Trump’s Losing Grip — And We’re Gaining Ground

Hey, everybody, and welcome back to the Find Out podcast.

This week, no guests.

You're just going to hear from the five of us because there is so much to talk about.

We thought having a guest would actually just make it difficult to get through all the things.

So, we're going to dive in.

We were recording this on Sunday night.

You're seeing or listening to this on Tuesday.

So, we have now seen all of the no kings rallies slash Trump's birthday,

Kim Il-Jung sort of

private like army thing that happened where we could literally hear the squeaks of the tires because no one was there.

Yeah.

But I think, you know,

some really exciting stuff we saw across the country from crowds opposing this administration.

So let's just dive into it.

Did anybody go to any of these?

Luke, what did you see?

Where were you?

What did you see?

I was in fucking Iowa, so, you know, surrounded by shitters.

Just corn.

It's always, because I went to the hands-off one too in April and it was, I bet the crossover was, it was 100% crossover plus about 50%.

It was easily bigger.

And everybody had a fucking sign.

I mean, everybody.

They were out there.

And even when there weren't people that were actually doing it, there was cars that drove by that had fuck Donald Trump literally shaking the windows.

It was pretty fucking awesome.

And there really wasn't any like

negativity.

We had a couple people that like came up and were like flipping everybody off.

And then the cops came over and like, get the fuck out.

So it was actually like,

it was cool.

It was Iowa, so like not a super big show out, but like, it's always cool to be in a community and see like, oh, hell yeah.

Here's, you know, 4,000 people that feel how I feel.

Right.

And when you're dealing with a smaller town, they like 4,000 people is a fuckload of people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's like, I'm not alone, even in red states when you're just exactly.

Exactly.

Oh my God, I'm not alone.

Yeah.

What was the best sign you guys saw?

Curious.

Like, did you guys?

I had a picture.

Oh, I saw so many good ones on social.

There were so many good ones.

The one I posted was from a friend was

when is Obama coming back?

The new babysitter is weird.

Yeah,

I prefer crushed ice.

That one was my favorite.

I like that one a lot.

That's a good one, too.

Well, it looks the estimates that I have seen are somewhere in the over 11 million range.

And I believe it because in my hometown of Bath, Maine, which has 9,000 people, my mom doesn't live there anymore, but was there visiting and sent me a photo.

And they said that they had about 2,200 people, which is what, 25, 30% of the entire population of that town.

And, you know, we saw.

huge crowds.

Seattle, the photos were incredible.

Boston.

Boston, right?

Chicago, too.

Chicago.

New York was actually.

And I tell you, I live in New York and it was pouring all day yesterday.

And there were still massive crowds.

And I think, you know, obviously this shows that people just don't like what's happening.

And, you know, the especially, I think, with the stuff that's happening in Los Angeles, where not only are undocumented folks being rounded up, but American citizens too, because they're just grabbing people.

And it turns out Americans don't like this shit.

Yep.

Shocker.

Really surprising.

So did you guys know that the first person that was detained by the Marines who got deployed to Los Angeles was a U.S.

Army veteran who was on his way

to the VA.

Right.

Yes.

The first fucking person who got stopped and detained by U.S.

Marines was an Army veteran trying to get to the VA.

And that is just so emblematic of everything that Trump is doing to my community, to the military veterans community.

It's like trying to turn us against each other, on each other, you know, slash our benefits, use other veterans to justify cutting those benefits.

And to see it manifest so poetically is just like, it couldn't be,

you know,

hitting it on the nose any closer.

It's emblematic of everything he's doing to everybody all of the time.

It's like, I am looking for a problem.

And so let's just create.

fake solutions everywhere.

And whoops, my solutions created more problems and hurt real people in the process.

Meanwhile, you're looking around going, nothing was ever wrong.

And then he undoes everything and says, hey, guys, everything's better now.

Look at how I won.

Yeah.

And chuckle fucks.

Cheer.

It's like if an arsonist comes back with the firefighters and everybody's like, oh, hooray, fuck you, you idiots.

It's not that hard to pay attention to.

Like, it's just not.

Pulls on the firefighter suit and comes back.

Dude, like, tossing the burnt matches out of his pockets as he's doing it.

I mean, the good thing is this shit is working because Trump pushed back.

He does no more farms, no more hospitality.

Like, this, he's like, he's hearing us, and it's like, you know, that is

a huge victory.

I don't think he is.

I feel like he might be hearing his donors because, like, those are corporate interests.

We're not talking about mom and pop for the people.

We're talking about

right.

You know, like,

no, they're the donors are hearing, I operate a mega farm and people are afraid to come to work, and that is going to collapse my entire business.

I don't think that Trump hears us.

But we force them into his ear.

That's the thing.

It's like all this stuff is at least creating the shift.

Even if it's not us directly, it's us forcing the people he'll listen to to say things like, hey, you got to shift your shit up because this is really fucking me up.

I think it's a really important thing.

Like this is the only functional power we have is to get in his face and go, this shit is terrible.

This is an awful situation you put us into.

We're not going to just sit here and take it.

And so so far, we notched a win and he gotcha.

I mean, that's just how it is at this point.

And you know what we did do is, sorry, like you watch 10, 11 million people take to the streets and just command headlines.

I mean,

even with the absolutely unspeakable atrocity in Minnesota yesterday, the headlines were that and.

No kings parades everywhere.

No kings protests.

And in Minnesota, they still went.

And they still went.

And even with a stay-home order, even with pretty bad sets, don't go to anything.

Look at the photo.

I googled this earlier today.

Look, like everybody who's listening, if you haven't seen the Minneapolis-St.

Paul rally photo, go look it up because that city is full of humans.

It is shoulder to shoulder, tree to tree.

A thousand was the number I saw, right?

Yep.

They could give a fuck.

They were just there.

You know what I'm saying?

I mean, this is still loose.

He's still out.

So people who were in direct fear still showed up, and Trump trump couldn't gather that for his

and he's got 10 exactly he's got 10 he's got 10 000 people versus 10 million and they had been planning for 200 000 they get five percent of that maybe ten percent of that you know and it's just like it's just the saddest and he hears headlines he sees headlines he sees the news he hears headlines

you know what i absolutely love i I just organized and Tim and Zach were there in DC.

We just organized the Unite for veterans rally it was

a bunch of people who were not getting paid came together and said hey we're gonna do this on d-day we got 7 000 people to come from across the country and and come to watch this this rally with the dropkick murphys

we got 7 000 people we spent A tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of all of the money that got wasted.

45 million or whatever.

We might have maybe gotten more people at our parade, at our rally than Trump was able to get with the power of the fucking presidency yeah which I got to say I'm pretty fucking proud of that well not even get his own fucking kids to show up much less the country well and it wasn't even just that it was Trump it was the entire conservative movement was pushing this right and it's funny because earlier today I put something up on uh a blue sky and threads where I was like can somebody put the curb your enthusiasm music behind the photo of the the one of the tank yeah with the wheels But people were like, no, no, we don't need that because the squeaking is

so much louder.

And they were, and it was, it was perfect.

There was nobody there.

I mean, I don't know.

That was Pennsylvania Avenue, I believe, where they did this.

And that is a very busy street.

And if usually during an inauguration, when the president either is in the limo or in the, in the, the bus or whatever the hell it's called, and, or walking.

the the stands at least are full it's not that many because it only goes back five or six that these aren't like huge stanchions

or stadiums.

It's not a stadium.

There was nobody there.

There was nobody sitting there.

It was completely empty in front of him.

And generally the people kind of crowd around where, sort of like at Macy's Day parade, right?

Everyone crowds around the end.

It's where the president sits.

And they were showing this footage.

And it's funny to hear some clips from Fox News because they're trying to make it sound good.

And then you just look.

There's no pictures that they could make it look good.

And they definitely didn't do aerial photos.

I've seen like a distinct lack of aerial photos.

No Yeah, it's it's close-ups of like you know, three people holding signs, like very tightly cut.

Yeah, and half the people that were there weren't even fans, like they were loudly yelling at him,

right?

There were protester, right?

There were protesters there.

And I will say, as somebody who worked at the Interior Department for five years in the Obama administration, the National Park Service has a helicopter.

So if they wanted photos, and they have photographers as well, if they wanted aerials, it would have been very easy for them to get.

And they deliberately chose not to.

