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Jan. 1, 2020 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
47:20
Desperation vs. Indoctrination

A hopeful podcast for the new year! Political analysts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss defections within Trump's base and the possibility that a certain segment of his voters are realizing he's not their candidate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Time Text
Prominent evangelical magazine Christianity Today is calling for President Trump to be removed from office.
White evangelicals are at the beating heart of President Trump's base.
It's not about the gospels.
It's not about the moral character of the president.
This is a transactional relationship.
It's not complicated for evangelicals.
Trump is the enemy of their enemies.
This was the president who was urging executive branch lawyers to work, you know, to override the congressional funding mechanism.
Why is the face of checks and balances?
I mean, this is, again, a president who's really testing the absolute boundaries of executive power here.
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-Sexton and Nick Hausselman will do.
Welcome to the Muckrake Podcast.
So, Jared, any interesting discussions with Trump supporters lately?
You know, Nick, this is the first Muckrake podcast of 2020.
And what a hopeful year this is.
I'm sure it's mixed with a lot of consternation, a lot of concern, but I come bringing glad tidings of hope.
You do.
I mean, what does it say about we can derive positive news over what apparently is more of a negative view of our president?
Isn't that terrible?
Isn't that just awful?
But I have to tell you, and this is... I was really excited to have this conversation.
You know, I think like a lot of people, I have a lot of hand wringing about 2020 and what it means.
I mean, I think you and I both do.
I think we're very concerned about what the presidential election is, not only what the results are going to be, but what America is going to look like before and after, how it's going to be covered, how we're going to inhabit the same space, whether or not Donald Trump will, I don't know, let other nations interfere with elections or recognize results.
I know I've certainly had my concerns about how this is going to look and I think you have as well.
Absolutely.
And in fact, I've always felt like you've been more dire about all of these things and sounding the alarm bells a lot more than me.
But, you know, the thing that I've been wrapping my head around more recently is when I'm talking to Trump supporters, you know, and viewing them in the context of I kind of look at it as older people.
For some reason I get stuck when I'm picturing the voters and I'm talking to them and reading what their impressions are on Twitter and whatnot.
It's this, you know, 65, 75 year old person who probably should know better but doesn't.
But what really is killing me is that they should really know better because they've lived through this before.
They've lived through Nixon and Watergate, and they know all the tell-tale signs of what a president who's corrupt looks like.
And the idea that they can't see it, won't see it, refuse to, and want to just sort of dismiss this behavior, it makes it even worse in my mind.
And that's what I'm having trouble wrapping my head around and what I would want to say to somebody, which might even have an effect.
If you say to them that whoever was alive during that period because maybe finally that would give them a little bit of self-reflection to realize that you know what he's right like we this is what happened the same way the same talking points and everything and all these things lead to the same result.
Yeah, you know, we've talked about it in previous episodes.
I talked particularly about my reporting on the 2016 campaign and all my time going into Trump rallies.
And the way I described it in the past is if you are in a gymnasium, right, and Trump is up on the stage talking his nonsense, there's the group right in front of the stage and they are the hardcore Trumpites, right?
These are the ones who are saying really noxious, awful things.
These are the ones who would proudly beat their chest and call themselves white nationalists.
And then up in the stands are more rank and file Republicans, right?
These are the people that you're talking about, the people who have been, you know, they're the ones who will volunteer to go in and work at a polling station.
They're the ones who have, you know, they participate in their communities and stuff like that.
And then they watch Trump and they hear him and these are the ones that sort of cringe at what he says, but yet at the same time they support him, right?
And so one of the things we have to be very careful of...
Is when we talk about Trump voters, we don't just slip into the mindset of it's the one group of people, right?
It's the people outside of rallies who are yelling, lock her up, that there's a larger base.
It's still the smaller minority of the country, but there is a larger base and a much larger umbrella.
And the good news that I bring today Is that the the the people on the fringes of the Trump movement, the people who maybe some of which held their nose and voted for him, the people who should know better.
Right.
They're moving away.
When you really have conversations, and I think this is an important thing to talk about, which you don't hear much about elsewhere, because a lot of these people, when we hear interviews with Trump voters, man, it's that cliche thing where reporters are coming in from New York City and they're going into diners and they're putting microphones in people's faces, right?
And they're like, do you still support Trump?
And it's like, yes, I still support Trump.
And they're like, oh, it's unwavering.
Well, what's actually happening right now with the impeachment situation?
And by the way, a big part of it has to do not just with the Ukrainian call, which these people understand was illegal.
If you talk to them and they'll be honest with you, they admit that the Ukraine call was illegal and impeachable.
And yeah, maybe he should be removed from office for what he's doing.
But these are also people who recognize that Donald Trump's three years in office have been predicated on helping himself and helping other rich white people.
