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Feb. 25, 2020 - The Muckrake Political Podcast

53:48

Bernie Fears, Troops and Tanks in Cities, and the Dismantling of National Intelligence

On this week's episode, Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the unnecessary freakout within the Democratic Primary and the events that should be freaking out everybody: namely the rise of fascism and authoritarianism that is going largely unnoticed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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	When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did?
	He had a massive literacy program.
	Is that a bad thing?
	Even though Fidel Castro did a lot of dissidents in prison, didn't he?
	That's right, and we condemn that.
	So the president has a pick, a new pick, to lead all 17 different arms of the intelligence community, and yet has no intelligence experience.
	I'm reading last night about the fall of France in the summer of 1940.
	And the general, Renault, calls up Churchill and says, it's over.
	And Churchill said, how can it be?
	You've got the greatest army in Europe.
	How can it be over?
	He said, it's over.
	Hey everybody, welcome to this week's Muckrake Political Podcast.
	Your political podcast that is all about freaking out over the political moment.
	And Nick, how are you doing?
	I am freaking out by so many different things.
	I don't even know what is freaking me out specifically anymore.
	It's so bad that I watched the beginning of Up last night.
	And I was just weeping into a pillow.
	I think that's the natural instinct of watching Up, though.
	I mean, I don't know if that's a good baseline to figure out where you are emotionally.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	But I'm so raw that it was like I literally was like just like a sobbing baby.
	It was intense.
	Well, I appreciate that we're starting this podcast off with a little bit of weeping.
	I think that's good.
	We're now living in a moment in this country where not only is the country in trouble, but it seems like a lot of people are starting to realize the country's in trouble and are freaking out at like a 10 or 11.
	But unfortunately, they're kind of freaking out about the wrong things.
	We have now watched, so we're taping this on Monday, February 24th, a couple of days past the Nevada.
	You're from California, how do you technically?
	Nevada.
	Nevada?
	Yeah.
	I would have been Nevada up until 2016, whenever it was explained to me.
	OK, so we're just going to go with it because I'm from Greene County, Indiana.
	I have a hard time pronouncing things.
	So the Nevada caucuses, which were won handedly by one Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont, who is now the front runner for the Democratic nomination.
	We are taping after Elizabeth Warren's complete and total domination of Mike Bloomberg in last week's Nevada debate, which he shouldn't have been there in the first place, which is kind of amazing that he was there and he paid hundreds of millions of dollars to be humiliated on national television.
	And now, I don't know how much you've been watching, Nick, or how much you've had your finger on the pulse.
	The media in general is, they're losing their collective minds.
	Over the possibility that Bernie Sanders could be the Democratic nominee.
	I think we need to talk about that, why it's happened.
	Maybe tell some people why they shouldn't be freaking out necessarily about the race and about everything in general.
	And then, you know, because we can't let good things lay, we should talk about the things that people should be freaking out about.
	Okay.
	Well, you know, I know I was freaking out about the potential of Bernie winning the nomination.
	And in theory, what you're describing as far as the media freaking out is sort of a reflection of, you know, the similar kind of feelings that I was having too, because what we can all imagine having gone through 2016 is how Trump would run against someone who's a socialist.
	And we now know that because he's willing to lie about everything and make everything up that he can, even falsify evidence, The public doesn't seem to have the ability to parse what democratic socialism means versus communism versus authoritarianism.
	Clearly, they don't know what authoritarianism is because we're under it now.
	That's probably the backdrop that we're looking at for this.
	Last time we spoke, I was like, this is it.
	If Bernie runs, he's going to get waxed.
	And I probably have calmed down a little bit from that, but while I've calmed down, yes, the media now has been going into the frenzy about it, just realizing a little late about what this means.
	Has anything else changed on your end?
	Well, you know, I've been... One thing that I resist is I try and resist...
	I try and resist predictive punditry, right?
	Like, I mean, you know, we're technically pundits.
	We're analysts.
	We're sitting here.
	We're talking about politics.
	We're trying to gain meaning.
	But I can tell you this as somebody who has studied politics and somebody who's lived through politics, polls don't really mean anything.
	You know, extrapolating one thing to another doesn't mean anything.
	Nobody has any idea how this whole thing is going to play out.
	Right.
	I mean, like anybody who says I just tweeted this a while ago.
	Anybody right now who says they know how the election is going to play out are either paid to make predictions.
	And as a result, it doesn't matter if they make correct predictions or wrong predictions, which they do all the time, or they're trying to scare people into voting for something else.
	Right.
	I mean, that's the only people who really claim that right now.
	Well, okay.
	Well, there's two things to that because, you know, if I tell you right now how Donald Trump is going to run against Bernie and describe it, I'm not lying, right?
	No, you're not.
	And that's the other thing about it is, yeah, no, they've already started calling him a communist.
	And I also want to point this other thing out.
	Like, it really doesn't matter who runs against Donald Trump because lies and truth, you know, they don't matter.
	I mean, with Bloomberg, and I have to tell you, as anybody who listened to last week's podcast, I came in hot about Mike Bloomberg and this idea that he was electable.
	And listen, I don't get a lot of victories in my life.
	I'm going to take a victory lap.
	Everybody who said that he was predictable and he was like the best idea of fighting Trump— Him going out on that debate stage and just laying a complete and total egg was so enjoyable for me.
	You guys can't see Jared.
	Jared is wearing a tiara right now.
	I'm very happy about that, and I have to tell you, like, the Democrats should pay billionaires to stand on stage with them, just so that they can point at them and say, you are the problem, and then go from there.
	But one thing that happened with that, I watched this debate, and while Mike Bloomberg was being correctly criticized for stop and frisk and these racist things that he did, both as a mayor and in his post-mayoral life, up until the time he declared for president, Donald Trump was telling people, I'm going to hit him on race.
