Their Egos Are A National Security Threat
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Rise and shine, fever dreamers. Look alive, my friends. I'm V Spear.

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. How are you, V? You know, they started drilling holes in volcanoes to produce energy, so I'm feeling fired up, but also scared, so the usual. I'm also coming to you live from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, because I had a speaking gig that I could not get out of, and so I'm down here for just three days.

to convince 700 lesbians to volunteer for the Kamala Harris campaign, talk to them about the history of voting rights and how it was all because of the work of lesbians, and, you know, not panic.

They only have a few days to get volunteering. What was that you said about volcanoes and the holes? Yeah. So in our endless quest to monetize natural resources, Iceland drilled a hole into an active volcano, and they think that they can produce, quote, endless infinite energy from the magma, which-

Well, I wish them the best of luck with that. I am so nervous about that. You know, if that were to happen, then we don't need the windmills and then we don't need any whale psychiatrists. I mean, I've watched Moana. I don't think you're supposed to fuck with the volcanoes, okay? I think you're supposed to leave the volcanoes alone. Yeah.

You know, I know when there's a topic that is above my pay grade and this is one. I'm not going to opine on the volcanoes. But how are you feeling with right now we are one week and one day from Election Day? For the listeners, we're one week. I'm honestly, I'm feeling really good. And

I think I'm going to miss this time, as crazy as that's going to sound. We've been on this since me and Sammy were at VidCon doing the disastrous Joe Biden debate backstage live. And I just, I think come November 6th, the day after the election, we're going to be in a whole new world. And it could be really good or really bad. But right now it just is. And there's a lot of hope still. And I think I'm going to miss this time.

Yeah, I think that no matter what the results are, you will look back on this nostalgically, particularly if the results go another way. Because of the intensity of these elections and my involvement in each cycle, I feel like everyone...

is like a crucible that you come out of because of how long it lasts and how intense they are and how hyper-focused you need to be for such a particular amount of time. But that's going to bear out in this episode. We have so much that's going on to talk about, and it's basically like a status of the election, but on so many different fronts. Sammy, how are you feeling? Are you feeling justified that you're warning to us that submitting to autocrats just makes someone more autocratic?

Yeah. I mean, I'm hardly the first person to come up with this concept. I heard it from you. So for me, it came from you. I know you probably read it in a book somewhere, but for me, I'm like, my friend Sammy told me, and this is why I believe it.

Well, I appreciate that. That is relational organizing at its finest. No, that's, I mean, there is a body of thought around autocracies and fascism. And the particular scholar who I have read it from, it's possible that others have said it before, is Timothy Snyder, who wrote on autocracy. And the thing to say about this is that, most importantly, it's not about like

feeling justified, though I do. But it's not like I said anything that wasn't existed, sort of available to anyone who's looking at the model of autocrats. And I think that if people really take a serious look at the model of how an autocratic regime takes power and how demagogues act, their particular personal qualities and the rhetoric they use and the qualities they have and their approaches,

are, and sort of the way that the mix of dangerous and unserious keeps people on the back foot. Like the Donald Trump can both be working in McDonald's and, you know, frozen on stage for 40 minutes in one week and also weaponizing, you know, the phrase enemy of the people and saying all these things within just so little time. All of that is, those are features of

of demagogues. And I think that this information and this realization and what will come next if we don't vote against him, even if we do vote against him, what they will attempt to do, all of this has been modeled before. So it's available to us. ♪

All right, let's get into the temp check, okay? And we're starting off with a temp check. Donald Trump held a rally at Madison Square Garden that a lot of people have compared to the 1939 Nazi rally that was held at Madison Square Garden. And there is nothing that makes me think you're more guilty of doing something than if you constantly deny it. And almost every speaker was like, see, this isn't a Nazi rally. You're not Nazis. This isn't anything like it. Yes, it was. And it was horrific.

Let's start with a few things. When we talk about the 1939 rally, what we're referring to is the German-American Bund Party rally that was held in 1939. They were a Nazi-sympathizing party. They wanted to bring Nazism to America. They wanted the Allies to lose World War II, which ties into what Tucker Carlson recently, he recently had a Holocaust denier on his podcast where that person said that Churchill was the

the adversary in World War II. So these people are trying to rewrite history to align with the Axis powers, the bad guys. Even in that reporting from John Kelly, he says to Donald Trump, just as a general rule, because Donald Trump asked who the bad guys were in World War I, he said, just as a general rule as president, the United States is always the good guys. And this is an ahistoric

group of people. And so it was the Nazi sympathizing party. And I would say that the rhetoric in this, if you actually kind of like look at the original rhetoric from the 1939 party, this was much more overt. This also had a presidential candidate on the stage and all of his

People who support him noticed not most of his former cabinet. And only one of his children, wasn't it? Ivanka wasn't out there. No. No, just Eric. Yeah. And his weird wife. Don Jr. Then Don Jr. Oh, see, I got to a point where I was physically getting ill and I couldn't take it anymore. So that's why my notes cut off after about Rudy Giuliani. Because I couldn't handle it. Me too.

I was like, why am I doing this to myself? I know what they're saying. I'm just putting myself in a torture cycle. But can I tell you what really bothers me? Because I have seen these suggestions made that it is somehow minimizing the Nazis or the Holocaust to compare it to a Nazi rally when these people knew they were referencing that rally. And they knew that they were doing it on the sixth anniversary of the Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh. Right.

And they also knew that they would get called out for this.

But they did it anyway because they don't care. And the people who say, oh, you can't compare him to Hitler or that minimizes the Nazis. Hitler wasn't always the fully realized version of Hitler. And isn't the whole point of learning from history to stop these things before they happen again? So you're basically just saying, oh, you can't ever compare something to the worst thing, so we should just kind of let it happen and justify it. Right.

I mean, let's compare him to Mussolini then, who also used to stage events where he would go into the wheat fields and pretend like he was a working man, even though he was like a major dictator autocrat. And he would have the press, the friendly press film it, and he would have friendly workers around him. And he would do that all the time to pretend like he was a working man, just like Donald Trump, quote, working at McDonald's. He's doing it so obviously and so poorly that I refuse to be gaslit into believing that it's not on purpose.

