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Feb. 1, 2020 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
50:23
EXCLUSIVE IOWA CAUCUS COVERAGE: Everyday There’s A New Treason

Jared Yates Sexton is in Iowa getting the inside information on the Elizabeth Warren Campaign as the Republican Party votes to forego witnesses in the Impeachment Trial of President Donald Trump. Jared and co-host Nick Hauselman reflect on a sobering, distressing day in the history of American democracy and dissect the Democratic field. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hey everybody, it's your co-host, Charitya Sexton, recording live from Iowa.
It is cold and rainy and we're going to talk a little bit about the Iowa caucuses and some of the reporting I did today.
But Nick, we got to talk about the fascist elephant in the room.
This is a dark day of our republic.
It really is.
And I don't want to – I keep saying, oh, it's just sort of bombastic and hyperbole, but it's not.
It really – and I was thinking about this like even with my kids.
Like they're going to kind of grow up in this situation.
And then four or five years from now, then you start to have a lot of people who just don't really know any different necessarily.
And then the next thing you know, you have a dictatorship or you have some sort of monarchy where there's unlimited power for the president.
And Yeah, so we're recording Friday night, January 31st.
The Senate Republicans voted 51 to 49 basically to close out the impeachment trial without any witnesses on the same day.
And by the way, just John Bolton couldn't go to hell.
I'm just gonna throw this that out there like the the leaking out of his book and and you know priming his book for pre-orders um today on like this big day of where the the trial was coming together and he leaked out that uh Trump was telling him back in May
About Ukraine and and you know shaking down Zelensky and not only told Bolton but the in basically the entirety of his administration And the Republicans voted with the exception of two Voted along party lines to shut down the trial while I believe the last number I saw was 73% of the American people want witnesses and documents and A complete power play.
And I feel bad on a few levels.
I mean, one, it's disheartening, obviously, and really enraging and disgusting.
But there's also a part of me that, like, I feel bad that it's gotten here and that, like, a lot of our worst fears have sort of manifested.
I mean, that's where we are.
You know, I think you hit the nail right on the head.
The idea that Your kids now live in a country where this happens.
I mean, that's what happened.
This is where we are.
Yes.
And you know, here's the thing.
I was thinking about this earlier because democracy continues to try and live.
It's kind of like in the movie The Thing where the alien is jumping from body to body and it's desperate to continue living.
With every breath it can have, it will try.
And I feel like where we're seeing this is in what is happening with Bolton's The Leaking.
And then we also saw, I had sent you an article where House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel had corroborated some Bolton testimony as well about Marie Yovanovitch.
And so, what I feel like is happening is, there were some dutiful soldiers, the John Kellys, the Mattises, those guys who won't say anything about what they saw, what they witnessed.
And because they perhaps are sort of relying on the machinations of the democracy working properly.
But as we see day by day and inch by inch it's failing in this impeachment trial, then the little things start to leak out and little things people start to speak like to the media instead.
So suddenly this court starts to open up into the court of popular opinion through the media.
So I find it kind of fascinating that that's what's happening but then again because the media is I don't think it's taking hold the way these people might have thought it would and now they're just looking like assholes for not saying anything when this stuff was going down
We've talked a lot in this podcast about, um, and, and I always, I always talk about the Trump rallies where you have his rabid, um, fascistic base down in front, you know, ready to stomp some skulls and, and go out and be storm troopers.
And then around the, the edges, you have all of these Republicans who are like, Oh, I think he's kind of gross, but you know, we need him in there.
Um, we saw a lot of that today.
you know the the really head-shaking things that happen here like you know Mitch McConnell's Mitch McConnell he's going to do what he does he he can't even help it at this point I mean you know he he's pardon the pun here he's a shell of a man I mean he he has made a decision that this is how he's going to live it's despicable but you know I guess it's serving him well and then you have other people Lamar Alexander came out last night and in one of the more pitiful moments
I I want to say in the history of the United States Senate if not the United States of America came out And this is a person who's retiring, right?
I mean, he doesn't have anything to lose.
It's not like he's going out for re-election.
It's not like he needs to fundraise.
He came out and he said, yeah, Trump committed crimes, but you know, we should, we should leave it to the people to decide at the ballot box and completely punted on his constitutional duty.
Right.
And then you have somebody like Marco Rubio.
And you want to talk about somebody who has revealed himself to be a sniveling coward who's not up to the times.
Marco Rubio comes out and says, yes, this rise to the level of impeachment, but I'm not sure it rose to the level of removal of office.
Whatever in the hell that means.
That means nothing.
The quote was, just because actions meet a standard of impeachment does not mean it's in the best interest of the country to remove a president from office.
So remember where we started.
It didn't happen, perfect call, and we've gotten all the way back around to it happened, it was inappropriate, oh well, but so what?
That's where we're at.
You proved the case.
We don't even need the witnesses because, well, you proved it.
We believe you.
So, but we're not going to vote to convict.
Now, can I make a connection here between what Lamar Alexander is saying?
Because he's making a direct connection between removing a president and having witnesses.
That is what I am hearing.
And what he is saying is, I don't want to, it's inappropriate, but we don't want to have him removed.
And what I hear him saying is he knows he would be removed if they had a guy like Bolton testify.
