GLENNIS: 0:00

Welcome to Vibes Only. Today we cover the horrific rise in ICE deaths and the circus in South Carolina where Trump handpicked Graham's sister to take his seat.

BRIAN: 0:09

Then we dissect the attorney general hearings for Trump's pet, Todd Blanche, preview the liar-in-chief's upcoming White House address, and lay out the stakes of Reconciliation 3.0.

GLENNIS: 0:20

Plus, we play clickbait or double-click with the week's biggest headlines, check in on Wisconsin oath candidate Ben Gruber, and a double dose of New York City good vibes with a horse carriage ban and data center moratorium.

BRIAN: 0:32

Let's get into it. Hi, Glennis. Good morning

GLENNIS: 0:41

How are you? Oops. I'm, like, moving my entire setup. I've been on the road and I'm, I'm tired. I'm in Miami right now, and Miami in July is hot, hot, hot.

BRIAN: 0:51

Hot. Yeah. El picante. We have so much to talk about.

GLENNIS: 0:55

Well, Brian, I think we need to start with the ICE murders, the murders of three people

BRIAN: 1:02

In the last week.

GLENNIS: 1:03

In the last week.

BRIAN: 1:05

Bringing the total up to, I think, nine since the surge has started.

GLENNIS: 1:10

You know, after René Good and Alex Pretti were murdered, Trump knew he had to turn down the temperature a little bit. He fired Kristi Noem. But we said this on the pod, they're not going away. They're just kind of going under the radar, and they're going to continue to do the raids. They're going to continue to show up in people's places of work and their homes. We just weren't gonna see it like we did in Minnesota. And it's continuing to happen, and it's horrific.

BRIAN: 1:37

Three murders by ICE agents in quick succession, two involving shootings at individuals who were in cars. One happened in Texas, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. One happened in Maine, and that was Joan Sebastian Guerrero, who people have probably seen something about at this point. He was 26 from Colombia, had a toddler and a wife who were in the car at the time. Police shot him as he attempted to drive away from them, then pulled his body out of the car and cuffed him, ICE agents did, as he was dying in the street. It's really despicable. It's caused outrage all over the country. We're gonna see a ton of renewed energy. We are already seeing people marching in the streets and continuing to call for accountability. DHS has clearly seen the potency of this issue because, number one, they've had to issue multiple contradictory statements trying to defend themselves. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. First, they made a statement about how people were using vehicles against ICE officers and then had to amend that statement when it was proven untrue by video footage to then just say that it was a general public safety threat. How a 26-year-old behind the wheel of a 1990 Camry- Mm-hmm … is a public safety threat to the degree that requires you to assassinate him is beyond me. But- Mm-hmm … they can't even get their story straight. After that, you had a new policy come out- Yeah … from DHS saying that they're not gonna do traffic stops anymore. Yeah. And really what that is is an admission that their officers are not well-trained enough- Correct … to be conducting normal traffic stops without murdering people.

GLENNIS: 3:20

Mm-hmm.

BRIAN: 3:21

That's, that's what that means. Then we had another killing in Florida, someone who was trying to get away from ICE. If you've seen anything about what ICE detention looks like, I don't blame anyone for, for being afraid, ran away from them and then was hit and killed by a semi-truck.

GLENNIS: 3:43

Ugh.

BRIAN: 3:44

Yeah.

GLENNIS: 3:45

I saw a, a meme. It was on TikTok. Some, you know, MAGA influencer's video with text overlay outlining how many ICE murders happened during the Obama administration. All the comments were like, "So you agree?" ICE has perpetually been a violent organization within the government and should be abolished. It's completely out of control and deeply, deeply un-American. And really upsetting

BRIAN: 4:13

We've recruited thousands of agents using racist memes on Twitter and 4chan with- Yeah … propaganda videos promoting the use of violence in the role, overpaying under-qualified people, giving them- Correct … no training and sending them out onto the streets with guns and- Mm-hmm a broad mandate to go harass anyone Brown or who doesn't speak English.

GLENNIS: 4:35

Yeah.

BRIAN: 4:36

And the Supreme Court has greenlit that. We can very squarely lay this at the feet of Donald Trump and Republicans who have dumped money-

GLENNIS: 4:46

Mm-hmm… BRIAN: broadly multiplying the size of to actually see that the mission of the organization is being accomplished. They don't care. They don't care. No.

BRIAN: 5:01

They just wanna harass people and make them go away.

GLENNIS: 5:04

Yeah. The immigration hardliners have said that is the America that they wanna create. That is the administration they want to create. They wanna create an environment of fear. They don't want people to feel comfortable in this country. They don't want people coming to this country because they want to intimidate them. And to your point on these unqualified individuals driving around in unmarked vehicles with masks on and not wearing body cams, they were also given things that we as Americans don't have. Huge sign-on bonuses, student loan forgiveness. It's so deeply un-American, and it is so disgusting that our, our tax dollars and things that we are putting into the government are being used for things like this. It's so despicable. It's so sad. We should ex- expect this because this is exactly what the administration wants. It is the policy that they've created.

