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Nov. 27, 2019 - The Muckrake Political Podcast

54:00

Bringing Order to Chaos

The Muckrake Podcast gets off to a rolling start as political analysts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the madness of the Republican Party, misinformation campaigns, manufactured conspiracy theories, and the fact that American politics aren't quite what they seem. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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	Of course the president's not the king.
	The president's far more powerful than the king.
	Based on questions and statements I've heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country, and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did.
	This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.
	Why do I care?
	Why do I care what's going on in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia?
	And I'm serious.
	Like, why do I care?
	And why shouldn't I root for Russia?
	Which I am.
	Let's go beyond the stale and tired narratives.
	Let's use historical context and alternative perspectives to fully comprehend.
	Let's dig deeper to tackle the news and bring a little order to these chaotic times.
	That's what your hosts Jared Yates-Sexson and Nick Halsman will do.
	Welcome to the Muckrake Podcast.
	So Jared, you've already gone to Ukraine this month to sit down with the corrupt prosecutors to get dirt on your political enemies, haven't you?
	Well, you know, it's been a slow month.
	A lot of business at the school, you know, getting ready for the end of the semester, getting ready for Thanksgiving, all of that good stuff.
	So I actually have not been able to travel outside the country and carry out a shadow foreign policy lately, you know, for my own political purposes.
	But knocking on wood, we can get that done.
	Right.
	What is wrong with you?
	Gosh, gosh.
	You know, I'll maybe you know what?
	I'll go this month for you if you want me to.
	Well, I appreciate that.
	And first of all, welcome everybody to a running start of the McGregor Political Podcast, where we are trying to piece together the madness of these times.
	We now have tons of things that we have to get on the ground running for.
	Devin Nunez, the ranking member on the Intelligence Committee in the impeachment inquiry, turns out has a little bit of dirt on him as well, as he travel to Vienna, you know, like most of us do.
	Most of us patriots like to travel to Vienna to meet with disgraced former Ukrainian prosecutors to see if we can pick up dirt on former vice presidents in order to help.
	I don't know.
	Right.
	I don't know what it's helping.
	Well, be careful because he might sue you for even uttering those that the thing.
	And by the way, it was the most ridiculous non-answer when he was trying to sort of assume that this was a... they're lying, it's not a correct report.
	But when you listen to what Nunes says, it's clear we know he actually traveled there.
	Here's one thing that bothers me.
	Does it bother you that the members of Congress, on our dime, can travel to Europe, but we don't have any other information besides the fact that he got on a plane?
	Yeah, our tax dollars, mine, yours, the people listening at home, the people who are struggling to get by, somehow or another were drafted into spending their money to send Devin Nunes Over the ocean, to go engage in, if it's not criminal behavior, it is criminal-like behavior, which we're seeing a lot of right now, in some bizarre fever dream that we're going to talk about today.
	We're basically looking at this time where Republicans are Gallivanting around the globe.
	God knows how much money has been spent at this point to send Nunez, Pompeo's been out and about.
	Who knows how much money?
	Barr, I believe, took a trip.
	How much money has been spent for Republicans and Trump Republicans to just go around the world in search of Conspiracies and explanations and political leverage to try and somehow or another save this criminal presidency.
	We're paying for that, Nick.
	Our dollars are paying for that.
	Well, yeah, but thank God a lot less of our dollars are paying for that because of all these beautiful tax cuts that benefit you and me.
	What, right?
	Well, not so much.
	You know, those things didn't have much to do with us.
	But we're very happy to be given, you know, it's one of those things where, you know, we've been getting ready for this podcast, ready to launch this thing.
	We never want for things to talk about, are we, Nick?
	And by the way, this is not that unprecedented to see officials going across the world to try and gin up dirt on their opponents in a political process.
	The original October surprise, or one of the original October surprises, was when Reagan sent his guys over to stop the Iranians from releasing the hostages before the Carter-Reagan 1980 contest.
	We've seen this to some degree in the past, but I don't think it's ever been on this level with so many people, and it's a lot of sort of redundancy too.
	If Rudy Giuliani has already been doing all this stuff as the official, you know, attorney of the president, then I'm not even understanding exactly why Nunes felt like he had to go over there and do the same thing.
	Well, none of this makes a lot of sense.
	And that's why we're here, right?
	This is a really complicated situation.
	And the reason it's complicated is because we're dealing, quite honestly, with a bunch of nonsense.
	We're dealing with some really, really bizarre ideas that have infiltrated American politics and American culture and have now created a really unprecedented moment where There are camps of people who live in alternate realities.
	I was looking at this earlier today.
	A new poll came out today during the impeachment inquiry that shows that 50% of Americans favor the impeachment and removal of Donald Trump as president.
	43% oppose.
	Independents right now are 47 to 45.
	So the 43%, and I want to go out on a limb here.
	I want to be controversial.
	The impeachment inquiry has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that we have a criminal president who has engaged in a criminal conspiracy.
	and has committed impeachable crimes.
	That 43%, the Republicans in this country, particularly the Trumpists, the ones who are, you know, ride or die with Donald Trump, are living in an alternate reality fueled by bizarre conspiracy theories and narratives.
	And somebody has to unknot this thing.
	I don't think that people in the media particularly or in the mainstream sources or pundits
	Really want to get into this stuff, but we need to talk about it We have to we have to get into the weeds on this and talk about why we are where we're at Well, well of that 43% that are you know backing Trump half of them probably just feel like it's all hearsay And there hasn't been anything in the testimony that's directly connected Trump is directly to all this stuff which is also kind of silly and But it does.
	If you wanted to connect it to Trump, it requires a little bit of concentration.