And they get that.
They understand that.
And a lot of them are people Who voted for Trump because they see Washington D.C.
as a corrupt entity, which by the way it is, let's just be honest, it is, that does not represent the interest of Americans.
It represents the interest of a political elite class and a group of corporate oligarch, you know,
Bastions and and these people see this and they wanted somebody to go in and tear it down And they see that Donald Trump is not fulfilling his promise to do that And so as a result when you talk to these people and they're honest with you They'll tell you they understand that Donald Trump is an egomaniacal Rich guy who is helping other rich guys and that is a that's a major breakthrough.
That's a major major thing Well I think also the interesting thing here is it seemed to me up until, well just right now, that if they even got as close to acknowledging that then they would simply shrug and not care that he's enriching himself and enriching his family and acting corruptly.
So you're saying to me that there has been a little bit of a cleaving here of people in that big tent of Republicans that are starting to feel like it's not okay?
Yeah, almost verbatim, that.
What I have done over the past few years, and what I think people who might not know who I am need to understand is, I come from a very, very small town in Indiana.
I come from a poor, poor family, and my family is the type that used to be FDR Democrats, and Then, you know, became Trump.
Actually, some of them voted for Obama and then ended up supporting Donald Trump, which is a group of voters that I think that our national sort of myth and the story we tell ourselves about tells us that that shouldn't exist, right?
That that's so far outside the lines of how this stuff works.
But I keep in touch with a lot of Trump supporters, and I keep in touch with a lot of Trump supporters in swing states.
I was really, really interested to see how he pulled off Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania.
And so I keep open lines of communication with these people.
And I want to tell people what the secret is.
And the secret is this.
When you talk The idea of the paradigm of Democrat versus Republican.
These people go to Trump every time.
And the reason is, it's branding.
Right?
It's the idea of, oh, the Democrats are an evil group of people.
Republicans are the people who fight them.
Well, they understand that Republicans aren't great.
They understand that Republicans don't help them.
They understand that Republicans push forward economic ideas that help wealthy people and don't necessarily advantage them.
But if you're talking about a culture war, if you're talking about blue versus red, if they have to pick one side or the other, they're picking red.
Right?
So that, go ahead.
Yeah.
So, you know, it kind of reminds me a little bit of, like, sports.
Like, if you live in New York, you have absolutely no reason to ever support the Knicks, right?
They're completely, you know, corrupt in some way.
They're really a mismanaged team.
They haven't won anything for a long, long time.
Yet, they are the most fervent fans you're going to find anywhere on Twitter and anywhere in between.
And so when you said that all of a sudden it sort of struck me that in this tribalism notion is like people must cling to that logo or you know that team that they're on and that makes I guess that makes a lot of sense like you know when I was growing up I was a Michael Jordan fan and if you wanted to tell me well you know what Michael Jordan really wasn't good wasn't a good player you know he really didn't dribble well like I would have thought you were insane and crazy and I would not want to talk to you and
And I think that maybe that's helping me even in this moment understand a little bit more of like where they're coming from because I know that when I talk to my people who are on the Democratic side, we oftentimes just sort of wring our hands and wonder like how can they get in that situation that they're going to support this guy as long as they have.
Yeah, and to bring that a little bit, I guess, in the realm of trying to put people in that mindset.
So, like, I'm a Chicago Cubs fan, right?
That's my baseball team.
I can tell you right now that in the offseason that we're in right now, I have not enjoyed what the Chicago Cubs have done.
I think it's been an absolute disaster.
But if I am around a St.
Louis Cardinals fan, I defend the Cubs.
Right?
Because that's my identity.
I am a Cubs fan and that is a Cardinals fan.
And by the way, that's blue versus red, so just to bring that metaphor full circle.
But what's actually happened here is they've made deals with themselves, right?
And a lot of this had to do with the 2016 election.
They particularly had been taught not to like Hillary Clinton.
And so they were going to be opposed to Hillary Clinton at all costs and that meant that they were going to pull a lever for Donald Trump.
But right now what is happening is there is room right now for those voters to be gotten.
Now, did they make a decision that they were going to support Donald Trump despite the fact that he was making racist appeals?
Absolutely they did, right?
These are things that some of them are absolutely prejudiced and some of them are absolutely racist.
At least they're tolerant for racism and prejudice, right?
But a lot of these people...
I think if they were given some sort of appeal or if they were given some sort of an idea that a person, a Democrat even, could be an outsider who's going to come into Washington and take on the establishment to take over the fight for the people.
These are people who could be gotten right now.
And that is something that we have not been hearing for a very long time.
The idea is that Trump's base is Trump's base and it would never move.
But especially now that we're seeing polls, we were talking about this before we started recording, a poll came out last week that said that upwards of 55% of the nation right now supports Trump's removal from office for the Ukraine call.
