941 - Sister Number One feat. Aída Chávez (6/9/25)

All I wanna be is Il Jungle

All I wanna be is Il Jungle

Web Basel

All I wanna

Hello, everybody.

It's Monday, June 9th, and this is your chop-up.

On today's episode, Felix and I are joined by journalist Ada Chavez, who was at last week's Welcome Fest in Washington, D.C., to tell us about her time there and all the wonderfully abundant things that she saw and experienced.

Ada, welcome to the show.

Hi, guys.

So good to be here.

And yeah, and then at the end of the show,

we will be sharing some music with you some uh recently commissioned music that i think that you will quite enjoy uh but before we get into that today i think it would behoove us to talk a little bit about a couple of the events that happened over the weekend I'm thinking specifically of the just violence that's happening in Los Angeles right now as people begin to basically fight back against paramilitary federal law enforcement, which has been targeting, I don't know, elementary schools, immigration courts,

and is certainly promising more violence to come.

Similar clashes happened in New York.

And I guess, like, I'm thinking about this happening at the exact same time this weekend where the Madlin

flotilla, the ship that was sailing to Gaza with Greta Thurnberg, Liam Cunningham, and other activists, was interdicted in international waters by the Israeli military.

Their cargo was seized, and they're currently being held in Israel.

I'm sure they're about to be let out of the country.

But like these things all seem somewhat connected in my mind in terms of like both who's being targeted by ICE, but also just like the fact that they're targeting schools and courts and just like picking people out the street.

It just, it all seems, it's all coming home to me, is what it seems like.

And whenever something like this happens and like riots occur, or there is violent clashes between people and federal law enforcement in this case.

I think there's always this round of debate about whether this is helping or hurting the cause of immigrant rights in America or immigrant communities.

And rather than get into talking about, rather than debate that, I just like, whenever I see stuff like this, it's just like, it's not a matter of whether is it justified or not, or whether you think it hurts or helps strategically.

All those are other debates.

This is just inevitable.

Like when you treat people this way, eventually they're going to fight back.

And like that, and that's what we're seeing right now.

And

you can, you can wish away that, oh, I wish it didn't have to be this way.

But, like, the way ICE is behaving, like, they're, they're asking for it.

They're courting this.

And this is just an inevitable reaction when people, when people see the law being turned against them in such an unjust way.

Yeah.

I mean, that whole conversation about like whether it's people saying that they should be waving American flags or that they should be thinking about the Buddha Judge 2028 campaign, it's particularly nauseating right now because I saw someone say it's okay, look,

we shouldn't expect unaffiliated protesters to have the Democratic Party's best interests in heart,

but it's so unfair that the Democratic Party gets affiliated with these protests, no matter what happens.

which there's this larger narrative of the Democratic Party as like Gill from The Simpsons.

There are these lovable losers who who just all these bad things keep happening to them.

Not that this is like a consequence of them co-opting every protest movement besides the ones that had anything to do with Israel in the last 20 years that had any popularity for their own electoral gain.

They just did that five years ago.

Obviously, I think it's ridiculous to say that like, you know, Chuck Schumer is in cahoots with like, you know, fucking George Soros to create chaos and cities for what i don't know but if an internal poll comes out these that like 65 of americans support these protests they will be all over it they will have like in-house activists on the scene there they they will have they'll produce a slate of candidates that like uh arise from the movement as movement leaders that we've never heard of before but but Secondary to that, I mean, this sort of reminds me of October 7th when people

just before anything, the moment it happened, everyone's favorite thing to do is to

act as their own Frank Luntz.

They only know people who are exactly like them, have exactly the same experiences, but all they ever do is just game out how the hypothetical like median American will react to everything.

With October 7th, it was all these people going, this is the end of any pro-Palestinian activism because Americans will just, you know, everyone will just be so, so disgusted by this.

You know, it's probably the end of the left.

And obviously, that is not what happened.

I mean,

there are similar themes in how Democratic primary voters will often vote based on what they assume other Americans will consider too liberal or moderate enough.

But it just, it's, especially now, is such a fucking pointless exercise.

This thing of just constantly gaining out what is the exact right thing, what it, what is too scary, what is the right, right amount of resistance for the average American.

As if the last 10 years have not shown that public opinion is completely amorphous.

And

all these opinions that pull a certain way, they don't seem so deeply held that they can't turn on a dime in eight fucking months.

And like just the idea that the protesters in the first place, that

the motive, their motivation is attracting public support, as if that is the be-all and end-all, that someone in Northern Virginia sympathizes with them.

And not what I think was kind of the point of these protests, which was to put the actions of ICE front and center.

to make every

impose a cost on these lawless gangs of like these lawless press gangs of like masked uh without any identification or warrant or whatever, these masked thugs that are like you know, we all saw the videos this weekend of them just like tearing people off the streets to arrest seizing people at an elementary school graduation.

Like, I would say the purpose of these protests is to enact a cost on, um, I'm sorry, these lawless gangs for their behavior.

But Ada, I want to get you in here because, like, to Felix's point about like, well, how is this all going to pull?

Uh, you were you were recently, you recently covered the DC Welcome Fest, like centrist extravaganza, the centrist firefest.

And I'm just wondering, like, how is that section of politics, like, how do they, like, metabolizing these ideas about, like, is the American public pro- or anti-immigrant?

And, like, is, is, are ICE detentions popular or unpopular?

Well, they're just totally unequipped to deal with the present moment.

Their obsession

with polling and data and the numbers and like the positions that they claim like regular people want.

It reads us like especially out of touch when you have protests like these or things like the genocide in Gaza.

And then at these events, like they'll go through the entire thing without even slight mention or reference to it.

Because I think they will point to polls that show that like, oh, Trump's deportations are popular.

But then like, when it's revealed that like they're deporting people without criminal records, and in fact, they're, seizing people at immigration courts who are going to apply for citizenship or check in on their visa process and they're being the ones seized, it becomes very unpopular.

Like it's very popular when people imagine that these, you know, ICE is seizing like, you know, Pablo Escobar or drug cartel Sicarios, but like not their neighbor or friend or spouse.

Yeah.

I mean, we had this conversation about immigration during the last election that like, okay, sure, i guess that you know the this sort of immigration restrictionism pulls in a certain way and it was never like you know 70 30 it was like 55 45

but you go back you know four years and it was completely the opposite then of course like obviously when you adjust for torturing random people with green cards, stripping citizenship from people with green cards, sending people to these fucking unaccountable foreign hellhole prisons.

What we said at the time was when people actually see this in practice, you may get a different result.

But at the time, I don't think we even imagined how

like truly horrifying it would be in practice.

In terms of like imagining how horrific this all is, I mean, I think a lot of you probably saw that clip from over the weekend of police in Los Angeles just shooting an Australian TV reporter with a less than lethal round.

And like, not accidentally.

Like, if you look, she pointed out, but you can see the cop in the video line her up, take sight, and pull the trigger.

The LAPD moving in on horseback, firing rubber bullets at protesters, moving them on through the heart of LA.

Okay.

So if they're doing that in broad daylight, like being recorded on the live news broadcast, broadcast, what do you imagine is taking place in the areas that you don't see and never will see being carried out by these same people?

And then like once you imagine that, what do you think the like appropriate strategically sound response to something like that is?

Or do you think maybe that like the people targeted by this aren't thinking about essentially like this issue in those terms?

Like perhaps they're just afraid and angry and have a right to defend themselves against this kind of lawlessness.

By the way, does this conversation about optics extend to them?

Does that extend to ICE agents and the police officers and the Marines that will probably end up killing at least a few people?

