Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 151: Anything But The A-Word

Episode Date: June 19, 2020

After our local BLM rally last week, the highest-elected official in the county took to Facebook with a few choice words about leftists, racism, and Adolf Hitler. We talk about all the fall out from that, and then hear from our old pals Gail and Bret of the New York Times. Throw a few dollars to our friend Charles Booker, who needs our help getting through the Democratic Primaries to take on Mitch McConnell in November: https://bookerforkentucky.com/ Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Well, folks, welcome to the Trillbillies. It is the week of June 18th, 2020. And let me tell you, we are going to be intentional about how we show up in this space from now on. We're going to come in here, We're going to show up as our best selves. Do you hear me, Tanya? I've not seen my best self in a decade. At least

in four months. I don't know her. I'm feeling pretty intentional today. I don't know about you guys, but I myself am feeling pretty intentional. For us, for me, a line came through the chat today that said I need to show up as an accomplice. Interesting. I'm not exactly sure what that means.

I've not heard that word yet, I don't think. You haven't heard the word accomplice? No, not in relation to allyship. Well, they say you're not supposed to be an ally. Fuck your ally push-ups. What are you talking about?

What's the new thing? You're supposed to be an accomplice. Oh. Oh. I see. Okay, so I stand corrected. I'm the one that's behind on the nomenclature. This is the shifting terrain of racial justice.

Well, the thing is, too, is that apparently I've been docked points for not reading White Guilt. Oh, God. The New York Times. The White Fragility. White Fragility, I'm sorry. I'm not. I'm apparently not sufficiently dedicated enough to the human resourcesization of human interaction

anymore. Interesting. Do you get demerits at work? Not yet. I've not got demerits yet. Since nobody does anything at non-profits, that will start just becoming the new workload.

It will just be the merits and demerits that you get from being a good or bad ally and that'll be your job and that's it yeah it's so yeah man it's just such a i don't know how y'all feel but it just feels like it's just such a a hollow way to like look at this moment i mean we got people getting shot down in the streets and all this kind of stuff and i don't know i just that just feels i don't know i just feel like the latest and greatest thing in racial justice is predicated on this idea of just letting whites feel better about

you know whatever. Unbelievable amount of white feelings boiled to the top right now. Well, speaking of white feelings, let's dive

on into this week in white feelings. I thought this would be a good time to sort of debrief or talk about

the events that have occurred in Letcher County the last few days. What happened, Terrence? I don't know. You're at the forefront of it, Tanya. You're in the front lines. Tell us what's going on. How am I in the front lines?

Give us your report. You went down to the fiscal court on Monday. What happened? Well, yeah, we had our rally Friday. Did we talk about that on the Sunday podcast? We did, yeah. We had our nice little rally Friday. And to keep things going, our judge executive was kind enough to post a bunch of insane Alex Jones shit on his Facebook page on Sunday night about us.

Totally batshit stuff. Not even your run-of-the-mill East Kentucky racist stuff. Just outrageous Alex Jones ranting. I have it in front of me right here um does one of y'all want to do the honors of um reading a few passages from it read it for us tom i'd i'd do a good terry if y'all want me yeah please do us a terry By the way, judge executive is a elected position here in the county. It's basically like you're sort of, I don't know what the equivalent would be, but it's like the head person in the county, like the mayor for the county, essentially. He's the highest ranking official in our county. Yeah, go there's a good way to put it he's over our fiscal

court right right let me close my eyes for a second i have to okay i got it this is a strange new world we live in today you have a small group of far leftists which let me just pause it there and say something. You couldn't make it four words, Tom. Here's what's interesting is, have y'all noticed that the phrase leftist, which was kind of just something that we called ourselves for the last couple years has sort of made it to the conservative world now oh yeah trump says it all the time every i mean i don't listen to him very much but i feel like every time i catch some trump thing he says left us right like used to they just call us liberals right and like i don't know if we've made enough noise to the point we've we've told them that's

actually pejorative but like they used to just like you know i'll tell you i'll tell you what it is um they started calling obama a socialist and then when i think bernie came on the scene they were like oh i guess there's a difference between like socialist and liberal but they still have to be able to put us all in the same camp and so they just call us all leftists yeah that's got to be it right so you think what happened is they figured out what socialism really is i just think it's interesting i think that they lump it into the same category to try to smear liberals with the socialist. The radical antifa. Right, yeah, yeah.

You have a small group of far leftists who want to stir the pot on racism that rarely exists anymore but in their minds. the pot on racism that rarely exists anymore but in their minds i like the imagery of stirring the pot on racism just getting a big cauldron and sprinkling racism pot sounds very witchy i'm into it yeah yeah then you have the majority of the people that have common sense that get pushed into a corner on these nonsense issues, like racial justice, apparently. You cannot erase history! Four exclamation points. Perhaps I didn't give that the gravity he intended. You cannot erase history!

Hitler tried doing that in Germany. Killed lots of people, destroyed lots of historical monuments, but in the end, history still stands. What the fuck is he even talking about? Truly. I wish I knew. In his office the next morning, I kept asking what he meant by his words and what were his intentions. I really wanted to know, and he doesn't know. wanted to know and he doesn't know well it's a stupid fucking comparison because go to germany you will not see one monument to the nazis like we have to the confederacy in every goddamn town

here not just the south but the midwest the northeast the southwest anywhere and also not that it matters but it was the opposite hitler was trying to revive the past he was literally trying to like build like a roman you know a sort of like i don't know anyways continue all these like like hyper racist like genocidal freaks like hitler and the planter class like worship like greek gods and weird shit like that. They were basically like Skull and Bone Society, but genocidal. Absolutely. Listen closely to what you hear and watch closely what you are seeing. There is an underlying agenda. Excuse me, he keeps putting the four exclamation points on me.

There is an underlying agenda. Wake up, America. How much more are the American people willing to sit quietly by and absorb? I believe in what our forefathers put in place, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. I believe the ones that are always pulling out the race card are the racists, I figure. Our little county is not a racist hotspot, that are always pulling out the race card or the racists, I figure. Our little county is not a racist hotspot, but you have people come in and have what they call a, quote,

peaceful protest. Why? Why? To stir up trouble. To alienate our police officers and to draw attention to what doesn't exist here destroying historical monuments quote whether you are government or the rioting public is wrong and in my opinion unlawful just my opinion not up for discussion just my opinion and then i love the passive aggressive feel free to block me if i have offended you i would say i apologize but i do not i do not well first of all first of all i want to point out one thing off the top that my man needs to apologize for immediately having a joint facebook account with your wife who cheated

that's my question who cheated i i think regina might have stepped out and got her face hard to see that got her facebook privileges revoked well in another way he's kind of dumb he could leverage that and just said oh that was my wife i thought he was going to that's what i fully expected him to say in his office i thought he was going to. That's what I fully expected him to say in his office. I thought he was going to blame it on his wife. He didn't. Oh, that would be some foul shit. I thought he was going to blame it on his wife.

