Executive Disorder: Lula’s Victory, AI Election Ads, Voter Fraud, Revolt in Albania

0:01 Call zone media.

0:08 This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what this means for you.

0:17 I'm Garrison Davis.

0:18 Today I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, Robert Evans, and special correspondent Margaret Kiljoy. who is joining us for our spooky, slightly spooky, but also kind of regular edition of Executive Disorder.

0:32 Class war. That's right. That's right. The specter that's haunting Europe.

0:40 We're covering the week of October 21st to October 28th. Not actually covering Halloween because that hasn't happened yet. But what can you do?

0:50 Halloween's a season now, Garrison.

0:52 It's months. That's true. That is true. I'm pushing for it to consume Thanksgiving.

0:56 Okay.

0:57 I'm so down. Halloween runs until solstice.

1:00 Yeah, straight into Saturnalia.

1:02 Yeah.

1:03 Sick. I love it.

1:05 James, do you want to begin with some short stories?

1:08 Let's do it. Okay. So starting, I guess, in this hemisphere, about a thousand troops from El Salvador have deployed to Haiti this week. The deployment came after four Salvadoran members of the UN task force went missing after they were ambushed and jumped out of their burning vehicle on the 18th of October. Kaelin says that these people weren't on a combat patrol, that they were Air Force techs who were returning from a market when they got ambushed. I won't comment. Four bodies have been handed over. They were handed over via one of these NGOs that does extraction work in the region. They were found burned and the NGO recovered them. I'm not quite sure if they were alerted that they were burned bodies or not. Bukele came

1:53 to see these are not the missing personnel and he posted a picture of a Chadian soldier's ID, but allegedly that Chadian soldier is alive but was injured and lost their ID in a mission. But Bukele came that the bodies did not match the age or height of the lost Salvadoran personnel. Either way, it continues to be really desperate for folks trying to get along in Haiti, and I don't think El Salvador military are going to make that much better for them. Another person has died in immigration detention. His death occurred in CoreCivics' Otay Mesa facility, which is here in San Diego. Daylight San Diego confirmed this.

2:31 ICE hasn't published anything on its news page yet. There were rumors earlier this weekend that someone has died. Daylight San Diego got confirmation, but I haven't seen anything yet on the ICE news page, so we don't know who that person was. At least I don't. Next, an Iraqi court has sentenced seven French Islamic State members to prison in the first verdict of a trial involving 47 accused Islamic State fighters. Because the international community manifestly failed to set up tribunals since the collapse of the territorial caliphate, the accused and their victims have faced massive delays in getting justice. The big worry for European Union states here seem to be that their citizens will be sentenced to death, right?

3:14 Some French citizens were sentenced to death in 2019, but their sentences were commuted. In this case, these people were sentenced to prison, not death. The United States, of course, helped transfer thousands of suspects from Syria when the SDG and the SNA began their offensive against the SDF earlier this year. And in this case, Iraq is beginning these domestic trials of accused foreign fighters. Meanwhile, talking of Syria, both Jordan and Israel have conducted operations inside Syria this week.

3:42 The Jordanians bombed what it claimed were Islamic state remnants responsible for an attack on a church in Jordan on the 26th of October, which killed nine people. Israel, the IDF, killed a young man with an intellectual disability and hearing problems during a night raid in Syria. They claimed that he kept approaching them, and so they decided to kill him.

4:04 Inside the country he lived in and that they don't live in?

4:07 Inside the country that they were illegally invading, along with all the other countries that they were illegally occupying, yes. There was like a really massive funeral for this man. It's deeply fucking sad. It's one of the thousands of horrific crimes against humanity that IDF likes to do about every week. So yeah, it's all not the most happy stuff for me, but that's what I got for small things.

4:29 The hunt is still taking an ass kicking every fucking day, man. So that's nice.

4:34 In Myanmar, to be clear. In Myanmar.

4:36 Yeah, yeah.

4:37 Yeah.

4:39 I mean, it's nice to see them losing. I guess they've also decided to, maybe I should report this, they've started to deploy their senior officers to the front lines. Previously, their tactic was that the officers would plan the assault and then send conscripts in to die while they remained in the rear. And it seems that senior leadership is getting very pissed off at their absolute dedication to using World War II tactics in 2026. There are people doing opposed amphibious assaults and getting mown down with MG42 machine guns.

5:08 They're doing an unsuccessful D-Day every day. It's tragic that that many conscripts are dying, but hopefully some of those officers find their way to the front too.

5:18 Line all them up.

5:19 I want to mention two things that we'll probably cover more next week. Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have released a new report on Trump's ties with Jeffrey Epstein. which contains details about Trump's involvement in Epstein's trafficking operations, and a new rape accusation against Trump made by a former beauty pageant contestant. Earlier this week, Trump instructed the DOJ to block the certification of Alaska's election results if the Democratic Senate candidate, Mary Paltola, wins Tuesday's election. The White House's preemptive justification is, is that two different people named Daniel J.

6:03 Sullivan Jr. and Dan S.

6:05 Sullivan are both on the ballot, Dan S. Sullivan being the Republican incumbent, who is marked as such on the ballot. Alaska also has ranked choice voting, so if there's any confusion, voters can scribble in both Daniel and Dan Sullivan. We'll see what comes of this next week. Robert, Do you want to do our first considerably not spooky story? Unless you want to consider Flavio's disappearing act.

6:37 Miami.

6:39 Yeah, I mean, there's a little bit of spook in that, I guess. But no, this is actually one of the happiest stories we'll have to say. And honestly, this is like the happiest I've ever been to be wrong and the happiest I've ever been to like more accurately read a bunch of sources that wound up being wrong. Because a couple of weeks back during my segment on ED, I talked about Lula's disastrous first round against Flavio Bolsonaro for Brazil's presidential election. And it went almost as badly for Lula as it could have gone. Neither side won outright. Obviously, Flavio winning outright would have been worse. But Flavio got more votes than Lula. Nearly all of the other candidates who got meaningful numbers of votes during that first round

7:19 were further right even than Flavio and a lot weirder than Flavio. There was only like one left wing candidate besides Lula that like got a notable really amount of votes. And it was still very small in the grand scheme of things. And so the assumption was that obviously for the second round of voting, you expect that people who voted for kind of other right wing candidates or the left wing candidates would they'll mostly coalesce behind whoever got the most kind of on that broad side. That's generally how you expect things to go. And so because most of the other candidates who'd gotten meaningful numbers of votes were further right, the assumption was, well, if Lula is going to pull a win out in the second round,

7:54 he's going to have to turn a lot of these right wing votes. And that just doesn't seem like it's going to happen, right? There was a lot of the sources that I was reading said it's essentially, it seems essentially impossible for Lula to pull out a second round win. Like based on What we're seeing and how previous Brazilian elections are going, something unprecedented would have to happen for him to win. And something unprecedented did in fact happen because Lula won last weekend. And he didn't just flip out an absolute like barely eking out a win. This wasn't a case where, well, it was kind of close the first round and Lula just sort of barely managed to edge his way ahead of Flavio. Lula won by

8:31 almost 3.6% in the popular vote. Like he doubled his margin of victory from the election in 2022. Why did this happen? Because the flaws in Lula's last administration didn't go away. And the fact that Bolsonaro nearly wound up right back in charge is proof of that, right? It points to the fact that Lula and the Brazilian left have a lot of work to do. And there's some other issues here. The most recent elections also handed Congress to the far right. So Lula is going to be fighting Congress basically from the moment he takes office. But the fact that Lula is president means that there's a fight to be had. You know, Flavio is not going to be able to, among other things, force out a bunch of Supreme Court justices who ruled against his father

9:10 and stack the court in his own favor. There's a bunch of shit Flavio is not going to be able to do.

9:14 Yeah.

9:15 Putting Lula in prison again, which is a thing that is weirdly not discussed, but like, yeah, this was- This was an election that was loser goes to prison.

9:22 Like, that's a big part of this.

9:25 Oh, Miami.

9:25 In Flavio's case, it was losers go to prison because he had committed a bunch of crimes he was actively being investigated for.

9:32 Yeah.

9:32 And Lula, it was Lula. They'll send Lula to prison again for bullshit. Because fuck you.

9:38 Yeah.

9:38 Yeah.

9:39 Yes.

9:39 But this was a loser goes to prison kind of election. You are right about that.

9:44 So in the next few days, we're going to have an episode from a Brazilian activist who was part of the massive grassroots campaign to turn things around for the second round of voting. And that's going to be the majority of our coverage on the subject, because obviously the person that we picked is a lot more qualified than any of us to talk about this sort of stuff living there and being. having been a part of this.

