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Episode 115

IN THE MAKING: Trump Deploys the National Guard in Chicago and Dolly Parton is NOT Dead

This week, we're talking about Donald Trump expanding his deployment of the National Guard to Chicago, the Federal shutdown enters its second week with little optimism over a resolution, and a Mississippi golf course gets an unexpected visitor.

All of this and more on another edition of America: A History in the Making.

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Special Guest:

Alyssa Royse, the owner of Rocket Community Fitness in Seattle, who is deeply passionate about fighting to preserve a fair and equal democracy in the US.

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Featured in this episode:

Treasury Department Considers Minting a $1 Trump Coin: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/03/treasury-department-trump-dollar-coin-00593368 

The shutdown continues: https://apnews.com/article/trump-shutdown-federal-workers-pay-health-care-415768faa14b4e54525d5e6d18ac97b4 

Shutdown affects US airports: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx27z97ryr0o 

Dolly Parton is not dying: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-15172709/Dolly-Parton-sets-record-straight-health-issues-sister-concern-prayers.html 

The National Guard Rollout: https://apnews.com/article/immigration-chicago-portland-memphis-trump-arrests-b36199b00e0511e687c10fa83fd838b5 

Alligator on the Golf Course: https://apnews.com/article/vince-whaley-alligator-sanderson-farms-pga-tour-950794673062998659bc76ecd7c92f72

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Mentioned in this episode:

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Transcript
Speaker:

so I'll, I'll do, so there's, there's a sort of pre-packaged little, um, intro bit.

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So I'll do a very quick, like welcome to another show.

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Read the headlines, bring you in quick.

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Hello.

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And then we'll, we'll just go through it.

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we'll try and keep this to around about sort of 30 minutes ish.

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Um, so yeah, cool.

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All right.

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Um, but yeah, when we're not talking podcast stuff, we, do need to have a proper catch up

sometime.

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Cause I feel like there's so much.

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I do want to talk about different podcast stuff, because I'm cooking up something.

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yeah, yes we do.

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okay.

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Right.

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Hello and welcome to another America here.

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I'll start that again.

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Yeah

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Hello and welcome to another America, a history in the making.

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This week, will Donald Trump get his own coin?

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And a Mississippi golf course gets an unexpected visitor.

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So let's dive into the news.

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I'm joined today by Alyssa Royce, the owner of Rocket Community Fitness in Seattle and an

all-around just very intelligent and articulate person.

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Hello, Alyssa.

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I hope I can live up to that

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I'm sure you can.

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The bar is low because I am like 10 minutes from having just put my daughter to bed.

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So my brain is frazzled.

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So I'm relying on you today.

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You've got it.

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It's not even lunchtime here yet, so I'm still kind of sharp.

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Well, that's good.

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That's good.

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At least one of us is.

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I do know what there's been just there's always so much happening on your side of the

world.

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we so we'll try and cover some of this stuff.

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We're not going to cover all of it this week.

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But to get a few quick headlines out of the way that I've encountered this week.

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And firstly, the US Treasury is considering creating a one dollar Trump coin to

commemorate the 250th

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birthday of America next year.

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That feels that's a choice, isn't it?

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It's not a legal one.

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I don't know how far into the legal minutiae you've gotten, but it's actually not legal to

put a living person on official U.S.

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currency.

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oh That's a law that goes back to the 1800s, actually.

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You can only put dead people on the currency.

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Some part of me is like, okay, let's put them on the currency.

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uh But the truth is, it's not legal.

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Now, I don't think Donald Trump cares about the law, but I think that at the very least it

will be a big battle.

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Yeah, well, I mean, considering the back and forth that Trump has had with certain members

of the Treasury Department, maybe someone there was trying to manifest something.

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ah I think there's many of us trying to manifest that.

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if putting them on a coin is what it takes, I can't say that I'm, you know, sad.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Well, okay.

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I guess in slightly bigger news.

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The federal shutdown is now in its second week.

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I spoke about this last week on the podcast and it's now affecting airports as know,

thousands, perhaps even tens or hundreds of thousands of people are out of work through no

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choice of their own.

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What's the feeling like on your side of the pond?

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Is this going to anytime soon?

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I would be really surprised if it did.

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I think that if it does end, it's probably going to be because of people like air traffic

controllers, which is how, you know, budget shutdowns have ended for us in the past.

