When Sex Gets Weird, the Cults Will Crumble
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Do you love reading as much as we do? Well, you're in luck because we're launching our first ever Betches Book Club in partnership with Nutella Biscuits because they know the best moments are even sweeter when you share a great snack with your friends. If you're in New York City, come hang out with us IRL at the Betches Book Club.

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

bit.ly slash book club IRL for tickets. Grab yours before they sell out. Rise and shine, Fever Dreamers. Look alive, my friends. I'm Bea Spear. And I'm Sammy Sage. And this is American Fever Dream presented by Betches News, where we explore the absurdities and oddities of our uniquely American experience. Hey, Bea. What's up, Sammy? Oh, man. We're home for once. We are home. We are nearing the end of September already. Can't believe it.

I know election day is still 42, 41 days away, but early voting has already started in Minnesota, South Dakota, and Virginia as of last Friday. So we are in the election. Can you believe it? We are in the election. And I saw a story last night about a bunch of absentee ballots that went out.

And in one state, they didn't have Kamala Harris's name on them. And in another state, they spelled Tim Walz's name wrong. They said Tom Walz. So those have to be corrected. Now, it is not lost on me that they never spelled Donald Trump wrong and they never left him off any of the ballots. Can you imagine if they did? Oh, my God, they lose it. The suspicery has begun. So what states are these being?

So the no Kamala Harris on the ballots came from Montana, and the ones that said Tom Walls instead of Tim Walls came from none other than Palm Beach County, Florida, home of Mar-a-Lago. So there's some funny business happening. Suspiciary. Suspiciary. We're barely even 75 hours into early voting. But I just want to note, you can vote early in every state except for Alabama, New Hampshire, and sort of Mississippi, but you can vote.

Vote early in Mississippi if you have pretty much like any reason or if you're a teacher or if you're a student or a bunch of other things or the spouse of a student or a teacher. Check the voter registration laws. You can go to vote.org. That's the only site that I really trust for this. A lot of fake sites out there to check your voter registration too. Vote.org is a good one. Yes. Iwillvote.com also. Iwillvote.com also is good. Yes. Yeah.

We also have a great episode from last week with Representative Debbie McCarcell-Powell of Florida, who is running for Senate against Rick Scott. Skeletor. That's what we used to call him when I lived in Florida. Skeletor, when he was the governor. I like to call him Mr. Medicaid fraud. He's the worst. Listen to the episode with her. Let your Floridian friends know. Yep. Let your Florida men know that we got to get Debbie McCarcell-Powell elected so we can keep the Senate.

The DMP, you know me. La Luchadora. Oh, yeah. We gave her a nickname on the show. You'll want to listen to the show. I was very unhinged.

We were very tired and unhinged and we called her La Luchadora because she's a fighter. We're always tired and unhinged. What's so good about this show? You know what else is tiring and unhinged? The latest potential government shutdown. Oh my God, I know. The deadline for that – okay, we're recording Monday. This is coming out Tuesday. Assuming they have not solved this problem, in which case we'll remove this from the episode –

There are six days until our government may shut down. Again?

Doesn't it feel like this happens every three months? It does. And that's because we have the most dysfunctional Republican-led house that we have had in modern history. Typically, so you guys know, it's not normal that they're kicking the can down the road this frequently. They usually set a budget. That budget's good for the year, man. We just set a budget for like three months because Trump doesn't want anything to be done. And Trump wanted a bunch of wacko stuff tied to this budget that luckily Speaker Mike Johnson took out.

So hopefully the Democrats will jump in and save the day and we'll have a country that's funded until December 20th. I want to know – it's December 20th. I want to know that that's still not even that long. I do want to know the voting rules that the extreme right-wing party of the House Republicans, what they want to add into it is something called the SAVE Act, which would require people to show proof of citizenship to vote. Two proofs. But this would affect everything.

Yeah.

And also, what's your second proof of citizenship? I was like, okay, my driver's license and my passport. Is the driver's license even proof of citizenship? Like, I don't know. So I couldn't even figure out what my second thing would be. You need a global entry card. I need a global entry. And then they were, and you know what? It's just nonsense. I got a passport card.

When I renewed my passport because I was like, I need more documents. We need so many documents. I'm like, you know that these old dudes who wrote this are thinking like, well, I've got my draft card. That means I'm a citizen and my passport. So I don't know. Your social security card. Who the fuck's got two piece? You can't laminate. Then when they say, oh, bring a piece of mail. I don't have mail. I don't have mail.

have mail. We do everything electronic. I don't have like my last five electric bills. Like your electricity bill? And they're in my wife's name anyway. So it's not like I'm bringing that in. Right. I don't have anything in my name. I'm just a girl. I'm just a girl. Everything's in my wife's name.

So anyway, yeah, the SAVE Act got cut. Trump is, I'm sure, typing in all caps on Truth Social right now. Truth Social, which has, as of this morning, lost 78% of its value and continues to crash in the stock market. But don't worry, because Trump is out here hawking silver coins.

And something else. Trading cards again. Well, you know what's interesting? Only he could launch both a physical coin and a Bitcoin in one week. He's such a nightmare. Sorry, Bitcoin exchange. Crypto exchange. Yeah, fake money. That's funny. Fake money.

How much more can he milk these people for? I mean, the people who fall for Trump's money scams have got to be running low on coin at this point. More. He could go forever. Can you imagine there's somebody out there who tries to trade their Trump silver coin for the new cryptocurrency and they're like, well, I thought that the silver coin you told me had value. And he's like, no, that's trash. Yeah.

