The Cool Zone Response to Trump’s State of the Union

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Then she says, have you seen a photo of my son? And I'm like, who is this person? Welcome to the Boys and Girls Podcast. Arranged marriage is basically a reality show. And you're auditioning for your soulmate. And who's judging? Only your entire family. I sacrificed myself to this ancient tradition, hoping to find love the right way. And instead, I found chaos, comedy, and a lot of cringe. Listen to Boys and Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone. It's Emily Simpson and Shane Simpson from the Legally Brunette podcast. Each week, we're bringing you true crime through a legal lens. Whether you want all the facts on the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie or you still need to wrap your head around the ditty verdict, we're breaking it all down step by step. And we're not just lawyers. We're also husband and wife. It makes for some pretty entertaining episodes. Listen to Legally Brunette on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The winner of the iHeart Podcast Award is... See all the nominees now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Audible is a proud sponsor of the Audible Audio Pioneer Award. Explore the best selection of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals all in one easy app. Audible. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free trial at audible.com. Cool Zone Media. Welcome to It Could Happen Here. I just want you to know our nation is back. It is the golden age of America. And we're going to talk about this year's State of the Union by President Donald Day Trump. And I've been saying our nation's back since way before it left, honestly. So I'm glad to see that we've caught up. But back to when, sir? You know. It's a transformation like no one has ever seen before. A turnaround for the ages. Mm-hmm. We're going to do it better and better. Better and bigger and brighter and whatever B word he can decide to include. We just keep winning. So you're getting some idea from this about the tenor of the president's State of the Union speech that we all just listened to. Yeah. It is like 8.30 p.m. at the end of a long workday that was already long before we listened to the president. 11.30 p.m. for Gare. Yeah. 11.30 p.m. for Gare. But I don't actually believe in time zones. I think that's a conspiracy, but we'll talk about that later. So in terms of like first responses to the State of the Union, I think mine was Trump spent a lot more time focusing on the achievements of other people, like literally handing out a bunch of awards and less time as a percentage of the speech actually trumpeting things that he did and his own successes in a way that I found kind of telling. And I think this merges with the fact that he did not mention ICE by name during the speech. Nope. So I kind of saw this as a recognition by him and his people that like there's some face that needs to be saved. And we've got to try in this speech to kind of minimize our least attractive attributes and maximize the positive, you know? Yeah, my take was that he was trying to simulate empathy and try to keep hold of that Republican crowd and try to endear himself to them as much as he could, despite the state of things. yeah yeah and trying to associate himself with a lot of acts of of heroism or military valor or you know like which is classic strongman stuff right like the uh you know we're achieving a time of national greatness here are some examples of masculine virtue blah blah blah we saw uh the u.s men's ice hockey team i really hated that 12 minutes in yeah because we just keep winning Our country's winning too much. We're winning so much that we don't know what to do. And here are a bunch of those winners. And I did find that kind of surprising too, like how quickly they got brought in and how much of a, like a lot of the length of this was just him announcing people who had won something or were about to win something and everybody clapping. Yeah. It's the most medals that we've seen in a State of the Union address. And I wonder, because I know one way in which these get quote-unquote rated by news agencies is like, how much percentage of the time was it standing ovations? How much percentage of the time, how many times they have to stop for applause? Maybe he's trying to game that system? Amazing. That's pretty funny. It was really easy to take notes because of how much applause there was in between single lines he said. And not just applause, right? There were a large period of time when people were chanting USA, USA, or Charlie Kirk's first name. Weird. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it started off with some more statistics of dubious origin, but the economy and various other things. He claimed that fentanyl was down 56%, that it was the strongest border security ever, that there's been no illegal aliens admitted to the United States in the past nine months. Zero. Well, that's a tautology, right? Like, when you are admitted, that means you have been processed and released into the United States. So by definition. Yes. Have there ever been illegal aliens admitted to the United States? Yeah, that is not what admission is, right? It's like saying there were... It's like being like, no bank robbers have legally robbed a bank. Yeah, exactly. It's like, well, no, I guess you're right. Yeah, no fish have walked under my orders. And Robert, you mentioned you wanted to say something a little bit about the fentanyl thing he brought up. Yeah, I mean, I love fentanyl, obviously. Big fan of the stuff, you know. I don't like to use it, just like to read about it, study it. use it. No, that's a joke. That's a bit. Don't do fentanyl, folks. Please. And actually, people aren't doing as much fentanyl, which has nothing to do with the Trump administration. So when he was like, there's 56% less fentanyl getting into the country. I just I knew that was wrong, because first off, I