BS 129 – It’s The Stupid, Stupid

Bullshit 129

[00:00:00] Cameron: I’m just going to start this episode of the Bullshit Filter, by playing something, that I think is topical. Uh, here’s a, here’s a show we recorded eight years ago. What the fuck, America? Ah, well,So the white people put Trump in power. So as a white person, I would like to say, I’m sorry, everybody, I’m really sorry.

[00:00:28] Cameron: I mean, this guy defeated the entire political establishment of both parties in the U. S. with pretty much no money, no fun, no funding, making every possible mistake you would think it was a mistake, talking just off the cuff shit, like completely breaking every rule there is.

[00:00:56] Cameron: And not only got in, but, you know, got in by a landslide in terms of electoral college votes anyway, and it looks like he’s going to win the popular vote as well. Which he didn’t. we’re recording this one, back to us in real time now on the 8th of November, my time, 7th of November in the U. S., 2024. I’ve, I went back and listened to that show that we did in 2016 after the election. I also listened to the one that we did in 2020 after the election over the last couple of days. Um, in the 2021, you know, the, my basic idea, you know, there was a lot of jubilation. with the Democrat voters that Trump was gone.

[00:01:44] Cameron: A lot of the pollsters and a lot of the media in the U. S. were saying, that’s it. We’re never going to see him again. Even, um, I remember Tucker, we found out later on during the Dominion voting trial that Tucker Carlson was sending emails to people at Fox saying, thank fuck. We never need to talk to that idiot again.

[00:02:04] Cameron: He’s the worst.

[00:02:05] Cameron: Um, uh, but my point in the 2020 show was. 

[00:02:12] Cameron: You know, depends what happens with the trials, Trump may go to jail, he may skate, but I don’t think Trumpism, I don’t think the underlying anger is going away, and because I’ve been saying this, you know, that episode I just played, the 2016 episode, wasn’t even on the bullshit filter, because we weren’t doing the bullshit filter.

[00:02:32] Cameron: in 2016. That was, that was a special episode of The Caesar Show.

[00:02:36] Ray: Pre. Pre, 

[00:02:38] Cameron: we didn’t start The Bullshit Film until 2017, which was confusing because I went 

[00:02:43] Cameron: looking for that episode on The Bullshit 

[00:02:44] Cameron: Film and couldn’t find it. I was like, I don’t know, where where the fuck is this episode? And then I eventually realized we did it on The Caesar Show as a special edition because I just needed to talk about it. Um, 

[00:02:56] Cameron: you know, I’ve been saying this though since 2015 and going back even 

[00:03:01] Cameron: before Trump was a thing, I was saying this about the Tea Party.

[00:03:07] Ray: Mm. Mm hmm. 

[00:03:08] Cameron: specifically Trump. Trump is not the problem. Trump 

[00:03:12] Cameron: is a symptom. of the problem. And by the way, so are the Democrats. They are symptoms, I believe, of the underlying issues that the United States has, that the, the political elites, both in the Republican Party, like the non Trump traditional GOP, 

[00:03:35] Cameron: And the Democrats have just been trying to ignore for the last eight or nine years.

[00:03:43] Cameron: They’re sticking their heads in the sand, pretending it’s not an issue. And it, and, you know, we can get 

[00:03:49] Cameron: into what those issues are over the course of the show, but these are real things. Again, like, Trump is not the problem. I remember when George Bush Jr. was president. And I was saying this to Chrissy at the time, because I met Chrissy in 2008 before the election, saying, 

[00:04:10] Cameron: Bush isn’t the problem.

[00:04:12] Cameron: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, they’re not the problem. They’re a symptom 

[00:04:15] Cameron: of the problem. And when Bush was ousted in that, 

[00:04:19] Cameron: election, and again, people were jubilant, saying, just, I say to people, just wait to see who 

[00:04:25] Cameron: comes next. Because

[00:04:28] Ray: Right.

[00:04:29] Cameron: if this isn’t the 

[00:04:30] Cameron: end, and I don’t think it gets better, I think the next guy

[00:04:34] Cameron: is going to be worse.

