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Here we talk about the far right, their fellow travellers, and what they say to each other when they think we're not listening.
The show is hosted by Daniel Harper and me, Jack Graham.
We're both he-him.
Be aware, we cover difficult, sometimes nasty subject matter, so content warnings always apply.
Hello, hello, hello, everybody, and welcome to an I Don't Speak German News Brief episode.
We're going to be just, I mean, really just because some of you have reached out to both of us a little, but mostly to Daniel, who's here, by the way.
Hello, Daniel.
Hello, Jack.
I'm here.
He is here you just heard it so it's so it's true and i'm john graham obviously so yeah people have reached out to daniel and even to a lesser extent me sort of asking, asking for our takes on recent things that have happened because if you hadn't if you hadn't if you weren't aware of this, Things have been happening out there in the world.
So yeah, we thought we'd chuck together a news brief, which is really just, I think, just going to be a take brief, really, for you on the whole sort of general of everything.
So Daniel, how are you doing out there in the old US of states?
Well, you know, somebody tried to assassinate the next possible, probable, I don't know, President of the United States, and that's been going swimmingly.
The media has not at all been, like, lighting its hair on fire over this.
Hasn't in any way just gone completely fucking insane.
Right, yes, exactly, exactly.
And I know on our most recent bonus episode about Independence Day, we did talk about the Biden debate and his absolutely horrendous performance.
And certainly, Biden appearing to be, at least in terms of the media narrative, and we could talk about this, it's more complicated, but Biden appearing to be a doddering fool while people are taking potshots at Donald Trump, and he gets up and yells, fight, fight, fight, while literally bloodied from a bullet that just whizzed past his ear.
That's certainly not Something that will influence, possibly, an election that's going to happen in a few months.
So yeah, we should just talk about that a little bit.
So go ahead.
I mean, what do you think?
Do you think this is going to swing it for Trump?
You know, my immediate thought was, and I think I did a blue sky, are we calling him Skeets?
Do I have to call him Skeets?
I suppose so.
Okay.
I did a Skeets, which was just kind of like, well, you know, I don't remember the exact wording, but it was very much like, yeah, the propaganda value of this is overwhelming.
This may very well have just sunk the election for Trump.
I don't know.
We really haven't seen polling on anything like this, and obviously things are going to change a lot before November.
We're still several months out.
My guess would be it is now Trump's to lose.
My guess is it is now Trump's to lose.
A lot of those independents, a lot of those people who are swaying already after the debate performance and after sort of the media around the debate performance are now going to be, you know, more inclined to, you know, vote for the other guy.
And obviously what we're talking about is like a very small handful of quote unquote independent voters in a handful of states.
But one of those states is Indiana, or one of those states is Pennsylvania, where the assassination attempt happened.
And another one is Ohio, where we will talk about J.D.
Vance is now the official vice presidential nominee for Donald Trump.
And I don't know.
Everything's coming at Milhouse right now.
Everything's coming at Trump right now.
And You know, I, you know, I don't give like electoral advice.
I mean, obviously nobody's listening to me, but I think Biden really has to do something serious to turn this around.
You know, I, I just don't know that.
I think the momentum is all, is all on that side right now.
And, you know, again, things can change, but it's hard for me to imagine, like, just go with the flow and, you know, be the calm, steady voice, you know, is going to win this at this point, you know, so.
Yeah, I think it's very possible that we end up with a Trump presidency.
And I don't think it will be solely based on this, but I think it's entirely possible.
It can be very hard to tell the difference between sort of a genuine drift or mood or sway in, in, in political events and, and media artifacts, you know, just how, just how the media are vibing.
Obviously the media do get themselves narratives and they just, they just write that narrative or play that narrative no matter what the No matter what the reality is, and I think we are seeing a lot of that.
What is your take on Biden's atrocious performance in the debate?
Do you think that's actually a sign of mental incompetence?
I think he's just old, honestly.
I think he's 82.
The presidency takes it out on people.
If you look at Barack Obama after his first four, especially after eight years, if you look at Bill Clinton was a young president, you know, you look at him after, you know, eight years, you know, they do not look like they are eight years older, they look like they're 20 years older.
It's just, you know, it is for everything that we can talk about the evils of the American presidency, the imperial, you know, all the all the other nonsense.
It is a job that takes it is it is incredibly, incredibly stressful.
It is incredibly stressful.
It is a very, very, very difficult job to manage this empire.
And To be the head of that.
And Biden was kind of old and tired in 2000 when he ran.
That was kind of the big thing against him then.
He talked a lot.
Well, and this is something that's kind of come up recently, is that he never actually said, I'm going to be a one-term president.
And nobody from his team officially said, I'm going to be a one-term president.
But like kind of after they like Clint, after they sort of like crushed the Bernie campaign by just like bringing all the centrist Democrats together and just sort of like, there were definitely like news articles and sort of feelers that came out of like, you know, Oh, we see this as transitional.
We see this and nobody ever really spoke on the record.
And so they get to talk out both sides of their mouth on this, but you know, I think it would have been very reasonable for Joe Biden to come in.
And say, I'm obviously the guy we're going to unite behind.
I am going to come through this.
I'm going to be the voice of reason.
I'm going to be the voice of stability.
I'm going to beat Trump.
And then, basically, now we're going to find the next person.
We're going to use the next four years to really push for a changing of the guards.
And we will anoint successors at the end of this process.
And I think there was a very real possibility for that.
But honestly, you know, from everything I see Biden's own.
I mean, he he's got an ego about himself now, particularly after he went in 2020 is like he and this is from reporting I've seen around.
I don't I obviously don't know Joe Biden.
I have no like, you know, but everything I've seen is that he believes he is the only person who can beat Donald Trump in 2024.
You know, and I think that's ludicrous, but, you know, like that's what he believes.
And like, he's just not going to step down.
I think the time to talk about this was four years ago.
I think the time to talk about this was two years ago.
If after the 2022 midterms there had been, you know, all right, now I'm going to, I want there to be an actual primary.
We are going to, and if I am the one who is picked, then great, but there should be a, like, a primary process.
And I think the administration really should have put their, you know, really should have put all those irons in the fire.
The time to do this is not, like, mid-July before the election.
Like, it's just not the time to do it.
So, I don't know.
They did the debate.
I think they wanted that debate to prove that Biden was sharp, and he was on it, and he was going to be able to.
And it just crashed and burned.
I don't know.
I'm sorry.
I kind of agree with Ezra Klein on this, and I hate to say the words I agree with Ezra Klein on this, is that Joe Biden is probably a very competent, Administrator.
He's a very competent chief executive in the sense of he can make decisions, he can do what he needs to do, he surrounds himself with the right people.
Everything that we've seen from the administration is that he actually does bring in, he brings in the left wing of the party, he brings in the centrist, he brings in the white ring of the party, and makes decisions based on what's best for the party and what's best for moving forward.
But he believes he's the only person who can do that.
And I think that that's just That's a shame because Joe Biden would have had the opportunity if he had decided in 2022, like, OK, now we're going to I'm going to like step aside and let somebody else kind of take over the reins and we're going to do a primary process.
He could have he could have gone into the sunset as someone who really did the right thing, you know, that level.
He could have been he could have been like revered for.
I know my time is up.
It is time to build the younger people in this party and to really build something for the future.
And they're just not interested in that.
