Press Freedom, DOGE Drama, and Democratic Messaging

ric-vnme-ova (2025-02-25 12:34 GMT-8) - Transcript

Attendees

Mike Smith, Nathan Brady, Nathan Brady's Presentation

Transcript

Nathan Brady: Let me get the inaugural turn desktop audio on.

Mike Smith: What the f***?

Mike Smith: The inaugural sit with better posture.

Nathan Brady: And then the What the f*** are we gonna talk about today? hold on. Who is this? Dina Frank Okay, I understand. Jesus Christ, she wrote me a f****** paragraph.

Nathan Brady: Okay.

Nathan Brady: So, yeah, I know that. Who is the administrator of Doge? That's hilarious. whatever.

Mike Smith: Got to talk about HUD obviously.

Nathan Brady: Department has made up administrator. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: Jesus Give me one more second. Now I have to do a prod deploy. That takes a second. Just an endo.

Mike Smith: What? Why?

Nathan Brady: But my friend, I have automated all of this. So I just hit the up arrow, run a script and prod deploy happens.

Mike Smith: Look at you.

Mike Smith: And we're going to talk about the grifter class, which I have up at the top, but also this from Marissa that I just love.

Nathan Brady: What from Marissa? We are being treated like s*** and we won't change a thing. Yeah, that sounds right.

Nathan Brady: I'm beginning to almost like the taste of this dog s***.

Nathan Brady: Let's do a story on its nutritional content. What? Somebody's response to that was funny.

Mike Smith: What?

Mike Smith: What are you talking about, guy? I didn't see that.

Mike Smith: You ready?

Nathan Brady: Yeah,…

Nathan Brady: I need more than this. what else we got?

Mike Smith:

Mike Smith: Just scroll up, I got a lot of stuff there. I got the federal court blocks Trump admin and…

Nathan Brady: Wasn't a lot.

Mike Smith: I got like I said that grifter thing I think is It's autofocusing on me. Nate, what do I do?

Nathan Brady: Let me son of a Fix that.

Nathan Brady: Fix it.

Mike Smith: How? It doesn't let me do anything. I don't know how to do that because it has these settings but I can't change any of them.

00:05:00

Mike Smith: Maybe now I've got auto focus turned off. Maybe we have your scoop on the federal employees responding to that email.

Nathan Brady: None. Sorry.

Mike Smith: We can talk about that for a bit. What do you think?

Nathan Brady: Sorry.

Nathan Brady: Say it again.

Mike Smith: We have your scoop on the response to the email that went out on Saturday.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we can talk about that, but I feel like we're already beyond that. as other funnier things came in, I want to talk about Apple.

Nathan Brady: I want to give my hats off to Apple a little bit.

Mike Smith: We can talk about DEI and then we can contrast it with Tesla which is on fire today. They're down nearly 30 points. Is this good or all right, you let me know.

Nathan Brady: Just give me one goddamn second.

Nathan Brady: Hey,

Nathan Brady: API being deployed now. Red Sox lose to the Braves.* All right. Im I'm ready. What do you want to start with? Just so I know where I'm going.

Mike Smith: I don't know. You want to start with weird stuff?

Nathan Brady: I hate you so much.

Nathan Brady: I'm just going live and we're going to do it live.

Mike Smith:

Mike Smith: I got this one. It's a AOL article that you didn't even know AOL was still a thing.

Nathan Brady: That's not the world's biggest heist. Donald Trump just did that.

Mike Smith: That's not a heist. That's It's a scam. It's different. This is stealing. They did what we tried to do. They got access to somebody's wallet and stole out all this stuff. They're like, "Come and get us. We're in North Korea.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. All right.

Nathan Brady: Whatever. None of this matters. All right. I'm going live.

Mike Smith: He's going live.

Nathan Brady: My god, God damn That button cannot be near the record button. I almost went live on Twitch. All right, here we go.

Nathan Brady: Hey everyone and welcome to another episode of the Blue Cedition podcast. I'm Nate Brady alongside Mike Smith allegedly.

00:10:00

Mike Smith: I'm Mike Smith.

Mike Smith: It's good to be back with you folks.

Nathan Brady: Mike, Why are you talking like that?

Mike Smith: I'm doing okay. I think that I made it through the weekend. …

Nathan Brady: Yeah. All right.

Mike Smith: because every time you have to take stock normally you have this general feeling of how you are but then since the inauguration your general feelings much lower and you have to go am I okay? Is this all right?

Nathan Brady: Yeah, it's the new norm is just feeling like absolute s*** all the time…

Nathan Brady: because of everything that you're reading.

Nathan Brady: Yeah.

Mike Smith: Yeah, I sort of posted about that on Blue Sky earlier…

Mike Smith: where I was I forgot just how this feels like during the 2016 2020 Trump admin. you had to get up and go, is my city on fire? is the world burning down around me today or am I okay?

Nathan Brady: Yeah. It's interesting.

Mike Smith: And you had to make it through.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. because we, …

Nathan Brady: it's funny as we were coming up with some show notes for today, I was looking through the news and I was like, " it's kind of a slow news day." But the reality is it's not. I mean,…

Mike Smith: Yeah. Right.

Nathan Brady: this would have been a news day for the ages 30 years ago. I mean,…

Mike Smith:

Mike Smith: Right. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: so yeah.

Mike Smith: No, I think that that was the thing that made me remember it so much is that I think today they had the first big press briefing from the press room at the White House.

Mike Smith: They've done a couple, but this was the one where they answered 40 or 50 questions and they talked about something that we're going to get to in a little bit,…

Nathan Brady: Okay.

Mike Smith: but it was like, man, I really forgot how much** they just spew out of that podium. that's the biggest thing is that every time they do that, you're like, "Wow, this is months of news 20 years ago and it happened in a 20 minute presser.

Nathan Brady: We do, in fact, have a lot of stuff to get to today. So, where do you want to start?

Mike Smith: Let's just go from there. I think I hinted to it, but there's no reason to. So, as a part of this press briefing this morning, the Trump White House correspondents has decided that the Associated Press will no longer be invited to the press room.

Mike Smith: So AP is not going to have a seat at the White House press room, which actually I don't even remember.

Nathan Brady: And…

Nathan Brady: why is this? I know why.

Mike Smith: It's probably something. they refused to call it Gulf of Mexico.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. I mean,…

Mike Smith: Yeah, in the AP style guide,…

Nathan Brady: Golf of They refuse to call it Gulf of America.

Mike Smith:

Mike Smith: I'm sorry, Gulf of America. Yeah, in the AP style guide,…

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Smith: they refused to update it to Gulf of America and…

Nathan Brady: I don't remember.

Mike Smith: and that was the straw that broke the camel's back and They were kicked out of the newsroom back in the 2016 to 20 Trump admin as well, weren't they? Man, it's all coming back.

Nathan Brady: But yes and…

Mike Smith: I do remember. I think that I can guarantee that they were kicked out of the first go round. Right. Technically,…

Nathan Brady: yeah and also a judge has ruled that the Trump administration does not have to allow the Associated Press access.

Nathan Brady: So awesome. That's cool.

Mike Smith: I agree with the judgment. They don't have to allow it. But it's a really** thing to do and it's in bad faith acting. You're like we don't do that with Fox News when we have a Democrat president.

Nathan Brady: I don't agree.

Mike Smith: Biden's not like Fox News is banned from here because they're not an actual news organization. That's not a thing that the Democrats do. They should since this is the playbook now. But they never have. They're just like,…

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Right.

Mike Smith: "Yeah, you're going to lie about everything that I said on Fox News and they're not going to hear any of our actual words. I guess we're okay with that.

Nathan Brady: So I disagree with you and the judge, but there are caveats here, I think tactically it is hard to allow every single news organization into the White House briefing room.

Mike Smith: Yeah.

Nathan Brady: But on its face I…

Nathan Brady: what we're saying is there first amendment is speech freedom of the press right and in other times where there wouldn't be several other news organizations reporting the same thing over the internet. We can all see We can all hear it. We're watching it live. Whatever. …

Mike Smith: right here.

Mike Smith: Right. Right.

Nathan Brady: if the president of the United States decided…

Nathan Brady: who was allowed in that room while it wasn't being broadcast live to the rest of us, I mean, we would never get the real news. Right.

Mike Smith: you get the news that they want to report either way,…

Mike Smith: but what you don't get is any push back from news organizations So asking hard questions is really the reason that they're kicked out is because they'll phrase a question along the lines of, that's a complete fabrication. So how do you respond to that?" and they don't have a good response to it, so they just kick them out.

