Mask Off dissects Brazil’s far-right rally "smite" claims, pivots to Syria’s 2024–2025 collapse under Shara (ex-al-Qaeda/ISIS), whose $10M-lifted bounty and Trump Heights deals exposed U.S. complicity in jihadist resurgence. Al-Hol’s 7,000 detainees—including revoked-citizen Shemai Mebegin—highlight failed repatriation, while the SDF’s withdrawal from Aleppo under unclear PKK pressure signals Kurdish resistance’s fragility. Parallels drawn to U.S. "cruelty theater," like Predi’s execution and ICE’s unconstitutional raids, reveal a backfiring strategy amid surging anti-ICE polls (20%→46%) and even Republican pushback, questioning whether populist spectacle can sustain power. [Automatically generated summary]
So there was a far-right rally in Brazil and lightning struck a bunch of people in the hospital.
It killed like, not killed rather, but like it injured like 70 people.
Yeah.
It was like really serious.
There's no way you don't evacuate yourself when you're struck by lightning.
Oh, I was like, I don't think you can really like.
exit the premises when that's okay.
No, no, no, no.
Obviously you stand there and sort of shake while a sort of blue is.
You're talking about something else.
No, no, I think you evacuate your bowels when you're struck by lightning.
How would you not?
I mean, have you ever been shocked?
How do people do that just when, you know, faced with a gun?
Well, I think it would be a touching tribute to Bolsonaro for dozens.
In fact, a score and almost a half of his supporters to simultaneously evacuate themselves while being shocked by lightning, which was sent, of course,
from almighty god ladies and gentlemen it is a true and unrule if
If you have been struck by lightning, just like if you don't like water because you don't like the way it tastes or you're not hungry, that is God telling you to die.
That is a direct intervention from God.
No, it's not about telling you to die.
It's just giving you a little warning.
It's if you don't like it.
God's Lightning Warning00:04:59
Hey, I'm here.
I see you.
I hear you.
It's time to come to me.
Not yet.
Because you're not going to die.
It's just, you know, I'm going to shock you.
I'll let you know.
I totally know.
Let my presence be known.
I totally disagree.
Obviously, you know that one of my long nurtured hopes is to kind of go towards the light at some point in my life.
Yeah, but not the lightning.
I know.
The lightning is God bringing the light that you go towards.
No.
That light is totally different and that tunnel is totally different.
The lightning is a shock.
It's a, it's a like, bam.
I'm hitting you.
I'm real.
I'm here.
Don't doubt me.
But then I'm gone.
And you're okay.
You don't feel great.
You got struck by lightning.
Maybe now you believe in God and it's time to move on with your life.
Interesting.
Interesting.
I fear you may be theologically psychotic.
Bye, everyone.
Hello.
My name is Brace.
I'm Liz.
I'm producer Young Chomsky.
And this is Truanon.
You said it so haltingly.
You were so sad.
And I don't want to do anything or like say, I don't want to bring private business into public, but don't like, like, if I kind of like move, you know, like how sometimes I like step to you real quick when we're in front of other people to like assert dominance or whatever.
And I get really mad at you if you don't flinch.
You're doing a verbal version of that on the show.
I'm stepping to you or I'm.
No, no, no, no.
You're flinching.
You sort of, you took a second to say your name as if I was going to hit you.
It just makes me look abusive.
I think all this lightning talk has kind of got me feeling a little thunderstruck.
Great movie.
Never seen it.
Have seen Moonstruck, though.
The house from Moonstruck, of course, is where Amy Schumer currently lives, although she actually knows she sold the house.
I believe.
Did she?
I think she is selling the house because she did do a Megan trainer.
She is now a, I don't know what you want to call it, rail thin and divorced her husband so she can have sex with hotter guys.
Doing a Megan trainer now means something else, actually.
What does it mean?
It means doing surrogacy.
She had a surrogate?
You didn't see this whole thing?
She's like, I'm not going back to that.
I'm not going back to what I was.
Maybe.
Oh.
Oh, man.
Yeah, she had a surrogate for her third pregnancy.
Well, it's not her pregnancy, her third kid.
And then just posted a photo of doing like skin to skin contact with the newborn.
Like the freshie-born.
Yeah.
And everyone kind of was like, wait a second, that's not really because skin to skin is scientifically, you know, based on the birth mother.
So people were, then it was a whole thing.
They didn't let me do skin to skin because I was too handsy with the doctors as they were taking me out.
It was a different kind of skin to skin.
Palm to palm.
Well, I was rubbing my palms together.
I was rubbing my palms together.
I was like, take off those little berets or whatever you guys wear, the surgeon berets.
Surgeon Yamakas.
Yeah.
They got on.
Oh, my God.
And take off that little mask.
I want to see your lips.
My first words, actually.
You said that to the nurses.
Said, oh, you look pretty.
He said, hello, nurse.
Hello, nurse.
You look like you got a pair of plumpers.
I'm not talking about your breasts because I still view those as food.
I'm talking about your lips because I view those as a different kind of nourishment of which I am in great need.
So you're talkative baby.
I came out talking.
I was talking two months.
I was talking two months.
You're a baby yapper.
Oh, my God.
I'm going to teach your fucking kid to talk.
Please don't.
First word's going to be brace.
Brace.
Can you imagine?
Brace.
Wall screaming.
Brace.
I'm going to teach your kid to cry.
I'm going to teach your kid to cry louder.
So loud.
You're going to be the annoying one who's like, I got your kid a drum kit.
Yes.
Yeah.
Oh, I got your kid Winston's.
Here's a karaoke machine for your baby.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I got your kid one of those little 22s.
Teach him a safety.
Yeah.
Get him a baby 22.
Baby goods.
Do they make those?
I mean, they do make guns for children.
In fact, I would say that the U.S. arms manufacturing industry, all guns are for children, considering what happens in schools these days.
Well, and not schools, out in the streets.
The Syrian Civil War's Resurgence00:14:53
We're going to talk about that today.
Out in the streets, out in the streets.
We'll talk about that.
We have a lot of things to talk about.
First, we need to talk about Syria.
Yeah.
We were going to do that a little bit ago, but current events intervened, which is crazy because the situation in Syria was unraveling and still insane.
Yeah.
And perhaps one of the most complex of all of our current events.
I will say, ahead of getting into this, for those the Syrian Civil War has an interesting effect on people.
It has driven a lot of people into a state of insanity and has driven, especially its foreign Viewers and occasionally fans of whichever side into just a psychosis unmatched by anything else I've ever seen in my entire life.
Do you think that that has to do with the Syrian war specifically or the time?
Because I also think the Ukraine and Russian war has a similar effect.
I would agree with that to an extent.
But it's almost like I think with Ukraine-Russia war, it's a little different because there's two sides, basically.
With Syria, there's like 10 sides, and within those sides, multiple other different sides.
And then, yeah, that's just the Turkish side.
Well, that's that's maybe that's many sides at once on occasion.
That's how he likes to do it.
And there's also, I think it's a combination of things.
I think it's one, the time period that it started during, and more and more people using the internet in unhealthy ways.
And also, yeah, and really, it's just because there's so many sides to it.
So people became occasionally very passionate and occasionally almost psychotic.
We are seeing somewhat of a resurgence of that right now because there is a, I don't know what you want to call this, one of the unresolved areas of the Syrian civil war is undergoing a resolution, I guess we could say.
So to bring us back a little bit, the last time we talked about Syria was in December of 2024.
And I would say, if you don't know what's happening in Syria, which fair enough.
Fair enough, I guess, fair enough.
But it might be worth it to re-listen to that episode for a moment.
Yeah.
But basically where we left it was former HTS and former al-Qaeda and former, I don't know why I pronounced it like the real way, al-Qaeda, and former associate and close companion of ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a guy named Jalani, basically blitzed Damascus in essentially like a week's time.
And the Syrian government fell very quickly.
The Russians were in a sort of weird holding pattern where they sort of started evacuating and then kind of just stopped.
Assad fled the country, is living in Russia.
There's all kinds of crazy articles that are like rumored what he's doing.
I think a lot of people have sort of settled on gaming.
Although there's so many stupid fucking, I know, fair enough.
There's so many stupid fucking memes associated with the Syrian civil war, which is actually the thing I, it's most everyone, if you become a Syrian civil war commentator long enough, you become a NAFO in some way, like one of those kind of like Ukraine crazy people who thinks only in memes speak.
But he fled the country.
Jalani took over.
And since then, Jalani has really immediately launched into rehabilitating his image, started wearing suits, started going by his dead name, Al-Shara.
And he did a bunch of like U.S. media 60 minutes type.
I don't know if it was specifically 60 minutes, but he did a bunch of like sit-down interviews with journalists.
So sort of like, so tell me about your de-radicalization.
Yeah.
I mean, and that was kind of like how he was presented.
He's like, I'm the reform jihadist through my years because he was, he was sort of in control of Idlib, which was the, by a certain point in the war, was like the breakaway rebel province that they like, they was controlled by the opposition and then was controlled by Jalani.
And how he has moderated his extreme views.
Because remember, this is a guy who's in Al-Qaeda.
And Al-Qaeda, obviously, is not exactly the same as ISIS, but ISIS came from Al-Qaeda.
It's a cousin.
It's certainly a close cousin in many ways.
The kind of cousin you could marry.
ISIS was a little more like the goth cousin, I guess.
Like, it's like, give it a rest, like, coming to the you know, to dinner with snake bites in, and, you know, this and like a tongue that's split or whatever.
It's like, all right, but he kind of came out and he was like, you know, I always said the worst thing about ISIS was it wasn't into free markets enough.
Yes.
And so he sort of positioned himself as like an abundant.
I mean, this is, it's sort of like an exaggeration, but an abundance liberal where he's, he's really into, and this is, I'm not joking about this, like he's like, talks about we need to build up Syrian institutions, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, have like a real country.
And as opposed to whatever they were doing in Idlib, where they were kind of doing some versions of that.
The reality on the ground, though, is a little bit different.
Because while Shara himself, however, and I'll probably interchange using Shar and Jalani throughout this episode, and so you'll forgive me.
While he might have allegedly, you know, turned a new leaf or whatever, there are many components within his administration and his armed forces that maybe don't share in his newly enlightened views, which it's not even clear that he himself believes.
There was famously within the Syrian civil war a large number of foreign jihadist groups that took part.
Some of these groups were folded into ISIS, some of these groups were folded into various opposition groups.
What Jalani did in Idlib is he sort of subsumed all groups under his command or control.
He kind of tamed everybody and got most people on his side, or he jailed them or killed them.
That means that there is now in the what's they're calling sort of the Syrian transitional government.
That's the other thing.
Syria has like a lot of, no one really knows what to call the new army or anything.
Some people are calling it still the SAA, Syrian Arab Army.
I'm not sure what it's officially called, to be honest.
I feel like transitional is good because you have to like denote some sort of break, or at least like as we're talking about this, we need to, because it really is a different organization.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, certainly, certainly.
I mean, a different organization, both in the prior government under the Baathists and then somewhat different than his government in Idlib.
So in that period, like where the sort of the chips landed after that episode, was he had much of the country, although that was kind of in name only, as especially in the east of the country, a lot of it is kind of just like, it's not a lot there.
There's like a few towns.
It's a lot of desert.
The west of the country, especially concentrated more towards the coast, is much more densely populated in the north.
In the north, however, the northeast, I guess we should say.
So if you're thinking of Syria right now, there was.
You're not, just pull it up on Google.
Or just imagine directions.
But yeah, pull it up on Google.
Take a look.
Take a look.
You might not know what it looks like.
It might surprise you.
You go, really?
That's how big it is?
It's a big country.
It is.
I think people forget how big it is.
It is.
In the Northeast, however, there was a large concentration of, I would say, somewhat motley assortment of forces centered around the YPG, People's Protection Units, and the YPJ, just the women's protection units, which are mostly Kurdish militias.
And then there's the, which are which are constituent parts of the SDF, the Syrian Democratic Forces, along with like a ton of various former revolutionary organizations, I guess some former elements of the government, various tribal groups.
And they had a strip of the border and that kind of curved down sort of towards Raqqa and enveloped much of the desert in Deir Azor there.
In that area, especially in Deir-Zor, there was also some American military bases.
And in Kamishlo, which is the largest city up there and it's sort of more in the like actual northeast, there was a, until two days ago, a sizable Russian airbase there.