[00:04:36] Cameron: And,

[00:04:37] Ray: I remember that. I think I remember you saying that. Yeah, conveying that, which scared the shit out of me. Sorry, go ahead. 

[00:04:43] Cameron: well, you and I weren’t doing a show back then. We didn’t start doing a show until 2013. 

[00:04:48] Ray: No, somewhere you conveyed that, um, you didn’t say it like this, but we haven’t gotten to the bottom of the barrel yet. You did say something, 

[00:04:57] Cameron: Well, I remember when, when Trump was out at the beginning, in 2020, in the 2020 election, saying, Wait till you see who comes next. Because it doesn’t get better. It gets crazier and crazier. That’s the way these things tend to play out. Anyway, we’ll talk about some historical analogies. We just did, um, we just did an interview with the authors of a book, Witch Hunt, Um, couple of ladies in New York that have just come out with a book.

[00:05:23] Cameron: Well, not just, they came out with it a while ago, but they just 

[00:05:25] Cameron: got around to talking to us, so that’s the only thing that matters. Um, watch their sales just spike now, go through the roof. Um, they wrote a book of, a book targeting teenagers, but it’s about the McCarthy movement. hearings, trials, the HUAC hearings.

[00:05:41] Cameron: And I was trying to direct the conversation away from McCarthy hearings specifically, and talk about the underlying, uh, reasons why anti communism was a thing in the United States 

[00:06:01] Cameron: in the thirties, forties, fifties, and onwards. 

[00:06:05] Cameron: And the parallels between that and what’s happening today, because I think there are a lot of parallels.

[00:06:15] Cameron: You know, you and I often say, we’re quoting Mark Twain, Tony often says this on QAV too, history doesn’t repeat but it often rhymes. The patterns play out again and again and again in history because people don’t change. And, um, I think that, you know, there’s too much is made in the media and by pundits and politicians about personalities and not enough about the underlying issues.

[00:06:44] Cameron: What you tend to see, like you’ll see this at the moment in the media in the US, People will talk about what the underlying issues are that caused Trump to succeed as much as he did in this election. They’ll talk about, well, it’s the economy, well, it’s this, well, it’s that. It’s a pushback against support for transgenders, whatever it is.

[00:07:08] Cameron: But, that generally gets quickly forgotten. And they go back to politics as usual, because trying to deal with the fundamental issues is too big a job. I think for anyone to do in an election cycle, uh, it takes like somebody like a Bernie Sanders, who’s been banging on about this for his entire political career.

[00:07:29] Cameron: No one listens 

[00:07:30] Cameron: to that. It’s that kind of dialogue that 

[00:07:34] Cameron: needs to happen before things are going to. Change. Anyway, 

[00:07:38] Cameron: enough of my ranty ravey stuff, Ray, uh, as the 

[00:07:42] Cameron: um, only American whom I, I care to talk to right now. 

[00:07:47] Cameron: Um, what’s the vibe 

[00:07:49] Cameron: like in your part of the world, Ray?

[00:07:52] Ray: Uh, despondency. Um, fuck, we got to do this for four more years. Uh, everybody in the family is looking up, you know, how hard is it to move out of the country? You know, all that, all

[00:08:05] Cameron: Now I remember you saying this eight years ago and you didn’t fucking move.

[00:08:09] Ray: no, I did, I did not know this. No, there, there, we’ll see. Then it was just, Trump was an incompetent asshole.

[00:08:18] Ray: And now he’s got Roe v. Wade smashed, he’s probably going to get one or two more Supreme Court justices before he’s four years out, that’s what, six or seven out 

[00:08:27] Ray: of the nine? I mean, electing him will affect America for decades to come, so it’s the totality of what he represents. And you’re right, he’s not, it’s not like everything else in America is fine, it’s Trump.

