transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:01] Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2:
[00:07] This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Robert Evans. This episode recovering the week of April 16th to April 22nd. James, some small news items at the start?

Speaker 3:
[00:29] Yeah, a few things I want to discuss up top. The United States government appears to be running multiple propaganda sites with associated X accounts that are posing as Iranian media. One of the accounts is located in Florida. This is not massively uncommon in a conflict side to this, right?

Speaker 4:
[00:48] No.

Speaker 3:
[00:49] The information war is part of the war.

Speaker 2:
[00:51] This is what like a actual PsyOP is. Like this is what the United States PsyOP operations are.

Speaker 3:
[00:56] Yeah, the PsyOP is not like the woman soldier that you follow on Instagram.

Speaker 4:
[01:00] This isn't new for the US to be doing. It is new for it to be like this sloppy. I think that's probably fair to say this is like a sloppier than normal.

Speaker 3:
[01:09] Yes. That's what's remarkable here is that it's shoddy. Yeah, and that is not a good sign for the whole US capacity in this regard.

Speaker 4:
[01:18] But it depends on how you think about it.

Speaker 3:
[01:20] Yeah. Yeah, sure. Secondly, a number of former DHS, Department of Homeland Security and INS, Immigration and Naturalization Services officials have filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court explaining why the cancellation of the Haiti TPS temporary protected status is illegal. They do include Janet Napolitano, which is nice. But a ton of people from Obama, Bush, even Clinton admin for DHS, INS were part of this amicus brief. An IDF soldier has been photographed destroying a statue of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in Lebanon, destroying it with a splitting maul. A lot of reporting called it a sledgehammer. That's not what a sledgehammer looks like. I know I get really picky about this, but maybe if you haven't worked with your hands, you should write things that can be read by someone who has and scan and not be completely ridiculous. The IDF has launched an investigation and so far subjected two soldiers to 30 days of military detention, which is more than they would get if they had killed actual Christian children in Palestine. Says a lot. I think that this image is like, we spoke about this in our group chat, but it's one image, it's comic book evil. There are many reasons why this is the thing that's blowing up for them. Ken Paxton is investigating ActBlue. ActBlue is a major donation website for Democratic candidates. He's claiming that they have continued to accept gift card donations, which could hide donations from foreign individuals or corporations, or even states, I suppose. The United States government's plans to send Afghans who are stuck in limbo in Qatar to the Democratic Republic of Congo are being reported on by the New York Times. Just for some context here, I saw people sharing this and thinking that this referred to Afghan SIV recipients who are resident in the United States. That is not what it's referring to. It's referring to people who the Biden administration removed from Afghanistan or wherever they were, often Pakistan, and then took them to Qatar as a temporary stopping off point where they would continue to do their vetting and background checks. This is normal for refugee admissions as opposed to asylum admissions. And then the 2024 election happened, Democrats lost, and those people have been in limbo ever since. It appears the Trump administration has been trying to get them, various states in Africa, to accept them. And it's now proposing the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country which already has a significant refugee crisis.

Speaker 2:
[03:50] Ron DeSantis, who is term limited as governor, has been jockeying for a position inside the Trump administration. Axios reports DeSantis has expressed interest in being the secretary of war, attorney general, or even a Supreme Court justice. Trump is expected to reclassify marijuana as soon as maybe today. We're recording this on Wednesday, April 22nd.

Speaker 4:
[04:14] Fingers crossed.

Speaker 2:
[04:15] Earlier this week, Trump signed an executive order to advance psychedelic treatment for mental illness and possibly reschedule certain substances which have completed phase three clinical trials.

Speaker 5:
[04:25] Yeah, this is the real sign that their internal polling is showing Trump really closing on getting below 30% approval.

Speaker 1:
[04:32] That's the most.

Speaker 4:
[04:33] Whatever gets us to actual legal marijuana, it.

Speaker 1:
[04:37] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[04:37] Like, at this point.

Speaker 3:
[04:40] It's such an easy win and it's been an easy win for the last three presidents in it.

Speaker 4:
[04:44] Anyone could have done it. It's a gun that's been left on the ground and fucking Trump finally just picked the damn thing up after it got covered in an inch and a half of dust. Like, unbelievable.

Speaker 5:
[04:57] They're desperate, keep pushing. We can get like completely legal LSD, I believe in us.

Speaker 2:
[05:02] On Fox News' Sunday morning show, Cash Patel announced that the FBI will soon make arrests related to Trump's claims that the 2020 election was stolen. With Patel saying, quote, they try to thwart our elections and rig the entire system.

Speaker 4:
[05:18] I can announce on your show that we've got all the information we need.

Speaker 6:
[05:21] We're working with our prosecutors, the Department of Justice and their attorney general, Todd Blanch.

Speaker 4:
[05:26] And we are going to be making arrests. And it's coming.

Speaker 6:
[05:29] And I promise you, it's coming soon.

Speaker 2:
[05:31] Patel later said it's a conspiracy case and that, quote, we have the information to back President Trump's claims. On Tuesday, voters in Virginia approved a redistricting measure, which would likely move four Republican seats to Democrat seats in the midterms. This measure passed with 51.5 percent of the vote, totaling over three million votes. Virginia joins California in approving new congressional maps to combat the recent gerrymandering in red states like Texas at the behest of Trump. But now with Virginia, Dems are actually up one seat nationally. Ron DeSantis has called for Florida lawmakers to meet next week to consider redistricting in their state. Trump has called the Virginia election, quote unquote, rigged, saying that Republicans were winning until a, quote, massive mail-in ballot drop, unquote, which is just how elections work. That's just how voting works.

Speaker 4:
[06:30] Yeah, we were winning until more people voted for the other guy.

Speaker 2:
[06:34] Until we counted more votes that showed that we did not win.

Speaker 5:
[06:37] We just live in the 2016 election forever now.

Speaker 3:
[06:40] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[06:41] I was doing pretty well in that boxing match until it started.

Speaker 3:
[06:46] Until the other guy punched me in the face.

Speaker 2:
[06:48] The margin of victory closely matches the result of the 2024 presidential election in Virginia. Republicans have challenged the Virginia redistricting in court since before Tuesday's election and the Supreme Court of Virginia ruled that the measure could go to a vote while legal challenges continue. This is the second most important election this week, the most important one, obviously being the Webbies, in which I think we can announce we have won. In a totally unrigged election. The only fair election that this country has seen possibly in like over 25 years.

Speaker 3:
[07:23] That's why they selected Claude as person of the year.

