Trump Accidentally Exposed Himself in Pathetic Natalie Harp Meltdown
PDS Published 08/18/2026
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I've got a genuinely crazy show for you you've got.
Why this disastrous Star Citizen livestream meltdown is people shouting billion dollars scam.
this Trump Natalie Harp situation is actually way more pathetic and weirder than you think. And why I'm begging people not to take the We go inside the weeds.
You manage potential escape route from his murder this fake polling problem that got exposed is so insane, especially with the midterms just months we're talking about all of that and even more on today's brand new Philip DeFranco show.
You daily dive into the news.
But first, a quick personal My 12 city live show run starts just this we've got Seattle, Portland, Boston and Philadelphia starting things
followed by San Francisco, Phoenix, Denver, Atlanta, Chicago, Saint Paul, Washington, DC in Pittsburgh.
and you grab your tickets right now at Crashing Outward, I got a link in the description and link in the and get them all you can, because you want to be like the people in Seattle who can't come because that show sold
come crash out with me. But with that said, there's a lot we got to talk about today, starting with this.
got to talk about these spectacular public implosion of what's become one of the most controversial projects in videogame history. Star citizen right.
You don't need to know anything about video games or even care about video games in general. For this to stand out and matter. or you've got some calling it a scam, others hanging on for the big payoff.
But after what just happened, I don't think that anyone's feeling really good about the game's future.
because if you're unfamiliar, Star Citizen is is very ambitious MMO, massive multiplayer online first person shooter space adventure game for PC being developed by Cloud Imperium Games or CIG.
a key thing with what I just said is being developed. Right. Because it is still not done despite first getting announced in 2012. or so back when Obama was president, but he was running for reelection.
never mind GTA six. GTA five hadn't been released yet. well way back then. CMG said that it would release the game just a couple of years later in 2014.
but as you may have realized, I am now making this video in August of 2026, and there is still no Star Citizen. but in the meantime, cig has taken in a lot of money.
fact, over $1 billion. And according to them, it's completely crowdfunded by the players themselves. for some context, there may be only 2 or 3 games that have cost $1 billion or more.
GTA six very likely on that short list.
Another is actually, oddly, a monopoly go which spent most of that budget on marketing. then the other is Star Citizen.
one of the ways that CG has raised so much money for their game was to release an early access version in 2017, and then sell players in-game content for exorbitant prices.
for example, they recently started letting players pay $5,000 for a ship that's not even playable yet, kind of like a preorder for when it's ready.
or if you want a pack containing all the ships in the game, as well as a few other items that'll cost you $48,000.
actually, I guess it's $49,000, because to be even eligible to purchase that, you have to be a member of the Chairman's Club, which costs another thousand bucks.
which is then part of the reason why we have so many people calling this game a scam.
the developers, they do make it clear that when you buy these things, you're also contributing to the development of the game itself. So it's kind of a half sale, half donation.
If what you're getting for your investment is a polished playable game at the end, then cool, right? Promises made, promises capped. Mission accomplished.
but ever since Star Citizen went public, fans complain that it's just riddled with bugs, sometimes with the point of being unplayable yeah. So yeah, they've improved it over the years.
So lots of people, they look past flaws enough to keep playing. But it is still clearly not a finished game.
so apparently with all this someone at the company had this bright idea of hey, let's do a live stream, have the devs themselves play the game not only on a private server,
but on an internal build of a game that is different than the one that customers currently play. this was meant to show how the game works under perfect ideal conditions. right.
So people could see what it'll be like once they fix the issues with the public servers, otherwise known as the P2. We recognize the current state of the two.
we see the reports, we play it ourselves. We hear you whatnot. Playing today on the two doesn't really do what we wanted to do today.
So we will be playing on an internal build. This is the game as it's designed to then what followed? It could be described as a sadomasochistic humiliation kink ritual.
You saw players lagging, NPCs, glitch in basic mechanics just not working. and boom, you see things popping up.
One Reddit thread lists dozens of bugs and issues that they observed during the stream.
I mean, it is hard to convey how uncomfortable it is to watch these devs live in front of an audience struggling to use their own weapons, or simply access their inventory.
oftentimes they just ignored it and pretended like everything was fine. But then sometimes they acknowledge when the thing wasn't working. Oh, God, I can't get it done.
Help! All right.