00:15:00

Mike Smith: But again, like you said, on the First Amendment side, they have to have an open press briefing and it is still being broadcast by SPAN. It's live, like you said. Everybody has access to that and so the AP can still write about the press briefings that come out. They just don't have that access to ask questions, which is…

Nathan Brady: I mean,…

Nathan Brady: and then Yeah,…

Mike Smith: what they want in, this style of, government. They want it more dictatorial. They don't want questions asked because that shines light on their mis misdeeds.

Nathan Brady: I mean counter to that the attorney for the Associated Press argued that there are elements to be reported on that cannot be seen on television and that it requires a journalist being in the room.

Nathan Brady: So, I don't know.

Mike Smith: Not sure I buy that, but whatever.

Nathan Brady: I mean,…

Nathan Brady: I t know. that I just don't know. there probably are. mean, if there are armed guards for some reason suddenly in the, briefing room that weren't there before at the door, and the TV's not showing that it's only showing the podium. I mean, there are things there that could matter. I don't know. nonetheless,…

Mike Smith: Yeah, I don't have any idea.

Mike Smith: Yeah, sure.

Nathan Brady: I still think it's bad. I think this whole,…

Nathan Brady: like you said, a Democratic president isn't stopping Fox News or I've seen ridiculous networks in there Over.

Mike Smith: Right. Like Newsmax.

Mike Smith: Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: Yeah, So, this just feels bad.

Mike Smith: O networks and Yeah. it's just…

Nathan Brady: But your problem listen no

Mike Smith: what oligarchs do.

Nathan Brady: Yeah, but this is your problem right now.

Nathan Brady: you're almost shrugging it off…

Nathan Brady: because of all of the other terrible things that are going on and the bad things that this administration does and you're almost like nah there's a whole bunch of other bad stuff going on All right.

Mike Smith: Yeah, you're right.

Mike Smith: Of course. I'm not in a position to argue this. Obviously, like nothing you and I do will have any effect to this. We both agree that you should let the AP into your press room. because they're one of the most reliable news reporting conglomerates. What's the word? coalition in the US.

Nathan Brady: Agents.

Mike Smith: Yeah.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Sure.

Mike Smith: Yeah. So, I mean,…

Nathan Brady: What are you going to do?

Mike Smith: what are you going to do?

Nathan Brady: Let's keep it rolling. We have a lot of smaller things to get to today. I do enjoy this one from Reuters.

Mike Smith: Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: Speaking of these types of organizations, let's share this stat. I don't know if you've seen this. Musk staffers have quit over confusion from his latest ultimatum to government workers.

Mike Smith: God.

Nathan Brady: So, I'm sure everybody by now, if you're listening to this episode, if you listen to, political, podcasts follow any of this, by now that Elon Musk, and Doge and the OPM have sent emails to hundreds of thousands of federal workers in the last week saying, or it was last Thursday or something.

Nathan Brady: basically saying you have to respond to this email with five bullet points of what you did last week and if you don't respond to that email we will consider it you resigning,…

Nathan Brady: so several people responded with memes nonsense. …

Mike Smith: Right. Right.

Nathan Brady: several agency heads told their department not to respond and that they would handle communications. people were worried about sensitive information being passed over these emails. I mean, it was Right.

Mike Smith: Not just sensitive,…

Mike Smith: but in some cases classified information.

Nathan Brady: I mean, it was a real Right.

Mike Smith: It's the classic Elon Musk s*** show.

Nathan Brady: Exactly. you know what? Yeah.

Nathan Brady: you here,…

Nathan Brady: let me share the image that you just shared with me. Folks can see. So, here's the email that was sent out. …

Mike Smith: Yeah, sure.

Mike Smith: This is in response to the name five things.

Nathan Brady: this is from HHS.

Mike Smith: Yeah, this is from HS

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. there is no HHS expectation that HHS employees respond to OPM and there is no impact to your employment within with the agency if you choose not to respond. I love this. and what's funny is that the FBI also said something similar. and the FBI is now run by Cash Patel and…

Mike Smith: Yeah.

Nathan Brady: right-wing podcaster Dan Bonino. but it's hilarious that there's already now a power struggle between, Elon and Cash Capel and this is going to start happening.

00:20:00

Nathan Brady: but they said essentially the same things that this HHS email laid out. Then let's take this even further. Elon Musk tweeted, I believe yesterday, that per the discretion of the president of the United States, there will be another email asking you once again to respond with five bullet points. And If you don't respond for realies this time, then it's going to be considered termination.

Mike Smith: Yeah. Resignation.

Mike Smith: You have to remember this is posturing for legal reasons. They want to have to pay severance of any kind. They don't want any wrongful termination suits.

Nathan Brady: resignation. …

Nathan Brady: Yeah.

Mike Smith: They want it to be voluntary…

Nathan Brady: Right. Right.

Mike Smith: but also tory. So, if you fail to respond because you were sick or whatever, that's a resignation, not them terminating you.

Nathan Brady: Right. No.

Mike Smith: Which is not how any of this works, but we've said that so many times now that that sentence seems to have lost all meaning.

Nathan Brady: It doesn't mean anything anymore. Yeah. Right.

Mike Smith: And in fact, it was interesting because I started, going down the rabbit hole on this, and I really should have copied this for our show notes, but I found a legal precedent that said that you can't have an affirmation from a negative. So if you don't do something, it can't affirm something. There's a legal ruling that basically says that this can't do nothing.

Nathan Brady: Love it.

Mike Smith: Yeah, because how?

Mike Smith: Because you can't Never mind. It's just so dumb.

Nathan Brady: No, I get…

Nathan Brady: what you're saying. so I know a few people that work inside the federal government. We shared, a scoop that we got earlier this week about how some government employees are responding. nothing's going to happen to these guys.

Nathan Brady: if they are going to be removed from office, they are going to force Elon to quote unquote fire them and Elon does not have the authority to do that.

Mike Smith: And he doesn't have the authority.

Mike Smith: We don't think he has the authority.

Nathan Brady: That brings up a really interesting question and something I believe you just posted on Blue Sky earlier. who's the head of Doge?

Mike Smith: Yeah. the administrator. It's the big sticking point. I'll try and get it included in the show notes, but the legal eagle did an amazing video essay on this last week just trying to break it down. And there's a bunch of legal ease in place that says that the administrator is the official position, but Elon's not like he doesn't have that position. He's just a special counsel to the president. So, he doesn't actually have any capacity authority to fire or hire or anything else, but maybe the administrator of Doge does, but it's sort of up in the air because there's a lawsuit pending.

Mike Smith: And now when they ask in the press room, who is the administrator of The White House press secretary says, I'm not going to reveal the name of that person from this podium. Which is just the stupidest response you can give.

Nathan Brady: What I mean that's the most transparent you could ever be from a

Mike Smith: Yeah, Elon boasting on his stupid explatform about how transparent Doge is and you won't tell us who's in charge of it, but you legally have to.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. does this person exist?

Mike Smith: Also, there's a standing expiry date for the position. So, it's like, has that clock started? Is this person actually doing a job right now? Do they exist? No. Yes.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Is the person a chainsaw?

Mike Smith: Yeah. Ellias.

Nathan Brady: So, le let's just keep going. Let's go on to the next thing. related though. So, this isn't really going on to the next thing, but this is kind of related.

Nathan Brady: By the way, Mark Elliot, is this I'm not sure. I should know how to say his name. It's IAS, Or Elias.

Mike Smith: Yeah, I've Yeah.

Nathan Brady: I've only ever read it. I've seen him on …

Mike Smith: Is Democracy Dog at podcast?

Nathan Brady: station.

Mike Smith: Probably. He has another station that we listen to on Station. It's channel on YouTube. Sorry, that's…

Nathan Brady: Good lord.

Mike Smith: how old I am.

Nathan Brady: Turn your dial to Yeah.

Mike Smith: Yeah,…

Mike Smith: and I think I've heard him say Mark Ellias,…

Nathan Brady: Tune in,…

Nathan Brady: folks. I can't believe that…

Mike Smith: but apologies if we're getting it wrong. I'll look into that.

Nathan Brady: and I think I said this to you earlier today, Mark is the only thing that's pretty much holding up the entire country right now. he's holding us together.

00:25:00

Mike Smith:

Mike Smith: He's the vanguard, he's the shield out there just blocking everything that these people do. And it's the reason that they're going after the judiciary so hard this time around where they're saying things like the judiciary can't stop an executive, the president should have blah blah blah and these are unconstitutional judicial verdicts and things. It's like they're trying to erode the sanctity and…

Mike Smith: belief in our judicial system because they can't beat that.