Or is optics only a consideration for the people that are being fucking terrorized?

Hey, Ada, like, in reading your piece about Welcome Fest, like, it seems like the bet noir of the abundanist coalition are what they refer to as the groups.

Like, what are they referring to when they talk about groups?

And, like, I'm sure immigration rights groups are are are talking there are thrown in with that lot you say like walking around the welcome fest you heard a lot of people talking about how bad open borders are so like what when when when these abundance people they talk about the groups Who are they referring to and what and what's their what's their alternative?

Yeah, so I think they're referring to like the immigration groups the climate groups uh young people like left-leaning advocacy groups but uh their whole um like groups thing that they did uh all day i think it's a euphemism for just anyone who expects more from their lawmakers, anyone who makes any kind of demand.

And so, like Maddie Glesis, for example, he was blaming

like immigration groups, advocates for immigrants, and the climate groups for how bad

like Joe Biden was in office, saying that they were what was standing in the way of effective policy.

When they see like these images of chaos or violence in Los Angeles and clashes between people and the police.

Or when they're confronted with the idea that ICE is basically without identification, without even showing their faces, are just kidnapping people from schools,

tearing away mothers from their children, throwing them in unmarked vans

to be sent to some legal black hole.

And I think we should be clear here.

All of this is for the crime that is a civil misdemeanor.

Like if you have driven in a car over the legal speed limit or over the legal limit of alcohol, you have committed a more serious crime than overstaying a visa.

So like what is their answer to this?

Do they just think that, well, hey, they have a point and we do need to crack down on illegal immigration?

Or do they see the horrors like this and they just like, is the answer, we just, you need to elect better Democrats?

Both.

I think a lot of the people I spoke with and a lot of the speakers on stage

are really that far right, um where they see these images and they think um oh that's good actually

like democrats should uh support this or you know try to outflank um trump on the right on immigration issues but i did encounter a lot of people who were um not to like project too much on them but they did seem quite ashamed of the immigration issues of the gaza issue um and kind of this awareness uh of what the democratic party um has been doing were those people that were like more ashamed, not,

you know, who didn't just like cheer at the idea of like protesters being ejected?

Did they like trend on the younger side, like the

college kids who fell in with a bad crowd?

Yes,

it was basically all college kids and early 20s where,

you know, I would ask about Gaza.

And then

like just pretty quickly, they would go silent.

They would think about it.

They would avoid eye contact.

They would stutter.

And so I could feel a real sense of shame

and like, you know, their voices would get low and, you know, sometimes they would say like, oh, well, it's an issue that, you know, Democrats just shouldn't run on.

They should stick to the domestic.

But there were some who would, you know, get a little closer and kind of like whisper this forbidden idea at the centrist rally that like it might help Democrats to have a little bit of empathy for migrants, for Palestinians.

You quote someone in your piece for the nation when you asked them about Gaza.

You quote them as saying, showing some empathy to Palestinians is probably good for the Democratic Party.

I think they'll probably need further polling before they

really get out too far over their skis on that one.

But

what does that say about the mentality here about

how they perceive political issues?

Because like, look, I mean, you should always be careful about treating politics as morality, but, like, there is a moral valence to all of these issues.

And it's just like, whether it's the, in 2016, it was a crisis that Trump was putting kids in cages.

And now, like, you know, what, eight years later, they're like, oh, well, actually, we need to build more cages.

And, like, we need to ask the question, like, do all kids deserve to be in cages?

No.

But, like, what is the correct number of kids that should be separated from their families in ICE detention centers?

Like, do you get the sense that these people believe sincerely that immigration is bad for America and that undocumented workers need to be purged from America by force?

Or is it that they just like they regard it as a problem for the Democratic Party and is getting in the way of their zoning reform that they really care about?

Yeah, that second one.

I think at least with the younger people

and it was quite revealing just in the way they spoke about the issue.

the guy you just mentioned who was quoted in the piece about saying how showing a little bit of empathy to Palestinians might be good for the Democratic Party.

Like when he spoke about

the horrors of Gaza,

he never spoke directly about the people and the violence being inflicted.

It was more just like the images, like we've all seen the videos, like everyone's seen the images.

And so like that just shows like, yeah, like the detachment on how they just think about these things in terms of like messaging, pulling issues for Democrats and like kind of annoyances standing in the way of their abundance agenda.

Well,

getting into that abundance agenda and like, I mean, I think it is, I mean,

we scheduled this, your appearance for Monday because we definitely wanted to talk about Welcome Fest.

But like, I think it actually pairs perfectly with the events of this weekend, which were, like I said, crises involving outright warfare, slaughter, horror.

And you want to talk about crossing the Rubicon, now the specter that the Marines, active duty military will be be deployed to quell civil unrest in an American city.

For Rubicon heads out there,

that's a crossing.

But

I think it's like the contrast could not be more hilarious between

these vicious and horrifying things that are happening in front of our eyes now in the borders of America.

And like the abundance agenda.

Like, this is their answer to that.

Like, this is their big rollout for like what they see the problems of America as and and like how they intend to solve them.

So

given your experience at the Welcome Festival, could you just describe like what was like the, you said there were a lot of like college students there.

Like, first of all, how many people were there and what was sort of the median attendee for this event?

Like, how would you describe the people there?

There were a few hundred people.

I was sitting in the back row.

So maybe it wasn't that great because the last few rows were emptied.

So I don't know.

It looked a little extra sad from where I was sitting.

There was a good number of women, but it was very male-dominated.

It was like mostly typical like DC freak, but also

like young kids that didn't really know how to socialize.

And then candidates who were kind of using it as an opportunity to like get money and support because it was hosted by like Third Way, Blue Dog Democrats, the other dark money groups and centrist groups.

Ada, like, I wonder what your opinion is on this because like, am I correct in thinking that like this whole abundance rebranding and like this whole the whole abundance movement to me is evidence that the Democratic Party no longer has any fear whatsoever of like Bernie and the squad and like the sort of nascent populist message that is kindled quite a bit of like actual in the real in real world support, but like politically speaking, seems to have been totally neutralized.

Like after 2016, all the Democrats who ran for president in the next cycle all pretended that they supported Bernie's agenda.

But like

this go-around, after losing and like completely defenestrating like the left part of the Democratic Party or the left or populist or progressive, whatever you want to describe it, it seems like there's no effort to co-opt the message or the policies.

It seems to me that they're just trying to rebrand in a way to sell essentially a moderate centrist politics that is like socially liberal but fiscally conservative, that has a lot of well-heeled donors, but no real purchase in the American electorate.

Yeah, that's my read of it.

In terms of the actual substance,

it was just very like lightly rebranded like neoliberalism.

And what I thought was interesting too was like the kind of tension between trying to make

Wellcome Fest like a victory lap, like saying like we own the party, like the threat of Bernie and AOC has been neutralized.

The tension between that and kind of saying, oh, but we're also underdogs and like victims of the groups.

What we are pushing this

like abundance agenda, this is actually the threats and the status quo, which, you know, makes no sense because they are the status quo.

Yeah, the abundance guys,

I think that I could take Mein Kampf and replace Jews with the groups and I would be accepted in abundant circles.

It is such a weird view of the world that these like nervous, annoying Elizabeth Warren staffers who, by the way, the only reason any of this like groups stuff had any purchase at all in the fucking party was because the Hillary campaign and some of the Obama internet surrogates in the years before the 2016 election decided that identity politics were an amazing cudgel to hit Bernie with in 2016.

And for some reason, decided that they should stick around, that

that should be like a load star during the Trump years.

This, again, what do we always talk about?

