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Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.
Hi, everyone, and welcome to the podcast. It's James today and I'm joined again by Kevin McDonald. Kevin is a retired officer from the Irish Defense Forces with some special forces and peacekeeping experience.
Welcome to the show, Kevin, Thanks, thanks very much for having me. And just as a sort of disclaimer at the very start, any views er opinions that I expressed, the opinions of a retired senior officer from the Irish Defense Forces can't be construed it has been in any way the views of the Irish Defense Forces, not indeed that of the United Nations. So I just wanted to put that was there before we get into it.
Yeah, yeah, not a UN or an Irish Defense Forces spokesperson, not that we've had many of those suppose on our show, Kevin, we're here today to talk a little bit about the situation in Congo and perhaps more specifically like how the peacekeeping mission there has it evolved and changed and sort
of morphed over the years. So maybe just to begin with, I can give an idea that like this city of Goma, which is the capital of North Kivu Province, has recently been captured by M twenty three rebels, would explain who they are people who aren't familiar in a minute. It's a city of about a million people. I believe they're saying around three thousand people have been killed in this operation, which is I mean, it's a massive.
Death toll in a short space of time.
Very short space of time. Yeah, And some of the other stuff I've heard, like at one point there's a prison within the city which there was a jail break, and they think a hundred of the women who were incarcerated there were sexually assaulted and in some cases burned alive. After the jail break happened, thousands of Congolese military and police have surrendered. A contingent of I believe Romanian private military contractors were captured.
Yes, captured, surrendered either where they went into Rwanda. I think about three hundred of them, which is a significant amount of mercenaries.
Yeah, yeah, especially when we're talking about Romania, which is not a vast country.
Yeah.
Understandably, a lot of things are happening in the US, so people may have missed it, and like I think people in the US, just due to the nature of news being quite naval gazing here, may not be as familiar with the conflict in Congo. Like if they know about it, it's from Warren zvon Songs or maybe from maybe from a couple.
Of films, Layer's Gone and Money.
Yeah.
Yeah, what's the other one? Roland, the Thompson Ganna. That's the Law and the Headless Thompson. That's it. That's the one. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So let's talk then about the various United Nations peacekeeping missions in Congo. They've been there since the nineteen sixties, is it on and off?
Yeah? So the first mission in the Congo was oak in nineteen sixty and a lot of people would say that that was the first UN mission, but as I think we discussed the last time, the first yu Went mission was full scale war in nineteen fifty in Korea, and that mission is still in existence the UNC, the United Nations Command, but I suppose speaking about the Congo specifically. So in nineteen sixty there was seventeen newly independent states,
of which fourteen were from Africa. I agreed to a call from the UN to establish this mission in the Congo, and Ireland answered the call as well, so we deployed. It was the first time that we deployed with the UN, and we had a battalion there from nineteen sixty to I think nineteen sixty whenever the initial deployment ended, and it was it was a fairly tough, intense introduction to peace.
In the early in nineteen sixty there was an engagement between an Irish platoon and a large group of Bluba tribesmen and there was nine Irish soldiers killed and twenty six Blubas killed. And that was the first time that Ireland kind of had to deal with that kind of death overseas, so it was pretty traumatic. And then in nineteen sixty one, you've probably seen the film The Siege of Jariteville, but it recounts the true story of an
Irish company under Kamada pack Quendlin. His company was one hundred and fifty eight roughly strong, and they were attacked while they were at mass on a Sunday morning by a group of between three and four thousand Catanganese well armed soldiers backed up by French and Belgian and South African mercenaries. They also had an attack helicopter and they had an attack chest.
I think he had some of the old Rhodesians in there as well at that time.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, well yeah, unfortunately, anything for a fight, but the Irish held out for I think over a week, and they didn't give up when they ran out of water, they didn't give up when they ran out of food. It was when they had no bullets left they negotiated a surrender thanks to the skill of the officers and NCOs and men. Not one fatality on the other side.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, when they came home because they had surrendered, they were treated like parias for years. It was seemed like a state on the nation. Now if God forbid, they had fifty percent casualties that have been treated like heroes. Yeah yeah, And it's only in recent years that they're getting the recognition that they should have got back in nineteen sixty one.
That's really interesting. I know they've been treated that way. It's quite sad to hear.
Yeah, yeah, it's a strange one. And a lot of the people that we will say shunning these officers and NCOs and men. It's having to serve to overseas. And like if the UN they tried once to resupply them with ammunition from the year, but it wasn't successful. So if the UN had full supported that company, they would have held out even longer. But I suppose that's that's the way things things go. So that's the first mission
to the Congo, And I could be corrected. I think sixty four sixty five it might have sort of started to draw down. Then in nineteen ninety nine, after it was the first the second war, the UN established monarch monu See and that lasted from nineteen n ninety nine until twenty ten when it was renamed and rechanged into MONUSCO. And the difference between the two is that MINUSCO is
what we call an integrated mission. And the three pillars of an integrated mission are the restoration of the rule of law, the protection of civilians, and the provision for long term recovery and democratic governance. So it's combining we'll say, the force of a military presence, but also there's special advises on justice and police seeing on governance, all that sort of stuff which you wouldn't have an emission like UNIFIL, which we discussed the last time. Yeah, yeah, which is
the earlier form of peacekeeping. So the NUSCO was supposed to have left the country in twenty twenty four, but they were given a i think a one year extension. Yeah, And unfortunately with the twenty three rebel advance, the mission is relocating most of its staff evacuating others. The difference between the two terms is very specific. You relocate within
the country and you evacuate out of the country. And I also note that some of the Hybrid African Union peacekeeping operations there was I think thirteen South Africans killed and in the initial stages of the of the onslaught towards towards going. So that that's kind of where we are with the With the I think at the at its height within twenty one twenty two, there was probably a strength of twenty thousand. But if you think the DRC is the second largest country in Africa. It's vast, yeah,
and the eleventh largest country in the world. Just the size of just phenomenal. So you can imagine what the Congo and is entire no more than Sudan, but what the Congo and its entirety was back in the day. Yeah, absolutely huge.
Yeah, it's vast. It it encompasses different climates, own different ethnic groups as we're seeing right.
Two hundred main ethnic groups.
Yeah, yeah, it's it's a fascinating place. It's a place I've wanted to go for a long time. I spent some time on the Congo Rwanda border a few years ago. I'm not so far from going er actually like riding riding my bike around. And it's a very interesting place in terms of what Rwanda is, a very interesting place in terms of its relation to its neighbors. I think people will probably struggle to conceptualize. I actually saw somebody had posted on Twitter, somebody who talks about Syria mostly
like how on Earth is Rwanda invading Congo? And they had like a picture, you know, and the land mass of Rwanda. Randa is one of the smaller countries in Africa, and Congo is obviously a vast country. Are you come toward explaining a little bit of like the Rwandan involvements.
It's complicated, and it goes back to the cities the genocide back in ninety four ninety four, I think, yeah, yeah, and the Two Kivus, North and South Kiva, which is on the border with Rwanda, there's a large amount of ethnic Tutsis, Congolese Tutsis. Yeah. There, I think what Rwanda has always projected force into the Two Kivus and Katanga because like literally that that's that's where the money is. Of course Rwanda would say they don't, but they are
actively supporting and emptry industry I don't have. Yeah, and most of the twenty three certainly the leadership would be ethnic Congolese Putsis. Yeah. So ostensibly I think the raison deathstra for romanda involvement was to protect the ethnic Tutsis from Hutus that had escaped from the from the genocide.
So it's complicated, but if you kind of part those complications and think of the money trail, it kind of leads to the Two Kivus because seventy percent of the world's cobalt, I think, is kind of located between the Two Kivus. And then you have gold, diamonds, all the other sort of rich minerals.
Yeah, incredible wealth in Congo.
Yeah yeah, but I was reading that the estimated deposits in eastern Congo it's something like twenty three trillion, Like it's it's off the wall stuff.
Yeah.
So it's no wonder it's become the battleground that it has essentially since nineteen sixty because in nineteen sixty, after getting independence, the Kivu and Katanga wanted to secede back by belt and that's kind of what kicked off a lot of the conflict in nineteen sixty, and the reverberations from that are still are still kind of being felt and been exploited because everyone wants to get a piece of the action, like all the surrounding countries. So yeah,
I see. I think it was yesterday that the they're planning a meeting. I think it's this week or this weekend to try and resolve the conflict. And this time they're going to try and include enter twenty three in the in the meeting rather than ex Google. I don't think that the choice. I mean they're heading down to book of use.
Yeah, I mean at twenty three have said that they're going for sort of the whole country. Now that they're not you know, it's not as not a regional or like you know, ethnic movement so much as a and they will M twenty three would say that they're not like per se ethnic separatists, right, Like I think they would claim that they're like a liberation of Congo force.
And then you've Brundy supporting the Congolese government. You know that there's all kinds as as you say, like regional and international actors because of the wealth in Congo and like let's can't go emerge from the DC emerged from its colonial past, right, it's always been destabilized by these actors, both regional and international, who wanted a piece of that
mineral wealth. And then they've created and sustained these differences which have become I think there's some evidence to suggest that like certainly they're like the ethnic differences have become more pronounced and more like intransigent I suppose, or like, you know, it's become more difficult for those ethnic groups to coexist over time due to decades of conflict, right and killing, and it's a very difficult situation and it leaves people like the civilians living in Goma today in
a terrible situation where I think this is the fifth time that people have attacked Goma, Like it's certainly I think the last time was about twenty twelve, was it when the last time M twenty three took Goma.
Yeah, and that's that's when the which we've probably just got slater to the Force and Invention Brigade. Yeah, Goma in twenty thirteen in a relatively har space of time. Yeah, compared to how long we took to more, they regained it very quickly.
Yeah. So I think we break for adverts now. I'd like to come back and discuss the Force Intovention Brigade because I think it's something that people ought to understand when we talk about peacekeeping. And we're back, okay, So yeah, you mentioned the Force Intervention Brigade, which is something a bit unique within peacekeeping, and there's a lot of like when people talk about peacekeeping, they'll be like, oh, why aren't they fighting? Why aren't they like going and stopping
the things? And I understand why people ask that. So can you explain a little bit about what the FIB was and what it did?
The concept of the Force Intervention Brigade was I think to my knowledge it's the first yew Woe Me mission that developed that concept. And they actually changed the mandate to include an offense of capability for U and troops as opposed to defensive or separation of war in factions.
This was full on warfighter and what they had figured out because the DRC is so big that the footprint, even with twenty thousand troops, the footprint on the ground was not sufficient to would say, as I said, one of the three pillars of an integratedmissions protection of civilians. And they were finding that very difficult. So they decided to use a concept of protection by projection rather than
protection by presence. So not alone did they have the Forceancry Brigade, they had the joint protection teams and also an idea of a rapidly deployable battalion. So the idea was that the Port and Diveention Brigade would say, do the heavy lifting and then when hotspots that flare up, they could choose either the rapidly deployed the battalions or the joint protection teams. So the idea is that rather than having static positions trying to protect people. They would
go where the action was. That was the idea. And in fairness, the FIB had artillery, martors, snipers, attack helicopters, U have these special forces. They retook Gum and I don't know the exact timeframe, but I think it was
less than a month. One of the problems and I think we touched on at the last time we spoke, and I think this is a specific problem to the how the FIB didn't really keep going the way it should have is that two of the main TCCs were Tanzania and South Africa, and they would have had slightly different agendas in terms of who they should and they shouldn't attack based on the government's position sorrue true country in the countries. Excuse me, I should have said that.
Yeah, yeah, sea of acronyms here. I've tried to avoid all the these faction acronyms, but yeah, yeah, explain that a bit, because when people think of the UN or in peacekeepers or troop contributing countries, the only time it comes on the news in sort of the global north is when people from say Northern Europe or North America are part of these UN peacekeeping missions. So they think of people British troops, American and Canadian what have you,
in their blue helmets. Right that the vast bulk of TCC's don't come from from Northern Europe, right, they're in Africa. The majority of TCC's or other African countries. I think I'm right saying it's a majority.
Yeah, Like like here here in in suth Sudan, most of the big battalions are Wanda, Nepal, Mongolia, China generally speaking, in my experience in the Central African Republic and here a lot of the battalions come from Africa, which which is fair enough. I mean it's it's their continent. Yeah, and they should have they should of a stake in trying to faster piece and develop peace and help countries in less or more dire situations than they themselves perhaps are.
So it's I understand your point about about different countries being aware of what the UN does based on I take, for instance, everyone in Ireland knows about the UN, and they know about the Irish and Lebanon, and in Syria and in Africa. I'm sure in the United Kingdom, because you've got a very small UN footprint. Yeah, Cyprus been one, and there's a few of you guys here, generally people in the UK, I'm sure you'll be able to enlighten
me on this. Wouldn't have the exact same intimate knowledge or even interest in the UN because basically they don't have a big footprint, deployable footprint.
Yeah. Yeah, and it's the same with the United States. I think it's not something that people think about for the most part, and so like that's this question of like why doesn't the UN. Certainly I think when people saw what happened recently in Lebanon, they were like, why are these peacekeepers? You know where you had these peacekeepers And we spoke about this in our last episode, right
being shelled being shot at. You know, the people were asking why they weren't out there fighting and there are a lot of reasons for that, one being that's not what they're there to do. But yeah, when we had this Force Intervention Brigade in Congo, they did some good things, right, they were able to retake Goma, and for the people who lived in Gomer, I'm sure that was very important,
like that meaningfully improved their lives. But like it also comes with these complications that you've addressed, right, Like each of those those troop contributing countries, you need everyone to be committed to like the same mission, I suppose, and like if your government is giving your armed forces one mission that differs slightly from that which the whoever's in commanded the force into venture brigade hats, then we get friction, right, or it's not as efficient as it could be.
Yeah, I think I'm sure I mentioned just when we last spoke. It's one thing developing a robust mandate, But if the if the TCCs don't want to have the skills, the experience, the training, the equipment, or the will to enforce the robust nature of that mandate, well then the mandate isn't really worth anything, you know. So it's it's kind of like, Yes, the FIB was extremely effected for
a while until it wasn't. Now whether that was a lack of will on the TCCs or on New York or mission leadership, I have no idea, but it was a great idea and it worked and then it didn't work.
Yeah.
Plus the fact that the DOC wanted the mission to downsize and eventually leave that added to the should should we really invest in something when we're going to pull out because the country doesn't want to hear it anymore, which is again as a fair point.
Yeah right, No one wants foreign troops in their country, right, you know, walking around, especially you know, engaging their owns. It's but I mean, it's interesting. I was watching a speaks the current president of the DRC, Felix TOSHISAKEDI. I've tried my best to pronounce it correctly. It's not that disrespect. He was saying that the international community is bordering on complicit in M twenty three's advance because of the failure to do anything about it, in a speech he gave
this week. And it was interesting because it had previously been, like you said, for under very understandable reasons, especially in the DRC, which has this long and horrible history of colonialism, like the terrible things done in the Belgian Congo. We've covered those a lot on Bastardsen now the show that we do, people can listen to that if they want to.
But now he's asking for more help, which is also understandable because you know, his military is one hundred and twenty five thousand or so, like and a large number of that it's not very combat effective forces maybe, and they've just been overrun in Gourma, in a big city, a city of a million people. So, like, where do you think we go from here? What's like, We're at a very unique time in world history in which the United States is it's doing some things with this foreign policy.
I mean, I don't I won't really mince words about anything's terrible. But if we talk about like USAID, right I was speaking to people on the Thai Burmese border last week who were telling me that USAID has turned off life support machines as part of its draw down and that people obviously directly died as a result of that there. So the US is not necessarily averse to having terrible consequences to its whatever it's trying to do right now, which I don't really have a good word for.
So where do we go from here? With the US becoming more isolationists.
Well, let's discuss for a few minutes the alternatives to UN peace keep ye, And there's a lot of them here in Africa. So you have the South African Development Community, the East African community, there was an African Union stroke UN hybrid mission and therefore UNIMIT which is closing. There was an AU mission in Somalia. There is the Lake Chad base in Multinational Task Force, there's the Group of
Five for the Sahel. Then you had EU four which was an EU force in Chad and in Mali and subsequently became miner cat in Chad and Minusna and Mali. Then you have the EUTM mission in Mali which I was part of at one stage, and another one in Socenaria.
