🚨EMERGENCY IMPEACHMENT: It Feels Perilous Because We're In Peril🚨
The Democrats are concluding their opening presentation in the Impeachment of Donald Trump, and the Republicans haven’t refuted any of the facts presented. Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss Trump’s plot and what he hoped to accomplish, the incredible closing speech by Adam Schiff, and we continue to watch Rudy Giuliani become unhinged on Fox News, this time trying to spin a tale about Ukrainian collusion with the Democrats in 2016.
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Hey everybody, it's Jared Yates Sexton, co-host of the Muckrake Podcast.
We have got some exciting news.
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And now, on to the show.
Brian, you're being totally naive.
In what way?
The apparatus to look at this refused to look at it.
The witnesses will tell you they tried to get this information to us for a year, and they didn't trust any longer the Justice Department because they were convinced that they were still being controlled by Hillary Clinton partisans.
I couldn't go to them.
They wouldn't let me go to them, and if I went to them, they would have laughed at me.
I don't know Parness, other than I guess I had pictures taken, which I do with thousands of people, including people today that I didn't meet.
Perhaps he's a fine man, perhaps he's not.
I know nothing about him.
But I can tell you this, I don't know him.
I don't believe I've ever spoken to him.
But here, right is supposed to matter.
It's what's made us the greatest nation on Earth.
Because right matters.
And the truth matters.
Otherwise we are lost.
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, Nick, how's opening week of the impeachment trial treating you?
Oh, wow.
It is a devastating case against the Republicans.
It's hard to believe.
Now, I'm glad they went first because they can lay this whole thing out.
But, man, you know, it's anything but boring to me.
Yeah.
I'm so glad that you said the word boring because I, I have to tell you going into this thing, we had talked a little bit about it and just kind of touched on like what I expected and what you expected from the media and how they were going to treat this thing.
Um, I just want to put out there that Mitch McConnell, um, understands American politics at this moment more than most people.
And he understood that scheduling this impeachment trial the way that he did, Maybe it wasn't going to dampen the way Americans felt about it, but it was definitely going to get to media members and pundits.
I've been really, really shocked and frustrated by coverage of people like Chris Matthews, who is undoubtedly paid I would have to assume north of seven figures, easily, to cover American politics and have a national platform and, you know, have a say in how the country works.
And this is a person who is right now getting paid to go on TV and talk about how bored he is by a constitutional, societal, existential crisis.
One of the craziest moments in American history.
And people like Chris Matthews are playing media critics who are like, well, I'm not quite entertained right now and this is really tedious.
What a crazy time we're living in.
Sure.
And if you watch Fox News, they will have their commentary on the right side without even any audio from the actual impeachment hearing.
So they could pretend that they are covering it when they're just offering their commentary, which I thought was interesting because the issue, I thought, was the reason why they wanted to have it so late into the night was because it would eliminate all of the people on MSNBC and CNN being able to analyze what's going on in real time.
And I thought, OK, that's a good idea by McConnell.
But then what I also didn't realize, I thought it was also going to be Fox News.
But no, Fox News will just, you know, cover it with a little, you know, picture in picture and still have their analysis and their propaganda.
So that's another way that they were able to arrive that because, you know, MSNBC, they're doing it the proper way.
They are covering the actual impeachment.
That's all you can see and all you can hear while it's going on.
And yeah, it's been fascinating.
Living in California, it's been great because it's 9.30, 10 o'clock at night, and I'm sitting there watching it to the bitter end, just fascinated by the whole thing.
I'd also heard about how Adam Schiff's closing arguments were one of the 10 best of all time speeches we'd ever heard in the Senate.
And I was like, okay, let's check it out because I didn't see it live.
I was literally eating when it was put on.
I literally just stopped eating and just became enraptured and fixated on every word he said and how he said it and what he was saying.
It was really impressive.
Well, I love that right now we get to talk about the fact that this podcast partnership that we have spans the width of the country.
Because I think I speak for a lot of our listeners who are on the Eastern Time Zone, who maybe, like me, have discovered this new existence of falling asleep while an impeachment trial plays out on your television and waking up and being like, oh my god, did the country burn down during the two seconds of sleep I got?
But I will say, and Adam Schiff, I would be remiss if we didn't talk about the fact that in history there are moments where the importance of the moment rises and there are individuals who meet those moments.
And there's a really special thing that's happening right now and, you know, for all of the partisan posturing and the strategizing and the criticism of how this thing is working or what it's going to do or whatever, Adam Schiff has proven himself, I think, to be a historic statesman.
I think that we...
We live in this time, and you brought up Fox, and I think it's interesting to contrast these two things.
Sean Hannity went on this rant the other night that was just unhinged, and he was like, oh, I'm so bored by this impeachment trial, and he started talking about bad talk radio hosts, and how bad talk radio hosts are really boring because they don't They don't have collars and they're not like stirring it up and they're just stating the same thing over and over again.
And it was obvious that Sean Hannity doesn't give a flying shit about, you know, what's going on in the country.