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think what, 70s or 80s, the air traffic controllers are the ones who brought this to an

end.

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And a lot of, think even worse for me than the people who are out of work are the people

who are having to go to work and not get paid.

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And I think that's gonna get old real fast, but I don't know if it's making it over there

that.

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Now is we're starting open enrollment for Medicare and Medicaid.

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And so people across the country are starting to see like the choices that they're going

to have to make about their medical coverage.

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And that's where the I don't am I allowed to say the fancy word of kaka is going to hit

the um Because yeah, that's that's that really is where shit hits the fan because there's

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people who are suddenly going to look at their medical coverage doubling and in some

cases, tripling in cost.

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And that is literally the thing that the Democrats are fighting for is, you they won't

sign a continuing resolution until the Affordable Care Act is taken care of.

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Yeah, but it's a tricky one.

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And ultimately, I blame the politicians for this because on both sides, they should be

thinking about, you know, the best interests of the people.

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I do think that it's a tough conundrum because of course, the Democrats want to fight for

that.

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But then by digging their heels in, everything comes to a standstill.

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Yeah, but by not digging their heels in, everything blows up.

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So it's sort of, you know, do you want to stagnate on the edge of a fetid pond or do you

want to get like tossed into a toxic pond?

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Yeah, I do think politically, like it just it feels like a lose lose for Democrats to to

push it to this point, because I understand like challenging it and even maybe, you know,

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calling their bluff and having a shutdown for a very short amount of time.

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But it gets to a point where ultimately, they're not the ones who are who are deciding on

this.

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And if it all blows up, and you know, there's a real impact on people because, you know,

the Republicans are pushed through a budget that just isn't good.

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Democrats aren't going to look bad about that.

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you know, as long as they push back and fight a bit, don't really know politically what

anyone gets at this.

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on this side of the pond is a little bit different because I think that a lot of us feel

like for, well, first of all, the Republicans control every single aspect of our

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government.

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So there's no universe in which this is the Democrats' fault, right?

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Except that for far too long, we've been watching the Democrats effectively bring a lawn

chair to a gunfight, right?

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They're just sort of, it seems like they're sitting there watching and that...

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A lot of what I think people wanted to see and a lot of the apathy that manifested in

particularly democratic voters is that the Democrats have seemed like they're doing

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nothing.

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And so I think that this is actually from what I can tell over here, they are.

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Winning might be an overstatement, but they are not losing this battle.

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In terms of sort of media coverage and sentiment that I'm seeing, I think people seem real

clear that this is not the Democrats' fault, except for the letting us get here part.

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Yeah, yeah, that's fair.

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I do feel that and, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but the impression I get from the

Democrats at the moment is that they're fighting small battles because they don't really

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know what their long game is at the moment.

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that feels correct to me, um which is a little bit horrifying.

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I think you look at the long game has presented itself in people like David Hogg, who is

not somebody who I particularly want to spend my time hanging out with, but he is in fact

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the voice of the future in no small part because he is still in his 20s.

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And you see the democratic establishment often trying to sort of kneecap them and shut

them up in order for the establishment to keep power and

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When you talk about us not having a long game, I feel like the long game keeps waving its

hands and saying, yo, we're over here.

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And they keep saying, no, we don't want to play that way.

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And I think it's changing.

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The candidate slates coming up in the midterms are pretty incredible if we make it to the

midterms.

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Yeah, that's interesting, because it's certainly you know, there's a lot of interest,

particularly in the UK and around the world for the presidential election, but we don't

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tend to hear an awful lot about the midterms.

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And when actually they're incredibly consequential, aren't they?

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Dude, that's true here too, unfortunately, and the truth is that both midterms and local

elections, which people do not pay enough attention to, are how our government is built.

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If you look at how the Republicans have effectively orchestrated what feels like a coup of

our government, it was in midterm and local elections.

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It was in seeding judges, it was in seeding...

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um

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You know, the people who literally manage elections on the state level, it was in getting

all of those boring little races that nobody pays any attention to stacked with their

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people.

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And that is why we are where we are.

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So, yeah, people pay attention to the president, but the power, you know, should be always

has been and always will be in the people.

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And that's local and midterm elections.

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And I think, you know, maybe a little too late, people are finally waking up to that.