That would be pretty funny. He'd have to admit that it has no value. Maybe I'll do it. That would be like a lesser punishment than the guys who are in jail for January 6th. Oh my God. Who he's going to let out, who he calls hostages. It's on the thing there. He's going to let them out day one. Much like he let 5,000 Al-Qaeda prisoners out. The worst. Remember when he let 5,000 ISIS prisoners who went on to ruin the pullout of Afghanistan? I have a lot of thoughts. I was kind of gone this week. And perpetuate Abbeygate.

which Donald Trump then attended with that whole Arlington thing. Just a couple of weeks ago. The death of a soldier at Abbey Gate. I was at the Pentagon in Arlington this past week. And so I want to remind you, the things that Trump did at Arlington are so off the wall bananas. It's so awkward because you're there and the sense of sort of like,

hits you as soon as you come in and everything is so grand and like really rigid and strict to act the way he did while he was there takes a level of delusion and like narcissism that I think is fairly astronomical because I was thinking about what he was doing when he was there, when I was there. And I was like, I wouldn't have the balls, man. I wouldn't have the balls to do any of this kind of stuff that he was doing. Even the way he laid the reef was weird. Like

just so many things were just so strange, but I was also at the Pentagon. You want to hear the top secret briefing? Yeah. Yeah. What did you learn? So V goes to the DOD is a semi-annual thing where I get to go and get like special briefings about, uh, cool stuff that's happening with the military. So here were the things that they told me that I was like, okay, cool. I love this. I'm going to bring this back to the American fever dreamers. Am I allowed to tell them? And they were like, uh,

This, this, and this, and not that. And I was like, okay, great. I want to hear not that, but okay. So number one, from the Pentagon, they are saying, if we were thinking about our biggest issues abroad, which I know I think about a lot, maybe you think about a lot, they said China is actually number one. And China is watching Russia weaken. And they're considering making some moves maybe because Russia has lost somewhere between 300,000 and a million people to the Ukraine war. They literally can't count them.

Russia's lifeline is the U.S. election. Yes. That is what will determine whether Russia is geopolitically successful or whether they have to compete with China directly. So what was interesting about it is they were like, China is our pace car, whatever you want to call it when it comes to international things we're watching. But China's kind of sitting back right now and seeing what happens with Russia. And I think that that's so interesting. Yeah.

They also said that there are reports that Taiwan is losing trust in the United States coming to its rescue. U.S. does have a one China policy that's our like agreement with China that we won't say Taiwan is an independent nation, but we also won't not say they're not an independent nation and we will help them if China tries to invade them, but we're not trying to provoke them. And so I was like, can you tell me what this strategy is called? Because that sounds crazy. And there's a word for it. It's called strategic ambivalence. I was about to

say it sounds like ambivalence. It's strategic ambivalence. I was going to say that not in a good way. Yeah. This word came from General Pat Ryder, who's a wonderful guy and great communicator. He's the one you see on TV on Tuesdays and Thursdays doing the Pentagon Press briefings. Super smart guy, very gentle with me, very helpful, and I appreciate that. And he was like, it's called strategic ambivalence. That's what we do. And I was like, oh, I learned a new term. I'm going to bring that back. Can I ask why that's advantageous?

He said it's just the way sometimes it is. So we're going to learn the different terms. There's strategic ambivalence, strategic deterrence, and then there was one more, but I'll get to it. So anyway, this is ambivalence, and we will use this from time to time because we don't want to start something and won't be nothing, is basically. China would be real pissed if we came out with a strong position. So we just kind of stay wishy-washy, and we all agree. It's like your drunk uncle on Thanksgiving. We all know what's going on, but nobody wants to point it out. We just want to have a nice dinner. Yeah.

Well, that – I see why the Taiwanese would be concerned. So they're aggravated because they want the U.S. obviously to come out and make a big, strong thing. And the U.S. is like, look, I said I got your back. Don't start nothing, won't be nothing is basically the way that it went. Right. But that does make sense. I don't think it would be advantageous for the United States to start something –

So basically, we don't need to go dick swinging in every district. Okay. That was the crude way of saying it was like, sometimes we don't have to do that. And I was like, okay, great. So we are moving boats to the Indo-Pacific though. There's some boats there now. And a lot of that has to do with the internet and Amazon. You like the internet? You like Amazon? Then we need Navy boats in the Indo-Pacific and the Red Sea because that's how product moves. That's how the United States maintains all of the comforts that we have. And I was like, oh, I could say it like that. That's great.

We also had a big win with the Philippines. The Philippines were thinking that the U.S. wasn't like so much daddy anymore. And Secretary Austin went over there, made great plans with them, reassured them. And now we're doing some joint training with them and we're expanding our alliance. And that's great for us because we need to put weapons there. Geographically speaking. So strategic weapons housing. That was good. And then I asked about TikTok and he was like, you're going to ask me about TikTok every time. I was like, yes, sir. And he's like, OK, look, here's the thing.

Yes, it's an issue, but also the American public has a right to engage on the platform. And the general said to me, I don't have TikTok on my phone, but my two teenage sons have it and they'll get to have it as long as it's legal. And that's the most I could tell you about TikTok. And I

And I was like, okay, great. He's like, it's a delicate balance. They're dealing with that at the DOJ. I'm not dealing with that at the Pentagon. I was like, okay. I think it's probably smart that they don't run their mouth on TikTok, about TikTok, because it will inevitably end up on TikTok and then get distorted, which is what they're afraid of. He's like, God, go to the DOJ with that. I'm the military. You know, leave me alone. I was like, okay, great. So then I, of course, have to ask, okay.

staying on technology, not talking about TikTok, talk to me about the pagers and the walkie-talkies blowing up. And he did this. He went, what did he, yeah, like I knew somebody was going to ask me, but he was like, of course. So he's like, remember we talked about strategic ambivalence?

I'm going to give you an ambivalent answer. Those aren't ours. We're not involved. We're watching this go down and we're figuring it out. Israel has the right to defend itself. How it defends itself matters. We are not getting baited into a war with the Houthis or Hamas or Hezbollah, but we're also not going to let them fuck with our boats. So we are focused on keeping the Red Sea channels open, keeping commerce moving, making sure people can get their stuff, their internet and their Amazon. And then there's other stuff that's going on. That is their stuff that's going on.

