Speaker 1: The thinking atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
an idea.
Speaker 2: The population of atheists this country is going through.
Speaker 1: The rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If
I tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth,
not because.
Speaker 2: I put my hand on a book and made a.
Speaker 1: Wish and working together for a more rational world.
Speaker 3: Take the risk of thinking, feel so much more happiness.
Truth Fusian wisdom will come to you that way.
Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
Thinking Atheist podcast, hosted by Seth Andrews.
Speaker 3: So this is the classic content creator's dilemma, and it
just happened to me. I had a show that was
prepped and cute and ready to go out, and it
had to do with, first of all, Pete Budages, our
former secretary of Transportation who is now sort of on
the speaking circuit, who is trying to spread a little
good sense out there. Whether or not you like Pete
or would support Pete. I thought the stuff that he said,
and I had sound bites. I thought it was relevant.
It would be maybe a jumping off point for larger
conversations about how do we fix the freaking country, and
so that was the first segment, and then I read
this letter from two hundred and fifty journalists, some of
them very high profile here in this country, in advance
of the White House Correspondent's Dinner, this big annual sois rae.
Speaker 4: It's a multi day event.
Speaker 3: And major, major, major league journalists, whether they are print
journalists or media broadcasters or whatever. They show up. There's
usually a roast. Trump does not go to this thing.
He just doesn't, except this year he did. So I
read the letter and we were talking about the responsibility
of the free press in this country and why in
the world are they sanewashing and soft selling the crazy
twenty fifth Amendment qualifying shit that has been going on
in this country for years and years and years. And
this is what the journalists said in their letter. They're like,
stop being afraid, stop sitting on your hands, do your
freaking job, and hold his feet to the fire. You
have a responsibility to your profession in the public.
Speaker 4: So that's what the letter was.
Speaker 3: But of course now we're talking about the White House
Correspondence Dinner for a very different reason. Here's the timeline.
Roughly about eight thirty five pm on Saturday, guests were
gathered at the Washington Hilton when shots rang out, but
long before the Secret Service activated, they rushed toward Donald Trump.
They grabbed him and escorted him and his cabinet from
the ballroom. A sole gunman had rushed a Secret Service
checkpoint in the line be somebody had written I want
to say it was a journalist who said that there
were no metal detectors installed. I can't imagine that's the case.
But apparently this guy charged the checkpoint in the lobby.
He had a shotgun, a handgun and multiple knives, and
he was intercepted after he got some rounds off. He
was intercepted by the Secret Service. One agent was injured.
I guess a bullet struck him and the bulletproof vest
protected him. That's the story that is being circulated right now.
The suspect tackled to the ground and handcuffed. Donald Trump.
Then around nine to twenty comments about the shooting, and
he says law enforcement acted quickly and bravely. The shooter
has been apprehended. Twenty minutes later, Trump posts on truth
social that the Secret Service wanted to shut everything down.
We got to cancel the night. We are complying, we'll
reschedule within thirty days. Ten to thirty, Donald Trump has
a press conference at the White House. He's got the
director of the FBI and the acting US Attorney General.
Other law enforcement officials are there. They say it looks
like a lone shooter. The story being circulated or the theory,
was that he had his targets, his literal site on
Donald Trump and or members of the Trump administration. The
guy's name is Cole Thomas Allen, thirty one years old,
out of California. Actually it might be Tomas Teomas. He's
from the Los Angeles area. But the intident itself, of course,
was pandemonium. It was chaos, gunshots ringing out right after
the appetizers were served. At eight thirty five, Donald Trump
expected to give a speech after an award segment. Now,
why was Donald Trump and his cabinet there? He didn't
go last year. I'm not sure if he went the
years before, especially after he had wailed and railed and
thrown his tantrums about being so unfairly treated by the press,
this treason, his press, anti America, anti Trump, fake news.
You know, he's threatening lawsuits. Hell, he's filing lawsuits against
members of the press. He's calling members of the press
piggy and telling people you're the worst, and your ratings suck,
and everybody hates me, and it's a conspiracy and the
woke radical left want to tear this country down. Me first,
blah blah blah, and then he what gleefully, voluntarily gleefully says,
I'm going to go and attend the dinner, and I'm
going to take my wife, and I'm going to have
the vice president there, members of my cabinet. It's going
to be a wonderful event. This bugs me. This is
where I have to say it. And everybody who starts
to wonder about a conspiracy theory starts with this because
it's supposedly, you know, it's a way to get in
front of the fact that you are spreading a conspiracy theory.
But I have to say, I'm not that guy, right,
I don't usually lean into this kind of thing, but
I will tell you there are so many red flags
and it just bugs me. It bugs me that he
agreed to be there and to do so so gleefully.
The demeanor of many of the people when the gunshots
were ringing out really bothers me. And you know what
he did right after, right after this incident happened, He
said he wanted to continue the dinner. Are you shitting me?
You just had a potential mass shooter go in, try
to get through security, and your first instinct was let
the party continue. This does not sound like Donald Trump.
Then he has this weird press conference with everybody grinning
like an idiot all around him, and all of these
people and more MAGA Incorporated start to follow his lead
in saying that this particular incident is why we need
that fancy new White House ballroom. Are you shitting me?
It bugs me, It doesn't feel right. And I will
tell you I put nothing past Donald Trump and his people.
A few years ago, I might have said no, no,
he would have never done it.
Speaker 4: Nah, Nah, It's impossible.
