Joe Jabe Sexton and Nick Houselman expose the DHS’s 500+ subpoenas targeting Google, Meta, Discord, and Reddit for ICE critics, warning of escalating surveillance and authoritarian suppression. They link this to Trump’s stolen USAID funds—$1B+ misused for private jets and gold-plated weapons—while the EPA scraps climate regulations, including idling standards, despite decades-old warnings. California’s Newsom threatens legal action as states push back, but systemic inaction persists, revealing power over principle. The right’s refusal to act on existential threats like climate change mirrors their denial of responsibility, prioritizing comfort and control over survival. [Automatically generated summary]
I'm joined by my co-host, Nick Houselman, and we have a very rare California corner installment today.
It's not 72 degrees and sunny.
You're actually going through it today.
I'm going, I mean, my feet are wet and cold, and it's a deluge right now, biblical proportions.
So stay inside if you're in LA.
My goodness.
What was that like for you?
Was it like the sky was falling?
Do you retain some Midwestern sensibilities?
Or did you just fall?
But, you know, we've had such, we had 80-degree weather like in January, which is like unheard of as well.
So we're definitely A, we're due and B, we're not used to this.
It's not, you know, 55 degrees and raining is not where it's at.
Well, we're going to have a conversation a little bit about the climate.
So just keep that in mind, everybody.
Also, a reminder, head over to patreon.com slash Mutt Craigpodcast.
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Nick, we start with another disturbing little tidbit from ICE and the Department of Homeland Security.
The New York Times has reported that DHS has sent hundreds of subpoenas to tech companies like Google, Meta, Discord, and Reddit, demanding information on social media accounts that are tracking ICE and also commenting on ICE.
This is part of a larger issue that you and I have been tracking for a long time, which is the merging of tech, state power, fascism, and surveillance.
To me, this feels like one of those moments where it's something that I knew without a doubt was going on, but hearing about it, it's also chilling in its own way.
You know, you combine that with the fact that they're trying to buy up all manner of warehouses for people to be incarcerated in.
And if you think it's only going to be for immigrants at some point, then you're probably naive.
Hey, by the way, shout out and solidarity to unofficial friend of the show, the woman who set fire to one of these places in Kansas City, Missouri.
So good job there.
I mean, like we talked about this last week, right?
And when you get into this, what was my take?
My take was, how can you do it where you don't get arrested?
Hey, she got away.
We were talking about it before we started recording.
She was wearing Birkenstocks, Nick.
Like she was out.
She did not care.
She did not give a shit what happened to her.
Yeah, they are absolutely setting up a nationwide system of concentration camps and we're just waiting on that to go online.
Yeah.
And I listen, I have no problem with the statement.
You know, it's certainly Jeans and Sandals is a bigger statement or a big statement as well to do this with no mask, no nothing.
So that's just, you know, that's my worry.
I want like the good trouble.
I want the ways things that can get stick a finger in the eye of the government, but I just want people to be able to not be tortured and incarcerated and all those things for making a stand.
This is also sort of just fascinating because the we like, yeah, we've always assumed that Palantir had all sorts of access.
It also sounds a little bit like they really want to know who the anonymous people are.
Not as obvious on Facebook or whatever.
Oh, Facebook, I guess you have to have your name, but if you're on Twitter and you're shit posting against ICE, they kind of want to know who that is.
You know, I'm out there.
You're out there.
They'll know pretty quickly that we're who we are and how to find us, I imagine.
But that's the surveillance thing.
This is getting to be more and more serious.
I just hope that that gets blocked, right?
I mean, I think there's legal ways to stop this from happening, but I feel like, correct me if I'm wrong, in that reporting, they have given up some information to the government already, haven't they?
Oh, absolutely.
They have.
And, you know, it's not a surprise that they have.
I, there's so much going on here.
I want to take it piece by piece.
And something you just touched on, Nick, which is really important in all of this.
These subpoenas are about anonymous accounts.
They are trying to get these tech platforms to give them information on people who are using, you know, fake names and anonymous sort of stuff.
That automatically tells me what?
That they have access to everything else in terms of people who have used their actual names.
I say that not as a scare tactic.
I say that because we need to admit this.
We need to openly understand and admit that all of us that have used social media and likely email and any sort of a platform, whatever it is, to criticize Donald Trump, to criticize the right wing, to criticize ICE and DHS, they have all that stuff.
And that was part and parcel of doing business and all of this.
Every time we get on this subject, Nick, we have the conversation, which is we watched this thing get constructed and so many people looked around and they were like, I don't have anything to hide.
And next thing you know, you're in a fascist dystopia and yeah, you probably have some things to hide.
The other thing that we need to understand is that going back to that time period where this thing was originally being constructed, back whenever we were finding about operations like Prism, you know, when we're looking at surveillance of supposed terrorists, all of that, all of these sites and all of these companies have worked with intelligence and have worked with governmental bodies to include back doors.
They, they, they, you know, sometimes you have to send a subpoena.
