The Greg Bovino Episode Extravaganza!

Finally, an episode about the life and times and possibly crimes of Border Patrol sin eater Greg Bovino. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Robert Evans?

  Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast that is about bad people. And it turns out, there's a lot of those in the world. Only more of them every year, it feels like. To commiserate with me about that point, my guest today, Jack O'Brien. Dr. Jack O'Brien, Mr. Colonel Jack O'Brien, President Jack O'Brien.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  Pod Dad.

• 0:30Robert Evans?

  All of the titles. Esquire.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  Esquire, yeah.

• 0:34Robert Evans?

  What other titles are there? Do we have titles for like?

• 0:36Speaker 02

  I don't know. I like Colonel.

• 0:39Robert Evans?

  Colonel.

• 0:40Speaker 02

  The Honorable Colonel. Because that's one that when they give it to you, you can just start calling yourself that. Like, we just did an episode about Elvis.

• 0:50Robert Evans?

  That's the dream.

• 0:51Speaker 02

  The, his Colonel was just like, just like somebody called him that one time. I think he like helped someone get a parade permit in like New Orleans. And they were like, we'll make you honorable Colonel, sir. And he was like, started signing his name on legal documents that way.

• 1:09Robert Evans?

  If I ever, if I was ever made a Kentucky Colonel or whatever other kind of, any time, the second I get made a Colonel, I am never introducing myself any other way. Like.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  I like to think, so when we went to the RNC and DNC, they had this display of President's shoes. I like to think if there was like a podcast version of it, it would just be Jack's Jordans.

• 1:33Speaker 02

  My Jordans.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34Speaker 02

  I have some behind me right there.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  That's what I think.

• 1:40Speaker 02

  That's very nice of you, Sophie. I don't think I can take credit for all podcasts.

• 1:46Robert Evans?

  You know what's not nice of me, Jack?

• 1:49Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 1:50Speaker 02

  Good.

• 1:51Robert Evans?

  Is telling you the, telling you the life story of Greg Bovino.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  I really like the, Robert, can you share the working title that you did? Cause it's, it's a great working title.

• 2:02Robert Evans?

  I, I, I don't know. You see, I was, I went back and forth on it because I feel like it's too obvious. I just called him America's Kirkland brand Gestapo chief. Yeah.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love it.

• 2:11Robert Evans?

  I like it. I like that a lot. And there's, there's the thing, cause like there are people, he gets angry that people compare ICE to the Gestapo, and he's not with ICE, he's Border Patrol, but you know, they're all Gestapo-esque and people get angry about them. And there's, there's like three different kinds of people here. There's like normal people who are like, yeah, it seems like some Gestapo kind of thing. There's like closet Nazis and Trump administration being like, first off, it's Gestapo and second. Second, you're using the wrong font to make that accusation. And then there's guys like me who tries to switch between the two. Yeah. Just because I've read too many books and watched too many documentaries about the Gestapo. Wow. But I swear to God, I'm not being sus.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Shocked to hear that about you, Robert Evans, host of Behind the Bastards.

• 2:59Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 3:02Speaker 03

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• 3:37Robert Evans?

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• 4:12Speaker 04

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• 4:32Speaker 05

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• 4:43Robert Evans?

  So, Jack, what do you know about Greg? Gregory? About time we had a Greg commit like crimes against humanity in this country.

• 4:51Speaker 06

  Greg?

• 4:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:52Speaker 06

  Greg?

• 4:53Robert Evans?

  It was about, it was not about time, but I feel like it hasn't happened before.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  I think, uh, you know, diversity of first name is really important. So I was also welcoming when Greg showed up on the scene.

• 5:05Robert Evans?

  Finally, finally, some Greg representation in the, in the crimes.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  I, uh, I host a daily news show called The Daily Zeitgeist with Miles Gray.

• 5:16Robert Evans?

  Oh shit, yes you do. I thought as a man, you were a man who needed no introduction, but clearly that's irresponsible.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  Well, no, but I mean, I, due to that show, do have some experience covering, uh, the latest happenings, but we do that show, uh, twice a day and therefore I don't, I didn't have a lot of time to dig into his backstory to really, uh, see what makes this guy tick.

• 5:40Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 5:41Speaker 02

  I have a feeling I, I was just like kind of, uh, you, using context clues and making educated guesses about what makes him tick.

• 5:51Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, I don't, I don't know that much other than that he, uh, his rapid rise and precipitous, uh, dismissal.

• 6:02Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. His, and that's actually happened once before in his career. Um, which we'll chat about a little bit. Yeah, not Greg. Greg, again, you can't, like, you, like, you go back to like the other crimes against humanity this country has committed. You can't imagine like a Greg having some significant role in like the displacement of the Native Americans, right? Or like, you can't imagine Greg, like... Gregory. Not an old, it's like, yeah, it's, I have trouble imagine, I can imagine a Gregory. I can imagine like a Gregory something either being involved in one of this nation's great crimes. I can see that name signed on to like the order to intern people, but not a Greg. You know, like there weren't Greg's until very recently, I feel like.

• 6:44Robert Evans?

  It's certainly not in a position where they could do crimes against humanity. Like.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  Greg. Greg. It's like, kind of got like a Gen X like quality to it, whereas just like, yeah. You can just call me Greg.

• 6:59Robert Evans?

  Would, would it be better or worse if he was a Craig? Like, would we believe him more or less? Cause I feel like Greg, I do believe Greg doing crimes against humanity more than Craig.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  Firmly, Greg is worse.

• 7:12Robert Evans?

  Craig is a, is a trustworthy name, you know? Greg, there's a little something sketchy about it.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. When do Greg's first start showing up? Just not Gregory's, but Greg's, you know?

• 7:24Robert Evans?

  It had to have been like the seventies.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  Like cousin Greg's succession.

• 7:28Robert Evans?

  There you go. That's, that's the birth of the bad Greg.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  Greg is a young person's name. Further point.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  But literally in that show, he decides he wants to be taken seriously. And he's like, asks people to call him Gregory, but he says it like, ah, Gregory.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  The emphasis on the wrong syllable.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  The wrong syllable. Uh, yeah, I recently met a 70 something year old man named Corey. And I was like.

• 7:55Robert Evans?

  That's upsetting.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  You're, are you the first Corey?

• 7:59Robert Evans?

  Like, yeah, you are first. Did you start the trend?

• 8:02Speaker 02

  I did ask him that and he didn't think it was funny.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  I think it's funny.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  Corey is such a young person's name.

• 8:09Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, Greg.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Well, we've, we've all tried to avoid hearing more because it's going to be so upsetting.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  I am, I will be over on my end Googling historical Greg's.

• 8:22Robert Evans?

  First Greg history, comma. So I said to him to write this episode, the week Mr. Bovino lost his special job dressing like a Nazi while overseeing border patrol operations alongside ICE in Minneapolis, he'd made the news several times for his statements in the wake of the murders of Renee Good and Alex Preddy, and during the first year of the Trump administration, had generally turned himself into the physical embodiment of the regime's violence towards Americans. It's too early to say what the future holds for Greg, but given that he just took a turn as sin eater for the Trump administration, I think it's time we look into who this guy is and where he came from. And in short, he's not quite the guy I expected. There's very little in Bovino's early life, and even in most of his career with the Border Patrol, that would

• 9:04Robert Evans?

  have led one to predict he'd have turned into this. I'm not saying you'd have expected him to be like a great guy, but that like, the fact that he wound up in, at this moment in history, doing this thing is like a little surprising. Most of his former, yeah, he's not, he doesn't seem like he was built for this his whole life. And you don't get a lot of quotes from his people who used to know him being like, oh yeah, that makes sense for old Greg, you know?

• 9:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:30Robert Evans?

  Most of his former peers-

• 9:30Speaker 02

  More of just like, they don't really remember him?

• 9:33Robert Evans?

  No, more of like, aha, that guy? That guy's doing that, huh? It's the general reaction. It's, it's again, like if this guy in your school who wasn't super bad at anything, but wasn't very good at anything, and never really stood out at anything, winds up on the news, dragging Americans out of their home and tear gassing them in the street for no reason. You're like, is he dressed like a Nazi? Is that Greg?

• 9:59Speaker 02

  Whereas like Stephen Miller is like, the LeBron James of Nazis. Like where everybody in high school was like, this guy is going to be a Nazi on the world stage.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  Did you just say the LeBron James of Nazis?

• 10:14Robert Evans?

  I think it's a good comparison.

• 10:16Speaker 02

  So only in the sense that he was a standout Nazi from the very earliest ages.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  That he wasn't, wait, that he was the chosen, he was the chosen one?

• 10:27Robert Evans?

  If you knew LeBron or Stephen Miller in sixth grade, you knew what they were growing up to do, right? Like, this guy's gonna be the best basketball player ever, and this guy's gonna be a fucking Nazi.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  Wow. Wow, guys.

• 10:42Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I think you're right.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  Not so for Greg, huh?

• 10:44Robert Evans?

  On the money with that, Jack? Not, not really, no. There's maybe one piece of evidence, but it's not good. So most of the evidence is that he's kind of like, not, not the guy you'd expect to have done this. Now, that said, we don't have a lot about Greg's early life. The only journalists who have really dug into Bovino's life in, in a credible way are Dan Michalopoulos and Lauren Fitzpatrick of the Chicago Sun-Times. And they did great work. They did both a podcast and a, an article looking into his backstory. Aside from them, there's just one Daily Mail article that talks to his sister. And so we have a lot from his sister, who I don't consider the most credible witness about this guy, right?

• 11:24Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 11:26Robert Evans?

  So there's just not a ton of detail. And then there's some sketchier sources on the, on the matter. So we got some open questions still. That said, Greg was born on March 27th, 1970, in San Bernardino, California, uh, which I bet you didn't call San Bernardino, baby, you know? That's, that's good.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  I didn't because I don't know, I cannot differentiate any, like any of those LA.

• 11:52Robert Evans?

  Pieces, that's such a West LA thing to say too, Jack.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  It's a, I, well, I'm bad at LA stuff too. I'm just like, I, I grew up on the East Coast and I'm just like, San. It's in, in, yeah.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  Inland empire, Jack, inland empire.

• 12:08Robert Evans?

  I know about San Bernardino from the Frank Zappa song, San Bernardino. And hearing that Greg Bovino was born in San Bernardino makes me also think of the Frank Zappa song, Baby Snakes, because at this point, he's a baby snake, you know?