	And that's that's a problem.
	But the other half probably just feel like, eh, so what?
	It's not a big deal.
	It's not an impeachable offense.
	They just feel like, sure, they want to put pressure on a country to get some dirt.
	They probably had no problem when he when Trump was being interviewed by Stephanopoulos and even said, of course, you want to listen to, you know, the dirt that other people are going to offer you.
	That's you know, you've got to at least listen to it.
	So I think there's a little bit of parsing here.
	And there might even be a way for somewhat reasonable people to kind of at least stretch their imaginations to get there as far as what's going on with the impeachment trial.
	Well, I remember growing up.
	Um...
	You know, what we're talking about now with Trump's base and the people who support him and the people who are like investing their identities in Donald Trump.
	I grew up with these people.
	I grew up in my family around them and my community around them.
	And these are the same people who back in the day would very, very proudly say things like Richard Nixon got caught doing what every other president did, right?
	Or it was a witch hunt trying to take down Richard Nixon.
	So there's a lot of people whose mindset is everything is corrupt and so there's – everybody does it.
	So why are they going after Trump?
	And that's where we get a lot of this partisan idea, right?
	The really, really scary thing is this other group within that group.
	And these are the people that republicans are talking to because I know in conversations with people in my life, people are like, what in the hell are republicans talking about?
	Every time Devin Nunes gets in front of the mic on live television, he talks about Ukraine possibly having been the country that interfered in the 2016 election and the fever dream the Democrats are in.
	And, you know, there's not enough time when you're doing like a five minute segment on a cable news network to get into this stuff.
	Or maybe people don't want to because it's bizarre.
	But what's happening at the heart of this is a conspiracy theory that it's not just a conspiracy theory.
	It has become the reality which these people live in.
	And I can't tell you right now whether or not Devin Nunes believes in this or if he's simply using it for some sort of political bludgeon.
	And to be honest, it's getting harder and harder to tell by the day what Republicans like Nunes and Rudy Giuliani and even Trump feel about this because it's obvious on some level that they believe it.
	And it's obvious on some level that they think that they have some sort of political benefit from it.
	But this thing that we're talking about right now, it's been called the insurance policy.
	It's been called CrowdStrike, whatever we want to call it, right, is basically a continuation of a conspiracy theory that Trump always talks about, which is the deep state, which is itself a reiteration of the New World Order conspiracy theory, which is a reiteration of the elders of the Protocol of Zion conspiracy. which is a reiteration of the elders of the Protocol of Zion But the main difference now, it isn't some sort of political American manifestation.
	It's not something that's been cooked up in the collective unconscious.
	This is a conspiracy theory that has been designed, implemented, and weaponized by Russia in order to sow discord in America and in order to sort of change the world order more towards Russia's advantage.
	And these people, despite being warned by Fiona Hill and basically every intelligence apparatus in America, they have completely dedicated themselves to this conspiracy theory and they now live in it.
	Well, you know, the response to Fiona Hill having, you know, having her yell at the Republicans in front of her for following the propaganda that Russia is spreading out was, you know, they're like, we did this report and it was a bipartisan thing and we all say in there that Russia, you know, tried to get involved in our elections.
	So, like, they're trying to have it both ways where they'll say, well, you know, we did pay some lip service to this and, you know, but, They do have this notion, and it's kind of interesting that, you know, some, a couple of random Ukrainians might have tried to have, I'm not even exactly sure what the bottom of that or what they think they did as far as like, it certainly wasn't any kind of a hacking thing, but they tried to sort of lump all that stuff together in with what the Russians did as a systematic, you know, military intelligence operation.
	And that's what's really frightening.
	I mean, we actually have video of these Russians in their in their offices, wherever they are, you know, hacking into the DNC servers.
	They actually reverse hacked and found these guys.
	It's like they have incredible evidence to this.
	Now, let's just give them props for a second because did you see that John Kennedy, the senator, went back on news with Cuomo and actually admitted that he was wrong and finally admitted that the Russians did, you know, cause the hacking of the DNC server?
	I did.
	And I think, you know, it's so hard to give credit anymore because you look at something like Kennedy going on TV and saying that he was wrong for trumpeting Russian propaganda, which by the way, what a time we live in, Nick.
	What a time that you have to go on national TV and say, I'm sorry that I'm peddling Russian conspiracy theories.
	But I think it's worth noting that he peddled it on Fox News and he apologized for it on CNN, which I think is a little bit of brand awareness.
	Yes.
	But at the heart of it, you brought up something interesting.
	You said, I don't even know what Russia is trying to do.
	It doesn't make sense, right?
	Well, it doesn't have to.
	None of this has anything to do with narratives that make sense.
	If you want to lose your mind for a little bit, just Google QAnon and just spend a good 20 minutes trying to connect those dots.
	It's not ever about making actual narrative sense.
	It's about feeding cognitive dissonance in the minds of people.
	It's about muddying the water and throwing a bunch of facts out there that people can use to combat facts that work against them.
	Russia is engaged in a really, really advanced idea of informational warfare.
	All they have to do is put out a bunch of different ideas, and some people are going to jump on them, other people are going to reject them, but at the end of the day, all it does is make everything that much cloudier and weirder, and so some people are going to tune out, and it's not going to matter, and it's going to lead to apathy, and it's going to lead to basically the shredding of reality, which is what everyone's trying to make happen here.
	But let's be clear about what the plan is and what the message is, because again, We never ever want to actually come out and say what the goal is or what the story is, right?
	The deep state and the insurance policy and all this stuff.
	What's being said here and what's being levied, and this is the reason why the people who stay with Trump stay with Trump, and it doesn't matter what gets said.