I fully did. Regina was in the computer room last night for hours. I don't know what she was doing, guys. That wasn't me. All I heard was something about the race card something about the hitler i was just trying to go to bed i don't know man you know how women are tom tell us the total number of exclamation points will you four eight twelve 16, 20, 24. I'm sorry, there's three here.

At least 30. 23. I see 26. And what do you call dot, dot, dots? What are those called? Ellipses. Ellipses. And there's at least five of those, which means that, which communicates a certain level

of sass. Yeah, you're just trailing off and sort of letting the statements linger. Yeah. Which communicates a certain level of sass. Yeah, you're just trailing off and sort of letting the statements linger. Yeah. Oh, God. The weird thing about him is he's not, like, this is the weirdest thing. Like, he's a really meek guy. Like, he's not really, like, he is temperamentally very unlike the previous county judge. Not a confrontational guy at all, this guy is.

Yeah. Which would explain why he cried in his office the next morning. So, yeah. The man's got layers. Tanya and a few others went to his office on Monday morning. And so I wasn't there. You want to give us a little bit of rundown how that went, Tanya? Yeah.

So this was posted Sunday evening or is when we saw it. And even though, you know, I don't like to get up out of the bed before 10 a.m., the courthouse opens at 830. And we talked ourselves into meeting at the courthouse at 830 when it opened. I didn't even think he'd be there honestly but he sure was um and but none of his secretary wasn't there no one else was there so he had to come let us in his office so we went to his office door natasha rachel banged on the door and waved at him and he came to the door because he just saw her and then the rest of us uh you know floated into his office and you could tell he didn't know what was going on and uh natasha didn't wait a goddamn second she said buddy we got problems we got big problems with your facebook

post we gotta talk about it you probably saw y'all and said god damn he had to turn the lights on in the office for us and we're all sitting and standing around um and we ended up being there an hour and there was a lot of that hour was awkward silence waiting for him to respond to something and say anything the the thing he said the most his his refrain was well i think y'all for coming in he just kept kept trying to push y'all yeah he thought we were gonna get up and leave we just sit there like no that's not the end of this terry um but i i like i said i kept we there were several questions leveled at him. Like, do you have any idea what happened here Friday night?

Even the local paper said he knew 90% of the people there. 200 people who you were asking to vote for you not long ago stood on the county steps people still on the county steps and talked about the racism that they've experienced here in ledger county you're acting insane like this is the most insane thing and he was like well just my opinion that's what he stood by just just his opinion and so i kept yeah go ahead well i, so a big part of this that I found so fascinating is, so like they like to do in a lot of these like protests and stuff, they always level the accusation that the people that go there and attend them, which is what they said about the Friday protests, are from out of town, are not from here.

And the actual racists. Yes. um yeah and the actual racist yes yeah and we're the actual racist that like the weird the idea is so funny it's like we've got these antifa buses and we drive them around the countryside just packed full of racist actual racist and we visit town and like unload 200 antifa racists to uh peacefully rally not do anything bad but literally just peacefully around this is the weird thing it's just like he wanted it to be in his mind he wanted the rally to be this like he wanted it to be like sort of like unruly. And it was like the most peaceful assembly, you know, of people actually from here. But anyways, you guys told him all this, right? Yeah, we explained. We were like a fucking Pentecostal preacher gave a closing sermon and prayer.

My man, we had a candlelight vigil for a woman who we all the whole country knows now because she was murdered in her bed in louisville kentucky and so then what he finally because what he finally said he said well maybe what i did here oh but first i do want to say this he said what about looting? Y'all support looting and property damage? And of course, my instinct was to say, of course. But Natasha, like she just nipped it immediately. She said, that don't have nothing to do with nothing. That don't have nothing to do with what we're in here talking about.

It has nothing to do with here. At our rally, we did not loot. Yeah, we had a peaceful protest. Who in Wattsburg got looted? We had a rally. This is ridiculous. No, no. So to put this all in perspective, we talked about this on the Patreon episode on Sunday,

but you don't have to go back and listen to it to get all the details. The long and short of it is that we had a rally with about 200 people, and there were almost 20 cops there. So that's like, what what one cop for every 10 person 10 people yeah ridiculous it was packed to the fucking rap just like rafters with cops they were everywhere um so anyways that's the that's the sort of con there was no looting it was totally peaceful and but anyways he after you guys had told him all this uh or go ahead i'm sorry i think yeah you're building towards what he was uh saying well he continued to say this was he was just his

opinion and when i asked him what were your intentions and sharing that as the highest ranking official of this county what were you trying to portray to people by saying this and he and he would pause for a long time and think about it and then just say i was just sharing my opinion look he had no i was like you were inside this is inciting violence like this is i feel deep down like he's a fox news guy gotta be and he's just he's just been like down he has to be this just like fox news maniac he's just listening to fox news all day and he thinks he can be this like trump you know he's fallen into this trump step where he thinks he can do things trump does and rise as some right-wing fucking politician but he can't

we can't get to trump but we can't at least get to these little folks and if we're gonna go ahead sorry no yeah well he's just not a very charismatic guy like this is again this is the weird thing about him he's not very charismatic i mean like local local politicians around here they usually come in either two flavors it's one of these two things they're either corrupt as fuck which is what our last county judge executive was and often charismatic yeah and and he stole the literally stole the election and i think was that 2006 or 2008 whenever that was to get in and like was the kind of just puppet and stooge for the people who wanted to bring the prison here and then when that fell through i think that was his that kind of swept the oil

and gas yeah that swept the rug out from under him. And so you've got those kinds. And then you've got guys like Terry Adams who, people's main demands around here, they want two things. They want their roads paved with gravel and they want culverts put for the stream in front of their house. Then, like, you call your magistrate, and that's, like, your interaction with politicians usually. It's like, buddy, I need the road paved. You know what I mean? They make about $70,000 a year just to basically put culverts in and gravel your road, your driveway.