• 12:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. And those are bad, right? They can pump you full of a lot of toxins, baby snakes.

• 12:28Robert Evans?

  Sure, yeah, absolutely. It's not their fault, they're just snakes. But yes, yes, he's born there. And because he would embark on a career of arresting and facilitating the brutalization of immigrants, a lot has been made of the immigration history of his own family. And I have some qualms with this because you're mostly bringing this up to be like, you're hurting these people, yet a generation or two ago, your family was in the same situation. Can't you see why that's fucked up? And my answer to that is, no, they can't, they're bad people. Right? Like, it's like, at a certain point, are you like, you could, again, people do the same with Stephen Miller's background, or Trump's, and it's like, I mean, they're bad, they don't care. They don't care. They're bad people. They suck.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  Oh, that didn't work, pointing out the hypocrisy of their behavior?

• 13:11Robert Evans?

  Their background, yeah.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  I feel like, like, the three millionth time we do it, it's just gonna, like, break through, it'll be like a dam, and they'll be like, holy shit.

• 13:21Robert Evans?

  Too many people believe their moms when they're like, that bully, you know, if that bully knew he was hurting you, he'd feel bad. It's like, no, he's a dick.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 13:29Robert Evans?

  That's not how they work.

• 13:33Robert Evans?

  So, yeah, and it's, it's also just like, yeah, basically, every white person, if you go back two generations, has like, an immigration story in this country, because it's the United States. It's kind of how it happened here for most people. But as you might have guessed from the name, the Bovino were originally Italian. In 1909, Michel Bovino, who is Greg's great-grandfather, left the village of Alprigliano in the mountains of southern Italy. His home was racked with poverty and dominated by organized criminal cartels, much like certain countries our administration doesn't think should be sending us immigrants today. So it is a pretty direct comparison.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  Not a popular source of people back then, right?

• 14:13Robert Evans?

  No, no, they were not, the United States not thrilled that these people are coming over. So, Michel, who I'm sure was immediately called Michael as soon as he entered, you can't be going by that here, left his wife and kids behind, so they are staying back in Italy, and I guess he's sending them back money, as he seeks to make a life for himself in the United States. So he's doing that for years, until, this takes a while, until in May of 1924, there's a panic over immigration in the halls of power in the United States. And this was, you know, the result of kind of a long simmering pot. From the early 1800s, most immigration into the US had been Western and Northern Europeans, AKA the whitest of the white people. And we had some issues with some of them, right? There were some

• 14:55Robert Evans?

  like, oh, a Welshman's here now? But like, you know, for the most part, it's like, well, they're all pretty, we're all pretty white, right? These people, you know, not to say Nobody faced bigotry when they came here, but they're all, you know, this is like the founding stock and the ideas of people by that point in time, by the time you hit the 1800s. And by the late 1800s and early 1900s, shit's starting to shift. Immigrants are now coming more from Eastern and Southern Europe, where the white people are not quite as white. The first 20 years, so years of the 1900s also coincided with the largest surge in immigration in US history up to that point. Eugenics was beginning to become a popular topic of discussion and among educated racists, it was believed that many different European nations were also effectively different races,

• 15:39Robert Evans?

  per an article in the Migration Policy Institute. The influential eugenicist Charles Davenport considered Italians prone to crimes of personal violence, while Jews were characterized by intense individualism and ideals of gain at the cost of any interest. Since eugenicists believe individual races possess different characteristics and abilities, Davenport argued the government should be careful not to adulterate our national germplasm with socially unfit traits. And, you know.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  And what, this was in what, a small corner of the internet? Oh, wait, this was in academia?

• 16:12Robert Evans?

  This is, this is in Congress at this point. I mean, this is.

• 16:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. It was so pop, like, Americans don't understand how popular that was in the early 20th century.

• 16:22Robert Evans?

  If you've seen a picture with a man with like a stethoscope or a fucking pincenez or whatever and doctor in front of his name in 1910, he believed the most racist things you can imagine. Because he read it in the textbook. That was like, the devious Czech has these characters, like a D and D source book, where it's like, oh, they get plus two to strike, you know? Like, that's, that's literally how these people are like, learning this shit. It's in textbooks and it's in the textbooks that our congressmen are reading and they're gonna yell that too, about all of the Italians that are coming into the country. Enter the Dillingham Commission, which was set up by Congress to study the consequences of immigration. It released a report in 1909, that's right after, about two years after Michelle came

• 17:04Robert Evans?

  to the United States, that argued Northern and Western Europeans were just kind of better people from the other parts of Europe. And it suggested, the Dillingham Report suggested a wide range of policies to discourage immigration from unw. Worthy places, including literacy tests and racial quotas. Right. That's where a lot of this stuff, you know, is when America really starts thinking about immigration and the border in a very modern way. You know, there'd been panics over it before and, and, you know, legislation. But a lot of our, our modern apparatus of how we think about immigration, of how we think about white genocide and that sort of stuff all starts right in this point, period of time. And to make a long story short, the Dillingham Commission releases that report in 1911. You know, things still move slowly in the halls of power.

• 17:48Robert Evans?

  But this eventually culminates in 1924 in the Immigration Act, which restricted immigration in an attempt to ensure most arriving immigrants were from the good places. Per the MPI, it closed the door on almost all new Asian immigration and shut out most European Jews and other refugees fleeing fascism and the horrors of the Holocaust in Europe. One of the most restrictive immigration laws in US history. It played a key role in ending the previous era of largely unrestricted immigration.

• 18:15Robert Evans?

  So this is when immigration as a, like a modern concept really gets started. And Greg Bovino's ancestor.

• 18:24Speaker 02

  This is just a relevant context for people who are like, this is not what America is about.

• 18:31Robert Evans?

  It's, it's kind of been the way we have it for a while.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  It's been our thing.

• 18:34Robert Evans?

  Last hundred and something years, you know?

• 18:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:36Robert Evans?

  And Greg Bovino's ancestor knew that this posed a threat to his plan. Cause he, he's, he's making money and he's sending it over to Italy. But his plan is, I want to bring my family with me, right? To the lane of opportunity at some point. And he sees this act get passed and he's like, shit, that's about to get a lot harder. So within days of the Immigration Act passing, he files paperwork to start the process of becoming a citizen. Once this process was completed in 1927, he brought his family over and they became citizens through a process known as chain migration. Here's how the Sun Times explains what happened. After Michelle was naturalized in 1927, he was reunited with his wife and four children in a Pennsylvania coal company town after their arrival on the steamship, the SS Giuseppe Verdi, record show.

• 19:21Robert Evans?

  Then the kids, including Vincenzo, 12, Gregory Bovino's future grandfather, automatically benefited from a derivative citizenship law for minors. Luigi will become a naturalized citizen. So all this is, it's, you know, chain migration is kind of exactly the thing that they're trying to stop now. It's a big part of why they want to reverse some of the citizenships that have been granted, because a lot of them are granted in ways that are very related to this, right?

• 19:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 19:45Robert Evans?

  And it's what they want to stop because they want to stop families from coming over here and getting larger.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  They've just, they've benefited from this random crap shoot of laws and so...

• 19:54Robert Evans?

  Everyone did.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. They're, they don't want anybody else to get lucky like they did.

• 19:59Robert Evans?

  Right. And they know that they don't want any other ethnic groups as they see it, or racial groups to come here and start breeding, right? Which is what Italians did, you know? It's what everybody did. It's kind of the entire point of, of the country, you know?

• 20:14Speaker 02

  Kind of the whole deal. The melting pot is a very chaste way of saying, a lot of people came here and started fucking each other.

• 20:22Robert Evans?

  It's the fucking pot.

• 20:23Speaker 02

  And everything kind of mixed together. I, I do love how rigorously Italian everything is at this point.

• 20:32Robert Evans?

  It's incredibly Italian.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  The boat that they came over on.

• 20:35Robert Evans?

  Oh, yeah. The Giuseppe Verdi.

• 20:36Speaker 02

  Giuseppe and Vincenzo, yeah.

• 20:38Robert Evans?

  They were near the end of pizza by the time they hit the docks.

• 20:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 20:41Robert Evans?

  I know. The Trump administration has cited the 1924 immigration laws as an example of the kind of reforms they seek to make. They've also repeatedly cited chain migration stories like this as an example of things like why birthright citizenship and juke solely need to be revisited. For his part, Bovino does not seem interested in his family background, and I don't know that it was much of a factor in his raising. For him, the most influential thing that happened in 1924 may not have even been the Immigration Act, because that is also the year the Border Patrol was created, and that's going to be Greg Bovino's whole life. So, like I said, he's born in San Bernardino because his father had just been drafted to fight in Vietnam. So don't worry, like my native inland empire people, they don't stay very long. They're just stationed on a military base nearby.

• 21:26Robert Evans?

  And two years later, when his father gets discharged, the family moved back east to Blowing Rock, North Carolina, which is the real name of a place. Don't make fun of it, you know?

• 21:36Speaker 02

  Blowing Rock, North Carolina.

• 21:39Robert Evans?

  That's a funny name.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  When you first mentioned San Bernardino, I was like confused because he doesn't give big inland empire energy.

• 21:46Robert Evans?

  No, he's not an inland empire guy. No, he's only there two years. Yeah.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  So this, this makes more sense.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  He does give blowing rock energy, I've gotta say.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  He does. He really does, Jack.

• 22:00Robert Evans?

  I do, I do kind of wonder, is there any, and he doesn't say anything about this, so maybe I'm reading into it, maybe two years isn't enough time, but I've lived in parts of, you know, the, the deep rural areas where, oh, you didn't come here till you were two? You're not really from here, boy.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:18Robert Evans?

  So I don't know if that was any part of his background or not.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  That new family?

• 22:21Robert Evans?

  Mr. California coming up here. That was twenty years ago, Mark.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  They'll call him Hollywood.

• 22:29Robert Evans?

  Fucking Hollywood.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  Here comes Hollywood Bovino.

• 22:32Robert Evans?

  Hollywood.

