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March 24, 2020 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
52:09
The Coronavirus Pandemic: Profit Over People

Donald Trump and Republicans are getting itchy and calling for social distancing and emergency procedures to expire, surely putting millions at risk. Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the dangerous mindset that powers the Right and corporations, as well as the possibility of more damage to our democratic institutions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Are there things you regret in the way you've handled the crisis so far?
I don't think so, you know.
I'm looking forward, I don't look back.
I'm a person that looks forward-thinker, I guess they would say.
But the president is right.
The cure can't be worse than the disease.
And we're going to have to make some difficult trade-offs.
You look at automobile accidents, which are far greater than any numbers we're talking about, that doesn't mean we're going to tell everybody no more driving of cars.
So we have to do things to get our country open.
Hey everybody, thanks for joining us today on the Muckrake podcast.
I'm Nick Hauselmann and joined by my co-host Jared Yates Sexton.
And there's a lot going on.
And we got Jared, I think, upset again, as he's been, as we've all been recently.
And so there's a lot to talk about.
Jared, we got to talk about how this money is going to be handed out by the government.
Well, I mean, we know how this money is going to get handed out by the government.
I mean, we're well aware.
We've watched this dog and pony show a few times.
You know, for all of us who sat and watched in 2008 as the financial crisis resulted in our money being handed over to the people who melted down the economy, we know how this thing works.
And right now, as we're speaking, it's Monday, March 23rd, as we're taping this thing, the Republicans right now are trying to pass a bill.
And just to give people an idea of what's happening in this, because the Republicans, obviously, I know this is going to be shocking, Nick.
They're trying to push disinformation about what's happening.
I know.
Hold on to your seat.
I know everyone is shocked.
They can't believe it.
They're telling everyone that, you know, the Democrats are trying to get a bunch of like pork in here and a bunch of quote-unquote goodies.
The argument is because the Republicans want to open a slush fund for the Trump administration to divvy out taxpayer dollars in bailouts and relief at their discretion, which will be hidden For a long time, if we ever find out where this money gets given.
And here's the thing, Nick, and you can answer this.
How trustworthy is the Trump administration when it comes to money and handing out favors and things to their friends?
I mean, I don't trust Trump any farther than I can throw him.
And with my bad back, I shouldn't be throwing anybody, Jared.
I think people would have trouble throwing Trump.
I think you'd make a bad javelin.
This is a really terrible situation.
And what we need to talk about is the fact that the Republican worldview is and has been and will be until this party either somehow or another suffers some sort of realization or active conscience or goes away, which it needs to.
It has been about how to profit in moments of crisis.
And by the way, crises that they always create.
Like every one of these crashes, every one of these wars, every one of these major societal crises is a Republican creation and then they promise everyone that they'll fix the problem and then they just keep funneling money more and more to the wealthy and powerful.
That's where we are.
That's what they're doing during this time.
We're gonna have to talk about Donald Trump wanting to put us all back to work during a pandemic despite what scientists and experts are telling us and the fact that the deaths are piling up and the infections are piling up.
You asked me how I'm feeling, Nick.
I'm feeling pissed off.
Well, you know, just to address a little bit of your question about how trustworthy he is, you could use the Secret Service as a good example of how they've really profited off of this, the Trump administration, the Trump himself, because they won't release any of the information about what the expenditures are going on around the Secret Service to have to protect him on all these jaunts across the country into his properties.
And we've also seen very little bit of clues as we've gotten, FOIA is sort of coming through a little bit, of complete and utter waste and also just raking the secret service over the coals with overcharging them.
And they're not charging market rate, they're not giving them a break at all.
I thought it was interesting that they asked Trump if his company would receive any of the bailout money.
And Trump, you know, got caught unprepared to answer this question and didn't answer it and just sort of mumbled a word salad about how he gives away his salary as a president and nobody thanks him for that.
It is, you know, if we'd ever wanted to see how narcissistic this guy is and how dangerous he is, it's like in these moments where nothing else exists outside the prism of how it affects him and only him.
Yeah, let's go back to that moment, because I thought that was, you know, if human civilization crumbles, and there's a possibility it will.
I mean, you know, let's just be honest and open about this.
There's a possibility.
It's very thin.
It's very fragile, right, Nick?
That's fair.
I mean, our society is a state of mind.
Oh, there we go.
It is a construct.
Exactly.
So, I wish somebody would take that moment in yesterday's press conference, Sunday's press conference, which, by the way, just to reiterate this call, these press conferences are public dangers and they need to be done away with and they kill people.
We're going to talk about that.
People have actually died because this president told them to take a drug and they took it and died.
Died.
Died, Nick.
Died.
Okay, so yesterday Trump is asked whether or not he's going to seek some sort of business aid in all of this.
Trump doesn't answer the question.
He starts talking about going to these charity events, all this stuff.
And then he, this man, who by the way is a fake billionaire, like God knows how much money he actually has.
He has the temerity during a worldwide pandemic in which tens of thousands of people have died.
Americans are dying more and more every day.
And by the way, not just dying, they're losing their jobs.
People are losing their jobs and careers and their families are in total chaos right now.
I know my family is terrified of missing a paycheck, of losing out on their livelihoods.
Trump, who is not just a narcissist, it's a dangerous narcissism, he starts talking about how hard it is to be a billionaire running for president, and how hard it is to be a billionaire and be president, and how his sacrifice is the money that he's given up.