At one point a dev even pleaded, just close your eyes while their hand glitched through a lever.
then, as if all that was not bad enough, they didn't even seem to be having fun with their own game. They they were bickering the whole time, like, was in a Call of Duty lobby.
it feels like everybody at the company hates each other. That's what it seems like. Like you're just working with your worst enemies.
Like it's a lot of team killing, a lot of like, passive aggressive, snide remarks.
then also in particular you'd many noticing that the devs seemed to be ganging up on their newest member, Ali. he's a content manager who just joined the team a couple of months ago.
and he had things like at one point he'd try to engage the Twitch chat, but he got shut down by another dev who mocked fans complaining about the mugginess. what's your average time that you get through this and what's your experience.
We were talking before how long it's going to take us with our impeccable skills. You've all seen Ollie. You've just fully opened up to them being local to work.
Right? You can do it. We're working on it.
They get to saying their At another point, Ali seems genuinely distressed, and another dev jokes that he's so useless he should just get the rest of them a can. Ollie.
Why are you not doing anything? Could you get us a come? I'm down. I said this. You know this. Are you being down?
You being up? There's no difference. he was.
I'm on Reddit reacting in moments like this saying if that reflects the company culture at CIG, then it's hardly surprising that the company keeps running into such serious problems.
but then one of the biggest gut punches came at the end when after well over an hour and a half of playing, they couldn't even finish the mission. Elliot's down. We've wiped.
It's a potty wipe. I think so. Right.
Attempt to queue up in the in the in the bed. so with that last jab at Ali, there's some awkward silence.
And then Ali's like, maybe we should respond and try again.
the host, Jared, who's hovering right behind him, immediately jumps in like, no, no, we're at a time.
which also, I would say it's kind of crazy to see Jared go from being proudly taking responsibility for the event like this. Welcome to another episode of Star Citizen Live.
I'm your regular host, Jared Huckaby. to seemingly just awkwardly throwing Ali under the bus for the whole thing.
we're at time show. Wrap it up.
Jared, you say goodbye or you say no. Okay. Luke.
now with all this, sig, they actually didn't try to bury that stream under ten feet of concrete. Like, many companies probably would, instead they actually posted it to YouTube.
And if you look at the comments, they clearly shouldn't have, got comments like no one was having fun here, felt like a hostage video, another ad and go easy on the dev team.
It was probably the first time they actually played the game. and then other saying the devs did this to themselves. Nobody forced them to do this. It was not required or promised ahead of time.
They willingly put this shit show on display, knowing how bad their fucking game is.
yeah, seemingly the biggest takeaway for a lot of people is that when cig insisted that all the glitches and bugs were just due to server performance, they were just lying.
you and one user saying this live stream showed the community that the core of the game is completely fucked.
if you're one of the many people who invested thousands of dollars into this game, that realization is one player put it is such a kick in the balls. But for some, this actually wasn't all that surprising.
Because when a game is stuck in development for this long, you might assume from the outside that things are gradually progressing, however slowly.
in reality, you have a situation where the game's just accumulating more and more technical debt, which, I'll let Kiera explain.
the things that were being done at the beginning have to work with the things you're doing at the end, and you're basically building on top of something layer by layer.
And as people leave and new people come in and things get changed, you are essentially like you're not working on something that just gets added and it just works.
You're having to rework things and deal with problems that have been around forever, or the new stuff that you're doing breaks something from before or is completely incompatible.
any of them saying that at this point, the most experienced devs in the industry know not to go near Sergey, because it's a small world and word gets around.
so the people that are left to clean up the mess are often junior devs like Ali, and unfortunately they receive the brunt of the backlash from understandably frustrated fans. for now, we'll see what happens.
See if CIG gets their act together, or if somehow they pull off a comeback after 14 years of delays or does it crash and burn, or do they just slap a bandaid on it and announce, hey, it's done without actually fixing the core things?
though personally, I think they just need another billion dollars to get across the line. So open those wallets. Gamers.
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and then actually on the note is something that's felt virtually unending like star citizens development we've got to talk about one of the most notorious mysterious cases in music history, Tupac Shakur's murder.
Right. Because that's coming back into the limelight this it took 30 years. But the trial finally kicked off in the Las Vegas courtroom yesterday.
Vegas is where she was shot after attending a mike Tyson boxing match in 1996, with him dying six days after the shooting.
