Left Face
Join Adam Gillard and Dick Wilkinson while they talk politics and community engagement in Pikes Peak region.
Left Face
Natural Disasters, Political Failures, and the Cost of Inaction
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Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Left Face. This is the Pikes Peak Region podcast, where we talk about veterans issues, and we have a great episode for you today. I'm your co-host, Dick Wilkinson, and I'm joined, as always, with Adam Gillard. Good morning, Adam.
Speaker 2:Good morning Dick. How are you doing buddy?
Speaker 1:I'm doing great we had for our listeners. We snuck in the crossover episode with Justice, with Jax in the last couple of weeks, so we hope you enjoyed that. But we're back to cover the news items that happened in the break.
Speaker 2:How much did you unplug while we were away?
Speaker 1:Oh man, so much, so much, it started to freak me out. It was like five days of not watching the news at all and by the end of that was like I felt like I lived on another planet.
Speaker 2:You know what I'm saying yeah and like, like we know with this administration, there's a new scandal every day so you, yeah, I missed, I missed an entire news cycle for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, five seasons for sure, yeah, uh, yeah, I drove to indiana. So like, while we were driving, you know, I was pretty unplugged from everything. So, yeah, yeah, me too I was kind of coming back and and really just pick up where you left off. You just try to have fun and just like, yeah, come back, just pick up the bucket of shit that you're, yes, yeah that's true.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, it was good, I mean it's good to do that, so I I encourage it. But, uh, I, I mean it's good to do that, so I encourage it. But I definitely kind of you know the idea with especially taking leave in the military you want to take leave for a long enough time that you want to go back to work, right, right, yeah, and so I guess that's my. You know, after five days I want to watch the news again, even if I know it's all terrible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, yeah, but yeah, it's definitely good to get those breaks and take a breath. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, we'll start off with really a crisis of what's going on in Texas right now. Over the weekend, on the 4th of July weekend, there was a flood in Kerrville or in the area of Kerr County. In the area of Kerrville is the seat of Kerr County and the Guadalupe river was the the culprit. Um an insane amount of rain. I don't know how many inches fell, but it all fell very fast and the flood happened overnight. It was flash flooding and the big concern there is that it got it. It peaked at night, so yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Even more more scary when you can't really see.
Speaker 1:You just hear that rumble and all of a sudden, Right, and so the instances where there was camps that were like permanent camp buildings. The water just rushed through those so fast that it swept people out of the buildings.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and a lot of those camps that, like there's not a high um, you know yeah, there's no escape point yeah, right. Well, there's not a high like parent to kid ratio oh okay, I thought you were saying high ground. I'm like, there's not that no, yeah, but but so you, you have oh yes, there's a lot of kids.
Speaker 2:You have a lot of kids out there, yeah experiencing just nightmare chaos yeah, yeah, and you know trying to find that high ground and there's just nothing, because it raised I can't remember how many feet in, you know a couple hours, but it was crazy like the amount of water that they saw and just how it cut people off and just water is so destructive. Uh, there's actually what's moving fast for sure yeah new video of uh going on in new mexico right, I saw that what's going on?
Speaker 1:we're just a house getting just I saw that video down the road there. You know it was floating, you know, like like a top. How does a house float.
Speaker 2:But you know, yeah and uh, I mean it takes a very little bit of water to be dangerous because, living in arizona where we had the monsoons, yeah, like a couple inches and your car would be taken off the road.
Speaker 1:So you're talking Swift. Moving water is super dangerous 10 feet of it with like rocks and logs and stuff like that. Yeah, it's just Whole trees floating down through it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, natural disasters like that, something that probably could be mitigated, but not like it happens.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:These things happen. What we missed, though, was the warning systems that we have in place for these things. Yeah, you know, having the National Weather Service be able to blast out their warnings in a timely, effective manner would have saved lives. Should have, yes.