Which, by the way, he hasn't given up.
Everything that he says and everything he does is tinged by what's going to bring him more money and more power.
Let's just get that established.
But that moment I thought was one of the most telling things ever.
He's missing something.
You know what I mean?
There's something within this man that's missing.
There is an element, and I keep saying he's the worst human being to be president right now, because most incompetent people would be terrified in the moment and would listen to experts and just do whatever they wanted to do.
There's something wrong with this person.
There's something, there's a human part that is missing in this man.
Well, if you're wondering why he's allowed to be this way, just look at, like, the two senators that got caught, you know, trading, front-running trading on this information while pretending that it wasn't a big deal or a pandemic early on.
And the other thing is, because Trump does not have competent people around him, they don't prepare him properly.
And that said, they might prepare him, but he doesn't have the capacity to remember stuff.
That they might tell him or he won't listen anyway.
So when you see Burr completely just punt and do a horrible response to why he was trading and dumping so many stocks ahead of the time and attacking the actual reporting of who was in this meeting that he had with all these business people.
Loeffler at least, you know, tried to lie and say that I don't have control over that.
It's simply done by, you know, third-party brokers.
Meanwhile, her husband also dumped a bunch of stock for millions of dollars.
And what's his job, Nick?
What's her husband's job?
He runs some big thing down in New York, down in the bottom of the borough.
Oh yeah, it's the New York Stock Exchange.
Oh yeah, that's right.
The president of the New York Stock Exchange.
Right.
Now, if you think that...
So a guy that's worth, you know, $500 million in this couple, it's worth that much money.
So people wanted to argue, oh, they wouldn't be, you know, dumping stocks and insider trading because it's peanuts to them.
And that is such the most ridiculous bullshit argument I've ever heard in my life.
These people would be actually do this for sport.
You know, they're excited if they can make a million here or a couple million there.
That's the whole point of this thing for free.
So there's nothing about the amount that has anything to do with whether or not it's ethical or not.
That's what's so horrible about this.
But these are the people on that side that are doing this.
And if you don't think that Nunes and all the other guys are in the midst of doing this stuff too, then you're insane.
They've been telling you, which is again, it's almost It's almost refreshing to see the corruption out in the open since Trump took over.
That's sort of where we are now.
And it's almost like they don't even have to hide in the shadows with this stuff.
No, they don't at all.
And I mean, it's just, we talked about this back during the impeachment debacle.
It's just like, you know, it's like right now, society is like, endangered.
You know, I was telling someone about this the other day, like, I'm hearing a lot more gunshots recently.
Just people like going out in their yard and like, you know, popping off a few rounds.
Because why not?
You know, the cops have other things they're doing.
You know, society is starting to fray a little bit.
Really quickly, imagine if half the police force in a huge city gets COVID-19.
We can't.
We can't.
We can't talk about that right now.
Sorry.
We can't.
I have to figure out a way to live not thinking about that.
My wife turned to me and said, we might need a gun.
I'm against the Second Amendment.
So here's the thing.
What we're talking about right now, we're talking about our families sheltering in place.
We're talking about being in danger.
Here in the next few days, and people listening need to understand this, this isn't fear-mongering.
It's getting bad.
Right now, it's getting bad.
If you know anyone, and that's the thing, if you know anyone who is in the medical industry, who are healthcare providers, they will tell you it's getting bad right now.
Like, it's starting, right?
And by the way, we're going to talk about it in a little bit, but today, as things are getting really rough, Donald Trump is talking about getting rid of social distancing, and we need to talk about the Republican corporate financial mindset that gets us to that.
But here's the thing.
As it's getting really, really bad, and as we're all terrified, and society is frank, these people had one thought, Nick.
They had one thought, and that was calling their stockbroker.
Right?
It was Donald Trump thinking about re-election.
It was Rand Paul wanting to like huddle within his libertarian philosophy.
And actually, here's the thing.
Nobody wants to talk about this thing.
Mitt Romney right now is in self-quarantine because he ran across Rand Paul who tested positive for coronavirus.
Mitt Romney's wife has MS.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like, like, think about that.
How about this?
Ram Paul probably got contracted this or was exposed to this maybe up to two weeks ago.
And while he's winning for a test results, he's busy swimming in the gym and going, working out and getting just completely getting shaking hands and affecting people.
It's a sociopathic mindset.
That's what is going on here and nobody wants to call it that because it sounds awful.
But we have a party in the Republican Party.
They're not good at governing.
They're not good at getting things done.
What they're good at is destroying the government because they're incompetent and talking to Fox News viewers.
That's it!
There's no actual civic responsibility with these people, and they have put us in danger.
That is what's happened here, and that's what we have to understand.
That's what this is.
Let me just put it, I'm over on the Johns Hopkins website to look at the increase in cases, because again, we have to talk about this next, which is the serious and severity of how this is spreading across the country.
On the 16th, a week ago, there was 1.8 thousand cases, new cases that day.
Well, today, I'm sorry, on the 21st, so that's the most recent I have I can see on here, there are almost 8,000.
So you're talking about quadrupling in less than a week.
We're outpacing Italy.
We're outpacing Italy on the curve.
And do you know why?
Because we have a media that is dedicated to spreading misinformation and a president who's dedicated to spreading information.