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Yeah, yeah.

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And I completely lost my train of thought.

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that's it.

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And sorry, my dog is scratching at the back door as and he was distracting me.

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so I think that historically, Republicans have actually been quite good at that,

recognizing the power of galvanizing people midterms, because, you know, they did it with

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Obama and it essentially, you know, halted any progress that he could make in the final

two years.

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And Democrats, I do think typically are a little bit

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I think it's because maybe they're not as prepared to fight dirty that they do lose when

Republicans take advantage of that.

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That is absolutely true.

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That's why I say they're bringing a lawn chair to a gunfight.

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they don't want to be mean.

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They don't want to fight fire with fire.

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Like something as stupid as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez saying that Stephen Miller is four

foot 10.

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He's not, he's five foot 10.

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But it's saying that he's four foot 10, which is juvenile in all sorts of ways.

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It has him totally back on his heels and he's freaking out.

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So it's just, you gotta play where they are.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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And also I love AOC.

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I hope she doesn't run in 2028, because I think it's too early for her, but I'm backing

her one day to be in the White House when she gets the time right.

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and it's way too soon and she's got more work to do in Congress.

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So I hope she does it.

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yeah, yeah.

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I was just about to say I'm going to pause there because I can hear there's a neighbor's

dog that has just very loudly barked and it's set off my little Yorkie.

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I can't hear it, but I am waiting for my dog to bark.

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I'm hoping he doesn't.

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can you not hear this guy?

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He's like right behind me.

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man.

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Well, that's good.

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It's a good mic, Right, yeah, in a moment.

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I'm gonna shut him in the liver and bear with me.

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but you get money, you go round the nook and I'm Bye everyone.

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Blackmailing retreats never fails.

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Yep, that always works for Pickle.

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Right, okay.

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Okay, so we could get very sidetracked talking about this.

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let's not because I think there's going to be many more opportunities on the podcast to

talk about the shutdown.

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But quickly before we move on to our main story, there have been rumours, mainly from her

sister, that

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Dolly Parton was seriously ill and was really weird wording.

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don't know if you saw this just a day or two ago.

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And it was like she put on social asking for people to pray for her, which I feel very

much insinuated that perhaps like she was on a deathbed or something.

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So she's had to and for anyone that hasn't yet been updated, Dolly Parton has gone to

social media and reassured everyone that she is not in fact seriously ill or dying.

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But...

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Even for me as a Brit, and I'm sure for many Americans, uh she is a national treasure and

that's going to be a very sad day whenever that does happen.

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not prepared to handle that.

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That will be a very sad day.

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That will definitely be a not the death I was hoping to see today.

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Kind of day.

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So it was it was a relief when in fact, it turned out that today is not the day.

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Yeah, exactly.

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Yeah.

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So yeah, a big sigh of relief all round for anyone that doesn't yet know that.

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And but right, we need to talk about the main story this week, uh which is why I guess

it's it's not just been the main story this week.

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This has been ongoing for months.

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So Donald Trump has deployed the National Guard to Chicago.

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which is now the fourth city to have National Guard troops deployed after Los Angeles,

Memphis and DC.

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Trump has also added Portland to his list of targets, as well as several other cities,

including New Orleans, but there's a definite skew in the cities that he's looking at in

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that he's targeting very blue cities and states.

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And all of this is happening.

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against a backdrop of uh growing concern about the potential risk of authoritarianism in

the US, which is becoming less and less implausible.

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When we look at how he's threatened political enemies, he's trying to silence critics all

over the place.

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When you look at all these little steps and the cumulative effect of that, you have to

start taking that sort of concern seriously.

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And mean, I listen, I've just I'm wondering as someone who's there in America right now,

all this talk of like authoritarianism, is it just clickbait or are we genuinely, you

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know, right to be scared?

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um I am genuinely scared and trying to steer away from hyperbole.

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He is systematically undermining the law.

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mean, he got the Supreme Court already to essentially give him immunity for anything that

he chooses to do.

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He's got Stephen Miller out there saying that the president has plenary power, which he

doesn't.

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We have three divisions.

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We have the legislative, we have executive, and we have judicial.

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but he's worked on undermining all of them.