People who voluntarily did these things to themselves, voluntarily took these positions, said these things in public, acting as though someone broke into their house and pointed a fucking gun at their head and said, you need to start saying unhoused.

No, you did this.

You were into all of this.

You hired the Elizabeth Warren staffers during the Biden presidency.

You were saying, this is actually fucking great.

This is the best presidency in history because of all of these Elizabeth Warren people.

doing all this shit.

But this is a view of the world that puts those people, like the people that

got the

Elizabeth Warren green hex code tattoo, as like the elders of Zion.

They're the most powerful fucking people in the world.

They can defeat,

you know, Reed Hoffman and all these, and David Geffett and all these fucking super donors.

But at the same time, they're also weak and they'll never win elections and they're foolish and they're defeated.

But they're also a looming threat that we have to defend against at all times.

Ada,

the branding for this year's Welcome Fest was the phrase responsibility to win.

So what did you see there?

What is the plan for winning the next like the midterms and the next presidential election?

Like what's their agenda here?

What's the winning agenda that these people are laying out?

Their plan to win is to win.

Okay.

That's good.

All right.

Score more points than the other team, you know, classic strategy.

You don't, you don't, if you're trying to win, you don't want to be losing.

So, I can only know that.

I mean, that's that's what they said.

Like, I wish I was like trying to be funny right now, but they would have these PowerPoint slides.

Uh, I would say things like, flip red to blue,

me,

yeah, you don't want to do it the other way, or else they win.

And so, like, for example, like one of the first speakers on stage, um, it was a PowerPoint slide.

First was an arrow, but pointing up, and so it was like flip red to blue,

and then it, or was it down?

I don't know.

The arrows don't matter.

Another arrow was to like keep the blue blue and then the arrow forward,

the arrow forward, like the arrow pointing to the right.

It had words underneath like Alyssa Slotkin and data.

It's referring to the Star Trek character,

not numbers.

Well, if you ask me, these human emotions are not what they're cracked up.

Okay, so get surgery to become Alyssa Slotkin.

Get date.

Just any data at all.

If you see an Excel spreadsheet, just start reading it, print it out, and eat the pages.

Yeah, essentially, yeah.

One of the things that perked my interest in your reporting on this is like of the few like concrete policy prescriptions being offered on offer was something called the Madison Amendment, which was apparently to prevent packing the Supreme Court.

Could you explain that a little further?

And were there any other sort of gimmicky ideas being tossed around at the Welcome Fest?

Oh, so that was just like a group of young interns

going up to people and being like, we got to keep nine justices on the Supreme Court, like no matter what.

And

why?

Why?

What if those nine justices were blocking housing reform and urban development?

That is essentially like saying, okay,

we shouldn't change the American flag to the Spotify logo.

So we need a whole new NGO and a law to guarantee that will never happen.

You could also achieve that by doing nothing.

Like, there's no threat of more than nine Supreme Court justices right now.

According to them, there is.

According to them, either the left or the far right could pack the court.

And so, they are doing what they can to stop it.

And they have their

best and brightest on this, handing out literature.

So, like, who, how, how do they plan on stopping it?

Is it another NGO funded by like the guys who founded Netflix?

I think they're pushing an amendment.

It's so fucking stupid.

Like, it's not going to.

Basically, basically, like, if you started an NGO, you gain employment, you are collecting W-dudes.

And the reason you get up every day and go to work is like, I want to prevent the state of Indiana from colonizing the moon we need a constitutional amendment to prevent the to prevent indiana from achieving space flight if you killed yourself right now you would achieve the same result um okay you guys are making me feel a little crazy about this so i looked it up just to double check yeah it's it's the keep nine amendment that says

I Kay would say it.

The Supreme Court of the United States shall be composed of nine justices.

Like if someone was like, if someone like had, had it together enough to like pack the court, like they had the votes, couldn't they just like overturn that amendment too?

Like, if they're already there, well, whatever.

Just make it a king's decree.

It's just as real.

Ada, another thing that I found interesting was some of the characters at this event.

Now,

we were just talking about how like a big pitch of this event is that the quote-unquote groups are sabotaging the Democratic Party by, in Matt Iglesias' word, creating bad incentives for the party by like bad incentives, meaning pressure on them to

pressure on them from their constituents.

You know, and like, I'm wondering, like, okay, they're mad at the left for sabotaging the Democratic Party, right?

But then there was a guy at this convention.

I'm going to read from your piece now.

It says, someone like Liam Kerr, the co-founder of Welcome Pack, a group that brought the Welcome Fest to life.

On Wednesday, Kerr wore a West Virginia University football jersey customized with the former Senator Joe Manchin's name on the back, a tribute to the conservative Democrat most known for sabotaging his own party's agenda.

So could you tell us a little bit more about the guy in the Manchin football jersey?

And once again, is there any indication of a, I don't know, a dissonance here between being mad at the groups and the left for sabotaging the Democratic Party and then having the guy who founded Welcome Pack wearing,

happily wearing a jersey emblazoned with the name of the Democratic senator most known for sabotaging Joe Biden's agenda.

Yeah, I should have also mentioned in the piece that he had like a Jared Golden koozie too that he was drinking on stage.

Yeah, he was interesting.

And so

he was the person who kind of introduced.

And so

just to show like how weird they are about the groups, one of the first things that he does when he's on stage

is put up a picture of the official Welcome Fest protester shirt.

I guess they made like shirts kind of anticipating protesters.

There was one interruption during the conversation with Richie Torres, but yeah, they were just doing that thing of like, yeah, like they hate us, they hate us because we're so right.

And so he showed the picture of the shirt.

And it's just like a pineapple.

And it says like official protester about welcome best 2025.

um i'm not gonna lie when i saw the pineapple i thought of like swingers i thought like isn't the pineapple associated with swingers

um i thought the same thing

i i i mean i thought that's what it was about because i mean that that is like you know I don't like talking about Aiella a lot because her whole thing just like sincerely depresses me.

I think like that every a series of horrible things happened to her in her life.

And now she is essentially like

a living conduit to create sex parties for guys that invent like AI assisted diet apps.

Like it's very sort.

Like I'm legitimately don't want to make fun of her because I think her whole life is like incredibly tragic.

But there is.

You know, Truanon talked about how there's like a network of Ayalas

and part of it is being very into like group sex and swinging.

So I just thought they were openly like branding it.

Were there any hanky codes observed at the

hotel basement where this conference was hosted?

It wasn't, it wasn't even like a particularly nice hotel basement or conference room.

And I thought this was backed by billionaires.

Like this is an event that was supposedly funded by like the Walton family, Michael Boomberg, all those guys.

Well, you would think it'd be nicer, but it wasn't.

I guarantee you they had 20 hours of meetings about how nice the hotel should be.

Like, they thought it was a major coup if the hotel was kind of shitty.

Oh, my God.

Most people stay in shitty hotels.

Once they see this.

Ada, were you there for, were you there for the disruption of Richie Torres and Josh Azabaro?

Yeah, yeah, that was cool.

I like Josh Azabaro just being like, oh, come on, Jesus Christ.

It's just like, do you want to advocate for war?

Because if you do, like, you're going to have to deal with some protesters.

Like, it's just like how indignant they are, they all get about people being mad at them.

It seems to be a big, big theme of the Abundance Festival.

Yeah.

And of course, if their point of view is that like these issues that put like a majority of Americans support, they should be no-brainers.

Well, you should be on those protesters' side then because they do represent the majority position, the super majority of of Democratic voters, and a near super majority of Americans.

