How long will Trump's base support him?

Last time we had Charlie Warzel on, it was to determine whether the insurrection had been a political success. Now, 100+ days into Trump 2.0, he joins us again to answer some simple questions: Should we be worrying about the survival of American democracy now? And also, with the fallout from tariffs revealing the first cracks in Trump’s base, is this whole thing good for anyone? Plus, are we ready for Dave Portnoy 2028? Our guest Charlie Warzel is a writer for The Atlantic and for his Substack, Galaxy Brain (https://warzel.substack.com/). You can follow him there or @cwarzel on X and Instagram, or @cwarzel.bsky.social. Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to the Garbage Day Discord? Sign up for just five bucks a month at: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Sponsors Want to sponsor Panic World? Ad sales & marketing support by Multitude, hit them up here: ⁠http://multitude.productions⁠. Credits - Host: Ryan Broderick - Producer: Grant Irving - Engineer: Rebecca Seidel - Researcher: Adam Bumas - Business Manager: Josh Fjelstad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration blog, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 0:26Ryan Broderick?

  So Charlie, welcome back to Panic World. Things are fine now, right? Like, because last time we spoke, you know, we were kind of worried about the direction of the country, but it feels like we figured it out.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's a real course correction, basically, since, you know, January 20th. We're on the right track now.

• 0:43Ryan Broderick?

  Do you? Do you? Okay, I don't really know how I feel about this, but I'm hoping maybe you do, and you can help me through this feeling. Do you worry about the actual survival of American democracy now? Is that a thing that is actually beginning to sort of like feel serious to you?

• 1:03Speaker 02

  Damn it.

• 1:21Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, I want to hear your answer, but let me set up the episode first. I'm Ryan Broderick. With me as always, sometimes throughout the episode, unfortunately, is our producer Grant Irving. He'll be popping in from time to time. This is Panic World, a show about how the internet warps our minds, our culture, and eventually, reality. And nothing really sort of exemplifies that warping of reality more than Trump's first 100 days in office. Today, I want to look back at the fallout from the inflation panic, the first time we really saw the cracks amongst his supporters, which leads me to ask, is this going well for anyone? Is this great for any of his supporters? Joining me today is writer for The Atlantic, Charlie Wazle. Welcome back. I think you might be our first, second timer.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  Hell, yeah. Wonderful.

• 2:04Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, so congrats. That's how you know things have really spun out of control. We're bringing you back in for Apocalypse Beat. And yes, last time you were on, we had talked about whether January 6th was a success or not. And we both spent an hour being like, I don't know, until the end being like, I think it was.

• 2:21Speaker 02

  It truly like cracked my brain open. Like, I left that and I just like stared at the wall for two hours. So that was fun. Hopefully we can have that happen again.

• 2:31Ryan Broderick?

  Dude, our guests keep saying that for some reason. So we're now four months into the victory lap of the January 6th rioters. They're now running the country and we're finding out, you know, what happens when people who are in charge are really horny for human suffering and also suffer from like various forms of conspiracy theory brain rot. It's a tough time for everybody. So yeah, my question at the top, before we get into all the people starting to panic, are we gonna survive this?

• 2:58Speaker 02

  Like, talking to me today about this, I feel like has me at a, at a level of concern that I may not have even had, I don't know, five days ago. So I just, I took a couple of days off.

• 3:11Ryan Broderick?

  Congrats. Humble brag.

• 3:12Speaker 02

  And it wasn't like I was like digital detoxing or whatever. Like, I wasn't like tuning out information, but I was like, I'm not going to like dip in and seek out bad news, right?

• 3:24Ryan Broderick?

  You're using the internet like a civilian.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it was astonishing how little information came in. I think there's this assumption right now that like information, if it's bad enough, right? Like, we'll find you. And I think there was that a little with some of the tariff stuff, right? Like, it's just like, the economy might be melting down, like, you know, when the Dow plunges a specific amount, like, that information shows up to like the most normie of normies in the world. But outside of that, it was like really alarming to me just how little information came through and just like also how good I kind of felt about everything, right? It's like, it's spring, like. It was really nice.

• 4:07Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, it absolutely rocks.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  I plugged in like, you know, this morning, like it came back into certain things and like, you know, I opened up Blue Sky, the constant like Trump administration five alarm fire of like the Blue Sky timeline, which, which sometimes can feel overwhelming, just like when you're in it and you're like plugged into information. It like hurt, but it also made me feel like, whoa, whoa, like this is hysterical, right? Like I was just out in the world for a few moments. Like this is like, like this is too much, like maybe I shouldn't be here. And then you sort of realize that's part of the problem, right? Like the places that are sort of attuned to the emergency are freaking out. I think probably rightly so, but like if you're not in emergency land going into that,

• 4:53Speaker 02

  like if there's so much friction, switching these spheres that like, there's like a barrier to entry almost. This is why I'm worried to go back to the, the answer there. Like the, the reason I'm, I'm concerned about this is that I'm like, oh, it's like, I totally get that like a vast majority of Americans just like aren't paying attention, like at all.

• 5:16Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, no, I, I know exactly what you mean. There's a surrealness to it. I've experienced it twice, actually, in different ways. Like I, you know, I, I've written and talked about like living in London through Brexit, which was essentially what we've done the last three months, but over the course of five years. So obviously it was a little slower, but there was this experience where like you'd go online and like it's the end of the world. And then you'd go outside and it's like, okay, things are like a little shittier than they were, but like I can still like take the bus and I can go to Wagamama or whatever. I used to work next to the Wagamama where that guy got poisoned by the Russian government. So like, it was kind of a tourist attraction for me.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  That's your humble brag.

• 5:52Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, exactly. Humble brag. Uh, and I also sort of experienced this very briefly when I was in Hong Kong in 2019 during the last wave of protests. So like the city felt like totally normal to me as an out, I'd never been there before, but my friends who were living there were like, it is different. I was like, okay, but it's a normal, you're walking around, it's normal. You're reading that. The Chinese government is obviously like freezing the city down and it's like cracking down and the last protest happens and it's this big protest, it happens and then it's over and it goes like back to normal. And I do wonder if like the average American is like sort of expecting like if things are bad, like it'll be like on TV, you know, it'll be like tanks in the streets and stuff. And it's like, that's just not really how

• 6:36Ryan Broderick?

  this plays out in my, I don't think, in the modern world.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  And there may be a way to like this all happening with such proximity to COVID.

• 6:45Ryan Broderick?

  Sure.

• 6:46Speaker 02

  Because it's like, well, like, I mean, I remember when I couldn't take my kids to school, right? Like clearly if like there's, if the breakdown of US, of United States democracy is as bad as like the people online braying about it, say it is, then there will be these disruptions to my day to day. And it's like, well, not really unless like, you know, but, but then, but then there are, there are these real things. Like up where I live in, in Western Washington State, there's a lot. There've been like a number of these like big ICE raids, right?

• 7:15Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  And like, you'll see it in like the local paper and it's like a big headline, but it's not done in that, in that like national news way. It's just sort of like 36 immigrants who worked for this roofing company are no longer there. And like the roofing company is, you know, going out of business because of it. And it's just sort of like,

• 7:34Ryan Broderick?