Yeah.
That's now been evacuated, right?
Yeah, yeah, sort of hastily evacuated, which is, it's weird.
I don't know exactly why they chose this timing because it didn't look like Kamishlo was about to be invaded, but we'll see.
Who knows?
Then on the coast, centered on Latakia, that is the region where a lot of Alawites live.
So again, we're going back to last year.
That's the region.
And in the northeast, there's a lot of Kurds sort of right along the border.
And then a lot of Arab sort of tribal groups in Raqqa and Deir-Zor.
And I'm not saying tribal as in like a derogatory way.
I mean, there's literally just sort of how families or society is organized on kind of a clan basis in a lot of that part of the country.
In Latakia and on the coast, there was a lot of Alawites.
So Alawites are a minority in Syria.
They also are the minority that the Assad family belonged to.
And a large component of the Syrian civil war was of a somewhat sectarian nature, where also a lot of people did not like being ruled over by Alawites, regardless of their whatever they didn't like about Assad.
That was just a fact.
And after Assad left the country, a lot of Alawites there, who, by the way, I think it's, I don't even know how many, maybe 5% of Syria's population is Alawite, were freaked out that they were going to get massacred.
And that's exactly what happened.
There was large-scale massacres on the coast of Syria that happened in the spring of last year.
The militias that belonged to the newly formed Syrian army went wild, widespread sectarian killings, way over a thousand dead.
I think it's over 1,500.
Might be a couple thousand.
I'm not sure.
Sorry, I don't have the top of my head, but thousands of people massacred, whole families killed, a lot of it videotaped.
And not really to any noises from Damascus and from the new government there.
It was sort of seen both internationally and within the country as massacres that were kind of just allowed to happen, essentially revenge sectarian violence for what people perceived as Alawites being pro-government during the Syrian civil war, which, you know, a lot of them were, but obviously doesn't fucking matter.
A lot of these people were poor people, poor families that lived there.
And even if they weren't, that's just not how you do things.
This gave the impression that the Syrian government was unable to control the new army.
And the fact is, there's a lot, again, a lot of foreign jihadists in this army there.
The Turkestan Islamic Party, for instance, which are our famous Uyghurs, who have been sort of sequestered in Turkey and I think have an official presence there, but many of their fighters have been fighting in Syria for a long time.
They join and they are full-on just like jihadists.
Like not, there's not really any kind of gussing up you can do about them.
A lot of them joined the Syrian army and they are incorporated as a brigade.
I think it's like the 84th Brigade.
But I think that's an important thing.
It's the 84th Division.
It's the members of the Turkestan Islamic Party and a ton of other al-Qaeda affiliates, foreign Al-Qaeda affiliates, joined the 84th Division.
84th Division is unleashed on the coast, and it does not bode well.
It looks like there's going to be a big resurgence of sectarian fighting.
Similarly, the government forces go after the Druze, which are sort of more focused also in the South.
And in that, that was also coincided with Israel coming into the country, which they'd been bombing since Shara took over.
They bombed like all of the Israel never really stopped bombing Syria since I think you can actually 15.
I don't know.
Earlier?
Syria occupies part of Israel occupies part of Syria, the Golden Heights, and has for decades, which is now Trump Heights, or there's part of it that's called Trump Heights.
That's a terrible name.
I know it's a triplet.
I mean, other things aside.
It's a tacky.
It doesn't sound, there's no ring to it.
It's tacky.
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
So large-scale massacres of the Druze there, that the Israelis come in more and take more of the country.
In the meantime, Jalani seems very, or excuse me, Shara seems very focused on getting the Caesar Act sanctions lifted on Syria.
So Caesar Act was a large-scale big sanctions regime that the U.S. put on Syria and that was not lifted.
It made it very difficult for Syria to do business with the world.
It was not lifted after Jalani took over.
Excuse me.
Shara.
And so he was really campaigning and gussing up his image to basically all in preparation for an eventual meeting with Trump where he would talk him into lifting the sanctions.
So I think they massacre about 1,000, maybe 1,500 Druze, or and then some die and there's actual battles too because there's Druze militias as well.
That area, they're kind of just like leaving alone for now, Sawaida, I think.
Tribal Agreements and Stalemate00:15:11
I'm not an expert on this, but it's sort of reached somewhat of a stalemate there.
It's also a tense situation.
In the meantime, during this period of March, like in March or April, May of last year, two other things happened.
One is that the SDF leadership, Maslum Abdi, who's sort of the general in charge of the SDF, makes a visit to Damascus and signs a tentative agreement with Shara.
And that tentative agreement, I don't know exactly what it says.
I mean, there's been various leaks, but it's kind of unclear.
Says that the SDF will be incorporated into the new Syrian army on a wholesale basis.
And this is important for some reasons I think will become clear on a wholesale basis.
So like the YPG or elements of the YPG and SDF will be, will join it as like their own divisions, and they will also be sort of placed, I suppose, in the Northeast.
Also, negotiations over limited self-rule in the Northeast, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Nothing happens after that.
This like is a side, like this is going to happen.
We have sort of the until the end of the year to figure out how it's going to happen, but it's going to happen.
And then nothing happens after that.
One thing that I should note, in May, the PKK, which is an organization that's a Kurdistan Workers' Party or Workers' Party of Kurdistan, that the YPG and YPJ stem from, but it's a transnational organization.
It's in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and in Syria.
The leader, which has been Abdullah Ojalan, who has been imprisoned on an island prison ever since Hafez al-Assad buckled to Turkish pressure and had him leave Syria in the 1990s and was captured in Africa by Mossad and CIA and taken to Turkey.
He's been on an island prison ever since, where he at one point changed his ideology from a sort of orthodox Marxism-Leninism tinged with Maoism to democratic confederalism, which is proven itself to be somewhat less durable and somewhat amorphous.
He signs a peace deal, or he doesn't sign.
He announces a peace deal with the Turkish government, his greatest foe, and says that the PKK will disarm.
Also, very unclear what happens after this, because as far as I know, there was like a few ceremonies where they burned a few old AKs and then nothing else happened.
So, wait, but what's your read on that?
Well, there's some things I'd say on the podcast and something not on the podcast, but I don't think it matters.
I don't fucking know, to be totally honest.
Nobody knows that I've talked to, including people who know things.
It's really unclear.
I mean, Ojalan is not, I mean, he's literally been in an island prison of where he is the only prisoner for decades.
Okay.
Yes.
It's a little like, all right, well, you haven't really been calling the shots for a while.
Right.
You know, there's been large-scale Bernie's sort of situation.
Yes.
Yeah.
And there's been large-scale Turkish drone assaults against the PKK leadership in these Kandil Mountains, which are sort of in northern Iraq, for the past really since drones, I guess, were invented.
But they've been trying to assassinate PKK leaders for a while.
And I don't think they've stopped since then.
And also, there's still, I'll say this: the PKK as an organization may have a ceasefire.
You're doing some air quotes here.
I'm doing some air quotes, but there's like 50 other PKK organizations that are the exact same thing.
It's like very confusing.
I'm confused too.
Okay.
But I think that's important because Turkey is a player in this.
And one of the biggest roadblocks against the SDF kind of getting anywhere in northern Syria is the fact that Turkey is the neighbor and views them as terrorists.
It should be noted too that the U.S. also has the PKK on the terror list.
Yeah.
So fast forward to sort of later in 2025, Shara meets with Trump.
Trump is like, I love this guy.
Lifts the Caesar Act.
Could have seen that coming a mile away.
Yeah, he charmed the shit out of him.
Lifts the Caesar Act sanctions and starts doing patrols with Shara's army.
In fact, I think three Americans were killed in what was, you know, there was like that ISIS.
Yeah.
That was on a patrol with Shara's people.
That was like spring last year, right?
Yeah.
And there's been a lot of reporting that's come out that the U.S., I mean, by the way, the U.S. had a $10 million bounty on Shara's head until he became president for being a terrorist.
Turns out, now reporting has shown that they were working with him for quite a bit longer than that.
Not to Turks.
Yeah.
I mean, the Turks, the thing about Idlib, too, is that they were actually able to somewhat circumvent some Caesar Act stuff as opposed to any other actor in Syria because they actually had direct trade with the Turks who backed Shara as well.
And like it was sort of seen Shara's assault on Damascus in December of 2024 was sort of seen as happening with Turkey's not only assent, but active participation.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Just fucked up because Erdogan and fucking Assad used to go on vacation together.
They might still.
You think he'll flee to Russia?
No, He's rocking.
Erdogan's Erdogan is really, that's a Teflon gentleman right there.
So I think, didn't Trump make Trump made the funniest fucking joke when he was like sitting with him?
Where he was like, it was something like you guys are worried about me.
You know, you want to talk about like not having elections?
Talk to this guy or something.
Yeah.
That's so funny.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it's also to be clear, like, you know, Jelani is sort of painted as a Democrat.
Western liberal media has been very kind to Jelani and sort of painting him as a Democrat, or excuse me, Shara to Shara.
It's painted as him as a Democrat.
But to the point where it almost feels like dated, like the way that they're doing it, it's so Obama era.
Yeah, because it's like the kind of like humanitarian, free market, liberal gloss that they're trying to put on literally this like ex-al-Qaeda guy, or not even ex at this point.
Anyway, yeah.
But there's something's like so it's so obviously absurd, but then also in this moment, it feels very like retread.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah, agreed, agreed.
So we're in this weird place now where there's been basically like, aside from, of course, the government massacres in the South and the West, kind of this weird sort of stalemate in northeastern Syria.
Now, I was in the YPG in 2016, and I've said on this program and else, I basically said since 2017, since this actually started happening, that the YPG going into Deir Azor, which is sort of south of Raqqa, and that the countryside south of there was a huge mistake.
I think that they were basically told to do it by the Americans, and they did because there has been very little strategic gain from that.
In that time, they were able to get control of some oil wells there.
It's actually been really unclear.
We've covered that on the show.
I think we covered that in like one of our first 30 episodes.
It's actually really unclear what has been kind of going on with that oil.
Sanctions have kind of also affected the oil that have come from that.
Regardless, it's now in Syrian government hands, but I guess I'll get into that in a second.
That occupation or that, I don't know how to call it, their time in Deir Azor essentially turned into SDF, YPGs, Vietnam, because a lot of the tribes there were really not amenable to their presence.
A lot of people there had, I mean, ISIS, sort of the ideologies that were maybe close cousins or brothers with ISIS's were quite popular there.
And the SDF, which was sort of YPG is kind of attempt to do this, you know, Brotherhood of Peoples, you know, multi-ethnic style thing.
And, you know, the people I met some people were very sincere about this project.
They came up against some limitations and some big ones.
The people that they tended to hire or hire to incorporate locals to run the areas that the SDF were in.
In Deir-Zora, it was disaster after disaster.
The people who joined were gangsters.
There was a ton of like inter-clan killing, very little stability.
And it was, you know, at some points, they'd have to arrest like the leadership there and then they'd free them.
And it was just like, it was a fucking complete mess.
And it did not endear an already hostile populace to them coming in there.
So SDF is also made up, as I said before, of like a lot of tribes, Arab tribes around there.
And in January, which is, it's still January, but earlier in January, about a month after this sort of agreement had expired or the deadline had passed for the SDF to make this agreement with the with Jalani, aka Shara, some movement happened.
Do you remember Aleppo?
Of course.
Who can forget Aleppo?
And what is Aleppo?
You're kidding.
No.
Don't get anyone started on Aleppo.
Well, would you believe it if I told you that the Syrian Arab army was once again besieging a neighborhood in Aleppo?
Because that's precisely what happened.
There was two neighborhoods in Aleppo that had been under control of the YPG since the beginning of the war.
Sort of extra.
I knew a couple of people who had been through there.
And things were always much more malleable in Syria than I think people who are maybe outside watchers are willing to believe.
Everybody talked to everybody.
Everybody dealt with everybody.
But there were these two neighborhoods in Aleppo that were essentially under the control of the YPG.
The Syrian opposition never took them and the Syrian government sort of just coexisted alongside.
And the Syrian government under Assad also had a sort of coexistence relationship with the SDF, YPG as well.
They didn't fight each other.
And in Kamishlo, they shared control of the city somewhat with Aleppo as well.
But the SDF just stuck to these neighborhoods.
Shara said no more and started besieging these two neighborhoods.
The SDF, it was not a good situation.