It's just whether or not he wins the ratings and profit and all that.
And then you have Sean Hannity who's treating this like it's entertainment because that's what he's in.
He's an entertainer for the right.
He's a propagandist and an entertainer.
And meanwhile, You have Adam Schiff who, again, just to state the truth and put it down, this is a man who's standing up and saying, you know what, all these partisan games and all this entertainment and all this propaganda, we have to put this away and recognize what this is.
It's an existential crisis.
It is a constitutional crisis.
It is the very nature of society that is endangered right now.
I think everybody keeps forgetting that and everyone wants to pretend like that's not what this is and it's just a big posturing thing.
But I think Schiff has somehow or another risen to this moment and he's been able to articulate it better than anybody.
I think it's really commendable.
Well, let's just do a quick, I think we need to, you know, just explain or talk about, like, what happened, how he, what he laid out.
Just because it can get a little bit confusing if you don't have enough, you know, mental focus for one sitting.
But basically what, and here's the thing is, everything they laid out has not really been disputed by anybody.
And so before we even get into the details of that, the concept I want to bring about is that they won't, they don't want to bring witnesses.
And we need to talk a little about that too because they're Republicans.
Republicans don't want to bring.
Sorry.
And so the reason why, so by basically saying they don't want to bring witnesses, they're almost saying, well, you laid it all out.
We all, we don't need the witnesses because the facts are there.
Because obviously if they weren't there and they didn't believe them, they would demand witnesses to rebut what they're saying.
So it's this weird logic where they're basically conceding what Adam Schiff laid out and there really isn't any way not to do that because it is so clear and the only argument they might have is that Zelensky said in a public statement that there was no pressure.
Meanwhile, they laid out all the communications they've had with Ukrainian officials underneath Zelensky who were freaking out about not getting the aid.
So it was clear there was a lot of pressure there.
And also, just the fact that no one's arguing that they agreed to do a CNN interview announcing these investigations into Biden.
They agreed to do that.
So, like, again, no one's arguing any of these facts.
So, to me, what that means is that they're saying that they've conceded that, and now the new argument is that, oh, it's going to take too long in the courts to get, if somebody like Bolton says executive immunity, or sorry, executive privilege, there's no time to go to the courts and argue that.
Now, we can get into that discussion, too, if you like, because the courts don't have any jurisdiction over that.
It's only a simple vote of the Senate.
They have sole impeachment power.
Jared?
I think we have to frame this by just admitting a really, really essential fact, which is the Republican Party in America is not interested in even pretending to be playing in good faith in any of this.
And again, like we've talked about this before, but it always has to be stated because we forget this stuff.
We forget that society and law and government and politics are constructs.
They're things that we've made up and the only reason they have any power and the only reason that society and all these things work is because we've agreed that this is how we're going to operate and everyone's going to operate within an agreed amount of rules.
And you have to operate in good faith.
Yeah, you can posture and you can strategize all this stuff, but there's like inbounds and out-of-bounds in what you do.
The Republican Party has said, screw that, we're not going to operate in good faith.
You know why?
Because you succeed in partisan squabbles if the other side acts in good faith and you don't.
That's basic game theory.
That's what all of this has been about.
Republicans haven't offered a single rebuttal of any of the charges.
And here's the reason.
There's no rebuttal.
It's black and white.
And that's the other thing that drives me crazy is it's like the coverage of this stuff The media has become, it's become the sportsification of American politics.
They want to talk about winning moves.
It's like signing free agents.
It's about, you know, motivation and what they're doing.
This isn't a game.
It's actually how the business of a country and a society is supposed to move forward.
Republicans don't care.
They've said the only thing that matters is our power and our survival and our advancement.
And so they're not going to rebut this thing.
And even as Adam Schiff, and this is the other thing, I think it's pretty amazing what he's doing.
He gets up there and he says, I know what you're doing right now.
I know that you've made this calculation, but you have to understand there are repercussions to this.
Because it's true.
If Donald Trump is acquitted, And, you know, everybody can sit here and say it'll happen, but I'll tell you what, the moment that we get some witnesses up there, like, if we actually get somebody and this thing cracks open, like, it could get weird and bad.
And I think, I just looked at a poll, 72% of Americans want witnesses, and the majority of Americans want him removed.
And the Republican Party has to understand that, and the vulnerable Republicans, I think, understand that very well.
If he's acquitted and this whole thing is swept under the rug, like, it sets a standard.
It says there are no rules anymore.
And that's what Adam Schiff is saying.
And he's appealing to the better angels of their nature.
And everybody else is just like, oh, who's going to win this?
Who won this round?
Who won whatever?
Republicans aren't interested in having a conversation.
They're interested in winning.
And that's where we are.
That's the black and white of it.
And that's not partisan.
And that's not biased.
That's what is legitimately happening right now.
And we see this throughout history.
I mean, even when we talk about the housing crisis and the Great Recession, we saw companies and politicians and people act in their own self-interest in a very short-term sense, knowing that what they were doing was going to destroy the economy.
