It Could Happen Here Weekly 156

are going to look like. In the wake of Trump's election victory last week, so one thing I was thinking about after the results kind of rolled in and seeing everyone's reactions online, you have a you know, a mix of people going full doomer, some people trying to get hopped up on opium, some people on copium right, just trying to like find any psychological way to survive and from kind of the way I like to survive is

just through information. So this episode, we're gonna get into how we see life for trans people under a second Trump term based on both what he's done in the past what he's promised to do in the future. And I know, in like the days after the election, like LGBTQ, like crisis hotlines all saw a massive spike in people calling in, to the point where some people were even unable to reach someone. And like I understand, this is

a very scary moment in time. And as much as it might not be fun to hear about how things are all gonna get worse, there's also some misconceptions, and I think there's also a degree of power in actually being able to reasonably ascertain what things could look like instead of just kind of feeling it out and just going purely on vibes. So to kind of start, I guess I'll mention some things that Trump did in his first term that then got undone by Biden, which will

probably just end up being reinstated. We don't know these for sure, but that's like a decent guess. So one of the first things Trump did when he got into office is he rolled back in Obama era memo directing schools to protect trans students from discrimination.

been incarcerated is that they have to do it. Is it is something that is required by the Constitution of the United States. The Eighth Amendment holds that there is a ban on cruel unusual punishment, and withholding medical care is so obviously a form of cruel unusual punishment that even staggeringly right wing Supreme courts have been like, no, you actually have to give people medical care in prison. So this is one that's going to be a little bit difficult for him to do. I don't know, he

might find some way to do it. This is one of the ones where there's a real potential for it to get worse, and we simply do not know enough about what legal strategy is going to be here to say for sure.

So that's kind of one shift in how things might be slightly more challenging.

and they weren't. So that's something that has been fought for, and that's something I mean, the trans community is small enough that that is the thing that has specifically been fought for by people who I consulted to make this episode. So, yeah, these these rights have been dearly one and it's going to be very hard to protect them. If I'm doing something where there's there's something about policy implementation, assume that I talked to Krinn about this and that's why it's accurate.

by just giving them direct cash transfers. They use some of their work too, but yeah, and direct cash transfers are one of the most effective ways that you can help trans people. And if you give money to this organization, they'll be links in the chat you can help do this. So let's get into how things are going to get worse. Unfortunately, trud administration, Congress, and state legislators have an enormous amount

of power to make everything worse. We're mostly going to be focusing on what Trump and Congress can do.

can get pulled is in the education system. Trump can unfortunately fairly easily implement what amounts to a don't say trans ban on a federal level by threatening to withhold federal funding for any school that doesn't mandate things like misgendering and dead nighbing students and banned And this is something he's explicitly talked about. Is like banning anyone in classes,

any teachers from talking about traditioning at all. He's also threatened to have teachers who talk to students about being trands like investigated by the Department of Justice.

So for people who don't know what the High Amendment is, the High Amendment is a writer that bans federal spending on abortion.

of these kind of things even under Biden. There was a version of this of a kind of high amendment for trans healthcare that was an attempt to get the DoD to not be able to spend money on trans healthcare. That's already a provision that's been tacked onto one of the most recent spending bills that went through because Joe Manchin like defected and joined the Republicans to get it onto one of the spending omnibuses, and that was again

just for the Department of Defense. We are very likely to see versions of these attached to every single spending bill that explicitly say that government funding cannot be used for trans health care. It will definitely be used to do to say you can't use it for trans healthcare for minors. It is possible this will be expanded to adults.

for the medical system. Even just a government band that prevents things like Medicare and Medicaid and like government health care from covering transition in the first place is a disaster. But if they go further and prevent clinics who provide trans health care from taking Medicare and Medicaid, that's bad enough that I think that is in terms of what is the thing we most need to be worried about right now, I think that's the worst possible thing that can happen very quickly, because.

And the thing about Senate reconciliation is that you can't fill a buster them, so these can just get rammed through really really quickly, and there's not going to be enough opposition in the House to stop it either. So I mean, some of this stuff probably could be done with executive orders, but it's quite possible if you won't even need that because it can just be rammed through in spending bills.

and this is very, very bad. What Scrimmetti versus Us is probably going to cost us is trans people as a group being protected by the fourteenth Amendment. So the fourteenth Amendment is supposed to provide everyone equal protection under the law. The way this has been interpreted is that if you're passing a law that directly targets a group, there are certain levels of scrutiny that have to be applied to it to see whether or not it's discriminatory

and can be allowed to proceed. What's probably going to happen here is that trans people aren't going to be held as protected at all, which means that the fourteenth Amendment will not protect us from things that are unbelievably obviously discriminatory, like healthcare bands for youth, which is again literally the same procedures that are happening for trans children are done to sis children. All the time and it's fine. Yeah,

so this is very obviously discrimination. We're probably going to lose it because the Supreme Court is full of a bunch of the worst people in the entire world. It is technically possible that Gorstch defects and drags someone else over and we get a thing that says we have intermediate scrutiny. That would be the best win we could possibly get on this. It's extremely it's unlikely. We're probably

going to lose it. And this is also going to overturn the landmark case Bostock versus Clayton County, which is the one that rules that you can't discriminate against trans people based on gener identity.

know this. I don't know how many SIS people understand this, but the level of trans employment discrimination in the workplace is unbelievable.

report isn't out yet. But what I will say is that the trans level of unemployment unemployment right now in the US is very low. The level of unemployment for trans people is nineteen thirty six, great depression levels. And this is before we lose these these protections. It is also worth noting this will not overturn like state level of protections, So if you're in a state that like has specifically banned it, you will have some more recourse. But we're losing fourteenth MEDIT protections on.

provide gender affirming care, also into hospitals. You know, there's gonna be enormous legal harassment. This has already been happening on a sort of lower level, but from sort of individual lawsuits and state attorney generals. But this is going to be happening with the full backing of the Department of Justice. You can look at like what Texas has been doing the past four years. Yeah, with them investigating not as clinics, but also like parents of trans kids. Yeah, parents,

like individual health care providers. He was also pledging to investigate like the companies that make hormones, So that's bad. There's also the Department of Justice has been making some incredibly half assed attempts to try to go after some of the healthcare bands.

going to have a large majority in the Senate. Trump has also pushed for a ban on gender firming care for minors, including Harts homo replacement therapy, which is like one of the main ways you transition and puberty blockers. That one is less likely to make it through the Senate, but it also again depends on how cowardly the Democrats

are and how much they decide to cave. And this is the moment that there is another thing that you can do and you should start doing this right now, which is this is the moment right now to start pressuring your congress person about this, like start calling them, start pressuring them, and start making sure that they don't

fully sort of turn on trans rights. This is just something that you can concretely do right now, because these people need to understand that there are consequences for turning on trans people, because if there aren't consequences, they are going to do it now. Trump has also called for a ban on recognizing trans people at a federal level on like all identification documents things like that also would outlaw non binary markings on passports and stuff. That would

also be really bad. That's also something that probably requires a law. And that's again and everything. Call your conresspeople, like pressure them now, start doing it now, do not wait until he's actually in office.

have your gender marker match your gener identity. They don't support your ability to participate in public life. And that is the result of an intentional misinformation campaign and essentially like a hate crime campaign and a hate speech campaign that has been going on for the past like four years because Republicans knew that they already lost the battle on like regular gay people, so they moved on to the next subjugated class. And that's something we've talked about

for a while. And this is like something that is shifting. So you have to actually verbally express to to your representatives that this is something that you actually do care about. Otherwise they will look at these like general polls and be like, oh, I guess this isn't popular anymore, and shift and cave on it. They need to know that their constituents actually do care about these things if we want these things to not get passed through Congress.

advocacy push outside of some trans people. But we have no money, we have no resources, and we need there to actually be large, widespread and vocal public support because otherwise all of the stuff that's happening here is going to get even worse. And you know the word when we could get very well, the worst case scenario, things which are full bands for adults. That's the thing that they could pass through Congress, but right now they don't

have the support for it. Yeah, However, Comma ascarising is going to get to there are signs that the Democratic Party is deciding to throw us under the bus.

