Colson 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've joined by Bufford Evans, Nia Wong, James Stouts, and Sophie Lichterman.
Tragically, we all have ed all right, I got it out of the way. We can continue the episode.
Now.
This episode, we are covering the week of February twenty seven to March five, Number Go Down, Public Humiliation Ritual of Vladimir Zelensky and the age of US global supremacy is overcome.
Welcome to the end of the American Empire. It sucks way more than I thought it would.
Yeah, uh huh, Well, I mean, look, some of us have been saying this.
Yeah, so it's just tragedy that is faster and then it's whatever the fuck is happening now.
Yeah, we have crossed the tragedy farce horizon. We're well beyond. We're well beyond anything Marks could have anticipating, Well, we're going. We don't need foss.
Like I am upset about how Landy and everything is becoming like I feel like you have to be almost forced into being an accelerationist now, like there is no other way out.
Did you watch the Democrats last night, Garrison.
It's like this non consensual acceleration as up. Yeah, yeah, that like people spent years trying to resist this accelerationist push. That even now I'm seeing like analysts like embrace, Like, I guess we have to be accelerationists now, which is very bizarre to see.
Yeah, That's what I've been saying. There is no more ideology called accelerationism. There is just acceleration of what you do about it. So funhole we've gotten ourselves into. Yeah, speaking of let's start with talking about.
Ukraine, a place which accelerated and that Oval office meeting that happened last Friday. That was a little bit odd, wasn't it.
Folks Garson say thank you, thank you.
Yes, I realize I've been under your employee for for four years now. I've said thank you many times.
Each of you thank me. No, I'm kidding Jesus Christ.
Wow, Sophie, Sophie has gone mad with power.
Mm hmm. I'm going to go callote the EU because Sophie has asked me, yes, So.
I don't know. I'm sure people saw like a two minute clip or something. I watched the full ten minute section, which is much more crazy.
Yeah.
And like in Trump's push to get like this Seaspire deal, Zelensky's hesitation has been because Putin has broken multiple Ceaspire deals, so how can we be sure that he will respect this one? And that's kind of what jump starts this extra combative exchange between Trump, Zelensky, and eventually little boy JD. I don't know, Robert and James, you your war understanders.
Uh, yeah, that's that's that's what it says. When I got into my h job, hege the.
The increasing story of and this this affects Ukraine, but is not just limited to it. The the story of the next several years is going to be the mass rearmament of Europe and almost certain nuclear proliferation. France, who has I think two hundred and ninety five nuclear warheads and extremely advanced first strike capability as well as a first strike doctrine is under Macron has just made a statement that he's willing to have France be the nuclear shield for the rest of Europe. The UK also has
enough nukes to kill way more people than actually live there. Unfortunately, their nuclear defense system and reaction system is very tied into the US one. I expect you will see them sever it from the United States as the United States becomes more and more of a geopolitical adversary to England and to everywhere else in Europe. I think you are going to see more smaller states in Europe get the bomb.
I think in general, I'm shocked if in four years there's not at least another four or five states that have gained access to the bomb. Yeah, because the overarching international lesson from Ukraine has never ever, ever, ever, ever ever give up a nuke and get one at all costs.
Yeah. Famously, the European national anthem WONOLOBE because if it's not love, it's the bomb that will bring us together. Yep, Garrison, I.
Don't like that that. Like I'm not saying this because it's it's good, but it's also literally like if I was in charge of European security, that's where you priority would be. Let's get as many fucking nukes out here as we get.
I think we should say that, like, this is how US diplomacy happens. This sort of shouting at and humiliating non US leaders is what the US does. The difference here is that Trump did it in front of the entire White House, press corps and TV cameras, yes.
In the Oval Office, for everyone to see.
Yeah, and it doesn't give Zelenski a place to back down. Right, Like, he's a leader of a country that is at war. He needs to show strength and like certainly sort of with the current understanding of leadership, he needs to show strength and to show strength, he doesn't have many places to go when he's been humiliated like that, right.
Well, and like you know, Trump was yelling about you know, World War three and then and then and.
Advanced China sat with.