But they didn't care because they needed to get one more quarter of positive growth.
And this is the same thing because, like you said, with the polls, This is a loser for the Republicans if they don't want to bring witnesses.
Now, here's the thing.
We've been saying this.
I want to take credit.
I don't think I get it, but I was saying from the very beginning that this is what McConnell is going to do.
He's going to make it a one-day trial.
I thought it was going to be one or two.
He's basically going to make it a two-day trial, vote, acquit him, done.
So we know that.
We know what the outcome is going to be.
It's not going to change even at this moment in time, even though we still have to talk about another piece of evidence that came out today.
We know that.
So what does these witnesses even appearing do for us and do for them?
Were we just hoping to say, well, at least they gave it the old college try and they at least gave us a little bit more of an appearance of a fair trial before they acquitted him?
You really think that Bolton's testimony would change five, or what is it, actually you need more than five senators, right?
I forgot the numbers now.
So you need 67 to vote to get him out of there.
So whatever that number is.
13, 14, whatever.
So you really think that would do it?
So let's talk about a thing called artificial state of play, right?
And again, this goes back to the idea of game theory.
Let's play a game, Nick.
All of a sudden, we're not in reality.
We're in an artificial state of play, right?
The problem with artificial states of play is that it changes the nature of play.
So right now, when you're sitting there, and you're exactly right, we all know what's going to happen.
But the moment that we say, yeah, Republicans are going to do this and there's no way that we can change that, it eliminates other things, right?
So, like, if we sit here and we say, yeah, Republicans are going to quit and we all expect that, it's going to be demoralizing and it makes us feel like we're bystanders.
But we're not bystanders.
That's not how politics works.
Politics is about, or it's supposed to be about, there's like a lot of contradictory evidence of that throughout time because America was founded under false pretenses.
But the idea is the sovereignty comes from the people.
Republicans and groups like Republicans, and because it's, you know, Democrats have done this too, and Republicans are doing it right now.
So it's, you know, this is bipartisan and it's all over the place.
Groups like the Republicans right now win when they make Americans and people like them think that they have no power.
And that this is just a foregone conclusion.
There's no reason to care.
There's no reason to hope.
Yeah, we are completely acting in bad faith and we're going to win.
So, you know, put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Well, Libtard.
Right.
The problem is that that's not how any of this works.
Like, if we actually get some actual witnesses in there, so if John Bolton gets up at the impeachment trial, and he's like, yeah, I saw crimes, and here are the crimes, and by the way, I have receipts because these are the crimes, and I've got this, and I've got that, and you get records, and all of a sudden it's this.
I'm sorry, the majority of Americans right now believe that Donald Trump is a criminal who should be removed from office.
The majority of Americans.
That is a clear majority.
If it just keeps getting worse and it becomes more and more and more obvious that that's not a political opinion and that's actual reality, if you get people in the streets, you get these offices flooded with calls and emails and all of this stuff.
Things change.
We the biggest mistake that humans make is thinking that tomorrow is gonna look exactly like today But it's not it changes all the time eras change dynasties change power changes and and if there is a swing of power and the momentum changes and people realize that they have sovereignty and that the Republican Party is actually a group that only exists because it's a minority party that you know gerrymanders and You know gives elections over to foreign governments if people understand that and there's a shift and there's momentum.
We don't know what could happen And that is what is going on here and that's one of the things that Schiff is trying to get to.
He's trying to break the idea that tomorrow will look like today.
Now, will it?
Chances are it won't.
Chances are that this thing won't break and the Republicans are going to pull off a great cover-up and we're in trouble.
But there is an outside possibility and we have to understand that that Could happen.
So you're telling me there's a chance?
I'm telling you there's a chance.
Well, okay, let's look at it this way.
Slightly rhetorical question, but has an incumbent president ever won with these kind of polling numbers?
Certainly has he ever won with a polling of whether he should be removed from office over 50%?
I think it's pretty safe to say no.
Okay.
So let's look at what the scheme was for a second.
I think I kind of want to unpack that.
I don't know if anyone's really looked at that to try and play along what would have happened if the whistleblower didn't exist or didn't blow the whistle.
So they announced the investigation and that gives him the fuel to then hammer that when Biden gets the nomination.
Oh, wait, wait.
No, hold on.
We have to make one quick little addendum.
It's not announcing an investigation.
It's announcing the possibility of an investigation.
Because none of these people had any actual desire to do an investigation, which was shown time and time again, because there's a difference there, right?
And one investigation is to root out corruption.
That's what an actual investigation does.
To say we're going to have an investigation and not do one is partisan purposes.
In some period of time, I quote.
So yes.
Right.
So, okay, right, but he'll be able to hammer, and even though they said we're going to start an investigation, that's what Zelensky would have said, something like that, and then Trump would already have twisted that to say they are investigating Biden, and we need to know.
So, okay, what he's now mirroring is the Hillary email problem, that they were able to hang on Hillary's head.