They Them ad being the prime example of this. According to a PBS report, from October seventh to October twentieth, Trump's campaign and pro Trump groups spent an estimated thirty nine million dollars on anti trans ads, and Trump ended up spending more money on these ads than on housing, immigration, and the economy combined. This was his main focus in his final ad push, a specific after the September debate.

A new report from journalist Casey Parks, using data from Ad Impact, shows that Republicans spent nearly two hundred and fifteen million dollars on anti trans ads this election cycle. And this figure does not include cable or streaming ads. This is just network TV. And these anti trans ads weren't just focused on the presidential election. Other Republicans in various Senate races picked up on the success of these

anti trans ads and used them in Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Now, initially some thought that maybe this would be a repeat of twenty twenty two, Maybe this extra focus on this small group of the population wouldn't lead to kind of electoral successes, pointing to how a similar strategy failed during

the twenty twenty two midterms. But then election day came and we saw that there was a degree of success or at least these did not hurt them in any substantial way, and Republicans won many of the Senate races on anti trans campaign messages. I'm going to quote from an article in The New York Times called it Trump and the Republicans bet big on anti trans ads across the country. Quote the kamala is for they them add was rated as one of his campaigns more effective in

September in some Democratic testing. According to results reviewed by The Times, Republican strategists said the focus on transunter women and girls in sports had been particularly effective with a key group of voters the party had hemorrhaged support from in recent years, college educated women. One of the things you see in the focus groups is that the moms get really visibly angry on this issue, said Jim McLaughlin, a Republican polster who works for mister Trump and other

Republican campaigns. Quote it's a fairness issue. They don't want their daughters to lose a scholarship and they don't want them to get hurt unquote. The enthusiasm for this issue kind of lines up with what me, Sophie, and Roberts saw at the RNC, where anti trans statements consistently got

the loudest applause. Though some state level Democrats Representative Steth Moulton of Massachusetts and Tom Soulsey of New York, as well as some other DNZ advisors, have jumped onto the blame game, citing trans issues as if not the reason, then a reason Democrats just completely fumble this election, claiming that the Democratic Party is far to the left on

trans issues and the average American. But largely the Dems were not out campaigning for trans people like Loud and Proud the selection cycle, oh trans issues were intentionally pushed off stage at the DNC, and the Harris campaign tried their hardest to sidestep this issue, giving vague non answers and whether trans people should be able to receive healthcare by just stating that her administration would quote unquote follow

the law and invoking States rights type framing. And I see this as just a massive failure to confront an issue that Republicans have like slingshot into the spotlight, and it shows a failure to do things because it's like the right thing to do, not just necessarily for some like electoral gain.

willingness to do that on trans rights. Now, even if some of these people that Democrats included claim to not like hate trans people individually, that they have allowed questions around access to bathrooms, sports and government fund and healthcare to be used as a wedge against trans rights as a whole, and the ability for trans people to be

able to exist in public life to close. I think we should have just a brief discussion on what people can do specifically during these next seventy five days and even in the months after, like what people can do to prepare for some of the worst aspects of this, specifically on the healthcare front. Now, we did a series of episodes a few years ago on DIYHRT. There are both pharmaceutical and home brewed options for homones that can

be ordered online. Now since that episode, home brewed distribution networks have spread throughout the United States. There's probably one already in whatever city is closest to you. Now, access to those networks does require a degree of, like in person community, and I know that can be challenging. You can certainly do organizing online on discord. You can certainly find trans people on discord that can help you learn

where pharmaceutical grade estrogen can be ordered online. But that type of online organizing will only get more dangerous under a Trump term, especially if the legal status of these hormones change. So I will always emphasize the importance of in person community. And it might just like learning if there's a trans band in the city you're in, going to some shows, learning where trans people go, Where trans people gather, is their community picnics?

and sometimes it might require a little bit of travel. Now, what we can do, at least right now is stockpile things in case things get harder to maintain or produce. There's multiple forms of these hormones that can be stored, and I do believe that there will be some form of home brewed option that will most likely continue to exist even if prescribed hormones get restricted. And part of why I emphasize kind of doing this in person as well, especially if you're a minor, that will just get more

dangerous to do under a second Trump term. I will point people to the website DIYHRT dot wiki. It's currently the best information source on dosing testing, how to find supplies and options for ordering hormones now, because changing legal paperwork on the federal or state level often takes a while. If that's something that you want to do, now is the time to start. There's still seventy days until Trump takes office and some of these changes could start being

put into effect. You should absolutely apply for a passport now. Depending on many variables, it may be advantageous to have your legal name and gender marker match whatever you more

easily pass as, rather than your gender identity. Now I understand why this is less than ideal and if you think that this might just inhibit your transition progress and push you further back into the closet, especially if the option of changing your gender marker on federal documents just like goes away during the next four years, then people should just go ahead and get that stuff changed asap. But it's something to reflect on and consider. Lastly, I

want to mention something about personal safety. Over the course of the past week, I've heard from friends around the country experiencing a spike in anti queer and misogynistic violence. Chuds, frat boys, and just asshole men have been way more willing to just to openly harass queer people out in public. Some of this I think is just Trump supporters quote

unquote celebrating the election results. But once Trump takes office, I expect this type of harassment to start slowly increasing as truds feel like they can get away with more just open misogyny, homophobia, racism, etc. I know a lot of people have been talking about or posting about buying firearms, and firearms is one of the last things you should

buy in a panic. This is a very careful and calculated choice for you to make about your own personal safety, your own mental health, your own willingness to carry and train with the gun. This is its own topic, but I do recommend buying and carrying pepper jel for basically all queer people and women. It's a great self defense tool. It spreads less than pepper spray, so you're going to be less likely to just spray yourself. Saber is a

good brand. Buy it for yourself, buy it for your friends. Uh, Mia, do you have anything else you want to add?

theorists of the last of this century. And there's a new addition, Whipping Girl, that's come out recently, and it is it is one of the fundamental sort of texts to understand the experience to transfend people in this country and why things have gotten the way that they've gotten. So yeah, go go read Whipping Girl. It's spectacular. And then I want to plug one more thing that you

can give money to. So I mean again, another very effective way for CIS people to support trans people is give them money, because all of us are unbelievably broke like all of the time. Another place you can give money to is the Trans Justice Funding Project. We'll have that in this too. When they base, they give out grants to other just like transgroups who are doing organizing or doing other kinds of sort of support work, mutual land,

et cetera, et cetera. So that's money that goes directly to trans people.

people part of the episode. After our after our four trans people part, go call your congress people, Go pressure them, Go show up to their offices and make it extremely that it is unacceptable to write off trans people and that they need to be willing to successfully stop these writers and successfully do whatever they can to chant out the works to make sure that the Republicans cannot pass bills that will harm us even more than the things that they're already going to do with.

is president again? Will things get better or worse? Obviously the expectation is worse. I think that's where certainly the safe money goes if you're putting money on this. But the short answer to that question is no, one fully knows now. The first thing that I did when trying to prepare for this episode was tracked down as many articles as I could that included interviews with Gazin's about their expectations, and those expectations were largely negative, but a

little more mixed than you might expect. A Reuter's reporter interviewed Abu Osama, living in Conunis in the southern Gaza strip. He called Trump's election a quote new catastrophe in the history of the Palestinian people, adding despite the destruction, death and displacement that we have witnessed, what is coming will be more difficult. It will be politically devastating. This essentially agrees with what a Palistinian from Batel lahis in the

Northern Gaza Strip, Ahmed Jerad told Al Jazeera quote. Trump and Netanyahu are an evil alliance against the Palestinians, and our fate will be very difficult, not only in the fateful issues, but also in our daily concerns. This is a sad day for Palestinians. Trump will endorse Netnah who's free hand regarding the possibility of the return of settlements to the Gaza Strip and even the displacement of large

numbers of Palestinians outside it. We hope to return to the north, and now all of our hopes have been shattered, and unfortunately Jerad's fears here have been immediately proven well founded. On November sixth, as the rest of the world reeled from Trump's victory, IDF Brigadier General Itzig Kohen told Israeli reporters there is no intention of allowing the residents of the Northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes. Humanitarian aid would only be allowed to enter through the south.

