SIO160: The President Mocked A Sexual Assault Survivor

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 160. I'm your host, Thomas Smith, and I am coming at you a day late and a dollar short. Well, no, just a day late. Last week, it was planned. This week, It was not so planned. If you follow me on any social media, well, more like on Facebook, I guess, you might have seen. I, I don't know how interesting this is to you guys, but I, honestly, I just, I had a real rough day yesterday. This news cycle is really getting to me. It seems impossible to me to both keep up with everything, maybe not everything, but keep up with as much stuff as I do, care about outcomes for people that I do and then not be miserable all the time.

0:01:25 Thomas: It's something I'm not very good at doing, which sucks because this should be the happiest time of my life. I mean, on paper, it really is. And at times I'm able to enjoy it. But, you know, on the on the other hand, it really, really sucks. And note the explicit tag, if hopefully it's displaying properly, because I'm guessing this is going to be another episode where I curse a lot because I, I just, I'm just so full of anger. Yesterday I, I was planning to do an episode and you know, I wasn't sure, I have some interviews in the can, as I always do. I usually am a one or two ahead and, uh, I've got some good interviews, you know? And, and I've kind of put them off last week because of the Kavanaugh thing. And then this week I was was thinking I'd get back to another interview. And then I'm listening to the Daily yesterday morning talking about the New York Times article that, you know, because the Daily is the New York Times podcast.

0:02:18 Thomas: And this Wednesday episode, which I highly recommend, was about this New York Times investigation. Huge, massive, took them, I think, a year. It's one of the longest articles ever written for the New York times is something like 10,000 words, uh, involved all these documents, all this investigation, huge thing into the fucking mafia crime family of the Trumps, you know, and that's something, believe it or not, that's a hyperbole that I hadn't really used before that. I don't think so. Anyway, I, I lot of people have referred to them as a Trump crime family. I do make some effort, believe Believe it or not, everybody, I make some effort to keep my hyperbole to be relatively in, you know, in control.

0:03:08 Thomas: But after seeing this, no, it's, you know, it is a fucking crime family. They avoided hundreds of millions in taxes, hundreds of millions, at least. So I was listening to that, I was driving home from something, and I was all set to get started on the show for the day, and once again, I had done a poll in the Facebook group for supporters, asking them, okay, do you want, I'm really upset and agitated and I would love to rant about a bunch of things, do you want that or do you wanna interview? And people are enjoying the rants, I think, because overwhelmingly people voted for the scream into the void option, and so I thought, okay I'm gonna do that. And then I noticed that I had horrible tinnitus. Um, I know that comes out of nowhere and it's kind of weird, but I just, all of a sudden I couldn't even focus or listen to anything.

0:04:00 Thomas: I was trying to, I was try to watch a few things and listen to a few thing, you know, for more prep for the show. And I couldn't even do it because the noise was just so grating and was hurting. Um. And it's, it was kind of disturbing. I was, and it turns out I posted about it. It seems like a lot of people, uh, on Facebook anyway, were like, Oh yeah, I have that. I have that. It seems like tinnitus is a, or tinnitous as some people call it is, um, a common thing, but I I've had it forever, at least intermittently, but this is the worst. I remember it. And I can't help, but think, you know, it's, I, I don't want to get all wooey on anybody, but like, it is a kind of a mental thing. I can't help but think I just was so angered and upset and and depressed by all the news, I can't help but think that my brain was just like, nah, fuck it.

0:04:47 Thomas: Just like, just, I don't know, I can't take it anymore. I'm done. I really, I dunno. I mean, I try and then I tried to like take a nap to see if it would, you know, usually it would like reset. And of course that lost me some time that I needed to prepare the episode. And I woke up from a nap and it was worse. So I didn't do the episode yesterday. All this is to say I didn't do the episode. I'm sorry about that because now that I have a baby, when Phoebe gets home, I want to spend the few minutes before she goes to bed and then she's asleep and I don't want to wake her up with a bunch of yelling and cursing, which is what this episode is going to be probably. So that's why I'm late. Sorry about that. I hope that the episode still finds you in time to give you some, I don't know, some relief from the news cycle.

0:05:33 Thomas: But I am just so fucking upset. I really am. And I, you know, it's not to make it about me, because it's not, I'm sitting atop a tower of privilege, none of this stuff really touches me, well, I'll tell you what, it, I mean, it does in a way, because I get immensely upset about this stuff, I really do, and also, uh, you know, my wife is, is just righteously and justifiably very upset by this whole Kavanaugh business and the, and the stuff, and, and so it, it is not as though it's in my life at all, but, but I guess technically speaking, none of this stuff affects me, but I, I can't help it, like I just, I, that's, I don't, I don't live a life of thinking, well, that doesn't directly affect me, so I'm fine, you know, the same reason that the tax cuts were bullshit, even though they directly benefited me, I, I wish that bill hadn't passed, uh, I think that the politics of selfishness and callousness and not giving a shit about the the harm other people are facing and the hurt other people are facing, I think that is the Republican Party platform, is I don't care about your feelings, that kind of thing, and that's just not me.

So, yeah, I'm really upset, but I don't want to make it about me, I hope you're upset too, and I imagine, I can't even imagine what it must be like to be a sexual assault survivor and have to go through all of the shit and to see the just all the stuff this drags up, to see the president mocking Ford, that just sent me through the roof.

0:07:07 Thomas: And I'm just so sorry for people who, you know, like someone I follow on Twitter, I retweeted her thread she had about what that drummed up for her as a victim of sexual assault to see. The president of the United States mocking Ford and the fact that it drags up all these feelings of self-blame and self-hatred. And it's, it's horrible. And it's and there's no the issue that I keep facing now, I guess, for me as a white male, maybe I still had some tiny portion of me that liked America. That was that was like, OK, this this, you know, yes, it got its flaws, etc., etc.

0:07:54 Thomas: But, you know, land of the free, home of the brave or the opposite. I can't remember. You you know, it's still whatever. And now it's just, nah, fuck this place. I've just seriously, it, the, the, The place is fine. You know, real estate wise, America, pretty great culture wise. There's a lot of good culture. There's a lot of good art. There, tell you what, our Netflix lineup in America, you know? American shows. Awesome. We got some great art. We've got some shows. We got some music.

We had some great movies. That's all cool. Everything else fucking shitty. And I know that might be an exaggeration, okay, I don't mean everything else, but we are, the state of the country right now is such that the president can do the following, well, I'm going to play it, and I do want to warn you, this might be something you don't want to hear, I, I am sure you have been forcefully exposed to it probably by now, but just in case you are avoiding it, by all means, skip, or turn it off, or mute, or whatever you want to do, if you don't want to, you know.