	Donald Trump, the most openly racist president since, like, Andrew Johnson, is already, you know, is going to tell people, like, I'm better on race than Mike Bloomberg.
	I'm better in race than this person.
	So it doesn't matter who it's going to be.
	I mean, you know, if it's Elizabeth Warren, they're going to say Native American slurs.
	If it's Bernie Sanders, I mean, listen, these people are vile.
	They're going to not only call him a communist, but, you know, Bernie Sanders, whose family survived the Holocaust.
	Like, they're gonna trot out National Socialist stuff.
	Like, that's how that's going to happen.
	And I will say, on that note, Chris Matthews was doing that on MSNBC, right?
	I mean, anybody who didn't see that should go and find it.
	It's a really disturbing thing.
	I wrote about it today on The Muck Rank.
	He compared Bernie winning Nevada to the Third Reich conquering France, which to take like, you know, the first sort of like Jewish presumptive frontrunner in American history and then sort of like bring that around and the language of the Third Reich and stuff like that is really terrible.
	But that's where, yeah, Trump's gonna hit all those notes.
	Don't get me wrong.
	That is as sure as the sun rising tomorrow.
	But nobody knows how any of this stuff is going to play.
	I mean, the idea of socialism... I mean, Democrats who aren't even socialists get called socialists.
	I mean, that's how it's always worked.
	You know, I bring up Bill Clinton a lot in here, who, his entire electoral strategy was to be a Republican in Democrats' clothes.
	And they still called him a socialist.
	And he was an avid pro-capitalist.
	Yeah, well also Obama got almost completely derailed by sharing the wealth.
	That phrase was the equivalent of being a Nazi according to them, basically.
	So, yes, there's no question that they're going to be able to paint this into a thing where You will never make any money, everything will be taken over by the government, and don't forget how bad the government is at managing all these different things, and it'll be a disaster.
	Now, here's the interesting thing, the Democrats are equally against Bernie, and are planting these seeds as well.
	It's a very strange thing, which probably only further, kind of like when Trump supporters will say, oh, keep acting that way, that's just going to get him re-elected again.
	Well, it's almost the same with the Bernie bros, it's a very similar mindset for them, but Hillary started it off with some derogatory comments in a speech or in a sit-down conversation she had with somebody, and now he's getting a lot of crap for what he said about Cuba and Castro.
	And, you know, you listen to the whole thing, you want to be, you know, take the whole context, and of course, you know, he tries to defend that, you know, Castro did do a couple of good things, like a literacy program.
	I mean, you're an English professor, you would probably recognize that's not a bad thing, right?
	No, I mean, they've had a working, you know, healthcare system, too.
	I mean, these are things that you can look at.
	And by the way, you're talking about nuance.
	And Americans are not good at nuance.
	Do not get me wrong.
	I'm with you on that.
	They're not good on that.
	But also, Cuban Americans, I don't think they're very good at nuance either.
	And last I checked, there are large populations of them in Florida.
	Yes.
	And so now it's like the abundance are screaming their heads saying, well Florida is now lost.
	And that might be true.
	And so here's the thing about politics that maybe Bernie doesn't quite understand.
	You know, it's not a bad point to make that, like, literacy is good or, you know, they have a national healthcare system that functions.
	But it's just not good politically to ever say anything positive about Castro.
	And there's no need to say that.
	And that's where you get into trouble with, you know, when you're running for a political office like the presidency, because you have to know better.
	Yeah, there's a lot of stuff happening, and you put your finger on a big chunk of this.
	So, like, if we're going to sit here and say, what are the problems with Bernie Sanders?
	One of the problems is he is not the most tactful, tactic, tactician, whatever we want to call it.
	He has a thing he believes in and he will go out and he will pound a podium and he will say that he believes in it, right?
	And one of those things that I actually enjoyed this when he gave his interview to the New York Times.
	And by the way, I want to put an asterisk on this thing.
	I'm not endorsing Bernie Sanders.
	I haven't endorsed anybody in this race yet.
	I have a couple people that I think would be better for the country than others, but this isn't like some sort of me staking out my candidate.
	That's not what's happening here.
	But I'll tell you what I did enjoy, and that was like in the New York Times interview where he said, I don't tolerate bullshit very well.
	Well, that appeals to a lot of people.
	It really does.
	And one of the things that I think is the reason why people have gravitated to him is because they're tired of politicians the way that they are.
	But on the same token, what you're talking about the Democratic Party, so you were talking about the 60 Minutes interview where he's talking about Cuba and Castro and all this stuff.
	That was not an artful answer in that interview.
	And quite frankly, 60 Minutes went into this interview being like, let's catch the socialist.
	I mean, that's what happened.
	And we've got, if he gets the nomination, we have a year of that.
	Right?
	That's the truth.
	And we also have a Democratic Party.
	And there are a lot of people who may be new to politics and maybe they're not familiar with the history of American politics.
	The Democratic Party is really predictable.
	And it always has been.
	And what basically happens is every time it comes time to nominate someone for the presidency, there's a mini-civil war in the Democratic Party.
	There are the entrenched powers, the people who have, you know, the party bosses.
	You've got senators, congresspeople, you've got fundraisers, all these people who make the Democratic Party a national body.
	At best, they're center-left.
	Right?
	There's center a lot of the time.
	Sometimes there's center-right.
	Sometimes there's center-left.
	And then there's always an insurgency among liberals.
	And there's like a liberal candidate or two that comes along and tries to change everything and tries to gain power.
	Barack Obama is one of those people.
	People aren't very aware of it, but in 2008, I mean, he took over the Democratic Party by force, more or less, right?
	He built a coalition that took over the party and remade it.
	But the Democratic Party has a long history of having these battles between the entrenched and the insurgents.
	And when the insurgents win, a lot of the time the entrenched powers will go ahead and say, yeah, we're going to lose this election.
	We don't even really want to win this election.
	We're not going to get behind this insurgent.
	Because if we get behind the insurgent, they can remake the party.
