Preachy Females In Democratic Politics
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Rise and shine, fever dreamers. Look alive. I'm V Spear. And I'm Sammy Sage. And this is American Fever Dream, a new podcast presented by Betches News. Where we explore the absurdities and the oddities of our uniquely American experience. Ooh, Sammy, do we have a new tagline?

You know, we do. We do. We are always iterating here at Betches News. And I think we, you know, we agreed. We chatted about it a little bit offline, off mic. And we agreed. We wanted a tagline that more clearly embodied the very specific brand of news that we are trying to cover here. You know, because we both report on a ton of news daily on our, you know, you on Under the Desk News, me on the Morning Announcements. And what we really, you

I think what we felt we were lacking was a show that really brings to light some of the news that's important but sort of lies outside of the biggest headlines and almost kind of like replace the things that local journalism should be, a more well-resourced media landscape would be chatting about or you'd have the option to hear about. And we both come really alive discussing these highly specific idiosyncrasies that

Define America's special flavor of fuckery. We are a big country and we have a lot of bizarre niches. So we want to bring you fever dreamers.

the United weirdos of America. Yes, exactly. And one thing that we promised you is we would read all your feedback as we're starting the show off and try to incorporate as much as possible. We heard that you wanted more news facts, more, uh, less personal stories. So we've got all of that going. Just bear with us as we continue to build out the show into something that's somewhere between American hysteria, Tammy Faye Baker and Mr. Rogers that will lie me and Sammy trying to navigate you through our crazy country.

We'll always have the stuff that's intriguing and arm you with accurate and inside knowledge so that you can feel safe even in harrowing times. We want to make sure that when you're in conversation, you know what's going on and you can help the rest of your friends know what's going on. And we'll be here every week to do just that.

So if you're enjoying the show, please be so kind as to leave us a rating and a review and let your friends know about the show. Share it in your story. This is the best way that we can beat what we're going to talk about today, which is kind of this media blitz against citizen journalism and sharing information. We can't beat them in...

We can't beat them on social media now. The only place that we could beat them is in podcast land. So this is the most important space that you can find me and Sammy and support us. And if you have any questions or comments, please leave it for us to make it even more streamlined for you to be able to reach us. You can email us at AFD at betches.com and we'll even, we'll read some listener questions and stuff on the air pretty soon. We want to, we want this to be a conversation. Yeah. I think we're open to seeing how we're going to use the emails. You know, maybe we'll be doing like mailbag, minibag,

Mini naps. Mini naps in the mailbag. Yeah. Thank you so much for all your feedback. We are going to continue to take it. So if you have any feedback, comments, questions, concerns, suggestions for guests or topics, praise perhaps, you can send them to

Even so, please feel free to DM either of us personally or to the Betches News account or now you can email afd at betches.com. And we are really excited to hear from you and make this a really communal show to, like we said, replace what we're losing in this fragmented media environment. I actually have some praise for you, Sammy, because I spent my weekend in your threads.

your threads account. This isn't in our outline, but I think it's important to give praise where praise is due. And you said what I think is one of the funniest things. We've got a lot of serious topics tonight.

But you said, what happened to people just having normal, lawful sex anymore? Everybody is in like sex trouble this week between P. Diddy getting raided and the Huberman stuff. And I just have to thank you for putting that note of clarity. What happened to normal, respectful, legal sex? Oh, thank you. I mean, I was like, what is she? Where is she going with this? No, I mean, this P. Diddy thing, we could...

you know, let's not speak too soon on it because we could really go somewhere with this. Oh, I know. But I think, yeah, I mean, there's so much space for lawful sex that, you know, to go outside of it, you really have to, you didn't go far. Yeah. And so we'll, we'll next week, once this has settled a little bit, we'll get into that later. But for today, temp check, it's time to check the temperature.

There was some really interesting new data just released by the organization Run for Something. Their founder, Amanda Littman, is a friend of the pod, and they support young progressives who are attempting to run for state and local offices nationwide. They'll teach you how to run, provide support and access to funding, stuff like that. Run for Something commissioned research from the market research firm SocialSphere, and they found...

It surprised me. It shouldn't have. They found that 61 percent of young Democrats who live in battleground states say they are more likely to turn out and vote if there is also a young progressive candidate running down ballot. This effect is more pronounced for voters of color, specifically that 50 percent of non-white voters under 30 say they are more likely to turn out to vote compared with 42 percent of white voters in the same age group.

Wow. You heard it here. We are in our down ballot eras. Yes. I mean, as it should be, because in reality, and I think this is the thing that was often missing from our civic educations or just general understandings as we were raised, particularly as millennials, is that state and local governments actually have so much more power to impact our lives for better and worse than us.

than big national actions. And basically, like most trad media is kind of run on stories of big national issues. And

In reality, like who we come to be and the privileges or lackings we come to have are so frequently about like our school district or you're like it could be as small as your neighborhood HOA. And that's what I think maybe like this is I think I hope this is kind of like, you know, the Titanic turning around us.

The people understanding the importance of local and state officials.

And so many folks who are older want to complain that young people don't vote. But this research really does show you vote for people who are like you. You vote for folks who you feel are in your peer group. And for so long now, boomers overall have dominated the political landscape. So when they were young, they were voting for boomers who were holding office. And now that they're older, they're still voting for boomers who are holding office. And Gen X pretty much got totally skipped. And now we're sort of like,

millennials pretty much got totally skipped. And now we're like, Gen Z will save us. And so we're seeing these younger and younger candidates, which is so important to realize that is exactly what builds enthusiasm for voting and for participating in civic engagement. Now run for something, analyze voter data from 2016 to 2020 and found that down ballot candidates actually contributed somewhere between a 0.4 and 2.3% bump for the top of the ticket, meaning the

somebody was showing up to vote for mayor and decided to vote for the president too. And especially in 2020, local candidates were the ones increasing the voter turnout overall. I mean, we weren't that excited about Joe Biden and Trump in 2020. We're not that excited about it now in 2024. That's where those local candidates, your friends and neighbors who are running for office, for school board, really make a difference. Yeah. I mean, 0.4% to 2.3% doesn't sound like a huge number, but in

are elections, which often can be decided by very, very, very small margins. That's a lot. And that across the country in waves can do a lot in the general election. And I mean, think about it. Are you more likely to vote if your friend's running for a thing? Or are you going to skip it that day? No, you're showing up. You're getting your I voted sticker and you are posting on your Instagram story about your friend voting.

your friend running or someone you know. It's exciting. But what I love about this study is that, you know, I said, you know, it's like the Titanic turning. These things tend to be a lagging indicator. And so that means that the people who need to hear it the most, the trad media, tend to hear it the last. Right, James Carville? Right.

