To celebrate 300 regular episodes we have brought on a special guest: Julian Feeld.
And what a beefy episode number 300 is.
First we cover Trump’s lively Madison Square Garden rally and a conspiracy theory that sprang up in the wake of stand up comedian Kill Tony’s appearance there. Plus, the return of the “Panda Eyes” conspiracy theory at a Trump event. If you don’t know what “Panda Eyes" are, then just assume the worst before listening to the episode.
Then we dive into the bizarre claims among some liberal posters who believe the first Trump assassination attempt was “staged.” There’s a new twist, with new lore, and the plot has thickened. Get ready for quality ear analysis.
Finally we go through the ways the US election is being besieged by efforts to skew the vote and apply some well honed election denial tactics, including an app by an organization you might remember from the last cycle: True The Vote.
It’s a window into alternate realities and a preview of the kind of paranoid delusions that will become popular as America struggles through the first presidential post-election cycle since January 6th.
Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes:
www.patreon.com/QAA
Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com)
https://qaapodcast.com
QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
Welcome to the QAA Podcast, episode 300, Madison Square Garbage.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rokotansky, Julian Field, Liv Acker, and Travis View.
Beloved listeners, welcome to the celebration of the 300th episode of QAA.
As is custom, we have a very special surprise for you this week.
Our guest is Julian Field.
You may know him from the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
We are so happy to have him here.
And let me just say that it's an honor to podcast with him.
Thanks.
It's always a great experience to return to the podcast after a deep, depressive episode because it all feels fresh to me again.
Speaking of handsome people this week, we've got a real banger for you.
First, we'll be covering Trump's lively Madison Square Garden rally and a conspiracy theory that sprang up in the wake of stand-up comedian Kill Tony's appearance there.
Plus, the return of the Panda Eyes conspiracy theory at a Trump event.
event.
And if you do not know what panda eyes are, you're in for a horrible dream.
Then we'll dive into the tenacity and creative writing that is somehow still going very strong among some liberal posters who believe the Trump assassination was staged.
That's the first Trump assassination.
The one that actually drew blood.
First blood.
That's what we should call it.
Assassination first blood.
I want people who are like really into the second one.
Yes.
I'm really passionate about this.
The second one was kind of cooler.
There was more there.
Once you looked into the guy, there was more content, that's for sure.
So yeah, there's a new twist.
There's new lore.
The plot has thickened.
So I think we're going to have a lot of fun with that one.
There's a third shooter.
Yeah, there's a third shooter.
Not me.
I'm not going to have any fun with it.
This shit is driving me crazy.
This is like my white whale.
Jake, you have been hired as an ear analyst, and you will do your job.
How do ears work?
How does cartilage work?
How does blood work?
How do presidents work?
How do presidents die?
Uh, not easily.
Finally, we'll go through the ways the U.S. election, even before it actually yields any results, is being besieged by efforts to skew the vote and apply some well-honed election denial tactics, including an app by an organization you might remember from the last cycle, True the Vote.
I'm sorry about the election, boy.
When it comes to elections, I only know two things to be true.
One, people vote.
Two, people don't.
Thank you so much, Mr.
Flynn.
Always a pleasure to talk to you.
It's an honor.
But before we jump into all that, we wanted really, really to thank all of you, our listeners, for getting us to 300 main episodes and six years of going strong now.
Well, you know, based on the last few weeks of my life, not going so strong, but, you know, strong in a kind of general sense.
Strong as a group.
You know, no man left behind is what I hope others are saying, because otherwise I'm going to be left behind.
Yeah.
Yeah, so I did want to tell you as a listener, you know, that we are very, very happy with you.
You've done a good job.
You're a good boy.
You're a good girl.
You're a good non-binary person.
We're patting you on the head.
And yeah, the truth is we've published over 600 episodes, if you count the premiums in the miniseries, which is just, it's not good, folks.
People will hit me up sometimes on X. That's how long we've been podcasting, is a website has two names now, and the second one sucks, so we want to call it Twitter, but that's not factually correct, so I gotta say X. But people hit me up on X, and they're like, oh my god.
They're like, when you said this, that was so funny, and I'll be like, ha ha ha, yeah.
And in my mind, I will have like No recollection of the joke or the bit or whatever.
Because just so many, like I've got to reserve a small amount of my brain to like memorize like lyrics from music that I'm currently listening to.
And the rest is like just like podcast nonsense, like pushing, you know, new stuff pushing the old stuff out.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, you know, it's like when you have a USB key and it's got like, you know, half a gig.
There's just not that much you can put on it.
Well, especially if that USB key is in the shape of a boot or a hat.
A Trump hat, yeah.
You know, especially hats.
I mean, you can't hold a lot of space in the brim.
You know, you got to hold all the data in the bucket area of the hat.
So, yeah, very difficult.
What are we talking about?
I don't know.
I mean, the next part is where I say thank you to the listeners.
We all are thanking you, but specifically I'm thanking you.
You ruined my life.
And also, if you want to subscribe to QAA, let it be said now.
And furthermore...
That you should not, you should definitely not sign up for the Patreon through the Patreon app on an iPhone.
If you've done that, unsubscribe, go back on a browser, resubscribe or something like that.
Because these motherfuckers at Apple, that's what I really came back for, is to say, fuck Apple.
They're trying to fucking take a big chunk of our fucking money through that shit, you know?
Your money, not ours.
Yours that you're paying for.
No, once they pay it, I think it's ours, Jake.
Apple doesn't yet have the kind of Pinkerton-like ability to just go take 30% of people's $5 or whatever.
They have to wait until we actually draw the client in.
And once we've converted the sale, which we talk like this all the time when we're not on the podcast, we talk about like, what's this freaking sales funnel?
Is it working?
Are we monetizing?
So yeah, do not use the Patreon app on an iPhone to sign up.
Thank you very much.
Just use a browser and go to patreon.com slash QAA where you can sign up for five bucks a month so I can afford psychiatric treatment.
You have 10 hours starting now.
Yeah.
So what else do you want to call out?
I know where you live.
Hurry, he's melting.
I know where you live.
Speaking of Liv, see that?
Yeah, I know where you live.
Speaking of Liv and Travis and Jake.
What's up, friends?
How are you feeling about our big milestone?
How has the podcast fucked your life up?
And what is next for you rascals in 2025 and beyond?
I'm feeling great.
I bet my girlfriend $500 that Kamala would win.
I'm all in.
Nothing's gonna happen.
I think everything's gonna turn out wonderfully.
You know, Liv, there's actual betting sites.
You can make a lot of money.
You can make way better money right now with the odds on Kamala, which are, like, I think 42...
Last I checked, it was, like, 42 cents to buy a dollar of Kamala if she wins.
Yeah, I think so.
And it was 58 cents to buy a dollar of Trump.
They have just integrated that into, like, Robin Hood.
Oh yeah, I saw that.
I saw that when I opened the app recently and it was like, you can now bet on the election.
I was like, Jesus Christ!
We are cooked.
We are so cooked.
We are so fucking cooked.
We don't need polls.
We just need markets.
How has the podcast ruined my life?
It hasn't.
And I would say like 95% of the ways my life is so much better.
I mean, decidedly better since starting the podcast.
However...
Conspiracy theories aren't as fun for me anymore, and I really can't talk about politics.
My idea of politics and just general concept has completely destroyed me.
So I really can't talk about politics with my friends or my family, and I try not to do it with my wife.
But it's tough.
I wish I could be a red v.
blue sort of person like I was before 2016 happened, I guess.
Yeah, the blue blood of Hillary Clinton as she devours the red blood of children.
That's what you fucking mean.
But like, yeah, it sucks because I'll see cool conspiracy theories and then, you know, I sort of like look over my shoulder and it's like the watchful eye of Travis View.
I'm like, he would be so disappointed in me if I believed in that.
That's the problem.
The biggest problem, the 5% of your life that, you know, because you said 95 is great, but the 5% is feeling watched.
And I hate that for you, man.
Yeah, a little bit of shame.
A little bit of shame.
Never change.
Never change, man.
We need you, your old self, forever.
Yeah.
I've considered getting pilled again.
I posted the idea on Twitter, and people seemed to think it was a good idea.
I'm telling you, they love it.
We need one pilled guy, I think.
We need a devil's advocate.
We do, we do need a devil's advocate, which is what I was for the first seven episodes of the show that I believe have just been deleted.
I think if you go to our website, you can hear me be like, I don't know, Julian, I think they were up to something weird.
Meanwhile, since I'm disenfranchised in this country, even though I pay taxes, I've recruited three to four very soft-minded, like, 18 to 19-year-olds that weren't going to vote, and we are going to show up for Trump.
I don't think that's a bad idea.
Please, the psychiatric help, please, listeners, subscribe.
Travis, tell us, where are you at?
Yeah, I mean, it's been really interesting.
You know, the first, I guess, couple years of doing this podcast was a process of me just kind of wondering when people would stop caring about this subject matter or when it'd be irrelevant anymore.
Because I'm just sort of used to being really interested in things that are very fringe and something that a small group of people are really fixated on.
But my small fixations became more a topic of national conversations.
And that moment when, like, it all kind of, like, went away and I just went back to my regular life just never happened.
You know what?
At this point, I've made peace with the possibility that never will.
And that's fine.
I'm enjoying it, actually.
I mean, it's something I really enjoy sort of breaking down.
It's like now when I discover something, like, you know, interesting or wild online, I have so many people I can talk to about it who are interested in what I have to say.
So, yeah, man, it's awesome.
I give it about a month before you're in rags, dragging yourself up the Capitol, uh...
Stares, yelling about consensus reality.
It's going to be good.
I do hope this election continues to break everybody, and it will.
There's just literally no result that will not break a portion of this country's mind.
Absolutely.
There's no result.
Yeah, no, you're right.
I was going to say Commonwealth landslide, but no, that's probably one of the worst ones for a certain portion of the population.
Either way, it's going to be bad.
But, you know, I don't know.
I guess my life has been changed less because I already had a fake internet job before this.
But I got a better fake internet job, so I'm not in grad school or on OnlyFans.
Which are two possibilities that are much, I think, worse than what I'm in right now.
I think you're limiting yourself.
You could do all three of those things.
I probably could, but I don't want to.
I was thinking about opening a feat, OnlyFans.
If things go really bad after this election, as in the infrastructure goes down, I think OnlyFans will survive.
And I do know that there are at least 45 people out there listening, probably right now, probably over the next couple of days as they check into their podcast apps.
Jacking off.
Jacking off.
That would be interested in buying feet pictures.
Jake, a reminder.
A reminder that on your WikiFeet, somebody uploaded the feet of a hobbit from The Lord of the Rings, and you for a second thought they might be yours.
Yeah, well, I gotta correct the record, because my feet are...
Skinny little piggies now.
No hair on them whatsoever.
Wait, you shaved your feet?
Okay, maybe you are ready for the big time.
I haven't shaved them, but I don't know.
Maybe the...
I don't know.
What's the episode about?
What?
We already went over that.
I think it's about time to stop bullying Jake, which, by the way, one of the main things that I got communicated while I was taking my little leave of absence for mental health reasons is, you know, that I had to come back and rein in Jake.
