Democrats are WINNING the Shutdown Debate

Hey, everybody.

Welcome back to the Find Out podcast.

We are at episode 50, everybody, at least if I have counted correctly.

Most podcasts end after three episodes.

So we've done pretty well here, guys.

We're getting sick of listening.

I think our listeners stopped listening after three episodes.

So, this is really just for us.

It's a Truman show situation.

We just talked to each other.

We just talked to each other.

Zach's mom still listens, right?

Yeah, definitely.

She's a big listener.

I'm not even sure that my mom listens to every episode, to be honest.

I'm pretty sure that we're radicalizing my mom, which I'm pretty sure.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, all right.

All right.

Well, that's.

She is someone who was never political ever.

And now she is very proudly politically engaged.

And it's pretty cool.

That's great.

I love it.

That's so great.

That's amazing.

And she's in a swing state.

So

even better.

All righty.

I like that.

Well, guys, I feel like we're in this very strange position here in that Democrats seem to be winning the messaging war around the shutdown.

Don't say it too loud, though.

You're going to jinx us.

Yeah.

You know, Trump is, Trump is already starting to crack a little bit.

He yesterday said that he was willing to negotiate on the ACA

tax extending the ACA tax credits, which are the things that help to keep our insurance premiums, I'm not going to say low because they're not low, but lower than they would be.

Affordable-ish.

Ish-ish.

And if we got rid of them, everybody's health insurance would go up.

And that's what Republicans have been, excuse me.

That's what Democrats have been pushing.

And it seems to be working, guys.

Did we, did we crack the code finally?

I mean,

Libs wants free health care for illegals.

i still want that

let's be really clear they didn't take the uh yeah i as far as i'm concerned they should get free health care it everybody should get free health care okay health care is a human right like this healthcare is a human right yep but democrats seem to have

wi-fi apparently

what's that according to the un wi-fi is too but human right a human right wi-fi interesting yep oh you can't find your nearest clinic if you don't have a strong signal so they kind of go hand in hand.

But guys, like it's both a mix of it seems like the members are doing well communicating.

And also this is really one of the first times that I think that they've relied on a group of creators slash influencers to also carry the message.

And all of the polling shows that most Americans are blaming Republicans for the shutdown.

Yeah, there's no notion.

I watched a whole bunch.

I looked at a bunch of polls about this and watched it as well.

And it was like,

it's so clear what people think.

They just look at it and go, Republicans are in power.

This is a mistake.

That's it.

Draw a straight line.

Like,

it's not complicated, and Democrats have a huge advantage here where all they have to do is just lean on that shit and they're doing a great job doing it, which is like, yeah, they get to lean into their most

accurate trait, which is that they don't have any power and they're useless right now.

That's not a lie for them to say it.

Yeah.

I thought you were going useless.

We have our principles.

Damn it.

All right.

So, so something I want to pull on something that Tim just said.

Is it because of the Democrats' strategy of engaging independent media and influencers?

Like, has that made the difference?

Or is it just the facts?

Because

in my opinion, facts don't fucking matter anymore.

Like for swing voters,

I don't think that facts really matter.

It's narratives narratives that win.

So

is it the Democrats setting the narrative?

Is it us setting the narrative?

Like people like us?

I think it's a mix.

I think we've all made a video about it.

Social media.

Social media sets the narrative.

Yeah.

The five of us have

single-handed.

I think we do.

Well, yeah, we have changed the narrative.

Thank you.

We do.

But we have over 3 million social media followers.

And we have all, as you guys were just saying, have all done videos on this.

And we've we've all done it with our own twist But at the end of the day the same message which is Democrats want to make sure that Americans keep their health care and keep costs as low as possible and Republicans don't right and we were lucky that the big bullshit bill is highly unpopular and it was the timing actually worked out very well that the shutdown happened right after that so we actually had two things that we could hammer on them both that they shut the government down because they they run the entire government and two, that it allowed us to talk about the least popular pieces of the big bullshit bill, which was the elimination of healthcare subsidies for poor and working class Americans, which also makes everyone else's costs lower because we're spreading out the costs amongst more people.

So

yeah.

Well, let's remember that it's, it's, there's a causal relationship between the big bullshit bill and the shutdown.

The shutdown is explicitly because of the big bullshit bill.

And this was what we've been talking about: the opportunity is there.

The political fight is there to win.

But

can we just win it?

Can we just do that?

And

that was always the hangup.

And it appears that somebody got the message because it's working.

By the way, you guys remember the layoffs?

The mass layoffs that were going to take place immediately if the government shut down.

Is this a taco comment?

I mean,

I suddenly want some tacos because I haven't heard Russell's boss name in several days.

They were like, Trump was tweeting, like, oh no, the boogeyman, Russell Vought, Jon Thune, said, We can't control him.

Like, who you fucking confirmed him, fuckhead.

Like,

you're, it was not long ago.

It was like six months ago.

You put a check, you said yay, or whatever they say.

Boy, Rich sounds a little bit like me right now.

I, well,

fuckhead.

I think that's

you know, my kids are at school right now, and so I can, I can, I can use daddy language.

But I haven't heard Russell Bott's name, and I'm not still not going to say it right.

I haven't heard his name in like five days.

