Another ICE Killing, Another Election Conspiracy.

This week on Chronically Informed, we're unpacking Trump's latest presidential address, examining the latest fatal ICE incident, and highlighting the local stories you may have missed in our State of the Week segment.

If you enjoy the episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and leave a comment. We'd love to hear what stories you'd like us to cover in future episodes.

New episodes every Sunday.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Hi everybody, welcome back to the Chronically Informed Podcast. I'm Brittany.

SPEAKER_03 0:10

And I'm Erin.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

This week, the topics we are going to get into, it's a short list, if I'm being honest with you. It is Trump's address from this past Thursday that was full of nonsense and lies, as always. And I personally want to talk about the most recent ICE murder. And I think that's it.

SPEAKER_03 0:29

Yeah, and then at the end, as we always do, um, we both spun the wheel and we're gonna get into some more state-specific local news. Uh this week Britney got Texas and I got Utah, so we will bring that to you at the end. But first, let's go ahead and get into Trump's address with Britney. As you may know, this past Thursday, Trump delivered a speech to the nation mostly addressing and rehashing incorrect allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election between uh now President Trump and former President Joe Biden. Uh babe, I know me and you were all over this. We were live tweeting it as it was happening. We were pretty just in general pissed off. Um what do you what do you got for us today?

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Yeah, I mean there's so many different things I can say. My favorite thing that he said was the whole world was laughing at us as a nation, but not anymore. I'm sorry, did was it Argentina? Wasn't their whole soccer team just mocking us in the locker room?

SPEAKER_03 1:27

Oh, Belgium. Belgium, yeah, Belgium, yeah. So after the US's uh men's team um after they lost uh another World Cup match, because let's keep in mind that they have zero World Cup victories, meanwhile the women's team has plenty.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

The women's team, aka the real US soccer team.

SPEAKER_03 1:44

The real US soccer team, yeah. Um but yeah, it it doesn't seem like the world has like stopped laughing at us. I mean, we're in this ridiculous war in the Middle East, uh, completely a war of choice by the current administration, very specifically, the president and the Secretary of Defense. Um, and then on top of that, we've just been blowing up every alliance that the U.S.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

has ever had any ever had. Yeah, like any friendship, any alliance, any allies that we have, we just blow it up left and right, and they're always making fun of us. Everybody can see it but them and their administration. They think that we're so strong because it's an echo chamber that they're living in.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

Yeah, they they think that we're winning, and we're winning so much that we're gonna get tired of winning. And I just want you all to know that America's doing great. America's back and really well. According to who?

SPEAKER_03 2:35

According to Trump. I mean Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Just him?

SPEAKER_03 2:39

Yeah, just him pretty much, actually. Nobody else, okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

No veterans, no people that are struggling with their hospital bills, no kids with cancer that are like, hmm, we can't solve my cancer. Why? Oh, because you cut cancer fund.

SPEAKER_03 2:52

Or even the the literal cuts to like the CDC and all these other like research centers that could have stopped the uh current explosive diarrhea outbreak.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

He has taken Taco Bell from us.

SPEAKER_03 3:04

He's taken Taco Bell from us. I mean, not from us, because I will continue to eat Taco Bell.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

I could lose a few, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:10

I'm trying to I could stand to lose a couple. I drank a lot of beer, right? I got I gotta get some of this belly off.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Yeah, but w we're gonna be silly and goofy because if there's one thing we're gonna do while we're super enraged, is make jokes about it because I can't walk through life full of rage and not giggle a little bit at the absurdity of the situation that we're in.

SPEAKER_03 3:29

Yeah, definitely. It's certainly a way of coping. So um, yeah, we apologize if if any of this makes it seem like we're minimizing anything that's going on. Uh we most certainly are not. Um, but yeah, getting back to the topic at hand, it really is just according to Trump, because it's not according to us, that's for sure. It's not according to uh the people across America who can no longer afford to live day to day, whether it be rent, groceries, gas, anything.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

Etc. etc.

SPEAKER_03 3:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

And that's not even getting into the main point of his speech, which was election fraud, which mind you, factually does not happen very often. Quite literally, everything he says about election fraud and how widespread it is and all these fake people are voting. I think we talked about this in the last episode, wasn't it? We brought up the percentages because the incident rate for voter fraud of the last four elections for mail-in voting, which is like his biggest issue, 0.000043%. That is so minimum. Yep, that percentage would not affect any election period.

SPEAKER_03 4:36

Yeah, in statistics you would call that an outlier in the sense that we wouldn't even really use that because it's just it's such a small percentage point. Uh, and I say in statistics, like I know I failed a lot of math classes, so don't listen to me. But basically, I mean that is an outlier, really.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

It is I Yeah, you know how to read though.

SPEAKER_03 4:52

I do know how to read. Um I'm I'm you know, getting there. I think eighth grade level is probably where I'm at right now, but we're slowly getting through the high school reading level.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

You're so strong. Of mice and men hates to see you coming.

SPEAKER_03 5:06

So we're talking about uh Trump's speech that he gave on Thursday. One of the big things that came out of that speech was that he has decided to unclassify a bunch of documents related to the 2020 election and voter fraud and election fraud and all these different things. Uh, we'll get into that just a little bit later. That's pretty much gonna be my only topic today. I did a pretty big deep dive into some of those documents, especially considering that these are documents that I most likely would have seen throughout my work, uh, considering the fact that I am an intelligence community member. Um, so we'll get into that a little bit later, but we want to kind of focus on fact-checking the speech itself for now, um, and then we'll get more specifically into the documents.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Yeah, absolutely. Um he did mention that thousands of votes were being made up in order to rig the election, and you'll get into the Russia collusion later.

SPEAKER_00 5:54

Right.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

That fun fact, if you actually read the document, it's the other way around. Russia was colluding for Trump, not against him, but I digress. Um one of the quotes that I saw from Politico, and there was a 60 minutes audio of Trump saying this, was um he was pretty much begging the j uh Georgia Secretary of State to find 11,780 votes because that's all he needed to win. So he's like, find them. I need those to win because he couldn't stand the fact that he lost. And that's why there was talks of him saying that John Osoff was an illegitimate.

SPEAKER_03 6:32

Illegitimate, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

Yeah. I just think it's ridiculous that people believe that Democrats stole the 2020 election. I think it's insane that that's even the thing that we're talking about. Republicans were in power then.

SPEAKER_02 6:45

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 6:46

So the Democrats stole an election while you were in power, but when the Democrats were in power, they couldn't steal this election? That doesn't make any sense to me. It's it's an asinine claim.