Don't be a preachy female in Democratic politics, Sammy. Look, I should just put it on a shirt. We really should put it on a shirt. Should we put it on a shirt? I know we keep joking about putting it on a shirt, but...

I don't know. Let us know if you want us to put it on a shirt. Would you buy a preachy female in democratic politics t-shirt? Maybe we should make it like an award, like preachy female in democratic politics of a little trophy. Yes. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We'll make it a segment and a little trophy. Send it to people. Okay. Well, oh, maybe we will. Okay. Well, we'll workshop this. I like it. Preachy females in democratic politics club.

That can be a new office on K Street. How about that? But not in the money and politics way. Just in the grassroots with loud opinions kind of way. Anyway.

I really appreciate this because it does run so counter to conventional wisdom at a time when conventional wisdom is failing us so terribly. Because usually people think, oh, the highest profile candidates and the household names at the top of the ballot are the ones who build turnout. That's basically lands on us in a situation where the national races and the high profile state races, which are not actually the most electorally important races in many cases, end up getting the most attention, getting the most votes.

funding and they get these races are so expensive. That's a whole other conversation. And it basically reinforces the

perceived notion that I don't, you know, who knows if this is even correct, that you need these highly so-called electable celebrity candidates instead of just the most competent candidate who represents you and will advance the most people's interests and improve the most people's lives. So I'm just hoping that this underscores if there are any elderly people listening, maybe not elderly, I don't mean to insult you, but if you are listening and you have significant influence, how...

And you're seeing how younger people are the ones who have all the momentum, but it's the older people who are more isolated and tend to be more out of touch. They have all the money and the connections and the savvy about how to navigate the system. So we need mentorship and they could use our insights. So like, let's work together.

I agree. I think you said the magic word there, and that's mentorship. We have been waiting for the older generation to pass the baton to us, not to get out of the way, not to be thrown to the wayside, but to pass the baton to us so we have the safety net of prior generations as inevitably new people make mistakes.

I mean, how great would it be if Nancy Pelosi had allowed somebody younger to run for her seat while she was still around and active enough to give them those inside tips to help them be a winner? That's the kind of stuff that we're looking for and that we're hoping for from the older generation and that we need. That's just what we need. And in my humble opinion, when you don't do that kind of thing, this is how you get NBC News making the extremely ill-advised decision to hire Rona McDaniel as an on-air commentator for $300,000 a year.

I mean, what could we do with $300,000 a year? So they literally did this just days after she was essentially strong-armed out of her role leading the Republican National Committee by Donald Trump. And she was only kicked out of the RNC because she was marginally less intense of an election denier than the rest of her party. But this woman spent the last, I don't know, eight years, I guess it must be now,

perpetuating Donald Trump, Trumpism, election denialism, and being a mouthpiece for things that she now claims she was just saying because she had to. Well, I don't want that kind of... NBC is very close to my heart. I've done work with them. I care about them. We love NBC and MSNBC. Incredible programming. We met on an NBC executive retreat, the two of us. We did. We did. That's how this...

Came to be. Because they bring together the best of the best. And I just, my heart is broken over this decision. And I know many of the other journalists at NBC felt the same because we're all in community with each other. And now I feel like I don't trust her and I don't trust having conversations there, you know? Especially because, I mean, they say she's not going to be on MSNBC, but that's like hardly the point. Like someone made this decision and-

I don't know, do they ask anyone? It just seems so ill-advised. She basically continued to push election denialism or at least justify her decision to participate in it on her first day, despite the fact, on Meet the Press on a Sunday with Kristen Welker, despite the fact that Kristen Welker was giving her every out to sort of be like, I was wrong, sorry about that. Or I don't know. We have a clip of it. Let's play it.

And you yourself called the election rigged multiple times. Did you enable Donald Trump to spread election lies? Let's go back to time. Initially, initially in November of 2020, there were concerns everywhere. Imagine you saw videos being put out, all types of things. You have to track that down. So where I was in 2020 and the quotes that are being taken from a very

long time ago, three and a half years ago to where I am today, you've got to allow the process to play out. And I think it is fair to say there were concerns then, but no,

I Biden is the president and we need to move forward. And this is important for our country. And I think what people struggle with is by the time January 6th happened, all of those court cases, more than 60 court cases had already been litigated. Donald Trump had lost. The Supreme Court said they're not going to take up concerns as the head of the RNC. Did you not have a responsibility to say Joe Biden won?

I've said that. At the time, before January 6th. Before January 6th, and you're still saying that there were concerns this morning. Saying there's concerns about the election doesn't mean he didn't win. And that's the only thing I'm going to say.

It is unbelievable that they would choose to put her on air. I mean, good for the anchors at NBC and MSNBC who have been speaking up against the decision to hire her. MSNBC says that they have no plans to put Rona on the air anymore, but many anchors spoke out about it on their shows. Rachel Maddow, Nicole Wallace, Joy Reid, Jen Psaki, Joe and Mika, even Chuck Todd, even Chuck Todd grew a pair and said something about this.

And it's because it's a bad decision. I know that it's always about growing the audience, but we are not going to get the Fox News viewers. We're just not going to. Yeah. I mean, just back to what you were saying, like the lack of succession planning by that generation is astounding. Also, I do want to shout out our friend Marissa Cabus. She's another friend of the pod and of mine. She's a freelancer for MSNBC. She's been on the air several times. And

Right when they announced Ronna's hiring, she posted it on threads, probably other places on her sub stack, and it went fairly viral. She had written a letter to the executives at NBC. I'm not sure exactly who she addressed it to, but basically calling them out for choosing to hire an election denier for this amount of money.

