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April 24, 2020 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
46:20
Please, Make It Stop Please

The hits keep on coming as the Trump Administration continues to fail the American people while using the crisis to pad their own pockets. Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman sort through the chaos one insane item at a time on this week-end episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Time Text
I told the governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, that I disagree strongly with his decision to open certain facilities which are in violation of the phase one guidelines for the incredible people of Georgia.
They're incredible people.
I love those people.
They are great.
I know a lot about economists and the answer is they have no idea.
I think I have as good an idea as anybody.
We're taking very special care of our nursing homes.
And are seniors other than me.
Other than me.
Nobody wants to take care of me.
Hey everybody.
Welcome to the Muckrake Podcast.
My name is Nick Hauselman and I'm the co-host along with Jared Yates-Sexton.
And it's going to be a nice fun Friday talk today.
Especially because I'm thinking about driving all the way to Georgia because I really need a tattoo of a dolphin on the outside of my ankle.
And Jared, it seems like the perfect time to head over there and get one.
Hey, the state of Georgia is open for business, people!
I mean, you know, yes, our cases of coronavirus are skyrocketing.
We're having dozens of deaths every single day.
Albany, Georgia is one of the epicenters of this entire panic.
But our amazing governor, Brian Kemp, who didn't know until about a month into the crisis that people could spread this when they were asymptomatic, in all of his wisdom decided to open up these businesses, tattoo parlors, bowling alleys, massage tattoo parlors, bowling alleys, massage parlors, you know, the really, really essential businesses.
And here's the thing as a resident of Georgia.
Anytime that you can get a governor who wins the governorship by, you know, driving around in his big truck and telling his commercials that he's going to round up immigrants and take them back to the border, Or, I don't know, trains his shotgun on a young man in order to make a campaign ad.
You've got to trust this person in a crisis, Nick.
What you have to do is you have to believe that he's looking out for you.
Because leaders like Brian Kemp, who are more than willing to sacrifice thousands of people's lives to open up tattoo parlors, hats off.
And by the way, we've got to talk about the fact that Donald Trump just absolutely just shit all over him, which I can't wait to talk about.
It's one of the highlights.
You find laughter where you can in this thing, and that is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time.
Well, you know, Trump hit him going forward, and then as he's lying on the ground, he put it back in reverse and then made sure to hit him again.
One of my favorite moments about all of this is that Brian Kemp does this, right?
He reopens Georgia because he's a big, tough man, right?
And he wants to out-Republican all the other Republicans.
Like, this guy looks at Donald Trump, and he's like, I can be Donald Trump.
Don't worry.
I'm coming up after him.
You know, after Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka both get their turns.
So Brian Kent thinks that he's going to gain Donald Trump's favor.
And you have Donald Trump, one of the most dangerous Americans of all time, who hears about this.
And at a press conference where he's told people to take a drug that has killed people now.
And he's like, I don't know.
This seems a little reckless.
Which is just, you really have to be working overtime for Donald Trump to go out in public and say that you're being reckless.
Well, hang on, we had a little hope for Kemp at one point when... Wait, we did?
When Trump visited the CDC, that was the famous, if you want a test, you can get a test.
That whole speech with the hat and he's standing in front of this, you know, whatever.
And if you look at Kemp, for the most part, his face is of sheer terror.
You cannot have hope in Brian Kemp.
listening to this thing and you thought, oh, he maybe recognizes how dangerous this whole thing is even at that early date.
So there was hope for maybe like a second there.
And I thought, oh, he gets it.
'Cause remember, everyone else, Redfield was there, and they were all smiling and doing Dear Leaders stuff at that point.
And so I had had hope and how quickly that dissipates. - You cannot have hope in Brian Kemp.
And I feel so sad that you were walking around in the world like, Brian Kemp's got this.
And anytime in your life that you think of Brian Kemp has something besides, I don't know, an election that he stole from Stacey Abrams.
Oh, allegedly.
I'm sorry.
I don't want to end up, you know, with a call from my governor.
Well, Newt Mays will sue you.
Yeah, that's right.
You know, it's all going to happen.
But what happened here is Brian Kemp is opening up Georgia.
Every public health expert in the country is like, this is insane.
And ridiculous.
But he again, there's all these Republicans who want to out Republican each other.
They really want to show that they have absolutely no concern whatsoever for other people and that they are like so much tougher and murderous than each other.
It's really incredible.
You know, listen, is there some sense of, like, can I understand what's going on here?
You know, a lot of people have made the sacrifice and the commitment to stay at home and not go to work, right?
Listen to the government for, you know, four weeks or so.
They're probably looking around saying, well, you know, my neighbor, they don't...
they're not sick and then he's not sick down the street here and they're they're looking around I don't I'm not sick I don't feel sick at all and and so it's like a man I can't pay my next rent because twelve hundred bucks I got from the government isn't coming for four months or it doesn't come close to even you know for poor people covering their expenses and so you know I can understand to some degree the motivation of like the base level grassroots people right you know this this is the They're going to starve.