And of course we have our mercenaries, you know, and when it emerged that there was over three hundred of them allowed into Rwanda, I was reading the report that they were getting something like three and a half thousand dollars a month, whereas the DRC soldiers were getting maybe three hundred dollars a month. Yeah, you know, and these guys were brought in to protect the mines because again they goes back to money.
Yeah yeah, yeah, pactal resources, not people. That's a different thing. So what if those like those African led peacekeeping missions look like like you talked about these various like international and regional groups.
I think it's it's certainly worth a try because dun hasn't the ability, not indeed the money, I presume to keep doing these large, big missions. At one stage, the three largest missions were MENUSCO, which were discussing MINUSCA and the Central African Republic, and MINUSMA, which was in Mali.
Mali's gone. DRC is on the drawdown. Central African Republic is still there, but I've noticed I spent four years there, and obviously I have a keen interest in the place, but there has been a big increase in anti anti French with a Francophone country. Yeah, Antry French and linked with a kind of an anti UN sentiment. No, the special advisor to the President is from Russia. Vaguer. You had a big part to play when I was there. The were key players. Yeah. Most likely they're interlinked.
Yeah, I mean, and they've done some things which are horrific in terms. We've covered that as well with the print Derma on the show. I did want to talk about this because the US is talking about withdrawing its sort of what we call like soft power assets right around the world, and I saw, like I forget who it was saying, like, oh, let the chips fall where they may. It's very obvious where the chips will fall
in this part of the world. Right, Like when I was in Rwanda, every fancy road in Rwanda they call them Chinese roads because they go from the mind to the airport.
Ye belt embraces Yep.
It's as naked a resource extraction project as you'll see right now. China also does a soft power thing. They'll build hospitals and these. You know, I forget where the quote comes from, but like every time the US comes, we get a lecture, and every time China comes, we get a hospital. This will reorient the way these countries, specifically in Africa, associate with the world. Right with the US drawdown and the United Nations not capable or willing
of sort of doing these massive peacekeeping missions. And I think for very understandable reasons groups out the EU. You know, it's best not to have large deployment to European en forces in Africa for reasons that are probably quite obvious. So like, yeah, we were likely to see I mean, hasn't Wagner rebranded itself as the Africa Core Now.
Yeah, I'm not sure who's running at no, but I'm sure the strings are being more closely pulled by by Putin as opposed to having very loose control when precaution was there. Yeah, yeah, it was given him like a standoff capability. Was right, This is just a PMC, nothing to do with me. Yeah, But I would imagine after his drive to Moscow and a subsequent to my I'm sure that whoever is running the Africa core is much more tightly controlled by the criminal I would. I would imagine.
Yeah, it's like a britishis India Company kind of model, like a sort of proxy colonialism, but very tight. Like you say, it's just almost just like a different badge on the same thing there. I think this is one of the things that won't get talked about in the next four years because the US media will talk about the US a lot. Again, I mean they always do.
But I think people should be concerned about this, about the future for like multinational peacekeeping in Africa, and more importantly, I guess the future for Interlink without the future for human rights in Africa. What do you see as like meaningful ways that people can advocate for a future for Africa which is not just another set of countries extracting resources and leaving very little for the people there, Which
is something that has happened. You know, I'm British best, and this has happened by British people for a very long time and other European people for a very long time. But like that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to stop it happening in the future.
That's a difficult one to answer, because ideally African problems should, in my opinion, be solved by African nations. Yeah, and that's the reason that the African Union and all these other ones that I mentioned I think are an attempt to do that. Yeah. And certainly Europe and the US shouldn't be dictating how Africans government themselves. They should be assisting in good governance, good policing, good judiciary. But it kind of goes back to money again, because there's so
much of a vested interest. I heard a figure that twenty three were getting eight hundred thousand dollars a month from some of the mines in the Kivus. Yeah, I can believe we'll get that kind of money floating around a lot of people maybe don't want to sort things out. Yeah, and it may suit to leave the mayhem there and use all these artisanal miners who are getting paid a couple of cents a day and Wonder has just got a big contract with the EU in terms of diamonds.
Yeah, I mean that is the thing, right, we can tell where this stuff comes from. There is a means to try and limit the amount of these resources which you can leave conflict zones in a way which benefits beligerent parties. It's where the markets for those resources are willing to do it, right.
Yeah, And everyone has mistaken the point, whether it's the overseer of the mind, whether it's the company that owns the mind, whether it's the people that move the product from Kivu into someone neighboring country, and then ultimately the people that buy it commercially in Western Europe or around the rest of the world.
Yeah. Yeah, And it's it's not you know, people think of diamonds a lot, and I think people that there's been a kind of movement to purchase diamonds which you're ethically sourced, or to just not use diamonds, to sort of move away from them as like a store of value. But it's also the parts in your mobile phone, isn't it. It's not you know, it's not just like fancy engagement rings.
Because this is a chain you wanted to be over the price for more ethical mining methods most people probably own.
Yeah, that's the thing, right, and especially when it's out of sight, out of mind for most people, even compared to you know, we obviously genocide Palestinian people or the you know, when we think about these other atrostees, right, like those have not remained out of sight out of mind because they're visible in people's social media, because you know, people in Palestine have phones and they can film, and
like that's I think meaningfully changed the way. Like I wouldn't have thought American people would care about Palestinian people. I moved here in two thousand and eight, and you wouldn't have found much interest in Palestine.
You wouldn't have expected them to promote that cleansing of Guz Yeah, I.
Know you well, you wouldn't have expected that either. But the movement like to support Palestinian people from the grassroots and then also the other government doing the exact opposite. You know, it's come from the bottom up. It hasn't come from like government advocacy. But we don't see that as much with certainly this part of Africa, right, Like
and it's exposed. It's to contro it's coins of like people in Congo maybe aren't able to access those global networks of like social media and maybe to share their stories,
you know. And I think it's also a consequence of us in the media not reporting at all, you know, Like I've for years tried to sell stories about Africa to American publications and at best they'll want a story about like the people who are starting like social enterprise, European North American people starting like social enterprises or like
sort of beneficial companies. And I understand it's have a role, but like, you're not going to persuade me that there is a single African person of interest to you, and that like it's someone who came from North America, that it's the only relevant story to tell in Africa. And like I've had this falling out with so many editors over the years that like, no, I don't want to tell that story. I want to tell a story about people from Congo and Congo, about people from Rwanda and Rwanda.
I live in the town towards the west coast of Ireland, and there's a guy from there. What I'll do is I'll send you a link. Yeah. Yeah, but he's passionate about getting free education in Africa between online courses and online libraries. Obviously, the more education you get, the better chance you have of having a better life. So yeah, I think of some sulf and I'll send an auntie and then you can figure out whether it'll be an
interesting topic or whatever. But I just literally as we were, I was thinking of how one guy is trying to change conditions for younger people in Africa and trying to give it to them for free.
That's it. Yeah, that's the key is like people doing it. One of the things that people did which I thought was really great as an example as a model, is from October about October the tenth of twenty twenty three. I suppose people weren't going to school or university in Gaza, and very quickly there weren't any universities in Gaza because
they all got bombed. Right, the colleagues of mine in academic departments started putting on seminars and lectures that Palestinian people, be they displaced or still in Gaza, but with access to internet, you know, it's still displaced, but internally displaced could attend and continue with their educations. And I thought that was a really great, like solidarity based way to facilitate access to something that people have had taken away from them through no fault they were by state aggression.
Yeah.
Absolutely, Yeah, there's a model for that. I mean, colonial has done many terrible things, but it's given us a common language with a lot of our African friends. You know, you speak French and English, you can do quite well. So like, yeah, there are things available, and I wish people would I don't think people should stop caring about Palestine, of course I don't, but I do wish they would care more about people in Africa too, because like, they don't deserve this any more than anyone else.
I was born in nineteen sixty when the first mission went to the Congo. Yeah, and it's been going on, like I'm sixty four, it's been around sixty four years. Yeah, so no more than the problem with the Palestinians. I think some people, unless you have a specific interest in it or feel passionate about it, a lot of people just I think true note and to go to the next pronouncement from the White House, you know, clickbit. Yeah, So I think it's a sad fact, but it's the factor I think.
Yeah, yeah, it's a shame. And like, you know, if there's one thing I'd like to do with my career, I'd like to spend more time in that part of the world and do more reporting. And I think we could do a lot with as a media with just explaining how life is for everyday people, because people think about Congo in terms of yeah, the M twenty three in the conglese government and the who too, militias and this and that, but the vast majority of people are just trying to get on with their day. You know,
they want a better future for their children. Yeah, and you know the fact that your mobile phone it's cheap, it's maybe making their children's future worse. And that's something that we need to reckon with.
And E cares.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean this is the thing people and talk about electric cars. It's so as weird. It's all that stuff come and then even here in America right whether the US trying to mind lithium on reservations where you know, the land there's little land it's left indigenous people to have sovereignty on. It's where it's now
trying to do this very invasive form of mining. Kevin, You've written a book, so would you like to as we wind down here, do you want to explain a little bit about about your books so that people are interested in your life and your time as a peacekeeper and an archaeologist.
Okay, So what started off as a lockdown project when COVID hit back in the day, I decided I would write an account of my weird of wonderful life for my just from my family, and don't you start writing as you're no doubt where you start remembering. And suddenly I was at something like a hundred thousand words, and I thought, right, there might be a book in this. And I know, obviously I'm opinionating about my own book naturally, but it's not just a book about some random military
guy waffling on about his military career. I've a separate career in mountaineering and kind of a nearly separate career in archaeology, So it's it's a mixture of soldiering, mountaineering and archaeology. As someone said it to me, it's a bit like Chris Bonnington meets Bert Grills meets Indiana Jones, which is weird and wonderful way to do so. The title of the book is a Lifeless Ordinary, which this was a recruiting slogo in the nineteen nineties for the for the Irish Defense Forces.
Oh, I didn't know that.
I think. I think I'll sent you the link. Yeah, yeah, if not, I'll do it, yeah, immediately. So all your viewers can order the book. You can only get it online at the publishers. It's not on Amazon unfortunately. Yeah.
Well maybe maybe fell the best given the way tech people are playing the US economy. Yeah, you can. You can get it online. You can get it sent to the United States if you interest date I did. Thank you so much for your time, Kevin. You're insights today. I know we really appreciate it. Is there anywhere else if people want to follow you online? Aside from the book? The book is probably the best one. What is probably the best way to get in comment? I'm on LinkedIn
and yeah, the normal stuff. Just google Kevin McDonald and I should I should come up. I was resisting for years and years, and eventually I googled Kevin McDonald and I was surprised at the amount of Kevin McDonald's There is a famous American actor writing called Kevin McDonald. Yeah, but I just as a small party shot when when I was in Mali, I was researching the archaeology of Mali and the world expert on Melaye archaeology is a professor, naturally,
Kevin mac donald. So I sent him an am here and I said, by the way, I'm also an archaeologist, and my name is Kevin McDonald, and he goes my word, I'd be in Bangi or in Bamaco in two weeks time. Let's meet up.
So the two Kevin McDonald's, two archaeologists met up in Bama cup to discuss archaeology.
So that's nice when these things kept again.
Another one of my word and wonderful stories.
Yeah yeah, well thanks so much for joining us to you, Kevin, So it's nice to hear me.
You're more than welcome.
Jims, Hello, welcome to It could Happen Here a podcast about things falling apart and the people.
Trying to put them back together again. I am today's guest host, Margaret Kiljoy. Today is one of those episodes about people, well trying to put it back together again, or I guess really an episode about people trying to stop them from making things fall apart, because today I'm going to talk a little bit about the fight against
the Mountain Valley natural Gas pipeline. Last Tuesday, February twenty fifth, twenty twenty five, the last criminal trials from the campaign to stop the Mountain Valley pipeline were held in Parisburg, Virginia. As you might have guessed based on the fact that you've never heard of Parisburg, Virginia, it's a tiny town nestled in the Appalachian Mountains. It's also the seat of Giles County, Virginia, and it the town is home to almost three thousand people. It's in the southwest of the state,
right up against West Virginia. Culture and geography, of course, both reject things like state lines. The governments are obsessed with them. For ten years, the people of Central Appalachia, on both sides of the imaginary line, fought against this destructive pipeline. Their campaign tied nonviolent direct action with lawsuits
and public pressure campaigns, and they very nearly won. It took backdoor dealings at the highest level of power to force the pipeline's construction, with West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin holding twenty twenty three's Inflation Reduction Act hostage until President Biden personally guaranteed that the pipeline would be constructed, overriding all of the courts, activists, and locals who blocked it
along the way. Essentially, the ostensible Democrat Joe Manchin said, fine, I'll vote for your climate bill, but only if you fuck over the state that I represent. The pipeline, owned by Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC, was supposed to be built in a year. Thanks to the campaign against it, it took six and a half years to build. It was intended to cost the company three billion dollars. It costs them more than twice that, which is not bad for
a scrappy movement of mountain people, hippies, and punks. It's not bad for a bunch of grandma's and college kids. I'll be covering the full campaign in more details soon on cool people who did cool stuff. This podcast is instead about the trials. Twelve defendants went before the court that day, eleven of them facing felonies and serious prison time. In the end, none of them were sentenced to time
behind bars. I am happy to say a friend of mine invited me down to cover the trials twelve defendants, all in the same day, all in the same courtroom, with the same judge. I said, yes, West Virginia is a bigger state than its own map would indicate because there aren't freeways that run through it, so it takes a very long time to get anywhere. So I packed
up my van and headed down on Monday night. That night, sleeping in my van, I had a stress dream about court where I'd forgotten to take off my knife before going through the metal detectors, and spent a very long time talking to various cops about who I was and why I was there, before being stuck outside the courthouse and a large crowd of protesters surrounded by a large crowd of cops. In that dream, someone who wasn't on either side stood up to give a speech, but too
near an open flame in his clothes caught fire. Us anarchists again, I'm talking about my dream here. Aus Anarchist rushed to help him while the cops stared on with blank stairs. We beat out the flames and held his burned body while the cops stared on with blank stairs. We screamed for someone to call an ambulance while the
cops stared on with blank stairs. I like when my dreams lend themselves to obvious symbolism in this moment where the apparatus of the state is content to let all of us burn, whether in the fires of fascism or the fires of climate change. But I woke up disturbed nonetheless, with the sun barely over the horizon. I ate a quick breakfast, and I drove the rest of the way up to the actual courthouse and the actual trial. Fortunately,
at the actual thing, no one caught fire. I parked on a nearby street and made my way to the courthouse. It didn't accidentally bring a pocket knife, which is easy for me to do since I usually have three on me because I am a totally normal human. I did, though, bring an audio recorder, which was equally forbidden in the courtroom. I went through the metal detector and surrendered my little bag with the Zoom recorder. Later, press came into the room and I tried to get my recorder back, but
I was told that's real media. Without a press badge, I don't look much like someone who works for iHeart. I settled into a seat and waited for the proceedings. Eco defendants and ECO defenders both poured into the tiny, dingy courtroom. The ceiling had holes in it, the drywall was sagging. Appalachia isn't extracted from region. A place from which wealth is gathered, not a place where wealth goes.