Speaker 4:
[07:26] Clearly the Webbies in 2026 are the only election that's going to affect anybody's lives. I think we can all agree on that. Anyway, so as you probably are aware because the president shouts about it every 10 minutes. There's a ceasefire currently in effect in the conflict with Iran. The war of choice that we started with Iran. James is going to talk a little bit more about that in a second. But because of the stand down, there's been kind of time for both forces to reassess things and time for outside people to reassess like kind of what we can tell about what's going on obviously in the immediate wake of Operation Epic Fury. And as recently as last Tuesday, President Trump said, We've taken out their Navy, we've taken out their Air Force, we've taken out their leaders. On April 8th, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called Operation Epic Fury a historic and overwhelming victory on the battlefield. By any measure, Epic Fury decimated Iran's military and rendered it combat ineffective for years to come. Now, that last sentence, the first part is technically accurate but not in the way that Hegseth means.

Speaker 3:
[08:36] No one knows what decimate means anymore.

Speaker 4:
[08:38] Decimate literally means to destroy like a tenth of a group, right? And yeah, that's pretty accurate, right? But the second part of that sentence, rendered it combat ineffective for years to come, is not accurate. Neither is Trump's statement that we've taken out their Navy and their Air Force. CBS published an article today reporting that roughly 60% of the naval arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is still in existence, including fast-hacked speedboats. And Iranian air power, while it's been degraded, is still significantly more functional than actually I had assumed. About two-thirds of the Iranian Air Force is still believed to be operational, despite the massive US and Israeli airstrikes largely targeting air production and storage facilities. The fact that you're looking at two-thirds of Iran's Navy and Air Force still functional and at least about half their ballistic missile stockpile and their launch system stockpile intact, that's a significant difference from what the administration has claimed. And evidence that were we to continue to press with the open fighting part of this conflict, it would be years probably before you're talking about like a complete degradation of Iranian fighting capability if that was ever achieved. Like when you factor in the United States would continue to suffer casualties and we've already been losing more of, you know, particularly our interceptor missile capability and a number of advanced systems like AWACS, then we can afford to replace James.

Speaker 3:
[10:15] Yeah. So I want to talk a little bit about the ceasefire itself, right? And then like what's been happening there. Let's start with like, I guess, straightforward news updates and then get into the ceasefire. The Navy intercepted an Iranian vessel in the Arabian Sea this week, close to the Iran-Pakistan border. The Tuska was warned. Imagine they use an LRAD to warn it. People see LRADs on ships sometimes and think they're coming to like make you deaf. This is one of the reasons ships have LRADs. They could have also used a radio, if they can talk to them on the radio, if they're receiving communications on the radio. They then ordered it to evacuate its engine room. They then shot out its engine with the five-inch gun.

Speaker 4:
[11:00] First time they've gotten to do that in 40 years.

Speaker 3:
[11:02] Yeah, I was looking at it. I guess it was since, what, 1988, the last time that I was thinking it's been a little, it's been a minute since this ship engaged another ship with this main gun. It was the USS Spruance, a guided missile destroyer that did that. Subsequently, US Marines on the Tripoli, we reported on when the Tripoli first moved towards that region, right? We specifically said that this is one of the capacities that it had. They boarded the ship. So they transferred a helicopter and then boarded the ship. The US has since inspected other ships, including outside of the St. Carmel. So the US perceives its blockade to be global, right? Of Iranian assets, of Iranian vessels and the quote unquote shadow fleet, which we've already explained on ED. So I'm not going to go into depth on what that means. The IRGC also fired several vessels in the street. There is some reporting that one of them, an Indian tanker, had paid a fee in cryptocurrency to what turned out to be a scammer. I'm certain that these scams exist because there have been multiple warnings of them. I haven't seen any evidence that is satisfactory enough for me to be confident that that particular ship had been scammed. But perhaps the most compelling piece of evidence, the ship is called the Sanmar Herald, is this audio that we're going to play right here.

Speaker 6:
[12:29] Sepah Navy, Sepah Navy, this is Motorenga Sanmar Herald. You gave me clearance to go. My name second on your list.

Speaker 4:
[12:38] You gave me clearance to go.

Speaker 3:
[12:39] You are firing now.

Speaker 6:
[12:40] Let me turn back.

Speaker 3:
[12:42] Just in case it wasn't clear, you gave me clearance to go, you're firing now, let me turn back. It does seem that that vessel believed that it had clearance to go and was then fired upon. This morning, there were some O-Sint pictures of IRGC. They look like fast attack boats, things Robert was talking about in the Strait of Hormuz.

Speaker 4:
[13:03] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[13:03] Something of a flex.

Speaker 4:
[13:05] Yeah, we still have a Navy.

Speaker 3:
[13:08] Yeah. I think that's important in the context of a ceasefire. I want to explain very briefly. There's been a lot of contradictory reporting on when, where, and how negotiations are going to happen. The ceasefire was set to expire the day we're recording Wednesday. On Tuesday, we saw Donald Trump unilaterally extend the ceasefire by truthing quote, based on the fact that the government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so, and upon the request of Field Marshal Asim Munir and Prime Minister Shabazz Sharif of Pakistan, we have been asked to hold our attack on the country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal. I have therefore directed our military to continue the blockade, and in all other respects, remain ready and able and will therefore extend the ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted and discussions are concluded one way or the other, President Donald J. Trump. The consensus seems to be that this is not like an infinite extension. This is like maybe less than a week for Iran to either comply with US terms or submit proposals that the US considers acceptable. A lot of that reporting does seem to come from Barak Ravid, who's not very good at journalism, so take it with a pinch of salt. Trump though is correct that the state of Iran is not a unified entity, and I covered this in the piece I did last week on an update on the Iran War. I think there's a tendency from people in the global north to look at a state and see it as like a pyramid. You have the head of state, and then you have government, and then you have legislature, and then you have the people they command, and the military and all the civil bureaucracy. That's not quite how Iran works. And I went into more detail in that episode that I made, so I'm not going to go into it here. But there are a series of overlapping, but not entirely aligned power centers within Iran and within its military capacity, both within its military and traditional sense and within the IRGC. Why this is relevant to the negotiations is it is not possible for politicians to negotiate if they do not believe that they can agree to terms and that their military will then comply with those terms. If the Iranian Foreign Ministry agrees with the US to do something, the IRGC doesn't do it, that then immediately undermines any further negotiations. So when we see, for instance, this morning, a large number of boats going into straight-up Hormuz, that looks a little bit like a flex in the context of this power struggle, in the context of Trump acknowledging that. Trump has once again been truthing this week about Iranian nuclear weapons. I'm just going to read one of his truths, because I think it pertains, it shows that the administration feels that it is weak on this particular accusation. Israel never talked me into the war with Iran. The results of October 7th added to my lifelong opinion that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. Did. Yeah, I don't know what's going on with that sentence.