They're going to be thrown on the streets because the government has let them down by not giving them any kind of relief on mortgages or rents.
Certainly not giving them directly the money that they need, which we got to talk about next because that's a whole rigmarole of dispensing funds when the Congress gets involved and starts giving away trillions of dollars.
Wait, has there, has there been a problem with that?
Because I thought that was going to go really smoothly and really ethically.
Are you, wait, Nick, are you telling me that something has gone wrong in the Trump administration and the Republican Congress's plan to help the American people in businesses?
No!
What?
The hell you say?
No, no, no.
Let's not sit here and pretend like this situation would be completely perfect and everything would be fine if we, you know, had a different president.
you know, a controlled party, there would be all sorts of problems too.
I mean, let's not get around, be the one.
No, no, no, no.
Let's not sit here and pretend like this situation would be completely perfect and everything would be fine if we, you know, had a different president.
It's different magnitudes, right?
Okay.
Okay.
It's the difference between maybe a couple or a few thousand people dying and what it is going to be dozens and then whether or not the entire pandemic crisis is going to be turned into an opportunity to redistribute wealth to Ruth Chris's steakhouse.
Okay.
Do you want to get into that?
Yes.
We have to.
The amount of companies that have market cap over $100 million that got significant amounts of money is ridiculous.
This is so frustrating.
Now, I'll throw this out there as a personal anecdote because that's what politics is.
My wife, she's a doctor.
Their small partnership couldn't get any money because it was all handed out.
And then you find out it was from Chase Bank.
Then you find out that Chase Bank did what the New York Times described as a valet service for all their big clients and put them in front of the line.
All the clients who wouldn't need this kind of money anyway.
And I've already told you this before as far as the notion of if you're a multimillion-dollar, hundreds of millions-dollar revenue company per year, and you can't handle a month or six weeks or two months worth of this, then you shouldn't be in business.
Go out of business.
Yes.
I mean, the airlines is maybe the only thing that maybe... I disagree.
I disagree.
Let the airlines leave.
They have betrayed... Listen, I only say this half-jokingly.
The airlines have betrayed the American people.
They are the enemy of the American people.
Fair enough.
You know, trains deserve another look.
They have taken advantage of us time and time and time again.
So if they, after all of this, having a general monopoly over an entire transportation industry that makes the country run and the world run, if they can't handle a few months without people beating down the doors to get on planes, you deserve to go out of business.
What you just said though, I love it that what happens here is that a medical office Right?
Which, by the way, Nick, I thought those were our heroes.
Yeah.
How would we ever, you know, not serve our heroes?
They put their lives on the line.
It's almost like what happened after 9-11 with first responders, and they were used for all kinds of photo ops and all kinds of, you know, beautiful speeches about heroism and American grit and determination.
It's almost like the doctors, nurses, and medical care providers have been screwed over left and right in all this by the same people who like to talk about them in their speeches.
Call me crazy, but it's almost like that's replaying itself.
Yeah, okay, and then there's an interesting video that's going on right now around social media about Trump and the day that the doctor died in China, who originally identified Corona, who they had tried to silence, you know, and he somehow was able to get enough information out where they could kind of start sequencing the virus.
But on that day was a day that they shipped 18 million tons of PPE to China.
You know in early February when of course within a few weeks all of a sudden you're like um we probably needed all of that uh it's that that's incredible to me that that comes up as well and by the way it's also worth noting that today they voted along party lines which also makes me absolutely livid to open up a COVID investigation in Congress because they need some oversight.
Not one Republican felt it was worthy of voting for.
Not one.
We have to talk about China in a little bit and what's happening there.
But before we do, allow me to put on my acting facade.
You're telling me that America sent these goods to other countries but we couldn't provide our own doctors, nurses, and medical providers?
That sounds like a conspiracy, Nick.
Has that been proven?
Yes, it has.
Oh, it has.
Yeah.
How about hijacking other PPE that was going to other people's other hospitals as well throughout the states?
No, are you telling me that the federal government has sold people life-saving supplies and then without any explanation whatsoever taken those supplies and then sold them again?
That sounds like a conspiracy theory.
That hasn't been proven, right?
Oh, well listen, here's the real conspiracy is that they're screwing up giving up payments of people so they can keep that money longer for interest.
You know, you can't tell me that Steve Mnuchin wouldn't have been looking at this going, hmm, this is a great opportunity here.
Now they want to take over the post office now.
Listen, this list is, this is really the shit, whatever they flooding the zone with shit.
It is, I had two Cokes today.
I'm hopped up and ready to go.
But this is, it's too much to handle.
They've really taken that to the heart.
Wait, this is a two Coke podcast?
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
Oh my God.
This needs a red light on it.
This is an emergency two Coke podcast.
This is how far we are into our social distancing.
What I also love about it, though, is that we're talking about this sandwiched between other issues, and the stuff that you just brought up is the stuff that you, and by the way, for anyone who's listening, because we have a lot of new listeners, thank you, by the way.
