It's been a week. Republicans voted to acquit Donald Trump despite all evidence proving his guilt, the Democratic Party's primary is off to a disastrous start, and Trump and Attorney General William Barr are already using their newfound freedom to distort the rule of law and undermine America's elections. Co-hosts Nick Hauselman and Jared Yates Sexton sort through the wreckage in search of some much needed hope.
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The grave question the Constitution tasks senators to answer is whether the president committed an act so extreme and egregious that it rises to the level of a high crime and misdemeanor.
Yes, he did.
There are FBI agents who took the law in their own hands.
There are CIA agents who took the law in their own hands.
There are Department of Justice lawyers who lied to the court.
There's been a movement since President Trump was elected by people in our government.
We're putting out a plan today that over a period of not that long a period of time brings our budget and our deficit down to what it should be, which is close to zero.
We're going to have a very good budget with a very powerful military budget because we have no choice.
So Jared, I am struggling under the weight of a unknown, unseen stress, weight of the world on my shoulders.
This whole thing has just been pulling me down inch by inch and I don't know if I have the strength to keep myself upright.
Hey, welcome to the McCraig Political Podcast, everybody.
I am Jared Dean Sexton, and I'm here with my co-host Nick Aselman.
Yeah, you know, let's go ahead and start here.
There was no way that this was going to be A happy-go-lucky beginning to this podcast.
I think it's important that we come here every week and we talk about what's going on in politics and we try and be as honest and as open as we can.
This one is a tough one.
It really is a tough one and America right now is in a weird time and it's not just because of the Senate acquittal of Donald Trump which was a travity of justice and it's not just because the 2020 presidential election is off to Less than ideal beginnings.
And it's not just because Donald Trump has been emboldened by his acquittal and is actively and openly dismantling the rule of law.
I mean this is a rough time and we have to talk about it.
We have to get it out in the open and we got to discuss it.
And that's the only way that we're going to fight against it because otherwise I've said it before and I'll say it again.
Authoritarianism wins when people become demoralized and can't fight back anymore or lose the power to fight back.
And so we just, we have to work our way through it.
We just, this is going to be one of those episodes where we just, we have to work our way through it.
Right.
You know, we've mentioned this before, but like, you know, the worry is is that it becomes overburdensome.
We can't seem to overcome the ennui or the just the whatever that feeling is that we can't, the helplessness feeling.
Our kids are born into this, so they don't know anything different after if it's eight years or that.
And then we're into decades worth of this kind of rule and getting worse.
So, you know, the thing I keep thinking about that would make me feel better, and it's a little bit of the Hollywood version of it, is, you know, a multi-million person march on Washington, from the mall to the White House, of the likes of which we used to see in the 60s every day.
Sorry, not multi-million people, but certainly tens of thousands every day were marching on Washington.
And, you know, when I start to picture the logistics of that, it's like, OK, like, I don't know if I can take off three days and spend all that money to fly to D.C.
and then have to stay in a hotel or whatever.
Maybe I mean, maybe I could find someone to stay with.
But like, how do they do it back then?
I suppose the answer is that most of the people back in the 60s were, you know, college students who didn't have Politics feels different.
It really feels different.
having to weigh them down.
I don't know about you, but it doesn't feel like that kind of campus leadership exists anymore that could rally something like that.
Politics feels different.
It really feels different.
I mean, one thing that we need to recognize, and American history goes in waves.
And by the way, I'm contractually obligated to mention right now the pre-orders are available for my book, American Rule, How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People.
The research that I found in all of this is that, you know, the time period before the 1960s was what a lot of people now have started to call the consensus.
This idea that, you know, Americans were on the same page and we were less polarized and we sort of, you know, walked together and we made decisions.
You know, this is the time that a lot of candidates talk about in glorious terms.
This is probably what Donald Trump is talking about when he says, making America great again, which is taking it back, you know, to when he was younger.
Well, America was sort of under a really hypnotic trance at that point.
And it was under that trance because minorities and women were held underfoot completely and, you know, had no place in America and had no real voice.
And we had like four or five channels that would broadcast idyllic scenes and propaganda that was being written in Hollywood and, you know, television studios.
And then that changed.
And what happened was, so much was done.