At just 25 years and all these years later, you still have people looking for Now, with that, I'll say this is an investigation that hit dead end after dead end, because police have been dealing with a lack of cooperation.
the case going cold for decades until former Southside Crips gang leader Dwayne De Davis basically implicated Davis is the first person to be charged for Shakur's death.
An important distinction here is that Davis is being charged for masterminding the killing, not firing the gun that killed in an opening statements yesterday, you would prosecutors arguing that Davis had Shakur killed as an act of revenge.
because you see earlier that day in 1996, Shakur's entourage had attacked Davis's nephew, Orlando Baby Lane Anderson, outside of the boxing match at the MGM or without its acting blaze a few hours before Shakur was shot.
And so revenge would make sense as a motive you also had the prosecution, noting that while not a lot of people have been willing to speak about this murder, Davis is the one person who has had a hard time
being what they appear to be referencing to is the fact that in 2019, Davis coauthored a tell all memoir titled Compton Street Legend,
where he seemingly wrote about the night of the shooting in and he also reportedly confessed during a secret 2008 you had Chief Deputy
District Attorney Bhanu Palau pointing all that and more out during the opening You will learn that Dwayne Davis got the gun.
You will learn that he got into a white Cadillac. You will learn what the opportunity presented itself for retribution.
Dwayne Davis made sure that the shooters, armed and ready to execute their image.
And what he puts in the book is that Dwayne Davis confessed to the murder of two points of court.
The book tells the story about these admission about himself, you've got him facing life in prison, if he's convicted of murder with a deadly weapon, with the intent to promote further or assist a criminal though
he's denied the allegations and he's pleading not that also is you have people going well if you if you don't want to be charged with murder, maybe don't write a memoir suggesting you might have murdered
with all this, you have Davis's lawyers calling the whole narrative but they're arguing that parts of the book were actually fictionalized in order to sell more also, as far as like, what did Davis actually say in the book in an interview?
well, he's claimed that he was in the car that fired into his car that and he's also said that he gave his nephew Anderson, the gun that was used in the murder.
And it was Anderson who shot the it's so one generally bad look. And two is a former gang leader.
Davis does not appear to be great at the whole silence is survival so basically you've got prosecutors using that story and alleging that Davis got a gun and coordinated two vehicles to go to a Las Vegas club,
one of them a white Cadillac with three other men, including his you would pull out telling the jury that the men, they were headed back to the Vegas Strip to track down Shakur's
but then when they saw Shakur in Death Row Records co-founder Shug Knight in a caravan of cars, Davis's group decided to turn around and confront with saying that Davis was in the passenger seat.
He then passed the gun to his nephew, who then fired into Tupac's but then also let's take a step back for a second and look at the bigger picture for a the murder didn't happen in a
If you're into rap or music culture at all, you probably know that the 1990s were kind of the golden age of hip everyone from MNAs Warren G.
Salt and Pepper, Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, Missy Elliott and Shakur at the top of their game and just dominating the but also at the same time, you have these really intense East coast, West Coast
label rivalries that were distracts, attacks, stuff like there was a major feud between Shakur's record label, Death Row on the West Coast and Bad Boy Records on the East right.
There's a whole complicated backstory here, and I'm not going to get into every detail Shakur and East Coast rapper The Notorious B.I.G.
Were friends until Shakur was shot and robbed at a Manhattan recording studio in 1994, about two years before his then had two parking.
That biggie was the one who was behind the attack or somehow and then you're the death row, bad boy.
West coast, East coast rivalry really exploding from yes, Tupac's murder was a gang violence related event.
But people also say that the tension from the rivalry helped create a sort of environment for this violence.
actually with that, I should note that the reason why, apparently, Shakur and his entourage went after Davis's nephew was because Shakur found out that night that Anderson was involved
in a robbery attempt targeting his record then, of course, with all this, just six months after Tupac was murdered, biggie was killed in a drive by shooting in Los Angeles, and his murder is still
and you've got a lot of people saying that gang violence and the label rivalries were connected, and that the rivalries ultimately led to both of their but with all that said, coming back to the case over the next few weeks,
we should expect to hear more from witnesses, maybe some celebrity witnesses, as well as experts and investigators that are going to try to get to the bottom of all this.
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You've got the white House losing its damn mind right now over the whole Natalie Harp situation in Trump. He just had a total public meltdown.
If you don't know or you didn't know until this week, because you have people in your life who love you and invite you to things.