And of course Hillary, we can argue that later, but I don't think she handled that well anyway.
So he thinks, okay, we now need another kind of Hillary-esque, email-esque thing.
This is going to be it and it will help us win because he believes that that's what helped him win his first election.
Is that true?
I would use this analogy, and we'll go to your world.
We'll go to basketball.
I'll go back to, I believe it was 2009.
I believe it was the NCAA Championship between the Butler Bulldogs and the Duke Blue Devils.
You know, like one of the biggest underdogs ever, Butler versus Duke, and they almost pulled it off.
And the way that they pulled it off, if anybody remembers it, and for people who don't care about sports, just, I promise you, we're getting there.
It was one of the ugliest basketball games that you could ever watch.
Just disgusting.
And it was a terribly played basketball game because Butler wasn't as athletic as Duke.
They had no chance to win if it was, like, a good game.
And so what they did is they drug Duke into the mud.
Right?
They, all of a sudden, they're like, okay, well, you're not going to have your advantages here.
Like, with Trump, the only way he ever wins is, he's very, very unpopular.
And there's no way he's going to become popular.
He's the head of a minority party that has, you know, their numbers are in the toilet.
And the only way that he can beat anybody else is by dragging their numbers in the toilet.
It's purely partisan, and it's purely oppositional politics.
There's no, I mean, Donald Trump doesn't inspire people.
There's no inspiration.
He channels anger.
That's it.
Okay, so, okay, that makes sense, because I think the question I was getting at was, you know, Comey is pretty much the guy, if you want to talk about Hillary's emails, that lost for the election, right?
His announcement a week before the election is what, she had a lead that was insurmountable a week before, and then it collapsed after he re-announced the opening, and then all of a sudden he's like, whoop, just kidding.
So, but okay, so then, If it was Comey who did it, but it was only because Trump kept it in the news for so long, I suppose is what his rationale is.
But again, it's almost like that bad movie where the whole plot hinges on someone else doing something that you never would have been able to bank on.
Like, he never would have known or could have controlled that Comey was going to a. Reopen the investigation for a day and then b. Announce it publicly, which he didn't have to do.
And also it was because, you know, this horrible tarmac meeting that caused, you know, it's all these weird series of events that didn't have anything to do with Trump.
So to me, it's like he's trying to recreate that.
And that to me almost indicates either just how stupid they are because they are they are dumb or and or how desperate they are.
Like this was the bottom of the barrel plan that they tried to hatch that they'd be able to handle.
Now, the other thing is, is that what he wasn't considering, I would imagine, was that there needed to have been some sort of, oh, he's trying to do another Hillary thing that that wouldn't have grabbed people as much because he already cried wolf once.
I would think.
Wouldn't you agree?
There's a lot of shit to spread around in this thing.
I mean, you're, you're exactly right that the FBI investigation, uh, played a role in determining that election, but there's a lot of other things too, because you said something very, very smart, which is Trump could not have won if things that he didn't even anticipate wouldn't have happened.
So I don't think Donald Trump understood that the media was going to gift him $3 billion worth of free coverage.
I think he intuitively understood that because he is cable news personified.
So the media had to fall down on the job and basically, not basically, they did.
They figured out that their profit margin and their profit machine depended on Donald Trump, which has continued.
The entirety of American political structures had to be weak and sick and, you know, inflicted with terminal problems that he could exploit and gain from.
The Hillary Clinton campaign was hobbled by some really bad strategy and the fact that she was in the public eye for decades and in places like Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the Clinton name was synonymous with NAFTA and deindustrialization.
So all those things came together.
There's a lot of shit to spread around there.
This right here is what you're talking about is exactly right.
This was an intentional effort to try and replicate what happened I don't think it was corrupt.
Was it a bad look?
that they could take Joe Biden and that they could frame him in the same sort of light.
And real fast, before we move forward, we have to point out, the reason he was able to do that is because the American political structure, which has been inundated with money and profit and business.
Like, I'm sorry, but Biden's kid got involved with this Burisma company.
I don't think it was corrupt.
Was it a bad look?
Absolutely, it was a bad look, right?
It's not necessarily that there was corruption.
It's the image of corruption.
And that's all that matters.
Well, it's already been talked about now for, what, a year?
And it could have been for months and months and months leading up to 2020.
Trump knew the media wouldn't be able to turn that down.
And that they would amplify it over and over and over again.
So yeah, he was going to point out how the structure has problems, and he was going to do it in a way to drag his opponent into the mud.
But it wasn't like he was a genius about it.
I mean, him and Rudy Giuliani, and we have to talk about this because if people haven't seen Rudy Giuliani's, and I'm so happy that Nick sent me this today.
I was busy working on some stuff and I hadn't seen it.
It is Batshit cuckoo bananas, man.
It is Rudy Giuliani basically going on Fox & Friends Live, which I... Can you imagine going into a live taping of Fox & Friends?
It's amazing.
And he goes on there and he's just like, I'm starting a podcast that's going to prove the corruption at the heart of all of this.