Speaker 1:Should have. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And even after that didn't happen in a timely manner. It still took hours to get people moving and doing things. The entire response was just feet dragged the whole way. It seems like it was yeah, and I don't mean to say that like the people that were there doing it were dragging the feet.
Speaker 1:There's not enough people there, the coordination and the administration of the response. Yeah, the responders were, you know were gangbusters for sure.
Speaker 2:But all that overhead that got cut recently, that we warned that would happen, people would lose their lives over it, came to fruition.
Speaker 1:Well, and in a situation like this it's called a flash flood for a reason, right, so you have the conditions that can create it is is identified, you know, maybe up to 24 hours ahead of time, but then it's a wait and see kind of thing. Uh, but you're right there that that wait and see is a coordinated effort to get resources in the right place at the right time in case it does happen. And that is what appears to maybe really didn't take place or unfold in the normal manner of that, whatever that 24 hour window is before.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that that stuff didn't really happen until the 23rd hour, right when the water was already there, you know because you know again from my experiences on Tucson, when we knew stuff like that was happening, they would push it out on the news and you would get the national weather service warnings and things like that within that day to say, hey, stay out of the wash yeah, and out of the wash.
Speaker 1:The text message alert for this stuff didn't go off until like 1 am or something like that. Right like I, if you got your phone set where it makes that terrible amber alert noise, that probably woke people up, right, you know you can turn off amber alerts I do know, yes, yeah you feel like a shitty person but you can do, you can.
Speaker 2:I turned it off, I did we had like, because down in pueblo somebody called in an amber alert because somebody stole their truck. He's like oh, my niece was in the back seat and so they called in the. They found the truck pretty quickly. But uh, yeah, okay, yeah, so like I turned it off. I was pretty upset but I was like man, I gotta turn that back on, just in case. But man, you know natural disasters happen.
Speaker 1:right, we can be prepared, we can be responsive, but we can't just prevent it. Right, yeah, and so the the take on that is preparation and response. Are government activities? Right, and I don't know about you, but the last time I checked, elected leaders are involved in coordinating those government activities, like the governor and the county commissioners and the mayors.
Speaker 2:those kind of people.
Speaker 1:Right. And so your argument, as we were kind of setting this topic up, was when do we politicize critical failures? Right, it's one thing to say nature can be full of wrath and it's something else to say. And the government missed the mark completely on you. You know whatever needed to happen in that regard. So, uh, is it? You know? Sort of like if somebody dies and they make a joke and they say, oh, too soon, right, like how soon is too soon to dig into the political problems that are associated with the response?
Speaker 2:yeah, because people get such a emotional and visceral reaction, like the and the media and influences purposely do this where they talk about you know the children that lost their lives and and you know innocent, you know lives being, you know families destroyed, things like that. You know it's there to build that up. But once you peel back that initial emotional reaction, why are we here?
Speaker 1:Why are we standing?
Speaker 2:right here talking about this even.
Speaker 1:And why does that emotional reaction become a deflection instead of a motivation in the right direction? Why does that happen? It's just a block or of reality, of that you know. You. You voted for a reduced posture in the federal government, in basically every part of the federal government, to include emergency management. And if that you know has come to pass, and even in just a few months of firing people and scaling back operations, we're starting to have natural disasters. Of course that's what happens. How can you defend and basically hide behind the fact that children have been, you know, impacted and perished in this disaster and and not say, wait a minute, this disaster took 27 kids and there could have been something done about it that I would. Why, you know, I can't do the mental gymnastics that's required to be defensive instead of motivated to care more about fixing the problem. Right, yeah, like I don't do the mental gymnastics that's required to be defensive instead of motivated to care more about fixing the problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know if it's a survivor's guilt. There's some kind of deep season there that people just don't want to admit that they are part of the problem. On this one, you're always problem or solution man.
