9/24/26: Nvidia CEO Warns On AI, Professor Pape Dire Election Warning, Bay Of Piglets Survivors Speak Out

21:46Ryan Grim:Like an act of God. Like a war or a hurricane prevents you from fulfilling your contract and then you don't owe the various fees for breaking the contract. In fact, they are declaring force majeure because they couldn't get their data center built in time. I guess they're calling the American public a natural disaster. They didn't see that hurricane coming. And so, yeah, now they're down 5 percent. Wow. And falling. We'll see how that goes for them. But this is what people like Trump are worried about with the music stopping. Yes. Last thing here, I put D5 up on the screen. Unfortunately, as much as I support the data center backlash, and I think we should make these people's lives as hard as possible, the Fed's not happy about the grassroots activism that is happening against data centers in particular, because that's where a lot of the visible grassroots opposition is at this point.

22:44Ryan Grim:And so Ken Klippenstein pointing out that the Feds are now targeting AI critics as foreign agents. they think China is behind the opposition to AI data centers. And do you remember this whole thing with Utah and there was a whole, like there was a whole like theoretical conspiracy that it was the Chinese government that was opposed to this mega build-out data center in Utah. It turned out to all be complete and total nonsense. And I think it's insane. Like I don't know whether the Chinese government has an interest in pushing data center backlash, But it's insane to think that they have the level of control that in this country, across the board, Republican, Democrat, independent in rural counties and urban and suburban, that they would be able to single handedly gin up this level of opposition to data centers.

23:33Otherwise, we would just love these, you know, loud, screeching, water gobbling. Yeah. Environmentally destructive.

23:41Ryan Grim:Yeah. Things being plopped in our rural community with no say. And without even the promise of like long-term job growth in any significant way. Right. But when Chairman Shee points that stuff out, we're like, oh, you make a good point. Don't like that stuff. Might be pushing on an open door there. Yes. All right. We got Professor Pape standing by. Let's go ahead and get to it. Hello, appliance fans. I'm here at Grand Appliance where Bill just bought a premium Bosch benchmark dishwasher. Talk about your experience, Bill. My salesperson was an appliance genius. She told me about their free install offer on Benchmark Appliances, and it was a done deal for me.

24:21Wow, free install from the pros at Grand? That's a no-brainer. Agreed. They make it so easy. There you have it. Grand for the win. Check out GrandAppliance.com for full details. This is Jacob Goldstein from What's Your Problem? Running a business is hard enough. Don't make it harder with a dozen apps that don't talk to each other. One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. That's software overload. Odoo is the all-in-one platform that replaces them all. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR. Fully integrated, easy to use, and built to grow with your business. Thousands have already made the switch.

25:01Why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's odoo.com. Did you know every 36 minutes a child in the U.S. is diagnosed with cancer? Which means some of the bravest warriors you'll ever meet aren't professional athletes or superheroes. They're the kids in this fight. That's why I'm proud to support Hyundai Hope on Wheels. For the past 28 years, with support from Hyundai, their dealers, and every new Hyundai sold, Hope on Wheels has contributed over$300 million to childhood cancer research, helping save more than 40 ,000 kids. But we're not done yet. Let's bring every warrior home. Join our fight at HyundaiWarriors.com.

25:42Joining us now is University of Chicago Professor Robert Pape and author of the new book, Our Own Worst Enemies. Professor Pape, the book is out, I believe it was out this week. Congratulations and thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. And it's not just about the timing of when the book came out. as we'll talk about, this book has a big warning for November in our country, and I really appreciate you giving me an opportunity to talk about that. All right. Well, it is required reading for the class. I want to start by asking you about a tangential or related issue here.

26:23We put up E2. Donald Trump's threatening to, or there's concern developing, as NPR puts it, that Trump may deploy the National Guard ahead of the elections. We live in Washington, D.C. The guard is already here. Some concern they'll wind up at polling locations or that the ones that are already deployed will be told to head to those places. I can tell you, as somebody in Washington, they're not that intimidating. Kind of 19-year-olds is in a lot of fatigues. In the summer, you feel kind of bad for them because they're kind of suffering in this 100-degree swamp heat. But Trump's deployment, and I don't want to, though, underplay Trump's deployment of the National Guard, because it's truly a break with all of the kind of norms and laws that have governed our country for 200 plus years.

