Trump and the MAGA gang get racist!

0:00MUSIC Trump and his cronies are back pushing racism against their enemies with Abdel El-Sahed their latest target. What's going on and are their plans even working? Nikki, take it away. Welcome back, you're listening to American Friction. MUSIC This is American Friction and I am Jacob Jarvis and joining me is of course, Nikki McCann Ramirez. Hi, Nikki, you okay? Hi, Jarvis, I'm great. I am beaming in this week from Texas. Nice. And I think listeners should expect that in the next two years, we will be beaming in from a lot of strange locations. Gonna be random places. Are you gonna do the whole podcast in a Texan accent or? God no. No, okay. We'll join. I can't do accents. That's what I've learned about myself and I've accepted it. I can't either, but it doesn't stop me trying. Zaki is always right there.

1:00You're better. I think of the three of us. You have the most capability. I've got the gusto for it. I've got the commitment. But yeah, I don't know if that's any talent. I'm coming in early here to say that's absolutely not true. Hey, Josh, it's definitely not true. Have you worked here last week? Simon is back. What about Emma Servan-Bale? That's my Texas draw. No, I've got it. This is going to be getting carfully at it right here. Yeah, it's just gone. Okay, they're right. Well, not doing this. On to the show, Nikki, the focus on L-Sciad's, why has this become such a national issue? I think if you're going to boil it down to something, it's the fact that one of the most prominent candidates in the 2026 midterm election cycle. Is a Muslim man. And it might not be in the atmosphere in Britain, the way it is in the US right now, but we are about a week away from the anniversary of 9-11, like roughly eight days.

2:05I think we've talked a little bit about it on the podcast in some previous episodes. This idea that in 2026, if actually let me step back, if we were wine to 2024, the two primary arguments were publicans were making against Democrats in that election cycle was the economy inflation and like Joe Biden old. We can make that a tertiary one. Yeah, but then immigration. Immigration was the thing that Democrats were hammered on over and over and over. It was they are doing crimes. They are ruining the culture. They are dirty eating cats and dogs bullshit eating cats and dogs. That kind of bullshit. Trump comes into office and the thing is there was an immigration problem. I think it like that we've established the American immigration system from the way you cross the border to the way you attain citizenship is broken and bureaucratic and too expensive. That was real.

3:06The immigration problem was never as bad as Republicans were describing it. Trump comes into office and within weeks, the administration is claiming that they have solved the crisis. That the border is closed, that all these mass deportations are happening, that they're getting the criminals and the rapists out of the country. So what happens now in 2026? The most effective line of attack that Republicans had against Democrats carries far less weight now because theoretically Trump fixed those problems. So if you're going around saying, oh well criminal legals and aliens are like breaking into the country and overrunning border communities and raping women and children, the response from voters is kind of like, well I thought Trump fixed that. I thought you Trump was elected to fix that. Why is it still happening? Anti-immigration sentiment can still be a really powerful, motivating tool, but you need to find a new entry point.

4:09And that's I think largely the reason we're seeing this resurgence of Islamophobic surreal law like 2001 to 2003 style panic over Islamic and Muslim influence in American communities and Michigan, which has one of the largest Muslim diaspora is in the country, has become a focal point of those sentiments. Yeah, yeah, I think it really sums up the classic right wing thing if they, they actually obviously don't really want to solve the problem because once they solve the problem, then their entire campaign is fucked. Yeah, it's fucked, so which is what really is a struggle for them when they're incumbent and then outside of it, yeah, it's in the interests of MAGA for the country to be bad or at least be able to be painted out of bad place. Because if not, then they've got nothing to talk about. And once it's completed, then what are they going to, what are they going to go on with?

