Ben Shapiro's "True Allegiance" faces sharp critique for grammatical errors and plot holes, including a villainous President Prescott ordering racial profiling against Muslims and an illogical Texas invasion of Mexico. Hosts question the plausibility of a National Guard soldier committing racism-driven violence in Ciudad Juarez and criticize the book's handling of civil rights leader Levon Williams' criminal connections. While promotional segments cover Clayton Eckard's fraud charges and "Soledad Chapter"'s militia dynamics, the core analysis concludes that the novel's political messaging relies on inconsistent character motivations and unrealistic legal jurisdictions rather than substantive storytelling. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Detectives Uncover a Pattern00:01:20
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10-10 shots five, city hall building.
How could this have happened in City Hall?
Prescott's Secret Service Panic00:15:28
Somebody tell me that.
A shocking public murder.
This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
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What's been in my Shapiros?
Did we do that already?
We've done that already.
I still think we did.
Not enough if we did.
Not enough if we did.
This is Behind the Bastards, and you know what that introduction means.
It's another reading Ben Shapiro's marvelous book episode.
Baby.
The episodes that everybody loves except the people who hate them.
The talented Mr. Shapiro.
The talented Mr. Shapiro.
Talking about Benny's book, True Allegiance, which I think I can say is like: if the Quran and the Bible had a baby, and then that baby fell off of a ski lift and hit its head on a pile of rocks several times.
And then that baby tried to join the military, but was told no because it had too much of a history of severe head injuries.
And then that baby tried to write a screenplay about joining the military, but then that screenplay was turned down for being terrible.
And then that baby became a right-wing grifter for, I don't know, 20-something years, and then wrote a fiction book.
It would be True Allegiance.
That is Ben Shapiro's background, isn't it?
That is Ben Shapiro's background.
That's his origin story.
Famed ski lift accident survivor Ben Shapiro.
That's why he stopped growing.
Okay, that's mean.
I think we've all established that you can't be mean to Ben Shapiro.
But I didn't.
But I did.
Anyway, it's fine.
It's where we are.
He's a result of starting to be a conservative pundit at age 16.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Perhaps the only thing.
I mean, I'm just going to say it.
The only thing 16-year-olds should be allowed to do is join the Marine Corps and drink alcohol and drink alcohol.
Just those two.
We shouldn't even let him go to school.
Yeah.
No school and nothing like that.
No, just drunken and drunk.
We don't need them smart.
Drunken teenage Marines.
Yeah.
You want them wasted.
So we're back.
We're back talking Benny Schapps in his book.
We ended with Combat General Brett Hawthorne talking to his friend, the token Muslim, who isn't a terrorist.
And I think the only Muslim who's not a terrorist that we meet.
I bet he's the only tall one, too.
And now we're moving to a President Prescott chapter.
So when we last left, President, yeah, he just had his 9-11 moment cruelly wearing a windbreaker in a disaster site.
Yeah, Cruelly.
Now, all right.
You have got to be kidding me with this, Mark Prescott said.
His eyes bulged.
His face had turned beat red.
I'm trying to hold the country together, and you're out there fucking supporting the enemy by targeting Muslims.
How am I supposed to counter the Accus?
Oh, good.
He's talking to Brett Hawthorne.
Excellent.
Oh, so if you remember earlier in the book, Brett Hawthorne made people forced people to illegally use racial profiling, which did not work or return any usable intelligence.
And now the president is angry because that has been released to the media.
Yeah, it's weirdly presented as an argument for racial profiling while being an example of why it's bad.
Yeah.
I not weird for Ben, though.
Oh, no, not weird.
It's completely consistent with his inconsistency.
Par for the course on this book, in this book.
I'm sure this will change, but one of the things that I find so fun about President Prescott is that he's written like an over-the-top movie villain, like a sniveling, like selfish coward.
But all of the actual things he does as president are perfectly reasonable.
It's like, oh, you want to have it?
You have a jobs program.
You call in the National Guard to deal with a nuclear attack.
The evil President Prescott.
Fuck that guy.
He's angry at us.
President Prescott.
Jobs program.
Yeah.
Yelling at an active duty general for forcing police to racially profile people for no effective purpose.
Like a dictator.
It's disgusting making it a 40-hour work week.
Refusing to invade Mexico.
Oh, right.
The whole thing about Mexico.
The whole plot of this is that America needs to invade Mexico after they get nuked by Iran.
God, it's so forgettable.
It really is.
I've lost the thread several times.
Like, that's like potentially like, oh, that's like, that's a story.
Like, I don't know what that's about, but okay.
But like, it's so forgettable.
It's gone.
To be fair, I already forget.
This year has poked a lot of holes in my brain.
So information leaks out anyway.
But this is not memorable enough to latch on.
No, no.
The only thing that's memorable are the characters themselves.
Yes.
Like Combat General Brett Hawthorne, who as this chapter opens, is sitting on the couch watching the president rage at him.
Oh, good.
We've got a real classic Ben Shapiro sentence here.
All right.
Let's get it.
How many commas?
How many commas?
So many, Sophie.
On the way to the hotel, comma, the Secret Service agents had been utterly silent.
Simicolon.
They refused to answer any of his questions, comma.
Give him any information at all, period.
Hate it.
My guy.
Say it one more time.
On the way to the hotel, comma, the secret service agents had been utterly silent, semicolon.
They refused to answer any of his questions.
Common, give him it, comma, give him any information at all.
That's not even a full sentence.
It's no actualist.
No.
Way to the hotel comma.
You don't need a comma there no, on the way to the hotel.
I'm sorry, I don't need to reflect in all of the info the like it's.
It's basically two incomplete sentences that he'd stitch together into one still not a grammatically correct sentence and the only thing he's getting across it.
Just on the way to the hotel, the Secret Service agent said nothing.
Bam, like that.
That's the point.
You don't yeah, and then the.
I mean the.
The last bit doesn't conclude.
That's the kind of comma use that you're supposed to have exercised around grade three.
Yeah, fourth grade, you know I, I think when you're doing your little grammar workbooks.
I mean, I think the conclusion put a line through it is that we need to criminalize comma usage.
Ban the comma usage two.
Absolutely clear.
He's like.
I know that semicolons exist.
Therefore i'm going to replace periods with them.
Semicolons like, uh, anyway it is.
It is fun that Ben has the same attitude towards ending his sentences that the United States has towards ending the war in Afghanistan, which is never do it telling.
So the Secret Service doesn't answer his questions, but Brett figures out they must have picked up Hasan.
Uh, how else could they have found him at Omari's.
Who's that like guy?