I think that the thing that's just, I mean, the whole thing is so funny, but

when he was defending why we should do this,

he like literally said, all my friends are doing it, except none of those people are his friends.

So it's just all of my enemies are doing it.

You know, North Korea, I mean, North Korea is kind of his friend, but North Korea, Iran, which we'll talk about Iran in a minute.

you know, North Korea, Iran, Russia, like they're doing these military parades.

And then they did one in Paris like eight years ago, right?

And that's where this jealousy was sparked where he was like well yes obviously

if france could do it right if they can get on

and so then so he spends 45 million dollars of our of our money so that he can do this and he does it worse and he does like

every way he's trying worse than all of everybody else and so he's trying to be this strong man He's got an unlimited Pentagon budget to be a strong man and he and he still can't do that.

He can't do the one thing that we really should with our military budget be able to do better than everyone else.

So it's it's like there are so many layers of ridiculousness to unpack.

And yet it's just another one of those things where like tomorrow some other thing is going to happen and we'll all just move on from it.

But worth it.

Yeah, I don't even know what's going to happen.

I'm waiting.

I'm not going to be.

The thing I like is always he's stacking up L's at this point.

Like that's like we I want to rewind a second because like when we go back to the first month or two of his presidency, we were talking about non-stop of like things that were being perceived as positives from a ton of different people, especially people in the middle.

Right now, that shit's gone.

The honeymoon is so fucking over, and he's in a position now where everything he's doing is being perceived by the average person in the middle as, oh, this is bad.

This guy is really fucking this up.

That is a huge shift from a few months ago.

So, like, we need to take a second as the party that is not in power and go, what we're doing is kind of working.

Like, we're really shifting the narrative here.

His opinion polls are way down.

His disapproval rating has gone way through the roof compared to where it was so like we're doing something right here so there's a quinipiac poll that was out last week that had him and it's i would say it's a bit of an outlier but uh they had him at 38 yep 38 dog after three months four months whatever the hell it's been feels like a million years but like five months four months

this is the longest five months of my life

well but like you but usually presidents in at least in their first year are usually sitting in at 50 roughly and he's at 38 maybe let's say he's at 42, whatever.

Like he's way underwater.

And Zach, you're exactly right.

That he, he just more L after every, every time he goes in front of a court, they rule against him.

And all the Republicans are like, oh my God, look at this.

It's like, did you ever think that maybe all this shit's illegal?

Like, that's why that's happening.

So, question.

How far, how much more slip do you think he has?

You mean what's the score?

Yeah, what's it what, like, because I think about it, like, I think a third of it is die-hard motherfuckers that will do anything.

33.

33.

I was going to say 33, 32.

The difference maker is a complete meltdown of the economy.

Yeah.

Yep.

Like 25.

Maybe to 20.

I'm not saying teens.

I'm just saying like

maybe high 20s.

The last time he left office,

he

did melt down.

Like we had a depression there for a minute and

everybody was dying And he still was at like 29, 30%.

And so

they tried to overthrow the government.

Yeah, that thing works out.

I think late January 2021, his approval was like, yeah, 29, 30%.

And it's like, okay, so a third of the people are gone.

Yeah.

They're gone.

If there's an economic meltdown that is like literally his doing, not COVID's doing, I think he could go to the 25 number.

I really do.

Like,

I do think the one difference this time is that we're seeing more regret from voters now.

It's, it's maddening because it's like, like i saw this video of this guy and i shared it on my on instagram and he is like all of my all my workers i voted for trump all my workers

this is this isn't fair this isn't and it's like he he literally said he was going to do this like i do not understand and i think that i think a lot of these people have convinced themselves that he was just going to go after folks that committed crimes which he didn't say he didn't say no but i think they were like i think they were fooled i think a lot of people just pulled the wool over their own eyes sure and were like I want to vote for this guy.

I don't like the lady, and I want to do this, and I'm going to just do it.

And now, all of a sudden, they're like, I mean, it's literally why we named the show what we named it.

Literally, everybody is finding out, right?

They're finding out, like, he's there is no surgical, there's no surgical, yes, surgical strike here.

It is, no,

it is just a fucking sledgehammer.

The dildo of consequences is, as always, unlooped.

You're getting it, motherfucker.

Speaking of dildos, has anyone heard any news about Elon Musk lately?

No, nope, that he is scared of it.

I saw he's got the fucking full-blown Heil haircut.

Did you see that shit?

He's got the lightning bolt in the side of his fucking head.

Of course he does.

The dude's like Gen Z.

The back is the full-blown Adolph fucking

mullet.

It's bad.

It is a bad haircut.

You did see that he basically apologized.

Yeah, he said I might have gone too far.

Yeah.

I'm sorry about that.

Sorry about the Epstein thing.

Whoops.

So one of the things that I pursued on his t-hole and realized that he was.

Which he was right about, by the the way.

That was right, by the way.

Dead on the money.

I love that.

Like, somebody's why they have not released that.

Somebody calling somebody a pedo, and you're like, oh, you know, I know it's the sitting president, but like, maybe we went too far when we got completely blasted on all of the things that we were blasted on.

And like, how many, how many drugs do you think they were on that Friday?

Like, that was the best Friday of my life, by the way.

A lot of drugs.

A lot of drugs they were on there.

Oh, I mean, like,

yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, but so let's, let's we can we can shit on on these guys all day long, but let's, let's just transition to like, okay, so, so let's say we had 10, 10, 10, 11 million people out there.

We completely dominated the news.

Like, even when I went to the grocery store this weekend, the No Kings parades were on CBS, which is when I see it on network, I'm like, okay, we're breaking through, not just cable.

For sure.

How do we

continue this momentum, though?

Because it is hard to show it again and day out.

Okay, so Luke, so it's do it again.

Fourth of July.

Do it again.

No, I think that's right.

But I also think like we have the benefit of Trump.

He's just going to keep doing stupid shit.

I mean, like, he's not done.

And, like, the, the more he does stupid shit, the more we're just going to keep piling on because we have momentum.

Like, I bet the next time he wins 15 million.

Yeah, I mean, but the only way Trump can get out of this is if he completely throttles back on all his crazy shit that he's trying to do.

And in which case, we win either way.

Like, we either he does stupid shit and we pressure him, or he throttles back and we're like, haha, fuck you.

You had to go to the bottom.

We're going to keep pressuring you.

Like, right.

Exactly.

So he's in a really fucked position right now in my mind.

Like, he, he needs, like, Trump is, I think, for at least if I'm reading Trump's mind right now, he's dying for a PR win here.

He's dying for like, oh, yeah, you know, peace talks between Russia and Ukraine going well.

Think like something in that realm where he can go, look at my, look at my huge dick.

I can swing around and make people do what I want.

He needs a moment like that.

And he'll be chasing one hard.

But when he doesn't get one, the floor gets lower.

I really believe that.

And I think the exciting thing about yesterday, which again, we're recording on Sunday, so No Kings was yesterday, is that in many of the large cities, it was was raining.

So we had 11 million people, New York, Philly, D.C.

to an extent, and a little bit of Boston, all rain.

And we got 11 million people out.

Now, imagine a month from now,

a month or six weeks now,

actually, no, three weeks, three weeks.

Beautiful sunny day.

It's what we're all thinking about what America really means.

And it's a Friday.

We get to 15 to 20 million.

You know, like that's late.

When you see like big labor movements of the past, that's generally what has happened: is it has started small and it snowballs over time.

Tiananmen Square, which is.

I don't want to make that comparison.

Well, but no, no, no, no.

But let me say.

No, no, but no, no, no.

But that started with like...

Yeah, I get what you're saying.

Yep.

And then it built.

And then there were people who did the, you know, there's the guy that we've never found that literally went out and stood in front of the truck or the suited the tank.

And that is a symbol that China has never been able to shake.

Yeah, and they still ban you on Chinese games if you say Tiananmen Square and Chen.

Yeah, you can't, you can't fucking crazy.

But like, my point is, is like the things build.

Like the movement, Poland's labor would Lekwalenza built over time and they eventually topple the dictator.

Like

if we start, if we keep going, but I think the other part, this is me, the organizer coming in though, is like somebody has to be channeled.

It doesn't have to be all organized, but like someone has to channel this energy into action.

Not just going, but like, what are we doing with that energy other than press, which is hugely important?