	Russia is pushing the idea that there is an evil international conspiracy of satanic-like people, in this case, Democrats, right?
	And, you know, they'll call them globalists, which you and I know is just, you know, a dog whistle for saying Jewish people and Jewish interference.
	There's a reason why George Soros always shows up in these things.
	And so the whole idea is that globalism is being run by a shadowy cabal of evil people engaged in a conspiracy.
	If you believe that, if you really hold that in your mind and you want to believe that that is true, then the antidote that has been pushed forward is nationalism, right?
	The idea is that each country should be responsible for themselves and reject this globalist conspiracy.
	Well, that's what Republicans and Trump are pushing.
	They're pushing the idea of basically white nationalism.
	Well, not basically.
	It's white nationalism.
	They're pushing the idea of white nationalism that pushes against globalism and saying that there is an evil conspiracy.
	And guess what?
	If there is an evil conspiracy, Nick, that means it doesn't matter what crimes you break or what crimes you commit or what laws you break because You're fighting an evil, right?
	That means that you can have a shadow foreign policy.
	That means that you can accept bribes and you can launder money because you're doing so in the greater good.
	And everyone always talks about fascism and authoritarianism and they always believe that, you know, that it's just an evil.
	No, authoritarianism and fascism are people who believe that they're doing the right thing at any cost.
	Yeah, let me piggyback on that because even aside from the global conspiracy stuff, I think even regular Republicans feel like their core beliefs in how government should be run are so important and so vital to the continuing of the republic that It doesn't matter what these politicians have to do to get it done.
	They have to cut these taxes because that will absolutely improve the economy.
	We have to cut entitlements because we must have people pull themselves up by their bootstraps because everything is completely fair in this country.
	So in my mind, aside from that, because that's what gets crazy is what you're talking about.
	I feel like regular ordinary people simply feel like it doesn't matter you know we have to get these this agenda done finally once and for all and I don't mind if we have to you know skirt the ball a little bit and whatever we can do because once we get it all in place everyone will be really happy and it'll be a perfect society for everybody.
	So that's what I think is what is why it becomes so strong and because it's the same thing that we're talking about.
	But when you can boil it down to sort of regular meat and potato stuff, it can grab hold to a lot more people.
	It doesn't sound so crazy.
	Well, one of the things we want to do on this podcast is I personally, at least, I want to reject the idea of left and right, one versus two, right?
	Like X versus Y. This very, very simplistic narrative that everybody goes to, which is Democrats versus Republicans.
	They do this, they do that.
	It's much more complicated than that.
	The Republican Party is a tent that encompasses an unbelievable amount of different groups, right?
	The group that you're talking about are the pragmatic Republicans.
	And that strain has roots that goes back as far as Nixon, at least, which was an individual who had absolutely no morals or ethics.
	But the reason he didn't have morals or ethics is because he believed that he was capable of doing great and just things as long as he had the opportunity to do them.
	And that meant winning elections at any cost.
	That meant breaking into DNC headquarters.
	It meant spying on his opponents.
	It meant bombing Cambodia when there wasn't a war going there.
	Yeah, or smearing the press.
	Right.
	And so that's a group of people who know deep down that Trump is dangerous and what he's doing is wrong.
	But guess what?
	It doesn't matter as long as they're taking over the federal judiciary.
	It doesn't matter as long as they're getting their tax cuts.
	It doesn't matter as long as they're scoring cultural wins, right?
	That's the pragmatism that's at the heart of that.
	And that's a strategy.
	That is a deal that they've made.
	If anybody's interested, go look at the quotes that have come out from people like Paul Ryan since he's left office.
	He will tell you that he made a deal here.
	He decided there was a greater good that could be accomplished by dealing with Trump who he didn't trust and he didn't believe in.
	That's one group.
	Then there's this other group that the Republicans have had to basically cultivate and turn into a base of power.
	Because here's what Republicans believe in and what the party's been about, which is tax cuts and helping the wealthy and international power, right?
	Those things aren't very popular to poor people, particularly.
	So they've had to cultivate up this white identity group that the Southern strategy basically played to, and they decided we can pick off this group here, this group there, this group there.
	Now we have a Republican Party that is wildly unpopular around the country, but it has figured out exactly which groups to play to and which groups to lift up in order to win things like the Electoral College or to gerrymander groups.
	So now we have a Republican Party that has this really diseased center to it, that believes in these conspiracy theories, and it believes in these really, really awful, troubling things.
	And all those groups cobbled together have created this Frankenstein's monster that, I mean, really, it's endangering the country every day.
	Sure.
	And a lot of those groups never had voted before.
	So the stirring up, especially of the racist stuff, is what gets a lot of these people out to vote, which they probably never had voted before.
	And that's what's kind of also screwed up a polling because it wasn't sort of based on a lot of the historical data they could use.
	And it's interesting because even those were the pragmatic Republicans tend to be from, you know, an older generation.
	Who clearly still struggle with the notions of like I even think ethical behavior and certainly racist behavior where they kind of lack the subtleties of like what racism is.
	They also lack the sophistication of understanding what like things like Fox News do and how that's really just propaganda.
	And not really news.
	And I would imagine that younger generations, I kind of hope, are a little bit more savvy to that.
	Maybe a little bit more cynical.
	But there's something about the hypnotic production values of Fox News that has entranced a whole generation of a very specific age range in this country.
	And that's what's also been fueling this fire.
	Well, when I used to go and report on the Trump rallies, what I would always find is that, like, in an arena or in a gymnasium or wherever it was, you would always find older Republicans sitting up in the stands.
	And these are the ones who go out with, like, you know, elephant brooches and, you know, Reagan hats and stuff like that.