That's a major number.
For the U.S.
For the U.S. in 2020 to agree 55% on anything is a miracle.
It's obvious that something has shifted, but because of the way we view politics and the way that we see it as Democrat versus Republican, the dichotomy of one party or the other, that is what is defining our perception of it versus the reality of the situation, I believe.
Well, not to ram the parade, but you know, there was also a poll that said that a significant amount of people didn't feel that he got impeached.
Because Nancy Pelosi is holding up the impeachment from the Senate.
And they, you know, went on the rampage for about, I don't know what, four or five days trying to sort of convince people of that.
So I think what you are right, what we're seeing is that there is a movement.
I mean, we certainly saw Christianity Today come out with an article that was denouncing Trump.
And his response was absolutely awful.
And we're seeing a movement there as well, which is, it is encouraging To see because if you can get any amount of the, and by the way Christianity today I don't think is a really, they're not evangelical, you know, far-right Christian group, but to see any amount of like religious group be able to sort of disconnect that connection Yeah, and I want to be clear.
There is a group of Trump's base that you are not going to get.
That you're not going to get to come over the line.
It's just I think maybe people are starting to realize that it's desperation versus indoctrination.
Yeah.
And I want to be clear.
There is a group of Trump's base that you are not going to get, that you're not going to get to come over the line.
And quite frankly, they'll probably be Trump supporters long after Trump is gone.
I know especially that I know a lot of people who were alive in the 1970s who believed that Richard Nixon got a bum rap and were Nixon apologists.
I mean even after Nixon had died right and and actually those people who were Nixon apologist that became part of their identity Right, they were contrarians, right?
Everybody around them would say Nixon was a criminal, he deserved to leave office.
And they would be like, actually, I'm strong enough to stand by this opinion that, you know, Nixon was like everybody else.
Well, they also say it was just the cover-up.
The cover-up is always what gets you.
Right.
And, well, he didn't get caught doing anything that nobody else did.
Right?
Which is the mindset with a lot of those apologists.
And that's actually a lot of what's happening with Trump's people.
The people who aren't going to leave Trump are the people who depend on Trump for their identities.
These are people who, you know, they literally believe that their problems in life are because of culture wars, demographic changes.
They believe there's a takeover of the country that they are victims of.
Those people aren't leaving.
them that they are right.
They do not need to question themselves.
They don't need to reconsider who they are.
They don't need to seek, I don't know, better mental health or better ways of living.
And as a result, they wear the Malaga hat and they are a Trump person.
Those people aren't leaving.
But the people who have made the mental and electoral bargain of looking for Trump to be the person to go to Washington and break up the logjam and And these are people who voted for Barack Obama for those similar reasons.
They're starting to move.
And this isn't just like one or two.
This isn't isolated.
These are all of the people that I'm talking to who inhabit that space.
The other people who are all Trump-ous by identity, they're concrete.
They're not going anywhere.
And this is about 20% of them.
But I have to tell you, it's all of them.
The moment that you let them know that you're not coming at this from a Democrat versus Republican, red versus blue argument, the moment that that dichotomy gets broken, It's over and they move away from Trump so fast.
I mean they run from him at this point.
Right, which starts to support my idea which I'd had months ago about the Republican Party itself realizing that this is a lost cause and having to somehow scramble to get Pence in there instead because they can feel like if they do polls and I guarantee you somehow it's gonna leak or it's gonna come out that I got a robocall poll and asking if I would support Vice President Pence in a presidential election.
And if they start to see those numbers, that was what was going to get me thinking that the Senate would actually support removal through an impeachment process.
And I certainly think that Nancy Pelosi has won this round by holding the impeachment up and letting more and more information trickle out as it's being reported about what happened with this money to Ukraine.
I think that it actually has worked.
And I feel like there is a pretty strong argument against what Mitch McConnell is doing as far as what they've already come out saying they're not going to be impartial.
And they've already come out and said they don't want any kind of witnesses to come in here and testify.
So I feel like what seemed maybe two weeks ago to be a dire situation where he was going to increase his electoral college victory in 2020 now feels like, with what you're saying, it is such a narrow margin that you don't need that many people to switch.
And if you can get just the 50,000 people in Pennsylvania and another 25,000 in Wisconsin, then his whole electoral advantage would crumble.
So I'm starting to get a little bit interested in this in a way that it feels like there is something happening that could actually finally affect the election.
Well, and let's get one thing straight.
One of the things that we try and avoid on this show, we're not big into game theory.
We're not out and plotting strategy.
This happens, this happens.
We want to go a little bit deeper on things.
But I'm going to offer this out.
This is some free consulting to the Republican Party.