It's like, oh my god, Rudy.
Just sit this play out.
It's on YouTube.
It just came out today.
And he lays it out.
And it's so convoluted.
You can almost hear people in the audience being like, what are you doing, Rudy?
I heard a couple of those.
I'm not sure if it was to encourage him or to be like, what's the matter with you?
But you know it's a problem.
Even the Fox News anchors who are hosting you are cutting you off and getting you to stop because it was crazy.
Do you think, by the way, real fast, do you think That, okay, so Sean Hannity is just, like, gone, right?
I mean, this guy exists on a different plane of reality.
But watching Fox & Friends and the way they respond to, like, Rudy Giuliani and Trump, like, the moments where, like, the insanity comes out in full view and they're like, oh, I don't know about that.
Like, do you think that these people who are at Fox News dragging in, like, seven figures and enjoying this platform, there have to be moments where Trump or Giuliani or some of these people are talking and all of a sudden it dawns on them and they're like, What am I doing?
Like, what am I involved in?
It has to, right?
We see that in a lot of those memes where they'll zoom in on, you know, I used to know their names and now I'm forgetting, Air Sith, whatever, one of those guys, and because he's really bad, but there are moments, it's multiple, I've seen a lot where when Trump is going on and on and Giuliani, and they'll just zoom in on his face and you can see what you described on his face.
Yeah, Doocy and Kilmeade.
So Kilmeade, oh my god.
Real fast, I'm so sorry.
It's a casual Friday emergency podcast, so I'm feeling a little loose.
I'll just throw this out there.
Doocy, I think, is the smarter of the duo.
And he has moments where he looks terrified.
And then Kilmeade, Kilmeade is kind of, well, he's not the intellectual powerhouse of that show.
And he writes books, right?
He aspires to be intellectual.
And there's these moments where Kilmeade will look around and it's like a dog who has suddenly become mayor of a town.
And even the dog is like totally shocked that he's in control of like a city.
Or to me it's more like, okay, blink three times if you need help.
You know, that kind of thing.
It really is frightening.
And, you know, watch it because he tries to lay it out.
There's a moment of a thread in there where you're like, OK, I'm kind of trying to see where you're going with it.
But then it's just, you know, the bottom line is the reason why the Department of Justice refused to even look at this stuff is because it is so much of what the Russian propaganda has been trying to perpetuate.
And we already heard from Fiona Hill.
They know this stuff.
Yovanovitch knew this stuff.
So, you know, that's the other thread that we no one's we haven't really even explored is it's sort of, OK, like why they needed to take her out.
And then it's also connected to the breaking news, which I can't believe we got this far that we're talking about of Lev Parnas releasing audio footage or video audio of him in the same room with Trump hanging out, having dinner at the Trump Hotel and Trump saying, take her out.
Take her out.
And I want to remind everybody because again our media which you know occasionally nails it and other times just drops the ball in the most unbelievable ways Trump and this whole cabal of idiots and Coen Brothers characters who were not just scheming against her They were literally stalking her.
Like, they were following her movements as if they were, well, not as if they were an organized crime body.
They're an organized crime body.
Let's call it what it is.
Trump says, take her out.
And real fast, and I'm having a good time here, but we gotta talk about some serious things.
We talked last time about how, yeah, maybe it's a joke for a while, and then things can get out of hand.
That's how things get out of hand.
You know what I mean?
I've seen this.
This is the Coen Brothers movie.
Yeah.
And your idiot president says, take her out.
And somebody's like, oh.
Oh, OK.
You said take her out, man.
You said take her out.
And I want to put this out there, too.
Man, there's so much.
It just never stops.
Yeah.
Ever.
Yeah.
No, Parnassus is Buscemi.
And Trump is the crazy guy in Fargo who kills the wife.
And he goes, what are you?
I didn't tell you to kill her!
Anyway, yes.
And by the way, they did whisk her out of the country.
I need to do a little bit more research to kind of get more.
There's not a lot of information about that because it's been classified, but we need that.
That needs to be presented somewhere in some form of what that nature of the threat was and why they felt compelled to take an ambassador out of her country that she's working in.
That's insane.
Right, and so you have this buffoon.
We have a total, total buffoon of a president, but that doesn't mean that he's not dangerous, right?
Because his instincts and his tendencies are authoritarian and fascist.
Because that's what happens.
Authoritarians and fascists are inherently insecure, and we have one of the most insecure human beings alive as president, right?
So it enables these things.
We also had a thing last night, and I can't believe we haven't talked about this yet.
CBS reported that Republicans were told from the Trump administration, from the White House, that if they stepped out of line, and if they worked with Democrats, or if they questioned Trump, their heads would quote-unquote be on pikes.
Now, everybody's just like, oh, that means that if, you know, they vote for witnesses, Trump will say mean things on Twitter.
Fine.
But you also have to understand that everything that Trump does right now has the backing of really dangerous people.
Really dangerous, unpredictable people.
And whoever he says is the enemy of the people, like, they're in danger, right?
So, there's a message.