• 22:36Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I could see that, but they don't say anything about that. That's purely headcanon for fucking Greg Bovino. And to be fair, probably not the case because his, his dad's side of the family's just come here, but his mom's side of the family goes back at least, they say, eight generations in the Blowing Rock area. The Bovino had two more children, Natalie and Nicholas, born in seventy-four and seventy-nine after moving back to their part of the country. And one gets the feeling that young Greg may have benefited a bit from only child syndrome because he's a good bit older than, than his siblings, right? Closer to his sister than his brother, but he's, he's got some oldest sibling memories at least. His younger sister Natalie is one of our few semi-detailed sources in Greg's childhood, although she seems

• 23:19Robert Evans?

  to idolize her brother and I don't credit her with a lot of skepticism or scrutiny about him. She describes their early childhood as Rockwellian, which means reminiscent of the paintings of Norman Rockwell, right? And is also based, I think, often on some misunderstandings of them, but like she's, she's, she's thinking of like those nice paintings of kids hiking in the woods and, you know, idyllic Christmases with the family gathered around the fire and stuff, right? Like, that's what she means. There were about a thousand people.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  Was Norman Rockwell like? Fucked up? I actually don't know.

• 23:48Robert Evans?

  No, he pretty good politics. I mean, he's not perfect. There's some stuff, you know, you find with any illustrator of that period, they did some uncomfortable illustrations, if you look back far enough, right?

• 23:57Speaker 02

  Sure, sure.

• 23:57Robert Evans?

  But no, he did a lot of, he was like, super pro-integration, super pro-civil rights movement, like, he was a-

• 24:02Speaker 02

  It's just like the carefully curated version of the paintings that make it happen to be curated by white supremacists.

• 24:09Robert Evans?

  As is often the case, a bunch of white supremacists have taken his paintings to be like, this was the ideal America before everything got ruined. Norman Rockwell was just painting pretty things, you know?

• 24:19Speaker 01

  Norman fucking Rockwell, as the girlies call him.

• 24:23Robert Evans?

  Cause he did some paintings of like, civil rights movement, like protests and stuff that were contemporaries. It wasn't all, but, you know, they forgot a lot of that. Yeah, they forgot a lot of that.

• 24:33Speaker 02

  So you're sure she was referring to Norman Rockwell when she said Rockwellian and not the eighties artist who's saying, "Somebody's watching me"?

• 24:40Robert Evans?

  Yes, I do not believe she was referring to the eighties artist who's saying, "Somebody's watching me." Thank you, though, for bringing that up.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Norman fucking Rockwell.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  Norman fucking Rockwell.

• 24:49Robert Evans?

  There were about a thousand people in their hometown, which she describes as literally perfect. So again, she's, she, she has these idyllic memories of their early childhood. The Bovino benefited from a tight family and an extensive one, right? They have a lot of in-laws and relatives. And they had money, too. They're doing very well for a while. Their father had started a successful bar, the Library Club. And the reason why it's such a big deal here is that their town is like the lone wet county in the middle of a bunch of dry counties. So there's a bunch of bars in town, and it's kinda like a vacation town, so it's both where people come on vacation, but also if anyone nearby wants to drink, they have to come to Blowing Rock, right? And the Library Club's like, one of the biggest places they're gonna go to.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  You can make a good living by having the brilliant innovation of, "We live in a town where I can open a bar and no other towns around us can open a bar. I bet people will drink here."

• 25:44Robert Evans?

  I bet people will drink here, and they sure did.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  Because people talk about like, being able to, like, how, you know, previous generations, you could like, buy a house for this, and like, everything was so much cheaper. It was also so easy to like, succeed back then.

• 25:58Robert Evans?

  There were less ideas had been had, you know?

• 26:02Speaker 02

  Like, I don't know. I think people will use plastic in the future. I'm getting into plastics.

• 26:07Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  You become a millionaire.

• 26:10Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it was easier. It was easier. Um, most of the sources I find. Now, I will say, though, Jack, I don't know that we fully understand how the library bar made its money. Most of the sources I find just describe it as a bar. And weirdly enough, the thing that made me think maybe something more was going on here was that interview I found with Natalie in the Daily Mail, where I don't think she's trying to let on that her dad was a criminal, but that's kind of how it sounds. Because here's a quote from her. "In those early years, the family was living the good life, thanks largely to the success of the library club." And here's Natalie. "The bouncers would drop huge sacks of money off, stacks and stacks. He did incredibly well. The family was able to buy their house and at both they'd ride on Watauga Lake in a membership in a country club where they ran a side business,

• 26:52Robert Evans?

  a drink stand on the ninth hole." And that's not how bars work.

• 26:57Speaker 02

  What were they doing there?

• 26:59Robert Evans?

  The bouncers don't come to your home with sacks of money. That's not... I've known a few bar owners, and none of them have the bouncers drop sacks of money off at their houses. That's... Your dad was moving something.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was moving weight, sir.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  The side business drink stand on the ninth hole is such a fantastic detail. Wow.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, we were basically millionaires for the time because he had a drink stand on the ninth hole of a golf course.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  Thank Natalie.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, that makes sense.

• 27:32Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that doesn't sound like the way you bribe the judges about any case.

• 27:36Speaker 02

  He drove an ice cream truck. And then it's like, what?

• 27:39Speaker 01

  What?

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, we ran a small bar, you know, the bouncers dropped sacks of money off at

• 27:46Robert Evans?

  the house, as is normal.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, stacks and stacks.

• 27:49Robert Evans?

  Maybe she's not remembering things right, but that sounds sketchy as fuck to me.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  And speaking of stacks and stacks, it's Dags, Robert.

• 27:57Robert Evans?

  Speaking of sketchy as fuck.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, that too.

• 28:01Robert Evans?

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• 28:36Robert Evans?

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• 29:35Robert Evans?

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• 30:16Robert Evans?

  And we're back. So yeah, I don't know. Greg grows up, uh, to be fair, whatever the truth is about their dad, the kids didn't grow up aware of anything sketchy. Greg spends his early childhood hunting, fishing and exploring the woods. His parents got him his first shotgun at age eight. He reads hunting magazines voraciously, which is how he encountered his first pieces of pro border patrol propaganda. And this is interesting because I get a different answer. Every other article I read was talked about a thing we'll discuss later. There's a movie he watches and then like, and this is the first time he encountered the border patrol. And it's actually talking to his sister that the Daily Mail gets this piece of information that I think might be more accurate because it feels more accurate to me at least.

• 30:59Robert Evans?

  The hunting publications featured columns written by old time border patrol agents such as Skeeter Skelton and Charles Askins. The young boy had found his calling. He thought it was the Wild West. Natalie Bovino told the Daily Mail. It was like a true frontier. It was those old timers that inspired that in him. And that is more believable to me than the other story just because like I, I too was a young boy once and I've read a lot of similar articles and a lot of similar magazines. I could see that happening to this kid.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  You're familiar with the works of Skeeter Skelton?

• 31:29Robert Evans?

  You know what, Jack, I am. That's what we're going to talk about next because the second, as someone with a comedy background, the second I read the name Skeeter Skelton, I was like, well, we gotta, we gotta deal with that.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  Skeeter.

• 31:43Robert Evans?

  Say more.

• 31:46Speaker 02

  Skeeter Skelton fucking rules. I'm sorry.

• 31:50Robert Evans?

  What is that short for? Like Skeetropolis? Like what the fuck? Skeeter? I've known a couple Skeeters, but I never thought it was a given Christian name. I'm going to be honest with you.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  Is it? Is it his actual name?

• 32:06Robert Evans?

  That's what it seems like. It's written on everything that it's, it's a byline. I don't know. I don't know the man's birth certificate, Jack.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  Skeeter Skelton.

• 32:15Robert Evans?

  It's just weird hearing the name, seeing the name Skeeter written and a real publication is supposed to hearing it across a bar. Which is how you're supposed to encounter a Skeeter.

• 32:24Speaker 02

  Those guys usually don't make it out of the library club. They're usually there for life.

• 32:29Robert Evans?

  They do not.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  I just am thinking of that, that Nickelodeon show called Cousin Skeeter from like. The 90s.

• 32:38Robert Evans?

  Oh geez, I don't even remember that one.

• 32:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:41Robert Evans?

  But when I read the name Skeeter Skelton, I had to look into it more. And he was a lawman from Hereford, Texas, who served in a bunch of different cop roles. He did everything, he was in everything from the Amarillo Police to Border Patrol to DEA to Customs. And he starts writing for Shooting Times, which is a magazine that still exists in 1966. And again, it's one of those like, no one had had the idea to have a magazine about shooting. So they start having one in 66 and he's like, I'm gonna write about handguns. It's like, no one had that idea before. So he goes from pitching them to becoming the handgun editor in the next year. Cause they're like, what a great idea. People in America writing about handguns. You're a genius Skeeter. And he has that job.

• 33:21Speaker 02

  Guy whose nickname is just a slang term for mosquitoes. He's a genius.

• 33:27Robert Evans?

  Oh God.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  Skeeter Skelton.

• 33:30Robert Evans?

  Yeah, he's the handgun editor of Shooting Times until his death in 1998. If you want to know his main claim to fame, he's generally credited with reviving interest in the 44 special round, which is the bullet that Dirty Harry uses. So without Skeeter Skelton, we may never have Dirty Harry.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  So he popularized it before Dirty Harry.

• 33:50Robert Evans?

  Oh yeah.

• 33:50Speaker 02

  He's not, he's not like Dirty Harry.

• 33:52Robert Evans?

  Skeeter's writing about the 44 real early.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay. He's not like Dirty Harry actually stole that shit from me. I do.

• 34:01Robert Evans?

  No.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  I gotta, so we're doing a new version of TDZ where we dive into icons. We just did a Marilyn Monroe episode. And we found this character named George Solitaire, who I can't stop thinking about and talking about because he had a claim to fame.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  He was just Joe DiMaggio's like drinking buddy. And his claim to fame was that he invented the phrase Splitsville and Dulsville. And he was, and he had a whole origin story about it.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  Cool guy.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  Because he was born in Brownsville and moved to Bronxville.

• 34:38Robert Evans?

  That's just how he thought about bills?

• 34:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, like Bill in his blood.

• 34:42Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  But otherwise, he was just a guy who got drunk with Joe DiMaggio. And he's like all over the historical record. And he was like a ticket scalper.

• 34:51Robert Evans?

  I love a guy like that.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  Having a claim to fame that is that specific and stupid is just like my hat's off to like, what a weird world.

• 35:00Robert Evans?