Because we also know that once Bolton testifies, he implicates all the other guys like Mulvaney, Pence and Pompeo.
They would have to testify.
There would be no way once that dam was broken that they couldn't get those four.
And I think everybody in the damn room knows that once those four guys testify and they don't lie, they would have to remove Trump.
So that's what Lamar Alexander is really, really saying here.
And that's why, to me, it's so horrible.
The game that he played, the tap dancing he did, it makes it even more infuriating.
I wish on one level, and again, this goes back to McConnell, right?
On one hand, you have to respect McConnell for just being like, yeah, I'm completely full of shit.
I don't actually have principles or an ethos here.
I'm just going to win.
The games that all these people have to play to try and maintain their integrity is the really insulting thing.
Lamar Alexander's rationale that he released was, oh, they've proven that Trump committed these crimes.
I don't need any more proof.
Which is mind-bending.
And mind-blowing.
Oh yes, I know there are crimes.
I don't need to know more about the crimes.
I don't need to know if there were more crimes.
I don't need to know how deep the crimes go.
It's truly disgusting.
And I have to say, you know, I...
I get really pessimistic about all this stuff because, you know, I think in part it's because I was in those Trump rallies and I saw this thing sort of rising and I felt like Pollyanna running around screaming.
I was like, you know, you have to know what's happening here and what's growing up underneath this guy.
And I think there's a part of that.
And there's this other part of me that on days like today, I.
It's a really demoralizing, crushing day.
Like, I was sitting there talking to some voters, and just, you know, having this thing wash in, it just felt so crushing and so awful that I have to find some sort of redeeming thing, and that is this.
I mean, Bolton's gonna testify.
Like, he's going to go up in front of Congress, and this stuff is going to get out there.
Now, what does that mean, and what does it do?
I mean, can they censure Trump?
Are they going to impeach him again?
I don't know, but I do know that because of people like Lamar Alexander and Marco Rubio and Mitch McConnell, I mean, everything that Trump's defense did is now precedent.
Everything, including the argument by Alan Dershowitz that the president is above the law and can do literally anything that he wants in order to help his own political ideas as long as he thinks that it helps the country, which what president wouldn't think that, right?
Every president in the future has to now basically start from a point of asking foreign nations to help them.
I mean, it's going to be a free-for-all.
It's going to be a clearinghouse for corruption.
But I have to hope that there will be some repercussions here.
There have to be.
Well, here's another thing that's part of this whole thing, is that more news had come out that there's this meeting between Trump and Bolton was in the room, Cipollone was in the room, along with Mulvaney, talking directly about needing investigations before they give them the aid, which is the whole kit and caboodle.
So what happens now is that Cipollone is now arguing in a courtroom in favor of a client where he is actually implicated in the crime.
In the crime.
And in his defense of his client, he is lying to Congress.
So that actually could be a really severe problem for him with disbarment, all sorts of things like that.
And this is the other thing we have to shore up with our laws because we've seen too many times around all of this stuff, going even back to Jeff Sessions lying to Congress about his connections with the Russians, where there isn't enough of a penalty, if at all, for lying to Congress.
And certainly what Cipollone did is complete, like, he should not be allowed to practice law again.
And I think it's a kind of a reasonable take by a lot of lawyers who feel that way because they still have the sanctity in the actual job and not just a bunch of shysters who get to say why they're way out like Dershowitz and Cipollone are doing.
So that is also another layer to this.
And here's the thing I want to ask you, though.
Do we blame the Democrats for this?
Should they have pressed harder on the Bolton subpoena and getting the subpoenas ahead of time and not sort of, quote unquote, rushed this through over to the Senate?
I don't know.
I don't know what could have been done here.
I put a lot of blame on a lot of different places.
I'll tell you, if I would have been in the Democratic Party, and I don't want to sit here and Monday quarterback the whole thing, but if I was a member of the Democratic Party, I would have...
This impeachment thing would not have just been the Ukraine.
I mean, the Ukraine situation was... And that's the other thing.
All of this is so deep-rooted, right?
All of this is so large and with so many different moving parts.
I mean, the Ukrainian scandal is mixed in with the Russian scandal.
It just is.
And we had all of these reports from Mueller's investigation that showed, you know, obstruction of justice.
I mean, there's all kinds of Russian stuff there.
And, you know, Manafort is wrapped up in it.
Trump's wrapped up in it.
Pence is wrapped up in it.
I think I probably would have had a much larger umbrella.
But I'll tell you where I put a lot of the blame on.
And that is in our media with analysts and pundits who buy into this game theory bullshit.
And, you know, there's people on TV tonight who are like, oh, the Republicans won.
This is quite the win for Republicans.
We know who lost.
All of us.
And not just, and by the way, like, let's be honest.
The Republicans lost too.
Like, they won, right?
But they really drug America into the mud.
I mean, They might retain power in America, and they might even keep power in America, and Trumpists might even, like, go on a run that is, like, unheralded.
I mean, we might have three Trumps elected in a row.
Who the hell knows?
But who's gonna trust this country anymore in our dealings?
I mean, we just showed that we're a corrupt country.
We just showed, not only are we corrupt, but once the corruption is brought out in the light, there's a party who is An authoritarian, fascistic minority group that is holding sway and power over the country and they're willing to turn the other way.
