple ambient on overseas flights to you know the president's staff obama and bush's staff and
maybe a couple provigil to help pet people up a little bit once they landed somewhere and
you know maybe he got a little too drunk on a couple of those trips and couldn't be
resuscitated when he was needed to like do his job.
And so they had to take his credentials to another backup doctor.
And,
you know,
what do you mean?
Couldn't be resuscitated or he couldn't be woken up.
Like he was so,
he was so drunk.
They couldn't wake him up.
That's dope.
That's so cool.
And then there's also the story where he almost woke President Obama up
because he was drunkenly pounding on a female subordinate's door
trying to get her to let him in so he could presumably sexually harass her
before passing out on her floor.
You know, that's not so bad.
Happens to the best of us.
And the press tried to get like backup on
a couple of those things and they were like we're not getting anything from the you know
obama administration officials they're all saying he's like the best guy uh but it turns out like
stuff kept coming out it turns out he not only got drunk on the road he got so drunk at a secret service retirement party that he crashed a
government car uh he was frequently known to like give and take prescription drugs uh like around
just the office uh including controlled substances like percocet uh yeah ronnie percocet
uh a future hendrix as they called him but yeah he was just like an all-around fuck-up,
which makes me wonder.
I think those Obama administration officials
that they were trying to get backup from
were like, nah, man, he hooked it up.
Well, exactly.
And the other thing, too,
is most people-
You never ran on your drug dealer.
Most people were like,
everyone was like,
yo, it's very normal for them to hand you sleep aids
and provigil on these trips because when you're doing diplomatic missions and shit, you're on a plane, you're in a completely different time zone, and then you've got to be ready, active to do the thing.
So most people were kind of like, yes, that's actually pretty normal.
Yeah, that's fine.
It's a role that's needed in the government.
Yeah, he's writing kind of on-the-fly prescriptions for people the same way.
Provigil was invented to help fighter pilots.
Yeah, a lot of fighter pilots.
Yeah, stay awake while they're like fucking flying around the world to go do missions.
So it's not that big a deal if he's giving it to other people.
But if he's prescribing himself Percocet.
Yeah, and then like popping pills in the office.
And like also just the reports of like what it was like to work for him.
Like people use words like toxic, abusive, volatile, vindictive.
Yeah, toxic masculinity.
He kissed up and kicked down, they said.
He was just a fucking awful, the shittiest guy you work with.
That's why this shit isn't as crazy as the fact that the White house can't pick people that are appropriate for these
jobs right you could almost argue okay you almost need someone that's basically this guy
to be like the dark part of keeping the government running right like you have to give people speed
evidently to run the government so for sure if that's a given then that doctor is gonna end up being like this
you just don't promote him right you just don't make him the head of the second largest like how
many people i think it's 300 000 employees and it's not just about medical killer either it's
like a financial body too like of giving assistance to veterans so he's just wholly unprepared and
unqualified for this thing and it's just again this method of
of hiring at the white house is like yo that dude's chill right which cabinet should he run
like which department should he we can control this guy because we've seen him do as much yeah
like we were saying other administrations would have vetted him sniffed all this shit out like
months in advance or weeks in advance uh but instead of doing that trump's
method was to just be like yeah he seems like a good guy let's use him and then when the media
revealed all this shit he was like you know if i were you i'd drop out that was an actual headline
it's like bro you trump you gassed me up to get out there what the fuck yeah but now man i'm like
yeah i wouldn't now it looks like a mistake. Right. It's a no for me.
Trump is that asshole cousin who like runs up to the edge of the pool and then stops and then you jump in.
Doesn't it feel, though, that like I genuinely think there's not that much artifice with these people.
They're like they believe it.
They're like, yeah, he's a boy.
Yeah, he's a boy.
We get to do what we want.
And then they're like, oh, he's not our boy, I guess.
Right.
Hey, you should really drop out, my man.
Right, right.
Yeah.
No, yeah, yeah, yeah.
They just don't know that there's any such thing
as a more functional administration.
They just think that everybody is as big a fuck up as them.
Right, and they also don't know any better doctors, to be fair.
Right.
He's the best.
I mean, Dr. Oz will probably be next.
I mean, come on will probably be next Anybody named Ronnie
Alright
That's gonna do it for this week's
Weekly Zeitgeist
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Folks
I hope you're having a great weekend
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and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit,
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