Speaker 1:I guess it's there. And as far as when, when, how soon, is too soon. I think a lot of people, especially if they're actually impacted directly by it or they're in the region, or something. I think what you're saying there of like trying to determine, could there be any other explanation? Could it just be, you know, the wrath of nature? Could it have been X, y and Z? And so those people are I don't want to say this in a negative way, but they're searching for answers. And the last one, it's the least comfortable one, to say oh, it's because people made mistakes and the policy is moving in the wrong direction. Right, that's not one that anybody wants to face, you know.
Speaker 2:I mean we need to get to that point because we're doing irreparable damage, generational damage, you know to our planet, to our kids. Um, you know, things like this are going to have such long impacts for all those kids yeah, those families affected down there um, yes, generational, when we have these, these kind of tragedies and uh, for sure.
Speaker 1:Well, and you know, hurricane season is coming right and, uh, there's already been a tropical, uh, depression that moved in and has put a lot of rain over on the east coast just once now, and so there's, that's, that's just going to keep continuing over the next few months. And so if, if, how many in a row, you know how many terrible disasters in a row that get bad responses, like, like you said, when do we politicize or when do we talk about?
Speaker 2:it finished, uh, responding to helene, yet like they still need money to help get them, you know, their infrastructure fixed and things like that in the, you know, the north carolina hills and things yeah uh, but they just got denied money. So these communities are directly suffering from a cut fema because they think that FEMA wasn't doing the job, because the media sold them that bill of goods.
Speaker 1:They're not doing their job.
Speaker 2:They are man.
Speaker 1:It's just a very, very hard job, yeah, and you just lost your house.
Speaker 2:So you're upset. We want to help you as much as we can. You're upset, yeah, you know, like we want to help you as much as we can, and yeah, it's things like that, that, just that you feel so bad for when the kids are involved. But this is exactly what we thought was going to happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and like a minute, like I said a minute ago, how many times in a row, how many times this year, is that sort of a year-on-year uh you know tracker, where you're like oh, there's only five terrible disasters last year. You know, and I mean the the death tolls rise. Like what's the?
Speaker 2:you know what's the thing that gets people to care about it right, or put it into their thought when it comes time to vote, I guess, and here's what really gets me because, like when california had a request for funds for the for the fires earlier this year, texas said no, hmm, wow, yeah, yeah, texas voted against giving them funds for their wildfires that destroyed LA. Down there, mexico, their president sent a team to help rescue people. Yeah, what a vastly different approach to just leading President Scheinbaum. Yeah, like what is like vastly different like approach to like just leading Like President Scheinbaum.
Speaker 1:Yeah, gloria.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, being always adversarial to the Trump administration, yeah, but still sent a team there just because it's human life, that's what matters in this moment, and so, but yeah, again, we can't politicize, we can't sing their praises no, definitely can't do that.
Speaker 1:Well, um, speaking of hurricanes, uh, that brings us. You know, we're going to take that and bend the story now from, uh, natural disasters to alligator, alcatraz and florida, um, just the, that's the, our lead-in to a topic about ice and the progression of everything that's going on in that uh, federal movement. We'll call it yeah, it's uh.
Speaker 2:I've already seen stories coming out about just you know, maggot filled food like horrific conditions, just just people, uh, just not in humane conditions, and I mean this is week one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I haven't really seen. I didn't know if the facility was open yet or not, so I haven't watched the stories since last week when the headline first came out. So yeah, they've got people in there.
Speaker 2:Now, that was my understanding from what I read. There was actually occupants, yeah, down there and they're already suffering from, you know, huge mosquitoes like they. Just I don't know if anybody's ever slept in a like a room with one mosquito. Yeah, like just an open prison and like the like. Just the terrible things that can mosquitoes can bring into those and transfer them so quickly. Yeah, like it's going to be mass bodies Like this is how, like holocausts happen. Like you put people in these tight little spots and just whatever happens happens. Yeah, no, like I've been to Auschwitz, like I've stood in that room that's like 10 by 10 and held like 100 people in it, you know, and like, and they had one little vent at the top where they would get to breathe and if you fell you just died. People just stood on top of you. It's horrific.
