DOGE, Deportations, and Democracy's Death Spiral

ric-vnme-ova (2025-02-04 13:14 GMT-8) - Transcript

Attendees

Mike Smith, Nathan Brady, Nathan Brady's Presentation

Transcript

Mike Smith: What the hell was that?

Nathan Brady: I'm taking notes, baby. I've never taken so many notes in my life. Okay, this All right, What are these stupid links?

Mike Smith: Also Nathan. Okay, these links, my good friend, are what we're going to talk about today at the start. I just want to go over some terrorist stuff because there was some terrorist news. Fuzzy this** thing. Wait for it to figure out there's no one behind me. Really, man?

Mike Smith: right, I'm just gonna be blurry. I guess that's b***.

Nathan Brady: I like that for us.

Nathan Brady: That's the b*******.

Mike Smith: Do anything about this?

Nathan Brady: This way. I have you here.

Nathan Brady: I need to see the recording button here to make sure I'm actually recording this here.

Mike Smith: Get help.

Mike Smith: Need help.

Nathan Brady: All right, give me some You have your headphones in. You have everything you need.

Mike Smith: Got my pods up in my ears and…

Nathan Brady: Okay.

Mike Smith: that's where they belong or whatnot. Things are unplugging so it's good.

Nathan Brady: Everything looks good.

Mike Smith: Make sure battery I actually have these things devices 100.

Nathan Brady: right. I want Blue Ski up.

Mike Smith: Let's go.

Nathan Brady: Blue ski app up. And I want this up.

Mike Smith: I want you up in arms to overthrow the government.

Nathan Brady: I will All right,…

Mike Smith: Uh-huh. I thought you might.

Nathan Brady: Let's get hyped for an exciting episode.

Mike Smith: Are you hype?

Nathan Brady: Are you hyped?

Mike Smith: You're not hype. You don't even know the meaning of the word hype.

Nathan Brady: I'm not. All right.

Mike Smith: Cuz I'm going gray. My mustache has one dark patch here. It looks my nose is draining liquid down right there.

Nathan Brady: Yeah, it looks like you just got a bloody nose right there. Good. All right.

Mike Smith: I tell people it's from storm in the capital. I was pardon.

Nathan Brady: Here we go.

Mike Smith: Let me just get all my cracks and…

Nathan Brady: I'm hitting. You get that out.

Mike Smith: stuff out of the way. Just All right.

Nathan Brady: Let me smoke some crack too before Wait, what did you say? Okay, here we go. Hey everyone and welcome to another episode of the Blue Sedition Podcast. I'm Nate Brady. but beautiful.

Mike Smith: And I'm Mike Smith, your beautiful hosts.

Nathan Brady: I don't know, blinding maybe. and we just want you to know before you go any further, and before you get into listening to this podcast, we are going to require upfront a 25% tax. right.

Mike Smith: Yes, you're going to have to like it. And for every four episodes that you watch, you're gonna have to create a burner account on YouTube and…

Nathan Brady: and subscribe,…

Mike Smith: like it again. Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: and…

Nathan Brady: and subscribe on all of those and ring the bell. I'm sorry.

Mike Smith: It's ring the bell and…

Mike Smith: all that.

Nathan Brady: If you want to stop the flow of bad comments into our YouTube, we may lift this tariff. Otherwise, you have to like and…

Mike Smith: I love it.

Nathan Brady: and subscribe right now. but that was the little segue we created. Yeah. to just kick this right off.

Mike Smith: I love it. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: Why don't you What are we doing?

Mike Smith: What could we possibly be talking about today?

Nathan Brady: What are we talking about?

Mike Smith: Nobody knows. I want to start out by talking about tariffs because there has been some movement around tariffs in the last little bit here.

Nathan Brady: Okay. Okay.

Mike Smith: So, as our listeners will no doubt realize, there were tariffs supposed to go into effect February 1 against Mexico, Canada, and China. There were supposed to be an initial amount of 15% going up to as high as 25%.

00:05:00

Nathan Brady: Right. …

Mike Smith: And then they did not go into effect.

Nathan Brady: did all of them not or…

Mike Smith: I think that China may have still gotten hit with the tariffs,…

Nathan Brady: because I Yeah.

Mike Smith: but Canada and Mexico, they were given somewhat of a reprieve for one more month.

Mike Smith: So it's until March 1st that we're thinking about this and there may be some small carveouts for things but what I wanted to talk about is sort of that process. I…

Nathan Brady: Okay. Yeah.

Mike Smith: I did sort of a deep dive into this whole thing because I wanted to know like we did with the mass deportations talk that we had many episodes ago where I was talking about I'm the nerd who goes over the financials and the logistics of it and how it doesn't make any sense to me and I wanted to get that sort of same understanding with tariffs.

Nathan Brady: right?

Mike Smith: And so what I find interesting the most about tariffs is that they apply basically to goods that are imported into the country but only at a certain threshold.

Mike Smith: And so I think it was in 1992 that threshold was set to any parcel that came in with goods of less than about $200, they were sort of exempted from any dues or duties or tariffs or taxes or what have you during the import process. During the Obama administration, they had pointed out that didn't keep up with inflation and prices and things like that. So they bumped that up to about $800. There people watching now we have it on screen. This is called the dimminimous exemption which is Latin and it's named by lawyers because they hate English.

Mike Smith: That's…

Nathan Brady: I thought that was D minim.

Nathan Brady: I was like,…

Mike Smith: what everyone's going to say when they see it. D minimus.

Mike Smith: And so what this does sort of interestingly historically is that you see exactly what you're highlighting here, this gross rise of Teimu and Shine and these other corporations that sell you direct to consumer goods from China basically that probably made Right.

Nathan Brady: So instead of the Alibaba where you might buy $5,000 worth of goods and get it shipped to your store or whatever, now you can just buy goods directly from these Chinese retail giants, Teimu, and…

Mike Smith: And I …

Nathan Brady: you're buying a $20 thing that's immune to tariffs.

Mike Smith: I had Exactly.

Mike Smith: And so I thought it was hilarious because in doing this deep dive I was immediately reminded of something that you and…

Mike Smith: I did where we were, this was during the pandemic and we were being silly about things and we were going to dress up as senators on the companywide call. And so I bought some powdered wigs that he and…

Nathan Brady: Right. Right.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Smith: I had it one shipped to his house and one shipped to my house. I think I spent $8 on these wigs and they're not cheap feeling or whatever and…

Mike Smith: they came from China and they cost pennies on the dollar because slave labor made them but they avoided any tariffs or dues or taxes coming into the country because they were under this at the time $800 dimminimous exception that they're in the dimminimous exception. Okay.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Yeah. Really?

