Then the question would be, how do we get a hair sample from Justin Trudeau? And we probably could. We recruit somebody who works in a hotel, get one of his hairs, capture his pea toilet tap.
Oh shit, I never knew about that. I never thought about getting the pee. That's so cool, stealing people's pee and poop. Yeah, oh yeah, Well, of course.
I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry o'she. I served in the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years, living undercover all around the.
World, and in my thirty three years with the CIA, I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Although we don't usually look at it this way, we created conspiracies.
In our operations. We got people to believe things that weren't true.
Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the news almost every day.
We'll break them down for you to determine whether they could be real or whether we're being manipulated.
Welcome to Mission Implausible.
Welcome to this week's Mission Employed. Back again with us is Adam Davidson.
Hey, guys, what have you been up to?
Adam?
I think you know I'm always up to different projects and a big project for me these days is working with Vermont artistical cheesemakers, and I'm trying to turn this podcast more in that direction.
And you can tell us about who cut the cheese.
Well, that's actually a good question, because cutting the cheese is a key decision that any cheesemaker needs to make. And actually, this is an interesting thing I learned, like artistical cheese, not like factory made cheese, but like real fancy cheese. It's very temperamental. Every day is different because the cows if it was a rainy day or if it was a particularly hot day though they're in bad mood or something, or if they're in a bad mood,
the microflora will be different. And so a big thing you have to do is decide it's cut ability, because when you buy cheese in the store that's pre wrapped to a specific size, the cheese has to have certain like tight structure.
But then if you go, guys, I'm sorry to break in. This is your producer, John Stern. I usually don't get involved in this part in the intro of these episodes, but I want to remind you it's called the podcast business there, and the podcast business a key component is cooking in the audience early on, as opposed to the exact opposite.
So you're saying, expand beyond chat or get into Alpine Cheese's wash Strine cheese.
Is I have an idea because there are various foods, but cheese as well that look like certain people. And so our episode today we're going to be talking about is Justin Trudeau related to Fidel Castro phenomenal. Today we have a special guest, a real podcast legend, John love It. John's a well known screenwriter, comedian, podcaster, and the founder of Crooked Media. You probably know him from pod Save
America and Love It or Leave It. And John was a speechwriter for Hillary Clinton and President Obama, among other things. So go ahead to have you here today.
John, great to be here, Thank you for having me.
So we want to talk about some conspiracies. The one that you know, we sort of want to tee up is the conspira that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is the son of Cuban dictator Fidel Kestro.
I just want to start by saying I have two points I want to make before I walk you through the details. One is that I believe every person, for the sake of the suppleness of their own mind, should believe in at least one true conspiracy theory. If your heart isn't big enough in this confusing, messy, complicated world to find space for one story that the world says is false, but one part of Reddit says is true,
your heart isn't open enough. The second point I want to make is I don't know that this is true. My point is not that it is true. My point is I want to live in a world where the word debunket means something. And my only claim that i will defend is not that the story I'm about to tell you is true. It is that it is not debunked. That's all I want to claim. Okay, so here's the conspiracy there. And I first got wind of it when they remember there were those Canadian truckers protesting.
Oh yeah, and Ottawa, Yeah yeah, the free folk of the North, that's right, And they were protesting Trudeau and they claimed that Fidel Castro is the father of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
This immediately started getting the kind of Snopes treatment. The AP round a story that said, no, Fidel Castro is not Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau's father. The Time said misinformation has been a key weapon wielded by Canada's protest movement, and critics of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have returned to one simmering falsehood that mister Trudeau is the love child of the former Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Snopes calls it
false and here's here's why they call it false. The Times reported that mister Trudeau's mother, Margaret, famously traveled to Cuba and met mister Castro at the beginning of nineteen seventy six, but the visit was more than four years after mister Trudeau was born on December twenty fifth, nineteen in seventy one. Given her high profile, it would have been highly unlikely for Missus Trudeau to have slipped into
Cuba undetected. Castro and Margaret Trudeau would have had to have conceived their secret love child between March sixteenth and April twenty second, nineteen seventy one, and because after their brief honeymoon through Trudeau's went to Canada, Snopes go as far as to say claims that Fidel Castro and Margaret Trudeau had an affair that produced the current Canadian Prime
minister are impossible on both biological and historical grounds. That seems to be definitive, right, Like you kind of look at the facts there, right, it's interesting, right, they've met, Right, it's kind of like the messy thing that's enough to make people ask the question.