Speaker 1:And we are lining up people to go to these facilities and we're building these facilities, we're reopening facilities around town way back in January when or maybe it knows November right after the election, we discussed that the for-profit prison, like investment indexes and like the companies, you know their values there if they were traded yeah, went up Right. I mean it was yeah, and it was sort of that like here it comes, well, here%, or something. I mean it was yeah, and it was sort of that like here it comes, well, here it is. You know it. Actually it didn't take long for it to arrive. That money must have fell out of the sky, you know.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, we saw what ICE budget ballooned to it's more than you know the federal prison systems and things like that, you know. So ice has a huge budget right now. Yeah, um, the aclu just did a for freedom of information request and they got a list of like six different facilities in colorado that ice is looking to uh reopen. Okay, um, two here locally in colorado springs, uh, facilities, that one facility that closed down a while ago, the cheyenne mountain complex, or something like that it down a while ago, the Cheyenne Mountain Complex or something like that.
Speaker 2:It was a prison that closed down earlier, and then a nursing home that they're also looking at, and so we're going to have these camps being built right here in our backyard.
Speaker 1:And the total head count for the state was 100,000 detainee bed count. That's crazy and we have a sheriff count for the state was a hundred thousand detainee like bed, bed count.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, and we have a sheriff that's already promoting how proud he is of catching 19 people. That are getting deported and you know, and they had a list of crimes and things that they were being charged with, but I don't think those ever went to trial. I think they're just dropping those and kicking them out.
Speaker 1:Story update there. The Trump administration just came out straight up and said if he's relieved from prison, we will deport him again. Like, don't let him out, because we'll just pick him up right outside the facility and put him on an airplane.
Speaker 2:Some other folks that I know have about all of these, the ICE folks, and to our National Guard and military folks. They don't understand that once an order's or maybe they do and they just don't give a shit, I don't know Once an order's deemed illegal, especially through the courts like this, which this would be an illegal order, you are not protected Civilly. Criminally you are not protected like civilly, like, like you know, criminally you are not protected. You will be held accountable and liable for those things.
Speaker 2:And so, even if you don't get charged, you know criminally for that. If that family identifies you as the person that stole their husband, your father, they can sue you civilly and you can be you know charged Wow.
Speaker 1:So like, and that's why they're all wearing masks and they're all wearing masks, yeah and like, and I should tell you you're not making ethical decisions. Yeah, if you can't wear a name tape and you have to hide your face.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You're a goon yeah. Yeah, Literally you know you're a goon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just horrific that we're going to be. We already have the sheriff on board with this. I'm sure that the police the CSPD chief is the mayor is probably not going to do anything or say anything to stop this, which is we talked about before. It's just kind of always a disappointment with them. But people need to stand up, because if people stand up, ice backs down.
Speaker 1:Yes, and there's a recent example of that. It's on the news cycle right now in LA Armored vehicles and horses. I showed up on armored vehicles and horses and just rolled into a park in LA Daytime yesterday, just broad daylight, like one or two o'clock in the afternoon. They just surrounded a park. Yeah, why, you know what I mean. Like is it was there. Just how? How do you just walk up to? Are they just walking up to groups of people and like instigating?
Speaker 2:is what's the deal? You know?
Speaker 1:like, right, I can't imagine the operation, like being an army dude. What was the we call operation order? What was the op board on? Like we're going to the park, why? What's the mission? What are we going to do when we get there? You know what I'm saying? Yeah, what's the target? What's the reason? You know, I can't think of one that would make sense, unless it was like hey, we've got intel that there's going to literally be a gang meeting or a gang fight or something like that, and so we're going to show up where we think there's going to be a high concentration of criminals. There's no indication that anything like that is what was going on. It was more of a show of force, absolutely.