His justification was that there are no more civilians in the north reporting from the Guardian interviewed several international humanitarian law experts, and the members of that likely dying field described Israeli actions here as war crimes. The forcible transfer of civilian populations and the use of food as a weapon are supposed to be banned. Despite this, we can safely assume that there will be no serious consequences as

a result of any of this. Now, the timing of this announcement was predominant, and it is not unreasonable to suggest that Israel might not have been as bold as they're currently being if Harris had won Another Gosen seventy year old doctor Zakia Hilal told Al Jazeera it is true that American administrations do not differ in supporting Israel, but some are more severe and more intense than others,

like Trump. You can find numerous gosins expressing feelings along these lines if you read long enough, But you will also find a number who feel like what's coming won't be worse, or at least won't be very different from

what they've already endured. Jehad Malaka, a researcher at the Palestinian Planning Center, told Al Jazeera he does not expect Trump's administration to be wildly different from Biden's In this regard, Trump uses rough tools and Biden and the Democrats resort to soft tools, but the politics.

Reuter spoke with the owner of a grocery store in Gaza, Khaled Desuso, who told their reporter, I think Donald Trump, if he wins, he promised the Muslim people in America to stop the war in Gaza. We hope that happens, and it's not necessarily absurd to hope that there may

be some positive effects here. Trump has said many horrible things about Palestinians, obviously, several weeks before the election, he had a phone call with net Nyahoo that may have been a viihilation of the Logan Act, although laws don't really matter anymore. Here's howslate dot Com summarized what happened

in that call. According to Trump, the Israeli leaders said he disregarded President Joe Biden's warning to keep troops out of Rafa in southern Gaza, a decision that resulted in the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in a shootout in the area. Trump also said nat Nyahu asked him for advice on how to respond to Iran's missile attack on Israel, to which Trump said he responded, do whatever

you have to do. Now, that's a dire sign, and it is impossible to imagine that a new Trump regime won't restart the sale in shipment of specific munitions that Biden banned for export to Israel this July. Biden halted the shipment of two thousand pound bombs to the IDF because quote, they cannot be used in Gaza or any

populated area without causing great human tragedy and damage. Now, the fact that munitions like this will very likely be used is hideous, and I think it's extremely unlikely that we do not see an immediate rise in the death toll. But at the same time, Israel's extant acts have caused great human tragedy and damage. The munitions they have have already been responsible for calamitous death and destruction on a fairly wide scale. So where's the cause for any optimism

on this at all? It comes from Trump's own self interest. As Khalide Desuso noted, Trump ran promising to end wars. This means he does have some vested interest, even if only in his own ego, in forcing NETANYAHUO to draw

things to a close in short order. And there is indeed reporting that Trump has told net Nyahu to wrap things up by January so that he can take office with an end to the conflict and ideally use that as a way to kind of bolster his early popularity and gain some political capital for the other sweeping changes he wants to make.

an end. There's a good article on this in the BBC. No guarantees Trump will give net Yahoo all he wants now. In that piece, Mid East correspondent Lucy Williamson writes, Donald Trump's first term in office was exemplary as far as Israel is concerned. Said Michael Oran, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, The hope is that he'll revisit that. We have to be very clear sighted about who Donald

Trump is and what he stands for. Firstly, he said, the former president doesn't like wars, seeing them as expensive. Trump has urged Israel to finish the war in Gaza quickly. He's also not a big fan of israel settlements in the occupied West Bank, has set Ambassador Oran, and has opposed the wishes of some Israeli leaders to annex parts

of it. Both of these policies could put him in conflict with far right parties in Netanyahu's current governing coalition, who have threatened to bring down the government if the Prime Minister pursues policies they reject. Michael Orrin believes net Nyaho will need to take a different approach with the incoming president. If Donald Trump comes to office in January and says, Okay, you have a week to finish the war, net Yahoo is going to have to respect that. And

we'll continue talking about what this means. But first, here's samants. So it is possible that we will see a quick end to the violence in January, and perhaps a quicker

one than we would have seen under Harris. That's the best case scenario and not necessarily the likeliest one, and I should re emphasize here that best case scenario still means that we will probably see a massive escalation in violence as the IDF seeks to force more people out of northern Gaza and in the conflict, with a large slice of Gaza permanently wrenched from Palestinian control and handed over to Israeli settlers, there is no version of what

comes next that is not a calamity to the Palestinian people. Now, the signs from within the Israeli government on what a new Trump administration means for them are certainly bullish, you could say, and reading these tea leaves provides very little fuel for optimism. It Mar ben Vere, the Minister of National Security, posted yes with several less's and an emoji of a flexed bicep in a post on social media.

When the first good return started coming in for Trump on the day of the election itself, and a sign of confidence in the coming results, bib netanyahuo fired his Defense minister Jove Gallant, who had been his primary point of contact with the Biden administration, and it's harder to imagine a much more direct sign of what he wants to do than that.

are incredibly negative. Ahmed Fayad, an independent researcher in Israeli affairs who currently resides in central Gaza, told Al Jazeera that he felt Trump's influence would be entirely negative, adding that Trump was a quote more dominating figure than Biden, and his influence would allow net Nyahu to quote conquer Gaza quote amidst the weakened Palestinian front and absence of any Arab unity and solidarity, the whole Palestinian cause faces

its worst threat yet. Now what does bear watching is the degree to which Biebe might face threats from his own right flank. Netniahu himself is almost certainly on the side of doing what will please his patron Trump all the more, and that would be forcing a quick, violent end to the fighting and taking Northern Gaza as the spoils of war. But this might bring him into conflict with radicals on his own side, who can't be placated by anything but what they would see as total victory.

In the event net Nyahu feels pushed, it is not impossible that he will wind up in conflict with Trump. This has happened before, as BB's sense of self preservation led him to take actions that enraged Trump. The best example of this took place in the immediate aftermath of the twenty twenty election. If you want to think back to those happier days, b B was again the first world leader to call and offer Biden congratulations on his victory,

as he was with Trump. This is a habit for the man, who, among other things, is an expert at toadying for favor with US leaders. Trump was livid, and he spoke out about this, telling Israeli journalist Barak Ravid that he believed that he had saved Israel from destruction, and in response, net Nyahoo had stabbed him in the back.

I'm to quote now from an article in the BBC six Mister Trump accused mister net Yahoo of congratulating too quickly mister Trump's successor Joe Biden on winning the twenty twenty US election. Mister Trump disputed the election result, though his claims were never upheld. The first person who congratulated Joe Biden was Bebe, the man that I did more for than any other person I dealt with. Bibe could

have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake. He was very early, mister Trump said, like earlier than most. I haven't spoken to him since.

that net Yahou and Biden once did once. I should say this may hinge partly on the fact that Trump really only believes in himself and his own benefit, whereas Joe Biden was a strong and committed bl in Israel and was willing to take actions against his own political self interest in furtherance of that belief. And we've all

seen where those actions got him. Just last December, Trump attacked Netnyahoo at an early campaign rally in New York, saying bb had quote let us down by pulling Israeli support for the operation that killed Iranian General Cossam Solomani at the last minute. He also criticized the Israeli leader

for not being prepared for Hermas's October seventh attack. Now, I want to be clear here that these divisions between both men are blisteringly unlikely to mean anything that approaches relief for the Palestinian people, at least in the near term. The immediate and probably long term future of Gaza is much bleaker today than it was a few weeks ago. The Guardian recently published an article interviewing former CIA director

and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. He predicted Trump would give Bibe a blank check for aggression which might invite the possibility of open war with Iran. Now that's the kind of thing that can lead one to panic, especially when you assume a guy like Panetta is privy to a lot of inside information. We may not be, but I'm actually not really sure that he is. I don't see any evidence from this article that Panetta is speaking from

direct personal knowledge about extant plans to carry out an attack. Instead, he quoted Trump's description of the call that Trump had had with BB before the election, telling net, yahou do whatever you have to do. So Leon may just be working from the same information the rest of us have

and coming to a somewhat different conclusion. I'm not as sure as he is about an imminent attack on Iran because Trump campaigned heavily on ending wars, and while I don't credit Trump is a particularly honest man, I do think he sees his personal benefit right now in being able to portray himself as a peacemaker, in part because he has so much domestically he wants to do, and

so much else internationally he wants to do. Right, Expending a bunch of political capital d with the kinds of protests and unrest and even anger from his base that a war with Iran would mean, especially once it gets bogged down in the kind of violence that would come with that, He may not and likely doesn't see that as being of benefit to him. Now, that doesn't mean it will never happen. It doesn't mean his calculus won't change.