	And that's a group of people who were like, well, this is my nominee.
	He's going to get judges.
	He's going to do this stuff.
	Then you had down on the floor near the stage, you had a scrum of people, particularly younger, angrier people, right?
	Who were spouting white ethno-nationalist stuff.
	They were the ones saying like the racial slurs.
	They were the ones talking about violence and revolution.
	So what we're actually seeing, and I think this should concern everybody, Fox News is to the people in the stands, right?
	Fox News is to the people who have been involved in this for a long time and they've been casually radicalized in really nationalistic sort of ways, quiet ways, right?
	It's the waving of the flag.
	It's the bald eagles soaring across the screen.
	The people in the scrum, the younger, they're not even Republicans.
	They're a different group.
	They don't really buy into Fox News.
	They think Fox News isn't extreme enough.
	These are the people who are listening to podcasts, who are going on YouTube and watching lectures.
	They're the ones who are radicalized online.
	And so they're actually moving more and more, and you want to talk about like this Russian propaganda?
	Russians are pushing this idea throughout the world.
	This is why we're seeing a lot of far-right coalitions growing up before our very eyes in Europe.
	It's happening here, too, because the younger people, and do not discount what the economy is doing for it, right?
	We have a lot of people who aren't making the money that they feel like they should or they feel like the world is changing around them and they're disadvantaged.
	And they're hearing the same thing that has radicalized extremists for years.
	I mean I've talked to one ex-neo-Nazi after another who tells me that they radicalize the exact same way that ISIS does.
	They find disadvantaged – or not disadvantaged, disaffected white youth who are frustrated and pissed off and they basically tell them join something larger than yourself and become more dangerous than you are now.
	So you have a group in the stands who are watching the group down on the floor gain power and they feel like they're the same party because Democrat, Republican, left, right, blue, red.
	But it's not the same thing.
	It's actually mutating into something much, much dangerous and weird.
	And until we're able to like actually define this and put our finger on what it is, it's only going to get worse because people are in denial about what it is.
	It's an interesting parallel here because just like a lot of the disaffected sort of, I guess, white people in this country are now feeling probably how everybody else of color has been feeling for centuries in this country.
	It's almost like welcome to the club.
	But also what's going on with our government now and how it's just blatantly corrupt is how most of the other countries in the world have been dealing with.
	We always used to be this beacon of ethical behavior to some degree.
	And so it's now all these other countries are saying to us, oh, welcome.
	Now you finally get to see what it's really like and what we've been dealing with for all these centuries.
	And, you know, we're all sort of now becoming on a level playing field.
	And that's what's also frustrating because at least the perception of what government is to us and what it represented tended to give us enough soft power across the world that, you know, less people would want to, you know, come over here and blow us up, basically.
	And now that we've eroded that and it stirs up more of this, you know, we're just sort of all in the same morass.
	We don't have any notion of like, you know, what America should stand for, the land of opportunity, exceptionalism, all those things.
	It becomes more dangerous from a national security standpoint.
	Absolutely.
	And if you've been paying attention to the impeachment inquiries, we have one diplomat after another who's coming out.
	And these, by the way, and I feel like they've been the real quote unquote stars or standouts of the inquiry.
	These are serious people who they're not even partisan.
	Right.
	They serve under under different party presidents all the time.
	They don't have any agenda besides trying to use that soft power and trying to make the world better without war.
	And they're coming out and they're saying something's wrong here.
	And what's wrong is that this even the perception of what America used to be.
	And there's a vast, vast difference between what America has been and what we perceived it to be.
	It's gone, right?
	And so we're losing our influence.
	We're losing the trust of the world.
	And part of the reason is because we have a criminal conspiracy that operates the government and does it blatantly and openly.
	But what has happened with, you're absolutely right, the perception of how this stuff has happened, you know, the reality that we thought we lived in was never actually reality to begin with, right?
	It was a white dominant perspective that everybody else had to live with then.
	What we're seeing now, maybe we have a change of economics a little bit and maybe the demographics are changing, but it's just the perception.
	These people are willing to basically burn everything down and get behind a despotic political figure like Trump simply because the rise of social media and the rise of, you know, this progressive society is even acknowledging that other people have different experiences.
	Right.
	And they feel like that because that is happening, that they're losing power.
	And the way that fascism grows is you have a group that has been in dominance and in power.
	They feel like they're losing power.
	You have a strong man come along and say I'm not gonna let that happen Here's the group who's to blame and let's go after them and it is paint-by-numbers Just what's happening right now.
	That's what we have.
	We have a rise of fascism and it's an existential crisis that we have to get to.
	Right.
	You tend to be a little bit more alarmist than I do, only because, you know, I think so many people in this country, like they just want to, they drive their kids to school.
	They come, they pick them back up at the end of the day, they go home and have dinner and they go to sleep, right?
	Like that's sort of, and that wouldn't even change under fascism in theory, right?
	Like all that stuff would just, they just have their own little worlds.
	We just want to go have a job and, And it's bad enough what's happening here at home with corruption, with the mismanagement of the government.
	But when it starts to also leak out into international stuff, in incidents like what we had with Turkey, and how we abandoned the Kurds, that's when you start to realize how dangerous it is.
	Especially why it's dangerous is because you start to wonder whether they're doing this simply as a distraction from all the corruption that's going on here, if they really do mean to do this, or if there are even more corruption going on.
	I mean, clearly, we understand that there is some implicit connection between Trump and Putin.
	And so when you see what he did with Turkey and not even consulting the military, basically, it just adds fuel now.
	But then we get accused, if you start to say that stuff, of dealing in the same kind of conspiracies that you mentioned about Soros and all those different things.