BRIAN: 5:52

You're exactly right. I don't want people to let them spin this as random or as a byproduct- Mm-hmm … of enforcing the law, as an unavoidable accident, something like that. No. This is the natural consequence of their policy decisions, and they are essentially saying they're okay with people, innocent people being gunned down in the street if it means that they get to deport non-white people who don't fit their vision of what America should be. That's essentially the trade-off that they're willing to make. Don't pass a bill requiring background checks- Mm-hmm … for gun purchases. That's a violation of our constitutional rights. But absolutely, if you're Brown, you can be stopped on the street, harassed by- Mm-hmm … an agent that was hired two weeks ago and handed a gun, and shot if you don't comply to every single contradictory order that they might issue to you. Insane, and there has to be accountability. I hear- Mm-hmm … a lot from the more moderate wing of the party that they don't want people out saying,"Abolish ICE." But I think that that position fails to understand the depth of rot in that agency. Yeah. Even if you were pro-reform instead of abolish three years ago under the Biden administration- Yeah and you're pro like generic humane immigration enforcement, you still at this point need to reckon with the fact that the entire agency has been corrupted- Rotted … by Trump and his goons, filled with people who have no business in any law enforcement role, and cannot be corrected or- Yeah … trained up to a standard that would make the agency capable of winning the trust of Americans again. So- Period … it has to be replaced. I'm not saying that we have to have open borders. I'm not for that. I'm not saying that we can't enforce any immigration law.

GLENNIS: 7:49

Yeah.

BRIAN: 7:49

That's not true either. But it can't be by this ICE-

GLENNIS: 7:53

Agency… BRIAN: agency. Yeah. Not possible. ICE is rotted to the core. Fuck them. It really upsets me. I'm just like, it is so anti-American. It is filled with racist zealots killing people.

BRIAN: 8:05

Let's talk midterms.

GLENNIS: 8:07

You know me, I'm a voting hound, right? I'm like, the, the path to, to change is through, I think, you know, organized resistance, one, but that is hard to sustain for a long period of time. Capitalism is on everyone's neck, but voting, that is our duty as the American people. How are we feeling? We haven't talked about some of the big news that happened since we last spoke. We were talking about Mitch McConnell being called up or down, heaven or hell. The good Lord took someone else.

BRIAN: 8:37

The gates of hell did open, but they snatched the wrong body. We thought that we were playing Big Brother, but in, it turns out we're playing Survivor. Oh. Lindsey Graham is out, has been voted off the island permanently, and I, I'm not gonna shed a tear for someone who has voted countless times to make life harder, more dangerous- Mm-hmm … and less humane for millions of people in the US and abroad. So spare me the fake bipartisan eulogy stuff. You're not gonna get it here. Yeah, Lindsey Graham is dead, and he has been replaced by his sister because that's a fucking thing that we're doing now in the Senate.

GLENNIS: 9:19

Crazy. Trump truth socialed it that he wanted his sister to take the seat, and then I think two hours later the governor was like, "You got it."

BRIAN: 9:28

Yeah. People call it a caretaker appointment because she's just gonna sit in the seat through November, and then she's not gonna run for- Who knows? the seat. Well, right, because the, no one can stop her from doing that. It's very similar to Laphonza Butler taking over the seat for Dianne Feinstein, who died- Mm … in office in her Senate seat in California-

GLENNIS: 9:48

Yeah… BRIAN: a couple years ago. The deal that was made was, "We're gonna appoint you. You're gonna sit in it for the duration of the vacancy, and then you're gonna leave, and someone else is gonna run in the special election." Reading up on her, you know, Lindsey Graham was infamously never married, and was, like, so, so fond of his sister in, in a way, in a, in a kind of weird way. Oh my God. Don't, don't bring

BRIAN: 10:08

incest into it.

GLENNIS: 10:08

No, I'm not saying… No. First of all, I'm not. Oh, God. I'm just saying it was like, it, uh… Oh my, I am not claiming that. Don't put words in my mouth. But what I'm saying is it was, oh, a very close relationship. I feel like she kinda was, like, a beard in a way for him. Well, what is a beard, like, actually? Is, like, a, a, is a beard, like, you are confirmed, like, married to the person to shield them from-

BRIAN: 10:31

No. It's just anyone that you're pretending to date or be romantically involved with- Oh to mitigate rumors about your sexual orientation, is essentially- Ah, okay … like, the vibe. So like-

GLENNIS: 10:42

Okay, no, I'm not claiming that, all right? I- You're my beard … retract my statement.

BRIAN: 10:45

You're, you're my beard.