You know, getting besieged in Aleppo is generally not a situation.
Listen, ladies and gentlemen, if you ever find yourself in that position in your life, try to get out of it.
There was a, I believe a ceasefire struck and SDF forces left, which was actually pretty shocking.
They left Aleppo.
I think they figured that the positions were not defensible.
They needed to buy some time in order to negotiate.
But it was a sort of stunning route to begin a series of stunning routes or routes.
What is it called when you route somebody?
So you route an enemy army.
Immediately after the Syrian government, which has been cultivating sort of tribes that were constituent members of the SDF for quite a while, they actually have a guy that has an office that is basically dedicated to like cultivating different tribes and clans.
They sort of play their hands.
And in Raqqa, which had always sort of had a difficult, well, I don't think Raqqa has had a very nice time for a long time.
But it had a difficult relationship between the SDF there and the Syrian Democratic Council and some of the residents.
There have been protests and riots and things like this.
In Raqqa and in Deir Azor, basically all the Arab members of not all, I shouldn't say that actually, but quite a few large groups of Arab fighters within the SDF switched sides to Shara's government.
And I think the SDF, what was left of it and the YPG kind of figured out what time it was and took off.
They really didn't put up much of a fight.
They took off.
Which also was shocking too, I think, for people watching this.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because they went from controlling so much of that part of the country, which again, there's not a lot there in certain parts.
You know what I mean?
Like in Deir Azor, it's like there's some areas of habitation, but a lot of it's just desert.
So it's a little deceiving that they like it doesn't, it's not like they control these giant population centers there.
Can I pause here for a second and ask you a question?
Absolutely.
Anytime.
Because, and I might be getting ahead of myself because I don't know when you want to talk about this, but there were highly publicized camps of ISIS fighters all throughout the north, if I'm correct.
That the YPG, I think it was primarily, right, was tasked with sort of overseeing a lot of them women and children, surprisingly.
Not in the YPG, I mean, well, but in the ISIS camps I'm talking about.
Yeah, yeah.
Specifically.
But what kind of happened with that whole situation?
Well, ISIS is a strange sort of beast because there was a lot of people in ISIS.
And when they lost a stronghold of a lot of people, there was a lot of people.
People liked ISIS at some point.
I don't think that they were good.
I know, but people did like there were some fans.
I met some fans, you know.
And it's interesting the sort of fandom wars that took place.
But after Mosul, they lost Mosul, ISIS did, and then Raqqa, their capital, after that, they, there was just a lot of people that had been in ISIS and that still loved ISIS.
And that I think everyone was like, what do we do with you?
Why Release ISIS Prisoners?00:15:12
You know?
And I'll say this.
I think it was a big mistake for the international community, because that's really, I think, where a lot of the blame lies here to figure out the best solution would be to essentially set up camps in an area ruled by a non-state actor and hope that they guard them indefinitely.
I mean, it does feel a bit like you're doing that as a kind of like, well, let's just see how this goes or in case something loose again.
I mean, is that, I know that that's like a very cynical and perhaps inappropriate thing to say on the podcast, but it doesn't look like it was meant to be a permanent solution.
Well, I mean, what does that look like?
Are you going to grow to be 100 years old in this camp?
Like, there's no, there wasn't really, that's the thing.
It's like there was no, so there was some international.
One of the, there's a few problems with that.
And actually, I'll say this.
I was, I was planning a trip in the active stages of planning a trip to go to Al Hol camp in March.
I was going to go to Al Hol and I was also going to try to see what the fuck that the U.S. military was doing in Deir Azor.
That trip is now canceled, as far as I know.
Well, certainly the Al Hol trip is.
I was going to go with a couple of people and now it's, that's not happening anymore.
I think that's for the best.
There was a camp of, I think at one point, like 13,000, now down to 7,000, mostly women and young children called Al-Hol.
And there was various other prisons, a few thousand each, I believe, of the men that were sort of scattered around.
Now, that is everyone in Syria is poor.
There's not like a rich part of Syria, to be clear.
Like the civil war fucked everybody, and the sanctions fucked everybody.
But this is a lot of people to be imprisoning.
There is a lot of money that the Western states, the U.S. and Europe, were supposed to give to YPG, YPJ, and SDF to guard it.
But like there wasn't repatriation in enough numbers necessary to actually clean these camps out.
Because as we saw with like the case of Shemai Mebegin in Britain, people were like, you fucking joined ISIS.
You lose citizenship.
Yeah.
It's a tough sell, particularly in this, we'll say, international climate.
Yes.
To say, hey, we need to bring our ISIS prisoners home.
Exactly.
And well, that's the thing is, because a lot of the ISIS, that's the other thing is a lot of the ISIS prisoners were like first or second generation immigrants.
And so people were, and this was, again, like, this was all happening during like not all happening, but a lot of this was during like fucking get Brexit done and shit like that.
It was not the environment that this was politically viable in.
So the only guy was, by the way, nobody knows what to do with ISIS.
Well, there's also like thousands of Iraqi citizens in there as well.
And Iraq was like, now we're good.
You know, just keep them.
That's a true and non-rule.
Nobody knows what to do with ISIS.
Nobody knows what to do with your ISIS.
And the fact is, another true and on rule, we don't like it.
But if you're a country that can refuse repatriation, maybe just refuse it.
Because then what's going to happen?
You know, the other guys have to take care of it.
They're not going to let them go.
Well, but so that leads us now to my next question, which was sort of built into the first question, which is like, now what has happened to all these ISIS men, women, and children?
So there's a cynical way to look at it, which is that one of the reasons that Turkey has not been able to successfully or has been dissuaded from invading northern Syria and fighting their ancient enemy, the YPJ, or YPG, YPJ, which they associate with the PKK.
Fair enough.
Is because there are all these ISIS prisoners there.
And there's sort of an implicit thing that's like, well, we might let them loose.
You know, I mean, the SDF has never said that, to be clear, they've never said that.
But if we're being realistic here, that was, or they might get loose.
The funny thing about that, they might get loose.
The funny thing about that is that I think probably a lot of the people in the Syrian government, Syrian transitional government related organizations that are advancing upon these places probably know a few people inside.
Well, that was my other question because, well, this is, again, I thought that a lot of ISIS fighters, or perhaps I should say ex-ISIS fighters, whatever that means.
Although I feel like ISIS, in many ways, like the CIA, you never really truly leave ISIS.
Yeah.
But my question is, I thought a lot of them were already being incorporated into like Jelani's forces.
I would say that there are probably one.
Well, there's two kinds of ISIS fighters.
Let me say that.
There's two kinds of ISIS fighters.
There's a lot of guys that when ISIS came to town was like, I guess I'll join ISIS.
You know what I mean?
Like I'll be in ISIS for a little while.
And then there's a lot of guys who are like, I love being in ISIS.
We should fucking make ISIS everywhere, man.
ISIS is awesome.
Like, you know, they were big ISIS.
I mean, they were in ISIS, but they're also fans of ISIS.
You know what I mean?
Like they fuck with their own flow, I guess I should say.
And so there are, I think there's probably, I'm going to be honest, I think there's probably ISIS fighters that are basically every, I don't know if there's any ISIS Druze, probably not, or ISIS Alawites, but like there's probably ISIS fighters and ex-ISIS fighters in the SDF.
There's probably ex-ISI, there's definitely ex-ISIS fighters within the Syrian transitional government army.
But there's also a hard core of like real jihadists that I would say are mostly, or I would doubt that there's any in the STF and that they would all be in the STG.
And so again, like, and there's probably people who were in ISIS at one point and then with NHTS at other points, you know?
Yeah.
Okay.
It's a, it's a fluid place in many ways.
And so there was a real fear that the STG would come and take over these camps and let everyone out.
That there were breaks, and they did.
They have taken over Al-Holcamp.
There were breaks, but the U.S. sort of freaked out and started transporting prisoners to Iraq.
Now, the question is, is if the U.S. can have done that the entire time, it's unclear why they just left all these ISIS guys there.
Wait, but why is Iraq okay with that?
Well, that's who knows what the fuck is happening right there because now, and this is getting, I'm sorry if anyone's confused.
Not a great situation between the U.S. and Iraq, too.
Well, no, because Maliki's about to come back in, which, and ISIS is returning, which means we're back in 2014.
It's eternal 2014.
It's eternal.
Well, he was leaving in 2014, but yeah, it's eternal 2014.
It is fucking, it is, I don't know what sort of deal is being worked out there.
But speaking of deals, there have been a series of deals that have been attempted since that sort of breakdown with the Aleppo stuff between the SDF and the Syrian transitional government.
So again, one of the sticking points in the original deal, or not one of the sticking points, one of the points in the original deal was the incorporation of the SDF as divisions or brigades or whatever unit of measurement within the Syrian army.
This is actually the same offer, essentially, that the SDF had with Assad during negotiations there.
I've talked to somebody, I mean, I followed those negotiations that the SDF did with Assad as close as I could.
I talked to somebody who was involved as sort of a neutral party in those in those, and he said that the SDF were very stubborn, which is congruent with how I perceive them as well.
They didn't really go anywhere.
It seems that that same thing happened here.
They were too stubborn.
It was like they wouldn't budge on anything.
They're not great negotiators.
Unfortunately, now their leverage has really changed because two big things have happened.
One is they lost a significant amount of their tribal allies, including the Shamar tribe, some of whom I was actually attached to Shamar people for, well, my unit fought alongside Shamar people for a little while.
And they lost American support.
And that's the big one.
And that is sort of sorry.
Yes.
Do you think we have writing on the wall for that?
Or do you think that was like Trump coming in?
You could see that coming a mile away?
Or you think that that is like very much a product of the ongoing fluid situation since the collapse?
I think it's a product of, I wouldn't have necessarily predicted that coming in.
And I actually still don't know what's going to happen.
It's funny.
A lot of Syrian rebel and now government supporters hated Brett McGurk because they perceive Brett McGurk as trying to get the SDF to make a deal with Assad.
And they're more pro-Tom Barak of the Epstein File of Fame, who is the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, also the person that was received an email asking for F. Jeffrey Epstein, I think a picture of him and a kid, and who is also the Syrian, or excuse me, the special envoy to Syria.
He has been kind of overseeing these talks.
He is very much more on the Syrian government side.
He doesn't, he's like, the Kurds are, that's old news.
We don't need that anymore.
I'll say this.
Obviously, I have been against the U.S. presence in Syria since it has been in Syria.
The presence now, the coalition, it's like, I think it's like the coalition against ISIS.
The Syrian government is now part of that coalition, is now officially part of that coalition.
The YPG SDF never was because they're a non-state actor.
Jalani was taken off the terror list.
The PKK is still on the terror list.
I don't even know if HTS was delisted, but HTS is sort of a non-entity now.
It's the Syrian government.
But, and so this is kind of like, we're actually seeing how things land here because the Syrian government is the government and SDF, now the U.S. is sort of being like, well, you're not the government.
So we actually don't have to deal with you.
And you have less people now.
The only problem is that I guess there's problems within the Pentagon because you'll never guess.
Some of them are a little worried about working with groups that have maybe jihadists in it, which would be a first for the Pentagon.
But Tom Barak is essentially, there's been various deals that have been attempted since in this past month.
One is Muslim Abdi went to Damascus and he was offered quite a different deal than the one they had been offered last year.
It was SDF members can join the Syrian government as individuals and they will add some Kurdish after school language programs, which the government has now announced, not enshrining their rights in the Constitution or any minority rights in the Constitution.
I don't believe, maybe there are some, actually, I shouldn't say that, but not enshrining Kurdish rights into the Constitution.
And it's just, and then essentially no sort of semi-federalization for the Northeast there.
There has since been, and then Abdi said no.
People were like, oh, the PKK, like his masters in Khandil are telling him no.
I don't know.
He said no.
And then there was another meeting, similar offer, also a no.
And in that interim period, in this past month, there have been a ton of atrocities.
At first, almost all of them were committed by the Syrian transitional government.
There was a very famous one of a guy who had cut off a Kurdish woman's braid and was parading around and joking about it.
There have been tons of just, I saw a video of a YPGJ member getting her head cut off, beheaded.
This also, I think, brings to mind when the elements affiliated with the current Syrian government army invaded Afrin with the Turks and fought the YPG there.
And YPJ, there was a sort of a famous incident of a Syrian rebel fighter cutting off the breasts and genitals of a YPJ fighter on video.