	So that's the other powerful thing about muddying the waters is that when you want to try and sort of connect some dots here and make a legitimate reasonable argument to what's going on behind the scenes then you're just simply another conspiracy peddler.
	Well, when I was covering the election in 2016, the first time that I ever heard about the possibility of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia was in the summer of 2016.
	And I was being told by everybody, we're talking people inside of campaigns, we're talking people who are noticing things within the machinery.
	They were like, there's something going on here.
	There's something weird that's happening between Trump and Putin.
	Now, we don't have to sit here and we don't have to peddle conspiracy theories about meetings here or payments here or even, you know, compromising videotapes or pictures.
	Like, we don't even need to get into that.
	What we need to talk about is the fact that for over a year, this stuff was hiding out in the open, right?
	It was there for anybody to notice it.
	And the media said constantly, these are conspiracy theories.
	There's no way that this could possibly happen.
	Well, guess what?
	They missed out on one of the biggest stories in the history of America.
	And they did it because this is all unprecedented.
	No one ever thought that a president would do something like this or would be engaged in something like this.
	This is a different time.
	You don't get to this amount of corruption.
	You don't get to get to this point of what I consider to be treasonous behavior.
	You don't get to this point without many, many, many years of corruption and problematic behavior.
	Like the, what we're discovering now in this moment is that a lot of what we thought America was in the past was a myth.
	It was, it was this sort of idea of a, of a perfect country and it was God's chosen country, which we're going to get into here in a second.
	This idea that that it's ordained to be good and just and and basically those people you're right They're picking up their kids.
	They're going to work there They're laying down at night and and they kind of took their eye off the ball of what was actually happening in the country And so I say it all the time Trump is not the disease.
	He's a symptom He's he's the late late symptom that all of a sudden you're like, oh, this is a sickness That has been gestating for a while And that's where we are now.
	And now we just have to start to really take a look at this thing, understand that things are changing rapidly, and that anything is possible.
	These people are capable of things that we can't even imagine at this point, simply because they're not operating on the same rules that you and I or the people we thought in the past were operating by.
	Right.
	And the government itself and the framework is struggling mightily to keep this thing together.
	And we inch slowly here and there to certain things that are kind of keep the norms in place to some degree.
	And it is amazing how smart the founders were because they did think about some of these things.
	And what we just found out is that, you know, Don McGahn is supposedly going to be compelled to testify, but they're going to appeal that.
	but it still seems hard to fathom that even the other courts above that are going to go against these two decisions.
	And it seems like that would open up the floodgates to not only Dominic Ann testifying, who was the White House attorney, but also that means Bolton, Mulvaney, 'cause I think all those guys are just waiting on this one case to be decided, and they'll follow that.
	So this is the moment here where, can the framework of the government keep this thing together, Because I do agree, while I'm not as alarmist as you, I do agree that where we're going, and if it doesn't quite, you know, if the government can't handle that, and the framework can't handle that, then we are gonna, the republic is gonna fall apart.
	We will simply, it'll be the end of the United States.
	Now who's alarmist?
	Right, well, it'll just turn into like we don't really have a democracy where we have some sort of a Republican Socialist Republic or whatever they call that right so but it'll change into something else And so whether you want to call it the death of what we had or not It'll just won't be the same anymore and the only solution in my mind for all this would be to radically change a lot of the laws and to safeguard from someone else like Trump ever coming back into power to do all the things he's doing and
	I don't know if I have a lot of faith in that because that would probably require a two-thirds majority in the Senate by the Democrats and then a Democratic control of the House and a Democrat control of the White House.
	Who knows if that will ever happen again?
	I would argue that we haven't had democracy.
	I mean, you know, obviously we started as a democratic republic, but I would argue we haven't had a democratic system in years and years and years.
	I feel like it's been overwhelmed by money, by special interest, and quite frankly, yeah, gerrymandering everything to the Republican Party.
	That's the thing is the Republican Party has shown itself to be a bad faith political party that is only interested in maintaining power and continuing power and consolidating power at the expense of the voters in the country.
	They have no interest in helping the country right now.
	It is all about continuing their power.
	Well, hang on for one second because there are probably moderate Republicans that would take a lot of offense and turn this podcast off right now from having you say that.
	That's a different thing.
	But then the question I have is, are you aware?
	Are they aware that they have they've caught the Republican Party red handed with several emails in several states gerrymandering and disenfranchising people on purpose to sequester the vote so they don't get a lot of votes and they can keep their power, keep control of their power.
	So it's like that's a problem.
	I think the disconnect we also have is that a lot of these Republicans either don't know about this information, it's come out, it's been reported, or what's even worse is that they don't believe it.
	They don't believe the evidence in front of their face.
	This isn't the same Republican Party.
	And that's one of the main problems that I really want to address on this podcast.
	Again, when you go on TV and you talk about Democrats and Republicans, you're not actually addressing the problem as it is.
	Right.
	You have a lot of Republicans.
	And this goes back to that arena with the people up in the stands and the people down in the scrum.
	They don't understand that they have gone through a metamorphosis.
	They have changed.
	It's become a different group and it's happened in the last 20 years.
	This is not a group that's worried about fiscal conservatism.
	They're not particularly worried about standing with word history and yelling stop.
	They're interested in consolidating power, and what has happened is they've made one deal after another, and they've made one game theory decision after another, and it's led them to a place where you have Republicans who you're exactly right.
	They don't understand that they are part of something that is different, right?
	It's the proverbial frog in the boiling water, like you're just hanging on the water, and you don't realize the temperature is going up, up, and up.