And not like being Fidel Castro's love child is.
A bad thing, right, I mean, no judgments.
It could be crazier. It could be like the president of the United States was born in like another country and secretly moved to Hawaii for a burstart.
To the right. But that's off the top of your head, off the top of your head. So this is Snope's basically saying. The most plausible explanation remains that Pierre and Margaret Trudeau had sex and created a child and that child became Justin Trudeau. But there is a big problem
with this theory. And again I am relying on Reddit, and what we also know is that Maggie and Pete Trudeau, as I call them, they did enjoy having sex, maybe with each other, but definitely others, and that's their life and they had fun and that was the time and began. No judgment, So what is the evidence that runs counter to this. First, you have to look at a picture of Fidel Castro and Justin Trudeau side by side. Just look at it, all right, draw your own fucking conclusions.
Look at a picture of them side by side, and just admit that there's a resemblance. But the ap the Times, and Snopes do not address this is what I will
call the second honeymoon theory. This originates on Reddit. But the people claiming this is debunk do not address this fact, which is that, according to the Ottawao Journal, which ran a piece on the thirteenth of April in nineteen seventy one headline Trudeau's privacy respective Bridgetown, Barbados, Prime Minister Trudeau and his wife left here Monday by chartered plane on
a quick side trip to an unidentified nearby island. They arrived here Thursday on a brief second honeymoon and have reportedly been staying at a private residence on the island's posh west coast. That trip lines up an unidentified island. Perhaps a rendezvous took place, perhaps some swinging occurred.
You said that the articles you're reading said that it was biologically debunked. How was it possibly biologically debunk where's the like they have blood samples.
Well, I think what they're saying is if you don't account for that second honeymoon, it is not possible. And all I'm saying is there's just some more debunking to be done. I need that, I.
Need biological debunking. That's just that's circumstantial time.
Yeah, circumstances, timeline debunking. So all that leads me to the conclusion, which is not that Justin Trudeau is the son of Fidel Castro, merely that there is more debunking to be done before we can declare this bunk debunked this.
And I've looked into this the Internet, dark conspiracies on mostly on Margaret Trudeau. Apparently she met Pierre, her husband, in Tahiti, how lovely, when she was barely eighteen and he was frigging forty seven. So she's a waif and she doesn't know lots of people they marry and this is you know, there's three kinds of people in this world,
those that can do math and those that can't. So they were married on four March nineteen seventy one, and Justin Trudeau was born on twenty five December seventy one, so that's eight months, two weeks and a couple of days. So it is conceivable that he was conceived out of wedlock. So Castro or whoever the father would have to be. He would have to have either been along on the honeymoon, which you've said, or have gotten in just like before
the honeymoon. You got to basically say that a nineteen year old girl who doesn't know anybody is going to have to meet the dictator, be swept away by him, betted by him.
Famously charming man, famously charming.
And he had a lot of paramours.
I will also say too that part of what I think the Canadian Trucker's glombed onto this is that maybe that communism is like genetically inherited, which I also don't think. You know, it's like like not, you know, justin Drudeau is not, you know, he's it's he's communism runs in his veins.
We got to take a break now and we'll be back in just a minute.
Glad to have everybody back. Let's go back down.
The rabbit hole. But I mean she was running around with people like the Rolling Stones and Jack Nicholson and other so even if it's not Fidel Castro, there could be some other things we could explore here, right, But there's a story in one of those articles that said the conspiracy started when Castro's oldest son committed suicide and left behind a note claiming that Trudeau was his brother.