Welcome, everyone.
We're really happy to have you, pumped to have you.
Flooding the zone with shit is this idea, and Steve Bannon is the one that the quote comes from, but it's actually a practice that has been done in, oh yeah, every authoritarian regime in modern history.
And basically it's the idea that you basically have one scandal and one crisis after another filled with misinformation and propaganda, and eventually people give up on trying to keep track of what is real and what is not.
This stuff is overwhelming, Nick.
Like the amount of scandals.
And we talked about it.
We actually, we got done, actually the last two podcasts that we've recorded, we've gotten off the podcast and we've gone for like an hour in detail on multiple things.
And we've gotten off and we're like, my God, we forgot three more things that have happened.
Oh, I know.
I'm going to rely on you, by the way, just kind of keep me a little bit focused because it's going to be all over the place today.
I'm sorry.
Two Coke podcasts, baby.
OK.
And it's one of those things where All of this stuff is stuff that should get a president removed from office.
All of it.
That should lead to the removal and disgrace of a president.
And it can't even make a headline at this point.
It's just stuff that's floating out there because there's so much grift and crime.
But here's the worst one today.
Are you ready?
Wait, wait, time out.
I've been busy all day.
I cannot wait to hear what this is.
Yes, they removed Rick Bright, who his official title is Director of the Department of Health and Human Services Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.
He's the vaccine guy.
OK.
And when he objected to hydroxychloroquine being pushed so hard by the administration, they got him out of there.
And guess what he did now, which I'm really excited about?
He filed a whistleblower complaint.
He is going to probably end up giving us the raw Conversations that were going on behind the scenes with this absolute insane, bad shit stuff.
The kind of stuff that no one has been willing to say on record before.
I'm actually kind of excited about that prospect because maybe they'll finally expose some of the... This is the kind of stuff we're gonna hear about, you know, nuking hurricanes or whatever that Trump wanted to do.
Or buy Greenland.
We're gonna hear that kind of shit.
I hate to be the pessimist here, but it's just like I wish that I could believe in that, but I feel like Charlie Brown coming down the hill looking at the football.
It's one after another.
By the way, while you're talking about the HHS, I just want to point out, this is something fun that has come out.
The new Department of Health and Human Services spokesman, Michael Caputo, here's apparently Quote that he has is now being attributed to him and reminder.
This is the person who is speaking for Health and Human Services He apparently said millions of Chinese suck the blood out of rabid bats as an appetizer and eat the ass out of anteaters He then responded to a user Apparently an Asian user.
Don't you have a bat to eat?
Oh Yeah, I have nothing to respond to.
I do, which is the shame never ends.
It is just the most vile, disgusting group of people imaginable.
And they're in charge at the absolute worst possible time.
It is embarrassing and shameful that these people ever even sniff power, let alone get it.
Jared, I feel like I'm Casey Kasem because the hits don't stop coming.
Are you ready?
There's more?
And if you don't remember who Casey Kasem was, he was a DJ who did the countdown every weekend.
If you don't know who Casey Kasem is, just pause.
Just pause the podcast.
Don't turn it off.
Come back to us.
Go find out.
The voice of Shaggy!
Shaggy and I believe he's also Robin in the Justice League as well.
So yes, he's the voice of probably a hundred different people.
And you also have to go on YouTube and find the outtakes when he starts screaming at the engineer for the way they're programming the countdown because he's swearing.
It's hilarious to hear Casey Kasem's voice swearing and being angry.
But I got another one for you.
It turns out, as this became a real serious problem in February, and COVID was a real issue here, Alex Azar, HHS Secretary, decides to bring in a buddy of his to be point man on the coronavirus response.
And do you know what his main claim to fame was in terms of work history up until that point?
I'm sorry, hold on.
It's such a pain covering this shit, Nick.
I'm trying.
What was his job?
He was an owner of a place called Dallas Labradoodles and he was a breeder, a dog breeder.
That was his main qualification for working in a government position that requires safeguarding the health of Americans and their lives.
Well, luckily that's not an important job right now.
You know, it's funny.
It's like on social media.
Every now and then you'll come across a word that just keeps getting repeated.
I kept seeing labradoodle.
And I was like, what's going on with Labradoodle?
I have no idea what this is all about.
But I should have known that anytime something like that, some covfefe shows up, that eventually it's going to be somebody who has been put in power within the Trump administration to make our lives worse.
Labradoodles.
And what a sweet dog!
Poor Labradoodles getting thrown in on this thing.
It was a Labradoodle breeder?
Yep.
Yep.
In Dallas.
And he sold it.
It actually sounded like he sold it for a couple hundred thousand bucks.
Wait, wait, wait.
He wasn't studying immunology of labradoodles?
It was just selling labradoodles.
It wasn't, it had nothing to do with health or human services or diseases.
No, it was just watching dogs fuck, I guess.
Two Coke podcasts, everyone.
Hey, it gets mature when there's a couple of Cokes going in this podcast.