And he's not interested in that.
And so that's the, you know, for me, I don't think it's dementia.
I don't think we see signs of dementia, obviously.
You can't diagnose that from a television performance.
I think he's old.
I think he's tired at night.
I think, you know, you see him in the middle of the day, he's a lot sharper.
He's a lot more with it.
And I don't think that's like a sundown effect, necessarily.
It might be.
But, like, what I saw on the stage was just, he's old.
He's tired.
You know what?
I get to 11 o'clock, and I'm tired too, and I'm in my mid-forties, you know?
It's like, it's a thing, you know?
It's not... Like, I don't know, this doesn't have to be complicated to me.
So, sorry, I think I answered, like, four questions when you asked one, but... Like, yeah, no, that's kind of my overall sense of it, you know?
Like... Hey, that's just efficiency, you know?
I ask one question, you answer four.
It helps us get through it.
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't think he has dementia.
I don't think he has Alzheimer's.
As you say, I think he's just an older man.
And, you know, he has, you know, as you say, similarly, you know, everybody gets names mixed up and stuff like that.
And it gets worse as you get older.
It's just it's the it's the surface level sort of short term memory thing, you know, gets a little bit weaker.
That's all it is.
You listen to him answering questions about foreign policy.
The, uh, the, the NATO, uh, you know, press conferences at the, the NATO summit.
He's, you know, he's, he's talking about something that he's clearly very invested in there.
Sort of foreign policy triangulation playing, you know, China and Russia off against each other and stuff like that.
He's completely on the ball.
This is not a senile person.
He knows what he's talking about.
You know, it's cynical, imperial brinksmanship, but he's making sense when he talks about it.
Yeah.
I mean, you can say he's evil and not believe that, like, he's demented.
I mean, these are two different things, right?
You know?
Yeah.
But then, of course, he accidentally says, you know, Vice President Trump instead of Vice President Harris, and that's what the media runs.
Because, as I say, the media have their story and their storytellers, fundamentally, and they just want to tell their story.
And I think, I mean, I think this whole thing is an illustration or it's like, it's an illustration of the gap between the actual grasp that like centrist liberals and establishment centrist liberal Democrats and some of that have on things and their sort of fantasy version of themselves.
I think the debate is a perfect example.
Of that you know they they they said right we're gonna be that we're gonna be terribly.
No serious minded and you know be politically serious about this we're gonna insist upon this debate with no audience.
And the mics are cut off when you're not speaking so we can really.
We can really have a serious debate instead of the normal sort of televised audience, gladiatorial sort of rhetoric back and forth thing.
You know, no, we'll get to the substance.
We'll be very wonkish and West Wing and, you know, idealized about this whole thing and do it seriously.
And that's how we'll win.
And of course, it was a catastrophe for Joe Biden because their politics is actually no more sensible or serious or grown up than the politics of the other side.
Part of the catastrophe of that debate is that he's gabbling pre-prepared talking points at the mic.
He's just mentioning that they brought the price of insulin down every possible time he can.
The whole idea that Biden was going to be a one-term, like a placeholder, skewered president, you know, where they choose the next generation, that's an example of the whole sort of thing.
And it's also an example of the whole thing of the media just dreaming up a narrative and then running with it.
As you said, the Biden team never said they were going to do anything like that at all.
I fully believe there were people going off the record going like, well, what I'm being told is he's going to be a one-term president.
And like, that's kind of how you feed these narratives into the media.
And I think you're right.
I think that people kind of ran away with it.
Although I don't know that it wasn't like a big story.
I just saw it a bunch on like, to like soothe, to like allay the fears of like when the Bernie coalition was just crushed.
Right.
And to be like, no, we're going to like, and to assuage like the fears about his age and all that sort of thing.
And it turns out that four years later, all that stuff is still there because he didn't actually solve the problem.
You know, and that's, you know, this is ultimately political.
This is an electoral question, not a policy question.
I mean, you know, one of the things that's just true about the American presidency is that, you know, it's ultimately, it's not Biden as a human being.
Biden could be an old man in a chair doing nothing.
It's the apparatus around him.
It's all the people around him making lower level decisions.
Like, ultimately, he has to, like, make decisions about, like, big picture stuff.
But You know, it is about this apparatus, and it is because of that apparatus.
It's like, for all of the problems I have with Joe Biden and with the Democratic Party, we will be better off with a Democrat in office in 2025 than a Republican in office.
And that's true of any, like, whatever name you want to fill in the hat.
So, like, I'm fine, you know, just kind of stating that, like, by definition, we're better off with Democrats in office on almost 100% of issues.
There's a handful of things where, like, maybe that's not true, but, like, For 99% of people who ever listened to my voice, you are better off with a Democrat in charge.
Believe me.
That's it.
I mean, you know, like it does matter, like it does matter like that, you know, Biden just seems to be unable to run for this office.
And, you know, it's like almost any one of the people in 2020 would be better at that.
You know, Kamala Harris would be would have done better in that debate than Joe Biden did.
Just she's not as old.
She's more with it.
She actually held a job.
She was a prosecutor.
That's a terrible job to have.
Does she hold a job like a real job?
Like 10 years ago, she had an actual job.
Mayor Pete.
Mayor Pete.
I despise Mayor Pete.
Mayor Pete would have absolutely washed the floor with Donald Trump at that moment.
The debate performance is a Joe Biden problem, not a Democrat problem.
Although... Yeah, there isn't much support in polling for the idea that any other candidate is going to do much better against Trump.
Yeah, no.
The polls come back and they say, well, how does Kamala Harris do against Trump?
Or Mayor Pete or whoever.
Nobody's saying, oh, well, if it was this candidate instead of Biden.
And I think, again, an awful lot of media storytelling and fantasizing is going on about this.
I mean, my opinion is that it would be craziness to pick another candidate now with only four months to go.
You know, I think that would be electoral suicide.
I think no matter how... Again, the time to do it was like a year and a half ago.
That was the time to really to make that decision.
And, you know, at this point, it's just it's too it's too fucking late.
And that is entirely a problem.
The Democratic Party and the executive branch and Joe Biden and the people around him have brought on themselves like they thought they could wicket at Bernie's through.
And it turns out, you know, or we can get Joseph's this through.
You shouldn't use Bernie in this context, but they thought they could, we can get Joseph's through and we will see if they're correct.
I really hope they are correct.
My life was going to be made significantly worse in four months if they are wrong.
And they're also under the persistent.
I mean, we're talking about this sort of West wing fantasy version of centrists, democratic party, liberalism that again, they're under, they're laboring under these delusions where they can do this thing where they to make a point out to the public, well, the stock market keeps on breaking records.
And people are going to say, oh, well, in that case, I'm not all that worried about the fact that I struggle to make rent even with three jobs.
Right, right.
Because the economy's doing well.
Yeah, I know.
I mean, rent and all that stuff.
I see people are talking about grocery prices.
I don't know.
I haven't noticed that grocery prices have been going up.
Maybe it's just what I buy.
I don't buy a lot of prepackaged stuff.
I buy a lot of basic ingredients because I actually know how to cook, so it's a difference.
But I haven't seen the price of eggs and bacon and stuff.
I haven't seen those prices skyrocketing.
I don't know.
Like it's a whole different thing.
Anyway, that's a, that's a complete different topic, but you know what I mean?
