Cold Zone Media.
No inappropriate joke Robert to start this episode, Wow, I feel so clean.
You know. I guess you could say I have some executive dysfunction today.
This is it could happen here executive disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the Crumpling world, what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis today. I'm joined by Mia Wong, Robert Evans, and possibly Sophie Lichterman, our producer. This episode, we are covering the week of August twenty eighth to September third, Happy fake Labor Day to everybody, and some breaking news from this past weekend. Trump maybe died.
Yeah, let's check out on that. Garrison as our official, is the president a lie of correspondent?
Let me do a quick at Google search here? Oh no, no, he's still around.
Did everyone get tricked again?
He's still okay?
Like conspiracy theory is the week were really fun And then there was that thing that video that went viral of like them like opening a White House window and throwing out a couple of black trash bags.
That really was really funny. That was really funny.
I was like, there's way worse things going on in the world. I don't have time to care about this. But we never got information about that. That was just some weird shit.
Not yet, not yet, Sophie sensational.
I don't think we know what it was. I mean, it could just be that's them fucking cleaning shit. But I wouldn't be surprised if they were destroying evidence.
I wasn't aware those windows could open. I thought they were like bulletproof and and like weren't.
Supposed to open.
I'm sure they both bulletproof, but have to be possible to open so that the Secret Service has more paths of egress in the event that some crazy disaster were to befall the White House. Okay, well, you need to watch the documentary White House Down, Sophie. This spells all of that out.
So Trump went a few days without a major public appearance.
The man is just trying to take some time off.
Though he was seen golfing between Saturday and one day, but there's nothing on Trump's public schedule for three days during Labor Day weekend, where he essentially took a brief gulfing holiday, and this fueled speculation that he was in a rapid health decline, spawning a whole bunch of conspiras, theories about him being in the hospital, Vance imminently taking over, and some comments from JD. Vance during a USA Today
interview released last Thursday fueled some of this speculation. Over the weekend, Vance said, quote, I feel very confident the President of the United States is in good shape, is going to serve out the remainder of his term and do great things for the American people. And if God forbid there's a terrible tragedy, I can't think of better on the job training than what I've gotten over the last two hundred days unquote. It sounds like he's ready to take the reins right now.
Sure, man, Yeah, you're trained up now.
Over the weekend, people spread AI altered images of Trump's face looking more swollen and sickly than it actually was, and rumors circulated that roads to Walter Reed Medical Center were closed yeah, when in fact there were no irregular closures, and screenshots of maps supposedly showing these quote unquote closures were actually just showing old security gates because yeah, you can't just like walk or drive up to the front door of Walter Reed Medical Center. Yeah, it's in a military base.
This is the ocent of idiots, right, which is people seeing something that is described as being one thing in this like little clip that they get of it in social media and they don't actually do any further check up.
It's the same thing with like the Pentagon pizza totally orders that people are like, ohh when pizza orders peeked the Pentagon, where about the US is about to go to war, and it's like no, Sometimes people just order pizza near the Pentagon because the Pentagon is surrounded by a city, right, there's like there's people.
The Pentagon pizza tracker was part of these weekend conspiracy theories that you were like trying to decide how to handle Trump's declining health, and yes, people just like pizza guys.
Like it's one of those things. I'm certainly not saying there's no way you will wake up tomorrow to hear that Trump has died, because you know what, he's seventy nine. It wouldn't be weird if his health took a sudden turn in the next day. Just statistically, it wouldn't be weird because he's seventy nine. But like the people pointing out sy simile they were doing with Biden pointing out like, oh, like the marks on his hand, and it's like, yeah,
that isn't it for both of them. This is evidence that they are older than you should be to be president. But like, my grandpa had shit like that, because my grandpa lived with us for the last like ten years of his life. His hands looked a lot like that for like a decade. Like, so people live for a long time. After it becomes clear that they're very sick and old, it's not a sign that they're about to kick off this weekend.
That guy in Congress who looks like a turtle has had weird bruises on his body for as long as I can remember, Toddle, Yeah, but no, Like accounts were basically theorizing that like Putin poisoned Trump during their last meeting, and this is why he's in a rapid health decline.
Oh my god, why.
Why would he need to do that? Why would that benefit him?
So baffling.
Yeah, when people noticed looking at the White House schedule, which they'd realized just existed a few days ago. But when looking on the schedule, they saw that quote unquote, the president was to give an announcement on Tuesday afternoon. Because of this, rumor spread that it would be Trump resigning for health reasons or Vance would come out and announce Trump died and he was the president now like some like really bad Aaron Sory in movie. That's how it works.