I haven't sworn on this podcast for 30 episodes and here I am.
I think you dropped a couple already today, but that's okay.
It's a two-part podcast.
So I just have to put this out there.
You have to laugh about it, but it's like...
Our loved ones are endangered by this.
Do you know what I mean?
It's like the people that we care about, the people in our lives, and on top of that, our economy is just destroyed.
Wait, screw them!
Me, I can't sleep!
My loved ones, whatever!
I don't know about you, but when I go to sleep every night, I'm like, is that shortness of breath?
I'm a little bit warm.
I end up getting every symptom imaginable every time I try and go to sleep every night.
It's awful, and we're in this state of absolute panic.
And to bring it all around, like this Kemp thing wanting to open the state back up, you know, a couple of weeks ago, it felt like maybe we were approaching something, like a light at the end of the tunnel, right?
Like maybe this thing was going to slow down, and maybe we'd be able to get back to our lives.
And you know, there was even a part of me, and this is something I haven't talked about a lot on the podcast, but I've been wrestling with lately.
I kind of thought there would always be a point in this entire corrupt awful system that it would hit a bottom and things would change.
Do you know what I mean?
Like I thought there'd be a moment where everyone would just be like no this is a step too far and it just keeps mounting and mounting and I never thought hearing that this person breeding labradoodles might be the straw that broke the camel's back but it's just so It's so infuriating and there's so much suffering and so much death and awfulness and these people are so incapable of doing it and they're so incapable of doing it with any integrity or actual energy.
It's terrible.
Has anybody, everyone's forgotten?
Great job, Brownie.
Because we've been through this.
We had FEMA run by Mike, Mike Brown?
No, something Brown.
Brownie, whatever his name is.
His last name is Brown, I know that.
And you know, W already got raked over the coals for having a guy that was not up to the challenge for managing a crisis like this.
By the way, this is what they're trying to do.
This is, okay, here's the warning alert for a, you know, a movie reference.
This is aliens, number two, the S at the end.
This is how, you know, they end up assembling on the ship and it's like they've taken over, you know, and they've got all these things and they got these people and we're simply hosts that will breed these aliens.
It's like this is what they're doing to the government.
They're slowly, I don't even know if it's slow anymore, just getting rid of anybody in any position across the entire government and putting in whoever they, you know, unqualified people that will simply bow to the dear leader.
It's insane because you start to realize how important so many of these government agencies are.
Yeah, so one of the reasons why that's really hard to wrap our heads around is because we think, okay, so it's like, this is, for anyone who's listening, who's listening, who is all the time watching the news and they're like, why aren't these reporters and these pundits calling Trump what he is?
You know, like why, why don't they call this the crisis that it is?
And part of the reason it's so hard to wrap your head around is because even though Trump is Trump, we're still, we keep expecting him to behave like a president.
Right?
That's not what he's there for.
And this is what I keep screaming from the rooftops.
He's not there to help people.
He's not there to use the government to make lives better.
He's there to destroy government.
These people don't want a working federal government.
They don't want a working system that helps anybody.
They want to turn the government, and by the way, it's a lot like a virus, if we're going to be straight up.
For anyone who has looked into it, a virus invades a body and attaches itself to cells.
It then corrupts the cell and then reproduces itself.
That's what these people have done.
They have gotten into the body of the government like a virus, and they are reproducing themselves.
They're not there to make it work.
They're not there to make anyone's lives better.
They are there to reproduce themselves and to destroy government as an impediment to profit and power.
That's the only thing that they care about, and it's the only thing they do.
This is why you have somebody like Rick Perry put in charge of the Department of Energy.
And this is the guy who said that it should be gotten rid of.
He couldn't even remember it out of debate.
They're put in there to fail and disregard it and destroy it, and that's what they're in government to do, right?
Yeah, and he had no idea what the agency even did.
The hits keep coming, and I'm Casey Kasem.
We got more, okay.
We gotta talk about testing.
The testing numbers, they want to open up.
You mentioned that, you know, Georgia's going to open up and the only reason they should be able to be open up is they test enough people and we know where the hot spots are, who's sick, who's not, keep those people away, whatever.
Well, here's the thing I thought was interesting that I saw on Twitter, which was it took 40 days to test 1% of the population for COVID-19.
40 days to get 1%.
If you want to get half the population, whatever we're going to really need to open up and feel confident, that'll take years, years to do this.
It's insane, and meanwhile he's talking about how they're covering the president, he keeps being allowed to say in a lie, a big fat whopper, that they've tested more people in every other country in the world combined.
And it's like, somebody must have given him a nugget of something like that, that's similar, and he, in his convoluted brain, that doesn't function properly, he's got it all mixed up now, and again, no one can seem to straighten him out on that, and you're gonna have a lot of people that will believe that.
Yeah and it's these briefings and again like I've got I've just gotten to the point where it's just like I almost watch them as experimental theater you know what I mean because they're so absurd but then all of a sudden I remember and which by the way is kind of what Trump is all about it's this absurdist figure that like somebody said to me I want to say it was like a week ago they were like man Trump is really funny And then it was like we were talking with Dresner, right?
