Debunking Trump's Arlington Cemetery Photo-op, X Blocked in Brazil & Chase Bank Fraud
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Do you love reading as much as we do? Well, you're in luck because we're launching our first ever Betches Book Club in partnership with Nutella Biscuits because they know the best moments are even sweeter when you share a great snack with your friends. If you're in New York City, come hang out with us IRL at the Betches Book Club.

On October 28th, Aileen, Sammy, and I are hosting a book discussion with author Margot Harrison, where we'll be discussing her brand new novel, The Midnight Club, and snacking on Nutella biscuits. No, I won't be sharing mine because I'm truly obsessed and they're actually my new favorite snack in the world. But don't worry, there's going to be plenty for everyone to share. Head to bit.ly slash book club IRL to grab tickets for you and your friends. That's

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Rise and shine, fever dreamers. Look alive, my friends. I'm Bea Spear. And I'm Sammy Sage. And this is American Fever Dream presented by Betches News. Where we explore the absurdities and oddities of our uniquely American experience. And this episode is all over the place. But I feel like we haven't had a normal episode in so long. We have been all over the place. I haven't been back in this bright pink office in weeks, it feels like.

Yeah. I mean, I don't feel like we've recorded this the normal way for like three weeks at least. And next week's not going to be totally normal either. I was going to say, we're doing this and then I'm leaving right away to come down to New York. So it's like, it's just crazy. And then we're going to Philly for the September 10th debate. And it's going to be quite a time. That is a week from today. And, you know...

Well, we don't know what's going to happen, but me and Sammy are staying in the same place for like five or six days. So I don't know. Maybe expect some TikTok lives. We'll be doing 1990s sleepover with a cousin vibes where we'll just stay up and do choreography. I think it's going to be really fun. TikTok dances. I'm excited for it. Me too. Me too. It's a good way to get back into fall.

It is. And this week, we have something that's so unusual. I'm on my way to New York City right after we record this, so I'm going to take my little five-hour drive. Because me and Sammy got an invite to a New York Fashion Week party that is so secret that we can't even talk about it in detail. But like, what the hell am I going to wear to a Fashion Week event? Are we hot now, Sammy? Are we a hot ticket? Maybe you are. I don't think I'm a hot ticket. Look, Fashion Week, I don't know what to wear. It's also harder when we don't know what time the event is yet.

I think we don't. I'm like in this mood where I'm like, I'm going to actively do a Gen Z and not participate in trying to be fashionable because I think it's like very millennial of me to try to like come up with like something that's fashion-y where the kids show up in literally like camo pants and a t-shirt and are like, oh, I don't participate and that makes me cool. I feel like that's going to be me this time. Yeah, no, I am a millennial dresser.

Every way from Sunday. Jeans and a t-shirt. I don't know. We'll see. I don't know what time it is. I don't think you can go wrong wearing black in Manhattan. We're just going to get an all black outfit and go with it. You know, it's a good place. It's a good. We'll just look classy. You know, just looking classy. Just demure and cutesy and mindful. Although that is very over. Demure and cutesy and mindful. Yeah.

I mean, Betches has always been hot. So I totally get that like New York Fashion Week would be like, oh, the Betches, like they're hot. But Under the Desk News is built for comfort, okay? We're not built for speed or for the late night. So I'm really hoping this is a happy hour party we got invited to, but we'll see. Betches is built for comfort too. Don't worry. Oh yeah. At least this Betches is built for comfort. Oh my gosh. And then after that, we go, I'm going to go visit my sister, which I'm so excited about. And then we go to Philly for the debate.

I'm also so excited to be in Philly. I love the city of Philadelphia. I think it's so much fun, but I'm coming in like a different capacity this time, which is to attend this debate and like, will there be protesters? I can't go to Pat's now because JD Vance went to Pat's to get a cheesesteak. So Alex Perlman, friend of the pod, said, no, we're going to go to South Street together and get better cheesesteaks.

Oh, I was actually wanting to have a cheesesteak. Well, Alex is going to take us. Okay, perfect. So we could get a good one. Get the band back together for a cheesesteak. I heard Pat's is the one you want to go to, but whatever. I don't really care. I used to love Pat's. So my dad was a Pat's guy. There's like Pat's or Gino's when it comes to tourists. Right, Gino's. We're from Connecticut. The other one. Leave us alone. All right, leave us alone. We're from Connecticut. We like the touristy cheesesteaks. And I've had both Pat's and Gino's many times, and I did prefer Pat's.

but now that JD Vance has been there and they like took pictures with them. And I think they're a little Trumpy. I don't know, right. As if I'm wrong, but I think they're a little Trumpy. I'm like, Oh, I don't think I could do it. We're going to have to do the South street.

Okay, I'm down for whatever. Last time I was in Philly was for our book tour when we did that event with Governor Shapiro at the Weizmann. So I was there pretty recently. What I really like about it is like, there's a lot of little quake corners. And I love a cobblestone. We have a lot of those there. I love original, you know, OG architecture, not original as in new architecture. So I'm excited to get to soak it up a little bit, even though we're only going to not really going to be there that long. But maybe we'll get out. We'll see.

Oh, and cemeteries. I don't go to cemeteries. You don't? I don't go on the 8th then when I'm there early because I love the old cemeteries and there's going to be old spooky stuff there for sure. I am not. I am not a cemetery goer. She's not a girl. Okay. I am. I just drive through them all the time.

I don't like it. I like want to even to visit my own loved ones. I'm like, I'd rather just talk to your spirit for my bedroom. Oh, I don't visit my family at cemeteries. I go to like the old Victorian ones that are like cool with the statues. No, not a big mausoleum girl, but I want to go to the skinny streets with the cobblestones. I also like going to the antique stores because you know me, I'm a sucker for weird Americana. I like an antique store, little

George Washington dolls and all my weird stuff. So we'll go antiquing. We'll do a little antiquing.