And with segregation and then desegregation, the problems became obvious, right?
And they started reaching a pitch where all of a sudden we had to do something about it.
The problems you're talking about, though, are what?
The problems of inequality, you know, everything from economic to racial to gender inequality and, you know, the things LGBTQ Americans have gone through.
So these vulnerable populations were held underfoot and eventually the crisis got to the point where, like, the media had to pay attention to it.
And with everyone paying attention to the media, suddenly you started having people go in the streets and forming coalitions.
Well, so there are these periods in American history where we're asleep and we feel like politics is beyond our means of control or maybe like it shouldn't be part of our control and then we wake up and we do something about it and then we revolt to a certain extent.
Well, what happened in the 1960s and then the 1970s is After marching in the streets and after saying enough is enough, eventually American capitalism, like it does, finds a way and it ends up selling to those counterculture people a means to have their identity as rebel rousers and rebels and it starts, you know, selling them blue jeans and starts selling them identities and suddenly you don't have to go and put your life on the line by going to these marches and sit-ins and all this stuff.
We have to wake up, though.
This is a time period where we have been taught that American politics is spectacle, and it's something to watch on television.
It's treated like a television show.
And we have to start to realize that this thing is getting way out of hand, and it's time for us to put our shoulders against the wheel.
I mean, that's the only thing that's going to change any of this.
Right.
It feels like these marches are sponsored by Starbucks if you march on the wall.
That's a real problem.
These signs that are being made now that are professionals.
It becomes a thing that you've watched and sort of don't feel.
The visceral power of a march when you want to have your voice recognized may not exist anymore.
That feeling.
I know when we went to LAX from the first Muslim ban, You know, there actually was a moment where it kind of felt like this was something, this was, we were making ourselves heard and we were a community that felt something, which is probably why I'm sort of still clinging to this hope that someone can organize this.
Maybe you and I will have to do it, but we can organize something right before the election that would lead us into, you know, that would control the narrative for a few days up until the election where we could finally just sort of uplift and give people hope that you can affect change.
Because otherwise, yes, we are going to be stuck here for a long, long time.
So if you were going to follow some sort of paint-by-numbers authoritarianism coloring book, I think the first thing you'd have to look at is getting the Department of Justice in line with the White House, having the Attorney General do your bidding as the And I think that that's what we're seeing playing out here from the get-go as soon as they were acquitted from this impeachment trial.
One of the oldest tricks in the book is to take the rule of law, to take the teeth out of it as a way of holding you accountable, and then figuring out how to wield it as a weapon.
And immediately, you know, the ink was barely dry on the acquittal before Donald Trump and William Barr started to figure out how they were going to do this.
And let's get this clear about William Barr.
The reason why William Barr is so dangerous as Attorney General is this isn't a person who necessarily believes in Trumpism.
This is a person who believes that American conservatives, particularly American evangelical right conservatives, are under attack.
And this is what we have to talk about because it's such a miscarriage of justice.
And so anything that he can do in order to protect them or move the scales a little bit is what he needs to do, which is how the evangelical right has figured this thing out with Trump.
So what we've now seen, and this is what we have to talk about because it's such a miscarriage of justice.
It's incredible.
William Barr has now turned the Department of Justice into a one-stop clearinghouse for corruption in the United States of America.
He has, on one hand, he now says that he has sole authority to either approve or disprove of investigations into presidential candidates during an election.
And by the way, when do elections stop in this country?
When they stop?
Yeah.
On Election Day.
Well, do they?
Because they don't.
We are a 12-month-a-year, four years in a row.
Oh, I see what you mean.
I mean, immediate.
So the moment that Donald Trump, like, if he gets reelected or he doesn't get reelected, I mean, the next cycle starts up already.
So we're already playing around with time, right?
We're already playing around with what we can do with the law.
But by the way, he added the caveat that says, you know, once this, I think this election is over, then all of a sudden he is no longer subject to the dominion of all the other, you know, offices across the country that might investigate it.
He's just covering his ass for this one.
And, you know, I like that how he says all presidential candidates, as if, you know, Amy Klobuchar, any moment it's going to be found out she's colluding with the Swiss, right?
We've got to really keep our eye on that one.
So dangerous.