SPEAKER_03 6:55

Yeah, if the Democrats were really controlling elections, do you really think Kamala Harris wouldn't be the president right now? Like, honestly. Or even even Joe Biden, honestly. Like either way, it would not be Donald Trump. If the deep state that he claims to uh exist in Washington, DC was a real thing, uh, and the Democrats were like controlling it as he seems to suggest. Uh he didn't he didn't really say that, you know, in explicit words, but if that deep state did exist, Donald Trump would not be president right now. Uh we would continue to have a democratic president. Uh and quite frankly, none of this information would have come out. Like none of the documents that he declassified, which again we'll get into later, uh, would have been able to like been released essentially because this deep state, as he calls it, um, is like this basically like a shadow government that controls the way that things work, controls what kind of information gets out. So, how is it different now that Trump is in office? You know, like how would that be different than the Democrats owning the and operating the deep state? It doesn't make any fucking sense.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

It doesn't. Just like Antifa and the members of Antifa and the Antifa leaders that they have all this information on. What do you I that's another thing. This has nothing to do with his speech. This just has to do with the relation of asinine claims. Antifa stands for anti-fascist, so do you want a bunch of fascists running around?

SPEAKER_03 8:14

I think that's kind of the point. I think that's kind of the point.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

It's just it's ridiculous. And kind of moving on from that and going back to just some of the things that he said, he did mention something about prescription drug prices. And talking about that, I have a cousin who is a type one, I'm pretty sure, diabetic, and she could not afford her insulin medication for the first time when Trump started making these cuts and prescription drug prices started going up. And so the fact that he's saying we pay the lowest price for prescription drugs, in in what world is that true? Because there are some I I did look it up online, there are some drugs, I think it was like the 10 like top 10 drug companies or something like that, did lower some prices. But for the general US consumers relying on commercial insurance or paying cash, overall pharmaceutic pharmaceutical expenditures, excuse me, continue to rise.

SPEAKER_03 9:08

Yeah, and this just it seems to play into Trump's MO that he's had for the last uh two terms that he's been in office now. If he says it, it must be. If he says it, it must be, but like the reality on the ground is not the same. You know, it's it's very much like it reminds me a lot of uh even whenever Biden was in office and he kept trying to tell us that like uh prices are coming down, things like that. Well, the the rest of the world, and or sorry, excuse me, the rest of the US is not seeing that the people, your constituency, your voters, uh the people who actually live in this country um and live the normal life, because a president's life is not by any means normal, any politician's life really is not by any means normal. So the normal people in the world are not, or excuse me, the US, I keep saying the world, a big foreign policy guy over here. Uh the normal people in the US are not seeing what you're saying actually happening. So it's like this weird dissonance between what Trump and even what Biden used to say about, oh, well, the stock market's doing well and these prices are coming down and inflation is coming down, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, well, I can't still I still can't afford my groceries, I can't afford my medication, I can't afford gas, I can't afford any of these other things.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

I don't eat stock markets.

SPEAKER_03 10:17

I don't eat stock markets, exactly. That is like a big thing that you'll always see when he talks about the stock market, like, oh, the stock market's better than it's ever been. Okay, cool. Feed me NVIDIA stocks. Feed me SpaceX stocks right now.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

Crunchy. He has said, is and I know that you'll give an Iran update later, but of course, another quote from his speech was, We're winning big in Iran. Do you know how much money we've spent so far?

SPEAKER_03 10:40

Do I want to know?

SPEAKER_01 10:42

No, you don't. At least $29 billion in direct military costs.

SPEAKER_03 10:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

And when it comes down to everything that is a result of this war, so gas prices, shipments, like all the stuff that we get from overseas that has been affected by this, it has surpassed $132 billion for taxpayers and the US that we've spent on this war. And let's make it even worse. Let's take that amount of money. It would end hunger in the US for s at least six years, which is a great start for these people to, you know, get get it back together. If you really care about your citizens, why aren't we spending all this money on helping our citizens?

SPEAKER_03 11:19

Yeah, but instead we're spending it on a needless war.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Exactly. And same thing for homelessness. They hate homeless people, they hate people that are down on their luck, they hate people that have mental illnesses. That amount of money could end homelessness for about seven years.

SPEAKER_03 11:33

Yeah, and let's also keep in mind that it's probably more money than seems to be being reported because this is not going to count, like, this can no in no way take into account the amount of money that the US is going to be giving to Iran in any sort of a peace deal. Like at this point, um, and sorry to kind of derail this a little bit and talk about the Middle East and Iran, but at this point, like we are trending towards the only way that this conflict is over is the complete decimation of Iran, essentially.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:06

Or, you know, we just basically get to the point where we ride this out for the rest of Trump's term, and then the next president comes in and says, nah, this is over. Because it does not seem like Trump has any interest in actually ending this war. Because not only are he and his friends profiting on it, uh, but it also makes him look big and tough.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

He keeps being able to say, like, oh, I did what nobody else has done in the last 47 years. It's been a problem for 40 plus years, and nobody's done it, but I'm brave, I'm big and brave. And even though I ship my britches, I still went into Iran because I'm big and brave.

SPEAKER_03 12:37

And we talked about this in the last episode. Has nobody ever considered the fact that, like, hey, maybe there's a reason we didn't do this in Iran before? Um, I was listening to uh some of the crooked media podcasts, and Alex Wagner put it really well. Uh, shout out Alex Wagner, love her so much.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

I know you're listening, girls.

SPEAKER_03 12:55

I know you're listening right now. But uh Alex Wagner put it really well uh whenever she was talking to uh Brian Tyler Cohen, I believe is his name, which is basically uh she presents this uh issue, and I forget what the actual issue is called, but it's like something fence, where it's basically like you see a fence and you tear it down because you don't want that fence there anymore. You will very quickly realize why the fence was there in the first place. And that seems to be Iran. We saw this fence, and by we I mean unilaterally the administration because the American people don't want this. Even his own voter base doesn't really want this, but that's besides the point. We Trump saw this fence of Iran and uh potentially the enrichment of nuclear materials, all these different things. He saw these things and said, I'm gonna tear down this fence because I don't want it anymore. And now he is seeing why the fence was there in the first place. The thing that we were scared that Iran would do because they would be able to exert total control over the Strait of Hormos has happened over and over and over and over again. Regardless of the MOU, regardless of the ceasefires and everything else, Iran has control of one of the most important traits in the world. The fence has been torn down and we know exactly why it was there. Trump doesn't, but the rest of us do.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

But everybody else does. Before we get into Aaron's more intelligence-focused deep dive into the documents that were released by Trump regarding election fraud, um, I just kind of wanted to mention something that I have seen a lot lately, and I just think a lot of people don't really notice as much. I'm I mean, we notice because we can see all the wrong that's being done, but the.gov websites and the White House websites are no longer factual information. Yeah. When I was writing papers my last semester and the whole time that I've been in school, when I was in high school, they were good sources.

