#695 Trump's ability to get uber-wealty mega-billionaire class to be patriotic to the US may be his main legacy. w/Nate Bethea
TODAY: Fired Veterans say they feel betrayed by federal job cuts, but have we considered this is being reported by the AP? What if the veterans like it? And who ever said we had to take care of veterans? Shouldn't they get nothing just like everyone else? PLUS: Trump scores an epic win for BlackRock, and we watch unpatriotic corporate firms cope and seethe. HOWEVER: I heard somewhere that BlackRock is also Chinese. We investigate. Listen to Nate on Hell of a Way to Dad Lions Led By Donkeys and Trash Future Get a bonus episode every week by signing up at http://patreon.com/miniondeathcult for only $5/month Music: Modest Mouse - Learnin' to Leave the Livin' Open Head - House
And conservative humor gone awry is going to fascist-fornia today.
So stay tuned.
We're going to take a few pictures of the desert and how their policies are actually messing it up.
It's not beautiful when you go across that border.
But stay tuned, guys.
Okay, I'm Alexander Edward.
And I'm Tony Boswell.
And we are Minion Death Cult.
Expecting the U.S. government to honor its promises to you, a U.S. veteran, is responsible.
And we're documenting it.
Hey, what's up everybody?
Welcome to the show.
Thank you for joining us.
We have a fun, just fancy free episode here today.
We got Nate from...
I'm looking at my notes here.
Hell of a way to dad?
Yeah.
On the show today?
Rebranded a bit, yeah.
What's up, dude?
You guys pivoted to dad?
Well, I got out of the army 11 years ago, and Francis was a reservist and retired in 2020 after 20 years of being in the reserves.
So at a certain point, you've told all of your military stories, and there's not really that many left to repeat.
And I became a parent like a year and a half ago, and so we realized that...
We can still talk about defense-related stuff or military veteran things, but if it was the only topic, well, everyone would get bored, and I think that by a certain point, everyone would be like, oh, Nate's going to tell that story about the airplane door that they thought was a radio again.
So it's like, yeah.
But also, we do a couple other shows, too, on this side of the Atlantic.
I mean, the timeline does sound right.
What happens after the war?
Well, the war comes home.
Yeah.
And, you know, I'm guessing that's a lot of what your show is about.
I know we have, you know, plenty of dads in our listenership who may be eager, you know, may not be vets, but they may be veterans of the dad wars.
The dad trenches.
I mean, if I was shameless and a lot dumber, I would absolutely, like, do, you know, sort of, like, secrets of Ranger School for being a dad.
But I just, I can't bring my...
I mean, even when there's, like, an apropos...
Observation to make.
I just dread even thinking about it.
It's certainly not bringing it up with people.
But like, oh yeah, you know, like, well, you learn to stay up all night and like how to make yourself not make mistakes even when you're tired.
And that applies to diaper changes.
I'm like, yeah, it does.
But like, nobody wants to hear that shit.
I mean, let's be honest.
I apply a lot of like the interrogation torture tactics I learned in training with my kid.
Right.
That's why she eats all her vegetables.
I mean, I knew guys who were, like, former drill sergeants.
They were like, oh, yeah, my kids, like, if they're screwing around, I'll just make them all do wall sits.
And I'm like, your kids are going to hate you.
They're going to leave you in, like, their non-funded ass doesn't exist anymore VA home as soon as they can, and they're never going to talk to you again.
One of them is going to put a fucking gun to your head while you're sleeping, dude.
You need to chill out.
That would be my proudest moment as a parent, actually.
I'd be like, you did it.
You passed the test.
You've correctly identified the greatest threat in this household, me.
Me.
Christ.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, just thinking about that.
I have a daughter, and if I had a kid, if we stay here, notionally, I would want her, any kid, if they can get a passport, another place to get it.
And it's like, if I had a son, he would have to serve in the Swiss military.
And I know it's kind of a big waste of time joke, but I think that would be weird because we'd be like, no, man, that's like one step away from being a cop.
Don't do that shit.
I feel like I failed as a parent if that happened.
But if you're Switzerland, isn't that more like joining Greenpeace or something?
Everyone I know who's done the military service here says it's just a huge waste of time, so it's like, I guess in a way, it's like the universal constant of being in the military, but there is a way around.
It's longer, but you can drive an ambulance or be an orderly in a hospital, and I would hope they do that, just because if nothing else, it's like...
I don't know.
Actual civil service?
Yeah.
I mean, I signed a contract when I was 17. It was stupid, but at the end of the day, it's like, I hope that...
The one good thing about it is that they don't...
It's not like the U.S. where it's like, oh, you're in the military.
You're our proudest and most important resource.
Psych.
Psych.
Yeah, we're seeing the fallout of that today.
Yeah.
Maybe...
Oh, go ahead.
I mean, well, it's just good, though, because as you know...
Girl dads are braver than every troop.
One day people are going to want to date our daughters.
One day we're going to have to clean our guns real fast with a blindfold on for our dates.
Wow, having a daughter made me really realize that women are people.
Alright, I guess I'm glad you got to that realization, but most people don't require this other life event to do that.
Yeah.
Now, to full disclose, you know, Nate, we're friends.
You've been on the show before.
It's been a while.
We're so happy to have you back.
But for full clarity, like, I haven't seen a picture of your daughter.
But if she were hot, you could have a sticker that was like, guns don't kill people.
Dads of pretty daughters do.
But I don't know if she's pretty enough.
For that.
She's 18 months old, so to me, I'm just sort of like...
More cute.
Cute or not.
Yeah, let's leave that discussion for multiple decades from now.
We're going to have that sticker in the merch shop, but you do have to submit a picture of your daughter to see if you qualify to put the sticker on your car.
We'll be the judge of that, yeah.
Yeah, you can just throw in a two-for-one deal.
They also get the sticker that says, only gay cops pull me over, and it's like, someone will kill you for one of these bumper stickers.
You don't know which one.
Yeah, you'll be good.
You don't know.
Yeah, so I don't know.
Our first topic today, I'm reading here from Newsmax.
Fired veterans say they feel betrayed by federal jobs cuts.
And when I think of disgruntled veterans, of course my mind snapped right to what a hell of a way to die.
Thank you for your service for this podcast and anything incidentally you might have done in previous life.
To be clear, yes, the Trump administration has already cut thousands of jobs from the VA, as far as I can tell, posed to cut about 80,000 more personnel from the Veterans Affairs Bureau.
Now, can you give us just very brief what the VA does?
It manages veterans' health care, right?
Yeah, so it does a bunch of things.
There's the VHA, the Veterans Health Administration, that is basically the closest, the only state-run healthcare provider in the U.S. When you think about something equivalent to Britain's NHS, where they not always but typically own facilities, and it's entirely run by the VHA. The VA is kind of the umbrella organization, but it includes things like...
Disability benefits, education benefits, vocational training, all sorts of services.
There's a lot of stuff that's not necessarily privatized, but there are things they've created over the years where VA funding allows people to get outpatient care at private facilities.
The VA runs a rehab.
I mean, the hospital I used to go to to get my regular checkups when I lived in New York, the 23rd Street Hospital in Manhattan, it's got a prosthetics department.
It's got all sorts of things.
And it's all...
Not everyone who works there is a lifer VA employee.
A lot of the medical staff, for example, there are a lot of young doctors and nurses rotating through, but there's also a lot of people who are permanent medical staff.
But a lot of VA employees, and I've read through this article before, we started recording, a lot of people will be things like program administrators.
They will be people that handle stuff for outreach or for getting people enrolled in programs.
A lot of times...
VA people will be tied in with charities and other things in areas like certain geographic parts of the U.S. where, for example, there might be publicly funded things and say, I remember working with one a long time ago when I used to work in a civilian job doing some outreach stuff in Pennsylvania, for example, and the VA would go to these...
They had all sorts of different programs they could tie people into that were probably funded by, I don't know, Bucks County or the state of Pennsylvania.
But it's a big organization.
Not everyone who works there is a veteran, but there are a lot of...
It's become kind of a catchphrase thing, but it's 100% true, which is that there's preferential hiring government jobs for military veterans.
Right.
That's a statistic.
I don't remember the exact number, but that was something that I read while looking at all these doge cuts to federal departments.
And maybe you can clear this up, whether this is VA-specific or just federal-wide.
Federal-wide.
The federal government workers are disproportionately U.S. veterans.
Yeah, I would say that...
I don't know if it's the 30% stat, 30% of federal workers are veterans, but having an honorable discharge does put you...
That is a bonus thing in terms of being hired for a federal job.
And there are a number of jobs where...
Because of the...
I mean...
Because of the degree to which some programs are going to be tied in with defense research or acquisitions or something like that, there's just a lot of jobs that are in the orbit of the military, federal jobs.
And I mean, there are laws.
I don't know if they really uphold them or they're going to get rid of them.
But for example, in some things with not just defense, but government procurement, they have to source things from a certain...
There's preferential...
Bidding for contracts if the business offering the bid is owned by a disabled veteran or something like that.
