How to deal with rage bait

Politics has always been an ugly game, but with Trump’s return to the White House and the proliferation of AI, we’re a far cry from the days when wearing a beige suit caused controversy. Today, we’re talking about how Trump is using the federal government’s massive communications apparatus into a rage bait factory — from immigrants to trans people and the “Radical Left Democrats,” blaming anyone except billionaires, corporations, and bureaucratic sluggishness for all of the United States’s problems today. Congressman Maxwell Frost joins us to talk about our troll-in-chief and how to fight back against his flirtation with fascism. You can follow Maxwell Frost on X and Instagram @RepMaxwellFrost or on TikTok @MaxwellFrostFL. This episode is sponsored by NordVPN. Get your EXCLUSIVE NordVPN deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/panicworld — try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to the Discord? Sign up for a membership at: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. 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 block, 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?

  I want to open up with just like a question about your experience with rage bait, either personally or professionally. What was the, what was the first time you ever raged out at something online?

• 0:37Speaker 02

  Huh. That I like rage bait got me like online.

• 0:42Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, like you got tricked or like, I guess you got like duped into being mad. Yeah.

• 0:46Speaker 02

  So I like, when I was like in middle school and high school, I was very, very obsessed with the prank guys on YouTube.

• 0:54Ryan Broderick?

  Sure.

• 0:55Speaker 02

  I would watch like all the prank guys on YouTube and I was really into like, like content that was really stupid and people being messed with and stuff like that. So I feel like it's pretty hard to rage bait me.

• 1:05Ryan Broderick?

  Interesting.

• 1:07Speaker 02

  I honestly can't think, I mean, I'm not saying like, yo, no one can trick me.

• 1:12Ryan Broderick?

  That's good though. That means you're the perfect person for today's episode.

• 1:31Ryan Broderick?

  I'm Ryan Broderick. With me always, the person who makes me the angriest, our producer Grant Irving, he'll be popping in from time to time. This is Panic World, a show about how the internet works our minds, our culture, and eventually reality. And joining me today is, well, it's a little, it's a little weird, wild to say this, representative of Florida's 10th congressional district, Maxwell Frost, thank you for coming on the show.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, good to be on, man. Thanks for having me.

• 1:54Ryan Broderick?

  Today, we're talking about something that I think we've all kind of noticed over the last few years, and it's definitely gotten worse since the start of Trump 2.0, which is crazy to think it's only been a year. We're going to be talking about how the White House has turned the federal government's comms apparatus into a nonstop rage bait factory. So this is part two of a series that we're going to be doing, a three-part, possibly four-part, series, talking about how American politics has evolved to its current rotted, insane state. And so this is part two. You're going to hear us cover some slightly similar territory from our Jon Favreau episode, but we're going to go a little, a little deeper and in a few different directions.

• 2:38Ryan Broderick?

  Just to kick things off, like, how would you describe the trolling nature of the Trump administration right now?

• 2:46Speaker 02

  A few things. AI, it's almost exclusively AI-generated content, which in it of it-

• 2:53Ryan Broderick?

  Have they, have they put you in a sombrero yet?

• 2:56Speaker 02

  They have not put me in a sombrero yet. We'll see what they do. Yeah, it's exclusively AI, which to me, I don't know, that kind of look that comes from AI-generated content, like annoys me in and of itself. So actually, I learned to answer your first question, like, the last thing that, any kind of rage bait, anything that's AI-generated, just that look really irks me and makes me feel weird.

• 3:19Ryan Broderick?

  Sure.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  That's one, you know, check. The second check is it has to be like bigoted and very racist, you know, anything related to immigration. It's like a Mexican guy. It's a brown person with tattoos and a hoodie. If they post something that's like, come serve your country, it's never like a black person or anything. It's like, you know, a white guy that like fits that profile exactly. So there's definitely like a racial bend to it for the people who are saying they don't want to see race or whatever.

• 3:50Ryan Broderick?

  Of course.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  And then, obviously, it's always connected to either immigration or trans people or some sort of community they want to blame the problems that we have because of the billionaires and corporations. They want us to blame other people. So everything is kind of based on that as well. So I think those are like the three prerequisites for the Trump rage bait that we're seeing online.

• 4:14Ryan Broderick?

  I think that's exactly right. And obviously, there's a long history of, let's call it like, political trolling, political rage bait. But we're gonna start today's episode with the modern era. And I think the best articulation of the ethos of this was Adam Serwer's 2018 essay in The Atlantic, "The Cruelty is the Point." Have you read this essay? Just for our listeners who might not be familiar, here's a little section. "The Trump era is such a whirlwind of cruelty that it can be hard to keep track. This week alone, the news broke that the Trump administration was seeking to ethnically cleanse more than 193,000 American children of immigrants, whose temporary protected status had been revoked by the administration. At a rally in Mississippi, a crowd of Trump supporters cheered as the

• 4:55Ryan Broderick?

  president mocked Christine Blasey Ford, the psychology professor who said that Brett Kavanaugh attempted to rape her when she was a teenager." And then the essay sort of lists all the cruelties of the first Trump administration. And I think it's a great place to start, because this is sort of the world of politics that you entered into. And I wanted to talk to you a little bit about your own political awakening. When did you first get involved with politics? Why did you first get involved with politics? For people who don't know. And sort of what was happening online and also in the American political psyche at the time?

• 5:30Speaker 02

  So I got involved when I was 15 years old. I went to an arts middle school and high school. So I'm a drummer. My father's a musician. That's what I wanted to do my whole life is be a drummer. So obviously, something went wrong, because I went into politics. And I played in the jazz band, which my school didn't have any sports. So like, the jazz band was like the football team, you know?

• 5:52Ryan Broderick?

  Sure, awesome.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  We traveled for the school. We played all the time. Either way, before the jazz band concert, my best friends and I would go to this, like, Fridays or Chili's, Fridays, across the street from my school. And we just, there was a silence up below in the restaurant. We look at the television screen and we see, okay, somebody walked into an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, and murdered a bunch of teachers and children. And

• 6:15Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  It had an impact on me. I mean, I remember I went back to the concert that night. I played the worst show of my life. I kept rushing and dragging, because I kept looking at the stage door backstage, scared somebody would walk into this place and kill everybody.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  And I couldn't shake it. Either way, I ended up becoming pen pals online with someone named Sarah Clements. And her mother Abby was a teacher at Sandy Hook who survived the shooting. And Tara invited me to go to DC for the memorial. And it wasn't just a memorial. It was like a three or four day trip where they advocate, they volunteer in DC public schools. And then there was the vigil. So I was 15. I was working at a shopping center here in Florida called Publix.

• 6:56Ryan Broderick?

  I hear it's very great. People seem to love Publix.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  People love Publix. I did work there for two years. And so I went to this vigil and my whole life changed there. And honestly, a lot of it comes from the fact that I met people that were my age that lost other loved, that lost loved ones due to gun violence. And just meeting people that for the first two or three days, we were just kind of being teenagers and like telling jokes and having fun and running throughout the Capitol and delivering letters and doing meetings. It was the night of the vigil that we were at one of these hotels we were staying at. And it was like all the teenagers just waiting our feet in the water of some pool. And they all just started opening up their hearts about like who they lost and what they missed about them.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  And seeing that kind of pain in people my age is something I never experienced before.

