With the holidays and off-year elections coming up often too does politics in conversation. Maybe too often for some, not enough for others, but either way it’s a good prompt to start talking about talking about politics, starting with an example of the kind of dense topic you should not open with…
Speaking with NPR this week, House Oversight Committee Ranking Dem Robert Garcia was asked about his team’s launch of what Fox News and other MAGA media outlets described as an “ICE tracker” akin to the now banned “ICEBlock” app. “Well, first, to be clear, this is a misconduct tracker that documents civil rights violations by the administration. Yeah. It includes, you know, cases where ICE has detained US citizens, of course. This is not a live location tracker. This is not putting officers at risk. We’re publishing records after the fact to expose any patterns of misconduct. And so this is not tracking anyone or putting out officers’ names. This is about documenting something that’s already happened. So they’re creating a fake controversy,” Garcia said, as Dems so often have to these days. The interview aired after MAGA Congressman Bryan Steil’s committee tweeted this:
Statement from Chairman Bryan Steil:
“The House of Representatives absolutely will not maintain a website that tracks and doxes ICE agents.” https://t.co/VJHeEERNh6
— House Admin. Committee GOP (@HouseAdmin) October 22, 2025
Irony’s dead, hypocrisy’s the law of the land, nobody gives a fuck about intellectual dishonesty anymore, and yet the tweet still manages to transcend it all. Now assume the very real possibility that this asshole simply did not even look at Garcia’s press release in which his staff announced that they’re “establishing a misconduct tracker to systematically document abuse and civil rights violations by this administration — including cases where ICE has detained US citizens and violated federal law. The tracker documents unconstitutional actions after they occur — it is not a live location tool” and just got the Fox News version of it instead. Assume that he doesn’t know the Oversight Dems already have a generalized “Report Potential Wrongdoing” tipline and web form like various committees under both parties have operated for years in search of bad shit to amplify.
Assume that he doesn’t remember that spandex-wearing grapple-freak Jim Jordan did the same thing with his ridiculous “Weaponization” tip line and that Gymbo’s doxxing of various prosecutors and other federal law enforcement officials in 2023 forced the FBI to set up a unit of no fewer than 10 agents working full time to track down death threats from deranged would-be MAGA terrorists.
Steil and/or his staff could fail to consider all of that but there is no world in which they’re unaware of why demented witch Chaya Raichik’s Libs of TikTok account is so popular in the MAGAverse.
This is the Secret Service agent who covered cameras on a hair salon with duct tape then broke into the store so Kamala rally attendees can use the bathroom.
Who is she? pic.twitter.com/NvHIwec4Ip
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 11, 2024
Her ENTIRE fucking schtick is doxxing people and putting them in danger, federal law enforcement agents included. A nonbinary teen, Nex Benedict, was beaten to death in a high school bathroom last year after Raichik had multiple times posted about their district. Mauricio Garcia, the neo-Nazi incel who gunned down eight people at a mall in Allen, Texas in 2023, was a big fan of Raichik. Then there’s the bomb threats – dozens of them against a children’s hospital in Boston – and other acts of intimidation on her lowlight reel and THIS is who Steil and his minions cite to assert moral supremacy on the matter of “doxxing ICE agents” they either knowingly or unknowingly misrepresented?
That’s nearly 500 words to break down a single tweet. It’s prooooooobably not going to be a workable conversation piece should politics come up when you’re chatting with friends, family, and neighbors during this and next weekend’s Halloween festivities. Maybe mention it only if some Fox News head rambles on that very specific matter of “GARCIA IS TRYING TO DOXX ICE AGENTS!!!1!!”
But the shorter and sweeter the better. Fun size, if you will:
You can thank Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for Halloween candy prices being so expensive this year.
Along with everything else.
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) October 31, 2024
For example, this tweet pairs PERFECTLY with articles like this NPR story citing an 8 percent increase in candy prices since last Halloween… Just don’t say it was from NPR. Tell them it was Fox Business News or SeekingAlpha or maybe that you heard it on a podcast. But don’t even mention convicted felon President Trump. Let your MAGA neighbor be the first one to do it. Then slip in some mentions about your electric bill and how it was supposed to be cut in half by now, credit card fees capped at 10 percent, IVF fully covered. Stuff like that which he’s done nothing to fulfill.
At some point they might wear down and say they never thought that lowering prices was realistic, that they actually wanted to mass deportations and a crackdown on rampant corruption and crime…
Don’t even bother on trying to appeal to a moral argument against the deportation agenda or about families getting ripped apart or any of that. The cruelty is the point and that’ll never change.
Inevitably Joe Biden will come up as will Hunter. There’s your opening to mention his pardon – and your right wing cousin’s invitation to ramble about how corrupt it was and so on.
Then it’s “Hey, did you see who Trump pardoned this week?”
President Trump has granted a pardon to Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance. https://t.co/31MiSzFHVx
— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) October 23, 2025
“Oh let me tell you about CZ. I don’t really get the whole crypto thing either, but he was born in China and he was convicted of crimes related to money laundering during the Biden Admin. His company was banned from operating in the US but he still worked with Don Jr and Eric on their crypto exchange project. It’s made them a shit ton of money,” you can say to your Trump fan.
When they’re like “Well whatever, it’s part of doing business in DC, the system’s corrupt. Democrats have been doing this for years. You know that one guy who Bill Clinton pardoned…” is when you bring up this 2023 letter from Republicans Senator Cynthia Lummis and Congressman French Hill:
Binance, notably, is an unregulated crypto asset exchange based in the Seychelles and Cayman Islands.
Binance has historically been linked to illicit activity and is purportedly the subject of a current Department of Justice investigation. On October 16, 2023, the Financial Times reported that Israeli law enforcement authorities had ordered the closure of over 100 Binance accounts associated with Hamas since hostilities began on October 7, 2023. This comes on the heels of an earlier report in May 2023 that Israeli law enforcement had seized over 190 Binance accounts linked to Islamic terrorism between 2021-23.
The fact that Hamas and other terrorist groups have been permitted by Binance to open accounts and conduct business, even after public reporting about the issue, clearly shows that Binance could be providing material support to entities engaged in terrorism under Federal law, or being willfully blind to the fact that it may be doing so.
There’s a solid chance that your Daily Wire-loving neighbor or relative will then start on a tirade about how Biden secretly funded the October 7th attack because he gave $60 billion to Iran who then funneled it to Hamas because that money’s “fungible,” so really both sides are just as bad.
Binance but make it fashion. pic.twitter.com/2JDtyXaec5
— Binance (@binance) October 25, 2025
“Okay, but didn’t you vote for better? You say you were against all the corruption and graft and pardons and secretly funding terrorism and Chinese communist criminals but you know Trump checked ALL of those boxes this week by pardoning that piece of shit, which will reopen his money laundering operation in the United States. They even processed transactions for drug cartels and child pornographers. I can’t remember Joe Biden ever having been accused, let alone credibly, of having done something like that, especially with a guy who helped his family sell a crypto shitcoin to enrich himself. But even if I’m wrong bad, I was to understand that you voted for better than that.”
“Didn’t you vote for better than that?” you add after a few seconds of uncomfortable silence. Do so with perfect clarity and control for the entertainment of whoever may be watching the exchange.
“Hey I think I have to go make sure there’s enough candy in the bowl outside/I need another drink/So how about that Chauncey Billips” is when you know your rhetorical victory is sealed.