GLENNIS: 10:48

Oh, wow. Ah. Oh my God, imagine if people thought that we were, like, together.

BRIAN: 10:52

People think that all the time. I get DMs constantly."Is that your wife on your podcast?"

GLENNIS: 10:57

Oh my God. What?

BRIAN: 10:58

No, I'm kidding.

GLENNIS: 10:59

They think

BRIAN: 10:59

you're- I'm

GLENNIS: 10:59

jo- Oh. I'm joking.

BRIAN: 11:00

I'm joking. It's

GLENNIS: 11:00

like we have, we have a literacy

BRIAN: 11:02

problem. No, they're like, "You fucking homo." Number one, I hate politics being a family business. Hate it.

GLENNIS: 11:07

Well-

BRIAN: 11:07

I don't like it when it's a Democrat. I don't like the Kennedy Schlossberg shit. I don't like people saying that Hillary Clinton's daughter should run for X. I don't think that Nancy Pelosi's kids should… Like, I don't like it. Number one, you didn't earn your spot there. Name ID is huge and people just lean into name ID 'cause it's so expensive to get a whole state- Get, yeah, totally or the country to, to know who you are. And so they just like lean into that and run. I hate it. I hate it. So in general, fuck that. Number two, the biggest impact that I think that this is gonna have on the midterms is that people are gonna dump money, probably way too much money, into Annie Andrews, who's running- Ah as the Democrat for the South Carolina seat.

GLENNIS: 11:45

Yes.

BRIAN: 11:46

I would probably argue that the seat is now less competitive than it would- Mm … have been had Lindsey Graham been running because we are in such an anti-establishment era and cycle that anyone who's a longtime incumbent should be a little scared at the box office right now, 'cause both parties are like,"Fuck all of you" to the people- Mm-hmm who have been in office for 30 years, 20 years, whatever. And now they're gonna have some fresh, shiny object who has no voting record in DC probably. And so I think that it's probably a tougher battle for her than it was two weeks ago, which was already not in the top 10 Senate seat. Right.

GLENNIS: 12:22

Yeah.

BRIAN: 12:23

So-

GLENNIS: 12:23

So the idea also is that Lindsey Graham's sister goes to work next week in the Senate and then someone else is on the ballot in November?

BRIAN: 12:32

Correct. They're having a primary in South Carolina in August. They will choose a new Republican. There are different people. Nancy Mace says she's, she wants to run for it. I saw

GLENNIS: 12:41

that.

BRIAN: 12:42

Barf, barf. No. The lieutenant

GLENNIS: 12:44

governor. Tomato, tomato, tomato. Ugh.

BRIAN: 12:46

What does that mean?

GLENNIS: 12:47

Oh my God, you don't know that? Tomato, tomato, tomato? All the kids say this. Like back in the olden days when someone sucked on stage, you threw tomatoes at them. So now the kids say- This is- … "Tomato, tomato, tomato."

BRIAN: 12:57

This is Gen Z slang.

GLENNIS: 12:59

I mean, this was like a TikTok trend last year.

BRIAN: 13:01

Nancy Mace, the lieutenant governor, is rumored to be running. There's a few members of Congress who may end up running who had run in the governor's race. The Palmetto State is more than just a reach for Dems. And even in this cycle, in a D plus eight environment, it will be insanely difficult. So people should look elsewhere for upsets like Josh Turek or Rob Sand in Iowa and other- Right … people who seem to be better positioned.

GLENNIS: 13:27

Yeah. Did you see Cory Booker's walk and talk eulogy- No of Lindsey Graham? It was- Tell

BRIAN: 13:31

me

GLENNIS: 13:33

Not good. It was just like, read the room, bro. Read the room

CORY BOOKER: 13:37

stunned at Lindsey Graham's death, but I pray that he is reunited with his friend John McCain, that they both are experiencing God's love

GLENNIS: 13:46

These establishment Democrats giving eulogies for this person, to your point, who was objectively horrible to the American people, especially working class Americans. You look like a Republican. You look like a fucking clown. We don't wanna hear how you were friends with Lindsey Graham and how he was great to have a fight with, and that you argued together, but you were still f- no. Why are you friends with that person? You are the company you keep.

BRIAN: 14:11

If you're sad, send flowers. I don't need to see it. I actually don't need to see a eulogy from you. I don't need you taking the time out of your day that you should be using to go talk about ICE murdering people. Where I want the bipartisanship and the cross aisle appeal is with voters. I want you to go have a platform and a message that can win over Republican voters, not corporatist billionaire buddy Republican- Yeah senators. Those are two different things. I don't care if you work out at the congressional gym- No … next to John Thune. Like, that I don't care about. I want people who can go win Texas and Iowa and Ohio and North Carolina. Democrats in DC get those two things confused because the Republicans that they see with their eyes are elected oftentimes monsters who are- Yeah all competing in the worst pageant in history for Donald Trump's approval and pets. That's not who we want you praising or appealing to. We want you to build a coalition that can fucking win.