Also, I just want to also put this out there. Yeah, that White House leaks like a fucking sieve. There is no way you could cover up the president dying without it being out immediately, Like come on.
No, I'm sorry, like you, they couldn't keep it hidden when he got sick. You think they're going to keep the fact that they're gonna weaken it Bernie's it's ridiculous.
Yeah, when this press conference got delayed an hour on Tuesday, this too was used as the evidence of Trump's declining health. But sure enough, right before three pm, Trump came out with a huge gaggle of people, which is probably why it was delayed, because he had like twenty guys with him who, like multiple people spoke to announce that they were moving space command. And Trump seemed normal. He seemed like normal Trump, like he is an old guy, but no, this was just normal Trump.
Yeah, does he seem older than he did in twenty sixteen. For sure.
Man, it's like were wrinkled.
But like he's older exactly like he did before these conspiracy theories started.
Yeah, I mean he looks old, Like he looks older than he did ten years ago. Yeah, I'm just saying.
Oh, he's so much less coherent than then. But like, yeah, he's not like, yeah, dying.
I don't have any particular reason to expect he's about to drop dead, like as opposed to like three months ago or six months ago, you know, yeah, like does it appear as if time is continuing to march on his face?
Yes, of course, you know exactly. During said press conference, Trump himself was asked about his alleged imminent demise and responded, like, this a.
Really different but about a big viral social media trend over the weekend.
How did you find out over the weekend that.
You were dady?
You see that? No, people didn't see it for a couple of days.
One point three million user engagements as of Saturday morning about your demise?
Really, you know, I have heard it's sort of crazy. But last week I did numerous news conferences, all successful. They went very well, Like this is going very well, and then I didn't do any for two days, and they said there must be something wrong with him. Biden wouldn't do him for months. You wouldn't see him, and nobody ever said there was ever anything wrong with him. And we know he wasn't the greatest of shape.
No, I heard that.
I get reports. Now you knew. I'd did an interview that lasted for about an hour and a half with somebody and everybody. So that was on one of your competitors.
That's a remarkably coherent Trump by Trump's standards.
Like no, and he's talking about how he was sending out very pointiant truths over the weekend on truth So okay, that's for current Yeah, like and yeah, he just took a nice little golfing golfing holiday and like it is drue.
He is the oldest elected president and the White House recently announced he was diagnosed with chronic venus and sufficiency a few months ago to explain his ankle swelling and the bruises on his right hand have become more noticeable, which the White House is attributed to frequent handshaking and the use of aspirin.
That is really funny. Yeah, he shook too many hands.
He just can't stop shaking hands.
That's actually hilarious.
But the aspirin thing is is real, and people of his age, frequent aspirin use can lead to bruising. Yeah, but I just finished up my Blue and On research, and then this whole weekend as I was like literally finishing those episodes, this, this whole this whole giant wave of these like Trump health conspiracies just just completely took over and I felt like I was like losing it, like everyone around me, and everyone around me was indulging this, and like usually from this place of like half joking
but not really joking. Like when yeah, when that line gets blurry between are you indulging in this like ironically because it's fun or does it is it actually kind of altering your brain? Like is it actually slowly making you convinced of this stuff? In like a small way.
This gets to what is at the root of all conspiracy culture, regardless of like the political ideology, which is the need, the emotional need to believe that you are the possessor of secret knowledge. Yeah, right, like that that that is so much a part of this that like no, no, no, I'm I am privy to secrets about the world that the average person is not, and the degree to which that's like comforting and also emotionally necessary for quite a
few people. And that's part of the problem with humoring this is that the instant you let it into your life, it starts taking more and more power because it becomes part of your ego, It becomes part of your coping mechanisms. It becomes like yeah, something, but you become dependent upon it.
Yeah, And I think it's also word noting. Like, you know, people are confused all the time about how does the right come to believe all of these things? How does the right sort of you know, like, how does like vaccine conspiracism spread? How does like QAnon spread? It's like it spreads like this, right, this is what it looks like. And you're also not immune to it just because your politics are better. It's still really really easy to fall
down those pathways because they're addictive and fun. And that's spreading so much unhinged shit.
Yeah, the root of a lot of madness comes with thinking that you're better than other people and that you're not cognitively.