27:11How does, how does kind of Trump's assertion of this presidential prerogative or made up prerogative play into what you write about in terms of the acceptance of violence in response to some of this stuff? Thanks, Ryan. And yes, the guard is a very important point, and I'll explain why. You see, we're heading into a domestic escalation trap where after the voting stops, and that means after November 3rd when the polls close, the counting starts. And that is the actual danger zone. So as you just said, well, okay, we're in Washington. You've used to seeing the Guard around. This isn't going to stop you, Ryan, from going to the polls.

28:05So that's not actually the real danger. The danger is not voter intimidation ahead of time. In fact, it may turn out that deploying the Guard will incentivize people to go and show the man. They're not going to be intimidated. So my book is not saying worry about November 3rd. The problem here is the escalation trap. Recall from international escalation trap, the problem is what happens to the losers, the group that is going to be losing. Will they accept their loss and simply surrender, or will they escalate? Same problem that we faced internationally. we're about to see start on November, and you could just say November 4th.

28:55And that's when the voting counts starts, I'm sorry, the counting starts, and that will continue the counting and the danger zone all the way through certification and the seeding of the new Congress the first week in January, which ironically could happen again on Wednesday, January 6, 2027, a very fateful day, we'll all recall, from 2021. That is what the positioning of the Guard is about, Ryan. It is not about voter intimidation ahead of the game. It's about what happens after the counting starts. And you've already heard, of course, a lot of scenarios. The Atlantic has published scenarios of seizing the ballot boxes.

29:52This is all about the counting, Ryan. And that's the big deal. And it's an escalation trap. So is President Trump, so we all assume, okay, now, of course, we could be wrong, but we all assume that the losers here are going to be the Republicans. And it's because the Iran war has made everything worse. All right. This book is laying out that it was already going to be a dangerous election before the Iran war. The Iran war is now pouring gasoline on that domestic fire. And what that means for the losers here is a catastrophic loss. So we need to understand that for President Trump, and of course, many people in the country will be very happy about this catastrophic loss for President Trump.

30:40But we need to understand President Trump is president now, just like he was in the fall of 2020. So he was not a candidate. He was the president in the fall of 2020. So this is a parallel situation. The last time he lost, it did not go well. We just need to understand that. Now, we can talk about certain scenarios, Ryan, and I'm glad to do that, but the fundamental points in this book are about this will be popular with core tens of millions of people here. who it's not what the normalization, just to tie it back to the core of this book, what we're seeing is the growing normalization of political violence in our country, which accounts for the strings of assassination attempts on both sides of the aisle, and also accounts for the rise of violent protests.

31:40I don't mean the just peaceful protests. Of course, we have a lot of peaceful protests. That's the core of our democracy. But we've seen the rise of violent protests. And we have seen, and I'm specifically pointing back to the fall of 2020, where the president of the United States used all the tools of that office to encourage that momentum, that normalization of violence, to encourage and use the tools to try to stop the loser from being the loser, in that case him. And so this is something we need to take very, very seriously going forward. And this book helps us to understand what's coming, gives us some ideas of what we can do now to try to inoculate ourselves, and helps to understand that this is not just a sort of an election that, like others, this is likely going to be the most dangerous election in our lifetimes.

32:41Just imagine that if the GOP loses here, you're already seeing Mike Rogers in Michigan pull away from Trump. What Trump faces in January is not just simply pressure from the Democrats. What he faces is actual removal from office because there could well be a third of the GOP who's going to join with the Democrats here. And that's a scenario that we're not talking about right now because, of course, the Democrats want to motivate the Democratic vote. But notice Mike Rogers. He's a bellwether, a canary in the coal mine here. And why exactly is MAGA sticking with the loser here in January Trump when they all know that there's got to be a future?

33:28So this is what we're heading to in this danger zone I'm calling attention to. And I appreciate you giving me a chance to talk about it because we're just not, again, it's a little bit like the month before the Iran war. I tried to get people's attention and I couldn't get it. Now you're at least giving us a chance to try to do something, to hear about it, understand what's coming. And I hope it doesn't come, by the way. I mean, please understand. I hope it doesn't come. But the bottom line is we are on the brink of this, and the book lays out all the dynamics.

34:07Ryan Grim:Yeah. Well, you mentioned The Atlantic. Let's put one of those scenarios up on the screen. This is E3. They have one particularly influential Trump outside advisor urging him to declare martial law for the midterms. I'll just read a little bit of this. They say of all the outside advisors urging Trump to seize control of federal elections this fall, the attorney Peter Tickton can claim the deepest ties. They went to military school together as teenagers in 2022. He helped Trump sue Hillary Clinton. He helped push Trump to secure a pardon for Tina Peters, former Colorado clerk convicted of charges related to tampering with election equipment.