GLENNIS: 15:18

Speaking of bipartisanship, and some bipartisanship that I would like to see today, Todd Blanche, he's up for attorney general. Todd Blanche, to me, is the Epstein class protector in chief.

BRIAN: 15:33

Mm.

GLENNIS: 15:34

This guy was Donald Trump's personal lawyer. The 34 count felon Donald Trump convicted, adjudicated sexual assaulter who just had to pay $5.6 million for raping E. Jean Carroll, by the way, is now trying to be the Attorney General of the United States of America. The same guy who wanted that slush fund for J6ers.

BRIAN: 16:01

Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

GLENNIS: 16:02

The same guy who flew down to talk to Ghislaine Maxwell because he hadn't had the chance to talk to her yet and was curious about what she had to say, who didn't ask one question about Donald Trump and only asked questions about Bill Clinton, who then, after that interview, transferred her into, like, the Martha Stewart prison. This guy only cares about protecting Donald Trump. And I was reading an article this morning, and I thought of you. What you said last week about what Donald Trump only cares about right now is protecting himself and his family-

BRIAN: 16:40

Mm-hmm… GLENNIS: once he's out of office from And Todd Blanche is someone who's gonna do his best to protect him from going to jail for the rest of his life. Nailed it. He is also the guy who got Trump the deal with the IRS that he's never gonna be audited. Him and his family will never be audited ever again, that Trump is immune from tax law enforcement. We have to root ourselves in very recent history that for the entire tenure of the Department of Justice, it has been understood and tacitly enforced that the agency was independent of the president. And if you tried to think of one person in America, 300 million people, who could be less independent than Todd Blanche, you would have a hard damn time coming up with someone. This is the president's pet. This is the president's pet. And so to put him in charge of the most important independent agency that exists in the federal government is so outrageous that I would laugh, but I'll cry. You know? It's too much. And it looks like he's gonna get approved. Like, we have- Yeah … a glimmer of hope. I'm definitely gonna be posting phone numbers and names for people to be calling, calling, calling. We have to maximize pressure to keep him out of that post, but it's gonna be an uphill battle. Our only shot is that Trump has fucked over so many Republican senators that we might be able to narrowly, narrowly block it because he has primaried Cassidy. He's getting- Mm-hmm … pushed out of the Senate. Thom Tillis is retiring. Collins, Murkowski are always trying to, like, hold onto their fake image of being moderates- Moderate … but they always cave. And Joni Ernst, who also- Oh, yeah … is retiring after being essentially, like, pushed out of, of the Senate. Joni Ernst, Steve Daines, Cynthia Lummis, Marsha Blackburn, Tommy Tuberville, Susan Collins, John Husted, Dan Sullivan, all are going to be targets for us to pressure for different reasons. to vote against this nominee.

GLENNIS: 18:42

Todd Blanche. Yeah, literally you can eat shit. Like that guy is a piece of shit. He only cares about protecting Trump and the Epstein class.

BRIAN: 18:51

Um, I want my personal attorney to be attorney general. That would be sick.

GLENNIS: 18:56

Imagine. I'm just like, why aren't we dragging Ghislaine Maxwell from her hair out of her, like, cushy cell and forcing her to talk about Epstein?

BRIAN: 19:06

Dragging her. They're about to pardon her.

GLENNIS: 19:09

I know.

BRIAN: 19:10

They're about to pardon her. I guarantee you Trump is gonna pardon her before his last day. It's absolutely happening. Probably the day after the midterms. Once he has- Yeah … like zero electoral interest in anything else that happens in the country ever again, he's probably gonna do it then.

GLENNIS: 19:24

We need to start burning trash like the French. Like, I don't understand-- I actually, I do understand why we're like this, 'cause capitalism is on everyone's necks, and they're just trying to get by and live day to day and afford their lives and provide for their families, live the American dream, which is now dead because of Trump and his administration and policies.

BRIAN: 19:43

Yeah. We have three other things to talk about. While we're on- What?… the subject of Congress, I wanna quickly hit on Reconciliation 3.0. Oh. The legislative agenda is a total shit show right now, and I'm guessing that people are pretty confused, so I just wanna lay it out. There-

GLENNIS: 19:58

The people? Me.

