Ramble On: Trolls Are Running the Federal Government (video)

Morning thoughts on Abrego Garcia, Bukele, Trump, Rubio, RFK, and the deranged psychology of trolling

Good morning. Here is today’s ramble:

Here is the transcript, edited for clarity:

Good morning. It is Friday, April 18th, 2025, seven o’clock in the morning. I’m up a little bit later than usual, having my morning coffee and I wanted to share a couple of thoughts.

The first thing: right before I went to bed last night, we got the good news that Kilmar Abrego Garcia is still alive, which I think a lot of people doubted. Senator Chris von Hollen of Maryland flew to El Salvador, made kind of a big deal about it publicity-wise, and after first being rebuffed by the Bukele administration to go into the prison to visit Abrego Garcia—this is the same prison where they let Republicans in to take porn prison shots, right? Where Kristi Noem posed in front of the cage and the two other Republican congressmen went, gave the thumbs up in front of these horrifying…the word prison doesn’t even really do justice to what’s happening there—they wouldn’t let Van Hollen in. Well, I guess ultimately they did. He released a picture of him sitting, eating with him, with Garcia, and you know, met with him. And this is very good news, obviously, because I think a lot of people were afraid that he was dead.

Yesterday at two o’clock, I went on Cliff Schecter’s live stream with Cliff and David Schuster, which was a lot of fun. I did it from my backyard, because the lovely tree there is now starting to bloom, with its nice pink flowers. And they asked me about Abrego and I said, “Well, there’s basically two reasons why they won’t let the Senator meet with the guy or they won’t let him come back to the United States. And the first reason is that, as soon as he comes back, he’s going to be on all the shows talking about what happened to him. And that’s a big story. It’s a big deal story. It makes the Trump people look terrible. And it’s not going to be something that can get away very easily if Abrego’s a sympathetic figure, which he seems to be. And then the second reason, I said, is, obviously, he’s dead and they can’t let the Senator know, because there’s nothing to see.

But I realize now after seeing the photo and the proof of life that there’s a third reason why the Trump people refuse all of this, refuse to bring him home, all of it. And that’s because they’re trolls. They’re trolling us. They’re using a human being to troll us— and his safety and his future, his health and the togetherness of his family, all of it— because they’re trolls.

What do I mean by troll? A troll is someone who basically gets off on riling up other people. They think it’s funny to rile up other people, get people agitated, angry, emotional, whatever. And then they go, “Isn’t it funny?” So trolling is a big subculture in social media. It’s a huge subculture in right-wing circles, 4chan, in these places where it’s just these emotionally-stunted, mostly men, young men who think all this shit is funny, who think Elon is a genius. You know, that’s the same…it’s a lot of overlap in that Venn diagram.

And in the article that I saw in the Washington Post talking about this, there’s a couple of trolls, and this is what drew my attention to it. Bukele, this Russia’d-up president of El Salvador, with his fancy beard. What is he, like, 4’11”? I don’t know, he thinks he’s this great dictator. He said on X that, quote, now that he, meaning Abrego Garcia, “Now that he’s been confirmed healthy, he gets the honor of staying in El Salvador’s custody.”

That’s just a troll. That’s a troll thing to say. All that does is make me mad and rile me up. And I’m sure it riles up other people too. And that’s his intention. That’s his intention. And the other troll is the people in the White House. This guy—Kush Desai, is his name; he’s some sort of White House spokesman—said, “Chris Van Hollen is firmly established Democrats as the party whose top priority is the welfare of an illegal alien, MS-13 terrorist. It’s truly disgusting. President Trump will continue to stand on the side of law-abiding Americans.” And that’s a troll. Abrego Garcia’s not a gang member. In fact, he left El Salvador to get out of that because he was being extorted by the gang.

And then, never one to be outshone by complete wretched awfulness, Karoline Levitt said, “If he ever ends up back in the United States, he would immediately be deported again. Nothing will change the fact that Abrego Garcia will never be a Maryland father. He will never live in the United States of America again.” Now, that’s just a troll. That’s all it is. It’s a troll.

And it speaks to who these people really are. I keep thinking back to Elon Musk talking about how empathy, I forget how he phrased it exactly, but empathy is the cause of the fall of Western civilization, which of course is ridiculous. It’s the opposite, if anything. Trolling like that is an indicator of lack of empathy.

And we have right now an administration filled with trolls, top to bottom trolls: Donald Trump, troll. JD Vance, troll. All those people in the cabinet, trolls. Hegseth, you don’t get to be on Fox News if you’re not a troll. RFK, troll. Just a troll. RFK even looks like a troll. I can’t even start to talk about the things that he said about autistic people this week because it drives me crazy. The ignorance. And danger that he’s putting that very large community in by his ignorant, stupid-ass statements, riles me up. And that’s what trolls do. They rile you up.