We were reminded repeatedly that the fire code limited occupancy of the roomed eighty nine people, and it sure seemed like they brought in as many cops as they could to limit our numbers. Many more supporters waited outside. Most of what I did that day was weight in the courtroom, because most of the courtroom drama was happening behind closed doors as the prosecutor, the judge, and the aid or so defense attorneys all argued and fought over the details
of plea deals. Most of these characters, judge, prosecutor, and lawyers were quite familiar to the people working with the movement. This was the last trial of many throughout the ten year campaign, which has relied heavily on non violent direct action since twenty eighteen. The prosecutor, in particular, a guy named Bobby Lilly, was a well known figure. Usually, when
people say things like the prosecutor was a clown. They're speaking figuratively, but Bobby Lilly, the prosecutor, is a balloon artist in his free time, and his Facebook is full of photos of all of his balloon creations. The rumor is that he clowned his way through law school, all right, Which, look, if I wasn't predisposed to not like this man because he was arguing for the imprisonment of people trying to save all life on earth, I would kind of think
that's cool. But it does mean that there was a clown prosecution. And some people who were there to support the defendants wore balloon animal hats to mock Bobby Lily, though they were forced to leave those hats outside as no hats of any kind were allowed in the courtroom. Coming in that morning, we expected most of the defendants to take non cooperating plea deals they'd already agreed to. Non Cooperating plea deals are deals in which the defendant
refuses to cooperate with the state's investigation of other protesters. Basically, this means these are non snitching deals. A few of the defendants, though we're ready to take their cases to trial, I've decided to largely not use people's names in this reporting. Those names are a matter of public record, of course, but we are entering unprecedented times, and I don't see any particular advantage in making their names more public than
they already are. But do you know what I do want to make public the sweet sweet deals offered by our advertisers. I love making those public. Here they are, and we're back. The charges against the defendants seem politically motivated. This isn't to say the defendants might not have walked onto pipeline work sites and disrupted activity. There certainly a coordinated campaign to do just that, but the charges against
them were artificially inflated. I was talking to a supporter during one of the many long interludes in the proceedings who explained to me that nearly everyone on trial that day, and a large percentage of all defendants throughout the course of the campaign, were charged with felony misuse of a motor vehicle aka joy riding. To be clear, no one has been accused of hijacking construction equipment and riding it around.
It's just one of the many charges levied at protesters in order to get their bail denied or inflated to tie everyone up in legal proceedings for longer, and intimidate people into pleting guilty to lesser charges. These are similar to the kidnapping charges that a lot of protesters got as well, despite that, well, no one was kidnapped during the course of the campaign, except, of course, by the state.
Another supporter explained to me, inflated arges has been part of the Mountain Valley Pipeline's legal strategy all along, the same as protesters look to tie the pipeline company up in court and delay construction, MVP's strategy seems to have been to drag out court cases and keep as many individual force defenders caught up in legal jeopardy as possible. Of course, they shouldn't actually have the means to change
people's charges. But if the fight against MVP has taught us anything it's that the state caves to business interests every time. Most defendants from the course of the campaign have taken pleas that include suspended sentences so that they never do jail time as long as they promise to never try to save the world from fossil fuel infrastructure. It seems like MVP wants each person who catches charges
to be out of the fight. But fortunately Frontline's work is only a portion of the work involved in defending the earth. When someone told me that this was MVP's strategy to catch everyone up on charges, I wasn't really skeptical because it made sense, but I still had that confirmed for me in the courtroom. You see, a few lawyers or other legal representatives of MVP were present in the courtroom that day, standing at the back of the room, seemingly eves dropping on the courtroom.
Chatter.
Word on the street was that part of their goal was to gather information for the ongoing civil litigation happening against environmentalists. But eves dropping goes both ways, and one supporter I talked to overheard them talking to each other about how they wish they could drag these cases out even longer. Once court began, defendants went up one by one before the judge. Most entered pleas of not guilty with stipulation. This is, in essence, a way to accept
a plea agreement without actually accepting guilt. So each person went up pleaded not guilty with stipulation, and then was found guilty by the judge.
On their lesser charges.
The process took three to six minutes per defendant.
I tracked it.
The defendants were there for arrests stemming from actions that happened between October twenty twenty three and March twenty twenty four, from three different actions, all on nearby Peters Mountain, a mountain which sits on the horizon of Parrisburg, Virginia, and which defies the border between Virginia and West Virginia. Most of the action from the campaign happened on either Peters
Mountain or another mountain in another county, Poor Mountain. One action in October twenty twenty three, like I said, court has been dragged out for a very long time, was an action in which one person locked themselves to an excavator while others were there in support. The supporters of the action were facing felonies too. Some of them a while back were re arrested at their own arraignments, given
additional charges, and put into jail for days. It's not hard to imagine why the defendants were nervous in the courtroom that day, even though most of them had already sorted out their plea agreements ahead of time. The state is fickle, condescending, and unpredictable. One of the defendants that I talked to told me about their own case. The evidence supporting the charges against pretty much everyone was weak, but the evidence supporting the charges against this particular person
were particularly weak. The state kept offering this person plea deals before anyone else. Will you be offering the same deal to my co defendants, the defendant kept asking. The state kept saying no, so the defendant kept refusing the deal. That defendant came to court fully expecting to stand trial rather than take a better deal than what their co defendants were getting. The big story of the day actually
revolves around that particular point. At least one of the defendants who came prepared to stand trial last Tuesday wound up being offered much more generous plea agreements at the last minute because the state knew its case against them was flimsy. Those who accept at non cooperating plea deals
were hit with suspended sentences, community service, and restitution. The details differed from case to case, but in general, people were given a year in prison hanging over their heads if they're caught breaking the law in the next year, and have to spend between fifty and one hundred hours doing manual labor for Giles County, Virginia. I've been told this can range from something benign like painting murals to something intentionally humiliating, like cleaning the toilets.
At the police station.
The single biggest issue of contention was restitution. The defendants are being ordered to pay for the overtime costs associated with arresting them. One defendant, who was I believe, arrested at a mom's against the pipeline's action, a woman who simply wants her children to grow up in a world with a habitable ecosystem, was in court last Tuesday to contest the restitution payments. This is, as I understand it, the only issue that was not fully resolved that day.
The case the defense made was one that I found convincing, though of course I have a bias in that direction. Essentially, the defense's case was that people are not legally on the hook for the investigation of their own crime, that it would set a very dangerous precedent to have people have to pay for the cops's time to arrest them.
The prosecutor's argument was, and I rudely paraphrase here, yeah, but fuck these people in particular that because there was a campaign against the MVP, their crimes ought to be treated differently, in the same standard of the rule of law should not apply to them. Again, I'm paraphrasing, but that really was the takeaway that I seem to get. The judge said he would need to consider the case law on the matter and would not rule on it that day. But you know what he would have ruled
on if he was the judge of this podcast. He would have ruled that it is time for advertising.
And we're back.
The only case that actually went to trial, as I understand it, was for the only misdemeanor case of the day, a protester who was accused and convicted later at the end of the trial of spending a couple days living inside a length of pipe to prevent it from being
buried in the earth. The full incompetence of the police was on display from the state trooper who didn't know what the word diameter meant when asked to describe the pipeline in question, to the police, who admitted that they didn't actually bother watching the entrance to the pipe, so they didn't actually see the protester when they emerged from the pipe. In court, the cop said the protester came up to them to turn themselves in and said, quote, well,
you're lucky, I'm honest. A large part of the defense's case was that the defendant had been denied the right to a speedy trial, which seems true to me. Misdemeanors in particular are supposed to move through the court system quickly, not drag on for a year, because again, it seems quite like that MVP has been working from the start to drag on court cases as long as possible. All the while the trial went on, supporters outside had a table set up in the parking lot with homemade food,
a staple of this movement. As far as I can tell, the connections between the front lines and their supporters built a very strong movement. Indeed, after the trial, an older local man gave a heartfelt thank you to everyone who had put their bodies on the line to protect the mountains he loves. And I went around and talked to people, feeling a bit odd to be there as a stranger
to the movement and as a journalist. Blocking pipeline construction through nonviolent direct action is simple and principle, but complicated in the details. The core of it is that you leverage your own safety in order to prevent construction crews from working. Since your own safety is what you're gambling with, it's well not safe the ideas you put your own
body on the line. In nineteen ninety eight, for example, Earth First activist named David Chain died when a lagger dropped a tree on him and killed him, and despite ample evidence that the lagger in question had been aware of the protesters and had been threatening them, no charges
were pressed against him. In two thousand and three, an American anarchist piece worker named Rachel Corey was killed in the Gaza Strip when she stood in front of an Israeli bulldozer trying to stop the bulldozer from demolishing a Palestinian home. Even when you aren't murdered for doing it,
the work itself is dangerous too. Shortly before I joined my first forest defense campaign in the Pacific Northwest, an activist named Whorhound had just fallen to her death from a tree sit and her absence was a tangible presence in every meeting and every forest defense camp for years after. So I don't feel like I'm speaking hyperbolically when I say that in that courtroom were some of the bravest people I've ever met who risked their lives to stop
a clear and present threat against it. And again genuinely believe this is not hyperbolic to say clear and present threat against all life on Earth. Climate change could very easily destroy every ecosystem on the planet. This fight is bigger than Appalachia. These forest defenders at this last trial knew that they would likely face felonies where they arrested, and they knew that people have died doing this work
before them. And I don't want to speak to everyone involves gender identity, but it seems likely that some of them were trans as well, and thus risking spending prison time in the wrong prisons, which is a particularly dangerous position to be in. I don't say this to try
to scare people out of joining movements like this. I can name people who have died in nonviolent direct action campaigns, and occasionally people have served real jail time, But I've met thousands and thousands more who have saved wild places, who have built lifelong friendships, and who have proven to themselves that they are who they hoped they would be.
I want to end this by reading two statements. One was written by one of the defendants and was posted onto the Ablachians Against Pipeline's Facebook page on March third. You can read the full statement over there if you'd like.
Quote.
Today we proved that co defendant solidarity works. We were able to see how different strategies against a stacked system play out. It is in the court's best interest for us to take a deal out of fear of trial, but today we showed that they are just as afraid of an uncertain outcome, and we can use that to
our advantage when we work together. The people who went to trial or pushed it to the brink got objectively better outcomes than those who took deals ahead of time, and those who took deals often had to struggle with changing conditions at trial, but still felt obligated to comply. I and another defendant held out, in part out of principle for people who had not been offered deals, and in part to say fuck you, Bobby Lilly, our prosecutor,
who is a literal clown. My co defendant and I went to bat for another who was not offered a deal at first. My co defendant was offered a deal, rather nice one at that, but my friend said no. The clown blinked. My friend basically went to trial. Technically they took a deal, but they basically started a trial. Prosecution made a motion to amend charges, but abruptly the clown and his cop body left.
They ran.
They had no evidence. Another deal, which was even better, was offered, and this time I got one too. For me, it was good and an agreement. We took our deals. The one other person was offered an okay deal, but opted to go to trial with eyes open at the courts in competence and crushed it. Little Bobby Lilly looked even more like a clown. Every deal that was offered only got better, especially on the day of the trial. You don't have to accept the first deal, or the second,
or the third or the fourth. And when they try to pit us against each other, it is because they know we are stronger together. Initially we were charged with conspiracy. The real conspiracy is between prosecutors and the judges, between the cops and the corporations. It is the conspiracy between your landlord and your boss to keep you exhausted and hungry, unable to fight back. It is the dictatorship of the billionaires to keep us bound to their world where they
make and break their own rules. This is bigger than a forty two inch wide, three hundred and three mile long, ticking time bomb running to Appalachia. It is the fact that our lives are bought and sold by the large land owning class who are able to ram this project through under Joe Biden, despite the harm it'll cause, because it will make them money as the world burns. Then here's another statement from the person who sat inside the pipe, and the statement is from last year.
Quote.
Winning looks so much bigger than just stopping this pipeline. It's a win through the community folks continue to build. It is a win because of the insane amount of skills that people have gathered and shared, no whin because whether or not this pipeline ever has gas running through it, the legacy of resistance in Appalachia still lives. Extractive industry knows that they can't fuck with the communities here without going through hell, and we better not let them forget that.
Many times in my life I have felt consumed by grief, grief for all the places this pipeline has destroyed, For communities who continue to be ravaged by the state and industry, For the senseless violence committed against people and land every day, For friends and strangers forced into cages. But what keeps me moving is knowing that I feel such grief only because I have such deep hope and love for what could be and what we have the power to create.
Find or facilitate radical community. Wherever you call home, Think about the things you are willing to sacrifice for people near and far. Dream of worlds that feel out of reach, because I bet they aren't as far away as it may seem as the end of the and so yeah, though the criminal trials are over, the civil legal fight rages on. MVP is attempting to wield civil courts to
silence its opposition. And if you want to help support that fight, which continues, you can donate to Appalachian Legal Defense Fund, which you can find probably by just searching for it, but you can also find it by going to bit dot l y slash app Legal Defense all one word, no dashes.
Anyway.
That's it for the episode. I'll talk to you soon. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. It's me James. Today we have a very special episode in which everyone is a doctor. I will believe in discussion, of course, as a doctor of modern European history. But I'm joined today by venktash Ramnath, who is a practicing pullmanologist, a professor at UC San Diego Health, a medical director of several its use in royal and urban settings, and also the author of the
substack be a health architect. Welcome to the Shoving Test. Thanks for joining us.
Great to be here.
I'm also joined by doctor Carve Hooder, a gastro enterologist and the host of our favorite medical podcast, the House of Pod. Of the many you listen to, I'm sure yeah, what they might call a super user in a medical podcast space you listen to more than. Most importantly, Cave is of course our friend, our resident doctor with a useful doctorate. So what we want to talk about today is Medicare and specifically some of the cuts to medicare. More broadly, the I don't know, you have to put
this challenges for people working in healthcare in the Trump administration. Right, we addressed specifically gender affirming care in a previous episode, but it doesn't start and end there, right, That might be the thing that sort of the culture wars have been focusing on recently. But I want to talk more
broadly about the challenges facing healthcare. So, first of all, would one of you care to explain medicare for people who are not familiar And some listeners might not be living in the United States, or they might just not have encountered this yet in their life, So could one of you explain what this particular sort of type of health insurance is and how it's maybe more vulnerable than other types to federal government changes.
I could take a stab at it.
I'm not a health policy want but I am a physician that has to deal with Medicare all the time. So Medicare, in sort of general terms, is a type of health insurance that is provided by the federal government.
It is almost exclusively for individuals above the age of sixty five, as it dates back to the nineteen sixties with Linda Johnson's Great Society Program, and so since that time there has been this blanket coverage for any individuals above that age, such that all their medical services or products, whatever they need for their healthcare is actually covered by the government.
This is the federal government. Now.
The interesting thing about Medicare is that there are different parts to it. There's Part A, which is primarily for some essential services and includes hospital care. There's Part B, which includes whatever physicians fees go into that healthcare. And then there's Part D, which relates to pharmaceutical prices, so
your drug costs. It's not comprehensive in the sense that there's always something more that individuals need, but Beneicare, for all intents and purposes, is the sort of standard and.
It should cover most of individual's needs.
Now that said, the commercial payers, that is, the other insurance companies that are not federally government sponsored, take their lead from Medicare. So a lot of the different payment rates or coverages and services they all look to what the centers of Medicare and Medicaid services dictate as far as what is an acceptable reimbursement rate, what are the rules around what should be covered and what should not. So that's why Medicare is such an important entity for the United States.
Yeah, I'll add to that.
They set the lead of importance here too, because if we're talking about telemedicine telehealth, how important that is to Medicare patients, to everyone in the country at this point, then if they are to cut it. If that happens is I think we're probably going to discuss. If that goes away, then the other private insurance companies are going to follow. That's right, could be across the board changes led by these changes of medicare.
Yeah, so let's talk about those changes. Then, as you mentioned right, there's this telemedicine. It's a waiver right that has allowed telemedicine to be funded through this for the last five years. I suppose it's going to expire by the end of this month, which is March twenty twenty five.
If if you're listening later, explain like why telemedicine has been such a positive step like in healthcare since if you could since twenty twenty and then what we're facing if it's no longer funded federally.
May I'll start this one, but Venkesh definitely want you to weigh in on it as well. Does give a little background over the past five years that's grown quite a bit and it's gone from being kind of this emergency stop gap to a real cornerstone of what we consider modern healthcare and now it's exceedingly common, like over seventy five percent of hospitals in the US connect at a distance via video conference or some technology to patients, and it's been popular on both sides. It's been popular on
both sides of the aisle. When it first was done, as you mentioned, during COVID, when they said, okay, we're gonna peel back some of the restrictions on Medicare coverage for these telehealth things, it was considered like a victory, like one of the few good things that come out of COVID. Both sides liked it. It was popular amongst patients, it was popular amongst medical providers. It was good for
Republicans and Democrats alike. And as you mentioned, it's been kept going through being put in some bill or another since it was initially put in I think as they called in twenty twenty, and it's been put in one bill or another to go with a funding. But then came this last December when Congress was going through their spending. It was only given this three months reprieve, which is going to be up as you mentioned, at the end
of this month. And if it goes away, there's a lot of factors will go into a lot of them, but there's a lot of people, older patients, you know, compromise patients who don't want to come into office, people with disabilities, people can't get around that well, people in rural areas, which is you know, really how it started. People who are going to be hurt all across this country. And at this point, the majority of people have had at least one experience or more in a year with telemedicine.