His with his little like thank you speech. And I think, Robert, I think I think you pointed out to me earlier, like why Vance jumped in on this the way he did, in like a way to establish dominance when Vance and Trump have very little cards to play, because this is a guy who has been like at war for years now, and like they need to feel superior to that. And that's why it's a public humiliation ritual because that's the only method they had yet right now.
No, because there's nothing really like they play act at masculinity and there especially Trump's base really like feeds into that. But they they definitely also have that deep security insecurity that because of aspects of our culture and media. I think most men who have never been to war have a little bit of that. I don't think it's a natural thing for men, but I think it's a natural thing in our society. I think it is extremely common. Vert jing on universal. I went to war in part
because of that derangement. And by the way, war doesn't do anything to make you better. Yeah, but what it does do it what it has done for Zelensky and why he acted the way he is, is that like he's he's literally been in the position of his entire family and him having Ak forty seven shoved into their hands because a Russian kill team was in the city gunning for him and his family as bombs fell all around. Like, yeah,
he's just he's I think he just has too much pride. Sorry, pride's even the wrong thing He's learned over the course of fighting this war. When you are up against a strong man, you can't back down, Like.
Yeah, you just keep getting pushed back further. And further if you do that.
Because he wouldn't have gotten anything if he had like sat there and been nice and let them make fun of him. And like, like the the the ending would be the same. They'd made up their minds prior to that meeting.
Right, and like the one of the things that Zelenski has going for him, and like there's a lot that he doesn't have going from he's not a coward, and like no people have noticed that he's not a coward, and that has brought him some of the support, and like it has allowed him to remain in that position of leadership a relatively uncontested right. They haven't been able to have elections. This is something that the Ukrainian opposition
have also kind of consented to. It's not like he's he's being a dictator here, as Trump is alleged, but like his personal bravery and willingness to confront these strong men is something that like people draw strength from in Ukraine, and he can't afford to let that go.
He actually was fairly submissive in this exchange. He was letting Trump talk way over him. Zelensky did not raise his voice. I don't I frankly, I don't understand how people have even deluded themselves into thinking this makes like Zelensky look bad or like he wasn't proper.
Yeah, he handled it like a grown up would handle it, Like he tried to point out what you're saying is wrong.
This was clearly like a coordinated trap from like the entire White House team, from like the press corps. Yes, like talking about like why he does wear a suit, and like someone like Rubio, like a neocon that has more of this like geopolitics focus. Like he was like literally like syncing into the couch as this was happening, like like Rubia was not thrilled at this.
Ye, no, no, because Rubio he has no personal pride or backbone, so he is willing to try and remake himself as a Trumper. But in his actual heart and soul, he's a Reagan republic he totally sure, or maybe at least a Bush Republican.
Definitely Bush, And I don't know, Like Zelenski was literally kicked out of the White House on Friday, He's now trying to find a way back into the negotiating table. On Monday, the United States suspended all military aid to Ukraine after Trump has continued to inflate the numbers in regards to the amount of military aid we have sent to Ukraine, often by a magnitude of two hundred billion
dollars and I don't like this. Was one of the first things that me and Robert noticed at the RNC, like how much Ukraine was like a top issue for them, Like people wouldn't shut up about Ukraine. And it took us a few days to like acclimate, be like okay, like why why are they talking about it in this way? Like it was?
It was.
It was very odd and Robert did a deep dive on that last year with front of the pod Rudy Giuliani Garrison.
I just wanted to up that you have been talking with Rudy about the album that you and I wanted to drop with him, and he is on board, so we will be moving forward with that this spring.
That's exciting a little taste for all you listeners.
And I like this.
This is very much a part, in my mind, a part of Bannon's push for like this quasi douganism, this idea of a multi pope polar world of Trump and Putin with Putin expanding power into Europe. While Trump tries to see his control over more parts of North and Central America, you know, taking the Panama Canal eventually Canada and Greenland, you know, and like both people wanting you know, more more Arctic land that will be useful considering climate change.
And Russia already has their fair share. So that's why, you know, Greenland is so essential for national security, like Trump talked about endlessly in his joint session speed, I guess, uh miya, do you want to add something about this mineral thing before we go to break?
Yeah?
