Also media welcome back to it could Happen here, a podcast that basically all of last week is about the twenty twenty four Republican National Convention, a four day period of time that I'm not sure ever ended or ever really had a beginning.
As of right now, we are stuck in the hotel because what we initially thought was a hack and may just have been a fuck up pushing an update by cloud strike, but by any measure of the word, is like the greatest computer disaster of modern times has stranded every Republican in the country in the city of Milwaukee.
Yeah, we are trapped with every single Republican in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as we wait for airports like a Stephen King bacne. It's feeling quite dystopian. We've already been dealing with a great deal of like dilation. Just this past week. This week has felt it first just felt like a month. Then it just felt like an eternity. Yeah, like we were just always reporting on the RNC. This is all we've ever done.
Every single day of this was longer than my childhood.
Yeah. No, I feel like all I've ever done is a person is be someone who reports on the RNC. This is just the entirety of my existence and life purpose.
It's like that Star Trek episode where they have like the fake casino because they found these aliens found a stranded astronaut and to try to make him comfortable, like recreated a dime store novel, and all of these fake people have only ever lived in the casino, experiencing the same day forever. That's us. That's us at the RNC.
So was only created to report on the RNC.
Did I have a before? Did I have an after? Absolutely not. Yeah. Anyway, so we're doing well, is the short of that.
Yeah, we're mentally healthy and well and well suited to handle this political task.
I guess the big story, the one that's really worth us talking about right now, is that last night you and I went to see the Trump speech spectacular. Now, every day of the convention, during the early part of the day, you'll have some speeches, and you'll have even
some outside of the event. Different groups and organizations will you know, rent out hotel, ballrooms, conference rooms, they'll give speeches, they'll do panels, there's workshops, and obviously inside the wire, so to speak, you have different dignitaries politicians, you know, Ted Kruz will come by and I'll sit down to be interviewed by a podcaster, a radio host. Rudy Giuliani's
doing the same thing. You've got all these people who do their shows live from the event, and then in the evenings, usually starting around like five to seven something like that, you start having speeches and part of what you know, speeches at the RNC are It's obviously it's a way to hype up the base. This is the base. And one of the things I try to get across
to people. I posted on day one while there were some very dystopian shit coming out Marjorie Taylor Green's speech and whatnot, how empty you know the state was to be like, look, there's not that many people here. And someone was like, well, it's kind of dishonest to say that, because this is an invite on the event that you
need credentials for. And well that's my point though, is like as crazy as a lot of this stuff is, and we're going to get into a lot of the crazy, you don't Also you don't want to discount it because these people are very powerful and they can do a lot of damage, and they there's a very good chance they're going to wind up with very close to total power. But they're also not representative of like a massive chunk of this country. Like these are the weirdest of the weird.
These are the high freaks of Republican Party politics. These are the nabobs and priests and shamans of their political class. And so you shouldn't over extend the craziness to think that, like, well, every one of my neighbors who is a conservative is this kind of person. Now some of you do have neighbors who are this kind of person.
So, and Trump's speech was certainly much more well attended than any other.
Yes, and it was. It was also a very different vibe because all of those other knights, all of this. You know, a big part of what this is for the people who get speeches is like, we want to give you a reward for being a good party soldier, but no one wants to promise you a cabinet position right now. You know, we can't get like, so we'll give you a speech at the RNC. You can lead, and you can get on right before Tucker, you know, or you can come on right after Tucker or whatever
like that. You know, and it's kind of how you it's one way to dole out favors, right, because it's good for people's you know, if you if you're head up an organization, it might get you some fundraising at any rate. It makes you look more connected at something you can brag about to your friends. You get to go backstage and be around the VIPs and whatnot, be a VIP yourself.
And that's certainly the case for someone like the VEC right, someone who doesn't hold like that office, never has, Yeah, but he's trying to position himself as being, you know, an active part of this political project.
Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's killer n gave a speech. That's not a guy who's you know, an elected leader, but he's a guy you want on your side. You let's give let's give him a nice position. We'll put him right after whole Cogan.
Oh my god, Which I.
Guess is you know that that kind of gets it why Thursday was so different from the other nights because while the other nights felt like a political convention, because the dims do the same thing, right like that their speeches occupy roughly the same role in their party. Last night felt like a concert. Last night was the vibes of like a show. You are going to get hyped
up and see a show. People were static. There was actually music acts, like not just the band that plays in between speeches, but Kid Rock came out and did a set.
It was all a big put on performance. Yes it was. It was in many cases well put on.