34:42Ryan Grim:And he is pushing for martial law and, you know, exactly the sort of actions that you are warning about here. So, you know, do you see this sort of thing as feasible? Because I think one important distinction you're making here is there's a lot of focus about, oh, my God, he's going to try to rig the elections. And you're saying, no, the action is actually after the effect with potential actions like this. And to tie it also back to what you're saying about January 6th, my experience with Trump 2.0 here is that some of the things that they tried and were sloppy and a mess from the first term, they spent the offseason figuring out, OK, how do we make sure that this time when we try to steal the election, for example, we actually succeed?

35:25Ryan Grim:So what do you think are some of the learnings they took from January 6th that we should be on the lookout for? Yeah. So I think those are helpful, those scenarios, but they're not really focusing on the plausible scenario. So what that scenario does is say, he might try to do X, Y, or Z, give money to the Democratic lawyers. They're going to file lawsuits and the law, the courts are going to fix everything. That's basically what's happening in that. And of course, I think lawsuits would be appropriate. I'm not saying not to do that, but that's missing the interaction with the Iran war. You see, with the Iran war, this is a very different scenario now.

36:05So with the Iran war, what can easily happen after November fourth. And this is when there's any internal trouble, and you can just look up international scholarship, scholars publishing about this for decades. It's called the diversionary theory of war. Any international internal struggle, the leaders sometimes, and there's chapter and verse cases of this, will actually attack other countries so they can do things internally to suppress their opposition. Also, by the way, once you have internal problems in a country, outside powers can attack thinking it's a good time, a vulnerable window to attack.

36:51So for example, President Trump has said over and over and over again, I'm going to deal with Iran the day after the election. Well, people aren't connecting the dots to that in the issue of martial law yet here. And what they're not, I think, realizing is if President Trump decides to escalate against Iran, then he can start to have a much stronger argument in the courts that for national security purposes, he needs to call out the military, needs to call out the National Guard, because given the Iran war and the proclivities of Iran to retaliate, this is a much more powerful argument for him in the courts.

37:36So I think, Crystal, what's really happening is we are just simply again, and the book explains, we like to pretend that although we've seen six years of rising political violence, it will never happen again. That's what happened at the Washington Correspondence Dinner. Everybody, oh my goodness, how could there be another assassination attempt against Donald Trump? Well, it's because the book is explaining. These are not abnormal now. We're seeing the normalization of political violence. That includes from the state. And this is why this is important to talk about now. And it's because what we're heading into is really quite a different world.

38:22And it's a more dangerous world. And you're pointing out some of the warnings that have already come up. But notice how they're not really connecting with the plausible way this could interact with the Iran war here. And by the way, we're not even talking about, I only briefly mentioned, Iran could do something to monkey with this too. Remember back in the summer, the New York Times reported that our government thinks Iran was behind the monkeying with that water in Minnesota. So there's Iran can stir the pot here in ways that we're not going to, it's not going to favor us. I guarantee Iran doesn't have our best interests at stake here.

39:04And that's why I think it's really important to get the groundwork now to understand what we're really heading into. When it comes to political violence in the past, with the help of hindsight, we often learn that there were actually elements of the government that were involved either with the people or with the groups that were carrying out that violence. How do you think about the role of the U.S. government, setting aside the Iranian government, when it comes to stoking this kind of political violence? So there's a chapter in the book that's about ICE and the deadly fracturing of American identity that goes directly into this, Ryan.

39:47It lays out how would you think about it. And what I did is I compared Trump's use of ICE here in, say, Minneapolis to what happened in the 1950s when Eisenhower called out the National Guard for segregation issues in the South. And here's the gigantic difference, Ryan, that's really important to understand. In the 1950s, you had a whole string of Supreme Court cases, Brown versus Board of Education, etc., etc., that laid the groundwork for the national importance of desegregation in the South. This was not just a partisan issue. This was widely supported across the body politic. Now, of course, not in Alabama, so for example, but nonetheless, widely supported.

40:44And so when Eisenhower is bringing out the National Guard for certain school desegregation issues, this is with a mantle of Supreme Court and court legitimacy. That's not one case, not two cases, a whole string of cases. Here we have the opposite. We literally have the opposite, as I lay out in the book, because the Supreme Court has ruled against President Trump in cases already involving the use of the National Guard in immigration without the approval of the states. So this is something that we can actually understand, but we need the time to digest it. If we wait until there's a crisis moment, you can't think in a crisis, Ryan.

