When justice bends, nature calls, and government stalls, what do we do to keep trust alive?

A courtroom trembles, a forest goes quiet, and a Capitol locks its doors and somehow they all tell the same story about trust. We start with the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey and examine what happens when the Justice Department looks like an instrument of revenge rather than a referee. We weigh the evidence, the reported push from political appointees, and the practical stakes for congressional testimony, prosecutorial norms, and the fragile belief that law can still be blind.

From there, we step into the Gombe forest to honor Jane Goodall her patient, ground-shifting discoveries and her stubborn, disciplined optimism that turned science into stewardship. Toolmaking chimps, mourning and conflict, kinship over dominion her life reminds us that hope works only when tied to action. Roots & Shoots, local projects, and the invitation to plant a tree or fund a habitat are not small gestures; they’re how trust is rebuilt in the real world.

Finally, we confront the ritual of government shutdowns: the history, the needless cost, and the predictable ending in compromise. We call out the politics that rewards defiance over governing and explain how normalized dysfunction corrodes civic faith. Along the way, we challenge the media’s left–right reflex around mass violence and the algorithmic churn that turns tragedy into team sport, arguing for slower, clearer reporting and prevention-focused solutions.

If you’re tired of cynicism but hungry for clarity, this conversation offers a map: protect prosecutorial independence, practice transparent compromise, support conservation, and choose small, concrete acts over doomscrolling. Subscribe, share this episode with a friend who needs a dose of stubborn hope, and leave a review with one action you’ll take this week to strengthen trust where you live.

Chapters

• 1:32 Framing Three Crises, One Question
• 2:17 Comey Indictment and Rule of Law
• 7:07 Political Pressure on DOJ
• 11:30 Stakes for Justice and Trust
• 14:07 Jane Goodall’s Life and Impact
• 21:07 From Discovery to Conservation
• 24:26 A Call to Act, Not Despair
• 25:45 Government Shutdowns: Ritual Dysfunction
• 29:33 Costs, Consequences, and Compromise
• 32:23 Rebuilding Trust Across Spheres
• 34:12 Media Polarization and Violence Narratives
• 38:48 Beyond Left–Right: Root Causes
• 43:58 Irony, Online Culture, and Escalation
• 47:54 History, Rhetoric, and Responsibility

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:46

Welcome to the Darrell McLean Show, Independent Media That Won't Reinforce Tribalism. We have one planet, nobody is leaving. Let us reason together. Welcome back. So this today's show is stitched together from a few threads that may feel disconnected at first glance. The indictment of James Comey, the passing of Jane Goodall, and the latest government shutdown. Now one is about justice and fragility, one is about creation and our place in it, and one is about governance and what happens when politics become a circus. Together, they ask the same question though. How do we hold on to the integrity that we must have in a time when institutions shake, when trust thins, and when cynicism becomes cheap? So let's start with the courtroom first, with the indictment of James Comey. So James Comey is the former FBI director, and he was indicted on two counts of lying to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceedings. The charges tie back to his 2020 testimony about the Russian probe and the Clinton Foundation. Now, of course the indictment doesn't mean conviction, it means grand jury. It means that they believed that there was enough evidence to try the case. But let's be clear, this isn't happening in a vacuum. Politics sit heavy on the scales. So we have to take it back to 2016, and that was 11 days before the 2016 election. James Comey reopened the Clinton email case, and for the record, the Democrats still say that James Comey doing that is what gave Donald Trump the election and cost Hillary the presidency. Fast four, Trump fires Comey in 2017. For conservatives, Comey becomes the poster child of the so-called deep state. Now, for Trump, Comey is the man who started the Russia investigation that dogged his first presidency. So here we are now. Nearly a decade later, with Trump back in the White House and Pam Bondy running the Justice Department, Korea prosecutors reportedly wanted no part of this case, calling the evidence weak, Bondy pressed ahead. And this is where history helps us see things more clearly. High officials facing charges actually isn't new. Think back to Watergate, John Mitchell, Nixon's attorney general convicted and in prison, or Iran Contra Oliver North on trial, convictions later overturned. Now the difference is those cases grew out of evidence piled high, investigations by independent prosecutors, bipartisan outrage. Comey's case, it looks more like a president wish list delivered through a compliant attorney general. So what happens if he's convicted? Testifying before Congress becomes a mindfill. Partisanships determines who gets prosecuted if he's acquitted, which the person that is overseeing his case is a Biden appointed judge, so if he is acquitted, then Trump's Justice Department loses credibility and half of the country shrugs and says, See the swamp protects its own. Either way, the system takes another hit. Now the real danger is this. When the courtroom becomes an arena for settling political bandettas, justice bends. And if justice keeps bending too far, it eventually is going to break. And here is the irony. Both the left and the right have lived this fear. Conservatives raged when Lewis Lerner at the IRS targeted Tea Party groups and walk free. Liberals still fume over the January 6th insurrection and the figures escaping accountability. Both sides point at the other and say, You have weaponized justice. Few of them, though, admit that they're both holding the same gun every time they get in power. So whether you see Comey as a saint, or whether you see Comey as a villain, or just another bureaucrat who played the game too close to the line, his case is about something larger. It's about whether we still believe law can be blind, or whether we've accepted that it will always wear the colors of whoever happens to be in power. And this is where the real trial is. Not in Virginia, not in America in particular, but for the very soul of this republic. Now to the straight news on the topic coming out of the Washington Post.

