True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 86: D.H. Ass
Aired: 2020-07-24
Duration: 01:06:33


=== Wicked Game Serenade (03:50) ===

[00:00:00]  Ah woo fall in love with games
[00:00:10]  You know you could do like a real good like werewolves of London thing that's that actually might be where werewolves of London came from see people think that Brace is just serenading them but actually they don't know because this is this is your new protest tactic because it's like the woman in Portland who the naked lady spread in spread an eagle showed her pussy to Department of Homeland Security.
[00:00:38]  Oh right.
[00:00:39]  Well, you can just say it like that too.
[00:00:41]  Literally what happened, but okay.
[00:00:44]  This is Brace's new tactic.
[00:00:47]  Serenading them with Wicked Game by Chris Isaac.
[00:00:51]  Wicked game.
[00:00:53]  You play.
[00:00:55]  It's funny.
[00:00:55]  I've listened to this song maybe 30, 40 times since I started today.
[00:01:01]  And I still can't get it right when I sing it.
[00:01:04]  But yeah, that's true.
[00:01:05]  You know, a lot of people, you know how they used to put guns, or excuse me, flowers in the barrels of guns at Kent State and related universities, probably also in the Kent area.
[00:01:17]  I'm assuming that's where they were deployed.
[00:01:21]  My thing is, listen, if you got haters, which I have basically nothing but haters.
[00:01:28]  If you got haters, all you got to do, hit him with Chris Isaac, Wicked Game.
[00:01:32]  Oh, you fall in love with me or something.
[00:01:39]  I think he says with me.
[00:01:41]  Anyways, I always hit him with the Wicked Game, baby.
[00:02:14]  Hello, Brace.
[00:02:16]  Greetings.
[00:02:18]  Liz.
[00:02:20]  Oh, wait, that's not how we do this.
[00:02:22]  Shit.
[00:02:23]  Okay.
[00:02:23]  Anyone ever call you Frank Zach?
[00:02:25]  You ever get Frank Zach?
[00:02:27]  Yeah.
[00:02:29]  Oh, my bad.
[00:02:31]  I don't really like it very much.
[00:02:33]  Because that's not how you say my last name.
[00:02:35]  Obviously not.
[00:02:36]  I'm just asking if you've ever got...
[00:02:37]  I've gotten Belding a lot.
[00:02:40]  What?
[00:02:40]  Belding?
[00:02:43]  I think it's from Welcome Back Cotter.
[00:02:45]  Oh.
[00:02:46]  I actually watched that show when I was a kid.
[00:02:48]  It's from one of those shows.
[00:02:49]  There was like a teacher named Mr. Belding.
[00:02:51]  Or whatever.
[00:02:52]  Yeah, I remember that one.
[00:02:53]  They were pretty good.
[00:02:55]  Those kids.
[00:02:57]  Feel like people back then wore like you know, cabby hats.
[00:03:00]  Yeah, they were like cabby hats that were like five times too big.
[00:03:03]  Yeah, they were too big, they were like off to the side, very funky, you know, and it's like they got a spring in their step.
[00:03:09]  They everyone walked like much longer strides.
[00:03:14]  Oh, absolutely.
[00:03:15]  It was always the keep on trucking kind of thing.
[00:03:17]  Yeah, yeah, they're kind of like lean back, smooth, move.
[00:03:23]  I have to figure out.
[00:03:25]  I'm sorry, I shouldn't be doing this while we're while we're doing this, but I have to figure out this Memphis rapper that that Memphis rapper big hat.
[00:03:35]  Is that going to help?
[00:03:36]  No, no, white, not black, white.
[00:03:39]  No, it's also showing me black people.
[00:03:41]  This guy is extremely white.
[00:03:42]  Fuck, I can't remember what it is, but I'm going to find it right after we end this segment.
[00:03:48]  I don't have to do this while we're doing the intro.