Natalie Harp is a 35 year old former Owen host who was hired as an executive assistant to Trump at the beginning of his second term. And she's become one of his closest and most loyal staffers. right.
She's almost always seen by his side.
She's helping him right, and send social media posts fetching important information.
and in fact, she's so close to Trump that she was reportedly one of the very few people with him when that whole Air Force One Twitter ruined turkey where he had Trump secretly changing planes amid
a potential threat from Iran, effectively leaving top staff and reporters as decoys.
and actually, Natalie's also credited Trump for saving her life by enacting a law in 2018 that gave her access to treatments for her bone but also their close connection.
It's raised some example, back in June, you had harps estranged older brother telling the Daily Mail that a relationship was very unhealthy.
in their new book, New York Times writers Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan reported that harp left adoring and intimate letters to Trump during his campaign in 2023 one even reading you are all that matters to we'll then fast forward to a campaign rally in Georgia on Sunday.
And there you had Senator John OSF mentioning their relationship while slamming the president to very loud And while the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war,
while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings.
He golfs and trade stocks, so he doesn't want to do the job.
He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace, gifted by the Emir of Qatar.
and apparently that hit a nerve for Team white House communications director, Steven Chung, going all in on an absolutely batshit Writing.
John Jack has to be the biggest loser in politics instead of denigrating hardworking people serving their country, John should look deep into his soul and ask himself
why he's a miserable person who hates this it's because he's a radical extremist Democrat. Steve my man, you can't. Look how you look and call someone a miserable my man.
The call is coming from inside the house.
also you had white House spokesperson Davis Engel throwing this tweeting Jon Ossoff is a cringe worthy feminine theater kid cosplaying as Barack Nobody gives a shit what this lightweight loser and again.
I hate to do this.
How is it this person that is saying So much of this feels like self-reporting projection.
And also, by the apparently nobody gives a shit what this loser says, which is why the whole white House is responding. it's why. Maybe we'll get into it.
A bunch of conservative influencers seemingly posted things that are, or very close to copy pasted influence campaign operations about
and actually you even had Trump himself taking swings while clashing with CNN reporter Kristen Homes in the Oval Office yesterday, John also said you'd be rather travel with your aide, Natalie Harp, and build the ballroom than do your job as president.
What is your response? John? Asaph.
You mean pee wee Herman, pee wee Herman lookalike? No, I would much rather do other things.
It's a we're building a great facility here. We're fixing a white House that hasn't been taken care of. with Trump then going on to ramble about his ballroom for a while.
But then a few minutes later you had Trump's berating Holmes after she pressed him on his decision to reduce military activities with South Korea, asking the president of Kim Jong un had requested that action
after he once again bragged about how well he gets along with the North Korean Kim Jong UN has always treated me with great respect.
And we met on numerous occasions.
Actually, two primary occasions spoken and spent time.
I understand him, he understands He didn't like anybody. But I get along with him very well.
Know what I'm doing is making things safer. Did he? Did he ask you? Did he ask you to scale back on those? Quiet.
You're very disrespectful in front of this young man, okay? Don't you find her disrespectful? He understands. Quiet.
Who are you with? I'm with CNN fake news. I just wanted to follow up on the Korea question. You're allowed. Boisterous person. You're fake news.
I was trying to find out if you had been talking to Kim Jong UN. If he had asked you to scale back on the military exercise, so one.
Just another classic embarrassing Trump meltdown.
And also, can I also point in a normal fucking world, it would be such huge news that the president of the United States of America said he and an infamous dictator understood each he's literally said it so many times it hardly ever gets reported anymore. so.
Understandably, the thing that ended up getting the most coverage was his toddler style then what's even crazier, but not surprising, is that the white House doubled their rapid response account on Twitter.
Sharing the clip of Holmes's questioning Trump about Ossoff, calling her a disgraceful, humiliating embarrassment to her alleged then going on to add in a later post.
Someday your children will come across your disgusting and inhumane will be sickened and embarrassed to have a parent be so callous and vindictive.
It's quite but then, unsurprisingly, that prompted a major backlash from the left, with her colleagues at CNN quickly jumping into her defense, saying that she's both a great reporter and a mother, with one senior white House reporter writing, know, it's disgusting and inhumane.