Yeah. Yeah, it was very competently stage managed. There's no no denying that. We can talk about the content of the speech, and I've seen a lot of it, you know, same seater who you know. I like, I'm not trying to shit. I'm not gonna shit on Sam or anything. But I saw his take being like I felt like this was kind of this seems like it's a week speech. It's not very coherent. You know, people in the audience looked sleepy. That was not the vibe during Trump speech.
I see where he's coming from, because this was one of the quieter Trump's speeches.
Trump is quieter, Sure.
I think this would be this This This was an intentional effort to blend some of his more classic talking points with this elder statesman kind of vibe and selectively utilizing the assassination attempt to talk about both yourself as this like broader political figure that that people should unite behind, because this incident really shows how divided we are, and what we really need to do to unite the country is stop attacking Trump, and that's the only way to
do it. So like this, this was all on purpose and kind of using that more sympathetic unity messaging to squeeze in all of his same extremely far right talking points, just slipping in between you know, calls for like unity and ending division and all of that.
And also the fucking the boys are playing in women's sports and.
The Canni elector the late great.
He had a Hannibal But we should We're getting ahead of ourselves, But I do want to just kind of say upfront my take differs from what I've seen from Sam Cedar and what I've seen from a number of folks who watched, you know, the closed circuit version of this. The audience loved it. Yeah, like they loved it, and you can you can taste in the air the degree
to which they loved Trump. This is like not if you have not been to one of these rallies, And even this is different because I've been to you know, a regular Trump rally. This was different than that because this is again like the most dedicated chunk of the base. It's very much a religious experience for these people.
Yeah.
No, it definitely had that spiritual vibe. So the first speaker we wanted to really get to in person to hear talk with Tucker, and Tucker, you have a very efficient speech. He did not read off a teleprompter. He was at living the.
Best speech at the convention.
He was, he was, he was. He was a pretty good speaker. And I know we often will make fun of kind of Tucker's mode of speaking on television, which can off as a little bit like disjointed and kind of just like confused, you know, he has that like resting, confused look on his face. He was a very good live performer. Yeah, this he gave a stronger live performance than I think what a lot of his televised performances come off out.
He was.
He gave an ridit and smooth summary of fascist ideology of specifically what used to be called the Futor prinzip or Fewer principle, which is this idea that came out of the Nazi movement of a nation being embodied by a man, and the man is accountable to the people, not in a sense that we would consider like checks and balances, but in some deep spiritual connection that they have.
And Tucker very directly like like hearkened to that. He made a comment about like, you know, Trump talked to me and he was like, you know, when I got shot, I expected to see the crowd running, screaming, stampeding, panicking, and no one did. And Tucker was like, that's because you're the leader, and the leader the people the leader, and they you know, you didn't panic, so they won't panic.
It's the most direct old style. This is nineteen twenties Nazism stuff that Tucker is throwing out, and he he discussed it in a way that was very smooth and very palatable to American ears. And that was the most chilling part of the night for me, because Trump's speech was not a particularly I think back to twenty sixteen and I was at the R and C in twenty sixteen. Trump's speech on the last night of the R and
C was his blood in the Street speech. It was a he was angry, it was aggressive, it was a violent speech, right, and there were there were moments, certainly of violence in his speech, but not much. That was not the overall vibe. That was not what he built towards. It wasn't the thing he ended on, and it was
never really a focus. But what Tucker was focusing on was getting people on board the concept that they are bonded to Trump in a spiritual sense, and that the nation is and that Trump is the leader, not by dint of having been elected, but by dint of some sort of psycha like psycho religious, mystic bond.
Tucker was also the first guy I heard of the convention to mention Antifa at all, first and only saying you and tifa' is the Democrats owned militia, which is, you know, something that you would hear four years ago. And right before Tucker's speech, I actually was talking with Robert being like, hey, I've not heard anyone mention in Tifa this entire week, and like this was used to be such a big thing in their political messaging both like four years ago, two years ago, and this week,
it was just completely absent. You know. Obviously it has been replaced by some of this like gender ideology, groomer kind of transpanic type stuff, but it is a noticeable absence in the current talking points of the Republican Party, say for this one mentioned by Tucker.
Yeah, and you know, during Trump' speech, I don't even recall him bringing up the radical left. He didn't even He made a couple of joke and these those one. Two of the jokes that got the best crowd response from him is he would bring up Biden, but they say, I'm not going to mention his name. I promise I won't talk about him, you know, And that got a laugh every time that he did it, which I counted twice.