Folks who are listening, if you're in Philly, let us know what is a must-see non-touristy fun thing because all I know is like South Street and Pat's Cheesesteaks from when I used to go there in college. And I doubt that the condom kingdom on South Street is going to have quite the laughable allure that it did when I was like 20 in college. We should go to Four Seasons Total Landscaping. Yes. That's where we should go. We'll do a live from the Four Seasons. We'll hold a press conference.

We were just talking cemeteries. Speaking of cemeteries, that is the topic of our first Chem Check. Theme of today's Chem Check is fights being picked. And the first one we have is you probably heard about Donald Trump and his campaign's incident at Arlington National Cemetery.

Fee, do you want to take us through this one? Because I know that you could really speak to the deep significance of Arlington Cemetery and why this was such an abomination of a story that has really lasted about a week at this point. Because it is so crazy. And also, Arlington National Cemetery is not a place for traitors anymore.

to be proud of themselves or take pictures. Now, for those who might not know, Arlington National Cemetery is in Arlington, Virginia, and it is situated on acres and acres of federal land that originally became a cemetery because when the Civil War was going on, it was supposed to be over. And Robert E. Lee's big mansion, his big house, was up on this hill in Arlington, and his guys kept killing Union soldiers after they weren't supposed to anymore. And

And so General Montgomery Meeks, who is an icon, decides, fuck Robert E. Lee. Fuck his house. I'm so mad at you. We're going to make it impossible for you to forget the soldiers that you killed, which were like murders. These were not like, oh, we're in wartime. So they dug graves where his wife's prized rose garden was right in front of

General Lee's house. A lot of Rose Garden drama for these people. There's so much Rose Garden drama. So they dig up this Rose Garden that his wife loved and they bury these Union soldiers that weren't supposed to be killed there to remind him of this. And he's pissed because he wants to move back into his house. And they're like, you know what? No. You shouldn't have killed people. Shouldn't have killed people. Also, you guys are jerks. So now we're going to double down. And the Secretary of State was like, we're going to actually...

take Robert E. Lee's home as like a spoil of war for the union and we're going to make it a national cemetery where we will bury like the most honorable dead like people who were killed in combat and like make it this this real space because he doesn't deserve to live in the most beautiful place in our nation's capital and so when you see that little mansion on top of Arlington National Cemetery it's

That was Robert E. Lee's house before the union was like, no, we bury our dead on your lawn now. And I sort of love that story. And I wish that we would get that that kind of attitude back, which is like if you're a traitor, if you do bad stuff, we're going to take your shit. You're never going to have a place in this government again.

So are you suggesting we turn Mar-a-Lago into a cemetery? I am, actually. I'm suggesting we turn Mar-a-Lago into a cemetery where anybody who has been a victim of his bigoted policies can be buried with honors. And I think, you know, if it were a different time, we would see that.

But we didn't. So what we saw instead was Donald Trump go to Arlington National Cemetery and to two spaces which are really considered hallowed ground. And that's to everybody everywhere, right? Like this is the thing where you just, whether you love or hate America, you just kind of like let people have these things. One is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and two is Section 60.

Section 60 is where people who were killed during the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns are buried. And the reason why it is such hallowed ground is because when you walk around Arlington, like sure, you see like Ruth Bader Ginsburg is buried there and some Supreme Court justices and like big families. And then on the military side, it's like Civil War and all these different folks. Section 60 was opened up for Iraq and Afghanistan casualties. And

those people's families are still alive. Like, this is very fresh. So it's been like, you know what? Understandably, yes, part of this cemetery is a museum. You're going to take pictures or you're going to want to like, you know, say, oh, I visited Ruth Bader Ginsburg's grave. Sure, whatever. In a respectful way. In a respectful way. And there are stanchions all over the place. You're not allowed to stand on graves. And it's beautiful there. You should visit. They have incredible, like, dedications to, like, the first women who were in the military. There's awesome stuff there. But when you...

But you don't go to Section 60 unless you are visiting a loved one, truly. It's not a space for it. It's not part of the museum. It's in that way. It's not like on the tour. You know what I mean? They don't bring you over there because people's families are still grieving actively. Not Donald Trump.

So Donald Trump gets, he says, contacted by one of the Gold Star families. We will never know if this was a campaign plan or if they planned it. I will say I do believe this part that there was a this one family who they are fans of Donald Trump. Sure. They're right. They invited him to a wreath laying ceremony that they were personally holding.

at Section 60 for the second anniversary of when 13 troops were killed in Afghanistan at Abbey Gate. So they had invited Donald Trump

For real. Regardless, that doesn't mean that it is legal. It's not. It's federally illegal to take photos for the sake of election related activities and for the campaign. So it's not wrong that he went there. It's the publicity of it on his own account.

is what was wrong. Whereas if they had posted a photo of him with them, I think that would be something different. But even still, there's questions about taking photos in that area at all because there's other people's graves that are there. And this is such a serious area that it

should be handled way more delicately. People could do whatever they want to mourn the person they love however they want. And we do weird shit. I do crazy shit to mourn my brother that makes absolutely no sense. So maybe taking a picture and doing hand signals is the way that you honor your brother. Like, I don't know, I do weird stuff on the anniversary of my brother's death. So I have no judgment of the family whatsoever for anything they did, any hand signal they made. Maybe that was a special hand signal they had with them. They were doing a thumbs up. Well, they were doing a thumbs up and some other people were doing like a

like a, like a, I love you sign or something that they were like, Oh, what's that sign? Who cares? Leave that family alone. This is about Trump. This is where I get a little cynical is this is the second anniversary of the death of this, this group of 13, which is,

Where was Donald Trump last year to celebrate the first anniversary? Why is it during the election year you make the time to come down? That to me struck me as a little bit odd. Plus you travel with all these photographers and videographers, which is normal. They travel with those people. But it was very much like a setup and it just felt very icky. And obviously we now know that it was in some way either opportunistically a setup or not because he used this to create campaign materials. He basically created an ad that

And for the family to say, well, we invited President Biden and Harris, maybe they did, but maybe they didn't. We have no way of confirming any of that kind of stuff. And he has used the death of these 13 troops who were killed in Afghanistan during the Abbey Gate, which is the very last minutes of the evacuation last August 26th.

so politically for so long. He's used it to say that Biden is inept, that Biden personally killed these people, like all this horrible stuff. And so he had already politicized the death of these 13. So now it's an election season. Now he's taking pictures. It's just there's a lot to it that's extremely icky.