It is absolutely. It is because he, because all autocrats follow similar models. There's, it is the combination of like clownishness and danger and cruelty and,

creates this person. Well, let's get into just, for those of you who didn't watch it, just recapping some of the lowlights, I'm going to call them, of this particular event. Now, the first one, and the one that you've seen most likely on social media, was when a comedian, and I use that term lightly, called Puerto Rico a floating garbage dump, said Travis Kelsey would be the next OJ Simpson, said the Democrat Party is the ditty party rife with sexual abusers, which is just weird considering the candidate who it is,

And then saying, Palestinians are fighting Israel by throwing rocks, but Jews have a hard time throwing that paper, so they take our tax dollars. And that was just some of the things he said. He also said that he was carving watermelons with his black friend, like –

It was just nuts. It was like the lowest hanging fruit. But it was also like, how did he had to write down what are the most racist tropes I can get into one speech and hit as many as possible. But the Puerto Rico one did backfire on him. Hugely. So right after he made that Puerto Rico comment, he,

Just as that was happening, Kamala Harris happened to be rolling out her plan for the prosperity of Puerto Rico. I don't know if that was planned because this joke was, you know, I knew they would, you knew they would make some sort of terrible comment, but you didn't know it'd be particularly about Puerto Rico and that it would be so vivid. And Bad Bunny endorsed her immediately. J-Lo, Ricky Martin, Luis Fonsi all posted comments.

I think they have a combined probably like 100 million followers or something. All of them posted endorsing Kamala Harris and sharing her plan for Puerto Rico while they next to this comedian's remarks. So there are over 500,000 Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania. A million in Florida. There are substantial populations of Puerto Ricans in multiple states. And

People who are from Puerto Rico are American citizens. They fight in the military. So, you know – Well, let me tell you about that. You have people say that the South – They're your neighbors.

A major, major amount of the United States military, in particular the army, is made up of Puerto Ricans. And they are oftentimes learning English while they're in the military. They are learning their MOS while they're in there. They are truly some of the most patriotic and thoughtful people and are also seeking a better life for themselves and their families. And so it's like to knock on Puerto Rico, which is a hub for culture, for families,

food, for liberty, for patriotism, for all these different things, especially when they're on their quest for statehood. It's like, did you people never watch the West Side Story? Like,

Puerto Ricans are fucking cool as hell, all right? And they all got it together at the end of that film. Why can't you get it together? I mean, they know that this was a huge problem because immediately the Trump campaign was disavowing it. Rick Scott was disavowing it, who's running in Florida for Senate. There was an

an immediate backlash where they were like, this is not reflective of the Republican Party. However, it was pre-approved because a staff fed those remarks into a teleprompter. So-

they either didn't, if they, they, maybe they didn't read them. No, exactly that Sammy. But also it's no different. It's no different from anything he's ever been saying. And in fact, I think that if Donald Trump had made that comment, people wouldn't even be talking about it. I think it's because they heard it out of the mouth of someone else that it was. And the vividness of it was so was actually what made it go viral. It was like, it's not the same old,

These are what these people believe. And I will not be gaslit into believing that they didn't know. They knew it because like you said, some staffer had to feed it into the teleprompter. There are dress rehearsals for these things. There is not one thing that gets set on a stage that the campaign doesn't approve, period. Even a dysfunctional campaign like his. And if it did, I don't think it really matters because if you listen to all of the other speakers, they all made similar comments. It wasn't like,

Yeah.

They did not disavow Tucker Carlson saying no fair system would make Liz Cheney powerful, Larry Fink rich, or Kamala Harris the presidential candidate. She's a metaphor for the system they created, but they have the audacity to lecture you that you're somehow immoral for participating in January 6th. Tucker Carlson also called Kamala the first Samoan, Malaysian, low IQ, whatever she is.

and then ended his speech by saying, I think Donald Trump as a free man and not as a slave, which I thought was incredibly audacious, insane. What does that even mean? They're trying to reclaim history and words like what it means to be a free man or a slave. And he's trying to say by supporting Donald Trump, he's a free man and the rest of the world is slaves, as if it wasn't the white supremacists like Tucker Carlson that did the enslaving and whatnot. Now, the thing that I didn't see a lot of people catch

that I want to make sure that, and I'm going to make a TikTok about it too. Hulk Hogan was one of the speakers. We know that Hulk Hogan is owned by Peter Thiel. And if you're like, what, why does Peter Thiel care about Hulk Hogan? There was this magazine slash like online source called Gawker and Gawker outed Peter Thiel. Gawker also released Hulk Hogan sex tape and Peter Thiel funded Hulk Hogan's slate of lawyers to sue Peter

the shit out of Gawker, put him on a business about the sex tape when it really was about revenge for outing him. That was really bad. And a canary in a coal mine, one might argue. Yes. So here's the thing that Hulk Hogan said that I want to make sure people really know. So turn up your radio right now and dial into this. He said, I don't see no Nazis out here, no domestic terrorists in here, just some real Americans. He

Kamala is like one of those Hollywood to a bad actresses for Hulk Hogan to compare her to what he was assuming is some sort of like porn worker, which also sex. Yeah. Which also,

Sex work is valid work, okay? We don't need to look down upon people who do sex work. But him calling her a hawk to a girl was so degrading. He's saying she slept her way to the top. Right. That's what he's saying. So degrading and so untrue and also disgusting. And then he called for the crowd to vote Trump to put God in our schools. Those are things that the campaign didn't disavow any of that. Mm-mm.

They want it.

in a way that is so scary to me. He has a confidence and a swagger that is not, I'm not saying that in a positive way, but he has a certain, he's really like chameleonified himself. It was a debate, but he really, he's getting good at talking and that is scary to me. I think he started to believe what he's saying because he realizes like he has to just keep

Going harder? I think that's what it is. Maybe in the beginning it was like he wasn't convinced of it, but now he's fully drinking the Kool-Aid. Correct. That's how I perceive it. He said Kamala is dumb with no ideas and Tim Walz has a hard job pretending she's any good. And then he did this thing. This is what scared me. It actually made the hair on my neck stand up. He went, can we spare a prayer for our good friend Tom Brady?