Mike Smith: So the first thing I'll point out is that Trump says I'm okay. I'm not doing the tariffs right now. But what he did do and is in effect today as of I believe Friday is he's done away with the dimminimous exemption. right now and I'm sure that there are court battles being fought over this but by way of executive action he has removed this exemption meaning that any goods coming into the country especially small retail goods like that like I said $8 I think is how much I paid per wig now has to be inspected by customs and border control I guess customs directly

Mike Smith: And there is now a new eiling process in place where or there will be I don't know if it is there yet that basically allows an importer to specify what the good is and what it falls into these regulatory things because customs has this big set of rules where if you send shirts across the border and if they're just t-shirts they fit into one tax bracket but if you ship $800 worth

Mike Smith: polo shirts or shirts with a breast pocket, they fit into a different tax bracket, so they get taxed differently. And so there's this huge customs regulatory body that sits in place and checks all of these things like coming in on tankers and coming in off trailers and they have to inspect the goods and state and find out is this…

00:10:00

Nathan Brady: Yeah.

Mike Smith: what they say it is. Does it have any contraband? are they shipping fentinel when they're supposed to be shipping, stuffed animals? So, they already are doing this for things for shipments that are over $800. You can imagine things that are in giant pallets or what have you, easier to just kind of group by. But, I mean, those wigs came in a box. It was like the mail system carried them.

Mike Smith: I don't think customs even looked at them. So, they're not really set up for this. And not only that, I think that I have a figure here.

Mike Smith: It says that the number of dimminimous entries has increased from 153 million parcels in 2015. So that's packages that were sent that were under this $800 threshold and…

Nathan Brady: They're over a billion.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Smith: then in 2023 it's over a billion a year. So I mean right there you're saying,…

Mike Smith: hold on. Are we going to make customs agents check 1 billion more packages per year? those guys.

Nathan Brady: You mean the custom agents that have accepted Trump's res resign terms?

Nathan Brady: You mean those guys? Wow. This sounds okay.

Mike Smith: I have another figure that goes along with that. It's a really good point to point out. I looked at the 2025 statistics produced by CBP, the Customs and Border Patrol, and we'll include all the links in the description, but there were 68,000 Customs and Border Patrol agents employed at the start of 2025. So, this is a month ago, right?

Mike Smith: 68,000. a lot of those are like border patrol agents or…

Mike Smith: non-customs agents. I don't have the exact figure for who the customs agents are, but we can safely say less than 68,000.

Nathan Brady: Much less.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. It's going to lock up the entire It's going to be worse than that.

Mike Smith: Yeah, much fewer. So, if I'm going to take those 68,000 and I'm going to make them check 1 billion more parcels coming into the country, what do you think that's going to do? just holistically with the way the people …

Nathan Brady: What was that hack that shut down cargo ships and everything coming into the US for a while? It's going to be worse than all of that. It's going to cause Yeah.

Mike Smith: yeah. Yeah. It was a worm, right? It was a I know…

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Yeah. Not was it sandworm?

Mike Smith: what you're talking about.

Nathan Brady: Was it sandworm?

Mike Smith: Maybe that's Stuckset, right?

Nathan Brady: No. Stuckset was it Stuckset? yeah.

Mike Smith: It doesn't matter.

Mike Smith: But it had tanker trailers parked in the harbor and…

Nathan Brady: Yeah.

Mike Smith: what do we do? And they're going to have it again because that a lot of these dimminimous exemption parcels are declared at customs but go through the mail system. I mean they're forwarding through mailers.

Mike Smith: And so are you going to start opening people's mail and checking that they're, …

Nathan Brady: I mean,…

Nathan Brady: okay, so first of all,…

Mike Smith: the Christmas gift from grandma from Canada isn't Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: C customs does do that sometimes. let's not So, I am a big Lego guy. I collect Lego from all over the world and I get them shipped from Denmark and wherever else and sometimes the package gets to me and you can tell that it wasn't open and inspected. so I mean,…

Nathan Brady: so yeah, certainly they do do that. You can't do that on every single one. But I Let me No, it's impossible. you're No,…

Mike Smith: But are you going to do that mean when you increase the number by a billion and…

Mike Smith: I'm not being facitious the estimate is 1 billion.

Nathan Brady: you're not. Yeah. I want to take a step back here and say that this sounds like it's going to affect lowincome and minority households more than But I mean,…

Mike Smith: It's going to affect everyone. But I agree because a lot of people are buying I mean I forget. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: as a percentage of your income, the effect that this is going to have on you is going to be more stressful to lower income homes because what's going to happen is it sounds like it's going to affect bargain shoppers, like people that rely on these types of outlets. this Yeah.

Mike Smith: and in ways that at least you probably haven't given enough thought to. So, for instance, we called out Teeu and Shine, right? And I don't personally use those services.

Nathan Brady: No. Yeah.

Mike Smith: I know a lot of people who do. They love bargain hunting and they love coming up with these I think it's Shine.

Nathan Brady: I know. Sheen or Shine or whatever it is is considered pretty evil. Okay.

Mike Smith: I wasn't familiar with it until I did this deep dive here. But Teimu, I'm familiar with. But it also affects Amazon sellers…

Mike Smith: because I don't know if a lot of people know this but people do Amazon market like sales and resales just as I live in Canada and I can put this on Amazon and I can get it delivered there for and…

Nathan Brady: Yeah.

00:15:00

Mike Smith: make a little tiny profit for myself and if I do this enough I've got a good living going. none of your products are going to arrive on time and they're going to be marked up 25%.

Nathan Brady: And also, a lot of these Amazon resellers do exactly…

Nathan Brady: what I was saying earlier, which is they order from Alibaba or whatever, they get 500 of a product and then they start selling that on Amazon. Yeah, you're going to see prices go up everywhere across the board. And I think you're right.

Mike Smith: Yeah. Yep.

Nathan Brady: I think that there's a 10% tariff was placed on all imports coming in from China and China has already retaliated. I don't know February 10th it looks like is going to China has announced it was going to retaliate and…

Mike Smith: in active.

Nathan Brady: and they're filing a lawsuit with the World Trade Organization. I want to go back to because you pointed out Well,…

Mike Smith: Aren't we not part of that anymore?

Nathan Brady: probably not. so I …

Mike Smith: I think Trump in his first term withdrew from that and…

Mike Smith: then Biden's term he decided I'm not going to prioritize that. I don't think we're part of that anymore. So even…

Nathan Brady: I want to go back to something funny that you had pointed out offline.

Mike Smith: if you open a lawsuit, it's just like Sure. yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: We were talking about so we'll talk about Mexico and Canada separately here. f first we'll talk about Mexico's response. Obviously both Mexico and Canada announced counter tariffs immediately. and by the way the Wall Street Journal came out immediately and said that this is the world's dumbest trade war. this was just Mexico and the United States came to an agreement. the Trump and Mexican president talked and they agreed to pause the tariffs for 30 days.

Nathan Brady: In response, the United States will slow somehow by whatever metric, I don't know how this will be meas measured, is going to slow the flow of illegal guns and illegal weapons into Mexico. And in return, Mexico is going to commit to sending 10,000 soldiers to the US border to help prevent the flow of immigrants into the United States. But then you found and pointed out that Mexico was already deploying 15,000 soldiers.

Nathan Brady: And this agreement isn't 10,000 additional soldiers. It was just

Mike Smith: No, it's a minimum.