But like, you know, we, there has to be something else here as well.

I don't know if there is.

Like, I really don't think, I don't, I don't know.

Like, we, we, we, like, the whole thing that has to, like, really made American politics what it is right now is who controls the narrative.

And we're kind of taking it.

So, like, in my mind, it's like, I don't think we need to do more than like the current strategy.

Like, I don't want to expand.

I want to fucking push the pedal down on what we're doing.

All the, all that Orange Schittstain cares about is the narrative.

Like,

who's in the headlines?

That's all he gives a fuck.

He doesn't care about, you know, like, oh, did we do a sit-in at this spot?

He doesn't give a fuck.

He cares about who's controlling it.

This is what I do professionally.

I was actually going to ask you.

I measure movements.

I make threat assessments.

I make predictions about how a movement is going to grow.

Usually I'm studying the, you know, the far right,

you know, the insurrectionist movement, extremists, all that kind of thing.

But honestly,

once you've got this skill set and knowledge down, you can apply it like anywhere.

So historically, we see movements like this increase as the temperature increases.

It

has been cool, relatively cool this summer through a lot of, this part of the summer through a lot of the country.

We are going to see hot nights in July.

That is when there are going to be things that look much more like the 2020 protests, where it's like real unrest.

And with that, we will see Trump continuing to deploy the National Guard.

A reminder:

the federalization of the National Guard, the memorandum that he signed is now.

There was no time limit on it, right?

It didn't say the words Gavin Newsom or California or Los Angeles.

It said the National Guard.

And it said that National Guard could be deployed ahead of ICE operations where they expect protests or violence.

Right.

So not violent protests, but protests or violence.

So right now, plans are being made to deploy National Guard around.

So we are going to see throughout the month of June.

I don't expect another huge thing like No King's Day before the end of this month.

It's only two weeks left.

July, we're going to see more organic stuff.

We're not,

the protests that we are going to see are not going to be, I think, nearly as organized as like a single day action thing.

I think there are going to be sustained protests like like we've seen in Los Angeles, but on a much larger scale.

We're going to see through the Midwest.

We're going to see the East Coast.

And with that, you know,

the increase in

state-sponsored violence or state-level state-enforced violence from the Trump administration is going to provoke even more of a reaction.

And then

in July and August is when all the cuts, all the additional like Doge cuts, they're coming.

They are still scheduled.

So in July and August and going into September, that is when Americans start feeling the pain of all of the sabotage of government because the courts can't stop Trump from firing everybody and sabotaging every department, though they have slowed him down.

They're not going to stop him.

So we are going to see

a continuing swell in this protest movement.

And once we hit September, like after 80,000 people are fired from the VA and veterans start offing themselves because they don't have access to their mental health counselors and they can't get medication, like I'm saying that as a survivor of suicide.

This is going to happen, by the way.

Anyone can dial 988 if they're

in an emergent situation.

And it is mental health awareness, men's mental health awareness month.

But we are only seeing the spark of what is going to be a blazing fire over the next three months.

So when do you put critical mass at?

September.

Yep.

I think it is important to call out, though, that this isn't like an unstoppable freight train.

You know, you look at what we did, and I say we as a community, but what we did in Los Angeles, you know, we mentioned that he's dialing back these workplace raids.

The reason people were out protesting was because ICE is raiding employers.

ICE is raiding, you know, these ICE raids are what caused that escalation.

And now he's backing that off.

And it's worth calling out that the control over the National Guard is, it was suspended, and then it was, the suspension was paused

until Tuesday.

So the Ninth Court either will consider it on Tuesday or will issue a ruling on Tuesday, the day that hopefully that this releases.

And from there, then inevitably, I mean, the Ninth Court that is, that's California Circuit Court, Appeals Court, correct?

Real-time audit means.

Yes.

that is known as a more liberal court.

I highly, highly suspect that they will not only take Judge Breyer's ruling and quadruple down on it, but they will

reword it in different ways so that it is even clearer is my expectation, which then will push it to the Supreme Court.

Supreme Court issues all their biggest rulings usually in May and June.

And so like, I'm not sure if they'll do a special session or how they'll do that, but there's a foreseeable future where he either has to decide to ignore a nationwide injunction, which he's not been effective at trying to do.

He's kind of tiptoed around it, but

we could potentially have a nationwide injunction against Trump's control of the National Guard without the permission of the local governor for a potentially a pretty good amount of time, which would get us almost into next election season if it ended up going to next spring.

So like, don't, if you're listening to this, like every day it feels almost insurmountable, but you look at like this weekend, you look at the past couple of weeks, it has been win after win after win for the left.

When you have no power and you're racking up headlines and you're racking up momentum and you're getting people to leave their house and just be excited to be part of this movement, to be part of this country, like we haven't, we haven't, we didn't even always have that through Biden's tenure.

So like we, we have a new energy that's much more organic than than we had when it was like, hey, you know, old, old daddy, come and take care of us out of the pandemic.

Like we're in a, we're in a different era right now.

There's that like very much appreciating it.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, and I want to say, like, you guys did hear Rich correctly.

He did talk about Judge Breyer because that is actually the former Supreme Court Justice Breyer's brother.

So he is about the same age, 83 years old.

Yeah.

These people, yeah, their lifetime appointments.

And in this particular case, it's a good thing.

But I want to turn to one person in particular during all of this that I think deserves a lot of praise.

And that is California Senator Alex Padilla.

Yes, sir.

Who literally did what I think every member of Congress should be doing right now, which is he wasn't getting answers from the Department of Homeland Security about what was going on in his state.

So he went directly to Christy Noam, the secretary, and tried to ask her questions.

And by now, I'm assuming most of the people that have are listening or watching this know that her thugs basically wrestled him to the ground after he identified himself.

And she claimed she didn't know who he was, but he was literally on the...

He's also on the committee that confirmed her.

Also, there's only 100 senators.

So like, you know, it's not that hard.

And they actually handcuffed him.

And luckily, there was several people who pulled out their phones and we saw it.

But like, you know, when people, you know, a lot of members in Congress have been saying, like, well, what do you want us to do?

I want you doing that.

That is what I want you doing over and over again.

No, it's incredible.

I mean, it's also like the word that I would use for Trump with this was embarrassing.

Like it's embarrassing that he's doing this shit to literally senators that are currently part of the Senate just asking questions.

Like this is painful to watch.

And I think that's a huge part of why we're feeling this momentum coming to us is that the way in which they're responding to what we're doing is like laughably painful to watch.

They don't know what to do.

Like they've been pitching this whole strongman bullshit.

Because you're so strong.

Why do you have to do that?

Exactly.

Like if your message is the right message and your strategy is the right strategy, you don't got to do that to a sitting U.S.

senator.

You could just let him ask questions, but no, you're going to handcuff him.

It's crazy.

And it really is just a truly embarrassing thing to watch.

And it's kind of like for somebody who hates Trump, like the rest of you guys, it's kind of fun to watch him just implode.

Like this is the administration going from like, we're all up on high to just so many catastrophic public errors.

It's kind of fun to watch, but also like really depressing to watch at the same time because it's like, holy shit, this is where we're at.

It's hard to believe.

Well, I think one of the, one of the tough things, too, is that this, Alex Padilla, I think is the fourth person, fourth Democratic elected official that the Trump administration has tried to prosecute already in five months.

Yeah.

And, you know,

I don't remember the Democrats doing that other than Donald Trump being impeached.

But they were weaponizing the DOJ, Tim.

Right, right.

Let me tell you, I was in the Obama administration for five years.

And if a member of Congress had showed up to one of our events unannounced, we would not have thrown them out.

Like, we probably would have taken the L of being screamed at.

But we'd invite him on stage to have a conversation.

You know, that's the kind of

thing.

Americans are hurting.

Americans are hurting.

We have to hear everybody.

Shut up.

Just shut up.

No.

I was going to say, I ran the numbers just because it's like, am I crazy?

Or, or is Christy Noam maybe outmatched here?

And so, you know, Alex Bidiet, he was elected by 3.7 million American voters.

Christy Noam's greatest accomplishment, governor of South Dakota, she had 212,000

Americans.

Holy shit.

There's less than 10%.

There aren't a million people in South Dakota.

Like nothing against South Dakota.

But like, if an American is an American is an American, she got 212,000 people to elect her to governor.