Speaker 3: And now I think this guy he would do anything,
He would say anything, He would sacrifice anybody, he would
stage anything. He has no bottom, no center, There is
no ethical compass, there is no there is nothing. So
now he's desperate to distract us from all the other
shit that is going on, especially Iran in the Epstein files.
And he loves to play hero victim.
Speaker 4: Right, I just I hate.
Speaker 3: The fact that I have these thoughts because part of
me is like, you sound like an idiot, You sound
like a tinfoil hatter.
Speaker 4: You sound like one.
Speaker 3: Of the people that you're always ridiculing or at least
questioning or being skeptical of. And now you're saying what
the whole thing was staged. I'm not saying anything. We
don't know enough. I don't know if we will ever
know enough about what happened. But I will just tell
you that the pieces for me do not fit together.
Man who hates press gladly and gleefully attends press party
before party is underway, and you notice it's before anybody
has a chance to say anything about him, or roast him,
or do any of the stuff challenge him. Sometimes the
roasts that these parties can be pretty good, pretty intense.
So it stands to reason that somebody would have targeted
Donald Trump with a nasty punchline, and I mean nasty
in the best way, like a barbed punchline directed right
at him. I think that would have happened. They didn't
even have time to do that. They're sitting there over
the appetizers when shit goes down before you know it.
Speaker 4: There's drama.
Speaker 3: The photos from this thing are crazy. I saw one
of Steven Miller. He's using a woman as a human shield.
Somebody said Carolyn Levitt was saying, well, there will definitely
be shots fired tonight whenever she was teasing the event.
Speaker 4: I think she was.
Speaker 3: Talking about, you know, the verbal jabs shots fired. Did
you say it in the colloquial sense, But there are
many who were latching onto that and saying Carolyn Levitt
new there would be literal shots fired. I don't think
you can definitively make that connection, but it sure doesn't help,
you know, and then it happens. Donald Trump, the biggest
fucking coward on the planet, says, I want.
Speaker 4: To continue the event.
Speaker 3: I just well, if he felt that the venue was
that insecure or unsecure, and that's why we need a ballroom,
why would he stay in the venue that is not secure,
and why would the Secret Service have ever let him?
He should have known that, and yet he publicly says, well,
doesn't bother me. Let us press forward with this celebration
of America's great journalists at the White House Correspondent's Dinner.
This makes no logical sense to me, makes no logical sense.
As I sit here at the microphone, there was so
much that is not known. There was so much speculation.
The conspiracy versu is going crazy. There are photos and memes,
and there are claims and hypotheses, and it's just a
white noise out there. The responsible thing at this point
is to sit back and to you know, see what investigators.
Speaker 4: Come up with.
Speaker 3: The problem is, you and I live in a culture
where investigators aren't investigators. Many of them are propagandists. And
we've seen this through Ice, after the Ice murders in
the streets, where's the investigation there?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: We've seen investigations happen, but only in regard to Trump's
political enemies, and those investigations were unwarranted. Those were genuine
witch hunts.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: The Department of Justice is no such thing. It's been weaponized.
It's supposed to be this apolitical organization. It's totally been
weaponized by dear Leader Donald Trump. State power or many
of our courts have been stacked with Trump friendly judges,
by the Trump administration or Trump himself. They've decided, hey,
we're going to go in and protect Trump at the local, regional,
and even national and certainly the Supreme Court level. How
the how can you and I be expected to expect
that an investigation is going to be done responsibly, honestly,
confidently and produced information we can rely on.
Speaker 4: And this is where we are.
Speaker 3: So I have this show about Pete Budages and a
letter which was written by journalists encouraging their peers to
conduct themselves responsibly and demand accountability as journalists, accountable to
the people. I don't know what to do with the
rest of this show. I feel like if I air it,
it just sounds totally tone deaf because people are buzzing
about the shooting. But if I don't release it, have
I missed an opportunit unity to have some still relevant
ideas out there in the mix. Well, I'm going to
go ahead and play it for you, and as you listen,
we will know that all of the other things that
are happening in this country right now, all of the
other stuff regarding the shooting, there is still the fog
of war, there's still speculation, there is still hypothesis, there's
still conspiracy theories, there's still lies. Who knows what the
hell's going to be coming out in the next several
days before we move on to the next piece of theater.
Speaker 4: If it is theater and there's the conspiracy, theorist in me.
Speaker 3: Doesn't make sense to me, I'll quit saying it, except
it doesn't make sense to me anyway. Anyway, I'm just
going to play for you the show as it was
supposed to air, in the hopes that you will be
able to partition the shooting off. I start with some levity,
we talk about some life stuff, we get into Pete,
and then we actually get into the tech of the letter.
You got to keep in your mind that the letter
was written before this incident. My comments about the letter
were uttered before this incident. The tone is going to
be pre incident. That's a relevant conversation. It'll be relevant
in a few weeks, it'll be relevant in a few months.
And I just think, fine, I'm gonna throw it out there,
and then we may come back later in the week
and talk a little more about this nut bar scenario
at the White House Correspondent's dinner.
Speaker 4: Okay, so I.
Speaker 3: Do appreciate your patience, but the rest of the show
will air as intended, and we'll do that next Okay,
you have my full attention, right, I'm here for you.
We are here together. I'm engaged. But I do have
a confession to make because right now under my studio monitor,
my phone is propped up and I have streaming phone
video and on my screen are.
Speaker 4: Birds.