On Tuesday, we talked to Dan Dresner about his book, The Toddler in Chief, and it's horror.
That's what it is with Trump, is it's horror.
And then you watch these briefings, and you watch the journalist who still call him Mr. President, who sit there as he lies to them straight out, and it's horror.
The idea that he's not being called out for this, and he continues to push that lie.
Also, you know, it's just like, oh, we have more than enough tests.
We don't need more tests.
Meanwhile, Fauci comes up the next second and he's like, well, we don't have enough tests to reopen the country.
And it's like, we're just hurtling into an abyss.
You're exactly right.
We have to basically test everybody in the country and have readily available tests.
Or else this thing isn't going to get squelched.
We can't actually reopen.
But then you have idiots like Kemp and the Las Vegas mayor, which, another thing, if people didn't see that clip, go watch it.
Because this person got out there and was like, I volunteer Las Vegas as a test to reopen America.
And at one point, Anderson Cooper, who was beside himself during this interview, he's like, well, what about you?
Why don't you get out there?
And she's like, oh, Anderson, I have children.
And that is the essence of it.
It is such a spectacular, horrific comedy at this point that it's so much worse than anything you can imagine.
It's just, it's crazy.
Let's talk about another moment in these press conferences where Trump actually tried to say that he doesn't think the COVID virus will come back in the fall.
Did anybody disagree with him?
What's that?
Did anybody disagree with him?
Maybe a medical expert?
Yeah, yeah, no, not at all.
It only took like, you know, three minutes until Fauci stood up there and goes, yes, I'm confident it will come back.
And by the way, then Trump tries to like pivot and say, well, it will never be as bad as it is now.
What we've gone through is the worst hell, whatever. - He doesn't know.
He doesn't know.
Well, he can't bring himself to admit what he knows, which he knows, because remember, it's not just going to be COVID in the fall.
Oh, well, here we go again with these really deep, dark podcasts.
But we're going to have a thing called the flu.
That's going to come up again.
And not to mention, there's going to be people who are getting sick anyway, who need to be in hospitals.
Yeah, there's no heart patients coming into the ERs anymore.
They don't understand why.
I mean, they're dying at home.
Yeah, they're just dying, which by the way, they're not even being added to the totals, right?
The amount of people who are actually dying because they're not able to get surgeries or, you know, they're not getting the medical care that they need, it just mounts and mounts and mounts.
And I have to say, so I bring this up often, but it's important.
I come from a small rural town in Indiana.
Those towns are going to be destroyed.
They're just going to be run through.
And when I talk back home, the news is terrible.
All of the nursing homes are run through with it.
And I'll tell you what's not ready for that.
The hospital.
The hospital, which has been just completely destroyed.
And it hasn't been brought up to date the way it needs to.
You have all of these towns...
They are prime targets for this stuff and and you even know God the World Health Organization.
That's another thing.
We haven't talked about we're basically while we're not basically we're defunding it and the president of the who came out and said we haven't seen the worst of this thing.
And meanwhile, Trump and Kemp and everyone like them is in a race to reopen this thing.
They know full and well it's going to kill people.
There's no way around it.
It's going to kill people.
And then you have the Lieutenant Governor of Texas who, what a great quote, there are things worse than dying.
Like, that's, like, put that on your bumper sticker, man!
Like, what is this?
It is a death cult of a party, and the longer that we pretend like they're valid is the more that we suffer.
And here's another thing that's really kind of ghoulish, is when they were doing the, they're really examining who is dying and what demographic is dying.
And it turns out the Republicans are going to suffer a lot more with death from COVID-19, which is sort of like backfiring then on what Trump really wants to do in terms of whipping up his base and trying to maintain his slim hold on Electoral College.
So, you know, remember, 10,000, 20,000 votes here and there could really affect this election in different states.
But you're engaging in long-term planning.
And we've talked about this now.
None of this has anything to do with long-term consequences.
Going back to the whole thing where Fox News was lying about this, even though they knew that it was going to kill their viewers, it still gets them ratings, right?
So if Trump can somehow or another navigate through this, and this is what Trump does.
Trump has never been a planner.
Trump is a reactionist.
He does whatever he has to do in the moment to escape.
It's like, you know, using your thing where you talk about movies.
It's like somebody needs to escape.
Do they know which hall they're gonna go down?
Or, you know, they're gonna jump out this window and then they're gonna do this?
No.
They're just reacting because their back is against the wall.
And that's what Trump is doing at all times.
He doesn't have a long-term vision.
He doesn't think about the fact that his supporters are going to die from this.
He's just like, no, I just need to get past this in the moment.
Well, you see me.
I feel like you really, I'm now, like you know what I'm about.
I feel like you're saying I had to escape reality by watching so many movies.
That's like, that's the life I live.
That is the only way that we're gonna do it.