5:12They're just on the 9-11 point. I just wanted to, yeah, just ask you about that and how residual is the impact of that in the US now? Because over here in the UK, there is plenty of anti-Muslim feeling unfortunately throughout the country and there are all sorts of resentment towards immigrants and there is all sorts of racism and xenophobia, depressingly, which we see pop up. But there isn't that sort of moment that it feels hooked on. Whereas it feels strange with Elsaid, they're hooking on something that I'm not downplaying the impact of was absolutely fucking huge and catastrophic and awful, but also happened 25 years ago. Yeah, he was 15 years old when it happened. Yeah, exactly. A huge amount of voters weren't alive or were, yeah. So does it really have as much of an impact as people still think? It does. It does. No, it really does. I think even myself being six years old,

6:16you remember the before 9-11, the after 9-11, 9-11 created the modern American security state, the surveillance state, the anti-crime policies being framed as anti-terrorism policies. That sort of attitude was born of the reaction to the September 11th attacks. And I think one of the things it did globally was incredibly unfairly create this myth that the Muslim religion, that Muslim countries are inherently terroristic, that they are inherently violent. This weaponized concept of G-Hod that, you know, and like Sharia law, that people like Governor, Texas Governor Greg Abbott are still able to use as shorthand for fear of terrorism,

7:18because it was such a great national trauma. I mean, I was some friends of mine and I were talking about it yesterday and I was very young when it happened and I have very vague memories of the day, but I remember the aftermath. I remember my dad being stuck on a work trip abroad for like two weeks. He couldn't get back into the United States. We had just moved to the United States for like the brief time period. I lived there as a kid. My mom was not a citizen at the time. She had three children under the age of six. I was six and my brothers were four and two. My mom speaks great English now. Her English was nowhere near as good when we moved to the United States. She was learning to navigate this new country, this new environment. She had moved away from her family and like this massive support system that both my parents had to the United States and within a month of getting there, this attack happens. And my family, historically, we've had a lot of pilots. There's a lot of pilots

8:19in my family. We have a lot of history and aviation the next ago. And I remember when I was really little, I could, you know, it happened a couple times that I would get on an airplane with my mom or my dad. And my parents would recognize the pilot because they went to flight school with one of my uncles or something. And be like, oh my god. And they'd like take me into the cockpit. And one time I got to like put on the headset and talk to my uncle who was like flying on a plane nearby. And after 9-11, you couldn't like talk to pilots or go into the cockpit anymore. The things just got really intense and you know, and then all growing up, my coming of age into political awareness, is in the context of the wars on terror. And this sort of decades long, in many ways, fruitless struggle that the United States engages in abroad that produces new waves of reactionary terrorism

9:22that kills hundreds of service members. Also, English service members are allies. It's, it was such a destabilizing moment and such a deep, traumatic wound. Yeah. In the psyche of the United States, because I think people need to remember, the last time before 9-11 that the United States had had a domestic attack of that nature was Pearl Harbor. Yeah. It was generational. And to this day, it is still such a force in the national sort of mental landscape. Is that not part of what makes this whole discussion, though, so frustrating? Because it's the classic of MAGA wanting to pretend that they are being excessively respectful of history of an event and actually bastardizing and warping the meaning and impact of it for their own political ends. It surely makes it even more grim that they're using 9-11 in this way, if there is still

10:28that tangible feeling around it, because it obviously should be commemorated. It should be remembered in a sensible way. It should be analysed, looked at whatever and it shouldn't be wiped out of memory. But because of that gravitas to me, that makes it even more despicable to use it as a weapon against random opponents in a midterm because it's just fucking easy to do. Yeah. And I think obviously, horrific tragedy. But I think you and I in all of our audience knows that like online and in the universe, especially now 25 years later, there is like people joke about 9-11. And a lot of those jokes are based around exactly that, this notion that this national tragedy that was unifying in some ways, polarizing in others. I don't like to perpetuate the myth that the United States was like wholly and completely unified in the immediate after

11:32the 9-11. There was maybe like a couple hours the Islamophobia started virtually immediately after. But 9-11 being turned into a political cudgel, a political weapon, something that politicians would just whip out as a sort of like Trump card or an attempt to shut up opponents. Or like, for example, like Rudy Giuliani, who did an amazing job as mayor of New York City, but then rode that long tail of impact to doing horrendous, weird, bizarre, enabling things for the Trump administration and like a latter part of his career, that I think really eroded the sort of solemnity of what those attacks represented. And like to this day, we see a candidate who was a teenager when it happened. Nothing to do with it said nothing controversial about it. Be maligned because of his faith.