And this is, I think, the mental math that the Republican Party is engaged in much more than the Democratic Party has ever been engaged in.
It is a major divide in the parties.
And that is this.
Republicans do the math and they say, okay, we're going to lose over here.
We'll just shift over here, right?
They're very fond of moving, you know, their markers around where they think they'll win.
I mean, that's how we end up in the situation we're in now.
They took a look at the demographics in the country and they said, We can't win a popular vote anymore.
We can't win.
We can't appeal.
We have too many years of the Southern strategy.
We have too many years of coded racial appeals for us to find minority voters who will support us.
We have to get rid of them.
We have to find the white voter.
And we have to find ways to not just blot out votes, but actually disenfranchise people.
Right?
They made that math in their head.
In this case right now, you are hearing people, left and right Trump supporters, say he needs to get out of the way.
Maybe Pence will do a better job.
So if Republicans really want to do some math, if they really want to play around with this thing and they want to, you know, be on this ship until it goes down all the way to the bottom, they need to take a look at this Trump situation and realize if they go out in public and they acquit him, and not just acquit him, but if they acquit him In a blatant, bad faith way, it's not going to play well.
It really, really isn't.
And if they go out on the record and say, our party doesn't care about the rule of law, we're willing to acquit this person for political purposes, it's going to blow up in their face.
And I don't think people understand that at this point.
There are political repercussions to this.
Right, which is why the timing of all this is so crucial because you've got to figure out when to do all this stuff before the election happens and when to actually maximize the devastation of what an impeachment trial could look like.
You know, it kind of reminds me, indirectly, I was on Twitter talking to somebody about how George H.W.
Bush lost in 92 to Clinton.
And his whole issue was that he was in a recession when they had the election.
But that was actually not true.
The country had rebounded for several, several months before that, but no one had quite felt the effects.
But they did a really bad job on the messaging of that.
But I also said that he timed the Iraq war poorly because his approval rating was sky high after they went in and took out Saddam from Kuwait.
But they could have waited.
They could have waited closer to the election so he could have benefited from all of that goodwill during the Iraq war.
You know, even three months later would have carried over probably into the election.
Instead, that all wore off.
Well, I'm glad you brought up George H.W.
It is a really delicate situation that they're, I think, obviously, the Democrats are doing a lot better at right now, just based on the polls.
And it still doesn't feel quite like, oh, this is over.
But I think that it's certainly there's something happening, like you're saying, that does have some encouragement.
Well, I'm glad you brought up George H.W. Bush, because one of the things that I think people forget about with him is that in the post-Reagan era, when the economy falters a little bit, George H.W.
Bush loses a lot of his momentum and eventually loses the election because he proves himself to be so out of touch with American life, right?
The Bushes are a dynasty that grew up with incredible privilege and wealth and had no understanding of what actual life was like.
And with Trump, we have another guy like that.
And I'll tell you this, I was on this corner in 2016.
The Clinton campaign spent so much time criticizing Trump for using terrible language and being a bully and a bad role model for America's children.
Well, I can tell you as somebody who grew up in a factory family, they used that language as much as Trump and more.
Right.
So like when they were going out and talking about, oh, his language is bad and all that, and he's actually a failed businessman and he's declared bankruptcy multiple times.
Well, my family has declared bankruptcy multiple times, too, right?
That is the life.
And so what they actually did was they humanized him.
They made him feel like he was a working class billionaire.
Well, what happens is, if you have Trump, and I know we've all made jokes about this, but if you have Trump out there who's talking about fixing America based upon how many times you have to flush a toilet or what water pressure is like, people don't care about that.
They don't care that Donald Trump Jr.
is out there being like, my dad was edited out of Home Alone 2.
Guess what?
Voters don't care about Home Alone 2.
They don't care about TV edits where people are cameos because they own hotels.
People care about the financial moment and the struggling that they're going through.
And Trump doesn't care.
There's no empathy there.
He can't even pretend to care about what's going on for people.
It's all about him.
And so there's a divide there between him and that base that's moving away.
And there is a very, very large space there for not just a Democratic candidate, but the Democratic Party.
And Republicans will tell you, and I've had conversations with plenty of Republican officials who will tell you, they look at the election in three ways.
And maybe this is a little generic, but this is how they look at it.
Either they're going to maintain the power that they have, they're going to maybe gain a couple of seats based upon Trump having some sort of surge in popularity, or there's another growing concern that they could be wiped out.
That they could literally watch the Republican Party, if the message goes right, they could watch the Republican Party completely swiped off the board.
And so I think that they understand that that's a possibility, and the more that Trump doesn't show the empathy towards people who are suffering, or even an understanding of that suffering, That has George H.W.
Bush written all over it, and it doesn't matter what happens in the country if he's not able to figure out something in between.
And I can tell you, he's not talented and capable of it.