I mean, nobody wins in this thing.
And for pundits and analysts to pretend like this was some sort of astute move or a chess game.
I mean, it's really disgusting.
I mean, they should have been calling the, you know, setting the alarm off.
That's the problem here.
We should be in the streets tonight.
We really should.
Right.
Well, here's the other thing is, I mean, there was a win to some degree for Democrats because they shifted the public opinion to a majority of people wanted him out of office, which is a higher number than even Nixon before he resigned.
So that's sort of a win.
And I know the Republicans try to couch Pelosi's delaying of sending over the articles for a few weeks as some silliness, but it actually worked.
That is what shifted opinion.
It kept in the news longer.
Whatever, a win.
And then, you know, the number of people who wanted witnesses is, what, 70%?
80%?
It's ridiculous how many people wanted that.
But here's the thing with that, and I think this is what the calculation the Republicans are making, is that they know that even though they vote against that, having witnesses, and they know that so many people actually want the witnesses, they know that their constituents will not vote against them for having said no to the witnesses, if that makes sense.
They know it's not a big enough issue to sway the vote.
They might be upset for a few days, they might, whatever, but they're going to throw up their heads and be like, okay, economy's doing well, whatever, I'm going to vote for this guy again.
So that was the calculation they made and, you know, I can't blame them for that.
I could easily see them looking at those numbers and saying, yeah, it won't matter if they want the people to testify because they're not going to vote against me if we don't have it.
I hate to throw gasoline on the fire, but the people who are most enraged by this thing, the Republicans, are working hard to make sure that they don't have the right to vote.
You know, that really is the thing.
I mean, Republicans have power in this country because we have a system that is set up to advantage a minority party based upon old slaveholding rules.
I mean, the Electoral College is set in place the way it is in order to help the South and in order to maintain white supremacy and bigotry.
And that's what it's doing.
Right?
I mean, you know, Trump lost by millions of votes.
The Republicans don't even really compete when it comes to the popular vote, so it really doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter what direction, one way or another, the polls go.
Now, do I think the Democrats can gain from this?
Do I think that Senate Republicans will suffer for it?
Yeah, I kind of do.
I think that this was blatant enough that unless, and I say this, and as soon as I say it, my stomach roils thinking about it.
like the only way that this doesn't have repercussions is if we forget about it in a couple of weeks and and you know what we were on the verge of world war three um at the beginning of this month it's january 31st at the beginning of this month we were on the verge of a nuclear war right like like a big giant crusade against iran and Maybe.
Maybe people forget about it.
I don't know.
But it's a really dark day.
It is not just shame.
It is one of the greatest shames in the history of this country's democracy.
And I have to believe, in order to wake up in the morning, I have to believe there are repercussions.
I just have to.
Oh, and I'm old enough to remember that we have the most corrupt cabinet in the history of our country as well.
And when you say that to people who are on the Republican side, they just stare at you blankly, as if you're speaking a different language.
They don't understand what you mean when you say that.
And it's like, you know, we're going to find out that Wilbur Ross has probably just been front-running on all the insider information he's got.
It's really horrible.
Yeah, I don't even know.
Here's the thing I also had texted you earlier is that, you know, now that you're in Iowa and we're seeing polls shifted.
Oh, by the way, who do you know who does win is the Republicans because they smear Biden.
you know, over and over again for the last, you know, couple weeks, few weeks, his numbers go down.
It's hurt Biden.
Something has hurt Biden.
We might as well point at that.
That looks like as clear as anything else.
So I had this thing where I sent you a text in panic thinking, you know what, Bernie is going to win the nomination.
And if Bernie wins the nomination, it's going to be like McGovern in 72.
Think about that for a second.
Well, McGovern, on one hand, it's hard to think about what McGovern's candidacy would have been if Eagleton hadn't come, if it hadn't come out that Eagleton had nervous breakdowns and electroshock therapy.
I'm I mean, I think that sunk his candidacy to begin with.
But that being said, I don't think he would have beat Nixon.
The Bernie Sanders thing is interesting.
And we can go ahead and we can shift because the talk in this state right now, in Iowa, is Bernie Sanders.
The talk.
If you're talking about the caucuses on Monday, Bernie Sanders is sort of the planet or the planet sized object that everything's sort of orbiting around right now all the conversations are going.
So, I spent some time tonight.
Talking to some workers and people with the Warren campaign and and with some Organizers and sort of talking to supporters and overhearing some conversations on one hand this impeachment trial So Elizabeth Warren was not in Iowa tonight for her scheduled event because obviously the impeachment trial kept her and the other senators in DC including Bernie Sanders and
But the Warren people are telling me left and right that they felt like they were at a disadvantage because Bernie still has apparatus left over from 2016, right?
And Iowa is all about organizing.
The caucuses are such a weird thing that organization within the state is the big deal.
Now the Warren campaign felt like they were at a disadvantage because Bernie already had his apparatus, but they also feel like they've been at a disadvantage because Warren hasn't been able to do as much retail politics here.
They have a good organization.
The question now is...
Is the country going to coalesce around Bernie Sanders or and and you see it among the Democratic Party I mean, there's all kinds of rumors coming out right now that the Democrats are considering different rule changes You know the the apparatus works against him.