So I think I think one of the important things here is that this is this is the definitive break point, Like this is the moment that people are going to point to and they look back on the moment the old American Empire died and that empire, you know, the sort of post World War two international order thing. Right.
The way, the way, the way the US maintained its geopolitical and economic power was by a network and system of alliances with a bunch of the you know, with their allies and sort of in places like Japan, but also you know, across Western Europe. They maintained this series of economic and political alliances that was able to win the Cold War, I you know, make make the US
like the world's low superpower. But in order for it to function, the US has to like maintain the alliance system even as it's doing imperial power protection and use its allies well.
And like, the US's power primarily has always come from the fact that, like or at least in this century, has been from the fact that we of the center of the global economy.
Yeah right, And and and the second part of it has been has been its ability to wield power in international institutions, right, yeah, you know, the US season control of the IMF and the World Bank, and and you know, using sort of trade like trade doctrine to to sort of empower itself. And this is all fucking gone. The US is alienating like everyone in the fucking globe basically
except for except for Russia. And you know, now we're entering this really kind of Argentina maybe well well well we'll we'll see, we'll see how long that government holds. Just like okay, yeah, but you know, like and the thing that it's pivoting to now, right is the stuff that used to be there. There'd be a sort of like coalition thing and the and American corporations would do this stuff behind the scenes is now just unbelievably explicit.
The US is just straight up openly doing resource colonialism, like they're straight up they're demanding that Ukraine exchange its mineral resources for protection, like it is right up a protection racket.
Yeah.
The proposed way that it works is that there's going to be like a quote unquote development fund controlled by the US and Ukraine like jointly.
But I mean.
It's just control by the US. I don't know why people are pretending that Ukraine is going to like have a say in this. I'm going to read from the proposed agreement. We don't know what the text of the final agreement is going to be. Zelenski has recently expressed that he's willing to sign it, but we don't know exactly what's going to look like. Here's the quote for
the document that we had. The Government of Ukraine will contribute to the fund fifty percent of all revenues earned from the future modestization of all relevant Ukrainian government owned natural resource assets, whether owned directly or indirectly by the Ukrainian government, defined as deposits of minerals hydrocarbons, oil, natural gas, and other extractable minerals, and other infrastructure relevant to natural
resource assets such as liquefied natural gas terminals and port infrastructure, as agreed by both participants, as maybe further described in
the fund agreements. Another quote, the funds investment process will be designed so as to invest in projects in Ukraine and intract investments to increase the development, processing, and monetization of all public and private Ukrainian assets, including but not limited to, deposits of minerals, hydrocarbons, oil, natural gas, et cetera, CEA, ports, and state owned enterprises, as may be further described in the fund agreement. So what they're talking about here is
not just like seizing control of Ukrainian mineral reasons. They're talking about like privatizing the Ukrainian state and selling it off and taking the profits from that. They are talking about seizing ports, which I have I have seen no media coverage of. I do not know why it is
any agreement, you can just read it there. I notably on the show am not like I am well known as not a China supporter, but I deeply remember for five years everyone losing their fucking minds about China doing this exact same fucking thing with port lease agreements, and THEYS is just doing it now. And this is just what the new international order is going to be. It's the US just very very openly instead of instead of working through allies, instead of working through sort of like
resime shamed operations. It's just the US going to be going like, okay, like you are all going to die unless you give us all your money.
Speaking of giving us all your money.
Wow.
Hell yeah, that's right, magnificent.
That was art.
Here's some ads. All right, all right, we are back, Robert. You want to talk about Syria?
Yeah, Syria, I hardly know, Okay. Anyway, I was sent to a document by my good friend Joey Aub from the Fire This Time podcast. It's sorry the Fire in These Times podcast. Joey's great. It's a document that the US is sending out to NGOs around the world. This one was sent to an NGO doing humanitarian work in Syria, and it's basically, you have to fill this out in order to have a chance of retaining the funding that has been paused right now, right so it's part of
the USAID pause. If you want to get that money. You have to fill this out and basically prove that you are in line with the new executive orders and policies of the United States government. There's a bunch of questions on here that you have to answer. A lot of them are yes, no, and some many of them are just like normal shit.
