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Jan. 28, 2020 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
51:58
Impeachment Optional

As Alan Dershowitz argues Donald Trump should be an unimpeachable king, co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman break down the increasingly baffling argument by Trump's lawyers, the booming business of cashing in on the fall of America, and Rudy Giuliani's new "podcast." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Time Text
I think that is what this is really about, is deep policy concerns, deep policy differences.
We live in a constitutional republic where you have deep policy concerns and deep differences.
That should not be the basis of an impeachment.
If you don't like a president's policies on climate change, vote for the other candidate.
If you don't like a president's tweets, find somebody who doesn't tweet.
That will be easy.
But don't allow your subjective judgments to determine what is and is not an impeachable offense.
Most of the federal crimes are contained in 18 United States Code.
There is no crime there called abuse of power.
It's a nebulous term.
It's a debatable thing.
It's more of a theory than it is a charge that's defined.
So this is a unimpeachable act.
It's not one of the acts about which Congress has the power to vote an article of impeachment.
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.
Hey everybody, welcome to The Muckrake Podcast.
I am your co-host, J.J.
Sexton.
I'm here with Nick Hausman.
Before we start, and man alive do we have a lot of stuff to talk about, I just want to put a couple of things out there for people to plan around.
One, today we launched the companion website to The Muckrake Podcast, which is TheMuckrake.com.
We've got our first article up there, which is an article about Donald Trump's religious and cult around him and the history behind that that includes Jerry Falwell, Ronald Reagan's a cult, leanings, a lot of really, really weird stuff that explains stuff that has seemed pretty inscrutable up to this point.
So check that out.
Please bookmark it, whatever you're going to do.
And also while you're at it, subscribe to the podcast.
We're going to Iowa and we're going to be covering the Caucasus and we're going to be doing a bunch of exclusive coverage on this podcast, Reactions from events, reactions from talking to Iowa voters.
Maybe you'll get some inside information.
You'll certainly hear me talking from rundown hotels in Iowa, so you got that going for you.
So go ahead, subscribe.
You're going to want that.
In the meantime, Nick, we have a lot to talk about.
Before we went on the air, We're doing this a little later than usual, so I was lucky enough to catch Alan Dershowitz, the great celebrity lawyer, making his case for Donald Trump in tonight's installment of the impeachment trial.
He argued basically that you cannot impeach a president, that presidents cannot commit crimes.
At one point, he went through every single president in the history of the United States of America and said why they had committed abuse of power.
He at one point mentioned John Adams, who passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which if you want the number one draft pick of the most unconstitutional things a president's ever done, it's way up there at the top.
He also brought up Iran-Contra, as if that wasn't something that probably should have gotten Reagan impeached.
He brought up James K. Polk, who invaded Mexico for no reason whatsoever, a completely invented war.
And basically made the case that the American presidency needs to rein in, which I have to say is I don't think what Alan Dershowitz planned on doing.
I kind of feel like he's going under the legal doctrine, impeachment optional, is what he would think the Constitution stands for, I suppose.
He's been insane for a while, and I think it's some sort of fever, right?
There's a Trump fever that attacks brains in the zombie way, and you get a lot of crazy shit being said by people who, you know, you could even argue in the past that Dershowitz did have command of his faculties and understood how to present a case properly.
I mean, it's really bad, because you're right, he's now saying that what Trump did as he was soliciting foreign interference in an election is not impeachable.
It's like nothing is impeachable.
No, he made the case that there's literally nothing a president could do that could lead to impeachment.
He said at one point, and this is some real Trumpian stuff, like this is Kellyanne Conway talking about alternative facts and Rudy Giuliani, who by the way, we're going to talk about a little bit and have a little bit of fun with because as you said, everyone who deals with Trump goes insane.
Rudy Giuliani at one point saying truth isn't truth right so Alan Dershowitz who is this high-priced very very famous defense lawyer at one point made the argument and and I'm still trying to wrap my head around this because it was something he made the argument that you can't punish a president for their intentions
Which he basically said, you know, it doesn't matter what the president was trying to do or what the president thought they were doing.
Like, that doesn't even come into the equation.
Which leads to a situation where we have a king.
I mean, that's what it is.
We have a monarch.
And that's what Alan Dershowitz was arguing for tonight.
Well, remember what he is doing is he's not dumb, but if you're trying to muddy the water about intent, I think he's trying to simply blow up the second article of impeachment, which is obstruction of Congress.
Because when you obstruct, you need to prove the intent.
That's sort of like the whole key to the case on that end.
And it's interesting only because most of the other Republicans have like summarily dismissed that out of hand.
They don't even want to talk about the second article because they don't recognize that as anything.
I suppose they're going to get onto their high horse and say, well, this is all a sham.
So why would he ever agree and participate in a sham investigation?
So there isn't any obstruction of Congress.
The problem is that the Constitution gives the House of Representatives the power to do this, to do their investigation.
It's very, very strange, but it also is pretty transparent, wouldn't you say?
Yeah, and I like that you're trying to, somehow or another, put a constant logic to all of this.
I think that's very brave of you, because the one thing that we've seen, not just from Dershowitz, but also from the Republicans, and also from Fox News, and everybody in Trump's orbit, is this constant evolving logic, faux logic.