SPEAKER_11: 6:01

FBI director James B. Comey was indicted Thursday on allegations that he lied to Congress. A sign of President Donald Trump's growing influence over the Justice Department amid his extraordinary demands it prosecute a man he has long considered a political foe. The indictment issued by a federal grand jury in Alexandria charges Comey with one count of making false statements and one count of obstruction of Congress, charges punishable by up to five years in prison. It was delivered over the objections of career prosecutors who insisted there was insufficient evidence to charge Comey with a crime. Grand jurors rejected a third count sought by government prosecutors involving another alleged false statement, according to court records. Comey declared his innocence and, in a video statement posted to social media, vowed to take his case to trial. My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump, but we couldn't imagine ourselves living any other way, he said. We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn't either. Comey added, somebody I love dearly recently said that fear is the tool of a tyrant. A reference to a letter his daughter wrote to colleagues after Trump administration officials fired her from her role as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan this year. Comey's son-in-law, a supervisor in the same U.S. attorney's office that charged him Thursday, resigned his position moments after the indictment was filed. He quit, he said in a resignation letter reviewed by the Washington Post, to uphold his oath to the Constitution and the country. The case against Comey marks the most significant step to date in Trump's campaign to deploy the Justice Department to avenge personal grievances and prosecute those he perceives as his enemies. The president's demands during the weekend that Attorney General Pam Bondi swiftly charge Comey and others flew in the face of long-standing norms meant to shield the Justice Department from direct political interference from the White House. Last week, the White House forced out the previous top prosecutor on the case after he declined to seek an indictment and replaced him with one of Trump's former personal attorneys. That successor, Lindsay Halligan, now interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, personally presented the case against Comey to the grand jury on Thursday, said two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Before she was sworn in Monday, Halligan had no prosecutorial experience. The indictment also means Comey is the first former senior government official to face prosecution in connection with an investigation that has remained a fixation for Trump since his first term. The FBI's probe of Russian interference in his 2016 election victory. After the charges were filed Thursday night, Trump took to social media to deride Comey as the former corrupt head of the FBI in a social media post. Justice in America, Trump wrote, adding later, He has been so bad for our country for so long, and is now at the beginning of being held responsible for his crimes against our nation. Bondae, in a statement Thursday, said, No one is above the law. Today's indictment reflects this Department of Justice's commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people, she said. We will follow the facts in this case. Comey will be represented by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, a close friend of the former director and a former U.S. attorney in Chicago who prosecuted such figures as former Illinois Governor Rod Blagoyovich. Of the former FBI director, Fitzgerald said in a statement he looked forward to vindicating him in the courtroom. Comey was appointed to the position in 2013 by President Barack Obama and abruptly fired by Trump four years later, amid acrimony largely stemming from the FBI's handling of the Russia probe. The case against him centers on testimony he gave before the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2020, during a hearing on the FBI's handling of that investigation. Under questioning from Senator Ted Cruz, Republican Texas, Comey testified he had never authorized leaks to the media about the Russia investigation or a separate probe into then Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's charitable foundation. Prosecutors contend that answer was untrue, forming the basis for the indictment's first charge. The second count, obstruction of a congressional proceeding, involves the same September 2020 testimony, but does not specify the false and misleading statements Comey is alleged to have made. A separate filing published on the court's public docket Thursday night detailed the third count sought by prosecutors, which the grand jury rejected, and which also dealt with Comey's testimony. To prove their case, prosecutors will have to convince a jury that Comey not only made false statements to Congress, but that he knowingly did so, and that any untruths were material to focus of the Senate proceedings. Comey's legal team could also ask the federal judge handling the case to dismiss the indictment before trial. Some evidence is likely to work in Comey's favor. For instance, Cruz said at the 2020 hearing that the FBI's then deputy director, Andrew McCabe, testified that Comey authorized the disclosure of the Clinton Foundation investigation to a news publication. But the Justice Department's Inspector General concluded in a 2018 report that it was McCabe who authorized the leak and who lacked candor when discussing the matter with Comey and investigators looking into the disclosure. Comey's attorneys are also likely to point to the fact that before Thursday's indictment, the case had been rejected by Eric S. Siebert, the Trump-appointed interim U.S. attorney who had been overseeing the investigation. He concluded there was insufficient evidence to move forward with the prosecution, the post has reported. Siebert resigned last week under intense pressure from the Trump administration, in part because of that decision. Trump appointed Halligan as his replacement because the president said she would get things moving. Since Halligan was sworn in Monday, several attorneys in the Eastern District of Virginia shared a memo with her, laying out concerns with the strength of the evidence. Two people familiar with that meeting said, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely about those internal deliberations. Nevertheless, Halligan opted to move forward. She and first assistant U.S. attorney Mary M. Maggie Cleary were in the Alexandria courtroom when the indictment was delivered to U.S. Magistrate Judge Lindsay R. Vala on Thursday evening. Comey's son-in-law Troy A. Edwards Jr., who had prosecuted and supervised national security cases, was seated in the front row. The grand jury fourperson told Vala that the panel had rejected one of three counts in the originally submitted indictment. Prosecutors then presented a revised indictment, the fourperson said, containing only the two counts that the grand jury had agreed on, and with which Comey was eventually charged. The judge received both indictments Thursday evening, and noted she was puzzled by the outcome. This has never happened before. I've been handed two documents with a discrepancy, Vala said. I'm a little confused why I was handed two things that were inconsistent. Halligan said at the lectern she hadn't seen the first indictment that was rejected, but Valla noted Halligan appeared to have signed that original document. Comey is expected to be arraigned on those charges at an October 9th court hearing before U.S. District Judge Michael S. Nakmanoff, who was assigned to oversee the case. Nachmanoff is an appointee of former President Joe Biden. In his video message Thursday night, Comey said he was not afraid of the legal battles to come. My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system, he said. And I'm innocent, so let's have a trial.