That way, you know, if you sue one of these tech platforms or one of these corporations, they're like, I don't know what to do.
We got a subpoena.
And at that point, it's, it's the, it's like the wink, wink, nudge, nudge between a political candidate and their super PAC, right?
Because those two things are completely and utterly in alignment.
They're doing exactly what they want to do.
So anybody who's listening to this, chances are that you were already on a list.
It just so happens that now we're finding out that we're all in this together.
That regardless of whether or not I don't know, you had an avatar of Snoopy wearing a bandana, right?
And you called yourself like ultra resistance fighter.
Chances are that you are now getting found out in all of this.
And there's bad news here, which is they're going for it, Nick.
Like they are really, really going for it.
And God knows there's going to be some consequences.
But the good news here, it's like taking a blood oath or a blood pact, Nick.
We're in this now.
We're all in it together.
So we might as well face it.
And we might as well move forward with that understanding and take appropriate precautions and take appropriate actions.
Well, yeah.
And the more of us that are in it, the better for us.
Absolutely.
And listen, would the government want to monitor the reaction to their policies on social media?
Would that be a good policy?
Would that be what they've probably been doing all these years?
Is that safe to say, yeah?
Yeah.
And on top of that, I mean, even Democratic presidents like Joe Biden and his administration, they didn't just monitor it.
They spent an inordinate amount of money trying to shape it.
I mean, we're always being manipulated.
We're always swimming in this soup.
Right.
So it's like, you know, the innocuous version of this would be, yes, we are making sure that our policies are popular, that people want us to, you know, they're agreeing with what we're doing.
By the way, if this was a video or a movie, you would be saying that and it would be the voiceover as like an ICE agent is using a battering ram to get into somebody's house.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I think that what also could be is the camera pulls out just a little bit farther back where you can see beyond what you can see on this on my webcam and there's a ICE agent like with a gun ready to shoot me.
But here's the thing.
If you pull out a little bit more, okay, because, you know, me, I like to kind of get in people's brains here.
Why?
What is the value of having very personal information of these anonymous sources that are probably the kind of accounts that are getting a lot of traction on social media with their negative responses to their policies and to what they're doing?
That is obviously where you could kind of, probably the answer is, I'm sure, very simple and very nefarious.
And that's the issue here is why would they have to subpoena?
Why would they go so far as to subpoena a company, you know, which ends up coming public to get this information?
What are they going to do with it?
What are your thoughts on that?
They're creating a database of the people that they need to watch and potentially round up in the future.
There's no other way to look at it.
So this will be an easier way when they get the phone number, they get the address, now they can surveil you.
Well, they either will surveil you.
Well, I mean, they probably will surveil you.
And then on top of it, Nick, there's all kinds of other things they can do.
I mean, what has happened with ICE so far?
Whenever they've scanned somebody's face and they're like, hey, welcome to a new list, which takes away everything from TSA preferences to put you on a watch list to possibly no fly list.
Possibly you're not able to leave the country.
Like they will use everything at their disposal as they're surveilling and as they build up momentum to whatever the next stage of this thing is.
Okay.
And then and those kind of things will simply serve to tamp down the resistance, basically, is what they're saying too.
If I suddenly find I can't get on the PSA list or the TSA list and I get a plane quicker or I can't leave the country, then I might say, ah, crap, I better shut up.
It can only get worse from here, I think, right?
Perhaps just the notion of getting the subpoenas is either the opening salvo or just the initial, just the big threat that they had to let everyone know, hey, this is what's going on.
This is what we were willing to do.
So you better stop it now.
That's exactly right.
And it goes into what I've defined as sort of the authoritarian bargain, right?
You have three choices.
One choice is that you put on the armband and you hope to share in the spoils.
The next is that you lock your door, you put down the shades and you're like, whatever's happening out there, it has nothing to do with me.
And you hope the knock never comes to your door.
The other is you say something about it and you fight against it and you get crushed, possibly, right?
And that's what's being offered at this point, which is that we, it's a really hard thing to talk about, but we, we sleepwalked into this, you know, we really did.
We were like, oh my God, it's so much fun to text people.
And oh, memes are the best.
And I love pirate, pirating music, you know, like all these things.
Like, isn't it fun?
We get to hang out with each other.
We get to record a podcast, all these things.
And meanwhile, all of this apparatus was being built up around us.
And that's a hard thing.
And I don't say this.
It's a little bit of hard medicine.
You know what I mean?
It's the equivalent, Nick.
And it really sucks to say it this way, but as somebody who has had to talk to many people that I've loved and like, they're like, well, I have to get this surgery or I have to get this treatment, you know?
And you have to say, this really sucks.
And we don't want to be going through this.
But the reality is that we have to.
And is it going to suck?
Yes, it is.
But we have to do this thing.
We have to get through this thing.
And unfortunately, that's where we are at this point.
There's, we can be upset about this and we should be upset about it.
And it should motivate people.