I think from their perspective, they're like, there are going to be sectarian massacres committed on Kurdish people, specifically Kurdish women, if the Syrian government army comes in and takes over, whether that's done via force or whether that's done via sort of surrender of the SDF.
I think that is essentially true.
I think that is a real thing to be worried about.
The other thing is now there has been a video that came out of what appears to be an SDF fighter who killed some Arab civilians, like 20 of them.
And that has really inflamed a lot of tensions on the Syrian government side, a supporter side.
I don't know if the government has actually made an official thing about it.
They might have.
I just haven't seen it.
And it's just, it's, I think a lot of people are sort of saying it's at the brink of becoming an ethnic conflict.
And it always had tinges of that.
But now it is, you know, and to be fair, you know, the SDF really did, in some places, try to make it a multi-ethnic governance.
But I think if, you know, some people, if you're not really a fully committed Democrat or whatever, you might just go with the, if you're, you know, if you're a Sunni Arab, you, you know, the Syrian government side might be a little more attractive to you right now, especially because they seem to be holding all the cards.
And so the SDF now have basically no cards to hold.
They have no American support.
They don't have American direct support.
They have lost most of their ISIS prisoners and they've lost a ton of their allies and zones of control.
And so they're essentially now in Kobani, where internet, water, electricity has been cut off for a while now, for like a week.
And Hasakot and Kamishlo.
Those are the other sort of two big cities there.
And there is apparently a meeting happening right now with Abdi, which is the leader of the SDF and Shara that's rumored to be happening right now, like literally as we're recording this.
I don't know how it's turning out.
They extended the ceasefire, no?
Yeah, and I think it's like the Americans are pressuring both sides to extend the ceasefire because I think it would look really bad for the U.S. if there was large-scale massacres of Kurdistan civilians or even fighters, really.
And I think Shara knows that as well.
Decentralized Ceasefire Talks00:03:31
And that doesn't stop that from happening in some places.
But I don't know.
I mean, it's also, I don't know how much control Shara really has over elements of the army.
I mean, I think Syria's war was very decentralized on every, from the government or from the old government to the new government to the rebels, to SDF, very decentralized at points.
And so it's unclear.
But yeah, it's bad.
And I think, you know, I don't really know how the YPG, YPJ could have really, I think that there's points of things that the time they could have done things differently.
I think they could have, you know, people who say they could have signed a deal with the Russians.
I don't know.
I mean, the Russians didn't really.
They kind of left us out.
After the Ukraine shit, like the Russians were so checked out of everywhere else that I don't think it would have mattered.
And that was going to happen kind of no matter what.
But the Americans, I think going along with them in that Deir Azor shit, I think really was a, I've been saying this for years, was a bad, mistake.
And, you know, it's, it's, I think, I don't know how this is going to turn out.
I really, you know, I hope for the least amount of bloodshed as possible, but it, it could be quite bad.
It could be quite bad.
And so, yeah, I don't know.
I mean, these things are still developing.
You know, I'm talking to people there.
I'm talking to people who know a lot of stuff, but it's really hard to get, you know, insight into every little detail here.
I hope I haven't got anything wrong.
But, you know, it's a tough situation.
I'll say that.
And it's a country that has undergone a lot of fighting over the years.
And I don't know whether people are sick of it or whether that just begets more, I have no idea.
But it's a tough situation, especially for those who are in Kobani right now, because they really are under a pretty big siege.
And then the ceasefire is essentially a ceasefire name only.
It's basically no large-scale battles, but there's still crazy fighting going on.
It's also really one of the first, I guess, large-scale introductions of FPV drones that I've seen.
I'm sure there have been others.
And so in that way, sort of mirroring other wars.
yeah it's a uh it's a bad situation let's talk about something a little sunnier i was about to do it really
Really stupid joke of like, actually, it's quite cloudy there because all the.
I think actually, yeah, because all the fucking snow.
By the way, have you been weathering?
How have you been weathering the storm, Liz?
It's so cold now.
There is so much snow around.
I will send you photos of my front yard.
It's shocking.
And it's not going anywhere because it's going to like still be frozen for the like next 10 days.
I know.
I know.
It's, I love, just love winter.
People would say they love winter.
I'm always like, what is wrong with you?
You say you love winter sometimes.
And I'm asking what is wrong with you.
Winter pre-Christmas, darling, romantic.
Attempting to Charge00:05:56
Three weeks long.
Well, fair.
But this during Christmas, where you get the cozy and the Christmas lights, and it still feels, you know, a bit romantic outside and you can kind of have it with the tree and like a little cozy inside.
Great.
I will say having the snowstorm over championship weekend, championship Sunday was not so bad.
But then dealing with it afterwards has not been great.
I haven't loved it myself.
Okay.
So actually, before we start talking about Minneapolis, I want to talk about something that happened in October really quick, which was the shooting of a woman named Maramar Martinez in Chicago by an ICE officer.
I think it was ICE.
I don't think it was CBP.
I think it was ICE.
But that doesn't, that's not necessarily germane to this.
So I think people heard about this at the time.
It's kind of gotten a little bit out of the news now, but the story is basically she was tailing a car driven by a man in camo with a Lyft logo on it, which I find interesting and no license plates.
Wait, I have a question.
It had a Lyft logo on the car.
That's the reporting I read.
It said that.
Yeah.
Maybe that's like what his gig was, or maybe he still has that gig.
Or maybe it's just like a car they took from somebody.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's uh, maybe it had one of those little things, like the stickers in it or whatever.
So she realized that he was a almost certainly a DHS officer of some kind.
So she honked and followed him around for about 20 minutes until he got out of the car, pulled out his pistol, and shot her and shot at her seven times, hitting her five times.
She lived, but while she was getting patched up, DHS released, she drove herself to, I think, an auto garage, and then they got an ambulance.
While this was all happening, she's like bleeding out.
I don't know what the fuck the DHS guy is doing.
Probably getting his story straight.
They release a statement.
DHS headquarters releases a statement calling her a domestic terrorist who ambushed federal agents.
And then they later mentioned that she was carrying a firearm with the implication.
Obviously, what do you picture when that happens?
When someone says something like that, right?
That it was like in their hand and they were like brandishing it or something.
Yeah, it was, it was in the fucking car, completely legally stored, totally legal for her to carry it.
Everything was absolutely legal there.
The government story was that she was part of a caravan that was ramming his car.
She gets charged with assaulting federal officers.
And then the government's case totally falls apart.
First, it turns out that they send an officer's car to the East Coast, which is, you know, it's part of the crime, apparently, but they send it like a thousand miles away where it gets fixed.
So this is fully detailed.
Yeah, fully detailed.
Yep.
And then footage comes out showing that the officer was not just rammed.
If he had in the past, we don't know, but it certainly was not right before he stepped out.
And we also find out that his partner is saying, like, do something, bitch, to Martinez.
Like, you know, because they're sort of near her in their cars.
Yeah.
And that happens right before the cop fires.
And then text messages come out showing the officer who shot her bragging about how many shots he hit her with.
So, what we have here is the cops lying, deliberately lying, and painting the person that they just shot as a domestic terrorist who is about to shoot them, even though that is just not borne out by the facts at all.
They have them concealing evidence and then they have them bragging about it.
And I think that this is important because this is clearly, clearly, whatever playbook that they're operating by now, this is the one that they're, this is it.
This is it.
This is the playbook.
What's funny is that I think for people that remember this story when it when it happened, that the second part of the story, which is the government's narrative completely falling apart, actually didn't stick with people.
Like, I know that was the thing that the government kind of like, like it had, everyone had sort of moved on in the news cycle as is sort of the pattern.
And, you know, what stuck with people was, oh, this person was following them.
They got shot.
Oh, this is like, this is like a terrible situation, but they were going after the ICE officers.
You know what I'm saying?
I mean, this is in October of last year.
And that is kind of what stuck in the sort of like national narrative.
That is different from what now we've seen over this past weekend in Minneapolis.
And I think that that breakdown of that playbook is really important.
Yeah.
You know, it's, it's, this reminds me of a brilliant essay I read on the Truanon newsletter that we send out that you wrote about sort of the narrative control that people jockey for right after these incidents happen and like how that's really what matters.
And I think you really hit on something there because that is like one thing that people keep wondering, like, oh, how come they're not like releasing these sort of neutral statements, like letting an investigation play out?
It's because they understand that like immediate narrative control is the one number one thing that matters.
And yet some of that is not falling apart, which we'll get to.
But let's walk through what's kind of happened in Minneapolis.
So Renee Good gets shot in the head and then elsewhere, I guess, in the body.
I think it's four times.
And, you know, there's not much more to get into there.
Obviously, the DHS immediately called her a domestic terrorist.
I think one thing to note is that they are also attempting to, or were attempting to, I don't know if that's falling apart by now, charge her wife with something, who was there.
Six federal prosecutors in Minneapolis resigned over this.
Fbi Investigates Signal Groups00:05:12
And could you read from this NBC article real quick?
Yeah.
The attorneys had felt pressure from Justice Department leadership, both in Minneapolis and in Washington, to investigate any ties to activist groups by Good and her widow, said a law enforcement official with knowledge of their decisions.
The officials said the prosecutors were also concerned about a decision to cut out state and local authorities from the federal investigation.
So two things to point out there.
One, the ongoing tension between state and local authorities and the feds, specifically DHS and not just DOJ, is like a really key storyline here.
But the second thing there, which I mean, I kind of want to just like talk about a little bit is this idea of activist networks operating in these jurisdictions, I guess you would say.
Like.
There has been a ton of digital ink spilled trying to parse signal groups, telegram groups, videos of what appears to me to be like Kirkland signature boxes of cheesecrackers and potluck style lasagnas looking for.
How could such antifug groups be funded?
There's clearly some sort of operation here dude it is.
But I think the important part is like, okay, it's one thing for like, you know, to make fun of kind of viral right-wing operator social media posts, but it's another for what NBC is reporting, right?
For this to be also coming from the Justice Department.
Well, Kash Patel said on the Benny Johnson show yesterday, this is where the news is happening, ladies and gentlemen.
On the Benny Johnson show yesterday, that because of reporting from Nick Sortor, follower of the podcast on Twitter, who is like a Cam Higby type.
I don't know, an independent person.
You need to go like one more because I don't know who Cam Higby is.
Cam Higby is awesome.
They're both, let's say, let me say this.
They're both Pentagon reporters.
You remember when they kicked the press corps out of the Pentagon and just brought in the Pentagon.
Yeah, they brought in like minor or sometimes major Twitter influencers.
They're people who have a career due to X's payout system with having to blue check an engagement.
I'm not, that's just what it is.
People who are guests on like the Tim Pool show or whatever.
This is like, they're from the Bongingo ecosystem.
Sure.
Okay.
Which is the Greater Bongingo.
Yeah, they're from the Greater Bongingo Kash Patel extended universe.
Is he back?
Is he back to his podcast?
Yes.
Is he back to his, what do you think?
What do you mean?
He's back to being deputy director of the FBI.
Why would he do that?
I don't know.
We got to check in with Moink.
Moink.
We got to check it with Moink.
Because we're going to make sure they're getting their money's worth.
So Kash Patel goes on to Benny Johnson's show.
Benny Johnson, obviously sort of a famous fairy, they might have called him in the popular magazines of the 1920s.
For the funded.
Yes, yes, yes.
Light in the loafers, which now I know what it means.
Now I don't, now I know that it means you're not sneaking, which is what I used to think it, man.
Six years later.
But actually, no, maybe I thought it meant you were stupid or crazy.
I don't know.
Well, regardless, I was easy.
Anyways, you thought it meant you were tired because you'd be like, when I get home from the factory, I'm feeling a little light in the loafers.
No, I know.
I didn't know it meant that.
I know I didn't meet you.
I remember exactly what happened.
It was as you were coming back from.
The dick sucking factory.
I was coming back from the actual factory.
And we guessed there was Dick Suck there.
What do you think we asked for on our contract?
Anyways, he goes on the Benny Johnson loafer show and he's like, I saw these posts from Nick Sordor.
And it appears that the operatives fighting ICE in Minneapolis have signal groups that are highly organized.
And the FBI is now investigating.
And, you know, I'm in touch with people who are part of these signal groups.
And they tell me that there is a, I mean, they already got infiltrated by like all these right-wing people.
And so it's a little, you know, I think they're having to reconstitute themselves anyways.