Speaker 3: Here's the story. Four years I've been telling my wife,
not really in jest, but I've been telling her. Look,
did you know that they make these little Wi Fi
camera bird feeders and you can sit them in the
backyard and then the little birds come up and they
and they land on the perch and they peck away
at the bird seed, and then it sends a feed
to your phone. You can bird watch from wherever you are.
You don't have to be in your own living room.
You can be in another building, you could be in
another country and you can watch the birdies. And Natalie
just rolled her eyes, not because she doesn't like birds,
but because she was like.
Speaker 4: Are you kidding me?
Speaker 3: There's gonna be bird shit all over the place. They're
going to get the feed everywhere. The dogs are going
to go out and get all up in the mess,
and do you really want to do that?
Speaker 4: Come on?
Speaker 3: And she was giving me so much grief. But on
my birthday there was a big box. And when I
unwrapped the package and opened the box, low and behold
there was a Keiwi bit camera bird feeder. And this
thing is amazing. Like I knew they were cool, but
in the age of four K cameras and everything, I
just didn't know what the options were.
Speaker 4: Let me just indulge me. Come on, tell you about it.
Speaker 3: And oh, look, I've got a couple of mourning doves.
Oh oh, and a sparrow. They're all three on the
perch and they're sharing.
Speaker 4: That's so sweet. Okay.
Speaker 3: So it sends to my phote and I can choose
do I want a standard definition or a high deaf
or a four K feed or whatever my bandwidth will allow.
And then it identifies the birds, so it shows me, Oh,
now you've got a sparrow, and now you've got a
whatever it is. I'm still learning what the birds are, oh,
a cardinal something else. And when you save the photos,
you can then save it with the identifier embedded in
the photograph and then you send it to your friends
or post it on social media. Oh lookie, who my
visitor was today. Now some would call this an old
person hobby. I don't think so. I think bird watching
is universal across the human spectrum. Birds make us happy,
or most of us happy. And so I opened up
my package.
Speaker 4: There it was.
Speaker 3: I assembled it all. I put the battery, the chargeable
battery in and got it all. Put the post in
the backyard in a strategic location, filled it up with
bird seed. And then the conversation becomes, well, what kind
of bird seed? What's the best kind? Yeah, I want
a certain brand or is there a certain type of
seed that serves specific birds in my area? What are
the birds in Oklahoma? Besides you know, sparrows and crows
and hawks. You know, I got to watch for hawks,
having small dogs, hawks and owls. You got an eight
pound dog. You cannot leave your dog outside unattended for
any length of time because I shit you not a
hawk or an owl could come down and your little
dog will disappear. So I'd be very careful about it.
I haven't seen any hawks or owls, but I mean,
what are the birds in Oklahoma? So I'm doing a
little research there we buy the seed. I am obsessed.
And here's the funny part. My wife, who was like,
oh my god, it's gonna be a mess.
Speaker 4: It's gonna be a pain in the ass.
Speaker 3: I cannot believe you want this.
Speaker 4: What a lame gift.
Speaker 3: Blah blah blah. She indulges me. She surprises me, Happy birthday.
Here's your WiFi four K camera bird feeder. You know
who's obsessed with it, Natalie. I got a text a
half an hour ago and she said, did you see
this bird or the dove is hogging the tray. He's
actually sitting on the tray and he's blocking other birds
from coming in. He's owned the tray. That's not fair.
On the app, you can enable the audio so you
can hear all the chirping and the pecking if that
zends you out. But there's also a microphone, so if
there's something going on on the tray you want to
scare somebody off or whatever, you just you hit the
mic button and you're like, hey, get off the tray,
or maybe you make cat noises. I don't know what
you're supposed to do with a microphone. And then this
is wild. There is an Unwanted critter mode, so the
camera can recognize non bird animals that are getting into
your seed. Oh look it's a squirrel or a raccoon.
This is not wanted. The device will automatically recognize what
it is and it will set off an alarm to
scare the shit out of the squirrel and the raccoon. Ostensibly,
I don't know if that works or not. We don't
have really any squirrels around here. There's not a lot
of trees in my neighborhood. But what kind of world
do we live in? It used to be hung the
little house on wires, stuck on a post. You sat
back on the porch and bird watched, And we do
a little bit of that. But why would you sit
fifty feet away when you can get a literal bird's
eye view, bird's eye view, eye to eye, face to face,
up close and personal with identification. So now we're watching
and learning birds at the same time. And I started
to post photographs online. And there's a whole culture of
people in this audience, tons of listeners and viewers and
people in this community who have these and didn't bring
them to my attention. For some reason, I'm almost defended
that you didn't tell me this existed in this way.
So I started posting photographs, and they start posting their photographs.
It's bird a palooza. It's like a bird community, a
sub community of this particular group, and I am so
there for it. So if you are a fellow bird watcher,
post your photos and let me know, let me see
your birdies, let me see what kind of birds come
to you. So anyway that's running, that's.
Speaker 4: Running under my monitor, and so with.
Speaker 3: What my periphery has birds in it. But my focus
today is on you, and it's kind of a one
two punch. I want to talk a little bit about
a recent event in town, and I'm going to get
into a larger conversation about the media in the United States.
All Right, I'm already preparing myself because some people are
going to get pissed thinking I'm dedicating this monologue to
a candidate.
Speaker 4: Hey, get over it.
Speaker 3: I'm just talking about one guy, and I don't know
who the presidential nominee is gonna be for twenty twenty eight.
I'm just talking about an experience that I had in
my hometown. Pete Budages was in Tulsa, white bread, corn fed,
red state, evangelical. Trump love and Tulsa and Pete came here.
And what's interesting is that the day before Natalie and
I went out, it.