Unbelievable.
Unbelievable.
There was somebody who commented that was like, Julian, we need you to come back.
Like, Jake has way too much mic time.
Like, this is unbelievable.
I'd like to say to that person, fuck you.
And also, I love you.
Thanks for listening to the podcast.
Ah, well, that's perfect.
We've insulted them.
We've gaslit them.
It's time to start the episode.
Trump.
Whoop.
I just called Travis Trump.
Travis.
Trump's Madison Square Garden secret.
So Donald Trump decided to make his closing argument with his usual inclination towards showmanship by hosting a rally at Madison Square Garden for a capacity crowd of 20,000 people.
Speakers such as Elon Musk, RFK Jr., Dr.
Phil, and Hulk Hogan all made the case for Trump in their unique ways.
Many people, including Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, compared the event to a 1939 pro-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden, though that event was officially billed as a pro-Americanism rally.
That one featured a giant portrait of George Washington flanked by swastikas.
I'm just really happy that we went back to just calling Trump Hitler.
He's so like Hitler.
He's like Hitler.
This is not going to backfire in any way.
It is funny, though, that Trump gets to be like, the Democrats, they're literally evil and they're going to kill all the babies.
And then Biden is like, they're garbage.
And then they make that such a cultural thing.
It's funny that it goes only one way.
I just feel like Dems might as well at this point.
It's like, well, if you're calling us...
I feel like Trump has probably called Dems Hitler at some point.
I will pay a painter to do that dogs playing poker, smoking cigars, but it's Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Dr.
Phil, and Hulk Hogan.
Because that is like such a fucking American basket there.
Like, what a beautiful fucking basket of human beings.
American fascism is so stupid.
It sucks.
Of course.
They got all the best guys, all of the wrestlers, the favorite wrestlers.
They've got all the best doctors, the TV doctors.
And they've got all the best presidents, secret presidents, Robert.
Now, the moment that got the most attention from this rally was, of course, the bizarre and politically stupid swipe at the island of Puerto Rico.
Liv's going to go into more details on that one soon.
But instead, I want to talk about how Trump again wielded his particular gift for capturing people's attention and stimulating their imaginations by making a cryptic reference to some secret happenings.
Longtime fans of the show will recall that this kind of thing actually helped ignite QAnon in the first place.
Back in early October 2017, Trump summoned present members of the White House Press Corps to the state dining room, where they saw the president gathered with his top military commanders and their spouses.
As they snapped photos, Trump told the reporters, you know what this represents?
Maybe it's the calm before the storm.
When asked what the storm was, he simply said, you'll find out.
So that phrase appeared in headlines at all major news outlets.
Some of those reports offered speculation about what he could be referring to.
A New York Times report was headlined, What did President Trump mean by calm before the storm?
And suggested that it might have been connected to promised aggression against North Korea.
But it also more accurately stated, quote, But it is equally plausible that Mr.
Trump was merely being theatrical, using the backdrop of military officers to stir up some drama.
Yeah, I think the whole idea was like, I'm up here with my boys.
Oh, you want to know what's going to happen to you next?
To the media.
He was doing a little trolling.
Yeah, this is a guy who's like, you know, he dropped out of military school.
He's got all of this wealth.
You know, and here he is.
He's the President of the United States.
He's got, you know, supreme power.
He's standing up in front of all the military guys that, you know, he was too scared or lazy to be.
And he's like, hey, you know, we could do, me and my boys, we could be really doing some damage, you know?
This is, I do kind of think that it's like, it's just him being like, you know, it was like on last weekend I went to an event with the Los Angeles Ghostbusters and like I was too nervous to like really talk to any of them or get a picture.
I was kind of shy.
By the way, you've received an envelope that looked very suspect and is full of little patches and stuff that they sent you.
Oh man, shout out to the homie Chris.
But if I had been, you know, if somebody was like, hey Jake, stand with all the Ghostbusters and we'll take a picture, and I stand with all of them, they got the packs lit up, and they go, do you have anything to say?
And I'll be like, ghosts better watch out, you know, or busted.
Makes me feel good.
You know, I would have said something to kind of, you know, honor the moment.
And, you know, Trump, after years and years of being a public person, of being, you know, a television reality star, trying to cultivate, you know, the personality that he so desperately wanted to be seen as, you know, I wouldn't put it past him to, like, come up with something kind of good and dramatic in that moment, which he did.
And it...
Altered the course of history forever.
There was no storm, but a lot of people lost their minds.
This has got to be one of the more oblique ways of inserting Ghostbusters into our conversation.
I'm really proud of this insert.
Yeah, it does.
I understand it a bit better now.
Okay, but this is what's happening when I'm not around.
You can't just yes and live.
You have to bully when I'm not there.
We like it.
Of course, the most deranged online conspiracists insisted that calm before the storm had to have some significant meaning.
Perhaps the storm referred to a brutal crackdown on Hillary Clinton and the rest of the adrenochrome-chugging child abusers who were controlling the world.
Weeks after the statement, the very first Q-drop appeared on 4chan, and the fantasy of an imminent storm of mass arrests and executions became central to its lore.
And here we are, seven years later.
One would hope that, by now, people would have learned that sometimes Trump just says shit that has little real function besides trolling and generating headlines.
But, no, it seems like Trump's deteriorating mind still has that old magic.
Ha ha ha ha!
At the Madison Square Garden rally, Trump yet again made a reference to some hidden information that is very important but will be revealed in the future.
And in doing so, he got countless people to speculate about its true meaning, like a dog owner who can get a pack of Labradors to run down the field by pretending to throw a tennis ball.
This latest instance came in the form of Trump bragging about a quote-unquote little secret between him and House Speaker Mike Johnson.
Because we can take the Senate pretty easily.
And I think with our little secret, we're going to do really well with the House, right?
Our little secret is having a big impact.
He and I have a secret.
We'll tell you what it is when the race is over.
What?
What is he doing?
That's it.
That's it.
I'm ready to say it.
Trump has a pussy.
What did he mean by this?
So, when asked about this little secret, Speaker Mike Johnson played coy by saying this.
By definition, a secret is not to be shared.
And I don't intend to share this one.
A secret is not to be shared.
It's like he has a fucking riddle or something.
He's guarding a bridge.
A secret is not to be shared.
House Speaker Littlefinger reacts to something said by Varys.
However, Johnson reversed course when speaking to reporters at a small rally for a congressional candidate in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
When asked about the little secret by reporters, he claimed that it was a particular get-out-the-vote tactic, but he was enjoying all the wild speculation.
What was the secret?
It's not scandalous, but we're having a ball with this today, because the media, their heads are exploding.
What is the secret?
It's this thing we have about, it's a get out the boat.
It's one of our tactics on get out the boat.
But they're convinced, like, they've got this, like...
And I call them this morning and I say, Mr.
President, should I just, like, blow...
No, no, man.
No, no, no.
He just came up with that spontaneously on the stage.
He really does call it our secret.
It's not diabolic.
I'm convinced now that, like, he actually has no clue what the fuck Trump was talking about.
Of course he doesn't!
Trump isn't talking about our little secret there.
This is like a thing he's saying, like, yeah, no, we have an inside joke.
Mike Johnson, like, is doing Trump impressions in the middle of it.
I know, this video actually, like, made me like him a little bit.
Like, he was so willing to jump into the impression, and he was so willing to sort of, like, make up an explanation.
I don't know, guys.
I think he's cool.
This is the Jake Devil's Advocate Trump supporter arc.
I've never actually listened to him speak before.
His Trump impression isn't bad.
The entertainer, Mike Johnson, rated by Jake.
That's what the next Republican candidate is going to be, because they're like, how can they replace Trump?
It's just someone doing a Trump impression.
Yeah.
And if he was here, you know what he would say?
Hello, my little kitties.
You're so beautiful.
So beautiful tonight.
Woo!
So, I mean, you can't rule out the possibility that Mike Johnson's just lying there, you know.
But, you know, it also wouldn't be surprising if it did refer to, like, something just small and mundane that was just sort of hyped up by Trump.
You know, some more liberal-leaning people thought that The Little Secret was actually a corrupt scheme to overturn the results of the election if Trump loses.
I have no doubt that Trump and his allies have corrupt schemes to overturn the results of the election, but not because he made a strange reference to a little secret, but because he already spearheaded many corrupt schemes to overturn the election.
Last election, he declared victory before the results were in.
He pressured the Georgia Secretary of State to find votes for him.
He asked Republican state legislators to reverse certified election results.
He fired officials who defied him and replaced them with loyalists.
His allies filed 63 lawsuits, all of which failed.
Mike Flynn publicly called on the president to suspend the Constitution, silence the press, and hold a new election under military supervision.
Rudy Giuliani coordinated a plot to send fake electors to Congress.
They pressured Mike Pence to reject the results of the election, even though he couldn't do that.
And when all else failed, he attempted a self-coup by sending a mob to Congress on January 6th.
It sucks, man.
This is their version of Night of the Long Knives, and it's so fucking shitty.
They're like, nah, we weren't really ever going to do that.
We weren't going to, like, you know, cull and do a purge and, you know.
Put in a military government.
Yeah.
Hitler would be so disappointed in him.
He'd be like, what did they do?
They killed a couple police officers and smeared shit on the wall?
Come on, man.
Yeah.
So for all those reasons, I think it's perfectly legitimate to speculate on the corrupt schemes that he might be involved in this time.
But the reference to a little secret I don't think is a mystery that's actually worth taking time to solve.
Representative Dan Goldman speculated that the little secret might involve using the Republican control of the House to somehow overturn the election.
We don't know, but I suspect Donald Trump's little secret plan with Mike Johnson is a backup plan for when he loses and he tries to go to the House of Representatives To throw out the Electoral College, the certification from the states, and have the House of Representatives under the leadership and the control and the gavel for Mike Johnson and try to overturn this election.
Sounds like a lot of news to me.
Yeah.
It's great because Little Secret is so vague and weird that everyone can make it whatever they want it to be.
I mean, it's like the cheapest and dumbest form of clickbait you can get.
Click here to learn a secret.
The secrets that doctors don't want you to know.
It doesn't have the same kind of artistry of maybe it's the calm before the storm.
It's just the dumbest, cheapest marketing curiosity gap bullshit.
He's like, my father taught me a...
A valuable trick in real estate sales when I was very young, and it was when you're ever down on a sale when you're losing it, you tell your opposition that you've got a secret, and they don't know what it is.
They won't know what it is, and they'll drive themselves mad trying to figure out your secret.
Okay, so...
I could totally see that he's like, ah, time to bring out the old, I have a secret.
In America, there are two types of politicians.
One has a dream, the other has a secret.
So Goldman there seems to be referring to a scenario in which, for some reason, no one wins the Electoral College, possibly through a corrupt scheme, and then Republicans install Trump through a contingent election whereby the House of Representatives votes to determine the president.
Now, to the best of my understanding, this is a hugely unlikely scenario.
I do think if they're, like, obsessed about not spreading, like, Democrats stealing conspiracy theories, they shouldn't say when he loses.
Because, like, have you seen the polls?