You're exactly right.
This thing is out of control.
And I tweeted about this over the weekend.
And I've gotten flack for it, but it's true.
We are swimming in coronavirus.
And it's because our President, the President of the United States, Donald John Trump, wanted to withhold tests to make sure that the numbers didn't go up high because he didn't want this to hurt the economy or hurt his re-election chances.
We don't know how bad it is and it's already bad.
Do you want to know why Dr. Fauci wasn't part of the talk yesterday, the press conference?
Oh, I know why, but do you want to share it with our listeners in case they're not aware?
I mean, I'm surmising with reasonable certainty that he... I think accurately.
He did an interview with the Science Magazine and basically, you know, didn't throw Trump under the bus, but definitely said, you know, what do you want me to do?
I can't jump in front of the mic and like push him aside and tell him to stop saying this garbage about taking different drugs and we don't know if it works or not.
And I have no doubt that Trump saw that and was like, nope, you're not going to be on the dais.
Now, up until then, he did have some respect from Trump.
and was able to speak and that was you know at least we were getting we knew when to open up our ears and listen to the real truth that was going on but you know if he's not out there today then you know there's gonna be a little bit cause cause for concern especially because Trump today was tweeting it out about obviously they're moving towards wanting to go back to normal and having people go back to work and I got some ideas about that when you're ready Well, I just want to put this out there.
I've been talking about this for weeks and, you know, I had some people say I was alarmist, but I'm telling you there is a cycle with authoritarians.
Again, just to lay it all out, authoritarians are insecure and incompetent.
They will sabotage any organization they are a part of because they have to have total power and they have to have sycophants who, and once they have sycophants, they'll fight them against each other.
That's how they do it.
It's like scorpions in a jar.
They hate experts.
Someone like Dr. Fauci is a living, breathing testament that Trump doesn't have all the knowledge that he thinks that he does.
They will sabotage experts, and as things get worse and worse and worse, they will throw away experts, throw away organization, and they'll put people in danger.
That is always what happens.
And this right now, you brought up the, what is it, it's 15 days?
Is that what the original plan was?
Yeah.
It was 15 days to stay away or whatever.
Which, yeah, and it's today.
Well, no, it ends on Monday.
It ends a week from today.
Oh, a week from today?
Oh, I was reading it.
I thought they meant it ended today.
Okay.
No, it ends a week from today.
Now, here's the thing that people need to wrap their heads around.
So Trump right now, and by the way, do you know where he got the idea to go back to quote unquote normal?
Have you come across this?
This is fun.
I know this is going to shock people.
He heard about it on television, Nick.
He was watching Fox, and one of the people on the TV said something that sounded real good to him, so now that's his belief.
So here's the thing.
The 15 days to stay away, or whatever the hell they call it, it hasn't worked.
In Trump's mind, it's worked fantastic, right?
It's just been great.
At the end of it, he's fixed the problem.
Even if the problem's getting worse, he's going to come out and say, I fixed the problem, because that's who he is.
He is so far removed from reality and delusional.
He's going to kill us, and here's the problem.
Business leaders and Republicans are all for this thing because like we've talked about on this program when they find out there's a problem that's killing people they get together in a boardroom with an actuary who tells them and risk management people who say this many people are going to die and here's how much money you'll lose if you take action and then they weigh it And if it doesn't hurt them too much, they'll take care of it.
If it hurts the profit in the bottom line, they won't take care of it, and they'll let people die.
And that is the corporate mindset that has gotten us here, and it's the corporate mindset that's going to make this pandemic even worse.
Guarantee it 100%.
That's what's going to lead to more people dying.
Right.
But remember, the people that they're talking about in this risk versus reward scenario, in their minds, are simply the invalid and old people who don't contribute to society in any way.
And so it's a small price to pay to get rid of all those people.
That's what they think, when in reality, that's absolutely not the case at all.
That's the actuary brain right there.
You just nailed it.
They think that the people who are going to die from this thing are useless.
And that they're not going to provide labor.
But guess what?
I don't know.
I've read some articles.
People who are like 20 and 25 years old are dying from this thing.
It is wildly dangerous.
So, oh, and by the way, we just got away from the fact, and we have to be careful.
Those people that they're just writing off, those older people, senior citizens, Like those are people's grandparents and parents and brothers and sisters.
They are human beings and you got people like Donald Trump and CEOs who are sitting there like just crossing them off on a page.
I don't want my mom to die.
I don't want my family to die.
Like you shouldn't either.
That's garbage.
It's garbage.
And guess who are the people who support him?
Are many people in that position who are going to be the first to go?
And, you know, again, more context because, you know, we're about as far as I could tell, you know, six, seven, five, six, seven days behind Italy as the progression goes.
OK, if you want that some some numbers here on 314 or sorry, on 315, they had three point two thousand cases reported for.
Five days later, it was almost seven.
You know, so again, and I guess I already said this before, oh wait, I'm sorry, I'm misreading this.
Five days later, it was 20 point, oh yeah, sorry, it was almost seven, I'm misreading that.
So you're talking about like, it'll double by Friday, what we have right now.
More, probably more, probably more.
And by the way, what you're talking about right now, the numbers in America, they're not real.
They're not even real numbers!
These are, like, we don't have tests.
We don't have enough tests, and we have a bunch of false negatives out there.