So if somebody takes advantage of that, whether it's a nominee or an entire party, it makes a giant difference.
Well, a lot of things to talk about on that statement because, frankly, this should have happened in 2016.
The Republican Party was on its last death rattle, and Hillary wins, and she would probably have at least been competent in running the country and would have been able to engender a lot better polls at least and hopefully would have run the country better.
Like that would have slowly, slowly – by 2020, the Republican Party would have been in the abyss of just completely falling apart.
So as a result, we get like the death zombie version of them, and this is what we have.
So, okay, I think we might have possibly delayed this complete and utter devastation of the Republican Party until now.
But here's the other thing that's got to be completely freaking out Republicans is that the economy is going really well, and quote-unquote really well.
And I don't think there's any precedent for a president to have this low poll numbers in an economy that's going this well.
And the other thing I wanted to talk about though about that is that We've always talked about like the economy in some in different kind of versions of like, well, unemployment is one version.
The Dow is another part of it.
And in reality, I don't think that we've ever since the Reagan era have ever been able to bridge the gap between the middle class and lower class and the upper class that just continues to get wider and wider the gap.
And, you know, when you hear Trump complain about homelessness in California, for instance, you know, for me, when the economy is truly going well, we don't have as much homeless issues, problems with homeless people.
There is enough money to go around that people can actually live, independent of other reasons why people are homeless, which goes into a lot of other things that don't necessarily relate to the economy.
But, you know, people aren't complaining and dying without health care.
So my markers for what a real good economy is, is not what we're in right now anyway.
No, we're in a hyper-capitalistic economy right now.
The whole idea of this is that everybody has to make as much money as possible, and that's it.
That's the only goal whatsoever.
And the way you make the most money possible is you pay people the least amount that you possibly can, you get rid of as many employees as you possibly can, while still keeping the company going.
Even if it's like a train going down the tracks and it's about ready to fall off, right?
The longer and faster you go without falling off the tracks, And there's no consequence to the train falling off the track.
way that our economy works, you're always afraid you're going to fall off the tracks, but you want to make as much money as you possibly can before you go off the tracks.
That's how the American economy works.
And it is completely removed from anything having to do with normal Americans.
And there's no consequence to the train falling off the track.
The economy, the country will pay for it, basically.
Oh, yeah.
The country will pay the ransom.
And what has happened is the market and the economy have been turned into more or less a ticking time bomb.
And we at all times have to be aware that it could go off at any moment and destroy all of us.
But it doesn't have a benefit for us, right?
It's standing over there ticking.
It doesn't really have anything to do with us.
If it blows up, we can lose all of our retirements and basically we can slog through Terrible existences and have shorter lifespans, but especially since Reagan we now have a market that it does well But the more well it does it doesn't affect us it like III it's 2020 since 2010 the minimum Wage has stayed stagnant.
It hasn't gone up, right?
we have a bunch of shiny new things and we all have like the amenities that we have to buy in order to keep up with the Joneses and But that's not actually quality of life for a lot of people, right?
And we have a lot of people who are suffering and quite frankly, they watch the news and they hear how good the economy is and they're like, really?
Who the hell is it helping?
It's not helping me.
It's not helping my kids.
They're not going to school and not accruing debt.
I can't go to the doctor and get actual health care.
So it doesn't matter if the economy is good.
I say quote with quotations.
Like the economy isn't good.
The economy is moving fast and it's growing but it's completely divorced from the American people.
Well I've seen those reports that try and insist that everybody is living better now in the last several years or whatever.
But then I see the rebuttal to that is generally that they don't include inflation.
And they don't include, they include like credit card debt, which I honestly believe like if gas stations stop taking credit cards, you would see people completely and utterly not drive.
They simply could not drive during the holiday season, the summer, you know, when everyone wants to drive.
Like there's a real problem with credit use because you just delay that.
But what happens now is that in people getting into houses and all these different things we saw in the 2008 housing crisis was they just made a whole new – I don't want to use the word slave, but people who are just beholden to having to work their entire lives to pay off the debt that they've accrued now.
And that's – they're never going to be able to rise up in any kind of meaningful way in terms of class because they're never going to be able to pay for what they've already, you know, put money down as credit.
No, we're distracted by the trappings of class, right?
We have a bunch of working class people who are digging themselves deeper and deeper in debt in order to live a lifestyle that looks like a middle class lifestyle.
And we have a bunch of middle class people who are like digging a deeper hole of debt in order to live a higher class lifestyle.
And again, it's a train burrowing down the tracks that is always in constant threat of derailing and taking everybody down with them.
But people understand, right?
You can't have a guy who's going on TV every day because what Trump does is, and Trump is a devotee of something called positive thinking.
This is a Norman Peale thing, right?
