Well, if you know how much I love wine, you know, how excited I am to talk to Damien from my favorite. Oh, my God, this is my favorite new rosé. Chateau August grand rosé. Hi, Damien. Hi, Stephanie. I thought I was a Chardonnay girl. You have won me over entirely. And I read a tweet. Janine said the good news is my six bottles of Chateau August Rosé arrived yesterday. The bad news is I may drink them all today. Can you get more offer codes, maybe the other varietals? I think I may go through a lot of them by November. You make a lot of great wines. I'm excited to get into the reds as we get into fall. But I mean, this rosé is just a perfect summer wine, isn't it? Sure, no, it's a perfect summer wine. It's made with Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot grapes. So it's not usual for rosé because it's normally more for red grapes, for red wines. And no, that's why we tried to change the techniques a few years ago because we just want to to make something different. We get the right fruit, right color, and right taste. One of the things I love is that you play music to the vines twice a day. This is a scientific process. Tell us about that. We work with with genetics, with the company who made the box for the music on the vineyards. It's more frequencies and vibrations, and we played two times per day when the sun rises. Wow. And it adds the vines to have a better immunity. So it's good for the health of the vines. I cannot recommend this grand rosé highly enough. Again, my SiriusXM listeners get over 50% off, go to VS.wine, six bottles for 98 bucks and free delivery. Best wine by varietal, gold metal, best in show by quality. That's six bottles for 98 bucks and free delivery. Just use the promo code Stephanie 50% off with the promo code Stephanie VS.wine, the promo code is Stephanie. This season Instacart has your back to school, as in they've got your back to school lunch favorites, like snack packs and fresh fruit. And they've got your back to school supplies, like backpacks, binders, and pencils. And they've got your back when your kid casually tells you they have a huge school project due tomorrow. Let's face it, we were all that kid. So first call your parents to say I'm sorry, and then download the Instacart app to get delivery in as past as 30 minutes all school year long. Get a $0 delivery fee for your first three orders while supplies last. Minimum $10 per order. Additional term supply. This is the John Fuegelsang Podcast. I'm John Fuegelsang. Let's talk each other off a ledge, shall we? Our number is 866-997-4748-866-997. Grit, we are live tonight from the Howard Stern Tower. High above Gotham. The great Thea Harper and I are here and maybe someone else in the building too. And we are taking your calls all night at 866-997-4748. Our fearless boss Chris Hauselt is running this thing out of the South Carolina Bureau tonight. The great Sasha Abramsky, one of my favorite writers, is here to talk about his new book, which examines the chaos of Trumpism from two different towns. Two different small towns and how they both during the pandemic and the times of Trump responded in different ways to the challenges to our democracy that Como Vercola represents. Rhonda Hanson will be here tonight as well. And tomorrow night on the show, the ABC News presidential debate live. We'll be having instant analysis afterwards, reaction your calls as well. We'll be bringing the debate live to you so we hope if you're near your radio, you'll join with us. We promise you the smartest post-debate show you'll find anywhere, and we're really looking forward to it. Really, really thrilled for tomorrow. I hope you are. And all night long, we want to know what you're hoping for in the debate, what your predictions are, what you're hoping the strategies will be, and what your worries are too. And before I get any further, I also want to thank the wonderful people of Portland, Oregon. What a great show we had with the Sexy Liberal Tour over the weekend at the legendary theater that used to be called the Paramount. Now it's the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, a building that the Marx Brothers played in. And Louis Armstrong and Sinatra. Sam Cooke played in this theater. And Bob Dylan. Patty Smith played this room. You too. Tom Petty. And now us. Gorgeous theater, gorgeous crowd. Thank you to our special guests. Tom Hartman, the smartest man in radio, who should have known better. And Rachel Bitticofer. Just a great, great show this month. We got two more on the 21st. We will be in Durham, South North Carolina. And on the 28th, we will be returning to Phoenix. Very happy about that. Thanks to all the great audience members who came down. What a really, really fun, fun night. Okay. And before we go any further, I bike down here tonight from my place. And as I usually do, I locked my bike over on 48th Street, right across from what used to be the court theater, C-O-R-T. Two years ago, this 110 year old theater was renamed the James Earl Jones Theater. And every day, when we leave this building, we see James Earl Jones's name right across from where we work. And as someone who had the great privilege of seeing James Earl Jones on Broadway, it's always moving just to think about being in the same room as this guy. By the time he was five years or six years old, growing up in Mississippi, his mom wasn't really around. And he was mostly raised by his mother's parents. He famously said that he had a very racist grandmother who was part Cherokee, part Choctaw, and part black. She was the most racist, bigoted person I have ever known, he said. She blamed all white people for slavery, and she blamed Native American and black people for allowing it to happen. And he had a very tormented childhood. And by the time he was eight, he could barely talk. And he was so ashamed of his stammer that he stopped talking altogether. He was so scared that only nonsense and stammering would come out. He went to a one room school in Manistee County, Mississippi. And for a while, he could only communicate by writing notes. He was a very lonely kid. And he had a hard life as an actor. He moved to New York, tracked down his biological dad who was working as an actor, who helped him a bit. At one point, he was working in a diner and living in a $19 a month apartment that only had cold water. And he was able to achieve one of the greatest careers for the same thing that cost him so much shame in his childhood, his voice. Abandoned by his parents raised by a racist grandmother and mute for years, because he was so ashamed of his stutter, he learned to speak on his own, on his own terms, and became one of the greatest orators. The American theater and American cinema has ever produced. He joined the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1960. He did Henry V. He did Romeo and Juliet. He did Richard III. He did a mid-summer's night's dream. He did a Thello a couple of times. He was one of the first black actors to be on the daytime soap operas. Guiding light, and as the world turns, he was on a lot of TV. The defenders Dr. Kildare touched by an angel. I remember that one, homicide, life in the streets. And he played Alex Haley in Roots the Next Generation. And of course, he was in maybe the greatest political comedy of all time. Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. He was the bombardier on the B-52, 60 years ago. I saw him in The Great White Hope, which he played on Broadway, but then made the movie. He also was the first black president in the movie The Man. 90 TV dramas, about 120 movies. Most of the obituaries you'll see we'll talk about the voice of Darth Vader and the voice of Mafasa and the Lion King. But this man won Tonys and Golden Globes and Emmys and a Kennedy Center honors and had an honorary Oscar as well. And he kept on doing theater into his 70s, into his 80s. He did Cat and Hot and Roof in 2008. He did on Golden Pond in 2005. And he was someone again who had been so filled with shame, he couldn't speak. And then he turned the thing that was his greatest source of pain into his identity. And I could talk about the movies all night. And John Sales made one, which he's great in coming to America. He's terrific. And he's in the sequel to that field of dreams. A lot of people are talking about the movie version of Cry the Beloved Country where he plays the South African Priest. He's great. I loved him in the Jack Ryan movies with Harrison Ford. He's terrific. And Conan Nubbar-Barrion as Thulsa Doom, a terrific villain performing. James Earl Jones was the first AM celebrity to appear on Sesame Street or one of the first. And when he did the gin game in 2015, just a few years ago, he and Sicily Tyson were doing this in their 80s. And that's a tough play. He was 84 at the time. I saw James Earl Jones on Broadway when I was a teenager in the play Fences. He won a Tony Award for it. August Wilson, it's incredible. It was the first August Wilson play I ever saw. And my kid brother came with me. He was only 13. I got cheap tickets from my school. And afterwards, we were the only ones waiting by the stage door. We waited like over an hour. But eventually he came out and he had a car waiting for him. And he didn't care. He just sat and talked with us for like 25 minutes. Both of us, my little brother was only 13. He was so kind. He was so generous. And by the way, I love that he came back to play Darth Vader. In Star Wars Rebels, he's great. And in Rogue One, he's great. And it's not really him. It's AI voice for him in the Obi-Wan show, but it's still great. I'll never forget the only other time I saw James Earl Jones. I went to audition for a voice over job. And it was just me and him. One line of copy. This is CNN. I won't tell you who got it. But thank you, Mr. Jones, for all the great work. Now, let's talk about this weekend. I was in Portland. It was amazing. I was led to understand that Portland was a burning pile of ash and cinder, but the because Donald Trump told me this beautiful place. It's almost like he was lying. Like all the MAGA people on social media are lying that Haitian immigrants are eating people's cats. Have you heard about this? They're all saying this all over Fox News in Springfield, Ohio. It's all a lie. It's based on a Facebook post. Ignore it. The local cops have said they've received no reports about any of this. This is what racists do. Over the weekend, Jack White and Meg White to the White Stripes have sued Donald Trump and his campaign for misappropriation of their song, "Seven Nation Army." Thank you, Isaac Hayes, for starting this. New New York Times, the NFL puts Trump up 1% over Kamala Harris with 30%, claiming they don't know enough about the vice president to support her just yet. Do you know enough about Donald Trump to not support him? Because folks today is the 50-year anniversary of a criminal president getting away with it. On the 8th of September, 1974, President Ford pardoned Richard Nixon and it set a terrible precedent. Just 30 days after Ford became the president, and hours later, Gerald Ford's White House press secretary, Gerald Horst, resigned in protest. Today, Donald Trump's former vice president, his