And I just want to call out Marissa. She does incredible independent journalism on her sub stack. It's called The Handbasket. Also, Margaret Atwood is a paid subscriber. So it's fucking good. Got to give her props here and support independent journalism. She uncovered so much about George Santos. She did incredible work on Benedict, which I believe there have been some

updates on. And we very clearly need independent journalism so badly while our favorite network is choosing to platform an election denier. So it's tough. It is. And not just an election denier, a woman who...

won't take responsibility for her words either. How are we supposed to trust you? $300,000 is quite a bit of money and it's not just the money you make for being on air. It's all of the doors that opens to you. And to me, there was a better choice. I mean, Rona McDaniel's name is Rona Romney McDaniel and Trump was so touchy about her name that she had to drop Romney when he got elected. So like, this is a person without a spine. This is a person that I don't trust. And even if she's not going to be on air, I don't want her in the room with the people that we do trust.

trying to make them compromise on exceptional independent journalism. It's also like you were saying about political dynasties yesterday, how you just will not vote for one. I won't. And it's like, there's only so many spots on...

on that audience. And like, to be fair, you can get a bigger audience on TikTok, but you cannot get the institutional cred of a big three network. And there are so many incredible people. Why her? And it's not, again, this is not against being anti-Republicans. They're actually really very, very intelligent Republican and right-leaning people who go on NBC and MSNBC, despite the fact that people think it's like all a liberal shilling factory. They're

Nicole Wallace ran comms for John McCain's campaign. Michael Steele is used to be the RNC chair too. And he's on the air all the time. Like Joe Scarborough is whatever. He's kind of a, he's basically a Republican. It's,

This is not a network that refuses to platform Republicans. This is a different situation. So, I mean, there's so much to unpack here. And I think it's actually the perfect segue to a major theme that we wanted to tackle today, which is that feels like there's been something of a total meltdown, you could say, or at least a massive reorganizing or disorganizing of the media landscape and the way we've all been consuming information.

It is now time to get into our main news segment. Our theme today is chaos in the information ecosystem because it feels like one of those collapsing dreamscapes right now with everything that's been going on. I mean, it already felt like we were on different pages about everything from which stories are important to the specific facts about those stories. And that's been going on for quite a long time now, not agreeing on what stories are important.

But it's really reached a breaking point lately. Axios' founders released a column yesterday where they described 12 distinct splintering realities within media, where people are essentially stratified by platform and generation and are living in entirely different information environments. Look, we don't just mention this article because we were mentioned in it, which is very exciting. But these trends of how people are consuming media, they're indicative of a massive new distinction between

In the way that information is shared and people are speaking to each other that will affect the 2024 election and an entirely new way. And to be honest, this is shows the importance of like real life conversations, but.

I don't know. There's a lot to unpack here. There is. And a little bit later in this episode, we're going to talk about RFK Jr.'s campaign because he is leveraging social media in a way to kind of like usurp the trad media lens that's been on him. And he has curated an entirely separate set of facts and realities on TikTok and people are going for it. Before we talk about RFK, which...

I was up to like two in the morning writing this. I'm very proud of it. So I hope you all like it. We are midnight writers. We are midnight writers. There are so many other factors that are playing out right now, aside from the three major news networks putting an election denier on the payroll. Outside of that, we're seeing that Meta has officially changed its settings to limit political posts, which they define as posts about laws, elections or social topics.

social topics like what? Like being gay, being a woman, that social topics is everything. And, you know, although it's social media, I'm not sure how you limit social topics and then your social media. People were pissed about it and they didn't notify users that they had actually changed everyone's settings to default to limit political content for me. You see, I mean, tell folks how they can switch this back. Yeah. So just

There are diagrams of this on Instagram. You can find them very easily, but it's easy to change it back. You just go to settings, settings and privacy, content preferences, political content, and then change your settings from a limit to don't limit. It's fairly easy once you get there, but you should also tell other people to do it. And realize this isn't just like, oh, your election, register to vote. It's not people yelling at you to vote. It's not like this. It's any sort of

personal issue. It's maternity leave. It's miscarriage care. It's all sorts of parenting information. Like this takes you into a very vague space that is quite dangerous.

And in addition to that, last year, Facebook had already demonetized Reels. And now they've demonetized Facebook accounts like the David Pakman Show that gives incredible information, like my show. I can't make money on Facebook from views. So I still post everything there. But that's where we say that supporting the podcast is the number one thing you can do for us. It's the only place.

that we can continue to fund this kind of work. And then there's my personal baby TikTok. Now the legislation to ban the app has not moved forward yet because the Senate is out until April 8th. But when they get back, I mean, it looks like they're on a fast track to try and pass that. So we have to keep fighting that. And,

It's not just us fighting it. It's our old pal, Jeff. Yes. Who has the richest man in Philadelphia who has popped up in yet another social media context. You know that he is a big funder at a bite dance and Tik TOK, but he is now also a big funder of truth social.

I definitely did not have this particular situation on my predictions list for this year. So Jeff Yass comes into this because Trump wants to IPO Truth Social through

merger with a SPAC, which is called a Special Purpose Acquisition Company, which is essentially a shell company that raises the money for the IPO. The largest institutional investor in this IPO is none other than Susquehanna International Group, which was founded by Jeff Yass.

And basically what's happening is now Trump shares worth at IPO is worth like $3.3 billion. So he now has the money. However, he also yesterday got his, the need for his, his bond number reduced to 175 million and he has now been granted a 10 day extension to come up with it. So that problem has been somewhat eradicated to some extent, but yeah,

This is like a crazy thing. So now Jeff Yass is also funding Truth Social and it could like become a meme stock. I can't. Who else? Who else is on the board of this company that that made this IPO? Like who who's behind the scenes doing this?

So the board is going to be Don Jr., former Congressman Devin Nunes, who, if you remember, he was the one who brought documents about the Mueller investigation to Donald Trump in advance in 2017, 2018. I'll never forget it. Kash Patel, who was a heavy part of the insurrection and the DOJ under Trump's administration. And Linda McMahon, the foremost CEO...

Like an old friend of Trump. Every time...

I hear McMahon. I think of how Hulk Hogan bullied Jesse the Body Ventura out of unionizing the WWE. And that came under the threat of Vince McMahon's wrath, who is now like, we could do a whole episode on what a nightmare that guy is. And then after the McMahons and Trump have been friends for a long time because Linda went on to be the very anti-labor secretary of labor under Trump. Talk about a fever dream.

These people, they are their own little cute family down at Mar-a-Lago. I guess so. Oh my God, birds of a feather. Which he claimed earlier this week on the newly public Truth Social. He claimed Mar-a-Lago is worth $2 billion. No.

I wish for his delusion. Same. I mean, now Jeff Yass is part of this wild group of people. And I can't believe just a few months ago we were unaware of him. And now he has his hands in every pot.

He does. I mean, he's wild. He came on the scene as the billionaire savior of TikTok because, again, he happens to own like a healthy percentage of its parent company by a dance. But now he has his hand in a lot more pots. His company, Susquehanna International Group, is a global firm worth billions of dollars and essentially acts as a middleman in the markets for buying and selling stocks and securities, specializing in short-term.

term trading. I can hear the Wolf of Wall Street boys just rushing to this segment. If you've ever bought stock on like a Robin Hood or an E-Trade, it's likely that you've used Susquehanna services. And Yas is also one of the largest donors to the 2024 election so far, having made over $46 million in donations to conservative leading PACs and other groups. So like any good billionaire, he has heavily availed himself of the American tax system to his benefit. And

And according to an analysis of IRS data by ProPublica, Yass has racked up at least $1 billion in tax savings over just the past six years and has been audited numerous times. But he just skirts around paying the average tax rate of just 19%. I mean, when you've got that much more money and that many lawyers, as Trump is proving to us, there are two different systems of justice.