Tim Walls. He did it in this very Southern, but he performed it well. And I was like, oh, Jesus Christ. There's going to be somebody somewhere that hits with. He is actually the real danger on the ticket. And it's really hard to even start to attack that argument, at least not in a one-to-one conversation. Because

everyone can see that Donald Trump is not going to be coherent for a lot of, a lot of time. And even if he is makes it through four years, let's say he won't be successor is JD Vance. And JD Vance is actually very smooth talking, good, eloquent. I hate to say that word, but I know, you know, he, he knows what he's trying to convey and he conveys it. Well, he, he's like the,

the ultimate sane washer, Mr. Clean. Donald Trump, even if he were to be elected, would not be the president. He's a diplomatic disaster. The incontinence, the blabbering, all of that stuff. And Elon Musk, Tucker, and J.D. Vance have all said in one way or another that they think he would be easy to distract. You just set him down in the West Wing in front of Fox TV and let him tweet, and they would be running the country.

Of course. And there's also examples. I mean, people ask, oh, why wasn't he a dictator the first time? It's because he had staff around him, like John Kelly, like Jim Mattis. I also think he wasn't in as much decline at that time. No, he wasn't. And he didn't know how to use the government as well.

But there were people, his staff literally like steal things off his desk so that he would forget about them so that he wouldn't do things that would be really dangerous and dictatorial, but that he wanted to do. And they're not going to be there this time, which is yeah. The crazy part now is,

The last person I watched and then I truly was – I was like, I know what this is. I think I've got a handle on it here. I don't need to see every single one of them, was Rudy Giuliani, who is also in major mental decline or whatever he is. He's completely off the rails.

Well, he does owe Ruby Freeman and Shea Moss his penthouse apartment in Manhattan, 20-something luxury watches, his Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, several pieces of valuable sports memorabilia. So I would love to see that as a reality show.

I know. Ruby's Penthouse would be great. So he gets up there, which is crazy to me that he's even allowed on a stage. And he, I think, if you were watching, I think he actually blew it more than the comedian at the front because he was screaming about how Palestinians are taught to kill Americans at two years old and they hate us and Kamala wants to bring them in here to kill you. And he was completely off the rails.

And the thing that I want to say to anybody who is dealing with an online leftist in their life, which I've been asked about several times just since I've gotten to Mexico, is how do I deal with the online leftist or my kid who wants to vote for Jill Stein because of what's going on in the Middle East? I want you to remember that...

Rudy was very clear that they will let Bibi do whatever he wants, that they will absolutely level Palestine, that they think that every single Palestinian is not a civilian or innocent, but rather a future killer of Americans, and that Jill Stein exists entirely to, quote, punish Kamala Harris and to ensure that Trump gets a victory in the swing states. And that could not have been made more clear than through the words of Rudy Giuliani himself on that stage.

And he has been Trump's lawyer and longtime best friend. They are in contact and they talk. That was straight out the mouth of Trump. That is what they talk about when they're golfing, when they're at lunch, is how they're going to destroy Palestine. Remember that Trump is the one who allowed Bibi to annex Golan Heights. He was already getting involved in Syria. He was already starting to do some stuff.

Trump is the enemy of any kind of peace that we could achieve through diplomatic relations. The only person who can bring diplomacy to the Middle East is Kamala Harris on this ticket. Yeah, I mean, for all that she didn't say anything either way too strongly about the Gaza situation –

Donald Trump had Muslims in Michigan endorsing him the other night. Well, he has the abandoned Harris Muslims, which is part of the Jill Stein sort of like Assad group of people. Well, they're also like more socially conservative to begin with. It's not like Muslims have voted across the board Democrats. It's a complicated thing, but ultimately no group was spared last night. Right. No group was spared and-

they made their hatred for Jewish people known. They made their hatred for lots of people known. And then Trump will get behind and he'll say, well, how could I hate Jews when my daughter is Jewish and my grandchildren are Jewish? And I'm like, I don't know. A lot of people who vote Trump hate their gay or Jewish or otherwise marginalized children because they're so brainwashed by Trumpism. I don't believe that just because you have a Jewish friend doesn't mean that you're not systemically anti-Semitic. It

It's not about whether he's specifically anti-Semitic. It's about whether he will stand up for anyone or anything against violence. Nope. Other than himself. And he will let anyone, any other group be in danger. He doesn't care. He doesn't actually care about Israel. The second that it becomes inconvenient for him to defend Israel, he will stop. Yep.

And to me, I mean, what for me is crazy is that the gaslighting is just at an 11%.

that so many Jewish people who are wary of their own safety and security are going to vote for a demagogue when all throughout history, it's been proven out that that is the least safe situation that Jewish people can be in. But I don't know how to get through to people on this point. And it drives me insane. That's all I'll say. It's wild. And the only way I've been able to hold on to my mental sanity is to

sort of put people in two different types of people. There are short-term thinkers and long-term thinkers. And I think a lot of folks who maybe vote for Trump and Trump himself are short-term thinkers. They're like everything from, well, we got that stimulus check when he was president and I really need the money for groceries, which I understand. I totally understand if that's where people are at in their understanding of things. Not everybody has the luxury of being able to like, like reaffirm

read at a level, read a ton or watch a bunch of news or whatever. So they just experienced it how they did. Or there's someone who's like, well, my stocks will do maybe better under Trump. So I'm going to make a short-term decision. All those short-term decisions, if you're not looking at the long-term implication, which when I say long-term, I mean the way you will feel in a year, the way you will feel in six months as opposed to today will be disastrous. I'm not thinking even that short. I'm thinking like

Long term, the risks are just so high. Well, that's what I mean. And those risks will hit you immediately. Yeah, those risks will hit you immediately with his tariffs. Or it could go really slowly. It could be like Hungary and Orban. Or it could be like Hitler, where he consolidated power in 30 days.