And I don't have anything else to say other than we are there for commerce and to make sure that we have the right of ways and passages in the waterways. And I was like, all right, great. That's not what I asked. Like a 17-dimensional chess game. What were you trying to get him to say or not say? I said, should we be worried that this kind of thing could happen? What about the chips? Most of our stuff is made in China and Taiwan. What about whatever? And he was like – and he assured me this isn't going to happen to us. It's not happening to American troops.

These little terrorist groups that are over there, they don't have the checks and balances. They don't have the security standards that we do for our stuff that comes into our thing. They made this purchase. Something happened to that purchase because they don't have the cloud or the whatever. And that's what happened to them. But that's not going to happen to us. Don't worry. Because they're a militant group. Because they're not buying. They don't have respect, really. But we don't buy from these channels. Don't worry about us.

He said that the purpose in doing something like that from a not us saying it, not us doing whatever he said, he would think the purpose of doing something like that is to degrade and disrupt the ops of adversaries. OK, and it gives Iran, they think, maybe a strong warning to quit what they're doing.

I mean, I think that was a pretty effective means of attack because they're not just like bombing an area. Obviously, there were a lot of casualties around them because there's massive explosions, but they targeted commanders. Yeah.

And then I asked another guy, not from the Pentagon, how we think this got put together. And he said there's this thing called Semtex, which is like a plastic explosive that they would have put behind the batteries. But that did not come from the Pentagon. That came from just like Guy in D.C. So I don't know. Just things that people know. Shit talking and speculating what kind of explosive it was. Anyway. Don't repeat that part. Don't repeat.

And don't go Googling it. I'm just telling you stuff. I'm telling you when it's on the record and I'm telling you when it's like me drinking a Miller Lite with a guy who's telling me stuff, okay? And that was just a guy telling me stuff. Yeah, a guy who's telling me stuff. All right. So anyway, then the last thing they said was about Russia because I was very concerned about Russia and them interfering in the election. They said that's always a concern. Russia doesn't just interfere in our elections. They interfere in elections around the world. So this is not – it's not – you know what I mean? Like of course there's – everybody's always worried about election interference and

That's their biggest strategy of pursuing power and dominance. They cannot beat us on tactical drones, heavy hardware stuff, where Russia has strength as cyber and software. And that's where we need to be the more agile. And that's what we're working on in the future is like the DoD has historically been a hardware company. They need to be a software company. We need to have more proprietary stuff built here. And they're all working towards that. So I thought that that was really, really great. A lot of that's been done. He also said,

with a little bit of a giggle. And Ukraine's getting in there. They now took 500 miles of Russian territory, not because they think they can conquer Russia, but to psychologically fuck with Putin. That's awesome. That's great. Yeah. Ukraine's like, oh, you're coming in my place? I'm coming in your place. How about that? Also, Putin's strategy is to psychologically fuck with other countries. So they're getting back. So they can do it by...

Cyber warfare. Yep. The Ukrainians are doing it with classic military means because the Russian army is really not that good.

Especially not now when he's pulling people out of prison to conscript them into service. They don't have enough left. So he was saying Russia is a formidable opponent because we're not in the place where it is like tank for tank. Now you have all this cyber stuff. And every time the drones come out, we shoot them down. And every time they get a little bit better each time. And also you have their goal is to weaken the United States. Totally. And the European alliance, NATO alliance. So they're doing like other work on the side. Yeah.

They're counting on Donald Trump getting elected so that he can have permission to, quote, do whatever it wants, whatever Russia wants in Ukraine. And

And then also you heard at the debate, he was like lamenting the loss of the Russian soldiers. I'm telling you, look, the military is a nonpolitical entity. I mean, of course, they're political, but the people aren't supposed to espouse any political beliefs. It's a nonpartisan entity. Nonpartisan thing. They very much appreciate the NATO alliance, would like to see NATO stay in check. They're working with 32 other nations on a lot of different things.

There is a concern that if anything were to happen to that, how that would degrade our position and potentially be more dangerous for us. You just said Russia's trying to hold out, see how this election goes down. Yeah.

My takeaway, separate, my little brain putting things together, is saying if Trump loses, Russia's going to have to come to the negotiating table with Ukraine. They can't outweigh them anymore, and Harris isn't going to put up with this, right? And they're losing. But if Trump comes to the table and we pull back NATO support or we pull back money from Ukraine, now Russia has a little bit more of an ability to continue moving on. And once they take Ukraine, they'll take Moldova, and then we're up against the NATO line.

So I said, why do we provide so much to Ukraine when they're not in NATO? And he said, well, there is a path for them to come to NATO and we certainly want them to. And this is strategic deterrence. Ukraine fighting this war helps all of us, helps the rest of Europe, helps the Americas, helps everybody, hurts no one. Like Biden says, right? Hurts no one but Russia. I say that all the time. Helps everybody, hurts nobody. I know. So it makes the economy go. So the

The last thing on Russia is they're doing some weird stuff over Alaska where they keep trying to fly their planes really close to us. It's very much that game you play with your sister or brother when you're like, I'm not touching you in the backseat. And so your mom has to turn around. Russia's doing, I'm not touching you. I'm not even touching you. So we move some boats and some troops out to Alaska. Again, strategic deterrence. There's no reason to worry that anything's happening in Alaska. Nothing's happening. They're just being annoying. And that was my talk. The last thing that I asked about is I said –

And this is exactly how I said it. I said, why do you guys always have to say, and Kamala Harris said this too at the DNC, we have the most combat ready lethal fighting force. I said, that makes people sad.

Strategic deterrence. And he said to me, what do you mean it makes people sad? And I'm like, it makes people sad when you say lethal fighting force because, you know, lethal, that's scary. That's upsetting. Nobody likes that. And he said, buddy, okay, listen, lethal fighting force is a term of deterrence, not a term of ambition. But make no mistake, when called upon to defend our nation and fight and win America's wars, lethality is a direct path.

to victory. That's how war works. That's why people don't want to go to war. And that's why war is unpopular. He also said it's very easy to get into a conflict. It is more difficult to get out of it. And it is not their goal at any time to get into conflicts so much as deter them. But lethal fighting force is not a term of ambition. And I was like, okay, thank you.