SPEAKER_03 14:48

They were the most boring websites ever because it was literally just statements of factuality.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

Exactly. You could use them as sources.gov was trusted as a source, but now it is not. It is more of a propaganda website.

SPEAKER_03 15:02

It's extremely partisan.

SPEAKER_01 15:03

A hundred percent partisan. Not just, you know, you can say nice things about the president and about their life and whatever, but the things that they're releasing lately are just absolutely absurd. I saw a quote that I looked up during his speech because he mentioned dropping some declassified articles, paperwork, documents, documents, yeah, reports, all that stuff. I could not remember the word. I was like, what's that word? Um, but one of the first things I saw, and this is a quote from Whitehouse.gov today the Trump administration convened senior officials from governments around the world to launch an unprecedented global offensive against the transnational threat of radical left terrorism. Under the leadership of President Donald J. Trump, far left extremism will be treated with the same seriousness and ferocity the world has long reserved for jihadist terrorism. So what's up, my fellow jihadists? I hope you're having a great day listening to this podcast. Apparently, we're terrorists now. And sorry. No, go ahead. Once again, when I refer to past presidents, it's not because I'm obsessed with them like Trump is. He has been harping on Joe Biden since 2016. He's been obsessed with Biden and Obama this whole time. He blames them for everything. So when I say if Biden or Obama said that conservative, far-right people were terrorists, I can't even imagine.

SPEAKER_03 16:30

Dude, fuck what Biden and Obama say. Like, let's think about any other president. George W. Bush, fucking Reagan, Nixon, anybody. Like, not just Democratic presidents. Like, if this was said at any other point in history, I mean, this is basically like McCarthyism, but getting into uh left versus right as opposed to just calling them communist versus you know not communist, whatever, this is literally just McCarthyism.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

I know it it's something that I keep coming back to, and people are like, oh, well, Democrats do that all the time. Yes, some random person online calling you a Nazi is not the same as the leader of your country calling everybody who disagrees with them terrorists.

SPEAKER_02 17:12

Yeah, that's an insane connection to make.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

But that's the connection that they all make. Yeah. They they treat regular people with higher standards than they do their own president, and that's where the disconnect comes from. I can call Donald Trump a rapist, and I can call ICE agents murderers. I'm not the president of the United States. I'm not the all-powerful non-partisan leader that I'm supposed to be. You know?

SPEAKER_03 17:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:38

I just it's just very frustrating.

SPEAKER_03 17:40

This coming coming from the mouth of what who is supposed to be the leader of the free world is so incredibly dangerous for so many reasons. And like honestly, this is one of those stories uh and one of those quotes really that it is kind of hard for me to laugh at at this point. Like, I will still kind of like giggle about it here and there. Like, I'll see some you know good jokes online, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

You'll giggle at the absurdity of the whole thing.

SPEAKER_03 18:00

Yeah, it is absurd, but like when you think about the precedence that is being set, and the precedence has that has that has been set throughout this entire second term, even getting into like the end of his first term, I mean it's it's terrifying. Like it really is, it's there are days where it's hard to see the silver lining of democracy. It's hard to see what America used to be, what America was supposed to be, because this is this is our reality now. I mean, we have an absolute fucking psychopath in office who is politicizing everything and is now saying that the quote radical left will be prosecuted with the fervor that the world reserves for radical Islamic jihadism. Which, first of all, that's insane. That is just an insane thing to say about people in your own country, and second of all, we didn't even mention the radical right violence, the radical right extremism. Because if you look at like DHS's um counter-terrorism strategy and things like that now, it only mentions far right radicalism and far right political violence and things like that, which I understand because political violence has been on the rise. Uh, Brittany, you know You're saying far right.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

Did you mean to say far left?

SPEAKER_03 19:22

I did mean to say far left, sorry. Um it it mentions specifically far left extremism and far left political violence, which I do understand because I I mean, babe, we've talked about this before. Um, you know, before we even thought of like starting a podcast or anything like that, that the theory of like reciprocal radicalization is like very scary, and the fact that we're now seeing more far-left political violence and really just more political violence in general than we have in the last I don't know how many decades at this point is terrifying. However, the fact that it is very purposely omitting the far-right extremism and the far-right violence, um, as well as the far right dangerous rhetoric and all those things that come out of the far right, uh, is even more concerning because now not only are you basically focusing on one part of the problem that is not the entire problem, but you're also politicizing a counter-terrorism strategy. That's insane.

SPEAKER_01 20:18

It is insane, and it's just completely ignoring the fact that people on the far right are proudly identifying as Nazis now. The Proud Boys are out in full force. There is white power groups advertising for themselves, showing up places, and they're the ones that they're claimed are being prosecuted. The president is I never hear him talk or mention any of the violence coming from the far right because there is such a strong promotion of white is right coming out of the White House that if anybody, oh, who cares that they went and did this, these gay people shouldn't have been outside.

SPEAKER_03 20:59

Yeah, and then let's look at like even getting into the military and like Pete Heggseth. How many reports have we seen recently about him like very specifically denying women and and black people promotions on like general and admiral boards? Like it's insane, dude. Like it's very it is all really starting to come together, and it has been for the last couple years now, but it's really starting to come together that this administration wants just a few things, and one of them is white nationalism. White nationalism.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

White Christian nationalism.

SPEAKER_03 21:28

I mean shit, dude, our Secretary of Defense literally has a white Christian nationalist tattoo on his fucking chest.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

God forbid the separation of church and state exists. It's it doesn't anymore at this point.

SPEAKER_03 21:39

It's been gone for so long.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

It's been gone for so long, and it's just it's become so extreme to this point that even regular people, regular everyday people, are getting so blinded to the fact that these extremist beliefs are being pushed on them that they think it's normal. They think Sharia law is gonna take over New York City because of what? Because you there's a Muslim. Mare that exists, none of that has come true at all.

SPEAKER_03 22:05

Yeah, and what's I think the funniest part about very specifically the Sharia law piece is that these are coming from like some of the most uneducated people in our country. Meanwhile, you've got people like me and like actual experts that know way more than me who have been looking at the Middle East for a long time now and understand that Sharia law is the exception, not the rule. It's a bug, not a feature. Like things like that. To say that Sharia law is coming to America because Mom Donnie won exists. Exists, won, but also like won the mayoral election for New York is just it's batshit crazy, man. It's it's complete and total fear mongering, and it's unapologetically fear-mongering. They do not care about the misinformation they're putting out, which speaking of which, we have documents that were unclassified by the president of the United States. And uh alleged non-citizens and deceased people registering and voting for Joe Biden in the 2020 election. And you want to talk about purposeful misinformation? Let's talk about purposeful misinformation because this is one of the worst cases I've seen.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

It also goes to the literacy crisis in the United States because they have released documents, and I have read them as somebody who can read and understand words.