If you don't want to spend the rest of your lives looking over your shoulder and wondering if some tweet that you put out drunk in 2017 is going to get you put into a gulag, well, we have some choices, don't we?
Which is we have to fight this thing.
And I think as time goes on and desperation takes over, more and more people would simply be willing to get crushed in the effort to stand up to this.
And, you know, it's unfortunate because with the kind of, you know, it's not even, it's not synchronous battle here.
It would just be a matter of time before a government like that could just crush anybody who's dissenting.
I think that's the whole point of this, right?
They were hoping to rely on people who were getting elected who did not have these tendencies and whoever thought you could do that.
But like Mayor Fry said, he's like, there are people that would have turned in and Frank.
Yep.
No, absolutely.
And I mean, you know, it's a result.
I'm thinking a lot, Nick, of, I don't know.
Did you see the click of actual friend of the pod, Waj, Wajahad Ali?
Did you see him talking with Hakeem Jeffries?
Yeah, I did.
I did.
Which, by the way, big, big ups to Wajahad Ali for pressing Hakeem Jeffries on his refusal to say that he would abolish ICE.
For the record, it's really hard to get an interview like that.
It's really hard to get an audience with someone like Hakeem Jeffries.
And most of the time, people play ball and they go along to get along in order to like keep that access open.
Waj put his feet to the fire and was like, what is your problem?
Why can you not do this?
And what did Hakeem Jeffries do?
He's like, I don't even understand what you're saying.
Fuck that guy, first of all.
Second of all, like, that's the thing you just said, which is the hope is that you elect people who wouldn't use this stuff against you.
But what's being revealed to us now, Nick, it's being revealed that every choice that we had at every given time, they were going to construct these things.
It just was a difference of how they were going to use them and whether or not the full power of them was going to be turned on the public or if it was going to be here or there.
It was always going to end up where it is now.
And it sucks, but it's another, again, with the disease sort of metaphor.
Like, I'm glad we caught it now.
You know what I mean?
I'm glad it's been diagnosed.
That means we can do something about it.
Well, do you have any?
Would you be upset if I said something that would probably guarantee that Hakeem Jeffries would never come on this show?
Hakeem Jeffries, I wouldn't welcome Hakeem Jeffries on this show.
Because, you know, just to put a button on what Waj did is, you know, he laid out the incredible popularity for abolishing ICE across the board, how it would be the easiest thing for a Democratic politician to simply say that and to hear Jefferies A, sort of say, I don't even understand what you're talking about, and then try to argue the semantics of it where I said a couple things that are like sort of mealy on that direction there.
So in order, it's so facto, I am agreeing with you, and I don't have to actually say it so they don't get a sound buddy me saying it.
Like it is exactly the epitome of what's wrong with what we have in this leadership because they won't even say, you know, and we keep saying this.
If you're a Democratic politician now, whatever you're afraid that they're going to accuse you of on the other side, they're going to accuse you of it anyway.
Performance vs. Protection00:13:52
So you might as well just say the thing that you did the right thing and do the right thing.
I don't, I don't think Hakeem Jeffries actually wants to abolish ICE.
I don't think the rank and file of the Democratic Party wants to.
They want to inherit inherit ICE.
They helped build it.
Why would they kill what they helped build?
They have no interest in doing that.
I don't know.
To me, it would just reek to, oh, we can't be soft on crime.
You know, we can't say things that sound like they're soft on crime.
You think they think that's it?
But here's the thing, Nick.
If that were the actual motivation, then the unpopularity and the popularity of abolishing ICE would have actually pushed them into that.
Like if they were just worried about public sentiment, they would do it.
The fact that they're pushing back so hard against something like 70% of the country wants to abolish ICE.
Like it's not that they're afraid of blowback.
What they're afraid of is that they don't want to actually change what is happening.
This is the equivalent, Nick.
It's like Frankenstein looking at his monster.
Like he made that.
He helped create that.
He doesn't want to destroy it until like it's at the absolute worst possible second.
Okay.
Well, don't forget that is also the crux of the matter.
He's trying to chase him down, trying to destroy it, but by then he's too powerful, I suppose, right?
It's sort of the answer.
Okay.
I mean, fair enough.
Yeah, it's just hard.
I know that's not a fun thing to have to swallow, but it's, you know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, it would just seem pretty easy then that those guys would get voted out pretty quickly then.
They deserve it.
Again, I just want to give huge props to Waj because that was like that took some guts.
I was really, really proud of him in that.
Nick, speaking of this criminal administration, reporting has now revealed that Russ Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, he's using stolen USAID funds for his own personal security and his own sort of enjoyment.
If you want to talk about a kick in the teeth, man.
You know, how many directors of the OMB have had to have round-the-clock extra security for their lives, right?
It's got to be a short list.
And by the way, like, if I am, I'm not making light of death threats, but like, if you are in like the political sphere, if you actually have like, you know, some skin in the game, you're going to get some death threats.