Like, he might win.
I know.
It's pretty close.
It's pretty close.
The money is betting on him, but I think that's also a bit of hopium because they want the kind of deregulated economy.
That part might be, because there's a bunch of, like, really big Trump whales.
I mean, this is, like, baking.
There are.
But they might want to make the national environment look more Trump-focused, like they think that's intrinsically valuable.
Yeah, I think they think it's intrinsically valuable to have a type of pole.
A lot of people, if they're into the magic of the market and the market reveals all truths and is perfectly efficient, they think, yeah, this is more real than whatever Rasmussen is cooking up.
Like, they want wealth voting to be real.
And this is their way of doing this.
Oh, 100%.
100%.
This reminds me a lot of, like, people trying to draw conclusions from, like, early voting data.
When, like, it's just you want to know something.
Is there something that I can think about beforehand to prepare myself?
It's like, you know, psyching yourself up before you order something in a restaurant if you're nervous.
It's like, there's something I can do before we get there.
I believe in us.
I don't think that there is.
You just have to, like, fall into the void to some extent.
I think we can achieve a Trump win and the replacement for the woke woman outraged meme, we'll find a new one.
That photo will be replaced and we don't have to see the girl with the glasses and shit that they love posting.
I think it's worthwhile to speculate on how they're going to try to subvert democratic norms this time, because they're going to do it, you know, if he loses.
I just object to giving Trump so much credit that you think every strange utterance he makes is worth decoding.
Of course, QAnon had their own theories about the significance of this.
Twitter user RedPillPatriot said this, They've been running a sting operation for the last eight years, and the hammer comes down after Trump wins.
Okay, the hammers.
The hammers, it's so...
It's crazy how, like, the iron has been so hot for so long and the hammer is also about to strike.
The hammer has been, like, just slowly, in extreme slow motion, coming down since 2016.
And it was meant to...
It was 2024.
The whole time is 2024.
Folks, we're trying to get the hammer to fall, but there's a sickle.
There's a sickle in the way.
And it keeps blocking the hammer.
At the last moment, the phone's memory capacity for slow-mo runs out and the hammer just comes down very quickly all of a sudden.
The QAnon podcast X22 report speculated that the little secret was some sort of big revelation possibly connected to Epstein or Diddy that would guarantee Republicans to win.
But we know something is about to happen or he wouldn't have mentioned it.
So there's something that's going to happen that's going to allow the Republicans to win.
And that could be Epstein clientless, could be Diddy, it could be anything that's actually going to bring light to who these people really are.
But let's see how this all plays out in the end.
And you can see the Patriots, Trump, he's very, very confident.
I do believe he has the people, he knows it, and he's ready to go after the bad guys.
And he's letting us go.
I'm still astounded by this faith that if Trump says something, he has to be deliberate and it has to have significance.
Like, part of this axiom is really what's driving a lot of people to break their brains.
God, all the promises are just not coming true.
It's like, four years of Democrats, and we were told, like, oh, we'll return to normalcy, you know, no more crises, like, we won't have to talk about Trump.
Wrong.
And then in this one, it's like, oh, Trump's gonna fucking bring the hammer down, man.
The deep state's gonna be hurting, and it's like, wrong!
We've had four years!
Four years in both of those cases.
How are there still people holding hope?
It's crazy.
Well, because they've gotten one more pedophile, you know?
For eight years, it was like Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, Epstein.
And I was like, could be Epstein and Diddy.
We got one more.
There's one more name that we can list.
Epstein and Diddy, really the salt and pepper.
Yeah, he said it so quick.
Did he even say it?
I don't know.
know it's almost as if he's kind of embarrassed to sort of bring up that reference what they're probably hoping for and i'm just you know goosing a little bit is like uh they're hoping it's gonna be like beyonce like somebody who endorses the democrat like that'll be enough it doesn't actually have to be any kind of a democrat leader it'll just be somebody who who sang at a function or endorsed them because then they go, look who endorsed.
Well, they could do a Diddy's vote or die campaign to bring out the vote.
Remember that?
Right.
Oh, that's right.
Damn.
I guess culture...
Yeah, we are getting a bit Hillary Clinton with the celebrity endorsement ratio.
So maybe that's what the Diddy's reaction to among these guys.
Because it's like, yeah, what fucking Kid Rock?
What Republican endorsements do they have that associate with Diddy?
Yeah.
QAnon podcaster Nino Rodriguez had a different interpretation.
He claimed that some unnamed source told him that the little secret was somehow related to a routine training exercise involving helicopters and emergency vehicles, which was conducted at the U.S. Capitol on October 28th.
I'm hearing that those drills are a direct result of Trump's little secret, so that's what I'm getting.
Now, I'm not going to say the source on that, but there's a lot of fear at the Capitol right now.
There's a lot of fear.
Nobody knows what moves are going to be made.
They're preparing for them.
This is not going to even be like 2020.
It's not going to be like 2016.
This is going to be a completely different animal.
Nobody knows the sinister thing that's going to happen and who's going to do what.
We're all preparing.
Yeah.
But yeah, I mean, I have a feeling that The Little Secret is either something mundane or nothing at all, and Trump is not making a covert reference to a coming history-changing plan, despite the fact that he is almost certainly going to be involved in some sort of corrupt schemes to overturn the election if he loses.
I will say, like, there's a Nick Mullen bit about conspiracy theories that it's like, you know, we're going to destroy the Twin Towers, but first off, the clues.
And I will say, like, if there's anyone to do a conspiracy and leave clues, it would be Trump.
But I don't think in this case it works.
Doing stand-up at a Klan rally.
Well, we've talked a little bit about Trump's Madison Square Garden rally and a couple of the speakers.
Perhaps the most noteworthy one, in terms of impact, was a comedian named Tony Hinchcliffe, also known as Kill Tony, which is a sentence that I never thought I would be saying out loud in a thousand years.
For those who are unaware of who he is, or I guess who were unaware before he made headlines, Tony is an Austin-based stand-up comic who hosts a show that's premise is bringing up random amateurs to do stand-up and potentially bomb in front of a panel of people generally much funnier than Tony himself.
The show is large enough that some stand-ups drive to Austin and sleep in their cars just for a chance to be randomly selected for it.
So a stand-up golden ticket, if you will.
He's been a rising star in the right-wing alt-comedy scene.
Cause I've got a golden trance joke.
I've got a golden trance joke.
I've got a golden slur.
He's attached at the hip to Joe Rogan and his media affiliates, who've been trying to make some sort of entertainment scene that's free from quote-unquote cancel culture, and have all made it their goal in recent years to ruin Texas' most liberal city, Austin, by concentrating themselves there.
I've always thought of Tony, from my vague impressions of his show, as a culturally conservative comic, but not an explicitly political one, which is like a very classic kind of stand-up guy.
Meaning he says absurdly racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.
jokes, but then explicitly maintains that it's not true, that it's all for the fun of it, and it's not political, etc.
Which is not a defense of him, but that's the general political landscape I thought he was.
But I was apparently proven wrong when he was booked for Trump's massive rally in New York, where he did all of the insanely offensive jokes he's regularly known for, except at a Trump rally.
And as many of you likely already know, the context didn't translate all that well.
Some of the jokes Tony made include a comment about a black person in the crowd eating watermelon, the Israel-Palestine conflict being a game of rock-paper-scissors, where the Palestinians throw rocks, and, quote, the Jews have a hard time throwing that paper.
Fuck.
And Latinos having a lot of children because, quote, they come inside just like they do to our country.
Okay.
So he's saying that Mexicans are cream-pying the border?
Yes, that is the Trump rally statement he's making.
That's funny, man.
That's funny.
And that's good.
That's good.
That's like a good – what you want to do is this is the conservative party.
Yeah, but they don't want the racism to be blatant.
They want the dog – the dog whistles is what they like.
But when somebody gets up and actually starts saying, like, really just flat out, like, racism, like, naked, naked and unafraid, like, you could tell even in the crowd that people are like, you know, like, yeah, yeah, no, it's.
It's interesting, though, because Trump started with the, like, Mexicans, they're coming and they're raping people or whatever.
Oh, yeah.
He's vile.
But one of the potential differences relates to the joke that grabbed the most attention out of his 12-minute comedy set, which was his comments on Puerto Rico.
I don't know if you guys know this, but there's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now.
Yeah.
I think it's called Puerto Rico.
Okay.
All right.
Okay.
We're getting there.
Yeah, it's just like the normal Kill Tony.
I've watched Kill Tony before.
YouTube wants me to be big fans of Kill Tony.
Yeah, my TikTok is like, have you seen this Kill Tony guy?
Yeah, YouTube is basically like, are you interested in Kill Tony police arrest videos or guys showing off their firearms in their living room?
That's what it basically wants.
Shane Gillis is also in there.
It's like, we want you to be into Shane Gillis, Guns, and Kill Tony.
And a little bit of body cam footage.
In typical Trump campaign style, it seems that while he's allowed to say almost anything, even those around him have to follow the normal rules of political discourse in America, as the backlash from this joke in particular has been quite massive, with Tony receiving front-page headlines in most major American news orgs, and, among other things, Google searches for Tony Hinchcliffe becoming more than twice as common as searches for Taylor Swift in the last week.
Ugh, RIP your algos, anybody who's searching for Tony.
That's all you're going to see now.
Following coverage of the joke, a few major Puerto Rican celebrities endorsed Kamala almost immediately, such as Bad Bunny, Ricky Martin, and Jennifer Lopez.
Puerto Rican singer Nikki Jem, who campaigned with Trump in PA and was introduced by Trump as a reason that every Puerto Rican should vote for him, also withdrew his endorsement of the candidate a few days later.
Another example is on October 31st, LeBron James endorsed Kamala, and in the tweet where he did so, he attached a clip of the Kill Tony set.
But it seems like this may not have only swayed celebrities.
A piece from Politico, for instance, observed a handful of Puerto Rican voters' opinions on the joke who live in Pennsylvania, and it seems that it may have meant something.
To quote from the piece, This was just like a gift from the gods, said Victor Martinez, an Allentown resident who owns the Spanish-language radio station La Mega, noting some Puerto Rican voters in the area have been on the fence about voting at all.
If we weren't engaged before, we're all paying attention now, Martinez said.
He added the morning radio show he hosts was chock-full of callers Monday, sounding off on the Trump rally comments, including a Puerto Rican Trump supporter who is now telling people not to vote for the former president.
Well, yeah, I mean, it's not great to have someone at your rally call an entire voting block a floating island of garbage.
It's also not even a very well-crafted joke, to be perfectly honest.
Like, it's not that funny.
It's just a bad joke.
It's absolute hack shit.
No, a lot of Tony's kind of hack.
Like, it's...
People aren't used to a part of stand-up that used to be, like, a very saturated market, which is just a guy who's, like, super offensive.
Yes.
It's like, oh, you know, I'm saying...
Like, Jimmy Carr was, like, an example.
Like, he used to do just, like...
Kind of hack.
Like, oh, I'm like, look at how insanely offensive I'm getting.
Jeselnik was like that.
He was like very dark, very offensive.
Yeah.