41:31That's the problem here. We can't think in the hours of a crisis because a crisis is unfolding right in front of us. So I've been working with political leaders for decades on trying to prevent, be proactive. All of them, many of them will tell, Professor Pape, I'll get there. I'll do it. I'll be right there the moment it happens. And you know what? They are there, but they have no time to think. They're reacting, and that is the problem. We need to be more aware so that when we get there, we navigate any of the surprises better. Well, I don't necessarily mean government violence that stokes blowback.

42:14What I'm referring to more is, say, like the government involvement in the conspiracy to go after Gretchen Whitmer, for instance. Or every time you every time the FBI holds a press conference announcing that they foiled some terror attack, you read the indictment. And it turns out it was just some mentally disabled Muslim person that the FBI promised to buy weapons for them and convince them to agree in a text message or at a diner that they would. So I would say, Ryan, and then and then you get the idea normalized among the public that like this is a thing that's happening all the time. Well, I really appreciate that, Ryan.

42:54And so let me just say that for decades with Al Qaeda and ISIS violence, I worked with the FBI directly on with sting operations and ISIS narratives and so forth. So I have a little bit of understanding of this, not just from sitting from the podium, you know, the ivory tower. And here's what I would say. The real advantage we have is that when that claim comes up, we adjudicate it through the court system, which is extremely transparent. And that can happen across multiple administrations. So people say, well, the wheels of justice takes too long. Well, one of the advantages of taking long time is you can get a change of administration.

43:38So you can get, if you think that one administration is somehow suppressing evidence, change of administration, that can come out. And what I would say is that there really is a concern, I would think. I mean, I wouldn't say a 10 out of 10 concern, but I take seriously the Gretchen Whitmer issue. I really do, even though I've worked with those folks with the sting operations. I think that sometimes they can get carried away. What I would say, though, is let's go back to January 6th. So the same claims that are often made here about January 6th. And this is a very, very, very different story. And I would just go back to the fact that we have heard those claims.

44:18And all we need to see is now the Trump administration Department of Justice provide the actual information that that actually happened, that there is real, real complicity by the FBI. Kash Patel, he is somebody who said that happened before. OK, fine. Now you're the director of the FBI. Bring it out. Let's see what the evidence is. And so far, that hasn't happened, Ryan. And that tells me there may be no there there, that we have another Epstein-like situation where there's all this discussion. And yet, nonetheless, the Trump administration has no evidence to really show us. So I would just simply say, I think this is one of the benefits of our great system.

45:06I never want our system to go away. I believe we live in the best country in the world. And this is one of the advantages. But this is something we need to protect. We need to take seriously that this is—and now, if we go forward here, and there really is even a quarter of the kind of thing I'm worried about, this is going to get very different very quickly. And it's going to, unfortunately, interact with the Iran war, not just go off on its own.

45:38Ryan Grim:So one thing that is different now versus 2020 is that Trump is not on the ballot. In addition, he claims he doesn't really care what happens in the midterms. I don't really believe him, but we can consider maybe he's telling the truth about that. And even in the scenario that you sketch out where there's a possibility of Republicans starting to break with him, which I do think is possible. You also have the Republican senator from Utah open to an investigation of Don Jr. over this Russian oligarch wedding situation. In any case, even if we accept that there may be some actual Republican breaking with him, Supreme Court has basically given him a get on a jail free card.

46:18Ryan Grim:He is wildly wealthier to the tune of billions of dollars than he was before he entered the presidency. Do you think that it would matter to him that much at this point if, you know, some Republicans in Congress are mad at him or if they even impeach him, if they even convict him and remove him from office? Would he really care that much, given that he's got the money and he's not going to be going to prison? Well, so I've advised every White House since 2001. So that's Democrat and Republican. And what I can tell you with the White House is what I believe they care about more than anything else is the word legacy.

46:56Legacy. And you hear Donald Trump. He's up front about it. Most of them I don't think are up front about it. But they care about their legacy. And what Donald Trump is facing is literally the irreparable destruction of his presidency politically. And that will go down in history. This will be at the very bottom of the totem pole here of American presidents. And in terms of his money, a lot of that money is in crypto, Crystal. That's going to just go up like a flash. This will be faster than Hunter Biden's paintings going out. I mean, this is really this is just going to go up in smoke. This is this isn't real.

47:37You see what I mean? And so once Donald Trump loses power and that's what's that's what we're talking about, Even though he's still titrally the president here, this is a disaster here. And that will be true for the Trump family. That'll be true for the extensions of the family. That'll be true for everybody in that cabinet. This is not, in 2020, we saw the problems, even though Trump surrounded himself with guardrails. So remember, in 2020, the people around Trump, and this is what Trump complained about afterwards, were essentially guardrails, Crystal. Here, we're going into a system, or I mean a period of time, where all those guardrails in the White House, in the Cabinet, they aren't just gone once.