=== Strange Force of Federal Government (14:50) ===

[00:03:50]  I'm going to find a song and Young Chomsky, I need you to play a portion of it right here.
[00:03:55]  This hot chick is all up on my dang-a-lang Giving me the eye while we dance and sing I can't stop staring at her belly ring Next thing I know she's showing me her thingy-bang Thank you for indulging me, Liz.
[00:04:14]  All right.
[00:04:15]  Well, now that we've done that, I should say, I'm Liz.
[00:04:17]  Hello.
[00:04:18]  My name is Brace.
[00:04:20]  Oh, and we're joined, of course, by producer Young Chomsky.
[00:04:23]  So, who does that?
[00:04:24]  Is that you or me who usually does that?
[00:04:26]  We just, you know, we see how it goes.
[00:04:28]  We wing it.
[00:04:29]  Yeah, we're riffing, baby.
[00:04:30]  We're riffing.
[00:04:31]  We're riffing.
[00:04:32]  Yeah, welcome.
[00:04:32]  This is Tronan, and we have a big old episode for you today where we're talking.
[00:04:40]  What are we talking about?
[00:04:41]  We're talking about the freaking coppers.
[00:04:44]  The jackbooted thugs marching.
[00:04:47]  I'll tell you what.
[00:04:47]  I'll tell you what.
[00:04:48]  If this pile of gunpowder was Ruby Ridge 0.2, these guys would be the spark and the fuse.
[00:04:56]  Yeah, so we got a lot to say about what's going on in Portland and what sounds like will soon be happening in a city near you, America.
[00:05:06]  So we got our buddy Ken Klippenstein on to talk through just what the fuck DHS is, what Trump is doing, maybe what some predictions, maybe we already think this is going.
[00:05:19]  And, you know, we got to talk Dick Cheney, my man, because he's involved too.
[00:05:26]  He's always involved.
[00:05:28]  Let's vroom on in, baby!
[00:05:30]  Vroom vroom!
[00:05:45]  You know, this would be a lot easier if we could do visual gags.
[00:05:49]  Like we were in an elevator and the elevator opened and Ken got in.
[00:05:52]  And we were like, oh, what a pleasant surprise.
[00:05:54]  It's Ken Klippenstein from the nation, a DC correspondent of the nation.
[00:06:01]  So good to see you.
[00:06:02]  But instead, I just have to say it.
[00:06:03]  So, well, oh, my elevator's coming down.
[00:06:07]  The doors are opening.
[00:06:08]  I wonder who's on the other side.
[00:06:09]  It's Ken Klippenstein from the nation.
[00:06:12]  DC correspondent, how are you doing, Ken?
[00:06:14]  Hey, I'm doing all right.
[00:06:16]  Ken, we're so excited to have you here because you are the FOIA legend, of course, but also you've been doing so much work publishing various memos and talking with sources inside various federal agencies about what exactly is going on within DHS, within Border Patrol, within ICE.
[00:06:40]  And we specifically have you on because we want to talk about what the fuck is going on in Portland in the wake of these kind of, it's like a second wave of these protest movements that are happening in Portland.
[00:06:54]  Kind of a continuation, but you know, really gaining second steam kind of.
[00:06:59]  And that have been met with pretty strange force by the federal government.
[00:07:05]  Yeah, so what we have is federal agents carrying out what they call a supporting role for local law enforcement.
[00:07:13]  And the media has not been very clear about this.
[00:07:15]  Certainly the administration's not been very clear.
[00:07:17]  I wish there was more kind of scrutiny of what the legal basis for all this is.
[00:07:22]  But I had a memo leaked to me from someone in Department of Homeland Security that gives us a pretty good idea of where these authorities are coming from.
[00:07:31]  And so it turns out that in June 26th, Trump issued an executive order.
[00:07:35]  I'm going to quote the order because the wording is kind of funny.
[00:07:37]  It's called the Protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues in Combating Recent Criminal Activity.
[00:07:44]  And so if you look at the text of that executive order, it says that the president directed, quote, that he shall provide, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, personnel to assist with the protection of federal monuments, memorials, statues, or property.
[00:07:58]  And everyone was sort of laughing about the monuments thing, myself included, because it's funny.
[00:08:01]  But the really critical turn of phrase there is property, because that can be interpreted very broadly.
[00:08:07]  And so in response to that executive order, Department of Homeland Security created what's called the Protecting American Communities Task Force, or PACT for short.
[00:08:15]  Another pretty funny.
[00:08:17]  Yeah, I'm not hugely relieved by the choice of name there.
[00:08:23]  A little robocop-ish.
[00:08:24]  Yeah, a little robocop-ish.
[00:08:28]  So this is DHS's response.
[00:08:30]  I'll call Department of Homeland Security DHS here on out.
[00:08:32]  That's their response to Trump's executive order.
[00:08:34]  And what that created was really the legal or kind of the agency basis for these feds to start running around Portland and arrest people in some cases.
[00:08:49]  And in fact, against the wishes of municipal, local, and state government there.
[00:08:53]  Yeah, just if we could back up for a second, because in case, like, some, I feel like our listeners probably know what's going on, but maybe they aren't aware or they're not on social media.
[00:09:03]  I don't know how much the mainstream media is really covering what's going on in Portland, but there was like a wave of like pretty viral videos of protesters in Portland basically being snatched by unmarked federal agents and thrown in vans, which is quite concerning for a lot of reasons.
[00:09:26]  And, you know, a lot of people were trying to identify, you know, who are these agents, what is going on here, and not a lot of comments from the feds.
[00:09:38]  Is that right?
[00:09:39]  Like, they weren't really like saying, oh, those are our guys.
[00:09:41]  Don't worry about it.
[00:09:42]  Yeah.
[00:09:43]  According to the videos, they say, you know, who are you and why am I being arrested?
[00:09:46]  Because that's probably the first question you have when you're being detained.
[00:09:49]  And at least in the videos, they didn't say.
[00:09:51]  And the cars were unmarked.
[00:09:53]  According to reports, one of the guys that was arrested, they asked him if he would answer some questions.
[00:09:58]  You know, he invoked his right to attorney.
[00:10:00]  At that point, they said, all right, you can go.
[00:10:01]  He left.
[00:10:02]  And what was strange was they never booked him.
[00:10:04]  That's very unusual if they're trying to, you know, intercede in a criminal act that they want to try to stop or know about something.
[00:10:10]  You know, we were talking about this offset, but I wonder if that means this is part of an intelligence gathering operation as opposed to something that they necessarily want to nail someone with charges for in the sort of like right now.
[00:10:23]  But it's really hard to tell because the administration has not been forthcoming about what exactly they're doing.
[00:10:27]  The media hasn't really asked the right sorts of questions.
[00:10:30]  So what I was describing before was to give people a sense of the legal basis, which was not just the executive order, but also Department of Homeland Security's response to it and the task force that they created.
[00:10:40]  And what's interesting about this task force is it takes advantage of really broad authorities DHS has had since its inception, you know, right after 9-11, which I think is really important context to include in any coverage of this.
[00:10:52]  This didn't begin with Trump, although the media might have you think that.
[00:10:55]  DHS was forged in the fires of the 9-11 attacks and has within its institutional DNA a lot of those sort of characteristics, really broad powers that were never rolled back after the attacks under Bush or Obama or now, of course, Trump.