Right?
Like for a while they were like, well if Trump was using defense funds to hold over the head of Ukraine and he did ask for them to investigate Biden, that would be a major problem.
And then it's like, flash forward 12 hours later when there's proof that happened and all of a sudden Fox News is like, what's the problem with that?
Obviously that's not a problem.
And so what we're also dancing around here is the major story of the day.
Which is that National Security Advisor and mustachioed man who has not met a war that he didn't love, John Bolton, has floated out parts of his manuscript for his new book.
And we got to talk about that because I...
I have a chip on my shoulder about this whole thing a mile wide.
But John Bolton has come out and said that Trump told him explicitly that the holdup of funds was completely about investigating Biden.
Said it pretty much in no uncertain terms.
And Dershowitz actually mentioned Bolton by name.
Because the one thing that keeps happening behind the scenes...
As you keep hearing these stories, and I've talked to a couple of Republicans today who have told me that the mood has changed.
As soon as that report came out, like a lot of Republicans started sitting up in their seats like a lot more rigid.
Like, I would bet dollars to donuts right now that Bolton is going to testify.
And Dershowitz, in his amazing legal mind, thought it was a great idea to say in front of the impeachment trial, in front of the United States of America today, he said, even if John Bolton's manuscript was accurate, that's not even punishable.
Which is mind-blowing insane from any viewpoint.
Yes, it is.
And let me ask you really quickly, how long does it take to write a book?
You've written a book.
You've written a couple of books, I think.
How long does it take?
Well, are you talking about, like, actually writing a book?
Or are you talking about being in the middle of a national-international controversy and an entire team of publicists deciding that you need to release a book as soon as possible?
Because if it's the latter, you're not writing that book.
Right?
John Bolton, and you'll notice if you go and look at his memoir, it's called a White House memoir, it's got a lot of his stuff talking about his, you know, past involvement with presidency.
Stuff he probably had written at some point.
But I can tell you that a team of ghostwriters were working on this around the clock as brand marketers.
And this is what pisses me off, Nick.
A bunch of brand marketers were like, you know, the nation's on fire.
This is a really good time to profit.
And that's exactly what's happening here.
This isn't some sort of like brave stand, principled idea that Bolton has.
This is cashing in on catastrophe.
Alright, because he just got fired or left, you know, not that long ago and all of a sudden it's in manuscript form.
I was shocked about that.
But I think what was also shocking to a lot of Republicans is how long the White House had this manuscript in their possession to review it and didn't say anything to anybody.
There's a couple of reasons why that might have happened.
A, they sent it to the White House, and the guy that signed for it never did anything with it, right?
Oh, I'm supposed to hand it to somebody?
Because I have a feeling that there's no command center there.
There's no hierarchy.
There's no notion of what things are supposed to happen in this White House.
This is chaos.
Or, I mean, listen, could they have sat on it, realizing just how bad it was, and just, like, they wanted to pretend if they ignored it, it goes away?
Well, I mean, weren't they, and remind me if I'm wrong here, but weren't they pushing really hard for the Senate just to vote to acquit and dismiss the charges?
Like, wasn't that the thing?
They were just like, oh yeah, we can bring this up at any time and get rid of it.
So the hope, I mean, in all of this, it's just desperation.
Yeah.
Also, some FOIA came out too.
Remind me what this is because my mind is now racing.
This all revolves around the fact that they didn't think that Pelosi was going to be able to delay it as long as she did.
Because if they could have dismissed it as quickly as they could have, then something came out in the middle of this that was really damning.
Remind me what it is?
With the Parnas stuff.
Oh yeah, Leopardist.
Yeah, yeah, the Leopardist material being released by the Department of Justice.
There's no other explanation for that other than, oh, they would have assumed it was going to be after the trial was over.
Oh, sorry, it's too late.
We can't, you know, it's done.
So this is probably another one of those things, too, where they figured it wouldn't come out because they did steamroll this thing through.
You know what's interesting, though, is that Trump tweeted not long ago, earlier, like maybe yesterday now, he basically discusses what he said with John Bolton.
And in a way to refute John Bolton, but he gives us a glimpse into the discussion they had of that.
So what he's now doing is eliminating executive privilege for this meeting.
Because it's now, I mean, it already was, you know, this has been reported and talked about publicly anyway, but that's how stupid this guy is.
And at this point, you mentioned you think that they're going to have Bolton testify, but what has changed?
But wait, wait, Nick.
I thought Donald Trump was a four-dimensional chess player who was constantly maneuvering pawns around and planning five moves ahead.
How could that possibly be that Donald Trump doesn't understand the intricacies of executive privilege?
That doesn't make sense in my head.
I'm gonna have to fall back on my worldview and turn on, oh, what is it now that they're pushing?
The One America Network?
Like Rudy Giuliani was on Fox News, and even Fox News at this point has to at times be like, I don't know, this is a little bit rough.
And every now and then there's a poll.
The poll came out today that said like half of Americans want Trump convicted and removed from office.
And so they're having to keep going deeper and deeper and they're like, oh, you should really watch OAN Network.