  What a, what a what? It's one of those things, the second someone tells you that, they're like, you know, I came up with that word splitsville. You're like, you must have.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  Would claim to have done that.

• 35:11Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's not a thing anyone would pretend.

• 35:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. But like to be like, I popularized this one round. And that's kind of my shit. It's kind of my whole shit.

• 35:21Robert Evans?

  Ancient man came up to me and said, I made the 44 popular. I'd be like, you probably did.

• 35:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess.

• 35:26Robert Evans?

  I don't know who else would lie about that.

• 35:28Speaker 02

  To lying and like getting to just find a lie so specific.

• 35:33Robert Evans?

  There you go, people.

• 35:34Speaker 02

  That nobody would ever be like, what? Okay. Yeah, I guess so. That that makes sense.

• 35:42Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I'll believe it. And so I I haven't had the time because he wrote articles for 20 something years. I haven't had the time to go through all of Skeeter's old articles on shooting times. But I found one article and I read.

• 35:56Robert Evans?

  And I read the first paragraph of it, Jack. And this, this kind of tells you all you need to know about what young Gregory might have picked up reading Skeeter's columns.

• 36:04Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 36:06Robert Evans?

  Almost all the objections to the 357 Magnum as a police weapon come from city police departments. It is argued with some justification that an officer who fires a Magnum in a crowded city is more likely to kill innocent noncombatants than he would be if armed with a standard 38 special. Not much is given to the fact that the same officer runs a hell of a lot more risk of being killed himself when his low powered 38 fails to put an armed opponent out of action.

• 36:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:30Robert Evans?

  So just like, look, some city cops, hey, using this bigger bullet gets regular people killed because it goes through doors and stuff.

• 36:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 36:37Robert Evans?

  But have you thought about the danger of not killing a guy?

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Out of action.

• 36:43Robert Evans?

  I love, and you, you see also, cause this was a, this is actually like was published right after his death, but he wrote it a little before. So this was published like posthumously in 88. But you can see the early birth of a lot of the warrior ethos, like warrior cop shit here, the whole, well, you know, you could say, you know, an officer was more likely to kill innocent non-combatives as opposed to like innocent people, innocent civilians, non-combatants.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  Innocent, non-combatants.

• 37:07Robert Evans?

  They still could have done something right, right?

• 37:08Speaker 02

  Everything is in the context of the, the assumption that someone's attacking you. That's how you leave the door in the morning.

• 37:16Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Everyone is a combative or a non-combatant.

• 37:18Speaker 02

  Entering a combat situation.

• 37:20Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 37:21Speaker 02

  Uh, with a, it's, it's worth the risk to have a gun that, uh, shoots through four people in a crowded urban environment.

• 37:29Robert Evans?

  Exactly. And, and so this is the kind of shit he's reading as a kid, like the early precursors to a lot of that is what Greg Bovino is. The fact that like, as like a nine or 10 or 11 year old, he's, he's reading, yeah, something like, cause he was born in 70. So he would have been born like a couple of years after this guy started writing for shooting dimes. So from the time he's a little kid, he's reading stuff like this. Like he's almost patient zero for this like warrior cop ethos bullshit. Like he, he may have been up, he's among the very first kids who got hit with this stuff as a child, you know?

• 38:03Speaker 02

  Like right in the bloodstream.

• 38:04Robert Evans?

  There's not an earlier generation.

• 38:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:06Robert Evans?

  Right into the bloodstream. And it just takes over as far as we can tell. So Natalie's interview is the only place I found reference to, to Bovino reading these magazines. And every other piece on him lists, as I said, a very different, inciting incident for his interest in the border patrol as a career. Here's how the Chicago Sun-Times describes it. Bovino has said, has said that he was inspired to join the border patrol when he saw a movie called The Border that came out when he was just 11, produced by a distant cousin of his mom, it just starred Jack Nicholson and Harvey Keitel as agents. But the young Bovino was crestfallen that the movie portrayed the agents as bad guys and said that he was moved to join the border patrol in 1996 to show that he was the opposite, a good border cop. Making the border secure is my personal responsibility, Bovino said on a podcast in 2021. And.

• 38:52Robert Evans?

  I wonder, is it that maybe he saw the movie and then started reading the magazines? But his sister describes the magazines as kind of the first thing. So is it that Bovino doesn't want to admit that like, well, I read some magazines by some Border Patrol guys? And thinks that, because this is a more convenient, right wing, modern, right wing narrative.

• 39:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:10Robert Evans?

  That like, well, I saw the liberal Hollywood movie about the Border Patrol and I wanted to prove him wrong. You know, which is kind of what I suspect.

• 39:18Speaker 02

  And it's like you're, instead of having to rely on people wanting to learn more about Skeeter Skeleton, you can just be like, it had Harvey Keitel and Jack Nicholson, like those are names you've heard before. This will stick in your brain.

• 39:31Robert Evans?

  You don't have to say Skeeter.

• 39:32Speaker 02

  To correct those guys rather than being like, well, have you read the works of Skeeter Skeleton?

• 39:40Speaker 02

  No.

• 39:40Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 39:41Speaker 02

  That's a name you just made up, man.

• 39:43Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's not a real guy.

• 39:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:45Robert Evans?

  So the idyllic, perfect part of Greg's childhood also ends the same year the border comes out when he's 11. His father drives home drunk one night from work. I'm sure it wasn't the first night, can't have been, right?

• 39:58Robert Evans?

  And he winds up crashing his truck directly into a car, killing a young woman and brutally injuring her husband. They were 26 and 29 years old, respectively. It was a bad crash. There was no sign that Bovino tried to brake before hitting the other car, which the local paper described as bowled over by the impact. Mike was unharmed. The victim's husband sued the Bovinos and sued Mike's bar. And ultimately, Mike pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of death by motor vehicle. But the judge in his case ordered he be sent to state prison as treatment for his alcoholism. And he stays there for four months. There's an article written about him while he's in jail. He tells the Charlotte Observer that he'd long struggled with his drinking and that he'd gotten drunk the night of the crash because his wife had begged him to quit the sauce and that had made him angry.

• 40:43Robert Evans?

  He promised not to do so again after getting out of jail, saying, I've got a dead woman on my hands. Getting dead drunk just isn't worth it. I don't know how else you frame that, but that's not the best way, maybe. I don't know. Um, the lawsuit destroys his business.

• 40:56Speaker 02

  What a clever bit of wordplay.

• 40:58Robert Evans?

  Yeah, why do we need word? You killed a woman. Why are we doing wordplay here?

• 41:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, what's the point, guy?

• 41:04Speaker 02

  Skip the fucking Hallmark poster and just go right to, yeah, I stopped drinking because of a horrible thing that happened as a result of my drinking.

• 41:13Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  Cause I.

• 41:14Robert Evans?

  That's a weird way to describe it.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  Murdered a lady. Thank you.

• 41:17Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just, I killed a woman would have been enough to say.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:23Robert Evans?

  The lawsuit destroyed his business, obviously, forcing him to sell it. Betty decided she'd had enough and divorced him after this, gaining sole custody of their three children. Mike left the family and settled in New Mexico. Greg was 14 when his dad left, so this takes a while. You have to imagine this is a bad three years.

• 41:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:39Robert Evans?

  And he enters high school right around the same time the divorce was finalized. He was not recalled by his peers as an overly memorable student, right? He's not someone who really makes a mark. When he started at Watauga High School, he joined the wrestling team. And if you have seen photos of Greg around other people, he's not a large man, right?

• 41:58Speaker 02

  No, he's a wee man.

• 42:00Robert Evans?

  He's, he's a smaller fella, right? And.

• 42:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:02Robert Evans?

  Height isn't everything. There's weight at classes and stuff. Height's not everything in wrestling.

• 42:06Speaker 02

  It's great for wrestling to be small. Yeah.

• 42:08Robert Evans?

  It can, it can be handy, but he's also, even in that world, kinda small, right? And he doesn't seem to have developed in other ways to compensate for that. And everyone who talks about his time in wrestling is very polite about this, but he was not good at it. Um, but sometimes people actually talk to his old high school coach who, it seems like a very nice man, cause when they bring up, was he good? He's like, well, when he was, you know, he wasn't the biggest boy. He wasn't the biggest guy. But at the end of his senior year, he got the most improved award, which is something, even though the team had an unusually terrible season, which is a very sweet way to try to describe this boy.

• 42:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it could just be that our team got so shitty that he was actually like kind of par for the course for our team.

• 42:52Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's kind of what he's saying.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  How, I, I am just curious, now that you've researched, uh, 3,000 of the, the worst people to ever live.

• 43:04Robert Evans?

  Um, yeah.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  How common is the, like, not remembered?

• 43:08Speaker 02

  Versus like, oh yeah, I remember that shit. Like.

• 43:12Robert Evans?

  Mostly, you know, generally, when we come across a guy who there's not much about their childhood or background, it's because they were like some weird con person in the 1800s. And it's like, they just hopped onto the historic record when they were 30 and we don't know what the fuck was going on previously.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:26Robert Evans?

  Um, or it's someone who's such a minor weirdo or creep that there's just not a lot, you know, no, no major, you know, they haven't been covered by a major newspaper. No one's dug into them that much. With someone like Greg, this is, it's not common to have this little, when you actually talked to a bunch of their classmates and peers, that's the weird thing.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  The one thing that we, that we typically come across, that's like a common commonality is like somebody who has crazy ambition and that's what people remember.

• 43:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  I'm not, I'm not hearing that here for Greg at all.

• 43:57Robert Evans?

  Nobody says that about, about Greg.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:59Robert Evans?

  Nobody's like it.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  That is a very common bastard trait is that they had way too much ambition at an early age and then they, you know, become like Jeff Bezos or whatever.

• 44:11Speaker 02

  They were like.

• 44:12Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 44:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was voted person least likely for you to be asking this question about them because I, he thought he wasn't gonna do shit.

• 44:21Robert Evans?

  Because Greg, seriously, Greg?

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Greg?

• 44:24Speaker 02

  Nah. You're talking about Greg, well, first of all, his name's Greg.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  Gregory.

• 44:29Robert Evans?

  Yeah, did you realize his name Greg? Like, yeah. Yeah. Sorry to the Gregs out there. I just, it's hard to, it's not even an insult. It's just hard to imagine a Greg being like the, the mouthpiece of a fascist government.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  I do literally have a cousin Greg and he is delightful cousin Greg, if you're listening to this, I love you cousin Greg.