It's become a part of a lot of people's lives. And if it goes away, you know, there's still going to be health care as it is. I mean, it doesn't mean healthcare is going away, but it is going to put a tremendous burden on patients and hospitals for that matter, across the country.
Yeah, let me add to that.
So, you know, telemedicine has been around for a very long time, at least technically speaking, right, I mean, you can go back to the nineteen seventies. Even when you talk about the intensive caeriod, which is where the sickest people in the hospital are, there are studies that come out of the nineteen seventies. However, Ever, since people have
had iPhones and been on airbnb and everything else. Since two thousand and seven, That inflection point actually had a wave of opportunity that washed right into medicine, and as Cave is saying, you know, we have such a fragmented healthcare system that has you know, folks living in rural areas, suburban areas, and urban areas, all of whom are at the mercy of what specialists may be. They're contracted at
any given time for any given specialty. Now telemedicine, as it's gotten more and more popular, has kind of leveled the playing field. I mean, you can be in a rural place like where I'm sitting right now on the US Mexico border, or you can be in New York City, you know, one of the densest populations, but you may might not have access to specialty expertise without telemedicine. With telemedicine, you can now have access and I've seen patients love it.
You can deal with the sickest of the sick, like I said, intensive care units, but you can also have outpatient experiences. And we've seen a number of different you know, commercial opportunities that have leveraged that. But the point is that as we're hearing on this, you know, it's become sort of a standard operating procedure for how we deliver healthcare. And if you just pull the rug out from that, there can be some you know, unintended consequences to that that are not insignificant.
Yeah, and like it makes a lot of sense to a lot of people, right, Like I think about my own experience with it. I was traveling recently and got COVID like a couple of months ago, and there was no need for me to go to a clinic and be around other people, right, I just needed to contact my doctor and get some prescriptions and check in, And like, it was so much better that I could do it in my pajamas from the bed rather than like having
to get out. And I'm lucky I have access to a car I can drive to to surgery is not that far away, have a job that accommodates my schedule. But there are million reasons way it might be very beneficial to people. So let's talk about you. You mentioned this before, but we have commercial insurers, and like people might think that this is limited to older folks, or it doesn't affect them, or it's something that only impacts
people who have Medicare. But as you said, Medicare kind of sets the standard for what is covered and what isn't covered, right, So, can you explain how this might end up resulting in it in just a massive like a cliff. I've seen it described as a telehealth cliff.
Yeah, so, I mean basically, the sort of this convoluted way that we pay for services is it looks to one standard, even though some may argue how did that standard come about?
But regardless of.
That, Medicare is the central authority that basically tells everyone this is what we should be doing, and this is how much we should be paying for it. Now, the commercial insurers can decide to exceed that if they wish. If they say, have an employer who's employees they want to have a special contract with, that's that's fine, that's not restricted. But the bottom of what is considered a reimbursable amount is really set by Medicare, and so they move the bottom. And so if you drop the bottom,
you can pretty much well assured in this. You know, in a capitalist you know sort of mentality that the costs should go down, right, I mean, why should you pay more for something that you don't need to write?
And we see that we see that every year.
Okay, every year there's new technology, but the slightly older technology, which is again covered by Medicare, they move those reimbursements down. So whether it's a sleep study, you know, for someone with obstructive sleep apn are difficulty sleeping at night, or it's some ophthalmology technology, or it's some ultra sound machine, it doesn't really matter what it is. Medicare is always trying to minimal cost, which is understandable.
They want to make it cost.
Effective, but they are setting the lead so everyone will follow what they do. That's kind of the way that our system is sort of set up.
Yeah, you know, I might just add to that that aside from all the things we mentioned about it, how you know, it helps people in rural areas, people with difficulty getting places are just really busy schedules. It also, you know, helps free hospital beds, helps prevent emergency rooms
from being overwhelmed. It leads to faster testing, it leads to a higher number of people that we can see, and in terms of its quality, we know it works well and about ninety percent of cases of telemedicine to get the same outcomes if the patient was there in clinic, and that ten percent that's not it's not clear that they're getting inferior care in most of those cases. So it's an effective treatment, and you could make an argument that it is cost effective in some ways too. It's
particularly clearly for like things of dermatology, pediatrics. These are things where it's clearly cost effective to have it. But even beyond that, it's not even necessarily I think a strong argument that we'll be losing money from it, and that cutting it would help us in the long run. I feel like if we're being smart about how to manage American healthcare system and how to keep it afloat, telemedicine is going to be an important part of that going forward.
I want to I do want to add something here, and I do want to be careful about the term, because telemedicine and telehealth are not only sort of a catch all, but they're sort of used interchangeably, right, and just like anything, you have to be specific about the term. So I think what we're talking about this on this podcast is tell amedicine in terms of a two way audio visual interface where you can have a direct face
to face consultation or interaction with a practicing practitioner. Usually that's going to be a position, but it may be a nurse practitioner or other physician extender we call them. But just to be clear, you know, telemedicine also extends to other types of devices like wearables. Those things that they are either you know, trackers that you can wear as your fitbit, or a sleep device you know that
you can wear around. Those kinds of things are kind of put into the telemedicine bucket and it's not clear to me at least how that is going to change.
I think April first is when they face to face coverage from a professional fee standpoint that is slated to end because they did liberalize it during the COVID pandemic and it's been extended I think another year around that, and that will definitely change the dynamic here, but it's not clear how much of it extends to other types of remote physiologic monitoring services and products.
Right, yeah, so something like a glucose monitor or like yeah some yeah, which could be catastrophic for people, right if they don't get those those funded. Right, We're going to take a little break for advertisements here. Maybe you'll get an advertisement for a Bluecoast Monitor or even Insolent.
Could only hope.
Yeah, yeah, I'm glad they're taking some of that money that they've made me bleed out of my wallet over the years and returning it to me in the form of podcast advertisements. All right, we're back. Let's talk more broadly about I guess the changes in the legislative environment for healthcare might be a good way to put it.
I think if you were an excellent op ed recently where you discussed you were one of the many recipients of the Tomby five Useful things you did at work this week email, I thought you wrote like a really good piece about about the varied and critical work that
you do. Can you talk about, like, what is the feeling among healthcare professionals, physicians who have you sort of like to speak speak as going into four years of possibly vastly reduced government spending and a sort of bizarre and haphazard cutting of the federal biocracy that we're seeing.
Yeah, it's a tough time, certainly, and coming out of the pandemic, this is not what really anybody expected. But you know, the stresses have been mounting for quite a while, right, Healthcare professionals are seeing and feeling more stress at work, whether it's you know, the demands of the job meaning that there are fewer resources to spend on a heightened number of patients with you know, increasingly complex diseases, or even just the questions that we are getting from patients.
A lot of patients now are asking me really financial questions.
I mean literally, the other day, I had a woman who was unfortunately having septic shock and was faced with having to amputate her leg, and I was speaking with her husband because she was becoming more and more delirious, and he was just asking me about, well, I'm going to have to sell my house in order to fund what might come down the pike as far as being at home with services, and I was trying to I was trying to kind of get an understanding of how
he viewed his wife actually going through the thing that we're watching in the moment. But it's a preoccupation that has taken up a lot of space in the room, and it's now coming on to physicians to sort of navigate at least some questions and answer those questions around it.
So that's a long way of saying that, you know, physicians and nurses and other healthcare professionals are feeling more and more stress in a system that's just buckling, right, and the last thing anybody needs is to be having to do more without really a clear understanding of the purpose around it, right, And we are all for a cost effectiveness.
We want that to work.
We also want to provide care irrespective of someone's religious, political, or other beliefs. And yet, you know, we have to work within a system that we kind of are not really understanding how they're approaching this issue. Are they are they with us or against us or somewhere in between. It's it's sort of a it's a moving target, and so I think that's what's that's what's kind of sandwiched a lot of healthcare professionals, and we don't really know where to turn for.
Some of the answers that we ourselves are looking for.
I would add also, you know, we're seeing this active dismantling of the US healthcare infrastructure, and our friends in the academic world in particular, it's a very stressful time for them. Who knows if their studies are going to go through, who knows if they're going to get their funding who knows what's going to stay with going to
go in the next couple of years. There's a lot of concern over that, obviously, But even in the medical world outside of the academic centers, I know a lot of doctors right now are concerned and they're concerned about what's going to happen to the state of our scientific community that helps us with new advancements in medical technology
in the coming years. And it seems like, as Ventechia was alluding to, we're dismantling all our ability to follow to study to really closely track infectious disease in a time that is exceedingly dangerous across the world, with rising disease, tuberculosis in this country, measles in this country, in Uganda,
there's ebola again. There's threats all over the world. And this is one of the worst times I could think of to be in this moment of austerity, and particularly because so much of it seems unclear to us why why these things are being done, you know, is it all because of this ridiculous gender ideology. Do they actually think they're saving money with some of these things. It's a very unclear time. And of course there are a lot of people in the medical world, doctors included, that
are conservative or Republican voters. Getting into conversations with them about this is sort of a tough thing to do because, like Fintesha mentioned, they, like a lot of us, want to make sure we're doing this in a cost effective manner, something we talk about and we have been talking about in medicine for a long time, particularly academic medicine, interestingly enough, which is really on.
The cutting board.
It's academic medicine that usually talks about, you know, trying to be cost effective. What tests are we going to order, what labs do we need to get, How we doing this in the most cost effective way. These are important things that are discussed and across the political spectrum in medicine. I think there is some concern even amongst some of the more right leaning doctors. But again it's hard because they've gone this far down the road, it's hard to know,
you know, when they're going to pull back. What's the line in the stand for them about what is maybe too far for this administration.
Yeah, and certainly like an area where we're seeing there right now is in like public health, right, we don't really know, like I'm going to Texas next week, where there's currently a measles outbreak. The things that we didn't think that we might be seeing in this country again,
we're seeing again. And like, as you say, it's coming at a time when like not just funding is unstable, but also like the I guess, like the basics of science have been somewhat politicized right to a degree, and like people, I don't know if that's something you see in your practice, but like certainly, like I was talking to a doctor friend who said half their clients are now like declining vaccinations as I was there to get,
you know, every disease that I could get. I have a lot of travel vaccinations, so I'm always getting new and exciting vaccinations. But I'm making up for some of the gap, I guess. But it's it's a really challenging time right from that perspective as well, like the culture around it.
Yeah, that's right.
I mean even here in the San Francisco Bay area, you know, I've seen more of vaccine hesitation than I remember ever seen before in the past.
It's sort of a vexing question because I think some of this is let's be clear, some of this is on our messaging, you know, as healthcare professionals. I mean, there are more and more articles. In fact, the Wall Street Journal piece a couple of weeks ago that was saying how patients you know, are increasingly not trusting their doctors and there are data to say that we don't communicate very well. Right, So there there is that, and
that's on us. And you know, another op ed piece in the Boston Globe by Ashi's Jaw, you know, did a mea culpa around some of the things that public health we did wrong.
We got it, we got it.
Wrong in COVID where we didn't you know, deal with some of the doubts and lack of evidentiary base for masking and some of these other things that basically hurt us in the end. So there's definitely that. However, you know, restoring the trust in healthcare professionals is sort of like a basic step to anyone getting their healthcare. I mean,
I think people still go to their doctors. Most people still trust their doctor to some degree, and I think that that's at least a bright spot in where we are, because when we've lost that, I think we're really in trouble. I mean that's slipping. But I think that there is a way to restore that trust. But it starts so that it just starts with a conversation. You know, if someone has a vaccine hesitancy or they don't understand what's going on, that's the opportunity to open the doors to
a dialogue. And I think maybe that's, you know, maybe that's the starting point for any of this. We all want cost effectiveness, we all want you know, transparency. We also want to have choices that make sense to us. But let's not make it an adversarial confrontation. And I think that that goes for both sides. I would add, though I agree with you on pretty much all of that. I agree that we need to have those conversations, you know, if they're difficult. We need to be able to look
back objectively about things that worked and didn't work. But a lot of these sort of mia culpas that have come out about like you know, this is where we went wrong and why we lost trust, if I'm being honest, including that one from Ashi's Yad, has a lot of in my opinion, pick me energy, a lot of people who are trying to appeal to the incoming administration and be like, hey, look, I'm cool too. I'm not always about vaccines, and to me, that's just as bad too.
And I do think we need to have an honest conversation, and I do think we need to be clear about how we do science.
Something we need to be able to explain. And you're absolutely right, which we didn't do very well is Look, we are working with information we have at hand. We're doing everything we can may change when it changes, our recommendations are going to.
Change too, And that is tough.
That is a tough message to get across because people don't like nuance like that. People don't like the uncertainty of that. People want to know yes or no absolutely, and sometimes it's hard. It's hard to find good communicators and science to do that. But that you're exactly right is incumbent upon us as doctors who have a sub stack like yours, of a podcast like mine, who are academics who have a reach to students and beyond to communicate these things.
And even though it would be.
Awesome for the next four years my podcast was just about farts and poop, I know I have to do a lot of this stuff because I know how important. This is now more than ever, So I totally agree it's going to start with conversations.
I think that's a big difference between this is the information we have available when were doing our best with it. When we get new information, we'll do something different if that's what that information points to. And these people are acting out of malice to deprive you of your rights or you know, which is sometimes what's been suggested by some people, and like, I think a good way to
defeat that, as you say, it's communicating around it. It is very sad that, Like when I was doing the research for my PhD dissertation, I wrote about First I wrote about violence and the Anarchist Builders Union for my masters, and then I wrote about public health and popular sport in the nineteen thirties in Barcelona, And a lot of what you saw anarchists doing in Barcelona in the nineteen thirties was talking to people about tuberculosis, educating people about
tuberculosis and explaining what tuberculosis was and where it came from, and like that was in nineteen thirty one, and how.
Far we've come, baby, wow, wow.
Yeah, it's great. There were some other things from the nineteen thirties, which have also made an unwelcome return. Tuberculosis is not the only one. There's also the Nazi salute in large public gather to the United States, which yeah, I don't know, and I guess i'd answer for them both in the nineteen thirties, and they're the same answers that apply now. I think people like people will be distressed by this, right, like a lot of people of
my age and younger. I guess it's folks a bit younger than me for the larger part, Like the pandemic was a life defining event for a lot of younger folks, right, and it was a scary thing. It still is a scary thing, Like getting COVID still really sucks. And I know people who have long COVID and the thought of
that is petrifying to me. People will be genuinely anxious now right at this potential dismantling of the public health apparatus, that rise in vaccine hesitancy, less funding for research, such that if we enter another pandemic with some novel infectious disease, we won't be able to respond as fast. Right. The response to COVID, for the criticisms of it like the
speed with which we had vaccines was amazing. Some of that came from like Vancousca's college that UCSD actually all right, like sult I guess which is next door with free parking?
Which is nice?
So like, what would you say to people, because this is a thing I've seen more and more among folks who you know, who are friends of mine, right, is like real worry about infectious disease, real concern about new variants of COVID or about you know, the bird flu is one, right with these other infectious diseases. I saw fifty people have died of it as yet unexplained disease in Congo recently. What would you say to those people?
Because they are concerns are somewhat legitimate, Right, Like, if we go into another pandemic, we're not going to be anywhere near as effective as we were in twenty twenty because of all these combination of reasons we've discussed.
That's a hard question to answer. I would say, let me, you know, I think that the COVID pandemic, Yes, there are a lot of things that went well. The vaccine development was phenomenal, I mean a revolutionary. I mean, who would have expected that to happen. However, it also just revealed how shattered our public health system really is in
terms of messaging, even detection, spreading information. Even the vaccine distribution was completely chaotic, Right, So so I don't want to say that, you know, the public health response during COVID was some sort of paragon to be emulated or replicated, right. So that said, though, absolutely, I mean, you know, how are we going to handle a new era of this what if you know, scenario where we don't know what
virus is coming next. I mean, I'm seeing these days, I'm even seeing viruses that never caused the kind of respiratory failure in the past, they're doing it now, whether it's RSV, the respiratory syensitial virus, or even non COVID coronavirus, which should just give you a cold the sniffles, and yet it's causing devastating, you know, pneumonias. So we're in a new era and you know, antibiotic resistance is not getting any less problematic. So what do we do in
this era? Well, I think awareness is the first thing. Okay, awareness around Yes, I mean, these diseases are transmitted from person to person you know, we all know somebody who doesn't want to take a vaccine. I mean, I don't think there's that's a surprise to say we know of somebody or directly or maybe one degree of separation, right, And I think you need to have those community conversations.