And next it's going to be like, oh, you should really not watch TV or read anything.
I mean, they just keep retreating.
It's so, it's so transparent and ridiculous.
Yes, it is like a bad movie.
It's a bad comedy that you wouldn't laugh at.
You know, we can't, we're gonna cry now because, you know, the thing here is at some point something has to like break, right?
And either it's, I think the breaking is, is he wins again.
Or, you get the four senators to at least get the witnesses to testify.
Now, here's the thing.
Back before the impeachment started, I suppose the only hope the Democrats had was to at least have the witnesses speak, right?
That would be a win for them, and then he'd get acquitted anyway, and maybe they can run against that in November.
Look at what he testified to, look at what he voted against, get him out.
But here's the thing.
Even though 70% of the country wants witnesses, right?
Isn't that what the poll is?
I believe 72% of Americans want witnesses.
Okay, but if the person who's representing them votes against witnesses, even though they want them, that's not going to change their vote in November.
That's the problem, I think.
This issue isn't the one, this isn't like pro-life, pro-choice.
This is not an issue I don't think that's going to move the polls when it comes down to them actually running for their seat.
And that's a big difference.
I don't know.
Okay, so real fast, I just want to mention, so we had done an emergency podcast that the internet and technology just ate and swallowed up the Great Loss podcast of the Muckrake podcast that if people want to go find it, go find it.
Maybe it'll become a collector's item someday.
Believe it or not, people did actually, Jared.
But I will mention though that I had said on that podcast that the greatest mistake that we always make is thinking that tomorrow will look exactly like Today.
And then almost immediately Bolton comes out and the entire narrative changes, right?
Now the narrative is, oh man, Republicans sort of had a slam dunk here and everything was on a rail and it was going to be fine and now things are falling apart.
So you're right that it's probably, like chances are, statistics are, that this isn't going to be a thing that is going to necessarily like tip every scale in every election.
But I think Republicans understand that this has electoral consequences.
I mean, I've been talking to people left and right who, I think I mentioned this before, they think either they're going to stay pat where they are in the Senate, or they're going to be utterly destroyed.
And if we have made-for-TV moments, and that's unfortunately what all this hinges on, if we get Bolton out there, and then on top of it, I mean, who knows?
Donald Trump might walk into the Senate one day and be like, I'm tired of watching.
You know, you might have a few good men moment.
Of course I ordered the code red.
You need me to order the code red.
You need me on that wall.
Like, that's the thing about all this is it's so transparent.
And it's so obvious that they've committed crimes.
And by the way, they're really untalented.
All these people.
I mean, the Trump defense team is embarrassing.
And Trump just keeps stepping over his own feet constantly.
I mean, I don't know that this is going to reach critical mass, but I mean, we have to admit that there is a minute possibility now because this thing is, I mean, it's escalating real fast.
Well, you know, here's the thing.
The firewall to the Republicans is Bolton and not letting him testify.
Now, obviously they don't want to do that because they know it's going to be really damning.
I mean, there's no question tomorrow we'll have even more come out on that.
But what happens then is once he testifies, and even if they agree, oh, we can only have Bolton, no.
That is going to lead directly to your friend and mine, Mike Pence, and then Pompeo, and then Mulvaney.
There will be no way to stop them because he will directly implicate them in his testimony.
And I can't imagine any scenario once that happens where they wouldn't then get those guys in to testify.
And again, they all should be testifying.
They should have testified yesterday.
This is how dumb this thing is.
I want to point out also, so John Bolton, while we're at it, a lifelong Republican, and not just Republican, right?
Not just a guy who is like down at your state fair like handing out corn dogs asking for votes for a commissioner.
This is a neoconservative of the highest order.
This is a guy whose fingerprints have been on chicken hawk politics for decades now.
He shows up on Fox News, or used to, let's point that out, used to show up on Fox News like Every night pounding the war drums and you know pushing is like virulent xenophobia I mean just a disgusting person.
I think he's hanging out with Joe DiGenova and and his wife right now at a pool somewhere.
Oh, it's it's it's incredible and now I don't know if anybody's seen it but Lou Dobbs tonight and because there's even the possibility that he might contradict So I think Sean Hannity, no it was Rush Limbaugh.
Rush Limbaugh today was like, I've had a lot of dinners with John Bolton and this is, I didn't think he was capable of such disloyalty.
And then Lou Dobbs, they started throwing up, you know, the iconic Fox conspiracy graphics.
Which are like a picture of, you know, Target X. And then it's like a link to like Hillary Clinton and Soros.
And they're already starting, I mean, they have rolled over on him in no time.
Because, again, this is a cult.
That's what this is.
And it's a cult of personality that runs like Stalinist Russia.
And so you can already feel those gears turning.
I mean, they're already turning him from a Republican mainstay and talking head Into, I mean, you know, the face of the deep state.
I mean, that's where this thing is going.
Yeah, they're moving the goalposts so far it's out of the stadium and into the lake at this point.
And here's the thing, if you're going to cast aspersions about Bolton, you know, being a guy always just trying to sell books, or even Parnas is just trying to, you know, get out of his situation.