remembered reading that during the Biden administration, there had started to be like a significant constriction of the international fentanyl supply market. So I looked it up and I was, in fact, accurate in my recollection. I found a pretty good article hosted by the University of Maryland's Medical School by Carl Hill, which notes that in 2023, the journal Science published an article by a Maryland criminologist that argued that the drop in overdose deaths that had started to be noticed in 2023 was driven by a collapse of the international fentanyl market supply chain. And you may note, 2023 is when Donald Trump was not the president. For this article, we were trying to understand why fentanyl overdose deaths after rising rapidly for a decade in mid-2023 suddenly turned downward. Peter Reuter, professor of public policy and criminology from the University of Maryland, told the Baltimore Sun, we are reasonably sure that something has happened to the precursor chemical supply from China that was a significant cause of the downturn in fentanyl. So again, what he's saying is the supply constriction happened in 2023, and it doesn't seem to have happened because of stateside U.S. policy. In other words, the contraction of the supply had nothing to do with us stopping fentanyl at the border and everything to do with an issue somewhere in China. Now, there's been a couple of theories as to this, including some international laws that have altered like the way these kind of some of the chemical companies in China have to work. But the gist of it is that this started in the Biden administration and has nothing to do with border policy. It's purely a result of the actual physical supply of fentanyl. And that constriction began in China. Anyway, that's what I had to say. Yeah, I think it's worth noting. I'm not quite sure whether at 56... No idea. It could be seizures that they... Maybe. Seized a lot of fentanyl. I'm not quite sure where that came from. There were a number of statistics which I couldn't track down, right? The 19 billion of fraud in Minnesota by Somali people. There was one I loved. He made a note that 2.4 million Americans have now, ascended wasn't the word he used, but gotten- Have been lifted off of food stamps. Lifted off of food stamps. 2.4 million Americans are off of food stamps. Yeah, and he specifically lifted off, as Gare noted, which would insinuate that their circumstances improved and they no longer needed food stamps. That's not true. Yes. We simply introduced work requirements and other restrictions that kicked 2.4 million Americans off of food stamps. Kicked people off of the food stamp program. Yeah. We pushed people into starvation because we... We lifted them into starvation, Garrison. We lifted them into starvation. And this was his line. right before he started talking about how we're winning so much and brought the hockey team. That was the segue. He was talking about how there's millions of people who now can't get food stamps. And look how much we're winning. Quote, we're winning so much we don't know what to do. That's my big problem. I feel so encountered that. What to do with all the victories. But no, there's a few others. I mean, he's talking about the lowest inflation in five years, which is continuing trends that have... been going on for the past like three years right inflation gas prices mortgage rates in this interesting line a short time ago we were a dead country now we are the hottest hottest the hottest and then he said hottest again and then he had a really a really beautiful line of prose our new friend and partner venezuela has given us barrels of oil our new friend and partner he called out delci by name and was like she's doing great things for venezuela we're going to do great things together like a bizarre really occurrence like but i think that it goes to show like how he understands foreign policy which is in a very transactional way right it is not about an ideological disagreement this is about having someone who he feels is personally loyal to him and and owes him the position that they have uh and that's i think what he's going for in venezuela right he didn't mention the amnesty but he at one point brought down a venezuelan man whose niece was in the audience to reveal that her uncle had been released from prison. I will be eagerly awaiting news on that man's ongoing immigration status. So bizarre. Yeah. There was a lot of this, like, really weird political theater. And so much of it that there just wasn't scenes for all of them. And so there were these, like, awkward open-door moments that were just unnecessary. necessary but that that's what he was going for tonight metal metal metal a lot of medals a lot of medals a lot of awards we got the list right the whole the trifecta we got the uh congressional medal of freedom the medal of honor presidential medal of freedom sorry presidential medal of freedom purple heart oh yeah a purple heart yeah we gave out a purple heart and olympic gold oh yeah many of those he like had this like strange moment where he's like i would like one of those but apparently like it's not yeah for the middle of honors you can only get them in the army maybe they'll open it up maybe they'll open it up and if they do I'll be the first one in line sir sir what he did tout that we ended DEI in America just like one of the annoying talking points that means nothing yeah whilst ice were not mentioned by name there was a lot of border chat right Yeah, especially at the start and then a few times towards the middle end. Yeah, and one of the things he did pretty consistently was talk about horrific incidents, often involving the death of children, sometimes in front of their parents. Yeah. I just want to highlight a couple of those. The first one he talked about, Delilah Coleman, right, who was injured in a crash with a pig rig. The driver as which was not a U.S. citizen, but did have a work permit. a work permit issued by the federal government under Donald Trump And this has