Mike Smith: It's very very silly. And again, it's a holdover. It's a silly thing that sort of makes you embarrassed as a Democrat because you're like Trump's first term, he did all these terrible things and he was trying to build the wall and bolster, migration or immigrant whatever the sentiment that he was stopping immigration. He's trying to reduce that, right?

Mike Smith: So he in one of these exact same things demands of the then Mexican president that they put border guards to keep people from entering the US illegally and I think this is primarily across the border of Texas across the Rio de Janeiro and around there and he demanded 15,000 troops and Mexico acquies to it because they stand to gain something like you said the guns deal or whatever it

Mike Smith: and then Biden takes office and doesn't withdraw this demand. So, it's still a standing agreement even though you would think a Democrat would be opposed to such an action. Maybe politically it was good for him,…

Mike Smith: and then when Trump comes back, he's forgotten that he's already done this and he's demanding it again. And Mexico goes, "Okay, we can do that.

Nathan Brady: Yeah, sure.

Nathan Brady: And…

Mike Smith: Whatever you say,…

Mike Smith: Grandpa. my god.

Nathan Brady: from the Canadian side Canada and the United States Trump has agreed to pause the tariffs for 30 days over there as because Canada agreed to implement a $ 1.3 billion border reinforcement plan.

Nathan Brady: I'm sorry. Can we just take a step back? is there really a problem at the northern border that we don't know about?

Mike Smith: I think that it's being postured a lot around the idea that fentinol,…

Mike Smith: which they call illegal for some reason, even though you can buy it with a doctor's prescription, is somehow making its way across both Mexico and Canada borders into the United States, thus feeding the pandemic of opioid addiction and overdose and death that we're seeing. I think you and I have talked enough about that both on and off the podcast about, that might be true, but where does bentinel come from?

00:20:00

Nathan Brady: I don't know if we've ever talked about this on the pod, but the problem actually started during COVID when the restrictions at both borders were really heightened and drug dealers and these drug cartels most mostly coming from Mexico were looking for an easier way to get drugs into the United States. And they found that instead of these large bricks of cocaine and whatever else they were trying to get in the United States, which was much harder to move, fentinyl, this synthetic drug, was much easier to get into the United States. and what few people realize is most of the fentinel that comes into the United States does not come through drug mules in an illegal manner.

Nathan Brady: It actually comes right through the border legally from people that are legally able to come in and…

Nathan Brady: out of the United States because it is so easy to conceal that now you're able to bring in many drugs into the United States in your car without needing mules to go in with bricks and…

Mike Smith: Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: so Yeah.

Mike Smith: Yeah. fake bottoms in your airplanes and all that. No. And I think that you speak to a lot of interesting issues there. We just want to touch on that for a second. The fentinol thing is mainly and you see it It's like the after effect, but you see a lot in the commercials and whatnot where they tell you about the dire consequences of a single gram of fentanyl or…

Nathan Brady: No. Right.

Mike Smith: whatever it is. And it's because whereas, to sell the same amount of product and make the same amount of money on drugs, you needed a kilo of cocaine to make money.

Mike Smith: Whereas you can get by with this much fentanyl and cut it into 6,000 pills…

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Smith: because it's effective at doing what it does medically. And so mixing it with party drugs and all this other stuff is now a problem because you can bring in an amount that a customs agent can't really detect when you're just driving across the border with your family.

Nathan Brady: Exactly. Yeah.

Mike Smith: He's "Empty out your pockets. Turn up your floorboards. What about blah blah blah? And …

Nathan Brady: And most of the time Yeah.

Mike Smith: you get creative. You hide it in a place they wouldn't think of looking. And you only need to hide this much.

Nathan Brady: And most of the time that I mean they can't do anything other than when it's you and your family coming through it's like What are you coming back for? They can't search every car. And if you're just a normal family, your papers are in good order. Your car is in good order. There's no reason for them to check you or pull you over or, continue the search. I mean, the $1.3 billion dollars Canada is spending, the troops that Mexico is sending, none of this is going to prevent any of the flow of illegal drugs into the United States. And I will even go so far as to say over the next four years, the flow of fentinel into the United States is going to get worse.

Nathan Brady: That'll be my prediction.

Mike Smith: it will and…

Mike Smith: and it sort of hearkens back to this one of the reasons I wanted to bring up this tariffs thing and the whole smaller parcels and the carveout being gone. If I were a politically ignorant person, if I was disconnected from the politics, we're clearly online politics.

Nathan Brady: Right. Yeah.

Mike Smith: We host a politics podcast. Our listeners are clearly interested about learning about politics and the goings on of the government and things like that. If I didn't do any of that, I got my news from the newspaper, maybe I get it on my Facebook feed or whatever, I didn't want to engage politically. I could see this as a plausible step in trying to stem the flow of fentanyl.

Mike Smith: packages under $800 aren't being searched and they only need to bring in this much fentinyl to make killer profits.

Nathan Brady: Right. Right.

Mike Smith: He's going to make them search all those packages and he's going to stop the flow of fentanyl. And from a very lazy point of view, I can see that argument. It doesn't hold water, but I can see it. And politically, you don't need it to hold water. You need it to, energize your masses. That's the whole point.

00:25:00

Mike Smith: So, I can see the game plan here and I know that they probably will stop some fentanyl coming to the country and then paraded around as, look, this is being very successful, but at the end of the day, it's going to be like, okay, you can't buy your $12 shoes on Teeu anymore. they've been marked up. They're 40 bucks now, and now that I guess Nikes aren't made here either, but the local the Americanmade shoes don't look so bad because they're so expensive. But again, getting back to what you're saying, I think that impacts lower income folks with less spending money just generally.

Nathan Brady: It's going to impact them disproportionately. which seems almost by design every time. okay. do we

Mike Smith: I want to take Okay, man.

Mike Smith: I don't want to be the guy who's the libertarians have a point on this one. that don't do a spit take. I don't want to be that guy. but I mean I'm looking for it, I'm a person who's empathic and can understand how things impact people other than myself. So I can see lower income people are going to be affected by these things more directly than people with wealth. the people who can afford to pay more for shoes that are a little bit nicer or whatever aren't imported from China, whatever it is, do you think that that's purposeful or do you think that's just the cost of doing business to these people?

Mike Smith: I'm being very honest here because I don't know that I have a formed an opinion around that. But I have this worry in my head that people rationalize it this may affect poor people worse but that's just the cost of it's the greater good or whatever. is there a stance that you could take where that would be if not okay at least understandable. You're not enjoying that. Let's never mind.

Nathan Brady: No. …

Mike Smith: Don't play.

Nathan Brady: I will say that. I'm trying to find the right word. no, I don't have it. I don't have a good answer for you.

Mike Smith: All right.

Nathan Brady: But I will say that it always seems to me that the working class in the United States is basically just collateral damage or an afterthought or directly meant to suffer from the orders of this administration.

Mike Smith: Right. The powers to be.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. and…

Mike Smith: Yeah. Yeah. No.

Nathan Brady: And I do the reason why I think that's often by design is because what happens when you have a comfortable working class versus what happens when you have a working class that needs a second job,…

Nathan Brady: that needs to make sure everybody is working in the workforce. I mean, you see where I'm going with this, right? So…

Mike Smith: I go ahead.