Well, if you can put your eye, be really skeptical about somebody and really feel like you know when someone's lying or when someone's not lying, well, when you say it like that, then what you're saying is that you believe Donald Trump.
Which means you don't have any ability to discern between when someone is telling the truth or someone's lying.
And so that right there, it destroys a lot of credibility when you want to take on that position.
But that's where we are.
And if we're looking to figure out sort of how we can get here and how they can get people to buy into this, that's what they're thinking.
They'll follow that reasoning because it simply supports who they support.
But it's kind of frightening when you actually Examine what that means.
And you just brought up a really excellent point that I think that we have to we have to delve in for a moment.
And by the way is the subject of the exclusive Muckrake content tomorrow.
TheMuckrake.com.
How's that for some shilling?
How's that for a little segue?
Little segue.
Little segue.
This entire group is so craven in what they do that it doesn't matter what it is, they're gonna make money off of it.
Like if there's some, by hook or crook, if Donald Trump is convicted and removed from office, his first call is going to be to like an agent to talk about possibly a book or a reality show about being removed from office.
Because these people, they're constantly looking for angles.
So we have to do a couple things at once.
We have to, we have to chew gum and walk at the same time.
John Bolton, I assume, is able to go to sleep at night thinking that he's doing the right thing, but do not, don't even lie to yourself and pretend like he's not doing this also for the money.
I mean, this was coordinated, right?
Like, he's taking the stand that he is when he is based on when to get a book out there.
Like, they had to get a cover for the book put in place.
They had to have They had to have meetings with publicists and agents to talk about what would be the right day for him to release something to the Washington Post.
I assume he got some money for that release.
Now, that is happening with him.
Parnas is making money, I'm sure.
Giuliani's making money.
Trump's making money.
His kids are making money.
And the whole point of it is, it brings it to this point where politics isn't about politics.
Politics is about how to make money and how to secure money in the future.
Which is the disease that we're dealing with now overall.
It's a big, giant, sick circle.
And I tweeted this earlier today.
I'm as happy as anyone that John Bolton is saying what he's saying.
Because he's bringing the truth out there.
And maybe it might make a difference to some of these Senators.
And it might get some witnesses in there.
But let's not pretend that the guy is a savior.
Let's not all of a sudden... I mean, you know, we've done this time and again.
These grifters who show up.
I mean, James Comey had his moment in the sun.
Robert Mueller had his moment in the sun.
All these people get turned into saviors and some of them are doing their jobs and others are selling pre-orders.
I mean, that's the essence of this thing.
It's a real, real bad thing.
Sure, so using your position in the government to actually profit from that.
Yeah, that seems to be a relatively accepted form of transaction in the Republican Party.
And yet, they're hanging their entire hat on what Hunter Biden did, which is exactly this, for Burisma.
And here's the thing, the idea is the more they're going to rail against us, and the more they move the goalposts, and the more they end up having opposite positions at the same moment, that has to be siphoning off voters, right?
It might not be tens of thousands, but there's got to be thousands of voters who are slowly being siphoned off.
Now, of course, that kind of goes against what I just said, which was with this issue, as far as voting on the witnesses or not, I don't think that's going to change their vote.
But I do feel like if you do add all these different things up and you actually listen to what they're saying, the air is being slowly let out of the balloon in a way that will definitely cause this to shrink even more.
So even though they're 90% in the Republican Party approval rating, it has to be that the Republican Party has shrunk.
You know who it's siphoning off?
It's siphoning off the people handing out corndogs at the County Commissioner tent.
These are the people who, like, actually... I talked about this before.
It's like at Trump rallies.
It's the people in the stands.
The one that wear elephant brooches and hats that say, like, you know, Reagan Bush or, you know, heaven forbid, Goldwater.
But these are people who, like, I actually believe in the rule of law and have principles and just so happen to be like, well, I guess I'm going to pull the ticket.
I really hate Hillary Clinton, so I'm going to go over here and pull this ticket.
There are Republicans who are going to shed off from Trump and are moving that way.
I've had conversations with them left and right.
They're looking for somebody else.
They're looking for other options.
They're tired of this.
They're exhausted.
They're sickened by it.
For Republicans to get up and do this, I mean, they're not even making a show out of carrying this out.
Like, they're not carrying out their oaths.
They're not carrying out their duties.
They're not actually sitting in there and considering the facts.
Because there's no considering of the facts.
It's obvious that he committed these crimes.
It's obvious that he should have been impeached.
It's obvious he should be removed from office.
The people who are tuned in and they're listening, they see it.
The people who don't want to see it, they don't even watch it.
Fox News isn't even broadcasting all this stuff.
They've started to put it over in a picture-in-picture window.
So those people who are drinking the Kool-Aid, they're gone.
But there are people who are sloughing off.
How could they not?
Well, that's a great point that you made about Goldwater.
Because if the Democratic nominee for president doesn't recreate that ad, against Trump, then they're just, they're idiots.
Now, again, a lot of people don't remember the Daisy ad that was, they ran against Goldwater, which is brilliant.
Basically, a little girl who's playing and all of a sudden a mushroom cloud just destroys her.
And that's what's going to happen if you vote for Goldwater.