100% of our demands is erosion control. We just want the water dealt with for god's sake the place is true good controlling the water it is it is falling in a rainforest by man yeah it's falling apart all around us just death by a thousand cuts from strip mining it's just like that's the function of a politician around here really just to hold shit together with like popsicle sticks and glue god damn when you take just a survey of political economy just an inventory it really all does come back to the water it does just every bit of it every bit of whether it's coming out of the sky or gosh yep that's a good call tanya um but anyway so okay sorry let me just

put a bow on this let me just put a bow on this he he finally even though we had said multiple times obviously you you're so he said there is no not only no racism he asserted to us multiple times there was no discrimination in let lecture county none and then he finally he started crying natasha kept standing up on him and yelling at him and he started tearing up and said i have black friends classic he pulled the he pulled the i have black friends he did the ally push you don. You don't have anybody. You don't have people. When we're picking on the ally-ship,

we're not really picking on ally-ship. I mean, of course, everybody, you know, I mean, that's a given. What we're talking about is there's like only three feet of difference between I have black friends and the ally push-up. That's exactly the point I'm making, yes. Yeah.

Yeah. So get this. So Natasha falls into the trap, and she says, oh, yeah, who? Who? And he says, Tyrone. And she... And I swear to God, Natasha says... Who, for context?

Natasha says... Sorry, go ahead. She says, honey, Tyrone ain't your friend i'll tell you that right now i've been in contact with tyrone and he ain't your friend he's very upset with what you posted she literally drug the fucking police chief into it to let him know the police chief hated his stupid that's because Tyrone also got himself into trouble a few years ago posting some bullshit on Facebook. It's just like a cycle. Yeah.

Here's the thing, too. It's funny you say that because I sent this to my cousin to look at the Facebook post and everything that was going on with Terry, and he goes, you remember what they called Tyrone's dad like literally everybody in the county called tyrone's dad growing up and he called him rob like everybody called him that you know it's like and you're going to sit there and say with a straight face that there's no discrimination no nothing when like that was like right like every i don't know well it's just preposterous patently fucking

stupid on its face yeah and and also we have a literal confederate monument in our county i mean it's literally like the county pays for on the state line yeah yeah and when our only gun store closed to get what they thought would be to get them business, they put up a Muslim free zone sign. Oh, I forgot about that. That was crazy. We were like, are you insane? Are you completely insane? Like, there are just so many.

I mean, obviously, there's different layers of racism, but there are so many just blatant obvious just signals all over town of racism well I mean it's really I mean it's a point we've made a lot of times on this show but it really just shows you that like there's no such thing as local politics or local journalism really anymore everybody just takes their cues from what they see on Fox News or CNN or whatever's going on on the national scene and they try to make it apply to small town life and that's how we've had these

dust-ups. Every five years we have like when it was Ferguson and Baltimore, we had one of these dust-ups. Now with all this shit going on, we've got another dust-up. The way people respond to it is what they've been putting into their fucking brain non-stop around the clock for the last seven or eight years you know what i mean and the battle lines are drawn that way well that's honestly how uh terry tried to pull himself

out of it he said that the mistake he made here the only mistake he's admitted to was maybe intertwining, I believe is what he said, national issues that he doesn't agree with, national problems he doesn't agree with. Yeah, that's our problem too, buddy. We've got people being slaughtered all over the country. But he was talking about, of course, property damage and looting, national things he doesn't agree with and and local issues he shouldn't have intertwined those what he what he did is he gave the frankfurt speech at home that's exactly what it did that's exactly what it did but you know it's not it's not just conservative judges here either i mean it's also the liberal NGO class that does the whole, like, it's weird, we never had racism here.

Every Martin Luther King Day programming. And who, mind you, like, all the older, more affluent people that sort of dominate that class are the ones that, like, decide who the speakers and what the programming is going to be and all that. And also, if you want to talk hogging spaces or taking up air like these people do that like you don't really like do you remember the uh the jim ward oh my martin luther king day speech uh one that will go down in history i I believe he quoted Ezra Pound. Yeah. And... He got up there, fumbled in his fucking dad britches.

You know, he's got the big sag in the ass. Reached back there, took out a piece of paper, and he said... He read an Ezra Pound... I swear the man wasn't on stage 30 seconds. He read an Ezra Pound quote that was just like, who, by the way, is a horrible anti-Semite, but also just had no applicability in the situation. And then he just said,

I believe Martin Luther King would agree with that, and if we live by words like this, we'd all be better for it. Thank you. And he just walked off. God damn, man. So, all right. So, what he did was, so yes, so he went through, he told Tanya and them, I might have mixed some things up with the national and the local.

And then he followed it up with a follow-up post on facebook to be fair he printed a correction he printed a correction in editor's notes but i'd like to point out before we hear it it has since been deleted oh really yeah he deleted it so you're hearing it here we've captured it here for posterity yeah not to mention right after we left his office we sent a camera crew in and the local uh paper went in for a statement we were his whole goddamn day he had six irate people a cameraman and a local newspaper reporter all in his office before 10 a.m that's that's not the kind of day you want to have when you're a small town on a monday yeah no this was posted 15 minutes ago by terry and regina adams apparently my post has stirred up mixed emotion in letcher county

Apparently my post has stirred up mixed emotion in Letcher County. I may not be as connected to the entire population of our county as I once thought. I do not condone discrimination in any fashion in our county and did not think it existed. That's great. I don't condone it. And furthermore, I didn't think it existed. Dude, he's kind of doing the Chris Hayes thing. Like, why is this happening?

I just was born today. He's hedging hard. We are all resident of Letcher County. I will admit that I make mistakes in interwinding local issues with nationalism. A mistake that I made, and for that I apologize. That's what he apologized for. I don't want anyone to feel uncomfortable about coming to see me. I am here to serve everyone.

Liked by Janet Ratliff and ten others. So the correction didn't get as much fanfare as the first one it never does no it did it did not and it ended up you know it did not survive history all right so i'm i'm trying to contextualize this in a larger sort of national context. Tom, can you turn your headphones down slightly? I keep hearing myself. Or one of you. I guess probably Tom. I think I'm on a delay again.

My headphones are down to one. If I turn it down anymore, I can't hear you. Okay, I'm sorry. You got your own reverb, buddy. Don't blame us. All right. All right. So, look.

Okay. So, yeah. So, no, we had this rally in Whitesburg in Letcher County on Friday. And then this was the kind of fallout because, you know, big Terry Adams here watched some fox news and thought that the antifa blm racist terrorists were were burning down the monuments in the county like hitler i also think we should point out that 20 other east kentucky towns held rallies like this and i haven't heard of any fallout like this no no there's there hasn't and

i've also not heard of any other of these rallies having 20 fucking cops on hand no no i was at four of them and they didn't which is interesting because wattsburg's supposed to be the woke town in eastern kentucky you know what i mean oh it's so funny that that's the perception when it's like not that in any way not even remotely um so but you know to put it in context it is a kind of fascinating sort of sociological look at uh what happens when um you know you have people sort have people feeding off of their perceptions of what something is that is fed entirely by the media and these other sources. And I experienced this in 2016 when we had a very, very similar experience

when someone put a Black Lives Matter sign in their window and our police chief Tyrone Fields made a Facebook post about it essentially singling this individual out which was you know highly fucking not okay

you cannot single out one of your fucking like constituents on Facebook. Constituents. Protected and serving. Right, but I talked to him about it. I had to sort of diffuse the situation, and I talked to him about it. There was a sit-down.