You need to have one on one conversations. Yes, it's going to be uncomfortable, but we got to talk about it and talk to your healthcare provider about it. I mean, yes, you can look up stuff on TikTok. Yes, you can look up stuff on Google or you name your online resource.
But you want to have a person that can actually understand from years of living and living and breathing this stuff, and also who listens to you as a human being in the same community or somewhere nearabouts right to put together what the science says in some sort of meaningful way to you, uh, and not some anonymous you know resource that may or may not have all the you know, all the data their fingertips, you know. So so I guess it still goes back to how does anyone find
reliable information? Where do you go when you've got questions? Most people want a human being who's lived and breathed this with experience to help them navigate. I I certainly see that not just as a doctor, but as a friend, as a family member. I mean constantly, you know, they're asking me these things, and I would suggest that you know your audience may have connections both personally but also professionally to those.
Folks that can help them navigate.
You know, and to answer your question from my perspective, is a challenge. I I think people should be concerned. In fact, I just did two parter with one of the world's best virologists talking about the possible bird flu pandemic that could arise and all the threats that are out there, and so I do think there are some really significant, serious risks to be worried about. However, I'm never gonna say there's nothing that can be done about it.
There's plenty that can still be done about it. I still maintain hope in the medical community for what we're able to do and what we're able to accomplish, And to echo what I think both of you guys have said or would at least agree with, there's a lot of changes that we can make locally amongst our small sphere of influence and then growing out from there in terms of getting vaccinated, in terms of wearing masks when needed, or at least looking at the data with an open
mind and sharing good resources. Because one thing that the younger population is good about, and what some of the people you're mentioning, James, is they're good at detecting online and that's a skill that needs to be honed for medical literacy as well, and I'm hopeful that that's going
to continue to improve. Maybe stupid optimism, but I do believe the younger generation is going to continue to be better at that than the older generation, and I think that will help battle a lot of the misinformation that's out there. But there are things that they can do in fact, for getting back to the telehealthing. For example, talking about telemedicine slash telehealth as vnteche sort of broke down in terms of it being cut at the end
of the month. There are people that are really pushing against that, including Rocana, who's here a legislator here in California who's proposed a new bill. I haven't been able to see any of the details of it, but there are a lot, including Amazon. By the way, Amazon is one of like three hundred and fifty companies that have written a letter to the to Congress to help push
for this funding. So if you can call a congres if you can do that, if you can keep bothering them telling them how important it is, I think those are things that can help. So I think that's a good place to start.
Yeah, that's a really get piece of advice.
If I could just follow up with that. I think part of what will help with the support for some of these programs is to take you know, take us take a few minutes to think about what the other side is worried about, right. I mean, we all know about the excesses of certain online bad actors. Who are they use telemedicine to promote you know, ADHD medications or other types of psychotropic medications, which was not it was
not supported, and it actually caused harm. Right, So so there are things out there that are excesses and somewhat harmful. And if we could as a community sort of help frame the approach to dealing with some of those things and preventing some of those problems, then I think some of the support will kind of sort of shortself. I think the worry is if you open up the floodgates too wide, you know, human nature being what it is, it's going to encourage bad behavior. Not that anybody wants that,
but there is something to be said about some scrutiny. Right, So if we're the ones, and I completely support the use of tell medicine, but I also want to be careful about how to promote its thoughtful and safe use and wed that in the proposal and not just leave it for others to figure out.
That I think would potentially.
Change the conversation around while you just want this and we're not going to give it to you, like the standoff will will subside when you try to work it, work a partnership out as opposed to a give it to me or else kind of scenario.
I don't disagree with that, but I also think you're giving those more credit than I would, which is to say that they actually, really, they really would focus and listen to I think what they've just done is literally, you know, take a chainsaw and cut away at major federal funding and then kind of seeing what was really bad about that and what wasn't and being like, oh, Okay, maybe we do need people in charge of nuclear security.
Oh maybe this is popular, We'll put it back. You know, I kind of think that they're not taking as much attention or care. But I also do agree that the point is is valid. I mean, sure, is there fraud in some telemedicine? Yeah, I'm sure, probably small, very small percentage. But if we can specify its use, if we can be better about that, I agree, I'm all for it.
Yeah, especially right now. I was just thinking, as you're talking about, like how important is people that accessing reproductive healthcare and being able to access reproductive healthcare wherever they are, and like how much more difficult that would be, right if people didn't have ten of medicine appointments. So I think we've spoken about before on the show. But yeah,
I'm sure there are some school cases. I'm sure there are a bunch of CIS gender guys getting gender affirming hormonal care through telemedicine who probably could go without and be Okay, guys, I'd like to wrap up there, but I want to give you a chance both to You talked a lot about like science communication, So where can people find you online? Where can they see you communicating your medical knowledge?
Okay, Well, so I thanks James, I have a substack. It's called Be a Health Architect. You can book me up at Be a Health Architect, and you know, I have a conversation there around an issue that certainly affects me and those around me, which is physician burnout, but in the larger sphere of healthcare professionals, it really touches
everybody in healthcare. So that's where I'm posting actively. I'm also sharing that, you know, through various other avenues such as X and Blue Sky and other places, so you can you can find me there.
Look forward to seeing you there.
Yeah.
I would also recommend Vintesha's substack if you're in the medical field in particular, I think you'll appreciate it. A focus on burnout is as important as it's ever been, if not much much more. I mean, we were talking about burnout and moral injury in doctors before COVID, and now you know, down a couple of years down the road, it's only worse. So I think it's really important and I do recommend it, or you know, check out his latest article in the Los Angeles Times. As you mentioned before.
As for me, find me on Blue Sky at Cave MD. But more importantly, just listen to the podcast The House of Pod. If you are a fan of this show, I think you're going to like The House of Pod if you haven't already given it a try.
It's a lot of the same people that you hear.
On this show. On the House of Pod. James included he's going to be coming back to talk about the measles and with an author of a new book down there about the measles outbreak. And you know, we take a look at grifters, medical grifters, We take a look at some people that would be considered medical contrarians. We take a look at some of the quackery in medicine
as well. So I think you'll appreciate this show. If you like the whole behind the Bastards verse, I think you'll get into the House of Podso, so check us out where you get your podcasts.
Yeah, great, Thank you so much for joining us. Guys, really appreciate it.
Thanks, thank you.
Welcome to and it could happen here Special Report. I'm Garrison Davis. I'm joined by James Stout and Sophie right when you're in so exactly, we are here to discuss Trump's first Joint Session speech of his second term. This is basically the equivalent of a state of the Union, except it's too early to really give a good state of the Union, even though this month has felt kind
of like a year. So we are doing a special report here in addition to our regular executive Disorder episode, because there is just so much to talk about that we cannot fit it all in our regular ed pause pause for effect. Okay, guess it was us speaking of This was the longest Wow Session speech in American history, and man, it felt like it lasted forever.
Yeah, I was gonna say, and boy, howdy did it feel never ending?
It went on so long.
Not a great feat of ar tree. Really.
I was supposed to watch some yawie with a friend last night and they came over and I was like, haha, I gotcha. Actually I have to watch this this speech first. Don't worry. Usually it's only like an hour or so. Two.
I did the exact same Two hours later, I did the exact same scam to my friend Sarah. She was like, you know, I seriously love you, right because this is horrible, horrible.
Two hours later, it finally ends and they're like, Okay, we can finally watch yawee, right, I'm like, no, no, no, I have to watch the Democratic response speech. Don't worry. It should be shorter, and thankfully it was. Yeah, but yeah, let's let's just start by talking about like the beginning of this speech, or rather with the general overview of this speech was. This was not a leaning across the
aisle speech, right, This wasn't trying to unite the country. No, it was not, but you know, just cater to core like mega supporters and new issues at the center of the modern right wing media machine. The version of the speech I watched on ABC frequently cut to Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro sitting together overlooking Congress as they were special guests of the President and the First Lady.
Yes, magic, they did they did this. They did this on CNN. I switched back and forth between a couple of channels. I noted this to our team. But when I first looked up, like what time the speech was starting, I turned on my TV and went to see it in and I happened upon the them talking about if Dems should not applaud or if they should heckle, and some motherfucker I don't care about said that Gems should find places to applaud him to show unity.
Cool.
Sure, yeah, mm hmm, that's always worked well.
Dems should find places to applaud him, to.
Draw to the king, the king for ruining the government, firing all the workers. Give him a clap. Why don't you, Sorry, James, I realized that got a little insensitive.
Wow, yeah, Garrison, this is why we have to watch those videos where the bad actors talk about how they do.
Not anymore talking about our workplace harassment videos.
EI is over, James, No more of those videos here in the freeze state of Georgia. That's illegal.
Unfortunately, here in California, I have approximately seventy five little little red bells and I log into my work day.
But like a single time, early in the speech, Trump asked Democrats why not join us in celebrating America. After he complained, I could cure any disease, and these people sitting right here, the Democrats, they would not cheer. I could cure any disease, and these people wouldn't cheer.
No, No, that was weird. I mean, like some Dems didn't even show up. They had the subcab of wearing certain they did the same performative bullshit they always do. And they had what I can only describe as like church paddles the status statistic signs on it.
They weren't.
They weren't even like I mean, like come.
On, like a good description. But no, some Dems did not show up in protest. Others were black, kind of.
Like in mourning.
Yeah, who cares.
Of the women's caucus were pink, very cool, very feminist, and others were the colors of the Ukrainian flag. Sure that will help, but you know, Trump just pointed towards the Democrat side of the chamber throughout the night and just referred to them as the radical left lunatics. Like this, this was not across the aisle speed.
No, it wasn't.
This was this was, if anything, emphasizing the divisions within the country.
One of the things that happened before the speech even started was like he drove in with Milania and Elon.
First lady and first bitch boy.
Yeah, first buddy, Garrison, first buddy is the official term.
First buddy. Yeah, I don't know, but like you know, Trump starts off the.
Speech with America is back, and like.
How far back are we talking? Because you're not wrong.
Yeah, like eighteen sixty four, I think it's the it's the goal.
I mean, this is the same phrase that that Biden opened his first speech with as well. I think Biden was referring to, like we are back to pre Trump America, and now Trump is using this phrase to refer to like this like mythical America. Right sure, but no. Trump took the stage to USA chance throughout yeah, thout the rotunda.
That was.
You know, I grew up watching the Houses of Parliament, so I'm used to like the boomers getting unruly, but this was something else.
They're just so fairal it's weird.
So cheesy. The speech was outlining like a new golden age of America and the renewal of the American dream. Trump talked about how he has accomplished in forty three days more than most administrations do in four to eight years, and that we're just getting started.
Cool.
He referred to this wide popular mandate a quote, a mandate like this has not been seen in many decades, referring to like winning all swing states, winning the electoral and the popular vote, and reference to this mandate kind of sparked the big boo, big like disruption of the.
Night, specifically when he started saying we won the popular vote.
Which like it's heavily disputed, Like, I.
Don't know, I don't think that that's not specifically what mister Green was talking about.
I'm not necessarily talking about when he specifically was saying that's when the crowd had their biggest they did reaction of the night, which like weird in my opinion.
It's great. It's the thing that Democrats are doing now, which is trying to be like the Republicans but lib like kind of just I suppose.
But not really because they didn't follow fucking through.
Without any like strength, like without any actual like momentum.
Right, like we saw like the sort of blue and non attempts at election denial like after the election, and like I don't think that's what they were doing here, agreed. They gave off this like yeah, this very ineffectual kind of a half fast attempt at booing. And then aside from Green, they they'll just sit down and wave their ping pong things.
Yeah, so representative of Al Green from Texas old man with Caine.
It's a good cane. It's got a gold handle, like I thought.
It was snazzy.
I thought, I mean, it's a sort of cane you normally see a sword coming out of if I'm.
Mind, Yeah, that would have been cooler. That would have been cooler. But instead he doesn't waves the cane around talking about how this mandate doesn't mean that there's a mandate to like, you know, cut medicaid, cut medicare. That was specifically what he was talking about. Television mics did not really pick that up.
No, and a lot of reporting didn't either, which was shitty. I thought, like, yeah, a lot of reporting just mentioned that he had shouted and not what he had shouted about, which I think is like, really, when you like, you see, what the media is doing is serving as like the propaganderam of a certain class of people when they're more upset that he was shouting than that he was protesting the fact that people are going to lose their healthcare and probably die because of it.
Yeah, and like Trump started like yelling over these protests. There was like a brief maybe like like you know, minute or so, like yelling match in the chamber. Mike Johnson was like what do I do here? Eventually, you know, Mike Johnson threatens mister Green gives warning and eventually directs the Sergeant of Arms to restore order and remove him
from the chambers. Not a regular scene in American politics, but a scene that you might be more familiar with in overseas politics, and specifically in democracies that are in trouble. You'll have more and more scenes like this.
Yeah, we can't get any smoke grenades like you see in Serbia.
You know it's still twenty twenty five, James, we still have three more.
Three more years, three more years soon to break out the ass off smoke grenades.
Whether or not this is like, you know, performative or cringe, it's like it's something that demonstrates, Hey, like this, this actually isn't normal, more than holding up a cheesy sign next to Trump reading this is not normal, which is some others did in protest. This actually is treating it like a serious situation, and more Democrats should have done this.
They should have staggered their protests throughout the entirety of the speech, continually disrupting it, making this speech basically unable
to end. Pushing this past midnight, having an endless procession of people having to be escorted out, you should force Congress to censure half of the sit in Congress people like, if this really is like an actual existential threat to our democracy, if Trump represents right now a genuine constitutional crisis, which he does, he is ignoring the courts, the people in Congress should fucking act like it.
They should have gone literally, single file, one by one.
Stagger it every like three minutes so that he just is unable to finish the speech. Have Mike Johnson do this every time because he was thrown. He was thrown, and they should have continued to do this. The fact that no one else did is pretty disappointing.
You could see Ants was very uncomfortable as well, Like.
He didn't have that nervous smile for most of well.
He normally does when he's confronted with a human being.
But later on the speech, after Trump talked about you know, trans women in sports and the price of eggs, you had you had a group of Democrats wearing resist t shirts walk out of the speech in protest, and like that's so much more pathetic than actually like standing up and talking about how this guy is ignoring the courts and is actually breaking the constitution. Like that's what they should have all been doing instead of wearing resist lim merch performatively.
Yeah, you could ran on, you know, to go parodying this, but you actually couldn't because they would just do that next time, Like if they really think this is the last, the last joint session of Congress, the ever going to have They sure didn't act like it or whatever.
But this is going to be the first ad break in a series of two mid episode ad breaks that we are playing on this show. So here's the ads. All right, we are back. I hope you pick up your new ad break themed T shirts to walk around in protest of capitalism.
Yep, not made by unions.
All right, let's talk about transgenderism. One of the first topics Trump discussed at length was the anti trans culture war, declaring that the government will be woke no longer.
Oh God, that fully fucking sent me. I've forgotten about that. It's just so. As the drunk old man at pub.
He bragged about about signing an executive order establishing that there's only two genders, as well as an order preventing quote unquote men from playing in women's sports. He first pointed out to someone in the audience who was a former volleyball player who got hurt by a volleyball and then decided to quit the sport. And they now blame this on the fact that a trendswoman was allegedly responsible for probably spiking the volleyball, which yes, is painful.
For playing sport the way that everyone else plays sport.
Yeah, for trying to win.
Yeah, in a team of volleyball context. So yes, this was the first kind of of these political props that Trump brought along to kind of point out and demonstrate some of the things that he was talking about. Frankly, it just seems like this person was not a very good volleyball player. But the next example Trump pointed to, I think James can speak better on But Trump said that essentially there was quote unquote a man who beat a woman in a race by five hours, to the shock of the audience.