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And it shocks me because I think that I continually underestimate both the ignorance and

the avarice of the American people because I keep thinking there's no way that members of

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Congress who have sworn an oath to uphold our constitution and protect our democracy

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will go along with these things that are so clearly unconstitutional and threaten to

destroy our democracy.

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And so I don't know.

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m

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I don't know where the end is.

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As of today, he's threatening to jail the mayor of Chicago and Pritzker, the governor of

Illinois.

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Because they won't, you know, the mayor of Chicago, I don't know if you heard this, but he

made it illegal for city properties to essentially house, take care of, and let ICE

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members use the facilities.

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So ICE is banned from going into like Chicago parks and using the bathroom.

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um

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which I think is brilliant.

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think that's absolutely what should happen.

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However, what it's going to do is it's going to bring a third amendment challenge to

SCOTUS and SCOTUS isn't doing really well at protecting our constitution.

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And so, yeah, I'm, no, I am, I am legitimately terrified.

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It goes back to what we said, though, about, you know, Republicans being willing to play

dirty because in Trump's first term, he very shamelessly overloaded the Supreme Court when

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he had the opportunity to do so, which put the skew in the Republicans favor.

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On the other side, you know, when the Democrats had the chance to in their final year of

office, exactly because I think the Democrats were sticking to precedence and tradition at

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a time when Republicans were not.

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I see Republicans

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Trump and Maga, think there's a big difference.

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There's not even a rep.

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There isn't a Republican Party anymore, though.

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And I've often tried to make that distinction myself.

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I really have because I come from my family's pretty evenly divided Republicans and

Democrats.

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And so I think that feeling protective of my Republican family, I was like, well, you

know, some Republicans are good.

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That's not the case anymore.

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If you can still vote for this and support this.

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You know, you're a Nazi.

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Sorry.

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I mean, I'm inclined to agree.

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I think at this point, you know, if you care about doing what's right, I think if you're a

Republican, have to abandon the Republican vote until Trump and everyone that's leading

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that MAGA charge is gone, right?

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And you know who's actually doing that in the Republican Party right now.

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Is that?

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Marjorie Taylor Greene.

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Really?

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my gosh, are you not getting that over there?

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She is one tweet after another going after the Republican party over not, and Trump

specifically, for not releasing the Epstein files, for allowing this government shutdown.

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She's explaining what it will do to the cost of healthcare.

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That crazy ass woman is out there saying, she literally said something like, I don't know

what the Republican party is right now, but I don't want any part of it.

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Mad.

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we, we heard about her, you know, standing up against the Epstein stuff.

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Um, I mean, that's for someone who's really built a political career on off the back of

Magga, that that's that's a big move on her part.

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It is a huge move.

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And the fact that, I guess I have never thought that she didn't have courage.

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I didn't think she had brains or a soul, but she's always had courage.

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But she's out there saying some really smart things.

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And I'm again, not inviting her to Christmas or anything, but like, I'll take it where I

can get it.

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And I think that more people need to stand up and do it.

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You know, that's all it would take.

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would take like nine members, nine Republican members of Congress is pretty much all we

need to save the country.

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there, yet there's, there's Marjorie Taylor Greene.

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That's it.

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It's crazy.

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Yeah, and I think this is this is what's so astonishing to me about all of this is that

it's astonishing.

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So I think I think as an outsider looking in here, what seems to be happening is Grump is

playing a phenomenal game because it's very clear to everyone who didn't vote for him what

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he's doing here.

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Since January, the little steps, these little baby steps that seem like, oh, you know,

whatever, it's just, you know,

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Who cares?

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Who cares if Texas bring in a Trump loyalty test for teachers, right?

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Who cares if he's trying to deport, you know, illegal immigrants, which I did, you know,

quotes for that.

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uh You can, if you're a MAGA voter and a Trump voter, you can justify these actions to

yourself at least.

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But when you look at everything in totality, and this is where it all kind of culminates

with sending in the National Guard.

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This is Trump systematically, step by step and uh very calculatedly seizing power.

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And it just baffles me that anyone is willing to just stand by and let that happen.

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Because I think as you touched on a few minutes ago, it's complacency at this point.

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Yeah, for what it's worth, his approval rating for all of this crazy shit he's doing is in

the 30 %-ish.

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So the vast majority of Americans, including people who probably voted for him, are wildly

opposed to what he's doing with ICE and deportations and all of that stuff.