48:29Notice Pam Bondi's out. You know, she wouldn't prosecute, gone. Okay. And so what you're seeing here is a very different world, fewer guardrails. And in terms of he'll just have a golden parachute, you know, by the way, Crystal, that was exactly what the Democrats promised Biden if he would do the switcheroo and get out. He's going to have the golden parachute. If you go back and look at all that, I think they're still waiting for the money. You see, once you lose power in Washington, you really lose everything. And that's what Trump's, that's the problem here. It's the escalation trap. It's literally a domestic escalation trap.

49:12And look, I hope I'm proved wrong. I hope the losers, we had a case in Gore versus Bush in the year 2000, where we had the hanging Chad. The vote was decided in Broward County, Florida by 328 votes, I think. And what happened with Al Gore? He graciously surrendered and paid the price for that among Democrats ever since. But, well, Professor Robert Pape, I almost said Senator Robert Pape, The book is our own worst enemy. Thank you for that, Ryan. It's out now. Professor, I did not know you were a Fed. We're going to have to take that under advisement as we're working on our schemes and conspiracies around here.

50:01So apologies if we have to remove you from some of our group chats. I've worked with all parts of the government, DHS, the military, the FBI, the sheriff's office in Cook County. I mean, because I try to be proactive about violence. Well, people have been warned.

50:18Ryan Grim:Successfully infiltrated our show. Yes, it did. Well, thank you. Thank you, Professor. Thank you for doing it. I know it's great. Thank you so much. It's our pleasure. Hello, appliance fans. I'm here at Grand Appliance, where Katie just bought a new Samsung laundry pair. Talk about your experience, Katie. My salesperson was amazing. He knew everything about appliances and was even able to get it on a delivery and install route for tomorrow. Wow. Next day delivery? Yes! My laundry is piling up, so this is a lifesaver. There you have it. Grand for the win. Check out grandappliance.com for full details.

50:57This is Jacob Goldstein from What's Your Problem? Running a business is hard enough. Don't make it harder with a dozen apps that don't talk to each other. One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. That's software overload. Odoo is the all-in-one platform that replaces them all. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR Fully integrated, easy to use And built to grow with your business Thousands have already made the switch Why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com That's odoo.com Did you know every 36 minutes A child in the U.S. is diagnosed with cancer? Which means some of the bravest warriors you'll ever meet Aren't professional athletes or superheroes They're the kids in this fight That's why I'm proud to support Hyundai Hope on Wheels.

51:47For the past 28 years, with support from Hyundai, their dealers, and every new Hyundai sold, Hope on Wheels has contributed over$300 million to childhood cancer research, helping save more than 40 ,000 kids. But we're not done yet. Let's bring every warrior home. Join our fight at HyundaiWarriors.com. So when I traveled to Cuba last March, I had a couple of things that I was trying to accomplish there. One of them was actually I was trying to land an interview with the deputy foreign minister, Carlos Fernandez de Cosillo, who incidentally was on our program last week or the week before. Crystal and I interviewed him, which was interesting, which was like I traveled all the way to Cuba to interview him.

52:26And here he's just coming into the studio.

52:28Ryan Grim:He shows up. The second thing I want to do is I wanted to find out more about the attack that had happened the month before, February of this year, by a group of 10 Cuban Americans who got onto two boats and tried to invade the island of Cuba and overthrow the government. Five of them were killed by the Cuban Coast Guard. The other five arrested. And so along with Reed Lindsay, who's a reporter with Belly of the Beast, which is an American news outlet that has a large presence on the island of Cuba, put in a request with Cuban officials there to be able to interview the people who had survived this attack, which people call the Bay of Piglets.

53:12So we've now published this investigation and these interviews in collaboration with Belly of the Bees and also with Miami New Times, which is this very cool kind of alt weekly down in Miami and over at Dropside News. You put this first element up on the screen inside the armed incursion from Florida intended to topple Cuba's government. I would highly recommend people go and read the entire piece by by Reed. It's Reed ended up carrying out the interviews in Havana. a really fascinating piece. But I want to go through some of it here because these are the first interviews that the men have given, and we have gotten no answers from the American government about what on earth happened with regard to this attack, which is not the kind of thing you would expect if 10 residents of the United States attacked a foreign government.