You know, they, they, they paraded him out as the boogeyman who was going to slash and burn government.

And then we started seeing headlines that like, it might be illegal.

And now they're saying like, well, they're not going to get back pay.

And now they're saying, well, I think they have to get back pay.

And like, they're just,

we're just sitting here.

It's like what I think it was James Carville who said, like, never get in the way of your opponent when they're defeating themselves, basically.

I'm like,

this is actually what's playing out right now.

We're just eating popcorn.

Well, that brings up an interesting thing, too, though.

It's like, so this is

something I struggle with quite a bit.

And I think about it all the time of what's the value short-term versus long-term in this, right?

So short-term, if we win this and the subsidies are, you know, extended, that's a short-term victory.

But is that a long-term loss?

Because in the the end, it's mitigating people from seeing what Republicans actually want to do.

Like the way we really guarantee a victory in the future is them doing worse and worse and worse things to American people.

And like, yes, it's a price we have to pay in the short term, but I think in the long term, I kind of trend more towards, I want people to feel what they voted for.

They voted for this.

Like, this is not a mystery that like, but where did this come from?

This was what they voted for.

Some people need to feel it.

And a lot of these people who would voted for Trump.

Like, it's not all Democrats are getting shafted by this.

I would argue the majority majority of the population that will get hit by it who voted for Trump need to see that.

That's the challenge.

This is my thought on it: that like we're supposed to have a little bit of principle, right?

Like, you're kind of advocating for a bunch of people to get fucked.

And normally, I'm all about that.

You just coined your own term.

I know, right?

But, like, it's tough for me to wish ill on people.

But it's not wishing ill, it's more so like having people get what they voted for.

Like, you voted for that.

I have no problem with people getting the fucking problem, but getting what they voted for, but I feel like we have an obligation to mitigate that harm as much as we can.

Like that's

like what we were talking about.

That's exactly the tonight, right?

You know, right.

We were talking about the farmers and the farmers, you know, generally voting for Trump and then like losing their fucking land.

Like, do they deserve that?

Yeah.

They fucking hate them, but it doesn't do us any good if the billionaires buy up all the farmland.

But it does do us good if you change their future vote.

Like, that's the thing.

That's the, to me, like, I'm looking more at, I want to win elections.

No, 100%.

I mean, if you can draw a straight line between why you got fucked and Donald Trump and the MAGA agenda, you'll never vote for it.

They don't draw that line, though.

But there's no other line to draw at this point.

The farmers are different, though, because the farmers, like tariffs have been something he's been yelling about and that he imposed in his first term.

We all knew that tariffs were coming.

I think

the challenge for me is when something happens that was not a voting issue, it wasn't top of mind for people, and then the bad thing starts to happen.

Then, saying, Well, like, you should have known.

Like, Trump's been saying a lot of shit for a long time.

And I really do believe, not the majority, but I really do believe a significant portion of Trump voters, because of the people I know in my personal life who voted for him, they really believed that he was just talking out his ass three-quarters of the time, like he always has been.

And so, now he's been much more effective in bringing that shit to keep the metaphor going

to real life.

And so, and now the people are saying, well, you know, I thought he was just saying things like he always did.

Like, you know, how much of that do you push back on them?

And then how much collateral damage do you allow to the people who did not vote for him?

Because it's still disproportionately marginalized people who are getting hurt by the worst things he does.

I don't think they're ever going to draw that line.

I mean, we've seen these fucking people.

They will draw a line the second Trump tells them, despite him looking them in the eye as he's them into the dirt

he draws an imaginary line

and they blame him every fucking time every time that is true but i think what like here's where i'll compliment democrats which is kind of crazy but i think what they're doing right now with the shutdown mitigates that a bit because they're they're cutting off that line and going okay look let's stop and talk here what's about to happen is the republicans fault and we're literally pausing the government to make that clear to you and now they can't escape that line so like they just have to keep using that tactic of like, don't let Trump weasel.

Like,

they beat Trump to the bottom.

They're putting faith in Democrats.

They're doing the right thing.

They beat Trump to the punch.

I got to give him a round of applause.

They've always had a reactive nature to Trump all the time.

And for the first time ever, they set the narrative and made Trump react to it.

And it works.

I mean, it's clear.

That's why Trump does it.

So, congratulations.

Very good work.

Yeah.

Now we just need to get it.

That's a first for the show.

Thanks, everybody.

So, do you guys think that

Schumer learned from last time?

Like it wasn't that long ago that we needed to pass a budget.

And

the risk was shutting down the government.

And Schumer ultimately like waffled and then caved and Democrats,

us included, rose up and were like, what the fuck, dude?

I think Tim was the only one who kind of said like, no, wait, guys, a shutdown is actually really fucking harmful.

I said that too.

I was on the side of don't do it.

Cause then like you didn't have that clear, like right now it's very clear what's on the line.

Back then, it was just sort of like, hey, we're going to try something like shrugging at it so I think this was a much better time to do it because you have a real reason to do it so it so are we complimenting Schumer right now we got

sure I will

well no I will because look he put out a video last night that I actually said was very very good and it was uh it really laid out what the what the challenge was and what they were willing to do and what they weren't willing to do and what would happen if Democrats caved, which was essentially that 15 million Americans would lose their health care and everyone else's premiums would go up and you know time and time again we see that health care is one of the number one issues in this country and they're playing right into it and they're basically saying if we cave your health care is going to go up so we are not going to do that

and the the the the the challenge for trump and the republicans is that the longer this goes on the longer that people start to understand the government services that they've come to rely on and maybe not even know that they're from the government are from the government and they don't get them anymore.