• 7:44Ryan Broderick?

  Wow.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  And that level of vulnerability. So I ran to my hotel room and I was crying and I called my mom and I was like, you know, this is like, this is what I want to do. I want to fight down gun violence. And I got back home and I started organizing and that's what got me involved in the politics. What was going on the internet at that time? Well, I mean, at this time, I, growing up, I was a troublemaker. So I always got in trouble. I was always in detention or something like that. And not, I wasn't like a bad kid in that, like, I wasn't like punching people and like getting in the fights. I just liked to make people laugh and I talked too much, which is funny because now my job is to talk to them.

• 8:22Ryan Broderick?

  You could have become a podcaster. So honestly, you took the better route.

• 8:25Speaker 02

  Exactly. I had two options as a kid who talked too much and got in trouble. I could be a podcaster or a politician.

• 8:31Ryan Broderick?

  Exactly.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  And now there's politicians with podcasts. So.

• 8:35Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  Kind of what I told you at the beginning, like, at least for me, my, kind of what was going online for me was very narrow. I was watching people doing pranks and I was watching stuff like that. And it wasn't until. I, oh, and like the other online part for me was like, at this time, I think I was playing a lot of Minecraft. And I used to play the chatroom games. Like, there's one called Habbo Hotel that I played all.

• 9:04Ryan Broderick?

  Habbo Hotel, of course.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know Habbo Hotel. Honestly, that was my social media.

• 9:09Ryan Broderick?

  It's fascinating that your political awakening is tied to Sandy Hook because across a lot of episodes of this show, we've been trying to diagnose this, this thing, this, this, this larger than, than, than you can sort of put your hands around idea, this vibe shift, if you will, that happened at some point between 2011 and 2015. Something to explain the, the road that we're down now. Friend of the show, a friend of mine, Charlie Wazle, you know, once wrote that the Sandy Hook was the end of pretending we were going to change anything. Particularly for, for people of the millennial and Gen Z and Gen Alpha generation, like that is the moment where the country said, like, this is the road

• 9:51Ryan Broderick?

  we're on. And wherever this takes us is where we're going. And politics gets uglier and almost immediately after, in a lot of ways. And so as, as Trump is entering the White House in 2016, what was that political environment like for someone who's young and trying to make their way in politics? Like, because in a lot of ways, I mean, is it fair to say that, like, you don't know another world? Like, you, you are, you're sort of a beast made of the Trump eras. So like, what, what is that like?

• 10:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, almost. You know, I, I was, because I was so involved in high school, and I would say like, kind of my sophomore, junior, senior year, and I had volunteered for the Obama campaign. I was pretty immersed in the kind of Obama era, that kind of era of stuff that a lot of people like, you know, miss. But for me, the politics were pretty black and white at that point, but very hopeful. And along comes a guy named Bernie Sanders, who became kind of my second big political inspiration after Obama. And Bernie was the one that really opened up my ideology, like figuring out like what

• 11:00Speaker 02

  Like, oh, it's not so black and white. And like, here are the things that I really believe in that might differ to other people who generally have the same values as me, which I think is really important, too. And so I ended up my senior year of high school volunteering on the Bernie campaign. And when I graduated high school, I was getting ready to go to college, and I get a call from someone I worked with on Bernie that said, Max, I got a job for you on the Hillary campaign. And I was like, oh, well, you know, I can't really volunteer right now. I'm going to college. And they were like, no, no, no, we want you to like, come work on the campaign full time. We're gonna pay you, you know, I think it was like twelve hundred bucks a month for the full time job. We need you to move to Fort Myers. And I was like, twelve hundred bucks a month? I'm gonna be rich. I was like, let's go.

• 11:41Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, that's good money, baby. That's good.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, dude, I was like, let's go. So I packed my bags and I went down to Fort Myers um, to do that job. And that's when my like political career as an organizer started. Fresh eighteen, the youngest person there by far. But that was like when the era of Trump started. And I'll be honest, being on the campaign, like, no one took him seriously. No one saw him as a real threat. It was kind of like a, you know, this guy's gonna lose.

• 12:07Ryan Broderick?

  Like a sideshow.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, like a sideshow, like, what the hell? And so I say all that to say, like, I've been doing most of my work during the Trump era the past ten years, but because I worked a little before that, I got a taste of like what it was before. But for most people that are, most Gen Z.

• 12:24Ryan Broderick?

  Was it better? Was it better before?

• 12:26Speaker 02

  Yes, I would say, like, yeah, of course, but and I think the world will be better when he is not on the political stage anymore. He is a singular figure, unfortunately. And he does have a juice that like JD Vance doesn't have. So like, when Trump is not on the ballot, all his people don't show up the way they show up when he's on the ballot, even when he asks them to. But I'd say the thing that's better now, though, is, I think at least in my party as Democrats, we have. More of a call to action and view on how we need to govern and what we need to do. And what I mean by that is the age of the neoliberal policies, which in many cases have

• 13:07Speaker 02

  brought us to this point where people feel like, eh, well, you know, the Democrats don't, you know, don't do much when they get in the power and then the Republicans come in and they mess everything up and I don't like both. And you have this age of complacency where people feel like I can't trust either party and wealth inequality is the worst it's ever been in our nation's history. And I think our party is waking up to that in a big way to say, wow, like, I think we need to have real bold transformational policies that will change people's lives. So I think in that aspect, things are better, but the general sense of politics is way worse.

• 13:41Ryan Broderick?

  I want to talk about the Democratic response, the shift from Trump won, you know, the age of the Pepe the Frog memes, which is very 4chan based, to the internet behavior they're doing now that they're back in power. And I want to talk about how this new strategy is helping accelerate the authoritarian takeover.

• 13:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:57Ryan Broderick?

  So just like, real quick, just for listeners who don't remember, because this is a lot that has happened in the last few months. On February 18th, the White House posts a deportation ASMR video with like, you know, detainees in shackles. February 25th, Trump shares on Truth Social the Gaza resort AI video. It has just been a nonstop barrage of this stuff. And in March, you know, the Democrats tried to do like a first big push, I would say, of just like enough, right? They wear pink, they hold signs, they post TikTok videos, and they get a lot of, they get a lot of flack on social media. Like, there's this one poster who wrote, "If you think Trump is a fascist like Hitler was,

• 14:41Ryan Broderick?

  then you have to accept that wearing pink is a ridiculous thing to do. In response to Hitler's policies, some members of the German Left Party wore purple hats. Do you see how stupid that sounds?" And like, you caught my eye because you were sort of one of the Democrats who was was taking this seriously kind of from the jump. And so, you know, how do you navigate? And tell me if I'm wrong, because from the outside, it seems like the Democrats as an institution, like, do not, do not know how seriously to take this. Like, what, what stage of red alert we're in? So, how do you combat the, the, the, the claim that the Democrats are being unserious about this stuff?

• 15:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. And speaking of red alert, that was my, one of my favorite games.

• 15:19Ryan Broderick?

  Great game.

• 15:20Speaker 02

  Speaking from a very personal point of view.

• 15:23Ryan Broderick?

  Sure.