So if they, they should just redo that and almost shot by shot or shot by shot to capture like what could happen to at least scare everybody about Trump.
Because again, at this point, there are no rules.
There's no decorum.
There's no notion of like, we have to run a positive campaign like we used to say.
It's time.
And either way, if that happens, and it really does take hold, at some point, you're going to get someone like Trump on the Democratic side, Who will be as ruthless and crazy as he accuses other Democrats of being anyway.
And then that could actually be an interesting comedy.
Write a script about that where you have two of the most nefarious, you know, with not a shred of decency running against each other.
It would be really interesting to see.
Yeah, I think that movie was called The Campaign.
It came out a few years ago with Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis.
It was a pretty prescient little thing, showing how nasty these things were going to get.
But I think you're right.
The Goldwater thing, and one of the quotes that I always thought was pretty fantastic was they would have buttons and signs about Goldwater that would be like, in your heart, you know he's nuts.
It's this idea that everybody knew that he was an extremist.
Well, the problem with Trump is even if he is acquitted in the Senate, everyone knows he's a criminal.
And everybody's tired of this crap.
They're tired of having to deal with it, and they're tired of all these fights that he picks, and all the crimes he commits.
And once you get down to that, like, what's the redeeming quality?
That he makes you feel like you're winning in cultural fights?
He's not helping your job.
He's not giving you health care.
I mean, now he's even come out and threatened to slash Social Security, which we were always going to get there.
That was always going to happen.
It was always part of this whole thing.
I mean, what other reason is there besides him making you feel like you're winning a cultural war?
And eventually people are going to be like, I don't want any part of this, particularly if the Republicans don't even put on a show of trying to make this thing work.
I agree.
I agree.
I guess we need to talk a little bit more about the defense because I feel like there's still so much more to mine about how they're defending this whole thing.
Specifically with Zelensky, Trump was trying to claim that he didn't go meet with him because of Hurricane Dorian.
Right?
Oh, he can't leave.
When, if you remember, first of all, it wasn't a major hurricane.
He tried to make it more of a major hurricane with a Sharpie, and he was playing golf for most of it.
Hearing them try and come up with these excuses is pretty incredible.
You know, I've been a teacher for a long time and I've heard a lot of reasons why papers aren't turned in on time.
Most of them are true, but occasionally you'll come across an outlier and you're just like, That is a lot.
These are a lot.
I mean, it's everything from a hurricane to, you know what, Donald Trump, he's our man against corruption.
That's just who he is.
At his heart, what he cares about is rooting out corruption.
It's like, even the people making the argument can't keep a straight face.
You know, it never had anything to do with this.
And the defense has been so sloppy.
I mean, there was at one point today, I just shook my head.
They were showing video of Nancy Pelosi handing out the commemorative pins from the people who signed the impeachment.
And it's just like, yeah, that's not a great optic, but is that what you're basing your defense on?
Look at them celebrating this thing?
It's so flimsy and sad, and they haven't refuted a single thing.
I mean, because there's no refuting.
It's just so obvious on its face.
Yeah, this other talking point from one of the senators was like, they began this impeachment in 2016.
I was like, oh really?
You mean when you had control of both the House and the Senate?
When the Democrats started this impeachment trial?
How about this?
Haley Bird of CNN asks Josh Hawley, why wouldn't the Senate want to hear from a first-hand witness?
So here's where they're going now.
He goes, well, I don't know.
Is he a first-hand witness?
I'm not sure.
That's what they're trying to do now.
I mean, that's insane!
Because they've been really against, you know, hearsay, and there's no first-hand witnesses, and they finally have one.
And again, like I said earlier, this is all because once Bolton testifies, there'll be no way to stop the other guys from having to file suit.
I would almost say John Roberts would have to say something at that point.
Sekulow went so far, if people haven't seen this, it is well worth seeking out.
Sekulow was quoting just verbatim Russian produced, designed propaganda.
Like, the things that we kept hearing time and time again that Russia was putting out there, like, even, you know, bipartisan security and intelligence experts were like, no, you need to stop talking about this.
This is Russian propaganda, right?
This is Vladimir Putin and Vladislav Surkov coming up with these things.
I mean, like, at this point, like, Trump's defense is, yeah, Russia might have hacked our elections, but it might have been Ukraine too, which is part and parcel designed by Russia.
I mean, that's what they're doing.
And they're getting on national television, and it's international, you know, people are watching this around the world, and they're using all of that attention and basically they're being lended the bully pulpit of the president to spread Russian propaganda and disinformation.
I mean, there's no reality outside of that manufactured bubble, which again, Republicans and Russians, their fates are tied.
They're just tied at this point.
It's inextricable until either Putinism goes away or the Republican Party goes away.
And until then, they are a knot together.
And that's the only defense they have, is to move this Senate trial into an alternate reality that has absolutely no relationship with the real world.
Right.
It's completely political, like they're charging the Democrats of doing when it's what they're doing.
I mean, it's again, it's projection, it's political.
It's all these different things that are just insane and not what reality is and not what the Constitution was intended for.
So again, remember, we have our homework podcast due soon.
I've got a good list of things that are going to have to change law-wise to avoid this ever happening again in the future and protecting the Constitution and protecting the separation.