He did make one reference to the shooter and said he tried to stop our movement, greatest movement in the history of the country, and that was interesting to me. I think that he was kind of playing easing off the gas on that one, because there's still so much that's uncertain about the shooter and his motives. I went to work out today because the morning after convention, that's kind of how I purged the hangover from my body. And I was watching Fox News on the TV in
the gym. And I don't watch television news much because I'm a person who has to do things, but it is useful sometimes because it connects you with how an unfortunate number of people in this country do and take their news. And this morning one of the reports was about the shooter and how the FBI had found that he had three ENCRYPTID accounts offshore overseas that there's trying
to break into. They are referring to I think discord kind of accounts and stuff like that, Like he might have like an we have.
Like a WhatsApp, he might have WhatsApp in account.
Yeah, it's an encrypted email possibly, Yeah, the stuff that like I have most people have. But they were like, so this makes it even more likely that Iran is involved, you know, there's some sort of a rant because like overseas that means Iran. Oh Man, there's lots of companies that have encrypted apps that aren't based in the we I used to shill for a VPN that was based I think Nord is based in Switzerland. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but like some of the VPNs are based
in Switzerland and like these are not. It's not the fact that it's overseas does not mean there's any tie to anything other than this kid, like a lot of people had, was used in encrypted messaging platforms. Obviously I'm interested, you know, if the FBI went if or when they get into that stuff, what they find. But I don't think they're going to find that the fucking Ayatola gave this guy a five hundred dollars AR fifteen and fifty ounce of ammunishit.
That is certainly doubtful. I mean, yeah, I think Ta Tucker had some of the best audience reactions since Marjor Taylor Green's speech. He called jd Vance a friend said that Dvance's politics are closer to the average Trump voter than anyone else in Washington. And yeah, just an overall, very very polished speech.
Yeah, we should probably do an ad break now, huh, we should. We're back. So after Tucker, we had a
couple other people come on. There was a woman who worked for an education a conservative education political activist group, who her whole thing was, you know, I worked in prisons for a while and then I switched over to working in schools, and the thing that shocked me is our schools are so much more about our schools are like prisons, which I was like, well, actually, there's a lot to be said about the way and with some of the same technology right, yes, no, this is there's
a lot to do. And then you was like, because children are much more violent than convicted felons, Like, oh, a lot. Of what she was saying is that, like schools are completely out of control. And obviously, in the wake of the height of the COVID pandemic and the lockdown, school violence did soar. It's been coming back down overall, schools have been getting less violent in every single way
but shootings for twenty straight years. And that is that is the case now, like under in Joe Biden's America, schools, like violence that is not related to shootings is going down. But what she was saying is that, like we need to be able to expel and suspend kids, particularly suspend
kids more often for bad behavior. There is actually quite a bit of data that shows that when you suspend children, it makes them more likely to offend and disrupt class in the future, Like it increases the problems that you are supposed to be stopping. Like most conservative measures that are kind of like punitive in nature, it doesn't actually
do the trick. I don't know why I'm arguing with this lady, but it is important that like that's a big part of how they're pitching what ultimately is a plan to win the Department of Education to parents is like, your schools are so dangerous for your kid, you need to be able to have a voucher to send them
to a private school. And we need to be able to kick these underperforming black students out of schools in order to make them safer for everybody, right, and shuffle them off into the car serral system.
Right. This whole speech was kind of a coded way of talking about like urban crime. She blamed this problem on an Obama Biden policy to limit suspension rates, which Trump undid, and yeah, said that the solution is both more suspensions and more school resource officers, which the Kido Institute says actually increases the number of Island instants in schools. So but again, of course they're going to call for more police. This is the republic Party.
Honestly, I don't know why we even bother like fact checking. This is important because I care, like and you care, and but like our audience knows, the lady that gets up to talk about school policy at the RNC is not going to be bringing out good policy.
But this is just how everything works, Like this just kind of underlines the alternate world that is formed in places like this.
Yeah, and you can't you can't fight these people with facts. That is the mistake liberals always make. It's like, well, if we can just out argue them, if we can get them, give them in front of the American people and see how bankrupt their ideas are. And that's not how you do it. Now. That's not to say that you shouldn't get out and engage with them, because what does work is showing the American people reminding them these
are freaks. These people are weird. These people are off putting, These people are scary, and you don't want to be around them, and by god, you don't want them with their finger on the button. Like I do, think that consistently works.
And unfortunately that freaks nature can sometimes help them, like when you pull out hul covid onto stay waving an American flag, calling Trump his hero and his gladiator.
And talking about how, yeah, all of America are gonna be the Trump bites. That's what they're gonna call him, which apparently he used to do with nWo back in the day, back in his glory day. He got he couldn't stop himself from talking about beating Andrea the Giant at WrestleMania. I think was like nineteen eighty three. He made two different Andre the Giant references, both of which were very mean to Andre the Giant, who I wish Oh Andre, No, the wrong one died.