  So fucked.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  Oh, they were all just rounded up and sent back home. And it's weird because it's like, it's very tangible. It's like just, it's happened in your community, but also it's not done in that way where it's like, you know, it's not like the Rachel Maddow like, like monologue about this, right? It's just sort of like happening.

• 7:52Ryan Broderick?

  It's like, it's like some kind of police force that's secret, like some sort of secret.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  There's no analog for this. This has never happened anywhere.

• 8:02Ryan Broderick?

  Um, not to shit where you eat, but there was an Atlantic story yesterday that was like, Trump is doing some sort of cultural Marxist project. And I was like, like a nationalist?

• 8:12Speaker 02

  There's no analog for this. This has never happened anywhere.

• 8:14Ryan Broderick?

  A nationalist social, like a, is there a word for, okay, we are freaking out, but it seems like the Trump supporters aren't liking what they voted for as well. So let's look back at the tariff panic because I think it shows that this is way more insane than even his most public supporters wanted. And yet that somehow has no real effect on us inching closer to full fascism.

• 8:37Ryan Broderick?

  But let's start with what I think are the three main factions, and all three had very unique reactions to these tariffs. So you have the Manosphere podcast world, like the Theo Von's, the Joe Rogan's, the Dave Portnoy's, UFC, apparently as an entire company. Then you have reactionary Silicon Valley. So you've got like the all-in guys, you've got various South Africans living in San Francisco trying to do techno apartheid. And then lastly, you have the white nationalists, you have the TPUSA people who have giant misshapen foreheads and too much gum for teeth as a ratio. And like those three groups effectively broke their coalition, I think, around the tariffs this month. What do you think?

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so. I mean, but only to a degree. I mean, I'll put it this way. The most interesting group to me are these like this Silicon Valley types. And because they are sort of looking at Trump as like a portfolio company, right?

• 9:35Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  It is, it is an investment. Like, I remember this, or like seeing this really for the first time, this mindset of like, what happens when like the venture capital and Silicon Valley crowd goes out of the realm of technology and into like a broader like political, cultural, social thing. Like, the thing that stood out was February 2020 with COVID, when some of these investors like that guy Balaji, the crypto angel investor guy, and some of the Andreessen Horowitz people were like, we're not gonna, we're gonna do a policy of no handshakes, right? Like, there's this virus in China, and it's coming around, maybe, and like, we just, we don't want to do that. Like, we're gonna wear masks inside the office. We should, we should do that. And people being like,

• 10:17Speaker 02

  this is, these guys are weird freaks, right? Like, what the hell? And then,

• 10:22Ryan Broderick?

  Sure.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Obviously, everything changed. Like, they're making bets, right? They're always like, they think of the whole world as like long, like, risk assessment and like, long-term bets, and how do, how do we like, do this? And it's both financially, but also reputationally. And this was like a huge reputational win for them.

• 10:39Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, so you're saying that like, the way that they think about, you know, the risk they take investing in companies or managing companies? Is how they see the whole world, right?

• 10:49Speaker 02

  That was like, kind of turned like the light bulb on in my brain of like, oh, they don't just look at companies this way. They look at literally every single thing in their lives as like a potential stock or portfolio company or investment or whatever it is. And that's, I think, obviously how they've responded with Trump, but you could see it in the tariff thing. Like, I made this reputational investment on Donald Trump. It was really interesting to watch them figure out like when to cut bait on the investment, like when to sell shares of Trump. And some people sold all their shares and some people sold like some of their shares and, you know, like hedge. And it was just like, it was really fascinating to see them treat this like actual literal crisis that they helped cause as like a market fluctuation.

• 11:36Ryan Broderick?

  In line with that, Zach Beauchamp at Vox wrote this really fascinating piece, kind of addressing this idea, and I want to read a section of it. So he writes, "People like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Marc Andreessen all had demonstrable track records of success. The basic thinking was that they would serve as the rough equivalent of adults in the room. That's of course not what happened. Instead of restraining Trump, Musk has become perhaps his most dangerous enabler. Why? Because he and the people around him genuinely believed what they were saying in public. The bizarre claims about government waste, the broke conspiracy theories, the unshakable faith in their own ability to reinvent government oversight. Musk and those close to him said much the same things behind closed doors as they do on X."

• 12:21Ryan Broderick?

  And here's, here's a quote from a guy that I want to talk about next. So are you familiar with racist Substacker and Silicon Valley illuminary, Richard Hanian? Hanania?

• 12:34Speaker 02

  Of course, of course. One of the premier minds of our, of our generation.

• 12:39Ryan Broderick?

  Hanania? So he wrote, Talking to these guys privately, there's no distinction, Hanania says, he told Vox. It really is people radicalized by social media, which is a thing that Richard has been doing recently, because he's clearly trying to like, figure out where to pivot next, because things are so clearly blowing up. And, so yeah, what is your kind of read on Richard Hanania right now? Because I feel like most, let's assume that people listening to this podcast do not know who he is. Like, how would you sort of describe his function in this reactionary Silicon Valley world?

• 13:13Speaker 02

  I would say, again, I don't know, like, you know, I'm not like, deep in on him, but he apparently...

• 13:20Ryan Broderick?

  I mean, you pay for his, you pay for his...

• 13:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I pay for a lot of people. It's a patronage model on the internet, right? It's just people who I want to see, I want to see him do well, you know, I...

• 13:29Ryan Broderick?

  You can expense it, so it's totally fine.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. It's all deductible. So, from what I understand, really kind of like, did a lot of race science dabbling, and I guess continues to still do that. But also kind of, you know, positions himself as one of those reactionary, like, kind of centrist types, right? Like, on like, the race science issue and other stuff, he's dabbling with, you know, measuring craniums and things like that.

• 14:01Ryan Broderick?

  Fraternity, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 14:02Speaker 02

  But, but he's sort of, you know, one of, one of those people for whom, you know, folks who are employed by news organizations could potentially quote tweet and be like, "That's fascinating, that's interesting," you know, and like, it wouldn't, it's not the same thing as quote tweeting, you know, Alex Jones, or Richard Spencer, or somebody like that, right? So...

• 14:22Ryan Broderick?

  Exactly.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  There's that kind of level. And from what I noticed, you know, he was a Trump supporter, and I, the big thing that I saw blowing up is this notion of like, "Wow, I guess Trump Derangement Syndrome really was accurate after all." Like, was the most accurate reading of the world.

• 14:41Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  And you could see that it was this amazing attempt at a pivot to be like, "I'm going to be the first person to raise my hand," and be like, "Trump's bad." And if I can be the first person out of the door, you know, before this whole thing collapses, or before, you know, it's only the truest, most hardcore, like, you know, deport all brown people administration...

• 15:06Speaker 02

  Then, you know, maybe I have a shot if this thing comes falling down. And again, it's one of those great examples of like, I don't know if he actually cares. It's not up to me to, you know, analyze that, but it was, it was just such a risk assessment and such a like, okay, I made a bet, it's wrong, I need to make another bet now. And here's where like the wind appears to be blowing. And that was sort of right at the peak of like, oh, is Donald Trump going to actually crash the economy in like four days over this tariff stuff?