There was a sit-down. There was the great Pepsi-Cola sit-down in front of the city hall, in which I had to get to the bottom of this and get him to stand down. in front of the city hall in which i had to like get to the bottom of this and get him to stand down uh and it was fascinating because like like he quite literally thought that black lives matter was a terrorist organization i'm not even i mean this also kind of shows the progress that has been made just in those four years like which is interesting which is interesting because we're talking obama era black lives matter is a domestic terrorist group was like a rallying call for police all over the country yeah like he didn't

pick that up from he's not a fox news guy you know what i mean that happened inside a certain institution that he works in yeah yeah you're right that's's a good point. But this event was very similar to that. And so it played out at the fiscal court office when Tanya and them went in on Monday morning. But then they had a fiscal court meeting that night. And so I went to it and Tanya spoke at it. And this was the first one I've been to with the new court. Same. So I didn't recognize anybody on the court anymore,

except Terry. Terry's the only one from the old court. Yeah. So just for who we're missing now, Wayne Fleming's no longer there. Oh, no. Bobby Howard, the Silver Fox, is no longer there. Yeah, Trubilly's legend, Wayne Fleming is no longer there. Bobby Howard, the Silver Fox, is no longer there. True Billy's legend, Wayne Fleming, no longer with us on the fiscal court anyways.

Truly devastating. We need to get him on here. Now that he's unencumbered with his position. It was fascinating. It was a truly fascinating event um for several reasons um the first is that uh he essentially opened he got the first word in and he essentially opened it up with like um basically everything he said in his mea culpa Facebook post. I'm intertwined issues. I may not have known the county as well as I thought.

I'm sorry, all this. Essentially his takeaway. He did not say I'm sorry. I'm an Antifa judge too. He has not said he's sorry for what he did. He said he apologizes for intertwining. That's what I was getting at yes he did apologize for that for the all for the misunderstanding yeah what i would have loved to have seen him

seen him do like a pascal's wager thing and the nwo theme music comes on he pulls out an anti-fascist like the red and black flag bandana puts it on says hey i'm here i'm your judge too antifa that would have been awesome instead what he walked away with was a discrimination exists in leicester county not that it's good or that it's bad just that it exists and b um never post on facebook that was his that was his takeaway listen if we could get most people to admit discrimination exists and to commit to not posting would be off to the races i guess guess you're right. That's a good... It's not the worst of it.

Yeah, you're not wrong, honestly. You're not wrong. Fight the urge to weigh in. We've said it many times. We have. But he... Shit. But this was his takeaway

after multiple people in the community, people of color in the community got up there and talked about their experiences with racism and discrimination and everything um and he still just yeah he still that was his takeaway it was very fascinating because it was very much like a struggle session um essentially people were just uh sort like, you know, lashing him. It was cathartic. I found it highly entertaining. I was entertained from start to finish.

If you had a camera on me, I would have had a shit-eating grin on my face the whole time. You may have had a camera on you the whole time. We haven't seen the local government government channel footage yet we don't know i'd like to get my hands on that there were two two amazing parts both of them had to do with tanya um the first is that tanya was like addressing the board and it was fascinating it was like a teacher getting on to her students because every single one she was like i didn't see any of you there at the protest not a single elected official in this county was at the protest and there was like two seconds of silence and one of them goes well i was out of town am i wrong were any of you there and then i let him i let him answer they just stared at me until

the one guy said well i was out of town you could tell he you could tell he was like shoo we got out of that he was thinking on his face he's like he's probably sold the rest of them now i don't know where the rest of y'all were at well that was actually the best part for me not that part but when they all were forced to throw terry right under the bus that was the best that was glorious that was the best part it was glorious one at a time they had to go down the line and say no i did not support what he said i would never support that i don't um and then the second part that i'm referring to is that tanya referenced the fact that there was 20 cops downtown it made the whole event feel far more unsafe than it should be and um you know it was a peaceful protest there's no fucking need

for 20 goddamn armed police officers. It was just completely uncalled for and an overreaction. That's what I said. And I thought it was fine, but then a police chief stood up and gave some fucking ham-fisted rationale for it that made no sense. But the best part was when our other elected sheriff, Mickey Stines, rolled off the podium and said, I would die for you.

Ma'am, you do not know me, but I would die for you. Ma'am, ma'am, ma'am. He said, what's your name? What's your name, girl? I would die for you and your family. I wanted to say, please do, sir. Chop your head off right now, please.

In this court off yourself more cops should die for people truly please i'm begging you to i am begging you to end it all right now in this courtroom it was fascinating the whole fucking you could have heard a pin drop it was so fucking awkward it was the most awkward thing i've ever seen everybody was like what the fuck i'll tell you what well what's crazier about that like he was screaming his voice was cracking he was shaking he was grandstanding was he not oh yeah he was very uh over a little girl at a podium saying why were there so many cops in town he flipped his shit that's all it took to set him off these people do not deserve weapons that's all it took to send this man into a fucking tizzy and then you know what's fucking crazy three of my friends now have been interviewed by local

reporters about it and all of them were asked what they what they thought about that moment that tense moment between me and uh the sheriff like they're trying to dig in on this and all of them were like yeah he like was in his fields and really overreacted that was crazy very awkward yeah i'm just imagining mickey stein's getting out of his cruiser and a purple mist comes out and Prince's I Will Die For You starts playing as he's writing traffic tickets. Well, that was a fascinating look into the

cop mindset. Fragile. Fragile. This goes to back what I was saying last week that it is the thin that is the thin blue blue line mindset that is the i would die for you i am external to society i i'm the protectors of the realm but like i mean this is also the same way that we saw someone crying over their fucking McMuffin being late for a couple of minutes. You know what I mean?

That's how fragile we are. Extremely maladjusted people gravitate toward this in mass. I thought it was possible because there were only... We were sitting in the very back of the room, back row Baptist, and the only people facing us, like looking at us the whole

time was the court which are all sitting low like the fiscal court but he's sitting high up on a podium facing us so i think it's possible he was the only person in the courtroom who saw that michelle and i did not stand for the pledge of allegiance we were the only ones in the room who did not stand for the pledge of allegiance wow we didn't even think about it and i think maybe he saw that and was still harboring anger over that incredible it's possible we don't know questionable move questionable move well i do know this i do know this people that weren't the citizens of Letcher County that couldn't make it out to the fiscal courtroom had some opinions that they called into the local newspaper and voiced. God, I'm not going to read any, are you? Oh, no.