I mean, like, like, I, I didn't hire personal security because people were like showing up at my door and stalking me.
Like, are you kidding me?
Like, Russ Vought is worried about attempts on his life so much so that he's going to use money from USAID to create a personal security.
Like, who the fuck are these people?
I mean, to me, that's like the accounting, you know, magic where they can move this and here and there.
Well, no one's using that anymore since we crushed that whole agency.
So we'll just divert it that we're there.
But part of me just feels like, you know, and it goes to lack of self-awareness on the right, but like maybe, just maybe, if you're doing a job like heading OMB, which should not be that partisan or it should not be that controversial, and you are facing enough death threats that you need this kind of round-the-clock thing, maybe, maybe that shouldn't be your job.
I want to say a couple of things.
First of all, we haven't even touched on this.
Hundreds of thousands of people already have died because they got rid of USAID.
Like we're literally talking about like a genocidal level of violence that has been perpetrated by the Trump administration.
And at the end of the day, we'll look at ICE and we'll look at concentration camps and deporting people and all of the cruelties that they have done.
We'll get into climate in a little bit.
Like all of these things are going to be stains, not just on the country, but things you look back on at the Trump administration and you're like, my God, just one of the most destructive, criminal, awful bullshit regimes of all time.
What has already happened with USAID is like incredible.
How many deaths and how many deaths are going to happen if this doesn't get put back?
The second point I want to make on this, Nick, and you just brought something up.
I've been looking at these people.
And again, it's very much, they're a PR front, right?
They're rodeo clowns that are out there to like distract people.
It's like the business of the rodeo is happening behind the scenes, right?
They're not cooking up any of these things.
Trump is a dead mad king is occasionally coming up with things off the top of his diseased brain.
But most of the time, this is being run by the think tanks and institutes who have power.
Nick, you know what I think is behind the personal security of people like this and Christy Noam with like the Jets and Kash Patel and all of his bullshit?
It's a status symbol.
They're LARPing.
They're pretending like that they are in danger because they're dangerous, right?
Because they themselves are somehow or another so important that someone would want to kill them.
And you'll notice when you look at the right wing, everyone from Donald Trump all the way down to all the associated grifters and subsystems and ecosystems, all of them want to pretend like they are dangerous and that they are endangered.
It is the perfect scenario for the right-wing paranoids, which is that they have, they are warriors, but at the same time, they are the hunted.
You know what I mean?
And I think shit like this, you roll in with your private security.
I mean, I think so many of these people, they do it as the equivalent almost of having like a posse.
You know what I mean?
Like you have a group with you that makes you look really, really important.
And so you must be protected.
And that's why children have to starve right now.
It's interesting.
That's a fascinating take is like, you know, when I first saw the headline, I was thinking, oh, he's siphoning money into his own pocket.
Oh, I mean, likely.
Oh, yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
Yeah, which they're probably doing anyway.
But like, this is, then it became a thing.
Oh, he's funding his, you know, his U.S. Marshal detail.
I got to look deeply into that because it feels like the Secret Service that's supposed to protect him and not U.S. Marshals, which is also interesting.
But at any rate, that makes sense.
I mean, like, you know, like Christy Noam has her personal plane and like he can have his security detail, I guess.
I mean, I, again, I don't want to make light of death threats.
You're right.
Like it could very well be something that's serious and that they, you know, he's got a family and this and that, whatever.
But it would just be nice at some point if there was a little bit more self-reflection to realize that maybe that what they're doing is bringing this upon themselves.
And if they were not to do what they're doing, they would not have to have, you know, protection against death threats.
Yeah.
And so much of it, I think, is it's sort of like an evolution of conspicuous consumption.
You know, it's like Donald Trump back in the day would, you know, have his jet.
He would have like his gold-blated apartment.
He would, you know, have all this stuff, garish sort of things.
And I think at some point or another, the conspicuous consumption, it turns into something else, Nick.
And I think that we've reached that point.
People want to talk about Mar-a-Lago face, you know, with people like Christy Noam and Lara Trump and all of these sort of women.
And by the way, the men are grotesque freaks as well, right?
Having so much work done and looking so strange.
But what is the point of that?
It's to show off that you can spend the money doing that, right?
It's almost like you're, I don't know, Nick, have you seen, this is a weird turn, but have you seen this character who's shown up in the recent couple of weeks, clavicular?
Have you seen this?
It's a buddy of Nick Fuentes, who's like a young man who's talking about like look smacksing, which is you're you're he's talking about breaking the bones of his face in order to get like better jawlines and better cheekbones.
And him and all of his stupid friends are doing stuff like that.
Like it is, it's just brain dead stupidity.
And meanwhile, they're far right, they're nihilistic, you know, they're anti-Semitic, you name it, all this stuff.
It's all a performance of the privilege to be able to do shit like this.
And, you know, Nick, we grew up in the 1980s, right?
You remember back in the day, there would be like, it would be on like the nightly news or 60 Minutes.