Who's the big Muslim?
He's like leading care right the the the, the Anti-Islamophobia charity, but in this they're working with the terrorists.
Oh yeah, yeah.
You can't trust the charity, can't trust, not a Muslim charity.
Prescott continued to yell, I elevated you, I made you, I saved you, and this is how you reward me.
Brett could feel the anger building.
He flexed his fist, then let it go.
An old trick Ellen had taught him to take his mind off his temper.
It wasn't working.
Tell me, I expect an answer.
What were you thinking?
I gave you back your life?
No, Brett said softly, dangerously.
I signaled you, I told you to hit the building.
Prescott scoffed, disbelieving.
You can't be serious.
You wanted me to start a war with Iran, after Iraq, after Afghanistan?
We just finished pulling the troops out.
For God's sake, we got you, didn't we?
That wasn't the goddamn point.
So again, this guy's the bad guy for not wanting to, not want to start a new war.
Also, just can't believe him.
Yeah, I don't think you need to add the word disbelieving after using the verb scoffed.
Yes yes you, you could.
That's another classic thing that you should get over in seventh grade.
Creative writing is like, okay, he scoffed because he doesn't believe them.
You don't have to tell us that.
It's like saying he uh, he said speakingly, yeah, he spoke wordingly.
Wordingly yes, yeah.
So they argue about this.
For a while Prescott's, like you know, I could kick you out of the military.
Yada yada, Ben or not.
Ben Brett says go ahead.
I'd love to tell the press just why you did.
Because you couldn't keep this country safe.
You weren't willing to make the tough choices like invading Iran.
Tough choice, keep the country safe yeah, by escalating, Escalating military action.
So the president threatens that if he doesn't keep his mouth shut, he'll have federal charges drawn up against him for violating that imam who's a terrorist's civil rights.
Because Ben thinks civil rights are a bad thing as a general rule, I think.
Yeah, yeah.
Made things worse.
Yeah.
And yeah, Brett tells him, like, hey, Mr. President, you know, if you'd listen to me, all of those people who were blown up in America would be alive today.
Prescott reached down to the coffee table and picked up the remote control.
He flipped the channel to CNN, where the anchors continued to gush over Prescott's big speech.
General, he said, I can afford a few public relation hits right now.
Rally around the flag effect and all that.
You'll be seen as an ungrateful rube looking to hit back at the man who saved you.
Your time is over, General.
Now get out of my sight.
So tough but fair.
Tough but fair.
I do love that after a nuclear attack on the United States, CNN's talking about the president's speech and nothing else.
Like, no.
No, it's tanned suit, right?
Yeah, they'd be talking about radiation, probably.
So are you kidding?
Rachel Maddow would latch on to that.
So Prescott woke from his, so I guess Prescott has a nap after meeting with the general, and he wakes up to see Prescott woke from his nap an hour later to Tommy Bradley's face.
Written across it was panic.
What?
Lazy.
Yeah.
It's very just panic was written across his face or something like that.
Don't why are you always so indirect, Ben?
Exactly, right?
Yeah.
Mr. President.
Sorry.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, okay.
So the president gets the news that Reverend Jim Crawford is assassinated and they're blaming it on the white supremacist, a white supremacist group with ties to terrorist mama who solidad, our Clive and Bundy, but a Latino woman.
Ben.
Above the Chiron ran the footage of the continuing riots in the streets of Detroit.
Then the anchors cut to some strong-jawed young black man named Levon Williams.
They billed him as protest leader.
Levon.
Yeah.
Yeah, here we go.
He's calling people to rise up, yada, yada.
And so on and so forth.
So forth.
Yeah.
So we have Ben writing what he thinks CNN says.
Law enforcement sources tell us that Soledad Ramirez, the fugitive wanted in connection with the bombing of government offices in Sacramento, California earlier this year, was spotted during the chaos in the aftermath of the Crawford assassination, entering the police station.
Sergeant Ricky O'Sullivan, who had just been cleared in Malone's killing, is missing as well.
And yeah, like law enforcement's not going to tie that to, anyway, whatever.
Ben needs this to work.
Wait, wait, wait.
That's fine.
She was seen walking into a law enforcement office, but is also missing.
She was seen breaking into a police station to free the cop who killed the dead-eyed black boy.
Gotcha.
I know there's a lot of threads here.
Yeah.
Okay.
This all checks out.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So the whole reason for this extended digression where he attacks CNN is because the CNN anchor says everybody's waiting to hear what the president's going to say.
So Prescott talks with his assistant about like, all right, what are we going to, what are we going to say?
Seems to me you've got two choices.
One is to allocate resources from New York to these various cities.
We've got governors beginning to call, asking for help from the feds.
They want some of the guard members we've brought back here in their states.
President Prescott shook his head.
No, bad imagery.
You remember Ferguson?
You put guns on the street.
You might as well tell the media you're a racist looking for street warfare.
Next option, we parlay with whom?
Bradley pointed at the TV.
We're seeing in flat.
Ah, okay.
So now the black terrorist is going to be because it's just like a process of like, okay, I see what he's trying to do.
Yeah.
Ah, here we go.
You know, I'm sure we've discussed when this book was written.
I'm shocked it's as recent as Ferguson.
Like, this feels like the work of someone, you know, a first draft you wrote in college.
No, no, this is post-Ferguson.
Right.
It's like he's 17 or something.
He's been a professional writer for a decade or more when he writes this book and clearly has not had professional editors for most of that time.
It is fun to me that the Prescott's like, okay, we should talk to this Levon guy.
And his assistant's like, well, the FBI knows that he's got connections to organized crime.
And the president's like, yeah, so did Big Jim.
That didn't stop anybody from like sainting him, which is just like, yeah, of course, all of the civil rights leaders in Ben's world are connected directly to organized crime, just like all of the Muslim community leaders are connected to terrorism.
But the terror, the actual terrorists who blow up a government building are Ben's heroes.
Although Ben would tell you that the Oklahoma City bombing was, of course, had nothing to do with conservatism.
Very good.
So in another classic Shapiro moment, even though this is President Prescott's chapter, we're now with Levon.
We have a couple of spaces in between paragraphs and we're back with Levon.
Thank goodness.
Finally.
Overnight, Levon had become de facto mayor of the city.
Levon Takes Control of the City00:03:59
Without the force of National Guard to back them, the local police had fallen into a standoff position with the protesters.
But Mayor Burns refused to authorize action to push Levon and his men out of the building, believing that such action would be too provocative.
So Levon's got runners going between different positions in the city, yada, yada.
Without National Guard soldiers, obviously, they can't put down these protests.