been a claim on the right This guy was undocumented for some time right And that California has been giving CDLs to undocumented people In this case, that is not the case. I'm interested in what happened to the Coleman family. I understand they've been through like a horrific thing, right? Their daughter, it looked like she was going to use the use of her legs. She's now relearning to use her legs and to walk, which is great. But previously, they had met with the person who was driving the vehicle that caused their daughter this horrific injury. And they had explicitly declined to politicize it, saying that they weren't interested in doing that. So I don't know what happened here to now Trump proposing a law, which Delilah's law, he's calling it right, which would... I'm trying to remember if he said stop non-citizens or undocumented people or illegal aliens to use his parlance from getting CDLs, obviously. I think illegal aliens. There are states which will give you driver's license without asking for documentation for the very obvious reason that people in this country have to drive. Large parts of this country are set up around driving. You cannot exist in some parts of America without a motor car. And it is better that people get a license and insurance than that they don't do that. He said barring any state from granting commercial driver's license to illegal aliens was his framing. Yeah, that's his normal framing. I have never had a CDL in this country, and I've never gone through the application process, but I would assume one would first need a federal work permit, as one would for any employment. Well, you need a driver's license. Yes, you would also need a driver's license. Let's start there. You've got to have a driver's license to get a CDL. Yeah, there's a background check component, it looks like, to the CDL. One of the lines that he used right before this call to action was that illegal aliens cannot read road signs. Yes. Yeah, that's how we introduced the section of like, yeah, they're all through this country driving around. They don't know what like a warning sign is or a stop sign. Obviously, lots of people come to this country and are perfectly capable of speaking English. There are also people who are born in this country who don't speak English. Well, we just we don't have an official language. Just to say a lot of people can't drive very well in this country. As an L.A. driver, a lot of you people don't know how to merge. And it has nothing to do with what language you speak or your citizen status. Okay? Like, this is a pointless remark to make, is my point. It's just a policy that they can make. Right. Yeah, yeah. Didn't he sign an executive order officially making English the official language at some point early on? Yes. No, I'm just... I'm trying to remember if that was the case or not. Yes, yes. Okay. The other claim that I thought was interesting was the killer of this young woman in Charlotte, right? Who was killed. The train stabbing incident from last year. Yeah, Irina Zorutska. And Trump claimed that the man who killed her had come in through an open border. I am not able to find any evidence that this person is an immigrant to the United States. I have not found that reported anywhere. His father appears to have at least resided, if not been born in the United States. His name is De Carlos Brown Jr. And so assuming that the De Carlos Brown, who is resident in the same place, is his father, therefore, I would assume that he was born in the United States and had citizenship through birthright citizenship. I have no idea about it. His father could well be a citizen too. I'm just trying to research things in a hurry. I have not seen it reported anywhere. Zero reporting about this man being an immigrant, including from right wing outlets who used this horrific incident to stoke like racist crime panic narratives last year. Yeah. And that may not have been the goal. It may have just been more traditional like race panic. Yeah. Yeah. That was what it was. They used it for racialized crime panic. This comment by Trump inferring that he is an immigrant may have been an unscripted ad lib that he just did. but from what we could tell this man was not an immigrant yeah no it was just like a guy did a bad thing nor was he released early from custody by the way which is part of the narrative that the right was using in the reporting around this was that this guy was like released early from prison and he did serve the entirety of his sentence he may not have been released early from his sentence but you're released early from your sentence of not listening to us here's some ads I hated that. That's one of the worst ones. Yeah, well, too bad. Ever feel like you're being chased by the marriage police? Welcome to Boys and Girls, the podcast where dating isn't dating. Arranged marriage is basically a reality show, except the contestants are strangers and your entire family is judging. You're sipping coffee with one maybe, grabbing dinner with another, and praying your karmic Ken or Barbie appears before your shelf life runs out. Trust me, I've been through this ancient and unshakable tradition. I jumped in, hoping to find love the right way, and instead I found chaos, cringe and comedy. And now, I'm looking for healing. Boys and Girls dives into every twist and turn of the arranged marriage carousel. The meet awkward, the near misses, the heartbreak, and let's not forget all the jokes. Listen to Boys and Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know Roald Dahl, the writer who thought up Willy Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy? Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roald Dahl, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans. What? And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. The guy was a spy. Did you know Dahl got cozy with the Roosevelt's? Played poker with Harry Truman. And had a long affair with a congresswoman. And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock, before writing a hit James Bond film. How did The Secret Agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? and what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids. The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to The Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Dirty Rush, the truth about sorority life, the good, the bad, and the sisterhood. With your hosts, me, Gia Giudice, Daisy Kent, and Jennifer Kessler. Rush, the recruitment, the ritual, the reality of Greek life has been a mystery for those outside the sorority circles until now. Is it really a supportive sisterhood that's simply misunderstood? Or is there something more scandalous happening on campuses across the country? In this podcast, we pledge to peel back the layers and spell the truth one Greek letter at a time. Pledges and actives, rush chairs and ritual keepers. Some call it the best time of their life while others say it's a nightmare. From a perfect rush to recruitment scandals, what is really going on behind the doors of those sorority houses from Alpha to Omega? We're taking you inside sorority row, including the chapter room, as we explore the fellowship and the frenemies. Let's get dirty. Listen to Dirty Rush on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Ryder Strong with a podcast called The Red Weather. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Traynor, disappeared from a commune. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. No, I am not your guru. Back then, I lied to everybody. They have had this case for 30 years. I'm going back to my hometown to uncover the truth. You can now binge all episodes of The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Hooray. So in the start to middle section where he was still kind of talking about the economy before the entire pageantry performance took over, he started talking about the tax cuts and the one big beautiful bill. Yeah. And he had this one line about how all the Democrats voted against these tax cuts. And this made all the Democrats stand up and applaud. Yeah, that was kind of funny. But then he talked about this mom who was homeschooling two kids. Oh, yeah. Who also works as a waitress during the night shift on top of her husband, who also works full time. And how these tax cuts have gotten them to take an extra $5,000 home each year. Right. This is the no tax on tips thing. And the story of this mom who's homeschooling kids and working at night and a full time husband was framed as this triumph of the American economy. Yeah. It was hard to interpret this as like a massive economic triumph when you were talking about a mother who's not only doing labor at home by schooling her children and then also working nights and a husband who's also working full time. And that demonstrates how difficult it actually is to exist economically, especially if you have a family in the country right now. And his kind of twisting of this scenario to support his notion that he's helping the American economy, I found to be quite interesting. And that's mostly what the Democratic response by Governor Spanberger was about. is how it's pretty clear to most Americans that it's actually been quite economically challenging based on his wildly unstable trade agreements and tariffs, which have caused a great deal of economic instability in this country. Yeah, there was a feeling during the Biden administration, especially with Psaki, right? The Biden administration was somewhat gaslighting people as they struggled economically. Sure. But Trump has not diverged from that policy, right? No. And obviously now the Dems are calling it out. Talking of budgetary issues, did anybody else catch that the Democrats have frozen funding to DHS who would like to be out there helping people shovel their snow? I missed this. I missed this shoveling snow line. Yeah, I didn't catch that either. Really? I caught it. I caught it. Okay, I thought I hallucinated that for a minute. Yeah, you did not hallucinate it. Maybe that flooded the banks of, like, Gary and I's nonsense filters, and we just shut down for a second. I don't know. yeah that one like i actually went back on the live stream and that was one of the few moments where uh i uh yeah i wondered what heck he was talking about yeah i'm sure he's going to be deploying fema fema yeah right fema to new england to help shovel this snow yeah great uh i'm sure that will be received well yeah that that was one of the more insane ones that i that it just it really took me a uh a second to work out what on earth was happening but yeah i believe that that That was maybe a FEMA reference. No, I won't be happy until Homeland Security investigation agents are shoveling snow. E-R-O. Honestly, make them do it in every state, even the ones without snow. Just get out there and pantomime it with a shovel, you know? We got sand in California. We'll find them some work. Shovel some sand. I think the most interesting portion of the State of the Union address was when Trump talked about his tariffs. specifically because just days ago, the Supreme Court struck down his tariffs as not being legal. This will get discussed more in executive disorder tomorrow. But I found this to be quite interesting because Trump acknowledged all of this and then discussed how he is going to keep doing the tariffs anyway right in front of the justices. Just openly talking about defying a Supreme Court order in front of them. And the camera kept going back and forth between the president and the justices as they just like sat there, completely blank face as he's talking about defying their order. And this is like real, real peak constitutional crisis stuff. He kept saying it's an unfortunate ruling by the Supreme Court. Mind you, there was four of them there. They all stayed stoic and some voted for him, some voted against him. So it was a mixed bag. But he was basically like, it was like, you know, when you do something wrong and the teacher lectures you in front of the class, It was very much