If we're okay with people being sent to fucking El Salvador because you think it polls well, then this should be a no fucking brainer for you.

Well, yeah, I mean, like, I think this gets into the essential contradiction here: is that like this whole thing is sold as like the Democrats need to win again, and they need to win again by like connecting with regular people and making stuff happen and building things and doing things that are popular.

But like,

it can't go unnoticed that this whole agenda and this whole strategy that they're employing here, their whole theory of power, which I'll talk about in a second, is just about how to deal with the fact that everything that they support isn't popular and is not going to be anytime in the future.

Yeah, that was one of the biggest themes of the day.

Like, almost every single person who got on stage spent like a good amount of time talking about how they get yelled at online every day and how a lot of people like hate their guts.

For example, like, you know, Adam Jonelson, the former chief of staff to John Fetterman.

Yes, of course.

Yeah.

He was there and he

one of his like biggest pieces of advice to his fellow centrists was to like stand up for centrists that are getting bullied online.

Like say something.

Does that include his former boss?

Because

Jendelson was quoted in the piece as saying, like, if you're getting a lot of flack, it means, you know, like you're doing something right.

Well, does that include his former boss that now he's gone on record as saying is out of his mind?

And is being, and by the way, Jendelson is being attacked now by Centrist for betraying John Fetterman.

How does Michael Bloomberg feel about paying, like, he's paying like millions of dollars?

Like, that's, you know, couch change for him, but he's paying millions of dollars for this conference where, like,

you know, people are going on well-butrin trips and passing out, and the point of every speech is like, juice my posts

i would be mad

i i i i noticed recently that there was this like poll done that all the abundance people were very mad at because like they asked like a sampling of voters like which message is you consider is a better way forward for the democratic party and the first one was this like you know uh the hodgepodge of like abundance buzzwords about bottlenecks and like you know

development and shit like that and the other one was that like uh the the wealthy have too much power power and wealthy corporate, wealthy incorporations have too much power over our democracy and we should take it back from them.

And the second message pulled way more higher, like had a way higher appeal than the mismash of abundance jive.

So like, and then like combine that with the just sort of visual contrast between this sparsely attended hotel basement and any of the huge rallies that AOC and Bernie have turned people out for.

Like, this, this must rankle them in some way, right?

Or is it that like there's, there's another part of the abundance agenda where they're like, they're convinced that like that something can be too popular, which is why it's bad?

They're sort of like looking for like a just right approach to policy where it's like equal parts hated and loved.

Yeah, I mean, nothing about this makes any sense.

That's why going was so weird

because

they all contradicted each other.

It didn't seem like many of the people there even really believed in what they were saying.

Like, if I would ask someone, like, okay, well, give me an example of a political hero.

Uh, they would say, like, Richie Torres, but they would seem very unsure of themselves and just immediately say, like, oh, I don't agree with everything.

Richie Torres is no one's fucking hero.

Like, what an odd response.

So, you think, like, Barack Obama would be like the easy stock answer for this crowd, but Richie Torres, like, nobody even knew who this guy was until like two years ago.

Right.

I'm like, I remember how when someone,

you know, when I'd be interviewing someone, how they would light up about like Bernie Sanders, for example.

And this just wasn't there for any of the people that they supposedly admire.

But they like they couldn't even fake enthusiasm when they talked about these people.

I mean, like, this is, it's, it sort of reminds me of like the anti-woke people.

If something is like annoying or perceived as annoying enough, you can get a lot of the mileage out of just making your whole thing opposing that thing

but when you actually try to make like a coherent um

political ideology and and like social identity around just not being something you will fall flat every time

and in this case it's especially fraudulent because okay maybe you could get more mileage out of um

we're not that thing in like 2019 when this stuff had more of a purchase inside the democratic party but now it's just like, I mean,

it is basically like

you're creating an entire identity and asking for money and asking for commitments around a project that is just, we're mad at people from seven years ago.

And we're also not those people.

You can't, there's no like positive, there's no like positive association or like any type of like admiration or any positive anything when it's just you know i like elisa slotkin because she's not like because she's normal okay what does normal mean is it just that uh it polls well well you don't take that approach with like fucking uh palestine or this recent polls matter until they don't i mean i think the democratic party is never going to change but whatever this is this whole thing of like we're going to enforce some idea of normalcy by people who had braces until they were 37.

I just don't see a future past, you know, holding endless conferences like this.

Well, I mean, this goes back to my original point, is that like the contradictions become easier to understand when I think like you have to understand like this whole rebrand as just like what as just like they're not looking to win elections.

They're not looking to like change policy.

They're looking to do the same thing that they were always going to do at the behest of the well-heeled donor class that funds all this bullshit.

But they know they need to manage the discontent created by

a base of the Democratic Party that is very much, like I said,

of where these ideas hold very little purchase and are in fact very unpopular.

And I think this is just about managing the kind of discontent and putting a new...

coat of paint on like the same old bullshit and trying to convince people that like uh working americans number one problems is like you know zoning regulations and not like a lack of health care or that like the rent is too high.

And the way that we can lower rent is to like, you know, I don't know, let private developers build residential units and charge market rates for it so that in 20 years time,

it'll come down by one or 2%.

Yeah.

And all that, all that like, you know, we're going to have suborbital deliveries and fucking cold fusion powered supersonic travel.

All the shit that like all the most crackheaded parts about abundance or the Jake Auschenslaw stuff.

I know he was at this conference.

I wish I got to see him speak.

He's my favorite guy.

It's just like, that is just window dressing to

disguise the fact that taken at face value, what this actually means in practice, what is this entire thing?

It is all these, all these people who are identical to the members of the groups that they hate saying, we think this is the most optimal way way to attract the stupids to the party.

I mean, like, that, that is the kind of the least cynical reading you could give, that they think this is the best,

you know, stupids magnet, this entire program of politics.

But all that, all that stuff about, you know, we need to build things and,

you know, also deal with kitchen table issues.

That is just to make it seem like it's anything but being defined by what it is not.

And what it, what it is not is what they're really against, which is populism of any kind.

And like the conflation of right-wing and left-wing populism.

And like, it's very clear when they talk about populism, what they're talking about is democracy.

They don't like a system of government where people have too much input over the laws or like conduct of the government.

Like that should be left to the smart people, people like them and the people who fund them.

And like they know what that sounds like.

So everything else is just papering over that essential truth is that like

these people know what ideas are popular, they know what a winning message would be for, like, not just the Democratic Party, but if they wanted to, like, win over, I don't know, like, like, like, the most popular politician in this country among independents is Bernie Sanders.

And, you know, say what you will about the guy.

And, like, if anything, like, as I said before, like, the fact that the abundance agenda exists is a testament to how well he's been defenestrated by the Democratic Party.

But, like, they know what a popular message is.

And it's a message that they are wholly and completely hostile to.

Will, they're hostile to it because they essentially have conservative viewpoints about all of these things.

Will, that entire thing about like being hostile to democracy, it reminds me of the conversation we had when Bloomberg was in the Democratic

primary.

How, like, I still think this, that the most

like horrifying outcome for the 2020 election, I think it would have been Bloomberg winning.

We talked about it at the time, but like that would be out of anyone that exists in like contemporary politics, I think Bloomberg has like the most potential to be like an American Franco.

I think like his entire political program is like hostile to the idea of democracy.

And it would just, it would just formalize this idea that

the richest among billionaires are the only ones who deserve to

rule over nations.

And we would just have 20-year terms.

That's a Curtis Yarvin belief.

Yeah, just talk about

it.

It's the exact same thing.

Just like how we talked about how Yarvin does his own version of we're like Gryffindor and they're like Slytherin.