Yeah, I mean, if he's saved $1 billion in taxes, then I know someone who has a $175 million bond that's due in 10 days that he should be able to...

He should be able to cover. I'm kind of surprised that none of the billionaires have come to Trump's rescue here. And then I thought maybe the Heritage Foundation was going to martyr him because, you know, if they did seize his properties, of course, they'd make a martyr out of him. So it's just so there's no win here. It's so it's so disappointing. It's interesting. Maybe they just can't figure out the right way to do it. Maybe they would get they would get taxed too much on the gift or something. I don't know. Maybe the wealth that's built through the tax code, though.

And by maneuvering it is a whale of a conversation that we have to have one day. But Jeff Yas, though, is as hyper capitalist as they come, but with a tinge of the prosperity gospel, which is, I think, kind of important to understand about him and how he plays into all of this. Because in that ProPublica reporting, they also quoted him as saying that making new markets is a mission from God.

And I just like want to roll my eyes so hard. But then I'm like, that's also deeply revealing. Donald Trump is a hardcore believer in the prosperity gospel, if you could call him a believer in anything. But I don't know. That's also a rabbit hole we should go down. There's never ending topics, never ending topics.

Yeah, and especially because when you get on the sort of topic of religious dogma, one place I did not expect Jeff Yass to show up was as a major donor to a conservative think tank that played a major role in designing and lobbying for the judicial overhaul in Israel, which before this was even just an absolute mess that is now clearly taking a backseat to everything else going on there. But

Sure, this guy's Jewish, but I would just love to know what business he has with Israel's already very precarious judiciary branch. Wait till the leftists on TikTok find out about this.

It's like Sophie's Choice. I love Jeff Yass for saving TikTok. I hate him for all the nefarious things he's doing. And it's like, how could one man find so much time in a day? We joke that like Beyonce has the same 24 hours we do. No, no, no. Jeff Yass has the same 24 hours we do. And he is a menace. What a menace. Well, you can tell the leftists on TikTok. You tell them what's going on. I'm going to. We're going to clip this. On to our next segment, Coming In Hot.

Now, we had a lot of questions about RFK Jr. And I spent an enormous amount of time combing through this man's life to try and bring you straight facts on what we know about him as a presidential candidate. And I am treating him as a serious candidate for the purposes of building out this outline. Because I think if we just dismiss him off the top, then we do ourself a disservice. So, you know, I'm not going to be able to answer that question.

This is a little bit of a long segment, but I promise you it will make sense. It's really important that I think people fully understand him because otherwise I think they're really just looking at sort of this flat caricature. Maybe they know two to three bullet points about him, but that is not the amount of vetting that we should have about a person like this.

Who has such a clear public history. Well, and the Kennedy name immediately endears you to him because all of the history has been written to be so favorable and tragic and interesting in the classic American family. Well, here, let's get into RFK Jr. as an individual separate from the family legacy. Yeah.

RFK Jr. is a 70-year-old white man. He's a Capricorn, an Earth sign, and his love language is words of affirmation and gifts. These are all true facts that I was able to find out about him, okay? This is not me being silly. Oh, he actually has said that? Yes. I agree. My love language is also affirmation and gifts. It's important to know people's love languages and their zodiac. When he was nine, his uncle JFK was assassinated, and when he was 14, his father was assassinated while running for president.

He is the third of 11 total children, and he himself has seven children and has been married three total times, most recently wed to Cheryl Hines, the actress from Curb Your Enthusiasm. Love her. That's probably one of the bullet points people will know about him. And it makes him very likable because she's so likable. It's a fun fact. It's the epitome of a fun fact. It is.

So looking at his early life, I looked into the schools that he attended. He went to three different boarding schools. He was kicked out of two for drug use, arrested and served 13 months probation for marijuana possession. And then after that, got into Harvard because obviously he did. I mean, the school at Harvard is literally named like the Kennedy School of Business, right? And RFK is a nepo baby after all. Let's not forget that.

Right. It's like a courtesy admission. Courtesy admission, legacy admission. He did a couple of years there. Then he went to the London School of Economics, the University of Virginia and Pace University. Pace University is where he is. Most of his early work takes place. And Pace is a great school in New York. Rachel Ray went there for cooking, but also Alan Weisselberg, Trump's former accountant, who I suppose maybe also learned a little bit about cooking.

But I digress. He did. Yes. So after college, I wanted to see what his work history was, what his qualifications were. And because I just cannot do another charismatic charlatan. So in 1982, he.

He was hired to be the assistant district attorney in New York City. Impressive, but he served less than one year. He was sworn into the job, but then he failed the bar, so he didn't actually qualify to do the job. And the very next year, he was arrested on heroin possession. He gets two years probation. As part of that probation, he is forced to do community service at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is where he starts to get into environmental stuff.

And he cleans up his act and he passes the bar in 1985. He then goes to work with a group called the River Keepers, which is an organization who works to protect the Hudson River. And he is a senior attorney there. Great.

And I got to say, the drug stuff doesn't bother me. I think people make mistakes when they're young, shouldn't be held against them. You learn hard lessons, you know, different ways. So all that aside now. Yeah, no. Childhood, I think, can be sort of not, you know, depending on what you do after your long-term track record. Right.

That's irrelevant to right now, even. Yeah. I mean, the man's father was shot when he was 14. Like, it is what it is, you know? Yeah. One of 11 in the Kennedy family. Not really famous for its function. Yeah. Yeah.

So then after this stint with the Riverkeepers, he becomes an adjunct professor of environmental law at Pace University, where he founds Pace's Environmental Litigation Clinic, which to this day is iconic. It is an empire institution.

The legacy of this is outstanding in terms of holding people accountable. He founds the Water Keepers Alliance. And at this point in his life, he is absolutely crushing it. He's an environmental lawyer. He's racking up win after win, suing polluters all the way up to ExxonMobil. He even sues the United States military for pollution. He got special permission from the state of New York for law students at Pace under his care to be able to try environmental cases, which just maxed out his impact.