SPEAKER_05: 13:21

Only death could silence Jane Goodall and her passionate defense of the environment.

SPEAKER_10: 13:26

We got the window of time to start healing some of this harm we've done to the environment.

SPEAKER_05: 13:31

At 91, passing away from natural causes while on a speaking tour in California after a lifetime of advocacy, starting with her beloved chimpanzees. In 1960, with little scientific training, she went to Tanzania and changed the way we look at these great apes by doing everything the scientific community then thought was wrong.

SPEAKER_10: 13:53

They were totally horrified. I'd named the chimps instead of numbering them. I talked about them having personalities. I talked about them having minds and being able to have rational thoughts and emotions, happiness, sadness, feel that all of these things were supposed to be attributes only of humans.

SPEAKER_05: 14:11

Immersing herself in the jungle, she discovered the chimps could make tools, ate meat, and fought wars, captivating the world.

SPEAKER_10: 14:20

I got on a geographic cover, and then there were all these people saying, Well, she's only successful because she's got nice legs. My attitude was, well, the first one gets me to get money to study the chimps, which is my passion. Thank you, Lenny.

SPEAKER_05: 16:30

A prolific author. She spoke for the creatures she understood. That's good morning. Good all married twice and had one son, but her lasting legacy is the relationship forged in the wild. Chimpanzees and ourselves. Ann Thompson, NBC News.