Speaker 2:
[16:12] Iran can never have a nuclear weapon, comma, did, the word did.

Speaker 3:
[16:17] Yeah, I'm not reading that wrong. It's just a hang-in.

Speaker 4:
[16:21] That's just what he said.

Speaker 5:
[16:23] He's simply senile.

Speaker 3:
[16:24] I can't help you. I'm just saying the words. I watch and read the fake news, pundits and polls in total disbelief. Ninety percent of what they say are lies and made up stories, and the polls are rigged. Much as the 2020 presidential election was rigged, just like the results in Venezuela, which the media doesn't like talking about, the results in Iran will be amazing. If Iran's new leaders, regime change, exclamation mark, close parentheses, are smart, Iran can have a great and prosperous future, President DJT. That's one of the more challenging passages of English language texts that I've ever approached. I speak four or five languages, and that's honestly set me back. But I've tried to give you a good faith reading of it. He's clearly sensitive to the allegation that Israel pushed the US into this conflict, right?

Speaker 2:
[17:16] He's clearly sensitive.

Speaker 3:
[17:19] The last thing that I want to add is that strikes on Kurdish groups have continued despite the ceasefire, despite the renewed ceasefire, the PAK, just two hours after Trump announced the extension of the ceasefire, Tehran sent four drones to attack a PAK base. There have been more injuries in Kurdistan. It doesn't seem that Iran considers any ceasefire to apply to its ongoing attack against the Trogelati groups who are currently in southern Kurdistan inside the borders of Iraq.

Speaker 2:
[17:54] Next up, we will discuss the charges against the SPLC. But first, listen to these ads. Okay, we are back. On Tuesday, April 21st, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Cash Patel announced that a grand jury indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center on 11 counts, including wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering. The indictment argues that the SPLC defrauded their donors by using donation money to pay confidential informants within white supremacist or neo-Nazi organizations. Here is a short clip of the press conference of a reporter asking Todd Blanch a question.

Speaker 7:
[18:49] I just want to make sure I understand you're alleging that the Southern Poverty Law Center was paying the leaders of KKK and other groups to continue their operations. Is that?

Speaker 6:
[19:02] I'm not alleging it. The grand jury returned an indictment that says that. What the investigation found according to the indictment that was returned today is that they were paying. The Southern Poverty Law Center is raising money, asking folks to give them money to dismantle racism. Over a very long period of time, they were using some of the money they raised from donors to pay to, they called them field, basically to informants, to, for information, for access, to just pay them for, for certain, to do certain things. And so yes, that's exactly what the indictment charges.

Speaker 2:
[19:40] The SPLC is a non-profit advocacy organization aimed at quote unquote dismantling white supremacy and exposing hate. They operate a blog called Hate Watch and run a public database of hate groups and far right extremists. This indictment claims that the SPLC has utilized its performance to gain information on far right activity since the 80s. But between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC secretly paid over $3 million to individuals associated with various violent extremist groups, quote unquote, in a clandestine manner.

Speaker 4:
[20:16] Yeah, no one, if you kind of have been in the world of CVE, countering violent extremism, like research or like involved in NGOs in that sphere at all, or been a researcher there, you're probably aware of the fact that the SPLC like has been paying informants. A lot of their scoops are because some Nazi tells on another Nazi, essentially, right? So that part isn't surprising. The weirdness is how the SPLC was going about it and how much fucking money they were giving some of these people.

Speaker 2:
[20:50] The amounts of some of these is exorbitant.

Speaker 4:
[20:52] Yeah, was legitimately shocking.

Speaker 2:
[20:54] And I do want to get into some more details about those amounts and the groups and the sort of nest of fake businesses the SPLC used to distribute this money, according to the indictment. The indictment reads that this was donation money, quote, received under the auspice that the funds would be used to dismantle violent extremist groups. This money was instead being used in part by the SPLC to pay leaders and others within these same violent extremist groups. That money was then used for the benefit of the individuals as well as the violent extremist groups, unquote. Money was funneled to individuals associated with violent extremist groups including the Ku Klux Klan, the United Clans of America, Unite the Right, National Alliance, National Socialist Movement, Arian Nations, and the affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club, National Socialist Party of America, American Nazi Party, and American Front. One informant, according to the indictment, was, a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 Unite the Right event in Charlottesville, Virginia, and attended the event at the direction of the SPLC. This informant made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees. Between 2015 and 2023, the SPLC secretly paid this informant more than $270,000. From 2014 to 2023, more than $1 million was allegedly paid to someone affiliated with the National Alliance, who served as an informant for over 20 years while fundraising for this Nazi group. The Imperial Wizard of the rebooted Imperial Clans of America was a paid informant according to the indictment. This is likely a guy named Bradley Jenkins. An officer in the National Socialist Movement and the Aryan Nations affiliated sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club secretly received more than $300,000 between 2014 and 2020. The former chairman of the National Alliance was secretly paid more than $140,000. While the SPLC website featured an extremist profile page for this individual, likely Eric Glebe. The SPLC also paid the leader of the National Socialist Party of America $70,000 between 2014 to 2016. This individual was a former director of an Aryan Nations faction and a former member of the KKK. This is likely a guy named Paul Mullet, who the SPLC hosts an extremist file web page on their website. A few other unidentified informants are listed in the indictment as well as a claim that the SPLC funneled more than $160,000 from a fictitious entity to an informant, quote, who then sent funds to various violent extremist group leaders, including the former grand wizard of the Knights of the Klu Klux Klan, unquote. That's a lot of money. Now, to obscure the nature of these payments, the SPLC opened a series of bank accounts at multiple banks for various fictitious businesses. These weren't actually incorporated, but they claimed to be businesses with names like the Center Investigative Agency or the CIA. Why? Yeah. Fox Photography, Northwest Technologies, Tech Writers Group, Rare Books Warehouse, Imagery Inc., J&J Electronics, Kelly's Marine, and Turner Personnel.

Speaker 4:
[24:26] Great. Good work, guys.