SPEAKER_02 23:24

With critical thinking skills.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

I do have yeah, sometimes I do have critical thinking skills. I read them and I'm like, what did they think that said? What did you think you were releasing? Because that doesn't say that the Democrats were colluding, it's saying that they were in your favor.

unknown 23:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Russia was colluding in your favor.

SPEAKER_03 23:45

Yeah, so as two critical thinkers, um, we're gonna kind of go into these documents. Honestly, it's gonna be mostly me kind of reading what I found because I went through um uh probably about 95% of these documents and like opened them individually, scrubbed through the papers uh as an intelligence analyst who was looking at declassified intelligence reports. Uh, and I'm gonna kind of go over what I saw, and Brittany will hopefully have uh some questions about kind of like what this means.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

Yes, I will have questions. I do have thoughts. Uh Erin is a big smart boy, and I, you know, I'm a big smart girl.

SPEAKER_03 24:18

She is a big smart girl. She actually went to college, I did not.

SPEAKER_01 24:21

But I'm not in the intelligence community, so that's just uh something outside of my my range of knowledge here. All right.

SPEAKER_03 24:27

Let's go ahead and get into the declassified documents released by the White House this past Thursday. So, what I'm gonna do first, um, I'm gonna kind of go over a general summary of what each of these files was. So, for those of you who haven't had the opportunity to go to whitehouse.gov and look at these declassified documents, uh, they are basically broken out into four separate categories, uh, and they are all uh zip files containing a bunch of the declassified documents that President Trump was mentioning in his speech on Thursday. So I'm gonna start out with the first one, um, just a quick summary of the first one. This one was all about uh US election equipment and vulnerabilities uh to that election equipment as well as our election in general. Uh one thing I'm gonna say about this, the biggest takeaway for me on this was that these vulnerabilities are not unique. Um, and to quote some of the reporting, uh the election related equipment, uh, like all complex software, that is something that they say in that report, like all complex software, contains vulnerabilities that require timely immediation. Remediation, excuse me. Uh, some of those remediations include uh going forward with multi-factor authentication as well with security patches. That is not anything super groundbreaking. That's not even really saying that there was any sort of breach in U.S. election equipment. Um, and we'll get into that a little bit later whenever I go into these a little bit more specifically. The second section that they released was a zip file of China's acquisition and exploitation of American voter data. Um this was a pretty large zip file. It had quite a few reports in it. Um, but one thing that kind of caught my eye is that all of these reports were from a redacted agency. Um, however, I am aware of where these reports came from and what agency it was, just because I've been looking at this for the last eight and a half, almost nine years now. This has kind of been my job. Uh so I've looked at those reports a lot, and what I can tell you is that these reports are what we call tippers, uh, which are completely and totally uncorroborated and entirely preliminary findings, with very little deep analysis done to prove any of the veracity of those reports.

SPEAKER_01 26:36

So does this fact-check the quote from Trump's speech on Thursday when he said tens of millions of voter data has been bought or stolen or hacked from China?

SPEAKER_03 26:46

Uh not really, not from what I saw. So, from what I was able to gather from those documents, it seems more like these are those, like I said, tippers, uh, the uncorroborated intelligence that China was thinking about doing these things. Uh, one of the big reasons why we redact unclassified intelligence reports, and one of the reasons why we classify them at the levels we classify them is usually a sources and methods thing. Uh, so we're kind of trying to uh protect the way that we gather information and how we gather information, right? That's 90% of the time why we classify something the way that it is. Uh, in this case, um that source and method is likely pretty sensitive, which is also why they are uh redacting the actual agency itself. However, having seen these reports before and having read these reports in this format, this is a tipper. It's uncorroborated. It's basically saying, like, hey, um, due to you know, maybe one source of intelligence, we have an idea that China wants to do X, Y, and Z. And so here's the report, they put it out to the community, and the intelligence community will use that as a baseline going forward. Uh, so then if they can corroborate the report, they can reference that tipper and say, hey, we got tipped by this and we're corroborating this report with this intelligence. Or they can basically say, Hey, we know what the tipper says, you know, X, Y, and Z. However, we've seen nothing to actually corroborate that. So this one, so this one is tough because it it does say that China seems to had had the attention or intention, excuse me, of acquiring that voter data. Um, however, even in some of the other reports throughout these different zip files, it seems like they did not have any intention of actually going forward with the plan uh to try to extract and use that voter data in any way. Um the what seems to be the most common theme overall is that China is very risk-adverse when it comes to actually influencing US elections, which is totally fair because uh if anything solid were to come out about China or even Russia really actually influencing and directly interfering with a US election in the way that Donald Trump seems to be uh claiming, uh that would be an international incident on the scale of which uh we have not seen in quite a while.

SPEAKER_00 28:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 28:54

Yeah. Uh so I'll get into the third zip file. Uh this seems to be the only one that has like some credible reports, uh, but it is also very unclear whether any of these reports were actually acted on uh before, during, or after the election. So this third zip file is all about the Michigan um voter reports records, basically trying to say that in Michigan specifically, there was an ongoing FBI investigation about voter fraud and people being registered that were non-citizens or didn't even exist or were deceased, things like that. So, what I got from those documents is that it seems like some of the reporting is valid. Um, it seems like there was an FBI investigation that was conducted in corroboration with the uh police department of their respective areas. However, it was not made clear in any of these reports whether the instances of voter fraud were caught before the election and then stopped, or if those votes were actually counted in the election and we found out about it later. So it makes it really difficult to get a feel of how true this is. And I kind of think that might be part of the reason why this was released because all you really need is that little bit of doubt in your mind to start sewing misinformation.

SPEAKER_01 30:04

Yeah, you just need one chip in the paint until somebody starts pulling more and more, and they're like, look at this big piece of damage.

SPEAKER_03 30:10

The beautiful American flag later, maybe yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

Um is there like a number amount?

SPEAKER_03 30:16

Um, so in the the Michigan files, it gets a little tricky because a lot of it is redacted, which is strange to me because typically all of these reports tend to be either originally classified as unclassified or they were for official use only, which is a form of unclassified information that typically stays within official channels. However, a lot of these reports were still classified, which was a little confusing to me. Um, I understand some of the personally identifiable information being redacted and things like that. Um, however, a lot more of the information than I was expecting in an unclassified report was redacted in this. So it's a little tough to tell kind of exactly what numbers it seemed from what I could see, uh they were really trying to hang the blame on a few individuals, um, just kind of based on what I'm seeing. Obviously, it's hard to really make that call without knowing the names and identifiers of those individuals. However, from reading the redacted reports, it seems like they're trying to hang it on a few individuals who were responsible for quote, thousands upon thousands of uh incorrect voter registration and basically fraudulent uh voter registration.