0:08:56 Clip: 36 years ago, this happened. I had one beer, right? I had one beer. Well, do you think it was? Nope. It was one beer. Oh, good. How did you get home? I don't remember. How'd you get there? I don't remember. Where is the place? I don't remember. How many years ago was it? I don't know. I don't know.

0:09:17 Clip: I don't know. I don't know. What neighborhood was it in? I don't know. Where's the house? I don't know.

0:09:27 Clip: Upstairs, downstairs, where was it? I don't know. But I had one beer. That's the only thing I remember.

0:09:31 Thomas: Step one, fuck you! So fuck you before anything else. Fuck you, you fucking piece of shit.

0:09:40 Thomas: So that's thing one, that's item one, is fuck you. Item two, she does remember a lot of the stuff you said she didn't remember. You can't even fucking remember which things she said she could and couldn't remember! Or you don't care enough to write it down! You fucking asshole. God, bad, how are we supposed to just sit here and fucking live in a country where this happens, where the president says this and people cheer? What, I don't, I don't, I don't get it, I don't, I don´ t you know what, I honestly don't understand what I'm supposed to, uh, tell Phoebe when she's growing up. Tell you what, she's not pledging the fucking Pledge of Allegiance. I, that's step one, fuck that, I don't give a shit about pledging allegiance.

Oh, let's start our kids at the age of five or six and and make them recite a pledge of allegiance to this country that they were born into without, they don't even fucking understand yet, they don't understand anything about it, they have no context, they have no perspective on whether or not this country is any good relative to other countries, whether or not they agree with all the the words in the pledge, not to mention the under God part. That's the least of my concerns right now.

0:10:58 Thomas: So I'm not doing that, but you know, cause like, I, I don't want her to make a scene about it, but like, I also don't want her to do it. So that, that's, that's a small thing, but how do I do? I mean, they're going to be learning all this shitty history. That's not the right version of anything, you know? Like this delightful, uh, stories of how we, uh, had, uh, dinner with Native Americans and it was all kumbaya, you know, they don't learn all the real realities of history. We've been, Lydia and I have been thinking about that a lot. I don't know. And that's, that's all stuff that was true a month ago, regardless. But then how do you, I mean, I'm sure there are a lot of parents listening who have kids that are more of an age, you Know, cause she's only 13 months or 14 months or so.

0:11:45 Thomas: She doesn't understand anything, let alone this, but I'm sure there are parents listening who have kids who are at an age where they might understand. What do you do, how do you explain to your kids that the president just mocked a victim of sexual assault, how do your daughters or your sons or anybody, that if they are abused by somebody, that it's okay to come forward, how do, how do make that clear, how do, that's the number one thought I've have had in all this? And I don't know the answer. I genuinely intend to try to do some research into this and see what I can turn up. If anybody has any expertise, let me know. But one thing we constantly see in people who victimize other people is they have a way, especially with kids, you know, younger people, they have a way of making the victim blame themselves.

0:12:42 Thomas: I don't know how it, it happens, I wish I understood more about it. But how do I raise my daughter in a way that'll help her understand that it's someone else's fault if they do something to her? That's already a challenge without the fucking president telling you it's your fault and blaming you for having this, having been done to you. It's already hard enough. It's already a difficult enough outcome come as it is, and then this. So, to answer your question, Mr. President, you piece of fucking human garbage, when did it happen? Summer of '82, I think, was the answer. Or, by the way, the other answer was, if the FBI wants to ask Mark Judge when he was working at the Safeway, that narrows down the time exactly, virtually, to the year, anyway, anyway.

0:13:29 Thomas: Upstairs, downstairs, fucking upstairs, you asshole, she said that, in her testimony, before the Senate, she's said that. As if this weren't enough, make sure not to watch the video in which you'll see a bunch of grinning, old, fucking, white, piece-of-shit men, smi-, cheering, oh, way to take down that accuser, that credible accuser of a powerful white man, yes, that means we get free fucking rein, forever. So, as you might remember, I, that last episode was, he's going to get confirmed, and, you I named the episode that because I, that's what I thought was going to happen. I kind of make predictions on this show and sometimes I tend toward pessimism and I would love to be proven wrong.

0:14:16 Thomas: I would, I, I would love to be proven wrong. But after I saw Matt Damon get up there and yell at people in front of the Senate, I thought that, I just think this will give them enough plausible deniability. And when they announced the FBI investigation, I will admit there is a flicker of like, OK, maybe they aren't doing this seriously enough. And then when they said the one week thing and started setting the limits on it, I thought, OK, this is bullshit. This is a way of trying to maybe shave off a couple of points of disapproval on a poll somewhere, like maybe it's enough to say we did something, we looked into it, and maybe there's a few marginal voters who will, who will think that. And they have the time, by the way, they've got the time to set a week to do a nothing nonsense investigation that doesn't look at any of the actual facts or interview anybody important, or even, by the way, they're not even going to release the results of the investigation.

0:15:13 Thomas: Frankly, the more the week went on, the more I was positive that I, unfortunately, was right. I would love to be wrong. I, right now, recording this now, it's Thursday at 3 Pacific. I would lo-, it looks like 99.8% to me. And, and three days ago I was like, okay, 60, 40, maybe we've got some hope. I don't give a shit about being right. I want to be. Please, God, let me be wrong, somebody, some Republican, have a spine, please. Please, Collins, Murkowski is always, but it's just not going to happen, Collins already said she's for. We did the, I'm very satisfied with the results of the bullshit we did to evaluate this. I, we looked into it, uh, and we didn't even interview Ford. We didn't interview any of the other accusers, but I don't know what they, what, what must they have done dusted for Prince somewhere?

0:16:05 Thomas: Like what did they do? Talk to some people who weren't any of the the main people? Do you know anything about this? Nah. Okay. Seriously, I'm trying to think what they even would have done if they didn't interview Ford. I don't think they interviewed Mark Judge, or maybe they did. It's kind of mixed here and there. It is also hard to know because it is confidential and we can't know. God, I wish it was still the movies. I don't know if it ever was the movies, but there was a time in life when I thought it was the movie, by that I mean, when there was the, in the third act, when someone, oh, I, I uncovered a clue, turns out this Supreme Court Justice was lying about fucking everything, then what would happen in the movies is everybody would be like, whoa, I've changed my mind, holy shit, he was lying, let's, okay, well, clearly, clearly we can't do that.

0:16:58 Thomas: Clearly we can't put on the highest court on the land for a lifetime appointment who's going to decide women's rights, gay rights, and the most important issues of our time. Clearly, we wouldn't put a fucking liar to that position. Nevermind that.

