Also media.
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 James Stout and Robert Evans. Yes, this episode recovering the week of November nineteen to November twenty fourth.
Boy, this year's just blown by yeah fast, yeah, yeah. They sped up the time stream. You know what else sped up the time stream watching something on Twitter blow up again. We can't seem to stop talking about this fucking website and I'm tired of it. But the big news this week from Elon Musk's fucking vanity propagana app is see Everything Happen That they introduced a new feature to let you know the location of the account and also the number of like name changes, like how many
username changes it's had since the account has started. I would say within sort of progressive and liberal circles. The i'm an interpretation of what's happened is best summarized by this Daily Beast headline. Top MAGA influencers accidentally unmasked as foreign trolls, No shit, Now, as is often the case, this isn't entirely accurate. Not to say that there's not a shitload of foreign trolls who are making money by pretending to be American MAGA influencers. There definitely are. We've
known about this since well before this Twitter change. One of the most prominent people on Musk's Twitter, Ean Miles Chong, is a Malaysian man who has never been to the United States and publishes nothing but MAGA content. Now, what's happened here? You can find going through there's a bunch of threads. There's threads on Blue Sky, threads on Twitter, threads, and various articles that are basically all copies of each other that are collecting a bunch of these accounts that
have been busted, right. One good example would be the Magination verified account, which has almost four hundred thousand followers. Started in twenty twenty four, it's had five name changes since October twenty twenty five, and it is based in Eastern Europe Non EU.
Yeah that's a nation, yeah yeah, yeah.
A lot of people have taken to mean like it's Russian, right yeah. Another account is the Ivanka news Trump, which displays as Ivanka Trump, even though it has nothing to do with her, which it does note in its Twitter bio. The account was started in twenty ten, it has had eleven user changes since August of twenty twenty four, and it is apparently based in Nigeria.
You have to see it.
You're seeing like aload a shitload of stuff like this right, and it's being taken unfortunately. I think this is a mistake and I hate to be like the hey, guys, stop being happy about this, but you should because you're wrong about what's happening here. Most people are like the Daily Beast account posts some liberal Twitter account being like this is total armageddon for the online right. It's looking like half of their large accounts were foreigners posting as
Americans all along. Now, let me clarify a couple things. For one thing, nothing that Elon has done here, nothing that Twitter has revealed has proven that these accounts exist
in any particular country. I'm going to explain why a lot of people use something called a vp and a VPN masks the location that you're browsing and logging in from, right, and you can use a VPN to look like you're posting from almost any country on the planet, and there is no evidence whatsoever that Twitter has done anything at all to deal with this right to like make sure
that they're getting someone's actual location. A bunch of accounts, a bunch of like people have pointed out like, hey, look, this is saying I'm from a country that I've literally never been to, Like here's my information. I'm very transparent. And there have also been organizations, including liberal you know, coded organizations, that have been mistakenly identified as coming from
a country that they are not set up. And for example, the Planned Parenthood account was showing us from Germany, which is ignited this conspiracy theory on the right that Planned Parenthood is some European fucking influence op in the United States. No, they used a VPN because they're in danger because it's Planned Parenthood, right.
No.
I mean I ran into a very similar situation because I mostly use Twitter to look at yowie now, and when I was in Germany last month, it wouldn't let me look at the AWI without putting in my government ID for like age verification, sure of course, and then the state hits garrison, so obviously a non starter. I'm not I'm not, I'm not giving X. The everything app my government id to allow me to look at Yawi in Germany. Sure, so instead I had to put on the VPN so I'm back in the States and then
I can look at the AYAUI. So it's basically the same situation between me and Planned Parenthood here.
Yes, I've said often that you and Planned Parenthood basically identical beings. What's happening here is it is worth talking about. But it's worth talking about not because we suddenly know the truth that it's been revealed about. We don't really know anything more than we did before this change came in, right.
Well except Robert, I mean the biggest the biggest news is that the DHS has been a massad operation this last time. Yes, that's right, Yes, like we've always suspected.
Yeah, so the the Department of Homeland Security account I think it was, got listed as having been based in Israel. This is not real, Like it's not this isn't even X fucking up. Somebody just edited a screenshot and there's so many of these going around, hundreds and hundreds of them, right that this just kind of got shuffled in to the flood and a lot of people didn't catch it right, and it just gets integrated into people's beliefs about the world.
Right.
This is a standard story with how Twitter works now. And this is, by the way, is overall I think beneficial to Musk and his kind of people, which is that we know less every day about the world. There's more disinformation about what's happening. People are less keyed in on reality and more just getting locked into different delusions.
Like That's what the story is here, which is that this app and the way that social media in general works, particularly in this age, each of these changes, even the ones that get celebrated as having revealed something, are just fogging up reality, and they're doing it in such a way as to make it so that like no one knows anything about what's going on. Right, this is like that this is the standard playbook that you've been getting out of like authoritarian regimes from forever.
Right.
What's important is not that just their propaganda be out. It's that there's not really any any way for there
to be a consensus reality. Because if there'sn't consensus reality, then you can't put together a large enough block of people who all believe basically the same things about reality to stop what's going on, right, that's what's happening here, And you're wrong if you're looking at this as good, if you believe that this has blown up the right and that this has done damage to them, they're saying the same things about you and about the left because a shitload of people use VPNs and you can always
cherry pick a bunch of and I'm not again, none of that I'm saying is not saying that they're in a shitload like Elon has specifically incentivized foreign accounts in different countries to make money by getting into the US culture war, right, That is absolutely a big part of how Twitter works today. No one's denying that. What I'm saying is that you don't know any more than you did before this came out, because you have no way of knowing if any of these accounts are based. Where
is saying they're based because of how VPNs work. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, that's what I've got to say.
It's incredibly annoying. It's incredibly annoying that we have to continue writing about eggs everything. The half of half of Blue Sky is people just virtue signaling that they're not using Twitter, and I'm being mad at Twitter.
You know, it's the same.
Honestly, this will get me flat, But it's the same thing about like whether people are angry about substack or fucking Instagram or Twitter or whatever. Like, if you're using social media, you're not doing yourself any favors. And they're all pretty supportive of bad things and bad people. And we use them anyway because that's the world. Like we spend dollars anyway, and let me tell you, dollars support some bad things. We pay taxes, and boy howdy, I don't like where a lot of those taxes go.