These are the same people with the same ultimate goal.

Ultra-wealthy Philosopher Kings, the end of all democracy.

Wonder, wonder, wonder, wonder,

I want to go back to this idea about we need to be normal and we need to have normal politicians.

I thought about that in light of the fact that clearly one of the big stars among elected representatives attending the Welcome Fest is Marie Glusenkamp Perez.

I did see footage of the attendees singing her happy birthday on stage.

Ayla, did you get a chance to see any of the Glusenkamp?

Yeah, I saw a lot of guys getting selfies with her.

Oh, God.

Were they hoverhanding?

Yes.

Oh, my God.

Yeah,

people were really excited to see her.

I would say, like, the people that

the attendees were most excited about, definitely besides Maddie Glacios,

her.

Well, I bring up Marie Glutenkamp-Perez because

I think this is once again another glaring contradiction in terms of making this person your new superstar for the abundance agenda, which is all about normal politics for normal people.

Marie Gusenkimp Perez is one of the strangest people I've ever seen be in Congress.

She is very odd.

And like I became aware of her because it was like right after the 2024 election, right after Donald Trump won.

She was like being heavily promoted everywhere.

And like

the thing that they were promoting was this video of her talking about like this great reform that she passed in Washington state about like how daycare couldn't serve fresh fruit because peeling fruit counted as like food preparation and they had to be zoned for that.

It was, you know, a typical onerous government regulation that's preventing preschool kids from eating a banana.

And everyone goes, oh, yeah, obviously, that's sensible politics for normal people.

But like, A, the thing she was talking about wasn't even real.

And B, I don't know if you remember that video.

When she spoke, there is something definitely touched about her.

Oh, my God.

Like, I think her mom was just drinking an ounce of mercury every day during her pregnancy.

I bring this up touched with madness.

I bring this up because like a while back, Ezra Klein, the king,

the abundance goat, he did an interview with Marie Lucenke-Perez in the New York Times.

I wanted to highlight briefly because they have a very strange exchange in it about garbage collection that I think is very telling.

So

she's talking about like, he asked her a question about consumption, and she replies,

that's one of the things.

We've replaced the idea of freedom as the freedom to consume.

And I would argue that we're not just consumers, we're stewards, we are producers.

So it's not just what you can buy, but it's what you can make and how you can make things last.

And your values, your inner values manifest in the world around you.

I have a bill that would require manufacturers of household appliances to put a sticker on the average life expectancy of that washing machine along with the annual maintenance costs because I think the persistence of of Speed Queen or something like that does show that people will pay more.

But having a class of buyers who has that information available changes consumption habits.

Okay, it gets rid of, but like, what I'd like to highlight from that here is, okay, sure, we should build things that last longer.

We should build appliances that last longer.

Like, you know, our grandparents had, you know, our grandparents had computers that last, they've never needed a new battery.

I'm playing with my great-grandfather's PS5.

But like, her solution to this is is not just to regulate the industries that produce these appliances to build them better.

It's to put a sticker on the shit that they're already producing telling you how bad it is.

Yeah.

I, the interesting thing about this, like, in addition to Gluzen Camp being so weird and just like her most ambitious policy proposal being, you know, you should be, you should be aware of how ripped off you are.

I don't know how anyone like looks at this, the last like five years of American politics and American culture and goes, oh, yeah, yeah, normal, the thing that everyone is becoming.

That's everything should be normal.

Like everyone now has the same personality as that QAnon guy that like killed the mafia boss.

Yeah.

So

Ezra goes on and asks her, do you think of these as economic policy arguments or arguments that are almost more moral and spiritual in nature?

She says, they're both.

My dad used to say, you can talk about your values all day long, but you see somebody's tax returns and you know what they really think.

The depowering of the environmental movement has been supplanting real environmentalism with a consumption habit.

So she goes on a bit for a while about developing skills and allocating your time to live in relationship to the world around you.

But then she says, one of the things I really love about where I live is rural scamania is that we don't have trash service.

So I have to look at all the trash.

And it's why I'm not going to buy a single serving yogurt cup because I'm going to have to smell that for two or three months before we go to the dump and load up the truck and take everything.

You have to see it.

And I think it enforces the reality that there is nowhere else.

You can't export emissions.

The climate is global and your relationship to the world around you, not just as a terrarium, but as a dependence and something that informs your life daily, I think that really matters to informing what trade-offs people will make.

And then Ezra says, I take the point, but most people want trash pickup.

I want trash pickup.

She says, sure.

Ezra says, you represent a city and that's not going to work without trash pickup.

And she says, yes, there are economies of scale, but often they can exclude the

fuller reality.

Yes, there is modern convenience, but is the climate better?

Are we happier?

Are we healthier?

Do we have what we actually want or has it been supplanted?

And yes, I would like to have trash service, but would I would like to have trash service enough to move to a city?

No.

Okay, I think I figured out what's wrong with her.

She's from the year like 1100 and got unfrozen.

Like this is, this is the closest thing that like people are calling it Maoism.

is it it isn't this is like

she wants to empty the cities yeah this is

beer rouge

like she said i later in the interview i don't like cities and like in her ideal world where she is queen there's no trash collection you have to look at all your trash everyone lives uh at least two miles away from each other And, but there's like no regulation on industry.

Yeah.

It's so weird.

It's so fucking weird.

I do have one one small detail to add from Welcome Fest.

Since it was her birthday, they asked her what her favorite candy is.

And she said, body parts, gummies.

What?

What the fuck?

Body parts, gummies?

Yeah, like on Halloween, you know, the gummies where it's like different body parts, like an eyeball.

Yeah.

So that's her favorite candy.

When the abundance of agenda is in charge, we'll have Halloween every day.

I very much take your point that you don't want trash surface enough to move to a city, and that's totally fair.

But what do you think about, and how do you talk to your constituents who do?

You know, like, yeah, that small minority of her constituents who like trash collection

so that like their front yard isn't just mouldering with, and by the way,

my mom lives in a pretty rural area where there is no trash collection.

So she has to like take trash to the dump in the car.

It doesn't take her months to do that.

Marie Lucenke-Perez says, I don't want the trash just sitting around for months at a time.

Like you can just like take your garbage to the, like, you know,

we figured out she's one of those women that has like, there are cups of water on her nightstand that have been there for 12 years.

Like, she's one of those people.

She says, sister number one, Mariequel Lucenke-Perez says, oh, that's great.

If you want to live in a city, you should.

I think it's also true that you could put an apartment building in a rural town, and a lot of people would get a lot of utility out of that.

But I think one of the things that is missed frequently in this discussion is that the shift to a service economy or a knowledge economy means that now your barber has to move to a city where they're not able to afford housing.

And when you have domestic manufacturing, if you're a mill in a rural community, you're able to own land.

You're able to spend time with your family.

I'm not trying to slight the urban issue, but I think that divorce from farm, the farms you rely on, from the water that you drink, from being able to ship your garbage somewhere else and not have to smell it yourself it changes your relationship to the natural world around you and if you're not clear about some that and those relationships you're losing something necessary so yeah she she is she's on that Khmer Rouge basically oh my god yeah it's like she represents a city she represents a small city in Washington like what is she talking about can you imagine if like the reign of her and Jake Oschensloss no like he is he is yeah her and

Aunschloss are like these are the two star abundance politicians, and they, like, they sound deranged.

They're going to, like, Marie Gluzle Camp Perez, she loves living in a rural area because no one knows that her husband is in,

he is now distributed to seven different rivers, systems, and tributaries.

That's the reason she loves body part gummies.