SPEAKER_01: 17:12

So from a courtroom in Virginia, let's walk into a forest and tanzania. Jane Goodwall, as you have just heard, has passed away at the age of 91 with one of her clearest, most gentle voices in the last century, now going quiet while actually on a speaking tour. So picture Jane in 1960. No PhD and no formal training, just a notebook, binoculars, and patience. Lewis Leakey sends her into the Gombi Forest. Everyone doubts her. And she sits for hours, weeks, months, until one chimpanzee, David Greybeard, allows her close enough to see what no one had documented before. A chip stripping leaves from a twig, two fish termites from a mound, to use as a tool. That moment cracked open science. We were no longer the only toolmakers. Soon she observed them hunting, she observed them waging war, and mourning the dead. They carried cruelty and tenderness, love and violence, just like us. But Jane didn't keep it to herself. She didn't vanish into academic journals. Jane didn't keep it to herself. She didn't turn inward. She turned outward, becoming an evangelist for the conservation movement. She told the world, we are not lords over creation. We are akin to creation. She spoke with presidents, school children, CEOs, and farmers, and she never lost her faith in young people. Her roots and shoots program empowered kids in over one hundred countries to take care of the earth. She knew despair intimately. She saw force vanish. She saw animals hunted, she saw rivers poisoned, but she refused to surrender to cynicism. Her optimism was stubborn, and her optimism was disciplined, not just a move or a vibe. And now it is ours to carry. Because conservation isn't about saying the environment is important to be saved. It's about saving ourselves. It's about knowing that when we cut down force, we lose the lungs of the planet. That when we drive species into extinction, we lose partners in the great web of our lives. When we pollute our rivers, we end up poisoning ourselves as well as our own children. So here's a little call to arms. If you've been meaning to give to a conservation society program, do it. If you thought about planting a tree, do it. Get your hands dirty. If you wondered whether your kids can make a difference, tell them about Jane, and then let them loose with a stubborn hope that she carried. Jane Goodall lived like someone who understood time differently. She taught us that healing and destruction both happen slowly, one choice at a time. Rest well, Jane Goodwall. You showed us the humanity of animals and reminded us of the animal in our own humanity. The force is calling. I say it's time for us to answer. Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with people who are doing something you don't believe is right. That quote comes from the late Jane Goodall, who died at the age of 91. And now we come from the quiet of the forest back into the noise of the beautiful, beautiful place we call Washington, DC. Because the government is once again shut down. Federal workers once again sidelined, services frozen, and millions caught in the crossfire of a political staring contest. Shutdowns actually feel like a part of the landscape now, but the first modern one only came in the 1980s, when the Attorney General ruled that agencies couldn't appropriate without appropriation. I'm saying the I'm sorry, he couldn't operate without certain appropriations. Since then, more than 20 have happened. Uh Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich in the 90s twice, uh Obama in 2013 when Republicans tried to defund Obamacare, Trump in 2018 through 2019, the longest in history, which was 35 days right through Christmas. Every time it's the same story. Politicians swear they're standing on principle, and every time it ends the exact same way. Compromise. The only real question is how much damage happens before the compromise gets there. Consider the stories in uh 2019. The Coast Guard families lining up at food banks, TSA agents calling out sick en masse, scientists barred from their labs, research ruined, parks rangers furloughed, national treasures left unprotected, veterans waiting for benefits, farmers waiting for loans. And here's the kicker. Shutdowns don't save money. They actually cost billions of dollars. Lost productivity, delayed contract, back paychecks that still have to be cut. It's vandalism dressed up as fiscal discipline. But the deeper danger is actually civic. When dysfunction becomes routine, trust decays in the systems. Citizens start to shrug and say maybe the government actually doesn't work and maybe the government doesn't matter at all. And that, my friends, is how democracies die. Slowly. Not with coups, but with cynicism. And here's the lesson from 40 years. Shutdowns always end in compromise. Always. The only variable is how long we let families suffer before our leaders admit that opening up the government again is inevitable. So why not start where history always ends? Why not cut the deal first and skip the damage? Because politics today rewards defiance, not governance. Because some leaders would rather starve the system to prove it weakens than steward it toward health. But we can demand more. We can't insist that compromise is a betrayal. It's the basic work of our republic. Because when the government shuts down, it's not a faceless bureaucracy that suffers. It's a soldier, the scientist, the inspector, the parent. It's us. And I reflect that we, as a country, deserve better. Three stories tonight. A courtroom where justice bends under political weight, a force where a woman showed us kinship across species, and a capital where lawmakers treat dysfunction as ritual. At first glance, they are separate. But they share root. Trust. Trust in law, trust in creation order, trust in government, trust in the fragile, once lost, is hard to rebuild. Jane Goodwell showed us that integrity and patience can rebuild trust with nature. Our leaders, when they remember, can rebuild trust in governments. And justice, if kept blind, if kept fair, can rebuild trust in institutions. The real question is will we? Because the work of holding things together doesn't happen in courtrooms or shutdown showdowns alone. It happens in how we live, whether we plant the tree, whether we stand for fairness, whether we demand compromise instead of chaos. So as I log off to this show, don't carry only anger at what's broken. Carry also a stubborn hope like Jane Goodall embodied. The stubborn memory that justice can still matter, that democracy still functions in this republic. We can't afford to shrug right now, and we can't afford to stop caring. So thank you for tuning in until next time. Stay grounded, stay hopeful, and take care of each other. We have one planet, nobody is leaving. Let us reason together.