And that was after she, um, that was after she killed the dog because it, yep, because there wouldn't obey her.

Um,

fuck.

So then

I'm a convicted felon.

Yeah, and she bragged about it.

Like, I'm not even making this up.

She just shot a dog because it was like, you're a dick.

And she's like, you're a dick.

I got to have a gun.

And so, you know, then a convicted felon nominates her to be, you know, I call her Elsa because she's the ice queen, but puts her in this position.

That's really good.

Thank you.

I use it in a video, but I need to make sure everybody hears it.

I'm like, I have to recycle my job.

I heard it and I didn't get it because you didn't do the ice queen part.

I just burned through it.

Yeah.

So here we are.

Here we are explaining it, but

which always makes jokes funnier in my opinion, but it's okay.

But so, you know, 3.7 million people elected Senator Padilla.

I mean, Karen Bass, the mayor of L.A., got 510,000 people who voted for her to be mayor of just L.A.

That's not L.A.

County, which has 10 million people in it, 10 times the size of the state of South Dakota.

So you look at like, you're not crazy.

Karen Bass would be a better person, a better secretary of the Department of Homeland Security than

Christine Noam, like Alex Padilla.

Some of the dumb fucks that post that map of the U.S.

and it's got red and

they don't understand that it doesn't really fucking grass.

But we have been living in a minority-led government for a long time now because of the way that the system was set up in this country.

A vote in California is not worth the same that it is in Wyoming.

It's not.

Even with the like, you get this many seats in the House,

it's not.

It's not.

And

also the way that the Electoral College is set up, it is meant to favor favor smaller states.

So like it has been a problem for us for a long time that Democrats, who generally tend to center in cities, are,

you know, basically like so many of us are in these states that it's making it hard for us to win.

But also we don't want to live in other places.

So it's like a very difficult situation.

But it's the same.

Like Chrissy Dome should not have any.

say over what happens in California in any sense, the imagination.

I mean, California is the sixth largest economy in the world, I think.

I think it's even higher than fourth.

So So I think it's important for us when we talk about Noam to

talk about the language that she and the Trump administration are using.

They have been, and Stephen Miller has been on this, like calling protests an insurrection.

The memorandum nationalizing the, or federalizing the National Guard called this a form of rebellion, these peaceful protests.

And

Christy Noam came to California to say that she was using the military to, quote, liberate California and Los Angeles, to liberate them from democratically elected officials, to liberate Californians from the government that they elected, which currently has pretty strong support.

And they're calling Gavin Newsom and

Mayor Bass socialists, right?

They are using language that is rallying the base, rallying their base around a campaign of fear.

So as much as, like, yes, we're starting to get the middle, I think, we saying the left, Democrats, people who care about democracy and the Constitution, right?

Yeah.

But the hardcore right,

all of MAGA, is starting to look at our peaceful mobilizations as an insurrection.

Yep.

Yes.

And, you know, know, again,

putting back my hat on as a threat analyst, like

they are preparing

their base to be tolerant of more state-enforced violence

against the American people.

And I

talk about messages.

I don't want people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And

I don't want for people to

be scared to leave the house, right?

We're not

anywhere close to that.

But people need to be aware that

if, say, the Ninth Circuit

shoots down the

federalization of the California National Guard, that doesn't take away Trump's ability to federalize the Texas or Florida Guard and send them to another state.

Right.

No, it's like the National Guard is still a tool that is going to get used, and it's going to be used in

new but legally blurry ways that we're going to continue the average American is going to continue to be surprised and horrified by.

I mean, to me, as much as this is going to come off weird, but I promise there's an explanation.

This is a win for us because at this point, Trump and his folks are siphoning all of their messaging into one group, which is MAGA.

at this point.

And when you've reached that point, we're winning in the middle.

And that's how you win in America.

Like that's, and yes, you're right.

Like let's not take away from what Chris said.

Chris, you're absolutely right.

Like the more radicalized MAGA becomes, the more dangerous the country becomes.

There's no question about it.

But at the same time, if we're just trying to analyze where we're at in terms of winning, we're doing great.

And that's because they're like really just diving into their base for some affirmation and they're not getting it from the middle.

So like it is a win, but it's also a dangerous win.

Well, look at what the reaction was from MAGA to the Minnesota shooting.

It wasn't, you know, our hearts go out to the victims of this horrendous crime.

He's a damn.

He's a Democrat.

He's a Democrat.

Right.

Even though he voted for Trump.

Well,

but like, and I learned this, I didn't know.

Minnesota doesn't keep voter registration or they don't have it public.

So like there's no way to look up whether he is a Democrat or Republican.

But his roommate yesterday went on TV and said, yes, he voted for Donald Trump.

He also was an evangelical Christian and I would argue was also a white nationalist.

And the things, the groups that he was associated with, the preachings that he was doing, he was virulently anti-abortion.

And his entire kill list, because that's what it was, he had a 70-person kill list.

It was a mix of Democrats, including Ella Omar, so like.

as liberal as they come.

Oh, yeah.

And Tim Wallace.

Tim Walls, Tim Walls,

abortion centers, and all these people who are trying to suggest that this person was a Democrat, which, first of all, they didn't know.

They just reflexively said it.

It just made it.

to the same thing that happens every time there's a thing.

Right.

It goes to Chris's point, though, that these people have been conditioned to deflect rather than to accept any responsibility whatsoever, which is the dangerous thing about this.

Yeah.

Something I haven't told you guys yet, because this is new, is that

friends of one of my researchers on my team were on that list.

And while the list hasn't been released, so as far as I know, at this moment, it has not been released.

So no one has a full list of names.

But people that my researchers work with on a regular basis around bodily autonomy and women's rights were told, you're on the list and you need to go, you know, into hiding, basically.

So this stuff, you know,

I am one degree from a lot of bad shit going on, but this one hits different.

Yeah.

Well, we, we, we know some folks in this group.

I'm not going to say their names on here, but we know folks who work directly directly with the House legislator, the woman that was the former Speaker House that passed away.

And I mean, I saw several people on LinkedIn talking about this yesterday.

What a wonderful human being she was and what, like, how caring she was, empathetic she was.

And, you know, it is just a horrendous tragedy.

It's great that it sounds like the senator and his wife will be okay.

But still, you know, this, this is this, and Chris, you know this better than any of us, but like this has been building for years.

They have been conditioning these people for this, and it is starting to happen.

And now it's all about how we respond in force and don't hide and cower.

Though, obviously, if you feel threatened, you should not do anything to put yourself in danger.

But it's a, this is, this is where this has been heading for a long time.

I think that Wall's calling it an assassination is big.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

It was.

He should be called a domestic terrorist fucking everywhere.

That's what he said.

Well,

if you burned a Tesla, they were ready to call you a Democrat.

Yeah, you were a terrorist.

But this motherfucker shows up dressed as a cop with a latex mask on.

And he,

we can't put that label on him.

And fuck you.

And he goes after one member of the house, which is 50-50, and one member of the Senate, which is 50-50, because he's trying not to do that.

It's come to the bottom of that.

It's come to that, where they're looking at this like.

I'm sure that there are people on the right who are upset that he wasn't fully effective in his endeavor.

But I think, you know, like, Chris, like when I hear the things you're saying, like, it's really powerful because you give people action.

And even if that action is, it's like 20 steps off from the meaningful, like immediate right now fix that everybody craves, you have something to do.

And something that I've always hated is when activists say things like, and I don't mean you, but just people, when they say things like, stay vigilant.

Like, what in the fuck do you literally mean?

Do you mean not not sleep tonight?

Do you just mean boil in anxiety?

Like, is that the end state?

Is that, am I doing it right?

Because I'm anxious 24 fucking seven.

So to look at the people in Minnesota going out while there is an active manhunt for a person who has their event on a kill list and they say, fuck it.

Like people are being vigilant, but we're making the choice.

We're making a very conscious choice to leave the house.

Every single person who attended a no-kings protest yesterday left the house after we knew what happened in Minnesota.

I mean, everybody nationwide.

And so for 11 million people to say this is what's on the table and it's real and it's really happening right now.

And the psychopath's going to throw a

fascist.

Yep.

And there was some of that that happened and people still came out.

And you're knowing like these things can happen, but not only can they happen, but they actually are happening.