	But I will say, you said something Earlier about the framework and the founders, I think one of the more disingenuous ideas is that somehow or another, Democrats or critics of Trump are trying to overthrow a democratic election, right?
	Quite frankly, the Constitution, it mentions how to impeach a president before it ever mentions what a president is.
	That's the first mention of the presidency is how to remove a criminal president.
	We now have a system where if it worked and one of the big differences that people need to wrap their minds around and this is about the Republican Party that has changed.
	Richard Nixon resigned because Republicans came to his office and said, you need to resign for the good of the country.
	They didn't have Fox News.
	They didn't have online.
	They didn't have social media.
	They didn't have all that stuff.
	So one of the things that's happening now is you have a Republican Party that is becoming a cult of personality.
	It might already be a cult of personality.
	Let's go ahead and throw becoming out.
	Right, we have just yesterday Rick Perry calling Trump the chosen one.
	We had a federal judge, Katonji Brown-Jackson, who came out and said presidents are not kings.
	This is making Don McGahn testify in the inquiry.
	And then Alan Dershowitz, who has somehow or another become one of the most bootlicking supporters of Donald Trump there is, said, and I quote, presidents are more powerful than kings.
	How do we live in this situation?
	How do we maintain our country in the way it's supposed to be or the way that we thought it was supposed to be if we have a party that's not willing to embrace its duty and its oath and is more concerned with maintaining power?
	And that's the question of the moment.
	Right.
	What we also have is a White House that is telling private citizens to ignore the law by not honoring the subpoenas.
	That is a new thing.
	I mean, I suppose what the argument then is, is that this is a sham investigation.
	So we can't deign to give it any kind of validity by going and showing up.
	And by the way, thank God for every single ambassador that has shown up for this testimony.
	they're all going in defiance of Mike Pompeo, which is fascinating, because I thought for sure when Mike Pompeo came out and said, we're not going to, we're being harassed and we're not gonna accept these subpoenas, I thought for sure that there was going nowhere with the hearings.
	But all these people crossed the picket line and stood up to that immense pressure in the face of ruining their careers to do that.
	And like you had said, I don't think I'm more, I could be more impressed with anybody than these ambassadors that came out and spoke.
	Fiona Hill is the most impressive person I've seen ever in these kind of hearings.
	And the fact that she stood up to these guys and to their face told them that they're just propagating Russian propaganda is like, but didn't even make a dent, which is the craziest thing.
	It's not even really making a dent that normal Americans should look at this and say, you know, subpoenas are the law.
	If I ever got one, I'd have to go and appear in court.
	And the idea that you have the White House systematically telling people not to do that, that should sink it all together.
	It should tell you how guilty they really are.
	And yet it doesn't cause a ripple.
	And that's the dissonance there.
	That's the disconnect.
	It's hard to fathom how we got there, short of looking at, you know, the real idea here is that what you mentioned is the last 20 years has taken hold, this whole notion of the Republican Party.
	Well, in the last 20 years, what's taken hold is Fox News.
	And I honestly feel like this is sort of what, if you want to look and point to something, it's the rise of Fox News, which has sort of gotten us where we are.
	Well, I would also go ahead and say it's the rise of cable news in general.
	This is one of the reasons I wanted to do this podcast.
	What you just laid out was a really nuanced view of what's happening with the impeachment inquiry, right?
	The witnesses, for the most part, have been members of the Trump administration.
	They are people who have been appointed or, you know, in Gordon Sondland's case, the one who said that there absolutely was quid pro quo, he gave a million dollars to Trump's inaugural fund.
	But he's not a fan.
	Right.
	He's an anti-Trumper.
	But what has happened is that cable news and particularly the politics in this country, it has been turned into an entertainment and it's treated like a sport.
	Right?
	When the hearings are over at the end of the day, it's like SportsCenter.
	It's like, oh, who won last night?
	The Bucs or the Rockets, right?
	Who made the best plays?
	Who did this?
	So what's happened is the oversimplification of this team versus this team, left versus right, Democrat versus Republican, has obscured what's actually going on.
	We're not talking about Democrats versus Republicans here, because Republicans are coming out right now and saying that this is wrong, too.
	Personally, for me, one of the most surprising things that I've seen in the last decade is watching Will Kristol, who is like one of the most stalwart Republicans, coming out on social media and saying, not only is this problematic, but it's making me reconsider my conservativism.
	This isn't Democrat versus Republican.
	This is Americans versus this bizarre doomsday cult that has taken the place.
	It's like pod people, Nick.
	It's a group of people who are not operating in a national and public interest.
	So I look at these hearings, and by the way, I think this is part of what went wrong with the Robert Mueller situation.
	Robert Mueller was a lifelong Republican.
	This is a guy who is Republican as it gets, and it was treated like every time he would reveal something or he would testify something, it was like, does this help the Democrats?
	Is this a good day for the Democrats?
	No, it's not the left versus right, blue versus red.
	This is an existential political constitutional crisis, and it just so happens that this group of people who are dangerous call themselves Republicans, so they're still treated as if they're legitimate and as if they're real.
	And that's not an actual thing that's happening right now.
	We're dealing with a new species, an invasive species, Well, here's the other issue I think we need to get down to as we get closer to the end of this podcast for this episode is, what is actually going on?
	What is Trump motivated by?
	What is the whole, you know, conspiracy in the very background?
	I think we need to get down to as we get closer to the end of this podcast for this episode is what is actually going on?
	What is Trump motivated by?
	What is the whole conspiracy in the very background?
	And I think while they are cultivating certain segments of America in order to win these elections to consolidate power, like you said, this is really rooted in simply – this is what the Democrats need to say more simply is that this is simply the – this is really rooted in simply – this is what the Democrats need to say more simply is that this is simply the – Putin wanting to Money.