What's this thing going to look like?
But I will tell you that the Warren people supporters organizers they do see the Democratic Party is splintering right now and The one thing that they all agree on is beating Trump, but when they look at Bernie, there's the question about whether or not he can win.
And when they look at Biden, they now see him as kind of being Hillary Clinton with the emails, right?
If he were to win the candidacy, this Burisma thing would just be followed around constantly.
They don't trust the press not to jump in on it and obsess over it.
I mean, it's a very fraught time.
They're very pissed off, though.
I will tell you that.
The Democrats here are very pissed off right now.
Well here's the thing that at least we have hindsight to know how Hillary dealt with the emails and why I thought that it was terrible.
She basically tried to like ignore it and never really even addressed it once.
So at least maybe Biden would learn from that and once and for all be able to sort of put that to bed.
I thought Barack Obama was able to do that with certain things like with his pastor and with his birth certificate.
There were things they were able to just shut down and address and then move on whereas Hillary just sort of Just kind of got, you know, in the deer in the headlights and never really discussed that well enough.
So hopefully Biden will learn how to do that.
And by the way, I'll tell you this, I would have voted for Warren in 2016 over Hillary if she had run.
So I like Warren, but you know, we now know the theater that Trump operates in and how he is going to attack these things.
So certainly if it's Bernie, You know, he's going to make it look so much worse than he did against Hillary, even, because it's going to hate the socialist word on him, and he has to accept that, because that's what he says he is.
And, you know, he's going to turn so many people off of Bernie.
It's going to become anti-Semitic, I have a feeling, as well.
So it's a real... that just frightens me to no end.
It kind of frightened me with Hillary, too, because You know, I don't want to get in trouble for saying like, you know, because Bernie got in trouble for saying a woman can't win the presidency.
But what he might have been trying to refer to in some abstract way mathematically was like there were people, I think we mentioned this in a podcast a long time ago, where there are there are polls that show that people would vote for Trump.
They would vote for Biden over Trump.
But if it's Warren, they vote for Trump.
Wrap your head around that.
The question at this point is whether or not, so the whole socialism thing doesn't matter that much to younger people.
Like, they're not really concerned with that.
People who didn't grow up in the 80s and the early 90s with the Cold War, they're not particularly concerned with the socialism thing.
The question, though, is whether or not you can build up a base that can beat Trump, right?
I mean, that's where that is.
The Warren people think of themselves as obviously the alternative to Sanders and Biden.
I think they see her as sort of standing in the cleavage between the two.
They've also started to see There's a lot of chatter about this, which I was very surprised by how much it came up.
Michael Bloomberg is coming up a lot in conversations right now.
And there's a real sense that, and I read this earlier today, Bloomberg is spending like $38 a minute.
on campaign materials, like every minute of every day, 24 hours a day.
But correct me if I'm wrong, he's not in the caucus, he's not going to be, right?
No, he's not.
Okay, so he's not spending it in Iowa.
No, he's not spending it in Iowa, but you can, I mean, Steyer is everywhere here.
That's the other thing, is there's a feeling that with Sanders and Warren doing as well as they are, that as they're moving the party to the left, particularly economically, That these billionaires are coming in and trying to move the party back to the right.
There is a feeling.
And by the way, the Iowa phenomenon is weird.
Number one, Iowans really like to throw curveballs.
They really, um, they're very proud of being the first contest.
They're very proud of, like, having, you know, people spend so much time here.
And they're very discerning.
They consider themselves political experts.
And this is one of the reasons why the caucuses produce so many surprises, is because they don't like the frontrunner.
They never, ever like the frontrunner.
Like, if you told me that Biden wins tomorrow, or, I mean, on Monday, I would be kind of shocked.
Because they don't enjoy that.
They like to shock the establishment and sort of assert themselves.
So there is this idea that Sanders or Warren might be able to, you know, capture the momentum here and win Iowa.
But there is the feeling that the party, at least because of the billionaires and the money they're spending and the leverage that they're trying to apply here, That there is, again, like a little bit of a civil war going in this party.
I mean, I've seen this happen time and time again.
I was out here, I was just thinking about this today, I was out here in 2004 for the Howard Dean campaign.
And you know, there was a feeling even back then where Dean was like the only anti-war candidate, and you could feel the party pulling them back towards the pro-war stance, even as they were facing George W. Bush.
So, when you get to Iowa, there's always a movement left, and then there's always the tug back, and I think people are very aware of that at the moment.
I wonder what it's like to have to live in Iowa, where every four years these gremlins descend upon your towns for, you know, two months at a time and just devour everything in their path.
You said they're proud and they're happy to be that first state, but I just have to imagine it's got to be just so surreal in theory to have, you know, so much attention and so much upending of their normal everyday lives for such a short period of time, but every four years.
They're sick of it.
You know, it's a really funny thing because on one hand, they're very proud of it.
You know what I mean?
And it's sort of like, at times, it's a little bit like a false humility or, you know, sort of a false sick of it.
Like, if you go to one of these events or you go to a rally, you're gonna get interviewed.
Like, you just are.
Everybody who goes into these rallies, there's a media person, if not five, who goes up and is just like, how do you feel about this thing?