• 44:45Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I'd have trouble imagining your cousin Greg is the mouthpiece of a fascist regime, you know?

• 44:49Speaker 02

  We literally all have a cousin Greg and they're all great.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  My cousin Greg rocks.

• 44:53Speaker 02

  Except Greg Bovino's cousin has a cousin Greg, not, not so great.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  Not so great.

• 44:58Robert Evans?

  Yep. So Greg's coach, uh, said this about him, quote, Greg was not bashful. He had no problems asking the coach questions and you know, he liked to tell stories, funny stories. Um, he also expressed when these reporters ask him a lot of surprise that he went into law enforcement and he says so in a way, I love this, the coach says this in a way that makes me think like. Oh, I, I think this coach might not like the police very much. Quote, "That was a real surprise. I just didn't picture Greg being in law enforcement. He was always very pleasant and I didn't see him as that. That to me didn't seem to fit his personality. It wasn't a dick. I wouldn't have guessed he'd become a cop.

• 45:36Speaker 02

  Good talking to you, comrade. Hell, yeah.

• 45:38Robert Evans?

  No, I didn't peg him for a huge asshole. Real josh to me.

• 45:41Speaker 02

  I didn't think he'd turn into a piece of shit.

• 45:43Robert Evans?

  Didn't think he was that kind of prick.

• 45:46Robert Evans?

  Thanks, coach.

• 45:47Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 45:49Robert Evans?

  Um, uh, cool guy.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  When you, when you go back, like it's, it's also interesting when they don't have anything interesting to say because like, I do feel like most of the time when you're asking a normal person about like, that they'll have made up a, a memory about them.

• 46:05Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 46:05Speaker 02

  You know, because just to be interesting at like dinner parties.

• 46:08Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I remember he never stopped reading that book about Reinhard Heidrich. Just loved the guy.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  Right.

• 46:13Robert Evans?

  Something, you know?

• 46:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:15Robert Evans?

  But no, there's very other, other than his sister being like, he read Skeeter.

• 46:20Speaker 02

  He read Skeeter and his coach being like, I didn't think he was a big enough asshole to be a cop.

• 46:25Robert Evans?

  To be a cop, yeah.

• 46:28Robert Evans?

  Jason Perry, his wrestling teammate, also expressed surprise at what had become of Bovino. He described Greg in school as very polite and added, "I don't think Greg would not do his job. And like, if they're asking him to do something that's not fair to minorities, I'm sure he's hating it. This is kind of a Bible Belt community. So I know Greg was exposed to compassion and love for his fellow man, but it's dangerous to speculate what a man is thinking. I hope whatever happens, I hope it works out good for him and his family and the people that are being mistreated."

• 46:53Speaker 02

  He knows about it.

• 46:55Robert Evans?

  Such a middle of the road thing. I hope both the guy hurting people and the hurt people are, get better. Okay?

• 47:01Speaker 02

  It's crazy because I know he's aware of compassion. Like he's heard of it. Like for sure he's heard of it.

• 47:07Robert Evans?

  He must not like what he's doing because he's not supposed to act this way. He's heard of compassion. Heard of it. I know he's not supposed to be doing this shit. Yeah. Yeah. Now, if you spend any amount of time looking this guy up on social media, you'll run into some claims made by a purported former classmate of his on Reddit that are much more negative than the recollections gathered by the Sun Times. It opens with the OP head bar nine, three, one, six, writing, "I just found out I know Greg Bovino personally. Here are some things you can tell him when you next see him." And the poster claims that he's a current Minneapolis resident who used to live in Boone, North Carolina, near where Bovino grew up and that they went to the same school. And he posted a clip from a yearbook with a picture of Bovino on the wrestling team as evidence. That said, a bunch of these

• 47:51Robert Evans?

  pictures are floating around. Not guaranteed that that means he actually went to school with this guy. And then he provides a bunch of suggestions for things that protesters should say to Bovino. "Hey Greg, you're the reason your dad got drunk and killed that woman in Blowing Rock, which led to your parents divorce." And I don't think that that's necessarily accurate. I think his dad killing someone and bankrupting the family is probably enough of a reason. That might be a bit of a dick move, but I think we're just being an asshole to this guy. That doesn't really expand our, our knowledge about Greg, though, right? So let's move on to the next one. "Hey Greg, do you think it's weird that the Watauga High yearbook has you listed as most likely to shit his pants in public?" Now, they don't. Burn. That's a nice burn, but also yearbooks don't do that. Nope.

• 48:36Robert Evans?

  That's, that's not a thing. Like, no school, public school yearbooks, not, someone would go to jail.

• 48:43Speaker 02

  In the South, putting that in a public school.

• 48:45Robert Evans?

  You're not allowed to do that for a lot of reasons. It's abusive to the students. Again, he would have been 18. Like, "Hey Greg, your history teacher thinks that you're a pathetic Nazi punk. No wonder you failed all his classes." Burn. This doesn't seem to be accurate based on, again, it's a burn, but I don't think it's true, because I think his grades were decent. At least it sounds like that. I can, I can believe his, some of his teachers hate him now, but I just, I don't think he actually did fail all of his classes. I haven't found the evidence of that. So the next allegation is that a local store banned him for sniffing shoes after people tried them on. Don't have anything about that one way or the other, right?

• 49:21Speaker 02

  It's a good one, though. They've, now we're getting to, like, pretty good lies to tell about someone.

• 49:26Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 49:29Robert Evans?

  The last one is that he-

• 49:29Speaker 02

  Kind of weird and specific enough, like having invented, invented splitsville. It's like, yeah, he had to be banned from Payless Shoes.

• 49:38Robert Evans?

  Yeah. The last one is really specific, Jack. And again, not one we can back up in any way. Hey Greg, do you remember eating that the Wataga pioneers wrestling team's soggy biscuit? Is it still gay to eat semen off a Bojangles biscuit? Or was that just an 80s thing? Now, again, first off, he was born in 70s, so he wouldn't have been. I mean, yeah, yeah, that could, that works out, I guess.

• 50:04Speaker 02

  80s, yeah.

• 50:05Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that does work out. The timing works out. The Bojangles biscuits make sense. That said, I can't back up the rest of this. And there's enough wrong with the previous parts of this that I, maybe this is somebody who went to school with him and is just like, throw it out shit because they didn't like him, you know? Maybe he did sniff shoes in a local shoe store. I can't prove it, but there's no evidence. People are going to bring this up because it went crazy viral. I can't back any of this up and there's nothing in here that.

• 50:33Speaker 02

  I feel like we can confirm both of those things happened in that guy, whoever the poster is.

• 50:38Robert Evans?

  In that guy's mind.

• 50:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 50:40Robert Evans?

  And like, he's just like.

• 50:41Speaker 02

  Way too specific. Yeah, because those are like good and specific and we're like, yeah.

• 50:46Robert Evans?

  Those are real specific.

• 50:46Speaker 02

  He's probably just taking those and being like, these happen to Greg Bovino and.

• 50:50Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I believe some guy did those things.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 50:54Robert Evans?

  I mean, yeah, again, maybe, but I can't, I can't prove it. And I can't find any specific reason to believe that this post that people are sharing around is real. Boy, if anyone can prove that Greg Bovino got banned from a store for sniffing shoes, let's have it. But nobody else yet seems to be sharing this yet. Great, some cub reporter, go down to Boone, figure this out. Break the mystery. So.

• 51:17Speaker 02

  Just looking through microfiche.

• 51:21Speaker 02

  Shoe sniffing.

• 51:22Robert Evans?

  Microfiche in the basement of the shoe store. It's all just shoe store related articles.

• 51:28Speaker 02

  All right, so I'm going to come clean here and say, I like the smell of new shoes.

• 51:36Speaker 02

  What is creep? So if you're smelling, if you're at a shoe store.

• 51:41Robert Evans?

  Waiting for people to finish trying on shoes.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  Right. So are you taking their shoes while their, their existing shoes while they're trying them on? Cause yeah, that's no good.

• 51:51Robert Evans?

  I can see how you'd shoot this in a TV show, right? Where like you have, you have somebody putting on, take off the shoe, put it up. And then you have like, oh Greg, sneak around the corner. Check, see that the coast is clear.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  Jack O'Brien, I'm gonna come clean here.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  I think new shoe, new tennis ball and new car are underrated, like synthetic chemical smells that I enjoy. Like I will, I will put my nose in a new pair of sneakers that I just opened the box on and take a nice deep, deep puff. And I, okay. Should I be banned?

• 52:25Robert Evans?

  Yes.

• 52:26Speaker 01

  Perhaps, perhaps.

• 52:29Speaker 02

  Nobody's worn them yet. What's wrong with that?

• 52:31Speaker 01

  I don't know, shoe sniffer.

• 52:33Speaker 02

  All right. New shoe sniffer, brand new shoe sniffer.

• 52:38Robert Evans?

  Brand new. Come on now. Um, all right. So that's the, that's, that's the myth about Greg DeVino that I had, uh, I don't know. It's not even busting. It's just pointing out, I've seen this going around. This doesn't directly comport with anything else that's independent. And I have no specific reason to believe this is all true.

• 52:56Robert Evans?

  So, anyway, uh, his sister describes him as a voracious reader in high school. And I've seen a few other accounts that match this. He liked military history and cowboy novels, particularly the work of Louis Lamour. And his favorite book was probably Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, surprising no one. Uh, his sister told the Daily Mail that he reads Starship Troopers once a year, which completely makes sense. Yeah. Oh man. Yeah. And I, I get, so did I back in the day, but.

• 53:22Speaker 02

  Now wait, the, I know the movie is satirical. Is the book also?

• 53:28Robert Evans?

  No, not at all. Um, so Robert, Robert Heinlein is, was an interesting guy. A very influential science fiction writer. Uh, one of his books, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, is often seen as providing a lot of the ideological underpinning for the libertarian movement. Right? Like it's a foundational text for like American libertarian. Libertarianism.

• 53:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. They've been coming off well in this whole thing, by the way.

• 53:49Robert Evans?