former attorney general, both of the secretaries of defense, his secretary of state, two of his national security advisors, his DNI, his chief of staff, and a chairman of the joint chiefs all oppose him getting a second term. And his running mate tells us that school shootings are just a fact of life. See, this is the thing. What Donald Trump has lowered the bar so much that everything he does is treated as normal. You guys know this. We're calling it sane washing these days. And yet, Fox News spreads the lies. Elon Musk helps him spread the lies. My God, go to Elon Musk's Nazi chatroom site and look at all of the AI-generated images of Donald Trump rescuing cats from black people, saying that black people eat cats. That is what Twitter has turned into. And as Donald Trump gets more racist and more dishonest, we're seeing more of his aides come out from Bill Barr and John Kelly that Mark Esper warning about him two months to go in a very close election. And people still aren't taking it seriously because the media is not taking Trump seriously. Over the weekend, Donald Trump said Eugene Carroll would not have been the chosen one for him to rape. He more or less said what he said before she wasn't attractive enough to rape. It's completely disgusting. He said on Friday, it was impractical to believe he would ever kiss a woman without consent. But we all heard him in 2005 on that tape saying he does exactly that. Here is Donald Trump's deeply stupid statements on tariffs. Now, when you listen to this, remember tariffs aren't paid by the other country. Okay, tariffs ultimately are paid by you. Him talking about tariffs is like attacks on working people. It's taking a higher percentage out of the paychecks of working Americans. It is not going to hurt the wealthy who can afford to buy crap. Here is Donald Trump. Assuming the crowd is more stupid than him on the subject of tariffs. We're going to be a tariff nation. It's not going to be a course to you. It's going to be a course to another country. I heard Kamala the other day, Kamala. Kamala. Kamala. She said, Oh, if you do that, he's raising your taxes. No, no, no. I'm not raising your taxes. I'm raising. You're raising your prices. China and all of these countries in Asia and all over the world, including the European Union, by the way, which is one of the most egregious. My God, it's like he's reading Putin's diary. He also claimed with no evidence that 20% of all mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania are fraudulent. Did you hear about that in the media today? Did the media talk about that? He promised mass prosecutions of anyone. He thinks is involved in election fraud, like the kind he lied about in 2020. Yeah, you know, Donald Trump came out over the last week and said that he lost the last election by a whisper. He admitted he lost the election. In other words, he admitted that Ashley Babbitt is dead. And all those racist Nazi jag-offs are sitting in prison after January 6th for a lie. So over the weekend, he threatened again to jail people for supposedly committing election crimes based on nothing. He promises to jail people for things they have not done based on things that he said happened that did not happen. And he said that if he wins the election, well, let me let me read up to him. He said, uh, he wrote on truth, social cease and desist. You can't do that with a post on social media. But he said, I'm watching the 24 election. It was a disgrace to our nation. When I win, those people are cheated will be prosecuted to the fullest who said the law. We can't let our country further devour to a third world nation that we won't. Locking up your enemies is what a third world dictator does. Promising to lock up your enemies is what a third world dictator does. Joe Biden is not locking up Donald Trump. Grand juries of citizens have viewed evidence and returned indictments. Okay, here he is over the weekend. Now Trump, who again said last week that he lost. Now he's promising to pardon the January 6th terrorists. The moment we win, we will rapidly review the cases of every political prisoner unjustly victimized by the Harris regime. And I will sign their pardons on day one. I will sign it and not do that. Right. Good one. We will completely overhaul Kamala's corrupt department of injustice and turn the justice department back into the best law enforcement agency on the planet. Instead of persecuting Republicans, they will focus on taking down bloodthirsty cartels, transnational gangs and radical Islamic terrorists, which words they won't even say they won't even. Okay. Yeah. The only person who's running for president, who's hired undocumented immigrants in two different centuries to avoid paying a living wage to Americans is man, baby. And he had this rally on Saturday in Wisconsin, a big battleground state. And he said, oh, he's going to eliminate the department of education. He promised to send education back to Wisconsin and back to the states. And then he said, we'll send it back to the state. So Ron Johnson can run it. Ron Johnson, the I'm going to say it, the the stupidest member of the United States Senate, the man who said that mouthwash would kill coronavirus, a guy who pushes so many conspiracy theories, Ron Johnson was saying over the summer that that about the federal government in the JFK assassination, and then the federal government having a coup on Nixon, Donald Trump wants to change up the 25th amendment as well. And in doing so, listen to this, he reveals he might not fully understand how the 25th amendment or the entire constitution works. Support modifying the 25th amendment to make clear that if a vice president lies or engages in a conspiracy to cover up the incapacity of the president of the United States, what? If you do that with a cover up of the president of the United States, it's grounds for impeachment immediately and removal from office because that's what they did. Right. He's more or less saying we're going to impeach Kamala Harris for hiding from people that Joe Biden was old. And then there came the part where he promised that his mass deportation program, he's never going to do of undocumented immigrants would be bloody. He threatened a bloody mass deportation regime. Before I play the clip, imagine if Kamala Harris had a rally and was talking about her immigration policy and said she wants to deport millions of people who are living here and working here and tear their families apart and pull them out of their homes. And then she said it's going to be a bloody story. And if she said they should never been allowed in the country, and if she'd already promised to build concentration camps for immigrants, well, maybe the media would talk about it. Did you hear much about this comment? Here's Donald Trump in Wisconsin promising the radicals headed up by a radical governor in Colorado that has no clue how to solve this influx of crime into his state. And by the way, Colorado is one state. It's much worse in other states, but in Colorado, they've taken over. I mean, in Colorado, they're so brazen. They're taken over sections of the state. And you know, getting them out will be a bloody story should have never been allowed to come into our country. Nobody checked them. Nobody checked. Were they criminals? Were they from jails? We haven't pouring out from jails. We have the worst criminals in all of these countries, 168 so far are registered, 168 countries. They're in our country. And they said, if you come back, you will be executed. You will be killed immediately. Not going to be easy, but we'll do it. Can you imagine if Vice President Harris was talking like this? Can you imagine what your right-wing friends would be saying? Look, I don't I know the country doesn't care about the undocumented immigrants who pick all the produce and do all the meat processing work, but most people know, at least people in finance know if you were to deport all of them at once, our economy would collapse and a salad would cost $75. This doesn't bother maga because they don't eat salads. But folks, Donald Trump threatened to prosecute election officials. He threatened to jail his opponents. He threatened to let the criminals, the terrorists of the January 6 riot out of jail. He promised bloody mass deportations of a marginalized minority, one he's hired for many years. This is fascist talk. You've really got to use this word. I'd sad how little the mainstream media is covering this stuff. I mean, my God, we keep hearing about it. Is Kamala doing debate prep? What are her positions? We don't hear anything about this jailing election workers, mass prosecutions of his enemies. It's authoritarianism 101 and Republicans won't condemn it. Nothing about his threats to lock up his opponents by lying that they were cheating in the election. New York Times didn't even cover that. New York Times readers don't even know this. Jailing public service on mass, vowing bloody mass deportations and saying he will not accept the election if he loses. But oh, God, is Kamala ready for a debate? Kamala Harris is going to have to work so hard and be so excellent for her to win because the only criteria our media has for Donald Trump, just like it was for George W. Bush, is to show up, not drool, and not smudge feces on your podium during the debate. This is how the media creates a both sides paradigm that is completely unbalanced and favors the fascists. Folks, Donald Trump has spent this entire year telling everybody he intends a mass roundup that would be on a larger scale than anything the Third Reich did. There's already a plan for it, and he just said it's going to be bloody. I don't know. That might be the top story in a sane media culture. We want to know what you think. We're at 866-997-4748. 866-997-GRIT will be right back with your calls and the great Sasha Abramsky. This is Sirius XM. Hey Podcast listeners, great news! All your favorite comedy podcasts can be enjoyed ad-free on Amazon Music. Listen to your favorite music plus top podcasts, completely ad-free on Amazon Music, included with your prime membership. Dive into a world of laughs by downloading the Amazon Music app for free or go to amazon.com/adfreecomedy. That's amazon.com/adfreecomedy to catch up on the latest episodes without the ads. Okay, it's time to commit. 