that they didn't really give him much of reaction. He was talking about all countries and companies want to keep the deal talking about tariffs and it's saving our countries. And this is such an unfortunate ruling by the Supreme Court but that it doesn matter because he going to keep doing it We still doing the tariffs Yeah we talked a lot about you know there going to be a certain point in this administration there where it going to come down to a Supreme Court ruling saying that something he doing is illegal and he's going to keep doing it anyway. He's already flirted with this in the past year. There's a few kind of more minor moments where if not fully breaking a ruling was bending it to a near buckle. Yeah. But like this is I think this is the most blatant incident so far of the president just blatantly ignoring and defying a supreme court ruling um and then he talked about how you know ideally tariffs will take the place of income tax which sure man good luck with that yeah cool uh he had a bit where he was like we've worked out a new and totally legal way to do it is that when he mentioned that congressional action won't be necessary for the new tariffs i think so yeah he was there was some new and established i mean because that that would be the legal way to do it that is that's the power that congress has yeah yeah we have the need to work it out like we've got that one covered oh my god do you want to talk about the the rate player protection pledge yes sure yes the idea that tech companies will have to provide their own power to the data centers popping up around the country lowering energy costs for for residents of these neighborhoods Yeah. And this is relevant for a couple of reasons. He's talking about allowing basically the issue is that all of these data centers have increased electricity costs for a lot of Americans. And he's claiming we're going to put that on the tech companies by allowing them to make their own power plants. Like that's probably he says by making them responsible for like funding the power that their data centers cost. But specifically the way this is supposed to work is by letting them build power plants. Is that explicitly laid out in this plan? Because the way he said it certainly was unclear. I mean, he said they're going to have power plants. The direct statement was like tech companies will be operating power plants that they're using to fuel these facilities. and that's like in line with lobbying Silicon Valley has been doing for years to make it easier for them to create small nuclear reactors. Like this has been for the last like several years, Silicon Valley interests, including like K-Rose Power, have been pushing to make it a lot easier regulation wise to operate small nuclear plants. Like that's definitely what he was referring to. Hmm, that's great. I feel good about that. Yeah, I mean, there's a good BBC article on it from like 2025 with the title Why Big Tech's Nuclear Plans Could Blow Up, but it features like a lot of quotes from guys at AI companies and at Google talking about like, small nuclear reactors could provide 24-7 clean energy near data centers, according to Haider Raza, an expert in AI and energy use at the University of Essex. Like there's a lot of these quotes that have been going around for years. So when I heard Trump say they'll have their own power plants, that's what I read it in the context of. Okay. and he just he says big tech companies he didn't list out like who yeah he doesn't who who that would be because it's just like not a thought out plan it's just something for a headline yeah this is like the kind of conclusion of years of lobbying for small nuclear plants on behalf of like big tech companies and i'm not against the idea of more nuclear power i am against the idea of letting open ai yeah it'd be the ones who have operated a power plant of any kind yeah yeah yeah And having it in the State of the Union is something of a signal by him to them, right? Like that they are like his constituency. Yeah, I think it's also, as Gare noted, it's like a nod to the affordability thing. Like he's had to deal with that a lot because people can't not notice that things are getting more expensive. So he's promising your power bill will go down because I've done this thing. Yeah. Talking of getting more expensive, he spent a while talking about fuel prices. like how he'd gone around and he'd seen like 185 a gallon gas and uh blah blah blah like i thought it was interesting that clearly they understand right again it shows that affordability is something that they know they're weak on and he's trying to trying to i guess reinforce the areas where he feels stronger within that and not talk about the ones he doesn't he talked about home prices talked a lot about his trump savings accounts yeah the trump accounts for for kids There is an infomercial vibe. He plugged a couple different Trump. Trump Rx and Trump accounts. Yeah. And he talked a lot about like, I think you got the transcript in front of you, if I'm not mistaken. He said that with a small investment, they could be worth a thousand dollars. A hundred, a hundred thousand dollars. A hundred thousand dollars by the time the person is 18. Yeah. The website describes it as we're building a long term financial security for millions of children by creating tax advantage investment accounts for U.S. citizens under the age of 18. it asks you to fill out a form and then it says get a thousand dollars for every american child born between january 1st 2025 and december 31st 2028 the account is fully in your child's name and you are the sole custodian until they turn 18 no contributions necessary but you can deposit up to 5 000 per year for maximum growth that's what the website says yeah like and like if this is i I guess to start off, this was like real. If it was real, then like, I don't have a problem with the idea. Like it's okay. Sure. But that's my immediate question, especially since it seems like, uh, the big thing that he was harping