Right.
Does your organization have a current risk management framework or policy? Yes?
No?
If yes, please describe the framework or policy right, not extreme or anything like that. You have to say that you're not working with cartels, narco human traffickers. But then you have to say you have not quote organized groups that promote mass migration in the last ten years, which is interesting, and when you're dealing with like war torn areas that are helping like refugees escape, is clearly going to be damaging to a lot of NGOs that have done very good work to save people.
Yeah.
No.
Number five is does your organization encourage free speech and encourage open debate and free sharing of information?
Yes?
No?
And then right under that, does the organization have a clear policy of prohibiting any collaboratioration, funding, or support for entities that advocate or implement policies contrary to US government interests, So free speech unless it's not stuff that.
We like, right, Yeah, that's kind of always been the way to be fair.
Now kind of the most I mean not kind of by a wide margin. The most fucked up thing about this is that it then goes down again right after the free speech thing. First off, I should note number eleven after the free speech question, can you confirm your organization does not work with entities that associated with communist,
socialist or totalitarian parties? And then below that is a basically a question of like whether or not, and they frame it as like, does this project take appropriate measures to protect women and to defend against gender ideology? Is defined in the below executive order, and then it links to the Defending Women from gender ideology extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government executive Order. And then it asks does the project take appropriate my to protect
children and links to the same executive order. So it is basically saying your organization has to support effectively like transphobic policies in Syria in order to continue to get us money right like and the fact that that is n one a requirement for aid organizations receiving aid worldwide now is deeply harmful. And it's also just like Syria was already transphobic, like the Syrian governments not really pro trans but the fact that this is just being like.
This is going to be like across the board.
Yes, everywhere, this is going to be everywhere in the world. We want to get US funds to save human lives, to stop the spread of diseases, you have to officially embrace transphobic policies. That's the stance of the United States government that that matters more than stopping the spread of a bola in the Congo.
Oh and this is like particularly worrying for you know, HIV prevenatives across the world as well. Most of the language that's used there has been heavily targeted. We're just gonna get a whole bunch of people sick and die yep, because of these actions.
Yeah, until it starts getting people sick and dead in this country, but we probably won't stop.
Then, probably not. James, I ptivot to you on our semi regular border update.
Yeah, it's me the border guy. I was down at the United States border this weekend, the one with Mexico and not the Canada one. And when I got back from the border, I saw an announcement from the Pentagon which announced the deployment of a Striker Brigade Combat Team and an aviation battalion. So what's the Striker Brigade combat team? You ask, Normally there are like four four hundred soldiers.
In this case, they're sending twenty four hundred soldiers from the fourth Infantry Division based in Fort Carson in Colorado. Striker Brigade Combat teams are based around Strikers. Strikers. They are armored fighting vehicles with eight wheels.
They're pretty cool.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've hung out in a couple.
A lot of them have fully automatic grenade lodgers. Yeah, they have decent air conditioning, you.
Know, big vehicle outside, small vehicle inside, as with old military vehicles. Great when you're six foot three like me, but famously not really something you can use for like policing the border.
No, Honestly, a lot of arguments as to whether or not they were good at their stated role in warfare.
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. The Bradley's have been having to come back in Ukraine. The Striker is not so much. What they're not good at is moving through incredibly rugged mountainous train stuff where I was on Saturday.
This is something Chuds don't understand, because a popular thing among Chuds is to take their Toyota Tundras, or their f one fifties or their Jeep Gladiators and send them down to this company in Florida that adds an extra axle in two more wheels so that they have six wheels, because they think it makes truck go better.
Just why it ruins everything.
It's a horrible, wet thing to do to attract I know that the people at Jeep have actually been thinking about how to make Jep better for quite a while.
Actually very amusingly. The place I was down at the border this weekend, there's a very rugged road that you drive down and then you get off and you hike. And I remember a few years ago a guy fresh minty fresh TRD hundress straight off the lot. And I've just negotiated this in a nineteen eighties erratoryo to pick up with my friends standing in the back to counterbalance and add weight as we go. I offered the spot
for this guy. He says, no, he doesn't need it because it's a tid immediately destroys absolutely.