12:35And it's frustrating, it's frustrating. And it's annoying that 25 years later, that's what the situation is. Well, how people are trying to time to it. So there was this tweet from CBS saying that he was going to be under scrutiny because of the anniversary of 9-11. And this reportedly is tied to Barry Weiss, who we've spoken about with Jeff Jarvis, who's in charge of CBS now and clearly underqualified for it and destroying the network basically. But is apparently was directly involved in pushing this line. What are they trying to do here? It seems incredibly tenuous to me. And I saw plenty of back-action people saying this just feels straight up racist. What was the connection they were trying to drum up here? It was straight up racist. During the pandemic, El Sayed had tweeted something along the lines. And again, if you recall, this was a comparison that so many people were making, that the death toll of the COVID-19 pandemic

13:40in the United States had surpassed X-9-11. So it's like, you know, 10 people have died of COVID for every one person that died of 9-11. And El Sayed, if listeners don't remember, he's a doctor, he's a physician. His whole thing has been healthcare policy. So he tweeted that something like, the death toll of COVID-19 has exceeded the death toll of 9-11. Hopefully we'll see the same sort of mass mobilization to try and combat these issues that we did when we, like, 1-9-11 happened, basically saying that if you can mobilize the entire state apparatus to respond to a mass casualty event, why can't you do it now? Which uncontroversial, so many people were saying it at the time, it was, anyway, the point being, El Sayed has very publicly stated that he deleted all of the tweets he wrote before 2023, which if you're on social media, something you should be

14:43doing anyway, you're just set of auto-delete on your posts. And CBS essentially tried to, like, gin up some sort of outrage being like, oh, El Sayed deleted controversial 9-11 tweets, which, and I think we have to tie it back to this. This has also been connected to the criticism of El Sayed's relationship with Hassan Piker, who is another Muslim man who has said some pretty glib things about 9-11. He's explained them, he's explained what he meant. I don't want to get into it again, but I think it's part of this larger opportunity that some of the right-wing conservative line media have seen and identified to be like, Muslim men talking about 9-11, we don't have to tell our audience what they actually said or meant. That connection already exists in their mind.

15:45And if you think about it, they did similar things to Zoran Mamdani when he was elected mayor in New York. How old is Zoran? Let's see. He's 34, I think? He's 34, yeah, you're correct. So he was roughly 10 years old when 9-11 happened. And you had people when he was elected, when he was nominated as the Democratic candidate saying, look how New York has forgotten what they did to them. Who is they? Who is they? And it's just, it's pathetic, but it does have an impact. It does have an impact because I can't stress enough how virulent the Islamophobia was in the years after 9-11. And like I said, Republicans are itching to find a new target to sort of transplant those immigration fears on to. And sleepers sell terrorists hiding in South Lake Texas. I mean,

16:48it'll play well. It'll play well. Well, he's doing pretty well in the polling. I saw a piece from Newsweek saying that he'd basically led all but one post primary poll of Michigan's US Senate race, which was despite the sort of blowback in criticism he has got. It's not another reason why J.D. Vance and Trump are waiting in on this because they are just obviously rassled. Yes, the Republican Party is extremely rattled by the outlook of these midterms. I am also in Texas because next week I will be going to the emergency convention that Republicans are holding in Dallas. One of the big issues that Republicans have right now is that Trump really wants to make these races a referendum on his performance and a referendum on loyalty to Trump, where it's abundantly clear that voters and Republican voters do not like how Trump is performing and do not