Keep government government out of my social security.

Yeah, keep going.

Yeah, keep their hands off my Medicare was one I think I saw somewhere, something like that.

I think that was Tea Party Days that we saw that stuff

to show you that it wasn't really about healthcare guys.

Yeah, it wasn't about healthcare guys.

It was about the black president.

And, you know, it.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Are you serious?

What?

It was about the black president?

The tea party?

I thought it was about.

Sorry, keep going.

Okay.

Okay.

I think your sarcasm went right over my head but um

uh

yes it was the tea party was mostly about the black president and not about spending because if it was about spending they would have been screaming about george w bush who completely obliterated the deficit um anyways enough i don't know what that means quick sidebar he lost him a deficit

but one thing that that americans do understand and are nervous about is air traffic controllers are paid by the federal government.

And I don't think they're being paid right now.

And I think that we actually saw an increase in the amount of people who were calling in sick

to do this because they're.

I didn't put the air quotes up, but Trump always makes one of the most stressful jobs in America, and you don't want to do it if you're not getting paid.

Shocker.

Right.

Yeah, really.

And they're threatening back pay, too.

They're trying to keep back pay as a bargaining chip on the table, even though Trump was the one who signed the last law saying that you get back pay after a government shutdown.

I think that's a comment on the What the fuck on air traffic controllers, though?

What did he say?

He was asked about it, and he goes, Well, it's just going to be longer lines at the airport.

The Democrats love long lines or something along the lines.

I was like, What the fuck are we talking about?

I don't think the air traffic controllers are in charge of the lines at fucking TSA.

He's usually better at burns.

That's pretty lazy.

That's like

the kind of thing I say to my kids when I'm trying to watch a game or a TV show and they keep asking me questions.

I mean, just say whatever.

I will never not have TSA pre-check because I hate lines.

So I guess I think most of us have that.

I mean,

not that we need to just delete Tim.

Well, right.

But I don't know if we need to necessarily debunk the like Democrats love long lines.

I don't think that one's going to stick particularly well.

But there have been some airports where

they have not had air traffic controllers and other airports have had to take over.

And the regional, especially the smaller places, like it's a real problem and you know americans want air traffic controllers so it's not a really good um that's a bipartisan opinion yeah i feel like we all agree on that right i saw that scene in uh

in uh breaking bad when the air traffic controller yeah

yeah

we don't have to talk about breaking bad again but we we hashed that out pretty well um but yeah that uh that scene still lives in my head um we don't need that um and trump is making it more likely that that kind of stuff happens.

Yeah.

So, you know, Democrats are winning.

Schubert did a great video.

They have been using creators very effectively as well.

I think we've seen a lot of them on the Hill and a lot of them talking to their audiences.

And I know there's a lot of coordination going on, which is great.

So we will see.

But Democrats have the upper hand.

And Donald Trump doesn't like losing.

So I'll be interested to see how much longer he allows this

to go on.

But there is another

thing that MAGA is all been out of shape about guys and this is

when aoc called stephen miller four foot ten and fox news covered that exclusively for like an entire evening

the whole night i i wasn't talking about that but i think anything that disparages uh that awful fascist guy i'm all for

he seems to be and all of maga seems to be very upset about it well MAGA is the biggest, they are the snowflakes.

This is the funniest thing about all of this, right?

Like, they're always like, oh, we're the big, tough men.

And they follow the biggest crybaby on earth.

They follow this little pip squeak, who, by the way, grew up in Santa Monica in a very like affluent area.

And I don't know where this rage came from, but now like seems to hate anybody who isn't exactly like him.

And they just melt down every time AOC

made a height joke and they all lost their minds.

You know, it's this like what I was actually going to make.

Oh, go ahead.

Sorry.

Well, no, I think we can talk about Stephen Miller just for a minute.

No,

I got the impression after he joined the podcast with JD Vance a couple of weeks ago.

And JD Vance was the one, he was, you know, he was the host.

And

he kicked it over to Stephen Miller and he had a look on his face that I can only describe as like contempt.

And it was, it caught me off guard because I don't watch, I try to not watch these people say anything ever.

And in that case, I did.

And the way their body language was very awkward.

And he said something to Stephen Miller along the lines of like, keep it brief.

And like, hey, like, explain this, but and please keep it brief or like keep it to 30 seconds.

And so I start, I got this bug in my head, like, does everybody secretly hate Stephen Miller in, in the, in the Trump administration?

So I started looking it up.

Rolling Stone did a whole expose just about a month ago on Stephen Miller.

And they talked to people who knew him on Capitol Hill when he worked for Jeff Sessions, which I didn't know that he worked for Jeff Sessions as like an aide.

They, they said he was

like psychotically intense.

There were rumors that he played, like they made a rumor that he played with porcelain dolls in his free time because that's the energy that he brought to the room.

And so it was like, oh shit, I kept pulling these threads.