[00:11:13]  And now we're seeing an administration that's willing to take full advantage of that and really push it to its limits.
[00:11:18]  And so one of those limits here is that under 40 U.S. Code 1315, this was actually passed right after 9-11 under the Homeland Security Act of 2002.
[00:11:27]  Great time for civil liberties.
[00:11:30]  When that was passed, it allows Department of Homeland Security to deputize its officers and basically make them functionally local police and able to operate like that.
[00:11:40]  And that's what they've done here.
[00:11:42]  That's something that I find really strange.
[00:11:44]  So I saw a lot of these officers identified as members of Bortak, which is like CBP's SWAT team.
[00:11:53]  So Border Patrol.
[00:11:54]  And as far as I know, Border Patrol is not supposed to operate more than 100 miles out from the border, except in like certain special circumstances, which do not seem to include what's going on here.
[00:12:05]  So that's why, for instance, Portland, which is not within 100 miles of a border, is able to basically be invaded by Border Patrol agents.
[00:12:17]  Yeah.
[00:12:17]  So they would say that they are, you know, I mentioned before the text of the executive order being that they have to help protect monuments, memorials, statues, or property.
[00:12:26]  And in this case, you know, property that can be construed very broadly.
[00:12:31]  And so we saw an example of this earlier when William Barr, under the direction of Attorney General Barr, they dispatched feds to respond to protests in front of the White House in the infamous Bible photo op that classic.
[00:12:51]  The authority that they were using then was to allegedly defend federal property.
[00:12:56]  And now DC, it makes a little more sense because there's federal property.
[00:12:59]  You can't throw a pebble without hitting federal property somewhere.
[00:13:03]  But in Portland, Oregon, that's a lot harder of a case to make, although they're still trying to invoke that same sort of argument saying, oh, there's a federal courthouse here, maybe within a certain distance.
[00:13:12]  But the report suggests that these federal agents are moving beyond the distances of these federal buildings that the authority would allow.
[00:13:21]  Yeah, I'm looking at the statement put out by acting DHS Secretary Wolf about why, about basically the pretext for sending these agents into Portland.
[00:13:35]  And he has a list of incidents starting from 529, 2020 and going up until just July 15th.
[00:13:46]  And almost like, for instance, this one is from May 30th.
[00:13:50]  There are several bullet points.
[00:13:52]  All of them say proceeded with violent anarchists graffited the building.
[00:13:57]  So violent anarchists graffiti the BPA building, graffiti the Hatfield Courthouse, graffiti the 9-11 federal building, which I don't know why they have one of those in Portland.
[00:14:06]  Violent anarchists graffiti the Gus J. Solomon Courthouse.
[00:14:10]  So almost all of these are courthouses and all of them sound like federal buildings.
[00:14:14]  And funnily enough, like, I mean, they're setting in heavily armed, I mean, basically like, you know, the elite of the Border Patrol troops to counteract what looks like graffiti incidents.
[00:14:26]  Yeah, that's exactly right.
[00:14:28]  And it's very carefully done and constructed.
[00:14:32]  I was mentioning this to you guys before, but William Barr has a history throughout his career of creating justification for the use of federal force in situations that, You know, probably the locality should handle them internally.
[00:14:46]  And one of the ways that he very ingeniously has done this is to argue that, you know, there are federal assets, you know, here or there.
[00:14:54]  And I mean, you can conceivably come up with federal, I mean, there are, you know, federal courthouses, federal buildings all over the place.
[00:14:59]  And so basically, he's very ingeniously crafted this sort of legal framework for sending federal assets to different locales in order to allegedly protect federal assets there.
[00:15:12]  And that's, I think that's exactly what we're seeing here because to you know, have Bortek, that's like, as you said, that's that's this is kind of like the special forces equivalent of the Border Patrol.
[00:15:24]  They have like night vision goggles.
[00:15:26]  They're often sent to like kick down doors, maybe at a, you know, like maybe like a, maybe like a cartel safe house where the, you know, they're really trained to deal with situations where you're very likely to find armed resistance.
[00:15:40]  So to have them, you know, arresting people that, as far as the, I can tell from the videos just seems like demonstrators.
[00:15:45]  That level of federal force just seems wildly disproportionate to the alleged threat.
[00:15:50]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:15:51]  You mentioned Barr, and I want to get into him in a little bit because he's a very important, not enough detention is paid on our attorney general, surprisingly enough.
[00:16:00]  But I'm wondering if, you know, you mentioned how like heavily armed these guys are.
[00:16:06]  And that has been like a slow creep over the past, I don't know, whatever it is, 20 years with DHS and its like kind of expansion.
[00:16:17]  I'm wondering if you can kind of explain some of that because DHS, you know, when it was initially created, like so many things, you know, with 9-11, it sort of had an express purpose, although it was, it's, it's become like, I think it kind of quickly became pretty muddy about what it was doing.
[00:16:34]  It was like, okay, you're TSA or okay, your border, and but it's like kind of like all over the place a little bit.
[00:16:41]  But it is one of the largest federal agencies, right?
[00:16:45]  Yeah, it's actually the largest federal law enforcement agency of any of them.
[00:16:49]  And that's interesting because it's also probably the youngest of all of them.
[00:16:52]  Yeah.
[00:16:52]  I'll give you guys some examples.
[00:16:56]  They have 45,000 Border Patrol and CBP officers.
[00:16:59]  That's three times the number of armed FBI agents.
[00:17:02]  They have 20,000 ICE law enforcement personnel.
[00:17:04]  That's the equivalent to all FBI, ATF, and DEA staff combined.
[00:17:09]  So this is a huge agency, massive.
[00:17:12]  And that's quite interesting because they don't have the sort of institutional history that can impose discipline and put on them a sort of cultural history to understand what exactly you're there for.
[00:17:26]  And I thought you brought up a good point that it's never, it's always been sort of modeled what exactly their mission is.
[00:17:31]  That's absolutely true.
[00:17:32]  I mean, they've dealt, you know, they've been tasked with dealing with everything from human trafficking to airport security to International commerce, oversight.
[00:17:44]  Like it's also, I mean, it's been so many different things that this is really the perfect agency to sort of, if, if, if your goal as president is to find one that can, you know, carry out and do things that, that maybe they don't, maybe they don't have an explicit mission to do.
[00:18:00]  Yeah, you mentioned the like culture thing, and I think that's such an interesting aspect that I hadn't, I had never thought of before, but it's true.
[00:18:06]  It's like, you know, we're not fans of the FBI in any way or the CIA, obviously.
[00:18:11]  I mean, that's like what our whole podcast is about.
[00:18:13]  But there is an institutional culture that, like you said, can impose some kind of at least internal discipline or sense of kind of like, you know, largesse among, you know, the bureaucrats working in these departments.
[00:18:30]  And like that just does not exist at Homeland Security.
[00:18:34]  And yeah, it's not, it's not even just.
[00:18:36]  I don't know exactly why.
[00:18:38]  Well, it's not even cultural.
[00:18:40]  It's also policy-wise.