Speaker 4: Was a big deal.
Speaker 3: They had it at will Rogers' School in a gymnasium auditorium,
which is weird because it wasn't really advertised.
Speaker 4: There was a social media.
Speaker 3: Campaign, but there was no billboards. I didn't see any
TV ads or anything. So I was like, if you
had really advertised this, and you've done it not a
week before, but maybe a month before, we could have
filled probably the Bok Center. There are a lot of
Pete fans in this area, and I really discovered that
when I all the line wrapped around the building. Fact
it was all around the building and then blocks down
the road. Natalie and I were standing out in the
sun for almost two hours to get in to see Pete.
But the day before I was talking to a few
people on my tennis team. I was like, Oh, we're
going to see Pete Budajes tomorrow and they looked at
us blankly, and they said, oh, who's Pete Buddhasje And
I looked blankly back at them. Now, I try not
to be too judgy, but I realized that these are
people who vote, but how do you vote without having
an informed vote? This guy was the Secretary of Transportation.
He's been on TV every six minutes. He ran for
president several years ago. I mean, the guy's been around.
So how unplugged do you have to be to not
know who Buddhaje is. I'll give you a pass if
you are maybe out of the country, but if you
live here, you need to know who Pete is. Okay, fine,
I'll give you just a quick premer just so everybody's
on my page before I share some thoughts.
Speaker 4: This is unprepared. I'm just talking about something that happened
to me.
Speaker 3: Pete Budajet. He was born in Indiana, went to Harvard,
was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, he became a management consultant,
went into the United States Navy as a lieutenant. He
was deployed to Afghanistan and he served there during the
Afghan War for almost a year. That was in twenty fourteen.
He'd already been the mayor of South Bend, Indiana in
twenty eleven. In fact, the residents there just knew him
as Mayor Pete. Now, right after he came back from Afghanistan,
I believe he went right back into politics. Forgive me
if I get that one wrong. But in twenty fifteen
he came out as a gay man. This was a
big deal. Then it unfortunately remains a big deal in
this country because if you are a gay person in
a position of leadership in this country, the evangelical bigots
lose their minds. Oh, he is now an aberration. He's
a pervert, he's a sodomite. He is in contradiction to
God's ordained model for the nuclear family, one man, one woman.
It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. And
this rhetoric continues today. But in twenty twenty, Pete Budages
ran for president and he was all over town halls
and debates and he was on TV. He of course
didn't even come close to winning, but he did make
a splash. And after Biden won, he named Pete as
the Secretary of Transportation and it was almost a unanimous vote,
and he was the first openly gay cabinet secretary in
our history at the age of thirty eight. He was
considered a possible running mate for Common Harris when she
ran in twenty twenty four. But as I understand it,
I think the vibe was, Okay, wait a minute, so
we're going to try to get a woman of color
and a gay man elected on the same ticket. This
may be a bridge too far in a country that
is this screwed up and this homophobic and racist. And
we've already seen what Trump culture has done, empowering the
bigots to step out of the shadows. The roaches are
out in the light. We've seen the you know, the
Clan rallies in Charlottesville and the Proud Boys and everybody else.
So a lot of people said this is going to
be too much. Even Pete probably thought that. So after
Trump was elected the second time, Pete Budages has pretty
much just been on the circuit and he goes on
Fox News. He is invited on what is essentially dear
Leader state television for Donald Trump. I wrote a whole
book about this network, the origins of the network, the
hosts of the network, this cross pollination between Fox News
and the Trump White House. And it's remarkable how many
Fox News hosts or producers went over to become part
of Trump's administration, and how many people who were in
the Trump administration have since gotten jobs on the air
at Fox News. It is an incestuous relationship. So Fox
News says, okay, well, let's have Pete on and we're
going to try to paint him into a corner, and
we're going to make him sweat, and we're going to
do all this. And the more they attempt to corner Pete,
the more he with an even voice and a prepared nonscript.
Speaker 4: He just has recall.
Speaker 3: He just knows he destroys them. And what I really
like is that he very often will not respond to
the host who is challenging him as much as he
will talk to the viewers. He's like, Okay, Fox newsers
are in a bubble, right. I think of a sixty
percent of the people who watch Fox News don't get
information about the world from any other source. They are
locked into that disinformation silo. So what Pete does is
he goes into the lions Den and he will kind
of turn to the camera and say, if you're watching,
you know, I'm gonna let me say something or state something,
but don't take my word for it. Go and check me.
Pull up the video, read the transcript, watch the speech.
I want to make sure that you are seeing and
hearing the information for yourself. And he does this all
the time. So I pulled up a clip. Now this
is back from twenty twenty. John Kelly was chief of
staff under Donald Trump. And John Kelly comes forward after
the fact and he talked about how behind closed doors,
Donald Trump was really shitty about our miss and women
in uniform who were wounded and or killed in combat
because they were suckers and losers, a bunch of weaklings.
He insulted John McCain, Vietnam war pow. He was behind bars,
he was in a torture prison for years, but he
was a war hero. Donald Trump said, you know what
I like men who weren't captured. And then John Kelly,
who was part of the Trump staff, comes forward and
he said this to a journalist for The Atlantic in
twenty twenty. He said, quote talking about Trump, he said,
a person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform,
or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or
spend years being tortured as POWs are all suckers because
there is nothing in it for them. Kelly said of Trump,
A person that did not want to be seen in
the presence of military amputees because quot quote it doesn't
look good for me. A person who demonstrated open contempt
for a gold Star family for all gold Star families
on TV during the twenty sixteen campaign, and rants that
are most precious heroes who gave their lives in America's
defense are losers and wouldn't visit their graves in France.