	You know what I mean?
	And it's a shifting of control of the party.
	You know, we talked a little bit before in a previous episode about McGovern in 1972.
	That was the first time that we had primaries, and McGovern was a liberal insurgent who took over the party.
	Well, the party didn't want to go in the direction of McGovern, and there were a lot of problems with McGovern's candidacy, but the Democratic Party's like, ah, we're good.
	We're sitting this one out.
	We're not really worried about this, and we've talked about it.
	He won one state.
	Now, that's not a possibility now.
	There's no way that Donald Trump is going to win 49 states.
	That's just not how things work anymore.
	But there is a possibility that this civil war the Democrats have could boil over and lead to a situation where, you know, it turns into a landslide because Donald Trump is good for fundraising and power and all those things.
	But I will throw this out there because this segment is about not freaking out.
	We have no idea.
	We have no idea because Bernie Sanders is a candidate unlike any that we've actually seen before.
	We have no idea if he's going to win the nomination.
	There's one person in my opinion who can catch him and that's Elizabeth Warren.
	We're not sure how that's going to play out.
	We're not sure how Bernie is going to handle being the frontrunner.
	And we're not sure if Bernie can build a movement that can take Donald Trump down.
	We have no idea.
	And so people need to calm down because the media tries to get them stirred up and anxious so they will click and retweet and watch and all this stuff.
	And people just need to chill.
	Well, let me just add this because being a, you know, an analytics guy to some degree for the basketball side, sometimes there are numbers that you might want to not believe in or ignore, but ultimately over a macro huge amount of time end up being pretty good predictors.
	And I think that that's sort of what they're sort of feeding into, saying, OK, look at Bernie's national poll numbers.
	Look at the races he's won and where he stands.
	You know, it would be very difficult for anybody else to win the nomination based on this.
	Now, that said, because we're in this really strange time, it's not easy to use any historical precedent to predict what's going to happen now anymore.
	But that's sort of what, you know, media is behind.
	They're always going to kind of cling to a lot of the macro sense of the numbers, say.
	It's kind of like how I said, you know, the Spurs, you know, in the middle of December, I'm like, they will not make the playoffs.
	They're only winning 39% of their games.
	They're simply not going to make it, you know.
	And everyone freaked out at me.
	And they're like, well, they're only this far away, this whatever.
	Well, guess what?
	They're not making the playoffs.
	And it's still going to hold true no matter what.
	But you didn't have a horse in that fight.
	Right?
	Like, you didn't care.
	Maybe as a basketball fan, maybe you wanted it to happen, but one of the things that ends up happening with polls, and because polls are so inexact, and they're so messed up, and particularly in the era where people don't have landlines, and, you know, some people respond, some people don't, we have no idea.
	And I'll bring this out for anybody.
	Anybody who's listening, I'm sure, has seen this.
	There's this poll that always happens, which is X versus Trump.
	Right?
	And it's like, how does X perform against Trump?
	How does Y perform against Trump?
	You know, Sanders, Warren, Biden, all this stuff.
	They vary so wildly that you can't get an idea of what they mean or if they're real.
	But I'll tell you who uses them, and that is pundits.
	And what pundits end up doing is they go on television.
	And by the way, this is a thing we have to talk about, and this isn't fun, but we have to do it.
	Let's talk about MSNBC, which is freaking out about Bernie Sanders.
	It is a corporate-owned television news network.
	That doesn't mean that it's not liberal.
	It doesn't mean that it doesn't lean left.
	It does.
	But you know what they don't want?
	They don't want Bernie Sanders.
	And they don't want Elizabeth Warren.
	They don't want tax codes to change.
	They don't want the economy to change that much.
	So you know what they're worried about?
	Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren.
	I mean, they've all but erased her in their coverage.
	Alright, so you're willing to say that the corporate heads are in the newsrooms influencing what they cover?
	No, I'm not saying that at all.
	I'm saying it starts with who are you hiring?
	What pays your paycheck?
	These aren't even things that people are aware that feeds into their ideas.
	So like someone like Chris Matthews.
	Here's why Chris Matthews went off on Bernie Sanders.
	The history of Chris Matthews is he worked in the Democratic Party for years and years and years.
	And his big jobs were with Ed Muskie, The senator that George McGovern beat for the candidacy in 72, by the way.
	And Muskie was one of those people that was like, I'm not going to help McGovern.
	And he's going to go down.
	Right?
	That's who Chris Matthews worked for.
	And so he is a part of that.
	And he has seen that happen.
	The other person that Chris Matthews worked for and defined his career was Jimmy Carter.
	And so Chris Matthews lives in constant fear of another Carter Democratic meltdown.
	So it's not like the old Roger Ailes Fox News, where they're getting memos that tell them what to happen.
	But the people on MSNBC are longtime, entrenched, democratic people.
	They're people who have raised money, they've run candidates and campaigns.
	They bring on James Carville, who was part of the architecture that brought us Bill Clinton and his centrist campaign.
	When they talk about the electorate and they talk about electability, they're not talking about any actual group of people.
	They're talking about their own opinions in the same way that Fox News is like, some people are saying.
	It's just a different side of the same coin.
	But yeah, they're a lot more independent than the people on Fox News.
	It just so happens that they're still biased because they're people.
	Right.
	And what's interesting is that, you know, the other thing you can argue with Bernie is that he had come out the other day and he had given us a number for what you'd be making when you see your taxes increase.
	And, you know, Elizabeth Warren, who I think I'm going to support her, was, you know, sort of saying that, you know, the top half of 1% of the top of the earners in America, those are the ones who are really going to have their taxes increase.
	Well, you know, Bernie is saying anybody who makes over $250,000, you know, will see their taxes go up.
	And that's where they're going to be able to, you know, pay for all these different programs he wants.
	That gives people some pause.
	That's definitely a lot different than some of the other things.
	And that will also influence different things like the markets.