• 15:23Speaker 02

  I, um, I'm in the state of Florida. I'm in a state where, what I always tell people is Project 2025 is Florida 2020. So like, all this stuff that people are surprised about, that everyone's freaking out about, rightfully so, we've been dealing with here for a while, and no one's giving a shit about us, right? So like, Ron DeSantis, our governor, if he disagrees with an elected official, he literally just takes him out of office, even if we voted them in. I mean, it's insane. He did it to my state attorney here locally. He did it to the state attorney in Tampa. Just recently, he threatened to do it to our county mayor, as it relates to the county working with ICE. Not just that, but, you know, you've heard, "Don't say gay bill," right, in our schools?

• 16:05Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  All this, like, he is an authoritarian, uh, Ron DeSantis is. I think Ron DeSantis has no juice. I don't think he'll ever be president. But I think the interesting thing is, the things we're seeing Donald Trump do now, and Project 2025 itself, a lot of Project 2025, it was based from a blueprint. And that, that blueprint is what these, like, far-right authoritarian Republican governors have done in southern states, and specifically in Florida and in Texas. And...

• 16:37Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, there was that whole slogan, like, "Make America Florida."

• 16:41Speaker 02

  That's what they're, that's what they're doing right now, right? And, and a lot of it comes from my state. So I think because of that, I came into this, like, on day one, with a heightened sense of alert, and kind of a, a plan on what we do locally, and what we need to do nationally to fight back against this. Because I know, you know, you want to talk about being in the minority? I mean, in Florida, we're in the super minority, right? So like, our tools are so limited. But you won't catch, like, a lot of local people saying, "Oh, my state legislator isn't doing anything." Even though they can't pass the bills to change everything we want. A lot of people still feel that energy from a lot of our local electors, especially here in Orlando, Florida. So you have to ask why?

• 17:23Speaker 02

  And looking at what they've done, working collaboration with organizers, you see what's needed in this moment. And it's being loud as hell. It's when you see a good fight, you hop and jump in it and you make sure the world hears about it. It's communicating relentlessly everywhere you can. And then it's using all the tools, you know, it's using all the tools in your toolbox, even when sometimes it doesn't work. And honestly, this is something Trump gets in that he does. They just throw stuff at the wall and like 95% of it doesn't stick. But at the end of the day, you heard about 100% of the things they tried to do. And they've given the impression of inevitability to the point where you think everything he says he's gonna do that he's done or is happening, when it's not true.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  But it doesn't matter because that's how authoritarians run things. They don't even have to do half the things they're saying. They just need you so scared that you obey in advance. And I'm not saying we need to be authoritarian, but what I'm saying is to fight back against fascism and authoritarian government like that, you have to fight that same way. Throw things at the wall, do everything you can do, get in every fight you can get into. You're not gonna win all of them, but people are gonna see that you're not just lying down and letting these people walk on top of you. And then at the same time, we provide our vision of like what we're gonna do and what we wanna do as well. And I think you have to do both at the same time.

• 18:42Ryan Broderick?

  So I wanna drill down into this more because I think this is interesting because to kind of bring it back to the topic of rage bait and the sort of constant barrages, you said, of things in the Trump administration meant to enrage you and piss you off and horrify you. A few more greatest hits just from the spring here. On March 15th, Trump uses the Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants to Seacot without trial. March 26th, Secretary Noem goes down to Seacot and does a little YouTube tour. March 27th, the White House account does a Ghibli AI image of an arrested woman sobbing, right? And so, as you said, like, these are clearly meant to activate his base, to horrify and

• 19:25Ryan Broderick?

  scandalize, but also trivialize the liberal response, the leftist response, right? Because if you're getting so worked up about an AI cartoon, you're inherently meeting them on the battlefield of stupidity that they've laid out. So before we go to the break, we kind of talk about the further evolution of this in Trump's first year. From your point of view, like... Okay, say that you're you're a Democrat politician anywhere in the country and you're minding your own business and Trump puts an AI Sempero on your head and calls you a piece of shit on Truth Social. In that moment, what is a Democrat politician meant to do? Are they supposed to do what Gavin Newsom does and pretend to be Trump for weeks on end and like

• 20:08Ryan Broderick?

  make fun of him? Are they supposed to be like Chuck Schumer and sit down and be like, things are exactly the way they were in 2003 and you can't convince you otherwise? Or is there some other, like, what is the playbook there in this type of information warfare?

• 20:21Speaker 02

  My personal style, I mean, and everyone, you know, is doing their own thing and figuring out the way they want it.

• 20:26Ryan Broderick?

  What would you do if you got Sempero posted? Yeah, what would you?

• 20:29Speaker 02

  I would do a couple of things. I mean, the first thing is if I'm talking about it online, the president has obviously just kind of elevated me, right, to a level where he feels like he needs to make fun of me. So I would take that opportunity to be on every, not just like mainstream corporate news network, but independent media, everything like that, to deliver a very simple message. Like, we're in a point in time where we have massive wealth inequality, where we have so little because billionaires and mega corporations have taken it all from us. Donald Trump is no different. He is one of those people. And he wants me to be mad about the fact that he did a racist AI meme about me, which is despicable. But I'm even more pissed off about the fact that working people are getting the short end of

• 21:13Speaker 02

  this thing. And it's because of Donald Trump specifically. And I just think, like, tying it back to what people are going through, I think is really, really important, especially because part of the way that fascist authoritarians and oligarchs keep us from, you know, putting them in our, I want to use the right word here, keeping them in kind of our sight as the person to blame for the issues that we're in and who to organize against.

• 21:43Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  Is if we're just like yelling at each other the whole time. And so I would never say that these things he's doing is a distraction, because that means we shouldn't pay attention to it at all. I think it's worth acknowledging how stupid it is, but using that as a leaping pad to then talk about the stuff he doesn't want us to talk about, which is the fact that the reason you can't pay your rent has nothing to do with the trans person living next door to you. The fact that you are too poor to afford groceries has nothing to do with the immigrant who lives next to you, and everything to do with people like Donald Trump who have been ripping us off for generations. And And that's that that message is an existential threat to his power.

• 22:21Ryan Broderick?

  Well, so yeah, so it kind of sounds like your mentality is like if the spotlight's put on you by by the regime, like you, you kind of have to use it to the best of your ability. That that sort of sounds like what you're saying there.

• 22:33Speaker 02

  Oh, you know, because there's a lot of people will come up to me and said, why aren't Democrats doing a press conference every day? Someone asked me this in a event now.

• 22:40Ryan Broderick?

  Why aren't they on like out? Why aren't they out? Just like, I don't know, like I I guess like as an average person, I'm just like, I want Chuck Schumer or whoever, Hakeem Jeffries laying on the steps of the Capitol and and doing an Occupy Wall Street or something like I I don't know. Like I I there's a frustration that I get when I think about like, where are where is everybody?

• 22:59Speaker 02

  Well, what you're bringing up is actually is the point I was about to make that the person asked me specifically, why aren't you doing a press conference every day? And I said, actually, people are doing press conferences every day. The problem is the way people consume media and the way you get attention is a lot different than it was 10 years ago.