There'd be some profile of some like quote unquote second or third world dictator.
You remember that?
And it would be like they'd be driving in fancy cars and them and their buddies would have like gold plated revolvers and shit and like all this stuff.
That's the performance of wealth and privilege taken to this like absolutely absurd degree.
And Russ Vought, I don't think is going to show up dressed as like an army captain or something.
But like I, if I told you that next year, Donald Trump Jr. is going to show up to everything without a shirt, without a coat on, and he's got twin holsters and he's got desert eagles in him, would you be surprised?
No, no, that's definitely.
I mean, it kind of plays in the back.
Like the Oval Office is a good example of that as well.
Exactly.
Yes, exactly.
It's a symbol of like pristine austerity, right?
Because it's the people's house.
And what he's turned that into is, you know, is that cheap version of like the 80s bad guy authoritarian in some third world country?
Like, that's what it looks like now.
And that's what we have.
That's what they're trying to do.
That's what's so what's so bizarre, but with all the cautionary tales, all the propaganda that we've grown up with against that kind of thing, for him to be able to tap into enough of an electorate that can keep him in power is truly remarkable in the United States.
Yeah.
And you know, looking back on the one that kept bouncing around in my head was Saddam Hussein, whose son, like Uday and all that, like they have tigers and shit, you know, and gold-plated or something, right?
They were like hunting real people.
They, whatever they were, yeah, it was horrible when they were doing it.
Yeah, it's just like this giant performance of all this stuff.
That's where it has to go because it's not enough that they're stealing money and they are most certainly stealing money, you know?
Like, I'm sitting here, and unless we get rid of Donald Trump and unless he dies, right?
How much money he is amassing that he's stealing from the United States, he's stealing from Venezuela, he's stealing from all over with the bribes and all of that.
Like, not only, and by the way, the true marker of this corrupt sort of authoritarian thing is what has happened to the East Wing, right?
Which is you don't spend your own money, you make sure that you steal money and other people pay for it.
And he wants to put in this arc in Washington, D.C., or whatever.
Like, as this gets worse, the garishness of it will get worse.
So, right now, we're having a conversation about Russell Vought, like having private security paid for by USAID funds.
Like, he'll have his own private jet before, you know, the month is out.
Yeah.
And then, if Christy Noam sticks around, I'm sure she'll have her own tank here at some point.
Like, it's just, it can't stop.
You know what it reminds me of, also?
It's like in Goodfellas when they rob the airport and all of a sudden it's like, stop spending money, stop showing what you're doing, but you can't.
Because what is the purpose of stealing the money if you can't show it off, right?
Because that's the value of it.
It's a the value of money to some people is the freedom from responsibility.
The value of money for other people is to project their worth, it's to project who they are and how people should respect them.
Yeah, right.
And we all know what happened to all the people except one who was involved in the Lufthansa heist eventually, which is sort of apropos of like what Trump will do to everybody as well as the walls close in.
The East Wing, by the way, you mentioned that.
You know, it's they've ceased action on that on the ballroom.
As far as I could tell, the agency in charge of that has said, you know, you guys don't have permits, you don't know how you're designing this is not right.
Uh, there might just be a gaping hole in the ground for the rest of his term.
I'm not even sure he paid the guys that demolished the East Wing, dude.
That is that is so appropriate.
Yeah, that's so, so unbelievably appropriate.
You know, it reminds me of uh, I used to have neighbors, and the neighbors like started to build what was supposed to be an addition on their house.
Yikes, and then like they just didn't put a roof on it and they didn't like you know, finish it.
It was just like boards and like subfloor.
And then, guess what happened?
Like, it rained and then winter came and then more rain and more winters, and years pass, and eventually you couldn't even build on it anymore, right?
And now, what are we talking about?
We're talking about the possibility that part of the White House might just like the East Wing of the White House might just like be like my neighbors, you know, addition part.
Yeah, yeah.
And, you know, at least if the ballroom is not built, I mean, that makes me happy.
You know, but at any rate, it's just, it's just, it's a perfect encapsulation of what's going on, especially for him as a guy who is a real estate guy who, you know, didn't get any kind of approvals ahead of time, thinks he can just ram through stuff as a president and, you know, ultimately you can't.
Well, and I just want to make one last final point on this because we're talking about like one of the main sort of telling points of Trumpism and MAGA and fascism in general, like especially this, this brand of it.
Nick, hundreds of thousands of people have already died because this money was pilfered.
And why?
Fucked-Up Priorities00:09:08
For shit that these people don't even care about.
You know what I mean?
Like Americans have been murdered.
Immigrants have been stolen and most certainly murdered.
Like we have like this system that is being created for the purpose of giving people things that they think they want, but they don't even actually want.
It's like giving a rich kid a toy.
Like they're like, I don't fucking care about this.
I have everything.
This doesn't matter to me.
And we're literally looking at everything being destroyed for what I would argue is the absolute worst possible reason.
Absolutely.
And it's out in the open too.
That's the thing.