But an FBI, like you have to remember, do you remember back in, I don't know when it was, but sometime last year, there was that Antifa conference at the White House.
Yes.
They brought in like Andy NGO and like all these other people to be like, Antifa is a is, you know, it's this transnational organized crime group that's blah, Obviously, if you spent any time on the organized left or even the unorganized left, but in person in the United States in major cities, you know that like Maybe in Portland, there's like a degree of organization, but in most places, there's like five or six anarchists or whatever.
Anti-FA Network Myth00:02:48
And it's like maybe they'll do black box stuff, which used to be way more popular.
I guess it's a little popular now, but it's a specific tactic, black box stuff.
Um, but there's not an anti-fa network that just isn't a thing, it just does not exist.
And a lot of those people, I'll say this: a lot of people do not like me, or at least used to not like me.
I don't know how they feel now.
Also, like, they don't want a network, yeah.
I mean, a lot of this, listen, a lot of this, and it's not painting with a broad brush here, they're painting with a broad brush here.
So, anti-fa is kind of well, I know that's what they, you know, it's also like whatever they want to call it, but I just it annoys me.
But as a result of that, uh, they listed I think like three European antifa groups on uh on the terror list and then said that they were going to go after and investigate like Soros and the Tides Foundation because to them, antifa means like anything that's funded by an NGO or whatever.
So, like bail fund, but bail funds, I guess, usually wouldn't be funded by NGO, but like I'm talking then about bail funds, about like immigrant groups, about anything that sort of does like activism.
That is what they view as antifa, like part of the greater, larger antifa network, yeah, yeah, exactly.
And it's funny because, like, if you are sort of a member of the left, which I'm not, by the way, I'm a Nazi, essentially, but I mean, not a Nazi, but like ISIS, like I, yeah, I'm like a combination of the two, but not the not the fan of ISIS, you're just the guy.
I'm not a fan of the Nazis either.
I just, you know, I, it's just, it just is the only thing around where I live.
Um, but I'm a fair weather friend, I'll switch to anything as long as it comes through my town and boots, uh, but not slippers.
And uh, but no, I if you are on the left, you understand that like some NGOs are all right, but like a lot of NGOs are actually in the final analysis a little bit our enemies, but to them, it's all the same thing.
So they like group every like the left in with liberal because that's like in their sort of cosmography of this or geography of this.
I don't know what cause I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about.
It's like all of these, like Soros has literally George Soros and Alex Soros now has this like giant network made up of like progressive prosecutors, uh, various like legal aid groups, the National Lawyers Guild, immigrant rights groups, and those are deployed in a centralized manner into hot zones to disrupt federal government operations, domestic hot zones, yes.
Like they view it as like there's literally, I don't think I can stress enough how sort of conspiratorial it is, like how mainstream obviously you can see the political use of this, like cynically, it's like, okay, yeah, perfect.
Semiotic Handgun Radicalization00:07:57
And this is a great way to sell a narrative and look at all these people eating it up.
The thing is, is that similar to how like Elon radicalized himself through like owning and like pushing all of the algorithmic gears to 10 or whatever on X when he bought it and just like furthering his own psychosis.
I genuinely believe that people within the administration, because of the like feedback loop that they've created with their base and the way that they have to appeal to their base through like narratives and policy decisions and the way that they speak to them with PR responses,
they've similarly like gone through the like a further kind of radicalization loop where they actually believe their own bullshit that they previously knew to be sort of like cynical tools.
Yeah, it makes total sense.
I mean, we see this in like Stephen Miller's DHS's and Christy Noam's response to the Alex Predi shooting, where they all came out and said the same thing.
Yes.
This person was an assassin who had two loaded magazines, two whole magazines loaded full of bullets even, and assaulted federal agents with the intention of starting a massacre.
And the implication is if you have to actually look at the sort of thinking behind that, a lot of these people have lied so consistently because I'm going to be honest, like, again, as a balls and strikes person here, and I really am doing balls and strikes here, there is just not a domestic infrastructure of left-wing guerrilla direct action, whatever.
There just is not a national one.
It's just not there.
There's nothing that resembles the weather underground.
There's nothing, I mean, that just, it doesn't exist.
It just doesn't exist.
But for these people, because literally they think that like indivisible or whatever are communists, they have this kind of logic that leads them to seeing gun.
And I think they know they're lying on some level.
I do really do.
I'm not trying to excuse them for that.
But I think they both know they're lying and also think that they're telling the truth on another level because to them, it is true, at least to so much of their base, it is true.
So it's Stephen Miller come out and be like, this guy was an assassin.
This was an assassin's, you know, maybe implication they're sent by Antifa.
Noam said the same thing and Bovino said the same thing.
I think this was a mistake.
It's funny because, you know, to your point, so there was some reporting in Axios that said there was an email sent to congressional Republicans over the weekend where like the DHS communications director wrote, this is what they said.
There was an incident between U.S. border.
This is about the Predi shooting, by the way.
There was an incident between U.S. Border Patrol officers and an illegal alien with a nine millimeter semiotic handgun.
Like, so that is the story that they sent out to all Republican congressional leaders about like the official DHS stance on what happened, which is just completely made up.
I have to interrupt for a moment.
Liz, you are such a fucking nerd that instead of saying semi-automatic handgun, you said semiotic handgun.
I did.
Yes.
What did I say?
Semiotic.
That's so funny.
That's when you used to assassinate Ferdinand Sassor.
I was going to say, you were, you were, Liz, you've been reading too many of these damn psychology books.
A semiotic handgun would fuck would, I think that would blow that agent's motherfucking brain.
Yeah, that was, you know, that was kicked out of the Americ, the psychoanalytic association back in like 62.
But they're lying.
Like they're like, and that's the crazy thing is they're lying and they're not that good at it because listen, this happened with the Renee Good thing.
They were able to kind of cohere around the narrative of like Renee Goode was actually, she did have a weapon.
It's called a car.
And I think a lot of people were like, I don't know, it kind of looks like that ICE guy got in front of her car and then took out his gun and shot her five times or four times, whatever.
And then they released that thing about he had internal bleeding, which is another word for a bruise because it would have something worse.
They would have said it was worse.
But I think a lot of people are kind of willing to go along with that because you can at least adjust, like you could adjust that video or justify things in that video from that framework enough to like give you an excuse.
Whereas this video is so sort of exculpatory to Predi, and actually, it's just so obvious that these, I mean, what it's just everyone's seen the video, everyone's seen all of the angles of the videos.
There's so many videos now of them just executing him and groping.
There's been since been some groping for like an excuse.
They're sort of settling around now, the whatever, the SIG sour going off, which has been a big story in the gun world, going off on its own.
And that has, but that doesn't, it's so crazy to me because the video is Freddy already disarmed with his hands behind his back, being like pushed to the ground and then shot 10 times in the back.
Yes.
There's a zero reason, like even if a gun goes off, there's, I mean, that's an execution.
There's no way around that.
And I think the big beyond just that video being very difficult for these sort of like other narratives to kind of fit, it coming in such quick succession after the Renee Goode video has made it completely untenable, as we'll talk about,
because more and more normal normie voters, people who I think were in 2024 more amenable to some of Trump's immigration stances, have since been like, what the fuck is going on?
Yes.
You know?
And I think that the immediate sort of barrage of lies and smears of calling this guy a domestic terrorist, a would-be assassin, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, that might play well with like anti-social right-wing personalities on Twitter.
Yes.
Which is kind of what they thought they could get away with.
I think that they think they're getting away.
It's just like the penguin shit.
You know what I mean?
Well, I would remind, I mean, do you remember Vance after the They're Eating the Dogs, they're eating the Cats situation where he came out and he said, when people are like, wait, what the fuck are you talking about?
He doubled down, remember?
And he was like, this is what he said.
If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do.
And you see all of that through Vance, I mean, other people besides him, but that is the posture of the administration.
Yes.
Up until this point, because now there's been, it seems, significant pushback.
Jacket vs. Coat00:13:40
Bovino, we hardly knew ye.
It's so sad.
Just as we were really getting acquainted with this amazing new character, because that's the thing is like Trump 2 has brought back not all the greatest hits from, I mean, they didn't bring back Michael Flynn, for instance, we love, but they brought back some of the hits from the first administration and they've added some new star players.
Bovino was set to be an amazing, amazing character in Trump World.
He has been made, he was, he was the commander of El Centro, but he was just like a, I think like basically like a district commander or whatever from the Border Patrol.
He was made commander of ops at large, which is a position they made up for him.
I love that.
Wait, can we just pause?
Because it just, whenever someone was named like editor at large, everyone would always be like, what is that?
What is this kind of title?
What is an editor at large?
No one ever knew.
Does that just mean you're friends with directors at large?
Yeah.
So it's so funny to see DHS like use that language as if it's like some sort of editorial board, commander at large.
Well, and they that's not a title.
They put him in the goofy coat.
Also, he's tiny at large.
I don't know.
I might have to figure him.
I might have to get some sartorial advice on this here from our producer because my view has been if you're little.
Don't do the floor length.
Floor length is hard because they see how close your head is to the floor.
No, preferably.
They see your head and then they see the floor and then they see there's so little distance between the two that it makes you look shorter.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's interesting because most modern coats are too short.
You see a lot of men wearing overcoats that are above the knee and it looks bad.
But you can go too far.
The pendulum swings the other way too far.
If it's brushing the floor, then it's too long and it exaggerates how tiny you are.
So you want the coat to end below the knee, but not quite at the ankle.
No, you need a like.
Yeah.
Well, my advice for Bernard Meyer would be to set up vantage points throughout any terrain that he has to go through and to wear Nike Air Max Pros in a really short jacket, but that is tanned like it's a long jacket.
Pause, do they really, do they recommend the Air Max Pro?
Because it is kind of crazy.
Those do have like little lifts in them.
So Liz, you know how I was like having a problems with my relationship with Christina Hendricks?
Uh-huh.
Oh, okay.
Once I started hooping more, I got the Nike Air Max Pros.
It's been smooth sale ever since.
Yeah.
They can ride in them Chinese balloons.
But it's, he looks, he's, he's very short.
People are like, oh, he looks like he's in the SS.
I got to tell you, I got to make a confession on the show right now.
Two years ago, for my birthday, my father proffered me with a gift unlike any that I have ever been proffered before.
Was this the two-piece or did the other part of the outfit come earlier?
No, they came at the same time.
Okay.
My dad gave me one floor-length leather trench coat.
And I got to be honest, it does flood a bit.
I'm not tall enough for this trench coat.
It's a very long coat.
You definitely need the Air Maxes with it.
I need the Air Maxes with it.
And at the same time, he also purchased me a Kangle hat.
Also leather, no?
No.
Oh, God, I wish.
Oh, God.
I thought it was also leather.
I've never actually, I've only put it on once momentarily, but I haven't gotten rid of it because I feel guilty, even though my dad will listen to this episode.
So whatever.
Dad, I haven't got guy guy.
I haven't, I still have that.
I still have the Kangle.
And I'm not saying I wouldn't do a Kangle.
Wait, do you not have the jacket?
Oh, I definitely still have the jacket.
Oh, okay.
The thing is, is it's not like matrix coated.
I want to describe the jacket a little bit.
It's a little is a little, it brings to mind the Schutzstaffel.
Yeah.
But also, I would say it's a little Soviet too, but it's also a little bit, because it's got a very wide lapel.
Lapel.
Yes.
But that's where it's kind of getting a little funky.
Yeah, it gets a little funky.
I don't know if I can incorporate this into a fully, I wore it one time and that was.
Oh, you could be Bovino for Halloween.
And I just shaft for Halloween.
And I did wear it then.
What?
What's the problem?
I didn't do the makeup.
I got that tint naturally.
No, but I drew I did dress as Shafta for a Halloween a couple years ago, and I did, or I did, I did.
So I guess it was right after my birthday.
And I did, uh, I did wear the jacket, but I maybe I'll bring it back.
Maybe I'll send it to Bovino.
Actually, it would make Bovinovino would drown in it.
Yeah.
Anyways, he is sort of very theatrical and he's kind of got this little whatever haircut.
And he has been giving these daily press briefings and he's been very active on Twitter.
Very active on Twitter.
He follows like every Nazi account, by the way, but he also follows every woman that ever replies to him with anything remotely positive.
I should have done that before he well.
I know.