And during this time, he represents the NAACP about unfair pollution of Black neighborhoods. He teams up with indigenous water protectors to fight water polluters. Truly, I cannot say enough good about this man in the 90s when it comes to environmental protection. An epic legacy. Yeah, he really did some good stuff in his early career. Well, if you don't count the two rides on Epstein's plane and the dinners he's photographed with Epstein at in the 90s, the 90s were pretty good for him.

Oh, my gosh. How many dinners? Several. Were they sitting next to each other? Yes. It's quite a few. Now, the thing is, he admitted to this with the most recent Epstein doc drop. He admits that he spent time with Epstein, but he actually blames his ex-wife, Mary, for why he was on the airplane. But we will never know if...

his relationship with Epstein was his own or if it had to do with Mary, because in 2012, after a few drug arrests of her own and RFK filing for divorce, and after she read his personal journal where he detailed that he had affairs with 37 women,

she unfortunately took her own life by hanging. And they had four small children. And then he blamed her for his presence on Epstein's friend list. Yeah, I'm sure Jeffrey Epstein was just dying to hang out with his wife, Mary, who he cheated on at least 37 times. So yeah, so he's an asshole who talks shit about his wife.

Yeah, his deceased wife. The mother of four of his children. I mean, devastating. This is not cool. Don't like. So I don't know if this...

Of all the things that he's gone through as a Kennedy and the legacy of trauma in this family, I don't know if this particular event messed him up. At the same time, his niece also took her own life and she is buried next to Mary in the family plot. But in my studying of him, it is shortly after these tragic events that RFK Jr. starts to veer into what will become a new legacy of championing the anti-vaccination movement.

This is also when his voice stopped working properly and he was diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia.

Now, I'm not diagnosing him. I am empathizing with him as a person who has also gone through excessive trauma. When grief hits you, when trauma hits you, it can change your brain and severe stress can trigger an autoimmune disorder. It's also reasonable to believe that all of this tragedy may have had an impact on his worldview and his foundational mental health and his ability to reason. I'm with you on all of that. It's

It just sucks when someone like that has a lot of power and influence and money and TikTok followers. Yes. Yes. So like for me, when trauma struck me, I became a better person. For other people, maybe they become anti-vaxxers. I don't know. Look, it's like that's why circumstances are so important, which is why having a pro-social environment for people to fall into. Yeah.

as a safety net is so important. Because you're looking for camaraderie, you're looking for comfort. And if you have power and you feel powerless, then you're going to use that power maybe in not such great ways. And then also, if you have an information environment that's right for people to grab onto things that can be harmful, you're then basically planting the seeds of what we have now. Yeah. Yeah.

So in 2016, he became the chairman and founder of the Children's Health Defense, an anti-vaccine advocacy group. They allege that vaccines, but also fluoride in the water and pesticides, cause autism, ADHD, food allergies, and cancer in children. Now, his own son has a severe peanut allergy that he blames on vaccines and pollution in the water. So, you know, hopefully he gets his son help for that. But in 2017, he met with Trump...

which is where he claims Trump agreed to create a government department that would fund research to study the risks associated with vaccines. Now, that never happened, but this man presents himself as an independent and as a leftist. And as you're going to see here, he is deeply embedded with the far right and in particular with Trump.

Pay attention here. These are the problems. We just gave him his flowers for our climate, which is still falling apart. Well-deserved for the things he did, sure. People contain multitudes. They do. So after this meeting with Trump,

This is when Kennedy's family turns on him publicly, as we've seen. I mean, just recently, Kennedy's family took a picture with Biden for St. Patrick's Day. But this point in 2017 is when the family turns on him publicly, claiming in a Politico op-ed, quote, RFK Jr. is our brother and our uncle. He's tragically wrong about vaccines. We love Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but he is a part of a misinformation campaign that is having a heartbreaking and deadly consequences.

So, I mean, that to me speaks compassionately to someone you love doing something that you don't agree with. But, you know, you're still hopeful that you're going to get it back. Yeah, they should make you know how he did the Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy commercial. They were pissed about that. They were pissed about it. But the Kennedys should do an equally large commercial about how they don't support this campaign. Yeah. Yeah.

So Kennedy's turn on him. He gets banned from meta platforms in 2021 for being the tip of the spear on the anti-COVID vaccination and anti-measles vaccination movement. And in 2022 hosts an anti-vax rally in D.C. comparing the compulsory COVID vaccine mandates to Nazi stuff. Ironically, this rally is attended by and supported by the neo-Nazi fascist group, the Proud Boys. So it's like a

M.C. Escher's Nazi swastika.

The company that you keep matters. You know, these are the people who support him. In January 2023, his organization, the Children's Health Defense, filed a lawsuit alleging media and social media companies marking anti-vax ads and propaganda as disinformation was a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. And that case will be heard later this year by our old pal, the ultra conservative abortion hating Matthew Kazmarek down in Texas.

Yeah, I think that he is one of the great dangers to our nation. We should keep calling that out. That gives you the rundown kind of up to this point. So

I also want to point out the group that he chairs and founded, this Children Health Defense, they are incredibly litigious. So for our legal purposes, we're going to end our talk about them there. He also has ended our ability to talk about them there because he suspended his daily activity with the group since April 2023, just about a year ago when he filed and announced he'd be running for president. Wow. So here we are. Here we are. Why does he think he should be the president?

Well, he's never held political office. This was the first question I had. Has he been elected ever to anything? And RFK Jr. has never held political office. He did brag that he turned down being assigned to take over Hillary Clinton's Senate seat when she went off to be Obama's secretary of state. It is unclear if that is true, but he does claim that at cocktail parties and on podcasts.

Well, he didn't do it anyway. No, he didn't. So still didn't do it. Someone could have like said it as a gesture. Oh, you'd be great. You're a Kennedy. Maybe they wanted a part on Curb. Like...

Yeah, it was Larry David that said it, to be kind. So anyway, let's get into what this man stands for in his platform. His platform leans heavily on his early career as an environmental lawyer. And they tried to play him as a younger, more virile man. And they even show on his social media the time he did the shirtless push-up contest on the beach. The man is 70 years old. He is not that much younger than Trump or Biden. And

The way that they are really using his early career, his pre-2012 career to get the youth is, I think, something that I want you guys to just do what you want. It's your body, your vote. It's your body, your vote. But make sure that you're putting things in proper context and understanding timelines. Donald Trump was the apprentice host before, so people can change and evolve in how dangerous they are.

They are. He was also the commencement speaker at my college undergraduate graduation. Shut up. You know who mine was? Rudy Giuliani. Oh, my God. The worst. Why? The networks. Well, at the time, it was like 2011. It was hot stuff. He was not a bad speaker considered. Mine was. He told us if you see a wall, just walk right through it.