I do foresee some situations in which Trump might decide that his personal benefit is in there being a wider ground conflict with Iran that US forces get drawn into. You know, we'll talk a little bit about some of the possibilities around this, and we're getting outside of the realm of kind of established fact at this point, but I do think it's worth considering some of this. But

first consider these ads. So, when we talk about the possibility of a ground conflict with Iran starting between Israel and ira but almost inevitably drawing in more US forces, the known unknowns and unknown knowns in this situation are pretty staggering. If I let myself analyze every possibility, my

mind can go to some dark places. Trump sees war with Iran as a negative, now, I'm quite sure, But how would he feel about it in the wake of, say, a Musk centered plan to in the Federal Reserve and tank the dollar in the wake of the changes that all of his immigration policies would make on the price of food, the Pression era levels of inflation and unemployment returning to the United States, and the attendant social unrest

that that would cause. If Americans find themselves on the verge of food rights, perhaps Trump would gamble on war being the best distraction he could manage. It's certainly not impossible. Now, I don't know how useful it is to bury myself in theoreticals and probabilities. The known threats are dire enough, and they demand full time awareness in order to attempt to counter and endure. So instead of spiraling, I'm going to leave you today with the words of another Gazan, Mohammed R.

While the world seems intent on erasing us. It's about surviving seventy seven years under occupation and over a year of ongoing genocide, the very genocide I barely survived last December, when my family and I, including my elderly parents and three year old son, were buried under the rubble of what was once our home after it was struck by an Israeli fired US missile. The date December seventh, twenty

twenty three. Our bones were crushed between layers of concrete and twisted metal as we spent hours in the dark, buried together and praying to be pulled out in one piece. The trauma of that night, in both its physical and emotional toll, of my son's small, fragile hand and clinging to mind, comes back to me now as Trump prepares to take power once more. I've seen how American political

leader's toy with the idea of change. How they dress up their campaigns with grand ideas about peace and justice, yet each president brushes off our reality. Barack Obama promised hope and change we could believe in, yet we got more bombs. Joe Biden offered a different approach, pledging and yielding support for Israel, leaving US to live through even

more horror. Vice President Kamala Harris's niceties included no concrete promises to protect Palestinians, but she did pledge to continue financial support for Israel, and Trump's blundness as he promises to come back swinging reminds us not to hold out.

these things. It's hard to say how extensive it will be, but there's a threat that Israel and their backers see, and the way that public sympathy has built so quickly for Gaza in a way that wasn't present with a lot of previous stages of violence between Israel and Gaza. Right now, this is the result of a lot of videos spreading on social media. It's the result on voices from Gaza getting out and getting to people in a

way they really hadn't before. And so one thing that does worry me greatly when I think about what's going to happen in Gaza under President Trump is not just what's going to happen to the people living there right now, but what's going to happen to their ability to tell their story to get information out to the rest of us.

That is very much an open question at this moment, but it's certainly one that should be on your lips, and it's one that we will be investigating here at Cool Zone as long as we're able to continue doing that until next time. I'm Robert Evans. We'll be back tomorrow and every other day reporting on you know the world.

I don't know why they've forgotten about. But the basic plan is to impose something like a ten to twenty percent tariff on all goods that enter the US from anywhere. There's specifically one for Mexico, but the numbers on what the Mexico tariff is changes every time he opens his mouth. Sometimes it's like twenty five percent. There's one where it's

like two hundred and fifty percent. Of course, two interchangeable percentages. Yeah, and then for China, it's supposed to be a tariff of somewhere between sixty sixty percent is the most commonly sided number. But he's also set one hundred percent.

you pay for it. So the way that it works in general is that this is just an additional cost for the company that's doing it, that's doing the like moving the good around, right, and so they are almost always going to just pass that cost directly on to you. Obviously, sometimes we've talked about pricing the way that pricing works a lot on this show. Companies tend not to want to raise prices, largely because of their effects on consumer

happiness and brand loyalty and stuff like that. So sometimes people will just eat shit on it. But if you're talking about a sixty percent tariff, like you, the sixty percent tariff is going to be paid for by you.

If you try to impose a sixty to one hundred percent tariff on goods from China and a twenty percent tariff on all goes into the country, the economy will collapse. I don't know why everyone is pretending that this won't fucking happen. We're going to get into it a second. I guess the reason why people are pretending this is happening because the way they're doing the modeling kind of assumes that it won't, which is baffling, incomprehensible nonsense.

on how they're still struggling with rising inflation. But still a big reason why Trump was elected is because he simply is not Joe Bideneh, and he's not from the Biden Harris administration, and there's this perception that he will be able to fix the economy, he will be able to get around inflation lower prices, when seemingly his main economic proposal will lead to what's probably going to be an economic collapse if it happens in the brutality of which he proposes.

jobs overseas by passing the Trump Reciprocal Trade Act. Under the landmark legislation, if any foreign country imposes a tariff on American made goods that is higher than the tariff imposed by the US, President Trump will have the authority

to impose a reciprocal tariff on that country's goods. Okay, So what this would do again is that any country that has a tariff already or imposes a tariff, And this is important if we get into a trade war where countries start imposing tariffs on each other in retaliation for their other terrorists, which is what happens when he did this trade war, which in like twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen.

That means that we're also going to impose a tariff, which means that the tariff rates don't stay at ten to twenty percent. They cyclically spiral upwards.

And at that point you're relying on the Supreme Court to stop literally anything that Trump does, like don't give a shit.

goes at two point nine percent. Now, those exact numbers are debatable, but it doesn't matter because these these are going to be vibes based ones based on how pissed off Trump is at a country.

One of the things that they will mention that is true, but they're not, you know, getting to the importance of is that this affects stuff that's made in the US. Because the thing about things that are made in the US is that they're made from components that are from elsewhere, because that's how international supply chains work.

in a second. Right, But a bunch of people in a bunch of places fucking lose their jobs because suddenly the reduction and consumer demand means that there's a fucking reduction necessary production, and this has cyclical effects throughout the entire economy as more and more people fucking lose their jobs.

And also, you know, the thing about those people who lose their jobs is that that also fucking reduces demand because those people are now even less able to afford the stuff that's been increased by inflation prices, and this this spirals through the entire world economy.