BRIAN: 19:58

There are a few major pieces of legislation that are moving in Congress right now. Trump and goons are trying to pass another reconciliation bill. That means that it only needs Republican votes. Democrats cannot stop something that is moving through reconciliation. But it has to pass the Byrd Rule, meaning only certain things can be in reconciliation, and they have to be- Mm-hmm budgetary in nature. They can't be regulatory. What they're doing in the House is they're attaching the SAVE Act, the voter suppression bill, which- Yeah … we've talked about many times, to about $70 billion in additional funding for Iran, 'cause we wanna spend more than the UK, Japan, Saudi Arabia does on their entire military. We're-- We wanna spend that much more on bombing Iran to no avail. In the House, they have to attach those two things because the far right won't vote for more spending that's not being offset. We're just spending with debt-

GLENNIS: 21:02

Uh-huh… BRIAN: unless they get the SAVE Act. That's like the thing to sweeten the deal. So they need both in the House in order to pass. But you cannot pass the SAVE Act through reconciliation in the Senate. It's been blocked many, many times. This is like the Mike Lee, John Thune drama for people who are really following closely. The only way to get it passed in the House is the only thing you can't do in the Senate to pass it. You can't pass the SAVE Act- Oh with, with reconciliation. They're on a fast track to nowhere. That, that's not a plan. Mm-hmm. And they are doing it anyway. The only solutions there would be to remove the SAVE Act from the bill, pass the supplemental military spending, so another $70 billion to bomb Iran, and then send it back to the House, and the House would then have to pass the supplemental purely on debt and find the votes for it. I think Democrats have learned their lesson and would not vote for that. They've said so. Or they would have to fire the parliamentarian in the Senate, which Trump's been advocating for for over a year. Basically go, go nuclear, and it would ef- effectively eliminate the filibuster to get- Hmm … the SAVE Act through the Senate, are the two options, and that John Thune has also said dozens of times publicly that he would not do. But never put anything past Republicans. Senator Warren is trying to get something in this bill.

BRIAN: 22:15

Spicy.

GLENNIS: 22:15

Yeah. Yeah. Which I saw that and I was like, "Get 'em."

BRIAN: 22:19

Okay, so in the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act, which is a must-pass bill every year to keep the military funded, blah, blah, blah. The lights on. Yeah. This is, this isn't, like, the extra money to bomb Iran. This is the basic must-pass money to just pay our military personnel. Wait.

GLENNIS: 22:34

Is that the $1.7 trillion budget?

BRIAN: 22:38

That's what they're asking for is 1.5 trillion. Oh, okay. Roughly, yeah. But it's getting cut down. That's what Trump is trying to turn into a $1.5 trillion, 50% increase in, um, military spending. Senator Warren, being the wily cat that she is- … snuck in a provision using Josh Hawley and his unbridled political personal ambition to appeal as an economic populist, basically. This provision- Ah. Interesting … that would ban defense contractors, so anyone who's getting paid by the US military, any company as a defense contractor, from corporate stock buybacks. Keep in mind, when we say defense contractors, we think Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, people making bombs. Defense contractors includes Google, AT&T. Like, they are supplying cloud services and telecommunication services. Amazon. Amazon. Uh, all the big companies are big- Mm-hmm … defense contractors. They're cashing in on our overspending on defense that goes essentially unaudited and unaccountable. This provision, if it became law, would ban all those companies from doing stock buybacks, which make their shareholders super rich because they're taking all this public money-

GLENNIS: 23:47

Mm-hmm… BRIAN: that they are then using Yeah. It's a pretty inventive strategy, if you ask me- Mm-hmm … to throw a punch at our corporate- Mm-hmm overlords who are- Yes … just raking in cash while everyone is struggling, while inflation is spiking, while the cost of housing is doubling. The people who own massive stakes in these companies are truly just turning into billionaires and trillionaires. Yes. Yeah, that, that was, like, the potential silver lining here. Yeah, I saw that and I was like, "Get 'em. Get 'em, Lizzie." And we've talked about this on, on the pod. They're getting rich off of violence, off of this military budget, off of bombing countries, getting into wars.

BRIAN: 24:27

No industry profits more off of fear and xenophobia than military defense. That is a closed loop- Mm-hmm of like more spending drives more violence, rationalizes more fear- Mm-hmm … drives more spending. Like, it's actually quite straightforward. We also need to talk about a upcoming reality TV special known as Address From The White House happening- Ugh … on Thursday.

GLENNIS: 24:57

Yeah, this is gonna be a web of lies, web of lies and disinformation that Donald Trump is going to talk about. This is some bullshit fear-mongering narrative build that he's trying to do to set up for the midterms to de-legitimize our free and fair elections

BRIAN: 25:17

Me thinks he doth protest too much. I think that this is a sign the White House is shaking in their boots, to be honest. Tell me more. They're really trying to escalate the messaging war. Trump posting 1,000 times an hour on Truth Social isn't doing the job anymore. As the economy is in free fall- As the Hormuz is

GLENNIS: 25:34

open, closed, open, closed.