Yeah, but don't don't pretend.
That because you pick the right social media app that you're not fucking your brain up and introducing yourself to a bunch of things that aren't true. We all do it, Like that's the problem.
Yes, they're not good for humans broadly. Do you want to talk about something else it's not good for humans?
Yeah, let's not talk about fucking X the every goddamn thing. Ye anymore?
No, Unfortunately, I have I have something Robert which does relate to X great everything app. So let's talk about Axios. Oh yeah, are you guys familiar with Axios. It's the use oatelet for people who hate paragraphs.
People who love cocaine.
Yeah yeah, yeah, for people reading the news while they're having a dump. That is what Axios is for. They ship out news for you to read while you're having a.
Ship again, which makes cocaine even a bigger part of the picture here.
No, it's it's like it's like the ADHD is like ideal news source.
Yeah yeah, yeah, you do a line, you have to go take a ship, you catch up on your news.
Yeah, it's that's what they called productivity. That's that's the Robert Evans grindset, the morning routine that everyone's been asked.
It's really it's really genius of fucking Axios to hit that demographic exactly because those people also have a lot of money because they're all day traders. True true, Yeah, yeah.
I have I have polymarket on the Califi on the other Axios always pulled up.
That's split screening.
You have one of those Apple like flat grass glass touch screen panels. But it's just for doing coke off of you've just got lines kind off on.
Yeah, it's because the metaglass is a contact right looping Axio screen at your Axios and use that left for people who are taking cocaine. Has seemingly been duped into running a Russian wish list as a proposed piece plant in Ukraine. Yeah great, this is what happens when you
do journalism the speed of paranoia. But this has come at the same time as Trump has proclaimed via truth the medium of a truth on through social that Ukraine was not showing suficient gratitude for what we had like eleven month of him failing to end the war.
Yeah.
So this twenty eight point plan was first published by Axios, and it was pretty much immediately rejected by a number of Senators, led by Senator Angus King, who were at a security conference in Halifax, Halifax, Canada. Not og Halifax, shout out yeah Halifax Junior. The senators pretty much immediately said that the US was not the author of the document. Rubio quote made it very clear to us that we are recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one
of our representatives, said Senator Mike Grounds. So what they are saying is that the US didn't write to document and it was delivered to them. One can safely assume by Russia. Right, Rubio using X the Everything app then attempted to deny this. So what it appeared years has happened is that this plan was drafted by Russian special envoy dmitriev probably was Steve Witkoff.
Sure that sounds right.
So Wickkoff is Trump's what is I think he's a special envoy to Russia at this point.
Yeah, I believe he's an onvoid of Russia. Yeah, Warren Zevon wrote a song about guys like him.
Yes, yeah he has. He has not covered himself in glory in his time doing this. He's kind of a useful fool. He's formerly like a real estate.
Guy that'll prepare you to deal with Vladimir Putin, having sold houses during the subprime mortgage crisis.
Yeah. Yeah, Like it's pretty much what he's doing here, right, Like he's consistently been duped and pretty much has become an advocate for the Russian point of view a lot of the times. In this case, it seems that it was then strategically leaked to Axios. Right when Barak Ravid, who authored the Axios article, posted it on Eggs the
Everything web site. Steve Whitcoff responded saying, quote, he must have got this from K. This is very funny because we have Steve Witcoff right negotiating a peace process which affects millions of people, and he also doesn't know how to use the DM button on X the Everything website.
To be fair, X the Everything I've just changed their DMS and the whole the whole user interface for the DMS is completely different. Now you have to put in like a pass co and they claim to be encrypted, and it's much uglier to look at.
So in defense in defense of Steve, instead you can instead leak.
The safer, more secure option might just be to do it all in public.
And to do it in public. Yeah, So so Steve of course using a code name there K will never know. Yeah, because we can possibly tell that Careal Dimitria my might be using K as a code name also the first letter of his first name. So it seems very like that either Dmitrie of someone else in Russia decided to leak this plan to Barakraavid or Dave Lawler, knowing it would be raised at a press conference of belling that Trump, who, according towards the Post, seems to have very little detailed
knowledges and negotiations. Would probably see this as a quote unquote deal that then he could claim for himself, right, and it worked. I want to talk about how Axios's model makes that possible.
Right.
I'm very well aware that Barackravid was a member of the eighty two hundred unit in Israel. If people I'm familiar, that's like a sigint Israeli intelligence unit. This is widely known. I've seen this being discussed in sort of relation to this. The thing is, he doesn't need to be nefarious for this to happen, and I think the most likely option here is that the Axios model is to do insider journalism and then rush to be the first to post it on social media and then get a bazillion clicks
for your z seventy eight word article. Right. That is how That is their entire business model.
It is the name of their whole game.
Yeah, that's why they don't use paragraphs. It's news for people who are like waiting for their coffee at Starbucks or whatever the problem is in this case, states are or nonstate actors, right, can effectively place a leak and they know that Axios will rush it to press probably in minutes, if not ours. And with the way that the United States executive branches right now, it seems very clear that that they can get it in front of Trump, then they're going to get a reaction one way or another.
So it seems that Rubio was effectively cut out, that the United States Secretary of State was effectively cut out
of this whole process. And there's a lot of reporting about, like I don't want to do kremlinology for the Trump White House particularly, but it shows how these news outlets, these news outlets are sort of don't fact check that rush to press, to do everything for social media can effectively be used right in a way that the benefits in this case Russia, but any number of organizations could do the same thing.
Robert mentioned some kind of like Wartimes warn that some kind of Wartimes song, And I was wondering, where is the country of Zevon? You said, there's like a song about Warren Zevon.
Jesus Garrison, Garrison, get out of you hears about discrimination in the workplace. Ah, I'm going to do a Woody Guthrie thing in my next series. And Gary is just going to sail straight past Garrison. You listen to Johnny Cash Garrison, I liked.
I like Johnny Cash.
Okay, James Cash.
That's what they call me. Here's the ads.
And we're.