Yeah, So look, it was shocked listeners to hear that most of what he said it's wrong. He directly referenced a friend of mine. He was referring to Austin Cillips, who is a woman. She's a trans woman, she's a very good cyclist. The reason she was doing the race, which see Arizona trail race. It's an eight hundred mile ultra endurance race like I used to do these kind
of things. The reason she was doing it is because of a UCI Union Cyclic International that governing bodies stopped trans women competing, right, so she did these races which were not sanctioned by them. She did get the record. The previous holder of the record was a CIS man. That CIS man had previously beaten. A CIS woman got Leo Wilcox. It's interesting that in this particular discipline, actually like SIS, women have been doing as well as it's
not better than men like Lee. Wilcox owns nearly all the long distance records in the United States. She's a phenomenal athlete. The idea that there's some inherent biological advantages
it's particularly nonsense in this sphere of cycling. But the reason that she was five hours ahead is because this race is eight hundred miles long, like those those records are broken by that kind of period, not all the time, but when you have athletes like Austin coming from the higher paying areas of the sport into this which has been a much less well a much smaller area of the sport, you're going to see these records getting broken, and again she broke a record that was held by assistude.
Crazy.
Yeah, it's fucking ridiculous.
I mean, like the level of like propaganda and lie. I mean, my mom watched the speech and she was like, that doesn't seem possible. And I was like, because it's all bullshit.
Yeah, it's just the second time he's picked on Austin and obviously it pisces me off. You could read her rop ed in The Guardian where she wrote about this the last time he cited her and his executive order, and I would encourage you to so.
After this initial dive into the trans topic, Trump followed up by talking about how egg prices are out of control take a shot, which happened about fifteen minutes into the speech. But near the end of the speech, Trump returned to the trends topic, pointing to the anti trans activist mom named January Little John No Comment whose kid secretly used they then pronouns at school, with Trump discussing how wrong it is for schools to secretly transition students
and like this actually just isn't true. Surprise, surprise, the parents in this case knew that their kid wanted to use a different name and pronouns at school, and actually were the ones to inform the school of this, according to school emails obtained by CNN. Not that this matters.
And I will say during this clip when when the camera cuts towards his mom, like all of the people that were used as political props that were cut to, they all had the most bizarre look on their face, like completely blank, like soulis not even like get really excited this this woman who who's you know, kind of a one of also the faces of like Florida's don't say gay bill just yeah, completely like blank expression because this thing that the president's talking about is just a
flat out lie. And like you know it, you lost a federal lawsuit over this lie. But here you are on national TV now, the prop of the president.
Yeah, on national TV, in front of both hanswers of Congress, attacking your own kid, yep, for trying to be here. They want to be a subject on which you lost a lawsuit.
Like and then Trump directly asked Congress to pass a bill banning trans health care for children, saying wokeness is gone, our country will be woke.
No longer whatever, such a loser.
The next topic was Elon Musk's doge Trump essentially just read out a list that mischaracterized aid programs or scientific research grants, talking about how Health and Human Services paid for housing for displaced immigrants in the United States, money for Middle East Sesame Street for making mice transgender, and LGBTQ education in Africa, as well as DEI in Burma, which I will now pivot to James again to fill in some context here.
Yeah, so I'm aware of this scholarship because I'm aware of the people within the Simpil disobedience movement who are talking to the State Department about it, and they begged for it not to be a DEI thing because they could see this happening. Right. It's the Lincoln Scholarship program our linked to it in the show notes. But it exists to empower people in Burma write with technical skills and to rise up young leaders in Burma. And it's not a DEI program, but for some reason it was
categorized as such. Right. It talks about respecting diversity because, as long term listeners will know Meanmar is an extremely diverse country, right, with more than fifty ethnic groups and hundreds of languages spoken, So that's why it talks about respecting diversity. This is one of the few things the United States has done for the people of Myanmar, after pumping up their economy, pumping up real estate, and then doing nothing when the military seized power there and started
to brutally repress the people. And the US is also I should add, at this point holding a billion dollars of the Burmese people's money that it froze when the coup happened, and if it doesn't want to give them these scholarships, could give them back their money, but I'm sure it won't. I know this one pisces me off in particular because obviously I'm very invested in the course of the people of mem and they are my friends.
Yeah, and this is very emblematic of the way Trump and Elon talked about a bunch of these aid programs. How like, you know, HIV prevention programs will be LGBTQ usaid money, right, Like they find a way to mischaracterize it in the most like culture war way.
Yeah, talking about public health programs as circumcisions, right.
Yeah, exactly right. They'll try to find every single like health or education program and turn it into some like LGBTQ or DEI culture or issue. Trump claimed on stage that they've found hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud. Now.
The doge website previously listed one hundred and five billion dollars in like found savings, but this very week the website scrubbed the five of the highest dollar value receipts after journalists found massive errors in Elon's estimated count, and now it's while of receipts totals around it eight billion, though that might also be an overestimate according to some journalists.
Amazing.
Trump also talked about alleged Social Security fraud, claiming that millions and millions of dead people are getting Social Security. Like this just isn't true.
The math is not mathing.
Yeah, this has been their thing for a while, right, Dead people are voting. Dead people are getting Social Security.
Yeah.
Trump's own Social Security administrator has like said as much. The super old people in the database simply don't have death and details logged, but they are not receiving payments. There is improper payments in the Social Security system, usually around one percent. Mostly that's over payments or entertainments to people who are actually alive, and there is a system for resolving those already in place, because social Security is a pretty old system that we've had for quite a while.
And like, I don't know, like Trump's skirted by a lot of economy issues, and the way he did so was just by repeatedly claiming that doge and like, cutting this fraud will magically fix the economy, right, Like, this is how he wants to frame this. Eggs are too much money, all of these things, and he has no actual solution to it. So instead, We're going to fix the economy through doge, through finding all this fraud, and somehow we will locate this like pot of gold hidden
somewhere that will magically make our economy better. And this is his solution because he doesn't have any real solution.
Yeah, I should have pointed out that Lincoln Scholarships were in fact a Trump They started in twenty nineteen, this round of them.
So like, good job, cut of your own fraud, Donald.
Do you know what else started in the first Trump era? Garrison Advertising advertisements was I believe Trump's first executive order. He established the podcasting advertising industry, which you know supports us to this day today is the backbone of the American economy.
Yeah.
I mean that's actually unfortunately more true than it should be.
You know, if anyone wants to buy any colloidal silver.
No, no, no, okay, we are back on top of trains issues. The other, I would say most cited element in this speech was the border. Trump reference to the Lake and Riley Act, which requires DHS to detain illegal immigrants who've admitted to were charged with or convicted of theft related crimes or any crime related to serious bodily injury.
They're not necessarily illegal. They could just be undocumented people. They could be asylum seekers.
Correct, correct, Yes, that is a good point.
I just want to note it was incredible the amount of sad looking children and or family members that he had as his propaganda prop people.
He had a lot of props for this speech, a.
Lot of props for his speech. I had Fred watch with me, and she just kept going, how did he find like these people?
These people have been figures of his campaign for years.
Yeah, I explain that. I explained that. Yeah, he's brought these same individual jewels out. As Garrett's mentioned over and over and over again, and use same thing.
With Fox News with one American News, like their entire life revolves around being political props.
It's an industry, right, there was nothing new here.
Trump signed an executive order on stage to rename a wildlife preserve. In this like anti immigrant propaganda move, he called for mandatory death penalty for anyone who kills a police officer and asked Congress to sign that into law, which is mostly like an anti immigrant dog whistle, essentially trying to find a way to kill immigrants who are like charged with the death of a police officer.
Yeah. They proposed the same thing for people smuggling drugs in the United States, like effectively charging them as if they were going to give all the drugs to one person to murder them and therefore giving them the death penalty.
Now that he wants to label all these people terrorists or you know, has labeled these groups terrorists, it gives the like the government a lot more leeway to do stuff like that.
Yeah, I mean, proving membership of those groups would be a chat.
Sure, I mean, so is proving membership to Antifa.
Yes, exactly. Yeah, we haven't seen how they can. Well, we've somewhat seen how they're going to try in the latter case, but none in the former. I guess we'll see, I'm sure at some point in the next year or two.
But like Trump said that, like previously, America has quote unquote buckled under migrant occupation, but now we are achieving the great liberation of America. That's the sort of language he was using for this section.
And he said how they rule from mental asylums and prisons.
Very standard campaign rhetoric that he's used for years now.
If you're new to this podcast, you can go back. You can search the word hacumber or border, and you can listen to interviews with probably hundreds of migrants. You can listen to my title forty two series, you can listen to my Darien series, and you can joy for yourself if these people are criminal or bad or mentally unwell.
The economy had a very minimal focus compared to border or trans issues. He really skirted over the tariffs thing as fast as possible, briefly talked about the federal funder Freeze bragged about terminating the green new scam, something that has never existed. Yeah, talking about withdrawing from the Preparis climate Accords again, as well as the corrupt World Health Organization and the and the anti American un War Crime Council.
Very cool, bragged about ending climate restrictions, you know, drill, baby, drill, going after rare earth minerals, talked about no tax on tips over time and benefits for seniors, and then briefly discussed that on April second, he will be enacting reciprocal tariffs just completely across the board for all nations. And he did warn farmers there is going to be an adjustment period. Quote, there will be a little disturbance unquote.
Certainly when you adjust to not having a job that pays you any money anymore.
Crashing the economy will have a bit of an adjustment period. It will be a bit of a little disturbance.
Yeah, I mean, just like he just kept going through these obvious, ridiculous claims and making Trump side comment stupidity, like calling the Middle East a bad neighborhood and.
That's my street joke.
Yeah, it's just incredible. And James, our colleague Molly Conger had a good point.
She did, Yeah, of her many good points. Trump said that people had never heard of Lesotho. At the same time, pronouncing it in a way that one would only know if one had heard it pronounced rather than seen it written on the page. Very very funny, south Ownd. He also said something about Liberia like implying like I would encourage people to understand the history of Liberia if they think the US does an Liberia a thing or two.
One of the last focuses of the speech was national security, promising a Golden Dome missile defense system, which Trump has previously talked about at previous twenty twenty four campaign events.
I'm obsessed with gold, sessed with gold with dome.
Garrison didn't even crack for those listening.
Once again, got him now once again. He announced that his administration will be reclaiming the Panama Canal, saying we have Mark Rubio in charge. Good luck Marco. If something goes wrong, we know who to play right.
Amazing.
His comments on Greenland were specifically odd, saying Greenland, we strongly support your right to determine your own future, and if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America. But the full quote about Greenland was very odd. He said, quote, we need Greenland for national security and even international security, so weird, and we're working with everybody involved to try to get it. But we need it really for international for world security, and I think we're
gonna get it. One way or another, We're gonna get it. It's a very small population, but a very very large piece of land and very very important for military security. Unquote okay, yeah, very odd, very odd comments.
Whole collection of English language.
Would he is He is continuing to say that one way or another he will take Greenland. I think his focus on it for national security is particularly interesting. I think this has something to do with trying to make the US and Russia these like two massive like world powers that both have like you know, Arctic land at their disposal, considering climate change or you know, a variety
of issues. But I think that this does move towards this like quasi like Douganism of like this like multipolar world that that Putin certainly wants, and Trump is kind of signaling that, you know, through the influence of Bannon, he's also moving towards with like Putin and trumpet like
you know, the two people who control the world. Speaking of Trump didn't talk about receiving a letter from President's Lensky asking to return to the neotiating table, and bragged about freeing another weed smoking teacher in a Russian jail, returning him home to America. And oddly enough, Trump met with the mother of this teacher in Butler, Pennsylvania right before he got shot, which led him to point towards the comparatour family, again, pronouncing it in a completely new
and different way. All of the members of the family seemed very not thrilled to be there, completely blank expressions, quite.
Odd, extremely weird.
Yeah, so this is where he ended the speech, was talking about, you know, getting shot, and then kind of went on a very long, ten minute, almost gptesque ramble about like America. I didn't take any notes on it because it just sounded like word salad. But there is a few other mislanious things from the speech I do
want to mention before we close out. Trump bragged about stopping all government censorship and having brought back free speech to America, saying it's back, which is you know, a slightly humorous amidst reports of grants being pulled for using quote unquote the bad words, wrong words, as well as a truth social post a truth made earlier today Wednesday, saying all federal funding will stop for any college, school,
or university that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested. No masks. So in one moment, you can celebrate bringing back free speech, and in the other you can call for deporting people who protest or imprisoning students are protesting on their own university campuses. Very very typical Trump doubles speak type stuff.
He talked about bringing the people back to the office like these are all like normal Trump.
Well, yeah, and these are things that have happened already.
Yeah.
Most of the half of this beach was celebrating things that he's already done. The other half was like asking Congress to help him do more things Mixed in with these weird propaganda moves like making this thirteen year old brain cancer survivor in honorary Secret Service agent and admitting this very square looking teenager into West Point. Who by the way, this this teenager has the most cop phenotype I've ever seen before. It's crazy, It's I was shocked, like, whoa,
they found him the cop phenotype. There he is, which was which is two? Two more of these weird props.
It's like in the cave in Plato, everything else is just a reflection of this cop kid. Every other coult it was.
It's so odd because like Trump spent this speech talking about how, you know, like we're bringing back a merit based hiring. We have we have quote ended the tyranny of dei across government, private sector, and military, as he then just did two DEI hires on stage. But you know whom I who am I to say? So that's kind of all I had to say on the Trump speech. Right now, I will briefly, very briefly talk about the
Democratic response. The Democratic response was done by Senator Slatkin from Michigan, who opened by saying America wants change, but there's a responsible way to make change in an irresponsible way, trying to paint DOGE as like this very irresponsible and brash way to achieve efficiencies, something that we all obviously
want the government to move more towards. She warned about how Trump's actions may result in our recession, warned about losing Social Security Medicare and VA benefits, quoted Musk, who recently called social Security the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time, and attacked Musk and the twenty year old DOGE members for using their own servers to access your sensitive data. Sluckin spent a lot of the rebuttal praising Ronald Reagan.
Odd for a Democrat. I would say, I don't know why, strange, don't know why you as the opposition party, are continuing to base your politics on praising Bush and Reagan. Very cool position party bros, very fun stuff. She also said, I've lived and worked in many countries. I've seen democracies flicker out. I've seen what life is like when a government is rigged. Like yeah, I bet you have the
former CIA agent. She also mentioned doom scrolling, so that that really shows how the Democrats have the finger on the pulse here when when doom scrolling is mentioned as something not to do, saying, instead, you should hold your elected officials, including me, accountable, Watch how they're voting, go to town halls, demand they take action and organize. Pick up one issue you're passionate about and engage. Doom Scrolling doesn't count. Join a group that cares about your issue
and act. If you can't find one, start one. And that was that was the bulk of the ten minute Democratic response. Oh boy, what a what a what a fun what a fun day in American politics?
That was Yep.
Any final thoughts, James Sophie.
Like this speech. This episode is running long. Yeah, so I rarely don't have any final thoughts other than.
Bad, bad, bad, bad bad. The Democrats are unwilling to do anything actually serious. Once again, the attempts that quot unquote fact checking the speech are also incredibly pathetic to look at.
Truly.
There's this New York Times fact check which I will close on just because it made me and the rest of our group chat very upset, which outlined this long paragraph from Trump saying over the past four years, twenty one million people poured into the United States, many of whom were murderers, human traffickers, gang members, and other criminals from the streets of dangerous cities and all throughout the world. Because of Joe Biden's insane and very dangerous open border policies,
they are now strongly embedded in our country. But we are getting them out and getting them out fast and the fact check for this very like false claim is quote fast is a relative term. This statement is misleading. It's just oh, it only focuses on the ending sentence saying that we're getting these immigrants out and we're getting them out fast. It ignores calling many of these twenty
one million people human traffickers, gang members, and criminals. Does not say that we never have had open border policy. Like it's crazy, even like the liberal fact checking is completely pathetic and toothless, and like fact ticking doesn't work, it's not useful anyway. That's why I'm not spending this
whole episode fact checking Trump's claims. But the fact that you're gonna parrot this insane anti immigrant rhetoric and only fact chuck Trump saying that we're going to get these immigrants out of our country fast, calling it a relative term. And this is the reason that this statement is misleading. This completely shows how Democrats like completely lost any momentum on the immigration topic. Same thing with the trans topic.