I'd rather have Confederate flags up in Wattsburg than gay pride flags I did not understand that what say that again I'd rather have confederate flags up in Wattsburg than gay pride flags oh my god here's an interesting take

I just wanted to say goodbye to the University of Kentucky all lives matter not just blacks. Support the white people, too. You've messed that ball team up down there, and I'll never watch it again. That was crazy. That's the craziest one. Are you in Speak Your Peace now?

Oh, my God. People want to take Confederate monuments down, huh? Well, why don't they take down the satanic monuments in this country? What does Satan represent? Oppression. Take it down everything the Confederate, take it down everything the Confederate Army

fought for. Let's just take up all the tombstones of our forefathers and toss them in the trash too. Yes, black lives matter, but you can kiss this white man's ass from behind for what you're doing god bless america and if the south little one would have had it made oh my god no it's just like no hey hey hey hey i didn't even know we had racism in this county exactly exactly here's the thing here's the thing i i'll even admit to this i had no idea how pervasive lost cause ism was in eastern kentucky like i knew it was a thing but i thought mostly

that just like the fucking confederate flag shit was just like an aesthetic choice no no these people really believe the lost Cause myth, like, wholesale. Well, it's pretty fascinating, because Kentucky wasn't one of those states like Alabama. Well, shit, it definitely was. It had segregation up until, like, the 1970s or something. But, like, I guess what I mean is that... Kentucky was only bested by Mississippi in abolishing slavery.

Yeah. Like, only Mississippi, only Mississippi abolished it later. It's this very weird dichotomy now. I don't know. I wasn't alive 50 or 60 years ago, but I have to assume that racism was pretty widely accepted in society in the sense that like most people proudly not most people but a great deal of people proudly viewed themselves as racist whereas now it's like a very small minority of people who proudly view themselves as racist and then people who are

racist but who maintain that they're not and don't want to think that they are. You know what I mean? They are, they are, they, yeah, you're right. They are the, the Madisonian intellectual, part of the intellectual tradition of like lost cause-ism. I guess so, yeah. Can someone explain to me? I'm sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead. No, I wanted you to read the one right under that.

That one was pretty funny. Can someone explain to me how a certain jail inmate... Wait, hold on a second. The one right underneath it. Maybe they came in a different order. It says, please pray. Oh, okay. Please pray for our deputy county judge.

I know that having a BLM protest in Weisberg has been very uncomfortable for him. There were a lot of really good figure pieces this week. There was. Tom, read the one that says, when you destroy your history. That's what I was getting to. When you

destroy your history, you forget it and then you'll repeat it. How long will it be before they go out and take George Washington, Thomas Jefferson off of Mount Rushmore? Hey. I know. It'd be the craziest damn thing, wouldn't it? What is the history

that you would repeat by removing them? Would you, like, found America again? Arguably crossed the Delaware, cut down a cherry tree. Like, what? What's the history? It's very bizarre. Anyways, is there anything else from that meeting?

I feel like there was one other thing that I wanted to tease out from it. I mean, they all threw him under the bus. That was pretty good. They all threw him under the bus. That was pretty good. They all threw him under the bus, absolutely. I mean, Angie Hatton, the only elected official, she's our state rep, and she's the only one who came to the rally. So she was there to say that the rally was good and lay her hands on it, you know.

Charles Booker was there. Yeah. Well, yeah, Charles Booker, our lay her hands on it, you know. Charles Booker was there. Yeah. Well, yeah, Charles Booker. Our only elected official, personally, was her. But, yeah, Charles Booker came and spoke and was incredible and awesome the whole day. Everybody loved him. And a bunch of people were like, I didn't even know he was running. So, hopefully, now he gets more votes locally.

We basically threw a rally for Charles Booker, candidate against Mitch McConnell. Yeah. That's what we did. But anyway. I don't know. It was. Yeah, it was definitely fucking bizarre. But what's even crazier, I think, is that have you seen the video that Mountaintop News, like the local news people put out about it? No.

They put out like a 10-minute video, 8 or 10-minute video, and the edit makes him look like an even bigger, incredible dumbass. The edit is so masterfully against Terry Adams. It's incredible. I mean, literally, they edit it to where someone's railing him, and then it cuts to him, and he says, Well, the cats can't be put back in the bag, so to speak. That's Terrence's job to fuck up the idioms. But honestly, one of my favorite Speak Your Pieces was saying, it starts out, I don't have it in front of me, but it starts out, Terry Adams never was one to brag on.

It's like the best East Kentucky cut, just fucking cut you to the core. They never were one to brag on. But now, it's like I don't even know what it went on to say, but shit. There were multiple people in the speaker piece that called for his resignation oh yeah well it was it was that's why it was so fascinating it's like he was in trouble but at no point did he ever realize what he was in trouble for that was that was what that was so fascinating about it it was just like it's truly lost on him and we told him over and over and over again,

you truly cannot lead this horse to water. He is a complete fucking idiot. Well, again, this is the thing that I was kind of trying to say at the beginning of this. Eastern Kentucky politics are notoriously corrupt. And so that means that a lot of our politicians are just plain stupid. They're just dumb people like literally dumb people and and so like that's that's terry adams you know that's a lot of them

yes so they don't do anything they just respond to calls from people who need like a bin for their trash can so the bear doesn't get into it or the road which. Which also, I'll be honest with you, being dumb has its advantages, particularly when you eventually get indicted. You have some plausible deniability that you knew what was going on, that you were an active agent in your corruption. So, not the worst strategy.

I mean, it's really not to say lightly because this is like politics across the board in small-town America, and big cities probably, too. I don't fucking know, but it's not just here. Like, the systemic failing upward of white dudes is truly, it's fascinating. It's terrifying. It's like, these people have done literally nothing, never not one thing, to earn the credibility or votes that they've received,

and yet they are running entire city, county budgets. I don't even think these people can read a budget. Oh, yeah. I mean, they don't have to. I mean, it's all industry. You know what I mean? Yeah, their secretaries do everything. Remember the budget meeting we went to when they were trying to pass the bathroom ordinance?

Where it was clear the one woman in the room had to, like, anytime there was an actual, factual question, she had to answer it. About the budget. None of the men in the room who were actually elected had any idea what was answer it about the budget no no none of the men in the room who were actually elected had any idea what was going on with the budget well they're all dumb because they they don't have to be anything else you know what i mean like when you've got the sort of overwhelming power of industry at your back you can just uh you know, I don't know. You just, it's advantageous for you to have people like that in office. Like Tom says, it gives you liability, plausible deniability, but it also gives you just an easy conduit for social control.