10:01 So we'll have more detail for you on what exactly happened later. But for the purpose of this episode, there's a couple important things I want to go over that are important in terms of understanding how this all happened, like how Lula was able to pull out a win. One is that people got galvanized by terror at what a second Bolsonaro, well, Flavio Bolsonaro, which was seen as an extension of like Jair's presidency, what that would actually mean.

10:26 And they had weeks to marinate in that anxiety. And that helped motivate a major get out the vote effort.

10:31 Right.

10:31 A lot of people who had been kind of, well, I don't want to vote because I'm disappointed in Lula or I'm just not motivated to vote. Like a significant number of people were willing to come out because of what the stakes were. But a massive reason as to why things worked out for Lula comes down to the fact that he and his team fought a lot smarter this time around. Bolsonaro, as one of my sources pointed out, because I've talked to a few Brazilians about this election and like what happened during this like couple of weeks span of time. And several of the people I talked to pointed out that Bolsonaroismo relies heavily on being able to propagate their message through a bunch of different mouths

11:07 and make whatever issue or scandal they think will get them power to go viral, right? The US MAGA right works basically the same way. You have a bunch of people who are all ostensibly independent content creators and media people who are all taking marching orders, probably from the same couple of like signal groups or whatever, where somebody says, hey, we're angry about trans people doing this this week. And then suddenly you have like 40 different people all putting out the same message and it goes viral, right? That's like a major thing in the United States on the right.

11:35 And it was a big part of how the Bolsonaros like did what they were able to do. Like it was a major messaging thing that they engaged in. Lula teamed up with a guy named Andre Yonones to come up with a counter to this media strategy. Yonones started out as a lawyer for the poor and went through a mixed political awakening. This is not a guy who has had like a straight shot to helping the left win an election. He did initially, when he was a much younger man, join Lula's party at one point, the Workers' Party.

12:04 But then after that, he joined a far-right party that was run by Carlos Bolsonaro. In 2018, he was the federal deputy of a centrist party. But then in 2022, after he had kind of an abortive presidential run himself and decided not to go through with it, and declared himself for Lula. Yaronis' background helped him to develop a shit-stirring strategy that was used to great effect. The big thing this guy's been talking about for a while is The left can't win unless we're willing to do some of the dirty shit that the right is doing, right?

12:31 Like we have to actually get down into the muck and try some, basically some dirty tricks in order to make shit work. And that's very much what happened. He created a WhatsApp channel called Lula's Army, which he estimated would need about 10 million subscribers in order to guarantee Lula a win. It wound up with more than 11 million subscribers. Andre was the only person who could make posts there. And he used it to issue orders to his millions of followers about what to do online and in social media. And among these kind of standing orders were do not engage with far-right narratives. Don't talk to these people. Don't argue with them. Don't respond to bait posts, not even to, like, dunk them. Block all of the

13:07 shit that you see from these guys to cut off the flow of attention to the fascists and at the same time flood the internet with stories that are useful to Lula's campaign. These are not just like pro-Lula messages. There was a lot of like, in some cases, boarding on conspiracy theorizing about Flavio Bolsonaro and the stuff that he had gotten up to, like pointing out his ties to Freemasonry, right? It was all stuff that would go viral and that would make fellow far-right assholes look bad.

13:31 This channel, Lula's Army, was cited as a major reason for Lula's victory by everyone I've interviewed so far and by Lula. At their victory party, he specifically shouted out General Llanones as the guy who had been the architect of a lot of their online strategy. And this was very much framed as like, this is the far right's place of strength is the internet and like virality. And if we're going to actually beat these people, we have to be willing to like take the fight to them in this domain and win. And this was very much like Lula's army was very much an attempt to do that.

14:04 I want to quote from an anonymous source or a source that I talked to that wants to remain anonymous, but provided me some of his thoughts on like what had happened and what had worked from this online strategy. One of the things I thought was interesting, he described, you know, known as his thesis to me as we can reverse SEO and election through mass action. What I have witnessed from afar is basically millions of politically disengaged normie working people saw this kind of small time politician make some Instagram video about how they personally could change history by blocking your chud Bolsonaro cousin, printing out some articles to show your unconvinced auntie, searching things like Flavio

14:37 Bolsonaro defended murderer of child on Google repeatedly until national newspapers were forced to mention it. He was literally doing little courses and videos like guys practice with me, anti-Lula clickbait, swipe away, don't click, don't argue, don't screenshot and quote tweet, just swipe away like this. And now all these people have been posting for days like I have social anxiety, but I've been sleeping four hours a night to go talk with people all day. My life has changed. I think we'll need to be doing this for years to crush the fascists. This person expressed to me that they doubted at one point whether what was going on was any different from like the common social media delusion of thinking, oh,

15:11 if I like retweet the right stuff, maybe it'll change politics. But this concerted activism did change politics because people were not just engaging with shit that inspired or pissed them off based on their id. They were acting strategically to block and deny the enemy terrain in which to maneuver. Here's another quote from that source. One of his tips, he's talking about Yonones, one of his tips slash directives was something like, okay, we will post about topic X, but we will avoid keywords like Lula, PT, which is Lula's party, because meta has muted them. And instead we'll use the hashtags of the enemy. So like Clockwork searching hashtag I'm with Flavio 22 or something on Instagram got you a wall of people doing the L fingers for Lula.

15:51 It's all very signal jamming-y while also completely low tech, like Americans just shooting flock cameras and all.

15:57 LOL.

15:58 That's it. Incredible.

16:03 I've never been more proud of my people.

16:05 I hope that becomes a new American international thing. They wear the fucking Realtree camouflage and they shoot flock cameras.

16:13 Yeah, that's our new stereotype. A flock camera is not safe. This is our new Goku. It's the international communication. Now, as I said, we'll have a more detailed explanation of what happens soon.

16:28 It's important that, you know, and one that I did want to point out is like one reason why they were focused on having, hey, we've got 10 million people start searching for like the same things, the same terms to make them go viral. Some Brazilian major news stations had like developed a kind of like a daily thing they would do of like.

16:42 What's trending online.

16:44 Yeah. And so if you have 11 million people in a WhatsApp group and you can make whatever shit you want about like the guy you want to defeat trend, that's a really powerful tactic.

16:54 You know?

16:55 If there's anything I've learned from using Twitter, Brazilians love to post.

17:00 They're huge posters.

17:01 They're posty-ass people, yeah.

17:03 They are some of the most online people I've ever encountered.

17:08 Yeah.

17:08 But as much as this sort of organized posting strategy was a major aspect of this election and this organizing, which it was, there's a few other things you mentioned about printing off things to give to your aunt.

17:20 Yes.

17:22 Other like in-person engagement, like having every person go out and like try to either flip someone that they know or talk to people who have like checked out of the political process and like harassed them into voting.

17:35 Yeah, and I've even seen cases of people just sort of convincing their Bolsonaro supporting relatives to like go on vacation during the election.

17:46 That's pretty funny.

17:48 Yeah, it was a wide-ranging and creative effort, and I think this is really important. A lot of the stuff that was being done through Lula's army is not what you'd traditionally call ethical, certainly not in American politics. I don't have a problem with it, but this is getting down into the muck, right? This is not clean fighting.

18:08 This is not going high. This is seeing what the far right's been doing for the last decade to get into power and going like, all right, well, two can play at that game, motherfucker. You know, like, I think that is important to acknowledge here. I'm seeing a lot of people online going like, this is proof that all we need to do is vote. And it's like, well, the first round is proof of what happens when all you do is vote. The second round victory is proof of what happens is when you get fucking creative, you know? Anyway, we'll have a more detailed explanation of everything that happens soon.

18:39 It's important that you know right now that after his defeat, Flavio was ordered to turn in his passport because he was actively under investigation for a bunch of crimes related to corruption that he definitely committed.

18:50 Yeah, tons of them.

18:52 And after initially trying to get the election results rescinded, Flavio gave up on that, promised to return in his passport, and then fled the country.

18:59 Yeah.

18:59 It looks like Marco Rubio helped orchestrate all of this. Basically, my understanding is he stepped into Argentina and then got on a flight that eventually led him to the United States with the help of the State Department. A senior State Department official told USA Today the State Department will issue visas to Flavio Bolsonaro and his family and allow them entry into the United States. And sure enough, a few hours after that, he landed in Miami. Like father, like son. Like father, like son.

19:25 Yeah.

19:26 I love that like the list of asylees and uh fucking refugees we accept it's white south africans are people whose last name is bolsonaro yeah.