Oh yeah, very fun, beautiful.
Love to see these strikers are doing pretty pretty good as we're hearing.
Yeah, so we're excited to see the strikerfect perfect vehicle for the Terraine. The other vehicles that we're going to see are UH sixty black Hawks and Shooks from the General Support Aviation Battalion who are deploying along side them. They are also about eleven hundred soldiers from sustainment units, right, people who facilitate the in this case, infantry and aviation deployment.
There's some public affairs soldiers, there's people with logistics, people who are going to help make this deployment happen.
Right. In the press release, NORTHCOM that's the North American Command of the United States Military, New United States Army said to us, carried out by a second strike of a gade combat team will include detection and monitoring, administrative support, transportation support, warehousing, logistics support, vehicle maintenance, and engineering support. Personnel will not conduct or be involved in interdiction or
deportation operations. So this is the the possecommatatis thing right that they're not directly going to be doing cop stuff. It's going to be helping border patrol do cop stuff supposedly, but this is still very different to the previous deployment.
We saw that the previous deployments were of like engineers and military police, right, the engineers and the marine Cormethine is what they seem to do is get up every day and put razor wire on fence and then wait for someone to take photographs and put razor war on fence again.
Right, And marines love putting razor wire up. It's not the job that everyone hates the most.
Yeah, yeah, everyone loves razor wire. Handling razor wire is famously fine.
Easy.
Does it get you horribly? Cut the fuck out?
Yeah, it's just what you're signed up to do. I think what are the MP's doing that they will be facilitating CBP operations. I'm guessing like singing, like helping with intelligence, that kind of stuff. Probably anti drone stuff. There's been a lot of talk about drones. I have not seen any small drones mast of the areas where I go in the border of federal wilderness or state wilderness, so drones aren't allowed there any way, but I've never seen one.
What makes this different is that these are infantry soldiers, right, like, this is a concentration of troops. Everyone in the military that kills people, it helps people kill people. These are the killing people, guys and girls and well and a closeted they thems. Yeah, if you're a close to day them in a military, best of luck to you. That's what makes it different. Right, this is a significant concentration of troops on the border with one of our allies.
This is coming as the United States has used drone over flights to pass information to Mexican authorities that resulted in the arrest of cartel personnel in Sinaloa. Right, So it is a significant change, and I imagine, based on what I've heard from sources, that we will see more of this. Right. The US's deployable infantry troops will be
coming to the border. It means that we might soon be seeing foot patrols, right, soldiers on foot walking through the mountains to the border, because we ain't going to see striker mounted patrols out there if they want to keep their strikers. They're adding more helicopter assets, right, which can both move people to more remote areas and do
more surveiller surveillance. I would assume, yeah, yeah, I mean like when a hiker was shot down at the border a few weeks ago and I was out there very quickly thereafter, and they used a UH sixty first, well,
actually didn't evacuate the person in the UA sixty. They went to the UA sixty of back to them in a eurocopter, and then another military black hawk was kind of flying over after that, and I'm guessing that was just to kind of provide cover for the like the first responders right who were going there to I think in that case they're investigating the scene the person had been evacuated, but there are very remote areas of the border which probably are best access by helicopter, and so
that's what they will be doing. But this does represent a significant concentration of combat troops on the border with that ally, which is not a normal thing to do.
And it's worth bearing in mind that as we're doing troop build ups in the Mexican border, there are a lot of people in the Trump administration who want to do just full on cross border US military operations in Mexico. They want to do invasions, they want to do like what would they think of as like hell actions.
So yeah, sort of support for like drone strikes right now, which the terrorist designation does kind of pave a road to. But obviously it's worth noting for those not familiar that Mexico is a different country and you don't just get to drowned strike other countries.
That's an active war.
Well, and speaking of they them's in the military, I will do a quick follow up before we go on break. We mentioned last week about efforts from the Navy to house trans naval members. I guess, I guess they kind of all are sailors, aren't they, But basically, how's them with people matching their assigned gender at birth, same thing
with access to intimate spaces like bathrooms. This has escalated further to now a general quasi ban of trans people from the military altogether, with a few implementation paths towards this, a form of like don't ask, don't tell. We will report on this more in the fewuture as a part of a larger piece on the lavender scare currently happening
across the government. But that that did happen literally like a few hours after we record it, we got word that they are seeking to disband trans people from the military altogether. Anyway, we will go on break and return to talk ter us.