And then on top of it, because he so desperately wants to use these people's political deaths, deaths politically in the way that he feels like he owns these 13 in some ways, he gets a near fistfight with the person who's trying to uphold the federal rules. Yeah, I mean, well, not him personally, but what happened is, so filming there was questionable, was not really supposed to happen in the first place. But when he went there,

reporting has since revealed that what the plan for that campaign was, was that they were going to claim that this was like a public ceremony and that Biden and Harris were purposely skipping out on it. So they're trying to take this footage so that they can then put that out there. But before they can spin that story,

Two of his campaign staffers got into a physical and verbal altercation with one of the female Army staff members of Arlington National Cemetery. They reportedly accused her of having a mental episode when she told them that it was illegal for them to be recording and for them to be taking photos. This gets out.

as the story gets out, and then the army releases a statement, which was a huge deal because it is really, really not common that they would get involved in something like this, especially given the politics of it. But they released a statement backing up their staff member's statement that there had been a physical altercation. They also add that she had declined to press charges because she was afraid of retaliation from the campaign. So that's

Kind of a soft consequence implication of this whole thing. But the fact is that that did happen. So that was confirmed to happen. It seems like it may be something of an open secret amongst the mainstream media who it was, who the two staff members from the Trump campaign that were that got into this altercation. But that hasn't yet been revealed.

Which if it was Harris, we would know right away. We would know right away. Yeah. They'd be like in the witness protection program. Yeah. The way they protect the Trump goons is next level insane. Even them refusing, the media refusing to publish the leaked emails of like the crimes or whatever recently because like, oh, well, they were leaked. Since when do you care about leaks? They do everything to protect him.

Following that visit, they do release a campaign video on his TikTok where he basically he blames the Biden administration for these people's deaths and says, like, no one died when I was in office. False. We'll get to the fact checking of all this in a second. But ultimately, the story here is that.

His campaign was engaging in illegal activity on hallowed ground, exploiting the tragic deaths of U.S. troops in order to create campaign material. It was foiled by his own staffers' altercation with the staff members of the cemetery. So,

That's what happened there. That's what happened there. Let's fact check it, Sammy. Are you ready for my fact checking? Because I'm so pissed about this. Yeah. So first of all, he tries to claim that he's like the one who cares the most about these 13 service members who were lost. President Biden is the one who recommended that they get the Congressional Medal of Honor, which Trump says is like not as good as the Presidential Medal of Freedom because the people who get the Congressional Medal of Honor

Get it for being dead or hurt. So that's number one. Number two, we know from General Kelly that Trump does not go to cemeteries, nor does he wish. And that's probably why he didn't go last year. And he never went to any of the memorials because he said he doesn't think it looks good for him to be standing in a cemetery or next to disabled veterans. He thinks it makes us look weak. That's a sickness. And that came from General Kelly, OK, who's a Republican and was his chief of staff.

We know that Donald Trump does not have any, has a strong distaste for people of any type of physical or mental disability. Or military. Or military. General Kelly is also the one who said that Trump said they're suckers and losers for being killed in battle. What's in it for them? Also, I want to remind people the Trump family has zero legacy of military service. Actually, Fred Trump's older brother is the only one.

Fred Trump's older brother's the only one. Yeah. But on Trump, Trump's dad, whatever, none of you got drafted during World War II. None of you went to Vietnam. Like all of these guys. The eldest Trump who came from Germany actually came here to dodge military service.

And he then couldn't go back because he had skipped out on service. Like y'all are sickos. And so one, that's crazy to me that your entire family for all of this time, going back to even Germany has been able to like dodge military service. And then you want to stand in Arlington section 60 and like try to make it about you. Captain Bonespur is over here. Captain Bonespur is over here. I know. Where's the media investigation into that? We find out like Tim Walls maybe once said, Oh,

I got a haircut. And they're like, no, you got your ears lowered. You're a liar. Like all the stupid shit they get Tim Walls on, but we don't get him on bone spurs. The problem here is Trump is the one who brought the photographers along. And it doesn't matter if the Gold Star family wanted a photo. They could have taken it on their phone. It is illegal to film in Section 60 without a permit. Will he be held accountable for breaking a federal law? No. And releasing it on his TikTok account.

And for him to say, you know, it is devastating that the 13 lost their lives in the final moments of this evacuation from Afghanistan. But

To put it all on Biden and say that he's the one who did this is to remove fault from Bush Jr., who got us into Iraq and Afghanistan in the first place. Obama, who didn't end the war in Afghanistan when we got bin Laden like he promised. Trump, who wanted to meet with the fucking Taliban at Camp David on 9-11, who is actually utterly unruly.

responsible for being the person who fucked us on Afghanistan because after he negotiated with terrorists, he negotiated with the actual Taliban, he reduced the number of troops that held Bagram Air Base, which is the root of why there wasn't enough forces in place for that deadline Trump set to pull out of Afghanistan. So they were way down on the number of troops that they had to

facilitate an organized evacuation. And because Trump had made a deal with the Taliban, how is this not disqualifying?