19:34 Yeah we're great on that this is my my one initial criticism of lula too which is as as the great marches historian clr james said the rich are only defeated when they are running for your lives you forgot to add you have to actually.

19:46 Catch them you have to catch them before they can run i gotta wonder where he was watching the election party from, right? Like to have easy access to a land border where he can walk across.

19:56 He must have been really making sure that he had that figured out ahead of time.

20:00 Yeah, he covered his back there. I know.

20:03 Lula had a good response when it came out that Flavio has fled. He stated at a rally, this is what the Bolsonaro family is like. Brazil is their second nation.

20:11 The U.S.

20:11 Is their first. That's a fucking dunk. That's good.

20:16 We'll see what happens and how the U.S. regime uses Flavio. Will Chamberlain of the Edmund Burke Foundation, which is supported by Peter Thiel. And I want to note that Ginny Kahn is the person who made me aware of this. She writes for the Bucks County Beacon. But yeah, he recently put out a statement saying, and I'm going to read from Will Chamberlain's statement, Flavio Bolsonaro's passport was canceled.

20:40 He was forced to flee the country by Lula. His brother Eduardo has an arrest warrant for lobbying against the U.S. It's time for the Brazilian left to face the full force of American diplomatic and economic sanctions until they stop acting like a banana republic. And he's basically encouraging the United States to treat Brazil like we treated Russia after the expanded invasion of Ukraine. including visa bans on government officials and also quadrupling tariffs on Brazilian goods. Chamberlain ended his message by saying the Brazilian regime should look carefully at what has happened to Venezuela and Cuba and remember that this hemisphere belongs to the United States of America.

21:14 Oh, I don't like that. I don't like that at all. We'll see where that one heads. That's a Don Roe doctrine. That's a new advanced level of Don Roe doctrine. Actually, this hemisphere belongs to is wild.

21:26 Yeah. it was interesting how kind of slightly tepid Trump's reaction to Bolsonaro losing was like he, he didn't, he didn't echo Bolsonaro's claims that the election was like rigged or stolen, but also said, I didn't take sides, but it was a terrible look for the world. Elections have to be indisputable. And it looked really bad to me, but he didn't really elaborate much more. Like he could, he could have gone a lot harder. And it's like, I didn't take sides. This is like the main... His first main response.

21:59 Yeah.

22:00 I assume he was like, all right, well, if they'd thrown a coup, we would have supported it, but he didn't throw a coup, so fuck it.

22:05 Yeah. I think he also doesn't like to be associated with failure. He doesn't like a loser. And he lost by 4 million votes.

22:11 Oh, yeah.

22:12 Dude took a fat L.

22:13 Lula had to catch up by 2.5 million votes and then won by 4 million.

22:19 It's crazy.

22:20 It's hard to dispute that. Even the extended voting hours because of issues on voting day. only netted him like 30,000 votes, 35,000 votes. And that election extension was requested by both Bolsonaro and Lula.

22:37 Yeah, but Flavio Bolsonaro has pretended he didn't ask for it.

22:40 Yeah, and he, I think, announced today that he's like the rightful president of Brazil from Florida.

22:47 Sure, yeah, great. Keep that grift going.

22:49 Get those 4 million people out of the way.

22:52 Maybe the coup's still to come. Oh, yeah.

22:54 I mean, who knows what kind of shit they'll try. But also, Brazil is not Venezuela. Well, he's going to get on the list. At some point, they're going to try some shit in Cuba, right? So like Cuba, that's another one where they might be able to at least accomplish their initial goal of like kidnapping and excising the people they want to get out of the country. Rubio made a fantastic tweet, like trying to recruit CIA operators.

23:17 Oh, yeah.

23:18 Yes.

23:18 Yes.

23:19 Well, I don't think you can do that with Brazil.

23:22 Big ass country. Yeah. Very big country.

23:25 Yeah. This is certainly the most exciting kind of election turnaround that we've seen. And like you said, it's going to be a hard fight for Lula and the Workers' Party in Brazil because they are dealing with a very, very far-right Congress.

23:38 Yeah. But at least there will be a fight.

23:42 It's a fight.

23:43 Yeah.

23:44 We have a game. All right. Let's hear from Bolsonaro. It's new cologne. All right, we are back. And what we are talking about now is non-citizen voting.

24:09 Very scary.

24:09 This qualifies as a spooky segment.

24:13 Yeah, I heard it's a big deal.

24:15 This is what's going to destroy the democracy.

24:17 And I feel strongly about borders.

24:19 Maybe that's what Bolsonaro is going to go for, you know?

24:22 He's the only one who's going to get caught voting.

24:24 Well, unfortunately, Margaret. Well, not the only one, Margaret. Some people have already been committing voter fraud. We're going to hear about that after we hear... Well, actually, ISIS News page yesterday announced that they had arrested a legal permanent resident for voting in the 2024 election. Joyce Pitts, they allege, is a Dutch citizen living in Pennsylvania who cast a ballot illegally in 2024. She's one of nine people charged in a statewide investigation.

24:50 Nine people.

24:51 Ooh.

24:52 So yeah, if anyone's keeping tabs, you probably won't need more than your fingers and toes. And you will, actually. Meanwhile, the DOJ is claiming that 20,000 non-citizens are on California's voter rolls. In a post on x.com, the Everything website, the White House asserts this number as an absolute. But in the complaint filed by the DOJ, they are referred to as, quote, likely. non-citizens.

25:22 And this is a super important distinction.

25:24 Yeah.

25:24 Yeah.

25:24 It's incredibly important. We're going to find out why, but.

25:27 Lest us forget Nevada.

25:29 Yes.

25:29 Yeah.

25:30 Right. And I think where none of them turned out to be non-citizens who are voting. It's worth noting that the DOJ is attempting to get California to sequester ballots from its 20,000 likely non-citizens, right? Saying that they could influence the outcome of the election. It's worth noting that they filed this on October the 15th. That is less than a month before polls close, right? Well into early voting in some states. The list was sent on a thumb drive to the state and the state failed to review said thumb drive within 48 hours as a DOJ asked them to. The DOJ is asking California to sequester this ballot and is trying to go through the court to make them do it. Whether or not they will have to do that is currently being decided in court

26:14 by Judge David O. Carter. O is his middle name, the initial of his middle name. It's not like the way that an Irish person would have their name. I was just confused for a long time about this, but I couldn't find an apostrophe anywhere and it took me a while.

26:28 Yeah, honestly, if your middle name starts with O, I feel like you kind of got to go by your middle name or cut it out entirely.

26:35 Yeah, it's either way. Very confusing way to present one's name. On Monday, the Ninth Circuit dismissed the Trump administration's appeal, saying, quote, the United States failed to allow the district court adequate opportunity to consider its application for a temporary restraining order. For that reason, we lack jurisdiction over this appeal. So we grant the county's motion to dismiss this appeal and deny, as moot, the United States emergency motion for relief. So in this case, the county would be LA County, right?

27:00 They're trying to force the counties to sequester these ballots. The county is saying, no, we're not going to do that. In the hearing the day before we're recording this, on Tuesday, Judge Carter, I'm going to just use Carter from now on, asked First Assistant United States Attorney Bilala Saleh why, if the issue was so big, they had not charged more people.

27:20 CalMatters has some good courtroom reporting on this. Quote, if it's that big, you've got a remedy for goodness sakes, the judge said. Go out and indict. Carter, who has previously denied the DOJ's request for the entire voter rolls at a state, also said, quote, some of these may be very valid voters, and that's my concern about disenfranchisement.

27:39 He indicated that he's likely to appoint a special master to look at the evidence, which will not happen before November 3rd. He did seem to indicate that he would be ordering the feds to stop intimidating local election officials, saying, quote, this court believes it would be wise to any threats to state or county election employees cease immediately. What a formal way of saying, like, I'll fuck you up.

28:00 The court believes it would be wise if you were to step back.

28:04 Yeah, immediately. Yeah, that is a very judgy way of saying, come at me, or don't, or I will come at you. So let's talk about that intimidation. On Friday, the DOJ sent letters to all 53 California counties, according to reporting in the New York Times. The letters contained a subset of the 20,000, they say, and gave election officials 48 hours from Friday, that's the weekend, to identify who on the accompanying list is a citizen and who is not.

28:34 It then went on to say, if, quote, citizenship status cannot be confirmed, we request you immediately instruct the appropriate elections official to segregate, not cancel, those individuals vote by mail ballots until their citizenship status can be determined. It seems that they tried to cut up the list by county here. Inyo County, for example, Northern California, got two names, neither of whom have been issued ballots. Mendocino, according to the registrar who was interviewed by the Times, got the wrong list. Quote, it's from another county. Incredible. Feds requested sensitive personal information like social security numbers to determine eligibility.