And by the way, for anybody who hasn't, here's a movie recommendation I caught it the other night, Network.
If you want to have an understanding of what is going on with cable television and particularly cable news, go and check that thing out because it's just dead on perfect.
It is all about an America that is being taken over by spectacle and big business that use the spectacle.
It is absolutely must watch movie.
Absolutely.
And then as a double feature, what movie I just watched last night is Full Metal Jacket.
Because then it fully encapsulates the insanity that we're going through.
Which, by the way, okay, the hits keep coming.
They did an exhaustive study to prove that Hannity killed people.
Yep.
And I was like, come on, whatever.
But I'm telling you, it's like a 90-page report.
I read, you know, 15 pages.
I tried to get through it, and at the very least, it's a pretty rigorous dissemination of the facts and of the data that they have.
And, you know, they could kind of show that, you know, what's-his-face Tucker Carlson was a little bit more sober, a little bit more serious about the virus earlier on, and that there's some connection between the people that didn't listen to him and listen to Hannity, were the ones that did not shelter in place and were much more cavalier and they died.
And those are the kind of things that you could cite like if there was ever a, I don't know, a lawsuit against Fox or something like, it might actually be compelling with the right lawyer arguing. - Please, if there's any justice in the universe, let there be a massive, massive civil action lawsuit against Fox News for what they have done to people during massive civil action lawsuit against Fox News for what they have done It is unconscionable.
And I want to point this out.
Fox News has been a public health crisis, danger to public health, since it came on the air.
And this has been a consistent thing.
When I was doing research on my book, American Rule, How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People, what I kept finding was that you had, as Fox News grew in power, particularly during the Obama presidency, they inspired so many mass shooters.
They inspired so many angry, paranoid white men to go into public spaces and shoot people.
And it would be this thing where they would talk to them afterwards and they'd be like, why'd you do this?
And I'm like, Glenn Beck.
It's Glenn Beck, absolutely.
It's Sean Hannity, right?
And it was Fox News.
It is not a cable news network.
It's not even just a propaganda tool.
It's actually a poison.
And the poison is very, very lucrative.
But it poisons society.
It kills people.
And you're exactly right.
John Hannity has killed people.
And by the way, while we're on that subject, let's talk about the fact that the President of the United States, by pushing hydroxychloroquine... Nice!
Hydroxychloroquine.
Did I get there?
There we go.
I'm from Greene County, Indiana.
I'm lucky I can tie my shoes.
It has been shown now that in tests, it's actually killed people.
It's raised the mortality rate with people who are suffering COVID-19.
So he was actually pushing poison on the American people.
And we found out that multiple people were fired or either suffered professional consequences because they didn't want to push the drug that Trump wanted to push.
This is another thing that he should be removed from office for and prosecuted for.
But meanwhile, it's just falling through the cracks.
Right, so the dumb thing was, well not the dumb thing because we didn't know what was going to happen in the future, but you know, impeaching him on the call to Ukraine ends up being like a silly, trivial thing compared to if they had waited, you know, another couple months, I guess this would have happened, but they probably would have argued there's no time between now and November to like, do an impeachment, but this should have been the impeachment trial, because it's still going on, that's the only problem, it's like I don't even know how you would even process this in real time, but
There's no question that this is clearly more serious than what he did with Ukraine, which is already serious enough.
I would make the argument that he should be impeached for both things and removed from office for both things.
And that's one of the damnedest things, too, is whenever he was impeached over the Ukraine call, I don't know if you remember this, but everyone was just like, well, are they going to focus on the Mueller report at all?
Are they going to go into the Russia allegations, all this stuff, the obstruction of justice?
And they're like, no, you have to make a narrow case, a focused case.
What would you even do in this case?
Do you know what I mean?
Like, how many ways has this president betrayed the country for his own interests and his own powers?
I don't even know how you make a cohesive case because at this point in the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, I've lost track.
I've lost track of how many battles this president has fought against the United States of America.
It's treason.
It's really awful, terrible, horrific stuff.
Right, and I'm not even sure he has a complete control on what he's doing, short of, they clearly must be just looking at polls, right?
They probably have their own internal polling, which is another reason, okay, we haven't even talked about Iran, okay?
Now, in the midst of all these things, and the narrative is starting to turn, let's not overlook this, you know, his approval ratings are dropping.
It is not sustaining.
So, you know, when you look at a thing where he starts to tweet about shooting down gunboats, From the sky, I don't know exactly what he means.
From Iran, if they are hostile to their ships.
And by the way, that's ridiculous posturing from both sides.
These little ships aren't really going to have much effect on a huge carrier that's in that area.
But he wants to threaten that, and then meanwhile, there never was an order to do that to the military from his office.
So at any rate, those are the distractions now, and this is how you know how desperate it's getting, because he's trying to figure out any way to change the narrative.
Well, and we're probably going to end up talking about this next week because it's already heating up.
And this is the thing, unfortunately, we talk about this stuff and then it comes out the next week, right?
And it just happens.