I don't know about Justin, but certainly her other kids or even conceidedly so the list of paramores goes with Mick Jaggers, Nichols, Ted Kennedy, Ronnie Wilson.
Ted Kennedy, and Ryan O'Neill.
So I don't know, could she have met any of those guys?
Yeah, because even the dates of the trip that people are coming on could be his younger He's got two younger brothers too, so it's possible that the younger brothers is that Castro.
That there is a deeper question and the human psych is why DNA is so important in politics. Politics and paternity seem to go together in conspiracy theories because Chris paternity up until recently could never have been proved. If you want to do a side by side, take a picture of Prince Harry and put it next to James Hewitt. If you're going to fool around with somebody. Don't fool around with a redhead. And you put the two of them together, the horse whisper, and they did have an affair.
She had an affair with a redheaded guy, but that's never been proven.
I do think there's a little there is misogyny in it, to be honest too, about like why people really care about this. I think people love speculating about the royals, and I think that there's something about line of succession that alights in people, you know, Elizabeth the fst running around and having no heirs and all that, and like kind of the tracing the lineage back.
At a deeper level. What this kind of means both the Obama birth and this is basically what people are saying is he's not one of us, He's not in our tribe. It's a way to try to sort of exclude him and anybody who supports him, and.
That the elites are all interconnected and have these secrets that we don't get to know, that they preach one way of living and actually live another way because the rules don't apply to them.
And the people who pick this up. You mentioned that the truckers. There's definitely a right wing thing about the truckers and also other podcast legend Joe Rogan, who have never listened to is also one of these people who's spread this tends to be the right wing people pick up on these things to use him as smeartech.
Like, no one's telling you the truth. There are a lot of secrets that actually you have to You can't trust what you read, you can't trust what you see. There's a deeper, truer story that you can only find by going to alternate, unconventional, less reliable sources that like, they'll tell you one thing about the vaccine, but actually the truth is more complicated, or there's a secret web of powerful people in the nineteen seventies fucking in the Caribbean.
So let us take you into our former world as agency officers wanting to know about people's their physical makeup, their DNA. It wouldn't be beyond the realm of the possible for the agency to want to collect. Say if I had a way of getting Vladimir Putin's p that would be valuable, right, I mean, what medicines is he on? And you know who is kids are, and you know
can you detect these? Right? If John and I back in the day, Director Cia says, you to get to the bottom of this, we need you know, the President wants to know definitively. Then the question would be, how do we get a hair sample from Justin Trudeau? And we probably could same with Prince Harry. We recruit somebody works in a hotel, get one of his hairs, capture his.
Pee, toilet tap, toilet tap. Oh shit, I never knew about that. I never thought about getting the pee. That's so cool, stealing people's pee and poop. Yeah, oh yeah, well of course, and some of these.
Guys they know that it's done, so they probably make sure that there's false pea and poop push down and right.
Wow, you got to make sure you don't get counter p.
Yeah, you gotta get a number of specimens from different places counter intel P.
It's this is James Bond stuff.
Man, it's precisely not James Bond stuff. Like it's exactly not.
But they're collecting other body, you know.
You know that's fascinating.
If we could steal Justin Trudeau's comb or we got one of his pubes, we could just solve the mystery for you.
When a head of state visits the White House, right, like does't Drudaux has been to the White House and he's probably had a salad. You're basically there.
And then the next time he comes that we could say we know your fidels and we're going to hold that over you for the rest of your time.
I presume somewhere in the in Langley, in some basement vaults there's various Fidel Castro samples.