Right, so DEI is what I'm hearing.
We're going to get into this topic, but it seems like Trump's following through on his promise to stop giving not just preferential treatment, but treatment at all to anybody for any reason.
Because I think that counts as DEI. Yeah, and something that I think is...
Worth pointing out is that the overwhelming majority of veterans, or rather the median age of veterans, maybe is a better way of phrasing this, is older than most people think because conscription ended in the U.S. in 1973. And there are obviously millions of veterans, of people who served in the military post-2001.
But for example, the people who...
Not this year, but next year.
2026 will be the point at which, for example, the first group of officers who joined, who went to West Point or did ROTC or whatever after 9-11 are at the age where they can retire.
If people who are retiring this year would have been in the class that actually started school and then two months later, a month later, it's like, oh, whoops, we're going to war.
So obviously, most people aren't staying in for 20 years and most people aren't officers.
But relatively speaking, you still have a significant number of...
Very few World War II and Korean War veterans left, but there are a pretty decent number.
But obviously, a ton of Cold War, Vietnam-era veterans, Vietnam War veterans, and then people post-Vietnam who served in the all-volunteer force.
So the average age of veterans is higher than people think.
And so...
At the end of the day, when people get out of the military, there are options.
There are programs when you leave, for example, showing you how to even write an application or to fill in the form and stuff for federal jobs where there is a preferential hiring for veterans.
It's not as if it's hand-walked.
A lot of these things can be pretty...
There's no guarantee of a job.
It's one of those things where because it's a pipeline that exists and because of that preference, of that DI, a lot of people go that route because translating being in the military into a civilian job for a variety of reasons can be a challenge unless you're going to go work for a defense contractor.
You know what I mean?
On one hand, there's preferential things because of laws Congress has passed or the government's passed.
On the other side, it's also just that you get out of the military and the paycheck cuts off.
There's no money anymore.
Well, it seems like a pretty basic thing that anybody would need.
Not just a veteran to get help in an applicable job program or whatever.
And so, yeah, I think if...
The average person had this level of support, even with, like, legal preferential hiring or whatever, it would still benefit, you know, the rest of people who didn't serve.
So much as well, but just nothing really like that.
I guess there's websites you can go to if you want to search it out.
Anecdotally, I remember years ago, there was this story about a special wing of a prison in Florida, a state prison that was for veterans only to do vocational training, and they ran it like a barracks, but it was all about rehabilitation.
They're like, oh, we've got to make sure these guys get on there.
I was like, wow, you mean like...
The thing you say that all of the carceral system is supposed to do?
Yeah.
Like, oh, for these guys, we actually will.
For everyone else, it's just the hell factory.
And it's just like, cool, man.
I fucking love this country.
I mean, I... Yeah, so looking at this, I mean, I started hearing stories from friends and people from home that I'd see posts online that, like, even before...
The big cut started coming down the pike.
People, for example, who had start dates in January, those got canceled.
People who had been hired for federal jobs.
And specifically, not just the VA, but you see a couple of anecdotes in the story, the one that you found on Newsmax, but I think it's an AP story that people who had moved their families cross-country to start jobs and in some cases, it's only been weeks since they started working and then, yeah, they've gotten the axe.
Yeah, it doesn't matter.
Daddy's home and he needs a soundbite.
So it doesn't matter if your entire fucking livelihood depended on just working a job.
You're not even asking for a fucking handout.
You know what I mean?
You're not even getting a check or whatever.
You're actually going to be working, theoretically, doing something productive for the country or whatever.
And even that, you can't even have that now.
Yeah, and it's weird because I think that story, the AP Wire story, it seemed as though they tried to find as many veterans as they could.
There was the non-voter, there was the Harris voter, there was the sort of hinted at third-party voter, there was the obvious Trump voters.
And I think the refrain that I saw, I'm not going to say I liked it, but I guess I could kind of understand the mentality was that even the really pro-Trump people were like, Oh, yeah, we want to trim the government and get rid of government waste, but this is just cutting it all down with a chainsaw.
It's like, yeah, that's kind of what they said they were going to do.
Yeah.
Remember how he posed with a chainsaw at the RNC? Yeah, I will say this, though.
CPAC, whatever it was.
Polling was showing something like 6% in 10% or 65% of veterans.
Express preference for Trump.
But the thing I would say, too, is just bear that in mind, that it skews older.
It skews older, almost in the sort of median age band, call it.
It's mostly white dudes.
That's not to say that...
It's actually a pretty diverse population across the board, but on average, it skews...
Just veterans.
The makeup of veterans in general.
Yeah, and that's going to be...
I mean, quite frankly, it's like, oh, you mean...
It skews towards a median age of 55 and a white dude.
That's just a Trump voter.
I hate saying it.
I mean, I know there's obvious exceptions to the rule, but that's...
In a way...
I don't know.
I think that gets kicked around and I see posts about it all the time with people being like, either...
I don't know, like, that sense of betrayal of, like, well, we didn't vote for this when we voted for Trump, or the sort of Harris voter contingent saying, like, well, you know, you got what you asked for, you know, you guys all voted Trump, you know, elections have consequences.
It's just like, I don't know, that's a fucking stupid way to look at it, but...
As if Harris wouldn't have promised to also slash the VA by, or the government in general, you know, if she had had more time to try and replicate Trump's plans.
Yeah, I mean, and also...
Go ahead, I'm sorry.
What's really disappointing about the whole support of Trump amongst the veteran ranks isn't so much that they're conservatives or MAGA people.
It's that they're getting behind their boss.
It's that they like their boss.
And that's really kind of disheartening.
No one should like their boss that much.
Well, I think it's maybe like boss envy, you know, because their boss was Biden for so long and they're like, God, I wish we had a cool boss like Donald Trump, the game show host, you know?
Yeah, I wish I had a boss I could have a beer with.
And then once they actually like see his effect, they're like, wait, he doesn't actually know what he's talking about?
Wait, he actually doesn't give a fuck about the negative ramifications of his choices?
I've never heard of a boss like this before.
It's like, I want, but in the choice between senile bosses, I want the one who is in Home Alone 2. That's my only criterion.
Yeah, I guess looking at it, I think the thing about it is that most people default when they think of this to healthcare.
And the VA does provide healthcare in the sense of like, oftentimes, this isn't the case everywhere in the U.S., but oftentimes, it is through things like facilities that are VA-owned and run, and the employees, the medical staff are VA. Some of the stuff they call, I think it's Veterans Choice or VA Choice stuff, it's like, it's kind of...
Outsource voucher kind of things.
It's sort of like charter school vouchers for going to a regular doctor.
A lot of this has to do with the fact that working for the VA as a medical provider is not particularly popular because it doesn't pay as well as private practice.
And also, there's just a lot of, as I understand it, administrative things about it that make it frustrating.
I mean, I give you examples of some of the things when I was...
Because I'm not...
If you're retired, you're entitled to lifetime care.
I am entitled to care for the things that were diagnosed, like stuff like injuries and things like that from when I was in.
But for the first five years after I got out, I was entitled to the same kind of suite of medical care because I was a combat veteran because I had deployed to Afghanistan while I was in the army.
And so there's a hospital and the government owns it and you don't pay anything.
So I was able to go and I had a number of appointments there.
Yeah, a lot of the medical staff, the actual doctors, the specialists, they did not seem to really enjoy their jobs that much.
But I think it's not just that they didn't enjoy practicing medicine.
I think it was more that administratively, there are a lot of things it does that you can't get anywhere else because no such system exists in America.
But I think that there were a lot of problems with backlogs, with backlogs for people's disability applications, for getting specialist treatment.
The VA administratively can be very inflexible.
You'll just get a letter in the mail being like, here's your appointment.
And if it's the middle of the workday, it's like, well, fuck you then.
You're bad for having a job.
It can feel that way sometimes.
And so they have expanded it a bit or they funded things in private medical care.
But in general, you have a population that gets medical care for things that...
Would in many cases make them very difficult to insure, if not completely uninsurable.
I mean, that's maybe not the average person, but a lot of people.
And by taking an axe to this, there's like the kind of ideological enemy of the sort of Trumpism of something like, well, it's government healthcare, it's state-run healthcare.
But also, I think it's...
I would perceive this as like an opportunity to be like, we cut the government, we can divert more funds to the private sector.
I do think about there are a lot of things where it's like folks are going to have a really hard time, I think, being able to get that kind of care without being more or less immediately bankrupted.
When I look at the very few government institutions that still exist, it seems like most of the...
80% of the problems are underfunding, and then 20% is rigid bureaucracy or just outdated systems.
Something like that, which could be fixed with more funding, it seems like.
Of course, you can't just throw money at an issue and expect it to resolve itself.
You do need competent leadership and management, but are you telling me we don't have fucking people who know how to run?
You know, a hospital?
Like, I think we can find those people, you know.
But let's read from this article, okay?
Because this is like, obviously, I mean, we're looking at this through the lens of a majority of Trump voters, you know.
This is just peak, like, wait, what?