17:52feel that he is doing a good job. So we're hearing that a ton of Republican candidates aren't going to show up to this convention, which is insane. Conventions are supposed to be for candidates. All these debates about whether some candidates are saying Trump needs to start spending some of his MAGA ink pack money on these races while other candidates are saying, okay, well, he should spend it, but we should hide it because we don't want to look like he's funding the races. It's a problem and then you get JD Vance who gets on stage and refers to Abdul Al-Sahed as evil. Yeah, well, what he says there that's just so odd is I don't even say he's evil in like directly like or give any reason for it. Just says there's something about Abdul Al-Sahed that is very, very evil. Yeah, I wonder what that is. Yeah, I wonder what JD Vance thinks that is. It's such a dog whistle and just the but it's also what I hate about this whole thing is it's like

18:56it's like a choose your own adventure book for racism. Yeah, you know, you can fill in whatever your prejudice towards brown men is basically. Brother, welcome to America. You can just throw that in. It's like he's not only been it's not only inviting racism. It's just it's so obscure. So it's just a way that he's just playing to anyone. He's not even committing to a stance or a position or saying what the thing is just saying, oh God, there's something about that guy and that's what Republicans want to do. Yeah, yeah. Republicans take the attitude and like like right wingers take the attitude that unless I'm wearing a KKK hood or like waving around a swastika, you can't call me a racist. Yeah. And it's it's no like you know exactly what you're doing. Yeah, it's just the this sort of polite face of racism to it, which is just grim. I mean, Trump has been going alongside this sort of thing as well. Do you just see is this just going to ramp

19:57up? Are we going to see this happen to other candidates? Is Alsaid just going to stay the sort of bogeyman for them up until November? How do you see this this playing out? Are there other races we should watch out for this sort of thing happening? Or is Alsaid who they've clearly picked to be the key target if they want to try and make this whole thing a national issue and point to someone to say we can't vote for Democrats because look at this person. No, it's definitely happening at the state level as well. You had some controversies recently out of Texas where I think two Muslim delegates at some like state party level were basically told to like get the fuck out of here. I mean, you have conservative governors passing anti-sureal law bills. Like what are we doing here? But yeah, Alsaid is the most prominent Muslim candidate of this election cycle. It will largely be concentrated on him, but I want to be surprised because what we're about 60 days out

21:00from election day. Things are really going to start ramping up if we start seeing more of this directed at down ballot candidates. With what's happening with Alsaid too, another depressing factor to bring in. So we spoke to Daniel Kurtz-Layburn from NPR a few months ago about macho politics and the politics of dudes I think was what she had written about in her in her piece. It's another reason why they're having to resort to racism when it comes to the way to target Alsaid because they can't do the same shit they're doing to James Talleriko. They can't do the like low tea, soy boy cook shit, whatever they want to do because he's jacked and he seems like a very masculine guy and it depresses me that that is one of the main metrics for success in US politics at the moment, but clearly he's got the most generic thing that they promote. He's

22:00other than not being white. He seems to be everything that Pete Heggsiff would want in one of his super soldiers in the army. He's got the whole match of thing down. So is that why they're having to resort to this? I think it's definitely part of it. I also think there's a long history. Long historic sort of racist trope of the brown or black man who's going to violate or ravage the pure innocent white woman. The most famous case in the United States is the murder of Emmett Till, a teenager, a black teenager who was lynched because a white woman accused him of sexually assaulting her. She completely lied. It was completely made up, but this historically there has also been this notion. It's why Republicans so often frame their anti-immigration, posturing around this idea that migrants are rapists, that they're child abusers. The impression

23:04they want to give is that that abuse and that threat, that threat of foreign macho masculinity is directed at white women and white children. It's been interesting to watch because I think I'll say that Republicans haven't really fully figured out how to respond to that outside of sort of continuing to push that threatening stereotype. We did see that Mike Rogers Photoshopped himself to look more buff in some way. Under the radar. So we did it. No, no, no, it was like AI. But was it a joke or did you do it? No, yeah, a staffer on his campaign. I'll send you the post. We can put it up maybe for our viewers if they're watching on video, but Jesus. No way. Dead ass. That is absolutely insane that they think about it. Think about

24:06buffed up. They fall that way. At least with the buffed Trump, it's so AI that you kind of know it's a bit with that. That's like he's used face tune or something on a dating app to to catch someone and it's just not worked properly. Wow. Okay. Good. Give him a light bowl suction. Yeah, someone's well and making put on 20 kg of muscle as well. And yeah, is there anything that they're arguing over that feels sort of legitimate in Michigan? Or is it just this just throwing shit? The arguments being had in Michigan are sort of the same overarching threads that are dictating most of these races, which is the economy and gas prices. I think one of the big things Mike Rogers seems to have kind of wanted to distance himself a bit from Trump, which is interesting. He's, you know, styling himself as like a conservative independent.