54:07This is the kind of thing that our FBI, A, is designed to stop because a lot of the planning was done for this pretty much out in the open. They were bragging that they were about to do it. But if they did this to Mexico or whatever, you would have an investigation and figure out how did this happen? Who were these people? Who financed them? Who came up with the idea? No, absolutely none of that. So we did it for them. And so bizarrely, or perhaps not bizarrely, this really begins on TikTok. So you have this account, La Nueva Cuba, the new Cuba, that was going around and trashing the Cuban government, as is typical of a lot of these kind of Miami-based Cuban-American accounts.

54:51and on tiktok people would engage uh with this account and when they would the the person behind it would either uh reach out to them dm them on tiktok or or sometimes people who were watching the con watching this content would kind of dm the account itself this the new cuba account say great stuff love to see this you know i also long for a free cuba one day so we put up this first quote card. Quevedo's account, La Nueva Cuba, is largely populated with images depicting arm resistance and an imagined post-communist Cuba, many of them AI generated. Rodriguez messaged Quevedo. Quevedo messaged him back.

55:32The two hit it off, and Rodriguez said that Quevedo invited him to Florida to meet a group of like-minded exiles. This is a guy who's in Nashville, Tennessee, by the way. Rodriguez told us they were looking for people who had the courage to join an armed uprising in Cuba. Half a year later, Rodriguez would be in Havana explaining to a reporter how he wound up in Cuban custody, but unbowed in his determination to overthrow the government. So on the evening of February 24th, Rodriguez joined nine other men on a fishing boat full of weapons bound for Cuba from the Florida Keys. They planned to seize a police station, ignite an uprising, and prompt U.S.

56:08intervention. Quote, the action plan was simple. Get the Cuban people to rise up in arms, control a province for 72 hours, and ask for a military invention from the U.S. government. And so it did not go the way that they were hoping that it would go. The plan was that they would take these two boats that they had taken from the Keys and kind of slip onto the Cuban island and then attack a police station. one of the boats, one of which was stolen, broke down along the way. And so all of a sudden you have 10 guys piled onto this one boat. Now it's illegal for American boats to get this close to Cuba from the United States.

56:51It's like, obviously it's illegal from the Cuban perspective to invade them, but it's also illegal from the American perspective. We were monitoring everything for these drug boats at the time. Like the idea that this boat filled with like grenades and weapons and 10 dudes with the other boat just floating wasn't noticed is considered to be preposterous by the Cuban government. And I think that with some reason. And so Reid also talked to Rodriguez's girlfriend. We can put the second element up here. According to Rodriguez's girlfriend, Yanny Rodriguez, he left their house in Nashville on Friday, January 23rd, telling her he was going to a camp in Florida with some friends.

57:39She said he collected magazines about guns and owned two or three firearms, which he took with him. She said he had a full-time job driving a dump truck, hauling dirt and stone to construction sites, and she expected him to return soon. The operation was a, quote, complete surprise to her. Who throws his life away like that, she asked.

57:58Ryan Grim:Gentlemen. Yes. Not a way to please your ladies with this one. Ultimately, Raul Cavado, a 40-year-old carpenter who runs a home renovation company incorporated in Bradenton, Florida, in addition to this new Cuba corporation registered in the state as a nonprofit, did not join the other men on the boat. So the guy doing the TikTok and the organizing of all this doesn't get on the boat with them. Reached by phone, Cavado said he was in touch with most of the men through TikTok, but declined to answer questions about his relationship to them and whether he was involved in the operation. He told us, I have nothing to say about that.

58:31The more you talk, the more your enemy knows about you. Quevedo said overthrowing the Cuban government is, quote, doable with enough money, but he was critical of the operation. Quote, it wasn't the right timing. It wasn't the right organization. It wasn't organized, he said. For something like that, you have to have a plan structure, a plan B, a plan C, and an escape plan. If you don't have that being only 10 people, you're lost. And it's a shame because they were good guys. So at this point, you're like, what on earth is going on here? So this is the guy who's recruiting these people. So after he recruits them, they trained.

59:09This is another way they most, they certainly very easily could have been caught if anybody was actually doing some type of sting operation. If these were Muslim men, for instance, you know, the entire FBI would be, would be down on them because they start they start doing arms training at a farm um what they call it a finca in in florida near fort myers so we can put this next element so in no in november they went to a finca or small farm near fort miles myers florida to begin training amid the peppers sugarcane and farm animals there was a rustic shooting range acosta and the other three detainees interviewed said they were told the finca belonged to maritza lugo fernandez a cuban-born political activist who runs an anti-communist organization called the Partido 30 Day November.