Nathan Brady: what no that was it.

Mike Smith: Go where you're going with it.

Nathan Brady: That's where I was going. I mean, it

Mike Smith: I was just going to say that it's striking to me that It's always the Republican party for one and they always have the rhetoric of we need to go back to a time when the working class was this bolstered economically sound group of people, the majority and they felt comfortable in their lives like you're saying and they get by on that messaging and then when they get into power they don't help the working class in any way.

Nathan Brady: And what's wild is that messaging is great…

Nathan Brady: if you wanted to get back there, not including all of the reversing of equality and all of that stuff that's happened,…

Mike Smith: Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: but if you want to get back to where the working class actually earned more as a percentage of the profits that they were generating of their output. That would be incredible. But the problem is that we've spiked completely away from that direction…

Mike Smith: Yeah. Yeah,…

Nathan Brady: since Reagan and because of Reagan and

Mike Smith: I was going to say it was largely at its height and during the beginning of the Reagan era and they paraded it as a win. They were look at how great we are. We have this bolstered working class and the economy is great and it was like a booming time and they were like let's just change everything so that secretly it'll be better for all of the billionaires.

Nathan Brady: It's better for and…

Mike Smith: At the time multi-million not anymore.

Nathan Brady: it's not even a secret. I mean, and that's what I just don't understand, but it's just so obvious.

Mike Smith: It seems very brazen.

00:30:00

Nathan Brady: But, a story that just came out earlier today where thousands of Trump supporters were fooled by an AI video into buying a new, Trump eagle coin. from some AI that was generated that made it look like it was and…

Mike Smith: They bought a grift from I like it. Yeah, I'm remember.

Nathan Brady: so this is what we're dealing with. We're dealing with an undereducated populist.

Mike Smith: God, we definitely have that problem. and unfortunately that sort of speaks to another topic that we should probably cover today is, the way that Elon Musk has gotten tacles, his cancers into the various departments in the United States government.

Nathan Brady: I do. Yeah. I mean,…

Mike Smith: The public education system is under assault and…

Nathan Brady: that's a good segue. I wanted to you choose your own adventure here.

Mike Smith: they're trying to yeah.

Nathan Brady: And you've probably already already answered that. I wanted to go to the US ID the Elon Musk's basically hostile takeover of the US Treasury. but also just really quickly,…

Mike Smith: Yeah. which is not something he can do,…

Nathan Brady: as we speak right now, if it's not already signed, is preparing an executive order to eliminate the Department of Education. and that is likely going to come today.

Mike Smith: but sure there is that I have to say that when they put checks and…

Nathan Brady: It stop him. Somebody** stop him.

Mike Smith: balances into place, they were assuming, good faith operators at every stage, and we simply don't have that anymore.

Mike Smith: I mean, right? it's a fairly simple reading of the Constitution to understand Not how it will operate. And the power of the purse that's in Congress's hands. The president cannot. And there are hundreds of years of case precedent showing this. It's just like birthright citizenship. There's 130 years of case law that exists saying you cannot coersse or withhold money to states that have been appropriated by Congress. They control the money. You get to either veto it or not. That's all you get in those things. So the department exists. You can't really get rid of it because it's been appropriated by Congress and sworn in. It has funds allocated to it.

Mike Smith: And beyond that, you can't deny any of those funds to those educations like schools and whatnot just because you don't like them. That the whole point is that there's case law where they're basically saying we're just not going to send California money for education budget and then they're like no that's unconstitutional. there is case law. but I'm with you. He's made an executive order or he will and he's done it for other government agencies as well and he says we're ordering this. We're going to do it and Congress should probably impeach him for trying to violate the Constitution in this way or at the very least censoring him and make it clear that you can't do this.

Mike Smith: But it's already in court I know for what was the first one they tried to shut down? Maybe it was the CDC. there's been so many they've been trying this for the last week or…

Nathan Brady: So okay.

Mike Smith: so through executive order to try and circumvent the fact that Congress holds the purse. and so there's already lawsuits and joined by multiple states, attorneys general and it's going to be a mad house. But until then, funding is paused

Nathan Brady: So the power of the purse lies with Congress. we know this and that purse generally operates through the US Treasury. yeah they are a little bit related.

Mike Smith: are you telling me these things are related?

Nathan Brady: Treasury Secretary Scott Vent granted Doge which is essentially just we can just say Elon unrestricted access to their payment systems which handles trillions of dollars in government expenditures from Medicaid to tax returns to I mean you name it.

Nathan Brady: And not only does he now have access to this social security I mean no anything.

Mike Smith: Social Security duties.

Mike Smith: You have Medicare enrollments and…

Nathan Brady: anything we're talking trillions,…

Mike Smith: payouts and…

Nathan Brady: right? …

Mike Smith: Department of Education funding bonds and I mean everything all of the dollars.

Nathan Brady: so Musk is in there. He's creating back doors in these systems. He's claiming he's going to swiftly terminate what he deems as unlawful payments through the Treasury system.

00:35:00

Nathan Brady: What the hell is going on here?

Mike Smith: I'll tell you what's going on here,…

Mike Smith: You have committed a crime.

Nathan Brady: So somebody names six people who is working with it. He doesn't dox them. He doesn't come out and give addresses or…

Mike Smith: These are public officials.

Nathan Brady: whatever. he just names the six people that are working with him.

Mike Smith: They work for the government.

Nathan Brady: And Elon Musk says to him in a late night tweet. I believe it was a 2:30 a.m. tweet that you have committed a crime.

Mike Smith: Yeah. a House of Representative lawmaker.

Nathan Brady: and then suspended that user's account. But seriously, we not just Joemo here,…

Mike Smith: Not just like some guy. it was a congressman…

Nathan Brady: Was it?

Mike Smith: who was like because he was like why do you have these 20 year olds run these six 20-year-olds like running this let's deal with all of the financial inst institutions money in the world and he's like you have committed a crime maybe I'm thinking of something else I

Nathan Brady: So, this is what I have. This is the one I saw. So, maybe it's a different one. Yeah. Yeah. So, I don't know who Fear Nun Inc. is. Ray Inside Out.

Nathan Brady: This is the list of people who I cannot confirm nor deny if this list is even accurate. I am doing this for purely journalistic reasons. in the open. This has already been shown on Twitter.

Mike Smith: Yeah, it's in the Z guys now.

Nathan Brady: So I do not believe that this is a crime. but as I understand it, there is already legal action being taken by Elon Musk against this particular person which is just I mean so one of the reasons people are I mean rightly

Mike Smith: And it'll be filed in Texas obviously. So there's anti-slap. So he can't just get away with it.

Mike Smith: you can't just say that this guy's just trying to ruin Meek with his billions of dollars and legal experts.

Nathan Brady: saying that Doge isn't even a legal entity is that they're not operating within the transparency of a department department external to the White House that is working in close relation to the White House and they don't meet any of the transparency guidelines for being considered this type of department. and one of those transparency guidelines would be naming the people that are working in that department, like having access to who these officials are. so yeah, no, this isn't a crime. Come on. Let's knock it off. let's knock it off.