We're looking at it strongly.
Right?
I mean, that's what this president would say.
And again, I know on one hand he's saying, you know, we're not going to let this person be investigated and I'm going to make sure it doesn't.
No, that means that the Attorney General of the United States has decided who to give preference to in a presidential election.
Right?
Oh, we're hearing a lot of things over here.
Meanwhile, At the exact same time, and I wrote about this today on themuckrape.com, William Barr has instituted an apparatus within the Department of Justice that is a direct line to Rudy Giuliani, who is still over in Ukraine, finding out anything that he can.
And by the way, just scooping up bits of Russian propaganda and misinformation that is designed by Russia to interfere in our elections.
That's what they're doing.
And there is now a direct pipeline from Russian intelligence to the Trump administration to launder their claims.
And anytime the Department of Justice now says, yeah, there's validity to these claims against Joe Biden, against Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, who knows who's going to get caught up in this thing.
Immediately it now via alchemy.
It now goes from being a rumor and propaganda and misinformation to being a legal concern.
And that is what has happened.
They have been emboldened to the point where they're going for it.
This is how dictatorships work.
This is how oligarchies work.
This is how kleptocracies work.
You get the rule of law on your side.
And this is what Vladimir Putin has done now for two decades.
You're able to use the law as a weapon against your opponents.
And after that, it's almost time to close the book because that's what we're walking towards right now.
This is like a big, giant, dangerous flashing light that this is like something that happens before democracy just goes away.
Right.
And all governments in all the country, you know, sort of things fail.
Rome failed.
You know, the British Empire fails.
It doesn't last.
So it's possible.
You know, we don't know what we're looking at here.
But, you know, it's not like out of the realm of possibility that like, yes, you know, the American government as we know it simply falls apart.
Hold on.
Completely morphs into something else.
Can we say a quick timeout and just say that we've been doing this podcast now for I think a month and a half.
Right and you've convinced me.
And we started this thing with you in every podcast being like my doomsayer partner here who doesn't know what he's talking about and now you're talking about the fall of Rome and the fall of the British Empire.
Hey listen I hear you and You're not wrong.
I mean, when I was doing research on my book, I was doing it with the background of what led to the fall of these states, these empires.
And what happens, and what history tells us, is that empires fall for a couple of reasons.
The chief among them is they lose control of the myth of the world, right?
An empire controls the world when they tell the world a story and the world believes the story.
Right?
Romans are the greatest.
They're the most powerful army there is.
The British.
The sun never sets on the Empire.
Right?
They can go anywhere and do anything and you can't take them down.
The moment that the myth starts getting lost is when Empires start to fall.
And we're in danger of that.
Like, that's very, very real.
Like, this isn't... and I have to...
I guess I'm bringing this up for one reason and that is all of the things that all of us were yelling about in 2016 and I was surely among them because I was in the Trump rallies and I saw what was happening.
I told everybody this thing's going to get very very ugly.
There's going to be blood spilled.
This country is going to be in trouble.
Trump is going to create something really really dangerous in this country and you all need to be aware of it.
Like, we're there.
You know what I mean?
Like, we have gone from hyperbole and fear-mongering and paranoia to we are now entering this new era of post-acquittal where it's not even about pretending anymore.
They're just being obvious with it, because there's no consequence to it.
There's no fear there.
And so we are in dangerous times, and we need to recognize it's dangerous times.
But I don't think the story's over yet.
It gets more dangerous, Jared.
They also announced their budget for the upcoming year, the next fiscal year.
And there is $800 billion of cuts to Medicaid and to Medicare and to entitlements.
This is what the real playbook has always been about as far as trickle-down economics not benefiting anybody but the top.
And then when they don't have enough money to cover other things, it's their excuse to sort of say, oh, well, we're poor now.
We need to cut all these things.
And it kind of goes back to the fear-mongering you mentioned a second ago for something else where, you know, I get that there's a mentality of people in the country who would...
Look at this and say, oh, there are a huge swath of people living in this country that are just living on handouts from the government.
They don't want to work.
They're happy.
And, you know, this is, you know, from my era, I'm a little bit older than you.