Speaker 2:
[24:28] Essentially, the DOJ is arguing that the SPLC solicited donations under false pretenses and then transferred that money to extremist groups using a network of fake businesses. To get a conviction, the DOJ will have to argue that this activity constitutes wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering. A conviction will result in the forfeiture of financial gains from the alleged illegal activities. The Right has reacted to this news by calling the Unite the Right rally and kind of the alt-right movement as it existed from this time period a Psi-op or a false flag. Senator Mike Lee, right-wing political influencer Nick Sorter and Elon Musk have boosted these names, getting tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of likes on X, the Everything app. This seems to be a new narrative. It's not really new, I guess, but an enhanced narrative that is emerging among the online right as a way to dissuade some of the uglier parts of that era while still carrying along a lot of the same politics, especially on like the Great Replacement, which is more of a mainstream idea among the conservative movement at this point in time. So they're able to walk away from the uglier kind of imagery and explicitly Nazi elements of this, like the KKK, which is very boomer, very boomer coded thing, the KKK. So they're able to call stuff like that and the Unite the Right rally a Psi-op or a false flag while still reaping the benefits that the alt-right movement achieved by kind of trailblazing certain rhetoric into the conservative mainstream. Right-wing commentators have also used this news to reassert one of their favorite claims that Patriot Front is a Psi-op or a false flag operation, that whenever a group of young Nazis show up in a U-Haul all wearing matching outfits and masks, that this is a staged event by either the Deep State, the Feds, or a group like the SPLC. Patriot Front is not actually named in this indictment. There's no evidence that the SPLC was paying anyone at Patriot Front to inform on the operations of that group. And obviously, paying an individual to inform on the details of an upcoming event like Unite the Right does not mean that the Unite the Right event in Charlottesville was planned or staged by the SPLC. Dozens of people were involved in the planning of this event, and hundreds participated of their own volition. One person in a planning group chat sending info to the SPLC does not mean that this action was staged or fake.

Speaker 4:
[27:13] Anyone who's in the field has had a lot of issues with the SPLC over the last few years, especially people who work for them. I know a lot of good people have worked for them and gotten fucked over by them. They did a lot of union busting to the people who run the SPLC and some of whom are the people who are specifically accused of having committed these crimes. I don't know if I feel like the specific things they have to prove in order to get a conviction are accurate because fundamentally anyone who donated to the SPLC knew that they were like getting shit from informants, you know? I don't think that was it. The amount of money though is shocking.

Speaker 2:
[27:52] That's what they're going to have to defend in court. Yeah, they're going to have to argue that the money that was donated was used for its intended purpose, which was dismantling white supremacists. We'll have to say that the information that they obtained through paying these informants was still in furtherance of that mission, right? That's going to be what they're going to defend in court. Now, obviously, the FBI also uses informants, right? The FBI does this same thing. Famously, the FBI paid the O9A affiliated Joshua Caleb Sutter over $140,000 from 2003 to 2021.

Speaker 4:
[28:26] The FBI funded a publishing house.

Speaker 2:
[28:30] A neo-Nazi publishing house, essentially.

Speaker 5:
[28:32] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[28:34] Which is responsible for, in part, the political direction of the Yadimofin Division. Now, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch has said that, quote, the SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence. And quote, using donor money to allegedly profit off Klansmen cannot go unchecked. Unquote. Patel has said that, quote, this is illegal and this is an ongoing investigation against all individuals involved. The SPLC released a video statement saying that the use of informants was, quote, unquote, necessary and claimed, quote, these individuals risked their lives to infiltrate and inform on the activities of our nation's most radical and violent extremist groups. Unquote. The indictment does not characterize many of these informants as, quote, unquote, infiltrators, but rather individuals who are already members of these groups and were paid by the SPLC to share information and gossip on fellow members. The SPLC statement also said that they, quote, frequently shared what we learned from informants with local and federal law enforcement, including the FBI. We did not, however, share our use of informants broadly with anyone to protect the identity and safety of the informants and their families. Unquote. Like a lot of the people in this field, the FBI knew the SPLC was doing this.

Speaker 3:
[29:53] Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[29:54] After the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Cash Patel announced that the FBI was severing ties with the SPLC, saying the organization had been turned into a, quote, unquote, partisan smear machine that defamed, quote, unquote, mainstream Americans with its hate map.

Speaker 3:
[30:10] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[30:11] Attorney Ed Martin, former head of the DOJ's weaponization working group, as in weaponizing the DOJ against political enemies, shared news of the indictment on X, Everything app and wrote, quote, They killed Charlie and they will pay, unquote. So clearly this prosecution is politically motivated, right? There is political motivations behind deciding to do this right now. The FBI already knew that this was happening to a certain extent, but now they are going after the SPLC as a part of a targeted political prosecution. And this indictment could be seen as part of the anti-Antifa non-profit crackdown.

Speaker 4:
[30:53] Right.

Speaker 2:
[30:54] Last March, CBS News reported that the FBI and the IRS formed a new initiative to investigate fraud at non-profit organizations with suspected links to domestic terrorism, following federal directives to pursue Antifa-aligned groups. A spokesperson from the IRS told CBS News, quote, IRS criminal investigation is collaborating with federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, to investigate individuals and entities that may be funding domestic terrorism or political violence.

Speaker 4:
[31:26] Yeah, it's unfortunate that the SPLC was so reckless and sloppy, and the fucking amounts are shocking and indefensible. And again, not necessarily in a legal sense, like I am very doubtful of the government's case, but I am very angry at the Southern Poverty Law Center. And I don't think it should consent to you to exist as an organization. Like, if it's going to do this.

Speaker 3:
[31:54] Yeah, and like when you combine this, as you say, like anyone who works in this world knows that people working there have had a miserable time for a long time, for a great variety of reasons.

Speaker 4:
[32:03] Yeah, I'm livid at them. This is obviously evidence that the Trump administration is doing what they've said they're doing, that like the DOJ is going to be looking into these like big, you know, liberal and left aligned NGOs, particularly that like are focused in combating the far right. But in terms of this showing any reason to be like scared that they're going to disappear people, like no, the SPLC did something crazy. And I don't think that the charges specifically are valid, but like they opened themselves up to get fucked with by doing something. So not like if one of these people, a million dollars, a million dollars. That's wild. Why do they have a fake company named after the CIA? What are you guys doing?

Speaker 3:
[32:50] Someone thought they were being a really cool secret spy.

Speaker 2:
[32:54] And those are some of the charges that may be able to stick, is the sort of stuff about misrepresenting to a federally insured bank. That type of stuff could be easier to argue based on what I've read in the indictment. But of course, that'll get settled in court.

Speaker 3:
[33:08] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[33:09] Yeah. And as a way to sort of close this out, I think one of the things we're running into here is, one of the things that the right is being able to use here is the fact that a lot of these sort of liberal and center-left NGOs absolutely sucked. And like we have covered on this show, a whole bunch of these organizations doing union busting. And like their priorities don't necessarily match what, I would say ours should be. And I think this is something that the Trump administration is going to continue to sort of, in some ways uses a rift point. Like the fact that these groups are doing all of this unhinged shit, right? This is the political consequence of the structure that these NGOs use in the way that they've operated. And now their sort of chickens are coming home to roost.