We were in a bad situation. Now, he originally told the Taliban in February that we would be out by May, which was not ever possible. Every single military scholar and person has said there was no way that we were out by May. Also, Bagram Air Base is super important for us, like keeping control on China and different stuff. We should have never given that up, and Biden didn't want to give it up, but Trump gave it up. So he tells the Taliban our plans –

in February. He's like, we're going to be out by May and here's how we're going to do it. Why would you tell the Taliban that? May 1st comes, Biden's like, we're not leaving, we're not ready. But by August 1st, the Taliban had like really made it an impossible situation where we had to evacuate under less than ideal circumstances. But this comes back to Trump and the, what did he call it? There's some stupid name he came up with for the deal that he made with the Taliban. But like, if you hear nothing else today, Trump made a deal with the Taliban. They're

13 people were killed as a result of that. Like the audacity to stand at the grave of Marine, smile, thumbs up, use that to try to get back in office. For what? So you can get back in office and more Marines can get killed around the world because you want to bow to dictators? What are you going to do next? What are you going to do when Putin calls and says, oh, we're having a hard time in Ukraine? You're going to send him soldiers? He will probably...

reveal some intelligence as that is what he was supposed to do.

1,700 active duty servicemen died by suicide on his watch. And every single year that he was president, 2017, 18, 19, and 20, every single year, 6,000 veterans died by suicide.

So he cannot say that no one died on his watch when his policies were directly responsible for 45 combat deaths. That's a period that was part of his bullshit with what he was doing with the Taliban. And to completely ignore veteran and active duty service member suicides, which is such an epidemic because of the just lack of quality of life that they have post-service, is egregious to me and sick. And then to use it to try and get elected is very ugly.

Yeah. I mean, the fact that so much is made out of active duty troops who are killed in battle, as it should be, but yet when you're no longer an active duty troop after you've given all that you have and survived that by chance, by luck, by strategy.

There's just total just just fuck off is essentially this to me is America's one of our biggest sins that we can do that, that that we can that you see veterans on the street. And well, we saw it's horrible.

And here's why we're seeing more veterans for Kamala stuff, because they get it and they understand it firsthand. When Obama did the Affordable Care Act, they also instituted this program called the Veterans Whole Health Program that started to treat veterans' root of despair, which is more than just giving them appointments to the VA or prosthetic limbs, which is important. But they started to deliver food to their home. That was one of the programs that I pioneered back when I was doing like

food stuff. And that made a huge difference. We started to get them set up with like stabilizing homes because once you have a home, then you can start to work on other stuff, community projects, making them community leaders so that they had a purpose. It's called like continue the mission. And all this stuff happened under Obama. Then we had Trump,

who completely gutted the VA and he's taking money that should have gone to the VA and he's giving it to private hospitals instead who like have no idea how to care for these people and they don't care. They're overburdened as it is, but they'll take that voucher check from the government. Then you get Biden back in. Now Biden's son, Beau,

Right.

A second Trump presidency says that your disability rating goes away. He doesn't think that disabled veterans should be getting lifetime benefits anymore. He's like, no, it's not like it was. You shouldn't get it anymore. He wants to see the end of the VAs, which, yeah, we all agree the VA sucks, but it sucks because it's underfunded, not because it's underfunded.

because it can't be good. And he's like, oh, we'll give you vouchers to go to what? The urgent care? Like that's going to help. It's not informed care. They don't know how to treat veterans. They don't understand the language that they speak. That's why they go to VA so that they can be in company with other people who had a similar experience. That's why there's like cancer hospitals. Because when you have cancer, you want to go somewhere where everybody else has cancer because they're specialists. When you're a veteran, you want to go somewhere where everybody's a veteran because they have specialists.

So a second Trump presidency would absolutely destroy not just the military, but the veteran services. And that is why we're seeing so much veterans for Kamala stuff going on. It just makes me absolutely sick the way that he tries to politicize the military and the way that he kind of brainwashes them into thinking that they would have some sort of like greater life with him. No, Trump wants to turn the military on civilians, which is against the constitutional oath that they take. Like the whole thing's a mess and they're just everybody's catching wise to it now. And I'm glad for that.

Yeah, it's really upsetting when they pick tiny little things that Kamala Harris will do. Like they'll say she didn't salute a Marine, but you see a video of her doing it.

Or they'll pick apart something very small, but then you have this very strategic plan by the Trump campaign and the force they put through. And then you had J.D. Vance, who basically, before she had even said anything about this Arlington incident, he...

kind of makes up a response that she had that she didn't have. And he's like, she can go to hell for something she didn't even say. He said that she condemned him. She condemned Trump visiting Arlington, which she never said. But that was before she actually did. Then she did. And Trump essentially sicks all these other veterans' families and families of Gold Star troops on her. And it's just wild to me how this could happen. Can you imagine your mourning the death of

brother or sister, right? Or your son or your daughter. And Donald Trump's campaign calls you without

all the fervor of the wannabe mafia that they are. And they're like, I really need you to write a letter to Kamala and tell her we were supposed to be there at Section 60 because we're getting in trouble. Like, what a selfish, sick bastard thing to do to, like, lean on these families to, like, come to your defense because it is the Trump campaign that's releasing these statements that they're like, we collected a statement from the family. It's not like the family's calling up the news and saying, hey, we want to set the record straight here. It's coming from the Trump campaign.

And he's just like a sick, scared little bastard. And this is just what he does. Trump loves to destabilize the world and not take blame for it. He loves authoritarians and terrorists. Recognizing the Taliban is why the pullout was so catastrophic and why those service members were killed, because nobody was recognizing the Taliban as the government.

of Afghanistan at that time. Afghanistan had a separate government. And then Trump started making deals with the Taliban and the Afghan government starts being seen as less legitimate by the rest of the world. And they're like, oh, I guess we have to deal with the Taliban. He stirred up shit when he moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and now looks what's happening in the Middle East there. And this is also why Venezuela is in the shit, because when Maduro illegally sees the government the first time, no one recognized him as the president until Trump did.

And then once America recognized Maduro as the president, even though he illegally became president, other countries had to as well because that's how they do trade and everybody follows America's lead. So he legitimizes dictators. And then the rest of the world is like, well, shit. All right. Well, I guess that's what we're doing if that's what America's doing.