29:13 And social security numbers do not. correspond to someone's citizenship status necessarily.

29:18 Yeah well i mean yeah you there are certain points within your citizenship journey where you can get very like an itin or an ssn but that is not like a that's not like a black white as you say the feds also sent a letter to the office of the council I'm saying Council, S-E-L, not Council, C-I-L, for Los Angeles County.

29:40 Like a legal council.

29:41 Yes, exactly.

29:41 Yeah.

29:42 It's just in the audio format. I'm trying to distinguish between the two, right? They sent a letter to the Office of the Council for LA County and included a statement, quote, if persons knowingly tabulate ballots cast by individuals identified by federal agencies as non-citizens, they risk becoming aiders and abettors to a federal crime.

30:01 Yeah.

30:01 Bill Asseili posted a very similar message to X last week saying, quote, it's simple. California has not verified citizenship status. We did the work for them. We obtained the registered voter list and told them who we believe are non-citizens on their rolls. Knowingly processing non-citizen ballots is a federal crime under 18 U.S.C. 611, section 611 and 2. We hold election officials accountable. No one is above the law.

30:26 Yeah, they're just they're trying to scare local officials into taking away people's ballots.

30:30 Exactly.

30:30 Yeah.

30:31 They're trying to scare people out of voting and scare people out of taking votes. This comes after Trump in June at a rally said he asked United States attorneys to, quote, look into the state's voting practice.

30:42 I called up the very powerful, very good U.S. attorney in California and I said, do me a favor. Take a look. They're trying to steal that election, too. I guess they called up. Over the next week, he was definitely going to lose.

30:54 But the U.S.

30:54 Attorney called. We want to check your votes.

30:58 About an hour after the call.

30:59 Ladies and gentlemen, Mr.

31:02 Hilton has won.

31:04 We did trim a little diversion that the president went on in the middle there about the local U.S. attorney being present. So the DOJ has also brought in California charges against 28 foreign nationals who it claims voted or registered to do so. There are various charges here, right? In some cases, they're charging people with lying on the naturalization application, either lying and saying they hadn't previously committed a crime for which they had not been prosecuted or lying and saying that they had not fraudulently claimed to be a US citizen when they had. Not everybody here actually voted. In some cases, they registered to do so.

31:42 I was kind of just looking demographically at this group. Obviously, it's people who are not born in the US, right? But they tend to be older folks, I noticed. I think the youngest person was 30. It's very easy to register to vote. And I could maybe see how it'd be possible that someone who didn't have English as their first language or the best command of the language could accidentally do that. But I don't know about any of these cases. The DOJ says they're all legal permanent residents, as was the case in Pennsylvania. I want to move on now to another case of misrepresentation of illegal voting practices.

32:21 This one takes place in Hennepin County and involves serial streamer of his own crimes, James O'Keefe, because he is at it again. This shit is wild. Have any of you seen this video? I have not watched the video yet. We're going to go on a fucking journey together, friends.

32:41 No, but I just want to acknowledge that O, in this case, is part of the last name and not a middle initial. I know everyone's confused, so.

32:48 Yeah, yeah, well, really, we're mixing it up with O's. Yes, in this case, James O'Keefe, that is his last name, and his colleague, Cam Higby. They misrepresented themselves in Minnesota by entering polling places and representing themselves as registered voters. James Edward O'Keefe, 42, and Cam Higby, 26, Both face felony charges of unlawful voting and identity theft in the primary in Minnesota, according to a Hennepin County Attorney's Office press release that came out this morning.

33:19 These are like right-wing trolls.

33:21 Yes.

33:22 James O'Keefe, probably most famous for his Project Veritas stuff back in the day. I think they kicked him out of Veritas, something to do with the finances. He's the guy who killed Acorn. Wait, do people even.

33:33 No one remembers Acorn. Never mind.

33:36 Yeah, that's like 15 years ago. Yeah, it's the dawn of time. Oh, I have like separate.

33:41 Reasons I'm mad at Acorn from 20 years ago, but from the opposite direction.

33:44 Oh, yeah. Very funny. It's like they also sucked when he killed Acorn. Yeah, I'm guessing you have little that you share, Margaret.

33:53 Yeah.

33:53 Isn't it amazing how much shit just goes down in Hennepin County? So what happened here is that O'Keefe and Higby entered a polling place and they wanted to draw attention to... to a practice called vouching. Vouching has been established for a long time in Minnesota. It allows a registered voter to vouch to someone who perhaps has recently moved to the area, right? To say, hey, I'm coming in.

34:17 I'm a registered voter. You got me on your list. This is my neighbor. They want to vote. O'Keefe obviously thought this offered a wide opportunity for fraud.

34:26 And so, So he committed fraud?

34:30 Yes.

34:32 Not only did he commit fraud, Garrison, he filmed himself doing it. And then he posted to X.com, the Everything website, a video posted to O'Keefe's X account with the opening credits seeming to identify him and the other people as members of the Citizen Justice League. It shows him dressed up in what he calls traditional Muslim attire. He's wearing a thobe and higbee clothes. In the car.

34:56 Fuck.

34:56 Garrison, if you could just play the first 34 seconds.

34:59 I've never been more excited to watch a James O'Keefe clip.

35:02 You're going to see some shit.

35:04 Fuck.

35:05 I mean, like, they're not sticking the landing on this.

35:08 I'm James O'Keefe, and this is vouching for seven other Muslims at a Minneapolis polling booth. We're going in to this location, and I'm going to say that I'm vouching for them. The name is William Lawrence. I have a question about the vouching program. I can vouch for them, but they are not registered.

35:28 That's okay.

35:28 That's fine.

35:30 Can I bring five more?

35:32 Up to eight.

35:33 Up to eight people?

35:34 Okay, that's a good thing.

35:36 We go back and we get Krishna and Ernesto and Mohammed. In Minnesota, you can show up on election day and vouch for up to eight unregistered voters.

35:48 Pretty incredible stuff. Yeah, I mean, you guys can't see this. O'Keefe is wearing a Halloween-tier outfit and affecting an accent.

35:57 It's like a level of racism that, like.

36:02 There are several things that I think he might be doing. He's filming in a polling place. I don't know what the rules are on recording consent in Minnesota. Higby in the cub, as you heard there, is the one using the cover name Ernesto. O'Keefe is the one using the affected accent in the video. Can we play 40 to 45 to see what's going on with Ernesto? You guys can probably guess.

36:30 I'm slightly less excited.

36:31 Yeah.

36:32 As I was a few minutes ago.

36:35 You've made me a cry.

36:36 Members of the Justice League dress up in traditional Muslim attire, including a transgender wearing a burqa, and put this vouching law to an extreme test on.

36:47 Primary day, August 11th.

36:49 Yeah.

36:50 Not a burka, but that's all right.

36:52 They're also putting on brownface, by the way. Yes, that's what I wanted to add, Mia, is that they did include footage of them applying brownface.

37:01 There's a lot to unpack here.

37:03 They're putting on brownface, and I don't think that's the most racist part of this.

37:09 This is the spooky week section. This is my fucking night. God, the fact that I have to live in this world is fucking spooky week. Yeah, it is the most American Halloween thing to do to find an incredibly racist costume that is also offensive in a myriad of other ways.

37:23 No, we've learned that the most American thing to do is to put on camo and shoot flock cameras. These people are doing it wrong.

37:28 Oh, yeah.

37:29 They don't deserve to come to America. These white people who were born here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, yeah. We're in a war for this, Saul.

37:37 So....

37:39 Later in the video, you see that the poll workers have very clearly worked out that something fucking weird is going on because they are outside filming O'Keefe and his crew and following them back to their vehicle. Higby hides in the footwell of the vehicle as they peel out and attempt to do the same thing at another polling location.

37:58 O'Keefe attempts to construct this as evidence that they know that the vouching system is wrong and not that they know that the group of people in brown face are probably up to some weird shit. I'm quoting again here from the presser. Minnesota law clearly states that no individual shall intentionally mispresent the individual's identity in applying for a ballot, depositing a ballot in a ballot box, or attempting to vote by means of a voting machine or electronic voting system.

38:24 Well, Mr.

38:25 Higby and Mr. O'Keefe did not sign the oath. Most men intentionally misrepresented their identities in applying for ballots, a press release said. The person O'Keefe impersonated only found out once the video was released. He was posing as a real person. Yes, that is a person. That is a registered voter in that precinct.

38:44 Oh my God.

38:45 This is a federal crime. William Pomeranz is a guy.

38:49 Holy.

38:51 Jesus Christ.