The poor disarmed cops have no ability to do anything.
I guess they're occupying the police station now, which would be pretty rad.
Yeah, Levon didn't know the exact extent of his power yet, of course.
Mayor Burns said that eventually things would be put back under control.
He put in a request to the governor, and the governor had put in a request to the feds.
But soon enough, things would calm down.
In the meantime, he urged patience and restraint.
Levon, on the other hand, called for action.
He humored every reporter, gave a quote to every journalist.
He trotted out Kendrick Malone's mother as often as possible, making his own case for authority bulletproof on the back of her grief.
Levon's long-term plan, he told the media, was justice.
He didn't define it, and they didn't have to know he meant to run for office on the back of his organized resistance.
It had worked for Mary and Berry, Big Jim had said.
It would work for Levon Williams.
All that changed at 8.34 a.m.
Ah, he gets a call from the president.
Yeah, so let's see what they okay.
The president's assistant is like, oh, we just want to tell you how much we admire you.
Thank you for tamping down the violence.
Levon grins, because of course the violence is all his fault.
Not the cops who killed people.
Okay.
Mr. Bradley, I really appreciate the sentiment.
What can I do for you?
Well, Levon, it's like this.
We couldn't admire your stand on social justice more, particularly in the wake of this tragedy with Jim Crawford.
I know you and he were close friends.
The president wants to ask you for a favor.
Please keep your followers from committing acts of violence.
That's how this works.
Yeah.
And Levon reasonably says, I can't control what everybody does.
It's a passionate time.
And they're like, yeah, just do your best.
And he says, in order for me to keep my credibility with my people, they're going to need the president to say something in solidarity.
They're going to need to know that he endorses our movement for justice.
They turned out for him at the polls, and they know he's with them, but they need some sort of sign.
They're going to need him to pledge to stop police brutality against our people.
They're going to need his promise to reopen the Ricky O'Sullivan case.
Bradley coughed.
We could do most of that, Levon, but that last one, that's out of our hands.
We don't control the DOJ.
Well, then we might have a conflict here.
I've got a lot of very angry people, and they're very angry for a reason.
I was like, you do control the DOJ.
Like, that is the executive.
Anyway, whatever.
You appoint the attorney general.
You have some power in this.
Yeah.
There's some power going on there.
Yeah.
So the president tells Levon that he has another idea that might serve both of our interests, but he's going to have to trust the president.
Levon asks how long and he says, not too long.
You'll see something in the news.
So they ask him to hold off for 48 hours and then they're going to give him a sign.
So I guess we'll see what that is.
Not in the next chapter, because it's.
Yeah, you know, we fade.
This is we fade to black as he whispers into his ear.
And we're back to El Paso and Ellen, who is Ben Shapiro, the general's wife, who is Ben's wife.
Oh, right, right, right.
Yes, Ben's wife.
But unlike Ben's wife, she loves her husband.
Should we take a break before we go into this chapter?
That feels appropriate.
You know who does love their husbands?
Bombs.
Yes, Raytheon loves husbands and wives.
That's why it shows up at so many weddings.
Bomb shops.
Loves school buses too.
Okay, this is Dark Brown.
What about hospitals?
Oh, so such a Raytheon could not support hospitals more.
Raytheon Loves Husbands and Wives00:03:26
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My dad gave me the best advice ever.
I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
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And he's like, just give it a shot.
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In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
Cartel Guardsmen and Drug Scandals00:14:56
This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
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Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
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My mind was blown.
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Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news out of Maricopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
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And we're back.
So we're in El Paso with Alan.
Oh, and they're invading Mexico.
Okay.
All right.
Get there.
Oh, boy.
First paragraph.
The Apache attack helicopters veered low over Ciedad Juarez and fired directed rockets at a small duplex on the outskirts of the city.
It went up in flames.
Governor Davis watched the real-time broadcast, yelping as the duplex disappeared in a puff of smoke and fire.
There goes one of the bastards, he smiled.
That bastard was one of the leaders of the Juarez cartel, just hanging out in a duplex across the border.
Yeah, so it starts with the governor of Texas sending an Apache tech helicopters to bomb a city in Mexico.
Jesus.
Oh, that's very fun.
Yeah, so Texas National Guard attacks helicopters, just start strafing vehicles and bombing buildings.
That's cool.
That's very cool.
Yeah.
It's about time.
The night was so, yeah.
He, he, the governor invades Mexico, uh, and it goes great.
The night was quiet, the quietest it had been for months, by which I mean nothing happens on the border.
The next day, though, residents of El Paso woke to a terrifying sight.
A National Guardsman hanging dead from a billboard in the center of town.
Uh-oh.
Painted in broad black letters were the words, plata oplomo, silver or lead.
In other words, pay us or die.
Governor Davis wasn't in the mood to pay.
It's also weird to send a message to the National Guard to pay us.
For what?
For what?
Yeah, for what?
What are you talking about?
You want to not be invaded by the National Guard.
The governor wasn't in the mood to pay.
Well, this seems like a threat against the entire United States.
I don't know.
There's a lot that's complicated here that doesn't track.
Yeah, it makes no sense because nothing Ben says does.
Yeah, so the governor orders a full-scale investigation.
I think we know who did it, but okay.
Yeah, and it turns out now there's rumors of a drug cartel in the city.
Rumors of a drug cartel in El Paso, huh?
That's shocking.
Yeah.
So clearly, and for whatever reason, Ellen is the one heading up the investigation, who is, I think his public affairs officer is now controlling a military investigation of the cartel murdering a soldier in El Paso.
Ellen acted swiftly, placing National Guard troops in the local police centers, increasing security along the border.
How is that her?
How does she have that authority?
Because you didn't want to introduce a new character?
Yeah.
Waiting established what she does.
Yeah, she's like public relations for the governor.
Yeah, that's not what this is.
I guess now she runs the National Guard.
A lot of hash.
She's a feminist.
She's a feminist.
She can do whatever she wants.
She's one of those classic PR ladies slash commander of the National Guard's police operations.
She's a multi-within hours.
The Border Patrol had caught two men attempting to flee into Mexico.
After questioning, Ellen had them detained indefinitely pending further investigation into their activities the night of the hanging.
And she redoubled deployments to the border to stop any further infiltrations and deter any attempts by collaborators to escape into Mexico.
Really sounds out of her pay grade.
It really does.
Sounds out of the governor's pay grade, to be honest.
This is not really governor shit.
All of it was good policy.
None of it made for good pictures on the front pages around the country.
And Ellen was stunned by the magnitude of the coverage.
The media coverage exploded with protest on the other side of the Rio Grande.