New Doge news for the first time in who knows how the news being. There's no more Doge. According to a report in Reuter's, DOGE has disbended eight months before its scheduled expiration in July of twenty twenty seven. When asked about the status of Doge earlier this month, Office of Personal Management director Scott Poor told Reuters quote that doesn't exist, adding that DOGE is no longer a quote
unquote centralized entity. Yeah. Boro has also said that the DOGE mandated hiring freeze is over and that there's quote no target around reductions unquote, meaning that the DOGE era rule of having to fire a certain number of people in order to be allowed to hire people is no longer in use as well. And this isn't really surprising. You have not really heard about many DOGE related stuff in a while.
They haven't been doing anything in a while. Musk has basically been out of the center loop of things. But also they did the things that they were needed to do, right. They did up massacred large portions of government employees. Yeah, did permanent damage to the administrative state and cost several hundred thousand people around the world their lives through cuts in USA.
Yeah.
Yeah, And like two former DOGE employees, including big Balls, now just work on web design for US government websites, and other DOG officials have moved to agencies which they administered cuts to. A former DOGE team member, Zachary Terrell is now the chief technology officer at the Department of Health and Human Services, And Jeremy Lewin, who assisted the slashing of you say it, now oversees foreign assistants at the State Department.
Yeah.
So those guys got jobs out of this. All of the people who got fired or got natively impacted by the government shutdown are probably not going to be coming out as well as mister big Balls here.
Well.
And there's some evidence that a number of folks who worked with DOGE are now feeling left in the wind and potentially in danger because there are a lot of people who want these folks to be prosecuted for what they did. Yeah, there's definitely talk about that. If there's another democratic administration, we'll see if they would ever have
the big balls to do it. But there was an article in Politico recently and I'm going to read a quote from that Musk had not just been their visionary leader for them, he was their protector, the man who had an elect direct line to Trump, who they believed could pick up the phone and secure a presidential pardon if the worst came. Without his presence in Washington, they
were suddenly exposed. A senior DOSE figure named Donald Park tried to reassure his colleagues that they were still brothers in arms and that Musk would continue to protect them. That led to another protesting and advising, guys, seriously, get your own lawyer if you needed. He LUNs great, but you need to watch your own back. Watch your backs, guys.
Yeah, these guys would be some of the more like presumably very easy to prosecute and like obvious targets. Yes, another democratic administration's.
Some really obvious crimes in terms of like protect action of information, you know, like some some pretty obvious rule breaking that went on that's not being prosecuted now, but yeah, they're right, it could be prosecuted in the future.
Those like first three four months of the Trump admin. Ye what it really was just full steam ahead on the Silicon Valley version of things, right, like the move fast and brave things. Yeah, that's such a wild time to look back on, not only just in terms of how much damage they did, but the idea that if they were going to continue at that pace for the rest of the term. The government already is fundamentally different in some ways, but like how much worse that would
have been? Yeah, Yeah, and if Musk's ego is in part what's sabotaged that from being complete and really kind of doing that more like Jarvin inspired project. Yeah, Hubris uh kills kills a man once again. But there is aspects of like the doge idea and this government efficiency thing which aren't fully going away like this, this still
is an aspect of the Trump administration. There still is like some of those guys at the Auspice of Budget and Management and the Hair twenty twenty five guys who have a lot of this government efficiency quote unquote government efficiency type stuff that they're still working on, including at the Education Department, which last week the Trump administration took another step towards closing the Department of Education by shifting some of its duties to other federal agencies, which the
Admin claims will quote streamline federal education activities on the legally required programs, and reduce administrative burden unquote. That is going to be done by these six new interagency agreements which have been signed with the Departments of Labor, Interior,
Health and Human Services, and State. The Education Department writing in an announcement that this will quote break up the federal bureaucracy, ensure efficient delivery of funded programs activities, and move closer to fulfilling the President's promise to return education to the States. So by splitting up Education Department duties among the four different agencies in three different interagency agreements, this is supposed to cut red tape and lighten central bureaucracy.
You have seven entities now what one entity did before.
The elementary, high school, and post secondary programs will now be administered by the Department of Labor.
That's great.
We'll now overseee over thirty billion dollars in education grants aimed at trying to boost the number of Americans in the workforce. The Department of the Interior will be taking over the education departments to Indian education programs and integrating them into existing programs administered by the Department of the Interior,
with quote unquote proper oversight by the Education Department. College childcare programs, and foreign medical school accreditation will be administered and overseen by the Health and Human Services, and the State Department will now oversee all foreign education programs, handle international education grants, and fully administer the full Bright program.
Justification for this State Department takeover of these funds specifically cited five instances of grants that were used to fund academic and medical research on trans people, writing that these programs have deviated from the core mission on The announcement from the Education Departments reads that the State Department is quote best positioned to tailor foreign education programs with the national security and foreign policy priorities of the United States.
This partnership provides an opportunity to streamline international education program funding and data collection measures, consolidate program management, and advance national security interests.
That's not good.
Yeah, that doesn't seem great. Huh.
Yeah.
This last part is particularly concerning that the US previously has done a lot of funding of education programs around the world, and to see that pretty much I like with this current vasion of the State Department either disappear or become even more up propaganda. Like it's really worrying. This kind of builds on that dose stuff that you were talking about. This is the end of the State Department doing anything other than the propaganda and I guess warmaking well.
And specifically, like Rubio's focus on education has been to crack down on academics palestatiing academics, academics who have who have protest in support of Palestine. That's specifically what Rubio has talked about in terms of you know, universities. Yeah, so with all the stuff in that statement about you know, national security and foreign policy priorities, it's not hard to
see what they could be gesturing towards. Yeah, as the announcements are currently written, a lot of the programs itself, at least in the trench transitionary period, remain kind of the same. They're shifting who is like quote unquote administering them. That's the word they use a lot. But they're not cutting funds to these programs at the moment, and they
do talk about them as like legally required programs. But I mean Carolyn Levitt and Linda McMahon have said, this is just one step towards well fully sending education back to the States.
Woh.
