Transcript
Corey
0:01
U.S. Constitution was drafted at a constitutional convention that took place from May 25th to September 17th, 1787. This
Corey
0:09
This new constitution replaced the original Articles of Confederation, which governed the United States for the first decade of its existence. Those original articles created a very weak central government.
Corey
0:20
The new constitution would create a strong one, one
Corey
0:22
one that could bind states that had the power to raise funds and armies, and could boldly dodge the issue of owning humans as property.
Corey
0:29
One branch government was replaced with three new branches. The legislative branch, the Congress, with the ability to create treaties and laws. The executive branch, the presidency, charged with enforcing those laws. And the judicial branch, with the ability to be packed by hostile Republican Congresses. The
Corey
0:46
The new Constitution was not, in fact, an instant smash hit. George Mason refused to sign. Patrick Henney smelled a rat. Sam Adams feared it would undermine the liberties so recently won. Many felt the delegates had swung too far, the president had too much power, resembled a king, the
Corey
1:03
the strong central government had the tools to become tyrannical. It was a powerful tool, and someday that powerful tool might fall into the wrong hands, crushing liberty.
Corey
1:13
Were the haters right? Would
Corey
1:14
Would the presidency, 230 and then again 238 years later be put in the hands of a madman? Or
Corey
1:20
Or was the real fuckup not foreseeing the rise of the fourth branch, Elon Musk, with his unlimited power to get 25-year-old incels to do his bidding.
Corey
1:28
That's a question everyone will need to answer for themselves, and this is
Corey
1:33
is You the People.
Carter
1:39
Well, that's Corey Hogan, and I'm Stephen Carter. This is You the People. This is exciting. We haven't
Corey
1:44
haven't done one of these for
Corey
1:45
It's been a minute. It's been a minute. I was looking at it. It's a minute. Yeah,
Carter
1:50
Yeah, well. well we
Corey
1:51
we write intros for this yeah it's
Carter
1:53
it's a much much more work all
Corey
1:55
all right it's it's and there's
Corey
1:58
host like this is uh we also
Carter
2:01
also do the uh carter
Carter
2:02
carter and hogan's that's
Corey
2:03
that's true which also
Carter
2:05
also have no host we
Corey
2:06
we don't write intros for those though no
Carter
2:07
no those ones were just slapdash together yeah
Corey
2:10
yeah it's true nice
Carter
2:11
nice intro by the way thank
Carter
2:14
two well the first
Corey
2:15
you kind of fumbled right away right away right away i got the bad one out of my system yeah
Carter
2:20
yeah well you did a great job oh
Carter
2:23
great job getting the bad one out of your system just like trump got elon right out of this right into the system yeah
Corey
2:29
yeah good oh god so here we are you um so for those uninitiated yeah stephen carter is our sherpa we we alternate the intros but then you sherpa i
Carter
2:39
sherpa i sherpa us through under
Carter
2:40
under the assumption that you know very little you pick up some stuff you don't
Corey
2:45
don't know it all
Carter
2:47
um but it's just it's kind of you're not studying this the way you have to study for the strategists no
Corey
2:54
no no you know the thing about canadian politics yeah
Corey
2:58
all around us kind of can't avoid it kind of can't can't avoid it i
Corey
3:03
i try to avoid a little bit of the american politics sadly
Carter
3:05
sadly it keeps coming back yeah
Corey
3:07
yeah i know you
Carter
3:08
you know like the flu blue yeah
Corey
3:12
okay well that that's not one i needed that other one you didn't
Carter
3:15
didn't want the hemorrhoid discussion okay my bad my
Corey
3:17
my bad did not
Carter
3:19
not expect that you
Corey
3:20
it's great you do you but okay what do you got for us what's topic number one here has anything been going on in the united states i've been well i'm
Carter
3:27
i'm trying to figure
Corey
3:28
figure out you know if i want to start
Carter
3:30
start at the beginning
Carter
3:31
or if i want to start at the end like
Carter
3:35
because everything has happened between then and now i
Corey
3:39
mean i feel like i started at the beginning we went to 1787 that's pretty good start that's
Carter
3:44
you know few people know that the constitution wasn't right there right at the beginning right i
Corey
3:49
i they just think these things were like plymouth rock they just walked onto it yeah
Carter
3:53
yeah it was all ready to go wasn't
Corey
3:55
wasn't ready to go it
Carter
3:56
it was a long
Carter
3:57
period of time you know and thomas
Carter
3:59
jefferson aged through the whole thing yeah
Corey
4:02
yeah you know this was all covered in hamilton the musical It was
Carter
4:06
was a really good show. People
Corey
4:07
People really got to get up. Really.