Do you want to stay up to date on the news, but find it stressful, and also, you don't have any time? We got you. The Morning Announcement is a daily podcast from Betches Media that's here to help you make sense of the chaotic world and its nonstop headlines. I'm Sammy Sage, and I'll fill you in on the biggest news of each day, delivered to you in five minutes with some light, snarky commentary.

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And speaking of people who try to destabilize the world, we got an Elon Musk story. Oh, God. Elon Musk is feuding, for lack of a better word, with a Brazilian Supreme Court justice over Twitter, which has just been suspended in Brazil for all Brazilian users. As it should.

And that is one of the platform's biggest markets. So we have this man who was already deeply in the hole financially, is making a geopolitical stir because he wants to save his business. So here's what's happening. This has developed over the past

call it five, six months. But at its core, this is a feud over far-right accounts and their right to spread misinformation and disinformation that Elon Musk is waging in the name of, quote, free speech. But it's really about the financial success of his company due to the importance of Brazil as a user base for Twitter.

So here's the context. In April, Judge Alexander de Moraes, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, ordered that dozens of accounts be suspended from Twitter for allegedly spreading disinformation and placed Twitter under investigation for allowing those accounts to flourish against Brazilian laws.

It ultimately became a, quote, feud after Twitter refused to comply with the order to shut down the accounts. Because Twitter had pulled – I'm calling it Twitter, by the way. I don't fucking call it X. Like, bullshit. Just fuck off with that.

The company had pulled out of having a physical presence in the country as part of their cutting costs. If you remember, he like fired everyone. And this justice was essentially requiring that Twitter have a physical presence, like have a legal representative in Brazil so that they can engage in this investigation and answer requests about disinformation. As one expects,

to happen in like a country with the rule of law. Yeah, you should have a headquarters there. Yeah. Or just an office, a PO box. That's what I mean. If you, something, if you've got that many people there, you need to have a staff to be able to run it. Yeah, a WeWork. He really just, the judge is really just requiring that they have a legal representative in the country. They hire just a lawyer, a Brazilian lawyer. Yeah.

So he was given this deadline of last Thursday evening to appoint this representative and they missed the deadline on purpose. So this justice calls for the five member court to rule on suspending the app in the country. And that was controversial, even though it passed because.

You know, this is obviously a controversial move regardless of why Elon Musk is doing it. I, who sit on the side of worrying about a TikTok ban, also think it's controversial for them to ban Twitter in a country. It's not good to cut people off from a major communication platform. Exactly. Because even though a lot of the accounts that were originally flagged to be suspended were, you

you know, former fan, you know, former supporters of the far right wing president, Yair Bolsonaro, who wanted to fondly name Trump of the tropics, wanted to stay in power, got kicked out. Will obviously probably try to come back. Well, is that like DeSantis's mansion now, isn't he? Didn't he come stay with the governor of Florida for a while? He came to Florida. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. So he wanted those accounts were to be blocked while the company's under investigation. Although now I guess every account is blocked.

The justice has said that the platform will remain suspended until it complies with his orders by hiring a legal representative. Not that hard. No. And also sets a daily fine of what is the Brazilian equivalent of $8,900 a day for people who use VPNs to access the app. Oh.

So here's the thing. He could have just appointed the judge. He was already publicly going back and forth with this guy. The judge is writing in rulings and Elon Musk is tweeting. And he accused him of being a, quote, pseudo judge and a, quote, evil dictator cosplaying as a judge who was trying to destroy free speech and democracy for political purposes. Because obviously this is a liberal judge who is against the far right Bolsonaro accounts.

In his ruling, though, Justice Morais wrote, Elon Musk showed his total disrespect for Brazilian sovereignty and in particular for the judiciary, setting himself up as a true supranational entity and immune to the laws of each country. This also led to the freezing of bank accounts in Brazil for Starlink, which Elon owns. And then on the financial side, this is a huge problem for Twitter.

because this company has zero room to lose any money. And it all belongs to Elon Musk, and it's leveraged against Tesla stock. And the Wall Street Journal just reported two weeks ago that the loans that banks made to Elon Musk so that he could acquire Twitter are the worst loans they've made since the 2008 financial crisis. There's a whole team at Barclays of

top investment bankers in the merger and acquisitions team, last year they were told that their compensation was going to be cut by at least 40% to make up for the poor performance of Twitter.

and Elon Musk's inability to repay these loans, which he has not restructured or refinanced. The replacement for Twitter in Brazil appears to be Blue Sky. The app announced on Saturday that it had registered over half a million new Brazilian users over the previous two days. So that is what's happening there. We'll keep you posted. It's not a, you know, he could just hire the legal representative.

He won't. He doesn't know how to run a business. He's a truly unusual person. And I'm kind of glad that while we can't get this kind of justice in America, we're seeing it abroad because this reminds me of the CEO of Telegram that we've talked about who was charged in France for being complicit in his platform, you know, being involved in child trafficking and drugs and all kinds of terrible stuff. And, you know, these big billionaire guys want to say,

oh, well, we shouldn't be responsible for what our users do on our platform. And it's like, yeah, you are. You are. You are a little bit, at least. I mean, you are when organized crime is happening and being facilitated by your platform. And when you are not...

upholding the laws of the countries that you operate in. The country of France says you cannot use Telegram to sell children on the internet. Just as simple as that. And if you are, or you find out that it's happening, you need to report it to us. That's all he had to do. And who doesn't want to report terrible things happen to kids? Like it's weird what these people prioritize. Yeah. Well, Elon, I don't think it's a coincidence personally that Elon Musk is going to bat

on account of these far right wing accounts in support of Yair Bolsonaro, who's now in Florida, like these people are fellow travelers. And thankfully, there is a judge who can stand up for that and say, you have to actually respect the rule of law here. Maybe your country won't make you do it, but here you will.