• 23:15Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  And so the fact of the matter is you could do a press conference every day, but it's really not going to get covered every day. Because the President of the United States naturally is going to have a bigger bullhorn than you. So the question isn't why aren't you doing press conferences every day? But it's like, what are you doing to get attention on what you're doing? And then in the cases where you're kind of lucky and the president is giving you some attention and you have the opportunity to say something into his megaphone, that's when we bring it back to that that core message, which he used to win the election, which is that working, you know, that all this ties back to the fact that they want to make more money, that they want to make more money, that they're greedy billionaires and that they want us to blame each other. And I just think like, that's the core message here.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  And that message scares these guys. That's why they don't want us talking about anything having to do with that, because it exposes how much full of shit they are. But the other thing that you brought up is figuring out how we bring attention to things. As I walk down the street and people are like, you know, Max, thanks for fighting right now. No one says like, Oh, because you did the press conference and like, thank you for fighting.

• 24:19Ryan Broderick?

  But they're like, thank you for that nice press release that you you put out via email.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  And you know, the press releases, you know, all that, we do all that, right? Like, you can still

• 24:28Ryan Broderick?

  Sure, you got to.

• 24:29Speaker 02

  Just do it all like at full force. And like, so people come to me and say, I saw the video that you posted on TikTok from when you were at Alligator Alcatraz, right? The internment camp in the Everglades.

• 24:39Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  And I've been keeping up with that. Thank you for physically going there. Like, I showed up to one place here. And I was outside, it was a ICE, what's called ERO, which is like a field office. And I showed up and I was like, I'm here to conduct oversight, you know, just want to come in and look around. And then they go, okay, let me close the door and we'll get back with you. And I put my foot and leg in the door. Because and then they got all, you know, they're like, whoa, like, what are you doing? Like, oh, how dare you? And I'm like, I wouldn't come with this energy if I hadn't just seen 10 videos over the last month of members of Congress being pepper sprayed, cursed out, thrown out of buildings and stuff like that. So I have to obviously assert myself, seal me in the building.

• 25:20Speaker 02

  And they let they then they let me in the building. But I promise you, if I didn't even just put my foot in the door, I wouldn't have been let in. But then capturing that and posting it online so people can see what's going on, I think is really important, too. So it's just like figuring out how to get attention, not for the sake of getting attention from Maxwell Frost, but to like show what's going on, because we can't assume everyone's paying attention.

• 25:43Ryan Broderick?

  So after the jump, we're going to talk about how the use of rage bait, let's call it for simplicity's sake, has become more pronounced as ICE has pointed its crosshairs at the American population. Instead of outsourcing to CCOAT, we are now seeing sort of a larger ICE presence here in the US. And we're going to get to Alligator Alcatraz. But first, a word from our sponsors. There are all kinds of forces right now trying to make it harder for you to access the open, free internet. If you don't have a VPN, you should definitely take a look at NordVPN. NordVPN has 8,000 servers in 126 countries. Basically, what that means is you can use it to mask your IP address as one of those countries. So if you're in America

• 26:28Ryan Broderick?

  and you're in a state where you're not allowed to access certain websites, well, you can just change your IP address to a place where those websites are accessible. Even better, NordVPN allows for one account to work across 10 devices. So you can have it on your phone, your iPad, your computer. It's great. To get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/panicworld. Our link will also give you four extra months on the two year plan. There's no risk with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee either, so you try it out, see if you like it. That link is in this episode's description, so you can go to nordvpn, N-O-R-D-V-P-N.com/panicworld and check it out.

• 27:09Speaker 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 block, 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 require compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 27:36Ryan Broderick?

  Just to rattle through a couple more greatest hits from this year, just so everyone can can keep in track of what's been happening over such a short amount of time here. April 25th, Wisconsin federal judge Hannah Dugan is arrested and fired theoretically for helping undocumented immigrants. May 8th, New Jersey Democrats, two of them are arrested for protesting an immigration detention center. June 8th, following protests over ICE raids in LA, Trump deploys the National Guard to the city. And that's when Gavin Newsom basically starts his like ongoing feud with Trump via like troll posts and stuff like that. You talked about sort of like throwing everything you have at Trump when the spotlight hits you. I mean, from a From like an energy perspective, like how like, how do you manage that?

• 28:21Ryan Broderick?

  Because like effectively what you're describing, are you familiar with the concept of a DDoS attack?

• 28:27Speaker 02

  No.

• 28:28Ryan Broderick?

  It's sort of like a, not like a hack per se, but it's like a cyber attack where you basically send thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands of requests to a website to overload it and bring it down.

• 28:39Speaker 02

  Oh, yes. Yep, yep.

• 28:40Ryan Broderick?

  And, and I've often thought of Trump in general as a DDoS attack. The right wing sort of has adopted that strategy of like, like right now, you know, before the show, I was watching videos on right wing X accounts where they are targeting members of the armed service who don't want to shave their beards or cut their hair because they've decided that they're just going to swarm this idea. So like, if you are at the center of a right wing swarm, because let's say you were videotaped outside of an ICE detention center, or that you've been singled out in a Truth social post, like how from a like, like a, like an organizational perspective, like how, how, how are you expected to handle that and, and also somehow come out of it promoting an agenda? And, you know, a political agenda and also like looking good, like it seems impossible.

• 29:25Speaker 02

  I don't think it's impossible. I think the, I think the first thing is realizing that when they do crazy stuff like that, it's, it, there's like 20 to 30% of this country that it's for.

• 29:39Ryan Broderick?

  Sure.

• 29:40Speaker 02

  Most people don't like a lot of the kind of rage bait stuff that's being posted. So they do either one of two things. One, they haven't seen it, or they've seen it and it's, they just kind of brush it off like, oh, that's Trump, right? But they don't care for it. And then there's another group of people who actually get like pissed off about it and mad about it. Those two groups of people are way, way, way larger than the group of people who see it and go like, yeah, that's my president.

• 30:03Ryan Broderick?

  Sure.

• 30:04Speaker 02

  And, and I think like when we're, when you realize that, you feel a little less pressure in having to respond to the attack in a way that is defensive, because most people, you, you don't have to defend yourself against that to most people because most people see it and it like rubs them the wrong way. So then you use the opportunity to talk about the thing you want to talk about. Trump hasn't really called me out personally, but you go back to the beginning of the year and who was it for me? Elon Musk. I mean, Elon was calling me out online like every other week. He was saying I was a jackass. He was saying he's going to fund my primary opponent. And I used that opportunity to talk about. What's going on with these billionaires essentially running the entire country and taking

• 30:49Speaker 02

  away resources from working people and trying to screw over working people? And that was my message relentlessly. Did I troll him sometimes online? Sure. You know, when he said he was gonna get someone to run against me, I like quote tweeted and put the link where you sign up to run against me. Like, you know, like little stuff like that. But I garnered a lot of media attention from Elon Musk, like just talking about me week after week. But I didn't feel the need to defend myself personally to those attacks. I just felt the need to not make it about me, but make it about people watching at home. And I just, I think that's the way to go on this stuff.

• 31:27Ryan Broderick?

  Bringing up Elon Musk right now is actually useful to think about because like, I think in a lot of ways, the end of second president Elon Musk's term, his sort of friendship with Trump ending, solidified the Trump social media response in a lot of ways. Like, I see a direct line from the Pepe the Frog memes and the WWE gifs of the first Trump administration to Elon Musk being like a total clown on X. And when they sever that friendship, it changes. And you can see this in the timeline we put together for today's episode because not only does the, let's call it like the national occupation of the Trump administration and ICE really, really heat up.