Bringing her perfect children into this. that also echoed by others, including many other journalists.
many others saying it was just a bad look for Trump to scream at a female reporter like that. but also, this is the quiet piggy president. So not surprising.
you also had CNN issuing a statement defending Holmes, calling her one of the most respected and accomplished journalists covering the white House, slamming the attacks from Team Trump and adding Public officials are free to challenge reporting they disagree with.
But personal attacks on journalists for asking questions are beneath the office and inconsistent with the principles of a free press.
now, of course, with this Trump has his base is you had plenty of people coming to Trump's defense.
but also a lot of the focus from the right seem to be centered around Ossoff and his comments.
probably because they won want to kind of deflect from everything else that Ossoff said in that statement.
and two to try to draw attention away from the fact that the president had this humiliating breakdown and screamed at a female reporter for asking basic questions.
so you conservatives accusing Ossoff of smearing harp, claiming that his remarks were sexist, with Megan Kelly tweeting. Ossoff was clearly implying that Trump is having an affair with his staffer.
was so determined to disparage Trump he didn't give one thought, or worse, he did to how this would affect Natalie forever. Don't let the Democrats tell you they are. For women. It's a lie. but.
Hey, Megan. Ossoff didn't say anything about Trump and Harp doing anything. It's you guys who were making this jump about Trump doing whatever with heart.
that sounded like Ossoff just talking about Trump, caring about the sycophants around him rather than all the other people on the decoy plane, all the troops he stressed out and put in harm's way.
rising gas prices, your rising electricity prices, your health care costs. all his failed promises.
and all of this is you then other others calling Republicans hypocrites here, noting it's Trump who regularly disparages women, makes overtly sexist remarks. mean, it doesn't even get to the edging Carol of it all.
also doesn't get into the Epstein files of it all.
and funny enough, part of the road that got paved for a second Trump presidency, starting with the first one. Was Trump berating Megan Kelly herself, talking about her bleeding from wherever?
then as far as Ossoff, when you had MSNBC's Jen Psaki pressed him on, why he namechecked harp, he responded.
Well, I've heard this particular aide referred to as his security blanket, and I think we could say that about any number of the senior aides in the white House.
They're not telling him what he needs to hear. They're telling him what he wants to hear.
And the nation is at war, and we cannot afford because the thing that kind of got alluded to, but we didn't go into the details.
harp is also considered his printer person. like she literally prints out positive things from the internet for him to see. that apparently being part of her responsibilities.
which then also begs the question, is it true that Trump actually doesn't know what the public thinks of him because he just being showed a certain version of the world that the people around him want to see?
then beyond all that, we saw a bunch of people wondering why the white House in Trump went totally ballistic about one kind of pretty mild line from Ossoff, with one person writing, almost no one in America knew who Natalie Harp was.
Then Jon Ossoff dropped her name and triggered an explosion of interest.
And it looks as if the white House is alarmed about Brian, many are thinking there's a lot of smoke here, so maybe there's fire, Tommy B tour of America, for example, saying
that Ossoff clearly touched a nerve and saying it seems like something that media should explore.
hey, for now, let me know your thoughts, opinions, and reactions in those comments down below. And I think as far as me, I think it's clear where I stand here. And actually I will add one thing.
you are a Democrat or even just anyone that is not pro Trump and Trump Republican do not give these hypocritical cry bullies a fucking inch.
They want you bigger and and paying attention to a billion other things other than how their God King is fucking shit up for you. they want to put you on the back foot, change the conversation.
Well, John, should it John didn't say much.
John brought up a former Oann news reporter who sounds like fucking Kim Jong UN's news person.
who is on the short list of people that Trump took on the secret plane while all the other people were on the decoy plane?
while he is waging a war of choice that is making your life harder and not fulfilling a lot of the promises that he made.
Except maybe the ones that he made while the mike wasn't in front of his mouth to enrich himself and his cronies. to any journalist. It turns this into a false equivalency. Look at John.
So bad John situation. You are a fucking hack.
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but then also, that's not the only bizarre political controversy we have to talk about today, because there's a very wild story about how fake polls can influence elections.
when it actually starts with the mayoral race in Los Angeles between incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and her left wing challenger, Nithya Rahman.
because earlier this month, you had a poll from a group called Median Strategy showing bass far ahead, nearly 12 points.
even more specifically, it showed the bass was picking up way more people who voted for Spencer Pratt in the primaries, which would be a big win for her.
and so you ended up saying there was some news coverage on this poll with the California Post, which is a West Coast spin off of the New York Post running the headline Spencer Pratt's voters could be deciding factor in la mayor showdown.