We don't care if you're a private company. We don't care about Barclays and their loan, their balance sheet.

You have to just appoint this guy or gal to be the legal representative. And, you know, Brazil's down there looking over at Venezuela and the way that their shit has gone so crazy. And like, you know, they don't want that to go on. So I think that there is less of an appetite for this far right insanity across the world than there's ever been. And so hopefully we catch that here and shut it down. Because they will reap the consequences.

It's different than here. We've seen that what's happening in Venezuela. And speaking of Venezuela, I got so many DMs this weekend from people who were genuinely concerned that a gang of Venezuelans had seized apartment complexes in Aurora, Colorado, and were holding people captive and why Joe Biden wasn't sending in the National Guard to like free these seized buildings. OK, and I was like, that sounds wild.

And then I was like, where did you read that? Because I got so many DMs from it, from the dust bunnies. And I was able to track it down to, it was a New York Post article. Now, the headline says, Venezuelan gang seizes apartment building in Aurora, Colorado, will like the National Guard be sent in to help. But then the body of the article, of course, doesn't say any of that. It's all full of, speculatively, we think that, we thought that. Yeah.

Yeah, I went deep into this on TikTok, not just, I think there you can kind of parse through. Something has happened there. Definitely. For sure, something has happened in this cluster of two to three apartment buildings. Is it the picture that people have painted? Not quite. But you can literally look on TikTok at scenes from Aurora, Colorado and what people...

are showing this story to be? Allegedly what is happening in Aurora, Colorado. So let me give you the rundown of this.

All right. So the New York Post published this story about how a Venezuelan gang called Tren de Aragua had overtaken an apartment complex and was holding people hostage and doing all this bad stuff, which turns out is just not true. But God help you if you try to say that online, especially on TikTok, where people will send you video after video after video of all this horrible stuff that's happening. Here's what I want you to know. It's not happening. The apartments being targeted are all owned by the same out-of-state company – keep that in mind –

This same out-of-state company that owns these low-income apartments had long been trying to evict the low-rent tenants. They failed to evict these tenants because the city said there was, quote, no due cause. And then suddenly, gun-toting men show up in masks on security cameras. And now they are claiming that they have – now the company is claiming that they have the right to declare the apartments a criminal nuisance and clear them.

So the governor of Colorado at first said there's no proof that this gang exists in Aurora, nor that they seize these specific apartments, which, again, are all owned by the same out-of-state company. And again, this gang is the one that allegedly one of the members was the person who killed Lakin Riley, who the Republicans have politicized the death of heavily also.

So this is their new fate. They used to be M16 or M13 gang. And now it's this Venezuelan gang that's everywhere. And there are millions of people and they're all coming to get you. Now, in the last couple of hours, he's come out to say, of course, like there should be no violence in our cities. And like we're not because the right wing media all came after him when he was like, that's not happening. We're like, he's enabling gangs. And he was like, I'm not enabling gangs. And I stand against like any kind of seizure of an apartment building. Like that's certainly not an OK thing. And I'm not enabling gangs.

So here's where I'm like, this is fishy to me. I think that we'll learn more about the story over the next week. So remember, we're recording this Tuesday morning. So

The Republican mayor of Aurora, Colorado, is this guy Mike Kaufman. And Mike Kaufman speculates that the federal government probably worked with nonprofits to place migrants in these affected buildings, which then attracted the gang to exploit the migrants. Kaufman has spent the entirety of his 34-year career in some form of elected office. He was a state congressmember, state senator, secretary of state, and now he's a congressman. And then he was a congressman, and now he's a mayor.

Throughout his career, he has hated immigrants and migrants and been a megaphone for far right wing conspiracies. He called the DREAM Act a nightmare. He said Obama is an American. He said abortion should be outlawed with no exceptions. He introduced a bill every single year to defund Planned Parenthood and supported a whole other host of far right fuckery. So when he speculates that something's happening, I'm going to take his bias and his history into account.

Yes, it's definitely important to know who is painting this picture. Yeah.

He also was not a popular mayor. He got in to be the mayor, which was sort of like a little bit shady. And now he ran for reelection. And on his reelection, he published a 45-page rewrite of the city's charter that would change the role of mayor into a no-term king-like role, which when the people of Aurora, Colorado were like, get fucked with this, he was like, oh, no, no, no. I didn't write that. I didn't do that. I'm not calling for that. And people were like, you literally did.

You literally just did. You're trying to be like a mayor king here. He's not our dad ballot girly of the week. He is not. And he lies constantly about migrants. In 2023, he lied about migrant gangs, quote, taking over his streets.

And he claimed to have slept on the street undercover for a week where he was robbed, beaten, and saw homeless folks, quote, use their panhandle money for drugs. A reporter wanted to fact check him on this to be like, okay, well, if you spend a week on the streets, I will too, and we'll see what happens. So this reporter goes undercover, spends a week on the streets at the same encampment that this mayor allegedly spent a week at, which I highly doubt. And he goes to the

And this reporter found that people had organized group dinners and were pooling their resources, were responsible for sweeping the streets, and talked with this reporter about how they were just trying to get back on their feet and the difficulties of the price of rent being just 10 miles outside of Denver, Colorado, and how, like many of us, you're one paycheck away from something going bad, and if you don't have family to lean on,

Sometimes people are living in their cars and there's just difficult shit happens to people. And that's what this reporter found. And of course, none of the people at this encampment remembered anyone resembling the mayor ever being around. So this is not the first time that this mayor has tried to like...

use migrant gangs to get himself elected and fearmonger into being a mayor king. You know, maybe the migrant caravan has run its course. These gangs have taken over Aurora, has taken on a whole new life with MAGA immigrant-hating online people who begin their videos with, no one will talk about this. But anytime nobody is talking about this, you got to question if it's real, okay? You're not breaking stories on TikTok. I'm not breaking stories on TikTok.

there's investigations being done. And if you're not seeing it anywhere but Newsmax and the New York Post, it's likely that it may be not happening that way. Well, it was also on Fox News. And I watched, I will tell you, I watched a lot of videos on TikTok because there are just, you know, there's regular people who are like driving around Aurora and they're

And they're like, this is what's happening. And there are a lot of people who are saying it's so bad, but they're not showing what's so bad other than sort of this reel of footage on Fox News. That is a real footage from a security camera. But it's also of people like masked men walking through an apartment building holding a firearm. But they're not saying we are these Venezuelan gang members. And here's the thing. They could be.