Mike Smith: And I think that it's a two3.

Nathan Brady: But yeah, you can see 2:30. no. You can't see that on here, but I guess you can see this was at 5:30 p.m. no. Maybe this just won't work out. But the way I saw it was it was like 230.

Mike Smith: They take our word for it.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. …

Mike Smith: I wanted to point out as well that they knew that they weren't going to get away with this…

Nathan Brady: yeah, you can find that list on our page.

Mike Smith: because one of the first I'm sorry, this is in reference to Elon Musk and Doge. because people came out and said you can't just unilaterally create a new government agency. That's not how this works.

Nathan Brady: Right. Right.

Mike Smith: You have to go through nomination processes. You have to go through budgetary considerations because we just signed a new budget into being and there's nothing there about a new department agency.

Mike Smith: And they just kept calling it Doge and Doge and Doge. And then I think it was last week or maybe the week before the trick that they ended up using was reappropriating an existing government agency. It was like the digital enforcement something digital online. I don't remember. it doesn't actually matter because they ended up firing everybody from that particular agency anyway and then filling it with themselves and just basically going like this is what Doge is now. It's this thing that already exists and already has budgetary considerations and we're just going to call it Doge now. And you're like but you have completely different stated goals and oversightes and actual reach and things.

Mike Smith: you don't have clearance for certain aspects like gutting the treasury in the way that you're trying to do and it's pretty baldfacedly illegal and I'm with you in the all of these lawsuits are now pending and we're trying to stop them from destroying the economy as well as the social fabric as we understand it. What if they just keep doing that and your local public school never gets their paychecks? Are the teachers going to keep teaching?

00:40:00

Nathan Brady: Why aren't I understand the Democrats are in the minority right now, but why aren't we doing the same thing? why aren't members in just why aren't we doing…

Nathan Brady: what may be considered unlawful but to prevent or stop what's happening here? Why are we not doing something other than saying, " boy, wait." Chuck Schumer tweeting like,…

Mike Smith: Chuck Schumer.

Nathan Brady: boy,…

Mike Smith: I knew Chuck was going to come in.

Nathan Brady: wait till you guys get your avocado toast and it's super expensive." You know who to blame.

Mike Smith: Yeah. Ter,…

Nathan Brady: What?

Mike Smith: terrible messaging. just completely tonedeaf to the situation we're living through. We're in a constitutional crisis. And then Chuck Schumer's on all the social media going like, "Yeah, just wait. You're eggs are going to be $7 a dozen." You're like,…

Nathan Brady: Can we?

Mike Smith: " that's not the tone we need right now." I actually have to hand it to …

Nathan Brady: I mean

Mike Smith: what is his name?

Mike Smith: Rascin who was in front of the Capitol building shouting at all the legacy media who would stop and listen to him and he's like this isn't the proper response. You're in a constitutional crisis. We need to be lawsuits and shouting and making the news point at everything.

Nathan Brady: do f**** something. Senate Democrats are not going to stand quiet as Trump makes inflation worse. fine. You've been quiet. We will push legislation soon to protect people's bottom lines and stop the president from Soon, bro. Yesterday, what are you talking about? you are.

Mike Smith: It's not only it feels like you're just blowing smoke up my ass, But also, you could have lied better than this.

Nathan Brady: I mean,…

Mike Smith: We're going to push legislation,…

Nathan Brady: and andority and…

Mike Smith: You're in the Senate. and B, you're in the minority. What the f*** is legislation gonna do?

Nathan Brady: in the minority what we need to do. we have to get to this story. guys, my head is my head hurts. My f*** head hurts.

Mike Smith: All right, let's do it.

Nathan Brady: Okay, I'm not prepared for this story because I didn't even have this in my lineup because of just how****** ridiculous everything is. And I don't want to spend too much more time talking about the hostile Treasury takeover even though in any other timeline that should literally be 25 hours a day the only thing people are talking about because that is insane. Mhm. Right.

Mike Smith: administration prior to 2016, if this had made it this far, people would already be in prison. I don't understand. after hearing that it would be and…

Nathan Brady: Right. No question.

Mike Smith: it would be bipartisan. This would be kind of thing that I'm thinking of George Bush's, Senate seats. And I'm going these people would be just destroying them. They didn't care who was there.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. …

Mike Smith: They'd be pushing for them to go to Gitmo, but it's still the same. All right.

Nathan Brady: so you made a transition there. you helped me with the segue. speaking of bipartisanship, I think we talked about this on the podcast, but maybe we did because I asked you a question. I said, "What do you think?" I said, "Marco Rubio was confirmed as Secretary of State." And…

Mike Smith: Right. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: what do you think the confirmation was in the Senate?

Nathan Brady: There were 99 people that voted and…

Mike Smith: Yeah. What?

Nathan Brady: and how many people voted to confirm Marco Rubio? What fantastic bipartisanship when it went 990, right? have you heard about the meeting that Marco Rubio just had with El Salvador's president?

Mike Smith: Yes, I have.

Nathan Brady: Okay.

Mike Smith: But let's inform the listeners.

Nathan Brady: So, here, let me share this tab because the headline pretty much says it all. I won't play the speech that he gave. Marco Rubio says El Salvador's president agrees to house US criminals in his country's jails. C can we just take a second to take a step back here and…

Nathan Brady: what the President,…

Mike Smith: I'll point out that this is not talking this it weirdly has nothing to do with deportation.

Mike Smith: Weirdly, what they're talking about is an internally executed extradition to a country that has no bearing whatsoever on any of the reasons you are in prison. I

00:45:00

Nathan Brady: right? so now he does say don't worry, he says violent criminals, which we can look back and see what Republicans think a violent crime is,…

Nathan Brady: but nonetheless, this has to be unconstitutional and I will scream that this is unconstitutional and is something going to happen? listen, he just said this is what El Salvador's president said. I was very grateful to him.

Mike Smith: Right. No,…

Nathan Brady: There's no, he didn't say this, but I don't think there is any plan to actually do this because by the way,…

Mike Smith: I think this may Right.

Nathan Brady: the prison industrial complex probably doesn't want this to happen anyway,…

Mike Smith: Right. Right.

Nathan Brady: right? Yeah.

Mike Smith: And think put that on Blue Sky. If I ever say tweet, sorry, it's an old habit, but I mean Blue Sky or…

Nathan Brady:

Nathan Brady: We don't mean it. yeah.

Mike Smith: maybe you did, but it was just one of the prison industrial complex will never allow this.

Nathan Brady: At first, it'll never allow this, but Jesus Christ, can you actually imagine…

Mike Smith: There are too many people in this country getting rich on the existence of private prisons for that to be allowed.

Nathan Brady: if we I don't know.

Mike Smith: Not going to happen. But also, it's like, why are you offering that? I'm sure this is Rubio. I was just going, "Thank you. Why?" No,…

Nathan Brady: I mean, I don't know how that discussion I mean, Look at I don't know anything about the president of El Salvador, but

Mike Smith: I mean, there's a darker read to it, though. I mean, you very much could imagine a wouldbe ally thinking, "Hey, I'll help you get rid of some of your deplorables, and you scratch my back." this could just be a way to take away some of the people that are causing the most trouble with Trump's regime.