I can play around with this stuff without it affecting me. The way to fix other people. M M yeah, or just because this is because the politics of this counter factual belief system are better than their counterfactual belief system.
This is not a counterfactual belief system totally. Yeah, And like when we see this with the way some people talk about like Russia, and like, I've faced a little teeny bit of pushback on some of the ways that I was framing like Russia Gate in the Blue and on episodes, and like, there is a difference between a social media disinformation campaign to influence elections, which Russia does, Like we know.
This absolutely, that's not in question whatsoever.
Yeah, there's a difference between that and like straightforwardly stealing an election in such a manner that the election results are themselves illegitimate.
Right, And this is the big question always if you're saying, like, no, they literally did steal this election in the twenty sixteen election, then like, but they just like fucked up for twenty twenty. They just couldn't get their shit together in time for that one. Like what or is it that they have influence campaigns like everyone else and they're influence, Like that doesn't mean saying that they're not problems but it doesn't mean pretending that's the only reason shit broke their way.
You know, in part, A big reason why things worked the way that they have and have worked the way that they have is that the disinfo campaigns that Russia, that the Russian government was engaged and were complementary to campaigns of disinformation that have existed for decades.
And the US right look at the way they were funding right wing content creators through Tenet Media, right, And like, you know, same thing with Trump, Like publicly encouraging Russia is not the same thing as actual collusion. And there is no clear indication that the twenty sixteen Russian influenced operations or even like their accessing of voter registration actually made a meaningful impact on the results of the election.
And this is the same thing with you know, like the rights legal methods of voter disenfranchisement, voter suppression or changing mail in voting rules. Right, there's that versus talking about like hacking voting machines. Right, the former doesn't mean that the election was quote unquote stolen. Now just because they do voter suppression, right, the results still need to be accepted, Like that's not illegal. Election interference. It's not good. We should oppose it. Yeah, but it's not a legal
election interference. And like this is kind of just like a coping method that passes the buck to avoid accepting that Republicans were better at winning these elections. Yeah, and it may be emotionally easier to like blame Russia than
to actually like reflect on ourselves. And I've seen the same thing when people talking about how for the twenty twenty four election, on election day there were bomb threats to swing state polling places that were traced back to Russia, and like, while this is nominally true, this did not
influence the result of that election. And then this can very quickly devolve into like just like basically like just asking questions, right, like you can't prove a negative, and this just turns into like a very cartoon version of understanding reality, like with like people in ski masks fixing elections or changing votes, where like hackers compromising election like voting machines, instead of just accepting that a lot of people voted for Trump and he won well.
And the part of the other problem is that I think when you lose yourself in patterns of thinking like this, it also leads to a failure to accurately gauge the strengths and the capacities of the enemy. Like if you're unwilling to see where they've made smart decisions and where they've made good investments that have paid off for them, then you are unable to follow and properly counter those kinds of things. And I think part of why this is so difficult is that so many people, so many
liberals and people on the left. I don't think I think both sides have differences in how they do it, but I don't think there's a massive difference in the degree to which either side does it. But you find on both ends of the political spectrum this emotional need to be like, these people are idiots, And the corelating factor with that is that like, and I'm not right, Like I'm smarter because I'm not one of these people, because I'm not one of these like fools who buys
into this right wing propaganda. And you're if you're more obsessed with that than you are with seeing where your enemy has made smart decisions, then you're going to continue getting dunked on by them endlessly. You gonna gain blindside,
and that's that's where we are right now. People are getting dunked on repeatedly because they refuse to see the things that Trump does that are based in actual intelligence, and the things that the far right has done, the things the Republican Party is of the architects of this movement have done that have been successful. You know who else is successful?
Genius the products that support this podcast. Yeah, that's right, and we are bad.
So on Tuesday, the Mayor of DC ordered that the city will continue cooperating with the federal law enforcement pass the export date of Trump's Crime Emergency Declaration, which is set for September tenth. She has established the quote Safe and Beautiful Emergency Operations Center. She is for DC to indefinitely coordinate with Trump's Safe and Beautiful Task Force. This is like a caving and like an acquiescence to prevent some kind of larger legal fight over Trump's ability to
exert power over DC. It's giving him a little bit of what he wants while trying to maintain a degree of sovereignty, but in doing so you kind of just play into what he actually wants. In the end. This operations center will work on quote centralized communications formulate post emergency planning and operations, and ensure coordination with federal LW
enforcement to the maximum extent allowable by law within the district. Later, in her order, she quote unquote, requests that federal partners adhere to effective community policing practices to maintain community confidence in law enforcements, such as by not wearing masks, clearly identifying their agency, and providing identification during arrests and encounters with the public.