59:54So the November 30th party. Lugo denied any knowledge of the operation, but confirmed she gave one of the men access to the property. The party traces its roots to the revolutionary, you know, 30th of November movement, an underground anti-Castro group that was founded in Cuba in 1960 and later reorganized in Florida after several of the leaders went into exile in 1991. the exile movement helped establish the party inside Cuba. Lugo was among its founding members and later assumed its leadership after her husband was imprisoned in 1994. She moved to South Florida in 2002 and continued the party's work from exile.

1:00:34So this kind of a fringe, I mean, these are all fringe things, but this is kind of a fringe anti-Cuba organization. There is an, And what people need to understand about this kind of the anti-communist, anti-Cuba politics down in South Florida is it's very heavily funded by taxpayers. Like the Cuban-American lobby is one of the most effective in Congress. They're like modeled after. They're very deliberately modeled after AIPAC. And AIPAC kind of coached them into how you take, how you can kind of flex power if you have. and they also not only had a lot of money and a lot of lobbying capacity, but Florida has always been an important state and they could swing actual significant votes.

1:01:20And so the deal they've cut with all of these different presidents and congresses is huge amounts of money going down to Florida basically through pro-democracy programs that then fund all of these operations. Now, we don't have any evidence that those particular dollars leaked out into this particular organization, but that's what props up this money. And when Elon Musk blew up USAID, what did Marco Rubio do? Came in and saved all of the democracy money around Cuba.

1:01:53Ryan Grim:He loves democracy. So he loves democracy. So we have not gotten rid of these programs. They were basically the only ones that were saved, plus some stuff aimed at Venezuela. But so then let's get to the actual day itself, because we have, you know, from the men, interviews about or their accounts of what went down. So approximately 7 a.m., a lookout at a Cuban border guard post, which is off of Cuba's northern coast, spotted the boat less than four nautical miles to the northwest. So already the plan is blown up. This was, they were not trying to get caught by the Coast Guard. A radar operator confirmed the sighting and began tracking its course and speed, according to First Colonel Ibe Carballo Perez, the Border Guard's chief of staff.

1:02:40Cruz Gomez said they steered the boat toward a small K near shore, hoping to hide until nightfall. But the tide was out and El Tornado ran aground in shallow water. So the Coen brothers' nature of this is all coming to pass. So here they are. They've run aground. They've been spotted by the Coast Guard. So Acosta says, almost everyone got out of the boat to try to dislodge it. So now they're trying to push the boat off the mud here and keep going and to add more fuel because we're almost out. That's when we saw a boat coming toward us. We didn't know it was the border guard, but we assumed it was.

1:03:16We got the boat free and everyone got on board. but El Tornado at a maximum speed of 24 knots could not outrun the border guard vessel. Acosta says by the time we took off the Coast Guard boat was almost on top of us. That's when Gomez shouted get ready they're going to shoot look for the magazines. Most of the weapons aboard El Tornado were wrapped in moving blankets and packed inside bags. Acosta said the magazines and the guns were in different bags. The group so they're practicing gun safety because they were not expecting this to happen. The group had expected to slip ashore undetected crews, and Rodriguez said, not fight its way onto the island.

1:03:56Cuban authorities say someone aboard El Tornado fired first, striking the border guard captain in the abdomen. All four men confirmed that the first shot came from their own boat. Rodriguez said, one of us fired the first shot. I have to admit that. And he, in the interviews, was the most critical of Cuban authorities. So you can take him with some serious credibility. He is still committed to overthrowing the government, even though he's in their custody. Rodriguez Cruz and Galindo said they did not know who fired first. Acosta said that Amihal Sanchez took the first shot. Quote, Amihal grabbed a magazine for the Chinese made AK-47 he had and opened fire on the Coast Guard, he said.

1:04:38That's when a shootout began. I don't know exactly what happened because at that point I got scared and threw myself onto to the floor of the boat so I wouldn't get hit by the gunfire. And so now you've got a full-on, you know, battle going. Cruz says, it was only when I managed to pull out a rifle that a bullet hit me, adding that the all-night voyage had left the men physically depleted and slow to react. We had been vomiting from seasickness, he said. We were wet, cold, and exhausted. It kept us from thinking it paralyzed us.