Nevermind if we want to give him, like, somehow a free pass for 17, you know, when he was 17, assaulting someone, one, not to even mention that a fucking angry entitled liar who lied about virtually everything, except his undying love for beer was the one thing he told the truth about, I think.

And it fucking hurts, God, it hurts so much, even if next week they put a just as conservative a justice on the court because they withdrew Kavanaugh or something, yes, that would still suck, yes, abortion, gay rights, all that stuff would still be in jeopardy, but there's nothing we can do about that. There's nothing we can do. But at the very least, even though there's nothing we can do about that, and mark my words, there's fucking nothing we can do because we did not vote enough in 2014 and in 2016. We fucked it up. We blew it. So we cannot fix that. Democrats do not have the power to fix that, I'm sure.

You You all listen to opening arguments like I do, enough to know that there is just nothing we can do. It's not, oh, Democrats need to fight harder, or, Or maybe if we hadn't focused on a 36-year-old allegation, we could have made the case that, no, we couldn't have done any of that, he was going to pass before the allegation he was gonna get through, he's going to get through after the allegatio, it doesn't matter, the allegati, what I was going say is that at least, even if, next week or next month or whatever,

0:18:51 Thomas: We would have a justice instead of Kavanaugh, who is just as conservative, at the very least, he wouldn't be a fucking attempted rapist, a misogynist. He wouldn't have been the result of a coordinated effort by Republicans rallying behind Trump, insulting Dr. Ford, a woman of tremendous courage, a women who got up there and bared her soul and answered every fucking question and told the truth, appeared by any objective measure to be making an effort to get at the truth, to admit her limitations, to not make anything up, to not make a making a like a far too ambitious story.

She didn't go over overboard in anything, she had a clinical explanation for her memory that makes perfect sense, she's a professional person, she did everything right at the very least, we wouldn't have the insult of this person on the Supreme Court. So, so don't give me your, well, they just nominate another person that's just as conservative, maybe even more conservative. First off, you don't really get more conservative than Kavanaugh. There's almost no room for movement there. So I'm not tremendously worried about like a worse Kavanaun. It's already the worst. That's how conservatives have it set up. They're all a 10 out of fucking 10 on the conservative-o-meter now. That's all of them.

They all are. So yes, if we got rid of Trump there would be Pence, yes, if we get rid of Kavanaugh there would be another conservative, but maybe they wouldn't be a fucking rapist and we wouldn't have to live with that stain on our country and on our institutions forever, for the next 40 fucking years, that would be awesome, that would feel really good right about now, you

0:20:44 Thomas: Know, like, I know, again, it would be nowhere near perfect, we'd still have a lot to do, but at least it wouldn't be that. You know, it just occurred to me, this might be worse than Anita Hill. We might have gone backwards. Holy shit. I didn't even think of that. Let me know what you think. But, I mean, and a lot of that rests on Trump, but we, in 1991 or two, at least, Bush Senior wasn't getting up there mocking Anita Hill, that I know of, unless I could, I could be wrong. But I think we used to elect, even though there were shitty people and still Republicans, we used to elect people who had a shred of human decency, just a minuscule amount of human decency to the presidency. I don't think, so have we gone backwards?

0:21:40 Thomas: I mean, in one sense, I guess no, because his poll numbers, Kavanaugh's poll numbers are worse than Clarence Thomas. So, okay, so I guess it's it's maybe we've made a little bit of progress. However, we're held hostage by a minority government of assholes and rapists and rape apologists. Is that, is that where we are? I guess that's where we, here's what I can't stop thinking, and I know I've said this, I've said, you know, impeachment for whatever, that, it's an enormous hurdle. It's an enormous hurdle to impeach Kavanaugh or any, or any Supreme Court Justice. It is an enormous hurdle, we're nowhere near, we don't even have power. But I think it's an ideal we can always strive for. Like, I, I for one, as a voter, and I, I just, here's, here is what I fear most in all this.

0:22:31 Thomas: You know what I feel most? I, you would've thought it couldn't get worse, and it's probably true. But you know what's slightly even worse for me? Is four months from now when no one gives a shit about this, somehow. You now, and partially, it's, it's not, it not really anybody's fault. There's too much. There is too much evil in the the world. But Clarence Thomas just got to quietly, as I said, I guess I probably said this last week, which feels like a year ago, you know, ClarenCE Thomas got to just quietly be ClarenC Thomas, be a justice for going on 26 years, whatever, just, just up there having gotten away with it. You know, are we, will it be, uh, in after the midterms, maybe Democrats take back some amount of power, but obviously nowhere near enough to single-handedly, uh.

0:23:19 Thomas: Unilaterally impeach somebody, they would need Republican help, which they won't get, um, will, will it be, let's say six months from now, someone asks a question, uh, what do you think about, uh, someday impeaching Kavanaugh? Bill, oh, well, no, you know, that, that's run its course, he's, uh, he's a member of the Supreme Court now, he's Supreme Court justice, we got to respect it. That's what I think will hurt worse than anything, is the power of once something becomes normal.

Sort of like, it's like Bush v. Gore in 2000, once, once that was the thing, somehow the the Supreme Court handed Bush the election, you know, and Gore just kind of was like, all right, and then it was that, okay, he's president for eight years, that's, that's not it, doesn't matter, you know, it doesn't matter how close it was, doesn't matter how illegitimate Cavanaugh is, how much he was lying, once you put on that fucking robe and you and you start doing that cosplay and you're part of the court, then we just, okay, okay, he's a Supreme Court justice. That's just who he is. In our minds, he is that. And it's not as though there's much we can do about it. Again, but can we just somehow never let this be okay? You and I, listener, can you and I never let this be okay?

I somehow, I don't know what, I know that I'm just going to never call him Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh. Maybe I'll just call him Supreme Court Rapist Kavanaugh. Maybe, maybe that's, that'll be my little protest slash. Can we run on the, or at least in campaigns, can Democrats say, yeah, he's illegitimate. He shouldn't be, shouldn't be on the court. He's a liar.

0:24:58 Thomas: He lied. He very likely assaulted a woman, probably more than one based on how many accusations we have. Can we just never let it die? Can we keep it in the news? Cause they're going to vote on, I think Saturday or Friday or Saturday and he'll be adjusted. That'll be that. He'll put on the fucking robe. Oh, he's a justice now. Just gets to be that for 40 years.

Can we keep it in the news, you know, because there's still a lot more, I, one thing, one component that, might be interesting is there, there were a lot of listeners, Witnesses who said they weren't going to talk to the media because they were going to talk to FBI, they were gonna be interviewed as part of the FBI investigation, well, that didn't happen for a lot of them, so, it might be that once they realize, oh, this FBI investigation was a fucking joke, so I'll go to the medium, maybe that'll, you know, that'll be enough to keep, but again, he's in, you know, once he's, he can, he could be proven on every single newspaper to be the worst.