So I know this was sort of taking hold in a lot of different places in media where you would you would see like these images of, you know, black people sitting in some, you know, small little house, you know, Clearly less educated than you and clearly don't have enough money than you and clearly just really, really happy to live that way and just take their check every month from the government and not do anything about it.
And that is sort of what the mindset is when they want to cut these programs, assuming that it's like, oh, this is going to better the America.
These people are going to now learn how to, you know, pull themselves up by the bootstraps because I did.
I, Mr. White Man, who's already way ahead of the game as it is, From the time you're born.
That's the mindset that's creeped in.
This is why this isn't even a Trump thing.
This is going back to Reagan and before.
And what they don't realize is that there are real consequences to cutting these kind of programs because real people who are working as hard as they possibly can to find this American dream rely on these things and they don't benefit from any of the tax cuts.
You know what America looked like before Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid?
It looked like poor children and poor elderly scrounging through trash.
That's what it looked like.
That's not a talking point.
It upsets me to even talk about it.
It was this period of time where humanity was treated like less than humanity.
We treated people as disposable.
There were periods of time where we were trying to take care of America's You know, breeding stock by breeding these people out of existence and talking about sterilizing them.
I mean, one of the things that happened and one of the reasons we have social security and we have the social safety net is because a byproduct of the 1920s and the Gilded Age and the age of tycoons and financial empires is that we got to the point where we thought so little of human beings that we started engaging in blatant fascism.
I mean, there's a reason why Nazi Germany followed our plans for eugenics.
There's a reason why a lot of Americans were either members of the American Nazi Party or sympathizers to the Nazi Party.
Fascism grew in America because we started to see people in terms of money and dollars and economics instead of human beings.
And when you start to do that, all of a sudden you're very, very capable of cruelty.
Right?
You're capable of killing, you're capable of doing just inhumane things.
I also think that the ideology came from, also became born out of the notion that what I believe in my values need to be imposed on everybody else.
Yes.
And that's the essence of fascism, is not only should my values be imposed on other people, but if people won't listen, then I will crush them.
And that is, I mean, that's fascism.
Because one of the biggest mistakes that we've made is we have tricked ourselves because of World War II and the myth of America and everything that I get into in my new book.
We did this thing where we wanted to believe that fascism was a purely European phenomenon.
It could never happen in America.
And to his credit, one of the great things that Franklin Delano Roosevelt did is, coming out of the Great Depression, it wasn't necessarily that he saved the economy, which is one of the great myths that we have.
He reignited the belief that America can be better than the sum of its parts.
Right?
It could be this, you know, idea of a country that takes care of each other.
And it took a lot of people from engaging in fascism to again engaging in quote-unquote the American dream or the belief in America as a place with a higher purpose and higher calling.
And part of that is the New Deal.
It reinstated a belief in this country that we can take care of each other and we can have a better country and we can progress to something better and more humane and truer.
And that is, that's the antidote to fascism.
You take away the social safety net and what's happening right now, make no doubt about it, what's happening is By taking away the social safety net, Trump is saying to his followers, oh, you'll be fine.
You're following me, you're white, and you're part of this tribe.
It's not going to be you that gets screwed over in this deal.
It's all of those assholes who are against us.
And that tribalism starts to speak in you, and all of a sudden you're like, oh, if I get mine, those people can die.
They can search through trash.
And the moment that that starts happening, what we're talking about, what we've been warning about, this creeping fascism, is what takes over.
Because tribalism, whenever there's a lack of resources and you're pitting people against each other, all of a sudden you don't treat each other like humans.
And we're creeping towards that right now and getting rid of that.
It used to be the third rail of American politics.
It's not anymore because everything is tribal.
Everything is segregated by this group versus this group and this identity versus this identity.
And Trump can pass this kind of thing because the Republicans have wanted to do it for generations and they now have the power to do it.
Which is, oh don't worry, you're fine, they're not.
Which is this discerning thing that Trump has done.
Which is, the law applies to them, it doesn't apply to us.
We will win, they will lose.
And the more that that happens, the more that we creep towards that thing.
Right.
And meanwhile, in the State of the Union address where he's talking about pre-existing conditions, because again, one of the things I feel like when we talk about, oh, everyone's doing much better now, the economy is doing so great, and it's a bunch of bullshit, and what the reason is, is because they don't factor in, for people who are not in the top, you know, 5% of earners across the board, You know, the cost of living continues to skyrocket.