• 15:38Ryan Broderick?

  To me, the Silicon Valley guys are the most sort of defined by the idea that like they truly thought they were building like libertarianism 2.0, right? But just a little background for Hanania, like all great Substackers, he got his start writing as an anonymous white nationalist forum user. That pipeline is like very well known. And he then published a book in 2023 titled The Origins of Wokeness, which does have some impact on Project 2025. He's sort of, he's in the mix, right? But I think the, the point about the Silicon Valley guys, seeing this as a math equation

• 16:20Ryan Broderick?

  and thinking like, okay, like, we don't really care if Donald Trump is super, super duper racist because like, we actually kind of like some of that stuff. And two, if like, he's willing to build like feudal style techno city states, like it's all good. But then, you know, you end up on tariff day with Bill Ackman having a complete meltdown. So you recently wrote about the VC kind of reaction. I guess, let's call them the VC, the VCs, the Silicon Valley guys. You've, you've recently wrote about their reaction to backing Trump. The, the same thing, you know, I don't want to say that you and Hanania are writing similar things, but you also pointed out a similar, you know, a similar skull shape, no, a similar connection between sort of what they're saying offline and online. So do you mind if I read your words to you or will you be uncomfortable?

• 17:05Speaker 02

  Bring me on this podcast and you just, just ruin my reputation.

• 17:12Speaker 02

  I'm honored. Yes, no, please, please read my words back.

• 17:14Ryan Broderick?

  Okay.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 17:15Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, so this is you in the Atlantic. For many outspoken VCs, backing Trump was a bet, much like investing in a portfolio company, one that came out with substantial risk. Should Trump's tariff scheme backfire completely by causing a recession or worse, their reputations as risk managers and complex systems thinkers would naturally be tarnished. See, Bill Ackman, who then spent tariff day bitching and moaning and pleading for Trump to this is me interjecting, by the way, unless, of course, they chose to double down and create a fictional narrative in which they cannot be wrong. The truthers are, in essence, taking up their reputational investment, as if the Trump administration was a stock they were holding. As Trump himself has proved throughout his political career, it's often easier to double down and build a fantasy world around your mistake than to admit you are wrong.

• 17:58Ryan Broderick?

  So what I would love to sort of understand, like, from how you see it is like, why didn't the VCs do the Trump thing? Like, why did they, why did we start to see people like Bill Ackman be like, uh-oh? Like, they couldn't buy into the illusion the same way the ideologues could?

• 18:15Speaker 02

  Some of them did, right? So I was like, looking at, I don't know how you say his last name, but like Keith Rabois or Keith Rabois, I don't know, like, again, like a tech investor, longtime guy, totally down the Trump rabbit hole, right? And this was like, and his was, he and this guy, I believe from Sequoia, Sean McGuire, who's been really vocal, the two of them were actually doing the like, basically the QAnon thing, right? Like, this like, no, no, no, this is all the plan. Like, this is, this is what, what he's doing.

• 18:45Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 18:46Speaker 02

  And the reason that I know that he's hovering over the target, like, about to, you know, fix everything, like, and, you know, put forward this masterful gambit, is because everyone in the mainstream media is freaking out about it, right? Like, all the people we don't like are really, really concerned. So clearly, Trump is on the right track. And then somebody responded with, to one of these guys, I remember just, just seeing on, on, on the everything app, they were like, what about, like, the legion of economists? And like, people, like, you know, economists famously not like... Socialists, right?

• 19:29Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  They're all freaking out about this too. What about them? And it was just like famously, every academic is a leftist. Like that was their response, right? It was just this total like I

• 19:39Ryan Broderick?

  Sure.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  Anyone who says that this is wrong in any way is clearly audience captured or radicalized or clinically insane. Whereas I am

• 19:51Ryan Broderick?

  I am not insane, right?

• 19:52Speaker 02

  I am the, I am the contrarian because I am looking at, you know, at my net worth being cut in half and saying, this is good. It's all like predicated off of, off of the, you know, the web two model of like people being like, well, you know, connecting kids who go to college with like, you know, weird accounts that say what their relationship status is, is, is like not a, you know, is not a major business. And they say, well, look, we saw around that corner. We saw Facebook, whatever. Um, but anyway, the, the other crew who's not like the Bill Ackmans of the world, they, I mean, I think the reason, just speaking about Bill Ackman, who is a, is a fund manager, like he's actually in charge of, of a

• 20:36Speaker 02

  bunch of people's money and not necessarily making, it's not quite the same as, as venture capital.

• 20:43Ryan Broderick?

  He's not really an investor. He's like, he's a money guy, but he's not like a, he's receiving the money. He's not sending out the money.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  And also, and also like the job is to like make money, right? Like to deliver a rate of return for very, you know, wealthy, um, people like there are, there are folks in that Trump tech and VC world who the straight up, like the Andreessen's of the world, those types of people, like they've kind of become, they definitely do the, the, the investing venture capital thing, but a big part of who they are and who their reputation is, is being like ideas people, right? And so they actually have a little more leeway, I think, with all this. But the people who are in charge of like responding to markets on a day by day basis, this was a good example, I think of just like the Trump

• 21:35Speaker 02

  Defiance of reality, like crashing against the rocks of like, no, no, no, like markets are just actually like a thing. Like you don't like, you know, they, they respond to very like, basic inputs and outputs. And if you, you know, levy tariffs against the entire world, like the stock market is going to react. Like it is maybe the most, you know, in this particular circumstance, like one of the more rational elements of, you know, of the global economy.

• 22:04Ryan Broderick?

  I, I saw this great quote from an economist, a leftist academic economist during the tariff crisis, who was trying to explain that like Donald Trump doesn't understand trade deficits. And his quote was like, yeah, I have a trade deficit with my barber. He's never bought anything from me. You know, typical leftist.

• 22:21Speaker 02

  I saw that exact, that exact frame, except it was the grocery store. I have a trade deficit with the grocery store from Ron Paul. Ron Paul.

• 22:30Ryan Broderick?

  If you've lost Ron Paul, you're in serious fucking trouble.

• 22:36Speaker 02

  It was amazing. It's such, it's such like great logic, right? And it actually shows the sort of, I think, the mad king nature of, of this tariff thing. He was on Air Force One and like Fox was interviewing him about, about this going on. And he was just like, they would ask him a question and it would just be like this, like vacant stare from Trump and he'd be like, they're ripping us off. And I was like, it was just so clear. It was like this, this man just like, he just doesn't know. Mentally just doesn't understand what is happening. And so I think like folks like Ackman were seeing that and saying like,

• 23:15Speaker 02

  I actually like, my primary reputational duty is this end of year rate of return. And like, if I don't have that, like I, it doesn't matter what my reputation is. My pathway to success is not having like 40,000 like mega folks with like pensions, investing, doing retail investing like in my fund. Like he has to worry about like billionaires giving him money.