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And the numbers are actually quite clear.

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Obama deported way more people than Trump.

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He did it legally and he did it peacefully.

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And I still would say it probably wasn't correct to do it, but...

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He did it without all of this, but I think the thing that people forget is that Trump is,

he's an entertainer more than he's a president.

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And so everything he's doing, he's doing in order to create social media reels that will

sort of foment fear and chaos amongst the people who do follow him and also make it look

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like he has a justification for declaring martial law in mostly blue cities so that by the

time the midterms get here,

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it will be very, very, very hard to vote.

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And I truly from the bottom of my heart believe that's what's happening because I, you

know, I was in Portland a couple of weekends ago.

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It's a lovely place.

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The riotous protest there literally amount to a man in a chicken suit and about eight

people with signs.

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Like that is it.

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And so, you know, and I remember in 2020 Trump and his, his people were saying that

ke, we were the big riots in,:

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You know there was a city park that was taken over by protests about George Floyd um and

that was all that was making the media and so they would go in and they would find these

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like isolated scenarios that looked chaotic and I was literally getting phone calls from

people from all over the country saying my god are you okay?

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Dude you've been to my house.

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I live in the city of Seattle and I literally had no idea what they were talking about.

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You know so he's got

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media trucks, like little full on news media trucks following his ICE agents so that he

can film what looks like war and chaos and then uneducated people are gonna see it,

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they're gonna believe that that's what's going on and in their own minds justify it and

it's crazy.

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So he's putting on a show, he's not running a country.

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Yeah, and I think therein is of the difference between people who vote for Trump and

people who don't because people who do believe the narrative that he's giving them when

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actually, you know, I don't think anyone at all has a problem with deporting illegal

immigrants.

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And because by the very nature, they're there illegally, you know, so whether or not you

agree with the laws of defining them as illegal immigrants, I think is another question.

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you know,

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and no.

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I think it's funny because a lot of people do have problems with that for a wide variety

of reasons and keep including people who I share, you know, no political territory with

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because it very real.

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I don't know if you followed the there was a chicken processing plant in I'm going to say

Iowa.

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I don't know some Midwestern place.

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no, no, no.

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It was the Hyundai plant in Indiana, the Hyundai plant that was all like all the South

Koreans and they went in and they raided.

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and they like deported all of these South Koreans and then shut down an entire town,

right?

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But that's happening in the agricultural sector, it's happening in the construction

sector, it's happening absolutely everywhere here and people do not support it at all.

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that's the problem isn't it like it's not it's it's it's being done under the guise of

whatever Trump wants to justify as when it's just it's a witch hunt isn't it it's a it's

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it's a racially yeah

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and what I think probably everybody supports is that we're going to get violent criminals

off the street.

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Great.

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So get violent criminals off the street.

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But that's not what they're doing.

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They're deporting anybody who's not white.

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And you can't even say that it's about immigration as he starts shipping in, you know,

white Afrikaners from South Africa.

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It's not about immigrants.

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It's about being brown.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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That's exactly it.

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And also anyone that's been to Portland, myself included, can agree that if there's any

city in America where an uprising is going to start, it's not Portland, which is like,

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yeah.

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I mean, it's just like, it's not Portland.

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The thing that scares me about Chicago is that Chicago is a city that will fight back.

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And that's what he wants.

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He wants that footage, right?

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He doesn't care about the politics or the people so much as he cares about the footage,

because that's the tool that he can use to say these probably brown people are violent and

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are going to get you.

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And that will feed the racism, will feed the fear, that will feed everything that he needs

it to feed.

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He's just out there getting shots.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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And in fact, just a couple of days ago, we released an episode of the podcast discussing

the Latino riots in:

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And one of the things that became very apparent about that is, the way in which the, the

authorities back these communities into a corner where if they don't like push back, they,

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get hurt or killed because of, you know, the corrupt, you know, the police, if they do

push back.

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All it does is corroborate the whole narrative as to why the police are there in the first

place.

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And we're seeing this repeated now today in 2025 with what Trump is doing with ICE.

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And it's like...

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this is also literally what Hitler did.

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He held rallies in places where he knew he wasn't welcome in order to get the uprising and

in order to get the strife.

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so, yes, that is what he is doing.