2024 is the year for prioritizing yourself. Begin your new smile journey with BITE, and you could start seeing results in just two to three weeks. Just order your at-home impression kit today for only $14.95 at BITE.com. BITE clear aligners are doctor-directed and delivered to your door. Treatment costs thousands less than braces. Plus, they offer financing options, accept eligible insurance, and you can pay with your HSA FSA. Get 80% off your impression kit when you use code "wondry" at BITE.com. That's B-Y-T-E.com. Start your confidence journey today with BITE. I am such a fan of Sasha Brumsky, longtime political journalist and author who has spent the last 30 plus years exploring the US political and social justice landscape. He's written beautifully and extensively on poverty, on criminal justice, on immigration. And of course, he's written a lot about the rise of hard-right and alt-right political movements. We've been honored to have him on our show before, but his new book seems to cover everything, and he manages to cover so much that's universal by focusing on just two towns. The book is called Chaos Comes Calling, the battle against the far-right takeover of small-town America. And instead of talking about in sweeping historic epic about Donald Trump and what it means to the states, he goes in tight on two small communities, Shasta County, California and Squim Washington, where an unholy fun do of QAnon, anti-vax people, right-wing, Christian nationalists, militia people, and other various racists and suckers have worked to take control of their local power. And both communities had very similar dramas, but very, very distinct trajectories. It's a story about what could happen, what might happen, and how much control we still have over our democracy on the local level. It is a great pleasure to welcome Sasha Abramsci back to SiriusXM. John, I'm delighted to be on your show. I'm delighted to have you. This book is incredible. You managed to go so macro by going so micro on these two tiny towns, and just going so deep on how these conspiracy theories and the bigotries have just turned so many neighbors against their neighbors. But then you come through and show that it's not hopeless, and there's ways to beat them. How did this book evolve, and how did you pick the two towns you followed for this book? The book evolved because I'm a journalist with the Nation magazine. Nation sends me all over the western states, basically looking for interesting stories. So in 2020, I went up to Squim Washington, where a man called Bill William Armacost had been elected onto the city council and then been made mayor. And the thing was Armacost was a QAnon sympathizer. Now, fast forward to 2024, and there are QAnon sympathizers all over the electoral map. But in 2020, 2020, this was unheard of. And the idea that a local government could fall prey to people who believed in just the most outlandish sort of conspiratorial vision of society was enough to send me on an air ticket up to Seattle and then over to the Olympic Peninsula. That was that side of the story. Shasta County was all over the news about the same time a little bit later. It had been swinging rightward anyway during the Trump era. Then the pandemic hits and all the political struggles over mass mandates over social distancing over lockdowns over schools closing and so on and so forth. And suddenly, Shasta County became one of the angriest, most dysfunctional places in the country. And these basically mobs would turn up at border supervisors meetings and they would scream and yell and threaten and bludgeon and demand basically that the county ignore California state health mandates. So again, I thought, you know, this is kind of crazy what's going on here. That's the origin of the book is these two sort of quite rural, quite small counties. The idea really was that a new kind of sort of got to it new introduction. If I can tell a story on the ground of what's happening in these sort of communities that in many ways are quite ordinary, especially Squim, which is basically a retirement community. If I can look on the ground to see, well, why has neighbor turned against neighbor? Why are Twitter mobs threatening death and destruction to public health officers? Why are respected long time elected officials being driven out by essentially militia aligned anti-vaxxers? If I can explain all of that, then I'm telling a story of what's happening to America in the 2020s, the sort of long tale of Donald Trump, how it sort of whiplashes and starts hitting and splashing around and hurting everything it touches. And that's the book. The book, as you said, is basically immersion reporters on the ground about what life in these communities is like in the pandemic era, the social media era, the Donald Trump era. I read somewhere where you were discussing how in reading the book, you've got to keep in mind these three forces that did this to these towns and are doing it to many, many towns in America. One's the rise of social media, which led to a turbocharging of the politics of rumor. The second thing you point out was the rise of Donald Trump, which goes along with the social media. And of course, the third thing was the pandemic, which just every community waiting to flip out and tear itself apart, finally had an opportunity. I mean, this book could not. I mean, if you take any one of those three things, they're bad enough by themselves. If you take social media and the collapse of traditional news sources, and these algorithm-based news systems that basically fuel extremism, so you click, click, click, and the more you click on a sort of one story that leads you in a certain direction, the more the algorithm takes you down further in that direction. So social media fundamentally changes the way that we distribute and understand news. And it sort of obliterates the idea that there is something out there called fact and truth. And it replaces it with this idea that any rumor, no matter how crazy, no matter how destructive, as long as it gets enough clicks, acquires the sort of credibility of truth. That's bad enough. Donald Trump then comes in with the sort of most demagogic violent kind of politics, maybe that this country's ever seen, but certainly that it's seen since the Joe McCarthy period. And he uses social media brilliantly. He's an absolutely extraordinary demagogue. And so Donald Trump sort of fast forwards the country into this period of sort of really nasty, angry politics. But even that probably wouldn't have created what you see on the ground in Squaremore, what you see on the ground in Shasta County in 2021 or 2022, you need a pandemic for that. You need something that is so out of the ordinary. There's such a black swan moment that it basically shatters our sense of stability and it shatters our sense of normality. And people were spawned. People were spawned in an angry, fearful, oftentimes deeply irrational way, which is why, for example, in my book, you have public health officers like Dr. Alison Berry, up in Thailand County, Washington, and Dr. Ramstrom in Shasta County who literally had lynch mobs outside their offices, literally had people who wanted to hang them because they had the temerity to put in place local public health mandates. You know, this is extraordinary. And you know, one of the things I'm trying to work out in this book is how does democracy survive through that? How does what we recognize as a pluralist, tolerant political culture, survive all of that anger and all of that sort of turbocharged rumor? And how do we get beyond it? And you know, you're absolutely right. When you said at the beginning, sort of, we have divergent pathways, this book isn't all doom and gloom. No, it's not. When I did a reading the other day in the Bay Area, and this lovely lady said to me, well, should I buy the book because I'm absolutely terrified that all you're going to do is depress me. And I said to look, I promise you, if you read the book, you're going to be a little bit depressed, but maybe a lot depressed, but much of the book, you're going to get to the end. And you're going to see that they're actually a reasons for hope here. And that they're actually a waste that we can empower ourselves as community to push back against all of this extremists on. And that to me, I think is the ultimate message to the book is that we do retain some control, quite a lot of control over our own destiny as individuals in this communities. You know, the greatest enemy this country has ever had since its founding is the corrosive selfishness that led to slavery, that led to segregation, that led to manifest destiny. This whole notion of we can do whatever we want, and we have no empathy for those who are suffering, which led to the ethnic cleansing of indigenous people. And we've seen it come so many times. And I'm still angry, Sasha, over the corrosive selfishness of Americans who didn't want to be bothered to engage in any public health measures to protect the lives of others during a plague. I'm still in a place of anger where I don't want to hear these godless motherfuckers ever call themselves Christian. I don't ever want to hear them call themselves patriots. They are deeply indifferent to the lives of other Americans. I don't want to hear them ever call themselves pro life. Just as civilian access to AR 15s is more important than the lives of schoolchildren. These are the same people who thought me not having to go through the inconvenience of wearing a mask matters more than the lives of everyone you've ever cared about. And, you know, you point out in the book that Shasta County was always very, very right-wing, but after COVID happened, it just exploded. Is it like they somehow had a permission mechanism in place that somehow this gave them a structure where they could completely destroy any pretense of norm civility or patriotism and just more or less rage against the America they hated because their ruler gave them that permission. I think that's largely true. And by the way, I didn't know you could say all the stuff that you just said on air. Welcome though. It's the House Howard Stern build. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. Well, lucky you. Yeah. I mean, I think what happened was the internet gave people permission to be deeply on civil. You know, I'm sure you have it. I know I've had it that, you know, most journalists friends I know over the last 10 years had a barrage of hate males come in their way. Oh, yeah. They had a barrage of stuff on Twitter and Facebook and everything else. And some of it's like really personally threatening and some of it's just sort of really creepy, but that's sort of become part of our culture at the moment, the infrastructure of our culture, that behind the sort of veils of anonymity, people think they can behave in any weird, strange, dysfunctional and plain unpleasant way they want. What happens in COVID is all of that sort of Twitter trolling mentality gets brought onto the streets. And so people who, you know, just couldn't for the life of them see why they should alter their routines or wear masks or do anything like this to help people who are immunocompromised or to help people who are at particular risk of COVID. Suddenly, those guys are not only doing this online, but as I said, they're basically going as lynch mobs outside public health offices. They're going to county borders supervisors meetings during a time when they've been told, look, you can't congregate in close numbers. And if you do congregate, you have to wear masks. And they're going deliberately without masks. And they're screaming in the faces of their elected officials. You saw this again and again in Shasta. So it wasn't just that there was a debate over whether or not school closures were legitimate. I mean, I think that would have been a perfectly fine debate to have. And you know, I don't think it was just people on the far right of the spectrum who thought that school closures were, you know, a bad idea. I was never crazy about