Carter
4:08
Really. If you haven't seen Hamilton, highly recommend it. So
Corey
4:11
So is that where we're starting? I feel like we're avoiding some harder topics right now. I'm
Carter
4:15
I'm not going to lie to you. I
Carter
4:19
think I'm going to start with the most recent stuff first.
Corey
4:21
Okay. You do that. Because
Carter
4:23
I don't know how to digest the Gaza situation where
Carter
4:28
where the United States is simply going to take
Carter
4:33
everybody's going to be displaced yeah
Carter
4:35
which uh i believe they call a genocide well
Corey
4:39
well ethnic cleansing for sure yeah
Carter
4:40
yeah uh yeah i mean this is a significant mistake uh for any people to do to another people um but to say it aloud from the microphone at the microphone of the most powerful office on earth yeah
Carter
4:56
strikes me as a particularly bad idea now did you happen in
Carter
5:00
in your osmosis to
Carter
5:03
capture any of the nuance that came with the Gaza.
Corey
5:08
The nuance. I wouldn't call it a lot of nuance. There
Carter
5:10
There was no nuance. I feel bad using the word.
Corey
5:14
Listen, we can all agree that the situation in the Middle East is complex, right? Traditional ancestral land of the Jewish people, expelled from that land thousands of years ago, came back, some other people were there, you know? It became a bit messy. see what donald trump is talking about is just expelling people for a real estate play he's talking about literally
Corey
5:36
literally the riviera of the middle east is how he's just it'll be nice we'll
Corey
5:41
we'll build the best western it'll be nice yeah we'll
Carter
5:44
we'll build the best western people will go there on
Corey
5:47
on vacation it's fucking twisted it's just it's really dark right because it's it's
Corey
5:52
it's like oh man you everybody everybody's sort of tense around here fighting over this land fighting over the the right to go back to other land you know what just kick them out and build a super eight right like is this the strategy and
Carter
6:04
and they're going to go to nice homes nicer homes than they have now in jordan and egypt or wherever else
Carter
6:10
else he chooses to i
Corey
6:12
i mean kind of the lowest of fucking bars after like a year of war more than a year of war oh
Carter
6:16
oh my god what is
Carter
6:18
a disaster i i don't know
Carter
6:22
don't know where to take this topic i want to take it two directions one is the legacy
Corey
6:27
sure the absolute lunacy that i mean that's fair it's pretty insane it
Carter
6:31
it almost feels like
Carter
6:33
that's cost it in we've
Carter
6:35
lunacy it's already costed in let's let's not do too much on that what
Carter
6:39
i what i what i'd love to know is
Carter
6:42
is how are you feeling right now if
Carter
6:44
if you're one of those muslims and in uh you know uh michigan who chose not to vote for kamala harris because because she didn't take a strong enough position on gaza and uh the palestinian state
Corey
7:00
yeah well i i mean i don't want to be super reductive about it the the reality is though the muslim population in michigan i don't believe would have made up the difference even of the vote it doesn't matter it to
Carter
7:12
to me it's the fuck around and find out group i
Corey
7:16
think it's broader than muslims i think it's a lot of people who said well joe biden wasn't perfect kamala harris wasn't perfect so let's just try this other thing let's just fucking go this other guy who
Corey
7:27
well and you know and we tell each other stories right like we can talk ourselves into doing something that we we know was generally not a good idea like how you can even get past the muslim ban that donald trump did in his first term i don't know but i'll you know what i'm not muslim i'm not going to pretend that i understand the complex feelings that might exist around there this is why we need zane by the way where is that guy but he's
Corey
7:51
he's on an airplane uh but it
Corey
7:54
it certainly is one of those things where you can start saying well yeah but he was pretty good for the economy and he largely left alone other things and i'm pretty pissed off at biden and the democrats are taking us for granted and you know harris is just a continuation of biden and you talk yourself into it you talk yourself into it and you end up in in situations like this and i think ultimately not to like way too big picture this here but But I think the story of Trump has been for a long time.
Corey
8:20
He always tells you exactly what he's fucking going to do. And we are so surprised by this activity. And yet even this has been somewhat foreshadowed by his previous comments about, you know, the big changes that need to happen. In some ways, this is an extension of a Jared Kushner idea. Right. Yeah.