Mike Smith: Basically, no questions asked. And in fact, it just says jailing.

Mike Smith: It doesn't even say prison sentencing. It's not necessarily that they're going to house them in their jail.

Nathan Brady: No, just house them in their jails.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Right.

Mike Smith: So, there's maybe a protester or something, right? It's like, they keep doing this. I we're going to arrest them on some grounds probably of tenuous legality and we're going to hold them for arraignment in El Salvador.

Mike Smith: And then what guarantee does anyone have that that will ever end in a positive way? That person is never coming back, I mean, that's the dark spin of it.

Nathan Brady: So, no.

Nathan Brady: They're never coming back. I mean,…

Mike Smith: So, it's the …

Nathan Brady: although I mean,…

Mike Smith: it's the spirited away version.

Nathan Brady: although, who knows? I mean, maybe El Salvadorian prisons are a much better place to be prisons. I think almost anywhere is a better place to be than a US prison. but yeah, let's face it. The US government cannot that would be deporting US citizens,…

Mike Smith: It's not even deportation.

Nathan Brady: deporting them.

Mike Smith: It's just extraditing. it's not even the goal.

Nathan Brady: But it's extraditing to a company to a country where there's no reason to extradite. So you're deport you're sending them to exist somewhere else.

Mike Smith: Right. If I mean, you can imagine a situation where it's not the greatest explanation that I have, but imagine there's somebody who is arrested for whatever a violent crime or whatever, and they're from the UK, as a simple example, and then they get extradited to El Salvador. But why?

Nathan Brady: line and that's what I want to say. This is where this came from. Trump says he's exploring option to send jailed US criminals to other countries. He just f* s*** out of his mouth out of his mouth hole and then other people have to go. Okay, I guess

Mike Smith: placid yesmen to just…

Nathan Brady: And that's right?

Mike Smith: because they know that arguing it's not fruitful. You're never going to get him to see it your way, and two, it might actually be detrimental to your political career as we have seen. So, I think people are just like, whatever. He's king. Who cares? I'm in power." So, when he says nonsense like this, I'm like,…

Nathan Brady: Tter nonsense.

Mike Smith: completely unconstitutional. There's no way that you can do this. completely illegal.

Mike Smith: I don't even think your Scotus will agree that you can do this. But man, why let him say these things? Just ridiculous.

00:50:00

Nathan Brady: Yeah. …

Nathan Brady: all right. I wanted to touch on a couple of other things. There was actually something that came up in the feed that I wanted to talk about on the blue ski feed. So, let me go back to having a hard time finding…

Mike Smith: Okay.

Nathan Brady:

Nathan Brady: where the profile is. This is funny to me…

Mike Smith: Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Nathan Brady: because this morning my wife told me something that I found just stunning. she told me that she's in a health and beauty Facebook group. And in this health and beauty Facebook group, the most common topic right now is them finding ways to aid and hide immigrants in the United States. I mean, first of all, what the hell does this remind you of in history, I mean, that is alarming. especially when it's coming from a health and beauty Facebook group. But the reason why I brought this up is because this story came up across the feed where the NYU Langon staff leadership has warned staff not to protect undocumented patients from ICE. Are you f****** kidding me, man?

Nathan Brady: Is that health and…

Mike Smith: I'm not shocked by this.

Nathan Brady: beauty Facebook group?

Mike Smith: This is a university but it's still corporate in nature and so yeah courage is in search supply these days but any of these institutions that exist today that are run by middle-aged plus white men aren't going to understand or…

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Right.

Mike Smith: care very much about how the economy works around them when it comes to undocumented

Mike Smith: anything. So saying I don't want to get in ISIS way, they probably think it, comes up to the bottom dollar is just going to improve everything for them. now I don't think that necessarily for a hospital as an example that nurses and doctors are going to be like I don't think they'll do that. I think most of the nurses and doctors I've ever spoken with or worked with in any capacity are also similarly empathic. they understand the need for caring for everyone. If I did, I used an awful lot of words for it.

Nathan Brady: And this leads into one of the other things that I wanted to talk about today as we're talking about this hospital staff is probably doing it for their corporate benefit just like we saw …

Mike Smith: All right.

Nathan Brady: Sam Alman We saw Mark Zuckerberg do an about face. Jeff Bezos is sucking at Trump's te because he's trying to get win more government contracts. but to continue on the hospital thread today RFK was promoted through the nomination process down party lines. I think it was 1514 in the committee that would advance him to go to a vote now.

Nathan Brady: And it sounds like the couple of hold out senators that have also the one I'm talking specifically about the ones that sounded like they were going to oppose RFK.

Mike Smith: But yeah,…

Nathan Brady: It sounds like they've already turned around on that. So it is very likely. I don't know when the actual nomination I believe it's tomorrow. since he was advanced today. Is it tomorrow? I'm not actually sure.

Mike Smith: I think I read that the holdouts were as per usual Susan Collins and Lisa Marowski again as the two Republican holdouts

Nathan Brady: Okay. Yeah.

Mike Smith: and they needed a third with Hexa to keep him from being confirmed. And as per usual, they said one thing and did another. Although I don't know…

Mike Smith: which one I'd prefer less. I mean, is more detrimental in a position of power than Pete Hexath? I don't know the answer to that.

Nathan Brady: Yes, I would argue I mean Hexath is terrible.

Nathan Brady: I think that RFK Jr. has the ability to cause immediate harm to millions of Americans if he's the what?

00:55:00

Mike Smith: Did I say that The abortion pill.

Nathan Brady:

Nathan Brady: Yeah,…

Mike Smith: They're going to try and…

Nathan Brady:

Nathan Brady: yeah, yeah,…

Mike Smith: revoke its FDA approval status,…

Nathan Brady: they're going to try and reverse that they're going to try and ban any type of hormone replacement therapies.

Mike Smith: Replacement therapies, but only for who?

Nathan Brady: They're that's…

Mike Smith: Because that is a common practice for women who are experiencing menopause. It is a right?

Nathan Brady: what I mean though is they aren't going to make this thing you think okay make it very explicit so that you can say you have to come out and you have to say trans people you have to say old trans people but they're not going to do that in most cases there's going to be some sweeping I'm just well that this administration has already proven to be women be damned,…

Mike Smith: Do you think they are actually going to ban HRT? women be damned.

Nathan Brady: but I think that a lot of the things that RFK is going to do is going to be so broad that it's going to affect the lives of people that maybe they weren't intentionally trying to affect, but it's still going to. And we're not even talking about his lies about vaccines where he's lying again right now to under oath so that he can get through this hurdle.

Mike Smith: under oath.

Nathan Brady: But what was Trump's ridiculous truth or post today where he made some comment about autism there was only one in a 100,000 autism cases before this date and…

Mike Smith: Yeah, I'll address that.

Nathan Brady: then after this date there was one in4 or whatever stupid thing he said.

Mike Smith: I'll address that.

Nathan Brady:

Nathan Brady: Okay.