the idea of school closures. I wasn't. One thing to say, right, let's have a proper debate about whether or not to shut down schools is quite another thing to say, we're going to literally invade the offices of our county border supervisors. We're going to scream in people's faces during a time when there's an infectious disease epidemic. We're going to mock people who wear masks. We're going to basically drive anyone who is health conscious away from those meetings. And we're going to rule by sort of the loudest voice in the room wins, which is what happens. You have these people who come and quite literally scream their way to the front of the podium and scare everybody else off. And this was happening not just in Shasta and not just in swim. This was happening all over the country. There was just this absolute explosion in rage and fear and instability. And we're still seeing it. We're seeing different issues. So today it's librarians who bear the brunt of it when they may stock a, you know, LGBTQ book in their library, or maybe schoolteachers who teach pluralism or, you know, dare to sort of say American history is complicated. But this sort of anger and rate has morphed from one target public health officials in 2020 and 2021 to a whole bunch of other targets today. And you asked if it sort of was because the leadership gave permission. Absolutely. If you have someone like Donald Trump in charge in the White House, who is using his podium to attack individual private citizens is using his podium to mock people for their disabilities or their gender or whatever he's mocking people on. That's a horrific message to send out to the country. And I think we're bearing the consequences of that today. I'm talking with the great Sasha Brumsky. His excellent new book is called Chaos Comes Calling the battle against the far right takeover of small town America. Sasha, could you tell us a little bit about the story of Dr. Allison Berry, public health officer for Clalom County. I think a lot of folks might not know her name, but her experience will sound very familiar. Yeah, Berry was this really fantastic young public health officer. And she'd come out of this background where she worked with, you know, every vulnerable, marginalized group you could think of. She'd worked in trauma centers in Seattle's Big Public Hospital. She'd worked with a seriously mentally ill. She'd worked with immigrants. She'd worked with the undocumented. She'd worked with people with no health insurance. She'd worked with the homeless. She'd worked with drug addicts. She'd worked with sex workers. You name it. Any sort of vulnerable group she had done work with. She got a job with Clalom County in Washington as the public health officer. And then the pandemic hits. And like many public health officers around the country, she's trying to work out, well, what can I do to keep the local community safe? And there are these mandates coming in from the state. There are these advisories coming in from the CDC. There's all this stuff coming in. But at the end of the day, it's these local public health officers who have to sort of make the decisions. How do we enforce social distancing? How do we enforce the shutting of non-essential businesses? What recommendations do we give about schools? And so on. So she gets to work and is rewarded by an increasingly vitriolic correspondence, especially online. She goes through that. And then the correspondence gets more and more and more violent. And then it gets really in your face. And as I said, people go from internet trolling to actually patrolling around her offices and trying to find her house and trying to hunt her down, basically. So in 2021, finally, after a year nearly of lockdowns, the vaccine rolls out. And I don't know, you know, I'm sure you can remember. I remember that boss feeling I had of, you know, liberation that I've been quarantining and social distancing for a year. And suddenly, there's this opportunity. You can get vaccinated. This is before all the variants that learned how to dodge the vaccine, you can get vaccinated. It's going to provide protections. You're going to be able to live a life again. The vaccine rolls out. But by then, it's already politicized. Right wingers have decided, well, we're not going to get the vaccine because, you know, there's all this conspiracy stuff online spread by Alex Jones and everyone else saying, the vaccine is going to, you know, make you allergic to this, that and the other. It's going to, you know, inject you with, with these monitoring micro tips and so on, just this crazy conspiratorial stuff. So a lot of people aren't getting vaccinated, which means that when states try and reopen in the spring of 2021, there's going to be an explosion in the COVID infection rate. And this is what happens. Washington state tries to open. There's an explosion in the infection rate. And the hospitals begin to be overwhelmed. And Dr. Berry is looking at this and she's thinking, well, what can I do to protect my society, my community? And she looks at the numbers and she realizes that the epicenter of these sort of new infections are in cafes, bars and restaurants, where people are rushing because they haven't been for a year. All these people are going into indoor restaurants, cafes and bars, and they're infecting each other. And so she has the idea, well, what if we introduce a local vaccine mandate? You can go to these cafes, you can go to these restaurants, but you have to show a vaccine card at the door to be let in. And she does this. And from a public health perspective, she's absolutely looking out for the people in your community looking out for all the kids looking out for the old folks looking out for everybody. Yeah. Yeah, she's doing she's doing something good. The problem is she becomes a poster child for the anti-vaxxer movement. So she wakes up the day after she's introduced this mandate. She's getting hate mail, not just from around Clalom County. She's getting hate mail from all over America. And then she's getting hate mail from all over the world. And suddenly people 10 and 12,000 miles away are threatening to kill her because she's introduced, you know, a fairly mild public health mandate requirement. And so, you know, I met her afterwards and by then the mandate had actually, you know, started to be rolled back. But she had PTSD. She was terrified by what she'd been through. She was terrified to go out alone. She was convinced that people were going to break into her house and kill her. You know, this has really real consequences. And one of the motivations for my writing this book seemed to me there were an awful lot of stories like this going on around the country where good people were being targeted by really malicious actors. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And their stories weren't being told. And I wanted to tell their stories and I wanted my readers to read their stories and to really get a sense of, you know, what sort of knife edge we're on as a country at the moment. It's a great book about America. And I really admire the way you can talk to people like these militia members and these far right people. And you are such a great interviewer because you're not there to debate. You're there to get their story and to tell the most rounded portrayal of the way they see things. So without giving away the ending, these two communities go in very different directions. And everyone needs to read the book to see how it turns out. But let me just ask what what can we learn from this? What can we learn from from how Clowham County responded that can maybe point us towards healing? Yeah, I think what we can learn is that if we sort of get very, very passive in the face of all of this anger and rage and we sort of try and tune it out, which is quite tempting because there's so many bad headlines every day, it's sort of easy to say, well, I hate this. I'm just going to tune it all out. Problem is, if you do, the back eyes kind of sort of take control. I think that's the lesson to be learned that a minority can really have an outsized impact if it's organized effectively in the anti-vaxxers, the militias, all these groups in Shastra especially, were extremely well organized. But the sort of flip side of that is when good people do decide to push back. There was a group out in Clowham County in Washington called the swim good governance league. And it brought together people, not just Democrats, not just sort of, you know, traditional lefty folks, it brought people from across the spectrum who shared a common dislike of the chaos and the violence that was being unleashed in their community. And they pushed back. And like, you know, again, I'm not going to spoil the ending sort of completely, but I'll, you know, give you a hint, they push back very successfully. And I think that's the lesson there that, you know, we have an awful lot of power in our own hands if we choose to use it. This is a book that is not pussyfoot around. And yet it is so filled with hope. The book is Chaos Comes Calling the battle against the far right takeover of small town America. By Sasha Abramsky, it is always an honor. This platform is always open to you, sir. Please come back anytime, especially with the next 59 days set to be quite interesting. We'd love to have your take anytime. I would love it, John. Brilliant. Thank you. We have to take a very quick break. We'll be back in just a moment with your calls. We are at 866-997-4748. This is Progress After Dark. What makes a life a good one? Is it the adventure you have? Or the friends you find along the way? Maybe it's pursuing you passion while striving to protect, defend, and save what you believe in every single day. So what makes a life a good one? In the Coast Guard, we think it's all of the above and more. But you'll have to find out for yourself. Visit gocoascard.com to learn more. Now back to tell me everything on Sirius and Progress 127. A great song. Is he strong? Listen, bud. He's got radioactive blood. Can he swing from a thread? Take a look overhead. This is poetry. If you were a kid in the 70s or 80s, the Spider-Man animated series debuted on ABC on this stage in 1967. And it's been covered by everybody from Michael Bugle to the Ramones. Tomorrow night on ABC, we premiere the first ever debate of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. It's going to be very exciting and we are thrilled. Thrilled, I tell you, to be covering it right here. The ABC presidential debate will be tomorrow. And the ABC News presidential debate, I should say. It'll air here live on Sirius X and Progress. In full and uncut, there will be no audience muted mics. And its outcome could potentially swing the future of the world. So maybe, you know, maybe you want to watch it or at least listen, we are at 866-997-4748. 