on is that like, this was funded in large part by like a six something billion dollar donation by the, by the Dells, by like Michael Dell and his wife. Yeah. And so first off I've used Dell computers. So I was immediately like, Oh, this doesn't seem like it could be good. But yeah, I don't know enough about this program to really know, though. It's just like my, it's a Trump thing involving money. So I'm on edge. But what are we actually looking at here? Yeah, so I'm just trying to work out the amount of interest it would take for that 1,000 to turn into 100,000 in 18 years. If I just plug it into the inflation calculator, yeah, even at 16%, that's not doing it. Well, if they put that $1,000 in NVIDIA stock five years ago, then it's certainly possible. I think that's part of these accounts is that it's tied in with stock investments. It seems like it doesn't sound like it's just like a high-yield savings account. Right. The other Trump-branded service that was advertised infomercial style during the State of the Union address was TrumpRx, which is essentially Trump's version of Mark Cuban's cost-plus-drugs website to get prescription drugs at very close to the cost of manufacturing, something that Trump reiterated multiple times, that he did not name the Trump accounts or Trump Rx himself. Yeah. Sure. Is this the part when he tried to use a woman's IVF story for propaganda? Yes. Yeah, I really disliked that. Yeah. Yes, he did. One of these people either brought in or sitting high up in the pews, he tells a lot of these little stories throughout the State of the Union. He talked about a woman who was trying to do IVF and the drugs were very expensive. And now, thanks to TrumpRx, it's less money. Well, it's just obnoxious because Trump said that he was, quote unquote, the father of IVF and claimed to be able to provide resources for people that want to pursue IVF. and he has not fallen through on any of those promises. He signed some executive orders. That did fuck all. And it's still an absolutely outrageous cost to do IVF, and he's done nothing. He's done nothing. Yeah. So to use it as propaganda, I find it to be extremely offensive. Well, yeah, sure. There's a lot that's offensive about the propaganda he does in this, like about the things he uses for propaganda, all the murders, and like that's... 100%. That's all this is. I just didn't want to. I just didn't want to skip over that because it's not going to get as much of a headline as some of the other horrific things he did. But it sucked. Yeah. You know what else sucks pretty hard, Robert? Ads. Not the ads for this podcast. Oh. No, absolutely not. No, I was thinking something's very different. Ever feel like you're being chased by the marriage police? Welcome to Boys and Girls, the podcast where dating isn't dating. Arranged marriage is basically a reality show, except the contestants are strangers and your entire family is judging. You're sipping coffee with one maybe, grabbing dinner with another, and praying your karmic Ken or Barbie appears before your shelf life runs out. Trust me, I've been through this ancient and unshakable tradition. I jumped in, hoping to find love the right way. And instead, I found chaos, cringe, and comedy. And now, I'm looking for healing. Boys and Girls dives into every twist and turn of the arranged marriage carousel. The meet-awkward, the near-misses, the heartbreak, and let's not forget all the jokes. Listen to Boys and Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know Roald Dahl, the writer who thought up Willy Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy? Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roald Dahl, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans. What? And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you, the guy was a spy. Did you know Dahl got cozy with the Roosevelt's, played poker with Harry Truman, and had a long affair with a congresswoman? And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock, before writing a hit James Bond film. How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? And what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids? The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to The Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Dirty Rush, the truth about sorority life, the good, the bad, and the sisterhood. With your hosts, me, Gia Giudice, Daisy Kent, and Jennifer Kessler. Rush, the recruitment, the ritual, the reality of Greek life has been a mystery for those outside the sorority circles until now. Is it really a supportive sisterhood that's simply misunderstood? or is there something more scandalous happening on campuses across the country? In this podcast, we pledge to peel back the layers and spell out the truth one Greek letter at a time. Pledges and actives, rush chairs and ritual keepers. Some call it the best time of their life while others say it's a nightmare. From a perfect rush to recruitment scandals, what is really going on behind the doors of those sorority houses from Alpha to Omega? We're taking you inside sorority row, including the chapter room, as we explore the fellowship in The Frenemies. Let's get dirty. Listen to Dirty Rush on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Ryder Strong with a podcast called The Red Weather. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Traynor, disappeared from a commune. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. So no, I am not your guru. Back then, I lied to everybody. They have had this case for 30 years. I'm going back to my hometown to uncover the truth. You can now binge all episodes of The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we are back. One thing that did get both chambers applauding, to the surprise of Trump, because both for the Democrats applauding and a little bit of the Republicans, he talked about the Stop Insider Trading Act, which would somehow, I need to look into the actual bill itself, but restrict to Congress people from doing insider trading. And this did cause a lot of applause on the Democrats' side and some applause on the Republican side. And Trump remarked on both being interesting and then made a Nancy Pelosi joke. She was there. They showed her later on. She was there. In terms of disruptions to the Democratic side, Al Green did a little protest thing at the beginning. And then during the section where Trump was talking about the Democrat DHS shutdown he told he told the room to stand up if you believe that that protecting American citizens is more important than protecting illegal immigrants or something to that effect The role of the government is to protect American citizens, right? Yes. Not illegal immigrants. And this caused a shouting back and forth between Alain Omar and Trump, which lasted for quite a while. Yeah. I wasn't able to hear very much on the news feed. and it's I've not seen much reporting on it yet because we were recording this literally minutes after yeah she shouted that he's killing Americans okay that makes sense okay yeah accurate which he is that is a solid that is a solid retort when you're talking about the DHS shutdown and standing up for American citizens as American citizens are being gunned down by the DHS that is a fine retort a retort that was mirrored in the Democratic response which we might talk about in executive disorder tomorrow So he mentioned trans people kind of one time in the speech close to the middle. He talked about how a school socially transitioned someone without telling parents. This kid ran away from home and then a left wing judge refused to return the child home. And this person who was at the time a trans guy was sent to an all boys state home, but is now a proud young woman with a scholarship to Liberty University. Yeah. Yeah. And this woman who was part of this little performance did this, like, zoomer finger gesture bit. Yeah. The Hailey Bieber hand gesture? Yeah. I'm hip with the kids. Yeah, I'm not. I don't know what you're talking about. It was annoying. Like, we need more normal D transitioners, but if you are, you just never, are never going to show up to anything like this. No. Yeah, yeah, right, yeah. Who wants to have the president of the United States talk about your transition? You know what? When Joe Biden gets elected again, I'll show up. I'll show up at the State of the Union. When Joe Biden gets elected again. I think it could happen. You know, stranger things have. But, you know, Trump's line after this was, you know, talking about how there's all these transitions happening without telling parents and the quote, we must ban it and we must ban it immediately. Whatever. And the trans stuff was all in relation to minors transitioning without parental approval. That was Trump's framing for the entirety of the transition stuff. It wasn't expanded beyond that. He did go off script to be like, these people are crazy during that. Yeah. When the Democrats didn't applaud for his trans comments, he did start talking about how deranged the Democrats are. He said, shame on you. And got like a kind of a chant going almost. There was a lot of shame stuff back and forth in this section. Same thing during the stand-up of You Believe, the role of the government is to protect American citizens. Those were the most out-and-out fascist moments of this whole thing, in my opinion. We got a Kirk moment after this trans thing. Talked about this renewal in Christianity among young people, thanks to one Charlie Kirk, who was martyred for his beliefs. Yeah. They trotted out Erica to do her schtick that she's been perfecting for the past six months. Surprisingly, no fire or sparkers or anything. It was hard to recognize her without the fireworks. Then after this section, after the Charlie Kirk Christianity section, after the St. Kirk section ended, it really became a military pageant for the rest. It got very Metal Gear solid. Correct. For the final, final, you know, 45 minutes where he brought up a whole bunch of people and gave the medals, as we've discussed, and then recounted the Maduro extraction. Yeah. In an extremely Metal Gear Solid style. He talked about, you know, the bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities. He talked about bombing drug smugglers and remarked that we, quote, seriously damaged their fishing industry, unquote, which is a little joke about how the people that they blew up might have just been fishermen, not actually drug smugglers. Well, and a joke about how the fishing industry has collapsed because people are too scared to get murdered by the U.S. to go fish so they support their families. Yeah, in addition to the fact that they were already struggling to afford fuel. Like, I know Venezuelan fishermen. Things weren't going great for them. Talked about how Hamas had to dig through piles of hundreds of bodies to find some of the slain hostages to return them as a part of the negotiations between Trump, Hamas, and Israel and boasted that he had ended 10 wars. And Marco Rubio looked a little soulless. Yeah. Marky Mark. I took a little bit of a note on Marco Rubio because he said he will go down as the best ever secretary of state and it seemed like he was really throwing his support towards Marco versus Vance tonight at the State of the Union. No, because Vance is now in charge of the war on fraud, the totally real thing that is happening, which Trump announced as J.D. Vance's new role is to be in charge of the war on fraud. Great pick. J.D. Vance, war fraud. But do you want to talk a little bit more about this, like, Metal Gear Solid, Hideo Kojima military pageant finale to this speech? Yeah, all I know about Hideo Kojima is he tweeted in support of the FDF and then deleted it. Sad. Yeah, well, you live by the tweet, you die by the tweet. A lot of this was kind of textbook fashy stuff, not to overly belabor the point, but the bringing out of the survivors and victims of crime, the parading of military heroes, right? Like, you can just go to Robert Paxton's book, which I have just over