Like we we've, we've talked more than once about the, with, with reference to, and this is kind of a good link with reference to the, the JFK assassination.
We've talked about the phenomenon of people being able to say in conspiracy documentaries or whatever.
Oh, you can't, you can't recycle this rifle in less than this amount of time on camera, actually recycling, recycling in less than that time.
In less than that amount of time.
I mean, I think i think things like like the price of groceries or just the buzzword inflation they get turned into again it's story telling they get turned into sort of catchphrases and synecdoches where people who.
Who's grocery bill is not actually going up.
We'll be talking about all grocery bills are through the roof you know because it's it might not actually be a real thing i mean it is for millions of people but for a lot of people doing the talking it isn't but it's nonetheless it's a it's it's a trope in the story that's being told i think.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
And, you know, it's just, it's a very, like, it's very, like, Middle American kind of thing to talk about, like, grocery prices and gas prices.
And, you know, I just, I don't know, like, I don't, like, I'm not above it all.
I'm just kind of like, yeah, my grocery prices, and maybe it's gone up by a couple percent or something, but it doesn't feel, like, apocalyptic to me, like, my grocery bill, you know.
You know, and mostly what I see is like, you know, I don't know, maybe the price of like sodas, like I don't drink soda anymore.
I don't drink like canned soda.
Maybe those prices have gone up.
And if so, I would, I would completely believe that, that I'm just not noticing it because I'm just not buying the kinds of things that are really seeing the massive increases.
Yeah.
Anyway, that's a different, that's completely off topic here.
Yeah.
But it's a way for elites to account for the, what is to them, the absolutely mystifying, you know, unpopularity of Joe Biden.
Well, how can Joe Biden be unpopular?
He's the closest thing to our fantasy Democrat president.
The stock market's high and he's doing all this great stuff.
The public don't like him.
Well, it must be because You know, they're worried about fuel bills and stuff like that.
I mean, I would say, I mean, honestly, the biggest thing for me that I see in terms of a bad economy is I haven't gotten a raise in a couple of years, you know?
I haven't gotten, I've been looking for a new job for quite a while, and, like, there just aren't that many jobs.
And I am a pretty well-qualified person, like, I could, you know, I should be able to find better employment, like, relatively quickly, and it's just, it's not, you know, it's not easy out there, you know?
And that's the kind of thing, and that's structural things with the economy.
That's stuff that Joe Biden is definitely not talking about.
If anything, they talk about job retraining programs and that sort of thing.
It's like, yeah, no, we just need more jobs, less AI, more or a better social safety net.
I would also accept that.
I would go on the dole if that's the option.
It's like, well, you can't get a new job, but we'll give you something to help you get by.
All right, fair enough.
I'll keep my shitty job, and I'll take the government hand out.
And I'll keep making the podcast, which is what I really want to do full-time anyway.
But you know what I mean?
It's a different thing.
Anyway.
Yeah, we are well off topic at this point, but like, yeah, no, I, I think, I think there is this, I think you wrote about like the media narratives and I think this is gonna like kind of play into the other topics when I kind of get into here in this episode.
So, and that it is ultimately very manufactured.
Yeah.
It's amazing how, you know, for all that he is a complete idiot, it's amazing how attuned Trump is to precisely that, you know, because he, he forces the secret service operatives that are trying to force him off the stage to stop so that he can go back to the podium and do his raised fist fight, fight, fight thing.
And thus, in the process creates this amazing photo.
That's amazing.
That's like, that's, that's the political instincts of a generation.
Like, you're actually getting shot at about, like, and there was some misreporting, or at least there was some confused reporting.
Like, at first I was seeing that people were saying, like, no, a bullet hit the teleprompter, and then the, like, the glass from the teleprompter hit him.
But, like, what I'm seeing now, at least from statements from the FBI, and of course I don't trust the FBI, but I've got nothing else to go on on this, is, you know, no, he was actually grazed by a bullet.
That appears to be what actually happened.
Alright, the last I heard was the shattered glass from the teleprompter version.
Apparently the teleprompters were not damaged, so that can't have been the answer.
I don't know why that sort of, you know, it's one of those things, it's a fog of war thing, it just kind of pops up in the immediate and becomes like a fact repeated, but I did go and kind of look at like official, you know, like, you know, I went and looked at a bunch of news stories and I went and kind of like, and it does appear to be The FBI is now saying he was actually graced by a bullet, and so, you know, if he was actually hit in the ear by a .226, that's, you know, an inch the other way, man, and we would be talking about very different things right now, you know?
Like, this, you know, I don't know.
Let's not Fed Post it in the slightest.
I'm not going there, but, like, man, this could have been a very different conversation, you know?
One inch to the left, you know?
That's all you needed.
Yeah, what about the secret service failure here?
This gigantic fucking empty roof just opposite the podium where he's going to be speaking.
There's a ton of conspiracizing around this.
Of course, immediately, like within seconds of it happening, the conspiracy theories are being spun.
It's not just an open roof.
That was the staging area for the cops.
He literally took a 50 foot ladder, which he had purchased that morning, along with like 50 rounds of this ammunition.
No, no, no, that was curtain rods.
It was just curtain rods, Daniel.
He literally took a 50 foot ladder, leaned it up against the place where the cops are hanging out, the place where they're staging all their activity.
He climbs the ladder, and that's where he's setting up.
Like, this is absurd.
Like, you know, like, and like, I do not believe any cons- I think that the cops really were that incompetent.
I think that, you know, one of the things with, like, open carry laws, and one of the things with, you know, Pennsylvania is an open carry state.
He could legally carry that, you know, carry that rifle.
He could legally carry that wherever he wanted to, outside of, like, certain, like, super high security things that are, like, private security and that sort of thing.
But, like, the cops, you walk up to a cop carrying that thing, they have no reason, without any, like, you know, Other evidence, like, for instance, if he was black, they would definitely not let him carry that around, but, you know.
Yeah, it's just amazing that, like, it's that on the nose, is that, like, that's the spot he ended up going to.
You can't write this, you know, you just cannot write this.
Yeah.
Yeah, no conspiracies required when the obvious explanation is the incompetence of cops and feds.
That's more than sufficient as a parsimonious explanation.
Even so, fucking hell.
I mean, all we have to look at is Yuvaldi, y'know?
cops like playing on their phones and using hand sanitizer while children are like dying and of a you know in their own screaming in their own blood you know but yeah no and then when then when it's donald trump suddenly somebody leaps into action but like apparently a one of the cops like climbed the ladder and the kid like shot at the cop or at least like you know brandish the gun towards the cop and the cotton that's how they kind of like discovered the kid
and apparently i mean it's entirely possible that like had they not climbed the ladder and not kind of like i think he was rushed and i think that's probably why he ended up missing the shot or missing the several shots actually i think three people were injured oh well two people were injured and one person was actually killed And then Trump himself, obviously, had the minor injury.
So there was somebody.
I mean, he actually did hit somebody, but it was not the person he was presumably aiming for.
Yeah.
So much for Trump standing in the way.
I thought he was supposed to be stopping them from getting to you by standing in the way.
Apparently not.
Yeah, apparently not.
Yeah, no.
Yeah, not that a murder of an innocent person is anything to joke about.
No, no, no, no, no.