His actual religion, and this is weird, but his Christian religion is the idea that if I think good thoughts at all times, the universe will bless me.
Right?
And that's why Donald Trump thinks he's successful, is because he is in this constant feedback loop about how great he is and how successful he is, even if everything tells him different.
Well, when Trump gets up there and he says, I'm the greatest president of all time, I have the greatest economy of all time, there's a bunch of people who have their identities wrapped up in Trump and they're like, yes, I'm winning!
Right?
And it's like a sports fan.
Oh, my life is terrible, but my team won the World Series or my team won the Super Bowl.
It's awesome.
Everything's great.
But that's like eating candy.
That's not sustenance.
That's not actual nutrition.
The people out there who understand that everything he's saying isn't true, they keep hearing it and they hear it and they hear it.
And they're like, I just want somebody to get up and be honest with me and be square with me.
This guy is a liar.
And on top of that, I'm exhausted.
I'm tired of fighting with my kids.
I'm tired of society being based around reckless wealth and culture wars.
I just need a break and I want this buffoon off my TV.
And those people are leaving.
And I will throw this out real fast.
You were exactly right a couple seconds ago when you said that the Republican Party was down to its death rattle, right?
But they believed that they were going to come out on the other side.
They were going to have this new generation with Marco Rubio, right?
That was going to be the future.
They were going to find a more diverse way of reaching out.
They were going to become a new party.
Well, guess what?
That's not going to happen.
And the Republicans who believed in that have left the Republican Party.
And I want to go ahead and I want to tap the cap to a lot of these people.
We have things like this new Lincoln thing where we have a bunch of really disenchanted Republicans who are saying we have to change the party.
It's probably time for the Republican Party to die.
I'm not saying that as somebody who's like, bury him and we'll always have a majority or whatever.
I don't even consider myself a Democrat.
The Republican Party has a terminal disease and it's not going to work anymore.
It has to go away.
They can find a new party.
They can rename it.
They can figure out something that's better and actually works.
But this Republican Party needs to go away.
And hopefully this is the last gasp.
But it has to.
You have to bring that part of the party with you and it has to be decimated to the point where you just have Trump as to her loyal and identity.
That's what has to happen.
Right.
I mean, I think what the Kool-Aid that was drunk by the Republicans was that they were able to not hide behind any kind of normal rhetoric anymore.
And I can, you know, it kind of felt like it was a little bit refreshing to hear them flat out be corrupt.
You're like, wow, they're not even hiding this stuff anymore.
Like, you know, even with the impeachment trial.
And what McConnell was saying and Lindsey Graham was saying you're almost like well, okay great good for you Like just finally just say it like it is but I think what we're realizing is that that simply is you have enough farmers who are going under with their farms because these the terrorists with China are killing them right and even though we're trying to bail them out and And, you know, by the way, speaking of what Trump, you know, what you described as positive thinking is lying.
When he's trying to say the New Deal is going to, you know, is going to be all this big win for them.
Well, when you factor in how much we've already had to pay the farmers to cover the losses, we're like billions of dollars in the red at this point.
So, you know, you can't eat pork.
By the way, that should be a really compelling thing.
I don't know if you've seen the reports, but because they've deregulated the pork industry, There's no telling what is going to be in the ground-up pork that you get like in sausage.
And I saw the report where two guys that work for the downer company are like, I'm not even gonna buy sausage from my own company anymore.
And you know what?
Those are real tangible things.
That could actually have an effect.
Yeah, and what you're talking about is the difference between the real world and social media world.
Donald Trump plays great for people who want to feel like they're winning on Facebook, right?
Oh, that headline!
Trump's deregulated!
Yeah, flip off the liberals!
Yeah, we need to get, you know, screw spotted owls or whatever, you know, little dumb fantasy they've made up for themselves.
That all sounds good on Facebook when you want to collect wins.
But guess what?
You have to put down Facebook every now and then and eat dinner with your family.
You have to go outside and breathe the air.
You have to drink water.
And when you do that and the government has taken all of the brakes off and basically said you can pollute to your heart's content in order to, you know, make as much money as possible, well eventually people get sick.
And on top of that, like, you're not getting paid enough at work, and so you can't go get decent health care.
And meanwhile, you have this buffoon who's up on stage saying, We have the best health care in the world!
Da-da-da-da-da!
And you're like, No!
We don't!
I'm in debt, and I'm suffering.
And those people, at some point or another, and, and this is, this, these are the, the stakes.
And this is a little bit of hope, but we have to say what the stakes are.
Those people who know that he's lying and they understand that this guy isn't who they thought he was, two things can happen.
Either they're going to vote against him for somebody or they're just going to check out and they're going to lose all hope in politics altogether.
And if it's the latter, this is just going to keep getting worse and worse and worse.