And I'm still going to go do it.

You know,

I'm really, really, really proud of the

left right now.

We are doing every single possible thing that we can.

So keep doing that because they'll feel that pressure.

They'll feel that momentum.

All you need is that person to look, you know, at the tide and go, maybe Trump is past his prime.

Maybe this is not the thing I'm going to die for.

Like maybe this is not my scene anymore.

Right.

I think we're seeing some of that, right?

I I mean, like, it's these, these silly little examples, but they add up.

And we didn't see those before.

The other thing that I think is important, and I'm going to go on a rant for a second, but like the media needs to stop both sizing the shit.

I saw it earlier today and I about lost my fucking mind.

I'm not going to say the person because I don't need them to get all attacked, but like somebody was like, you know, the right and the left are both like ratcheting up the rhetoric.

And I'm like, there is only one side that is committing all, all of the political violence in this country.

It's the right.

You can look it up.

You can Google it.

You do not have to take my word for it.

Do not talk to me about that mentally deranged man 10 years ago who shot one member Republican like he was a sick individual.

And we all fucking shouted that down, but that nonsense.

But if this shit is.

CNN State of the Union.

Is that what you saw today?

Because I listened to a few minutes of it.

No, it was a Hill reporter who was doing it.

But I'm like, you just have to look.

Janet Napalitano, when she was the head of, she was the Homeland Security Director, tried to put a report in front of Congress that showed them that right-wing vigilante, like, like violence was spreading.

And they were like, no, we don't want that.

Bury it.

And now 12 years, 13 years later, we're seeing it unfold in real time.

Yeah, I remember when the report came out during the

first term of Obama about how extremist groups were specifically trying to target the military and veterans community.

And the response, not just from the right, it was my community.

It was a bunch of nonprofits that frankly were speaking out of turn and don't know shit about extremism, who were coming out and saying, oh, you're trying to paint all these veterans as extremists and blah blah.

And that put us like 15 years behind what, you know, not just the federal government ought to be doing to make sure that extremists aren't successfully recruiting service members and veterans, which they have been.

But we as a society have not been prepared to face this because these types of, you know, radicalization, off-ramping, it can't be done by the government alone and it can't be done by nonprofits.

It needs to be done at the micro level.

It's friends and family who stop people from going down

that rabbit hole.

Well, and we've never, we've, this is maybe an uncomfortable thing to say, but we don't ask Americans to sacrifice.

We never do.

9-11 is a perfect example, right?

Like, and some of us here remember it.

Some of us, Luke,

Luke instantly shaking his head it wasn't even a plan yet but we and I can't remember the politician that I saw I was I saw say something really great about this and maybe it was Kinzinger which kind of surprised me but it was basically like yep we got attacked 3,000 Americans died the most horrific way possible and we basically just threw it all on the on the military to handle it and nobody else.

We didn't raise taxes.

In fact, we cut taxes and we drove ourselves into the debt that we're in now.

And we basically forgot all the guys that were in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And I bet most Americans couldn't tell you the difference between what we were doing in Afghanistan and what we were doing in Iraq.

And we ended up being there for 20 plus years

and we

tied.

Maybe?

Like,

maybe we lost.

Like, yeah, we killed the leadership, but like that they're still there.

So like,

that's an important point, too.

I think is Americans just don't think any of the shit can happen here because nothing like we have, I'm not saying people's lives are easy, but we don't have life and death situations, generally speaking, in this country, unless you live in a city, in an impoverished area with gun violence.

Otherwise, you don't.

This is this is the whole reason why like Trump's rhetoric and all this stuff didn't really work.

The democratic rhetoric of like Trump is a fascist and Trump's an authoritarian, because people don't feel that in the moment because it's a slow growing thing.

Like fascism doesn't just happen overnight.

It takes time to set in.

And people, so people hear the narrative and go, ah, shut up.

My life's the same as when Trump got elected.

It's like, yeah, right now, but fast forward a year and you'll not notice the creep underneath.

And then poop, it sucks you into the fucking undertow.

That's how this shit works.

People just don't understand how to actually reasonably look at a situation and analyze the threats as opposed to what's right in front of their face right this very second.

And that is literally the downfall of America, pretty much just across the board.

Well, we're seeing little bits of it at least.

I mean, with the things he's doing.

And, you know, we talked about earlier how like this shit hasn't all hit yet and like the protests are coming.

We're still in a tariff pause.

We're in a National Guard pause.

Like the, he's, he is acting on, I tallied it up the other day, and I'm going to do a video about this, but you guys are hearing it first here,

unless I push it out on Monday.

But

we've got three different emergency powers stacked on top of each other so that Trump can function.

And that's, he's holding on to the Insurrection Act, which is related to the posse

comatitis.

Comatitis.

How much fucking Latin have you guys learned in the last like three, four months?

More than I want to.

There are so many things.

I'm like, what is this fucking thing?

And so, but then there's the tariff control, like, which that was a surprise to me when the judge, when the court said, you don't actually have the power to do tariffs like this.

It was like, I didn't know that.

It turns out by he had to declare that economic emergency for the case.

Yeah, he had to.

It should be a congressional action.

He's he's strung together a border national security emergency, an economic emergency, and potentially the like rebellion emergency so that he can just do anything.

And

all of that is creating all of this pain and chaos.

And those things are going to be, I mean, they're extremely volatile because you saw with the Alien Enemies Act, that was unraveled and essentially blocked completely by

the courts.

So

he's the little bit of pain he is getting through to us, people are immediately feeling it and going, well, I didn't vote for this, even though they might write it on the internet, but you know that they didn't vote for this.

You literally did.

You literally

So we should talk about the Insurrection Act because

that was brought up and that's important.

He has not invoked the Insurrection Act.

What the Insurrection Act would allow is for law enforcement to, excuse me, for the military to enforce domestic law.

That is not the case.

And it's not martial law either.

Like that's a, that's a separate layer.

So there's a couple of layers here.

Yeah.

So what's what's going on right now, the only thing that the National Guard and that the active duty Marines are on paper allowed to do is to protect federal property and protect federal personnel.

They are not allowed to make arrests.

However, anyone who knows anything about the global war on terror, we don't arrest anybody.

We don't arrest anybody overseas.

We detain people.

And when people are detainees, they don't have any fucking rights.

And that's a product of a global war on terror.

And people need to recognize that just because the military can't arrest you doesn't mean they can't fucking detain you.

Right.

Yep.

So speaking of the global war on terror, we are going to talk about one of the countries in the axis of evil, a George Bush term that really made us all look like a bunch of idiots.

But

a bunch of racist idiots.

Israel has launched a massive attack on Iran this weekend, killing.

multiple top military personnel,

attacking nuclear sites.

And actually,

the scale of this thing is when you read about it,

it kind of takes your breath away because of the ability that they had.

They were launching attacks both from within Iran and also from Israel.

There's about

100 to 200

bombings that were happened from jets.

And they were also, there were drone attacks.

And

it's a little unclear whether Trump allowed this or kind of looked the other way.

But Netanyahu feels, I think, unleashed to do whatever the hell he wants.

This is the one thing I think that could throw all those other things into

maybe not having as much of effect because of whatever our involvement ends up being in this.

And I want to ask our veteran first,

what you think the chances are that we are actually going to get involved in a hot war, because Iran is certainly not going to just sit around and take this one because it made them look very, very weak.

And that is the last thing that they want to ever be seen by their own people yeah i mean

so um

this is kind of a deep cut uh folks who have the ability right now should look up the name dan caldwell uh he is a former

colleague he used to work for concerned veterans for america he was very close to pete hegseth that is one of the non-profit profits that hegseth came out of which groomed him for Fox News, which groomed him to become Secretary of Defense.

Lucky us.

The reason that Dan Caldwell and a couple of his other colleagues from this, formerly of this organization, Concerned Veterans for America,

an arch conservative group that I agree with almost nothing on, they are anti-war in the same way that I am.

They take a conservative view of it, though.

They have all been pushed out of the Pentagon because the Pentagon under Hegseth wants to go to war with Iran.

Sure.

So, so that is a very good question to ask.

And more people should look into what happened.

I would never make this recommendation ever again,

but people should look up the interview that the former Fox News darling Tucker Carlson did with Dan Caldwell.

Because they talk about how he was pushed out.

He and his colleagues were pushed out.