According to latest poll.
anyone Karen Bass herself touting the numbers with her campaign, throwing them on to a graphic and adding doing the work, showing up and gaining momentum. Let's do this la.
and so if you were rooting for part of Bass's campaign looking like really good news, except it wasn't real. Right. A reporter for the L.A. times said he repeatedly reached out to media and strategies.
Right.
The group behind the poll and, quote, they told me they were discontinuing their polling operation. Then they admitted their poll was fake.
the group also giving a statement to the times saying median strategy was created as a short term social experiment to examine how purported polling information could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification.
saying we are not seeking publicity or attribution for the individuals involved and are declining interviews, their website now displaying a similar memo and noting that all their previous releases have been withdrawn and should not be cited as genuine polling data.
All of which is extra fantastic because, according to reports, when media began posting on social media on August 9th, a claim that it wanted to fix the credibility problems in polling and rebuild trust, and so now,
there's just been so many reactions to this, Karen Bass, she took down her post about the poll and a spokesperson for her campaign said, this poll was reported on by a news outlet
saying any bad faith attempts to influence election should be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
you also have the California Post updating the article to be about Bass's condemnation of the stunt.
And Nithya Rahman's team also respond to the news to call out bars for sharing unverified information, with a spokesperson saying the mayor's campaign promoted a fake poll without properly vetting the source,
saying it is the latest example of an administration that too often struggles to get the basics right, saying Angelenos deserve a mayor who gets the facts right, communicates clearly, and does the work before announcing the results.
but also like here's, here's the truth, this whole situation speaks to more than the la mayoral race.
because as you the times noting one of the other polls that median released it was on the Wisconsin gubernatorial race, and it showed the Democratic Socialist candidate, Francesca Hung ahead by 20 points.
but as you saw last week, she ended up losing that race. and while there were also other polls that showed her well in the lead as well. Right. It wasn't just that fake median one.
you now have more people arguing that fake polling is a very real threat to our elections, with, for example, one California based polling firm saying this isn't just a harmless social experiment,
saying it's arguably election interference and hurts the credibility of new pollsters who are doing genuinely good work.
and adding, however, if you take their social experiment at face value, they certainly proved a point a post FiveThirtyEight world, there's essentially no vetting of new pollsters.
so now you have a lot of people looking at this going, oh, this does show how, you know, a fake poll can go so far that news outlets and campaigns, they're not always going to look into who's conducting them or what their methodology was before running those numbers.
and so you had one Democratic strategist adding fake cooked poll releases or quickly becoming the hottest form of election interference, saying this does not bode well for 2028.
another political blogger, adding it seems like making a polls could be an underrated business strategy.
example, my fake surveys as a 2028 presidential vote in Pennsylvania will be tied with a four point margin of error. How much are you going to have to spend to beat that?
then you add another pollster adding that while we don't know the motive here, this seems like a trend that could be used to manipulate prediction markets.
and actually, interestingly enough, before this whole thing played out just last week with the Brennan Center for justice putting out a piece exploring efforts to undermine poll credibility,
explaining polls can shape voters perception of candidates electoral participation and confidence in election results.
This makes polling a prime target for those looking to influence the electorate and shape public opinion.
because there's been both an increase in fake or misleading polling, as well as attacks on legitimate polling. It's just harder for the average voter to know what to believe. into one.
Of course, I just I would love to know your thoughts on any of this, but also to.
at the very least part of this story, I should tell you that you should vote no matter what the polls say. could be wrong. They could be right. They could be trending one way or another.
But the only thing that actually matters is the vote that happens. or I guess another way to put it. And this is kind of a more all encompassing thing. you will always have more people talking and yapping than actually doing.
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Let's cram in some more news you need to know, starting with this. We're watching measles make a comeback right now. current health officials are not doing us favors. Right.
Back in 2000, public health officials declared measles eliminated in the U.S.. meaning no. Endemic ongoing transmissions.
But fast forward to today, and we're seeing highs that we haven't seen in over three decades. just last year, you had more cases than any year since 91.
and now in just the first seven months of this year, we've already shattered that, including a few deaths.
as far as why it's coming back, we need herd immunity needed roughly 95% of people to be vaccinated. But people like RFK Jr, the making sure that's not going to happen.
Rick is on the one hand, he claims to support some vaccines, but then he does everything in his power to spread doubt about them.