And the message in all of this, and, you know, it starts off like, a lot of crime boss people are very charming.
Well, guess what?
It hides an evil, dangerous, murderous veneer.
You have, in this case, a U.S. diplomat being stalked and being threatened.
Over here, you have him basically telling the Republican Party, you step out of line, your life is in danger.
Like, we can laugh about this because, my God, you've got to laugh at horror, right?
Because that's why it's funny.
That's why this whole thing is funny at times is because, you know, horror plus relief equals comedy.
Well, in this case, we literally have a murderous crime syndicate that is totally unpredictable and has authoritarian fascist tendencies, and they're imperiled, right?
And they're desperate.
And so that's that's what we're dealing with here.
It's a really frightening thing.
Right.
And then the funny thing is all the projection that comes out.
So like Giuliani, for instance, is trying to accuse Biden of all these years of corruption by wherever he went with his foreign policy experience.
His family would dig in and then suck dry, you know, the laundromat out of those different areas based on his position as a senator or a vice president.
Well, you know, he's describing what Trump's doing and the Trump found Trump.
Jesus, the the Trump organization is doing.
So it really and it doesn't seem to have any effect.
I mean, it has an effect on the people who are already predicated to not like them.
So Democrats and independents or whatever.
But it really serves to harden fast and really, you know, the ideology of who still the people who still support him.
So that's the question, though, is is what it with all of this in the context and the polls and what we're seeing.
Why do we still feel so concerned about the 2020 election?
Because America is fundamentally broken and.
And our system of government has been bought and sold.
It's been taken away from our power.
And just to throw some more on that fire, we have moved to a system now where politicians are openly asking foreign governments to interfere.
And we can't trust our systems, and we can't trust fundraising.
Also, by the way, our technology has created dangerous partisanship where people don't understand what's happening in politics, or who they are, or how things are going on.
And we have a fascist authoritarian who has joked openly about canceling elections.
Yeah, I mean it's, you know, that's the Reader's Digest version.
It's a perilous time because there's peril.
I, you know, I feel it's January, by the way, and this month has felt like three years.
I'm getting ready to go, you know, people have heard I'm getting ready to go out to Iowa and New Hampshire for the caucuses and primaries.
And we're just starting the process, right?
And we have a president who, for the past four years, has called everybody who's ever criticized him an enemy of the people.
He's had people under him send bombs in the mail.
You've had people killed.
You've had militias marching through state capitals.
You've had neo-Nazis who have killed.
You've had journalists killed?
Yeah, it's a legitimately perilous time.
And we're at the dawning, and not to get too dramatic because, you know, it's like 2.30 on a Friday afternoon.
We're at a changing of an era.
Like, that's what's happening here.
What we've known about the world is going away, and we're entering into something else.
And whenever you enter into something else, there are always these moments of peril where it could go one way or it could go the other way, right?
It could go the wrong way here, and it looks like it's trying to go the wrong way here.
And again, it goes back to the idea of powerlessness and watching this stuff as spectacle.
But the secret to making sure that it doesn't go the wrong way, the first step is realizing it could go the wrong way.
Right?
And that there's an opportunity for it to go the wrong way, and that it's perilous.
Which again, goes back to the fact that that's why Adam Schiff's thing felt so important, is because when people stand up and they start saying, hey, this is an actual serious situation, and while the media... I gotta say this, I gotta get on my quick soak box.
This is a constitutional social crisis.
We don't need flashy graphics.
We don't need dramatic music.
It's not a television show.
Like, this is the state of the world.
This is the fate of the world here.
And we have to start treating it that way.
We have to start treating politics like it's the way society moves forward.
Not like it's, you know, Monday Night Raw or the Bucks against the Rockets.
Like, we have to start treating it like it's real and that it could go the wrong way because it's sliding the wrong way right now.
Right.
Schiff said it perfectly.
He said, the quote was, right matters and the truth matters.
But he is so right and it's like maybe this will be that cause for inspiration for like even younger people who want maybe to get into politics because who would ever want to be involved in this kind of stuff anymore based on what's going on.
Another one of those, you know, when what dictators want is to people, oh that's so corrupt I don't want to even be a politician.
So then we have a real brain drain and we don't have any kind of talent in our politics.
So that's a real scary proposition as far as where we're going to go here.
But again, every number would indicate that, yeah, he's going to lose and it won't even be close.
I want to talk about a couple things that have been bothering me that are a little bit related to this, but almost not.
Why do you think Trump didn't minimize... I know we briefly talked about this, but we now have even more information about just how many American troops were hurt in Iraq on that attack.
Do you think it's possible that this is all sort of part of it, like, you know, hey, Iran, okay, you can retaliate on us now a little bit and then we'll be good, you know, and then the distraction will be there for the impeachment and we'll be all set.
Do you think that there was any connection to that?
Because I know when we had a bomb at a Russian airport, military airport, whatever, we told them ahead of time, well, they were operating within a day, so I'm wondering if the same thing existed here.