• 32:10Ryan Broderick?

  You get in July 1st, Trump officially opening alligator Alcatraz, which is still blowing my mind that that's what they actually call it. They start, and then the Republicans, of course, sell merch because they know that like that's a really easy way to mess with people. And they start like bragging about the hurricanes and the snakes that like might hurt people. It's a real shift from the first half, let's call it of the first year of the administration, where it's much more, it's much more about like, you know, the perfect post, the perfect meme, whatever. It becomes a far more kind of multi-dimensional attack, you know, in the media. And so, a couple of weeks later, you have the Department of Homeland Security's X account

• 32:52Ryan Broderick?

  post a painting with a 14-word caption and two capital H's. And then you have them doing like a Batman parody. Tell me if I'm right here, they've become more comfortable. Turning the entire Republican Party into like a troll farm. There was a switch over the summer and I, I, I think it's Musk leaving where the Republican Party just goes, this is our thing now. How do you deal with those people? Like, how do you talk? Like, I saw a clip this morning of like Mike Johnson being like, sorry, if you have a phrase like, don't pay attention to the internet posts. And it's like, dude, they're coming from, from you guys. Like, like, so how do you, how do you seriously communicate with, with,

• 33:36Ryan Broderick?

  with an, an, an opposition party like that?

• 33:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I, I think I never thought of it as the way you said it with Elon Musk leaving and it ramping up, which is very true. But I think another part of this is they get to spend a lot more time this year trolling people and this kind of thing. I think for many reasons, but I think the main reason has to do with the fact that the policy portion of what they're doing is already prescribed.

• 34:01Ryan Broderick?

  Interesting.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  Like Project 2025 is the prescription. So they're just following through a plan. I for one, don't, I think it's like Stephen Miller is really the president. I mean, he's the one who's putting through all the policy and pushing it through, same thing with Russell B. And a lot of the operators and it seems like Trump is enjoying a lot different of a role than he did in the first term. Take the government shutdown, for instance. In the first term, Trump would take to the road, do rallies across the country to try to blame it on Democrats and like,

• 34:30Ryan Broderick?

  Hundred percent.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, do that sort of thing. I think one thing is he's just a lot older now and maybe he's not up to it. But even

• 34:36Ryan Broderick?

  Well, he can't walk upstairs. He's afraid of stairs.

• 34:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. But even in that meeting with Hakeem and Schumer and them like a few days ago, I was told that Trump was pretty silent the whole meeting. Like he said like a few things and that was it. It was mainly the legislative leaders talking and him just kind of listening.

• 34:54Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, that's not good. That's, that's scary. Oh, Jesus. Okay.

• 35:01Ryan Broderick?

  So, okay, this is actually a really interesting conflict at the heart of a lot of this stuff, which is that their information warfare, the memes, the trolling, the barrage of bad headlines and misinformation is all happening at a moment where they're also clearly no longer caring about remaining popular.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 35:23Ryan Broderick?

  Like, the Trump 2028 hat, like, they're doing it out in the open.

• 35:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:28Ryan Broderick?

  It makes you wonder what it's for. So, for instance, you know, the Department of Homeland Security makes a Pokemon-themed video edit of migrants being detained.

• 35:39Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 35:40Ryan Broderick?

  And it's like, why? Like, you don't actually have to, you could just be a shadowy authoritarian government. Like, why? I don't get it.

• 35:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, because, yeah, I mean, it's for the 20 or 30% of like that base and nothing else. Like, it's not, Trump, and I've been saying this since the beginning, Trump, in his mind, he's already, like, his presidency is really two years in terms of, like, doings, all this stuff they want to do. That's why they've been working so quickly on Project 2025. I think in his mind, he's already lost the midterms, and it's part of the reason they're doing the whole gerrymandering thing, and why they're doing it so, you know, out in the open. Like, that's like the Hail Mary for trying to win the midterms.

• 36:23Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 36:23Speaker 02

  But he knows, like, we're not gonna, you know, be in our total power much longer, and that's why they passed a big, beautiful bill the way they did, because these are like, you know, these are, it's like fleeting time of, like, total power in the government, and he knows that. And the other thing is, you had brought up, we were talking about how the Republican Party's doing a lot of trolling and stuff, but the interesting thing about Trump is he didn't give a shit about the Republican Party. He doesn't care about the Republican Party at all.

• 36:50Ryan Broderick?

  No.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  He came in and used them as a vessel to get the power. When he's gone, or, you know, when he's not in this position anymore, he's not gonna do anything to help the Republican Party. And actually, this whole kind of Democratic chaos people were talking about earlier in the year, I think what the Republicans are gonna be in after the next president Potential is gonna be a lot worse, actually, uh, because I think Trump is gonna, unless he, you know, he, he, I think he is gonna try to, uh, run again or do something, who knows? Last time he did an insurrection on our country, so we'll see what he does the next time.

• 37:26Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 37:26Speaker 02

  But I do think he's gonna subtract from that party, and I think, you know, he's just looking to make money for himself and enrich himself. You know, you have a lot of Republicans who say, he doesn't have to be president, he was already rich. It's like, brother, do you know that his net worth is the highest it's ever been? Like, running for president has been one of the most lucrative things Donald Trump has ever done for him and his family. And he made it lucrative. That's what it's all about. And, um, so I agree, I don't think he cares to be popular, cuz he doesn't, in his mind, he probably, you know, he knows, I'm in my second term, I don't really care what people think about me, I'm just gonna like, do what I wanna do and let my henchmen, like, execute the plan that they told me I should get behind for, to win the race, and I won the race, so I guess they should do the plan. And we'll do memes and make money in the meantime.

• 38:13Ryan Broderick?

  See, you, you bring up like a good point, something that I, I, I, in conversations Grant and I have, I go around in circles about this over and over and over again, I think I make myself sick about it, which is like, okay, so if the Republicans via Project 2025 have kind of already decided they've won the game, if they get through the midterms, like, game's over, we get to do whatever we want, hundred-year Reich, whatever they wanna call it.

• 38:37Ryan Broderick?

  And while that's happening, they've become way more aggressive about misinformation, disinformation, meme warfare, information warfare, and they're just like messing with people, as you said, probably to energize their base of like twenty to thirty percent of, of Americans or whatever. So, in that environment, I look at the Democrats, and I don't, I'm not, I'm not gonna try to get you to, you know, talk shit on your colleagues, unless you want to, and then please, by all means, uh, but, uh, I, I, I get frustrated, you know, when the government's shutting down, and I go to Hakeem Jeffries livestream, and it has like a hundred and twenty-five people there. Or I get frustrated when I look at

• 39:19Ryan Broderick?

  Chuck Schumer next to the 2028 hat, just allowing that photograph to be taken. Or the bevy of other sort of like establishment Dems, let's call them, that don't seem, not only are they not like making a big, like you can talk all day about whether Gavin Newsom's like social media strategy is effective. It is petty and I do find that emotionally fulfilling. But to see establishment Dems both not going that direction, but also not going the direction that I think you and a lot of younger Dems go, where it's just like, okay, we're gonna just like go like Zorin Mondami, great, great example, where it's like, we're gonna go out, we're gonna make sure we have cameras and know how to film it, know how to frame it. And we're gonna make sure that people know we exist and we're gonna meet them where they want to be met.