Nothing but women and children.
As the sun came up, at least 100 women stood carrying toddlers and babies, waving their hands and screaming for the National Guard to let them cross.
The National Guardsmen stood their ground.
They didn't point their weapons.
Ellen and Davis had agreed there would be no such activity, both for both moral and media reasons.
But they looked threatening enough in their uniforms, young, strong, square-jawed.
I hate this book so much.
It's so bad.
It's very bad.
And also, like, have you seen National Guard soldiers been?
They're just like dudes and ladies.
Like, half of them are middle-aged.
It's like their weekend job.
They're not square jaws.
Square jaws, as far as the eye can see.
Yeah.
It's very funny.
It's very funny that like the good policy is confronting people trying to cross a border to see their families with a line of soldiers.
And that's the heroism.
Yes.
Having the soldiers, of course, the caravan is on its way.
Yeah.
And of course, when this happens, this completely predictable protest from shutting down all border traffic and invading Mexico, when that happens, the media gets involved, but obviously not because it's a meaningful story.
One of the biggest media magnates in Mexico owned several major media outlets in the United States.
Ellen wasn't surprised at the number of cameras showing up.
Obviously, this was a big story.
Still, she resented the intrusion.
There'd been zero cameras for the murdered National Guardsmen, but get a few dozen women crying on the border with their kids and the media had a field day.
I don't believe there were zero cameras for a murdered National Guardsman executed by a cartel after an invasion of Mexico.
She complains that someone's tipped off the cameras.
And that's the reason they're reporting on the invasion of Mexico and these women trying to get it.
I mean, it's logical, right?
What other reason would there be to report on that?
It wasn't hard to gather who had tipped off the cameras.
One of the biggest magnates in Mexico owns several major media outlets in the United States.
Oh, fuck that guy.
Fuck that guy for reporting that news to people.
The invasion of Mexico.
Hey, hey, I know we would never cover this normally, but because I'm your boss, I want you to film some of the American invasion of Mexico.
The lamestream greedier.
Yeah.
And of course, Ellen notes that the murdered National Guardsman hadn't gotten any cameras.
It's also like, no, it would have been the number one story in the country.
It's like, okay, whatever.
Whatever.
So, yeah, the cameras find their way to Ellen for comment.
We will maintain the security of the people of Texas, she said.
Our immigration services have not screened any of the people out there.
We're sure most of them are wonderful people who want to come here and work and build a life without taxpayer help, but we simply don't know who they are.
And without screening them, we're not going to open our borders to anybody who wants to cross.
We have the body of a National Guardsman hanging from a billboard that tells the story of what we get when we don't check those who cross the border.
And it's telling that he does have to invent a thing, right?
Like in order to justify shutting down the border.
And it's basically, he's basically saying the thing that Trump ran on, right?
I'm sure some of them are wonderful people.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, this book came out two months before Trump was elected.
Yeah.
Yep.
They're the same person.
They're the same person.
Yeah, the headlines hit almost immediately.
Oh, this should be good.
Texas governor's top aide says immigrant women, children pose security threat.
I might posit that the top story would be Texas governor's top aide controlling military investigation into murdered soldiers.
Yeah, yeah, that's a better headline.
Yeah.
Yeah.
She should have known better than to give them any material they could misuse.
Then again, what material wouldn't they have misused?
She vowed to ignore any calls coming from a media number.
Of course, yeah, that's how it works, right?
I know there's probably some sort of caller idea.
The media.
The media.
The media is calling me.
Yeah.
Scam likely.
He's giving me a call.
Yeah.
So it's this is the third, the tertiary story in the news.
The number one story is that New York got blowed up.
The number two story is the riots, the BLM-style riots all over the country.
And I guess number three is America invades Mexico.
But they're not showing any of it, just the president's speech.
No.
No.
Until they get the tip.
And that the Mexican military doesn't do anything because they don't want to fight with the National Guard and they secretly like the cartel being cleared out.
So they're okay with being invaded.
Each day by the good guys.
Each day, small groups of National Guardsmen raided Ciedad Juarez, usually by motor vehicle convoys across the border.
The cartel members had picked up on the nature of the offensive action and had inserted themselves into heavily civilian areas, cutting down on the ability of Texas forces to strike without facing the prospect of urban warfare.
Now more dangerous search and destroy missions had been authorized.
The American side of the border remained quiet until it wasn't.
Oh, good.
So we're going to get a border massacre because obviously invading Mexico sparks more violence in the U.S.
And stopping all those moms from getting across to their families doesn't again, Benjamiro making the point that he refuses.
Yeah.
So, oh, yeah, a bunch of protesters get shot dead.
Eventually, 26 people.
Everyone figured it for a drug cartel hit.
Then the footage came out.
Ellen saw it on the evening news as a network anchor intoned.
What you're about to watch is very graphic.
Younger viewers are advised not to watch.
She cut to a grainy, close-range video of a man in a National Guard uniform from behind, walking up to a group of tents.
Get out of there, the National Guardsman said in a thick Texas accent.
Get out of there, you little.
And then he uses a racial slur for Mexican people.
Which, okay.
A few children, rubbing their eyes, came scurrying out of their tents.
Their mothers following.
Seeing the barrel of a gun, they raised their hands.
The screen went white with the fired shots, flash after flash, again and again.
When the night vision calmed, the smoking bodies of two dozen innocents lay on the ground.
So, yeah, I guess I'm sure it's somebody posing as the National Guard to make them look bad, right?
Ben wouldn't have a National Guardsman do the thing.
I don't think so.
That's mixed messaging for sure.
I bet it's Leon or something.
I'll give Ben some credit if it actually is, if he's actually making the point that, no, there's racists in the National Guard.
They'd totally murder children in this, you know?
I bet.
But I don't think that's what he's saying.
Yeah, I think I might take a bet against what you're claiming.
That doesn't feel like what we're building to here.
So the governor is angry at her, angry at his aide that he put in charge of the invasion of Mexico, which I would be angry at this too.
Perhaps he shouldn't have invaded Mexico.
That's a fireable offense in my book.
I would say so.
I didn't write this book.
Might also literally be treason to give an unelected aide control of the National Guard.
I don't know.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That seems like it's a crime, right?
So the governor's top news story if everything else wasn't going on.
Sorry, continue.
Yeah, yes, of course.
And Bubba, of course, tells him that the president's yelling at him, but not over the invasion of Mexico over this.
I would have think the yelling would have started.
I would have thought that the president would have sent in federal agents to arrest the governor of Texas for invading a sovereign nation.
I didn't, Ellen gripped her fists.