And, you know, like plenary, plenary authority, Luke, like you said that, like that, just that phrase, regardless of what he was going to say about it, we all saw that, I think, that clip that's been going around.

Donald Trump is not a person who uses a phrase like plenary authority.

And I feel like if you use that in his

presence, he'd be like, what the fuck are you talking about?

Like, he has that angry nerd energy that I think is off-putting for everyone, including people on the right.

And so, I don't know.

I've enjoyed living in that space in my head for the last couple of days.

Did you guys see the fucking White House comms director response to this, though?

The 410 comment?

No.

Craziest shit I think of the whole thing.

He made a direct comment to AOC on Twitter.

I don't call it X, about how apparently she must be used to the little things in life.

Jesus.

Oh, my God.

That's fucking shameful.

It's the fuck.

It's the White House in a fucking nutshell right there.

Well, the problem is that

Donald Trump's inner circle are all a bunch of hanger-ons

and they are all clawing at each other to get closer to Trump.

So they aren't friends with each other.

They're all like.

At best,

you know,

when it's convenient for them to be friendly, they do.

But it's just a bad group of people because Donald Trump is a bad person and bad people follow bad people.

And that's what we're seeing here.

Look at his faith advisor or ex-faith advisor.

Oh, yeah.

What happened to that guy?

Nothing good.

Raised a 12-year-old girl for four years.

That's nothing good.

Yeah.

So, and all the while saying his hail Marys.

It's insane.

You know, you know that those kinds of sentences are coming when we talk about this.

And yet it still catches me off guard every time.

It's still awful.

It's like full-on gallows humor shit.

You're like, I know this is real and it shouldn't be.

And yet it is.

And I have to

go to soccer practice the end of the week.

Like, nothing is happening.

I think what we talked about last episode in like we need bullies.

I think this is like what's happening to Stephen Miller and his meltdown, his literal like brain melting during a CNN interview.

If you make fun of people like this,

it completely dismantles their ability to go on offense.

So, you know, I

think that, you know, protesters, if they're going to take the time to make a sign, like you should make pictures of Stephen Miller as golem and call him short king.

Like that type of thing ending up in a newspaper will drive him insane and make him less effective in what he's attempting to do is use the military as an absolute force through the plenary authority of the United States president to take take over Illinois, Washington State, California, you name it.

So

these little things that I gain great pleasure out of picking on bullies.

So this is selfish of me.

I want to see more people do that.

And I think that we should use every opportunity that

we can to hurt MAGA feelings.

Well, mockery has been shown to work for in fascist regimes or dictatorships.

It's like once you start breaking down

that, that wall.

And it's Donald Trump's worst nightmare.

That's why they went after him.

And Colbeck.

It's why, it's why Tim Walls's weird comment

hit so well.

And they should have stopped using that.

And it caught us all off guard because it was like,

I'm weird.

I'm awkward as fuck.

We're all weird.

Like, where is this coming from?

But for those, those guys, if you remember all those Peaked in high school boys and girls,

being weird or abnormal was like the worst thing that you could ever be.

And it's like, oh, yeah, I forgot.

They called us weird because they thought that was like the cruelest thing you could say to someone.

We just didn't care because we're like, maybe I just like being weird.

Well, there is another thing that they're being very weird about right now.

And that is the announcement that Bad Bunny will be the halftime performer at the Super Bowl this year, wherever it is in February.

And MAGA had an absolute, complete meltdown, including from the White House.

Because he's Mexican.

That

right?

He's from Colombia.

He's a cocaine dealer.

So, oh, wait, he's Puerto Rican.

They don't know that that's part of the U.S.

They need to go back to Puerto Rico.

They need to leave the U.S.

That is what MAGA is out there saying.

So there have been a lot of crazy

things about this, but my favorite one was by Tomi Laron, who is a right-wing

podcast.

I don't want to talk about Tommy Leonardo.

No, no, we're going to talk about this.

You don't like this one.

You'll like this one.

Because she, it appears in the video that she doesn't understand that Puerto Rico is part of the United States.

Yeah, she does.

And so she, she made some comments to a reporter, whoever it was who would go on that show, and basically said, like, basically said a version of needs to, we need an American performer.

And the person was like,

well, but

Puerto Rico is part of the United States.

And she just had this, like, one of those.

I mean, Tomi Larin has like mastered the art of the dead stare because she doesn't actually know what she's talking about.

And so there's just this like empty glare.

But they even asked Mike Johnson about it.

He's said, I don't know who Bad Bunny is, but then he also said it was a bad idea, which just means he's just parroting whatever everybody else wants him to say.

I don't need to be mad about this.

Right.

Yeah.

The person needs to be singing in english i'm like bad bunny's like the biggest artist in the world right now

like right like him and taylor swift are like the the two biggest ones and

like what

i know we can do i know what we can do we can get zach bryan instead

oh wait they're all fucking butthurt about him too yeah so what was that luke what what did he do what did he drop the other he's dropping an anti-ice protest song and i you know i think he's a bad person like personally, but at least he's doing this.

I don't know anything about him.

Why is he a bad person?

He's an abuser.

Yeah, not great.

What was that?

What was that?

Oh, that was a dog.

That was a frosting.

That was a dog shaking.

I was going to say that was frosting.