25:07But Michigan is also so embroiled with the economy of Canada. They have a ton of cross-border trade. So this whole situation with Trump trying to revive the trade war with Canada. If they don't come to a solution, they might really start playing into the dynamics of that race. And then you might see some more tension between like more acute tension between Rogers and Trump. 25 years ago this week, Alcade has attacked on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a United Airlines flight killed almost 3,000 people and set in train events that would kill literally millions more in war, the destruction of countries, and the spread of preventable disease. I'm Andrew Harrison, and this week in a special mini-series from the bunker, I ask experts and eye witnesses how the consequences of the 9-11 attacks and the war on terror that followed still shape our world. From the rise of the security state to the tensions that still

26:07inflame the Middle East to the rise of an isolationist America first president who treats his allies with contempt, that's terror century, a three-part mini-series from the bunker, tracing the road from 9-11 to Donald Trump. Follow the bunker now on your favourite app, you won't want to miss it. Is everything we knew about warfare changing right before our eyes? The war in Ukraine began with tanks and infantry now drones, network systems and low-cost weapons wage a battle for dominance.

27:09In new weapons for new wars, a brand new limited series from this is not a drill. We look at the fastest most intense transformation of warfare in half a century. Automated battle systems that learn as they fight, faster, more accurate missiles, cheap drones that can take out a warship for less than the cost of a family car, and next generation defences to keep enemies at bay. That's new weapons for new wars with me, Gavin Esther. Search This Is Not a Drill on your favourite app now. Before we get to the roundup as ever an appeal to your warm, lovely, beating hearts we hope. We need your support to keep the podcast going, we love making the show, but you know, it takes time, it takes money, it's the whole thing, so that's why we need backing

28:09on Patreon to keep going. If you can go to patreon.com forward slash American friction, you can get episodes at free, you can get bonus content, and the chat community, it's already good stuff, it's merchandise as well on the higher tiers, it's already good. So yeah, go there, we'd love it. If you did, patreon.com forward slash American friction, and if you can't back us there, we understand, but please do go rate, review, and subscribe wherever your listening is to show, and go leave a comment. It's been very nice that you've been leaving loads and loads of comments, go do that, and go review us as well, go give us a five star review and say something nice would very much appreciate it. Five stars only, five stars, nice stuff, go get it done, you've got the time, you'll do it right now, we'll wait. Cool, thank you very much, thanks for getting that done right, the roundup, Nikki. Very nice of you. Right, the roundup. So, Trump's AI Slop has obviously been intense for a long time, but he posted an AI video if him blowing up part of one or him personally, but

29:12a lot of a random sort of blown to smithereens, which didn't happen, but was so confusing, and to some people realistic that the Department of Defense had to confirm it wasn't real. What's going on there? Does it feel like some of his most extreme AI bullshit yet? Yeah, I just think it's really concerning that the president of the United States is like trapped in a digital fantasy about the university thinks it exists in his own head and not the reality on the ground. There's a right wing obsession with like visual generative AI, and I think to tie this kind of back to what we were talking about earlier, like this idea that, you know, the immigration issues, the immigration problems in the United States were never as bad as Republicans want you to think they are. Generative AI is providing an increasingly realistic method for right-wingers, Republicans, bad actors to generate hyper-realistic images of the world they

30:20want you to think is real, or of just individual narratives that they want to popularize. I think the thing I think about really often in this context was the reflecting pool. It sounds so stupid, but the AI images that the Trump administration and Republicans were putting out showing the reflecting pool, looking like a literal, like a swamp, like a Shrek-style swamp, were ridiculous. I lived in DC for a decade. The reflecting pool never got that bad, and it was a propaganda tool, a propaganda strategy to convince people who had never been to DC, never seen the reflecting pool, had no context about the issues they had historically had to support Trump's unlawful intervention and stupid project that became a shitcho.