[00:08:42] Ray: And he’s just going to bring us all down with him. No, I mean, when you, and I’m not going to do a long spiel here, that’s for later, but when you have a shitty education system, yeah, that’s for you. When you have a shitty educational system and you have, uh, the, the average American, probably like other people have a memory, a political memory of 2.

[00:09:00] Ray: 5 seconds, and they, they, And there’s things like, there’s gun violence, there’s healthcare. I pay 778 a month just in case something bad happens to me and I have to go to the hospital and that way I don’t have to pay more. That’s fucking insane, but that’s where I’m at. When’s the last time minimum wage has been raised, you know, by the federal government?

[00:09:22] Ray: So the point is, you’re right, there’s a ton of problems. They’re all being ignored. No one has the cojones to see. Bernie Sanders would get in and go, okay, we’re not. Fuckin around people. I don’t want makeup on. I don’t want to waste any time. Let’s get, he would, he might not succeed, but you know, he would, he would drag his issues down to the mat and try to beat the shit out of them because that’s who he is.

[00:09:42] Ray: And he doesn’t give a fuck about history. He, he just, he just sees problems. But the point is no one has the courage, the political will, whatever, to do it. And I think American politics has gotten so superficial. The really good people, Are smart enough not to go into politics to what, or at least on the presidential level.

[00:10:01] Ray: I don’t know. You can tell me what you, what you think about that, but as bad as this is, we haven’t crashed yet. Um, and, and we, we said this when Trump was elected, okay, Trump, Trump is an idiot, but as long as nothing bad happens, we’ll get through this. Well, then we had COVID and we lost a million people.

[00:10:18] Ray: Uh, so the point is here’s four more years. Trump is a little more comfortable now. He kind of knows what to expect. We’re not even going to bring up yet Project 2025. So I think he’s going to be more of himself. He’s not going to be overhauled or intimidated and he’s going to be Trump. And it’s, it’s not going to be good.

[00:10:37] Ray: Um, I, I don’t know. We’re, we’re still in, We’re just still, uh, stunned, and we don’t really know how to think or feel. For right now, it’ll go away, because we’re humans, we adapt, and we move on. But for right now, it’s like, holy fuck. And for me, because my family doesn’t give, this will be the last thing I say for a while, my family doesn’t give a shit about history.

[00:11:01] Ray: But me, someone who’s read a couple of history books on the toilets, do I now have to look in the mirror and go, I don’t know if I realized or didn’t want to realize some percentage of my fellow country people, and I know this is kind of harsh or whatever, but, but it’s not inaccurate to, to some degree, are fascists or racists or misogynists.

[00:11:23] Ray: I mean, yeah, we’re, we all think 

[00:11:24] Ray: these things, but you know, it’s 

[00:11:27] Ray: not, you know, I’m tongue in cheek there, but, but you don’t act on them and you don’t say, um, um, and because everybody has rights and we’re trying to move forward as a society. Well, a couple of days ago, we 

[00:11:38] Ray: proved. Fuck that We’re going back to the 1950s.

[00:11:42] Ray: I don’t know. It’s 

[00:11:43] Ray: insane. And to answer your 

[00:11:44] Ray: question, we don’t know how to 

[00:11:47] Ray: feel right now. 

[00:11:50] Cameron: Not back to the 1950s, back to 1930s Germany. Um, I, I don’t think, I You know, if I had to sum up my take on the people who

[00:12:00] Cameron: voted for Trump, it’s not that they’re all fascists or sexist or misogynistic or racist or whatever, it’s that they’re stupid, 

[00:12:09] Ray: The educational system and media. Go ahead. Go ahead. 

[00:12:12] Cameron: just stupid, generally speaking, to believe that 

[00:12:17] Cameron: A corrupt, criminal, um, serial 

[00:12:21] Cameron: rapist, guy, you know, billionaire, bankrupt, like Donald Trump,

[00:12:28] Cameron: is gonna save America?

[00:12:32] Cameron: You gotta be stupid, like fundamentally deluded and stupid. But I would say the same thing that believe that, believe all of the rhetoric that the Democrats believe about Biden and Harris and the Clintons is the same thing. So I don’t, again, I’m saying this is a, it’s a symptom of a, an underlying problem of stupidity and short termism driven by.