And it, all that, it doesn't matter because we've gotten to the point that Republicans can just say the sky is purple and it doesn't, there's, if enough shouting fucking asshole people cheer them, then it doesn't matter. Then, okay, I guess the sky is purple. They win. They have the power. They've, they've wrested the power, they've, they've captured the power. We can't do anything. And by the way, even if we take back power in two years, it doesn't matter. It's institutions get a respect or something, or then they'll start playing the victim and they'll sit there and, you know, it's never going to be fixed.

0:26:39 Thomas: I've just, this is why I'm so angry. There's such a feeling of helplessness. It really is.

0:26:46 Thomas: Going to talk about so, to add to that helplessness, uh, and I think what really just put it over the top, like, I can handle a certain amount of just, uh, just complete rage in a day, you know, I've got my, like, my allowance, you know, it's like one major thing, like, you know, Trump did or said this, ah, fucking asshole, and, you know, I can, I'm mad, but I can go about my day. I think it was this plus that New York Times investigation that did it, because, here, I'll, in case you didn't read, I read the whole damn thing, it was a long ass thing, it was like reading a book, but it was worth it. I, I want to tell you about it, so I'll be quick, because you should, you know, go to the source or listen to that podcast, but if you didn't do either of those things, our law and order candidate, yes, the law and order candidate, the crooked Hillary, the law corrupt candidate, is a fucking criminal. Criminal!

0:27:39 Thomas: I mean, we already knew this. Do you remember, were you listening, listener that I'm talking to back when I debated Robert Price a little bit on this show? Because I, at one point I said, I believe, I haven't gone back, but I said something like, he's not a businessman. He's not a real businessman because Price was saying, yeah, well, we got to get, you know, I need a businessman in there to run the show. So it was some good old fashioned business sense to run the economy. And I don't remember exactly what I said, but if I had it to do over again, I would say something like he wasn't a businessman. He has no business knowledge. What he was, was he wasn'T even a CEO. It's one thing to get a CEO of a multinational gigantic corporation in there. I wouldn't support it because the government is not a corporation.

0:28:24 Thomas: It should not be run like a corporation, but, but. If I were to buy into that premise, if I were to say, all right, maybe we need someone with a little bit of business sense in there, if, and I'm saying if, even if I granted that, Donald fucking Trump would be the last person I would put.

And that was before that it was 100% confirmed that he's a fraud by this investigation, because at best, he was a guy who inherited a bunch of money and then put that money in the safest bet that there could ever be, which is real estate in New York fucking city, and by the way, still did a shitty job at that, he couldn't even do that well, bankruptcy after bankruptcy, bought a fucking air, a shitty airline, ran it to the ground, bought a bunch of dumb ass casinos, and somehow couldn't do business as a casino, should be one of the easiest, he's an idiot, he has no business sense, but even if he, he had, you know, even if he was rich because he inherited money, bought a building and made a bunch of money on that, that's not, that's easy, it's easy to do, a what, a nine-year-old, you could explain to them, okay, businessman, nine-years-old, here's what you do, if you get money, it's the game of Monopoly, if you land on a square, you know, and you have the resources somehow by a dint of good fortune to buy a hotel on that square, or, you know, one or two, four houses or a hotel.

Then when people land on it, you get money. Holy shit. I think I can fathom that. This is not, this is not a serious thing. This has not major business acumen.

0:30:08 Thomas: This does not, you know, the kind of thing that you would want. And by the way, you wouldn't even want that. As, as I've said already, if you, if want to run the, the, national economy, if If you want to try to, I don't know, help the world economy or help the country in general, you need to know macroeconomics and things like that. Frankly, I mean, I'm sure you want to have some knowledge of it as a CEO, but it's really it's not that side of things. It's like it's like being a really good athlete. Say you're a basketball player that doesn't make you a good referee necessarily. There's some overlap. You're going to know the rules for the most part. You might be able to be an OK referee, maybe depending on how much you care about calling, but you're not training for the same thing. A company is training to thrive within the rules within, well, sort of within the rule, within the game, you know, that they're at.

0:30:59 Thomas: And someone who's trying to fix an economy or make sure everybody's employed, that's a macro level thing that's way different. It's just way different But back to the article, here, we'll go through how much of a fucking fraud this human being is. He's not even self-made at all, like even, even, because he had a story that even if you bought his story, it's still that his dad gave him a $1 million loan. Hey, guys, I didn't, I'm just like you, you know, hey, listeners, I just, I am just the common man like you. You know, my dad gave me a million bucks, but I had to pay it back. Yeah, if you can, if If you get a million dollars without, you know, any credit history, you know, your dad just gives it to you. Even if you later have to pay it back, you got a million dollars.

0:31:48 Thomas: You can use that to buy property, which easily allows you to repay it. And then you make a bunch of money. I found it really fascinating learning about how Fred Trump built his fortune because Trump's dad, Fred Trump, while he, of course, also was was the beneficiary of a bunch of government unsubsidized loans, which I think is key. He was a businessman. Fred Trump was a hardworking, I'm not trying to make him out to be a saint or anything by any stretch, but in the American go-getter corporatist sense of the word, he was exceptional. He utilized government money. He glad-handed, he kind of made connections So that he would get these government loans that were subsidized.

0:32:34 Thomas: Did I say unsubsidized? Whatever the word is, one or the other. They're basically very cheap loans, like you have to pay almost nothing in interest for them. And you get access to a lot of money. And what he would do is he would use that a lot of money to build a shitload of houses. And he had this sort of Henry Ford method of, of doing it faster than anybody else. You know, he had shifts working around the clock, floodlights, all that stuff.

And he took part of it. He was in charge of everything. And tell you what, he was the opposite of his shitty son, Donald Trump. He was all cattle and no hat, I guess. Donald Trump is a, is a caricature. He's all hat and no cattle, I, dad, had, it's kind of interesting if you read the Article, Fred Trump barely had an office, you know, he had the office the size of a parking space, he had one secretary and he did fucking everything, he would call everybody, he'd make all the deals, he was an actual hard negotiator, he drove a hard bargain, as they say, he would get people to give him stuff for a little less, you know, he did all the typical businessy stuff, which again, I don't, you know, is still exploited.

We set aside how much he was using government money to exploit people and make a bunch of money, whatever. Set that aside. In the old-fashioned American sense, he was very exceptional, though. Hard worker, probably brilliant, brilliant businessman, at least. And he made a shitload of money doing that. He made a shitload of money.