Why do you think we want all these guys to come to the UN right? All the world leaders? Hum turf And he famously came. When he came to New York the first time for the UN he went to Harlem and stayed in like a slum, just to make a statement. This kind of thing in history, it does become serious. John's the Russian expert. But in the seventeen eighties there was the Pugachov Rebellion in Russia and millions
of people died and half of Russia was conquered. And the whole point of it was this peasant Pugachov claimed that he was the Czar Paul the third and Catherine the Great was just a German war, and people followed h His conspiracy theory was obviously not true, but people so didn't want the political leadership they had Catherine the Great, a German, they were willing to buy into this conspiracy theory, and the country was ripped apart and hundreds of thousands
died in battle and millions died in famine. That came from that, all based off of like who's your daddy? So the peasants in Russia, it was clear they were desperate for a narrative that said that the current political elite was illegitimate and wrong, and they were willing to again and their thousands die against this. So let's switch forward to today's think there are an unlimited supply of conspiracy theories. But why do some catch Why would the
Birtherism thing with for Barack Obama? Why would that resonate? What does that say about us?
Yeah, it catches because just like you said, they want to say he's the other you know, it's ugly politics. I mean, John knows this stuff better than any of us.
Right, We've had Trump kind of with two lies like this, Well we've many lies, but two that stand out obviously is he put himself on the national stage as a political figure through the birther conspiracy theory, and now he spreads a conspiracy theory, a lie about the election. They both, in various ways, play on people's fears of the other, of racism, the assumption that Barack Obama can't be from here,
given what he looks like and how he thinks. And with the conspiracy theory around the election, Trump ties it back to Shenanigan's going on in cities. Right. Oh, you got to look at what happened in Philadelphia, you got to look at what happened in Detroit, you got to look at what happened in Atlanta, which is his way of saying black people are getting one over on us, us the white Republicans. You know, Trump spread the Birther
conspiracy theory. You can't really point, i think, to a way in which that redounded to any kind of like political advantage. But I'm sure the polling on how many people believe that ebbs and flows it is and I'm sure quite dispiriting how many Republicans believed in it. I think the big lie has been one he's kind of stuck with longer, used more, has gotten more purchase, in part because it doesn't just confirm fears about the Americans
that they don't like. It also confirms a kind of pride about like, I know my country, this country wouldn't vote for someone like that. The people I know voted for Donald Trump. Of course, has got to be another stool we couldn't have lost. So there's a way in which I think the big lie validates people in a way that the Birther lie doesn't, which I think is why it has a little bit more purchase, because it affirms not just a negative idea of the other, but a positive view of themselves.
I think that's even a more generous way to look at I do think the birther thing had an impact on election in the sense that what Cambridge Analytica did and what the Russians did in the lead up twenty sixteen is there was a portion of an American electric that never ever voted on the right, and I think, based on the Facebook data that Cambridge Analytica had, there was an effort to make those people so worked up and so angry that people who never voted on the
right came out and voted. And the Birther thing could play a role in that, is trying to find sort of the really really radical people who just have never played in our political system and get them to be voters.
I think that's totally right. I don't disagree with that at all. I think the birther story is part of a story of they're taking your country from you. But it was just like a tile and a nightmare mosaic that they were making, you know, as opposed to as most of the big lie now, which is central right. It is a central plank of Donald Trump's campaign, which, by the way, appeals to a lot of Republicans but alienates a ton of other normies out there.
I think the power in the birth Rhythm thing is it allowed him to break norms, like I can say this and I can still get away with it, whereas you couldn't before. And the second thing is if you buy into it, sort of like a religion or a cult. Once you start buying into it, you're in right. You're part of the team now. Like my next door neighbor is a Detroit Lions fan. You know, in ten years ago he was like, the Lions are the greatest. Knew they weren't, but you got to buy into the fib
to be on the team. And so that's the price of admission and increasingly so selling your soul. You've got to buy into the absolute bullshit.
Basically sent a message to millions of Republicans, which is that I don't give a fuck. I'll say whatever I want and they can't stop me. And I think one of Trump's great I think ways of sort of like feral genius is understanding that signal. Like now, saying you believe that Joe Biden is not legitimate is a way you prove your bona fides. It's a it's a vicious circle.
So what kind of conspiracies can we see that are similar to the Trudeau thing that might be spun out In a lead up to the election.
Trump has trotted out Nicki Haley, right, sort of birthruisms.