It's like they don't, they're not, they have to hide it.
They don't have to hide it at all.
Speaking of stealing, pilfering, and destroying, one last thing here, Nick, as the Environmental Protection Agency.
Nick, real fast, can you check the notes?
Who created the EPA?
Yeah, Dick Nixon.
Oh, yeah.
One of my favorite little trivia notes.
The EPA has rejected the finding that greenhouse gases threaten humans and the environment, which has taken out the entire bedrock of any sort of climate change policy or regulation.
At the same time, because they've taken out this Jenga piece, Nick, in America, when it comes to auto manufacturing, there are zero standards.
No standards.
There are no standards for auto manufacturing.
There's no standards in general for anything, which is completely the opposite of everywhere else in the world that is currently still carrying on neoliberal capitalism.
But we have reached the point where not only are these freaks saying the climate change isn't real, but they have now more or less taken out the last brick that they possibly can, which gives the federal government the ability to regulate greenhouse gases.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, and they prefaced it by saying that they were going to repeal, as far as I can tell, just the thing where, you know, when you park, when you stop at a light, the car like turns off and then it turns back on right when you want to go.
So you can, so the idling doesn't contribute to pollution.
So they got rid of that one.
And I think people don't like that.
That was annoying.
I don't like that, but that doesn't mean it should go away.
Right.
And but, but like, that's the thing that they, you know, as the selling point, we're going to like, we're going to focus on that thing.
And then, oh, by the way, there will be any regulations or anything anymore.
And like, you know, the idea that we've gotten to 2026 and we've leaned into coal is, you know, I can remember when we started this pod, you know, in 2019, whatever it was, saying, I do not want to hear any solution to a climate issue that does, that involves coal, you know, and in spamming oil.
You know, that's got, we have to be moving on.
So it is fascinating.
And, you know, Governor Newsome in California is going to threaten or threatening to do a lawsuit and they're going to try.
It makes me feel like there could be some states that will just impose their own cafe standards on the cars.
And, you know, I guess dare the federal government to come in and force not to enforce those, you know, but California's got a lot of sway in this one.
I want to say a couple of sobering things before we get to the actual story in general.
And this is, again, it's one of those sitting down being like, hey, you have a disease.
We have to take care of it.
It's not going to be fun.
And here it is.
All of us who have spent.
Nick, when did you hear about climate change?
Do you remember?
Do you remember when you first became aware of climate change?
When I was in high school and they banned aerosol deodorant was the CFCs, that was definitely, I certainly knew about it then and why we couldn't use them.
They got rid of those.
So, you know, that's mid-80s.
I was in, so mid-80s, I was in elementary school.
And you remember they used to send out magazines to schools, little, little, little magazines for kids like Ranger Rick.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I loved, man, I loved me some Ranger Rick, Nick.
Oh, my God.
That was a good day every time we got a new issue with that.
I remember reading in one of those magazines in elementary school about climate change.
Of course, back then it was called global warming, right?
Before it got its glow up and, you know, was closer to what it actually is.
And I remember having a discussion in that elementary school class and asking the teacher, like, what needs to be done or what needs to happen?
And the teacher just being like, I'm sure our leaders are going to figure it out.
Right.
They're not going to fucking figure it out.
They're not.
And that's awful.
I work on climate.
I've got a big giant climate project that's coming up, what, in a month and a half, two months.
Like all this shit, like the leaders of this country are not going.
We're having a hard enough time getting them to admit that it's real, much less actually doing.
And by the way, personal use of vehicles, that's part of it.
The larger issue here is, of course, the military.
That's the largest thing.
It's the state powers that are driving this.
And as a result, we would need some sort of a changing in terms of our military, in terms of national security, you name it, right?
Which, by the way, it's weird how that's interconnected with the fact that we would need to lower our military budget and then have money to spend on, I don't know, healthcare, social programs, education, but that's neither here nor there.
I'm just talking crazy, Nick.
But they're not going to fucking fix it.
The people that we have in charge are not going to fix this thing.
And that sucks, but it does allow us to have a moment of clarity in which we say, well, we can't wait around on them anymore.
We can't just wait on these same assholes to fix a problem that they won't even admit is happening.
And as a result, it's going to get worse until it becomes one of our major sort of priorities.
And I want to go ahead and call ourselves out.
When I was putting together the rundown for this, I put this in the last spot.
Nick, if you were putting together this episode, would you have ever put a climate story in the top spot?
Probably not.
Why?
It's less interesting to people, right?
I mean, that's the answer.
It's less interesting.
It's an existential problem.
What the fuck am I going to do?
Oh, these guys are talking about climate.
I'm going to turn this off.
That's right.
We saved this to the last slot so you'd listen to most of the show.
And now we're fucking talking about it.
Meanwhile, we have an existential problem hurtling towards us at God knows what type of speed.
The point of it is this, Nick, the people who are in charge right now, the fascist, they're not interested in solving problems.