• 23:41Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  That's his bread and butter. And those people do respond. To the market like after a while. And that's why I think the tariff thing has been this really great sort of reality test for this, right? Like it was this excellent way to sort of as you, as you were saying, breaking them down into like the three crowds to look at all that and say like, okay, so, so who, who is like, where is somebody down, you know, like the maga rabbit hole? Like there, there are clearly the people like the Charlie Kirk's of the world or the Benny Johnson's of the world who, who are so far down. And then there are these people who have made the investment, but are willing to cut bait like Ackman if, if, if it went, you know, tits up or whatever.

• 24:21Ryan Broderick?

  So I want to talk about kind of like the mad king idea and the cult of personality and, you know, what I think is like, you know, the driving force of that cult of personality, which is it's not an accident. We have not mentioned a woman yet. Like the, the, the life blood of this thing is misogyny. And I think that there is a sort of a de-realization at certain levels of toxic masculinity where like reality starts to warp. And so, right after the ad break, I want to talk about probably our most casual faction here who have had probably my, the funniest reaction to everything that's been happening. So right after a word from our sponsors, which is a, a new brand of creatine, you can absolutely buy at the online panic world store. We're going to be talking about how the manosphere did with the tariffs this month.

• 25:05Ryan Broderick?

  Do, do, do, do, do. All I know about creatine is what I learned at an all boys high school growing up, which was that it makes your muscles watery. If you don't work out properly while taking it, like you get like watery muscles.

• 25:14Speaker 03

  I'm going to always continue to edit out anything bad you say about creatine. The only

• 25:19Ryan Broderick?

  Are you on creatine? Are you take, are you, you, you, are you on the team, bro?

• 25:22Speaker 03

  I cannot, we do this every four episodes. Are you, are you joking? Is this a bit?

• 25:27Ryan Broderick?

  At this point? Dude, I record and then like, I have no memory of what happens. And if you edit anything out of these episodes, yeah, like I don't know that I said it.

• 25:35Speaker 03

  I'm leaving this in because we've now talked about you making fun of the water muscles thing on microphone.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  Can I just say that I've, as a, as a listener, I have sometimes, you go to the ad break right before like teasing like the worst thing ever. Like it's, it's just like, here are some men who are going to be like fucking a jar of mayonnaise afterward from our sponsors. And I'm just like, man, what is Allbirds? Like the rep from Allbirds or whatever, you know, whatever. Who's just like, like the Chobani yogurt person who's like, cool, sweet. That's good. That's, that's great. I love it. It makes me laugh so hard.

• 26:12Speaker 03

  Patreon.com/panicworld. That's really the only option for us, please.

• 26:16Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. And we do, we do pickups where like, I'll just cycle through like a bunch of them to see like, if we can come over there, a really good one, you know? Like it's a, it's a bit now. So unfortunately.

• 26:29Speaker 00

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• 27:26Ryan Broderick?

  It's time to talk about Dave Portnoy.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  I was the 48th president that you're talking about. Just be careful.

• 27:32Ryan Broderick?

  Charlie, Charlie, that is, so this, okay. The line that Grant wrote in the script is, all right, now let's briefly talk about our next president, Dave Portnoy. So, congrats.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  Hell, yeah.

• 27:45Ryan Broderick?

  I assume at this point, Panic World listeners know Dave Portnoy is, but if you don't, he is the founder and sort of head of Barstool Sports. He's been kind of a fascinating figure throughout all of this because he was really quick to kind of be like, uh-oh. And also, unfortunately, came up with the term "Orange Monday," which fucking rocks. Like, that rocks so hard. That's like a typical Boston piece of shit, like, reaction that I really find endearing, unfortunately, even though he's a very bad man. But I think he is important to look at because, like, he is such a casual in all of this, but he's also kind of like a foot soldier in the misogyny that, like, fuels the movement on a base level.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  All right, so i-if I can just, like, the reason why I made the joke about Portnoy being the next president is precisely because of what you just set up. Like, the idea of, like, it all just echoes Trump, pre-Trump going down the golden escalator, like, so well. "Orange Monday" is an amazing term. That Donald Trump tweet about Diet Coke, right? Like, "I'll keep drinking this garbage my whole life," right? Like, it's like, like, there's stuff that he says sometimes where you're like, "Ah, man, I gotta hand it to him. Like, I don't like this guy, but like, it's funny," right? And also, like, just in

• 29:02Speaker 02

  the same way that Trump's medium of Twitter, like, pre, again, pre-coming down the escalator, declaring his candidacy, all that, like, his sort of ability to be like a savant there and intuitively understand the medium, like, that is him, that is Portnoy and Barstool with, like, short-form video, like, TikTok stuff, podcasts. Like, he instinctively understands, like, Barstool is just a reality show about a bunch of bloggers that is somehow, like, one of the most popular things in the world. They livestream, like, six guys sitting in barcaloungers, watching football games and betting on them and reacting, and you don't even see the football game. Like, it is literally just like-

• 29:44Ryan Broderick?

  No, you just watch that.

• 29:45Speaker 02

  It is a wild thing, and he seems to have this really innate understanding of, like, the media ecosystem. He echoes- Everything from like 11, 12 years ago of Donald Trump in this way where it's like, yeah, there's a lot of really kind of like messed up and misogynist like shit in Portnoy's past. But if you don't know that, there's also like, he's got a bunch of rescue dogs that are like, kind of like adorable and like he, you know,

• 30:15Ryan Broderick?

  The pizza reviews.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  Does the pizza reviews and like, and sometimes he just like goes off and dunks on somebody. And in that, you know, like mass hole way, like sometimes it's like absolutely like cathartically hilarious. And so it all reminds me exactly of somebody who like, isn't attuned to, you know, all the allegations of, you know, around Donald Trump or the fraud or the bankruptcy or the whatever, and just sees him as the apprentice guy and is like, yeah, this, this guy, sure, like, why not? You know, I, anyway, it just, it feels like, like history echoing in a really hard way around that guy.

• 30:51Ryan Broderick?

  That's all right. And I think we are seeing Portnoy speak to a part of the MAGA coalition that could turn against Trump if Portnoy also turns on him. So let's run through a ticking clock of Dave, let's, let's run through a ticking clock of Dave Portnoy's big week where he slowly realizes that he may have voted for more than he thought. April 3rd, Dave Portnoy fires off this post on X.

• 31:23Ryan Broderick?

  Should I do a Boston accent?

• 31:24Speaker 02

  Oh, God, yes.

• 31:25Ryan Broderick?

  I don't think I've ever done one on this show before. All right. I have a dumb, I have a dumb Bitcoin crypto question. If the point of Bitcoin is to be independent of the US dollar and not regulated, why does it basically trade exactly like the US stock market nowadays? Market up, Bitcoin up, market down, Bitcoin down.

• 31:43Ryan Broderick?

  So there you go.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  This is fascist Peter Griffin.

• 31:47Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, just, yeah, Mac it, Mac it up, Bitcoin up, Mac it down, Bitcoin down. April 4th, the next day, Portnoy says, Portnoy reveals that he's lost $7 million.