Nathan Brady: Right. Yeah.

Mike Smith: That requires logic and a law degree and understanding the implementation of the law which Mark Ellias does very well. He argues it and keeps winning in court. They can't win in court.

Nathan Brady: So, I don't know if Mark is directly related to this particular case here where a federal court has ruled to block the Trump administration from implementing the OM funding pause.

Nathan Brady: And then quotes, the public's interest in not having trillions of dollars arbitrarily frozen cannot be overstated. I mean, yeah.

Mike Smith: Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: I mean, we saw it with what just happened with USID, $500 million in food, rotting away in shipping containers, …

Nathan Brady: vital, medication, HIV medication, life-saving drugs and medication just sitting expiring, instead of saving tens of thousands of lives. we talked about this a little bit last week and I had said, Al Gore was kind of like the original Doge, in the Clinton administration where they had gone through and they had cut a whole bunch of funding and, government employees, etc.

Mike Smith: Yeah.

Nathan Brady: But you cannot do it the way that Elon and…

Nathan Brady: his team are doing it which is just to go in and say all right what happens if I hit the delete key you can't do that you can't do that with anything Right.

Mike Smith: Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Smith: No, but I think feels That's their goal here is that they want to make it as painful as possible to these federal employees so that while we're waiting on court judgments and verdicts that the administration may or may not, listen to, you're not getting a paycheck.

Nathan Brady: Runner. Right.

Mike Smith: You have rent to pay and you've got groceries to buy and you got to fill your car with gas and get to work. you can't keep doing a job if they're not giving you your compensation for it. And that's the idea. They're trying to make it as painful as possible so that these people just leave and stop doing it. And again, they want it to be voluntary. They don't want to fire you. They want to make it so unbelievably painful for you to continue working there that you'll just not do it anymore.

Nathan Brady: …

Mike Smith: I'm hoping that all these federal agencies and all these federal employees can last the storm while these court cases are raging. And again, you're hoping the admin, I don't know why he would, but eventually just gives in and follows the judicial orders. but without any checks and…

Nathan Brady: he is the law.

Nathan Brady: I don't know if you Yeah,…

Mike Smith: balances, he is the law. That's true.

Nathan Brady: I don't know

Nathan Brady: I don't know if you know about this, but he is the law. In fact, let's move over to I have to play this clip. I mean, because if you haven't heard this clip yet, did we No,…

Mike Smith: It's going to hurt me,…

Mike Smith: isn't it?

Nathan Brady: I think we've played it on Did I not share it?

Mike Smith: I don't know. We'll find out.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Here we don't go. No, that's not the one. Stand by. Here it is. All right, let's share this.

Nathan Brady: So, this is an exchange that happened with the governor of Maine, Janet Mills, and Donald Trump. So, This is just truly insane. So, let's listen in.

Nathan Brady's Presentation: The NCIA has complied immediately,…

Nathan Brady's Presentation: by the That's good. But I understand The governor of Maine? Are you not going to comply with it? I'm complying with state and federal laws. We are the federal law. you better do it because you're not going to get any federal funding at all if you don't. And by the way, your population, even though it's somewhat liberal, although I did very well there,…

Nathan Brady's Presentation: your population doesn't want men playing in women's sports. So, you better comply because otherwise you're not getting any federal funding. See you in court. Every state. Good. I'll see you in court. I look forward to that. That should be a real easy one. And enjoy your life after governor because I don't think you'll be in elected politics.

00:30:00

Nathan Brady's Presentation: Every state, the NC

Nathan Brady: So a couple things here.

Nathan Brady: First of all, I don't know if you could hear it, but she said a couple things under her breath that weren't as easy to hear. One of them was said when she said, "I'll see you in court." Which, by the way, wow.

Mike Smith: Good for her.

Nathan Brady: good for her. That's how you do it.

Nathan Brady: you look a fascist in their fascist face and…

Mike Smith: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: you and you tell them, and good for her because she has more whatever coones, right, than anybody else in that room for being able to do that. But she said, "I'll see you in court." And he responded, that should be easy" And then she said, "Easy for me." Which under So I really enjoyed that. That whole exchange was great from her end, but for him, he said, "Are you gonna comply with this?" And she said, "I will comply with state and federal law." Meaning to say, " if you want your stupid thing to be a thing, then make it a law, and I basically don't have a choice, but right now we are complying with state and federal law." To which he responded, "We are the federal law."

Nathan Brady: which is sorry the president of the United States doesn't understand…

Nathan Brady: how civics works but you're not the law that's just not how it works I think a number of people just learned something today.

Mike Smith: It's called the executive branch…

Mike Smith: because you are the execution of the law. You don't enforce That's law enforcement. You are the executive. That's all you do.

Nathan Brady: Including Trump …

Mike Smith: No, I'm guessing he didn't. The other thing he said in there that's absolute gibberish is he's like, "I did very well in Maine. I think He lost Maine by almost 100,000 votes." He's a liar and a con artist. Everything he said in that sentence was gibberish.

Nathan Brady: he just said it's not even so much that he lies.

Nathan Brady: yes, he lies, but he just says He doesn't know if they're true or not. He just says whatever he wants to be the truth, and I think another great example of that,…

Nathan Brady: and I'm going to stay on because I think you posted this. Yeah, this one. I just love this. So, let's play this one as well.

Nathan Brady's Presentation: by Russia…

Nathan Brady's Presentation: because they was the one to aggress just so you understand Europe is loaning the money to Ukraine. They get their money back. No, in fact to be frank we paid 60% of the total default and…

Nathan Brady's Presentation: it was through the US loans guarantee grants and we provided real money to be clear we have 23

Nathan Brady: I mean,…

Nathan Brady: how fantastic is it that Mcronone was like,…

Mike Smith: No, no,…

Mike Smith: I don't have a grandpa.

Nathan Brady: "Wait a minute." And he put Donald's hand over his lap and…

Mike Smith: I know.

Nathan Brady: was like, "Hold hold on, idiot. excuse me. hold hold on.

Nathan Brady: …

Mike Smith: I think that it's a great showing. I want so very much to see more world leaders do that. I think I posted that specifically. I was like we need to have that more often where we have democratically elected world leaders just treating him correctly in this way and…

Nathan Brady: right. Right. Right.

Mike Smith: just being like no you're wrong and here's why and just keep talking. He's proven that he doesn't do well at this age with people just railroading him. He had trouble with that in the Biden debate. He definitely had trouble with that in the Camala debate and it's been getting progressively worse where he used to do that. He's out of energy and he can't really do it. So McCron just kind of starts talking and then puts his hand on him and kind of shoves him out of scene and he's like now the French guy's talking and he's like no no no.

Nathan Brady: No, actually actually.

Mike Smith:

Mike Smith: And that's all he's got. He can't even push back hard anymore.

Nathan Brady: And he was doing this. He was like, I don't know. Donald, you just have no idea what you're talking about.

Mike Smith: Yeah, it's all posturing at that point. it looks weak. And I think that a lot of other people have pointed out is that he looks weak in situations like this. And this is how ally leaders specifically should treat him. but I'm wondering too, I don't know if you saw this. I just sent you. did Macron hurt his hand? Did you see this?

Mike Smith: This is an Aaron Repar. I'm going to Nate bring it up. It's an Aaron Repar post that he found.

00:35:00

Nathan Brady: Let's try and…

Mike Smith: It's a Getty image of Trump after this meeting holding his hands together and he's got this big fat bruise on the one hand and it's the hand that Macron held him down on and so I'm wondering is he at the age now where a little bit of force causes him to bleed and bruise did Macron do But I mean,…

Nathan Brady: maybe we Can I make this a little bit bigger? No, that didn't work for me. let's

Mike Smith: look at that thing. That's for the people looking at home. This is at that green yellow stage of peruse…

Nathan Brady's Presentation: We paid

Mike Smith: where it probably hurts a lot. It's got some red purple around the edges of it. Just looks nasty.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Unfortunately,…

Nathan Brady: we can't see at least in this clip.

Nathan Brady: I'm on the wrong I wasn't sharing. You can't see in this clip. yeah.

Mike Smith: Yeah, it's covered by the chevron,…

Mike Smith: So, it's like you can't That's too bad.

Nathan Brady: Yeah, that's unfortunate. I wonder if somebody has another angle. we just also talk about what's going on this hand here?

Mike Smith: I wonder if we went and found a French feed or something instead of the Fox News affiliate that we might have a better angle there. I don't want to be ages here.

Nathan Brady: I mean, this looks like No,…

Mike Smith: I mean right?