She does not walk on the stage and say this is going to cause an economic collapse, right, And I think the reason that happened is because we've gotten into this place where nobody fucking understands how the economy works at all, in a way that's even worse than it was even in like the twenty tens. Like in the twenty tens, I think people sort of had a vague understanding the thing that was happening to the economy was uberization,

whatever you call it, was the expansion of gigwork. Right, there was sort of an understanding and a focus on the very sort of low level parts of the economy, like what are you a poor person doing for your job?

the economy. I've been holding my tongue on this for years, but the people who have been writing about the economy don't understand how the fuck it works because they've been completely myopically obsessed with the idea that we're in this new era of state capitalism and no like the actual thing that's been happening in the economy. And I think if you are like a person who buys stuff, you

probably understand this. But for some reason this has never made it to like economists or like people who fucking write about the economy for a lot. Thing is consumer to manufacturer sales. So this is stuff like Temu, This

is stuff like shean who and I mean invented. It's a strong word, but they're one of the first people who sort of popularized this model, right, And this is the thing where you have a platform that lets people like nominally buy directly from the factories or from you know, the people who are producing fruit, right, and these factories aren't producing goods until basically either people order the goods or like analytics tells them to order it, so they

don't have a lot of the problems that other kind of like distribution models have. You have a bunch of good sitting in a warehouse, like you just don't have that because you don't start production until your sort of orders come in, your analytics come in. And the theory here is you can reduce costs by eliminating the middleman. But of course a new kind of middleman emerged, and that is the drop shipper.

in the American economy. It's it's sort of like an integral part of the American scam economy now too, as the American economy has been increasingly sort of riddled and consumed by scams and riddled and consumed by sort of like people trying to capitalize on like some fucking meme or some political thing. You know, you have all these people doing like drop ship t shirts right where they can immediately come in and.

margins are really really low. They don't make that much money, and in fact, a lot of these things like hemorrhage money until they've basically you know, they do the thing that Amazon did, right, where like you lose money for a million years, but then eventually you have enough market chourney you start making money again.

Oh wait, it's all of the fucking manufacturing you know, like tiny manufacturing firms that these drop shipping things use to produce all their stuff.

this in the ten episode. Those loopholes on American terriffs were like, if you're if you're bringing stuff into the country that's below a certain value, it has to be above like a six hundred dollars something to like trigger a threshold, okay, to like activate the teriffs applying to it. So people just ship a bunch of like one billion boxes individually that are like five hundred and ninety nine dollars to go under the thing.

that gets just liquefied if these terrorists go through. These are enormous companies that you know are going to just eat shit, and those companies eating shit have these sort of effects we talked about earlier, right, which is it caused people to get fired, it causes growth collapses, it causes cyclical decreases in people's ability to buy things, and then also like demand decreases because people can't buy things. But this is like the new school supply chain stuff.

percent tariff stapled onto them. Now, the thing that people have been talking about as the like, oh well, here's the thing that will happen instead instead like, instead of the thing that's pretty obviously going to happen if this have happens, which is just that the economic bubble we're in pops and everything s to go to shit. People have been like, oh, well, this will just accelerate the

shift of production of goods out from China. And like I've been talking about this for like a fuck decade, right, Like the journal Chwung is something that I talk about a lot that I record on. People really has been talking about this for literally ages and ages and ages. So people have been trying to move production out of

China for ages. I mean, like one of the first big attempts to do this was in twenty eleven when there is there's a series of riots in China, and people tried to move production of goods out of China and they couldn't do it. And the reason that they couldn't do it was because you have to find a country that has both like a relatively skilled and educated labor force and also has the infrastructure to be able

to like match Chinese production. And so they we're talking about things like they have to have like a functioning electrical grid that is stable enough for.

isn't happening. It's us not plugging these products and services.

On the financial front, where you have is actually increasing integration as as China attempts to sort of like you know, has been lifting restrictions on the ownership of different types of corporations to make it easier for foreign owners to actually come in and invest and put capital in China. Right, the second thing that's happening is a lot of these supposedly like we're cutting China out of the supply chain things, have been a bunch of Chinese companies starts starting to

set up production in Mexico. Now, the thing about that, right, if Mexico was supposed to be the fucking panacea for getting us out of these tariffs, remember that Trump was talking about two hundred percent tariffs on Mexico, and that's the country that's supposed to like fucking get us out of this mess by like, oh, we'll be fine because like production will to shift away from China to like to where like a lot of the assumptions I was

reading was like people were talking about, oh, the production will like twenty five percent of production will like.

easy to move low end manufacturing. This is what's been happening, right, Like really cheap garment stuff, for example, has been has been moving to places like.

goods from? Like what production facilities are you just like suddenly that have just been like sitting there fallow are just suddenly gonna like a PEERI out of nowhere.

basis for your economy. But like that's the thing, right, if the Chinese economy fucking goes down, right, that's like that's seventeen percent of the world's GDP. Seventeen yeah, of the total GDP, right, And it's like the economy isn't national in a way where you can have an economic collapse in another country, in just a country that's that

large and ignore it. And the thing I want to close on, and the reason we know that this is true is that it is actually possible kind of to restart america domestic manufacturing.

export economy. And this actually brought back American manufacturing for a while until it had to all be reversed under the Clinton administration and the Reverse Plaza Accords, because the problem was when you sort of nuke to the zero sum manufacturing of a country like Japan, their fucking economy didn't work anymore. And in order to sort of bail out the Japanese economy and stop just a sort of world running economic collapse, I would have just like tore

the absolute shit out of the economy. The US had to fucking reincrease the value of its currency and lose

its whole domestic production base. Right You can't actually increase a production base in the world right now without decreasing it somewhere else, and that has sort of staggering, ripple economic effects for the entire global economy, which is why even if Trust's plan worked somehow and didn't immediately cause an economic collapse by like the direct effect on American consumers, it would cause another economic collapse by the effect on fucking people in China.

due to a lack of workers. And even some people on Trump's team have started to acknowledge this, mostly Elon Musk, who has opened said that Trump's term will involve some quote temporary hardship, so between tariffs and mass deportations. Like even people on his team know that this is going to damage the economy, especially in the short term, if not.

economic devastation. But the thing about the vulgar shock was that the way he blew up the economy was really really good for people who like fucking owned assets, like people who who like owned bonds, like people like people.

They take him seriously, but perhaps not literally.

I'm trying to understand the Chinese economy. And so if you want to be about ten years ahead of like guys who write for the econ hoymist if you read Schwang, you will end up being like ten years ahead of those guys.

and I feel so much better. So I would advise you to do that. Maybe you're listening on your hike. That would be fun. Actually, I think if I was hiking, I would I would skip this one and listen to the birds and uh, you know, enjoy the outdoors.

his second term. So his previous foreign policy was a pretty mixed bag, and he bombed the shit out of the Islamic State, right cool. Based he also bombed the shit out of thousands of Syrian and Iraqi civilians. Not so cool. Also, we should note, not so different from every other president this century. Bombing civilians has been pretty much the through line of American foreign policy in that part of the world for a very long time, in

particular in the Trump administration. I want to talk about there was a single US strike cell called Talent Annvil. I think they were mainly like CAG guys from what I read, so Delta Force guys, Army Special Forces guys who were making these decisions. They hired a office building in Syria, and these guys were constantly looking at drone feeds and various other information and then calling in strikes on various targets. Right, I'm not sure if they had

the CAAG guys in the watching computers. I'm not entirely sure, and like, well he didn't have someone else who knows, But this strike sale dropped more than one hundred and twenty thousand bonds, and Jesus Christ, yeah, yeah, the amount of ordinance we dropped on Syria, it is insane. It circumvented procedures are in place to prevent Philian deaths. In order to do so, they had embedded lawyers who were

supposed to approve the strikes. But these lawyers tried to raise the alarm that some of these strikes were reckless. They weren't hitting things that were actual targets, and they sort of ran into an organizational brick wall. At some point, pilots even refused to engage targets because they didn't think Jesus, Yeah, which it's not usual.

people lost their lives. As we reached the end of that battle, Donald Trump, who's president at the time, personally called erda one, who's the president of Circuit at the time. Right in late twenty eighteen, Trump asked the one, if we withdraw a soldiers, can you clean up ISIS. That's the quote, According to an unnamed Turkish official interviewed by Reuters,

at One replied that Turkish forces were capable of a mission. Quote, then you do it, Trump told him, and US as National Security Advisor John Bolton, who was also on the call to quote start work for withdrawal of US troops from Syria. What this resulted in was US troops putting out from some locations in Syria right local people threw

tomatoes at them. Even worse than the tomatoes were the fact that it gave NATO's second largest army, which is Turkey, of course, free reign to attack the Autonomous Administration North Nessyria, which it did in twenty eighteen it did again in twenty nineteen. Those two operations to claim considerable ground in