• 32:02Ryan Broderick?

  He's, he reveals that he's lost, he claims he's lost $7 million in stocks and crypto. April 7th, he declares it Orange Monday.

• 32:12Ryan Broderick?

  And then he starts like making like kind of failed threats against Trump, which is really funny. And then on April 9th, Trump pulls back. Portnoy is seen dancing and singing to celebration in a short video. And then on April 12th, he is seen hugging Trump at a UFC event. Which I feel like if I had to explain like what this world is, that is essentially all of the things there.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's so weird how, like, there's that, that, that like phrase, right? It's like, it's a big club and you're not in it or whatever, that is often like deployed about like, you know, elites in whatever thing. It's sort of like the same thing to me, like Portnoy hugging Trump in that way after like just roasting him all, all week and like declaring him the enemy. It's like kind of similar to when like, right before the inauguration, I think it was Jimmy Carter's funeral. Like Obama was like, kind of like smiling, sitting next to Donald Trump. And you're like, oh, is it just like, is it all just like a game? Is it really like, does anyone really care as much as the people who care? You know, I, I'm not articulating myself properly, but.

• 33:30Ryan Broderick?

  You know, it's like the people who have to care.

• 33:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 33:33Ryan Broderick?

  If you don't have to care, if you can lose $7 million in stocks and crypto and still have an internet connection that works in your home, you know, like if you can still afford to post, if they haven't repossessed your, your phone, then yeah, I don't think it really does matter, probably.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. But anyway, to, to that point, I mean, it's, it is also just amazing how there's guys in this like manosphere space, right? Like, like you see it with, you see it with. Joe Rogan, sometimes you see it with Theo Von, like Joe Rogan, a couple of weeks ago, I saw a clip of him being like, this is really hurtful to the movement when we deport people to El Salvador who are very clearly innocent, right? And like, boy, I sure wish he wouldn't do that. And it's like, it's like him, it's like the equivalent of like, oh, I caught him.

• 34:21Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I got the quote right here. So he said, "The thing is, you got to get scared that people..." Should I do a Boston accent for this? So the thing is, "You've got to get scared that people who are not criminals are getting lassoed up..." An incredible visionary thinker, Joe Rogan is. "You have to get scared that people who are not criminals are getting lassoed up and deported and sent to El Salvador prisons." Horrific, is the quote.

• 34:46Speaker 02

  God, but it's just the way that these guys are like, that quote-unquote condemnation, right, of extrajudicial renditions to foreign countries. It's similar to the way that someone would criticize, like, "Ah, I didn't like that, how he comported himself." It's almost like it has the tone of, "I wish this would all be a little more civil," right? And like, there's just this weird way that these guys in this universe acknowledge the most heinous authoritarian tendencies of this guy. But the way they speak out against it is like, as if he said a swear word or something like that.

• 35:29Speaker 02

  It's like that level of outrage. Like, ah, again, they're hedging their bet, their portfolio investment, just ever so slightly, but they're absolutely not, like, they're not shorting Donald Trump here.

• 35:43Ryan Broderick?

  Actually, much in the same way the Silicon Valley guys are like, "Wait a minute, I thought we were doing techno-libertarianism. I didn't know we were gonna go full authoritarian lunacy." I think these guys are the same deal, where they're like, "Wait, I just thought women weren't gonna have good jobs anymore. Like, I thought that's what we were doing."

• 36:01Speaker 02

  Some of it is just a contemplate, right? Like, I think you were talking with Felix about this, with some of these guys, like the Nelk Boys and whatever, and it's like, the pivot is always just like... Donald Trump's good for content. Like Donald Trump's like, like this is interesting. Like Donald Trump is funny.

• 36:21Ryan Broderick?

  Are we, are we part of it right? Are we, are we doing that right now? Is that?

• 36:26Speaker 02

  No, we're, we're, we're good.

• 36:28Ryan Broderick?

  Please subscribe to our Patreon for $5 a month and you'll get more about all of this. No, but you are exactly right. He is very good for content, especially if you're on his side.

• 36:36Speaker 02

  The savvy that you can actually like apply to Trump, like it's never policy. It's never like, like grand strategy, but it is this idea of like finding these people and being like, "Oh, they need content. I'm really good at that." Right? And like, this is like, this is a natural partnership, right? Just like Trump and the sharper image in 1994, right? It's like, like he understands partnerships in that way and these guys understand it too.

• 37:05Ryan Broderick?

  The Trump movement could not have worked as well as it did this time around without that entertainment arm. Like essentially, as we understand it, like it was Baron Trump, which is like an insane thing that happened where he was like, "Hey dad, here's how entertainment works now. Get on these shows."

• 37:23Speaker 02

  And it works too because of the way this podcast ecosystem works, right? Which is that they all like, and again, it's not coordinated in some like, you know, backroom cabal way, but like so many of them are friends or so many of them have realized that having, you know, this cinematic universe where the Ovans on Rogan and you know, like, like Shane Gillis is on every single podcast in that sphere and then.

• 37:51Ryan Broderick?

  No, no, you can just say everything. I think he, dude, he's on, he's on this one right now. Like he's, he's coming on right after you.

• 37:58Speaker 02

  He and Post Malone are gonna drink 46 Bud Lights.

• 38:01Ryan Broderick?

  Hey, don't threaten me with a good time. Let's fucking go.

• 38:04Speaker 02

  It would be pretty sick.

• 38:08Speaker 03

  That's when we're covering the manny sucker. That's the, you get the dystopia episode.

• 38:12Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, Post Malone gets a fun one, yeah.

• 38:15Speaker 02

  Damn, he gets all the good stuff. But like, these guys are always in those spheres and the, the result of that is just repetition, right? And like repetition changes culture. These guys maybe don't even necessarily know what they're doing, but they do have this instinct that it is like, in this, you know, cinematic universe of podcasters, like this guy is not a bad person to be, you know, somewhat aligned with.

• 38:49Ryan Broderick?

  That's right. And when he was running, he was organically good for everyone's business and good for Trump. But now these guys are starting to hedge. They don't want to sell thoroughly and hurt their brands. But I think we are seeing that they're getting nervous. Recently, Portnoy amped up the language and posted that the stock market is Trump's doing. And to not quote, piss on my leg and tell me, hold on, piss on my leg and tell me it's raining. So this is very, you know, this very well might be a group that could defect if Trump's governing becomes worse for their bottom line than his cultural cachet helps them feel strong and proud as, you know, annoying white guys. But that doesn't seem to be slowing down the fascism, which is the problem, which is aided quite a bit by the last group we

• 39:34Ryan Broderick?

  need to discuss, the spineless demons willing to contort themselves into whatever Trump gets up to. And we're going to talk about all of that after a break from our sponsor, Prager University. You can learn all about how the Civil War was based on states' rights with Prager University.

• 39:55Speaker 00

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• 40:20Speaker 04

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• 40:50Ryan Broderick?