BRIAN: 25:36

Yeah. As gas prices are spiking, as Trump is starting wars that he has no plan for, as people are being murdered in the street, they're just losing the narrative, and they're watching the numbers. No one trusts Trump on the issues that got him elected. No one likes Republicans generally. People are fleeing the Republican Party, and he's trying to recapture the narrative. My expectation is that this is going to be a magician level, a fucking David Copperfield level misdirection campaign- Mm-hmm … to try to get people to, "Look over there." They don't want you looking at everything that's on fire over here. Mm-hmm. The leaks say that it's about the 2020 election. The election that happened six years ago is the most- Get over it … pressing concern of the President of the United States, considering all the things that we've been talking about today. That hopefully will actually hurt him more than it helps him. If he truly gets on and just talks about the 2020 election and claims foreign interference, I actually think that persuadable voters will be more turned off by that than they will be persuaded that there was any wrongdoing or that Trump is in any way with it when they have real concerns right now.

GLENNIS: 26:47

I was doing some research on this, and the guy, John Solomon, who is, I would say, Trump's, like, captain on all of this. He's a special employee of the White House now. Yeah, like, literally, he's like, "Brum-ta-da."

BRIAN: 26:59

Captain?

GLENNIS: 26:59

Oh, I was thinking more of, like, a sports captain, like, leading the charge. Oh,

BRIAN: 27:02

okay.

GLENNIS: 27:03

Yeah. Not like- I was thinking- AI captain … the Titanic. I was thinking the Titanic. Oh my God. Literally the sinking ship that is the Trump administration. This guy is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. He is an election denier. He's the reporter, I mean, now, um, failed journalist. He was the one who was spewing all the bullshit about the Biden Ukraine conspiracy election bullshit. We said off-camera, I have my thoughts about him and maybe who he's working for.

BRIAN: 27:28

His motives, we'll say.

GLENNIS: 27:30

His motives. Connected to a often shirtless, riding on a horse dictator. This guy's nuts. He hates America. He is whispering sweet nothings in Donald Trump's ear. He's so bad, even Fox News flagged him when he was on air saying, "We can't have this guy on anymore. He's spewing disinformation."

BRIAN: 27:50

In general, I would say tune it out. People don't really need to be concerned about it. I definitely am not gonna watch it. I hope that by now our listeners know that there's not value in that, that that's not oppo research, that that's not helping you with 4D chess. That is- No just plugging yourself into the fucking exhaust pipe of a McDonald's and breathing for no reason whatsoever.

GLENNIS: 28:15

Okay, Brian Clickbait or double click. If you've never listened to Vibes Only before and you've made it this far, congratulations. You've made it to Clickbait or Double Click, where Brian and I bait each other about if a headline is worth it for you or if it's just rage bait.'Cause mainstream media, they're doing rage bait now, trying to get in the algorithm. Okay, first one, "Your paycheck is just barely keeping up with inflation," from the Washington Post.

BRIAN: 28:41

Double click. If you're not talking about the economy, you're losing. That is all that Democrats should be talking about. It's more believable from some of them than it is from others, but think that that's real. We're experiencing it. Life is expensive, and no one is trying to help.

GLENNIS: 28:57

I bought a smoothie yesterday here in Miami. Guess how much it cost.

BRIAN: 29:01

Oh my God, $18.

GLENNIS: 29:03

$22. Oh

BRIAN: 29:04

my God.

GLENNIS: 29:05

And, like, the ingredients were so fake. They were like- Words I had never heard of before. And I didn't even finish it 'cause I realized halfway through it had matcha in it and I wanted to go to bed.

BRIAN: 29:14

I literally can't go to Juice Generation. If I don't bring my own protein to work, I, like, can't have it. It's too much.

GLENNIS: 29:20

This is the economy. Like, you have to bring your own protein to put in your Juice Generation smoothie 'cause you can't pay the extra $5 for the protein boost.

BRIAN: 29:27

No, I literally can't go to Juice Generation at all. Oh. I have a blender in my office.

GLENNIS: 29:32

Oh, I've seen it. I've seen it. And I

BRIAN: 29:33

make my own shit.

GLENNIS: 29:35

I know, it's crazy. And like coffee, I buy coffee out. If you run the numbers on how much coffee actually costs, you're like, "Damn, okay."

BRIAN: 29:42

Do you? I, like, generally won't buy an individual coffee. I buy Trader Joe's bulk ass cold brew, and that's-

GLENNIS: 29:48

No

BRIAN: 29:49

what I live on.

GLENNIS: 29:50

I do it to go for walks, like to get steps in. I ran some numbers and I was like, "You know what? Maybe the avocado toast will bankrupt me."

BRIAN: 29:58

I hope you're going to a bodega at least and not Blank Street.

GLENNIS: 30:01

I don't go to Blank Street'cause that's private equity. I go to Mud Coffee. Mud- What the

BRIAN: 30:05

fuck is

GLENNIS: 30:06

that? Mud actually isn't that expensive, all things considered.

BRIAN: 30:09

Okay.