	And suddenly, what we get afraid of, when you talk about, you know, on MSNBC and the economy, is a guy like that.
	Although, there are some benefits that you forget.
	Like, if everybody did have universal healthcare, and your taxes go up a little bit, but you save all that money that you don't have to pay for healthcare, that's a really positive tradeoff.
	And all you have to get over then is, you know, the health care that you like.
	I don't really think anybody really likes their health care.
	I don't, you know, I kind of think, oh, I want my choice.
	But in reality, when I think about my health care, my insurance company, I don't like them.
	They don't, they don't do well by me.
	And so it couldn't be that much.
	Well, it could be, but I, you know, it's, it's not like it's functioning great for me anyway.
	Yeah, and what you're talking about there is I think one of the big problems with American politics.
	You're talking about the difference between what you know and what could be, right?
	When you say the word choice, it's not really a choice.
	When I'm picking out a doctor to go to or a procedure that I need taken care of, I have a choice of like, I don't know, maybe three or four and none of them are great.
	And, you know, it's not like I'm really enjoying the customer service that I'm getting.
	But when you start talking about changing, it means, oh, I might lose everything.
	That might just be gone, right?
	And who knows?
	But one of the problems with American politics is we have moved, and this is in your wheelhouse, Nick.
	This is a Nick Haussleman special.
	And that is this.
	We have moved from a type of politics which is aspirational.
	Which is, we could do this.
	This is a thing where we could find progress.
	If only we think outside the box.
	If only we were bold.
	And we have moved from that to a risk aversion society.
	Where we are like, Well, you know, maybe you could make the world better, but wouldn't that be hard, and maybe you would fail?
	And when you turn on the TV now, and you turn on MSNBC, or CNN, or you turn on Twitter, you see a bunch of people who are like, yeah, it would be great if we could give healthcare to everybody, but I really don't know if people are gonna vote for it.
	Well, what is it?
	You know, are we just going to live the rest of... I'm 38 going on 39.
	Am I going to live the rest of my life in a society that will never take another chance?
	Are we never going to try something new?
	And at the end of the day, I understand that it's really frightening.
	And I have to tell you, I am getting older.
	And 20-year-old me, who... I'm sorry, I was 21.
	21 22 year old me who is out marching against the Iraq war I would have been I would have had a Bernie tattoo on my forehead I mean, you know, I would have been ready to burn it all down and now as I'm getting older I'm like this is This is an anxious thing, right?
	Here's the problem, though.
	For me, because I'm a little bit older, I would have been marching against the first Iraq War in college, but here's the thing that I feel.
	I don't mind Bernie's policies.
	I don't mind getting out of the box.
	I don't think that those are all a problem.
	The only thing I mind is that I believe he is going to hand the election to Trump.
	That is it, really.
	And that's the fear, right?
	That's the really vexing thing about all of this is what we're talking about, and by the way, this is therapy talking is what's happening here.
	When it comes to anxiety, anxiety is just fear of things we can't control and things that might happen, right?
	It's not something that's happening.
	We have, again, we have literally no idea what's going to happen.
	At all.
	Right?
	I mean, who knows Donald Trump?
	I mean, we got other things to talk about today about what Donald Trump has done.
	He's dismantling our intelligence system right now.
	Oh yes.
	It's just destroying it.
	He's committing crimes on an almost daily basis.
	Who knows what this campaign's going to be?
	And every time that we talk about electability, and we're not talking about something we believe in, I just feel like we're forfeiting something.
	Because listen, Donald Trump would not get elected in a country that worked.
	He just wouldn't.
	He's a symptom of a larger problem.
	We have to at least aim bigger.
	That's the whole thing.
	I don't trust people who come out and they're like, oh, if Joe Biden got elected and had dinner with Mitch McConnell, the republic would be saved.
	Like, I don't buy that.
	That's not true, because these guys were on watch when everything was going wrong.
	Yeah, and I don't like to wish ill on anybody, but I do have very, very deep, dark thoughts about Mitch McConnell.
	Yes, I agree.
	I hope he's not re-elected as well.
	You know what?
	By the way, he's not completely safe, which is exciting to me.
	But Kentucky, they elected a Democratic governor, and the polls indicate that it's not a slam dunk like it's been for him.
	So I will be more than happy to give money to his opponent in the Democratic side.
	So on that note, and by the way, you're talking about Kentucky.
	And this is one of the reasons why I'm telling people not to freak out.
	I'm from Like, red Indiana.
	And I'm talking like the conversations you hear in red Indiana when the doors are closed and people feel comfortable.
	I mean, you hear some things.
	Oh yeah, we'll give you a couple beers and we'll hear your real accent.
	Hey, it's a hard thing to keep at bay, but that's exactly right.
	But here's the thing.
	If you talk to people in red indiana and you talk to people in red kentucky and i'm down in georgia you talk to people down in red georgia and and what you're talking about is exactly right like the specter of socialism and those types of things if you start talking about class And the economy, with some of these people, they will go radical.
	Do you know what I mean?
	Some of them are not afraid of getting way out there in terms of redistribution of wealth and power.
	And so it is one of those things where we keep having this idea that, oh, these Americans won't do this and these Americans won't do that.
	And we talk about politics as if it's concrete and will never change.
	We have no idea.
	We just have no clue whatsoever.
	And anybody who right now is telling you that they have an idea, again, they're profiting off of it, or they're trying to gain political power by it.
	But we have to stop with political punditry predictions, because they're not real.
	They just aren't.
	And we don't have to know today who's going to be the nominee, and we don't have to know today who's going to beat Trump.
	But hopefully somebody beats Trump.
	Right.
	And there's an effect, by the way, I'm forgetting the name of it, but I was just seeing that they researched about how, depending on how people feel about the candidate at that specific time, is whether they will agree to do the poll.
	So if Trump is doing some stupid crap, whatever, and the Republicans are out there, they won't even respond, they won't answer the poll.