This also was sort of like in massive disparities in educational outcomes state by state in the United States, right, Like, we already have that to some extent, but that's only going to be exacerbated by this. Right talking about things happening between the states, let's talk about Gregory Buffino, person who supposedly patrols the borders of the United States but has more recently been doing internal enforcement for the Border Patrol. He gave an interview to AP recently that I was
just reading. They did confirm interestingly that like a few weeks ago, maybe months ago, we've been talking about Bevino and like trying to work out if he was still chief Patrol agent in El Centro. It appears that he is. But he's also reminder of this operation at large, which is their sort of the thing that has moved from Los Angeles to Chicago, which is now in Charlotte. Right,
this sort of internal enforcement operation. He calls his team and now quote unquote sanctuary busters, and he said that quote there will be no more sanctuaries, which kind of does build on what I spoke about in our last ed right when we spoke about the idea that the reason they had targeted Charlotte was because it appeared on that CIS map quote unquote sanctuary city or sanctuary jurisdiction, despite the passage of legislation in the state which would
have prevented it doing the things that the sanctuaries do. I just want to talk about this ABC investigation into CBP's use of licensed plate readers. CBPS has had these for like eight or nine years now. I found the twenty seventeen piece they wrote out their justification for using them. Right, Their use has grown immensely right in a yeah, and it has grown under both of meministrations we've I suppose Trump administration from twenty twenty by the administration twenty twenty,
twenty eighty four. We spoke actually in an episode that I think it was just Robert and I in that episode when we spoke about Gavin Newsom. People love that episode and they send me great feedback, because guys, it's important that we all know that the only person standing up against Trump right now is Gavin Newsom. Everything else is pointless. But in that episode, we spoke about how many California jurisdictions share license plate reader information with federal
immigration authorities, even when California law prohibits them from doing so. Right, this is kind of one of those these things they were it's a ratchet, right. Once you give that power to the state, it belongs to all of the state, and you can never take it back. Automated license to plate readers have been a big thing in this kind of the post twenty twenty tendency of democratic mayors in big cities to massively increase spending on the police and
massively increase police surveillance. We have automated cameras on our lampposts here in San Diego now right, California has prosecuted one jurisdiction that I'm aware of, which is Alcoholone. People will be familiar with alcoholne from Alcoholone. Mayor Bill Well's attempt to make a country music song about how schools are turning kids trans that is un ironically probably the most national use it that ALCOHOLA has made for a while.
But bundahursued Alcoholone for showing that data. My guess is that that is because it's alcoholone, right, Because alcohol is a city where the mayor makes a country music song about how schools are turning children trans like it's very obviously like a partisan prosecution. There are many other jurisdictions doing this. What Border Patrol does with these cameras is it targets quote unquote suspicious activities and then it requests stops.
Sometimes this stops an made by Border Patrol, but are made by local police right on the pretext of something like speeding or failing to signal before you change lanes, having a break light out could be many, many things, right. The ABC piece quoted Deputy Joel bab Of saying, quote, the beautiful thing about the Texas traffic code is there
thousands of things you can stop a vehicle for. The idea here is not to explicitly talk about the license plate readers, right, And the fact that they are using these to do predictive surveillance is what they call it. Right, They're trying to highlight like suspicious patterns of vehicle motion
and stop people. The piece has some they obtained through public records requests from a court case a whatchapp group chat between Border Patrol and Texas officers, which the opposite shared movement, social media profiles, car rentals, and home addresses of people who they were interested in surveilling. Right, and
it reveals a massive level of surveillance. You know, if you if you're thinking of border patrol and you're still under the impression that in America, the border can't come to you wherever you are, this is another example of why that's not true. Right, DHS uses these all over the country to include outside of one hundred mile border enforcement zone. Right, this piece seems to believe that the board one hundred mile zone is it's like a legal
hard line. It's not. It's an interpretation of a quote unquote reasonable distance. There is no hard line stopping BP for operating further from the border than that. That is just generally where the interpretation of a reasonable distance from the border is perceived to fall. Border patrol has these cameras at fixed points, so like that would be border patrol crossings. You know, when you enter or enter the enter or leave the country at a port of entry
and then at checkpoints. Right, people will be familiar with checkpoints that live in a border area. And then they also have these in mobile and covert capacities. Right, and they're using them to find people who might be driving near the border or staying and and then leaving at a strange time, and then they're building a profile of those people's movements and using that request stops. Right. It's a level of surveillance that I think should be worrying to many people.
And they have access to these like larger integrated camera networks like by Flock Safety, which I've talked about before, including I think yesterday's episode, as Flock is like an Atlanta based company that rose to prominence through their surveillance around the forest where Copsity was being constructed. Now Flock is all over the country, and Border Patrol has access to the Flock system. Yeah, and it's used for a whole bunch of other really dubious stuff, including in Texas.
I think four h four Media did a report not too long ago about Texas sheriffs tracking a pregnant woman getting an abortion not in Texas.
Right, Yeah, yeah, I can see. Yeah, Texas law makes it a crime to leave the state in order to get an abortion or something, right, and so that would be the I guess their excuse here, But like I think we can all see that that's a pretty pretty disgusting use of the surveilance state. Yeah, these things grew massively in the time period between twenty twenty and today,
and it was not just in Republican jurisdictions. Right, there's this like unabated support for state surveillance that we saw all over the United States is now being turned against migrants and anybody who is suspected of helping them, which is not great. Talking of not great, we have an obligation to pivot to add I'm happy.
I think that's great. I love I love having a job.
I enjoyed to consume products and services.
That's right, and we're back.
How's everybody doing good?
Yeah? Banging, pretty good, pretty good. I just finished my Asahi smoothie from the Hair Heritage Social twenty twenty four cup, so I feel great.
That's great.
Yeah, that's good for you.
Garrison really coming together, you know, politics from different sides coming together to enjoy a smoothie. Not unlike the meeting between Zora Mum, Donnie and Donald Trump.
Oh my god, Oh how long did you plan that for?
Garrishon? Like literally five seconds? It just it just came out.
We don't do smooth transitions here like that.
Well, you know sometimes do you know who was smooth? It was Zoramum Donnie during that meeting, which bit like a duck's back, like a like a seal.
That kind of smoothness is.
Trump seemed pretty pretty enamored. Mister mum Donnie mayor elect Mom Donnie. Quote, we have one thing in common. We want this city of ours to do very well unquote. So this was on Friday, Trump and Mum Donnie had
a private meeting in the White House. Afterwards a thirty minute press conference in the Oval Office where Trump was sitting down and soa was kind of looming over the side of Trump the whole time, never fully smiling, always having a little bit of like a a tiny like both sided smirk, but not doing his traditional happy smile. He had a very different look in the White House. But as soon as the press conference started, it was
clear that the meeting went very well for Momdannie. Trump was exuberant about the man.