Great.
Quote, the Safe and Beautiful Emergency Operations Center will continue to prioritize DC National Guard for typical mission focused activities unquote. So they are requesting that federal partners not wear masks, and that's kind of the strongest amount of pushback the mayor is allowing in regards to Trump's federal control of over law enforcement in DC.
Great, that'll solve it, you know.
A while back, I said that like, one of the most important sources of support that the Trump administration has is a bunch of the Democratic mayors and governors, and oh boy, is this one of them.
Yeah.
Uh.
However, it's worth noting that this has not been the response of all of the Democrat governors, and I think we're going to turn here towards the impending occupation of Chicago. So Trump has said that he is going to deploy the National Guard to Chicago, ostensibly also because of crime. As of two thirty two Pacific time on Wednesday, the third, we don't have a timeline for the National Guard deployment. That could change. The situation is evolving rapidly. We will
get you more on a second. We also have conflicting reports where Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker has said that the Texas National Guard is being staged to sort of participate in the sort of occupation of Chicago. Gray Abbott has denied this. We sort of don't know what exactly is going on with that, but it is worth noting that both Governor Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson have been very very clear of that they do not want a federal deployment in Chicago. They have said go home.
There isn't really because this is a federal deployment, There isn't really much they can do about it outside of legal stuff. And the Trump administration has been a lot more careful about this, and they were in La in terms of how they're doing the deployments legally, so we'll
see what happens with the National Guard deployments. However, and this is something that I think is getting very very little coverage, which is that the actual threat model on the ground in Chicago, and the day this is going up, we will have run in an interview the day before with Raven who's a journalist from the Chicago based outlet Unraveled about what the response in Chicago has been to all of this, and how people are repairing and what
the threat model is. The actual thing people are worried about in Chicago is not the National Guard so much. It is the deployment of federal agents from Homeland Security,
including ICE in the Border patrol. Very very specifically, there is difificant concern about border pature because while there has been ICE operation in the city and that's obviously very bad, as we sort of talk about, there really hasn't been any significant border patrol deployments and that seems like it's about to start as an indication of how fast the situation is moving. So that interview was recorded Wednesday morning,
September third, Yeah, September third. In the time between that recording and now, which was maybe three hours, we got more information about the federal deployment. So the Sun Times is reporting, based on reports from government officials, that two hundred and thirty agents, including Border Patrol, are being sent from LA to Chicago. Thirty agents are already here. They've been doing training in anti riot stuff with flash bangs.
They've also apparently moved one hundred and forty unmarked vans to this naval base, not really in Chicago, we'll get to that seconds, but they've moved one hundred and forty on mark vans to do these kind of raids. This very much suggests that they're going to do the kind of smashing grab raids we've been seeing in LA. That's the thing people are very worried about. And we've seen you know, tiktoks from the senior leadership with the Border Patrol talking about how.
Their talks I know, it's it's bleak.
Yeah no, literally, it's like it's it's tick talks of him going like we're trading our palm trees for skyscrapers. Oh jeez, it's really bad. It seems like they're going to be deploying the kind of smashing grab raids they did in LA. But comment there's one final thing I want to get to. This naval base is not really
in Chicago. It is really far north of Evanstone, which is like a thing that's like not Chicago's like this naval base that they're deploying from is closer to Kenosha than it is like Kenosha, Wisconsin, than it is to like even the north side of Chicago. It's like really really far north again, like even to I mean neighborhoods that are pretty far north. It's like an hour out right.
It is a multiple hour drive into the center of the city, so it's going to be kind of difficult for them to deploy in the middle of the city. This is something I talked about with the raven It looks like they're trying to hit the more outlining areas more with raids because those areas are less well defended and there's not as much sort of rapid reaction stuff there.
That's sort of what this looks like. People are preparing because I guess there's one more important thing, which is the naval base is where they're running their operations out of. But the naval base has declined the request to house them, so they're probably going to be in a hotel. Seople are going to target those, but yeah, that's where things are at as of Wednesday, they're staging in this weird naval base that is really not close to the city.