SPEAKER_02: 27:51

Boy, we should have laminated that thing. There were six mass shootings at 24 hours. Two in North Carolina, two in Louisiana, one in Texas. Uh uh, the terrible scenes out of Michigan. Uh but fear not, because the president is obligated.

SPEAKER_06: 28:18

This morning, President Trump declares he's deploying troops to Portland, Oregon. Oh!

SPEAKER_02: 28:25

You just missed it! You're gonna want a little to you're gonna you've got the right country. You're gonna want to ship the ship one. Uncontrollable. Till you see the lights of the old. Not sure what that makes. Here's the craziest part. The people of Oregon, Portland in particular, were also caught off guard by this. And the governor of Oregon tried to explain to the president that they were not in a state of war. And the president's response was, well, well, it was telling.

SPEAKER_17: 29:35

President Trump, in an interview with NBC on Sunday morning, said a phone call with Governor Kotek showed him a different perspective, saying, I spoke to the governor, she was very nice, but I said, Well, wait a minute.

SPEAKER_03: 29:45

Am I watching things on television that are different from what's happening?

SPEAKER_02: 30:06

I don't think any of us know what you're watching on. But if it's Game of Thrones, I'd say yes. Conditions in Portland may vary. And B, this explains so much about the governing philosophy of the Trump administration. There is reality, and then there's this.

SPEAKER_03: 30:32

My people tell me different. They're literally attacking, and there are fires all over the place.

SPEAKER_02: 30:37

And dragons. Alone in his screened bunker, sees reports of conflict in Portland on TV. His lackings reinforce the chain of us, and rather than take a breath, rather than take a beat, rather than not acting rationally, rather than using the resources available to him as the president of the United States to find out what the realities on the ground are. He just goes, go away, let me go. Because he sees it. And acts impulsively. He sends out the National Guard the same way you or I might make a late night female purchase. But at three in the morning, it's magic. Meanwhile, the non-Portland area of the country is going through some shit. As we mentioned, there's a mass shooting now like every couple of hours. Previously, the routine would be we express our shock, we express our sadness, we offer our thoughts and prayers, we spend a day, maybe two, arguing about the appropriateness of bringing up guns at all, and then we uh do nothing until the next time. But as our politics becomes more polarized, even that learned cycle of helplessness has been replaced by a new post shooting pastime. That new pastime is was this one of yours? The shooter was a radical leftist, the guy is a right wing Trump supporting evangelical Christian.

SPEAKER_12: 32:39

He is a Biden supporter. Case closed. We know the suspected shooter is Mega.

SPEAKER_05: 32:44

The shooter?

SPEAKER_02: 32:45

A leftist whack job? It's America's new gender reveal tradition. Boom! It's blue! Ha ha! I'm so happy to blame the left for the violence. The game is so ubiquitous. Now we often play it before we even know who the perpetrator is.

SPEAKER_00: 33:03

The kill's identity may be unknown, but his point of view seems pretty clear. That's why I'm calling it political and from the left.