But why would you wait around to see? Either way, it's bad. Also makes me crazy is like, so why are we even defending this? How is any of this even remotely okay? How has it gotten to the point where it's like, okay, well, you want all of this? This is what you want for America. Yeah. Even if you believe, you think it's going to come with better financial success or more safety, right?

What about the Goldman Sachs economists? What about John Bolton, who's warning that he probably won't necessarily be pro-Israel in this second administration? He certainly won't be. He works with him. Yeah, I know. All right. So that was our temp check. Obviously, the temperature is up.

When we come back, we're going to talk to you about the status of the election in various states and we'll get back to you. You're going to feel better. I think you're going to feel better. I'm feeling very good out here. Again, I will not be gaslit in these last couple of days by things like, oh, black men aren't coming out for Kamala. Yes, the hell they are. We'll be back. We're going to talk all about it. I've heard generic financial advice all my life. Like don't buy fancy coffee every day.

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B, I have to tell you my secret, which is that every time people are like, oh my God, the race is so close. The race is so close. I'm not going to lie. I'm not nervous. My jaw is permanently clenched at all times. I know.

I feel that the signals that are coming – the signals around how close it is are coming from the polling, polymarket, the narratives, the legacy narratives. The bots. But when you – the bots. Right, right, right. I mean, right. How could I forget?

But then when I look at like the soft data, the fact that he can't fill a venue in State College or he hasn't been able to fill a venue in a swing state for several rallies in quite a while. And look what she's doing. You look at the organizing advantage that they have. You look at the enthusiasm. You look at how he's using paid canvassers and she has tens of thousands of volunteers, maybe more.

You look at the Republicans who are crossing over. You look at the gender gap in early voting. You look at how she is overperforming both Biden and Obama in terms of college-educated white men. And he's relying on, I'll call it the Black and Latino mirage that I'm not sure is going to actually pan out. And anyone who looks at like

you know, return ballots by registration. I don't necessarily think that's going to map fully on Kamala and Trump. And I think there's going to be many more Republicans who are crossing over. It's just, so I am disheartened by the narrative, but at the same time, I'm like, I'm going to choose to believe my eyes and ears because in an autocracy, by the way, step two, or maybe it's, maybe it's a later step. I don't know. Believe your eyes and ears. Don't listen to what the state is telling you. Right.

Okay, here's what broke my trance a little bit. I watch MSNBC. I like a lot of their programming. I think some of it is really super smart. But the other night, Steve Kornacki was on and he was like,

Like Trump overperforms with people who don't vote. And I was like, Steve, what are we doing here? What are we trying to say? Meaning like low propensity voters? Yes. But like, why, why do we need to say it made it sound like it was a win for him. It gave me anxiety until you listen, what he says. And I'm like, Trump performs overperforms with people who are out there, maybe wearing the hat or saying Trump 2024, but who didn't vote in 2022 or 2020 and likely aren't going to like fucking vote now. So I was like, this is dumb.

Yes. I think what he's trying to say is that there's a lot of room for unknown in how many people Trump will actually turn out. And that's why I say the organizing game matters.

that the Democrats and Kamala Harris have is really important because I don't think that that organizing game exists on the other side to turn those people out. That's what I mean. I think he's trying, what Steve Kornacki is trying to say is like, well, you don't know ultimately how many people he will pull to vote. Yeah, except those people didn't vote the last two times. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's why the polling is so...

Like, overestimates him, possibly. I think by a lot. I think she wins the popular vote by a landslide that we've never seen in this world. But like we say, she has to win the vote, the count, the certification, and the violence. And those last three are the ones that are tricky, especially, and we missed this in the first part, but when Trump spoke at his own rally, he said to Mike Johnson, because of our little secret, I think we'll do well in the House. What's that?

What's that? He's talking about trying to, what he's talking about is a contingent election. What the Republicans would love to happen is that Kamala Harris can't get to 270 votes because they refuse to certify in a certain number of states. Then it would go to the House and each state would get one vote, depending on how many representatives are in their state by party. And in that situation, it would go to the House and it would be 26 to 24 votes.

And he would win. Yeah.

That's always an option. Like they know exactly what they're doing. They've known now since 2020 what they're going to do. I mean, I guess what's good is they're so fucking unable to keep a secret clearly, as noted by Elon Musk and Trump having private conversations with Putin all this time, that they say on the stage at Madison Square Garden, they like give up their cards right at that moment. I mean, we are prepared for this, the Harris campaign. Biden will be president. There's some leverage that we have to make sure that people do the right thing.

which gives me some hope. But I want you to, can you help explain what the polymarket is to me? Because I've seen this pop up on social media quite a bit and I don't fully understand it. So polymarket is a betting site. You know, you can bet on a lot of things. It does not permit U.S. residents to bet on the U.S. election.

But people look at polymarket to determine the odds of things. And they're looking at it to determine whether or not they think Donald Trump will win. They're using this as an indicator. So polymarket, you can bet on this election. If you live in like England or Germany or somebody, those people can place a bet on the United States election. Those are the only people who are betting on the United States election on polymarket. So Donald Trump is winning on polymarket. I think it's like 60 by 60%. Okay.

The platform found that a French trader, not a traitor, a trader. Traitor.

spent $45 million between four accounts to bet that Donald Trump would win, which majorly skewed the whole market. And they found that the person behind the accounts had extensive trading experience and a financial services background. And basically, they're continuing to investigate it. But the point is that this isn't... People are looking at this as a real indicator. And then you have Nate Silver, who is kind

kind of like regarded as a pollster guru just based on like his history, even though he doesn't always get it right, but everyone rewrites history and says they got it right. Last week, he published takes in the New York Times and in his own publication that he instinctually believes Trump will win. Nate Silver is on the board of Polymarket and Peter Thiel, who also backed J.D. Vance and who we mentioned earlier, backing the Hulk Hogan campaign,

lawsuit, he is an investor in Polymarket. Oh my God. So much of people's vibes are being determined based on this. And the other important thing is that this belief that he can win or that he's leading is part of the basis for claiming the election was stolen. Because if all these polls are saying it, and then all of a sudden it doesn't show up in the votes, they can be like, oh, he was supposed to win. So why didn't he win? Because they stole it.