Nathan Brady: no, I don't. But this just looks like somebody who's not really taking good care of themselves.

Nathan Brady: …

Mike Smith: Yeah. You got athletes foot.

Nathan Brady: it looks like there's fungus growing here. I mean, if you crop this out right here, this looks like a big toe that you're like, "Hey, you need to get some athletes foot.

Mike Smith: You need some help.

Nathan Brady: Just clear it up a little bit." …

Nathan Brady: this just looks like somebody who's sitting at his desk drinking Diet Coke and watching television to see what they're saying about him. but yeah, I mean it doesn't look good was so I mean that's…

Mike Smith: Yeah. Doesn't look good.

Mike Smith: I don't know. But I had put those two together and I wanted to ask if you thought that maybe that was it because Yeah.

Nathan Brady: what people hear.

Mike Smith: So that's what people are speculating on. I didn't dig into the comments on This one I found in passing and I found it interesting.

Nathan Brady: I mean this says this generally happens to older people if they are constantly shaking hands. I mean yeah I mean yeah I mean we don't have to

Mike Smith:

Mike Smith: Yeah. Yeah. The same thing happened. I think that I talked about this in the California Fires episode that we did where Trump came to California and he met Gavin Newsome on the tarmac and of course Newsome's quite a bit younger than him and…

Mike Smith: there was in this video that Nome gave him a pretty firm handshake and Trump visibly winced at it. he didn't look like he enjoyed it. And so I'm thinking that a lot of his fellow Democratic leaders are letting him know who's in charge with the handshakes these days.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: I mean,…

Nathan Brady: this person also brings up a good point because, I've seen this personally a lot too. is like, could this have been a bad IV state?

Mike Smith: Yeah, could be an IV.

Mike Smith: Yeah, that's a really good point.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Yeah. interesting.

Mike Smith: Yeah, and it's harder obviously in older folks in particular to find if you're trying to do a banana bag because he is older. He is and he's doing a lot activitywise, So, he's probably dehydrated a lot and they might have to give him a banana bag to keep him going. you're on the Air Force One, they do that all the time with a lot of presidents, not just like elderly elderly, but even Barack Obama had that. But in the elderly, it's hard to find a vein to do at the elbow because they don't have the blood pressure to do that. And if you talk to any nurses, they go to the hand next.

Nathan Brady: I have terrible veins.

Mike Smith: In fact, my wife has terrible veins. They always go to her hands because that's the only place they can find a vein.

Nathan Brady: It's the worst, I hate going to get my blood drawn or something because they poke me so many times.

Mike Smith:

Mike Smith: Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: The worst.

Mike Smith: because they don't believe That's what they do with my wife. They're just like, I'll try your elbow 16 or 17 times." And…

Nathan Brady: I say it to every single one of them and…

Mike Smith: then they're like, "Okay, I guess I'll go to the …

Nathan Brady: they're like, " I've been doing this for 10 years. You'll be fine." And then it's like, " oops.

Mike Smith: I've never blown a vein in my life,…

Nathan Brady: Oops." …

Mike Smith: in my career." And then I want to circle back just really quickly one more thing from that press conference.

Nathan Brady: okay. okay.

Mike Smith: We were talking about s I went and checked the 2022 Maine governatorial election. It was Janet Mills versus Paul Leage, if you remember…

Mike Smith: who Paul La Page is. And she won that by literally a 100,000 votes. So, I'm not really worried about her electability as compared to, grandpa here.

Nathan Brady: I think…

Nathan Brady: what just happened for her is great for her career. I mean, she stood up.

Mike Smith: Yeah. She's got campaign fodder for years now.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. yeah. Yeah.

Mike Smith: She just says, "I'm gonna run up against Trump every chance I get and I'm gonna stick him to the wall and then everybody votes for him. It's one of the only reasons I think that Nuome succeeds in California…

Nathan Brady: No, that was great.

Nathan Brady: Yeah.

Mike Smith: because he's sort of widely disliked even by Democrats in this state. just for a lot of reasons, but he does lawsuit and state position and try and whip the state congress or state senate into passing laws that are very anti-Republican in nature. So he's always fighting with the GOP and Trump in particular the last few years to stories. Yeah.

00:40:00

Nathan Brady: Yeah, that's I wanted to bring this next story. So, I'll throw in something, I guess positive. I mean, depends on how you want to look at it. I need to give credit to Apple for two stories that Apple has been in the news lately. And the first one I'll share is this one.

Nathan Brady: This is Apple shareholders vote to keep its diversity policies. And this isn't coming from the shareholders. This was the board actually suggesting to the shareholders that it vote this way. and specifically if you go all the way to the top Apple's current CEO Tim Cook has said that its collaboration u with people of all different cultures and backgrounds is part of what makes the culture at Apple work. and so they are not succumbing to the GOP's ridiculous attacks on DEI.

Nathan Brady: So I asked I think it was last

Mike Smith: I think it's important to note too that Apple is a worldwide company.

Mike Smith: We think about them in terms of being based out of Silicon Valley in that area, but they have employees all over the world. and to even hint at a signal of we don't want to have, people of color, we don't want to have women, we don't want to have in inclusion in this way is just hugely self destructive. it's not a good look for employees who work for you for you to have a public stance of antagonism against them. So, I mean, it feels like it's such a small thing to do to be like, "Okay, you didn't throw away this thing and good for you. It's so easy." Yeah.

Nathan Brady: maybe the episode before whether Tim Cook was at the inauguration because I couldn't remember.

Mike Smith: Yeah, you asked that. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: But I'll say that everybody else there Mark Zuckerberg,…

Nathan Brady: Musk obviously, Google, everyone Bezos, everybody that was there, they've already acquiesced, right? They've already met Meta has already started removing their DEI policies.

Mike Smith: Hey, Anthony.

Mike Smith: Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: They've been removing factchecking. they've been doing some just ridiculous things. Google the same way. And Apple stood its ground. and we're seeing, that old that the nonsense saying that the right is if you go woke, you go broke, which just certainly isn't true.

Nathan Brady: Costco is another one that said we're not going to touch our DEI policies and people have rallied behind them. People are rallying now behind Apple. Target was one that went the other way and now they're hurting from it and eventually it sounds like going to try and reverse some of the damage that they've already done.

Mike Smith: Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Smith: They're going to change course on that. I would imagine these publicly traded companies when they make stances like this that are I mean there you have to imagine that at the top they're doing the costbenefit analysis,…

Nathan Brady: …

Mike Smith: They're on the one hand we have to bend the knee so that we get preferential treatment from the god king and on the other hand we're a publicly traded company and…

Nathan Brady: right. Right.

Mike Smith: god king says. We care what the shareholders say. So you have to really do that tight rope walk to get it right.

Nathan Brady:

Mike Smith: And again I will call out Apple for a lot of their practices and…

Nathan Brady: I mean,…

Nathan Brady: yes. Yes.

Mike Smith: and other companies as well. Costco I mean they do things that are not in the ve best interests of their employees specifically…

Nathan Brady: Yes. Yeah.

Mike Smith: but they do stand in the right light in present day with these initiatives. I think.

Nathan Brady: And I think the other one which I don't have a story ready linked up but the other one to share with Apple is recently the UK basically said hey you need to put a backd dooror into your into your end encryption service that you offer here in the UK so that the government can get into user data when they need to. And Apple said absolutely not.

00:45:00

Nathan Brady: and the UK said, Basically, if you want to have this encryption service, you have to do it." So, Apple said, " then we're just not going to end to end this encryption service in the UK." And…

Mike Smith: You must Yeah.

Mike Smith: the UK to do that.

Nathan Brady: if that means that people are going to go with a different provider because of it, But we're basically going to make the consumers pissed at the government instead of us. Why are we gonna acquies and

Mike Smith: Which is the right way to do it?

Nathan Brady: it's the right way to do it. so that is one case where because if you've listened to this podcast at all, I'm not here to defend corpora Corporations exist to live and breathe to make as much money as humanly possible despite any, …

Nathan Brady: opposition from consumers, employees, like whatever. They're just there to make as much money as possible no matter how no matter. And this, I think, is a little bit Yeah,…

Mike Smith: Yeah. Risk side effects be damned.

Mike Smith: Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: I think this is a little bit counter to what we're used to seeing, especially in a corporation this size. so I have to give a little bit of credit here to Apple for that.

Mike Smith: And this isn't the first time that they've done something like this, with regard to security. Obviously, Nate and I are both in tech field and we, are very close ear to the ground on these sorts of things, but Apple has in the past as well,…

Nathan Brady: Right. Yeah. Right.