Al Cogan compared the energy of the RNC to a WWE match, which he is not wrong, not wrong, It's very similar.
Look, I'm not gonna like Hull Cogan understands this crowd, oh.
More than almost more than maybe any other actual speaker. Yeah, like like Tucker kind of understands them, but Hull Cogan even more so.
They loved him.
Yeah.
When he ripped his shirt off.
Oh yeah, tank top underneath.
That was the best moment of the r NC. That was the moment where I was like, all right, fuck it.
He said that he usually stays out of politics, but after what happened on Saturday, he could no longer stay silent, and then spend you know, the rest of the speech just praising Trump, saying how tough he is, saying that you know, he's survived all these court cases, these investigations, impeachments, and we need a tough man to take on like politicians, criminals, and drug dealers, and no, it was it was a in a week full of kind of surreal moments where
you're seeing these people that you only interact with on a screen. Yeah, you just see them walk past you like all the time, every day. This was certainly one of the most surreal.
And Cawthorne nearly hit me with his wheelchair. And I'm not the only one I talked to with that story. He's a little reckless, So I'm gonna be honest.
Maybe he thought you were a tree.
Maybe he thought it was a tree. I love that we saw two people, two Republicans at this convention, both of whom have a tragic tree story. So I'm talking about Greg Abbott.
They made the kind of baffling decision on the schedule to put Franklin Graham after Hulk Hogan.
Not nice to Franklin Graham, to be honest. No, yeah, because he's he did the thing that like usually gets a good reaction, which is the prayer. Right He's there to do the prayer, and this is a good crowd for a prayer, right, Like, that's not a that's not like a lame thing to these people. They love doing that, but no one's heart was fully into the prayer after Hulk like, you can't you can't get the people.
It's a tough compdown.
It's a tough come down from Hulk Hogan ripped his shirt off on stage too. Now let's bow our heads and thank God.
But if you didn't grow up an evangelical circles of Franklin Graham is the son of Billy Graham, possibly the most famous pastor in American history, at least in the past one hundred.
Years, since sinners in the hands of an angry God, like the most popular man of faith in the country.
And he closed his prayer by saying, all authority comes from you, speaking of God, and we ask if it be thy will that you will make America great once again. Just a wonderful, a wonderful Christian message.
Uh huh grand So that was nice.
Eric Trump gave a very Uh he tried his best, which is basically what Trump said.
Again, you, Hulk Hogan has just been on, Trump is about to be on. It is the last night of the RNC and everyone is absolutely certain of victory. So as a speaker tonight, you couldn't be more teed up for a good reaction, and he could barely get laughs.
He could barely get cheers. Like even when he did the anti trans stuff, it didn't get it got a muted reaction, not because people aren't bigoted, because they loved it when Marjorie Taylor Green did the say, they loved it when Trump did Eric Trump just sucks yeah at speaking, probably at everything, but he they he did not get a reaction. I cannot overemphasize to you how little this crowd wanted to listen to Eric.
Yeah, no, I mean he shout it out. Monster Liberty said that the Trump admin we'll fight against brainwashing, and schools will fight against homeless people, specifically taking resources from veterans and of course trans people in sports.
He kept bringing up Ukraine to stealing resources from Americans. He was like the most brought up Ukraine in a derogatory since more than I think any other single speaker at the convention, which is interesting because his dad took even a bit of a different tact with that. So yeah, I found that interesting. But I did not find his speech interesting because he is a bad speaker.
Now. The only line I found interesting is when he was talking about how all of Donald Trump's political enemies aren't just happy going after him, but also going to be going after every Republican. And he said the greatest retribution will be our success. Yeah, and they've been using netword a lot this year, retribution, retribution.
And you know, he did kind of in the end, getted a little bit of applause. That'say. It was like the fifth or sixth best standing ovation of the night. So again, he at his best, was never able to really rile.
Them up, especially when's talking about the assassination attempt to mean, Yeah, the crowd chounting fight.
Yeah, that's what got them back on board. And interesting they loved talk about that, I think in part because it had been so absent earlier.
Yeah, it was talking about way more today than well, basically all the other days of the week combined.
Yeah, yeah, and that makes sense. I mean, it was the day that Trump came out to speak, you know, and.
You know what we're going to talk about now or not talk.
About assassinating your thirst with hopefully a soda company advertising on the podcast. Otherwise, this ad segue is not going to make much sense.
All right time for Donald Trump himself, He's coming out they set this stage, they got.
Everything ready d to be an American.