SPEAKER_01 31:24

So they're trying to hang the blame on incorrect registration, but never really said if that did anything.

SPEAKER_03 31:32

Yeah, and again, this is why this Michigan one is so confusing, and it's also the one that uh unfortunately makes the most amount of sense uh in the actual files that were released. These are the ones with the most credible information, but I think because it was an FBI investigation, um, because parts of that investigation may still be ongoing, because these investigations take a long time, especially on the scale that they're claiming, uh, that could be one of the reasons why some of that information is redacted. And like I said before, it's also extremely difficult to really ascertain how many people they're trying to blame um because so much of that information is actually redacted.

SPEAKER_01 32:10

It just seems like they're putting out a bunch of information that doesn't really prove anything, but it just places seeds of doubt in people's mind to make them seem cur like they're in the right. It's it's kind of making people fill in the blanks for them. Because from what you've said and from what I've seen, I haven't seen anything that's gives proof of widespread election fraud.

SPEAKER_03 32:33

Yeah, so that's actually really funny that you mentioned that. Before I go into the summary of the last section here, uh, there is one very specific document that struck me quite a bit. Um, this is an email from one of the uh FBI leaders in counter in the counterintelligence division. Uh the FBI is basically pushing back on a report that was published by the National Intelligence Council saying that it does not abide by standard IC standards, uh intelligence community standards, or or sorry, of assessments and is extremely misleading. And they very specifically called them out for citing, quote, the absence of evidence. Citing the absence of evidence in this email was listed as a red line for the FBI, basically saying we refuse to support something that is only supporting the absence of evidence, and additionally, is something that even at the most basic level of the intelligence community, my like day, you know, day one training was basically just that you need to have the facts because your credibility is your everything. If you lose your credibility, you are nothing. So citing the absence of evidence means absolutely nothing in an actual intelligence report.

SPEAKER_01 33:39

Hmm. That reminds me of something that I have here on my notes. The Trump Justice Department has sued more than two dozen states across the US for voter registration data, and all 15 judges rejected them based on a lack of clear purpose for those lawsuits.

SPEAKER_03 33:56

They seem to be just another example of how this administration tends to operate. It is sow the smallest seat of doubt, provide zero evidence, and then pursue that. Uh most of the time, thankfully, we get things like this, uh, where the Justice Department is um basically shooting these down for lack of purpose. Sometimes they get lucky and a few get through, um, and then we get these insane fucking investigations. But before we get too deep into that, I do want to move on to the summary of the last one, which uh arguably pisses me off the fucking most.

SPEAKER_01 34:27

Are we getting into Russia, Russia, Russia?

SPEAKER_03 34:29

Uh not quite. I've got one more summary and then we'll get into Russia, Russia, Russia.

SPEAKER_01 34:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 34:34

Alright, so the final summary I have here um is on the most nonsensical part of this entire release. This is an entire section dedicated to reports on voter registration fraud. Now, based on how much Trump talks about this, babe, how many documents do you think were in the zip file?

SPEAKER_01 34:56

Oh. Millions. Millions. Hundreds of thousands, at least.

SPEAKER_03 35:01

So here's the awesome part. You're so fucking wrong.

SPEAKER_01 35:04

There are exactly You've been awaiting to say that, huh?

SPEAKER_03 35:07

Yeah, I felt really good. I'll never get to say it again because my wife is beautiful and smart and usually right. Um there are a total of two total fucking documents in the zip file. One of them is a report from DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, and the other one is a joint report between the Department of Homeland Security and the Cyber Intelligence uh whatever the fuck, CISA, uh CISA. So I want to talk about the CISA one, the joint one they did with DHS first, because that one made me a little less mad. Um basically, this report was going over um ways forward to protect the integrity of the election equipment and kind of giving some more of those lessons learned and like talking about the multi-factor authentication that we talked about in the beginning, things like that. It seems to mostly parrot what was happening um on some of the other reports that we talked about in the first summary. Now let's go to my favorite. The unilateral DHS report. This report is so brain dead, so fucking dog shit, that whoever wrote it needs to be fired and never allowed to work in the intelligence community ever again in their life. Moreover, moreover, the person who approved this report needs to be tried for fucking crimes against their country. This was the most ridiculous fucking report I have ever seen. The entire report is blatantly partisan. It offers absolutely no evidence, uh, no empirical evidence, no evidence of any kind. It's not written as an intelligence product of which it's supposed to be, because it is an intelligence product. Instead, it's written more like a Trump rally-esque speech that he would have got given at one of his little fucking meetings of clan members or whatever he does. And it touts the effectiveness of the save system. And if you're wondering what's the save system, it's the fucking part of the Save America Act that Trump wants so goddamn bad.

SPEAKER_01 37:09

Oh boy.