• 40:02Ryan Broderick?

  But then there's this massive, and it seems like it's massive, chunk of the Democratic Party that doesn't seem to know how to do either. And, and maybe there's all kinds of closed doors stuff happening that like the average voter doesn't know about, but like, I don't know, people seem really scared. And it's like, I don't know what the, the problem is. Like, what's the deal? I guess.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  I think part of the issue is, and you guys know this very well, that the frontier of politics in this country, in media in this country, used to be television, right? And I would say the last great national politician who dominated that frontier was Obama, right? And if you dominate that frontier, you dominate politics. And now it is a completely different frontier, right? And now it's social media, it's online, it's short form video content or very long form video content, stuff in the middle doesn't do as well. And I just think a lot of people don't get that. And, and I think a lot of people's playbook on how we handle what's going on now is still

• 41:07Speaker 02

  based on an old frontier that we're not in anymore. And I'm not sure, and I'll speak generally, that the party as a totality has the

• 41:18Speaker 02

  People expertise, ideas and creativity necessary to catch up with that in a way that allows us during a shutdown to to give the message when I get out. And I'm just saying that about like any specific group of people, just like in general.

• 41:31Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 41:31Speaker 02

  And it's a huge problem and I, you know, I'm trying to do as much as I can in Congress to help a lot of my colleagues, you know, do better on that. And honestly, I've seen a huge difference from now versus like, you know, in January. And I think a lot of people are seeing that and they want to do more. But the problem is a lot of times people get a narrow sense of stuff and I gotta be honest, it's not just about like doing more interviews or doing interviews that are not just corporate media or doing videos. Like it's not just about that, but it's about the things you're saying. And the fact of the matter is that it's not just that Democrats have a communications problem.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  Cause when you say that, it means you're saying we're doing everything right, but not enough people are hearing about it. I don't think that's the whole problem. I think we have a doing problem too. And it's part of the reason I bring up like the politics and policy of everything as much as I can. Because you look at someone like Zoron. What's the measure of success there? Well, he personally has a lot of juice, right? He's personally great, but it's two other.

• 42:35Ryan Broderick?

  He's got the juice.

• 42:35Speaker 02

  Right? There's two other things. Number two, he knows how to convey that through short form video content, posts, interviews, everything like that. Okay. But we're not done yet because there's a last thing that if you don't have this thing, the other two things might not matter as much, right? And that is the fact that he's giving real solutions to people. That when people hear him, they know like this guy gets what I'm going through and he knows what to do about it. And that, and honestly, and I'm not trying to compare him and Trump because I'll throw myself in there with him that I try to like have joy in a lot of this work is that's a similarity between what we're seeing with the administration. That their form of showing joy while they do their project is the memes and the AI and everything like that.

• 43:18Speaker 02

  It's cruel. It's horrible. To us, it's horrible. But to him and that subset of people that he cares about, that's the joy for them, which is. Horrible, right?

• 43:28Ryan Broderick?

  They love it.

• 43:29Speaker 02

  They love it like that. That is the version of like AOC's video of like dancing and like like a small group of people being like, oh, my God, she's unqualified in Congress, but everyone else is like, oh, cool. She's a human like she's a person, right? And same thing with a lot of the like humor you see in Duron's videos or even like community. When I go over my community and I like go somewhere, they ask me to play drums and I play the drums and people love it like that is our form of their like stupid memes. Does that make sense? What I'm trying to say?

• 43:58Ryan Broderick?

  It does. And it is a perfect segue into the last section of today's episode, which we're going to talk about right after the break. We're going to be talking about how we fix everything. Seems simple, should only take a few minutes and we'll talk about that right after the break.

• 44:17Speaker 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 setup required compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 44:42Speaker 03

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• 44:47Speaker 04

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• 44:50Speaker 03

  I make naan grilled cheese when my daughter has friends over.

• 44:53Speaker 05

  I use stonefire naan to reward the humans who do my bidding.

• 44:57Speaker 04

  Right. It's perfect for camping trips.

• 45:00Speaker 05

  Dance for it, feeble mortal.

• 45:02Speaker 04

  Sorry, is he talking to me or?

• 45:05Speaker 05

  Dance. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

• 45:07Speaker 03

  From our tradition to yours, stonefire. Together we naan.

• 45:14Ryan Broderick?

  We just did an episode with Crooked Media's John Favreau. He and I were talking about the structural differences between the Democrats and the Republicans. And I wanted to float this theory by you to see what you think about it. From my point of view, the Republicans are extremely bottom up. Even though you have Trump at the center as this cult of personality, the Republicans over the last 15 years have become very, very sophisticated at using the world wide web of neo Nazis as their monkeys with typewriters to figure out like what they should do. And because it's the internet, there's a two way street. So the cyber army is listening to Fox News and Trump and the heads of the administration. And I think a lot of times vice versa, especially Vice President and super poster

• 45:59Ryan Broderick?

  Jimmy Vance, they're very plugged in. And Jon Favreau from Crooked Media was saying that the Democrats are not that, that they are extremely top down. And so first, like, my question is, do you think that's true? And then my second question would be, how do we fix that as fast as possible? And then I guess the third question is, should we? Like, is that good for democracy as a whole?

• 46:21Speaker 02

  No, I think our party is very regimented. We are too top down, and it's a huge problem. And look no further than what's going on in New York's race, right? Where because-

• 46:31Ryan Broderick?

  Are you a Cuomo guy? Are you a Cuomo guy?

• 46:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, dude. Cuomo and I, dude, we go back. But look no further than New York, right? And it's not even just about his politics, but it's about the way that he entered the scene, right? And like, it defies a lot of what our party is about, which is that process and like, kind of hierarchy that is set up. And how do we fix that as fast as possible? By defying it and by winning as much as we can. And as we do that, we change what people think is possible, which means more people try to do it, and then more people do it. But we also change what our base and what Democratic voters are looking for. Because I think we could go back years ago, right?

• 47:17Speaker 02

  And you would say, well, people look for a specific type of person who have a specific type of policy, who maybe they've done the thing. But I think- More and more what we're seeing from my race in 2022 to other races, Zerona, Alexandria, or a lot of other progressives like Summer Lee, Greg Kassar, Deli Ramirez, you know, a lot of people doing this work. You know, Robert Garcia, he's a second term congressman, but he's running the Oversight Committee now for Democrats. That was not an easy thing for him to do, and it defied a lot of what our party is about, which is kind of that seniority model. But he had to defy it to change it. And now there's like, brand new conversations in Congress about what it means to lead Democrats on a committee. Now,

• 47:58Speaker 02

  for the first time, get this, now people are talking about term limits for chairs in the Democratic Party.

• 48:04Ryan Broderick?

  Hey!