And then they announced kid Rock.
Oh my god, and he comes out and the whole stage is wreathed in massive screens, like dozens of feet tall, and they all are portraying fire and American.
Flag, American flags that look kind of like they're on fire burning.
Kid Rock comes out and does a rap set to burning American flag surrounding him.
It was kind of just a fascinating image for the RNC.
The refrain is they call me Cowboy. He said that like forty times, and he just kept going Trump, Trump, Trump, Fight, Fight, Fight in.
They loved it. They loved it was It was very high energy. It was it was a concert. Everyone everyone ever had a great time.
Yeah. Yeah, it got a good reaction. People were hyped up. It is the loudest, stupidest thing I have ever seen in my life, but it got a really good reaction. People loved Kid Rock coming out. It's interesting to me that they chose to have Kid Rock basically lead directly to the president rather than than the Hulkster. But I
don't know. If I were if I had been setting this up, I would have done Franklin Graham school Lady Eric Trump, all the weak ones up first, and then probably Tucker the Hulkster kid rock you know.
Yeah, the NS should really hire you to man their schedule.
Yeah, I'm available, guys.
So after we all kid rocked out, technically, Dana White gave the introduction.
Or Dana White. Yeah, they bring in Dana White, who has who is the UFC CEO. Yeah, who is also on video hitting his wife in the face. This is not a debatable, he said. She said he is on video. You can watch it.
Yeah, And he gave a very very typical strength and security speech to introduced Trump, who emerged from behind one of the big the big screens.
Well, Proud to be an American plays and like the entire crowd stands up and they're all singing along to Proud to be an American. They love that song.
He'd started his speech, and one of the interesting things is that he said that he's going to tell the story of what happened at the assassination attempt here right now, but won't tell it ever again because it's too painful to tell.
Yeah. I'll be interested to see how often he does, because it is like just based on his body language, because he's been out every night but not saying anything, and he does has looked a bit different, and I'm not going to do the whole thing. Some of the fucking you had some like Politico being like, it's a new Trump, He's become a statesman. They definitely that's what the RNC is trying to sell you on. That's nonsense.
But he has changed in the way that like you would be if you were shot in the head and survived, you know, like anyone is go like, he's not a robot, right, Like anyone is going to be affected by that. And he might not have been lying. He might just have been like, look, I have to talk about this once. I really don't want to keep talking about this because it's fucked up.
I mean, one of the parts actually felt genuine, or we're certain sections this where he was like saying like I'm I'm I was not supposed to be here tonight, and the crowd was like.
Yes you are.
He was like no, no, no, really close.
You know, he was thanking God. I don't know how genuine that is for him, and how much of that's political posture.
Yea that I don't necessarily believe.
That that's just kind of what you have to do.
He certainly knows that he barely made it out of that fucking speech.
Yeah, and he pointed to thessassination attempt as a sign of how divided this country has been. A very world trying to find the guy who did this moment. And he called the Democrats to stop the witch hunts if they want to unify the country, saying, quote, we must not demonize political disagreement, and the Democrats should quote stop weaponizing the Justice Department against Trump and labeling him an enemy of democracy. So he's saying the way to actually
unify this country is just to stop stop bad. Yeah, stop saying orange man bad. That's really what he was. That's what he was getting at.
Well, and I you know, you get if you want to see the things that you can gain from this that are useful in how to fight these people. They are scared of the attacks that portray Trump as an enemy of democracy. The Project twenty twenty five focus was hurting Republicans and polling and the fact that the DIMS have pulled back maybe.
Not mentioned in a single speech this week.
Yeah, nobody talked up twenty twenty five. You know, even the Heritage Foundation. People were notably cagier about it than you might expect in their interviews with the press. Ye, because they do know that it's not a good it's not great for them to bring up now, it's not popular.
Yeah, And you know, slowly, Trump's speech got more and more Trumpian rights, saying that Democrats are destroying our country, talking about, you know, immigrants invading our country, as he said, he said the word invasion many, many times, Yeah, saying that they're that, saying that legal immigrants are killing hundreds of thousands of people a year.
Yeah, it's the fentanyl thing. It's even though ninety fentyl is brought into US sports of entry by US citizens. Yeah, that line actually was one of the through lines that was almost every day of this. I heard someone mention that we've lost as many or more Americans to fentanyl as we did in World War Two. At one point,
it might have been in Trump's speech. It was even framed as like more people have died from fentanyl than died in World War Two, and like, well, no, no, no, a lot of people died in World War two, just not that many Americans really.
Yeah, speaking of World War two era Germany in.
Trump's little section, we sure did get a mention there.