  I said influential. I said influential. That's, that's not a value term. And he's a guy, he started out as a socialist and then he had his like weird, super reactionary, right wing, like John Burtcher period. And then he became kind of more of like a, a normal libertarian sort of deal. But Starship Troopers was, it's, it's often seen as a fascist novel and that's certainly a very valid reading of it. There's a lot of it that reads very fascist. It's also, if you understand Heinlein's life, there's a lot of it that's like, oh yeah, you were a guy who like, joined up during World War II and served in the military during that period of time. Of course you have a very positive view on what the state and the military could do together, right? Like, there's also a bit of that in it where it's like, well, you just feel, there's some like nostalgia towards that period of time too in this.

• 54:32Robert Evans?

  But it is, it is a book about, no, literally the best type of government would be the military runs everything, right?

• 54:41Robert Evans?

  So I can see why Greg Bovino is attached to this book as a kid, especially without any of these slight mitigating factors in Heinlein's own life. And Heinlein, pretty racist guy. I'm not that interested in mitigating it. I'm just saying there's a little bit more there than there would be with a guy like Bovino. So, once he graduates high school in 1988, Bovino went to Western Carolina University, where he studied natural research conservation before becoming the first member of his family to graduate college. He then joined the Border Patrol in 1996. He graduated as part of class 325. One of his classmates, Jason Owens, would wind up as head of Border Patrol. The two have podcasted together, per the Sun Times, with Jack, you know, is the strongest bond that two people can share.

• 55:23Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 55:24Robert Evans?

  During their, their podcast together, Bovino claims Owens had better grades and graduated at the top of the class, but that he was better at PE and marksmanship. And he makes this claim a lot, that he was the best shot in the Border Patrol, basically. I haven't seen independent confirmation of this. Seems like he might be kind of just jazzing himself up a little bit. But.

• 55:42Speaker 02

  Pretty easy claim to make.

• 55:44Robert Evans?

  Pretty easy claim for you to make.

• 55:46Speaker 02

  Rarely do people be like, all right, that's it. Let's go to a range together right now.

• 55:50Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yeah. It's usually like at least an hour long thing to set up, you know? Um, he starts working at the famous El Centro Sector, which is on the border of California, not far from what he, where he'd been born, but across the country from his home. Per the Sun Times, quote, Bovino told Owens later that he was impressed when the sector chief showed up in the field alongside the agents. Bovino said it showed him the need to get into the fight. It's not a fight.

• 56:16Speaker 02

  It's not a fight, Craig.

• 56:17Robert Evans?

  A bunch of hungry people walking across the desert, not a fight. Not a battle. Seen a couple of battles, they don't look like that.

• 56:25Speaker 02

  Enemy bugs out there.

• 56:27Robert Evans?

  I mean, there are hungry people stumbling around battlefields, but you don't look at them and go, ah, the fight. You look at them and go, that guy's starving to death because he hasn't eaten in three weeks.

• 56:37Speaker 02

  Non combatants, we'll call them.

• 56:40Robert Evans?

  For now.

• 56:41Speaker 02

  Combatants is a good term. We gotta see though, if they got any weapons.

• 56:44Robert Evans?

  They might get into the fight. Yeah.

• 56:46Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 56:46Robert Evans?

  So he was promoted steadily over the years and wound up transferred to Washington, where he got a master's degree in national security at the National War College and then New Orleans, where he led a sector. In 2020, he was sent back to El Centro as a commander. He also spent some time in tactical units, per his sister, who makes this dubious claim. Early in his career, Greg would run into cartels and be the first one in the door because he had the best marksmanship there. You see that claim again, a lot of times it was drug cartel based, which he said has now infiltrated every major city with the crime and corruption. And again, I don't think Natalie knows all that much about this stuff. I think her big brother just told her this and she's like, that's the way it's gotta be.

• 57:25Speaker 02

  By the way, if you talk to the son or like sister or, you know, children of any law enforcement officer who are gullible enough, this is the same. First of all, it'd be like, first of all, you guys don't know how dangerous it is out there. And second of all, their dad is actually secretly the sickest marksman.

• 57:47Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 57:48Speaker 02

  And like nobody, like it's crazy. They thought he had like super. Yeah, that's amazing. But it's great. You know, it's a certain type of person who lies about that stuff to their sister.

• 58:01Robert Evans?

  Right, because I haven't found this claim repeated elsewhere. Clearly not anywhere credible. But we do have documentation of his career running El Centro where he oversaw about 1,100 employees. Critics say that under Bovino's leadership, BP employees were violent and cruel towards migrants. The ACLU accused one of his agents of assaulting a Salvadoran migrant in 2022, separating her from their 10-year-old child for nearly a year after presumably she was beaten. The woman was charged with assaulting an agent in detention, and then the charges were dropped. The Sun-Times quotes Monica Lungarica, a senior attorney for the Center for Immigration Law and Policy, as saying, "I think it was a prosecution that sought to silence her, stop her from speaking out about the assault that she experienced. We've seen it here at the border for a very long time." And now, obviously, you know, Bovino has taken that show on the road.

• 58:44Robert Evans?

  And I bring this up because you can see this exact pattern in the rest of it in his most recent chunk of his career, right?

• 58:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, right. Where someone is being assaulted by the people under his command, and that is treated as an assault somehow.

• 59:00Robert Evans?

  Yep.

• 59:00Speaker 02

  There, yeah.

• 59:02Robert Evans?

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:02Speaker 02

  It's interesting.

• 59:04Robert Evans?

  Yep. So for his part, Bovino has bragged that the consequences El Centro agents force upon migrants lead to fewer people trying to cross in the first place. Earlier in his career, he seems to have had more of an interest in portraying himself as a good guy to members of the public. Not long after he got transferred back to lead El Centro, a local activist, Edie Harmon, 81, complained about Border Patrol vehicles harming wildlife. Bovino fancies himself a conservationist. He's gotten a degree on the subject, and he once wrote a thesis about the danger illegal immigrants pose to animals in the Southwest. So he agreed to go hike with Harmon, and he wrote her a thank you note insisting Border Patrol cared about the environment, too. Per the Sun-Times, she said Bovino tried to win her over by offering to install a guzzler, a watering tank for the sheep, and to dedicate it in the name of her dead husband.

• 59:49Robert Evans?

  She said she declined because no biologists recommended that. Before Bovino left their hike, he's asked to take a photo with Harmon, each standing on opposite sides of a cactus. And

• 59:58Speaker 01

  That's just so weird, man.

• 1:00:00Robert Evans?

  It's so weird.

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  That's weird guy behavior. What do you mean?

• 1:00:05Robert Evans?

  It was the Biden administration. I think he's trying, he's gotta pretend he cares about the environment. I think he also sees it as, because he's got this background, this is a wedge you can drive between the liberal conservationists and the, uh, the quote unquote illegals, right? Is if you're like, well, they're bad for the environment, you know?

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  But you're bad for the environment, Greg? Fuck off. Fuck off, Greg.

• 1:00:26Robert Evans?

  And, and Harmon made the very good point that like, he wanted to install a water tank for that. The reason the sheep are endangered is because the border patrol keeps putting concertina wire up across their grazing ground. It's the razor wire that's bad for the sheep. Yeah, I don't think they need water. They need there to be razors lying around.

• 1:00:43Speaker 02

  They're gonna want some water, Robert.

• 1:00:45Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that is true.

• 1:00:47Speaker 02

  As, as somebody who, uh, has done, uh, 3,000 podcasts on Hitler, um, wasn't Hitler also like very into animals and animal rights and stuff like that?

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's a vegetarian, big into animals, interested in, no, not at all.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  For those two things to overlap.

• 1:01:04Robert Evans?

  No, and I, I think, you know, this may just, this may be Bovino, maybe there's another version of Greg Bovino, who just went into conservation. Um, but also maybe it's just, it's, there's a degree. I think certainly by the time he's back at El Centro, there's this understanding that like, well, maybe this is a way we can drive a wedge between the people that I want to target and the majority of the voting population of this state, right? Bovino is one of the guys who completely drank the border patrol Kool-Aid, right? He, he loves to use the nickname, the green machine to refer to the border patrol, which is what they call themselves. I think they think it's cool.

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  That's like, like a naked juice. It's like what they, it's like a naked juice flavor.

• 1:01:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's green machine. It is. Yeah. They named themselves after the green juice from Naked Juice that like sometimes tastes real, like sometimes, fine. And sometimes it's so fucking bad. Have you ever had a bad green juice?

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  I have, I have, man.

• 1:01:59Speaker 02

  One of those, yeah, like 7-Eleven green juice can go, can go off.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, speaking of, uh, random products, um, Robert, it's about that time.

• 1:02:10Speaker 02

  Oh, is it time for another ad? You don't want me to keep talking about how Naked Juice Green Machine can sometimes go off?

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  I've never seen you drink a Naked Juice. I sat next to you for years.

• 1:02:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's because I had a bad experience once, I'll tell you what.

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  You're, you're a Mountain Dew guy.

• 1:02:25Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  Sophie's seen me at my finest.

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  That's your green juices of Mountain Dew.

• 1:02:34Speaker 02

  That's right. Why? What were you talking about?

• 1:02:38Speaker 02

  I once did a money phone in front of Sophie with a six pack of Mountain Dew.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  You did? I think I have that picture.

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  If I do have that picture somewhere, I am gonna have them put that up on Netflix.

• 1:02:53Speaker 02

  My finest work.

• 1:02:54Robert Evans?

  Oh, man.

• 1:02:57Robert Evans?

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• 1:04:29Robert Evans?

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• 1:05:10Robert Evans?

  And we're back. So Bovino, as I said, really drinks the Border Patrol Kool-Aid. He loves reciting the agency slogan "honor first" with little provocation, which at least one Border Patrol whistleblower has said is often used by men in the Border Patrol to mean "on her first" because they like to sexually assault female agents and women in their custody. Good stuff, the Border Patrol. Bovino described the Border Patrol as his life's work in Brandon El Centro, "the premier sector." He's the one who considers it that. It is a very busy sector. It's a big, it's a, a lot of people come through it. But he's like, no, this is the, this is the state of the art. You know, this is, this is the best one.

• 1:05:52Robert Evans?

  You know, we're, we're the standard from which all the other sectors are set. I appreciated what one journalist for CalMatters.org said about this. It's similar to the way states have mottos on license plates that aren't necessarily used by anybody else to describe that state.

• 1:06:08Speaker 02

  There's some good ones of those.