Speaker 2:It was intimidation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so here's what happened. Absolutely, it was intimidation. Yeah, and so here's what happened. The citizens just started chasing them out of the park and they started yelling at the ice people and yelling at the people on the horses, and the back doors of the armored vehicles were open and they just were riding in the back and it seemed like within just a few minutes they chased them out of there, man, because there was no violence going on, there was nothing on fire, and so there was no rules of engagement-wise for the ICE agents.
Speaker 1:What can you do? You know what I'm saying If there's nothing criminal going on right in front of you, you can't fight with these people. You can't shoot them with rubber bullets or hit them with batons like what you know, right? So they just left right and the mayor showed up and just called it what it was. She's like this is a an egregious show of force. It's just basically to make people afraid to go out and enjoy the city. There was nothing going on here. There's no violence. You know there may be more that comes out on both sides of the story, but right now it looks pretty much cut and dry. You know, a show of force got rejected by the local population and it worked yeah, and it was a clear violation of the posse.
Speaker 2:Comatose, yeah, yeah, it's clear violation of that. Uh, I think they're trying to um use, like the vehicles and the ice agents, as you know, federal property, so you know, having the guard around them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, uh, as a you know, a roaming federal property type of definition but if the insurrection act hasn't been declared, again you have zero protection as like a troop, like right now you guys have zero protection, like on the legal side of things, with that being not not being declared, without the insurrection act being declared right now you're just being, you're following illegal orders the uh backstop of pardons is the, you know, yeah you know, I mean this is kind of a sidebar.
Speaker 2:Uh, you know, we keep talking about like the red line for folks like what is gonna? Is there gonna be a singular moment where people wake up and be like, okay, that's too far?
Speaker 1:I, honestly, if I was at a park and federal agents just showed up and posted up, that would, that would be the red line for me. Like, honestly, I mean I'm not 100% against, um, the detention type operations that are happening. I'm not 100% against it. I don't think they're going well, I don't think they're being done in a, like you say, legal or or tactful way. But do I, am I against the idea of trying to find criminal, illegal people and try and get them out of the country? No, not necessarily. But what that is, you know, showing up to a park with just gear, you know, heavy, heavy weapons and poking. That's not. They just they just want to poke people.
Speaker 2:That would be.
Speaker 1:That crosses the line for me as just a citizen, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just a citizen, you know, yeah, I mean that's. You know, when you read our founding documentation, you know it's things like that that started a lot of this. You know, having military presence in our city yeah, just just martial law trying to impose. You know their footprint of, you know the foreign government at that time, but you know um, so one thing that's kind of come out recently too, uh, is the new party, the american party oh, yeah, yeah, we didn't text enough about that.
Speaker 1:We should.
Speaker 2:We should have spent all day talking about that, but we didn't, yeah so before elon even started that, he went and talked to that yarvin guru guy okay and so right there that that like worries me so much.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure I know who that is, so he's a guy that, uh, he has a lot of influence over all the billionaires and peter teal and all that okay uh, and he really believes more in a monarchy system.
Speaker 2:So breaking up the us into like different kingdoms and having each billionaire run their own little king, okay, okay um, so like back to the, you know the feudal systems and things like that yeah uh, and yeah, so he, he's a very, very influential person on like with those guys, sure. So which immediately makes me just kind of like anything that Musk does just makes me nauseous, like I get like he's just buying Twitter all over again. He's trying to buy his way into shit.
Speaker 1:And he's still a Nazi piece of shit Like I can't yeah.
Speaker 2:Like I can't.
Speaker 1:You know man.
Speaker 1:But I do love the third party idea. I know, I know that's it. I have to decide if I'm such a third party zealot that I'll get in bed with basically Satan himself to get funded so that I could run for office in a third party. Like you know, I, I love it at face value, but then as soon as you crack open the details and you're like, well, it's Elon Musk and it's this and it's this, and you're like, oh man, I still, I still think I, maybe I want to do it. You know.
Speaker 2:I just won't be an asshole. Yeah, right, right.