  One of the most interesting figures in the tariff crisis to me has been whittlist, whittlist, whittle boy, Ben Shapiro. Because he was probably the biggest ideological figure to break the earliest. And this is, this is what he said in the midst of the chaos. "The idea that this is inherently good and makes the American economy strong is wrongheaded," he said about the tariffs. "It's untrue. The idea that this is going to result in massive reshoring of manufacturing is also untrue." And then basically just like spent the week like aptly freaking out about the tariffs, which is not what the rest of his ilk would do. And it should, and it does show a split because he's effectively a conservative from like

• 41:33Ryan Broderick?

  1993, teleported and shrunk down to fun size into 2025, which I think is a fascinating, you know, it makes him a fascinating comparison to the MAGA-brained, you know, full-size influencers that we typically deal with.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I actually, you saying that, I saw, I read this, like one of those New York Times, like long interviews with people and it was with Megyn Kelly and she like takes credit for him, but takes credit for him when she was at Fox, right? And Megyn Kelly at Fox was this sort of like, I'm the straight news person and like clearly flogging right-wing, you know, talking points the entire time. But he kind of came up in that, that side of it, right? And I think that he's always, again, like the best way to think about all these people, I think, is just as brands, right? Less as ideologues and much more as, as brands. You know, back in 2016, I remember the Anti-Defamation League released this report of like, who

• 42:32Speaker 02

  are the journalists who are being harassed on Twitter the most? Ben Shapiro was orders of magnitude.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  More harassed than anyone else, right? Like antisemitic, just like the recipient of antisemitic hate, right? Like, nobody has had their face photoshopped into a gas chamber more than him. And like, he was very vocal about that and very vocal about like Twitter, like, fix your problem. Whereas like, the movement was actually moving towards trying to court those people. So he was always like positioning himself on the outside of that. I think it's like a relatively savvy play, right? Because he, Daily Wire was huge on Facebook for a reason. Because it's like that normie version of that, right? It's the posts that sort of like are, have an ideology around it that is of the broader Maggie ecosystem.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  It's one, it's like a quarter step removed, right?

• 43:29Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, that's right. And on the other end, the people who wanted to recruit, you know, gas chamber photographers, these guys, the vast majority of them, they reacted to the tariffs as necessary for a very specific reason. They justified it as a step towards a world where women won't work anymore.

• 43:46Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 43:47Ryan Broderick?

  Like, and I watched the monkeys with typewriters that weekend. And they used to do this on 4chan, but now they're doing it on X, which is much easier to use. So that's great for me. If you sit in those spaces, you can watch them over a period of time, create a narrative that ends up on Fox News the following Monday or Tuesday. You can set your watch by it. And that's when you start seeing the guys being like tariffs or this. And it's like a photo, it's like a video of the girls dancing or whatever. Or like, you get, you know, Miley Annapolis tweeting, "Men are depressed and addicted and broken because they have nothing left to do. They get no stimulation or satisfaction from BS email jobs. I'm telling you, white Americans will love working in factories again, making things in the image and likeness of God the Maker."

• 44:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:30Ryan Broderick?

  When you're posting that, bud, like, things have spun out of control.

• 44:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:34Ryan Broderick?

  Like.

• 44:34Speaker 02

  I mean, to be fair, he's lost the plot like 400 times.

• 44:42Ryan Broderick?

  Do you remember that brief moment when he exposed that like Kanye West has dental surgery-related like nitrous addiction and brain damage? And was trying to like get him safely removed from an environment? I mean, the man is.

• 44:54Speaker 02

  Truly unbelievable.

• 44:55Ryan Broderick?

  Live many lives.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  It's like, it's that right there, like, if that happens to be true, which I have absolutely no freaking clue.

• 45:02Ryan Broderick?

  Once again, no idea.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  What an unbelievable, you know, like.

• 45:08Speaker 02

  Boy Who Cried Wolf situation where like he's just trying to do something good, but he's just like 80 layers of insanity and blown trust on everything. It's just, nobody listens. They're like, yeah, whatever. Who cares? He's insane.

• 45:23Ryan Broderick?

  I, I think a bunch of Nick Fuentes fans stole his cat.

• 45:27Speaker 02

  Who's cat?

• 45:27Ryan Broderick?

  So he's like.

• 45:27Speaker 02

  Milo's cat?

• 45:29Ryan Broderick?

  Milo's, because Milo keeps, Milo keeps threatening to release material that would prove that Nick Fuentes and the streamer Destiny are in a homosexual relationship with each other. So, yeah.

• 45:38Speaker 02

  Can't unlearn that.

• 45:39Ryan Broderick?

  This world is, this, this world is a mess.

• 45:44Ryan Broderick?

  This, this whole world is a mess. But like another, unfortunately, another important Milo post in this sort of story is him posting, "Calling OnlyFans whores creators quote unquote is a direct and conscious insult to our Lord. These women must be sent away to convents. The men running the company should be beheaded on the Capitol steps." And the reason I say that that's important unfortunately is because like, it is probably the most earnest, kind of like, wait, we're gonna crap. It's not that we're crashing the economy for our culture war. It's our glorious leader has, is crashing the economy and we need a reason for it.

• 46:24Ryan Broderick?

  And actually, the reason is that we can send American men to factories and get women out of email jobs. And like, that's the order of events as far as I understand it.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  That post honestly sounds like, like ISIS.

• 46:39Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, it is. No, it is. It's white ISIS. Of course it is. Yeah.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  It's like, I mean, which is, which is truly fascinating. I think that, that this is, this is a really like important contingent to track. Because it's obviously not a message that will ever.

• 46:58Speaker 02

  Like broadly resonate in terms of, in terms of like, give men the factory jobs, right, so that they will, you know, have purpose again and, and it will allow women to stop working in jobs and just, you know, procreate and stay at home and, you know, bake apple pies or whatever. What just feels really true about it is that it is just such a good reflection of rage, right, of like rage and this idea, like biblical level punishment, right, that like certain people, like you must smite and like strike down certain people and this like, this depravity inside America that is mixed with this idea of this more compelling, sort

• 47:43Speaker 02

  of more marketable message of men have no purpose, right? Like, it's great to make things with your hands. It's great to like, you know, have a reliable job in meat space instead of, you know, the internet. Like, these things, these things will actually solve some of these broader issues, like trying to find, you know, consensus with, you know, the, the anxious generation and like, going back to coal mines is like, it kind of freaks me out because I think that there is a market for that. But what it's actually motivated by is that other thing, that idea of like punishment,

• 48:22Speaker 02

  like, you know, like biblical level punishment and this like restoration of, like, you know, white ISIS.

• 48:30Ryan Broderick?

  I do wonder if part of it is like a demographic issue where like, okay, so like, follow my logic here. Steve Bannon sends Milo into 4chan to enrage like gamers, creates Gamergate effectively as a Breitbart narrative in like 2014. And they realize, wow, that's really powerful, actually. Like, we can like, we can essentially have- Nationalist trolls online in a way that like, America didn't really have before. Other countries had started to have, kind of like, China actually has had nationalist trolls since like, the 2000s. Like, we didn't really have an organized nationalist troll movement. Bannon sort of figures out a way to connect those dots there. And they start using them a lot, for all kinds of stuff. Trump's first campaign, you have Pepe the Frog shit everywhere.