This is part of the game. Because if he's supposed to lose and he loses, it's like, okay, he was going to lose. That's why saying it was going to be really tight the whole time, because it was. And I mean, I don't know what it's like now, but was a key piece of this. And why he's always been saying he's going to win. Right, right, right.

Right. So it does benefit us, even though it gives me anxiety to continue to be like, no, it's a super tight race. It's a super tight race because we're essentially like combating the misinformation. Well, I think at this point, saying it's a super tight race is like the minimum, like you should say, but there's, I don't know, like what you're, you should say what you see as we have been. Yep.

I think it's a super tight race based on conventional wisdom. Based on what I'm seeing, I don't see how it's a super tight race. Not that she's going to like, I don't think it's going to be a landslide landslide like, you know, Reagan. But I think she will win by a solid margin in a lot of places. I think she's going to take North Carolina. I'm putting North Carolina on the map for Kamala. I kind of feel that as well.

So yeah, I mean, well, you have some other stats here about how things are going. She's winning the gender gap, college-educated white male voters, like you said. What about the silent vote? You think we're the new silent majority? Yeah.

No, we're not. We're not silent at all. I think there's probably- I think a lot of women will go in and pretend they were voting for Trump, but actually vote for Conlon. Or is that just a- I think there's women and Republicans. No, those are people. I think there's also Republicans. Yeah. Even if they're not voting, they don't have to pretend they're voting for Trump. They just don't need to be loud Harris voters. And I think there's a lot of people who are just like, I'm over this. I'm going to

Go in, make my vote. And then like, why is she overperforming with college educated white men? Probably because they're like, these people are freaks. I don't want my wife to die. I'm not, I don't need this. Well, with the boys I talked to who are, you know, the Gen Z college boys that are pro Kamala, a lot of their thing is like,

I think that there is this idea that men dislike women on a level that is not actually true. Maybe that's a dated thing, like the old ball and chain. You don't hear a lot of young married couples saying that nowadays they're hating on their wife the way that like older generations did. It's not cool to hate your wife. It's not cool to hate your wife. And a lot of, and a lot of those marriages for many reasons were kind of like you had to get married. Women couldn't have their own credit card in the seventies. There was, it was a different structure. A lot of unhappy marriages came from that. So, um,

Now you really do have a choice and fewer people are getting married. So when you are getting married, you really, really like that person. And I do think that young men really like women in a way that is much more equitable than perhaps previous generations did. You see that reflected in their comedy and the shows that we watch and their content. And so when they're hearing from the women that they want to date, that those women are scared or they're not happy, it is very attractive to be a liberal man right now.

now. And a lot of them through the process of, of just seeing the content on TikTok or learning from the women, their age came to realize that the Comstock act that they're trying to bring back doesn't just ban abortion. It would ban contraceptives and they're like, and porn and porn. And they're like, you know, even less than the porn thing. They're like, what do you mean? So like, we wouldn't be able to get condoms. Like I thought we were supposed to use condoms. I thought we were supposed to use birth control. The state of Mississippi is saying,

that there isn't enough teen pregnancy in the state these days. And I'm like, that's insane rhetoric. That's insane behavior. You are so far off the rails with that. That is literally an argument they made in a legal filing, just so people know, as their argument against Mifepristone. I think young men are smart enough to know, and were parented at this point by mostly millennials and Gen X, who are like, please use condoms. Here is free and fair and easy.

easy access to them. This is the least we can do to not just prevent pregnancy, but disease, to be safe. And it's very normalized. And they're like, look, do I want to use a condom every time? Maybe not, but I want to have the choice. Who says they'll be able to get those? I want to be able to get them though. I can't imagine. And their whole thing is like, this is unfair. This is unfair to us. So they're voting for Kamala Harris for the fact that not only is it just women have the right to do what they want with their body, but men do as well.

And in young families, a lot of these men, even what you might consider a more traditional manner, saying, I want to be the one who decides how many children we have with my wife. I don't want the government telling me my wife owes the state five children, five workers. That's weird. Right. Also, once you get into this information, once you get off the online disinfo bullshit and you start having a conversation with the women in your life because you're a man who

Can speak to a woman. It's normal. Yeah. It's a very healthy view. Yeah. I think it's very easy for them to see like, okay, this is the cool masculinity. I don't need to question my own masculinity, but they clearly are. Like, I don't need that to be, to feel like a man and to have a relationship with a woman.

with a woman. Well, the red pellet incels have just gone too far, I think, too, because everything is like you have to build on the next one. And like my grandma says, skirts can only get so short before the maxi dress is back in fashion. The incels got to a point where they were like, you shouldn't even masturbate because that's like you should spare your seed. And they're like, that's fucking gross. OK, now we're in a gross place and I don't even want to talk to you anymore. Like, this is too much. I don't even like, no.

Moving on. I'm just saying. What to say about that. But speaking of Mississippi, we're going to talk about different things that are happening in various states. This is our main news section. We've gotten here. So we're going to give you some updates by state.

Mississippi has a legal ruling last week with potential national implications. Let me tell you. So the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overruled a Mississippi law that allows mail-in ballots to be counted if they're postmarked before Election Day but received up to five days after. So basically the mail's slow. That's what that is about. So they said that that is no longer acceptable. They have to be received by Election Day.

The first thing is that this ruling does not technically have an immediate impact on this election because that panel, the appeals court, did not issue an injunction to block that law for this year. They just sent it back to the lower court.