And so, like, it's really incredible. and so like it's really incredible i have one thing on my mind and it's these people wanting to get rid of cops we didn't have them in letcher county hell i couldn't sleep at night because we'd be having people killed we already have to put our lights out everywhere so we can see what the drug addicts and thieves are doing and how close they get to our homes at night i think we need more cops not less thank you god bless yeah you know this is pretty interesting there was a speak your peace and this is the thing this is another thing that terry adams got very very wrong is he calls like this idea that he was intermingling national issues with local issues, and that was his mistake.

And so he was wrong on several levels with that. Not only was he wrong to say that there's no discrimination here, but all of them are wrong to say that there's no police brutality here. I mean, I don't know if you guys saw it, but there was a speaker piece in in the newspaper this week about uh police brutality in jenkins and there were jenkins cops at our fucking rally and this speaker piece was basically like the jenkins cops are just as bad as the kentucky state troopers like they you know they routinely harass and surveil people and beat them up and

and again like tom and i we've talked about this before but we were working on a story about this this exact same thing was going on in the 70s like this this is what cops do it is there it and like i said there's two kinds of cops really there's the one that's like who thinks he's the good guy the good sheriff who's running out the bad guys who says i will die for you i will die for you and your family and then the other ones who are just like actual fascists who need to control people and beat them up and murder them and everything it's just like they're again there's those two neither of them are good neither there's no good cop in that but they all because they all serve the same purpose but in their mind it's how they sort of like rationalize what they do when in reality all those things that he says are national issues are actually happening here

just like they're happening everywhere else i found out through all this that a black man has died in our jail in lecture county jail i know his daughter has been in my sex ed classes i think she's in college now but she's like a teenager or 20 years old her dad has there's been people die in custody oh many many in hazard like that's well known but I had never heard of this in Letcher County yeah yeah no it's and now they have now our jail has uh its first COVID cases well this is the fascinating thing about people I mean like this small town stuff is that like a lot of these actors, whether it's Terry Adams or Mickey Steins, the sheriff or the jailer,

they are operating in systems that have a certain logic to them. And that logic sort of dehumanizes people. And it treats those people in that get locked into them as sort of dehumanizes people and it treats those people in that get locked into them as sort of subhuman and um and so it it doesn't matter how nice you are how good a guy you are how good of a family man you are people know you in the community or whatever it's like the system itself is designed to uh you know maim and in many cases kill. And so it's just, there's no way that even the nicest people administering those things are going to be able to keep a lid on that.

At certain points, it's going to boil over into, you know, atrocity and violence, regardless of who's fucking running it, because that's just the logic of the system yeah you're still just uh an agent whether wittingly or unwittingly in this sort of necro politics and i think the other thing too about that is something i noticed just growing up where i grew up and and dispatching at the fire department, which brings you into proximity with the whole police culture and stuff, is in the early 2000s, every police officer I knew came up with this word that they would call people they would arrest on drug offenses,

like the people that they would have to, or not have to, but chose to go and arrest time and time again for possession or whatever it was it was hybrid and like i heard people that in this cop culture they they said they called these people hybrids like sort of a dehumanizing term obviously but two they like when they would see an overdose they would say well that's an that's an add and you say what's an add they said just another dead doper it's like they just treated these people like their addiction was punitive you know what i mean and i think that's like the primary like sort of critique of cop culture when you're talking about addiction and stuff but what's

so strange about that is when you presented an alternative which is not a perfect alternative by any stretch i'm not like endorsing this or whatever because it still falls under the purview of all this culture but when drug court came into vogue in eastern kentucky as a way to sort of you know deal with addiction or whatever it was tremendously successful and like those terms started going away a little bit a little bit so just i say that to say that like you know in the in the here and now i'm not talking about like what we want out of our project ultimately but in the here and now like there aren't just simple modest reforms you could make that end a lot of that dehumanizing stuff or curb a lot of that dehumanizing stuff that ends up better for you know anybody that's you know unbelievable

opportunity for harm reduction that these people just literally um make it sound like it's some left-wing crazy thing. Just ridiculous. Oh, yeah. I mean, the idea, I mean, when you've got a region that's just, I mean, so absolutely ravaged by, you know, the opioid epidemic, the idea that cops aren't out there, like, yeah, beating them in the most dehumanized fashion you know what i mean like just brutalizing them is just preposterous like we know how

they think about addicts and how they treat them and and the thing is is that addicts don't get a voice and so that's the thing like the addicts aren't going to be the ones who are going to be able to go to the fiscal court meeting and tell Terry Adams about all this. It's like those people are completely pushed to the margins of society and kept in the prisons and the jails. And oftentimes what happens to them is they do this sort of self-loathing, self-flagellation thing, if they're lucky enough to even break that cycle of addiction, where they kind of say, well, no, when I was up there being a knucklehead mickey steins was nice to me and all this kind of stuff and so they think that like

it sort of legitimizes like this horrible brutal system that consists of disproportionate amounts of like sociopaths that's what like the mickey steins character is good for right to like sort of like well there's that one guy that was like nice to me so i guess you know that like there's something to this or they still have a role in society or whatever well yeah i mean there's no societal examination of addiction you know what i mean like a sociological examination of it it's all your individual failings it's like maybe it's the fact that i don't know we live in a neoliberal hellscape where there's no fucking jobs left there's no hope or anything like yeah no hope no cash no jobs but so and on top of this you got like

the Sackler family dumping four million pills in West Virginia towns of 300 people and that kind of shit it's you know so you get these paternalistic these sort of networks of paternalism where you're exactly right Tom where like the cops the bad cops uh that i was the broken windows type cops um were the ones that will brutalize them and then the thin blue line cops are the ones that will sort of uh rehabilitate them and be like oh see like i'm the one to put you right back on track you know what i mean i would die for you yeah yeah i yeah well what about your six boys that beat the hell out of me when i was fucking you know that you that you won't hold to account that you won't say anything to you won't do anything about no

no i mean i was really shocked that nothing was brought up at that meeting about abolishing the police i i thought that maybe tyrone or somebody would make a side comment about it or something, about some of the signs that were there, because apparently that was very scandalous. I mean, I knew it was going to be. Apparently, I didn't. Even Angie was like, there were only a few bad signs in the whole place, and you know that was ours. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, I knew it was going to be because, like, this is, I mean, a poll came out today.