He should take that advice.

and has been very vocal about that, but he does not believe that the man convicted of killing his father is true and also thinks the CIA just killed him. He believes that gender dysphoria in children is due to pollutants in the water and cited a study that claimed pollution chemically castrated and feminized frogs. He hangs with Jordan Peterson,

the far right Canadian psychologist. Cool fact, fun fact again, he's a master falconer, like the bird, like he trains falcons. Well, he should take that up professionally and get out. Go enjoy your life. You're a millionaire and a Kennedy. Go be a falconer. And he also whitewater rafts. And his oldest son, Bobby III, is married to a CIA agent, which has to be awkward at Thanksgiving, who is now the campaign manager for RFK. So maybe it's less awkward? I don't know.

Imagine your father-in-law thinks the CIA killed all of his family. And then also you're a former CIA agent married to his first son. And you're just like all sitting there. Maybe that's why he thinks it. It could be. Well, he loves her. So now that we know the things that he has perpetuated on the podcast lately...

I want to talk to you about who is on his staff because who runs for president is not just them, the person, it's who's in their cabinet, who's on their staff.

So right now we know of three people, three key players. Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, the daughter-in-law, is the campaign manager. She is famous for hosting a Netflix show about drugs. Her stepdad was Wes Anderson's producer. She comes from big Hollywood money. And in the CIA, she claims that she posed as an art dealer and she was responsible for stopping the sale of, quote, weapons of mass destruction, which we know don't exist. So I'm not sure that's a real job.

What I'm guessing is that what she means, if this is true, is that she poses an art dealer because people launder money through art to buy weapons. Maybe that's what she means. But either way, you're not supposed to fucking talk about it. And then she met her husband, Bobby Kennedy III at Burning Man, which will become very relevant later. These people love Burning Man. They're burners, big time burners. Okay. Okay.

So the next person in the RFK camp is Del Bigtree, who's the campaign communications director. He was a field producer for Dr. Phil, and he produced 30 episodes of The Doctors, also known for misinformation. Del founded the anti-vax organization called Informed Consent Action Network and was a speaker on January 6th that the pro-Trump Stop the Steal rally. Oh, that's bad.

So he's really he is really embedded in them. He's a he's a spoiler. I think it's getting fairer and fairer to say. I think it's definitely fair to say that he has a close friends alignment with Trump. Yeah. And his people. And then fellow travelers. Yes. About to be announced today. The worst kept secret in politics, who he's picking for his vice president. This woman, Nicole Shanahan.

Nicole is a Chinese American lawyer and millennial. She's a billionaire question mark. I couldn't exactly get her net worth, but I think she is a billionaire. She grew up in Oakland, California, claims to have had a hard childhood with a schizophrenic father and a mother who worked as a maid before becoming an accountant. Her father died in 2014. She was right. She has been right. She has been thrice wed and all two tech bros that she has met at festivals.

She allegedly had an affair with Elon Musk that led to her divorce from her second husband, Google's co-founder, Sergey Brin, who she shares a daughter with named Echo. Love that for her. And she got a billion dollars of Sergey's $95 billion wealth when they got divorced.

She recently had a, quote, love ceremony, a hand-fasting commitment event with a Bitcoin guy that she met at Burning Man. Now, she met Sergey Brin at a yoga festival, and she met her first husband also at a yoga festival. So you could say she has a type and a pattern. I mean, ladies, go to Burning Man and find a billionaire husband. We started this podcast saying we wanted younger people in politics. Yes.

We have them. We just not every young person in politics. Well, here's the thing. I like this gal. I'm going to tell you a couple more things about her. She both she both titillates and terrifies me, if you will. I don't like that. I know. She is the CEO of Blitz.

I think it's pronounced Baya Echo Foundation, which is one of several groups that provided funding to the White House Task Force on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health. This outstanding work that she's done there. She also helped launch the Center for Female Reproductive Longevity, which seeks to prevent or delay ovarian aging to extend your birthing years, which originally sounded great to me until I started to get scared about all the right-wing stuff where they're like,

trying to like make women baby factories. And I was like, man, menopause can't even stop you. If your birthing years go into your 60s now instead of into like your 40s, you know, I was like, oh, that could be that could be maligned. Can we just leave it as it is where it's your choice? It's if we had choice, I would love this because I think what a wonderful thing. And I do believe she has good intentions with it.

She previously supported Pete Buttigieg and Marianne Williamson. She gave $25,000 to Biden in 2020, but she gave $4 million to RFK Jr.'s PAC for that Super Bowl ad. So what is this? What is this about? Does he want someone who has money who can help support the campaign?

Now, RFK has no problem getting money. I mean, he's extremely well-connected in Hollywood and politics and legacy family money, all that stuff. Politico actually did an analysis of the available donor data. More than 500 of Kennedy's biggest donors gave to Trump in 2020. More than 160 of Kennedy's donors have also given to biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. So you see where we are. There's a lot of company here.

More than 60% of his large dollar donors have no donation history on either ActBlue or WinRed, which are the two parties' primary donation platforms. I thought that was very interesting that millionaires who don't typically donate to politics are interested in him, thinking this is Hollywood money perhaps.

And then 20% of Kennedy's newly acquired donors were from California, including several dozen who listed their occupation as actor or producer. Weird. Okay. Yeah. But he's married to Cheryl Hines and he's a Kennedy and he's got access to these people. True. And you don't know how much it was. No, we don't know how much from each, but he's raised, I mean, $40 million or something crazy. Yeah.

Now, the biggest donor, and this is why I will never, ever vote for a kid who as a political parent, I wouldn't vote for Chelsea Clinton. I would try to primary the hell out of her. I just don't believe in political dynasties. I think it's like royalty and we're not supposed to do that. Timothy Mellon, who is the heir to the Mellon banking fortune, his stepmother is Bunny Mellon, who is Jackie Kennedy's best friend. Bunny Mellon is the woman who planted the iconic rose garden that Trump tore out.

Oh, so Tim has donated $20 million to a pro RFK Jr. Super PAC. He has also donated $15 million to a pro Trump super PAC. And he has also personally donated millions of dollars to build a wall at the southern border. So Timothy Mellon is one of these very eccentric, recluse, you know, American heirs to the Mellon banking fortune. Yeah.

So he loves to throw good money after bad? Is that what I'm hearing? Because you're personally paying to build a part of a wall. Like, how much are you building? Unless you can build...

the whole thing, you might as well just not build one. And then even so you shouldn't build one because most people come here by flying. So we just, we can't even go into that. This man is wasting so much money and it offends me. It's crazy. What, what is, what I'm guessing, what I'm perceiving is that this dual play between Trump and RFK is giving spoiler. It's giving spoiler.