I didn't ask for this, Bubba.
I did it as a favor to you.
Some favor, he said.
I've got two dozen dead kids and their mamas and a boy in a National Guard uniform responsible for all of it.
A boy I kept here in Texas instead of sending him to New York like Prescott wanted me to.
Do we know who the little bastard was?
Yes, she answered.
We do.
Oh, okay, cool.
His name is talking like this.
Because it's bad.
He's bad.
He's a bad writer.
So it's a soldier, a sergeant named James Easton McLawrence.
And Davis is like, don't they all have three names?
I guess that like serial killer thing.
Oh, boy.
She passed him a photo of a young man in a National Guard uniform.
His eyes were open a shade too far, bright blue and off-putting.
His mouth was slack.
McLawrence joined the guard after dropping out of high school and getting his GED.
Not a stellar candidate for higher rank, barely at the bottom rung.
He's full active duty.
Wait, how is he full active duty and in the National Guard?
That doesn't make any sense, Ben.
Do you not know how the National Guard works?
It doesn't sound like he does.
He's full active duty.
He joined the National Guard.
He's full active duty.
No, then that's active duty army.
That's not the National Guard.
They're saying to do things, right?
Yeah.
Also, they're saying this guy's bottom rung, but he's a sergeant, which is not a bottom is actually a role with a lot of responsibility where you're often in charge of a significant number of lives.
I think you're just supposed to go with it.
Don't question him.
Just like, don't write about this stuff.
Yeah, don't write about this.
Write what you know, not what you fantasize about Noah.
Right.
Keep it to your like live journal.
So the governor asks what that set this guy off.
And Ellen gives three possibilities.
One is that he hated illegal immigrants because his dad lost his job at a manufacturing plant that moved south of the border.
And another is that he was paid by cash by the cartels.
And another is that he's, quote, just crazy.
Simple as that.
That's an useful information.
That's a classic explanation for people's behavior.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's, I mean, classic have been to like start with, oh, well, maybe he's angry because his dad lost his job.
Yeah.
Racism does not actually enter into that at all, really.
Um, that's interesting of Ben.
It's wide, wide range.
We can get racism, we can get equalism in there, we can get a lot of shades.
So, uh, Davis is sending Ellen to New York now.
Racism Does Not Enter Behavior00:06:14
Uh, I guess she's botched the job of commanding the army to invade Mexico.
So, Bubba's, I don't know, maybe gonna put like the agriculture secretary in charge of it or something.
Well, what's she gonna do in New York?
She's gonna talk to the president because the president wants to humiliate Bubba Davis in front of the entire country.
Quote, hell, he could have a local DA down here drop charges against me so that they're frog walking me when I get off the plane.
It's a setup.
Ah, so Bubba doesn't want to get arrested for invading Mexico.
Uh, and so he's sending Ellen to, I she won't get arrested.
Uh, they won't touch you because of Brett.
Um, that's fun.
Um, and Ellen's like, Well, but the president hates my husband.
And the governor says, It doesn't matter.
Your husband's a national hero, he's not going to arrest you.
Um, Ellen had to admit that the idea appealed to her.
She hadn't seen Brett in nearly a year now, and she'd missed him awfully.
Every time they flashed his face across the television, her chest ached from missing him so much.
What do I say to Prescott?
She said, You tell that son of a bitch that we're not going to back down off the border, not for him or anybody.
And if he asks you about Mick Lawrence, you tell him we're investigating, turn down any federal offers for help.
We don't need the feds down here mucking up our operation.
Not your choice.
Not your choice.
Also, it's the crime of the radar with it off the rails in this book.
I mean, it is the crime of a U.S. serviceman in a foreign country.
At no point would that be the jurisdiction of Texas law enforcement.
They would have nothing to do with this.
Legally, they can't.
It would be like the FBI or somebody would not be local police in any way.
That's just not how the government works.
But what if it is?
Yeah, like all those full-time active duty National Guardsmen and the full active duty part of the National Guard that's active duty, but not the army.
Yeah.
This is also unimportant, but if you've already written a couple sentences about how she missed him terribly or awfully, she missed him awfully.
Yeah.
Choice of words.
After you've done that, you don't need to say when watching him on TV, her chest ached from missing him so much.
Yeah, just her chest ached.
I don't know why.
I'll get it.
I can put two and two together.
Whenever she saw him on TV, her chest ached.
I understand why.
It's because she missed him so much.
You don't even have to say she missed him.
You could say the idea of seeing Brett again appealed to her.
It'd been nearly a year.
Every time she saw him flash on TV, her chest ached.
And the reader using his brain for her brain.
It's all laid out for me.
Yeah.
Like, you're not trying to convey a complicated emotion.
She misses her husband.
And like, especially after reading the rest of the book so far, I get it.
I'm all caught up with her feeling.
Yeah.
Basic human emotion.
Okay.
So, yeah, okay.
So Ellen does immediately point out that cross-border murder falls under federal jurisdiction.
And the governor says he's busy.
He won't mind.
And it'll allow him to save face to put me up for public scourging.
I'll be the bad guy Southern hick who won't let the sweet-faced Yankee down here to fix things.
That's what the media is looking for anyway, right?
They wouldn't send a Yankee.
There's FBI offices in Texas.
They would send someone from the El Paso FBI whose job is to investigate murdered Americans in Mexico.
That's a thing that they do, right?
No, it's the Yanks.
It's the Yankees.
They got to send a Yankee down to Texas.
There's no Texans in the FBI.
Some lib Yank is on the carpet bagging Fed.
Oh man.
What's your end game?
She said.
In game, darling, this thing here has been going on since the Alamo.
There's no endgame.
Just a game that won't end anyway, except us holding our ground or cutting and running.
But don't worry.
You just, yes, the invasion of Mexico over cartels is the same as the Alamo.
Okay, we all remember that.
This is no end game.
It's a game that won't end.
Cut one of those.
Yeah, dude.
Like, I can't even.
He didn't have an editor.
Oh, absolutely not.
There's no way.
And if he does.
We have yet to look into the milk, but yeah.
What?
Yeah.
It's probably his dad.
Well, his editor is someone he really likes.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And doesn't feel comfortable speaking up to his boss, I think.
That's my guess.
Yeah.
So Ben's Brett, or sorry, Ellen agrees to go to New York.
And she's sitting in the National Guard terminal at the airport, which might exist.
I don't know.
I've never, I don't know that the National Guard has their own.
Not impossible.
Okay, sure.
Like, I don't know.
Maybe.
Is that a thing that exists, Cody?
Are you?
I don't know.
I'm trying to find out.