=== Shadow Ice CBP Security (15:37) ===

[00:18:41]  So like at the FBI, you know, as you say, plenty of problems.
[00:18:44]  I'm not an enthusiast for any of the intelligence.
[00:18:47]  Yeah, to be clear, so that never gets taken out of country.
[00:18:50]  Yeah, this is a matter of like relative problems.
[00:18:55]  So I would say relative to the FBI and everything else, they're even less disciplined.
[00:18:59]  So in the case of DHS, they take their leadership from, they take their cues from the president on national security matters, and it was designed that way and intended to be that way.
[00:19:07]  Whereas with the FBI, that's actually under the Justice Department.
[00:19:10]  And the Justice Department, at least in theory, I mean, we're all adults here.
[00:19:13]  We know that.
[00:19:14]  In reality, they're not necessarily neutral, but at least in theory, they're supposed to behave neutrally or act that way.
[00:19:19]  With DHS, there's not even that presumption.
[00:19:21]  So that I think leads to the kinds of politicization that you see when you see, for instance, ISIS, the ICE, ISIS union, Border Patrol's union, they all endorse Trump.
[00:19:31]  When you look at FBI, they don't actually have a union.
[00:19:33]  They have, you know, they have some trade group, but it's not quite the same thing.
[00:19:36]  And it's certainly not as partisan as these Department of Homeland Security subcomponents are.
[00:19:42]  Yeah, if I'm not mistaken, like CBP has a lot of problems with personnel, too.
[00:19:48]  Like it's like, it seems pretty criminal in nature, what a lot of these guys do.
[00:19:55]  Yeah, this is amazing.
[00:19:56]  So from 2005 to 2012, there was one CBP agent or officer arrested every single day.
[00:20:02]  And that's the problem.
[00:20:04]  That's insane.
[00:20:07]  How many is that?
[00:20:10]  It's decreased a little bit, but it's still quite bad.
[00:20:13]  That's insane.
[00:20:15]  That's a full turnover.
[00:20:18]  That's like they've had to go through an entire turnover then.
[00:20:21]  That's crazy.
[00:20:22]  And it really shows, too, because the morale is so low.
[00:20:25]  I mean, you know, I know a lot of folks in these different agencies.
[00:20:27]  You can see it sort of informally, but they conduct polling because they want to find out what the workforce thinks.
[00:20:33]  There's all sorts of questions they have about like, you know, readiness and things.
[00:20:36]  Like you see in the military, so they want to know, you know, how are people doing?
[00:20:39]  And they consistently rank towards the bottom of all the federal agencies.
[00:20:43]  And it's so bad that last year, I think I had a report.
[00:20:46]  Someone showed me a memo from the, I believe it was the head of Department of Home Security.
[00:20:51]  And he was cheering that they had a 2% increase in morale among ICE, I think it was.
[00:20:56]  Incredible.
[00:20:57]  And so that gives you a sense of how rock bottom the morale is there.
[00:21:02]  Incredible.
[00:21:03]  Yeah.
[00:21:03]  And this, I mean, also, it's, you know, you said it's not just culture, but it's, and, you know, with the personnel, it's like, you know, the training that these guys kind of have to go through, it's nowhere near as rigorous as any other agency.
[00:21:17]  Like, it's not, I mean, you know, you don't have to go through like, you know, rigorous like security clearances or insane, you know, background checks.
[00:21:32]  Like, and I'm not even, that's not even the tip of the iceberg with what, you know, kind of goes into the application to work for the FBI.
[00:21:40]  But, you know, it's a completely different pool that people are, that, that the department's pulling from, it seems.
[00:21:47]  That's definitely true.
[00:21:48]  I mean, there are many cases where people just have a GED.
[00:21:50]  I mean, I was talking to my man.
[00:21:53]  I was talking to a, I have to be vague, like a, I was talking to a law enforcement person in DHS.
[00:22:00]  And he was telling me, like, it's astonishing because, you know, they'll get hires here that you could never dream of working for any of the Justice Department components that you would think about, like, you know, DEA or FBI or I don't know, even a DOD, NCIS.
[00:22:12]  The degree of education is a lot lower.
[00:22:16]  Discipline is generally lower because there's just less training.
[00:22:18]  If you just look at the training that they're required to do, even with once they get to DHS, that's a lot less as well.
[00:22:24]  So I think that all of this contributes to an institution that, you know, might not be so hard to lead around by the nose when you have a sort of charismatic figure who's also gives them a whole lot of money too, and assurance that they'll keep getting more money like President Trump has.
[00:22:39]  Yeah, I mean, I think that's like, you know, there's like a couple of things there where it's like, you know, okay, you mentioned if you wanted to have a kind of like federal, like, you know, army police, basically, that having a kind of like undertrained, not very well-trained, but highly militarized, massive department that is like direct that directly reports to the commander-in-chief would maybe be the first step.
[00:23:09]  You know, not to sound like crazy, but you know, I think like, I don't know, I don't think people completely understand like how unique the Department of Homeland Security is in its like history and structure.
[00:23:22]  And it needs to, it should be treated very differently than the other ones, at least just even just historically.
[00:23:29]  Yeah, their mission is so, you know, poorly defined.
[00:23:32]  And the resources and authorities they have reflect that too.
[00:23:35]  So in that memo that I was telling you about that I was given to, I was given to from someone within DHS, it has some talking points, like how they're supposed to interface with media, how they answer questions.
[00:23:47]  One of the questions was, what do we say if they ask you about drones?
[00:23:50]  Because that was a big issue in Minneapolis.
[00:23:52]  We had the predator drone that was conducting surveillance over there.
[00:23:55]  They said to say, I'm quoting, at this time, CBP Air and Marine Operations has assets on standby to assist as needed.
[00:24:02]  So that's basically saying, you know, we reserve the right to decide if we want to use a drone at any point in time.
[00:24:07]  And a lot of people were surprised to hear, wait, HOMA Border Patrol has drones?
[00:24:12]  And it's like, yeah, they do.
[00:24:13]  They also have planes.
[00:24:14]  They have a whole fleet of things.
[00:24:15]  And I don't think people realize the extent to which they've accrued all of these resources to become a kind of shadow defense department in many ways.
[00:24:24]  I think that's a good way to put it too, because I mean, I always joke that like the United States only industrial policy is Department of Defense.
[00:24:32]  Like the only thing we make and contract out to make are weapons.
[00:24:37]  And, you know, you have all that money sloshing around.
[00:24:41]  You have all these contracts to fulfill.
[00:24:43]  You got to, you know, send that shit somewhere.
[00:24:45]  And having a kind of like dumping ground for a highly, you know, expansive weapons and military program seems to be quite useful.
[00:25:17]  Something I wanted to bring up, too, is that, like, you know, it does seem sort of like a shadow DoD, which is extremely concerning on many levels.
[00:25:26]  Although the actual regular non-shadow DOD, I also find to be extremely concerning.
[00:25:31]  So to put that in perspective.
[00:25:34]  But one sort of like fear that I have is that it does look like there is essentially like a highly partisan, which to be clear, most police forces are extremely right wing, but like a highly partisan, especially where it concerns Trump, essentially like shadow army being deployed that has like predator drones, that has, yeah, like you said, air and marine assets.
[00:26:04]  And I'm a little confused about why, because they also said that I think Secretary Chad Wolf also said that he had intel about a possible attack on federal property in terrorist attack, I think he might have called it, although I'm not exactly sure on that language, about property in Portland.
[00:26:22]  That's why DHS troops were sent out.
[00:26:24]  But forgive me if I'm wrong, but that seems like it would normally be the province of the FBI.