I could hear a dog shaking from a mile away.

Yeah.

But isn't it funny?

Isn't it funny, though, that they like all collectively lose their mind because a Spanish-language pop star basically is going to be performing for what, 15 minutes at the Super Bowl?

Like, who gives a shit to be there?

There is a reason that they give a shit.

It's because when they hear people speak other languages, they feel stupid and they feel afraid.

And I'm saying that as, you know, as a former conservative, like that, that is why,

you know, Spanish used to bother me on the train when I was a kid.

I like, I wish that that wasn't the truth, but that's the way that I felt.

And that is why so many people get upset about the idea of bad body being

at the Super Bowl.

It is because it makes them feel stupid.

And that

is what we should talk about is that MAGA just has low self-esteem.

They're afraid of things they don't understand.

And rather than educate themselves, they'd rather just spew hate.

I think that's the key piece there because I also, I don't, I speak

white guy English in the suburbs.

Like, I'm sorry.

That's the, that's the only English.

I know that's the only language I know.

I also feel stupid when I hear people speaking Spanish because I think I should learn Spanish.

Why am I so stupid?

Everybody else is bilingual and they're smarter than me.

And I'm stupid.

I tried and I could not.

It's impossible.

But that's because I know how to deal with emotions.

When I feel stupid, the first thing I ask is, is it my fault?

And

And when they feel stupid, they just externalize it.

Like, obviously, I am the only real American.

so like if you start with that default position then anything that isn't it that isn't part of that persona that part that identity um is an attack on it and they they don't know how to reconcile unpleasant emotions and so they just turn everything into fear anger or sometimes physical violence well they're also every day they're all they're told every day all day long that their problems are somebody else is caught somebody else caused those problems yeah right whether they're listening to a podcast or whether they're on facebook or whether they're watching fox news they are being told especially

people of

Hispanic descent are,

you know, they're running over the borders illegally and they're, you know, they're raping and killing everybody, even though they're not.

And, you know, they're told these things and then they see this bad bunny guy that they don't understand and they lose their minds.

But it's funny that they say like, well, we need an American halftime when we've had Paul McCartney, we've had you two,

you know, people that are not Americans at all.

I'm sure there's some other ones in there.

Copy, I think.

Oh, did Copelay do it?

Yeah.

I think Copeland did it one year.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They're a very sick.

I feel like that show is kind of mid, though.

I feel like American for them is maybe just like a euphemism for white.

Yeah.

White English.

White in English.

White.

Yes.

It's definitely.

I think you might be onto something, Rich.

I think especially how Kenry Lawrence went last year.

You know, they're all like, well, how could you do this?

Like, would you what?

Put the most popular hip-hop artist on stage.

Who's literally one Pulitzers for his fucking writing?

Because he is a fucking genius, a genius, like the best rapper of all time by far.

But it all comes back to the fact that

they should call MAGA the grievance party.

Because that's all it is, is grievance.

You did this to me.

And it's like, well, what about what you're doing to other people?

Like, it's just, it's.

That's just America.

Yeah.

Right.

America is doing it to them.

And they're part of America.

Right.

The party of identity policy.

Grievance.

So a lot of people, like, I run run an organization called Veterans Fighting Fascism, right?

A lot of people get confused about what fascism is, and they think that it's a label like Democrat or Republican, right?

Fascism has certain elements of it.

It's a way of thinking.

It's a way of being.

And MAGA, I wish I recognized this earlier in my life.

I didn't until I got a degree in political science.

But MAGA is a fascist party.

And a big part of that is grievance is a core tenant of everything,

everything that they believe that they do and what rallies them to support Trump.

And it's, it's what makes Trump so uniquely dangerous is he has figured out a way to leverage that grievance.

And

through that, you know, he has pushed the Overton window to a point where we have massed agents standing on the stop, on the top of buildings, shooting protesters in the face with pepper balls.

Like a year ago, that person would have been tried.

Like they would have gone to jail for that.

Yep.

Like caught on camera.

A white guy was the victim, by the way.

That is probably the only reason they would have gone to jail.

But like Trump's fascism has normalized state violence against civilians in a way that we have not seen,

you know,

at all in my lifetime.

Yeah.

I mean, the George Floyd protests, this was like mid-COVID.

And so I think a lot of people just had a lot on their plate

or early COVID.

But the George Floyd protests were were really, really

severe, rightfully so, obviously.

But it was very bad.

And he got close to,

you know, invoking, he threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act back then.

That was, you know, it's like.

put it on my tab at that point, you know, like mid-2020, everything was a fucking nightmare.

And so I think people, you know, didn't maybe spiral quite as much because the presidential election was right around the corner, but it was really bad.

And he wanted to do all of these things.

But I think because he was coming into an election, you know, there were more things that he had to, you know, I think consider politically.

And so he didn't.

But certainly he's trying to get us to a place where that is more normal as we look at like Chicago and Portland.

There's going to be dual hearings today, the day that

the episode releases,

in Portland and Chicago determining if these uh deployments are are

going to be allowed.

Um, and he's already threatened again, you know, for like the hundred billionth time this year to invoke the insurrection act, um, which would to get around slow judges and slow governors and mayors that don't cooperate.