Spoiler, he got shut down.
His Twitter got shut down.
Well, I will say I did learn from an article that came out today in American Prospect by Daniel Bogeslaw that his passwords got leaked.
And one of them was a variation on the word Redbone, which I found quite shocking.
Okay.
Yeah.
It does make the whatever Sean Penn, one battle after another comparison.
I mean, it's a little too much.
It's a little too much.
Bovino has come out differently.
Also, I do think, I mean, just for simulation theory watchers, the name Bovino feels like a little bit of a damn thing.
It's one of those things where I almost want to shut you down right now.
It's hard for me to talk about that.
You know what I'm saying?
Bovino?
How can that be his fucking name?
Well, obviously, there's a cow somewhere back there, you know.
How can that be?
What is his name?
Dude, I think he's fucking.
I don't know, man.
If you're named that, is this just what you become?
They shouldn't let you into cities if you got a name like that.
It's tough.
We remember what happened to Chicago with the fire.
We don't need you here.
Yeah, Barry Weiss gets a job at CBS.
Fair enough.
Yeah, and also it's a little too like Bongingo as well.
Like there's a little too much.
No, but Bongingo clearly a clown.
Bovino, I don't know.
There's something pastoral about the name.
Anyway, we're getting off topic.
He has been so it was also to be clear, it was uh border patrol officers, which have been deployed to Minneapolis under Bovino.
They're like, we're bringing in the big guns.
They're bringing in Bortak, which is like their assault teams.
They have a couple, I think, but they're bringing in Bortak and they're bringing in Bovino and his just like in his thugs, his thug squad to supplement ICE.
And it was Border Patrol officers that shot Alex Predi.
Yeah.
And then Bovino, who came out, and I think Bovino was the first to say Predi was an assassin.
But he came out hard.
He's been, you know, arguing for his officers on Twitter.
He said that he would not name the officer involved in the shooting or the officers involved in the shooting because that would be doxing, which it just is.
I just, we just keep on using that, don't we?
I could not believe it.
It's just like the federal government will no longer name their agents who kill American citizens in an unjustified shooting because that would resemble what you would do during Gamer Game.
I mean, that's been the whole thing with these DHS people in the first place is they wear the masks because, oh, their families would be harassed.
Their families would be threatened.
I do think that would happen.
I don't give a fuck.
You sound like that.
I'm sorry.
It's a fucking no, no.
I want to talk about that, though, because I also think, whatever, we'll get to this later.
But I do think that that is why it's such an important ask that you get the masks off these guys.
I think you would see a shocking number of resignations.
I genuinely do.
Yeah.
I mean, I think there's also a real psychological aspect of wearing a mask when you sort of conduct these operations.
Yeah, no shit.
There's a reason they make executioners wear hoods.
You know what I'm saying?
Yes.
And these guys who are fucking like prattling off whatever internal like monologues of whatever fucking dumbass video game that they think they're in.
Yeah.
And they don't even have to like have their face shown.
They can just like fully inhabit whatever fantasy as they're like.
I mean, it's like, I don't know.
It's really, it's too much.
It's too much.
Well, they're, they're sending him back to El Centro.
I don't know if he's any longer the commander of ops at large, but he is being removed from Minneapolis.
He is being really sunsetted.
He's being sunsetted.
I read in one of the articles, there's a bunch about this now, that he was thinking of retiring soon, which is, I'm like, okay, yeah, he's he was, he's been thinking of that in the past five hours.
How soon is relatively soon?
But they're, they're putting Bovino out to pasture, which was, which is interesting because I believe there were other plans for him.
Because now Christy Noam and her paramour paramour, Corey Lewandowski, are in trouble.
So I want to say, real quick, did you see that Fedderman came out and demanded the resignation of Christy Noam?
Really?
Yes.
He's awesome.
He's, we, he's fucking, I'm sorry.
Because that's the thing is like the left needs a guy who speaks plain people's language.
I was always, I'm just almost shocked that he did, but he did come out and say that.
Maybe, maybe he's like, I want to have lunch with her.
You know, she's under, I think he's just like, she's under a lot of mental pressure.
We need to give her a break.
In front of Congress.
She is being summoned by Rand Paul, no less, right?
Yes.
And there will be congressional hearings.
We'll get into that.
But I think the fascinating thing with Christy Noam, Kirsty Noam?
Christy Noam?
Kirsty Noam.
Don't make me fucking do this.
So this is the thing.
This is, let me get it.
Let me get on it.
Let me throw my body in front of you like a Secret Service agent and take the bullet and say this.
If your name is Kirsten or Kristen or Kirsty or whatever, we don't fucking know the difference.
I see K's, I see I's, I see Y's, I see R's, I see S's, I see T's.
It is a jumble of letters for me.
I don't have the sort of failures that lead one to develop organically a type of dyslexia that many of you might have.
I actually have, I've been told that I have a brain that they could have made in a lab.
It's so perfect.
My one Achilles heel, and Liz shares this as well, is with the K's and the R's and the I's and the S's, we don't know.
And so, true and on how style is, if you have one of these quite modern names, because names like this, both male and female versions, are quite popular these days, we do not tell the difference.
And it's not saying we cannot tell the difference because with study of years, I'm sure we could, but we do not tell the difference because it's hard for us.
And so, Kirsty Noam, Christy Noam, she is all of these.
The thing you have to pay attention to is the gnome part, which is also true in many fantasy settings.
Anyway, Ms. Gnome.
So, Ms. Gnome, it's known, has been working quite closely with Corey Lewandowski since at least 2019, 2020.
So, I want to interrupt.
I'm sorry, I need to interrupt.
It's Mrs. Gnome.
She's married to a guy named, I believe, Brian.
Yeah, Brian with a Y. Her husband is named Brian Noam.
So it's not Mrs. Noam.
It's the married to Brian, Mrs. Gnome.
Now, isn't Corey also married?
Corey is also married, but who gives a fuck?
But Corey is a Trump one character.
He's an amazing, he's a Trump one campaign character.
So people might remember him, although he did get kind of pushed out of Trump World.
Yeah.
They have been having an affair since at least 2021.
She is the head of DHS.
Affair in the White House00:07:46
I want to walk through some of this about her because I found some of this stuff fascinating.
She's obviously, she's the head of DHS.
He is kind of an unofficial, I don't know, right-hand man for her within the organization.
She was prior to this, kind of like small-town dumbo in South Dakota politics.
She was like handpicked by Tom Dashel and then just kind of like rode the Republican wave.
She is not, I would say, an ideologically committed person.
In fact, like a lot of reporters have just called her stupid.
I don't believe that to be just straight misogyny when they're doing that.
I think that genuinely, like it seems that she's very Trump-like in the sense that like the last person that talks to her, she's like, let's do that.
Yes.
She doesn't really seem to be super committed to any kind of like real conservative values or Republican values or even MAGA value.
Like she's just like she's having a long-term affair with a fucking Polk.
I'm so sorry.
I totally forgot.
She's having a long-term affair with somebody of Polish persuasion.
Okay.
New York Magazine said that she had reality star energy, which I do kind of like.
And I want to kind of like, you know, I can't really stop thinking about that.
There was, do you remember when she did that video in front of the Seacot prisoners?
Yep, just like Nick Shirley did.
And she was, she was wearing a $50,000 Rolex in that video.
Like, she knows what she's.
She also, just as like a couple things, she green lit a one and a half, close to one and a half million dollar anti-drug campaign with the slogan, meth, we're on it.
In Dakota?
Yes.
Or whatever.
That apparently she statistically meth, we're on it.
Meth, we're on it.
It's good.
It's good.
I mean, there's probably statistically a lot of people that read that and were like, I actually, the government is on my side.
Speaking my truth.
I am the government.
Yeah.
And the government is me.
She also, do you remember when she lied about meeting Kim Jong-un?
No.
Yes.
And then like doubled down on it.
Anyway.
Oh, did you just think it was another maybe in her book?
I think it was in her book.
And then she, and then when people are like, wait, when did that happen?
And she was just like, you wouldn't, you wouldn't know about it.
That's the same book.
Of course, she talked about killing our dog.
Cricket.
Yeah, I'll mention that in a second.
So according to New York Magazine, this is what they said about their relationship.
Lewandowski is not only surreptitiously co-leading DHS without congressional approval, but has brought Trump World's maniacally pugnacious style to the department and drawn out some of Noam's own pugnacious predilections too.
I don't know if I would have used pugnacious the first time in that sentence.
I don't think I would use it twice.
No, well, that's what I'm saying.
It's tough.
Little true-on-style tip here.
You want to use if you got a, if you got a, you know, 50-cent word, use it one time.
But also, is pugnacious really what we're going with there?
I think that's pugnacious.
Um, anyway, this is also what they had.
This is what Frank Luntz had to say about her, which I think was, is so nuts and completely contrary to what we've seen in this past week, which is she is probably the administration's best spokeswoman.
The only thing that bothers me is that her name is not mentioned as a potential 2028 Republican Party leader.
She's underestimated.
Nope.
Not happening.
No.
Not happening.
Not in a million years.
In fact, I would be.
Well, let's see if she survives this.
She might.
Let's see if she's still in fucking office by the time this fucking show comes out.
So Noam and Lewandowski met in 2019 on a Foster's Freeze deep sea fishing trip.
Okay.
Foster's Freeze.
But do you mean Foster Freeze?
I know.
But we do call him house style.
We call him Foster Freeze.
That's what we call him.
Obviously, we love the Berkeley Foster Freeze.
Yeah.
So just like on some big, you know, conservative, like stupid fundraising thing.
She was already governor at the South Dakota at the time.
He had already been pushed out from Trump one.
They totally hit it off.
She ends up bringing him on as an advisor, quote unquote, advisor.
He starts handling like all of her kind of media facing stuff, which is like bookings, events, whatever.
Starts to kind of like build up her profile.
I mean, I will say this about Lewandowski.
Like, he's not, he's a mover and shaker.
He is.
Yeah.
I mean, that was the whole thing during Trump one is that he kind of like retired from politics to become an unofficial lobbyist who never registered as a lobbyist.
Right.
And so he's just like, I can open doors for you.
I mean, he would sell his like services to companies or whatever.
And he just gave them advice on how to deal with Trump in the public.
Now, people forget this, but she was on the short list for VP.
And she was like really rumored to be at the top of that list.
But apparently, one of the reasons she wasn't selected was because of the rumors of her affair with Lewandowski.
There's like at one point, Trump even like calls her.
I mean, all of this is very out in the open, too, about the two of them.
Trump like refers to her as Corey's girlfriend.
But the thing that really kills the whole VP thing was that she killed her dog.
Okay.
Like when that comes out and everyone's sort of like reacting to it.
And then her, remember how she tried to say face or whatever?
It was like on Face the Nation or something like that.
And it was like, she was like, anyway, instead, Lewandowski is the one that ended up pushing for her at DHS.
Yeah.
So he was able to, at the time, recruit Tom Homan to really like back her, which is interesting.
Interesting.
Yes, considering the current dynamics, which we'll talk about.
And Trump approaches her, asks her what she wants.
And she's like, I want Homeland Security.
She gets approved, confirmed, like easy.
In fact, I think it was funny because I feel like Alyssa Slotkin did a whole like, you know, Sermon from the Mount after the fucking like murder this weekend.
And she fucking voted for, she like voted to approve her.
So I was like, whatever.
Anyway, Lewandowski wanted to be the chief of her chief of staff at DHS.
That was kind of like the deal that they imagined.
That's so progressive.
It is.
But that all fell apart because everyone knew they were having an affair.
Okay.
He was also hit with an unwanted sexual contact case from, it was like some, he like tried to grope someone.
I don't really remember the details.
You're telling me, sorry.
You're telling me that a right-wing person from Trump World groped a woman.
Well, he had to like settle.
It was like settled.
I think it was in Vegas that it took place too.
I can't remember exactly, but I think it was in Vegas.
And then there was all of the like he wouldn't register taking unreported foreign money stuff.
So he got flagged for all this like internal background stuff.
Anyway, so she keeps him on as special government employee.
We talked about that funny status because remember that was what Elon's status was.
69 Days and Counting00:02:37
Yeah.
That technically has a 130-day limit.
Now, Lewandowski has like skirted this by literally avoiding swiping in and out.
Genius.
So he like goes around.
This is from reporting.
He like goes around and like frags that like he's only worked 69 days.