[00:26:31]  Well, this is where the unclear nature of DHS's mission really comes in.
[00:26:35]  So they also have a counter-terror mandate.
[00:26:38]  And, you know, I've spoken to for the last few articles I've done on this, current and former intelligence officers, and they describe how after 9-11, their mission has really been to look at groups like Al-Qaeda and the Arabian Peninsula or anything that can be said to pose a threat to the continental United States.
[00:27:02]  And this is the cause of a lot of consternation because my understanding is that the intelligence officers, they want to focus on the targets now, which they believe are far-right groups and the anti-government groups that have been carrying out a lot of terrorist attacks.
[00:27:16]  And they can't because they're just so kind of cemented in this old framework of like, oh, we're the guys that go after Al-Qaeda or ISIS or whatever it is.
[00:27:25]  So even to the extent that it's a counter-terror agency, it seems like it hasn't been able to do these things effectively.
[00:27:31]  And people inside will tell you that too.
[00:27:33]  This is from people that are not very critical of the agency in the same way that the general public might be.
[00:27:41]  Yeah, I mean, that's the thing.
[00:27:43]  Is DHS like, is this an intelligence agency?
[00:27:46]  Is this like just like a federal sort of catch-all thing for like, you know, internal troops?
[00:27:53]  Like, what is DHS?
[00:27:56]  So it contains within it, it's very complicated, but it has one like sub-agency inside of it that is a part of the intelligence community.
[00:28:03]  It's called intelligence and analysis.
[00:28:05]  And that's important because that gives it the same footing as the CIA, the, you know, Defense Intelligence Agency, the FBI, all these very top-tier agencies that have extraordinary access to information about, you know, what a lot of people in the U.S. are up to.
[00:28:21]  And what's interesting about ICE and Customs and Border Protection, which includes within it Border Patrol, is that they've tried to get similar footing.
[00:28:30]  So there's good reporting last year and the year before showing that they wanted to join the intelligence community, which is really amazing.
[00:28:37]  I mean, there wasn't much coverage on this, but if they were able to get into the intelligence community, they'd have access to top secret information of the sort that you try to have really stringent vetting of people that have access to it because it's understood that they could potentially do some really bad things with these types of things.
[00:28:56]  Fortunately, ICE and Customs and Border Protection, they were rebuffed.
[00:29:00]  For whatever reason, they didn't succeed in getting included in the intelligence community.
[00:29:05]  But earlier this year, I learned from folks in both ICE and CBP that they ended up getting what's called a security agency designation, which makes it so that they no longer have to disclose not just the names of their employees.
[00:29:18]  And I'm not talking about just field agents, even just office workers and things like that.
[00:29:21]  That's all secret now.
[00:29:23]  But they don't have to publicly disclose even which office they work for or salary information, very basic stuff that for federal employees is often something you can get under FOIA or if you're on the street and you want to know who's arresting you, for instance.
[00:29:36]  Wait, this is ICE and CBP or all of DHS?
[00:29:39]  Both ICE and CBP.
[00:29:41]  They didn't have this before either.
[00:29:42]  The only agencies that have this designation are like CIA, Secret Service, FBI, really top tier kind of things.
[00:29:51]  That's because that's what's so wild, because one of the reasons that people were freaking out so much about the Portland stuff besides some, the obvious is that ICE agents weren't wearing any.
[00:30:02]  You know, you know, if you look at cop uniforms uh, army uniforms most uniforms have the person's name on it and these agents did not have those on their uniforms and Chad Wolf came out and said it was because of threats of doxing.
[00:30:18]  Oh, I have an interesting story about that.
[00:30:19]  So this designation I told you about I was given some other memos that showed what the rationale for it was and the origin of all this you can find my report on it.
[00:30:28]  Just, you know, Google Security Agency and ICE or CBP was that someone on Twitter had been posting their, I think, salaries and like addresses or something like that.
[00:30:37]  I saw that they released like a dropbox.
[00:30:39]  That's right and that is the cause of them getting the same footing as the CIA and FBI and all these other things is because someone was so scared that some guy on Twitter literally a Twitter, ONE Twitter account it says people who say Twitter doesn't matter and Twitter isn't real.
[00:30:53]  Look at this guys, we got, we got.
[00:30:56]  We got CBP custom, excuse me uh, put as a uh, Intelligence Agency, security agency.
[00:31:02]  Excuse me yeah, we're winning the war on ideas.
[00:31:06]  Fuck, that's crazy.
[00:31:09]  That's like actually insane.
[00:31:11]  So I mean, what seems to be like the picture you're painting for me here is of an agency that is massive, that is, is basically being used by the president in a highly partisan way which again, is not unusual for intelligence security agencies whatever but, but it's it's, it's.
[00:31:28]  The scope of this is really what blows my mind.
[00:31:32]  And so we have these troops deployed to Portland federal troops, I mean, I call them troops, I guess police uh, essentially temporarily kidnapping people uh, just whisking them off the street.
[00:31:43]  They shot a guy I know, I believe took out a.
[00:31:46]  Did they kill him?
[00:31:47]  I know they hit someone with a rubber bullet there.
[00:31:50]  I think he had a concussion.
[00:31:51]  He was very seriously injured, but I don't think he's dead.
[00:31:54]  Yeah, well, still shot him.
[00:31:56]  And not arresting anybody, just like taking them off the streets for a while, which is a pretty classic intimidation tactic.
[00:32:05]  Yeah.
[00:32:07]  And they're talking about deploying these guys to other cities too, right?
[00:32:12]  Yeah, that's right.
[00:32:13]  So if you look at the memo I was given, other talking points they're shown is to, if they're asked where they're going to be deployed, say we can't tell you because operational security.
[00:32:22]  And then if you ask how long, like what the timeframe is going to be, they also cite national, they also cite operational security.
[00:32:30]  So we can't tell you.
[00:32:32]  This memo was released on July 1st, and they were instructed to say, we believe this will only last through the 4th of July, just for that day.
[00:32:41]  And of course, it's ongoing and they never ended it.
[00:32:44]  So, you know, much like the agency itself, this task force and the federal agents they're deploying to God knows how many cities is completely open-ended and poorly defined and vague in itself.
[00:32:56]  Yeah, that's what's so crazy to me is that we do have basically the indefinite deployment of federal officers doing whatever the fuck they want with basically no oversight.
[00:33:06]  You can't even know their fucking names.
[00:33:09]  And this is like the Jade Helm stuff come true, right?
[00:33:16]  Like they really are.
[00:33:17]  Like they're an unmarked, I mean, if you look at it, for some reason, it is supremely creepy to see these guys in military fatigues dragging some guy who's just walking home from a protest into a fucking unmarked, just like minivan that you'd see at Whole Foods parking lot or whatever in the middle of the street without saying a word.
[00:33:36]  It's incredible.
[00:33:37]  And people, I think some people are sort of waking up to see what this is, but like this is the stuff that Alex Jones warned you about.
[00:33:44]  They're actually doing it.
[00:33:47]  And I think a lot of people just don't know how to react because like there's not much we can do.
[00:33:52]  Like you said, the local politicians in Portland don't want them there.
[00:33:58]  But the police unions and the police, the guess the local police departments, a lot of these cities are inviting them in too.
[00:34:06]  Like they say they're willing to work with them.
[00:34:08]  Yeah, that's exactly right.
[00:34:10]  The reception from local police has been very warm and in stark contrast to that of like every other public official.