So I know this intellectually. I know this is what trolls do. On the other hand, this isn’t some prank. This isn’t some high school, middle school prank. These are real people with their lives on the line, and the trolls in power don’t seem to understand that, or if they do understand it, they don’t care. They’re more than willing, happy to sacrifice lives of Americans, or people living in America, for their own trollish pleasure. You know, it’s a form of sadism. It’s not funny. And people who find it funny have a defective sense of humor.

That’s just how it is. So think about that, the trolling, that the constant lies coming out of the administration, the form of trolling, that’s what it is. These people are trolls, and they will happily sacrifice you, me, members of their own family if they needed to, to get the dopamine rush they get from being trolls.

Ted Cruz too, forgot about Ted Cruz. He’s also quoted in the article. Ted Cruz, again, another one who looks like the troll that he is. This guy Homan, whatever? I forget what his, if he’s the border czar or something? He looks like a troll. Like, if I’m gonna go cross a bridge somewhere, that’s the dude that you run into, Homan. Troll, they’re trolls.

They’re also Nazis. You could be more than one thing at the same time. All of this stuff is just pure Nazi stuff, what they’re doing—taking people who are here in the country legally, vanishing them and sending them to this…hellhole is a generous description of what that place is…in another country. And then saying, “Well, I wash my hands of it. Nothing I can do.” Yeah, I’m pretty sure if the President of the United States called up Bukele and said, “Send this guy back,” he would be back in an hour on a plane. But they don’t want to, because they enjoy this. They’re sadists who enjoy the trolling. That’s who they are. And too many sadists like that, that’s why Nazism appeals to them. It appeals to them because they are sadists and trolls.

Anyway, that occurred to me today or last night reading the story—what should be a good story about Abrego Garcia being alive. But, put him on the damn plane with the Senator! You know, what are you doing? But we don’t have an Administration like that. We have an Administration that wants us to die, and that’s what’s gonna happen. They’re gonna get us to die. A lot of people are going to die directly because of decisions made by trolls in this monstrous Administration.

A couple of quick announcements. We had our first Five 8 1/2 show on Wednesday night. That’s a new show, for those of you who don’t know, that Stephanie Koff and I are producing. And it is basically like The Five 8, which we do on Friday night, i.e. tonight, as you can see by the poster here in the background. But it’s on Wednesday night and it’s hosted by Nadine Smith and Lisa Graves. And it was wonderful. They were great, coming right out of the gate strong. And I encourage everybody to go check that out. They are brilliant. They are funny. They’re extremely knowledgeable, and very hopeful. Both of them are very optimistic people and hopeful people. And we can’t get enough of that, I think, right now. So please go check that out.

Please go subscribe to our Five 8 channel. It’s all in the same YouTube channel.

I mentioned I was on Cliff Schecter’s Substack Stream yesterday. I’m not sure how to link to that, but it does exist. It’s out there somewhere in the ether. That was fun. We have a great show tonight on The Five 8, so 8 o’clock Eastern. Tune into that.

And finally, a new podcast today that isn’t me talking about Severance with my wife. I have on Mike Albertus, who wrote this book called Land Power, which was a super interesting book about basically the what he calls the Great Reshuffle, which happened after the French Revolution when huge amounts of land transferred ownership for the first time in centuries en masse from one group of people to another group of people. And he looks at situations where that’s happened historically and what the ramifications are. So: really interesting book. He went all over the world to research it and I really enjoyed having him on, so I hope everybody takes a listen to that.

I have nothing further to report. Today is also Good Friday. For those of you who celebrate, I wish you a happy Easter and an excellent weekend.

Take care.

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LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

The Great Reshuffle: Land and Power (with Mike Albertus)

Who owns the land? Who DECIDES who owns the land? Who has the power to redistribute land ownership? If land ownership IS redistributed, who gets to take possession and who doesn’t? And what adverse impact can the reshuffling of land ownership have on our society and our planet?

Greg Olear talks to Michael Albertus, a professor at the University of Chicago and the author of Land Power: Who Has It, Who Doesn't, and How That Determines the Fate of Societies, about these and other questions pertaining to the relationship between land and power.

Follow Mike:
https://bsky.app/profile/mikealbertus.bsky.social

Check out his website:
https://www.michaelalbertus.com/

Buy the book:
https://www.amazon.com/Land-Power-Doesnt-Determines-Societies/dp/1541604814/

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Make America Great Gatsby Again!

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