Yeah, I mean the real focus on this anti crime crackdown is also a way to like trojan horse slightly obscured ice operations. And when Joey cler are talking about like National Guard deployments to cities nationwide, the actual main mode that National Guard will be operating in is logistical and like like PaperWorks support for ICE operations. Yep, at least for these like broader nationwide deployments. With these specific deployment in DC and in Chicago, there's there's more preparation
for like carrying out ordinary law enforcement actions. But those actions also exist in coordination with immigration crackdowns, and like that's a lot of what these like more militarized occupations are going to be focused on.
Yeah, And it's worth noting like just logistically, like they're not going to be sending the Guard into the parts of Chicago where there like are is crime sometimes with though again it's worth noting crime rates that weighed fuck down. Yeah, but also like every story about this is like, oh, there were shootings over the weekend, and it's like, yeah, it's not good, but like the actional Guard is not
going to be deployed to stop shootings. They literally can't get there again, It's like, no, three hours out.
No, they can't get to the north side of Chicago. And as as we all know from the song Bad Bad Lee broy Brown, the south side of Chicago is the baddest part of town.
Jesus Christ, I'm just gonna ignore that.
Uh huh, yeah, you should just ignore that.
There are places in Norset that they could deploy. But if you're trying to get to the actual south side, it is at least a three hour drive. And that's like assuming that, like the traffic isn't bad, Like it's at least three hours. It's possibly larger than that. I I didn't even bother checking it because I looked at where this was and I was like, this is basically
in Wisconsin, what are we doing here? So like this is you know, this is this is GZ Garrison was saying, this is a this is a giant show of force thing, and it's but it's mostly just this is the sort of shock and all thing to frame this as crime so that people aren't focusing on obviously, like it's bad having just like troops in the streets, but like the ice enforcement and the border patrol deployment is what the actual threat is here.
And yeah, and like yeah, Depentagon and the Trump admen are planning a lot of different scenarios that they would like to enact. But Trump's actual comments on like a larger like military style deployment to Chicago had been a little bit flip floppy. I think they're still trying to reach some kind of deal to like work with the local government and state governments in a way that is less bombastic than like a like a completely like adversarial
deployment would be. Even that that press conference where the shambling corpse of Trump made an appearance, his his his comments about the possibility of the point of to Chicago is seemed still pretty exploratory, Like there's still there's still like conversations being had about how to actually do this. They they are not as as brazen as what they were in LA and they don't have as much justification to do what they did in DC to a city
like Chicago. So they're still trying to work out some kind of deal with like the local governments.
Yeah, and it's really unclear to me that they're going to be able to reach a deal with Brandon Johnson and with Pritzker, who's leading it.
It seems that Brandon Johnson's less willing to work with Trump on this than the mayor of DC, So props to him for that, I guess.
Yeah.
Yeah, And this is also a thing where Brandon Johnson is like very deeply unpopular in Chicago. However, actual federal deployment there is so unpopular that you have you have the fact that The Sun Times is pointing out in the reporting of this that crime rates are down, which they have never done, like ever, That's not a thing they ever talk about. It's so unpopular that there is really really significant pressure on both Pritzker and Johnson not
to do this, and you know, maybe they cave. I have a kind of low opinion of them from like my time in the city doing politics there, But I don't think they're going to cave on this, No, And I think what that means is that it's mostly going to be the homeland security like ice border patrol deployments.
Yeah, guesse. Chicago does fall into our very loose definition of like a border town.
Uh huh, yes, which most towns are.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaking of JB. Pritzker, I mean he has a lot of corporate interests. He may have stock in one of the companies advertising on our show. We have no way of knowing we're back.
I just got a text from JB. Pritsker. Oh yeah, I was recruiting for the private people's militia to defend the free municipality of Chicago.
So he's recruiting horse archers for the cop Yeah. Yeah, you've got to be able to loose twelve arrows a minute from the back of a war pony in order to in order to make the make the cut.
Protesters did shoot arrows at the cops at Hong Kong, so it's not it's not without precedent.
Yes they did. Yes, they did at the university. Yeah.
Well, and you know, if Florida National Guard deploys to Illinois, they may be able to use biological warfare because the Florida Surgeon General has just vowed to end all of the state's vaccine mandates, equating them with slavery. Not just the COVID mandates, all vaccine mandates across this state. After he announced this, he got like over thirty seconds of applause, like NonStop. I will play a little bit of the end of this announcement.
Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery. Okay, who am I as a government or anyone else, or who am I as a man standing here now.
To tell you what you should put in your body?
Who am I to tell you what your child should put in your body?
I don't have that right.
Your body, your body.
Is a gift from God.