She's going to get together with Jake Auschensloss and birth a shadow baby.

And they are, they're going, they're going to have the abundance Khmer Rouge where the cities are emptied and everyone has to live in rural apartment buildings that have sky gardens.

Rural apartment buildings.

And

there will be forced breeding until someone finally creates the family from Foxtrot, reborn in Jake Oschenslaus's vision.

The iguanas come separately.

Yeah.

But I like, once again, she's like, oh, like your barber can't live in the city where they cut hair because housing's too expensive.

But like, the solution to that is never to like, I don't know, build social housing or like put a cap on the rent.

It's just like, it's like her washing machine problem.

It's like, we could just demand that appliance manufacturers build better products.

But like, no, it's just, we have to label it.

And then with this, it's just like, it's all these.

bizarre little tweaks around the edges because like Marie, the gluten camp,

what she actually believes in is just very strange.

And like, and she's part of a Democratic coalition that expects her to do things about this.

But like, all her answers are like, you know, these are both political, but moral and spiritual problems about being disconnected from the land you live in.

So like the solution is what?

Make everyone farmers again?

Who the fuck are you?

Thomas Jefferson?

Like,

aren't farmers like also dependent on the cities where their goods are sold?

Like, it's this weird, it's this weird, very, very strange glorification of rural areas.

Again, it's like, it's just Republican shit.

Like, smaller rural communities are better and more soulful than big cities.

This reminds me of like, this was more of like a 2000s thing because there really aren't that many libertarians anymore.

They've all become like MAGA guys or gone on to other things.

But like in the, during the Bush administration, there was this phenomenon where.

like if you were like a left liberal and you were really upset about things like warrantless wiretaps and um

gitmo and all these things

The closest, the people that you could talk to actually about these things and would be where you were at were libertarians.

And so often you would have this thing happen where you would hear a libertarian start talking.

And

for the first like minute, you're like, oh my, yeah, this all makes sense.

Like they're saying we should end the war on drugs, like that, you know, this, this war is unjustified.

We should.

persecute these people for war crimes and torture.

And then enough time passes and

they finally say it.

You should be able to buy a baby or harvest one to buy its organs in the future.

And you go, oh, I see why you have such a small constituency.

This is the same type of thing where it's like, oh, yeah, it sucks that

we, you know,

the locus of all economic activity in America is in urban centers where

most of the service workers that keep it going and are the backbone of the modern American finance and service economy cannot afford to live there.

The solution to that, instead of like government housing or price controls on rent or regulation of landlords and large real estate trusts, is to march them at gunpoint to the farms.

And

they can live on a haircutter farm.

Well, actually,

the solution is maybe people in the city should drive three hours to get their hair cut.

That's a great idea because then they'll be more, they'll have more of a relationship with the land in between them and their barber.

Yeah.

Or maybe, actually, I think a real abundant solution.

Do barbers need clothes?

Shouldn't all barbers be nude?

I'm so glad you brought this up.

Think about how in touch you'll feel with your barber when he's naked cutting your hair.

Yeah.

The world's first nude barber,

he's a Yimby.

Why?

He was doing.

Yeah, here's a question.

Here's a question that

the populist left needs to answer.

Why is it easier to build a nude barber shop in Texas than it is in New York or California?

I ask you that.

I want to read real quickly from Ezra Klein's view of populism and democracy.

But before I do, I want to ask,

who are your favorite guys

at the Welcome Fest?

like were there any anecdotes that didn't make uh that didn't make the cut for your article but like who is your favorite person to see and and or talk to at the abundance fest okay so a lot of them weren't very um like passionate or enthusiastic but one guy

one guy who was

who was pretty passionate um

he was telling me that his uh political hero is uh dean phillips um and he just found it like so inspiring how he went against the party when it came to Joe Biden.

And then he immediately starts talking about how New York and California are overrun with crime.

But he was like really animated.

Yeah, like people wearing glasses.

Well, I mean, like, I mean, you talk about the strange lack of enthusiasm or like the fact that people say their political hero is Richie Torres, someone that we all learned about a year ago.

It just seems to me like there's no real enthusiasm or they don't seem sure of themselves because like there's nothing here that you believe in other than like what already exists.

It's just the Democratic Party.

Take it or leave it.

Keep voting for us.

You have to.

Like, there's nothing to like, nobody really is passionate about zoning laws or fucking or deregulating small business or whatever the fuck these people want to do.

Like, like, these are not issues.

These are not moral, political, or spiritual issues that matter or like that anyone, anyone is excited about.

But they have to pretend like they are because they want, because, like, they realize if they don't, then maybe they won't have a job or maybe that, maybe, like, maybe politics will turn in a direction away from them.

And

to that point, I just want to read, like,

Ezra Klein, this is from over the weekend in the New York Times.

He's sort of, you can tell they've been kind of stung by the reviews that came in for their abundance book.

And they're like, oh, everyone's saying we don't have a theory of political power.

Well, allow Ezra to lay it out here.

And I think it's very telling what he says at the end of the speech here.

He writes, many of my more leftist friends and antagonists have asked me if abundance has a theory of power.

I often say it does, but they're not going to like it.

And that's in part because its theory of power is liberal rather than populist.

Cass Mudd, I love that name.

Cass Mudd,

a Dutch political scientist, defines populism as an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogenous and antagonistic groups, the pure people and the corrupt elite.

Different forms of populism populate these groups differently.

Right-wing populism defines the people in geographic, nationalistic, and racialist terms.

The corrupt elite tend to be educated, foreign, and cosmopolitan.

Left-wing populism tends to sever society economically, the 99% against the 1%, or corporations against everyone else.

Once again, like, I don't know who Cass Mudd is, but I think his definition of populism is that, like, it's a belief that there are pure people and the corrupt elite to be wholly spurious.

Like, once again, populism means democracy.

It means popular support.

It means the people, the masses, have a say in the government that rules them.

It would seem to be like, to me, it's the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

But then, like, this hand-waving away that, like, oh, it's all just this Manichean view that divides people into like good and bad.

Well, I think a lot of the criticism that Ezrick got for his stupid book is that, like, yeah, like, sometimes, yeah, there are, there are antagonizing and competing interests in our society, and there are competing points of view.

Some of them are good, and some of them are bad.

Some of them are held by genuinely evil people seeking to

most of whom just funded the Welcome Fest.

But

how is this a sophisticated view of the world, though?

How is this any more sophisticated?

I mean, with Mary Gluzic and Perez, it's dividing the world into city and not city.

But with the less

Mercury-afflicted members of the coalition, it's the same thing.

Everything that pulls at above 55% is good, uh, except for anything having to do with health care, housing costs, or Palestine.

Um, any anything that we associate with like staffers that tricked us into posting a black square in 2020 is bad.

This is, I mean, someone today said that Ezra Klein is he's Thomas Friedman for the millennial set.

And I think that's very true.

And he's, you know, as is always the case with the successor to the original, he's learned from Friedman's mistakes by presenting himself as more

reactive and

more open to the views of others.

But if you actually look at all of this, if you try to address it, what are they actually saying?

What are they proposing?

should be done and who are they naming as their enemies?

There is no complexity.

We've seen this before.

This this is all this is is the early 90s dlc platform adjusted for for tech donors yeah and all authored by people who have gone insane from taking uh about 800 milligrams of fucking well butrin every day for 10 years and like and you know like and and the abundance as your worldview like i mean there are groups that he's antagonistic to that he thinks you know like uh need to be confronted they're just like homeowners associations and like labor unions you know it's just it's a matter of just picking who your targets are.

And he disagrees with the targets of left and right-wing populism.