[00:13:01] Cameron: Media narratives, uh, and social media narratives and that kind of thing. People who believe that, uh, Vladimir Putin’s reasons for military action in Ukraine are because he wants to rebuild the Russian empire. I mean, just the level of. Stupidity that I hear from Americans isn’t, and I’m not just Americans, like it’s a global thing, right?

[00:13:27] Cameron: I’m just, I’m not picking on Americans here. People are generally stupid because they don’t read, they’re not 

[00:13:31] Cameron: educated, they don’t try and understand history, they don’t try and understand politics, they don’t try and understand philosophy, they don’t try and understand anything outside of usually a narrow domain.

[00:13:42] Cameron: They may be very good at their jobs, you might be really, a really good lawyer. or a really good, you know, copywriter or a really good doctor, right? But you don’t 

[00:13:53] Ray: A factory worker. Yeah. 

[00:13:54] Cameron: you don’t study how the world works. And, um, you know, as I was trying to get across to the ladies we just interviewed, from all of the study and all of the shows that we’ve done on the Cold War show about why anti communism became a thing in the US, the fundamental, there are lots of reasons, things are complicated, but the fundamental thing that made it happen, in my view.

[00:14:20] Cameron: is 

[00:14:20] Cameron: that the rich elite businessmen in the United States and the politicians that they controlled were very, very concerned about the growing anger huh? 

[00:14:34] Cameron: Uh, in the working classes, the proletariat in the United States and watching what was happening around the world about the inequality in the early part of the 20th century. And they saw people were starting to organize into unions and into political parties and revolutionary political parties. They did,

[00:14:54] Cameron: the rich 

[00:14:55] Ray: They have that right. 

[00:14:57] Cameron: The rich decided to, uh, use their wealth and 

[00:15:01] Cameron: their reach and their media control and their control of politicians to fight against that, to get on the front foot.

[00:15:08] Cameron: One of the things that they did in the United States very successfully in the 40s and 50s was co opt religious leaders

[00:15:17] Cameron: so they could start to position communism as evil, literally as evil, 

[00:15:23] Cameron: start And capitalism as Christian and American and pro American, and then they used their control of the media and their control of the pulpit and the innate Christianity that most Americans had back then, and they drove that message home relentlessly for decades until it became, until the very word socialist became basically verboten in the U.

[00:15:49] Cameron: S. until Bernie Sanders brought it back a few years ago, tried to bring it back. Um, and so it, and then I look at what’s happening with Trump today, and the same with the Democrats, because again, both political parties, as George Carlin used to say, there’s only one political party in America, and it’s the party of big business, and it has two divisions.

[00:16:10] Cameron: He was right when he said that in the 90s, um, Bill Hicks used to say the same thing, and it’s still true today, and, and, um, People, uh, generally just refuse to listen to that. But so what you’ve got is, I mean, this is why all of 

[00:16:27] Cameron: the billionaires were getting behind Trump. Um, towards the end, and spending insane amounts of money, which we’ll get into, to make sure that he won, it’s the, uh, rich consolidating their power over any forces of progressiveness.

[00:16:45] Cameron: Remember back in the Obama days, we had Occupy Wall Street,

[00:16:48] Cameron: which got shut down by the Obama 

[00:16:51] Cameron: Administration

[00:16:52] Cameron: so, anyway. Uh, let me, let me quote for some stuff that I’ve been reading over the last couple of days and we’ll, we’ll dissect it. This is from the New York Times. In a closing rally on the Ellipse last week, Kamala Harris scorned Donald J. Trump as an outlier who 

[00:17:07] Cameron: did not represent America. This is not who we are, she declared.

[00:17:12] Cameron: In fact, it turns out that may be exactly who we are. At least, most of us.

[00:17:17] Cameron: Populist disenchantment with the nation’s direction and resentment against elites. Proved to be deeper and more profound than many in both parties had recognized. Now, I want to stop there. That’s the interesting point. Resentment against elites.