Syria cost countless civilian lives. Continue to perpetrate human rights abuses to rehabilitate people from ISIS and other Jahadi groups as Turkish free Syrian Army, and they kill some people who were people I care about, and I continue to care about the cause of Rajava or Autonomous Administration in North Nessyria very deeply. And it really fucking sucks to think about the potential of the US abandoning those people. Again,

not that Biden has done very much. Yeah. Now, I think this anecdote, right of what Trump does with one tells us a lot about his approach to foreign policy, which is he really sees it as very transactional, which is not different from everything else he does. I guess like he's a very transactional person, and he seems really only to be concerned about what he can get out of it. So like in this case, I guess he wants to say he bought US troops home from Syria,

like he's anti war. This is one of his things, he says now, right, but he's prepared to also in the case of the bombing, Right, he's not so concerned with civilian casualties as long as he can claim that he'd he was the one who defeated isis right? A bomber couldn't do it. He did it, and he did it on a pile of civilian remains, and also using chiefly the Syrian Democratic Forces, right, not US forces. There

were US forces on the ground. They were engaged in combat, but in minuscule numbers compared to SDF, who lost fifteen thousand of their children in a battle against ISIS. And I think Trump would be very willing to admit that he's transactional, right, Like, that's kind of his brand, is like America first and fuck everyone else. So I think he'll probably be similar in this term.

rest of NATO. There's been a revolution in Memma. I suppose he doesn't know that.

just a political party. The Islamic State doesn't exist as a territory identity, but it very much does exist as a terrorist group, which continues to and has actually increased its activity this month with sleeper cells continued, suicide bombing has continued, and the SDF continue with their anti ISIS operations. Without US support, those would be harder. And so we have to ask, I guess on what Trump's going to

do with these things? And I want to look at a few different issues and pick apart what Trump said on his campaign website, pick apart what he said on the campaign trail, and then look at who he's appointed so far. We're recording this on Tuesday to twelfth, so if someone gets appointed before you hear this, that's why we've missed them out. So I guess to start with Trump's foreign policy, we should talk about his number one like peer competitor, which is China in his eyes right,

not a big China appreciator. So I looked at his campaign website for this, which really has some just incredible use of capital letters. He just fucking does what he wants. It's wild to see. So chiefly one of the things that he's been on about for a while now is tariffs on Chinese made goods, right, as means the feign policy.

a lot of countries in Africa do too. Aside from the economic sort of aggression, it stands on, Taiwan is weird, which is normally where we would like expect to see the most like physical friction between US and China.

violence it needs to maintain itself? Don't worry. Here are some heres, some psychopaths from Russia.

the country's mineral rights and like they've signed away a bunch of these specific minds to these mercenary groups. It's like, oh okay, so this is like awesome. This is also just imperialism. It's just new management.

all your natural resources. US policy in Africa is pretty much to stop those two countries getting too much influence. The Biden administration is as many liberals are right, like, there's actually not that much difference between what Biden and Trump will do in Africa. The difference is Biden is

smart enough not to say it. Trump's ability to do anything useful in Africa is going to be masked by his massive racism, Like when he says things like shitthhole countries, it becomes a lot harder for the US to do anything in Africa that isn't tinged by that, right, Like that doesn't make that sort of imperialist ambition more obvious.

US politicians rarely talk about Africa, they rarely campaign on what they were going to do in Africa, and so pretty much the only things we're going to hear from Donal Trump at Africa, I would imagine, are going to be when he lets his racism out. Yeah, that will have results for like US credibility. Also, my guess is.

exporting is weapons to Ukraine. It's a little unclear Trump he called Olensky the greatest salesman on Earth, but it was also claimed that he can personally end the war in twenty four hours. I don't think that means that he will be deploying himself to the down bas a like a gun dam, but he claimed he can do

this with his negotiating skills, this seems unlikely. To put it mildly, I don't think that it would be possible to end this war in twenty four hours if both sides declared peace right now, getting communications to their frontline troops would be a challenge in twenty four hours in

some places. Yeah. So the way I interpret this, and I may be wrong here, is that he is likely to leverage the support that the United States gives to Ukraine in order to force Zelensky into an unfavorable settlement, which would achieve his goal of a being able to say he stopped giving American money to Ukraine, which has been a big talking point for the Like every time you sat with the Western North Carolina right after the

hurricane or these Republicans sort of talking points were like, oh, well, all the money is in Ukraine, so we can't have fucking MREs for people in Western North Carolina, Like FEMA has no money because we sent Ukraine some memphors. This is very silly, right, This is it's not a zero

sum game. It's not really a reasonable critique, but it's one that Trump has kind of managed to stick in the culture was his base seems to see the money going to Ukraine is directly coming from things that would otherwise be going to them, which he would benefit from it if he could bring this war to a close, right jd Vance has mentioned a demilitarized zone in between Russia and Ukraine, which yeah, he's going to minister the DMZ like yeah, like this did we really want this?

Are we going to have troops out like we do in South Korea? For you know when was a career around the nineteen fifty seventy years, right, And I don't think that's really really.

that has been rejected multiple times. Several sources I've seen suggest that Trump has spoken to Putin quite a few times since leaving office. This has planned for Ukraine certainly seems closer to the Russian one than the Ukrainian one, the Ukrainian one being stop invading us and go home, and the Russian one being, well, we'll just keep all the stuff we've taken so far and then add a buffer zone in between, and Ukraine can keep whatever's left

of its country. Right. What's interesting to me is what other than NATO members will do in the event of the US reducing its AID. I would suspect that they will try and step up and meet that gap. It might also result in the US put certain restrictions on its AID.

And they had a lot of like eighty fours and things like that, right, like US anti tank weapons, but the United States doesn't want Ukraine using the long range artillery and stuff it's given it to yeat projectiles at Moscow. I can see a situation where if the US draws down some bit aid, European allies of Ukraine might not play some of those restrictions on their aid. That could

lead to some interesting complications for Russia. Right if Ukraine is more effective, like if they get more aid from Europe and Europe doesn't place restrictions on the aid, they could potentially strike Russia within Russia, which is not going to be good for Putin and it's probably not going to be good for like bringing I mean, unless they can deal some really crippling blows. It might not be good for bringing the war to an end. But maybe

it will. Maybe they've done some pretty effective things with not a huge amount so far.

can't keep up with the US production. Of course, the US being the heart of the military industrial complex does mean that a lot of Trump donors will probably be able to leave ridge of their donations to his campaign, and so we might not see as much of a drawdown of Bay to Ukraine as we're worrying about here.

May talking of launching things from a long distance at a very small target, I would like to launch these advertisements from iHeart mean the advertising department directly to your ears, Heiger.

well as we're recording for context. Like that's quite troubling. Yeah. His other two foreign policy appointments that I've seen so far have been less so look, i'd say less so. Marco Rubio is a third right, Like, I think we all know that I share very little with Marco Rubio on Turkey and Rajaba. He is good. He is not a fan of Verta one. He's in contact with Googlanists.