You really wanted to say, your body your choice.
Huh?
What you put into your body is because of your relationship.
With your body and your God. I don't have that right.
Oh really, Oh really? Oh wow, unless it's trans healthcare, in which case you simply cannot.
A little on the nose there.
God.
Yeah, it's frankly wild. Yeah, motherfucker. It's like it's like that commercial that was.
I don't know, you might be too young for this. Kuess there's this commercial with this this old man with like a dollar on a fishing rod.
Going you almost got it. It's literally that it's literally that no very close into walking into a full body autonomy argument there, even though you know, for reproductive healthcare that is unrelated to general public health, which is why these mandates exist, which can affect people besides you.
Yep.
Oh, Ron Santas announced and during the same press conference the creation of a Florida's own Make America Healthy Again Commission, which will enforce Robert F. Kennedy's policies to the fullest extent in their state.
Grand he was the least charismatic person we saw speak at the RNC last year, just saying yeah, DeSantis. Yeah, in my opinion, no, no, who was worse?
JT Vance?
YEA Advance was there.
That lady did fall asleep.
Man and people people were outwardly contemptuous of Vans at the RNC, like like Republicans were contemptuous. But remember the women for trouble, A.
Woman who fell asleep next to us while watching the Dvance speech and then mouth he's so dry.
Yeah, yeah, that was really good. Yeah.
But I would say DeSantis is a solid number two, maybe Abbot three, I don't know.
Maybe they should have got a vaccine to boost their boost their charismas dats.
That's right, that's how that works, lax or.
So this is really dangerous. This is going to put a whole bunch of kids in harm's way. Yeah, worrying trend.
Yeah.
I want to talk a little bit about Ukraine. Ukraine specifically kind of the present situation of the war in Ukraine. Just kind of another little update because people catch little bits here and there on the news about what's happening, and I felt like we should probably update people as
to what's been going on. Kind of the most recent news you've probably heard is that Russian forces have been advancing in the Dnetsk Oblast and recently broke into an eighth region of Ukraine and started taking villages in the d naipro Petrovsk region, which is like a major industrial center that's next to the Dnet region, where Russian soldiers had not been recently. At this point, gains in this new region by Russia have been seemed to be fairly minimal.
They've entered two villages in the eastern part of the region. The Russian Defense Ministry claims that they captured both of the villages. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry has said, well, they're in the area and they're basically contesting them, but they
haven't entrenched or built fortifications. Like fighting is ongoing. I'm sure neither country is giving out perfectly accurate data, but it seems certainly fair to say and verifiable to say that Russian has made an incursion into this region and the fighting is ongoing. However solid their gains may or may not be. This is not the entirety of what's
going on in the conflict overall. Basically, the whole line of contact with Russia, which is about one thousand miles long, is in play at the moment, but there have not been like massive gains over the last couple of months, and in fact, as of August of twenty twenty five, Russian forces occupied about nineteen percent of Ukrainian territory. They first hit nineteen percent back in October of twenty twenty two, right before Ukrainian forces liberated a large chunk of the
Kersan Oblast. So basically what we're seeing here is Russian forces reached this peak like three years ago, a Ukrainian counter offensive pushed them back, and over the last three years Russian forces have kind of clawed their way back to where they were near the end of twenty twenty two, right, if you're looking for, like what is the overall progress of this war over the last three years, So that's obviously not going well for Ukraine, but it's also not
This is not a situation where Ukrainian forces are in any kind of collapse like you're looking at. It took Russia three years to get back to where they were three years ago, so this is I mean, this continues to be a grinding and hideous conflict, but it does not look like one at which the end is in
any way in sight. Still, even with the kind of pulling of support from the US of Ukraine, with a reduction in arm shipments and whatnot from the United States to Ukraine, there's not any signs of like a generalized collapse. And in fact, over the last couple of years there's been a fairly minimal increase in occupied territory. Right now, the pace of Russia's advance in Ukraine, per a recent AP article, has slowed by eighteen percent just over the
month of August. So Russian forces took about four hundred and sixty kilometers of territory in August and had been seizing more like five six hundred square kilometers of territory a month in the couple of months prior to that, So that's kind of what you're looking at in terms
of the overall pace of the conflict. One of the major changes that we've seen over the last like really specifically like a couple of quarters in the conflict is Ukraine has been increasing their capacity to hit Russian strategic targets behind the line, like well behind the line, we're talking fuel and we're talking power infrastructure, which has been