Mike Smith: basically told the FBI in a couple of instances we can't help you with this encryption breaking. We don't have the keys or a back door to help you. and we're not going to build it into our system. And then it's push come to shove again here in the UK where they said build it or you won't be able to operate in the UK and they said we're not building a back door in it. We're just going to say that your users can't have it and we're still going to market it. We're still going to talk about how great this system is. And for those who don't know, this is just an offline encrypted data from your phone. So think your photos and your documents and your phone calls and your text messages.

Mike Smith: they get downloaded onto Apple's servers somewhere. And this is an offline encrypted storage mechanism that says no one can decrypt your stuff except Apple can't decrypt it.

Mike Smith: The government can't decrypt it. Foreign enemies can't decrypt it and this is a good feature and users should be extremely happy about this. I think back to the simplest explanation was I think it was a John Oliver but it may have been a John Stewart long long ago about the government can't see your dickpicks is basically how they framed it and…

Nathan Brady: Yeah. …

Mike Smith: they went around asking people are you worried that the government can see your dickpicks and they're like what so no this system says no okay everybody but your government can't see your dickpicks UK careful with that they can see your dickpicks …

Nathan Brady: So, we have actually some breaking news that I'm going to share right now. So, this is breaking for you as well.

Mike Smith:

Mike Smith: let's go. Probably they announced it.

Nathan Brady: Just earlier in the podcast, we did not know who the administrator of Doge is, and now we have an answer. The administrator of Doge is one Amy Gleason. This has been confirmed via the DC Examiner. and we also have a post to Amy Gleason's LinkedIn, so we have our experience here. but we'll just note that Max Kennerly here says, "Congrats to Amy Gleason, who was totally named Doge admin out of the blue and…

Nathan Brady: is going to get pulled into a thousand court hearings where she has to say I don't know over and over because she genuinely doesn't and watch federal judges face turn faces turn beat red." and then questions. So then what exactly is Musk's role?

Mike Smith: Yeah. …

Nathan Brady: So yeah, we'll see here Amy Gleason's past experience. she was senior adviser to the US digital service for two months. she's a consultant and her own consultant agency for about six years. She was the chief product off officer looks like a venture capitalist firm. she was the chief product officer for a health company. and then for three years as well was a digital service expert for the White House.

Mike Smith: I'll point out something interesting here that I think may have fallen past the fold here,…

Nathan Brady: I Okay.

Mike Smith: but senior adviser and I'll go back up the top, Senior adviser to the United States Digital Service is an oversight. They haven't updated their LinkedIn thing. Recall that that was renamed to the United States Doge Service. So that's…

Nathan Brady: right.

Mike Smith: how they created the stupid agency without creating an agency.

Nathan Brady: So, this is Doge,…

Mike Smith: They took an agency that had a G in it and…

Nathan Brady: You're No, you're totally right.

00:50:00

Mike Smith: renamed it.

Nathan Brady: No, you're totally right. I actually completely missed that. Thank you for calling that out.

Mike Smith: Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: And it's funny, did she backdate it?

Mike Smith: I mean, she must have…

Nathan Brady: I …

Mike Smith: because she was never announced and I mean …

Nathan Brady: plus it says senior adviser. So, was she always an adviser, but now she's the administrator?

Mike Smith: that's interesting. I don't know. Yeah, pro. Probably that's what happened is that they were looking for a scapegoat to get under the bus and…

Mike Smith: she said, "I'll do it." my god.

Nathan Brady: They didn't know.

Mike Smith: Why wouldn't they announce it at the podium? That's my next question. If I'm literally any media thing at the next No,…

Nathan Brady: They didn't know,…

Mike Smith: no. The next briefing,…

Nathan Brady: right? Yeah.

Mike Smith: the very next briefing, I go, "You said you wouldn't be announcing who the administrator was from the podium. Why did you not want to announce that it was Amy Gleason?

Nathan Brady: What's wrong with announcing that? Yeah.

Mike Smith: What's wrong with knowing that? Can you confirm that?" I know.

Nathan Brady: I mean, they're just gonna handwave that. That's nothing,…

Mike Smith: But the whole point of being in the press room is to embarrass the press secretary for the Trump admin…

Nathan Brady: .

Mike Smith: because she's obviously a moron and just lying for the God King. Man, that's some good breaking news,…

Nathan Brady: Yeah.

Mike Smith: Nate. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: Hey, I listen, if you guys aren't on Blue Sky, it reminds me of when Twitter was good, but also all the noise kind of is filtered out. So, if you're specifically looking for breaking political news,…

Nathan Brady: I mean, first of all, just come to our thing and follow our news sources list.

Nathan Brady: I think that list is available for anybody to follow.

Mike Smith: Yeah, it should be under our lists.

Mike Smith: If you go to our page and…

Nathan Brady: And we throw people in here …

Mike Smith: go to our lists, you should see it. It's called new sources at blues edition.com.

Nathan Brady: who we think are reliable. speaking of here's Marissa and…

Nathan Brady: her and her intern. I huge fan of Marissa who has done some incredible reporting es especially these last couple of weeks. check her out.

Mike Smith: She broke a story just the other day.

Mike Smith: As I recall,…

Nathan Brady: What she breaks several stories.

Mike Smith: she broke a story just the other day. She broke the story from HUD over the weekend.

Nathan Brady: Are we going to share it?

Mike Smith: The video that we're ready to share.

Nathan Brady: All right. you know what?

Mike Smith: feel like we have to for the people…

Nathan Brady: I'm not going to describe this for the people that are listening.

Mike Smith: who are lovely enough to not have eyes here or lucky enough really.

Nathan Brady: So the other morning was it yesterday morning? I don't know what day it is anymore. I think this was yesterday morning.

Mike Smith: Yeah, this was broke yesterday, Sunday morning.

Nathan Brady: No,…

Mike Smith: Monday morning,…

Nathan Brady: yesterday was Monday morning.

Mike Smith: excuse me.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Smith: Day is

Nathan Brady: There was a video playing on almost all of the monitors at the Housing and Urban Development headquarters in DC when the day that mandatory return to office began and the video was playing on loop of Donald Trump sucking Elon's toes with a text over it reading long live the real king.

Nathan Brady: Imagine you walk in to this government building and this is just on loop on all of the monitors.

Mike Smith: The resistance is real,…

Mike Smith: I'm telling you.

Nathan Brady: I mean, wow. Yeah,…

Mike Smith: There are federal employees who aren't gonna take this sitting down. I love it.

Nathan Brady: people aren't happy right now, I mean, what's funny is so many people now, probably still Trump supporters, have been caught up in this. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. I didn't think Wait,…

Mike Smith: Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: yeah, you're starting to realize, that none of this is for you. This has never been for you, this is all about them.

Nathan Brady: And we're seeing today as the House and…

Mike Smith: Yeah. Right.

Nathan Brady: Congress argues over the proposed Republican budget bill where is the $1.2 trillion in savings going to come from? how do you do that without cutting Med Medicare, Social Security, programs that affect majority of Trump supporters? so people wake up, It was never about your eggs being so, you have to just come out and admit it. are you a racist so much so that you're willing to forego anything good that the government is doing for you just to hurt immigrants, brown people, people that don't look like Or, are you going to finally admit that this is actually a problem and that these government safety nets matter?

00:55:00

Nathan Brady: And that …

Nathan Brady: which one is it? because guess what? I went to the grocery outlet day before yesterday and the eggs there, which I was getting for $4.99 at the end of Biden's administration, which was still high,…

Mike Smith: so high.

Nathan Brady: are $11.99 right now. Okay, they've nearly tripled since Biden has left office. And we were told, so now Trump supporters are saying,…

Nathan Brady: that there's a bird flu going on? Don't you know that there's the aven flu out there?" And yeah, we were aware. That's what we were telling you. but your god, king, right, told us on day one, day one, he was going to fix it. Day one. Wh What's going on, guys?

Mike Smith: He's going to fix it.

Mike Smith: He's not even talking about it.

Mike Smith: They're not doing anything. And I agree.

Nathan Brady: He's not doing,…

Mike Smith: There's nothing he could do. I mean,…

Nathan Brady: but he's not even pretending.

Mike Smith: but he's not even pretending.

Nathan Brady: Here's…

Mike Smith: And this is his game plan every single time he runs for president or he's campaigning on something. his position is, I'm the best at negotiating. I'm going to get it done day one. And people believe him for some reason. And then he just doesn't do anything about it because he just doesn't care.