You know, I didn't vote for this.
I voted for the good things.
Why are bad things happening?
And this is Newsmax, you know, no liberal or left publication, and I was kind of surprised to see this one show up in my inbox.
Fired veterans say they feel betrayed by federal job cuts.
Nathan Hoeven is a disabled Air Force veteran who voted for Donald Trump in November.
Barely three months later, he's now unemployed and says he feels betrayed by the president's dramatic downsizing of the federal government that cost him his job.
Quote, I think a lot of other veterans who voted the same way.
And we have been betrayed, says Hooven, who was fired in February from a Virginia medical facility for veterans.
Quote, I feel like my life and the lives of so many like me, so many that have sacrificed so much for this country, are being destroyed.
The mass firings of federal employees since Trump took office in January is pushing out veterans who make up 30% of the nation's federal workforce.
That's the statistic you referenced.
That's what Newsmax gives as the makeup of the federal government overall.
The exact number of veterans who have lost their job is unknown, although House Democrats last month estimated that it was potentially in the thousands.
More could be on the way.
The Department of Veterans Affairs, a major employer of veterans, is planning a reorganization that includes cutting over 80,000 jobs from the sprawling agency.
According to an internal memo obtained by the Associated Press, veterans represent more than 25 percent of the VA's workforce.
Yeah, I don't know.
Whenever I see these Trump voters, these anti-government people expressing regret, sure, I do work in government, but I did vote for the guy who hates people who work in government, who made that his whole plan and somehow expected these results to turn out differently.
Most of the rationalization I see, of course, we'll get into replies here, but most of the rationalization I see is like, well, I thought Trump was going to do it smartly, like you said, Nate.
I didn't know they were going to take a chainsaw out of the whole thing.
I thought they were only going to go after the bad apples.
And it's like, brother, you are the bad apple for existing.
You are the bad apple.
I don't know how you didn't look in the mirror any time in the last 12 years.
You're the bad apple, bro.
It's the same thing with immigrants.
On a recent episode, just recently, I was talking with a couple Mexican-American dudes and an obvious reactionary Trump voter who was like, yeah, well...
They mentioned dudes like food vendors getting arrested and deported and shit.
And the dude was like, well, yeah, I just wish we would focus on the criminals.
And it's like, yeah, but you mean Mexican immigrants when you say criminals.
Yeah.
You do know that the food vending is considered illegal.
That's still a crime.
I know that you think dog whistle is like an SJW woke term or whatever, but it exists for a reason.
Because that's what they're doing when they say, quote, criminal, they mean you.
A lot of these people are really convinced that just because they're not a transgender Venezuelan immigrant, their jobs are safe.
And it's like, nope.
Nope.
The fact that your job exists is why you're not safe.
It's money they want to get rid of.
It's a fucked up lack of class consciousness.
Yeah, exactly.
Because it's you trying to be the boss of your co-workers.
It's you trying to position yourself as better or more efficient or one of the good ones relative to all the blood-sucking leeches that you work alongside all day.
And that's why...
You're failing.
That's why you're miserable.
That's why these things happen to you.
It's because you have zero solidarity with people in the exact same situation.
Because you somehow think yourself better or you've somehow been propagandized against your own neighbors and your own co-workers.
Yeah, I mean, I think about it too.
I mean, obviously, from an ideological perspective, I think I'm...
I'm a bit of an outlier when I think about people I was in the military with.
There are a few people who I think either were the same viewpoint or came to it later on.
But in general, most people that I meet who are veterans, if they're not apolitical, they tend to be...
If not right-wing, then crypto-right-wing in these reflexive positions.
And I don't want to see those people lose their jobs.
I don't want to see those people not be able to put food on the table, not be able to take care of their kids.
But there's a part of me that's like...
If you work for the federal government and you are, you know, you are really kind of full-throated supporting these people who are basically saying the federal government is the enemy.
We're going to do it even bigger and dumber than before.
And you've already seen the track record of Trump's first term.
What that looked like and the kind of things when they went really swung for the fences.
You can't pretend to be surprised.
I feel bad in a way, but I don't know how to say this.
I feel bad in the abstract because I'm just like, yeah, come on, man.
If you were paying attention to anything and you had any kind of sensitivity to what's been discussed and what's already happened, I don't know how you couldn't come to the conclusion that you are on the chopping block solely because...
And it's like, it's the same.
You know, I was thinking about this years ago.
A guy I knew was in the army with someone who was a Persian-American from California and spoke Farsi as his first language, but he was bilingual.
And he tried to be...
He was actually doing an officer program, and he was trying to be a military intelligence officer, and he got classed transportation.
Instead.
And people would be like, man, that's so stupid.
Why would the army do that?
Like, this guy's a Farsi speaker.
Why would they make him an MI officer?
It's like, nah, man, they don't give a fuck.
Like, you're expendable.
You're completely replaceable.
They don't know and they don't care.
Like, none of that matters.
And I bring that up because it's like, that's what it's like in the military when people who are like, the enemy is the government and we're going to get rid of funding things as much as we possibly can.
Like, there is no such thing as being a good one.
They don't care.
They are in the American Enterprise Institute, Koch Foundation slash weird congressman's fucking staff into this kind of job.
And they just see this as every single person is acceptable damage.
And it's like, yeah, you're actually...
Not only have they not made a mistake, they've actually succeeded on their own terms because the goal is cut as many government jobs as possible.
You just don't count.
You don't matter.
It's really interesting because you would think that the treatment and lack thereof of U.S. military veterans would radicalize more people.
But for some reason, the fact that there's so many non-profits and charities that are there to support veterans who need help, that shouldn't be a thing.
It's just happening anyways.
It shouldn't be a third party having to raise money for this.
But they donate through a lens of patriotism.
Instead of, like, a critique.
And it's really unfortunate.
You would think that, like, this would be something that would radicalize people.
Like, you know, regardless of how you feel about everything else, you would think that at least the way we treat veterans and help them out when they get out would be something.
But it's just not.
It's the government doing this mistreatment, though.
So it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Because they can say, look at how the government treated you now.
Now wouldn't you rather have it be a...
Profit-interested organization who has to serve the customer or whatever bullshit they try to valorize the private sector with.
But I do predict many more veterans getting radicalized when the VA outsources its therapy services to the Tim Pool podcast or the Daily Wire.
And then they can get so radicalized that they shoot up an elementary school or maybe a yoga studio.
It's interesting because I spent six years living in the United Kingdom and they don't have a VA there because they've got the NHS and the NHS is not in a really good state because of...
Well, I mean, 14 years of conservative government and now basically the same policies continued by a really right-wing Labour Party.
And one of the things that I found there is that you will see these kinds of things happen where even though veterans are kind of folded into the general population as far as medical treatment goes, but there is still that same argument of like, why do we spend money on X when we should be taking care of our veterans?
And it's like, well...
No one seems to come to the conclusion that the indifference and the malice with which they're treating people when they hear stories of veterans with severe mental or physical disabilities post-service being homeless, being mistreated, being subjected to these batteries of just incredibly inhumane, the dehumanizing sorts of like prove that you're actually disabled things and then still being denied money, still being denied any kind of state assistance.
They never look at that and say, oh, wait, the way they're treating them is the way they're treating everyone else.
And that instead it becomes like, how dare you treat this one group that we like or that we kind of kayfabe that we like this way.
You should reserve this malice for everyone else.
And I feel like that's...
I'm using the British example because you don't have the VA there.
But in the US, it feels like it's the same thing.
I struggle sometimes when you see people kind of only take offense or look at something as a concern or an issue because it's being done to someone who was in the military.
Because I'll give you another one, too.
You could deploy to...
You could enlist and be in the military and get deployed.
And in some cases, back in the 2000s, you might even be, if you'd gotten in trouble, pending administrative separation.
They're going to kick you out of the army and take away your veterans' benefits.
You won't get any.
But they'll still keep you for the deployments.
Even if you get out of the army date, the whole stop loss phenomenon was, say, April 15th, but your unit's deploying January 20th to combat.
They'll keep you that whole deployment and then bring you back and kick you the fuck out of the military and you get no benefits at all.
I met a guy in New York who he said he was administrative to discharge.
It was other than honorable.
People say dishonorable discharge, but those are actually really rare.
You kind of have to jump through a lot more hoops to sort of...
To kind of give people the big fuck you stamp.
So they typically...
They go a different route when kicking people out.
He said that at least in New York, the VA had at least tried to link him up with some of the programs outside the VA that he might be able to get help from.
He said in Texas, he tried to go into a VA facility and he got taken out by the cops.
They literally carried him out of the...
Hell yeah.
And it's like he was in Iraq that he was in Iraq twice, but he had gotten kicked out of the army.
I don't know for what.
And...
Yeah, so he had no actual right to veteran care.
And so it's like, look, talk about some of the ways that this shit works.
It's happening all the time to veterans, but that's actually even by the letter of the laws it is now.
And to me, it's like, well, instead of looking for this one group, you can say, okay, these people shouldn't suffer, but everyone else should.