0:34:04 Thomas: He has the story that Trump tried to say he had. And this is the weird thing about this article. Is so interesting in a lot of ways, as depressing as it is. So even if we bought his story of the dad only gave me a million dollars, you know, that, that already is not self-made. You're not, that's, you're not self made. If your dad gave you a million hours, even if you later had to pay it back, turns out that is not even close to true. Fred Trump made Donald Trump a millionaire by age eight, age eight. Donald Trump was a millionaire because Fred Trump gave him all kinds of jobs. So like on paper, he put his kids as like landlords and, uh, consultants and business owners and, and, you know, all this stuff.

0:34:52 Thomas: Like I think that covers it. Basically they were landlords for certain buildings. They were the owners of, uh I think laundry money. There's some Some just every way Fred Trump could find to enrich his children, he did. And hey, that was his right within the law. But it's completely, it completely contradicts Donald Trump's story that he's any sort of self-made, even to the extent that we believe getting a million dollar loan is. He was a millionaire because of his dad by age eight. And here's the best thing. Despite all of this, and his dad gave him millions and millions of dollars, not just $1 million, millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars, despite all this, which he lied about and claimed it was his self-made fortune. He still blew it.

0:35:37 Thomas: In 1990, he was in extreme financial distress. Despite having every advantage you could possibly have, despite having a dad who's just throwing money at, just fucking, he's got a leaf blower that's attached to a money machine, just shooting it in Donald Trump's face, and And he still can't turn a fucking profit, because he's a fucking idiot. That's why. He's a FUCKING IDIOT. So, his dad goes to his casino, this is a story that was already known, uh, at the time of the election, but, you know, didn't really matter, I guess, uh... His dad goes his casino and buys $3.5 million in chips, and then just doesn't use them. So, that is an illegal loan, and it actually was, was, uh prosecuted, resulted in $65,000 in civil penalties, but it saved Donald Trump for the millionth time, so that, it just, it never ended, he just kept bailing him out and bailing him out.

0:36:32 Thomas: And this is where I had to take a second and be immensely jealous of his relationship with his father. I was like, man, that'd be nice to have that kind of relationship where you're just a dipshit who can't do anything. But his dad, Fred Trump, was there the whole time trying to contribute not only financially, but also to this false image of Donald Trump as a self-made billionaire. His dad actually, it's so hard to imagine, his dad actually played into it, played into the lie in the media. Another one of the schemes that he had to do to give Donald Trump money was he was in, again, Donald Trump was in dire straits. And so Fred Trump bought, it was a scheme where he bought shares in Donald's condo tower and then later on sold them back to Donald Trump for like nothing.

0:37:24 Thomas: So he, so he spends millions on this big deal for, for shares, sells them back and it wasn't reported as a gift, but it was a gift. It was a way to get around that. And then also Fred used that loss. He declared it as a loss and a tax write-off, which is also illegal when it's a transfer between family members. Here's one of the most disturbing things of the story. Despite all this, despite the fact that they're as close as close could be and Fred does nothing but give Donald money all the time, when Fred Trump was, you know, getting on in years, he lived to be, gosh, I think, 95 or something, but he was already, he was very old in 1990. Donald Trump, again, was in just, just terrible financial situation. He attempted to dupe his ailing father into giving him control of his estate.

0:38:13 Thomas: He so he sent him these legal documents with a message of like, urgent, please sign these, you know, which were all legalese, which would have given Donald Trump like soul, whatever, just control of his estate. And Donald Trump needed that because he is an idiot and was in complete financial ruin because he sucks at business, um, and so he did this to his own father, he just sent this, this, you know, by courier, he signed these papers, you know, it's all legal, but his father, Fred Trump, being a pretty savvy guy, even at 85 or whatever it was at the time, he, he was like, nah, I don't, this doesn't seem right, and he sussed it out, and he sent, he used, you know, because his daughter, Trump's sister, is a federal judge, and he send it to his sister, Donald Trump's sister, and was like, does this look right to you, and uh, he's like, nope, she, she said nope, and and he investigated.

0:39:07 Thomas: And so, this is so hard to believe. That's how amoral Donald Trump is. He tries to dupe his own dad, who's done nothing but give him money all his life, dupe him out of his own estate, essentially, out of control of his own estate. But as it says in the article, this did set Fred Trump on a path toward, with all the kids, arranging for this outright fraud to avoid avoid paying inheritance taxes.

So this is what seems to me to be the most criminal aspect of all this, so Fred Trump is the one with all the money because, again, Donald Trump is a piece of shit and couldn't figure out how to make money even with tens of millions of dollars, but by the way, you give me a million dollars right now, I guarantee you I could at least make a living on it, I could invest in something that would be okay, I bet you anything, I'm not gonna come back and be like, hey, I need 20 more million dollars, Cause I just somehow use that million dollars to blow it even to leveraged blow it so that I owe tens of millions.

Anyway, um, what they did was so Fred Trump's empire has all the money because he built an empire and they realize, okay, he's on his way out. If he dies and passes this billion dollar ish empire to his kids, that's going to be subject to a, I think a 55% estate tax or inheritance tax. And so they embark, the family embarks on a scheme which involves setting up a fake company that it's this fucking mafia money laundering shit.

0:40:46 Thomas: They set up a fake company called All County, which becomes this middleman that takes stuff that's, you know, millions in expenses. You think of the expenses associated with being a landlord and, and all that, you You're buying furnaces, you're buying supplies, you buy whatever, paint, all that crap. There's a lot of very totally justified and normal expenses. So All County is this company formed that's Fred Trump's kids plus someone else that he wanted to give money to. It was like a childhood friend, something like that. And they're the owners, so they're The Whole Company. Company. They are the, now the new middlemen, which, which if, uh, if they, if Fred Trump's company needs a furnace, all County buys the furnace, by the way, Fred Trump still negotiating.

0:41:33 Thomas: So Fred Trump, because he's an actual businessman negotiated down, like they have these stories of like fridges, like, okay, you're going to, you know, outfit the, my building with these fridgens or these boilers or whatever it is. And he drove a hard bargain still. So he still drove a heart bargain and like got a good deal and did all this stuff. And then what he would do is that was, that was between Fred Trump and the distributor, whoever person, and then all County, the fake company of his kids would then be the one that sent the check. So they would send it. Let's say it's a fridge for $250 or something. All company would send the check for $ 250 to the actual thing. Then Fred Trump's company would buy the fridge from all County for like $500.

0:42:18 Thomas: They were literally doubling the cost of something, just massive write-up, all so that they could hand the kids income in a way that wouldn't be seen as inheritance.