GLENNIS: 30:09

But

BRIAN: 30:10

anyway. Shout out to Mud. Sponsor us. Okay, next up, U.S. Supreme Court justices made a rare Capitol Hill appearance to warn of threats against them. Amy Coney Barrett and Justice Elena Kagan asking for more money because they're saying that Supreme Court police force has reported a 38% increase in threats this year.

GLENNIS: 30:32

I wanna say it's clickbait because of course you're getting threats. Like, you are one-third of the executive powers and you're making decisions, obviously Elena Kagan less so, that fundamentally affect the American people. I guess it's like the hard right political extremists who are probably the ones threatening violence. I don't know, give them the money, give them the extra protection. Tell Clarence Thomas to stop being so corrupt.

BRIAN: 30:57

We definitely need them all to survive for the next six months. That at least is, is true. I- So that

GLENNIS: 31:03

Trump doesn't put… Yeah. So that…

BRIAN: 31:05

Yeah, we, we can't have any vacancies right now. No vacancies allowed. But in general, I agree, clickbait.

GLENNIS: 31:11

Okay, last one for today, but it's a doozy. Trump drops plan to charge ships fees in the Strait parentheses of Hormuz, but will restore blockade

BRIAN: 31:22

Double click. We are in it. In Iran, the entire MOU of peace has been exposed as a scam, which we've talked about. The fact that it was reported by the media as being anything other than a press release from Trump himself is a joke to me. We are back at square zero, where we're bombing a country with no stated goals, no exit strategy, and generally no transparency about what's going on, and Trump is in full escalation mode. Blockade, bomb, blockade, bomb. He's trying to, yeah, charge some new fee. Someone's gonna pay it, somebody's not. It's all of his own creation. We're in the Trump doom spiral- Yeah… making a problem, pretending to fix it. He's not even really pretending to fix it anymore.

GLENNIS: 32:11

No.

BRIAN: 32:12

And this is shattering trust with his base and is going to severely depress turnout in the midterms from- Mm-hmm… people who are lightly Trump supportive or who generally hate all politicians and wanted someone to blow things up. He has become the worst of their nightmares, and they're not gonna show up for him when all he does is start new foreign wars and cost them money.

GLENNIS: 32:34

Yeah. The amount of people who voted for him because he ran on no new wars, and now is- Right … putting us into a months-long presumably years

BRIAN: 32:43

long Years long. Yeah. Even if everything stopped tomorrow, do we all really think that we're gonna be in a stable place with Iran next year? No. Okay, we have to talk about our Oath candidate of the week. I got a spicy one- Tell me … for you this week.

GLENNIS: 32:55

Ooh, why are they spicy?

BRIAN: 32:57

Because you've definitely, definitely never heard of them. Okay. We had a lot of hot takes about our Oath candidate of the week last week, Manny Rutinel, who I happened to comment is hot. It's known, uh, in the biz as hot as fuck. Mm. You didn't wanna admit that, but our listeners broadly agreed with me, and they were like, "Glennis, just, just say that he's hot."

GLENNIS: 33:18

Yeah, like it was like gun to head, they were like, "Glennis, say he's hot." Objectively handsome.

BRIAN: 33:23

They need you to know. They need you to say. They need you to say it out loud.

GLENNIS: 33:26

The edit was great, too. Shout out to Jason for that. Yeah. I was definitely giving like Brittany Broski drinking the seltzer. Hit me with this week.

BRIAN: 33:34

This week we're not gonna talk about how hot the candidate is, by popular demand. Instead, we're gonna talk about how important it is.

GLENNIS: 33:41

Mm-hmm.

BRIAN: 33:42

The Wisconsin Assembly, stay with me, is currently split between 54 Republicans and 45 Democrats, and we have the opportunity to flip the chamber, which everyone should care about because Wisconsin is really gerrymandered for Republicans. Mm-hmm. And if we flip the chamber, we can redistrict between 2026 and 2028, adding two, maybe three additional Democrats to Congress, when in 2028 winning the House is gonna be much harder than in 2026. So really important, really important win. It all could likely come down to one seat. Ben Gruber is a really normal dude who's running to flip the tipping point seat in the Wisconsin State Assembly. You need to flip four of the five toss-up seats. We do all of this analysis at Oath to identify which seat is gonna be the most critical. That is Ben Gruber, and he's such a fucking cool dude the more that I've looked into him. Yeah. He, get this, he's a volunteer EMT, a firefighter, a paramedic, a police officer, and now he's serving as a conservation warden. I didn't know what that was. And- But basically his job is to stop polluters, catch poachers, and rescue hikers. Like so epic. He's a really cool dude. He has this huge beard, and these are the type of races that go completely ignored by all media. No one's gonna be talking about it. This isn't James Talarico or Jon Ossoff raising $100 million. Yeah. This is somebody who could really use the help. If we win, the consequences for the whole country could actually be huge.