Mike Smith: I want to take this full cloth a whole cloth.

Nathan Brady: Thank you.

Mike Smith: So again, I think that the idea of with RFK and the idea of banning RT holistically just across the board and these other things like you say it's what I was talking about before about the tariffs and about it affecting minorities disproportionately to white upper middle class people. and again it comes back to sort of this idea that they march with this greater good or just the cost of doing business. which I find sort of deplorable but I can see them rationalizing it this way because you said okay HRT is a simple example.

Mike Smith: If you ban hormone replacement therapy as a practice in the United States medical community outright, you remove FDA approval for it and you can't make it illegal without Congress, but you can make it so that it's not something that you think that doctors and hospitals should be doing. okay, then millions of American women going through menopause are going to suffer for that and you will reap some consequences presumably from that, right? But also, the party doesn't care about women.

Nathan Brady: I Yeah,…

Mike Smith: Historically, that's not been their demo. I don't think they care. They gutted Roie Wade and said, "Come and beat us at it, women." And, it just wasn't enough.

Nathan Brady: it's funny that you say historically that's not their demo, but let we can go back and look at some of the results of the 2024 election.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. are you saying that voters are reactionary to immediate

Mike Smith: I think that there's a lot of this sort of hardship that you're going to see from this that plays out over a span of time that voters don't have a good capacity for understanding just seeing an Yes.

Mike Smith: Yes. immediately reactionary and…

Nathan Brady: Yes.

Mike Smith: they forget who did what and…

Nathan Brady: Reactionary and…

Mike Smith: that we had a third of the country blaming Biden for COVID and…

Nathan Brady: forgetful. Yeah,…

Mike Smith: I'm like do you not remember four years ago is that just not in there? You don't have it anymore.

Nathan Brady: I think Trump's just a quick aside,…

Mike Smith: Okay. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: I think Trump's approval rating his first week in office is the lowest since approval ratings have come out for a newly elected president.

Mike Smith: I mean that's not surprising.

Nathan Brady: That's right.

Mike Smith: His positions on everything are just horrible. Anytime you pull anybody on any of the positions from Project 2025,…

Mike Smith: which is what he's enacting right now, basically verbatim, it's all like sub30s. It's not something that's even like fringe approved.

Nathan Brady: But he has a mandate.

Nathan Brady: He has a mandate.

Mike Smith: He's got a boy name. what is it?

Nathan Brady: I didn't like that.

Mike Smith: What is the main?

Nathan Brady: I didn't Let's Yeah,…

Mike Smith: Okay, I was trying to emasculate him. I'm above that. You're right. I'm sorry.

01:00:00

Nathan Brady:

Nathan Brady: let's never do that again.

Mike Smith: Let's not do that.

Nathan Brady: Just because you said boy Nate and that just rubbed me the wrong way as a Nate.

Mike Smith: Boy date, but that's also bad. Boy dates worse somehow.

Nathan Brady: As a Nate, I didn't like that.

Mike Smith: Yeah.

Nathan Brady: Man, man.

Mike Smith: Dates. I wanted to talk about the other thing.

Nathan Brady: What else we got? What else you want to talk about?

Mike Smith: The autism thing, right?

Nathan Brady: Okay.

Mike Smith: This is another perfect example of the reactionary aspect of it…

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Smith: because I think goodnatured people…

Mike Smith: who want to believe in good things and reasonable interpretations right that might actually be true I haven't done the digging on it but let's say that it's one in a thousand before and it's one in 30 now right so a reasonable person with no context to that would say wow incidence of autism has grown tremendously from X to Y,…

Nathan Brady: Mhm. Right.

Mike Smith: But the other thing is that we didn't start studying it…

Nathan Brady: Yeah. What?

Mike Smith: until 30 years ago in any real capacity. And so they just rebranded…

Nathan Brady: That's like saying,…

Mike Smith: what ADHD and ADD are as to be part of the autism spectrum disorder.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Every scientist knows that the increase is likely or…

Mike Smith: And you're just like

Nathan Brady: or is due to a better understanding of what autism is. I mean, there's so many but to me I think this is…

Mike Smith: But it's also reported.

Nathan Brady: what you're saying. it's like saying there were no cell phone accidents in 1960, but there are so many cell phone accidents now.

Mike Smith: Right. Right.

Nathan Brady: Somebody's got to do something.

Mike Smith: I think it's even easier than that. I think I mean maybe that's as easy to understand as it gets, but I mean I remember seeing the same sorts of graphs in the 90s about the incidence of homosexuality where they're 80 years ago,…

Nathan Brady: Right. Right.

Mike Smith: one in 20,000 people were, self reporting as gay. Whereas now it's whatever the number I made that number up.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Right. Because people feel more comfortable doing it.

Mike Smith: I don't know what the numbers are, but because they are more accepted in their communities.

Nathan Brady: Yes. Yeah.

Mike Smith: They come out because they are able to do so. They're not afraid of some hick with a shotgun killing them.

Nathan Brady: Right. I mean, if you go back and over time, you can probably go to the Roman Empire where maybe it was more acceptable,…

Mike Smith: Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: And then in our western world, it became less acceptable for whatever reason and then more acceptable. And it's just like who is the idiot? I mean, one of these idiots, probably RFK or somebody like it was complaining about these friend groups now you're seeing friend groups come out as trans more.

Mike Smith: Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: And it doesn't make sense. but likeminded people and…

Mike Smith: They made the argument of you'll have groups of kids who all come out as being trans, whereas, before it wasn't like that. And they're surrounding themselves with minded individuals who they feel comfortable expressing these things with.

Nathan Brady: then and…

Mike Smith: This shouldn't be

Nathan Brady: then The argument from these parents are like this was from a terrible documentary.

Nathan Brady: And the argument from the parents is like they never said anything about this before. Yeah. no s***.

Mike Smith: Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: What kid do you know was like who obviously if you're on a documentary about hating trans people, your kid was probably not very likely to come out to you as trans to begin with.

Mike Smith: Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: So yeah.

Mike Smith: and they likely suffered, immensely from that with social disorders like anxiety and depression and honestly probably I'm sure there's a certain number of them with a self imposed hatred because society hated them too.

Mike Smith: I remember reading about that during the 60s when it became more common place for homosexuals to come out and…

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Smith: talk about it and they said that I felt like I was supposed to hate myself and I mean it's terrible but I will say that I have a quippy oneliner that I read that I think is so propo of this whole situation and just the world in which we live and you have never lived in a society where there were no trans people and you never ever will. And it's the same no matter what you say, the gay people, trans people, doesn't matter. and the people who plug their ears and are like, "It was better before. I want to make it great again." They're living in a fantasy. They just don't want to hear about it. They don't want to talk about it. And they certainly don't want to have to be kind to you for being different.

Nathan Brady: And they think that Trump is eliminating trans people.

Nathan Brady: To that oneliner. That is not what he's doing. He's just making their lives miserable. And …

Mike Smith: Yeah. Sending them to El Salvador.