0:42:30 Thomas: So rather than paying 55% of inheritance taxes, they would only pay whatever a corporate income tax. I can't tell you what that would be in New York at that time, but it's going to be a lot less than 55%. It could be, you know, given all the ways they're able to mess around with stuff, it could be pretty low. It could have been 20, 25, who knows? Very low, much lower. So this is totally illegal and it's totally fucking fraud. Totally fucking fraud, and then the other major thing was when he did eventually die or when they started working on transferring the estate, they systematically worked with this one appraiser to appraise all of Fred Trump's buildings at a fraction, like a 40th of the value in some cases. It's just absolutely astounding. Thank you for joining. So, in 1995, they got it to $41 million.

0:43:18 Thomas: That's how far down they got. So, they only had to pay taxes on $41.4 million. In 2004, which, I think, was the next available paperwork they had, that same empire was worth $900 million. Million. Now it didn't go up whatever 25 fold or whatever in that time. What happened was they systematically undervalued it by submitting essentially falsified or, you know, they, they maybe they, who knows, maybe they bribed him or whatever. They worked with this appraiser to give massively undervaluated appraisals. And then, uh, you Know, when they needed it to be worth nothing, it was worth nothing. So they didn't have to pay taxes on it later on when they needed to be worth a lot to, you know, get loans or do something like that, then it was worth a lot more.

0:44:04 Thomas: So they did all this and avoided hundreds of millions, hundreds of billions in taxes. So now it becomes a little more clear as if we didn't already know why Trump told Mueller that he better not look into his finances. That would be too far, looking into the finances. Hmm, it's almost like he knew he had something to hide, or the fact that he never released his fucking tax returns like every president has done since, whoever, Nixon or something. Hmm. He deprived the public of the chance to know all this shit that we would want to know to make an informed decision about voting for him. So he's a fucking criminal. He hid it from us. He got elected. That's stealing an election. I don't care if Russians didn't tap into a voting machine when you do that.

0:44:54 Thomas: And by the way, when you also hide the fact that you paid off a porn star days before the vote, that's also stealing an election. When you hide critical information, when you illegally hide critical informa tion from the public before they vote for you, that's stealing an elec tion. That's fraud. That s wrong. You can't do that. You shouldn t be able to do that, but it doesn t matter because you can do anything now because there are no fucking rules. We figured out we re not living in a movie. We re living in Mitch Mitch McConnell's hellscape where all that matters is if you have power. It's all that matters. If you have Power, well then rules exist for the people you want rules to exist for. If you don't have power, you're fucked. It doesn't matter. It does not matter. You have no power.

0:45:39 Thomas: Nothing matters. Just a little thing to end on for this article that I found fascinating. I said before that Fred Trump bought into this and tried to help out with the Donald Trump myth. I find it so weird. So weird. Here's a quote from the New York Times article, Fred, sorry, Donald Trump built the foundation for the myth in the 1970s by appropriating his father's empire as his own. By the late 1980s, instead of appropriating the empire, he was diminishing it. It wasn't a great business. It was good business, he said, as if Fred Trump ran a chain of laundromats. Yes, he told interviewers, his father was a wonderful mentor, but given the limits of his business, the most he could manage was a $1 million loan, and even that had to be repaid with interest.

0:46:25 Thomas: Through it all, Fred Trump played along. Never once did he publicly question his son's claim about the $1-million loan. Everything he touches seems to turn to gold, he said the Times for that first profile in 1976. He's gone way beyond me, absolutely, he says when the Times profiled his son again in 1983. 1883. What a, what a world we live in. This is Shakespearean, I got to say. And you know what? Don't you wish, again, we lived in a movie where Trump is actually a tragic figure because he knows he's a fucking fraud. His whole life he's been a fraud. He was a fraud, he was never a good businessman ever. He Was never a dealmaker, never. He WAS never a dealer maker. His dad was the, the, the, his dad was The Image he was trying to be his whole life.

0:47:11 Thomas: His Dad was the dealmaker. Fred Fred Trump was the dealmaker. Fred Trump was the businessman. Fred Trump was the billionaire. Fred Trump was the genius. He was the hard worker. He was all those things. And you just wish, you just, you know, you just envision a movie where deep inside, Donald Trump knows that he's a fraud and he won an election, sure, but no one respects him. He doesn't fucking know what he's talking about. He doesn'T understand fucking anything. And so he knows. He's, he'll never fill that hole of knowledge that he really isn't the man man. He always wanted to be, but you know, that's not fucking true. You know, that he just is like, yep, I'm the dude. I'm a guy. Yep. I am the billionaire art of the deal, baby. I know fucking everything. You know, he has no awareness.

0:47:56 Thomas: I tell you, he's the happiest person in the world. I bet. Maybe not all the time because he's got to deal with a lot of negative coverage or something, but I think he buys into his bullshit. I really do. You You have to, I don't, I don't think that kind of person, I Don't think he deep inside knows he's a fraud because he is a total fucking fraud. Every aspect of his life is fraudulent. He's a complete fucking fraud and to any normal person with a conscience or, or any sort of like, I don't know, uh, self-esteem issues or, or, uh appropriate sense of self-worth. Anyone who was put into those circumstances would just be like, well, yeah, yeah, I have all this success and wealth and I'm the president, but it's all a lie.

0:48:45 Thomas: So that I feel bad is what I think would go through my mind. Oh, this is not real. I didn't accomplish any of this on my own. This is all bluster and fakeness. That would be me. But you know, he's just like, yeah, this was great. This was awesome. I got Air Force One and stuff. I'mthebest. I can't believe there are people who say I'm not great. Can you believe those people? What the hell are are they thinking? You know, there are people who don't think I'm the greatest thing in the world. What is wrong with those people? I think that's all that goes through his head. So after all this, after all the solid proof, this, this just, again, a year, year and a half of hard research, report, just amazing reporting by the New York Times, uh, this is all past the statute of limitations.

0:49:32 Thomas: Cool. So even if it's 100% proven, doesn't fucking matter!

0:49:40 Thomas: Now, apparently they can still try to collect penalties, because there's no statute of limitation on penalties, like civil penalties or something, but, uh... even though this is a huge crime, a monumental crime that in a just world would be punished, doesn't matter. And by the way, Congress could decide tomorrow if the Republicans got brain transplants that despite the fact that, sure, legally speaking, you're past the statute of limitations, impeachment means whatever they need it to mean.

High crimes and misdemeanors mean whatever you want and I would certainly think even though it's been a whole 20 years since your crime family stole hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S. government, I would think that, uh, maybe, maybe despite the fact that you can't be arrested for it now, I think maybe you shouldn't be fucking president, you shouldn't be in charge of the fucking country that you stole hundreds and millions of from. I would, that would be reasonable if I were in Congress. I think, I think.