Yeah, it's, I mean, obviously we're not just discovering right-wing hypocrisy, but wow, there has been rather a lot of that around this, hasn't there?
Well, it's the sort of thing where the immediate line was, the Democrats have been, by calling Trump, Barnes, Hitler, by calling him a threat to democracy, they have created the atmosphere that just creates this need for somebody to come out and do this.
And it's like, what have you guys been doing for the last 20 years?
Like, this is literally, like, the whole rhetoric of, like, the entire right wing is the Democrats are a threat to the nation, the Democrats are a threat to our way of life, often with, like, literal gun motifs and, like, a whole bunch of their, you know, their advertising, their campaign work, their You know, the propaganda, the journalism, everything.
It's like, and this is like an intrinsically gun culture.
Like, you know, it is a, it is just a factor.
However you feel about gun laws in the United States.
It is definitely true that the Republicans are the party of the gun.
And the Republicans go around wearing AR-15 pins on their lapels, for God's sake.
Absolutely.
You know, like, Steven Crowder sits and he, like, does his YouTube show, or his Rumble show, with, like, two guns holstered in front, because, like, you gotta carry that gun, man.
It's an aesthetic, I mean, and that's what it is.
And it's just like, yeah, I mean, to pretend that this is, you know, that, like, very sober analysis saying, you know, well, Trump is actually a threat to democracy, because we've read the 600 pages of Project 2025, it's the same thing as, like, decades of, You know, just hyperventilation about, you know, Democrats raising taxes slightly and therefore stealing freedom from millions of Americans.
It's just a different thing.
And of course, they're going to use this incident, and they're going to use the fact that apparently this kid donated 15 bucks to ActBlue on the eve of Joe Biden's election.
You know, inauguration as, well, he was clearly a Democrat, he was clearly a left-wing plant, you know, and then we'll forget that, like, you know, actually he registered Republican when he turned 18 and he has been a Republican for, you know, since then, and actually unsubscribed for that ActBlue mailing list, like, two years ago, so, you know.
And yet, you know, he obviously was trying to murder Donald Trump, I mean, so that's a pretty good indication that he's not pro-Trump, you know?
Well, right.
I don't think that being anti-Trump is, like, you know, I don't think that means anti-Republicanism in the slightest, but, you know, I think the reality is what I'd really love to have is I'd love to have a motive for you.
I'd love to have an explanation for you, you know?
I don't have that.
Nobody does, so far as I know.
There's been no, like, public release of it.
You know, when some of the, like, the mass shootings in 2019 and 2020 happened, you got a manifesto.
You got something that's kind of going out there.
We haven't seen anything like this from this kid.
There's been no social media on earth that was anything.
Nobody at his school, like, there has been a lot of interviews from people who went to Bethel Park High School who were like, you know, what do you know about this kid?
Nobody said he was, like, overtly political.
He was a bit of a contrarian.
He was kind of a Republican and a sea of Democrats in a lot of his classes, and so he would take kind of contrarian positions and kind of be the stick in the mud and be the sauce in the machine or the sand in the gears sort of thing.
You know, we don't have, like, notebooks full or, like, a webpage full of, like, indivective against, you know, the deep state or the immigrants or, you know, anything like that.
And, you know, honestly, if you asked me to sort of speculate, which you didn't, but if you asked me to speculate, I'd think, you know, this kid wanted to feel important for whatever reason.
He was apparently bullied at least somewhat in school.
I mean, he has this very normal, very normal resume for this kind of stuff.
And, you know, he just decided to get up there one day and, like, take a few pot shots just to feel important or something, you know?
Like, I don't know.
Like, that would be my completely wild guess on this.
But I did see, and the reason that really, like, people were, like, pointing at me or, like, asking me questions about it was there was, I forget his name, he was, there was a political commentator with some number, some amount, and I don't know his name.
I've never heard of him before, but he had a number of followers, and he was posting about the shooting in the minutes and hours afterwards, and he's like, this guy appears to have been a grouper.
He's obviously a grouper.
And no, there's no reason to think... And then they're like, well, he's wearing a grouper t-shirt, and what the fuck are you talking about?
This I actually resisted this for a while because I couldn't find like documentation of it.
But he was apparently wearing a shirt from a from a YouTube channel called Demolition Ranch, which is a, you know, very, you know, we're gonna fire big guns and blow stuff up kind of like YouTube channel.
I mean, Robert Evans described it as the Mr. Beast of Guntube.
And like, if you know Mr. Beast, it's just like, it's all about spectacle.
It's all about, like, I watched a couple of videos, like, and when they were, like, sort of, like, they're, like, they're, like, the one that they point you to when you first click on the page is, you know, we hit, we fired, like, the biggest sniper rifle in the world against, like, a big, like, a big cube of, of, uh, bronze, and we shot a bunch of guns at this, and we, like, compared, like, the, you know, the, the impact, the, and I watched the video.
It's a fun video.
It's, like, Firing big guns at, like, hard things and seeing, like, damage.
It's explosions and fire, and, you know, it's fun, you know?
But it's not like, you know, we have to kill the Democrats or we have to kill Donald Trump for the, you know, for the blood of the innocents.
And it's certainly not Groyper-related.
The Groypers are not, like, Huge gun nerd enthusiasts.
These are mainstream, they're trying to use Trumpist attitudes to get into mainstream Republican positions.
There's no reason to think that a Groyper, even if it was a Groyper, there's no reason to think he would assassinate Donald Trump.
It's just incoherent if you know anything about these subcultures at all.
And when somebody with some degree of gravitas is talking about that, it's like, what?
That's why people, I think, were asking me, like, what does this mean?
And I'm like, that doesn't mean anything, that's just stupid.
I'm sorry, it's just dumb.
Yeah, yeah.
The fact is, we do not know why he did what he did.
And I was irresponsible for even speculating a slight bit, and I understand that, but I think I was hesitant to even do that.
I was like, if you made me guess, that's what I would say.
But yeah, I am not at all trying to actively speculate on MOBAs.
So anyway, please continue.
Sure, yeah.
No, no, I mean, you're...
I don't think you are speculating.
I think you're ruling stuff out, and I think that's a perfectly fair thing to do.
It's perfectly fair to try to winnow this down based on what we know or don't know and what we can deduce.
And then you get into deeper questions about what does Y even mean?
Lee Harvey Oswald murdered President Kennedy, did he do that because he was a Marxist or a communist because he thought he was, or did he do it because he was just aching to be important and have a huge effect on the world and kill somebody, and it just so happened that the president was going to be driving past the book depository where he happened to be working, you know?
He tried to kill another guy earlier who was like a right-wing butcher, and then he decides to kill Kennedy, who's the guy that he'd expressed admiration for.
And I do confess to a lot of irritation with like liberal and Democrats, you know, writers and podcasters and YouTube people who are in their own way.
And it's less obnoxious and less hypocritical, obviously, because, you know, it'd be difficult not to be less those things than the Republicans.
They are nonetheless playing a similar sort of game.
So why was there a registered Republican?
Yeah, that doesn't alter the fact that he was clearly trying to kill Donald Trump, you know, that doesn't make any sense.
He was a registered Republican.
The guy that was shot and killed was a registered Democrat.
The fact that, apparently, the fact that, you know, you register this affiliation or that affiliation at some point or another, that doesn't necessarily mean anything.
