Andrew Callaghan: Channel 5, Gonzo, QAnon, O-Block, Politics & Alex Jones | Lex Fridman Podcast #425

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Transcript: https://lexfridman.com/andrew-callaghan-transcript

0:00 – Introduction & sponsor mentions:

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1:18 – Walmart

2:48 – Early life

21:38 – Hitchhiking

33:14 – Couch surfing

42:14 – Quarter Confessions

59:58 – Burning Man

1:15:08 – Protests

1:20:41 – Jon Stewart

1:23:37 – Fame

1:36:55 – Jan 6

1:40:39 – QAnon

1:46:24 – Alex Jones

2:03:17 – Politics

2:12:53 – Response to allegations

2:29:53 – Channel 5

2:35:28 – Rap

2:37:15 – O Block

2:41:11 – Crip Mac

2:44:23 – Aliens

The crash-zoom was great…

Had to beat one of the most in-depth and greatest podcast I’ve ever seen

1:35:45 Which one(s)? 🤔

The lot lizard story took years off my life from laughing so hard.

He does not know enough about Q. What he said was supposed to happen on Jan 6th and the stolen election is made up. Q didn't say any of those things. He hasn't put any thought into it at all nor research in depth and we can tell. Q was/is not a psyop. Future proves past. He doesn't get it.

Whether you agree with their politics or not, TYT has the most perfectly concise quick pitch for viewer donations out there. You don't even have to bother fast forwarding them, well done

Andrew's take on Jon Stewart is so spot on.

Eyy, Flagstaff!! Always a highlight on the 40, was one of my favs as a kid to pass thru. Lived there for about 8 years to really experience it and man let me tell you, it was fcking wild for a So-Cal boy.

Love Andrew and this episode is great so far. But does anyone else not mind their HPPD? I always loved it and felt it made life less boring and am always in awe when I see comments like his.

1:43:25 I wish SO MUCH that QAnon was just **gone**. My Mom (78) fell into it, so deep that we’ll never get her back. She was a member of alternative healing groups (stuff like Reiki, Rohan, hypnotherapy, Healing Touch, etc.) and those groups were targeted because they were generally full of “magical thinkers” more willing to accept a less than likely pile of bullshit. And this group of internet trolls, delusional hyper-partisan alt-right Trump sycophants, foreign agents, doomers, Rapture-loving religious fanatics, people with mental illnesses, and fucking morons all came together under the banner of Q and absolutely rained down ruin on families all across the US (and surprisingly, the world too).

She was justifiably scared of a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic as a person with only one kidney (as a kidney donor), and an impending vaccine that was rushed and untested. She looked for information and got shit like The Epoch Times (dressed in the guise of a respectable paper but really just a mouthpiece for China) that quickly helped to radicalize her to the far-right.

YouTube and Facebook especially picked up that algorithm and ran with it, as the more fear she had, the more it served up to keep her scared. Then it went on to the election and fraud allegations and on to Jan 6 and so on. And all of that, due to one individual born into more wealth than most of us will see in our entire lives, with such a massive ego that he couldn’t stomach the public seeing him fail even once.

And rather than admit he’d lost a poorly run election in which he made no attempts to appeal beyond his base and attacked everyone constantly, he tore democracy apart to convince people there was sufficient fraud to have it stolen from him. Even now, he continues to say “the only way we lose is if it’s a rigged election” with no thought to the possibility that this is the third time he’s run, is not popular beyond his base, and is on the losing side of tearing Roe v Wade apart for a small minority of voters as he attacks women that will decide this election.

My Mom was never political — she idolized MLK and JFK after meeting them in her youth, and voted for Obama, but was otherwise not interested. My Dad is a lifelong Republican. He voted for Jimmy Carter but served in Vietnam and his dad got him into Rush Limbaugh, who they both listened to for his whole life. I hoped when Rush died that my Dad would drop it but he moved on to Steve Bannon who… you can’t get any worse than Bannon.

And Bannon weaponized the fear of an old man afraid of “losing his country” to people that didn’t deserve it and didn’t fight for it like he did. People being given stuff for “free”. He just hates Democrats and suddenly had an ally in my Mom, who hated them for entirely different reasons that weren’t rational (and my Dad doesn’t buy into Q) but they both spurred each other on.

Like Andrew said, Jan 6 2021 was “supposed to be the Storm” that’s perpetually coming (even as I write this, late in 2024). QAnon talks in riddles and never gives information but rather just the most generic questions like “Who stands to benefit?” and “follow the money” — things that you could basically apply to anybody and say “this person stands to benefit from having more money”. They’re big on letters and numbers so they’ll just throw out “it’s the 13th letter of the alphabet” or “it was 1:30” or “13 people were killed” or “13 Columbus Avenue” or whatever they need to retroactively create and solve a mystery.

And of course they never do. They perpetually move the goalposts when the storm doesn’t happen as predicted. “It was a test!” they’ll say, or “we were trying to out the spies” or “it was a PsyOp to see who was truly dedicated and devoted and loyal” or “it was ANTIFA trying to make us look bad” or “it was the Jews!” or whatever.