In fact, I think on that day when they were
going to honor our fallen soldiers, I believe Trump went golfing.
That's what we're talking about. Okay, So Fox News says, Hey,
wait a minute, how do you know Trump actually disparaged
the members of our armed forces. We should be distrustful
because Trump really might love our military. Let's talk to
Pete Budaget. Here's just a clip from February of twenty twenty.
Speaker 5: Pete, you have tweeted some pretty strong words about the president. Well,
about the article about the president today in The Atlantic,
you wrote, there are no wars for how disgusting and dishonorable.
Speaker 2: This is my question to you is how do you
know it's accurate? How do you know it's true? Oh,
that's easy. I mean, this is a pattern we've seen
from the president throughout his life. When he was a
young man, he faked a disability so he could avoid
serving when it was his turn. We've watched him refer
to prisoners of war like John McCain as losers with
our own eye. Look, if you're watching this at home,
here's how willing Donald Trump is to insult your intelligence.
Today he denied that he ever called John McCain a loser.
Now again, if you're watching this at home, grab your phone,
go on Google. You can see video of him doing it.
You can see a tweet of him doing it. So
I think it's pretty easy to figure out who to believe.
And indeed, again I'm looking at the internet right now.
Fox News itself has confirmed many of the details of
this story. So here's the bottom line. The president thinks
people who play by the rules or people who sacrifice
for other other are suckers. He thinks people pay their
taxes are suckers. He seems to think Christians are suckers.
He'll just hold up the Bible as a prop without
ever seeming to look into it. This is part of
a clear, consistent, repeated pattern of behavior. Although I will
say these revelations about just how much this president disrespects
the military do represent a new love.
Speaker 3: I got to hand it to him. I mean, I
don't know if I could do that. I don't know
if I could sit in a chair on Fox News
and not just look eye to eye with whoever the
host is, especially Sean Hannity or even some of the
ex foxers, Tucker Carlson, Megan Kelly, those people. I mean,
if Kaylee mcananey was looking at me on Fox, I
don't know how I would keep from looking at her
and saying, how do you sleep at night? You psychopath?
Because these people, I swear to you, whether they're transactional
or whether they truly believe it, and I'm not convinced
they're true believers. I tend to think, and this is
just the yes, I tend to think there's psychopaths. I
think they are willing. They would sell anybody and everybody
down the river. I think they are in the business
of outrage, porn for fame and millionaire money. I think
they know that the Fox News brand is a gravy.
Speaker 4: Train for them.
Speaker 3: I just who was it who went on Sean Hannity
and they were arguing and debating a spirited debate, and
right after the cameras went dark, Hannity looked at him
and said, Wow, that was really good or that ought
to get some attention.
Speaker 4: Who was he debating.
Speaker 3: I can't remember, forgive me. It was somebody like Pete
or Christopher Hitchens or somebody like that who went on,
who was very much on the side of humanism and
liberal values. But after you know, the segment was over,
Sean Hannity was like, oh, man, that's going to make
for great television. That kind of thing, I think is
indicative of how that network works, remaining the most popular
quote unquote news network in the United States. They bring
Pete on, he says yes, and he mops the freak
and floor with him. He comes to Tulsa and he
blows us away with a refreshing combination of smarts and
empathy and charm and intelligence. He's a bit kinder to
the quiet quitters of MAGA. He was addressing people in
the audience. You know what, I've got the town hall
audio right here. Let me just play you a few clips,
and this is what he had to say to some
of the people who may have sort of snuck in
under the radar, who voted for Trump in twenty sixteen,
maybe again in twenty twenty or twenty twenty four, but
they're looking around having an O shit moment, and now
they're pete curious, and so that's why they're there. This
is what he told him.
Speaker 2: Maybe you're here because you've never voted for a Democrat
in your life, but you're looking around asking yourself some
questions based on what's going on in the world right now.
And if that's why you're here, I'm very glad that
you're here and thankful to be able to be in
dialogue with you. Maybe don't think of yourself as political
at all. You don't think a whole lot about Democrats
and Republicans, but you can't help but notice the gas
is going through the roof, diesels going through the roof.
Speaker 4: Can't help.
Speaker 2: But notice that we were told a year and a
half ago the prices were going to go down, and
instead they are up compared to what they were a
year and a half ago. Maybe never mind left and right,
you're just bothered by a sense of right.
Speaker 4: And wrong now. I really appreciate that.
Speaker 3: And those of us who understand how to deprogram people
out of cults know that you're not gonna deprogram them
by putting them on their heels and insulting and calling
them names and saying you're an idiot and all those things.
But I will say that in my own mind, I'm
not there. I'm not as generous. I don't feel that
level of empathy. And Natalie and I were talking about
it on the drive home. We're still pissed. We're pissed.
Speaker 4: We're like, you should have known better.