And while he is hardly the only one, he is easily the most prominent and powerful anti-vaxxer currently.
and with this, you're seeing kindergarten MMR vaccination rates steadily dropping nationwide amid skepticism, pandemic era disruptions and an ever increasing amount of exemptions being granted. it's so bad.
You've seen them fall below that 95% threshold in a majority of states.
it's what makes sense that Mes would make a strong comeback because give it any space and it just spreads like crazy.
It is outrageously contagious, with one infectious person often passing it to at least 18 others.
and even when you don't think you've been in contact with someone who has it, there's a chance you actually have been. Because if they leave a room, the virus sits in the air for up to two hours.
and the infections are also often unevenly distributed. right. Certain communities often have higher or lower vaccination rates. Like minded people live together, especially among the unvaccinated.
when that happens, the virus gets a ton of space to just go crazy. and you got a situation where it's probably just the tip of the iceberg.
when you've got vaccination rates going down, measles is usually the first one to get noticed because it's so contagious.
but it's also often a sign that other diseases covered by childhood vaccines such as rubella and polio, they can make their own comebacks. but maybe silver lining maybe RFK junior and Trump.
They can use that part of the deal to get some good prices on some new iron lungs. then in other news, Trump just randomly declared the Strait of Hormuz is U.S. territory. Except that's not how U.S.
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or international law works. with the announcement taking place in one of the most presidential places. Truth social. were you at Trump posing a lightly edited map labeling the street as new U.S.
territory.
with the circle also having bits of the neighboring countries on there, though I'll say it's unclear if he's claiming those two. Normally, I'd say that's a joke. but it's Trump. So who knows what's going on with those brain mashed potatoes.
but this also is not super surprising, since Trump actually floated the idea last Friday at a campaign event.
And now it comes right as a 60 day deadline for a new regional deal expired without an agreement.
and actually on that note, you had Trump batting today, there are no talks won't be talks in a blockade of Iran is ongoing. Trump's argument is that there doesn't need to be any kind of legal claim.
instead, it's de facto U.S. territory because the U.S. Navy guarantees freedom of navigation in the area.
but under international law and customs that have been around for well over a century. That's not how any of this works.
the Strait of Hormuz is surrounded by Iran and Oman, meaning that its waters belong to their sovereign maritime zones. patrolling international waters protect trade routes. It gives nation power, but it doesn't give them a deed.
and so unsurprisingly, officials in Tehran responding immediately, calling Trump delusional and adding Strait of Hormuz has been Iranian, is Iranian and will remain Iranian.
anyway, some officials being pretty aggressive, saying that the U.S just needs to accept defeat and until then it will enforce a blockade.
but either way, you have legal experts and diplomats worldwide kind of just scratching their heads, calling this a massive geopolitical provocation disguised as a social media post.
you then have the Trump supporters claiming that everyone is taking this too seriously, and the president just trying to force another deal or just shitposting. And then finally today we should talk about Luigi Mangini.
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Because he might actually have a chance to get out of his murder because after he pled guilty in his federal stalking case, admitting to tracking down and shooting UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson, his legal team immediately called Double Jeopardy.
right. Well, big.
That also wasn't the most surprising thing because they've had that in their back pocket the whole saying that he's become a pawn in parallel prosecutions and that prosecutors were trying to punish him twice for the same
and while when they argued it before the judge said that it was too early since the federal case had ended But now that he's pled guilty to stalking the courts, apparently taking them up on it, and decided to put the murder trial that was set for next month on hold, the prosecutors have time to respond.
write and if they can't make a strong enough case against it, the state trial, it could be over before it even starts.
But with that, you have the Manhattan District Attorney's office already saying that they're committed to seeking justice for Mr.
Thompson and his and so for now, they have until October 9th to make their then the next time you'll see Mangini is at a hearing set for December which is also a week before.
We'll find out his official sentencing for the stalking charges where he's facing But that my friend. You beautiful bastard is the end of your Tuesdays hope you enjoy it.
I'm trying to keep him big, even though I'm also doing a prep week for the beginning of the Crashing Out which again first show start this weekend. Seattle. Portland, then Boston. Philadelphia.
Then eight more dates.
you can and you should go grab your tickets at Crashing Out Tor.com Link in the description link in the top comment. But that said, thank you for watching. I love your faces, and I'll see you right back here tomorrow.