It's like, can you maybe externalize it a little bit?
Can you expand the group?
And what's really wild is, like, any other job, you just stop showing up once that happens to you, but you can't do that there because it's a whole-ass crime.
I mean...
With, um...
Oh, sorry.
Go ahead, please.
Yeah, I just...
Your idea of, like, you know, the one acceptable group to give help to or whatever, it's like...
Yeah, you saying, well, you know, homeless drug addicts don't deserve help, but homeless drug-addicted veterans do deserve help or whatever.
You're...
You're the reason why people are okay with veterans on the street.
Like, they've successfully laid the groundwork for the dehumanization of homeless people on the street.
Yeah.
And you can't just say, oh, but this one's a veteran, and that changes the whole system.
You helped put this system, and now we don't have a lot of power as just regular citizens or whatever, but you've been, like, propagandized into supporting a system.
That only results in this.
And it is like Shirley Jackson's The Lottery or whatever.
Just like conservatism and reactionary ideology in general is akin to that.
Where it's like, okay, we're going to pick the scapegoat, the outgroup, whatever, to foment anger, to foment mistrust of the government, to implement austerity measures, to revoke services.
And you agreed to be part of this game.
You agreed to play this game where we get to take things away from people who are undeserving and that's our politics.
And your number got drawn this time.
That's all that it is.
Your name got pulled out of the hat this time.
And you can't...
I agree, the system fucking sucks, but not just when your name comes up.
And there's also a part of me that sometimes feels like...
It's kind of, it's almost like the inverse of a scapegoat.
It's sort of like the idea that the example of we should be taking care of, you know, why are we spending all this money on X when we should be taking care of our veterans is never really a question about we should take care of our veterans.
It's a question about, it's basically saying, no, no one deserves anything because this exists.
But like, it existing isn't necessarily a given.
And also like, there are actually, I mean, under, You get your
VA benefits if you have disability benefits.
If you get incarcerated, you get...
They take them away.
I mean, they give them back when you get out, but they don't pay you, for example, when you're in prison.
And it's like, that's...
I mean, people can debate that if they want, you know what I mean?
But it's one of those things where it's like, if at the end of the day, here's someone who's had the...
Man, the VA is fucking this guy over.
They're taking away these veterans' benefits because they've been convicted of a felony and they're in prison.
And it's like, I've not exactly been like, hell yeah, we should imprison more people.
It's more along the lines of like, That example is going to exist no matter what.
And instead of it only mattering when it's a certain population, I don't know.
Maybe these are just platitudes at this point because it feels like it's a discussion that we've had.
You've had on this show.
I've had on my shows for years.
But I do think that I am somewhat surprised that they were willing to be like, no, fuck you.
We hate the military and we hate veterans.
That feels new.
I think it's still It's still a Pretty good facts on your side, or at least anecdotes or whatever debate tactics.
For one thing, these federal workers do not make that much money unless they're police.
They're not like cops making $200,000, $300,000 a year.
I mostly saw statistics of $80,000 as a salary for...
Any average of these federal...
They're not making congressional $250,000, $500,000 a year salaries.
Second of all, they are disproportionately veterans.
So I've dropped that in a couple conversations and it just stops.
They really don't have a response to that.
Let's get into comments because we are going to see people try to grapple with these issues.
So Katik says, another AP report.
Never mind.
And Go America replies, exactly my thoughts.
I don't really trust the AP when they say the guy who bragged about slashing government slashed government.
And that's an increasing tactic we've seen from the Trump voter.
Just a total abandonment of reality.
If it's any...
Like, website other than One America News Network or a TikTok about a TikTok that's hosted by, like, an esoteric hippie Nazi, then it's probably fake news.
Well, it's kind of like the Sandy Hook thing.
It's sort of like, no, those kids weren't real.
They never existed.
And it's like, you can have all these quotes from all these people, you know, and they've gone to try to...
It seems like they tried to get, like, every tranche of voter from the U.S. in 2024 that was a veteran represented in this article.
And they're like, no, no, they're not real.
They made it up.
It's fake news.
I don't know if they're hiring or anything like that, but I want to put that out there.
You guys can't pay me to make this happen.
I think CNN and NBC and all those other news agencies could save a lot of money and make a big impact if they got rid of the newsrooms and started broadcasting everything from the interior of an F-150.
Yeah, Facebook Live.
All your news is broadcasted from a truck.
With someone wearing some sunglasses and they will believe it more.
Because yeah, all they're saying is like, oh, this isn't real because it's from a news source I don't trust.
And it's like, okay, so that means you don't know any veterans who lost their job, which means you probably don't know any veterans.
And it's just like, you're not even in touch with reality anymore.
You're just making up whatever lie you want because you don't like the source.
Naval Air Power says, I get a monthly VA email and there's a spot in there where vets can get a job in the various fields.
I also noticed in this propaganda piece where one, quote, vet, question mark, end quote, said he voted for Kamala, just another lefty hit piece.
They talked to a guy who voted a different way than me, so I know that it's fake.
No true veteran would vote for a Democrat.
No true veteran would be in favor of any kind of gun control or whatever the law they're mad about.
Like, yes.
It's weird.
I used to work at a creative writing fellowship, basically, for veterans and for family members of veterans.
It was a pretty loose definition.
We had some people who their dads were World War II veterans.
And being in the veteran space, that was a perfectly nice place.
But a lot of the veteran space, you come to realize, there's a lot of folks, especially the veteran news influencer thing.
You're so implacably hostile to Islam, but you guys are really good at takfirism.
You're basically like, no, you can't be a vet.
You're not a vet.
Veteran status removed.
You didn't actually do this.
It's so funny, yeah, from the crowd talking about, like, getting deplatformed or getting silenced for your political views or whatever, to just arbitrarily say, oh, no, you actually didn't go live in Iraq for two years or because of how you voted or whatever.
You know, it's pretty absurd.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's pretty absurd, like, cope.
And then, yeah, Naval Air Power also comments, Joseph Goerables.
Would be very proud of AP slash NM, which is Newsmax, I guess.
Oh, they're turning on Newsmax.
It's too woke now.
I love Goerbol.
It's almost spelled like gobbles.
Like a turkey would gobble.
Goerbol.
It's great.
Yeah.
Whenever I... My favorite response to this to do...
I don't do this in every comment section because it would get extremely annoying, but when I'm in...
Teamsters comment sections or, you know, my work Facebook groups.
Whenever anyone's like, Teamsters should know better than to believe CNN. I reply, sir, that's an ad hominem attacking the messenger.
Please explain your actual problems with, you know, which part is false, sir?
Yeah.
I'm just, I don't care.
I have no shame anymore.
I was telling Ani this last night.
I'm all in.
I'm all in.
On debating.
I don't give a fuck anymore.
You've committed the no true Scotsman fallacy, you piece of shit.
Yeah, exactly.
I liked this one from Enzo...
Enzo Sinon at gmail.com.
That's so funny.
That's amazing.
His username in the Newsmax comment section is a fake version of his own email that he probably accidentally put in.
Yeah.
It doesn't even have the at symbol.
I think maybe Newsmax autocorrected to the letter A, gmail.com.
Enzo says, Betrayed?
Ask yourself, why is there so much fraud in the VA? Did you do something?
Do you care?
We need people in the medical field.
You're not out of a job.
You're moving to something else.
Employed again.
No one betrayed you.
Trump is cleaning up.
Oh, you lost your job?
You probably did something.
You need to look inside.
You do this to yourself.
Yeah, I did Medicaid fraud, and you know what?
That's the way you move up in the world, apparently.
You become a senator afterwards.
I mean, I look at this like...
There may have been...
I mean, I haven't really paid a lot of attention to this stuff, but I do recall...
I mean, sometimes there'll be things with...
I think especially in the same vein as like...
Medicare, Medicaid, things where private providers are getting reimbursed by the government, that there have been things where the VA getting overbilled.
But I don't really think fraud's the biggest problem with the VA. I think, as I recall, the biggest problem the VA had was, well, it's expected to provide services to an enormous population with an enormous amount of needs for not that much money, and they constantly have staffing problems.
That, if I remember correctly, was the thing that was really...
They had so many...
That's what I hear.
I don't know.
Whenever I hear people complain about the VA, it's wait times.
It's not being able to make an appointment.
It's like you said, overworked doctors who aren't able to give people the attention they need.
There's another comment in here who has the exact opposite view of that.
But no, I don't even think you should have to actually...
I don't think these people should just be allowed to say the word fraud and then we have to bend over backwards to prove there's no fucking fraud in a government system or whatever.
Where's the fraud?
What the fuck are you talking about?
You're repeating something the ketamine addict in chief said on Twitter.
You're just using the word fraud in place of cuts to the federal government.
The cut is one-to-one equal to the fraud.
That's the only argument that's being made here.
And it's astounding for you to be like, well, I heard the word fraud one time, so I'm okay with 80,000 of my fellow service members getting fired.
Again, extreme lack of class consciousness, I think, that undergirds a lot of this.