That's a great way to put it. It also fits in with what we were saying about China, which is like, don't start something. There's not going to be nothing. Which is why it is important that you have a strong military and NATO alliance. Right. So anyway, that was my time with General Pat Ryder, who, again, very sweet to me to

It takes my stupid questions and is like, okay, they're not stupid questions. So they're the questions that like the average person would ask. Yeah, they're actually the normal questions. I think if you ask questions that were more esoteric than that, I don't really know what

I don't think they'd let me be that buddy-buddy. What would you be bringing to this show? No, they wouldn't let me be that buddy-buddy with them. I'm like friend. You know, I'm like their little friend who like they give information to. If you want to read hardcore reporting, go read what Jennifer Griffin writes. She's like the press corps for the Pentagon. She's incredible. Well, I think also what they're trying to share through you is like basic principles that people don't necessarily understand about America's national security. Yeah.

They're not giving you any secrets. No, no, no. No, they don't give anybody any secrets. But he does – and he gets better every time at communicating to like what the normal person, what the average American public would do. The way he talks to Jennifer Griffin, right, who's in his press corps is very different than the way he talks to me because Jennifer Griffin is writing on a much like higher level, like more detail. Yeah.

But there's stuff that we need to know too. And I appreciate that the military does that. They also talked about their plans for retention and taking care of their families. Military is going to do universal pre-K. They're also increasing the amount of money that they offer for childcare. And one of their next big priorities is spousal employment and helping spouses get jobs that are either civilian jobs in the military or civilian adjacent, all remote, so that quality of life for our military families can be higher. That's awesome. It was dope.

Going for a 4.5% pay increase for the troops with this budget. We'll see.

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Shall we get into our temp check? Here we go. We got to talk about voter suppression and the attempts that are being made by the GOP throughout several states to prevent certification, slow down the counting of votes, and

votes, prevent, you know, basically make really late in the game rule changes that will ultimately have the effect of voter suppression. So the latest is that on Friday, three pro-Trump members of Georgia's Board of Elections instituted a rule change that will require all ballots in every county in Georgia to be hand-counted

which is nearly a physical impossibility. It's 5 million. 5 million votes. They're expecting between 5 and 6 million ballots to be cast in Georgia. How many people do they have counting? It could be around three in many counties. Three. Three people per county. Three people. Up to 6 million ballots total. There are 6,500 precincts.

There are three people per precinct. That's stupid. And some of these precincts have hundreds of thousands of people in them. Some of them have a few thousand, so they would be able to hand count, but...

Before they passed this rule change on Friday, you had county election officials, dozens of them, coming to make public comments and saying, this is physically impossible, especially because you're trying to change it so late in the game and because we don't have the money to do this. We would have to hire all these new people. We would have to train them. It is too late to train our tiny staffs and pay for this to happen.

Not to mention it also invites a lot more human error. Like, have you ever tried to count anything? You might, you know, you lose track.

Well, and who's to say, right? Who's to say that these people are doing it properly or ethically, right? Like the folks who are signed up to do this kind of thing, we don't have time to vet them in 45 days and see if they're an extremist or if they're going to make a mark on a ballot to make it not good anymore or whatever. Right. Also, that would be one thing if you were just trying to have a genuinely valid hand count and this were actually for protecting the count. But

What it also invites is opportunities for interruption or the Ruby Freeman, Shea Moss who pass each other a piece stick of gum or a mint and it looks like they're making – they turn it into something that it's not. I don't know if you've ever seen the HBO film Recount about the 2000 Recount and the Brooks Brothers protests where all these people stormed the Recount room wearing Brooks Brothers and

stormed the recount room so that they would stop the count. So imagine if you have that all over Georgia, which I will add, there was also reporting from last week in The Guardian that the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington did a public records request from Georgia officials, and they found that there are...

like a large email chain and tons of correspondence going back to this past January where GOP election deniers, people from, you know, like the 2020 who were trying to overturn the election in Georgia in 2020, and at least an election officials from at least five counties are in a, on like an email chain together where their corresponding will cast out on the results. And they're also working together to institute these rule changes.

Not only that, but Donald Trump has shouted out at his rallies by name the three members of this Georgia – Republican members of this Georgia Board of Elections and said they're like warriors. They're doing great work. These are the people who got the rule – this hand count rule changed. And there's going to be legal challenges.

Hopefully it gets overturned. Yeah, I know they're trying to say we don't have time or the money to do this. It could get overturned, but you draw the wrong judge. They keep bringing it to the Supreme Court. Yeah. What are we going to do? You're in trouble. Well, it's not just Georgia, right? I also heard about what's going on in Nebraska with Lindsey Graham.

For folks who don't know, every state except Nebraska and Maine have a winner-take-all approach to electoral votes. But since 1992 in Nebraska, they do a split congressional district thing. So in total, Nebraska has five electoral votes. And they allocate two electoral votes to the state's popular vote winner and then one electoral vote to the popular vote winner in each of the three congressional districts.

So like in 2008, Obama won District 2 and got one electoral vote from Nebraska. Well, they're worried that Kamala Harris is, of course, going to win Omaha and that congressional vote. And right now, we're dealing with- Biden did too. And Biden did too. We're in a situation where one electoral college vote could make a huge difference. So now Trump wants Nebraska to change their rules this late to do a winner-takes-all approach.

which is nuts. 40 days left in this election, and you want Nebraska to change its process. Nebraska's governor, Jim Pillen, who is a Republican, supports this idea, but said that he would not call a special session to reconsider the state's appointment of votes without the support of 33 senators, 33 state senators, so they haven't gotten that yet. And who has stuck their nose in

And Ladybugs into this race. None other than the Queen of South Carolina, Ms. Lindsey Graham, who is in Nebraska trying to change their voter laws. Even though you don't see Nebraska's actual senators, Deb Fischer and Pete Ricketts, neither one of them are pushing for Nebraska to change the voter laws. And they're both Republicans, too. But you got Queen Ladybugs in here. So.

stock in the cornfields trying to change the laws. Stay in your lane. Remember when he went to Georgia in 2020? He's like the errand boy. Go fur somewhere else, Lindsey Graham. Let it go, my boy. So there's that. And then also, so I think it's unclear if this will end up happening, but it could be very problematic because in this case,

Let's say Harris wins the Rust Belt, but she doesn't win the Sun Belt. If this one district in Omaha can go to her, she can get 270. But if not, it goes 269, 269. The vote then ends up in the House where each state of 50 gets one vote. And that is based on whether that state has a majority of Republican or Democratic representatives.