Inflation continues to go up.
And what's not badgering is how much it costs for medical care.
And how much it costs when you have loans for student loans that can keep you for 25 years in debt.
All those things.
Child care.
All the kind of things that a lot of other countries help their people in their countries handle.
Don't exist here.
And so, it's like, it doesn't help people.
We're not living in the same kind of, you know, dream that they're talking about.
And yet, you still see that this pump has been primed for all these decades now for people to think that, yes, I will eventually be in that top 1%.
So I want to make sure that those laws are enacted to cover me when I do eventually get there.
And meanwhile, it's against their own self-interest to vote for these policies.
And that'll never, that might not ever change.
What happens if Social Security goes away?
What happens to the average American worker?
They work longer, right?
And they work harder because they're terrified.
For less.
Yeah, for less.
And on top of that, it takes away any bargaining power whatsoever.
People aren't leaving jobs because they're afraid to lose their health care, they're afraid to lose their social safety net.
That's already happening right now.
And people want to sit here, and they want to say that the economy is just booming.
I mean to the people who are listening to us, like maybe some of us are doing okay or whatever or some people out there are doing fine.
It's not.
It's not doing well.
Our economy has been configured to help the powerful and the wealthy figure out the best way to use the people below them.
When you say that the economy is booming, it means that it is just Absolutely using people to the height of its ability.
And we've talked about it over and over and over again.
It's a train that's going to derail at some point.
Everybody knows it.
They're going to make as much money as they possibly can until the thing derails.
And guess what's supposed to be there to help us when it derails?
Things like Social Security and Retirement and Medicare and Medicaid.
And when those things are gone, People are going to be scrounging for scraps.
They're not going to be able to leave jobs.
They're not going to be able to take chances.
They're not going to be able to relocate.
They're not going to be able to live better lives.
And the less that they're able to live better lives, the more that they're going to be frustrated and angry.
And these things boil up.
This is why we have things like shootings.
This is why we have a society where we feel farther away from each other than ever before.
It's because this economy is not fair.
It does not work.
And that is what Trump is for and what he's always been for.
He just hides it behind grabbing the flag and pretending to care about people, which he doesn't.
At all!
Everything about what we're talking about from the economy being booming to messing around with all this, it's been a plan that's been in place for generations and it's finally being carried out because they found the perfect guy to carry it out.
Okay.
This episode is sponsored by Smith & Wesson.
Get yours before they take yours.
Anyway.
You're right.
I'm not even sure we're supposed to go with this because, again, it's just the accelerated process of this oligarchy that's being taken over our country.
It keeps popping up in other weird ways, too.
Like, for instance, You know, even like purging the government, right?
Like another one of those things where it's okay, you get rid of anybody that might actually do their job competently and professionally.
So, you know, Vindman, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman gets perp walked out of the White House, you know?
Now, and one thing that's interesting about this is that I was thinking about this yesterday, you know, he's not the whistleblower.
So he has not afforded any kind of federal protections that a whistleblower is supposed to get.
So it's not like he can't be fired and I could get it that he came in and testified against the president and he doesn't want him around and you know that kind of makes sense.
You know then it kind of spills over to his brother.
Who also gets perp walked out of there?
It's like, now we're starting to see how, in a systematic sweeping, it's taken a little while now, three years to get like, you're talking about the Comeys, you're talking about, you know, everybody in between there.
He's just, and McCabe, they've just been systematically getting rid of anybody that might actually do their job competently.
And again, the other side's going to say, well no, he needs people he can trust and whatever, but it's like, how are we going to deal with this stuff if he has people in there that aren't really up to the task, you know, cabinet-wise or lower?
We have a coronavirus that's sweeping through here, and who knows if that's going to be handled properly.
And what about sneaky, slippery Mitt Romney, right?
The guy voted to convict Donald Trump for obvious crimes and now you can't turn on the television for seeing an ad or a commentary by a pundit that claims, and this is, let's really get down to it, that claims that the Oh, this is insane.
The last candidate of the Republican Party was a sleeper agent.
For the Democratic Party, right?