That's how he described it, not to quell a rebellion or an actual insurrection, but to get around politically inconvenient barriers for him.

So I don't know.

We should maybe talk about that because I'm certainly getting a lot of comments from people saying,

you know, martial law is coming.

It's not martial law and the insurrection actor, not the same thing, but people are in a scared place in their head.

So, like, what happens over the next week?

Yeah, well,

I think we should name why people are scared.

And that's because there are creators like Aaron Parnas who just go out and repeat, you know, headlines and take the worst possible sky is falling thing and they do endless videos about it.

Like that, that, and a lot of our audience, I know, listens to creators like that, and it's not good.

Like there, there's a reason that I don't do that.

And that's because I feel it's fundamentally wrong to cause mental distress to people delivering bad news all the time without giving them anything to do, anything that empowers them.

It's paralyzing and it feels and it and it does feel manipulative after a while because we've we've been trained to be in this headspace by cnn and msnbc and a lot of the the left-leaning networks do just as much fear-mongering um as the right because it's incredibly effective you're you're craving a dopamine spike of good news and you just keep coming back getting lower and lower and lower and then they're like here's a you know puppy riding a turtle at the end of the broadcast and you're like well everything is better now and that's been that's how we've been trained by the news for like 15, 20 years.

And so it's, it's not a new thing, but it is so fucking frustrating to watch it just persist at a time when I think really more than ever, we need to like, we, we're all afraid all the time.

I wake up every fucking day, half an hour before my alarm in some sort of a panic state and I have to work my way out of it.

We don't need to be more afraid.

It's not, that, that is not where we're at in, in, in what people need.

We need anything else.

Yeah.

I mean, I think the the question starts to become: how far is Trump willing to go on all this stuff, right?

I know that's it.

That's the set, and nobody seems to know the answer.

But like, I think there are clues we can use that can chill us out a little bit with a lot of this stuff.

Because Trump's sort of like superpower is he knows the line, and then he goes up to the line and like peeks over it and goes, nah, I'm not killing it.

He tickles it just a little bit.

But he threatens what crossing the line forever.

Like he'll get up to that line and like, you know, tiptoe and dance on it for fucking ever and pretend like he's going to jump right over.

And he almost never, not to say he hasn't.

Like Like, Ice, the stuff Ice is doing, I'd argue, has gone over that line.

Deplorable.

But like, he's slow play, like, what he tries to do is he dances on that line so long that the line moves.

And then he can, that's, that's his strategy.

So, like, I never expect some big, like, holy shit, the military's just rolling into a city kind of thing because that's just not his way of acting.

He, like, threatens it for a year.

And then when he finally does some version of it, people are like, all right, see, it wasn't that bad because he set a different expectation.

Yeah.

But the context is

the reaction to the Charlie Kirk murder that we saw last month, like that in the minds of many Americans

started to justify the type of violence that like ICE is doing as a response.

Yes.

So we can't just think of Trump as the lone actor.

We have to think about the stochastic terrorism.

of Trump, you know, coming out, picking targets, you know,

calling as of the day we're recording this, calling for the arrest of the mayor of Chicago.

That type of thing, when the arrest doesn't happen, it makes these crazy MAGA morons think that they need to go out and be a vigilante and like take action.

We saw that years ago with Trump doing this to judges and districts' attorneys and attorneys general.

This

like Trump is not the lone actor, and we're reaching a point where folks on the left and these meme shooters who are unaffiliated and you can't put on a clean political spectrum, they are actors in this too.

So, what I fear most,

maybe fear is not the right, what I expect is

that there will be other acts of violence that will give Trump the opportunity to step over that line.

He will have the political capital necessary to step over that line.

And I think it'll happen

sooner than we might want it to.

Well, and I think it's important to go back to the left-leaning creator space, as we are all creators, even though I don't really like that term.

You know,

the challenge,

the positive of that ecosystem is like what we're seeing with the shutdown, where like it's, we're able to amplify messages and tailor them to different audiences and we're winning.

The bad side is that there is, there's no like journalistic code of ethic.

Like journalists have a standard that they have to meet.

And when you're an individual with a phone, all the only standard you have to meet is is your set is whatever you set for yourself.

So there are people out there, like the one that was named, that, you know, they...

I get it.

No, it's all right.

You said it.

It's fine.

That, that ramp up because that's the social media algorithms reward

that type because it's all about engagement.

The way you get people to engage.

is by scaring them, making them mad or making them laugh or making them cry.

It is somewhat different.

Horrified, shocked, horror.

Yeah, all of these things, right?

If you're just reporting, like, well, Trump said for the 18th time that he's going to do the Insurrection Act, even though he never fucking does it, like that video will bomb.

If you say, you know, we're getting close to this moment.

Alarm bells are going off.

It's also, it's the

alarm bells are going off.

Like, da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

Check back in in four hours.

Right.

Not only do you guarantee this video, you guarantee the next video.

That crazy.

Same shit cable news has been doing forever.

right it's the it's the exact same thing um except even less standards because you know i mean cable news can still get sued and you know fox had to pay almost a billion dollars well three quarters of a billion dollars to settle a lawsuit where they lied about dominion but individual people don't have that and i think we have to do a better job on our side i don't think anybody here does it of like using rage and anger when it is appropriate and in the appropriate context.