Corey
8:37
I don't know, man. I mean, it's it was wild. But also the delivery of it, to your point, how he just came up with this thing, didn't seem like it was on the spot to the sense that Netanyahu was incredibly surprised. But apparently his aides were very surprised. Even his aides who have tried to walk it back since have been undermined by him then going and saying, no, I meant it. I didn't tell them about it. And we're going to do this fucking thing.
Corey
9:00
It's crazy. I mean, it's a violation of international law. It's a violation of any kind of morality that might exist on this particular issue. you yeah and
Corey
9:08
and i mean shame on anybody who's getting behind this it's just just horrific stuff well
Carter
9:13
well i mean i guess the good news is i don't see a lot of people right rushing to uh to stand behind him no i'm
Corey
9:18
i'm no that's not in the
Carter
9:20
the international community but it does you know for me you've made the good point about how many people um you know it's not just the muslims in michigan it's not just one group uh but there was an awful lot of people who also didn't take his uh mass Mass deportation promise, very seriously. And that kind of brings me to the second topic. Oh,
Corey
9:42
More light fare. That's
Carter
9:43
it's the executive orders, right?
Carter
9:45
right? It's the executive orders that were implemented. You know, if Gaza was the most recent, and I don't know, maybe something happened today. I was in meetings most of the day. Me too. Who
Carter
9:56
Who knows? We may have missed something horrible. Yeah.
Carter
9:59
But we're still around, so it wasn't nuclear war. That's a good thing. But the executive orders. I mean, mass deportations, almost an executive order suggesting that we don't have climate change. There's no such thing as climate change. Eliminating DEI, the
Carter
10:16
the hiring freezes, the rejection of the WHO, the rejection of birthright citizenship, which is. is which is which is well
Corey
10:30
that was strange uh executive orders rejection of birthright citizenship welcome back well
Carter
10:35
well sorry about that uh you know the technology doesn't work as well out here in vancouver that's
Corey
10:39
that's fair you know
Carter
10:40
know it's it's it's not the big city that calgary is uh
Carter
10:46
it's a setback but birthright citizenship was the last one i was going to say anyway okay that's
Corey
10:50
that's Those are just
Carter
10:51
just a handful of the of the executive orders that he undertook. He undid 70 plus of Biden's executive orders. I mean, this was a complete undoing of
Carter
11:01
of of government as it was known prior to 2025. Yeah.
Corey
11:08
Yeah. I mean, I almost wonder why he bothers, because a lot of his other actions seem to be totally in disregard for for any any kind of legal framework, even executive orders. right but yeah this is this is uh for everybody who said oh no that project 2025 isn't really donald trump's thing i guess they were technically right and that donald trump wants to go much further than uh project 2025 in a lot of ways so weird
Carter
11:36
i just i can't get past how it really is going to fundamentally change the united states of america oh
Corey
11:41
oh i think it's it's it's going to take years to undo even the damage of the first two weeks. Yeah.
Carter
11:46
Yeah. I mean, how quickly, how quickly you can undo something. And part of me was trying to figure out, is there a good news side to this, right? Like there were probably some programs that were needed
Carter
11:58
needed to be approached with a different lens, but I just can't wrap my head around it. I can't, it's gone too far too fast. And, uh, I just don't know how you put the genie back in the bottle yeah
Corey
12:10
yeah you know i think one of the things about government that is easy to think from the outside is that it's just a bunch of people sitting in rooms coming up with dei policies or frankly just policy in general yeah
Corey
12:22
but the reality is most people who work in government are
Corey
12:25
are doing things you would find severely
Corey
12:27
severely unobjectionable right and in the case of the united states it's it's people like nurses it's uh you know it's um it's the army right these are people who work for but there are people who are working at wickets helping you get your passport and all of these other things that are going on and there's this this layer of management and layer of policy development that exists in any kind of department of government whether that be in alberta in canada or in the united states but that's that's not that's
Corey
12:56
that's not government like that that is just a small portion of what government does and frankly it's not the expensive part of government right Right. Can those things be done differently, to your point? Sure. Are there a lot of programs that are maybe duplicative or have no longer served a purpose for many years? I would wager yes, having worked at senior levels of government. Certainly lots of things would be in my crosshairs. Right. But this
Corey
13:21
this is not how you make change in government. And the reality is government is designed to be a bit of a stable rock. The American system is designed to be slow moving. And what Donald Trump is doing right now is saying, fuck that. We're going to go very fast. Certainly a guy who knows how old he is, right? And he could drop dead at any minute. He seems to be trying to do as much as possible, as fast as possible.
Carter
13:45
Yeah, it's wild to watch. I mean, it's difficult to imagine. I know how hard it is to change government. I just wanted to do two things when I was chief of staff to Premier Redwood.