Nathan Brady: Here's what it is to me. Donald Trump grabs the football. He puts the football down like Lucy and Charlie Brown. One of his Trump supporters comes over and says, "Can I kick it?" And Trump says, "Yeah, you can kick it." And the Trump supporter kicks it, misses, lands on his ass because Trump pulled the football away. except the Trump supporter is getting back up and…

Nathan Brady: instead of being mad about that is going, "Let me watch that ASMR video again of the immigrants being deported because that's so funny." What is happening?

Mike Smith: Yeah. I don't know. And it'll be interesting,…

Mike Smith: I don't want to talk about, but many people from the center Democrats, I don't know why this is causing me problems,…

Nathan Brady: Why is this still up?

Nathan Brady: Sorry, that's been up for way too long. I'm sorry.

Mike Smith: but I was distracted.

Nathan Brady: I could tell you were visibly disturbed there.

Mike Smith: But there are people who I think are middle-of the road Democrats, centristle leaning old liberals, that sort of thing, who are now in a position of just accelerationism where they're just like, what, I kind of want the GOP to just completely destroy these public goods, these services that are offered because it's going to ruin so many people's lives that is…

Mike Smith: what it will take for them to learn. And I'm like, hey, that's such a horrible way to think about this world.

Nathan Brady: I mean,…

Mike Smith: I mean,…

Nathan Brady: and honestly,…

Mike Smith: I understand it. In my darkest hour, I might feel that way, but I genuinely don't think that burning the building down is the way to do it.

Nathan Brady: and I'm not sure it actually does change the mind of most people.

Nathan Brady: I mean, I am

Mike Smith: I mean,…

Mike Smith: if you're one of the people who, get support from Medicaid or Medicare or you're living on your social security, and you get these services and you voted for Trump to do away with the waste and then you lose access to them because they were deemed waste. Are you going to learn anything from that? I mean, you're not going to be able to go to the doctor anymore and…

Mike Smith: you're going to stop getting checks in the mail and you still have bills to pay, I assume. So, you're going to learn that somebody voted to take that away from you…

Nathan Brady: It's And somehow that'll be blamed on Biden or…

Mike Smith: because they have to vote on the budget. They can't shadow docket it. They have to vote on the budget. And eventually, someone has to vote on I'm going to cut Medicaid, right? Someone has to vote yes on I think we should take social security away from the seniors.

Nathan Brady: Obama or whatever. And some of these people actually buy that. that's the thing. we said Trump wasn't addressing inflation, prices at the grocery store, eggs, anything like that.

Nathan Brady: The only thing that he has said even anywhere near any of this stuff is the post that he made on True Social,…

Nathan Brady: maybe a couple of weeks ago where he said Biden inflation is at an all-time high. listen, either the president controls inflation. Frankly, how…

Mike Smith: right? Biden has a lot of control over that given that he's not the president anymore.

Mike Smith: Interesting. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: how weak of a president do you have to be, if the other guy is still in charge and…

Mike Smith: Is Biden still in charge?

Nathan Brady: you want is Biden still in charge?

Mike Smith: Do you remember that?

Nathan Brady: I mean,…

Mike Smith: Do you remember after 2020 and then Biden was elected, that I don't know. There was a very niche group of Republican voters who were like, "No, no, no, no, no. Trump's still in charge. He's behind the scenes and…

01:00:00

Nathan Brady: right? Yeah.

Mike Smith: he's controlling everything.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Mike Smith: Biden's just a puppet." And all this other stuff.

Nathan Brady: Right. Right.

Mike Smith: It's like, how do you feel now?

Nathan Brady: In that case, I mean, yeah. Which one is it,…

Mike Smith: Is Biden doing that now?

Nathan Brady: Yeah. which one?

Mike Smith: But I want to talk really quickly about that though because I think that it is important going back to the that people vote, the way that your representatives vote, the way that the Senate votes on things, and how Democrat messaging needs to change. I thinking about the Harris campaign in particular because it's obviously the most recent in memory. We spent so much time and effort and dollars on her campaign making promises that were sort of just highlevel Democrat talking points,…

Nathan Brady: Yeah, right.

Mike Smith: We're going to restore Roie Wade. We're gonna what I mean? and all of the Trump campaign money went to Harris is trying to turn everybody trans and Harris is going to try and tank the government and Harris is going to do this and Harris is going to do that. I think we need to just change messaging tact. I think that people especially in this voting time understand attack ads better than they do the nuance Democrat approach. if you're in Texas, you need to be like, Senator Cruz took away your social security. Vote for me. I will restore it. you need to have that simple messaging of he did this. Vote for me and we'll fix it. And it's not I want to make Roie wait again.

Mike Smith: No, he took it away. We vote for me and we will restore it. It's too much.

Nathan Brady: Yeah, it's hard to believe them at this point.

Mike Smith: It's not enough finger pointing. Right.

Nathan Brady: That's and frankly though I agree a little bit. I mean, I feel like you can't even campaign on the problem the Democrats have is a lot of times when they do the Trump fingerpointing, they do it in a way that makes it seem like they don't have anything else to run on. it's just like, the other. m At least I'm not that guy. look at how bad that guy is. and I think this was the problem with the Harris campaign in my opinion was they weren't offering any real change.

Nathan Brady: It was like, "I know you're struggling right now, but isn't what was going on with Biden so much better than what a Trump term could do?" it was status quo.

Mike Smith: I agree.

Mike Smith: The messaging was like things were fine.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Smith: Let's stick to it. And every voter was like, they're not** fine. What are you talking about?

Nathan Brady: Yeah. …

Mike Smith: I mean, it's just disillusionment. I don't understand how they can't, see that for what it is. But obviously hopefully in the midterms the messaging will be more of things are really f***** up and it's his fault he voted this way.

Nathan Brady: So, I want that, but I had this argument the other day. I want it to be things are f***** up. It's his fault.

Nathan Brady: here is what we're going to do and how we're going to fix it. That needs to be the main message.

Nathan Brady: What are you as the Democrats going to do to stop this? Because right now, all I'm hearing is Hakee Jeff and Chuck Schumer hamming and hawing and no, we can't really do anything. Like, no,…

Mike Smith: Yeah. What can we do?

Mike Smith: Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: I do. Nobody wants to hear that.** even just lie to me. we've talked about this before. come on, you sound weak and pathetic, what are you going to do to fix this? And that needs to be the messaging from any new Democrat that comes onto the scene to fight for a seat in the midterms.

Mike Smith: I think that those are the three tenants that things right now are* up. They broke it. Here's how I'm going to fix it in these ways.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Smith: Very simple, clear messaging that you can fit into a 30 minute ad or 30 second advice.

Nathan Brady: And I want to find a clip as well that I saw yesterday.

Nathan Brady: But first because it's kind of related to this, but also related is Lindy Lee here.

Mike Smith: It is.

Mike Smith: I think it's important. Passion

Nathan Brady: We talked I don't know if we shared any of this on Blue Sky, but you and I have talked about her a little bit. And Lindy Lee, as John Pavlovitz points out here, was a very passionate Democrat supposedly. and she was one of the lead strategists I think for Kamala during her presidential run. she quote unquote here loved Joe Biden and was constantly posting with Dems in Congress, attending events, raising money.

01:05:00

Nathan Brady: And then suddenly the day after the election,…

Nathan Brady: she completely pivoted to fiercely supporting Trump and trashing the Dems non-stop on Fox News, Newsmax, OAN, whatever she could get on. and it's just craven souling. And it is really the

Mike Smith: Yeah. …

Mike Smith: I hope that she's just a money grubber like the rest and she's just like I go to the highest bidder. they paid me enough money, I'll vote for whoever they want. Like that I don't condone it, but I can understand it at the very least. But it really feels like the Democrat voters are constantly getting the rug pull from these candidates that run on this messaging that we're talking about.

Mike Smith: We're going to shake things up. We're going to change it. We're going to improve things. they get elected and then suddenly they're like actually I'm more of an independent and…

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Smith: I am and the key word the code word is always I'm actually more of a fiscal conservative Democrat and then a few votes later they're like I truly an independent and then eventually I'm a Republican actually and then they either lose their seat they walk away in the case of cinema because they've got greener pastures somewhere where they're going to go be part of a think tank or write their or…

Nathan Brady: or lobby or…

Mike Smith: whatever lobbyist or…

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. They're going to make millions of dollars.

Mike Smith: something because they know they can make more money doing that.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Right.

Mike Smith: Or they just end up being a Republican all like Mansion for instance where he was a Democrat but he voted against the Democrat block all the damn time. they don't have dinos…

Nathan Brady: I mean,.

Mike Smith: but we could have called him that.