He kind of puts Turkey in the in the bricks box is a good yeah, which which leads us to the very funny idea of Marco Rubio ordering a drone strike on airicc Adams.

weirdly was one. Compared to I was expecting more of the hegths, like Fox News commentator type people in foreign policy positions, because Trump fundamentally doesn't care about foreign policy, and like it's an area where he can kind of give something to those kind of like insane far right commentator types. He all also did appoint Mark Waltz. I think could be Wolls He's one of the first special Army special forces guys serving Congress, maybe the first as

a national security advisor. Walls is a member of the Kurdish Caucus in Congress, so again positive for his JA there. Talking of Army special forces, there's one more insane Trump foreign policy proposal that I want to discuss, and that is his desire to use the United States Army in Mexico. I'm just going to read from his campaign website here. President Trump will take down the drug cartels just as

he took down ISIS. He will impose a total naval embargo on cartels, order the Department of Defense to inflict maximum damage on cartel leadership and operations, and designate cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and choke off the access to the global financial system. President Trump will get the full cooperation of neighboring governments to dismantle the cartels or else expose every bribe and kick back allows these criminal networks

to preserve their rain. He will ask Congress to ensure that drug smugglers and traffickers can receive the death penalty. There's a lot there. The way that Donald Trump helped defeat ISIS was exclusively by bombing things and with some small contributions from US grand troops, but we don't really have a partner force in Mexico like that, and I think, especially with the new administration in Mexico and especially with Trump proposing one hundred percent tariffs on Mexican goods, we're

unlikely to find one. Which leaves the very strange kind of prospect of US troops carrying out like unapproved, undeconflicted hits on Mexican nationals in Mexico, which like it's an act of war.

destabilized that cartel, but has happened within the US. They didn't send teams into into Mexico, and the way that the US has traditionally got hold of cartel leaders before is going to be arrested in Mexico in cooperation with Mexican government forces, be they police or military, and then extraducted them to the US trial and that doesn't seem to be what Trump is proposing. But again, like the bombastic rhetoric and the reality are sometimes very different.

half of this episode. The US lost a lot of that in the first Trump term, right, and it will lose more of it in the second Trump term. Some of that is, you know, the the US maybe shouldn't be influencing, and the US has had some pretty malign influence around the world. You can listen to a song

called Washington Bullet to learn more about it. But it will mean that, like there will be a space for other bad actors, right, Russia, China, You know that le Russia has not shown itself to be any more concerned with human rights, and probably less so than than the United States went in in and it's time in Syria, right, it's been an unmitigated disaster for the Syrian people. The Russian cooperation with your side regime. We do not need

more of that around the world. The Wagners to Africa Core deployments in Africa have been horrific in terms of human rights, and this will open more spaces for that. So yeah, I mean it doesn't look great this secretive appointment. Maybe we'll learn more about that in the coming days, but that doesn't look great. There are some bright spots for a Java. I guess there's some glimmers of hope there,

which is a nice thing. Trump's policy on Gaza fits with this general model of like he wants to end conflicts, and the way he sees of doing that is doing away with any restraint in terms of civilian casualties. And so the way that he went after isis was to just say bomb them all. I can see him doing the same thing in Gaza, right, just saying like he wants to claim that he bought an end to the war and he doesn't care how many bodies he's standing

on when he says that. Yeah, same thing in Lebanon, obviously. So yeah, these are not great things. These are things that we will have to deal with for decades to come, whatever happens. And I guess the way that you can do something here like why a little glimmer of hope, It's like you can reach out to people all around the world and let them know that, like, even if

America's foreign policy is shit, you're not. I have sat in ro Java and I have seen them taking the children to the hospitals, and I've watched the US soldiers sit in their bases and do nothing, and like it didn't help. Really I didn't. I wasn't able to do

very much. I couldn't even give blood. But I was able to be there with them, and maybe they're meant something, and like you can, you can do little things to show your solidarity around the world because there won't be much of it coming from the government.

I'm sorry what like, you know, and us holding down the DEI section of cool Zoe, you know, we are the diversity, equity and inclusion over here. Figured you know, there were some things that were super shocking around some of the data that was coming back from the exit polls. As we thought about like okay, so who actually voted for who.

and then I'll turn it over. I think Mia, like you know, you can take it on from there. Is I am, in fact a black man, So I think I can speak from a certain level of experience. Obviously not the experience of every human, right, but I can speak from a certain level of experience. Now as we talk about the Latino vote, I am, in fact, news flash, not Latino. You know what I'm saying. My wife is

from East LA. But obviously proximity is not the same as being a member of so keep that in mind as we discuss these things.

pull was very specifically from my people, which is to say, Chinese Americans who went right.

And so if you look at sort of where these things happened, the biggest ones were New York and LA, and you know, places like Seattle had some shifts, But I think New York in particular, UK and LA in particular are important for this because a huge part of the reason that this happened was the sort of crime panic stuff. Yeah, and the crime padic didn't one hundred percent start with Chinese Americans, but it's one of the

earliest sort of incubators of this entire thing. So the sort of trajectory of this is that in twenty twenty you have this sort of like whole stop Asian hate campaign, right, and you know, yeah, you have all this race like sort of like racist like ascitement.

But most of the rest of the American left saw this and was like, Okay, the thing that matters here, and the actual problem with anti Asian violence is that people are criticizing the Chinese government too much and that's what's causing this, and so we need to defend the CCP. And this is just politically, this is fucking radioactive to like, yeah, eighty ninety percent of like fucking Nasian Americans because like, yeah, there's a sort of sort of combinations of factors, right.

You have on the one hand, us sort of immigrant communities where most of this shit doesn't work because you're dealing with people who were like, I don't know, we're fucking sterilized by the government because the CCP decided to like do Malthusian fucking population control.

support the CCP, you know. I mean there are some tenet organizers, you do good work. We've had on the show, right, like, there are there are people trying to organize the communities, but like the mainstream left was just like fuck it, we don't care, we don't give a shit about you. Like the important thing about you being killed is that

we can defend this fucking state that we like. Yeah, And so what happened to the stop Asian hate thing is that it got folded into the crime panic because the product of this was both the sort of right wing we're going to give you anti black racism as you're like, this is this is going to be your solution quote unquote to this, yeah, and the sort of stop Asian hate, like mainstream sort of liberal thing both

just fed directly into carcuralism. And you know, so you started like it turned into this rallying cry for like hate crime bills, and then like increasing police presences and you know, like the fucking cops were like all over the place of this shit was happening, and you know,

didn't do anything because they're cops, right. Like all of this fed into it went sort of seamlessly into the crime panic, where you could just feed all of these people of the sort of memory of the fear and the anger over like Asian people getting killed, and you could just lump that in with crime.

But you know, they kind of had been lumped into the Democratic Party because of the just unbelievable racism from the Republicans, and now the sort of crime panic stuff has finally given them this thing where the Republican deal is basically like okay, if you're okay with sort of being anti black with us, if you're okay with massive expansions of police presence, you're okay with us running on

that right and also on anti homeless politics. That's been a huge, extremely effective thing Chicili among business owners.

been a lot of ways our community. But I found that, you know, the like proper Asian in the jungle Asian thing where it's like pending on your relationship with the United States is almost even. And if you identify as Asient, because you sit down ten Filipinos, like half of them going to say a Pacific islander, you know, the other have gonna say to Asian. The other have is gonna

say the Asian Pacific Islander. And then and then my lord Cambodia right next to them, who are all in Long Beach and their crips, you know what I'm saying.

is very California stuff. But they stuck to themselves, you know, and they they saw a lot of the American things like this is pragmatic, like we're here to win, like you know, like so when you started having the Asian hate thing, like it's almost like now that you say it, it's like we just tied that community up into a bow and then handed them to the right, because this all happened at the same time as like the the anti affirmative action you know.

The reasoning is the same, like the system is not for me, so I'm just gonna get mine, Damn the community, you know what I'm saying, Like, I'm just gonna go get mine, you know. And so in the again in the black community, for those that swung right, it was just like like in some senses, they're like, well, why no, y'all are fucking racists, like you know what I'm saying. So I'd like as far as like the rights, like I know you are with the left, it was more

like you're just gaslighting me yea. So well, if you're just gonna gaslight me and I already know that you hate me, well fuck it, I'm just gonna get mine, you know.

stuff before we move on. And that's one of the things you kind of brought up earlier, was the insolarity, because part of what's going on here too is that there's a lot of Chinese immigrants and people who you know, you get communities there speaking like they're uspeaking like Kenzanese or Mandarin, and in a lot of cases, it's like you'll get these very very small, tight knit communities with people who are speaking like the provincial dialect that's like

semi incomprehensible to other people, right, because it's like effectively.

is all unbelievably right wing. Yeah, right, there's Miles Guah who whatever, God like twelve years from now, when I finished the lab Leak episode, which is gonna be He's gonna be a big part of this was he was this Chinese billionaire who defected to the US and came here and ran one trillion scams and is currently going to prison for Like, yeah, I'm pretty sure he was the guy who's boat Steve Bannon was on when Steve Bannon got arrested by the Post office cops.