They're there to make the problem worse and to make people not pay attention to the problem.
They're there running interference for the people who have caused climate change in the first place and to keep people from believing it.
They know it's real.
They're simply trying to keep people from coming together and pushing back against the capitalist wealth class.
That's it.
That's the entire purpose of all this.
But the rationalization tends to be, well, A, money, and that's really short.
But B, like, you know, the kid who'd be like, I want a candy bar.
No, you can't have one.
But Johnny gets to have a candy bar.
How old is that kid?
That kid's five, six, maybe, when that kind of reasoning?
And this is the same thing where they're like, well, China is polluting.
So we should too.
Like that, but that's as far as they can get.
China pollutes a ton.
So why should we have to have any kind of restrictions on our pollution?
Like literally, as if we're not going to be contributing to that and making it worse and accelerating all these issues.
And, you know, what they probably end up wanting is what we talked about in terms of, you know, climatary immigration when the other parts of the planet are inhabitable and they have to come rushing across to the places where there are resources.
You know, if the Trump administration had its way, they would already have the army built up, ready to go to repel all those people, right?
So we can hoard all these resources and not help anybody.
So it kind of plays into that whole paper pitch.
And I told you, you know, too many times how this also makes me worried that this related to some sort of event that's going to happen that they know about that they're trying to hide from us and they're dismantling the warning systems for this.
You're simply saying that because Barack Obama went on Brian Tyler Cohen's podcast over the past couple of days and said that aliens are real.
I want to know.
I want to say.
And by the way, Nick, we've done this.
Actually, over the last few days, you know what I did?
I went back.
I just discovered this feature because I'm 44 years old.
I'm an old person.
Yeah.
I went back and I realized there's a feature where when you're sorting podcasts, it can go oldest to newest.
Wow.
We're welcome.
I know.
It blew my mind.
And I went back and listened to some of our earlier shows.
And you know what, Nick?
Like, first of all, I went back to our pandemic shows, like at the beginning of the pandemic.
We fucking nailed that thing dead to rights from the very beginning.
We told everybody exactly what was going to happen and how things were going to play out.
I'm very proud of us for that.
So good job, 2020, Nick and Jared.
But while I'm having this conversation, how many times in the seven years we've been doing this have I given any credit to Ronald Wilson Reagan?
When have I ever done it?
There's got to be something you've been able to address.
Do you think so?
Step Back From Nuclear Testing00:04:45
No.
Do you think so?
Do you think there's one?
I mean, when you say credit, it's something positive, I guess.
I don't think anything possible about the guy.
Well, let me, let me, let me break protocol for a sec.
Okay.
Hold on to your butts.
And I'll just say that, everybody.
Now, Ronald Reagan obviously created huge amounts of tension when it came to the Soviet Union and nuclear weapons, right?
Like, really, that was the strategy was to rash it up, rash it up, and, you know, brought us like very, very close to nuclear war.
But you know what?
What I keep trying to almost call him Wilson.
I need to step away from calling him by his middle name.
You know what Reagan and other presidents of that era did?
They signed deals with Russia to ban nuclear testing.
They said, you know what?
This is a problem.
This is causing an issue.
We need to step back from nuclear testing, which, by the way, we don't have those deals anymore because the asshole in charge has basically ate them up like Pac-Man with so many pellets.
Okay.
The point of this is back then, we had national interest and countries would say, hey, you're another country.
I'm another country.
We recognize there's an existential problem that we are facing.
We can come together.
We can talk for a few days.
We'll come to an agreement and we'll put together a settlement.
Right.
That was when there was still a notion of actual power that was taking place in representative government.
Now that is gone.
None of this has anything to do with solving an existential problem.
The people who caused this problem are now the ones who control all mechanisms of power from top to bottom.
And this, like what you just brought up about, like, well, China's not going to do this.
Those fights, those are manufactured.
Those are manufactured fights to keep us from actually taking care of the problems that would actually hurt the people who control and own representative government at this point.
It's a distraction.
And what you just said is exactly right.
It's the notion.
It's the idea.
We see the meme all the time.
That person there is trying to take your cookie.
That's where this is taking place.
And these great power games are about running interference.
So we don't recognize that, hey, my future, your future, the future of children, the future of next generations are going to be affected by something that is really going to hurt them.
Yeah, absolutely.
And yeah, again, all in the name of like greed.
Greed.
That's really what it is.
And we've talked about this before.
There's a lot of money to be made in, you know, going green.
Lots of money.
There's so much money to be made in solving these problems.
And by the way, you brought like with China.
Nick, if we got together with China and basically ended this new bullshit Cold War, we would probably stave off a new world war, right?
And gotten God knows how many lives we will lose if we end up having that.
We would also create sort of an off-ramp for American empire that could give way to something better and start solving some of these problems.
First and foremost of them, climate change.
And we could make that the basis of a new economy.
But guess what?
The people who have entrenched power and entrenched wealth, they don't, they're very, very nervous about shaking up the Yahtzee Cup and letting the dice fall where they may.