Nathan Brady: it's sad because it's also hard to identify. So there are these people that are coming out of the woodwork.

Mike Smith: But that was the other thing that I wanted to say is it just that you did the Harris campaign not did they really not know who this person was? I have to quote coach Kinstock here because he summed it up great. He said Lindy Lee a member of the DNC national finance committee and top level consultant on the Harris campaign flipped to the GOP as soon as Harris lost. That's why you** lost. You have a grifter Republican running your campaign pretending to be a Democrat. She's even defending Pete Hegath,…

Mike Smith:

Nathan Brady: Right. I know…

Nathan Brady: what she's doing right here.

Mike Smith: which is I can you not see it?

Nathan Brady: It's hard to believe.

Mike Smith: Are you just not digging into these positions that you're staffing for your campaign, or do you not actually want to win?

Nathan Brady: Yeah. It's hard.

Mike Smith: I don't understand.

Nathan Brady: I'm not a John Pavlovitz follower. I think as you can see right here, I don't have the follow button hit. it's hard for me to believe that there were no signs that Lindy Lee was this type of person.

Nathan Brady: I feel much like Liz Cheney, probably behind closed doors, she was more of a conservative, if anything a moderate Democrat, but probably always more of a conservative. And none of us needed to know that. But certainly there's no way Kamla and her staff didn't know that in my opinion.

Mike Smith: Right. Right.

Mike Smith: But then why pick that person?

Mike Smith: Because it doesn't seem like that person is going to be, all in on the goals.

Nathan Brady: Man, I can't tell you why.

Mike Smith: Just Yeah.

Nathan Brady: I can't because it almost seems like the Dems try to lose. I mean, so

Mike Smith: It's like if you're a professional, baseball team, if you're the Dodgers and you hire the person to be your head manager who's still gung-ho about the Giants. I don't know how to make it any different. That's just a bad idea. I don't care…

Mike Smith: how good he is. He's never going to be the head coach of the Dodgers. You know what I mean? it's just Yeah. You're just like they don't,…

Nathan Brady: He's just got a Giants tattoo under,…

Nathan Brady: …

Mike Smith: align again I want to believe that it's just like the money rubbing like these people understand each other…

Nathan Brady: it really almost feels like they're doing it on purpose, There's just no other It's like, are you really that dense or is there something else going on here?

Mike Smith: because they're all in that political space where I feel like it's very likely that she's like I'll work for you and I'll do good work for you But I have to tell you that as soon as this is done, I don't expect because we all know that a lot of the campaign staffers didn't expect Harris to win. that's come out since the election and…

01:10:00

Nathan Brady: Yeah, sure.

Mike Smith: they probably had an honest conversation of I'm going to jump to the biggest buck that I can find for the next thing because I don't think there's a next thing here. I'm going to try, but then I'm going to go do that. No hard feelings and okay, but the optics on that to the voter base is not good.

Nathan Brady: We could go another hour about me being pissed off about the Democrats. So, maybe it's best just to wrap here so we can end on it's like we were riding a little bit of a high.

Nathan Brady: As I was saying, we were riding a little bit of a high, I realized that my hand was doing something that by the way,…

Mike Smith: Yeah. Little bit of a high.

Mike Smith: No. no.

Nathan Brady: It wasn't. but it does make me want to Should we at least talk about that a little bit?

Nathan Brady: The CPAC…

Mike Smith: the CPAC.

Mike Smith: Yeah. …

Nathan Brady: where We're now just saying it out loud. yeah,…

Mike Smith: we just have more and more examples of people besides Elon, throwing sick aisles out there now.

Nathan Brady: it's just Bannon did the gesture and then he looked and he heard the approval and…

Mike Smith: You nodded and…

Nathan Brady: he nodded and…

Mike Smith:

Mike Smith: wings and Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: he nodded.

Nathan Brady: And then another and I think it was a Mexican guy.

Mike Smith: very much a nod who's no reason to have any exposure there.

Nathan Brady: I don't know what his name was. I don't want to give him any exposure. But then he said, "My heart goes out to you." Which obviously it was a call back to the Elon thing and…

Mike Smith: It's now the phrase Yeah.

Nathan Brady: then very deliberately did the hand motion and…

Mike Smith: Of course we did.

Nathan Brady: and there was I think we actually shared it on of course we did.

Mike Smith: Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: Here's the gift that somebody put together. Yeah. Here it is. of the three of them just doing it together,

Mike Smith: You get the gist of it.

Nathan Brady: Wait, is it …

Mike Smith: these three fellows. I can't actually make out his name, but I don't know.

Nathan Brady: it's live now from Fox. That's a strange name,…

Mike Smith: That's interesting name.

Nathan Brady: but yeah.

Mike Smith: But yeah,…

Nathan Brady: No, I Yeah,…

Mike Smith: I think this is such a simple just my god…

Nathan Brady: I don't think anybody really knew who he was. I mean, I think I saw this from Aaron probably Is it working?

Mike Smith: if I'm running in the midterms I'm just going to collect these and I'm going to run this gift with every single one of the bigname ones. I'll make a 3x3 grid of the guys who end up doing it and I'll be like you stop electing Nazis. That's all it's going to say.

Nathan Brady: I don't think that works. This is my problem.

Mike Smith: They weren't actively being Nazis during the campaign.

Nathan Brady: Steven Miller it doesn't get more of a Nazi than Steven Miller, And we couldn't get people to listen to that.

Mike Smith: But he's smart enough to not go out there throwing siley around. Yeah. 16.

Nathan Brady: I mean, fine, but his words were enough.

Nathan Brady: But this goes back to my point of it is not enough. If I were a Dem strategist and Bernie Sanders isn't out there going it's all making his whole campaign speech about let's see when he was running in 2020 he wasn't making about Trump he was saying…

Mike Smith: Right. He was on Medicare for all and…

Nathan Brady: what he wanted to do what the work needed.

Mike Smith: and…

Nathan Brady: Yeah, right.

Mike Smith: paid maternity leave, and he was on, workers bill of rights and all that stuff.

Nathan Brady: Exactly. And you can argue that the reason…

Mike Smith: And to be perfectly frank, those things pulled really well. he was obviously raking with that.

Nathan Brady: why Joe Biden won was because he took a huge many pages out of Bernie's book.

Mike Smith: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they found common ground once Bernie had basically dropped out. He was like,…

Nathan Brady: Right. Right.

Mike Smith: "Okay, I have to move this direction otherwise I'm not going to get those voters." So,…

Mike Smith: I have to ask because you put a spark in me here. You say, those words you were talking about the Nazis, like you said, those words don't move people. And it makes me wonder…

Nathan Brady: Yeah,…

Nathan Brady: right. That's Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Smith: because words obviously are what move Democrat voters specifically. Bernie used his words. He's saying, "Here's what we're going to do. Here's the plan of action." and he moved people with it. I think that on the other side, on the right, the Republicans and whatnot, I think that they go more by action and optics than anything. And so, if I can get these sorts of visuals in front of maybe middleight voters,…

01:15:00

Mike Smith: maybe I can sway them away from their base in the midterms by using actions and…

Nathan Brady: There is something that definitely pulls both sides.

Mike Smith: optics. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: I think that especially when you're in the opposition, Trump was always really good when he was in the opposition in 2016 and then again in 2024. He was always really good at making people hate the you getting a visceral reaction to the status uo. He was good at blaming the other guy for the problems.

Nathan Brady: The Dems are not good at blaming the Republicans for the problems. And the Democratic voters don't want to hear that anyway. They just want to know what it is you're going to do for us.

Mike Smith: Yes. Right.

Nathan Brady: And I think largely that is going to be the only way to pull away some of those Republican voters and who still think that Biden caused the terrible situation that they're in…

Nathan Brady: because Biden did promise things that he didn't do. The Dems of the Dems always promise things that they don't do, and it does Yeah.

Mike Smith: But he also did things and…

Nathan Brady: It doesn't matter.

Mike Smith: nobody gives him credit for it.

Nathan Brady: Doesnt matter. It doesn't matter.

Mike Smith: I know.

Mike Smith: I know.

Nathan Brady: So yeah, it's …

Mike Smith: So, circling back, I mean, does that mean that in your view things have got to get a lot worse? people have to feel it from the action of this administration. So, we're going to have to have, Congress and the Senate pass cuts to things that hurt their voters before they actually believe the words that the Democrats use.

Nathan Brady: In first let me just say I don't think there's any

Nathan Brady: way that things don't get worse. they're already worse.

Mike Smith: Okay. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: They're already worse two months in.