Coincidentally, the targets of right-wing populism are just non-white people.

And the targets of left-wing

populism are

the dramatically wealthy corporations and elites who like,

if billionaires can't be called an elite or a corrupt and parasitic elite, I don't know who can.

And he writes, what both forms of populism share is a tendency to treat virtue as a fixed property of groups and policy policy as a way of redistributing power from the disfavored to the favored.

Yeah, I mean, actually, like that, I think that actually is a pretty good definition of politics, in my opinion.

But he says, he goes on to say, under the populist theory of power, bad policy can be and often is justified as good politics.

Every policy in this telling has two goal.

Two goals.

One is the goal of policy or the project.

Perhaps you're trying to decarbonize the economy or build affordable housing or increase competition in the market for hearing aids.

But the other is the redistribution of power among groups.

Does this policy leave unions stronger or weaker?

Environmental justice groups, corporations.

Then he goes on to say, my view of power is more classically liberal.

In his book, Liberalism, The Life of an Idea, Edmund Fawcett describes it neatly.

Edmund Fawcett.

Human power was implacable.

It could never be relied on to behave well.

Whether political, economic, or social superior power of some people over others tended inevitably to arbitrariness and domination unless resisted and checked.

To take this view means power will be ill-used by your friends as well as your enemies, by your political opponents as well as your neighbors.

From this perspective, there are no safe reservoirs of power.

Corporations sometimes serve the national interest and sometimes betray it.

The same is true for governments, for unions, for churches, for nonprofits.

A lot is lost when you collapse the complex interest of politics into a simple morality play.

There are often different corporations on different sides of the same issue.

There are often different unions on different sides of the same issue.

To know where you stand and who stands with you, you need to know what you are trying to achieve.

This is not, I should say, some untested approach to politics.

It's how Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the two most successful national democrats of the past 50 years, approached both their campaigns and their presidencies.

Obama was perceived as like more radical than Harris or Biden.

Like regardless of what his policies and rhetoric were, he was perceived that way.

And he is the most electorally successful Democrat that we will probably see for about 50 fucking years.

Look, I mean, for Ezra, like the presidencies of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were very successful.

And like, I don't think he means electorally.

I think he means in terms of policy.

I have to discuss.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Like, I mean, I think there were disasters for this country in a lot of ways.

But like, it's this idea about like power can never be wielded for good.

You know, power always corrupts.

It's like, it's this like half-smart college kid view of the world where you're like, oh, like when I was younger and more immature, immature, I simply thought that, you know, there were bad people in power and that like power should be gained to like take that, that you need to, you need to wield power to take it away from the people who are evil.

But like now that I've went to college and have a job now, I just know that everyone is sort of good and evil and that like all power needs to be checked.

And like the important part about power is not having it and using it.

It's just making it as diffuse as possible.

So that like no bad actor can do bad things trying to do good or something like that.

And I just think that, like, that sums up like the worldview here is that, like, power is not to be wielded except by the people who fund the Abundance Festival.

Because, like, look at what Donald Trump is doing right now.

I would say that that's an example of power being used for evil.

I mean, like, deploying the Marines in an American city to quell, you know, protest against his ethnic cleansing policies.

But, like, That's why like the idea that this is some way back for the Democratic Party is farcical to me because like power is to be used.

The most important thing about

power is keeping it and using it and using it on behalf of the people who gave it to you.

And yes, and using it against the people who are bad, who are evil, who are villains.

It seems like they're using power against everyone else every fucking day.

And we're just supposed to, I don't know, tweak regulations and zoning permits to deal with that.

It's especially farcical now because it's like, okay, do you believe that if if you just if you do the obama thing what obama did in office and just you know uh the point of your presidency is to show how responsible you are with power so people like you enough for you for you to create like shitty netflix documentaries till the end of time like that is a successful presidency if you just do that with the next democratic presidency Well, the Republican Party is just bound to go back to normal.

There's no seal has been broken here.

You know, this this is not a new era of American politics.

This is just, you know, it's, this is just at this point, like a 10-year-long fever.

And if we behave responsibly enough, then our opponents will stop calling us pedophiles who deserve to be executed next time they hold the White House.

You know, that's over.

That is over with.

And I don't know if these people uh know that and don't give a shit or if they are so delusional that they think like it it can become the 90s again.

But it is so ignorant of the time that we live in.

I mean,

it's so funny that they mention Obama too, because the only reason that Obama won reelection by a pretty big fucking margin was that he named enemies after four years of like a healthcare bill.

that the insurance industry practically wrote and like a shitty stimulus that it was it was the exact policy prescription of these people's predecessors uh he named mitt romney as a class enemy and one

ada to your point about how when you brought up for instance gaza to any of these people at the welcome fest like they they sort of stuttered whispered didn't really know what to say and i think this speaks directly to the heart of this idea about power because like these are the same people who have been telling you over the last two years you can't expect the president to just do something.

Like, look, Joe Biden doesn't have the power to stop Israel from killing all these people.

I suppose you think he could simply just stop selling them weapons.

It's just like they turn the power button on and off at will in terms of like what you're allowed to do with power and what's realistic to expect of the US government being able to accomplish.

Like whenever you talk to like Yimby people about like, well, why don't we just do rent control and just have the state build housing rather than private developers?

They're like, there's no money for that.

You know, like, who's going to pay for it?

And it's like, the U.S.

government has a budget in the trillions of dollars.

Like, it's not like they could pay for it if they wanted to, but it's just this, like, it's this, it's this mystification around the idea that like the people you elect to office should be expected to do something.

And like, they turn that dial on and off whenever it suits them.

Donald Trump is spending trillions of dollars to give a massive tax cut to everyone who's earning more than $300,000 a year with

high the highest earners, people making millions of dollars a year, receiving the biggest benefit.

Surely in this era of politics where

this was supposedly the austerity party, surely you could see that that doesn't matter.

But no,

nothing can be done except for the crushing of the left.

And like, I guess I'll just bring it back to the the protests and and and uh like police violence going on in Los Angeles and elsewhere in this country right now.

Because like, obviously, like, this is not an original thought.

And like, you know, this is sort of lib-brained.

But like, I had to think about January 6th and sort of like taking in all of this stuff.

And like, what I thought about it was that it was one of the greatest political successes in American history.

Like, they did not manage to overturn the 2020 election, but they managed to get the 2024 election.

And what Donald Trump did, one of the first things he did was pardon all the people involved in it.

So like, they exercised power illegally illegally to threaten the government of this country and its politicians.

And, like, yeah, they got sent to jail for it, but then they were pardoned because the political party they were doing it on behalf of supported them.

So,

how about the optics of that?

How about the strategy, the electoral strategy involved in looting the Capitol and threatening to kill the vice president?

And then four years later, the person you're doing it on behalf of is president again.

How's that for power?

For like a year.

I mean, talk about like bad optics.

Donald Trump's, Donald Trump as a political entity was over, except for like, you know, certain Republican primaries.

Even then, like the, the common, the, the conventional knowledge among conservatives was that it was going to be between like DeSantis and Doug Bersum for the leader of the future party.

Donald Trump was like, it was the lowest he's ever been with his supporters, both after the vaccine and him like in the wake of January 6th being like, I disavow everyone who's there.

Just let me have Twitter.

And then, you know,

what is their solution to this optics problem?

Well, they say that like everyone there who did anything insane,

anyone who got shot by a cop, anyone who did anything, they were actually like, it was a false flag or a federal agent.

And the people in

prison are victims of entrapment and also that none of it happened.

Just.

Total denial.