And he's like jumping the turnstile at DHS or whatever.
So he doesn't swipe in.
But like, dude, literally he uses 69.
No, he says it on purpose.
So did Elon, you know?
This is like, this is, this is like dog.
This is our government.
No shit.
We're all dying.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No shit.
We're all on meth.
So I want to just like, I've, I was curious.
So I was like doing a little bit of research on the very commented upon changes to Mrs. Gnome's appearance over the years, which whomst amongst us hasn't enjoyed a glow up.
Yeah, or the swag method or anything.
I will say this.
It definitely starts.
I think there's, I don't want to imply, you know, look, correlation is not causation.
Yes, it is.
However, it is after she meets Corey that she starts getting filler.
So I'm going to say this.
It's not just the haircuts and it's not just the change in makeup.
I'm talking cheek filler to start.
And I think her chin.
I don't abide by this strategy anymore, but I know that the strategy works and I currently use it always.
If you're in a relationship with a woman, you have to start needling her about her appearance.
You just have to.
And so she comes home and, you know, she's a bit frazzled from a day of work and say, you look like shit.
Why don't you look nicer for me?
You wake up in the morning and say, ooh, wow.
Maybe go to sleep with a little bit of makeup on once in a while.
And then you start asking her, can you make things bigger?
And you start with the lips.
Easy to do.
Maybe a little bit of cheek too.
And then say, when you are cross with me, ma'am, I don't like the way that you furrow your eyebrows because you look like the evil baby from The Simpsons.
Why don't you put some fucking shit in there that makes it so you can't make expressions anymore?
And then how about this?
We need a fucking Trump World person with a BBL.
No, that's like, that I can't.
That's too powerful.
That's too crazy.
So you think that Corey is just like, I need you to look better?
Flashy Raids vs. Bureaucratic Mission00:09:37
I do.
Yeah.
I actually.
I think that he was like, if we're going to increase your national presence, fucking, let's plump those lips.
She does like, it's 2024 that she gets the full kind of like famous Mar-a-Lago face, which is basically her face now.
But she does like, she publicizes her own veneers in 2025, which was really funny.
She like tried to get ahead of it, I think, because I think people often don't realize how veneers genuinely do change the way you look.
Yeah.
Like so much.
And especially her.
Anyway, I, it's of, it's my opinion that, yes, I do believe that he had a hand in all of this.
I'm just saying.
Well, she looks amazing.
Although she does have a touch of the seal about her.
And I don't mean the animal.
I mean the person.
Her cheeks look a bit pitted whenever I see her.
I know.
It's just the light.
Corey doesn't know about all the things you can do about that, which is a shame.
So despite Homan's help with Lewandowski.
That's like a sitcom from the 80s.
Homan's help?
Yeah, there have been a there have been some problems internally at DHS, you'd be shocked to know, between factions that have sort of appeared and cohered and solidified in the past year.
So this is coming from the Washington Examiner, which is a right-wing paper.
I think that, I mean, it's not a super far-right paper, but it's a right-wing paper, although I do think it often has pretty good stuff about the internal workings of the administration.
It's kind of like a little like tabloid-ish, too, which is fun.
Yes, definitely.
Would you read this out?
Exclusive.
Senior Trump administration officials, including a cabinet member, tried to force out President Donald Trump's top border official over disagreements about how to reach the president's deportation goals and ethical concerns.
Eight sources alleged during conversations with the Washington Examiner.
And yet none of them could be named.
Those involved said Homeland Security Secretary Kirsty Noam and Corey Lewandowski, a special government employee at DHS and Noam's close ally, have waged an aggressive campaign to make U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott so uncomfortable at work that he would resign.
I do think it's funny.
They're going to, you know, we're going to go on and talk about this, but if you just didn't read any more, it sounds like they're just like doing the like annoying someone to death move.
Yes.
Well, they kind of are doing that.
Which is true and unapproved, by the way.
Yes, they are literally, they're annoying him to death.
So they're talking about Rodney Scott, who's the actual commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
That is his job.
He is like, I think a lot of people might think it's Greg Bovino.
It's not.
Greg Bovino does not have, it's a fake job that they made up so he can go on TV.
The actual guy who is in charge of that is a guy named Rodney Scott, who's like a longtime customs and border protection guy.
I think he was in Georgia Border Patrol in like 92 or something like that.
So the article goes on to say that at points, Lewandowski would order Scott around and Scott would be like, you don't work here, man.
Like you can't, it's been 180 days.
Like you can't order me around.
At which point I assume Lewandowski would say, 69 days, my brother, read the fucking slip.
But that caused tensions because Lewandowski is in there sort of swinging his dick around.
Scott, who's like a career kind of bureaucrat guy, was up until a certain point, is like, you can't order me around.
You can't do this kind of stuff.
The article also claims that Noam sees Homan, Tom Homan, and Scott as threats because they carry institutional credibility that doesn't depend on proximity to power or press.
Girl, you don't need to lean on him.
Yes.
Well, I think the real Fisher is this.
I think that it's Noam, Lewandowski, and Bovino are sort of doing this like TV show for Trump, whereas Homan and Scott are like, we're doing like, we're doing this like we've always done, but we're finally kind of able to do our job now.
We don't have those fucking Democrats breathing down our necks.
And so they're a little more focused, I guess, on DHS's mission.
And I'm not trying to make them sound like good guys or anything like this.
I'm just sort of, this is just how they're being portrayed.
Whereas Noam and Lewandowski and Bovino are sort of focused on things like the flashy raid in Chicago and that apartment building and like the videos.
Yeah, I mean, they genuinely are operating or creating like cruelty theater for the terminally online who hate libtards, who will say the party depends on for election juice, especially with the midterms looming.
Yeah, it's an interesting thing to balance because Homan and Scott probably, well, that's not really, it's more Homan's job than Scott, but they probably have actionable plans to deport more immigrants than Lewandowski and Noam do.
But it doesn't necessarily lend itself to as good of TV.
And so it's interesting because you'll see, I think that there's this weird tension in the MAGA camp of people being mad enough that the flashy raids aren't deporting enough people, but they want the flashy raids to happen.
And it's sort of like, it's kind of everybody like this very rabid anti-immigrant base wanting something that's maybe a little impossible, which is huge numbers of deportations, but also we need like hype videos for it.
And we need like maximum media exposure.
Well, I think the other thing is, is that, you know, a lot of these career guys know that like political backlash is the way to get all of what they're trying to like do shut down.
Yes.
Whereas Lewandowski, Noam, other parts of the administration, specifically Stephen Miller, who somehow people are not like focusing their ire, by the way.
It's like, wait, get him out of there too.
Yeah.
In advance, right?
They're all doubling down on like any objections to what we're doing are illegitimate in the first instance, basically.
Yeah.
And I also, I think that there's another factor here, which is that Miller very openly wants to fight his political enemies using the vehicle of DHS.
Yeah.
I mean, I think that that is beyond any doubt now that DHS has been transformed into a fully sort of not fully, but partially realized political police in many ways.
And that is how Miller, who has, Miller is also obviously very, very, very, very, he hates immigrants.
I think that is, I don't think you'd dispute that.
He hates immigrants.
Not even immigrants.
Just like not anyone who's not white.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Thank God he's a fucking Jew.
Jesus Christ.
But I'd say that very selfishly.
There is, and so there's that factor as well, because like that is also kind of hard to like that that transforms, like whereas Homan and Scott's maybe more bureaucratic, obviously very political, but bureaucratic mission would be derailed by transforming ICE and CBP into organizations in large part that are supposed to be dealing with internal political enemies as opposed to immigrants.
Yeah.
So the examiner article goes on to say, in an internal memo obtained by the Washington Examiner, Scott told senior officials across the agency in December, this was last December, about his new deputy, whom, of course, it's last December, whom the DHS had selected for him.
The new appointee was Joseph Mazzara, previously special counsel to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who Noam later tapped to serve as acting general counsel at DHS headquarters.
All matters were now to go through Scott's deputy commissioner rather than him, sources said the DHS told Scott.
So the article goes on to show that the CBP mid-ranks have been filled essentially with like political appointees by Kirsty Noam, which essentially act as like acting upper ranks there.
Does that make sense?
I mean, that's like someone like Bovino or something like that, but also in the bureaucratic structure.
So they've essentially created a parallel bureaucratic structure within CBP.
Almost like a Soviet of some kind.
Yes.
So there's detail after detail of them trying to get Scott to quit by annoying him so that they can replace him.
And the person they want to replace him with, and this has been reported throughout last year, throughout the last part of last year, but is really made clear in this Washington Examiner article.
The person that they want to be the new CBP chief to replace Scott is the one and only Greg Bovino.
Well, that's been completely derailed.
I don't know.
I mean, there's an interesting thing.
Like, I think there is an internal war happening right now.
This is what I'm hearing at least within the Trump administration as to their, I think this is getting them.
I think this is a problem internally for them.
Yeah, it's a huge problem.
I mean, because it's also derailing like one of their signature issues.
Internal War Brewing00:15:47
Yes.
Which like I think, you know, I think it's worth mentioning that it's not just within the Trump administration, but like the Republicans are really struggling with this as well, which is pressuring the administration to kind of deal with this.
And it's funny because Trump, like Trump's response to this incident versus Renee Goods, was he was very much more, you know, well, you know, we're trying to investigate what happened, you know, much more like wishy-washy.
Whereas with Renee Goode, the with the after her shooting, he was like, can you believe that, you know, she was like trying to run over our officer?
So he, I think, and whoever is around him can see some of the political writing on the wall, which is like, this is not going the way you think it is among like the larger American public, specifically people who used to be on your side.
I want to talk about that a little bit more, but I also want to mention some of the stuff with Democrats because, again, the response to this has been different than the shooting of Renee Good.
where the Democrats now are threatening to shut down the government and are saying that they want to, you know, basically shut down the government over the appropriations bill that the Senate is voting on now, which would fully fund DHS through the year.
Yeah.
Something I think that is important to mention is that like the thing with Noam and Lewandowski is that them operating as a unit coincided with DHS getting this like huge, amount of money with the passage of the UBA, OBA, the one big, beautiful bill.
Just going to call it the OBA.
I mean, they were getting funded.
They were getting more money than I believe the Marine Corps.
Yeah, it set aside $190 billion in additional funding for DHS through 2029.
So totally discretionary, very few restrictions.
That included $75 billion for ICE alone, because obviously there's other departments within DHS and another $66 billion for CBP.
So that is not what is being debated in Congress right now, right?
What's being debated in Congress right now is the annual budget for entire DHS, which, you know, DHS annual budget, I think, is like $64 billion, which is also like putting that in perspective.
Yeah.
So, you know, kind of putting that together, in addition to the $64 billion, the OBA gave ICE like a $75 billion slush fund that they can use no matter what, even if the annual budget gets frozen, which is why I think that Democrats are really focusing on, I mean, some Democrats, we don't know how this is going to go, but they're focusing on these restrictions that they can kind of impose on appropriations,
which all sound very reasonable to me.
I don't know.
I know I'm like Lib Franczak now, but what they're asking for is that to like cooperate with state probes and send CBP back to the border.
So not to let them operate internally.
Yeah.
And then they're demanding body cams, which I know everyone knows whatever.
Everyone knows that a lot of that is reform theater, but body cams and no face masks.
That to me seems really big.
They also are asking agents to be limited by use of force standards.
And I just want to say it's so fucking crazy that they're not.
Yeah.
That is crazy.
Well, it's really unclear like what standards that they are limited by.
I don't know if they have any.
Miller said that they had total federal immunity.
That's what it's not a thing.
Yeah.
It's, it's, I mean, but it's him trying to essentially incite them to do, to do maximum damage.
You know, I think the Democrats are kind of in a bind.
Democrats have a tough go with immigration stuff.
And I think there's a sort of funny but kind of correct right-wing critique about Democrats' relationship to immigration, because I think as a lot of the kind of NGO staffer set became much more liberal during the woke era, I guess you could say, one of the, you know, big canards with that, I think I'm using the word canard correctly.
If I'm not, I'm not, but you know what I mean?
Was not necessarily open borders.
I don't think anyone would say that, but like basically no immigration restriction.
And, or not no immigration restriction, I shouldn't say that, but much laxer immigration restriction.
This sort of clashes with what the Democrats believe, which is a, in a capitalist, you know, liberal democracy, which is, there's not been one in history that has had no borders.