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He's not holding rallies in places where people love him because there's no footage to be

gained from that.

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Exactly.

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And you know, people like Trump and presidents like Trump cannot operate without chaos.

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They need it.

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so Trump is creating that.

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And as you say, sending the national guard in.

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It's all for the footage.

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It's all to stir up those people that are ultimately, you know, it's the same people that

on January 6th,

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Okay, Trump didn't say storm the Capitol, you know, and take over, but he basically said

it was okay, didn't he?

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Yeah, so.

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think that, you know, we're all getting a lesson in stochastic terrorism, which I'm sure

you know what stochastic terrorism is, but we'll use, you know, using Charlie Kirk as an

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example, because he was absolutely perfect.

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Yes, he always stopped short of saying, go commit this atrocious violence on these people,

but he fomented, you know, he, he, I think the example I used when I was talking to

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somebody, somebody else is, was Charlie Kirk an arsonist?

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No.

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But what he did was he set little piles of very flammable stuff everywhere he went, and

then he left behind matches um so other people could start fires.

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:

And that's what Trump does to, well, Trump actually does break the law.

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um But that, you know, this is all stochastic terrorism.

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:

So his claim that he didn't start the January 6th riots is like, I mean, well, okay, but

you told everybody where to go and what to do and why they were justified in doing it and

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how you were gonna protect them.

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So.

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Hmm.

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:

You kinda did, dude.

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That's it.

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:

know, going back to sort of the likes of Charlie Kirk, mean, because I don't think Trump

is particularly clever, but I think individuals like Charlie Kirk are actually quite

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clever because they're smart enough to know that actually, you know, they don't, what's

more powerful than telling people what to do is telling them how to feel.

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:

And once you get them feeling in a certain way, actually, those actions are going to

happen anyway.

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They absolutely are.

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And it's like, it's the same sort of thing that cult leaders do, right?

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Like you make them feel like you have them, like you're in their corner and like they need

you.

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And you create this environment where they feel like this crazy loyalty to you.

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And I don't think what Trump is doing is any different at all.

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think it's dangerous.

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It's cult-like.

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And when you look at the reaction that his base are giving, I think it's...

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It's really worrying.

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Oh, yeah, no, um I'm definitely terrified.

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I hope if we make it to midterms and those elections are honored, I think that we have a

chance of saving this country.

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:

I don't know that we make it there, you know?

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:

Yeah.

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:

But of course, you know, talking about the, you know, the midterms again, one thing that

Trump has already started doing is talking about putting in additional restrictions that,

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you know, and he's doing it under the guise of, it's, it's only fair to make sure that the

people who can vote are people who can present, you know, valid ID.

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But the problem is there's such systemic inequality in the people that are able to get

that, that, that, that valid ID.

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:

this whole this whole like completely ridiculous made up fear about illegals, a term I

hate voting is ridiculous.

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:

Like it doesn't happen.

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:

They found something like, you know, barely double digit cases, like not even 50 cases of

that.

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:

So like, a that's a thing that doesn't happen.

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:

But yeah, a lot of people don't have passports, dude.

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:

And if if he's talking about literally requiring passports, it is hard to get a passport,

especially if you've

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gotten married, you know, and so your documents don't have the same names on them, you

know, it's difficult.

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I do think, you know, that will be interesting.

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:

Yeah, I don't know.

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:

Yeah, I agree.

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:

And I think, you know, my, big issue with that is that if you don't solve the, the, the

root cause of the problem, then you're not really, all you're doing is making that problem

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:

worse.

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:

Um, with dumb stuff like this.

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:

Um, and actually anyone, if you haven't watched last week tonight by John Oliver with John

Oliver, then he a few years ago now, yeah, he, did this whole, um, deep dive around kind

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:

of voter registration and why it's all just so

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:

fucked up basically so I will link to that in the show notes so you can actually

understand why this is a problem.

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:

No, it's this, this we are dependent on having an uneducated electorate that doesn't

bother to vote.

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:

That is literally what this country is predicated on.

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:

If people actually had and use their power, we would be fine.

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:

But the reason why Trump is able to win elections is because he taps into something in

that electorate that otherwise can't be bothered to vote.

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:

And he gets some of them to turn out because they believe that finally there's someone who

speaks to them.

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:

that's, yeah, of course.