Yeah, yeah, he's doing the birth thruism a bit on Nicki Haley, sort of a racist attack on her. Kamala Harris is really pulling the strings?
Is it?
Sort of a has a similar sort of geometry to it as a story. You know, it's like here's the real power, Here's what's who's here's who's really in charge. That's why they said brock Obama had studied anti colonialism. That was sort of a buzzword for a while, and it's like, your leaders aren't who they say they are, and they don't believe what they claim to believe.
Let's take a breather and back in a moment, and where back. I think it's time that we addressed the eutlephant in the room. Something that yeah that we and our audience, you know, we're all thinking it, but I'll just say it. Grover Cleveland, Right, Yeah, So Grover Cleveland, he was running for president and a woman comes out and says, I have a ten year old illegitimate son, and the son belongs to Grover Cleveland. And the entire country is looking at two pictures of the kid and
of Grover Cleveland. Could it be his? Or couldn't it? And in fact, the whole push of the opposition political party, their motto was ma, Ma, Where's my Pa? This was the whole thing. And Grover Cleveland was able to put a stop to this push to delegitimize his candidcy by basically saying the kid could be mine. I'm not really sure, but I'll claim him. And he won, and then the slogan Mama, Where's my Pa? Then became as everybody knows gone to the White House? Ha ha ha, like fuck you we.
Won really good? That's it? Hey, that's cool? Is there the scoreboard? Chant?
Yeah.
It got weird with Grover Cleveland because he said later in his papers that, as everyone knows, he said that the kid isn't actually his. It actually belongs to his business partner who was older than him. But his business partner was married and he was a bachelor, so he said, I didn't think it would be said bad if I did it, because it would destroy my business partner's marriage.
And then it turns out that Grover Cleveland, when he did get married in the White House, he married his business partner's daughter.
Fucking Grover Cleveland.
Worth remembering too, right? Paternity conspiracies or just a subset of centuries, thousands of years of attacks around infidelity which are hypocritical and will never end.
So, John, why do you think people would want to believe that Justin Trudeau is Fidel castro Son? What is the what's the impetus behind this?
First of all, it's just fun. It's like a prime minister and they're traveling. It's another era. It's the nineteen seventies. There's a dictator from Cuba involved the enemy of the West. It has a kind of like spy movie vibe, which I think is just fun. And then I do think there's a little bit of like the idea that like genes can be responsible for overturning Batista.
Are there any conspiracies, other conspiracies that you sort of are interested in it? Because we respect you so much for coming on, we will also believe that.
Let me think, what is a conspiracy theory? I actually believe here's one. It's not exactly a conspiracy theory, but I do think it's an unanswered question, which is, do you remember when former Clinton administration official Sandy Berger was caught with documents in his socks. He passed away. We never found out what was going on, and the explanation was something along the lines of, oh, these were drafts of documents that were still preserved, that nothing was truly lost,
something to that effect. But it was deeply strange and remains unanswered. I don't know if i'd call it a conspiracy theory, but I don't believe we have the whole truth.
Well, John's great having you on. It's such a such a pleasure for us, and so.
So do you know how to tell male chromosomes from female chromosomes?
Oh? No, how God, how.
You pull their genes down?
Ugh?
I got kids.
I got kids as a blast. Hey, I had so much fun.
Adam Davidson, welcome back to the show.
Great to be with you guys.
So, Adam, what do you think about that discussion we just had about Justin Trudeau Fidel Castro? And if you can merge us with the discussion of cheese, that'd be great.
And so you live up by the Canadian border.
You're in Vermont, right, I am in Vermont.
As I've told you like four hundred times.
What are you picking up on that particular conspiracy from your side of the Canadian border?
Well, I would say that in Vermont that would just be a positive people. Would you know that that would be seen as a really good characteristic of any politician. I'd say if Bernie Sanders, I mean, he already gets like two thirds of the vote, but if he spread the rumor that he's also Fidel Castro's son.
And you know how the Canadians sleep around much more than the people in Vermont do. So this is not really a surprise.