Because that market doesn't exist anymore, like the fact that like Tony is able to occupy that and exist in an area where like quote unquote cancel culture isn't affecting him gives him an opportunity to be like especially hack, I feel like.
Yep.
Besides just being morally reprehensible, Tony's joke blowing up in his face may also have been a strategic blunder for the Trump campaign, as 450,000 Puerto Ricans live in Pennsylvania, one of the narrowest swing states in the country that Biden won by less than 100,000 votes in 2020.
Oh my god, this would be so insane if...
Trump fucking lost because he brought Kill Tony up on his thing because somebody told him they were like, oh, this guy is hot and they've got conservative young men as their audience.
That's Barron Trump.
Barron Trump has been doing his social media strategy.
All those interviews and shit that he's been doing with comedians and stuff like that, with streamers and YouTubers and shit, that's all his son Barron.
Yeah, White Hat Baron going around and actually doesn't want his dad to be president again because it's such a pain in his ass.
So he's going around, White Hat, behind the scenes, he's blowing it up from the inside.
Shout out to you, Baron, and if you want to text me back about the thing we talked about, our little secret, you can hit me back on Signal, please.
They're playing 2K. He's going to get me a face scan of his dad so I can ball on the court as Trump and lose.
It's a way that I can be bad at the game and pretend like I'm doing it on purpose.
It was inevitable that Jake would look up to Barron, who's a tall man with good hair.
He is so tall and his hair is so good and he's a white hat.
He's going on Logan Paul.
Logan Paul, they're drinking prime.
They're eating Mr.
Beast.
I like my cheese trippy, bro.
They're eating Mr.
Beast's Moldy Lunchables, and he's slowly destroying my campaign from the inside.
But he's pretending like he's helping, but he's much smarter than me.
I should have never sent him to school, Baron.
We should have kept him in front of Call of Duty.
Call of Duty...
KD ratio high, but now it's low because he's going on Logan Paul and he's eating Lunchables with Mr.
Beastables full of mold.
I'm going to stuff you into a ballot box and light me on fire.
I will say also there was a clip of Joe Rogan in August saying that Trump should hire Kill Tony to do roast jokes about his opponents.
I know.
That's great, Joe.
So what was the Republican response to this?
While many politicians, including Trump, would distance themselves from Tony's comments, some of the less politically savvy right-wing operators would initially stand behind him, with Trump's VP candidate J.D. Vance saying this.
Again, I haven't seen the joke.
Maybe it's a stupid racist joke, as you said.
Maybe it's not.
I haven't seen it.
I'm not going to comment on the specifics of the joke.
But I think that we have to stop getting so offended at every little thing in the United States of America.
I'm just, I'm so over it.
Another very intelligent right-wing operator, Matt Walsh, immediately reacted to the outrage surrounding Tony in a tweet that read this.
Just a master at work right now.
Winning!
Matt Walsh, a genius of getting people to vote.
Tony himself also pushed back against negative attention by, for instance, Tim Walds, who spoke negatively of Tony's stand-up set on a Twitch stream with AOC. He would quote-tweet the Kamala HQ Twitter account when it posted a clip of Tim talking about the joke, saying this.
These people have no sense of humor.
Wild that a vice presidential candidate would take the time out of his quote-unquote busy schedule to analyze a joke taken out of context to make it seem racist.
I love Puerto Rico and vacation there.
I made fun of everyone.
Watch the whole set.
I'm a comedian, Tim.
Might be time to change your tampon.
Ugh, which is this fucking thing they love to be like, Tim Walz wants to put tampons in the boys' bathroom.
It's like, who gives a fucking shit?
They're mad that it's in the girls' bathroom, aren't they?
They're like, no one should have access to tampons.
I feel like that's the lie.
Why are you thinking about tampons?
These people don't make any fucking sense to me.
I don't know.
They're just so fucking obsessed with the genital stuff.
But also, it's like, taken out of context, what other context do you need?
You're at a Trump rally.
You changed the context.
Did you or did you not call fucking Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage?
Well, and also, I think it's, you know, I think this could also be interpreted as that, like, 90s misogynist, like, humor that's just like, oh, you got your panties in a bunch, or time to change your tampon, you're on your period, you crabby, you know, like, that kind of, like, there is, like, a contingent of comedians, I think specifically around this sort of, like, Austin collective, you know, that is trying to, like, take comedy back to 97!
You know, you could say retard.
You could say F-slurs.
You could say this stuff.
It's just comedy.
Like, you know, everybody's so offended.
We can't do our jobs anymore.
But it's like...
I saw Anthony Jessenlich talking about this.
He made a good point.
He's like, if people are offended, like, you fucked up.
Like, you didn't do your job.
Like, you can get away with saying, like, horrible shit.
But if you do it in a way that's, like, smart and clever and, like, you know, that you're kind of...
He said funny specifically.
It has to actually be funny.
Yeah, funny and punching up, you know, not punching down on people.
There is ways that you can get away with that and have everybody laughing and on your side.
And when you don't, it means you just kind of didn't do your job.
And I agree with that.
Yeah, the joke just didn't land.
It's interesting that that sort of, you know, it's just joke stand-up culture is coming back a bit, but it's explicitly political.
Yeah, totally.
It's like people, like, Tony is still pretending that it's not, but then he's doing it at Trump rallies.
So I guess the defense is pretty fragile here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Unless he put out, like, a Nathan For You-style video that showed him videotaping, like, the months, the weeks up to doing the rallies.
Like, I'm fucking infiltrating.
They're idiots.
They fucking hired me.
I'm gonna get up there and do a fucking bunch of, like, racist-ass jokes for these, like, these white MAGA supporters.
And, like, we're gonna fucking, we're gonna tank it for...
See?
Jake is able to detect and come up with the most common conspiracy theory.
It's true.
Yeah, Jake.
He's amazing.
You don't even know what you just did.
You're a fucking genius.
Oh.
Is that what they're saying?
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah, buddy.
Maybe I am still pilled.
Still pilled.
Still, still pilled.
He's still got it, folks.
300 episodes in.
In relation to the politically neutral vibe that I said I got from Tony before, it seems like a lot of his fans generally agree with me, as the Kill Tony subreddit has been pretty upset about him doing his jokes at a Trump rally.
One of the highest uprated comment chains on the main thread about his set, users said this, for instance.
Call me crazy, I don't think roast comedy and political events mix, like, at all.
Nah, not at all.
He's endorsing Trump while telling racist jokes.
That's like making a Jewish joke at a Holocaust museum and acting surprised people think you're anti-Semitic.
Lemma foul.
I was wondering how you were going to pronounce that last word.
But while Trump and Kill Tony fans alike have distanced themselves from his set, it seems that for the most part, Trump's staff had okayed what he said.
According to Mark Caputo for The Bulwark, staffers claim that Tony ad-libbed the line about Puerto Rico.
Yet besides basically this line, the rest of the absurdly offensive jokes Tony said on stage had been pre-approved.
According to staffers, only one joke of Tony's was rejected by them.
Where Tony reportedly planned to call Kamala the C-word.
That's so awesome.
Yeah, well...
Calling the vice president a cunt would be so...
I mean, you're not in Australia, bro.
To quote him.
Campaign staffers had asked all speakers to submit drafts of their speeches ahead of time, before they were loaded into the teleprompter, according to the aforementioned sources.
Once the objectionable cunt joke was... Jesus Christ.
Once the objectionable cunt joke was spotted, the sources said, a staffer asked Hinchcliffe to strike it.
He complied.
The sources insist that Hinchcliffe ad-libbed his most offensive material, but were divided over whether the campaign knew about the joke, accusing Hispanics of having unprotected sex, a double entendre about how they, quote, come inside the country.
That's good.
That's good.
Comedy.
Yeah, we've missed the most absurd reaction to Tony's joke of all.
The right-wing conspiracy theorist, who seemed to claim that Tony was some sort of undercover white hat, supposedly working for the Trump campaign, but only in order to sabotage it from within.
Oh.
So there you go.
My theory?
Exactly.
Exactly.
No, I didn't say that that was my theory.
I was just saying, like, he could have come out on top if he did that.
That would have been funny.
That would have been the only way those jokes would have been funny.
Yeah, exactly.
Why are you so defensive?
Why are you so defensive, Jake?
I'm not.
Okay.
Known moron Jack Persobiak, for instance, found it fishy that Kamala Harris posted her plan for providing Economigate to Puerto Rico on October 27th, the day of Trump's Madison Swear Garden event.
He quote tweeted Kamala's post on it by saying this.
How did the Kamala campaign know to release a Puerto Rico video earlier today?
Curious!
Makes you think.
Which, that is crazy luck, I will say, by Kamala.
That it literally is the day of.
It's like, yeah, by the way, Trump ruined Puerto Rico economically and didn't properly respond to this disaster.
I won't do that.
From the guy who tried to livestream the basement underneath Common Ping Pong comes another awesome theory based on timestamps.
They love their timestamps.
It's difficult to find the exact origin of the theory that Kill Tony was a secret plant.
In a post-QAnon world, there are, of course, no such thing as coincidences.
And the fact Kamala released her plan to aid Puerto Rico if she becomes president the day of the floating pile of garbage gaff was enough for many on the right to draw some sort of connection here.
I saw this take in some capacity basically everywhere I looked where there were right-wingers, on 4chan, Twitter, and Reddit, many pointing out how Tony has a supposedly gay voice, and some speculating on whether or not he's Jewish, while Tony is neither Jewish nor gay.
That did not stop users from speculating, of course.
I do feel like this is where our Patreon comments kind of, like, join the chants.
Because people are constantly debating whether you have gay voice.
Especially those who just always comment, Liv Agar.
Like, there's so many people, they just go, Liv Agar.
Tell us, what do you think?
Gay voice or not?
Am I a plant?
This is more important than the presidential fucking polls.
I'm more interested, do I have Jewish voice?
Do not weigh in on that one, please.
Yeah, which is kind of what it sounds like somebody who has a cold or, you know, bad sinus problems.
Yeah, weigh in on the comments or message me personally or publicly on Twitter.
Okay.
With our powers combined, we make Tony Hitchcock.
We make KS. It's like Voltron where different pieces of me and Liv form together to make one gay Jewish robot.
We need Julian to make the offensive jokes as well.
Yeah, Julian can be the gun.
Julian can be the gun that forms in our hand.
No, I'm not the slur gun on a Gundam.
Yes, you are.
Yes, you are.
Travis, you can be the sword, I guess.
The light sword.
Which isn't an analogy.
It is just a sword.
If you put a gun to Travis's head and asked him what we're talking about, he couldn't tell you.
Here's one example of a post like this on 4chan's politically incorrect board.
The same one that brought us QAnon.
It was a coordinated attack.
Somebody somewhere booked this no-name Jew to well poison.
Shills and bots on standby ready to deploy manufactured outrage attack.
Look at that goddamn nose, those teeth, that smile.
You know in your heart it to be true.
Why the fuck was a comedian doing a set at a fucking Trump rally?
That doesn't happen.
That's a great question.
It's the same question that I was asking myself.
What's going on here?
I mean, don't they have, like, Jim Brewer and Rob Schneider?