This one, here's from somebody who shares their experiences.
Easy Loan says, I'm 75 years old, VN, disabled vet.
Vietnam, I guess, disabled vet.
It's taken me 15 years to finally get to 50% disability.
This was not due to the amount of people.
I had to work my butt off to make it happen.
I had to travel by bus to get evaluations done because the VA outsources the testing.
Ding, ding, ding.
They don't even do the final eval.
I was given hearing tests and hearing aids by the VA, but after an outside company eval, I had been denied three times for hearing loss disability.
I'm just too old and tired to try anymore.
Every vet having to deal with the VA know that less people will probably help if they get the right people to do the job inside the VA. I'm confused by this comment because I thought it was kind of agreeing with us, but now I don't really even know.
Can you translate this for us, Nate?
Do you know what's happening?
I mean...
The funny joke thing is this idea that somehow because you can't quite make the sort of cognitive leap to be like maybe Trump and the various underlings suck at their jobs and just don't want to help.
So it must be the cuts are actually going to be good.
We're going to get more people inside the VA. But if you're complaining about outsourcing, that's a result of cuts.
That's a result of cuts and also of the kind of quick solution because of...
Really, in the 2010s, you were starting to see huge problems with this because of just the understaffing and the underfunding.
And so Congress funded, they set aside, I don't have the figures, but a very large budget basically as kind of like emergency funds that would then be used.
For the outsourcing.
And one of the problems that you would have...
So on one hand, if you're a veteran, it's like, okay, well, you can then effectively get a VA voucher sort of thing.
And if you're waiting on some kind of treatment or care evaluation, you can get it and you give them paperwork or whatever, and you don't have to pay for it.
But one of the reasons is...
I can talk about my experience, but obviously, I was living in New York City.
So they are the combination of the size of the facility and also the fact that they've got so many medical schools in the city.
Much better staffed at 23rd Street.
But I had a friend in Michigan in, I don't know, Traverse City.
And he had to drive a ways to get to a VA facility.
And they were really understaffed.
So that's why they did this.
But then it's like, I didn't realize they were outsourcing it for disability stuff, which is...
One of the things, without derailing stuff too much, is that...
A lot of times when people are fighting for years to get evaluated and confirmed for disability and then get the disability stipend, the pension, basically, is that it's very, very hard to have these sorts of things documented when you're in the military because, especially for junior enlisted people, it implies that you're able to go to the company aid station, the battalion aid station, and they'll actually, A, give you the correct diagnosis, and B... Take it seriously, as opposed to just being like, take some ibuprofen and fuck off.
And so a lot of people, if they have chronic illness, if they have serious injuries, if they have things that were misdiagnosed, whatever, they don't have the medical record from their time in service to be able to show that.
So they have to go through the VA and get checked out and have all these valuations done.
And I presume that it sounds like this guy...
I was trying to file a disability claim.
And so wherever he was, whatever VA catchment area he's in, their solution to the backlog was like, oh, we're going to have providers in fucking anywhere, whoever, do these evals because we don't have the workforce to do it.
So it's like, once again, it does sound like you think you're agreeing.
This person's agreeing with it.
But then it comes to like, it'll probably help.
It's like, I don't know, man.
They're firing.
They're firing.
Actual VA employees.
They're not firing, you know, the fucking, like, guy who've rebranded his pain clinic as, like, fucking veterans clinic, you know, when they stop being able to just hand out OxyContin.
Like, if anything, it's going to increase that.
It's going to increase the number of, yeah, civilian providers where their incentive is that the government gives them money.
Yeah.
No, you guys don't understand.
Like, the whole thing is that there's so much staff, they have no room for patients, so they had to outsource it.
They're all bumping into each other and banging off the walls.
They can't actually get the test done.
To me, this argument sounds like my kid went to charter school and had to repeat the 12th grade five times.
Why do we have so many public teachers?
We need to move along here.
But there's a couple more that are pretty good.
So this is a guy who's trying to explain the waste in the VA medical system, trying to justify these cuts.
I've used the VA medical system for many years and I've seen all kinds of waste in the staffing system.
The main VA hospital I go to has several places a vet can enter the hospital, and at each one is at least three people sitting behind a table to assist vets on directions on how to get where they need to go, even though all vets get letters and emails detailing how to get where they need to go when they arrive.
I think if anybody's ever worked in customer service, they know that patients and customers are very good at going to the right place and getting the right form and doing the right thing in order to navigate your system.
Just on their own.
They should just...
You should just...
Yeah, let's create an app for this.
Especially at hospitals.
It's really easy to figure out what to do.
Especially if you have a letter telling what to do, that I'm sure is very clear and easy to understand the directions.
Yeah.
This is great right here.
Also, I always see a lot of people meandering around everywhere in the hospital wearing scrubs.
There's just so many of them.
Just walking around.
It looks like there's a fire drill in session, but no one is going anywhere in particular.
Sometimes after an appointment, I'll follow them to see where they're going.
Wow, you can't take the ranger out of the man, can you?
Still doing reconnaissance missions.
President Trump, there are too many NPCs in the VA. That's exactly what this is, dude.
You're like a fucking solipsistic philosopher looking out your window and being like, look at all these automatons.
But it's updated with this sort of conspiracy theory mindset where you're following them around to the back rooms.
If you follow them long enough, they just clip through the wall.
And then you've got to find them again.
And they just repeat the same path over and over.
Sometimes, yeah, sometimes after an appointment, I'll follow them to see where they're going, and they literally are going nowhere in particular.
Maybe you don't have, like, the access to the clipboard that they have, sir.
I'm just gonna say that.
Down the corridors and then into a bathroom or pause at a water fountain.
And then back the way they came, usually to get in an elevator to another floor, and then do the exact same.
Yeah, he's just following them floor to floor into the bathrooms.
And that's, I mean, I think maybe what we need to do is hire more people at the VA to monitor the other people at the VA. I think so.
I think so, yeah.
We need more hall monitors.
We need less doors, more hall monitors.
So, I guess that's the justification.
But here, this is...
We have the people who are justifying this by saying waste, fraud, mismanagement, yada, yada, yada.
And I think they know that that's not going to cut it.
They know because the Trump voters who work at the VA who didn't do any fraud or waste because they know what they do every day still got fired and still got cut.
And also, it's going to make services worse.
This is absolutely going to make services for veterans worse.
Worse.
And so there are people who know that.
Trump supporters who know that.
And so they're just throwing it all out there.
They're leaving it all out there.
Chuck8321 says this is no different than a military RIF. Get over it.
RIF is reduction in force.
So basically like when they do drawdowns and things like that.
Yeah.
It's layoffs.
It's part of life.
Undead comes back DD-214 recipient or just chirping noise?
That's a statement of honorable service.
It's like your record, basically, were you actually in the military?
Yeah.
Chuck says, the same as you.
And then Glibwart says, who suffers the consequences?
Don't we owe those who served something?
And Chuck says, no less than we can afford for others.
Ding, ding, ding.
Glibwort says, I do not follow that comment.
I think we owe veterans a level of care that was promised when they signed up, not some reduced level, which essentially fails to honor the national commitment.
Chuck says, can you point out where that promise is in the contract?
I love it.
We're redounding.
We're reducing the fraction to...
No.
You have all these complicated iterations of the number.
The complicated iterations meaning, oh, veterans can have this and this special interest group can have that.
But when you do all the solving, it just comes out to no.
When you actually try to push the issue, it just comes out to no services for anybody.
That's fair.
Getting your veterans benefits is the same as getting the reward money from the NYPD. Yeah, exactly.
You get a giant fell for it again award.
I think the thing here is that they're not even really talking about the services being provided to patients here.
They're talking about this article is about veteran employees who make up a third of the federal workforce getting axed and effectively the complaint, the kind of implicit complaint here is They're not being treated preferentially.
They're not being spared from cuts preferentially as a protected group.
And it's like...
I mean, no.
No, apparently not.
And I mean, I guess this...
I'll be real with you.
Francis and I used to do this sometimes going at the comments on task and purpose that were all older boomer commenters and this kind of thing would happen.
And it's like, I've seen this kind of conversation so many fucking times.
And it's just sort of like...
I guess, okay, if you think that the government, whatever your confidence in it, has no obligation to honor even the things that it says it's going to do or even the fact that they've passed a law.
I mean, it is federal law in terms of EO and hiring practices about preferential treatment for people with honorable discharges.
And it's like, I don't know.
It doesn't matter.
Fuck you.
Yeah.
Cool, man.
I mean, it doesn't really bode well for the sort of national cohesion, even if we're just this group, because it's never just one.
It's just sort of like, if nothing is going to make you change your mind, then it's like, all right, cool.
Well, I mean...
Then you're no different than that dude in, what was it, Louisiana, who was like, yeah, Trump, they put the tariffs up on fiberglass.
My boat-making business went out of business.
I can't afford it anymore.
I went bankrupt.
I don't mind because Trump's making America great again.
It's sort of like, all right, brother, I ain't got anything I can say for you.
Sorry.
Go about your business.