So the Republicans would right now just have 26, which is just that's the amount you need. So that would go badly. Depends how the House races play out. But I still don't think that they would. I think in no case will the Democrats succeed in a situation like that. So we can't let that happen.

The holdout from this Nebraska thing is one guy who wants to run for mayor of Omaha. And if he were to give in to this change, that would probably not happen. So let's hope that he has a squeaky clean record and that they can't find anything to pressure him with. How's that? I mean, because they're out here finding stuff. If you wrote racist or horrible comments on a sex site in 2005, somebody has screenshots of it. Yes.

Mark Roberts in North Carolina. Proof. Hey, you know, good news is it looks like she's going to pick up North Carolina. We need to stay vigilant in North Carolina. It's very possible, you know. We're hoping it. We're hoping. Michael Steele says he thinks that North Carolina and Florida will both fall. Good call.

But I don't know. I've heard not great things about the Florida Senate race, so I don't really see how – I'm not looking in the rearview mirror until the very, very end. Yeah. Until she is inaugurated and fully in that house. So we've got to keep pedal to the metal. Even then, they'll still try to fuck with her. And not only – this isn't just happening in Georgia and Nebraska. There are attempts across many different states –

even ones that are solidly red, in order to suppress the vote. So Texas has purged approximately 500,000 eligible voters from their voter rolls. Oklahoma has purged almost 200,000 voters. And red states have collectively closed over 100,000 polling locations, primarily in Black and Latino neighborhoods. So this is a strong...

widespread effort, got to just push back against it and get ourselves out there and get everyone you know to make sure that they are getting out there no matter how hard they try to make it. Have a voting plan. Talk to your friends and neighbors on a walk. Offer to drive people to the polls if you can. It's going to be a difficult one, but...

My little light at the end of the tunnel is Donald Trump said if he loses this one, he won't run in 2028. So we can eradicate MAGA if we just keep it up. That's because he says he's fleeing the country. Oh, he probably – I know. That would be great. I think a big MAGA loss this round is going to take the final bit of air out of that balloon because it would have been a long time of losing. It would have been a full eight years of losing. Right. And especially if they can neutralize Russia because so much of this is supported by –

Foreign disinformation. Yep. Anyway, shall we go to our main story? Yes. V, take us to this. Take you to North Carolina. In our main news segment, which we are calling The Sex Got Weird and Now the Cult is Collapsing. Yeah. Let's go.

Mm-hmm.

Because that is how dangerous they find him. And he still has not stepped down from office. I don't know who is writing this episode of America, but this is crazy. The man calls himself a black Nazi. He said on porn websites, I want to remind you, this wasn't like a political website. This is nude Africa. He's writing this stuff on. He's saying slavery was a necessary part of life and we should bring it back and confessed to peeping on women in a locker room. Some as young as 14 years old, uh,

I wanted to know more about this man because I was like, how did he get here? He also said that Mein Kampf was not what he expected. An eye-opening. Everyone should read it. So I got into it because I always want to know, like, how did you get this way? Like, where did you come from? How long has this guy been around? So here's what I found on Mark Robinson. He is the ninth of 10 children who grew up in a home with an alcoholic, abusive father who beat up on his mom and him.

Uh, he ended up in foster care for a period of time. Then he joined the army. He used the GI bill using those social programs that he hates so much to get a degree in of all things history from the university of North Carolina at Greensboro. Now he did not graduate from that school, uh,

Because he got turned on to Rush Limbaugh's talk show. And when he was listening to Rush Limbaugh's talk show while he was in college, he said that he felt like the things Rush was saying reflected who he was as a man. So that explains why...

He now thinks slavery is a good thing and that, in his words, I would like to buy a couple myself. Yes, yes, yes. He thinks they should bring back slavery. Yes. So he was very much an unknown person. He worked in a furniture factory and went to this college for history before 2018. This is when Mark Robinson takes the Clarence Thomas black conservative unicorn path.

And he was shepherded onto this path by Republican Mark Walker, who was tasked with leading the Republican outreach to the black community in North Carolina at that time.

Mark Walker and Robinson both attended a Greensboro County meeting where Robinson defended having a gun show in the wake of the Stoneman Douglas shooting. And Mark posted that speech to Facebook, which went viral and started Robinson on this path of being rewarded and driven around to be a speaker at Republican events as this black conservative. And he was paid handsomely for saying some really super conservative, crazy shit.

So that is, that is exactly how Clarence Thomas started. He was looking for power and someone told him, well, you'd have a lot more power if you went the conservative route because, you know, there's so many, so much more competition and you have to be a really good person to be a Democrat. And he was like, oh yeah, Shepard, take me over there. Take me near the Harlan Crowe's yacht. I'll go. Well,

Well, he's already seems bought in. It seems like he's ideologically aligned from his days listening to Rush Limbaugh. But I don't know if like this Rush Limbaugh thing was part of like the on-campus recruitment of black students for the Republican Party in North Carolina and like how much this Mark Walker guy really sort of like selected him. Did he give him the speeches? It seems like he was coached a little bit by this guy to be this person since 2018. Yeah.

So this Mark Robinson guy hates the Jews, hates Jewish people, makes frequent anti-Semitic comments about Jewish people on the porn sites, remember, but then recently said he supports Israel. People have asked him how he squares that, and he said they're not the same. Okay. So, all right. Moving on. We have to move on. We don't have time to unpack all that. I can't unpack.