Remember the leaks, the supposed leaks at the Pentagon?

They were the fall guys for that.

And Dan says that the reason he and his colleagues were pushed out is because Hegseth and the rest of the political appointees around him want to go to war with Iran.

So that is something that people should be mindful of.

Yeah, that makes sense.

I mean, I want to do just a quick rundown for, because I feel like a lot of people don't know the background of all this.

And like a lot of this could be traced back to Trump's error in his first term.

Like in 2015, Barack Obama made the Iran deal with Iran, which essentially said, look, we're going to lift economic sanctions on you.

And in exchange, you're going to stop enriching uranium.

You're going to stop your nuclear program.

You're going to get it to the point where you can't create weapons anymore.

We made the deal.

People didn't like certain elements of it, like the fact that there was no, like there were expiration dates on it, things like that.

Trump was one of those people.

So when Trump became president in 2018, he said, look, We're not doing this deal.

We're going to drop out.

We're going to re-impose sanctions.

And now Iran is free to start enriching uranium again.

Shocker.

What did they do?

They fucking enriched uranium a shit ton and they started rebuilding their arsenal up to the point where they're like way beyond the point they were when they first negotiated in 2015.

The Biden administration tried to renegotiate that deal to get them back into it.

They were too far down the road of...

enriching uranium and their new leadership really didn't want to make a deal with the U.S.

And then Trump thought I could just come in and swing my dick and fucking make a deal with them.

Didn't work.

So if you trace all this back, the whole reason this this program even fucking exists is because Donald Trump made the spiteful decision in 2018 to pull us out of a deal that would have stopped this program to begin with.

And nobody is telling that story, and I have no fucking idea why.

He is the sole reason why we are here in this moment.

Like, there's other elements, I get it.

Like, Israel's got its own reasons and whatever.

The only reason this program exists is because Donald Trump fucked us in 2018.

That's just the bottom line.

Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, no, I mean, I mean, it's true.

I mean, people forget, like, people forget

that we tried to get a deal with Iran for like 40 years.

Yes.

And we did it.

Obama did it.

And we did it.

And look, like,

we were never going to get a perfect deal.

It is nonsense.

And I don't think that the Obama administration did a very good job selling it.

But, you know, the fact is that we did stop their military enrichment of

uranium.

And there were inspectors.

And yes, it was a kind of a bullshit game, but like we definitely slowed them down and stopped them.

And also we continued to do covert operations on them at the same time.

It wasn't like that shit stopped.

In fact, I think we actually, there was one story about how they managed to get into the computer systems and actually spin one of the cores so fast that it overheated and like blew up or something, which I'm like blown away that we could, people could do that shit.

But.

Yeah, I mean, Trump is an idiot.

Like it comes back to that.

And I know like it's

like

It seems so crass to say it.

He's a fucking idiot.

And he thought, he thinks he's a deal maker, which I would, I dare, I challenge MAGA Republicans to tell me, name one good deal he's made.

One, anywhere.

Just tell me.

What is it?

Yeah.

Because it doesn't fucking exist.

He takes hostages all the time and then he releases the hostages and goes, I just made a deal.

And it's like, no, you caused a problem and then you made it.

Unless he's firefighting.

Solve your own problem.

Yeah.

right.

Yes, that's a good term for him.

Always him.

Yeah.

I mean, he is not a good businessman.

We've said it a million times.

He got $400 million from his dad.

He would have been better just playing the stock market than trying to play business.

Not even playing the stock market.

He's going to put it all in the SP and

he's worth more.

He's a dog shit businessman.

Absolutely awful.

You know,

I think what happened here with Netanyahu is he looked at, well,

Zelensky is doing whatever the fuck he wants.

Maybe I can also do whatever the fuck I want.

Because you know, who didn't attack Iran for all of

2008 to 2016?

And then from 2020 to 2024, Israel didn't attack Iran.

So now everybody's looking around going, I think we can just do whatever we want.

Just walk over him.

Like, I think he's all bluster.

Like, he's bullshit.

He's a fucking reality TV show host.

I think it's that simple.

And, you know, everybody's afraid of him.

He's a peacetime president.

Nobody wants to Star Wars when he's in office.

Shut up, Rich.

You're wrong.

You remember the stupidity and the chaos?

Was supposed to be the like, he's so dumb and so chaotic that that's going to prevent anyone from doing anything dumb because they won't know how he's going to respond.

And I'm like, that held up for four months, right?

And now, and now, like, what you could call like tier two or like lower level, you know, certainly less powerful nations are just saying, I don't, I'm just calling his bluff.

Just do whatever you want.

Trump's not giving shit.

But here's the deal: he's not a strong man.

That's why he's taco.

He's a scared little man and he pumps his chest like funk fake masculine people all across this country do and wears his foldy catheters and walks around yeah but you see that picture they're either leg braces or catheters i don't know which is worse uh i i don't think it might be a two-in-one leg brace catheter could be yeah i saw those i don't know why you need a catheter and a diaper at the same time it's a great question i mean if there's like a overloading situation yeah do you really want to get into this nope i don't really there's like the ladies on the edge of the dam

So we just said it like really quick, but

we haven't talked about Ukraine at all and we didn't plan to talk about it in this episode.

But like I if there's anybody who's out there who's in Ukraine who listens, I don't know if we have any downloads.

I think we can probably find out.

I got to say the Ukrainians have been have been fucking killing it.

The attack that they did against Russia and taking out a third of their nuclear capability or their air-powered nuclear capability.

There was something in there about that that they didn't, what was it?

They didn't tell Trump?

Crazy.

Like, that is the Russian asset.

Yeah, not telling the Russian asset means they, oh, God.

What is what is wild, though, I mean, like, and, and this is a sign of, of how far we have fallen is, is that we are no longer being viewed as the leaders of the free world.

Like, people are looking to Zelensky now.

Yeah.

And,

you know, a relatively, like, yeah, he's, he's got an army and and they are really fucking effective like the the uh the ratio of casualties is is far and and above in favor of of ukraine the russians have been just getting absolutely creamed for the entire half a million right dead but on the russian side yeah it's like 500 000 casualties yeah no it's true and or actually i think they're about more combining you know injuries and and everything and desertions i think they're are over a million casualties.

I think I said that still crazy, yeah.

So, uh, I just have got to say that all of the Americans who you know did things, and I know a lot of people aren't paying attention to attention to it anymore, but I have a feeling a lot of our listeners did things like donated to support the Ukraine mission.

And that that paid off, like Americans' organic response for Ukraine, you know, beyond what the Biden administration did, what civilians were doing.

The Dropkick Murphys, they just were overseas a couple of weeks ago with a couple of my friends, you know, delivering ambulances,

which have something like a 15-minute survival rating.

Like they, they are being deliberately targeted by the Russians, which is a war crime.

But like, Americans are still doing shit that is making a difference on a battlefield where democracy is literally at stake.

And, and that is awesome.

The thing that kills kills me about this, and sorry, Zach, go to your next book, is this.

When people talk about, oh, I don't want to spend all this money on Ukraine from the U.S.

government, we were basically spending the equivalent of 5% of the military budget in our operations in Ukraine.

What did that do?

It's basically completely annihilated a third to a half of the Russian army, their heavy tanks.

They lost like 20 generals.

in this thing.

And they do not have the ability to strike at Western Europe like they originally did for 5% of the budget.

It is the best money that we have spent on our, in the military in 50 years.

Yes.

And you know what is what's interesting is what one of my friends is like a MAGA Republican, and I pitched that exact argument to him and he agreed with it.

Like, this is not a controversial perspective.

Like, there's no question that this was some of the best money you ever spent.

And the thing, a place I was going to go, like, so my wife is literally a Ukrainian, born and raised in Ukraine.

I could have told Trump from day one, if you are going to underestimate Ukrainian people and the resolve of Ukraine, you're fucked.

And that's exactly what he did.

He walked into the situation like Ukraine is going to fold.

I just got to side with Russia.

We'll lean on them and they're going to fall apart.

The second I knew that was what he's going to do.

I'm like, you're fucked, dude.

You're going to run into the resolve of the Ukrainian people, man.

Like they have the most tremendous belief that they can transcend what the Soviet Union forced them into.

Like the Soviet Union pushed Ukraine into a position where they're just absolutely fucked.