31:22I think that exemplifies how Republicans are using AI to legitimize these fantasies that don't exist in the real world, but that they want voters to buy into. Over the weekend, what we saw was Trump who seemed to believe it was real or seemed to believe it was actually happening, putting out an AI-generated video of some random, because it didn't even look like Carg Island, some random island getting bombed from every different direction. And he's like, ah, Carg Island being obliterated. Carg Island has not been shelled by the Americans since the spring, since April, I think. You know, it's this idea that it's them, him attempting to convince himself, we're living in this universe where the war against Iran is going really well. He comes out and says every week, oh, they're military's decimated. We've won. It's a decisive

32:23victory. Then why are we still there? And so, nothing, none of this aligns with the facts on the ground. But you know, he gets to post this little video and I'm sure he saw it online and was like, oh, this is great. We're winning. And it's, there is a demented old man in the White House. And he has the nuclear codes. Yeah. But yeah, it's very unsettling. It's really unsettling where when I click on a new story and I scroll into the replies and I just see people go like posting AI-slop generated graphics or stuff being like, no, I'm like, Jesus fucking craze. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's the same, the reflecting pool thing reminds me over here of all the AI -slop we have of how terrible London is and all these sort of war things. And it's this strange, again, it ties back to the weird sort of respect for stuff, but then going against that that we

33:23were discussing in the 9-11 section, that they want to say that America is the best and all the right wing here want to say that the UK is the best thing in the world. But simultaneously, they want, they want to say, but it's fucked and it's awful too and look how terrible it is. And that's why they want to send the Washington, which should be somewhere the Americans that proud of and say, look at this amazing place where all our democracy happens. They want to say it's a shithole in the same way that right wing is over here, want to say London, what a dump even though yeah, everyone loves to be there. Yeah, you should be really proud of it. They should be proud of London and they should be proud of Washington. I like London a lot. I think London is great. It's cool. You guys should invite me back at a good time. Come back you. Welcome whenever. Come along. Come see it. Dan Driscoll was we're talking about. Dan Driscoll. Yeah, so he was he was Pete Hexif's number two pretty much right in the Department of War as they're calling it Department of Defense for any of the same. Yeah, war, war, war. But yeah, he's quick. What's going on there and

34:24what does that actually mean for Hexif and Trump anything? This one's really interesting. So Driscoll is was Secretary of the army. He's very high up. When you say second and command, there's like several second and commands. It's like all the different branches of military. But there had been reporting that he and Hexif had had issues in the past, particularly around the way Hexif was denying promotions and firing like long time members of the military who had sort of like earned their stripes or in their positions were expected to be promoted or had like very distinguished careers and were ousted by Hexif in the name of anti-wokeness. And I think from the reporting we have the thing that I ultimately kind of tipped this over for Driscoll was the in seeming intent by the Trump administration to continue the war in Iran through into 2027

35:27which again the death toll is over a dozen hundreds of casualties like different parts of the navy and the army are being asked to redirect resources to the Middle East at the expense of other regions. Long term if a democratic president takes over the military is going to be in shambles you have lost tons of institutional memory tons of experience a generation of the leadership class. Financially funds have been redirected toward corrupt projects, stupid endeavors abroad. You've mistrainings and like things have been re-prioritized in deprive and how do you go about fixing that and what does that transmit to our allies and enemies. And I don't know I think for we've been hearing for a while now that a lot of people within the military just kind of are taking the attitude like I don't want to be held responsible for that. Yeah yeah yeah fair enough