Yeah, he seemed really excited. Yeah, it's a little weird, but he seemed really excited.
He stated that they have common ground on getting housing built, on affordability, on food and prices coming down saying, quote, there's no difference in party, and we're going to be helping him to make everybody's dream come true unquote.
Everybody's stream doctory amazing.
Yeah, First, I want to play Zoron's initial statement as the press conference started on what they spoke about during this meeting.
I appreciated the meeting with the President, and as he said, it was a productive meeting forocused on the place of shared admiration and love, which is New York City, and the need to deliver affordability to New Yorkers, the eight and a half million people who call our city their home, who are struggling to afford life in the most expensive city in the.
United States of America.
We spoke about we spoke about groceries, we spoke about utilities, we spoke about the different ways in which people are being pushed out. And I appreciated the time with the President. I appreciated the conversation. I look forward to working together to deliver that affordability for the orders.
It's one of the posture people with the green line. The green line.
Yeah, no, I've seen yeah, that going on a couple of times.
They've already they've had that way with it.
They've been on it.
Yeah, yeah, okay, it does seem tense. The vibes in that room must have been very, very weird.
N Yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah, no, Zorn's very tense. Trump's trying to relax. Like bad late.
Face that you've posted on gas he is, I can.
Only it's like a shit eating grin on Trump's face. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like he does seem genuinely half thrilled. Yeah, it's weird.
He likes to be associated with winners.
This is one of the big things, right A lot of I mean, we'll talk about this more and that takes okay at this, but but yeah, I think it's very clear why Trump's actually having a good time here. Zoron's like the most popular politician in the country right now, and Trump likes winners. And if anything, Zoron has proven to be an underdog that has an enormous capacity for winning, and I think Trump does like that, and that, coupled with a genuine love for New York, I think Zoron
was able to navigate around Trump pretty successfully. When asked about Zoron being a communist, Trump said, quote, I feel very confident he can do a good job I think it's going to surprise some conservative people actually unquote, and.
You should add what he said about liberal people because I thought that was his funniest line.
Oh then also liberal people, but they already like him too or something.
Yeah, I don't think they'll be surprised, they'll just be yeah, yes, they like him because they already like him. It was very funny. It was very funny.
Trump's talked about how a lot of Trump voters actually voted for Zoron as well, saying quote unquote, I'm okay with that, And so I mentioned that, yes, one in ten Trump voters in New York voted for Zoron, and zor mentioned the end to forever wars and the cost living crisis as the driving motivators that voters spoke about
as he was campaigning. Throughout this press conference, and we can assume some degree of the meeting, Zoron was very laser focused on New York specifically, And you've even seen this in interviews that he's given to like NBC and other outlets the past few days, where people are asking him about, you know, the Democratic Party as a whole and national level, and Zoron repeatedly just goes back to affordability in New York. This is like the one thing
that he's going to keep talking about. He doesn't want to talk about any anything else, really, And this was evident throughout this meeting, the way that Zorn would would reiterate every question to being about New York. But they didn't shy away from talking about the things they disagreed on on, like an ideaological sense, ICE being one of them. Here's one of their exchanges about ICE.
Resident, you've threatened to send federal troops to New York City. You both have differences when it comes to ICE agents in New York City. Mister Mundanie, you've called ICE a rogue government entity. I wonder how you reconcile your differences on both of those issues.
I think you're going to work them out.
And I think that if we have known murderers and known drug dealers and some very bad people, you know, we want to get them out, and the mayor ones have we discussed there is a great length actually, maybe more than anything else, he wants to have a safe New York. Ultimately, a safe New York is going to be a great New York. If it's not safe, no.
Matter how well we do with pricing and with anything else. We can talk about anything you want.
If you don't have safe streets, it's not going to be a success.
So we're going to work together.
We're going to make sure that if they're horrible people, we want to get him out. I think he wants to get him out, maybe more than I do, so we'll work together.
They talked about ICE at one later point in the meeting, where you get kind of a peak at what some of this conversation may have been like behind the scenes, about trying to target any ICE enforcement against people who have criminal records rather than these roving raids that round up but just swaths of undocumented people like the Canal Street raid a few weeks ago. It's still not super clear what they are talking about, but there's not compromise
in this point. Like Trump's obviously going to try to frame this in a way that strengthens Trump's own positions on this, and I think Zoron will do the same. Before we discuss I don't want to play this the second bit of their discussion, because you get more of Zoron's angle.
We discussed ICE and New York City, and I spoke about how the laws that we have in New York City allow for New York City government to speak to the federal administration for about one hundred and seventy serious crimes, the concerns that many New Yorkers have around the enforcement of immigration laws on New Yorkers across the Five boroughs, and most recently, we're talking about a mother and her two children. How this has very little to do with what that is.
Is we discuss crime more than ice per se.
We discuss crime, and he doesn't want to see crime, and I don't want to see crime, and I have very little doubt that we're not going to get along on that issue. He wants to and he said some things that were very interesting, very interesting as to housing construction, and he wants to see houses go up. He wants to see a lot of houses created, a lot of apartments built, et cetera. And you know, we actually people would be shocked. But I want to see the same thing.
See that.
Yeah, that worries me a little bit.
What about that worries you?
I can tell what Trump's.
Trying to do, which is that he really would like to get Mom Donnie on his side and he's interestingly for Trump, I think he is willing to move on some things if he can fundamentally get Mom Donnie who agree that ice has a use. Yeah, right, Like that's what he's clearly trying to do, and he's clearly trying
to portray it as we've already agreed on that. And I think that within the context of this meeting, because of how the questions were being asked, I don't think Zorn got enough of a chance to fully address that question. So I'll leave it open to see how that is, like like how he deals with that in the future, But I don't think he got enough of an opportunity to push back enough on some of the things Trump
was claiming here. That does concern me a little bit, Like I think it's more a factor of how an Oval Office press conference is structured. But I do think that it's like I can see what Trump's trying to do well.