In Trump's little section about inflation, he gave a fascinating comment, yeah, saying, quote, you can go back to Germany one hundred years ago unquote to see the negative effects of inflation. Yeah, waiting to like find Maar era Germany.
Yeah, yeah, you're talking about VYMR. He's talking about like what immediately preceded the Nazis coming to power.
Yeah, and but like also framing it as like I'll be the one to get us out of inflation, which is very similar messaging as the fascist movements did, saying to Germany that was in you know, in a real economic issue, we will be the ones to fix this through through nationalism, closing our borders, through putting Germany first, Like that is it's it was. It was a very very odd comparison for Trump to make. I don't know
how well he thought through that. I don't believe that was this was like an intentional coded.
Messa didn't It didn't seem like.
I don't think Trump works that way.
Yeah, he definitely does have teleprompters sometimes, but he also he is like a good public speaker. He doesn't just stick religiously to it, you know, And that did strike me as a line that may have just come right out of the heart.
Now, he had a few other interesting things in the economy. He was talking a lot about increasing car manufacturing jobs, including saying the leader of the United Auto Workers should be fired and promising to put tariffs of one hundred to two hundred percent on all foreign made cars, which would I'm sure do some real.
Stuck up on your toyotas now, folks, well they make a lot of them in the US.
I'm sure that would really help the economy.
Yeah, yeah, which is like I mean, part of the there's a lot to say about that. One thing that's interesting. Someone had told you, because you were the first person to bring this up to me. There were strong rumors that really a midday before the speech started percolating that Elon Musk was going to show up and introduce or people.
I heard this from like Thursday morning.
Which may mean that they were just getting some bullshit. It may mean that there were actually talks, right, I'm sure because Musk has been real like Musk has been trying to get Trump's attention. Yeah, that's beyond debate. He wants Trump on Twitter and he wants Trump. You know, he's he's been making all these statements about how much money he's going to donate to Trump and now he's endorsing him. Now, do I actually think he's gonna give
the RNC forty five million dollars a month? No, he's going to find some bullshit way he's going to give him something. But he's gonna fight. He's he's never spends gives Like that's too much money for him to want to spend on them, right, Like, I think he's going to fuck them the way he fucks everybody over. But it was interesting to me how much talk there was
of him showing up and absolutely no eelon. And in fact, there was a moment where Trump was like, hey, electric cars are fine for some things, but like we got to subsidize gas cars.
Yeah. He talked about, you know, increasing drilling in the United States and kind of the last big topic that he went to was the border. He pointed to the to the little border patrol chart that he looked at the split second before those shots fired, which saved his life. So you can thank the border patrol chart for that. He said that Mexico and South American countries are sending murderers and people from a sane asylums into the United States.
It was interesting because Naibukell of El Salvador, it keeps getting brought up as like a Trumpian figure, is like, this is the kind of leader Trump wants to be. Look at, how much, how good he's done it, like stopping violent crime in El Salvador. Trump shat on him. Trump accused him of sending all of El Salvador's violent criminals and psychopaths to the United States, which I thought was interesting.
Actually, was it El Salvador Venezuela both?
He brought up both because he also brought up Venezuela and accused them of doing that. He said El Salvador, but he also brought up Venezuela and said, maybe next election will hold the RNC in Venezuela because it's so peaceful now because they sent all their rapists here.
Exactly that. Then he had the late great Hannibal Lecter line. And then immediately afterwards he said that he will enact the largest deportation program in American history. Yeah, and that's just what a very beautiful snapshot of the current American politic.
And it got a great reaction, and I would say that by far the most aggressive, because he really didn't play any of it, much of the much of if any radical left stuff. He really even didn't other than to say that Joe was like a bad president, the country was in bad shape. He didn't like yell at Democrats much. The hate was mostly reserved for migrants and immigrants.
Yes. He closed by saying that we're going to be building an iron dome in the United States.
Oh yeah, curveball, Yeah.
And then he pivoted to saying that we will not have men playing in women's sports, which is the first trans reference in.
His whole speech, and he just kind of dropped it and then changed.
And then he immediately continued to something else. And the crowd did not react to that nearly as much as they reacted to any of the other mentions of like trans people.
I think because it just kind of he just kind of threw it out there, but then we're right back to.
It was almost like a perfunctory line, like knew he had again and.
Drop a line about because I think it is perfunctory because again, Trump doesn't really care all that much about the culture, like the social stuff.
Yeah, and that is that's pretty much what they closed the speech on most mostly on this migrant stuff, this iron dome thing, and increase increasing the increasing the manufacturing jobs in the United States, which is you know a lot of a lot of what Trump's messaging was back at twenty sixteen as well.