I mean, we have our Secretary of State trying to shore up a authoritarian who's destined to lose an election in Victor Orban soon.
You know, what does that say as he's speaking to people across Europe now?
Where, yeah, it's just out in the open and it's really, really frustrating.
And again, yeah, I'll keep saying this.
Yeah, they, if they just, if it wasn't like Obama who put some of these regulations in, right?
Like the reflexive, we have to do anything opposite what he did, right?
Or anybody on the left or something, you know, and someone said, you know, you know, we could make billions on this if we just, you know, committed to it.
Like they would have done it in a second in a heartbeat.
It wouldn't even be a consideration.
And by the way, just to bring it into full clarity, it's not billions.
It's trillions.
Okay.
We're talking trillions of dollars.
Like move that is everyone wants to talk about AI as like the next step or whatever.
Meanwhile, it's going to gobble up every ounce of water that's on the planet.
Like you want to talk about what the next big thing is moving away from fossil fuel into something brand new and better and sustainable that avoids this.
Like that's the next epoch in human history, but they're not interested in it.
And they don't have the clarity.
They don't have the creativity and they don't have the will or the notion.
Opposite Moves00:03:30
So there it is.
I do hate those cars that stop running at a red light.
That's on me.
That's on me.
I don't like it.
It comes from poverty.
I'm afraid it's not going to start again.
Yeah.
No, it feels like it's like not shutting down.
It feels like it's dying.
Die.
Not die.
What's the word I'm looking for anyway?
I don't like it, but that's not about me.
That's not about me.
That's the difference.
It's fine.
I'll drive that.
I'd be fine with it, but I don't like it.
That's just me.
That's the difference between me and the right.
We're now going forward.
Do you like that?
Do you like that feeling?
In the car specifically?
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, no, because it feels like it's going to die.
What's the dang word?
It's like you flooded the engine and won't start like that.
You know, I don't have to deal with that anyway.
So well, okay.
You know, you just bought a car from a fascist.
Anyway, but it's just, I hate that feeling, but that doesn't mean that I can't deal with it.
Right.
I can deal with it.
I don't need to take over the government and destroy democracy to get rid of it.
I mean, it's not like it's a religious thing, but it's there's a higher purpose to that.
And that's what the value of it.
And that's why you're willing to do this.
We're trying to band together here to save this world, which, you know, listen, has there been a hysteria in the past saying, oh, you know, if we don't stop climate change from, you know, progressing, we're going to be cooked by next year.
Like, you know, like 25 years ago was it was tomorrow and it fed into this frenzy now.
Like, look, it's still really cold here in winter.
So obviously there's no climate change, climate warming, or global warming.
And that's so frustrating and so dumb when you hear him say that.
But it's also, I, I, I'm, because this is our show, I'm not afraid to admit, you know, what's been running rounds in my head now for like a week?
It's that Lee Bryce song that was played at the turning point halftime showers.
Like, I just want to ride my truck, wear my boots, catch my fish.
You know, that song.
Beer's in there, right?
So, Lily?
Oh, yeah, of course, beer's in there.
And I, I've been singing it incessantly in like an OCD, like autistic way and like messing with the lyrics.
It's a lot of fun.
But you know what really stood out to me?
Like, Nick, the reason why like the right doesn't want to deal with climate change, even though they know deep down it's real, is because they don't want to give up burgers or they don't want to give up their gas stove.
Or you know what I mean?
It's like one thing after another.
And it's, I've been thinking about that song.
And what's he saying, Nick, is he just wants these things.
No one's trying to take his boots.
No one's trying to say he can't catch fish.
No one's saying he can't drink beer.
Like the things he says are, he doesn't want to wake up and hear about someone using a gun that he owns, killing someone.
That's just making you feel bad.
That's it.
It's not trying to take things away from you.
It's they don't want to feel bad.
They don't want to feel like there's a responsibility on them.
Yeah.
They don't want to be inconvenienced either.
They don't want to be inconvenienced, which I have this working theory, Nick, that like part of like the COVID conspiracy theory shit was that they didn't want to be left alone with their thoughts.
They wanted to go to FUD Ruckers.
So they didn't think about what was going on.
Yeah, they didn't want to deal with their own breath in their face with the mask.
Exactly.
And like, so it's like all of this, like, if we talk all the time about what would happen if like we got rid of guns.
Responsibility and Convenience00:00:35
I've told you, I'm a gun owner.
If like that will save some lives, I'll hand them over.
Yeah.
Fine.
You know, if you, if you can tell me this is an authoritarian takeover, take them.
Let's save some lives.
If I have to drive a car that stops running when I'm at a stoplight, I'll hate it.
But I'll do it.
That's fine.
All right, everybody.
That's going to do it for this episode of the My Craig Podcast.
We will be back with the Weekender Edition on Friday.
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And for those who are already supporting us, thank you so, so much.
In the meantime, you can find us over on Blue Sky.