It's like this fundamentally misconceived idea that if we can prove that he was one thing or the other, then that will tell us why he did it, and then that will give us this key to understand the wider political situation.
No, that's just not how it works.
I really like, sorry, I'm joking, believe me, my heart goes out to the families of the people who were injured, the man who was killed, etc, etc.
The man who was killed was a former, not a police chief, a fire chief of, I think, Buffalo Springs.
Pennsylvania.
I don't have that data in front of me, but like it's something like that.
But he was a he was a former or current fire chief.
Maybe, maybe he was the actual target.
You know, that would be like completely within the evidence we have right now is that no, he was actually trying to get this one guy, you know.
Because of some personal beef he had, or like, a friend of his house was burned down under this guy's watch, and so he's actively targeting this guy.
That's what it would be if this was a TV show.
If this was a Law and Order episode, that would exactly be.
I don't know, we've been programmed by law and order to find these things, but that is completely within the bounds of the evidence that we have right now.
There is no reason to think that is not the case, except for the obvious thing is Donald Trump was injured, and political assassinations are a thing, etc.
etc.
But that's just us jumping to conclusions on this.
There's no reason to assume this has to be a target on Trump himself.
So, you know, anyway.
Just putting it out there, you know.
Without wanting to sound like I'm spinning an equivalence, it is really fascinating to see and hear liberals and democrats suddenly embracing the mental illness argument of political violence, you know, very enthusiastically.
Whereas, again, you don't need to do that, because it is entirely possible that this person was motivated to try to kill Donald Trump by hearing lots of people talk about the fact that Donald Trump is a fascist and a dictator in waiting.
Which is true!
Which is true, also, by the way, just don't you know!
This is absolutely true, y'know?
This is it!
You can't, y'know, the fact that you might inadvertently influence somebody to do something like try an assassination attempt, you can't let that mean that you can't talk about things that are true.
People say about Donald Trump that he's dangerous, that he's a fascist, that he's an authoritarian dictator-in-waiting, that he tried to overthrow the American democratic system, that he did this, that he's a rapist, etc.
etc.
These are all true things.
You can't say, well, I can't talk about that in case it inspires somebody to take the wrong approach to it.
You don't need to deny that that might have had an influence on him.
It doesn't make you responsible for what he did.
It's not comparable to what the right wing have been doing, which is concertedly and knowingly trying to instigate political violence on a massive scale for the purposes of destroying American democracy or persecuting and killing oppressed and vulnerable and marginalized populations on the basis of lies about them being organized pedophiles and things like that.
It's not comparable.
No, no, it is not.
It is not in the slightest.
It is not.
And, you know, it is, it is like, you know, I don't know, I don't like this term, but I think it, it makes sense.
I mean, we're not going to predefine it, but the, like the Blue Anon crowd, you know, the, you know, we're going to, we're going to embrace all the like wacky conspiracy theories, but we're going to embrace them from the pro-democratic party.
And like that this guy was, You know, a false flag and all that sort of thing.
It's like, no, there's no reason to think that.
There's no reason, like, doesn't make any sense.
It just doesn't make any sense.
There's no logic behind it.
And, like, it's just, I think that I skated, like, right after it happened, like that, you know, that night it happened.
It's like, you know, I saw the, the photos, like, it was kind of immediate aftermath photos, and I saw, like, some of the commentary around it.
And I was just like, we're going to be dealing with this shit for the rest of our lives.
And it was like the blue and I conspiracy stuff.
And it's just like, yeah, this is the JFK assassination over and over again.
This is all the stuff we're just, we can never actually just think of things rationally.
It's always going to be some shadowy thing.
It's always going to be like this partisan, like everything has to have this partisan angle and all that sort of bullshit.
It's just like, I'm just, I'm so frustrated with, like, you know, we just can't share facts on the ground anymore.
We can't, like, you know, have an epistemological, you know, I don't know, I sound, I sound like my old, like, skeptic self right now, don't I?
I don't even sound like, because, like, we know conspiracies happen, like, COINTELPRO happened, you know, like, there's a ton of stuff that, like, you know, came out years later that was, that came out years later because That's just how these things work.
It's like, you know, if you're talking about something, some shadowy conspiracy that has no, like, conspiracies have a shape.
Like, real world conspiracies have a shape.
Yes.
And you can recognize, if you study conspiracies, you can understand how these things work.
And it's not like you don't just get to pick and choose the evidence that works for you.
And like, this is the, I don't know, coming out of that, like, skeptic movement, I think, has just, like, kind of inured me to some of this stuff.
And it's just like, no, I don't, I can't believe that.
I'm sorry.
I just don't.
You've got to have a rational, material and structural view, or you're just going to end up in the wrong place, not only factually, believing things that just aren't true, you're going to end up in the wrong place politically, because that's not the basis of good politics.
And yeah, you can, as you say, conspiracies do happen, and we know how they happen, and how they work, and what they look like, and how they pan out.
You know, there's sociology on this.
One of the things that always makes me think of, this is a bit of a byway, but I like this, it always makes me think of the O.J.
case, and like, people at the time, and for a long time afterwards, they said like, well, O.J.
was set up by the LAPD, you know, because of racism, and he was dating a white woman who, you know, His wife that he murdered was a white woman that he abused and murdered.
Nicole, that's her, I couldn't remember.
And yes, the LAPD in the 80s and 90s was a profoundly racist organization, and I'm sure it's still a racist organization now.
Thankfully they've completely solved that problem now, it's all in the past.
No, no, no, not at all, not in the slightest, but even more so in the 80s and 90s, even more so in the 80s and 90s.
That's what I was getting at.
But the thing is, we know what police racism looks like.
We know how it works.
It doesn't look like, you know, detectives who don't know each other spontaneously deciding to launch a gigantic conspiracy against a black guy who is a millionaire and an incredibly popular sports hero who is also best friends with the local cops.
That's not what it looks like.
I mean, it looks like the Rodney King beating.
Yeah, I think there are reasons to think that Mark Furman absolutely planted some evidence.
I haven't looked at that in detail, but from what I've seen of it, I think it's entirely possible that Mark Furman did actually plant some of that shit.
But he framed an innocent man.
Or he framed a guilty man.
He framed a guilty man.
There's tons of evidence that O.J.
Simpson actually committed that crime.
And we don't have to ignore all that and just look at Mark Furman's very obvious racism and his very obviously bad, bad police work, however you want to describe that, to believe that.
And I think, I don't know, this feels very simple to me.
This is just like being an adult in society, it's just like understanding that these things, there is, you know, I can be a far-left radical and still see nuance, you know, about the material world.
It's just, yeah, it's It's silly.
It's ludicrous.
So keep your head on your shoulders.
That's all we're saying.
Keep your head on your shoulders and don't go off on your skis when you don't have the evidence to really believe this.
You've got to really know what you're saying and understand the material forces that are actually impacting this world.
Focus on that.
Look, if it turns out that this kid did have police connections, or if that comes out in another year or two, then yeah, we can talk about that.
I think that'd be fascinating.
But right now, there's no reason to think this is anything other than some weird personal motive.
And don't generalize from the particular.
And, you know, if he turns out to have been a ride or die sort of Hillary Democrat or something like that, you know, you can't generalize from that particular.
And people hearing that will say, well, you generalize from, like, right wing mass shooters and stuff like that.
That's, as I say, that's different.
Actually, we don't.