38:52 That's wild.

38:53 I didn't know they actually did it.

38:55 They actually stole someone's identity.

38:57 Holy shit.

38:58 It's funny, and it didn't work. The poll people were like, no, you're fraudsters.

39:04 Well, they didn't say that because O'Keefe never actually did the thing. He never actually signed the oath, right? You attest that these people are residents, right? Just as one might enter into any other contract. This is a fairly well-established thing that happens in law. You can attest to things, right?

39:21 So in this case, I'm guessing he thought he wasn't stealing the identity because he didn't sign the contract. But Pomeranz found this when it was sent to him by one of his students.

39:30 Jesus.

39:32 Can we just play like 859 to 905 when the poll workers work out what's going on here?

39:38 Yeah.

39:39 That's the biggest scam, I think, is that you can, as long as you know their name and their address, you can show up and vote in their name, no verification required.

39:45 But it looks like we may have problems doing it for you.

39:47 I can't promise you.

39:50 You want me to ask? Should I get up now? What we could do is just reposition.

39:54 He's going to go alert somebody. Does he work there? I sure told him shit about us.

40:01 Oh yeah, they're recording.

40:04 Get down, get down, get down, get down, get down.

40:12 Holy larp oh my god yeah i can't let them.

40:15 Get close i love that at the moment he's saying you could vote without having an id several poll workers have already followed him to his vehicle and.

40:23 Also just like the just the hypocrisy if i can film them and they can't film me.

40:28 Yeah yeah the whole thing they're filming us get down i don't expect better from them you're you're you're posting it on twitter yeah what are you James O'Keefe, serious journalist, never thought to ask a lawyer, what if I do a number of federal crimes and then video them?

40:45 The world is just that Simpsons meme of like filming this crime spree is the best idea.

40:50 We've ever had.

40:51 Videotaping this crime spree.

40:52 Yeah. Yeah. So amazingly, O'Keefe's most recent tweet reads, siren emoji, calling all election judges, county clerks, poll workers and watchers. Are you serving in the upcoming election? We want to connect with you to help ensure transparency and integrity in the electoral process. Send us a DM with your name, contact info, and the best time to reach you. He then links to the video in which his alleged crimes are recorded. Great stuff.

41:18 Well, I'm glad that we were able to catch at least someone doing voter fraud.

41:23 Right, yeah.

41:24 The big problem is former Project Veritas people in this country undermining democracy.

41:28 Holy boy. Excited to see how this court case plays out. So I'm going to do an actual, I think, authentic, classic Spooky Week style segment and talk about doppelgangers. Rather than ghosts or goblins, zombies, werewolves, or vampires, the only spooky creature of sorts that I've ever been kind of scared of, felt like the heebie-jeebies about.

41:53 Is the doppelganger.

41:55 The idea that you suddenly happen to encounter an apparent double of yourself, whether just like a glimpse for a short second or maybe an extended encounter with someone or something that looks exactly like you. And I'm not talking about like lookalikes here. I'm not talking about someone who just kind of resembles you. I mean, like you wake up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and as you walk down the hallway, you see another version of you standing there. Or you're like cutting through like a crowded sidewalk and you notice... as you pass by someone, you turn back because they look just like you, but then they're lost in the chaos of random passersby. That's the sort of doppelganger I'm talking about.

42:39 So-called scientists say the odds of someone having the exact same facial proportions on a scale of eight features is 0.11%. Not very likely that you experience someone with the exact same features as you, but Again, I'm talking about more of like a high strangeness type of situation here. So although this scientifically not likely to happen in the meat space flesh world, online digital doppelgangers are now quite plentiful.

43:09 According to a report from the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks data on political ads, they identified at least 220 political ads from the 2026 election cycle online. that were generated at least in part using AI. And of these 220 ads, about half contained AI deepfakes of real politicians. And this is a growing industry. Just this year, more than $ 137 million has been spent on AI political ads, compared to less.

43:39 Than $ 50, 000 in 2024.

43:40 And that $ 137 million figure is quote, almost certainly in undercount, given that it is difficult to detect uses of AI, per Wesleyan Media Project. This report found that 81% of AI-generated ads were sponsored by Republican candidates or groups, while only 12% of the ads were sponsored by Democrats. And A lot of the groups or candidates using these ads might not have a lot of funding, right? A lot of smaller campaigns may turn to AI when they are tight on cash because what could have costed millions to produce now costs essentially nothing. Which is not to say that candidates with big budgets don't also use AI.

44:29 They do.

44:30 But this is part of why you saw so many AI ads during primary house races. Because a lot of those candidates might not have as much money as the big name Senate races. Now, these AI ads have shown up all across the country, at least in 34 different states, with most being found in Oklahoma and Texas. And just 27% of these ads contain a disclaimer that the ad featured AI generated content. Let's go through some examples because... Since kind of this spring, I have been saving AI ads that I come across in the wild because I think they are fascinating.

45:09 I don't like the future. I'm just going to go ahead and say it.

45:13 I'm so excited to count fingers.

45:15 A June ad paid for by Michigan State Senator Eric Nesbitt stars a deep-faked Michigan Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, colluding with an AI version of who I think is supposed to be New York Governor Kathy Hochul, as they conspire to register illegal aliens to vote.

45:34 The numbers are a disaster! We don't have enough illegals!

45:38 Don't panic. I know someone who can help. Hey, what's up, Gretch?

45:43 Don't worry, we got Michigan covered.

45:46 Oh, don't forget to register to vote. Free bus rides for illegals! And you'll be sorry that you messed with the U.S.

45:54 Of A.

46:01 So that's the general vibe of stuff we're dealing with where we live in a satire.

46:06 God damn if that feels kind of like confused or chaotic uh that's because it is and that goes on for a whole other minute that's that's less than one third of this ad.

46:18 I'm i'm invested i need to know how he saves america.

46:21 It's pretty cool the gop state senator eric nesbitt then drives a tractor and to intercept this caravan of quote-unquote illegals on their way to vote.

46:30 Then Ice pulls up with guns drawn.

46:32 Oh, cool.

46:33 And then at the end of the ad, the Statue of Liberty comes alive and grabs Zoran Mamdani and Abdul Al-Said. Some interesting notes here. When Zoran starts talking, completely different voice than he talks in the rest of the ad. Also, AI Zoran calls the blonde woman Gretch.

46:51 Gretchen Whitmer they're going for? Yeah.

46:55 As in Gretchen Whitmer.

46:56 Even though the text accompanying this ad and per the visuals, she's supposed to be Secretary Benson, not Gretchen Whitmer.

47:03 So a little confusing. Great stuff happening here. Yeah, that's definitely my problem with it.

47:09 It does scream the kind of attention to detail you want in someone who gets to decide what the law is.

47:15 Michigan law requires me to tell you that this video was generated completely by artificial intelligence. It has been manipulated by technical means and depicts speech and conduct that did not occur.

47:24 But that's, yeah, that's the general kind of vibe that we're going to be dealing with. For people confused, that was supposed to be a bald eagle, even though that's not what a bald eagle sounds like.

47:33 Thank you for that clarification. I almost was going to make that particular note that all of the sounds we have for bald eagles are not bald eagle sounds, but yeah.

47:42 I'm glad that the AI continued in the great American tradition of getting that wrong.

47:45 Yeah. Also in June, a Trump-aligned organization, Citizens for Sanity, spent six figures on a 15-second ad of Tallarico in a maid dress singing a quote-unquote trans kids version of A Few of My Favorite Things.

48:00 I feel like I'm being hate-crimed by being on this show.

48:04 Yeah, sorry, Margaret, you've come on a rough one. No, no, it's all right. Changing the gender of all your offspring. This is, wow.

48:10 These are a few of my favorite things.

48:15 So this does not have a disclaimer that it's AI, even though it's maybe not impossible to tell by looking at it.

48:21 Yeah, the apron dress doesn't have strings.

48:24 This is kind of one of the more lo-fi ads compared to what we will see in the next few months. Because in September, Ken Paxton released his own AI-generated ad depicting a deepfaked James Tallarico sitting at a home desk reading paraphrased and abridged quotes from Tallarico from years past that are all stitched together. with things he hasn't said.

48:48 Some of these quote unquote quotes are being scribbled into a King James Tallarico Bible. I'll play this clip here. And I know this is, you know, visual content. I will link the list of these ads below at the top of the description. If you Want to, for some reason, watch them all yourself.

49:06 If you too.

49:07 Want to annihilate your brain cells and like feel your soul physically drained from your body, which is the experience of watching this.