I mean, defunding the police is popular among 11% of Americans, which is a lot better than it used to be, probably. That's a great starting place. But 11%? 11%? That's pitiful. 11%, yeah, yeah. 11%. That's pitiful. Yeah, yeah.

But no, people have got this drilled into their minds that like all of it's the same. It's the same reason that like, you know, ice, ice is only what, 15 years old and people already can can't have a hard time seeing a future without ice. Without ice. Fucking police have been around forever. It's like that's a hard thing for you know people to get around it's just a it's just a permanent feature of their landscape um yeah us homeland security those type of things that haven't been around that that's yeah we already we already think they're like venerated institutions and we are literally twice as old as all of those agents yeah yeah um no but i don't know i mean the thing is is like uh

you still i mean like i don't know you gotta start somewhere and rallies are a good place to start them um and you know they're a good place for signs like that and for messages like that maybe the vast majority of people may see it and get very like i said i told you someone told me straight up that i was at the wrong protest because of my sign so it's like i mean but i kind of expected that like that's the uh you should have looked at and said i'm from the uh the new mexico chapter of antifa just coming to keep my eye on things. But, I mean, but, you know, it's, I guess we're, we gotta start somewhere. We gotta start sometime. What better time than now? Or what's that Rage Against the Machine lyric?

All hell can't stop us now. Dears, speak your peace. If they're going to go through with this big defund the police plan, how about starting with the DEA? That's the Drug Enforcement Administration cutting out half of its budgeting officers. The DEA has done nothing but stop doctors from doing their jobs and making cancer victims suffer. Let's start the defunding with them right now.

It's like, hey, man, I agree. Narcs be gone. You're not wrong, buddy. You're not wrong. All right. Tonya, you probably got to go, right? We're keeping you longer than you need to. I really, really wanted to do the Gail and Brett this week.

The conversation. Well, let's do it. You want to do it? We can knock it out. Let's do it. You want to knock it out? Let's knock it out. All right, let's fucking knock it out.

I'm really glad that you're into it. I thought that you wouldn't be. Not only do I have something else to do, I have Chinese food waiting for me. But you're doing this with your friends look at this truly of the people um well so while y'all are bringing that up or wait you know why not we'll uh it's so hard to get it just right because it's behind the fucking paywall you gotta open up the incognito private mode maybe um no i usually just kind of redo it and then hit the x do i need to screenshot

it and send it to you no i think i just got it yeah i did it it worked all right so this is let me do that too then maybe perhaps the fifth or sixth entry in our ongoing series of the New York Times column known as The Conversation, featuring our good friends, our good old pals, Brett Stevens and Gail Collins. Let's give it up for Brett and Gail. We got them right here on the show with us today um so what you're going to be talking about today is what should be done about the police from abolition to reinforcement there are a lot of different ways to think through the problem

um so let's see what you got brett stevens action hi gal question i never thought i'd ask should we abolish the police brett i kind of think that's stacking the dick should we reform the police set standards, totally rethink their role. I'm good to go anywhere except the A word. I had a nickel for every time I said that to somebody. Look, I'll go

anywhere but the A word. I'll do anything you want except for the A word. Nothing more than a pinky over here. Yeah, you be careful around my A word. I was struck by an op-ed by Mary and Cobb that we ran this week that went all the way to the A word. It was called... All the way?

Yes. Fourth base. We was called... All the way? Yes. Fourth base? We mean literally abolish the police. Now, personally, I think the idea's nuts. The world is filled with a lot of terrible people who do terrible things, and wouldn't it be a better place if, you know, if only they met with a social worker twice a week. And I'm not just talking about the president, either.

Hey! But what I mainly found interesting about the piece is that it represents a growing constituency of activists and voters who think that reform isn't enough, that another recommendation-making blue-ribbon commission on police violence won't accomplish anything, and that policing in America is so rotten and racist that it needs to be gotten rid of root and branch. Well, one could argue that the chances of getting very serious major league radical reform are a whole lot better if the other side thinks the alternative is abolition. Dare I say that Gail has taken on Terrence's take on incrementalism? Incrementalism. She's doing it. Gail's doing it.

Let's give Gail credit where it's due here. You've got to hold a gun to their head somehow. Gail understands it. Hey, if you're going to get them to go near the A word, you've got to hold a... I'm sorry. You've got to intro a pinky. I guess radicalism might induce the police to make some long-resisted changes,

especially when it comes to police unions' protection. I guess radicalism might induce the police to make some long-resisted changes, especially when it comes to police unions protecting bad cops from discipline and dismissal the other possibilities that abolish the police radicalism gives donald j trump a terrific foil to run against in the fall he loves it man he like that his that is his go-to every fucking time dollars to fucking donuts he's gonna vote for donald trump well now joe biden has already said he isn't in favor of defunding or abolishing the police trump may try to pin it on him anyway but one advantage of having biden at the top of the ticket is that almost nobody imagines him doing anything dramatic

this is interesting this is very interesting because when i read this this week it was literally like the first time i'd read joe biden's name and like him in he entered my brain for the first time in like two weeks like where the fuck is joe is m i fucking a can you imagine the conversations they're having right now about how it's probably best he stay out of it. Oh, they are literally trying to preserve every cognitive function he has and keep his brain cells in reserve. He did. I was on. That's why they don't have him out there.

Yeah, they can't have him out there because he'll expend all of his energy. Listen, I don't know if I was on Facebook or something, but I saw it was a YouTube ad. And Biden popped up. Man, I'm serious. I mean, I hate to keep beating that drum because it's well-trodden territory. But this motherfucker was struggling to read off a teleprompter. It was bad. I was like, God damn, that's bad.

And this is like an ad where you get unlimited amount of takes to get it right you know what i mean and you know that was the best yeah that was the best one they came up with that if that son of a bitch gets covid he is dead as a doornail he's toast absolutely i mean if he gets a sniff he's done for they might be don well trump too by the way i'm i'm i'm calling this as of june 18th to 20 27 15 p.m if they held the election tomorrow that motherfucker would win like trump is is uh i'm basing this exclusively off speak your piece exclusively off speak your piece i i have noticed a discernible shift in speak your piece there's been less pro-trump ones and i've seen multiple ones that are like i'm not getting okie doked again i'm not voting

for him again i'm just like it's interesting i just think it's interesting anyways continue to adapt a line from george w bush it's the soft benefit of low expectations nevertheless there's a lot that needs doing particularly when it comes to the blue wall that shields officers who behave badly cops almost always stick up for other cops no matter how bad things get making citizen complaint records public would be a good first step toward attacking that here's what's so amazing to me like like gail gail collins even gets like just the rudimentary argument against police you know what i mean in a way that like people like still do gymnastics to make arguments for good idea and it's true and it's true that there are a lot of jobs cops do that could be performed by others

damn gal for instance people are wondering whether policing the schools couldn't be done better by specifically trained civilians you think how about you what would your reform agenda be brett i'd definitely get the police out of social work and police shouldn't need to be called when your neighbor's halloween party gets too loud as for getting the police out of schools fine by me provided the specially trained civilians you mentioned are competent to deal with an emergency like a school shooting you've just given me a little opening to point out that the best thing we can do for public safety on all fronts is a nationwide gun law that keeps weapons out of the hands of anyone who hasn't passed a shooting skills test and government vetting. We know how good the government is at vetting.