It's not the hardest thing in the world to predict, but we're starting to hear drumbeats of war against China.
There's all kinds of talk about the U.S.
intelligence community trying to find proof that this is a bioweapon or made in a lab in China.
And all of a sudden China is now saying that they have heard that it was made in a bio lab.
I want to say it was Maryland, I think they said.
So they've now gone back and forth and they're firing shots over each other's bow.
What it is is a president who's flailing.
It's a person who is trying desperately and he's done this his entire presidency and probably his entire life.
Anytime that there's an issue and there's a danger that he might get found out or he might suffer consequences, he just throws some shit at the wall, right?
And that's the thing, and it drives me insane.
All of these pundants and people who are supposedly incredibly intelligent and astute, they're like, he's a master chess player.
Like he is just playing four dimensional chess and he's not he's flinging shit at the wall people and he's just trying things and eventually we've been incredibly lucky that we haven't gone to war yet under this man and it has to do with the fact that he's a coward that's that's the first thing and he's not into actually doing things he likes the illusion of doing things besides stealing money Someday he's gonna roll snake eyes.
Like this China thing is not a thing to mess with and he's now getting the U.S.
intelligence community involved and they have shown over the last couple of decades that if you tell them you want a war with somebody they'll figure out a way to give you a war.
And this is just, it's a really concerning thing.
And unfortunately, I hate to leave people with this before we go for the weekend, but this is something we're going to be talking about.
It's going to build and build and build.
It's already been way too consistent.
It's already gotten too loud.
It's going to be something that we're going to have to deal with.
But wait, there's more.
Well, we didn't even talk about the immigration ban, okay?
We didn't even talk about the immigration ban!
He banned immigrants!
It's like a temporary arresting of the visas processing, which take way longer than 60 days anyway.
It has no effect on anything.
And by the way, here's the thing.
How can you in one sentence say, we're coming out of this, everything is getting better, we're going to open up the country soon, and then turn around and say, well, the country is doing so poorly with COVID that we have to have an immigration ban.
This is the kind of stuff that...
I do feel like it is eroding some of that support on the margins.
I really do feel like there is starting to be some movement there a little bit, you know, day by day.
But again, you're right, flooding the zone with shit, throwing stuff on the wall, seeing what happens.
But I wonder, can he continue to increase the volume of that?
Because at this point, how many things have we already gone through?
It's barely been half an hour.
Nick, he told three states last week to liberate themselves.
Oh yeah.
He told the state of Virginia that they need to liberate themselves because the state was planning on taking away their Second Amendment rights.
Which, by the way, real quick, what's that have to do with coronavirus?
Nothing!
It's literally, and I keep telling people this, and I want people to hear this, and I want people to remember this, because this is going to be important now And it's going to be important in November if we have elections.
That little asterisk on there, right?
What you need to understand is that this is not a person who considers things the same way we do.
When he watched in 2012 when Mitt Romney got beat by Barack Obama, handedly, right?
And remember that Trump has never been a fan of Mitt Romney.
His immediate response was to tweet out to his followers, before he was Donald Trump, President of the United States of America, head of the Trumpism movement, He told people they should march on Washington and carry out a revolution and that they had lost their government.
Now he's president during a generational crisis.
He's facing the possibility of not just getting beat in an election, but being prosecuted after he's beat in the election for all of his crimes.
He will pull out any stops.
This is a drowning man, and anybody who's ever taken swimming lessons knows that if you try and save someone who's drowning, They will drown you to save themselves.
It's instinct.
He's worse.
He's not actually drowning, but he always feels like he's drowning because he is a man of crisis.
And that's what he does, and he'll try anything, and this stuff will take off.
And we've already seen people get killed.
We've seen one of his supporters try and carry out a systematic assassination of the entirety of the Democratic leadership.
Like, we've seen that.
And then he just got back to it a couple days later, saying, yeah, they're the enemies of the people.
It's what he does, and it's what he's going to continue to do.
It's going to get worse.
And he's supporting all these protests.
And when you look at these guys who are, you know, playing dress-up, you know, war games, loaded M-16s, and, you know, you could argue that, you know, they're basically just threatening lawmakers, right?
Absolutely, it's terrorism.
It's terrorism.
Yeah.
And by the way, we haven't even mentioned – there's another thing we can mention, which is – and this is from Alan Rappaport, who is a New York Times financial analyst.
You know, here's what his tweet said.
I say, "The Trump administration suggested in March that the jobless rate could hit 20% if nothing was done to prop up the economy." OK?
Well, the government has unleashed $6 trillion of stimulus, and 20% unemployment looks likely.
Anyway, so we're talking about, this is going to be 25%, 30% unemployment.
The market is still sort of moving up the last several days, which again, just shows you how manipulative all this is.
The oil prices are all down too.
So, how can you explain in the midst of that kind of crisis, especially the oil as well, how the market could even possibly move up at all?
This boggles my mind.
It makes me angry.
It has nothing to do with us.
And we've talked about all this before and it's so sad and it's so true.