• 49:13Ryan Broderick?

  It's like, full, like, the incel army. And they continue to use the incel army over the next decade. And I do wonder if that has had a mutating effect on ideological right-wingers and far-right thinkers, who now, like, only understand their own supporters as psychopathic incels? And are like, "We should get them off the computer and put them in factories."

• 49:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, probably, a little bit, for sure. I mean, there is a little bit of, um, of creating the monster, and trying to figure out what to do with it.

• 49:54Ryan Broderick?

  It's like, you're only surrounded by incels for so long, you're like, "Well, all men need to get off the computer and go work in the mines, because they're ins-" because they love anime girls too much, so we've got to send them to the mines.

• 50:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's also like, it's the one thing that gives me a little, little bit of hope, right? And I'll tell you what I mean by that.

• 50:13Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, oh yeah?

• 50:14Speaker 02

  Which is that, it is a, like, and again, I'm probably overestimating, um, rationale and like, hopefulness in the world. But I feel like, to your point of like, losing the plot, like, when, when the tariff thing was happening, right, like, and Benny Johnson is like, you know, talking about like, "You won't even notice that you've lost money. Losing money does not matter." Like, it's ones and zeros, and then that, that right-wing account, the quartering, is like, "You don't need an iPad. You want an iPad. You don't need a computer. You want a computer. You don't need running water. You want running water." Right? Like, all that stuff.

• 50:51Ryan Broderick?

  That's true, that's true. Those are, those are all three things.

• 50:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, clean, clean air. Like, you just, you want it, because you're, you're soft. Um, but those messages, obviously, they can get laundered through the right-wing media ecosystem, and sort of put into a framework, which is why I think the, you know, the anxious generation, like, format of that is like, very scary and compelling. But this idea of like, we want to send-

• 51:18Speaker 02

  Yes, your kids are not gonna have the same standard of living, you know, as you did is like one message. And then your kids aren't going to go to college because somebody has to mine the coal. It's like, not like, an amazing political message. Like, there is a little bit of like, being so far down the rabbit hole, that you do start to like, lose people in a way where it's like, this is not what I signed up for, right? Or do you feel like it's just going, like, I just feel like it's a really bad political strategy to basically say like, no, no, no, your kids are gonna be in the factory. You know, other people's kids, that's one thing. But it's like, your kids are gonna

• 51:59Speaker 02

  grow up and, you know, refit copper pipes. Like, I don't know.

• 52:06Ryan Broderick?

  Well, Charlie, you've walked right into our trap.

• 52:08Speaker 02

  God damn it.

• 52:09Ryan Broderick?

  Because the next four pages of our outline are historical proof that this is very normal in an authoritarian regime. So, Ceaușescu's Romania.

• 52:20Speaker 02

  I'm leaving.

• 52:20Ryan Broderick?

  1966.

• 52:23Ryan Broderick?

  ENX decree 770, banning all abortion and contraception in Romania. And he adds, "An economic and cultural incentive for women to have lots of children." He designates the title, "The heroin mother" for any woman who bore and brought up 10 or more children, with the idea of raising birth rates, and, of course, helping the economy. This is the inspiration for a little thing, maybe you've heard of it, "The Handmaid's Tale, Charlie." Have you ever heard of "The Handmaid's Tale"? Putin's Russia, 1992. The birth rate in Russia begins shrinking for the first time in decades. The population overall shrinks as well. And so, in 2007, Putin introduces the maternity capital policy, basically creating an incentive for women to have children to work in sort of factories or mines or what have you.

• 53:09Ryan Broderick?

  Orban's Hungary, 2019.

• 53:12Ryan Broderick?

  Charlie's face is like, just completely devolving.

• 53:14Speaker 02

  I literally walked into saying, "It can't happen here."

• 53:24Speaker 02

  This is the worst version of what I'm supposed to be.

• 53:29Ryan Broderick?

  Charlie was having such a great, Charlie was having such a great time pontificating. He couldn't realize my face was doing that thing from The Grinch where it's just slowly curling up as like you're walking right into the final part of our episode. No, but in all seriousness, I, to, in all seriousness, what I do think is confusing and, and interesting and like, worth pointing out about how Trump is going about this and how his ideological arm is going about this is that they are not, I think, going at it in the same direction and order as previous dictatorships that have gone down this road. They are almost going in the reverse. Like, Trump has an insane economic policy that makes no sense based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how things work.

• 54:09Ryan Broderick?

  And his most fervent supporters are creating authoritarian explanations for it. And that is different. And I think that's why you're saying, you know, like, wait, like, this can't, like, this doesn't make sense. And it's like, it doesn't because they're, they're going in the reverse, I think, in many ways.

• 54:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. The administration has TaskRabbit-ed it, you know? Essentially.

• 54:33Ryan Broderick?

  That's a perfect way of thinking about it because like, I do think, and tell me what you think here. I, I think that the, the, the far-right populism wave of the 2010s is actually ideologically distinct from what Trump is creating now, which in many ways is probably like, stage two, but we've just never seen stage two. We are not in a situation where Trump has complete control over all branches of government and is doing whatever he feels like. We are in a weirder, more modern version where he is effectively crowdsourcing his own authoritarian regime in real time in front of us. And that is of, I've, I've never seen anything like that. I've never heard of anything like that.

• 55:13Speaker 02

  The flash mob version of like goose stepping.

• 55:20Ryan Broderick?

  Hey, hey Grant, hey Grant, hey Grant, that's the episode title. It's Goose Stepping as a Flash Mob is the episode title. Thank you very much. Yeah, but I think you're totally right. It is an open, it's open source, it's crowdsourced, it's different. It is different.

• 55:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm trying to think of what the effect of that is in a bunch of ways. And my immediate feeling on that is like, it's how he manages Trump to avoid certain criticism and like certain association, right? Like, because you could be like, ah, the guy's just like, an old dude who says everything's computer, right? It makes it so that people who sort of see things for what they are can very easily be dismissed as hysterical, right? Because it doesn't, it comes, it's very like amorphous.

• 56:06Ryan Broderick?

  A thousand percent.

• 56:07Speaker 02

  It comes from so many different directions and it basically forces you, right? To grab the corkboard and the red string and be like, see, so like when this happens, this happens. When this happens, this happens, right? And then you're like, oh, like I'm like Russ Cole from True Detective, right? To like anyone who's not fully steeped in this kind of stuff. And that's what I think makes it so painful, like to loop it back to sort of what I was talking about at the very beginning of all of this, which is like you're on some of these networks, like, and when you're steeped in it, it feels so overwhelming.

• 56:46Speaker 02

  And so much like this, like, not coordinated, but this like just multi-pronged assault on like reality, institutions, democratic ideals, like, like logic, like, like, just like the normal, like, social contract that we've all had in like modern society. And then from the outside of it, it's like, it can be perfectly like unintelligible, right? Or just like something to just tune out because it seems preposterous, right? Or random even. And I think that that is like the core of the issue and why it feels so intractable.