So now we know the team, the money, the history. I wanted to get to his promises. And on his website, he says, quote, as president, I will end the forever wars, clean up the government, increase wealth for all and tell Americans the truth.

I like those things. They, but they sound nice. Yeah, that's like classic doublespeak. So now we need to dig into the things that he has promised. If you knew how many hours of podcast I had to listen to to get his most recent promises, you would feel bad for me. You're a midnight writer. You would buy me a cinnamon vanilla Dunkin' Ice coffee. Yeah, I will.

He said recently as a Catholic, he has disdain for abortion and supports a 12 week ban, but will sign a 15 or 21 week ban if elected president. He is a self-described second amendment absolutist and a constitutional absolutist.

He said climate change. Now, this is a guy who's like a legend in the environmental litigation world now says climate change is divisive and fear of climate is being used to control us. This one. Oh, my God. Hold on to your yarmulkes because he said that COVID is ethnically targeted.

Mostly affecting black and white people, but not affecting Ashkenazi Jews or the Chinese. He said that COVID was a bioweapon. I thought we are white, us Ashkenazi Jews. No, you only get to be white sometimes. Not in RFK's COVID conspiracy. Not when we want to blame Jewish people for things that they have absolutely no responsibility in. Like, what do we have to do with this?

Anyway. Leave my friends alone. Oh. He also says that the Jews are responsible for 9-11 and that it was an inside job. Okay. And he said it like that. And that's ugly. But the inside job is who's inside, not the Jews. Not the Jews. How many are there? It's like 2% of the world population. You know what I mean? Like we got to give them a break. They can't do it all. Somebody's got to help. Yeah.

Sammy needs to rest. Right. And on Saturdays too. And also it's like, wouldn't we stop if we could control it? Wouldn't we not even be having this conversation for real? And lastly, he was encouraged to run last year by Steve Bannon, Roger Stone and Alex Jones. He says that openly, those are the three dudes who really convinced him to run for president. And so no matter, I need you guys to just like, like I had to hear that, sit with that, know that that's true. And,

weigh how much that matters to you. That is actually the biggest red flag here in terms of national security, in terms of like threat to democracy. This is the real red flag that this is not just a, in my opinion, a vanity campaign and is, it has more insidious forces behind it. Right. Well, and he's,

Again, when we look at who the candidate is, you have to look at who their cabinet is, too. And if these are the guys who are helping him run, then these are the guys who are trying to kind of split the vote, get either Trump or RFK, I guess, in because they'd have a seat at the table either way.

Now, I want to go into just a couple of the other promises he made. He said that he will protect schools from shootings because when he said he was a Second Amendment absolutist, I got a little pushback actually from Joe Rogan on that. He was like, can you tell me what that means? Well, what about the school shootings? And he said he will protect schools from shootings the way we protect airlines. And that was all he said. That's very unclear to me. We're going through TSA. I guess so. Yeah.

He said he's against mail-in voting because the process has sown doubt in the minds of so many Americans. He's also against voting machines for the same reason. What does he want to do? Paper ballots, I guess. Just raise your hand. Those are actually, hand-marked paper ballots are actually the most, you know, the most hackable way, but different, different conversation.

He blames the war in Ukraine on U.S. provocations against Russia and says that the U.S. basically started this war with Ukraine and Russia to try and weaken Russia. The Russian state television propaganda channels play that on air all the time. That's really embarrassing for us, given the Kennedy name. I know. Chemicals in the water feminize kids and frogs and make them gay and trans. AIDS. Remember, he said that HIV does not cause AIDS.

He said that AIDS is caused by gay men doing poppers. And he knows this because when he was a drug addict, yes, when he was a drug addict, he saw a lot of gay men doing poppers. And those are the people who got AIDS. And so AIDS is caused by gay men doing poppers and clubs. It is not a viral disease.

Oh, my God. So this man has no understanding of the empirical method. No. I'm like, tell that to women who got it from their partners. Okay. So many things. He said he wants to wind down the empire to bring the troops home and make significant cuts to the military. He wants to end industrial agriculture, fertilizer use, and factory meat farming. And he backs Texas and going to war with the federal government over who controls the southern border. He is pro-union.

He is pro-union. So, you know, we take the good with the bad. But the thing he's doing...

most here is he really is slaying his comms and reaching out to the youth. He has a hashtag on TikTok called hashtag Kennedy creators. You can make custom merch. You can print out iron on logos. He's encouraging you to use RFK stuff in your zoom backgrounds for work, in your signs and your profile pictures. He's making printed home stickers. He did a tutorial on how to make all of the stuff you do for his campaign tax deductible. And if you look at his merch, it's

top of the line, well-designed compared to any other politician. And not that merch does it, but it does. And we're looking at, he's very clearly targeting women and young people because women's merch is at the top of the page.

and modern cut sweatshirts are on there. Kennedy is a cool name. A lot of times it just says Kennedy, like it would say Harvard or something. Um, and then he has what he calls truth, a Ganda Trump style vanity posters of him, like AI generated as like a war hero or a cowboy or a spaceman. And then he even has MAGA style merch. He has green hats. It says make America green again, which would make you think, you know, that we're all on the same side here, but we're not, but he has a bunch of stuff that looks very MAGA. Uh,

Um, so that's, that's what, and I, I want you all to know, I am not picking on him. I spent hours and hours and hours combing through what he says to find this kind of like wrap on who he is and where he may have gotten broken. This is, this is five alarm fire to me in a major way. He's not on every state ballot. I will know, but yeah.

Yeah. That also doesn't matter because this is the most effective spoiler campaign I've ever seen, because the thing is, it doesn't matter if he's not trying to win. He's trying to get a lot of attention and draw votes. So what's your take on what's like really going on here, having done all this research into him? So my hot take is prior to his wife's suicide in 2012, RFK was a liberal Democrat.

He joined the call for marriage equality in 2011. He was a rock star environmental lawyer. He championed civil rights and indigenous causes. He identified as a liberal Catholic at one point and used to say that his relationship with God is what guided him to protect the earth and respect its people. And then there's the last decade of RFK Jr., which are marked by anti-vax work, anti-science hot takes, and saying things like chemicals in the water are making kids trans or neurodivergent, and palling around with the Proud Boys in Trumpland. So yeah.

In his social media posts, you will see a lot of the old footage

of the liberal pre-2012 RFK Jr. And it just doesn't square with his more recent press appearances, his books and his published opinions. And I just don't like feeling tricked. And in my opinion, he's doing a little bit of a bait and switch. And his campaign serves to really split that independent vote and swing the election to Trump. Kennedy's own family is calling for him to step down. And in RFK's own words, yes, I am a spoiler candidate.