We don't know how many Americans have it, and we're already outpacing Italy.
That's how bad this thing is.
I agree.
And no one wants to take enough responsibility for it.
We're seeing footage in L.A.
of people playing pick-up basketball on the beach.
And we're seeing beaches crowded in Florida.
And we're seeing at the mall in D.C.
Everybody just sort of walking along each other in close contact.
You know, I don't want to be the bearer of really bad news, but there is an article that seems somewhat reputable that is saying that what they discovered in China was that the range is actually closer to 15 feet of where you can get infected and it can stay in the air for up to 30 minutes.
So they've been able to track how people were getting infected on buses.
And it's like somebody got on a bus who was infected and got off, and then somebody got on after that.
It wasn't even on the bus at the same time, and they get infected because of that, because it's in the air, and it's being recycled by the air conditioning on the bus.
So this is a real – that's the biggest issue.
I don't think people even want to recognize how contagious it is.
They want to compare this to the 2008 stuff with the bailout where we have to deal with that in that sense.
Like this is a, it's not an economic issue, right?
This is a humanitarian issue that we must treat much more like it's disaster relief than it is any kind of bailout for an economic turn.
It's so stupid.
It's so stupid and it's so enraging.
Listen, I'm gonna do the thing.
This is the first day of Economics 101.
Alright?
I know, everyone hold on to your butts.
Money's not real.
It's an agreed-upon construct.
What we're talking about is a thing that we have made up to order the world and to distribute power.
And instead of realizing that and thinking about sustainable futures, thinking about sustainable economies, which is a thing by the way, we don't have to have this world where everyone has to kill each other to gain a penny and then go bankrupt the next day.
That's not how things have to work.
This is a brand new concept.
What we're living in right now started in 1980 with Ronald Reagan and a group of people who used him as a puppet.
It doesn't have to work this way and instead we're just walking around talking about this imaginary construct that doesn't work in any way shape or form that is always destined to blow up and blow us all up with it.
And instead of talking about it in terms of this construct and changing things around Nick, we're talking about sacrificing lives.
We're talking about, oh god, if your parents and your brother and sister and your friends and your loved one don't go back to work and risk their lives, carnival cruise ships might go out of business, Nick.
And by the way, real fast, oh god, we gotta talk about this.
They're not even registered to America.
Oh, I know.
They don't pay taxes.
None of these corporations pay taxes.
The ones that we're bailing out, they become nation states unto themselves.
Once you grow to a certain level, you don't belong to a nation.
You're not American anymore.
You don't pay taxes.
You have no civic responsibility.
But guess when you do have a nation, Nick?
When things get bad, you wave that red, white, and blue, and you are made in America, baby.
You are Hulk Hogan on steroids.
That's what this thing is.
And we just keep fluffing these people up and blowing them up and making sure they survive.
And you know who they don't make sure survives?
Us.
And that's not class warfare.
That's reality.
That's how this thing works, and that's where we're at.
Well, it's really the heart of how Republicans see this versus Democrats, and mostly it's because, you know, one of my best friends is an analyst, a stock market guy, and he's liberal, but he will tell you, well, you know, if you need to, you know, get the government to help the economy and improve the value of assets, well, it will help to improve the people who have the most assets.
That's what he thinks.
But the problem with that is that we've seen with trickle-down economics is that with like stock buybacks, for instance, is what they're not having a prohibition against if they give all this money to the different corporations.
It means that they will simply get the hand out, they will get their self-balance again, and all these companies have a lot of cash anyway, and then they'll simply give all that money back to investors.
That's it.
They don't reinvest in their workers and they don't make their lives any better from this.
Their wages don't go up.
None of those things that they think will stimulate the internal economy of those corporations actually happens.
And after enough time, nobody seems to mind because, oh, look at the worth of this company.
It's up again.
Meanwhile, we've heard Trump actually say, he said out loud that he doesn't want to do buybacks.
But we don't see that in the language of this bill.
And that's a real big problem that we're having.
And then certainly the obfuscation of not being able to see where this money is going, how much it is that they're giving out.
And then they're also putting on punitive restrictions on certain different non-for-profits like Planned Parenthood.
They're trying to make sure they don't get any money for no other reason than because ideologically they're against that, what they do.
That's why the Democrats have to put their foot down.
And I'm afraid that they're going to lose that PR war because McConnell will be able to sit there and pound his fist and yell in that drawl that the Democrats do not want to give people their money that's coming to them.
The good news in all of this is that Trump is impatient and he doesn't have an ideology.
Thank you.
Thank you.
That's it.
He just doesn't, right?
Like, if he can make money, he'll make money, but he'll make a deal, like, just have a deal.
He wants to have a win.
That's why each of these press conferences keeps getting delayed like a half hour, a half hour, a half hour.
He wants to go in and announce a win.
That's it.
So eventually this thing might come around.
But here's the thing, and I'm telling people this, like, If this passes the way Republicans want it to pass, and you read this, I know you did.
I read it, and I still look back on these things in order to get myself good and pissed off and lathered up.
It's these articles after the 2008 financial crisis, where after the bailout goes out, you find these articles where it's like, Oh, Company X used the bailout to fund a Hawaii trip for its executives.
Oh, Company Y hoarded that money.
Company Z did stock buybacks.
Yeah, and by the way, that's how this thing works.