49:18 In the beginning, God was non-binary. and he wasn't a Christian. And God said, let there be six genders, and there were. Then God so loved the world that he gave us his only son, who was a radical feminist and never asked people to worship him.

49:33 Look, I always think of myself as a Christian who hates Christianity. America is not a Christian nation.

49:41 And wrong for America, too. I'm Ken Paxton, and I approve this message.

49:46 Yeah.

49:47 A lot of the things Tallarico is saying there are things that are just, like, biblically accurate and, like, true.

49:53 Yeah, that's Elaine Pagel's whole shit.

49:55 Like, God's not a Christian.

49:58 What? I know, right?

49:59 There's a lot of stuff that's just, like, accurate and, like, true, but that's besides the point. With the way that they're stitching all these things together into sentences he didn't say, and then having his likeness say them, This is bad for democracy, right? This is not a good thing to do. And this ad in particular is pretty photo real, at least compared to some of the others highlighted in this episode.

50:22 It's funny that riots are illegal. Like, this is more destructive to our society than fire is. I'm just gonna, anyway.

50:33 And there's teeny, teeny, tiny text at the very end of the video that reads, certain video content depicted in his advertising was generated by artificial intelligence. Certain video content? The whole video, dog. Following the lead of Iran state propaganda, a few candidates like Doug Bassler in Seattle have AI-generated Lego-style animations, as well as political ads riffing on adult animated sitcoms. And we could sit and laugh at how bad these are, but because they are not deepfakes, I'm going to skip them, but I will link to examples below, again, if you want to check.

51:10 These out yourself.

51:11 Before the Florida primary this summer, Ted Cruz linked Super PAC called Frontline Action, paid top dollar to broadcast AA ads targeting Florida Republican gubernatorial candidate James Fishback during the World Cup. One of these ads says, groups of people showing up to Fishback's house for an anti-Israel party, including who is supposed to resemble Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, and Tucker Carlson, AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Columbia campus protesters, Hasan Piker, and Code Pink activists, as well as Vladimir Putin, and finally some Iranian state officials who then slash an Israel party cake with a sword. The ad says, Is this really what you want your Republican Party to look like?

52:01 Sounds like a pun with the word party. Because some of those people are right-wing people. I know I live under a rock, but that's a list of people that's right-wing people that they're now trashing.

52:12 Some of.

52:13 Well, yeah.

52:14 I mean, Ted Cruz has had an extended beef with Tucker, Candace, and by extension, Nick Fuentes for the past few years.

52:22 Over Israel? Over Israel, yes. Okay.

52:24 Okay. And like, as weird as this ad is, it's not nearly as weird as the other anti-fishback ad made by this Ted Cruz-like super PAC depicting two fishermen who catch a, what I'll call a talking fishback fish.

52:40 What?

52:41 God damn it.

52:44 Big mouth. White genocide is real.

52:46 Oh God. And I'm running for governor to stop it. On my first day, we will suspend the enforcement of the unconstitutional antisemitism law.

52:55 You want to throw this fish back?

52:57 We can't throw this fish back. He'll ruin the other fish.

52:59 If we don't throw this fish back, what do we do?

53:03 Election Day keep James Fishback out of office.

53:05 The Frontline Action is responsible for the content of this advertising.

53:09 If you watch any of these, you've got to look through the show notes to find this one.

53:14 I'm going to see this in my nightmares.

53:16 This has so many layers of I don't even know who's criticizing what about what.

53:21 Yeah.

53:22 I mean, this is the pro-Israel part of the Republican Party fighting back against the groiper, anti-Israel part of the Republican Party, which Fishback was kind of the main representative of.

53:33 Okay, thank you.

53:35 And, like, Frontline Action seems to specialize in, like, the sloppiest of AI slop ads, right? Like, this stuff looks almost indistinguishable from those, like, creepy vegetable fruit, like, cuckoldry videos that you may have seen if you, like, ever scroll Instagram. Those were popular a few months ago.

53:52 I've missed those.

53:53 The visuals of these is kind of of a similar quality.

53:56 And in September, they released an ad targeting Abdul El-Said titled Family Values, showing Abdul, his sister and Hassan Piker in his mouse suit and a keffiyeh. playing a, quote, death to America board game about destroying, quote, the West.

54:15 I fucking wish. The destruction of Israel and the West isn't just a game for them.

54:20 It's a mission. His sister hates everything about America.

54:24 His pal Hassan Piker thinks America deserved 9-11, and his father-in-law founded a charity.

54:29 Tied to the Muslim Brotherhood.

54:31 El-Said isn't playing games, and his family members are wrong for Michigan.

54:37 I'm starting to think that the Republicans are racist.

54:41 It does look that way. Yeah.

54:42 So this last image is a framed family portrait with Abdul, four women in the cobs. And again, Hassan Piker, whom Abdul is not related to. This is he's not part of Abdul's family. But no, this is the most like post 9-11 style anti-Arab racism.

55:00 Yeah, it's 2001 gutter racism like. The unfiltered shit you used to get with people talking about nuking a rock. Yeah, it's great. Yeah.

55:10 Half of these ads is kind of in that vein. An ad that came out this month from a GOP candidate for Congress in North Carolina uses AI-generated video to attack Democratic candidate Jamie Agar for hosting drag performances at his barn in 2019. And what's really insidious about this ad is that the first five seconds of the ad are actually manipulated media using real footage of Agar with a pride flag artificially added to the background. And then this real footage is used as the visual basis for the rest of the AI ad with him like dancing with various famous drag queens with no disclaimer that the drag queen footage is fake.

55:54 I hate election years.

55:55 There's this sort of like blending of reality in ads like this, which is like extremely dangerous. But the single candidate that's utilized AI ads the most is Republican candidate for New York Governor Bruce Blakeman. According to the New York Times, Blakeman has posted at least 22 AI ads since April. He's been just pumping these videos out from more traditional ads, just like replacing stock footage with more like cinematic AI visuals. to short little films or short videos of AI constituents talking about how bad New York has gotten under Kathy Hochul, to, of course, deepfakes of Hochul herself. Blakeman's use of AI deepfakes has been rather innovative.

56:35 One ad from September takes the form of a pharmaceutical commercial starring AI deepfake Governor Hochul and what is supposed to be Mayor Mamdani.

56:44 Introducing Kathy, the political delusion pill for New Yorkers who'd rather not think about what four more years could actually cost them.

56:51 Before Kathy, I worried about things like tax, utility bills, crime, and whether families could afford to stay in New York.

56:57 And now?

56:59 I just say it's someone else's fault.

57:01 It's working.

57:03 Side effects may include chronic wallet shrinkage, higher tax, higher utility bills, higher costs, shrinking paychecks, business leaving New York, uncontrollable government spending, sudden urges to defend socialists, and other financial complications.

57:15 Every accusation is a confession. Yeah.

57:18 Like many others, this ad contained no AI disclosure in violation of New York law. Blakeman produced another ad in the form of a retro TV commercial, also starring AI Deepfake Hochul. where she offers free healthcare to quote, illegal immigrants, sex workers, and homeless drug addicts. And that is supposed to be a bad thing.

57:38 Yeah.

57:41 Based on all the ads I've watched, which is more than I've included in this episode, I'd sort these AI deepfakes into three sometimes overlapping categories. First, there's demonstrative or like descriptive AI, basically using AI visuals in place of real photos or videos and more traditional ads. This is kind of using AI like customized stock footage, footage that looks and feels relatively realistic, like someone standing next to AI Trump at the White House. or a deepfake of a candidate reading quotes directly to camera with just like a plain white background. But because of its simplicity, this type of use could actually be the most deceptive. A deepfaked candidate reading a quote direct to camera without the

58:35 context of why they said that quote could dramatically change its meaning and could be more easily mistaken for authentic footage. And then there's this other type just like Right. This is what we've seen with the fishback ads. And this is, you know, deep fakes of political opponents usually acting in some sort of satirical sketch or narrative scenario. These could be either dramatic or comedic. They sometimes have like a brief plot that leads to a climax. This is most similar to what we would call like AI slop. Things that are much more easily recognizable as AI are And I think part of why these sorts of skits are so common is that for the sort of laws that are trying to regulate this sort of thing, there is

59:18 First Amendment card votes for satire and parody. And so a lot of these ads could legally, arguably, be considered some form of parody. And that argument gives them a little bit of wiggle room. But there's another category of ad, which I'm going to call an AI scandal ad. A little bit of that drag queen barn ad, I think, would fall into this. And that's AI generating footage to visually implicate opponents in some sort of political scandal, whether by dramatizing an event that did happen, but with deceptive framing, or just depicting something completely fictional. A few months ago in Executive Disorder, I talked about that Niagara, Kentucky ad with AI generated footage of Republican Representative Thomas Massey holding

59:58 hands and getting dinner with AOC and Ilhan Omar, followed by surveillance-style footage of them checking into a hotel room, with the ad being themed around Ilhan Omar and AOC and Massey are in a thruple together, and Massey has betrayed Trump.