Speaker 3:
[33:58] I want to talk this week in our immigration segment about the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service. This is the agency tasked with vetting and adjudicating immigration benefits. It's the only immigration agency at DHS that traditionally hasn't done enforcement sweeps, right? So for a while, particularly recently, people there have felt a little out of place at the Department of Homeland Security, right? The idea has been to keep enforcement and processing separate, so that people don't have very reasonable reasons to fear doing the legal process, right? So that people continue to show up to their interviews, to submit their documents, et cetera. Generally, they are funded in large part by immigration fees, and perceived as the friendlier, more welcoming side of the process. Their job historically has not been to root out bad migration as so much as to help people, or at least to process people to do the bureaucratic part of migration. Under the second Trump administration, however, this has changed. There have been detentions at interviews, there have been cancellations of citizenship ceremonies. The USCIS has begun hiring for a new position, and this new position is eligible for remote work, for more remote work than existing hires. And it's called the Homeland Defender. So like we probably many people have seen these Homeland Defender advertisements on x.com, the everything website, right? Homeland Defender has been offered up to $50,000 in signing bonuses. And at the same time as offering remote work benefits for the Homeland Defenders, the agency has been forcing other people to return to offices that could no longer fit the number of staff it had. Under years of work from home, the agency grew and changed, right? Like almost every organization did. And there were reports that you literally had like lawyers sitting in corridors working on their laptops or like trying to perch on a radiator or a windowsill because their offices could fit people, right? And at the same time, the branding around Homeland Defender is not the way that USCIS staff traditionally saw themselves. In Minnesota, USCIS has began re-investigating people admitted with the incredibly highly vetted refugee status. We already spoke about this once today. Refugees are vetted before they even enter the United States. Across the country, executive orders were followed with memos pausing or entirely stopping the process of legal and vetted immigration for people from an increasing number of countries. The legally mandated green card for adult children and siblings of current citizens as well as spouses and minor children of existing permanent residence has gone unfulfilled. This is, quote unquote, family-based migration. They used to call it chain migration, right? That used to be the language on the right. It's something that Trump administration has hated since its first term, right? This has been a thing that they spoke about, and that has been spoken about on the right for some time. These green cards could be reused for employment-based claims, which is going to have a much larger number of people who are already in the country. It's not bringing new people in, or they might just go unused. Resugees are being detained without any clear legal authority and re-quiz about their applications according to reporting in the New Yorker. This means that people are being taken in, detained at an ICE facility, and then quizzed about stuff that they'd already been asked about before they came to the United States when they were doing that vetting. People who are married to United States citizens are being arrested at interviews, even though generally there was an amnesty of people who for instance had overstayed a visa and then got married before. USCIS has also committed significant resources of the agency that may well have been taken away from processing claims and devoted them entirely to investigating naturalizations with the goal of denaturalizing naturalized United States citizens. This is a very difficult process, right? The Afriyim case is the Supreme Court case, which happens this way. It refers to someone who was a Jewish communist or had been in Israel. What it says is the government cannot desitizenize someone because it doesn't agree with their politics, even in a time of anti-communism. Once somebody becomes a citizen, their files are removed from USCIS and they go to the National Record Center. And so calling the presumably tens of thousands of files of naturalized United States citizens, hundreds of thousands over time, millions, right, would require some kind of filter. The most likely way this is being filtered is through their nationality, right? One can imagine, for instance, that the 75 countries Trump has paused green card processes for might be a start or their specific focus on Somali people might even prove a more focused way of doing it, right? They have had some success. This week, a Belizean woman was found guilty of naturalization fraud for submitting a fake divorce decree. She married an American citizen without being divorced from a previous spouse in Belize. They found that she had falsified those documents, right? They are also pursuing a case against a Nigerian man who has already been convicted of fraud and has already been put in prison for that, but they are now pursuing a denaturalization case as well. Virtually every interaction with USCIS now seems to require interviews in person and biometric connection. This means that applicants now have to come into an office where they know that people have been detained. This leads to people being afraid to do that, right? Petitions are slowing down as they're moved around to a dwindling workforce, but we're still focused on processing those as opposed to the growing amount of the USCIS workforce, which is looking for quote unquote fraud in applications or attempting to denaturalize people as we just covered. Among the people waiting without visas are some people who are waiting for special visas, which are given to people who are survivors of human trafficking, gender-based violence or other crimes. This includes children. There's a special immigrant juvenile visa, which every single person I've heard of coming on an SIJ visa has had things happen to them, which I didn't struggle to think about that would keep you up at night. The thought that those people are waiting in limbo because they're trying to denaturalize people is particularly upsetting. I'm sure it's also upsetting to some people who've worked at USCIS their whole life. I know that morale among those people is pretty low, while the agency has changed beyond all recognition in the last couple of years. Talking of changing beyond all recognition, we're going to now pivot from journalism to probably some adverts for online gambling. It will be shocking and jarring.

Speaker 4:
[41:02] I love it.

Speaker 3:
[41:03] You could change your life beyond all recognition if you have a big win at that.

Speaker 2:
[41:08] Or a big loss. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[41:10] You could also change your life that way. Garrison, we're not supposed to mention that.

Speaker 4:
[41:22] We're back, and we all just voted on Forbes.com's newest prediction contest, how many people will be wounded in the next three American mass shootings. I'm excited, there's a big prize for this one.

Speaker 3:
[41:36] Sick.

Speaker 4:
[41:37] Yeah, that's only slightly an exaggeration of what Forbes is actually doing.

Speaker 3:
[41:42] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[41:42] Yeah. It's pretty gross. It's pretty gross.

Speaker 5:
[41:45] It's really hideous.

Speaker 2:
[41:46] It's okay, guys, it's not a market. It's just a prediction platform.

Speaker 3:
[41:50] It's just a prediction platform.

Speaker 2:
[41:52] There's no real money, only social capital.

Speaker 3:
[41:56] That could be the slogan of most journalistic enterprises in 2026, to be honest. Yeah, Forbes has kind of long been a blog rather than a news website, but this is still pretty disgusting.

Speaker 2:
[42:10] Speaking of there being no real money.