One of the worst things already happened.
You lost your fucking livelihood.
Yeah, it is like the flip side.
It's this neoliberal austerity where it's the government.
Whether it's Democrats or Republicans, pretends to carve out social safety nets for its whatever target demographic, whether it's Kamala Harris saying...
Pell Award recipients who open up a small business in a struggling community will get a grant, an interest-free loan, or whatever.
Or it's the right wing saying, well, benefits for veterans, but for no one else.
Neither side actually means to do anything that would fundamentally change anything.
It's all just a smokescreen.
It's all just a distraction.
While they continue hollowing out what's left of the federal government.
Let me see what this last comment is.
Yeah, right here.
Did I say that?
Some veterans also feel that it's more important for our grandchildren to have a country that is not in debt to its enemies.
That's why we served.
And this gets to the heart about it.
This is what I see when I try to pin down MAGA Teamsters.
When I try to pin down pro-union, but pro-Trump.
Dudes, I'm like, you know, these guys are like, they want you to make fucking $7 an hour, if even that.
And when you finally get them into that corner where they have to justify their position, they'll just say, no, I think it's actually more important that trans women can't play college volleyball than for me to make a living, than for me to be able to feed my children.
Yeah, I'm willing to suffer.
While that position is really hard to deal with, like you were talking about when you're talking to somebody, like how can you even respond to that?
That person might be beyond help.
However, people looking at that would be like, wow, that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.
When you put it like that, oh sure, I'm willing to sacrifice my pension, my house, all of this shit.
On some culture war nonsense that doesn't affect me whatsoever, I think it lays bare the contradictions in working class reactionary politics.
It's amazing too that they're like, no, listen, I'll take on the debt.
I'll take on losing my job.
As long as the country's not in debt for my grandchildren, it's okay if they have to be raised in squalor.
But as long as the country they live in is not in debt, that's all that matters.
That's what I fought for.
That's what I serve for.
Fuck me and my family as long as the country we live in is good.
Yeah.
America is crying out for Trump to do the Great Leap Forward and fucking just do everything we possibly can to make the country strong again, even if it means simply ruining my livelihood.
Cool, man.
Alright, well, like I said, how much I can really do for you if that's the look.
Because, I mean, I canvassed for Jeremy Corbyn in 2019, you know, like I... Did phone banking for Bernie Sanders in 2016. But I can't think of a politician where like, if they were like, Nate Bethea, we are going to fucking make you bankrupt and homeless and you will never have a job again.
I'd be like, you know what?
But he still means good things in his heart.
I still really respect.
I mean, like, there's a point at which I am out.
What if he had a cool hat that you could wear?
And even if you're like, you know, homeless or destitute or disabled or whatever, you still get to be part of the hat club.
Part of the hat club.
Think about it this way.
The earlier I die, the less money my kids will have to spend on me.
If I die right now, that's great.
My kids are going to save so much money on not buying birthday gifts for future birthdays.
Yeah, absolutely.
If I put what little money I have left into this really cool financial opportunity I just saw shared by Javier Millet of Chile, I might actually wind up on top of this thing.
Yeah, we'll see.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I love the idea that, yeah, it's like, well, we trust these people because they're big business success leaders to right the ship in America.
And it's like, if that means divesting Social Security into a shit coin, well, they want the best for us and they're really smart.
If they weren't smart, they wouldn't be as stupidly rich as they are.
Yeah.
The thing, too, just like the last thing on this topic, but the thing about debt.
America can't be in debt.
No private business would ever go into this much debt.
I can't believe we're running the country this way.
And it's like, have you ever looked into how private corporations run?
Have you ever looked into what these billionaires' finances actually are?
They run on debt.
They take out billions of dollars in loans.
That's how they get their money, man.
They leverage their...
It's running on debt.
The whole country runs on debt.
No, I don't think it's a good way to run a country, but it's not a good argument against government when we have a system that already runs on debt.
That's just how it works, folks.
They're in debt to banks that have been rescued by our taxes.
Yeah, it's dumb.
You've got to have lots of money to be in lots of debt.
It is also very interesting that they somehow managed to resurrect the economic practice of Herbert Hoover and be like, that's the standard we need to achieve in America.
The government never intervenes in anything.
We're going to be completely solvent all the time.
And it's like, please do not read what happened next.
Yeah, beautiful, beautiful stuff.
Everything is fine.
Yeah, okay, so the next, I don't know, the next topic pretty similar, you know, I've, We're in the midst of one of the biggest, it seems like, slashes to the federal government in a generation.
And just the conversation over the private sector versus the public sector, I think, is and should be one of the defining conversations of our time.
I don't know, at least it's like the left.
The left is and should be anti-capitalist, and in order to be anti-capitalist, it means you have to have a robust organizational, whether that's the state or whether that's something else, that acts instead of the market.
And of course, I'm simplifying all of this, and I don't need any market socialist nerds in my DMs explaining to me the synthesis or whatever.
I trust you.
We're all on the same team here.
But yeah, I feel like we have a right wing who is more anti-business and anti-corporate than I think I've ever seen in my life.
Now, most of that anti-corporate sentiment comes from things like DEI or comes from things like wokeness, just nonsense, distracting stuff.
These are people who are willing to criticize specific corporations and also corporations at large.
And I think the principle still stands.
Even if they don't like the corporations for doing the one performative egalitarian thing that they've ever done, it still represents The private sector being unaccountable.
The private sector being able to direct its massive amounts of wealth into whichever direction they want.
Now, I might not agree with some of these people that wokeness is the worst thing a corporation can do.
I will actually maybe agree with them that it doesn't do much at all.
That it's actually performative nonsense done by corporations wanting to sell products, wanting to get people's money.
It's cynical.
I will agree with people on the right for that.
But I feel like there's an argument to be made that Okay, you didn't like what corporate America was doing.
That reasoning is fake.
That reasoning is a distraction at best.
But you voted for a guy who you now are celebrating changing the direction of these private interests.
How are you going to justify eliminating That sort of democratic control over these sectors, right?
Like, you only think you got justice because Trump got in there and was able to exert your will over these corporations.
Why in God's name would you want to dismantle the mechanism by which you were able to exert your will over these corporations?
It's very, like, I don't know, fundamental sort of, like, philosophical argument that...
May or may not resonate with people on the right.
I'm trying it out.
But this is a good example in my mind, this news story here from Yahoo Finance.
BlackRock's Panama Canal deal is latest win for Chief Larry Fink in strong start to Trump era, which I'm elated.
It's nice to get some good news for once.
You know, it's like there's so much bleak shit happening every day.
It's nice to know that Larry Fink got a huge win for BlackRock in the first months of the Trump administration.
Like, send this screenshot to any of your online conservative high school friends to watch them die instantly.
Yeah.
BlackRock is one of the bad corporations.
If you're not aware...
BlackRock is one of the corporations that is the acceptable target of right-wing wrath because they did DEI, they did ESG, which is environmental social governance, meaning they were like, hey, we should use our $14 trillion in assets to try and influence the market to make it a better place, by which we mean, you know...
Payouts for performative pro-green energy stuff or whatever.
I can't believe they were actually making that much of a difference, nor would they really want to.
But this is like the globalist corporation.
Even more than the ESG, DEI, Larry Fink is a liberal arguments.
I see the argument that BlackRock has bought up 25% of single-family homes.
That is the criticism that I see in my right-wing groups when BlackRock comes up.
People forget about the DEI. People forget about the ESG. People even forget about the globalism because that statistic about private equity owning single-family homes in this country Is so salient to people, no matter where you are on the spectrum.
And that is class politics.
You are actually having class consciousness in that moment, despite your best efforts.
And that is an opportunity for people on the left, especially when this news comes out.
Not only is this a big win for Larry Fink during the Trump era, Trump fast-tracked this.
Trump made this happen.
Larry Fink, director of BlackRock, personally called your anti-establishment president to fast-track the purchase of ports around the Panama Canal in American interest.
Oh, we're so happy that BlackRock is buying up these ports for America.
Right, everybody?
Yeah.
No.
Nobody believes that.
At least it's an American corporation and not some Panamanian cartel.
I mean, that's the thing, isn't it?
Like, Trump was basically saying we're taking the Panama Canal back, and part of me looks at this as like...
Has Larry Fink convinced Trump that he's done that for him?
Because obviously, it's going to be pretty...
Since BlackRock is so ubiquitous, if you have a 401k in America, at a bare minimum, it's very likely that some, if not all of it, is going to be brokered through BlackRock.
It's so hard to avoid because they are just the guys with money who buy and trade assets.
I've seen numbers anywhere from, like you said, Alex, anywhere from...
10 to 14 trillion dollars.
So more than the entire GDP of the United States.
And yeah, it's like...
So I don't know.
Did he just be like, well, if we buy these ports, can we convince Trump that we've done it for him?
Because if Trump actually did something insane, that's going to mess up BlackRock's bottom line probably more, quite frankly.
I mean, and obviously...
Beyond the fact that I'm sure they're invested in all sorts of things around the region.