1:00:15 Thomas Massey caught in a throuple in Washington. He's cheating with the squad on the America First movement. Massey voted with the squad against Trump's tax cuts. Massey voted with the squad against finishing Trump's wall. He voted with them against hiring new border agents. Well, this is worse than adultery.

1:00:35 It's a complete and total betrayal of President Trump and Kentucky conservatives.

1:00:40 On May 19th, fire Thomas Massey.

1:00:42 MAGA Kentucky is responsible for the content.

1:00:44 Of this advertising.

1:00:45 Massey has said that this ad did trick people into thinking that he was in a real throuple with these people. Because the footage is actually pretty convincing. For someone who's older than 60, it could be hard to distinguish that this is not real footage. Especially when they put these filters on it to make it look like it's surveillance footage of them checking into a hotel room. Currently, 31 states have laws regulating the use of AI and deepfakes in political ads. Maryland has banned misleading election-related deepfakes entirely.

1:01:15 And California and Texas have banned the publication of deceptive or harmful political deepfakes 30 days prior to an election. Minnesota has a similar law. But other state regulations just require a disclosure if AI was used. And obviously, disclosures are not enough for this problem. And those don't even get followed half the time. We need to get as close as we can just banning AI ads entirely. There are currently two bills seeking to federally regulate, quote, deceptive AI and AI in politics. These are pending in Congress and probably won't pass anytime soon, at least certainly not until there's a new Congress. And for these bills to succeed, they do need to be written carefully, because if they're

1:01:56 overly broad, they could be struck down on First Amendment grounds. Lastly, I'll mention there was a 2026 study in Communication Research that which found that even when participants knew a video of a political figure was an AI deepfake, that deepfake, quote, still has the intended delegitimizing impact on the attacked politician by lowering support for the targeted candidate. So just because these ads aren't necessarily convincing all the time doesn't mean they don't have negative effects. So yeah, doppelganger is pretty scary.

1:02:31 Y'all ever heard of a Butlerian jihad? A lot of that going around these days. Oh, God.

1:02:40 Speaking of ads, hopefully not AI-generated ads, it is time for one more ad break.

1:02:58 And we're back. And I know what you all are thinking. You're thinking Margaret hates everything. And that's not true. I like widespread revolt. Also, I like Sophie's outfit. I wish all of you out there could see. That's incredible. That's legitimately crazy. Sophie as Princess Peach.

1:03:18 Yeah, that's amazing. It's so nice to see someone just wearing an outfit that isn't racist and it's just nice. It's so rare in my line of work.

1:03:26 Oh my God. So countries all over are doing a widespread revolt thing right now.

1:03:34 That is happening.

1:03:35 That has been going on for a couple of weeks depending on– well, a couple of months depending on how you're going to be paying attention to this. And Albania is on the list of countries of widespread revolt. But it's one of the ones that no one covers despite the fact that it has the coolest flag of the countries that are covered in this particular way. Although– I probably just like medieval-looking things. Is it cooler than Nepal, though? Whoa, is Nepal in your vault?

1:03:59 Nepal, I guess you could consider the first one of these from a couple years ago. Okay. Yeah, no, that's true. I just immediately thought it was right, because the dragon flag is cool as hell.

1:04:07 Yeah, yeah.

1:04:07 We've got to acknowledge that.

1:04:08 I mean, the one with the machete and the... Talking about Mozambique? Yeah, that's the best flag in the world. We just have to acknowledge that.

1:04:16 Yeah, the machete and the AK.

1:04:17 Okay.

1:04:18 I don't even like a hammer and sickle all that much, although I recognize it as a good icon. Anyway, whatever. Okay, so Albania is on this list, and people don't know shit about Albania. And so I thought I would talk about the revolt in Albania. And this is going to be a situation that is entirely unfathomable to the American mind.

1:04:36 There are two major political parties, only two, and one of them is center-left and one of them is center-right. And they're both corrupt as fuck. And they're both privatizing the shit out of everything. And they're the only... It's funny because it gets called a regime because they are the only parties that have been in power for like 30 years.

1:04:55 Yeah.

1:04:56 Anyway, think on that.

1:04:57 It gets called a regime because it's like east of some delineating line, maybe Poland, right? Where everything.

1:05:02 Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah. And it also is a regime. No one likes it. That's why they're having this big revolt. But the cost of living keeps rising. Conditions are getting worse. People are mad about their country sending aid to Israel. They're mad about the destruction of the environment in the name of rich people having fancy shit. They're even mad at like Jared Kushner has released all this. And they are tired of the violence of the police and other voices not getting heard. So they are in pretty open revolt right now. And I'm still working on building more about this. I've basically just spent the past couple days talking with comrades in the area. They're like busy. There's like stuff happening, you know. And so they're like sending

1:05:44 me some things. And then like, here's 170 page book about the like neoliberalism of our country. And I'm like, okay, Albania is a small country. It's about two and a half million people. It is a one quarter of a New York City, depending on how you're mapping New York City's metro area. And it's in the Balkans. It's Northwest of Greece. Albania was once part of the Ottoman Empire, declared independence in 1912. Communists liberated the place from Nazis in 1944. And then they did a communist dictatorship that overall is not looked nicely upon even by the modern left wing of that country, right? So people aren't like, oh, I miss when everyone was Stalinist. That's not really what's happening here. It got multi-party elections in 1991. The communists

1:06:26 lost their first election in 1992, which put a guy named Sally Barishi in charge. And I have only been reading and I have not yet talked in person. So I'm going to mispronounce important names here. It put a guy named Sally Barishi in charge. Mia, you're the most likely to randomly know this guy's actual name. Yeah, unfortunately, I strike out after Hoxa, which was Albanian.

1:06:50 That's cool.

1:06:50 I didn't put Hoxa in here because I had no idea how to pronounce that name. Who was the main communist?

1:06:56 Yeah, he was the communist dictator.

1:06:58 Went from Maoism to the Maoist got too far right, so he became Juche, and then.

1:07:04 Built a bunch of bunkers. The whole thing, fiasco. Oh, this is the bunker country.

1:07:08 This is the bunker guy. Yeah, yeah.

1:07:10 Okay, great.

1:07:11 Yeah, this is bunkers. People know bunkers in a Norman wisdom. I should point out before someone goes on to Reddit.com that I am aware that Albania is not to the east of all of Poland.

1:07:20 Yeah, totally.

1:07:21 All right. So, Sally Barishi is still a player in this story. The guy who won in 1992. He was a big anti-communist reformer. It's a majority Muslim country, and he basically unbanned religion. He privatized the fuck out of everything he could. And then under him, literally half of the country's wealth was invested into a series of pyramid schemes. Oh, yeah, pyramid schemes. And so everyone gave all of their money to these pyramid schemes because they had just gotten out of communism. And so people were like, oh, I know what you can do with your money, but guaranteed returns.

1:07:52 And probably all they've ever been hearing is like guaranteed returns. That's what people tell you about the stock market in America.

1:07:57 You know? Well, and like people did get rich in like Russia, right? Like grabbing a bunch of previously nationalized shit. Like that's how some of the oligarchs came to be.

1:08:05 Yeah.

1:08:06 So like you can see it happening and like it's very fertile terrain for this shit. Yeah.

1:08:10 It's not like it's not like half the country are fools.

1:08:12 Right.

1:08:13 Yeah.

1:08:13 But the pyramid schemes, it's not a very stable form of society. They collapsed and it fucked everyone over because so many people had invested in these short deals. So Albania had like basically a civil war level of revolt against corruption in 1997. It wound up with its current constitution, but it still has a fuck ton of corruption. It went on to join NATO in 2009. It's not yet in the EU. It's a candidate country. It has been for about 12 years. And Sally Barishi, the guy who let all this bad shit happen under him with the Ponzi schemes, he ends up prime minister again from 2005 to 2013. But then, ever since then, he's the Democrat Party, the Democratic Party. They are the center-right party. Then the

1:08:53 center-left party, the Socialist Party, has been in charge ever since 2013. Under the the direction of a guy named Eddie Rama. And he has been prime minister since 2013. He's currently on his fourth term, and he is corrupt as fuck. Rama came to power by being— oh, and you all will like this. Rama came to power by being the popular socialist mayor of the biggest city in the country, the capital, Tirana. And he won everyone's hearts by repainting the city vibrant colors to move away from like the drab Soviet era. So he was like, I've done civic improvement and I'm the socialist mayor and everyone loves me.