Speaker 3: I heard somebody phrase it this way, and it's such
a good way to put it. Trump was an open
book test. There were no surprises. Everything was right there,
and this is not what you voted for. I just
have a hard time buying that. Either you're lying to us,
maybe you're lying to yourself, or are you just that
dangerously stupid that maybe we should consider having some sort
of a qualifier, maybe a test, before you are allowed
to vote for our leadership. So I don't have that
much charity in my heart, but I get it. Whether
he believes it behind closed doors, you know, maybe whenever
the cameras are off, he's like, fuck those people. Yeah,
he right, he's a politician, but I'll tell you when
he's in public, he is very much the olive branch guy. Strategically,
it does make sense, right as he moves forward into
what some think might be a presidential run, and I've
been having this conversation about whether a gay man is
electable in this country. We saw the racist come out
of the shadows when it came to Kamala Harris. It
sexism and racism. It was a one two punch. And
it didn't matter what her qualifications were. It didn't matter
what her education was, it didn't matter how long she'd
been in public service, it didn't matter. It was, oh,
I'm not going to vote for that black woman. And
we saw a hell hired people in my own zip
code say that shit. So now we're talking about a
gay man and a culture that talks about how marriage
is only one type of thing, and gay people are
in rebellion against God, and they're already selling Satan on
Fox News and at every fundee church around the country.
Speaker 4: But I had this thought.
Speaker 3: I thought, what if Pete saw this as an opportunity.
What if people are so disenfranchised and so pissed off
and so grieved and scared and absolutely thinking what in
the world are we going to do? That they would
vote for almost anybody I'm talking about, even moderates and
moderates conservatives. They would vote for almost anybody who could
hit the stop button on the runaway train. In that context,
then would this be an opportunity for somebody like Pete,
a liberal gay man, to run for president. I'm not
an expert. I have no idea, but I had the thought.
There are others who say, well, it's still a bridge
too far. Our country is still too bigoted to ever
go there. And there are still others who say that
maybe he's strategically waiting for a Democrat to win the
presidential election in twenty twenty eight, and then he would
get an appointment in that administration and then run for
president in twelve fourteen years. You know, he's a young
enough guy, He's got plenty of time. Now the Supreme
Court came up. I'm just going to play one or
two more soundbites because they are opportunities for discussion here.
But you know, what do we do if the Supreme
Court is essentially the victim of a hostile takeover, and
you know, if let's say Clarence Thomas or somebody else
kicks off tomorrow, the president who would appoint the next
Supreme Court justice is still a freaking psychopath, What in
the world do we do about the court?
Speaker 2: Back when I was running for presidents seven years ago.
When I said that we ought to do structural reform
to the Supreme Court, people looked at me funny. Nobody,
even Bernie wouldn't talk about it back then. Now that's
become a mainstream position in this country, and I think
it's because we've seen what that court has become. But
as far as Congress look right now, one out of
ten House races is actually competitive. Think about that. In
a fifty to fifty country, only one out of ten
races is actually a contest. The rest the other nine
out of ten you pretty much know what the outcome
is going to be before the first vote is cast.
Speaker 4: That is nuts.
Speaker 2: Some of the things we take for granted as core
to the Constitution. It's right in there. It's first Amendment,
second amendment. The word amendment means it wasn't even in
the original text. Amendments have always been a critically important
part of how our constitution is supposed to work. We
just forgot about it. We amended our constitution for prohibition.
We changed our constitution so you couldn't have a beer,
and then we thought that's a bad idea. We changed
it back. Don't tell me we can't change the Constitution
to get money out of politics.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's got a point about the Constitution and
change and how we can amend an update. But at
the same time, I mean, we're talking about a nation
that refuses to update the Second Amendment or at least acknowledge.
Speaker 4: What it is.
Speaker 3: This is a glacial beer rock receive. And I don't
care what he says about the Republican Congress. So I'm
not convinced that even public pressure is really going to
push them in the right direction. I think a lot
of these people, like a huge number dozens and dozens
of conservative Republican Christian congressmen, have just decided they're not
going to run during the mid terms. They're just I
want to go spend more time with my family. Well,
this is code for I need to save face. I
know I would get my ass kicked. I'm embarrassed of
you know. I'm on the losing team and I know it.
So I'm going to go and spend more time with
my family and enter the private sector because God has
told me it's the right time. I just don't think
that they give a shit really about what we think
enough to change their position. While they're in the Congress,
so that's kind of a utopian view. But the court,
could we pass a constitutional amendment? Do you think we'd
ever get there to expand the court? That's what constitutional
attorney is, and brew Sidel says, we need to do.
Why in the hell do we just have nine Supreme
Court justices? And how did we end up with a
court that isn't representative of the three hundred and sixty
or three hundred and eighty million American citizens and the
laws that ostensibly protect them. It makes no sense. And
then what do you do if the Supreme Court goes rogue?
And it's the highest court in the land, right, who
watches the watchers? This is one of the dilemmas. The
strength in numbers, right, strength in numbers. And finally, American
journalists and I think international journalists are included as well,
have come together, or many frontline journalists have come together
to add some pressure to their peers in reporting, TV, prints, radio,
et cetera, to say, hey, what the hell, it's time
to put the fire to Donald Trump's feet and quit
socking up to him, or at least quit being afraid.
And they issued this open letter and it's gone viral,
and I'm gonna read for you the letter, which I
found refreshing. I'm gonna do it right after this. On
the subject of journalism, our media, the press's responsibility to
report accurately what is going on, and I think the
media is largely failing us. There was an open letter.
It was signed by two hundred and fifty American journalists,
many of them heritage journalists, to big names like Sam Donaldson,
Dan Rather and others photographers, reporters, TV commentators, etc. And
they published this letter to their journalistic peers before the
White House Correspondent's Dinner. And this dinner is put on
by the White House Correspondence Association, which is supposedly a
separate entity from the government. Just a bunch of journalists.
They get together and have this thing. The president usually attends.