But if you are just doing it to build an audience and to basically build a mob, it can be a very dangerous thing.

And it's very bad for people's mental health to hear that all the time.

And also leads to apathy, because if you are told there aren't going to be elections next year, there's going to be martial law, people aren't going to vote.

Right.

And that's what the right father says.

Right.

It's paralyzing.

Fear is paralyzing if you don't pair it with either a call to action or hope that just makes you think, well, I'm going to wake up tomorrow and

I think I will be able to do something to help.

If you don't at least have that, that's when people get to a really bad place.

And then

when you're hopeless, that's when bad, far worse things happen.

People are capable of a lot worse stuff when they have no hope.

So we don't.

And whether that's inaction or whether that's self-destructive action or publicly destructive action.

So we cannot let, I like this country still.

I don't want it to be a fucking dumpster fire civil war thing where everybody's killing each other.

Fuck that.

Fuck all of that.

I have kids.

But I also don't want that for people.

So let's, let's, let's not do that.

I think when I look at like ICE and the National Guard, one thing that really shocked me after the CK thing

last month was

nobody could prevent social from showing that fucking horrible, traumatizing video to everybody.

And

I thought about that in the context of like, you know, North Korea,

Germany in the 30s and 40s.

Fascist control of media outlets is something that goes hand in hand.

And like they're, they, he tries to control everything he can, but nobody controlled that.

When, when, when bad things happen, I saw that priest get shot in the head with a pepper fucking bullet.

It's six different videos, I think, this morning in Chicago.

Those things being seen are what keep Trump honest and will have to keep Trump and not just Trump, but the Trump administration and ICE honest.

Because when that shit starts to get out.

It's like that monk that's fucking self-immolated in the...

That's all I have to say.

And you get that image in your head of this monk sitting there on fucking fire.

It is visually traumatizing to see bad things happen and it fucks people up and makes them want to make that stop.

And so we need to,

I hate seeing bad things, but when those bad things happen, let's make sure everybody knows all of this shit is happening because of Donald Trump and because of Donald Trump's Republicans in Congress who have given him permission to do whatever he wants.

Well, this is why there have been politicians on the left who have said, if you see this stuff, record it.

Record everything you can, because people need to see this stuff.

It goes back to, we've talked about this a few episodes ago.

I think it was Emmett Till, the story of Emmett Till,

who was brutally murdered by a white mob because they claimed that he whistled at a white girl, which the evidence is very, very slim on that.

And then I think they dumped the body in a river.

And at the funeral,

it was a closed casket.

And his mom said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I need the world to see what they did to my son.

And you can look that photo up to this day.

It is horrific.

And it led to some positive change.

So yes, there's, there's, you know, a time and a, in a place for that stuff.

And I've actually argued for a long time, even though it's uncomfortable for people that show the gunshot victims.

Right.

Show the mass shooting victims.

I mean, if the families are okay with it, like, if I am ever the victim of that, show my body.

Because the thing is, the people do not understand.

Like when you hear about something like, oh, someone got shot with a pepper ball.

It's like, oh, okay, a rubber bullet.

Like, whatever.

It bounced right off.

That shit like can do serious damage it could you could go blind hit you in the throat like there's lots of very bad things kill you and also just seeing the carnage as much as i hate it i think people need to see it yeah

in in the spirit of what we're talking about i want to offer people a resource so my nonprofit task force butler institute has two instruction manuals on the website you can go to taskforcebutler.org we have our community response guide that is very entry-level this is for people who don't consider themselves activists, don't typically go out and protest.

This is really accessible stuff on how you build community and gather evidence of criminality.

Now, while this was written to gather evidence of criminality by hate groups, it also applies to ICE.

You do the same things.

It'll tell you like how to take photos,

the way to preserve evidence and everything, right?

The more advanced that we have, a more advanced version that we have is called the Street Teams Guide.

This is for people who are regularly out in the street, who are protesting, who have a trusted crew.

You can get more,

you can get stronger evidence if you're working with a team.

So

our point here at Find Out is not to scare you.

It is not to make you feel hopeless as bad as all of these things.

you know, may be.

We talk about Trump being an authoritarian and we all have to deal with that.

But we're doing this because because we believe that there's a way out.

Otherwise, we would all leave and we'd all shut up.

Right.

Well, it's more important than ever to do that because we can no longer rely on legacy or mainstream media to carry our water.

I mean, most of them have paid Trump off in these silly lawsuits.

And we saw this week, last week, that CBS News has purchased Barry Weiss's free press substack and are going to name her for $150 million

and are going to, which is just fucking

insane.

And they're going to, she is becoming the editor-in-chief of CBS News.

She is a

journalist, quote, unquote, that has basically made her entire name off of going after anti-woke behavior, which

Anti-woke behavior is just like being a reasonable non-racist person.

but has, but she is now going to be in charge of editorial at CBS News.

And this is why street teams, people on the street, and frankly, to be self, to be entirely self-promotional, why we are doing this here at the Find Out Podcast and Find Out Media.

Because

it has, we have to continue to talk about this stuff and we have to make sure that the information is getting out to the public because we can't rely.

I mean, CBS News, like that, Dan Rather, like I used to to watch him growing up, and you would trust what he had to say.