Also, if you fuck up the Panama Canal in any way, it's the busiest ship.
I think if it's either it or the Suez Canal, it's the busiest shipping lane in the world.
Well, the biggest canal in the world, the busiest in the world.
I think, yeah, it's super important to, obviously, North America's economy.
And so it's like, are they basically doing sort of like...
I don't want to say you say Truman showing Trump, but what is the incentive here?
Or was this a thing that he's like, we can parlay Trump's insane, just sort of off-the-cuff statements about foreign policy into a thing where he can be like, well, now it's an opportunity for us to buy this and Americans can think that they're going to see some dividend from this.
Because they're not.
I mean, we're not.
It's just another opportunity for them to kind of sink their teeth into something that they can extract more things from.
Right.
I mean, I think it's probably an extremely lucrative prospect to own ports along the Panama Canal.
I think this is probably something that BlackRock already wanted to do and were possibly even prevented.
From doing it, buy a Republican Congress who's saying they're too woke to buy anything.
You can't buy the Panama Canal until you stop my posts from getting shadow banned on Facebook.
No, really, because BlackRock has now scrubbed their website and their annual reports of ESG targets.
I think it's all here in this article.
Let me read here.
I'm reading here from Yahoo Finance.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is notching some early wins in the new Trump era.
The last came Tuesday when the world's largest money manager announced that a BlackRock-led investment coalition would take control of two key ports on either end of the Panama Canal for the price of $22 billion.
The move essentially gives President Trump something he asked for, a larger American presence at this vital shipping lane where he had alleged Chinese interference.
And yeah, Trump did announce this at his State of the Union.
Was that the name of the speech he gave at his whatever address to Congress?
But he said, an American firm has purchased these ports in Panama Canal.
He was savvy enough, or whoever writes his speeches, was savvy enough to not let him say, we sold the Panama Canal to Black Rock.
Yeah.
And so I think that it's just an American company is synonymous with America to almost everybody, whether even you're a CEO or a politician or anything.
That's the struggle that we have to surmount is convincing people that an American corporation does not mean you.
It does not mean you just because you're also an American.
It's like a huge W because it's A, not China.
And it's not America spending its own money, spending your tax dollars on a Panama port.
It's not that either.
But it's still an American.
So it seems, you know, at least superficially, it looks like an American W. Right.
And the argument specifically for owning them is because, well, you know who owned them before was China.
Yeah.
And by China, I mean Hong Kong.
Which is very funny.
The place that just desperately wants to sell itself to either America or the UK. Totally, yeah.
Absolutely China.
We need to get it out of their hands, for sure.
Wasn't there a thing not that long ago where the freak-out Republicans and the more or less rapacious capitalist Republicans had to square off about this because there were ports in the US that I think were bought by a Mazda group or something like a sovereign wealth fund or investment fund from the Emirates.
And people were like, the Arabs are buying our ports.
It's Al-Qaeda.
And it's like...
Guys...
Excuse me, you're talking about ex-shareholders here, right?
Let's watch our tongues, please.
Honestly, I wish that the United Emirates and Dubai and all that people were racist enough to think that that was part of the Taliban.
That'd be awesome.
I mean, I just love the idea there that...
Yeah, I mean...
I can't put my finger on what the importance...
Of this is, other than, like you said, Alexander, that perhaps this is the thing that Larry Fink wanted to do and Trump more or less helped him muscle it through.
Because the idea of the Panama Canal no longer being the American Panama Canal zone is like a full-on early Reagan-era grievance politics kind of thing.
I mean, they signed the bill in 1979. Panama took control in 1999. It's a very long time ago.
And so obviously Trump's brain is just frozen cryogenically in 70s and 80s grievance politics.
But it doesn't strike me as a thing.
His weird asides about countries he wants to annex, notwithstanding, it doesn't really strike me as a thing that has been on my radar, as a thing conservatives really care about.
So I'm drifting towards an explanation of what you said earlier.
This is just a thing that...
Larry Fink wanted to do, but was unable to because, yeah, because in the sort of like corporate correction post-2020 protests, they decided to put up a page about DEI and now they've become persona non grata.
And not for the reasons they should be, which is when you think of like you just said, like the fact that, you know, the sort of new frontier of private equity is beyond like, you know, bankrupting everyone's favorite local businesses or whatever is like buying up, yeah, single family homes.
Trailer parks, things like that.
So they can turn them into...
They can securitize.
They can turn them into assets.
And it's like...
So, yeah.
I don't know.
I mean, the origin of this is baffling to me.
But...
Well, it's...
You know, I haven't really thought about the politics of the Panama Canal.
It's not...
You know, I would think none of my business...
I think about it all the goddamn time.
I am fixated on post-Panamax ships, man.
But it seems like the right and the center, you know, Democrats increasingly anti-China positions lends itself to this, you know, because this is just, you know, let me just get into the comments right here.
I mean, it's all just anti-China stuff.
And it's like, oh yeah, the Panama Canal, what?
China controls that?
Fuck that.
We need an American company to control that or whatever.
Yeah, Ad Monroe says, BlackRock bought back all the ports from the Chinese.
Got it.
Another Trump win, and it didn't come out of the taxpayer's pocket.
Like you said, Tony.
Yeah, this is a win for us, because now a private profit-seeking organization owns it.
Hell yeah.
Right, everybody?
And again, bought back all the ports from the Chinese.
Again, we're talking about a Hong Kong-based company.
I love that they're so racist that they're adopting the one China policy.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
They're like, no, that's just China.
And it's like, oh, yeah, no, you're right, it is.
I do think the general American has no idea.
I do think your average American has no idea.
They will when we start.
Sending an ungodly amount of firearms over to Hong Kong guerrilla groups or whatever when we start flooding their streets with automatic rifles.
Karen Senta says Trump's ability to get uber wealthy mega billionaire class to be somewhat patriotic to the U.S. may well be his main legacy.
With literally trillions under management or ownership, his buddies can reshape the world of commerce, politics, and culture.
Phenomenal!
Incredible.
Thinking this is patriotism is so amazing.
Did I write this comment?
Is this a fucking fellow traveler pretending to be a pro-Trump person?
I can't imagine a worse pitch.
For a Trump voter.
Well, Trump's connections to the ultra-wealthy will allow them to reshape the world in their image, guys.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
He's making these people we all love, billionaires, love America again.
Yeah, getting involved in this crazy, you know, the biggest porch in the world.
It's not for profit.
It's for patriotism.
It's because they love America.
That's why they're doing it.
Hey, salutes.
Wow, we finally got BlackRock to be patriotic by buying up the entire U.S. rail system.
It just shows how much they love America.
They're going to buy up our entire infrastructure.
They really must like this place, you know?
Grelin says, China's goal of world dominance is ended.
They will be diminished daily.
I just read this comment every 10 years.
That guy who writes the book, The End of China, every 10 years is just doing nothing but getting stronger and more influential across the globe.
I love it.
But then Funk replies, Huh?
They just bought the canal.
BlackRock is China.
Whoa.
Here we go.
I didn't think about that.
Whoa.
Here we go.
See, I know BlackRock's bad.
I know BlackRock's bad.
It might be China.
Amazing.
Ladies and gentlemen, I stand up to PP says this deal still smells like China's involved real deep somehow.
It ain't clean by no means.
So I love it.
Just people like too capitalistically racist to even be happy that an American corporation bought a piece of vital infrastructure.
I still think China like.
Like, what's the opposite of China?
Like, I know America is, like, pretty opposite of China, but can we get, like, Iceland to go in on this, too, or something?
And what's Australia up to?
Yeah.
I need some more assurances that they're not Chinese.
You know, let's get some more non-Chinese.
Oh, let's get the Japanese.
They're kind of like the anti-Chinese, right?
Sorry, Trump won't allow that.
His brain's still stuck in the 1980s.
He's gonna go full-on fucking gung-ho on you, you know?
Like, it's just gonna...
Can you imagine the degree when he starts doing impressions, how bad it's going to get?
Nalons says, Not sure how I feel about this one.
I've never trusted Blackrock, but I trust China even less.
Tough.
Just like, yeah, when you're stuck between a Blackrock and a hard place.
A Blackrock and the Great Dragon.
It's like, God, I've been so propagandized against both of these specific things.
Which one do I choose?
Sluganot says, didn't BlackRock buy up vast numbers of single-family homes in the U.S., resulting in vast price hikes for homes in most parts of the U.S.? BlackRock is not a, quote, good company.
The dog too far south replies, BlackRock single-handedly caused the unaffordable housing crisis.
First time in modern history that lending rates continued to climb, yet houses were being purchased at over 80% inflated values.
Everyone know you buy low and sell high, yet rental property companies started buying up entire neighborhoods and entire towns out west.
Yeah, it's almost like your mom and pop kitchen table budgeting doesn't apply to fucking multinational corporations.
I don't know, man.
That's what happens when you have a system where money equals power.
They don't have to play by your rules.
They don't have to follow your logic.
It's an entirely different logic because they have the power.