They're actually unwilling to push back on changing popular sentiment because they're automatically agreeing with the actual conceit. Yeah, anyway, that got me upset, and then I watched Tiawei and then went to that. So there we go.
Do you go ya yaie? Garrison?
Anyways, this is it could happen here. Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis today. I'm joined by Bauford Evans, Nia Wong, James Stokes, and Sophie Lichterman.
Tragically, we all have ed. All right, I got it out of the way. We can continue the episode.
Now.
This episode, we are covering the week of February twenty seven to March five, Number Go Down, Public Humiliation ritual of Vladimir Zelensky, and the age of US global supremacy is over.
Welcome to the end of the American Empire. It sucks way more than I thought it would.
Yeah, uh huh, well, I mean, look, some of us have been saying this.
Yeah, it's just tragedy that is fast, and then it's whatever the fuck is happening now?
Yeah, we're we have crossed the tragedy farce horizon.
We're well beyond.
We're well beyond anything marks could of anticipating.
We're going we don't need foss.
Like I am upset about how Landy and everything is becoming Like I feel like you have to be almost forced into being an accelerationist now, like there is no other way out.
Did you watch the Democrats last night, Garrison.
It's like this non consensual acceleration as well. Yeah, yeah that, like people spent years trying to resist this. Accelerationists push that even now I'm seeing like analysts like embrace, like, I guess we have to be accelerationists now, which is very bizarre to see.
Yeah, I've been saying there is no more ideology called accelerationism. There is just acceleration of what you do about it. So funhole, we've gotten there into Yeah, speaking of let's start with talking about Ukraine, a place which accelerated, and that Oval office meeting that happened last Friday. That was a little bit odd.
Wasn't it.
Folks Hearson say thank you, thank you.
Yes, I realize I've been under your employee for for four years now. I've said thank you many.
Times each of you. Thank me. No, I'm kidding Jesus Christ.
Wow, So Sophie has gone mad with power?
Mm hmm, I'm going to go call the EU because Sophie has asked.
Me, yes, So I don't know. I'm sure people saw like a two minute clip or something. I watched the full ten minute section, which is much more crazy. Yeah, And like in Trump's push to get like this Ceaspire deal, Zelensky's hesitation has been because Putin has broken multiple Ceasepire deals, so how can we be sure that he will respect this one? And that's kind of what jump starts this extra combative exchange between Trump, Zelinsky, and eventually little boy JD.
I don't know, Robert and James, you your war understanders.
Yeah, that's what it says when I go into my hobe.
The increasing story, and this affects Ukraine, but is not just limited to it. The story of the next several years is going to be the mass rearmament of Europe and almost certain nuclear proliferation. France, who has I think two hundred and ninety five nuclear warheads and extremely advanced first strike capability as well as a first strike doctrine is under Macron has just made a statement that he's willing to have France be the nuclear shield for the
rest of Europe. The UK also has enough nukes to kill way more people than actually live there. Unfortunately, their nuclear defense system and reaction system is very tied into the US one. I expect you will see them sever it from the United States as the United States becomes more and more of a geopolitical adversary to England and to everywhere else in Europe. I think you are going to see more smaller states in Europe get the bomb.
I think in general, I'm shocked if in four years there's not at least another four or five states that have gained access to the bomb. Yeah, because the overarching international lesson from Ukraine has never ever, ever, ever, ever ever give up a nuke and get one at all costs.
Yeah, fantasy the European national anthem whenobe because if it's not love, it's the bomb that will bring us together. Yep, Garrison, great one. I don't like that that.
I'm not saying this because it's it's good, but it's also literally like if I was in charge of European security, that's where you had priority would be let's get as many fucking nukes out here as we can.
I think we should say that, like this is how US diplomacy happens. This sort of shouting at and humiliating non US leaders is what the US does. The difference here is that Trump did it in front of the entire White House, press corps and TV cameras, Yes, in the Oval Office, for everyone to see. Yeah, and it doesn't give Zelenski a place to back down. Right, Like, he's a leader of a country that is at war.
He needs to show strength and like certainly sort of with the current understanding of leadership, he needs to show strength, and to show strength, he doesn't have many places to go when he's been humiliated like that, right.
Well, and like you know, Trump was yelling about you know, world War three and then and then and advanced China thing. He's particularly incoherent with his with his little like thank you speech. And I think Robert, I think I think you pointed out to me earlier, like why Vance jumped in on this the way he did, in like a way to establish dominance when Vance and Trump have very little cards to play because this is the guy who has been like at war for years now, and like
they need to feel superior to that. And that's why it's a public humiliation ritual, because that's the only method they had yet right now.
No, because there's nothing really like they play act at masculinity, and their fan especially Trump's base, really like feeds into that. But they definitely also have that deep secure insecurity that because of aspects of our culture and media. I think most men who have never been to war have a little bit of that. I don't think it's a natural thing for men, but I think it's a natural thing in our society. I think it is extremely common, verging on universal. I went to war in part because of
that derangement. And by the way, war doesn't do anything to make you better. Yeah, but what it does do, what it has done for Zelensky and why he acted the way he is, is that like he's he's literally been in the position of his entire family and him having Ak forty seven shoved into their hands because a Russian kill team was in the city gunning for him and his family as bombs fell all around. Like, yeah,
he's just he's I think he just has too much pride. Sorry, pride's even the wrong thing He's learned over the course of fighting this war. When you are up against a strong man, you can't back down.
Like, yeah, you just keep getting pushed back further and further if you do that.
Because he wouldn't have gotten anything if he had like sat there and been nice and let them make fun of him, and like, like the the ending would be the same. They'd made up their minds prior to that meeting.
Right, and like the one of the things that Zelenski has going for him, and like there's a lot that he doesn't have going from. He's not a coward, and like no people have noticed that he's not a coward, and that has brought him some of the support and like it has allowed him to remain in that position of leadership a relatively uncontested right. They haven't been able to have elections. This is something that the Ukrainian opposition
have also kind of consented to. It's not like he's he's being a dictator here, as Trump is alleged, but like his personal bravery and willingness to confront these strong men is something that like people draw strength from in Ukraine, and he can't afford to let that go.
He actually was fairly submissive in this exchange. He was letting Trump talk way over him. Zelenski did not raise his voice. I don't. I frankly, I don't understand how people have even deluded themselves into thinking this makes this like Zelenski look bad or like he wasn't proper.
Yeah, he handled it like a grown up would handle it, Like he tried to point out what you're saying it's wrong.
This was clearly like a coordinated trap from like the entire White House team, from like the press corps. Yes, like talking about like why he doesn't wear a suit, and like someone like Rubio, like a neocon that has more of this like geopolitics focus, Like he was like literally like syncing into the couch as this was happening, Like like Rubio was not thrilled at this.
Yeah, no, no, because Rubio he has no personal pride or backbone, so he is willing to try and remake himself as a Trumper. But in his actual heart and soul, he's a Reagan Republican.
He totally sure, or maybe at least a Bush Republican. Definitely Bush. And yeah, I don't know. Like Zelenski was literally kicked out of the White House on Friday, he's now trying to find a way back into the negotiating table.
On Monday, the United States suspended all military aid to Ukraine after Trump has continued to inflate the numbers in regards to the amount of military aid we have sent to Ukraine, often by a magnitude of two hundred billion dollars and I don't like this was one of the first things that me and Robert noticed at the RNC, like how much Ukraine was like a top issue for them,
Like people wouldn't shut up about Ukraine. And it took us a few days to like acclimate, be like okay, like why are they talking about it in this way? Like it was. It was very odd and Robert did a deep dive on that last year with front of the pod Rudy Giuliani Garrison.
I just wanted to update you have been talking with Rudy about the album that you and I wanted to drop with him, and he is on board, so we will be moving forward with that this spring.
That's exciting a little taste for all you listeners. And I like this. This is very much a part, in my mind, a part of Bannon's push for like this quasi douganism, this idea of a multipope polar world of Trump and putin with putin expanding power into Europe, while Trump tries to see his control over more parts of North and Central America, you know, taking the Panama Canal eventually Canada and Greenland, you know, and like both people want to you know, more more Arctic land that will
be useful considering climate change. And Russia already has their fair share. So that's why, you know, Greenland is so essential for national security, like Trump talked about endlessly in his joint session speech, I guess, uh miya, do you want to add something about this mineral thing before we go to break?
Yeah, So I think I think one of the important things here is that this is this is the definitive break point, Like this is the moment that people are going to point to and they look back on the moment the old American empire died and that empire, you know, the sort of post World War two international order thing.
Right the way, the way, the way the US maintained is ueopolitical and economic power was by a network and system of alliances with a bunch of the you know, with their allies and sort of in places like Japan, but also you know, across Western Europe, they maintained this series of economic and political alliances that was able to win the Cold War. I you know, make make the
US like the world's low and superpower. But in order for it to function, the US has to like maintain the alliance system even as it's doing imperial power protection and use its allies.
Well, and like the US is power primarily has always come from the fact that like or at least in this century, has been from the fact that we are the center of the global economy.
Yeah, right, And and the second part of it has been has been its ability to wield power in international institutions, right, yeah, you know, the US seizing control of the IMF and the World Bank, and and you know, using sort of trade like trade doctrine to to sort of empower itself. And this is all fucking gone. The US is alienating like everyone in the fucking globe basically except for except
for Russia. And you know, now we're entering this really kind of Argentina maybe well well well well we'll see, we'll see how long that government holds just like okay, yeah, but you know, like and the thing that it's pivoting to now, right is the stuff that used to be the there'd be a sort of like coalition thing, and and American corporations would do this stuff behind the scenes.
Is now just unbelievably explicit. The US is just straight up openly doing resource colonialism, like they're straight up they're demanding that Ukraine exchange its mineral resources for protection, like it is straight up a protection racket.
Yeah.
The proposed way that it works.
Is that there's going to be like a quote unquote development fund controlled by the US and Ukraine like jointly. But I mean it's it's just gonna control by the US. I don't know why people are pretending that Ukraine is going to like have a say in this. I'm going to read from the proposed agreement. We don't know what the text of the final agreement is going to be. Zelenski has recently expressed that he's willing to sign it, but we don't know exactly what's going to look like.
Here's here's the quote for the document that we had.
The Government of Ukraine will contribute to the fund fifty percent of all revenues earned from the future modestization of all relevant Ukrainian government owned natural resource assets, whether owned directly or indirectly by the Ukrainian governments defined as deposits of minerals, hydrocarbons, oil, natural gas and other extractable minerals, and other infrastructure relevant to natural resource assets such as liquefied natural gas terminals and port infrastructure, as agreed by
both participants, as maybe further described in the fund agreements. Another quote, the funds investment process will be designed so as to invest in projects in Ukraine and intract investments to increase the development, processing, and monetization of all public and private Ukrainian assets, including but not limited to, deposits of minerals, hydrocarbons, oil, natural gas, et cetera, et cetera, ports, and state owned enterprises, as may be further described in
the fund agreements. So what they're talking about here is not just like seizing control of Ukrainian mineral reasearchs. They're talking about like privatizing the Ukrainian state and selling it off and taking the profits from that. They are talking about seizing ports, which I have seen no media coverage of.
I do not know why it is any agreement. You can just read it there.
I I, notably on the show, am not like I am well known as not a China supporter. But I deeply remember for five years everyone losing their fucking minds about China doing this exact same fucking thing with port lease agreements, and they was just doing it now. And this is just what the new international order is going to be. It's the US just very very openly instead of instead of working through allies, instead of working through
sort of like reshime shamed operations. It's just the US going to be going like, okay, like you are all going to die unless you give us all your money.
Speaking of giving us all your money.
Wow, hell yeah, that's right, magnificent.
That was art.
Here's some ads. All right, all right, we are back, Robert. You want to talk about Syria?
Yeah, Syria. I hardly know you.
Okay. Anyway, I was sent to a document by my good friend Joey Aub from the Fire This Time podcast if sorry, The Fire in These Times podcast. Joey's great. It's a document that the US is sending out to NGOs around the world. This one was sent to an NGO doing humanitarian work in Syria, and it's basically, you have to fill this out in order to have a chance of retaining the funding that has been paused right now, right,
So it's part of the USAID pause. If you want to get that money, you have to fill this out and basically prove that you are in line with the new executive orders and policies of the United States government. There's a bunch of questions on here that you have to answer. A lot of them are yes, no, and some many of them are just like normal shit.
Right.
Does your organization have a current risk management frameworker policy?
Yes?
No?
If yes, please describe the framework or policy right, not extreme or anything like that. You have to say that you're not working with cartels, narco human traffickers. But then you have to say you have not quote organized groups that promote mass migration in the last ten years, which is interesting, and when you're dealing with like war torn areas that are helping like refugees escape is clearly going to be damaging to a lot of NGOs that have done very good work to save people.
Yeah. No.
Number five is does your organization encourage free speech and encourage open debate and free sharing of information?
Yes?
No?
And then right under that, does your organization have a clear policy of prohibiting any collaboratoration, funding, or support for entities that advocate or implement policies contrary to US government interests. So free speech unless it's not stuff that we like, right, Yeah, that kind of always been the way to be fair. Now kind of the most I mean not kind of by a wide margin. The most fucked up thing about this is that it then goes down again right after
the free speech thing. First off, I should note number eleven, after the free speech question, can you confirm your organization does not work with entities that associated with communist, socialist or totalitarian parties? And then below that is a basically a question of like whether or not, and they frame it as like, does this project take appropriate measures to
protect women and to defend against gender ideology? Is to find in the below executive order, and then it links to the Defending Women from gender ideology extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government executive Order. And then it asks does the project take appropriate measures to protect
children and links to the same executive order. So it is basically saying your organization has to support effectively like transphobic policies in Syria in order to continue to get US money, right, and the fact that that is numer one a requirement for aid organizations receiving aid worldwide now
is deeply harmful. And it's also just like Syria was already transphobic, like the Syrian governments not really pro trans but the fact that this is just being like, this is going to be like across the board, Yes, everywhere, This is going to be everywhere in the world. If we want to get US funds to save human life, to stop the spread of diseases, you have to officially
embrace transphobic policies. That's that's the stance of the United States government that that matters more than stopping the spread of a bowlet in the congo.
Oh yeah, this is like particularly worrying for you know, HIV preventative measures across the world as well. Most of the language that's used there has been heavily targeted. We're just gonna get a whole bunch of people sick and die yep, because of these actions.
Yeah, until it starts getting people sick and dead in this country. But we probably won't stop then.
Probably not. James, I p pivot to you on our semi regular border update.
Yeah, it's me the border guy. I was down at the United States border this weekend, the one with Mexico and not the Canada one. And when I got back from the border, I saw an announcement from the Pentagon which announced the deployment of a strike A Brigade combat team and an aviation battalion. So what's the strike A Brigade Combat team, you ask. Normally they are like four
four hundred soldiers. In this case are sending twenty four hundred soldiers from the fourth Infantry Division based in four Cartson in Colorado. Strike up gad combat teams are based around strikers. Strikers. They are armored fighting vehicles with eight wheels. They're pretty cool.
H Yeah.
Yeah, I've hung out in a couple.
A lot of them have fully automatic grenade lodgers. Yeah, they have decent air conditioning, you know, big.
Vehicle outside, small vehicle inside, as with all military vehicles. Great when you're six foot three like me, but famously not really something you can use for like policing the border.
No, Honestly, a lot of arguments as to whether or not they were good at their stated role in warfare.
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. The Bradley's have been having to come back in Ukraine. The striker is not so much. What they're not good at is moving through incredibly rugged mountainous train that stuff. Where I was on Saturday.
This is something Chuds don't understand, because a popular thing among Chuds is to take their Toyota Tundras or their f one to fifties or their Jeep Gladiators and send them down to this company in Florida that adds an extra axle in two more wheels so that they have six wheels, because they think it makes truck go better.
Why it ruins everything. It's a horrible wet thing to do to a tract. I know the people at Jeep have actually been thinking about how to make Jeep that for quite a while. Actually very amusingly. The place I was down at the border this weekend, there's a very rugged road that you drive down and then you get off and you hike. And I remember a few years ago a guy fresh minty fresh tid hundress straight off
the lot. And I've just negotiated this in a nineteen eighties Erra Toyot to pick up with my friends standing in the back to counterbalance and add weight as we go. I offered the spot for this guy he says, no, he doesn't need it because it's a tid immediately destroys. Excellent. Oh yeah, very beautiful. Love to see.