I think what Mum Donnie is trying to navigate for is if he can put an end to roving ice rates that just like that just round up people at whether they're at restaurants or from depots, and if there's people who are who have been incarcerated who are incarcerated, and if removal operations are specifically against except like what one hundred and seventy like serious crimes, and if that is a sort of compromise, I guess I don't know, Like he's not an office. Yes, it's it's unclear the
way that this would this would be enacted. Yeah, but if it's an harm reduction measure of stopping ICE raids from happening or limiting the amount that ICE is able to operate as as basically a rodenty within the city, And I don't think we know enough to like actually see what that will look like yet, because he's not taking office for another what like forty five days.
Yeah, Yeah, what he's talking about when Trump goes about crime, crime is what they have always talked about, right, right, When when they talk about the ICE enforcement, the crimes that they are speaking about, very right, they will always give the example of the person who's been convicted of
child abuse, of murder, of domestic violence. Right, But then they will also go ahead and say the crossing between ports of entry can be prosecuted as a crime, and then they will use that as a justification for taking anyone right and specifically people who have entered within the last two years, many of whom were shipped to New York from other states, and saying, well, these people entered between ports of entry, which they did after the end
of Title forty two, right when we returned to processing people under Title eight. And they will place him in actibility to remove all proceedings like that, that is what they have been doing for a while. When he talks about the sanctuary policies, New York right now doesn't honor detainer requests right in theory, sanctuary laws prevent and y see, from what I understand, from honoring detainer requests, which would
be an extra forty eight hour detainer. We haven't, like, as Robber said, we haven't really seen enough to see see what he's talking about there. But like, I don't know if he's talking about a change to those sanctuary policies or not. But yeah, like that that would be disappointing if you did.
I obviously there's any indication that he's talking about a change to sanctuary policy.
Well, when he's talking about we can cull them on one hundred and seventy serious crimes, right, what does he need?
Yeah? And I think This gets back to the fact that a press conference in the Oval Office is not going to give you a chance to adequately address an issue like this, and I see Trump trying to paper over it and move past as quickly as possible. Yeah, and I understand why you'd show up for this meeting, and I think it was probably, on the balance, the right thing to do. But like, I am interested to see what he does next, because I think Trump is
going to continue trying to push for accommodations. And it is kind of it is wild and unique to see that he seems to be willing to move on some stuff. But he's willing to move on some stuff because he thinks he can get Mom Donnie to soften some of his stances.
I mean stances on what I mean. I mean, I don't on ice.
I mean, that's what he's trying to do here. He's trying to build a case for that.
I mean, I guess I don't know the degree to which we're using.
Saying that this is a rogue government agency to saying that this is a government agent. That's what Trump is trying to push for. Yeah, I'm not saying Mom Donnie agreed with that. I think that the nature of this meeting did not give him enough time to push back on that.
Sure, sure you have Mum Donnie pointing there towards like an instance of like, you know, a mother and like a child getting affected by this and like and using it as an example of like what they are trying to prevent and like focusing on like the stopping ice rates from happening, as as like the thing that Mam Donnie is pushing for there and Mam Donnie as New York City mayor cannot abolish the entity of ice, and so like the degree in which we're framed that as
like Mom Donnie's like softening, I think still, I mean yeah, like, as you've said, there's not enough here to make a full determination.
Yeah.
I just think that's that's what Trump wants to get out of this.
I think trumple just wants to be associated with this guy who is currently, as Garrison said, very popular.
And it is really wild to see him be so deferential to somebody.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean including in this this this question about Trump being a fascist, which he handled in a very uh, very fascinating way.
This is nuts.
Yeah.
Are you affirming that you think President Trump is a fascist.
I've spoken about.
Okay, okay, it's easier.
It's easier than explaining it, or did say yes during that exchange he did? He did not, He in fact did.
Yeah, he absolutely did. It's one of the most remarkable moments in American political history. Yeah, if I had any stretch of the imagination.
As Trump pats on the side, and I mean, it's it's it's wild for Trump. This word doesn't mean anything right for for Trump, like him saying it's easier than explaining that's just indicating to zort On that you don't have to do this like little like political game for this reporter and be like, you know, we have we have just we've disagreed on policies, which blah blah blah. Like Trump's like, no, you don't have to do that.
It's easier and explaining just say it yeah yeah, which is a sort of like a point like against like the media. That's from Trump's point of view, it's like you don't have to do you don't have to do like the little dance for like this like New York Post reporter or whatever. Just say that I'm a fascist. It's fine.
Yeah, And because politics is for him a sort of behind closed doors boys club. And they, yes, they both have to go out and then deal with the media. But like you can sort of see that in this sort of highly viviality that Trump goes for there. I'm not saying that ma'm Damie is less necessarily in his boys club. I'm just saying that that that is how Trump perceives politics.
Yeah, I mean he made other references like when when Trump was asked if he considers or on a g hottist, like someone else in the Republican Party called him, and Trump's like, no, I mean, the man's sitting in front of me is not a the hottest. People have to say certain things during campaigns, but the man I met was today. It's a very rational man. And like little lines like that, like people, Yeah, when you're paining, you have to say things that I think that he's getting
at a similar point there. But there was multipoints for this press conference where Trump defended Mamdani against like other aggressive questions about his focus on international law versus the Constitution, or why Zoron flew to DC instead of taking a greener train. Yeah, silly, silly stuff. And Trump was like Trump like dismissed these questions if like for Zar, essentially, I mean like, I'll stand up for you.
Yeah, it's it's something else.
There are more salient criticisms, and there were reasonable criticisms you can make of some stuff he's done. Those are the event.
Yeah, it's just gotcha media stuff, right, like which which it's interesting how well Trump is able to call sort of their bullshit. Yeah, always fascinating.
One of the more hilarious attempts at a gotcha question is from Jack Pasovic, who was in the room, who asked.
This, God, he must have been having an absolute melt down.
Yeah, he can't be happy about this, okay.
I wanted to know.
One of the policies as well that Mayor, like Madomie talked to a number of times about on the campaign, was shifting the tax burden for property taxes from what he called minority communities to white based communities.
And putting more taxes on white people.
I also noticed that in your acceptance speech you didn't mention didn't mention anything.
About America or Christians or white.
People in general, and so I didn't know if that was one of the policies that you guys had spoken about incredible.
Yeah, and Trump's like smiling, like like a proud of father this whole time. Ass like weird question. It's such an odds like schizophrenic moment. It's it's weird.
How much more he seems to like Zoran than like his supporters.