Because, you know, let's say, for instance, they do send every... and people need to wrap their heads around this.
Let's say the government does send us out checks, $1,000, right?
You and I get a $1,000 check.
Maybe you're gonna go out and use that $1,000 to stimulate the economy.
Maybe you'll get some food.
Maybe you'll buy some things.
Maybe you'll do some house improvements.
Maybe you'll buy some food.
Okay?
Maybe you'll use it to pay your mortgage.
Whatever.
I might do the same thing.
My neighbors might just pocket it.
I don't know what they're gonna do with it.
You can't demand that they spend it.
When you give money to companies, they know it's an advantage.
Because they know that the economy will probably bounce back.
And by the way, if I'm company X, I know company Y might go ahead and use it to pay their employees and help the economy.
They're always looking for an advantage, and you can't live in a sustainable world.
And not just sustainable, like a world that isn't going to self-destruct.
You can't live where everyone is looking to screw each other over for an advantage.
It doesn't work, and we've seen it, and we know it, but yet we keep trying to make it work.
Right.
I mean, so if there is any hope that there's going to be something that come out of this, like I was thinking that, hey, maybe we'll actually get universal health care out of this.
Because when you realize how so many people can't get tests and the way that the way the structure is to be able to go get a test without a doctor being involved, it's like impossible.
Great.
Let's get universal health care.
But then you think about things like Sandy Hook.
Where not one piece of meaningful legislation has ever come out of that.
And then you realize that maybe nothing will ever come out.
Now that said, Obamacare was done.
They got that done.
And they were on our way to slowly improving it over the years to get closer to something that really did actually help people.
And we have people like Trump now trying to remove it and make it totally decimated to the point where not only are they trying to argue that they have something better, Time out, Nick.
Listen, I eat a lot of shit, but I don't know if I can stand this.
to be in this corpse of a plan that used to exist almost relatively okay, and now it's just failing people.
Time out, Nick.
Listen, I eat a lot of shit, but I don't know if I can stand this.
I don't know if I can stand here and listen to you say that my president, Donald Trump, who tells me that healthcare is a priority during a pandemic, is suing to get rid of healthcare that serves Americans.
That is unthinkable.
In the next sentence, yes, we're suing them to get rid of it, but we will also always have pre-existing conditions protected.
Wait, let me, let me, while we're talking, I'm going to go find that plan.
I'm sure it's online somewhere.
I'm sure it's, I'm sure it's in black and white, the specifics of that plan.
Wait a second, I checked the entirety of the internet.
It's not there because it doesn't exist.
But it was going to exist and then they decided a little while ago that, oh, it'll exist like, you know, in December, January of next year.
Interesting timing, wouldn't you say?
Oh my god.
Oh, which we could talk about that too.
They won't, they're not going to put enough whatever regulations or they're not going to try and make national voting from home across the board for every state for the November election.
They're like resisting that.
And probably because they wanted to postpone it, wouldn't you say?
I've been beating this drum for weeks now.
If anybody wants There to be free and fair elections in November.
You better start screaming and kicking a door down right now.
We, again, they've already floated the idea.
And by they, I mean the Republican Party and Donald Trump and the entirety of right-wing media.
They have already floated the idea of canceling and postponing the elections, which by the way, that's what they do.
They send up a trial balloon.
They see how upset people get, whether or not even people pay attention.
They prepare people and foreshadow it.
They did that before, I want to say before there were even a hundred confirmed coronavirus cases in America.
um we're we're about about to enter into it man like it's about to get real bad um they just did a thing the other day where uh this is fun um you know Bill Bill Burr um who is just um
A really great Attorney General, just a really, really great Attorney General, has pushed judges to basically suspend the Constitution during the coronavirus and be able to hold people and detain people without legal cause or constitutional rights.
This is not an administration that is going to even blink before they cancel or postpone an election.
And by the way, if they postpone it, it's not happening.
It's not going to happen.
Would you think that a request like Barr just did about, you know, suspending, um, you know, trials... The Constitution?
Do you think that that would have been reasonable maybe, like, in the immediate aftermath of, like, the few weeks after 9-11, perhaps?
Would you think that that would be reasonable?
Because maybe... But did that, did they even need it then?
Can I do a thing that I don't want to do?
I don't know.
Okay, I'm gonna do it.
I'm gonna do it.
And I feel dirty and I feel gross right now.
I've already taken my shower for the day.
I might have to take another one.
Here's the thing.
For all of the ways that George W. Bush fucked up, and his ways are legion, man.
He believed he was helping people.
He believed that he was behaving in a spirit of patriotism, and even in the ways that they not just endangered the Constitution, but that they stabbed the Constitution, they left the Constitution a bloody heap on the floor.
They believed that they were, somehow or another, within the bounds, working.
Dick Cheney's a different story, by the way.
I'm never going to say anything like this about Dick Cheney.
George W. Bush, a simple fellow, believed that.
And now, that's the thing.
Like, after 9-11, they made all of these constitutional attacks while believing they were working within its bounds.
These people don't care, Nick.
These are Dominionists.
These are people who think that they're fighting a holy war.
And with Donald Trump, he hasn't, there's not a contract that man has ever looked at that he believed in.
Not a one.
And the Constitution is way down on the list of those priorities.
Like, we're in real trouble if people think that this isn't going to be a power grab.