Mike Smith: Which they voted on hating the status quo.

Nathan Brady: At the very best for these people, it's going to be status quo which was just gradual worseness which they hated. yes to answer the first part of your question, it is going to get worse. It's going to be very bad for them. Dems need to somehow find a way. I mean, I'm not listen, I'm not studying this. I'm not sitting down here working on the strategy. This is just off the top of my head, but Dems need to find a way to say I don't know if it even needs to be an admission of guilt in this part or at least the new Dems can come and say that. you're not going to find a Nancy Pelosi to say, "Hey, you know what? We have some part of the blame in this too and we need to fix it."

Nathan Brady: That's what made Bernie Sanders so alluring to people, I think, is that he was always kind of outside of the Democratic arena, too. he caucused with the Dems.

Mike Smith: literally an independent.

Mike Smith: Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Brady: But he said, "No, they're a problem, too. Why don't we have Medicare for all? Why is the Dem establishment also stopping us?" yes, the Republicans are terrible. Listen, you guys already know the Republicans are terrible, but why are the Dems holding us back,…

Nathan Brady: too? And I think that's where Bernie Sanders, AOC, any new blood looking to break into the Democratic party who isn't just looking for a paycheck, who isn't just looking to cozy up to the Dem lobby and…

Mike Smith: That's the problem.

Nathan Brady: the Dem corporations to get paid. That's the way that you're going to break into this and that's the way you're going to win. That's

Mike Smith:

Mike Smith: Yeah, I agree. And I think that's a huge part of the problem is that obviously you're going to get fought by the Dems…

Mike Smith: if you come in with the perspective of that we need campaign finance reform which is another one of Bernie Sanders's thing. He goes he's like Nancy Pelosi is a multi-millionaire…

Nathan Brady: Right. Yeah.

Mike Smith: because of how she runs her campaigns and how she takes donations from the pharmaceutical industries and blah blah blah blah blah. you run that as a Democrat and they're going to use the entire DNC pocketbook to try and shoulder you out.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Yeah. And a AOC has found a way around that though.

Mike Smith: But that's the messaging that resonates with voters. So that's the challenge there is you're like Democrats can't win without this messaging and Democrats won't allow the messaging. So what do you do?

Nathan Brady: And I don't know what it is.

Mike Smith: Yeah. I think she came in more like a downhome Democrat and…

Nathan Brady: I don't know what the AOC magic is, but both AOC and Bernie have figured that out.

Nathan Brady: Because it was very grassroots.

Mike Smith: I don't think the DNC took her seriously in her first campaign where she was running and when she won. Very grassroots.

Nathan Brady: Yeah, it was grassroots.

Mike Smith: And they didn't expect her to win that campaign…

Nathan Brady: Yeah. I mean that's Yeah,…

Mike Smith: but when she did her messaging changed to more align with Bernie which is very popular amongst voters. And by then the DNC couldn't stop her. They ran a ton against her in her first election bid. They ran millions of dollars against her and she just trounced them because her messaging was so good by that point and she had a following. So, you need more of those sneaky tickets…

01:20:00

Nathan Brady: yeah, sneaky tickets.

Mike Smith: where they're there.

Nathan Brady: Yeah.

Mike Smith: They're not there to get the money grabbed the cinemas of the world, but they're there to actually try and accidentally help the Democrats like the AOCC's despite themselves. next year.

Nathan Brady: Let's see. I mean, we have a lot of time. but the 2026 midterms is going to be a real litmus test for the Democrats. and whether we're going to even be able to get to a 2028. because it…

Mike Smith: Yeah. …

Nathan Brady: if we stay on this trajectory and the Dems don't pick up ground everywhere in 2026 it's over.

Mike Smith: yeah. No,…

Nathan Brady: It's just over.

Mike Smith: if there's not a blue wave in 26, then it means really that the Democrats have given up…

Nathan Brady: Yeah. and…

Mike Smith: because they couldn't field anybody that was better than these guys in their hand gestures.

Nathan Brady: right now it doesn't look I'm just going to be honest.

Nathan Brady: does not look like they're up to At least the current Dem leadership with Hakee Jeff and Chuck Schumer, I am not feeling the energy.

Mike Smith: The messaging is just so bad. Their messaging it's chicken s***.

Nathan Brady: It's so bland. It's right It needs to be more like AOC…

Mike Smith: It's just, we can't do anything. woe is us. And I'd be like, don't even have that messaging. if you don't go on TV if that's all you're going to say, you'd be better off just crying at home and no one knows about it than whining on TV like this because you look pathetic. You got to have some fire out there.

Nathan Brady: who is like, "Yeah, yeah, you're going to come after Come at me,…

Mike Smith: Yeah, I want Maine's governor.

Nathan Brady: b Come at me." Yeah.

Mike Smith: I want to be out there like I'm gonna fight you.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Maine's governor AOC.

Mike Smith: I'm gonna take your ass to court.

Nathan Brady: That's what you got to do. You

Mike Smith: Hakee dep should be out there be like we're going to fight him on this entire budget deal that's coming.

Mike Smith: I'm not going to vote on anything that cuts social security. And just get loud about it.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Smith: It's so easy to play from the and…

Nathan Brady: They need and…

Mike Smith: the Republicans do it every time. They are the minority. They play from that position very well. We're not going to budge on this. We're not going to budge on that.

Nathan Brady: and we let them. I mean, it's like,…

Mike Smith: It doesn't even matter that they can't do anything. It doesn't matter that he's right.

Nathan Brady: right. Yeah.

Mike Smith: There's not a whole lot Hakee Jeff can do. But that's not the position that you don't talk about that. What you say is I'm not going to let them do this. I'm not going to let them do that. even if it's a lie because it has to be that energetic that fire up your base.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Smith: You have to give Democrats a reason to want to believe in you.

Nathan Brady: It's the whole, submission in advance that I think the Democrats are doing that is Yeah.

Mike Smith: Yeah. Just lying down.

Nathan Brady: They need to turn it around, Do we need to go over there?

Nathan Brady: I think maybe our next episode needs to live from the steps of the Capitol building.

Mike Smith: We're gonna have to go over there. We're gonna from Capitol Hill. Let's go.

Nathan Brady: So maybe that's someday in our future.

Nathan Brady: And…

Mike Smith: Mike and…

Mike Smith: Nate reporting live from being arrested from the Capitol building.

Nathan Brady: we're okay I think this is a good spot to wrap. we've gone over the hour mark please.

Mike Smith: Don't forget to and subscribe so that we can pay our lawyers to keep us out of the Gitmo concentration camp. Please before the Gestapo come for you.

Nathan Brady: Yeah, you can only call Stephen Miller a Nazi so many times before a cash capel kicks in the door and…

Mike Smith:

Mike Smith: That's true. there's got to be some word play there along the lines of Hashtapo,…

Nathan Brady: so luckily we're too small to be on their list but I want to be on their list when we're big enough yeah we'll workshop that All right.

Mike Smith: Because it's his brown brown boots, brown shirts. I mean, I'll workshop that a little bit. Okay.

Nathan Brady: All right. Thanks everybody for listening. we'll be back next week, same place.

Nathan Brady: Until then, I don't know, fight. but yeah,…

Mike Smith: Keep fighting.

Mike Smith: Get mad.

Nathan Brady: get mad, get loud. I think maybe next episode as we're talking, we're just going to start putting numbers of Congress people on the B just so you can start spamming your congressmen.

Mike Smith: Just text them. Yeah, just Thanks everybody.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. Yeah. Just text, just get fired up.

Nathan Brady: All We'll see you next time, everyone. Bye.

Nathan Brady: right. Good show, chat. …

Mike Smith: There you go.

Mike Smith: You too.

Nathan Brady: I had the Nazi salute up there for a while,…

Mike Smith: For a long time.

Nathan Brady: You could have said something.

Mike Smith: A long, long time. We were on a roll. We're fine.

Nathan Brady: Yeah. I mean, hey, that was good background to…

Nathan Brady: what we're talking about. So, they love it so much.

01:25:00

Mike Smith: Luckily, what's going to end up happening is that the YouTube algorithm is going to go to all these right-wingers…

Mike Smith: who really want to see that salute and then where we're going to get peppered in with them. I want them to just, drive engagement. I get fired up in the comments.

Nathan Brady: All right, I'm probably going to go pick up the kiddo at school and then I'll come back and…

Mike Smith: That's what I'm going to do. Okie do.

Nathan Brady: work on this. All right, talk to you later.

Meeting ended after 01:25:44 👋

This editable transcript was computer generated and might contain errors. People can also change the text after it was created.