=== Legal Pretexts and Power (14:52) ===

[00:34:18]  I mean, you have senators, you have Nancy Pelosi, for God's sake, going on Twitter and sounding like Luis Mensch about all this.
[00:34:25]  And she is not someone who ever issues, you know, very strong statements about hardly anything.
[00:34:31]  Let me try to find what her statement was.
[00:34:33]  It was pretty astonishing.
[00:34:34]  She said, quote, DHS actions in Portland undermine its mission.
[00:34:37]  Trump and his stormtroopers must be stopped.
[00:34:39]  And it's kind of a nice slum.
[00:34:41]  Yeah, really surprising to hear her say that.
[00:34:43]  And it's kind of a nice segue because right now the House is right in the middle of deciding what kinds of budgetary appropriations they're going to do.
[00:34:52]  And like minutes before we went to record this, Ryan Grimm had a story out saying that the Congressional Progressive Caucus is pushing for a new funding bill that doesn't include funding for DHS.
[00:35:06]  But at that same time, Pelosi, it sounds like, and the other Democratic House leaders want to go ahead with the funding that they already had in place.
[00:35:17]  I mean, these people are so spineless.
[00:35:19]  It's so frustrating to see, like, you know, she, Pelosi puts that shit on Twitter to like rile up whatever and make this like big thing like, look, the Democrats were doing something, blah, blah, blah.
[00:35:30]  But they're just signing these bills away to DHS.
[00:35:33]  And they have been for the past, you know, since its fucking inception.
[00:35:38]  You know, they've been just giving them more and more money every year.
[00:35:42]  There's been absolutely no, no concerted pushback ever.
[00:35:46]  Yeah, that's exactly right.
[00:35:47]  I mean, in situations like this, the president has enormous power to tell them what to do, but the power that the branch that's supposed to be co-equal Congress has is the power of the purse string so they can defund.
[00:35:58]  And that in itself, maybe you can't defund all of DHS, but that would send a pretty clear message to them.
[00:36:02]  Like, you know, you better stop just being this like highly partisan outfit or we're going to keep cutting things.
[00:36:10]  And the thing is, it's not like we tried it and it didn't work.
[00:36:13]  It's more like nothing has been tried.
[00:36:15]  Right.
[00:36:16]  Well, I think you just mentioned something that I kind of want to pinpoint.
[00:36:19]  You said that supposedly equal branches, which, you know, part of what is kind of like, you know, we mentioned William Barr, you know, the executive branch, the fact that DHS basically just reports to the commander in chief slash president, which are now sort of one in the same, which we'll get into.
[00:36:39]  But, you know, the kind of like deep backdrop of this is something that we've mentioned on the show before.
[00:36:46]  If you've listened to our episodes on 9-11, which is something called the unitary executive theory, which our man, William Barr, is actually, I think you could go so far as to say one of the philosophers of, legal philosophers of.
[00:37:02]  And, you know, this is usually mentioned in conjunction with Dick Cheney at Donald Rumsfeld, John Yoo, of course, who I think is still making the cable news rounds, which.
[00:37:13]  Yeah, in fact, Fox News was dragging Andy NGO and fucking John Yoo out the other night to talk about how everything that the DHS is doing in Portland, totally legal, extremely sick, no problem.
[00:37:28]  And I thought it was a little fucking on the nose to have John Yoo, the fucking torture memos guy who is like the Alfred Rosenberg of the fucking Bush administration, or one of many Alfred Rosenbergs, the Bush administration, to talk about this.
[00:37:44]  It's incredible to me.
[00:37:45]  Well, that's what's so funny is that John Yoo is right.
[00:37:48]  And that's like kind of like an important point is that, you know, this stuff is actually all legal.
[00:37:54]  And part of the reason why it's legal, and we can kind of, it's sort of, let's see if I can explain this right.
[00:38:01]  There's, but like, it's legal because they've created laws making it so, right?
[00:38:07]  And that starts, I mean, there's an important kind of longer history here that actually goes all the way back to Iran-Contra because everything, of course, goes back to Iran-Contra.
[00:38:17]  But basically, there's like a split there where the Reagan administration is wanting to do all of this stuff, you know, fund the Contras, right?
[00:38:26]  And not only that, but then they're also trying to deregulate massive industries domestically.
[00:38:33]  And Congress like really put its foot down and they said, no, no, no, we're Congress.
[00:38:38]  We're not going to let you do that.
[00:38:39]  And this was like, you know, this was a big sticking point.
[00:38:45]  And basically, like, you know, during the Iran-Contra hearings, one of the kind of like minority reports of the Iran-Contra hearing kind of starts to spell out what would be, what would basically become a kind of more unitary executive theory that we see develop mostly through the HW and then W, Bush, and Obama years, and now the Trump years.
[00:39:12]  But basically, the idea is that actually the president has all power because the executive has all power.
[00:39:22]  And if like, basically, if the executive has control over something, then it has exclusive control over something, which means that Congress doesn't have any role in limiting the executive's control over it.
[00:39:36]  So there's like kind of like two steps that they're kind of doing there in terms of legal justification.
[00:39:41]  But part of it is saying that it's really blurring the line between commander-in-chief and the executive.
[00:39:50]  And this became really crucial in the years, you know, right after 9-11 when most of these, including the Patriot Act and a lot of the torture memos and the warrantless surveillance program and all these legal justifications are getting, you know, basically milled out by the Bush administration, although it's unclear exactly how quickly they were able to write those.
[00:40:13]  Methinks they had some of them, you know, squared away.
[00:40:18]  Ready to rock.
[00:40:19]  Yeah, ready to fucking rock for sure.
[00:40:22]  They fell out of the damn planes like a fully intact passport.
[00:40:26]  Exactly.
[00:40:28]  Exactly.
[00:40:31]  But, you know, that basically, you know, because he's the commander in chief and you're in this state of national security, that there are no laws that can like in any way limit the power of the commander in chief because all national security concerns are under his purview, if that makes sense.
[00:40:52]  And that becomes a very dangerous situation as we're seeing, not just, you know, as we saw explicitly with the war on terror.
[00:40:59]  And, you know, I won't even get into the way the Obama administration expanded this stuff, but now we're seeing a direct, you know, we're seeing this direct with the Trump admin and the expansion of DHS, where they're literally using this, these same, you know, these legal justifications for deploying troops to cities.
[00:41:22]  Yeah, it's really extraordinary the role that Barr has played.
[00:41:25]  He's really doing, he's playing a song he's practiced his entire life.
[00:41:30]  And I'll give you a couple examples that sort of illustrate that.
[00:41:33]  So back in 1989, and this was pointed out, I should say, by Ryan Goodman and Daniel Shulkin of Just Security.
[00:41:41]  They had a really great article on his sort of legal history.
[00:41:45]  So back in 1989, the Virgin Islands suffered a really bad hurricane.
[00:41:50]  And so they had to go in.
[00:41:51]  And the question was, how do we send federal troops in to keep to prevent looting and things of that nature that is always their transcendent concern?
[00:42:00]  How do we do that without declaring martial law?
[00:42:02]  Because going all the way to martial law, that looks bad.
[00:42:05]  So Barr came up with a pretty ingenious interpretation of some really old laws that have been, some really old statutes that have been on the books.
[00:42:13]  And basically, he was able to use the statute that said that to keep federal functions going and courts open, you can send federal troops in to do kind of local stuff regardless of the support or objection of the local authorities.
[00:42:28]  And so on that basis, he was able to use very arcane sort of legal procedures to end up sending federal troops there.
[00:42:36]  That was just one example.
[00:42:38]  But what was so striking about that is that when he deployed, when Barr signed off on the deployment of feds here in Washington and D.C., he also used the justification that they're there to prevent and prevent violence against the courts and preserve the courts' ability to continue functioning.
[00:42:56]  So it's almost uncanny how similar it was to this case of the Virgin Islands.
[00:43:00]  And there's yet another example when he was working for George H.W. Bush during the Desert Storm invasion.
[00:43:10]  Bush had deployed 500,000 troops to Saudi Arabia.
[00:43:13]  And so he said, okay, do I need congressional authorization on this?
[00:43:16]  Barr essentially said to him, no, I don't think that you do.
[00:43:19]  And he said, you know, so long as you, the commander-in-chief, believe that you need to go in there, then I think that that is justification enough.
[00:43:27]  And so, again, provides a very complex legal justification for circumventing really what is the only protection we have against a president running roughshod on our foreign policy, which is congressional approval.
[00:43:40]  And so the argument he made essentially, it's kind of interesting.
[00:43:42]  He said that if you need to do first strike in order to protect your army in the field, thinking that your army will get attacked first, then as long as you're in that state of mind that you're protecting your army, then you're within your rights as commander-in-chief to invade.
[00:43:55]  Exactly.
[00:43:56]  So wait, like you could, you could put a bunch of troops on like the Iranian border or something, and then because you need to protect them from something, some foreign force, you could invade Iran.
[00:44:08]  That's essentially what Barr said.
[00:44:10]  Now, this is where I'm skeptical of the law generally, because it's so the law has a tendency to fill the shape of the container that is in front of it.
[00:44:18]  That is the sort of political situation that is created.
[00:44:21]  So in the case of Desert Storm, I think there was probably a lot of power centers within the United States and internationally that wanted Saddam to go and get beat up because of what he had done in Kuwait.
[00:44:30]  So this creates sort of opening and then you need a legal pretext for it.
[00:44:33]  You know, you've got to pretend like you're but, you know, that can't be completely written off.
[00:44:37]  This person is very talented at being able to twist these things in such a way that he can provide that legal justification.
[00:44:43]  And so for that reason, Liz, what you were saying before, comparing him to Cheney, I think that's a really good comparison.
[00:44:48]  If Trump is Bush, then I think a really good comparison between Barr and Cheney can be made because they provide this sort of, how do you say, sort of lubricant to keep all these complicated pistons of state moving so that someone like Trump can accomplish what he very indelicately puts in rhetoric, but doesn't really know how to manipulate the system to be able to bring about.
[00:45:17]  One thing I want to remark on that you mentioned, and then your echo, I suppose, this blurring of commander-in-chief and president is like crucial for these legal justifications.
[00:45:30]  And that's exactly what Barr was sort of laying the groundwork for with Desert Storm, is his memo on Desert Storm, it sounds like.
[00:45:38]  But what's also part of that is saying that basically for 200 years, the role of Congress and the legislature has been to write laws.
[00:45:48]  And that is just no longer the case because of these legal moves that were made with the groundwork being laid since Reagan, but then really, you know, they got their moment right after 9-11 in the Bush administration.
[00:46:01]  And so suddenly you have the executive writing its own legal justifications for national security laws.
[00:46:09]  And basically, this is what we can do because of national security issues.
[00:46:12]  And so like you have a case where, like, we'll talk about, you know, in the case with Portland is that you've, if these protesters wanted some legal recourse against the federal government, there isn't like Congress can't pass a law that says, no, we don't torture because the executive says, no, we do.
[00:46:33]  And if you want to contest that, you've got to take us to court.
[00:46:36]  And the courts have to then decide whether or not what we're torturing people over is an issue of national security.
[00:46:43]  And if it's an issue of national security, then it's the purview of the commander in chief, which Congress cannot limit.
[00:46:48]  And that's the legal move that's happening here.
[00:46:51]  And it's really fucking dangerous.
[00:46:53]  Like, I don't know like how I'm trying to be really passionate about this for people to understand because there's a direct line between this and what we're seeing in Portland.
[00:47:05]  And this idea like Congress just needs to make laws, Congress needs to assert itself.
[00:47:09]  It's like, that's part of it.
[00:47:12]  But it also like, because of this sort of new legal regime that we live under and we have been living under, which we can call the unitary executive, or you could call authoritarian, whatever, it's nearly impossible.
[00:47:26]  It's nearly impossible.
[00:47:28]  Yeah, I think this, what's so incredible is that like this seems to be like one of the things that people have been warning against for decades, right?
[00:47:38]  Like stuff like this is going to start to happen.
[00:47:40]  And now it is happening.
[00:47:42]  And the response to it has been in some quarters, you know, people have been pretty loud about it.
[00:47:47]  And a lot of other quarters, pretty muted.
[00:47:50]  And my worry is like, okay, it seems like Portland is just a testing ground for this kind of stuff.
[00:47:56]  And this is going to sort of roll on further.
[00:47:58]  And these tensions between these local municipal and state governments and between the federal government are going to probably rise.
[00:48:06]  I mean, I think Lori Lightfoot released a statement earlier today saying that she wouldn't allow federal troops or whatever in Chicago, which is, by the way, they already have allowed them in.
[00:48:17]  I guess just not these new, the CBP said it was sending 150 agents in this weekend.
[00:48:22]  Not even anything to do with violent anarchists, but to just promote law and order because there's been so many shootings, which not really sure why CBP really has to deal with that.
[00:48:32]  But it just seems like this is going to expand and that every time there's a protest somewhere that is, I mean, doesn't even have to be near a federal building.
[00:48:41]  They can really send someone out.
[00:48:42]  So I am just waiting for them to announce that they're sending some out to Oakland or LA or any of these other cities.
[00:48:50]  You know, whether it's for optics, for Trump's, you know, base or whether it really is to punish Democrat mayors or to just intimidate protesters, I don't know, for any number of reasons or all of those reasons.
[00:49:04]  It just, it's astounding to me because it is like this really like blue-pilled martial law.