And over the last 30 plus years, they have emerged as potentially like the next democracy to watch in Europe.

And, like, we need to respect the fact that, like, they have been pushed into a corner with Russia where Russia, like, everybody thought in the day one, like, Russia is going to just crush them.

And they decimated the expectations.

So, good for you.

So, the one other thing that I think is important to say, which

everyone keeps missing this, is that invaders in the 21st century don't fucking win.

They don't because there's the technology

has evened enough that it makes it very hard.

And also it is very hard to go door to door, like in every fucking city in a country.

So all these people who are like claring for a war with Iran, it would literally be the stupidest thing that we could do because first of all, the people hate the Iranian regime.

All we would do is do a rally around the flag, but it also, it's applicable everywhere.

It's just, look at what happened in Afghanistan.

Look what happened in Iraq.

It is impossible.

And those are not technologically advanced societies, and the strongest military on earth could not defeat them.

So, like, I do hope that as people see what's happening, I mean, Putin is getting his ass handed to him.

Destroyed.

Like that, that they thought this was going to last two weeks.

And what are we at?

Three years?

Whoops.

And, and it's just, it, it's just,

uh, and, anyways, so we have been going on and on.

We've also missed, this is the worst transition of all time, by the way.

Oh, God, I know where you're going.

The other day was father's day

and we have four fathers technically well technically i'm i'm trying to do in the future

i know four fathers

we're the four fathers we are the four fathers yeah that's one not father and one not father who has father that you know

i do have father you do have digital

so we've talked a lot i mean like donal like and i wrote something on substack about this today but like there's a lot of talk about masculine we talk a lot about masculinity right and i thought we've talked a lot about some really bad examples of masculinity Donald Trump is the worst because he's the biggest baby on earth.

Hag Seth is another horrible example.

Stephen Miller's name came up, who is literally the lizard king.

So to wrap up our session here, like I would love everybody to talk about one, let's say, father figure in their life that did something to them that they feel is the definition of positive masculinity rather than this sort of pump your chest and punch people to show you're a bigger man version.

So

who wants to go first?

I vote Rich because he started this conversation.

That's true.

That's true.

That's true.

Yeah, this wasn't my idea.

I'm just pretending it was.

I just was, I was wondering how long it would take for somebody to get around to Walter White, and then we would just be arguing about breaking bad all over again.

No, um,

you know, you for one episode, no, um, we're talking, we're not talking about our dads, right?

Our own dads, like everybody's got a dad that you can if you want to.

Like, well, okay, so my dad, um, it was funny because I wrote in a card for him and I said, like, sort of thank you, but, but not thank you because you set me up for failure because he showed me what real masculinity was like.

And

I was thus not prepared for the real world

because you get out in this world and you meet guys and you understand what like masculine culture is in this country.

And it took me like, it was like leaving religion.

It took me like 10 years of like trying to reconcile things, like two things that were both not true or one thing that was true.

And I thought they were both true.

And

now I understand.

Like, but it took me absolutely forever to understand that

most guys are not like the guy that, who raised me.

And, and that was a person who's just, you know, it's not rocket science.

Like all people are equal and women are awesome.

Like my wife, you know, my mom is his best friend and they do everything together still.

They're still married.

And so my dad's amazing,

obviously.

But I also want to give one shout out to a guy.

I'll just call him Sean

from college.

He was my journalism mentor, inspiration.

He was the guy who just constantly, unrelentingly challenged me to be, I was like, you can do better than that.

He constantly told me that.

He's like, this is really good, but you can do better than that.

You're smarter than that.

And he was always, always, always pushing me, but it was from a way of, it was from this position of like,

you're, you've got this thing in you.

So keep like, keep coaxing that out, you know, and it's sort of this like, perpetual, like, you're good now.

So don't, don't dog on yourself, but keep making yourself better better at this craft because, like, you know, obviously it's a thing that you love to do.

And that's literally what we are doing.

It's what I'm doing on social right now is the very, very sliver of a thread of a craft skill that Sean identified a whole 20, whatever years ago now and said, like, basically chase that.

And so huge shout out to him.

He's still, he's still in my life.

I still message him every once in a while.

I'm very, very proud of what we're all doing here.

So huge shout out to Sean.

Cool.

Zach, Zach, you're next.

All right.

I'm going to be very boring and do my own dad.

Because

so I'm the father to a four-year-old daughter.

And, you know, it's my only kid.

And I'm trying to figure out how to navigate being a dad, you know, like what's natural to me, but also what's right for her.

And, you know, you got to find that balance.

So obviously you draw a ton from how you were raised if you liked your upbringing.

And I'm very fortunate to be one of the people who's happy to say I got two amazing parents, two amazing step parents, too, but two incredible parents.

And, you know, the thing my dad did that I try to emulate every single day is he gave me room to just be who I was and not force me into a position.

He, unless the, like, the boundaries are essentially like outside of this boundary is severe error.

Like, don't do heroin, you know, like things where it's like, holy shit, don't go that far.

But out within the boundaries of like just regular existence, do you, man?

Like, that's that's a really, and even as a, you know, my daughter's only four, but even at four, that's an incredible lesson to understand.

Like, no matter what you do, I'm here.

It's cool.

Like, you're good.

I got you.

No matter what, you're going to be your own person.

I'm not going to force you into a box.

This is an extremely important thing.

And dads, I think, kind of set the tempo on that kind of thing a lot of the time.

Oftentimes, dads are the ones who like let you know, these are the boundaries of life.

This would, especially as a, you know, a son, this is how it's going to be.

So for me, having that growing up was so, it made being a parent so easy for me.

Like, you know, being, like, I'm really lucky in that, like, I have an amazing daughter, but I also like being a parent feels much easier because I had two incredible parents who like set the tempo for what it means to be a parent.

So like.

I, you know, it's boring, but my dad did an amazing job as my dad.

And like, I'm really hoping I could just like kind of scrape the surface of where he got with me, with my own daughter.

And so far, I think I'm doing okay, but you know, we'll see how it goes.

I got a lot of years to go.

Well, I think, I think we could use a lot more boring in our lives.

I'll joke about wanting to live in precedented times.

So boring sounds lovely.

So, all right, Luke, you're next.

All right.

I'm also going with my dad, but not so much like he did.

Basically, the best,

I would think about it a lot, what the best lesson he ever taught me is.

And he always told me that the best way, has always told me, that the best way to judge somebody is how they treat people older than them, like really old people,

animals, and kids.

And like, I feel like a lot of times people give that kind of bullshit

gibberish, like, oh, this is what you should do in life.

But when I think about it, and I look back through all my memories with my dad, I have never seen him mess something up with one of those things.

Like,

to paint a picture, my dad is like six foot, probably 250 pounds.

His His hands are the size of fucking catcher's mitts.

And I have seen that guy,

you know, I grew up on a farm.

I have seen that guy give CPR for 30 fucking minutes to a lamb that was probably half the size of one of his hand until his hands were literally fucking blue to bring that fucker back to life.

I've seen him do it.

And like...

Looking back on it, like if you walk, if you see him walking through a farm and fleet, your immediate,

or at least like when I see someone like him, my immediate

assumption is like,

and like, I have always been thankful to like, to think that, okay,

you don't have to think that way all the time.

That's incredible.

That really is.

Chris?

So I had a complicated relationship with my dad.

His

and

I am three weeks into being a dad.

So this is my first Father's Day.

And

one of the things that it has taken me a really long time, I'm going to be 40 this year,

to kind of accept was that my dad was a guy who struggled and he didn't know how to deal with it.

His relationship with his father shaped his entire life, everything about it.

His dad was the version that I got of his memory was that his dad was like a violent alcoholic who like beat the shit out of his only child, like all the time.

And, and my dad, when he became a father, his commitment to, to himself and to me was that he would never put his hands on me.

And in his,

in his mind, that would make him a better father than than he was, uh, than than he had.

But it didn't make him

an emotionally whole father, right?

So I got a version of masculinity growing growing up that was, that was silent and stoic and that, you know, buried the pain.

My father unfortunately inherited the

addictive gene that his father had.

He was a big alcoholic.

He was

a drug user.

You know, for my adult life,

for my entire life, that addiction problem shaped a lot of who I am, like growing up with my dad having gone to rehab a couple times.