But it could open up a potential challenge at the Supreme Court where it would impact how votes in other states are counted, where they also have similar laws that permit ballots to be counted if they were received after election day but postmarked before. I want to stop you for one second. For those of our listeners who have never lived in a deeply rural area and you're wondering why would it take five days for if you mail a letter at your post office for it to get to the state capitol, some of these towns get mail pickup like crazy.

twice a week. They don't get the mail every single day. So that's why they need these extra days to get their ballot in. Because it's not like the state's sending it two weeks ahead of time and they're just delaying. It's difficult to get the mail. It's difficult to get it back. And in places like reservations, which isn't necessarily an issue in Mississippi, but it is an issue in Arizona, they're picking up the mail once a week, twice a week. This is not something that is like your normal suburban East Coast, West Coast situation with the mail. Right. And postmarked

does imply that it was received. Like you submitted that before. Received by the government. Yeah, you submitted that before. It just didn't get to its final destination.

The other piece is that they also, and this isn't part of this case, but in general, a form of voter suppression is that they will try to prevent ballot harvesting. Meaning like, let's say one person on the reservation says, give me all your ballots and I will drive them to the state capitol because our mail isn't going to get there in time. They also try to prevent things like that from happening. So it's basically all just a voter suppression tactic. Let's see where else they're trying that.

They tried it in Virginia, where they purged over 1,600 voters from the registration list in the past several weeks. But a federal judge ruled on Friday that those voters were illegally purged because there's a federal law that people cannot be automatically purged from state voter rolls within 90 days of a federal election. And they did so within 90 days. So those people are back on the registration list. Yay. Yay.

We also have Pennsylvania, where there's definitely been quite a bit of malfeasance in Pennsylvania. There's already been one video that was produced by the Russians that is fake, where they were claiming voter fraud in Pennsylvania. Also in Pennsylvania, in Erie County, people tried to accuse a monastery of 53 nuns of not having anyone living there while they had 53 nuns registered.

They lived there for like decades. Not the nuns. So that ran on CNN. They have so few rights, those ladies. Let them vote at least. I bet you those nuns are voting for Kamala Harris. They definitely are. Also in Pennsylvania, in Lancaster County. So Erie, where that nun situation was, is an important county. That's considered a bellwether county. Lancaster County is also a really important county. So Erie.

State officials are now investigating what they say are up to 2,500 voter registration applications that were fraudulent in that county that had been flagged by election workers during a routine review of registration forms. Those forms that were fraudulent reportedly came from paid canvassers as part of a large-scale canvassing operation. We see where we're going. This is what state officials said. And they had a bunch of applications dating back to June, June

And that there might be two other counties who may have received fraudulent applications. But county officials want to assure you they seem really on top of it. I will say that with all these situations, the local officials do seem really, really on top of it. But they emphasize that no eligible voter will be turned away from voting. And they are launching a wide scale investigation into that situation. How many fraudulent applications got into the mix? So what are you thinking?

I mean, like, I'm just so sick of it. Honestly, you work so hard to have, you know, to get people genuinely engaged and want to hear their voice. And then you've got, you know, these jags down in Pennsylvania that are going around and like trying to, you know, put in fake stuff. It's like every accusation with the conservatives is an admission, every single one of them.

Well, I will say Lancaster definitely leans Republican. And we know who has a paid canvassing operation. I know. It is what it is. Now, I was in North Carolina, and I got to say, I did some door knocking, and I did some local events. I did stuff at the park and stuff at the schools and whatnot. And there's continuing ground operations there. I was just there for that one week or whatever. But this has been a truly remarkable experience.

historic effort. And Anderson Clayton, who is the 26-year-old Democratic chair for the state of North Carolina, deserves all the credit. She has an energy and enthusiasm. She is a wealth of knowledge. And she just knows how to talk to people. I watched her talk to people on the Duke campus. And I watched her talk to legit hillbillies. And she just speaks the language. And she's just so wonderful. So shout out to Anderson Clayton.

Let's get her on the podcast when she has some free time. Yeah, maybe after. Maybe after. That's what I mean. But one of the craziest things I think that's happening in terms of trying to overrule citizens' votes is happening in North Carolina.

So, well, it's not actually happening because the idea has been thrown out. But I do just want to tell you because of how insane it is. A congressman from Maryland, like in the House of Representatives, who is the chair of the House Freedom Caucus, proposed that the North Carolina state legislature, a state that he is not from, should just consider allocating the state's electoral votes to Donald Trump because...

They should. Before the votes are even counted or done being cast. Okay, the real reason for this idea is because of the devastation in the western part of the state from Hurricane Helene. And he says because that is a more Republican area, they know how they would have voted. Yeah.

Yeah, Asheville, the beacon of Republican conservatism. I don't think so. Well, I think he's referring to the more Western rural counties. There are 25 counties that were affected. Of the 80 sites that you can vote at, 76 of them reopened and the four that didn't reopen, they have a plan to bus people to a voting location. Like they are doing everything to make sure those people can vote.

Yeah. So it's a disingenuous idea from the Maryland representative who has... Stupid. What business does he have talking about North Carolina's situation? Is he Lindsey Graham? That's what I was just going to say. The Yentza trying to get...

This is the Lindsey Graham School of Diplomacy. Right. What if I'm just like, okay, I'm going to go to Oklahoma and I'm going to tell them exactly how they should do things? Yeah. Me. Just why not me? Why not you? So the good news is North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper insisted that the electoral votes, the 16 electoral votes of North Carolina will, quote, reflect only what the people say at the ballot box.

That's right. Shouldn't need to be said, but it very much does need to be said. We love Roy. Oh my gosh. Speaking of North Carolina, Mark Robinson is still out there campaigning with a cardboard cutout of Donald Trump because he won't come to his campaign stops anymore. That wacko guy who was campaigning for governor. And then JD Vance the other day was in North Carolina and he accidentally was like, we have the great Mark Robinson out here running for, uh, uh,

you know, like he forgot that he wasn't supposed to talk about him.

That's the new, smooth, improved J.D. Vance. That's what I'm saying. I'm telling you, I do think we're going to see just... And maybe that's wishful thinking or manifesting, but I'm going to say it anyway. I do think we'll see her win the popular vote in a really wide margin. I don't believe the lies that Black men aren't supporting Kamala Harris. They absolutely are. I don't believe the lies that the Latino community is not supporting Kamala Harris. They absolutely are. And even if they weren't, the numbers that she has made up with female voters, that gender gap is so...