We're back. Hey, I wanted to note something I was unaware of because I have not changed my friend's name and my phone, but Joey now goes by aliyah ayub. I apologize for the error there, but James corrected me. So we're good team.
What makes a dreamwork?
And never changing people's names in my phone makes well?
Actually, I usually I was gonna say, I'm impressed you have a name saved in.
Your alas is a friend, so I actually have their name saved in my phone. Of the texts coming at me at any given time is just a series of unlabeled phone numbers, and my it's chaos. I'm just guessing that people are who who raise someone I should be in contact with?
That's absurd. Well, there's no tariffs or butts about it. But the economy is it a bad spot?
No, I was gonna do.
I was gonna do, speaking of absurd but no, no, even worse worser Garrison.
You know what, Gear, I'm proud of you. That's almost as good as my rock the kas Bo joke.
Yeah, do you wanna do you wanna do? Tariff talk?
No? But do we do it anyways, So.
After those horrors we got we have other horrors, question mark. So on Tuesday, Trump's tariffs on Canada and Mexico and also an additional ten percent tariff on China went into effect. So these are twenty five percent across the board tarriffs. There's some I think there are only like ten percent on Canadian oil.
Canadian energy, yeah, yeah.
Like energy stuff.
Weirdly that's not also applied to Mexico, even though we this's a shit ton of oil.
I don't know.
And at sort of the last moment, if there was a kind of he got called by all three of the heads of the big three auto manufacturers who were like, if you don't exclude auto tariffs, we're all gonna die. So he's he's like pushed tariffs out for one month. They're suspended on automotive imports. We still don't know what the fuck that actually means, because it's unclear whether he just means like cars and trucks or whether it also includes auto parts. Deeply unclear. There's also all tariff alune
women steel imports. He announced that a tariff on in the speech the copper Rolem.
We knew about.
I don't think we knew about the illune women's steel imports, which are new, which are also going to be sort of catastrophic. I want to read this amazing c quote from CNBC. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that Trump's tariff will cause quote higher prices, but he maintained that only some products would be affected and that price hikes would be temporary.
Famously, price hikes are only temporary.
Hold on, hold on, it gets better. We've got to the other part.
Yet, Lutnick consisted that those rising prices should not be considered inflation. Okay, as the President said last night, there's going to be a short period where there be some higher prices on certain products. The cabinet secretary said on Fox News, it's not inflation. That's nonsense, certain products for a short period of time. He said, No, Now, the definition of inflation, and I kind of emphasize this enough is prices going up, so.
Great great stuff here.
There's also, you know, as this has been unfolding, there are been reciprocal tariffs from Canada. The first round of negotiation between Trump and Trudeau basically went nowhere. Canada's putting tariffs on And this is of both Canada and China, who have both done reciprocal tariffs. They've been more limited. They're only targeting sort.
Of specific sectors.
Well, the Chinese rates are lower. China's Yeah, rates are really a ton of fifteen percent, the big one from China.
And I'm very.
Confused about this whole the way everyone's talking about this, because everyone only seems to be talking about Canada and Mexico and these, even though the terrorfraid on China is now up to twenty percent.
Yeah he did it out of a two steps, right like that.
Yeah, yeah, he slid under the rada, you know, obviously, Like yeah, okay, So like the US and Mexico and the US and Canada have the two largest trading relationships on Earth. However, Comma, the Chinese cciprocal tariffs are really going to hurt because one of the big things that they're targeting is US soybean exports. Now, we do twelve billion dollars of soybean exports per year. This matters enormously though.
It has an outsized impact regardless of sort of the dollar amounts here because Midwest farming, huge parts of it is based on yearly rotations between soybeans and corn to maintain soil quality. Right, like the farm like that I grew up near, Like this is what they did, right, this is this a massive portion of mid Western agriculture functions off of this.