• 48:04Speaker 02

  Which no one talked about until a young guy won, but whatever. And at least they're talking about it. But by defying it, it's a big way that we can change things. I'll be honest, though, I think we're, I think this year has awakened something in like the base of our party and the party itself, that, number one, I don't think there's an establishment anymore, really. I mean, what's an establishment? An establishment are like, the top power brokers and holders, kind of marching towards the same goal and using their resources to get to that goal. And the fact of the matter is, after last election, there's so much friggin' drama in the party between the power brokers, and there's so many of these power brokers who really don't have power anymore, that there

• 48:47Speaker 02

  isn't really an establishment anymore, which means it's kind of up for grabs on who directs what this party is about. And that's why, the midterms are really important, because I think it's important we get like, bold progressives elected, and that helps shape the debate and shape things. But the most important one is going to be who we put forth as our primary nominee. And I hate to make everything about the presidency, everything's not about the presidency, state and local office is really important, who we send to Congress is important. But just looking at like, what's the fastest way we can drastically change the Democratic Party? It's by putting forth someone who's drastically different to lead our party in not that long, in like, two and a half years, right? And if you look at the Republican Party, that's what Trump did.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  He defied the odds, got through and became the leader of the party and has led the party for a decade and has made it in the way that he wants to make it and has changed it and broke that kind of hierarchy that they had set up. It's gonna have to be the same for us. And I feel honestly very optimistic about it because people want fighters, but not just fighters, they want fighters who have bold progressive visions. And I hear that from people who hated Bernie in 2016. And then I saw them at the oligarchy tour and I was like, wait, what are you like, what are you doing here? I thought you hated our, I thought you hated my guy. And they're like, I just want a fighter and the progressives are the ones fighting. But my hope is, we're not just looking for fighters, because there's gonna be a lot of corporate candidates who say they're fighters, but you know, want

• 50:14Speaker 02

  to keep the status quo. But the question is like, how do you want to drastically change the country? Like, change it? Because that's what people are hungry for. So sorry, that was a long answer, but I'm actually pretty optimistic about it, to be honest.

• 50:25Ryan Broderick?

  On the topic of fighters and and sort of tone, if you dig deep into particularly like more hardcore leftist online spaces, I think you see a thing that come up a lot, which is, take this seriously, and not only take this seriously, match aggression with aggression. And so, one question mark for me about sort of the future of the Democratic Party, as you said, that is, it is clearly like, there is, there are young upstarts that are, that are finding a footing and getting in. And, and I think pre-Zorin, I would have said, it's impossible to not be aggressive and do well. Zorin has sort of changed my thinking on this slightly, because like, he is making me, like, peak millennial,

• 51:08Ryan Broderick?

  like, very sort of excited about, like, viral content and that energy, that very, like, 2012 energy that he has. Because it's authentic to him and it makes sense. But I guess, like, assuming the internet is gonna be a big part of shaping the future of the Democratic Party, these, these young candidates that are coming in and trying to figure out a way to just like shoot through the, the structural machinery of the party and, and make a name for themselves. What would you say to people online in particular that are like, "Yeah, well, you have to be as much of a giant asshole as the president is, and you have to match aggression with aggression and no cheeky shit." Just like, "I need you to be like, wearing like, a black mask and a Molotov cocktail." And like, "That's what I wanted on my day." I mean, would I love to see AOC throw a Molotov cocktail?

• 51:53Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, it would make me feel great, but I'm wondering if that's the correct strategy here.

• 51:57Speaker 02

  Don't give Trump any AI meme ideas, okay? That one's definitely coming out.

• 52:03Speaker 02

  No, 100%, and what I would say is, what we should ask people, because I think sometimes people are even confused on what they're like, what they're looking for. And it's like, "Do you mean aggression in the way that we communicate and talk about stuff? Or do you mean like, aggressive in the way that we govern for like, our people?" And I think, to go back to Zohran, that's something that he exemplifies. Like, he's a joyful warrior. He's aggressive in what he's fighting for. That's what people are looking for. And then he does it in a way that's authentic to himself. Everyone's gonna be different. That's something I try to tell people. And honestly, like, to be very, like, straight up with you, social media was never something that was a big forte for me, right? You know, my thing is like, music and live events.

• 52:45Ryan Broderick?

  You had Habbo Hotel. Hold on, wait, you had Habbo Hotel?

• 52:48Speaker 02

  Habbo Hotel, yeah. I mean, if Habbo Hotel was still around, like, I'd be, you know, much bigger on Habbo Hotel. But sometimes it takes you some, it takes you a little bit to figure out like, "What's the way that people resonate with me on the internet?" I'm in my second term, right? I'm two years in. I feel like, honestly, I'm just now starting to get a hold of the way that people connect with me online. And I didn't really get that the first two years.

• 53:14Ryan Broderick?

  Fascinating.

• 53:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, the first two years of my term. I was trying to figure it out. I was doing a lot of different stuff. It wasn't a huge priority for me personally, because I'm just so like... In person based that I realize that we're doing such cool stuff like on the ground. Like I have a music festival here in central Florida. It's like a political thing, but we never really captured it in the right way to show the rest of the world what we were doing. And I feel like this year is the first year where I feel like, oh, I get how people like to hear from me, right? And everyone's content's different. Like I was for Alexandria, right? She doesn't do the like short form kind of videos like Zoranda's. She does like long form lives that like tens of thousands of people get in and they like, they clip those lives and they post that like that's her thing.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  And I've learned for me, a lot of it for me is like, like kind of directed camera, like sitting on my couch, talking with people. And I'm just figuring that out. Like I just figured it out this year. So I, I encourage people to just like be authentic to yourself and not try, like, don't try to copy somebody else. Like do your thing, but, but be aggressive in what you believe in. It doesn't mean you're gonna be like cursing into the thing. A lot of people think like just saying a bunch of curse words is what people are looking for. And I, I think people are looking for something a lot deeper. And I say this as someone who curses randomly.

• 54:30Ryan Broderick?

  Let's get Chuck Schumer a ring light. So my, my last question for you, and this has been a great, this has actually been so much more of an optimistic conversation than I expected. So like, thank you for that. But like, we've just come through like a major news cycle that I think was very clarifying for the, the political temperature of the country. So Jimmy Kimmel, he's forced into suspension. He's brought back. There's all kinds of first amendment concerns. The country, it feels like actually like the majority, like the, the majority of the country for the first time actually kind of understood how scary things have become. Obviously, you know, it's great because like everyone knows Jimmy Kimmel and he's been on TV for 25 years or whatever.

• 55:14Ryan Broderick?

  And you, you can understand that like the president is bullying Jimmy Kimmel off the air. But how do you, if you're being bombarded with memes and, and the old media world is decaying, if not already dead, the press conference era is over, the TV era is practically over. You know, I can joke like get Chuck Schumer a ring light, but like. We are in this transitionary moment where the Democrats basically have to wait for primary season and wait for the midterms to really understand like what the shape of the the party will look like and and and not to be hyperbolic if the party exists in a legal manner in the way that we've we've understood for the last hundred, 200 years. So like this is a big deal. And then we are entering like a very scary moment.

• 55:57Ryan Broderick?

  And it is a little frustrating to think that like the average American, it took Jimmy Kimmel for them to be like, hey, Google AI search, what's fascism? Like, like, it's a little concerning. It's a little concerning. And so I guess like from your vantage point, not so much what you would do, but I guess like if you wanted, if you wanted to be a mouthpiece, the Democratic Party right now, how do you both calm people down, but also I think like treat it, treat this seriously? Because like there is, there's, this is big, I think. I, I, I don't want to be, I don't want to be hysterical, but this feels big.