SPEAKER_02: 33:12

That's Cudlow's lock of the week! Lock it up next murder rate in Chicago next weekend. Well, it's getting cold there, so I'm taking the under. By the way, playing with this one of yours is also certainly a speculative endeavor. So we are treated in the aftermath of these horrific crimes to the news media's active politicized scavenger hunt. Which piece of inconclusive arcana proves which half of the country is to blame.

SPEAKER_03: 33:41

The shooter reportedly voted in the 2020 Democrat primary.

SPEAKER_13: 33:44

The Butler, Pennsylvania shooter was a registered Republican. The suspect wasn't registered either party.

SPEAKER_03: 33:51

He grew up in an area of Utah that is mostly Republican. The shooter was a registered Republican, while election records show that in 2021 he gave$15 to a Democratic aligned organization.

SPEAKER_02: 34:12

Republican, but donated to a Democrat. Maybe he just wanted the PBS Ken Burns tote bag. I don't know who to hate. Sometimes the clues aren't even expressly political, but live politically adjacent in the culture.

SPEAKER_04: 34:28

Social media photos show Mr. Robinson shooting and posing with guns.

SPEAKER_16: 34:31

There's his pickup truck, the huge American flags. This person was a gay man who is in a relationship with another man who believes he was a woman, and they were both into a phenomenon that can only be described as furriness.

SPEAKER_02: 35:12

I mean, if you weren't even gonna do something like that, how would you even get the stains out of the costumes, I mean? Especially if they had set for three days. What would you use? Club soda, lemon? I'm just asking. Or do you just throw the costume out after each experience? Now call me old-fashioned. But I miss the good old days of mass shootings. When networks took a principled stance to not shower attention on acts designed to get attention.

SPEAKER_18: 35:38

We will not say the gunman's name or show his photograph.

SPEAKER_07: 35:41

Fox News will not show you his picture or give him any attention by repeating his name. We don't like naming the gunman because so often they do things just to get attention.

SPEAKER_02: 35:59

That's right, boys and girls, you know. When I was a boy, there was a brief period in American media where not only wouldn't they say the suspected killer's name, they wouldn't constantly show the suspected killer's OnlyFans hotshots. They wouldn't do it. They wouldn't, oh dear Lord! Oh! Oh my god! He could have so he could have done so much good with those. And yet he chose the dark side. So why has the news media become obsessed with right-left framing of violence? Well, part of the reason is they are following the lead of social media. Social media is doing it crazier and faster than anybody else. So the media is trying to keep up. The fire in the church in Michigan was still burning when online influencers were inferring that the number of Muslims in Michigan are what obviously made this attack happen. Until police released the suspect's photo, which looked like it came from a Duck Dynasty fanfic account. And then the left got to celebrate. And then they found a Trump Vance sign on his house, case closed, except that sign was placed near a stop sign. So some on the right said, no, no, no, he's saying stop Trump Vance. Like it's some leftist Rebus that he was creating. But here's the thing. Who the f cares? These mass shootings don't fit. Who honestly cares? These mass shootings do not fit neatly into our left-right paradigm. Mass shootings are probably caused by a complex fusion of mental health and access to weapons and attention-seeking delusional nihilism married to an algorithmic underworld that set these horrific acts in motion. But unfortunately, right-left paradigm is the only way our narcissistic media ecosystem sees anything anymore. That's the system they built. So it must fit into the right-left paradigm because that binary is the foundation of all of their programming. So that helps them pretend that the solution to this violence is a simple change in our right-left rhetoric. The violent rhetoric that is coming from the extreme right wing.

SPEAKER_04: 38:33

They are not just tolerating political violence, they are cultivating it.

SPEAKER_09: 38:45

Stop with the rhetoric.

SPEAKER_02: 38:49

I don't think the rhetoric is getting people killed. Honestly, I don't think any of these psychotic motherfuckers that are doing this are watching MSNBC. I mean, I'm only judging from the ratings. I'm almost positive they're not watching it. To suggest that we don't need to tackle any complex, deep-rooted issues haunting American society, we just need to stop saying a few choice bad words, and all our mentally broken young men will be fine is not realistic.