GLENNIS: 35:19

Love it. This resume is great, and also a helpful hand. You know, if there was a fire in the State House, need for CPR, an injured person, that he could rescue them from the floor. Ben Gru- He,

BRIAN: 35:30

he's definitely the dude that you just want around.

GLENNIS: 35:32

Like a human Swiss Army knife.

BRIAN: 35:34

Totally. Well, should we send them off with a good vibe?

GLENNIS: 35:36

We have two really great good vibes coming out of New York. I saw the first one, and I thought,"Ooh, what does Brian think about this?" But Buffalo blood, Kathy Hochul, what has she done? A one-year moratorium on data centers in the state of New York. Buffaloes

BRIAN: 35:52

are going wild this week. Did you see that guy?

GLENNIS: 35:57

Wait, no.

BRIAN: 35:58

Get freaking

GLENNIS: 36:01

to- tossed by the buffalo. Oh my God, yes. I thought it was AI. But here's my question. He's walking, right? Yeah. And then, then he, he, he, like, hides behind a tree. Run as fast as you can to shelter. Why are you, like, wanting to engage with this bison that's, what,

BRIAN: 36:19

5,000

GLENNIS: 36:20

pounds?

BRIAN: 36:20

Oh, was it, was it a bison? It wasn't a buffalo. It was a- Damn, it was a bison. Are they, are they different? I don't know. I don't know. Are they? Okay.

GLENNIS: 36:26

This guy wouldn't… Like, he- I don't know if he's alive. So we should probably check

BRIAN: 36:29

back before we- He is. He is. He is. Okay. He is. He is. He's recovering. He's

GLENNIS: 36:31

recovering.

BRIAN: 36:31

He's

GLENNIS: 36:31

also old. He's rec- Bones like that can't fly. He was 20 feet in the air. It's so fucked up. He was 20 feet in the… He went do, do, do, do. It was like a cartoon. It's so bad.

BRIAN: 36:45

Okay, so data center moratorium.

GLENNIS: 36:49

Yeah. Oh

BRIAN: 36:49

my- Data center moratorium in…

GLENNIS: 36:53

It's 'cause the video is so insane. We have to, like, play the loop. I j- It's un- It's actually unbelievable. Like, his body rockets. He's also got the, the suspenders on. He's like a caricature of like-

BRIAN: 37:14

Oh, my God.

GLENNIS: 37:15

So, it's so bad. We shouldn't be laughing.

BRIAN: 37:19

We're terrible people. Like- We're terrible people. Oh, my God. Um,

GLENNIS: 37:23

anyway- No … uh, Kathy Hochul, governor of the state- Oh … of New York. My God. A Buffalo Bills fan. That's how we got here, and she's from Buffalo. That's why I say Buffalo blood when I talk about her. She has put a… You gu- You need to stop. It's so bad. She put a, she put a year-long ban on building any new data centers in the state of New York, which I think is objectively good. Let's just, like, take a beat. I don't think it's gonna make us fall behind China. I don't think we're gonna lose a ton of economic opportunity. I guess only time will tell.

BRIAN: 37:56

Politically, it's a winning hand for Dems, and so- Yeah … I can lean into that, even if I don't think that moratoriums as a whole are brilliant- Yeah … policy solutions. I, I do think that it is politically a very popular thing to do, so pop off, Kathy Hochul. And not only are we getting good news out of our governor in New York, but here in the city, we are getting what most people that I talk to think is good news, which is a potential horse carriage ban. Has been debated for many, many years after- Decades … yeah, forever. Uh- Mm-hmm … in New York, it's like a really hot political issue because movies make people think that there should be horse carriages in Central Park. The horses are alleged to not be treated right. They pass out from heat and exhaustion. Yeah. They'll occasionally get spooked and, like, run into cars and slam stuff, and then recently, a tourist died after getting run over by one of these carriages that he was riding, and that was, like, a straw that broke the horse carriage's back.

GLENNIS: 38:57

It's long overdue. I, I don't know why it was such a hot political issue. To me, the carriages are objectively harmful. Horses are animals that are very sensitive. They're easily spooked. Anyone who's spent any time in Central Park knows that it is a very busy, hectic- Yeah … place.

BRIAN: 39:15

So good news from New York, moratoriums and bans.

GLENNIS: 39:19

We're happy to see it. We really are. And that's Vibes Only.

BRIAN: 39:22

That's Vibes Only for the week. Hit follow or subscribe wherever you're listening.

GLENNIS: 39:26

And we'll be back next Thursday for another vibe check. See you then. It's so crazy. I don't know how he survived that, to be honest. He probably broke every bone in his body.

BRIAN: 39:36

Okay. Have

GLENNIS: 39:37

a good

BRIAN: 39:37

week,

GLENNIS: 39:37

guys. Okay. Have a great week.