Speaker 5:
[42:12] Yeah. Let's talk about the Federal Reserve. So, when we last left our, I hesitate to call them heroes, but when we last left the Federal Reserve Board, there was a very obviously cooked up investigation by the Justice Department into Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell. This investigation doesn't really seem to have advanced at all, but the conflict over Powell and over Powell's replacement has been intensifying in recent weeks. Last week on the 15th of April, Trump threatened to fire Powell if Powell stayed on as basically the temporary Federal Reserve chair after his term expired. Now, the reason this is happening is because Trump's attempt to get someone confirmed to replace Powell has not been going well. If no one is confirmed by May 15th, then the office is just empty and Powell has said that he wants to stay on and become the temporary chair. This is sort of unprecedented. But then again, we've also not ever had the president's open an investigation into the sitting chair of the Federal Reserve causing him to give a reverse hostage video. So where things are right now is that we are getting hearings on Trump's preferred nominee, the man named Kevin Warsh. However, there is a real problem with Warsh as a candidate that doesn't have anything to do with who he is. We'll get to that in a second. The biggest issue that Trump is facing here is that Pom Tillis, who's an outgoing Republican senator is refusing to let any Trump appointee pass through the finance committee unless Trump ends the investigation into Jerome Powell. So this has had everything at a complete standstill. It was sort of unclear that a lot of different Republican senators had threatened to do something like this. But because Tillis is leaving, he's retiring at the end of this session. He's the one who's up there doing it. This has ground the nomination to a halt. We're still getting hearings, but there's no way for him to actually get a vote to get this process out of committee. So, into this morass steps Kevin Warsh, who he's not the most unhinged guy Trump could have picked.

Speaker 2:
[44:45] High bar.

Speaker 5:
[44:46] This is at least nominally on the surface sort of a fed guy. Like he has worked for the Federal Reserve, like Federal Reserve banks before.

Speaker 4:
[44:55] He's not a podcaster, right?

Speaker 5:
[44:58] Yeah. Yes, actually, actually, don't fool me on that. He might have one.

Speaker 4:
[45:04] There's a non-zero chance.

Speaker 5:
[45:06] He might be. I don't know, but I am not willing to say that he is not one. So now, this whole nomination has also become a mess because again, as we've been talking about, the reason why Trump wants to basically take direct control of the Federal Reserve and end Fed independence by installing his guy as a chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, is that he wants to be able to control the Fed so he can control interest rates. He wants interest rates cut. Now, this is coming up a lot in the hearings. So far, Warsh is giving answers that if you've ever watched the testimony of someone who's trying to get onto the Supreme Court, it's a lot like that where he is saying the things that he is supposed to say. He's saying that he opposes interest rate cut. He's saying that the primary job of the Fed is to combat inflation. He's saying that he believes in Fed independence. But he also has said that Trump has not asked him to cut interest rates. Elizabeth Warren, who's been leading the Democratic charge against this, has pointed out a number of things, one of which is, in working order, to get some more of the weird shit with him in a second. But one of the major things here is that the president has said that he's asked Warsh to do interest rate cuts. So somebody's lying here. Warsh isn't giving non-answers about that. I'm also just going to read this quote from the Associated Press. Warren also noted that Warsh has not disclosed all of his financial holdings, which include investments in startups and private companies or the size of those financial stakes. For example, Warsh has said he has holdings in SpaceX and Polymarket, but has not said how large those investments are.

Speaker 3:
[46:58] Oh, great.

Speaker 2:
[46:59] Well, you can't win them all.

Speaker 5:
[47:02] Yeah. So later on, Warsh said he would divest from $100 million in investments. But, you know, this is great. Warren also points out that he's in the Epstein files, because Epstein apparently invited him and his wife to a party. It is unclear at this point what connection he had or if there was more, but that's not a great sign. Where we are right now is that Warsh is normal enough of a guy that Thom Tillis is willing to vote for him if the investigation is dropped. Tillis and some other members of the committee have been, or public members of the committee have been talking about this scheme to get the investigation transfer from the Department of Justice to the Senate committee. I think at which point they could basically just kill it or just have it be a thing into budget overruns. That's not like an attempt to depose Jerome Powell. It's not clear what's going to happen with that and it hasn't started yet. This is the point that we're at right now. This conflict is going to keep heating up as the May 15th deadline for getting a new nominee in before the board vacancy happens and Jerome Powell basically stays in power longer than his term would only last happened. So we're going to keep following this story. There's one other story that we are going to keep following, which is there was an exclusive by the Wall Street Journal, which is a report. This is from unnamed US officials, but it claims that the UAE's central bank governor is reportedly trying to get what's called a currency swap with the US. So what a currency swap is basically is it's like, it's a way to try to fix an exchange rate and get a country a certain amount of US dollars by just like just at the fixed exchange rate, just like swapping X amount of dollars for X amounts of another country's currency. This report was immediately denied or very, very quickly denied by a series of posts on X, the everything app by the UAE's embassy to the US where they gave a thing. Trump also had like started talking about this too. I'm just going to read a little bit of this quote. We very much appreciate President Trump's recognition of the UAE as one of America's most important economic and trade partners. That recognition reflects the depth of mutual trust based on mutual investment, etc., etc., etc. Any suggestion that the UAE requires external financial backing misreads the facts. The UAE is one of the most financially resilient economies underpinned by more than $2 trillion in sovereign assets, more than $300 billion in foreign currency reserves held by the UAE Central Bank and banking sectors with approximately $1.5 trillion in deposits. So when they start listing out the deposits, that's when you know things are not going great.

Speaker 3:
[49:51] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[49:53] The issue here, this is what The Wall Street Journal is talking about, is that this is not an immediate proposal. This is a proposal for what's becoming increasingly clear, which is that there's not actually an end to the war in Iran in sight. And if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, this is an existential crisis for the UAE, because not only are all of their exports stopped, you know, like the UAE itself is just physically under threat, its infrastructure is under threat, and it's very difficult for them to get more investments. And this could in the future start a dollar crisis of the kind that we've talked about on this show before. If you want to, yeah, I've talked about basically dollar crises and how you can have balance of payments crises for running out of US dollars. What's interesting about this report, and the reason that we're sort of talking about it right now, is that one of the things that the UAE reportedly was mentioning was that they might be forced to turn the Chinese currency, basically they might be forced to like sell oil in Chinese currency in order to like get it through the strait, which would be a epochal shift to the entire global political economy, which is like the America status in the world is in part, but in no small part based on the fact that you can really only buy oil in dollars. It seems like what's happening is that the UAE is looking at their long-term prospects going, we're completely screwed. They're going, oh, well, if you don't just hand us a bunch of money, we're going to have to start looking at the underpinnings of American imperial power. So we're going to continue to see where this goes. As this war continues and as the strait continues to be blocked, countries around the world are going to become more and more desperate as the economic consequences of this ripples out across the world. We're probably going to start seeing more things like this. And at some point, if it becomes clear that the war is not going to end Trump's early week announcement that the ceasefires are going to keep going stops being able to keep the stock markets from being propped up, we're going to start seeing an even wider spread impact of this. But this is a bleak sign from a staunch US ally.

Speaker 3:
[52:10] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[52:11] We have one final story before closing, which is a little funny, also worrying, but more funny, I think.