	So of course the poll swings wildly a certain way.
	But when something in their mind is relatively OK on Trump's end that he does, like maybe, you know, survives the impeachment, whatever, then they find that they're much more willing to actually answer those calls and do the poll.
	And that shifts the whole poll another way.
	Now, that's an effect that they call it something.
	But it's also that could just be the polling itself.
	Like that's another version of knowing whether or not the polls are reflecting accurately what we all feel.
	But it is and I agree, I think going forward right now, it is difficult to be able to follow whether or not those polls work, especially because they're not nuanced enough.
	Like, for instance, what people are talking about in Georgia or Indiana and read Indiana, read Georgia, like talk to them about immigration.
	Or talk to people who are directly affected by immigration, who were immigrants, whose parents were immigrants.
	There are people out there that are completely in favor of what Trump is now doing, which is basically bringing out the SWAT team from the border and helping ICE go into cities, to sanctuary cities, and root out these illegal immigrants, many of whom are going to be innocent people who are just caught up in this whole, you know, wave that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
	There's going to be some horror stories coming out of this.
	For those sharp listening listeners out there, we have moved officially from the part of the things that you should not be freaking out about to the things that you absolutely 100% should be freaking out about and we're not talking about.
	Because the other stuff is sexier and it leads to more ratings and shares and infighting and spectacles that everyone can agree to fight about.
	What you're talking about right there is not just the militant presence in cities and in people's rights being taken over.
	It is the inaction of a symbolic iron grip.
	That's what this is about, right?
	It's not about actually like
	Grabbing, you know immigrants off the street like they'll do that that will happen and there people are gonna be subject to some really awful things and injustices But the way it's being done is it's being done in such an overt cruel overwhelming Show of power that it is about informing the citizenry that this is a power that we have This is a power that we're going to enact and it's a psychological operation That's why it's happening
	Yeah, it's stormtroopers going through the ghettos trying to find, you know, this looks like, you know, what these World War II movies look like.
	And you are exactly right on that end.
	And, you know, the sexy thing you mentioned, I mean, listen, it was sexy to cover child separation at the border for a little while.
	And then I guess the other problem, though, is at some point, sexiness doesn't last.
	Babe, if you're listening to this, you are still too sexy to me.
	Sexy doesn't always last, because certainly in the media, where yeah, they've completely stopped covering that, yet there are thousands of kids who I don't think are ever going to find their parents again.
	Ever.
	Yeah, and deaths.
	There have been more deaths since the last time we had some sort of article or report about that.
	It's just not something that people want to talk about.
	And people get tired of it.
	And, you know, it's a blip and it's so sad to talk about, but it shows up on social media for like a hot minute and everyone's like, isn't this terrible?
	And then all of a sudden it's just there.
	You brought up stormtroopers and, you know, outside of like the ghettos and all this stuff.
	Do you know?
	I mean, that was about, obviously, oppressing these people, and killing these people, and taking away their rights.
	But it's also a message to the people around them.
	And it's a message that, oh, you might be offended by this, and you might be troubled by this, but you have no way of dealing with this.
	We are overwhelming and stronger than you, and our oppression can put you down.
	So you know what you do?
	You get in line, and you shut up, and you let it happen.
	It's all about these shows and symbols.
	But it's not like the government's going to have a list of, like, journalists or people who want to, you know, to march against these things and keep that organized and structured and know who they are, because that would never happen, would it?
	Wait, didn't that... So, first of all, didn't that happen with...
	Oh yeah, Richard Nixon.
	And then, also, it just came out the other day, and this is one of those things that sort of gets mixed up and lost.
	Trump's making a list.
	Like, that came out, I believe, yesterday.
	That Trump has a list of people that, like, he's ready to drop the hammer on.
	And you're absolutely right.
	That's what happens in authoritarian societies.
	It starts with this thing where everyone's like, ah, they would never have, you know, troops in the streets.
	They would never be wearing, like, death's head insignias.
	Oh my god, you're overreacting.
	You're hyperbolic.
	And they use that, and they use the cover of deniability and that plausible craziness that people are feeling, and then the next thing you know, tanks in the streets.
	And that's what these people respond to.
	And do you know what happens then?
	There's another part to it.
	Trumpist, or people who are attracted to Trumpist, who are weak, insecure people, they want tanks in the street.
	They want to put on those uniforms.
	They want to put on those insignias.
	It is a terrible, terrible cycle, and it just ratchets itself up until you look up one day and you're like, I don't recognize this country anymore.
	That is something that people should not just be freaking out about, but freaking out about on like a major level right now.
	And you're describing the Proud Boys and those guys that will dress up like they're in the military and parade around with their open carry guns and that is intimidating.
	That is intimidating to me even from watching on the TV, much less if I was ever in the vicinity of what that was happening.
	It doesn't happen in LA, thankfully, but at the very least it is all those things and it really is Just another notion of like, you know, what country do we live in and how easy would it be for those kind of people to take hold of the entire zeitgeist of the country, right?
	And then we all live this way.
	It can happen quickly, it can happen suddenly like we're doing.
	Even with Trump appointing Richard Grenell, who has no experience in the intelligence community, as an acting DNI, he's now demanding all the raw intelligence over the Russia interference of the 2020 campaign.
	And this is just a way for Trump to get talking points, to then insist that the whole thing is rigged, and it's fake, and the Russians aren't really trying to support him.
	They're supporting Bernie instead, or whatever.
	Can we talk about that?
	Can we just for a moment talk about that?
	Okay, so what came out is that, you know, Bernie was briefed a month ago that the Russians are now actively infiltrating our campaign, and there's evidence that they're trying to support Bernie as well.
	Now, Jared, this was like a weird talking point about all the Bernie bros and all this stuff on Twitter, but you explain, because I think we talked about this before, you could probably do it better than me.
	Explain why this makes sense.