	You just said it.
	Yep.
	That's what we'll do.
	Now everything else is sort of just you know the extra stuff and whatever that they're gonna throw in there and then try and distract but in reality like if you're wondering what the collusion was or what this whole thing is rooted in why was Manafort chosen as the campaign manager and why you know what is Jeff Sessions involved with all this and now we have even people like We're talking about the beginning.
	Nunes going there.
	You had Dana Rohrabacher.
	You had a lot of these people who were probably under the spell of the Russians anyway.
	So, what was this all about?
	This is simply about the getting rid of the sanctions.
	Now, here's the interesting thing I find.
	What leads us to believe that the sanctions are even still in place?
	How do we even know that they're being enforced?
	Really?
	Right?
	Like, they could easily have gotten rid of them and we wouldn't have known.
	And they already did a little bit.
	They already got rid of certain sanctions by supposedly making, I'm forgetting who it was, like, you know, sell off a little bit of his company so he's not part of that for Russia.
	Whatever.
	But like, you know, I almost feel like they've already gotten to this deal.
	It's already been done.
	And now they're just reaping the rewards.
	It's all money.
	And that's the depressing truth of this thing is we talk about honor and duty and oaths and stuff like that.
	But what we have is a group of people that are interested in the bottom line.
	They're worried about money.
	And when you look at Putin's Russia, it's what I've taken to calling post politics.
	They're not interested in helping people.
	They're not interested in forwarding agendas.
	They're worried about getting the democratic part of things out of it, right?
	They don't want people voting.
	They don't want representatives arguing about bills and legislation.
	They just want to turn this into a show that'll keep people happy and not worried about, well, not even happy, just quiet, right?
	And apathetic.
	They're just worried about putting on a show that makes it seem like it's legit while the leaders and the oligarchs just absolutely take everything that they can grab and stuff in their pockets.
	That's what Trump is.
	This isn't a person who's interested in anything approaching politics.
	I mean, there's a reason why this administration doesn't get anything done.
	It's not meant to get anything done.
	It's meant to put on a show while it gets richer and richer and richer and richer.
	And that's what Trump is about.
	And the problematic thing here is we have had this mindset for decades now.
	And it started in the 1980s with particularly Ronald Reagan and the group of people with trickle-down economics and supply side, whatever we're going to call it today.
	But basically it means we're going to take everything and we're not going to give anything to you.
	And it continues.
	And that's what we're seeing now is a fruition of it.
	You don't get this amount of corruption.
	You don't get this amount of disrespect.
	You don't get this amount of criminality and greed without decades of greed.
	And that's what we're watching.
	It's the final evolution of that idea, which is what Putin and Trump represent.
	They don't have to have compromising videotapes.
	All they have to do is offer money and possibilities for money.
	And it doesn't even have to be a lot of money.
	In some cases it is a lot of money.
	Other cases it's piddling and it would make you depressed to know how much this country is being sold out for.
	But that's where we are.
	This all wraps back up to what we talked about earlier, because when you mentioned Morning in America and Reagan and trickle-down economics, what they wanted to do was give a lot more money back to the wealthy class, and that'll trickle down, everyone will be happy, and that's why they'll do anything that they can by, you know, in a Machiavellian sense to get that done.
	But it's failed every time they've done it.
	It's led us to recessions, it's separated the distance between upper class and the middle and lower class wider and wider year over year because of this stuff.
	And so then when you pile on top of that, You know, this notion of doing anything by any means possible to get this goal that you want bleeds into business.
	So we see that people are willing to violate every law they possibly can, and that's what led us into the Great Recession because of the bottom line.
	But how is that any different?
	Violating those laws and probably getting away with it, because certainly Trump has, which we'll talk about the taxes in one second.
	How is that any different than a poor person who's, you know, Sort of having to commit crimes to be able to have anything that they can afford to live, afford to eat.
	I don't think there's much difference between that white-collar crime and the other kind of crimes we see that are so vilified at this point because so many of the white-collar people just get away with it.
	And this is another notion.
	The biggest bombshell this week isn't, you know, or last week was the Fiona Hill testimony or even Don McGahn being forced to testify if he does.
	You know, another step towards getting Trump's taxes has now been hurdled.
	They actually now rule that they will need to be released, and now they've gotten a stay, but that will actually be the biggest, I think, bombshell of them all.
	When you finally realize how much of a crook Trump is with his taxes, and that he was money laundering, and that he was lying about his income, and protecting all these things, I think that might finally be the hammer that will drop him, but the only question now is, is are they going to either A, be able to prevent that from happening, and then B, are whatever ends up getting released,
	Well, depressingly, we're talking about business, not politics.
	That's one of the things that these people depend on, is that we constantly mistake the two, right?
	Because it's one of those things where you see pundits who are usually very smart or at least have their finger on some pulse, They look at Trump and they say, Oh, he's the president.
	He's a political figure.
	No, he's a businessman.
	And the way that he is operating in this government is like a business, an international business, which means that you're not bound to any country.
	That's why corporations aren't interested in paying money for roads and education and healthcare, is because they don't technically have a country.
	They straddle continents.
	They live all over the world, which means if Russia wants to work with you, absolutely work with Russia.
	It doesn't matter if there's anti-democratic or dictatorial, as long as they give you a political, or I mean, not political, God, let's stay away from that, an economic advantage, you work with them.
	These post-political people are not interested in democracies or human rights or even human dignity.
	They're worried about building empires and gaining more and more.
	So yes, we absolutely have to talk about it through that.