And when they walk away, the Iowans just sort of look at each other and roll their eyes.
But you know and then like I was sitting there tonight talking to a couple people at a bar and they were just so sick of people coming in and reporters being there and people asking questions and talking about the caucuses.
But at the same time after they were done talking about how tired they were of it they were talking about the candidates.
And most Iowans, I mean, they're the ones who get very, very excited and coordinate and go door to door and knock and organize.
But most of them consider themselves independents.
Like, they weigh people up until the night that they go to the caucuses.
And the way that the caucuses are structured, you go in with, like, your number one, your number two, and your number three, because you move and you argue and you shift.
So, like, they actually do have that sort of ranked list.
That's how they end up seeing politics.
And, I mean, it depends on where you go, right?
I mean, it could just be the luck of draw.
It could be the organization that's been hitting things hard.
But, you know, in this case, you have two viable candidates in Sanders and Warren, and both of them are going to be represented in all caucuses.
They're not going to lose members to each other.
It's just a question of whether or not the other people can coalesce their I have no idea.
And I don't know that we're going to know for a long time.
The caucuses have gotten more and more complicated.
We're scheduled to talk on Monday night and talk about the results.
I assume that when we get on here, I'm going to make a prediction.
When you and I record our reaction podcast, there's going to be just chaos to react to.
I mean, that's where we're going to be after Monday.
But the old adage is three get out.
Three get out of Iowa.
The top three get out.
And I think in this case, we're looking at possibly four.
We're looking at four or a fifth if things get really, really wild.
I'm sorry, so when you say that, you mean if you're below third or you're below fourth, let's just say, you're probably going to be out of the race pretty soon.
It's hard to raise money.
It's really, really hard to raise money if you come out of Iowa fourth, fifth, or sixth.
Right.
And Iowa isn't a complete predictor, but it seems like it's pretty good as far as picking who the nominee is going to be.
But again, times being what they are, I don't know if we can use any past precedent to predict what will happen.
It's just not the same times anymore as it was even four years ago, or eight years ago.
Well, it's not at all.
I mean, what's funny is a while ago you brought up Barack Obama responding to the Jeremiah Wright controversy.
You know, that is, you know, the quote-unquote modern era, but it's not even the modern era.
If a candidate like Obama right now had the Jeremiah Wright controversy, it would never end.
And at the time, even Fox News, you know, they were still critical of him, but eventually they moved on to the next story.
That would be in the A-block of every Fox News program right now, and you would have, oh my god, they would be talking about black separatism, they'd be talking about black power, they'd be interviewing or showing clips of Wright and talking about, you know, they're gonna go in your homes and they're gonna kill you.
Even thinking about it now, like, there's really no clue.
I mean, what we're watching now in the post-Trump era, I think if you're gonna try and guess what's going to happen with Trump as an incumbent, there's no way to do it.
There's just not.
I mean, his reaction to the Iowa caucuses, like, who the hell knows what's gonna happen?
How he's going to influence it.
Every day now we're finding out about new treason.
You know?
Like, every single day there's some sort of new shoe that drops.
Like, who knows?
On Monday we might find out, you know, that there was an explicit quid pro quo.
Or there's physical proof.
Or there's a tape.
Or there's an audio.
And who knows where we go from there?
Oh, well, there's no question that, you know, usually you lead with your strongest suit, like with Bolton, for instance, and what we're learning.
So you would have thought that the first thing we heard was the worst bombshell we got, but then today that was worse.
So it's safe to assume, or reasonable to assume, that, like, there could be even more.
And I believe that because if his goal is to sell books, Then he doesn't want any of this really to get leaked out.
So then the next question there is, sorry to get back on this track, but like, who is leaking it?
Because I don't really think it's the publisher.
I don't think it's Bolton, per se.
You know, certainly in the detail, we've been getting leaked.
So if that's the case, is it someone in the White House?
Because they're the ones who are like, this is democracy trying to rear its ugly head from any crevice they can.
And we're realizing, well, you know what, this impeachment trial is not going well.
Someone's got to do something.
I disagree with you on that.
I think this was completely coordinated with publishers and agents.
It's too much.
Is it going to hurt the book sale?
No, not at all.
I actually think that this was a gambit.
I think that they went ahead and they made their money on the day where it was initially announced that Bolden, you know, knew about all this stuff.
I think that it went ahead and became a bestseller that day.
Everything after this is playing with house money.
It came out today.
I mean, it's not a coincidence that it came out on the day where they're going to, you know, decide whether or not to have witnesses.
I mean, that's way too perfect.
If that's a coincidence, then how would that leak on that day?
It had to have come from their team.
And this is a rollout.
And I think that they were like, this will increase tension.
And all of a sudden you'll have Bolton swing in as a hero one way or another.
Either he'll go in front of Congress or he'll get subpoenaed to talk.
I mean, this seems coordinated and that's the really disgusting thing about it is I actually think that Bolton has looked at this whole thing with an eye towards marketing.
I think there's been an entire team behind it and, you know, I think that's one of the real problems with America is that You have a guy who, and by the way, I don't want to sit here and defend Bolton because I've spent the majority of my political career, you know, really deriding that guy because he deserves it.