SPEAKER_03 37:10

Yes. The report specifically mentions Biden's administration as being the reason for the voter fraud, and they throw out a bunch of numbers that are not supported by any other portions of their own report. This report is one page long, and all it does is give the reader a fucking aneurysm because these dumb fucks decided that they were gonna work for a president instead of being an independent agency as they should. The top line of this report very boldly claims that quote, over 250,000 non-citizens are illegally registered to vote in just the four states for which public data files have been reviewed. However, if you go on and read the report, nowhere in that report are these numbers supported. The Department of Homeland Security claims later in their shitty little one-page write-up that only 28,000 non-citizens, and this is following a review of more than 68 million registration records in over 25 states were illegally registered to vote. Also, they added a fun little table so that even dipshits like me can fucking read the data and figure out what it means. In this table, they show 10 states and then say that in those 10 states only 10,716 non-citizens were registered to vote. Nowhere in this report does the quote 250,000 non-citizens in four states number materialize, nor does any actual evidence or analytical technique. Do you want to know what an actual analytical paper would look like? They would start the fucking paper with an overview. This is these are the things that we are claiming. This is how we're going to support that claim, and these are the analytic methods that we use to do this research and write this paper. Nowhere in this report is that fucking anywhere. All they do is throw out numbers and hope that the reader is so fucking stupid that they won't question it. And in this case, if it went to Trump, I think they fucking hit the nail on the head. Alright, now that we've gone over the summary for all four of these zip files that the White House published, I want to get into a little bit of the data. So one of the bigger reports in this is coming from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. It is a report they ran looking from 2019 to 2024, where they conducted a series of technical and operational activities to evaluate the security of U.S. election systems. Some of those key takeaways we've already talked about, one being that election-related equipment, like all complex software, contains vulnerabilities that require timely remediation. I've already gone over that, not going to be the dead horse in this case. However, one thing that I will mention about this is that because of the way that these voting machines are deployed in some states, it can be difficult to apply security updates in a timely manner. Some systems are only deployed in the immediate period surrounding an election, while others are deployed for longer periods but locked down to prevent any changes being made to those machines. So there already are, as you would expect, some mitigating factors when it comes to protecting our election equipment. However, again, like all complex software, there are still going to be vulnerabilities. One thing that I want to read directly from this report is a quote from the actual conclusion. This quote is CISA's findings highlight that U.S. election systems are subject to the same security concerns as most other software systems. They are subject to outdated and fragmented certification regimes, insufficient vulnerability transparency, and persistent cybersecurity gaps. Now, the one thing that I really want to point out about that conclusion and really the report as a whole is that nowhere in this report or in the conclusion of their findings does it say anything about these actual vulnerabilities having been exploited in any of the elections during this time period, which would have been the 2020 and 2024 elections. Moving on to a CIA report. This is coming from CIA Wire, which anybody who's in the intelligence community knows that this is a really fun site to kind of peruse. The CIA puts out some really good stuff if you have access to it. The CIA in this case is reporting that Chinese cyber actors have conducted some type of collection activity in every U.S. presidential election campaign since 2008, according to a redacted source of open source intelligence. From a 2020 election specifically, the Intel community detected state-sponsored cyber actors targeting Joe Biden's presidential campaign. The intelligence community also assessed that China did not intend to covertly interfere in the election, and rather that they were building a baseline to enable interference operations in future elections. So again, even the CIA and their analysis of the 2020 election as well as elections from 2008 onward showed that China does what China does, which is collect, collect, collect, but had no intention of actually influencing the presidential election, neither in 2028, uh or excuse me, 2028, uh 2020, 2008, or any of the elections in between of which the CIA report covers. Now we're gonna get into Russia. Babe, I know you're very excited about this.

SPEAKER_00 42:36

Russia, Russia, Russia.

SPEAKER_03 42:38

Russia, Russia, Russia. Let's talk about Donald Trump's best friend, Vladimir Putin.

SPEAKER_01 42:43

I am very excited because it's my turn to talk for about 35 seconds. Because this is the this was the report that I showed to Aaron that got him into the rest of it. So what I saw was according to the National Intelligence Council declassified by Trump on July 3rd, Russia tried to spread claims about Biden in 2016 when he was in office. US officials and other prominent people online advanced these narratives. So the Russia Russia-Russia hoax was them trying to spread claims about Biden to get Trump to win. So Russia was colluding, but for Trump, even though all they do is claim that it wasn't the complete opposite. They tried to orchestrate a high-profile corruption scandal, implementing Biden in order to ensure Trump's victory, which LOL didn't work. Take that, losers.

SPEAKER_03 43:37

Yeah. Um it Russia trying to start disinformation campaigns or misinformation campaigns, whatever you want to call it, um, on social media, especially about US elections, is by no means new. Um this is something that Russia's very good at. Hell, China's very good at it as well. Um, this is not something that like is any sort of like ground. Shaking revelation. One thing I will say is that if Russia and China can do it, you can bet that the US can and probably is as well. So this is not by any means specific to two quote adversary countries to the US. It is simply a response from one superpower to another. Now, with the Russia piece specifically, we all know how much Putin and Trump fucking love each other. So is this surprising? No, not at all. But what is surprising is the fact that Trump decided to release this as some form of gotcha. Undeniable proof. Yeah. You know, like I what I really want to know is I really want to know what he was told before he approved the release of these files and if he read any of them. You know he doesn't understand words. Obviously the answer is he did not read them because if it did not come from Fox News, he does not understand it. But I really want to know who basically came to him and said, hey, if we declassify this, this is gonna put the whole thing to bed. Now, is that man or woman a hero by tricking this fucking dipshit of a president we have? Possibly. But more likely More than likely they were also a fucking idiot who thought it was.

SPEAKER_01 45:30

Hot dog, what a frustrating time to be alive.

SPEAKER_03 45:33

And then one last piece on Russia before we move into uh our next topic, and then eventually the local topics. Um, part of this report about Vladimir Putin and the senior Russian officials that are overseeing the efforts uh to spread false claims about Joe Biden and Ukrainian politicians, was that they also were specifically mentioning and circulating narratives about voter fraud resulting from mail-in ballots and tried to frame the Democratic Party as rigging the elections. Does that sound familiar to you? Who have we heard that from very recently, maybe I don't know, Thursday in an address to the nation?

SPEAKER_00 46:08

Oh, I think um gosh, what's his name?

SPEAKER_03 46:12

Barack Hussein Obama.

SPEAKER_00 46:14

No. No, sleepy Joe Biden.

SPEAKER_03 46:16

Sleepy no Gavin Newscom. Donald Trump. Oh fuck, it was Donald Trump. Yes. Oh, okay. Donald Trump is literally parroting Russian information and intelligence. Donald Trump is literally parroting Russian misinformation tactics. He is seeing these reports be spread on social media, which we all know that he is way too involved in. He's seeing these reports then get circulated into the more mainstream media like Fox News and the fake CNN and all these different things, and he is taking that as truth. This man cannot be trusted. He very clearly does not read into anything beyond a headline. And the headline in this case is exactly what he's been saying is that voter fraud is resulting from mail-in ballots, and that the Democratic Party is rigging elections. This man is literally puppeting Russian misinformation campaigns. Let's move in to the next topic, which is the recent ice shootings.

SPEAKER_01 47:15

So this past Monday there was yet another ICE-involved shooting that killed yet another person who, mind you, was permitted to be in the US to work. He was not the target of their investigation, and he had a social security number.

SPEAKER_03 47:32

This sounds familiar.

SPEAKER_01 47:34

It it does sound familiar because every single person that they have killed has A not been the target, B was allowed to be here, and C did not provoke ice in a way that would result in them being shot. Would result in that being justified, at the very least. I just realized that I never said the name of the man that was shot by ICE. His name was Juan Guerrero. I have seen his name pronounced as Juan by the major news outlets. I have no way of knowing otherwise if it's pronounced differently, so that's what I'm going to say. Um, he was described by friends, co-workers, neighbors, and family as an excellent person. His family was a calm family. He was a hard worker, a dedicated, good father and husband. And this came from co-workers, neighbors. A lot of neighbors said, Oh, I didn't know them very well, but I know that he worked hard and loved his family.