	Because, major businesses, what happens when you skirt the law?
	You're looking for an advantage.
	And businesses do this all the time.
	The big ones do.
	And they're constantly trying to find some lines outside of the law.
	Well guess what happens if they get caught?
	They get levied with a fine and they keep going, right?
	They quote unquote learn a lesson even though they're not actually learning a lesson.
	In this case, and you go back to the housing crisis and I think that is a perfect place to talk about it, they realized that oversight was weak.
	That they could get away with anything that they wanted to do and so they didn't just go outside the lines, they went completely off the playing board.
	And that's what Trump and all these people are doing.
	They have found that oversight doesn't matter, and they can break any law and challenge any institution because it's not going to challenge back.
	And so what we're looking at is a completely different game that nobody yet totally understands how to talk about.
	They're talking about a 21st century problem using 20th century definitions and ideas and narratives.
	And I think that that is what we need to take on.
	I think that's why we're here.
	I think that's why we're even trying to dissect this stuff because we're not going to fix it and we're not going to treat it until we actually put a name on it.
	I agree.
	I think the other thing is, why don't they care if they get caught?
	Right?
	They get the little slap on the wrist, they just move on.
	Because it used to be that there was a political price to pay.
	So I know that there's a lot of cynical Republicans out there who just think, oh, all politicians lie.
	You know, all businesses do this stuff.
	They all push the boundary.
	We should applaud trying to get away with stuff.
	Of course, yes, if politicians lied and they got away with it, one thing, but generally, if they did get caught, there was a big penalty to pay.
	They would lose their seat, they couldn't run again, they'd have to resign, and that's where we're getting to the point where that's not even happening anymore either.
	So, there doesn't seem to be a care across the political landscape for doing all these horrible things.
	And why do we not care?
	Well, okay, we get back to things like, you know, the Fox News and the propaganda that gets pushed out there, and just the sheer volume of I'm not even sure how we get back to that.
	being punished.
	So that's really, I feel like we're heading into a really dangerous territory where it simply doesn't register to anybody anymore that the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia.
	It doesn't matter to them, and that the standards have changed so far.
	And that's where we need to kind of get back to.
	I'm not even sure how we get back to that.
	I suppose we get back to that by having competent and inspiring leaders once and for all, finally.
	Well, I think you have to have competent, inspiring leaders who are able to communicate these things, but you also have to be able to understand exactly what's happening, which is why this current model doesn't work.
	It's It's why we're all so frustrated with media and pundits is because we're not actually talking about the problem, and we're not talking about the consequences, right?
	We're talking about, again, the Bucks and the Rockets.
	Who won last night?
	Who made the plays?
	When you actually simplify it to that point and you don't talk about what's at stake because They're very afraid of being alarmist, right?
	They're very afraid of being labeled as conspiracy theorist or alarmist or any of those things And so as a result, we're not actually talking about the subjects that are taking place or the consequences that we're looking at in the future Because what you're talking about when people stop playing the game and again politics is a made-up game it Politics, countries, nations, constitutions, these are all things that we've decided that we're going to do and we'll play within the bounds with rules that we've all agreed on.
	When you stop playing within those lines and you just start playing in bad faith, It turns out that if you play in bad faith, you prosper because there's if the institutions aren't willing to hold you accountable, then what are you ever going to do?
	And then the game starts to fall apart.
	And we've seen in other countries, particularly Putin's Russia, what happens when people play outside the lines and they're not held account.
	And what happens is people live worse lives.
	They grow apathetic and that the people pulling the strings and enriching themselves and breaking the laws, they continue to grow in power.
	So we have to put a foot down.
	We have to actually talk about what's going on.
	We have to start to wrap our heads around the consequences and we have to tell that story and we have to fight against it because there's no alternative.
	There's no alternative to letting this go down the wrong road.
	Well, Jared, one of these days we're going to be able to end our podcast without the image of America shattered in a million pieces laying at our feet on the ground.
	I don't know if this was going to be the episode, but one day we'll get there.
	Well, we have to start somewhere.
	And I just want to say real fast before we get off here, I'm really excited for everybody who's listening right now.
	I don't know about you, but I'm pumped about this project.
	I really, really want this to work out because I think that We're offering a different perspective.
	I want to have conversations with people who know that something's wrong about not only what's going on, but how things are being talked about.
	So that's why Nick and I want to welcome you to this.
	And we're so, so happy to have you.
	We ask you, please remember, we're an independent journalistic enterprise.
	We depend on your support.
	That's the end of the ballgame.
	We need you to make this work, and we really, really want it to work.
	So if you're tired of the same old coverage, same old narratives, Tell someone about this.
	Tell someone about the podcast that we're doing.
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	I'm at J.Y.
	Sexton and Nick is at, can you hear me, SMH?
	Is that correct?
	Yeah, that's right.
	Can you hear me shaking my head?
	Can you hear me shaking my head?
	We're going to depend on you, especially here at the very, very beginning.
	We have to get off on a good start.
	Please go on iTunes, rate us, comment and download us.
	Again, share it with people.
	We really, really appreciate this and we need your help on this and we're just beyond excited about this.
	Thank you for being here.
	Our first episode, we'll be back next week.
	We're hoping Tuesday's, right?
	Yeah, Tuesday's is good.
	And on top of that, we're going to have special coverage when it's necessary, when we get some more bombshells.
	I'm going to be out on the campaign trail in 2020, hopefully.
	I'm already exhausted thinking about it.
	But, you know, I assume I'll be doing some special podcast about rallies and events and moments in history from Drab days in in the middle of nowhere where I'm going to be eating terribly and I don't know feeling Isolated in this sad little hotel room.

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