So the last time I looked at an article about it, I want to say it said that there were 11 US soldiers that suffered traumatic brain injuries.
I want to say that was the last thing I saw, at least that they suffered head injuries.
Oh no, there was more than 11.
Wait, was it more than 11?
That's the last I'd seen.
So, there's a couple things happening there.
One, obviously Trump doesn't want to believe that he hurt anybody, right?
Like, he doesn't want to take responsibility for the fact that his actions hurt people.
It's not politically great.
But secondary, there's also another part to this and there's a long line of this stuff and it has to do with masculinity and the traditional idea of it.
I wrote about this in my last book a lot actually, like the evolution of the idea of trauma.
through war and battle is inherently linked to the idea of malehood, right?
And Trump's like that.
He's like, oh, you got a head injury?
Oh, you got PTSD?
You got a headache?
Oh, take an aspirin and get over it, right?
And this is a person who didn't serve, obviously, and got multiple deferments because he was terrified of doing it.
But, you know, these chicken hawks have a long history of just being like, oh yeah, talk to me about PTSD and your stupid ass feelings.
Okay.
And so he doesn't care.
It's a combination of the two things.
On one hand, he doesn't want to take responsibility for it.
On the other hand, I mean, he has to pretend like he's tougher than that.
Like if he was there, he wouldn't have got hurt because he's not weak.
Right.
By the way, it was 34. 34.
It's up to 34.
Remember, you could be nearby with a percussive blow to you that knocks you over like the That's concussive symptoms.
And real fast, I'll just throw this out there to go along with that.
That goes back to the John McCain thing, right?
I like heroes who didn't get captured.
And the idea with American soldiers, particularly with the American right, is they look at soldiers and they lift them up to this godhood status, but the moment that they're hurt, it means that they were faulty.
Right?
That the soldier who got hurt was somehow or another not up to the level of, like, godhood and masculinity.
So that goes right back to the McCain thing, which everybody was totally shocked that Trump could talk about McCain, but there's an inherent thing there, right?
Because Americans are terrified of weakness.
It says something, it says something about us, and the fact that John McCain was there, like, everybody lauded him for, you know, decades for actual heroism.
But, like, the fact that Trump could do that, I think is, it goes back to the idea of these insecurities.
And to show how desperate they are, they're pulling out the criticism of Vindman again, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, and his testimony against the President is now an affront to the Republicans and to America.
It also reminds me of when Schiff, in his amazing speech, he referenced, you know, you could give him a pass if you thought he was kind of a joking, if he was a joking President when he said, Russia, if you're listening, you know, you could hack Hillary's emails.
But we know within, you know, a few hours they did do that.
So now when he turns around and says, hey China, investigate Biden, he's not joking.
And if he is joking, then great.
Quit being the president and go on tour and you can be a stand-up comic for all you like.
He'd be a shitty stand-up comic, but like that's what he wants to do.
That's what these rallies are.
He thinks it's a stand-up comic performance.
And that might be what I'm really most, I don't know, most frustrated, but this notion of what a statesman is supposed to do and say and how he's supposed to galvanize our country and bring them together.
And it's like what you had said earlier, which is right on.
He operates on hate and he operates on divisiveness.
We gave him a chance.
He had his three years to get this thing together, and he failed.
This is the absolute worst possible result you could have from a presidency, and yet you have the people here, the dwindling numbers who are still wanting to say, well, he didn't do anything wrong, and I don't care if he did because I'm getting my judges.
He has failed at everything.
An interesting thing that I hadn't thought about in a couple days, but I'm glad that it's coming back up.
So I've been doing some research lately on Reagan, Ronald Reagan, and the myth and the cult of Ronald Reagan.
One of the things I write about all the time and some of the things that I'm working on have to do with that idea of like the cult of the shining city, Reagan is sort of a patron saint of American exceptionalism and a perfect, you know, vessel or whatever.
And I was going back looking at this old footage and coverage of Ronald Reagan, and first of all, everybody at the time was just like, he has no idea what's going on, this is a really problematic presidency, and he's kind of incompetent.
Well, Republicans were totally behind him because they were totally, totally, totally in love with the evangelical part, but also the war with Russia.
Right?
Cold War was a black and white thing.
We're on this side, and they're on their side, and that's it.
Well, Trump talked—er, Trump.
What a Freudian slip.
Reagan talked all the time about how evil Russia was, right?
It was the evil empire.
Then when he started talking with Gorbachev, him and Gorbachev hit it off and they started talking about treaties.
And Reagan screwed that whole thing up, but there was a funny thing that happened.
And what happened at the moment was that while Reagan was working with Gorbachev, they started working on an arms treaty.
And they finally got there after a couple of meetings.
They signed an intent for a treaty.
And the United States Senate has to ratify it, right?
They have to ratify any treaties with foreign countries.
Do you know who supported Ronald Reagan on that?
Democrats.
That's where he got the majority of his support.
And then the Republicans at the time were just like, oh, this is absurd.
You don't talk to Republican.