You know, first of all, Separation of church and state has completely gone out of the window.
They're having church tent revivals in the White House now, and that used to be a big sticky point, even for Libertarians and certainly for Republicans, I think.
That's a big thing, but certainly there's other rules that we need for the balance of power and make sure there are checks and balances that actually work.
Yeah, and you know, speaking of homework podcasts and the Constitution and the defense of the president and insanity and alternate realities, we would be remiss if we did not discuss Rudy Giuliani's premiere episode of quote-unquote common sense, which I don't want to just sit here and dunk on him, and I'm going to in a couple seconds because it was A lot.
And before we begin talking about it, I just want to point out, and this is where the enjoyment is going to come from.
So, Rudy came out on TV and he was like, I'm going to release a podcast.
Well, first of all, it's not a podcast.
It's a video, which is just as funny as funny gets.
And so, I watched the video.
Does it exist on the podcast app, like on iTunes?
I couldn't find it anywhere.
Which makes me really happy.
And he tweeted out a link to a YouTube video.
So that's just funny.
But also, I just want to point out for the purposes of this discussion, I watched the video and Nick listened to the audio and like just, you know, wasn't able to watch the video.
I highly recommend everybody, this is going to be the best 35 minutes that you spend today.
Go find the YouTube video because I have to tell you this thing just to just to set up a visual picture, right?
There's so much on this show that is dispiriting and and and occasionally upsetting because we live in dispiriting upsetting times, but this is not.
So Rudy starts out with this monologue talking about how he's the philosophical heir of Thomas Paine and And basically like calling himself like a modern founding father, which is amazing.
Meanwhile, as he's doing this, I have written down here, we see flashes of the American Revolution.
We see marble statues and oil paintings of founding fathers, Abraham Lincoln, interspersed with decades old pictures of Rudy Giuliani with hair.
And all of the pictures, it's so funny, are of Rudy Giuliani with hair.
Well, let me defend him a little bit because I have to tell you the opening, it's sort of like a TV show opening, was kind of impressive.
Like, you know, there was an interesting voiceover and it has a nice sort of historical context of, you know, Thomas Paine and other things.
So I was like, okay, this is, you know, somewhat well produced up until, you know, after that, to that point.
Wait, did you think it was well produced as he ranted and raved flashing his Yankee Championship ring and a half a dozen rubber Charity Cause bracelets?
Is he talking about the Founding Fathers?
And meanwhile, and this is the thing you missed which I think you need to re-watch it because this is really important.
The entire time there's just car sounds in the background.
It's New York traffic.
And at another point, and this was my personal favorite, There's a doorbell ringing!
By the way, I think he might be in D.C.
when he's filming this, if I'm not, if I recall correctly.
I feel like he said that's where he was, but yes.
Okay, so it falls off a cliff really fast.
I'm not gonna deny that.
Some would say the second it starts, it falls off a cliff.
Or that it was never on a cliff, but that's fine.
But it also seems clear that him and Dershowitz must have been, you know, in a hot tub together because there's a lot of similarity of what Dershowitz is arguing today and what he was trying to argue.
But, you know, he's just basically saying that you need to have a crime to be impeached.
And there is no crime here.
And then abusive powering isn't a crime.
And so we can't impeach for that. - Rudy says at one point that he has heard so much from a couple of individuals and stops just short of telling us that he has talked to members of Russian intelligence.
It's a very, very odd moment where he does that.
He then intimates that over the course of his new quote-unquote podcast that he's going to reveal that Joe Biden used the vice presidency to go to foreign countries and milk each and every one of them out of millions of dollars.
Including, and I can't wait for this episode because I am now a devotee of Rudy Giuliani's common sense.
He claims that somehow or another Joe Biden, his VP, bilked China out of millions of dollars.
So what's actually happened?
Is that Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of New York City during 9-11, the president of the United States of America's private attorney who drug him into a conspiracy theory, fever, paranoid, alternate reality that led to not just his impeachment, but the embodiment of a shadow government and shadow foreign relations.
He has gone full Russian propaganda Crazy.
I mean, he's just swimming in this thing now.
Well, there's a couple questions I have because I think the first one is why did Rudy do this in the beginning?
Why did he want to get Trump all involved in this if that's sort of what it looks like he did?
Now, obviously, one of the answers would be they have a lot of side deals where he's trying to make his own deals on the gas and all sorts of things like that.
And, you know, then it all sort of devolved from there where all of a sudden, you know, Money.
Money.
I mean, that's what it all boils down to with all these people.
And we talked about this on an earlier episode.
It's kind of hard to sort of follow that train of thought.
But what do you think?
Money.
Okay.
Money.
I mean, that's what it all boils down to with all these people.
And we talked about this on an earlier episode.
They're all looking for money.
But Rudy Giuliani is also one of those guys.
It's like an old athlete who can't stop going to games and telling people about how great he was when he was younger.
He wants so bad to be in the mix of everything.
Um, there, there was a period, I mean, he, he tells literally anybody who texts him or gets ahold of him, like he's, he's just a wild card, right?
And he'll tell anybody who gets ahold of him, like what he's planning on doing and where his mind is.