Because that's in a completely different context.
That's in the context of a gigantic movement.
of people who are all sort of sharing in this organized ideology, which is being constantly propagated by a well-funded and constantly churning right wing propaganda machine.
It's not the same thing.
Right.
We look at the propaganda machine, like the active propaganda machine with huge amounts of rhetoric pushing it and like historical antecedents in societies all throughout like Europe in the 20th century, up to and including the actual liberal Nazis and And then we point to the way these historical patterns revert.
And yeah, I don't know, maybe it turns out that this kid saw a Biden tweet where he's like, we have to target Donald Trump for not being president in 2025, and was compelled to act.
But, like, that's not where the money lies on this, I'm sorry.
It's just not, you know?
I love the idea that, like, you know, there's a theory here that he was inspired to go and kill Donald Trump because of a supporter's newsletter wherein, passing on one occasion, Biden, or that is to say, whoever wrote the email, supposedly from Biden, uses the clearly metaphorical phrase, you know, Trump in the crosshairs or in our sites or whatever it was like that and thinks, Oh, the president wants me to shoot by, uh, wants me to shoot Trump.
Whereas, you know, Trump can, Trump sort of repeatedly stands up and on stage and kill them, go on, kill them, kill people, kill them.
You can't blame him for anything.
When Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul Pelosi were targeted by an actual like person, Donald Trump stood on stage and mocked these people.
Like, these are not, and look, this is not, like, we are not trying to be partisans here, we are not, like, playing the red versus blue game.
It's just, like, these things are very, very asymmetrical.
There's no reason to even think that you can't compare these two phenomena.
It's just, it's just not a thing.
It's, like, it's silly.
It's silly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And liberals and Democrats are, they're all hiding to nothing if they try, if they try to argue this.
You were talking about apples and oranges.
These things are not comparable.
So moving on from the assassination attempt on Donald Trump to the fact that, well, it happened almost literally on the eve of the RNC conference in Milwaukee.
And at that, I mean, that's been interesting in itself.
You've been watching some of that, you told me.
And at that, of course, J.D.
Vance has been announced as, finally, Trump has finally announced his pick for his vice presidential running mate, and it's J.D.
Vance.
So, what do you make of that?
Well, I, so, it's funny that, like, I did, like, in preparation for this, I listened to a recent episode of The Daily.
The Daily is sort of the daily 30-minute New York Times podcast where they just do whatever's in the news.
And obviously they're covering the RNC.
And look, again, we are not Stan's of the New York Times.
We know all the problems of the New York Times.
This is the shit they're actually good at.
It's like, they actually have reporters who like follow the, they can pay reporters to just follow these campaigns around and follow these things around.
And these guys are actually like subject matter experts in their own domains.
And so they kind of had a reporter on the ground.
I believe his name was Matt Binder or Matt Bender, which like, Yeah, Matt Bender's good.
It's not that guy, it's a different guy.
Oh, it's a different Matt Bender, okay.
It's a different Matt Bender, yeah.
So wait a minute, Matt Bender?
Hold on, you're working for the New York Times?
Man, I gotta get back in the DMs now, man.
No, it's a different guy.
How many Matt Benders are there?
I don't know, at least two.
He's like, yeah, I've been talking to people from all three, there were kind of three people who were sort of in the late stage mix, and it was Bergstrom and JD Vance, obviously, and I can't remember, who was the third?
Rubio?
Rubio, Rubio, Rubio.
God, Rubio is so like a nothing to me at this point that I couldn't even remember his fucking name.
Like, Ted Cruz has a bigger influence in terms of my thoughts on politics than what Rubio does, he's just such a nobody.
And apparently up to, like, the hours before they announced that, They were going to announce and then even even the people even those like last three like nobody knew until like an hour or two before the actual announcement was made which is like remarkable and apparently Trump is just kind of known for like after she picked Mike Pence in 2016 and I'm getting all this from that daily podcast so I'm not an expert on this but
Apparently after he announced Mike Pence, he then spent like the next day like, hold on, can we pull back on this?
Can I make another decision?
Like he's very impulsive, very childish in terms of like, you know, really he goes with his gut and he kind of waits the last minute.
So I don't think he even advanced it until like an hour or two before.
The actual moment in which he was selected, which is, I mean, it's remarkable.
It's kind of amazing that this is how our political process works.
But again, when you have a mercurial intellectual toddler, emotional toddler, as the head of the party, that's just sort of how these things go.
Yeah.
So yeah, I know there's been a lot of speculation on this, in terms of, like, was it gonna be Hayley, was it gonna be... And I think, like, River Swami... It was never gonna be Hayley.
It was never gonna be Hayley.
I think there were people wishcasting on that one.
You hear people talk about, like, Hayley as a potential VP pick, and that's, like, you know, sorry to say, like, the giant sucking sound, the largest J-O motion that you could possibly imagine.
That's kind of how I imagined those conversations to go.
I kind of thought it was going to be Vivek was kind of like my kind of go-to just because he's been the most like forthright in terms of really supporting sort of a far-right policy or far-right polity.
But Vance is almost as far, but also has been much more sycophantic towards Trump himself, while even while espousing politics to the right of Trump.
He has been very, you know, he has just been licking those boots for the last, you know, couple of years after being a, you know, a very strong Trump skeptic.
He was a very, you know, you know, you know, he called him the American Hitler and he was, he was an anti-Trump.
You should get your head examined if you voted for him.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And apparently that's all water under the bridge now because he's just, he's on board.
And I think that speaks to, I think really what this speaks to is like Trump.
He's not looking for, like, I don't know.
I think there's a lot of.
There's a lot going on here, but I think the real thing is, like, what we're really looking at is, like, if Trump wins in 2020, if Trump wins in November 2025 forward, it's just gonna be, it's gonna be Trump all the time.
And it's gonna be Trump, like, his personal grievances.
Like, all the, like, legal issues that he's been thrown his way, very legitimate legal issues about, like, he tried to overthrow the government, you know, and, like, tried to steal an election, and did a whole bunch of other terrible shit, all that, it's just gonna be pointed the other way now.
Everybody who ever got in his way, the Supreme Court has, like, they have set him up, they have set the system up to just give him full reign to do whatever the fuck he wants on that regard.
And that's what we're going to see for the next four years.
It'll be Biden, it'll be anybody who ever said a crossword, anybody who ever got in Trump's way, everybody who ever pissed Trump off, they're going to see legal action.
And all the judges who ruled against him, everybody.
Everybody, everybody, everybody.
That's what the next four years or further is going to be like.
And I think one thing that J.D.
Vance tells us, I think it's entirely possible that this is Trump picking a successor, like he's saying, this is the next guy, because he's loyal to me.
J.D.
Vance is younger than we are.
J.D.
Vance is 39, he was by far the youngest person on the list, and I think that's kind of what's happening.
Also, Vance was funded by deal capital.
His Senate campaign was...
He's the field guy.
He's very much aligned with that national conservatism movement, which Trump is not really.
I think we might have to do an episode of a national conservatism now, like based on... If Vance had not been picked, I don't think I would have bothered with it, but I think we're going to have to do a full episode of national conservatism.
I think I might... I was going to suggest it.
I think I might plan that for the next full episode now.
I've got a couple other ones that I've been kind of low-key working on, but I think we have to do that now just to sort of get into some of those details.