Yeah. We can't, we can't. He also said he hates abortion and calls it child sacrifice, but did admit to paying for an abortion in 1989 when his then girlfriend got pregnant, he would go on to marry that woman and have two children.

He since said he regrets that.

He did two things while in office, though. He convinced the state legislature to pass legislation establishing the North Carolina Medal of Valor for law enforcement officers and made his office responsible for implementing it. So he created an award for cops. And then, of course, he oversees a 15-person task force that

That roots out wokeness in North Carolina schools. And those are the two things that he has done as lieutenant governor. So not so great. Much more active on the porn sites than he was in the legislature. Now, in the wake of this CNN expose with information delivered by the Republican Party.

Trump has kicked Mark Robinson off the campaign trail after calling him a great guy and the modern Martin Luther King, which is funny because Mark Robinson called Martin Luther King Martin Luther slur word and said that he was a bad person. So I don't know how they square these things, but here we are. He also compared Hitler favorably to Obama. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, he's all over the place. He just says the craziest thing possible.

Pretty much. And Trump just appeared in North Carolina without Robinson and instead brought all his grandkids on stage to help appeal to the women, I guess. Robinson was also barred from attending J.D. Vance's rally in North Carolina. So they have dropped him like a hot potato, as has Robinson's entire campaign staff. They have all quit at this point, which is great for Josh Stein, who's also running for governor. But

But Mark Robinson is still on the ballot. So you can't give up now. Even with all of this, there's going to be plenty of people in the state of North Carolina that don't follow the news and just go in and vote Republican down the ticket. Josh Stein. Get out the word about Mark Robinson.

Like I said, bipartisan support, but he still needs all the votes he can get. He's a sweet man. He coaches youth basketball. Who doesn't want a youth basketball coach? It's like our own little Tim Walls in North Carolina. And he doesn't spend his time on porn sites making disparaging comments about Martin Luther King. So for that alone...

Vote for Josh Stein. Yeah, just a functional person who's interested in governing. He's a good dude. He's a good dude. And hopefully his lieutenant governor will be someone that we can trust as well. Because right now, Roy can't leave the state of North Carolina because that makes the lieutenant governor the acting governor. And he had to give up being vetted for vice president, the current governor of North Carolina, because he was so afraid if he had to leave the state to campaign that Mark Robinson would do crazy stuff.

This happened in Arizona too, I think. Didn't it? It happened in one of the Sunbelt states where the lieutenant governor was a woman and they were like, we can't leave because she changes the rules every single time he would go anywhere. I forget. Anyway, tale as old as time through freakos. Classic, classic. ♪

Speaking of freakos. Speaking of freakos, we have to talk about this Diddy indictment. I can't. It is- So disturbing. So disturbing and so extreme. And what I think is especially disturbing is that he was so high up in the legit A-list upper echelons of entertainment and-

who he is and has been close to, there is simply no way they did not know about some level of his depravity, such as Jay-Z, the Kardashians, Ashton Kutcher, his very close friend. I'm watching this Ashton Kutcher thing. This is now the second or third person who

who has done terrible things that has been a good friend of Ashton Kutcher. Yep. Danny Masterson, who he wrote a character witness letter about. Mila Kunis, his wife, who was 14 when they first started the show when he was 19. And she says back then he made her uncomfortable and was always talking about underage stuff. So I don't know. I don't want to like, I think the Ashton Kutcher stuff has come. And I think this fact that he runs a human trafficking nonprofit freaks me out. I'm just, I'm scared of everything now. Nothing's off the table. J-Lo. J-Lo's in. J-Lo. J-Lo.

People know this was the person who handed Diddy the gun in the club where he shot someone. Shine. Yeah, who is now randomly a member of parliament in Belize. What a glow up. Yeah.

second act, I don't know. If we find out that in my millennial childhood, one of the paramount moments of it was Biggie getting shot and Puff Daddy at the time, they called him Puff Daddy, not Diddy, making the song I'll Be Missing You with Faith Evans, who was Biggie's, at that time I thought, widow, but they had actually been divorced. If I find out at this point in my life, at my grown age of 42, that I spent so much time crying about that song and swaying at the sixth grade dance to that song

And Puff was the one who took Biggie out? I'm going to freak out. Just so much of my life is a lie if we find out that he was responsible for Biggie's death, too. What makes you think that? Because they're saying he was responsible for Biggie's death. There? Like, the TikTokers? No, like, the evidence that leads up to, like, how Faith Evans then went on to marry Stevie J, who's, like, P. Diddy's, like, number one guy. And, like, just the way that...

Diddy controlled bad boy and like wanted to be bigger than Biggie Smalls. And with the killing of Tupac Shakur had to like had this opportunity with killing Biggie with the death of Biggie or the shooting of Biggie to make it this East Coast West Coast thing and have like all this power transition to him.

It is a hard line between what Jaguar Wright is saying on TikTok and what people from the past and Cat Williams are saying about all this stuff and what's real. And I just think we're in such a weird situation with this right now. Yeah, I'm a little down the rabbit hole with Jaguar Wright and...

Cat Williams is my next place to explore. Oh, Cat Williams does not lie. That man, he's sober-dober. He's, yeah. And he's been saying it for years. Yeah. So here are some of the things they found in the siege of Diddy's Hall.

home. Diddy's home, which is now up for sale. From this house, they seized 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lulube, which is just what was left over, folks. This is like what was in the house. They were asking somebody, I think it was Little Rod, about why so much baby oil. And he said, well, Diddy likes his men greased up. And I was like, okay, gross. 800 dildos, 800

This is a compulsion. It's just a compulsion. I mean, maybe there's no reason to have that. He's like Anthony Comstock. Unless there was. Exactly. The people who are like this are the worst. Narcotics of many types, including something called pink powder, which I asked threads, what is pink powder? Because I didn't know. I haven't done drugs in a long time because there's meth and fentanyl in them. Don't do drugs. You can't do drugs anymore. I'm sorry. It's over.