	Okay, so a large part of what's happening here is, so the Russian operation, and anybody who wants to know about this thing, you know, after this podcast, go online, wherever you want, go look up Vladislav Surkov, who is one of the main architects of how this thing works, and Russian interference, and the idea here.
	And basically, it's a playing of all sides against each other.
	If you get a chance tonight and you're looking for something to watch, a great episode of television is The Twilight Zone's The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.
	And basically, this is a really great old sci-fi half hour, I believe, where the power goes out in this neighborhood in the 1950s and some lights go on here and they just start turning against each other.
	Well, guess what?
	The Russians are engaged in a win-win situation, no matter what they do, right?
	So back in 2016, when they interfered in the election, if they never got caught interfering, that's a win for them, right?
	Because they interfered on behalf of a candidate that they wanted to win.
	If they got caught, that's another win because they still influenced the election and also it got into people's heads.
	And suddenly everyone's like, things just aren't quite right here.
	It's weird.
	Well, guess what?
	With Bernie Sanders... So, here's the thing.
	They must either think that Bernie will lose to Trump, which is a possibility, or they just want to make people freak out over everything.
	Listen.
	Bernie is not a Russian agent.
	Bernie doesn't have any deals with Russia.
	He doesn't have any money in Russia.
	You know, he's not a six-time bankrupted billionaire who is depending on money from foreign influences.
	He's just not.
	And by the way, Fox News, I don't know if you've seen this, they are already talking about Bernie because he's a socialist loving Russia.
	Which is absolutely insane because if you study history and you look at how the ideas of socialism and communism were bastardized in Russia, anybody who actually believes this stuff hates Russia and hates what they did.
	Okay, so there's that.
	They are doing this in order to sow chaos and disorder in the Democratic Party.
	And so they either think that Bernie would lose to Trump, and they're trying to help him, or they think that he could beat Trump, and they're trying to get people to be distrustful of him.
	Either way, win, win, win, however it goes.
	And that is the next evolution in Russian interference, is just do a bunch of things because it's going to freak people out and they're paranoid.
	Right.
	And I'm waiting for Elizabeth Warren to say, Russia, if you're listening, I'm going to win this race and be the Democratic nominee.
	I don't know.
	I just feel like let's troll those guys.
	That would be a great talking line for any of the Democratic candidates, by the way.
	That's for free for you guys.
	Well, I just want to say, real fast, for everyone who's freaked out about this thing, if Donald Trump is re-elected in 2020, and I don't care if it's, you know, going up against Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Buttigieg, I don't care who it is, what has been established in the impeachment and his acquittal there is that candidates are going to be required to reach out to foreign influences in order to help them.
	That's the future that will take place if Donald Trump wins his re-election.
	And there's no coming back from that.
	That's it.
	Close down the shop.
	We are screwed into perpetuity.
	And that is one of the many, many, many reasons why it's important to beat him.
	But that idea that people are interfering and it's just there?
	It's gonna get worse.
	It just is.
	Because you're going to have to go out and you're going to have to be like, hey, New Zealand, just to let you know, my economics are really going to help you out in case you have any troll farms that you want to put my way.
	That's where it's going.
	And that's what we're going to be looking at if we don't get this cancer out of the presidency.
	For sure, but then again it's unclear to me how we would put a law in to completely stop that as well because, you know, it would be so easy to get that done without quote-unquote soliciting foreign interference in an election.
	It's almost like it's in the Constitution anyway and you just need a party who takes it seriously.
	Yeah, and then I would also have to say they're gonna have to update the language a little bit.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Because again, you know, and while they're at it, let's update the Second Amendment.
	Can we do that too?
	Now, see?
	Now you're hoping for larger things, Nick!
	I love it!
	Let's come out from underneath our fear!
	All right, well, let's wait, but we got to get scared again because... Oh yeah, let's get actually good and scared.
	...the Dow Jones dropped 1,000 points.
	Okay, sorry, 999.3 points today.
	And it's all related to the coronavirus, which If you haven't realized what supply chains mean in China, for instance, it's shut down.
	China is not producing anything, not shipping anything.
	And it's been that way for a week.
	It's going to be that way for like two weeks.
	That can destroy a whole quarter for a company or for all these companies.
	And that's what we're seeing now.
	I can only imagine it's Monday.
	We have the whole week to get through.
	Nothing's going to change except that there's going to be more deaths, more coronavirus from more countries like South Korea and we're seeing in Italy.
	My wife's a doctor and she was freaking out.
	I was kind of saying, well, it's not that big of a deal compared to like, you know, there's more people are dying from the regular flu.
	And she's like, you idiot.
	This is the proportions are way off here.
	You know, compared to the number of cases versus number of deaths.
	This is like really, really alarming stuff here.
	And in my mind, the reporting is poor, right?
	I don't think it's accurate.
	So it's only going to get worse.
	It's only going to go one direction as reporting gets better and we get more information about who's getting the virus and who's not.
	And then we got to have this notion of, oh my God, did the US really do what they're supposed to do to contain this?
	Considering they flew a whole plane, a plane, a lot of people who supposedly weren't infected, and they were.
	And no matter what they try to do with the quarantine, it seems like it didn't work either.
	So, this is going to be a real... This is like 12 monkeys.
	First of all, 12 Monkeys is a great movie.
	I do enjoy 12 Monkeys.
	I wouldn't watch it right now, in the middle of all this, I'll say that.
	Well, so, a couple things.
	If you turned on Fox News, or I think MSNBC might have touched on this today, they were like, the Dow fell because Bernie Sanders won Nevada.
	Which is just, just, and again, that's where we're at.
	And then meanwhile, over on Fox News, If you turn it on, and here's the reason why we should be freaking out about this, and again, why it's so important to defeat Trump and to defeat the Republican Party.
	And by the way, I'm not a registered Democrat.
	I'm not sitting here, you know, trying to get them power because I want power myself or something.