They have to be given an appeal that will bring them back into the process and will make them realize the rational thing is that this guy is a dangerous, dangerous person and they have to move against him.
And when you say worse, I think what you mean is they're going to have to try and find more and more people who have probably never voted in their lifetimes, who are the really, I guess what Hillary called deplorables, but you're going to see dog whistling and that's not even the right term anymore.
I feel like their rhetoric is going to become so awful and horrible.
If Elizabeth Warren gets a nomination, the only reason why I'd be worried about another woman is because I just feel like the things he would say against a woman in a general election would be so despicable.
And I don't think he would end up helping it, but they have no other choice but to try and find anybody else that might agree with that ideology.
And that's what makes me really worried, because this is really desperation that we're seeing from him.
The tweeting is coming out now.
And he's trying to throw any kind of spaghetti on the wall and hope it sticks.
It's like that spaghetti is going to turn into a real ugly soup that you can't even be in the same room with.
Well, think about it like sediment in a body of water, right?
You have sediment that moves down and then it settles on the floor.
What happens when it settles on the floor is these voters, the ones who have lost all hope whatsoever, and they've given up everything, and they have no hope for the future in any way, shape, or form, those are the people who get poached off by people like white supremacists.
They're the ones who get radicalized by groups that say, oh, you're not at the bottom.
There is hope and we provide hope.
Here's a swastika.
And that's what has happened time and time again.
That's how fascism happens is you say that the system has failed.
Here's a new identity that you can rise up with.
So what has to happen right now?
And, you know, we've talked about every election for forever as if it's a crossroads, as if this is like a major, major moment.
This is.
We have to go ahead and reject Donald Trump.
We have to reject the Republican Party in its current state and find a different way out or this thing's going to keep getting worse.
But it's not going to be enough to beat them.
We have to move forward and repair this country to keep that illness away.
Because if we don't, we're going to look up in a few years and this thing is just going to keep going and going and going and getting worse and worse and worse.
Well, my New Year's resolution with you, Jared, would be for one of our next upcoming podcasts, we should do an episode where we focus on what are the major reforms that need to be put in place to ensure that A, this doesn't happen again, and B, we can move forward.
I'm going to start to put on my Nixon hat and study what, you know, I like that idea.
I really, really like that idea.
Carter would probably be the better look at to see what we did to try and come out of that and restore some semblance of normalcy and hope in this country.
But we should do that as another episode because I think that's gonna be the next important, that's what everyone wants to know.
What is that thing that's going to repair everything? - I like that idea.
I really, really like that idea.
And I wanna put this out there.
I really like the idea of talking about the steps that need to be taken to fix this country And I think in order to do that, you have to have a really, really mature, honest conversation.
You have to look at how we got here and you have to start throwing out a lot of preconceived notions Because the idea and and again, I'm gonna try and say this every episode Trump is not the disease He's the symptom you have to figure out how we got to this point and I don't think that it's healthy or safe or productive or even sane to Well, he was open to it.
like after Trump, everything's going to be fine.
Like I just saw the other day, I don't know if you saw it, Nick, but former Vice President Joe Biden came out and said he's willing to make a Republican vice president.
Well, I understand that maybe that's a little bit of political gesturing.
Well, he was open to it.
He didn't say he would, but he was open to it, right?
Well, okay.
Before I make my point, let me ask you this, Nick.
What Republican in this country right now, would you feel good about being Vice President of the United States of America?
Mitt Romney.
Mitt Romney.
Okay, that is a bigger conversation.
I think we need to have that before this episode ends.
But I will say this.
If you look, and this thing I could not help thinking about, like the 1864 election with Abraham Lincoln reaching out to Andrew Johnson, a Tennessee Democrat, on a unity ticket, and what ends up happening, basically he said, you know what, not all Democrats are terrible, this fever will break at some point, And then he's like, I'll bring this guy in, even though, I don't know, Andrew Johnson is a rabid white supremacist.
Abraham Lincoln gets killed at Ford's Theater, and Andrew Johnson comes into power, and he immediately installs white supremacists, like avid white supremacists in the South, which leads to generations upon generations of Jim Crow.
And part of it is the fact, and listen, I know this isn't popular, but there are a lot of shortcomings with Abraham Lincoln.
And we could do a whole episode talking about Abraham Lincoln and the mythology around him and what that is.
But Abraham Lincoln had a blind spot.
And the blind spot was that if only we could get past the Civil War, we could possibly get past any strife about race and it would just be fine one way or another.
He thought about selling the slaves to the British.
He thought about sending them to other countries.
And it was not this racial progressivism that we all think it is.
But he moved past all that, or tried to, and it led to one of the most systematically dangerous, awful things that's ever happened in American history, post-Civil War, because it was hidden racism and prejudice.