And, you know, and now Barry Weiss is the person

who couldn't hack it at the New York Times because she claimed it was too woke.

I'm like, what on earth are you going to do?

So at the risk of going out over our skis, I think we should also talk about what we're trying to build with our community.

Yeah.

Like

we, we are.

I am not.

This is actually the opposite of what I want to do.

So I'm going to hand it over to Tim and let Tim talk about what we're building.

So we're, you know, I think that we all understand that pretty much every social media app and most of the legacy media is all in control of billionaires that do not have our political best interest in mind.

I mean, CBS is owned by Paramount, which was purchased by Larry Ellison, who owns Oracle and is about to own TikTok as well.

And he is a friend of President Trump.

So what we are trying to do, Luke, as well, I'm going to throw your name in there because you're both

is we are going to build an online community where our followers can come and have conversations about sometimes it will be about politics, sometimes maybe it's just about a movie or sports or music, because part of being informed is also being able to have fun as well.

Because we can't, when you're talking about this doom scrolling and these people telling you that every everything is fucked, a lot of it is, not all of it.

We also need outlets.

And like, we hear from so many of you in red states who feel like you're alone.

And we want to create community because, one, it's good for everybody to have a community.

Everybody needs a community.

And two, it will lead to more action in, you know, winning as many seats as we can in the House next year, taking back the Senate as well, and then preparing for that monster battle two years later, which is for the White House.

So we're not ready yet, but we are building it.

We'd also love to hear from you about what you would like to see it, because this is, I mean, it's for us, but it's also for you.

And we don't want algorithms telling you which things you should see and which things you shouldn't.

We want you to be able to have conversations with people across the country.

I mean, everybody and everybody is welcome.

And hopefully in the next few weeks, we will have more to say about that.

But we realized that we need to build something on our own because otherwise we will be beholden to a billionaire who will not have our best interest.

And we just cannot have that right now.

We will still use all those channels to reach out to people, but we are going to build this community.

So please in the comments on this and or you can email us at hello at findoutpodcast.com and tell us what you want to see about it.

So that is what that is.

I want to see $150 million

so that we can sell ourselves to Paramount.

That's what I want to see.

Are we?

Yeah.

We promise to not sell to a right-wing billionaire.

I'm going to just promise that for everybody.

If Larry Ellison comes with $150 million to my door right now, like we're going to at least have a conversation about what this looks like.

So

I'll take money from bad people and then use it against them.

That's the thing, right?

Like, that's, that's the, that's the, that's the thing.

So, you know what else?

You know what else I see right now?

I see a great, a great hoodie on Rich right now.

Do you want to show the crew what you got?

Yes, but I should have.

I'm like regretting not wearing the five faces hoodie.

Rich doesn't have pants on.

That my wife.

He can't stand on that now.

That my

that's all right.

I'm a, I'm a, I'm a cock beta soy boy.

I'm just like a Ken doll.

I'm bald from the waist down.

Absolutely harmless.

But yes, you have a very lovely hoodie.

Imagine that my wife just got the the five faces one.

That's what I was going to say.

So my wife just got it.

She was like, you got to get me the five.

Like, she only wants Tim's face on a hoodie.

The rest of them are like collateral damage.

But she, she saw the five faces and she's like, I have to have, she asked me like every day for six days, like, when is it going to be here?

So it just got here yesterday and she immediately pulled it on.

Um, and then sat on the couch.

Well, we're both wearing the very first ever.

Yeah.

I actually have my sweatshirt out there and I was going to, I was going to wear it and then take it off to have this, but it's so goddamn hot in this room.

I couldn't, I couldn't stand it.

Uh, new shit on.

Oh, Luke's got the love.

I love that shirt.

The tree, the tree is good, I love the

popular, and the five faces are popular.

You know, this one's not very popular anymore, but no one likes Newton.

No one likes Newton every day.

I'm just more upset about it.

I'm watching the sales, and no Newtons, no one's buying them.

You're breaking Chris's heart.

Yeah, yes, gotta help me.

If someone wants to make Chris happy,

go buy one of those Newton shirts because they're made in America, They're union-made,

they're comfortable, and

we reduce the cost a little bit, the price a little bit, to make it easier for you to all buy.

So if you want to get one of those, you can go to findoutpodcast.com.

And a lot of you have.

So thank you for doing that because it helps to fuel this

business and help us grow.

So we really appreciate it.

And also we appreciate everybody who's become a paid subscriber on Substack, which you could do at findoutpodcast.substack.com.

All of these things help us build this media company.

We are going to be building more shows

with more people.

We'll have a lot more information about that soon.

But the more that you support us, the more we can move faster.

So we really appreciate that.

And with that, we're actually at 12 o'clock on the dot.

I have to run to a meeting.

So we're going to end this.

But thank you, everybody.

Keep up.

Keep telling your friends about why the government is shut down and who is responsible for that, because that is working.

Word of mouth is incredibly, incredibly powerful in this moment.

So keep telling those friends, even tell your MAGA uncle who doesn't want to hear it.

You know, do that, and we will win this thing.

And hopefully, at the end of the day, more people will be able to keep their health care, which is the most important part here.

So, with that, thank you all for listening, and we will be back on Tuesday.

Have a great weekend, everybody.