[00:17:36] Cameron: Donald Trump is the very definition of an elite. Elon Musk is the very definition of an elite.

[00:17:45] Cameron: Um, you had all of these elites coming out in support of 

[00:17:51] Cameron: Trump. 

[00:17:53] Ray: Right. Mm-Hmm. 

[00:17:55] Cameron: yet the people voting for Trump claim to have resentment against the elites. Now, I think they mean the political elites and Trump has still managed to position him, uh, himself as an outsider in politics. Even though he’s very much, uh, you know, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, uh, blue blood, he’s, he’s positioned himself as an outsider and, you know, that is what Kamala Harris, uh, couldn’t do, uh, Biden couldn’t do, and getting the Clintons and the Obamas and all these people to support her didn’t do.

[00:18:34] Cameron: They didn’t have a candidate that could, um, play to the genuine resentment. And, uh, you know, I said this in 2016, and I said it in 2020, 

[00:18:49] Cameron: the American people have very, very good reasons to be angry.

[00:18:54] Cameron: Against. The elites and

[00:18:57] Cameron: against business leaders and the political leaders. The fact that they’re putting that anger in support of Trump is just a repre, uh, represented representation of how stupid they are

[00:19:11] Cameron: because they ain’t going to make it better.

[00:19:12] Cameron: He’s going to make it worse. Million times worse. And I laugh about the fact that 

[00:19:16] Cameron: you keep saying, well, we’ve got four years to do this and another four years. 

[00:19:20] Cameron: or four years. You’re assuming that there will be more elections in four 

[00:19:23] Cameron: years. I give that a 30 percent chance.

[00:19:31] Ray: There’s already talk about the Republicans doing something about the 22nd Amendment, which limits the President to two terms, so. You might be onto something there. I mean, but I, I’ve got a, I’ve got a hope in something, but here’s my thing, if you can look at a guy, and, 

[00:19:47] Ray: and, and no disrespect, because, because I live with these 

[00:19:50] Ray: people, no disrespect, you got a guy who, who does manual labor for a living, he drives a truck, he doesn’t have sleeves, he’s worn the same baseball cap ever since he was 18 years old, salt of the earth, work, whatever, all that good stuff, to have Trump Stare at that guy through the television screen with I don’t know how much Trump suits cost But I’m sure they cost a pretty penny and go I’m here for you They’re trying to get to you through me all that bullshit and for this person to go Yeah, he is really looking out for me.

[00:20:18] Ray: He’s gonna take care of me. He’s gonna make whatever and I’m like Trump doesn’t know the first thing about your life. He’s never shopped. He’s never asked him the price of milk. What the fuck? I don’t know. I just bought the cow. The point is there could not be a larger disconnect and you’re right. What does it say about the American people for someone to tell a bold faced, bold faced lie for years and have the people go?

[00:20:39] Ray: Yep. Nope. He’s my man. I mean, what does that say? about the electorate. I mean, we’re mad, but, but think about it. Think about Trump’s brilliance in this. The American people are so goddamn pissed. We’re ready for a French revolution. Let’s just go in there and guillotine all the 

[00:20:55] Ray: people that have got way too much money. Trump was able to not only go, Hey, not me. I’m with you. And he rode 

[00:21:01] Ray: that like a fucking wave all the way to the white house. And like you 

[00:21:05] Ray: said, not once. But twice. He was able to take that anger and ride it versus 

[00:21:11] Ray: having it roll over him. That’s a pretty good fucking skill, if you can do it.

[00:21:17] Cameron: Okay, but you, you, you’ve missed my point about the four years. 

[00:21:22] Ray: No, I know. 

[00:21:23] Cameron: let me, let me, let 

[00:21:24] Ray: gotcha. Go ahead. 

[00:21:25] Cameron: let me, drill this home for you.

[00:21:28] Ray: Wicca, wicca, wicca. 