The other disturbing thing is this, I already got a couple, couple assholes on Twitter, and again, I just use them as a, as a kind of a weather vane, I, just, uh, see what they say, and they usually end up blocking or muting them, because I just don't care anymore, it's not worth it, Trump, anyone who supports Trump is beneath human dignity at this point, I mean, I know, I have family members that support him, I've, what, I now, we all know those nice people who otherwise are great, but they voted for Trump, and, you know, maybe they are, they're just, they're conservatives and so they want, you know, Republican in power, but they don't agree with them, and I'm sure

0:51:20 Thomas: That's true, but the people who are online defending Trump are beneath human dignity, they're not worth, just don't, don't try, I'm telling you, don't do it, and you always think, oh, but how will we ever make progress, and I, I think that too, how will we, what do we do if those numbers get too, too big, you know? And the answer is, right now, anyway, containment, we can outvote them. There are so many non-voters that can outvote them. We can do it. That's all, the only option we have. You're never going to change a Trump supporter's mind. They're not, they're not real people. They're just, they just post, I've seen them even on this Dr. Ford stuff. They just post post meme after meme of easily refuted garbage, pictures that aren't actually Christine Ford and stuff that's not true and Soros and all this shit.

0:52:14 Thomas: And you just link them why that's not true. And then they're on to the next thing. There's no winning with that. All we can do. So what I'm saying is don't waste your time with that, try to convince a non-voter to vote, try to help a non-voter to vote, you know, sign up for, uh, there's...

There's ways that you can help drive people to polling places, there's all kinds of ways that can help people vote, that's what we should do, because there are enough non-voters to to contain the cancer that is Trump supporters, they, there are.

But speaking of the cancer of those Trump supporters, a couple things I got on Twitter was, oh, this is just, all the Times showed was the standard ways that rich people avoid taxes, it's just, it, it not illegal, it just loopholes, one guy said this is class warfare, you just hate the rich because they're able to do this, so, it so frustrating, a meticulous year-long investigation. Investigation.

They consulted dozens of tax attorneys who told them, yeah, this is illegal as fuck, maybe not all of it, and they were careful, this, this might be a gray area, this you might get away with, that was fucking fraud, and this, you know, so they were carefull, and all that goes out the window, because you can just say, all they do is say one of two things, so, that's one of them, ah, the rich, yeah no, they all, those rich people, they can do those things, no, this not, not, if you think every rich person is doing this, then you should call the FBI or the IRS.

If you have any evidence of this, it's fraud, you know? And the other thing is, it might be that a lot of people get away with this stuff because, and by the way, did you know that the Republicans are massively defunding the IRS for this reason?

0:54:07 Thomas: So the IRS doesn't have the resources to go after rich people who steal from the government by avoiding taxes in illegal ways, you know, and some of this stuff is, you know, blurry lines kind of thing where it's like, all right, maybe you can get away with that, but a lot of it isn't, a lot it is just fucking fraud, and the IRS doesn't have the resources to punish or pursue it or find out about it, and, uh, that doesn't make it right, doesn't make it okay, we should start devoting, imagine if we devoted as much resources and manpower power to this kind of crap as we did to arresting black men for having an ounce of, or not even that, a joint or something, you know, imagine if we cared about it the same way, or the other, the other response is, uh, New York Times, that's what, so again, this feel, what has broken my brain is this, this, this injustice of it all, of, you know, on one hand, massive reporting, well sourced, just combing through documents, talking to attorneys and and all that stuff that the New York Times did, and on the other hand, Donald fucking idiot Trump just gets up there and says, oh, the failing New Yorg Times, fake news, and that's, and that somehow, better, like that, that claim in their minds trumps everything else.

Well, on one hand, we've got, you know, dozens of highly trained reporters sifting through all, all this and being very careful and talking to attorneys and, you know, going, coming through city, county, state documents and doing all this stuff.

0:55:42 Thomas: On the other hand, we have, uh, an old idiot saying fake news and well, I think I'll go with the old idiot. That sounds, I've, I'm weighed my, uh. I've weighed the evidence and I'm going to go with a fake news option. It's just, it's just too much sometimes, you now. Just too much to take. All right. I think think I've yelled myself into either exhaustion or resigned feeling that we're fucked. I don't know what, but I've got a couple of voicemails I wanted to play for you guys.

0:56:14 Voicemail: Hey, this is Lisa leaving a voicemail, um, this whole, uh, Kavanaugh stuff, especially the way that he treated the female senators is so discouraging, this, the whole Trump winning was so discourage for many of us who have been bullied, I was bullied a lot as a teenager for having a disability for a lot of reasons, the way The way that our president acts, the way that Kavanaugh treated the female senators, the way that a lot of the alt-right act seems a lot like the way the bullies acted at school. It's something I really can't understand, how people could vote in people like this.

I'm not saying I'm better than anybody else, because I'm I'm not, but I've voted in some pretty desperate places, haven't missed an election since I've been 18 and was eligible to vote. And I have to say that I know some very nice people who love Trump, who voted for Trump. Some of my in-laws are Trump supporters, and all I can say is that I'll keep voting, and I hope that everybody who feels that they don't like this sort of behavior goes out and votes, no matter what you've got going on, you're going to be helping yourself and all the rest of us by going out and voting. Thank you for listening and bye bye.

0:57:47 Thomas: Hey, Lisa, thanks for the call, I couldn't agree more, message received, we need to vote, God, we, need to, vote, we get to do so in a month, and just about a month you get to, do the tiny thing that you can directly do to show, what you care about, and to try to get the government to reflect your views, and, to represent you, since, we We get this once every two years, really, to make any significant choices. And vote in everything you can. I know it might be hard for some people. If you need any help, I'm sure there are resources. Let me know if you feel like you can't vote for some reason. I will, wherever you are, I will Google something.

0:58:36 Thomas: I don't even care. I'll find a way. I'll help you. I'll Google. I'll do something. I don't know. I'm just so beat down at this point. Just please vote. We can do it. The polls are not, are getting worse for Democrats, did you know that? We're less ahead than we were a few months back. Now, hopefully, that's not real or something, you never know with polls, but we gotta do it, guys, we have, we can do it! We can take control, and we can send a slight message, we stem the bleeding, we stop billions of dollars given to rich people, we could stop the sliding into oblivion. And that's better than continuing to slide into oblivion.

0:59:19 Voicemail: Hey, Thomas, it's Amy with a Y from the Secular Soup Podcast. Um, I was just listening to your recent episode on the Kavanaugh hearings, and one thing that I think a lot of men maybe don't realize is that things like this happen just as a matter of course in women's lives. I just had an incident last night where my husband and I were talking about the hearings, and we've been married 17 years.