Are you fact-checking, Ben?
Yeah, yeah.
So as she's sitting there waiting to fly to New York, she gets a call from a number she doesn't recognize.
So she picks up to at least hear what the media had prepared.
At worst, she could give a no comment.
So she goes back on her promise to not pick up from the media, but it's not the media.
It's Brett.
Honey, don't come to New York.
He sounded winded, hoarse.
Brett, what's going on?
I can't say for certain yet.
Just don't come to New York.
Something bad is going down.
How do you know that?
No time to explain.
The line went dead.
I love it.
It's probably time.
Yeah.
It probably is.
No, too many comments.
No, it's gone on for too long.
Would have gone on.
Yeah, she you know it's bad because he doesn't tell her he'd take a bullet for you, babe.
It just, there's so many like cryptic messages this woman gets from her husband.
I would be sick of it.
Yeah.
Finish a sentence.
Finish a sentence.
Don't just like hang up and tell me not to do something.
And I don't know.
Yeah.
Sounds like it's time to take a break for perhaps.
You know, speaking of taking a bullet for you, we've already done it.
These products would take a bullet for you, haven't we?
Time to Take a Break Anyway00:03:13
We did that months ago.
Well, here's some fucking ads anyway, goddamn.
You Yankees.
You fucking Yank libs.
Yank lib feds.
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends.
Oh my God, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
You related to the Phantom at that point.
Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
That's so funny.
Share each day with me each night, each morning.
Say you love me.
You know I.
So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ago Modem.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
It's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat.
Just hang in there.
Aiden Rides His Motorcycle Alone00:15:52
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Gillespie and Michael Marancini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trap.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
Listen to the Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And we are become returned.
So, next chapter is a Soledad chapter, who is, remember, the terrorist Eamon Bundy, but a Latino woman so that no one can call Ben racist.
Right.
Smart.
Covering your tracks.
Yeah.
They camped outside the city.
No fires.
No lights.
They'd separated after Detroit, split up to avoid being followed.
They set the rendezvous for Nashville three days later.
Soledad recommended that they wind their way through several states to throw any would-be trackers off the scent.
She took Ezekiel west, then south.
Aiden took Ricky East, then doubled back through Kentucky.
Nearly all the men made it.
A few apparently decided they'd had enough after Detroit after seeing their faces on television, labeled white supremacists.
They took off for the hills.
Soledad told them to ditch all their electronic gear to make for the northern border if they could.
They flee into Canada?
That doesn't seem like what a bunch of gun nuts would do.
Okay.
Um, the ones who were left look like they'd been through a war.
Eddie was the worst.
Fatso, as they all called him, had taken a tire iron to the gut, then gotten stomped at the center of the crowd.
He'd been in and out of consciousness ever since.
His fever spiking radically.
Just before hitting camp, Ezekiel told Soledad he'd started twitching and then gone quiet.
When Aiden and Ricky drove in, Soledad motioned them over.
They put down their kickstands, turned off the hogs.
He loves calling motorcycles hogs.
He's literally slapping my beat.
Do you think he's been on a motorcycle?
I think he wants to have been on a motorcycle.
Yeah, yeah.
But I don't know that I think he's been on a motorcycle.
He's going to get on a little bit.
We can all fill in the blank.
Yeah.
Moped.
He can ride a moped.
Yeah.
He could ride a moped.
He shouldn't ride a moped.
Mopeds are big boy vehicles.
And I wouldn't want Ben to a big girl.
Yeah.
Or big girl.
Just not a Ben Shapiro.
No, no.
I'm just looking if there's a Ben Shapiro on a motorcycle picture because there's so many shameful with like swords and stuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And his little gun.
All right.
What do we got?
Do we have do we have Ben Shapiro on a motorcycle?
No.
No.
All right.
I'm not seeing it.
Yeah, there is.
He does have that.
He does own a leather jacket.
You're right, Cody.
If the motorcycle pic existed, it would be online.
He wouldn't.
It would be the first response.
It would be the saddest thing that anyone's ever seen.
But Ben is a little bit too smart to be pictured on a motorcycle.
So he gets his motorcycle kicks by calling them hogs every chance he gets.
I'm just so embarrassed for him.
Yeah.
So their friend Fatso, who's dying, is in a coma.
And once they all get back together, Aiden, who's the former fed who murdered a bunch of other feds for her, asks, Do we have anybody who knows anything about medicine?
She shook her head.
We need to get him to a hospital.
I do love this.
Is I don't think Ben minted, but this is the most accurate part of the book because that is the thing all of these like right-wing militias have.
It's like none of them are medics.
That's right.
None of them ever bring medical supplies.
None of them take care of each other.
No, they rely on Antifa to take care of them at protest.
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That part is pretty, pretty on brand.
Yeah.
So they decide they've got to take him to a hospital.
And Aiden's like, he's not going to live anyway.
And Soledad gets angry.
We're not going to leave him to die.
Yada yada yada.
Okay.
So they are having a big fight.
And Aiden's angry because he doesn't want to risk everybody's lives.
So, but Soledad's like, I've got to make, I got to make the call.
You know, I'm the boss.
So she calls for Ezekiel, who's the token black guy in the militia.
Give me a hand with this man.
She leaned over the body, felt the heat emanating from the burning skin.
She gripped him around the biceps, put her back into it, and moved him nowhere.
Embarrassed, she gripped him tighter, pulled again.
When she looked up, Ricky O'Sullivan.
She's got to go with her legs.
She's got to use her legs if she wants to move.
That putting your back into it, that's bullshit.
Sorry.
So the cop who killed the dead-eyed black boy helps and is like, we got to get him help.
Nobody's going to die for me ever again.
No one died for you.
You killed somebody.
Yeah.
You shot, you shot a person to death.
A child, Ricky.
It's just some that's how he's coping.
Yeah.
That's what he's telling himself.
Yeah.
Okay.
So they get the guy.
They drop Fatso off at an emergency room.
And they have the black guy stay with him because he's the only person without a national face in the group.
Cool.
Okay.
Yeah.
Do Wow.
I'm going to spend way too much time on this.
This is just like a boring book.
It is.
It is a boring book.
Like, and they, they, she, so Ben starts this next.
It's like a full page that starts with like, they dropped him off at the hospital and Ezekiel stayed with him.
And then after that, the next like six paragraphs are her talking with Ezekiel while he tells her she's going to stay behind and stuff.
Like, yeah.
Ben starts by explaining what happens and then walks through it all slowly, um, like a bad writer.
This is boring.
All right.
Back to the action.
The headlights from the hogs carved a three-pronged gash into the darkness.