[00:21:29] Cameron: I was surprised, um, the last time, 2020, that he didn’t, um, stage some sort of a, uh, national crisis. um, after the election, uh, where he could declare martial law and, and, and 

[00:21:49] Cameron: hold on to power. There were people in his inner circle that were trying to get him to do that. 

[00:21:56] Cameron: He didn’t do it. What nearly happened to him in the 

[00:21:59] Cameron: intervening four years?

[00:22:01] Ray: About to go to jail. 

[00:22:03] Cameron: Go to jail and have his entire empire and his family’s empire 

[00:22:08] Cameron: dismantled. He barely survived all of the, legal challenges that were thrown at him. They gave him too many outs, too many, they took too long to 

[00:22:25] Cameron: prosecute because I think the Democrats thought that’s it, he’s done, he’s over, there’s no rush.

[00:22:31] Cameron: It’s, it’s, you know, we can take our time here. They didn’t fucking nail him to the 

[00:22:36] Cameron: wall. You know, he got fined hundreds of millions of dollars, which he couldn’t pay, and he got it, he got them to fucking reduce the settlement amount. 

[00:22:46] Ray: Yeah. 

[00:22:47] Cameron: Um, 

[00:22:48] Cameron: So, but he got through and he’s going to be president again. Now, 

[00:22:53] Cameron: if he goes to the polls again, and let’s say he survives four years, chances of that probably not high.

[00:22:59] Cameron: And, um, you know, partly through assassination attempts, partly through just, he’s, you know, not a 

[00:23:04] Cameron: healthy looking fucker, but let’s say that he does survive the 

[00:23:07] Cameron: next four years. Do you, if you were Donald Trump,

[00:23:12] Cameron: would you take 

[00:23:13] Cameron: the 

[00:23:13] Cameron: risk of having another 

[00:23:14] Cameron: election? And what you know is gonna happen to you when you’re a private citizen again after 

[00:23:21] Cameron: your second term expires, in terms of legal and financial challenges?

[00:23:29] Ray: Yeah, your second and final term, unless The 22nd Amendment is, is, is adjusted. So I guess the thing is, and you probably heard this for the last, uh, 48 hours, like I have, Jack Smith has already met with the Department of Justice going, I’m ready to close everything. I had 

[00:23:45] Ray: the guy fucking nailed to the wall, 

[00:23:48] Ray: guilt as fuck.

[00:23:50] Ray: This is the way the cookie crumbles. So, so Jack Smith has already, has already started to shut things down. So the question is, is it just delayed until four years from now and that he can pick it back up? I don’t, I honestly don’t know. I don’t know how that works. But you, but you make a good point of trump’s, like if there’s even a 1% chance, some of these assholes are gonna come after me, after I’m out of the White House.

[00:24:11] Ray: Maybe my fat lily white ass needs to stay. So, again, Trump, Trump, Trump is a coward. At the end of the day, he can talk all this shit, but you know enough psychology to know that he’s an absolute pussy, he’s a coward, and the idea of jail and embarrassment and losing everything is more than he can do. I think he would try for something extreme, like having the 22nd amendment removed or augmented or whatever.

[00:24:37] Ray: You know, altered so he can stay in power. And the reason he didn’t do anything after the election, to me, to my thinking in 2020, is because he already had the 

[00:24:45] Ray: plan. And the plan was to get Mike 

[00:24:47] Ray: Pence to not certify the thing. So the point is, he 

[00:24:50] Ray: did have a plan. It wasn’t more violence, but he had a plan.

[00:24:54] Ray: This time, I think he’s thinking, I can’t take Any fucking chances, cause I’ve really riled 

[00:24:59] Ray: up the people that don’t like me. They will come after 

[00:25:02] Ray: me in some form. I think I’m going to stay right here in the oval. In fact, 

[00:25:05] Ray: I’m going to die in the oval

[00:25:07] Ray: office. But we’ll have to wait and see what happens. 

[00:25:10] Cameron: Yeah, I mean, We know why Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon 

[00:25:18] Cameron: Getting back 

[00:25:18] Ray: they were ruining him.