Like, they have a couple comedians in the back, you know?
They know better than wheeling either of those morons for a fucking Trump rally.
Yeah, Kill Tony is, like, a huge get.
But the thing is, is Tony is at his best when he's commenting on other people's stuff and then getting made fun of by his friends.
He's kind of like me in that regard, you know?
Yeah.
He's sort of best in the pocket where he is on his show.
Front and center, and maybe I'm just unfamiliar with his comedy, but front and center, it definitely felt like he was out of his place.
Yeah, it was a little weird.
Although this is kind of a perfect conclusion for that kind of Joe Rogan.
anti-cancel culture like click which is them like thinking oh okay cool like i guess cancel culture isn't a thing anymore like we've defeated it we can just start saying offensive shit it's kind of what happened with like elon buying twitter where he's like oh like the cancel culture stuff is gatekeeping we can just like make all of our offensive shit again and they realize the consequences of saying offensive shit which is that a lot of people don't like it like that's why this happened in the first place was because people were like no i don't like it as a puerto rican when you say that puerto rico is a floating heap of garbage Yeah.
And that's bad.
Yeah.
So beautiful conclusion.
Beautiful self-October surprise from the Trump campaign.
Yes, we love it.
Panda Eyes goes mainstream.
On Halloween night, former President Trump appeared at a live Tucker Carlson event in Glendale, Arizona.
But before Trump and Tucker spoke, RFK Jr.'s former running mate, Nicole Shanahan, took the stage to promote a QAnon conspiracy theory.
Shanahan was referenced in a recent New York Times story about Elon Musk.
The Times story said that Musk has offered his own sperm to friends and acquaintances.
Apparently this is part of his general campaign to increase the birth rate.
I like the idea that he's offering it to his male friends too.
Yeah, yeah.
In case you need it.
Musk suggested to Shanahan that he could offer his own sperm via in vitro fertilization should she want to expand her family.
For sure.
Yeah, he was like, only in vitro though.
If there's any other methods you were thinking of, definitely Zillow Musk.
I'm not gonna do those ones.
Shanahan who has a child with her former husband, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, is said to have declined the offer.
So she's, like, in with the insane Silicon Tech.
Oh, yeah.
Okay, that's great.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, like, yeah, recent reporting about her has not been flattering.
She seems like a real social climber in the tech world.
At this event, Nicole Shanahan made an odd reference to a Halloween costume worn by First Lady Jill Biden.
She wore a simple, like, zip-up panda suit and...
This was a reference to the fact that the Smithsonian's National Zoo welcomed two giant pandas from China just a couple weeks ago.
But Shanahan suggested that the panda costume was actually something much more horrible, but she didn't specify what.
So, she actually alluded to a particularly deranged QAnon conspiracy theory, which claims that the cabal uses panda symbolism to refer to children who are so severely abused that their eyes welt.
They're hurt so badly that the area around their eyes swell and blacken so that they have panda-like eyes.
Jesus Christ!
I know.
It's very dark.
Oh my God.
It's very sick.
What are you doing thinking about this kind of stuff?
Like, oh my God.
This is like early QAnon stuff too.
Like, your mind is so ruined.
If you see like a panda suit and you think of like abused children.
Yeah.
And not just abused children, but ones who are so bad that their eyes welt and Like, oh, God!
Yeah, it's pretty sick.
It's also, like, just based on nothing real.
But the crowd seemed to recognize what she was talking about.
Oh, great.
Right in front of our eyes.
The parading of Jill Biden in a panda suit yesterday.
Right in front of our eyes.
What the hell is this mockery?
No more.
No more!
No more!
Narrator, there would be many more, and these people would do nothing to stop it.
It's so weird that she didn't even bring up the conspiracy theory, though.
Like, if you're in the...
Like, no one knows who PandaEyes is in that crowd.
They're like, oh, I guess the panda suit is bad.
I don't...
Like, oh, okay.
We're not doing panda suits anymore.
I suppose it's possible.
I suppose it's possible that they didn't know, but they were just so caught up in like, you know, sort of like taking the lead of the speaker that they were shouting and stuff.
I don't know.
It seemed to me that they were reacting to what she was talking about as if, you know, as if they knew.
It's tough to say.
I would love if a portion of that audience was like, yes, we should not...
The pandas should be left alone in their natural habitat.
No more mocking that we capture these majestic animals and put them in captivity.
There's probably a, like, portion of them that just think that that means Joe Biden's enthralled to China.
Yeah, I think maybe that was their, yeah.
That's possible.
No more, no more.
But, you know, it doesn't matter.
The speaker's mad about it.
She seems to know something about it that it means something.
And I can just interpret what it is.
I know that it's bad.
Is it Joe Biden in China?
Is it imagining abused children?
Like, it doesn't matter.
They all already think Joe Biden is a Chinese pedophile, so it's fine.
Right.
Of course, QAnon followers online immediately picked up on what she was talking about.
One said this.
I grew up in the 60s and 70s and 80s celebrating wearing Halloween costumes to go trick-or-treating and then adult parties slash events, and I never saw anyone wearing a panda costume or panda face makeup.
The evil people are making fun or signaling their sick intentions towards children.
Like, no one would ever think of a panda costume on their own.
Like, it has to be a reference to beating children.
No, yeah, yeah.
No one considered animal costumes, specifically pandas, until the cabal said, you know what, we're going to start doing panda sort of costumes to reference something really, really sick.
Panda masks are, like, a standard at, like, you know, dress-up stores.
Yeah.
And what's really wild is that this was not from, like, a QAnon event.
This is an event in which Tucker Carlson, one of the most mainstream right-wing pundits, interviewed Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president.
And they're, like, straight-up talking not just, like, QAnon shit, but, like, this years-old, really sick QAnon, like, Pizzagate-level conspiracy theories.
In 2020, especially like after the election, I thought like, oh, okay, QAnon is mainstream.
It's fully integrated in the right.
I didn't realize the extent to which they could integrate it.
I feel like we haven't seen anything yet.
I think it's going to get worse, like regardless of which way it goes in terms of the election.
Well, Liv, your training is complete.
Well, all right.
You've earned your stripes.
Think it's only going to get worse no matter what?
Welcome, welcome.
You are officially one of us.
Brett Mizellis sat nervously in the vast, intimidating conference room.
Large glass letters, MSNBC, were mounted on the pristine white walls looming over him.
It was the last place Brett wanted to be.
In fact, he never wanted to be a journalist at all.
How the fuck did he go from editing videos for the Ellen DeGeneres Show to running one of the most credible media outlets of all time, Midas Touch?
Everything they touched turned to news.
And the news was business, and business was booming.
So what the hell was he doing here, waiting to talk to a bunch of amateurs at MSNBC about a surprise so October it could get him and his brothers killed?
It's because I'm a patriot, Brett whispered softly to himself as the suits poured into the room, each with their own personal assistant trailing a few feet behind them.
Once everyone had settled, an older man towards the head of the sleek-looking conference table stood up and gestured to Brett.
Our guest needs no introduction.
Brett, we are honored to have you here.
We always knew the Republicans would believe any sack of beans you sold them.
Boys over at Fox have had that market corner for decades, but you, my friend, you were able to do something far more impressive.
You unlock the secrets of the neoliberal brain and discover the precise temperature at which it boils.
And we couldn't be more grateful to you and your three brothers.
I think he's only got two, but for some reason I wrote three and I'm not going to change it.
Okay.
Brett blushed a little.
He tried to nod in a way that exuded humility, but it was tough to be humble.
Four billion views, 113,000 posts, 16 podcasts.
That's a lot of podcasts.
Brett leaned forward in his chair and coughed a little, clearing his throat.
I wish my brothers could be here with me.
I could use their support with what I'm about to tell you.
Everyone leaned in.
The assistants raised their notebooks.
You could hear an Uncrustable rapper hit the ground.
We at the Midas Touch Network have uncovered proof that the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Butler, PA was 100% staged by the Trump campaign itself.
Everyone in the room gasped.
Brett kept going.
We've got the shooter ready to talk.
He's willing to go on the record as well as the three police officers who helped him up onto that roof.
One reporter in the conference room shook her head in disbelief, asking, and-and what about the firefighter, the hero?
Is he willing to go on record as well?
Brett sighed and shook his head.
Uh, uh, uh, unfortunately, ma'am, uh, that death, uh, was real.
Brett noticed some of the journalists losing interest.
The senior editor, the stern older gentleman at the head of the table, spoke up.
Go on, son.
Tell us what happened.
Brett was sweating a little bit.
It was the first time he had broken the story out loud.
Until now, it had been nothing more than some blurry JPEGs.
A whisper of a post.
The gun was supposed to shoot blanks, Brett stammered.
Trump had ketchup packets in his shoes.
The shooter would fire.
45 falls to the ground.
He gets up.
Ketchup from his shoe.
And Secret Service picks him up for the photo shoot.
Time Magazine, Person of the Year.
He wins the election.
Brett paused for a moment to catch his breath.
He looked down the table, locking eyes with the man at the end of the table.
But something went wrong.
Whoever loaded the blanks...
They fucked up.
And when the actor they hired to play the shooter pulled the trigger, BLAM! Brett's head slammed against the conference table, a stream of blood pouring from one of his nostrils.
One of the journalists unscrewed a silencer from the MK-23 SOCOM pistol.
They delicately handed a still-smoldering weapon to one of the assistants who handed it to another assistant who then disappeared.
The man at the head of the table began passing leather-bound dossiers out to everyone in the room.
These are non-disclosure agreements guaranteeing that the events that have just transpired inside this conference room are never spoken of again.
Should one of you even get the inkling of an idea to go public with this?
Remember what happened to Don Lemon.
A couple of the journalists shuddered.
So unless being drunk in Times Square on New Year's Eve sounds like your idea of a fun time, I highly suggest you all suffer short-term memory loss.
But sir?
All heads whipped around to see a younger reporter, barely 24, holding up her hand.
Don't you think the people have a right to know that Trump staged the whole thing?
The man laughed.
Not if we want him to win.
A couple of the other senior reporters laughed, mocking the young woman as they filed out of the conference room.
As the room emptied, only a handful of assistants were left.
One of them was typing furiously into their phone.
Turns out, there was another patriot in that stuffy conference room, besides the now-deceased Midas brother.
If MSNBC wouldn't publish this story, it was up to her to leak it.
On October 26, 2024, former congressional candidate and current conspiracy theorist Rebecca Jones tweeted this.
A friend who works in one of the newsrooms that was pitched the secret Trump story says it wasn't about groping a minor.
She says it was about the staged assassination attempt in Butler.
Apparently everyone is too afraid of political retribution to touch it.
5.6 million views.
63,000 likes.
15,000 retweets.
The only thing that makes me feel good is that all of those stats are, of course, fake, because it's Elon Musk's Twitter.
You could keep telling yourself that, Liv.
I will say, as someone who gets a lot of Twitter likes, I get way more now.
They did the Reddit thing where it's not the actual like amount.
It's like some weird simulator.
It's proportionate.
The ones who are getting more likes are getting more likes, but I feel like it's halved, at least.
So you're saying that Elon Musk is empowering young women?