Speaker 3:
[52:18] Yeah, this one's pretty good.

Speaker 2:
[52:20] Shawnee Kirkhoff, the woman that Glenn Beck's right-wing outlet, The Blaze, falsely accused of being the January 6th pipe bomber, has launched a lawsuit against The Blaze and the two journalists who wrote the story. For context, last November, The Blaze published a story claiming to have identified the bomber as a Capitol police officer who responded to the January 6th insurrection based on quote, forensic gait analysis, which determined the officer was a quote, up to 98 percent match to surveillance video of the bomber. This lawsuit claims five counts of defamation and one count of defamation by implication and Kirkhoff is requesting a jury trial. The documents claim that the Blaze report targeted her because of her actions on January 6th as a police officer and testimony she gave against insurrectionists in court. Part of the intention of targeting her was to build on this larger idea that the defendants had that January 6th was a quote, unquote inside job. As these reports were getting published by the Blaze, Glenn Beck said on his show, quote, This is one of the biggest stories. I think it is the biggest scandal of my lifetime. Maybe in the last 100 years.

Speaker 4:
[53:45] Bigger than the Pinnacott papers.

Speaker 2:
[53:46] It is monstrous.

Speaker 4:
[53:48] Bigger than Watergate.

Speaker 2:
[53:50] Pulitzer Prize winning stuff, unquote.

Speaker 3:
[53:52] Do you have the capacity for self-delusion?

Speaker 4:
[53:55] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[53:55] Pulitzer Prize winning stuff, James.

Speaker 4:
[53:57] I'm waiting for the Pulitzer Committee to finish reviewing this one.

Speaker 3:
[54:00] They're going to have to get in line after the Pulitzer Prize. They're surely going to get for interviewing the dude who murdered Minneapolis Democratic politicians.

Speaker 4:
[54:08] Well, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[54:09] Which I'm sure was an action that his lawyer was super stoked about.

Speaker 4:
[54:12] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[54:13] Court documents say that because of this false claim, the CIA placed the plaintiff on administrative leave and she was forced into hiding amidst online threats from conspiracy theorists, quote, for her role in supporting the deep state, including in posts on her mother's obituary web page, unquote. She was getting death threats on the obituary page for her mother.

Speaker 3:
[54:37] Yeah. Constant frustration in my life is journalists posting screenshots from court cases and then not listening to the court listener page. So I decided to find the page so I could not be that guy. But some of the threats this woman got genuinely probably made her life very difficult to live for a period of time.

Speaker 2:
[54:56] Absolutely. The suit alleges that even after she was cleared as a suspect and weeks later another suspect was arrested, who seems to be the likely bomber. These blazed journalists continue to harass her and that their false and defamatory accusations have irreparably changed her life. The documents say that this ruined her lifetime career in public service by forever linking her to the bombing and records of an FBI investigation, making any potential security clearances needed in the future difficult or impossible to pass. One of the journalists was fired by The Blaze on April 1st, just earlier this month, and the other resigned two days later. They have since raised over $20,000 since leaving The Blaze to continue their claims on a new independent website that they're launching.

Speaker 4:
[55:54] Are you giving the name of the website?

Speaker 2:
[55:56] The website is called Veritas Regnant, LLC?

Speaker 4:
[56:01] Yes, Veritas. I think that just means the truth is king, basically. Truth reigns. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[56:06] Yeah, I think that's what they were going for at least.

Speaker 4:
[56:08] Yeah, I love it. I love it. When I read that detail, I was, you guys are going to be the most sued any people have ever been. It's beautiful.

Speaker 3:
[56:18] Something about a pit hard seems relevant here.

Speaker 2:
[56:22] The document says that the plaintiff was called in to work on November 6th, where two FBI agents then asked her about quote unquote online chatter that she was the bomber. She consented to a phone and car search and was placed on administrative leave. Later that day, a quote unquote caravan of FBI vehicles arrived outside her home, including a bomb disposal truck and a helicopter. I'm just going to read from the document quote, The agents claimed that they were primarily looking for shoes. Agents exited their vehicles with their guns drawn in full tactical gear. An agent called Mr. Dickert, who is the plaintiff's boyfriend, and commanded him to quote, come out of the house unarmed with your dogs. Mr. Dickert and Mrs. Kirchhoff complied and stepped outside. Agents swept through the house, then reentered with bomb sniffing dogs. They opened cabinets, rifled through drawers, and scattered Mrs. Kirchhoff's and Mr. Dickert's belongings, all without obtaining Mrs. Kirchhoff's or Mr. Dickert's consent. It suddenly occurred to Mrs. Kirchhoff that they were not simply looking for a pair of shoes, unquote.

Speaker 3:
[57:31] Never heard them asking for the dogs to come out before. That was a new one for me.

Speaker 2:
[57:36] That is an interesting detail. That is an interesting detail. So the plaintiff asked the agents there why they would do all this to investigate, quote unquote, online chatter. And a senior official responded that these orders came from, quote unquote, higher up and that Mrs. Kirchhoff could, quote, clear everything up just that night if she would accompany agents to the FBI office for a polygraph interview. Mrs. Kirchhoff agreed and agents assured her that the drive out to the office would take longer than the interview itself. This was not true. The interview lasted almost three hours. Agents repeatedly accused the plaintiff of placing the bombs and continually asserted her guilt. Partway through the interview, the interrogator changed out the tubes on the polygraph because they, quote, did not like how they were reading, unquote.

Speaker 3:
[58:26] That was a remarkable detail.

Speaker 4:
[58:29] Jesus.

Speaker 5:
[58:30] Yeah. Oh, Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2:
[58:32] And at one point told the plaintiff that she, quote, failed the polygraph test, which the plaintiff assumed was just an interrogation technique.

Speaker 3:
[58:40] Yeah. You can't fail a polygraph test, right? Like it just gives information.

Speaker 2:
[58:45] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[58:45] Often not actually an information which is very useful in any way relevant, whether you're telling the truth or not. Polygraph is not really something that should be used in this capacity, but here we go anyway. But yeah, there's not like a pass fail. It doesn't like go bleep, bleep, bleep, lie or detect it. No.

Speaker 2:
[59:01] Now, after midnight, she asked if she was free to leave and the agents said yes. So she went home and the next day the FBI returned her phone. And then once she got back her phone, she saw this quote unquote online chatter exploding all over, alleging that she was the bomber. A day later, the Blaze published a report explicitly naming her as the bombing suspect, something they already alluded to in previous reporting, which sparked the online chatter, which caused the FBI to search her home and interrogate her. This was all in intentional on the part of the Blaze, according to this court document. The defendants, these quote unquote journalists, purposely forwarded a tip to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in an attempt to get quote unquote corroboration of their reporting from sources inside the government by getting the plaintiff placed under investigation prior to their publishing of the articles identifying her as the bomber. This was basically all part of the scheme.