Speaker 1:That's it. Yeah, but you, you know he talks about primary and people that you know in other parties that he has no control over. Imagine if you're in his own little personal back pocket party like you can't run again if he you know you're going to follow his orders, basically. But I think the strategy here let's talk about the value of the third party strategy that he's laid out, regardless of who he is. Let's take that part and pause that for a minute and let's just talk about his vision, which I am excited about.
Speaker 1:The House and Senate are often so close to a 50-50 balance and have been so often for the last 100 years that a hundred years that a handful of votes one way or the other is usually the tipping point for a lot of legislation.
Speaker 1:So if you can sprinkle in your party and basically take away that margin of handful of votes where right now, like two senators don't vote for something and then the vice president can come in and split the tie right, if you have three or four senators that are in this other party, then you don't get that. You have to court those people, right, and they have to pull you back to whatever middle or libertarian or whatever position they're in. They're going to pull things back that way, Right? That's the idea. And so having two, three Senate seats is his first look, you know, like in 26, I think, try to run two or three Senate seats and eight to 10 House seats, and that that's enough to split that 50-50 margin most of the time and cause real, you know, breaking down some partisan mentalities and like these 30, 40 year long agendas can't really survive in the face of this, like mediator, if you will. And so that's the idea, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but if you're, if you're putting people into those positions you know, being Elon Musk, he's going to look for far right people. Well, like you, look at AFD and the folks that he would support in other races. Yeah, he's looking to bankroll far right people. Well, like you, look at AFD and the folks that he would support in other races. Yeah, he's looking to bankroll far right people.
Speaker 1:Maybe I mean.
Speaker 2:I don't know, maybe Another thing when you're talking getting these people elected and hoping they have a backbone to, you know, do things like folks that are elected now don't have backbones to like, stand up to different parties.
Speaker 1:But that's the point is that you know your sugar daddy's got your back and so you don't have to play the game of like. Let's make sure mitch mcconnell doesn't get mad at me because he's got 60 billion dollars in his war chest and so I need to make sure I keep drinking out of his fire hose. That's that's. You know that that's. It gets that whole party down into a field teaty position. Right, Just like they are right now.
Speaker 2:Right, Well, you're just changing the puppet master at the end of the rope, but three puppet masters makes a good difference.
Speaker 1:Is my point right? Like that's the whole point, right? Is that? Yeah, I'm not.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think that the radical thing that needs to happen is get rid of Citizens United so that, like normal people can actually run campaigns and actually not have to get funded by billionaires to be effective. Yeah, because I mean everything's going to come at a cost when you're doing stuff like that. Yeah, but getting rid of Citizens United would save our democracy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I think you're not wrong that the way that super PACs are set up is very undemocratic, right, it really reduces the power of the individual voter or the, you know. I guess the, the, even the parties themselves, you know, get kind of abused by the way this PAC system is set up. So yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, cause everybody cowcows to them. Now you know. So it's, yeah, it's a terrible terrible.
Speaker 1:It's not a great setup, no, um, no, and maybe a third party would be able to force the issue and say this is the thing, that's the worst thing there is.
Speaker 1:And if you can't address this in your pork barrel bill, if you can't get my pork in that barrel, well then we understand what's going on. You know what I'm saying, and so we're going to fix this right, and I mean you. And again, if you get that tiny piece of either house, that's what you get to do, and that's what in other political systems that have more parliamentary, where they got like four or five parties right, the the, the top two will be the sort of like large interest parties, and then you'll have two or three in there that are just ultra focused on like one or two topics like agriculture, right, you know, and it's like, hey, all we care about is making sure that the farms keep operating right, and that's our biggest focus is is managing agricultural industry in germany or whatever, and so they've got like 10 seats in parliament, you know, and that this could be something like that, right yeah, it's almost like taking the.
Speaker 2:Uh, it'd be tech instead of the lobbyist like different lobbyist industry yeah sections and having them back their own parties.