Corey
13:54
Redwood. Mothers against drunk driving. No,
Carter
13:56
No, there was two things in the budget. Two things in the budget that really needed to go. One of them was we subsidized beer. I didn't think
Carter
14:02
need to subsidize beer. It's $5 million, not
Corey
14:05
not a huge chunk of
Corey
14:07
in the overall point of part. You just alienated half our listenership, but keep going.
Carter
14:11
I mean, I'm assuming that they're hammered when they're listening to this.
Carter
14:14
But, you know, eliminating beer subsidy, I thought was a wonderful idea. And eliminating horse racing subsidy. It
Carter
14:22
have saved a grand total of, you know, 20
Carter
14:25
20 million. I think horse racing was like
Corey
14:25
like 25 million or something. Yeah,
Carter
14:27
Yeah, it was not a big chunk
Carter
14:29
money to try and
Carter
14:31
There was absolutely no way I could get it through the caucus. There was no way the government just wasn't going to move that fast to eliminate two programs that I thought had run their course. Yeah.
Carter
14:44
you know, in Trump's defense,
Carter
14:46
defense, to his credit, to something, whatever
Carter
14:49
whatever he is choosing to achieve, he is achieving it. You know, the other people who were saying, you know, don't worry about Trump. He doesn't have the capacity to actually do
Carter
14:58
these things that he's talking about.
Carter
15:01
Oops-a-daisy. he he seems to have had the the capacity not only to to
Carter
15:06
to to say these things but to actually start to try and achieve them well
Corey
15:10
well can we talk a bit about that capacity or am i jumping too far too fast to talk about elon musk and that was
Carter
15:17
was the next thing you're
Corey
15:18
you're so good at this natural transition i mean
Carter
15:21
mean oh my god elon for
Carter
15:23
for the man who's made me embarrassed
Carter
15:25
embarrassed to own an electric car congratulations
Carter
15:30
yeah you with your vw who'd have known that choosing hitler's hitler's favorite auto producer was going
Carter
15:37
to turn out the best the best for you playing
Corey
15:39
playing the long game yeah playing
Carter
15:41
playing the long game i got the modern day nazis you got the old day olden day nazis all
Carter
15:50
yeah i mean what what the hell i mean do you first of all do
Carter
15:54
do you think there's truth to the rumors that he's just kind of going through and creating absolute chaos
Corey
16:01
do i think there's truth to the very well-placed reporting that that is exactly what's happening yes of course i do yeah
Corey
16:09
you know oh boy i i mean i have so many thoughts about this and yes it's certainly true that government uh it systems can be a bit sclerotic like here in alberta i can tell you there was a very funny moment when i worked for the government where we were we had some questions about billing uh by the doctors right and there was some some a suggestion right that uh when um there
Corey
16:34
there was a negotiation down and what the billing rates were on certain codes what was happening is some physicians were then saying well i'm just going to use the longer building code the billing code the one that allows me a few extra dollars for it you know i can't remember the exact breakdowns but here in alberta it was basically you see a patient for less than 15 minutes you bill this if it's like 15 to 25 you bill that and then all of a sudden maybe there were more 15 to 25s because overall billings continued to climb despite the fact that the billing rates were declining right despite those being negotiated so pretty reasonable you think well maybe we just do like a database query we find out if all of a sudden there's because they're time-based are people all of a sudden seeing their patients allegedly for a lot more does that change our perception of their day because there's all of these codes that have time minute and uh you think you could do that no
Corey
17:21
no no can't do that i think in alberta's case it's because those records were like on reel-to-reel tape you know old magnetic stuff didn't lend itself to queries the system was designed essentially just to produce bills and be auditable on an individual level but not to aggregate data and so uh yeah i get it you look at that and you think holy fuck i could go down to radio shack and for 500 upgrade a server and not have this problem in the future right and
Corey
17:47
and so i get that i get that like there's a great appeal to send somebody like elon musk in who knows just enough to be dangerous and has the irrational confidence to be willing to do it and just fucking change it all like overthrow it all overhaul it all but
Corey
18:03