But you have a guy who has sworn to protect America and taken all these oaths to take care of America and he's doing this as a way to make money.
I mean, it's obvious that he's put money and profit and fame over taking care of the country.
Oh, it gets worse, though.
Like, you want to talk nicely about Bolton for a second.
We now need to talk nicely about John freaking Kelly, who's vouching for Bolton.
And, like, he has no reason to vouch for him other than if he was probably telling the truth.
But here I am, a guy who, like, was the architect of what happened at the border, and I have to now say, oh, John Kelly, a stand-up guy, he's like, you know, we have to believe John Bolton because he says we have to believe John Bolton.
It's all, this is the upside down.
It's horrible.
Uh, and you know, I was getting into it with a guy on Twitter who basically lives in Portland and just doesn't believe anything.
Every single thing that comes out of every person's mouth is a lie.
And I kind of wanted to tell him, listen, something is true.
You got to choose one of those things that's true.
But at this point, it's like, maybe he's right.
The Trump world is so insane.
So if you really want to believe everything that the Trump people roll out, then you believe that Trump has chosen a bunch of losers and untrustworthy people and dangerous people and and kooks and liars to serve in his administration.
That's what you have to believe.
But that's not how their mind works.
It's just like an instantaneous amnesia where they forget that and push it.
The cognitive dissonance there is crazy.
They turn into those people once they stop working for Trump, right?
Until then, they're terrific people.
And then as soon as they leave, then they're all those horrible names and all those things and Trump had no idea.
Again, it's the mental gymnastics that is involved in this that must create so much torque in the psyche of people who support this guy that it must just be, to have to live in the brain of someone like that for a day, it just would be chaos.
I don't know any other way to describe that, but just sort of a state of like stressed chaos.
You know, I want to believe that's true in order to have faith in the universe and the way that it works, but I think there's probably a blissful ignorance in it.
I think you and I sit here and we're like, what the hell is going on here?
And they have to stay up at night and they have to be exhausted.
But I think these people sleep like babies.
I mean, I really, I think it's a different type of operating system.
I think when you live in this world and you know, we've talked about it a lot ad nauseum on this, on this podcast, but it's like, Trumpists who are in this cult, like, there has to be something very reassuring about having a living Messiah in the White House who can do no wrong.
You know?
It's like, let the Lord take the wheel.
And you don't have to think about it.
I mean, that's one of the easier things about Trump.
I mean, the easier thing would be for us to say, you know what?
It's done.
There's nothing to do here.
I love Trump.
I'm going down that road.
Everything's great.
Sitting here and knowing that this is a hellish day is exhausting.
Like, you know, I'm out here in Iowa.
I'm traveling and covering this stuff.
I'm exhausted, but I'm gonna have an even harder time going to sleep tonight knowing that this miscarriage of justice has been carried out.
It would be so much easier to just be like, yeah, we won today!
Congratulations.
And I think that's, I think that's the worldview a lot of these people have.
Well, okay, you're in Iowa, you've been there all day.
Talk to me about where have you gone, what have you done specifically, what kind of events?
So, I like to get out and sort of get the temperature of the community, right?
I like to go out and sort of live in the community a little bit.
And again, Iowans just like to talk.
They really just like to sit around and chew the fat on politics.
They like to talk a lot about basketball.
The Iowa Hawkeyes are doing really well right now, so it's Iowa Hawkeyes and the Caucuses.
So, had a lot of conversations with people, a lot of different voters.
You know, it's really odd, you'll be at like a bar, and at the bar they're like, it's so funny, it's like, it should be a CNN show.
It's like, here's a Biden supporter, here's a Buttigieg supporter, here's a Klobuchar supporter, oh here's three Andrew Yangs.
You know, and it's just like the big group of people that are very diverse in their opinions and their thoughts and their worldviews and they sort of they're preparing for the caucuses, right because the caucuses are like big communal debate nights.
And so they're sort of like sparring with each other.
And in a way, like, listen, Iowa should not be the first contest.
It's way, way too white, and it doesn't represent the country.
But the fact that they are the first one in the process, they take it very seriously, and they turn into very, very informed voters.
And it's very good to watch.
It is a nice thing to sort of be there.
I've talked to a lot of, like I said, a lot of members of the Warren organization.
I got a really good sense of what their get out the vote apparatus is going to be.
I think they're going to be very strong.
I think probably at this point, probably the top three organizations are going to be Biden because he's dealing with a lot of DNC people.
I mean, you know, he's the front runner for the party and he's got a lot of that weight behind him.
Bernie has his own army that he's left over from 2016 that has only grown and grown and grown.
The Warren people, they sort of have the best of both worlds.
They've got the Democratic Party people, but they've also got the outsider revolution part, right?
Which makes me think that they're going to do very well on caucus night.
Buttigieg has a nice law organization too, but Yeah, so I spent a lot of time talking to them.
I caught up with a couple of the Warren campaign people that I know, and then I went to this rally.
And again, it's a problem where Warren's not here, you know?
These people are stuck in Washington, D.C., so they have to rely on surrogates.
And, you know, who your surrogates are makes a big difference.
So, like, Bernie Sanders right now has, you know, Cortez, Ocasio-Cortez running around Iowa for him.