But the way it's framed and how common it is, it's not really like that. So you see like, look, I don't want to invalidate the people who are saying this happened to me.

But I don't think that it's necessarily the thing that they are identifying it as or that it's as widespread as they're saying it is. Here's what I'm going to do. So I work with the Working Families Party here in New York, and they also have Working Families Party folks in Colorado. And I'm going to talk to the tenants rights organizers that have been fighting this specific rental company that's claiming that the Venezuelan gang took over only their apartments.

Right. This is not anywhere else. It is just one particular...

That they say they're going door to door and kicking people out and then collecting the rent. And that what they accused them of, this one particular city council member, accused them of basically ruling these apartments through intimidation and kicking the management out. And the tenants rights person that we're going to talk to is saying that is just fucking not happening. They're like, that's not happening. There's also footage of Aurora police.

outside the building saying, we have been speaking to all of the tenants and what is being described is not what is happening. But again, it's not that nothing is happening.

It's that. Yep. I just can't believe these stories from the right wing mayor and his goons about what's happening out there when the tenants rights person is saying, like, no, we've actually been fighting this apartment complex owner. And this is like very suspicious. Now they're trying to use gangs and fear mongering against migrants to try and kick people out of their apartments.

And so it's very fishy. It reeks of immigrant phobia and perhaps some forced gentrification. These apartments are, like I said, only 10 miles from Denver where the cost of housing is through the roof. And I'm sure where this company would love to be able to rent out their apartments for a higher price in the beginning, running it as low income housing. So we'll give you an update.

And we'll see what, you know, probably on social media once I talk to this tenants rights organizer, because this has been going on with this particular apartment building owner for a long time. And it's unusual to me that if the Venezuelan gangs are taking over Aurora, why they're only specifically targeting these two or three buildings that belong to this one out of state company. Right. That doesn't make sense. Well, we will get to the bottom of this best we can before we allow misinformation and disinformation to spread.

Like wildfire. That's what I'm saying. So this story to me is about as real as Elon Musk, the AI photo of Kamala Harris in a USSR uniform, about as real as Taylor Swift endorsing Trump. I just think these people, I worry that the imaginations of the Republicans and of the conservative right wing right now is so unchecked that they are just like leveling up and leveling up and making this story bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger all the time. And they never get checked on it. So it doesn't matter. It's the new migrant caravan.

Speaking of things that go wild on the internet, we've got a double America can't tonight, starting with the Chase Bank glitch that went viral, which is actually wire fraud. Did you see this hack last week, Sammy, about how to get rich quick? I didn't see the hack, but I did see the people who tried the hack and what happened to them. The hack, quote unquote hack.

This is not a hack. You will go to jail. So basically, and I don't know, maybe it started off as satire and some people took it for serious. I highly doubt that. This is crazy right now. But basically, there was an account that said if you write a check and deposit it to your bank using a Chase ATM, some of the money will become immediately available. So even if you don't have this money, if you write yourself a check for, say, $10,000, $200,000, whatever dollars, and you deposit it, and then you take out the max amount of

before the bank opens the next day to clear that check and then close your account, boom, you got rich because of a glitch at Chase Bank. Now, that is check kiting. That is wire fraud. That is a federal crime, a felony. It is grand theft. And like, I don't know if this is real. I mean, it seems like it's real. But a bunch of guys made TikToks showing their bank statements and talking about how they were being harassed by Chase Bank.

And that this check glitch doesn't actually work. Some of them are offering to give the money back to Chase, but the crime is already done. And for others, they had already spent the money. So they don't, you know, they can't get it back. Where does it go so fast to spend it on a credit card too? Return whatever you bought. I mean... Do you know what else is confusing to me about this? What ATM is letting people take out these sums?

Since when? That's where I was like, maybe it's not real. From where? I have great credit. I have great credit. I've worked very hard on it over the last couple of years because I had really bad. I don't think it has anything to do with your credit. I'm just saying, and I have Chase and the maximum amount of money I can take out in a day is $500. So I don't know how they were taking 10,000. That's where I'm like, I don't think you could do that. That's,

That's same. I also ever had to take out any amount of cash in the thousands. You have to go to a teller. So that's what's confusing to me about this. Also, what's confusing to me is like, even if this was a glitch, it was so obviously going to be corrected.

It's not like you found $10,000 on the street. Yeah. It's all. You're using your ATM. You're seeing the security footage. The camera comes on. It's going to show your face, your ATM card, which is connected to your phone number and your social security. And like that was your account. Yeah.

Which is why I can't either, I think. You signed your check to yourself. Didn't they say catch me if you can? Well, I'm going to tell you a little quick sidebar local story. There's a lady here in Rochester who just got arrested for kiting like $8 million between her various restaurants and special events businesses. I don't know how this happened, honestly, because $8 million to float around like that is crazy. Right.

But here's the thing. Once you have $8 million, just don't just be, have that and put it in a money market funds. Let it grow. I'm telling you, we're devastated here in Rochester because we love this lady. And so it's like difficult because Rochester is a city, but it's also a small town. So this woman-

owns all of these really great restaurants that are super dope. She's the best caterer in town. She does everybody's wedding and whatnot. And she had just bought this cursed restaurant on the water called the Crestview Inn that like nobody can open. And everybody was super excited for her new project. And now I'm like, don't send her to jail. Can't we just all kind of like pool our money and help her out? I mean, she's such a good lady. But she did check all this stuff. I mean, here's the thing. Well, it is a cursed restaurant.