these systems are they're like in some cases like literally nuclear hardened they're designed to make sure that no matter what happens they work and the tech world works very differently the tech world is move fast and break things and if it doesn't work we move on to the next thing they don't need to worry about literal centuries of data and then the requirement to be secure in the case of like a two-front nuclear war and stuff like that this
Carter
18:27
this this reminds me of the budget choice uh project that you and i worked on oh good
Carter
18:33
the for the alberta government back
Corey
18:34
back in 2014 alberta government getting a lot of shout outs on this america centric but
Carter
18:40
budget budget choice thing you went home and basically overnight produced a uh a proof of concept yeah
Corey
18:45
yeah i was the tech bro in this story right yeah and
Carter
18:48
and so you can't you were you were elon musk you were able to kind of come but then we spent the next six weeks meeting all of the requirements of the
Corey
18:56
uh of the provincial government it's perfect point security accessibility all of that shit right i mean
Carter
19:03
mean it was the the concept was there the the actual programming wasn't all that complicated But it was it was adding on all the bells and whistles that actually made it a government project. And it wasn't like that stuff was extraneous. That stuff was core to the functioning
Carter
19:19
functioning of a government, recognizing that, yes, not everybody was going to be able to read this. Well,
Carter
19:25
was going to be able to experience it in the same format. at well
Corey
19:28
well so let's yeah let's talk about some of that accessibility like when we did that project and obviously i have a lot of government experience since then yeah that that's kind of reinforced further but i remember we got this email from what was then the public affairs bureau that the very department that i ran eventually right yeah and it had i don't know what was it like a
Corey
19:49
hundred pages of accessibility challenges that we had to work through like tick tick tick this font doesn't have enough contrast this font is too like difficult to see under these conditions these buttons you can only click it doesn't work with like a screen reader right all of the things through and my tone suggests like some tedium and annoyance but the reality is they were 100% right it's
Corey
20:09
it's the government it's got to work for everybody not just the 18 to 24 set with the most updated technology right just
Corey
20:16
just not how it goes you
Carter
20:16
you and i weren't the 18 to 24 set we
Carter
20:20
no we We were a little older than
Corey
20:21
than you. No, we were. Even then, back
Carter
20:23
back in the day. Even back in the day.
Corey
20:26
Just let me have this, Stephen. Let me be the young guy. Just one more time. You were the
Carter
20:30
the young guy on that project.
Corey
20:32
Yeah, I think I was in my 30s, but yeah. Was
Carter
20:34
Was Zane with us at that time? I
Corey
20:36
I don't think he was. I
Carter
20:37
I don't think he was. I think that was you and me going, you know, just freewheeling. We
Corey
20:41
We moved a lot faster before we were dragging that corpse along,
Carter
20:44
right? We were dragging Zane around. Oh, man.
Carter
20:46
Oh, my God. We kept him for how long? Like,
Carter
20:48
Like, it's ridiculous. Too
Corey
20:49
Too long. He only does both there. he's gone
Carter
20:51
gone or probably not probably
Carter
20:57
that's that's wrong anything else you want to say about the doge the
Carter
21:00
the department of government efficiency yeah
Corey
21:02
yeah i mean i've got lots of thoughts i don't know if i'll spool them all out here but like it's it's
Corey
21:08
it's it's a chaotic thing and i think that they're going to be realizing the challenges with it in the months and years to come like i'm not even sure that we'll know in six months whether all of the damage has been identified when
Carter
21:20
when do you think the first break happens where the first thing that is is fundamentally broken
Carter
21:26
broken that we can't go back and say oh okay we're going to fix that you know it
Carter
21:32
it like the first fundamental the social security checks don't go out or something something ridiculous and
Carter
21:39
we already saw it with the faa and the pressure that they're They're putting on aircraft controllers, flight
Carter
21:47
flight controllers. Because two airplanes ran into each other again today.
Corey
21:53
Is that true? Yeah,
Carter
21:54
Yeah, they didn't have a massive crash. They just literally crashed into each other. Jesus. Fender bender, I think they call them.
Corey
22:00
Oh, okay. Like on the ground, obviously. On the ground,
Corey
22:03
ground, yeah. Not a sky fender bender. They don't have sky fender benders, do they? Sky fender
Carter
22:06
fender benders have this tendency to go horribly wrong.
Corey
22:09
Yeah, well, I'm not... Hmm, interesting. Okay, well...