Exactly.
That's exactly what I'm saying.
He's amplifying their reach.
He's an ally.
He is, basically.
Thank you, Elon Musk.
That was quick.
That was nice.
I think we should end the episode there.
Now, to provide a little bit of context, Rebecca Jones was the woman who claimed to be a whistleblower in 2020 after she was fired from her job managing a COVID-19 data dashboard.
She claimed that Florida health officials had forced her to manipulate data to hide positive COVID case numbers, but after conducting an investigation, Florida's OIG found zero evidence supporting her claim.
That, in fact, her firing had not been related to any kind of political retaliation, but instead because she kept posting confidential information online.
This feels like a weird one where, like, God forgot to make her conservative before she was born.
You know, like, it's like there's a wire that...
Yes, totally.
Oh my god, that's such a funny way.
There are a couple people like that, I feel like, nowadays.
Despite this, Jones posted a document online that she claimed was a dismissal letter from the Florida Commission on Human Relations that seemed to validate her claims.
This letter turned out to be a forgery.
Awesome.
This also wouldn't be the first time that Jones posted misinformation.
On September 1st of this year, Jones claimed to break the story that Melania Trump had filed for divorce over Labor Day weekend and included a doctored Newsweek headline to support her claim.
After the story was found to be completely false, Jones posted this.
Within two hours, I made up a rumor about a presidential candidate.
AI generated quote-unquote news sites reported it as fact.
Journalists shared it.
Community notes incorrectly fact-checked it.
Nothing stopped its spread.
Millions saw it.
Key influencers knew what was happening and played along.
Imagine if we organized and decided to create real disinformation.
Imagine if we were the alt-right.
Like, is this a pitch?
Is she pitching this idea?
Oh no!
This is so bad.
She's out of her mind.
She's out of her fucking gorge.
She has, like, a pretty long legal rap sheet, too.
I figured it wasn't necessarily relevant to this topic, but, like, yeah.
Problematic person, for sure.
Like, blew it on by never-Trump Republicans who are, like, temporarily pro-Democrats is...
This is my, like, talk about being pilled.
My little pet theory is that the never-Trump, like, Republicans switched political, like, sides, but never actually changed.
And so what's happening is they are funneling their own conspiratorial selves that they always have been, but with different, you know, with different targets and are trafficking conspiratorial thinking to, you know, a neoliberal audience.
I I don't have any proof, but every time I click on one of these fucking people who's doing some outrageous blue and on baking, they're retweeting the same eight to ten people.
It's all the same.
I'm not going to name names, but it's a very concentrated group.
So, despite the poster's history of lying and posting conspiracy theories, the, quote, media killed the fake assassination story tweet went viral, earning 5.6 million views and 63,000 likes, as we said before.
As I scroll through the replies to the tweet, all of the usual suspects began to pop up, like flagrant conspiracy theorist and former MAGA supporter Jack Hopkins, not his real name.
He writes, um, three fire emojis in response to this, and goes, bring it!
Now, the fire emoji is kind of Jack's, like, signature sign-off, and just as a sidebar, if you go through his replies, it's mostly just hundreds of flame emojis and little L's.
Why don't you...
I would like the podcast host to scroll...
Scroll down.
Now, the first image is, you know, you can see, like, I don't know, probably 20 flame emoji replies.
But look at that second image.
See all those tiny little lines in the middle of the page?
Those are all flame emoji replies to random users.
There's a hundred flame emoji replies.
Easily, easily a hundred.
He must have, like, a flame emoji bot.
Yeah.
Now, the listener, unfortunately, Ken, I wish you were here next to me in my living room, sipping my coffee, arms around one another.
You two could be looking at these screenshots, which are essentially just a Roman column of flame emojis.
And words cannot describe how impressive the amount of replies is.
Let me just repeat.
So wait, so if a listener's in the room, you'd be like hugging them?
Yeah, of course.
And you'd both be watching the same screen?
Arms around the shoulders, you know?
Friends.
Real friends.
Hell yeah.
Real friends.
Not fake podcast ones.
Yeah, yeah.
Jack also retweeted Jones' tweet to his 279,000 followers.
This guy is so...
He's like twice and then some as many followers as our podcast has.
Not that I'm jealous or anything.
I'm just saying this is big.
This is massive reach.
And he writes, staged assassination attempt.
We knew it.
We knew it.
It's true.
And Jack was an early supporter of the staged assassination theory.
In fact, this was his pinned tweet as of July 27th, two weeks after the assassination attempt in Butler, PA, and it reads, The FBI has some answering to do.
We've seen a close-up picture of Trump's right ear that was posted by at Pete Souza and presumably taken by the Associated Press.
The assassination attempt was just 14 days ago.
Trump is 78 years old.
78-year-old human beings heal far more slowly, the tweet's cut off, but I guess that's what he's saying.
Trump is healed too quickly for an old man.
Yeah, he's got that Wolverine blood.
But not that Wolverine hair, unfortunately.
I'm seeing skin in the picture under the hair.
I know that pain.
So I went to check out Jack's Instagram page to see what his other content is like, and it is an absolute nightmare.
I've included a screenshot for our hosts, and the vibes are like somewhere between ancient aliens, life coaching, and political influence.
Real nasty stuff.
We got front of the show Tom Arnold on.
Yeah, Tom's on.
And it's so funny, like, it makes a lot of sense, because before Jack catered to terrified liberals, he wore many different hats, calling himself, quote, the anxiety doc, a, quote, body language expert, a, quote, hypnotherapist, and a, quote, alpha male.
Oh, yeah.
That's the highest paying job of all, the alpha.
That's, uh, you know how, like, they have, like, the, like, uh, I don't know, like, white men for Kamala.
Mm-hmm.
I think, like, uh, anxiety docs for Kamala.
Body language docs for Kamala.
Hypnotherapists for Kamala.
Alpha males for Kamala.
Yeah.
Let's do it.
We're gonna get this woman elected, folks.
And, like, all of his content is essentially, like, he's still doing the anxiety doc stuff.
Like if you watch his little kind of like Twitter videos, he'll be like, look, I know a lot of you guys are unsure about the possibility of World War III.
Oh, God.
And it's okay for everybody to be terrified.
But, you know, when human beings are terrified, there's a piece of our brain and it's built to actually support us.
Like he's doing like fight or flight sort of like life coach type of stuff, but just like applying it to the filter of politics.
And so he, of course, needs politics to be chaotic and dangerous and constantly on the brink of chaos for him to kind of step in and be the rational voice telling you to calm down.
You know, calm your brain.
You know, say your mantra.
Quietly step into the ballot box.
Vote Kamala.
You know, like, it's very weird.
Wow.
But just to give you an idea of, like, where this guy came from, here he is on the, quote, Rational Mail podcast in 2019 before he realized the error of his past ways and totally changed.
Fun fact, that was the name of this podcast before I joined...
Travis would disagree.
He'd be like, well, two of the hosts are very irrational.
I think the challenging thing for my current wife, and I think, frankly, a challenging thing for any woman I would be involved with or married to, as we've talked about before, Pat, I'm an alpha guy.
I'm very much a believer in that I'm the man here at home.
And for me, that has certain connotations.
It means that we can make all kinds of joint decisions, and sometimes you make a decision that I go, cool, that's fine.
But ultimately, I'm the buck stops here guy.
When you can't agree, there has to be someone who is the decider, and that is me.
It's really incredible to, like, hear someone talk about being an alpha male, which is a categorization among a kind of gathering of men, right?
Where you're the alpha of that pack, but instead you're referencing just you being alone with your wife.
You're just, like, dominating her or whatever, like, as the best male in your living room.
Yeah, I was gonna say, like, anytime you start a sentence with the challenging thing for my current wife, like...
you have yeah what's going on here buddy or i think it's totally fair to assume that one possibility could be that their ideology hasn't changed at all they just realized where there was more money you know they found a new grift i mean and this guy has had you know a bunch of different online grifts where he's been an ex you know he's positioned himself as an expert of something and he saw where the winds were were trending and and decided to hop in i'm I mean, it could very well be that they believe none of this, that they don't believe any of this stuff.
I think it's very telling that he gets so many views on, like, this fucked-up, blue-anon conspiracy theory garbage, and he has a blue checkmark, which means he's probably monetizing them.
Sure is.
Another booster of the theory was former DNC consultant, journalist, researcher, and podcaster Andrea Chalupa.
In fact, she quote-tweeted Jones's post and reminded followers that she had been pushing the staged assassination theory all the way back on July 13th of this year, with a post reading...
Trump with his NRI supporters and PSYOP experts are crazy enough to stage this so he can be the invincible strongman.
And she's included the very famous picture of Trump with his fists up.
So, you know, I know that Andrea follows Travis on Twitter, which is crazy, because how can you be a fan of Travis M. View and then post garbage like this without being a little bit ashamed?
I mean, look at me.
I basically had to stop fooling around with conspiracies because Travis had become my friend and co-worker.
And every time I felt that XR red pill seeping into my bloodstream, I would imagine his watchful eye and do something healthier.
So, shame on you.
Wait, why is Travis M. View?
What's the M for?
I just made up, like, a middle initial because I thought it would be funny.
Okay, but now finish the creative exercise.
What do you mean?
What's the name?
What's the name?
What does the M stand for?
Oh, Matthias.
I feel like he'd be like Murdoch or something.
And, of course, we already know what the damage is.
Liberals on Twitter already understandably nervous about a horrifying election spin off further into conspiracy land.
And, in addition, right-wing operatives and influencers gain more fodder in hypocritically criticizing the left as conspiracy wackos.
So this is a two-fold.
You are doing damage in two areas.
One, you are helping liberals or, you know, center-right Republicans detach even further from reality.
And you're giving, like, the far-right talking points to be like, look at these conspiracy theorists.
Look at these guys.
Like, it's stuff that they can pitch to their followers to make them go, oh, wow, at the very least, they're the same.
Like, we're not as bad.
You know, it's just awful shit.
Cut it out.
You're not going to.
You're making way too much money.
I understand.
I love you.
Go for it.
So to end this segment, here are how regular folks are reacting to the evolution of the staged assassination conspiracy theory.
This is someone quote tweeting Rebecca Jones, Damn it, staged assassination attempts would have been a much bigger story than groping.
I know, that's gross, but it's true.
If every institution preemptively bows to him, it won't be difficult for him to carry out his fascist plans.
Another guy says, be patient.
Too big a story not to have someone leak it.
My bet is on one of the truth tellers like at Keith Olbermann or at Midas Touch or at Michael Cohen 212 or at JB Thinkin who have been on top of the story.
I have no idea who JB Thinkin is, but he did quote tweet Rebecca's tweet and said, Been tagged several times on this.
Yes, all caps, I do believe we are just one, all caps, brave patriot away from the truth, all caps, about Butler, PA, staged exclamation point, all caps.
They talk like Trump, too.
Yeah, they do.
Staged exclamation point.
Staged!
Their brains are so cooked.
There's another guy named Patrick Spooky Tomlinson, and he says, I'm not saying that this is true.
Okay.
All right.
Little bit of reason here.