36:27I think you would want to escape it if you could. Do you struggle to keep up with the news every week? The bunker has got you covered. Every Monday we really start your week where we go over the big stories to follow in the coming days. And then on Fridays we have our weekly raffle where we give you the context and the meaning behind the biggest and the weirdest stories of recent days. Search for the bunker wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Is everything we knew about warfare changing right before our eyes? The war in Ukraine began with tanks and infantry now drones network systems and low-cost weapons wage a battle for dominance. In new weapons for new wars a brand new limited series from this is not a drill. We look at the fastest most intense transformation of warfare in half a century

37:30automated battle systems that learn as they fight faster more accurate missiles cheap drones that can take out a warship for less than the cost of a family car. And next generation defenses to keep enemies at bay. That's new weapons for new wars with me Gavin Esther. Search this is not a drill on your favorite app now. In 1991 two hikers in the Alts found a body melting in the ice. They assumed a fallen climber what they'd actually found was a 5,000 year old murder victim. Welcome to buried evidence. Join archaeologist Professor Raksha Dave and me historian Rebecca Radeel as we dig up some fascinating true crime through history. Launching on Friday the 4th of September you can find buried evidence wherever you watch or listen to your podcasts. Subscribe at thecrimedesk.com and get episodes a week before anyone else. Finally one and only two touch on so Milo Ian Apples

38:40who as we know in the past has been pretty pro ice pro Trump was working for Kanye West I believe and Marjorie Taylor Green at one point. Yeah just I don't know exactly how you describe him an agitator who just says a lot of ridiculous shit but anyway he was deported because ice went and arrested him and deported him and now he is saying wow did you guys know that ice coming and raiding your home and deporting you actually really sucks and it's not good. Well have you made of this and he's not saying anything we don't know but do you think that this coming from a fresh messenger might actually change how some people think about what's going on with ice? No no no here's my thing ice is bad ice is terrible yeah the way this administration

39:43treats migrants is a crime it's in a lot of ways crimes against humanity violations of people civil and due process rights this is a real oh I didn't know the leopards were going to eat my face moment it's so annoying because this is the thing about authoritarianism and fascism you're only protected so long as you're in the in group yeah you're only protected so long as the fascist and the authoritarian likes you and in the case of this particular administration it can come down to likes you personally not even the demographic you're a part of it's likes you it's more a loomer got pissed off at my lonely monopolist and had him deported. Yeah well it's like this they can only see empathy for people when things happen to them directly on the right for example with Marjorie Taylor Green once you went guys crazy how Trump will just pile on people if they disagree with him after he did that to her and you go yeah sure but you didn't mind when he launched dog piles on

40:50your enemies yeah you didn't mind when you were part of the pile yeah exactly you were down with that so it's just a complete lap of I found his reaction to it absolutely insane and I'm obviously not defending what happened to him it sounds dreadful yeah it's not something I would wish on anyone but also I have a limited amount of empathy for you specifically my lonely monopolist this was a guy that called ice on his landlord during a like a live stream like this is the same kind of torture you leveled against other people for fun yeah yeah these uh yeah there's no words for the bizarre hypocrisy of it all but yeah and let's hope at some point some people enough people go hey Iso fucked up because I don't know what more evidence they need but clearly they feel that they need more right it's time for Simon you're on it this week there's no Chris we've not mentioned that yeah no Chris uh we missed you Chris uh but Simon you're doing the silly question this time tell

41:55me what is the silly question of the week indeed I have been given silly question duties and I've taken inspiration from something we were talking about last week the Natalie Hoth situation which was cropped down on the photo yeah making me think about how weird it would be to have special advisors and all these people around you the whole time like talking in your ear and telling you and so the question this week is based on that it's two-pot question the first is you have to choose either all you're getting a special advisor you've got to have them in your ear the whole time and it's one of these two people from Trump's past it's either Laura Luma or Steve Bannon you've got to choose one of those two oh my god and then the second part of the question is if you can just choose anyone to be your advisor you'd actually want in your ear who would that be okay what I'm gonna have to go Steve Bannon I think because he probably just did get more shit done