Carved a gash.
Oh, that's my boy.
Yeah.
To one side of Soledad, Ricky rode.
To the other, Aiden.
The night was silent except for the rumbling of the engines.
The murky smell of the murky smell of the trees?
How do you spoken like somebody who hates trees?
And what is murky smell?
How is something smell murky?
Well, he grew up in a haunted marsh, so he has a different association.
Famed swamp creature, Ben Shapiro.
You are right, Katie.
Yeah, that's correct.
Oh, my God.
Of the trees.
I wish everyone could see our faces.
They're just so disgusted.
Every four sentences.
I'll be making the face, and I'll look over.
And Cody's making the exact same thing.
It's just confusing.
Oh, God.
Okay.
So the start of this, they're driving through the forest in Tennessee, and Soledad thinks about how awesome she is and how awesome it is that they're doing this and like super rad that wear a bicycle, a motorcycle militia.
Um uh Aiden, i'm sorry, I dragged you into this.
She yelled at last, sorry.
He grinned.
I've been waiting for this all my life something to fight for.
She glanced over at Ricky.
His mouth was set in a tight line, his gaze focused on the dark horizon.
Nothing left to fight for, said Ricky.
You guys know what you're up against.
That's incoherent yeah, yeah.
So she apologizes out of the blue.
She apologizes to Aiden and is like i'm sorry, I dragged you into this.
And he's like why are you sorry?
I've been waiting for something to fight for my whole life.
And then Ricky just says, nothing left to fight for.
You guys know what you're up against.
That's not.
That's completely nonsensical.
That's he's trying to be cool and sparse with the language and it's just ineffective.
Yeah, it's just.
It's just incoherent.
Left to fight.
Nothing's been that the thing to fight for is hard.
Yeah, they're fighting for something.
Why?
Why would you say, anyway, this doesn't make sense.
That's yeah.
So Ricky says they're not going to let us go.
They say we killed Jim Crawford.
They say we're white supremacists.
Soledad said, do I look like a white supremacist?
White supremacy comes in many forms.
Direct quote Msnbc today, they're nuts, I know, I know, I know oh, he's so mad, he's so mad nuts, but effective, oh boy um also, when they they she's mentioned three times this chapter that all of their electronics are off.
When did he watch Msnbc?
How are you having time?
On your hog yeah, i'm curious how many times hog is used in this chapter?
I I actually do want to know how many times the word hog is used in this book entirely.
Only four okay, only four matches.
Oh, so they're all in this chapter.
Okay, how many times uh, is the word motorcycle used?
That's a good question, Cody, 14.
Okay, that's a fair bit fair ratio.
You impressed, you impressed us.
Very good job, Ben.
Yeah, point to you Ben.
Okay, so they're talking.
That's very boring.
Talk uh uh okay um, so they talk about how they're revolutionaries and comparing themselves to the founding fathers.
How Soledad says, if it's good enough for Benjamin Franklin, it's good enough for me.
You do realize, Ricky said Wryly, Franklin took off for some French whore whoring during for most of the Revolutionary War.
It thundered overhead and the clouds opened up shit.
She heard Aiden say just what we needed.
Yeah okay, it's raining yada yada yada um oh, there's something solid ahead of them.
Okay, I think they the the, the man has found them, so they get off the road.
It's a military drone.
Okay um, too small to be anything else.
They could be looking for someone, for someone else.
Wait, military drones aren't very small okay anyway um, so the drone?
Yeah, he's thinking of the little, little drones you can get for the park.
The drone couldn't they see it?
Even though it couldn't be any, it couldn't be more than 10 000 feet from the ground during a rainstorm, which I don't think you're going to see a drone in that, those conditions in riding a motorcycle.
But okay whatever um oh, it's a predator drone.
Yeah, those aren't, those are giant, those are the size of a car.
They're not not a small drone.
Okay whatever, Been.
Doesn't do any research.
His size.
Perspective is off.
Oh, the drone is on Aiden and they.
They fire a missile.
Okay, so the drone does a missile strike on these guys.
Okay okay okay um, and it blows her off of her motorcycle.
Uh, she peeked over the hedge the first, 20 feet of trees had been completely obliterated.
The embers of the splintered burning trees floated through the air on the ground, its rear wheel spinning.
Soledad could make out the twisted metal of Aiden's bike.
Near it, comma.
She could see what looked to be a white lump of flesh.
Period ew, a mangled arm.
That's the next sentence.
Just a mangled arm, a torn fragment of a maroon scarf she'd handed him to wipe off the handlebars.
Is the sentence after that?
For cleanliness yeah two, not sentences in a row.
Use commas sometimes or make them full sentences.
You know she saw a mangled arm, comma.
A torn fragment of a maroon scarf she'd handed Aiden earlier.
You know something like that, something like that.
She felt an arm on her shoulder.
Get to your damn bike.
Ricky shouted into her ear.
They're coming back around.
She tried to get to her feet but her left leg wouldn't respond.
Looking down, she could see the black ooze of blood creeping through her pants.
Ricky swung her roughly onto his back.
He pushed himself on the cycle.
He cranked the throttle.
Aiden, she moaned, son of a bitch.
Behind him, the drone dropped to attack altitude.
All right, son of a bitch, son of a bitch, a good, good reading.
Yeah uh, i'm still just like really bored.
I know this is Like stuff going on, but I don't know if it's the plot or like how it's written, or both.
It's horrible.
Just everything leading up to this point.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's not like we don't really have, like, these people are talking about how they're like the new founding fathers, but like her grievances are very unclear, right?
Like, she doesn't pay her taxes.
And so they murder a bunch of feds and then they break a cop out of prison on the other side of the country.
And like, I don't know what they're doing.
I don't know what they're doing.
What are they fighting for?
And we don't see any of them really express an ideology.
Right.
Like, it's vague and just like the vague, like fighting for something.
Yeah.
Like, okay.
What?
I mean, you freed the cop you think is innocent, even though he admits he shot the boy.
And you blew up a federal building because they came at you for not paying taxes.
What's the ideology, though?
I think he left vague so that people could fill in their own ideologies and relate to it.
I don't know if that's he trusted like the aesthetics, right?
They're on motorcycles and they have guns.
Obviously, they're the good guys.
Oh, right.
And like their opposition to like the Obama of it all and just like, yeah, these sort of vague signifiers and markers of like, oh, I, they're, yeah, the motorcycles in the wind, the murky trees.
Yeah, the murky trees.
I don't even, I, what it's amazing.
What does that mean?
Nothing, Sophie.
It means nothing.
Okay.
Yeah.