I'm not saying that this is true, but I am saying, okay, I am saying that less than two days after rumors of this, quote, campaign-ending story first started, two major newspapers refused to endorse a candidate for the first time in decades, and the story remains unpublished.
Something is terribly wrong.
Wrong.
Like, the Bezos endorsement stuff really has cooked a lot of, like, liberals' brains further, in a way where it's like, yeah, I mean, that's pretty insane that that happened.
It's just always good to have the liberals finally be open to the talk of an oligarchy that we live in, now that they, you know, inevitably hate Donald Trump and are starting to see other billionaires as bad people.
Yeah, yeah.
Travis, would you read Ride In With Kamala, what their tweet says?
If they show the Butler assassination attempt was planned, that means Trump and the plotters would be guilty of murder, allegedly.
I love sprinkling an allegedly.
Allegedly, allegedly.
The next person, however, isn't being so reasonable.
Julian, would you read this one?
Tell your friend to give them to me.
I'll publish them, and I don't care if they kill me.
This isn't a hyperbolic statement.
I'll happily risk my life to let Americans know the truth about Donald Trump.
I grew up in the streets of New York, and I don't give a fuck about Trump or MAGA cowards.
4.7K likes.
Yeah, by the way, I'm picking the replies that have likes in the thousands.
These are very popular replies.
And then we get this reply, which is so beautiful.
It's so perfect.
It so encapsulates the art of the conspiracy theory and why it is just so sticky.
And it's from, I'm sure, a pleasant lady.
Name's Veronica.
She's got the pepper and the coconut and the tree in her name at her.
What's the pepper?
I don't know.
Maybe spicy Latina?
Maybe.
I don't know.
We don't know what they mean, but we know what coconut pill means.
She has an accent over the O. It's a gif with a little kitty cat who's putting his paws together, and it says, Please report this story and validate what we already knew.
We already knew it.
Validate what we already knew.
Ketchup packet.
Travis, you had a funny point about this when I texted you this screenshot the other day.
What were you saying?
Well, yeah, it's like, well, it doesn't really make any sense because it's like, well, if you already know it, then why do you need it validated?
Is it just feels good to like, well, like, I don't know, is it like when you look good one day and you know it, but then someone else says, hey, you know what, you're looking good today.
It's just very validating.
Is it like in that sense?
Yeah, but it's like the news?
Well, that's what I, they want it to hit the news.
So they want like Keith Olbermann, like what would be perfect here is just doing a deep fake of Keith Olbermann saying what they want to hear.
Right.
Right.
Yeah, it is very strange, especially since there's so much fretting, I think, legitimately about the ways in which Trump tried to degrade the trustworthiness of the press, not because he had any legitimate critique or because, like, he really wanted the press to do a better job, but because he really wanted the press to sort of cow to his particular narrative, and he was very mad that they weren't doing that.
This is, like, a very weird thing.
They made up a story that, like, there's a Trump assassination attempt, and all of the media is sort of in coordination to cover this up in service of Trump.
And it's, for some reason, they got a lot of people to buy into it, even though it's nonsense.
Now, there are lots of benefits to early and mail-in voting that are available in most states.
Primarily, it makes voting more accessible.
That's a good thing.
But it also allows us to get a sneak preview of the flood of voting and election conspiracy theories that we're going to see on election day itself and perhaps months or years afterward.
It's very optimistic, perhaps.
Yeah.
So that's why we're going to be confident that there are going to be conspiracy theories about, for example, voting machines switching votes away from Donald Trump.
There was already one promoted by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.
On Twitter and then on Infowars, Greene relayed the story from a voter who claimed that a machine switched her vote.
And so when this voter printed their ballot and they looked, it had changed.
It was not Donald Trump.
It was not me and it was not the other ones they had voted for.
It had switched.
And so they went up to one of the election workers and they said, here's the problem.
The machine switched it and my printed ballot, I did not vote for these people.
So they had to start over and they went through it several times.
And it kept on making the same error.
According to local election officials, the incident that Green is referring to was the product of a simple user error.
She just pressed the wrong button, and the printed ballot didn't reflect the voter's choice, and then a poll worker immediately fixed the issue by spoiling the wrong ballot and assisting them in making a correct one.
So...
Not a big issue.
On the program of Face the Nation, an already exhausted-looking Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger explains why this was a non-issue.
Have you seen any evidence of fraud?
No.
And what happened with Phil County was the lady thought she had pressed a certain, you know, selection.
And then when she printed out the ballot, she knowed that.
She saw that.
And so then she made them aware of it and it got corrected.
And then it got blown out of proportion by people that like to use, you know, Twitter and other forms of social media.
But we're going to respond quickly to these sorts of things in 2024 because it's not supported by the facts.
There are also going to be conspiracy theories and disinformation about campaign workers destroying ballots.
There was a viral video which seemed to depict just that, even though it is totally fake.
The video claims to be from Bucks County in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania.
It shows a man opening up sealed envelopes and upon seeing that the ballot is for Donald Trump, the man says, fuck Donald Trump and tears the ballot up and throws it away.
But upon opening up a ballot marked for Kamala Harris, he resealed the ballot and places it back.
So let's see what we have here.
This is Berks County.
Ha!
Fuck Donald Trump!
*punch* Wait, what?
Is that a guy, like, opening somebody else's ballot?
Yeah, that's what it seems to depict.
And destroying it?
And destroying it.
Now, the problem is that it's not real.
As the Bucks County Republican Committee explained on Twitter, there are many telltale signs that the video doesn't actually depict Bucks County ballots being destroyed.
The video is fake.
With such things as the color of the envelopes being the wrong shade of green, the paper is not the same quality used by the Bucks County Board of Elections, the envelopes lack a return address, and no employee at Bucks County Board of Election meets the description of the person in the video.
The Bucks County District Attorney investigated the video and released a statement saying that the video was fabricated in an attempt to undermine confidence in the upcoming election.
Which is unsurprising.
Even if some evil person was doing this, why would you film yourself committing a federal crime and then upload it to social media?
It's very strange.
Bad choice.
They clearly put a lot of effort into it, though.
It does look like a proper ballot.
I don't know.
There's surely some story behind this.
Who knows if we'll find it out.
As a matter of fact, so according to Clemson University's Media Forensics Hub, the video was produced by a Russian influence operation actor that researchers call Storm 1516.
I will say, credit to Russia on this one.
That one's pretty good.
Usually the Russian ops I've seen are very unconvincing.
Yeah.
This is fun.
Even I was fooled by this.
I thought it was for sure going to be just like another chapter in the tale of Republicans having to fabricate the oppression that they claim to be under.
So it's like, you know, they're like, people are destroying ballots.
Well, like, we're going to have to produce that content and put it out to make it seem like it's real.
Well, honestly, with these critical minds, I am just grateful that Liv is Canadian and Jake lives in California.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, so apparently they've upgraded to now recruiting actors for these little things.
20,000 mules!
Yes, of course.
There are also going to be conspiracy theories and disinformation about so-called mules stuffing drop boxes with ballots.
People will claim that adjudication software is corrupting the vote count.
And, of course, there will be unsubstantiated claims about non-citizens voting in droves.
But, you know what?
I kind of want to see the real conspiracy theories.
Because these ones promoted by, like, billionaires by Elon Musk, or, like, members of Congress, or, like, some, like, Russian agents trying to figure out what might make people mad in Pennsylvania.
I mean, what happened to good old American conspiracy theories?
The stuff that real American citizens are making.
I wanted to get to that.
Well, it's a real shame because what happened was during the kind of neoliberal reform, a lot of those jobs were sent overseas.
Americans are no longer capable of producing them for themselves.
Detroit is in ruins because of this.
So to see what people on the ground are doing, I turn to an app specifically designed for the people most paranoid about the integrity of the election, Vote Alert.
So Vote Alert is an online app designed by the org True the Vote.
You may recall True the Vote as the group featured in the discredited Dinesh D'Souza documentary, 2,000 Mules.
Now, through a vote alert, they found a way to crowdsource information about alleged suspicious activity related to the election.
So it allows you to, like, post images and descriptions of anything about the electoral process you don't like or read a feed of what other people have posted.
So here's how they describe themselves.
Help your fellow citizens across the country as we work together to support our elections, ask questions, report suspicious activity, follow trending events, and join a boots-on-the-ground coalition dedicated to safeguarding our representative republic.
So I went ahead, I made an account to see what these citizen poll watchers are observing.
Once again, a case of Travis participating in the very worst activities of our fellow countrymen and then saying, I'm just here to watch, to observe, to monitor.
So, Vote Alert allows users to upload videos.
Now, very few people have.
It's still in its early days.
But one person who did was from Lansing, Michigan.
And according to themselves, they downloaded a PDF of the location of local drop boxes.
And they say that they personally inspected 300 of them by driving by.
You know what?
That is their right to observe the security of their dropboxes themselves.
But he was concerned because some of these so-called dropboxes appear to be entire buildings, not just like some sort of box.
Now, the video records an exchange between himself and a Lansing clerk, who then simply explains why some so-called dropbox locations are just buildings.
Well, I found that those Dropbox locations are actually some of the residential addresses unsecured.
In small rural communities, I do not disagree.
But they actually, by law, now must have a Dropbox in their community.
At minimum, one Dropbox.
And it can be a slot in the Township Hall building, for example, a mail slot.
But by law, you have to have a minimum of one drop box for any population up to 15,000.
And then for every 15,000, you have to have a segment of registered voters.
I don't like drop boxes.
I don't trust them.
They're all under cameras.
They have to have some kind of camera.
Cameras can be played.
Oh, God.
Cameras, cameras, cameras can be compromised.
Defects can be made.
I feel like the most insulting thing about this, or the most upsetting thing, is someone who is, like, neurotically polite is just bothering some random woman with your theory.
Like, she doesn't give a shit that you don't like drop boxes.
Like, this is some lady somewhere.
I don't...
What are you doing?
I guess he wants to get a video of him, like, being tough on these, like, election-stealing weirdos or whatever.
Yeah, it's just weird.
He uploaded this to himself.
Like, I guess there's, like, confronting the clerks about the lack of security of these drop boxes.
But here she's, like, calmly explaining the law.
It's like, well, sometimes it could be, like, a township building if it's a low-population area.
By law, they all have to have at least one.
You know, she's very polite and knowledgeable.
And eventually it comes down to, like, well...
I don't like drop boxes.
That's basically it.
He has a feeling.
He doesn't really want to hear the detailed explanation of how things are handled.
In the video, he says he isn't satisfied with the current level of security.
He suggests some form of tracking technology for the ballots, and the clerk explains why this is a bad idea.
And so all of us voters are supposed to sit here and we're supposed to trust our elections, and I want to trust them.
I do.
But I don't.
And I just see it as a vulnerability.
I think they could be more secure.
I don't disagree.
I mean, why can't we put an RFP chip or something on the envelope so it goes in?
You know what I mean?
You know how wacko people are about any kind of tracking?
So other people just sort of offered sort of their own personal stories and commentary.
One voter from North Carolina was disappointed that they were allowed to vote with their old ID, saying this.
I voted Saturday.
I accidentally pulled out an old ID with my old last name.