They have to hold so many competing thoughts in their head at once… Trump is the real President, not Joe Biden, but also… Trump is the President through command of the military while Biden is the President, but also “Biden is actually Jim Carrey or Jon Voight or James Woods in a mask” or “Biden is AI when you see him on video” or “he’s a deepfake” or “he’s a hyper flesh mask on a Secret Service member” etc. because Biden was rounded up with Bezos and George Soros and Bill Gates were all executed or sent to Guantanamo Bay.

You can’t have a rational conversation with someone lost to QAnon because they can’t be pinned down to facts. You can’t show them facts bc they believe everything is fake/manipulated. Live video, even. Or video taken from hundreds of different PoVs to prove “Trump said x” can still be tossed away to “that’s a deepfake”. One of the first things Trump did when in office was to say the press was the enemy of the people, called them fake news, KellyAnne Conway claimed they had “alternative facts”. Made it so his followers would believe anything he said and if evidence was contrary to it, it was bullshit.

Elderly people especially who are not the most internet literate, at a time when AI allows us to actually fake voice and video convincingly and any one of us can do it, and we need to rely on trusted sources more than ever. And as Trump famously said, “I love the poorly educated”. He depends on low info voters who refuse to properly inform themselves or fact check. I’m all for “doing your own research” but as an example, he had 60+ straight losses in courts all across the country (including his Supreme Court where he personally staffed 3 of the 6-3 majority that sides with him no matter what).

So we’re either a country that believes in law and order, or we don’t. And if you lose 60 straight times on the case of “this election was stolen”, then it was not a stolen election. He went out and said it was anyway, and the Jan 6’ers didn’t know or didn’t care. They were told Mike Pence could change it. That the Constitution was set up so 154 million individual voters could have their votes changed by a single man, the VP. Obvious bullshit. And then they nearly had him killed.

They call the Jan 6’ers “political hostages” and “political prisoners” as if Jan 6 wasn’t the one day out of every 4 years where the Capitol Building is so obviously closed to the public while they certify the votes, but it’s okay to trample police and kill them and break doors and windows and storm the building to prevent the candidate you don’t want to win from being certified. I’m a big fan of Andrew but as closely connected to all of this as he is, I think he “doesn’t care” more than he thinks that they disappeared.

They’re still out there, making up nonsense, dragging EVERY FUCKING THING IN THE WORLD into the conspiracy. There’s no safe subject, no person not involved. Everything is a trigger, everything is a sign. There’s nothing you can talk about at the dinner table without it becoming a political conversation now. There’s no evidence you can present. There’s no facts you can use to make your case. There’s nothing you can do to pull someone out of QAnon either.

At this point, there’s so much of a sunken cost fallacy that renouncing everything a person has believed for the past 4+ years and running as bullshit, like everyone said, would just destroy a person. And you saw what happened to Trump just in being unable to admit he lost an election. Now try to imagine someone renouncing buying into his election lies and everything he’s spun to try and steal it back. My siblings and I would give anything to just have our Mom back. She just wanted to protect us from a virus, and be well informed, and these assholes took advantage of her willingness to “do her own research”, her magical thinking and gullibility, and her lack of internet literacy and made her a mark. And now Trump defines her as a person. She lived an entire life, raised a family, and now it’s all in service of a man that will never know she exists and would fuck her over in a second if it benefitted him a single penny.

So fuck Q. Fuck everyone that preys on people like that. There are countless families all across the US and globally even, just destroyed by QAnon. Real funny prank, guys. My siblings and I have each other, thankfully, but I see so many stories in support groups for families of QAnon members where they’ve lost their house, their life savings, their job, etc. because they bought into it so hard. And then, often, were scammed further. Q says Trump is gonna erase all credit card debt, he’s gonna put us back on the gold standard, etc. They stop paying their bills, they destroy their 401Ks, they fuck up their life investments. Or they pay their last dollars for his “trading card” NFTs or get scammed in crypto and bitcoin shit they don’t understand.

I remember laughing when I first heard about QAnon, probably on the Jim Jeffries Show or Jordan Klepper talking to crazy Trump supporters. I remember thinking it was harmless but stupid. But my god, the harm it has caused. I’d give anything to have my family back, pre-2016. The past 8 years have been so dark and depressing, and even when Trump is toes up there will still be people carrying on with Q and destroying lives. So fuck everyone that’s deliberately and knowingly peddling lies and propaganda on the internet. I don’t believe in religion but I wish I did, because I’d like to think there’s a special place in hell for everyone responsible for this.

This video literally can’t be searched on YouTube’s in house search engine I am a subscriber and still it didn’t show the right video

Drugs didn't do this to this guy.

Zionists Shills !

“I’m not an orange man basher” 🤡

March 2020

Don’t think that way, no any parents hate their children, please use positive attitude treat your parents, don’t left sorrows to your families for rest of their life.

Their party covers red and blue two parties for 25 years, now still not vote yet, they have such impatience to divided today, definitely make them satisfied.

God Bless this man

Thanks for what you're doing. I'm a big fan. You're so professional and yet you're yourselves. Top tier!