=== Trump And The National Guard (09:40) ===

[00:49:10]  Like the justifications for this stuff, I guess, don't even really need to make sense.
[00:49:15]  They can just, they can just, it's legal and they can just do it.
[00:49:18]  Yeah, you see an administration like this.
[00:49:20]  I think somebody like Trump is very good at taking all the air out of the room and getting all the cameras to look at him and to not look at people like Barr, people like John Bolton, people like, you know, these sort of virtuosos of manipulating the political machinery to effectuate something that often is pretty unpopular with the population.
[00:49:39]  It's not easy to do.
[00:49:42]  You know, so someone like Trump may well just want this to be an optics thing.
[00:49:47]  I mean, he has rhetorically said for years now, you know, I'm going to do something about these liberal cities that aren't doing a thing about these liberal sanctuary cities.
[00:49:57]  He's threatened that for years now.
[00:49:58]  Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, just because this is a fireworks show for the base to shore up his election, that Barr doesn't have his own designs that he's been working on for decades and decades.
[00:50:08]  You know, both of those things can be true.
[00:50:11]  So unfortunately, there's a kind of, there's always been a kind of dualist attitude like, oh, does Trump know what he's doing or does he not?
[00:50:18]  It's not, no administration is monolithic like that, though.
[00:50:21]  There are different factions of every administration, you know, from Bush to Trump to any, you know, boys and Yankees, yeah.
[00:50:28]  Right.
[00:50:29]  And so their interests can overlap sometimes in what they're pursuing.
[00:50:32]  It may not even matter that Trump knows what he's doing if he's laying in this sort of legal framework for something that Barr has wanted to do for decades.
[00:50:39]  Where could we see this go?
[00:50:41]  Like, what could the next steps of this kind of stuff be?
[00:50:44]  It really depends on what Congress does now.
[00:50:46]  I would not, you know, I'm generally quite pessimistic about, you know, elected officials and things, but this is really going to be a debate right now.
[00:50:54]  I know staffers that work on this kind of stuff.
[00:50:57]  And, you know, Ryan Grimm's report earlier today suggests this as well, that it's not at all clear yet what, you know, Pelosi's and the Dem leadership is in a tight spot because people are really pissed off about this.
[00:51:09]  Extremely unpopular.
[00:51:10]  I got so many emails from people saying, you know, I had a story recently about a bill AOC is going to introduce to require that all federal agents have identification.
[00:51:21]  And I got a flood of emails from actually a lot of conservatives saying, God, I never thought I would say this, but I actually agree with AOC on this issue because this does kind of like, I mean, you know, it's the feds stomping around in your backyard.
[00:51:34]  Like this should be something that's not going to be a lot of fun.
[00:51:36]  This is very unpopular.
[00:51:37]  Right.
[00:51:38]  Exactly.
[00:51:38]  Which is why they don't want any of it on television, by the way.
[00:51:41]  Like any military incursion domestically is historically very unpopular.
[00:51:48]  I mean, think about Kent State, right?
[00:51:51]  Like there's a reason why this also is not getting a lot of media coverage, I would say.
[00:51:56]  I agree, yeah.
[00:51:57]  I mean, so Pelosi's in a very tight spot.
[00:52:00]  It depends on how much the Congressional Progressive Caucus is able to assert itself and to what extent I think the public sort of gets involved in this and sees this as the pressure point as opposed to retweeting Pelosi's statement or whatever kind of other thing they put in front of you or just vote, just wait until November vote.
[00:52:21]  No, at that point, it's too late because you've already given them the sack of cash that they're going to use to do what we know that they've been doing with it.
[00:52:28]  I mean, this is the pressure point is their funding.
[00:52:31]  And so a lot depends on what happens in the next two or three weeks, I think.
[00:52:35]  Well, you brought something up there with voting is, I mean, this could potentially be used by Trump to affect the outcome of the election.
[00:52:47]  Yeah, I think so.
[00:52:48]  And I think that's what people should be looking at.
[00:52:51]  Because when he talks about, I mean, he is sending them so far to blue states that, you know, by no means swing states, but there's no reason he couldn't.
[00:52:59]  I mean, if he wanted to send these, it's unclear what the motives are, as always, because, you know, profound lack of openness on the part of the administration.
[00:53:07]  But I mean, this could be a testing kind of thing where he's dipping his toe in the water and seeing, okay, if I put this in deep blue states, that'll tell me how far I can go.
[00:53:16]  Because if I want to put this in a swing state or in a red state, it's going to be way easier because the governor might not oppose it.
[00:53:21]  You know, the state legislature might not oppose it.
[00:53:23]  So this is going to be the toughest sort of scenario for him.
[00:53:26]  Well, and not even just the election, but like, you know, we're on the precipice of like an economic cliff, basically, with the, you know, basically Republicans saying no, no more extension of unemployment.
[00:53:41]  Although, you know, I'll believe that when I see it, because I still think it's an election year, but, you know, no stimulus, no extension, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:53:49]  Evictions are eviction moratoriums are ending in a lot of places.
[00:53:54]  And you've got 3 million, you know, or what was it last week?
[00:53:59]  1.5 million new unemployment claims.
[00:54:02]  Like more and more jobs are being lost.
[00:54:05]  And you've got a pandemic that they're predicting is going to have a massive, horrifying resurgence in the fall.
[00:54:12]  Like what that does for a social fabric and social unrest is completely unpredictable.
[00:54:20]  Yeah, I think that's why Trump is experimenting with what he can do with the Defense Department in terms of deploying not just the National Guard, you know, which itself is a lot of part-time people who are maybe teachers on the side.
[00:54:32]  Yeah, don't get me started on my rants on the National Guard.
[00:54:35]  I could beat the shit out of anybody in the National Guard.
[00:54:38]  No fucking question.
[00:54:40]  That is not a threat.
[00:54:41]  I just could do it.
[00:54:43]  And to see him, I mean, he wanted to try to deploy this active duty military.
[00:54:48]  That's like much more serious than the National Guard.
[00:54:52]  I mean, these guys are.
[00:54:52]  Yeah, that did not play well in D.C.
[00:54:54]  That did not play well.
[00:54:56]  They're trained to, these guys are trained to kill overseas.
[00:54:58]  I mean, that's their job, you know?
[00:55:00]  They don't know how to do crowd control.
[00:55:01]  I mean, if you thought the National Guard was bad, you can't imagine what the difference would be.
[00:55:05]  Well, they do know how to do crowd control.
[00:55:07]  It's just a very different guy that is deployed overseas.
[00:55:12]  Blackwater famously showed us how to do it in Square in Baghdad.
[00:55:17]  So I wonder if he's just cycling through his options here because I don't know.
[00:55:21]  I have a funny feeling that the payroll tax cut is not going to cut it in terms of helping people.
[00:55:27]  So maybe there's, I would imagine there's some anticipation of increased unrest.
[00:55:32]  And so, you know, if sending out the active duty isn't going to work, I mean, his attempts to, you know, activate the DOD were really extraordinary to have the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milley, apologize for the church photo op and to have yeah, that was that was wild.
[00:55:47]  That's like pretty unheard of, right?
[00:55:49]  Totally unprecedented.
[00:55:50]  I mean, I'm not saying he's some great, you know, moral exemplar for DOD.
[00:55:53]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, please.
[00:55:54]  But like, you know, or Mattis for excoriating him in the Atlantic of all places.
[00:55:58]  That was kind of funny.
[00:56:00]  But like, for these guys do not cross sorts with, you know, the current sitting leadership.
[00:56:06]  I mean, they're highly political as, you know, a senior intelligence official in DOD told me these guys are essentially, you know, internally, they think as politicians.
[00:56:16]  They don't behave that way, but they think about it.
[00:56:18]  And so they don't want to come off as though they're crossing elected leadership.
[00:56:22]  So for them to say these things, that's like, it might not seem like much to us, but in that world, that is like very, very unusual.
[00:56:30]  Yeah, it's a bit worrying too to see that kind of split, you know?
[00:56:34]  Yeah, it almost seems like the DOD told the Pentagon said, you know, no, we're not going to go the full extent.
[00:56:39]  And then he just pivoted and said, all right, well, DHS, what can you do for me?
[00:56:42]  Exactly.
[00:56:43]  Well, that's the thing that I'm talking about with this whole thing is or that I'm worried about with this whole thing, because if, because, you know, there is a, well, there are several deep states.
[00:56:53]  But, you know, there are large factions within the intelligence community, which that term I fucking hate, but for lack of a better word, that hate Trump, right?
[00:57:02]  Like there are large parts of the CIA, FBI, et cetera, that very much dislike Trump.
[00:57:06]  And so what it seems to me like he has is he has an ultra-loyal, ultra-funded, ultra-bloated, basically like private, essentially army for his executive ready to go that will not cross him, that will not have like Chad Wolfe, a guy, you think, listen, listeners, you think a guy named Chad Wolfe, even if he wasn't DHS secretary, any guy named Chad Wolf in America is not going to come out and say, I'm not going to do this, what Trump tells me to do.
[00:57:35]  It's a classic Trump guy name.
[00:57:37]  The Virgin Constitution versus the Chad DHS secretary.
[00:57:41]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:57:43]  But that's what's insane to me is that you have this like partisan force for him.
[00:57:49]  And, you know, God forbid, you will not hear me say one kind word about any federal agency, including the FDA, who, by the way, FDA do have a fucking SWAT team, as do I think the Education Bureau does too.
[00:58:04]  But it is, it's frightening because this basically, like, these are his, his, his, this is his SA, you know, if we're making that kind of analogy here.
[00:58:13]  Like, these are his, like, they're his, there's shock troops.
[00:58:16]  Well, and also, then you've got suddenly a war between him and DOD.
[00:58:21]  And like, I don't know who, I mean, between the executive and the Pentagon, like that's a very, very, that's a very dangerous situation that no one should want or encourage happening.
[00:58:36]  Like that kind of split and perhaps military officers, Pentagon officials moving in to secure order and peace.
[00:58:47]  I'm just saying that is not a situation anyone wants.