A lifelong Republican who has been in good standing, who was the standard bearer in 2012.
This guy, and by the way, who has done multiple photo ops with Donald Trump and has praised him as much as he has torn him down, this guy is a sleeper agent.
Right?
Because that's what it is.
He's part of a giant conspiracy to take down Donald Trump.
And what a conspiracy, by the way.
They got one Republican vote.
So, I mean, quite the dangerous conspiracy we've got going here on the left.
And meanwhile, he has to be systematically purged from the Republican Party.
It is It is what happens within a Stalin-esque or an authoritarian strongman structure.
Anybody who does even the right thing or the obvious thing has to be perp-walked, has to be labeled a traitor, has to be labeled a criminal.
And then, it's not just that, but they also threaten them.
Right?
I mean, Vindman and Romney, I assume, have received multiple threats on their lives.
Their lives have probably been living hells for, you know, weeks now.
And it's just because we have people who had to stand up and say that something was wrong.
And now the Republican Party has sent a message.
Well, guess what?
You stick your throat out on the line and then you lose your throat.
Because that's where we are.
That's who they are.
And they have determined to play quote-unquote hardball and meanwhile our media and everyone around it has just like stood around applauding them like, oh Republicans just play this game better than anyone else.
That's not what's happened.
What has happened is we have an authoritarian movement in this country that is willing to put people in danger.
It's willing to risk people's lives.
It's willing to destroy the rule of law.
And it's willing to get in line and salute the strong man in chief.
And that's where we are.
That's what's happening right now.
And we need to open our eyes and we need to recognize it for what it is.
Well I'm glad you brought up Lindsey Graham for a second.
Lindsey O. Graham.
Usually they use the initial O must stand for oh shit.
Because that's what comes out of that guy's mouth.
He tried to say basically that Vindman was part of a whole cabal between CIA agents, Department of State, Department of Justice lawyers, FBI agents.
They all had a political agenda that was proven by the FISA investigation.
Which is the opposite of what it found.
The one thing it said that wasn't found was that there was no political bias in anything that happened.
There were some mistakes and they got to clean this stuff up, but that was what it did not say.
So here we have a guy, a sitting senator in the United States Senate who is just lying to everybody and people are going to believe it.
That's what's so frightening about that.
Now, the other thing about Romney is, because I'm glad you brought him up because I have a whole take on this.
Are you ready for it?
I could not be more ready for this.
I'm just going to sit back and enjoy this.
Okay.
With everybody else.
Because, you know, here, first of all, I started to think about, like, you know, and you've sort of put it on its head, what I'm looking for in an effective candidate on the Democratic side.
I want Jed Bartlett.
I want someone who can bring everyone together and have the music fade up and the amazing oration.
But here's the guy who could run is Mitt Romney.
He should run because he's already going to be vilified and kicked out of the Republican Party as it is.
He should run because how many votes do you think he'll be able to siphon off from Trump?
100,000? 300,000?
How many do we really think we need to get off of Trump before Trump loses?
Clearly, he doesn't think Trump should be in office.
Right?
That seems pretty clear by his vote.
So, if he were to run and get on the ballot in enough states, I think that would be the thing that would sink Trump.
Because we both know that this election is going to be very, very close.
Just like it was again and then.
If you had someone like Romney in there, listen, he's going to get a few million votes.
Okay?
Even as a write-in candidate, if he really pushed that.
That's all the Democrats would need.
And guess what?
Trump loses, a Democrat comes in the White House, and Romney switches party as the hero and the statesman.
I'm telling you, that's what should happen.
I don't know that Mitt Romney has that gear in him.
I, you know, this is a person who, if you told me Mitt Romney got up in the morning and recited the Constitution from memory and, you know, and then put on his Bill of Rights underwear before he went to work, like, I wouldn't be totally, totally shocked.
I mean, I don't know that he's capable of dirty tricks.
I really don't.
I think he would have to think that he could win the presidency before he started a campaign.
Well, if I had a dollar for everyone who said, oh, I'd vote for, Democrats who say, I'd vote for Mitt Romney right now, I'd be rich.
So I'm telling you, you know, by the way, what does he really have to do?
He can run as a Republican.
He doesn't have to raise any money.
Just make sure he gets enough signatures in the ballot.