Well, it's just also just like soybeans and corn are like primarily what human beings grow. Yeah, yeah, and rice like those are really the big three.
You can't you can't eat that corn, but yeah, well.
You don't, but it's part of your foods.
Eventually it becomes yeah, yeah, it's it's corn syrup.
And ship but yeah, well corn syrup and also it's you know what the animals be yeah yeah, when they feed it to cattle and chickens, yeah.
And so and so this is this is going to have a massive disruption on American agriculture. Trump has also been talking about imposing attacks on all American agricultural exports. Is some sort of weird like American autarchy thing. So interest the thing people are calling this a terriff. This is not a teriff. You don't impose tariffs on something that you are exporting to. How this works, you know, like you can go back to a basic hey, division of powers.
Congress has the power of taxation. Wait, how is he.
Doing who knows? I don't know where where where were so far beyond that. But like the thing that he's hinting at here right, like if he really is trying to sort of like prevent all US agricultural exports, this is apocalyptic. Yeah, and it's also worth noting this thing has also been lost in the news.
But he's been talking about this. He's been talking.
About doing these tariffs to the EU twenty five percent across the board, terrafs A, the EU. Now, what I think is important. So the markets today on Wednesday have been going back up. They immediately tanked like Tuesday.
This week was nasty like Monday. Tuesday was red.
And what's happening here is that none of this shit, None of the analysts, none of the people getting paid, like fucking thirty million dollars do you do to financial analysts?
What other the fuck?
Like, none of these people, none of them thought this these terrorists were actually going to happen.
They all just assumed.
But they were, Oh, he's not actually gonna do it, He's not actually gonna do it this it's just negotiations. No, No, he was He's doing it, and he was going to do it. They probably will be like sector bisecond negotiations to get temporary lifts on them. But none of this shit was priced in. None of the financial animal like no one was doing business planning or whatever, like, none of this shit was supposed to be real, you know.
And what's happening right now is sort of like they're latching on to this thing with some of the auto teriffs being lifted for a month again one month, not and not an actual lift, but one month. They're latching onto this and they're going, Okay, maybe we can sort of reverse this.
But this is the.
First moment that the financial markets have actually had to grapple with the fact that Trump is going to do all of the shit he says he's going to do. And like, like that afternoon, Bloomberg had a guy on like calling Trump a dictator and saying he wasn't gonna
have elections. We are we are beginning to see capital flight from the US, where investors are like are openly talking about like pulling their fucking money out of this country and pulling into somewhere else because it's no longer stable.
And this is something that you know.
I think the next dam will be when the US is like credit rating gets downgraded, but we're starting to see the damn break on the financial class and all of these analysts and like people on Wall Street realizing that no, he is going to continue to throw bombs at the entire world economy in order to sort of carry out He's like, I want to be like the fucking big man Empire guy.
I like Trudeau. I had a call with Trump on Wednesday, basically going, hey, what's what the fuck man? I thought I thought we had a deal, and Trump was like, well, I'm not seeing much progress on the whole Fentanel thing. And Trudeau's like, what the fuck are you talking about?
And Trump then basically pointed towards him not being satisfied until there's a new Canadian government, like he's not gonna want to lift these until Trudeau is out of office and ask Trudeau when the next Canadian election, is hinting towards the fact that he just is going to refuse to seriously negotiate with Trudeau and will wait until whoever
the next guy is. Meanwhile, you haven't post from the Chinese embassy in the US saying if war is what the US wants, be it a teriff for a trade war, or any other type of war, We're ready to fight till the end.
Yeah, I will say. I will say.
The guys they put on the embassy pr comms are giftshits like. Those are not the guys running the Chinese government. Those are like the fucking clowns they put at these administrative posts to like scream about wolf warriors or whatever the fuck. The reporting I've seen from inside the Chinese government is that they also were like what the fuck are you doing? And they're they're trying to figure out like okay, like how do you negotiate with this guy?
Yeah?
Like yeah, And they're having real issues because like for all, for all of the Chinese government does like this is a government of capitalists.
They want to make money, and.
They're looking at a guy who is willing to just blow the entire thing up.