Still got to vote under my new name.
Old address.
Different last name.
And I look nothing like my old ID. Getting angry about being enfranchised is awesome.
It is awesome.
It's so funny.
They let me fucking vote.
They let me, a citizen who legally has a right to vote, vote.
It's like you're describing a legal vote, but you're mad because you think you shouldn't have been allowed to.
This is very odd.
What would they have done if they showed up and they went, sorry, this is an old ID. Do you have the new one?
They went, oh my god, I left it at home.
They're like, sorry, you gotta come back with the new ID to vote.
They'd be like, this is ridiculous.
Yeah, the post would be a complaint about the other side.
There was no outcome she wouldn't complain about.
Exactly, exactly.
They'd be like, excuse me, ma'am, are you sure this is you?
The picture doesn't look like you.
And they're like, oh my god, they're trying to keep me from voting for Donald J. Trump because I glowed up.
You know, it's like, yeah, there was no outcome that would be acceptable.
So, one user of VoteAlert from Flint, Michigan, posted a notice from Facebook announcing that on a particular day, a couple of churches were partnering with the Secretary of State and the County Clerk to offer local residents Michigan IDs and copies of their birth certificates.
Now, the announcement also said that the church would cover the cost of these documents.
Now, a very thoughtful gesture.
You know, some people have challenges in getting their documentation, and this church just made it a little bit easier.
You know, good for them.
However, the poster on Vote Alert saw a more malicious intent.
Flint Driven Church posted an event on Facebook that would be issuing Michigan IDs and birth certificates.
I did not attend the event, and it is not known how many illegal aliens were registered so they could vote in Election Day.
That is true.
It is unknown.
It's unknown.
I don't know anything.
I just can't imagine that's something that they would do.
Obviously no indication that the church was helping produce fraudulent documents.
This is apparently what would aid in illegal voting.
This is apparently what this person was imagining.
I want to vote in election day.
E.T. vote Kamala.
On the app, you can actually add comments to the vote alert that people post.
And one user added this.
Absolute treason against both faith and constitution.
This church is aiding many who do not believe in God nor America.
It's cool, man.
Yeah, these people are very furious that this church is helping their local community in a tangible way.
We need those little stickers that say, I voted, but they just say, I posted.
So one message came from someone claiming to be a naturalized citizen and they really they want to like really be integrated into American society so they decided to be paranoid about non-citizens getting registered to vote.
I used to live in California and I was there under a work visa then green card.
Julian?
It's me.
I now live in Colorado, and I am a citizen, but on California DMV list, I was listed as a non-citizen and on a work visa.
They know this because they were validating my legal status with DHS in order to get a license to drive.
Still today, I received an SMS from California asking me to register to vote, which is solicitation to non-citizens to register to vote.
stop them these things are always funny because it's like the way that governments keep track of people is so Byzantine especially when you like as someone who changed their name like a couple years ago it's like it's we it's hard to know like oh they have my name in this way and this on this yeah there's like a bunch of different databases that like that like aren't intuitive to think about.
So I'm sure like at some point it got dinged.
It's like you're a citizen now, but then when they came to take up your information, it was your old like address or something, you know, it's just like complicated.
I fully support you changing your name from Margaret because you don't like Thatcher.
Actually, I changed my name from Karen, which was a mistake.
I shouldn't have chose that name.
Good job.
This shit happens all the time.
It's happening to me right now.
Despite voting, I moved two years ago to, like, a different area of LA, and I voted in the, like, midterms in my new area, at which point they updated my address at the polls because I had to go to the old polling location, but my mail-in ballot got sent to my old address for whatever reason because the address on my driver's license is different from even my update.
Like there's all there's so many different like bureaucracies that are trying to keep track of like millions and millions and millions and millions of people's data that like you're going to have shit like that.
Like you're going to have stuff like this happen all the time.
And all you have to do is just be like, oh, well, I'm then I guess I just got to go.
I guess I'm not mailing in or I could go to my old address and pick it up.
I'm too lazy.
So I'm just going to go up the street to the polling location there and vote on the day.
Like no big deal.
So just like, oh, I guess they have my old info.
I should, like, update it somewhere.
I should update that next time I'm at the DMV. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Also, I just love, again, this is someone, he's legally eligible to vote, and he's mad that someone texted him to register the vote, but he thinks that the person who texts him doesn't know he's a citizen, and therefore it shouldn't be allowed.
I don't know.
Yeah, you'd think they would be keeping track of that.
One user named JW from Ohio complained that their son hadn't updated his voter registration.
My son moved to Indiana seven years ago.
He is still registered to vote in Ohio at his previous address.
This was followed up five minutes later by the same user who made this comment.
My daughter-in-law moved to Indiana seven years ago.
She's still registered to vote in Ohio.
Update the information.
I don't, like, you didn't update it, so it didn't change.
Well, it's like, I don't know, it's like he's ratting out their son and daughter-in-law.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think we just should have never updated to all these text message notifications.
I think it's really confusing for some of the older population.
They're getting too many texts.
They don't know who it's from.
It's from some weird number.
They can't call it back.
It doesn't leave a voicemail.
I think for a certain age group, we need to stick to snail mail.
That would solve a lot.
Maybe I'm wrong.
One user from Montana offered this complaint about the writing instrument options.
What writing instrument should be provided at polling stations for federal elections?
Recently moved in my new polling station provides black Sharpies.
Asked why not a black ink pen and was told that the Sharpie helped people stay within the lines.
They did provide me with a black ink pen upon demand.
So I guess Kamala is stealing the election.
Yeah, it's like, hey, he's just a little bit confused, and then he was ultimately accommodated for, I don't know, weird complaints.
It's like this Sharpie is too, the point of it is too fat.
I went to go vote for Donald Trump, and the ink leaked all the way over to Kamala.
And I know that if both circles are filled in, they're going to choose Kamala over Trump.
This app is supposed to be like the sex offender pedophile watch registry thing, but for votes, basically, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But it's more like Nextdoor.
I think, yeah, that's probably better than that.
More like Nextdoor.
You report all the paranoid things you see to the community.
Like, watch out, wild cat.
Attacked my dog while I was walking.
Keep an eye out for this address.
Orange cat will attack.
Cat will steal your vote.
Wildcat will sneak into the ballot.
It is.
We'll tear up your...
We'll puncture your skin and tear up your pallet to shreds.
Very nasty cat.
No good.
Sorry, Travis.
Go.
One reporter from New Jersey claimed that they encountered problems related to bans of electioneering near polling places.
Now, every single state has some kind of law that ban electioneering in order to prevent voter intimidation or influence, but this voter says that is the first time that they encountered it.
So this is, to be clear, electioneering is like advertising a candidate while people are going into the voting.
Okay.
Waited about 30 minutes online politely.
Poll were...
Oh, do you think they meant inline?
Yeah, I think so.
Oh, but they wrote online.
Anyways, who am I to correct them?
Poll worker managing the line queue was pleasant at first.
Directed me where to go.
I voted and paused while leaving to eat for my daughter.
Huh?
While leaving to eat for my daughter.
I don't know if that's what they say.
Like 20% of Americans are functionally illiterate.
It's fine.
Yeah, it's okay.
Same poll workers now tells me I can't be wearing candidate clothing and I must get 100 feet from the building.
I mentioned free speech.
He argued and said they had someone arrested the day before.
There was a posted sign about no printed brochures or signs, but not about clothing.
I looked this up and found New Jersey apparently has these socialist laws.
I wear Trump hats and shirts routinely and consider this freedom of speech.
Socialism is when you have, like, a secret ballot that you can't fuck with, I guess.
Yeah, but actually socialism is when you wear your favorite comfy bright red hoodie, Trump's face on it, to the polling place.
The radical left wants you to wear comfy photos of cats and dogs instead of your Trump photo.
The radical left, they want you in drab olive greens and kaki, kaheki pants.
They want you not to wear the face of your favorite politician, which is very unfair and goes against rule number one, freedom of speech.
I couldn't even think of what to fucking call it.
Rule number one.
Anyways, we're cooked.
Yeah, so that's basically the main vibe of the complaint so far.
There are people who are generally just unfamiliar with the laws at all, and also people who encountered a minor inconvenience, which was later very quickly corrected.
So probably that's also what's going to drive a lot of disinformation going forward.
Yeah, people just, they want to see it so badly.
They want to be a part of, you know, all the viral videos they saw in 2020 with the, you know, Trump voters, like, witnessing someone supposedly stuffing up.
Like, they want to be there.
So anything slightly out of order for them, they're going to report on these sort of apps.
Wow, 300 episodes and look at all the bullshit there still is to talk about.
Oh, God.
Great, great stuff.
Only getting worse, folks.
Yeah, how is everybody feeling about the election looming?
It's in a couple days.
Liv, I guess you really can't vote being up in Canada.
That's what you think.
Yeah, that doesn't mean that the nerves aren't still there.
No, I'm voting for Kamala 50 times.
We're bussing her in, folks.
We're bussing 50 Liv Agars in.
She's gonna vote one in there.
She's going to be wearing Kamala t-shirts at the polling location, but not in New Jersey.
Very round glasses, folks.
Brunettes with bangs.
They're all coming in.
Her glasses are round.
Her hair is short.
She'll be there 50 times over, casting the same vote for her hero.
Travis, how are you feeling?
Uh, you know, I, I, I think, you know, I, maybe I'm being too optimistic, but I think we can sort of limit the casualty count over the next few months.
I think we can, I think there will be minimal deaths as a consequence of the tension and confusion and anger that is, uh, that is, that is simmering, but maybe that's getting my optimistic call.
I'm not making any predictions.
Yep, there we go.
Travis View, folks, hoping for fewer deaths this time around.
So we know we're in a great place.
Julian, what do you think?
Well, he's disappeared again, folks.
We had him for a very short, beautiful amount of time.
We love our Julian, but sometimes he's here, sometimes he disappears, and we love him for it.
And we love you for carrying us.
You have crowd surfed us past not just 300, but over 600 episodes.
It seems crazy to even Say that number out loud with the miniseries too, which are very good.
And if you haven't listened to those, you should subscribe on the Patreon.
Five bucks a month, not through Apple.
I believe that is the business of the day.
and listener for another 300 may the deep dish bless you and keep you we have auto keyed content based on your preferences I mean what?
Amazing!
He stood up, and he thought about you!
And me.
I was really worried about him.
And then when we saw him say, fight!
Fight!
Fight!
That's the man to lead us, to lead us back to the America we love!
Do you swear to make America better and greater by voting for Donald Trump and J.D. Vance?
Now go do it!
Fight!
How weird.
It's such an honor to be here.
And it's wild.
Just another day following Bobby Kennedy Jr.
at a Donald Trump rally in Madison Square Garden.
I mean, what?
That's totally normal.
You know, I've been coming to this building month after month after month, and I've seen sold-out crowds over and over again for over 40 years.
And for 40 years, I've always asked the question, whatcha gonna do?
Over and over and over again, whatcha gonna do?
Well, today, after feeling the energy in this building, I finally got the answer.
And the answer is: Vote for Trump!
America is going to reach heights that it has never seen before.