there, but I'm not going to read from it right now. Anatomy of Fascism. Yes, The Anatomy of Fascism. And you can start checking off the list and you see so much of it here, right? Yeah, I mean, a mix of like, you know, war veterans, World War II. Trump tied a lot of this to 1776, the fact that the 250 anniversary of the United States is coming up. Yep. And then the national betrayal and the scapegoat group and him being the renovation. Like, we got it all, baby. yeah his speech read like he looked at paxton has these motivating passions of fascism and it looks like he kind of went down that as a checklist as he was right as whoever wrote this was writing it right like it has almost everything from that the glorification of martial valor like i said the blaming of a scapegoat group like i alone can bring this nation back to greatness yeah things that were not new fort bragg is back james uh yes actually a different a different different brag yeah uh they found another guy called brag uh which he didn't mention they uh they thought brag is back but it's a different brag this time and i'm sure it's just a coincidence it's the same as at first but no like robert i think you're totally right that like he started off by you know you have to address the economic stuff at the front because he ran on so much of it but they want to get through that as quickly as possible then in order to try to coax this like patriotic spirit, it devolves into this ceremony of military greatness, of returning to military greatness, something that was lost. Now we have redone. This was the most successful military operation in decades. I had foreign leaders calling me to congratulate me on it. We took down the Chinese and Russian defense systems. This guy's leg was ripped apart by bullets, but he still landed the chopper. So much of it becomes about the heroic moments done by other people to to pad pad around the actual fractured state of of of trump's of trump's america and waving the bloody shirt is a phrase you hear like it is a phrase you hear associated with fascist movements it's literally referring to like a thing that happened during the rise of the nazis right um as a result of like the murders of some of their street fighters but that's i mean like he he's doing very much a version of that here like including the fact that while he was talking about this attack on Venezuela and the guy who got injured piloting the chopper, he spent like a lot of time talking about blood, like sloshing around in the bottom of the flight deck. The aisle. The aisle or whatever. Of the aisle. The aisle of the Chinook. The blood was streaming down. So all of the, all the special forces in the back knew that the pilot was injured and that they were all at risk. Very bloody, very, very bloody speech in general. Yeah, a lot of blood mentions. There's similarly like the Lake and Riley sections of his State of the Union address last year were very similar. And he was trying to, you know, play the hits in terms of how much that stuff, that stuff played well among his base last year. He was trying to recreate that in a few moments. When one of the instances you have is, you know, someone who was socially transitioned who now isn't, and someone who was injured in a car accident, you know, not a murder. Those are two of your instances. It's starting to get weakened a little bit. He tried to use the Kirk assassination as one of these instances. and then one instance of a stabbing that was a murder. Those were the bloody shirts that he was waving, as well as the National Guard. And Jared Kushner. Oh yeah, Kushner was out there. Mentioned him by name, I think more than once. It's always a jump scare for me. Yeah, he may have mentioned Kushner more than Vance. Yes, definitely. He barely mentioned J.D. Vance, which is very interesting. Yeah. Does anybody else have any thoughts? Nope. It's over. I'm glad. Yeah, let's be done with this. Let's be done with this. It was too long to begin with. I wish we were finished with this State of the Union as soon as Al Green was. There's a reference to him getting kicked out for the second year in a row. Yeah, he's made it happen. I wouldn't have planned dinner for halfway through. We're like, don't worry, I'm not going to be there long. I'm going to get kicked out immediately. Don't worry, guys. Why not? And, you know, if we decide there's more to talk about, we'll mention it on ED. But for now, that's all we got. The Save America Act he did mention, which we need to cover in depth very soon. And we will. Yes, we will. But for now, bye. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com. Or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode description. Thanks for listening. or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Traynor, disappeared from a commune. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. No, I am not your guru. Back then, I lied to everybody. They have had this case for 30 years. I'm going back to my hometown to uncover the truth. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever. you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, it's Emily Simpson and Shane Simpson from the Legally Brunette podcast. Each week we're bringing you true crime through a legal lens. Whether you want all the facts on the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie or you still need to wrap your head around the ditty verdict, we're breaking it all down step by step. And we're not just lawyers, we're also husband and wife. It makes for some pretty entertaining episodes. Listen to Legally Brunette on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See all the nominees now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Audible is a proud sponsor of the Audible Audio Pioneer Award. Explore the best selection of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals all in one easy app. Audible. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free trial at audible.com. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.