I just want to say one thing before we get too far down the road. One million percent, Brett Stevens, has called the cops on a neighbor's halloween party absolutely 100 well i this is weird though the best thing we can do for public safety on all fronts is a nationwide gun law that oh wait anyways i'm sorry the thing thing... Go on, Brett, continue. Sure, except that the more people there who are... Sure, except that the more people there who call to abolish the police, the likelier many others are to go and buy a gun. A few years ago, I wrote a column

calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment. The whole idea is predicated on a robust police force that keeps our streets safe. Now I'm having second thoughts about that column. Brett? Stick with us. Wait, wait, wait. Before we go further, Brett's idea for gun control was just give the cops as many guns as possible.

And now he's thinking it's a big oopsie-doo. Robust police force. What are we dealing with now, I'd like to know. They all have tanks. Skip down here. Let's skip because Brett's answer here is so fucking boring it makes me grate my teeth. He does say the great majority of police officers are hard-working brave public spirited working class men and women of every race and ethnicity um read that last part there tom says and while the police

and while the police obviously need to reform not least so that they are not viewed with fear and distrust by communities they're meant to serve nobody's going to be well served if their budgets are slashed and reputation smeared just because they're in blue there are that that's what it is that's what it is it's the it's their their their valor color choice coming for their valor there are a lot of reasons for new york's murder rate plummeting one very big one is the aging of the population another is the end of the crack epidemic god damn gail but a great commissioner can make a huge difference i knew one a good friend who used to say that the most important job of a police force is keeping apart people who hate each other. You mean like Melania and Donald?

I'm sorry, go on. Meanwhile, it's interesting to see how the latest crisis has got the sports community embracing the idea of taking a knee. I think that's great. community embracing the idea of taking a knee. I think that's great. Something that was so wildly controversial is now looking like a useful nonviolent protest. I've always defended the right of athletes or hell, anyone else to take a knee. It's a free country, and I generally admire anyone who takes an unpopular stand or knee out of deeply held belief.

Except for people who say abolish the police. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a bridge too far. The question is whether the knee taken is truly sincere. There seems to be, seems to me, something forced or gestural about it now. More about social posture than personal conviction. And I wonder what it will mean for our politics as a whole. If Isaac Newton were a pundit today, God, it's so fucking boring. personal conviction and i wonder what it'll mean for our politics as a whole if isaac newton were

a pundit today god it's so fucking boring he might say that every action in american politics has an equal and opposite overreaction god what a well it's sort of what a ham this guy is huh sort of the way things are supposed to work right some people take an unpopular public stance to call attention to a terrible social problem they suffer the consequences for a while but they eventually convince many many others of the righteousness of their cause then their colleagues feel compelled to join in because otherwise they might lose popularity that's a fair point in the meantime gail corona's viruses seem to be rising in the Sunbelt states. Do you think the country's ready for a second lockdown?

Lord, that would be awful. Shocking that so many governors are afraid of telling their people to put on masks and make some sacrifices now for the long-term common good. Of course, it's all about Donald Trump. Can't believe he's holding a mass rally. He clearly cares less about the health of his supporters than getting his... Adulation fix. Adulation? That sounds so sexual.

It's the A word. It is the A word. This is the A word they've been talking about. This is the A word they've been talking about. I'm tempted to say that if Trump's rally goers want to take those risks out of moral conviction or epidemiological ignorance, they're welcome to do so. Of course, there's this little matter of them spreading it to those who share neither their beliefs nor their level of ignorance. The president actually wasn't looking too good at his West Point appearance. If he came down with the virus, would you be quietly gleeful, or are you a better person than that?

The thought that these stoical cadets had to quarantine for two weeks for the honor of hearing their commander-in-chief praise himself and exaggerate his accomplishments is, in its small way, all you ever need to know about trump but really gail i don't wish the coronavirus on anyone even this president maybe just a really painful bone spur jesus christ man that was probably the worst one we've read in terms of just banal banality so fucking banal it's so fucking goddamn lame oh shit well thank you gail and brett give yourselves a round of applause thank you well i mean i just reporting the news thanks for having us on the show, Terrence. Loved being here.

Hey, anytime, Gail. Gotta take off now. Anytime. We have to go. Gail's gotta get... If you want... So we pay each... Every time Brett and Gail come on the show,

we pay each of them $500,000. So to be able to afford their high speaking fees we need you to support us on patreon um go to patreon p-a-t-r-e-o-n.com i'm losing millions of dollars on bret and gail um but it's all for the content baby so yeah go to patreon.com slash Trill Billy Workers Party and give us pull the lever for your favorite podcast you get a free

an episode every Sunday with that five dollars I think we have a good one this Sunday I think we're gonna be talking about Dolly all about Dolly. All about Dolly Parton. Right?

So, because there was a really great... I'm finally in this moment of Dolly's great silence. Stretched to the point of shitting on Dolly. I never thought the day would come. I'm ready for it. You're ready to do it! Oh my God! Fucking Dolly is sitting around. The only thing I've heard out of her this month is some little pussy ass drag queen shit she's going to do.

Thinking that's going to appease us. It ain't happening, Dolly. Well, there was a great op-ed in the New York Times that was like, should we replace Confederate monuments with Dolly Parton statues? Oh, for God's sakes. I know. the New York Times that was like, should we replace Confederate monuments with Dolly Parton statues? God sakes. I know. So we felt that it was timely. Hoffman would be better. So I think that's what we got going on in the Patreon this Sunday. If you're

interested, subscribe and check that out. Once again, patreon.com slash trailbillyworkersparty Thank you so much for joining us this week throw a rally in your hometown piss off your highest elected official uh make him cry ruin their none of these people deserve a minute's peace truly they don't show up and just ruin their fucking day you be surprised how good it feels honestly it's not even that sacrificial no it's it was is for nothing else it's highly

cathartic um watching them cry i mean yeah i watched a man cry in his own office yeah so it felt incredible yeah um so anyways thanks for listening this week everybody we will see you next time bye-bye happy juneteenth