Oh yeah, I mean a lot of his supporters are losers and Zoron's a winner.
From his cabinet members, Yeah.
Because they're losers like Pete Haig, saith Elon Musk, they're losing.
Yeah, they're all dweebs.
I think JD. Van's right.
Yeah, Zorn's has proved himself to be like an incredibly capable figure. There's a little moment as Jack's first asking the question where Trump indicates to Zora, like, Okay, you you handle this guy. You can have fun with this. Yeah, and it's it's it's very odd and not odd and it's unexplainable. I understand what's happening here. Actually I think this is actually very easy to understand. But it's just still it feels odd.
Yeah, yeah, and just give him the adversarial politics were so used to.
Like there's a lot of moments like this, like when when Trump's asked if he's gonna cut off federal funding to New York. He says, quote, I don't think that's going to happen. I think we're gonna help. And this is like an indication of like what Zora was trying to do in terms of harm reduction in this meeting, specifically around raids on National Guard deployment and on like
cutting off federal funds to the city. One of the methods I think that Zoran used to help get Trump on his side is an appeal to like the real estate brain that Trump has with mom Donnie's like left wing yimby style of policies, talking about rent coming down by building housing and how much that surprised Trump because Trump has this conception of people, like of people usually on these like left wing positions are very very nimby in a lot of ways, and Trump was like surprised
by this. I guess he hasn't really encountered like a left wing yimby before. And it's like it's like this like caught him off guard. Yeah, there's a good point here where Trump expresses this.
Now we may disagree how we get there.
The rent coming down, I think one of the things that really gleaned very very much. Today, he'd like to see him come down, ideally by building a lot of additional housing here.
That's the ultimate way. He agrees with that, and so do I. But if I read the newspapers, in the stories, I don't hear I don't hear that.
But I heard him say it today, and I think that's a very positive step. No, I don't expect. I expect to be helping him, not hurting him. A big help because I want New York City to be great. Look, I love New York City. It's where I come from. I spent a lot of years there. Now I'm right.
Here, am ray Okay.
And later Trump clarified that he would feel comfortable living in New York under Mam Donnie and compared Mam Donnie's popularity to that of Bernie Sanders, as well as how supporters of Bernie moved over to Trump and then vice versa.
And through Trump talking about this, you can start to kind of peak behind the current of like how Zorn was framing his version of populism, which was able to get Trump to be like friendly towards like the economic affordability sides of his policy proposals in talking about like the crossover of support between Bernie and Trump and twenty sixteen and the crossover support between Trump twenty four and
ma'm donnie in twenty twenty five. At one point, Mam Donnie did also address the genocide in Gaza.
Ask mister mamm donnie, you've accused the US government of committing genocide and Gaza. Why President Trump was working on peace?
Why that I've spoken about the Israeli government committing genocide, and I've spoken about our government funding it. And I shared with the President in our meeting about the concern that many New Yorkers have of wanting their tax dollars to go towards the benefit of New Yorkers and their
ability to afford basic dignity. And what we see right now is we're in the ninth consecutive year of more than one hundred thousand school children being homeless in our city, and there's a desperate need not only for the following of human rights, but also the following through on the promises we've made New Yorkers. And I appreciated the meeting we had and the work that we can do.
I agree that President Trump didn't do a piece and work hard to make the peace, because we were hard to do with the peace in the Midate East and everywhere. What do you agree with that?
I appreciate all efforts towards peace, and I shared with President Trump that when I spoke to Trump voters on Hillside Avenue, including one of whom was a pharmacist, that spoke about how President Trump's father actually went to that pharmacy not too far from Jamaica, states that people were
tired of seeing our tax dollars fund endless wars. And I also believe that we have to follow through on the international human rights and I know that still today those are being violated and that continues to be work that has to be done no matter where we're speaking of.
Man, that's I I that's so complicated, so conflicting.
That's a lot going on.
On one hand, it's really good that somebody on record said in the White House that the US is enabling Israel and continuing the genocide. I'm glad that that happened. Yeah, On the other hand, the fact that it's off roaded so quickly to now let's talk about like what we want to do for New Yorkers and it is like, yeah, it's not I don't know, it's it's the only way
this was going to happen at all. I suppose it's the mar It's very no, I agree, I agree, but it's tonally awkward, like it's yeah, it's it's totally a little lot, especially when the topic is genocide, right, like the vault from genocide to housing affordability and understand that both the serious issues, it's still a tonal shift that is jarring. And like, yes, it's absolutely fair to say
he's the mayor of New York. He has no ability to influence US policy in terms of selling arms to Israel, and the fact that he brought it up at all is positive. But boy, is that is that a wild minit or so of talking.
I think the reason why he brought it up is to talk about specifically, like funds that we are sending to Israel should not be sent to Israel now, those funds that should be being used in the United States to do things to help people here. And that is why he brought that up as a seg well.
And reiterating that Trump supporters often agree with the idea that we should not be spending this much money on this, sending weapons over the world to fund wars overseas. It'll be interesting to see if shit continues with Venezuela, how that all moves. But I think it's valuable to like really slam that home in the White House that like, hey, you ran on getting the US out of these kind of violent entanglements overseas. Yeah, I'm glad someone said it.
I guess, Yeah, it's just weird. This is all a very weird meeting.
Yeah, yeah, the whole thing was jarring. I guess.
There was another point there where he was talking about like like local local New York businesses and a Trump's father like went to this pharmacy, And I think stuff like that is tactics that he used to get Trump
to be friendly with him as well. As Trump later spoke about how in one of the rooms that they were meeting, and there was a portrait of FDR which Trump had personally like picked out of the storage faults to hang, and like Orn asked him about the portrait and asked if he could get a picture with it, and this seemed to please Trump a lot. Tr Trump wasn'thing able to talk about how he picked up the picture,
and then Trump said a few really interesting things. He's like, I guess it's a big fan of FDR and the New Deal, which is phenomenal maneuvering from Zora classic technique to get like democratic socialist politics across to someone. Again, there's moments like that stuff with stuff of how we talked about like Bernie some some you know, the you know, regular populist rhetoric, talking about the crossover between you know, voters from between Trump and mamdannie, just his general love
of New York and FDR New Deal. You can see all these things that were used to like navigate through this meeting to get to get Trump to actually seed ground on a lot of stuff with I think very very minimal concessions, if any if any real concessions even from Zor like at all. Like I think in general, Trump was the one that moved rhetorically throughout this meeting and moved on like actual like actual like promises to withhold funds to invade the city with National Guard troops.