Well, that's what I'm saying. Now people are like, oh my God, it's because she bought the crust for you. But I'm so bummed because I like really, this is for those, if you listen from Rochester, this lady owns like Monroe's restaurant and like the Winter Garden place downtown. They're going to get married. And she bought that restaurant out in Narondakoy. And I'm so bummed because it is one of these things where like, I can imagine that she was doing it because she's a good person and just was trying to move the money around to make it work because restaurants are tight. For $8 million? No, no.

No, sorry. Now she's going to jail. You know what you're doing. If you are able to make that much money, you know what you're doing. I know. I know. She's the best. So anyway, I hope she doesn't go to jail, but it looks like she might. Don't do that. Don't do crimes. Right. Speaking of financial crimes and fraud, back to Donald Trump, just to close it out. Just to close out this episode with one more American.

Users on the Internet have pointed out one little peculiarity about Donald Trump's campaign strategy. While the vice president and Governor Walz have been going on a swing through southern Georgia last week and then to the Rust Belt for Labor Day to hold events with unions, a number of people have noticed that Donald Trump has been doing a swing around America's sundown towns.

Now, this is not something that his campaign is stating outright. And of course, it would be intended as a dog whistle anyway, as many places in America have actively worked to overcome their reputations and histories as sundown towns. So what is a sundown town? You haven't heard of this. That is a name they've also been referred to as gray towns, as places throughout the country that are or were historically exclusively white by law or by norm, where Black people and individuals of other ethnicities were

were not permitted to reside or even pass through. And it was called a sundown town because it would be physically dangerous, deadly even, for Black people to be out in these towns in public after sunset.

And sometimes this was enforced by legal ordinance, even after the federal government made that illegal to discriminate. And other times it was just enforced through norms and vigilante justice. And that's what the, you know, the movie Green Book, Green Books would tell Black people where they could safely drive after sun, after dark to avoid being in a sundown town or having to get gas there or having to get food there or anything. And many of these towns, you know,

remain predominantly white today, or even if they're not, you know, maybe if they're not as dangerous, I would imagine this is where a lot of Donald Trump's fans are.

are going to hail from anyway. This is the thing. You don't need to rally to the fans. You rally to the fans. When you're setting up campaign advance, you're looking at where can we make a difference? Where can we catch a moderate? Where can we change minds? And where could we reinforce having our fans nearby? But one of the towns on here, and I know you're going to go through the whole list, but the first town that he visited is Howell, Michigan.

Howell, Michigan has a population of 10,000 people, predominantly white. Why would you hold a rally in a town that only has 10,000 people unless it was specifically because of this sort of secondary nefariousness? Well, I think it could be that. Yes, your point about you would go to a town where it would make a difference, but that is if your candidate is not obsessed with how many people show up to fill his venue.

So this could be a town of 10,000. I mean, how many people do you get? A thousand people to come to the rally to that? I mean, it's tough to say everybody would come like these are the could be the only places that people are reliably showing up. Maybe. Yeah. He also went to La Crosse, Wisconsin, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, York, Pennsylvania, Glendale, Arizona, which is kind of a bit of a Klan heavy spot. Puddle.

So is Howell, Michigan. Howell, Michigan has been run and pretty much owned by the KKK since the 20s. I mean, it's like the Grand Wizard lives there or whatever. So it's just, you know, they just, you may remember this town as the one who back in July had people marching through the streets saying Heil Hitler.

And White Lives Matter, they had a KKK rally July 21st of 2024. And then Donald Trump's rally was just one month later. So it's not like he didn't know. That was big national news. I mean, he knows.

That's why he's doing it. You know that you're going to a town like that. Yeah. Right. That's why I think this was noticeable to people. Also, legal analyst Joyce White Vance pointed out that in 2021, he went to Cullman, Alabama, which is quite out of the way. Not a competitive state. There were other places in Alabama he could go that would have made more sense. But Cullman is famous.

famously a sundown town. Obviously, this is not something that they're stating outwardly that they're doing. That's kind of the whole point. But to me, this sounds like exactly the kind of sick shit that Stephen Miller would come up with. And ugly. He's an ugly person on the inside and the outside. And he's

He's a creep. So here we are. Anyway, that's our episode for today. What an exciting one. Next week, we will be live in Philly covering the debate. So get ready for that. Hopefully next week's episode, we can talk a little bit about debate strategy, what we're expecting to see. Maybe have a little lighter episode. This is a heavy take. This episode was the epitome of American Fever Dream to me. It truly was. Just whack.

from every corner, totally outrageous, can't make it up, couldn't predict it, kind of could predict some of it. But like, if you were trying to come up with the craziest thing you could imagine.

We didn't even get into the fact that RFK Jr. is suing to get off the ballot in battleground states while the GOP is suing to get Cornel West on the ballot because they came to realize that RFK Jr. pulls votes from Trump and they want Cornel West to pull votes from Kamala because they know they can't beat her fair and square. So, I mean, there's just too much. This should tell everyone.

about these candidacies, which the most important thing to understand is that they exist as part of an electoral strategy and not as part of a cause to serve the American people and legitimately try to win. They are part of a separate manipulative strategy to make something else happen.

That is not above board. Just not great. And hopefully not going to happen here. But I see more Harris Wall support camo hats and even flags on some of the trucks out here in Rochester now that I'm feeling really, really positive about it. But again, we've got to keep our pedal to the metal. Well, until next time, I'm Thee Spear. I'm Sammy Sage. And this is American Fever Dream. Bye. Bye. American Fever Dream is produced and edited by Samantha Gatzik. Social media by Candice Monega and Bridget Schwartz.

Be sure to follow us on Instagram and TikTok at Betches News and follow me, Sammy Sage at Sammy and V at Under the Desk News. And of course, send us your emails to AmericanFeverDream at Betches.com.