Corey
22:14
uh you know what it's
Corey
22:18
thoughts on government are complex i there is many things that i would do different if i just controlled the universe and could change it but i'll say this governments are very uh
Corey
22:28
adverse to change by
Corey
22:30
by design as we've already talked about but once they are up and running they're they're generally pretty well functioning systems and it's pretty easy to complain about them and say oh fucking government it's not doing it very efficient and oh this form didn't deal with my particular situation but government is designed to work for uh people a hundred percent of essential times and like 98 of non-essential times right god help you if you're in the two percent on that non-essential time you'll pull your hair out you'll go nuts right and by the way that hundred percent of essential that's rounding up from like four nines and if you happen to be that fifth nine you
Corey
23:05
you know god help you i'm not saying government's perfect i don't want to be misunderstood that way but they
Corey
23:11
they don't digest change very well and they're being thrown a lot of change very very quickly right now and i can't imagine this ending well i
Corey
23:20
i i worry though that the world just i don't mean like the globe i mean just people in 2025 aren't gonna care i think this thing could fucking break horribly and be absolute dog shit in front of people's eyes and half of them would say good on trump fixing this broken thing in front of me and not attributing the damage to him in the first place.
Carter
23:40
So I'm hearing 28 days. 28 days before we start to see something really fuck up. Thanks,
Corey
23:45
Thanks, Corey Hogan. You're welcome. I
Carter
23:47
I am writing that down. 28 days. Okay.
Corey
23:50
Okay. 28 days later.
Corey
23:52
that an episode title? I think that
Carter
23:54
that that could be. I mean, it could be. Who knows? We
Corey
23:56
We do a different thing here. We do, like, articles and we, like, do pines on America. Yeah, I know. We don't actually create
Carter
24:00
create the, yeah, this is... It's
Carter
24:02
This is our most formalized project.
Carter
24:07
which gives you a real sense of how fucked up the rest is it's fair point i
Carter
24:11
i got one big subject to come okay
Carter
24:14
because it's the one that interacts with us the one that interacts with the core of our show you
Carter
24:19
you know the the the strategist podcast
Carter
24:21
is noted for canadian politics and i think that we've touched on it from the canadian side oh
Carter
24:28
but from the american side the
Carter
24:32
um the trump tariffs uh you know i mean and they're kind of caught
Carter
24:38
caught up for me in the same the same language of buying greenland right or putting uh you know taking back the the panama canal the tariffs don't seem to be designed for economic reasons they seem to be designed for the united states simply to dominate they want to dominate this particular region this particular in the hemisphere and they are going to dominate even if they have to dominate their friends and
Carter
25:04
and that to me is what the trump tariffs are about um or i
Carter
25:09
i could you know take it at its word and say it's a fundamental misunderstanding of uh of economics of of of how trade works um but i think that it's probably best to say that it is a uh it is an attempt to dominate would you Would you agree? This is Trump just simply pissing on our legs.
Corey
25:32
Well, he has made a lot of comments that he thinks tariffs can replace other revenue sources in the United States.
Corey
25:40
They can't. You can just do the math. Look at the percent of exports that are the U.S. economy at a 25% tariff. You don't come close to making up the government income that he claims that he can make up. and even if he were going to do that as been observed by many people it would make an incredibly regressive tax system because the things that get hit by tariffs are the things that people buy every day whereas the super rich they're largely going to escape for a lot of different reasons right so yeah just a bad idea but i do think we need to acknowledge that he's been on this idea for a while even absent hemisphere domination like he's talked about in terms of china he's talked about in terms of europe but
Corey
26:18
but all of that said it
Corey
26:20
it is really really clear to me
Corey
26:23
that probably around december a light switch went off on his head like click all of a sudden there's a light above it you know uh feel free to add a light bulb above my head and post here yeah and uh that has to happen it has to be a tremendous
Corey
26:38
if it would be a tremendous failure for them um and uh at that moment he said wait a minute governor
Corey
26:44
governor trudeau that was was pretty funny but what if he was governor and i don't know it's it's like the movie dave where that guy is hired to incept this idea into his competitor's head right yeah yeah
Corey
26:56
and and i just i think that he's got this this thought contagion this mind itch whatever you want to call it and now he just thinks maybe
Corey
27:04
maybe i could take over the you know the rest of the continent maybe i could take over canada and a lot of his actions since then fuck is it's this is not like of Kremlin ology it's not like we're having to read and interpret very obscure statements by people he has fucking said multiple times that he wants to take over Canada conquer
Corey
27:22
conquer us by economic force erase the border the idea that in Canada we're being like I don't know what he means could be anything the idea that Americans are like strange that Trump's saying these things what could they be interpreted as he's fucking telling us he would love to take over Canada and that's
Corey
27:40
that's That's wild, man. Like, that's really wild. But I don't think he started with Canada as the goal. I truly feel this fell out of the Trudeau visit to Mar-a-Lago. And it would be easy to then blame Trudeau for that. And I mean, I think it was a bad idea for him to go down.