Speaker 1:That's what happens in parliamentary systems sometimes. Yeah, like you have the beef party.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah yeah, the beef party I want to join the beef party I'm from texas um, I don't eat that much beef, but it's in my blood. Literally. I can't donate blood anymore because I ate too much beef in England and so you know, right yeah. So beef is literally in my blood, so that one's that rats itself. So well, that's the thing. Once we have a third party, I'll splinter that off and have the fourth party right and it'll be the beef party, right, or whatever. So, because once you do it like then, there's no end, right?
Speaker 2:so yeah, yeah, you, you hope that would snowball because, yeah, we need the, the diversity of people, like willing to have diverse opinions. You know, right now everybody on both sides is just this falls in line.
Speaker 1:You know you have a couple dissers, but overall there's nothing getting done, and that's my point is that if you can split that up a little bit and give either party some room to breathe and be like, oh, if we court them, then we get to step out of line a little bit, but it's not the end of our political career or whatever, because we still get to get something over the line More negotiation, more collaboration. Well, let's shift gears to our last topic, um, since you know, I don't think a third party is going to end ice detention centers anytime soon. So let's let's move over to a little bit of a different story where we're going to talk about the media, uh, as the subject of the story to some degree, but we're going to look at it through a couple of recent things that have the cycle on CNN and MSNBC. So it seems to be a bit of a bias slant right now is that last week, secretary Hegseth paused shipment of weapons to the Ukraine conflict and that there was some material impact from that, that President Trump did not know about it and that it was an order that was given as sort of a rogue order. And so they bring it up to president Trump yesterday and start asking him questions like did you authorize this? Did you know about this? Was there a strategy associated with this? And his he just flat out said I don't know what you're talking about. Like I didn't do that and that didn't happen, Right.
Speaker 1:And so the news pushed back and said well, it certainly did happen. And he said nothing got paused, nothing stopped, certainly did happen. And he said nothing got paused, nothing stopped. If there was an order given, it was not executed and that's it, like there's no story here. I don't want to say I agree with Donald Trump, but I believe that what he's saying is true in that I don't think anything stopped. I don't think, in the course of you know, less than five days of whatever churn in in the department of defense, that there was some material impact to how much weapons got to. You know the conflict. So trump's not wrong in saying nothing. There nothing really happened. But then it's also not untrue that the secretary of defense may have given that order and trump didn't know about it yeah, because he definitely has the authority, um but, but it is funny that even in his circle there's really no delegation in that circle.
Speaker 2:No, like everything has to run through him, like there's a single point that all information or decisions need to go through. And so, even like the question or the thought that a decision was made that he didn't know about, he's like, no, that wouldn't happen. Decision was made that he didn't know about, he was like, no, that wouldn't happen?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that didn't happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which in and of itself is kind of should like make you kind of tingle a little bit like yeah yeah, well, he does understand what the Secretary of Defense is actually allowed to do, maybe, but and I don't think that the Secretary of Defense knows either, I think he's just like, if say it, they'll probably do it. Right, you know, like it's not, uh, because it's based on this like great storied merit of understanding of the you know dod, right, um, but anyways, uh, my take on it is that the media is trying to hound this um as another, like black eye for pete hegseth or as a black eye for the administration. And I think Trump's statement of nobody's eyes black what are you talking about? Right, that's actually the right, that's the true story right now is nobody's eyes black, and so that's. It's a little bit frustrating for me to see that and say you know, isn't we got enough news? You don't have to make up stories. Right, you don't have to spend time on something if there's really nothing to talk about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, cause there's like every day there's a new shiny new story, that that's there. So, having something like this at the same time that his DOJ came out and said that the Epstein files didn't don't exist, or the list doesn't exist. Yeah, like, why are we not talking about?
Speaker 1:that.
Speaker 2:Like how is that not the first thing? We've been talking about this for years? Yes, he said he was going to release the list.
Speaker 1:He did.
Speaker 2:His attorney general said that it was on her desk.
Speaker 1:I think that's the most damning part of the whole story is that she acknowledged the existence of the list in that statement, right, and now I know that they're backpedaling and that they're trying to play wordsmith and word weave, 4d chess, 4d backgammon, but that's what Trump's trying to do with this.