Nathan Brady: I have to tell you, and I'm sure everybody knows this, but although I do know personally a few trans people, I trans things have never been jammed down my throat except by the people against trans rights, which forces people like me who, to be fair, 15 years ago never even thought about trans people,…

01:05:00

Mike Smith: very ignorant. I didn't know hardly anything about the

Nathan Brady: but I've known a trans person for 30 years, but I never thought about trans rights or anything like that because nobody was yelling to eliminate them.

Nathan Brady: And now that they're doing that,…

Mike Smith: Right. Right.

Nathan Brady: Trans people have to step up. So that's why you're hearing about it. You leave them the f*** alone and you won't hear from them. It's that simple.

Mike Smith: Yeah, I agree. Everybody needs to join the church and mind your damn business.

Nathan Brady: Jesus Can you tell me before we leave? Maybe you don't know. I know we're at the 1 hour mark. I don't know if you have to get going here.

Mike Smith: Ready? I read the executive order brushed over it and…

Nathan Brady: Do you know what the hell the sovereign wealth fund is? Have you read about this executive order? I actually don't know. I'm ignorant to this. So

Mike Smith: so they're going to try and institute and they do this in Middle Eastern countries.

Mike Smith: I think that Qatar and maybe another one or two have this idea of a sovereign wealth fund where they have it's strange because there isn't this notion of a central reserve for the countries that do this and…

Mike Smith: then they're going to try as I understand it make a reserve of cryptocurrency or something to that effect. Am I even near the right answer here?

Nathan Brady: I all listen here's all I know and…

Nathan Brady: hopefully if you've made it this far or I may invite people to come and…

Mike Smith: Put it in the comments.

Nathan Brady: and share with us please.

Mike Smith: Let us know.

Nathan Brady:

Nathan Brady: I don't know. All I know about it is that Trump signed an executive order calling for the creation of it.

Mike Smith: Right. Right.

Nathan Brady: He said we possibly have $5.7 trillion in assets that we could use that could potentially be invested through the fund.

Nathan Brady: And then he finally said, and this is why it crossed my radar at all. He suggested that the fund could be used to purchase Tik Tok.

Mike Smith: right? my god,…

Mike Smith: Tik Tok. We don't have time.

Mike Smith: We don't have time for ik Tok. The United States government can't purchase Tik Tok.

Nathan Brady: So a US sovereign wealth fund for one of the purposes of buying Tik Tok.

Mike Smith: It's literally a free speech platform. All people do is speak their mind there. If you ban someone, you're violating their First Amendment right. I don't know what to do with this. They can't buy Tik Tok. The injunctions need to happen yesterday. It can't happen.

Nathan Brady: But at least the executive order notes that the plan is subject to the availability of appropriations and…

Mike Smith: Again, just sort of glossing over the fact that there's a branch of government in charge of that and…

Nathan Brady: suggesting potential need for legislation.

Mike Smith: you can't potentially ignore it. this country got so stupid in just a few weeks. It's amazing. I knew it was going to get evil I expected but stupid at this rate is that's just amazing. You kind of got to clap for it in a certain respect. You'd be like, "Damn, I couldn't try to be this stupid.

Nathan Brady: While we're wrapping up here, the Trump and his cronies are eliminating every single climate that they're just re replace every single page on government websites that say climate change or…

Mike Smith: Yeah, right.

Nathan Brady: anything about climate change on it. And we're destroying the environment. It's going to get colder here. it's going to get hotter here.

Mike Smith: It's going to get more fluctuatingly destructive.

Mike Smith: So, if you live in an area that's subject to both high temperatures in the summers and low temperatures in the winters, you are living in a place that is probably going to be uninhabitable in a hundred years.

Nathan Brady: I don't know.

Nathan Brady: I'm my prediction,…

Nathan Brady: which I won't be around to see, is that Canada is going to have some of the best climate is going to be basically the best land to live on.

Mike Smith: 10 years.

Nathan Brady: the best is going to be it's actually nice in the summer and…

Mike Smith: The best I think in this case is going to still be not great, but yeah.

01:10:00

Nathan Brady: potentially deadly in the winter but I think we're going to have equator like weather in the United States soon in the summers and it's going to be you can somewhat deal with the very extreme cold but when you get to the streets are melting, the infrastructure is melting. you can't survive that. And yeah, yeah, right.

Mike Smith: less so Nevada, but like that where they're closer and more impacted by heat waves like that. and it's like you're saying,…

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Smith: I mean, the asphalt is oozing and…

Nathan Brady: I mean,…

Mike Smith: you're like,…

Nathan Brady: we literally saw it in Yeah.

Mike Smith: we can't go in the store today because I'm going to get stuck in the mud and…

Mike Smith: the mud is asphalt." the I mean,…

Nathan Brady: Right. And there were literally places last year in other countries…

Nathan Brady: where there were videos of people's shoes just getting stuck eaten up by the streets. so I just wanted to end on that positive note. If you're looking for some land, maybe start looking north of the border.

Mike Smith: yeah, maybe I still think, this is blue sedition after all.

Mike Smith: I still think that we're a little bit insulated here on the West Coast, but I mean after what we've seen in the first month of this presidency, I Hasn't even been a month. my god.

Nathan Brady: Yeah, it's not promising and…

Mike Smith: I have to say that it's not promising, right?

Nathan Brady: I don't think and we're certainly not going to be insulated from global warming. I mean, no matter what we do as a state, we're not going to be able to combat whatever the US decides to reverse in terms of helping slow climate change to a point where we're not all either cramming onto Elon's last rocket to Mars, where it's going to be uninhabitable anyway, or just dying here. so hey if you liked that you want a little bit more of that you liked where that went make sure to and subscribe and…

Mike Smith: and…

Nathan Brady: try not to be so damned down.

Mike Smith: leave a comment about I want to know about the sovereignty fund. So, leave comments about that.

Nathan Brady: Yeah, I want to know more about the US sovereign wealth fund. So if you guys know anything else about that. I read through the executive order. I have no idea what the f*** he's talking about. So, help us out. Thanks everybody. We're gonna be back. So, it looks like we're probably for a little while our new podcast day is going to be on Tuesday. So, we'll be dropping a pod. probably most Tuesdays for the next couple of weeks. and…

Mike Smith: Look forward.

Nathan Brady: we do them ad hoc where we can as well if things get too crazy. So, until next time, thanks for listening. Bye, everyone.

Mike Smith: Bye everyone.

Mike Smith: Are you all right? You going to be good?

Nathan Brady: I don't know,…

Nathan Brady: I don't know…

Nathan Brady: if I'm gonna make it. This pod gets me fired up and then sad. That's the motions that I go through. let me …

Mike Smith: I got good news for you.

Mike Smith: The next Cody Shody Dodie is entitled Elon Musk Thinks You Are So** Stupid.

Nathan Brady: look at this. wait.

Mike Smith: That's the name of the episode. You can get No,…

Nathan Brady: It's already out.

Mike Smith: you can get early access on the Patreon or…

Nathan Brady: You wait,…

Mike Smith: you wait…

Nathan Brady: you got early access to the whole thing or

Mike Smith: till Yeah.

Meeting ended after 01:13:31 👋

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