866-997. Grit is our number. And I am so pleased to welcome our next guest to the show. We're going to get to your calls very shortly. But I'm a big fan of Rob Kuttner. He's done the show a bunch. He's an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Peabody award-winning comedy writer. He's written for The Daily Show. He's written for Conan. He's even written for Teen Titans Go, which might be the hippest superhero thing ever. He's also written the national bestseller Apocalypse How, Turn the End Times into the Best of Times, and the graphic novel Shrinkage, the excellent kid's graphic novel, Snot Goblins and other tasteless tales. And we can say this, Rob is the ghost writer of Ant-Man's book that was featured prominently at Ant-Man 3. But he's here tonight. Not for his comedic, well, partially for his comedic brilliance, but this Wednesday. And a special early show at The Laugh Factory on Sunset Boulevard in LA, 6 p.m. Pacific Time. So it's perfect for dinner. There's going to be an amazing, amazing stand-up show that's going to be called stand-up for neurodivergent adults. It's a comedy show that is being built to accommodate neurodivergence, including space to chill out, use of self-regulation devices and noise outburst acceptance. It's going to have some great comics, including The Brilliant, Laurie Kilmartin. I am so inspired. This is a real thing. And I wanted to welcome Rob Kuttner back to SiriusXM. Rob, hello and welcome. Well, after that introduction, why don't you need to talk? Well, because you're my hype. You're my hype man, John. No, no, this is amazing. I mean, like you, you're the guy who put this together. It's an actual stand-up show for neurodivergent adults and their friends. The obvious question is, how did this idea germinate? How did this come to be? I can't take credit for that, but I will. Now, this was the idea of my sometimes comedy show producing partner, a guy named Mike Rotman. And he has a family member who's an adult with neurodivergence, and he loves comedy. And as you know, I think, but maybe not all of your audience knows, sometimes neurodivergent adults, that this means people on the spectrum. It can include Down syndrome. That's right. Really, all kinds of different sort of, you know, mental, mental wiring, we'll say. Sometimes they'll have an outburst, get excited. They'll do what's called stimming, like just sort of doing some of their hands. It makes them feel better. Maybe this is something you've seen. Some people will put on headphones because too many, too much noise and stuff is ever stimulating. Can you explain what stimming is for those who weren't in the, yeah, it means like sort of self-stimulation. I don't understand that neuroscience, but it's just something that makes someone on the spectrum or with different neurodivergences feel better with what's going on. It makes them feel better about their senses and stuff. Don't quote me on that, but that's the idea. And so, as you might imagine, from the stand-up stage, if you didn't know that, you might have someone yell something from an audience or do something unusual with their hands, or maybe even get up and pace a little bit, a typical thing, or have headphones. Not knowing. You might say, "Hey, pal, you got something to share with the rest of us?" Or, I'm not saying that would be your thing, but any number of comics might just think it's someone being playful, or heckling, or messy around, or whatever, not understand it, and just start doing some crowd work with them, or calling them out. Totally legit thing to do in general. In this case, you can see how that would be really uncomfortable. You could try to talk to that interesting looking fellow who's moving rather interestingly in the front row, and instead, you might wind up really overstimulating somebody and really stressing someone out who's trying to have a good time out in public. Yeah, and also, his family member doesn't always feel like comfortable going to a live comedy show, even though he'd love to. And so, he said, "What if we just sort of had a comedy show where we just sort of pre-arranged with the comics and said, "Look, this is what's going on." Just don't call out something like that. Just roll with your set, have a good time with the audience, but don't call any attention to anyone in the audience who doesn't necessarily want that. And also, a few things like asking the venue to just keep things calm, clear signs, everyone knows what's coming up. Next, that's a good thing. And also, as you said, sort of a chill out space, someone gets over stimulated, they can get up and walk away. Again, if you did someone did that in your crowd, can we get up and walk, "Where you going, pal? You got somewhere better to be?" Because you have that Bronx accent that I know is part of your career. Brooklyn, thank you. But, yes. Again, if you're just joining us, the show is called Let It Out. It's stand-up for neurodivergent adult comedy fans and their friends. This Wednesday, the 11th of September at 6 p.m. And let me be the first comedian to mention what a great date for comedy September 11th always is every year. A day you'll never forget. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, every one of us has done stand-up on 9/11 and had to make a joke about the elephant in the room. So, I'm guessing you had to go pitch this to our old friend, Jamie Masada, the macdaddy of a laugh factory. I did. I did. And pitches an understatement because before I got about two sentences out, he was already saying, "Yes, this guy is a munch." Yeah, he is. And he loves to do it. He does a lot of initiatives for the community. He does comedy camp for underprivileged kids. He does benefits for veterans. He does all kinds of stuff. He doesn't care about, he makes good money, he doesn't care about, he just wants to bring more people into space to have a good time. And I was visiting the site today and they were thanking us for honoring them by bringing a population into their space to enjoy the laughter that doesn't always get to do that. And the other thing I want to say is just like, beyond the stuff I've said, it's so easy for a venue and for comics to do this. All it takes is like about 15 minutes of preparation and thought, and this could happen anywhere. And we want to just make it a thing, it's a regular thing that any venue could do. And it's a neurodivergence and neurotypical. People can come together and everyone can enjoy the same show and no one has to feel anything odd or uncomfortable. I think it's great. And the goal is, I think, Rob, that you guys want this to try to become a regular thing. That actually, this can be a place where neurotypical American adults can come and enjoy stand up in a room that's kind of geared towards not freaking people out. Exactly. It's just a welcoming space is the way we're sort of doing it. How do you prep your comics for something like this? You tell them don't do crowd work or don't do crowd work around people who might not seem neurotypical. I mean, you really can't tell if someone's spectrum just by looking at them. Yeah, so it's almost literally the spiel I just gave you in the last two minutes. I just sort of explain all that stuff and say, this is what's probably going on. So unless you're really sure that they're seeking to engage with you specifically, like, don't necessarily call out, you know, eccentric behaviors. I love this so much. I'm sorry. I just like inclusion is a word we throw around a lot, but there are so many adults who are ASD who, yeah, would love to go do something like this, but loud crowds can really stress a lot of folks out. And there's comics as well that are doing this. Now, I'm curious, are any of the people doing spots focusing on being neurodivergent, or are they just doing their regular sets? Yes. Well, okay, so that's a great question. Last question first is also to make this the ideas we call it light and easy. It's light and easy for everybody to just do it with a little thought. So every comic coming into your set, you know, and even shorter sets are great here too, because that's probably better for our audience. Just come into your set, don't alter your set. We don't want anyone to have to do anything differently than we do any other comedy show. I love that. And then, and then to your other question, there's a guy named Josh Meyerowitz, who is part of this act called Autistic Thunder. He himself is autistic, and he's hilarious, and he talks about it in this very blunt way, which is really, really funny. And there's a guy named Kruger Don, who is a neurodivergent. He's a friend of mine as well. That's what a lot of his set is about. That said, I also would just want to say, again, like, it's not the point that that's the content of the show. Right, I get that. That's just what we're doing. It's so cool. It's so cool that you got it. But it also, they see this one on stage talking about this stuff. Yeah, exactly. We just had a Broadway musical called Dancing in Ohio that was, you know, all the cast members were all on the spectrum. And it was amazing, because there were so many trips of kids and adults on the spectrum who were coming to actually see a Broadway show that wasn't just about being an autistic adult. It was starring autistic adults. So I just think this is so liberal, happy clappy. It makes me feel like my heart grew five sizes. Now, I know this is your first time doing it. Thank you for inviting me to do it. I'm crushed that I'm not in LA, because I would have totally been there, especially for a six o'clock show. I could get out of this job. Yeah, exactly. But it's not going to be available for streaming, right? If you want to see it, you've got to be there in person to witness this. It is the hope at some point you can take this on the road or have it be a streaming show? I think that's an interesting question that we haven't quite wrapped our heads around, because if you think about the stuff I've said already, maybe the people in the audience don't necessarily want to be on camera. I think that's something we have to navigate through to. We're going to have photographers there taking various selective pictures with people who have been concerned because we're getting some media coverage. We want everyone to hear about this story, but we're just going to keep it very controlled. My idea is less a tour than, well, a tour to work as well, but I mean, my idea is just to sort of like create a playbook that you can hand over a comedy venue is anywhere. And so anywhere you have comics, you can do this at your venue. You don't even need us. It's not that these particular people, it's not a theme group of comics, it's just a way of running a comedy show. I love it. And I love that you're going to have like, you know, a chill out area for people who might be getting overstimulated and just need to go and self-regulate as we call it. I want to chill out area in my house. I wish I could arrange that. I need one as well for when I get dysregulated. Yeah. I need one all over the place. I live in New York. Rob, for people who are interested who are hearing and thinking, hey, six o'clock, that could be fun after work. Because again, it's not a show just for autistic adults, and it's not a show featuring just autistic comics. And it's not a show with autism themed stand-up. It's just a comedy show that is making space for neurodivergent adults to be part of the experience and part of the audience. Where should people go and comedy fans go to learn more and to get