Speaker 2:But Pam. Bondi flat out said the list is on my desk, and that was only four months ago. Yeah, and we've seen the court reports where it's John Doe 174 and things like that, oh yeah right, like they have a list of, like one, like they have to line that up. Well, it's either from prosecutors.
Speaker 1:even if it wasn't Jeffrey Epstein that put it together himself, that could have been the prosecutorial list, which was still considered evidence, right, like it came from evidence. So they didn't make it up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they weren't just like grabbing the white pages and pulling names out of there like, yeah, they had evidence against epstein, obviously. Uh, and where is it? Yep? And so many like maga folks are kind of like like recognizing some things about their, their great leader here, um, and some of them are swallowing that pill and saying like, well, hey, he might have done some bad things, but he's called to action by God and he's going to execute Christ's will here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the justification engine is on full blast around the story, yeah.
Speaker 2:Like so many of these stories, like people just have to keep jumping through these hoops to get themselves to believe that they didn't elect the Antichrist.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Like.
Speaker 2:I hate to break it to you, but he checks a lot of boxes.
Speaker 1:Well, and you know, maybe the media would have been better to cover that story than hey. Did Pete Hegseth do something that he's allowed to do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean the whole, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean the whole. I'd rather hear a news story about you know? Here's proof that Trump is the Antichrist which. I wouldn't believe and I don't think that, but I'd rather see that on TV than you know. A 15-minute spot on Hegseth you know.
Speaker 2:Well, see what sucks now is. We could have video of him shaking hands with Satan and they'd be like, oh, it's AI.
Speaker 1:No man, he's got seven fingers. Check it, yeah, check again. Yeah, that's the heat, it's the waves of the heat coming off of satan's hand. That's what it is. Uh, but the you know. I guess my takeaway from that point is is that, come on, media, do a little bit better. Yeah, let's, let's get to the bottom of the you know epstein thing, whether I don't actually care about that, other than I care about it from the novelty of the story that it has become, not because of the original story, more of the story about the story like, like the OJ trial is its own story. Right, they made them. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:No, no Having like a ultra elite class of sexual offenders running around the world Like I'm concerned.
Speaker 1:I guess I'm saying I'm not, I don't know if the list will exist, will ever exist, whatever that type of evidence stuff, I mean the whether it is the fact that he was operating that type of enterprise. Yes, I care about that. No, I don't care about the story of like, whether or not the conspiracy stuff, that piece of it, you know all those things. That's what I'm saying. Like, I don't care so much about getting to the bottom of that conspiracy, um, because I just I don't think we will, you know I guess at this point, yeah, like I'll go out on a limb and say, like he's probably alive somewhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that minute of most missing footage because they released 10 hours of footage a minute missing.
Speaker 1:I think that's what I mean he did on an island, right right, they put a body in there. Right right, they call it Epstein's Island, so have we checked.
Speaker 2:There's one guy living there. Where's the overall? He's like a custodian.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah have we checked Epstein's Island, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just. It'd be nice to have somebody that you respect enough in office to not even have these kind of questions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh sure.
Speaker 2:He's been cursing more in office.
Speaker 1:We do like to end the show on a sad note. So you're right, let's bring it down a little bit, just the way he's been carrying himself in office.
Speaker 2:Him and JD, both have just been kind of just so gross.
Speaker 1:Very brash, yeah, they're cursing more.
Speaker 2:They're obviously never.
Speaker 1:Not stately. They're not stately, yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's just kind of a shame how far the office has fallen in a couple presidencies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, here we are, there we are yeah.
Speaker 1:That's true. Pumping circumstance right, that's. You know, Name the game now.
Speaker 2:And fried chicken, I like mine on tacos. Yeah, yeah, nice.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that does it for us this week on Left Face. Thanks everyone for listening and we will catch you next week. All right, bye.