But yeah, no, I think, I think this is Trump, like, sort of, he's going to be my yes man.
He's going to do whatever I tell him to do.
He's kind of the next guy after me because he's going to do whatever I tell him to do.
And it's him, you know, sort of aligning himself with his national conservatism people.
And, you know, that's fucking terrifying, especially with the Trump, with the Project 2025 stuff.
And I don't know, we could talk about Project 2025.
That's, I have complicated feelings about that, but, which I don't want to get into in this context, but.
I mean, it's bad, but it's bad in different ways than people think it is.
But yeah, that's kind of my read on Vance.
That's kind of my read on where this is going.
If Trump wins, Vance is the heir apparent, and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
So yeah, how do you feel about that?
Very, very similar thoughts, my end.
I mean, I don't know if Trump is necessarily thinking of Vance as like his successor, you know, the solution to the succession problem that the emperor always has.
But I think other people are.
I mean, just Parenthetically, we were joking about law and order plot lines earlier.
One of the other things that's happened just recently is that Judge Eileen Cannon in Florida has just dismissed all the entire sort of stolen White House documents case.
And it's ironic to me that we have a bona fide case of a, you know, Of an egregious criminal just going free because of a technicality, a trial that lets him off owing to a, you know, a soft judge, an activist judge.
And it's, of course, it's not a poor person being allowed to go back on the streets to murder and rape because of a left-wing judge.
It's a rich person being allowed back onto the streets to Subvert American democracy by a right-wing judge.
So it happened, like the Law & Order episodes always happen, but completely ideologically reversed.
Yes, absolutely.
But yeah, with Vance, I think other people definitely have identified him as one of the possible solutions to this succession issue, which is ironic, because I think one of the reasons that Vance got it sewed up is his personal friendship with Don Jr.
And I'm sure Don Jr.
sees himself as the heir apparent, and But I'm sure he's been advocating for Vance.
You know, it's like iClaudius around here with this stuff.
But yeah, I think Vance is very connected.
He's very ideologically connected.
You know, he's connected to Leonard Leo.
He's connected all over the place.
He's done a good job of sort of connecting himself all over the The various wings of this thing he's connected he's connected to bannon he's connected to tp usa and of course as you say with a tooth and loads of these right wing techno libertarian nutcase venture capital people who are influenced.
Curtiss-Yarvin, Mencius-Molbug, you know, this sort of neo-reaction people that our friend Elizabeth Sandefur wrote about.
Yep.
Yeah, I mean, and he's part of that, what people have called the new, I mean, rather fatuously, I think, called the new right.
Inside the Republican Party, which is basically just another way of talking about this, this, this fascist tendency within, you know, it's not quite MAGA, but obviously it's connected with MAGA, this fascist tendency within the Republican Party now, which is extremely socially, you know, radically socially right wing, and also isolationist, you know, and is kind of, I think, what that is on a fundamental level, it's like,
The american far right taking advantage of the fact that america is teetering on the brink of becoming a post imperial culture to take over the american right wing which of course for decades has been run by the form of conservatism or reactionary politics which is suited to an imperial society.
I think vance has done a very good job of positioning himself in that sort of political milieu.
No, no, absolutely.
I mean, I think that's 100% true.
And I think that, I mean, really, like, what we call the, what they call, we're not calling it the new right.
I mean, I just call them the paleoconservatives, you know, and, you know, ultimately, the- Rose out of that, yeah.
The former alt-right, you know, I mean, they're very ideologically consistent with the paleoconservatives, is what I'm saying.
It's like, you can draw a straight line between You know, Sam Francis and that kind of crowd, to the new right.
They have very similar positions.
And what they've just done is they've learned from the former alt-right, from this sort of youth movement, this online youth movement, this kind of flash-in-the-pan thing that we started out studying as kind of the raison d'etre of this podcast.
They've learned from that failure is that we shave off the rough edges.
We shave off the roughest of rough edges.
We don't talk about Jews.
We don't talk about... But we share a very right-wing ideology, a very socially conservative, a very far-right ideology.
But we combine that with this kind of anti-war, anti-imperialist stance.
Now, in practice, They're not going to be anti-imperialist in the slightest.
They're absolutely going to engage in the same kind of imperialist wars and aggression.
They're just going to do it in a more quiet way, and they're not going to emphasize that as part of their overall plan.
They're going to do it in a different mode.
They're going to do it outside the confines of what used to be called the rules-based international order, which is just another way of saying that they're going to do it in the same way as Putin and Orban do it.
And Orban is another example of somebody that Vance has connections to.
He's very pro-Orban.
And he's very, you know, via that, there's Tucker Carlson.
He's very close with Tucker Carlson.
Tucker Carlson's a big advocate for him.
I mean, sorry, this is an aside, but it disconnects.
It's like, you know, we don't put troops on the ground.
We just hire mercenaries.
We just hire BlackRock to go and do the dirty work for us.
And I think it speaks volumes in this kind of cultural moment, in this political moment, that the That the attempted assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was filmed a couple of years ago in the background of a Black Rock video filmed at his fucking high school.
Like, the idea that, hey, Black Rock is filming recruitment videos in high schools And that he's just, this eventual attempted assassin was just sitting in the background there.
Like, who knows what conversations that this kid had with, like, BlackRock employees in 2022 or whatever.
Like, this, I mean, it's just, it's, I don't know, like, it's just, it's so perfect.
It's just, like, everything is just, like, so on the nose.
Like, you can't even write this.
Yeah.
And again, it links up because another thing about Vance is that he's one of the best within that far right wing of the GOP at doing the sort of pretense of populist working class politics.
He's one of the people that definitely emphasizes that sort of right wing, brackets white, working class economic populism thing, you know?
You know if Trump wins now, we're going to have to do Hillbilly Elegy for this podcast.
You understand that, right?
Yeah, yeah.
And that's a full circler, because it takes us right back to where we started in this podcast, because one of the things about Hillbilly Elegy, which is this sort of disgusting, The poor are a bunch of feckless idiots and drug addicts who are poor because they buy massive televisions and stuff like that, and what they need to do is pull themselves up by their bootstraps like me.
It's just that age-old dogma.
But it was such a big hit, partly because it was embraced by liberals and centrists, who loved the idea of this good conservative.
Anti-Trump, good conservative, and of course, look how that's turned out.
And who liked the idea, this fantasy that Trump's base is, you know, hardscrabble West Virginia white people, and not like, you know, the guys who own the car dealerships in West Virginia.
Like, those are the people.
And techno-libertarian venture capital.
Yeah, I mean, absolutely, absolutely.
Yeah, no, it's silly.
Another aspect to this that I just want to throw in here, I just want to make sure it's said, is the fact that Vance wrote a bestselling book, and then also had a movie made out of that book, and is sort of a celebrity in his own right, I think is another thing that pushes him to the top of Trump's list.
You know, again, I was talking about Marco Rubio that I can't even remember.
Like, I don't remember what his face looks like.
I just honestly forgot his name.
Like, I was literally listening to this podcast, like, 20 minutes before, and I just completely, completely blanked on, like, Marco Rubio.
You know, not that he's not terrible and important, but, like, I just completely blanked on it.
J.D.
Vance, for all of his faults, he has that cachet.
He has that celebrity to him.
And we know that Trump is very enamored in terms of the look, the look of people, how they're going to come across on TV.