tickets? So go to the laughfactory.com and click on their Hollywood venue. We also have a link, which is one of those bit.ly, those short things, you know, let it out comedy, B-I-T dot l-y slash let it out comedy. You go there, you'll find a laugh factory. It'll be under the shows for September 11th. It's going to be a pretty short, early show. It's going to be like six to seven, 30 or something like that. And the last pitch I would make is whether you have someone you want to bring or not. If you're a typical or you have some or not, this is a chance to see an excellent comedy show that will also be part of a movement, because this success with this will inspire a lot of other places. You can actually do something good while having a completely selfish, fun experience and not even do anything else. And I just realized I should also ask what about teens that are teens on the spectrum? Who might want to come? Will they be admitted? It is an adult comedy show. 21 plus because they serve, they serve drinks. But you know, that's also, if I can sidebar, like that's interesting that my partner brought off is that our society often provides a lot of support and enrichment for kids up until about their 20s teens who are on the spectrum. And then after that, it kind of drops off. Like you're sort of like you're an adult on the spectrum. You're on your own. And so this was also filling in that gap as well. It's like, what do adults do? We want to go do adult things. And they've aged out of that sort of stuff, robust stuff that exists for younger people. Right on. Well, thank you for picking up the slack. And of course, if you are a young person on the spectrum in the Los Angeles area, just bring your fake ID. I know you've all gone. You are a prince. I'm not used to you being such a moral titan in addition to being such a successful and productive one. What is the best way for our listeners to follow you, Rob? And keep up with all your work. It's just www.robcutner.com. It's as simple as simple as could be. Well, thank you so much. It's great to have you here. Everyone, go see this show. If I was in LA, I'd be doing it or at least watching it. Let it out. Stand up for neurodivergent adult comedy fans and friends. Wednesday, the 11th of September at 6 p.m. Pacific at the Laugh Factory on Sunset. Please let us know how it goes. And I can't wait to join you at a future show. Love to have you. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Rob. Have a great one. We're going to take a very quick break. We'll be back in just a moment with your calls and the great rod to have some at 866-997-4748. This is progress. Chuck in Wisconsin on Line 3. Thank you so much for waiting. Welcome. You're on progress. All right. First time caller. Long time stalker. Honor. Thank you. So I had this thought. I was listening to Liz Cheney, you know, talking like she's saving America. Oh, yeah. Yes. And and and Kim Zigeru, thank you. And the rest of those calls. They're really not trying to save America. They're trying to save the Republican Party. I agree. I agree. But but they're helping America by doing that. Let's be honest. You know, they're there. Well, we're sure when John McCain saved Obamacare, he was saving the Republican Party too. But I'm also glad he saved Obamacare in the process. I get what you're saying. But that's true. Yeah, I just I just would. I think, you know, and I know why they're saying it out loud now instead of just, you know, they could just vote for Harris and that would be it. But I think they're trying to get they're giving everybody they're trying to give Republicans permission. Yes. That's why we like it. That's why. Yeah. Right. But I think they would even if they kind of made it sound like, listen, you know, I don't want to I don't want to vote for Harris, but I'm doing this to save the Republican Party. That's what they're all saying. Oh, are they saying that? I actually heard her saying. Oh, they're all saying they don't agree with her on it. Look, I mean, I'll say it. Liz Cheney. Liz Cheney still wants a portion to be banned. Liz Cheney still thinks billionaires need another tax cut. Liz Cheney still thinks the Iraq War was a swell idea. She's wrong about everything except one thing. And you know what? It's okay. Like I opened my show and Portland the other night and I told the audience here's an announcement. Dick Cheney is still evil. He's still he's allowed to do he's allowed to do as many good things as he wants. He's still evil. He is so evil. The dark side turns to him. Dick Cheney is is so evil. He literally heartless. He reads the he reads the grapes of wrath and he roots for the bowl weevil. You understand? He's an evil man. His old heart is he lost his old heart. It became Nixon's horcrux. He's an evil guy. But you know, he did one other good thing in his life. He didn't die in office because if he had died in office, George Bush would have been president. So this is two decent things. This evil motherfucker has done his entire Mississippi gotten life. And I won't it's not going to make me call him a good man. It's not going to make me say he's found the light. But what I will say is he's not stupid. He's evil and he's more evil than Trump. But he's a lot smarter than Trump. Trump's a lot more stupid and Cheney knows how bad for Republican party and for America. This presidency would be. Yeah, just I mean, if you think about it, so the for 12 12 of the last 16 years were Democrats and Harris will probably be, you know, the next president. So you're looking at another four years or 16 out of the last 20 years. Let's hope we're Democrats. And if she gets in again, out of the 24 years, it was just four years of Trump and that's all the Republicans have to run on. Like, you know, they can't, they can't say, well, I know president things were great, but they can't they can't and they try to do it under Trump. But they're just giving Trump credit for Barack Obama's recovery from the last Republican fuck up president. Let's not forget, you know, in my lifetime, I've only seen Democrats become presidents after Republicans completely fuck everything up. Jimmy Carter got in there because a Watergate bill Clinton got in there because 12 years of trickle down collapsed. Barack Obama got in there because George W. Bush was the worst president of all time, at least since World War II. And we know why Joe Biden got in there because of fuckface fun clown stick. So it's like, you know, like in the last since 1988, I mean, since since the late 80s, Democrats have won seven of the last eight presidential elections. If we're a democracy, going by popular vote, the American people have chosen the Democrat in every one of the last eight presidential campaigns except the one after 911. And that's a whole other level of fuckery. Because I do believe that was cheated and stolen in Ohio, but that's another show. So you're exactly right. This is going to continue. And I don't know if Kamala Harris is going to do it. I hope she will. I think she will. I don't believe any of these polls. But yeah, I mean, you're going to see, look at the deficit reduction. I mean, it's gone up under Republicans. It goes down whenever there's a Democrat. Numbers don't lie. And that's why they ignore the numbers. So here in Wisconsin, a lot of the Trump flags and signs have started coming down. Really? I'm opening that to sign. That's wild. Yeah, on just on my street, there was a couple flags and a couple signs in their yard. And I don't know if they just got tired of mowing around them, but they've been slowly disappearing. So I think the I think people are like, yeah, when he goes to prison, I don't know if I want to have like, you know, I don't think I'll care. I don't think the Trumpers care there. I saw I was in Virginia Beach last week, and I saw nothing. But Harris Wall Street signs on yards. I didn't see any Trump signs on yards. But when I went to the boardwalk, the t-shirt shops, it was all like I'm voting for the felon. It was Trump's mugshot with images of Trump giving two middle fingers. Donald Trump is clearly winning among t-shirts showing him giving the middle finger to people. But Kamala Harris is winning in Virginia on street signs. It's going to be an interesting week. Exactly right. Excellent. On that note, Chuck, thank you for calling. You're good at this, man. Call in more often. It's a pleasure to hear from you. But right now, people of Earth allow me to just cheer the return of comedian writer, actor, director, Ms. Rhonda Hansen. She's open for Anita Baker. She's open for Diana Ross. She's open for Aretha Franklin. And she was one of the first comedians to ever be nice to me when I was a little open miker. She says, great solo shows, and we are blessed to have Ms. Hansen with us every Monday night. Ms. Hansen, if you're nasty, sign for tall, dark, and handsome with Rhonda. I'm black. Thank God you are. How you doing, goddess? You're so busy all the time. Are you even having time to pay attention to our corrosive politics anymore? It's been a challenge. But first, I got to say, belated. Happy birthday to you, my dear, dear friend. Thank you. Also, you look good. And it looks like you have had a pause in the intensity of writing your book because you do look a little over. Okay, so Rhonda actually had to see my wisdom to carcass about 10 days ago. And it was so nice to actually see you in person for a few moments, Queen. We had a party for Frank Conif at my house for his birthday because I lost a bet. And I was forced to. And so all these comedians came over. And I was so happy to have you, Rhonda, because I've never I've been in this place for a couple of years. I've never had like people over in the backyard before. It was my first attempt at socializing. So I was really happy to see you and Jim Norton at the same party in my backyard. I know I'm doing something that was really something Jim's wife is something else too, but that's a whole other show too. Yeah, that's some Norwegian stuff there. Yeah, talk about her all day. But hey, but you look great. And yes, I turned in my book the night before the the DNC began. So so I've been getting a little bit more sleep in the last couple weeks. Thank you. Good, good. Yeah, tell me how you're doing, Rhonda. I'm doing great. I'm doing great. I have already started my September solo show development workshop. I love that you do this. And I'm having so much fun. It's just such a delight to be with people who are great writers and open to my guidance and suggestion. And so now we have opened the October registration. And you know, I'm looking forward to that. And but I'm trying to keep my head on, John. I think things in our world are keep speeding up every week. It seems like it gets crazier. And the crazy comes a little faster. I did tell Chris that something that was on my mind was this cult gray. Yes, the young man who shot up and killed four people in the Georgia High School just last week. Yes. And it's going to rest it along with his father, who seems like a quite an interesting piece of work. They all seem like what the nuns at St. Virgin in the bushes. What the nuns used to call a prize package. They don't see a prize