	I think the Democratic Party needs a lot of reform and it needs to change its ways.
	Republicans are on Fox News claiming that it is an engineered virus.
	right now.
	There's no proof of that whatsoever.
	I mean, maybe proof will come up.
	Maybe that's true.
	I don't know.
	But you've got Tom Cotton, who's just all over the airwaves right now, telling everyone he knows for sure.
	That's not great at all.
	And that is like misinformation and dangerous propaganda that has no place.
	Meanwhile, Donald Trump can't do anything.
	Why would anyone have faith that he can handle A global pandemic?
	There's no way!
	Like you just said, this thing where they brought people back on a plane, like what is going on?
	We have a government that is full of acting directors and people who are doing like four or five different jobs because he has no interest in governing and actually governance is a hindrance to him.
	He just wants to juice and juice and juice this thing for power and money.
	So no, they cannot be trusted with power and especially when you have something like the coronavirus looming on the horizon.
	It's even worse though because not only do they have a list of like journalists and people and dissidents and Sorry, what did what they call them in the graduate?
	Are you one of those agitators?
	They they have the list of that But they also have a list they're going through the government itself to get rid of anybody who is not a Trump loyalist they That is what is crazy because, again, the Republicans have this unique DNA.
	They simply cannot fathom somebody from the other side, the Democrats, that could do a professional job under a Republican president.
	It doesn't compute with them, only because probably most of the Republicans I know would not do the professional thing.
	they would be biased in their work against a Democratic president.
	But at the very least, that's what we're doing as well.
	So he's not only using people who are completely unqualified for these positions, but they're certainly, their only qualification will be that I had said nice things about Trump.
	The irony here about Grinnell is they found a lot of tweets that were really negative against Trump, that he has deleted, but they used the Wayback Machine, and they found a lot of these old tweets.
	So it's almost like you're not going to find many more of these people who are completely unholy in the Trump camp.
	And so you're really going to get people who aren't qualified for these jobs.
	Do you ever notice that Donald Trump only knows like seven or eight different people?
	Like the same people just keep... Yeah, they just keep flowing around in this orbit.
	And if you've ever watched... Man, we're getting into a lot of films today.
	So just, you know, make a note.
	This is a good watching list.
	If you ever noted like the Godfather movies, like, you know, there's there's a reason why Robert Duvall gets sent on every mission.
	It's because when you're an organized crime boss, you only trust a certain amount of loyal, you know, hired guns.
	With Grinnell, he's doing this because, number one, he is apparently trusted to dismantle the National Intelligence Operation or ruin it.
	One or the other, right?
	I mean, you know, whether or not he'll do it competently or he's just a rube that they understand is going to ruin everything and help them, you know, by default.
	That's why he's doing this.
	And that's why Trump keeps the people around him that he does.
	They are either people he can trust with his crimes or people that he knows are going to screw things up because governance is not his main priority.
	And in this case, both with national intelligence and with this coronavirus thing, you have a group of people who They're not just paranoid.
	They're not just dangerously paranoid.
	They're dangerously paranoid and they're motivated.
	Right?
	There's a reason Tom Cotton is out there talking about this being an engineered virus in China.
	He thinks it's going to win points against China and either lead to, like, a war or economic advantage against them, while meanwhile slandering an entire group of people for something that may or may not be true.
	That's what this thing's all about.
	These people should not be trusted in any way, shape, or form.
	Well, the slander, but also the fear.
	Yeah, totally.
	That's really what Fox News has done.
	They make everybody really scared about everything.
	Well, would you vote against the sitting president if we were facing a looming biological terror attack?
	No!
	You never change horses in midstream in the middle of a war.
	Why would you?
	Right.
	And you know where Tom Cotton went to college?
	Harvard.
	Oh, he's an elite?
	That's crazy.
	It's almost like these people are playing characters.
	Yeah, almost.
	You know, my favorite thing is, you know, for the permanent DNI, they wanted to appoint Doug Collins.
	And Doug Collins is like, nope, I want to win this Senate race in Georgia.
	You're there in Georgia, is he going to win?
	Oh my god.
	If that man is my senator, I don't even know what to say, Nick.
	The truth about that, I read the article that he was going to run for it, and in my head, my rational space and my brain was like, no, there's just no way that could ever happen.
	And you just asking that question just led to a stomach pain.
	I know.
	And by the way, if you don't know Doug Collins very well, he's one of the most outspoken supporters of Trump.
	He's one of the most outspoken idiots.
	Yeah, Nunes, Gates, Collins, they're all like the same person, basically.
	And he's so intellectually dishonest with his discussions when he goes on these shows.
	It's really disgustingly horrible.
	But I will say this, and this brings it around to what we were talking about.
	So we'll find our moment of hope.
	We'll find this thing.
	So I live in Georgia.
	Which is one of the seats of the Confederacy, right?
	Like, this is deep south.
	I'm not just in Georgia.
	I'm in, like, southeastern Georgia.
	Like, I'm almost to, like, the border with Florida.
	Georgia's kind of purple.
	And Georgia is kind of leaning blue.
	And you have someone like Doug Collins who isn't just intellectually dishonest.
	I think he is intellectually deficient.
	I think the impeachment trial showed him to be lacking.
	I'll just leave that there.
	I'll try and be kind since we're trying to be helpful.
	We don't know what's going to happen in this country.
	We don't know what's going to happen in places like Georgia and Texas.
	Right?
	Texas is even changing.
	Could it be possible that moving left might bring some of these people along?
	And people like Doug Collins and a lot of incompetent Republicans?
	And by the way, real fast, I gotta put this out there.
	This modern Republican Party is not talented.
	They're not actually good at anything they do.
	They're not good at legislation.
	They're not good at politics.
	They're not good at anything.
	It just so happens that they have a multi-billion dollar media apparatus that keeps them afloat.
	And they have an entire constituency that has been locked in an alternate reality.