SPEAKER_04: 39:21

And I'm pretty sure that these people don't believe that either. When you equate federal agents with literal Nazis, you're no longer offering an opinion. You are giving permission to escalate. So dangerous. So this is what Hitler did with the SS. This is what Nazi Joseph Goebbels said about the Hitler youth. Nazi tactics are progressive tactics first. Permission to escalate, granted.

SPEAKER_12: 39:56

Look, in America we disagree, that's fine, that's the democratic process. But your political opponents are not Nazis.

SPEAKER_04: 40:05

Except when the Democrats. They are authoritarians. They are jack-booted thugs.

SPEAKER_02: 40:14

No, no, he's not calling them Nazis. I'm sure that's just a fashion critique. Jack-booted thugs, I mean those boots, and white pants in October. Are you mad? Only Hitler would pull something like that. Look, getting our arms around why this is happening is maddening and scary. But the media's ability to memory hole mass shootings that they can't neatly fit into right-left is almost as maddening as not really knowing why these killings are really happening. Even when the suspected killers leave supposedly explicit cues on their bullets.

SPEAKER_04: 40:55

One inscription read, uh, hey fascist, catch, uh, giving some indication about the mindset of uh uh of Tyler Robinson.

SPEAKER_02: 41:05

Oh, right, no, it's uh very clearly anti-fascist, very clear. Unless was there anything written on the other bullets?

SPEAKER_04: 41:11

If you read this, you are gay, L-M-A-O. Okay, that seems kind of homophobic to me. If you read this, you're gay. I don't know what that means.

SPEAKER_02: 41:25

Well, read it again. It means it's gotta mean something.

SPEAKER_18: 41:38

New York City college meme and digital culture researcher we spoke to said could refer to a video game called Helldivers 2. The same for other inscriptions found on an up arrow, right arrow, and three down arrows, which is how you drop a bomb in that game.

SPEAKER_02: 41:55

What the f are we even the world that these kids now live in is so cynical and impermeable. This online nether world. If only there were a man. One man, a man who looks square, but is hep to what these kids are laying down, man.

SPEAKER_09: 42:20

There's a lot of talk about the chat platform Discord, and Kurt the Cyber Guy joins us now to tell us what Discord is.

SPEAKER_02: 42:40

Fresh off of doing the weather in Sarasota. Thanks for the no down, Kurt the Cyber Guy, you old cyber dog. Say hello to your partner in crime, meme Maven Gary. Meanwhile, why are we all just taking the bait from these psychos?

SPEAKER_13: 42:59

Authorities have not released the motive, but of course, here's the ammunition. The words anti-ICE, that phrase hyphenated, written on one of the bullet casings.

SPEAKER_08: 43:11

We we just had the facts laid out for us. This was an individual motivated by anti-ice. He wrote it on a bullet. We saw the bullet yesterday. Anti-ice.

SPEAKER_02: 43:20

Case closed! He wrote anti-ice. Doesn't anybody think it's fing weird that these people just started writing on bullets all of a sudden? Like that's the most effective way to get out their deeply held political beliefs? Anti-ICE, enough said. Or is there the slightest possibility that these people are fing with us?

SPEAKER_07: 43:44

According to his friends, the alleged gunman was not overly political and was mainly interested in video games and internet culture.

SPEAKER_00: 43:51

Clearly it's anti-ICE, right? And his friends say, I wouldn't interpret it that way. He was never a sincere guy. Everything he said was laced with irony and sarcasm.

SPEAKER_02: 43:59

What kind of finging psychotic internet culture? What's happening? Can't we just go back to the cinnamon challenge? Is that so hard? What is wrong with you? Look, we would definitely have a healthier political discourse if we weren't constantly calling each other fascists and communists and Nazis. But we are the only place in the world where this shit happens all the time. But we're not the only place in the world that name calls. So what is this? Perhaps we need to look back at our founders, who through their infinite wisdom designed and operated a more mature system, which had some balances and a respect for all, that prevented this kind of corrosive infighting and radicalization.

SPEAKER_03: 44:50

John Quincy Adams take an aim at Jackson, asserting that Jackson didn't know how to spell, was too uneducated to become president, while newspapers portrayed his wife Rachel as a short fat dumpling.

SPEAKER_02: 45:09

A delicious dumpling, indeed.