1:09:27 And that's how the socialist party was able to come to power. But then he changed nothing. And he's fully into privatization and corruption just like the other guys. And he is fully in bed with organized crime, it seems like. Obviously, people like to argue about this. And press freedom is terrible there. Everything is just getting bad. About a third of the country has emigrated. There's about 1.1 million Albanian-born people living elsewhere.

1:09:51 Jeez.

1:09:52 Right?

1:09:54 To quote an as yet unpublished piece from some comrades in the Balkans, quote, for years, Eddie Rama has used his power to seize control over every sphere of social life. Much like under the government of Sally Berisha, oligarchs have forged close criminal ties with those in power. Oh, and then the worst thing about this man, he's a podcaster. Oh, wow. Oh, no. Yeah, he has a podcast.

1:10:17 It's just the way it is now.

1:10:19 Yeah.

1:10:20 Gavin Newsom, too.

1:10:21 So that's the setup. Why are there big protests? And one of the reasons I want to do this, people feel in Albania feel pretty misrepresented in the West. And it's like everything I've read has been like it all started in France and it's spreading. And that's like, yeah, no, not really. I love the France revolt. Don't get me wrong.

1:10:39 But like every country has its own reasons it's doing this, you know. So then Jared Kushner, I hate that I finally have to learn these people that you all talk about in your day job all the time. And this is why I do history for a living. Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, he visits Albania and he sees a cool island called Cezanne. And I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right. And it was undeveloped and it was protected.

1:10:59 It was protected wetlands. It was like, don't fuck with this island. We all love it. All that's there is an abandoned military base. And he's like, but my dad is Trump. So what if I want to put a really fancy resort there? And also a big part of the protected area of the wetlands on the mainland as well.

1:11:18 So Rama personally visited Kushner and was like, yeah, fuck it. All right, we'll figure it out. We'll figure out a way to make this legal. And so they passed a law that was like, just kidding. Rich foreigners can bulldoze our protected wildlands. And people didn't like that. So in May, at a protest against the playgrounds for rich right-wing tourists that should have been a protected ecosystem, A protester was dragged and beaten by a private security guard who then put a gun to the guy's head, right? And all of this happened in front of the cops. Everyone's like, why aren't you doing anything? And they're like, I don't know, because we're the cops, right? We're corrupt. And this was the spark. But the protests aren't about the resorts. They

1:11:58 are and they aren't. This is the spark. But the fuel is decades of corruption, privatization, rising costs of living, mass emigration, And a sense of powerlessness, right? All protest movements have been captured by one political party or the other going back for decades. And so now you have the Flamingo protests, and they're called that because flamingos live in those wetlands. And they're very explicitly against both Rama and Berisha. Berisha is the opposition leader still, and he keeps trying to be like, oh, these are totally my protests.

1:12:27 Everyone loves me. And best I can infer, I'm still waiting on confirmation. I believe that when his people show up to try and co-opt the protest, they get pushed to the outside and sometimes literally thrown in the river.

1:12:40 We got to start doing that, trying to hijack protests.

1:12:44 And so it is and isn't a Gen Z protest. This is a whole generation of people who've only ever known the Rama regime and they see no future in themselves. So they are out there protesting. And for 130 days, it was a big, peaceful daily protest, which was a whole new kind of protest. It was a little more of an Occupy type thing. People would go out every day and they would like, have a kind of carnival air, right?

1:13:05 And the one rallying cry, uniting the crime, because all different types of people are there with all types of different demands. The one rallying cry is Rama to prison, Barisha to prison. So they want the head of both their political parties in fucking jail for decades of corruption. Which reminds me of the Argentinian protest chant from 2003.

1:13:24 Que se vayan todos. They all must go.

1:13:28 I think it's 2001.

1:13:30 Is it 2001? I trust you far more than I trust me with remembering things like that.

1:13:35 Which is funny because that's the exact line that came into my head.

1:13:38 Yeah, no, totally.

1:13:39 They all must go. Right?

1:13:41 Yeah.

1:13:42 They must all go to prison. Yeah, totally.

1:13:44 Yeah.

1:13:45 Parentheses.

1:13:45 Yeah.

1:13:46 So that 130 days of peaceful protests were just ignored by the government and or repressed, right? And so finally on October 13th, the students were like, man, fuck this shit. And so they threw a student strike and the protests have escalated ever since into a genuine uprising. And the way it's presented by the people that I'm reading and talking to is like, the only question is what we're going to do when the Rama government falls. Like they believe they are going to win as of, time of recording lest I talk to some people.

1:14:19 Right.

1:14:20 And the government has been attacking people in the streets with all the usual shit, chemical weapons, water cannons, baton rounds. They took out somebody's eye. They're kidnapping people in the middle of the night. There's plainclothes officers attacking people, arresting people. People are being beaten inside of the jails. They're passing all of these new laws specifically to punish. Now, it's no longer illegal just to break shit at a protest.

1:14:41 But if you're in a protest where anyone breaks shit, you can get in trouble for that. And this isn't stopping people. As for who is doing it, quote, I'm quoting this unreleased thing. This is not the finished translation, and I'll be covering this more on some of my shows as I get more information. As for who's doing this, quote, students and pupils, trade unionists, parents and children, political groups and leftist political parties, sports fans, right-wing groups and nationalists, a whole host of people from diverse spheres, ranging from educators to social media influencers. And, quote, there is no clear vision for what should follow the fall of the Rama government, nor is there a defined strategy for how

1:15:21 the resistance might continue. But one thing is certain, there is no turning back. And public gatherings are being restricted. People are being told they can't leave the country, which is unconstitutional according to Albanian law. You're not supposed to be able to prevent people from leaving the country. And it seems like there is a chance that this will turn into– a thing where people form assemblies and build counterpower.

1:15:46 And if so, we might see a real revolution and not just one party replaced with another. I'm a cynical enough person who's seen a lot of uprisings around the world where I'm not specifically holding my breath. But I fucking, fuck yeah. And in the meantime, Rama refuses to sit down. He's like, I'm willing to talk to you all. But everyone's like, no, get the fuck out. He's like, no, I'm willing to talk to you. So he set chairs up in front of his office as a symbolic, like, come talk to me. Sit down. We'll have a conversation.

1:16:13 So they set the chairs on fire.

1:16:14 Hell yeah. Incredible.

1:16:18 They're not talking to this man. They are the power. They are the people. And they want him fucking gone. That's what I got so far. By the time this comes out, it might be completely different because even my news is about two days old.

1:16:31 Nice.

1:16:31 All right. Princess Peach is.

1:16:34 I believe blessing the Albanian revolt is what's happening with Sophie right now.

1:16:39 Yes. Orthodox Princess Peach.

1:16:43 You all are going to be so sad this is not a video show because Sophie is fucking killing it.

1:16:48 Yeah.

1:16:48 Yeah.

1:16:51 Oh, I got a headless horseman costume for my dog.

1:16:53 That's perfect. I'm just going to wear one of my onesies like I always do.

1:16:58 Anyway, that's what I got for this week. I have a bunch of other podcasts, ones called Cool People Did Cool Stuff, where I talk about history, except I also sometimes talk about modern revolt. I actually talk slightly less fast on that. And I also do Cool Zone Media Book Club, which you probably know because it's in the same feed as this particular show. But also, on Halloween this very year, I have a spooky collection of short stories called The Folk Tales of Lola and Sakan. that comes out from tangled wilderness.org from strangers in the tangled wilderness.

1:17:25 And it is only six bucks and it is the most beautiful zine. And it has five of my stories in it and you should pre-order it because pre-orders are awesome.

1:17:33 Oh yeah.

1:17:33 And if you like my fiction, which you have no way of knowing if you do, cause I didn't say anything fictional. I told you about some other stuff. I am need to eat.

1:17:41 I'm done. Okay. Magic. If you're listening on the day this comes out, I'm doing a book talk in San Diego on Sunday at the garden center in Mission Hills through the Fall Bookshop is what the place is called. If you would like to email us with a news tip, coolzontips at proton.me. Some of you marketing people still trying.

1:18:02 Admire the tenacity. Not going to work. Put a trans girl on your spooky couch.

1:18:08 I don't know.

1:18:10 We reported the mostly scary but not always scary news.

1:18:16 Woo!

1:18:17 Woo! be reported the news

1:18:29 It could happen here is a production of cool zone media for more podcasts from cool zone media visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts you can now find sources for it could happen here listed directly in episode descriptions thanks for listening