DSR Daily August 18: Disney Sues Trump Admin Over Political Targeting

We're here to go through the news and talk a little bit about how we're reacting to it and you know why it's making us crazy but we'll do it in a way that maybe we'll make you less crazy or help us all feel like we're going crazy together. So Riley, why don't you pick us all? President Trump declared that negotiations with Iran have stalled following the expiration of a 60-day interim agreement

insisting the nation's surrender and reiterating that it must never obtain a nuclear weapon.

We heard this. He also issued threats toward Oman regarding its separate talks of Iran to restore commercial shipping in the state of Formus. We're ongoing military actions have disrupted global energy supplies. Spite rising fuel prices and domestic pressure ahead of the upcoming midterms. Trump insisted that political considerations have no influence on his strategy and that I do believe actually. I don't think the outside world is any influence on his strategy.

“I don't think he has a strategy. I think he's just got like impulses.”

And you know, the impulses that led him to this war have been disastrous in a hundred different ways in terms of the economic cost,

the geopolitical costs, the empowerment of Iran, the unintended consequences, the depletion of our munitions,

the alienation of our allies, the pushing up a gas cost, the diesel cost, the food cost, now the alienation of our allies who is punishing for not supporting him in South Korea, the making the world the less safe place, the degrading of American standing in the world. I could go on and on, but I won't. But I do think it's a little bit weird that like two months ago, everybody in the news was like, oh my god, there's a piece deal. They signed a piece deal. It's a piece deal. Oh my god, because the war was the biggest story in the world.

So then the piece deal became the biggest story in the world. And a bunch of us said, hey, this isn't really a piece deal. They haven't really agreed to anything. And they have no intention of actually implementing this deal. And you know, low and behold, here we are two months later. Nobody's really covering the fact that the deal was complete bullshit.

The points were not agreed to. It hasn't happened. It's not going to happen. And indeed yesterday, when I asked about this, the president who got a little bit testy, because he's feeling a lot of that Natalie heart pressure where people are going, who's what's he doing with that one? It's making him a little crazy if you're watching him that comes up in these conversations. Anyway, the president when asked about this said he has no intention of, you know,

resuming discussions with the Iranians. Quick reminder, we did have a deal to keep the Iranians from having this. They were no closer to having nukes a year ago. They were no closer to having nukes when we began this war. Their policy as a country for decades has been that they do not want or intend to get nukes. This is a sham. And when he said, as he did the other day,

well, Americans should feel good about spending $4 a gallon of gasoline because it's keeping Iran from having it. No, it's not. They didn't have them. They weren't any closer to getting them.

“The only thing that made them any closer, they got rid of the constraint that was on them.”

It was Trump canceling the deal that by Obama had signed in December or during his first term.

Anyway, it's it's it's it is an ongoing mess and it's showing every sign of looking like it's going to continue to be a mess for a long time to comment. So Riley as our Iran correspondent, you're going to have plenty to talk about. I'm sure that excites you know. Can't wait to cover the same story again and again. It's cycling through the same three developments. Do you know, keep doing a practice mixed perfect up soon?

I'll be perfect at this soon. Yeah, rather than later. Up soon, new threats. Then anyway, you know, these guys are such idiots. I don't know if you saw it. Apparently Trump in order to saw, remember he was going to solve the Ukraine more in one day.

“I remember that was going to be a day when he was going to solve. Well, apparently he hasn't.”

I was reading apparently that was still going. And so what he decided to do was to send the guy who is responsible for building the ball room over to the Russians just to see if he could end it. It apparently competence and knowledge of it. It makes it. It's crazy. It's like anybody walks to the Trump's office. Well, I could solve this word. It's like, yeah, okay, go solve it.

It was really approaching the levels of the movie idiocracy.

“And that's what that's kind of where we are at this.”

Well, speaking of more idiocracy from the administration, ahead of an impending deadline, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, US officials are conducting delicate high stakes negotiations to find an off ramp and overt an escalating trade war over Trump's threat of new 50% tariffs.

While Washington seeks to Canadian concessions on defense and critical minerals, intense domestic backlash, limits of Canada's ability to yield without securing meaningful reciprocal tariff relief.

This is insane. Canada's our friend Trump negotiated the North American trade deal, and Trump is the person who's violated his own trade deal. That's where we are. And, you know, he's just going back and forth. I don't think that I find weird about this. Have you did you see a story that are like a week or two ago? An American oil company started doing exploratory work in Greenland and the Danish government, the Danish government, we're like, you don't have a license to do this.

