Pat (co-host/producer)

It is suspicious.

It may have just been a coincidence because there are a lot of people who are getting death threats around the country right now, whether they be pro-Trump or anti-Trump.

And on occasion, people's houses burned down.

So you could have just had a situation where you had a judge who was adversarial to Trump who happened to have this happen to her.

And it's a tragic story no matter what.

But of course, we want to

find out whether there was foul play, because this could be an example of political violence.

And I'm not suggesting that like anyone's dragging their feet on this, but we don't know at this point if there was foul play.

And we may not find out if there was foul play until weeks from now, at which point people will have moved on from the story.

Maybe there will be some attention paid to it, but the headlines will long have passed.

So it could be one of those situations where

When there's an example of a right winger being the victim of political violence, people are able to pounce on it right away, say this was definitely political, this is the fault of the left.

Whereas if there's an example of someone who is anti-Trump becoming the victim in some situation, you may not find that out until later that it was politically motivated.

And so...

Trump supporters are going to be less likely to be labeled with that, like their violence, their attacking people sort of rhetoric that we're hearing on the left.

Well, I would argue that even if they did definitively find out that this was someone who was angry with the judge over politics, that this wouldn't be all that damaging for the Trump administration because there have already been plenty of examples of political violence against Republicans.

people on the left and people who are anti-Trump.

And these Trump supporters don't seem to care all that much.

They don't think it's that big of a threat.

Like we had, of course, the attack on Nancy Pelosi's home that led to Paul Pelosi getting severely injured.

We had the attack on the governor's mansion in Pennsylvania a few months back.

It's not like Trump supporters are changing their tune and having this conversation about how we have to tone down the rhetoric and the

Political violence is running rampant.

No, they only reserve those talking points for when it's a member of their own who is the victim.

So if we find out 100 percent that this was political violence, they would just shrug it off.

They would think it was no big deal.

And this was just some South Carolina judge anyway.

It wasn't like a Charlie Kirk figure.

So they wouldn't pay that much attention to it.

There's this old adage in politics about how you should actually attack your opponents based on the things that make them look strong, not the things that make them look weak.

So for Trump, for example, he likes to project this image of being this alpha male.

And a lot of people think, oh, yeah, he's just like in a very aggressive, masculine leader.

But the truth is, of course, that we know he was born with it.

silver spoon in his mouth.

He never had to work a day in his life.

He doesn't exercise.

He dyes his hair, dyes his skin.

He's really the opposite of a masculine man in a lot of ways.

So to attack him on that, I think is politically advantageous because it makes a fool out of him.

Right.

And I think it undercuts the main argument that people have when it comes to Trump, that he's this no bullshit leader who is tough and is willing to stand up to people.

I think you can easily extend that to Stephen Miller and try to ridicule him.

But what do you think about the argument that she uses, which is that you should attack him over his height, for example, because he's short and insecure about it, supposedly?

That kind of rubs me the wrong way because there are also people on our side who have insecurities or are short or whatever the case may be.

So attacking Stephen Miller over his height, are we also sort of in kind attacking our own who are short or insecure?

Yeah.

I mean, all this stuff could apply to like any masculine feature, right?

I suppose the hypocrisy angle is like the best way to go about doing it, that these right wingers claim that they are examples of these alpha males, but they don't live up to their own standards like that's the safest way.

Yeah, but maybe they just say, well, just because we value these things, just because we value the alpha males, that doesn't mean that we all are that archetype of masculinity and we admire those people who have those qualities, but we're not necessarily saying that we ourselves are those alpha figures.

They could always use that approach, but I don't know if that's all that convincing either.

Well, you know, AOC likes to speak candidly to her audience when she does these live streams.

It's, you know, not a bad idea, I think, to hit Stephen Miller where it hurts.

I do worry about those like immutable characteristics going out after those things, because I think people could get the wrong intentions.

But certainly there's a lot of different ways you can make fun of Stephen Miller.

Just take a look at what he says when he does these media appearances and respond to him.

I mean, you can just look at that if you want to criticize something about him.

And you think that's because it's specifically UFC because it's fighting like if they.

All right.

Yeah, I don't have anything in principle against like having a UFC fight or certainly like a basketball game or a baseball game.

I can see how UFC would be like a stretch too far for people because of the violent nature of it.

But like if we just had America's pastime baseball on the front lawn of the White House and the MLB set up the game and they promised to cover the costs if grass was destroyed, like I don't think I would have a major issue with it.

My issue, however, is that Trump is so buddy-buddy with Dana White and that whole UFC sphere, and it's the one environment he can go to that's a sports environment, and he won't get pooed out of the arena.

He'll actually get cheered.

So it's just the latest example of him trying to give out goodies to his friends, and they in kind, of course, will support him for his 80th birthday.

That's the thing about this that rubs me the wrong way.

And in addition, I think it's probably not a good look to have such a violent sport at the White House.

And I'm not against the UFC, but I don't think that it's a good mixing of imagery.

There's always another layer when it comes to these Trump controversies.

Often that extra layer has to do with hypocrisy.

Sometimes it has to do with corruption.

Sometimes it has to do with racism.

Like, for example, last week we covered the story about Trump posting to Truth Social that fake video of Hakeem Jeffries and

Chuck Schumer and Jeffrey said the sombrero and the mustache.

There are a lot of people, of course, who are talking about that.

That was a racist post.

We didn't even get to that on our analysis of the story.

We just talked about AI because with Trump, there's often a layer of racism underneath it.

So when it comes to these different things, we just often can't get to everything because there are these other side stories that seem to always be there when it comes to Trump.