He just completely puts himself out there because he can't help bragging and talking about himself like a big shot.
He wanted to go in front of the Senate.
He wanted to make a big spectacle.
He wanted to be in the spotlight.
He wanted to be in the limelight.
And he wanted to be the center of attention.
Because Rudy Giuliani is one of those people who can't let go.
And that's one of the reasons why him and Trump are on the same wavelength.
I mean, they're just such shallow black holes that need more attention than the world can even give them.
I mean, they're both tapped into the zeitgeist at this point.
Trump more than Giuliani.
They're both obsessed with that and they need it so bad.
I mean, they're willing to destroy the country.
They've endangered the rule of law because they need attention and also money.
Okay, and also, when they were hatching a scheme, I'm sure Rudy said, oh, don't worry about it, Donald.
We'll just invoke attorney-client privilege, and they'll not be able to hear any of this stuff.
And the problem with that is that once it gets into doing illegal things, there is no attorney-client privilege, and he has to be compelled.
And by the way, that's the kind of thing that John Roberts would compel him, like right then and there, to have to answer, and you can't just hide behind that.
Because again, that's the other thing is, with all these other witnesses, at the very least, they should show up They could invoke any kind of executive privilege once they get there.
That's like what should have happened, at the very least.
And the only problem with that is that, you know, Trump was saying, well, we can't have Bolton testify because he might, you know, reveal who I don't like, what other world leaders I was talking badly about, when we all know that's not what they would ever ask him about.
That's not going to be the issue of like, well, what do you think about Merkel?
Like, they're not going to ask him that kind of stuff.
They're going to keep it on point with what the actual case is about.
Which actually leads me to have a question for you.
Should they do a quid pro quo with the witnesses and let them have Biden and let them have Hunter?
I tell you what, I'm going to take off my glasses real fast because I've been dying to do this all day.
Because the podcast, because our podcast is an actual podcast.
It's actually, you listen to it as opposed to watch it.
We can always put this on YouTube too if you like.
As opposed to Rudy Giuliani.
By the way, it's not a podcast.
I just looked it up.
It's not a podcast.
And I know, listen.
Things have been rough lately.
It's the little things that give us joy.
And it includes Rudy Giuliani telling everyone he's watching a podcast.
It's actually just a video on YouTube.
Okay, so because this is an auditory thing, I have to tell the audience I'm getting ready to do the Rudy Eyes, the really, really big eyes.
Yeah, right.
Right?
Where it's like he suddenly wakes up and he's like, oh, where the hell am I?
So, at one point, with attorney-client privilege, he's... let me get my notes here.
So, at one point, he's like...
As the president's personal attorney.
Big eyes.
At that point, he starts talking about what he talks to Trump about.
And then he starts talking about how he can't talk about what he talks to Trump about because attorney-client privilege.
Big eyes.
And he would have to go in front of a courtroom to get permission or permission from his client.
Meanwhile, What you're talking about with executive privilege and attorney-client privilege, all this stuff goes away.
When you're out there launching podcasts, when you're the President of the United States tweeting about what you and a national security advisor were talking about, there are rules and there are consequences and big eyes You have to really consider these things.
And Trump, and again, I made the joke earlier about playing five-dimensional chess.
Everyone thinks he's like this secret genius.
He's not.
He's just doing shit.
And if we had a government that worked, well, first of all, if we had a government that worked, he would have never gotten elected president.
But if we had a government that worked, All of this would bite him in the ass because he's tromping over everything and he's just, he's let himself out there.
And you're exactly right about the witnesses.
This is going to lead to a place where John Bolton's going to step in front of the Senate.
I mean, the writing's on the wall unless there's some sort of major misstep or, I don't know, more heads are threatened to go on pikes or whatever.
But there's a real possibility that he's going to testify.
And I don't think that Republicans are in a position of power to not make that happen.
I don't think they have to trade witnesses at this point.
I would hope not, only because, again, if the case is really about the call and then withholding money to Ukraine, well, Hunter Biden has no knowledge of that.
There'd be no reason to call him for that at all anyway.
So that's the best argument I've heard.
You know, there's a couple things we've got to run down because they're kind of in the shadows now because of All this insanity, but you know there was a letter that John Dowd had to get from Donald Trump that would allow him to represent Parnas.
And it's an interesting thing because it's a conflict of interest perhaps because Dowd had represented Trump.
The only reason why you need that kind of a letter that will give down permission is if Trump and Parnas were like associates and knew each other, certainly knew each other well enough to need that.
And meanwhile, you have Trump saying, I don't know the guy.
I would never heard of him.
I maybe took some pictures with him.
And then what happens?
They drop this tape of them at a dinner for 90 minutes, hanging out, having drinks, talking about everything and everything, definitely skirting or getting really close to violating national security protocol at this dinner.
And that should be enough to get Parnas in there.
I had forgotten about.
I mean, that's how quick everything's moving.
I had forgotten about the tape that Parnas made, which if you don't talk about that for a quick minute, the idea that just some random dude could just tape the president for so long without anyone knowing or anybody stepping in or doing whatever.
There was an interesting article, oh it was from the The Stable Genius book.