Oh, it's been that way.
And it's very clear that that's what our biggest fear is.
And this also is another, not a distraction, but another way to keep our eye off the ball as far as, you know, the Russian propaganda that's going on.
A, to continue to stir up what's happening with COVID-19, but also with the election in November.
All these things are being put into place and no one is out there trying to stop that either right now Which I don't blame them at this point because we're dealing with it with the coronavirus But you know that that is going to be a real problem too as the infrastructure is now built and ready to be Weaponized as soon as they flip the switch Number one, I mean, Russia doesn't have coronavirus, Nick.
It's just somehow or another, Russians are immune.
How could they ever have it?
Number two, we haven't talked about this on this podcast.
And by the way, it has completely gone under the radar.
Trump.
Putin.
Putin has changed the Russian constitution where he can basically be president for the rest of his life.
That's happened.
That happened.
And it just kind of happened under the radar in the midst of all of this stuff.
That's what these people are about.
They're about demolishing democratic institutions to help themselves to power and profit.
And that's what happened there.
And listen, you don't have to believe that Trump was having meetings with Russians.
He was.
You don't have to believe that Trump was engaged in a conspiracy with Putin and Putin's technologist.
He was.
You don't have to believe all that to understand that they are ideologically soulmates.
They are.
They're post-political and so are corporations and so are big tech.
That's who they are.
They're looking to get rid of all this stuff and they will use every opportunity to get rid of it.
That's just the truth of the matter.
I don't have anything to add to that.
Isn't that sad?
Yeah.
I mean, it's sad.
I think that there's always the notion of, we don't know if this is really what's going on.
Are the men in black really there?
Do these things really exist?
And I feel like that was, you know, a kind of, it caused problems in your psyche, right?
Because you just don't know.
And with this, we know.
It is not, there's no, question anymore about this thing.
So there's almost some sort of gravity going on, some centering here about this, that at least we have something to tangibly point to that can prove that they are as corrupt as maybe we've always thought.
And it's probably the heart of the matter as far as why so many of the Trump supporters will continue to support him until they die.
It's because that's sort of their argument.
This has always been this way.
It's as corrupt as it can be.
And this guy is open about it.
So that's what we respond to.
Yeah, it's a really weird thing.
I mean, you know, we could spend a few hours talking about the mindset of Trump supporters and why this movement works.
But it works because totalitarianism, authoritarianism, fascism feeds off dead tissue, right?
It feeds off diseased parts of a body, of the democratic body.
It feeds off corruption.
It feeds off distrust.
It feeds off racism, classism, misogyny.
All those things come together to feed that monster.
And now we've gotten to a point where we have a real giant monster within the body politic of the United States of America.
He's willing to sacrifice lives.
We know that.
I mean, he's already done it.
I mean, God knows how many people are going to die because Trump decided not to take action.
He's going to cause more lives because he bungles everything.
So there's both intentional, like, you know, action and there's unintentional action.
And there's what's going to happen as it gets worse because authoritarians do not take responsibility.
I mean, I don't know if you read it and I hope our listeners have.
Harassment of Asian Americans inside of America right now is just...
Growing exponentially he is literally putting people's lives in danger and as society keeps fraying and as people die And here's what happens a lot of Trump supporters are gonna lose people because they they don't a lot of them have health care a lot of them have Existing conditions because they've been screwed over by the corporate politics of this country for years and years and years it's one of the reasons that they voted for Trump in the first place and
A lot of them are going to die, and they're going to lose people, and they're going to get more frustrated, and Trump is going to keep turning up the heat in both Democratic institutions, quote-unquote conspiracies of liberals in the media, and the Chinese.
And people are going to die in that regard, too.
And I wouldn't be shocked if we find out people already have.
Because these are people, and I said this real fast, and I gotta say it, and I gotta tell people.
In 2016, when I was going to Trump rallies, people would tell me they wanted to kill.
They would tell me that they were more than willing to engage in fascistic ideas.
And that is where we are.
They're being told by this person that they might need to do that.
And some of them are really more than willing.
Oh yeah.
To even get back to your point about Putin and him being peas in a pod, it's the same thing with North Korea.
And we found out that Trump had sent a letter to North Korea wanting to help and have cooperation between them.
Meanwhile, it's such a shitshow here, they can't be getting anything settled.
Are you aware, by the way, that ICE has ordered tens of thousands of N95 masks?
I am.
Do you know why ICE agents would need so many of these N95 masks?
Tell our listeners, Nick.
Because they intend to use this to go after and deport more people that are undocumented or documented at this point, the way they've been going.
They're still so focused on these other agendas and still trying to wreak havoc on our liberties that They won't even realize what they're doing.
This is the moment in the Hunt for Red October, where the subcommander kills everybody in it because of stupidity, but greed as well.
So, at any rate, how about this?
Trump, did you hear the thing where he tried to get an exclusive patent on the vaccine that was being developed in Germany?
Yeah, that's something it happened in the midst of everything and it was and by the way It's like every day now brings I don't know 30 to 40 new Pieces of news and scandal that tells us this guy's not only up for the job, but he's killing people There's just one of those things that like deserved a lot more time and a lot more focus and it just kind of got lost But yeah, he tried to he tried to buy a vaccine and
Right, and the implication being that he was going to get the patent for it and then just outrageously charge a huge amount of money for everybody else to use it, you know, and cure their people.