extremely successful. One of the things that's allowed Ukraine to hit these further back targets has been they've they've started producing an indigenous style of cruise missile code named the Flamingo, which has an eleven hundred almost twelve hundred kilogram warhead and a three thousand kilometer range, which puts it about one thousand kilometers past kind of the maximum range the one way attack drones like these one way suicide UAVs, which had been Ukraine's like furthest in way to strike
Russian territory, those only reached in about two thousand kilometers, So this puts a significant amount of like Russia's infrastructure, within Ukraine's ability to target they're currently producing. I think that they're hoping to get up to by the end
of the year, seven missiles a day by October. Now, these new cruise missiles are fairly easy to shoot down with like modern air defenses, but modern air defenses are in short supply, so it's a matter of if you're able to produce an increasing number of these and you're fleeing as many of them as you can out every day, the Russians will have to make choices in terms of what infrastructure are we actually going to devote anti missile assets towards, and you know that's always going to be
less than the total number of targets there are to hit, and the in terms of evidence that these strikes have been successful, there has been increasing limitations on personal fuel use inside the Russian Federation and increasing power outages, like all of that has gotten more common over even just like the last several months in particular, So kind of overall, what we see if we're looking at this conflict is a grinding, high casualty endeavor where the Russians are slowly
pushing back Ukrainian lines at the cost of a pretty nightmarish number of casualties. Right, Like, this is still a meat grinder conflict, and that dimension on the ground for the Russians hasn't changed. The main thing that has changed is Ukraine has gotten better at striking behind the line, which has been met by a significant acceleration in Russian strikes, particularly even on like civilian assets in Ukraine. Like, there have been more missile campaigns, more drone bombardment campaigns on
the capitol and civilian targets than previously. Like some of the largest raids just took place three or four days ago. You know, that's kind of a broad update as to what's going on. It continues to be a very ugly war. One of the main things that we've learned about what modern warfare is going to look like is that it is almost impossible for infantry forces without air supremacy to break and make large advances and then hold that territory if they do not have air supremacy. When you're looking
at two peer combatants, that's almost impossible to do. And so a significant amount of the fighting devolves into who can fling drones and missiles behind the lines and hit different sort of strategic assets with more efficacy, And that's what the war has bogged down to at this stage.
Speaking of aerial strikes, do we want to at least reference attack on the Venezuelan alleged drug smuggling vessel that was announced during Trump's death press conference.
Yeah, we blew up a boat. We did a boat in international water that was claimed to be a trend to Agua, which is a Venezuelan kind of analogous to a cartel organized criminal organization.
One of the biggest boogeyman's of the second Trump term.
Yes, they're primary, like Latin American boogeyman, and yeah, we blew them up. The administration is claiming it was, you know, filled with fentanyl or whatever. I don't believe there's as of yet any independent evidence that this boat was in any way affiliated with Trindagua or carrying drugs or headed to the United States. We simply don't know a lot of times, like just the way that trinda Ogwa works,
This is not like the Sinaloa cartel. This is not a cartel that has a massive degree of international capacity that extends to the United States. Like there's even significant debate as to how much they are extended into other parts of Latin America, they've had like really limited success expanding into Colombia because different insurgent groups like the FARC and the e L have provided a significant counter veiling
force to them. And I wanted to note because one of my sources is an article on Trindagua by America's Quarterly and in talking about their kind of troubled expansion into Colombia, this article notes tellingly even in these spaces, TDA operative subcontract smaller local gangs and authorize them to use their name to generate fear in compliance with their victims.
And this is a really common thing with Trindaugua where when you're seeing, oh this is you know, TDA affiliated or whatnot, these guys may have no actual communication or very much to do at all with the centralized group. They're just kind of using the name for branding purposes because it, you know, scares off other gangs because it allows them to like act as if they're connected to this larger organization, but they really are not in a
very meaningful way. In the same way a lot of you'll see a lot of articles that'll be talking about like these are trinda Agua tattoos, Like none of them are actual like tattoos affiliated with the group. This is like largely non sense because Trindagwa doesn't have a tattoo tradition. Per the people who are actually experts on Trindagha. There's a lot of good articles, particularly in Insight Crime, Jeremy McDermott being one of the authors that have tried to
bust a lot of these myths about TDA. We'll be doing more coverage on them in the future. But like, yeah, that's kind of the situation.
Speaking of international shipments.
Oh boy, sorry, locking jazz Brocky jazz bot.