And I'm saying this not to be like, I'm, I'm a, you know, completely, you know, I'm a fucking immigration restriction or anything like that.
I'm not saying my opinion here at all.
I'm just saying there's some contradictions within the Democratic coalition about this that I think you really saw come out during the Biden era, where they were kind of just paralyzed on it and didn't really know what to do.
And it's interesting because it's like just like you saw some Democrat politicians who are fairly mainstream, maybe liberal Democrats or maybe moderate Democrats in other ways kind of become like abolish the police or defund the police people.
I guess mostly defund the police people in 2020.
You saw some of them sort of go to these positions that aren't really congruent with their other positions on immigration during the Biden presidency.
And it's kind of got them into a mess where there isn't really a coherent Democrat plan for immigration.
And if Europe serves as any sort of guide for us, what tends to happen, and I've talked about this on the show before, is that right-wing positions or parties will grow quite popular, oftentimes based around immigration, which is frankly not very popular with large parts of the population.
And then, in a effort to stave off the popularity of those right-wing ideas or parties, a liberal party or centrist party or whatever, or left-wing party in some cases, will adopt a restrictionist platform when it comes to immigration.
And I think that is probably, weirdly enough, going to be eventually the end result of this here.
Well, I think that like it's funny because the White House is sort of operating in a flip version of this a little bit, which is like, I mean, we've been talking about this like for years with these guys, but I think everyone recognizes that like their obsession with social media is like a guiding force of policymaking and like response.
And they're extremely influenced or captured.
I don't even, maybe that's a better term by the forces that they see kind of guiding the media online, which I think, you know, people can argue was similar to how a lot of mainstream Dems operated in the Biden years, right?
Kind of what you're talking about.
If we, if we think of, if we take the Iglesian analysis of the groups capturing the Democratic Party and apply it to the Republicans, it would be the group posters.
Yeah, the group chats.
Yeah, no, that's a much, no, you're a genius.
It's the group chats.
Yeah.
But I do think that it's funny because in this moment, this is different, right?
Yes.
Like it seems to me that now they look like, and you see it from the silence now coming from people like Vance and Miller, by the way, which I'm sure was a directive after that disastrous press conference.
But they seem genuinely out of touch with normies who find this shit rightfully horrifying, you know?
And, you know, to kind of circle this back to immigration, like that was one of Trump's strongest issues.
Obviously, I think everyone knows that.
And one of the, like one of the main things that got him elected.
And just like balls and strikes, right?
Looking at the numbers, the New York Times has him polling at like negative 18 now on immigration when he was just negative six in September.
So it's like a 12-point drop in four months.
Now, I think the question is, what image do people have in their head when they think immigration?
Is it Somali daycares?
Is it Haitians eating cats?
Is it Venezuelan rape gangs?
Is it caravans of migrants in South Texas?
Like you forgot about that, right?
But that was like the big image, that and the Colorado apartment complexes, like defining images.
And the admin has done so much work to get those images to stick.
And they're very good at it.
But now what I see, and I think what a lot of other people are seeing is that when what people are associating with immigration, not even just ICE, but like with immigration, is federal officers shooting a mom in the face and calling her a fucking bitch.
Yeah.
And a regular guy getting shot 10 times in the back after being tackled and disarmed.
Like that's what people are seeing now.
And it's funny because in the last lesson, I think just like last week, everyone is kind of shocked.
Now, abolish ICE.
Shout out Sean McGowe is now polling pretty well, which is crazy.
It was a career ender.
I mean, you bring up defund the police, right?
It's a similar thing.
It's associated with like lefty decadence of the early 2020s.
And, You know, just September 2024, abolish ICE was opposed by 66%, right?
Only had 20% support.
January, you gov, and this is prior to the Predi shooting.
January, YouGov has public support of Abolish ICE going 46% to 43%.
That's crazy with independents favoring getting rid of the agency entirely by 12 points.
So there's basically been a net 50-point move on abolishing ICE, which was a position that was previously seen as electoral suicide.
This is fascinating.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, from a balls and strikes in a ball and strike in perspective, I should say.
It's crazy that that's happening.
Now, do I think that they're going to abolish ICE or whatever?
I mean, I could see a world where INS makes a roaring comeback.
Well, yeah.
No, I mean, it's just the thing is not, you know, if this is like predicting anything and more so that this is not normal, like moving 50 points on a single issue in less than a year is not normal.
Yes.
And I've seen some other pollsters compare it to Abu Ghraib and the Tet Offensive in terms of quote unquote events that shifted polling significantly.
Right.
And that these being moments where they're so publicly widespread and so publicly, like publicly consumed, the images stick and everyone is very much on the same page about what they are seeing and horrified that it completely flips policy.
It's interesting to contrast that with a lot of the talk from right-wing influencers online.
Yeah.
And it's funny because, you know, there's a lot of, they all talk about panikins and these, these sort of things, but fucking by the way, it's just sweet panic.
And I'm fine with that.
I'm never panicking.
I'm always, look at this hand, completely steady, wrapped around my penis.
But the, it's interesting, it's been interesting to see like these people sort of dig in their heels and be like, this is what we voted for.
I voted for a woman getting shot in the face.
I voted for this.
Like to sort of, what do people call it?
Vice signaling?
I think that they did too.
Yeah.
But like, I think there is a limit to vice signaling.
Yeah.
Just like there was a limit to virtue signaling.
I think there is a limit to vice signaling.
And I think it is a poor strategy for a lot of the online kind of Trump boosters or personalities sort of associated with that realm to push that because A, they are quite right.
The administration is watching that stuff and they are also kind of fooled by it and that they think that like, oh, some 75,000 like thing, you know, saying, this is what I voted for with a picture of whatever, Alex Party getting shot.
Oh, that 75,000 likes.
That must be popular.
You know what I mean?
Like that must be that must be what people like.
I just don't think that that is the case.
I think that it's a mistake.
And I say this to even people who might nominally agree with me or who do agree with me on many things.
I think it's a mistake to see support for your beliefs online and likes and retweets as real support for something.
I think it'd be an indicator of some kind of mood among some parts of the population.
But oftentimes it is a way to fool yourself into thinking that your beliefs are popular.
Because I think for a lot of people, it's like people are like, everybody believes in, you know, socialism or whatever.
Like, you know, look how popular this stuff is on TikTok.
It's just not the case.
You know, it's just not the case.
It's not how it works.
And I think predicating that strategy or that mindset on the posts of people who revel in cruelty has a lifespan that is much shorter than people would, that, than, than these people might believe.
And it's, again, I think that the this whole like acting like Darth Vader bullshit.
It just, I don't think it, it flies.
I just don't think it flies.
I think what you actually see is something like the Alex Predi shooting and then a bunch of people going like, man, that's, I don't like that.
You know, like people are not as, it's, I think it's, it's maybe some of these people have tricked themselves into thinking that Trump really is a Caesar figure.
But that's not even how like Trump is a guy who looks at how things are.
He watches the news.
He watches the news religiously.
He is very sensitive to bad press.
And he knows how things play on TV.
Exactly.
I think he realizes this doesn't play.
I think, you know, a few things.
Fighting Over Political Bounds00:07:12
One, you're already seeing like Republican senators and congressmen break with the Trump admin on this and calling for like de-escalation or even so far as saying like, you mentioned the INS thing.
There was one, it was like on Fox where they were discussing how DHS should have never been created.
We should have just had INS stay under DOJ.
Oh, yeah, Laura Angraham's saying this.
I mean, listen, DHS is a war on terror vehicle.
You know what I mean?
You know, I really wouldn't, you're talking about Democrats like needing to square the circle on immigration.
I really would not be surprised to see them trot out U-Verify again and try to push this just on employers.
But all of this is coming, you know, in the environment where Trump is underwater in like every swing state and you have the upcoming midterms and everyone is terrified of what that might look like and what that might mean then for a Trump presidency, particularly Trump.
I mean, Trump probably rightfully thinking that if they lose the Senate, he's going to be impeached like every second of the day, which is probably true.
I know.
You know, and they'll just like railroad him.
So it's, it's, you know, I think that like watching kind of the response here versus in other incidents, it, you know, it just, it feels different.
Like this, everything is, this is very different, I think, from a lot of the past viral moments of this administration.
Well, I'll say one thing to watch out for is, you know, these are, this is an administration that is very concerned with narrative.
And I would watch out for them as they see narrative control slipping away for someone lashing out.
Yeah.
So I don't know what they're going to try to do here.
I will say, I wonder, because remember that Holman bribery shit got leaked early this year?
Now I'm kind of like, I wonder if Noam's going to fucking pull the trigger on that and be like, maybe.
That would be so funny.
It just goes like full setting the car on fire.
I mean, I just, I just, a fair warning to our fucking Groyper and neo-Nazi listeners out there.
I think that there is a limit that you can get away with your like Pinochet sort of like LARPing with this shit.
And it is, it is always a mistake to overestimate your support.
Always underestimate it.
Always underestimate everything.
But it's a mistake to believe that everyone will agree with you and that everybody like just wants to kill the left because that is what you see on your group chats or whatever.
It is just, it's a mistake.
And I got to tell you, it's an unfortunate reality.
The left, aside from like presence on the actual ground, is a kind of almost a non-factor in much of this, like the organized left.
This is really like, so much of this is actually. sort of fighting between these liberal figures like Wallace and Fry and the administration.
And the left is sort of seen as like people to go after, but like they're not people who are really able to strike back themselves.
And that's something I consider a lot because it's just, you know, it's sort of, it's like you're a player without the ability to win.
It's fun, you know, I will say I'm kind of conflicted on some of this, which is like, on the one hand, I believe that America cocoons deserve what they voted for.
And on the other hand, as a patriot, which we're always saying on this show, I really do love this country and the people within it.
I really can't abide by any of this.
And I think if we're speaking in terms of, say, like a return to genuine Republicanism, this is what I would say.
I think, you know, you're always talking about law and order.
I'm a law and order guy.
If we want to talk about law and order and restoring trust in our institutions, this is what my demand would be.
I will tell you.
One, this is all so blatantly unconstitutional and is clearly a deliberate strategy to provoke internal enemies.
Yes.
That the response, the like response has to be demanding accountability, like literally all the way up the chain, which means anyone within the security apparatus responsible for setting rules of engagement, including training and enforcement standard, should be fully court-martialed.
I mean, like, completely.
Any public official involved who's spoken about this with any kind of like prejudice should be thrown up there too.
Like, no, like, don't hold back.
Like, just be sick of this shit.
I think people really want to see that.
You know, it's like none of the behavior that we've seen should be tolerated at all from any administration or like civilian national security officials.
They should all be tried in federal court and the minimum should be just barred from holding public office again.
Yeah.
They should all be pushed out of public life.
All of that is doable, by the way, without changing anything, without changing anything, besides like straightening up some spines.
Yeah.
The thing is, I just want to be the person that throws them in jail.
This is what this is what pisses me off.
Like I agree with you, but I just, it's a simple thing as I wish my political beliefs were more popular.
Because I do.
Any of this is, you know, outside the bounds of what liberal democracy is capable of.
Oh, I know, but I, I, my political beliefs are well without outside the bounds of liberal democracy.
And that's it.
That's the thing.
Yeah, it's, I, I, it sucks, but I think a lot of people, this, this will also weirdly have the, um, this, this, all of this shit will have the result of making liberal democracy, I think, more attractive to people.
A specific, a specific type of American constitutional liberal democracy that we do here.
Um, and so that's, I don't know, I just, I, in my head, I'm like, Newsome, all of this.
I just hear the tread of Newsome coming down the road.
And I just, it's just, it's surly.
I know, I know, but it's like, how much more of this?
And I buy like all of this shit.
Do people fucking like, do you just want, do people just, will they just accept the president Newsome with fucking, your kid is fucking so stupid from AI all the time as a fucking drooling moron?
Something Will Happen00:00:39
And all you do, I don't even know what job you have at that point.
And it's just like, I just, the future that the liberals offer outside of immediate revenge, which they're not even offering yet, but I think that they will.
Some of them are hinting at it is just also so fucking unattractive.
And I understand how it's attractive to anybody that it's just the whole thing just, you know, I don't know.
It, it's, they're, they're, but something will happen.
Well, until then, I'm Liz.
I'm Brace.
And I'm producer Young Chomsky.
And this has been Trunan, and we will see you next time.