So, I mean, in a way, it was mostly him playing the hits. You know, we had the there was. He did bring out Corey Contempori's firefighter's uniform. It was on stage behind him the whole time. He kissed it.
At one point walked up to it and I thought he was going for a hug and I was like, Oh, that's gonna be weird, and instead he went up behind and kissed it, which was also weird.
It kind of did a Joe Biden to the dead Man's firefighter.
It was a very Joe Biden.
And he brought up Corey. He brought also up the other people who were wounded. He named them all, which you know, you I makes sense, you have to do it. He didn't really talk much about Corey beyond that, Like Corey was there as a prop. He kissed it and then he.
Gave a five second moment of silence, a very brief moment of silence.
And then they moved on. And when his speech ended for the night, Garrison and I both saw this was beautiful moments to share with you, Garret. You and I have shared some moments, but this was. This is right up at the top of the list as all of the the whole convention, the whole ceiling is balloons, right, They've got them up there. They have some sort of system by which, like at the end they trigger it and they all start falling down and they'll fall for
ten fifteen minutes. Like there's a lot of balloons and it's rigged so that they're and you know, some of them are red, white and blue. A lot of them are like gold, huge gold balloons. And the last sight we get, you know, as as Trump is on stage with his family, balloons are showering the crowds everywhere streaming.
They're they're celebrating what they see as as an inevitable victory.
Yeah, two stage crew guys take Corey's uniform and wheel it unceremoniously off stage into darkness. As quietly wheels balloons poured down and everyone dances and cheeks.
No one, no one notices We're done.
It's like Frank Grime's caskets sinking into the into the dirt, and the Simpsons like no one sees, no one sees.
Very unceremoniously, very quietly, very quickly just wheeled off, and what we needed from him, the celebration continues. And also they spelled his name wrong on the fire to be it was previously spelled.
Yeah, yeah, that's I think it was an issue of when he was a firefighter. They just could only have so many letters on the jackets. But you know, there was some talk about that. I have seen a lot of folks making the comparison to Horst Wessel, who was a German member of the Brown Shirts. He was also a pimp who gets got murdered by some communists in retaliation for acts of violence he had carried out right before the Third Reich took power, and they they really
made a lot out of his death. He got this massive state funeral, They had a very popular song about him. He was kind of he was kind of the individual chosen to embody all of the guys who died in the street fights prior to the rights of the party, and people have been comparing Cory to Horst. I get why, because this is we are watching a fascist party near power here, and there's clearly some desire in that for
Corey to be that. Horst was the focus of almost I'm not almost of the cult, and what I saw here was a perfunctory Well, we got to mention this guy. Uh, we got to, like, you know, make a reference to him. But let's let's get in and out of that. We got to move on to the meat and potatoes. That's not gonna win us. And I think what is like the the swing voters and shit, don't care about Corey contemporary, right, that's not gonna that's our base is going to expect
us to say something. It's also just like the thing you do. This guy got killed at your rally with a bulletmint for you. You got to bring up something, But then let's move on. Let's get him out of there, Let's shove his fucking uniform into the fucking back closet and uh, get back to the party, you know. And
that is different from how the Nazis handled Horsed. And I think that difference, maybe it signals a real difference in the structure of American fascism, you know, and how it inhabits a party, or maybe it's just a measure of we're not all fully bought in on this to the extent in the same way that the Nazis were, right, like, we really are trying to just get a lot of people on board to vote for us, and we don't
want to get too weird with it. We don't want to have a big cult for Corey at the r NC, the big religious state that's got to be off putting to Americans. So let's we'll kiss the hat people like firefighters, shove it back. That's how I took that.
There's two other things I want to mention. I've had jd Vance's Hype song stuck in my head, boy, Yeah, because they just kept playing it at that convention, and it's an interesting song. It has, it has a good beat. It for most of the song it's talking about how, you know, we spend all this time trying to like liberate other countries, right, and maybe actually we're the ones that need to be liberated. Maybe maybe America actually needs
to be saved. Maybe we aren't as free as what we would think and it has a line about like getting out of Iraq.
We got to get out of we got to get out of Iraq, take our country back and put America first.
And I mean that is the point that where they lose me. Obviously, it's it's still it's still interesting for one of them, like for the Vice President's song at the r n C to be anti Iraqs. I'm like, hey, there there are people telling you back then not to do Iraq and you really wanted to.
We heard it for the first time on Monday when Vance got officially announced as the nominee, and I kind of wondered then if like is this a fuck up? Was like somebody they were like, oh, there's a Merle Haggard song about America first, let's throw that in there, And then realized, oh, no, there's we We can't have that. We're the party who did the Iraq stuff. But it kept coming up, kept being played. So it's very intentional, clearly.