And I just last night told him the story of a time that I was being driven home by someone from a bar, we were all drunk, and I was just groped in the car, it was a really bad situation and took the friend of the guy to kind of pull him off of me, and when I was telling my husband he was horrified by this, but for me it was just something I never even thought was worth mentioning to him over the course of 17 years, because to me it was just one of those things that happens to women all the time, and I know that most of my friends, my women friends, would tell you the same thing, that this is just something thing we've kind of come to expect. And I guess the Me Too movement did do a little bit in kind of showing men how pervasive this kind of thing is.

But I think women have been just sort of conditioned that this is what happens and you just deal with it and you try to move on. And yeah, I just thought it was interesting that I had never told him about that, and not because I was afraid to tell him or anything like that.

1:00:50 Voicemail: It just, it literally never even occurred to me until this came up and it was on the news and we were talking about it. So something for men to keep in mind, I guess. It's, you know, you'll never quite realize how many instances like this happen over the course of a woman's life. And I think that's why women are having a much easier time believing Dr. Ford's accusations because they know that this is just something that happens. So anyway, whatever those thoughts are worth, just wanted to add my two cents. Thank you very much. Thank you.

1:01:23 Thomas: Thank you, extremely good points, and yeah, that's totally true, it's horrifying, it is shocking, and I know it's shocking probably to men, because as you say, men just aren't aware of these things, probably not that shocking to women, as you said, it probably is more commonplace than I would even realize, but that was my experience, that was Lydia's experience, she just, you know, once Me Too started taking off, she said something similar, which was like, yeah, yeah, I, there's times I, I can't, I'm just remembering like things that I don't even remember because it's so commonplace sometimes that you just kind of move past it. And yeah, if, if we're at all getting to a point where we don't move past those things anymore, where they do matter and we do talk about it, that's good.

1:02:12 Thomas: Um, it's only happening with some proportion of the country and not the rest, which is horrifying, you know, the Republicans are, I think I saw a headline that was like Republicans are now the party of anti-Me Too, which is again, it is horrible, but that might be true, and sucks that the polarization is going to apply to that too, you know, there's not, that's why I said, when people say Me Too has gone too far, it's kind of an incoherent thing, some people have applied lessons of Me Too, and then other people have rejected all of it, you know, I've barely even changed any of their behavior, but anyway, I am glad, and I, I'm, that's why I've, you know, anytime someone wants to come on here and tell a story, I would, I would love to signal boost it, because trying to make men more aware of just how prevalent this is, it changes your background assumptions.

1:03:08 Thomas: And I, I think you are right. Especially when you say that, you know, this could be, and is the reason that women just tend to believe other women on this. Um, it's because there's a difference in background knowledge. If men have never had to, they've never dealt with this. They've never heard about it. Then to their mind, it'S like, Whoa, Whoa. This is out of the ordinary. What are you? Whoa. Are you sure? Are you telling the truth? Meanwhile, itS completely ordinary. It's 100% within the ordinary. It's not an extraordinary claim at all. It's a very commonplace thing. And so a lot of men have an incorrect background assumption about the planet and what goes on on the planet. And yeah, so that's why I think I've said that a lot too, where that's a very good thing about Me Too.

1:03:58 Thomas: I hope it does make some meaningful impact on men's background assumptions about how much of this goes on day to day. So all that is to say, you're totally right. Thank you for the call. I really appreciate it. Anytime you or anyone wants to call in and tell your story, please, by all means. And that message in particular was sent by email. So if you want to record something, send it to me. Or if you wanna talk on Skype, just let me know. Email, reach out. Alright, that's that's enough. I'm genuinely like exhausted from that. Uh, I, uh, thank you for listening.

I hope it helps. Um, I'm really furious and it's never going to be okay. This will never fucking be okay I don't, I just don't know what else to do, guys. And I, and I don't want to, you know, sorry, no, I shouldn't keep going. I don't want to hear the like, "Oh, you know, try not to think about it." I'm not good at that, you know, I'm not, I'm good at being like, "Well, I ought to just ignore what's happening and be happy for me." I'm just, I'll try a little bit, but I'm not good at that. I just am not.

It might be a reason that I kind of perpetually upset about stuff, but you know, maybe, maybe it would be cognitively healthy to be able to to ignore it more, but it's a really shitty tough time to to be around. Oh, I know what I want to say. I'm sorry. I do have to say this, this, this rage that I'm feeling, I meant, I touched on it earlier, but as

1:05:30 Thomas: I said, this is reaching me and my pillar of privilege, this is a rage that a lot of people, specifically people of color and women, have felt for a very long time, and uh, and any sort of person who's ever been persecuted or marginalized in our society, uh, this is the rage that has gotten, there's been been present for hundreds of years in, in people. And I just wanted to say that I don't by any means mean to say that now is finally the time to be mad or anything like that, or, or now that I'm feeling it, then that that's when it's appropriate. Not at all. Uh, I think it is, it's exactly the kind of rage that Black people, that women, that, that other marginalized groups have had to feel and have not been allowed to express for God knows how long, hundreds of years.

1:06:23 Thomas: And I just wanted to say that I, for one, think your rage is valid, and you shouldn't have to stifle it, and I'm sorry if society has made you do that.

I'm reading, I read Soraya Shamali's book, and I am right now reading Rebecca Tracer's book, and there's other, you know, of course, great books on Black Rage, and the fact that it's, you, you know, these these groups of people that are not privileged like I am are forced to keep their rage themselves, because if they don't, they're subject to, you know, stereotyping, and they're judged more harshly. And there's so many examples.

I mean, Trump can get up there, and even Bernie Sanders can get out there and bluster and yell and, and, you know, Bernie justifiably so about certain things, but Hillary had to be just the absolute pillar of rationality and composure, and the minute she did anything, anything that treaded toward anger in any way, uh, it's seen as shrill, it's shrill, it's harsh, oh, she's emotional, oh, she is out of control, meanwhile Trump is the biggest emotional baby on earth, doesn't get penalized for it. So I just wanted to acknowledge that, I wanted to, the the anger that I'm sure a lot of people have felt for a very, very long time.

It's not new, and I don't mean to suggest that it is. But boy, lately I've been feeling it a lot. And let's do something about it. Let's do whatever we can. Let's vote. We got a month. Please, please do so. Please encourage others to vote. It's what makes more of a difference than anything else. Okay, thank you for listening.

1:07:57 Thomas: If you like the show, please go to seriespod.com/support or patreon.com/seriespod either way to make it happen and, you know, join that Facebook group and be a part of that little community. It's really fun. But thank you for supporting. It is why it happens. It is Why the Show Continues. And I will see you next week.