And there are all these stories like this is sort of how we low key going to a war for Greenland. I mean, this play before. I don't like how it ended last time, even. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. And so, you know, well, that how will that affect our relations with Canada and with Europeans, if Trump goes in that direction? He can't, I bet I guess the point here is he can't stop himself from insane conflicts with people who are actually our friends, which I think has, you know, been the bane of his existence as a human being, which is why nobody likes him and he has no friends.

But it's, it's, it's, it's bad for the United States and we should, we should feel bad about this. Right now, we should be friendly with the Canadians and making fun of the relationship between Justin Trudeau and Katie. Okay, here here, federal officials are defending ISIS extensive efforts to track down New York resident David Striver, who is pursued across multiple locations and given a legal warning after sending a scathing email comparing a former ice leader to a Nazi. Striver sued the Department of Homeland Security for First Amendment violations,

but government attorneys argued in court that in-person visits and warning notices are critical tools to address potential threats against officials.

Although ISIS sends close the investigation, Striver's legal team cautions that the government's defense sets a dangerous precedent by claiming the authority to issue formal warnings against protected political speech.

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To get your 20% off, go to DSR network.substack.com/August26. That's DSR network.substack.com/August26. Well, they're at a war against the First Amendment, and this is the Department of Thoughts, behaving thuggishly, and, you know, if this sounds like a repressive regime to it's because it's like a repressive regime. And it should scare the shit out of you, because, you know, oh my God, you listen to deep state radio, you're going to come after you, they're not.

“They're not going to come after us, they may go after Riley, but that's why he's there. He's there as the first line of defense for the First Amendment.”

Thank you, Riley, for your service. Happy to help, in any way I can. Well, closing out with two different lawsuit stories.

Disney filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration alleging the FCC is violating its First Amendment rights through a retaliatory campaign at targeting ABCs and broadcast licenses.

The legal action comes after FCC chairman Brendan Carr, launched unusual early license renewal challenges and investigations into shows like the view following a political friction over the networks content.

Well, good for Disney for standing up against this attack on the First Amendment, but doesn't it feel, I mean, listening to these stories doesn't feel a little bit like an authoritarian state.

Doesn't it feel like we've crossed the line, you know, is it aren't we in a place we never thought we would be in this country where people, you know, I mean, the view is considered like, you know, unacceptable political discussion seriously. The guy can't write a letter complaining about DHS without, you know, having the cops come after him. We're in a very, very dark place America and, you know, it's it's a little bit like the frog and the boiling water, you know, I mean the waters boil it, okay, if you haven't jumped out yet, at least note that the water is boiling.

“You know, clearly the only way out is now the election in November and, you know, that that's what is it.”

It's at less than 80 days, it's it's it's soon.

So we will we will be covering that on all of our usual podcasts, which you'll have this week, yes, it's the summer you're like, how can I possibly have all the usual podcasts. But, but because we work through the summer, you will get them all and I encourage you to listen to them, you just did an interesting silly consciousness week, going to have words matter coming up, we've got deep state radio coming up. Where we're talking about a fascinating new book and who knows, maybe tomorrow Riley will cover Pete Hegsa going across Iowa, I see considers a presidential run.

“I feel we've got to cover that on. Yeah, we really do, you know, hey America, could you do worse than Donald Trump?”

I don't know, the answer may be strong, yeah, it's true.

All right, all right, so here we are, are we done, are you done for the day? No, okay, I've got one more story, okay, well keep going there. Meta is facing a federal trial in Oakland, California, where four states are seeking roughly $200 billion in damages over claims the company intentionally addicted to young people to social media and harmed their mental health. The lawsuit accuses meta-violating federal child privacy and state consumer protection laws by deploying features like infinite scrolling while deceiving families about platform safety.

“Meta denies the allegations, contending that it plays safeguards for young users and acted truthfully as prosecutors push it to ban and key engagement tools for minors and call CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify.”

Say you would you finally found some good news, this is a lawsuit that should be happening for those of you don't understand the terminology that Riley was using term infinite scrolling is it means sort of what I do with my light. And and infinite scrolling is also the name of our rock band that we're launching soon as soon as many gets back. But you know these these people have done damage not just sort of damage not just this isn't good for kids. Real psychological damage people have died from bullying people look at the education scores we've now had social media long enough that we can see how it impacts.

Reading scores in countries in education and so forth it's bad of the Chinese are ahead of us in some aspects of this they they are strictly limiting. The amount of social media people are exposed to and yeah there are you know authoritarian nation with that doesn't have free speech and guess what so are we. That the very least if we're going to restrict free speech let's or restrict speech in some way or restrict content in some way let it be. Stuff that's damaging truly damaging to people and make meta pay the price.

Anyway we will follow this one too we will follow it all and we will see a soon right here bye bye.