1:05:09Ryan Grim:If it wasn't for that, it definitely would have succeeded. They would. Yes, they they caught it. They caught him when they were struggling. Yes. So Acosta said at that moment, all I could think to do was put the weapon beside me and lie down in the boat. I got scared. He added, I always said back at the farm that shooting at a target, a bullseye, is not the same as facing people in real life who are shooting back at you. A powerful insight. Brilliant. Brilliant. One that proved correct. the exchange lasted minutes according to the survivors and cuban authorities uh cruz eventually raised an arm to signal surrender galindo said one of the border guards continued firing until the wounded captain ordered him to stop galindo said the captain shouted at him shouted strongly if the captain had let him continue uh he would have killed us all um uh and then he says perhaps the idea was somewhat naive because we hadn't prepared for every possible situation said cruz We weren't prepared to face the border guard.

1:06:09Rodriguez added, we had no training to confront the Cuban border guard.

1:06:15Ryan Grim:So in their minds, what did they think was going to happen here? So in their minds, two boats were going to slip ashore. They went to a heavily patrolled part of Cuba, which some people in Florida were like, this is the worst place. Like, why would you go there? The Coast Guard is definitely going to survive. I like the idea of just some random Cubans in Florida being like, ah, this was all, you know, Monday morning quarterbacking the whole thing. What are you doing? Right, because they've all thought about it. Yeah. And you're like, no, not there. And so they were going to slip ashore. And then they were going to find a police station.

1:06:50Ryan Grim:Okay. Attack it. Okay. And the attack on the police station is not that different from the actual Bay of Pigs. Right. And then that was going to then spark an uprising across the island where people see this is happening now. Like it's going down. In fact, this is a helpful quote to that point. So we can put up this last quote card. Cruz said he still believed in their cause, but they needed more resources to carry out a successful armed struggle. He compared their failed incursion to Fidel Castro's 1956 landing in Cuba aboard the Grandma. He said, I'm convinced that everyone in Cuba wants change.

1:07:30We still have many of the same problems we faced in the 1950s, and those problems will inevitably give rise to revolutionary movements fighting for a just cause. Rodriguez said he did not regret joining the operation, although he lamented watching his companions die. The suffering his detention had caused his family, end quote, having failed all those Cubans who want a free Cuba, end quote. He said he remained committed to bringing about the end of what he considers a dictatorship, whether it be through military action or the Trump administration's current policy of economic warfare. He said, referring to himself, if they told me they would send an oil tanker to Cuba in exchange for freeing Jose Manuel, I would rather rot in prison than let a single drop of oil enter this country.

1:08:14Ryan Grim:That's wild. That is bleak. He loves Cuba so much that he wants all of the people there to suffer. Yes. And the people are suffering. They're suffering completely differently from the 1950s. 1950s, there was a mob run dictatorship, basically, that ran Cuba that was overthrown. Now they're suffering from no oil being allowed in and a third of the people don't know running water. like the economic situation is absolutely um you know gut you know basement level but so four of the five agreed to speak the fifth uh the fifth did not some of them said they regretted it others said you know it was it was the right thing to do and they're glad that they tried it but they regret the way that unfolded but yeah to your point they didn't have a much of a plan after taking the police station just just a faith that people would spontaneously rise up popular uprising and then the trump administration would kind of run into exactly which is what the cia thought with the bay of pigs that right that's that the that kennedy would have to come in at that point the parallels really are very interesting because also the bay of pigs was also a total disaster and didn't go to according to plan from the start right um and yes you know fell apart instantly and also the conception of like, oh, for sure this will just spark a popular uprising and then TBD, what happens after that?

1:09:41Ryan Grim:And we'll figure it out from there. Yeah, and so we don't know what the U.S. government knew about this. It's very hard to believe that they picked up nothing from it unless they have not a single person inside any of these Cuban movements, which is, I suppose, possible. other than, I mean, people infiltrating them. They probably have people like working with them, like collectively together with them. But right, if this is a right-wing white nationalist movement or if it's a group of Muslims or if it's a group of eco-terrorists or whatever, like - Data center activists. Data center activists, the feds would be all over it.

1:10:22This, they're like, let's see how it goes.

1:10:24Ryan Grim:Let's see how it plays out. You never know. Yeah. Interesting. Great reporting, Ryan. Interesting stuff. All right. That'll do it for us today, right? That'll do it for us today. We've got Friday show tomorrow. We're actually going to be talking to Nithya Raman. So that'll be a really interesting - Future mayor of Los Angeles? Looking pretty likely. Major poll just came out that had her up significantly on Karen Bass, who it appears people are just really frustrated and disgusted with her leadership. So we will look forward to speaking with her. And we've got a lot of other great stuff planned as well.

1:10:56Ryan Grim:So we will see you then.

1:11:29We'll see you next time. and keep shaping. You stay in control, giving direction and choosing the final output. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting work mode. Available on Plus and Pro plans.

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