Sorry locking jazz b Locky jazz bob Ah. That's good stuff, Jesus Christ.
Okay, So nobody being murdered in cold blood to post a video on x dot com the everything app in this one, but.
Probably there it's its own fair share of harm.
Yeah. So, at the end of last week, the official like end of the Deminimus exemption for packages under eight hundred dollars finally fully went into effect. We're going to talk about this one next week when it's more clear what the large scale ramifications of this are. We have been talking about this for a very very long time.
The other really big news this week, and this is I think most of what's been going on here has been the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that most of the tariffs that are in effect are illegal. Now. The court also basically put in a thing saying that this ruling doesn't go into effect until October fourteenth, so that Trump can have time to appeal. This is a Supreme Court. He's already appealing to the Supreme Court trying to he wants a quote expedited ruling
from the Supreme Court. He started ranting about how if the tariffs go back into effect are not allowed to be in effect, the US will quote turn into a third world country or may turn into a third world country.
No, yeah, so not a third world country. Ah God, The American Centery of Humiliation continues to chug on.
Yeah. So okay, It actually is worth talking about this case a little bit because it goes to the core of what's been happening with these terrorists, which is that yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. So in the Constitution, if you read it, it says that the power of taxes and tariffs lied with Congress. It really explicitly says this I'm gonna read a thing
from the ruling. This is a quote from the ruling. Quote, the Constitution grants Congress the power to quote lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, and to quote regulate commerce with foreign nations. This is the constitutioned Article one, Action eight. And I'm going to stop here to note that everything that's in the Bill of Rights was not in the original draft of the Constitution that got tacked
on later. So like freedom of speech, and like freedom of assembly, and like freedom of religion were considered less important by the people writing this than Congress are the only people who could do taxes. I'm going to keep reading from this ruling. Tariffs are a tax, and the framers of the Constitution expressly contemplated the exclusive granting of
taxing power to the legislative branch. When Patrick Henry expressed concern that the president quote may easily become king debates in several state conventions Jonathan Elliott eighteen thirty six, James Manison replied this would not occur because quote, the purse is in the hand of the representatives of the people.
So I cannot believe that we have a president doing a t tax for forign terrorists. I know, I know where's Boston when you need it?
Robert, do the voice? No, I'm not, I'm not your fucking monk.
This this is the only way to have to stop Robert from doing the voice is to try to get him into the place because of oppositional defiance.
Yeah, that's that's what that's what rules.
Okay, speaking of what rules us, so Trump has been using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and he like declared a state of emergency over like drug trafficking in order to do this. This is nonsense, gibberish. And this is actually where I think this is a very very significant part of this case here, which is like, Okay, what power does Trump actually have? Like can he continue to just sort of rule the United States?
Many people are asking questions, and I'm.
Going to read this this this line from CNN, which is quoting the court draft quote. Notably, when drafting the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, Congress did not use the term tariff or any of its synonyms like duty or tax. The Court said in its majority ruling. The absence of any such teriff language in the Act contrasts with statutes where Congress has affirmatively granted such powers and including clear limit on that power. So this law do not say
that he could do this. He has simply been doing this the whole time with using a law that it literally explicitly does not say the word tariff in it. So the court is extremely unhappy about this.
Ladies and gentlemen, we got them.
It really is. I think this is genuinely just on a basic constitutional level, this is one of the most staggering ones of these I've ever in terms of just like does the Constitution still exist? The answer is eh, Like, this is article one of the Constitution. It's article one. This is the first shit they wrote. This was like literally the whole point of the American Revolution was that the king can't levy taxes. It has to be the
parliamentary representatives of the people. That's like the whole thing. It was that the slogan was no exactination without representation. Yes, yeah, and like and like, obviously that's the stated goal of it. You could obviously go and see her, right, there's like a million other things. You can go into your territorial expansion and go into your slavery blah blah blah blah. But like this is what it was supposed to be about, and has just claimed this power from himself, And we're
gonna get a real test in the Supreme Court. So the Screme Court goes back from their recess in like a month, so we're gonna probably get a real test on how far the Supreme Court is willing to let Trump just straight up rule by executive fiat. But in the meantime, all these terrorist are still in effect. And yeah, this has been tariff talk. We have talked about the tariffs.
Excellent.
Well, I believe that does it for us. You're at it could happen here.
All right, everybody, until next time. You know, just if anyone tells you the precedent is dead, assume they're telling the truth and go live your life.
We reported the news.
We reported the news.
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