That's all you need to do.
And OK, that costs a little bit of money probably to get some grassroots going, but not much.
And I think he's got a name enough to do it.
So that is my hot take on what Romney should do.
And I just don't see why it would be such a huge burden on him.
We have to give credit where credit is to.
What Mitt Romney did was an act of courage.
I mean, he lived up to the oath that he took.
He lived up to his responsibility.
And he's taking the hit now.
And we all knew that it was coming.
And we all knew what it was going to be like.
I think as the months go on and as this election carries on, I mean, we might see Mitt Romney actually expelled out of the party.
I would not be shocked if that's what ends up happening here.
But yeah, we gotta give credit where credit is due.
And that courage is really lacking in American politics right now.
I mean, this is gonna be in the history books.
It really is.
It's gonna be in the history books that this was a person who stood up for what was right and he's gonna be used as an example of a Republican who, you know, pushed against not just prevalent thought but, you know, stood up for his conscience.
However, are you aware of the rewriting of history books by deeply conservative It sounded like this one couple in Texas was able to do massive damage.
And I saw this article not long ago comparing, you know, the California version of a textbook versus the Texas textbook.
It was frightening.
So don't be so sure that history book, at least in Texas, will be written properly to extol the virtues of what Mitt Romney did in a very touching speech where he was crying.
You know, crying probably over the fact that he knew what was going to happen to him.
I don't see any other way.
I guess what I'm saying is I'm almost that desperate to think that that's what's the thing that's going to end up being Trump, is we need someone to siphon off just a few extra votes here or there.
I think that's also part of the prevalent anxiety that's happening with this Democratic contest.
You know, we're taping this on Monday, February 10th.
The New Hampshire primary is tomorrow night on the 11th.
It looks like Bernie Sanders is going to win the New Hampshire primary, with the possibility of a shakeup of a couple of things happening.
Klobuchar is currently rising.
I think Elizabeth Warren is doing pretty well.
As I've been reporting, the Joe Biden campaign is just continuing to crater.
I think that's what we're looking at, but we came out of a really disastrous Iowa caucus, and the Democratic Party is in disarray right now.
I mean, you might as well call, that might as well be the full name of the Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party in Disarray.
I mean, you know, that's a pretty standard place for the Democratic Party to be.
But as of right now, it's a really unsure time.
I just want to put out there, since it is our podcast, I really, really, really want to caution people between starting to put their faith in Michael Bloomberg.
I think his candidacy and what he has done is indicative of a really dangerous trend.
You want to talk about oligarchies?
We have a person who has already spent hundreds of millions of dollars without much in the way of interacting with voters or participating in the Democratic contest and not really getting involved with everything from debates to contests to even events.
I'm really scared of what this is.
revealing, which is that the liberal side of the American political spectrum is starting to accept and welcome oligarchical efforts and controls.
I think what you're talking about, the need for like a Romney to get in or this person to get in, I think it speaks for a very large anxiety that's there.
I mean, I think a lot of people are frightened.
I don't know what's going to happen.
And I don't think most people do either.
This has been a very tumultuous time.
And I think that's what it speaks to.
I I agree.
And I feel like I don't know what's going to change in the Democratic process.
They said they're going to keep tearing each other down.
And whoever survives this, you know, Biden is, by the way, down to 11 percent of his polling in New Hampshire and Buttigieg is 22.
So, you know, I had hopes for Warren, at the very least with Warren.
You know, her policies, which do mirror Bernie a little bit, at least are more fully formed and seem to indicate a way where they can pay for much of it.
And I really feel like what she is saying, it really resonates where it's like, can these, the wealthiest one half of one percent, just pay another two cents on the dollar more?
And that would cover so much of what we're lacking here.
And then meanwhile, the increases in military spending, it's just ridiculous compared to what we're not seeing in this new budget.
It just feels like Warren would have resonated more, should be resonating more, and I don't know what's, I just can't figure out why she can't break through any, you know, the next level.
Unless it's the simple notion of, ah jeez, we already tried a woman, it didn't work, I don't want to do it again.
I think Warren got hampered again by the fact that she was unable to be in Iowa for large swaths of time because of the impeachment trial.
I mean, everybody on the campaign told me that.