But I was asking, what's pink powder? And they said it's a combination of ketamine, cocaine, strawberry flavoring, MDA, MDMA, and bath salts. I was like, okay. Also known as cotton candy. Apparently it's like pink cocaine is like the thing now. Guns with serial numbers, sawed off ammunition, and IV fluids for recovery, which means that there had to be some kind of medical professional involved in these freak-offs, which is also scary. So they said that some of the injuries from these freak-offs, it would take like days or weeks to recover from.

Yeah, it was definitely pretty dangerous, some of the situations that they were putting them in, these elaborate sex productions that could last days. I also don't think we should call them freak-offs. I think we should call them mass rapes because the more that I was reading about it, it's very clear that Diddy had hired and paid criminals.

contract male sex workers. Those people were compensated. They were flown in. They were given performance instructions. They were paid. There was whatever. But then they talk about the women that were involved in these and it's always they were drugged. Their careers were under whatever. They were not paid. This was not him hiring a bunch of sex workers for like some legit fun party time. This was seemingly much more nefarious and sick than I think any of us will ever be able to truly imagine.

It was like a sex performance for him. It wasn't like, oh, we're going to all get into this role play consensually and this is something we like to do. This was something that people were pressured to do physically, financially, emotionally, sexually, whatever it was. And some were

Some people were paid, but that doesn't really matter. And some people were non-consensual. Were not. Yeah. Now, the thing that they make very clear here is that there were no underage victims named in this particular indictment, which...

I know that they want to get that out there to say there's no underage victims as if that somehow like makes it better. But I am still wondering about Justin Bieber, about Usher, about Lil Bow Wow, about some of the young talent that was on the bad boy roster that we can see a distinct flip in their personalities from around the time of 13, 14, 15 when they start with him to 16.

17, 18, when they, you know, many of them went through very difficult, either drug addiction problems or psychological issues. Aaron Carter is alleged to be another potential victim of Diddy. I would tell people to watch the videos where Justin Bieber and Diddy are interacting after the moments where Usher reportedly gave Diddy a cust guardianship over Justin Bieber for 48 hours. Yeah.

So weird. I looked into this. So strange. I looked into this too. I was like, why did Usher have custody of Justin Bieber? And apparently this goes back quite a ways. And if you look into people even like Mick Jagger and Elvis and whatnot, when they had underage people that they wanted to travel with them either as paramours or as musicians, the parent would give custody of that child to that musician so that they could take him across state lines and essentially be in charge of them. So that is, I guess, Justin Bieber's mother would not give custody of Biebs to Usher.

Diddy gave custody to Usher and then Usher loaned out Justin Bieber for the 48 hours. And the things he says about him are very unusual, like that he was beautiful like a woman, but he was a boy. Like I think there's just very strange things. It's very, very gross. So I watched a lot of this. I think we're on Epstein level, if not higher, with the level of – I don't think you get above that. People –

I don't think you get above Epstein, but I'm saying I think in terms of recognizability, we're going to see names on this list that we know a lot more than – and that were more influential in shaping our culture and our personalities and our music and our art and people we trusted more than, say, the folks that Epstein was catering to who were these sort of like businessmen that we don't know and –

all horrible, but I think that we are in for a period of national grief when it comes to the truth coming out about a lot of this. And who was a victim and what victims turned perpetrators also. And V, you also mentioned an East Coast, West Coast thing. I think that could be what this is. You had a lot of businessmen, politicians involved in Epstein, and that was basically based on the East Coast, Wall Street, all of those power centers. And this is more of like a celebrity. This is how

People in the music industry got famous. And I think what you can even tell is that now the people who are pop stars and people who are an older generation of pop stars, like the elder millennial type of pop star, they're much more protective over the younger ones. Probably because of what happened to them. Exactly. I mean, even if you look across the music spectrum and they're saying this all levels up to LA Reid and Pinky,

And Pink is listed in some of these things as having been like a part of Diddy. But Pink was also discovered very young. She wasn't on Bad Boy because as her lyric says, L.A., which I thought meant Los Angeles, it means L.A. read. L.A. told me I'd be a pop star. All you have to change is everything you are. And she signed with Interscope Records instead.

Wait, so she went away from that? She went to go sign with Bad Boy, but they said, all you have to change is everything you are, and she signed with a lesser label to maintain herself. So that's what her side of this is. But people are trying to say she was in with Diddy, she was mixed up, she was whatever. I definitely think – it's undeniable that she's had crossovers with him. She also kissed Justin Bieber during a – when he was accepting some award, and people thought that that was weird and gross. But I –

we are not putting Pink into the situation. She wasn't with Bad Boy and she wasn't at the freak-offs, but she was adjacent to this and people are saying, should Pink have blown the whistle? Should Will Smith have? What about Will Smith's children? They should all have blown the whistle.

Khloe Kardashian has said that she would be at Diddy parties with so many naked people. The Kardashian family, you've got to remember, Robert Kardashian is the head of this and he's the one who helped OJ get off, right? So there's a lot here. There's a lot here. And me and Sammy don't have the lawyers to go into speculating any further than we already did. So we're going to stop there with the Diddy stuff, but certainly following it. Now, there is something out there right now that is happening on TikTok and I'm seeing a ton of it.

And it's that people are saying they discovered Kim Porter's book. So I want to tell you, Kim Porter was not married to Diddy, but she has three of his children. She was very young. She was a supermodel. Diddy just said he couldn't marry her for whatever reason, but she was a longtime partner of his. She recently died of pneumonia at like 47, young. And people were like, ain't no way, ain't no way she died of pneumonia. And so now on Twitter,

Amazon, there is a self-published book called It's Kim Porter's Memoir. It is only 60 pages long.

And it allegedly is her diary entries that go up to right about the days that she had died. Now, it was on a shared drive, like how me and Sammy have a shared document when we write the script for the show. She had a shared document with her friends because she was afraid of Diddy. This is all allegedly. And so they would read these diary entries in case anything happened to her, they would be able to publish them. So her one friend says that he lightly edited

to just make it make sense and publish it as a book on Amazon. It's only 60 pages. You can buy it. You can read it. But again, she is not here to say if this is exactly what was in those sheets. And he admits that he lightly edited it, but just because like he had to like clean up the spelling and that's what he's saying. So here's what it says. Yeah.