I mean, it's kind of his one... I mean, you could say it's his one legitimate talent.
The one thing you can actually kind of respect about the guy is he's always just known how things are going to look on TV.
And, you know, he he displaced Bannon in part, not because of Bannon.
He disagreed with Bannon because Bannon was kind of slovenly.
Bannon didn't put himself together the right way.
You know, he kind of he was scruffy and he was, you know, and that's not that's not what Trump wants in him in his life.
That's not what Trump sees is like a good person to have around him.
And it's very petty and it's very superficial and it's very, I mean, fascist in its own way.
But it's just it's just a, you know, That's another thing in Vance's favor, obviously.
Yeah, absolutely.
And Trump has this track record of kind of getting crushes on people.
I don't necessarily mean sexual or romantic crushes, but just in the broader sense.
Yeah, apparently he has sort of gushed to Vance about how good-looking he is and stuff like this, which is a weird thing Trump has sometimes.
I will say, as a man with a beard, having a bearded American at the top of the US government... Finally, representation!
Finally, representation for the bearded among us.
Representation matters!
I am fully in favor of this.
Vote Trump-Vance now.
Unless he shaves, in which case, fuck that guy.
Because that's just a traitor, you know?
Sorry, I was going to go into a very problematic place, and I'm not going to do that now, but yeah.
But yeah, no.
Yeah, I don't know.
Do you have anything else to say?
I mean, we could talk about Vance all day, and I think we will have to talk more about Vance down the line.
But, you know, certainly, I think we've kind of covered, like, why we think he was picked.
So, what's the implications going to be?
Yeah, he's also got the right-wing Catholic connections as well, doesn't he?
He's got a little bit of that.
I think he just sort of calls himself Christian, but he's sort of aligned himself with this sort of hard-right Catholic stuff.
I don't know how profound that is or how connected that is.
I mean, obviously, the Catholic Church is not sort of... I don't think the Catholic Church has a giant presence in West Virginia, Ohio.
I mean, I know there are Catholics.
Obviously, there are Catholics there, but I'm not sure what his, you know, if you think about like redneck West Virginia, you're definitely, and I say that with the most respect, I'm a redneck from Alabama, but if you think redneck from West Virginia, you're definitely thinking like high church Catholic at that point.
And so it's a different, it's a different kind of vibe.
So I think that is like, he's, he's shed all that and he's like embracing his more cosmopolitan, his more city bred, you know, sort of, sort of idea, the more elite sides of this.
And I think that's, I think that's interesting as well.
I think it's more just an example of this thing that he has where he sort of places himself in lots of different connections, you know?
That's what it looks like to me.
It looks like he's a guy who sort of, like, you know, he approaches politics as like, you know, LinkedIn or networking or something like that, you know, you put a pin in this thing and then you put a pin in that thing over there and you end up with loads of pins and, and you can, you know, join them up when necessary.
You know, he's connect, he's connected.
I mean, I know they all do this, but he's, he seems to be particularly good at it.
You know, he's, he's a very, very, very stupid man, but he's like Trump.
He has his talents.
And it seems to me that one of his talents is sort of putting these pins in different places and connecting himself to lots of different things and people at once.
Yeah, no, I would agree, for sure.
I got one more thing for you.
I got one more very brief note.
Trump made his first appearance since the shooting, since the attempted shooting, at the RNC.
He did not give a speech, but he did give his first appearance.
And through thunderous applause, he shows up and just sort of sits at the desk.
And he does have the bandaged ear, which I am certain is medically necessary.
We're not playing that game.
I am certain that is medically necessary at this point.
But he does have the bandaged ear.
People were chanting while he's just, while they're just sort of like waiting for him to kind of come with their chanting, fight, fight, fight, fight, which is what he chanted on the end.
I mean, this is, this is, I mean, I mean, again, how do you possibly like, I've never been shot at like that.
Like if somebody shot me in the year from behind while I was like, while I was doing this podcast, somebody shot me in the year and like three seconds later I jump up and yell like, fight, fight, fight.
Like that's.
That is an instinct that, like, very few people on this planet have.
I mean, that's, again, legitimate.
Like, the guy, he's a nincompoop, he's a fascist, he's a horrible, horrible human being.
He's got that skill, he's got that, like, get up on his feet and do that to him.
Because there's this- Well, he's a psychopath, and psychopaths have very shallow emotions, so they don't experience fear the same way you and I do.
Right, yeah.
Yeah, no, I thought that was very telling.
I didn't watch a ton of the RNC Day one, but I watched some clips, and that was very, very interesting to me, that you did have huge portions of the crowd.
Some of his posts have been hilarious.
His posts have been like, the doctors were telling me it's the most amazing thing they've ever seen.
Anybody else would be dead.
And a lot of people are telling me, people are saying it's the most iconic photograph ever taken.
And I survived, and most people have to die to get an iconic photograph.
He is so happy.
He is just over the fucking moon.
He is enjoying himself.
You have never had as much fun as Donald Trump is having.
He knew in the moment that he could spin it.
I don't know, he's got that instinct.
It's disgusting, but it is the thing.
It's really great that the Democrats just said, oh yeah, we're just not going to campaign against him anymore.
We're going to pull all the ads.
Fucking typical Democrats.
Don't do anything, you know?
Like, yeah.
No.
It's great.
Well, we're going to have to accept responsibility for what happened.
We're going to have to accept responsibility for causing this assassination attempt, because anything else would just be politically indecent.
Or, I don't know, anti-Semitic or something, I don't know.
But we're just going to have to admit and beg forgiveness.
That's the only politically sensible thing we can possibly do.
Exactly, exactly.
Well, I think, I think, I think I'm done.
I think we've, I think we've gone far enough on this one.
So yeah.
Okay.
Well, thanks for listening, everybody.
That was a, I don't really have the nerve to call it a news brief.
It was just a, it was just a chat brief or shoot the shit brief or whatever it was, but I hope you enjoyed it.
So it certainly felt good to me to, to talk to Daniel again after a little bit of a break and get some stuff out of the old system.
So I hope you got something out of it as well.
And we will be back with you with something or other.
It might be another news brief, or another chat like this, or it might be another bonus, you know, for people that chuck us as little as a dollar or two.
one of our patreons talking about we've been we've been prepping the bonus movie probably we've been prepping the bonus on frost nixon which is a 2000s movie at least so you know yeah definitely Directed by Ron Howard, director of Herobrine and the Elegy.
Yeah.
We could talk about, you know, man, that's a, God, God, this is, it's just a shit show.
The whole thing is a shit show.
Like, you know, what the fuck are we doing in this world anymore?
Um, but yeah, no, lots of, lots of content in prep.
Sorry.
We've been a little bit, we've been, we've been very like lax on this, but it's not because we're not doing the work and it's not because we're not trying, it's just like, Things just keep getting in the way, but yeah, we're definitely going to come back for more content.
I think the Newsproof episodes are late.
I think we're going to just have to do some more of those before November.
I think there's no way we're not going to want to sit and chat for an hour about whatever the fuck is going on in the news for the next four months.
So expect a lot more of these, I think.
So tune in for those, and thanks for listening to this one.
Bye-bye, everybody.
Goodbye, Daniel.
See ya.
Cheers.
That was I Don't Speak German.
Thanks for listening.
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