Now, the right seems to think he'll pull a ton of votes from Biden.

Uh, and he very well may with the promises on his website that appear to be extremely leftist and independent, but you have to look up his published opinions, not just the polished promises. No one on his staff has ever been elected to office, which sounds cool. I'm not against that, but I right now don't have the heart or the will for another four years of somebody who doesn't understand constitutional law, basic civics or government having the top seat in our government, you know?

Or science, because this can be really dangerous. I mean, what I think about is that I try to never allow myself to forget, and this is like my big thing.

fun fact about him other than Cheryl Hines is that he built his legend on anti-vax claims, sort of like a pre appeal to the Joe Rogan set. And there were, there were actually two recent headlines that reminded me of how dangerous this whole, like just asking questions, posture, this distrust of science, making claims that are not necessarily fully supported by the evidence or fully contextualized.

These things can be really, really dangerous when they go unchecked because here's a story from January that stuck out to me from my own community on Long Island. There was a midwife on Long Island who was fined $300,000 by the New York State Health Department because she gave homeopathic pellets to children, which were not approved by the FDA or the CDC, to 1,500 children instead of giving them their required vaccinations for measles, polio, and hepatitis.

And the health department found that she had falsified over 12,000 vaccine records in the state's immunization information system since 2019. So like pretty recently.

All sort of in this time that our media ecosystem has been splintering into these new pieces, as we talked about earlier. And apparently it wasn't just this midwife doing it for fun. The investigators basically said that the scheme seemed like the kid's parents sought it out and paid her to do it because they didn't want their kids to be vaccinated. So the parents aren't being investigated, but this is...

You know, having that kind of lie out there in the community is dangerous because that's how vaccines work.

I mean, for me, I can't get past that. I do like the vice president as a person. I think she seems super smart and interesting and driven and perhaps is also caught up in the Kennedy Riz thing. She's the sixth person that he's asked with folks like Aaron Rodgers being knocked out by some donors who thought he was too mouthy and other folks like Andrew Yang repeatedly telling him just like absolutely not. No. So I think it's clear that Kennedy is playing to the centrist female voters, really playing up the Kennedy name.

And, you know, it's one of those things after spending literal hours in this research that the facade of RFK Jr. fell apart for me. I'm a no on RFK Jr. And I just think he's dangerous and

You know, he only got this far because he's a Kennedy. He's kind of like a worse version of Marianne Williamson. And they were both oddly obsessed with HIV and promoting misinformation about the well-documented causes and effective treatments that have given people their life back. So I, as a gay, I can't do that. And even his own family is calling us a vanity campaign with his Hollywood connections and slick marketing. I, you know, in a recent profile of him and Cheryl Hines, um,

He said, I've got so many skeletons in my closet. If they could all vote, I'd be king of the world. And she said that some of his comments, like the one about how Anne Frank had more freedom than people today, are reprehensible, but she stays out of it. Must be nice. Yeah. Okay. I can't. I can't even deal with that. So you asked for it. We gave it to you. The deep dive on RFK Jr. Our last segment of the day is our down ballot era.

Let's lift ourselves back up to somebody that we can get excited to vote about. That is Arizona State Senator Eva Birch. Today, in solidarity with the activists who are bravely standing to defend our access to reproduction, Democratic State Senator Eva Birch of Mesa County is currently pregnant and revealed in a speech at the state Senate last week that she's planning to get an abortion because her pregnancy is no longer viable. I rise today because I think it's important to acknowledge how this body is

has impacted my family and our journey, along with many others who are just like me. I don't know how many of you know this, but a few weeks ago I learned that, against all odds, I am pregnant. Many of you know that I've had kind of a rough journey with fertility. I had my first miscarriage more than 13 years ago, and I have been pregnant many times since then. Twice I was lucky enough to successfully carry to term, and I have two beautiful, healthy little boys.

But two years ago, while I was campaigning for this Senate seat, I became pregnant with what we later determined was a non-viable pregnancy. It was a pregnancy that we had been trying for, and we were heartbroken over it. But now, I wish I could tell you otherwise, but after numerous ultrasounds and blood draws, we have determined that my pregnancy is once again not progressing and is not viable. And once again, I have scheduled an appointment to terminate my pregnancy.

I don't think people should have to justify their abortions, but I'm choosing to talk about why I made this decision because I want us to be able to have meaningful conversations about the reality of how the work that we do in this body impacts people in the real world.

Really such an amazing and brave way to go about this, even though it's, you know, and to, you know, just put this out there. She is up for reelection this year. So if you want to support her, you don't have to be from Arizona. Check out Eva for Arizona dot com. And we want more brave young legislators like her.

while we are in our down ballot era. Yeah, we don't want women to have to stand in front of the Senate and talk about the most deeply personal and traumatizing events of their reproductive health and private lives. So if we get more women in there, hopefully they won't have to do this anymore. Shout out to Abortion Access Front, which is protesting now on the steps of the Supreme Court, led by Liz Winstead, who is the founder of The Daily Show and friend of the podcast. You can

Follow her and her crew's work at aafront.org for all things abortion and fighting back. And remember, no matter what, organizations like mayday.health will send you abortion pills in the mail if you need them. Or if you want to buy some now to keep for an emergency, they keep in a cool, dark closet as long as they're in the original packaging for up to like three years. That sounds like a good idea. Yeah.

I have birth control and Narcan at my house. I hope that I never need either, but you never know what you're going to need. I carry Narcan with me for the same reason. Better safe than sorry. Truly.

And little band-aids if you need one. Well, that's important too. I mean, blisters get me all over New York City. Auntie's got you. Well, Bea, this has been such a fun episode despite how insane it's been. And yeah, I think we've done it. I think we have hopefully woken up from a fever dream about the absolute chaos of our disinformation nation.

And we might have a little mini-sode for you. There are going to be surprises that drop into your feed. You'll never know where. So make sure you're subscribed to this podcast so that when we do drop extra information or emergency alerts, it'll pop right up downloaded for you so you never miss information. Until next week, I'm Vita Sphere. And I'm Sammy Sage. And this is American Fever Dream.

American Fever Dream is hosted by Vitus Spear and Sammy Sage. The show is produced by Rebecca Sous-McCatt, Jorge Morales-Picot, and Rebecca Steinberg. Editing by Rebecca Sous-McCatt. Social media by Bridget Schwartz. And be sure to follow Betches News on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Betches.