	Where's the hope?
	Well, the hope is that they could lose everything.
	I mean, we don't know.
	We don't know.
	There could be, like, not a blue wave, because, man, I don't want to talk in hashtags, but there's a possibility that we could see a major sea change in this country.
	And God knows we need it, because the things we're talking about that are dangerous are incredibly dangerous.
	For sure.
	I mean, listen, yeah, we could, the Democrats could take control of Congress, they can take control of, sorry, the Senate and the White House.
	I mean, it's been a little while since they've had that, but I certainly feel like, that's the one thing, it's like when you talk to a lot of Republicans and conservatives, they're kind of convinced that the only time they've ever had prosperous economies is under Republican presidents.
	When in fact, it's the opposite.
	We've got recessions.
	And the greatest run of economy we had was under Clinton.
	And then what Obama did to shepherd us out of the Great Recession was unprecedented in terms of growth for decades and decades.
	It's really weird that, you know, all these arguments are sort of based on fictional things.
	And kind of like even getting back to the beginning, we talked about the polls and what those mean.
	A lot of times, you know, there are, there's a framework, there's math, there's a binary answer to some of these questions.
	And you can't ignore it in preference of some strange philosophy that you might have, which could very well be rooted in bigotry and white supremacy.
	And that's, you know, that's where we're at.
	I'm supposed to be hopeful.
	I'm sorry.
	I lost the hope.
	But hey, maybe those bigots and white supremacists will change.
	It's audacious.
	I think we just found the title of this week's podcast.
	Maybe the bigots can change.
	That'll really drive the listens over there.
	No, you know, it is one of those things that when we talk about things like bigots, and we talk about people who have, you know, moved into Trumpism, There are a lot of things that lead bigots to become active bigots.
	Do you know what I mean?
	Like, that changes the way that they operate.
	Like, there are tons of people in this country who are prejudiced.
	And by the way, some of them are self-avowed liberals.
	Some of the people who are very, very left that I have met in my life and consider themselves progressives are prejudiced.
	So let's just go ahead and get that straight.
	But The active bigots are active bigots who have been acted upon by people outside of them.
	There's a finger that is pointed in a particular direction and there's a scapegoat or a conspiracy or something or another that powers their inherent prejudices and makes them to move, right?
	You can combat that.
	And yes, when we talk about changing America, it's a really heavy, esoteric, abstract thing.
	If everybody just woke up tomorrow and we were better, everything would be better.
	Well, that's not going to happen.
	That's just, you know, the best we can hope for is to disable this really volatile situation and start to move America in a little bit of a different direction and hope that it just continues and that it's good stewardship and that we can reform some of this stuff and that we can get to a decent place.
	I think that's hope.
	I agree.
	I think that that's right.
	We have to because it's not like enough to say, well, just get the assholes out.
	Right.
	Because that's not really enough.
	That's almost a Republican thing.
	We're just going to say, well, it's not at least it wasn't as bad as Trump.
	Like, I don't want to be in that situation either, where we're like, just sort of, you know, thank God we don't have him.
	The next guy could be worse.
	I agree.
	I think that, you know, these are incremental changes and we'll have to eventually see.
	And there is a feeling that perhaps we are going to be able to inch into the right direction, but it might take a lot longer than we think.
	And that's really what's scary because obviously the other side of that coin is if it lasts long enough, it does so much damage that whatever hope we might have, it will eventually take so long that we won't see it in our lifetimes.
	Well, and it's really important really quickly, and we didn't get to talk about it in depth today, but right now Donald Trump is in India meeting with Prime Minister Modi, who is a, how do I put it?
	Oh yeah, a populist authoritarian.
	A really, really dangerous individual, and You know, Donald Trump is making all of these arrangements and all of these partnerships with people like Vladimir Putin, with Modi, with Kim Jong Un.
	And you're seeing this conglomerate effect of like all these major countries and major figures who are coming together.
	And let me tell you, they're not sitting around and talking about each other's shoes.
	You know what I mean?
	They're not sitting around telling each other that they love each other's ties or whatever.
	Like, this is a system that has been bubbling up for a while and taking shape and it they're they're they're bringing it into into focus now.
	I mean if if people again a reading list Vladimir Putin right now is uh ratcheting up Russia to take a look at its constitution and he wants to change everything about that constitution in some really frightening ways.
	This stuff is solidifying it's like concrete that is wet and it's getting harder and harder and harder and permanent That is why we have to change things.
	We have to move forward.
	Because simple little, you know, chipping away at the corners, that's what got us here.
	That's how we ended up in this place, is pretending like there weren't major structural things that needed addressed.
	But the good news is, you can't get there unless you start.
	That's the hope.
	It all starts with one step.
	It all starts with one moment or one movement and it can change.
	American history shows us that we have these periods where it feels like we can't change anything and it feels awful and then we change things.
	And so we can.
	We actually, actually can.
	And that is the hopeful thing.
	We just got to figure out what we should be freaking out about and what we should be worrying about from the things that we shouldn't be freaking out about and worrying about.
	Yeah.
	So, you know, we always try and end on a halfway decent note.
	It wouldn't be a very fun podcast if we were just like, doom and gloom.
	Goodbye, everybody.
	So, uh, we just want to say thank you for listening.
	Um, you know, these are, these are frustrating, stressful times.
	A lot's on the line.
	It's very, very tense, but we appreciate, um, this conversation we're having and, and we really appreciate you for listening and sharing and subscribing, leaving comments, all that good stuff.
	Um, please make sure to do that.
	Let people know about this podcast and, um, you know, that you're, you're hearing something here.
	There's a conversation that you really can't find anywhere else.
	In the meantime, like, subscribe, all that good stuff.
	I am Jared Sexton.
	You can find me on Twitter at jysexton.
	You can find Nick at canyouhearmesmh.
	You can find more stuff at themuckrake.com.

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