She died days after she planned to release this book about her life with Diddy. The book says that Diddy taped himself having sex with young boys that he managed and that he had underage girls attending the sex parties that he threw. The final entry of the memoir has Kim Porter falling fatefully ill, dramatically texting her friends, he got me, and then calling 911. The 60-page book is a combination of diary entries and confessions allegedly from Kim that were on a shared drive with these friends.

And it is the top selling book on Amazon right now. So I don't know. Can a book only be 60 pages? Diddy denies the book's allegations and Kim is not here to tell us how much of her friend edited this. So I don't know. But we do have one person corroborating the Kim Porter book. This is the craziest thing to me. Donald Trump Jr.,

Oh my God. Donald Trump Jr. said when asked about Kim Porter and the book and these allegations, he said that his ex-wife, Vanessa Trump, was Kim's best friend. They were supermodels together. And Vanessa never believed that Kim died of pneumonia. And Donald Trump Jr. corroborates that Kim was afraid of Diddy. Donald Trump Jr. is our smoking gun in the Diddy story. Don Jr. who went to Diddy's parties with his dad. This is what we've got. Yeah, there's so many pictures of Donald Trump and Diddy. To me, this...

is legit because of the fact that they were actually in the same circles. It's not like a random, you know. Also, he would be happy to deflect something like this off of

Look, Don Jr. is a sensationalist in many ways. And if you watch the video of him talking about Diddy, it is the only time you will see him sober up and be straight. He's like, look, I'm not trying to get involved in Diddy's business, but my ex-wife Vanessa was friends with Kim and she always said that she didn't believe it. I was at those parties. I saw a lot of things. And I do know that Kim was afraid of him. He just says it so straight. He's like, okay, next question. So that's to me where I'm like, okay, all right. Okay, Don Jr.,

Now, I mean, here's the thing. You're going to hear so many people. I'm not making any excuses for any celebrities. But I worked in high-end catering and event planning back in the early 2000s in New York City. And this was very much the norm, them having these huge parties in the Hamptons. The white party was storied.

There's going to be some people who went to the parties. Did you leave by 1130, 12? Or did you stay to the after one? That's what we need to understand. Attending parties is a part of celebrity culture and political culture. You are expected to make appearances. Sometimes your brand deals are tied to your appearance at this particular event because TMZ and all the magazines are going to be covering it. So I think we have to, there's going to be a lot of truth and a lot of lies that come out, but I am very interested in this Ashton Kutcher thing because I have always believed that

that people who like to scare people are scary people. Like I never liked Ellen because she was always about trying to scare people. And I think there's some sort of like

about people who constantly keep people like on edge all the time. And Ashton Kutcher is very much the same. Punked. That's a good point. You get a certain kind of thrill out of like terrifying people and it's not Halloween spooky fun time. Something about that to me is like, I don't know. It's a control thing. I never thought about that. So we'll see what happens with him and him thinking Danny Masterson is such a great guy and writing a letter for him and everything. Just to close out the sex scandal section, I do want to call out that Matt Gaetz

is back in the news for allegations of sex-related activities with a minor. He's the worst. This came out because basically new court filings contain sealed affidavits from three eyewitnesses who saw Matt Gaetz attend a sex party with a 17-year-old at the home of a lobbyist named Chris Dorworth, who was one of Matt Gaetz's friends.

And these filings basically came out because Dorworth filed an unrelated civil lawsuit in 2023 that he ultimately ended up dropping. But his attorneys filed their own documents in federal court to try to recoup the legal fees since he had dropped his case. So we're now hearing about this kind of almost as a side effect of this other lawsuit.

But again, Matt Gaetz can't escape these allegations. No, but you know why? Another reason to vote, Sammy. The Department of Justice is the one overseeing the Diddy case. These are federal cases. Same with Matt Gaetz. If it goes up, you know, the congressman chain would be a federal case. Merrick Garland doesn't bring something to court unless he knows he's going to win. And that's how we know that this Diddy thing will continue on. And he's got the staff and the expertise of this particular Department of Justice to get a conviction against somebody as powerful as that and a network as big as this. Right.

If Donald Trump becomes president, Merrick Garland ain't going to be the damn Department of Justice head anymore. All those lawyers go to way. And I made a video yesterday and people were like, you're being tinfoil hat. I'm like, I am not. That's how it works. You people don't understand all these, all these deep conservatives who are like, get rid of all the federal bureaucracy, fire everybody at the Fed. Like,

Who do you think would bring these cases forward? If Donald Trump gets elected president, the Diddy case either goes on hold or gets dismissed. They don't deal with it because he wants his Department of Justice to jail journalists and do all kinds of retaliation against people he thinks are like his political enemies. And he's going to prioritize that. Now, will he make Diddy sit in jail forever and ever and ever and never get his trial? Maybe. Maybe that's how it goes. But we're certainly not going to see justice with the Donald Trump DOJ. Who's going to be the head of his DOJ?

Mike Davis, his whole goal is absolutely going after political people that he thinks should go to jail, journalists, shutting down television stations, shutting down newspapers. Diddy is not going to be a priority for Donald Trump, who has said many times he loves Diddy. To Danity Cain's face on The Apprentice said, I love Diddy. I'm going to stick up for him when we know now Danity Cain was one of Diddy's victims.

Even back then, they were saying, I don't want to talk about Sean Combs. So vote to put Diddy in jail, I guess. We'll be following this. We will. A wild story. This was a crazy, crazy episode. But like I said, when the sex gets too weird, the cults crumble. And that is just the truth across the board. It has been forever.

You got to let people live and not try to control their sex or their money or your cult won't last. And that's Cult Leader 101 with V-Spear. That's just the facts, man. That's just the facts, man. So until next time, I'm V-Spear. I'm Sammy Sage. And this is American Fever Dream. 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.