And

a big part of that, you know, pain that I had with that relationship of not really being close to my dad, my dad trying to be a good dad, but just not knowing how

made it so I never wanted to be a dad.

One of many reasons, like going to Iraq and seeing the worst of the world.

And there are many reasons I never wanted to be a dad.

And when I first got with my wife,

when we got married, you know, for the first few years, my wife didn't want a kid either.

And her mind changed after the fall of Afghanistan.

She was an editor for the New York Times,

the editor of Afghanistan.

So she worked on the Afghan EVAC, and that was a very traumatic experience.

She had spent two years in Afghanistan as a journalist.

So she has a personal connection.

And my mind didn't change.

We spent a few years navigating IVF and now my dad, and I love it.

And it is,

I think that the three weeks of experience that I've, that I have have helped me

forgive a lot of my, my dad's shortcomings and his, his version of masculinity because no one modeled it for him.

He didn't, he didn't have another masculine figure come in and save him.

He didn't have a mentor

take away the pain of his relationship with my grandfather.

But with all that said,

I wouldn't be who I am today

without my father and his influence on my life.

And I know that I have accomplished...

an incredible amount of good for the world.

And

it took me a long time to get here, but I'm now a dad and I love it.

And, you know, something that I had been afraid of for,

I don't know, the last 30 years, like since I was a kid,

has been an absolutely wonderful experience so far.

It's amazing.

That's great.

Oh, yeah.

All right.

Well, I'm going to try to get through mine because mine's a little is both good and a bit painful.

So my dad passed away three years ago,

relatively sudden.

We had about a week's notice, five days' notice, I think.

They originally told us three to six months and he had five days.

And

it was particularly painful because,

well, one, because it was such a shock.

He was 70 years old and we all were just kind of stunned.

But I had also

had gotten him studio time.

He was a musician.

And he had written a song in the 60s called Way for Tomorrow that another band recorded.

Apparently it was like number 16 on the main Tuck 20, which I didn't even know was a thing that existed.

And maybe it didn't.

Maybe he just said that.

I don't know.

And he'd never been in a real studio.

So my brother and I, for Father's Day, so three years ago today,

got him that.

And I am a terrible gift giver generally.

And he loved it.

And he was so excited about it that he began reworking the song because he didn't like how the original was.

And then he got sick.

And we had to postpone.

And then it got to the point where we didn't get to do it.

And in the last weeks, he said his biggest regrets were not seeing his grandchildren grow up, uh, not eating his favorite meal, and not doing the song.

So, without telling my brother, who is the musician, by the way, I am not, um, I told him that my brother and I would do it as a tribute and that hopefully he would be able to hear it.

And that seemed to perk him up a little bit.

He found, he told us where the sheet music is.

And

unfortunately, he didn't make it.

Um, but he,

we did it a few months later after some time.

And,

you know, it really was

cathartic for us.

And my mom was just like blown away.

First of all, she never heard me sing.

I saw I sing on it.

And my brother, it's kind of like a duet, sort of.

And really, so like,

I think for me.

It was the gift of music that he gave me, but also he was somebody that worked a job for 35 years and he absolutely hated it.

And he always told me to go out, go explore.

We didn't do that.

We stayed in bath, go check things out, go find your place.

And that's exactly what I did.

And I don't know if I would have done that if I hadn't had the push.

And that was all him.

I mean, my mom, too, of course.

And then the other thing was,

you know,

don't start a fight, but if someone starts a fight with you, you could finish it.

So I did get a little bit of the,

which I never had to do.

I never had to do so that was that was mine but you're still getting tim there's still time

well

i got to see the ice coming knocking on on my son's school or something there might be a little bit of a problem but um

uh

okay did we so no i think that's that's it's a powerful message and and it's something i i didn't say about my dad but that i i immediately regretted not saying he he told me you don't have to hate what you do

because there's this thing especially among men, that's like everyone hates their job.

And you go do your work and you pay the bills.

And it's, it's this stoic thing.

And, and it's like you, there's no work that isn't sacrifice and that it isn't misery and that there's some honor or whatever in that.

That doesn't have to be true.

And for millions and millions of people, it is not true.

You can wake up every day, love the people you're with, and love what you do to give back to your community.

And that's what you're doing.

You're delivering value to human beings, whether that's through a for-profit organization, a non-profit or a non-profit organization, whatever it is, you're creating value for humans.

That's why it's like, I don't want to be an influencer, but like at the same time, if people are creating value for other people, if that's entertainment, if they're in Hollywood, if they're online, it doesn't matter.

Show up, love what you do.

That is manly as fuck.

I 100% agree.

And not to get too like woo-woo on everybody, but like, what do we got?

80 to 100 years on this earth, right?

300 years from now, no one's going to remember any of us.

It's sad to say, but it's true.

Why not live your life in the, I mean, not everyone can do this.

I, I, there's privilege in what I'm saying, but like, you know, try the best to have us have a life that you like.

And Rich, if that means making TikTok videos and screaming at your graph as they, as they shoot up and then straight down, you know, because they're screwing you over, like, that's okay.

That's a real story, by the way.

And we have seen it happen several times.

There's, there are some slacks that I'm also not clean on that one.

Oh, I was going to you next, but I was going to say, no, but, but, like, look, like, it, everybody should try to do what they enjoy in life.

And who gives a shit what other people think, right?

Like, and I don't like the term influencer either.

It kind of makes me feel like it.

That's what I am.

Fuck it.

All right.

Let's accept it.

But, anyways, like, I, you know, I think, I don't think men talk about this stuff enough, right?

And I think that it's like you said, the stoic and silent and just like go about it and wait for your pension, which most people don't get anymore, so it don't really work.

Um, you know, it's just not like, and a lot of those guys, I mean, my dad had a, had an alcohol problem too.

A lot of it stemmed from that, a lot of it stemmed from his father passing away too early.

But, you know, it's not a healthy thing.

Hey, Tim,

I'm going to put you on the spot and we can edit this out if you don't like it.

But what do you think of in honor of your father and Father's Day that we put your video at the end of this episode?

Ooh, I like that.

What do you think?

All right.

All right.

So everybody takes

Tim's making it.

Everybody should stick around

because you're going to get to hear.

It's good.

I've seen it.

It is good.

It's good.

Let me just set the stage for that.

And it's funny because my dad was a big Beatles fan.

And that's where I got my video.

He had like all original 45s, everything.

Like he had every song and he played every day.

I'd hear Beatles songs being played in the basement.

When he passed away, I found videos of him practicing the song that he set up in his basement on his shitty iPhone three or four, probably.

I don't know what it was.

And so in my head, I was thinking of the Beatles when the three surviving Beatles got back together to record the two songs that John Lennon had recorded on a tape.

It ended up being three of them, but two at the time.

And they had done something like that.

So I was like, why don't we do the same thing where my brother and I are performing the song.

But my dad was actually playing along.

And then at the very end of the song, the last five seconds, we pulled audio off of one of his practice videos.

So he is, in fact, playing with us.

That's also so cool.

I hope you enjoy it.

And with that, we're going to go, folks.

Thank you, everybody.

This was a really great episode.

This is Tuesday, so we will be back on Thursday again.

And in the meantime, don't forget to pick up some merch from us or sign up for a membership on findoutpodcast.substack.com.

I see the guys laughing at me because I always do the same thing.

Shameless talking, even in the face of your father.

mug.

Buy a mug for Tim's dad.

He would say, Go for it.

He would say, I think he would.

It sounds like

anything that he could get, he could get more people to listen to his song.

I think that'd be great.

Anyways, everybody, have a wonderful day.

We'll see you in two days.

be mine.

Wait,

then I'll get to you just in time.

You better wait.

Wait

for tomorrow's such a show.

Wait,

that's when we'll be ready to go.

You better wait.

You better wait.

Let's record to start anew.

I just can't wait to be with you.

Everything will be much brighter soon.

We'll make a life for you and me.

Just to wait and see.

Everything will be much brighter soon.

Wait

so we can start our life together.

Wait,

then everything will be much better.

You better wait.

You better wait.

Let's look forward to start anew.

I just can't wait to be with you.

Everything will be much brighter soon.

We'll make a life for you and me.

Just you wait and see.

Everything will be much brighter up soon.

Wait

for tomorrow to be mine.

Wait,

then I'll get you just in time.

You better wait.

You better wait.