I don't believe Trump went last year. They get together
and it's cocktail parties and dinners and just a big
party goes on for several days. Well, because this is
the White House Correspondent's Dinner, some of these correspondents in
American journalism said, Hey, we're putting our fellow journalists on notice,
would you please. In the wake of what's going on
around us, do your goddamn jobs.
Speaker 4: And I thought, okay.
Speaker 3: Finally, in April of twenty twenty six, there is an
organized effort by American journalists to shore things up. The
letters said, in part we the undersigned call upon the
White House Correspondent's Association to use the occasion of the
White House Correspondent's Dinner to forcefully demonstrate opposition the President
Trump's efforts to trample freedom of the press. The dinner
is long served as a symbol of the vital and
irreplaceable role of a free press and American democracy, and
a celebration of the First Amendments and the journalists who
uphold it. President Trump's systematics, sustained and unpress idented attacks
on the free press render his presence at such an
event a profound contradiction of its purpose. The collective weights
of the administration's actions retaliatory access bans, coercive regulatory investigations,
frivolous lawsuits against the press, defunding of public broadcasting, dismantling
of international broadcasting, physical restrictions on journalists, personal verbal attacks
on reporters, assaults on the media in official White House
press releases, and social media posts. The arrest of journalists
and the pardoning of those who committed violence against the
press represent the most systematic and comprehensive assault on freedom
of the press by a sitting American president. There's a
long tradition of presidents attending the White House Correspondence Association dinner,
but these are not normal times, and this cannot be
business as usual with the press standing up to applaud
the man who attacks them on a daily basis. We
understand that some journalists plan to wear pocket handkerchiefs or
lapel pins with the words of the First Amendment, and
continuing in that spirit, we believe the White House Correspondence
Association should take stronger action by issuing from the podium
a forceful defense of freedom of the press and condemnation
of those who threaten that freedom, followed by a standing
toast to the First Amendment and a pledge to continue
upholding such a critical cornerstone of our democracy. Speak forcefully
in front of the man who seeks to undermine our
country's long tradition of an independent, strong and free press.
We also urge the WHCA to reaffirm without equivocation that
freedom of the press is not a partisan issue, and
that the association will not normalize this behavior, but instead
fight back against any office holder who has waged systematic
war against the journalists whose work the Dinner celebrates, and
it lists specific examples of Trump's attacks on freedom of
the press. Let me just roll through some of these,
they're interesting. February twenty twenty five, the Trump administration banned
Associated Press reporters from pooled press events of the White
House and a board Air Force one after the ap
declined to alter its long standing editorial style guide to
replace the internationally recognized name Gulf of Mexico with the
president's preferred term Gulf of America. In early twenty twenty five,
the Trump administration stripped office space at the Pentagon from CNN,
The Washington and Post, The Hill, NBC News, The New
York Times, NPR, Politico, and other outlets whose coverage the
administration deemed unfavorable. The Trump administration implemented Pentagon press rules
in September twenty twenty five, prohibiting reporters from reporting any
information not cleared by the Defense Department, a move the
court ultimately ruled violated the First Amendment. President Trump has
engaged in a sustained pattern of personal verbal attacks on
individual reporters, including calling ABC reporter Mary Bruce a terrible
person and a terrible reporter, calling Bloomberg News reporter Catherine
Lucy piggy, calling CBS reporter Nancy Cordes a stupid person,
calling New York Times reporter Katie Rodgers a third rate
reporter and ugly both inside and out, calling CNN anchor
Caitlin Collins the worst reporter, calling ABC reporter Rachel Scott
obnoxious and a terrible reporter, a pattern disproportionately targeting women journalists.
Trump also threatening to revoke ABC's broadcast license when the
network's reporters ask questions he disliked. In a speech at
the Department of Justice March fourteenth, twenty twenty five, President
Trump publicly called CNN and MSNBC corrupt and illegal, and
broadly attacked the independent reporting of major news organizations as illegal,
using the bully pulpit of the presidency to delegitimize and
intimidate the free press. In November twenty twenty five, the
White House launched an official government web page titled Hall
of Shame, naming and targeting individual journalists and news organizations
for reporting that the administration disagreed with. In December twenty
twenty five, Trump publicly accused The New York Times of treason,
labeling it the Enemy of the People, rhetoric that press
freedom organizations worldwide have identified as characteristic of authoritarian governments.
President Trump, through FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, launched politically motivated
investigations into major broadcast media organizations, including ABC, NBCCBS, and
San Francisco radio station KCBS, for matters ranging from their
coverage of immigration enforcement to editorial decisions, using the coercive
power of broadcast licensing as a weapon to threaten and
suppress unfavorable journalism. In January twenty twenty five, FCC Chairman
Car launched an investigation into NPR and PBS over their
underwriting practices, threatening the federal funding of public broadcasting, which
serves more than ninety nine percent of the American population,
including rural communities that rely on public media for emergency
and disaster information. The Trump administration filed the lawsuit against
the Des Moines Register, its parent company Gannettes, and pollster J. N.
Selzer over a pre election poll, and the Pulitzer Center
using personal and governmental litigation as instruments of pressure and
intimidation against news organizations. The president has also sued The
New York Times in The Wall Street Journal for billions.
Speaker 4: Of dollars for alleged defamation.
Speaker 3: President Trump filed the lawsuit against ABC News and anchored
George Stephanopolis, which Disney, ABC's parent company settled for fifteen
million dollars directed to the future Trump Presidential Library, plus
a million dollars in legal fees, a settlement that legal
scholars warned would produce a chilling effect on network journalism.