Here's my pitch for what we should do with China, right, you know how, China has this border conflict with India that could endo the world, but usually just involves two groups of people with spears that were originally made in the thirteenth century having failing fights. In the mountains. Yeah, we should just send over a couple of thousand marines and do that with China. Get it all out of
our systems, this whole all this war talk. Just have a couple thousand dudes, have a big old speared fight. We filmed the set of a bit. We get some drones, we bring it. Maybe we bring in Tarantino. He'd be great to film the fucker. You know. We really just have a good time with it, and then we just go back to not not doing stuff like this.
Look, I think if we get us and trying to compete each other in the against each other in the US Special Forces Games, and we show this to Donald Trump and we have the Chinese government take like a stage loss or something, we could solve most of our problems.
You can just edit it to be whoever like for both countries. Right, you have an America version and a China version.
We already do this.
So the last.
Sort of serious thing that I want to talk about here is that this, especially the stuff he's talking about with you, but also with sort of Canada, this has broken the sort of international coalition that all of these people have been setting up for a really law time right, this whole sort of coalition of all the sort of world's right wing governments like coming together in this like national thing, and like they're really fucked now. Like the Canadian right was just like about to take power and
they might not now. And even if they you take power, they're gonna have to like deal with the fact that they've all been like fucking maniac Trump supporters this whole time, and Trump has just been like fucking their entire country. And like these people are now talking about like again like shutting off power to the US, and this is happening all over the world with all of these fascist parties who've been allied with the US right. They're now having to grapple with the fact that the US is
just gonna it's just gonna fuck them. Weirdly, the thing it reminds me a lot is like the situation you got at the end of the seventies in East Asia with the communists, where it was like, Okay, so we have three nominally communist governments on the border with each other. Right, you have China, you have Cabodia, and you have Vietnam, and I guess you have Flows and then then those three governments instead of like forming a united bloc, like
all go to war with each other. And that's like sort of what we're seeing with the fascists right now is like because Trump has decided to just be like fuck it, like we're just gonna do tariffs on everyone it has, it is really starting to tear his coalition apart and hopefully this rolls back a bunch of their gains everywhere else in the world. And yeah, they suply chit.
And I think Trump is using for leverage here beyond even tariffs, like a cutting out Canada from the Five Eyes Intelligence Group, halting intel sharing with Ukraine, very very like drastic steps in terms of like national security and intel sharing.
I mean, it's it's just deeply clear that what's happening is we're ending every single thing the US used to do that Trump does not see as a direct financial benefit and largely aligning ourselves with Russia against every state that does not have the physical power to stop us.
Yep, well that does it for us today. I know, on Tuesday night, Trump did a speech to a joint session of Congress. We have a whole episode on that that released yesterday. Because there was just so much to talk about. So if you want to hear our thoughts on that, you can check out yesterday's episode on his
congressional speech Full of Somebody. A summary, yes, because the speech was very long, focused a lot on trans people, focused a lot on the border, talked about national security, really skipped over the economy because yeah, no, guys, so great, because that's not really going too good.
Keep shooting holes in it.
Let me skip over that. Focused more on trans people as the single greatest threat facing this country. But yes, if you want to hear about that, check out yesterday's episode on the it could happen here feed.
The shortest summary possible speech bad.
Speech bad?
Yeah, speech bad. The era of woke is over would be the other summary I give.
The era of woke is over? Where where you're employed? If the era of woke has ended your employment and you'd like to reach out to us, you can using our proton metaddress. That doesn't mean that it's not like if you're not using proton that it's not end to ending crypto. If you are, then it's encrypted, but it doesn't mean it's necessarily totally safe. So you need to do what you think is best. It is cool Zone
tips at proton dot me. If you don't work for government, but you do work for Elon Musk in another capacity, it would also be very funny to hear from you about what that is like. So yeah, cool Zone tips at proton.
Dot me increasingly relevant considering that social Security layoffs have started and they're now seeking to cut possibly upwrints of fifty percent of the Social Security workforce and the irs.
So I'm sure that's going to work out great for government revenues.
I'm sure everything will be fine and America will be back on top in no time.
It is back. America is back. I learned that last night we reported the news.
Yes, we certainly did.
We reported the news.
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