Yeah, but Bernie already had a ground game in place.
And his surrogates, I think, outshine most people out in Iowa.
But I think what we're watching right now, and I want people to remember this, because obviously this is a really, really stressful time.
I mean, that's why we started out talking about this thing.
And everybody just wants sort of the magic bullet to take down this administration.
Like, what is going to win?
And what is going to end this nightmare?
I want people to remember that primaries have sort of a rhythm to them.
Everybody remember the fact that over the years, like in think about the Republican primaries over the past few years, everybody gets their turn, right?
Everybody gets a moment where they're in the lead.
I mean, Ben Carson was the de facto nominee for a hot minute.
And there's like, Fiorina had a moment where they were like, oh she's up and coming and she's gonna take the lead.
We really don't know what this thing's going to look like in about a month.
When we get to Super Tuesday and these things start sorting themselves out, we'll have a better idea.
Right now the betting money is on Bernie Sanders becoming the nominee.
Now that terrifies a lot of people, including my co-host here.
Hi.
And I know it terrifies a lot of people that this might be a McGovern Redux situation.
That's where the betting money is right now.
But Warren also had her moment before this thing even really started getting going.
So there's still a possibility for her to come back around.
I think Buttigieg is going to wane.
I think that His defense against the attacks in the past couple of weeks, particularly post-Iowa, haven't done him any favors.
I don't think that he is going to enjoy a lot of support from everything from labor unions to minority populations.
I think that there's a lot of shaking out left to happen here.
And do not forget the fact that Donald Trump is a self-destructive He's a dysfunctional person.
I mean, when he feels like he isn't getting enough attention, he will throw a tantrum and it will hurt his case.
It's what he does time and time and time again.
What that's going to mean in the media is one thing, but I really don't know how this thing's going to shake out.
And in the meantime, we have to keep an eye on authoritarianism.
Like, that's what we have to keep an eye on.
The way this thing will shake out and what the race will do, the media will sell it to us and they'll sell our anxiety right back to us.
But right now, we have to keep our eye on what is happening and, you know, basically what's being fed to us.
We have to keep an eye on that thing because it's already getting really bad and we're only about a week outside of acquittal.
Right.
You know, I guess I keep coming back to this notion of we talk about, you know, the creeping of, you know, fascism taking over the country.
And I can just hear the other side just thinking of the most ridiculous snowflakes of all time and whatever.
And so I can almost feel like, can we, is it too much to just ask for some outrage equivalency?
So, you know, when Clinton meets with the Attorney General in the tarmac and it's outrage and it's insanity or whatever, it's like, can't we have the equivalent outrage for what Barr is doing now at the White House?
Is that too much to ask?
No, it's a grievement.
I mean, the entire working engine, the machine that keeps Trumpism going, is that it's a group of people with all of the power and all of the wealth who believe that it's going to get taken away from them.
And so they have to create these shadows that are going to take them from them, and conspiracies that are going to take them from it.
I mean, Donald Trump was born with incredible wealth, and he's going to die with incredible wealth, and he was never in danger from the very beginning.
And that's just how this thing churns out.
These people are the way they are because they are constantly obsessed with controlling their own destinies, even though no one's trying to take it from them in the first place.
I mean, you're exactly right.
There should be outrage for what they're doing, but these people see it as necessary, and they see it as a necessary reaction to fears that they have and paranoia that they have.
I mean, they're not going to meet us on that, and we have to understand that at some point.
Well, I don't know if Nick feels better.
I don't know how we're feeling here at the Muckrake Political Podcast.
It's a rough week.
Is that true?
It's a rough week.
It is.
I feel better, though, Jared.
I do.
Thank you.
Okay, good.
I'm glad that you admitted that empires fall and all of a sudden that created, like, you know, a feeling of somewhat hope.
I'll take that.
I'll be singing Oceans Rise, Empires Fall from Hamilton for the rest of the week.
And you know, again, we really appreciate people who come here.
I know that I was worried coming into this podcast, particularly considering the sobering nature of things, and I know post-Iowa, particularly, as the chaos has taken over, you know, it's been a lot of fear, but we're very thankful that you're here, and you mean a lot to us, and we're just very, very thankful.