We cannot sit here and pretend like the Republican Party is functional anymore.
It is addled with disease.
And we can't and maybe Mitt Romney and listen, I look back on 2014 or 2012 Mitt Romney and now it just seems like a more lovely time.
Right.
But I the idea that you would even at this point say that the Republican Party has even a little bit of healthy tissue to it.
It shocked me.
It shocked me.
You know, and you're right.
I think the ideal situation would be something else pops up and you get the Mitt Romney and the Jeff Flakes, if he ever, you know, get like those kind of guys to come back and form something else that you can, because they could also realize that, hey, There is a big enough group of people that would support me outside of the Republican Party because we stand for what they used to stand for back in the day with the Tom Nichols guys on Twitter who are Republicans who aren't anymore.
There is room for someone to come up with something.
And, you know, you had even said, you know, that we weren't going to be consultants for either party, but, you know, the idea that we'd see the Democrats argue with each other and not just be an all-out assault on what's going on with the Republican Party, every word that comes out of their mouth, that's what's also scary and what gives me pause about whether or not the Democrats have a legitimate shot at actually holding the House, maybe winning the Senate, and then maybe winning the White House.
Well you have to do this really delicate dance.
American politics necessitates that you always try and keep up the myth of America.
That we have been good from the very beginning, we've always been good, and that any problems are just momentary blips.
In this case, so my problem is I'm sort of afraid of having anybody in a moment of leadership who, if Mitt Romney right now was beating down every door and getting in front of every television camera and saying, Donald Trump is dangerous and this is not only an impeachable offense but he should be removed, all of a sudden I'm like, oh that is a responsible statesman.
Right?
Because that's what needs to be happening.
But at the same time, this is a guy who's like, well, I'm troubled.
We'll see where things go.
This is the same guy who would go out and dine with Trump and beg for an administrative spot after putting all of his political capital on the line and calling the charlatan.
So I understand the optics of it.
But the more that we try and pretend that the Republican Party is even an actual party and not a white identity criminal movement at this point with fascistic undertones and overtones, I think it gives them I think it gives them respectability that they don't deserve.
And I think that that sort of like damns us for this thing to continue going until it gets worse.
That's fair.
I hear you.
I hear you.
Listen, you know, again, that's why we have to do this other episode that's going to focus on what can we do that not only heals the country, I think, from a systematic approach as far as laws that need to be enacted and norms that need to be restored.
But, you know, what do we do with Well, you know, maybe it's the new year.
Maybe it's the spirit of the productive conversations I'm having with Trump supporters.
Republican Party who have views that deserve representation, I think we have to solve that problem.
And then that would actually make me feel better if we could actually come up with some concrete ideas.
Well, you know, maybe it's the new year.
Maybe it's the spirit of the productive conversations I'm having with Trump supporters.
But I want to say this.
I spend a lot of time talking about capital R Republicans, right?
I'm talking about people who are representatives and senators and the president and a lot of these people who have shown themselves to not only not have principles but to be actively, you know, at any moment willing to issue everything and work with a fascistic president.
Like, that's what I'm talking about, right?
But that doesn't mean that everybody who is a conservative or everybody who is interested in being a Republican is like that.
That's not true.
What we have to do in this country is we have to really heal our political system to where like normal, good faith people want to participate.
We've created a system where a lot of bad faith, egotistical narcissists who are in it for power and money and enrichment, all the things that go with it, are the only people who are interested in going into politics.
I don't know if you have conversations with people.
If you ever say to somebody, have you ever thought about running for office, the natural response at this point is, oh my god, I would never do that.
That's just a disgusting cesspool.
We have to change that.
And the moment that we do that is the moment where we say, you know what, the Republican Party is terminally ill.
It has to go away.
And by the way, the Democrats aren't perfect either.
They have their own diseases and their own fleas that they need to fix.
We have to get to a point where we heal politics and we get better people in.
There's room for conservative voices, but it has to be good faith, good people.
Yeah.
And you know what?
We don't end happily that often.
I'll do it.
All right.
All right.
So, okay, everybody.
That's the end of our first podcast of 2020.
We're so excited about this upcoming year.
We're going to be covering not just the primaries, but the presidential election, the ongoing impeachment of Donald J. Trump, everything that's happening here.
We're going to do some specials along the way.
We're so excited.
The support we've had has been incredible.
That's incredible.
Please keep reaching out.
Email us.
Talk to us on social media.
Let people know about this podcast.
Every single thing you do helps.
Liking it, subscribing, leaving comments, sharing on social media.
We need it so bad and we're so thankful for you.
So let people know what we're doing here.
On Twitter, I am at jysexton.
Nick is at canyouhearmesmh.
We'll be back next week.
Until then, enjoy the new year, everybody.
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