• 56:32Speaker 02

  You're 100% right. And the thing I always tell people is, the good news here is we do have history to look at, at other fascists and authoritarian leaders, and this guy's doing the same exact thing. And that should, you know, concern you, obviously, but also gives us a roadmap. Because the fact of the matter is authoritarian leaders, they always, always, always, always bank on having the impression of having much more power than they have, and people complying in advance and believing them at their word. A lot of people have forgotten that Donald Trump is a liar. So just because he goes on the TV and says he's gonna do this crazy thing, doesn't mean it's gonna actually happen. And it also doesn't mean that when he does it, that it's gonna remain permanent. You

• 57:16Speaker 02

  know, and something I always tell people, 45% of his executive orders have been overturned or stopped or paused by lawsuits or by like, public opinion that has pushed him and people on the streets. So like, the organizing and the work we're doing does work. But I'm not, I wouldn't tell people to calm down, because we're staring literally down the bowel of fascism and authoritarianism. But it's all in service of enriching a few people in this country, enriching People and billionaires like Donald Trump at our expense. And that's not a Democrat versus Republican thing. It's a people versus the problem thing. And and my hope is we'll stop looking around at each other on who to blame for these issues and look up at people like him. Some people want us to see the authoritarianism and ICE

• 58:01Speaker 02

  and ripping apart institutions and like taking apart the First Amendment as one story. And then taking away Medicaid and raising our prices and all this as another story. And they're two different stories. These aren't two different stories. They're one story. Because the only way in this country that you do this to people, that you take away their healthcare, that you raise their prices, that you make life harder for them just to enrich billionaires. The only way you do that without feeling like you're going to feel the wrath of the people, either at the ballot box or on the streets, is when you do the

• 58:30Ryan Broderick?

  To clamp down.

• 58:31Speaker 02

  When you clamp down on them and you make them feel like there's nothing that they can do. You know, in history, when the opposition, a lot of times the opposition is the person who gives the person in power the power that they want. Let's let's not do that. So I'm not, I wouldn't tell anyone to calm down, but I'd tell everyone to rev up and that we can actually do something. And I say this to empower people, not to depress them.

• 58:52Ryan Broderick?

  Thank you so much. This was great. Before you move, I think Grant has two quick pickups to grab and then we'll send you on your way. But thank you so much.

• 58:59Speaker 06

  This was, this was Thank you so much. All right, Ryan, I think you actually got at it with the last question. So Max, if you, I'm going to say my piece. And if you say, yes, my answer to the last question is the answer I would give, then we can be on our way. But if there's something you want to add, great.

• 59:14Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 59:15Speaker 06

  I, you know, the other day, Trump told a bunch of people to open fire in American cities and that we got to get the enemy from within.

• 59:27Speaker 06

  And I feel very frustrated that if you respond to that, you end up sounding hysterical and you sound like you're hyperbolic. If you're trying to be like, this is serious, this is scary. I hear what you're saying about getting back to things that the the overlying issue. But I, but like, is there any way that you see of communicating about what we are about the cruelty and about the ideas that like, we can just send in the National Guard to American cities that can get somebody who's not paying attention every single day to care about this in a way that doesn't make us sound like hysterical or overreacting?

• 1:00:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, and this is, you know, something I was getting at too, and I was talking about those two different stories, is the fact that we have to talk about both things. And I think it's all connected to enriching billionaires. So I think the reason he's sending the National Guard to our cities, the reason he's using ICE to greatly grow the prison industrial complex, which is run by a lot of private prisons and people making money, is all for rich people to make money. Now, he's just using the government to speed that process up, and that's what this is all about in the end. But I do think it's important to talk about it, and I get really, I get upset when I hear people say, "Oh, don't talk about the National Guard thing, like, that's a distraction," or like, "Don't talk about this, that's a distraction." When you say something's a distraction, you're implying that you shouldn't pay attention to it.

• 1:00:54Speaker 02

  We have to pay attention to it. I don't think we sound hyperbolic when we talk about it. I think we sound like we're meeting the moment, and that we're actually seeing clear-eyed what's going on right now. If the politicians in the opposition are not talking about the blatant law-breaking and authoritarianism that the president's doing, then who's gonna do it? So I think we must talk about it. What I'm mainly saying, though, is we should always talk about it and then tie it back to this bigger class issue that's going on in this nation as well. And I deeply believe that both things are pretty deeply connected.

• 1:01:31Speaker 06

  And if you don't want to answer this one, I totally understand, but have you helped any of your colleagues rotate a PDF or like taught them how to like, take a selfie properly? Have you, you know, what it means to go live?

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  Yes, I have. No, you'd be surprised, I get asked to do a lot of this stuff all the time, or like, I used to work on music festivals before I went for Congress, I worked for Coachella. And I remember I was speaking to a group of my colleagues about it, and a group of them came to me after, and they were like, "What's cockroach chella? What is that? Can you explain that?"

• 1:02:02Speaker 06

  Oh, dude, oh, no.

• 1:02:05Speaker 02

  The way I explained it is I was like, "Um, it's like the Jim Clyburn fish fry, but like, bigger and music."

• 1:02:16Ryan Broderick?

  Incredible.

• 1:02:16Speaker 02

  I had to find a good example, you know?

• 1:02:18Ryan Broderick?

  I want to thank you for coming on. This is a great conversation. If people want to follow you online, where can they do that? Where are you most active? Are you a blue sky warrior? Are you still duking it out on X, TikTok?

• 1:02:29Speaker 02

  I'm still on X. I'm pretty, I, some people are going to disagree with me, but I believe on, I believe that politicians should stay on X. You can follow me at Maxwell Frost FL, M A X W E L L F R O S T F L. I'm on everything. And then on TikTok, it's Rep Maxwell Frost. If you want to follow me there too, I'm pretty active there.

• 1:02:51Ryan Broderick?

  Panic World is a production of Courier. It is written and produced by Grant Irving and hosted by me, Ryan Broderick. Josh Fialsted is our production coordinator and our amazing researcher is Adam Bumis. From Courier is Shane Verkest, who edits our video episodes along with our producer, Kevin Maroney, and National Managing Director and Executive Producer, Kevin Dreyfus. RC DeMezzo is their VP of Brand and Social. Charlotte Robinson is their Deputy Director of Brand and Social. Mary Ann Kuga is their Director of Marketing. YouTube and Podcast Growth Marketer, Samantha Hallows. And Tracy Kaplan is the Senior Vice President of Sales and Distribution. If you want to sponsor the show or give us products to sell, she's the one to talk to. You can email her at [email protected]. Be sure to

• 1:03:35Ryan Broderick?

  check out the Panic World YouTube channel, which you can find at youtube.com slash at Panic World Pod. And please, give us some nice ratings on podcast apps and leave a funny review. Lastly, here's my advice for you. Chill out and touch grass while you still can.

• 1:03:55Speaker 03

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• 1:04:01Speaker 04

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• 1:04:04Speaker 03

  I make naan grilled cheese when my daughter has friends over.

• 1:04:07Speaker 05

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• 1:04:10Speaker 04

  Right. It's perfect for camping trips.

• 1:04:13Speaker 05

  Dance for it, feeble mortal.

• 1:04:16Speaker 04

  Sorry, is he talking to me or?

• 1:04:18Speaker 05

  Dance. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

• 1:04:21Speaker 03

  From our tradition to yours, Stonefire.

• 1:04:23Speaker 04

  Together we naan.