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:

Yeah.

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:

And we're seeing it in the UK here now as well.

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:

know, opinion polls have reform way out in the lead and,

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:

anyone in the US that doesn't know much about UK politics.

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:

Reform is a very right wing party, very much made in the the magma mold by a guy called

Nigel Farage and just Google him.

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:

He's just a terrible human being.

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:

But he does.

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:

Yeah, he does.

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:

uh But reformer leading in the polls like by by about 10 points as well.

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:

You know, this is not insignificant.

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:

And so we're seeing it here.

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:

And seeing it all around the world, actually, this rise in right wing politics and

actually, if every country starts to become more right wing, then then we're just

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:

catapulting ourselves towards World War, right?

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:

people are voting that way because they are genuinely frustrated and fed up with their

life because they feel like they're not getting ahead.

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:

Like they're working and working and working and they're not getting ahead.

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:

And so they're trying to find somebody to blame it on.

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:

Meanwhile, we've got billionaires and oligarchs spending fortunes to generate social media

campaigns to blame that frustration on

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:

immigrants, on trans people, on gay people, on women, when it's the fucking billionaires.

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:

know, that that's, you know, there's, there is, there is more than enough money and

resources to go around for all of us to live very comfortable lives.

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:

And it's literally being hoarded by a handful of people who are manipulating all us into

thinking it's somebody else's fault.

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:

And it's crazy.

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:

Absolutely.

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:

And I actually have a certain amount of sympathy for some of the people who have felt

galvanized to vote for Trump.

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:

actually, I respect the fact that people feel impassioned enough to go out and vote.

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:

And I think the blame, uh as you've touched on it, it lands on the people who are

exploiting that vulnerability and that naivety and giving them false reasons to vote.

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:

And they're lying to them.

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:

know, it's, yeah, there's this...

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:

about inflation.

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:

Inflation here was a driving, like that really drove people to the polls, right?

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:

Was inflation and the cost of living.

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:

So you hear inflation, inflation, inflation.

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:

It has to raise prices.

421

:

And then you look at corporate profits and CEO pay, and they continued to go up the whole

time that everything was in inflation.

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:

So that margin there, like that 500 % increase in CEO pay and corporate profits, that is

where the inflation is.

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:

It's not.

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:

It's literally not anything else.

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:

Those people could choose to buy one less boat or one less house and keep prices where

they are.

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:

Absolutely.

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:

People like Musk and Bezos and all these other Silicon Valley billionaires, people have

quantified what it would cost to end world hunger, and it is less money than these people

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are worth.

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:

Why do you need more than a billion pounds in your bank account?

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:

Why do you need more than a few million?

431

:

Exactly, yeah.

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:

can you imagine what is wrong with your soul that you have the power yourself to write a

check and eliminate all human suffering.

433

:

And you just, you're like, meh, I'm gonna build another like dick shaped space rocket.

434

:

Like what is wrong with you?

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:

Like.

436

:

And, know, the argument that some of these people say is, well, I don't actually have that

cash in my bank account.

437

:

And it's like, well, maybe not.

438

:

But actually, you do have billions and billions of dollars of profit coming from your

companies, which you're happily divvying out to shareholders.

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:

Maybe give some of that away instead.

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:

Like, you can do it.

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:

If you can leverage it to put another elevator in your house, you can leverage it to

educate kids.

442

:

It's not, it's just, that's such a bullshit excuse.

443

:

I mean, I don't have the cash lying around either, but I can take out a HELOC to like do

something.

444

:

It's ridiculous.

445

:

Yeah, exactly.

446

:

And, you know, coming kind of full circle to the whole kind of, you know, National Guard

thing, I just, think what this is showing is a dangerous culmination of the, just how,

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:

just how pervasive that messaging has become from Trump, because it's gotten to a point

where even as you've said, some of the things he's doing, you know, aren't particularly

448

:

popular, but he's been able

449

:

to manufacture an environment where he's now able to do some of that less popular stuff

and get away with it because he's been getting the Supreme Court on side.

450

:

He's been silencing journalists in the media.

451

:

So he's able to do more than any other president was able to do.

452

:

And you've also made the comparison to Hitler.

453

:

It's not that far-fetched anymore to make those comparisons because we saw the same things

happening in the 30s.