43:00and so I suppose maybe if I said hey Steve can you be aligned to what I like and what I want to do and what I think and could you you know flood the zone with shit about that for me that maybe maybe he could be effective yeah I think if you could if you could weaponize him in your way if I could do a marju Taylor Green and be like hey it's pretty good when we're doing the pylons yeah then maybe that could be useful over Laura Luma who I feel like would largely be just telling me conspiracy theories whereas Steve Bannon I think would be telling me conspiracy theories with the occasional bit of strategy thrown in there as well yeah interesting I think I would actually go the other way round on that particular part of the question just because I feel like Steve Bannon would be maybe too effective and you might start to be like maybe I believe some of this crazy shit this guy is telling me whereas Laura Luma is just so bad shit that you'd be like

44:05immune from it that's that I would just be concerned to have Steve in my ear the whole time that yeah he could he could somehow turn me to the dark side so I think for me I'm going I'm going Laura what about you Nikki oh Steve Bannon yeah I would learn a lot about politics and about being a sleazy scumbag who gets my way which you know might be good for me I also think Laura Luma might like smother me with a pillow in my sleep and I don't I don't trust her like that she scares me yeah if I had to pick whoever I wanted yeah to be my advisor that's a really good I hate taking advice no um probably my friend now me if I could just have like a direct line to her all the time like I do we text and we call up but she's like you know she's like that or my dad but I think my dad would probably get annoyed with me after a certain amount of time okay also I don't

45:08need my parents knowing everything I do so yeah now me okay fine yeah you're you're close friend I'm sure she's gonna be please please with that yeah also her husband listens to this too so Sam I would also include you Simon you go first because I'm still thinking on it you've had time to think who would you go for yeah I've decided I'd go for the philosopher and writer AC Grayling who we've had him on the bunker a while back but I was worried him from from my uni days and he's just obviously like a mega brain knows so much also has a really nice voice and is super wise being a philosopher say I feel like that would be a really good person to just have their in your ear to just be able to see you know give you some some good context and just good advice the whole time I can have him I'd be I'd be pretty happy okay um maybe Angela Merkel okay

46:13I just think you know I get annoyed by stuff and I'm like oh fuck and I feel like she'd be quite good at just going chill don't worry about it well don't worry you're pretty little yeah it's all fine let's do this and would just give me I'm not saying it'd be the most exciting in the world should be calming in five four like should be calming influence and also so genuinely smart that there's just so much to be like Angela I know how to do this come on and I think she could work it she could work it out quite well on the on the German theme I'm surprised you wouldn't go Jürgen Klopp Simon he'd be pretty fun to have around to be fair as well and smart yeah that's true and you feel the most of eight you exactly well you'd be energized you'd get nice hugs yeah I love no hugs exactly yeah nice hugs nice hugs a nice well listeners this has been a nice hug for your ears I hope and that brings us to the end of American friction the hugiest podcast in the world Nikki why not why not Nikki you like hugs so why don't you want to be the

47:19hugiest buggyest all right I love you and I will hug you only a respectful amount yeah she's the hugiest goes watch out Simon thank you the second hugiest on the podcast thank you kindly and obviously Chris is the hugiest but yeah Chris is the is the squeaky or softest the hugiest buggyest cuddly honest in the in the whole part like guy you just can't stop it from him uh and thank you me obviously as well thank you I'm hugging to a to a usual standard extent but you know we can get more hugs from us if you back is on patron we'll add a hugging to where it's so high that you get a hug off every single one of us you have to travel to us we're not covering that but anyway we don't have that yet but what we do have on patron is episode 3 and bonus content so go to patreon.com forward slash American friction so you can give us a big virtual financial hug

48:20which we'd like whoa my voice when so high though it's so excited we'd like what uh so yeah American what god that's wrong patron.com forward slash American friction I'll get it right patreon.com forward slash American friction sign up that'd be great if you can't back to there we get it but go rate review subscribe wherever you're listening go leave a comment and go leave a review of five star review we need more five star reviews particularly if you're on Apple podcasts go there five star we'd love that thank you very much yeah this has been American friction take it easy we'll speak to you soon lots of love bye hugs hugs