Which makes a pretty big difference.
So, I did that today.
Tomorrow, I believe I'm going to check out Joe Biden's situation, and then I'm going to go see Bernie Sanders in an arena, which is going to be really weird.
We'll talk about it more tomorrow, but when I first saw Bernie Sanders four years ago in Iowa, it was in the smallest little Union Hall that you could imagine, and it was just like an angry old man walked out and banged on a pulpit.
And now he's going to be like up in front of thousands.
So it's going to be really interesting to see how the Sanders campaign has evolved.
And I'm going to talk with a couple of people I know there because that organization has, it's really blossomed and boomed in a bizarre way.
I don't think a lot of people imagined that he would be back here.
I think that it, There have been a lot of people who wrote him off in a lot of different ways at a lot of different times, and it's going to be really interesting to see how they feel about it, to get a little bit of that internal temperature from the Sanders campaign.
Well, somewhat absent from what you were just describing as far as, you know, the key players you mentioned were Buttigieg, Sanders, Warren, and Biden.
Klobuchar, she's done.
Is that what we're going to say?
I think she might have a decent showing.
That's what I was saying about four or five.
I would not be shocked.
I would flip a coin right now.
If you told me that Klobuchar was out after Iowa, I wouldn't be shocked.
If you told me that she was right there in New Hampshire, I wouldn't be shocked.
You know, it really depends.
I think the caucuses are going to be wild.
I really do.
I think Buttigieg has spent an unbelievable amount of time and resources here.
You can't walk down the street without finding Buttigieg people.
They're everywhere.
And it was actually really surprising talking to some people about how much... because that's the other thing.
You ask Iowans, who's been bugging you the most?
Right, who's been knocking on your door the most?
And for the most part, it's Buttigieg.
And he has had a really strong presence in Iowa so far.
And I think they also like the fact that he's Midwestern.
I think that helps Klobuchar too, obviously.
At this point, I think predicting the Iowa caucuses is kind of foolhardy.
I really don't have a sense yet of how the results are going to turn out, but it's going to be wild.
It's going to be a really bizarre thing, and I don't think that we've ever seen anything like this.
Back in 2004, again, the time I was here with Dean, you saw sort of a demolition derby of people, and it was like nobody really wanted the nomination.
This is a situation where you have a lot of people who are very, very desperate because they know that Trump is vulnerable.
Right?
Trump has to really, really have a big showing again.
He has to draw an inside straight or a flush on the river if you want to get fancy with poker terms.
I think everybody knows that he's very vulnerable and there's an opportunity to beat him.
Right.
And so this is going to be really, really different than anything we've seen in a long time.
Right.
And let's not forget the Howard Dean scream, which was in Iowa after he didn't win the Iowa caucus.
It seemed like he was in a position to do that.
Can you believe that that would have sunk someone's campaign in 2020, thinking about it now?
You're breaking my heart, Nick.
Listen, I'm an open book.
On most things, I will not talk about the Dean Scream.
I refuse.
No.
That's my one, that is my one veto on the Muckrake Political Podcast.
We will not talk about the Dean Scream until we do like a five hour episode on it.
And then we'll talk about the Dean Scream.
Fair enough.
But, and you know, to me it looks like Buttigieg is just trying to sort of replicate Obama's 08 run where Obama shocks Hillary in Iowa.
I think Obama loses New Hampshire and then wins South Carolina, I believe.
Am I correct on that?
That's correct.
But that legitimacy he got in the infusion was crazy.
And I suppose Buttigieg is trying to do the same kind of thing here.
And he kind of has, he hits some similar notes.
Is that fair to say that Obama does?
Well, there's a lot going on there.
I mean, particularly how the Democratic Party is split.
I mean, when you had Obama versus Hillary, that was, they sort of straddled similar lines, right?
Like, Obama's Obama's entire campaign rhetoric was America really is good.
We just have to rediscover what makes us good.
And that's a lot of what Buttigieg does, but that also doesn't ring the same way anymore.
People want an economic message.
They want retribution.
They want They want social justice, and I think that's where Buttigieg has come up short in a lot of ways, but that doesn't mean he can't win Iowa.
He absolutely can win Iowa.
I mean, he is, again, he's Midwestern.
He strikes that American exceptionalism chord, and on top of that, like, Iowans like to show everybody that they're progressive.
You know what I mean?
Like the idea that they could look past somebody, you know, being openly gay.
I think that a lot of Iowans would go down that road.
So, who knows?
You know, again, you could run this race 100 times out of 100.
I think you'd have 90 different results.
I really do.
Yeah, I'm just kind of checking 538 right now, just at the exact moment we're talking, and Sanders is at 22%, Biden's 21.5%, Buttigieg is 15.5%, and Warren is 14.4%.
So they're kind of all bunched.
I don't remember it being that close for other people.
It could be, but yeah, I guess we're going to have to find out who can finally galvanize and inspire.
Right now, no one really has.
And I suspect maybe after the convention, when they finally pick somebody, maybe when that moment will happen, because I just don't know if they're going to be able to do that.
You know, Obama's ability to orate was really inspiring, even from the time he spoke at the 2004 convention and got everyone excited.
That put him on the map.
No one's been able to really do that, unfortunately.