package. And John, what strikes me is when people like to bring up Chicago as some kind of disguise, not so much disguised racial slur. That's right. Is the pattern of parents giving assault weapons to young people who have been called in by the principal, the counselor, their teacher, and the FBI, your house had the FBI visit your house because your child made terroristic threats about killing people at school. And you turn around and buy that kid and they are 15 for Christmas. And I really, really have to say that it is time that these unhinged irresponsible people are treated like they're black. What would that look like? Rhonda? It would look like when you when you come to when the police or the FBI or the sheriff or whoever comes to their door, they are they are assaulted. They are not given any of their rights. They are automatically assumed guilty and possibly shot. Yeah. John, I'm tired of it. We we get shot through the window where we have called when we've been a wellness check has been called. We could we could shot when we're looking for help. We get shot with our hands up. We get shot with our hands empty and down. We get shot when we're guarding autistic people. And that's right. That's right. Gun crazy. Unhinged. I can't I have no proof that they're racist, but they're definitely unhinged. These gun crazy people are are indoctrinating their children and these and I believe these are the same people who send out holiday cards with their babies holding guns. Yeah, that's a lot of Congress people do that too. I mean, I'm not against gun ownership. I'm not against the second of either of mine. I'm going to get one. I think well, yeah, I do I do, by the way, think that AR 15 should be legal, but only for women because women have proven after a couple of decades they're the one gender we can trust with this kind of hardware. Women aren't the ones doing mass shootings, but you're exactly right. I knew that the assailant was uh was white the second I heard he was taken in a life. I mean, we can look at the chart showing how many of these white mass shooters were taken in alive. And there aren't that many black mass shooters, but when there are, we know how that story always turns out. In the case of it's always an unarmed black man who gets shot or a kid, like to be a rice. And then these white guys, even James Holmes and the movie theater, bring them in alive. I have to pick a bone with the media for some reason. They're talking about this school getting shot up by a teenager and they post a teenage black person, a teenage black boy who was the victim who was a victim so that it looks like, you know, if you're just reading the headline and looking at the picture, it looks like it was a young black person who perpetrated this horrific crime. So I really am upset about that. And you know, the new thing they're doing is saying that Haitians are eating cats. That's the new thing. And I thought it was a joke all weekend. Then this morning, I actually looked on social media and saw the amount of fake pictures people have generated and how huge this is and how it's been spread by these influencers that Haitian immigrants are eating cats and Donald Trump is protecting our pets. I mean, look, racist deserved to have fun. And I'm a fan of creativity, but holy crap, Rhonda, they're just so disconnected from reality. Wait a minute, wait a minute, Donald Trump is protecting the pets. But his running mate has actually invoked the wrath of cat women everywhere. Not only that. Just before I connected with you, it seemed like they were saying he's some kind of lightning rod these days for stuff that is even weirder than Trump has been spewing. And John, when you get weirder than Trump, you have, you have reached some kind of, of weirdity, if there is such a war. I want to get to our callers, but I want to comment on one more thing you said, you know, I was in Chicago for the show and then the DNC for a week. And you know what I kept hearing from so many people who were visiting Chicago for the first time, they couldn't believe how beautiful the town was. They couldn't believe how much fun the town was, how great it was to get around. I talked to so many people, people older than me who've grown up in a media culture that tells them that Chicago is a hellscape of nonstop gun violence, which is the right way. No, it's the right wing way of smearing black people the way they did my whole life until 9/11. They always use New York as code for black people are violent since 9/11, it's been Chicago. And it was so moving and infuriating to talk to somebody. I do have to say that people in the Midwest, people in the Kentucky, Georgia, Midwest, Iowa, Idaho, in some suburbs are wild with their criminality. They are incestuous. They are killing each other. And they are, you know, distributing meth when they're not using it themselves. And somehow, you know, once again, it's the face of crime and drugs and whatever is bad in this world is a black face. And I'm not accepting it anymore. I'm just not taking it anymore. Me neither, doll. Let's talk to some of the evil army of the night. Shall we, David? I love your evil army of the night. Bring them on. David Washington on line eight. Welcome. And thanks for waiting on hold. You're on Sirius XM with Rhonda Hanseman. Me. Hello. Hello, John. Hi, Dave. Hey, Rhonda. How is everybody? How are you? Good. Long time. I'm going to talk to you. First off, I just want to say, look, I was just complaining about, you know, here in America, we all seem to have an addiction to happy talk. And what I'm about to say is it's going to make me sound like a hypocrite. It's going to make me sound like I'm promoting happy talk. But it's just the theory I have. All right, I don't want people to get too excited about it. And actually, I kind of want to connect this thing with this thing with Dick Cheney. A lot of people I think are underestimating this endorsement. Although Dick Cheney can vote for Kamala Harris. I think people are underestimating this because regardless of what you think about Dick Cheney, right, he is America's probably America's foremost living technocrat. I mean, Dick Cheney knows the inner working. Yes, I agree. And the machinery of government. I think Joe Biden does pretty well as well. But yes, go on. Yes. And here's why that's relevant to my point. Okay, look, everybody was saying, are everybody coming about Trump's comment about he actually is? He actually did lose the election, right? But they're not elaborating. I think that's important also, because when it comes to the machinery of government, okay, I think what Dick Cheney saying is another Trump presidency can really just obliterate the machinery of government that keeps us a democracy. And let me explain. No, I know you're saying, I think you're right. I think that's what Dick Cheney thinks. Well, what happened was, all right, when Trump admitted that he lost the election, why that's important? It's huge. I think, well, behind the scenes, right, these legal aides from the Supreme Court, and you know, these technical bureaucrats, right, they are communicating, right? But even when Trump's out of office, and Justice Kavanaugh said something, he said that nobody knows more about executive authority than him. So where we go with this, Dave, because I got 900 callers. Look, when Kavanaugh said that he wasn't just, you know, stout enough, some sort of, he wasn't bragging. What it is is, Kavanaugh's told Trump, if you lose the election, these cases are going to go forward. And you, the only way I'm going to support you is if you say you were told that you actually won, that's the only defense. I find it very hard to believe that Brett Kavanaugh's been talking with Donald Trump, my friend. Why is that behind the scenes? Why do you find that hard to believe? I don't think that's how they do it. You don't think Brett Kavanaugh has assistance that are talking to someone in the trip? Oh, maybe there's intermediaries talking to intermediaries talking to intermediaries. Yeah, but I don't think Brett Kavanaugh is setting any terms for Donald Trump. Well, Brett Kavanaugh does are these cases are going to go forward if he loses. Oh, I know, I know, I know, I know. And by the way, if he does lose these cases, we'll go forward because the Supreme Court's not going to care. They will go ahead. That's the smartest thing that Judge Mershan did. Liberals were so angry, Rhonda, on Friday when Judge Mershan said he wasn't going to sentence Trump for his guilty convictions in the New York 34 felony counts until after the election. By doing that, Judge Mershan guaranteed that he didn't give Donald Trump a jail sentence that Donald Trump could then appeal to Brett Kavanaugh before election day. Now the Supreme Court can't fuck with this in any way. And if they sentence him to jail, I don't think they will. But if they do sentence him to jail after election day, Supreme Court's not going to care. They're not going to get involved. John McCallum brought up Kavanaugh and my mind just immediately goes to the Eiffel Tower. I don't know why. I don't know why. It's absolutely crazy that he brought up Dick Cheney. I don't care who Dick Cheney is endorsing. I'm not going hunting with him. No, exactly right. But I would not object to Donald Trump or his inner circle going hunting with Dick Cheney as well. Dave, you're a gentleman. I have no idea why you still listen to our show. Thank you so, so much. Let me go to Stephen in Kentucky. You're on with Rhonda. Hey, Stephen. Stephen, are you there? I can literally hear the crickets on his veranda. And I'm certain Stephen has a veranda, by the way. Stephen, where'd you go? Exactly. Stephen. Oh, okay. I think he left his phone on the veranda and went off somewhere. Stephen, come back. He's still my favorite Tennessee Williams character. Let me go. Let me go to Bill in New Jersey. Bill, thank you for your patience on hold. You're on with Rhonda. Hi, how you doing? How are you? Good. Good. Okay. Did you know that Donald Trump was white before he was orange? Yes, I did. Well, I thought he was just white. Anyway. No, he sees he's trans. He's trans. He's he's. Yeah, he's transracial. Right. Right. Why do you ask? I just love that white white supremacists are supporting a guy who spray tans himself to appear less white. That's what I love. It's like he's cock blocking his own hate people. He spray tans himself to be less white. And the white supremacist go, that's our guy. It just a good guy, these people. Go ahead. We've got a really big problem here because half the country don't believe that things are as good as they are. They'd rather believe that things are terrible regarding the economy and regarding immigration, the two biggest things. And I don't understand why they can't knock that down with facts. I mean, it didn't work under for Obama. I mean, they they they believe what they want to believe. They they still well, they they they played dumb about a plague that was killing Republicans because Donald Trump told them to play dumb about a plague. And these are people call themselves Christians and they voted for the this blasphemer God sent a plague and they're still playing