Corey
27:57
But I think he probably would have ended up there anyways, you know, at a certain point. And apparently he used to joke about Canada being the 51st state in
Corey
28:04
in his first term, too. So I don't think it was that far from the surface. No,
Carter
28:08
No, I think that the difficulty
Carter
28:10
difficulty with Trump is that those things that he raises as a joke or that seem like a joke very quickly become reality in his head. And then the rest of us are left to deal with it. I mean, you
Carter
28:23
know, we're going to take over the Gaza Strip and turn it into, you know, a new resort area is laughable, but it's now real and everybody's dealing with it. Yeah.
Corey
28:35
Yeah. But like, Stephen, the idea of him being president is laughable. Like, hasn't the last 12 years trained him just to say, fuck it, I'm going to do it and I'll just do it. Like, the asshole staged a coup, was impeached by the U.S. Congress, barely managed not to get convicted by the Senate. That was a really close vote, lest we forget. There was just a couple of votes away. And he managed to then bend that entire Republican Party back to him in the matter of just a couple of years. it was almost a couple of days of course insane i mean it
Carter
29:08
it did not take any time at all for him to start winning back the people who uh the mitch mcconnells of the world who you know um sadly fell down some stairs the other day and and still lives but um okay
Corey
29:25
but why so like if you're trump i guess my point is just this why
Corey
29:28
why would you believe people when they say you can't do it Why would you believe there's such a thing in life called consequences? He has lived an absolute consequence-free life. He's a very dangerous man.
Carter
29:39
We're seeing it all the time. And what I
Carter
29:41
I think is amazing is that certain things that used to be considered absolutely untouchable by Republicans, like the CIA, for example,
Carter
29:50
the Central Intelligence Agency, the
Carter
29:52
the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, these are three-letter acronyms that are almost synonymous with the Republican, the GOP, right? Right. Like the this is the these things are through
Carter
30:08
law and order, through and through, you
Carter
30:10
you know, protecting the country. And the
Carter
30:14
the word comes out that the CIA is, you
Carter
30:18
you know, sending a retirement. You know, do you want to take a package to every single employee? Yeah,
Carter
30:26
it gets insanity. Like, that would have been, like, could you imagine Ronald Reagan, he of Iran-Contra, putting
Carter
30:35
putting the CIA in that type of a position? Like, I
Carter
30:39
I just can't imagine that the party has gone so far. But yet, everything that we're seeing, whether it's the executive orders or the, you know, keep in mind, he controls both houses of the Congress. Congress he
Carter
30:54
has the capacity to pass legislation he doesn't necessarily need to do all this through EO and he's choosing to do it through executive order this is the lunacy that we're now faced with a party that has no principle a party that exists simply to be in power and that is where you start to see the rise of absolute tyranny yeah
Corey
31:14
yeah well that's a cheerful thought you know and it's funny you talk about him having both houses that's one of the big shifts too like you used to be able to account i mean i'm going a bit back now but congress was not this rubber stamp for any party at one point right but
Corey
31:29
but lest we forget republicans brought down nixon not all of them but enough of them that's what happened yeah
Corey
31:38
different now different and i guess we could sit here and say wow
Corey
31:41
wow isn't that weird doesn't that suck but i think maybe i'll throw to you because
Corey
31:45
because i think what's amazing is we've now talked for what a half an hour what
Corey
31:50
about the democrats like
Corey
31:51
like what are you doing if you
Corey
31:56
the in the united states in theory there is a second major political party called
Corey
32:00
the democratic party yeah
Carter
32:02
joe biden's party you
Corey
32:04
you know what not anymore oh
Corey
32:06
oh it still exists though it still exists as a party i mean barely
Carter
32:12
i thought that i thought it died when joe biden died joe
Corey
32:15
joe biden's still alive man what
Corey
32:24
so like in the canadian system there's always a leader right yeah you you win an election you lose an election there's still a leader yeah in the american system you lose an election
Corey
32:35
there's no leader no it's gone just a bunch of people it's just chuck schumer doing doing chuck schumer shit you know it's just bad it's
Corey
32:42
it's just a bad system jeffrey's
Carter
32:44
jeffrey's running around saying i could have been a better speaker fuck
Corey
32:47
fuck like what are these people doing and and they uh they seem to be so bound up in this notion that like oh norms are collapsing so the way that we fix that is that we hold ourselves to every norm that used to exist like they don't even currently exist like used to i i mean it's a it's madness to see it really does make me think and i i just i do kind of hate the analogies of like comparing this to 1930s germany and enabling acts and all of this right but
Corey
33:14
but it did really make me wonder like
Corey
33:16