So the Levon chapter opens with revealing, you know, how the president had been calling him and been like, chill out for a couple of days.
I got a secret for you.
Turns out the secret is that they were blowing up that cop and the terrorist mama with the drone.
So the president seems to think they killed all three of them.
And that's what he tells Levon.
So that's great.
Yeah.
So just so you know, Levon, the president is very proud of what you've done there.
You've kept people under control in a bad situation.
It won't be forgotten about that, sir.
Levon coughed.
I can only keep them tamped down for so long.
My people are agitated about that attack still.
With Sullivan being dead, that helps, but they think the mayor is a shill for white privilege.
It's just not how you'd say it.
A shill for white privilege.
You're not a shill for white privilege.
That's not really a term anyone would use.
We're not selling it.
Well, I guess some people maybe are.
Some people are.
Replacing Police with New Officers00:05:08
So he's got these like weird buzzword grievance things that he's just got to dip it in.
And that's what it is.
Yep.
So I'd be curious to know how many times they talk about intersectionality in this.
Yeah, I haven't seen it come up yet.
So what Levon is asking the president for is the ability to remake the police department and put his own people in there and for the president to throw his support behind that.
So I guess that's what he's proposing.
And yeah, they talk about this in a conversation.
I don't think we need to go all the way through.
Yada, And yeah, the president says, all right, yeah, well, let's, I'll pressure the governor to give you the police of Detroit.
Within days, the applications began piling up on Levon's desk.
He'd moved over to the mayor's office, taking up virtual residence there along with his secret political weapon, Regina Malone.
He meets with the police union.
It doesn't go well.
The man was old school blue, and he didn't want to hear about changes to the department.
He pointed out that they all had contracts.
Levon, enjoying his newfound power, let the man stew for a few minutes.
Then he told him they had every intention of honoring the contracts.
There just might be a few more cops writing desks.
The new boys, he said, would take over the streets.
No more Ricky O'Sullivans.
Now things were running smoothly, though.
Levon slotted personal interviews with each of the possible new officers.
Each was slotted for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, Levon worked with the committee appointed by...
So yeah, he's just putting up a replacing the police with his guys.
Okay.
That's fine.
He writes a new directive for the police that they're not allowed to use racial profiling, which, of course, is bad.
When told of the new strictures, dozens of officers quit right away.
Good riddance, Levon told the mayor.
Less pensions for you to pay.
When Billy Barton walked into Levon's new office and slapped down a list of 400 officers willing to quit over the new standards, Levon looked him dead in the eye.
Well, he said, I suppose it can't be helped.
Changed has casualties.
The media viewed Levon's new standards as groundbreaking.
Racial sensitivity, they said, had never been used as an actual policing criterion.
But nowhere was that criterion more necessary than Detroit.
Had Ricky O'Sullivan been taught and held accountable under these standards, Levon said, Regina standing beside him, perhaps Kendrick would still be alive today.
Showing attitude to police officers is something a Detroit cop should have understood had he been properly trained.
Don't call our kids thugs just because you don't understand the experiences they've had growing up.
They've seen cops pull over their dads, drag them off to jail.
We have an entire generation of missing men in our community.
Sensitivity is the key.
Okay.
So that's why hundreds of cops quit, which scans.
Now, but Ben is framing all of this as bad.
As bad.
Yeah.
That's what's remarkable about this of this novel.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So he changes the rules so that anyone convicted of a nonviolent felony could be considered to be a police officer.
And yeah, which is also like, why should having sold pot disqualify you from being exactly like?
Yeah.
More cops resign at this.
The final blow to the police enrollment standards came in the area of education.
The standard for the department had always been a high school degree or equivalent.
Now with the applications pouring in, Levon had to face the fact that not enough applicants had graduated from high school.
Many had dropped out.
Again, he cited racial disparities in changing the policy, explaining that every trainee would be given remedial education necessary to do the job.
How can you expect people to work their way up the ladder if we don't give them the chance to get on the first rung?
He's just being very reasonable here.
And also like, yeah, tons of police departments accept GEDs.
It's not uncommon.
Yes.
Also, like, are plans to educate people who don't have the education?
Provide free education to police officers.
Sounds good.
Higher nonviolent felons make them racially sensitive.
Yeah, this guy's the bad guy.
So he gets a cover on time.
And one of the things that's frustrating about this is there's no clear understanding of how much time is passing because Levon is completely remaking a major city's police department.
And he winds up on the cover of time as the new face of law.
Yeah, how is this happening so fast?
Basically, the mayor.
Yeah.
And I, and then he's, yeah.
Okay, but then at the end of it, he says that this all happens within 48 hours.
No.
This is absurd.
I mean, if only.
Yeah.
Because I was like, it was boring reading, like hearing about it because it was written in that way where it's like, okay, so this is like over, like you're just describing like a paragraph a month or something.
Yeah.
The pace.
No, it's two days.
How much do we have left of this book?
The pace?
We are 84% of the way through.
That's not enough.
No, it's not.
Painful.
It's not.
Should we save the rest for another day?
Yeah, I think we've got one more episode in us, and I think next episode we'll finish this book.
Bret Hawthorne Shapes Our Future00:03:31
And our next chapter will be Brett Arthorne.
Oh, thank God.
But also like other people in other scenes, in other places.
Yeah, literally anyone.
Much like Ellen, I've missed Bret Hawthorne.
Bret Hawthorne.
Whenever he's not talked about on the page, written about on the page, my heart aches from him not being on the page.
And when his name is mentioned, my heart thumps faster.
Because his name was mentioned and we miss him.
Bret Hawthorne.
Yeah, okay, this feels like a good spot to end it.
Hey, Cody, plug a move.
Yeah, guys, check us out with our other show, worst year ever.
And Cody?
Even more news is the name of our podcast.
And some more news is the name of a show on YouTube that you can watch.
Hell yeah.
And our Twitters are Dr. Richard Cody and Katie Stoll.
Crushed it.
Yeah.
We're at Bastards Pod on Twitter and Instagram.
That's the end of the fucking episode.
That's the end of the episode.
I'll take a bullet for you, babe.
Take a bullet for you, babe.
Brett.
All right.
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say that.
Trust your girlfriends.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Grego Lesbi and Michael Mancini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trapped.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots five, City Hall building.
How could this have happened in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that.
A shocking public murder.
This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
They screamed, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
A tragedy that's now forgotten.
And a mystery that may or may not have been political, that may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Laurie Siegel, and this is Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens.
This week, an interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to the products we put out in the world.
An in-depth conversation with the man who's shaping our future.
My highest order bit is to not destroy the world of AI.
Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.