SPEAKER_00 48:28

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 48:28

Just by living next door to him. Um, of course, Ice claimed that he tried to ram them with his car. Which once again, does that sound familiar?

SPEAKER_02 48:39

It does.

SPEAKER_01 48:40

The past couple ice shootings have been at the excuse of they tried to ram me with their car. Where in any any law enforcement handbook does it say if somebody's behind the wheel of a car, stand in front of it.

SPEAKER_03 48:56

Get in front of them and then start unloading into the city.

SPEAKER_01 48:58

Get in front of it and shoot at it.

SPEAKER_03 48:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:00

In every and I have looked at the Justice Department, I've looked at DHS's website, I've looked at just the general handbook for almost every law enforcement agency. Quite literally, all of them say, unless they're somebody's gonna hurt somebody else and like drive down the street and kill other people, don't chase the car, don't get in front of the car, and don't shoot at the car.

SPEAKER_02 49:20

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 49:21

But ICE continuously does the exact same thing. They get in front of a moving vehicle of somebody who's scared for their life because masked men are coming at them in unmarked cars and then telling them to pull over, and they're trying to leave, and these ice agents then stand in front of their car using themselves as a human shield and then murdering the person driving the car. ICE or DHS even said that he was not their target at all. ICE officers didn't have body cams on. Any video that we've seen of the encounter with ICE has been the man was calm and he was not a danger to ICE agents in his car. The videos that we have seen he was going so slow, and in one of them the ICE officer was steering his car out of the way because he had already shot him. And then they dragged his dead body out of the car and handcuffed it on the ground while his wife and toddler and her bluey pajamas watched.

SPEAKER_03 50:25

Drug him out of the car, not to render aid.

SPEAKER_01 50:28

No, they didn't render aid. There it was video of them pulling him out, handcuffing him, and then waiting a little bit. Even though, of course, Ice and DHS say we got him aid as soon as we could. Why? You shot him point blank, drug him out of the car, smacked his dead skull on the ground, and handcuffed him.

SPEAKER_03 50:48

I would also like to point out the we got him aid as soon as we could narrative uh has been present in every other ice shooting. Uh you look at Renee Good, you look at Alex Prey, uh the some of the two most prolific ice shootings uh in recent history now, and both times medical aid was denied to the people that they just shot. There were typically some sort of like RNs or EMTs or some sort of medical professional on scene with a camera, granted, not a part of the ice, you know, team or whatever the fuck they are, a cult. Uh not a part of them, but who was just saying, I'm a registered medical professional, please let me render aid to this person, and they were repeatedly told no. This is not the first time that they have denied medical care to somebody that they fucking unlawfully shot.

SPEAKER_01 51:34

Yeah, and like in the Renee Good case, there was a doctor on scene saying, I want to provide care, and they said, An ambulance is coming. And they told him no repeatedly. If these ICE agents would have let a medical professional who is legally obligated to perform care on people in need, to her she might not be dead. But they refused to let a doctor help her that was in the neighborhood, and when the um first responders came, they had to carry her dead body around the corner because Ice wouldn't let them on the street. D we forgot about that, right?

SPEAKER_03 52:12

I yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:13

Yeah, I mean it it's just awful. And to make it worse, reports have come out from Politico and his ex-wife. Did you see the reports from his ex-wife?

SPEAKER_03 52:23

Not from his ex-wife, but I saw the original Politico story.

SPEAKER_01 52:26

Yeah, so the Politico story said what exactly I think you I read it, but you retain information better than I do.

SPEAKER_03 52:32

Yeah, so essentially they were saying that the ICE agent who shot um the victim was brand new uh to ICE and had very minimal training, and this just seems to be a growing pattern. A growing pattern of how ICE recruits and how they deploy their quote officers, because they're not fucking real officers, to the field.

SPEAKER_01 52:54

Yeah. Um after that, his ex-wife came out and said that he has a troubling history of violent behavior. And his own relatives have said that he has always struggled with mental health issues. They questioned his fitness to work as an ice agent, and they were shocked to find out that he was an ice agent because of how violent he was before. Jesus Christ, dude. Oh, his name is David Bruyette, by the way. Bruyette?

SPEAKER_03 53:21

We're gonna say that a couple more times so that this man's name can be out there.

SPEAKER_01 53:26

David Bruyette.

SPEAKER_03 53:28

David Bruyette shot a man who was legally allowed to be here and was not even the target of their unlawful raid.

SPEAKER_01 53:37

And we are gonna wrap this up because there has been a lot of news about it lately, but I do want to make sure to mention that his ex-wife came out with reports of his abusive behavior in their marriage. She said, in a quote, I don't understand how he keeps getting these jobs where there are firearms involved. He's a danger to society, he's a danger to people and to himself. She also said, I just don't understand how he keeps getting away with it. She divorced him after he became physically abusive, confirmed by her mother that he threw boiling water at her while she was holding her child.

SPEAKER_02 54:09

Oh my fucking God.

SPEAKER_01 54:10

Yeah. And like after all of this happened, ICE agents were told to largely suspend vehicle stops until further notice and to coordinate with partner agencies when executing a criminal warrant on someone in a vehicle. The pause in vehicle stops made Trump so angry that they reversed it. So instead of being like, Yeah, you know what, we should stop killing people because these vehicle stops are not being performed properly, he got so mad because prominent MAGA voices suggested that his administration was weakening its immigration enforcement.

SPEAKER_02 54:45

Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_01 54:46

So that lasted what, a day?

SPEAKER_03 54:49

Maybe, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:50

Yeah. And it's just the latest news regarding ICE and just their complete untrained nonsense.

SPEAKER_03 54:59

It's a fucking embarrassment to actual law enforcement in this country, and don't get me wrong, um, law enforcement in America has never been perfect.

SPEAKER_01 55:10

It needs major reforms.

SPEAKER_03 55:11

It needs major reforms. We are far from perfect, but holy fucking shit. Um, ICE has managed to take an imperfect product and wipe their fucking ass with it. Uh, this is an absolute slap in the face to any and all Americans. The American Dream, as well as any immigrants who come to America to make a better life, to follow the American Dream. ICE is a terrorist organization that is supported by the government of the United States of America within our own borders.

SPEAKER_01 55:41

Wrapping up this week's episode, we are going to get into our respective local news stories. Do you want to start with this one or do you want me to start?

SPEAKER_03 55:50

Let's start with yours, because my state story kind of relates to your state in general, so.