Speaker 4:
[60:04] Their goal was to set the narrative.

Speaker 5:
[60:06] Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2:
[60:08] Months later, the defendants have refused to remove headlines or social media posts claiming to identify the bomber, even after the actual text of these articles was removed after the FBI arrested the real suspect in December. Well, just last month, the journalists published another article on The Blaze titled, Brian Cole Jr.'s physical presence, posture, mannerisms are no match to FBI's hoodie-clad pipe bomb suspect. Oh, God. This was another article on The Blaze saying that gate analysis showed that Brian Cole Jr., the actual suspect who has been arrested, does not match the gate, does not, does not have a positive gate analysis of match to the surveillance footage from that night. Oh, my God.

Speaker 4:
[61:01] Because it's not real. Because gate analysis is bullshit.

Speaker 3:
[61:04] Well, they break that down in the court documents, right? The footage of her that they had was when she's carrying like 50 pounds of tactical gear in a heavy bag.

Speaker 2:
[61:12] Tactical gear, yes.

Speaker 4:
[61:14] Yes, and she suffered a serious leg injury in college.

Speaker 3:
[61:18] Yeah. It's comical that like they, this is what they went with. But the fact that they're doubling down on it is very funny.

Speaker 2:
[61:26] And legally baffling.

Speaker 4:
[61:28] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[61:29] They really are not ready for the consequences to hit them on this one.

Speaker 4:
[61:33] No.

Speaker 2:
[61:35] So like I said, these two journalists were fired and slash left the blaze earlier this month. But in posts and podcast appearances, they assert that Brian Cole Jr. is a quote unquote patsy and that quote, the truth about the pipe bomber has been quote unquote thwarted. And that quote unquote legal considerations are preventing them from further disclosing the quote unquote darker details about their pipe bomber theory.

Speaker 5:
[62:04] Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2:
[62:06] Now, Brian Cole Jr.'s defense lawyers have filed a subpoena for Ms. Kirchhoff, which misleadingly states she quote unquote failed a polygraph. This subpoena also contains her home address and this subpoena has been spread online by these quote unquote journalists as evidence that they were right all along. The plaintiff continues to deal with doxing and death threats as a result from this subpoena and the quote unquote journalists continued reporting, spreading claims that she is in fact the real bomber. So Kirchhoff is requesting a jury trial with these six counts of defamation. And I hope she gets a lot of money from everyone involved in this.

Speaker 4:
[62:46] Yeah, I hope she gets every dollar Glenn Beck has.

Speaker 3:
[62:51] Yeah, I mean, I hope the outlet sees his existing.

Speaker 2:
[62:54] That would be ideal.

Speaker 4:
[62:55] I hope the outlet becomes yet another subsidiary of the onion.

Speaker 3:
[63:02] That would be a magnificent way for this to end. But yeah, like, yeah. And then another element of the documents I noticed was that they talked about how the quote unquote journalists had benefited from the blue check ex posts, right?

Speaker 2:
[63:16] Yeah, monetized accounts on ex, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[63:18] I would be interested to see as we get more in the discovery element of this case, how much were they making, how much were they making from ex versus the blaze? Like, I'm going to follow this one just because so many of the bits of misleading reporting we see are because of this financial incentive structure. So like, it'll be very revealing for us.

Speaker 2:
[63:40] And this financial structure is something that ex everything app is somewhat attempting to take on, at least for news aggregator accounts.

Speaker 3:
[63:48] Yeah, they specifically went off to Dom Lucret apparently.

Speaker 2:
[63:51] Yes, one of ex's guys announced like a week or so ago that they're going to be reforming the payout system for news aggregators. This is Nikolita Beer.

Speaker 4:
[64:02] Yeah, part of the way they're doing that is that ex's traffic is in freefall. And this is something that we're seeing like across social media. There was a really good report that Peter Thornberg, who is an assistant professor in computational social science at the University of Amsterdam published earlier this year. I mean, just today came up with an update on it. On like the most recent numbers we have on like what's happening to the different social media networks. Visiting and posting on ex the everything app and Facebook have seen like a nearly 50 percent drops. A significant decline among like the youngest and the oldest users on social media, particularly like people over 65 and people from 18 to 24 have seen like the biggest decline in like the time that they've actually spent on site. I'm going to be doing something more detailed about this in the future, but a lot of what you're seeing from these big social media companies and these like big pivots right are moves in desperation. This is not working as well as it used to. The economics that once underpinned this system are falling apart. None of these companies are as profitable as they used to be. People are pulling away from social media, particularly from a lot of the text-based social media sites, which were never as profitable as short-form video was. So I don't know. That's something that made me less bummed.

Speaker 2:
[65:31] Well, I hope she gets certainly all the money they got from X, and learning how much money that was will be super interesting in discovery, and hopefully, much more money as well. Speaking of money, James, you wanted to plug a donation.

Speaker 3:
[65:51] That's right. Yeah. I want to talk really briefly about the guys from Cobra Column. So Cobra Column, if people aren't familiar, it's a special forces or it's a PDF that is aligned with the Karen National Union, Karen National Liberation Army, and the struggle for liberation in Myanmar against the junta, right? They have been fighting intensely in an area near Miowidi, a place that Robert and I spent some time actually, just across the river from the base. Robert and I spent some time, albeit the junta has successfully launched munitions into Thailand several times now. And they are really like, if you want to look at the front line of people's autonomy against autocracy, against dictatorship, against tyranny, like they are at it. And they need money to sustain their efforts to feed themselves, to equip themselves, to buy medical equipment. And I think they're also trying to buy like a replacement helmets and body armor because they keep getting hit by drones, right? And people have survivable injuries but their armor is destroyed. If you'd like to help, you can send 15 euros for 10 stickers. Stickers have the Milk Tea Alliance salute, which is the same as the salute that the Cub Scouts use and the one from Hunger Games. I'm not going to describe it because you can work it out. It is stickers for Myanmar at protonmail.com. You can send 15 euros for two stickers. That's S-T-I-C-K-E-R-S-F-O-R-M-Y-A-N-M-A-R at protonmail.com. If you want to email us, CoolZoneTips at proton.me. If it's a marketing email, I'll blog you.

Speaker 5:
[67:29] Put a trans girl on your couch.

Speaker 2:
[67:32] We reported the news.

Speaker 3:
[67:35] Bye bye.

Speaker 6:
[67:36] We reported the news.

Speaker 1:
[67:46] It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.