• 1:06:09Robert Evans?

  Yeah, there's some good ones of those. So during the Biden--

• 1:06:12Speaker 02

  To show me state.

• 1:06:13Robert Evans?

  Hey now, hey now, hey now. I gotta stand up. Actually, that, that's, that is an insult to people from Missouri.

• 1:06:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, why do they do that? Why they do that?

• 1:06:22Robert Evans?

  It dates back to, again, like the 1800s, but it means that like people from Missouri were so dumb that like if, if, they wouldn't believe you unless you showed them something, right? You can't just tell someone like, oh, there's, there's big boats now. You gotta, they gotta see the boat because they're dumb.

• 1:06:36Speaker 02

  Don't believe in dinosaurs, that sort of thing.

• 1:06:38Robert Evans?

  Right, right.

• 1:06:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. Calling something the premier anything is a great like weasel word, like that, that's gotta be--

• 1:06:46Robert Evans?

  Such a weiner move.

• 1:06:46Speaker 02

  One of the MVPs of like bad movies posters. Like where the, like the, the premier crime film--

• 1:06:53Robert Evans?

  It's like Miller calling itself the champagne of beer. It's like, yeah, okay, guys, no one's gonna call it that unless we're joking.

• 1:07:02Speaker 02

  The poetry of lying, you know?

• 1:07:06Robert Evans?

  Yeah. During the Biden years, Bovino started running into trouble. First for tweeting, he made a, he made a lot of tweets that got him in trouble. One of them was about a citizen who had been killed by an undocumented person driving drunk that his superiors made him delete because it was too political. He claimed to be apolitical and not understand what was wrong with his post, but he would later prove to have something of an obsession with the subject. He has in the Trump years, the most recent year in change at least, repeatedly brought up the threat of undocumented immigrants driving drunk as a reason for aggressive immigration.

• 1:07:35Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:07:36Robert Evans?

  And arrest. Yes.

• 1:07:37Speaker 02

  Robert, wow.

• 1:07:38Robert Evans?

  Nothing psychological there. Okay.

• 1:07:43Robert Evans?

  Okay.

• 1:07:43Speaker 02

  That's.

• 1:07:44Robert Evans?

  Okay, Greg.

• 1:07:47Speaker 02

  That's so wild, man.

• 1:07:50Robert Evans?

  Last year's Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago, which is where Bovino, and not where he first gained widespread national visibility, but it really, really massively increased his visibility, was in honor of a 20-year-old who'd been killed in a DUI, right? Like, this is a thing for Greg. And it's like, again, man, like, okay, you didn't want to go to therapy, but you're just taking your anger at your dad out on some random people, almost none of whom did anything wrong. Like, almost none of whom have ever driven drunk, right?

• 1:08:19Speaker 02

  This is up there with Tucker. I'm sure you guys have talked about it before on the show, but Tucker Carlson's.

• 1:08:24Robert Evans?

  We gotta get our Tucker.

• 1:08:25Speaker 02

  Hatred of hippies and.

• 1:08:27Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:27Speaker 02

  Women, and then his mom left his dad for like a French hippie. And like, his mom was a hippie. It's just like, damn, man, it's almost like too obvious. Like, how do you land where you are without being like, this is, like, everybody's gonna know why I'm the way I am. This is so bad.

• 1:08:49Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, that's often the case. And, you know, it is, it's the case with old Greg, right? Now, one thing that made Bovino's El Centro stand out is that he had five agents whose whole full-time job was making videos, which is interesting, and it shows again, he understands, he, he's at least someone who sees how good a shot Trump has at coming back in the Biden years and is like, I, I know what to do to get on this fucker's radar. Is I need to start making. Some shit that goes viral. I gotta piss off some libs, right? Here's how Cal Matters describes a representative example. Two agents sit in their vehicle at night, listening to a news broadcast about an undocumented migrant charged with the rape and murder of a 64 year old woman in Santa Maria. The news clip is from a real CBS report from 10 years ago.

• 1:09:32Robert Evans?

  An agent shakes his head in disgust and turns off the radio, saying, man, that's the second one in less than a week. Things are getting out of hand.

• 1:09:38Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 1:09:39Robert Evans?

  And if you're trying to make the case that like, wow, every week, multiple people are getting raped by immigrants. And it's like, yeah, your one example was from a news clip from 10 years ago.

• 1:09:49Speaker 02

  Their most powerful weapon maybe is selection bias where they will find a they will find a crime and make it seem like it is constantly happening right next door to you.

• 1:09:59Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yep. Now, at that moment, dispatch comes over the radio and it tells the agents there's a nearby vehicle loaded with migrants. The agents catch three of them in, but one gets away and sneaks into any town USA, where he murders an American citizen, taking the man's cell phone and running off. And the screen goes dark and the message, every apprehension matters. Do you know who got away? And again, less than one percent

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  That is so much plot.

• 1:10:24Robert Evans?

  It's so much plot for such a shitty ad.

• 1:10:27Speaker 02

  That's like 30 minutes of a Chuck Norris movie.

• 1:10:30Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's the opening of a Chuck Norris movie.

• 1:10:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:34Robert Evans?

  Only about 1% of the people the border patrol encounters have a criminal conviction compared to 8% of American citizens. But there's little point in bringing reality into this. They don't care, right?

• 1:10:44Speaker 02

  Right. They just get to treat these people like complete shit.

• 1:10:47Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 1:10:48Speaker 02

  And so it's like a chance. Yeah, it's bully tactics where you just find the person who's the least protected and then

• 1:10:55Robert Evans?

  Yep. Go after them.

• 1:10:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:57Robert Evans?

  So Bovino was called to testify before Congress in 2023. He discussed how crossings in his sector had increased significantly and basically made the border hot case that the Biden administration was failing to protect the border. Bovino's own history came up, including what turned out to be repeated issues with social media. One relevant quote was, I think there was one post with two Yemenis terrorists. I was ordered to take that down. Vino was relieved of command after his testimony, uh, which the Republican House members who convened the hearing saw as retribution and it probably was, right? Like, yeah.

• 1:11:29Speaker 02

  Retribution for him saying horrendous stuff and being bad.

• 1:11:33Robert Evans?

  Yeah, for him being a fucked up asshole, but I guess that counts. Um, and it's also though-

• 1:11:38Speaker 02

  This is retribution. I was fired as retribution for being bad.

• 1:11:43Robert Evans?

  He kind of admits he's bad at his job in this, right? Because he's, his whole claim is that like, you gotta be brutal to reduce crossings and he admitted that crossings were at an all time high and he's in charge. I don't know, man. Maybe you were just saying you sucked at your job, but he didn't suffer any consequences for his actions. Those House members complained about his demotion and he was reinstated at El Centro. And you know what happened not long after? Donald Trump won reelection. On January 7th, 2025, the day after Congress certified his victory, Bovino led 65 agents in Operation Return to Cinder. Per CalMatters.org, most of the official information about the raid came from Bovino's Facebook comments. He posted blurred photos of three Latino men alongside a photo of 33 pounds of marijuana in the trunk of a car.

• 1:12:25Robert Evans?

  He wrote, "Here in the premier sector, we go the extra mile, or 500 of them, to protect our nation and communities from bad people and bad things." So congratulations, Greg. You protected California from pot. Like, great, man. Keeping that weed out of the state.

• 1:12:41Speaker 02

  I haven't seen it here or smelled it here since.

• 1:12:43Robert Evans?

  Ever since. That 33 pounds really put a dent in the state.

• 1:12:47Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:12:48Robert Evans?

  Um, 78 people were arrested. The Border Patrol told local business owners that the raids were targeting criminal activity, but this was obviously untrue. And a CalMatters investigation partnered with Evident and Bellingcat showed that the Border Patrol had no prior knowledge of criminal history of any kind for 77 of 78 arrestees. This was very likely illegal and the ACLU has sued on behalf of the farm workers. Agents are accused of failing to ID themselves or present warrants and of using brutal force. In one case, they slashed the tires of a US citizen and then arrested them for seemingly no reason. I say very like, this was very illegal, you know? I think this is all very illegal.

• 1:13:24Speaker 02

  Slashed the tires.

• 1:13:26Robert Evans?

  They love doing that. They love doing it.

• 1:13:28Speaker 02

  Um, what, what, so on what grounds were they arresting them if it wasn't for them having like warrants or anything?

• 1:13:36Robert Evans?

  Here illegally, here illegally, here illegally.

• 1:13:38Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:13:39Robert Evans?

  Yeah. I mean, that's their argument is that like they were doing, that's the illegal thing they were doing, you know?

• 1:13:43Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:13:44Robert Evans?

  Um. So Minju Cho-

• 1:13:46Speaker 02

  Not having the papers.

• 1:13:48Robert Evans?

  Right. Yeah, that's who they all are. Uh, Minju Cho, a senior lawyer for the ACLU, called this operation a pilot project for the ones that Bovino would later spearhead around the country. He'd earned the attention of the Trump administration for his combative presence on social media and willingness to use federal forces to brutalize people. On June of 2025, he was named tactical commander of a mass raid in Los Angeles, which sparked protests across the city. And you're all pretty familiar with what happened next. We don't, we're not going to go into crazy detail about everything Bovino did in the last year because you all lived through it, right? We don't need to do a ton of that. His agents helped ICE agents as they brutally detained random Angelenos. They blew open doors to houses, they gassed people in the street. Bovino had his video division craft ads depicting his men's violence to regular working people

• 1:14:33Robert Evans?

  as action movie scenes. He led his agents in an armed patrol outside of a political rally held by Gavin Newsom, which some might suggest could be seen as actual treason. Bovino claimed not to have known that Newsom was in the building, continuing his habit of giving answers to questions that present only the, the only other answer is like, well, so then you're incompetent, right? If you didn't know he was in the bill, like, what the fuck was this about, dipshit?

• 1:14:53Speaker 02

  We, we just like saw a crowd and we just like, kind of, we were like, oh shit.

• 1:14:58Robert Evans?

  That's what the border patrol does.

• 1:15:00Speaker 02

  Was this also when they did the, uh, military raid of, uh, MacArthur Park in LA?

• 1:15:06Robert Evans?