They have the money to wait out all kinds of competition and in the long run, it will be very valuable for them to buy up all the houses at this current inflated price because they can just inflate it more later.
And also, it's like when you think about the size of their assets under management and the fact that their only obligation is just to give return on it.
It's like...
Their investors don't give a shit.
Their investors don't even know who they are.
Most people don't even know who they are.
If they have anything in the market, if it's a retirement fund, if it's a pension, anything at all, they may not realize that they are actually a BlackRock investor.
It's an impossible-to-fathom amount of money.
So yeah, why wouldn't they?
Like you just said, they can squeeze it.
They're going to get a return on investment.
If it means driving people into homelessness, they'll do it.
They don't care.
Yeah, and the idea that BlackRock is not a good company is absurd because, by all metrics, they're the best company.
They did the best.
They're a good company.
They won at being a company, okay?
Maybe it's the idea of a company owning essential services and goods is what's bad.
And it's the whole thing, like, the American people have no idea what numbers really are.
They have no idea what money really looks like.
These people make $100,000 one year and think they're part of the upper class.
And it's like, that's not the case.
They really don't understand.
There is a vast difference between a million and a billion, and a billion and a trillion.
They have no idea how vast that gap is.
They really don't.
They really don't understand how this stuff works.
El Jefe did tea.
I don't know what that means.
Do not trust BlackRock under any circumstances.
Okay, I won't trust him.
Deal.
Deal.
Got you.
They are globalists with no allegiance to the U.S. They are for sale to any country that wants to partner with them, even countries controlled by the world's bad guys.
Wow, what the heck?
A profit-driven company is only interested in profits?
It has no allegiance to you or anybody else who needs to actually make a living to survive?
That's crazy.
It's almost like exactly what our system incentivizes and points towards and just creates.
I don't know how you type this out.
And what is the opposite of this?
What is the good U.S. company who doesn't...
Seek to exploit its workers or seek to overcharge the customer or exploit third-world labor for cheap goods.
I think you nailed it in your previous comment that the guy says it's not a good company.
It's like, no, by all objective measures, what a good company is in terms of its goals and its obligations, they have won it being a company.
They are the platinum star company.
But their business model involves just...
Yeah, exploitation and cornering things, buying out competition.
And basically, it goes so far beyond this idea that like, oh, if you just do a thing and you do it well, the company is somehow going to be successful.
It's like, I don't know.
I mean, it wasn't BlackRock, but there was a private equity firm that bought up a newspaper in Colorado where like...
In the same year that they won two Pulitzers for coverage of stories that their staff had done, kind of a rare thing in newspapers these days, they fired two-thirds of the workforce because it's me.
They were just debt-loading them.
They were just asset-stripping them.
And it's like, yeah, it doesn't matter.
They are doing the thing that they are allowed to do, and they are lauded as a success story for the system.
Well, I'll tell you this much.
Yeah, because we organized our whole country around profit.
So these are the results.
This is what happens.
Go ahead, Tony.
Okay.
Yeah, I just...
This is the last comment here.
Just Another Drew says...
BlackRock might be a U.S. company, but BlackRock is going to do what is best for BlackRock.
It's naive to think U.S. corporations are looking out for the interest of the American public.
Ding, ding, ding.
Chaka says, would you rather a shell company backed by the Chinese government own them?
Because that's probably what would have happened if BlackRock didn't buy them.
Son of says, quote, it's naive to think U.S. corporations are looking out for the interest of the American public.
Actually, the exact opposite is true.
In a capitalist society, if companies don't make slash do things that are in, quote, the interest of the American public, then they won't be around for very long.
Wow.
Imagine believing that.
We all know this, yeah.
Awesome.
All the companies that exist, nobody has a problem with any of the companies that exist, as they are.
And even when you guys did have a problem with the companies that existed, all they had to do was delete some performative copy from their website, and it solved the problem for you.
I just wish the egg companies would stop working with the Chinese and start worrying about American interests.
Someone getting really confused at this news and writing like a child scribbling fan letter to Larry Fink being like, can you please buy UnitedHealth?
Yeah.
Can you fix it for Americans?
And it's like, I don't know, I think they're doing a pretty good job of being American as fuck themselves, quite frankly.
Yeah, oh, I remember what I was going to say earlier, which was...
You know, like about whether or not a company is good and performs its services and that makes it a good company.
It's like the company that I work for was the standard.
It was a standard in shipping, incredibly profitable, making money hand over fist, but they weren't making as much money as Amazon was.
We're not as profitable as Amazon was.
So we have to reorganize the entire company and scrap our previous business model of delivering consumer goods to residential places of residence because we've decided that it doesn't give us enough profit.
Yes, we profit.
But is it enough?
No.
So we're going to lay off thousands of our own workers in order to change the ratio so the ratio makes the shareholders happier.
And that's just...
When I am talking to Teamsters who are these pro-private sector union members, I'm like, your company is the private sector.
The CEO that you're making jokes about killing every day in the Facebook group is part of the private sector.
You lamenting that the company doesn't give a shit about service anymore, the company doesn't give a shit about its workers anymore, is because it's run by shareholders.
It's profit-driven.
Why would you want this for every other aspect of the country?
You've seen it firsthand how a company going public...
Influences it only for the negative.
I'm really working overtime to try and force some of my peers to connect these dots because I think the contradictions are bare.
We just have to show them to people.
Honestly, you guys should be really pissed off as UPS employees and UPS didn't buy the Panama Connect reports.
Yeah, I think it shows a stunning lack of patriotism on UPS. Yeah, absolutely.
United Panama Service is what it should be.
United Port Service.
They should go back in time.
They should do an even better one than pull a JP Morgan and try to just build a second canal to compete with the Panama Canal.
Just cut a hole through Nicaragua, through the Great Big Lake there, and be like, guess what?
We finally did it.
We got a second canal, and it belongs to UPS. It's brown.
Extremely brown canal.
Yeah.
The guy who wedged his boat sideways in that one actually was a scab.
That guy was actually a seasonal hire.
He was using an app to drive the freighter.
It's been a minute since we've had a Panama Canal clog.
Yeah.
Well, that might have been like, what, the Suez Canal?
Yeah, Panama, I don't know if...
They're all the same.
Yeah, you know, cut a hole in the land, you know, make the oceans connect, whatever.
Yeah, I take a point that, like, this idea of just, oh, it would be much more efficient if the private sector did it.
But it definitely would...
Abstract away the responsibility to the point where the people who make the decisions only care about number go up and nothing about whether it's actually providing good service or as a sustainable business model.
That's one of those things with the government.
People love to shit on the government about certain things, but there are ways in which...
It's not always a default going to be better all the time, but at a bare minimum, when something is state-run, There's not this ability to be like, what if we fucking ruin it, but then we can make away with all the profits before it collapses?
I don't know.
Maybe that will be the new model for government in the United States.
But I just...
Yeah, to me, it's like...
Well, there's a mechanism.
There's like, if it's government, there's theoretically a mechanism that you can address these problems with because you have the public sector.
And it's the same thing with union.
It's like...
Not all unions are great.
Not all unions serve their members.
That doesn't mean you should get rid of the union.
That means you should take over the union and make it work democratically for the people.
And it's like you don't get rid of the only democratic mechanism because it's failing because of the specific people who are in there at that moment.
It's throwing the baby out with the bathwater or whatever.
You have this...
And again, we're at the tail end of what the federal government used to be.
We're sort of coming into the game a little late here.
But why would you dismantle the system by which you have to affect any of the problems that you acknowledge are rampant throughout?
The country.
Yeah, you take away that Democrat, that one, perhaps not particularly strong, but still existing democratic accountability and be like, no, replace that with terms and conditions in an AI chatbot.
I'm sure that'll make it a fuckload better.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, thank you so much, Nate, for joining the show today.
A pleasure to have you on.
As always, check out What a Hell of a Way to Dad.
You want to tell people where they can get that?
Well, yeah, I also plugged some other shows, too, because I am now a co-host on Lions Led by Donkeys, which is a podcast about military disasters.
I'm also a producer and co-host of Trash Future, a podcast about the tech industry and British politics.
And yeah, What a Hell of a Way to Dad is my show with Francis about parenting and also why you shouldn't join the army.
And yeah, those are all anywhere you find podcasts like streaming services, things like YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, they're all available there.
So yeah, just look up those search terms and you will probably find them and hear my voice.
Thank you so much for coming on.
Always great to talk to you.
Likewise, guys.
It's a lot of fun.
Good luck on the dad thing.
Good luck on the Switzerland thing.
I love living in a country that thinks it's made capitalism work.
It's great.
Thanks, guys.
Awesome.
I guess we closed the merch orders, so we'll be sending those over for printing here this week, and we'll keep everybody updated.
On when we'll be shipping those out.
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Anything else to add, Tony?
No, yeah, thanks for coming by.
It was a good time.
Yeah, please, thanks for buying stuff.
It's going to look really good on everybody.
Make sure to wear your merch and your dating profiles and all that stuff.