President Trump filed the law suit against Paramount, the corporate
parent of CBS News, over the editing of a sixty
minutes interview. Paramount settled, paying sixteen million dollars to the
future Trump Presidential Library, despite legal experts characterizing the suit
as frivolous and predicting CBS would prevail at trial. The
settlement came as Paramount sought FCC approval for a multi
billion dollar merger. Trump's FCC chairman threatened Disney and ABC
with their broadcast license if they didn't suspend Jimmy Kimmel
after comments that conservatives took issue with ABC took Kimmel
off the air for a week. In early twenty twenty six,
FBI agents rated the home of a Washington Post reporter,
seizing her phone in computers, a move the Reporters Committee
for Freedom of the Press described as endangering confidential sources
and undermining investigative journalism, and which penn America called evidence
of a growing assault on independent reporting. In twenty twenty six,
federal agents arrested journalists Don Lemon and Georgia fort while
they were covering a news event, with two separate federal
judges refusing to sign arrest warrens for lack of evidence
of any crime before the Justice Department obtained a grand
jury indictment, a prosecution that press freedom advocates characterized as
an assault on the First Amendment right to cover matters
of public interest. The Trump administration acted against two foreign
born journalists. Mario Guavera, an Emmy Award winning Spanish language
journalist originally from El Salvador, had lived in the United
States for nearly two decades. It was deported by Ice
after he was arrested while covering a no King's rally.
As Stephanie Rodriguez Flores, a Colombian born journalist who was
seeking Assiglum was arrested by ICE a day after reporting
on ice raids in Nashville. She was held for two
weeks before being released on bail. On May first, twenty
twenty five, President Trump signed Executive Order one four to
two nine zero titled Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media,
directing an end to all federal funding for NPR and
PBS through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, with a White
House accusing the media outlets of receiving tens of millions
of dollars in taxpayer funds to spread radical, woke propaganda
disguised as news. In July twenty twenty five, he signed
legislation revoking one point one billion dollars in already appropriated
federal funding for public broadcasting, causing the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting to shut down and placing over one hundred eighty
public radio and television stations at risk of closure. The
Trump administration moved to dismantle the US Agency for Global
Media USAGM, silencing Voice of America, a journalistic institution with
eighty three years of history, and terminating several US news
services that broadcast to those living under authoritarian regimes. Within
the first hours of his second term, President Trump suspended
hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid specifically designated
to support press freedom overseas. On January twentieth, twenty twenty five,
President Trump issued a blanket pardon to more than fifteen
hundred individuals charged or convicted in connection with the January sixth,
twenty twenty one attack on the United States Capital, including
at least eight individuals convicted or charged with violent crimes
against journalists present at the scene and three convicted for
destroying media equipment, crimes that were documented on video and
prosecuted by the Department of Justice, sending a message that
attacks on the press will be forgiven. President Trump has
publicly expressed personal support for media owners who have demonstrated
favoritism toward his administration, including praising sky Dance CEO David Ellison,
whose company acquired CBS Paramount under Trump's watch, hosting Oracle
co founder Larry Ellison at the White House for business announcements,
and praising Fox News and its leadership. Creating a system
of rewards for compliant media and punishment for independent journalism
that fundamentally corrupts the relationship between government and a free press.
The United States has fallen to a ranking of fifty
seventh out of one hundred eighty countries in the twenty
twenty five Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index, its
lowest ranking since the index was first compiled in two
thousand two. A dramatic and his way historic decline that
reflects the documented and measurable deterioration of press freedom under
President Trump's administration. And I see six organizations that represent
the two hundred and fifty journalists on the signatures, the
Society of Professional Journalists, the National Association of Black Journalists,
National Press Photographers Association, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Coalition
for Women in Journalism, and the Radio Television Digital News Association.
It is nice to finally see a cohesive, concentrated effort
to call out their peers in journalism. Let's apply some pressure.
Is it long overdue? Yes, it's long overdue. It's April
of twenty twenty six. What the hell this should have
happened ten years ago? Before the examples, we knew he
was going to go hard, and we knew the journalists
would be right there on the front lines along with artists,
satirist comedians, commentators, anybody who dares to roast the sacred cows.
We knew that they were going to be in the crosshres,
So am I pissed they took this long?
Speaker 4: Yes? Am I glad they did it? Absolutely?
Speaker 3: Okay, it is a little bit of a shorter broadcast today.
I must apologize to you, but I have my reasons.
One of them, actually, both of them are kind of selfish.
I am finishing my speech for the upcoming we Can
Reason conference in Calgary first weekend of May. We Canreason
dot Com.
Speaker 4: Is the website.
Speaker 3: There are some tickets still available, a few, I think,
And then I'm going to fly my wife up on
Sunday the third, and she and I get to take
a long overdue vacation at BAMF National Park, which I
hear and I've seen the pictures, but I hear it
is one of the most beautiful.
Speaker 4: Places in the world.
Speaker 3: Now, as much as we hate to leave the two
dogs and the cat, we have an in house sitter
friend of ours is going to like pat them on
the head and assure them that yes, mommy and Daddy
are coming back. But Natalie and I we're gonna unplug
and be together, and I am trying to get ahead
of the game so that everything is all sat for us.
And I don't come back to a monumentally tall inbox,
So I guess both of those are selfish. I'm looking
forward to the conference, got to finish my prep, but
I'm also taking a five day vacation and I am
so ready, and then I will come back to you,
refreshed and ready to rejoin the battle. Thank you so
much for listening. I will be back and we will
do it again.
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