dumb about it. They're they're not going to grapple with reality. It took these people 20 years to admit that George W. Bush lied to them about Iraq. And they only did that because their new cult leader told them to. Right. But next week, the Fed is going to drop when they call jumbo 50 points, which is like half a point. I'm interest rate, which is going to drive things better in the housing market and everything else. So that's really good news. And there must be a way to communicate the stuff that's already been done. Yeah, you can't. I mean, you can't do it. You know, this happened in the Barack Obama in 2012. It was a recovery on paper, but people out there didn't see it. They didn't feel it. And we're still dealing with inflation. I can go up there and tell people the facts, which is that inflation hit the entire world. Every country suffering from it. And then America under Joe Biden has recovered from inflation better than any of our G7 capitalist allies. No one's going to care if shit's still too expensive. And I'm going to say, well, it's not the president who sets prices. It's these crooked big capitalists and they made a profit and they're making record profits and they're not and they're still jacket. They don't care. Shit's expensive. Who can I blame? And you know, they're their coach to blame Democrats not to blame the actual they'll blame they'll blame Democrats for their CEOs exporting their job overseas to China. They won't blame the actual people who do it to them. Well, it's time they woke up from their nightmare because that's what it is. And and realize that things are a lot better than they are. Oh, by the way, my congressman Bill Pascrell passed away two weeks ago. He did. And nothing in the press about it. Very little. I was surprised about it. Democrats are down one guy now and they're not going to have one till election day. Yeah, but it's a safe seat. I think it's going to be it'll be a democratic seat. I think. Oh, yeah, absolutely. They already have the governor's door. We got someone picked out to run and you know, democratic state right now. Bill, thank you so much for the call. I really appreciate it. And Rhonda, I hate to say that Bill makes a lot of good points. But that time he did. I mean, you know, we can argue all day the facts that Joe Biden has led us from this pandemic. But people who don't want to believe that aren't going to be walked through the connecting the dots. Well, all I know is that 10 Brillo pants of four dollars shot and it shocked me. It absolutely shocked. It's crazy. But then people, you know, beat up on him. So Kamala Harris says, let's have some price caps. And now they're calling her a communist. So it's like, what the fuck do you idiots want? Do you want you don't want prices to be high and you want to blame the president for prices being high? But if the president tries to do something to help you consumers and cap prices, you'll call them a commie. Haters going to hate Rhonda. That's it, right? Oh, well, that's John John. That's a haters job. But you know me. I want I want lineage-based reparations. I know I'm working on it. I'm working on it. Marking on John. Things were crazy in California this past week. What happened in California this past week? They acted like the reparations legislation was, you know, all set. And then they started shuffling things around behind the scenes and the whole thing blew up and in knew some space. That's right. That's right. And they don't want to have anything like that happen before election day. Mark in Wisconsin, you're on with Rhonda. Hello and welcome. Yeah, thanks guys. First, my good news is that I've had a clean scan this week. So, I mean, that makes me surviving for another period of time. Congratulations. Excellent. We've talked before. It's interesting today. I've been taking my dog for a walk in the morning that two miles before he actually does his business. But I mean, one of the houses I passed by in my little community up here in Sock City is that the guys got his tractor parked out in front of his house. I was a little farm hall, small little tractor, little farm hall, red farm hall. And behind the farm hall, I think he's got it got decaled on there, locally hated. And I just kind of that kind of just struck me as pretty awfully sad because a couple of houses down there, somebody's got a rainbow flag in front of their house. Right. Another Trump and another Trump house next to that. But I mean, it's just kind of sad that somebody's embracing that he's he perceives himself as being hated. And it just. And why does he why does he perceive himself as being hated? I have no idea. But he's just got that on his tractor. It probably went by. Is this the right the right wing guy trying to play victim you're saying? I probably right wing guy who's prejudiced against a lot of people claiming that he's victimized and people are out against him because real America, blah, blah, blah, fucking blah. I mean, right? Persecution complex is what unites a lot of Trump supporters. They have to believe they're victimized to justify the cruelties they espouse. It's just sad. I mean, I heard today on the radio that well, gas prices here in Wisconsin are down like 20 cents a gallon. But there's other reports of apparently people are getting more or less assaulted when they're trying to put up a Harris science. Yeah. And harassed when they're trying to put up Harris science and apparently Republican parties apparently encourage in this. And I just find that incredibly sad and incredibly, you know, I wouldn't I wouldn't tolerate any of that. I'd just say, well, fine, we'll just see what the police have to say about it and just let them let them handle it because it's just it's just sad. I mean that part of me just remembers that I wonder if a part of it, at least here in Wisconsin, it started in Wisconsin because Scott Walker was was the twerp that was promoting divide and conquer, that's right. And Trump has taken that and run and you run a marathon with it. Yeah. Exactly. Trump shows what happens if a Republican has charisma and a willingness to lie more than usual. We got to hit a break mark, but I thank you so much for your call. And thank you for reminding us how awful your former governor was. Miss Hanson, can you stay with us through the break? Absolutely. What's going to happen with this debate? Tomorrow night, Rhonda, what's going to happen with this debate tomorrow night? I'm buying popcorn, John. I'm just I'm stocking up on it. That's all I know. I can't wait. It will absolutely be, I think, a manure, a manure show. Let's see. Let's see who gets the manure thrown at him. Miss Rhonda Hanson, how do our listeners follow you and learn more about your workshops, your teaching? Because you can do this online as well and and see you play live and all the good things. Well, this is what I'm doing. They can go to my website, rondahansome.com and check out my upcoming events and my services, including the solo show development workshop. It's a masterclass in that and you can start creating one or tweak one you already have. But I was in addition to always being on PolitiPod. You know, I write for a guest. I just did Harmon Leon's history, Comedy History 101, and we talked about moms mainly and in connection with the performance that I did at the International Black Theatre Festival. So people should check that out. And also, I did a great fun podcast with Leanne Lord and Shelly Coleman, the funny women of a certain age podcast. So they can check those two out, check out PolitiPod, go to my website. I'm just using it up and I need your busy. Yeah, go there and, you know, leave some data, you know, leave a social security number, anything, and follow me on Twitter at rondahansome. Like a handsome man without the dude. You don't need it. Let me say this, Rhonda, with the with the exception of the escorts they send to Mar-a-Lago. You're the hardest working woman in show business. You really are. You really are. Let's try to get a caller to it really quick before the break. Mitch and Ken State, you're on with Rhonda. What's up? Thank you, John. Love you, Rhonda. Love you, Mitch. Yeah, again, John. Rest in peace, Mr. Jones, I mean, his rendition of the National Anthem, I spoke a word of action. When he spoke the National Anthem, it was crazy great. Yeah. Yeah, 93. Rhonda, I met him when I was a teenager. I saw Fences when I was a teenager and my kid brother was with me. We waited by the stage door for an hour and he spent so much time with us. He was just wonderful. He's worth it. He's a treasure. He's a theater treasure. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, sure. And happy birthday to the great OS ready. Yeah, it's 83. Oh, wow. He did his last show here in Cleveland. His last show was a Cleveland TV station on his way to Wisconsin and that playing awful playing garage with the great OS ready. And also happy birthday to John Lennon's Imagine. Yes, 43 years ago. You know, you know, remember that day to John? I don't. On the debate, the two things. This is Kamala Harris's job interview. To me, it's her job interview, you know, and what she had, she has a class clown next to her at the same time. Yeah. So, you know, I just, this is it. I mean, this is, this is front and center. It's front and center. He's not the class clown. He's the class bully. But yeah, there you go. That's true for sure. But I got to warn people, Donald Trump, you know, showed a lot more discipline than I expected in that debacle of a debate with Biden in the end of June. Don't be surprised if Trump is more disciplined than you expect. And he might not just be a screeching monkey the entire time. He might come ready to actually play grownup, which he can do when he wants. Right, Ron? I haven't some of his associates and fellow party members been a little disgruntled with with him and been encouraging him to like muscle himself and they have and be more civilized and situation. And I'm saying he showed that he was capable of doing that in the Biden debate. I'm curious to see what will happen. I mean, he didn't get rattled by Joe Biden. We'll see if she can rattle him. It's going to be a very interesting show and we're glad to be carrying it live right here. I'm having a lot of popcorn. Good. Me too. Well, he's still one trick pony. I mean, that's that's his thing and that's that you can't know that, you know, that's all you can do. That's all you can do is just, you know, this show. We're going to John on a year ago, we passed this, you know, the reproductive act, you know, for a year in Ohio, yes, there's still putting blockades on it, you know, these representatives from Columbus, you know, but a year later and we're still trying to get things, you know, straightened out there. So, well, you know, we got, uh, Democrats here in the Congress here trying to get this thing through. But a year later, get dragging, dragging their feet because, you know, the GOP blockades down. Well, let's make some noise about it then because it's only going to help drive turnout for your election this year. Mitch, thank you so much, Rhonda. It's so good having you with us. Thank you so much. Thank you, John.