SPEAKER_01 55:54

Okay, that makes sense. Um, mine is about Governor Greg Abbott appointing Robert Howden as Texas's new interim Secretary of State. He is replacing Jane Nelson, who unexpectedly resigned just months before the November midterm elections. She was Secretary of State during, you know, a pretty controversial time during Texas's primary elections. Um, the Republican Party of Texas sued her office after she declined to implement a proposed closed primary system. So basically, they were trying to prevent Democrats from voting in Republican primaries. The lawsuit exposed a rare divide within Texas Republican leadership, and the Attorney General sided with the Texas GOP, and Jane Nelson defended her office's decision and argued that the lawsuit should be dismissed, which is still ongoing, which kind of leads into why did she leave randomly with no um explanation?

SPEAKER_02 56:49

Yeah, that's you know, great question.

SPEAKER_01 56:51

It's a great question. And the guy that is replacing her is a longtime Greg Abbott advisor, and he was his legislative director, and he has been described as a business-friendly conservative. So he's business friendly. If they want to get something done, he's gonna do what they want him to do.

SPEAKER_03 57:12

Yeah, and typically business friendly means not people friendly.

SPEAKER_01 57:16

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 57:16

Yeah. Um more allegiance to corporations and to your own constituency.

SPEAKER_01 57:21

Yeah, it's just kind of I don't know, it's like a little bit shifty because there really isn't a detailed explanation as to why she resigned.

SPEAKER_00 57:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:31

And the fact that she's resigning and leaving so quickly before a midterm election. A little sus, I'd say.

SPEAKER_03 57:41

It just seems a little off. Yeah, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

SPEAKER_01 57:44

Yeah, it seems a little bit off. And um Cal Jelson, a political science professor, said one of the more controversial things that former Texas secretaries of state have done is to engage in the purging of voter rolls. And quote, it is necessary because voters die, voters move away, they have to change their voter registration, so purging the voter rolls is appropriate and even required. But if it's done sloppily, and it has been done sloppily in the past, in Texas in recent years, it takes legitimate voters off the rolls, and then they have to discover that they're off the rolls and re-register and get back on. So this also relates to her and the lawsuit that they were a part of trying to um prevent Democrats from voting in Republican primaries.

SPEAKER_03 58:30

Great. Good for them.

SPEAKER_01 58:32

Good for them. So they're like, you know what? Let's just replace her.

SPEAKER_03 58:35

Let's just fucking replace her.

SPEAKER_01 58:37

So this is like super not awesome for voters in Texas.

SPEAKER_03 58:42

Yeah, especially considering that um, you know, being from Texas, this is something that I've watched a little bit since ever since moving to California, like what, eight, nine years ago? Um Texas, especially in more of the urban areas, uh kind of getting away from some of the more rural areas, which um is kind of a general trend in America, but especially in Texas, a lot of those more urban areas are shifting blue quite a bit. Um, and so continued uh what is basically voter suppression um is is not new for Texas, unfortunately. Um, and especially with someone like Reg Abbott, who is a documented piece of shit, um, it's probably not gonna get better until um some real change comes to Texas.

SPEAKER_01 59:25

Yeah, which sucks because Jane was a Republican. She was on their side, but just because she tried to actually follow the law, okay, get out of here.

SPEAKER_03 59:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:37

Uh and which is a growing trend in growing fucking US politics in general.

SPEAKER_03 59:41

All right. Uh well, kind of hopping off that, going into Utah, this is actually a little bit related to your story, Brittany. Um, so Utah conservative donors are confirming this week that they will host a fundraiser for the Texas Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton on August 21st, which is bringing one of the country's wildest congressional elections to Utah. Uh, what's really interesting about this uh is that whenever you look at the amount raised between Ken Paxton and his uh Democratic opponent in this race, uh James Tallerico, Ken Paxton, even with establishment support, has only raised $9 million in the second quarter. Meanwhile, in comparison, Talo Rico has raised $30 million, building on his $27 million first quarter, which is the most raised during these periods for a U.S. Senate campaign ever. And let's take that out of the picture and just realize that this is a Democrat in Texas raising this kind of money. So that's huge. That's it's huge. And for those of you who don't know much about Ken Paxton, a documented piece of shit. Um, he is just an awful human being, uh, an even worse politician. He's one of those guys that Trump tried to kind of weasel his way into the primaries and supported Ken Paxton, even against the quite frankly, the begging of his own party not to endorse Ken Paxton. Um, because years and years ago, Ken Paxton was actually shunned by his own party um and then basically like kicked out. Um and so nobody wanted to see him come back because he is such a massive piece of shit. And yet here he is because Trump endorsed him, now all of a sudden he is the Republican nomination for the Texas Senate seat. So kind of getting back to Utah's role in this, um, Utah is, like I said before, uh going to hold a fundraiser for Ken Paxton on August 21st, uh, which is a little surprising considering the geographic distance between Utah and Texas. Uh, however, it is showing that quite frankly, in my view of this, that Ken Paxton and uh his own party are so desperate to raise money and try to uh continue with the Senate bid in Texas that they are now outsourcing to other like-minded conservatives throughout different states. So uh, Utah, if you live in Utah and you're listening to this podcast, um you're probably not a Republican. And in that case, I am very sorry that your state's doing this. Um but just an interesting little piece to kind of bring and tie in with the uh other Texas story uh that Brittany just brought up. Um and for anybody who is you know into politics, into the Senate race, Texas for Democrats is kind of a long shot, but the trends have been looking pretty okay so far. But now you're starting to see this outsourcing by the Republican Party into other states and um kind of trying to dip into other funds, which in my opinion kind of shows the desperation they have to keep that seat in Texas. All right, well, that's gonna wrap up this week's episode of the Chronically Informed Podcast. I'm gonna go ahead and take this out because Britney seems to be fucking dying next to me.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:50

Um I don't know what's going on.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:51

She does not know what's going on.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:53

Holland counts are off the charts right now.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:55

Yeah, it's bad. But uh thank you so much, guys, for listening to this week's episode. Uh, hope you enjoyed it. We are now on Spotify, by the way. So if you're listening on YouTube and you have a Spotify account and you prefer to get your podcast through Spotify, you may now go and listen to us there. We are also just called the Chronically Informed Podcast. Just Chronically Informed Object. Just Chronically Informed, excuse me. Um so make sure you you know subscribe to that on Spotify if you enjoyed the podcast. Uh we are in the future going to try to expand out to some more platforms just to give everybody an opportunity to listen on the platform they like most. But thank you so much again. Um we will see you next week.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:35

And I can't wait.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:36

I can't wait either. I can't wait to see what fresh hell this country brings us to report on next week.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:41

What fresh hell's waiting for us?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:43

Alright, guys, see you next Sunday. Thank you so much again and have a great day. Bye.