It's such a cavernous gap that I just, I refuse to debate people who want to spread lies. And I know I've mentioned the college-educated white men. Yep. That is important because there's so many of them. So you move them a little bit, it's not the same as moving 10% of Jews in Michigan. Yeah. All right. Those are your state-by-state updates. We are going to come back after the break and talk about the Brolligarch takeover for our AmeriCAN section.

All right. Welcome back, friends. And remember, on election night, you don't have to watch the mainstream media. You can watch me and Sammy for a period of time. We're going to be streaming live from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. on all of my under the desk channels. We're also simulcasting, I think, on a couple other places, maybe Betches. We're still working out the details because it's tricky, but I think that we are.

And you can watch it. We're going to have a great fun time. Instead of staring at a board and being worried, you can watch a drag performance. You can watch a comedian. You can vote for which one of my dogs is top dog. And we do have a partnership with the Associated Press, so I will be calling the states in time, the same time as any of the major networks. So tune in to Under the Desk News wherever you get your news on social medias and come and watch us instead.

I am so excited. Maybe I'm going to come in person. You should come in person. I'm going to watch my dogs, though. Bring them. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. But anyway, I want people to have a good time on election night because we have worried enough. At that point, what's done is done. And we might as well celebrate the fact that people voted and all the hard work that went into this time. And so it's going to be a celebration of democracy. And also we're going to call the states.

And we also have surrogates from the campaign calling in. So you might hear from Pete Buttigieg, you might hear from AOC, you might hear for some of those other folks. We're working out that right now, because as you can imagine, it is incredibly difficult to try and put something like this together. But it is my ultimate goal to even if it's just for 15 minutes, have a higher viewership than the mainstream media, so that I can say on election night, I had more viewers from the six to seven o'clock hour or whatever it is. That's my ultimate goal.

That's my goal. Okay. Let's try to do that. Let's try to make that happen. So speaking of people, I appreciate your endorsement, Sammy. And speaking of people who won't endorse fucking Washington Post and LA Times, the two newspapers I worked at are out here acting a whole damn fool.

I know. But, you know, I think as we've all seen from this argument, it's not a referendum on the journalists who work there. No. Nope. It is the ownership. And I think this is really the most dangerous part of the conversation. It would be one thing if the journalists couldn't agree. No. That's the part that sucks is so many people are like, I'm going to cancel my Washington Post subscription. And I understand. But, like, please don't punish those journalists because they're billionaire owners trying to destroy them.

He's trying to destroy the newspaper that holds him accountable. So, you know, you're just accelerating that. And it was the same with the LA Times when I worked there. They were wildly dysfunctional and incredibly just weird. And I just, LA Times, I kind of saw coming the billionaire owner over there is like a South African Elon Musk type guy. Yeah.

whose family was way too involved in the day to day. And just, he just, again, another person who like is trying to make blood from a stone happen. And he's like, well, why isn't the newspaper making me more billions of dollars? And it's like, because that's not how it works, brother. Like you've got enough money. Why can't you be like a Rockefeller and just invest in something?

Right. That you don't expect anything in return for ever. Yeah. That's like part of your- Or like learn how to run it better. For real. I don't know what to tell you. And I'm going to tell you firing all those people isn't going to do it. Like you have so many assets with which to run it better. It's not like you have nothing to sort of improve your own operations, but whatever. People are now resigning because-

They, the LA Times was planning to endorse Kamala Harris. Of course. And they were also planning to run a series known as the case against Donald Trump. The whole thing, though, was quashed by the owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, who reportedly quashed the endorsement. Then his daughter, it's interesting that you say the family was too involved because his daughter came out and made fun.

what seems like kind of a rogue statement that the reason that they did this was over Kamala Harris's support for Israel's war in Gaza. But then her father said- I'm going to tell you that's not true. That's not true. I've dealt with her and him. Go ahead. What did he say? Well, her father later said that that actually had nothing to do with it. No, of course not.

No, of course it didn't. And that she was not involved in the decision. No, she is so desperate to be like a social media celebrity. She has online brain rot in a level that is like so weird for a woman of her age and opportunity.

And I'm sure that she's saying this because she thinks it's going to somehow endear like the online community to her. It's never going to happen. You're not Paris Hilton. They will never love you. Yeah. I mean, it was very clearly a rogue statement that even her father couldn't, couldn't get behind. So especially since, you know, they're South African. Yeah. There've been several, several resignations, including the head of the LA times board, Mario Garza. And then the,

really like the next day something similar happened at the washington post well let me give you one more thing on la times though because this is a systemic attempt to destroy this newspaper last year last june they laid off 73 journalists and then in january of this just past january

They laid off 174 some journalists. It equates to like almost 40% of the total workforce. And he, January 1st, lays off Kimbrielle Kelly, who was like a Pulitzer Prize winning iconic investigative political journalist who was based in the D.C. Bureau. She was the D.C. Bureau chief and her entire team, including the White House correspondents during an election year because he didn't want to fucking deal with it.

So they cut all of their investigative reporting on politics, all of their political beat reporters, their White House correspondents. I think there's like one instead of the five they had or whatever. It was like an intentional and Kimbrielle has been very diplomatic about her departure and I don't care because I love her. And I think she was wronged.

That led to their editor, Kevin Morita, ending up quitting because he couldn't see eye to eye with Patrick because Patrick was constantly trying to quash stories that were important investigative journalism. And it's like Patrick and his daughter have absolutely destroyed this newspaper, and it was on purpose. It wasn't an accident. It's not – like they're idiots. They're smart. And if you can destroy the press, then nobody holds you accountable.