  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Which we, we should be talking, and he was like, we're giving this back to Ma and Pa, America. And it's like, man, the people who live there are the ones that you're fucking with. They're the ones who use the park, dipshit. But again, he knows this. Um, I'm not going to give a blow by blow of every violent act his men perpetrated, but I should read this quote from an article by Gabrielle Cannon in The Guardian. "Two undocumented people have died trying to flee Bovino's agents. A Mexican farm worker fell from a greenhouse and a Guatemalan day laborer was hit by a vehicle following a raid at Home Depot. In another episode, the paper reported, they detained a disabled 15-year-old high school student in a case of mistaken identity after drawing their guns and handcuffing him, leaving unfired bullets on the ground." So, cool people, just like well-trained, good at their jobs.

• 1:15:51Robert Evans?

  Uh, Bovino's obviously sent to Chicago after LA where he enacted similar violence. On one occasion, he throws tear gas on camera against a crowd of peaceful protesters. He and his agency had just been enjoined against using gas without justification. So Bovino claimed that he'd been hit in the head with a rock and had no choice. Bovino later admitted that he'd lied to the US District Judge Sarah Ellis about this.

• 1:16:12Speaker 02

  That seems fireable, Robert.

• 1:16:15Robert Evans?

  Should be.

• 1:16:16Speaker 02

  It seems fireable to be caught doing a violent thing and claiming they they hit me in the head with a rock and then being like, I lie.

• 1:16:27Robert Evans?

  Such a cop thing to do.

• 1:16:28Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 1:16:29Robert Evans?

  I'm a huge piece of shit. Sorry, guys. Uh, in October of 2025, he'd been declared commander-at-large of the Border Patrol, which is not a real job, but basically removed him from the normal Border Patrol hierarchy without giving him formal control over the whole group. In other words, it's the job you give a guy who you want, you want out there in public. You want to let him do stuff for a while because you know eventually you piss people off too much and you want to be able to make him your sacrificial lamb, right? Let's make him a job that'll put him out in front of everybody because this dipshit is not going to be able to help himself. He was the face man for Trump's brutal mass deportations and his main job again, I think, was to provide a focus for public outrage. Walking around in his Nazi coat, looking like Doogie Howser at the end of Starship Troopers. Shit like this serves as a useful distraction.

• 1:17:12Robert Evans?

  Bovino has gotten to defend his choice of outerwear several times in interviews. Per GlobalSecurity.org, he explained that he purchased it around 1999 as a young Border Patrol agent and had worn it for more than 25 years in cold weather or formal settings without prior controversy. He pointed to a 2022 Department of Homeland Security ceremony under the Biden administration where he wore it and received only compliments. Survivors argue that the design draws from longstanding US military traditions such as the M1939-style overcoats or bridge coats used in law enforcement and formal uniforms rather than exclusively fascist imagery. But we know why you're doing it, Greg. Come on, man. We know why you like it. You like it because it makes you look like Doogie Howser at the end of Starship Troopers.

• 1:17:51Speaker 02

  And also to be like, it's not fascist. It's from the US military. Yeah. Like, well, okay, uh, let's take a look at the US military history. Yeah, there is something we, uh, we were talking on zeitgeist about how that like they're thinking about bringing ice to the Winter Olympics. And, um, there, there's just a quote from somebody in Italy talking about their prison camps over there. Like they're deporting Albanians and taking them to like a black site. And they were like, it's like Italian Guantanamo. And I was like, oh, we use Nazis as like our touchstone.

• 1:18:30Speaker 02

  The other countries use us as their, they're like, yeah, it's, it's almost like we're America. As, as their like fascism touchstone.

• 1:18:42Speaker 02

  Jesus Christ.

• 1:18:44Robert Evans?

  So anyway, I'm not sure how much there is to say. I mean, there's a lot more, but you've all lived through it, right? You know, we know where he is right now. After two murders in Minneapolis, he was picked to be the face of the Trump administration's miscalculation. He was removed from his fake job and sent back to El Centro. I'm sure this is not the end of us hearing about Gregory Bovino. They're kind of keeping him in the cooler, right?

• 1:19:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:06Robert Evans?

  He had made a couple of claims previous, even previous to Minneapolis about wanting to retire in the next two years. Which I think was part of why the Trump administration, this may have even been an open like, look, we're going to give you a special fancy job. You're going to be on camera. You're going to get to be the face of the border patrol, doing all this fascist bullshit you've always wanted to do. And then when stuff gets too hot for us, we're gonna, we're gonna cut bait, right? And then you'll just retire with, with full benefits. Doesn't that sound good to you? You can get a nice job on Fox News or something in your retirement.

• 1:19:36Speaker 02

  To wear that jacket that you keep asking us to wear to every meeting. You get to wear that on the news.

• 1:19:41Robert Evans?

  You can wear that every day, buddy. Greg, anytime you want to wear your dumb jacket, just please put it on. Put it on in LA. Fuck it. Like, um, anyway, that's, that's my read of the Greg Bovino story. We will maybe do an update on the fucker if more becomes of him, but it may also just be a thing. Well, he'll wait around a little while in El Centro, you know, probably get, get his rocks off a few times hurting people down there and then retire. You know, like he'd planned to.

• 1:20:09Speaker 02

  Right. Did you see the video of the woman who was just like, kind of dragging him outside of a 7-Eleven? And his response was just, he was like, "Oh, that's real nice. Oh, you're being real nice." It was just like, I don't, I don't know, man. That's, I don't, I don't think your place is to tell people that they're being not nice at this stage.

• 1:20:32Speaker 01

  He's a weird little guy that got too much power and I hope to never see him again. But I, I think unfortunately, the way this world's been working, we probably will.

• 1:20:44Speaker 02

  Yep. Yeah, there's a lot of weird little guys, I feel like. Someone should make a show about that. Yeah, we should probably have a show about weird little guys on our podcast network.

• 1:20:52Speaker 01

  Oh, great news, Robert. I have great news. Molly Conger has a show called Weird Little Guys.

• 1:21:00Speaker 02

  Oh, they crossed that Rubicon. They figured out how to launch a second podcast. Incredible.

• 1:21:05Speaker 01

  Um, Jack, is there anything you'd like to plug here at the end?

• 1:21:08Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. Sophie, thank you so much. Uh, first of all, such a pleasure to be with you guys. Uh, Robert, uh, the, my, my first intern at Cracked, our first intern discovered by, uh, the great Daniel O'Brien. And, uh, so, so fun to, uh, have been working with you in the podcast space all these years. And Sophie Lichterman, one of the greats to ever do it. Um, so thank you guys so much. Uh, always enjoy being back. Uh, Daily Zeitgeist is a show that I do twice a day, um, with my wonderful

• 1:21:43Speaker 01

  Jesus, twice a day?

• 1:21:44Speaker 02

  long-suffering co-host, Miles Gray. Um, and we, uh, just published our 2,000th episode.

• 1:21:52Speaker 01

  Oh, congratulations, dude.

• 1:21:54Speaker 02

  2,000th main episode.

• 1:21:56Speaker 01

  Crazy.

• 1:21:56Speaker 02

  The second, we didn't even count the second one, but, um, we did it. We made it to 2,000. What, what it is, we're not sure, but we did it.

• 1:22:06Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:22:06Speaker 02

  Uh, and then, like I mentioned, we have a new series that, uh, I think fans of the Cracked podcast, the old Cracked podcast, uh, will like, called The Iconograph, where each Monday, um, me and a researcher.

• 1:22:20Speaker 02

  Or do a deep dive into a different icon. What's an icon, you ask, by our definition? So our first episode was about Einstein and our second was about Urkel. So it's just any of these like big pop culture whore cruxes that drive a lot of meaning in the zeitgeist. And it lets us do a show that isn't about the news, which is so nice.

• 1:22:45Speaker 01

  Fun, fun, fun Sophie lore for you. My, my first ever crush was Einstein's like great grandson.

• 1:22:52Speaker 02

  Are you serious?

• 1:22:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:54Speaker 02

  Damn.

• 1:22:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:55Speaker 02

  I should, I should have had you on to talk about that.

• 1:22:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. If you're listening to this, yes, I loved you. It was first grade. I loved you. Yes. Hi.

• 1:23:05Speaker 02

  You, you don't think he knew?

• 1:23:07Speaker 01

  Oh, no, he, I, I was not cool. You know me, I can't hide any, anything. I've never changed. I've always been this way. Like he, he for sure knew, he for sure knew. And the way I know he knew is I got teased about it by this other guy. So I kicked him in the shin and then I got in trouble. So he knew, he knew I've been this way my entire life.

• 1:23:26Speaker 02

  And I picture you kicking him in the shin and his shin bone snapping backwards like Steven Seagal.

• 1:23:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. No, he, he definitely knew.

• 1:23:36Speaker 02

  But, uh, and his name was Greg Einstein. So Greg Einstein.

• 1:23:40Speaker 01

  Simon Einstein, shout out. If you're, if you're listening, if you're listening to this, I loved you. I was in first grade.

• 1:23:47Speaker 02

  But, uh, yeah, anyways, that's a, that's a fun one. Those come out every Monday morning. We're calling them the iconograph. We just did Marilyn Monroe, which is a really fun episode. Dolly Parton, Tony Hawk's coming up. And Robert would love to have you on one. So sure, we, we like to reach out to the guests and be like, okay, here's our list. Who do you like? Or pitch us the icon that you want to go over. So maybe a chance for you guys to talk about people you don't, who, who aren't, uh, the worst.

• 1:24:17Robert Evans?

  Sure. People who aren't the worst. Yes. Icons.

• 1:24:20Speaker 02

  Icons.

• 1:24:21Robert Evans?

  Yes. Like my, my, the iconic Jack O'Brien, who thank you for being on our show.

• 1:24:25Speaker 02

  Oh, it's so wonderful being here. Also, Jack underscore O'Brien on Twitter and yeah.

• 1:24:30Speaker 01

  One, one last plug, Against the State by James Stout, our colleague. His book is available now. Please buy it. It's fantastic.

• 1:24:39Speaker 02

  Love James.

• 1:24:40Speaker 01

  That, that'll do it, right, Robert?

• 1:24:43Robert Evans?

  Yep, that'll do it.

• 1:24:44Speaker 02

  Holy shit.

• 1:24:45Speaker 01

  Bye bye.

• 1:24:50Speaker 01

  Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedi.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes of Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit Remind Me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For clips and our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, youtube.com/behindthebastards. We love about 40% of you, statistically speaking.

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