=== Michael's Words Matter (04:54) ===

[00:58:51]  We like to talk about various possibilities on this podcast.
[00:58:55]  Not predictions, just not part.
[00:58:58]  You know, it is a possibility.
[00:58:59]  I mean, I think Trump will probably lose the election in November, although.
[00:59:03]  And the Senate, yeah.
[00:59:04]  But who knows what happens?
[00:59:05]  It does not look good for him.
[00:59:07]  But, I mean, if he does somehow eat out a win, I will be very curious to see how these sort of relationships end up.
[00:59:32]  Ken, thank you so much for joining us.
[00:59:35]  That was fantastic.
[00:59:36]  Good to talk to you guys.
[00:59:38]  Always happy to depress people, which feels like it's increasingly my job.
[00:59:42]  I know.
[00:59:43]  This is like a little bit of a black pill episode, but it's an important one as we enter phase four.
[00:59:49]  You know how everyone always talks about like, oh, Ruby Ridge, oh, Waco, and all these things that happened a million years in the past, and they're making TV shows about it now, whatever.
[00:59:57]  Well, the one thing is, at least we'll have fresh material for the Ruby Ridge set.
[01:00:02]  Yeah, but when we're locked in under martial law, like legal martial law, we'll have brand new Netflix shows that are just dramatizing our reality right before our very eyes.
[01:00:16]  All right.
[01:00:16]  Well, that was Ken with us, and we will see you.
[01:00:19]  We'll see you next time.
[01:00:20]  Hopefully, there doesn't have to be a next time, but unfortunately, there probably will be.
[01:00:25]  We'll see you later, Ken.
[01:00:26]  Bye, guys.
[01:00:48]  Hey, guys.
[01:00:49]  So most of our listeners might already be aware, but earlier this week, a dear friend, colleague, and comrade, Michael Brooks, passed away.
[01:01:01]  Michael was such an important force for good in this world, a relentless voice for justice.
[01:01:11]  And we are all just devastated at the prospect of having to continue all of this without him.
[01:01:21]  There are very few prominent left voices so thoroughly committed to a true internationalist politics, so passionate about exposing the American empire's heinous crimes and amplifying the struggle of people fighting to lift the boot.
[01:01:39]  We've just lost one of the loudest.
[01:01:42]  Michael, in addition to this indomitable passion for justice, was also just so incredibly funny.
[01:01:51]  You know, his ability to use comedy to diffuse political and social tensions, this, you know, this stems from a genuine, a true, genuine love of people and the world, even or especially even in the face of unrelenting brutality.
[01:02:12]  This love requires a fierce commitment and purpose and a tenderness and spirit.
[01:02:19]  All of which is to say that this is what makes his passing almost too much to bear.
[01:02:26]  Michael was a sharp wit, an invaluable political voice, and someone who was never tired, never ever, ever tired of wrestling with the big ideas, even when they made people uncomfortable, himself included.
[01:02:42]  He was always pushing himself to think harder and better and deeper.
[01:02:48]  And I'd ask that in addition to us all committing to take on that mantle from him, that in the spirit of Michael, we all vow to be a bit more kind and a bit more generous with one another.
[01:03:02]  With all that being said, here's Michael in his own words.
[01:03:07]  A very, very extraordinary historical figure.
[01:03:10]  We've talked about him a bit before on the show, Amik Clara Cabral, who was this extraordinary revolutionary from Cape Verde.
[01:03:25]  And one of his concepts, and I actually mentioned this concept in Against the Web, Cosmopolitan Answered in New Right, is this idea that, which is a really brilliant nuance because he says the colonial imperialist enterprise has taken Africa out of history.

=== Claim No Easy Victories (02:13) ===

[01:03:45]  In other words, they weren't in history creation anymore because they were subjugated by European colonial and imperialism.
[01:03:55]  And his point, though, is that the liberation struggle is a return to history making.
[01:04:02]  And you can build a genuinely global fabric that, as an example, could be local, national, and international simultaneously.
[01:04:12]  And these ideas from Cabral are so distinct from that.
[01:04:16]  And he had even brilliant ways of relating that as an agronomist and understanding ecology and understanding plants.
[01:04:27]  And he also had this famous phrase: claim no easy victories, which, you know, in a time when, again, it's like, guys, there are these extraordinary movements happening.
[01:04:41]  Power at the base is consolidating.
[01:04:44]  It's all going in the wrong direction.
[01:04:47]  And I just love that idea from Cabral: like, don't claim the easy victory.
[01:04:53]  Fight for those real actual things.
[01:04:56]  It's much harder.
[01:04:58]  It's the antithesis of the toxic payoff society.
[01:05:05]  But it's deep and it's real, and extraordinary leaders like this speak to that.
[01:05:11]  Let's just reflect on that.
[01:05:12]  There's a really broad legacy here.
[01:05:14]  Of course, he was, you know, liked Sankara, assassinated by a comrade, assassinated by a friend, another great theft from all of our collective history to have this extraordinary human taken from us.
[01:05:31]  But claim no easy victories.
[01:05:34]  Claim no easy victories.
[01:05:36]  Reflect on that.
[01:05:37]  Take that in in all levels.
[01:05:41]  That's part of the broad struggle we all have to try to be in the process of working on ourselves and thinking about the big, real challenges that we are deeply in.
[01:05:55]  We are, I mean, I don't, someone said I was like a Debbie Downer.

=== Optimism with Prodding (00:34) ===

[01:05:59]  I don't think so.
[01:06:02]  I do think there's enormous possibility.
[01:06:06]  And even when I'm critiquing and prodding and trying to think and pointing out things that, again, I'm sorry, if I think something is, you know, stupid or whatever, I'm going to say it.
[01:06:18]  But of course, I mean, there's a huge amount of energy and the material conditions are in place.
[01:06:26]  Those are real things.
[01:06:28]  Of course, there's grounds for certain optimism, but it has to be a grounded optimism.