That's the only reason why you would do that.
And I'm sure he was sitting in the meeting going, yeah, hey, I want exclusive rights to that one.
Yeah, so no one else can use it.
And he probably would want to pat himself on the back for that.
Well, there's two things happening there.
And by the way, this is essential for understanding Donald Trump.
And to wrap your head around this idea that he wanted to buy this vaccine, there's two things he wants.
One is profit.
The other is the reward of fake selflessness.
Right?
Both things at the exact same time.
Right?
Like, the Nobel Peace Prize.
Right?
You made this happen, plus you also made a ton of money on it.
This is why when someone like Trump, and he did this at the press conference yesterday, he's like, oh, Melania and me were at this charity event.
Right?
And everyone will tell you Donald Trump doesn't actually give to charities.
Or he, you know, screws people over on charities.
Or he'll say that he gave to a charity that he never gave to.
Right?
And if you or I gave to a charity, like, it's about helping.
Right?
It's about fulfillment.
It's about trying to engage in a shared society.
For Trump, he will lie about the charity.
And then hopefully figure out a way to pocket the money while he's doing it.
That's the essential part here, is that's who he is.
And until you understand, he's not doing anything out of the goodness of his heart.
You just don't know Donald Trump.
That's who this person is, and it's incurable, and it's terminal.
That's who he is.
Right.
Let's circle back on that for a second because the notion of what they want to do to solve this or slow down this depression, and let's not make any bare bones about this, this is going to be a depression a lot of people seem to think that, recession, depression, you know, whatever you want to call this.
But here's the thing, a couple things that are tied to that.
First of all, You know, sending that money that you mentioned, everyone will get $1,000 here, then maybe the next month they'll get $1,000 for a few months.
That is one of the things you absolutely would have to do.
You'd also have to make sure that every landlord cannot evict anybody for six months.
That has to be another big thing.
But when you realize that the service industry itself can't survive two or three months of this, which is probably one of the big reasons why he wants everyone to get back to work and be back to normal.
Because remember, these are very cash poor industries or cash poor companies.
So if a restaurant has to go through what we're going through now with nobody going in there, Uh, for over a month or so.
They're just out of business.
Unless you can bail them out, those are the small businesses that need to be bailed out, then we won't have a service industry to return to when this thing finally does end.
And, if you want to try and get everyone back now, right, your 15 day moratorium is over, or like a week from now, then you're just going to re-spread the virus and make it even worse.
And then you're really gonna see a depression because now the people who have to work on the electrical grids, for instance, or the police department, those are the guys who then fall sick, can't do their jobs, and now we're talking about a society that doesn't exist anymore.
Oh, Nick, you anti-capitalist.
You know, I just came back around to what you had said earlier today.
It's an alarmist thing, and now I'm making it... I feel like I just made it sound a lot more reasonable.
No, it really is a thing where, so what you just said, it incorporates long-term planning and thinking.
Yeah.
Right?
Like if I, you know, it's like that old, um, oh who was the Popeye friend?
Was it Wimpy?
Is that who it was?
The hamburger guy?
I would gladly pay you tomorrow for a hamburger today, right?
That is the type of corporate amnesia that exists because what's happening everything that you just said if I was a corporate CEO who by the way owns I don't know 40 to 45 senators right now and a president and a vice president Everything that you just said after get people back to work, an initial bump in stocks or the economy, I would just lay back and just start thinking about swimming in my money.
I mean, that's what happens.
It's just, it just goes away.
There's no longer, and by the way, these CEOs are terrible.
They really are.
They drive corporations into the ground like you wouldn't believe.
I'm talking like Sears.
Pennies!
I'm talking Kmart!
How do you screw these places up?
And you screw them up because the people who keep rising to the top suck.
So here's the thing.
I just want to give people, we're getting ready to wrap up here in a few, I just want to give people some homework.
And this is important.
Before we come back and tape, and we're going to tape either on Thursday or Friday, we'll figure that out.
I want people to go and look something up.
And that is Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights.
Go and look this thing up.
And for people who don't know it, as World War II is starting to wind down, Franklin Delano Roosevelt starts talking about a second Bill of Rights, adding it to the Constitution.
And this would be an America that made sure that everybody had a house, everybody had a job, everybody had health care, and everybody had an education.
Doesn't that all sound pretty good right now?
Doesn't it sound like if we would have gotten there, that maybe some of the effects of the pandemic and also the economic crisis, doesn't it seem like maybe those would have been curbed a little bit?
Like, just a little bit?
Because that's what's happening on the stock market.
They're thinking about future dips in earnings, so they're not investing and they're taking their money out.
So wouldn't it help if people had all those things?
To quote the immortal Caddyshack, the world needs dipstickers too, Jared.
Oh man, don't they?
I told you this.
If the aliens came down and observed for a few weeks how we run our society, they would say, of course, you have to keep this entire segment down and not being able to get out of their situation so they can continue doing all the menial labor you need to have done.
That's why you did this, right?
Your schools are this way, right?
Isn't this why it's designed?
Yeah, but what you're saying, and here's the thing.
I used to think when I was younger that it was, again, it was a smoky room, right?
It was lighting cigars with hundred dollar bills and they're just like, ah, we're going to screw over the poor.
We're going to keep them poor and hungry and stupid.
But here's the thing.