I think Trump was the one who actually seeded territory in this meeting. I do not see much evidence of things that m Donnie had could have personal impact on actually like losing losing ground on those things throughout this meeting.
It is also important to remember that he has a rhetoric man, Damie two has a rhetorical role to play, right, And yes he is Mayor of New York. He is also an extremely popular politician at the and like when he talks about things like the genocide in Gaza, that
that has rhetorical value. I'm not saying he can go to New York City Council and stop it, but like him saying that it is a genocide at the White House is important, and like it is important that like when he has this this podium in front of the whole world at the White House, so he used it to talk about the genocide, and he did, But like, I don't think we should only think about this in
terms of New York. Like it is sure important that someone said that, and I hope he keeps using that platform he has right now to say that as someone who like is definitely looked up to nationally in like DSA circles.
I mean, I think and this this goes into some of the the I guess kind of I mean, some of them are critiques, some of them aren't even really critiques of this meeting. I think a lot of them are people jumping on the opportunity to just attacks or
on with no real construction critique there. But there's this kind of relates to these two different forms of politics that people use on the left, like politics is a form of personal expression as a for of like posturing as a as a form of like maintaining of moral purity, versus politics as an actual practical method of achieving cyst like systematic change, And people engage in these two different modes, and there're thing there's a role for both of these
modes of politics. Actually, I think both of these have have a degree of necessity. And Zoron has has taken one specific path, and there's the others who are who are very clear in having taken the other path. And there's there's a bunch of a bunch of a bunch of critiques from this meeting quote unquote critiques, including from a formal Seattle City councilman who's now running for Congress
as a socialist, Kashama Sawant quote. If I were in Mamdani's position, instead of asking Trump to meet me, I would have announced a mass rally of tens of thousands of people in New York City to protest against ice rates, to declare that New York City will not tolerate ice and will fight Trump every inch of the way. I would launch a mass campaign for free transit and free childcare and build a militant movement to win unquote. These these are things Zoran's are already participated in. These are
things that have happened. Just one more, like one more protest that's going to be more effective than actually having Trump seed some ground on the scale of enforcement. This is part of why I have this like hesitation around discussion of Zoran, because I think he's actually doing kind of strategic moves to actually limit the amount of damage
that Trump's able to do in the city. And he's doing it through like rhetorical maneuvers, and some of that may feel awkward to watch in a like a live press conference, but I think the actual end results of that have a lot more potential than say of, you know, a rally of ten thousand people which effectively does nothing.
Yeah.
I mean we've had a bunch of those that that is politics is performance right lately like that, Yeah, people are very attached to that mode of political engagement in the United States, like that they're large, you know, walking around with sciences shouting demonstration and political intent. It has not been success in stopping ice gribing random people of the street, I'll just say that.
And people have been criticizing Zoran just simply for even taking this meeting because it's somehow quote unquote like humanizes Trump in some way, like Trump doesn't need to be humanized, right, Like it's like Zoron's platform by Donald Trump. He is the president of the United States. He he he wins, he has that position, he has bought the legitimacy like this this I don't think Zoron being there actually rehabilitates
Trump's image in a meaningful way. I think what he's doing is trying to actually make New York a safer and more affordable place to live by doing a kind of complicated political maneuver, which I'm sure is kind of upsetting to kind of go through, but he's doing it.
And the wave of criticism that it's kind of based on based on that sort of you know, humanizing argument or this stuff on, like why doesn't Zorn just protest instead of actually trying to like cut deals or like not even cut deals because that sounds so like slimy, but like actually like negotiate with the president, and like this criticism comes on the tail end like a week's worth of very reflexive criticism of Zoran for his retention
of New York Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tish, as well as advocating against the New York City DSA's endorsement of city councilmen and new DSA member she offses primary campaign
against Congressman Hukim Jeffries. Some of these criticisms I get the Jefferson a little bit more, but some of these criticisms I find to be a little odd, mostly considering the fact that Zoran has been open about his plan to retain Tish for literal months, for literal months, and just this week people acted like it was this massive betrayal in his like ideological purity or his stated promises,
which just isn't true. He's been open about this like since like last summer, and on the on the Jeffrey side of things, I think Zorn's point of view here is at a difficult primary campaign and one that's probably going to be unsuccessful based on the Zoron twenty twenty five general vote map. It shows that that'd be very, very challenging. But this, this difficul call primary against referees, would also inhibit Zoron's ability to implement the affordability agenda
in the city. The New York Times quoted a leaked portion of the DSA's endorsement meeting with Zoran saying, quote, the choice before us is not whether to vote for Chai or Hageme at the ballot box. The choice is how to spend the next year. Do we want to spend it defending caricatures of our movement or do we want to spend it fulfilling the agenda at the heart
of that very same movement. Unquote, Zora has a very specific focus right now on the New York City government, and implementing the agenda for New York City and the congressional campaign would, in his view, only put more roadblocks to that at this point in time. Versus keeping a left wing ally in the New York City Council.
I guess I don't see why they can't do both. Like they will be defending caricatures of their movement for sure the next forever right until the Internet and stupid politics, the stopping part of a politics which isn't coming anytime soon. I think it'd be perfectly possible to give that endorsement and still say my job as mayor is to do the ship that I promised to do. I also endorse this person because I think they're a better person than
the Keem Jeffries, who has been very poor. Okay, I don't I don't see those two things as mutually exclusive. We need to talk about MTG, if only very briefly.
What is there to say.
That magic the Gathering has finally reclaimed the acronym. Oh good, Yeah, Marjorie Taylor Green leaving politics?
Well maybe, well she's leaving the house. Is at the end, at the end of the year.
Is leaving the house?
See what she's announced?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It is unclear how she will continue her career.
Maybe maybe Zoran will be taking her seat. Maybe the Trump's new friend.
I mean, I really don't think he's much interest in being in the House of Representatives, especially in Georgia.
Oh would jesus?
He has a much more important role now. I guess like he's able to do a lot more as executive new York than he ever would be as like a single rep in yeah yeah, yeah, but yeah no more MTG.
Okay, well great.
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