Yeah, that, I mean, well, at least they held, you know, what's his name? Tom Girardi accountable. I know. But that is deeply concerning because he, look, we should do more research into him, but that is deeply fucked up. And then, sooner be known to me, here comes the Washington Post. Jeff Bezos, who I will say, like when I was there, there's a whole desk assigned to holding Amazon accountable. And he was like kind of okay with it.

Apparently he got sick of that because he is too much of a pussy to not allow the Washington Post editorial board to endorse Kamala Harris, which of course they would. Trump said he's going to put journalists in jail and all he does is lie. And Bezos says, no, I'm going to endorsement ready to go. It's right. And Bezos is like, no, no, no, I don't want to do it in case he becomes the president. That's going to fuck with my like rocket ships and all my business. What? Yeah.

Well, I mean, well, the next day, Blue Origin executives met with Donald Trump.

I can't. So was he scared or was it a quid pro quo? It's a little bit of both. And I mean, I was nervous when they put Will Lewis in as the new CEO. Will Lewis came from the Wall Street Journal. Journalists there had sounded the alarm about him. He's definitely very right-wingy. And we were trying to say- We've talked about that on past episodes. Yep. We were trying to give Will Lewis a chance, trying to say maybe not, maybe not. Well, clearly that was a waste of breath. Look, it's very upsetting because-

The Washington Post is epic. I'm glad a few weeks ago we said that the Atlantic was the paper of choice, though that is also owned by billionaire Lorene Powell Jobs. So I don't know. Maybe it's going to be under the desk news is the paper. It's going to be us and Betches. That's all that will be left. And, you know, maybe for the better, but yeah.

Which brings us to our least favorite billionaire of all, Elon Musk. According to several current and former U.S., European, and Russian officials, Elon and Putin have discussed personal topics as well as business and geopolitical tensions. And Putin once asked Elon not to activate SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan as a favor to Xi Jinping.

This is of particular concern because Elon has a $1.8 billion contract with the Pentagon and NASA, as well as security clearance that gives him access to certain classified information that he is so willing to chit-chat over tea with Putin about. And it is evident that Musk was supportive of Ukraine in the early phases of Russia's invasion, provided Starlink terminals and whatnot, but very quickly has aligned himself more with Putin. And it's just...

Again, why do we give this man money? In the time that he started increasing his contact with Putin, he did start promoting more Kremlin talking points. He did pull Starlink access from offensive operations. And he once polled his audience on Twitter about a proposal for ending the war in Ukraine. And it was basically what Putin would have wanted and had marks of very specific policies that he would have wanted. Like, for example, making sure that Ukraine continued to provide water to Crimea.

while they were invading Ukraine. So it's very transparent. And I think that this fits in with what we've said before. This is a geopolitical war where the election is the war.

And autocrats are trying to use Donald Trump and Elon Musk to weaken America. And Elon Musk thinks, I will be America and I will be the person. Well, he does think that because one of the plans from the whack asses at the Heritage Foundation is to break the United States up into tiny little territories where a tech bro would oversee each one of them as like a pseudo monarch.

So Peter Thiel and Elon Musk each get one. Yeah, they would get a big territory. I guess Peter Thiel would probably get Miami. He likes that. And Elon would get California. It's craziness, but we tell you this stuff not to bum you out, but so that you're informed and so that we can fight it. And one thing I'll say is I support trad and legacy media. I have been a constant proponent of saying that they need to work better in tandem with new media and social media and that I in no way replace them. We work together. This is the way that it goes.

But like, honestly, any journalist who is still on Twitter at this point, you really got to start considering the value that you are providing to that platform and see if there's something else we can do here. He is nothing without you. Same thing with liberals buying Teslas. Please quit that. And as far as government contracts go, Elon Musk is providing the Trump campaign with millions and millions of dollars based on

on the money he gets from the American tax paying contracts for these NASA situations. There has to be a way to hold him accountable. And I don't know what Kamala Harris's plan is for Elon Musk, but maybe she releases that this week.

I would love a plan for Elon Musk. I mean, he's getting held accountable by the DOJ maybe, but it's like he is a figurehead. No, he's not. He got a strongly worded letter. He got a strongly worded letter. He's not a figurehead. He does his own negotiating. He owns these things. He figures out his own financing. Look, if he couldn't get financing from people, because let's remember that the Tesla buyout was the most...

consequential loss for some of these banks who lended him money since the 2008 financial crisis. He's not this genius businessman. But that's why I'm saying he could be replaced. There are boards on all of these companies. There's no reason why SpaceX should be getting billions of dollars from the American taxpayers and giving it to a potential trader. Right, like maybe...

Make your own satellite internet. I think you can afford it. Please. Please, let's make our own. Or make contracts with better vetted people. Hey-o. That's right. I do just have to hand it to Vladimir Putin. He is good at manipulating these people. And they're simps. They're flattered by him. It's the fact that they want his approval.

Like if you listen to the way Putin talks about Elon Musk when he was on the Twitter space with Tucker Carlson, he was working him in a KGB format. And the fact that these people are too stupid to see it because they're –

so fucking easy to gratify their fucking egos. You are national security threats. Your egos are national security threats. Maybe it will. Well, I mean, something I'm looking forward to this week, today, Kamala Harris, when you're listening to this, if you're listening to it the day that it drops, Kamala Harris will be giving her real final big speech, her closing argument, they're calling it, from the Ellipse.

She has gotten a permit to have up to 20,000 people at the Ellipse, the site of where January 6th really kicked off. And she's going to make her final plea to the American people for why she's the best choice for president. I will be so excited to watch. And I think it's, you know, one thing I like is that she does reclaim a lot of things that Donald Trump ruined. We saw the reclaiming of the flag, even of Trump.

political flags on F-150s. Now I see Harris Wall's flags out on the trucks, which is kind of cool. And reclaiming the ellipse. I'm not into political. I don't like that. Oh, I love the pageantry. I don't like the pageantry, but I'm glad we have reclaimed flags and cameras. Patriotism and now the ellipse. So until next time, I'm Thee Spear. I'm Sammy Sage. And this is American Fever Dream. I fucked up!

Can I go back? Can I go back, please? So nervous. 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. Betches.