[00:25:20] Cameron: my fundamental premise of humans is humans don’t change. Um, you know, well, yeah, he was going to be destroyed. I mean, he crossed the Rubicon because Rome was corrupt and they, were coming after him and he felt like he was backed into a corner.

[00:25:37] Cameron: He had no choice. And I.

[00:25:39] Ray: they, they broke the law to punish Julius Caesar. I mean, they literally, 

[00:25:43] Ray: the Senate broke the law, several laws to punish him, and he’s like, well, if y’all can fucking do it, guess what, 

[00:25:48] Ray: bitch, that’s a two way street, but the point is, yeah, I mean, humans, 

[00:25:51] Ray: humans, at the end of the day, will do anything to protect themselves in the more 

[00:25:55] Ray: radical or extreme depths of hell.

[00:25:56] Ray: The threat is, the more

[00:25:58] Ray: extreme their solution has to be, so, who knows 

[00:26:02] Cameron: know people in America think, oh, that could never happen here, because we’ve got strong institutions, and

[00:26:07] Cameron: we’ve got this, and we’ve got that, and yeah, that’s what every country that’s, uh, had a revolution thought. It could never happen here. The Romans thought that. Um, You know, you, you now have Trump, looks like he will control not only 

[00:26:23] Cameron: the executive branch, 

[00:26:24] Cameron: he’s going to control both houses of Congress and he controls the 

[00:26:27] Cameron: Supreme Court. So all 

[00:26:29] Cameron: of the instruments of government at a federal level he controls. And has the ability to manipulate a great deal, a great many of the states as well, uh, by, uh, Using the levers that he has available to him, like funding and access to trade restrictions and who knows what else, to control what happens in the states.

[00:26:55] Cameron: Anyway, let me go back to the New York Times. For the first time in history, Americans have elected a convicted criminal as president. They handed power back to a leader who tried to overturn a previous election, called for the termination of the Constitution to reclaim his office, aspired to be a dictator on day one, and vowed to exact retribution against his adversaries. Rather than be turned off by Mr. Trump’s flagrant, anger based appeals along lines of race, gender, religion, national origin, and especially transgender identity, many Americans found them bracing. Rather than be offended by his brazen lies and wild conspiracy theories, many found him authentic. Rather than dismiss him as a felon found by various courts to be a fraudster, Cheater, sexual abuser, and defamer, many embraced his assertion that he had been the victim of persecution.

[00:27:55] Ray: Jesus Christ. On it. 

[00:27:58] Cameron: As, um, This election was a CAT scan on the American people, and as difficult as it is to say, as hard as it is to name, what it revealed, at least in part, is a frightening affinity for a man of borderless corruption, said Peter H. Weiner, a former strategic advisor to President George W. Bush and vocal critic of Mr.

[00:28:20] Cameron: Trump. Donald Trump is no longer an aberration, he is normative. His businesses went bankrupt repeatedly and multiple others failed. He was taken to court for stiffing his vendors, stiffing his bankers, and even stiffing his own family. He avoided the draft during the Vietnam War and avoided paying any income taxes for years.

[00:28:40] Cameron: He was forced to shell out tens of millions of dollars to students who scamming them, found liable for wide scale business fraud, and had his real estate firm convicted in criminal court of tax crimes. He has boasted of grabbing women by their private parts, been reported to have cheated on all three of his wives, and have been accused of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen women, including one whose account was validated by a jury that found him liable for sexual abuse after a civil trial.

[00:29:11] Cameron: He is the only president in American history impeached twice for high crimes and misdemeanors, the only president ever indicted on criminal charges, and the only president to be convicted of a felony. 34 in fact. He used the authority of his office to punish 

[00:29:26] Cameron: his adversaries and tried to hold on to power on the basis of a brazen lie.

[00:29:32] Cameron: Mr Trump beat some of the investigations and lawsuits against him and some proved unfounded, but the sheer volume is remarkable. Any one of those scandals by itself would typically have been enough to derail another politician.