like what did the german opposition look like like on a day-to-day basis not the big strokes we read about in the uh you know in the history books but like what were they saying to the german media how were they tut tutting how were they holding the chancellor to account or not like what the fuck did that look like because i worry it probably looked a lot like this right like this suggestion of like oh well we'll just wait till the next election and maybe we'll do better as hitler ends elections yeah
Carter
33:43
well and that's i mean it's asymmetrical warfare right if one party is prepared to do something and the other party is not prepared to take actions that that that are in you know in the same similar scope then you know suddenly
Carter
33:59
suddenly you're you're burning libraries i
Corey
34:01
i mean fuck that it's like an abrams tank running through a kindergarten like they don't seem to be willing to do anything you know the the biggest like showing a backbone they've given in the last bit is showing up at these places where doge is going into wreck shit and being like you won't let me in i'm in congress what are you doing you know like for fuck's sake people get serious about this this is your democracy on the line at least in in
Carter
34:26
in the first in the first term trump faced the women's march you know where's the fucking outrage well
Carter
34:35
where's the outrage where are the people standing in front of the in front of congress every night burning candles like you know demanding change there's
Corey
34:45
no i know and like i get that americans are on the mat right now many americans who were fighting donald trump thought this could never happen again and then the
Corey
34:54
majority of their you know their countrymen decided no actually we're going to let this guy go again i get that but i also think you're really going to regret losing these six months this year if you don't start doing something because uh this is some wild stuff and as we were talking about just a few minutes ago in two weeks he's done a lot of maybe
Corey
35:15
maybe not completely irreversible damage but going to take years to reverse damage what can he do in what can he do in two years well
Carter
35:22
well i i mean it's just it's insane to imagine right like it i was going to ask you uh and kind of as we bring this episode to a close because as you know our uh you know um the
Corey
35:35
intros take a lot out of me you know well well
Carter
35:37
well and let's be honest without zane here it shortens it by about 25 minutes um i
Corey
35:46
mean i can't i can't argue with you i can't if you
Corey
35:48
you think the light bulb is still above above my head by the way probably uh
Carter
35:53
i thought he was gonna listen to the episode i'd feel bad no
Corey
35:56
no you wouldn't though yeah
Carter
35:57
yeah i was gonna ask you what if
Carter
36:00
if this is the first two weeks yeah
Carter
36:02
does he run out of steam no
Carter
36:06
no i mean what lunacy follows
Corey
36:10
here's my here's my big fear for the next bit let's end on this cheerful fucking note right he's running around he's gonna break everything he's he's sprinting across the the schoolyard in
Corey
36:21
in his tank rolling over people right and at a certain point the
Corey
36:26
the family and the relatives of these people the people who just got clipped they're all going to start going after him he's going to have to be fighting like a 5 000 front war he's going to have a lot of messy situations going on and at that point what
Corey
36:39
what we know about donald trump is he's just going to run pure distraction politics arguably he's running them right now there's a lot of people who pretty reasonably think that his gaza stuff is distraction from all the shit going on in treasury with elon musk right but
Corey
36:52
what does distraction look like when you've already broken everything when you have nothing else you can blame and change that's
Corey
36:59
that's when i think you have to start worrying about what happens internationally and by the way we don't even know what the hell's going to be going on with vladimir putin with ukraine that's still a little bit of a murky picture in terms of what he intends to do there he
Corey
37:15
was asked if he's up today because
Carter
37:16
because it was just all leaked right it was not i don't
Carter
37:19
think that we really know what's going to happen with with ukraine it appears though that he just wants to to say okay stop fighting yeah
Carter
37:28
and everybody gets to keep what they've got yeah
Corey
37:30
yeah that does appear to be the
Corey
37:32
the plan which to be clear means russia wins right that's
Carter
37:35
that's all they wanted i mean they wanted all of ukraine so sure on some level they failed but
Carter
37:40
but they get to keep the area that they'd previously annexed yeah
Carter
37:43
and that shouldn't you you know that
Carter
37:45
that shit shouldn't fly no
Corey
37:48
no it shouldn't and and i think that uh kind of shame on the world for letting it happen with korea but it did and the fact that we then are not going to learn from that like does anybody think that putin then thinks we're good now like this is fine i
Carter
38:02
i mean the only thing that saves us is is nato and thank god trump's right be oh fuck fuck yeah
Corey
38:12
that's america for you they're uh they're doing stuff right now it's gonna be interesting to see what happens
Carter
38:18
i sleep well yeah