As far as I can tell now Vermont is we We are like the biggest compliment. That's what we say at a party. Oh you look like Fidel Castro's son. Oh hi, you look like this this delicious Vermont made artisanal cheese's son. You know, we're Bernie Country. We love our Fidel Castro. We are a weirdly functional state. By the way, this is just a side note. Two thirds of the state votes for Bernie Sanders for a Senate and two thirds of the state vote for our very
moderate Republican governor. And we have a weird thing where we have like a sensible bipartisan legislature that actually works across the aisle to achieve outcome. I will say with Fidel Castro, just talking about northern states. I did some reporting when Fidel Castro was still alive on agriculture policy in the US, and one pocket of enormous support for Fidel Castro in the US is bean farmers, especially northern
Midwest like the North Dakota's Minnesota. If you meet someone who farms soybeans or other beans for human consumption, like a guy in their eighties or seventies who probably votes for Trump, probably has never voted for a Democrat. I would say there's a not unreasonable chance they have met Fidel Castro, because all along we have had trade delegations to Cuba for basic food stuffs, and it's been a part of particularly beans of US export policy. It's like
nobody knows about it, but it's been really funny. I was sitting in a combine in North Dakota with a Republican farmer who was telling me about them many many times he had had dinner with Fidel Castro, and how fun it was, how he was up until two in the morning.
Maybe if our relationship approves, we can send them meat and other vegetables.
It's kind of a weird thing where there's a very small number of people who it's really important for, and they don't really want the word out, you know, because they feel like if it gets too loud, it'll all get shut down. All right, I'm pulling up a photo of young Fidel Castro next to Justin Trudeau, who, let's be honest, it always looks young, you guys, see it?
Yeah, I do.
It is striking, is it not?
It is not. I'm not seeing it on this two eyes and nose in a mouth, But I'm not buying it.
You know, as I look more like at the eyes, at the nose, at the ear, it a little bit falls apart, but there is a go all, like an overall just lo.
I hate agreeing with Jerry, but like, I see the same thing. You could almost put any two people together unless they're crazily different looking, and say, oh yeah, look you see they look the same. So like if I saw those two pictures together and didn't know about any of this, I wouldn't say to myself, oh my god.
It is not enough to build a conspiracy around. Although that guy who they say is JFK. Junior, the fact that he looks literally nothing like JFK. Junior is almost proof.
What you're discussing here is pari dola, which is the seeing faces and inanimate objects like the man in the moon or Elvis's face and mold on a on a refrigerator. There's an actual word for that.
There's a word for something you would absolutely know at Perry Dolans.
Everybody should know that one. But yeah, yeah, if you put Justin Trudeau and you put him next to Robert Mugabi say, I would say, yeah, okay, probably not. This is closer but I'm maybe it's the beard. You've got a beard, ad him.
I get David Cross all the time, like I have. I have people nervously come up to me and be like, I'm such a fan of your work, and I'm like, oh my goodness, thank you. And I loved Alvin and the Chipmunks.
I'm just not clear on whether Cubans believe the conspiracy theory that Fidel Castro is Justin Trudeau's father.
That's an interesting point.
Well, didn't Trump say that Ted Cruz's father was involved with Oswald and Cuba and trying to assassinate Kennedy.
I have some bad news for you, Jerry, because I obviously believe that myself as well. But it turns out in the Trump hush money case, David Pecker revealed that that was actually made up, that they locked that up.
Something was made up in the National Inquiry.
Oh yeah, God, and Ted Cruz has got to be livid, livid.
Oh livid.
He's so livid that he only triple extra endoors Trump for president.
What was made up that Ted Cruz has a father, that Ted Cruz is a human being?
Yeah, that's a good point.
I want to thank John and Adam for this episode in our special sponsor the Cuban Government.
I thought it was going to be a cheesemaker mission.
Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'shay, John Cipher, and Jonathan Sterner.
The associate producer is Rachel Harner.
This has been a
Production of Abominable Pictures, an honorable mention for iHeart Podcasts.