And so, I don't know.
And that's where I get really nervous when I start thinking about if it's Sanders or even anybody else, just because it just seems like we need an Obama to beat Trump.
You, I've noticed in the time that we've been recording this podcast, you seem to me like what you really respond to is a candidate who can sort of hit the tuning fork of the soul, right?
Like somebody who can like really sort of vibrate the keys of the heart, right?
The problem here is, that is, that's a narrative.
That's a story that builds.
And the Obama story, we watched it.
You know what I mean?
Because he was the biggest star of the time.
And we got to see Obama, like you said, like with the convention speech, and then as he became a candidate, and all of a sudden he shocked Hillary here, and he's, you know, he's throwing out these amazing speeches and orations.
He wasn't competing against Donald Trump.
That's the big thing here.
He was competing against Hillary Clinton and John McCain and Mitt Romney.
And so Obama sucked up all the oxygen in the room.
I mean, Hillary Clinton couldn't get a speech broadcast in 2016.
It was absolutely impossible.
She rolled out one plan after another.
Nobody had any interest whatsoever unless she was giving a speech about Donald Trump.
That was the only time that like anybody ever broadcast a speech.
The problem here is who is going to match Donald Trump blow for blow in the media?
And will the media allow that to happen?
Right?
Who will drag him in the mud?
And I'll tell you this.
I've seen the stump speeches of Biden.
I've seen the stump speeches of Sanders.
I've seen the stump speeches of Warrant.
They all like to fight.
That is true.
They all like a good fight.
So, is somebody going to raise that idea?
Is somebody going to inspire?
That's a great question.
And we don't know the answer yet.
And I don't know that we're going to have an answer until after... And again, real fast, just give people a preview.
The results speeches, the victory speeches, the concession speeches, this is the next level of the campaign, right?
This is where we make memories.
This is where we tell people, this is where I'm going, this is what we're doing.
That's where you get that inspirational stuff, right?
Where all of a sudden you have a winner who is speaking and oh my god, they've got momentum, they've got momentum, they've got momentum.
I don't think Iowa's going to give that to us because I don't think it's going to be definitive.
People are going to walk away claiming victory and we're not going to know for a couple of weeks probably who won the Iowa caucuses.
New Hampshire will be different.
We'll have somebody on the primary night that you and I are going to get on here and we're going to have a speech that we're going to watch and we're going to know who it is.
Then we go to South Carolina and it raises and raises and raises.
I think it's probably going to be after New Hampshire and after South Carolina that we're going to have a decent idea where this race is going.
Iowa is the first tremor.
And I think that's what we're looking at here.
I don't think I'm going to leave this state knowing who's going to have the nomination.
I think that's virtually impossible at this point.
Fair enough.
I do think that, you know, if we're looking at the overall vote, it seems safe to me to say that everybody who voted for Hillary will vote for the Democratic nominee no matter who it is.
Seems like that's pretty safe to say.
And that's a three million vote advantage.
Again, doesn't matter because of the Electoral College.
So that's the other question.
And it doesn't make me feel any better about this election and who might win.
So, I guess that's the next level is, okay, well who is that person that's going to get another 3 million more votes on that side to overcome any other shenanigans or Electoral College issues that we have across the Rust Belt or wherever it might rear its ugly head this year?
Well, it's important to say this and I'm so glad you said that.
What happened today with the Republicans covering up Trump's crime?
And basically, not basically, you know, Dershowitz made the argument that the president should be a dictator and the Republicans sat on their hands and, you know, just let it happen.
The problem here, and I've said it before on here, is when blatant corruption goes unpunished, people lose faith and they become apathetic.
This is what happens in authoritarian cultures.
This is what happens with Putinism.
This is what happens in failed democracies.
You're exactly right that everybody who voted for Hillary will vote for Hillary if they vote.
Right?
If people look at this and they're like, this is a crooked game and this doesn't work and these people are crooks, I don't want anything to do with it.
It's disgusting.
Trump wins again.
And that's what I want to put out there to viewers is tonight is a really really crappy night and it is a loss for all of us and it's it's a crushing demoralizing moment.
But you can't give up.
You cannot give the country over to these people.
The Republican Party today, and they've done it multiple times, but they showed today specifically, they have no right to the public trust.
They just don't.
They do not have the responsibility.
And maybe there will be other Republicans who come after them or there will be another party that replaces them.
This Republican Party does not deserve our trust and should not be given the reins of government.
They do not deserve it and they cannot operate with it.
And you cannot give up at this point.
Like, we have to do better for 2020.
We just absolutely have to.
All right, so I hope that that's a decent rallying cry.
It was a really crappy day, and I'm glad we got a chance to talk about it, and I'm glad I am in Iowa where it is cold and icy in a way that I forgot that it can be cold and icy.
We will be doing this again tomorrow with more updates from Iowa to give you a decent idea of where these caucuses are going, even though they're going to be wild and chaotic and possibly Anarchic.
So, thank you so much for listening.
Please don't lose the faith out there.
I am Jared Yates Saxton with my co-host Nick Haussleman.
Subscribe, share us, all that good stuff.
We really appreciate you hanging out with us and showing support.
We will be back with more exclusive coverage from Iowa before the Iowa caucuses.
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