there's Fallen Gong guys everywhere. They're posters, there are people, so they are cult. They run shan Yu. They run a newspaper called The Epak Times, which is just a pure fascist propaganda outlet, and those things kind of just like devoured the entire Chinese language media ecosystem. And it wasn't good before because like there are also a bunch

of other weird right wing groups. Like part of the problem here too is it's possible for in sort of Asian American community for you to have two people who, in by American standards, have identical politics, right, they're identically right wing on things like racial politics, and they're like edi crime stuff, you know, who are incredibly sexist and like humblophobic, but they absolutely fucking hate each other because one of them is a pro CCP Chinese nationalist and

one of them is an anti CCP Chinese nationalists.

like why would you vote for this racist man? And it's like, well, the same reason I would vote for every other racist man, you know what I'm saying, Like, which, find me one that ain't you know, so, like that attitude is already there, so you know, obviously all of us would push back and say that, like, well, you choosing yourself is also a vote against yourself and is destroying your community. Clearly, it's never worked at some point,

you know, which I'm sure y'all can relate to. It's like I feel two ways when I see like black people, specifically black men, sit at this table, because I'm like, I can imagine the first joke that you kind of let slide that was like, I was kind of weird, but I don't know, it's no big deal. I'll get over it. Maybe maybe they didn't mean it, you know.

And then that joke gets more and more intense, and then all of a sudden, you sitting in a room and they cracking jokes about Haitians eating pets and that Puerto Rico's a track, you know what I'm saying. It's like it didn't start there. It started with you accepting and just being like all lighten up, and at some point somebody said something to you and you made a face and they went, dude, just it's a joke, man, it's a joke. Come on, bro, you know me, You

know me, right, you've had that. You know what I'm saying, and I know that happened a year ago, and now look at you. You know, so like eventually, the point I'm making is like, at some point you are going to have to lay down all of your identifying factors to be able to stay at this table.

question that you have to ask. And essentially I find I figure, I think I've come to the fact that what America means by that is you were colonized by Spain, so in some way you kind of speak somewhat Spanish, unless it's Brazil, in which case you were colonized by the Portuguese. Right, So it's like, you don't even know what you mean, Like y'all don't even know.

I identify with the colonizer? So no, I'm not Hispanic, Like they're the colonizer. Right. Whereas you ask a Puerto Rican or a Cuban or Dominican, they say Hispanic, but they just mean it differently. One because the island was called Hispanola, y I'm saying, so like they just mean something totally different. And Dominicans as black as hell, yo said,

And then what about a Cuban. The way that they relate to America is also incredibly different, especially because of like you know, I'm pretty sure y'all y'all room knows, is if you could touch dry ground, right, And that really just had to do with the fact that we just ain't fuck with Castro. So the way that they relate to even immigration is completely different. Because if you could make it to the Soy, if you go back

to Florida, you're a citizen. So they just didn't go through the same things that people from Central and South America went through to be able to become a citizen. And on top of all that, California, Arizona and Texas is Mexico. So like so some of them a and immigrants. They was here, like the border move we didn't cross

the border, the border across US. So you put all that together mixed with a group of people who might be ninth generation Mexican that people that don't speak Spanish, they're no samples as you call it, like, well't even speak Spanish. You know what I'm saying that, Like you love all these people who speak so many different languages and have so many different understandings of who they are, and you just call them Latino and then you get

this number. But if you're willing to accept the absurdity of it, then then we could talk about the actual Like what actually happened here and what you find are two things that are seem so reductive. But as you look at the exit polls and even like interviews that I that I personally conducted. If you set aside the person that has been just cooked by just the right wing information, like set that person aside, that is just you've just your brain's been cooked.

very traditional. That's why I'm saying I'm using cisgender things. It's like you bring a boy over your grandma, all your theas are watching you make him a plate. You have to go over there and make him a plate and sit it in front of him or you going to be judged. This is just the culture, you know, so it's no surprise that that is not going to play into how you vote.

We came to this country because we believed in the dream and we fought for it, you know, and we and we did it right, you know obviously like with the Mexican like sort of like work ethic of like no excuses, just work. We can't stand for no cheaters. We don't believe in stuff like that. You have to work for yours right, And we come here. There's no cuts in front of the lines. There's no shortcuts. You do the work right, and if you cheat, you go to the back of the line.

don't like you. You barely want to oh because you can hoop? Oh so you like basketball? You one of us, you know what I'm saying. So I just think that that like you've already got yours, so let me get mine. Is like, at the end of the day, was so appealing to this particular demographic and it just made sense.

eats everything around it. And I think the second part is I think it's an interesting distinction here too, because I think there's like a kind of differing parts of the storysness of the kind of like we came here to work thing, because that was the Asian American thing from maybe twenty years ago, and the last ten years and especially post twenty twenty has been people realizing that it's not real, yeah, and that you know, you work, you work, you work, you work, and this is this

is actually also funny enough, exact same thing happening in China with sort of different political results because it's less it's you know, we're not dealing with yeah, like the

same kind of sort of immigrant culture stuff. But the Chinese American version of this was like, Okay, we need to figure out who to blame for this, and they were like, well, yeah, okay, it's because of like all of this crime shit, because like people are going to prison for one million years, and like I see a black person and there's like a homeless person who I have to like walk past every day. This is the reason why like our fucking dream died. And that was

a really sort of appealing message people. And it's the same kind of thing with the people who went for the affirmative action stuff, where it was like the people who you know are like in all seriousness, like we're running into kind of like oh no, there actually is a sort of wall that you hit, yeah, where it doesn't matter how hard you work, like there's only so many spots at the university, there's only so many totally, you know, there's only so much so far you can go,

And hitting that wall drove a bunch of people you.

you're welcomed in this table. But at some point you can't take it off. It a'll rub off, you know, dress your kids up.

to stop people from killing you in the street. Yes, And the reaction to that was like, and I saw this on the left where like a bunch of people basically splintered off and became like hardline Chinese nationalists because they were afraid, and they were like, Okay, well, you know, here's this thing that we have, this like strong state that will protect us, and we just have to fight for it.

And I don't know, it's bleak, but it's it's not something that can't be overcome, but it's gonna require like, it's going to require organizing, and it's going to require the left to not be about fucking making white people feel more anti imperialist, which has been what fucking politics ordizationan Americans has been. And until that shit at Shedison's like, you're gonna keep seeing this shit accelerate.

it serious this time, like for real, for real. Yeah, you know, like there's you know, it's, like I said, it's very small and like obviously, like my grandchildren will probably be the ones to see any sort of beginnings of that actually taking route but it's still like, you know, people are some of the things that are being talked about right now, like we should like really like really consider it.

have the incredibly narrow ideas of their class. The incredible narrow idea, incredibly narrow ideas of their class are completely useless for the sort of task we have ahead of us. Yeah, And and it's kind of working for them, yeah, I mean it's working for them, it's just it isn't working for anyone else.

where we need to go as as a as a people.

right and there's never been a reckoning about that at all. Yeah, and so you know, like the stuff that could have come out of that just kind of never did, and we never got the kind of integration and the kind of politics that we could have had if people had been like five percent, well not five so they would be able to require them to move their positions a bit. But like people had actually cared about sex workers, we wouldn't be here right now.

So I say all that to say this understanding a better understanding of like it's hard to reason reason with somebody when they're hungry, you know, so just a better understanding of what are these communities actually prioritize, what do they actually value? And obviously, like you know, the dims and and unfortunately even the left was just like just swinging a miss guys, Like this type of thing, like

you said, is not hopeless. It's like, now there's an understanding of like, okay, so you value the hustle, all right, well, let me tell you in the ways for which the choice you just made is working against your hustle, you know, like or now now here, Here are ways for which you can, like you said no to the grind and accomplish these goals in a way that's not so detri mental to the people around you. Yeah, you know, I'll

with it. Like, I'm not hopeless either. I think that we just need to think about the word our word choice and what hells we willing to die on and be like, this is what we meant when we said this.