Or, uh, I can't have Freudian sleep.
Freudian sleep.
You don't talk to Russians, right?
You don't, you don't have anything to do with Russians.
Americanism is you don't work with Russians.
He got the support from Democrats.
Now, all of a sudden, Reagan has been lauded again as this Republican cult icon.
He did everything perfect, right?
He was, he was And now all of a sudden you have a guy, that was their line back in the day, now they have a guy who is just drooling at the bit constantly to talk to Vladimir Putin, sides with him on everything, contradicts American intelligence to help Putin, is on Putin's side at all times, sitting there saying Russians should interject themselves in our elections, and is just kowtowing to Russia at all times.
This is a group of people that has changed.
The Republican Party is different.
For them to sit there and let this thing happen, they've made a political calculation, and I've said this before and I'll say it again, they and the Russians particularly, and by the way, I'm gonna stop saying Russians because it's not the Russian people.
It's Vladimir Putin, right?
It's Putinism.
They have recognized in Putinism one thing that they need, which is how to get power despite not having democratic popularity.
And they have recognized it.
It's a white identity movement, it's an apocalyptic movement, and it's a political movement, and it's all tied up together.
They have made that calculation, and that's where they are.
They don't care about the country.
They don't care about the betterment of people's lives.
They care about maintaining power.
And that's it.
Here's the thing that I think is interesting is that they really, even within the first 100 days of the administration, before we really found out anything about Russia, remember this is all come out after the fact, Oh, no.
Wait, I was reporting on that in the summer of 2016.
Nobody else wanted to talk about it.
You're exactly right.
It was a little bit out there.
And then the Mike Flynn thing was just coming out and bubbling up.
And even then, there was a tremendous resistance to even acknowledge that Russia was involved or had anything to do with it or didn't appeal to their hawkishness against Russia from the Reagan era.
All these people who were devoted to Reagan.
And it was striking to me because I used that Well, it was the first 100 days.
Remember, I was having a discussion with somebody, and I used it.
I'm like, I would think that, you know, your reverence for Reagan, and you living through the 80s, how would you ever consider Russia being an okay ally or be part of this?
And it just, there was nothing.
They were not even, they didn't respond.
They just moved on.
We had to start talking about something else.
It was simply a blank stare.
And it really struck me back then.
Rudy talked about this today.
There was a really quick thing that he said, and I actually think the Democrats have made a good point about this during the impeachment trial, which is pointing the finger at Republicans and saying, hey, you are willingly Willingly pushing Russian propaganda right now, right?
Because it's the same thing with Trump.
Trump doesn't want to believe that Russia conspired in the 2016 election.
Or maybe he knows.
Who knows what's going on in that dude's brain?
But he wants to believe that he won it on his own.
Republicans don't want to believe that they are now tied to the political fortunes of Russia.
Russia's more than happy to tell them and sell propaganda and conspiracy theories that say, no, you won elections.
We have nothing to do with this.
Rudy said it today in that Fox and Friends thing, and he dropped it in very, very quietly.
He's like, I've talked to multiple people that tell me it wasn't Russia.
It was Ukraine.
It's like, you know, like self-interest and the narrative of the self does incredible things for your ability to believe absolute bullshit Oh, yeah, and so they are tied to them and they're they're tied to that reality because it's about Identity and and what they think about themselves and how the world works and you know They're gonna keep towing that line until there's another line to tow that will help them more and that's just who these people are
I think that some of the psychiatric evaluations that we're having, I know it's armchair evaluations, but still, is the projection because we see Rudy Giuliani in the show, like what you mentioned, he literally is trying to connect a case, he says he has evidence, where the Democrats colluded with the Ukrainians to shift the 2016 election.
And that is exactly the opposite, right?
It's the other way that it happened, and we have the evidence for that.
Ultimately, it's striking to me that it's feelings over evidence.
Feelings might not even be the right word, because you can start to talk about bias, or it's bias over evidence, or it's bigotry over evidence, it's white supremacism over evidence.
And you get that far, and then you realize, to get to that point where that's how you really feel, Then you're right.
It's almost like you'll never be able to have a conversation with those kind of people.
And they've gotten there with so much help from places like Fox News, which is certainly a part of it.
And then it really is just solidified now because of Trump.
I think Trump is basically, you know, if they were still sort of wet mud, Trump is now the sun that's dried it out.
And now they're hardened fast and you can't break it.
It's like cement.
That's an unbelievable analogy.
I was going to say a bunch of stuff, but we got it in there.
That's way too good.
I lament that I had to compare Trump to the sun, but some sort of funny device.
You sound like a man in his personal life who's been dealing with mud lately, so I'll just throw that out there.
OK, so we're going to sign this off.
We just we had to do an emergency podcast.
It's too much.
There's just too much happening, as always.
In the meantime, as was advertised, please subscribe to the podcast because we have a lot of coverage coming up while we're doing the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries.
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A lot of episodes are going to be dropping.
A lot of reactions are going to be posted.
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I'm AJY Sexton.
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