It's just increments.
You know what I mean?
It's like, think about a textbook.
You know how they do these textbooks where they just go in and they just completely change history around in order to keep people from thinking about things?
That's not one person who does that.
There's multiple people that are like, oh, we can't say that about the stock market crash, because if we say that, people might question, you know, the stock market.
Oh, we can't talk about the Fresno race riot, or the Tulsa race riot, because that would just make Oklahoma look bad.
You know what I mean?
It's just one after another.
It's little bite here, little bite there.
Until you have a country that doesn't work.
And this country doesn't work.
And we're watching it not work.
And that's why I'm pissed off.
And I can't apologize for that.
And we shouldn't have to apologize for that.
This is bullshit.
And it's got to get fixed.
And it's got to get changed.
I know, and at least maybe we're slowly getting closer to getting into focus what the blueprint needs to be.
And by the way, you can see why Bernie would get so much support because he does represent something new and completely radically changing what has been happening in the past.
And again, imagine if you're a millennial and your entire life has been 9-11, through the housing crisis, through this, and everything in between, with never a job market that's been sustainable.
It's insane.
They don't remember what it was like back in the late 90s when the tech boom and things were great and jobs were great and corporations treated their workers well, for the most part, and that was a cool thing to do.
They don't know that life.
And we're in danger of having another generation not knowing what that's about either.
And then where are we?
Again, even independent of who we have in power, we are now sliding towards that sort of, you know, Non-democratic Ideals that we don't adhere to anymore about the United States and people need to understand this going back to our good friend Vladimir Putin It isn't Russia still operates like a democracy.
Do you know what I mean?
Like it still has the functions of it like they still have votes, right?
They still have they still have the appearance of democracy.
They have a thing called managed democracy and That's what we need to be careful about, because we think that our institutions are secure and immutable and they can't be destroyed.
Which, by the way, I have to tell you, and we got to talk about this at some point, it's got to be a thing on the show, and whenever I talk about the elections and the possibilities democratic institutions are going to fall apart, people have already forgotten about the impeachment.
We watched it happen.
We watched an entire political party mortgage the Constitution before our very eyes.
Oh, but wait, let's not forget, that's the reason why we're having the coronavirus.
It's because the Democrats were busy impeaching the president.
They were busy trying to impeach a criminal president.
Yeah, there's a danger here.
There's a real, real danger here of not just everything melting down, but we're in real danger of democracy and our democratic republic falling apart.
We really are.
Like, those are the stakes, and people need to understand that.
Especially in the next couple days, because it's about to get bad.
It just is.
Oh yeah, I mean, I hate to say it, but yes, every number seems to point to an extreme rise in number of cases, and that also directly means more deaths.
And if we're having the president saying it's now time to get back to work simply because he's wringing his hands over the market, which continues to tank every time he talks, then, yeah, there'll just be blood in those hands.
And it's just what seems – I think what's now paralyzing to me is knowing that the people that support him are not going to ever not support him over anything like this.
It just won't change.
They don't want to admit that they were wrong.
They're going to double down, triple down, quadruple down on this.
And that's what's so intractable about the situation that makes it feel like you want to just not be here anymore.
I want to give this piece of hope because this is a very dire circumstance, but I think this is important.
What you just said, I think, is true.
But I do know this, and that was, everyone thought that the spell of Ronald Reagan could never be broken.
Period.
It just couldn't, right?
It was gonna be a Republican elected every four years, right?
It was gonna be Reagan, Bush, Quayle, just keep going and going and going.
Something happened, and by the way, this is different.
Trump is a different thing, but I want people to think about this.
George H.W.
Bush lost in 1992 for a lot of different reasons, but one of them is because he kept telling everyone that the economy was great, and his supporters looked around and they said, what the hell are you talking about?
The economy's not great.
So here's the thing.
Here in a few days, like in a week or whatever, if Trump wants to talk about how great America is doing, a lot of his supporters are going to look around and their loved ones are going to be in ICUs.
Or dead, unfortunately.
You know what I mean?
There are going to be some people who are going to recognize that this thing Is is a lie like it doesn't mean that all of them are or even large numbers of them are but there is a spell here that could start to be broken.
And if we have elections, I have to imagine that I have to imagine just to sleep at night that there will be people who hold him accountable, but we have to have elections.
We have to have elections, and people need to keep their eyes on it, and we have to make a stink about it, and we have to talk about what's going on here.
And we so appreciate you coming here.
We've been getting new listeners coming in, checking this thing out.
We've been getting great feedback, and it means the world to us, because we're stressed out.
We're as angry as you are.
And this is a place where we can come and talk about what's actually going on, how we got here, and, you know, talk about solutions, talk about things that can be better, and talk about a world that can be better.
So thank you for coming.
Please be sure to like us, subscribe us, share us, and most of all, tell people.
Like, you're at home, you're cleaning the house, you're doing stuff, maybe you're going outside raking the leaves.
I got leaves to rake, Nick.
I live in southeastern Georgia.
I got leaves to rake.
So, you know.
Sounds nice.
You seem very impressed.
So, you know, if you're outside, you gotta do something.
Please listen to us.
Tell people about us.
We really, really appreciate it.
On social media, Nick, my co-host, the best co-host in podcasting, is over at Can You Hear Me?
SMH.
I am at J.Y.
Sexton.
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