And we were talking last night about this and like how how this is how these tip sort of nationalist projects always work. And we've seen more America first like that that exact phrase used at this convention way more than any any previous one. Trump said it a few times.
A lot of speakers have been saying it just like we need to put up America first, and yeah, no specifically in this song, you know, it has it has this kind of populist bent that then is very hard nationalist, yeah, which I'm sure we're all familiar with as a political tendency. But I've just thought I found that to be the most interesting part is because for like the majority of
that song, I'm like, yes, absolutely, I agree. And then and and then they say the America first line, and It's like, oh, that is not that is not what we're talking about. It's yeah, And I just know it's It's was something I've been thinking about, and I'm sure we'll want I'm sure we'll do some more deep dives on Vance in the coming weeks, since he's a little bit, you know, less well known to many of you, I assume.
And the last thing I kind of want to mention is that yesterday, right before Trump's speech, I was getting some work done and I happened to be sitting about ten feet away from Ted Cruz, who was who was talking on air about his thoughts on like both this this convention and this election in general. And he said a few interesting things that I half heard that I that I quickly just scribbled down on a notebook. He said that, you know, this convention already feels like a celebration, right,
this already feels like like we've kind of won. But he warned Republicans to be scared of over confidence. He said that we're kind of acting like how the Democrats were acting in twenty sixteen. I have been saying that all week. Yeah, and that's that's what Ted Cruz was saying. Yeah, he thinks that that that Biden is not going to be the candidate. That someone else is going to come into place.
Now.
He believes that that's gonna be Michelle Obama, which unhinged.
Opinion, unbelievable because like, do I think Michelle Obama would have a decent shot at winning the presidency in this election? Sure? Do I think Michelle Obama wants to go anywhere near the White House again in her life?
Now?
It's like a nightmare. She's making movies, they're produced, they're in Hollywood. You're doing the thing people when.
They're doing what Ted Cruz wants to do.
When people are allowed to make big Hollywood movies. They don't want to get into politics for a long time. That's how we avoided having fascist and power in this country and like like direct power, like like Trump type kind of fascists.
We're very lucky that Clint Eastwood just makes movies and doesn't do pology.
Are the people who would be the best we have? You know, you have fascists like stuck inside of the bureaucracy, But the people who could really have the potential charisma to be populist leaders wind up becoming movie stars. Tom Cruise could have been a president. Oh he's he's got what it takes. But he decided to devote all of that manic kind of charisma energy into climbing the bersh Khalifa. And that's part of the genius of the American system.
And I mean, guess lastly, Milwaukee was lovely. All the food service workers Milwaukee's great. Even the poor people who were forced to work at the convention center consistently nice, did a great job. And there's there's one one anecdote that Robert should mention a.
Just regardless of a favorite part of the convintion, some of the very fine people here in Milwaukee and shouted my occasional enemy, well, always enemy, but occasionally I remember that he exists. Andy know made a series of posts about how there was a dangerous Antifa terrorist at the convention and like clipped a couple of posts of mine out of context like he always does, and was like, you know, people in his mentions were tagging the Secret
Service in the FBI, it serves Laura Lumer. I continued to repeatedly enter the RNC I went through. God, I lost count of how many times I went through Secret Service checkpoints. We snuck into the Heritage Foundation party. None of it mattered. The only people at the show who recognized me were like technical folks for the different radio. I had a couple of different people who were carrying booms carrying cameras who like referenced, like recognized me and
shouted me out, which I felt good about. What I felt best about is as you and I were walking to the stadium to see the speech, we see a forklift driving down the street.
In the middle of the security one of the crowded streets, which is kind of crazy.
It's weird. I've never actually seen a construction vehicle driving around inside the during like the convention hours. So that was weird. And as we're like watching this thing, like I honestly wondered, like should I like get a footage of this that's kind of wild looking as we as we see it like kind of coming up next to us, the driver leans out of the side of the vehicle and he is a beautiful man covered in tattoos, huge nos ring and he's like, hey.
Roberts, we we have the forklift demographic.
Nothing has ever made me so certain that we're doing the right thing with our lives. We're reaching the people we need to be reaching.
You know, we forklift certified soldiers out there.
So Forklift Nation, thank you for listening to It could Happen here.
We do this for you.
We do this for you. We know you have our backs and we have your back.
Stay save everybody.
Yeah, God blessed.
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here. Updated monthly at coolzonemedia, dot com, slash sources, Thanks for listening.