454

:

But it is literally exactly the same.

455

:

Project 2025 is Hitler's playbook, just updated with new annotations.

456

:

But I do think, and I don't want to leave people over on your side of the pond thinking

that Americans support this because they don't.

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:

Overwhelmingly, he has no support for this.

458

:

What he has is systemic infrastructure.

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:

that is for some reason not saying no to him.

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:

And I think, you know, if history is our lesson, the Nuremberg trials or whatever we call

them in the future, you know, will address that.

461

:

The problem is that a lot of people are gonna be hurt and killed between now and then.

462

:

You know, what they are doing is, I mean, literal international crime.

463

:

He's blowing up boats in the Caribbean.

464

:

You know, like, this is not legal.

465

:

Nothing he's doing is legal.

466

:

in the long term, know, long game that we talked about a while ago, he's not gonna get

away with it.

467

:

But I am very, very, very worried about the short term.

468

:

Yeah, and I'm sure there's going to be a lot more to talk about over the coming weeks and

months as things continue to progress.

469

:

Yeah, exactly.

470

:

But let's end on a slightly lighter note, we?

471

:

Do you play golf?

472

:

No, I don't have that kind of attention span.

473

:

Okay, great.

474

:

Me neither.

475

:

But there was a story that caught my eye.

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:

there's a golfer called Vince Wally, and I was hoping you'd be able to enlighten me, but

clearly not.

477

:

He was playing a uh championship in Mississippi the other day and ball went in the water.

478

:

He stepped in the water as you do.

479

:

Well, it was on a golf course.

480

:

I'm going to assume it was fine, but hey.

481

:

This time not so much.

482

:

There was an alligator in the water.

483

:

So imagine playing golf.

484

:

You're taking a shot, you turn around and there's just an alligator eyeing you up.

485

:

No, there's no universe in which I would take that shot.

486

:

No, I mean, I don't, I won't go in the water anyway, but yeah, no, you lose that match.

487

:

Have ever been competitive enough though that you've been willing to take an unnecessary

risk?

488

:

I do not have a competitive bone in my body.

489

:

I am made entirely of fight, so if you wanna like come at me with a social justice cause,

I will fight to the death.

490

:

But to win a game?

491

:

No, no.

492

:

you see an alligator, you're running regardless.

493

:

Logical.

494

:

They are, aren't they?

495

:

They run fast.

496

:

I've seen a few TikTok videos of the alligators out of water.

497

:

I don't know how they pick up so much speed with those little legs, but they are fast.

498

:

But anyway, Wally is fine.

499

:

The alligator is fine.

500

:

But it did.

501

:

I don't know.

502

:

Now I have to find out.

503

:

Yeah, yeah, watch this space.

504

:

But yeah, that's that.

505

:

Anyway, I think there's going to be so much more to cover in terms of Trump and National

Guards and everything else.

506

:

because it really is, it's really important to me that you guys over there don't think

that we're all a bunch of uneducated ignoramus's who don't care because we do.

507

:

yeah, yeah, absolutely.

508

:

And it's been it's been great having you on this, Alyssa.

509

:

And if anyone listening does want to connect with you after this, where can they do that?

510

:

easiest place is just on blue sky which is you know my my name is my name over there um

that's the easiest place to find me though i'm usually talking about politics and

511

:

sometimes dogs and pottery so

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:

Perfect.

513

:

That's yeah, great combo.

514

:

And Alyssa, thank you again.

515

:

And that has been a pleasure.

516

:

And we'll have to get you back on the podcast soon.

517

:

And anyone listening to this, if you've enjoyed this episode, we'll leave links to every

new story in the show notes to go and check that out and do leave us a rating and a review

518

:

as well and give us a follow so that all future episodes appear in your feed.

519

:

you know, we really wouldn't be able to keep making the show without your support.

520

:

So

521

:

If you love the podcast, there's some links in the show notes and you can support us as

well.

522

:

That would be awesome.

523

:

Thank you all so much for listening.

524

:

Thank you, Alyssa and goodbye.

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About the Podcast

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America: A History
Your Ultimate Guide to US History

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About your host

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Liam Heffernan

Liam's fascination with America grows year on year. Having graduated with a Masters in American Studies with Film, he loves pop culture and has been to Vegas four times which, in his opinion, is not enough.