• 57:27Speaker 02

  Like you kind of can't wrap around it because it's not coming culturally, it's not coming from like one guy.

• 57:36Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, it's like if they're, if they're throwing shit at the wall, statistically, 80% of that never materializes in a way that matters. And the 20% that does materialize, you have a really tough time paying attention to because there's, you're, I mean, you're flooding the zone with shit, basically. And so I feel like, you know, as we bring this episode to a close, the takeaway, it seems like you're sort of arguing for is that people should just stop paying attention and sort of just hang out and vibe.

• 58:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's great. It's amazing. You know?

• 58:06Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, it seems like that's really the way to, it's just, just let it happen. Just let it, just see what, just.

• 58:13Speaker 02

  What would, what?

• 58:14Ryan Broderick?

  What's, wait, wait, hell, wait, wait. There's a right wing meme they kept posting during the tariff fiasco that was honestly really funny, where like they're all just like, "Admit it, you're curious."

• 58:26Ryan Broderick?

  I just kept seeing that with like, just like red economic like market charts. I just was like, that's honestly really funny.

• 58:34Ryan Broderick?

  Unfortunately, that's really good.

• 58:36Speaker 03

  Some men just want to see the world burn.

• 58:37Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, just, you know, trust the plan, Anon, like, trust the plan.

• 58:42Speaker 02

  To that, like, there, it does speak a little to like, the way that this like, scrambles the moment, right? When some guy's basically just like, "No, I'll do it." Like, "I'll, I'll blow this, this whole thing up." And you like, and you have to like, you have to argue for institutions and it's like, "No, no, they're broken, but we need like, we need like, running water." You know, it's like, it's a very, it's like a tough battle to win on the internet.

• 59:07Ryan Broderick?

  It's much like, uh, the movie The Dark Knight, featuring, uh, the Hollywood creation, the Joker. Uh, Trump is much, much like that character, but in our world.

• 59:20Ryan Broderick?

  Trump is like the Joker of the White House.

• 59:22Speaker 03

  As I'm listening to you guys make sense of this, what makes, where, where, what I dawn on to is, um, MAGA was put under a stress test, where like, we saw the different factions start to see, start to think the other side was crazy, the other people that they were like, "Oh, you actually believe that? You're actually into this?" Like, like, we started to see them turn against each other. And they're like, in case of emergency, the thing that to break glass on was like, "Let's hate women." When people were like, "Oh, like, we could lose this coalition," the thing, the only thing that they could come back to. Was masculinity and misogyny as like the thing to try to pull everyone back to

• 1:00:03Speaker 03

  the base. That kind of makes me feel hopeless because there's this intangible thing that unites them.

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  Well, I would just say it also feels like it feels like it wasn't just like just let's go back to the women thing, but it was also like it was sort of the like populist rage, right? Like it was it was sort of a little like, oh, God, this guy like might burn it all down, like flips through notes, like, oh, burning it down is good because like, here are the reasons why this is, you know, like, modern culture and, you know, is depraved.

• 1:00:35Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  Can I can I read you a tweet that I screenshot it? I would rather send it to you, but I it's a screenshot. So it's it's long, but I'll try to run through it. It's by this guy DC Draino, who's got like, he's like a maga dude with like two, two and a half million followers on X. But it's basically it's the it's that TikTok video, right? It's the one of the the boss ladies dancing. And it says, Imagine watching this video as a blue collar worker coming home to your rented house in a tough neighborhood after being laid off your from your factory job when it got shipped to Mexico. While you fill out unemployment benefits and look for affordable divorce lawyers after your wife said she's leaving and taking the kids to move them to another state because their school was trying to turn your son into a girl. Meanwhile, you get a text from a friend about a high school classmate who died from a fentanyl overdose. Your truck broke down again. You

• 1:01:20Speaker 02

  can't afford repairs because the interest rate on your payments too high. Your parents tell you you can't afford basic groceries on their social security check because record inflation and are wondering if you can send him $200, but you don't want to do it on Venmo because the IRS might audit you again. You grab a beer, turn to TV to relax and see a trans TikToker taking a bubble bath with Bud Light, with a Bud Light can in their hand while some multimillionaire actress at the Oscars says everything wrong in the country is your fault. This is why we want, they want Trump to tariff the shit out of foreign countries and burn it all down. And like, so there's so much there, like, but it's, but it's all of it, right? It's like, it's the populist rage of like, an underclass from these people being like, "Okay, yeah, like, this guy who we hitched, you know, we hitched to their wagon, and it

• 1:02:05Speaker 02

  seems like because they're an idiot, they're going to burn down everything. So, let's go back to The Notebook and pivot to like, why burning it down is good, right?" And I think that that's sort of, you know, it's like, "Oh yeah, we predicted this guy was actually gonna juice the economy for everyone and lift everybody up, and that's the reason why you should vote for Trump." Actually, now it's, now it's a, now it's a burn down situation. Like, we're pivoting to end times.

• 1:02:30Ryan Broderick?

  Charlie, if people want to follow you online, where can they do that?

• 1:02:35Speaker 02

  Um, I, I don't know. Who, who cares?

• 1:02:41Speaker 03

  We did it, Ryan. We broke him. We got him.

• 1:02:44Ryan Broderick?

  Thank you so much for coming on and having a manic episode with us. No, but in all, you know, yeah, where could people follow you?

• 1:02:53Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm posting over on Blue Sky, at Seawarzel. I, you know, just read, read me on The Atlantic there. I share my articles as gift links because I want people to read them.

• 1:03:09Ryan Broderick?

  That's what we like to hear. Thank you again. This was a, this was once again, a surprisingly entertaining and uplifting conversation about the end of the American experiment. So, thank you for coming back.

• 1:03:20Speaker 02

  We did it.

• 1:03:22Ryan Broderick?

  We did it.

• 1:03:22Speaker 03

  Do you know that you sign off every podcast now saying, "This was, it's such a surprise that we had a great miserable time."

• 1:03:32Ryan Broderick?

  It always is a surprise.

• 1:03:34Speaker 03

  It always is true.

• 1:03:35Ryan Broderick?

  It always is true.

• 1:03:38Ryan Broderick?

  Panic World is a Garbage Day production. Subscribe to the newsletter at garbageday.e-mail. Panic World is written and produced by Grant Irving. It's hosted by me, Ryan Broderick. Our amazing researcher is Adam Bumis. It's engineered by Rebecca Seidel. Our deranged logo was created by Gabby Cash. Please give us $5 at patreon.com/panicworld. Please give us products to sell by contacting multitude@multitude-production/ad.

• 1:04:04Ryan Broderick?

  For any other way you would like to give us money, or work with us, or promote us, or become financially entangled with us, you can reach out to our fixer, our wonderful bagman, Josh Fielstad, and you can reach him at [email protected]. And one piece of advice from me to you: chill out, touch grass while you still can.

• 1:04:27Speaker 05

  Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities, so do like I did, and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com/switch.

• 1:04:47Speaker 06

  Upfront payment of $45 for three-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com.