I don't know if anybody read this part but it was like Nancy Pelosi's daughter is a documentarian and she was working with Trump and you know they were filming something and Trump was like he needed something to drink And nobody would like answer his calls and so Pelosi's daughter just pulled out a bottle of water out of her purse?
And gave it to Trump, and that shouldn't happen.
That should never ever happen.
You know what I mean?
Like, you should never be in a position where an outsider can just like hand a substance over the president without there being security there.
Which just speaks back to the fact, and this tape does too, what is Trump saying at Mar-a-Lago?
What's he telling all of these people who have no business knowing the business of the government and the inner workings of what the presidency does?
I mean, if Republicans And again, I understand that we have a very, very dedicated Republican Senate audience on this podcast, so I'll speak to them now, right?
They're the ones who need to hear this.
If you're not worried about his crimes, are you not worried about the national security implications of that?
That we have a president who's just willy-nilly telling people everywhere and that he's being taped without anyone knowing?
Like, does that not worry people that Like our security is compromised?
Like is that not a thing that jostles your heart and makes you feel like you have a duty to do something?
No, I mean imagine like how worried he was about Obama wiretapping him in Trump Tower, you know, whatever.
And meanwhile, he's calling people on his own cell phone.
And we know, I mean, it's not even an assumption at this point.
You know that China and Russia both are monitoring.
Israel is monitoring.
They know more than probably a lot of our national security apparatus.
It is truly frightening.
That's another big reason why he needs to go because a lot of things can happen.
You know, Schiff had said what could happen in a few more months.
A lot.
And they could play him like a fiddle because they know what he's saying.
It really is frightening especially you know what's frustrating about this whole thing is that he won the election in large part because of her emails right this email server that was never hacked anyway right her email server never got hacked no one ever got any of her emails from that server so but meanwhile they were able to design an entire platform on that which is probably why obviously they were so willing to do this with Biden because they realized that it really worked and they were going to try again
but at this point because big eyes can't figure out what difference between the pod and the YouTube video they can't he couldn't pull this one off man that that never is going to not be funny that he launched a podcast and it was a video um I I have at times tried to write down all the times that Donald Trump has compromised national security.
And I mean, this goes back to, I mean, telling the Russians about classified information with the Israelis.
I mean, it goes back to, you know, him using phones that aren't protected.
It never ends.
I mean, this is a person who is not just unsafe in mind and ideas and temperament, but, you know, every nation in the world, like you said, probably has a one-up on him because he is ridiculous, but also because they probably know what he's saying.
And on top of that, if they want to bribe him, all they have to do is take out a block of rooms at a Trump hotel or promise to host an event at the Trump hotel.
And there's just one way after another that he has sold out this country and has put us all in danger.
I mean, this Ukraine thing, and this keeps getting lost because the Ukraine thing is such a ridiculous crime.
And it's so obvious.
And it was obviously him trying to get Biden.
But it was a national security issue.
It's in the U.S.
national security interest to have Ukraine be safe and strong against oppressive Russia.
The fact that he not only did that, but held up our money, my tax money, your tax money, and also funds that were supposed to help U.S.
national security, He did that to help himself.
And we keep sort of losing track of that in the middle of looking at all these crimes.
I mean, that's what it amounts to.
I mean, this guy makes us less safe.
And not just less safe, like demonstrably less safe.
Oh, you want me to make your point even worse?
There is evidence, and I'm talking about irrefutable evidence, that there are people who are trading on the stock market, front-running, ahead of these announcements he's making.
Like, literally, at the end of the day, five minutes before close, all of a sudden these huge orders are coming in, and then, whoop, the next day, poof, a big announcement comes out from some government agency, and people are making a lot of money.
I wouldn't even be surprised if it was Trump himself, you know, through his surrogate, doing this.
For him, for his money.
It's not like, hey, Hey, Harry, why don't you short this stock today?
It'll really help you.
I don't think he's doing that.
I think he's like, hey, do this for me, and then you give me the money.
And that's irrefutable.
They don't know who it is because it's hidden behind confidentiality.
But you can see the actual transactions happening.
And of course, nobody at the SEC is looking into this.
And, you know, I worked at the Mercantile Exchange when they had a huge sting, you know, to arrest front-running traders back in 1988.
Like, they had an undercover officer, they had a whole thing going on.
And it seems pretty clear that with a guy like Barr in charge of the Department of Justice, like, that stuff is just never going to happen again.
And it's been in decline for forever.
I mean, you know, the the way that everything from the SEC to the IRS has taken care of business.
I mean, they've had all their their teeth removed and it's been, you know, it's been purposeful.
There's a reason why all this happened.
I mean, there's a reason why we have the crashes that we do and why our economy works the way it does.
Again, all of it comes back to money.
It's making as much money as you possibly can before things fall apart and the getting is good.
And that's where we are.
And that's how we end up with this constant cycle of crooks who are you know, whether or not they're making money or they're making money off the way that they make money or they're making money off the crimes they commit to make money.
It's just a big, big giant cycle, which you can read about in the exclusive article tomorrow on themuckrake.com.
All right.
I can't wait to check it out.
Yeah.
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Wow, is it really?
I mean, we haven't even talked about...
Any of the people running, by the way.
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