These strikers are doing pretty good as well, we're hearing.
Yeah, so we're excited to see the strike. Perfect perfect vehicle for the terrade. The other vehicles that we're going to see are UH sixty black Hawks and Shnooks from the General Support Aviation Battalion who are deploying alongside them. They are also about eleven hundred soldiers from sustainment units, right, people who facilitate the in this case, infantry and aviation deployment. There's some public affairs soldiers, there's people with logistics, people
who are going to help make this deployment happen. Right In the press release, NORTHCOM that's the North American Command of the United States Military, New United States Army said to us, carried out by a second striker. A gade combat team will include detection and monitoring, administrative support, transportation support, warehousing, logistics support, vehicle maintenance, and engineering support. Personnel will not conduct or be involved in interdiction or deportation operations. This
is the the Possycommatatis thing. Right, that they're not directly going to be doing cop stuff. It's going to be helping border patrol do cop stuff supposedly, But this is still very different to the previous deployment. We saw that
the previous deployments were of like engineers and military police. Right, So the engineers and the marine cor engineers, what they seem to do is get up every day and put razor wire on fence and then wait for someone to take photographs and put razor war on fence again, right, And.
Marines love putting razor wire up. It's not the job that everyone hates the most.
Yeah, yeah, everyone le's razor wire. Handling razor wire is famously fine.
Easy.
Does it get you horribly?
Cut the fuck out? Yeah, it's just what you're signed up to do. I think what are the MP's doing that they will be facilitating CBP operations. I'm guessing like singing, like helping with intelligence that kind of stuff. Probably anti drone stuff. There's been a lot of talk about drones. I have not seen any small drones. Most of the areas where I go in the border of federal wilderness or state wilderness, so drones aren't allowed there any way.
But I've never seen one. What makes this different is that these are infantry soldiers, right, Like, this is a concentration of troops. Everyone in the military that kills people, that helps people kill people. These are the killing people, guys and girls and well and a closeted they thems. Yeah, if you're a close to day them in a military, best of luck to you. That's what makes it different. Right. This is a significant concentration of troops on the border
with one of our allies. This is coming as the United States has used drone over flights to pass information to Mexican authorities that resulted in the arrest of cartel personnel in Sinaloa. Right. So it is a significant change, and I imagine, based on what I've heard from sources, that we will see more of this. Right, the US's
deployable infantry troops will be coming to the border. It means that we might soon be seeing foot patrols, right, soldiers on foot walking through the mountains to the border, because we ain't going to see striker mounted patrols out there if they want to keep their strikers. They're adding more helicopter assets, right, which can both move people to
more remote areas and do more surveillance. Surveillance, I would assume, yeah, yeah, I mean, like when a hiker was shot down at the border a few weeks ago, and I was out there very quickly thereafter, and they used a UH sixty first. Well,
actually didn't evacuate the person in the UA sixty. They went in the UA sixty of acted them in a uicopter and then another military black hawk's kind of flying over after that, and I'm guessing that was just to kind of provide cover for the like the first responders right who were going there to I think in that case, they're investigating the scene. The person had been evacuated, but there are very remote areas of the border which probably our best access by helicopter, and so that's what they
will be doing. But this does represent a significant concentration of combat troops on the border with that ally, which is not a normal thing to do.
And it's worth bearing in mind that as we're doing troop build US in the Mexican border, there are a lot of people in the Trump administration who want to do just full on cross border US military operations in Mexico. They want to do invasions, They want to do like what what they think of as like hell actions.
So yeah, sort of support for like drone strikes right now, which the terrorist designation does kind of pave a road to. But obviously it's worth noting for those not familiar that Mexico is a different country and you don't just get to drone strike other countries. That's an active war.
Well, and speaking of they them's in the military, I will do a quick follow up before we go on break. We mentioned last week about efforts from the Navy to house trans naval.
Members sailors.
I guess I guess they kind of all are sailors, aren't they, But basically, how's them with people matching their assigned gender at birth, same thing with access to intimate spaces like bathrooms. This has escalated further to now a general quasi ban of trans people from the military altogether, with a few implementation paths towards this a form of
like don't ask, don't tell. We will report on this more in the future as a part of a larger piece on the lavender scare currently happening across the government. But that that did happen literally like a few hours after we record it we got word that they are seeking to just band trans people from the military altogether. Anyway, we will go on break and return to talk tar Us.
We're back.
Hey, I wanted to note something I was unaware of because I have not changed my friend's name and my phone, but Joey now goes by a ya ayub. I apologize for the error there, but James corrected me.
So we're good team. What makes a dream work?
And never changing people's names in my phone makes well?
Actually, I usually I was gonna say, I'm impressed you have a name saved in.
Your LEAs is a friend, so I actually have their name saved in my phone. Ninety percent of the texts coming at me at any given time is just a series of unlabeled phone numbers, and it's chaos. I'm just guessing that people are who someone I should be in contact with.
That's absurd. Well, there's no tariffs or butts about it. But the economy is it a bad spot? No, I was gonna do.
I was gonna do speaking of absurd but no, no, even worse.
Worser Gar said.
You know what, Gear, I'm proud of you. That's almost as good as my rock. The kas bad joke.
Yeah, well I don't want to do tariff talk. No, but where do we do it? Anyways, So.
After those horrors we got, we have other horrors question mark. So on Tuesday, Trump's tariffs on Canada and Mexico and also an additional ten percent tariff on China went into effect. So these are twenty five percent across the board tariffs. There's some I think there are only like ten percent on Canadian oil, Canadian energy, Yeah, yeah, like energy stuff. Weirdly that's not also applied to Mexico, even though we there's a shit ton of oil.
I don't know.
And at sort of the last moment, if there was a kind of he got called by all three of the heads of the big three auto manufacturers who were like, if you don't exclude auto tariffs, we're all gonna die. So he's he's like pushed tariffs out for one month. They're suspended on automotive imports. We still don't know what the fuck that actually means, because it's unclear whether he just means like cars and trucks or whether it also glues auto parts deeply unclear. There's also all tariff alune
women steel imports. He announced that a tariff on in the speech, the copp rolem we knew about I don't think we knew about the illune women steel imports, which are new, which are also going to be sort of catastrophic. I want to read this amazing CM quote from CNBC. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that Trump's tariff will cause quote higher prices, but he maintained that only some products would be affected and that price hikes would be temporary.
Famously, price hikes are only temporary. Hold on, hold on, it gets better. We got to the good part.
Yet, Lutnick consisted that those rising prices should not be considered inflation. Okay, as the President said last night, there's going to be a short period where there'd be some higher prices on certain products, the cabinet secretary said on Fox News, it's not inflation. That's nonsense, certain products for a short period of time. He said, Now, now the definition of inflation, and I kind of have it's enough, is prices going up?
So great? Great stuff here.
There's also you know, as this has been unfolding, there are been reciprocal tariffs from Canada. The first round of negotiation between Trump and Trudeau basically went nowhere. Canada's putting tariffs on and this is true of both Canada and China, who have both done reciprocal tariffs. They've been more limited, They're only targeting sort of specific sectors. Well, the Chinese rates are lower. China's Yeah, rates are really a ton
of fifteen percent, the big one from China. And I'm very confused about this whole the way everyone's talking about this, because everyone only seems to be talking about Canada and Mexico and these, even though the terriff rate on China is now up to twenty percent.
Yeah, he did it out of two steps, right like that. Yeah, yeah, he slid under the Rada.
You know obviously, Like yeah, okay, So like the US and Mexico and the US and Canada have the two largest trading relationships on Earth. However, Comma, the Chinese reciprocal tariffs are really going to hurt because one of the big things that they're targeting is US soybean exports. Now, we do twelve billion dollars of soybean exports per year.
This matters enormously though. It has an outsized impact regardless of sort of the dollar amounts here because Midwest farming, huge parts of it is based on yearly rotations between soybeans and corn to maintain soil quality. Right, like the farm like that I grew up near, Like this is what they did, right, this is this a massive portion of mid West and agriculture functions off of this.
Well, it's just also just like soybeans and corn are like primarily what human beings grow. Yeah yeah, and rice like those are really the big three.
You can't you can't eat that corn, but yeah, look.
You don't, but it's part of your foods.
Eventually it becomes definitly yeah, yeah, it's corn syrup and ship.
But yeah, well corn syrup.
And also it's you know what the animals be yeah yeah, when they feeded to cattle and chickens.
Yeah, and so this this is going to have a massive disruption on American agriculture. Trump has also been talking about imposing attacks on all American agricultural exports. Is some sort of weird like American autarchy thing. So interest the thing people are calling this a teriff, This is not a tariff. You don't impose tariffs on something that you are exporting to How this works, You know, like you can go back to a basic Hey, division of powers.
Congress has the power of taxation. Wait, how is he doing who knows? I don't know where We're so far beyond that. But like the thing that he's hinting at here right, like if he really is trying to sort of like prevent all US agricultural exports, this is apocalyptic. Yeah, and it's also worth noting this thing has also been lost in the news.
But he's been talking about this. He's been talking about.
Doing these tariffs to the EU twenty five percent across the bard terriffs of the EU. Now what I think is important. So the markets today on Wednesday have been going back up. They immediately tanked like Tuesday. This week was nasty like Monday, Tuesday was red. And what's happening here is that none of this shit, None of the analysts, none of the people getting paid like fucking thirty million dollars you do financial analysts?
What other the fuck?
Like, none of these people, none of them thought this these terrorists were actually going to happen. They all just assumed, but they were, Oh, he's not actually going to do it, He's not actually going to do it. This it's just negotiations. No, no, he's doing it, and he was going to do it. They probably will be like sector bisecondor negotiations to get temporary lifts on them. But none of this shit was
priced in. None of the financial animalsts, like no one was doing business planning or whatever, like none of the ship was supposed to be real, you know. And what's happening right now is sort of like they're latching on to this thing with some of the auto terifts being lifted for a month again one month, not and not an actual lift, but one month. They're latching onto this and they're going, Okay, maybe we can sort of reverse this.
But this is the first moment that the financial markets have actually had to grapple with the fact that Trump is going to do all of the shit he says he's going to do. And like, like that afternoon, Bloomberg had a guy on like calling Trump a dictator and
saying he wasn't gonna have elections. We are beginning to see capital flight from the US, where investors are like are openly talking about like pulling their fucking money out of this country and pulling into somewhere else because it's no longer stable, and this is something that you know, I think the next dam will be when the US
is like credit rating gets downgraded. But we're starting to see the damn break on the financial class and all of these analysts and like people on Wall Street realizing that no, he is going to continue to throw bombs at the entire world economy in order to sort of carry out He's like, I want to be like the fucking big man empire guy.
I like Trudeau. I had a call with Trump on Wednesday, basically going, hey, what's what the fuck man? I thought I thought we had a deal, and Trump was like, well, I'm not seeing much progress on the whole Fentanel thing. And Trudeau's like, what the fuck are you talking about?
And Trump then basically pointed towards him not being satisfied until there's a new Canadian government, like he is not going to want to lift these until Trudeau is out of office and ask Trudeau when the next Canadian election, is hinting towards the fact that he just is going to refuse to seriously negotiate with Trudeau and will wait
until whoever the next guy is. Meanwhile, you haven't post from the Chinese embassy in the US, saying if war is what the US wants, be it a terraff war, a trade war, or any other type of war, We're ready to fight till the end.
Yeah, I will say, I will say the guys they put on the embassy pr coms are dipshits, Like those are not the guys running the Chinese government. Those are like the fucking clowns they put at these administrative posts to like scream about wolf.
Warriors or whatever the fuck.
The reporting I've seen from inside the Chinese government is that they also were like what the fuck are you doing? And they're they're trying to figure out like okay, like how do you negotiate with this guy? Yeah, like yeah, they're having real issues because like for all, for all of the Chinese government does like this is a government of capitalists.
They want to make money, and.
They're looking at a guy who is willing to just blow the entire thing up.
Here's my pitch for what we should do with China, right, you know, China has this border conflict with India that could endo the world, but usually just involves two groups of people with spears that were originally made in the thirteenth century having Felanx fights in the mountains. Yep, we should just send over a couple of thousand marines and do that with China. Get it all out of our systems, this whole all this war talk. Just have a couple
thousand dudes, have a big old speared fight. We filmed The Son of a Bitch. We get some drones, we bring in, Maybe we bring in Tarantino. He'd be great to film the fucker.
You know.
We really just have a good time with it, and then we just go back to not not doing stuff like this.
Look.
I think if we get us and trying to compete each other in the against each other in the US Special Forces Games, and we show this to Donald Trump and we have the Chinese government take like a stage loss or something, we could solve most of our problems.
You can just edit it to be whoever like for both countries. Right, have an America version and a China version.
We already do this.
Yeah.
So the last sort of serious thing that I want to talk about here is that this, especially the stuff he's talking about with you, but also with sort of Canada, this has broken the sort of international coalition that all of these people have been setting up for a really long time, right, this whole sort of coalition of all the sort of world's right wing governments like coming together in this national thing, and like they're really fucked now.
Like the Canadian right was just like about to take power, and they might not now. And even if they you take power, they're gonna have to like deal with the fact that they've all been like fucking maniac Trump supporters this whole time, and Trump has just been like fucking their entire country. And like these people are now talking about like again like shutting off power to the US.
And this is happening.
All over the world with all of these fascist parties who've been allied with the US right, they are now having to grapple with the fact that the US.
Is just gonna it's just gonna fuck them.
Weirdly, the thing it reminds me a lot is like the situation you've got at the end of the seventies in East Asia with the communists. It was like, Okay, so we have three nominally communist governments on the border with each other. Right you have China, you have Cabodia, and you have Vietnam and I guess you have flows and then in those three governments, instead of like forming a united block, like all go to war with each other.
And that's like sort of what we're seeing with the fascist right now is like because Trump has decided to just be like fuck it, like we're just gonna do tariffs on everyone it has, it is really starting to tearrist coalition apart and hopefully this rolls back a bunch of their gains everywhere else in the world.
And yeah, they suply chit. And I think Trump is using for leverage hair beyond even tariffs, like a cutting out Canada from the Five Eyes Intelligence Group, halting intel sharing with Ukraine, very very like drastic steps in terms of like national security and intel sharing.
I mean, it's just deeply clear that what's happening is we're ending every single thing the US used to do that Trump does not see as a direct financial benefit, and largely aligning ourselves with Russia against every state that does not have the physical power to stop us.
Yep, well that does it for us today. I know on Tuesday night, Trump did a speech to a joint session of Congress. We have a whole episode on that that released yesterday because there was just so much to talk about. So if you want to hear our thoughts on that, you can check out yesterday's episode on his
congressional speech, Full of Somebody. A summary, yes, because the speech was very long, focused a lot on trans people, focused a lot on the border, talked about national security, really skipped over the economy because yeah, no, guys are great, because that's not really going too good. Keep shooting holes of it. Let's skip it over. That focused more on trans people as the single greatest threat facing this country.
But yes, if you want to hear about that, check out yesterday's episode on the it could happen here feed.
The shortest summary possible speech bad.
Speech bad, Yeah, speech bad. The era of Woke is over would be the other summary I give.
The era of woke is over. Where you're employed, if the era of Wok has ended your employment and you'd like to reach out to us, you can using our proton mail address. That doesn't mean that it's not like. If you're not using proton then it's not end to end encrypted. If you are, then it's encrypted, but it doesn't mean it's necessarily totally safe. So you need to do what you think is best. It is cool Zone
tips at proton dot me. If you don't work for government, but you do work for Elon Musk in another capacity, it would also be very funny to hear from you about what that is like. So yeah, cool Zone tips at proton dot.
Me increasingly relevant considering that Social Security layofs have started and they're now seeking to cut possibly upprints of fifty percent of the Social Security workforce.
And the irs. So I'm sure that's going to work out great for government revenues.
I'm sure everything will be fine and America will be back on top in no time.
It is back. America is back.
I learned that last night we reported the news.
Yes, we certainly did.
We reported the news.
Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the Universe.
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here, listed directly in episode descriptions thanks for listening,