I just saw, I read an article today that America's richest billionaires have gained over 280 billion dollars.
Like, tell me how that's fair.
Tell me how that's right.
Tell me how that is just.
It's not.
Because this economy was never built for people.
It was built for the redistribution of wealth under Ronald Reagan and the hyper-capitalist people who used him as a puppet.
None of it is fair.
None of it is right.
And you're exactly right.
They passed the biggest stimulus bill in American history.
The biggest of all time.
And it didn't help.
It didn't do anything besides redistribute wealth.
That's all.
So are they going to get together and do it again?
I can hear Mitch McConnell right now saying, we could never do another one of these.
They don't care.
And I know that's a... Wait.
You don't have to hear him say it.
He did say it.
I think he just came out today and was talking about how he's going to refuse to do any more of these.
I was so busy teaching that I didn't see this.
He said something.
Of course he said something.
Of course he said something.
He's a jackass.
There's no other way around it.
Man, when this thing is all said and done... Yeah, so really quickly, he wants to let the states go bankrupt.
Oh, you can't let those ships, those cruise lines go bankrupt, but let's let the states go bankrupt.
Oh my god, what a... Listen, I don't know how to put any more of a better face on this thing.
The Republican Party is a destructive movement that has nothing to do with political action and or treating anybody with dignity, respect, or you know, Human dignity at all.
We have to get rid of these people.
And I say that not even as a Democrat.
Like, the Democratic Party is the only one that even has any sanity left to it whatsoever.
The Republican Party is a death cult that will drag us down and destroy this country if they have their way.
It's unbelievable.
Let the states go bankrupt, Nick.
Just let him go bankrupt!
You know?
Restructure it like Donald Trump.
Who needs a post office?
Who needs a post office, Nick?
What's another?
What's a few more in the state?
It's insane.
We didn't talk about the post office, really.
I guess we mentioned it briefly.
But I'm exhausted.
Who needs a post office?
Who needs a post office, Nick?
It's only in the Constitution.
Wait, it's the thing that is supposed to keep us together as a shared society.
But who needs it?
Right.
Daddy's got bills to pay!
It's that thing, what's it called?
It's like a societal need, whatever they call that, you know, yeah.
It should be considered that way at least.
Yes, the idea that you can have a independent or a government-run agency that delivers mail, not, you know, they want to privatize this thing.
And all I can imagine is how ridiculous that would be and no one would be able to afford sending a letter anymore.
Well, or they'll be able to send it but they won't have the right of privacy.
Ah, yes.
Which is a big part of this thing.
By the way, I'm instituting a new rule.
New rule on the Muckrake Podcast.
We cannot reveal a quote from Mitch McConnell that I haven't heard yet before the weekend.
We can't do it.
You cannot tell me something that Mitch McConnell has said before we're done for the weekend.
That just can't work.
I'm sorry.
I'll send a six-pack over.
It is unbelievable that that man, that little shit man, stood up and said that.
Of course he did!
Of course he did.
Yeah, at least he's getting some backlash in theory, but hey, it's insane.
So, yeah, I guess it's, let's, can we find something to raise our heads over before we leave?
Here's the thing that made me feel hopeful, bringing this thing full circle.
Governor Brian Kemp comes out, says he's going to reopen tattoo parlors, massage parlors, all those hair salons.
And immediately everybody in the world, including Donald Trump, said it was stupid.
That's the beginning of hope, right?
Is that this recklessness.
The audacity.
I think that there is an understanding in this country.
I was looking at it earlier and I think there's like 80% of Americans do not think that social quarantining should be relaxed.
That's a huge number, Nick.
And when you look at the, we've been talking for the past week about these Reopen America protests, which are completely fabricated, funded by billionaires on the right.
Most Americans don't believe it.
They think it's crap.
They don't believe it.
That's hopeful.
And I think there is hope here.
And the hope is that something like this, I think, will start to bring some people over into the realm of sanity and common sense.
I have to believe that.
Me too.
I do.
I believe.
There's something happening.
I do believe.
Remember, they don't have to win by more than one vote.
By more than one Electoral College vote.
It's all we need.
I don't care.
It doesn't have to be a landslide.
It doesn't have to be a mandate.
Just get him out.
And then hopefully he will accede to that.
But still, it's kind of like what the Rockets do in basketball.
They're not there to blow anybody up.
They're simply there to get one more point than the other guy when the horn sounds.
It's not the most beautiful type of basketball either.
Alright everybody, well we thank you so much for coming and hanging out with us on our Leader in the Week podcast.
We have a lot of new listeners and we are really grateful for you and we're really excited about continuing this conversation.
A reminder here on the Muckrake Podcast, we're having conversations other people aren't, giving context and ideas behind it.
Please let people know that we're doing this.
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Until next time, I am JRJ Sexton.
You can find me at JY Sexton.
You can find Nick Hausselman at Can You Hear Me SMH.
And until then, stay safe, keep washing hands.
I'm getting so bad at that.
Have to.
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