And, you know, in the sense that it stopped being an albatross around the the neck of Trump's movement, it fucking worked.

Well, because he stopped apologizing for it and started celebrating all the people who did it.

Yeah.

So it sort of seems like it changed public opinion, at least as far as the election goes.

It's almost like the attitudes of powerful people can affect polls and that public opinion isn't just this like, this force of nature that exists alone, like that operates independently.

Ada, just before we get off, before we go here, just any final thoughts about Welcome Fest?

Is there any moment that stands out in your head?

Any sort of sensory memory?

Were the food and drinks there any good?

You said you attended a, there was sort of a happy hour.

What was the socializing at this scene like?

Yeah, there was no music, just everyone

speaking.

Everyone speaking really loudly about centrism and richoras and broken borders.

There

were two open bars,

but no themed drinks or anything, just a big

like plastic storage bin of gummy bears in honor of the Congresswoman's birthday.

You know, in full transparency, I did eat some of the gummy bears.

I know you're not supposed to like just eat random gummies at festivals without testing them first.

And I did try them.

How were they?

They weren't bad.

She's been compromised, folks.

She's taking gummy bears from the people she's covering.

Oh,

Ada took Richie Torres' MDMA gummies.

I think

this is the one place in the world where I would feel safe eating anything that was given to me, knowing that it wasn't adulterated in any way.

Yeah, my final takeaway.

In a way, the sadness of the whole event was kind of comforting to me.

I know for a lot of people, like including me, it can feel like things are totally out of our control, but I found it pretty comforting that like these are the people we're up against and these are the people at the top of the Democratic Party.

That just made me feel better.

Yeah,

I think that that's a very good point, especially in light of like,

you know, in an organic protest movement that happened concurrently with this.

an organic protest movement of people who, you know, it wasn't affiliated with any party or any organization necessarily, but it was just people protecting themselves, protecting their family and protecting their friends.

For

all that is said and,

you know, all the game planning about public opinion that is done about it, it showed that there is actually organic resistance to all of this and that people will go out and risk life and limb for each other.

And as grim as everything is, it's a very stark contrast to this, this political festival festival for the idea of nothingness.

And then like the very real like self-defense of people, you know, standing up themselves against, like I said, like paramilitary federal law enforcement targeting, you know, elementary schools.

Like that's not an exaggeration.

Yeah, it reminds you that like there are a lot of different types of people out there.

Some of them are Pennsylvania voters.

You know, they're dumber and more incoherent than you could ever imagine anyone being.

But a lot of people are very courageous.

And maybe they don't know it until it is, they're tested.

I don't think a lot of these people knew exactly how this would play out.

I don't imagine that in November of last year, they knew they would be in the streets like fighting federal agents and now Marines.

But it does show that like, it's similar to what we said right after the election, that there will be times when people are tested.

And sometimes it will turn out that maybe their beliefs weren't that tightly held.

But other times, and this seems to be more common now, people turn out that they're made of much stronger material.

They have a much tougher moral fiber than even they themselves ever assume.

Okay, that does it for today's episode.

But before we go, before we go today,

I got one quick thing and then a little treat for you.

Per our sort of in-memorium for Jordan Breen that Felix spoke to you about at the end of our last episode.

Some of Jordan's friends have reached out to us

to share the news that his alma mater is starting a scholarship fund for sports journalism.

And we're going to have a link to that in the show description.

So, just if you're thinking about Jordan, it seems like a very

nice effort to remember him and to continue his work in the future in the field of sports journalism and MMA.

Yeah, I posted this.

I've already donated anyone who, you know, don't break the bank if you are in a precarious situation, but if you have money burning a hole in your pocket

and Jordan touched your life as a fan of the sport, a fan of his work.

I will just say that like one of the things I found very harrowing about Jordan's tragic and untimely death was that this guy was a absolute titan in the sport.

in the eyes of people who followed the sport intensely, in the the eyes of people who read and listened to him.

And his greatest curse was that he was just too ahead of his time.

And it was harrowing to see this guy who was, I thought, such a titan,

unambiguously the greatest combat sports journalist in the entire world, that he unfortunately died in obscurity, even though, in light of his passing, thousands and thousands of people have talked about the ways that he touched their lives.

This is a way that we can make

Jordan live on in more than just our memories as people that admired him and loved his work, that we can put some permanent, permanent marker that Jordan was here and that he touched, that he touched the lives of thousands.

So in slightly later news, I mentioned that we'd be sharing some music with you at the end of today's episode.

And

now, if you've listened to the show recently, you know, first time or long time, if you listen to Chapo, you know two things about Felix and I.

That we are fans of both John Fetterman and our RXK nephew.

The two men bringing back hip-hop.

Yeah.

And now we've referenced before the brilliant tweet that made John Fetterman into an RXK nephew lyric.

Kill myself at my son's birthday party.

I'm the worst guy in the

Democratic Party.

We've said Fetterman, Slitherman, many times on this show.

And listeners of the show reached out to RXK nephew.

He's very gregarious on Instagram.

He will respond to a.

Very enterprising.

He's a very enterprising musician.

And

they inquired to Mr.

Nephew, how much did it cost to do a song about John Fetterman?

RXK responded, $500.

I have my engineer with me right now.

Listeners, friends, I answered the call.

I gave RXK Nephew $500.

I feel like the modern-day Medici family for my sponsorship of the arts.

But without further ado, here is RXK Nephew's untitled John Fetterman track that was worth every penny and then some.

A steal at twice the price.

Yeah, the best line is when he says, John Fetterman can suck my dick.

Actually, no, I don't want him to do that.

I get the sense

he was learning more about Fetterman as he went.

Yeah.

Well,

I couldn't be more thrilled.

RXK, RXK,

he fucking crushed it with the John Fetterman song.

He really did.

It's the RXK nephew untitled John Fetterman song.

Till next time, everybody, bye-bye.

And thanks again to Ada Chavez.

We'll have a link to her article for the nation in the show description.

Thank you, Ada.

Thanks, guys.

Carl Fetterman, Dad, got Fetan on Miley.

Who the fuck you think you is?

Who the hell you thought you was?

Nigga bought a church in Pennsylvania.

Off his family drugs.

Nigga, you like 6'8.

White man can't jump to this day.

All your advice is dead dirt.

My samples that don't make you dance break.

We still trafficking through PA.

My dogs in Philly got switches for days.

I feel like Neth Kenner man.

I feel like Neth, Feddy White Man.

I feel like Neth, Slitherman.

My dope hit like Rob Van Dam.

All Auntie said was God damn.

Tell Feder Man he can suck my day.

I'll take that back, I don't want him to do that.

I'ma turn Mexican and judge the border.

I'ma buy an ape, turn it to a quarter.

Fetter man, Nether, traffic your daughter.

It's a ransom, free food stamps.

She my type, only fans and food stamps.

Treat my trap like a boot camp.

This random dope willn't do stamps.

Got a BB of that shit stank.

Hit it once, said I'm top rank.

Off the Remy, then have my drink.

Next, Feder Man do it with that came.

I'm got a ball head, John Federal.

Walk in, get lit out of the Democrat martyr.

Get a bitch pranked at a Republican party.

Call Fetterman, Dad, got Fatin on Miles.

Who the fuck you think you is?

Who the hell you thought you was?

Nigga, bought a church in Pennsylvania.

Off his family drugs.

Nigga, you like 6'8.

White man can't jump to this day.

All your advice is dead, dirt.

My samples that don't make you dance break.

We still trafficking through PA.

My dogs in Philly got switches for bands.

I feel like Netf Kenner man.

I feel like Netfety White Man.